The sensation was definitely different than whatever he remembered when going through the Phobos Anomaly...not that he remembered a great deal. It was over in a split second. There was a great whooshing sound that seemed to blow through him and a brilliant green light and then, abruptly, he was somewhere else.

And that other place was absolute pandemonium.

Green was shouting, firing, into a crowd of zombies, Imps, and Demons in a large, open area. The details were lost as Jack raised his weapon and stumbled off of the red platform, spraying the general crowd with his SMG. He stitched a bloody line of fire across a quartet of zombies, spraying the crowd with blood, brains, and bone fragments. He emptied the SMG, ejected the spent mag, and slapped a fresh one in.

His last one.

He opened fire again, simply trying to keep them at bay. By the time his second magazine was dry and his SMG was functionally useless, there was another bright flash of green light and then Jennifer was there. Jack shouted a warning as she hopped off the platform and pounded out a slug shell, blowing an Imp's head clean off.

Frustrated that he already had to use his special gun again, Jack let the SMG hang and snatched up the Plasma Rifle. Aiming at the biggest cluster of enemies, which was a clutch of about a dozen Demons and Imps dead ahead, he held down the trigger and began moving the gun back and forth in a tight arc. Brilliant blue-white balls of light lit up the area as they hosed the enemies down. The stench of burning meat filled the air as the balls of energy smacked into the exposed flesh of the monsters, immediately blackening and crisping even their tough hides. The Imps shrieked and the Demons roared as they went down.

There was another flash of green light, and then Stratton had joined them.

"Aw, shit!" he cried, adding his own gunfire to the mix.

Jack ended up emptying his Plasma Rifle, but it cleared out a little over half of the enemies in the immediate area. Soon, there were over twenty blackened, charred, smoking corpses littering the strange, green marble floor. As soon as the gun was dry, he dropped it and yanked out his pistol, aiming and popping off enough shots to empty a magazine. When the last bullet was launched from its dark nest, it seemed they had finished off the horde they'd stepped into. Although, given the sounds they were hearing, the peace wouldn't last.

"Hurry up, find ammo," Green said.

Distantly, and not so distantly, they could hear growls, moans, shrieks, and grunts. Some of them sounded just in the next room. Things only got worse as Jack quickly scavenged for ammo, patting down the ripped, bloodied, burned uniforms of the Space Marines and scientists and techs that had been transformed into the lumbering, walking dead. The room itself was horrible: a godforsaken amalgamation of UAC tech and architecture and hellish environs. He saw bland chromed walls stamped with the UAC logo, but among these were stylized grinning skulls with glowing red eyes. And, placed seemingly at random, were square holes covered by rusty iron bars. Behind these bars were piles of real human skulls.

Worst of all was that, in some places, instead of skulls, there were what appeared to be scrolling sections of flattened intestines.

"What the fuck is this place?" Jack whispered, pausing momentarily as he caught sight of that particular horror.

"Insanity, just don't think about it," Green replied.

Jack nodded slowly, forcing himself to return to his duty. He managed to piece together two magazines for his pistol and two for his SMG. Although his Plasma Rifle was tapped out, he at least had his D1X1 frag grenade in case of emergencies. Once he finished, he and the others gathered at the base of a broad stairwell that led up. Hellish red light seemed to bleed from it. It was the only obvious way to go.

"Onward and upward," Green muttered as she took the lead.

Jack followed behind her, with Jennifer and Stratton covering their backs, and hurried up the stairwell, which was made mostly of strange green brick. They hustled up it, Jack cresting the top barely after Green. The stairway opened up into a courtyard of granite flooring and more UAC materials for walls. The UAC stuff was really messing with him. It was bad enough they were in this hellish environment, but the juxtaposition of it with stuff he was used to seeing seemed to make it worse somehow, as if perverting it.

There were a few openings into the courtyard, the most obvious of which was the fact that it had no ceiling, and they saw that eternal crimson sky. And within seconds of them getting inside, a dozen Demons began stomping out. Cursing, Jack threw himself back into the fray, trying to line his shots up carefully, spraying bursts from the SMG into the gaping maws of the Demons as they came towards them with a mindless determination.

He put down one, saw another get a portion of its head blown off by a shotgun shell, watched a third go down under fire. They made short work of the Demons, forced to work fast in a bad situation, blowing the things away until the last one fell.

"We've got to keep moving," Jennifer said.

"There," Green replied, pointing to another, more narrow stairwell across the courtyard. They all hurried over to it.

It sounded like there were reinforcements on the way.

The next stairwell led to a tight corridor that made Jack's skin crawl. The walls were constructed of that same horrific pink flesh-and-bone he'd hoped to never see again. What was worse was the fact that the walls were barely three or four feet apart. He took point this time, SMG ready, just wanting to get through this, to keep going, to push on to the next teleporter and then do it all again, and again, and again until they were home.

If you looked at the big picture, it seemed impossible. Hell, putting your face up to the picture and just looking at where you were at right now was hard enough, but that's how you had to do it. Think about the whole thing and you would despair. Just focus on the here and now, and eventually this will just be a memory.

He'd gotten through so much so far. He'd killed his way across two entire moons and two areas in this hellish nightmare. There was a lot to go, but he'd already done so much, and even back then it seemed impossible. But he had made it. That's what counted. He hurried through the corridors, feeling his whole body tense up each time he came to a turn, because there could be anything around each corner.

After the fourth turn, he let out a scream as he heard a roar and actually saw the thing's breath fog his visor, and yet he couldn't see anything. But he knew what he was seeing. A Spectre. He aimed and fired dead in front of him, and gore splattered the walls. He was rewarded with a kill, and then another one as he emptied his SMG into a second Spectre and hastily reloaded. He waited a moment, then gave the all clear and pressed on.

He stopped when he found a stairwell heading down into what looked to be an utterly silver room. "Got a stairwell here."

"Ward, Taylor, check it out," Green replied.

"Affirmative."

Jack and Jennifer moved swiftly down the stairway. Jack came in first, finding an utterly bizarre rectangular room of brushed, highly reflective silver metal. All of it was silver: ceiling, floor, walls. Every last inch gleaming silver metal.

"What is with this place?" he whispered. It was weird enough, but the hell stuff kind of...made sense? It made sense in the sense that it was insane, but it fit with what he thought of as hellish, or at least what he'd come to expect from this dimension. But then they'd throw in something utterly out of place, whoever 'they' were.

There was just a single object in the room.

"We'll need that, I'm sure," Jennifer said, retrieving the blue skull-key that was lying in the center of the room.

Jack expected something to happen as soon as she picked it up, some kind of negative reaction, a trap, something, but there was nothing. She pocketed the key and they hurried back up the stairs. Once they'd reported what they'd found to Green, the quartet pressed on. The sounds of the damned were getting closer again. This place was a fucking madhouse. They couldn't seem to catch a break. As they hurried through the maze, the sounds of the damned grew louder, closer, coming up from behind them. Imps, Demons, and zombies.

Standard fare for this nightmare.

They kept going until they hit a dead-end. Well, not a total dead-end. They came to a big door, studded with skulls, painted in blood and trimmed with blue and silver. The sounds were getting louder. Jennifer slotted the skull-key as quick as she could and the door slid open. Jack caught sight of the room beyond, there was a lot of red, and then they were through. He spun around, facing the way they'd come, and saw a clutch of Imps, followed by a group of Demons, suddenly coming at them down the corridor, practically scrambling over each other. As soon as they were all through, they closed and re-locked the door.

"Oh shit, I hate this room," Stratton said.

Jack turned back around and finally got a good look at it. He immediately agreed with the man. Ahead of them was a simple path of rock extending through a pool of blood to either side of it. The walls all around them were bleeding. The four of them moved slowly across the rock path, hoping that they'd earned themselves at least a small reprieve. Jack was almost tapped out for SMG ammo yet again.

He'd hoped that at this point the ammo situation would be better, and yet here he was.

They managed to make it across the blood pond to another door at the other end, which was also of UAC design. It opened into what appeared to be a storage area in a typical UAC outpost. Unlike the other places, this one felt like a bastion, an eye in the bloody hurricane. It wasn't a particularly big room, and there were a lot of crates around.

"Secure the area," Green said, jogging forward into the room.

They took a few minutes to do just that, and found only one other exit. The monsters banged at the door they'd come through for just a few minutes before giving up and wandering off. They found nothing and no one in the storage bay.

"Come look what I found!" Jennifer called suddenly.

Jack moved across the room, which was mostly empty, taken up in one corner mainly by stacks of crates that, he discovered, formed a little maze. They followed it to its core and discovered Jennifer standing among the remains of a small encampment. They found several opened up crates, among them were some foldout chairs, a foldout table, tools, empty MREs, and guns and ammo. Several of the crates were marked for such.

"Watts and his team must've been through here," Stratton said.

"Here's a PDA," Jack said, spying one on the table among the debris. He grabbed it while the others began collecting up and inventorying their newfound treasure trove of guns and ammo. Jack fired it up.

"Watts here." The man looked worse this time, exhausted, pale, his eyes bloodshot. There was a crack on his visor and a lot of blood on his helmet. Jack could hear others moving around. "Not a lot to say really, to whoever the fuck is watching this. If anyone is. It's been pretty nonstop, especially since hitting this freaking nightmare. Lot of dead ends in this place." He hesitated, looked away, finally looked back. "We lost Davis back near the beginning of this place. Lost Soul got him. Goddamnit." He paused again, then sighed heavily.

"Resting for a bit. We've got no idea what the House of Pain holds for us, but it can't be good. God, what kind of an asshole thought up these names? Whatever, out."

The file ended abruptly.

"Shit," Jack muttered.

"What was the time stamp?" Green asked.

"Uh...this was recorded about twenty one hours ago."

"Well...we're getting closer, at least. Fuck, I hope they're still alive," Green muttered.

Jack nodded.

"Okay, grab what you can, we press on in five minutes," Green said.

Jack took all of those five minutes to sit down. His lower back was killing him and his shoulders were sore as hell, and that wasn't even counting the fact that his feet were in a fair amount of pain, and his joints hurt, and he had about fifty minors bruises, scratches, aches, cuts, burns, and scrapes. He felt like he was falling apart. The armor definitely helped him maintain the illusion that he could keep doing this forever.

It was an important illusion.

He managed to snag a full quartet of magazines for his SMG, another two for his pistol and, finally, he found another shotgun! He snagged it and the sixteen shells he found for it, loading it up, pocketing the spare shells and letting the SMG hang. It was a good gun, but it was nothing like a freaking shotgun. It certainly earned its nickname of Blaster. When the five minutes were up, Jack groaned as he hauled himself to his feet.

He was a Marine, had been for years, but damn, even he had his limits.

And he couldn't even joke that this was close to being over.

But he had to press on. And really, there was a hard truth to continuing, in whatever it was you were doing. There was no secret, like a lot of people thought, wanted, or even hoped for. No, the truth was that the only way to go on...was to go on. You just did it. So he just forced himself to get up and followed the others across the bay, to the door at the far end. He took point with his shotgun in hand as Green opened the door.

It opened up into another one of those rooms with a bridge across it, except that while the walls weren't bleeding here, there was a weird blue-green watery liquid in the pool below the bridge. He had no idea what it was, but there were skull and crossbones slapped all over the perimeter of the room, each one sporting the word POISON above them. Well, he might not know what it was, but he knew it was dangerous.

They crossed the bridge and passed through the next door, what Jack hoped would be the final damned door. He was already sick of the place known as Pandemonium. He felt relief and tentative hope enter him as he stepped beyond the threshold, into a huge stone room. There was a single red square of metal, a teleport pad, in the dead center of the room, which reminded Jack oddly of a coliseum or arena of some kind. That was unsettling, but there was the damned teleporter! They were done with this place!

"Let's get the hell outta here," he said, making for the pad.

"Ward, wait-" Green began, and then there was a brilliant flash of green light.

A Baron of Hell popped into existence, stepping off of the pad. Jack screamed something, he wasn't sure what, but he shouldered the shotgun and managed to pump out two slug shells, both of them hitting the thing in its broad, muscular chest and opening up gory holes, before it threw a ball of green plasma right at him, roaring furiously. He managed to avoid a head-on collusion, but it winged him, hitting his shoulder hard enough to send him both flying and spinning. The shotgun was thrown from his grasp.

He screamed, feeling the immense heat of the pure energy even through his armor, knowing he was getting burned in some capacity but not knowing what to do about it as he hit the floor and rolled several times. The others were opening fire now, hosing the thing down. Gritting his teeth, Jack grabbed his SMG and rolled over, back towards it. From his prone position, he opened fire, aiming for its head, his eyes blurry with tears of pain. He emptied the magazine and managed to land maybe a third of the shots.

Ejecting the spent mag, he screamed as lances of burning agony shot through him when he tried to reload. It was a bitch, but he got a fresh magazine slapped in and took aim again. By the time he did, however, the other three had managed to topple the great beast. With a resounding roar, it crashed to the stonework floor, spilling its awful, deep red blood everywhere. As it did, the other three hurried towards him.

"Shit, Jack, are you okay?" Jennifer asked as she crouched by him.

"Shoulder," he moaned.

"Shh...hold still."

"Don't move," Green said. She took off his helmet carefully, then she, with great trepidation, pulled off the shoulder section of his armor. He bit back a scream as she did, feeling some of his skin, which was definitely burned, come away with it.

"Aw damn..." Stratton muttered.

"Watch our backs," Green said as she pulled a Medikit from her belt and cracked it open. "Don't worry, Jack, I've got this," she murmured quietly. Jennifer took his other hand and he squeezed as Green stuck him with a combination painkiller/stimulant and injected him. Then she did it again with another combo of antibiotic and antiviral cocktail. With that out of the way, she began carefully pulling away the burned remains of his uniform. He groaned sickly, but the medication was already taking effect.

Within a few minutes, she had the pieces of his uniform that had partially melted into his skin mostly taken away, had the wound cleaned and, after spraying on some artificial skin that was also mixed with a local anesthetic, she bandaged it, then reapplied the shoulder piece and got his helmet back on.

"Okay?" she asked.

Slowly, painfully, he moved his arm. "It'll have to do," he replied.

"Yeah, I suppose so. Come on, we've got to keep going."

He nodded. There was no time to rest, no rest for the good guys, only the press of time and the ever closing demon things.

Again, Green took point, and disappeared in a flash of green light as she stepped onto the pad. Counting off, Jack then did the same.

Time to go to the House of Pain.

He felt like he was already there.