The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 03: The Chamber

This new landscape was not completely boring, however.

Beneath it all, in some deep dark cavern of mystery, lay the enigma. The question of what the UAC was really up to here. What sick experiments they might be performing on the prisoners. What twisted tech they were dreaming up. He asked around where he could and people were mostly polite to him now that word had spread.

Eric moved another piece in a fit of desperation. V chuckled softly and moved his own. "Checkmate."

Eric sighed. "I'm not much for chess."

"I'd have to disagree. You lasted longer than most people do. By the way, I have one more piece of advice for you."

"I'm listening."

V nodded casually. "See that guy with the muttonchops?"

Eric looked and spied a man sitting at a table reading with a deep frown. The book looked out of place in his hands. He had short, dark hair and long sideburns, a heavy brow, and a frame packed with hard muscle. Like V, he looked racially ambiguous. In fact, he looked like how V had described him a few moments ago: like a man out of time. Or, more accurately, he kind of did look like an actual caveman.

"Yep."

"That's Torque. Steer clear of him. He's like me: he genuinely does not give a fuck. If he gets pissed, he'll do whatever he wants to do and fuck the consequences. I once saw him pull a man's eye out and stuff it down his throat."

"That seems a little intense."

"It's an intense atmosphere."

"Crowe!"

They both looked over. Behind the safety barrier that ringed the whole silo was a narrow passageway. It was how the guards got around. It was mostly unbreakable glass so they could tap on the window of their private zoo.

Johns stood back there with two heavies with deep frowns and strong batons.

"Get your ass over here, Crowe. Got a special assignment for you."

"How's the finger, Johns?" V asked with a jovial smile that somehow managed to look utterly alien and yet completely sincere on him.

"Fuck off, V," Johns snapped.

Eric got to his feet and walked over, curious. He kept his movements careful and deliberate, as not to get them excited and give them some excuse to kill him.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Got a special assignment for you, Crowe." Johns had a slight, cruel smirk. "Come on." He opened up the barrier.

Both guards had Raptor SMGs. Eric knew that they wouldn't have an issue putting half a magazine in his head, but what truly kept him from snatching one of the Raptors out of a guard's hands and returning the favor was the fact that he was curious. Something significant was happening. He wasn't sure what it was, but his instincts were warning him, like the buzz of an electric fence, unseen but not unheard.

Maybe more accurately, like a minefield. He'd walked through enough of them that he could read them, see where to step. Usually.

They were walking into a minefield of some kind.

"Don't try anything stupid, Crowe," Johns said as he gave him a shove towards a doorway at the back of the curved corridor the door had admitted him to. "We love excuses to break skulls. And believe me, we do crack craniums here. Like eggs. And watch the 'yolk' leak out."

He chuckled darkly as he reached out and tapped his baton painfully against Eric's head a few times. He considered a response and opted out of one.

"Yeah, yeah, get moving hardass," Johns grunted, putting a boot to Eric's back and shoving him forward, through the door.