This was it.

This was what they had been fighting, suffering, bleeding for.

Jack led the small party of survivors down a lengthy corridor of bland gray metal, sprayed liberally with blood, the deckplates littered with parts of people. Sometimes severed limbs, sometimes just scraps of flesh, sometimes decapitated heads.

The only thing that gave him solace as he drilled deeper into the dead heart of the hellish wasteland Haydenfield had become were the others at his back and the fact that they'd actually managed to find a small bastion before having to do this. After making the report and getting their marching orders from Anderson, the quartet had managed to locate a security zone that remained mostly untouched by the inhuman changes of the demonic presence that warped reality itself. They'd found a few critical things.

Guns. Ammo. Medicine. Food. Water.

Survivors.

They'd picked up three more allies to help deliver a fatal blow to any demons they encountered, two of them sporting the yellow armor of local security forces, PFC Kaufman and Corporal Wallace. Both had seen a lot of fighting and both seemed eager to get some real payback. They kind of struck Jack as some rowdy college-age kids, but the fact that they were still alive and the combat they'd seen together since leaving the security center so far gave him the impression that they were competent. The other survivor was a battle-hardened Marine from another squad, a silent, grim-faced woman named Corporal Folta.

She hadn't said much since they'd hooked up, just offered a chilling grin when Jack had told her what they planned to do.

Besides hitting the bathroom, downing a quick meal and a few canteens of water, and taking a much-needed break while they still could, Jack had taken the opportunity to patch up his armor as much as he could. It was in bad shape. It had taken a lot of hits, and he knew it couldn't stand up to much more punishment, even after the patch-job they'd done. He'd have given a lot to swap out suits, but there weren't any left, any armor they found on the dead was even more trashed than his, so he was stuck with it.

After that, they had marched, burning a path through whatever demons and undead humans they came across, heading for their rally point.

There hadn't been much on the radio. He'd tried to report in to Anderson five minutes ago but there had only been a garbled reply, and then nothing.

Jack stopped as they came to a door, where the lengthy corridor terminated.

"Try the radio again," he said as he looked back the way they had come. Listening to Jennifer's communications litany as she tried to raise anyone at this point, he studied the others. They looked haggard and miserable in varying levels, but they also looked ready for this. Either grimly determined or almost like a dog straining to break off its leash and tear into something that had earned its ire. He was somewhere in the middle.

He was tired. So tired.

But there were miles to go and he honestly didn't know if he could ever look forward to a full night's rest again for the rest of his life.

That was in the future, though, and something to worry about later.

"No good," Jennifer said.

Jack sighed. "All right. We keep pushing. The rally point isn't too far ahead. Let's find it and then see what we can see."

They all responded affirmatively, checking their weapons and then signifying that they were ready for whatever lay beyond that door. Jack turned back to face it. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He could do this.

He had to do this.

Jack opened the door. An ugly red light greeted him, one he was becoming unhappily familiar with: the Firewall. Which meant this place ahead didn't have a damned ceiling. Ahead of him was a simple stone walkway, it looked smooth but not made of bricks. The walkway was maybe six feet wide, leading forward a good fifteen feet before connecting to what seemed to be another walkway, an octagonal one, that ringed the core of the area beyond. To either side of the walkway...Jack took a few steps out and peered over the edge.

Pits of acid, twenty feet down.

Well, just great.

Overhead, nothing but Firewall. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Stone pillars supported a basic roof that covered the entirety of the walkway. Right away he spied several items of interest: iron bars set into the walls of the strange chamber they were coming into, two doorways, one fringed in blue, which was the way they needed to go, and…

"Contacts!" he shouted, raising his shotgun and pounding out a shell.

It blew the Lost Soul to bony bits, and it was like firing the pistol at the start of a race. More Lost Souls and a triplet of Cacodemons descended from over the outer walls or other hiding places they'd secreted themselves. Behind the bars or rectangular openings set seemingly at random into the outer wall, more hostiles appeared. A Revenant. Three Chaingunners. A handful of zombies and Imps. Jack cursed and worked the shotgun, firing again and again as he tried to get to cover behind one of the pillars. He pelted another two with shotgun shells and popped them. The others opened fire from the doorway, the two security personnel dashing out onto the walkway with him in their eagerness to mow down the opposition.

Jack didn't have time to worry about them now, he had to cover his own ass. He popped the last of the flying skulls and felt some small sense of the relief. At least he didn't have to worry about the little insta-kill bastards now. But there was a lot more to deal with. Case in point: a Cacodemon hovered in perfect silence around the pillar he was hiding behind, appearing right in front of him. Its eye lit up with malignant glee and it opened its vast mouth.

"Fuck you, beach ball!" Jack screamed as he stuck the business end of the shotgun in its mouth, angling it up, and pulled the trigger.

The shell blew right through whatever served it as a brain and sent it a few feet back from the force of the point blank blast. It let out a wailing moan as it fell into the acid below. Jack groaned at the demon blood and gore that had splattered the front of his armor and onto his visor. As he was wiping it off, trying to keep an eye out for other contacts, he heard Jennifer scream at him.

"Jack! Six o'clock!" she roared in a truly desperate voice.

He spun around, raising his shotgun. What he saw nearly made him shit himself in shocked fear. A pair of rockets were coming right for him. That fucking Revenant! Jack simply dropped at the last second, though he couldn't honestly figure out if it was his reflexes and tactical thinking, or that fear finally got the best of him and collapsed his legs. Either way, it saved his life. The rockets smashed into the pillar above him, exploding. A blast of fiery concussive force sent him sailing across the walkway, sparks flying from his armor skidding across the stone.

Jack went right over the edge. This time it was pure instinct that saved him as he grabbed hold of the ledge. His armored hands and somewhat enhanced strength gave him the grip needed to keep from falling into the acid twenty feet below. While trying to haul himself back up, listening to the sounds of the others firing furiously above him, and the demons returning fire, Jack heard a shotgun blast that was far too close for comfort.

A second later, a chunk of the stone right next to him blew out. Cursing, Jack twisted around and just barely managed to see what had him pegged: a zombie, of course. Standing in one of the openings in the far wall, sneering and holding a shotgun, already pumping it and aiming again, trying to end his life.

"Oh come on!" Jack groaned as he reached for his pistol. He'd managed to hold onto his shotgun and plasma rifle by dint of the fact that their straps were looped over his neck, but he couldn't single-handed wield either of them. He got his pistol out and began to aim. Another shotgun blast and he heard the chips of stone pelt his armor and bounce off. Way, way too close.

"Fuck you!" he snapped as he opened fire the second he had the thing in his sights. He could just barely see it, but his aim was good. Sort of. Three shots went wild, but the fourth slammed into the thing's forehead and buried itself in its brain right as it was preparing to take a third, and likely fatal, shot.

The shotgun dropped from its hands, clattering to the stone, bouncing once, then going over the edge into the acid.

The zombie followed shortly after.

Jack quickly shoved the pistol back into its holster and grabbed onto the ledge once more. A shadow fell across him. He glanced up and saw yellow armor, an arm reaching down. He reached up and whoever it was, either Kaufman or Wallace, gripped him tightly and began hauling him up with a shocking strength.

How much strength did those damn suits of yellow security armor afford them?

He caught sight of the nametag: Kaufman. The young PFC continued lifting him straight up.

"Okay, I'm good!" Jack snapped, his arm beginning to hurt.

Kaufman didn't respond. Suddenly, he was brought to eye level with the man and stared into the security helmet.

His heart skipped a beat as a new surge of adrenaline flooded his system. The face behind the visor was a mask of death, twisted and mutated, the eyes glowing. What had once been Kaufman roared and swung Jack around, hurling him down the length of the stonework platform with an unnatural strength. Fuck! When the hell had that happened?! Jack cried out as he hit, bounced, hit again, skidded and then rolled a few feet. He readjusted himself so that he ended up laying on his left side and facing Kaufman, who was coming for him with death in his inhuman gaze and menace in his stride. Jack whipped his pistol back out and shot the man three times in the head.

That put an end to his fucking menacing stride.

The sickening sound of a Cacodemon popping and spraying the area with its guts drew his attention back to the matter at hand and he leaped to his feet. Turning in a quick circle, Jack saw that the last of the nearby demonic forces had been suppressed by the others. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then turned his attention to Kaufman. A Lost Soul must've got the poor bastard not long after Jack had launched the attack, but…

That still seemed like a short window. He remembered it taking over a minute, or maybe not. Maybe he was just remembering it worse than it actually was. Or maybe it varied from person to person?

"Are you okay?" Jennifer asked, approaching.

"Yeah, fine," he replied, ignoring the pain that was assaulting his body from the several near misses. "Kaufman?"

"Lost Soul," she confirmed. "I saw it hit him, tried to save him, then I tried to kill him after it got into him, but more Cacodemons showed up..."

"Fuck," Jack muttered. He sighed and moved over to the body, then quickly relieved the man of his spare ammo. "The others?" he asked, looking around.

"All fine," Jennifer replied.

They were scattered across the area, securing it. Wells and Folta were advancing on the only other way out of there at the moment.

"We gotta go find a blue keycard," Jack grunted as he began walking towards the pair of grim women.

"Yeah," Jennifer agreed, following.

While the others secured the rest of the octagonal walkway, he and Jennifer joined Wells and Folta at the entryway into the next section. As was becoming more and more common, Jack didn't like what he saw. A handful of dead Imps now occupied the open space just beyond the large opening. There was a roughly square room of more bland green metal plating beyond, the only interesting feature being an ascending stairwell just a few meters dead ahead of the ingress. The room was a good twenty feet tall and on the upper walls, to either side of the stairwell, square openings were cut, showing more of that riveting red sky.

Things groaned and growled up above, just out of sight.

"We ready for this?" Jack asked as he heard the others approaching. A general response of affirmatives came back. "All right. Wells and Wallace, with me. Harper, hang back and cover our six. Jennifer and Folta, behind us, ready to back us up."

More affirmatives and Jack led the pair up the stairs, which were broad enough to accommodate all three of them. More features of the way ahead became apparent as they ascended. The biggest, most obvious thing was a metal cage that was resting atop a stone platform maybe five meters ahead of where the stairs let out. It was empty, for now. He also caught sight of walls made of cracked, dull brown stone rising up to either side, and more of the metal plating serving as further walls ahead, as well as the platform the cage rested on. As they got closer to the apex of the stairway, he began to see curious, curling, dead trees.

As he came to stand in the entryway to the next area, Jack scanned the way beyond. The ground was dirt, out of which a handful of strange-looking trees grew. The way seemed clear, but...Jack took a cautious step into the area beyond.

As soon as his foot hit dirt, he immediately heard a whirring mechanical sound start up, one that was sickeningly familiar. Not just one but two things made that sound, and it was rapidly growing closer. Within a few seconds, a pair of Arachnotrons had appeared, one to either side of the platform the cage sat atop.

"Fire!" he shouted, glad he'd switched to his plasma rifle before heading up the stairs. He aimed for the right Arachnotron as it strutted into view, all metal and brain and glowering blue eyes. He targeted the brain and started trading plasma as the thing opened up. They spread out to give each other room and to allow Jennifer and Folta to back them up. Jack began pumping a stream of burning blue-white plasma balls into the thing, targeting its exposed gray matter. He sidestepped as it returned fire, trying to put it down as quickly as possible. Immediately, the brain began melting and crisping and blackening.

The plasma fire stuttered and then choked off and Jack grunted as one of the searing hot balls of energy smacked into his armored thigh. The heat was intense, but not unbearable. He finished pouring plasma fire into the one on the right and burned a groove right through its brain. The thing staggered around like it was drunk, eyes flickering from blue to red to yellow and then back to red, and suddenly they went black and it collapsed in a heap. Turning, he saw the others putting down the second beast and felt some relief.

That could have gone very badly, but their combined might was enough to deal with the two latest additions to the demonic hordes.

"Folta, stay here, watch the area," Jack said. "Wallace, with me. We're going right. Jennifer and Wells, left. Secure the area."

They all broke off into small groups. Jack led Wallace around the right side, finding another stairwell attached to the side of the platform, leading up to an area behind the cage. Nothing up there, but Jack kept his plasma rifle tucked up and ready to go. He reached the top of the stairs and carefully scoped the area out. Just a little section of metal plating with nothing on it, maybe a few meters wide, the length of the room itself. Jennifer appeared at roughly the same time he did. The only thing of note was a back entrance into the cage, although it wasn't exactly a cage, he saw, those iron bars were just the front portion of the small room that sat atop the platform he was now on. They crept forward and got into position.

Jennifer opened the door and Jack kept it covered with his rifle. He tensed, but there was nothing inside. Except…

"Keycard," he said, spying the blue keycard sitting on a square of wood among the metal plating not far from the center of the small room ahead. He quickly checked left and right, but the room was actually empty. Creeping forward, he kept an eye out for anything that might be hidden, but there was nowhere to hide. It was just an open space. Given everything he'd seen so far, that didn't necessarily mean he wouldn't get royally fucked in the face if he took a few more steps into the room, but he needed that damned card.

"Watch my back," he said, and continued forward.

The tension grew, but he couldn't tell if it was his instincts or just his paranoia. He made it to the wooden portion of the floor the keycard rested on, crouched, snatched it up, and stood. Nothing happened. Jack got the impression that something should be here, something demonic and dangerous. It was a section of the floor set apart from the rest of it, with a view overlooking the stairs he'd initially led the others up.

Had something been here?

If so, where was it?

Maybe something had initially been here, waiting, but for some reason it had gone elsewhere. Deeper into the complex, perhaps.

He shivered, wondering what it could be.

Turning away, he returned to Jennifer. "Let's go."

They all regrouped and hustled over to the blue-trimmed door, eager to be done with this miserable task that had been laid at their collective feet. Jack opened the door and found a flickering hallway awaiting him. A few more corpses littered its length, but otherwise it was unoccupied. He sighed softly and hefted his shotgun.

"Let's do this."

Jack was waiting for the other shoe to drop, or maybe for the hammer.

They had been navigating the hybridized nightmare that Haydenfield had become, passing through a series of tunnels that were equal part human engineering and demonic corruption. So far, nothing and no one had come over the radio. The thing that was really bothering him was that they hadn't run into all that much resistance. Not much more than a handful of Imps and Demons patrolling the unholy corridors and passageways.

He knew they had to be getting close to the dark heart of the forsaken starport.

Jack opened another door at the end of the corridor they had been traversing and stepped out, shotgun still at ready. He'd had to burn through the rest of his battery in his plasma rifle in an emergency putting down a half-dozen Demons that had been right around a corner and now was down to just one last battery.

He came into another corridor, broad, lit by flickering candlelight, so not very well lit at all. The right dead-ended a few meters away in a strange carving of what looked like a Baron of Hell done in oddly intricate detail. To the left, however…

"Identify yourself!" Jack snapped as he spied a lone figure walking towards him. The only thing that had made his finger hesitate on the trigger was that the stride was too purposeful, too human to be a zombie.

Or so he hoped.

"Lieutenant Anderson, United Marine Corps."

"Oh thank fucking God," Jack muttered. "Sergeant Ward, reporting," he said, lowering his shotgun and moving forward.

"Shit Ward, I'd hoped that was you."

They met in the center of the corridor and Anderson looked them over. No doubt taking in their battered and bloodied state. He didn't look all that great himself. It was obvious that he'd seen a lot more combat since they'd last departed.

"This is everyone?" he asked.

"Yes. We picked up a few others," Jack replied.

"Good. Come on." He turned and began heading back the way they had come. The squad quickly followed after him.

"What's the situation?" Jack asked.

"Not as good as I'd hoped. I've been at the rally point for almost half an hour now. My squad got wiped out completely by a pair of those damned floaters that spit the skulls and a pack of the bull-apes. Some of the others have shown up, but now that you're here, I don't think we can wait any longer. I almost launched without you. Before I completely lost radio contact, the situation was getting bad. We lost four of the Nodes we'd taken, and my forces were having a hell of a time holding down the Refueling Bases. Last line out was they were fighting off a goddamned army of those cyber spiders and the skeletons. We need to take down that shield now. And hope that there's an army of allies waiting to come in and save the day."

"Shit," Jack grunted.

They hit the end of the hallway, came to a junction, and took a right. After another few turns, Anderson led them to a simple square room of basic metal plating. Five other wartorn Marines were gathered and Jack recognized them all, and felt some relief. Staff Sergeant Hollenshead was there, as were Sergeants Abrash and Nichols.

PFC Cortez's face lit up with a smile as he saw Jack. "I knew you'd make it."

"Good to see you too," Jack replied.

The last member of their final assault squad was another one of the squad members he'd seen during the city assault and at Fort Minor when they'd prepared for this clusterfuck of a mission: Private First Class Diaz. She was crouched over a rucksack, digging around carefully inside, muttering quietly to herself.

Anderson followed his gaze. "That's Diaz, she's our demolitions expert. She's going to be the one who, hopefully, blows whatever the hell is controlling this damned Firewall back to Hell."

"Just get me there, and I'll send it to the fucking moon," Diaz growled in reply.

"Okay everyone, pay attention. Now that we've found Ward's squad, we're going ahead with the plan. We can't afford to wait any longer and I think this is as good as it's going to get. Every second we wait is paid for in blood somewhere else. The plan is simple: from what I've been able to gather, the power source isn't far from here. We get to it, we kill anything we find, we plant the bomb, we get the fuck out of there and blow it."

"Sounds simple," Hollenshead muttered.

"It never is," Jack replied.

"That's why we get paid the big bucks," Anderson replied with a savage grin. He looked at Diaz. "Are we ready?"

She answered by zipping the rucksack shut, standing, and slipping it on. "Yes, Lieutenant."

"Then let's fucking do this."

He led the way, a chaingun in hand. Jack followed, as did the others. They hit the door, opened it, and passed through.

The corridor beyond was long, at a guess Jack would have said it was something like fifty meters. The only light provided was flickering red torches made out of severed human arms mounted on the walls, which were themselves quite disturbing. They looked to be made of overlapping human skins, hammered crudely to dark, rotted wood beneath. Some of them had screaming faces sewn into them. The skin was stretched taut over the wood and blood pooled on the floor, which was made of dirty gray stone. Mixed in with the pools of standing blood were severed hands, severed heads, torsos, tongues, eyes, random piles of pulped flesh…

Nobody spoke a word as they made their way down the corridor of horror, guns at ready, trying not to step on anything.

It was difficult.

Jack did his best to keep his focus on his environment, but it was growing more challenging with each passing second. He would have thought that after all he had seen, not just during his time as a Marine but specifically all he had endured over the past week across Phobos, Deimos, Mars, and Hell itself, he would be a bit more used to horrific scenes of stomach-churning carnage. In a way, he thought perhaps that was probably good that he wasn't desensitized to it. To become so felt too close to losing his humanity, to losing his…

Soul.

But it was a disadvantage on the battlefield. As the seconds bled by with a painful lethargy, they finally made it to the end of the corridor. Something thrummed on the air, almost like the pulse of a massive, powerful generator that was more felt than heard, like it was just beneath or beyond the threshold of hearing. There seemed to be two different levels to it. One was a constant humming buzz that was a little like static electricity across his skin. The other came roughly every two seconds, more like a pulse, a thing that rattled his bones and his teeth in his gums very gently but very noticeably. It made him sick.

They stacked up on the door at the end. It was of a corroded yellowish metal, covered in old blood stains. A simple button was embedded in the wall next to it. Once they were in place, Jennifer hit the button. Jack and Anderson stood at the fore, guns at ready. Anderson with his chaingun, Jack with his plasma rifle.

The door slid open.

Immediately, somehow, someway, Jack knew they had found what they were looking for. Slowly, he walked out onto a stone walkway, looking left while Anderson mirrored his actions, facing right, each man covering a portion of the room. The room they had come into was poorly lit by more arm-torches, the light red and flickering. Shadows gathered along the edges of the room in deep nests. The room itself appeared to be a large square, maybe a hundred feet across and fifty tall. A walkway made of chipped, chewed stone ringed the periphery of the room, what they currently stood on, maybe ten feet wide.

Beyond this platform, making up another layer in the room, was a trench.

A dark black substance boiled and bubbled in the trench about eight feet down. Jack thought it might be tar or oil but somehow knew immediately that it was not. He had no idea what it was. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. It just looked...evil. Like liquid dark evil. Every fiber of his being screamed in revulsion and rejection as he looked at it. Forcing himself to continue his survey, he saw an island about twenty feet by twenty feet made of a curious dark metal in the exact center of the room. It had a six foot trim of walkway space on it, and the rest of it was taken up by another cube of metal in the exact center.

Though this was more of a rectangle, reaching up higher, its top obscured in shadows.

Something about that bugged Jack, but before he could look closer or in any way deal with it, he heard the distinct sound of several wall panels opening all around him.

"Ambush!" he screamed as he hastily switched to his shotgun.

All along the outer walls, panels slid open and Imps stepped out. Easily two dozen of the bastards. As frustrating as it was, Jack was not wasting plasma on some damned Imps. He aimed his shotgun and pumped out a round within a scant few seconds and blew the head off the nearest Imp. Immediately, the others behind him opened fire. It wasn't the greatest arena for battle, but it could sure as hell be way worse. Jack pumped the gun and fired again, sending another Imp back to hell as his shell tore away a good portion of its skull.

Chaos reigned as they hurled fireballs back at him. He stepped closer to the wall, to both get out of the way of the return fire, and to let whoever was behind him back him up. Jack put down three more Imps in quick succession, blowing holes in their faces or chests and killing them instantly. He emptied his shotgun clearing a space and one of the others kept up the rate of fire behind him as he hastily shoved more shells in.

As Jack finished reloading and prepared to go back to work, he stopped.

Something was happening.

There was a malignant red light around it and it was moving, twitching. It was one he'd shot in the chest. Abruptly, it sprang back to life, and its feet.

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" Jack screamed in shock. The Imp screamed in response and began winding up to throw a fireball.

Jack pounded out another shell and blew its head off. As it died, he saw another one that had been chewed up by chaingun fire suffused by the same red light. Within a few seconds, it had resurrected as well. What was happening!?

"Ward, what the hell is this?!" Anderson snapped, stepping up beside him.

Jack blew the freshly resurrected Imp's head half off with another shotgun blast. "I have no idea!" he cried. "This is a new one!"

"Shit!" A third Imp began resurrecting. "Look!" Anderson said, suddenly excited. "The headless ones aren't coming back!"

"Yeah but why is this happening?!"

"Lieutenant! Three o'clock!" Hollenshead screamed suddenly.

Jack and Anderson both snapped their gaze to the right as Jack put down the third Imp. At first, he didn't see anything.

Then a red glow, coming from somewhere higher, caught his attention. He felt a sense of despair and dread flush through his body as he looked up.

Something was standing on top of that central tower of metal, hidden among the shadows. As it glowed with that same malevolent red light, he got a rough idea of its shape. It was humanoid, with arms and legs, a long torso and big, bulbous, alien-looking head.

"Talk to me, Ward," Anderson muttered.

"That's a new one," he repeated. "Never seen it before."

"Fucking hell...up there, Marines! Take it down!" Anderson yelled.

Several flashlight beams zeroed in on the new creature. It was tall, maybe seven or even eight feet in height, and covered in yellow skin that seemed stretched tight over a bone structure that was too big for it. Its stomach and lower ribcage were exposed, part of its torso sliced open below the ribcage and drawn back, almost like curtains on a stage. The thing had huge hands and they were raised high above it. They were glowing red.

It had shifted focus. As Jack switched to his plasma rifle, prepared to launch an assault, something happened. The thing was staring down at Sergeant Nichols and Lance Corporal Wallace, who were by the door. Right before the Marines opened fire, it suddenly hunched forward, drawing its hands inward in a thunderous clap, and a brilliant explosion of flame suddenly appeared directly below Nichols and Wallace. The two men screamed as they were sent flying.

Everyone opened fire.

Jack loosed a blast of plasma at the thing and he saw it make several hits on it. Lead and plasma connected, but right away he got the impression that that leathery yellow skin was tough. The thing roared in a high-pitched voice and suddenly leaped back. Jack heard a loud thud, assuming it must have jumped down onto the central platform, behind the tower it had been atop. He heard a series of splashes and screaming.

Loud, unending screaming.

Jack surged to the side, looking down into the trench. Both Nichols and Wallace had ended up in the black liquid.

It was consuming them.

Already, Jack could see that it had eaten through their armor. He saw Nichols reach up out of the goopy black substance and felt his stomach churn and flip as he saw not much more than a skeleton with strands of meat sticking to it.

How were they still alive?

A gunshot rang out and one of the voices cut off abruptly. A second one followed, and the screaming and splashing stopped.

Anderson lowered the pistol. "Don't fucking fall in there!" he snapped. "Taylor, Hollenshead, Abrash, Cortez, go right. Everyone else with me! We nail this fucker now!"

Everyone snapped off quick replies. Wells, Folta, Harper, and Diaz joined Jack and Anderson. They could hear it, stomping around. They'd put down the Imps, but as they made their way hurriedly around the periphery of the room, another one resurrected. Jack blew its head off with a blast from his shotgun, and they quickly repeated the action on every non-decapitated Imp they passed. They hit the turn for the left side of the walkway and hurried down it. Jack kept his gaze on the central island, ready for the exact moment the latest horror was revealed.

He didn't have to wait long.

The tall, freaky-looking bastard appeared as they came around to the other side of the room. It was waiting for them. It immediately faced Jack's group and raised its hands, which began glowing that same evil red color as before. Jack fired off a burst of plasma at it and watched them stream into its chest. But still it held its stance.

He felt heat beneath him.

"Scatter!" he yelled, rushing out of the way.

He dove at the last second and felt a blast of hot force send him smashing into the nearest wall. Frozen black terror shot through his body as he thought he might bounce off and go for a death dive into that dark substance, but he landed with a grunt.

"Take that monster down!" Anderson screamed as a chaingun started up again.

Jack staggered to his feet, leveled his plasma rifle at it, and squeezed the trigger. He didn't let up, watching over half a dozen streams of bullets converge on the creature. It roared and screamed and staggered, trying to raise its hands again, to murder them all. But it was too much. The attack overwhelmed the monster and dark red blood began pouring down its alien body. Finally, its bulbous head popped and it flopped forward, like a puppet with its strings cut. It hit the edge of the platform, flipped over, and fell into the black substance, where it immediately began to melt. Jack let out a sigh of relief, still trembling badly in fear.

"Find a way across, Marines!" Anderson called, still on top of the situation.

Jack took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then began helping the others hunt for a way to get over to the central island. The men and women who had fought, bled, and suffered through Haydenfield hunted in silence around the perimeter. They worked at it until they located a switch in one of the niches the Imps had been hiding behind. They flipped it and that made a stonework path rise up out of the acidic trench. After waiting for it to clear off, they cautiously crossed it and then secured the island beyond.

There was just a single door in the central cube. They opened it and found a single room inside. The walls were made of clean, smooth stainless steel, and directly opposite of the door was…

Was…

"What the fuck is that?" Jack whispered.

Whatever he had been expecting, it was not this.

Embedded in the back wall, which was made not of clean stainless steel, but of what appeared to be a random mishmash of body parts, tissue, and musculature, was a large skull. Or something that vaguely resembled a skull. It was maybe four feet tall and three wide. It looked like, for the life of him, a skull with a mohawk of metal spikes, wearing big, black sunglasses. The lower jaw was missing. In the sunglasses, which were made of some smooth obsidian material, data flowed in neon green symbols that he realized he couldn't read at all.

They looked strangely runic.

"This has to be what's controlling it," Anderson muttered. "But what in the hell is this damned thing? I've never seen anything like this before in my life."

"Why does it look like that?" Jennifer agreed.

"Who cares? Can I blow it up?" Diaz growled.

"Yeah. Do it."

She didn't have to do much, basically just setting the rucksack she was carrying at the base of the terrifying skull...thing, and then reaching inside. She messed with it for a second, something beeped, and then she fell back.

"Ready, let's go," she said.

"Clear out!" Anderson snapped.

They hustled back across the bridge, through the door they'd come through initially, down the corridor of awful things, and back into the room beyond it.

"Blow it," Anderson ordered.

Diaz raised a detonator and hit the bright red button on it immediately.

The lights that were electronic and still working flickered as the entire area shook, trembling while a muted roar sounded.

As the shaking and the sounds faded, Anderson activated his radio.

"This is Lieutenant Anderson to anyone, do you copy? Over."

Immediately, a babble of voices filled their radios, sounding panicked, joyous, angry, desperate, and all other manner of emotions.

Jack felt relief wash over him.

They had done it.

Whatever lay ahead, whatever had happened before, they had taken down the Firewall.

An hour later, he and Jennifer, along with a handful of the others who hadn't been deployed elsewhere to trouble spots in Haydenfield, gathered in a secure Node. Anderson had been talking nonstop with anyone and everyone he could, coordinating the retaking of Haydenfield. Jack left him to it. He wanted a break.

He and Jennifer found a side room that was void of people and simply sat down together, side-by-side, with their backs to a wall.

For a long time, neither said anything. They just took off their helmets and sat together.

"We did it," Jennifer said finally.

He laughed softly. "Yeah. We probably managed to successfully retake a single starport."

"Hey, it's like the biggest starport on the planet," she replied.

"Are we going to hold it? Does it even matter?"

"I don't know. Can't we just enjoy this?" she muttered.

"I'm sorry," he replied, sighing. "I'm just...this is all so big. It's too much."

"I know. Don't think about it. You can't look at the whole picture all at once or you'll go nuts. Just remember: step by step. We take this step by step, don't worry about tomorrow. Focus on today. We're probably gonna die horribly anyway, but we've always known that the end will likely suck for us. So all we have is the right now."

"The right now has sucked a lot recently," he muttered.

She grinned and nudged him. "Aw come on, it's not all bad. Surely that threesome with a smoking hot redhead and me was worth some of it."

He laughed tiredly. "Okay, yeah. That was...that helped a lot."

They were interrupted as the door to their little side room opened and Anderson stepped in. "Oh good, you aren't fucking. I'd hate to interrupt that. There's news."

"Please, for the love of fucking God, tell me it's good," Jack groaned.

"It's good...ish," Anderson replied. They waited, staring at him. "We have Haydenfield. General Taggart got word out and Haydenfield became something of a rally point, all over America. So we've got a lot of people inbound, Marines and civilians. In short: once we get this place back under control, it's going to be ground zero for the evacuation of Earth."

"Jesus...how can they even do that?" Jennifer asked. "I mean how many people can we possibly cram up into space?"

"Not nearly as much as we'd like," Anderson admitted. "That's why we're looking to turn Haydenfield and Hayden into more permanently secure areas. Whole states are being abandoned so that we can consolidate what power we have left here and a few other key locations. I know that they're already scrambling resources to start building space stations to serve as colonies, and I've been hearing some rumors about some kind of big colonization effort on Titan that the UAC was trying to make happen. It sounds like they got most of the way done, but there's almost no one there because they hadn't finished it yet. So a ship's being sent out there to investigate. I have no idea how many people we can get up into space safely but I'd be genuinely surprised if it was more than a million."

"Jesus fucking Chris, out of twenty billion people..."

"Word keeps coming in from other places, some good, some bad. Russia's holding its own against the invasion, though China and India have been hit brutally hard. Scotland is gone. So is Japan, from what I can tell. Someone used nukes and pretty much took both countries out. I've heard reports that the UK is trying to do the same thing we're doing, and Australia's actually doing pretty good. Though I guess that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone."

"What about us? America?" Jack asked.

He sighed. "Someone nuked New York City, and Los Angeles, and supposedly a few other cities. I heard that the eastern seaboard is basically just overrun. There's millions of the fucking things pouring out of portals there. There's supposed to be safe zones attempting to be established in a few locations. Alaska. Hawaii. Somewhere in Texas. Nevada. But at this point any and all of that could be bullshit. There's so much rumor and speculation flying around that I have no idea what's verified. But, the one thing that is verified is that we have our marching orders for our next assignment. United Marine Command is liking this idea that we can hit them tactically, if we can track down their...technology, for want of a better term.

"Satellites and sensors indicate another concentration of energy somewhere in Hayden, they think it's a portal. They got their hands on some UAC stuff and are in the process of putting together some bombs to try and collapse the portal."

"Can they do that?" Jennifer muttered.

Anderson shrugged. "I have no idea. But they want us to deliver one of the bombs."

"Wait, can't they just drop it from a jet or something?" Jack asked.

Anderson shook his head. "The energy field is screwing with all manner of technology. Honestly, we'll be lucky if we can load the fucking thing onto a truck and drive it. No, it has to be hand-delivered by someone who can get the job done. That means you two and November Squad, and anyone else they can rustle up."

"Great," Jack muttered.

"Hey, you've made it this far. We can do it. Save the day again. Think of it, you'll be fucking heroes after this."

"That isn't why I signed up," Jack replied, and Jennifer nodded.

Anderson grinned. "I knew there was a reason I liked you two. You've got an hour to rest. Use it." He turned and left them.

"I know exactly what I want to do. It involves food, and then a shower, and no clothes," Jennifer said, getting to her feet.

"Sounds great to me," Jack replied, standing wearily.

As they headed deeper into the Node, he found himself wondering how Kyra's assignment was going.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, that's it. I've FINALLY reached the end of Part II. Took me a lot longer than I had hoped. For the moment, The DOOM Chronicles are going on a brief hiatus so that I can shift focus back to my Halo action-horror story The Will To Live. Ideally, I won't be gone from this story for more than a month, but given how 2020 has gone, and my own personal history, we'll see how well that works out. Thank you for reading, and those of you who reviewed, thank you as well! It is extremely appreciated.