The tram came to a halt in the receiving station, but Jack thought it was a damn near thing. It was worse than ever out on the surface and there'd been Lost Souls and a few zombies actually in the tram tunnel with them. They hadn't raised the alarm, as far as Jack could tell, and the Lost Souls had just bumped harmlessly up against the glass in the rear compartment when they'd been waiting for the airlock to open for them.

He wasn't sure if their luck would hold out one last time.

"Are we clear?" Jenkins asked quietly.

Jack peered cautiously around, through the glass of the driver's compartment, crouching, his movements slow. After a few moments of staring at the platform and anywhere else he could see, he finally stood up.

"Clear," he said. "But stay sharp."

Was there even a single place on this fucking moon where they could let their guard down? Jack felt like he was going to have sore muscles and stomach problems for weeks from how many hours he'd gone around, his whole body clenched from tension. That is, if he was lucky enough to survive that long.

They left the tram and swept the station. There was nothing, only the brutalized, bloody remains of the dead that hadn't been put to use by the demons. Jack felt his stomach turn over as he thought of that infirmary. He pushed the thoughts away. Needed to focus. Always needed to focus. Their sweep turned up nothing. No zombies in the shadows, no Imps in the vents, nothing. Jack didn't like it, as thrilled as he was not to have to shoot it out again.

But something seemed off.

They approached the main exit and as he got close, he hesitated again.

"Jenkins to the left, Jennifer, right," he whispered. They tensed up, picking up on the apprehension in his voice. They moved in quickly and he brought his SMG into play, crouching down behind a stack of crates. Once everyone was in place, Jennifer opened the door. Jack licked his lips, his hands trembling slightly. He didn't like that, it had been happening a lot more just lately. The door parted down the middle, sliding into its niches, slowly revealing the room beyond. Jack did not like what he saw at all.

The trembling got worse.

The receiving lobby had been replaced in totality. This wasn't just knocking down some walls or a little restructuring, this was flat out changing the building itself. A corridor that was about ten or fifteen meters long stretched away from them. It ended in a large stone door. The walls had been replaced with something...something that Jack wasn't entirely sure he was seeing. It was like his brain was trying to hide reality from him.

Then it hit him.

"Oh...oh God..." he moaned sickly.

The walls were made of pinkish flesh and bleached bone. He was looking at exposed spines of some kind. The fact that it only took him about ten seconds to recover from the horror of seeing this impossibility told Jack that either he was getting good at dealing with this kind of crap, or he was getting bad at it. And by that he thought that he might be just...repressing it, or pushing it away, and not actually dealing with it.

And that could have bad side effects.

And given the number of psychotic breaks he'd had just recently, he thought that it was the second option more than the first. Whatever, he'd deal with it later. Wordlessly, he marched into the corridor of flesh and spinal columns. He heard the others following behind him. Swallowing nervously, Jack found himself wondering just how he would handle this if he hadn't had these two with him. He probably would have lost his mind.

They reached the door at the other end.

The big stone slab sat, inert and unyielding. For a moment, he was stymied. He saw no way to open it, no way for them to progress. As he took another step forward and suddenly the door began grinding open, sliding into the floor. They all jerked back in response, weapons raised, ready for anything, or so they hoped.

There didn't seem to be any apparent immediate danger, so, as the door finished lowering, he stepped forward. Sweeping the room beyond with his gaze, he found almost an arena-like room. It was about twenty meters across and roughly octagonal in shape. The walls were made of that same awful pink flesh and bleached bone, the floor made of slate gray stonework masonry, the ceiling made of the same stuff.

He could see another stone door across the way, and the only real thing of interest was a large pillar in the exact center of the room.

"What is this?" Jennifer whispered.

"Bad news," Jack muttered in reply. He took a few more cautious steps into the room. It was as if the universe was holding its breath, waiting for the bad thing to happen. As he took one more step into the room, that did it.

The bad thing happened.

The pillar in the center of the room began rapidly lowering into the floor with a grinding sound that was quickly overwhelmed by the marrow-freezing roar of pure and absolute fury issued by the Baron of Hell standing atop it.

"Shoot it! Shoot it!" Jack heard himself screaming even as he aimed his SMG at the big bastard and squeezed the trigger. He moved out of their way, strafing right and hosing the behemoth down with fire even as it raised its hand and hurled a ball of green energy at them. The thing missed him by inches and even through the suit he could feel the raw heat coming off of it. He emptied his SMG, putting a ton of small holes in its broad, well-muscled chest, and Jennifer and Jenkins had landed a ton of hits as well, but it wasn't going down.

"Use your damned rocket launcher!" Jenkins shouted.

As he finished reloading, he almost, almost went for it. But something told him, simply: No. It was not yet time. He knew they could kill these things with bullets alone, and he only had the three rockets. What if they ran into something bigger?

"Just take it down with small-arms!" Jack replied.

"Why!?" Jenkins cried as he kept blasting away with his shotgun.

"Gotta save the rockets!"

Jenkins began to say something else but the big beast threw a fireball at him and he had to tuck and roll to get away from it. Jack finished reloading and emptied the second magazine into the monster, never ceasing his movement. As he slapped a third magazine into the SMG, he saw that it was beginning to slow down, wilting under the constant rain of fire. Unfortunately, it was eating up a shitload of ammo.

In the end, it took all his SMG ammo and four shotgun shells before the thing finally issued a roar of pain and collapsed to the stonework floor. Jack hastily shoved four more shells into the shotgun, cocked it and waited, but the Baron was down for good and out of the game. He let out a long sigh of relief.

"What the hell else do you think we're going to come up against?" Jenkins asked as they regrouped on the far side of the room.

"No idea, but we were in no way expecting those assholes, right?" he replied, nodding to the Baron of Hell. "Stands to reason there might be something bigger and badder along the way. And I want rockets if that's true."

Jenkins just grunted in reply, seemingly distracted with the terrifying notion that there was something even nastier than a Baron of Hell. The other stone door opened as they approached, and Jack felt an immense relief begin to flow through him as he saw more familiar territory. A corridor of gutted technology and steel deckplates awaited his inspection. It was sparking and bloody, but it was familiar, and he'd missed it.

As they began making their way down the corridor, checking out the occasional alcove or side room that seemed to house heat sync areas and energy monitoring rooms and other sections that he couldn't even guess at, his hope spiked again when he heard gunfire. Without a word, he took off sprinting towards the sound. It was too deliberate, too controlled, to belong to any of the zombies, and he couldn't imagine any of the other beasts putting the Raptors to use. They hit the end of the corridor and opened the next door.

Pure, bloody, unmitigated chaos reigned in the huge room beyond. At a casual glance, the place seemed to be a toxic waste storage area. The walls were lined with huge silver cylinders and hostiles of all kinds were pouring in through the three other main entrances into the room. A pair of battered, burned, and bloodied figures in green security armor were crouched down in the center of the room in a rounded workstation, fighting desperately to survive. Survivors! Actual, real survivors! Jack could hardly believe it.

"Friendlies, coming in!" Jack screamed over the roar of combat. "Jenkins, get over there and help them out! Jennifer, cover the left door, I'll get the right!"

They both snapped off affirmative replies and headed off. Jack moved over to the right door, blasting away with his shotgun. A six-pack of Demons were stomping in, roaring their heads off, and a bloated Cacodemon was coming in behind them. Not good. He worked the pump action, blowing fist-sized holes into the big pink things' broad bodies, spraying the others with crimson gore and sending them into a more furious frenzy. They stomped towards him, roaring. He blew away a good chunk of skull of one, then fired a slug shell directly into the gaping maw of a second, blowing open the back of its head like a ripe fruit.

He dropped two more before his shotgun ran dry and he started feeding more shells into it. He only managed to get four in before they were nearly upon him. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, and emptied the gun again, putting down the rest of the Demons. Then the Cacodemon fired a fireball into his chest. Grunting as he stumbled backwards, he wondered how much more punishment the armor could stand up to. He let the gun hang and pulled out his pistol, emptying the whole magazine into the floating horror.

The big eye in the middle burst in a spray of blood and the beast roared, then began firing blindly at random, floating around and roaring furiously. Jack slapped a fresh magazine into the pistol and emptied it as well, finally popping the big bastard and killing it. He ran over to the door and slapped the close and lock button, then turned and tried to help the others as he reloaded yet again, then holstered the pistol and hastily reloaded the shotgun. He saw that Jenkins and the other two Marines had managed to stem the tide from the front entrance. He hurried over to it and locked it down as well, then moved over to help Jennifer.

Together, they blasted away another dozen Imps that were crawling over each other to get inside. He emptied his shotgun yet again, completely running it dry, blasting Imp heads and repainting the metal walls with a fresh coat of blood. As soon as they were dead, Jennifer locked down the third and final door.

All fell silent.

It was almost painful after the roar of the guns and the screams of the dying. Jack turned and began trudging over to the central workstation where the two survivors were slowly reloading their weapons. They turned to face him.

"Thanks for the save," one of them said. Her nametag identified her as SGT. Green. "Who are you? Not that I'm complaining," she added.

"We're all that's left of a team sent up to investigate Phobos," Jack replied. "You?"

"All that's left of Gehenna Squad...not that that must mean much to you, if you're from Mars City. Got time for a story?" she asked.

The other figure, a younger man who's nametag read PFC Stratton, chuckled and sat down heavily in one of the chairs, groaning.

"Definitely, I could use a breather," Jack replied.

Green opened her mouth, but froze as an intercom system crackled to life. "Warning. Warning. Nuclear reactor core approaching critical meltdown status. Nuclear reactor core will reach final meltdown status in T-minus thirty minutes."

Jack stared at Green in disbelief, then at the others.

"You are shitting me!" Jenkins cried.

"Damn," Green grunted, hefting her SMG. She kicked Stratton's boot. "Up and at'em, we're not done yet."

He groaned and got to his feet, then raised his shotgun and popped his neck.

"How do we fix this?" he asked.

Jennifer moved past him and stepped into the ringed workstation with the others. She quickly began working the controls. A minute passed in silence. "Shit," she muttered, straightening up. "Okay, we can fix this. That's the good news. The bad news is that we're going to have to work fast and split up. There's two repairs that need to be made, they're really simple though, and there's a dual-lock emergency shutdown switch that, for some stupid-ass reason, needs to be initiated simultaneously," she explained.

"What's worse," she continued, "is that the corridor leading to one of the switches has been hit by a toxic spill, so whoever goes down that one will need a radiation suit."

"Ugh, I'll do that one," Jack said. He looked at Jennifer. "Will you help me coordinate the emergency shutdown?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes. Come here you three, I'll show you where you need to go and what you need to do," she said, beckoning them over.

While they did that, Jack quickly searched the zombie corpses they'd produced. If they were going to get through the Nuclear Plant, he was going to need more ammo. By the time Jennifer finished up and sent the other three off, Jack had at least managed to find enough shells to reload his shotgun and a few more magazines for his pistol. Once he was locked and loaded, he and Jennifer reopened the right door and put down a few more zombies that had shown up, then took off running down the corridor, following its curve towards the shutdown switches.

They had a hell of a timeline working against them.

Neither spoke as they blasted their way through the corridors, moving fast, not having time to get into pitched firefights with any of the assholes they ran into. Jack still ended up using his shotgun shells blowing holes in Imp and zombies chests and at one point completely decapitating a startled Imp that he ran right into and firing at point-blank range. They managed to find the emergency radiation suit storage room in record time.

"You sure about this?" Jennifer asked. "I'm probably quicker on my feet."

"I'd rather risk me than you," he replied as he moved across the narrow room to a row of glass-fronted lockers built into the back wall. He opened one up, staring briefly at the heavy white suit with its big, green boots and red rings around the wrists. He set aside his shotgun and began pulling it on. Thank God it was big and pliable enough to go over his armor. "You're smarter and stronger than I am, it's more important that you make it," he added.

"Why do you think that?" Jennifer asked. She sounded startled and a little bewildered.

"You haven't gone primal twice," he muttered without looking at her. The thing had no helmet, but whatever, his own suit should be fine.

"Jack, that's not-"

"Don't worry about it," he said. He zipped the suit up and stood, then grabbed his pistol. He turned to face her. "Let's just get on with it."

She stared at him, and he wasn't sure he entirely liked what was in her gaze. He thought it might have been pity, but he tried to tell himself that it was empathy, which was a lot better. In the end, she just nodded tightly and about-faced.

They jogged on, reaching a break in the corridor where two more passageways snaked away, leading to the shutdown switches.

"Good luck," Jennifer said.

"You too," he replied.

"Remember to plug into the console so we can sync up," she said.

"Got it."

They took off as the countdown timer announced that they now had six minutes left. Already, he could smell the acrid reek of a toxic spill and activated his internal air supply, closing off his vents. He reached the end of the corridor, turned and hesitated for a second. The whole rest of the corridor floor was covered in bright, glowing green liquid. Sighing, telling himself that he'd be fine, he began slogging through the muck.

He felt it begin to eat away at the suit immediately.

Jack picked up the pace, running now. He hit the end of the corridor, turned the next corner and nearly ran into the arms of a Demon that was stomping around in the toxic sludge. Okay, so, Demons weren't affected by this crap. Great. Shouting in surprise, Jack aimed his pistol, his only real weapon just then, and opened fire, while backing up. Muzzle flare flashed and the thing roared as it stomped towards him, taking bullets in its big open mouth. The last shot managed to hit one of its strange, golden eyes.

That halted its advance, if only briefly.

Feeling the press of time, Jack reached for his next magazine and came up empty, his hand bumping against the radiation suit.

"Oh, you are shitting me!" he screamed in fear and frustration.

He'd forgotten to pocket some of the magazines in the suit! Continuing to backpedal, he hastily unzipped the suit and reached inside. Fumbling around, he found a magazine, ripped it out, and slapped it in the pistol, raised it and started squeezing the trigger as fast as possible. It took the entire rest of the magazine to do it, but the Demon went down. Sighing with relief, he reloaded again, then rezipped the suit and ran off, moving as fast as he could the whole way.

Finally, he hit the end of the maze and found the console. Rushing up to it, he activated it and linked his suit's comms suite to the console's.

"Okay, Jennifer, I'm here," he said. "What do I do?"

Her voice came back through a haze of static, tinny and quiet. "The keypad there, punch in eight four six," she replied.

He did it. "Done."

"Okay. There's a big, green switch. It should be in the down position. If it is, flip it up."

He found it, saw it was in the down position, and flipped it. "Done."

"Okay, there's a flat, octagonal red button in the upper right hand corner of the control panel. Do you see it?"

"Yes, I see it."

"On three, we're going to push it together. One, two, three."

He pushed the button, the console chimed, and everything lit up red. Was that good or bad? He waited, holding his breath, listening to the sizzle and pop of the toxic goop eating through his suit. Finally, Jennifer came back.

"That did it! Now get out of there, that can't be good for your armor."

"On it," he replied. "See you soon."

He turned and made his way back through the maze as quickly as he could. A moment later, he was finally free of the toxic spill. He opened back up his vents and turned off his internal oxygen supply. As soon as he was on dry land again, he quickly began getting out of the radiation suit, as it was practically melting off of him at that point. Well, the boots at least. By the time he finished getting them off, Jennifer had come back.

"Almost finished?" he asked.

The clock had gotten to two minutes now and he was starting to get very antsy, though he hadn't heard it since they'd initiated the shutdown.

"Yes," Jennifer replied as they started making their way back to the main room. "The shutdown we hit stopped the meltdown, the repairs they're doing are keeping it from getting too bad again. Although it's little more than a patch job. We really shouldn't be on this moon after a few hours. Less, if at all possible."

"Couldn't agree with you more."

They made their way back through the facility, having to put down another clutch of Imps and zombies that had wandered into their path since then. Jack was beginning to feel that strange sense of dislocation he sometimes got when he went on for just too long, like the world was beginning to fade to gray. Definitely a bad sign. He tried to force himself to focus again as they came back to the main control room about the same time the other three showed back up.

"I haven't heard that announcement for some time, I'm assuming we're not going to die?" Green asked as they reunited.

"Lemme check," Jennifer replied.

While she worked, Jack looked at Green and Stratton. "I'm assuming the two of you are okay with heading for the Hangar?" he asked.

Green nodded. "That's where we were going," she replied.

"We're good," Jennifer said. "For now at least."

"Perfect," Jack replied, turning and making his way to the exit. "Let's get to the tram and swap some stories."