This time, when Jack appeared on the teleport pad and was already moving, shotgun in hand, he realized that he was alone. Only no, that wasn't true. He heard a roar to his right and when he spun, shotgun raised, he screamed and stumbled back as he squeezed the trigger.

The barrel was nearly touching the demented face of a Demon.

The shell he accidentally fired off went right between its glowing golden eyes and splattered its hot, foul-smelling blood all over his visor and armor. Stumbling, he tripped and fell onto his ass, grunted as he went onto his back. And screamed again. Through the bloody film that covered his visor, he could see the bright yellow shape of a Lost Soul dive-bombing straight for him. He rolled out of the way as it hiss-roared at him.

It smacked into the stone floor with a loud clacking sound and rebounded, heading up into the air again. Jack tracked it with the shotgun, now lying on his back again, and squeezed the trigger. The first blast missed, but the second got it, blowing it to pieces and dust. He scrambled to his feet, looking around for any more assholes that might want a piece of him, but no, he was alone. And then he realized that he truly was alone.

There had been no other flashes of light, no one else stepped off the teleporter pad. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Had something attacked them right after he'd gone through? Jack almost immediately stepped back onto the teleporter pad, but stopped himself. The radio. How far was the range? There was no way to tell.

He turned it on. "This is Jack to anyone, do you copy? Over." He paused, waited, listening. Nothing. He repeated his message twice more before growling in frustration. Looking around again, to make sure he was still alone, he decided he would go back through and double-check. But as he stepped onto the pad...nothing happened.

"Shit...it's one-way," he whispered, stamping his foot on it a few times. Sighing in frustration and misery, he stepped away from the inert plate of red metal and looked around once more, paying closer attention to his surroundings. He'd come into some kind of ingress room, what might very well have been the entryway into the Unholy Cathedral. It sure looked unholy. The walls were made of that painfully familiar slate gray stonework, the floor made of darker gray stone, but the ceiling was open. There was no ceiling.

Nothing but that roiling bloody sky.

He was in a long, open room. The back was just flat wall, but ahead of him were a few broad, short alcoves, each terminating in a wide wooden door. And above each door…

"God," Jack whispered.

There were more of the nameless dead. The UAC personnel, Space Marines, poor bastards who probably had no idea what the hell was going on. They were crucified, upside down, hanging from the walls over the doorways.

At least none of them were still alive.

Jack mentally reviewed his situation as he set off towards one of the doors. His boots echoed, the sound lonely, as he hurried off for the exit. An intense wave of loneliness, fear, and apprehension had settled in heavily. He hadn't been alone for awhile, but, more importantly than that, he had no idea where his allies were.

Where Jennifer was.

He had to find her as fast as possible. He hit the door and found a big red button next to it. Without really thinking about it, he hit it. As the door slid open, he thought about his ammo. His SMG was dead, his plasma rifle was dead. He had that one frag grenade, four magazines for his pistol, (fuck, he didn't want to fall back on that thing, it felt useless against the hordes of hell), and maybe a full load for his shotgun.

And that was it.

At least he had his armor.

As the door opened up, he focused up. Had to get through this, just keep going, just keep pushing. Off to his left, he saw a pair of Demons stomping around, and Imps farther on. Nothing to the right at least. Jack shouldered the shotgun and blew away a solid chunk of a Demon's big, ugly face in a spray of pulpy gore, spraying blood all over the other, which seemed to send it into a frenzy. This garnered the attention of the Imps, who began throwing fireballs. One of them slapped the Demon in the back of the head before it had made it two steps, and the thing roared furiously and spun around, then began marching off.

Jack grinned, just a little, and made his way slowly forward, not wanting to stand still at all, but knowing he couldn't rush forward or risk getting their attention again. By the time he'd crept halfway up, the Demon had eaten the head of one of the Imps, but the other had finally brought it down through a combination of claws and fireballs. Jack shot it through the chest and pumped the shotgun, then kept on going.

The next section was more stonework, the floor made of that weird asphalt-looking stuff. As he turned the corner, he froze. There was another long section of corridor, but in this place, some of the stonework was missing. And what was beneath it chilled his blood. He was sure he'd seen this before, though he couldn't exactly remember where. Faces. A wall of faces, like islands in a sea of pale, gray flesh. Those faces were etched in horror, pain, despair, insanity. Jack tore his eyes away from them, instead focusing on the red brick pillars that lined the next corridor. At the base of the nearest one, he saw a scattering of shotgun shells.

It was a beautiful sight.

He hurried over to them, checked out the area, and gathered them up. Feeding some into the shotgun and topping it off, he pocketed the rest and then kept on going. Putting one foot in front of the other. Only way to do it. Jack tried the radio again, reaching out into the unknown, trying to hear a friendly voice, and for a few seconds, he thought he heard something, but it was so faint as to be almost nonexistent. After gathering up another small cache of supplies, this one a trio of magazines for the SMG, he made sure his weapons were loaded up and killed his way through another desolate section of corridor.

Six dead Imps and two very dead Demons later, Jack found himself standing before a bizarre silver...door? Was it a door? It kind of looked like a door. From what he could tell, it was a square of silver made up by about six foot-thick bars. There was a contraption in front of it, a thing that was kind of like a metal detector. Basically, it was two narrow walls of deeply red bricks parallel to each other with about two feet of space. There was a base of concrete with a glowing yellow cutout in the shape of a simple diamond, and another identical copy above it. He almost stepped through it, but then hesitated, instead wanting to check out the rest of the area.

However, it turned out to be pretty fruitless. The corridor off to the right, the way yet gone, curved around out of sight, but ended abruptly in a firmly locked door with blue trim. So, he needed a blue skull-key. Sighing, he went back to the metal detector looking thing and hesitated before it. It seemed very deliberate, and he was sure it either opened the door, or sprung a trap...or both. But then he heard gunfire nearby, coming from beyond the silver barrier. Another survivor! Jack stepped between the two walls and immediately the barrier began to part. It was a door, though a weird one. The bars of silver disappeared into the floor and ceiling.

Beyond, he could see another armored figure in a broad, strange room, battling a small army of Lost Souls and Spectres.

"On your six!" Jack called as he rushed in, shotgun at ready.

"Jack!" It was Jennifer!

"Fall back to the door! Bottleneck them!" he called.

She hurried backwards as he blew two Lost Souls into pieces with one shot, cocked the gun and lowered his aim and blew a spray of gore out of a nearly-invisible Spectre that was stomping rapidly towards him. As Jennifer joined him at the door, they set to work, cleaning up the area the way only a pair of badass Marines could. Jack emptied his shotgun and let it hang, grabbing his SMG and hosing down a pair of Spectres.

When they went down, oozing dark red gore from their strangely translucent corpses, he quickly reloaded, scoping out the room. It was empty. They'd killed everything. The floor was littered with bits of bone and nearly invisible corpses.

"Holy crap, it's good to see you," Jack said as he fed more shells into the shotgun.

"Same," Jennifer replied. "Have you seen any of the others?"

He shook his head. "No. You're the first sign of life I've seen." He looked around the room for the first time, really seeing it. It was another bizarre construction. The walls were made of that same deep red brick he'd been seeing so much of lately. The ceiling was made of some dark gray metal, but it was studded with dozens of small, round red lights. For some reason the sight made him think of movie theaters from just before the turn of the twenty first century began. What a weird fucking room. He finished reloading.

"I don't suppose you've seen a blue skull-key around here?" he asked.

"No, but I'd been exploring this room ever since I teleported into it, and I had just found something when all these assholes came in," Jennifer replied, walking across the room towards its end. He followed after her, wary of any other monsters, but they were clear for now. He wasn't sure where she was going, but once they got to the back wall, he saw that there was actually a small alcove hidden from view off to the left. They moved down it. There was a skull attached to the wall at its end. It was a creepy thing to see.

"I think it's a switch," Jennifer said as they approached it. "So...you know, get ready, in case it does something bad."

Jack nodded. Once they reached it, she pressed it in, and there was a loud, heavy snapping sound. From behind them, back in the main room, he heard something grinding. Shotgun at ready, he hurried back, Jennifer right behind him. His relief was immense when he saw that a stone pillar had ground up out of the floor in the center of the room.

On it was the blue skull-key.

"Well...that works," he said, moving forward and grabbing it.

"I wished the freaking things worked in different buildings," Jennifer said as he pocketed it and they began to leave the room.

"I don't even know why they have them," Jack replied. "In fact-"

His train of thought was violently derailed as they stepped out of the room and back into the corridor, and he heard an earth-shattering roar of pure, white-hot fury. His vision turned to green as a thrown ball of energy scorched by right in front of his faceplate. He screamed in fear, stumbling backwards, turning and firing blindly to the right, where the sound and energy had come from. It had to be a Baron of Hell.

Jennifer was shouting, opening fire. Jack blinked furiously as he kept backing up, trying to get out of the line of fire. Finally, as he began to see again, he saw that Jennifer hadn't joined him in the room, instead opting to back up towards the blue door. The Baron was going after her. Cursing, Jack rushed forward. As soon as he was in the corridor, he began pumping shells into the big, eight-foot bastard, blowing bloody holes in its broad, well-muscled back. The beast roared and spun around, flinging another ball of green energy at him. He ducked it and began to back up, but then Jennifer was firing on it, and it spun back around again.

They kept at it, Jack depleting his shotgun and using up about half his SMG ammo before the thing finally let out a huge roar and, bloody and bullet-riddled, crashed to the floor. Jack breathed out a sigh of relief as he checked the area. The thing had been hiding in a hidden room that they'd apparently tripped. A panel of wall directly next to the exit of the skull-key room had slid up. What was it even doing in there?!

Just waiting for them?

That seemed ridiculous. The room it had hidden in was tiny, barely able to contain it. Jack shook his head and rejoined Jennifer.

"Let's make some progress," he said, nodding towards the blue door.

"I sure could use some damned progress after all this crap. God, I hope Green and Stratton are okay," she said, worry leaking into her voice.

He knew how she felt. His heart skipped a beat as he heard muffled gunfire once more. They rushed forward and he reached into his pocket, grabbing the skull-key and yanking it out, trying to slot it. He dropped it. Cursing sharply, feeling his body shaking not just from adrenaline at this point but exhaustion and hunger as well, he snatched it up and shoved it into the slot, then pocketed it again and rushed into the room, SMG at ready.

This room was done up in that awful green brick, from the floor to the ceiling. There were two important features of this room. The first was Green. She was alive, kicking and fighting for her fucking life. The second was a strange octagonal pit across the room. There were green flashes of light. They were monsters, teleporting in. Apparently, the octagonal depression was serving as a receiver. Well, there was nothing to do but run forward and join their Sergeant in combat. Jack on one side, Jennifer on the other.

Their guns spoke for several minutes.

Jack was immediately worried as he sprayed down the dozen or so Imps that were making their way across the room, throwing fireballs. The three of them made sure not to bunch up. He emptied his magazine and slapped a new magazine in without thinking about it. Just one more after this. Definitely bad. He emptied the submachine gun a second time, putting down another seven Imps, but more were teleporting in all the time. They couldn't pull back, there was nowhere else to go but through this room! His SMG began dry-clicking.

"Fuck!" he snapped, letting it hang.

There were even more of the assholes teleporting in. There had to be thirty corpses now, and almost as many still coming. Time for Plan B. He quickly grabbed his sole grenade, primed it and threw it right at the depression. It disappeared behind the living wave of Imps. A few seconds later, there was a tremendous explosion that threw bits and pieces of Imps everywhere, spraying the whole area with their blood.

When the bits and blood and body parts stopped falling, there were just a half-dozen of the reddish-brown bastards left, and they were put down easily enough. Jack checked his weapons over as he waited to see if anything else would show up. Nothing in his shotgun, SMG, or plasma rifle, and now he was without grenades. Just his pistol, and just three magazines left. Damn. He grabbed his pistol and turned to face Green.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She nodded shakily, reloading her own shotgun. "Yeah, thanks for the save. Fuck, that was a lot of those assholes..." She sighed and finished reloading, getting control of herself. "I found the way out, but it's locked down behind a door that has blue and yellow trim. Judging by the fact that you came through that door back there, I'm guessing you found the blue key." Jack nodded. "Good. I haven't found Stratton yet, but I also haven't finished searching this area. Is there anything back the way you came?" she asked.

"No, not as far as I can tell," Jack replied. "But I didn't have a lot of time to search."

She nodded and began heading for the door across the room, the one she must have originally come through. "Okay, we'll search the area back here for Stratton and the yellow key. If we can't find them, we'll expand our search."

They moved silently through the Unholy Cathedral. This time, they came out to an open courtyard that had an outdoors kind of feel to it. Not that that counted for much here in hell. There were a handful of simple, one-room structures scattered across the yard that looked like they'd been cleared out by Green. One held a deflated Cacodemon, another a handful of Imps, the third one holding a collection of dead zombies, and the final one was locked down, though, between the bars that made up the 'front', Jack could see the teleport pad. There were two ways out of the courtyard, besides the one they'd come through, and they broke for the left one first.

Silently, Green leading the way, they moved into a room of deep red. It was a simple matter to clear out the handful of zombies and Imps hanging around. Jack emptied another magazine from his pistol, but he managed to snag a pair of mags for his SMG. He just wanted to be done with this crap. Wanted out of this goddamned Unholy Cathedral. What was up next? Oh yeah, Mount Erebus. Didn't that just sound fucking awesome?

But they were getting closer.

They were getting there, to the Tower of Babel.

They began to head into the next area, passing through the door to the right, but as they stepped inside, they heard gunfire and shouting. They hurried through the room to a door at the back, and found themselves at the start of a long hallway. By the time they'd made it halfway down, the gunfire had fallen silent, and then, suddenly, Stratton appeared. He almost shot them, but then relaxed when he realized who they were.

"Where the hell have you been?" he asked, coming to meet them. "Wait, don't answer. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that I'm finally through that damned maze and I've got something I bet we're gonna need." He reached into his pocket and held up a yellow skull-key, grinning tiredly behind his visor.

"Yes, we need that. Come on, we can leave now," Green said, taking the card.

"Thank God, already tired of this fucking place," he muttered.

The four of them headed back to the courtyard, unlocked the teleporter, and began the process of leaving the Unholy Cathedral.