This time, the whole process of teleporting to Hell went a lot more smoothly.
Kyra thought, as she appeared on a platform in the middle of a small room with ugly green-brown walls, that if those involved had had to endure what she had during her first transition, maybe they wouldn't be so fucking eager to continue their research. Then again, this was the UAC she was talking about. It's not as if the fuckers pulling the strings would ever have to endure that crap. No, it was far easier to keep the war going when you never had to step within a hundred miles of an actual battlefield and your job was to make battle strategies.
Fucking jackoffs.
Getting her bearings, Kyra checked the perimeter of the room she was in. Though there wasn't much to see. Beyond the basic platform she'd appeared on, there were just the walls and floor and ceiling, a medieval style wooden and iron door dead ahead of her, and a still somewhat intact workstation to her right. Thick black cabling ran from the workstation to the teleportation platform, which was a black metal pedestal beneath her feet. As soon as she was sure that she was truly alone, (or as alone as she could get, now knowing that the inhuman bastards could teleport), Kyra took the opportunity to recheck her gear.
She found that Jensen wasn't bullshitting. Everything was still where she'd left it and fully functional as far as she could tell. Although the only real test that mattered was pulling the trigger. Kyra looked at the door ahead of her. She should probably get those tests out of the way sooner rather than later. She took a moment to investigate the workstation, but it didn't hold anything of any value, so she moved over to the door. Another one of those big red buttons inset into a silver plate was embedded in the wall to the right of the door.
She hit it and the door slid up into the ceiling.
The time to perform some crucial tests on her weaponry immediately came upon her as the door revealed a decent-sized room beyond. She took it in with a sweep of her gaze as the barrel of her shotgun already began seeking targets. A pair of fiends were crouched in the dead center of the room, maybe ten feet ahead of her, feasting on the corpse of a technician. Behind them and to the left was a second story with iron bars for walls and more fiends on patrol, or maybe just milling around. She popped the head of the first feasting ugly and sprayed its partner with gore, which caused it to snarl out a shriek and hurl a fireball her way.
It smacked her in the chest and sent her stumbling back, but Kyra quickly readjusted her aim and blew off its right arm as the slug shell connected with its shoulder with all the force of a cannonball. The thing shrieked madly as it fell to the stonework floor, flopping violently as it sprayed deep red blood everywhere. She ignored it and turned the shotgun on those above her, which were already trying to pelt her with fireballs, throwing them wildly between the iron bars. As she took a step out and readjusted her aim, she heard a warning snort from her right, and another from her left. Pinkies. Except she hadn't seen anything.
She glanced to her right as she fired and realized that it was more of the invisible bastards. Cursing, though glad that her aim was true even though she was distracted and another fiend went down with a fist-sized hole in its stomach, she pulled back into the previous room. Stomping footfalls signaled the approached of the ghosts and this time with the better light, (there were a lot more of those arm-torches burning that weird green fire on the walls and she'd caught sight of a skylight overhead), she could actually see something!
She saw a strange kind of shimmering effect, almost like heat waves that you could catch sight of if you looked at an open flame or a baking blacktop in the hot summer sun. She aimed and fired and was rewarded with a roar of pain and a spray of blood. She repeated the action and one of them went down with a meaty thud. Kyra turned and emptied her shotgun into the second one, putting it down as well. She waited, hearing only the annoyed hissing of the surviving fiends on the second story, and finally swapped to her assault rifle and stepped back out. Apparently that was it. Dodging the fireballs, she put down the remaining fiends and finished securing the area. Not a bad test of her armory, all things considered.
Plus, not a bad reentry into fucking Hell itself.
Kyra took a moment to search the area. There wasn't a whole lot around. Besides the one lonely corpse in the middle of the room that had clearly been there for awhile, which had nothing, there was one other body and a few crates tucked away in a darker room accessible through a rectangular hole in the wall in the upper right corner. The crates had nothing of use and the second body, some poor Marine bastard, had only a single spare magazine for the rifle, which she salvaged. She took the opportunity to feed another eight shells into her shotgun and decided to stick with the rifle for now. Kyra came back into the central room and looked up.
That skylight really freaked her out. Overhead, she saw nothing but a square of burning orange-red skies. Man, this place truly was a nightmare. Tearing her eyes away from the sky, she scanned the room one more time. For a few seconds, she was stymied. There didn't seem to be anywhere else to go. Her eyes were drawn to that fenced-in second story. Blood was dripping down the green-brown wall from the dead fiends, but there didn't seem to be any way to get up there. Then she noticed that one section of the wall ahead of her was different from the rest. It was what looked like a collection of iron girders welded together.
Then she noticed a button on the wall beside that and walked up to it. Pressing it, she jumped back slightly as that iron girder section of the wall lowered into the floor. It was a lift, she realized, and stepped aboard it just in time before it went back to its original position. Her stomach rolled a bit at the rapid ascent, but otherwise nothing bad happened. Dead ahead of her was another medieval door with another red button, but she left that alone for the moment. To the right was just a dead drop back into the previous level.
To the left was the entirety of the second story, which was really just an L-shaped corridor. She moved slowly down it, pausing to look out of what served as a window in the form of three more of those weird iron girders set into the wall with about six inches of space in between them, and saw an outdoors courtyard. More sounds came to her: the groaning of zombies, that weird gurgling sound that had to come from the fiends. Ignoring that for the moment, she finished her sweep of the second story and found nothing more.
Eager to get this over with, and to kill some more monsters, she returned to the door and opened it up. More of that bloody light spilled in as she stepped out into the courtyard. There was a little raised area directly in front of her, kind of like a porch, if the porch were made of patchwork, flat gray stones. Broad stairs led down to the courtyard proper ahead of her. As she looked at a pool in the exact center of it, she was reminded of the UAC's name for this place: Acid Prison. She supposed there were enough bars around here, and that was definitely a pool of acid. And there was another pool of acid off to her right, in the corner.
In fact, all but one of the corners had drop-offs into pools of bubbling green acid. From where she was standing, she couldn't see any hostiles, but she could definitely hear them. One was to her right, so she decided to investigate. Couldn't have enemies that she couldn't quite see hanging around. As she edged closer to the drop-off into the pool of acid, she finally saw it: there was a corridor down there missing one of its walls, and there were a trio of fiends lurking. One of them saw her and shrieked a warning to the others.
She rewarded it with a three-round burst right in its fucking face.
The others began hurling fireballs at her and she sidestepped while firing, putting them down as well. This was going pretty great so far. Having the high ground was awesome. She killed one more that came out from an opening in the left side of the open-faced corridor, from where it gained its missing wall, becoming a proper hallway. Once they were put down, she finished checking out the courtyard.
The most obvious exit was a smaller version of the wood-and-iron door, but it had a red trim to it. Well, a red trim of...skulls, actually, embedded in the wall around it. They were hideous and disconcerting. There was a small dark slot in the wall next to the door. Keycard, she realized. Or, well, if it was like the other time: skull-key. Great. Kyra continued looking around, and quickly surmised that she was going to have to do something she really didn't want to do: make a jump across the acid. Or probably into the acid.
The ceiling of the open-faced corridor was almost the same height as the ground she was standing on. The pool was maybe six feet wide. She might be able to make the jump, but she'd also have to calculate for the drop rate as well, so she didn't just jump face-first into the wall. She looked at it for a few more seconds, then decided to look around the area one more time to see if she'd missed something. But no, she didn't see any way down there beyond jumping. Maybe there was a way in beyond the red skull door?
But she didn't have the skull-key, and she needed to progress, so Kyra returned to the ledge, judged it best she could, then ran and jumped. She scraped the top of her helmet on the edge of the ceiling, but just barely managed to land on the very edge of the platform below. As she did, something groaned and a bullet slammed into her armor. She let out a short shout of frustration and as soon as she was stable, twisted around, snatched up her shotgun, and put a slug shell through the head of the zombie that had attacked her.
She pumped the shotgun and fired again, mostly decapitating a second former human behind the first. Nothing else showed up or made noise. Sighing softly in relief, she started hunting around for anything useful. The corridor extended ahead of her, becoming open-faced again after a dozen feet and showing her the second acid pool in the area. Between the two of them, the zombies had a spare mag for her sidearm and a few shotgun shells, not much else to write home about. The corridor terminated in a left-hand turn where she found a few more corpses, another doorway, and a pair of buttons dead ahead.
The doorway, to her right, was all wooden and adorned with an absolutely horrifying...sculpture? She didn't know what the fuck it was beyond a collection of skulls. Some were human, some looked like they belonged to fiends maybe. They were arranged in a pile, all of them embedded in the wooden door, and at the top of the pile was a much larger skull with two big horns curling out of the sides. What in the fuck had that been? She hadn't seen anything like that. Fuck, she hoped she wouldn't run into it.
Kyra spied a button next to the door and hit it. It slid up into the ceiling like the others, revealing...a large room where the floor was covered in acid. There were rows of rectangular platforms sticking out of the acid, rising about ten feet into the air.
She stared into that room for several long seconds. "You know what?" she murmured quietly, reaching out and hitting the button. "Fuck that room."
The door closed and she turned away from it.
Moving over to the other two buttons, Kyra stared at them for a moment, then reached out and hit the right button. There was a loud click, and somewhere overhead, she heard something open up. After nothing else happened, she hesitantly reached out and hit the second button. Whirling around as a section of wall to her immediate left opened up, she sighed heavily, realizing what it was: another lift. She stepped aboard and rode it up, finding herself back in the courtyard opposite where she'd first entered it through.
"You fucking assholes," she muttered as she looked around, trying to find whatever it was that had opened. They'd hidden the goddamned way down there, because this section of floor didn't look any different from the rest of it, and there was no obvious way to open it from the side. Ahead of her and to the right, a section of wall had apparently disappeared, revealing a room beyond. She moved over to it, shotgun at ready.
"What the fu...who designed this?!" she cried, exasperated at how needlessly fucking creepy the room she'd found was.
Ahead of her, etched into or maybe mounted on the back wall was a huge motif of a giant demonic skull in front of another pentagram, all of it done into gray-white stone. On either side of it, set into their own little narrow niches, were burning...somethings. They were made of old dirty brass, pedestals with stands of intricately carved skulls, twists of metal stranded together forming the support pole, and another skull on top that held a burning crimson flame. At the base of the huge motif was a slightly raised square, and Kyra thought she could see something on it. Reluctantly, she moved forward into the room, assault rifle fully loaded and ready.
She quickly saw that it was the red skull-key and the platform it lay on was a square of what looked like...intestines. Squished, petrified intestines. A few severed human hands and a fucking tongue lay on the platform as well, almost like an offering. Feeling her stomach turn over, she drew closer, then reached down and snatched up the skull-key.
As soon as she did, something began grinding open to her left. Whirling around, assault rifle raised, she found a section of wall raising up rapidly into the ceiling to reveal a half-dozen fiends. She didn't give them a chance as she opened fire, throwing it into full auto and sweeping the barrel back and forth. The gunfire shredded them, sending geysers of pulpy gore all over the walls of the small chamber they were in. Bodies dropped, spent shell casings clattered the floor, and gunsmoke diffused into the air as Kyra emptied her assault rifle into the horde. When she'd run dry, they weren't all dead, but the pair of survivors were on the floor, bleeding out. She pulled out her pistol and capped each of them in their big, misshapen skulls.
Replacing the pistol, she reloaded and quickly checked out the small chamber she had revealed. Why had they been in there? There was no other way out, and as far as she could tell, no way to open it from the inside. She'd seen this before, but it still baffled her. What kind of devotion did it take to just be locked up in a room like this for...hours? Days? How long had they been waiting? Then again, they could teleport, but she hadn't sensed any of that energy building beforehand, so they must have been waiting in there.
Were they free thinkers? Were they mindless slaves? Animals?
Questions for later, if ever. She left the room after finding nothing and opened up the skull door, slipping the key into the slit. It didn't return. Not that she was particularly wanting it back. The door opened up, revealing another open-ceiling courtyard. More slate-colored stonework floor, and more ugly green-brown walls. Along the walls to either side of her were rectangular openings a few feet off the floor.
She caught movement in one of them, the nearest one to the right. A zombie. Kyra raised her rifle and popped off a three-round burst as soon as it stepped a little closer into view. A chorus of roars went up and more zombies stepped out into view on every platform. They opened fire on her, almost all of them Marines wielding shotguns. Definitely not good. She fell back to the relative safety of the doorway, playing firefight with the undead bastards. Bullets punched through decayed craniums and sprayed old blood all over the place as she dropped them one by one. When the last one fell, she moved slowly forward into the new courtyard.
Dead ahead, she saw another raised area. This one, at least, wasn't so high up that she couldn't just grab the ledge and haul herself up. Which was exactly what she did, the suit giving her enough strength to pull herself, it, and all her arsenal and inventory up. She came up onto a platform with...the exit! She could see the exit portal, an exact replica of the one she'd arrived on. The only problem was, it was locked up behind more of those iron girders. There wasn't enough space between them for her to squeeze through, even if she took off the suit. With a sigh, she started hunting around for some way to get them to move or open somehow.
After a few minutes, she noticed that the platforms the zombies had been haunting were actually access points to lengthy rooms. She jumped back down and hurried over to the nearest platform, then pulled herself up and probed the area beyond. It was a simple room, no more bad guys hiding around, nothing of use beyond the handful of shotgun shells she found among the dead. And the big button she discovered mounted on the wall.
Pressing it, she heard another grinding sound. Moving back to the platform, Kyra saw that indeed the first row of iron girders was lowering into the floor, revealing a second row of them. Of course. She looked over at the opposite side of the courtyard. Well, at least this was easy. She hopped down, crossed the distance, and climbed back up. After retrieving some more shells, she found the button and pressed it.
More grinding, and the way out of here was open!
She moved back over to the platform and hopped down, then she froze as an awful, familiar hum began to fill the air. The area seemed to darken, shadows sliding over everything like liquid darkness. Something was coming. Her eyes flicked to the now available gateway, a route of escape, but she quickly decided against fleeing. No, she had to face whatever it was here and now. She had no idea what could be waiting for her on the other side, what the terrain was like, what kind of situation she might find herself in, and whatever it was could follow. But here, she was familiar with the area, she was well armed.
Kyra moved over to the doorway she'd originally come through and, after a moment's indecision, switched to her chaingun. There were two of them, whatever they were, as two burning pentagrams had appeared. Were those pentagrams bigger than the last ones? She couldn't be sure, but Kyra thought that they were.
"Shit," she whispered, spooling up the chaingun.
Well, whatever it was, they were going to get hit with a goddamned barrage of lead.
The sensations of power swelling, the very air itself trembling, was stronger than last time. The seconds ticked by far too slowly. The pentagrams continued to grow brighter and brighter, a powerful red light shining from them.
And then it happened.
There were twin puffs of black smoke, and out of them came…
Skeletons!? FUCKING SKELETONS!?
Kyra opened fire the second she had a target, but her brain kept trying to process what she was seeing. Two skeletons! They were tall, easily nine feet in height, and mostly golden-brown all over. Their chests were encased in silver armor and one of the most immediate things she realized was that there were what appeared to be miniature rocket launchers mounted on their shoulders. The skeleton on the right was picked up off its bony feet by the sheer power of the concentration of lead coming from her chaingun. It came apart, flying into pieces and shrieking madly as it did. And while that put a definitive end to one of them, the other took the opportunity to attack her.
Two rockets burst from their nests and began coming right for her. Kyra tried to turn the chaingun on the second one, and actually managed to score a few hits, but then it got too late too fast and she reflexively put up the bulky chaingun in between herself and the rockets. They smashed into it and the explosion threw her back through the doorway she'd come through. Sparks flew as her armor grinded against the stonework flooring. She skidded along the stone until finally coming to a halt, her whole torso and arms hurting horribly.
Groping for a weapon, she struggled to her feet and saw that she'd just barely stopped short of falling into the central pool of acid in the previous courtyard. Getting her assault rifle ready, she took aim and opened fire, hosing the skeleton down as it stomped towards her, coming for the doorway. The hail of bullets centered on its upper area and enough of them managed to hit its skull that it caused its bleached cranium to come apart. The effect was immediate: the rest of the skeleton fell into a pile of golden-brown bones and armor plating.
Unfortunately, it managed to get off another pair of rockets. Kyra scrambled to get out of the way as they flew through the doorway, and then they fucking turned to follow her. Were they fucking heat-seeking!? She kept running as they trailed after her, managing to get around them and back into the second courtyard where she closed the red door behind her. A muffled explosion sounded as they struck the door, which trembled in its frame, but otherwise held. Kyra let out a long breath, and then immediately growled in frustration.
Her chaingun was gone!
She saw it on the floor now, a twisted, mangled mass of metal.
Nothing to do about it now but go on. She took the time to reload her weapons as she walked back across the courtyard one more time. As soon as she was to the far platform, she hauled herself up again and moved on to the gateway.
It was humming with power.
"Blood Labyrinth, here I come," she muttered, and stepped aboard.