He was in Hell.

Watts slowly opened his eyes to a world of stone and metal and the flickering light of naked flames. Where was he? What had happened?

How had he gotten here?

Trying to put the pieces together, Watts surmised that he'd been strung up, hanging by his wrists from a ceiling. Everything about this strange place surrounding him was pervasive, assaulting all of his senses. He was in some kind of chamber, the walls made of ugly green brick supported and outlined by rusty steel girders. Directly ahead of him, he could see a sort of metal grille made of black iron. It was difficult to tell what lay behind it. The floor was made of the same ugly green brick and was splashed with red-brown stains.

Blood.

Old blood.

The air reeked of a thousand awful odors. He could smell slowly rotting meat that had been left out in the sun for a few days, he smelled blood and roadkill and vomit and urine and shit, all of it mixed together and leaving him gagging.

It was so thick on the air he could taste it.

Looking down, Watts suddenly realized he'd been stripped naked. It was uncomfortably warm in the chamber and he was already sweating.

He tested the bonds, old metal wrist binders that held his arms together, hanging from a chain. Although it looked old and worn, it seemed fairly strong. Fear was strong within him. Distantly, he could hear screaming.

It never seemed to stop.

Somewhere behind him, there was the sound of a huge door creaking open, the squeal of hinges painful in its clarity. He tried to look over his shoulder, to see, but he couldn't. He was somehow prevented.

Something snuffled and snorted, an altogether animal sound that reached down into the deepest, basest parts of his soul and awoke something primal. Terror turned his veins to ice. Heavy, meaty footfalls began waddling closer to him.

It was getting closer.

Closer.

Something sliced into his back and he screamed.

Watts gasped awake.

He sat straight up, looking around his darkened, cramped apartment. His heart thundered in his chest as he swept the entire area with his gaze, trying to determine if he was alone or not. The apartment seemed clear, but he could hardly see in the darkness of the bathroom and the closet. Swallowing his fear, reminding himself that he was a Marine for Christ's sake, he got up, marched over to the wall and slapped the light button. He screwed up his eyes against the sudden invasion of brilliant white light.

He stepped into his closet. Nothing.

He stepped into his bathroom. Nothing there, either.

As he returned to his bedroom, his eyes fell to his bed and he realized that he truly was alone. Fletcher was gone.

His alarm suddenly blared to life.

"Shit!" he snapped, his heart reawakening with a vengeance, threatening to crack open his ribcage and break out of his chest.

Stalking over to his nightstand, he hit the kill button and stood there blinking several times in the sudden silence, trying to get his mind in order. It was harder than normal, but being a soldier meant being quick on your feet. It was oh six hundred, and he had to grab a shower and breakfast before reporting to Hades Squad.

As he moved to gather a fresh uniform and prepared to shave and shower, he thought about yesterday. After sex and another shower, he and Fletcher had pretty much spent the day together. They'd swung by the infirmary and he'd picked up the Insomnium, (she was right, it had some weird long name he'd never remember), but he'd never taken them, he realized. The slim white bottle was still sitting near his sink.

He'd have to remember to rectify that tonight.

They said to take one about an hour before bed.

Watts got into the shower and began to wash up and shave. After the infirmary, they'd gone to grab food at the mess. He was in luck, it was tacos and enchiladas, and they were actually pretty nice. They'd taken their meals back to his room and chatted. Fletcher had grown up in Florida, though she'd had to leave with the others when the ocean started overtaking the state. They'd transplanted to New Mexico. She'd signed up with the Marines from there, but she'd apparently made the mistake of being a hot woman.

A superior hit on her, tried to fuck her, but she wasn't into it.

He wasn't into her not being into him, so she broke his nose, his arm, and dislocated a shoulder. She'd been sent up to Mars for her troubles. But she wasn't an idiot, and non-idiots were apparently in short supply this far from Earth, so she'd eventually wound up in Hades Squad. He learned all this over their meal yesterday and shared some about himself, even his own embarrassing situation, which she thought was funny.

Then they'd had sex again. Twice.

They'd watched a movie in between, and had gone to sleep after the second time. But, sometime during the night, she must have left.

He missed her.

Brushes with the opposite sex were rare things since leaving Earth. He'd had a pair of one night stands with two female Marines back on Mars City and a slightly more extended relationship with a beautiful brunette technician that had lasted two months before he'd gotten rotated up. He missed her, too. But such was life nowadays.

He felt lucky just to have these experiences.

Watts finished his shower, killed the water, and dried off.

It was time for another day of work.

The routine of Hades Squad was already becoming just that: routine.

Breakfast was biscuits and gravy with a side of bacon. He ate it fast, spying a few of the others from Hades Squad around, but not Fletcher. He wondered if she wouldn't meet his gaze now, wouldn't talk to him. He thought they'd had a great time together yesterday, and not just because of the sex: he'd connected with her.

But sometimes it happened.

He felt relief when he went to the armory and saw her. As he passed her to get to his own gear, she looked directly at him and smiled. Watts smiled back. It was a warm smile. He got to his locker and grabbed his gear.

Once it was pulled on, he and the others marched out of the armory, led by Kaplan all the way through to the Phobos Anomaly.

The trip was a blur.

Watts kept thinking about the other place, and his nightmare. It had been so...real. It left him feeling disturbed and dislocated. Shell-shocked. Before he knew it, he was standing before the immense black portal.

Reluctantly, he followed Hades Squad back into the other place.

Watts shook off the effects of the transition as he walked through the crevice with the others, heading towards what Kaplan called Base Camp.

This time, as they approached the gate, it took a moment before it opened. Watts could immediately tell that something was wrong. He wasn't sure how, attributing it to that shadowy sixth sense he just called his instincts. Sure enough, when the gate finally did open, Watts spied a good dozen men and women gathered in the area: Gehenna Squad and several personnel in white or blue envirosuits.

Kaplan led the squad into the compound.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Two of our men are missing," another soldier, a woman with SGT. Green imprinted on her suit, replied. "About thirty minutes ago. We can't raise them on the comms and I've been wanting to hold down the fort here until you arrived for backup."

"Why didn't you send a call through to Command Control?" Kaplan asked.

She looked startled. "We did. They received the call and said they'd send you double-time."

"What the...they didn't say a word," Kaplan muttered. He shook his head. "All right. I'll stay here and hold the fort. Watts! Bryant! Go with Green and her squad, help them find the missing troopers," he snapped.

Both of them snapped off a crisp, "Yes, Sergeant!"

Watts swallowed his fear. There were fellow soldiers in trouble and he needed to be on the ball. He and Bryant followed Green and four of her men back out through another gate. They approached one of the openings.

"We've been mapping out this area for awhile now," Green explained as she led the way. "Since our shift change was approaching, I decided to take most of the squad back. One of our beacons that we use to help map the area was malfunctioning and the UAC pitches a bitch about them, so I left two of my men to fix it. We picked up a brief transmission from one of them, but it was too garbled to make anything out. That's when we called Command Control."

Silence descended as they continued making their way through the winding, tight crevices. The narrow space made Watts nervous. He found himself habitually looking up at the cliff sheers high overhead and regretting it each time because he was given a fresh, all-too-clear glimpse of that roiling crimson sky.

They walked for fifteen minutes through the natural alcoves.

Green held up her fist suddenly and everyone froze. Up ahead, past the others, Watts could just make out that the alcove opened up into a larger space. Green made quick hand gestures and two of the other four Marines that had come with them moved past her, into the opening, shotguns at ready. Their movements were tight and rigid.

They must have found something.

Once the Marines gave the all-clear, the others moved into the opening. It wasn't too large of an open area, maybe half a dozen meters across, and two more tunnels in the cliff sheers burrowed away from them.

What held everyone's attention was the huge splash of blood on the ground, soaking the ugly gray rocks…

And the severed arm.

It was still holding a pistol and came complete with green envirosuit armor.

Green opened up her comms. "Murphy, Wilson, do you copy? Over," she asked, her voice hard and tight, the strain beginning to show.

There was a pause that lasted just long enough for her to begin to repeat her inquiry. Then a sharp buzz of static slammed down through the frequency that made them all jerk slightly. A garbled transmission came through. Watts listened closely, his heart hammering in his chest, but couldn't make out any of it. The only thing that came through was that it was a male human voice, and whoever he was, he sounded terrified out of his mind.

"Murphy, say again! Over!"

This time, there was nothing.

"Fuck!" Green snapped. She quickly doled out orders, sending her four men down one alcove and taking Watts and Bryant with her down the other.

The pressure only continued to build as they plunged into the next rock tunnel. A severed arm lying in a pool of blood was no small matter. They were officially in a combat zone, they had to be, what other option was there? Obviously the guy didn't tear off his own arm. Maybe they were finally going to meet the inhabitants of this hellish wasteland. Watts still refused to believe that they were alone here, not with the feeling of being watched omnipresent since the second he stepped foot into this surrealistic nightmare of a world.

They made another discovery a few minutes later.

Again, Green raised her fist and both Watts and Bryant froze. She made quick hand gestures and again they moved quickly, carefully, and quietly forward.

Ahead of them was another opening and Watts caught sight of a shadow, moving sluggishly. Whatever it was, it at least resembled a human being and was just out of sight. They came to the edge of the opening, paused, then moved in.

Relief flooded through Watts as he spied a familiar suit of green armor. But that relief was short-lived. The suit was covered in blood.

"Identify yourself," Green said, her shotgun trained on the figure.

Slowly, whoever it was turned around. Watts felt his pulse quicken again. Something was wrong here. As the figure finished turning, Watts looked into his faceplate. The man inside the suit was pale, his eyes almost vacant, the thousand-yard stare of a shell-shocked individual. His sidearm was still in his grasp, dangling by his hip.

"Drop it, Murphy," she said.

The man remained stationary, simply staring at them.

"Murphy, drop your sidearm now, that is a direct order," Green said firmly.

Slowly, the man named Murphy looked down at his sidearm, as if just now realizing that he had it. He looked back up at Green and the others, and some of the cloudy confusion in his gaze seemed to go away.

He dropped the pistol.

Green lowered her shotgun. "What the hell happened, Murphy?"

He looked at the three of them for a long time.

Then, finally, he said, "It took him, Sarge. It took him away. He's all gone."

Watts made his way through the chromed corridors of Command Control, towards his apartment block.

The day hadn't gotten any better after they'd found Murphy.

He and Bryant had escorted the dazed Marine back to base camp while Green and her squad pulled a double-shift and spent the next four hours looking for the missing man. Eventually, they came back, exhausted and demoralized.

They couldn't find anything.

Fletcher and Davis had escorted Murphy back through the portal and dropped him off for the medics to clean up and try to get anything out of him. The current working theory was that he'd snapped, killed Wilson, and dropped his body over the side of a cliff or into a chasm. But that didn't add up for several reasons.

First, the severed arm. Murphy would have a pretty hard time tearing an arm off, let alone an arm encased in metal armor.

Second, there were spent shell casings from both a shotgun and a Raptor SMG. Murphy had had the shotgun, Wilson the SMG. If Murphy had attacked Wilson, then Watts thought it was pretty unlikely that Wilson hadn't shot the man at least once, and Murphy and his armor had been in pristine condition.

Well, physically, anyway.

But beyond and below that was the fact that it just didn't feel right. He, and several others, were convinced something had attacked them.

He felt certain that the Brass didn't want to admit that, either to the lower ranks or to themselves. So they locked Murphy up.

Watts reached his apartment and stepped inside. He just wanted to shower off the day and have sex with Fletcher again and relax. He still had a good seven or so hours before it was time for sleep. He shed his uniform, turned on the shower, and got inside. Standing there for a long while in the water, Watts found himself wondering something.

Was this top secret project good, or evil?