Jack walked through the brilliantly lit, chromed corridors of Mars City, his head feeling like it was twisting and shifting.

Jenkins had, mercifully, been quick with his shower, and Jack had had enough time for a very quick washing down. He would have liked to have enjoyed a half-hour long shower after being stuck on that fucking transport for two days, but he was taking what he could get now. While he'd been waiting, he'd looked through his PDA. It didn't have much. There was a generic introduction video, Welcome To Mars City, that he'd stopped watching only a minute in. There was also a slightly less generic video from the guy who was apparently in charge of the military outfit on Mars, Master Sergeant Kelly.

He intended to watch them through, simply because he was an information junkie. More information tended to mean it was easier to stay alive. Not that he was actually planning on fighting for his life up here. Well, not in the traditional sense. He might have to fight to save his sanity. Now, he was walking through the base, heading for his local Space Marine Security Center. As the corridor came to an end and opened into an open area that granted access to other portions of the base, he glanced back over his shoulder.

Jenkins and almost all of the Marines he'd come in with, he realized suddenly, were following him. What the fuck, why? He also noticed they all kind of hesitated when he stopped. Suppressing a sigh, Jack figured it would make sense that, well, someone has to be at the front of a crowd, but there was definitely a kind of deliberateness to it. He found the Security Center they were supposed to report to and cut across the open area, just wanting to get this next part over with. The sooner he was on duty, the better.

As miserable as it was, as painful and humiliating and frustrating as it was to be a fucking Private in the goddamned Space Marines, he was familiar with duty. Even if it was just patrolling or standing guard. The door whooshed open, sliding into the wall instead of the ceiling this time, and he led his crowd of Space Marines into the room beyond. It was a fairly big room. The back of it was flat but the side walls and front created a kind of half-hexagon that was covered in banks of monitors and workstations manned by more Marines.

Sergeant Blackmore was up front, looking over a large screen, facing away from them. Jack could see doors that led to other portions of the Security Center to his left and right. As all of them filtered into the room, (they remembered to form a line this time), Blackmore finished up whatever it was he was doing, spun around on his heel to face them and began crossing the room. He stopped halfway and sized them up.

"Two of you are missing!" he snapped.

There was a long silence.

He shook his head. "Jesus fucking Christ." He reached up and ran his hand down his haggard face. "Okay, your PDAs have been updated with maps, clearances, and orders. You're going to be paired off and get to work. Get used to today, because it's going to be representative of the rest of your time here on Mars. Now, your security armor is through there, your weapons are through there," he said, pointing first to his left, then to his right. "You show up here every day, grab your armor, then grab your sidearm, then get to work. It's real fucking simple people, so don't screw it up. Now get to it!" he snapped.

Jack began to turn and head for the armor suit-up room, but stopped as he felt Blackmore's gaze burning into him. He looked back at the man for a few seconds, then turned and started walking. What was that about? Well, he probably knew all about Jack's reason for getting shoved up here. Probably resented having someone like Jack up here in his collection of burnouts and green-as-grass recruits that made for easy pushovers to someone of a higher rank. Space Marine BS aside, Blackmore knew that he and Jack were basically the same rank.

But Jack wasn't planning on making any waves. He didn't want to fuck this up. The United Marine Corps was all he knew. He was still confused about a lot, and he was disgusted by what had happened, but if he dug down to his core, he knew he wasn't strong enough to walk away from this life on moral grounds.

He just wouldn't know what the hell else to do with his life.

Jack grabbed his bland green security armor, pulling on the bulky chestpiece, finding himself wishing vainly for that deep, electric blue combat armor. That stuff was great. It could stop a goddamned eight gauge fired at point blank. After getting the armor on, he shuffled back out of the armor room, across the Security Center and into the armory itself. He felt like a damned zombie. The armory was a proliferation of shelves, counters, lockers, and workbenches. A pair of Marines took up the duty of checking all this gear out.

Jack had to admit, there was a lot of fucking gear.

Besides all the stock stuff like pistols, SMGs, and shotguns, he spied several goddamned Widowmaker chainguns, and even a freaking Eliminator rocket launcher. What the hell were they planning on doing with a damned rocket launcher in a place like Mars City?! He wanted to at least get his hands on one of those submachine guns, but all they issued him was a hip holster, two magazines of ammo, and an unloaded sidearm.

After signing it all out, he sighed, attached the holster to his belt and studied the pistol. It was, at least, a sturdy thing. The DX-12 Enforcer sidearm held twelve .45 caliber rounds and packed a hell of a punch. He looked over the sleek black pistol, then loaded it up, flipped on the safety and holstered it. After pocketing the remaining magazine, he left the armory and the security center, coming back out into the main junction area where the others were gathering. He joined them in pulling out his PDA and checked his orders.

He saw that he was paired with someone named Jennifer Taylor.

Glancing back up, he started scanning the nametags that were embedded in the chestplates. His gaze landed on PVT. Taylor. He looked up at the face over the chestplate and found himself staring at the beautiful brunette he'd seen earlier. She was staring back at him, PDA in hand. Okay, maybe everything wasn't total shit.

He and Jennifer were paired up and put on patrol for the first three and a half hours. After that, they had guard duty/unloading duty in one of the garages.

They were silent for maybe the first five minutes, then Jack finally kicked off the conversation. "So, um...you like Mars City?" he asked.

Jennifer looked over at him. "This is the first thing you've ever said to me and that's what you chose?" she asked.

"I, um, I'm bad at conversation."

She stared at him a moment longer, then she smiled and even laughed a little. "Me too." She looked around at the bland chrome corridor they were walking down. "It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and having to only share with one other person is pretty great. Although...I saw you got paired up with that kid."

Jack nodded. "Yeah. He's not too bad, I guess."

They lapsed into silence for a moment.

"So...I'm guessing you want to know what I'm doing up here," Jennifer said.

"Yeah, I am," he replied.

She sighed. "I'll tell you if you tell me."

"Fair enough." He rehashed the story he'd told Jenkins out there on the landing pad. He wondered how many times he'd have to tell that story. Jennifer listened as they moved slowly along their planned path.

"I'm not so sure I want to tell you my story now," she muttered. "You got shipped here because you did the right thing and pissed off the wrong person. I got shipped here because...I fucked up, plain and simple."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Jack replied.

She sighed. "I might as well. I haven't…" she paused, sighed again, shook her head, "I haven't told anyone since it happened." She was silent for another minute or so, gathering her thoughts. "Okay. I was a Sergeant and I was in Brazil, taking on the Liberation Force. I'd been down there for six fucking months at that point, dealing with the shit day in, day out...I was in a village, checking out reports of enemy activity with my squad...got a transmission over the radio about some civilians at the other side of the village about the same time we got some sketchy intel about enemy movement...eh, long story short, I broke orders to rescue some civilians. Turns out there were no fucking civilians. Walked into a goddamned ambush, got half my squad killed..."

"I'm sorry," Jack said quietly.

"Yeah, so am I."

They kept patrolling and five minutes of silence passed.

"So, you got anyone waiting for you back home?" Jennifer asked.

"No. Family's dead, all my friends are either dead or gone. You?"

"Mom's still alive but that's about it. And we're not...really on speaking terms. So, you know, not really. I guess that's the blessing of this place. You make friends up here and they aren't going to up and die on you. Well, probably."

"Gift and a curse," Jack muttered. "You really want to be friends with these rejects?"

She snorted. "Good point."

"Although..."

"Although what?"

"I don't know. Just wondering why the UAC keeps having soldiers shipped up here. I mean, there were over a dozen of us on that ship. It's probably nothing."

Jennifer didn't say anything, but she looked contemplative now.

They kept walking.

The day dragged on.

Jack got to know Jennifer, at least peripherally. Neither of them seemed too willing to let their guard down all that much. Which was about par for the course. But he liked her, and she seemed to like him, and that was nice. It had been awhile since he'd connected with someone on anything but an absolutely superficial level.

After the patrol, they were given a break for lunch, then they'd reported to the next part of their job: guard duty and cargo unloading.

Now, they found themselves in a small garage with two other Marines and a UAC technician working on a land rover's engine. They'd been standing around waiting for something, anything to happen, for about forty five minutes now and finally, the two Marines started passing a cigarette back and forth and began asking questions.

"So, you two are new?" one of the Marines, a huge, bulky, muscular man with a buzzed mohawk who bore the nameplate PFC THOMPSON on his chest asked.

"Yep," Jack replied.

"You hear any of the scuttlebutt yet?"

"No, actually. You got anything solid? Anything interesting?"

"Well..." Thompson looked briefly uncomfortable. There was a difference between gossiping over juicy rumors and asking for solid intel. "Only rumors."

"Like what?" Jennifer asked.

"Well, like guys going crazy up on Phobos and Deimos. That they're doing all sorts of weird-ass experiments up there. Making monsters. Making zombies. Cutting deals with aliens, exchanging people for technology."

"That's an old one," Jack replied.

"Well...yeah." He paused, then a look of excitement came over his face as he remembered something. "Friend of mine, a tech, was crawling around the ductwork last week, said he saw something at the end of the vent he was in. Something big and red, but it got away before he could get a clear view of it."

"And where is this tech in question?" Jennifer asked.

"He's..." Thompson drifted off, frowning, deep in thought. "I haven't seen him all week, actually. And normally our shifts overlap at least some. Shit, I'll have to ask around."

"Well, I know one thing for sure," the other Marine, his nametag read PFC Sanders, said, "a lot of people seem to just disappear. I swear they replace half the staff every month. They all get funneled up to the two moons. And the flow doesn't really seem to slow down. Actually...if anything, it's sped up over the past month."

With that pronouncement, all fell silent in the room. Even the technician had stopped working. Jack looked at them all, hoping to get more out of them, but apparently there was no more. The tech went back to work, Thompson and Sanders went back to their cigarette. Jack started to ask another question, but all of them jerked slightly as the overhead comm clicked on and a flat, toneless voice informed them that a shipment was incoming.

Great.

It was ten past midnight before they finally left the garage.

It was almost twelve thirty in the morning by the time they'd gotten back to the Security Center, dropped off their armor and weapons, signed out and started heading back to their new home. Jack and Jennifer walked through the starkly lit corridors in relative silence, passing the occasional Marine or technician.

Jack felt lethargy creeping in around the edges. He was a little concerned about the fact that he didn't go to work until four in the afternoon now. He wasn't used to such a late start time. He supposed he could work it, provided he went to bed basically as soon as he got back to his bunk. He hoped Jenkins wasn't the kind to stay up all night.

Finally, they came back to their dormitories. It turned out that Jennifer's was across the hall and only a few doors down.

They both stopped, hesitated, lingered.

No one else was around.

"So..." Jennifer said.

"Yeah?" Jack replied after a moment.

"My roommate works the night shift. You wanna spend the night?"

"Definitely," he replied.

She smiled and moved over to her door. Opening it, she slipped through.

Jack followed her in.