"Oh my dear, sweet lord in Heaven, I accept this heavenly gift, and will use this big motherfucker to chew up and spit out all sorts of demon meat," Kyra said as she slowly lifted the huge, shiny, giant, fuck-off chromed killer she had just discovered.

This was easily the best thing that had happened to her since she'd woken up in that motherfucking escape pod who knew how long ago now. She'd made her way to the Military HQ after wasting the second hellbound heart, and it hadn't been easy. She'd been jumped by two pairs of fiends and a clutch of zombies that she'd emptied her pistol and again bloodied her hatchet dispatching. Again, she had that anxiety eating away at her: reduced once more to her hatchet. But as she'd come to stand before the entrance to the Military Headquarters, she'd finally worked up the nerve to open it up...and there it had been.

Almost like it was waiting for her.

The chaingun.

The United Nations Marine Corps issue DX-56 'Widowmaker' Chaingun. She hefted the big chromed beast and found that not only was it fully loaded, there was even one of its big yellow boxes of ammo nearby. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and she was sure it would soon enough, but for right now, this gift was enough to put a huge smile on her face. This was the first real, genuine, significant firepower she'd encountered since this whole mess began, and Kyra more than intended to put it to immediate use.

"Okay fuckers," she whispered as she looked around the entrance lobby to the HQ, "let's get this goddamned, motherfucking show on the road."

As she marched into the main antechamber of the headquarters, Obsidian Station obliged her willingly enough. The door to her right opened up and a clutch of shrieking fiends came scrabbling out, trying to all get to her at once. She turned the six-barreled gun on them, which she had already begun to spool up, and opened fire.

An unstoppable barrage of red hot lead sliced into them and began turning them into chewed up meat. Their shrieking took on a different quality, and it didn't last for a whole lot longer. Two managed to pop off fireballs, but one missed by a wide margin and the other just winged her armor. She shredded them and sprayed the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else with their blood and pulped gore. Before she'd even finished, another door behind her opened up and she whirled around, now finding a group of hellhounds coming for her, their claws clacking madly on the floor. She emptied the rest of the big box of bullets in the chaingun taking them out, reducing them to nothing more than blood-soaked parts and pieces.

Limbs and guts and meat flew everywhere.

Kyra heard herself laughing with complete abandon as she sliced and diced the fuckers and some small, distant part of her worried that she might really be beginning to lose it. After a few seconds, she realized that the gun was empty and the smoking barrels were still churning. She released the trigger and hit the eject button. The big yellow box clattered to the floor and she began the process of reloading it. Thankfully, there was nothing else coming for her right away, although she could definitely hear more sounds coming from elsewhere.

She'd stirred up the hornet's nest.

Good. Fine.

She finally had a goddamned can of Raid for them.

Kyra finished reloading and hit the barracks first, where the fiends had come from. They were a bloody, wrecked mess. The place looked like a feeding ground, with chewed bones and piles of stinking meat scattered across the floor. Men and women hung from the ceiling, bound by chains with hooks through their shoulders. Some were almost whole, some were little more than shoulders, a bit of chest, and a head, with stringy bits of skin hanging down from them. The sight didn't turn her stomach, it just boiled her blood and filled her with rage. She cleared the area, finding nothing else lurking in that section, and headed for the next place, which turned out to be a mess hall that was in just as bad of shape as everywhere else.

Some zombies hung around, and they were all armed. Some semblance of sanity came to her and she didn't waste the chaingun on them, instead putting them down by popping shots into their skulls as they returned fire. All of them did that, and two of them connected with her armor. Smarter, they were definitely getting smarter.

Big, bad sign.

But later, she'd worry about that later. Or never, hopefully, if she killed them all. Couldn't be smart zombies if they were all dead. She swept through the mess with a brutal efficiency, recovering some shotgun shells, and moved on to the next section of the HQ, passing down a long hallway of bloodied, dented metal and flickering or shattered screens. As she came into another antechamber, she began to see the changes being wrought by the hellbound heart. One wall had largely become ugly green brickwork with iron windows set into it. The floor had simply collapsed in one corner and was now a puddle of bubbling toxic green glop. More rusty hooks hung from chains embedded in the ceiling. An enormous goat skull with huge, curved horns was mounted in the center of the room on a titanium pedestal, its empty sockets glowing a malignant red.

More of those weird red pots lined the walls, and torches made of human arms were mounted here and there. The area was empty for the moment, so she moved over to a security station and got behind the desk, hunting for info and ammo. She didn't find either. All she got for her troubles were more bleeding screens with burning pentagrams featured prominently. She ignored it and looked at her options, as all the doors in the area were at least labeled. Two to her right, one of which led to an armory, the other leading to the CO's office. Dead ahead led to the control area. Left were bathrooms and a break room.

She made a beeline for the armory.

It was, of course, locked up tight, and unless she had patience and tools, she wasn't getting in without a security keycard. And, of course, the CO's office was locked as well. Trying to ignore her rising anger and the horrible place around her, Kyra decided to do a standard sweep of the area. She found another pair of fiends in the bathrooms that she put down with shotgun blasts, and a few zombies lurking in the lounge. Pretty standard fare at this point. As she hunted around for a security keycard, Kyra thought that that was interesting.

It was crazy what you could get used to.

No security card, just a few more shotgun shells and a magazine for her assault rifle at least, but nothing else very substantial. At last, she came to the final door and opened it up. Here was the control area for the HQ. It was a very ugly place. Once, it had been a vaguely circular room, built around a raised control desk from where, no doubt, the CO of this place sat and lorded over his techs and flunkies. Workstations and terminals ringed the outer wall, with an open space for foot traffic in between the two areas.

Now, the place was a wretched, reeking mess.

Humans remains were scattered across the blood-soaked carpet. Across from her, on the far wall, she saw three people crucified to metal beams that had been welded together. They were hung upside down and metal rivets meant for hull repair had been driven through their wrists and ankles. Their guts had been sliced open and their intestines hung out of them like dead snakes. Vaguely human skulls and outright otherworldly ones had been arranged all over the place, serving as sources of light, as their sockets glowed that eerie red. One wall was replaced with a strangely rocky material, the uneven surface a deep bluish-black in color.

She saw the heart in the middle of the raised dais, in plain view.

Last one. She wanted to get it out of the way quickly, while there was nothing in the room, as far as she could tell. There might be a few hiding places, but she doubted anything particularly threatening was lurking around, if anything at all. The place actually felt empty. Well, now or never. Raising her pistol, she aimed and fired.

It was good. The bullet punched through the heart, and the uncomfortable feeling that she'd already begun to associate with the hearts was beginning to dissipate. And nothing was coming. As Kyra began to leave the room, something changed. That feeling of tension and despair stopped ebbing and began to swell once more. In fact, she began to feel a strange sensation, almost like an electric charge building on the air before a lightning strike that was somehow getting through her suit. The lights began to dim and the shadows grew.

The light wasn't dimming, she realized as she looked around, switching to her shotgun, it was...gathering. Focusing. In three points in the control room: one dead ahead, one to either side. They were circles of red light on the floor, and, she realized with a growing horror as the sensation of something coming, something's imminent arrival grew, they were pentagrams. Definitely a pretty bad sign. Especially when they began to pulse and the energy on the air grew even more powerful. Something was definitely coming.

Kyra kept her shotgun leveled at the central pentagram.

There was a flash of red-yellow light, and when it was gone, something had appeared in its place. A fiend! It had appeared out of thin air! Teleported! Kyra squeezed the trigger and the shotgun jerked in her hands. The thing's head was blown clean off, but two others had appeared alongside it. They weren't disoriented at all and wasted no time in hurling fireballs at her. One of them slammed into her chest and she grunted, stumbling back, feeling the powerful heat. A second winged her right arm. She turned and pounded out another shell, blasting a fist-sized hole into its chest. The final one leaped at her and bashed the shotgun aside.

It went clattering to the floor and the beast went for her throat, wrapping its big hands around it. Panic set in and Kyra's own hands shot up. She gripped the thing's misshapen skull and dug her thumbs into its eyes. They popped in sprays of dark red gore and it released her, shrieking wildly as it flung her away. Kyra hit the deckplates with a pained grunt, but she was ready, pulling out her pistol and putting three rounds through its face as it stumbled around. When it died, she laid there for several seconds, getting her breath back, but mostly just staring in shock. They could teleport! How?! Was it a natural ability?

Or were they being teleported somehow by someone?

Finally, after admitting to herself that she might never get the answer, or even if she did, it certainly wouldn't arrive with her sitting on the floor, Kyra picked herself up. She holstered her pistol and retrieved her shotgun, then began the long trek towards Command Control.

Kyra hammered on the door and stared into the camera overhead. It was on, she could tell, the little light blinking green.

"Let me in, asshole," she said into the radio.

"Hold on," came the distracted reply.

Another few seconds, then the door opened up. She slipped in and it snapped closed behind her, resealing tightly. She looked around Command Control. It looked a bit more impressive this time around at least, compared to Typhon. There was a small corridor that she was in, with security checkpoints to either side. Beyond that was another area crammed with workstations and terminals and chairs and desks. This place hadn't been hit terribly hard, and it was obvious that there had been a cleanup effort. At the back of the room was a small raised section that led to a glass-walled secondary area where she could see the good doctor working diligently.

He seemed like he'd sealed himself in.

"All right, Jensen, I want it," she said, marching across the room, up the few stairs, and onto the platform outside of the glass wall.

Beyond, he stood facing away from her, typing away at a terminal at one of the desks inside. There were stacks of PDAs around him, as well as a healthy supply of guns, ammo, medical supplies, tech parts, and food and water situated on other desks.

"What?" he asked.

"Dirt. All the information on this goddamned stupid corporation we work for. Tell me everything you know," Kyra said.

He stopped working and sighed heavily. Turning around, he grabbed one of the PDAs and walked over to the glass wall. His voice came from a speaker mounted nearby. "I'm afraid you likely know most of it. But I can tell you a few things. I've been working here for a year, and I've been with the UAC for twenty. I know for a fact we've broken several international laws. We've experiment on convicts for medical breakthroughs and testing out new military poisons and biological warfare. I know we've been involved in a few assassinations. As for our work here? Well, by the time I had arrived, they had already discovered teleportation technology and had been making expeditions into the other dimension for a few months. Possibly longer, it was hard to tell. I know that they started with drones, and upgraded to manned expeditions as fast as they could, and began building outposts in the other dimension, or re-purposing existing structures."

"What was their goal?" Kyra asked.

"At first? Simply exploration and information gathering. Of course they had aspirations even from the beginning, but the place was so vast and alien that it took them quite awhile to get even the basics down."

"How long until they realized they weren't alone?"

"Awhile, at least from this outpost. I honestly don't know. I've heard rumors and come across a report or two that indicates that other places had teleportation pads of their own, and had their own unique experiences. Even with unlimited access to all of Obsidian Station's databases, I still only know so much, as a lot was lost in the fighting. I know at least that there were attacks about a year ago. It happened just a few weeks after I had started. Since I was already fairly high up in their corporation and I had been trusted with a number of highly illegal experiments, I was brought into their 'inner circle' quickly."

"You're a sick fuck, you know that?"

He sighed softly. "Yes. I know. I sold my soul a long time ago. I won't bother trying to justify myself, because now it doesn't matter. Just know that I had my reasons and it wasn't blind greed that drove me."

She shook her head, fighting her anger. "So what were you, then?"

"A chemist, among other things. They had me studying material brought back from the other dimension, as well as the bodies they began recovering of the imps."

"Imps?"

"That's what they call the ones that can throw fire."

"Okay. Did they figure anything out about the other dimension? Why are there structures there? Who built them? How old are they?"

"It varies, oddly. And the dimension itself is vast. There are whole different regions. Thousands upon thousands of miles. Some of those structures are a thousand years old. Some are ninety thousand. Some are older than that. Besides some basics, we have no idea how that place works. Even today it's one giant mystery..."

"Okay, so what happened here?" she pressed.

"A few days ago the teleportation devices activated by themselves at both here and Typhon Station. We were trying to figure out why when the demons began pouring through. There were dozens, hundreds of them. The skulls flew out and immediately began infesting people, possessing them. There was a lot of fighting, but there was a lot of death in the very beginning. I'd say easily over half the population of the station was wiped out within an hour. It was a slaughter. A nightmare. We tried to escape, but the ships that were here were destroyed in an explosion. A few last stands were made around the base and they all failed. Eventually, I was the only one left." He sighed. The man looked dead on his feet.

"Is this happening elsewhere?" Kyra asked.

"I can't know for sure but I'm almost positive it must be. I wouldn't be surprised if the lunar outpost has been hit, or our Mars bases. And elsewhere. God...these things...I don't know if the UAC has portals on Earth, but I wouldn't put it past them at all."

"No, of course not," Kyra muttered.

He frowned and then opened up a mini-airlock in front of him. He placed the PDA in it and cycled it through. "Everything I can offer is in there. A map of the station, the highest clearance available, as well as every scrap of data I could piece together, including some absolutely crucial information. If the worst has happened and we're looking at a full-scale invasion of Earth, we're going to need every conceivable edge over them. Contained within is detailed information on how to properly calibrate the teleportation devices so that everything we put through goes through. We're going to need that," he explained.

"So the portal I'll need to take will work?"

"Just hook the PDA into it and it will properly calibrate it. Do not lose that PDA. It must get to the right authorities. Whatever beliefs I held, whatever oaths I swore, whatever secrets I promised to keep to my dying breath...none of that matters any longer. The existence of that place and these things overrides all of that. We could very well be looking at the end of the human race, and worse," he said gravely.

"Worse?"

"If there are other species out there, aliens sharing our galaxy, then we have potentially unleashed a terror from another dimension that could spread everywhere. And who knows what they're capable of? What if they really are demons? This could get much, much worse..."

"Exactly what I needed to hear," Kyra growled as she looked over the PDA. "This will get me into that armory? And the CO's office?" she asked, looking back up.

"Yes."

"Fine then. I'm going back there to stock up, then I'm taking the tram to the other building and teleporting out of here. What are you going to do?"

"Stay here and try to survive. I know you must hate me. Loathe me even. You would gladly kill me, I imagine. But that doesn't matter any longer. The survival of the entire species may be on the line. If you do make it to safety, and it is as bad as I fear, then you must send someone to get me."

"Why should I bother?"

"Great wars are not only won by great fighters, but great thinkers, as well. You are going to need scientists, engineers, doctors...I am a genius. That is not arrogance, I am stating a fact. I can't promise to turn the tide of the war, but I have no interest in letting humanity die. I will continue working while I am here surviving, and if rescued and brought into the war effort, then I will do everything I can to wipe them out. Even if we aren't looking at an apocalypse scenario and it was contained to a few isolated incidents, I will gladly turn over all information on the UAC. They have gone too far for too long. They must be stopped or they're going to kill us all eventually."

"Might be a little too late for that, but I'll put it on my to-do list, doc," Kyra said as she pocketed the PDA.

"I would appreciate it."

Kyra left him in Command Control.