"Fuck ladders," Jack muttered as he descended yet again into the bowels of Haydenfield.

He'd found a way down into the underground, but it required getting into a narrow concrete shaft that was just barely big enough for him and his damned suit of armor. Occasionally he scraped against the sides and it made him jump each damn time. He couldn't even properly look down to see if there was anything coming up after him. Could they climb? Mainly he was worried about zombies and Imps. Also Lost Souls. Fuck, if one of those got in here with him he might very well be straight up fucked in the face.

However, Jack managed to reach the bottom of the narrow shaft without running into anything deadly or dangerous. Unfortunately, as he stepped off the ladder and began turning as fast as he could manage, drawing his pistol, he nearly got terminated right then and there. He'd come into a roughly rectangular room and across a simple divide where shallow water ran through the center of the room, a trio of zombies had gathered, each holding a pistol. They roared and began popping off shots at him. They were horrendous shots, at least, and gave him the necessary time to raise his own sidearm and return fire.

The first shot took the middle zombie right in its big, pale forehead, opening up an ugly hole and ejecting brain matter and bone fragments out the back, spraying the door behind it. It fell, but he didn't have time to appreciate that fact as he sidestepped and shifted aim simultaneously, opting for the right zombie because it seemed to be drawing a bead on him more efficiently than the other one. He squeezed off another two shots. One just clipped the bastard's ear, but the second one turned its right eye into a bloody socket erupting a geyser of old gore. It went down with a roar. Jack shifted to the final target and they fired at the same time.

The zombie, with its awful, dead eyes and leathery, pale skin, managed to wing his armor right as he shot it in the mouth. The back of its neck blew out in a spray of decayed gore, and Jack's armor managed to take the shot without a problem. He let out a relieved sigh after a moment passed and nothing else came running. Now that he was alone again, he took a moment to study his environment. The room wasn't very big. The walls were metal, the floor concrete. There was a little moat cutting the room in half from side to side, and the water that ran through it looked clear. What was it? Was this normal? Or the result of some kind of accident? It didn't look like sewage, maybe it wasn't water. Maybe it was some kind of coolant?

He didn't have time for it. There was nothing on his side of the little room, and although the moat provided two exits in the form of passageways to the left and right, (the left one open, the right sealed, save for a little space beneath it to let the water through), there was a door directly across from him. Cautiously, Jack tested the water, put his boot in it. The water went up to just past his boot and there was no bad reaction, so he just shrugged and splashed across to the zombie side. There, he policed up a trio of magazines, (and reloaded his pistol), then moved over to the door and opened it up. It slid into the ceiling and revealed a little work area beyond.

Stepping in, he quickly cleared the room, finding it empty, and then he closed the door behind him and checked over his map. Of course, the way he wanted to go was that locked down entrance on the right side of the room. He took a moment to move back outside and splashed over to it, but after checking it over for a good, long minute, he determined that it was some kind of floodgate and not a traditional door. With a sigh, he returned to the work area and moved over to a console built into the wall that looked the most promising.

Around him, he could hear the occasional groan and the distant gurgle-clicking of Imps. He'd gotten exceptionally good at picking those sounds out. Thoughts came and went as he searched through the functions of the console, but he was glad (sort of) to see that he could put them out of his head with more ease than before. His anger had settled into a sort of cold steel, and he knew that he had at least gotten good at taking the raw fury of rage and beat it quickly into a blade that could be wielded against his foes.

Anger was fuel, if properly utilized.

Feeling fast and competent, Jack tracked down the protocol to open the floodgate and deal with the thing barring his progress, but the console buzzed at him and flashed red.

"You bitch," he muttered as he realized he needed a keycard to deal with the apparent lockdown that had been triggered, of which this was a side effect.

Sighing softly, Jack turned away from the console and slipped back out into the main room. He looked at his only option, the only way yet gone on the left side of the room, and got back down into the little moat. He started splashing his way into the metal tunnel beyond, which was darker than he would have liked, frustrated at how loud his splashes were. He could hear other splashes, too, deeper in. The tunnel immediately curved off to the right. He listened and heard several zombies stumbling around up there.

Great. Well, he could deal with zombies.

Getting up to the bend in the passageway, he waited, amping himself up, and then stepped around, pistol aimed. Four zombies were in the tunnel, two zombies and two former Marines. Perfect. Four shots were fired, four skulls were penetrated, four zombies became unmoving lumps in the shallow water. While this was happening, in a little alcove to the right, a shriek sounded and an Imp leaped out, already winding up to throw a fireball his way. A mixture of fury and surprise, which just turned into more fury, made Jack turn and pump the rest of the rounds in the pistol into the thing's chest. Its own fireball smacked with a hard thump into his chest that the armor stood up pretty well to and it went down screaming.

Jack reloaded and shot it one more time in the head, then started searching the corpses for ammo. Between the four dead, he managed to replace the magazine he'd just expended, and he was about to move on in frustration, but as he checked down the little alcove the Imp had been hiding in, something caught his attention. He activated the flashlight on the end of his pistol and moved carefully into the narrow space. It looked like it housed some kind of equipment embedded in the walls, but what mattered to Jack was that at the back of the alcove was a dead Marine. The poor bastard wore the standard green armor and it was torn off in some places, pumped full of holes in others. What really caught his attention, however, was the man's weapon.

"Hello," Jack muttered as he retrieved the rifle.

It was a Sig-Cow. Not exactly the best piece of hardware in the military's arsenal, but it was a step up from the pistol. It took a fifty-round magazine of 10mm bullets and it was mostly full. Holstering his pistol after turning off the flashlight, Jack stepped back out into the main tunnel. Now he had two choices to progress: ahead and left. Ahead the tunnel again quickly curved out of sight, back to the right, and he could hear more groaning coming from that direction. He chose left, in case there was anything worthwhile through the big metal door there. He hit the access button and readied himself, falling back a bit as the door slid up.

A decently lit room lay beyond. There were a few corpses, what looked like technicians probably, strewn across the concrete flooring. Left and right both had walls with a lot of technology embedded into them, and there was another opening at the end of the left wall, leading deeper into the room. At first he became hopeful that maybe this was where the floodgate was controlled, but even a casual glance told him that this probably wasn't a control room, more likely a monitoring station of some kind. He couldn't imagine the sheer technological powerhouse required to run something like Haydenfield. He pushed on and passed through the opening in the left, hoping for more, but he only found another, similar area.

More corpses, more blood, more useless tech.

With a sigh, he left the room empty-handed. As he stepped back out into the tunnel, a wall directly across from him suddenly shot up, opening like a fucking spring-loaded trap, and a pair of zombies let out roars as they began stumbling for him immediately. Jack let out his own shout of angry shock as his heart nearly burst out of his chest and he began squeezing off shots instantly. He punched seven holes in the motherfuckers and dropped them with headshots, then snapped out a curse and kicked one of the dead zombies in the head.

"Fucker!" he growled, shaky from adrenaline.

Looking into the little niche beyond, where they'd been hiding, he felt a surge of anger. "What the fuck even is this?!" he yelled.

Somewhere nearby, something let out a warning growl. Clenching his teeth, Jack brought himself under control. Losing control was a quick ticket to an early grave around here. He splashed on after making sure nothing else was hiding in the niche and came into the next section of this underground area. The waterway terminated ahead of him as he came around the corner in another sealed off floodgate, but according to the map that way didn't go anywhere he needed. To the left was a concrete stairway that led up to a platform. There were more growls and groans coming from very nearby. Jack mounted the platform and moved carefully forward.

He found himself looking over some sort of control area. He stood on a concrete catwalk that ran the upper perimeter of the room, which was a good fifty feet by fifty feet. In the back right corner of the area was what looked like a command room, done up in steel with several shattered windows. Between the outer walls of the room and the structure was an open area where a good dozen creatures wandered around, half of them zombies, half of them demons. They hadn't noticed him yet. Jack raised his Sig-Cow, preparing to start blasting, then hesitated. A grin suddenly came onto his face. He hunched down, aiming between the safety railing that ran the perimeter of the upper catwalk he stood on, and aimed at a Demon that was facing away.

He resisted the urge to laugh as he squeezed the trigger twice.

It had the desired effect immediately as the Demon turned around as soon as both bullets made bloody craters on its broad, pink back. It locked its glowing golden eyes on the nearest thing to it, a zombie wielding a pistol who wasn't even facing it, let out a roar and started stomping right for it. The zombie just had the wherewithal to notice the encroaching Demon and begin to turn towards it right before the Demon grabbed its arm and bit down. The zombie's left arm disappeared into that massive maw and was removed cleanly with a wet snap that made the zombie roar furiously. It raised its pistol and began pumping shots into the Demon.

Jack watched with a sort of mad glee as the battle sent every last monster down there into a frenzy. The Demons immediately began ripping into the zombies and they did their best to fire away with whatever firearms they had on them, which, sadly for them, was just a handful of pistols. In the end, all the zombies were brutally murdered, crushed between the savage, massive jaws of the Demons, and two of the big pink bastards went down. Jack stood up and took aim at the nearest one with the Sig-Cow and began popping off shots.

He dropped the first Demon right away with a shot through its eye. That tipped off the other three survivors that something else with a gun was still around and they needed to swiftly rectify that. They started stomping towards the stairs that led up towards him. Well, they weren't totally hopeless, at least. Too bad for them he had the tactical advantage. Jack kept firing away and went through half his magazine putting down the survivors. He sighed softly as the last one fell. The Sig-Cow wasn't exactly the best weapon against Demons on parade. He was definitely going to have to lay his hands on something with a bit more stopping power.

But they were dead for now, which meant he could get a move on.

He moved down the stairs, stepping around the dead Demons and taking a few moments to check the zombies corpses. Or what was left of them anyway. The Demons had really chewed them up. He managed to recover another pair of magazines for his pistol, tucked them away into a pocket on his armor, and then made for the control room. He opened up the door and stepped in, Sig-Cow at ready. The lights still worked, at least. That was another setback with the Sig-Cow: no flashlight. Fuck, maybe he should just stick with his pistol. The room he came to had been subjected to the slaughter that had consumed the starport as much as everywhere else apparently. There were shattered screens and shell casings across the metal plate flooring.

Jack tracked down the most intact-looking control terminal and booted it up after making sure no zombies or Imps or Lost Souls were lurking in the immediate area. The only doors led to a little break room, a bathroom, and a small storage area.

"Come on, you bastard," he muttered as he navigated the menus. "Give me something..."

A moment later, he found the floodgate control system, located the one that he wanted, and initiated the override. A little loading symbol began flashing on the screen and he waited, resisting the urge to cross his fingers. He could only guess at how shredded the internal systems must be. They were probably basically Swiss cheese at this point. He was lucky that fucking anything worked down here. And then the loading symbol disappeared, the screen remained frozen, and…

"Don't fuck me on this," he whispered.

There was a chime and the override was sent. Jack let out his breath slowly and laughed softly. Well, there was one step down.

Onto the next thousand of them.

The floodgate was indeed open, and he managed to get to it, pass through it, and splash his way down near three hundred meters of tunnel without running into more than a handful of zombies and Imps that he put down with relative ease. He ultimately did have to switch back to his pistol because too much of the place was unlit. He had to stop every ten meters or so to listen because his splashing feet were so damned loud, plus he was extremely paranoid that the floor was going to drop out from beneath him and plunge him into some well or something. Eventually, after what felt like a really long time, he finally came to the next part.

As he approached the archway that let him know he was about to enter a sewage maintenance sector, he stopped and took inventory. First he made sure he didn't hear anything, and he didn't save for the gentle lapping of the water, which was surprisingly soothing given the situation. He then checked his map to get an idea of what he was up against, but this maintenance sector seemed less like a sector and more like a little bastion for the poor bastards that had to maintain this place. Just five rooms and not a whole lot else.

Jack took a few breaths to steady himself, then moved up to the archway and checked out the area beyond. An antechamber, with a trench cut straight through it like the first room he'd come into, a continuation of the waterway he currently stood in. Although at least this one had the decency to have a little foot bridge built across it. There were two doors on the right and they were closed. The one to the left was open and something about that bugged him. He didn't know why, tons of doors were open, but it nagged him.

He stepped onto the left platform and held his Sig-Cow at ready. The lighting was good enough here and there were still enough rounds in the magazine to rock and roll if need be. Jack stopped as he saw a dead zombie on the platform with him. Again, corpses everywhere. He looked at the body, considering it for a few seconds. The zombie was a local tech, a young guy with a shaved head and a face twisted into a death mask, ruined by a bullet. Jack looked around. No other zombies in the area. He looked back.

This zombie had been shot a few times, and behind it he saw two bullets buried in the wall. It was sloppy shooting, but did that mean another zombie had wandered through, got pissed, and instituted a little unfriendly fire? Or was it someone on the run, panicking?

Jack activated his radio. "This is Sergeant Ward to anyone in the vicinity, can you hear me? Over." He waited and got nothing but a faint buzzing sound. Sighing softly, he stepped up to the door. "Can anyone hear me?" he asked.

God, what he wouldn't give to see a friendly face again.

He'd been alone for just over two hours now. It seemed impossible that so much time had passed since he'd last seen Jennifer, and yet it seemed equally impossible that it hadn't been two days since he'd entered this miserable place. Still nothing, but his instincts were muttering to him. Something was off. Jack stepped into the room beyond and found himself in a place jam-packed with tech and monitoring gear. There were a ton of workstations, bulky pieces of equipment, and monitors built into the walls around him, and an island of tech took up the middle of the room, blocking his view. He set off carefully.

There was a lot of beeping and humming and other technical sounds coming from the equipment that was still functioning. But as he made his way slowly down the right side of the room, coming towards the back, he thought he heard something else.

Breathing.

"If someone's here, come out now. I'm friendly. I'm a Marine," he said slowly, calmly.

The breathing cut off suddenly. Jack tensed, gripping his weapon more tightly. He was almost sure that there was someone, or something, near the back of the room. But it could be something else. He didn't think it was anything he'd encountered so far. It sounded like human breathing, and the zombies didn't breathe from what he could tell. Or if they did, not like that. Neither did any of the others. It could definitely be a terrified civilian or fellow warrior.

"I'm coming around the corner," Jack said.

Still nothing. Well, here was hoping he didn't get shot. He stepped around the corner and came extremely close to shooting the man in the yellow security armor that was crouched down across from him, tucked tightly in between a pair of consoles. The man let out a yelp as he saw Jack and dropped the pistol he was holding.

"Goddamnit! I nearly blew your head off!" Jack snapped, lowering the rifle.

"I'm sorry!" the man choked out. "I thought..."

"What?" Jack asked. "Are you hurt?"

"No," he managed after a few seconds. "I don't know what I thought," he muttered finally, breathing heavily. "Shit. Shit."

"Calm down," Jack said, walking over to him and automatically sweeping the rest of the room with his gaze. "Who are you?"

"C-Corporal Nelson," he stammered.

"Why didn't you answer me?"

"I thought...I don't know! I thought maybe you were one of them," he whispered harshly, his gaze darting furtively around the room. He looked like he was on the verge of panic.

"Okay, Nelson. I'm with the United Marine Corps. My name is Sergeant Ward. I'm part of a task force sent in to regain control of Haydenfield. I'm going to need your help. Do you understand me?" he asked slowly.

But Nelson was already shaking his head, trying to push himself deeper into his niche, his eyes wide. "No, no, no, man. You don't know, man! There's too many of them! God, thousands are dead. Thousands, thousands...thousands..." he muttered, trailing off.

"Nelson...Nelson!" Jack snapped, and the man jerked back to looking at him again. "I need you to focus now, okay?"

He began shaking his head again. "No way, it's way too much, there's too many of them, there's thousands and thousands and-"

"Nelson! Look at me." Jack knelt before him and made direct eye contact, which seemed to bring him around at least a little. "Say 'teacup and saucer'."

Nelson blinked suddenly and a look of confusion came across his face. "W-what?" he demanded.

"Teacup and saucer. Say it. Right now. That's an order."

Technically, he was pretty sure that some law gave Marines the ability to give orders to local forces, but he wasn't actually certain about that.

"T-teacup," Nelson stammered.

"And saucer."

"And saucer."

"All of it. Now."

"Teacup and saucer-why am I saying this?!"

"You feel better?" Jack asked.

He opened his mouth, looking like he was about to argue, then slowly closed it. "Not better," he muttered, "but more in control...what the fuck was that?"

"I'm not sure why it works. I think it's like a slap to the face or throwing a bucket of cold water on you. It confuses your brain right out of panic," Jack replied. "Now, on your feet, soldier."

Nelson looked like he wanted to argue, but as Jack stood, he didn't say anything. Instead, he scooped up his pistol and got slowly to his feet.

"I'm not exactly a soldier," he muttered.

"You've made it this far," Jack said.

He looked away, frowning. "Luck, and cowardice, mostly." Jack began to respond but something seemed to occur to Nelson suddenly and he locked eyes with Jack again. "What. Are. They?" he demanded.

"They come from another dimension, that's all we really know. The Union Aerospace Corporation accidentally discovered their dimension with teleportation technology."

"They're not...demons? They're...aliens?"

"Yeah," Jack replied. He didn't know for sure, but he had the idea that most people would be more comfortable fighting aliens than demons.

"I've heard so much shit...is it just here? In America? Or are they...elsewhere?"

"They're everywhere," Jack replied. "Everywhere. They're on Mars, for Christ's sake."

"Holy shit...where are we going to go?" Nelson whispered.

"We'll figure it out, but right now I need your help. I need to get to the nearest security node and get it back online. There's hundreds of Marines working their way through Haydenfield right now, working on this problem."

"I..." Nelson hesitated, looked at Jack, then looked around the room they were in, then slowly looked back at Jack, "y-yeah, okay. Yeah. I can do that."

"Good. Follow me."

Jack began leading him out of the room, but stopped as the man suddenly cursed and started patting himself down.

"What?" Jack asked.

"I'm out of ammo," he replied. "I had a shotgun but I lost it up top."

"Here." Jack passed him four magazines for the pistol, and Nelson thanked him, accepted them, reloaded, and pocketed the rest. Now that he was armed, Jack led his first conscript back out into the main area. "We need to clear the area."

"Got it," Nelson replied. Well, he must've had some training, at least. Now that his panic was under control he seemed to be fairly with it.

They spent the next ten minutes checking out a storage room, a break area, a small bathroom, and another room similar to the one he'd found Nelson in. They found just a single Imp hiding in the bathroom and Jack popped its skull with two shots from the Sig-Cow, spraying ruby blood across a urinal and sending it sprawling. Once they'd cleared the area and confirmed there were no more survivors and nothing useful, they moved through the next floodgate, (which was mercifully unlocked), and began heading for the next leg of the journey.

"So what happened?" Jack asked.

"To what?" Nelson replied.

"You."

"Oh." He paused. "Well, I mean, a lot. I guess...when the things, the...demons, came, it was like suddenly they were everywhere. There was this flash of red light, it was like everywhere, and then there were just demons everywhere man. The ones that throw fireballs..."

"Imps," he said.

"Is that what they're called?"

"Yeah. I mean, that's what I call them. I imagine we'll have to set some kind of standard once we start building a database of all these things."

"So yeah, the Imps, they were the most common. They just...they started coming out of everywhere. I was in a security center a bit farther in when it happened, and half the screens turned to static, some of them were, I swear to God man, they were bleeding."

"Yeah, I've seen the bleeding screens."

"And all the security monitors that still worked were just showing those Imp things and they were just...ripping people apart. If I didn't know, like...if the invasion hadn't already been happening before the starport was full-on attacked, I honestly would have thought I'd had a psychotic break. It was the most surreal, stomach-churning thing I've ever seen."

"I honestly know what you mean," Jack muttered.

"What about you? What were you doing when it started?"

Jack was silent for several moments as they splashed down the lengthy stretch of tunnel. Finally, he said, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"I was basically at ground zero."

"Where was ground zero? They've been saying it all started happening all at once like...everywhere. I saw those portal things in like Scotland and Japan and Texas and Australia..."

"It started on Phobos."

"Pho-wait, what? Like...like the moon Phobos? Like around Mars?" Jack nodded. "...how?"

"The short answer is: the Union Aerospace Corporation was screwing around with teleportation technology. They accidentally discovered another dimension. These things were in it. Now they're pouring through by the millions."

"Holy shit! Why doesn't like everyone know this?!"

"It just happened a few days ago. I barely survived. Like, I spent a few days getting across those moons and then through the other dimension trying to get back to Mars, only to go back to the other dimension again to assassinate what we thought was the lead demon. We did, but apparently that big spider bastard wasn't the leader, not by a long shot."

"Wait, wait, what!? You've been to the other dimension!? You killed a...what, a giant spider demon!? So all this, it's like nothing to you? Like a walk in the park?"

Jack laughed bitterly. "No, I wouldn't go that far, but yeah, I have been through a lot."

"Wait, I'm confused. So you're like...a hero? Like a war hero who went to this other dimension and killed tons of demons and...why are you here? Why are you at Haydenfield, talking with me in like the fucking basement?" Nelson sounded genuinely confused.

"Me and another two survivors were picked up by some Marines with fried comms, so we couldn't make any kind of report. As soon as we got back, we were shot down and we crash-landed. We managed to make it to Hayden and hook up with some local resistance. We finally made our report, and the Brass up top decided me and the other survivor from Phobos, there was just the two of us, would be best suited helping out here."

"Holy shit, that's so crazy," Nelson muttered. He shook his head. "Well, all right then, I guess I'm along for this ride. Um...what happened to me, yeah, I was telling you that. I'm still having trouble sorting it all out. We left the security booth, started making our way to help the civilians at the nearest sector, but quickly got bogged down. There was a lot of running, and shooting, and screaming, and I finally got separated from my squad, those that were left, when I was forced into a maintenance area with half a dozen of those Imp things coming after me. Found another squad, tried to rescue a group of civilians under siege, but by the time we got there those big bulldog things had eaten them all..." he trailed off and shuddered, then continued.

"We tried to head for a rally point but it quickly just became chaos. It was all bloody, screaming chaos and, fuck, I don't know, it lasted for hours and hours. Running and hiding and shooting, scrounging for ammo, trying to link up with people. I don't know how I'm alive. Eventually I found myself in a stairwell, locked the door behind me because a dozen zombies were on my ass...I mean, they are zombies, right?"

"As far as I can tell, yeah," Jack replied.

He sighed. "Can't believe this shit. Anyway, ended up playing hide and seek down here for awhile, got back upstairs, but then I was forced down again. That's when you found me." He trailed off, let out his breath in a long sigh. "This is nuts."

"Bugfuck nus," Jack agreed.

He brought Nelson up to speed on the demons that he knew about so far, warning him especially about the Lost Souls, as they were still probably the most dangerous bastards hanging around. Not that any of the others were non-lethal.

"Do you think we'll run into that spider thing you mentioned again? The big one?" Nelson asked as they closed in on the end of the tunnel.

Jack shuddered. "Fucking hell I hope not. That thing...it was practically the size of a house."

"How did you kill it exactly?"

"I had a really big fucking gun," he replied. "Experiment tech made by the UAC. Makes a rocket launcher look like a damned bottle rocket."

"Whoa."

"Focus up, we're almost to the lift we need to take back to the surface," Jack said.

Nelson nodded tightly and readjusted his grip on his sidearm as they splashed on. There was another floodgate up ahead. It was closed, and Jack felt a bit of fear dip into his spinal column as he considered the possibility that they may need to go all the way back. While they didn't exactly have a timeline, per say, it wasn't like time was a luxury they had. The more he dicked around down here in the underhalls, the more people died. Of course, that was true of whatever he did. He had to stay sharp and keep focused and get the fucking job done.

He didn't need to worry, however, as he found that it wasn't locked down, just closed. "You ready?" he asked as he prepared to open it.

"Ready," Nelson replied. He looked pale behind the plate of glass covering his face, but about as determined as Jack had seen him so far.

It would have to do.

He hit the button and then shouldered his Sig-Cow. Not a lot of rounds left in the magazine, but enough to pop a few hostiles if need be. The way ahead was another room divided by a small waterway. On the right side was a door and what looked to be a maintenance hatch in the floor, the left side held the lift they were looking for.

There were just a pair of dead Imps for company.

"Come on," Jack murmured, slipping into the room. The door across the way was closed so he left it alone, hoping it would stay that way and they could just ride the lift up and out. That dream of easy escape, however, was quickly realized to be stillborn. Jack hit the access button and nothing happened. He groaned softly and hit it again, then resisted the urge to smash the control panel with his fist. "Fuck."

"Is it broken?" Nelson asked nervously.

"I think it's dead," he replied. "Can we reroute power somehow?"

"Maybe..." he murmured uncertainly, and his eyes drifted to the maintenance hatch.

"Of course," Jack growled. He marched back across the waterway and took a moment to check out the single door over there, just in case that was it, but it only led to a tiny bathroom that didn't have anything useful in it. With a sigh, he crouched by the hatch and opened it up. It was dark down below, and as he switched back to his pistol and flicked on the flashlight, he thought he caught a flash of movement.

"What was that?" Nelson whispered harshly.

"I'm not sure..." Jack replied, feeling that old familiar fear come back to him. It had almost looked like...a giant spider. He waited another minute before admitting to himself that he was just going to have to go down there. "Cover me."

"Check," Nelson replied, taking up overwatch at the head of the hatch.

Jack fit himself down into the hole and quickly traversed the ladder. At least it was only about eight feet down. He landed with another splash, it seemed as if the blue liquid had seeped into this area too, and it didn't seem intentional here. Hastily taking aim, he looked around. The ladder was in the corner, near the head of a hallway about twenty meters long. No doors, but there were little slits, almost like vents, along the bottoms of the walls to either side of him. There was one about every five feet and they were all dark and somehow ominous.

He could just make out something sparking at the other end of the hallway.

"Okay, come on down," he said.

Nelson hesitated for just a second, then holstered his pistol and mounted the ladder. He came down, his motions jerky and anxious, and he splashed down into the tunnel beside Jack a second later. Pulling his pistol back out, he turned on the flashlight.

"So we just...go down there?" he asked.

"Yes. Nice and easy. Watch those openings," Jack replied, and set off.

He did not need to face those weird skull spider fuckers again, especially not down here in the goddamned basement. They splashed down the tunnel, making decently swift progress, and Jack kept searching the area. He studied the walls, the openings near the floor, where the water leaked into it, the ceiling, but...there was nothing.

They made it to the other end without a problem.

Here, they found a console and a junction box. That's what was sparking. It had taken damage and it almost looked deliberate.

"How the fuck did this even happen?" Jack muttered as he located a little repair kit and cracked it and the junction box open.

"That's a great question," Nelson replied nervously.

"Watch the tunnel. I can fix this."

He set to work. A minute ticked by in tense apprehension, the only sounds the two men breathing, a steady drip coming from somewhere nearby, and the noises of his work. With a pop, the junction box came back to life. It began to whir comfortably and Jack let out a sigh. He knew some technical stuff, enough to get by, but it always felt like a bit of a gamble whether or not he could bullshit his way through a repair.

"Done," he said, replacing the kit after closing the box. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"Yep," Nelson replied.

They began splashing back down the tunnel, and they made it about halfway back to the ladder when a chorus of deep, guttural growls sounded seemingly from all around them.

"Fuck!" Jack snapped, skidding to a halt as, sure enough, one of those damned giant spiders crawled out from the nearest dark slit near the floor. Had he ever named them? Spider worked well enough for now, he supposed as he leveled the pistol at it.

What he would not give for a proper shotgun right now.

"What the fuck are these?!" Nelson cried as more began to emerge.

"Dead meat! Shoot and run!" Jack yelled back as he put two rounds into the cluster of dark eyes of the nearest spider. It shrieked as dark blood sprayed out of it and stained the blue liquid it was a few inches deep in. He began running, frustrated at the way the liquid slowed him, and started pumping lead into the ones ahead of him. He emptied the magazine putting down four more of the bastards, punching gory holes into their hideous, malformed bodies, and as he reloaded, he stomped on one as hard as he could in passing.

It went splat beneath his boot and sprayed the whole area with dark gore.

"God, they're disgusting!" Nelson cried as he put down another one.

"Yep!" Jack agreed.

He finished reloading and they hit the ladder. Spinning around, he shouted for Nelson to get out of there while he resumed firing. There were a dozen of the things scuttling down the hallway, splashing through the liquid, and more were coming. A grenade would've been pretty great right about now. Jack emptied the pistol, holstered it, and snagged his Sig-Cow. He ended up emptying it firing rounds into the encroaching wave of skull spiders, and as he let it hang, Nelson reached the top and shouted for him to go.

Jack hit the ladder and hustled up it as fast as his body would allow. Nelson fired over him from up above for as long as he could. After what felt like far too long, he hit the top, took Nelson's gauntleted hand, and let himself be pulled up and out. He stepped on the close button for the maintenance hatch and, not trusting it, hurried back over the waterway to the lift, praying that his repair had done its intended job.

He pushed the button.

The door dinged open, revealing a clean, well-lit interior.

"Oh thank fuck," he groaned, staggering in, Nelson right behind him.

He punched the up button and the doors slid shut.

They started to head back up to the surface of Haydenfield.