After restocking in the armory again, Jack led Cortez and Bidwell out through the storage wing exit, down a few corridors, and then took point through a hatch in a back maintenance bay that led into the waste tunnels.
"What a lovely place we've come to," Cortez muttered as they stepped out into a large tunnel some sixty feet below the surface. It wasn't all that dissimilar from the underhalls he'd traversed a few hours back, though these tunnels were larger, a bit rounder, and the walls were largely composed of tubes that transported, well, waste.
Thankfully they weren't transparent.
"Let's get a move on," Jack replied as he took aim with his rifle and led them down the center of the passageway. This one at least had a real floor and not a moat to splash through. They didn't have much for company beyond a handful of corpses, mostly technicians who had been down here when the invasion had struck.
Judging by their wounds, it looked like Imps had gotten to them.
"So, Bidwell, how'd you end up in the Marines?" Jack asked as they moved on. For the moment, it looked like they had the place to themselves.
"I did it to escape what they call the gilded cage. My parents were rich. My grandparents were rich. I had one brother and one sister, and they were both content to essentially just be useless rich people their entire lives. It didn't seem...right. There was so much suffering in the world, and I knew that I was smart, so I decided to dedicate myself to the United Marine Corps," he explained.
"Wow. Why?" Jack asked. "I mean, that's commendable, to be sure, but it's obvious to anyone with a brain that the UMC is compromised at this point. I mean yeah, we rush in to save the day and kill the bad guys sometimes, but most of the time the 'bad guys' are just whichever group pissed off the men with the money, you know?"
"Yes, I was well aware. I supposed I looked at it as a matter of...trying to make changes from the inside. And I wasn't planning on staying in the Marines my entire life," Bidwell replied.
"That's a good point. Can't really make many changes from the outside looking in, of course, on the inside, you run the risk of succumbing to the same corruption," Jack murmured.
"Quite." Bidwell regarded him for a moment. "You are a curiosity. You were at ground zero, you survived everything they threw at you, and continue do so. Why do you think that is?"
"Training and a natural talent at shooting and staying alive, mixed with proper proportions of stubborn endurance and a shitload of luck. And other people helping me," Jack said. "Why, what did you think it was?"
"That's about what I was going to guess. Mostly luck, but it can't all be luck. I just wanted to hear your answer."
"You seem pretty calm about all this," Jack replied.
"That's Bidwell. Nothing rattles him," Cortez said.
"I believe I lack the same depth of emotional range as most people. I certainly feel emotions, they're just easy to contain and, when necessary, shut out. I'm not so much better at it as I am genetically gifted," Bidwell explained.
"You sure it's a gift?" Cortez asked.
"I think so. And if it isn't, I guess I wouldn't know. It has served me well, and so I choose to call it a gift and utilize it as such," Bidwell replied.
"That makes sense. I think more people should be intentional in their life," Jack said. "Too many people just...do things." He hesitated as he heard something up ahead, then he readjusted his aim on his assault rifle. "I heard something, get ready."
The other two silently spread out, as not to create one big target. Up ahead, he could see the end of the tunnel they were traversing. He listened closely, hoping to hear it again, but the sound didn't come, and it was too indistinct to figure out what it was the first time. Between his and Cortez's rifles, and Bidwell's Raptor, they should be able to handle most anything. Unless it was a Baron or two, then things might get tough. The tunnel came to an end and opened up into a large, rectangular area with several passageways snaking away from it. The lighting was worse and there were a lot of bodies scattered across the big, open room.
They waited. Something was in the room, Jack felt almost certain of it, or at least nearby. There were a half-dozen tunnels snaking away all around them, more waste tunnels. Jack continued to wait, fervently scanning those openings. Another sound came to him, and it was just as strange as before, something deep, something that might have been organic. It was coming from the right, in one of the tunnels that was farther away from him, something he could only see a few feet deep into. He motioned for the men to move up with him.
The trio of Marines carefully shifted deeper into the room.
They froze as a shadow suddenly fell across that opening and began to swell. Jack heard no footfalls and realized it had to be a Cacodemon. Well, they could handle a Cacodemon, even a few of them. The things were creepy but not that dangerous.
That was when something completely new sailed into view.
It was like a Cacodemon, in that it was round, had a giant eyeball, and floated. That was where the similarities ended. This one had a leathery brown hide, with two dark, stubby horns curling out of its head above and on either side of its giant yellow-red eyeball. Two arms grew out of it, reaching for them with grasping claw-hands on either side of an utterly massive maw that made up probably half of its face.
And inside of that maw...
"What the fuck!?" Cortez cried.
Jack watched in horror as a Lost Soul was spat out of the thing's mouth, and behind it was another one. Jack cried out in shock and nailed the Lost Soul with a three-round burst. That killed it, popping the thing like a balloon, but the second one sailed out of the thing's mouth. It let out a bizarre croaking sound as Jack shot it, just missing its eye. It spat out another Lost Soul.
"Fuck! Kill it! Kill it!" Jack yelled as he opened fire, spewing out three-round bursts as quickly as the rifle would allow. All around them, he heard several roars of alert as the battle began, and heavy, stomping footfalls started to come towards them from all around them.
Fuck! Either Demons or Spectres, neither good. As he emptied his assault rifle putting down a quartet of Lost Souls being spawned in by the fucking new creature, which was backing up and away, spewing out more even as he watched, he caught sight of the wavering effect as a Spectre marched out of one of the hallways.
"Spectres!" he called. "Keep on the Lost Souls! Try to take down the fat one! I'll take care of the Spectres!"
Cortez and Bidwell both snapped off crisp responses and advanced on the thing, keeping the Lost Souls at bay while trying to get some shots in on it at the same time. Jack swept the area with his gaze as he swung his shotgun into play. He spotted three Spectres lumbering towards him, visible only as a watery effect against the dull industrial background. He pounded out a shell and put it right between the eyes of the nearest Spectre, or so he assumed, because it let out a loud groaning roar as a healthy spray of blood popped into existence and there was a solid, meaty thump. He pumped the shotgun and doled out some more lead.
Two blasts put down a second Spectre as it lumbered towards them. As he shifted aim and opened up on the third one, which was getting dangerously close, a Lost Soul suddenly flashed by right in front of his helmet.
"Fuck me!" he shouted, stumbling backwards, blinking rapidly as he kept tracking the Spectre and, as risky as it was, firing blind. The thing roared in pain. He fired again. This time its roar was cut off and there was another thump. Twisting around as his vision came back from how close the flaming skull had come to his eyeballs, he saw it. The thing was coming back around and preparing to kamikaze him.
Jack fired, popping it, then twisted and fired off his last shell, killing a second one that was coming for him. He hastily reloaded and reassessed the situation. Though Cortez and Bidwell were doing an admirable job of keeping the growing Lost Soul population at bay, it was clear that this wasn't working. There were half a dozen of the things and more appearing from the freak Cacodemon mutation or whatever the fuck it was, which had tucked itself in one of the upper corners of the ceiling. Jack finished reloading and rushed past them, towards the thing. He had to end it and right now. He aimed up as he got beneath it and fired.
They'd managed to land a few shots, but his slug shell punched into what might have been its belly and rained down brownish-red blood on him. Sneering in disgust, he pumped the shotgun and blasted twice more. That did it. The thing literally exploded and shreds of flesh and pulped gore splattered across the room, raining down on them. In its place, three more Lost Souls appeared. Cursing, Jack emptied his shotgun helping the other two put down the survivors, and somehow, by the end of it, they hadn't been turned into zombies and found themselves standing among a field of bone fragments and blood pools.
"What was that?" Cortez asked after they'd finished reloading.
"I don't know, I've never seen anything like that," Jack replied, although that wasn't entirely true. It reminded him of something, but not a Cacodemon. After a moment, he suddenly had it: when he was younger, a lot younger, he'd been kind of heavy into tabletop roleplaying games for awhile, and one of his favorite series had a monster that kind of looked like that.
"We should name it, for future reference," Bidwell murmured.
It had been called a...
"Pain Elemental," Jack said. They looked at him.
"Why that?" Cortez asked.
"Looks like a monster from a series I was into as a kid. Unless you have any objections?"
"Fine by me," Bidwell replied.
"Kinda fits, I guess," Cortez murmured, looking at the pulped remains of the beast. He shuddered. "Goddamn but that thing was horrifying!"
"Yeah. Holy shit. I keep thinking that I won't see anything that can surprise me anymore, but somehow they keep thinking of ways to surprise and horrify me...come on, we're not all that far from the repair we need to make," Jack replied.
He finished reloading and switched back to his rifle, frustrated that he'd just burned through two-thirds of his shotgun shells. What else did the hordes of Hell have to throw at him? Much as he was loathe to find out, he had no doubt that he would, and sooner rather than later. They headed off down the second tunnel on the left, which was painted in blood and full of bits of corpses. Probably where the Spectres had been chowing down.
Their progress was slow and cautious at first, but they picked up speed as they seemed to have temporarily exhausted their local supply of demonic bastards. The tunnel they traversed ended in a T-junction and they broke right, coming to a set of stairs leading up.
"What about you, Cortez?" Jack asked as they went up. "Why'd you join?"
"Aw shit, nothing special about me. Grew up dirt poor, wanted to do the whole 'see the world' thing. I'm pretty stupidly brave and I've always had more energy that I knew what to do with, and Marine seemed like the best option to actually make some kind of living for me. Signed up a few years ago," he replied.
"Anything left from your old life?" Jack asked.
"My madre. She's the only one I really felt a connection to. She worked so hard to raise me, house me, make sure I had something to eat. I'm from Venezuela originally. And the place that we were living in was technically what they had labeled as a...what'd they call it? Non-viable...something. It was really, really shitty, is the point, and so we qualified for some special initiative. I sign up, they get my madre sent somewhere else, set her up with like an apartment and a job. Kinda a new life." He paused. "That might've played a role in it, too."
"Where'd she go?"
"Paris, actually. She'd always wanted to go there and she actually knew French as a second language, so it was perfect. She's there now..." he trailed off. "Hopefully," he said finally, then he sighed. "God, everyone's gonna lose someone now, huh?"
"Probably," Bidwell murmured.
"We'll get it figured out," Jack said, but it was the only thing he could really think to say. Even if they managed to save the human race...billions were already dead. Billions. They'd be lucky to have millions alive after this was over, if there was an after. The scope was so broad and the true nature of the invasion itself so unknown that he had no idea if there'd be a way to actually end the demonic threat, or if it was going to have to be their new normal.
He thought about all they had seen so far.
He doubted this could become a new normal and humanity could survive.
They reached the top of the stairs and came into a crossroads antechamber. The left door would take them to where they wanted to be. Jack and Bidwell covered it while Cortez opened it up. It slid into the ceiling, revealing an industrial corridor maybe five meters long, with a workstation and some technical looking stuff affixed to the wall at the end of it. There didn't seem to be any other way into the room, and it looked clear.
"All right, let's do this," Jack said.
The three men made their way down the passageway. Their footsteps sounded loud and somehow ominous in the corridor, which oddly seemed to take longer than it should have to reach the end of. They got to the workstation and Jack quickly checked around it, looking for any nooks or crannies something might conceivably be hiding in. It was clear, and the tech, for the most part, seemed to be in decent condition, save for a few stray gunshots. Fuck, was there anywhere in this place that hadn't been touched in at least some capacity by the invasion? One place that had no blood, no bodies, no spent shell casings, no damage, no stray shots?
There must be, but he found it hard to imagine.
"Okay, do your thing, Bidwell," Jack said, turning back towards the door.
"How long?" Cortez asked as he joined Jack.
"Shouldn't be more than five minutes," Bidwell replied as he stepped up to the technology and set to work on it, pulling out a toolkit.
The seconds began to tick by. Jack almost felt like there was a tension building on the air, but he always felt that way whenever he had to wait for something nowadays. Something seemed off about the corridor, but he didn't know what. He looked around, scrutinizing the corridor carefully. There were a few vents, but they were very small, and intact. He doubted even a Lost Soul could fit through them. There were no other doors, no windows, no openings of any kind anywhere that he could see in the corridor with them.
There were a few bits of corpses in there with them, but nothing whole, nothing that might jump up at them.
Was he just being paranoid?
A minute went by and nothing happened. Two minutes went by in the miserably tense atmosphere and still nothing happened. He wanted to say something, to strike up any conversation to break up the tension, but he didn't want to distract Bidwell, nor did he want to distract himself or Cortez in case something did happen.
The third minute ticked by, then the fourth. The tension was really starting to get to him. Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"I'm finished," Bidwell said suddenly, closing something with a small snap.
Jack nearly jumped out of his skin as the man spoke, and he prepared to get them out of there and further along on their journey, when suddenly, six previously hidden panels, three to each side of them back down the corridor, opened up. At once, half a dozen Imps stepped out, roared, and began to come for them.
"Fuck!" Jack and Cortez screamed at the same time.
Jack leaped forward, bashing the nearest Imp's face in with the butt of his assault rifle, then shooting it in the head with a three-round.
"Kill them before they damage the equipment!" Bidwell called.
Both men fired and took down an Imp each. Blood sprayed as Jack swiveled to get aim on one of the survivors, but it leaped at him in a terrifying display of dexterous grace. The wind was driven from his lungs in a painful burst as it got atop him and clawed at his chest. He heard metal rending as the armor fought against the thing's claws. Jack fought violently with it as he struggled to get it off of him, but it was so damned strong. It shrieked in his face and grabbed his helmet. Jack felt panic hit him, and a kind of rage, a powerful one, and he reached up and grabbed the thing's wrists.
"Get the fuck off me!" he screamed, and squeezed as he shoved up. Something inside one of its wrists snapped and the thing roared. Jack screamed back at it and twisted to the side, threw it off of him, then scrambled up, leaped onto its back, and grabbed its head. He grunted in furious exertion as he slammed its face into the metal floor, then lifted it up and repeated the action again. And again and again and again, screaming as he did it until something let out a violent, wet snap and its misshapen alien skull caved in.
"Ward! You got it!" Cortez yelled.
Jack looked up, panting, and saw both men staring at him. They looked concerned. Jack shook his head, getting himself back under control, then grabbed his rifle and stood up. "Yeah," he muttered. He coughed a few times. "Was it damaged?" he asked, looking at the machinery they had come here to repair.
Bidwell stared at him a moment, then shifted back over to the machinery. He checked it over, then returned. "No, it's fine. We can leave."
"Okay, come on, let's get the hell out of here," Jack said, still coming down from the adrenaline fury high. He set off.
After a few seconds, the others followed after him.