He appeared in a short, narrow alcove, the walls, floor, and ceiling made of patterned slate-gray octagons. Shotgun locked in a death grip, Jack moved forward, marching off the pad of rusted red metal, out of the alcove and into the room beyond. Secure the area, always the first order of business. He conned the room with a quick swivel of his head. Walls of white and black stone, looking created by more natural means, (inasmuch as anything could be natural in this godforsaken hellscape), comprised the small area. There were two pillars tattooed with skulls that had glowing red eyes, and a pair of doors.
Almost immediately as he crossed the threshold into that area, a pair of Demons stormed out from behind the pillars, coming for him with murder on their minds. He could see it, plain as sunshine, in their glowing, golden eyes. He snapped the shotgun towards the left one and pounded out a shell, putting it right down the monster's gullet and killing it. The other stomped closer, faster, and he swiveled and fired again. The shell took it in the chest, opening up a hole and staggering it briefly, but not deterring it.
He fired again as the beast came within arm's length of him, reaching for him, intent on consuming his body. This shot hit it dead in its eye, blowing the golden orb into a bloody socket of ruined flesh. As it sank to the ground, Jack kept a vigil, seeing if anything else would come running at the sounds. But the two exits, one just an opening in the wall, the other a more artificial looking rectangle cut into the rock leading to a manufactured hallway, remained vacant.
In the distance, he could hear growls, moans, and shouts.
Alone for now, but that wouldn't last.
The others appeared in thirty second intervals and joined him in the main room. "What now?" McNeil asked. "Split up?"
"No, not any longer," Jack replied. "We need to stay together." He looked at the two entrances and finally decided on the left one for a reason he couldn't be sure of. It might have been that the manufactured appearance of what little corridor he could see beyond it appealed to him. It offered some small comfort, no matter how false, in this hellish maelstrom of bloody chaos. He led the way, shotgun in hand, the others falling in step behind him, intent on pushing on, pushing through. Digging to the end of this horror.
However far that might be.
It occurred to Jack, as he stepped into the area beyond, that this might go on for ages. Who knew how big Hell was? How would they realistically find their way to this beast? How would they find their way back? He shook off the black terror those thoughts brought to the best of his ability, studying the corridor he'd come to. It extended immediately away to the left, made of a tan kind of metal with artificial lights built into the ceiling.
Fielding said that the UAC hadn't really been this far out, or at least had given the impression that they hadn't spent enough time in this region to get any serious work done. And these lights weren't just strung up or slapped on, they were built into the ceiling. What did that mean? Had the demons done it? If so, how? Why?
His questions only grew as they reached the end of the corridor and came to a series of rooms that seemed to be a haphazard collection of stone walls studded with big sections of silver steel embedded with screens, switchboards, and workstations that had clearly come from a UAC facility. It didn't look natural though. How had it gotten here? Imps roamed these rooms, hissing and shrieking as they noticed the human interlopers, and the two groups began to exchange fire. He wondered, as he emptied his shotgun and hastily reloaded, if maybe some kind of teleportation event might have occurred. What if portions of either Phobos or Deimos Base had been snatched out of reality and slammed in here? Or even swapped.
He remembered seeing hellish architecture on Deimos.
And if that was the case, why? Was it an accident? Some natural side effect of the process? Or was it intentional? What was their goal, beyond death and destruction? Did they even have one? He finished off the last Imp and they all took a few moments to more thoroughly check out the area. The sense of dislocation, of unreality, only heightened as they explored the side rooms. The walls were made of stone, but they were covered in some strange blue material that resembled circuitry, blown up to ridiculous proportions.
They finished clearing out the area, collecting up whatever ammo they could find, and then popped open the next door and shifted slowly into the next section. Jack moved cautiously down a narrow descending stairway. It led into a huge, open, warehouse-sized room. And, like a warehouse, it was filled with UAC-stamped crates of varying sizes. Somewhere in the proliferation of metal, he could hear the snorting and grunting of more Demons. The immediate area was fairly open, but it was bordered by the stacks of crates.
"Okay, we should-"
Jack didn't even begin to get a chance to formulate a plan, because it was at that second that a general roar went up and a living wave of burned-pink flesh began emerging from around the crates. Jack immediately opened fire, as did the others. They stood in a staggered line, facing the tide of death that was stomping towards them. The world became awash in a sea of flying blood, muzzle flares, and gunsmoke. Jack worked through the shells in his shotgun as fast as he could. He hardly had to aim, there were so many of the things.
One went down to a headshot, another took a round in the face, another staggered and collapsed, neck pumping blood.
He could see others being taken down by the hail of gunfire. But there were more coming in, and now Imps, too. As he heard the distinct sound of a chaingun being activated, Jack thought, for a moment, that they had this.
Then, rising silently from behind more crates across the huge room, he saw a small flotilla of Cacodemons, backed up by a fleet of Lost Souls, coming their way.
"Aw, fuck it!" he snapped, letting the shotgun hang and pulling out his plasma rifle. "McNeil! Rocket launcher! Floaters!" he screamed.
McNeil snapped off a response and as Jack, Jennifer, and Pavel opened fire on the horde of Demons and Imps pressing in on them, mowing them down, a rocket sailed through the air, smashing into one of the Cacodemons and blowing it to pieces. The resulting explosion took out a few of the Lost Souls. He fired again, then again, hitting the Cacodemons and Lost Souls in their largest clusters. Death rained down from above.
The plasma rifle felt like raw power in his hands as he squeezed the trigger and moved the strange, square-shaped barrel back and forth with a ridiculous ease. Brilliant, blue-white balls of plasma seared through the air, burning into the tough flesh of the Demons and Imps, singeing and blackening skin everywhere they touched. Monsters died roaring beneath the onslaught. And then, suddenly, there were no more balls of energy.
The gun had gone dry.
As Jack reloaded the strange energy cell that served as ammo, he was at least glad to see that the others had finished off the mob of hell-spawn. "Holy shit, what the hell was that all about?" he muttered, surveying the carnage.
No one seemed to have anything to say to that, so instead the quartet spread out and searched the area. Despite resembling a warehouse, there didn't seem to be a whole lot actually in the room. Most of the crates were empty. The few doors they came across led only to smaller side rooms that were just as useless. Eventually, they gathered at the only way out: another corridor that terminated a few dozen feet away in another wood-and-metal door.
The squad trudged on, pushing themselves silently deeper into this nightmare dimension. And it didn't get a whole lot better from there. They opened the door and moved down a broad, low corridor of tan stone. It opened up into a large courtyard that was divided into sections by small creeks of bubbling green toxins or acid. There were square pillars of stone placed seemingly at random across the area, and attached to them…
"God," Jennifer whispered.
People. People had been chained to the pillars, held up by their wrists with rusty old chains. Some had had their legs ripped off by what appeared to be brute force, and their intestines, fat and ropy, hung out the bottom, snaking away from their torsos. Jack felt his stomach twitch, but that was the extent of his reaction, and that worried him.
Good lord, how desensitized would he be by the end of this?
As they moved forward into the area, a huge panel across the way snapped open and a Baron of Hell stepped out. As it was roaring, before Jack could react, McNeil snapped "Oh, shut the fuck up!" and fired off a rocket.
It went directly into the Baron's open mouth and blew off its head, neck, and some of its upper chest. The decapitated corpse took a few lurching, swaying steps, as if drunk, and then toppled over and crashed into one of the acid creeks with a splash.
"Holy fucking shit, that was awesome," Jack said, unable to keep from laughing. Something about the whole event struck him as impossible, yet he'd just witnessed it.
"I fucking hate those things," McNeil replied.
"That was an amazing shot," Jennifer said.
"It was honestly luck," the Corporal admitted as he fed another rocket into the launcher.
"We could really use more of that," Pavel said quietly.
Jack nodded in agreement, then led the search. They hunted quickly but fervently through the area, taking down a handful of Imps and zombies in the process. In the end, after checking out a few alcoves and a handful of rooms, all they got for their troubles was a blue skull-key. He supposed it was probably worth it, but he honestly would have preferred a bit more. A way out would be nice, but no, they hadn't met their minimum necessary suffering quotient yet. So they retraced their steps, coming back to the room they'd originally appeared in, and took the other door. This one led around into a room of pale stone and blue metal.
There was a door with blue trim.
"Should we open it?" Pavel asked.
Jack shook his head after a moment, instead looking at another opening across the way. His shoulder was throbbing again from where that Baron had hit him so long ago. How long had that even been? He tried to ignore the pain. "No, let's leave it for now," he said, moving forward, "I want to see what's back here."
They followed him, moving down another stone tunnel, and coming to yet another surreal piece of architecture. There was a turn in the corridor, and they came to a flickering passageway with more of those built-in light fixtures overhead. They pulsed almost in sync, causing light to go down the length of the corridor away from them, one turning on after the other. As they reached its end, they found a room made of bright, shiny silver metal, the walls all stamped with the UAC logo again. And at its head was another Baron of Hell.
"How many of these goddamned things are there?!" Jack growled, raising his plasma rifle and opening fire, wanting to kill it as quickly as possible. Jennifer joined in with her chaingun. The two barrages of fire, plasma balls and bullets, converged on the awful beast and sprayed its steaming scarlet blood all over the chromium walls. The thing died with a roar.
"We're getting better at this," Jack murmured.
"Don't get cocky," Pavel warned.
"Yeah, I guess so."
As it turned out, the Baron was guarding something else: a red skull-key. They claimed it, pocketed it, and moved on, as this place was a dead end. Jack was beyond questioning almost anything anymore. He didn't want to think about the mysteries and enigmas and insanity of this realm. Didn't want to ponder on any of it. He was beginning to worry that he was reaching the end of his rope. And the others didn't seem to be doing that good either. But they had to keep going. They had to. What other choice was there?
They went back to the blue door and opened it up.
A corridor of gleaming silver tech awaited his inspection. He edged cautiously forward, moving down the passageway and coming into a room that ran lengthwise, stretching away to the left and right, made of more silver tech. Everything had a blue trim to it. Jack shook his head, trying not to think about it, finding himself switching back and forth between asking why, why was this here, and just not giving a fuck.
It helped when a clutch of Imps wandered into the room.
As he opened fire on them, everything seemed to become a haze of frenzied activity. They ripped and tore their way through more steel silver, blue-chromed rooms, past blinking displays and rows of glowing blue circles embedded in the floors. They put down a dozen Imps, a dozen zombies, an awful proliferation of Lost Souls and Demons and a few Cacodemons thrown in for good measure. They murdered their way up and down the area, spraying the walls with blood and spilling guts and gore across the shiny floors.
Jack blasted through his shotgun ammo, shoving more in wherever he found some, and then putting an SMG he found clutched in the hands of a zombie to work. He rattled through every last round he had and ended up breaking it, using it to bash in the skull of an Imp that got too close for comfort. At the end of it, after the murdering and killing and screaming and gunfire, the quartet of blood-drenched, hell-shocked survivors found themselves standing before another teleport. Except this one was strangely different.
It wasn't a gateway, nor was it a simple red pad. It was somewhere in between. A pad of black metal with intricately carved runic symbols across it was situated between clusters of black crystals that seemed to grow at random from the walls, floor, and ceiling. It glowed and hummed with a dark, pulsing energy.
Behind it, through the unnatural archway created by the sharp black crystals, they saw a horrifying carving on the wall. It was of a face, an alien face with huge eyes and a large, bulbous head stared at them with malice and judgment and a cold alien fury. Jack shuddered and looked away from it. "I think...this is it," he said. "This is the end."
"Christ," Pavel muttered. "I almost don't want to do it."
"I really don't want to do it," McNeil muttered. "All this hell we've faced...what the fuck is at the end of this madness?"
"Nothing good," Jennifer murmured.
Jack looked over at her, and suddenly felt a nearly unbreakable compulsion come over him. He blinked, licked his lips, glanced at the others. "Could you, uh...give us a minute? Wait here for us?" he asked.
"Yeah sure, what's going on?" McNeil asked.
"I need to talk to Jennifer before we go, alone," he replied.
She was looking at him now, confused. McNeil seemed to get it, though. "Oh, okay." He nodded. "Don't take too long."
"I won't." He reached out his hand and she took it, allowing him to lead her back out of the corridor and into the previous room. He looked around it, at the corpses, the strange tech that was being meshed unnaturally with the hellish architecture. He really wished he had a better environment to talk in, but that just wasn't going to happen.
"What's wrong?" Jennifer asked.
"Well, I'm scared of dying," he replied, then laughed. "And so, because of that, because I think this is going to be the end, I really think I should tell you something: I love you."
She blinked, looking momentarily bewildered, and he felt a little bad, throwing her a curveball like this, in the middle of all this crap, but time had run out. "I'm sorry," he continued, "if this is too much, or uh...unwanted. I just thought you should know. I don't know if either of us is going to make it and there's so much fucking ugly shit in this world and I feel like...like..." he sighed, struggling. "Without sound stupid as hell and like some lame ass poet, I feel like what I feel for you is...pure. It's unequivocally good. Loving you is, has been, honestly, the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. It feels right. So, I just thought, um, it should be said."
"I love you too, Jack," she replied.
He felt a tremendous relief at hearing that, at seeing the kind, happy, accepting expression on her haggard face.
"Well...that's really great to hear," he said.
She laughed. "It's great to say." She sighed suddenly. "Now, if only we can survive this shit, we can talk about this more and celebrate it later."
"All the more reason to get out of this alive," he replied.
Knowing they couldn't put it off any longer, the pair rejoined Pavel and McNeil. Jack felt a pang of empathy for them, and guilt. They didn't have anyone. Or if they did, not here. Well...they were probably all going to die anyway.
At this point, in the darker corners of his heart, his only real hope was that he managed to take out the thing behind this invasion, the mastermind.
"Ready?" McNeil asked.
"Ready," Jack replied, taking his customary place as first through the portal.
He stepped on, and disappeared in a flash of black light.