If you have been keeping an eye on the Concept Vaults or the upcoming Issue covers for Purgatory Magazine, you might have noticed a new title creeping into the roster. That title is Alien: Salvage.
I began brainstorming ideas for my story set within the Alien franchise, the intent was straightforward. I sought to return the franchise to the raw, suffocating sense of claustrophobia that the original film so masterfully employed. There are no large-scale pulse rifle battles or galaxy-spanning wars. Just the cold, the dark and the monsters.
The original concept was centred on the idea of the deep-sea welder aesthetic. A group of corporate scavengers rummaging through the decay of an acid-sunken derelict vessel. It was gritty, dark and perfectly captured the essence of the Purgatory setting.
However, as the cover art for Issue 05 began taking shape, the narrative began demanding more. The image of the protagonist standing alone in the dark, yet radiating an aura of terrifying serenity as she stood opposite the Xenomorph, forced me to consider one question. Why isn’t she running?
This single question completely redefined the narrative. I quickly came to the realisation that I needed a protagonist that belonged in the dark just as much as the Xenomorph did.
This led me to delve into the darkest corners of corporate greed with the Bio-Adaptation Programme. What if a corporation discovered a way to make a human completely invisible to a Xenomorph? How would they do it? By adapting human DNA so that, to the hive, the human is no more discernible than background noise.
This is where the new protagonist comes in. She is no marine, no scientist, just an indentured Clearance Asset, a human workhorse, altered to smell like the hive itself. Her task is to infiltrate a pitch-black infested hive alone, chart the paths and place acoustic charges so that the corporate strike teams can swoop in behind her, safely.
It is a tale of corporate servitude, the psychological impact of isolation and what happens when the perfect corporate asset finally has a crisis and decides that she has had enough.
I am currently in the thick of outlining and working on charting her harrowing journey into the dark. Keep an eye on this space, because Alien: Salvage is turning out to be one of the more tense and atmospheric pieces in the Purgatory line-up.
And to the students who hung out with Sami and I last night and kindly bought us a kebab, Thank you for your words of encouragement.