The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 07: Hard Fought

Kyra felt an intense wave of dread settle over her, nearly crushing in its enormity, as the tram settled into place. The airlock hummed and hissed, faintly audible beyond the glass-and-steel of the tram cart. She swallowed and tried to push the fear back down, running her hand down the barrel of the assault rifle she'd snagged. She wasn't sure what it was. The fact that she now felt confident that she was alone here, on this wretched place? Maybe. Garret, White, Banks...everyone from the Icarus was very likely dead.

And she was the last one standing.

Last human standing, that was. The airlock finished its cycle. The large doors in front of her opened up, revealing a sleeker, and bigger, receiving bay. This one looked more like it was meant to handle human cargo rather than the regular kind, and had the look of the place where all the money had gone. The lighting was better, anyway, although several of the bulbs were flickering. There was no reception committee waiting for her at least. Kyra kept sitting there in the driver's chamber even after the tram had settled into place and a maddeningly polite voice had informed her that she could depart whenever she liked.

She didn't want to leave the tram.

She didn't want to go into Research.

Kyra liked to think that she was brave. She wasn't fearless. Only morons were truly fearless, or people who honestly didn't care whether they lived or died. But she had spent a long time conquering her fear, dealing with it in its many forms. But this was something different. It was that same, pervasive feeling that had been with her, settled over her like an icy fog, from the moment she woke up on this godforsaken rock. It was at its most powerful here, in Research. She supposed the real problem was that she couldn't stop thinking about Henderson's last words.

"You're going to have to go through hell to get there..."

There was something just...wrong with what he had said. No, the way he had said it. Kyra could be a stickler about certain things: reading body language, reading between the lines, picking up on certain tones, the way people emphasized specific words.

Going through hell was a phrase people tended to use, and phrases were said a certain way. But Henderson hadn't been just using a phrase. He wasn't just telling her that she was going to have to endure a lot of suffering and hardship to get to her next destination. From the tone of his voice, the emphasis he'd placed on certain words...

It was like he was, as a matter of fact, telling her that she would have to actually go through Hell to get to where she needed to go.

As in, physically make a journey through Hell.

But what did that mean? Surely he couldn't be literally saying that. It was impossible. She'd looked through the dead man's PDA on the tram ride here, but most of it had been scrambled or erased in some kind of malfunction. Was Henderson cracking at the end? Lying maybe? But it didn't feel like a lie, nor did it seem like he was losing his mind. For the most part. Kyra wanted to keep sitting here in this tram, keep poking and prodding this conundrum she found herself in, because it was safe. Well, safer than leaving.

Probably.

Okay, it appeared to be safer than leaving the tram.

But none of that mattered. The only way Kyra was ever going to get back to anything approaching normal ever again was to keep going. Even if 'normal' was days away. Weeks. Months. Somehow, someway, she intended to get off this rock, get back to Earth. Right now, even the hellscape of a bloody battlefield in some third world, wartorn country seemed like a vacation compared to this. She'd take prison over this.