There was a brand new problem waiting for them when they got to the tram station, although Jack had no idea what to make of it.
"What...the...fuck?" Jenkins whispered.
Jack had to agree with him. The three of them stood together in the tram as it trundled slowly across the surface of Deimos. They had confirmed that they were on Deimos when they found a map of Deimos Base on the way out.
Directly overhead, seen through the glass ceiling and the clear tube, was the sky.
The problem was that Deimos had no sky, it was without atmosphere. It was Deimos, and yet...overhead, they stared up at a swirling, shifting crimson sky.
"Could...could it be Mars?" Jack asked slowly. "Maybe...maybe the experiment screwed up Deimos's orbit?"
"I don't think so, that doesn't look like Mars," Jennifer murmured. "It's a slightly different color and that doesn't look like a normal atmosphere."
"So what is it, then?" Jenkins asked softly.
"I...I don't know," Jennifer replied.
"It doesn't matter. There's nothing we can do about it," Jack said, trying to get a grip on himself. He stepped back into the front room. "We need to stay focused."
Jennifer joined him a moment later. They had no idea where they were going. The map had called the next structure the Containment Area, so that could mean...just about anything. Most of the other buildings were the same as those over on Phobos: Military HQ, Deimos Labs, Nuclear Plant, Hangar. Up ahead, he could see the structure: a huge L shaped building with a couple of towers on top of it. The tram was heading right into the elbow of the L.
Jack found his gaze drifting back up to that impossible crimson sky.
What could it mean?
He thought that he might know, somewhere deep in his battered, abused brain, but if he did, it would not bubble to the surface. The notion remained elusive, and perhaps that was for the best. A small but potent part of him thought that if he could dredge the notion up from the murky depths of his mind, it might drive him crazy.
So he left well enough alone.
In the distance, he could see clusters of Lost Souls drifting soundlessly across the gray surface of Deimos, which looked no different from Phobos. Except for the crimson tint to everything. He could also see the larger, beach ball shapes of Cacodemons hovering about, apparently content to float in the vacuum of space.
Provided that's what was out there, beyond the glass.
The tram pulled into the station after cycling through the airlock. Jack stared out the windows, trying to get a feel for what kind of situation awaited them in the entrance bay. There didn't seem to be any hostiles in the immediate area. After a few moments, he finally moved back into the main cabin and over to the door.
Wordlessly, the pair of fellow Marines followed him out onto the platform.
They ran into a roadblock immediately, though this one couldn't be cured with keycards or cutting tools. The main entrance into the Containment Area was bashed in, the metal buckled and dented, wedged firmly. It wasn't going anywhere.
"Well, shit," Jack muttered.
"There has to be another way in," Jennifer replied.
They searched the platform but found nothing worthwhile, no other entrances. From there, they got down into the darkened maintenance area beneath the platform. They found the generic litter of maintenance things down there, a small bathroom that looked like an abattoir, and, finally, a workroom that had a small service lift that went only down. Jack went first, stepping into the little lift and hitting the down button.
He held the shotgun firmly in his grasp, aiming it right at the door.
Good thing, too, because a Z-Sec was waiting for him. Right as the door opened, he squeezed the trigger and punched a fist-sized hole right through its black-armored chest. The force of the blast picked the bastard up and sent it flying. Its armor spat sparks as it hit the rusty deckplates and skidded a few inches.
Jack waited a few seconds more and, when no other creatures wandered into the small antechamber ahead of him, he stepped out and sent the lift back up. Jack spent the time checking the area out a little more thoroughly, making sure nothing lurked in the shadows, but there really weren't many hiding places around. He moved over to the only door in the room and leaned against it, listening intently.
He thought he heard a deep growl at one point, but it might have been the metal shifting. Damn, he hated this place. Behind him, the lift settled back down into place. Jack spun around, suddenly paranoid that something besides his friends would step off of it, but the doors opened to reveal Jennifer and Jenkins. They stepped out, pistols drawn. Jack led them across the room to the only exit. He hit it. The door slid open to reveal a long corridor. A curious mist, steam, he realized, hung on the air, which was choked with wires and cables hanging from the ceiling.
"What the hell?" Jack muttered. "You've gotta be kidding me." His vision was utter crap down here and there were about a million hiding places. There had to be hundreds of these wires hanging from the shredded ceiling like creeper vines in a jungle. Somewhere, something growled. His muscles feeling like tempered steel, his stomach feeling like a freezer, Jack set off, tension singing through his whole body.
He began shouldering his way through the wires, shotgun tucked hard and tight to his shoulder, finger on the trigger. Jennifer and Jenkins were at least reassuring behind him. Their movement was hideously slow, as he had to stop and check out some shadowed niche every five feet or so. They managed to make their slow progress unmolested for about sixty seconds. Jack stopped, thinking he heard something, then decided he hadn't. He set off once more, pushing his way through a thick cluster of cabling.
Clawed red hands, fast and strong, shot out from the cabling and wrapped around the barrel of his shotgun. Jack screamed and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun discharged uselessly, missing the Imp. It ripped the gun from his grasp and threw it aside, then raked its claws across his chest. He screamed as burning agony ripped into him. Immediately, he felt a liquid warmth sliding down his chest. He stumbled backwards, tripped over a cable, and fell flat on his ass. As soon as he was down, Jennifer and Jenkins opened fire.
He could just see the huge, red shape of the Imp through the cables. Bloody holes opened up on its chest. The thing issued a hissing shriek and tried to get a fireball out. It succeeded in doing so, but lobbed it straight into the ceiling, as useless as his own previous shotgun blast. Jack winced as he shifted, looking down at his chest.
"Shit," he whispered. Three clearly visible claw-marks had ripped through the uniform and it was soaked in blood.
"Oh damn, Jack," Jennifer said, crouching down. "That looks awful. We need to patch it up."
"Not yet," he grunted. "Gotta get somewhere safe first. Help me up."
Jennifer looked like she wanted to argue, but then she looked around and realized he had a point. So she helped him up, then found his shotgun and passed it to him. Jack gripped it for a moment, then reluctantly passed it to her. He knew she'd do more good with it than he would, but dammit, giving up a shotgun in a situation like this was hard, even if it was the logical choice. He took his pistol out, holding it with his right hand, then pressed his left hand against the wound, covering as much of it as he could and crying out hoarsely in pain as he did.
They made hurried progress after that, pushing on recklessly through the maintenance tunnel. How long did the damn thing go on for? Abruptly, they broke through the cables and wiring and came to a short length of clear hallway that ended in another door that was partially open, maybe three feet off the floor, stuck. Jennifer went first, getting down and moving through the opening after doing a quick survey. When nothing happened, Jack and Jenkins followed. They'd reached another maintenance bay scattered with greasy tools and spare parts and a few shredded corpses. Once they'd secured the three ways in and made sure nothing was in there with them, Jack sat down heavily in the nearest chair and carefully unzipped his uniform.
The claws had missed the zipper at least.
"Damn, that looks bad," Jennifer murmured as she grabbed the StimPack off her belt and opened it up. Jenkins stood watch while she worked.
"This is gonna hurt," she said.
"Just do it," Jack grunted.
He clenched his jaw and let out a pained half-yell as she poured antiseptic and clotting liquids across the wound. It was, mercifully, mixed in with a numbing agent that quickly went to work. Jennifer worked quickly and skillfully, cleaning the wounds and then sealing them with military grade bandages that were supposed to stand up to a lot of punishment. Once she'd sealed them up, he thanked her and re-zipped his uniform.
"How's it feel?" she asked.
"Fine for now," he replied. "It'll have to do. Damn, we really need to find some armor."
They located another service lift and this time Jennifer volunteered to go up first. Jack and Jenkins waited in tense silence as the elevator went up the shaft, paused, then came back down. It came back empty. They stepped onboard and rode it up. Jack wondered what they might find in the Containment Area. It could mean anything. What was it containing? The lift stopped and the door opened, revealing Jennifer with the shotgun.
A pair of dead Imps lay at her feet.
"What the hell?" Jack whispered, stepping out, pistol drawn.
"What the hell indeed," Jennifer replied. "I have no idea what to make of this."
Jack felt an awful chill rip through him as he looked around the broad, open space they'd been admitted to. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of some strange, greenish brick, the surfaces chipped and worn. He realized that he'd seen it before...in his nightmares. That same green brick. There were four pillars in the room, big, rounded brown pillars of some unknown stone material. Flickering torches set into black metal holders provided some of the light, while the racked florescents up above provided some as well.
He could see three ways out of the room, and all three of them were gleaming silver doors that looked utterly out of place.
"What is this?" he muttered. "Where did this come from?"
It was becoming a recurring question. Knowing that they couldn't linger, Jack started moving. They checked the doors, finding the ones that led to the left and right were shut and wouldn't open. The final door, dead ahead, slid up on command to admit them to a large storage area. It looked more human, with gritty, bloodstained deckplates and smooth white walls, several of which were open, their panels taken away, raw circuitry and technology, the guts of Deimos Base, exposed and often sparking. There were haphazard piles of crates everywhere, creating a confusing network of alcoves. Imps were somewhere nearby.
Well, at least the light was steady.
They began moving into the crate maze. The crates were of all different sizes, shaped into squares and rectangles. The whole area was infested with Imps. Their progress felt slow and sloppy as they made their way through the confusion of crates. Jack ended up emptying his pistol twice over, putting rounds in Imp skulls, punching holes in their chests, and then finding more ammunition. Jennifer was hell on wheels with the shotgun, vaporizing whole Imp heads with the squeeze of a trigger. Ten minutes later, they'd traded a lot of shells and bullets for about a dozen and a half dead Imps and a few zombies, just to mix things up.
Jack had almost given up hope of finding more ammo, but while they were searching the natural alcoves created between the uneven stacks of crates, they found what seemed to be someone's stash. Jack found grim thoughts drifting through his mind as he inventoried the supplies. It was in a dead-ended alcove buried pretty deep in the crate maze. Who had this belonged to? Where were they now? How had they survived the initial slaughter?
There was at least another shotgun, a box of shells, and some magazines for the pistol. Jack ended up taking the shotgun and fully loading it, then passing off the rest to Jennifer. His sidearm situation was little better. The pistol was loaded with one in reserve, and that was it. They headed out of the storage area, finding only one door among the five in the area that actually led onward. They came into a long hallway that stretched away from them to the left and right. Much like before, this corridor provided a brand new curiosity.
The walls were paneled in weathered wood and rusty nails. Flicking torches provided light. A few of the wood panels had fallen away and beneath them, they could see the wired and piping guts of the installation. At the right end of the corridor, they saw a large silver door stamped with the UAC logo that looked important. Towards the left, Jack squinted, staring down the lengthy wooden passageway. There was definitely something down there, but he couldn't make it out. He motioned towards it, then set off.
"What is that?" Jenkins murmured, cold fear stealing into his voice.
It was a pedestal of some kind, Jack realized as he drew closer, maybe three feet tall. It seemed to be made of rusty copper. It also drew his gaze to the floor, which he realized was not wood, but made of some strange kind of stone that made him think of sandstone. There was something red on the rounded top of the pedestal.
It was a human heart, Jack realized as he drew within a few feet of the thing.
It was still pumping. He could even hear it, faintly.
"What the fuck?" he whispered. "What...how is this?"
"It's not right," Jenkins whispered.
"No. It's not." Jennifer punctuated her sentence with a gunshot that made Jack jump. The heart burst, spraying blood across the wooden wall behind it. Somewhere, distantly, Jack thought he heard a roar. Maybe it was his imagination. They turned away from the awful pedestal and began walking down the long, strange corridor. The few doors they came across were either locked down tight or wedged shut, and there wasn't a keycard or cutting torch in sight. Before long, they came to the huge silver door at the end of the passageway.
Jack expected it to be locked, as it looked pretty heavy-duty, like it was guarding something important, but it wasn't. It slid right up into the ceiling, revealing what appeared to be some kind of combination control room/observation deck. Monitors surrounded them, as workstations lined the walls beneath the ring of glass that made up the center of the outer three walls. Most of the screens were broken from gunshots, several were showing static, some were actively bleeding. Jack watched the impossible situation for several seconds as blood popped straight out of the glass and ran down it, pooling somewhere below on the metal floor.
They were back in regular human territory again, though, so that was something.
Jack walked to the front of the room and found himself looking down into a large, open, metallic arena-like area. It was littered with corpses. He saw human, Imp, and Demon bodies down there, as well as a great deal of blood.
"What the hell was this area?" he muttered.
"I think this terminal still works," Jennifer said.
He turned away from the window and saw her settling in at a mostly intact looking terminal. Jenkins stood by the door, standing guard. Jack moved over to join her. He watched as she silently navigated the menus on the computer through a haze of rolling static and a large crack through the screen. Several minutes passed by in tense silence. Occasionally, Jack could hear something bang into a metal wall or floor somewhere, or something let out a roar, or a deep growl. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, moving his hand slowly up and down. He was working on a headache. The boost he'd gotten earlier felt like it was losing its grip. And they were just on the second building. How much more of this crap was there?
He knew not to try and have a set idea on when something bad was going to end, because he'd learned the hard way that how much you could do, how much you thought you could endure or put up with, was all perception. It was true that there was a hard limit, a hard end, to how much a human being could do before passing out from exhaustion or going crazy, but a lot of people didn't understand or never learned that it was actually way more than they thought they could endure. It was miserable, and awful, and hellish…
But you could do it.
He could do it. He had to do it.
He'd made a mistake when he'd told himself that it'd all be over in the Phobos Anomaly, and he was trying to tell himself that it wouldn't do to count on it being over when they hit the Hangar. It might go on longer than that.
"Aw hell," Jennifer muttered.
He came back to the here and now. "What?" he asked.
"I'm reasonably sure that they were running tests on these things. I found a schedule of 'battle tests', though it's pretty vague as to what they were testing, but it's got to be the creatures. So they obviously didn't just find out about these damned things..." she sighed. "The good news is that I've found a map of the Containment Area. And there's an armory on the other side of the structure. The most direct route that I can see, and honestly our only route right now, given the state of the other areas we've come across, is down there, through the arena. We can access a maintenance route and cut through a lot of the crap."
"Of course," Jack muttered. "Well, sooner the better."
Jennifer stood and hefted her shotgun. "Couldn't agree more. Now we just have to find a way to get down there."
"There's a hatch," Jenkins said, pointing.
They followed his finger and saw a hatch tucked away in one corner, between some of the workstations.
"Good eye," Jack said, moving over to it.
He crouched by it and opened it up, then found himself staring down a narrow shaft. Nothing was moving around down there at the bottom, as far as he could tell. With a sigh, he made his way down the ladder, hurrying to the bottom. Once he was there, he hopped off and spun around, shotgun at ready. He found himself in a small, reinforced room. It was empty. The others came down and they left through the only door, which admitted them out into the arena. Now that they were on the ground floor, Jack realized that the area was ringed by doors, all of them closed. He remembered that the maintenance bay they were looking for was dead across from the observation deck.
They started making their way towards it.
Their boots echoed hollowly as they crossed the huge room, occasionally squelching as they stepped in a thick pool of blood. Jack froze in his tracks as, suddenly, all around them, every single door (save for the one they needed to go through) opened up. A general chorus of roars and growls and shrieks sounded as a dozen Demons and Imps poured into the room from the small, simple rooms they'd been caged in previously. Jack snapped out a curse, raised his shotgun and pounded out a shell, hitting a Demon right in its big, ugly, vast maw. The shot was good: the back of the thing's head blew out, spraying the others with dark red gore.
Jennifer and Jenkins opened fire, shouting as they strafed away from each other as not to get in each others' ways. Jack adjusted his aim and fired again, ripping away half of an Imp's skull with a slug shell. It had been in the midst of throwing a fireball and the blast threw its aim off. The fireball meant for Jack flew into a Demon's back. The big pink thing roared and spun around. There were a pair of Imps nearby and apparently that was good enough for it. The Demon began stomping towards them, roaring furiously.
Apparently, Imps were good at reading Demon body language, because they immediately issued hisses and began tossing out fireballs at it before it got to them. Jack issued a short, high-pitched laugh that stank of hysteria and turned his attention to the other things that were trying to kill them. He sprayed the air with blood as he put down another pair of Imps and a Demon. He ended up expending the meager shotgun ammo he'd scraped together recently doing so, but as he pulled out his pistol, he saw that Jennifer and Jenkins had finished off the others.
Well, almost all of them.
The Demon and one of the Imps were still going at it with fang and claw. Jennifer raised her shotgun, but Jack put his hand on the barrel, lowering it. The three of them watched silently as the two monsters ripped and tore at each other. In the end, the Demon won out. It hit the Imp with one of its muscular, though strangely small, arms and knocked the thing to the floor. The Imp, badly beaten and bloody, tried to get up, but the Demon planted one foot on its chest, leaned down, grabbed an arm and ripped it off in a spray of blood.
The Imp died shortly after.
Jennifer rewarded the victor with a shotgun blast to the back of the head, putting the big ugly pink thing down.
All became still and silent.
"This place is messing with us," Jack said as they stalked across the arena.
"Yeah, I've noticed that," Jennifer muttered. "It almost feels like we're being watched..."
"I know what you mean," Jenkins said. "All those damned doors opened at once, like a trap, like they were waiting for us."
"None of those things are smart enough to lay traps," Jennifer said.
"What then?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Something we haven't seen yet. Or maybe those two big assholes we killed back on Phobos? More like them?"
"They seemed more like muscle than brains," Jack murmured.
They reached the door and opened it up, tensing for another attack, but there was just a derelict maintenance area. The trio progressed quickly through the filthy, oily bay. They located another lift that they took down into the guts of the base. Their trip through it, this time, was thankfully short and uneventful.
"How you holding up, Jenkins?" Jack asked as they passed through some well-lit, relatively-untouched looking tunnels.
"I'm okay," he replied. "Gut hurts like hell, but I'll be fine. I just...can't believe all this shit. I mean...this is crazy, right? Like, this is all as crazy as I think it is, right? I'm not losing it or anything, am I?"
"No, it's nuts," Jack replied. "Totally off-the-wall bonkers."
"Well, at least the good news is that the Drill Sergeants weren't bullshitting us," Jennifer said. "Apparently, this training really does make you ready for anything. I think we've handled it all pretty well."
"That is a good point," Jack murmured. "How'd you two fair in boot?" he asked.
"Like crap," Jennifer replied. "Sexism, unwanted advances on me. Had to kick ass on three separate occasions when one of my 'fellow' Marines wouldn't take no for an answer. Broke one guy's nose, another idiot's arm, almost cracked the third moron's skull. Other than that, I did pretty well. I mean, I think so, at least."
"I kind of just...pushed through," Jenkins said. "It all kind of blurs together. I mean, before it all..." he hesitated.
"Before it all?" Jack prompted.
"I was a real screw-up," he said. "You remember that flu that hit the Midwest back in '39?"
"Yeah. That was, uh...R1X9, I think," Jack replied.
"They called it the Black Fever," Jennifer said.
"Yeah. My whole family ended up getting it. We lived in some pretty crappy housing. I got it, too, but my immune system fought it off. Almost didn't though. But my whole family died. My brother, little sister, and parents. I was fifteen. My uncle took me in but he was a drunk mechanic who was never around. I was always getting into trouble. Drinking, drugs, girls, all the cliched stuff. Got arrested several times, almost got myself killed more than once. When I was nineteen, I finally landed in the hospital after a stupid car accident. I decided I needed to get my shit together after I almost died, so I signed up for the Marines."
"It seemed to have worked," Jack said.
He shrugged. "I dunno, not really. I'm here because of a dumbass mistake."
"You're a good Marine, Jenkins," Jack replied. "You can fight, you can shoot, you can keep your head in the midst of genuine chaos. That's not easy. You survived. You earned that. You're a good Marine," he said firmly.
"Thanks," Jenkins said quietly after a moment.
They reached the end of the tunnels and rode another lift up, then climbed another ladder. The place they emerged in was even worse than the damned arena. Jack led the way out and into a huge, warehouse-sized room. The walls to either side were nothing but ranked square steel cages. There were dozens of them, perhaps a hundred on either side. Most of them were open and empty, some had bloody interiors, but some still held Imps and Demons. One held a Cacodemon. How long had this been going on? he wondered sickly.
The next room was actually worse.
They passed through a ripped-open, reinforced airlock and came into a surgical bay. Several surgical bays, actually, divided by glass partitions. Several of the surgical tables held Imps and zombies that had been cut open. Their stomachs and chest cavities lay open and exposed to the world around them. Medical tools glittered and gleamed in the too-bright operating bay lights. The trio moved silently through the place that stank of blood, death, and antiseptics. Jack felt his stomach turn over lazily, his last meal threatening to come up. He'd never liked hospitals and needles made him very nervous, but this…
It was like a vision of hell itself.
They moved quickly through the surgical area, keeping clear of the tables and carved up bodies. As he passed by the last table before hitting the far exit, the zombie corpse on it suddenly shifted and moaned. Jack jerked back in surprise, although he was five feet away, (his lack of armor was really freaking him out). He felt his stomach twitch again and his bile rise as the thing rolled over towards him. Foamy loops of intestine spilled out, dangling over the side of the table and splattering wetly to the floor.
"God," he whispered.
Rousing himself, he forced himself to walk out of the room. The others followed silently behind him. They passed through another ripped open airlock room, then moved through a small office complex, and finally came out the other side into another long corridor. This one seemed like it was in the process of a huge renovation. Several of the big metal floor panels had been ripped up, revealing a crawlspace beneath. The walls were a strange patchwork of bland gunmetal gray panels stamped with the UAC logo and a bizarre blackish metal that oozed a strange dark substance. They moved cautiously down the passageway.
"There," Jennifer said quietly. "Door to the armory."
They moved quickly over to it and promptly discovered that it was locked. Jack growled and kicked the frame as a sudden burst of fury overtook him. "Goddamnit!" he snapped. "Can't we get a single fucking break!?"
"Jack...calm down," Jennifer said.
He glanced at them, saw the worry in their eyes. Jeez, he was starting to lose it. Bad time, bad place to do it. He sighed deeply and tried to clear his head. "Sorry," he muttered, looking around for some way to get through this roadblock.
"There," he said, pointing, as his eyes fell on an open floor panel about ten feet away. "Maybe we can get through under the floor."
"Exactly what I was hoping to do today when I crawled out of bed," Jenkins said miserably.
Jack went first, leading the way over to the floor panel. He grabbed his pistol and flicked on the flashlight, then pointed it down the dark maw. A steel-silver environment, wrought with smears of blood, that strange oily black ooze, and circuitry and machinery, the guts of the base, was revealed. He moved slowly around it, searching the shadowy darkness as much as he could, but his flashlight revealed nothing.
With the trepidation of a man preparing to jump into a very cold swimming pool, Jack hopped down into the niche. He fell just two feet and grunted, then quickly dropped to his hands and knees. He took another minute to scope out the area, but there were a lot of partitions and pieces of equipment that blocked his field of view.
"We're clear...for now," he said.
Jennifer and Jenkins followed him in. They began to navigate the space beneath the floor with a quiet desperation. Jack felt his heart kicking hard in his chest. He was hot, sweating badly, feeling claustrophobia ensnaring him, closing in on him the way darkness closes in on your vision when you're in the process of passing out. Controlling his breathing to the best of his ability, he tried to hold it together.
They moved parallel to the wall and finally found an opening that led beneath it and into the armory beyond. Not much farther now. The quiet grunts and breathing of the others were incredibly reassuring. Jack came around another piece of machinery beneath the floor and saw light up ahead. It was coming from another open panel. Oh thank G-
Jack screamed as a red, clawed hand shot out from behind the machinery and wrapped around his wrist. An Imp shrieked and yanked him violently forward. The pistol discharged, briefly painting the whole area in a stark black and white flare. He saw the mask of alien horror that was its face, the eyes, the huge mouth that was like a black hole ringed with teeth. He could hear the others trying to get to him, but this was his problem.
Struggling violently, Jack punched the thing in the face.
It was like punching a brick wall.
Acting on instinct, he shot his hand out, his first two fingers held rigid and formed into a very primitive stabbing implement.
They penetrated the thing's eye, which vanished into an awful, hot oozing mess that splattered all over his hand and wrist as if he'd burst a boil. The beast began shrieking furiously and it let go of his hand. Jack brought the pistol up, stuck the barrel into its mouth, and squeezed the trigger three times. The thing's head came apart like a ripe fruit and it stopped shrieking.
"Ugh, God," he muttered, wiping his hand off on his uniform.
"Are you okay?" Jennifer asked.
"I'm fine," he replied. "Just grossed out. Imp," he explained.
He heard her sigh in relief. Once his hand was cleaned, he crawled on and made it up and out of the crawlspace. He secured the area while the others joined him. They'd definitely come up into the armory, and it was, as promised, a big one. It was a large, rectangular room the walls of which were covered with ranked rows of shelves, cases, gun and armor lockers, and workbenches for basic weapon and armor maintenance.
They spent twenty minutes picking through the entire area, as it was obvious that, like all the other armories they had encountered so far, it had been picked over. First, he imagined, by the humans that had run this place, and later by the zombies, or perhaps the Imps looking to arm the zombies. They didn't seem capable of such tasks. Well, maybe. The Z-Secs definitely did, though. In the end, wading through all the awful stuff turned out to be really, really worth it. Jack began to feel something like hope again.
They found three suits of Combat Armor.
Jack wasn't sure why they were bright blue in color, but they were and it didn't matter because they were tough. They could stop a point blank shotgun blast. They were airtight and came with a pretty healthy supply of oxygen. They could hold a shitload of ammo and grenades and whatever else you wanted to take with you. They found the suits in a small storage room attached to the back that was largely untouched.
They were each in a glass case, looking clean, glossy, and pristine.
They ran quick checks on the suits after getting them on, as they came with a basic operating system to monitor the oxygen supply, suit integrity, a reticle on the Head's Up Display keyed to whatever gun you were holding, (provided it was compatible, which all of the DX models were,) and basic vital signs.
The suits were great.
On top of that, they managed to scrounge up several more magazines of ammunition for the pistol, a couple of boxes worth of shotgun shells, a Raptor SMG with some bullets for Jenkins and, lo and behold, another big, shiny, silver chaingun that Jack claimed for himself. It even came fully loaded and with an extra magazine.
After they finished cleaning out the armory, the three of them quickly tracked down a tram station that would take them to the next building: the Refinery.
Jack was feeling pretty good about his odds as they rode the tram once more.