EPISODE FOUR
–PRISON IS HELL–

They had names for it.

Slam City. Incarnate. The Hellevator. The Pit.

The moniker they scrawled across official documents read Carmack Correctional Institute.

That one was particularly galling for a reason Eric could never properly articulate. Maybe it was because it was a lie, but what wasn't nowadays? Maybe it was because they were just so damn blatant about it. They didn't even have the decency to admit that it was a prison, and had the nerve to proudly proclaim that they did anything even resembling 'correction' within its bleak, titanium, micrometeorite-scarred walls. But it was something deeper than that, and he could never give it voice.

For a time he'd stuck to calling it the Black Hole.

But eventually, and especially now, that simply shortened to The Hole.

It was where they sent you to die if you pissed off the government enough. Any government, really. He knew for a fact that it was built, run, and powered entirely by the Union Aerospace Corporation, lashed to a ball of rock some eighty miles in diameter, hurting through the vast gulf of space between Mars and Jupiter.

If nowhere was a place, it would be The Hole.

Eric imagined that in older times, perhaps even fifty years ago, the place would be a blacksite, not officially recognized by any government, corporation, or law. But the UAC didn't even have to hide their most egregious of sins anymore. They could commit them more or less in public. So long as they pulled the curtain first.

He'd heard about it for years. First as rumors whispered in shadowy corners, then as something a bit more solid as the years wore on, and finally as a not-so-gentle threat as the UAC gained more and more popularity. It was the place they sent the Marines that went really bad, the military personnel who really fucked up.

And Eric Crowe, well...he hadn't fucked up.

But the nine dead men would've said otherwise.

Were they still alive.

And now here he was. At the end of a series of shuttle rides and long, boring waits in cold cells with poor lighting and far too many hours spent in several courtrooms with MPs everywhere. When they had finally caught him, Eric had almost run. Almost. But where did he have to go? If he'd had anything even remotely resembling a life, maybe he would have. Certainly he had enough skills and talent and experience to slip away and disappear into the boiling, seething mass of cancerous life society was today.

Except he knew that wasn't true. He knew he wasn't going to run. He knew from the moment they woke him up with three gun barrels and slapped the cuffs on him in the middle of the night that he wasn't even going to deny it. It should have been an open and shut case, and, in truth, it was. They just wanted to parade him around in front of the cameras, because he was exactly the kind of criminal they so desperately sought nowadays.

A mad dog killer who wasn't crazy enough to be declared insane and who wasn't sorry for what he had done.

Of course, if he'd been able to get a word in edgewise, he would've been their worst nightmare, and that was exactly why, as soon as they were done with all the bullshit, they'd up-shipped him straight to hell.

Straight to The Hole.

The Lieutenant who had helped escort him to this very shuttle that he now was locked into had, just before boarding, given him an evil grin and told him he was never going to see real daylight again. That was about the time he'd learned that sadistic killer Eric Crowe was not as contained as they'd like him to be.

He'd broken the man's nose, arm, and four fingers, and had ripped out a good, solid chunk of skin from the guy's cheek with his teeth.

Medical and cosmetic technology being what it was today, he'd go back to being a pretty boy with a chest of medals by the end of the week...but Eric knew that he'd wake up in a cold sweat remembering that moment in time for the rest of his life. And that was almost enough, because he knew the type, knew the kind of the shit the bastard got up to on his off hours.

"Psst."

Eric was staring out the window. They were coming up on the asteroid now.

"Hey man, psst."

They were all locked very firmly into their chairs, not even a way to scratch an itch, and Eric knew if they weren't, he'd have this annoying jackass tapping him repeatedly just about now. Not that he actually believed in it, but he figured the universe had been doing him a favor by giving him a transport partner who was passed out for whatever reason.

Only now he was awake and annoying.

"What?" Eric asked finally, when it became apparently the man wasn't going to give up.

"What are you in for, bro?" he whispered, aiming a sidelong glance at the nearest guard.

"Murder. Nine counts," Eric grunted.

"Nine...wait, wait, wait. You're that fucking-that psycho Marine serial killer, aren't you?" he whispered harshly. "That Crow guy?"

Eric said nothing, just stared at him for a long moment, then turned his attention back to the window beside him. The man began muttering quietly to himself, or maybe to the next guy over. They were packed in three to a row, and it seemed like there was a lot of fresh meat being brought in on this flight. He still couldn't see The Hole, somewhere ahead of them, and that was fine. He'd been told often enough that once he got to the end of the line, it was the last thing he'd ever see, because no one ever came back from this place.

In truth, Eric believed them.

And he didn't care.

"End of the line, maggots," was the pronouncement that welcomed them to The Hole.

Eric had managed to catch a brief glimpse through the window as they'd come in for their landing, but what he saw hadn't been all that impressive. A grim little collection of buildings clustered together on the surface, almost like they were huddled up out of fear. He figured that most of it was probably underground. Had to be, for a prison.

The shuttle finished settled into place. He looked ahead, at the guard who'd spoken. Two of them stood at the head of the human cargo bay, grinning like sharks, eyes hidden behind the tinted faceplates of their helmets.

"Rise, dead men!" the other one declared, and punched something on the wall behind him.

The harnesses that held them in place unlocked and disappeared back into the seats. The fifty or so men rose to their feet, rubbing wrists and necks and shoulders.

"Prisoners will not speak unless spoken to! Prisoners will not move unless instructed! We do not ask nicely and we do not ask twice! If any single one of you scumfuckers tries anything, we are authorized to-"

One of the men nearest to the guards let out an inarticulate scream and lunged towards them. The one who was speaking raised his pistol and fired off a single round, punching a hole into the prisoner's forehead. Several others cried out in disgust as they were sprayed by a fine mist of blood and brain matter.

"To do that! Your lives are now over! They belong, in their entirety, to the United Aerospace Corporation! We can, and will, kill you at any moment we so choose! Step out of line?" He raised his pistol and several of the men nearest to him ducked instinctively. "Bang! Give us attitude?! Bang! We've got your name! We've got your ass! Now, everyone shut the fuck up and follow us in an orderly fashion!"

Eric was honestly a little surprised that he felt no fear.

He was sure that he'd be at least somewhat afraid, positive that he would taste, however faintly, that metallic edge of terror. But nothing came. Not as he marched out, slow and shackled like the rest of them, into the aisle. Not as he slowly followed the rest of the fresh meat down the aisle and into a noisy bay where the sound of machinery clanged and chattered. Not as he cycled through the airlock with a handful of others and then marched down a ramp and into a big hangar that smelled of sweat and oil.

Nothing came.

To be a Marine in this day and age required either a certain level of insanity or a mastery of fear. Fear was a survival mechanism, but, like all tools, it could harm you if you misused it. It could kill you. After fifteen years in the Marines, after a thousand combat missions all over the world (and a few in outer space), Eric had more than mastered his fear. At a certain point, he had forgotten it. And, he was now convinced, when he had begun hunting and slaughtering his own for their unforgivable sins, he had killed it.

A life without fear was...confusing, to say the least.

As they came out of the hangar bay and into a long metallic corridor that reeked of humanity, he strongly considered rushing one of the guards. He was fast enough that he could probably kill or at least seriously injured one of them. And certainly these assholes had it coming. This was basically a blacksite, a secret location where not even God could peek. And people who had that sort of absolute power tended to abuse it in a maximum fashion.

Eric would die in his attack, he knew that for sure. They would blow his brains out as easily as that other guy. That was why he wanted to do it. It wasn't so much that he wanted to die, more so that he no longer saw much point in living. Certainly the notion of living here was tremendously unappealing. Much as his present experience was shockingly similar to bootcamp, he didn't relish the notion of being a prisoner.

He actually began tensing up as he approached another faceless guard, but then something inside of him said 'no'.

It said: wait.

Why? he thought. Why wait? Why not just die now?

His instincts had kept him alive in some absolutely insane situations, encounters that nobody should have walked away from. But somehow he had. They were almost never wrong. And they spoke to him now.

Wait.

As he continued shuffling forward, relaxing, looking around, it dawned on him. Eric had been a killer for fifteen years now. Taking another life no longer bothered him, but, despite what everyone thought about him, he was not psychotic. He was not detached from reality. He had not lost his grip. If anything, he had tightened it. He did not kill indiscriminately. Really, he was still killing to protect, more so than ever before.

He killed bad people.

And this was a place constituted almost entirely of bad people.

Not all of them, he knew that much. While he had no illusions about his own innocence, Eric knew that the UAC and the United Marine Corps were all too happy to toss away the occasional sacrificial lamb. There were probably at least a few good men in here. So he would have to be careful. But he could kill in here.

He could continue to do his work.

Eric found a small, grim smile creeping onto his face.

Time had lost a lot of meaning to Eric over the years.

Its measure could change in a snap. When the bullets were flying and the blood was spilling, seconds could last hours. When you were hurrying up and waiting, hours could last days. When you were in bed with a friendly woman, an hour could become a minute. Now, though, time seemed to be seeping away into the dark corners of the universe.

Perhaps an hour passed as he was processed. Probably three. He waited in line, shuffled forward, finally came before a bored clerk with a twitching right eye and a sort of glazed cruelty. He asked Eric questions, and Eric answered them. Mostly just confirming his identity and, interestingly, his mental acuity. From there, he shuffled and waited, shuffled and waited, and then he went through some kind of scanner that took longer than usual.

He was in there for a good two minutes.

What the hell were they scanning for that took so long?

More questions he wouldn't get an answer to. And then he was shuffling again. Down another long corridor, the walls of which were mostly rock behind plexiglass and steel beams. He could sense some sort of shift, then. They were close to the true end of the line, at last. The guards would say something to the prisoners before removing their shackles and then shoving them through a big door. He noticed they were occasionally looking at him specifically, and muttering and chuckling to each other. He couldn't bring himself to care as to why.

When it was his turn, they unshackled him and then pulled him to one side.

"Stay," one of them said, sticking a finger in his face.

Eric resisted the shockingly strong impulse to bite it off and spit it back into the man's face. He'd done it before, he knew that it wasn't all that difficult to bite through a finger bone if you were using your side teeth and not your front ones. He waited until they had sent the last of the prisoners through the door, then both guards turned to look at him. Even though their faces were hidden completely behind tinted visors, he could just tell they were giving him shit-eating grins.

"So you're him, huh? Eric Crowe. I bet you think you're just the baddest motherfucker in the whole solar system, huh?" he asked.

When Eric realized they actually expected an answer, he just shrugged.

They both chuckled darkly. "Well, if you want the truth, we actually do got one of the baddest motherfuckers in the solar system locked up in here. And he's gonna be your cellmate. Someone paid good money to arrange that."

They took off his shackles and then one of them put a hand on his shoulder, guided him over to the door. It let out onto a circular catwalk that extended away in both directions, giving a magnificent view of the vast chamber that was his new home. It was a little like the inside of a beehive. There were some dozen or so rows of catwalks above and below him, all of them rings giving access to stairwells and rows of cell doors.

In the center of the vast room was a watchtower that, at first glance, almost seemed to hover there. There were connections to the catwalks at all.

"Your cell is down there. Number six sixty six. Now, Crowe, do me a favor. I got a hundred creds riding on you making it a whole sixty seconds. Because you look like a scrappy motherfucker."

"I'm a dead man then, right?" Eric asked.

They both laughed. "Yep!"

"Then I see no reason not to do this," he said, already reaching up. He got hold of one of the guard's fingers and snapped it like a twig.

"Motherfucker!" he roared, shoving Eric forward and punching a button that secured the door behind him. "If V don't finish you off, I'm gonna personally curbstomp you into a urinal!"

"What's your name, maggot?" Eric replied, staring at the man through the bars.

"Johns," he snapped before he could think better of it, then he grunted and walked off. "Going to the fucking infirmary."

"You dumbass," the other guard said, laughing after him.

Eric took a look around and located his cell.

Well, time to meet V and see what all the fuss was about.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: And so we're back!

I decided to fire up Episode Four right now because on this day, as I am writing this note, 30 years ago, id Software released DOOM in its original incarnation. December 10th, 1993, at 5AM Central Standard Time. Thanks to that particular fact, we have a lot of cool games and some books and a pair of movies and a really ridiculous comic, and this fan fiction!

I'm going to try and keep up with it better this time around. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer, and I want to say, sincerely, it's great to be back here again. On July 3rd, 2016, I posted the first chapter of this story, and some of you reading this now were there then. But whether or not you've been following along for 7 and a 1/2 years or you just started reading, I'm happy that you're here.

One last thing: FFNet seems to be broken. Stats no longer register. While I've come a long way from worrying about them, I can't claim to be free of them entirely. I like to know how many are reading. With that in mind, I would request that you leave reviews to let me know you're here and what you think.

Now, let's plunge deeper into the dark universe of DOOM.