Jack nearly stepped into the waiting arms of an Imp. Still cranked out on the berserker shot, he raised his shotgun and blew the thing's head off almost without a second thought. Twisting as he heard a roar and stomping footfalls, he fired a second and third time, spraying Demon blood all over the place as he put a shot into its skull, then another into its mouth. The big, deep pink thing roared its death cry as it smashed to the floor.
A fireball smacked into his back. Feeling a shot of fury hit him, Jack stepped further away from the pad as he spun around, aimed, and fired once more. The shell took the Imp that had gotten the drop on him right in the neck and effectively severed its head from its body. The body took a few stumbling steps to the left as blood sprayed out of the stump in a huge fountain, then collapsed a few feet away from where the head had hit the floor and rolled. Breathing heavily, he looked around for another threat, but that was it.
For now, anyway.
Jack fed more shells into the shotgun as Jennifer appeared in a flash of light. "Clear?" she asked as she stepped off the pad.
"Clear, for now," Jack replied.
He looked around the room they'd come into. It was a relatively small area of more gray stone. Just two doors, both of them strangely out of place among the gritty masonry, as they were the high-tech sliding UAC doors. He frowned as he spied a pair of zombie corpses over in one corner and moved towards them.
"What is it?" Jennifer asked.
"Not sure," he replied quietly, crouching and studying them. He'd seen hundreds of corpses by now, but he could still pick out certain things. Like the fact that these zombies had been put down with clear precision headshots. And it seemed like the bodies had been ransacked. "I think either McNeil or Lynch was here."
"Well, we're getting closer at least," Jennifer said as she joined him.
They waited for the other two to appear, and once Miller and Pavel had joined them, they moved up to the doors.
"Which one first?" Miller asked.
Jack was getting impatient. "Left. Be ready," he said, moving forward without waiting. He hit the button and the door slid open to reveal a single Demon treading around. It was blown away in hardly two seconds.
The room beyond was about a third the size of the one they'd appeared in, made of red brick, and held nothing of interest. Sighing in frustration, wanting to get on with it, or at least to have something else to fight, Jack moved over to the second door and opened it up. Beyond was a small antechamber of ugly brown metal with just one other exit along the right wall. There were another two corpses, Imps killed by one or both of the other survivors. Jack moved through it and stepped out into the chamber, looking first left, then right.
The way left ended not too far away, opening into some kind of courtyard with pillars and no ceiling. The way to the right kept going, then curved out of sight. He sighed, considered it for a moment. "We should split," he said, looking at the three of them. "We've got three things we're looking for here: our friends, that top-secret weapon, whatever the fuck it is, and a way out. We'll get it done better if we split up." He looked to the left. "There's an acid moat in there...who feels like dealing with acid with me?"
Miller sighed. "I'll do it."
"Fine. Jennifer, go with Pavel. See what you can find over there. We meet back here in ten minutes, got it?"
They all replied affirmatively.
"Then let's get this over with."
Jack wondered how many times he'd said that, or something like it, over the past few days. God, it felt like it was half the sentences that came out of his mouth. He pushed it all aside and focused on the here and now, his blood feeling like it was bubbling, making him antsy to do things, to fight, and he looked out across the open courtyard beyond. He didn't like what he had to look at. Overhead, the skies looked different.
Black clouds rolled over the area and huge, jagged mountains of white and slate-gray rock reached up into the those skies like skeletal fingers. Through breaks in the clouds, though, Jack could see that same shade of red. At least that was consistent. On the smaller scope, he and Miller stood at the edge of an acid moat that was about three feet wide. It ran around the perimeter of a large, square room. The middle of the room, an island in the center of the moat, was a large stone platform studded with rounded pillars.
There were grates in the walls that bled more green toxic acid. He could see another few doors across the room, in an area on the other side of the moats and the island. There were no demonic horrors around, at least.
"God, what the fuck is it with this place?" Miller muttered. "I mean, look at this? What the fuck is this room for? What was that last room for? What's any of this for?! There's no...sense to any of this. It's all just abstract bullshit. I mean, they don't even use the same material. It would be one thing if it was all just stone or wood even, but there's metal in there too, and I can't imagine it's all from the UAC, as some of it looks really old."
"I know exactly what you mean," Jack replied. "This place is just...chaos. It's insane, I think. I have no idea why any of this is the way it is. I mean, beyond the fact that it's a hellish, chaotic environment inhabited by assholes."
She snorted. "Yeah, there is that."
"Okay, we've gotta get over there. Good to jump?" he asked.
She nodded tightly. "Yes."
"I'll go first, keep watch."
"Got it."
He backed up several feet, studying the gap, then sprinted forward and leaped. He landed easily, armored boots slamming into the stone. For a second he was worried it was going to shift or give out beneath him, but it was rock solid.
"Come on," he said, turning back and keeping watch for her. Miller ran and made the jump as well. Okay, so far, so good. They moved across the island of pillars and he checked around each one in passing, half expecting something to be hiding. But there was nothing. Jack could feel his anticipation growing with each silent second. They reached the other side and, upon encountering nothing, each made the next jump.
Now they stood on a kind of rectangular deck of stone. There were three doors fitted into the wall ahead of them, two made of wood, the third of metal with the UAC logo on it. He tried that one first, but it was locked. Sighing, he moved over to the left door first. "Get ready," he said, hand hovering over the big red square button.
"Ready," Miller replied tightly.
He hit the button. What was it with them and big buttons like this? The door slid open. A small room of red brick awaited him. The only noticeable feature was that there was a skull embedded in the wall at the back. Frowning, Jack slowly moved up to it. Cautiously, he reached out and laid a finger against it, some instinct making him press inwards. There was a sharp, loud clicking sound and the thing's eyes lit up with strangely technological glowing green lines, almost looking like a circuit board. He stepped back, waiting, listening.
"What did that do?" Miller asked.
"No idea," Jack replied. "Let's keep looking."
They tried the door again, still found it locked, and saw that nothing had changed out in the courtyard beyond. He moved over to the right door now, and found an identical room waiting for him. Jack pushed the skull. This time he heard grinding, and shifting, and sloshing from the courtyard beyond.
"Island's gone," Miller reported as he hurried out to join her.
He growled, seeing that they now had no way back across. The pillars were now partially submerged in the acid, but not submerged enough that they could jump onto the tops of them. He supposed, if push came to shove, they could probably survive long enough in their suits of armor to get back over…
Then again, he had no idea how deep that acid might be in some places, or its composition. It could eat through his suit in a few seconds. "We can't do anything about it now," he said finally, moving back to the central door.
Miller just grunted and joined him. He hit the button again. This time, the door slid open, revealing a small room with a handful of shot-up Imp corpses with an opening into a narrow tunnel at the back. Immediately, he could tell that they were back in UAC territory. Well, probably. It was really hard to tell with places like these. The walls of the corridors were made of more familiar metals with vent grates built in at regular intervals. There was something disquieting about that bland gray metal and the regular rectangular lights overhead.
Jack activated his radio. "Jennifer, you read? Over."
A pause. "Yeah, I'm here. We're still making progress. Nothing serious so far. What about you? Over," she replied.
"That island is gone now, so we're trapped over here for now. Over."
"Great. We'll keep looking. Over."
"Affirmative. Out."
They moved slowly down the narrow corridor. There didn't seem to be any other openings along the walls, floor, or ceiling, but Jack didn't trust it, nonetheless. He took point, shotgun at ready, Miller backing him up. The first length of corridor didn't spring anything awful on him. The passageway ended in a T, more corridors branching away left and right. And now he could see side paths leading off of them. Unsure of where to go, as neither direction seemed better than the other, Jack broke left and pressed on.
He and Miller made agonizingly slow progress through the tunnels. They began, at least, to see more signs of the UAC. Some of the side alcoves led to rooms that had bunks, tables, crates, some actual consoles and terminals. None of which were functional, unfortunately. But it was progress. There were a handful of zombies roaming around, and there was more evidence that either McNeil or Lynch had been through here. They pressed on, checking out the alcoves, listening intently for signs of life on either side of the line.
Finally, the corridor ended in a large room that seemed to be the center of this UAC outpost. It was a huge, square room of brushed silver steel. The walls were studded with consoles and terminals and workstations, there were several crates and foldout tables and chairs scattered across the area. Dead ahead of them, directly across from the opening, was a large, vault-like door with a big window of unbreakable glass set into the center. There was nothing living in the room, though Jack saw a lot of corpses around.
"I think that's what we're looking for," he muttered as he hurried across the room. Sure enough, as he stepped up to the glass, he looked in and saw, mounted on a table in the middle of a small room lit up with brilliant white lights, encased in a glass case, was…
Well, he didn't know what the fuck it was, except that it kind of looked like a gun and it was big and silver and nasty-looking.
"Bingo," he said. He backed up a few paces and Miller joined him. "Now we just have to figure out how in the fuck to get it open..."
They both froze as a banging noise began to sound from somewhere to the right. They both spun around, shotguns raised, hunting for the source. There was nothing, except...there, Jack thought, advancing slowly on a panel in the wall set between two big workstations. It looked different from everything else. When they drew closer, the sound got louder, and Jack thought he could hear shouting faintly.
"Someone's in there," he said, slinging the shotgun and hunting for a way to open the panel. "God, it might be McNeil or Lynch. Help me."
After a few moments of frantic searching, they finally located the release for the panel. He had Miller stand back and cover him, just in case, and then he hit it. The panel slid up into its unseen niche and McNeil all but fell out of the small closet-sized space beyond. He grunted and cried out as he crashed to the floor.
"McNeil," Jack said, and he snapped his gaze up.
The Corporal looked like crap. He was wearing a bloodied, burned, pockmarked set of green armor, the helmet missing, his eyes wide and stricken, blood on his face, some of his hair missing, scorched off.
"Ward," he croaked. "Finally." He looked past Jack. "Miller, you made it."
"Yes, Corporal. I made it," she agreed.
Jack offered the man his hand and for a second, McNeil simply stared at it, like he didn't know what it was. Then he took it and let Jack haul him to his feet.
"What the hell happened?" Jack asked.
McNeil sighed and shook his head, stumbling forward a bit, then falling heavily into one of the chairs. "Got teleported ahead of you, in here, with Lynch," he replied. "This place was crawling with them. It was a goddamned miracle I made it out at all. We fought off a clutch of zombies with our bare hands, grabbed some guns, shot the place up. Ran here, there, and everywhere trying to survive. I..." he sighed again, rubbed his eyes. "It's a bit of a blur, honestly. Lynch didn't make it. Lost Soul got her." He looked up at them suddenly. "Tell me you aren't the only ones."
"No," Jack replied quietly. "Pavel and Taylor are still alive. They're here, in another part of the area. But...we're all that's left. Jackson and Bennet are dead."
"Shit!" McNeil snapped. "I managed to find some armor, ammo, guns...then I got chased in here by some Demons, got backed into that closet and the damned panel closed on me. I've got no idea how long I've been in there."
"Same here," Jack muttered. "McNeil, uh...that's the gun, over there," he said, pointing. "We have to find out how to get in there."
McNeil looked over, then staggered to his feet and walked over to the vault-like door. He stared in through the window. "Well, so it is. Son of a bitch." He took several steps back and looked up at the door, studying it intently. "Okay, let's figure this out. Uh...see if any of these computers work," he said, moving over to the nearest one.
Jack updated Jennifer and Pavel on the situation. So far, all they had to report from their end was that they'd been killing zombies, Imps, and a few Cacodemons. From there, he and Miller helped McNeil move through the devastated control room. Most of the workstations sported the black eyes of shattered screens, pockmarked with bullet holes, sprayed with blood. But some of them still functioned, and after several minutes of intense, fervent hunting, the ruined computers slowly gave up their secrets. There weren't many left for them to give.
"Okay, I think we've got it," Jack said after they'd compared notes. "We need three goddamned keycards and a password. Blue, red, yellow." He let out an exasperated growl. "Fucking hell, just what we need. Let's get to it."
McNeil nodded. All he had on him was an SMG. Jack had been hoping that the man would've found something heftier, a chaingun or plasma rifle, but he supposed he should be happy that the Marine was alive and intact. He updated Jennifer and Pavel one more time, then set off once more back into the corridors.
"How you doing?" Jack asked as he took point, shotgun at ready.
"Tired," McNeil admitted. "Really fucking tired of this shit."
"Yeah, I'm there with you. Although we had the boost of a berserker pack to keep us going...then again, if this goes on long enough, it won't fucking matter."
"Yeah," McNeil grunted.
They continued moving through the corridors, in between walls paneled in pale gray metal studded with bolts, marred occasionally by rusty iron girders. He stopped to check every side alcove they passed, and thankfully most of them were empty. After tracing their route back to the original break in the passageway, he pressed on into unknown territory. He was glad to have Miller and McNeil at his back, covering him. This was hard enough as it was. He didn't think he could have done this if he was completely alone.
The walls changed as they pressed on. First becoming what they had been before, steel panels with little vent grilles on them, then shifting abruptly into bland, deep gray, smooth stonework. It ultimately terminated in a small, square room with seven other doorways fitted into the walls. Jack sighed heavily as he looked around at them. Four of them, (including the one they'd just now come in through), were smaller and set into slanted portions of the wall between the larger doors. Jack walked up to one of them.
"Let's knock these smaller ones out first," he said. "Even money says they don't really go anywhere."
"Let's see," McNeil replied.
Jack opened the door. His vision was filled with red. Something roared and a fireball smashed into his chestplate, sending him stumbling back. "Son of a fuck!" he screamed, snapping the shotgun up and blasting out three slug shells into the huge, open mouth of the Cacodemon that had been hiding behind the door.
It roared again in furious pain and deflated, spraying its demonic guts all over the narrow alcove it had been barely able to fit in.
"What the hell was it even doing in there!?" Jack groaned as he shakily fed three more shells into the shotgun, chest smarting.
"Waiting for us, or someone," Miller murmured.
"Well...I was right, at least," Jack growled.
They opened up the other two smaller doors, finding them empty. And, lo and behold, behind the fat, bloated corpse of the Cacodemon, Jack spied a blue keycard still being held by a pale hand. He retrieved it, pried it out of the hand, and pocketed it. They managed to scavenge some magazines and shells from a small cache hidden at the back of one of the other alcoves, and Jack found himself fiercely curious as to who had put it here. It didn't seem very formal, so it was unlikely to be from those who had manned this UAC outpost.
Then again, everything was unlikely around here.
It could be a fucking ghost vampire dog from the future for all he knew.
They gathered at the first of the four larger doors and opened it up. Jack prepared himself for a fresh wave of horror, but there was nothing in the short, broad corridor beyond the door. Instead, he found himself staring at stone walls covered in more of those creepy green vines. Overhead, he saw neat rows of diamond yellow lights. Weird. He moved slowly, carefully, down the corridor, again taking point.
It was when they were about two thirds of the way down the corridor when the grinding noise began. Snapping his gaze up, Jack shouted in fear and surprise as he realized the ceiling was coming down on them. He sprinted forward, coming into a room that extended off to the left and right and ended abruptly ahead of him. Except no, it didn't. The wall dead ahead of them snapped up, and a pair of Demons, backed up by a half-dozen Lost Souls, sprang into view.
"Frag out!" McNeil screamed, and Jack reacted automatically, rushing off to the left even as he registered the trademark sound of a fragmentation grenade striking a hard surface. He barely had time to hit the far wall maybe ten feet away before there was a deafening explosion and the sound of a metal rain of fiery fragments pinging off of every surface, mixed in with the shrieks of a dozen dying monsters. He spun around, shotgun raised, waiting to see what else was coming his way. He saw that Miller had joined him in his small corridor. McNeil was down the other direction. They waited several seconds, then gathered in the center again.
"Nice," Jack said, staring at the ruined interior.
"Brutal," McNeil agreed. "My only one, for the record."
"Well, you did good," Jack replied. They spent a moment poking through the remains, finding nothing worthwhile, and had just begun debating what to do about the lowered ceiling, which was now completely blocking off their only exit, when it began to return to its original position. As soon as it was high enough they took the opportunity to get out while it was still a certainty. Once they were back into the main room, they closed that door and then gathered at the next one. McNeil and Miller stood off to his sides, weapons at ready.
Jack hit the button.
He expected something to attack him, a Demon, an Imp, something, but he found himself looking into another octagonal room, the walls fitted with more of those sheets of gray metal. From what he could see, the openings along the walls just led into big, empty, closet-sized extensions. The light was good, no shadows, and nothing moved. He didn't trust it all. But there, dead ahead across the room, right up against the wall, was a pedestal.
Instead of a still-beating human heart resting atop it, like he'd seen before, there was a keycard. A red one. They moved slowly into the room, covering the sides, checking for anything. But they remained alone.
"Miller," McNeil whispered. "Grab the card, let's get out of here."
"On it," Miller replied, moving quickly up to the pedestal. Jack tensed, preparing himself for something to happen, some fresh nightmare to be visited on them. Miller reached the pedestal, reached out, and took the card.
The second her hand touched the card, a huge panel behind the pedestal snapped open, revealing a Baron of Hell. Before anyone could say or do anything, it made a fist and punched Miller's head clean off her body. A huge spray of blood escaped her neck as her body went stumbling, dying nerves working furiously, and then it collapsed.
Her head, still inside its helmet, went bouncing away.
"MILLER!" McNeil roared as he opened fire.
Jack felt an inarticulate roar of white-hot fury escape his mouth with such power that the inside of his visor was sprayed with foamy spittle as he raised his shotgun and began firing off as fast as the gun would allow him to. Bloody wounds opened up on the Baron's broad, muscular chest and it roared in response as it tried to get off a ball of green energy at them. It managed to throw two that missed before they emptied their weapons into its chest and face and put the thing down. Jack felt red creeping into his vision.
He tore across the room, unable to contain himself, kicking the huge, eight-foot corpse, shrieking an incoherent string of curses at it, going and going until he dropped to his knees and began punching what remained of its head.
Eventually, his anger burned itself out, and he found himself staring at drops of blood on the outside of his visor. Gasping to get his breath back, he struggled to his feet and looked down at his hands. His armored gauntlets were dented and covered in blood and shreds of flesh. He sighed, suddenly tired, and took a moment to wipe off his visor, using one of the several cleaning wipes that all suits mercifully came packed with. He took it off and cleaned the interior, too. While he did that, McNeil silently crossed the room to Miller's headless corpse and pried the keycard from her death grip. Jack replaced his helmet and joined him.
"Fuck," Jack muttered after a moment, then crouched and began recovering whatever supplies and ammo he could from the dead Marine.
"I dunno how much more of this I can take," McNeil said as he straightened up.
"We'll take all of it," Jack replied, his voice flat. "Because we don't have a choice."
McNeil grunted in response. They left the room and made for the final door. Somewhere in his deadening mind, Jack knew that this was the last obvious route. There were no other entrances on this side of the acid pond. So they'd either get lucky here or have to start hunting for hidden passageways. The next room was another vine-covered affair housing a small collection of Imps and zombies. They didn't stand a chance.
Jack and McNeil blasted them away in a few seconds. They crossed the room after checking it out, moving to the only other door. Jack opened it up...and nearly shot Jennifer in the face. He lowered his shotgun at the last second.
"Oh thank fuck," Jennifer said. "We've been trying to find a way over and...what's wrong?" she asked.
"Miller's KIA," Jack replied quietly.
"Fucking goddamnit!" she snapped.
"We've found two of the keycards. Any luck on your end?" he continued. That same lethargy came down on him, not just of physical fatigue but mental as well.
Jennifer took a deep breath, held it, blew it out slowly. No doubt reassessing her focus. Mission came first, always. "We found a yellow keycard, a PDA, and an exit. Exit needs yellow and blue keycards."
"Well, that's all the puzzle pieces then. We got the other two keycards and between the two of us, we can get into that special armory," Jack replied.
He led them back through the twisting maze of corridors, all of them walking silently, keeping focused, until they arrived back at the main room. Jack thought that he'd feel some kind of sense of accomplishment or even a grim kind of joy when they got the door open. But as they swiped the cards and fed the code into the terminal and the door slid up into the ceiling, he didn't feel much of anything. Mainly, he just felt tired.
They walked carefully inside, checking the corners for any hidden threats, but they were alone. And, even better, there were two more doors, one on either side, that, when opened, revealed smaller but jam-packed armories.
"Holy fuck," Pavel muttered. "That's a shitload of guns."
"And that's a big gun," Jack said as he opened up the huge glass case containing the top-secret weapon they'd been seeking. It was indeed very large. It was bulky, with lots of protrusions, made of some strange amalgamation of black and steel silver metal and plastic and glass and other unidentifiable components. It had a big goddamned bore, shaped like an upside-down pyramid, sticking out of the front. There was a big, crooked piece jutting up from the back end. Jack slowly opened the case and reached in.
"What in the hell is this?" he muttered as he picked it up.
The gun was surprisingly light. He thought it'd be a bitch to pick up, but the materials must be some of those lighter-than-plastic stronger-than-steel super-science kinds he'd heard about whenever he glanced at the news. Well, at least it looked like a gun. And it handled like one, too. He held it up, twisting it over, and found something stenciled on the side in very unprofessional scrawl. It rea 9000. Only...no.
He got closer, saw that there were more letters in between the big ones, and they made words. "What's it say?" Jennifer asked.
"Big Fucking Gun," he replied, then laughed, because he couldn't help it. "Is that what they called it? The Big Fucking Gun Nine Thousand? Well, I gotta admit, it's a million miles better than all the weird crap the scientists come up with."
"Does it take ammo?" Pavel asked.
Jack checked it over. "Not...that I can see," he murmured. "Fuck, this is going to be a do-or-die thing, isn't it? Well, let's see if we can find some specs or instructions, and stock the hell up on guns and ammo," he replied.
It at least had a glowing green bar on the top labeled ENERGY LEVEL. Even better, it had a handy shoulder strap.
They spent the next fifteen minutes going over the armories and the immediate area. Although they couldn't find any form of guide to the BFG, they managed to find a big store of supplies. Jack shoved as many magazines and shells into his pockets as he could find, and even managed to locate another plasma rifle with four full cells of energy for ammo. Jennifer grabbed a chaingun and several big yellow boxes of ammo, while McNeil grabbed the final of the heavy weapons lying around: a rocket launcher with a good dozen rockets. Pavel, though he didn't have a larger weapon, did stock up for his shotgun, grabbed an SMG and a pair of pistols, and several grenades to top it all off. Fully armed, the squad left the armory.
"And now we head into the wild red yonder," Jennifer said as they got to the exit teleporter and unlocked it. "Because we've got no fucking clue what lies beyond."
"It could be the big bad fucker we're looking for," McNeil replied.
"Doubt we'll be so lucky," Jack said. "But I'll go first. Remember the procedure, thirty-second intervals, one at a time. Be ready for anything."
He tried to prepare himself for anything as he stepped onto the pad.