Chapter 3

In actuality, Isaac had not entered Hell, but being in a place so far removed from sanity and common decency, he figured it was close enough. A metal wall shaped into the silhouette of a Marker descended into shadows across Isaac's vision, making him feel trapped in an old-fashioned prison. Even though the air system kicked in and gave the man a breathable atmosphere again, it tasted colder in his lungs than normal. In so many words, Isaac hated the Church of Unitology.

Despite that, he still withheld the hatred from his voice as he earnestly asked his ally, "Daina? The Church of Unitology? Why here?"

Daina explained, "It's one of the few places Tiedemann can't monitor. Separation of Church and State."

Isaac tried to convince her it was not good, saying, "No Daina, we shouldn't be here. This is the last place we want to be right now."

Daina asserted, "Isaac, my brother died trying to rescue you. This is important. This will work", before explaining, "I'm in a safe room at the top of the Church. Meet me there, OK?"

Isaac really did not like being a house of lies but he really had no choice, so he went into the Gift Shop to try and find more supplies. Supplies were good. Supplies kept him focused on survival, and off Unitology. He found some pulse rounds for his rifle and then went up the stairs to the Gift Shop itself, with a stand-up display next to it. Pressing the holographic button at the bottom made it say, "Welcome to the Church of Unitology Gift Shop! Find that special souvenir for that special someone to let them know you stood in the shrine of Altman today! Marker pendants made from the fragments of Titan itself are now available! Altman be Praised."

Entering the small room, Isaac was greeted by a regular Store and a Workbench, so he did what he normally did and sold off whatever he did not need and bought a couple of power nodes to upgrade his gear. He only had four so he divided them evenly- two for his Pulse Rifle and the other two for his Plasma Cutter. Isaac headed back out and went up the rest of the stairs to his left and reached the Reading Room.

Just like before, there was a holographic display stand waiting for whomever to come press the button, and when Isaac eventually did so, it said, "Beyond these doors lies the Reading Room, a place where believers are encouraged to relax and meditate on the teachings of the Church. The shelves are lined with select inspirational materials as well as a variety of meditation aids. Please respect the sanctity of this place and those using it by remaining quiet and reverent while inside."

Isaac laughed and commented, "Yeah right", and entered with decidedly loud footsteps. Although there was no one around to aggravate, it still felt nice to disrespect the so-called "Church." All Isaac saw was an organization that swindled very depressed mothers out of their money and forced their sons to go to less-than-adequate schools for engineering. He was of course thinking of his own childhood and college life afterwards, all of which was ruined by the lies of Unitology and their money-grubbing ways.

As he walked through the area and took what he could, Isaac recalled his disdain for the religion stagnated into pure hatred as the true horrors of the Church were slowly revealed to him aboard the Ishimura and on Aegis VII. Many people in both places were nothing more than religious kooks preaching about stupidity, but as it turned to madness, many innocents lost their lives as well.

Isaac found himself internally growing angrier and angrier, and when he read the text log inside explaining the "sacred ceremonial gesture" of the twin arms crossing each other, the engineer thought he was going to go ballistic. He really needed something to vent his frustrations out on, and the Slasher that attacked him was more than a perfect subject. Isaac blasted both limbs off and spent a good portion of time stomping the remains into red goo, staining the luxurious and decadent carpets with viscera.

As he stomped out, Stross contacted him again to say, "Isaac? Isaac, I know you see the symbols too. They mean something!"

Isaac rolled his eyes and played along with, "Stross. Yes I see the symbols."

Not really paying attention to Isaac's exasperated attitude, Stross continued to babble, "We're a threat to them. I know it. We have to work together!", but suddenly his stopped and began to walk off, muttering to himself, "Oh, is my nose bleeding? When did that start? Oh..."

Isaac fruitlessly called out, "Work together? Who's them? You mean Tiedemann? Stross? Work with me Stross!", but the man was already off in loony land again. Giving up, Isaac instead went down to the room adjacent to the doors that let him into the Gift Shop area initially, finding a text log that mentioned rules for the tour guides to follow. It was a mostly standard list of regulations: keep visitors within the guide's sight at all times, the indoctrination centers are off limits, things like that-

The engineer blinked and read that part again, seeing the line, "The indoctrination centers are strictly off limits to the casual public." It was so surprising and yet... not. He had no idea what to think, but soon Isaac was feeling another wave of anger and took it out on the nearby wall, punching a sizable dent into it with his fist. Isaac hated this place he was stuck in and hoped to leave as soon as possible, burning it all to the ground if that was possible. Or blowing it up- Isaac could use an explosion right about then.

Taking deep breaths and walking out, Isaac forced himself to ignore everything that was not relevant to his mission and into the other side of the Church. Despite his intent, he could not help but listen to more of the Church's buttering up and lies, just wondering to himself how the liars could sleep at night with what they do.

As for what the display had to say, it went, "Welcome to the Titan Station Church of Unitology! We're glad you've come to visit our sanctuary, and place of light and hope. Our tour guides are looking forward to showing you the best of our beliefs, and what a meaningful impact we can have in your daily life. There is of course no obligation of any kind with this tour. Kindly remember to stay with your tour guide at all times. Someone will be with you shortly."

Isaac went through the door and rounded the corner immediately to enter the other small room on this side, finding an audio log this time. He wondered, "What's next?"

It was just about some pressure issues in the pipes, causing two events, one minor and more a little more severe. Isaac was happy that at least people were given one good reason to not join Unitology, as if giving away their freedom, money, and entire bodies were not good indicators already. On the other hand, he had no respect for those already within the house of lies- Isaac casually stepped over and knocked away the corpses on the floor; they exhibited similarities to Unitologist bodies aboard the Ishimura when the Necromorphs came.

They all had cloths covering their faces, almost like masks or sacks, and had a single, small, bloody hole in the middle of their foreheads. Although it was part of their faith, it also had a much more practical and insidious reason behind it- Infecters could do their jobs more easily. However Isaac was not taking any chances with that, stomping on each and every corpse until they were nothing but a pile of severed body parts. A highly grim and gruesome thing to do, but compared to everything else the man had witnessed, it was honest work.

Going all the way up the stairs this time, Isaac listened to the audio display before heading into the library. It said, "Welcome to Unity Hall. This magnificent library holds copies of the Church's most sacred texts and is a regular meeting place for the Unitology scholars as they debate the glorious mysteries of the Black Marker. Note the intricate details of the stained glass roof, forged from the hand-filtered sands of Titan itself!"

Isaac went through the door and onto the balcony, filled on the left side with book after book on drivel and utter nonsense. Even if there was an engineering manual in any of the shelves, he would not have touched it with even his Kinesis module. Besides, he had bigger issues to worry about- Infecters appeared and tried converting the dead into Slashers. Taking out his Pulse Rifle, Isaac concentrated his firepower on a singular point and killed the Infecters before they could complete the transformation.

He ran down the steps to the ground level of the Church to kill the rest of them, then took the elevator in the middle of the room. Going up lead him onto a walkway above the balcony from before, and Isaac walked along until he went through the next door. It lead him to the last place he wanted to be in a Unitology church, even through the Church itself was already the last place he wanted to be. Before him was the room that lead into Indoctrination, down-played by the Church as just a "worship" center.

Isaac pressed the button beside it with grim hesitation, unsure if he wanted to hear anymore of the Church's lies. The machine proclaimed to the engineer, "Welcome to Indoctrination. A Church session is currently in progress. Please wait for the next available Church associate. Indoctrination is a pleasant, joyous event, where you will take the first step into glorious oneness that is... Unitology."

With as much dread as his body could produce, Isaac headed inside the center and prepared for the worst. Already to his right he was seeing their methods at work- a few chairs were set up in front of a projector screen mentioning the same things Isaac heard when he first entered Unitology territory, only this had a visual element to it. After it was over, Isaac went inside a room adjacent to the projector and found some loose paneling. But behind him was something much more important... and vile.

There were at least four of the set-ups against the back wall, with monitors all around the seat where the "recruits" would remain until the testing was over. Isaac was not entirely sure what it was right then, but walking to the end of the room and finding a text log, what it had to say confirmed his suspicions. It had the individual it listed- Casey Milham- and broke down his attributes in terms of the odds he would stay with the Church.

The author of the assessment judged Casey to not be a good fit for the Church- his gullibility and desire for spiritual meaning were low, which meant he would probably not stay with the Church for too long. Sadly he was also the corpse near the seat where Isaac found the text log, so his outlook as nothing more than yet another future enemy for Isaac to fight was quite high.

Moving away from that, Isaac looked back at the screen covered up the loose paneling and saw a way to move ahead- if he were to somehow power up the door to the Observation Room, he would have a way forward. Looking around, he found one more loose panel on one of the machines, taking the power source from it and plugging it into empty socket. That did the trick, and Isaac was able to advance through the Church once more.

Unfortunately that was when a group of Necromorphs decided to congregate in the main room. Isaac knew he was likely to hit the window to space behind them at any point, so instead he did that first and blew them all away, closing the empty space again right after they were all gone. Getting up, the engineer found out why the Observation door was not powered- there was a glitch in the motors, making the whole thing slam up and down very quickly. A blast of Stasis and a quick sprint got Isaac onto the other side without incident.

At least he got through without incident- what awaited him on the other side was another matter entirely.

As soon as Isaac looked at all of the monitors in the room, another hallucination decided to act right then. Nicole's voice spoke to him as the monitors changed to static and hurt his mind, with the former stating, "I'm so cold Isaac. It hurts", before asking, "Where are you going? You can't run from the pain forever. Soon you'll beg for a way to end it all."

The hallucination ended and allowed Isaac to search the area. He found that the security room was connected to a supply room with some useful things in it, including a schematic for a security suit. More importantly, it had a vent he could crawl through to get to a new location. Getting inside, Isaac stepped out and-

Nicole appeared right behind him with a syringe in her hand, trying to impale him in the eye. Isaac's helmet receded into the armor as he fended her off, putting his hands on her arms and keeping her at bay while she screamed at him, "MAKE US WHOLE." Eventually he managed to overpower her and... saw he was holding the syringe against himself. Isaac blinked and tossed the syringe away and put his helmet back on, simply wondering just how much power his Dementia had over him. Shaking off his feeling of fear, Isaac continued on and pretended that event did not happen.

Looking around, he found he was in someone's private office and there was a power node resting on the desk. Isaac swiped it headed out, leading him into a hallway with a single door nearby. Although the door itself would not open, an exposed fuse next to it allowed Isaac to break that, thus opening the door. It just looped back into the rest of the Church and the Gift Shop, so if he needed to buy supplies or upgrade things, he could do that without backtracking too much.

Since he was fine for the moment, Isaac instead turned around and went into the Basilica, which lead out onto a second floor peering over the first one. His battles were not over through- something new was running around the opposite side of the room, and eventually disappeared into the dark corners below. Isaac had never seen anything like it before, so he kept up his guard even more.

Rather unhappily, the elevator near him only descended into the dangers at the bottom, but there was no point in going back but to delay the inevitable. Isaac went to the ground floor and warily kept his Pulse Rifle close to his body. He had finally gotten to the other side of the Marker silhouette, not that it gave him any comfort. In fact, Isaac found with grim humor that he was truly "behind bars" this time, and the only way past was through the madhouse itself.

Some of the inmates of his proverbial prison called out to him- there were strange noises all around, but he could not determine their source, almost like they were stalking him. With nothing more to be done, the engineer simply went to the main doors in front of him to leave. However this was not to be- as soon as he was about to press the button, something big and angry on the other side punched it, breaking the door's functionality, but not completely down. Isaac jumped back in fright and wondered what he was ought to do then.

Taking several breaths, he contacted his ally to say, "Daina I'm locked out. There's something in the Church. It broke the door!"

Daina promised, "Hang on, I'll try to override all the gates in the area."

As the strange noises grew louder and louder behind him, Isaac advised, "Hurry. There's something out here, too..."

He turned around and aimed his Pulse Rifle, not quite ready to fight whatever was about to attack him but going to be attacked before then anyway. Backing into a corner to limit the ways the incoming Necromorphs could get to him, Isaac watched as a head of one creature poked around a corner and sprinted to another position for cover. Soon the monster simply charged at him, so Isaac picked up a nearby spear with his Kinesis and impaled the creature before finishing it off with his Pulse Rifle.

More of the new Necromorphs began running around in the back, almost as if they were using hunting tactics to fight. Dubbing them "Stalkers", Isaac switched to his cutter and prepared to kill any of the monsters that came his way. Perhaps the only flaw in the creature's plans were that when they went for the kill, they did one at a time, which gave Isaac enough time to reload his weapon and prepare for the next one.

At that moment Daina tried to tell him, "Isaac, I don't think I can-", but since the man was preoccupied at the moment, he cut her off by stating, "Not now!"

Isaac found the Stalker's talons served as adequate implements of impalement, and made up for the spears he ran out of after a bit. Every time a Stalker ran towards him, he fired the talon into it and brought it to its knees, whereupon it received a blast of plasma from his Plasma Cutter. The tactic proved to be effective enough that Isaac defeated all of them in short order, and thus he could move around the room freely again without the fear of being flanked.

Walking into the middle of the room, Isaac contacted Daina again and asked her, "Daina, you there?"

Daina sadly explained, "Isaac, I can't unlock the elevator! Can you do anything from your end?"

"Let me see what I can do", Isaac replied. He stomped each of the Stalker's bodies and took their things before Daina added, "OK, once you're through you'll through the Funerary Wing of the Church and down into the Crypt. It's very important that you don't...", but her voice became increasingly garbled with static from there.

Isaac could barely hear her shout, "No! No, EarthGov can't jam us in here! Not in here!"

The engineer called out, "Daina? Daina? Important that I what?", but received no response. He gave up and continued walking around, looking for a way forward. Around a corner there was a control box Isaac could hot-wire to force a gate down from his end, so he fiddled with the inner-workings until the gate activated. He took the elevator that opened up and went to the other balcony he saw before, the one that first Stalker ran around on.

Peering behind a corpse, he found a power node resting there, so he took that and went the opposite direction. Isaac then discovered the door to the Funerary Wing and a display next to it. Activating the button made it stated, "Welcome to the Basilica! This hauntingly beautiful hall serves as the starting point for many of our formal ceremonies. Its architecture is rich in symbolism, and the stained glass ceilings are forged from no less than the sands of Jupiter's long lost moon, Io, making them nearly priceless. Enjoy the light and love the room offers, as many have done before you."

Heading inside, Isaac took the path that lead into Crypt Access, stopping to enter the Chapel that preceded it. Turning on the display, the same cheery voice that he had heard a dozen times already said in a much more serious tone this time, "Attention. Please be quiet when observing the funerary rituals of the Church. Flash photography and holographic imagery are not permitted inside the Church. Thank you for your compliance."

As Isaac went inside, the screams of the Necromorphs attacking him went over the voice speaking in the background. While the carnage was playing out, a new voice said, "Children of the Marker, we gather now to pay our respects to the bodies of the dead, those who have been fortunate to be called ahead of us. Their bodies and souls go now into the protective custody of Church where they will be looked after and cared for. This is not an occasion for grief, but an occasion to rejoice. Let us always remember that death is a blessing."

The voice continued, "Just as all life comes from the Marker, all life will one day return to it. The body and soul will live on, with brothers and sisters, with family and friends, when the day of Convergence arrives. For this is what the Marker promises us and what we know to be true."

It ended with the usual, "Altman be praised", while Isaac finished up destroying the rest of the Necromorphs. He went around the metallic coffin leading into the cold and dark storage below and towards the elevator that would lead into that area proper. Before taking it down, Isaac took down another Slasher pretending to be dead until he made it really dead.

Exiting the elevator, Isaac felt the conditions were not quite what the Church had in mind- the tunnel leading into the Crypt was dark, green-tinted, and rather leaky, but that last part might have been because no one was around to do maintenance. Even so, Isaac marched onwards and went into the room just before the actual Crypt itself. He knew the place would be full of dead bodies, just waiting to transformed into more monsters for Isaac to fight.

Regardless, the engineer summoned his courage and went inside, wary of the dangers within...