"Whoa, what the fuck?" Kyra asked, slowing automatically as the quality of the light changed.

"Yeah...holy shit, what is that?" Powell asked.

"What the hell's happening?" Carpenter muttered, staring up through the windshield.

Kyra brought them to a halt. The trip had actually gone quite well so far. They'd driven across the black desert at a decent clip, with more than enough power to get to where they needed to go. They'd run into a few roving packs of Imps and Pinkies, but had managed to outrun them all pretty easily. Though that didn't stop Powell from chopping at least a few of them up with the mounted chaingun. Otherwise, they had seen nothing.

And then, just now, the sky had changed.

The whole sky had just changed, like someone had flipped a switch.

Kyra finally brought them to a stop. She could actually see the UAC Headquarters now maybe a hundred yards ahead of them. A long building that seemed to be made of large, tan, heavily weathered brick. Even from this distance it had a few hallmarks of UAC occupation. But none of that held her attention.

The sky did.

Because it had gone from looking like roiling red mist to looking like someone had put a bunch of corpses through a masher and then imprinted the results onto a plate of glass. It was red, extremely red, and there was what appeared to be bone and gristle and blood and meat up there. How was that even possible?

"So we're all seeing the same thing," Kyra murmured.

"Yeah. I'm seeing a sky with fucking skulls and ribcages and gutted meat," Carpenter replied.

"Yep," Powell agreed.

"So it's not a hallucination, unless it's a shared one? But that seems unlikely…"

"This whole thing is unlikely," Carpenter muttered.

"Should we be worried, is the real question," Powell said. "As in: is this imminently threatening us somehow?"

"It's at least not moving...I think," Kyra replied.

"Hooray, the sky isn't falling," Carpenter said.

"We should keep moving, I don't think it's a threat," Powell said.

Kyra sighed and got them rolling again. They were almost there. "What could it be though?"

"Maybe it's...like...what you see once you get within a certain distance of the big demon, whatever the hell it is?" Powell suggested.

"That's a terrifying level of reality manipulation," Carpenter said.

"Maybe it's automatic," Kyra said, "like it's not doing it on purpose? Or maybe it's weather? Maybe this is just how the sky is in this realm? Fuck, whatever. We're here. Get ready."

The place was a battlefield.

That much was immediately obvious as they rolled to a stop once more. A big metal room had been erected and added onto the side of the structure, what was obviously intended to be a motorpool. One of the garage doors was ripped open like something had taken a giant can-opener to it, and there were holes punched through the general frame of the room. There were a lot of bodies. Just everywhere. Inside, outside, all around.

Marines, technicians, scientists.

None had survived this wholesale slaughter.

"Jesus. Fucking. Christ," Carpenter muttered grimly as they got out of the vehicle.

"Powell...take that chaingun with us, I think we'll be needing it," Kyra said.

"Way ahead of you," Powell replied, still inside the vehicle. While he unfastened it from within, then climbed out and onto the top of the ATV to finish the job, Kyra walked slowly towards the wrecked motorpool.

It looked like this place had gotten hit particularly hard. There was blood everywhere. All of it was old and dried. Bullet holes peppered everything, spent shell casings carpeted the area outside the base. As she cautiously stepped into the motorpool, she found it in the worst, most wrecked state she'd found anywhere so far.

Nothing remained untouched. Everything was shredded and smashed, and there were even more bodies scattered around.

"Here," Carpenter said as Powell approached with the chaingun, "give it up. You two got plasma rifles, I need some heavier firepower."

"Fair point," Powell replied, passing him the weapon.

"Let's get to work," Kyra said. She was unhappy to see that there weren't all that many dead demons mixed in with the humans.

They spent a bit searching the bodies, but it became obvious pretty quickly that someone had already done something similar. No doubt the Imps or whatever the fuck did it so they could properly arm their zombies for the invasion of Earth. They worked their way through the motorpool and in through the entrance to the building proper.

It was a strange place.

The entrance let into an open-faced chamber with a floor made of randomly matched golden brown boards, the ceiling was made of small, tight tan brickwork, and the walls of wood that had what appeared to be braided cables embedded in them. The front of the room was the open-faced section and opened onto a huge area that likely ran the length of the whole building. There were a lot more corpses scattered about, dozens of them, and an ocean of blood.

"Jesus," Powell whispered.

Kyra activated her radio. "Can anyone hear me? Is anyone still alive?"

The response was almost immediately. "Holy shit, finally! Kyra!? Where are you?" It was Jack and he sounded...pissed.

"I'm at the UAC HQ, in some huge main entryway," she replied. "There's a sea of corpses…"

"Oh fucking great. We're trapped in some small room. We have been for like an hour now. There's no way out."

"Oh shit, sorry we took so long, we had to repair an ATV. Uh...bang on the wall or something," she said as they slowly walked out of the ingress into the main room.

"Okay."

They waited and listened, and sure enough, a faint, muffled pounding came from their left. "Got it! We're close! Coming to you," she said. To Carpenter and Powell she said: "Secure the area."

"Thank fucking shit," Jack groused.

While the other two got to work seeing if anything had survived the massacre, Kyra headed over to a section of wall to the left. She could already see a button to press. There were signs of the UAC all around, and it was clear they had put a lot of work into making this place more suitable for humans. Half the place was wallpapered and there were a ton of crates and pieces of furniture scattered around. There were even a few potted plants.

It was all smashed and blood-splattered now.

The effect was largely ruined by, among other things, a huge section of the middle of the room that was missing. Instead of a floor, it dropped down into a pool of acid. What was it with pools of acid lately? Had this always been here, or had it appeared later?

"I'm about to open what I think is the door, so don't freak out," Kyra said.

"Understood," Jack replied.

Kyra hit the button. Abruptly, a whole section of the wall opened up, and she found herself looking at the very welcome sight of four armed and armored Marines.

"Holy shit it's good to see you," he said as they walked out.

"Likewise," she replied.

"Goddamn, what the hell happened?" Jennifer muttered as she looked around.

"Slaughter," Kyra replied. She studied the other two survivors, vaguely recognizing them from...this morning? Good fucking God, had planetfall truly been within the last twenty four hours? It didn't seem possible. The hulking black guy still looked like he had a lot of fight in him. What had been his name? H something…

Oh. He still had his nametag. Hollenshead.

The other guy, Cortez, looked a bit more fried but still with it and if he'd made it this far, he had to be a hardass and a half, so: someone good to have your back in Hell.

"What's going on here?" Jack asked. He was looking behind her now, no doubt noticing Powell and Carpenter.

"We're securing the area and-"

Gunfire from behind her and a startled shout pulled her out of the conversation. Kyra whirled around as Jack and his team shot into action. Farther down the huge room, she could see Carpenter backing away from a section of wall that had abruptly opened up, firing into it. At a skeleton. No, two skeletons.

"Shit!" Powell yelled even farther down the room, all the way at its other end, where another big section of wall had opened up and one of those goddamned plasma-toting spider-demons came stomping out on big metal limbs.

As Kyra raced into action to give them cover fire, a fireball slammed into her side and knocked her off balance. Cursing, she spun to the right and saw that the motorpool they'd initially come in through was now spilling out Imps like blood from a wound. Easily a dozen were already coming through, and there were more behind them.

"Shit, zombies across the acid!" Jack shouted.

"Fuck!" Kyra snapped, turning her plasma rifle on the Imps and letting them have it.

They were surrounded!

It was a goddamned trap!

Pure screaming ataxia engulfed them as the demons moved in from all sides. Kyra found herself fighting for her life with Jack to one side and Hollenshead to her other.

"Bullshitdogs!" Hollenshead roared from her right. As she finished off the Imps, frying them at the cost of a whole power cell, she automatically began to reload and turned to face the direction they'd just come from. Another section of wall had opened up and now a living wave of pink flesh was coming for them, stomping their way over with huge maws and golden blazing eyes. The two of them opened fire, mowing them down, flaying away flesh and shattering bone with plasma and bullets alike. Blood flew and pulped flesh splattered.

Something exploded behind them. Kyra whirled around just in time to see body parts going flying as a pack of zombies blew apart. From the other side of the acid trench, a rocket shrieked out and collided with the big mech-spider as it tried to kill Powell with its twin plasma cannons. It staggered, the gunfire choking off, and suddenly Jennifer was there with an assault rifle, taking advantage of the chaos and emptying the whole magazine into its face. The thing staggered as sparks and oil and blood flew, then it collapsed into a smoking heap.

She could see a pair of armored figures across the trench now, killing the zombies over there. Reinforcements? Had to be.

Kyra focused on mopping up the stragglers now that they had turned the tide. She switched over to her shotgun and went to work, emptying it twice blowing the heads off some surviving Imps and Pinkies.

Finally, the gunfire fell silent. As she reloaded, she began walking towards their side of the trench and focused on the two figures.

They were familiar…

"Linaweaver!" she cried finally.

"In the flesh," he replied.

"I'm here, too," Falcheck said.

"Good, we're all together," Kyra said as she looked around. It seemed as though everyone had survived that ambush intact.

"We've found the main armory and the control hub, but they're locked down," Linaweaver reported. "And there doesn't seem to be a way over…"

"Okay, wait there, we'll see what we can do from over here," Kyra replied.

"You all should get over here, you're going to want to see this," Carpenter said. He was standing at the threshold of the area the skeleton had come out of. Beyond, the walls were covered in what for the life of her looked like books. Like a library.

"The hell?" Jack muttered as they all approached him.

"Maybe there's something useful inside," Jennifer said.

"Hopefully. Uh, Hollenshead, would you go farther down and help Powell secure the area, check for things?" Kyra asked.

"On it," he replied.

She glanced at Jack briefly, but he was busy staring at the weird library. Well, there was another thing that might get weird. He was definitely more qualified to give orders than she was, even though she outranked him, as he'd had more experience with Hell. Him and Jennifer both. Honestly though, she'd gladly pass that torch off.

But for now she wanted to see this library. Walking in carefully beyond the threshold with Jack, Jennifer, Carpenter, and Cortez, she saw that the room's walls were literally covered in bookshelves packed with books. There were some blue-burning torches scattered around, and several more corpses, as well as more signs of UAC occupation. For a moment, she was utterly stumped as to why they hadn't pulled all the books off the shelves to study them. And then she grabbed the nearest one and opened it up, staring inside.

"What the shit?" she muttered.

"What does it say?" Carpenter asked.

"It's blank." She flipped through the pages, then tossed it aside. "It's just blank pages." She pulled another one off. "Same thing." She tried two more, each from different shelves. "They're all blank, probably. Nothing on the covers, either, or the backs or spines."

"Why?" Jack asked, doing the same. "Why was this made?"

"I think they're mimicking our reality," Kyra said.

"But why? Also, how?"

"I don't know why, but as for how, we've never really seen technology that didn't either come from the UAC, or resemble it. Although I'm willing to bet any facsimile workstations or consoles we came across that just resembled them don't actually work. I doubt they even turn on. But we know that they can use technology. I mean they can teleport for Christ's sake."

"Maybe that's just a natural ability?" Jennifer asked.

"I don't think so. Maybe for one or two of them, but they're clearly splicing flesh and technology. That spider fuckface out there. The skeletons. That CyberDemon thing you described. I fought one, by the way, and fuck ever doing that again. But clearly they have the means to use technology. So maybe there's technology somewhere we just can't see. And it's copying and generating our world into its own. It would make sense. This library, so much of the other stuff I've seen, it has the feel of procedural generation, but like...malfunctioning procedural generation."

"Remind me what procedural generation is?" Jack asked.

"It's like when you're playing a video game and instead of designing a level, the computer just assembles a random level based off a bunch of objects and items and characters within certain constraints."

"Oh, right, yeah. Okay." He looked around. "It does actually feel like that. Actually...fuck, that would make a lot of sense and account for a lot of the shit I've seen so far. It's all just so...random. Like random and abstract and chaotic, but not purely chaotic. But why would they do that? How would it help them?"

"Maybe they have no idea what they're doing?" Kyra asked. "Maybe they're just...rolling on, fighting a war that got started a billion years ago, and they literally don't know any other type of life? Fuck, these things look like copies of each other almost, right? Maybe they're machines? Or clones? I mean, you said it yourself: killing that big spider-brain fucked up the invasion of Mars and its two moons right? And that's what we're doing now. So obviously there's some level of control being exerted over them somehow…"

She shook her head suddenly and sighed. "I guess it doesn't matter right now. This is for the eggheads to figure out later...and I think I see a button."

They all followed her gaze as she stared deeper into the 'library'. There was a skull embedded in the wall, though it didn't look human. Kyra walked over to it and, after a moment of hesitation, pushed on it. There was a sharp click that made her jump, but nothing happened. She jumped again as her radio clicked on.

"You got it, there's a bridge now," Linaweaver reported.

"Well, good for that at least," she said, turning back and rejoining the others.

"Also good news: we found a key-card," Powell reported.

"Thank fucking shit," Jack muttered. "Let's get a move on."

They all came back to the main room and crossed over a bridge that had risen up out of the acid to connect the two sides of the huge ingress. They hurried across, as there was still some toxic acid clinging to the surface and their boots hissed and sizzled wherever they touched. Soon enough, they were with Linaweaver and Falcheck.

"We've cleared out this side, though there wasn't much," Linaweaver said as he led them over to the only door on that side of the room. Through it was another massive area, roughly shaped like an L. There was a lot more wood paneling around, and more shelves full of more empty books, and more broken UAC stuff.

A lot of blood, though there were no bodies on this side.

That set Kyra on edge, though she couldn't quite articulate why.

"Far as we can tell, that's the only way yet gone," Linaweaver said, pointing ahead and a bit to the right of where they'd come in at a silver door with the UAC logo. It had blue trim. "Everywhere else is just smashed up and broken."

"You sure it's the armory and control area?" Jack asked.

"Yeah, we found a map of this place on the wall. That's what it's labeled as. The room beyond is a large sort of a checkpoint, and from there you can get to Security and Command Control."

"Hope to fucking God they've got weapons, because I am almost dry," Jack muttered.

"Yep," Hollenshead replied as a few of the others grunted in agreement.

"Here's hoping," Kyra said as they approached the door.

Once everyone was in position, she slotted the key and opened the door.

She took one step through the door, weapon at the ready, and stopped dead in her tracks.

And stared for a very long time.

Well...at least she now knew where all the bodies had gone.

"Dear God…" Carpenter whispered.

No one else spoke for several long moments.

The room beyond had been emptied of anything the UAC once might have had in there. The floor and the walls were splattered with blood, a great deal of it, but that was nothing compared to the ceiling, which was literally completely coated in the stuff, almost as if someone had intentionally painted on a thick layer of it.

But that was nothing compared to what actually occupied the room.

Spread out on about two dozen spikes stuck in the floor were corpses: Marines, technicians, scientists, civilians even. They were all impaled, skewered right through the chest. And, from the ceiling overhead, another two dozen or so hung. Some by their necks, some by their feet. Some had been skinned, some were complete, some were little more than skinless torsos and heads. But that wasn't even the worst part.

Kyra jolted into action when she saw one of the skinless torsos twitch. They hung maybe five feet ahead of her. She moved forward, needing to be sure that she hadn't seen an illusion or trick of the light. As she did, the skinned torso's eyes suddenly snapped open and they let out a nearly silent, strangled shriek.

"Holy shit!" Cortez screamed.

Kyra didn't hesitate, drawing her pistol and putting a round in the poor bastard's head.

"How is that possible? There's no way," Powell muttered. "There's no fuckin' way-"

They froze as one of the skewered corpses began to shift and twitch.

"Oh God," Jack moaned and hurried forward. Kyra joined him.

The man had once been a Marine. The tattered remnants of his uniform said that much. His body was covered in cuts and his stomach had been slit, his intestines pulled out. The spike was through the center of his chest.

She had no idea how he was still alive.

But he was. Horribly, he endured.

His eyes were open now. They rolled in his head, then focused on the two of them.

"F-finish it," he gasped, almost inaudible. "Finish it. Please," he begged.

This time Jack did the dirty job, putting his pistol to his temple and squeezing the trigger. The man let out what sounded like a sigh of relief as he went slack, his last breath escaping him, delivering him from his torment.

"Spread out!" Kyra snapped. "Make sure they're dead."

When they had finished their task and gathered at the door that led to the armory, the mood was considerably more somber. No one spoke as Powell got the door open, and the mood didn't rise even when they saw that it was, if not untouched, then not completely raided. There were a lot of weapons and crates of ammunition scattered around, including some higher end stuff. Kyra snagged a rocket launcher and several rockets, more ammo for all her weapons, plasma rifle included, and even a few more grenades.

Once everyone was loaded up, they moved on to the final section. She expected there to be a bit more trouble getting into the main room, but there wasn't. Command Control was pretty busted up as well, but the central workstation was in a protected area and, thankfully, remained mostly undamaged from all the fighting.

"Okay, lemme see what I can dig up," Powell said as he settled in at the controls.

Kyra found a seat that would support her armor's weight and sat down in it. She watched the others move about the large room while Powell worked. They moved slowly, as though in a daze, and she'd seen the motion often enough. She was sure she'd been moving like that. Shock was a hell of a thing. War, brutality, violence, bloodshed, slaughter...you could get used to it. And by now, they all had, even counting out this latest change in their lives.

But there were still moments where particularly brutal savagery got to you.

Or, hell, maybe it was just the wrong thing at the wrong time.

She remembered doing a patrol through a bombed out city somewhere in Estonia and coming across a stuffed rabbit laying on the side of the road.

She'd broken down without warning and cried for twenty minutes, and she was already a five year Sergeant at that point. She'd seen men and women blown to bits, walls painted in blood and gore. It was downright mind-blowing what a fifty caliber bullet did to a human body. Or a simple fragmentation grenade.

But that rabbit…

She was sure everyone had at least one story like that.

But then, sometimes, you found yourself freaking out over the things that you were supposed to. Like a roomful of skewered, hung, skinned people that had been mostly tortured to death. She suddenly wondered about that whole 'normal life' thing.

Would she ever be able to sleep without having a nightmare again?

She realized that at some point Jack had gone back out into the horror room. He returned a bit later and spoke with Linaweaver, then Falcheck, then he headed her way.

"What's up?" she asked.

"You come across a Mexican woman with a cocky attitude, name of Diaz?" he asked.

She thought about it for a long moment, then shook her head. "Definitely not alive," she replied, "but I don't really remember seeing any corpses like that. Although…"

"Although most of this is a blur and we've seen hundreds of corpses. I know she isn't out there at least," he replied. "And the others haven't come across her."

"She's part of your team?" Kyra asked.

He nodded. "Yeah. She's the only one unaccounted for...what about you?"

Kyra sighed. "This is everyone who made it out of Antarctica alive. Linaweaver's the only surviving member of my team. The rest are from the station down there."

"Hey guys, get in here! I've got something kinda big," Powell called.

"Great," Kyra muttered, "I love surprises."

Jack offered her a hand and she let him pull her to a standing position. They all moved over to the sectioned off area and joined Powell.

"What's up?" Jack asked.

"So, UAC had more than they were letting on for sure. And...you were right, Morgan," Powell said.

"About?" she asked.

"I heard you over the radio, when we were searching. You said we haven't seen their technology yet, but it must be here somewhere. Well, it is. The UAC found it. Some kind of weird alien or demonic database...something. Somewhere nearby. They found it early on and spent pretty much all their time trying to fix it, then crack it, and then translate it. They didn't get much, but there's enough here for us. They knew about the big bad demon, but it looks like they thought it was a corpse. They didn't know it was still alive," Powell explained.

"Jesus," Carpenter muttered.

"Yep."

"Any specifics on how to kill it?" Jack asked. "Or what it looks like? Or what it even is?"

"No, but a lot of this is corrupted. Really, I've just got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we have a clear path of teleporters from here to the big bad...they have a name for it. They called it the Icon of Sin."

"...okay, that's fucking creepy as shit," Hollenshead muttered.

"Yeah...God, what the hell even is this thing? The Spider Mastermind was the size of a goddamned house. How big is this thing?" Jack asked.

"Again, dunno. And here's the bad news. The only way to actually get to the Icon of Sin is to unlock its 'protection', whatever that means. This is done by traveling to two different locations, what's translated roughly as the 'Spirit World' and the 'Terminal Blood'. Luckily for us, someone here wasn't a complete moron and was paranoid that the thing wasn't quite dead, and so they marked for a demolition team the location of the two devices generating its 'protection'."

"So we break back into teams, hit these places, blow up some shit, and then teleport on to the Icon of Sin?" Jack asked.

"Uh, yeah, basically," Powell replied.

"Fucking great," Jennifer muttered.

"We have a plan, at least."

"Half a plan."

"Better than no plan. Powell, chop out the relevant data on this mission and package it, send it to all our suits. Then, package everything you can from that data drive and do the same thing. I want this data getting back to Earth," Jack said.

"You got it," he replied, typing rapidly.

"Kyra...I think it makes the most sense if we split back up. You take your people, I take mine. We each hit one of these places, meet back up at the Icon of Sin, toast it, go home and celebrate. Make sense?" he asked.

"Makes sense to me," she replied. "Who gets to go where?"

"I dunno...I guess I'll take the Spirit World. Whatever the hell that is," Jack suggested. "Cool?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll deal with the Blood...whatever it was."

"Let's get ready."

They began checking over their gear, and once Powell got the data packets uploaded to them, they tracked down the pair of teleports, said their goodbyes, and dug deeper into Hell.