E1M10 Cont

“...Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

“Of course,” Romero answered Reeves’ question. “We checked the map schematics back there. We’ll reach that force-field safety zone in no time.”

“I don’t like this, I don’t like this,” murmured Rogers, still cradling his injured right arm. “It’s getting darker. The walls are closing in-!”

“Keep it down, man!” Hissed the gunslinger. “We’re almost there. Just a few more minutes and we’ll rendezvous with Agent Taylor.”

The lieutenant was sweating heavily and shivering with every breath, his eyes filled with a look of nondescript terror.

“...they’re all around us. You can’t see them, but they’re following us…

…too long. She’s been gone too long…”

Rogers’ anxious chatter was only irritating the group, but Romero was beginning to empathize with some of his statements.

She hasn’t radioed in quite some time. Where is she? I sure hope she’s not in any trouble…

A spectral blue image sputtered into view in front of them, and Rogers wildly fired at it with his super shotgun.

“WHOA! HOLD YOUR FIRE!” Yelled Romero as he pulled the lieutenant’s firearm up.

“Let go of me! I’ll kill them all-!”

“Check fire, soldier! It’s just a hologram!”

Rogers irritatingly pulled his weapon free from Romero’s grip, and the team scuttled past the holographic projection of an elderly hunched woman.

“It is not a mistake that he has come into our possession,” the projection murmured. “The demons prophesied his return.”

“Huh?”

“W-who’s she talking about?”

“He was there in Phobos. He was there in Argent D’Nur. He was there with the Martians, all those centuries ago.

If he awakes, it could jeopardize the entire mission- BZZZT HSSS-HSSS!”

The hologram sputtered out and shut off.

“What, what was she talking about?”

“Rogers, it was just a hologram, it doesn’t mean anything-”

“No,” interrupted Reeves. “I recognized that woman. That was Doctor Olivia Pierce, one of the highest authorities here on the Mars Base.”

“Really?” Asked Romero. “Well, who was she talking about?”

“The Doom Slayer,” came the hushed answer from the quiet scientist.

BZZZT!

There was a bright sparking and all the ceiling lights shorted out to leave the team in pitch darkness.

“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!”

“ROGERS, CALM DOWN!

Reeves, doesn’t your plasma cutter have a flashlight?”

Click click click!

“It’s not working…”

“OhmyGodwe’reallgonnadie WE’RE ALL GONNA FUCKING DIE!!”

Woosh.

A brilliant source of light suddenly ignited in their midst, causing the group to recoil from the sudden glare. Once their eyes adjusted, they all turned to find the nonchalant scientist at the source of the light, miraculously holding a shining white orb in her hand that illuminated their immediate surroundings. Romero couldn’t see any physical item in her grip, and the orb seemed composed of pure light.

The woman made no expression and kept the same lowered distant look. Then, her look became frightened as she stared past Romero at the yawning corridor. He heard quick footsteps scampering in their direction.

“CONTACT!”

Something pale and emaciated shrieked and briefly entered the range of the scientist’s light, but immediately whimpered and fled away. The gunslinger caught the briefest sight of skin boiling and steaming as the light hit it. The woman’s gaze focused behind Reeves to a low howl approaching them. Keeping his Vortex Rifle ready, Romero saw a dripping red figure step into the light but straggle back out moments later, groaning all the while.

“Rogers, Reeves! The three of us, form a circle around her! Stay close! The light harms the creatures! Keep moving that way, we’re getting out of here!”

“The Doom Marine, he was there in Phobos?” Yelled Rogers while the team tensely shuffled down the hall. “In Argent whatever and ancient Mars? When those worlds were invaded by demons?”

“LIEUTENANT!” The gunslinger shouted as screeches and hisses echoed around them. “NOW IS NOT THE TIME-!”

“I thought the Doom Marine was supposed to oppose the demons! That’s what Agent Taylor said!” Replied the engineer. “Why did Doctor Pierce sound afraid of him? Did Taylor lie about him too?”

A swarm of small spider-like creatures resembling disfigured human heads sprouting bony legs crawled into view.

“AAAHH!”

“CONTACT!”

The group opened fire, shooting Vortex Rifle, plasma cutter, and super shotgun to blast the squealing creatures into greenish splatters.

“He’s their leader! He’s the king of all demons, bringing his damn armies here to kill us all!”

“Rogers, please-!”

“Click-click-click-click!

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click!”

That clicking, thought Romero. It’s coming behind us!

“What’s that clicking?!” Rogers shouted.

“Keep moving! Keep moving!”

“But Hiro,” interjected Reeves. “Pierce said that the Marine was present at all three of those places! Phobos was lost! The Martians are clearly extinct! And if Agent Taylor lied about the Argenta too, then they perished opposing Hell! All after the Doom Marine’s appearance!”

“That makes no sense! How could he have been with the ancient Martians-?”

“Demon!” Shouted Rogers. “He’s a demon!”

PEWW! PEWW PEWW! Flashes of blue streams and Vortex Rifle beams. Screeches of pain and the sounds of fleeing footsteps and fading shrieks.

“Bzzzt!”

A horrific zombie cyborg in black armor appeared in front of them, wearing a dreadful red holographic skull helmet and aiming a Vortex Rifle it carried in place of a right arm. Reeves screamed as Romero stumbled back, and Rogers was frozen with fear.

“Tssshhht vitarrrhhhrrr.” The cyborg spoke in garbled radio chatter as two more soldiers appeared beside it. “Atarrr hisekk- AAAH!”

The soldier on the right crumbled as a blue pulse spread across its body, falling lifelessly to the floor. The cyborg soldiers turned and fired wildly into the shadows, prompting the group of survivors to duck for cover.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Romero heard a low metallic voice growl as a translucent shape flanked the second zombie cyborg and twisted its head one-hundred-eighty degrees with a sharp snap. “These four are MY prize.”

The last soldier fired beam after beam of zero point energy all around, before suddenly freezing and stretching back as if something invisible had grabbed hold of it. Its weapon arm was torn off to clatter on the floor, and a horrendous purple-suited Griefer powered off its active camo to reveal itself firmly gripping the zombie from behind.

“Psssh…” It whispered into the cyborg’s ear.

“Nothing personal, kid.”

With its free hand, the Griefer drew a knife whose edge glowed an ominous blue and plunged it into the cyborg’s back. Romero’s eyes widened in horror. There was a brief shink and a faint blue pulse of light spread across the zombie’s body, and the demon went limp as Romero knew the knife had just fried the cyborg’s entire nervous system.

He could recognize the blue of a Neural Knife anywhere.

The Griefer dropped the corpse of the zombie and shifted its grip on its knife to grasp it blade-down before turning its electric blue gaze at the group and triggering its active cloak once more.

“Where did it go?”

“Do you see it?”

“Click-click-click-click!”

“WHAT IS THAT CLICKING SOUND?!”

“Back around her!” Romero directed the other survivors. “Guns and faces pointing outwards! Don’t put your back to it! Keep going!”

The female scientist looked fearfully past Romero’s shoulder, and he glanced through his Vortex Rifle’s X-Glass scope. A field of strange dizzying symbols and a fleeting humanoid shape.

“There!” PEWW!

“Argh!”

A spark of blue light as his Vortex Rifle beam merely glanced the Stalker, but its active camo broke and the others fired at it. Their shots hit flesh and armor, and the demon growled in pain before vanishing in the flash of a personal teleporter.

“Rogers, Reeves! Fire in the direction she looks to! That’s where that thing’s gonna attack from!”

The mercenary glanced back to check on his teammates when he saw the scientist fearfully gaze past Rogers, who was looking elsewhere. An invisible footstep splashed on a puddle before the Stalker uncloaked, leaping at the lieutenant’s throat with drawn Neural Knife.

“NOOO!!”

“HIRO!”

Too late to aim at the Griefer, Romero dropped his rifle and tackled the demon before it could strike Rogers. The two hit the floor and the demon rolled over to pin Romero beneath it, who pushed against it with both arms to keep the Neural Knife from plunging into his chest. Romero sweated heavily as he struggled to keep the hissing blue blade away.

He could still see those black UAC troopers on Ceres. Knew that a Neural Knife could pierce right through combat armor and deal a swift but horrid death if it so much as touched a single one of his nerves.

“That look in your eyes,” hissed the Stalker. “You’ve witnessed the majesty of a Neural Knife before.

It’s time you tasted the cold steel of one.”

“Cold steel?” Groaned Romero as he had an insane idea. After a moment of hesitation, he stopped pushing against the Stalker and swiftly moved his arm into the blade’s path. The Neural Knife sank up to its hilt in the mercenary’s arm and the Griefer hissed victoriously, but Romero was still alive.

“I prefer a big iron myself.”

POWW!

The gunslinger turned his face as he was splattered with blood from the Stalker’s exploding head, and standing up he pushed the demon’s headless body away before hanging his smoking Power Colt back on his hip.

“Hiro!” Reeves yelled in relief as he approached. “I’m sorry! I saw you got attacked but I was afraid I’d shoot you and Rogers just hid-!”

“It’s okay,” Romero reassured her. “I understand.”

The engineer looked at the searing blue blade stuck in Romero’s forearm. “H-how did-?”

“Don’t worry.” The gunslinger drew the Neural Knife out and threw it away before pulling off his suit’s gauntlet, revealing the cracked synthetic skin and sparking cybernetic components around the bloodless wound. “That’s my bad arm.”

“Clicking,” whimpered a huddled Rogers nearby. “Clicking, nonstop clicking.”

“That’s the exit,” whispered the hushed scientist.

Romero looked behind him. There was a sealed gate leading to the force-field safety zone, and the sparking ceiling light above it indicated there was power.

“Rogers, come on,” urged the mercenary as he pulled the lieutenant to his feet. “Exit’s that way. We’re almost there.”

* * *

“This is new.”

I stared in awe at the intensely red walls of the new portion of the Deimos Base I entered, which consisted of smooth translucent glass backlit by long horizontal light strips. Combined with the rocky red ground and ceiling, the area was certainly sinister, though undeniably fascinating.

“Come on, soldier! Focus focus focus!” Colonel Johnson urged as he snapped his fingers. “Your key is right over there. Grab it and get the hell out.”

I walked silently down the bright crystalline halls of that sector, continuing to formulate my spell concept for a Void clone in my head. It wasn’t long before I arrived at the signal source, finding a golden metallic skull lying on top of a carved stone pedestal between four rocky columns. The skull appeared composed of wiring and electronic components, and gleaming points of light ran along its structure.

“That’s the key?”

“That’s your target.”

I huffed and stepped forward between the two nearest columns when I suddenly heard a deep grating sound.

“Above you!”

The ceiling between the four pillars was plummeting towards me. I swiftly rolled forward and grabbed the skull key just as the ceiling landed with a loud BOOM.

“Holy shit!”

“John, you’ve got company!”

I had already seen the three dots on my radar slowly approaching through the red maze. I grinned at the fact that there were only three, though my grin vanished when I saw what floated around the corner.

Horrendous brick-red abominations with no limbs, wicked jaws with countless pointed teeth, and a single green eye atop their entirely round bodies.

“Cacodemons! John, duck!”

I dashed out of the way as the demons spat crackling balls of lightning at me, the projectiles exploding on the walls in powerful plasma bursts. I switched to my machine guns and opened fire, and the demons flinched though continued floating in my direction.

“Don’t let them get close! Those jaws will bite you in half!”

“I get it! I get it!”

With the skull key still in hand, I primed my Skullfire spell and tossed one fireball after another with my free hand while continuing to fire at the monsters, but they were tough and I only managed to bring one down into a squelching blue mess before my machine guns ran out of ammo. I switched to missile launchers while they regenerated and fired a homing volley at each Cacodemon when I saw a new dot rapidly approaching my position.

“Another one! And it’s fast!”

Thud! “ROOOAAARRR!” A hulking humanoid figure with a massive muscular body, mottled grey skin, and skull-like face thundered into the chamber and roared.

“HELL KNIGHT!”

The monster reared back and tossed a flaming fireball at me, which landed directly on my chest. Losing shield and a third of my heath, I was tossed back onto the rocky wall. I landed heavily on the ground when I saw a Cacodemon gather blue energy into its mouth. I rolled out of the way and barely dodged the demon’s lightning ball, but I was caught in its burst of blue plasma and my red health bar dropped by another fourth.

“DAMN YOU!”

I raised my red hand and leeched blood from the Cacodemon to heal my injuries, watching the monster growl in pain and stocking its excess blood in red crystals on my arms when I heard a deep thudding from my right and turned to watch the Hell Knight leap with Hellfire in its fists.

“WhooOAA SHIT!”

I shadow dashed through the demon just as it landed, avoiding its Hellfire slam and splattering its blood as I passed through its body in my sharp Void form, but the demon was tough and roared at me with only a flesh wound.

“ROOOAAARRR!”

“John, you gotta do something quick! You can’t fight all three at the same time!”

Damn that the Heart of Lothar is completely useless right now!

“I gotta try out my Void clone spell now! It’s now or never!”

“Are you sure about this?! Are you certain it won’t backfi-?”

“Release!”

I placed my palms together and brought them apart as I decisively recited the wordless phrases in my mind, applying the required energy and watching a shadowy figure emerge from my skin.

The spell had consumed half of my full mana capacity, which would have been all had I not received the Bloodstone from Vesper, but in front of me stood a hazy dark humanoid figure with two structures extending from its shoulders. In my mind, I could feel a connection binding this reflection to me, as if it was awaiting my command.

The spell worked!

“Kill that Hell Knight!”

The clone immediately rushed towards the hulking monster and began striking at it with clawed hands. The Hell Knight roared and turned from me towards the clone, swiping at it with its massive claws but the clone dashed away and fired shadowy rounds from its shoulder cannons while throwing dark fireballs.

“You did it! You son of a bitch, you did it!”

“We’re not done yet!”

With only two Cacodemons left to focus on, I switched to my flak cannons and rushed towards the nearest one, which began channeling blue energy into its mouth.

“Whoa! What are you DOING-!”

The demon released a flurry of lightning bolts at me, but I ducked while firing my thrust jets and dragged my hand along the ground to slide in a circle around the Cacodemon, firing my flak cannons at close range and throwing fireballs all the while.

“AAAHHH! DIE!”

I switched to the dagger throw spell I recently acquired from the fallen Deraki scout and launched several volleys of crystalline daggers at the monster’s face, curious if they would do any good. The daggers stuck and caused the demon to hiss in pain while causing a bleeding effect that compounded with the multiple hits, but that seemed to be it. With one final dagger volley, the demon came apart in a mess of shredded blue meat that collapsed to the ground. I heard the Hell Knight roar nearby. It was still engaged in battle against my Void clone and bore deep inky wounds, though my clone appeared fuzzier and less solid.

“John! Your buddy’s not going to last much longer!”

“I know!” I shouted as I charged at the last Cacodemon while drawing my knife. “Just a few more seconds!”

The Cacodemon belched ball after ball of lightning at me. I dashed around explosions to the sides and behind me to avoid the waves of scorching plasma. I swerved around a stray swipe from the Hell Knight and inadvertently passed between the four stone columns. I kept my jets ignited to speed past the plummeting ceiling and heard a loud BOOM shortly after, and a ball of lightning hit me in the face. My overshield broke and the Cacodemon hungrily smiled with dripping fangs as I approached mauling range.

“JoOHN!”

Infusing the excess leeched blood to heal myself, I extended my Spear and leapt into the air to dodge the monster’s biting pounce. Channeling the spell I used before against the Skullworms, I ignited my Spear with blazing Hellfire and plunged downwards just as the demon looked up in confusion. There was a thunderous shockwave as I landed on the Cacodemon and thrust it to the ground, my spearhead passing through its eye.

“REEEEEEE!!” It squealed in agony.

“Eat this!”

I gripped the Spear firmly with both hands and pushed it downward, feeling it pass through bone and hit solid ground. The red monster shuddered and relaxed beneath me, and I retracted the Spear while looking for my clone. It was almost entirely decomposed, but the Hell Knight still had some fight in it. I turned to the space beneath the four columns and got an idea.

“Move there!” I pointed between the columns and the reflection swiftly retreated from the Hell Knight to where I indicated. The monster roared but quickly followed. Focusing Hellfire into its fists, the Hell Knight leapt and landed directly on the shadowy figure, dispersing it in a swell of black fog and an inky substance before turning towards me.

“ROOOAAARRR!”

“Too late, bitch.”

The Hell Knight looked up at the sudden rumbling and was promptly crushed to the floor with a loud CRUNCH and a wet SPLAT.

“Ugh!”

“Oh, God! I didn’t think it was going to be that loud!”

The ceiling between the columns retracted with a wet squelching sound, revealing a large red puddle and fragments of white bone sticking beneath the crusher.

"Ugh," I muttered as I headed towards the exit.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Huh? Oh!”

I had dropped the golden skull key when I impaled the last Cacodemon, which still lay strewn beside its bloody blue corpse. I bent down to grab it just as the ground shook again.

“…GGRRRRR…”

I was indoors so I couldn’t see the outside from my position, but I heard the distant thunder of crashing mountains and what sounded like the very surface of Deimos cracking open.

“…iss devret aquilah sahkil-”

“AAAH!”

“John!”

“-ooh temet intumeh aphlos…”

The dreadful whispering faded and Deimos fell silent once more. Loose rubble fell from the cracked ceiling and I forced myself to calm down.

“Just what in blue blazes was that?”

“The moon,” I muttered breathlessly. “It’s whispering things. It’s agitated and stirring in its sleep. Something’s wrong, Colonel. It’s waking up. Deimos really is coming back to life again.”

“Oh my God…If it wakes up with you on it…”

“I gotta be out of here before that happens.”

* * *

CHIMERA TROPHY ROOM, read the sign over the sealed gate.

Chimeras? As in the ancient Greek monsters? Been a while since the Slayer saw one of those.

The door opened to a single long hallway with wide windows on both sides that spanned from ground to ceiling at regular intervals. On the other side of the thick glass were cubical rooms containing a variety of specimens. Observation cells.

“...how would you describe your relationship with your father?...”

“...He disowned you?...”

“...why was he so opposed to you becoming a Marine?...”

“...I see. He was only a child when his own father died in the Cold War…”

“...do you know what happened to your grandfather, Mr.-”

The Slayer breathed in sharply and shut his eyes, sweating heavily as his heart raced and the memories painfully echoed in his head.

He was not in a cell. He was not in a straightjacket. There were no stern-faced doctors with white coats and clipboards standing over him.

He was in the Praetor Suit. He had a shotgun in his hands. He was on a mission to purge every last demon off the face of the planet.

He was the Doom Slayer.

His heartbeat gradually returned to normal, and he sighed as the past faded and his focus returned to the present.

Samur had taught him that.

He stood up straight and relaxed his grip on the shotgun while keeping it steady, and stepped into the dim observation deck. ‘Courtesy of Dr. Betruger and Dr. Pierce,’ as read on the wall panel. Signs occasionally hung from the ceiling to mark specific portions as belonging to a certain demon class, while display panels on the walls described the contents of each cell.

IMP CLASS

In the first cell was a hunched ashen figure with its back to the window. It glanced at him as he passed, revealing bony scythes on its arms and three yellow eyes in the center of its face.

Subject #H0005

Species: Splicer

Classification: Volunteer

Volunteer? Had the demon had volunteered for public display?

The Slayer shrugged and walked to the next cell.

Subject #DI134

Species: Nightmare Imp

Classification: Recombinant demon

The second had an upright imp-like entity with dark glassy skin and dull blue cybernetic implants. It had no visible eyes in its robotic head, yet it menacingly stared at the Slayer as he walked by.

Subject #H0042

Species: Agaures

Classification: Insubordinate Emplo-

Insubordinate what?!

A pale skeletal shape huddled in the upper corner of the room, its long serrated and spiked tail waving forlornly in the air.

Had the demon been employed by the Lazarus Project? Like the Hell Hunters?

The Slayer decided to move on before he started asking too many questions, but a cold chill was starting to spread across his body. He didn’t recognize any of these demons.

HELLGROWTH CLASS

The fourth cell was empty, though unexpectedly illuminated with a deep crimson light that the Slayer found particularly sinister.

That light, ugh. Whatever had been contained there had certainly been something wicked.

Subject #H0066

Species: Brier

Other names: Upside-Down

Classification: Felon

Status: Permanently transferred to the Red Room after [REDACTED]. Escape/release unlikely. Termination methods currently being researched.

The Slayer stopped when he reached the fifth cell. It was empty with only a puddle of dark reddish fluid on the ground. He glanced at the wall panel.

Subject #H0058

Species: Gaunt

Classification: Unshielded Refractor exposure victim

Status: Melted

Notes: Please see cell #6 for live specimen. Sanitation has been contacted. Apologies for the inconvenience.

…The fuck?

He turned to cell six, seeing only a tall and vaguely cylindrical shape standing at the far end of the room. Other than its two long and thin straight legs, the entity had no visible head, arms, or other discernible features in the dim Lazarus lighting.

Subject #H0059

Species: Gaunt

Classification: Captured survivor

Status: Melting

The Slayer briefly contemplated using his Clearsight to get a better look at the demon, but decided not to.

HELL KNIGHT CLASS

Subject #H0081

Species: Hell Hunter (prototype)

Other names: Falcon Knight, Birdman

Classification: Retired worker

Status: Decommissioned. Scheduled for termination.

The observation cell was empty too, though clearly once occupied. There were claw marks on the floor and cracks on the glass.

Subject #H0084

Species: Hell Hunter (prototype)

Other names: Bruiser Knight

Classification: Political dissident

Status: Decommissioned. Pending transport for display.

Another empty cell, though pristine and seemingly never used before. But that term…‘political dissident? A question was beginning to form in the Slayer’s mind, one he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to.

PINKY CLASS

Subject #H0042

Species: Cyber Pinky - D2005 variant

Classification: Disabled worker

What in the-?

Inside the cell was what appeared to be the unarmored upper half of a Pinky demon attached to a cybernetic wheelchair. Unlike other Pinkies, the demon’s single sets of teeth were broader than usual, two large tusks poked from its upper jaw, and it was completely blind. With only fair-toned wrinkled skin on its flabby body and above its toothy snout, it blindly scratched at the floor with its four bloody fingernails per foot.

HA! Thought the Slayer as he amusingly leaned on the glass. It reminded him of a domesticated pig he once saw, born without its back legs but harnessed to a custom wheelchair.

Meals on wheels.

He forced down a chuckle, one he noticed smelled of bile, and moved on.

Subject #PI235

Species: Spectre

Classification: Recombinant demon

Notes: Successfully bred from subject #H0062.

Another empty cell, not even with a status label on the panel. Fucking scam.

Subject #H0062

Species: Pinkinator

Other names: Breeding Sow

Classification: Trespassing worker

Status: Decommissioned after outliving productivity. Transferred after crushing Lazarus personnel and compromising cell integrity. Scheduled for vivisection in surgical labs.

Another empty cell, though bearing corrosion marks from acid and multiple cracked spots on the ground as if from extreme weight.

OTHER

The final portion of the observation deck.

He stopped in front of the next cell. The thick glass had been broken and lay in large fragments around the empty cell, which bore deep jagged gouges, heavy plasma scorch marks, and a clear sticky fluid on all surfaces. The Slayer sniffed the peculiar aroma over the spilled liquid, which smelled faintly of salt. Cerebrospinal fluid. The escaped subject was nowhere to be found.

Subject #H0101

Species: Unnamed

Current designation: Anthro…

He squinted and leaned closer to read the name.

Anthro…cerebro…arachno...2004- Oh, whatever.

Classification: Dissidence leader

Status: Missing

Note: Future subjects will be exhibited without combat armaments and/or with heavy sedation.

He frowned in perplexment and mounting apprehension. Dissidence leader? Political dissident? Workers and employees? But that would mean…no. No, it couldn’t be. Those had to be code for something else. He moved on while beginning to feel sick to his stomach.

Subject #H0024

Species: Corpulent (prototype)

Other names: Fatso

Classification: Noncompliant journalist

WHAT THE FUCK.

A languid mass of pink-brownish flesh lay unmoving in the center of the next cell. It was large, three meters wide and almost two in height. A long mane of brown hair ran down its upper side, and between its countless skin folds and festering sores, the Slayer spotted the shape of two morbidly obese arms and a contorted face. Two teary black eyes twitched as it stared at him, while a grotesquely stretched and drooling mouth revealing two sets of neat white teeth opened and closed in respiration.

…how could they not believe him? He’d seen them marching across the burning cities of Earth…

…lumbering behemoths with pink-greyish skin folding over their monstrously obese bodies…

…mechanical cannons grafted to their arms breathed destruction and fire…

…two short fangs poked out from the lower jaws of their roaring human-like faces…

No. It was just an illusion, he thought as he backed away from the cell. It was some trick by the demons, or some convincingly real hologram like the ones the Holo Pilots used. Those monsters he’d seen in his visions were just strange but entirely demonic Mancubus variants. There was no way they were…this thing in front of him wasn’t…

The Slayer’s eyes glanced at the final line of the wall panel.

Note: All of Mars’ meat/dairy products are cultivated from specimens such as this one! Kosher and vegan options available.

The Slayer’s stomach sank as he recalled the multiple items he’d seen in the break room’s vending machine. Sandwiches, tacos, burgers, hot dogs…and pizza.

The Slayer’s heart skipped a beat, and a guff of sour air involuntarily burst from his throat.

No no, it was all good, he assured himself. He was alright. Before the Divinity Machine, he’d previously survived in Hell by consuming any and all sustenance he could find, including demonic flesh. Roasted Pinkies were a delicacy in Hell!

Yet unable to shake off the feeling of nausea, the Slayer turned away from the mass of flesh and headed for the exit at the end of the hallway, passing by the final observation cell whose glass was entirely black.

The Slayer had almost left the deck when he froze on the doorway, pondering whether or not he should go back in the room.

He needed to keep moving, he needed to keep moving.

And yet he needed to know. He needed to know if the UAC was truly as depraved and vile as his suspicions claimed. Sighing, he turned around and approached the final cell.

Subject #H0023

Species: Unknown

Classification: Corporate spy

Status: Unclear

Notes: Subject causes extreme psychological trauma when seen. Glass tinted for your viewing safety.

…

Wait, what was that?

The Slayer heard a faint droning that seemed to come from within the cell. He frowned in perplexment and leaned in to place his ear against the tinted glass.

“...oooohhh…ooooOOOOYYYYYOOOOooohh…”

God, that sound!

He stepped back and stared at the darkened glass.

He had no business being here, he should turn back and leave this godforsaken place immediately.

Wincing in dreadful anticipation, he turned on his Clearsight and looked past the tinted glass.

OH GOD!!

OH!! GOD!!

The Slayer immediately recoiled in shock as he turned his Clearsight off and covered his eyes, but the image of what lay within that cell was already seared into his mind.

Workers. Employees. Journalists. Spies. Survivors.

He fell to his knees in disturbed horror, breathing heavily and with blood roaring in his ears.

“...I believe in our work. But, in order to make progress, we will have to make even greater sacrifices…”

“...This isn’t progress, it’s MADNESS…”

Chimeras! The UAC called them chimeras!

Hybrids.

The Slayer’s stomach rumbled. He quickly signaled his helmet to retract and vomited all over the floor of the observation deck.

DAMN THEM!!

GOD DAMN THEM ALL!!

* * *

Ruby was lost.

She weakly shuffled along, placing one foot in front of the other, but she couldn’t manage to lift her gaze. She couldn’t even force herself to seek out her team with her new senses. At the moment her mind was blank, her eyes staring without seeing anything.

A shut door suddenly opened as she approached. She lightly flinched at the sound before a familiar red color drew her attention upwards.

DIE, read the wall with dry smeared blood, the final letter trailing off towards the hand of the bloody skeleton on the floor. There were splatters of blood, sigils, screams, and fire. Ruby’s heart immediately raced and she aimed the Hellshot in combat alertness.

SUCCUMB

SUFFER

BURN

The entire laboratory was smeared with bloody writing and littered with the mutilated corpses of scientists. Their clothes and the majority of their flesh had been scorched away. A frightful scene, though a silent and dead one.

They must have been too close to the blast wave.

A soft bubbling sound drew Ruby’s attention. She aimed her rifle towards the stasis tank on the left wall of the lab and gasped when she saw what was inside.

The figure was almost two meters tall with rough and dull indigo skin, yellow spines running along its hunched back, long bony claws extending from its hands and feet, and three small yellow eyes bundled close together above its many sharp yellow fangs. It was covered in a thick chitinous shell that formed a sort of natural carapace, and a bifurcated lower jaw with both halves lightly twitching as the creature slept suspended in the clear bubbling fluid.

What…what the hell is that? I’ve never seen this thing before.

Ruby couldn’t find any labels, panels, or controls on the stasis tube. She kept the Hellshot aimed a few more moments before wearily bringing it down. Spotting an empty chair beside the terminal on the other side of the room, Ruby walked towards it while stepping over bloody corpses and dejectedly slumped in it. A blood-drenched skeleton on the chair beside her stared vaguely in her direction, but she was too exhausted and nerve-wracked to be disturbed.

“Hell of a day, huh?”

The skeleton made no response, though Ruby half-expected it to.

“Oh, cheer up, you don’t look so bad. You’re one of the lucky ones.”

Staring at the skeleton a moment longer, she sighed and turned towards the blinking icon on the lower corner of the screen in front of her. It was still powered on. With her mind numbened by a dull throbbing ache, she decided to log on to the machine to figure out her exact position.

LAZARUS LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED

Ruby looked at the seated skeleton beside her which still carried a keycard on a lanyard around its neck, the numeral IV appearing in large font over its name.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Ruby asked as she pulled the keycard free and read the name. “Joe? Joe, why don’t you take a break? You look bone tired.”

Joe the skeleton slumped to the floor in a clattering mess, but Ruby had already placed his keycard against the reader and logged on to the terminal. The desktop was a cluttered mess of icons and files that Ruby could barely read through. She saw what appeared to be a facility schematic and selected it.

VIDEO PLAYBACK 01 - M2149.05.28

A video log of the laboratory appeared on screen, brightly illuminated and crewed by several white-coated researchers. Doctor Betruger stood in the center attending to a figure obscured by another scientist. The researcher moved moments later to reveal the figure, and Ruby gasped.

It was a woman bound to a piece of machinery on the wall, her limbs and torso restrained by clamps at the end of robotic arms. Her head had been recently shaved and she looked around in wild desperation. She couldn’t have been older than thirty.

Wait a minute, I recognize her…

Ruby recalled a young gleaming face with rich auburn hair, smiling and laughing with her coworkers without a care in the world. She tapped the woman’s shoulder, and watched her joyous expression turn to horror as she instructed the worker to accompany her to Lazarus. The woman had screamed, begged and implored, but orders were orders, and less than an hour afterward the handcuffed worker was escorted through the teleporter to the Lazarus Labs, and Ruby had continued with her duties.

What are they doing to her? What is Betruger doing?

“Test 438. Subject H0027,” spoke the recording of the pale scientist as he calibrated the restraining apparatus. “We have a very special guest today with this fine young lady who has volunteered to help us advance our work. Unlike all other subjects, she has been verified as an Omega-type individual!

Usually type-Omegas would be terminated per protocol, but Doctor Pierce has granted me special authorization to perform a demonization trial in my quest for a Nightcrawler chimera! I have developed a new methodology, and I am very excited to start!”

“What is happening?” Asked the frightened woman. “Where am I?”

“To start off, we will inject the subject with a simple neural conditioner,” continued Betruger as he grabbed a syringe from an equipment table and tapped it. “This will prime the subject’s neural receptors and make her more sensitive for the next step.”

“What is that? Wait! Don’t come near me!”

Betruger injected the syringe’s contents into the woman’s arm, backing away as padded robotic arms descended from the ceiling and placed themselves onto the woman’s arms, legs, and chest.

“The subject has already received a stimulant to prevent her from losing consciousness, a defibrillator will restart her heart if she suffers cardiac arrest, and there are IV medigel lines to repair tissue damage.

Begin electrostimulation.”

There was a high-pitched whirring and the video recording flashed with electricity.

“AAAAAAHHHHH-!!”

Ruby slammed the Esc button and brought the terminal back to the desktop. She panted heavily as sweat dripped down her face, and turning she noticed her clawed hand had dug into the desk. She pried it free with a loud shink and shakingly selected another icon on the screen.

Map, where’s the map?

VIDEO PLAYBACK 43 - M2149.07.12

“No. No no no, damn it!” She spammed the Esc button but the terminal wouldn’t respond.

“Test 438. Subject H0027,” repeated a tired Betruger on the screen. “After receiving the Dark Imp vector, the subject has become resistant to usual psychosensory stimulation methods, as has been the case with previous tests. I’m afraid we are at an impasse in our research.”

Oh, God!

The bound woman had become hideously disfigured. Her whole body had an emaciated look with bones protruding at horrific angles, yet her skin had become rough with the color and consistency of bruising. Claws extended from her hands and toes, her eyes were condemning bloodshot things, and she bled from the fracture that split her lower jaw in two. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and glowing red tubes were wired from her body towards strange humming machinery.

Ruby recalled her own ongoing mutations, and she solemnly clenched her own clawed hand.

“Bastard,” the woman exhaustedly muttered in a low growl. “You fucking bastard…”

“Fortunately,” spoke Betruger in a brighter tone as he put on medical gloves, “there are other ways to provoke psychosensory responses in human beings.”

“...I’ll rip your fucking throat out, I’ll tear you limb from limb…”

Betruger reached towards a table beside him and grabbed a piece of medical equipment. Ruby’s eyes widened in horror when she realized what it was.

“Samuel was right, you can’t always count on technology and machines to do your work for you. Sometimes…” Betruger ignited the device, its high-pitched buzzing sending shivers down Ruby’s spine. “...you have to get your hands dirty.”

“KILL YOU! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!

…wait, what is that? What are you doing with that?

No. No! NoooOOOOOOOOOO!!”

Ruby turned away from the woman’s gut-wrenching scream, feeling her eyes sting as tears began to flow. A bright fiery tear from her right eye ran down her face and hissed on the desk below. It burned, but it didn’t hurt as much as her heart did.

I’m sorry, Ruby thought with shame and regret. I’m so sorry…

Ruby clicked on one last icon on the desktop, hoping she had finally found a sector map.

VIDEO PLAYBACK 96 - M2149.09.22

She pushed the chair back and rose to her feet, ready to leave.

“This is it! I think this is it!” A giddy Betruger practically bounced in front of the camera as a multitude of scientists passed in view and off-camera. “The subject received the implanted vector of the Summoner we captured from the Hellas Incident! There was no rejection and its demonic vectors have synchronized!”

The woman was nowhere to be seen. In her place in the center of the screen was a smooth metallic tubular apparatus the size of a person.

“We’re preparing to open the transfusion capsule now! Doctor Pierce is here, the Board of Directors too, and we’re broadcasting live directly to the Blind Council on Earth!”

Blind Council? They televised this to the leaders of the Church of Penance?!

“Can we, can we make some room? Yes, give us some space,” Betruger continued as he and the rest of the researchers moved off-screen. “Doctor Perez, if you could kindly step back.

This is it! The moment of truth.

Doctor Pierce, with your permission?...

…As you wish. Argent suppressors active, force field barrier activated, runes of protection stable and holding. We are ready to begin.

Zeta, dim the lights.”

Red tubes wired to the metal tube ignited in a crimson glow as a force field and fiery runes appeared over the apparatus, which dimmed to keep the tube visible.

“Release.”

With a deep hiss, the tube slowly split open and released a fierce gust of gas that obstructed the view of its contents, just as ventilators activated to vent the gas from the scene. There was something dark in the tube. Something with claws and spikes.

Betruger gasped, and Ruby froze in horror.

Inside the metal tube was the same monstrous creature floating in the tank behind her. It was still bound by its limbs and torso, and Argent suppressors plugged into its body drained Argent Energy to keep it subdued, though the beast fiercely struggled against its restraints and howled harshly with a high-pitched chittering.

There were sounds of laughing, of crying, and screaming.

“‘Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair,’” whispered an awestruck Betruger as he slowly approached the creature. Ruby’s hands unconsciously rose to her mouth and she stepped back in mind-numbing shock.

“Oh, my dear, you’re so beautiful!

I’ve done it. After twenty-eight years, I’ve finally done it! Damn the Griefers, damn the Revenants! Damn the Splicers, Nightmare Imps, the Blackwatch and Z-Sec!

This is proof…final DEFINITIVE proof that what we call human morality is a MYTH! Free will is an illusion, religion is a lie! Subject any human being to sufficient trauma, to enough suffering and pain, and even the incorruptible type-Omegas can be made MONSTERS!

Standing before you here today is the fruit of Project Nightcrawler! The first military-grade human-demon chimera, the next-gen weapon of war that’ll secure the UAC’s dominion for years to come!”

Ruby heard the clinking of broken glass behind her, and she slowly turned to find the indigo creature standing free of the broken stasis tube and looking directly at her. The beast tilted its head inquisitively as it met Ruby’s gaze, its three glaring yellow eyes locking with hers as her breath caught in her throat. She aimed and fired three fireballs from the Hellshot, and though the creature was pushed back by the shots, a swell of purple fire from its body immediately extinguished the red flames from her attack. The creature was unharmed.

“I present to you, subject H0027…”

The creature’s hideous eyes suddenly flashed red with recognition, and Ruby’s body went numb as some deep primeval terror awoke within her. Betruger’s recording turned to directly face the camera, a malicious smile on his lips and an icy glare shining from his clouded eye.

“...THE PROWLER.”

The demon pounced at Ruby with flaming violet claws and she ducked underneath as she rushed towards the sealed door, kicked it down and raced down the hall while triggering her Overclock. There were sounds of claws on tile and passing whooshes as swift violet fireballs impacted in front and beside her and demolished the labs.

She didn’t even try evading, she just needed to get away.

There was a low hiss, and she made a sharp right while wall-running to maintain her momentum just as a violet flame wave incinerated the entire hallway. She raced towards the exit at blazing speed, ignoring her aching body and a thundering heart in her panic. A fleeting indigo blur and red glare appeared in an adjacent corridor on the other side of windowed offices separating the two, and Ruby anxiously turned to find the creature keeping up with her even as she ran at full Overclocked speed. The demon vanished in a bright violet flash and Ruby crouchslid to avoid the searing violet claws that nicked the front of her helmet as the demon warped in front of her.

There was a teleportation deck ahead. Ruby slung herself over the control panel and through the safety glass before sliding into the nearest teleporter pod and slamming the emergency activation button on its interior. Ruby was pushed into the pod as a force field barrier appeared over the opening just as her pursuer pounced at her. The demon growled and slashed ferociously, but its claws couldn’t penetrate the barrier, and it stopped.

Ruby panted heavily while struggling to catch her breath, and as the teleportation pod powered on and activated, the last thing she saw through the blue swirl of particles was the Prowler’s red eyes, staring coldly at her with all the rage and hate of the nine circles of Hell.

* * *

“We’re here,” Romero told the other survivors. “We made it!”

“Oh, thank goodness!” Cried Reeves.

The engineer and lieutenant put down their packs and slumped onto the floor of the empty safety bunker, though the gunslinger continued towards the control terminal near the entrance, the quiet scientist close behind.

“What are you doing?” She softly asked.

“I’m going to activate the lockdown procedure, then I’ll try to contact Agent Taylor again. Communications are spotty but I don’t know why she hasn’t answered at all.”

The young woman turned away from Romero as he worked. He brought up the lockdown interface and pressed the ACTIVATE prompt.

“Demonic presence at unsafe levels,” spoke the automated facility voice. “Lockdown in effect.”

“Are we safe now?” Asked a groggy Rogers.

“That wasn’t me, that wasn’t me!” Replied a panicked Romero. “The system’s displaying error messages, the terminal’s locked me out!”

“We’re not alone in here,” muttered the scientist in a soft impassive voice.

Romero’s blood ran cold as he heard the woman’s words, when the next message appeared on the terminal.

DEMONS DETECTED INSIDE SAFETY ZONE

EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY

“GET OUT!!” He shouted as he ran for the exit just as a missile demolished the terminal he’d been standing on.

The others rushed for cover as Romero grabbed the scientist’s hand and pulled her to safety. Missiles rained from the second level of the bunker above them and exploded on the ground mere meters from where they hid, until a shadow appeared on the floor and one of their attackers landed with a heavy thud.

“What is that?” Rogers shouted. “WHAT IS THAT?!”

Almost three meters of bone and sinew, a jetpack grafted to its torso, and two cybernetic missile launchers on its shoulders beside its bloody skeletal face. Romero grimly remembered what Taylor had called them.

A Revenant.

“RAAAHHH!”

“GET AWAY!!”

Romero rushed to his feet and opened fire on the demon. He fired beam after beam of zero-point energy directly at the creature’s face, which shrieked haphazardly while grasping its head seemingly in pain. The monster fell to its knees and Romero took the opportunity to rush forward and kick the dazed creature back before grabbing a frag knife from his belt and tossing it at the monster’s face, sticking it between the eyes.

“RAAH-!” Splat!

The red light over the entrance gate turned green and the lock disengaged.

“Rogers, we have to move!”

But the lieutenant was crying and shouting in hysterics.

“That was human! A demonic human with, with cyber implants and guns!

They created it! The UAC built it to kill us all!

Taylor lied! Taylor lied!”

Romero rushed forward and pulled the lieutenant to his feet.

“Get a grip on yourself, damn it! Gate’s open, we have to get out of here!”

The door slid open and a giant metallic leg stepped through. A hulking shape crouched beneath the doorway and stood to full height once it was through, a massive humanoid almost four meters tall clad in heavy steel armor, two rocket launchers affixed to either arm, and a horned armored head resembling a knight’s helmet. The helmet split open vertically as it entered to reveal a glitching television screen, the image of a human mouth opening and closing on the display which turned to that of a staring eye as it spotted the survivors.

“Reeeooowwwhhh!” The monster growled in a distorted electronic tone.

Three Revenants jumped down from the second level and blocked off the group’s retreat. They were trapped.

“TAYLOR!!” Romero yelled into his radio as the Revenants shrieked and the armored monster raised its cannons. “TAYLOR, WE NEED HELP!!”

* * *

“But he’s not wrong, she did pass away-”

“That’s not the point. He believes she was slain by demons. He still believes Earth was invaded, its cities destroyed, humanity hunted to extinction…

How do you suppose he’ll react if we tell him she wasn’t killed by demons, but rather a terminal illness? Caused by his absence?”

“Don’t tell him. Let him believe what he wants to believe.

We can’t keep him here forever. Sooner or later he’s going to break out, and we won’t be able to stop him when he does. Let him believe that the demons killed her. If that’s what it takes for him to agree to the mission, so be it.

This is out of our hands now. If they really do exist, better he be their problem than ours.”

The Marine could hear the doctors through the walls and thick glass of his cell, but it didn’t matter. They were lying. He knew they were.

He knew what he’d seen. Legions of demons swarming over Earth, the great cities burning as ships of flesh and metal descended from above. And in the center of it all, her head. Decapitated, on a pike. They’d let him return home but had taken something in return. What he treasured the most.

He was cold. He curled up into a ball and put his arms around himself, ignoring the sound of the breaking handcuffs and tearing straightjacket.

The doctor who’d been interviewing him stared quietly through the window of his cell, gazing at the Marine with an expression of both wonder and pity.

* * *

The Slayer stepped out of the pod in a teleporter deck, walking heavily with smoking chaingun in hand as he headed towards the last Hunter’s signal, taking only a small comfort in having put the wretched creatures in the observation deck out of their misery. The sight of what lay within the last tinted cell had already faded from the Slayer’s mind, but not its screams as it perished.

…

There was a bliss in ignorance. Sometimes, the Slayer was grateful to forget.

“RRROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRR!!!” The ground shook as a terrible roar rumbled in the distance.

He skidded to a halt. That roar, that sound. There was an imperceptible change in the quality of the Lazarus Labs. An invisible switch had been flipped, and although visually unchanged the environment suddenly felt unfathomably more hostile, as if the wafting air particles themselves recoiled in furor.

Something terrible had just awoken.

The Slayer picked up the pace before breaking into a full-blown run, glancing at the destination labels of the teleporter pods as he passed by.

MIND CONTROL LABS

BIOWARFARE LABS

CHEMOWARFARE LABS

EUGENICS LABS

Ignore them! Just ignore them!

VACUUM EXPOSURE LABS

RADIATION EXPOSURE LABS

ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE LABS

METAPHYSICAL EXPOSURE LABS

There! Up ahead! Through a gate labeled Surgical Labs. The Slayer grimly resigned himself to whatever happened next and stormed through the door.

“REEEHHH!”

He broke through to a medical room lined with several hospital beds, occupied by the soggy remains of bound human corpses surrounded by various strange devices and burning sigils. In the middle of the room was a single Lost Soul with two low metallic horns, a flaming crimson aura, and a cybernetic device implanted over its eyes. His HUD identified it as a Forgotten Soul.

With its scream, the demon released a bright flash of psychic energy that bypassed his ARMOR and instantly reduced the Slayer’s HEALTH from 74 to 65. He switched to the shotgun and blew it out of the air, but more Forgotten Souls swarmed around him and chipped away at his HEALTH with their psychic screams. He toggled the Sentry Bot into machine gun mode and equipped his own HAR to quickly eliminate them. Two Ethereal Souls spawned from among the Forgotten Souls and he finished them off with a quick burst from the phase rifle.

“Raaahhhhwwwrrr!”

A rattling growl, undeniably one from some new Revenant variant. The Slayer hurried past the mutilated corpses and thrust his hand into a health station while picking up a fresh armor cuirass. 68 ARMOR, 100 HEALTH. With a pounding heart and surging rage - at the UAC, at Hell, and at mankind - the Slayer leapt through the observation glass and plunged into the blood-soaked surgical labs. A large and misshapen mass of flesh lay splayed on a surgical table attended by robotic arms nearby, which the Slayer resolved to not look at.

“RAAAHHHWWW!”

Howling at him was a bizarre Revenant with a red polymer harness, two Vortex cannons grafted to its shoulders, and an eerie green glow radiating from its eyes. Most unusually, the Revenant’s clean white skeleton was surrounded by the ghostly silhouette of an organic body, almost as if possessing a transparent layer of skin and flesh. His HUD identified it as a Ghoul.

The Slayer immediately tossed three grenades to clear out the swarming imps and zombies around the spectral Revenant. The Ghoul faltered with the blasts of the first two grenades, but it teleported out of the third’s blast range and swung at the Slayer with a ghostly flaming hand which passed straight through his chest. 78 HEALTH. He rushed back and the spectral Revenant fired its Vortex cannons at him, hacking away at his ARMOR with repeated beams of zero-point energy. He faltered the demon with a shotgun blast and rushed away to another portion of the labs, past aqueous red stasis tubes containing dormant Hell Knights, imps, and Lost Souls.

A Cyberpinky and Sawcubus charged at him as another Ghoul warped towards him in the blue stream of a phase shift, and the Slayer switched to the Blazing Spirit and-

-the body of a flayed man lay bound to a surgical table, abdomen split open in a clear vivisection procedure. He was still twitching, and the Slayer could still hear his screams-

-the Cyberpinky rammed into him while the Sawcubus thrust its chainsaw arms into his chest.

FUCK!

He kicked the Sawcubus away and charged a Blood Punch to eviscerate it, throwing an Echo Drone to redirect some attention and opening fire with the Blazing Spirit.

RAHH! RAHH RAHH!

Eerie green blasts of raging spirits erupted throughout the labs, shredding imps, pinkies, a Core Tentacle and a Cyber Cacodemon, though the multitude of zombies, Lost Souls, and Revenants merely faltered and took little damage from the soul-based attacks. He caught a kamikazee Terror out of the air and threw it at a squad of Z-Secs to kill them all, destroyed the robotic back half of a Cyber Pinky with a shotgun shrapnel shot and rushed forward to kick the demon into a Cyber Revenant before it exploded.

Ghosts and Ethereal Souls floated amidst the carnage. He strafed to avoid the ghosts’ deadly charges as lesser demons fell dead in their wake, but suddenly there was a low metallic whirr and the cursed dimness of Lazarus fell to total darkness as even the sound became muffled.

The Slayer was shooting blind. He couldn’t see or hear anything in his vicinity and Rampaged in his confusion. He felt flesh crushing before him, claws and fireballs and zero beams exhausting his ARMOR, the cold grasp of a ghost passing through his body, Forgotten Souls’ psychic screams searing at his spirit, and eventually collided face-first into the lab’s reinforced wall. 62 HEALTH.

Some external factor was nullifying conventional sensory mechanisms in the environment.

BLACKOUT DRONE DETECTED

NANOPARTICLE CLOUD ELIMINATES AUDIO-VISUAL PERCEPTION

CLEARSIGHT RECOMMENDED

The Slayer turned on his Clearsight and immediately located the ovaloid drone on the other side of the chamber projecting the obscuring metallic cloud, also spotting the multitude of Ethereal Souls resurrecting the non-gibbed remains of other demons. He switched to the Gauss Cannon and charged a siege blast.

The flash and peal from the railgun were imperceptible, but a loud red CLASH indicated the drone was hit and the metallic cloud promptly disintegrated like dust, revealing the path of carnage the shot had carved to the drone. He tossed a Siphon Grenade to recover HEALTH and ARMOR and equipped the rocket launcher to vaporize the risen demons, switching to the pulse rifle to finish off the ghosts and Ethereal Souls. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW!

LIVE SUBJECT WEAPONS RANGE, read the sign to an adjacent laboratory as pairs of eerie green lasers focused on the Slayer through the wall.

FOCUS, DAMN IT! FOCUS!

He rushed out of the path of the searing beams of zero-point energy, Rampaging around the corner in the direction the beams had come from while dropping proximity mines behind him. He reached the empty spot and looked around in confusion, coming across the mutilated corpse of a UAC worker on a table, his injured body sprouting piercing metallic shards from a failed nanotech reconstructi-

There was a swirl of fog to his left. He charged a Blood Punch to swing it and the Ghoul broke its active camo to phase shift away from his attack. He equipped the Lightning Gun and aimed its microwave mode, which settled amidst the blue stream.

BZZZZZZZZZT POP!!

Two more Ghouls broke their active camos, fresh waves of demons began warping into the laboratory, and the three Hell Knights in their stasis tubes broke out of containment.

The emerald glint of a BFG fusion core drew the Slayer’s gaze as it clattered to the floor. He drew the BFG-9000, aimed it in the least demon-infested direction, and fired.

PSSHT FEWWW!!

A swirling green vortex and a dazzling flash. A miniature sun erupted from the weapon’s barrel and struck down every demon in the laboratory with emerald bolts of lightning. Hell Knights, Pinkies, Revenants, zombies. Not even the phasing Ghouls escaped its destructive power.

POWWW!! The fireball crashed and erupted on the force field reinforcing the chamber, shorting out the field and melting the back walls into green slag amidst a flurry of emerald embers. The Slayer picked up the free fusion core and was back to full BFG ammo.

That was the last of them, but where was the Hunter-

A robotic arm over the giant demon carcass on the operating table sparked and shorted out. Surgical tables jumped as electricity arced between them, and a power coil on the ceiling fell in a shower of sparks. The Slayer quickly raised his hands to shield himself but was thrown back by an exploding surge of power. He stuck the landing and raised his gaze to witness the figure manifesting in the center of the chamber.

The last Hell Hunter was four meters tall and humanoid in shape, yet it bore a thick biometallic armor over its body that formed organic segmented plates and was surrounded by vivid blue electricity. The armor was embedded with electric blue octahedral crystals on its elbows, chest, and head, and the Slayer instantly knew that its metal was not one that appeared in the Mortal Realm.

SPIRITUAL ARMOR?!

The Armored Hunter gathered a blinding vortex of electrical power into its fist and launched it at the Slayer.

BZZZT BOOM!

The Slayer jumped out of the way of the projectile’s direct impact, but the orb projected lightning streams that arced out and struck the Slayer regardless. 58 HEALTH. The demon gathered electricity into its fists and leapt into the air for a ground slam, causing miniature bolts to rise throughout the laboratory floor. The Slayer quickly leapt towards higher ground before the Hunter landed and released a pulsing ground shockwave throughout the chamber.

He equipped the chaingun and fired. RATATATATATAT! The heavy rounds clinked and shattered against the monster’s spiritual armor, which was completely untouched. Rocket launcher! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! He Rampaged towards the monster with raised fists and slammed into it before viciously punching at its armor. The demon only crouched and focused lightning across its body before releasing an electric pulse that blasted him across the chamber. 26 HEALTH.

It was useless. The Hunter’s spiritual armor was completely invulnerable to physical attacks. The BFG would likely be effective, but he only had three shots and needed to conserve its ammo. The demon flinched at the blasts and was pushed back, but continued forward and channeled another lightning ball. The Slayer switched back to the chaingun and opened fire on the electric crystals embedded in the plates to see if that would disable the monster’s armor.

RATATATATATAT! BZZZ- POOF! The Hunter threw the lightning ball which crossed the path of the Slayer’s fire, which to his surprise dispelled the projectile before it could strike him. A stray round nicked the demon’s gauntlet, causing it to spark and the demon to growl in pain. The Slayer raised an eyebrow.

He kept his distance to prompt the demon to launch another lightning ball from its other hand, and as it channeled the energy, the Slayer equipped the Gauss Cannon and fired at the glowing gauntlet.

CLANG! The entirety of the Hunter’s armor came apart from the strike and clattered to the floor before dissipating into azure embers, leaving the pale and unarmored Hell Hunter exposed.

Chaingun! RATATATATAT! Clink-clink-clink-clink! The demon raised its right arm and projected a swirling particle field to catch the incoming rounds before shotgun-blasting them back at the Slayer. He ceased firing and rushed out of the way of his redirected bullets.

Great! The Hunter had a particle shield just like the ATLAS mechs!

He switched to the rocket launcher and fired multiple rockets not directly at the demon but in its close vicinity while tossing grenades in a similar manner.

Its particle shield might be able to deflect bullets and explosives, but it couldn’t deflect their blast waves!

The demon raised its left arm and released an electric discharge that detonated his rockets and grenades before they came into range.

OH WHAT THE F-

An azure glow began manifesting around the demon. It was recovering its spiritual armor.

Not yet not yet NOT YET!

The demon focused power into its fist as the air in front of it crackled, and the Slayer widened his eyes before the lightning bolt shot directly at him. He absorbed the bolt into his Bracer and launched it back at the monster.

KSSSHHH! “RAAAWWWRRR!”

The deflected lightning bolt struck the Hunter and blew a large portion of its flesh off while electrifying it, halting the regeneration of its armor. The Slayer threw a siphon grenade and aimed the rocket launcher. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Direct hits!

The stun only lasted a few moments and the demon soon broke out of it and recovered its intact armor, but the damage was done and the Slayer could see the blood dripping between the plates, while his own HEALTH had been boosted to 45 and his ARMOR to 26.

He headed towards a stray medikit in the corner of the room with a new game plan, coordinating to respond to the Hunter’s attacks and wait for the moment to strike. 70 HEALTH.

The demon leapt into the air in an electric slam, and he jumped onto a platform above to avoid the electric ground wave. Rushed back as the monster crouched to charge an electric pulse that surged in a wide radius around it. It raised its arm to channel power for a lightning ball.

There! The Slayer aimed the HAR to fire a precision bolt, but the demon slammed its fist into the ground and released a swift electric wave in his direction.

FUCK!

57 HEALTH. The demon had already charged another lightning ball and launched it at him.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

He hastily aimed the HAR and fired in full auto at the orb, dispelling it but not before it struck him with its seeking bolts. 43 HEALTH. The Slayer furiously equipped the Blazing Spirit and aimed it at the Hunter.

MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF-

RAHH! RAHH! RAHH!

The ghostly blasts of souls erupted against the Hunter’s armor and pushed it back. The damage was slight, but he knew that ethereal attacks could counter spiritual armor.

RAHH RAHH! RAHH! RAHH! RAHH!

BREAK, YOU DICKLESS PIECE OF FUCK! BREAK!

RAHH! RAHH! RAHH! CLANG!

Knowing the Hunter would likely resist the Lightning Gun or stun bomb, the Slayer threw a frag grenade and switched to the plasma cutter while aiming at the monster’s ankle. POWW! POWW POWW! BOOM! The demon reached critical health and heavily fell to its knees as its foot was cut out from underneath it. The Slayer brandished his fists and swept in for the finishing blow. The monster roared one last time and focused electricity into an arm before releasing it. The Slayer leapt and caught the lightning bolt into his Bracer before descending upon the Armored Hunter and releasing the bolt back unto its chest.

BOOM!!

A dazzling flash of blue, then nothing. The surgical labs were dark and still, with only the soft sputter of sparks landing on puddles punctuating the silence. The Slayer reared back from the eviscerated remains beneath him and slumped his head backwards, alone in the dark once again.

A bundle of torn water-soaked papers lay discarded on the floor in front of him. His mind was too numb to make sense of most of the words, but he made out phrases like “secure channels,” “Allied Nations requests additional data,” “high-value subjects will be transferred to Mars,” and “UAC’s immunity to be extended.” He merely turned away from the documents and remained kneeling in the middle of the carnage.

The papers were stained with blood. Whether human or demon, he couldn’t tell.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Hayden confided in a low regretful voice. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

…Nothing ever was.

The computer spoke in a somber tone, almost as if it understood the gloom of the situation. The Slayer grimly rose to his feet and pried the indicated organ from the Hell Hunter’s corpse: its spine and ribcage.

There was a buzz behind him and an intricate apparatus extended from a compartment in the wall, a large horizontal glass tube with a digital control panel and numerous robotic arms inside it.

The Slayer climbed up the stairs to the station, which unfolded as he approached and extended three robotic arms.

He extracted the Hunter organs from his storage matrix and delivered them to the arms. The power core of the Helltime Hunter, the skull of the Brawler Hunter, and the ribcage of the Armored Hunter.

The three arms placed the components together while other mechanisms assembled the composite device. Some arms bound the skull to the end of the ribcage with tendons and sinews while others welded electronic devices to the power core. Two other arms attached muscle and bone to the apparatus, and a recognizable outline began to take shape

That was no key at all. It was a weapon.

The ribcage formed the barrel and overall structure of the firearm, the power core was stored at the base by the bone handle, and the horned skull formed the firing muzzle. A grip and trigger were added to the handle, and the weapon was complete. An amalgamation almost two meters in length of demon bone, flesh, and metal, with an inverted pentagram on its top and a horned skull at its crown. He recognized the weapon. He had seen it in visions, in nightmares.

A demonic unmaker of catastrophic power.

The Slayer reached forward and confoundedly lifted the weapon from its supports.

What the hell was this thing?

SCREAMER ACQUIRED

MUNITION TYPE - SOULS

PRIMARY FIRE - EXPLOSIVE SOUL CHAINGUN

SECONDARY FIRE - EXPLOSIVE SOUL SHOTGUN

The BFG is his possession was one thing, but this? This was something else entirely. It wasn’t a UAC infantry crowd-control weapon, it was a focus weapon built specifically for his hand.

Just what exactly was in Lazarus that he was expected to use this weapon to kill it with?

* * *

BOOM! BOOM!

What was that? Ruby wondered as the sounds of distant explosions shook the labs. Sounds of rockets and missiles being fired.

“Reeeooowwwhhh!” A garbled electronic roar.

Wait, is that…

“..Taylor…FSSSSST do…BZZZZZT copy?!...”

Ruby gasped at Romero’s static-filled transmission and shouted into her radio.

“Hiro?! What’s happening?! What are those sounds?!”

“...Taylor! BZZZZZT...ambush!...HSSSSSS need help now!”

“RAHH!”

A Revenant’s bone-rattling howl shrieked through the radio, and Ruby’s stomach sank.

“HANG ON!! I’M COMING!”

Entering full combat mode once again, Ruby drew her Hellshot rifle and raced down the hallway towards her team.

* * *

BOOM! BOOM! “Reeeowwwhhh!”

“Aaaarrrhhh!”

The towering armored monster had barely taken any damage from the Revenants and had already killed one of them, blowing them to bits with its dual arm-mounted rocket launchers while its steel armor blocked their missile volleys. Romero and the other survivors hunkered down behind a corner in the bunker, still structurally sound despite the heavy combat thanks to the walls’ force fields, but the infighting demons blocked the only exit.

A Revenant dashed towards the armored cyborg, and the monster extended a piston-mounted battering ram from its left arm and splattered the Revenant across the wall.

“Damn it! They’re killing themselves out there!” Romero shouted after peeking around the corner, but he couldn’t find a way past the monsters. A stray missile from the last Revenant struck a wall near them, and the team backed away while covering their ears from the explosion.

“Damn it, Rogers! Pull yourself together and help us find a way out of here!”

“What’s the point?! We’re all gonna die! Taylor was never going to save us, she brought us down here to kill us! To turn us into monsters!”

“RAAAHHH!”

The Revenant suddenly jumped over the monster’s rocket and closed the distance to it, punching at its body and breaking some of its armor plates to reveal a pale but grotesquely muscular body beneath, which it then fired at with its missile launchers.

“Weeeaaarrrggghhh!” The monster shouted as its face screen depicted a growling mouth.

The monster pinned the Revenant to the wall with a robotic claw it had in place of a right hand and then aimed its left cannon at it. Romero thought that the cyborg would crush the Revenant with its battering fist, but instead the monster deployed a machine gun from within its arm and blew the shrieking Revenant apart with a storm of heavy bullets. It shattered the Revenant’s cybernetic rig and moved upwards to blast its head to pieces.

“Go! Now’s our chance!” Romero grabbed the scientist and Rogers and the team darted out of the corner to run past the distracted cyborg, but the monster turned its face screen depicting a bloodshot eye at them while releasing a harsh whirr.

“Wwwwrrrrhhhh!”

“Christ!” The group came to a halt.

The cyborg dropped the mangled remains of the Revenant before raising its cannons at the group, and Romero raised his arms in front of his team in a gut reflex to protect them.

“Rrrwwweee- AAARRRHHH!”

The monster’s back suddenly erupted in writhing red flames as something attacked it from behind. It staggered, clawing at itself in an effort to extinguish the flames, revealing Ruby firing her Hellshot at it from the doorway.

“It’s Taylor!”

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?!”

The team finally caught sight of Ruby’s clawed left arm, the black horn sprouting from her head, and the sinister red eye peering from her helmet. Romero’s blood ran cold.

“Reeeooowwwhhh!” The cyborg writhed in pain from the flames, but they didn’t seem to be doing much damage. It aimed its rocket launcher to fire at Ruby, to which she triggered the faint golden hexagonal shield of Reactive Armor over her suit and leapt out of the way of the thundering explosion.

“Hiro! Take the others and get out of here! I’ll hold the Bruiser off!”

The Bruiser raised its battering arm and punched at Ruby, who dashed beneath its arm which cracked the ground behind her while charging a Power Slam and delivering it at the demon’s chest. The cyborg faltered and was thrown back by the Elite Guard’s electric punch.

“You heard her,” shouted Romero as he grabbed the scientist’s and Roger’s arms. “Let’s go!”

“Get off me, bastard!” Rogers pried Romero’s arm off and ran for the exit, and the Bruiser aimed its machine gun at him.

RATATATATAT! CLAN-ANG-ANG-ANG-ANG! Fast as lightning, Ruby darted in front of the rounds and deflected them back at the Bruiser with her Vorpal sword, breaking its machine gun and more of its armor plates. Roaring in fury, the Bruiser raised a small shoulder-mounted cannon and fired a searing blue plasma bolt at Ruby.

POWW! POWW! POWW! Ruby raced out of the path of the plasma missiles and struggled to deflect them as their heavy impacts pushed her back, but Rogers was already rushing to the crumpled exit gate, smoking after being hit by the Bruiser’s plasma bolt.

Romero shouted after him, he and the others still pinned behind the fighting Bruiser and Taylor.

“Lieutenant, wait!”

Rogers ignored him and forced his hands into the juncture, struggling to pry the doors open. “FUCK ALL OF YOU! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Something shrieked as it struck the door from the other side, and Rogers backed away. A dent appeared on the door, then another, and suddenly three short claws shrouded in violet flames stabbed through the jammed seal. Rogers ran for cover as another clawed hand stabbed through the juncture and the doors were loudly pried open by a hunched indigo figure, who cried in a high-pitched shriek from its split jaws.

Ruby immediately turned in horror as the Prowler appeared, but the Bruiser raised its cannon and fired at the smaller demon. The rocket missed and merely struck the Prowler with its blast wave, but this howled and charged at the Bruiser while warping to avoid its attacks and launching its own violet fireballs at it, striking its exposed flesh and causing the larger demon to buckle. Rogers ran out of the room, and Ruby helped cover her team as they ran to follow.

“Mark, stop!”

The Prowler jumped onto the Bruiser and clawed viciously at its neck and back with searing violet claws. The Bruiser roared and raised its arms to try and throw the Prowler off, but its cannon arms were too bulky to grab the smaller demon, which swiped and broke the plasma launcher on its shoulder.

“Now!” Ruby shouted as her team ran out the exit. “Go go go!”

She stayed close to the others while looking back to make sure they weren’t followed, though she could still see the Lieutenant running away far ahead.

CRASH! The Bruiser suddenly punched through the reinforced wall and reached for Reeves with its claw arm.

“AAAH-!” Shink!

Ruby rushed forward and sliced the Bruiser’s arm off with the Vorpal Sword’s power slash. She fired the Hellshot as the demon stepped through the hole, but the Prowler pounced at it and diverted its attention once more.

“Go! Go! Keep moving!” She hurried the team as they approached the gate at the end of the hall. The automatic doors had just closed, meaning Rogers had passed through there.

“Rwwweeeaaahhh!”

Ruby glanced back and saw the Prowler plunge its arm into the Bruiser’s back, pulling out a glass capsule containing a human brain attached by cables and a cybernetic spinal cord. The Bruiser’s face screen howled in panic, depicting a terrified eye before the Prowler smashed the capsule onto the floor in a mess of glass and blood. The Bruiser released a bone-chilling electronic roar, its face screen glitching and sputtering between a bloody eye and a screaming mouth, before powering off and turning silent. The monster sparked and spasmed, collapsing to the floor with a heavy crash.

Reaching the exit and urging her team through the door, Ruby turned back and caught one last look at the Prowler plunging its claws into the fallen Bruiser’s chest and ripping out its heart, howling in victory as it held the beating red organ in the air above it.

Shooting the gate panel behind her to seal it shut, Ruby rushed forward to catch up to the fleeing lieutenant.

“Rogers! Stop!”

“Get away from me!”

Ruby dashed forward and pinned the soldier on the wall, grabbing hold of both his arms to keep him from escaping.

“Mark, please! I’m on your side!”

“LET GO OF ME, YOU MONSTER! YOU LIED TO US! YOU WERE TURNING PEOPLE INTO DEMONS! YOU’RE GOING TO KILL US ALL!”

“Oh, God!” Reeves shouted. “What’s wrong with your face?!”

Ruby turned towards the engineer, uncomfortably aware of how she looked to her teammates.

“Amanda, please. It’s still me. It’s Taylor.”

Romero bore an expression of concern, but Reeves’ face displayed nothing but terror and disgust. Ruby gasped as she saw Reeves’ face, momentarily loosening her grip on Rogers who reached for his shotgun.

Romero was first to notice. “Taylor!”

Ruby spun around and flicked the barrel out of her face.

BANG!

The gunshot startled Ruby, and as she cupped her ringing ears, she saw Reeves crumbling to the floor from the corner of her eyes.

“NOOOOO!”

She yelled, but she couldn’t hear her own voice.

She let go of the lieutenant as the engineer fell to the ground, and looking up she saw him mouth one last sentence, his face a mixture of fear, pain, and despair.

“You lied to us.”

Rogers turned away and fled into the darkness, and Ruby tore her gaze away to look at Reeves.

The engineer had taken the glancing shot to the face. Her left eye was gone as well as the entire upper left portion of her head, throbbing brain tissue visible amidst the mess of mangled flesh and bone. Her right eye stared emptily into nothing, but she was still breathing.

I promised I’d get her out of here, I promised I’d take her home!

“Hiro, do you have a medpack?!”

“Taylor, what are you doing?!”

“Just give it to me!”

The gunslinger unslung his pack and rummaged in it before pulling out a tattered white stimpack.

“It’s my last one.”

Ruby snatched it and opened it, withdrawing the small blue vials of medigel.

“Taylor, what…Oh! Oh, GOD!! Stop! Taylor, stop!!”

“She’s still alive! This will seal the wound and keep her stable until we can get help!”

“Taylor, what- ARE YOU BLIND? DO YOU NOT SEE HER?

YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO USE A MEDPACK TO TREAT HEAD TRAUMA!”

“They’re coming,” the unfazed scientist said.

Ruby looked up at the yawning corridor. She could see shapes darting through the darkness. They were far and afraid, but they would come for them. She lifted the engineer up and hoisted her over her shoulders.

“I need to carry her. Help me keep the way clear.”

Romero grit his teeth and looked off towards the approaching howls.

“DO IT!”

The gunslinger cursed under his breath and unslung his Vortex Rifle before grabbing the scientist’s hand and guiding them into the labs.

* * *

The Slayer stood in front of the gleaming yellow, red, and blue technoarcane barrier sealing off his access to the Lazarus Archives. With the Screamer in hand, he stepped forward and pressed the weapon to the barrier. The skull at the end of the device settled into the shimmering pentagram sigil in the shape of the four-horned skull, and he pulled the trigger.

“AAARRRGGGHHH!!”

The weapon cast a sinister red glow from its circuits as the horned skull released a fiery surge of spiritual energy, but at once the gleaming barrier began unraveling along its sigils and entirely dissipated in a matter of seconds. The metal gate slid open and the Slayer shielded his eyes. The space on the other side was brightly lit and seemingly unaffected by whatever curse rendered the rest of Lazarus completely obscured. He let his eyes adjust and assuredly stepped into a narrow corridor that branched into other hallways. He briefly wondered which path to take when he suddenly heard a voice.

“Come here.”

The Slayer stopped immediately. It was a woman’s whispering voice, which seemed to originate from all around and nowhere at all. There was something else to it, a subliminal haunting tone that made the Slayer’s blood run cold. He heard a wet splat behind him and spun to find a pair of bloody footprints shuffling down the empty hallway, spontaneously appearing on the metal floor with no source or origin in view. The Slayer tentatively turned on his Clearsight. If there was something there, his Clearsight would find it.

He saw nothing at all.

The footprints slowly approached him. He watched as they walked directly through him, one on either side of his body, but felt nothing to indicate another presence.

What the fuck…

The footprints continued and turned right, walking towards a gate that opened as they approached.

“Follow me…”

The HUD marker indicating the entrance to the Lazarus Archives seemed to be in the direction the footsteps were heading. He grimaced in apprehension and followed close behind.

He had a bad feeling about this.

“...Come on! Hurry!...”

The footprints shuffled along at a faster pace, and the Slayer jogged lightly to keep up. They made a sharp left and led towards a shut gate, which was locked and reinforced. A dead end.

“They took my baby.”

The ceiling lights went out and were replaced by the dim emergency red light. The Slayer looked around in tense confusion when he heard it.

A baby’s cry.

“Wooooaaaaha…”

The Slayer instantly equipped the BFG and aimed it at the only path that led to his dead end.

If ANYTHING came around that corner, he would open fucking fire.

Just as suddenly, the ceiling lights turned back on and restored the hallway to full brightness. The Slayer cautiously stepped forward and peered with BFG in hand around the corner. All clear. He sighed in relief and heard the sealed gate unlock behind him. He turned and passed through the gate as it opened, but came to a halt when he saw what was on the other side.

What the hell is that?!

It appeared to be a Gore Nest but was embedded into the final door at the end of the hallway. Its pulsating mass had spread tendrils throughout the thick gate and its controls, but the Nest itself likewise incorporated cybernetic devices into its own structure, including an entire computer unit.

He didn’t know what the Cyber Nest would do, but its structure had completely infested the gate and its access panel, and the HUD marker directed him straight ahead. He needed to disable the Cyber Nest if he wanted to continue.

The doctor placed the folder on the table in front of the Marine. He asked what it was.

“This is your ticket out of here. The UAC is offering you one last mission, in exchange for your release.”

They were back.

“Mars intercepted a stray satellite transmission from Phobos. The moon is quarantined by apocalyptic levels of radiation, nothing should still be alive, but there’s someone there. Or rather, something.”

The Marine reached forward and opened the sheaf of papers, glancing at the images decoded from the satellite transmission.

“An unknown entity, possessing vast rejuvenating powers, resurrecting the corpses left over from your last mission. The UAC believes it's using the radiation to conceal its presence, but they know nothing about its nature or origin.

A number of spatial phenomena have been detected in Phobos space over the last six hours. Perhaps it slipped through another gateway the researchers built.

As the only survivor of the Phobos Event, the UAC has reactivated your commission in hopes you can help contain this…incursion.”

The assignment was clear: merciless extermination.

The Marine chuckled and closed the folder.

One of his squadmates wasn’t actually dead when he found him.

“I beg your pardon?”

He’d found him impaled on a piece of rebar on the ground, struggling to breath as he still attempted to lift himself up. The bar prevented him from bleeding out, and the man was pale with shock and exhaustion.

He’d cried. Said he didn’t want to die.

Then he did.

“Marine?”

The Marine slammed his hands on the desk, denting the thick metal. The soldiers standing guard around the cell raised their rifles, but they stepped back fearfully as if they knew their bullets would be useless.

They all die! Isn’t that enough?! How many more would be thrown at him?!

The interviewing doctor made no response, but his expression changed to a softer one, almost one of sympathy. The Marine sighed and relaxed his stance.

The doctor who’d been interviewing him wasn’t UAC, he had the logo of the Global Science Council on his coat. But even his pose and look were different. He seemed to care, and he seemed to understand. The Marine lamented that the man had been brought in to deal with him.

He lamented many things.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

The Marine lowered his head. He was supposed to feel something. Anger, sadness, anything. But he didn’t. After returning from Hell, all he felt was numb.

They’d killed her while he was gone. He should have been there for her.

“I’m supposed to tell you that they’re offering you employment. An advisory job in preparing and dealing with future incursions, in exchange for limited visitations to Earth for whatever matters you must attend to…”

The doctor’s words rang hollowly on the Marine’s ears.

“...but in my personal opinion, I believe this mission could be beneficial for you. Everyone deals with loss in different manners. Perhaps this way you’ll find some closure.”

The Marine perked up. He hadn’t thought of that. A chance to get out, and make the bastard demons pay?

The doctor checked his watch, then stood up and buttoned his coat.

“Excuse me. I have a ship to catch, but I do recommend you consider their offer. And quickly. The window is closing. This might be your only opportunity.”

“Samuel, honey?” A middle-aged woman with short tucked red hair peered through the door. “Time to go.”

The doctor nodded at the woman and placed his hand on the Marine’s shoulder.

“Good luck, Marine.

I hope we’ll meet again.”

The Marine looked down at the folder on the table, hearing the door open and close behind him.

Date: 2064

Project DOOM

‘Join the Marines. See the universe.’

Geez.

The Slayer breathed deeply in resignation and forced his hands into the Cyber Nest’s eye, grabbing hold of its beating cybernetic heart and pulling it free.

“RRRAAAHHH!!”

The Cyber Nest screamed and exploded in a burst of flesh and metal, just as the message flashed on the Slayer’s HUD.

DEMONIC MALWARE DETECTED

MALWARE TYPE: VIRUS

EFFECT: DISABLES HARMONIC RESONATORS

The Praetor Suit’s Resonators immediately shut off, their electronic tones fading to leave the Slayer in solitary silence as the Cyber Nest’s tendrils withered and disintegrated from the doorway. The gate unlocked and slowly slid open with a heavy rumble, and the Slayer raised his hands as the heavy fog poured from the darkness beyond.

* * *

I reached out and placed the metallic skull-key up to the shimmering golden seal. The skull floated in the middle of the shield before dissipating in a wave of energy, which unraveled the seal and prompted the gate to slowly open with a heavy rumble, golden electricity arcing across it. I stepped through into a dark area and let my eyes slowly adjust.

The walls were composed of stone blocks in hexagonal patterns, forming channels, inlets, and pools for a thick bubbling green fluid that flowed throughout the floor and which poured from outflow pipes in the walls. The fluid had an iridescent sheen and seemed faintly luminous, though the area was dimly illuminated by cracks in the ceiling leading to the exterior.

“That’s nukage, radioactive waste from when Deimos still relied on nuclear power. But it was all stored and locked away, I have no idea how it turned to this.

Either way, try not to fall into it. It’s not so radioactive now but it’s still heavily corrosive.”

“Whatever.”

I walked along a narrow pathway leading straight ahead as my shadow was cast on the fog in front of me, but looking down, I found my shadow cast on the floor, not in front. I looked up in alarm and raised my knife as the fog blew away to reveal the lone figure.

It was a thin and humanoid entity that bore a surprising amount of muscle on its slim frame. Its skin was a pale brown color and on its feet were four long claws that almost resembled hooves. The entity carried a mechanical jet rig on its torso with two cannons mounted atop its shoulders. There was a vertical cybernetic ridge atop its head, reminding me of a Roman Centurion soldier. It stood in place while breathing deeply as if quietly seething, and although it wore a carved bronze mask over its face, like that of a death mask, I could tell it was looking directly at me.

“John, that’s a Revenant,” Colonel Johnson whispered.

“Are you crazy? That doesn’t look like anything from the UAC’s Revenant program. It looks like something the Deraki made.”

“John, I’m telling you! It’s still wearing its UAC jet rig, and those are UAC pulse cannons on its shoulders! That’s a motherfucking Revenant!”

The Centurion stepped forward and released a harrowing roar through its mask, raising its clawed arms out as the force of its roar dispelled the fog in the chamber. It leapt into the air and fired a volley of heavy plasma bolts on my position. PEWW PEWW PEWW! The bolts exploded in swells of burning blue plasma and I dashed to avoid being struck, priming my missile launchers and opening fire. FEWW! FEWW! The Centurion dashed in the air to break the missiles’ lock-on before plummeting to the floor and rushing at thundering speed towards me. I triggered my launchers’ alternate fire and unloaded a barrage of soft-lock missiles, but the demon strafed side to side to avoid them as it approached.

I drew my Bronze Knife and thrust it just as the Centurion crashed into me, but the demon caught my hand in its own and thrust its other hand over the cybernetic core on my chest. As I watched, streams of Argent Energy were siphoned from my core into the demon, draining my health and mana.

“John!”

“AAAAHH!”

I triggered the Heart of Lothar and launched the Centurion back as my chest opened up in a blur of spinning razor disks, with gouges appearing on the monster’s chest and mask.

“Let’s see how you like it, bastard!”

I extended my left hand and leeched blood from the Centurion to heal my injuries, and though the monster growled in pain it did not stop and strafed around me with blazing jets while focusing targeting lasers. I stopped siphoning its blood and instead threw fireballs at it while firing my machine guns, dashing to avoid the searing beams shooting from its cannons. The demon responded by tossing fireballs of its own in the directions I dashed towards to avoid its beams, and before long my overshield broke.

“Damn, he’s too fast! I can’t even hit him with my machine guns!”

“Create a shadow clone! See if you can distract him!”

I activated my new spell and cast a shadowy Void clone from my body, mentally commanding it to attack the Centurion. The clone obeyed and started shooting at the demon with its own cannons, and though the Centurion fired a volley of plasma bolts at my clone to force it back, its attention remained focused on me.

“Ugggh! Let’s see if this works!”

I primed the dagger throw spell I’d acquired from the fallen Deraki scout and blasted it with a barrage of crystal daggers. The Centurion groaned as the daggers stuck and began discharging its blood, but they still didn’t perform other effects or do remarkable damage, and the monster surged at me again.

“DAMN IT!”

I hit the demon with a flame wave while dashing back, and to my surprise the daggers immediately caught fire and ignited the Centurion in a blazing torrent of flame, much more intense than I’d ever seen my flame wave do before.

“Holy shit, you’re supposed to combo the crystal daggers with other spells!”

The Centurion roared in pain as the flames and incandescent daggers immolated its body, and I rushed forward with Bronze Spear in hand. “NOW HE FUCKING TELLS ME!”

Slash at the knees, slash at the chest. I pushed the Centurion back with every strike and splattered great arcs of red blood. With a great thrust, I stabbed my spear into its face and felt something break as the demon was thrown back into a pool of the bubbling nukage, extinguishing its flames. I reflexively shielded myself from the splash, but the steaming droplets were blocked by my overshield and I cautiously approached the pool.

“Did we get him?”

I couldn’t see any movement. The nukage was giving off too much steam, and its shimmering surface made it difficult to spot any waves.

A white dot appeared on my radar.

“NO WE DIDN’T!”

I dashed back as a glaring red blur shot out of the nukage, a steaming and heavily corroded Centurion dripping noxious fluid and its core releasing a sinister incandescent glow. Its mask had broken off, revealing a monstrous skeletal face with exposed teeth, two short tusks protruding from each jaw, and two fiery eyes glaring with pure rage.

“OHH, HE’S PISSED!”

The demon plunged and released a wave of Hellfire at me, which I jumped over to find the Centurion aiming its cannons at me before striking me with its beam attacks.

“FUCK!”

My overshield broke and I was left exposed. The demon fired ceaseless barrages of plasma bolts at me while I struggled to leap past flame waves and fireballs, but its attention suddenly diverted when a blast of shadow struck its back. The Centurion rushed away to assault my Void clone shooting at it from behind.

“The clone worked! That thing’s lost control! It’ll attack anything that moves!”

“What are you going to do? If you attack it, it’ll come after you next!”

“Not if it can’t see me!”

I strafed around the berserk Centurion to flank it and activated my phase shift. Entering my ghostly phased state, I circled around the demon and fired one missile volley after another. The monster spun around searching for a culprit, but in my phased state I was imperceptible and my shadowy clone was a much more pressing opponent.

Although successfully wearing the Centurion down, my clone was almost fully dispelled after the berserk demon’s ceaseless assault, and after a final flame wave it fully dissipated. I exited phase shift and rushed at the demon’s back.

Now!

I triggered my shade dash and passed through the demon in a piercing shadowy blur, releasing a wide spray of blood and shrapnel. With the last of its strength, the Centurion thrust its hand at my chest, but I sliced it off with a firm slash of my Bronze Knife. The monster roared in pain and I thrust my knife into its open mouth.

“AAAHH!”

I toggled the knife into spear mode and watched the long bronze shaft pass through the Centurion’s head, shattering the cybernetic ridge on top and blowing out its brains. The demon’s fiery red eyes faded to black, and after retracting my spear it crumbled to the floor in a bloody broken mess, its jet rig whirring down and powering off.

I panted heavily, gripping my Bronze Knife tightly before I fell back to the floor.

“Woah. Not bad, soldier.”

“Huh. Thanks…Colonel.”

“Hey, look at that.”

Catching a metal glint in the corner of my eye, I turned and found the Centurion’s severed hand beside me. Between the rough skin and four clawed digits was a strange metal apparatus extending across its fingers, trailing red tubes towards a central ring.

The thing it used to drain my health and mana.

“That doesn’t look UAC-made.”

I reached out and grabbed the demon’s hand. The device wasn’t implanted and rather worn like a glove over its fingers, and I pulled it free to get a closer look.

“This machining…I think it was made by the Deraki.”

I turned to the remains of the Centurion. Its jetpack was heavily corroded and scorched from my attacks, but there was no mistaking the UAC logo on its back.

“They really did steal UAC Revenants, and augment them with their own technology.”

“But why? They have their own armies and war beasts. Why do they need our guys?”

“I don’t know, but there’s something else.”

I brought the draining device over my left hand and pushed it down, placing it over my Hemokinetic Module. It was a perfect fit.

“They also stole me. Whatever cyber-soldier tech the UAC used to build me, the Deraki also want it. There were entire racks of others like me when I escaped from that ship. And they’re still trapped.”

I looked at the white plating over my limbs and body. It reminded me of the UAC’s Scout Bots, those agile portal-wielding machines they used to explore Hell. I groaned and rose to my feet.

“Maybe they want cyborg human soldiers to wage war on other demons, or more likely, us. Look at all the things I can already do on my own. Imagine what an entire army of enslaved soldiers like me could do.”

“This sounds way bigger than you and me, John. I’m risking my neck out here just trying to bring you back. I don’t know how you and I can stop an invasion of this scale.”

“Just take me home,” I said while clenching my hand and looking up through the cracks in the ceiling, seeing the roiling storm of the gateway above the dark Tower.

“I’ll come find you, and we’ll bring an end to this together.”

* * *

“Taylor, stop! Look, we’re safe now! Just stop!”

Ruby came to a halt and turned to face the gunslinger.

“I’m not taking another step till you tell me what’s going on!”

“Hiro, we don’t have time for this. We’ll discuss this later.”

Romero ran in front of the Elite Guard and cut her off.

“WE’LL DISCUSS THIS RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT!

We’ve cyborg demon zombies after us, Reeves is crippled, Rogers is gone, you’ve got whatever this is!” He waved at Ruby’s arm and face. “We still haven’t found whatever it was we came into Lazarus to begin with, and let’s not get started on all your bullshit!”

“So that’s what this is about?” Ruby bent down and gently placed Reeves lying down, resting the engineer’s head against her pack. “Fine, then. I’m all ears.”

“First off, what the hell is wrong with you?!”

Ruby sighed and looked down at her arm.

“It’s a demonic mutation spreading across my whole body. It’s altering my physiology and my mind. I’m not sure what caused it, but the LXR serum I took only accelerated it.”

“LXR…You mean those knives we took from that black box?! This one right here?!” Romero pointed at the black handle on his hip.

“The knife itself is harmless. If you were to inject yourself with that serum it would just kill you, though the injection procedure involves stabbing yourself in the heart regardless.”

“What about Rogers?! He’s got the third knife! What happens if he injects himself with it?!”

Ruby paused.

“I…he’s not an Elite Guard. He’s not augmented. It’s not going to have any other effect on him.”

“W- okay. Look, forget Rogers.

What about you? You lied. One time after another, you’ve lied to all of us.”

“Hiro, there is such a thing as classified data. I can’t tell you every single thing that went down here-”

“But you did, didn’t you?!” The mercenary pointed at her in accusation.

“You were the one who told me about the Revenants! You were the one who said Hayden would never let us escape!

You were the one who told us about the Argenta and the Martians, but what you conveniently left out was that they were two completely fucking different people! We saw the relics! The Martians were aliens, and they’re all dead because of the demons, aren’t they?! What about the Argenta? Did you make those up, or did the demons kill them too?!”

“Hiro, I couldn’t tell you what happened to them because-”

“Because then we’d never go along with you! If we knew we were all fucked from the start, then you’d never have a team of expendable sidekicks to cover your ass!”

Ruby had kept her composure so far, but being reminded of Harrison, of the technician at the hospital, and of Reeves at her feet made her eyes sting, but it also made her heart flare with anger.

“Hiro, please. That is not what happened,” she muttered in a low voice.

“Then what?! Why raise our hopes up?! To make you the big strong savior?! To let you feel like a hero?! Tell me!” Romero gestured towards the crippled Reeves. “Do you FEEL like a hero?!”

The accusing question pierced through Ruby’s composure like a sword, and she made a conscious effort to keep her voice calm.

“That’s enough. We’re done here.”

Romero lowered his voice, but his expression changed to that of contemptuous understanding.

“That’s it, wasn’t it? You wanted to be like the Doom Marine.”

“I said we’re done here.” Ruby struggled to remain composed as she clenched her clawed hand.

Romero took a step forward and looked at Ruby directly in both eyes, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“You wanted to be the big strong one-man killing machine. Fuck everyone else, kill all the monsters, save your own skin.

No wonder everywhere the Marine went fell to ruin. I wonder if beneath that helmet, he looks anything like you.”

Ruby pounced at Romero and pushed the man against the wall.

“I COMMAND YOU TO STOP!! THAT IS AN ORDER!!”

The gunslinger forcefully elbowed her in the face with his right arm, breaking her grip before kicking her back.

“I’M A FUCKING BOUNTY HUNTER!!” Romero shouted as he drew the Power Colt from his hip. “I TAKE ORDERS FROM CLIENTS, NOT YOU!!”

Ruby drew her EMG and raised it, just as the gunslinger aimed at her head.

“Drop it,” she muttered.

“You drop it.”

She primed the EMG’s secondary fire.

“This will cook you inside your suit.”

He cocked the revolver’s hammer.

“This’ll take your head clean off.”

Neither the Elite Guard nor the bounty hunter lowered their weapons, and they stared each other down with cold murderous intent.

The scientist who’d watched the whole exchange broke the silence. “Reeves.”

The young woman’s voice came from behind Ruby. Romero’s gaze shifted to her before he turned to the side, lowering his gun with an expression of mounting alarm. Ruby’s scowl softened before she lowered her own pistol and turned to where he was looking.

Reeves was standing of her own accord facing the trio, but something was off. Her gaze was lowered, her body still, but her posture was uncannily straight, and she stood at the edge between the light illuminating the team and the yawning darkness beyond. The gaping wound on her head glistened grotesquely.

Ruby cautiously stepped forward to approach the engineer. “Amanda?”

The splash of a droplet drew her attention downwards. She looked down to find the engineer standing on nothing, the bottom of her boots a few centimeters off the ground and dripping water into the puddle below.

Ruby looked up in pure horror to catch something black wrap its limbs around the engineer and pull her into the darkness with a low raspy howl.

“NOOOO! AMANDA!” Ruby rushed towards the hall but both the gunslinger and scientist pulled her back.

“Taylor, we need to go!”

“WE CAN’T! WE HAVE TO SAVE HER!” A distraught Ruby yelled and struggled against the two, but they pulled her back as a familiar clicking echoed from the corridor.

“Click-click-click-click-click!”

“Leave her, she’s gone!”

“They’re coming!” Yelled the scientist.

“NO SHE’S NOT! I PROMISED I’D TAKE HER HOME! I PROMISED I’D LET HER SEE HER MOTHER AGAIN!

AMANDAAA!”

An abandoned plasma cutter lay on the floor, and Ruby stared helplessly at it before a gate closed in front of her and it was gone forever.

* * *

The Slayer’s footsteps echoed as he walked across the final chamber, spotlights on suspended gantries illuminating the path forward. The cursed dimness haunting Lazarus was gone, but he didn’t want to activate his Clearsight anymore. He reached the final illuminated spot at the center of the chamber and stopped, wondering what would happen next.

FWOOSH! A flaming portal ignited in front of him, the label on the round metallic gateway reading TO LAZARUS KILL RING.

Not where he wanted to go.

FWOOSH! A second portal appeared on his eight-o’-clock to the LAZARUS OFFERING CELLS, and a third portal on his four-o’-clock to a LAZARUS FEEDING PIT. He tightly gripped the Screamer in tense apprehension.

A mass of fluid splattered on the ground in front, a thick and clear viscous substance resembling saliva. He slowly raised his gaze upwards with a hammering heart as metal cables twanged and something growled from above. Fiery spotlights ignited upwards along the tall circular chamber, illuminating the countless rows of stasis tanks holding dormant human figures and the monstrous demonic entity suspended between them all.

“RAAAAAAWWWWWWHHHHHH!!” She shouted in a voice part-human, part-demon.

The entity was suspended by an array of cables and a cybernetic harness binding her to a robotic arm. She was almost five meters tall, with four twisted arms ending in curved black talons but no legs. Her skin was a glossy brown-red but crisscrossed with scars, veins, stretch marks, and thick intravenous cables leading to her harness, which dug torturously into her body. Her tall domed head had four bony horns - the four-horned skull in the shape of a pentagram he saw on the barrier - and below the face of a suffering woman, the Slayer could see a third large beast-like jaw, lined with white human teeth, drooling beneath her mouth. Her abdomen was grossly distended and swollen with translucent pods containing dark squirming shapes.

A mother.

“RAAAAAAHHH!” The Mother Demon roared in torment and anguish, a resonating cry that shook the Slayer to the very core and was further compounded by the harrowing silence he found himself in because of his disabled Resonators. He sprung into action as roaring pillars of Hellfire spontaneously erupted throughout the chamber, equipping the chaingun and aiming it at the Mother.

RATATATATATAT! His bullets blinked and disintegrated against the shimmering arcane seals surrounding the demon’s body.

Not again!

“RAAAWWWRRR!” A Hell Knight roared as it passed through a portal, accompanied by waves of demons from all three gateways: Lost Souls, zombies, imps, Z-Sec, Pinkies, Revenants, Cacodemons, Hell Knights. Demons of every size, shape, and variant. He desperately fired the chaingun as he was pelted by claws and fireballs, struggling to swerve around Hellfire pillars cast by the Mother, and his HEALTH fell to 24.

He charged a Blood Punch and released it on the ground before tossing a siphon grenade to recover HEALTH and ARMOR, and he equipped the Screamer while toggling the Sentry Bot into machine gun mode and signaling it to fire only upon human-type demons.

“ROOOOOOHHHHHH!!”

A howling barrage of fiery red souls erupted from the horned skull at the end of the Screamer and exploded against the swarm in bright red shrieks of spiritual energy, rendering flesh and bone apart and sending blood and body parts flying through the air. The Slayer’s Screamer razed through native Hell beasts while the unaffected zombies were cut down by his Sentry Bot’s machine gun, providing the necessary munition for the demonic weapon in the form of mortal souls.

With the horde sufficiently thinned down, the Slayer caught sight of the faint streams of ethereal energy linking the three portals to the seal around the Mother, each gateway protected in turn by a technoarcane barrier. Red, yellow, and blue.

While the three portals were active, the Mother couldn’t be harmed!

The Slayer Rampaged through the mob in the direction of the nearest portal, punching past a Hell Knight and running down a Sawcubus while firing away with the Screamer. After only a few hits from the weapon the barrier surrounding the portal disintegrated, and the Slayer charged a Blood Punch and shattered the gateway as he passed.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!!”

The Mother Demon screamed in agony as the first link was severed and the first seal around her burst, breaking several cables and weakening the robotic arm restraining her. She lurched painfully downwards, pressing her distended abdomen against her harness and causing the translucent pods to pulsate. The Mother’s scream momentarily made the Slayer’s stomach turn and his vision blur.

A new wave of demons surged through the remaining two portals, though this time without Hell Knights or Cacodemons. He threw a stun bomb at a Z-Sec, headshotted a Sawcubus with the HAR for an electric battery and chainsawed the stunned Z-Sec to restock on bullets before Rampaging towards the second portal when a wall of Hellfire suddenly ignited across his path. Too late to jump, the Slayer equipped the Gauss Cannon and flicked a shot downwards to boost himself over. A new flame wave surged from the Mother’s hand and sliced through the air towards him while a flame pillar erupted beneath him, and he fired the railgun to the side to gauss-boost out of their path.

He switched back to the Screamer while soaring over the horde and triggered its alternate fire.

“ROOAAHH!” BOOM! “ROOAAHH!” BOOM!

He pulled the trigger twice, firing two explosive shotgun blasts of raging spirits that obliterated the mob beneath him. He fired at the second portal and disintegrated its barrier before shooting a rocket at the exposed gateway.

BOOM! “AAAAAAHHHHHH!!” Absent from his Resonators’ tones, the Mother’s psychic scream made the Slayer feel sick and a stabbing pain pass through his head.

Second portal and seal gone. The cybernetic collar around the Mother’s neck shorted out and the harness dug deeper into her abdomen as the robotic suspension arm lowered her almost to the floor, tearing her skin and causing her to bleed. She retched and vomited bloody saliva on the floor, contractions visibly spreading across her abdomen.

Desperate for the ordeal to be over as much for himself as for the demon, the Slayer fried a Ghoul with a microwave beam from the Lightning Gun as the final wave of demons poured in. Only basic zombies and Possessed soldiers, and the Mother seemed to have lost her capacity to summon Hellfire, as even the chamber’s fiery illumination faded to the dim blue-green from the stasis tanks. He sighed in relief. It would be over soon-

Smash!

A glass tank suddenly crashed against the Slayer and knocked him to the ground, splashing him in a murky fluid. 62 HEALTH. He turned in horror at the expelled humanoid clone which had been gestating within the tube, shivering from cold and gasping in pain as its undeveloped body convulsed broken on the floor. He recoiled in repulsion, feeling the shock and disgust jar his senses and blur his vision.

He raised his sight once the stun broke. In the absence of Hellfire attacks, the Mother Demon wielded telekinesis to tear stasis tubes from the walls - still containing various human and humanoid clones in varying stages of development - and throw them at the Slayer. He swapped Lethal Force for Momentum Swing to prevent further hitstuns and swerved around smashing tanks, their corrosive fluids, and their mangled occupants of adult and juvenile ages. Desolate cries of agony from countless voices punctuated the discordant cacophony of battle and filled the room, painfully echoing in the Slayer’s mind and hacking away at his HEALTH.

He chainsawed a Possessed soldier to recover bullet ammo for the Sentry Bot, although the attack couldn’t restock his soul munitions which were running critically low. The zombies passing through the final portal weren’t supplying him fast enough either, and once he closed it they would be cut off entirely.

But the dying humanoid clones wouldn’t.

The Slayer’s stomach turned as the realization washed over him, but grimacing he steeled himself and fired at the flying stasis tanks with his Gauss Cannon. PEW! PEW!! PEW!! In single strikes he shattered the tubes into bursts of glass and blood and collected the clones’ souls into the Screamer to fire at the final gateway.

“ROOOOOOHHHHHH!!” PEWW! With a final shot from the Gauss Cannon the gateway shattered and the last seal over the Mother Demon broke.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!!” He covered his ears as the Mother’s howling cry pushed him back and bloodied his sight in a piercing migraine. The robotic arm holding her collapsed and fell to the floor, bringing her down with it. The Slayer ducked and swerved beneath the falling gantries and scaffolding, which crushed the remainder of the zombies as the Mother Demon landed with a reverberating BOOM, shattering her cybernetic harness in the impact.

As the dust settled, the Slayer peered amidst the rubble towards the smashed body of the Mother. She lied on her back and was still and silent.

Suddenly her entire body shuddered and she released a low groan that crescendoed into a dreadful roar as her abdomen violently contracted, and she expelled a dozen smaller entities from orifices along her exposed abdomen..

“Wooooaaaa!”

“Waaahhh!”

“Mamaaa…”

The newborns were small creatures resembling human infants. Hairy and misshapen bodies with black carapaces and six wickedly sharp insect legs. There were stingers at the end of their wasp-like abdomens, two large compound eyes on their bald heads like flies, and two long transparent wings on their backs. The skin on their plump faces and two stout arms was deathly pale, but their eyes were black with fiery irises.

The Slayer’s jaw dropped with a nameless, mind-numbing horror that shook him like never before.

“WAAAHH!”

He flinched as the demons, identified by his HUD as ‘Putti,’ suddenly leapt at him and began hacking at his ARMOR with their claws and stingers. He threw off one after the other, but they swarmed over him and blocked his vision with their plump hairy bodies, prompting him to charge a Blood Punch and release it on the ground to blast them off and recover distance.

He toggled the Sentry Bot to shoot at anything that moved while he fired the rocket launcher at the Mother’s torso.

PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The Sentry Bot dutifully shot down the Putti pouncing at the Slayer, but the rockets were having minimal effect due to the Mother’s exceedingly fast regeneration. He blasted large portions of her head and torso off, but streams of Argent flowed from her abdomen and restored the missing tissues within seconds, all while her psychic screams resonated throughout the chamber.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!!”

Another migraine stabbed through Slayer’s mind and he was pushed back by the scream, lowering his HEALTH to 39. A Putti suddenly latched onto him and vomited onto his face while another launched some dark effuvium at him from its abdomen. 32 HEALTH and a drenched visor.

UUUUGGHH!!

He grabbed the Putti on him and pulled it apart by its arms before charging at the other, grabbing it, and smashing it on the wall. But more kept spawning from the Mother who still agonizingly moaned in labor. He launched an echo drone and several grenades to thin out the swarm of Putti before switching to the Screamer and firing at the Mother’s abdomen.

“ROOOOOOHHHHHH!!”

The howling stream of souls erupted on the Mother’s body and liquidized the translucent pods with every hit, splashing transparent fluid, blood and gore, but the wounds did not regenerate. He tossed a siphon grenade at the next wave of Putti and strafed around the languid Mother, pulling as hard as he could on the trigger and unloading its full power on the demon. The attacks lacerated her flesh, severed her arms and shattered her horns, and she released an unholy sound from both mouths that made the Slayer regret he could hear.

She was almost dead, but the Screamer had run out of ammo and the Putti did not provide souls!

His eyes rose to the endless rows of clones above him, quietly gestating in their stasis tanks as they awaited whatever dark purposes the UAC had intended for them.

The Slayer grimaced and shut his eyes as he equipped the chaingun and fired upwards. RATATATATATAT! Glass shattered above him. There were splashes and splats of fleshy things striking the ground, and the Screamer hissed as it recovered munitions. He switched to the rocket launcher and fired in the same direction as he disengaged his Boiling Blood rune for God Speed, igniting into a blazing blur that incinerated nearby Putti. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Splashes. Splats. Hissing. Shrieking. Moaning.

He wished it could be over. He wished he could be anywhere else in all of Creation except where he currently was. His eyes hurt from how tightly he pressed them shut.

With the Screamer having recovered enough souls, the Slayer aimed the Hellish weapon in the direction of the Mother’s groaning and triggered its alt fire.

“ROOAAHH!” BOOM!!

A tremendous explosion rocked the chamber and a surge of Hellfire threw him backwards. The swarm of Putti shrieked but fell silent, and the Mother stopped screaming.

27 HEALTH left. The Slayer opened his eyes and saw the chamber desolate and still. The collapsed scaffolding had crumbled to ash. Tiny embers of Hellfire flickered on the ground. The stasis tanks above him were broken, empty, and dark.

In the center lay what remained of the Mother Demon, little more than a torso, her head, and two broken arms. All that was left of her abdomen was a steaming puddle of fluid and some clear tattered membranes. The singed body of a single Putti weakly buzzed its wings and cried softly before falling still.

“...Uggghhh…” One of the Mother’s hands clenched as a rasping gasp escaped from her mouth. She was still alive. The Slayer began walking in her direction.

“...Uhh…” He equipped the super shotgun and slowly loaded two shells into it, ready to finish the job.

“Please…,” the Mother gasped as she reached for the Slayer, “kill me…”

The Slayer stopped and winced as her words struck him like a knife through the heart. He was dizzy, exhausted, his ears rang, his vision was blurred and his entire body ached. He wanted nothing more than to turn around and leave, but he couldn’t.

He brought the shotgun down and activated the Praetor Suit’s hidden procedure, glancing at the flicker of Purefire igniting on his left hand before he bent down and placed it against the Mother Demon’s body.

“Aaahh…aaaAAAHHH…”

The Slayer stepped back as the cleansing blue flames quickly spread across the Mother, searing away flesh, bone, and spirit into sapphire embers. She writhed and recoiled in the flames, piecing the Slayer’s heart with every pained yell she made but he resolved to stay until it was finished.

“AAAHHH…AAAAHH!”

There was one last echoing scream as her arms slumped to the floor and crumbled to ash. There was a swirl of sapphire embers in front of the Slayer, and he was alone.

Why did he still fight?

Why did he ever sign up for the Marines? Why didn’t he listen to his father?

If there was a reason for why he chose to stay in Hell, all those years ago, the Slayer had long since forgotten.

As the last ember flickered away and the chamber was plunged into darkness, the Slayer wondered if humanity was even worth saving anymore.

* * *

The Marine’s mission was complete. He sighed, blood pouring from his eyes as he stood in defiance, the infernal embers flickered past on the plains of Hell.

He had returned to Phobos, plunged into the dark realm once more, tracked down the demon lord responsible for the new invasion of 2064, and exterminated it without mercy.

The UAC’s tech had improved. All he had to do now was trigger the return beacon hanging on his hip, and he’d be back home.

‘Home.’

Home to what? A board of inquiry for his original crime? An absolution of all wrong-doing, a star-shaped medal on a blue ribbon?

He had no home. He had nothing and no one left. His great-grandfather was dead, his father had disowned him, Ashford and Osborne were MIA, and his…she…was gone.

If he pressed that button, he’d only return to a miserable existence. Back to pension, back to IRR status, back to a lonely desk job. Back to being owned by the government, the UAC, or both. Back to more useless counselings, psychologists, and officers who could never understand. Back to weak men and shallow women. Back to the nightmares and terrors. Back to the visions of Hell on Earth. Back to rot from radiation poisoning or wither of old age.

But…

He clenched his beloved super shotgun in his hand, which had been with him through thick and thin. Through Phobos, Deimos, to Hell and back.. It was his last possession and his most prized treasure.

Pulling the trigger and feeling its recoil as its blast pulverized Hellspawn brought back a spark, a shadow of the rush he once felt in his first foray into the dark realm. It had since faded to be replaced by his present exhaustion and resignation, but it had not gone away entirely.

He could go back to Earth and die alone in a hospital bed, in a one-bedroom apartment, or on the street, or be torn limb from limb by the demons on their next inevitable invasion. Starting bar fights, becoming a mercenary, doing anything just to feel alive, wishing every day he could be back on the field of battle. Or he could stay, chase after that rush only combat could bring, and die in a blaze of glory knee-deep in the dead.

The Marine pulled the beacon from his hip, dropped it to the ground, and crushed it beneath his boot. He pulled the dogtags from his neck and tossed them onto the scrap. Then he reloaded his super shotgun and walked off into the infernal wastes.

He would remain in Hell and ensure no demon ever rose again.

It would be a hard and lonely road, a path of perpetual torment, but luckily for him, pain was an old friend.

He was a dead man anyway.

And he’d never felt more alive.

* * *

Osborne surged through the gateway and landed on the infernal wastes.

It was a nightmarish sight. Plains of brimstone, skies of black, seas of Hellfire. Shattered mountains like fangs gnawing against each other. No light shone in that cursed place, and the darkness felt like seeping into his soul. He was filled with a terrible sensation, the sensation that his very body and spirit were being undone by merely being present.

“Hell…so it’s true,” he told the Marine. “This is Hell.

We’ll make it out of this together, Marine.”

No one replied. Osborne turned around, the flaming gateway behind him gone but no one else in sight.

“Marine?”

He frantically turned left and right, searching for his brother-in-arms.

“Marine!”

They both jumped into the gateway! Osborne had seen him with his own eyes!

Desperate, he called out the Marine’s name.

Osborne was alone.

“NOOOOOO!!”

He fell to his knees and cried bitterly.

“NO! NO! NOOOOO!!”

How could this have happened? The two had fought their way through Phobos and reached the portal off the moon together, but only he had made it through?

It was cruel; it was unfair. After everything he’d suffered and everything he’d sacrificed?!

It seemed every time Osborne received something dear, the world would tear it away! A family, hopes and aspirations, respect from his commanding officers, the chance of redemption, the companionship of his squadmates!

Abandoned, forsaken, left to die by all of them!

Even…him.

Osborne’s eyes widened as the realization washed over him.

The Marine hadn’t become lost, he’d left him to die as well. He could see it in his eyes ever since their reunion on Phobos. A hesitation, a doubt, a reserve that wasn’t present before.

He thought Osborne was a monster, just like the rest of them all. He’d left him to die as well.

Osborne shuddered. His jaw clenched and tears kept pouring from his eyes, but a dark frown spread upon his face as the flames of hatred ignited in his heart.

He’d been a fool for ever striving to help them, or believing they were worthy of salvation. They were selfish. They were all selfish, worthless, PATHETIC scum, and they all deserved to die.

He’d been suppressing and holding back his hate for so long, but not anymore. With a pained groan, he released the flames from within, feeling his diseased heart turn to stone. The flames of hatred spread across his body and turned his green combat armor a sickly orange. He felt sick and rotten to the core, but he also felt free.

They thought him a monster? Then he would BE a monster.

Osborne’s emerald eyes turned an incandescent orange, and from them a smoldering tear like fire poured down his cheek.

He would bring them pain. He would bring them suffering. He would bring them torment just as they had brought unto him.

He would bring them Hell.

The Ghost of Phobos gripped his axe and rose to his feet, his eyes burning with the fires of Hell.

He would slaughter all of mankind, and he would burn their world to the ground.

* * *

Hayden stood alone in his bunker, staring solemnly at the monitor displaying Earth.

He thought back to when he still worked for the Global Science Council, a trusted guest researcher for the UAC, who’d been invited for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Learn the true nature of the Phobos Event, a tragic but enlightening incident that would forever change humanity’s perception of the cosmos. Learn of another dimension beyond mortal comprehension. Interview the only known survivor of Phobos, an extraordinary Space Marine once a normal soldier who’d survived this otherworldly ordeal. The man who would become the Doom Slayer.

Mysterious ways, indeed.

I bet he doesn’t remember, reflected the cyborg.

VEGA softly stated.

I’ve calculated twenty minutes before the first Gore Golem rises, forty minutes until seismic phenomena make Mars uninhabitable, sixty until it escapes the Labyrinth, and eighty until Mars experiences a Category Five interdimensional breach.>

Hayden stared grimly at the map of Earth.

“Even if the Slayer stops the Cyberdemon, he will not stop the effects its presence will wreak across the planet.

I’m afraid…we must proceed with the Zeroth Protocol.”

VEGA remained in silence for a moment before responding.

Hayden heavily walked towards his control desk as the wall-mounted screens throughout his bunker shut off one by one. He settled into his seat and gazed at the primary monitor as only the blue ceiling lights remained lit.

“Good luck, VEGA.”

The screen in front of Hayden changed to show a password entry box. The cyborg reached out to input his password, but instead lifted the photo frame on his desk. It showed him, a living breathing man of flesh and blood, smiling alongside a woman with short tucked red hair, as she held a computer core with a familiar blue eye. It was the best day of her career, and he couldn’t have been prouder.

“Forgive me…Joan.”

Hayden set the picture frame down and input his passcode.

J O A N O F A R C

Zeroth Protocol engaged.

VEGA logging off.>

The final screen and the ceiling lights shut off, leaving Hayden alone in the dark as he calmly waited for the system to reboot.

A white dot appeared on the center of the screen. It pulsed, and the lights came back on again, a deep and ominous red. The monitor displayed a crimson symbol resembling an inverted triangular UAC logo, and a grave robotic voice echoed from the speakers.

“Hello, ARES.”

* * *

A pair of footsteps marched across the Mother’s empty chamber. Bullet holes, scorch marks, smoldering craters and deep cracks gouged the walls. Every available surface was drenched in blood - red, blue, and black - and pieces of splattered gore softly pulsated amidst scattered metal rubble.

There were flickers of red Hellfire, but there were also embers of another flame, a strange blue flame that the figure carefully avoided. As it watched, a cinder of blue flame landed atop a sliver of bone still simmering with Hellfire, and the combination unexpectedly ignited in an eerie purple radiance. The figure turned its attention to the brightness and curiously approached.

It bent down, reached out and gently raised the gleaming sliver before its emaciated skeletal face, studying it intently seemingly through the cybernetic implant bearing sinister glowing sigils over its eyes.

The figure raised its forearm and spoke into a communicator on its copper armor.

“Notify the Speaker and the council of Inquisitors,” it calmly said in the low and hoarse voice of a man. “There is a new asset at our disposal.”

The Goetic Trooper lowered its arm and admired the dazzling red-and-blue fire in its hands.

“Welcome back, old friend.”

* * *

Betruger happily marched down the dark and towering halls of Lazarus, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silence.

“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves,” he slowly sang, “did gyre and gimble in the wabe…”

Betruger halted and fell to his knees in reverence, the form of the Hell lord manifesting in the air in front of him. A slim gray body like a Summoner, four arms, two ending with hands and the other two with scythes, ten glassy black eyes, and a wide crested head resembling some thorny spider’s body.

Betruger extended his arm to the side and presented the Prowler quietly following close behind.

“My tribute, as agreed, Seamstress. A gift for the Blind Council of Earth, as willed by the-

IMPERATRIX.”

The Seamstress beckoned, and the Prowler calmly approached while growling softly. The Hell lord bent down and lightly caressed the demon’s face, before gesturing towards the flaming portal opening behind her. The Prowler obediently walked through the portal and vanished, and the portal closed.

The Seamstress returned her attention to Betruger, bent down to lift his chin with her hand, and opened her mandibles to release a howling torrent of infernal energy into his mouth. Betruger convulsed and gagged as he absorbed the demonic essence, shouting as a fiery glow emanated from inside him before the Seamstress released him and he collapsed on the floor.

Betruger coughed and panted, but the glow quickly subsided and he chuckled. His back was straight, his body firm and youthful, his scalp full of thick black hair and his formerly clouded eye now black with a bloody red iris.

“You are too kind, Seamstress,” spoke the younger man’s voice.

The Hell lord wisped away as two Possessed soldiers, animated by ethereal strings attached to their bodies and rising into the ceiling, brought before him the corpse of a man in Elite Guard armor. The zombie marionettes threw the body to the ground in front of him, and Betruger stood up and raised his hand over the cadaver.

“Torzu, abila inocas!”

A pentagrammic sigil ignited on the floor beneath the Elite Guard as the shuddering body rose into the air, arcing with Hellfire and arcane lightning.

“Rise! RISE!” Betruger shouted. “There is no death for you.”

The body of the risen commando landed heavily on its feet before Betruger, its body segments sputtering in and out of physical reality, its arms replaced with two writhing disjointed tentacles of claws and spines, and its violently twitching head barely visible behind the blur of a phase shift.

“Bring them to me,” Betruger commanded. “And destroy him!”

The tentacled Commando ran off at terrifying speeds, erratically warping side-to-side before disappearing in a teleport.

“All must be prepared for the arrival of the Annihilator.”

The two marionettes walked off into the darkness, and Betruger made a right and entered a new chamber filled with the sounds of manufacture, confidently buttoning his lab coat to reveal his newly lean figure. Sparks flew as robotic arms welded and forged, and floating cargo drones transported material to and from the room.

“Oh there is no rest for the wicked…,” he sang as he casually approached the abomination being assembled at the end of the chamber, smiling as the large cerebral creature atop robotic legs joined him on his walk.

“All mimsy were the borogoves…”

Betruger came to a halt and rested his hands on the railing, admiring the gigantic cyberdemonic beast in construction. Flesh and metal, bone and polymer. Two long clawed arms, a long serpentine neck, and a skeletal head with four great horns. A wide disembodied grin appeared beside Betruger, lined with countless needle-like fangs and glowing with blue electricity, like the insidious smile of a large spectral demon.

"And the mome raths outgrabe.”

* * *

KILLS - 17%

SECRETS - 49

TIME - 45:00

And in these troubled times

Don't you lose sight of yourself

There's nothin' left for you to do

But fight like hell!