The storm was about the same as it had been when she'd gone in.

Kyra was hoping it would cut down sometime soon, but this was freaking Antarctica. She began kicking her way hurried through the snow, or as hurriedly as she could manage, bearing roughly westbound, where the Military HQ should be. She tried to raise Linaweaver, (or anyone really), several more times over the radio as she marched on, keeping a sharp eye out for demons. Unfortunately, the burst of clarity she'd enjoyed seemed to be proving the exception, not the rule, down here. Was it the weather? She didn't think so.

Comms always seemed to be spotty around UAC facilities infested with demons, and she remembered how much Jack and Jennifer had emphasized that in their own tales. What she wouldn't give for one of them down here right now. Their time together was brief, but the two were shockingly competent and although now millions more knew what it was to fight demons, Kyra imagined that there were still only a few who knew the truth that was hell itself. Actually going there. She hoped it never happened again, but doubted that reality.

After several long moments, the dark gray metal exterior of the Security HQ abruptly loomed up out of the snow.

"There it is, get ready," she said, readjusting her grip on the pistol and checking to the sides. Still no signs of hostiles, though she thought she had seen a dark figure lurking among the shifting snowstorm more than once.

"Check," North replied tightly.

They marched up to the side of the structure and quickly located a door that had been torn through with what looked like claws, brute force, and determination. It had been peeled outward like someone had taken a canopener-chainsaw to it. Even as they approached it, she could hear sounds of conflict coming from within: shotgun blasts, someone shouting, and the squealing of the pinky demons. Shit. Switching back to her shotgun, Kyra burst onto the scene, rushing through the ripped open door and looking for trouble.

She found herself in a training area, the place scattered with both corpses and weightlifting equipment. A single, solitary figure in battered security armor was fighting for his life among a sea of pale pink flesh. There had to be a dozen of the things stomping around.

"North! Help!" Kyra shouted as she unloaded a shell directly into the back of one of the thick-skulled bastards. The shot was good and it dropped the pinky, but that just caught the attention of a quartet that immediately began to beeline for her and North. For a second, she thought the man in question must be Linaweaver, but she quickly realized that the voice didn't belong to him, though it was familiar. Someone else from the squad then, and she wasn't sure they could save him. Honestly, she was surprised he was still alive.

As she thought that, one of the pinkies knocked his shotgun out of his hands with one burly arm and reached for him with the other.

"Help!" he screamed.

Kyra fired off another shell in between two of the advancing demons while North plinked away at them with her pistol. She actually managed to hit the one that had a hold of him, and it lost its grip. He stumbled away…

Right into the waiting grasp of another that had circled around behind him. Kyra screamed in rage and empathetic pain as the pinky clamped its jaws around his bicep and bit his arm clean off. A tremendous spray of blood splashed its pig-like face as it swallowed the severed arm in one gulp. The Marine was screaming wildly now, an unending noise of agony that was abruptly silenced as another pinky grabbed him, yanked him down, and bit his head, helmet and all, right off. Even more blood splashed the thing, this time like someone had just thrown a bucket of the stuff onto it. Letting out a string of curses, Kyra quickly emptied her shotgun and, together with North's pistol, managed to clear a space around them and drop four of the big bastards.

But that still left seven in total, and now they had nothing dividing them.

They were all focused on Kyra and North.

She looked around frantically as she let her shotgun hang and pulled out her pistol. There. Her eyes fell on a big, beautiful, chromed chaingun. It was across the gymnasium-sized room, to her left, maybe fifteen meters away.

"North! Split up! Go right!" she shouted, and took off while opening fire.

North sprinted off, away from the ever encroaching horde of pink monstrosities, while Kyra ran for all she was worth. She covered the distance in a scant couple of seconds, almost stumbling twice navigating the corpses strewn about, and the second she was within reach of the chaingun, she dropped the pistol, said a prayer, and snatched it up. Whirling around, she raised the weapon and took aim for the crowd of pink bastards bearing down on her. Most of them seemed to have come after her instead of North.

Good.

Kyra squeezed the trigger. The barrels spun up and luck had found her one more time: an array of burning metal death began churning out of the end of the huge weapon and smashing into the crowd of demonic bulldog demons. The quality of the roars that escaped their vast, bloody maws changed from fury to pain. Or maybe just infuriated pain. Kyra swung the big silver gun back and forth, hosing the monsters down, blasting chunks of pulped flesh and great sprays of blood from their bulky bodies. She emptied the entire box of ammo into them and managed to kill every last one of the fuckers that stood in front of her.

There were two left alive and they were heading for North, who was doing her best to put them down. Cursing, Kyra dropped the chaingun, snatched her pistol back up, and began opening fire from her own position. Together, the two of them managed to put down the pair of pinkies. Not giving herself a chance to relax, Kyra retrieved the chaingun and this time slung it over her neck, then jogged over to the dead Marine.

North joined her. "Burrows," she muttered.

"Fuck," Kyra growled as she crouched and began patting him down for ammo. She passed the dead man's shotgun up to North, who accepted it silently. Now they were down a heavy weapons specialist, and God knew how many others. At this point, Kyra wouldn't be surprised if she and North were the only two surviving members of the squad. She shook her head as she finished collecting up the shotgun shells Burrows'd had on him. Couldn't let herself think like that. Assumptions were bad and shit thinking led to shit decisions.

There were enough shells for one full load each. Both of them reloaded their weapons, and again Kyra was reduced back to her pistol, saving the shotgun for a rainy day. Or really a rainy five minutes from now probably.

She activated her radio as she finished up and began leading North out of the training area. "Linaweaver, can you hear me?"

She was answered not over the radio, but by a shotgun blast coming from deeper in the facility. Coming out into a long corridor, she followed the sounds of combat. They raced past a pair of barracks to one side and a pair of mess halls to another, then came thundering into a security checkpoint where Linaweaver was mopping up a handful of fiends.

"Friendlies, coming in!" Kyra called.

She swept the area with her pistol and saw him putting down the last one. The man stood among a field of pinky, fiend, and zombie corpses. His armor was splattered with blood, dented, and burned in several places, but he was still alive and in fighting shape, apparently.

"You okay?" Kyra asked, honestly impressed. There were a lot of dead demons around.

"Fine," he said. "I thought I heard fighting elsewhere in the facility."

Kyra grimaced. "It was Burrows. He didn't make it."

"Fuck!" Linaweaver snapped. He finished reloading and looked at North briefly. "Have you seen anyone else?"

Kyra shook her head. "No, just North and Burrows. Haven't heard from anyone but you, either. You?"

"No," he replied. "I thought I heard Pace at some point, but comms are shit. Right now, we got a situation." He jerked his head towards one of the doors in the area, the one labeled CONTROL. It was shut firmly, a red light burning above it, indicating it was locked. "I saw some bastard run in there and lock it down, and now he won't come out. Tried to get in when there was a lull in the fighting, after we lost contact, but either he's in there and hiding or he got killed after locking the door because he didn't realize something was in there with him."

"A local?" Kyra asked.

"Almost certainly. He had on security armor, but I caught a quick glance at his face. Didn't look like anyone from the squad. We need in there. That's where the armory is, and a major control point for the area."

"So how do we get in? Find a keycard?" Kyra asked.

"If we can find Pace, I'm positive he can override the lockdown without too much trouble." As he said it, their radios crackled and another voice came onto the line.

"-s Pace, I'm under att-" Again, static laced the channel.

"Speak of the devil," Linaweaver said.

"I'd rather not," Kyra muttered. "Pace, this is Morgan, where are you?" she asked.

"Some kind of exercise yard...shit!" A shotgun blast sounded. Kyra just barely heard it somewhere nearby, to the left. She twisted in that direction and saw a closed door labeled TRAINING YARD (EXT.).

"We're on the way!" she replied, and took off.

Linaweaver and North hurried after her.

She hit the access button as soon as she got to the door and stepped through, pistol raised, expecting anything.

Or so she thought.

The training yard, which appeared to be sheathed in a shield of glass, was writhing with a few dozen creatures she had never seen before. One of them was coming right towards her and she stared for a scant few seconds in disgust. It was low to the ground, pale gray in color, and hunched. And it had two heads, each one sporting a long black tongue. A pair of tumor-like growths were rising like something infectious from its back, each one sporting a little garden of bony shards. It writhed and twisted as it came towards her on all fours...no, all fives she saw, as it apparently had five legs, and the first word that popped into her head was maggot.

She popped one of the heads with a bullet, causing it to stumble to a halt, then she did the same thing, this time double-tapping that second mask-like face of horror. This, apparently, killed the new creature. But there were a lot more. She could see Pace all the way across the yard, apparently having managed to get in through an exterior entrance, fighting for his life.

"Take them down!" she shouted, growling in frustration as she shifted back to her shotgun. Goddamn did she hate being this low on ammo, but if they didn't save Pace now, they'd have a much harder time getting in, and once they did have him, she could hit that armory. Provided it was still even partially stocked, that was.

She began blasting as a big portion of the maggots started coming towards them like a living wave of death. They walked on strange, hoof-like appendages, though she saw that one limb on each ended in an actual clawed hand. Their eyes glowed a malignant red and they issued awful shrieks. So there were new horrors that hell was churning out, apparently. She blasted a head clean off one, which was enough to apparently kill it, as the light faded from the second head and it collapsed. Good to know. Shifting aim, she pumped the shotgun and repeated the action. North and Linaweaver took up shooting stances on either side of her and opened up with their own weapons. Linaweaver apparently had an assault rifle and was putting it to good use.

Across the way, Pace blasted away with a shotgun of his own.

"God, what the hell are these things!?" North cried.

"New to me!" Kyra shouted back.

She emptied her shotgun and let it hang. Whipping out her pistol, she opened up, punching bullets into the maggots' ugly hides and doing her best to give them all rapid onset lead poisoning. She burned through a magazine spraying their blood, guts, and brains across the already filthy AstroTurf of the training yard, ejected the spent mag and slapped a fresh one in, then kept on going. To either side of her, Linaweaver and North fired away, keeping calm and cool, for the most part. Across the way, Pace was shouting and blasting, though he sounded more pissed than panicked. Which was good. Pissed worked in this conflict.

Finally, the last of the newly discovered demons were blown away, and the only sound was the faint shrieking of the winds.

"Linaweaver, make sure he's all right. North, watch our back," Kyra said as she reloaded again, staring hard at the nearest maggot corpse.

Both of them snapped off replies and hopped to it. Kyra holstered her pistol and walked over to the dead body, then nudged it gently with her foot. Jesus, they just kept getting weirder. In a strange sort of way, she found the zombies and the fiends and even the pinkies made sense. But the pumpkins, the flying skulls, and now these things…

It was making less sense.

Did they all come from the same place? Was there something resembling a society somewhere there in Hell? Or was Hell merely a passageway, a conduit through which weirder and weirder things were being sucked out of different dimensions, passed through, and then deposited onto Earth? Because she had a very hard time believing that this maggot thing and the flying skulls came from the same realm. Then again, maybe there was no rhyme or reason to it all.

Maybe it was just sheer fucking chaos.

She looked up as Linaweaver began returning with Pace. The man seemed all right. She looked around for a moment. Apparently, even in Antarctica, the UAC wanted their people to be able to go outside, even if it wasn't technically outside, just an illusion. She saw a few basketball and tennis courts, another weightlifting area, and other things generally associated with physical fitness scattered about the yard.

"We're good," Linaweaver said.

"Thanks for saving my ass," Pace added as he carefully wiped some blood from his visor. "Hot damn, that was close."

"You're welcome. You can hack a door?" she asked.

"Yep," he replied, sounding confident enough. Well, they'd find out soon enough. She rejoined North, leading the other two back into the facility. Nothing new had arrived since they'd had their shootout in the training yard. She had North and Linaweaver secure the exits and stand guard while she joined Pace at the main door.

Finally, they were making progress.

"Have you heard from anyone else? Seen anyone else?" she asked while Pace pulled the covering of the door controls off and got out a toolkit.

"No, no one," he replied. "Fell out the back on my ass, just barely missed smashing into a big wall out there. Then there were demons on my ass."

That meant that Collins and Weldon were still MIA. Or, at least, hopefully MIA. Honestly, the fact that there were four of them, they were together and unharmed, was more than Kyra had dared hope for when they'd started going down and had had to bail out the back. She watched Pace work, trying not to annoy him, but the man seemed calm now. He was actually humming lightly to himself. Well, that was how some people worked. Give them a task they were good at or even just knew how to do, and it'd chill them right the hell out.

"Got it," he said at the same instant there was an electrical pop. "I can open it whenever you want, Staff Sergeant."

"Linaweaver, North," she called. "Form up."

They jogged over to join her. She and Linaweaver took up position to either side of the door, with North standing out of the way completely, their weapons raised, just in case something particularly nasty was waiting on the other side.

"Do it," she said, wishing she had a bigger gun.

"Opening door," he confirmed.

The security door began to slide open.