Watts gasped awake, sitting straight up in his bed.
"What is it?" Fletcher asked from somewhere nearby. "What's wrong?"
He gasped again and snapped his gaze right and down. She was propped up on one elbow, looking up at him, then around the surrounding environment.
"...nightmare," he managed as he realized that he was fine. "Sorry."
She reached up and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pulling him back down. Reluctantly, he laid down, and she moved against him beneath the blankets. "It's okay," she said, wrapping an arm around his chest and holding him close. "I understand. I get them, too. You've been taking your Insomnium, right?"
"Yeah," he replied, his pulse dropping back down to something more manageable.
"Do you remember the nightmare?"
"...no, I don't," he murmured.
"I usually don't remember them now, either."
They laid there in silence for a few minutes more. He didn't remember the nightmare, only the emotions that it had left him with. Chief among them being stark, yammering terror that jettisoned all other thoughts.
Watts finally looked over at his clock. Only a few minutes before his alarm went off. He reached over and killed it, then laid back and stared at the ceiling. The drugs seemed to be helping, because already he was beginning to feel better. Or maybe it was Fletcher. He glanced over at her. She'd stayed with him all through the night.
"Why did you leave, the night before last?" he asked suddenly. He'd meant to ask her but kept forgetting all of yesterday.
"Sorry about that," she replied. "I kind of...I don't know, really. Panicked, I guess? I know I came on strong and confident but it's actually been a little while since I've been with anyone, even in a one-night-stand capacity. I thought...I didn't know what I was thinking. Sorry."
"It's fine, I'm just glad you came back. You're really awesome."
She laughed. "What a ringing endorsement." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Come on, we need to get up, brush our teeth, shower, all that crap. And since we missed out on it yesterday, I'm totally willing to have wake-up sex with you."
Watts grinned. "You've just been upgraded from awesome to excellent."
"Hurry up, okay?" Fletcher asked.
"I will," Watts promised.
He slipped into the infirmary. After he'd heard a couple of Marines talking about Murphy being locked up in a nearby infirmary, instead of the brig, he knew he had to take the chance. Because he just had to know.
There was no one around.
Quickly moving between some examination tables, he opened a door at the back of the room and went inside. Here was a corridor and alongside it were patient rooms. A couple of them were made of tough material to hold more unruly patients. There was no one around here, either, no guards or doctors.
Watts thought it was strange, but he'd seen an odd trend lately in Command Control. Everyone was getting busier. Too much was happening. There'd been a couple of rumors of disappearing personnel. Not from teams going into the other world, but here in the base. And there were also rumors of people snapping, going crazy. And then there were all the power outages that had the technical staff overworked and frustrated.
So when he found Murphy, locked up in a patient room, it was just the two of them.
"Murphy," Watts whispered, looking around again. "Murphy, what happened with you and Wilson?" he asked.
The guy looked terrible, but more in control of himself than when they'd first found him. His eyes were bloodshot and darkish shadows lay beneath each. He was pale and gaunt. He walked up to the glass, staring into Watts's eyes.
"It took him," he whispered.
"What took him, Murphy? What was it? What did it look like?" he asked. Murphy shook his head, his eyes becoming unfocused. Recalling his first time coming to the other world and how Kaplan had dealt with him, Watts decided to try and reach him on a different level. He squared his shoulders and stared hard into the man's eyes.
"Report, Marine!" he snapped.
Murphy jolted and looked back at Watts. That seemed to get his attention. "It was humanoid," he whispered harshly, "skin like leather. Big, six four, maybe six five. Covered in these bony spikes. Huge mouth. And those eyes...red eyes...it took him..."
After that, Murphy would say no more.
Watts didn't blame him, because he didn't want to hear any more.
Swallowing his fear, or trying to, he wished the man good luck, turned and left.
"Hades Squad, report to Armory Eight immediately. Repeat, Hades Squad, report to Armory Eight immediately."
Watts looked up at the intercom with a mixture of fear and frustration, then he looked back down at Fletcher, who had the same look. Behind her, across the room, he spied Davis, who locked eyes with him. His gaze revealed a similar mix of emotions. Something had gone wrong. Watts then looked down at the tray of breakfast foods in his hands. He and Fletcher had just gotten their meals and were heading to sit down.
"Let's go," Fletcher said with an irritated sigh.
A couple other people got up as well. They all converged at the dirty tray line, dropped off their meals, and marched out the door. As they began making their way through Phobos Labs, they were joined by the other members of their squad, everyone but Kaplan. Watts couldn't help but feel a growing, icy fear worming its way through his intestines. He kept imagining that thing Murphy had described.
Was the guy insane?
Or had he been driven insane by what he'd seen?
They reached the armory and found Kaplan already suiting up.
"Get the lead out, Marines!" he snapped. "Eggheads wants us there ASAP."
A string of 'Yes, Sergeant!'s sounded off and the group split up. They managed to get into their suits, grab their gear, and be out into the corridor in five minutes. Watts felt his pulse picking up as they got into the tram, which was put at a higher speed than normal. The dead gray surface of Phobos flashed past.
Overhead, Mars loomed, enormous and red and ominous.
No one spoke on the ride over. Watts thought about asking Kaplan if he knew what was going on, but realized that the man probably didn't. If he did, he likely would have divulged that to the troops. Although he'd kept quiet about certain things before, this was different. This felt like a combat situation, and you wanted your soldiers to know the threat beforehand if at all possible. Otherwise, you tended to end up with more dead than was necessary.
The tram slid to a halt into the airlock and was cycled through.
As they got out, Watts noticed that there were a lot more Z-Sec soldiers around and they all looked tense. Definitely not a good sign. They made their way into the anomaly room. The place was bustling with activity.
"What's the word?" Kaplan asked their handler as he led Hades Squad down the stairway towards the Phobos Anomaly.
The man seemed distracted and he was talking with someone over a headset. He quickly wrapped up the conversation and turned his attention to them. "Nothing major," he said, though it felt like a lie, "we've lost communications with Gehenna Squad and Base Camp, but we're pretty sure that it's some kind of equipment malfunction."
"I see," Kaplan replied. He didn't sound satisfied with that answer.
"Fire it up!" their handler called.
Watts watched, feeling that same sense of unease, laced with dread and foreboding this time, as the Anomaly went through its warmup procedure. He glanced at Fletcher, who looked right back at him. He saw his own concern mirrored in her gaze.
"All right, let's go. Stay sharp," Kaplan said through their group comms channel.
They walked through the portal.
Watts snapped into existence.
"This is Sergeant Kaplan to Sergeant Green, please respond immediately, over," Kaplan said.
Silence was his only answer.
"Shit," Kaplan muttered. "Form up! Guns at ready!"
Watts brought his shotgun to bear. It was probably nothing, he tried to tell himself. Just an equipment malfunction or some kind of interference. This was another dimension after all, or, well, it probably was. Who knew what kind of things could screw with radio signals? But he couldn't make himself believe it.
Something was gravely wrong here.
They moved slowly but steadily through the crevice that connected the plateau to Base Camp. Watts strained his ears against the silence, trying to detect anything that shouldn't be there, but all he could hear were the others and his own thundering heartbeat. They kept walking until they reached the opening.
"Oh fuck," Kaplan whispered, his professionalism slipping.
Watts didn't blame the man. The front gate they'd passed through just yesterday had been forced open and periodically shot sprays of golden sparks into the air. Kaplan seemed to get hold of himself once more and made quick hand gestures to the squad, indicating who should go where. Two of the Marines broke left, two broke right and the rest followed him cautiously in through the broken gate. Watts kept his shotgun ready to fire.
It only got worse once they were inside.
Base Camp had been shredded. There were deep gouges in several of the walls, what looked like claw marks, and there was fresh blood everywhere. Spent shell casings, too, hundreds of them. But no bodies.
"Any contacts?" Kaplan asked, his voice harsh and strained.
Everyone reported back negative.
"Fuck," he snapped. "Bryant, Davis, Berry, get up on the watchtowers and make sure nothing's sneaking up on us. Everyone else, with me."
Kaplan led them into one of the structures, the largest one, which turned out to be a combination security center and communications shack. The place was a wreck: pools and sprays of blood, broken monitors, smashed furniture. Kaplan ignored it all.
"Wong, get on the comms, link us with Command Control."
The primary tech nodded, moved over to the comms console, which was still relatively intact, and set to work.
Several minutes passed in tense, forbidding silence.
"Something's blocking the signal," Wong said finally. "I can't get through."
"All right, I remember that in an emergency, Base Camp is supposed to have a signal booster. Where is it?" Kaplan asked.
"Hold on," Wong replied. He turned and moved across the room to a pile of crates stacked in one of the corners. "It's in one of these."
"Then let's get opening."
Kaplan, Watts, and the others spent the next several minutes prying open the crates. Watts could feel the tension ratcheting up inside of him. They had to get back, get Command Control to re-open the portal and let them through, because clearly something horrific had gone on here and they were going to need a shitload more soldiers to deal with it.
"Here it is," Wong said, straightening up, holding a small, triangular device of black metal. He checked it over, then powered it on. "It's functional, but the closer we get to where the portal naturally opens up, the better."
"All right, head back there. Watts, go with him. The rest of us will hold down the fort," Kaplan said.
"Yes, Sergeant," Watts replied, tossing one more worried glance at Fletcher before following Wong back out of the room.
They made their way out of the base and through the narrow crevice once more. They moved as quickly as they could. Watts could sense that Wong wanted to get the hell out of here just as much as he did. They reached the plateau and as soon as they did, Wong knelt and began setting up the device. As he did, suddenly, a tremendous roar cut through the air. It wasn't just a roar though, it was a roar amplified a million times, a noise that broke the sound barrier, a noise that was like one planet crashing into another.
It sounded like Armageddon.
It shook the entire area and Watts thought it would burst his eardrums. He screamed, but the sound was utterly lost in the malevolent storm of this inhuman roar that engulfed the entire region. He clapped his hands uselessly over his helmet and fell to his knees, unable to do anything else until, finally, the roar began to fade.
His ears ringing, eyes watering, hearing slowly returning, Watts stumbled to his feet. He found himself staring out over the huge vista that the plateau overlooked. He saw the awful buildings, the ugly formations, the rivers of blood…
And, among all that, like a colony of ants on the move, he saw dark, shifting figures. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Even more.
He couldn't stop staring.
Behind him, he heard screaming, and gunfire.
And inhuman roaring.
The end was here.