Afterwards, I always thought Dillon knew he was going to die. Maybe he thought he was fucking Moses or some prophet or something, or maybe he was just one miserable motherfucker. But when we all agreed to Ripley's plan it was because of him. I never gave Dillon any respect. He never deserved any before then. I see people like him everyday and I wish they could have taken his place.

I can see down into the ghetto from my window. When it's not too cold I get Stede to push the bed toward it so that I can sit up with a pillow behind my back and watch people. When it's cold, however, I have to get him to put it back where it was, because the heater's on the other side of the room. It used to be cold a lot, particularly in the early mornings, but I'm not feeling it so much anymore.

I have started a tally on the wall. It is so dirty I can scratch a notch in the grime and it doesn't go away. The rooms weren't cheap, but they weren't expensive either. We only have this one for another fortnight. Stede hasn't extended the lease by paying a bigger deposit. He won't say it, but he thinks a fortnight will be too long. If this thing has done anything for me, it's actually made me think more clearly. A blessing disguised as a fucking curse, I keep telling him. He nods and swaggers away.

The tally now stands at three, seven and fourteen. Three murders that I have witnessed, seven rapes and fourteen thefts. Not all of these are individual incidences. One time, late at night, I watched a guy rape a woman, kill her and then steal the clothes off her fucking back. It makes me think. Ripley gave up a lot for these motherfuckers. So did Min. I wouldn't have.

Stede laughed when I told him I watched all this happening from the window. He came in once and I didn't even hear him. I was watching these bastards laying into a young guy. I'd seen him before. They beat him with these poles that anyone could find if they looked hard enough and when he stopped moving they just took off with his food. But he wasn't dead, of course, because I'd seen him do this before. He pulled a gun and he shot the slowest in the head. It took him two rounds, he was that good a shot. Everyone else just looked the other way when he went and claimed the corpse. Anybody else would have taken the fucker's clothes, but Bentley was more interested in what was inside the rags.

"Nice people," Stede said. "Don't you ever feel like getting involved?"

"No," I said. "The fuckers will get what they deserve..."

Stede would shrug. He didn't really care. He was just winding me up. If I went down there I would be the one with the bullet in the scalp and Bentley's filthy fat cock thrust up my arse. One day I saw Bentley fishing for his next partner in a blizzard and I was bored so I started to imagine all the nasty ways he deserved to die. It always came back to the creatures.

My head hurts more today than it has before. It's hard to write.

If anybody ever deserved to die that way, it was Andrews. They always used to tell a story on Fury, when new inmates arrived, and they were always about Andrews punishing inmates with fuckings. Those were in the days when there were thousands on Fury and none of us would have seen Andrews, day in, day out. It was easier to believe the stories then. We eventually found out that Andrews made up the stories himself and had a little system going with a prisoner called Randall. Randall wanted to be the daddy. Andrews wasn't new to this industry. He knew there had to be a daddy, and he'd rather have him on side. So Randall would spread these stories about Andrews, and when Randall wanted to give one of the prisoners a punishment beating, Andrews and co would look away.

They gave a beating to the new guy once, but this time they picked on the wrong newbie. I had been there a year at that point. Dillon had come a good eleven months after me, but hadn't spoken to a single person since he got there. So they gave him a beating and Andrews paid no attention. Dillon had no qualms with killing the guy. He was a lifer anyway, he told us later, but they weren't going to gas him. He killed the guy and after that Andrews lost his foothold. When they pretty much closed us down, we all thought Dillon would kill Andrews, Aaron and Clemens and get us the fuck off the planet. He never did, though. Maybe he did deserve what he got, after all.

I've just watched an execution. Usually the gangs drag people off to die on their own turf, because it's easier to behead people or drown them or generally carve them up where security isn't just a minute's run away. This was a nice grisly beheading. I'm not usually up for these things, but I knelt at the window and rubbed my hands together to keep warm as they tied these guys up and then hacked at their necks as they lay writhing naked in the snow.

One of them was Bentley. I'm sure they missed his neck deliberately.

I've been thinking too hard about Fury. When you think too much about something you can't fully remember, you start to add things that seem to fit but which didn't actually happen. I now remember Ripley screaming. She started screaming on the scaffold and didn't stop until she fell into the lead. And she flailed once in the lead, and came up screaming still, and screamed until she died. I can't remember if that happened.

I had a funny thought last night. What if this was my final night? What if this was my final 9pm? My final 10pm. The last time I would take a piss. The last time I would see the moon. The last time I would scratch my arse, or see my face in the mirror, or burp. Of course, it wasn't, but I'm sure it will be soon. Every time I do something now I always think for a moment that it might be the last time I do it. Stede laughed and called be a sentimental old bastard.

Stede will get my book out. He doesn't seem too interested in what I'm writing, but he's promised he'll make sure the right people get it. I used to think he understood. He claims he still does.

I had my first regret this morning. I haven't thought about Min ever since they shipped me off Pluto and back in here. But then I remembered I didn't care anymore, so why was I bothered that she wanted to bring the creatures back? And why was I bothered that she had, at the last minute, changed her mind? If I could have any woman one last time it would be her.

Stede has some amazing contacts on the outside. He has brought to me all the skeletons from the Weyland Yutani closet. It all goes back further than I ever thought. It talks of Ripley, her old ship Nostromo, a planet called Acheron, a marine mission for which every single member was recorded MIA. The final impression I get is that I'm just one tiny little part of something that's been going on for decades and will now, thanks to me, go on for many more.

I showed Stede some of my writings this afternoon. He pointed out how my handwriting has deteriorated recently. I hadn't noticed myself. He read a little of what I've been writing recently. Some bits made him laugh, but I'm not sure they were the bits that were supposed to. He's told me there's a gaping plothole in my story, and whilst I insisted that it wasn't a story, he is right that there is one.

"How did you get off Pluto, then?" he asked dubiously.

The answer is, quite simply, that they let me off. Min died believing I had destroyed the samples. It's a good thing I don't believe in Dillon's afterlife, or Min will be sitting up there right now, reading over my shoulder. The truth is, Min, I didn't destroy all the samples. I still had Ripley's. I know that's the one they were after. Why would they have wanted anybody else's? They have it now. And I hope it kills them all. I can die happy knowing it will. It doesn't really bother me that they put a cancer in my head. At the end of the game, I shall be the overall winner.

I talked to Stede for a long time tonight. He just left. I wonder why he did that. He's usually got much better things to do. The quack physician appeared at one point when I was trying to sleep, but he didn't come in, he just stood in the doorway and made his diagnosis from a distance. That didn't take him very long. Then Stede came in and we talked. I told him the story again and it would seem that I've told it so many times that he can remember where I've changed it better than I can. It's funny. I can't remember telling it to him before.

NOTES:
For me, this chapter was the reason to write this story. I had it planned out from the beginning that Morse would end up writing "The Dragon" as a last ditch attempt to make his mark in the world whilst lying on his deathbed. It's my favourite of all the chapters, not least because of that poignant final line, which I'll probably end cannibalising before long. The only problem I have with it now is that I can't connect this Morse with the character I saw in "Alien 3" any more. I've made him too much of a tragic anti-hero.

Reading back, I don't think the fact that I cut swathes out of my original plot through lack of interest changes the particulars. In fact, I think it polarises the feelings of despair and hopelessness. Originally Morse would have escaped New Dachau and returned to Earth on this noble mission of Min's. Instead he's brought back against his will and ends up in a worse state than that in which he began. It all just confirms that nobody really has much of a chance in the "Alien" universe. Somebody like Morse was never going to live out the rest of their days on the golf course.