"I really don't like the look of this place," Diaz muttered.
"That's been my default ever since hitting Mars," Jack said, staring up at the strange building.
It had been a quick and relatively easy drive to the distress call. They'd made their way down three streets and over a few blocks, zeroing in on what might once have been a warehouse or factory of some kind. Jack had no idea because now it was made of some strange ugly tan-brown material that vaguely resembled cobblestone. There were windows built into it, too high up to see from where they stood before it, made of old wrought iron.
They'd already tried reaching out over the comms, but there had been no response of any kind.
"Something's wrong," Jack muttered.
"What?" Rhodes asked, standing to his other side.
Behind them, the APCs idled, thrumming with power, like beasts of burden resentful of their present immobility.
"It was too easy to get here, too easy to track the signal," he murmured.
"We did just install that comms booster," Diaz pointed out.
"Yeah, but...I don't know. My gut says 'trap'. I've rarely been wrong since learning demons are real."
"So do we not go in?" Rhodes asked uncertainly.
"Oh no, we're going in. I doubt they can fake a distress call at this point, so good chance there's actually Marines in there, and we're going to help them, just...need to be ready." He keyed the team radio. "Rhodes and Diaz and I are heading into the structure to find the Marines, everyone else stay in the APCs and stand guard, we'll be as quick as we can."
"Understood," Abrash replied.
Jack sighed heavily as he checked over his shotgun once more, then popped his neck. "All right, let's fucking do this."
He led the way, walking up to the only obvious entrance to the building. The doors had once been big, heavy, wooden ones, also studded with strips of wrought iron, held in place with big, rusty nails. It was obvious that the Marines had blasted their way in with explosives. The trio of Marines walked slowly into what might once have been some sort of lobby. Their boots echoed in the large room. The floor was made of some strange sort of pale green marble and a great deal of blood had been spilled across it.
Somewhere north of twenty corpses lay scattered across the area, most of them zombies, some of them Imps. Shell casings lay everywhere, but Jack's experienced eye could see the pattern of attack. The Marine squad, there had probably been over half a dozen of them, had busted in, guns blazing, and mowed down everything in the room with a savage proficiency, then marched on. There was just a single way out of the room beyond the entrance they'd just come in through, so they pressed on towards it, boots squelching in the blood.
It was quiet now. Jack had gotten used to the grinding of the APCs and their engines, or the omnipresent stew of sound that Hayden had become: the chatter of automatic fire, the occasional explosion, the distant screams. But it was silent in here. The noise had fallen away, save for the idling of the APCs outside. But even that seemed remote now as they crossed the threshold into the next room. It was a curious place: long but shallow, stretching away about half a dozen meters to either side, but perhaps two meters across. Just one more door, again directly across from the one they'd just come in through, and a few more of those iron windows. More corpses, more blood, more spent shell casings. Jack walked up to one of the windows.
Something about what he saw through it made him anxious. He could just make out a little walkway immediately beyond the wall, and beyond that was a moat of blue liquid that he wouldn't be surprised to learn was not at all water, and within that was a small, square island of stone. There were more signs of battle, but nothing alive from what he could see.
"What do you wanna do?" Diaz murmured as she studied the room with him and Rhodes watched their backs.
Jack was silent for a moment, then activated a general comms. "This is Sergeant Ward to any friendlies who can hear my voice, we received your distress call and are here to help. Is anyone picking up this transmission, over?" He waited, listening to the dead air, and finally heaved a sigh. "We keep going. Nice and easy. Watch for traps or hiding spots."
"Got it," Diaz replied.
"I've got your back," Rhodes replied.
Jack walked over to the door and pushed the strange stone button next to it. The door, also made of wood and iron, opened with a painfully loud squeak, sliding up into the ceiling. Shotgun leading his way, Jack stepped up to the threshold and took another look around. There was definitely a small path of stone stretching the length of the room to either side of him, acting as a periphery pathway. He saw another on the opposite side of the large area, which, he noted, had no ceiling or roof. Nothing but smoke and red sky overhead, although the walls extended up a good thirty feet. Great, another way for them to ambush.
After a moment of nothing else happening, Jack stepped through the door and onto the stone walkway. He peered cautiously over the edge. The blue stuff was maybe six or seven feet down, not a terrible drop, and he saw a few corpses in it, including what looked to be a relatively fresh Marine pumped full of holes. It looked like the bullets had killed him, not the liquid, so it probably wasn't acidic or toxic.
Probably.
Jack saw the problem right away, though. They were going to have to get onto that island if they wanted deeper access to the facility. That stone pathway did not run around the entire edge of the room, the only connection to the other side was a narrow pathway that ran from both sides of the island. He sighed softly and started walking along it. The walls that made up the room were all made of that same ugly tan brick, but something bugged him about them. It was getting hard to sort through the general feeling of terror and anxiety that operating in this environment produced and his instincts warning him about something.
Having Diaz and Rhodes there helped, though. A lot. Before all this mess with the demons, Jack had always taken some measure of comfort from his fellow Marines. It could vary, depending on who it was or what they were like, but usually he could trust them to have his back. It was different now. There was a sense of companionship that existed on a deeper level. They were there with him, doing the exact same thing he was: walking into hell itself and carving up demon guts, again and again until one side was dead.
As the three of them reached the island, a cacophony of sound began and Jack nearly had a heart attack as it all fell apart in a split second. Both pathways leading to the island collapsed into the blue liquid, effectively cutting them off. Several slots on the walls to either side of them snapped open, revealing gun-toting former humans and Imps, all snarling and screaming and ready to deal some death. And there was nowhere to hide, no cover to get behind. Nothing to do but fight like hell and hope to survive.
"Kill 'em!" Jack roared as he swapped to his rifle, shouldered it, and let off a burst of gunfire that turned the face of a zombie into free-flying pulp.
Chaos erupted as everything opened fire on them. Jack didn't bother trying to dodge, trusting his armor to take the brunt of the assault. He shifted aim and fired again, snapping off a burst that split the skull of a shrieking Imp right as it wound up to throw a fireball. At the same time he felt a few bullets ping off his armor, and a fireball smacked him in the shoulder as he tried to line up his next shot. The slew of bullets he sent off fired harmlessly into the stone wall and he cursed, readjusted his aim, and put two shots into the twisted face of another sneering zombie. Behind him, he could hear Diaz and Rhodes both doing the same thing he was.
"Come on, motherfuckers!" Rhodes shouted.
"Come get it!" Diaz screamed, punctuating that with a burst of gunfire.
Jack emptied his magazine, putting down the Imps and zombies as they appeared in the slots that had opened in the walls. Several of them appeared to take the place of those who had fallen. He cursed as his gun ran dry and he ejected the spent mag and slapped in a reload. How many were there?! He kept firing, spraying blood and viscera while getting pelted with small arms fire. The fireballs were slow enough that he managed to sidestep out of their way. He emptied a second magazine and as he was reloading, saw that some of the openings weren't getting filled back in. Feeling a sense of relief, he popped off a few more bursts.
And that was when he registered a shadow falling across him. Jack looked up and screamed as he saw that a Cacodemon had floated silently in overhead from the open ceiling. He dropped his rifle, snatched up his double-barrel, and raised it up, firing into the thing's huge, grinning face all in one smooth motion. The huge pumpkin-like entity burst in an enormous eruption of dark demonic gore, spraying across him.
The gunfire fell silent as Jack shoved two more shells in. He looked around. "Everyone okay?" he asked.
"Suit took a beating but I'm fine," Diaz said.
"Same," Rhodes replied.
Jack nodded, quickly checking the display for his suit's integrity in his HUD. It wasn't nearly as solid as he'd like it to be, but it was better than nothing. As he finished reloading both weapons, he looked around and tried to get a sense for where to go next.
"Think we're gonna have to do this the hard way," he said as he walked to the edge of the island and looked down into the blue liquid. It didn't quite have the same consistency as water, he saw now that he was closer, it was a little more like coolant.
"How do we know it isn't toxic?" Diaz asked.
"We don't. Cover me," Jack replied, and leaped down. He landed with a splash and waited for his suit's suite to start up with a warning alarm, but nothing happened. No pain, no problems, nothing. With a sigh of relief, he looked back up. "Come on in, water's fine."
Both of the other two landed with grunts beside him. They walked the short distance over to the other side of the room and Jack motioned to them. "Come on, I'll give you two a lift up, and then you can haul my heavy ass up there."
"Just like gym class," Rhodes said, grinning as Jack helped him up. He grabbed the ledge and hauled himself up.
"I always kicked ass in gym class," Diaz said as she went up.
"Like you were awesome or you actually kicked someone's ass?" Jack asked.
"Both," she replied. "Too many shit-talkers trying to act tough, tell me girls can't hit. Love proving them wrong."
"You're something else," Jack said.
"Hey, I was a shit-talker," Rhodes replied. They both reached down and offered their gauntleted hands to Jack. He leaped and got hold of them. They lifted him up out of the blue muck. "I mean not seriously, you know, just playing around."
"You ever get your ass kicked 'cause of it?" Diaz asked.
He laughed. "I mean once or twice. Some people don't like the funny guys."
"You get lost on the way to the comedy club and sign up for the Marines instead?" Jack asked as he approached the door.
"Something like that. Drunk is more like it," Rhodes replied.
"Wait, like for real?" Diaz asked.
He laughed. "Yep. Got fucking blackout wasted in Guatemala and next thing I know I'm waking up on a bus headed to the nearest United Marine Corps training ground."
"Holy shit, dude, that's nuts," Jack replied.
"Yeah. But my friends were there, we had all been on vacation together, and I guess we all talked each other into signing up while we were wasted and the Marines were desperate enough that they just overlooked that particular fact. And once we actually got there and started going through the physical and stuff like that, well...I mean, we were all in pretty good shape. Even hungover we did a good job, and it wasn't like I had some great life to go back to in Mexico." He shrugged. "Me and my friends figured 'fuck it, why not?', and we stayed."
"I'd call you crazy but who the hell isn't anymore?" Jack replied.
"Hard agree," Diaz said.
"No arguments there. I'm off my rocker, man," Rhodes replied with a laugh.
Jack passed through the next door and focused up. They came into a room of cracked tan-brown stone walls, splattered with more blood, the floor littered with more bodies. Remnants of what the building had once been were still visible. Jack saw a computer terminal up against one wall, still occasionally bleeding sparks, its screen flickering red. Some lights were still in the ceiling, surprisingly steady, and one corner of the room held the remains of several silver crates, all burst open and rifled through.
"No other casualties," Rhodes muttered, growing serious as they looked across the dead. There were mostly Imps, but a few Demons were mixed in as well, and Jack saw the distinct remains of bleached bone scattered here and there. A lot more shell casings, bullet holes everywhere, pockmarking the walls. Jack saw three ways out of this larger, rectangular room. Two of the doors were closed off. One was open.
"All right," Jack began as he stepped deeper into the room, "let's-" Behind him, he heard the distinct sound of a door slamming shut. Spinning around, he saw the door they'd come in through had sealed. "Fuck! Diaz, see if you can open it."
"On it," she replied, heading for the door.
"Trap?" Rhodes asked.
"Isn't it always?" Jack replied, expecting another wave of shrieking monsters to come after them. But no such wave manifested. He heard Diaz toiling for a few moments before finally he heard her grunt and then kick the door.
"Motherfucker," she growled. "It ain't budging. And it's solid, too. Might be able to blast through, but I don't have that much demo on me right now."
"Great. So we find another way out." He opened a link with the rest of the team. "Abrash, can you hear me?"
"Yes, I hear you, Sergeant," the man replied.
"We're locked in, still looking for the survivors, doing okay otherwise. How are things going on your end?" Jack asked.
"A few zombies have wandered up, nothing we can't handle. It's quiet out here."
"Understood. I'll keep you appraised of the situation. Be ready with some explosives to blast through a door. It'll be the one past the island. The blue liquid doesn't seem to be harmful, so you'll be able to just move through it. You'll need at least one other person to help you make it to the door, though."
"Copy all. We'll be ready."
"Thanks. Out."
Jack headed for the open door first. The flickering light coming from beyond it didn't inspire much in the way of confidence. Nor did the amount of blood that lay in the corridor past it. More dead demons, but he thought he saw another Marine corpse at the far end of the passageway.
"Carefully," he said, switching back to his double-barrel and setting off. Diaz and Rhodes backed him up and together the three of them moved down the stone tunnel. Jack continually scanned the wall, the floor, the ceiling for any sign of a trap. Hidden doors or niches, anywhere something could hide, because it looked like a hell of a fight had gone on in here. The only lighting came from brass candle-holders mounted on the walls at irregular intervals. He hated seeing this: the strange subversion of reality that the demons seemed capable of doing apparently anywhere. It was one thing to see it on Phobos, another entirely to see it here on Earth.
As they reached the end of the corridor, which turned sharply to the left, he saw the remains of a trio of Marines, shredded and pulped, armor and all, at the junction. Grimacing, he peered cautiously around the next corner, made sure that corridor was clear, before dropping into a crouch and checking out the remains.
"Jesus," he muttered, picking through it. Something was flashing in one of the helmets. He sighed as he realized what it was. "Well, that explains our distress call…"
"So now what?" Diaz asked. "Do we-"
She stopped speaking as they all heard someone shout and then a shotgun blast, followed by a roar. Jack cursed and they took off running down the next corridor as more shotgun blasts sounded. The roar was horribly familiar.
A Baron.
They followed a single trail of bloody footprints down the corridor until they reached its end. It let out into another room, this one smaller, where a Baron of Hell was preparing to eviscerate a Marine desperately trying to hold it off. He was basically backed into a corner at this point, as there were no other exits in the small room.
"Blast it!" Jack roared as he unloaded both barrels into its broad back, then switched to his assault rifle and started unloading the whole magazine into it. Rhodes and Diaz joined him and the three streams of gunfire converged on the big thing. It never stood a chance. Blood flying in every direction, the Baron roared and then toppled over into a pile of chewed up meat. For several seconds, there was only the sound of reloading.
"Are you okay?" Jack asked as he looked the man over. He was missing a helmet and his armor was scuffed, scraped, and covered in blood, and he had a bad cut down his face, but otherwise he seemed okay, if a bit shaken.
"Y-yeah," he managed, then let out a little laugh, looking at the dead Baron. "Holy shit those things are huge…"
"What's your name, Marine?" Jack asked.
That seemed to get him to focus a little. "Sergeant Vekovious."
"I'm Sergeant Ward with Death Squadron. We picked up your distress call. Is there anyone else alive?" Jack replied.
He shook his head. "No...I'm the only one. Everyone else got killed. I thought I was dead too when that fucking thing popped out," he muttered, glancing from the dead Baron to a large hole in the wall. For a moment, Jack again marveled at that. A Baron of Hell had apparently waited in a space just barely big enough to hold it for the sole opportunity to leap out at a human. Why? How long had it been waiting there? Was it somehow tactically sound? He could understand if it was a heavily trafficked area, but this was very out of the way. Did it make sense in some way to the demons? Or was it as crazy and brainless as it seemed?
He sighed. "All right then, come on. We're getting out and you're joining my squad."
"Uh...all right," Vekovious replied. "You said Death Squad? What exactly are you out here doing?"
"Blowing up that portal in the middle of the city. We're on a top priority mission from Command," Jack replied as he started heading back the way they'd come.
"Holy shit, okay. Yeah. My squad has...had been wandering around pretty much since this began, just fighting. We were getting updates from Command but eventually that stopped. We were finally on our way to what was supposed to be a rally point when we got forced in here," the Sergeant replied, following after them. "Who's in charge?"
"I am," Jack replied.
"Ah. Okay." He was silent for a few seconds. "So...do you actually know what the fuck is happening? Because I've heard so many different theories."
"The Union Aerospace Corporation was screwing around with teleportation technology," Jack replied, coming back into the initial room and making for one of the other two doorways. "They accidentally ripped a hole between our dimension and another one. These things were living there. They got out, everywhere. Now we're just trying to figure out if survival is even on the table. Mostly we're evacuating the Earth right now and trying to stop the bleeding."
Vekovious didn't say anything for a long moment.
Jack sighed. "I know, it's a lot to take in, but I need your help. Rhodes, patch up his wound. Diaz, with me. We're going to scout ahead."
"Got it," Rhodes replied. "Come here, man, I'll get you fixed up."
"Thanks," Vekovious said quietly.
Jack and Diaz moved over to the door and managed to get it open without any trouble. Another corridor awaited them and it looked empty. They started moving down it.
"What the hell was this place? Because this layout makes no sense," Diaz muttered.
"Probably a warehouse or a factory," Jack replied, "I don't think this was the original layout."
"So how much can they change? And how fast? I mean how are they even doing this?"
"No idea, no idea, and no idea. I mean I guess they can manage a lot quickly." He sighed. "It's gonna get a lot worse, a lot weirder. I have seen some strange shit so far. This doesn't even rank, this is honestly pretty vanilla."
"Great."
They kept walking and this time, reality played fair. Almost. The corridor terminated in another doorway. If Jack's relative idea of where they were in the building was correct, then this door would let them back outside. Theoretically. Unfortunately, it was not only a locked door, but too dense to blast through without heavy explosives.
But Jack saw a slot in the wall next to it, small, meant for a card. And the door, which was an odd brushed steel, had a blue trim to it.
"We need a keycard," he said, heading back the way they'd come.
"Fifty creds it's another trap," Diaz replied.
"Yep." He laughed. "Think credits even matter anymore? Pretty sure the whole economy just collapsed."
"Good. Built on nothing but bullshit debt anyway."
As they came back into the main room, Jack saw that Rhodes was just about finished patching up Vekovious. "Any luck?" their latest addition asked.
"Some. There's a locked door. We need a keycard. I don't suppose you came across any?" Jack replied.
"No, sorry."
"All right. Come on, let's all four go this time."
They set off to the last door and also managed to get it open suspiciously easy. This time, a large room awaited them. This room looked a lot closer to what must have been the original design. The walls were partially stone, partially drab metal sheets. There were several large crates and stacks of crates around, all of them, unsurprisingly, stamped with the UAC logo. Those fuckers were everywhere, even in some random warehouse in Hayden, Kansas. Dead ahead of them was a big crate blocking the view of the rest of the room.
As Jack led them around it, he felt as if the room itself was holding its breath, like reality was waiting for something to happen.
The tension kept mounting as they came around the large crate and stepped into an artificial corridor maybe a dozen feet wide, created in between all the rows and stacks of crates to either side of the room. And at the end of that corridor, Jack saw something blue on the floor. What had to be their ticket out of there.
"All right, Rhodes, Vekovious, hang back and watch our six. Diaz, let's get that card," Jack said.
"Ready," she replied.
They got to work, fingers on the triggers, moving down the corridor between the crates. There were a hundred places to hide, as most of the crates to either side of them were not fitted perfectly together, leaving all sorts of alcoves and niches and shadows. Deep shadows. Jack heard nothing but the sounds of their heavy boots on the scuffed metal flooring as they progressed towards the card. As they got about halfway there, he finally saw that it was indeed a keycard, and not just some blue thing meant to resemble one.
The only thing that creeped him out was the fact that there was a severed hand holding it.
They were nearly there when the second trap was sprung. Jack spun to his left the second he heard something shift. One of the larger crates fell open and a Demon stomped out, coming right for him. He let the pig-demon have it full force, blasting a hole clean through its monstrous skull with the double-barrel.
"Go! Get the card!" he shouted as he cracked the barrels and reloaded.
Diaz took off, sprinting towards the card. Around him, more crates broke open. Jack just managed to get the gun reloaded as he saw another Demon coming at him. Sticking both barrels in its massive maw, he squeezed the trigger and blew the back of its skull out. Tossing a glance back over his shoulder, he saw Rhodes and Vekovious opening fire on a pack of Imps that had scrambled out of their hiding places.
"Got it!" Diaz shouted.
"Let's get the fuck out of here!" Jack snapped as he reloaded for a second time. He aimed and fired once more, putting down a pair of Imps that were nearest to him, and then grabbed for one of his frag grenades. The second Diaz was past him, he pulled the pin and dropped the grenade, then bolted after her. Switching back to his rifle, he helped her mow down the Imps in between them and the exit. They just managed to blow them away and rush past them to rejoin the others as the grenade went off. Jack didn't bother to look back and see if anything else was still coming after them as he hustled them out of the door and shut it behind them.
"Come on, keep pushing!" he shouted as they hurried back to the other door.
He could hear other things in the building, but nothing seemed to be immediately attacking them, so he pressed on. They hit the final corridor, raced down it, and Diaz slotted the card. The door slipped open, revealing a dirty alleyway.
The quartet hurried out and quickly made their way back to the APCs.