Alien: Prototype: Novel Overview And Plot
Alien: Prototype is a 2019 novel by Tim Waggoner, published by Titan Books on 29 October 2019. It sits between Keith R. A. DeCandido's Alien: Isolation novel and the comic series Aliens: Resistance. Corporate spy Tamar Prather stole a hidden egg from the wrecked freighter Proximo and delivered it to Venture, a rival of Weyland-Yutani, at the V-22 research complex on Jericho 3. Former Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks was already there, training Venture's Colony Protection Force, with the ident chip of the synthetic Davis still in her pocket after Aliens: Defiance.
Plot Summary
Tamar Prather boarded the disabled Proximo with the pirate crew of the Manticore and found an unmarked stasis pod under the captain's floor. The scanner read biomatter. She killed captain Juan Verela when he walked in, then fought her way off the ship with the pod after Kenyatta Lehman and Sid Chun tried to stop her. Tamar was not a pirate. Venture had planted her on the Manticore to watch for stolen cargo the company could use.
The Manticore Raid
The Manticore had lured the Proximo with a false distress call, then wrecked its engines and comms with a rail gun and boarded under gas grenades. Tamar took a roundabout twenty-three-day course to Jericho 3, cycling the light engines and changing the call sign so Weyland-Yutani could not follow the ion trail. She left the surviving pirates stranded on the wrecked ship.
The Lodge And The Egg
Director Aleta Fuentes ran V-22, a five-building complex of nearly six hundred staff that workers called the Lodge. Venture had overbuilt the site, and the return so far had been thin. Aleta needed a win that would keep the board from shutting the place down. Dr. Millard Gagnon and his synthetic assistant Brigette confirmed the pod held a viable Ovomorph. Tissue samples leaked acid blood that ate nusteel. Test animals refused to go near it. Gagnon asked for a human host. Aleta sent the request to Legal.
Hassan And The Host
Hassan Bagrov kept the Lodge's thermo systems running and sold his body to lab trials for extra pay, saving for a trip back to Earth. Gagnon had already given him cellular necrosis during an earlier vaccine test. The treatment worked, but Hassan's mouth stayed dry and he still grew kidney stones. He walked into the chamber thinking it was another paid trial. The Facehugger came out of the egg and took him.
Zula And The Hider
Zula Hendricks was in her mid-twenties, a private first class with a bad back, hired to train ten Colony Protection Force recruits on robots modeled after hostile life. The trainees called her Boss. Most of them were older than she was. Ronny Yoo acted as their unofficial leader. The others were Miriam Castro, Virgil Townsend, Genevieve Parks, Donnell Stockton, Masako Littlefield, Ray Ackerman, Brenna Lister, Nicholas Hauata, and Angela.
During a Junkyard exercise a camouflaged Hider bot ignored its kill switch and went after the group. Masako sprained an ankle earlier in the run. The Hider knocked Miriam out and cracked Brenna's ribs. Zula drew it off and destroyed it with a grenade. Ronny later admitted he had rewritten the bot as a joke meant to humble her. The rewrite had gone further than he planned.
Birth Of The Necromorph
The chestburster tore out of Hassan already marked with barnacle pustules and black lesions from his leftover necrosis. Gagnon hoped the disease would kill the larva. It did not. The adult broke containment, took traits from both the host and the virus, and began killing through the Lodge. Gagnon named it a Necromorph. Aleta tried to keep the outbreak quiet and sent Gagnon, Brigette, and Tamar after it.
Med Center
Miriam was still in a ward bed from the Hider hit when the creature came out of an air duct. She sent the nurse out, picked up an IV pole, and went at it anyway. The tail broke her shoulder, then punched through her back. The inner jaw finished her. Gagnon tried a vaccine sphere and a one-shot proton stunner. The Necromorph coughed a black cloud into him. He pressed the stunner to his own neck and killed himself before the disease could finish the job. Zula and the trainees arrived in time to drive the creature off and pull Tamar and Brigette's damaged body out.
Vents And The Lodge AI
The Necromorph used the air system next. It braced in a duct and coughed virus into the vents so people who never saw it still died. More than a third of the Lodge later died of cellular necrosis before the outbreak burned out. Aleta watched her assistant Jazmine cough lesions open in the outer office, then died at her own desk with her head on a computer pad, still trying to send a report that would blame Gagnon. Davis, running from Zula's comm and later the Lodge network, fought the facility AI to dump the tainted air outside. Brigette's ident chip burned in that fight. Zula pocketed the charred chip and left the synth's head in the corridor.
Nicholas took a dose of the mutated virus while they hunted the creature through the buildings. He stepped back from the group and shot himself under the jaw so the disease would die with him.
Airlock And The Surface
The next trap was an airlock. Rifle fire still only dented the fused hide and burst pustules of acidic black goo. Tamar knocked Brenna forward on purpose to draw the tail, then grabbed a knocked-out tooth. The tooth melted into her palm and infected her. The Necromorph's inner jaw killed Brenna. Tamar ran into the open airlock, opened the outer door, and crawled onto Jericho 3 without a suit. The air was mostly carbon dioxide. Necrosis was already opening lesions on her hands when the creature tore her apart and left her on the rocks. Before it went outside it had already hidden one egg in a dark aisle of the warehouse.
Proto-Colony And The Junkyard
Zula took the remaining trainees out in a skimmer through an electrical storm to the proto-colony, the other human site on the planet. The Necromorph was already at a habitat dome. It had ripped a colonist out of an EVA suit and killed another with a tail through the chest. In the dust it yanked Virgil out of their firing circle and killed him. Only two colonists failed to answer Davis on the radio. The rest were still alive if the creature could be pulled away.
Zula hung from the skimmer's drop cable and used herself as bait, leading the Necromorph back to the Junkyard training ground. Davis took over the leftover training bots, but friendly fire wrecked that plan. The creature jumped Angela and killed her. Donnell tore his suit and broke a leg. Zula then lured it into the empty skimmer. Davis sealed the hull, climbed into the storm, and overloaded the engines. She dropped out on the emergency cable a moment before the explosion. The Necromorph died with the craft.
Aftermath And The Hidden Egg
A week later the Commissary was half empty. Venture closed V-22 and offered the five surviving trainees posts at other Colony Protection Force sites, with a pay raise. Ronny, Masako, Ray, Genevieve, and Donnell took the offer. Zula and Davis wiped Gagnon's isolated research, then a fire in his lab, with the suppression system delayed, burned the leftover egg, Facehugger, and Hassan's corpse. Davis also stripped Aleta's outgoing files. She had told her superiors about the work, but she had not sent the raw data. Zula refused a new Venture post. She caught a supply ship off-world, heading first to Earth to pick up Amanda Ripley.
Months later, inspectors Royce Leahy and Taneka McKinley walked the abandoned warehouse while Venture weighed turning the Lodge into a refueling stop. At the back, in poor light, they found a greenish leathery egg covered in black lesions. It opened as Royce reached for his comm.
The Necromorph
Xenomorphs take traits from their hosts. On Jericho 3 that included a colony disease. Hassan's dormant cellular necrosis passed into the larva and stayed in the adult as raised lesions and pus-filled barnacles. The hide was harder than a normal mesoskeleton. Ordinary pistols and even pulse-rifle fire mostly cracked the surface and burst the pustules. The black goo from those growths ate EVA faceplates and flooring the same way acid blood did.
The Necromorph could cough a cloud of mutated necrosis into a room or a vent, so it did not need to touch every victim. It could also hold the dose down when it wanted a host to live long enough for implant. With no Queen on site it still produced at least one egg and hid it in the warehouse, an eggmorphing path Gagnon had already guessed when he saw it drag a lightly infected man toward a duct. Zula had seen Xenomorphs live in vacuum. Jericho 3's carbon-dioxide storm did not stop this one either.
Zula And Davis
After Aliens: Defiance, Zula recovered Davis's ident chip from a wreck on Earth and had not yet found him a new body. She carried the chip to the Lodge and talked to him through a portable link while she trained the recruits. A nightmare put her back on Tranquility Station with Amanda Ripley, then killed Davis in front of her. She woke knowing the chip was still the real Davis.
Davis wanted to be more human than the other units in his line. He wore glasses he did not need, and he had rewritten himself to feel pain. On Jericho 3 he did the work a body could not: he beat the Lodge AI, tracked the Necromorph through storm interference, and flew the overloaded skimmer. When Venture shut the Lodge, Zula still had his chip in her pocket. The next stop was Earth, and Amanda.
Continuity With Isolation And Resistance
Zula's Jericho 3 assignment sat after Amanda's fight on Sevastopol Station in Alien: Isolation and after Zula and Davis's war on company bio-weapons in Aliens: Defiance. Zula then left Jericho 3 to collect Amanda, and in Aliens: Resistance the two of them used that reunion to hit another secret program. Aliens: Rescue follows that same trio, Davis included once he has a body again.
Venture ran the Lodge, not Weyland-Yutani, but the stolen egg was company property and Tamar treated a sale back to Weyland-Yutani as a live option. The leftover warehouse egg was never resolved. Months later Royce and Taneka still stood over it after the Lodge had been emptied.
Editions And Adaptations
Titan's UK paperback runs 384 pages. The US mass-market listing from Penguin Random House is 352 pages. Both dated 29 October 2019. Blackstone Audio released an unabridged reading by Sarah Mollo-Christensen the same day, running 8 hours 54 minutes. Titan later bundled the novel with Alien: The Cold Forge and Alien: Into Charybdis in The Complete Alien Collection: Symphony of Death on 7 November 2023.
Behind The Scenes
Waggoner dedicated the book to Lance Henriksen. The acknowledgements thank agent Cherry Weiner and the two Steves who shaped the draft from the start, Titan editor Steve Saffel and Steve Tzirlin. Titan announced the novel on Alien Day in April 2019, alongside the Isolation novelization and Alien: 40 Years 40 Artists. Waggoner was already a Bram Stoker Award winner and a creative-writing professor at Sinclair College when he took the tie-in.
Conclusion
Alien: Prototype is the Jericho 3 outbreak that sits between Defiance and Resistance. Zula and Davis stopped the Necromorph by blowing a skimmer out of the storm, wiped Gagnon's files, and left the surviving trainees with Venture. The Lodge closed. One diseased egg stayed behind in the warehouse, and Zula headed for Earth to find Amanda.
Sources
- Alien: Prototype (novel, Titan Books, 2019)
- Alien: Prototype (audiobook narration by Sarah Mollo-Christensen)
- Related continuity: Alien: Isolation (2019 novel), Aliens: Defiance, Aliens: Resistance
External Sources
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