The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 18: Situation - Unknown

                                               -PART THREE: HORROR RISING-

He was dead.

Jack was positive that he was dead.

He wasn't entirely sure why he had this certainty locked so firmly in his skull, but it was at least a familiar one. How many times had he been sure that his life was over? How many times had he looked down the barrel of a gun? The edge of a knife? How many crashes had he survived? How much pain had he endured?

Apparently, death was cold.

This wasn't a surprise to him.

Out of instinct, Jack tried to move his body, and was surprised that he still had a body to move. He risked opening his eyes. A grainy, gray ceiling filled his vision. He sniffed the air. It smelled like blood, death, shit, and oil. He was still breathing, he realized. If he was dead, he wouldn't need to breathe. Right? Jack slowly sat up.

He found himself staring at a generic stack of crates, a shelf of generic maintenance supplies, and a bloodied workbench.

"What the hell?" he whispered.

Glancing down, he realized he was naked. Worse than that, he had no weapons. He had absolutely nothing on him.

He took a moment to sort through his memories. It terminated abruptly in the incident at the gateway. He remembered being sucked up into nothingness. If he had to guess, he'd place his money on the gateway activating and grabbing them. So where had they gone? Obviously somewhere with generic UAC equipment.

Jack looked down at himself again and sighed. He'd come through with nothing but himself. After all the damned work gathering the guns, the ammo, the supplies. It was all gone. Slowly, painfully, seemingly his entire body aching and sore, Jack pulled himself to his feet. He began to get his head, and his priorities, sorted out.

The first thing he needed was a weapon. That above all else. Wherever he was, he was positive that he hadn't escaped the torment of the damned that had infested Phobos. He tried to get some clue as to where he was by studying his environment, but it could have been anywhere. To give himself something to do, he began checking out the crates and the shelves in the small storage room he was in. Most of it was just spare parts, and none of the tools were lethal enough to provide any help. He needed clothing, a radio, armor, information, allies.

He needed a lot.

Right now he had jack shit.

Jack sighed in frustration as he finished his search. Glancing down at himself, he saw that he had a number of bruises, as well as some scrapes, cuts, and burns. Medical supplies would have to be added to that list. Feeling a bit more in his right mind, he moved towards the only obvious direction that presented itself: the door. Walking up to it, he paused and listened, pressing his ear against the metal. He couldn't hear anything.

That didn't necessarily mean there was nothing out there.

Hesitating for a moment, he finally mustered his courage, reached out, and hit the button. The door slid open to reveal...a short length of hallway and another door directly across from him. He waited, listened, heard nothing and slipped out. The hallway stretched away to his right and terminated about ten meters away to his left. As he stepped out into the corridor, Jack shivered. It was definitely cold here and that was going to be a problem.

He moved over to the other door and opened it.

Another storage room awaited his inspection.

Jack wasted fifteen minutes checking out all the rooms in the immediate area. The only thing of use he found was a small bathroom where he pissed into a urinal. Padding back out into the corridor, he moved to the open end of it, which led him to a crossroad section. Another two corridors snaked away from him, one on either side, and they looked the same as the one he'd just come from. The way ahead, however, looked different. He made his way down that shorter hallway and opened up the door at its end.