When Jack snapped into reality this time, something felt different.
Something felt off.
He had appeared on a teleporter pad at the end of a short, narrow alcove made of relatively simple gray rock. Ahead, he could see a room, and another copy of the alcove and teleporter opposite. That had to be where Kyra and her squad was going to come in. Hopefully. Slowly, he began making his way down the alcove.
As he came into the central room, Jennifer appeared behind him. He checked out the room and found a surprise.
"Whoa."
"What is it?" she asked, moving to join him.
"Guns. A whole fucking armory," he muttered.
"Suspicious."
"Yep. But we might as well stock up. Also, there's dead guys in here."
"Nothing new there."
The room was made of more gray stone, somewhat longer than it was broad. In the corners, which were slanted ingresses, corpses hung by their wrists, connected to the walls via rusty chains. They had all been skinned, everything below the chest eviscerated, nothing more than a smear of blood on the wall below them.
Hollenshead appeared next. He came in and looked around as Jack and Jennifer began loading up. The only other way out, besides these two teleporters, was a third teleport, at the head of the room down its own little alcove. It was different from the others, silver. Shiny silver. It was up against a wall that had a horrifying visage of melted faces constantly flowing.
"Man, this is creepy," he muttered.
"Isn't it always?" Jennifer replied.
"I wonder who they were," Jack said, glancing again at the bodies.
"Hopefully fucking stockholders or CEOs for the UAC or something. Or, shit, any company at this point," Jennifer replied.
"Yeah. Fuckers sit on their fat asses, laughing as they do drugs and light cigars, sending us grunts to die and bleed in fucking pointless fake-ass wars," Hollenshead muttered. "I'd say I wouldn't wish this shit on my worst enemy, but honestly, Hell was made for fuckers like that."
"Can't say I disagree," Jack replied.
Cortez appeared and joined them in the armory. The place had obviously been worked over by the UAC, although Jack had to admit that the foldout tables and gun lockers spread out along the periphery of the room had a more hasty look to them. Maybe someone had been paranoid, thinking ahead in the event of disaster, knowing that this eventuality might occur. That some squad of battle-hardened warriors might show up in this exact place, needing to put down this Icon of Sin. Whoever that was, Jack silently thanked them.
The UAC weren't all morons and assholes. Some of them were doing good work. Or had been, at least.
Kyra appeared in the opposite teleport not much later. They all reacted to her presence on instinct, but relaxed when they saw who it was.
"So it worked," she said, joining them.
"Seems to have," Jack replied. "We won't know until we go through that teleport. I'm guessing it takes us to the Icon."
"Hopefully...whoa, what the fuck is that?" she asked when she noticed the gun he was checking over.
"BFG Nine Thousand," he replied, hefting it. "I used this to kill the last big granddaddy demon. I'm guessing it'll do a good job on this one. Or...hoping, is more accurate."
"It's really powerful," Jennifer said.
"Don't suppose there's anymore around?" Kyra asked.
"I don't see any, sorry. And I've got dibs," Jack replied.
She sighed. "Figured."
As the others on her squad appeared one by one, they cleaned out the armory, loading themselves down with as much ammo, as many guns and grenades, as they could carry. The bad feeling only grew as they worked. It was a heaviness on the air, a tension. Like the place itself was just...bad. The feeling had been there ever since they'd entered Hell, but it was more concentrated than ever. Jack wondered, suddenly, if it was the dimension itself that gave off the feeling, or if it was the Icon of Sin. And it had been getting worse because they were drawing nearer to it.
When they were finished, Jack slowly looked around at them all. Was this it? Was this what Earth, what the human race had mustered in the face of true evil? Eight battered, weary, beaten-down warriors in dented, bloodied, half-broken armor?
It didn't matter, he knew. Although he was wishing for an army, an array of vehicles and the highest of high-tech killing hardware, he knew all that mattered was that they were the ones who had made it. They were the ones who were here.
It was their responsibility to do this, or die trying.
"I don't suppose you came across Diaz?" he asked.
Kyra shook her head. "No, not as far as I know."
He sighed tiredly. "Figured." He expected Jennifer or Hollenshead or Cortez to offer him something, some words of hope, but they didn't. They all knew the truth as much as he did: it was almost certain that she was dead.
He realized they were all looking at him. "Well...this is it," he said after clearing his throat. "I know we're all fucking dead on our feet, and miserable, and this place sucks shit through a straw. But everyone is counting on us. Literally fucking everyone. The fate of the world and the human race is in our hands. We have to kill this thing. That's all that matters. We don't do this now...I don't know how long it'll be before someone else gets another shot. So let's go execute this fuckhead."
The others nodded grimly, readying their weapons.
There were no illusions among them.
Jack knew that they felt in their souls what he felt in his: they probably weren't coming back alive from this encounter, whatever it was.
He had everyone double check all their weapons one more time, then he stepped up to the silver teleporter pad. Jack took a deep breath and exhaled long and slow. This was it. This was the last one. Hopefully.
He could die out there.
Honestly, it was a miracle he hadn't yet.
But as long as he managed to actually kill this thing, and buy the people of Earth some time, he thought he could die, if not happy, then at least satisfied.
Jack held onto the plasma rifle, BFG slung across his back, his other weapons in reach and ready, and stepped onto the pad.
This time, the flash of light was black.
When he appeared again, he was standing on a long platform in a massive stone room. Beyond the edge of the platform, some ten feet down, lay a large pool of blood. But it was what was ahead of him that immediately captivated.
It was huge.
It also didn't seem to make any sense.
The far wall of the immense room he was in was absolutely covered in an intricate networks of tubes, piping, and circuitry, as well as other bits of technology he had no real analogue for. But that wasn't what captivated him so.
It was what lay at the center of the wall.
It was a…
Goat skull. A giant goat skull, bigger than a Spider Mastermind. It was built into the wall, not just affixed to it but a part of it. Its eyes were white and blank and huge, the size of giant tractor tires. Its mouth was a sneer of huge blocky teeth. It could swallow a truck whole. It was oddly biomechanical in nature, the tubing and piping and circuitry flowing onto it without boundary or break. Probably the strangest thing of all was the fact that there was a large rectangular hole in it massive forehead. And though it was mostly made of bone, strands of red flesh were pulled up and away from the hole, held in place with huge spikes in the wall around it, almost like something undergoing surgery. Inside the hole, he could see only darkness and a vague hint of meaty matter.
This had to be the Icon of Sin.
It wasn't alive, though. Or it didn't seem alive. It was completely immobile and inert. The room around him, vast though it was, held no sound. Only the noise of the others teleporting in behind him and spreading out, joining him in standing on the platform, staring up at the vast beast.
"So, um...what the fuck do we do?" Hollenshead asked, finally breaking the long silence.
Jack finally tore his gaze from the immense demon. "I'm not sure. Maybe just start firing away at the big fucker? I mean, is it even alive? It's gotta be alive…" He looked around. Not much stuck out about the huge room they were in, but there were a few things.
For starters, they were standing on a tiered platform, at the lowest rung, with two more above them, each tall enough that they couldn't jump or climb or help each other up. He also noticed a relatively small square platform in the midst of the blood pool, at the base of the Icon of Sin, right in front of it, not much bigger than a teleport pad.
It seemed oddly specific in its placement.
There was more evidence of the UAC having once been around. He had to admit, whoever came to this place and chose to remain and keep working under the not-quite-dead gaze of that immense demon had guts. A lot of guts.
"Maybe it's sleeping," Cortez muttered.
"It's probably focusing," Jennifer said. "Overseeing the invasion."
"So what, should we just fucking blast it?" Powell asked.
"No...we should look around first. Make sure we aren't missing anything. They obviously did research here. Look," Jack pointed along the base of the massive wall of biotech that the Icon of Sin resided in, "you can see the remains of workstations and data cores they plugged in there at one point. Two of us should stay on watch, everyone else split up and search the place."
"I'll keep an eye on this big fuck," Carpenter muttered, looking up at the vast inert thing.
"I'll make sure nothing sneaks up on us," Cortez said.
"Perfect. Let's go."
The tension was already approaching unbearable, but it got worse as they hunted around. Jack began looking around for some way to get up onto the tiers above them, as well as for anything that might be useful in giving them intel on what they were supposed to do. He had to admit, this was not what he had been expecting. The last time around, it had just been: shoot it until it died. And really, that's how it had been so far. Just shoot the demons. If that didn't work, use a bigger gun. And that had worked.
He wanted to use a nuke on this thing, but he didn't have one, and he didn't want to piss away this opportunity of quiet while they had it. Whatever the fuck the Icon of Sin was, it clearly was either too engaged or maybe it really was asleep.
Or hell, maybe they had it wrong and this was something else, and they were actually supposed to be elsewhere.
Now there was a bad thought.
Something caught his eye. A PDA, silver and still relatively shiny at the far end of the platform, among a pile of debris and bones.
"Think I've got something," he said, crouching and scooping it up.
"Anything useful?" Kyra asked over the radio.
"Hang on." Jack fired it up and saw that it belonged to a scientist named Lovelace. He wondered what had happened to them, and then glanced at the charred bones nearby. Probably nothing good. Maybe it had been a quick death. There were a few files in the database. He skipped to the last entry, finding a video file, and as he saw the image of an older man with his hair half burned off and wild eyes, he flashed back to finding Watts's notes during his first trip to Hell. There was a lot going on in the background.
"If you've found this, there's a good chance you're here to kill the Icon of Sin. We've been studying what we can, pulling data from The Wall, and I've been translating. Everything is going to hell now. The creatures are everywhere. Here is the important part: the ritual platform in the blood pool at the base of the creature is key. You MUST hit the four releases spread out across the room, and then hit the final release, the big skull at the top of the platforms. This will-" He paused as something exploded behind him and several people and demons screamed. He glanced briefly back over his shoulder and then hunkered down more, staring madly into the camera with a focus that seemed inhuman.
"This will cause the ritual platform to raise. This is key. This is the ONLY way to kill the Icon. You must fire something powerful directly down the hole in the center of its brain. All my research indicates this to be the key. You must-"
A bony fist punched through his skull and the PDA was dropped as blood sprayed across it. The recording ending.
"Just figured out how to kill this fucker," Jack said.
"Hit us with it," Jennifer replied.
"We need to-"
A loud roar filled the air. It was so intense, Jack felt it pass through his bones, rattling them painfully. It nearly knocked him off his feet.
A booming, horrifying voice cracked into existence.
"OREMOR NHOJ, EM LLIK TSUM UOY, EMAG EHT NIW OT!"
"Aw shit, you woke it up!" Hollenshead cried.
The baffling pronouncement rolled over them, echoing through the chamber like a thunderclap, and a loud igniting sound came on its heels. Jack watched in horror as something flew out of the Icon of Sin's head, specifically the big hole in the middle. It was a huge cube, six feet by six feet by six feet, cast in iron or bronze, old and corroded, each surface covered in a skull. It flew down towards where Carpenter stood, and he moved quickly out of the way before it smashed into the platform. Jack's horror grew as, when the cube landed, it vanished in a puff of smoke and hellfire, and in its place were a pair of Revenants and a trio of Imps.
The igniting sound came once more, and as he looked, he saw another cube coming his way.
The demons roared and began attacking.
"Fuck!" Jack yelled, getting out of the way and raising his plasma rifle. The others began engaging the demons. Already, another cube was launching.
"How do we kill this thing?!" Kyra snapped.
"We gotta find four switches that will help us get up to the top of these platforms!" Jack yelled, speaking as clearly as possible. The cube meant for him burst and in its place, a Mancubus and an Arachnotron appeared. "Oh shit! Hold on!"
He began strafing as he opened fire on the Mancubus, figuring it to be the more dangerous of the two. It proved him right by raising its rusty cannon arms and launching twin fireballs at him. He barely managed to avoid them, burning away patches of skin from the immense monster's body as it tried to draw a bead on him, and then he lucked out when the Arachnotron got tired of waiting for a shot and fired directly into the Mancubus's back. That caused the big demon to roar and spin around. Jack held off, letting the two of them go at it.
"At the top of the platform is a skull-button! Pushing it raises that platform down in the blood! I need to be on it because I've got the BFG and it's the only way to get a clear killshot! Does everyone got that!?" he snapped. The Arachnotron managed to win the little skirmish and Jack rewarded the damaged, burning thing with a burst of plasma and finishing it off. A series of strained, affirmative replies came.
More cubes were coming. More demons were spawning. There were already two dozen of the things moving around, and it seemed that the Icon of Sin was bringing in some heavy hitters right off the bat. He saw several Barons, many more Arachnotron, and a group of Revenants. Everyone was engaged in heavy fighting. He saw Cortez running towards him. The immediate area around him was clear. Jack ran to the edge of the platform he stood on and looked around frantically, trying to find any indication of a button or a lever or a-
"There!" he yelled as Cortez skidded to a halt at his side. He pointed. "See it!?"
"Yep!" Cortez replied.
A cube burst beside them, spawning in a fresh pair of Barons.
"Jump!" Jack yelled, and they leaped off the platform. Landing with a huge splash in the blood, Jack was deeply relieved to find it was only ankle deep. The pair began running towards the skull-button he'd spotted over in the corner, where the Icon of Sin's massive Wall met the more normal stone wall running along the left side of the room. All around them, gunfire popped off and fireballs flew. Something exploded.
It was chaos over the network, several of them shouting battle-cries of rage and fury.
"I found one! I'm going for it!" Kyra called.
"I'm with you!" Jennifer yelled.
"Same! Go! I got your back!" Hollenshead roared.
He and Cortez ran across the blood, hurrying as more and more cubes kept coming. Jack's heart thundered in his ears as he ran up to the skull-button and punched it. It clicked loudly and the eyes lit up.
"Got one!" he shouted.
As he and Cortez began making their way back, he scanned the wall for more, but it was infuriatingly smooth and empty of anything useful.
"Got two!" Kyra reported.
"I see something!" Cortez said, pointing at the platform they'd leaped from. There was indeed a skull-button, but it was different from the first one. Did that matter? Right now, it didn't, because Jack was going to push it anyway.
As he reached it, a cube burst not far away and a small army of Imps popped into existence in the blood with them. They fired as they ran, mowing the shrieking leathery things down, dodging their fireballs and finishing them off as quickly as they could. As they came up to the button, Jack heard a shriek from overhead.
"Back!" Cortez yelled.
Jack took one step back and then a Revenant landed heavily in between him and the platform in a big splash of blood. His rage taking hold of him, he shoved the plasma rifle into its face and emptied the rest of the cell, disintegrating the thing's skull. Hastily reloading as it collapsed into a pile of bones, he punched the skull-button. The effect was immediate: the platform abruptly dropped down and he heard Carpenter and someone else shout in surprise. As it became level with the blood, he saw several demons stagger and stumble.
Through them, he just barely caught sight of another skull-button, this one hidden by the platform until it had lowered, but it perfectly matched the one he'd hit initially.
"There it is! I'm going for it! Cover me!" Jack roared and raced off.
He ran through the demons as they tried to get back to their feet all around him, focused entirely on the button, reaching for it.
"I've got it! I've-"
The platform shot back up and he and all the demons who'd been trying to get to their feet fell over again.
"Fuck! Cortez! Hit it-"
"On it!"
Abruptly the platform dropped again. This time, Jack at least managed to stay on his feet, though an Imp grabbed his ankle as he hurried towards the button.
"Fuck off!" he screamed, tearing his foot free and stomping hard on its skull, splattering its brains all over the place. He raced forward and hit the button. "Third check! Whoa shit!"
The platform shot back up, and he saw that Cortez had managed to get back onboard before it did so. And then they were neck-deep in demons. Jack began spraying the immediate area with plasma fire just to get himself some space. Imps yelled, Demons roared, Revenants shrieked, and Barons bellowed as they were killed and driven back. Cortez added his fire, pushing them back, blowing off heads and blasting away everything in sight.
His plasma rifle finally ran dry as he put down another Baron, burning a hole in its throat and halfway decapitating it. The ball of green plasma it was winding up to throw went wide, taking an Imp's head clean off its shoulders. He readjusted his grip and then began swinging it around as a Demon came for him, mouth wide, roaring. He slammed the gun into the side of its big head, staggering it, then hit it twice more, tearing one of its horns off. The gun started beeping in that way he knew meant it was overheating, so he stuffed it into the Demon's maw and then kicked it hard enough to send it stumbling back into a pair of Mancubi.
It blew up before it could recover, and apparently caught whatever gave the Mancubi their abilities an overload and blew up all three of them.
"Ha ha, badass!" Cortez cried.
"Hell yes-OH SHIT MOVE!" Jack roared as he switched back to his double-barrel.
Too late. One of the descending cubes landed right on Cortez. Jack watched him disappear beneath it and a massive burst of blood and bits of armor and bone sprayed out from beneath it as landed and then became a trio of Cacodemons.
"I can't find the last switch!" Kyra snapped.
"Cortez is KIA!" Jack roared as he stuck the business end of the double-barrel into the nearest Cacodemon's face and popped it. "I think I might know where the last switch is! Whoever's on the platform, meet me at the far right side!"
And then he was off and running, blasting with his shotgun and shoving more shells in, over and over. He eviscerated Imps, blasted Demons, and blew away whatever else got in his way as he hoofed it through the sea of bodies, alive and dead, his boots squelching in the growing pool of demon blood.
This had better work.
He ran into Jennifer along the way, and she helped him push his way down to where Carpenter and Powell were fighting back to back.
"Linaweaver's down! FUCK! THEY JUST TORE HIS FUCKING HEAD OFF!" Kyra roared over the scream of a chaingun.
"MOTHERFUCKERS!" Hollenshead bellowed. Something exploded and demons were sent flying.
"What are we looking for!?" Jennifer cried.
"Button!" Jack replied, blowing the head off a Revenant and shoving another pair of shells in. As he reached the opposite end of the platform…
There!
He saw another skull-button.
Behind him, he heard Carpenter yell. They both spun around and saw that he had gone down. Powell stood over him, fighting back a horde of demons clawing and shrieking to get at them.
"Help him!" Jack snapped. "I got this!"
Jennifer hesitated only for a split second, then unloaded into the crowd between them with her plasma rifle, screaming like a Valkyrie.
Jack hit the button. The next tier lowered. There were fewer demons up there, and he could see the last skull-button they needed. Running as hard and as fast as he could, he just barely managed to hit it before the platform snapped back up into place. He was already off and running though, racing and dodging through the demonic bastards as he made for the opposite end of this platform. He knew what he needed to do now.
As he reached the next skull-button that would lower it, he called out to the others over the radio. "I've got all four! About to push the last! Regroup and stay alive!"
There were several responses, none of them sounding particularly hopeful, but he put it out of his head for the moment. Right now, it was all coming down to him. He found the button and punched it, causing the final tier to lower into place. Stepping aboard, he saw a few enemies wandering around and started exterminating them, already hurrying towards the back wall where, presumably, this final button was to be found.
As the last tier shot back up into place, he saw it.
At the center of the back wall was a large white skull, one that looked far more stylized than any of the others, embedded in the wall.
Only, he realized, it looked familiar, and in an instant, he knew why: this was the same thing they had blown up in the core of Haydenfield to lower the Firewall. There were also tiny alcoves in the wall, one to either side of the skull. They were little more than closets, really, and each held a teleporter pad. Great, another thing to worry about.
Jack set off to push the final skull-button, but then froze as something occurred to him. He really should have brought someone up here with him. How was he going to push it and then get down there onto the platform? How fast did it raise?
Some sixth sense caused him to stumble to his right and just in time, too. A cube landed where he had been, birthing a pair of roaring Barons of Hell. He raised his shotgun, preparing for the worst, when he saw a flash of green light come from behind them. A second later, he heard the unmistakable sound of a rocket launcher firing.
One of the Barons blew apart and the other was staggered several steps. Behind it, a figure in blue armor was revealed. They held a rocket launcher. Switching targets, they fired a second rocket directly into the back of the surviving Baron, killing it.
Jack looked into the visor.
"Diaz! Holy shit!" he cried.
"What the fuck is that and what the fuck is going on!?" she demanded as she reloaded the rocket launcher and looked at the Icon of Sin in the distance.
"That's the leader! I need your help!" he cried.
She finished reloading and stepped up to him. "What do you need me to do?"
He had a million questions for her, namely where had she been and what had happened to her, but it didn't matter in this moment.
All that mattered was the mission.
"Your radio work?" he asked. She nodded. "Connect to the shortwave and double-check. Hurry."
She did so and spoke into the mic. He heard her over it and spoke back. She gave him a thumbs up. "I hear you."
"Good. Stand right here, and when I tell you to, push this big skull," he said, pointing at it. "After that, help kill demons."
"Check, go!" she replied.
He was gone. There were things he wanted to say to her, to them all, but there was just no time. He ran to the edge of the top platform and dropped down. Landing with a heavy grunt, he blasted away at whatever demons were nearest and shoved his way through the rest. As he dropped back onto the lowest tier, he could see Powell and Jennifer fighting off a horde of them. He couldn't see Carpenter anymore.
Still running and gunning, dismembered limbs and huge gushes of blood flying through the air as he blasted through his reserve of shotgun shells, he finally hit the edge and dropped down into the blood pool. He could just make out Hollenshead and Kyra fighting their asses off. As he looked, a Mancubus fired off a pair of fireballs into Hollenshead. One missed, the other connected with his left bicep and took his arm completely off.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, the huge man turned and began unloading into it, holding onto an assault rifle with his remaining arm. Jack primed and threw a grenade at the Mancubus's feet, then primed and tossed the rest of them he had on him at the demons along his path. Ducking and shielding himself as best he could, the grenades went off. He went sprawling from the concussive force of the impacts.
When he got back to his feet, ears ringing, head swimming, body pulsing in agony from a hundred different injuries, he saw that the way was relatively clear.
Jack ran.
He blew through the remainder of his shotgun ammo getting to the platform.
"Diaz, now!" he screamed as he leaped and landed on it heavily.
For a cold-gut second, nothing happened. And then, with a jerk, it began to rise. Jack nearly lost his balance but managed to remain on two feet as it ascended. It moved at a slower pace than he would have liked, but this was it.
This was the actual end.
The final push.
It had all come down to this.
He ducked as a few fireballs came his way, then heard Diaz yell over the radio. Glancing back briefly, he saw her firing rockets into the seething mass of demons below her. He could see the others fighting.
Even if he made it, would they make it out of this chamber alive?
Would they ever see Earth again?
It truly didn't matter. In this moment, the only thing that mattered was that Jack performed this one task correctly.
If he could do it, then everything he'd suffered, everything he'd endured, even dying here in this godforsaken place would be worth it.
He hefted the BFG, coming up in line with the Icon of Sin. When he did, he saw that the screen that was built into it was blinking red. For a moment, he almost had a panic attack. Then he realized that it wasn't drained of energy, it only had enough energy for one shot.
Of course. Of fucking course it did.
How he'd missed that, he had no idea. Maybe it was because his brain was absolutely fired and he was so exhausted that he was basically the walking dead at this point. Maybe something had happened to it during combat.
Didn't matter.
He just had to make this shot.
With a shuddering halt that nearly made him fall off, the ritual platform stopped abruptly. He was level with the hole now.
The Icon of Sin loomed before him, an immense thing mounted on the wall, a terrifying visage of insanity, alien hatred, and malignant malevolence.
He took aim.
The Icon let out a roar that seemed like it was going to pop his skull.
Jack could see something, a throbbing gray-red mass down the shadowed corridor that led into its impossible skull, and then he fired.
The roar intensified and he saw darkness boiling along the edges of his vision as the great green ball of energy traversed the distance between them.
This was it. If he'd missed, they were all fucked. Humanity was doomed.
He clung grimly to consciousness, falling to one knee, feeling blood begin running down his face from his nose and his eyes.
His visor cracked as the roar continued.
And then the green ball disappeared, straight down the chute.
For one long, terrifying second nothing happened.
And then there was a brilliant burst of energy. The roaring cut off and an explosion of green, gray, red, and orange blew out of the hole. It began spreading, like a match being tossed into a puddle of gasoline catching, and consumed the whole of the face.
Jack screamed as he fell off the platform.
And then he was tumbling, falling back down to the pool of blood. He heard nothing. All sensation seemed to disappear.
He felt nothing…
But peace.
He'd done it.
They'd done it.
The Icon of Sin was dead.
Jack hit the pool of blood and vanished into darkness.