Upon arriving at the prison again, Henry immediately made his way up to the third floor, the last place he had yet to explore, and while he was at it, he would be sure to hit as many creatures as he happened upon with his pipe. After all, that was the most fun he'd had in the five days that he'd been trapped. In that time, he'd been forced to take up sitting in his kitchenette and watching the linoleum curl for entertainment when watching his neighbors on the other side of the apartment building failed to provide anything interesting to watch.

He entered the double doors leading to the third cellblock and started off to his right, opting first to clear out anything that might prove a pesky nuisance as he explored. He didn't have to search long, though, for he had only gotten about a quarter of the way around the cellblock when he found the most incredibly messed up thing he'd seen yet. It looked like infant Siamese twins draped in brown shag carpeting, and in the absence of a lower body, it got around on its hands, one of which it was balancing on while the other was outstretched to point directly at him in an Uncle Sam-esque, "I want YOU!" sort of manner. Henry thought it was looking at him funny and decided to implement the Eddie Dombrowski policy by killing it for doing so.

However, the creature was the first to take initiative and immediately charged at him. Just it was about to enter swinging range for Henry, the creature spun around on its palm to take a swipe at some enemy that wasn't even behind it. "What the hell was that!" Henry shouted.

"Rshwhr…" the creature whispered as it meandered about. Henry blinked.

"What…?" he asked.

"Rshwhr…" the creature repeated.

"I can't hear you!" Henry said. "Speak up, dammit!"

"WE SAID 'RECEIVER,' YOU DUMB-ASS!" the creature finally shouted at the top of its lungs. Henry took offense at the statement and readied his pipe, but for some reason even he himself couldn't fathom, he decided to focus his attention instead on one of the many low-priority Graboidites on the wall, leaving himself wide open as the creature brought the palm of its hand crashing down on him. Henry then decided that the creature was pissing him off and, as soon as he recovered from the considerable pain, decided to cut the nonsense and get about the business of bludgeoning the abomination until it bled. He hit it in the shoulder as much as he could, but that didn't really hurt it so much as it did annoy it to the point of giving him another rather painful slap. Henry then decided it would be wise to back off until he could devise a more devious strategy.

The creature then made a flying leap at Henry with the intent of landing on him. This turned out to be a mistake, for all that the intended target had to do was take a single step backward and the creature would have nothing but wet concrete to do a belly-flop upon, which is exactly how it played out. Henry used the time it took for the monster lying at his feet to stand up again to move around behind it while readying a charge attack, and when the thing was back on its hands, he let fly with the pipe and beaned it right over the heads. The creature stood there dumbly for a moment, and for a brief instant, it looked as though it wouldn't fall over. After a few seconds, it began to rock forward on its palms, and Henry blew at it just for good measure to make sure it fell to the floor. Then, of course, he delivered a hearty boot-stomp to insure that it wouldn't be waking up anytime soon.

"Ohh…" Henry groaned as he leaned against the inner wall of the circular corridor. "Who would've thought a rug, of all things, would be such a tough customer?" He decided then that it was official, and christened his latest quarry…the Rug Beater. Of course, he would be sure never to tell anyone that the carpet monster had actually given him a run for his money, otherwise his ego would be more bruised than he himself was at the moment. Henry decided he would probably do well to just forget about it altogether as he went about the business of exploring that floor.

One cell was littered with a large number of books. "Looks like Miss Readman's apartment," he commented. Strangely enough, he couldn't bring himself to read any of them no matter how hard he tried. At length, he gave up and exited to investigate the other cells, a number of which were empty, save for large holes in the floor leading to the cells directly below.

He entered one cell that was occupied by a bunch of Mushroom Heads. Those things annoyed him, the way they made those faces at him, made those yucky wet noises and swayed like they were performing some obscene dance. After clearing out the fungus infestation, he took note of a journal on the desk.

We had some good stew yesterday. Mmm…beefy! In the cafeteria, I heard something about a death chamber behind the kitchen from one of the new cooks. Came running out of the kitchen, yelling, "It's made from people! It's PEOPLE!" Yup, seems they take meat straight from the dead inmates and feed it to us. Mmm…human: the OTHER red meat. You eat what you are! Yeah… When I got back here after that, I bowed before the porcelain altar and offered a REALLY huge sacrifice, if you know what I mean.

Henry pocketed the journal on an impulse and moved over to the other journal sitting on the bed. He vaguely wondered why anyone would keep two journals at once as he read.

I think I'm screwed. I stood in front of the voyeur's room and screamed obscenities at the top of my lungs, but nobody came out, even when I made a bunch of disparaging remarks about his mother.

Once he finished reading, Henry continued his exploration of that floor. One had a shirt and pants laid out on the bed, and that was it. There was also a note on the desk.

Now it will look like I'm sleeping! Sort of… Now, if I can just get some cement so I can mold a replica of my head.

WTF! Feetsteps? I wonder if they saw me.

In another cell, Henry found some red graffiti on the wall.

I wanna hide. But I can't hide. They never let me do anything I want!

He had just entered a cell in the southwest area of the corridor when he saw he wasn't alone. Just to his right upon entering, he saw a blond guy in a green jacket stooping down on the floor with his back turned to him, apparently too preoccupied with something to notice Henry's entrance. Curious, Henry peered over the man's shoulder to see what he was doing. What he saw would psychologically scar him and haunt him for the rest of his life.

The man had his arm shoved halfway up the porcelain hobbyhorse. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!" Henry shouted. The man looked around and just stared at Henry for a moment, almost as if trying to absorb the fact that he'd been caught.

"Uhh…" he hesitated, removing his hand from the toilet as he stood up. He then shot a few glances around. "I, uh…thought I saw something in there. Yeah, that's it!" Henry shot him a dubious look.

"So you just reached in there?" Henry asked. "With your bare hand?"

"Oh, don't worry!" the man said, holding out his hand to show Henry, who backed away from the presumably contaminated gesture. Much to Henry's surprise, there wasn't a trace of fluids or matter best not described on his hand. "See? That's the good thing about the physical limitations of a polygon environment."

"Yea-- wait a minute…!" Henry said. "The book said this place was a pixilated environment."

"Well, where do you think the surface textures come from?" the other guy said, gesturing to the rather filthy toilet.

"Good point," Henry said, "but still, man, that thing with you and the toilet…it's just plain weird…" He then noticed the hole in the floor and decided to make use of it in getting away from this twisted Renton copycat. "Look," he said, inching his way toward the hole, "it's been, uh…yeah…but I've really gotta be getting to the basement." He was just about to jump when the weird guy intervened.

"Step aside!" he said, shoving Henry away from the edge. "Let a professional show you how it's done!" Then, without any hesitation, he jumped into the hole.

Henry just stared in disbelief. Hell, that guy didn't even know how far the fall was, and he'd just jumped without a second thought. Henry approached the hole again and peered over the side. He was subsequently joined by a small, green, diaper-clad duckling. "Well," Henry said to the duckling, which just stood there and looked up at him while sucking his thumb, "much as I'd like to leave this to the professional idiots, I don't see any way around this." So, without further hesitation, Henry made a daring leap into the opening in the floor.

The duckling peered over the side after him and removed his thumb from his mouth to speak. "Henry go down the hooooole!" he said.

--------------------

Henry landed safely in the cell below the one he'd jumped from despite the fact that there was also a hole in the floor in that one also, perfectly aligned with the one above. And on top of that, he was still on the outer end of the cell, which is where he'd made the leap from above. Something was really screwed up with the physics in that place. Or maybe it was those physical limits of the pixilated environment, or something. He decided he should probably just be thankful he wouldn't be breaking or spraining anything as he leapt through the second hole into the cell below, where he found still another hole. Of course, he jumped through that one as well.

When he landed after the third jump, he found himself in a large room. "Finally!" he said. "That wasn't so bad! I guess that weird guy musta jumped before…"

He was suddenly startled when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Thinking it was the weird guy, he wheeled around. "KEEP YOUR TOILET WATER HANDS OFFA ME, YOU…!" he trailed off when he saw that it wasn't who he'd thought it was at first. Instead, there were two Rug Beaters pointing him out. "Oops…"

After getting slapped around like a stooge for a few moments, Henry managed to get himself knocked into the pipe spanning from floor to ceiling in the middle of the room, knocking it out of alignment just enough to cause it to jet water from the opening between the joint. The water drenched the two Rug Beaters which, unable to stand with the added weight of the water soaking their carpeting, fell to the floor. Henry, not wasting a second, immediately ran up to them and gave them the mighty boot-stomp of doom to insure they wouldn't be able to get back up. He decided to pass on making any dull one-liners and just exited the room.

He found himself in a short corridor, and at the end just to his left was a circular culvert with a ladder in the center leading up. Of course, he moved over to investigate and climbed up to the second level.

He climbed into a circular guard station with small portholes set equidistant around the perimeter of the room in the wall. There was a note on the desk…

The place is really going to pot. We can't even open the doors to a lot of the cells anymore. The kids inside are trapped. But the less they know about that, the better, though I'm sure they'll figure it out on their own, eventually.

At least I still get to peep on them, though, so that's a plus! I get to watch as they waste away in their cells. No food, no shower…sucks to be them!

An engineer suggested we solve the problem by digging holes below the cells, though it would seem less laborious and more economical to just fix the doors. Then again, this place is already a monument to inefficiency. Anyway, we can rotate the floors of the building and align the holes so that we can get rid of the "evidence" without anybody noticing. We're sneaky bastards, we are!

P.S.

Chief,

I bet you're just dying to see the torture chamber behind the kitchen. Hell knows the kids already are…literally, thanks to our own gross negligence!

Anyway, there are three rooms with tomato soup stains on the bed (which is probably why we don't just deliver their food to them through the windows in the cell doors to keep them from starving). There were three such spilling incidences, one per floor. Just align the rooms and…wait, B-7? I got BINGO! Yay! No, wait…dammit! He sunk my battleship!

P.P.S.

I'm sleepy… All this sitting around doing nothing takes a lot outta me.

After stuffing the memo into his pocket, Henry started peering through the peepholes to look into the rooms. Sure enough, there was a cell in the northwest with a tomato soup stain on the bed. There was another with a similar stain, but it was only on the floor. He then checked on the cell with the trapped guy, and was amused to see the fat slob was still muttering to himself.

"This sucks worse than that time I got busted for possession of White Claudia…" the fat guy muttered to himself. Of course, Henry could relate to his current plight, but damn it, it was just so funny when it happened to someone else!

Once he'd checked every other cell, he climbed up to the second level, which had a room identical to the one below, save for the presence of a small stand with a valve on it just beside the opening in the floor. The first thing Henry did was check the memo on the desk.

To keep a close eye on the kiddies, it's important to keep the cells well lit. The lights on the 3rd floor were originally bought as searchlights. Yeah, the kids keep trying to escape for some reason… Anyway, we ended up having to use them to light the joint.

Anyway, as a precaution against blackout, they were set up to run on a private generator. Unfortunately, those cheap bastards decided to cut funding, and we had to jerry-rig our own generator and waterwheel in the basement. Damn them! So, to light up the 1st and 2nd floors, use the dump chutes.

You can light up any of the cells by rotating the floors and aligning the holes. We also do this occasionally to freak the kids out. I just love messing with their heads!

P.S.

Chief, the valve in the middle of the room is for rotating the floor. Don't bother with the 1st floor, 'cuz it don't turn. Damn. Anyway, just align the 2nd and 3rd floor cells with the soup-stained beds with the one on the 1st floor.

BTW, the peepholes are there for a reason. Use them so you don't make the place seem like a carousel. The last thing we want is for the kids to enjoy themselves here. Anyway, give it a try. It's lots of fun! And don't forget to open the sluice gate on the roof, because it's always nice to be able to "light up" on the job. Thanks for nothing, Chief!

Henry noted that word again. "What the hell is a sluice!" he demanded before reading the rest of the memo.

P.P.S.

I want to go home. I don't want to have to deal with the deep moral crisis I'm having, watching the trapped kids waste away and not doing a damn thing to help them.

After stuffing the memo into his pocket, he went about checking the peepholes. He found the cell with the stained bed, but he also saw another with something he could barely see on the table through the dim light inside. He made a point to check it out and went over to the valve.

He inspected the valve, and there was just something about it that somehow enthralled him. So round, so inviting…he just had to turn it! He reached out and, with a shrill screeching of rusting metal, the valve turned, and the building shook as the corresponding floor rotated with it. "That was fun!" Henry said. "In fact, it was so fun, I think I'll do it again!" And he did. Again and again and again. It wasn't until the fat guy started shouting at him that he stopped.

"HEY!" the fat guy yelled from the first floor. "CUT THAT OUT! WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE, A CENTRIFUGE?"

"Sorry!" Henry responded with a mischievous grin. "I guess I musta been possessed by Valtiel, or something!"

"No," the fat guy responded, "that's Walter!"

"Oh, right!" Henry said. He gave the fat guy's response some thought. "How do you know that!" he demanded.

"I don't!" the fat guy answered. "Who's Valtiel!"

"Idunno!" Henry replied. He just shrugged and, after checking the peepholes to see where the cell with that thing on the table was, climbed up to the third floor.

Once again the room was the same boring design as the one below. The only thing interesting about it was the memo stuck up on the wall.

The Secret Number for getting through the door in back of the kitchen this month is 0302.

Thanks for not being unnecessarily belligerent about it.

"Hey!" Henry said. "That's the same as my room number!" When it became apparent that nobody cared, Henry dejectedly stuffed the note into his pocket and made his way back down to the basement, where he unlocked the door at the other end of the corridor so he wouldn't have to go through all of that unnecessary crap involving hole jumping in order to get back to the voyeur's rooms. That, and it was the only way out.

--------------------

Henry dropped into the cell in question and investigated the item on the table, which turned out to be a stun gun. "Bitchin'!" he said as he took up the weapon. "I wonder if it still works?" he said as he pocketed the find before jumping holes again.

--------------------

After going through the motions with the rotating floors again, he aligned the cells with the soup-stained beds and started back down to make use of them.

When he got to the bottom of the ladder, he found he wasn't alone anymore. The fat guy was kneeling in front of the kid from the cemetery in the forest.

"C'mon!" the fat guy whined. "Just one candy bar! A guy's at least supposed to get one last request!" The kid just looked at him as though he were the most pathetic deadbeat on the planet before turning and leaving. Henry decided it would be fun to make the fat guy jump out of his skin and who knows how many layers of fat, and snuck up on him from behind.

"BOOGIEBOOGIEBOOGIE!" he shouted as he tickled the guy's back. The fat guy screamed like a little girl as he jumped to his feet.

"What the hell's the matter with you!" he shouted. "You tryin' to give me a heart attack!"

"Sorry," Henry said, "I suppose I really shoulda considered your cholesterol level before sneakin' up on ya!" The fat guy obviously didn't care for that remark. "Anyway," Henry added, "who's the kid? And who are you?"

"His name's Walter…" the fat guy answered, "Walter Donovan. I used to work at the orphanage, watching the kids and beating them up…" He caught himself and tried to recover. "I mean, uh…giving them stern disciplinary lectures," he amended. "Yeah, I'm Andre DeSilva. Anyway, they tried to make it seem like an orphanage… But according to the town's Holy Scriptures, it was actually the center of their religion…"

"Oh, ya don't say?" Henry replied, not really paying attention.

"Yeah," Andre said. "That kid, Walter… He was really into that voodoody-oh-doodoo stuff… Especially that 'Descent of the Holy Mother' crap-ola… Pretty scary, huh?"

"Yeah, whatever," Henry said, brushing him off. "So, that kid's gonna kill you, huh?"

"Yeah," Andre said. "Never woulda been such an asshole to him back then if I'd known this would happen!"

"Right," Henry said. "So, uh, how did you get out?"

"Out of where?" Andre said. "Oh, you mean the cell? When you rotated the third floor, it tripped the lock on the door." Henry looked at him suspiciously.

"How did you know it was the third floor?" he demanded.

"Because that's the only floor that can trip it," Andre said. "I don't know why…" He just shrugged and turned to leave.

ZORCH!

Andre was rocked by what felt like a mule kicking him right in the ass, and the next thing he knew, he was looking up at the ceiling from down on the floor with a strong metallic taste in his mouth.

"Kick ass!" Henry said, looking down at the stun gun in his hand. "This thing rules!" Andre sprang off the floor and gave Henry a rough shove.

"What the hell was that for!" he yelled.

"Just wanted to see if it worked," Henry answered. "Sorry, I didn't think it would do much through all those pillows you're smuggling under your clothes."

"That's it," Andre said, "I don't have to put up with this crap!" He pointed at Henry with both index fingers. "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" he added, pointing to the door to emphasize his statement of departure before storming off. Henry noted the exit he'd used.

"Figures he'd leave through the cafeteria," he said as he went on his way.

--------------------

Henry landed in the kitchen in the basement after jumping through the proper holes. "Finally!" he said as he made his way over to the door leading to the northwest quarter. "This must be it," he observed. He tried to find the number pad but, much to his dismay, he couldn't use it. "Come on!" he griped. "Why can't I use it!" He then remembered, and the realization hit him like a ton of bricks.

He'd forgotten to restore the power. "DAMMIT, WHY!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Why can't I do this in the dark! It's just a freakin' ten-digit keypad! Any idiot could do this by touch alone! But NOOOOOOO! I have to be confined to the limitations of this pixilated environment! Now I have to go all the way back up to the roof and open some wha'dya-name-it that I don't even know what it is!"

Then, suddenly, as if by divine intervention, the light came on seemingly of its own accord amidst the melodic voices of an unseen heavenly choir. "Wow…" Henry said, stunned by the convenient turn of events. "I wonder how that happened."

Meanwhile, on the roof…

A shady figure stood before the concrete cylinder standing in the center of the reservoir on the roof. One would be able to recognize him from a mile away. Not because of any distinctive facial features so much as a lack thereof, for aside from an unusually wide mouth, this particular somebody didn't have a face. His ensemble consisted of heavy jack boots, a dingy, sleeveless robe and strange latex gloves with the three middle fingers all fused together; definitely not the usual attire for your everyday plumber. That was probably what the guy was, for he was apparently the one responsible for opening the sluice, likely by turning the control valve on the side of the concrete cylinder. His job being done, he took up his pipe wrench and plunger and started off, his head twitching violently as he whistled the tune to the chorus of I Want Love – Studio Mix.

Back in the basement…

Henry attempted to disengage the electronic lock, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't operate the keypad without first taking the placard hanging on the door. Said placard had the image of an eye and the word "Vigilance" engraved on it. "Uh-oh," Henry said. "I think this means fat boy's a free man at last." He took the placard and examined the keypad, which he noted had the lowest digits nearest the zero on the bottom. "Huh! Never would've guessed it was arranged like that," he said as he punched in the number. "I guess I wouldn't have gotten it in the dark after all!" And with that, he passed through the door.

As far as torture chambers went, the one Henry had just entered could be described as sparse at best. It only had a rotary saw and a wooden thingy designed to bind someone in the spread-eagle position hanging from the ceiling. And there was very little floor. There was an elevated concrete platform standing in the middle of a pool of stagnant water, and a metal walkway spanning the distance between it and the ledge in front of the door. Henry made his way out to the platform in the center of the room.

When he got there, he saw that he had been right about Andre. He was lying face-up in the water with the numbers 18121 printed across his belly. "Seems I was right," Henry said, "though I never woulda guessed a guy his size would float."

Then, as if on cue, a familiar-looking circus clown rose from the depths and poked his head above the surface. "Henry," he said, "down here, they all float…" Henry just rolled his eyes and turned to leave. "Hey!" the clown shouted "Don't just ignore me!"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't," Henry shot back. "Hell, you're not even worth my time, you sad Kefka reject." The clown was outraged at that statement.

"Hey!" he shouted. "Don't compare me with that upstart!"

"I suppose I shouldn't," Henry shrugged. "He kicked infinitely more ass than you could ever hope to!"

"How so?" the clown growled. Henry turned back to face the clown and started counting off the reasons on his fingers.

"One: he's got a much bigger kill-count than you. Two: he's more dangerous than you, and Three: he's got more memorable one-liners than you! All you have is, 'They all float!' Seriously, you have any idea how old that gets after, what…the second time? Now, get outta here, Mister Pound-Foolish, before I call the Orkin Man on your ass!" The clown was now livid.

"I ought to use my Dead Lights on you!" he snarled. Henry remained unfazed as he gave his response.

"Four:" he said, "the Light of Judgment beats your so-called 'Dead Lights' any day of the week." The clown looked bemused at the statement.

"The what?" he said.

They were interrupted by a grotesquely distinct, maniacal cackling from somewhere in the far distance, and the walls of the structure began to shake as a dim light illuminated the room and slowly grew in intensity. Henry and the clown directed their attention upward. "Oh SHIT…" was all the clown could say. Henry immediately dove back out of the room, slammed the door shut and leaned his back up against it in preparation for what was about to happen.

There was a very loud explosion from within the torture chamber, the force of which caused the door to bulge outward to an obscene, almost cartoonish degree momentarily as a bit of smoke and dust was forced out through the space between it and the doorway. Then, everything fell back to silence. Curious, Henry turned around and cracked the door open, and the last thing he remembered was thick, billowing smoke pouring out of the room and completely engulfing him.

Hell Count: 7
Total Hell Count: 43

A/N: That's the longest chapter yet. And the most cameos and references! By the way, I've added some new material to the previous three chapters. Specifically, I included some of the lesser reading material that can be found throughout the game. I decided that, if I'm going to do this, I should do it right! So, if you feel like it (it's not absolutely mandatory, but likely good for a few yuks), go ahead and read.