The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 48: The Icon of Sin

When Jack snapped into reality this time, something felt different.

Something felt off.

He had appeared on a teleporter pad at the end of a short, narrow alcove made of relatively simple gray rock. Ahead, he could see a room, and another copy of the alcove and teleporter opposite. That had to be where Kyra and her squad was going to come in. Hopefully. Slowly, he began making his way down the alcove.

As he came into the central room, Jennifer appeared behind him. He checked out the room and found a surprise.

"Whoa."

"What is it?" she asked, moving to join him.

"Guns. A whole fucking armory," he muttered.

"Suspicious."

"Yep. But we might as well stock up. Also, there's dead guys in here."

"Nothing new there."

The room was made of more gray stone, somewhat longer than it was broad. In the corners, which were slanted ingresses, corpses hung by their wrists, connected to the walls via rusty chains. They had all been skinned, everything below the chest eviscerated, nothing more than a smear of blood on the wall below them.

Hollenshead appeared next. He came in and looked around as Jack and Jennifer began loading up. The only other way out, besides these two teleporters, was a third teleport, at the head of the room down its own little alcove. It was different from the others, silver. Shiny silver. It was up against a wall that had a horrifying visage of melted faces constantly flowing.

"Man, this is creepy," he muttered.

"Isn't it always?" Jennifer replied.

"I wonder who they were," Jack said, glancing again at the bodies.

"Hopefully fucking stockholders or CEOs for the UAC or something. Or, shit, any company at this point," Jennifer replied.

"Yeah. Fuckers sit on their fat asses, laughing as they do drugs and light cigars, sending us grunts to die and bleed in fucking pointless fake-ass wars," Hollenshead muttered. "I'd say I wouldn't wish this shit on my worst enemy, but honestly, Hell was made for fuckers like that."

"Can't say I disagree," Jack replied.

Cortez appeared and joined them in the armory. The place had obviously been worked over by the UAC, although Jack had to admit that the foldout tables and gun lockers spread out along the periphery of the room had a more hasty look to them. Maybe someone had been paranoid, thinking ahead in the event of disaster, knowing that this eventuality might occur. That some squad of battle-hardened warriors might show up in this exact place, needing to put down this Icon of Sin. Whoever that was, Jack silently thanked them.

The UAC weren't all morons and assholes. Some of them were doing good work. Or had been, at least.

Kyra appeared in the opposite teleport not much later. They all reacted to her presence on instinct, but relaxed when they saw who it was.

"So it worked," she said, joining them.

"Seems to have," Jack replied. "We won't know until we go through that teleport. I'm guessing it takes us to the Icon."

"Hopefully...whoa, what the fuck is that?" she asked when she noticed the gun he was checking over.

"BFG Nine Thousand," he replied, hefting it. "I used this to kill the last big granddaddy demon. I'm guessing it'll do a good job on this one. Or...hoping, is more accurate."

"It's really powerful," Jennifer said.

"Don't suppose there's anymore around?" Kyra asked.

"I don't see any, sorry. And I've got dibs," Jack replied.