Alien

***Alien*** is the eighth episode of the second season of the thriller horror docudrama found-footage television series Lost Tapes. It originally aired on Animal Planet on November 10, 2009 and was directed by Adam Ripp, who is the first director (since Douglas Segal) to direct a Lost Tapes episode.

## Plot

In Spring 2008, former astronaut captain Miranda Bach was pulled over by a state trooper for driving erratically and placed under the psychiatric care of Dr. Lee Morris and Nurse Rebecca Damon. After being placed under medical observation, she awoke suddenly at night, screaming, "Get it out of me!" as she attempted to commit suicide, and was strapped to the bed for her own safety.

A video recording of Bach's debriefing from her last mission reveals that Bach was exposed to dust from a comet that had hit the shuttle she was on, but scientists regarded it as harmless. As Damon comes in to examine her, Bach claims that her shoulder is hurting and the nurse discovers a bizarre rash that resembles a festering wound, and becomes concerned when her stethoscope alerts her to two distinct heartbeats, but blood tests confirm that she is not pregnant; an x-ray instead reveals an unidentifiable object in her chest cavity.

Over a matter of hours, the skin condition spreads all over Bach's arms and torso, and she attacks a man who tries taking a skin sample, but has no memory of her actions mere moments later. Damon speculates that some kind of mutated parasite has made it into Bach's body when she inhaled the comet dust, and it is the cause of the atopic eczema. Morris plans to move Bach to a more secure facility where her conditions can be monitored, but an alarm suddenly goes off as Bach begins convulsing violently and screaming even more loudly and agonizingly, and unearthly hissing screeches can be heard as well. By now, the rash has spread all over Bach's face.

By the time Morris, Damon, and a security guard named Alzedo arrive in her room, Bach is dead and there is a large, bloody cavity in her chest. Suddenly, a strange insect-like creature swoops down on them, hiding under Bach's cot before it flies out of the room. The doctors decide that they cannot let the creature escape the hospital and put the entire building on lockdown, leaving them with two minutes to evacuate. However, they do not make it to the doors in time, though all other staff members and patients have safely evacuated.

Alzedo takes out his taser and decides to try to kill the creature. Moments later, the doctors hear Alzedo screaming and find him dead. The creature flies at them, so they take refuge in an office. Damon figures out that Bach must have picked up the parasite in outer space, over time destroying and hardening her flesh and using her like a cocoon and worries about what would happen if it escaped, but Morris assures her that it cannot escape the building because of the lockdown. They hear screeching just outside, and Morris picks up a jar of acid to use as a weapon. As they open the blinds on the office window, they suddenly see the alien, which resembles a gigantic wasp, in full view of their camera for a brief moment. They hear cicada-like chittering above them, and a large insect-like leg tries to reach them through a ventilation shaft.

Morris yells for Damon to run and Damon escapes. As Damon returns to try to help him after hearing him scream in agony from vainly attempting to kill the creature with the acid, she sees it apparently eating his corpse and flees in terror, using a fire extinguisher to force open a door and runs down the stairs and into the main lobby of the hospital. She is finally able to evade the alien when it makes it to the door before it closes in on her, and she falls, causing the automatic doors to open and the alien flies out into the night sky.

All records of the alien's existence and what happened in the hospital were confiscated and classified by the government, and the official causes of death for Capt. Bach, Dr. Morris, and Alzedo remain unstated. The alien was never found, however, there are unofficial reports of spores similar to the ones found on Capt. Bach's spacecraft that had been detected as far away as South America.