Jack reappeared in a flash of black light.

It was less awful this time, at least, the feeling. But…

He looked around. Jennifer was missing. And he was in a small chamber of green brick. The walls were covered with flowing blood and he could see iron bars built into the bricks. Jack took a quick look around, feeling panic rising. Jennifer was nowhere to be found, and there was no obvious way out of the small room. He saw a grinning Imp staring in at him between the iron bars and quickly grabbed for the shotgun he'd scavenged.

Only there was no shotgun.

No armor. No guns. Nothing at all.

He was naked and unarmed.

More Imps were coming now, on the other side of the bars. They began to hiss and cackle mercilessly at him, reaching in, clawing at him.

One of them grabbed his neck.

Jack tried to scream, tried to fight, but he was caught.

He was dying…

Jack jerked awake, gasping and sitting straight up. He heard someone else gasp beside him and looked around, taking everything in frantically. His eyes first fell to Jennifer, who was staring up at him, eyes wide with worry, her pale face ghostly and beautiful in the soft luminosity offered by distant stars.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"I..." he looked around the room he was in, felt the comforting weight of memory settle into his mind. "I was just having a nightmare," he said, slowly laying back down.

"I'm sorry," she said, and moved against him beneath the blankets, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her nude body to his.

"Me too," he muttered.

"I've been having them, too. I think we're gonna be stuck with them for a little while."

He nodded tiredly. He was exhausted, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Not right away. To distract himself, to help reassure himself that it was all okay, that it had all worked out in the end, (for the most part), he thought about the past three days. They had been a pretty long three days, but mercifully free of combat.

The final black crystal teleporter had deposited them right back to where they had started, back on Mars City. Jack had no idea, even now, why that was. If it was just total blind luck or maybe something that Fielding had done or even that the Mastermind was using it for its own demented purposes. But they came through, and with their armor and guns, too. Jack thought it must've been the Mastermind causing that to happen, when they came through naked.

They had gone in search of Kelly and Fielding.

Both men were dead. They'd been killed by the demonic horrors before Jack and the others could succeed. He didn't know what had gotten Fielding, but a group of Imps and Demons had jumped Kelly. He'd been surrounded in the Marine HQ by a good dozen bullet-riddled corpses. The old bastard had gone down fighting.

After running the scanners one more time, and confirming that they were, in fact, working, Jack and Jennifer confirmed that they were the last two humans left alive on Mars, and certainly on Phobos or Deimos.

Jack prayed that there were no living humans in Hell.

They had received a call, an answer to a distress call that had been sent out previously, within hours. It was a Marine Recon ship that had picked up the signal and was on their way. They would be there in a little over a day. Unfortunately, for some reason, they wouldn't respond, and Jack could get no one else on the radio as well.

So he and Jennifer had done what they could to tend to themselves. They had locked themselves up in the Administrator's Wing, which sported luxurious apartments, cafeterias, and medical facilities. They had taken full advantage of those. The very first thing they'd done, after securing the area and locking it down as much as was physically possible, was take a shower. They'd done a cursory job of tending to their wounds, then they had found the most comfortable bed they could, made love and had fallen into a deep, long sleep.

It was a dangerous gamble, but they were simply too wiped to do anything else.

They'd woken up some strange, distant time twelve hours later, starving to death. Or at least that's what it felt like. They had taken another long, hot shower, then grabbed a huge meal in the cafeteria, then had taken the time to do a more thorough job of tending to their wounds. Jack's shoulder was definitely going to scar, and he had a few more scars to boot from all this. They both did. Neither cared. They'd come out the other side alive and relatively intact. It was more than they had honestly thought was going to happen.

They'd simply relaxed the rest of the time, eating and napping, having sex whenever they could work up the energy. After all they'd gone through, this felt like a bonus. When the Marine Recon ship had arrived, a small but fast thing, they'd spent four solid hours explaining everything that had happened, doing everything they could to convince the small crew of men and women aboard. And, given the carnage on Mars City, and the fact that Deimos was still missing, they didn't have a difficult time believing them.

Jack remembered then, way back when on Phobos, when they had downloaded copies of the information, the incriminating evidence. Well, that was long gone now. Lost to the Phobos Gate. But there was enough data left in the cores here on Mars City that he and Jennifer had a fair amount of damning, hard proof to show the Marines. After confirming that there was, in fact, no one left alive on Mars or on Phobos, they had set a course for Earth at maximum speed. Jack had wanted to call ahead, but they couldn't.

A surprise solar flare had fried their comms. They could receive, but not send.

And now he was coming awake after almost forty eight hours of being on the ship. They weren't that far away now, he saw as he checked the time on the clock mounted on the wall above the bed he and Jennifer were sharing.

"You know, I can think of something to help with those nightmares," Jennifer said.

"Oh?" he replied, and she placed a hand on his shoulder, pushing him onto his back.

"Oh indeed," she said, and pressed her lips against his.

The wall-mounted comm crackled to life. "Ward, Taylor, get out here. Something's come up." It was Pierce, the man in charge of the ship.

Both of them sighed and he reached up and hit the respond button. "What is it?" he asked.

"It's important. We've got a distress call from the moon. I think it's related to whatever happened to you on Mars."

They both looked at each other and a bolt of cold black fear shot through him. "We'll be right there," he said.

Seven minutes later, they were dressed and on the bridge with Pierce and two others, the pilot and his second in command.

"What's the situation?" Jack asked.

"Our troubles have only gotten worse," Pierce replied. "Comms are almost dead, we're limited to very short-range signals, and our sensors have gone on the shits." He turned to the pilot. "Play it back for them."

A woman's voice, sounding tired but determined, came out of the speakers amid a haze of static. "I repeat this is...zzt...eant Kyra Morgan on UAC Lunar One...zzt...immediate assistance. I am declaring an emergency..."

The message faded out.

"That's all we got," Pierce said.

"Shit," Jack muttered.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

Jack looked at him. "You're asking me?"

"After learning that Hell is apparently a real place and demons are real too, I'm feeling a little out of my depth."

Jack frowned, considering it, looking first at Jennifer, then back at Pierce. "We should check it out," he said. "How far out are we?"

"Half an hour," the pilot said.

"Do it. Divert course," Pierce said.

"Yes, Sergeant," the pilot replied.

The ship adjusted its heading and began to head towards the unknown.