It was unreal to be back here in Mars City, to be viewing the same level of devastation here as he'd witnessed on Phobos and Deimos. Jack was a pessimist, although really, given how shitty things had turned out, he'd call himself a realist, but somewhere, in the back of his head, he had somehow allowed himself to believe that Mars City was a safe zone, untouched by the horrors of hell. Why? Why had he believed that? Why had he let himself? Probably because he hadn't even realized it, because he'd gotten too good at thinking about 'right here, right now'. But no, here he was in a corridor of dented metal and smeared blood, with a pair of bullet-riddled bodies and a carpet of spent shell casings for company.
Well, that and some fellow Marines.
Despite everything, despite the deaths and the horror and the exhaustion, it did feel genuinely good to have some real backup. They must be as exhausted as he was, but McNeil, Pavel, and Sanders all moved with a solid military precision as they navigated the bloodied, chromium corridors of the city. McNeil was leading the way.
Jack moved up alongside him. "What's the quickest way to the armory?" he asked.
"There's a big transitional area up ahead, that's the most direct route. The only problem is that every time we've gone through there, it's attracted a lot of attention," McNeil replied.
"We can handle it," Jack said.
"I suppose so. So...you really made it through Hell?"
"Yep. Hell and back. Or whatever that other dimension is. It sure looks like Hell, bad enough to be it, but...I'm not so sure. I don't think you get a shotgun and a fighting chance in Hell, you know what I mean?" he replied.
"Yeah. Everyone calls these things demons, but...it does make me wonder."
"What they really are. I think they might be aliens. Or maybe even genetically engineered creatures." He shrugged. "In the end, I don't think we're ever going to find out, but does it really matter? They're obviously not friendly, and are going to engage us in a fight to the death, and we can kill them without too much trouble."
"You raise a good point," McNeil said. "The transitional area is up ahead."
"Get ready, Marines," Jack said, slipping his finger inside the trigger guard of his Raptor SMG. He missed his plasma gun.
They got up to the door that served as ingress into the next area. Jack and McNeil got up on either side of it and, once the others were in position, he hit the access button. Waited a second. Nothing happened. Waited a few more seconds. Nothing continued to happen. Jack poked his head and SMG out and saw nothing, just a big, empty, two-story room with lots of doors. "Clear," he said as he stepped out.
McNeil followed him, as did the others in a strung-out line. They split up, each covering different portions of the room. Jack came to stand near the center of it, scoping the area out, waiting for something to happen, but it seemed like they were actually in the clear. "Which door is it?" he asked to McNeil.
"That one, up there," he replied, pointing.
"All right, Marines, let's-"
He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence as an Imp issued a hissing shriek and a fireball came at him from the ceiling. Jack jerked aside, looking up, wondering where the hell it had come from, and spotted it. The thing was hanging from inside a broken out vent shaft. He jerked his gun up and fired, spraying a burst of red-hot lead at the awful thing and splitting its head open. He sidestepped as it lost its grip when it died and fell out of the vent, slamming heavily into the deckplates in a spray of dark red blood.
That seemed to signal the attack.
Most of the doors in the area opened up to admit new horrors: zombies, Demons, more Imps. Everyone opened up on the living wave of horror as it attacked them. Muzzle flare lit up the area, monsters roared as gunfire sounded and blood sprayed across the chromed, UAC-stamped walls. He put a trio of shots into an Imp's screaming mouth, then adjusted aim and put a round through one eye of a decaying zombie that had once been a technician, switched targets again and emptied the rest of the magazine into a Demon.
By the time he had slapped a fresh magazine in, Jack realized that they'd stemmed the tide of monsters. He looked around to double-check, and saw that, yes, they were alone. Well, damn, it was nice to have a five-person team.
How long would that last? He wondered.
They finished reloading and hurried up the stairs, then through the door McNeil had indicated. Down another pair of dented, blooded, flickering corridors and Jack found himself standing in front of the door to the armory. It wasn't until he looked in through the bulletproof window and saw the familiar figure of a suit of armor that he suddenly remembered he was without armor. God, he was glad he'd forgotten, or else he would've been a lot more nervous back there. Well, either way, he was going to get a suit of it now.
"Kelly granted me executive access," McNeil said as he waved his PDA in front of the security scanner. It chirped and turned green. The door slid open. "Figured it would be a lot easier that way," he added.
"Definitely," Jack agreed.
They all headed into the armory and secured the door behind them. McNeil had been right: the place was pretty ransacked, but not totally. There were two sets of Combat Armor, beautiful green Combat Armor that looked fresh and polished and ready to be put to strenuous use. Jack and Jennifer quickly pulled these on, and then set about joining the others in hunting for weapons and ammo. He managed to find a stack of ammo for his Raptor, a shotgun with a lotta shells, and a big, shiny silver chaingun.
It was no rocket launcher or plasma rifle, but it would do.
He loaded it up and found two spare big, yellow boxes of bullets, as well as another backpack to put it all in. Unfortunately, he was the only one who had a more substantial weapon. Here was hoping they found something better on the way over.
"Now where?" Jack asked as they left the raided armory.
"Tram station," McNeil replied.
"Oh. Nice. There were a lot of trams up on Phobos and Deimos. They were fairly sturdy," Jack replied as he followed after the big Marine once more.
"This one has yet to fail us," McNeil said. "It isn't too far from here. The hardest part is going to be Delta Labs itself."
"We'll be ready for it," Jack replied, hefting his chaingun.
McNeil just grunted. Jack supposed he could appreciate how the man felt, and hey, he was probably right. Maybe they weren't ready for them. Barons of Hell were certainly terrifying, but after seeing the spider queen, and the Cyberdemon...well, your sense of perspective changed. The five of them made their way through Mars City as quickly and quietly as they could, grateful to avoid any further confrontation. Everywhere he looked, Jack spied some new atrocity. A half-chewed torso, a trail of blood leading up to a broken-open vent grate, a decapitated head, at one point he saw about ten corpses stacked like firewood alongside a bulky piece of machinery tucked away into its own dark niche in the wall.
How many?
How many had died?
At least a thousand, he figured that much. Between Mars City, Phobos, and Deimos, and whatever operations they might have had going on in the other dimension when this all went down, at least a thousand people might be dead. Or turned into zombies. God. What a fucking nightmare. They at least managed to make it to the tram station without a problem. Jack felt a strong sense of Deja vu as he got onboard the tram and helped McNeil secure it. It was clean, basically untouched, vacant. And in proper working order.
Pavel silently assumed the role of conductor and got them started.
As they moved out through the airlock, Jack moved over to join McNeil at one of the windows. The vibrantly red landscape of Mars began to drift by. "You know," McNeil murmured as he reached into one of his pockets, "I used to think that Kelly was crazy." He came out of his pocket with a crumpled pack of Yeheyuans and a lighter. He offered one to Jack, who took it immediately. Both men raised their visors and lit up.
"Why?" he asked.
"I thought the guy was paranoid. Hearing things, seeing things. Ghosts, bullshit, rumors. Nothing happened in the whole time I was up here. And I've been here for almost a year. There were rumors, but there's always rumors, especially with some freaky-ass corporation up on Mars, away from prying eyes. I just wanted to keep my head down and make some money."
"Why'd you get sent up here...if you don't mind my asking?" Jack replied.
He shrugged. "I lost my nerve. Got some good men killed. It was a bad situation. A bad time. You?" he replied.
"Went against the grain of command. Saved some lives."
McNeil snorted. "Way better than me or most of the people here. But anyway, I guess that's why he's Sergeant Master and in charge of Mars Security. He knew what was up. Well, he knew something was up. He's the reason any of us are even still alive at this point. He tried to manage everything from minute one of the outbreak. If we'd had ships...or some kind of warning...a lot more people would still be alive. Now there's not even a dozen of us. You sure there's no one up there on those moons?" he asked.
"Sure about Phobos and Deimos, yeah. We ran checks. I mean, unless someone got outside of the range of the scanners, but those are pretty far-reaching. As for Hell? Shit, I dunno. I mean, we came across some survivors, but they were all so far gone we had to mercy kill basically every last one of them. There could be people still alive there...God, I hope not."
"Yeah, me too," McNeil muttered grimly.
Jack left him smoking and moved over to Sanders, who was talking quietly with Jennifer. "What's up?" he asked, sitting down with them.
"He was just telling me about the invasion," Jennifer replied. She shook her head. "God, we thought it was bad up on the moons. There were families here, Jack. There were fucking kids here. And they're all dead now. I suppose the only real consolation to all this is that the UAC pukes who did this are dead, and hopefully they went out as painfully and brutally as Carmack did. Fucking assholes," she muttered.
"Yeah, it was pretty bad," Sanders said quietly. He heaved a sigh. "I only hope we can stop it here. I mean, we can't really save anyone here at this point, but if it gets out...if these things somehow find their way to other places..."
He trailed off, not finishing his sentence, but they all knew what he was talking about. Earth. If they made it back to Earth…
Jack didn't even want to think about it.
"We're arriving," Pavel called from the front.
"Let's get this done," McNeil said, tossing down his cig and crushing it beneath his boot. Jack did the same and lowered his visor.
The tram cycled through the airlock, and came out into a tram station of destruction. Lights flickered overhead, a body hung half-off the platform, tools and spare parts were scattered across the metal plating, mixed in with blood and severed limbs. Two people, skinned, hung from the ceiling via lengths of cabling.
"Okay," McNeil said. "We tried this before. We have the route memorized, the shortest way there. It's just a matter of actually doing it."
"I'll lead the way," Jack said. "Just guide me."
They headed out of the tram. Jack now had the chaingun in hand, warmed up, locked, loaded, and ready to straight up fucking murder. The five of them moved across the wrecked platform and came to the exit. Jennifer hit the open button and the doors slid slowly open. One of them juttered to a halt halfway, spat out a stream of sparks, went a few more inches, then died completely. As he moved through the opening, Jack came to an utterly destroyed airlock that led to an equally devastated security checkpoint.
They moved slowly and carefully through it, coming at last to the entrance lobby. As they stepped in, Jack jerked in surprise as an intercom clicked overhead. "Welcome to Delta Labs. Please, follow all safety regulations, and enjoy your stay." It began to go on to say something else, but cut out abruptly. Jack rolled his eyes. He hated automated messages.
"Which way?" he asked.
"We're heading left. Follow the corridor to its end and turned left again," McNeil replied.
Jack moved on. The squad left the lobby, boots squelching loudly in the blood, and listened intently for signs of life. This place seemed to have been hit harder than everywhere else. It was darker here, bloodied, seemingly every surface dented or damaged in some way. This must have been the point of origin of the invasion. There were a lot of body parts around: he saw some hands, several arms and legs, a few heads.
God, it was a slaughterhouse.
The corridor was long and there were a lot of cross-corridors and rooms. He peered in through every window or open door as he passed, seeing if anything was hiding out. So far, it was a whole lot of nothing, just empty offices and disorganized storage areas mostly. A few labs. One open door led to a ridiculously bloody bathroom. Where were these monsters? Where could the Barons possibly be hiding? The longer they went without confrontation, the more worried he got. It was obvious that Delta Labs was a big place.
They reached the end of the corridor without incident, turned left, and kept going.
"Now where?" Jack asked.
"Sixth door on the right is another short corridor, then that'll take us there," McNeil replied.
Jack took a step into the next hallway and heard a roar that he'd become all too familiar with recently. One of the doors to the left burst open in a shower of metal and sparks, and a Baron of Hell burst into the hallway. Its head nearly brushed the top of the ceiling. Damn, these fuckers were huge! Jack raised the chaingun as it wound up to throw a ball of green plasma. He didn't give it a chance, as he'd kept the barrels spinning.
The barrage of bullets chewed into the Baron's chest, sending it stumbling backwards. He ended up emptying half the magazine into the thing, spraying its blood in all directions and sending it flying backwards. It crashed to the deckplates thunderously and became still in a widening pool of deep red blood.
"Well damn," Sanders muttered.
"Don't get too cocky. We had a chaingun, too," McNeil murmured.
They waited to see if something would happen and, sure enough, they heard another roar from somewhere nearby, down the corridor, the way yet gone. Heavy footfalls began to sound. Jack kept the barrel spinning, aiming. The corridor they were in terminated in a T-junction. The Baron appeared from the right side and Jack walked forward, opening fire as he did so, and emptied the magazine, sending the big bastard to join its brother.
"So far, so good," he said, going through the long process of reloading the chaingun. One of the drawbacks.
Once that was done and it was obvious that no more beasts were coming for them, they finished their journey. Well, this part of it. The final corridor terminated in a huge steel door, built like a vault. Jack moved up to the terminal next to it. "How do we talk to him?" he asked.
"Here," McNeil said, stepping up as well. Jack let him work. A moment later, he had it working. "Whoever's in there, open up."
There was a long pause. Finally, the comms crackled in response. "I'm afraid not. It's too dangerous. I've been tracking your progress though the city's internal security grid. Why have you come?" a voice responded.
"We need help. We need to know if you know how to stop this mess," Jack replied.
Another pause. "I've been working on that exact problem. Listen, I'm still trying to figure things out, but there's something you can do that will help immediately. I'm sending you a program and a location. At the location is a portal scrambler. It's just a prototype and it won't last all that long, but it should buy us enough time to pull this off. Once you get there and initiate the device, then kill off at least the remaining big demons, come back here, and I should have everything worked out, and then I can help you put a stop to all this."
"So you do have a way to stop this?" Jack asked.
"I believe so."
"That's kind of vague."
"I'm aware. The sooner you get this done, the better."
"Fine," McNeil growled. He pulled the information off of the terminal, studied it, grunted. "Great, other side of the labs," he muttered.
"Let's get this over with," Jack replied miserably.
They started trudging back.
They managed to make it back to the lobby area and through the right-hand doorway without running into any trouble. In fact, they made it about halfway down the next corridor before it happened. Jack had been waiting for 'it', but it was so unspecified, this feeling of general foreboding, that when the Baron of Hell stepped out of an offshoot alcove about twenty feet away, he almost felt relief. He could deal with this.
Then he heard a growl coming from behind him.
Glancing over his shoulder, Jack saw that another one had appeared at the head of the hall. How had it done that!? Had it teleported in? Wouldn't they have heard that?
"Shit," McNeil said.
"Fire!" Jack called, leveling the chaingun and squeezing the trigger. The gun spoke, spewing an array of bullets at the Baron, but he heard someone shout a warning and then there was an explosion of hot pain along his back that sent him crashing to the deckplates, the chaingun flying from his hands. The Baron he'd been fighting had only taken a few rounds, and threw a ball of green energy as well. Jack scrambled for the chaingun, managed to get it up as he heard the others shouting and firing, trying to deal with both threats.
Down on one knee now, he aimed and fired again, and this time he poured enough rounds into the big demonic bastard to put it down for good. He turned around just in time to see Jennifer fire off a blast from her shotgun that hit the second monster right in the eye. It stumbled backwards, tripped, hit the floor with a thud that shook the area, flopped and jerked for several seconds, then was still. They all waited, listening.
Several spent magazines clattered to the floor.
"Damn," Jack groaned. "How's my back?"
"Armor's all black and kind of cracked, but it looks otherwise intact," Jennifer replied. "Does it burn?" she asked.
"No. It was really hot at first, but it's just a little warm now. Not like with my shoulder," Jack muttered.
"Two more of the big bastards down," Pavel said.
"You know, this is bugging me," McNeil said as they hurried on. "How in the hell do we have a portal scrambler? How much do we know about this?"
"Too much, or, well, depending on how well we can handle this, not enough. Maybe too much of the wrong stuff, not enough of the important shit," Jack replied.
"That sounds about right, given how fucked up everything has been so far," Jennifer said.
They jogged on down the corridor, took a right, ran down its full length, wondering where the other two Barons of Hell were, but wherever they were, they weren't close enough to stop them before they reached the lab that held the portal scrambler. Jack stepped in, chaingun at ready, and found himself staring at a huge spike of black and silver and gold and purple metal plates covered in strange circuitry and glass bulbs and odd metallic protrusions. It was in the dead center of the room, rising towards the ceiling, perhaps fifteen feet tall, the ceilings in here higher. Everything seemed to be centered around it.
"What the f...what is this?" Jack whispered.
"Next objective on the checklist," Jennifer replied. "McNeil, what next?"
"Now..." he muttered, jogging across the room to the biggest workstation, built on a raised dais at the back of the room, overlooking the rest of the area. "I plug the program in here and it does its thing, however long that takes."
"Great..." Jack looked around, he could feel something on the air, some tension that hadn't been there before, more physical than before, almost like a static charge before a really bad storm. He hoped it didn't take very long.
"Okay, we're golden! It's working!" McNeil called.
"Hey, McNeil...how in the hell do we turn these on?" Jack replied. Something had caught his eye, and looking up, then around, he realized that there were more than one of them. Drone guns. Automated assault weapons, hanging from the ceiling like inert, metal wasps. "'Cause that would make me feel a whole hell of a lot better."
"Oh shit, I didn't even see those," McNeil muttered, returning his attention to the workstation, working it furiously.
The feeling of tension was only getting worse, more powerful.
He looked up suddenly. "Uh...I can't activate them. There's a short...there!" he said, pointing. Across the lab was an exposed panel, sparks shot out of it. "Pavel, install a bypass."
"On it," Pavel replied.
A great hum suddenly filled the room. Jack looked around, terror gripping him, the bad thing was happening…
There was a brilliant green flash that briefly overloaded his vision.
As it came back, he looked around frantically, chaingun at ready. His eyes fell on the huge, burly figure of a Baron.
It was standing directly behind Sanders.
"Sanders!" he began, raising the chaingun. The Baron of Hell pulled its hand back, roaring furiously, and sparked a ball of green energy, conjuring it from apparently thin air. It threw it point blank into the back of Sander's head.
It took his skull clean off.
All that was left was a cauterized stump of a neck.
Jack screamed as he opened fire, gunning the demonic horror down with the remainder of his magazine. "Pavel, go!" he screamed as he reloaded, going as fast as he could. "Jennifer, McNeil, protect the workstation!"
Jack secured the final box of ammo to the chaingun right as another green flash burst across his vision. Gunfire exploded, Pavel was running, a Baron had popped into existence about ten feet to his right and had its fiery, murderous sights set on the man. Jack leveled the chaingun and emptied half the last magazine, putting it down in a spray of bullets. Another green flash, then another one, and a third. That one was high up.
A Cacodemon. No, two.
And two more Barons of Hell. This was quickly becoming unacceptable. Jack emptied out the chaingun putting down the nearest threat and then dropped it. Pavel was clear for the moment. A shadow passed overhead. Jack brought his SMG out and aimed straight up, squeezing the trigger and emptying the entire magazine into the Cacodemon as it sailed over him, apparently intent on killing Pavel. Did they know? How could they know? Were they listening? This was definitely bad. He slapped a fresh magazine in, let the gun hang from its sling, and pulled out his shotgun. Another Baron was stomping directly towards Pavel.
Jennifer and McNeil were doing the best they could, opening fire from the raised dais, but they were dealing with another Cacodemon and a quartet of Imps that had just teleported in. Shit! The Baron was close. Jack threw together a plan and before he could think better of it, he ran forward, put himself between Pavel and the Baron, shoved the shotgun into the thing's mouth and squeezed the trigger. The top of its head burst like a ripe melon and, with stunning clarity, he saw the way its curving horns flew in opposite directions, one of them actually dislodging from the head. It sailed through the air and clattered to the floor.
Then the Baron's fist, which had been mid-flight when he'd pulled the trigger, hit his chestplate. It was a glancing blow, but even a glancing blow sent him stumbling backwards so hard he fell flat on his ass, and found himself staring up at another Cacodemon.
"Fuck!" he snapped.
He pumped four shells into the big red bastard and then rolled out of the way as it popped, trying to avoid the visceral spray of its blood and guts. As he tried to get to his feet, he heard a loud whining noise and then the deafening sound of four mounted machine gun turrets firing overwhelmed him and he wondered if they would be able to differentiate between humans and demons. So he just waited for whichever outcome.
Apparently, he didn't have anything to worry about.
When the guns stopped firing, a loud thrumming filled the room. Jack opened his eyes, realizing that someone was standing over him. Jennifer. She was offering him a hand. He took it and she pulled him roughly to his feet.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, can we get out of here? This thing is giving me a migraine," he replied.
The four survivors stepped back out into the corridor after he grabbed his chaingun. "So, I take it it's working?" he asked.
"Yeah, it's on," McNeil replied.
"Good. Now-" He paused as his radio crackled to life.
"Good work, Marines. Now I need you to secure the area. I'm not opening the door with these things still roving around. I'll guide you, there aren't that many left. Then, once they're dead, please return to my area post haste."
"Yeah, we'll get right on that, doc," Jack muttered.
They set off.
There was a Baron of Hell, a half dozen Imps, three Demons, and a few Lost Souls hanging around. They cleared them all up as quickly as they could, and then got back to the vault-like door. This time, the good doctor opened up the door for them. Jack led the way into the room and immediately felt a chill settle over him. The room was a sterile environment, seemingly untouched by the invasion, but also as immaculate and well-lit as a surgical bay. Lining the walls to either side were large, square glass containers embedded in the white-tiled, UAC logo-stamped walls, some full of a greenish liquid and, in a few cases, bodies.
He saw a pair of Imps and what looked like parts and pieces of a Demon.
There were workstations in front of these containers. All of this was lorded over by another raised dais sporting a big, fancy, curved workstation, behind which the doctor sat. He was a slight man, hidden mostly in his labcoat, a pair of glasses with round lenses perched on his nose, his thinning black hair beginning to turn gray.
"My name is Doctor Fielding," he said almost absently, working the controls. "I'm very grateful that you have arrived. It might be fate. I have figured out how to fix this...I think. But there is no way I'd ever be able to enact it myself."
"Fine. How do we do it?" Jack asked. He was hungry, and thirsty, and his whole body was hurting at this point, and he was dead fucking tired.
He wanted this done.
"I managed to piece together information from all the archives. I've got access to everything now. They divided up the departments, compartmentalized knowledge, piecemeal. So no one knew too much. I can see that you are eager to resolve this, as am I, so I'll spell it out for you. You, and as many as you can muster, must go into Hell once more, via a teleporter here, locate and then kill the leader, the mastermind behind this whole operation. Our basic research indicates that they are being...not exactly controlled, but focused, by a single entity. If you find and kill this entity, this mastermind, then that will leave them broken, give us time to regroup. I know its location, a region we marked for exploration based on primitive maps of the region we discovered during one of our previous expeditions. They called it Dis," Fielding explained.
"That's great and all, but how do we get to Hell?" McNeil asked. "We destroyed the primary portal."
"There is an auxiliary portal. It isn't activated right now. That will be your first task: reactivate a pair of emergency generators to give it power. Unfortunately, I cannot teleport you into Dis. We don't have the coordinates for it. The closest I can get you is a place called the Warrens. I know that you will at least have to travel through two more regions: the Fortress of Mystery and the Halls of the Damned. We did preliminary scouting of those regions, and we believed that we might have located the portal to Dis, or at least the portal to the location that has the portal to Dis. So you will need to get me access to a server that has the teleportation coordinates of the Warrens so I can fire it up and send you through. Then, well, you know the rest."
"Fan-freakin-tastic," Jack muttered.
"Good luck," Fielding said.
Jack turned away from the man, too tired to be angry, and activated the radio. "Kelly, Ward here. We've got a plan." He ran through a brief description of it.
"...well, okay then. I guess it'll have to do. Get me the locations of those generators, I'll send a few over to deal with one of them while you deal with the other," Kelly replied.
"On it," Fielding said.
Jack shouldered his shotgun. "Let's get this over with."