Doom 3™: Maelstrom Page 16

  “Right, Swann. Get us off, and whatever else we might bring with us. Then what? Take us back to Earth? That sound good, Swann?”

  Swann looked away as if he might be considering the repercussions of an Armada landing for the first time.

  “Now tell me—does that sound like a good idea?”

  Swann turned back to him, staring at the BFG-9000, which was pointed in his general direction. Not that Campbell planned on using it.

  He saw Swann gulp. His eyes sunken. The man’s fear almost something he could smell.

  “Wh-what are we going to do, Jack? What the hell are we going to do?”

  Campbell felt that Swann had at last pulled back from the precipice and was ready to listen. “We have to secure Mars City, Swann. We have to try and stop this—contain this—before we let anyone come here. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Swann nodded. True acceptance or merely some rote reflex? It was hard to tell.

  “But who’s left?”

  “There are plenty of people left. Plenty,” Campbell lied. “Whole squads back at Transport and Reception. Other teams are securing Alpha. But we have a real big problem.”

  Swann’s dark eyes were locked on him.

  “This all comes from Delta Lab. And that, well, that area is not secure. Something is still going on—”

  Swann started shaking his head, “I don’t think…God, I really, really don’t think—”

  Campbell pulled his right hand off the BFG and gave Swann a strong back slap. Swann’s haunted eyes popped open wide.

  “Listen, Swann, let me do the thinking, okay? You see, if we don’t stop what’s going on in Delta, then nobody will get out of here—or off Mars. Nobody.” He paused to let the words sink in a bit. “So you have two choices. You can go back to Reception. A long trek. Might see some of the uglies along the way. In fact, you probably will. Or”—he tapped the gun—“you can come with me. Me and my”—Campbell grinned, using a line from a vid from over a hundred years ago—“little friend. You do know how to shoot, right?”

  Swann nodded. Campbell guessed that Swann wouldn’t be much use in a firefight. But one way or the other, he wanted the panicked lawyer away from the Comm Center.

  Campbell took a breath. “So what’s it going to be?”

  Swann cleared his throat; then, as if he had been glued to the contoured chair before the control panel, he stood up.

  “I’ll go with you, Jack. You’re right. We have to stop it.”

  Campbell patted Swann on the back. “Good man.” He grabbed his PDA. “There’s a spur of the monorail near here. And it will take us right there. Take this—” He handed Swann a machine gun. “Safety’s off, so be careful. All set?”

  A nod, and then Campbell led the terrified Elliot Swann out of the control room, thinking, If the poor bastard only knew how scared I am too, he wouldn’t move an inch.

  34

  KANE STOPPED FIRING, BUT HE HEARD MARIA let off a few more blasts at the latest things to try and stop them.

  In what was becoming standard procedure for them as they fought their way forward to Delta, they stood back-to-back to cover a 360-degree arc.

  “Think they’re dead enough?”

  Maria shrugged. He imagined she was as exhausted as he was, but both of them resisted using more stims. Diminishing returns, Kane knew, and could lead to a collapse.

  “So,” Kane said, looking at the pile of bodies around them, “mind telling me where these zombies got chain saws from?”

  “Sure, as long you tell me how the chain saws became part of their bodies.”

  “Guess it makes them easier to use.”

  “Seriously—under Delta there is a massive warehouse that’s used by the excavation teams. Looks like these former grunts went in there, maybe running from the blast, and this is what happened.”

  They stood there for a second, and the moment of giddiness at being alive began to fade. “The key thing,” Kane said, “is that these things can just—I dunno—affix things to their bodies.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Yeah, but if it’s true, if it’s what you might call a ‘rule,’ then we got to be prepared for anything.”

  Only now did she turn and look at him. “I thought I was.”

  He laughed, the sound so human, so good. “Guess you are.”

  They had activated the Delta reactor, restarting the main and backup controls. The place would be powered. The chain-saw zombies had been a momentary distraction.

  “Okay, guess we’re ready, then. And Delta?” he asked.

  She turned and pointed to a door at the end of the room, across the sea of dead chainsaw zombies. “There. It’s an observation room, and my PDA shows direct access to the lab.”

  Kane nodded and together, taking care as they moved, they headed to the last barrier before entering the rear section of Delta Labs.

  “Goddamn,” Kane said. “Door is locked. What do we—”

  But when he turned around he saw Maria picking through some of the dead corpses.

  “What are you doing?”

  She turned, her face all scrunched up, and waved a PDA at him. “I’m guessing that one of these things had the right security clearance.”

  “Good thinking.”

  She brought the PDA up to the security lock. “Okay—here goes.”

  Kane waited. The lock glowed red, then turned to green. “Open sesame.”

  “Once we walk in,” Maria said, “we’ll technically be in Delta. At least that’s what the schematics show.”

  He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open….

  The room was empty; still, they kept their guns leveled, ready. “Everyone moved on?” Kane said.

  “Guess so.”

  They walked through the small room, a lab of some kind. Half the ceiling lights were damaged, but there was enough of a milky glow to see this small lab—and something standing in the center of the room.

  Kane walked up to it.

  TELEPORTER STATION 5, it said.

  “Teleportation. Is that what they were doing? Do you think—”

  But Maria had walked to the far wall, and stood at a glass window. “Kane, come and look at this.”

  He walked up to her, and he could see what was obviously the main Delta Lab. A massive room, with at least three more of the teleporter stations. Bodies all over. But no creatures. At least, not yet.

  One of the teleporters looked on fire, a liquid fiery glow filling it, shifting, fluttering as if caught in some unknown breeze; it lit the room with a brilliant yellow-red glow.

  “What is that?” Maria said.

  “Not sure we want to know. But we have to get in there.” Kane looked left and right, but he could see no doors, no potential entrance.

  “There’s got to be a way.”

  Maria also started to look around, but the empty smaller lab only led out. If there was a way between this room—an observation station of some kind—into the other room, it wasn’t clear.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “Me either. Does that mean we have to go back and—”

  “Help…” The sound was a croak, almost not human. But Kane couldn’t imagine any of the creatures asking for such a human thing as help.

  “You heard that?” he said to Maria.

  She nodded. “I’m trying to locate it. Not sure—”

  “Please…”

  She turned back to the observation window and tapped it.

  “There! It’s coming from inside there.”

  Kane came and stood beside her as they scanned the room. Until—

  “God, I see him.” She said. “Poor bastard. Over by that table.”

  Kane spotted a man sprawled on the ground by an overturned lab table. He could also see that something had been done to his lower legs.

  Kane raised a hand to the man, who acknowledged the move with the slightest tilt of his head. The room’s intercoms still worked.

  “Is there a way
into the lab from here?”

  The man cleared his throat, a low gravelly sound as he struggled to talk. “Yes. There is. Y-you…need to come quickly. There’s no…time.”

  Kane answered: “What do we do?”

  The man pointed to one of the teleportation pods standing quiet. Then his finger pointed, just past Kane, to the pod in the observation room.

  “You have to use…the teleporter. Use it…to come here.”

  Maria answered quickly. “No. That can’t be safe.”

  “Listen…” the man said, struggling to get the words out. “It is safe for short distances. We—we tested it with humans. It was safe…up to a point.”

  “Kane, I don’t like it.”

  “You can use it to get in here. That short distance…always seemed safe.”

  Maria came closer to Kane. “Come on—we’ll go the other way in.”

  Kane looked at her. “You see that.” He pointed to the other pod, the one that glowed like an open wound of color and heat. “My guess is that has to be stopped. And we sure as hell can’t do it here.”

  The scratchy voice from within Delta: “You have to hurry.”

  “Right.”

  Kane walked over to the teleporter and looked at the controls. “I’ll go through, and you go find another way into Delta.”

  “This is crazy.” Then, to the man in the other room. “Talk me through how to use this.”

  The man coughed, and then slowly began to explain how to use the device that would transport Kane into the other room.

  Kane pressed a button. The screen in front of him flashed: TELEPORTATION SEQUENCE INITIATED.

  Then: TRANSMISSION IN 60 SECONDS.

  A timer counted down as Kane stepped into the chamber. He smiled at Maria. “Meet me on the other side. When you can. Maybe I’ll have the whole thing shut down by the time you get there.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  A matching screen told Kane he had thirty seconds. “Tell you the truth, neither do I. But not much choice.”

  He put a hand to the thick clear hull of the pod. “Just wish me luck.”

  Maria raised a hand to the pod shell, matching Kane’s, and shook her head. “Good luck, Kane.”

  And then the chamber filled with a brilliant white cloud, followed by thin spears of electricity that erupted from the center of the chamber.

  Maria had closed her eyes. And when she opened them, Kane was gone.

  35

  KANE HAD CLOSED HIS EYES TOO. After all, he thought, if I’m going to be transformed into a zombie, maybe with bits of my weapons attached to my body, I’d rather not watch it happen.

  But when he opened his eyes, everything looked to be in the right place, and outside of a slight ringing in his ears, he didn’t feel any different. Did it not work? he thought for a second. But looking up, he saw that he was in Delta, and he saw the other chamber, the swirling vortex of yellow and red, close by.

  He opened the chamber door and stepped out, hurrying to the man on the ground.

  “Okay, what can you tell me about what’s happening here?”

  The man’s eyes looked at Kane’s. “I will. I—I’ll tell you everything you need. But when I’m done…I want you to hand me your gun.”

  Kane looked at the man’s legs. The bottoms twisted into complete uselessness.

  “Agreed?” the man insisted.

  “Agreed.”

  The man looked at the fiery chamber. “My name is Dr. Kellyn MacDonald. The experiments done here opened a portal to…someplace else. That”—his finger pointed at the molten swirl—“is the opening. Things have come from there, and those who have been touched by it…become changed. But”—MacDonald’s eyes drifted back to Kane—“you have seen them.”

  “Yes. And I want to stop it. I need to shut it down. Can you tell me what to do, how to—”

  The man nodded. He raised his other hand, and Kane saw that the scientist had his fingers tightly wrapped around a PDA. “It’s in…here. All you need. Read it. Then—”

  His eyes went wide as the man’s head exploded as a shell of some kind hit it. Kane rolled to his right.

  So stupid, he thought. Letting my guard down. So damn stupid.

  As he rolled, he tried to get his shotgun into position. But he could hear blasts tracing a path toward him. He caught a glimpse of what was shooting at him.

  A living skeleton, covered with skin—and with what looked like twin cannons or small rocket launchers perched on its shoulders, shooting at Kane.

  No—not on the thing’s shoulders, but part of them.

  Kane raised his shotgun, but the thing was easily a few seconds ahead of him, taking a step that made its leathery skin ripple. Kane might get off a volley, but he was about to be blown to bits.

  Which was when the thing’s head erupted after a concentrated blast of a dozen machine gun bullets hit it, passing through the skull and out the other side.

  The skeleton demon stood there a moment as if pondering what just happened. Then it collapsed, falling full-length before the prone Kane.

  “Moraetes,” he whispered.

  “I figured if it was okay for you”—she nodded in the direction of the teleporter—“then it’s good enough for me.”

  “I didn’t see that thing appear.”

  “It came from there.”

  “Yeah. It’s a portal. To God knows where.”

  “It came out just as I finished beaming over.”

  “Feel okay?”

  She smiled. “I think so. And you?”

  “Yeah.” Now he turned back to MacDonald. “We were too late to save this guy, but—” Kane got up and walked to the dead scientist. He leaned down and removed the PDA from the man’s death clutch. “—but maybe he can save us all.”

  He hit the PDA, and the screen came to life, the last entry already on the screen. Maria walked over.

  And they read the last entry of Dr. Kellyn MacDonald together.

  Mars City PDA

  Dr. Kellyn MacDonald

  Personal Folder, Security Enabled.

  Checked and Opened_03_13_2145 18:23:10

  I don’t know how much time I have. I expect I will be dead soon, and the only hope for telling what I know—what I believe—will be this document. If it’s not found, it could all be lost. Humankind itself might be lost.

  Know this: the things that now roam Mars City come from a universe away, a place as real as our universe but a place of nightmares and horror. I have seen them emerge, crawling out from the portal that Betruger’s experiments created, eager to feed off the life they find here, and eager to reach beyond Mars City.

  If they were to gain an opening to Earth, then it would surely all be hopeless. And I have seen what no one else has: how the creatures come out and are shaped. As if they can sense our fantasies, the terrors, the images that have haunted us since we first huddled in caves—and they become those horrors. Our own imagination becomes our worst enemy, used by these beings. Is there a limit to what they can become? I have not seen any such limit.

  And now the material found at Site 3 all becomes clear. How the great Martian civilization faced extinction—complete and hopeless—when somehow they opened a portal to that universe. They could not save themselves. But they could stop it. They created something that could rival the power of the evil that threatened to possess this universe, the evil ready to turn Mars into a world of death and horror and destruction.

  We called it U1. The artifact that was discovered at Site 3, something that Betruger started calling the Soul Cube, is a remnant of the long-ago civilization. Except it wasn’t merely a dead artifact from that lost civilization. The true souls, the opposing force of their existence, became channeled into this device, making a weapon which could finally rival in power the terror from beyond.

  But now this Soul Cube—that dam against the wave of madness—is gone, taken into the portal, taken into the other universe so that the beings here are free.

  Time. There is
no more time. It may already be too late, but if you read this, know one thing: only if you are armed with that ancient weapon can you truly stop them and close the portal. Without it, then the battle is truly finished.

  And if you get back to Earth, please, please tell my family that my last thoughts were of them, and

  Folder Closed and Locked_03_13_2145 18:23:10

  Maria spun around.

  “What?” Kane said.

  “Thought I heard something back there. Something moving.”

  They both stood still, looking around the lab. At any minute they knew something else could emerge from the portal.

  “At least we know what to do.”

  She looked up at him. “You do? And what the hell is that?”

  Kane stared at the swirling maelstrom that was the gateway to another world. “I have to go in there. Get this Soul Cube. Use it—somehow. Stop this.”

  Maria looked like she was about to argue with him, but then they both heard a sound, and their weapons flew into position. Kane spotted something scurrying between tables, navigating the maze that was the destroyed lab.

  “Hey!”

  Maria looked at him, perhaps wondering why he didn’t shoot.

  “Come out.”

  And then she saw the small head pop up over the edge of the table.

  36

  MARIA WATCHED THE SMALL BOY COME OUT from behind the table.

  “It’s okay, son. You remember me?” Kane said.

  “You know him?”

  Kane took a step toward the boy and then crouched down. Maria saw him smile at the kid. “You scared, son? What’s your name?”

  The boy looked around the room. Maria had to wonder how much the boy had seen. His eyes looked haunted. Kane put out a hand and gave the boy’s hair a gentle tousle. She thought he’d recoil at the touch, but he stood there.

  “Theo.”

  “Theo.” Kane looked at Maria. “I guess, Theo, you’ve been running around a lot. Hm? Seen a lot of things?”