Author's Note: Hello fellow Preddie/Yaut'ja lovers! ^^ I hope all of you like reading (and waiting a bit,) because this FF is vast and still growing. :D I realize there is a similar story of a Yaut'ja who grows up on Earth, but I assure you, mine is substantially different. I am not copying them or taking credit for the idea in any way. :)

There are some subtitles throughout the fic, so if you read one chapter and skip another, things may be confusing. :) I also apologize for the lack of dividers in earlier postings. My original ones didn't survive the upload. -_-

So I hope you like this original Alien/Predator fanfiction! Enjoy! :3

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Prequel: A Living Experiment

Falling...

She couldn't stop it. Panels and pressure valves were shot to hell.

Too fast... Oh please Paya, don't let her die!

She fought the pull of the planet below as hard as she could. The unseen foe behind her had paralyzed her engines.Damn them!

She was a fugitive. Only for being the best mother she could be. Her helpless daughter lie in a gyro crib, almost oblivious to the tremors in the dying craft.

The foreign world shoved its ever growing ground closer and closer to the ship. The mother was jarred back from the controls as the deepest layers of atmosphere hit the shieldless hull. There was no controlling the ship now. The gravity was too strong.

In the last seconds before impact, she grabbed her daughter and held her close...

Dr. Matthew Okinaw could barely stay awake in the rocking three-wheel ATV as it skirted the Everglades. He felt like he was in one of those curious people in an old extraterrestrial movie. Though he would have gladly deferred the responsibility of checking it out to someone else. He had only gotten two hours of sleep when the order came: "Unknown craft has crash-landed in your jurisdiction. Orders are to analyze and determine if anything has survived."

He didn't like being so far from HQ, but it was what his company had dealt him, so he took it. Matt would've been a lot more excited at this sudden incident if it were in the morning. But he had to laugh at himself. What twenty-four year old astrobiologist went to sleep at 9:00 P.M.? It was 2020 for crying out loud.

Common sense, he answered himself. He'd never admit it, but he was a genius. The most important thing to his intellect was sleep.

The ATV came to a halt and Matt slid out tiredly and rubbed his eyes with one hand. In the dark, wet swamp nearby, a mess of mangled still smoking trees blocked his view from the crash.

One of the officials who had gotten there before him jogged up, handing him a folding touch screen with all the latest information. Matt took a moment to read it... Then his droopy eyes finally widened.

He jogged to the crash area, nearly getting stuck in a few hidden muck holes on the way. Approaching the edge of the displaced earth, Matt looked down at the craft. The information was right. This was exactly what he was hoping to find. He descended the rest of the way to the ship and found an opening where everyone was gathered. One of the hands looked up when Matt approached and informed him that they had had orders not to enter the craft until he'd arrived. The radiologist assured him that there wasn't anything imminently dangerous in the craft. The men stood aside for him to take the first step into the ship.

It was at a 70 degree angle and Matt had to hold onto the sides of the very large hallway to keep from sliding down. The inside was completely destroyed, power lines and technology beyond repair. Matt clipped his HHC to his chest pocket and started recording, prattling off documentation as best as he could. It was a momentous find nonetheless.

He neared what looked like the first door of the high ceilinged ship. A thin glowing stream was slowly seeping out from under it. Angling himself past a few fallen pieces of metal, he tried to push it. He realized that it slid instead and managed to heave it open. In the dark room, the young scientist saw a large, curled body jammed in the corner. The luminous blood coming from the individual was the only source of light.

Balanced on the door jam, Matt snapped to the person behind him. "Light," he said. He was immediately handed one and shined the light on the alien body. It looked to be dead but it was clutching something close to its chest. And whatever it was holding squirmed.

Matt carefully made his way over to the alien, reminding himself to keep his distance. He stopped four feet away and got a closer look.

Inside wasn't what he expected to see. True, he expected the species he'd studied in various reports, but not like this. From what he could tell, the individual looked... very feminine. He'd never heard of any incident of a female specimen. She had everything the other aliens were described to having. Four sharp mandibles, a long skull lined with black dreadlocks, and reptilian skin. Matt dared to inch a couple feet closer. Two of the alien's large, but slender hands rested on top of a small mass. He almost reached over to take a hand off, but it shot out, knocking him back a full yard and a half.

Stunned, Matt slid back down near the corner. Expecting to find the alien standing over him, he looked up to find the huge being trying to shrink farther into the corner. She was barely conscious and now Matt could see how bad she was wounded.

Matt surveyed the room and found a stream of the blood from the door to the wall adjacent to it. There were jagged instruments on that wall also coated in some blood as well. She had been hit in the back of the head and sliced in the lower part of her back. He was no med expert, but it looked irreparable. She was mumbling a string of words in her harsh sounding language.

Matt attempted to calm her down. Against his better judgement, he reached out for her arm and gently tried to put it down. "It's all right, w-we won't hurt you. Try not to move."

She forced her eyes open and stopped resisting. Her gaze was unfocused, dazed. Matt called a medical team down, even though he knew they wouldn't be able to help her. They knew nothing about her race in the biological sense.

Looking back down at the alien, Matt finally saw what she was holding. It was an infant. It looked unharmed for the most part to him. She must have been its mother.

Matt felt a pang of pity for her, but it was short-lived when the dying alien handed her baby to the only person she could. He stared at the now growling little thing in his arms and back at the mother with a "you can't be serious" look. This definitely felt like an old extraterrestrial movie.

Ten hours later in San Francisco, the head of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, Aden Rabindinath, was positively animated. Matt had never seen him this riled up. The twig thin Indian yammered off the advantages of having an alien ship in their possession. Matt only half paid attention. He agreed with what most of the CEO was saying, but Matt's mind was on that interaction he'd had with the alien mother. He wished someone else had been there for her last few moments. It wasn't that her death itself had bothered him... Well, it did, but it wasn't the point. He couldn't shake the feeling that she had entrusted her infant to him. He couldn't do it, of course. He had no experience with otherworldly babies. He didn't even have experience with humanbabies.

The others in the board room agreed vigorously with the CEO. Even the staunch liaison from Tokyo was in agreement. He also assured them all that the American government didn't know any specifics about the crash, believing it to be a malfunctioned private jet. Measures had also been taken to cover all the loose ends of the incident, such as eyewitnesses, airlines, etc. When Aden started wrapping up the meeting, Matt brought up what he wished he wouldn't have. "What about the infant, sir?"

Aden looked up pleasantly, not even hesitating. "Experiment on it, of course. You'll carry it out, I trust." It wasn't a suggestion or even a question.

"Why me?" replied the astrobiologist.

"You, of the entire group of Weyland-Yutani scientists know the most about this race. You're the best one for the job." Aden straightened up his papers and smiled at Matt on his way to the door. "We look forward to your reports on its internal system. We may even be able to add its best characteristics to the new genetic manipulation companies popping up all over the place."

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Rabindinath, but are you expecting a dissection? Of a living individual?"

The CEO laughed lightly, standing in front of the door. He turned to face Matt again. "Yes, Dr. Okinaw, that's exactly what we expect."

Matt frowned at his absolute lack of feeling toward life. He could understand the man's reasoning. This race had been recorded as vicious, bloodthirsty hunters that made trophies of people in the vilest ways. But this was still a sentientlife. "I'm sorry, I can't oversee that kind of experimentation. I will conduct controlled tests and observation on the infant, but I will not kill it in order to learn how its mind works."

Aden raised a skinny black eyebrow at that statement. "Well, doctor, if you won't do so, that's completely fine with me. We'll just have to get someone who's willing."

Matt retorted, "But as you've said yourself, sir; I, of the entire group of Weyland-Yutani scientists know the most about this race... I'm the best one for the job. Maybe even the only one."

Aden didn't appreciate being dictated terms by a subordinate in front of his peers. His long silence made Matt brace himself for the worst.

The infantile alien delicately picked up a few of the clear blocks. Matt and his team now knew that it was a she, she breathed a different type of oxygen mix, and had a very low metabolic rate. They had to figure out what she could consume, but she didn't seem to need it yet.

Matt was going over the ship footage again in the lab room. The little alien was behind him in a controlled habitat, content to play with herself.

Matt had the volume low as he watched it. He was still shocked that the CEO had allowed Matt to persuade him like that. He hadn't done it only because it was wrong morally to him to waste an innocent life, but also because he felt responsible for the infant. He kept shoving it out of his reasoning. It came back anyway.

The recording replayed the mother handing the infant to him. She was having a hard time breathing and was starting to fade. She placed a hand on her daughter one more time. Looking at Matt with glazed eyes, she uttered one phrase to him. "Mahhlee-dehhknaah."

Matt had shaken his head, not knowing what she meant. "What?"

She looked frustrated, tapped her infant weakly, then touched her own eyelids. "Mali'dekna," she said clearing her slur with some effort.

Matt nodded, still not knowing what she meant, and repeated the phrase. "Mali...dekna."

The mother placed her hand on his shoulder, squeezing it firmly. Matt didn't know what that meant in her culture, but it seemed like a gesture of trust. She closed her eyes for the last time and her grasp on his shoulder slackened.

Matt stopped the recording. Why had she touched her eyes? Swiveling his chair around to face the infant, he watched her. His first suspicion had been that she was blind.

She had set the transparent blocks in a pyramid. Matt would have fallen over if he saw a human infant do that. It did amaze him anyway. She could obviously see, but not in the way he thought. Her species could only see in the infrared without help. She shouldn't have been able to see those transparent blocks at all. They were the same temperature as the floor. Yet she could stack them-and in a three dimensional pattern. What didshe see? he asked silently.

Leaning on his elbows, he formulated a theory. What if she couldn'tsee in the infrared? Like the rest of her species. He wished she could communicate so be could more accurately test his theory. But that would have to wait.

Standing, he walked to the chair in front of her sterile containment box. He leaned his forearms on the back of the chair and rested his head. He was eye-level with her and very close to the barrier.

She was so quiet. The only time she'd made any noise was when she was handed to him by her mother. He wondered... Did she know her mother was dead? Or was this the demeanor of all infants in her species?

He lightly rapped the barrier with his finger, trying to get her attention. She looked up at him with large, deep orange eyes that Matt swore he saw gleaming with intelligence. She half crawled, half dragged her small body over to him. If she were human, Matt would've guessed she was five months old. He hadn't the slightest idea of how old she really was.

She clumsily sat in front of him and almost seemed to look at him expectantly, like she was waiting for him to take her out. He studied her miniaturized features. Her teeth and mandibles were still forming. Her "hair" had not yet broken the surface, giving her a very saurian appearance. Though, she reminded Matt of a frog with her color. So different...

He tapped his finger on the barrier again and she put both small yellow and green hands where he did.

He put his hand up to her two and sighed. He shouldn't be in charge of this. It was going to be too hard for him not to want to be a parent for her. But was that really such a bad thing? Who better than him?

Taking out his flip touch screen, he brought up the little aliens file. Under "designation", he wrote: Mali'dekna.