"Are you sure you are going to be okay?" Bidwell asked as they moved through yet another back maintenance area.
"Yeah, I'll be fine. Don't worry, I'm not going to go postal on anyone or anything. Just them. Just the fucking demons," Jack replied. "I know it isn't normally the best idea to snap like that, but, to be completely honest, in my experiences so far on Phobos and Deimos, and in Hell, it was seriously an asset. In controlled bursts."
"I suppose you have a valid point," Bidwell murmured.
"Yeah, this situation is so damn fucked that I guess it makes sense to get crazy pissed," Cortez agreed. He laughed bitterly. "Goddamn, I always thought the world was going to send itself to hell with all the bullshit we pulled as a species, but...I didn't figure so literally."
"We're not fucked yet," Jack said, though he didn't have much else in the form of encouragement to offer. In all honesty, whenever he lapsed into a damned blood rage like that it still freaked him out. He stopped as they arrived at the door they needed to get to, and he hesitated to actually open it, his finger lingering over the button.
"What's wrong?" Cortez asked.
"You don't feel that?" Jack murmured.
"I don't feel anything," Bidwell said.
"I..." Cortez hesitated. Jack waited. "Yeah...kinda like a bad vibe? Maybe a little nauseating? What is that?" he asked.
"I'm not sure, but it can't be anything good. I think..." He had an idea, but he didn't like it and pushed it away, hoping he was wrong. "I'm not sure, but we should keep going." He hit the button. The door opened up onto a sharply ascending stairwell. The trio began making their way up the stairs, weapons at ready, prepared for whatever hellspawn might be waiting for them at the top. After that last attack, he was now more paranoid than ever. He hadn't even seen those damned wall panels, and he was still trying to figure out why they existed. Were they part of Haydenfield? Or were they somehow created by the demons and their twisted presence?
Not to mention, it felt too much like a trap. What the hell did that even mean? Did the demons somehow gain the knowledge that Jack and the others had to specifically go to that particular location and make that repair, and so they laid in wait? If so, how did they gain that knowledge? Or was it just a coincidence? Were they just waiting there for someone to come by? Jack shook off these frustrating and probably unanswerable, (for him at least), questions as they began to approach the apex of this metallic stairwell.
Cortez hit the door while he and Bidwell aimed their guns. The silver door at the top slid open and revealed a short entry area and, beyond that, a dimly lit room where only a row of metallic columns was visible. They had tubes running through them and an eerie blue substance flowed within them. Jack caught movement beyond the columns, where it was darker.
"Movement," he murmured.
"Saw it," Bidwell muttered.
Cortez covered the rear, going back down several steps to get out of the way, while he and Bidwell took up positions on either side of the door. The Taskmaster, thankfully, came with a goddamned flashlight. He activated it and studied the spots between the dark metal columns. A few seconds passed. Suddenly, an undead face with dark eyes and pallid skin inside of a green helmet with a shattered faceplate appeared.
The undead Marine roared and began firing at them with a pistol.
"Fuck!" Jack snapped, putting a three-round burst right into the thing's face. Old blood sprayed from the ruined forehead as the bullets connected and the body went limp, but all that did was stir up the hornet's nest. Suddenly every space between the columns was alive with undead activity. A half-dozen more zombies, all of them either Marines or local security, all of them armed, appeared and opened fire.
"Where the fuck did this come from!?" Jack snarled as he returned fire, then ducked.
"They're learning," Bidwell replied, shooting one in the throat, then a second time in the right eye, turning it into an empty, bloody socket and dropping the bastard.
They went back and forth for another minute or so, exchanging bullets until Jack's rifle was nearly dry. He leaned out and saw that nothing else was lining up to kill or be killed, so he quickly reloaded and took a step closer.
"Cover me, Bidwell. Cortez, come in behind us and secure the back door, then help us clear out this room. I'll break right, Bidwell and Cortez left, got it?" Jack asked, his voice harsh.
"Understood," they both replied at once.
They entered the little ingress area and Cortez closed the door behind them, then secured it. Jack took the right, finding an alcove of space barely wide enough to accommodate his armored shoulders in between the row of columns and the wall, which was a bland collection of dark metal plating. There was blood on the floor. This was going to be a mess. Jack opted to move with his back to the wall, facing the columns. Both to give himself a bit more breathing room, but also to get a tactical leg up on anything that might be hanging out there.
The bad feeling had intensified, he realized, but he ignored it for now.
The first gap between the technological pillars was clear, at least as far as he could tell. It was obvious that there were rows of pillars and the flashlight only extended so far. What the fuck even was this room? The second gap held a death-pale, snarling face and Jack just barely managed to get a shot off before the shotgun the fucker was holding discharged and possibly killed him. On the other side of the room, he heard Bidwell's Raptor speak and put down, apparently, an Imp. Jack cursed and kept going, switching to the next opening.
Nothing there, or in the next one. Just one more and he'd hit the next wall. He shifted. An Imp appeared in his field of vision and shrieked, gearing up to throw a fireball. Jack answered by putting three bullets into its big, stupid mouth and blowing the back of its head out in a volcanic geyser of ruby blood, pulped brain matter, and shredded gore. He hit the wall. Nothing there. Jack put his back to this new wall and resumed the process.
It took about ten solid minutes to actually clear the room, first along the outer ring, and then being forced to move in between the pillars themselves. Thankfully, by that point, there were only a few zombies left, and these ones were stupider and unarmed. They found three doors besides the one they'd come in through, each in a different wall. One was less of a door and more of a panel set a little back into the wall. There was no obvious way to open it, so they reluctantly left it. Another door had a blue trim to it and wouldn't open, meaning it needed a fucking keycard. God, how he hated those things. The last door appeared unlocked.
"Either of you know what the fuck this room is?" Jack asked as they gathered at the door and checked over their guns.
"A coolant room, I believe," Bidwell replied. "Meant to deal with one of the no doubt many, intensely powerful reactors that power this station."
"Huh, weird," Jack muttered. The bad feeling was worse than ever, and now even Bidwell seemed a little uneasy. "All right, we ready?"
"Yep," Cortez replied, and Bidwell gave an affirmative reply.
"Okay, let's see what's on the other side."
Jack opened the door.
He was not ready for what was on the other side.
For several seconds, they just stood there and stared. It was like looking through a portal into another world, one that had almost nothing in common with the one you were presently standing in. Jack tried to make sense of what he was seeing as he stood there. The most immediately obvious thing was that they were up high, probably a good forty feet off the ground floor. The room ahead of them was quite large, extending probably a hundred meters away and fifty from side-to-side. Directly ahead of them was a square platform maybe eight feet by eight feet made up of metal plates and contained within a ring of squared pillars made of a light tan metal and studded, seemingly at random, with little yellow LED lights.
To their right and ahead, forty feet straight down, was a stone area edged to the back and right by more dark plate-metal walls, and to the left and ahead by a moat carved into it that was filled with a bubbling, glowing green acid or toxic waste. It effectively cut the room in half. On that stone area, towards the back, was a square platform, raised up, made of what might have been processed sandstone. A set of metal stairs led up to it and, directly above it, close to the level they were at now, was another platform of the same dimensions, held suspended in the ceiling. Across the acid moat along the left side of the room was a curving catwalk at their level. It was maybe five feet across and was home to a handful of rooms built into its wall. The only thing covering these rooms were iron bars, with a gap left in each as a doorway.
Behind the bars, Jack saw movement. Imps. They hissed at each other and fed on what certainly were corpses. Directly across from them were two openings high up on the wall, with no apparent way to get to them, where more Imps wandered around.
"What...what is this?" Bidwell asked uncertainly.
"Yeah, am I having a stroke or something? What the fuck am I looking at?" Cortez muttered.
"It's like what I saw on Phobos and Deimos. They warp our reality with their own," Jack said, trying not to freak out. An Imp in one of the caged rooms to the left shrieked and threw a fireball. That helped him focus. He stepped out onto the platform and Cortez did as well, both of them trying to get a better angle on the Imps. Jack managed to shoot one of them in the face before the world dropped out from beneath him.
"FUCK!" he screamed in raw, shocked fury, and heard Cortez yelling in much the same manner. He looked around as the world spun by and right about the time it stopped two seconds later, he realized what had happened: that metal platform they'd stepped out onto was a fucking elevator of some kind!
He glanced up, hearing gunfire overhead, and saw that Bidwell was still up there, firing off at the Imps. Thank God he hadn't fallen over the edge, there was no railing or wall or anything now dividing him from a forty foot drop. Jack looked around. They were sitting ducks in this makeshift cage of weird, LED-strewn metal pillars that were just barely not wide enough to squeeze through. However, behind them was a gap in one of them.
"Go!" he said as fireballs rained down above them, pushing Cortez towards the gap. The man slipped out and Jack did as well. As he stepped out, he heard a grinding sound and turned back around. The weird elevator had shot back up. Great. Now they were effectively stranded down here, unless it came down again. Bidwell was still up there. He and Cortez came from around the caged elevator, towards the raised platform to their right, to get a better angle on the Imps. Only now he couldn't see them, as they were too high up and out of sight.
"Fuck me, I can't get a shot!" Cortez growled.
"I think-" A bright flash of green light from the right caught his attention and he turned to face whatever had caused it.
And felt his whole body go cold.
Four Barons of Hell had apparently popped into existence on the raised platform over there. They were, for some reason, facing the opposite direction, though with Bidwell's firing, he had no idea how long that might last. Gently, he reached out.
"C-Cortez," he muttered. "Don't...move."
"I've got fireballs incoming!" he growled, his voice low, apparently warned enough by Jack's tone not to shout.
"Fuck...back behind the elevator, now."
They began stepping back behind cover and the second they did, narrowly avoiding several incoming fireballs, as the Imps had come out of their cages to attack them from on high, the Barons turned around.
Four marrow-freezing roars of demonic, white-hot fury sounded.
"Fuck!" Jack screamed, and Cortez echoed that as he turned to see what in the hell was happening. Jack backed up rapidly, instinctively moving away from the four behemoth juggernauts that were gearing up to start pelting them with balls of green energy. He bumped into the wall behind him and something let out a loud, sharp click. He jumped and glanced behind him, spying a pair of glass squares set inside of a silver plate embedded in the wall. The one on top was glowing green. At the same time, he heard a loud grinding sound.
Cortez had already moved away, returning fire. Jack leaped to the right as he took aim with his rifle, narrowly avoiding one of the green plasma balls. It smashed into the wall behind him. Looking up, he realized where the grinding sound was coming from: the platform suspended from the ceiling was now lowering. He felt a sharp stab of hope as he looked back down. The raised platform they were standing on was a giant crusher...for some reason. None of this made any sense but the only thing that had to was that the crusher would crush the quartet of Barons if they stayed on the platform. Which they were doing, apparently content to sit back and toss green plasma from a distance. Jack dodged to the side as another came his way.
"Just dodge!" he shouted. "They'll be crushed!"
"Goddamnit!" Cortez snapped, throwing himself out of the way of another green energy ball.
It was sheer chaos as they went back and forth, dodging and diving and throwing themselves out of the way as the four Barons of Hell threw energy ball after energy ball at them. Jack couldn't believe this was how he encountered the eight-foot, musclebound, goat-horned fuckers again. They sneered and roared and snarled as they assaulted them with their energy. How were they even generating it!? He knew he couldn't let one of those things hit him. An Imp fireball would hurt, but one of those might actually kill him.
He could feel the heat of their passage even through his armor.
The crusher moved with a glacial slowness, but finally it began coming down on them. Almost as one, the penny finally dropped on them both, and all four of them reached up in a panic, pushing their palms against the huge platform. Their muscles bulged and Jack and Cortez stopped moving, watching in sheer amazed terror as they actually stopped it!
"Focus fire on that one on the left!" Jack shouted, raising his Taskmaster and starting to pour fire into one of the Barons. The thing roared in fury as bloody holes opened up on its chest and along its limbs. The crusher let out a rending shriek. They were going to break it! It could still come down on them, or it could lock into place, fucking Jack and Cortez over completely. Jack emptied his rifle and slapped a fresh magazine in, then focused fire on the thing's head. It was difficult, as its head was largely protected by its giant bicep.
But he managed to land a shot on its big, ugly face and although he didn't kill it, he pissed it off enough that it roared, gave up trying to hold the crusher up, and turned to fling a plasma ball at him. Jack laughed as immediately the crusher resumed its course and as he dodged the green energy, the sound of snapping bones could be heard as it continued its relentless push downwards. They tried to get out from beneath it at that point, but they got in each others' way and the thing continued grinding ever downward.
They roared and screamed as their bones broke and blood flew and the four titanic beasts disappeared beneath the thing in a series of loud, wet snaps and pops and bursts. Blood oozed down the stairwell and over the side of the platform as the crusher reached the base. After a few seconds, it began to ascend again.
"Ah God!" Cortez groaned at the melted-cheese way the flesh and organs were pulled and strectched, stuck between the two platforms of the crushing thing.
Jack realized that the gunfire from overhead had died away.
"Bidwell! You okay up there!?" he called.
"Just fine!" the Marine called back. "What was that awful sound?"
"Four giant demon bastards being crushed like tin cans!"
"...I see. Are you safe now?"
"Yeah! Stay up there, we'll explore down here for the moment," Jack said.
"Understood. I've killed all the Imps I could see."
"Excellent! Come on, let's see what there is to see," he said to Cortez.