It was the middle of the next day and nothing was better.
After spending the night with Jennifer again, they'd both gotten up a little before her roommate was supposed to get back, (Jack still didn't know the policy on fraternizing but figured it was pretty lax like most other policies up here), grabbed a light breakfast, and then hit the gym. That first section of the day seemed almost regular. The power surges weren't quite as consistent, the techs and Space Marines populating the hallways and junctions and mess were talking about other things besides all the weird shit going on lately. Well, sort of.
The infirmaries weren't full.
But not long after his shift started, that feeling of unease began again. He wasn't just patrolling corridors today, now his orders stipulated that he had to check out a number of rooms that he passed along the way, most of them storage rooms or maintenance areas. He just had to basically step inside and make sure that 'nothing was out of order', whatever the hell that meant. Of course, he was on his own again today, no partner.
The third room he'd checked out was a small, square thing that housed a stack of crates and a dirty, oily workbench scattered with tools and spare parts. There was no one in the room. That was creepy enough, because it looked like someone had been in the middle of fixing something at the workbench. There was some kind of piece of equipment there that Jack didn't recognize, some complex thing of circuitry and bright chromed metal, and it was partially disassembled. What was worse, however, was what was scrawled on the wall above the workbench in black, oily writing that looked like it had been done with someone's finger.
THE END IS NEAR
The oil had run, giving the words a creepy, melted look.
Jack had called it in and hung out there until a pair of stern looking Corporals showed up to check the room out. And probably clean it up. He'd resumed his patrol, but all of the vaguely comfortable feelings he'd been gathering over the past several hours were immediately ejected from his skull and replaced with a slow, cold, creeping horror that he'd been experiencing ever since he'd gotten the word that he was getting upshipped to Mars.
Of course, it had never truly left him, hiding in the background ever since he'd seen that shredded corpse. His mind kept wanting to get away from it.
Jack stepped into a bathroom and swept the room with his gaze. It was a thing of polished white tile and silver divider walls between the urinals and toilet stalls. Jeez, what was it with this place and polished everything? It was like a universe of chromed silver. Well, it certainly gave the place a hi-tech feel, which was probably what the UAC wanted to exude, even when you were taking a dump. Jack moved slowly through the room, seeing that none of the stall doors were closed. He had the place to himself.
He checked out the stalls and a little maintenance closet at the back of the room, finding nothing out of order and began to head back out. That was when his helmet radio crackled to life, causing him to freeze in place and his heart to jump in his chest.
"Ward, got new orders for you. We've got a scientist that's gone MIA. Last time he was seen, he was heading into Mars City Underground. I've updated your PDA with a map and proper clearance. Get down there, find him and convince him to get upstairs, to the nearest infirmary. Do not hurt him, we believe that he may be having a panic attack. Over," Blackmore said.
"Understood, Sergeant. I'll get right on it. Over."
"Tell me something, Ward," Blackmore continued as Jack checked his PDA and then started making his way towards the nearest entrance to Mars City Underground. "I read your file, I know about what happened in Keferistan. Do you regret it?"
His answer was immediate. "Hell no."
A pause. Then: "You'd do it again, even if you knew it got you shipped up here?"
"Hell yes," he replied firmly. What the hell was his career going down in flames worth against the lives of the forty two civilians he'd saved? There wasn't even a question about which one was worth more.
"I see," Blackmore said after a long moment of silence. "Out."
The link clicked off and he was left with nothing but dead air.
Sighing softly, Jack kept going.
Mars City Underground was almost the opposite of what he saw topside.
Whereas the facilities above ground were all made up of brightly lit, wipe-clean chrome, the underground was a dark place of steam and flashing lights and dark metal. Technicians in grease-stained jumpsuits lurked in the shadows, either catching a smoke, working on something, talking to each other or just...lurking.
Jack immediately felt uncomfortable as he plunged into the world of dark metal. How the hell was he going to find this guy? He was currently standing in an open area, the periphery of which was dominated by huge pieces of equipment, all of them sounding strained and overworked. He stopped for a moment, considering the situation. He'd never been down here before...why the hell had Blackmore assigned him to this job?
It didn't matter, he decided, he'd do his job.
Jack was nothing if not adaptable.
He checked out his map of the area, which had been unlocked, no longer blacked out but instead a confusing network of overlapping rooms and corridors. He found himself on the map, then located the nearest security center. The place had a good dozen of the small, circular rooms spread throughout. Orienting himself, Jack selected the second door in the left wall, tucked away in between a big pair of tall, rectangular pieces of technology, covered in flashing lights and trembling slightly as they did whatever it was they were supposed to do.
He walked down a short, too-dark corridor, passed through the next door and came into a smaller transitional room. One corner was taken up by the curved exterior of a security center. Jack walked up to it, looking in past the bulletproof glass at a bored-eyed Space Marine staring into his PDA with his feet kicked up on his workstation.
Jack knocked on the window. "Hey, need some help," he said.
The man jerked in surprise and nearly dropped his PDA. He clumsily got to his feet, his face flushed, frustrated or embarrassed at being caught unaware.
"What do you want?" he replied.
Jack had already brought up the image of the scientist he was hunting down. The picture showed a frowning, pale Japanese man with short black hair and a face lined with worry. His name was Jonathan Ishii.
"I'm looking for this man," Jack replied, putting his PDA up to the glass, screen-first. "He was last seen coming down into the Underground about fifteen minutes ago. I was hoping to use your security system to help me track him."
"I'll use the system to track him," the man grumbled, sitting back down and turning to his workstation. He fired it up and began scanning screens which no doubt connected him to security camera feeds.
A minute passed by, long and uncomfortable.
Abruptly, the man straightened up. "Here he is. He's...in an old decommissioned communications facility. Let me see your PDA, I'll pin his location on your map."
Jack passed his PDA through a little slot in the glass, watched the man work it for a moment, then took it back. He studied the map. The decommissioned communications facility wasn't all that far from here. Perfect. After thanking the man, he turned and set off. Jack had to admit, this wasn't boring. Although he wasn't sure if being down here in this miserable, cramped, dark place was worth not being bored.
One of the things he'd learned the hard way was that boredom became a luxury in the face of the horrors war unleashed.
Jack quickly made his way through the interconnecting tunnels, feeling like a rat in a labyrinth, trying hard not to get lost. He usually had a great sense of direction but this place was almost like it was designed to be confusing. As he navigated the area, he found himself wondering just what in the hell the scientist could be doing in the comms facility. Maybe it was just the place he ended up going to ground in his panic. It was decommissioned, so it should be abandoned. Someone probably forgot to lock it up or something.
But what if something else was going on?
Jack simply couldn't ignore the puzzle pieces that had been falling into his lap over the past few days, each disturbing in their own way. Something was going on in Mars City, and something worse was going on up on Phobos and Deimos. But what? What the hell could it possibly be? They were a giant, multi-trillion dollar, interplanetary megacorporation, the largest one in the history of mankind, so it stood to reason that they were experimenting with...all sorts of things. Especially given the fact that they kept producing breakthroughs in engines, medicine, warfare, and pretty much all fields of technology.
So...what were they experimenting with that was having these strange side effects?
Jack realized he was at the comms facility. He found the door closed and locked. Sighing, he waved his PDA over the security pad next to it. The pad turned from red to green and when he tried to open the door this time, it slid slowly into the wall, revealing the room beyond. A man in a white labcoat stood at a large workstation of keyboards and screens ahead and to the left. He had them lit up and was working them furiously.
"Dr. Ishii, I need you to step away from the console right now, please," Jack said, stepping into the room.
The man jerked in surprise, clearly so enthralled in what he was doing that he hadn't heard Jack enter. He began shaking his head and turned back to the console. "Please...no, I need to do this. Do you understand? I must do this..." Ishii replied.
He didn't look good. He was paler than in his photo, his hair was a disheveled mess and he was sweating furiously and chewing on something. Sighing, Jack walked forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Doctor..."
He froze as he saw an image on a screen that had been hidden by Ishii. On the screen was an image of some kind of creature. Something that was covered in red, leathery skin and spikes that looked like bony, white ivory. It stood against a background of strange, green, almost iridescent, brick and had one hand raised. It looked like it was holding fire.
"What the fuck is that?!" Jack asked.
"It's one of the reasons I must alert the authorities," Ishii whispered, feverish with fear. "They're going too far. They're going to-"
"Back away, Private Ward!"
Jack jerked and jumped, the irony of the fact that he had become just as enthralled as Ishii had been and had missed the two huge men that had stepped into the room not lost on him.
"No! Please! Help me!" Ishii cried.
But there was nothing he could do. The two men were the same he'd seen earlier, the two stern-faced Corporals that had arrived to take care of the strange message written in oil. They didn't seem too pleased. They outranked him. The two men stepped forward and grabbed Doctor Ishii. One of them held him while the other shut down the workstation he'd been working at.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to come with us, Doctor," one of the men said.
The other looked at Jack, his eyes flat and hard like flint. "I suggest that you get back to your assigned patrol route immediately."
"Yeah," Jack replied, staring back for a few seconds.
He turned and left the room.
Jack gasped awake, ripped unceremoniously from the deep sleep he'd been in, as static crackled and a familiar voice filled the air.
"Taylor, Ward, get your asses up and report to the Security Center ASAP!" Sergeant Blackmore snapped.
Jack sat up, blinking rapidly, looking around. Where the fuck was that coming from? Beside him, Jennifer was sitting up as well. He reached over and flicked on a lamp affixed to the bed frame, screwing up his eyes against the sudden brilliant light. For one crazy second, he thought that the man was in the room, but it was clear they were alone.
"Where the hell did that come from?" Jack asked, pulling back the blankets and standing uncertainly. He felt incredibly incoherent and confused, still caught in the deep depths of slumber, trying to kick his way out of it.
"Um...uh...comms panel, wall, next to the door," Jennifer said, clearly in a similar predicament.
Jack looked around and spotted it. He began to head for it, to respond, the light throwing his shadow crazily across the wall in front of him, but he stopped. The line wasn't open anymore and Blackmore wasn't talking.
"Okay, we've got our orders," he said, turning away, towards the bathroom. "He said get to the Security Center. Let's go."
He stepped into the bathroom, flicked on the light and splashed some cold water onto his face. He then took a quick leak and stepped out of the bathroom as Jennifer came into it. He was slowly coming online, moving more on autopilot now more than anything else. His heart was still hammering in his chest and he became dimly aware that he'd been having some kind of nightmare involving that strange, red, spiky thing he'd seen on the image. He'd been puzzling over it all day almost obsessively, going over the incident in his head again and again. He hadn't said anything to anyone yet, because those two Corporals kind of freaked him out.
There was definitely a 'secret police' kind of vibe to them. He didn't want to endanger himself or any of his coworkers by tipping them off that he'd seen something. No, better to let them think he hadn't seen anything, that they'd gotten there in time. Originally, he'd almost discounted the secret police idea as overly paranoid, but then he remembered the shredded corpses, the dozens upon dozens of coffins, the constant rotation of personnel, and had realized that it was probably all too easy to make someone disappear up here.
Accidents happened.
So he'd buttoned up about it, for now at least.
He'd been dreaming that he was hanging upside down in a chamber made of that iridescent green stonework, naked and sweating, the blood pooling in his head. That thing had walked in, grinning a wicked grin of pure malice, pure malignant evil, and it had started coming for him, its big, clawed hands outstretched…
And then he'd been woken up.
Fuck, what an awful nightmare.
Jack and Jennifer quickly pulled their uniforms back on. Jack had been smart enough to snag a couple spares and store them over here in Jennifer's dresser. He was grateful for that now as he got into a fresh and crisp set of fatigues. Both of them were dressed and out the door in only a few minutes and they were on the heels of Jenkins, who Jack realized he hadn't actually seen for a little while now. The kid looked shook up.
"What's going on?" he asked, his voice a low whisper.
"No idea," Jack replied.
Farther down the way, another door opened and he saw the immense bulk of Thompson as the man stepped out into the corridor as well. He saw them and waited for them to catch up. "You get the call, too?" he asked.
"Yup...what time is it?" Jack replied, he hadn't had a chance to look.
"Just past three in the morning," Jenkins answered.
Jack was mostly awake by now. He'd only been asleep for two hours. Fuck. Not the best amount of sleep to operate on in an emergency, and this felt like an emergency. As they navigated the corridors, making for the Security Center, he ran Blackmore's message back through his head. He'd known that Jack was in the room with Jennifer...was that bad? Or did the man care? Was he just waiting to use the knowledge at some future point?
Jack dismissed the worry. Right now there wasn't time for that.
The quartet of soldiers found the Security Center and hurried inside, finding another three Space Marines there, as well as Sergeant Blackmore. The man stood at the front of the room, which was only manned by a single other Space Marine, who looked very miserable and overworked. Blackmore was in furious and quiet conversation with someone. Jack tried to pick up what was being said, but all he could make out was the word Phobos.
Not really the best sign.
Jack studied the other three soldiers. He'd seen them around over the past couple of days. The grim-faced black woman who always seem unhappy he recognized as Corporal McGee. He'd seen her around, conducting other Space Marines and technicians. She seemed like the frighteningly competent sort of person. The tall, thin, pale man with a scrim of stubble on his face who looked like a burnout was PFC Peterson. Jack had seen him working on lots of different gear and had found the man crouched before open panels several times over the past few days, digging into the exposed guts of Mars City as he ran down one problem or another.
The final member, PFC Baker, was a hard-faced medic who had a wicked sense of humor. He'd seen her in the rec room a lot and she seemed to be one of those women who got hit on a lot and had absolutely no problem shooting them down with a practiced ease. She had lost her good humor though and now stood with the others, frowning, staring at Blackmore. Jack and his lot moved to join the trio. They all crowded together.
"Any idea what's going on?" he asked quietly.
McGee shook her head. "No, Blackmore just called us here. Although I do know that at least thirty personnel have been sent up to Phobos today...and none of them have come back as far as I can tell. Nothing beyond that."
Jack's stomach went cold. "What the fuck are they all doing up there?"
"No idea," McGee whispered.
Abruptly, Blackmore's conversation cut off. He sighed heavily, facing away from them. His head was down, as though gathering his thoughts. Suddenly, he straightened up and turned around. His expression was hard and grim.
"There's an emergency situation up on Phobos," he said, walking swiftly across the room. He didn't bother with pretense, instead walking past them, into the armor room. "Come on, we need to suit up right now."
They followed him in, looks of unease plastered on all their faces. While they pulled on their green pressure suits, Blackmore continued. "At eighteen hundred hours today, Phobos Base sent out a distress call. It was cut off mid-transmission and what they did send didn't really enlighten us as to the nature of their distress. We upshipped a team, got the report that they had landed and then didn't hear back from them. Two hours later we upshipped a second team, and didn't hear back from them either. So they sent up a third team and, you guessed it, when haven't heard back from them as well. So we get to be team number four."
"You're shitting me, right?" Jack replied, causing everyone to look over at him sharply. The others looked back at Blackmore, their expressions expectant, wondering how the Sergeant would react to the statement.
"No, Ward, I'm not," he muttered.
Jack was surprised, and worried. He hadn't meant to let that slip out and had expected a verbal assault by the stern Sergeant, but he'd hardly said anything. Which meant he was distracted, worried, or both. Which was definitely a bad sign.
"UAC still thinks the situation can be salvaged up there. I don't know what the hell their plan is if we don't report back..." Blackmore added.
They finished putting on their armor and then quickly crossed over to the armory. Jack's hopes sank even lower as he saw the utterly depleted condition of the room. There was barely anything left beyond a handful of pistols and some shotguns. They gathered up the gear and distributed it as evenly as they could. What that ultimately amounted to was the fact that Jack only managed to get his hands on a pistol and five magazines.
Great. Sighing, he loaded up the sidearm, flipped on the safety, and holstered it. He pocketed the four spare magazines.
Fifty bullets and some green security armor was all that stood between him and who the hell knew what up on Phobos.
"Look, I know this is a lot to throw at you, but we don't really have a choice. They've been having some kind of problem down here in Mars City and everyone else is staying put in case...something happens," Blackmore said. "So the mission is as follows: secure the area, determine the nature of the threat and, if necessary, eliminate hostiles and evacuate the personnel."
"What 'hostiles'?" Jennifer asked.
"I don't know," Blackwell replied. "Everyone loaded up?" he asked, looking around at them. They all responded affirmatively. "Then let's go."
Jack followed him out of the armory with the others, feeling like a man who was walking towards his own grave.