The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 15: Unruly Evil

This time, the whole process of teleporting to Hell went a lot more smoothly.

Kyra thought, as she appeared on a platform in the middle of a small room with ugly green-brown walls, that if those involved had had to endure what she had during her first transition, maybe they wouldn't be so fucking eager to continue their research. Then again, this was the UAC she was talking about. It's not as if the fuckers pulling the strings would ever have to endure that crap. No, it was far easier to keep the war going when you never had to step within a hundred miles of an actual battlefield and your job was to make battle strategies.

Fucking jackoffs.

Getting her bearings, Kyra checked the perimeter of the room she was in. Though there wasn't much to see. Beyond the basic platform she'd appeared on, there were just the walls and floor and ceiling, a medieval style wooden and iron door dead ahead of her, and a still somewhat intact workstation to her right. Thick black cabling ran from the workstation to the teleportation platform, which was a black metal pedestal beneath her feet. As soon as she was sure that she was truly alone, (or as alone as she could get, now knowing that the inhuman bastards could teleport), Kyra took the opportunity to recheck her gear.

She found that Jensen wasn't bullshitting. Everything was still where she'd left it and fully functional as far as she could tell. Although the only real test that mattered was pulling the trigger. Kyra looked at the door ahead of her. She should probably get those tests out of the way sooner rather than later. She took a moment to investigate the workstation, but it didn't hold anything of any value, so she moved over to the door. Another one of those big red buttons inset into a silver plate was embedded in the wall to the right of the door.

She hit it and the door slid up into the ceiling.

The time to perform some crucial tests on her weaponry immediately came upon her as the door revealed a decent-sized room beyond. She took it in with a sweep of her gaze as the barrel of her shotgun already began seeking targets. A pair of fiends were crouched in the dead center of the room, maybe ten feet ahead of her, feasting on the corpse of a technician. Behind them and to the left was a second story with iron bars for walls and more fiends on patrol, or maybe just milling around. She popped the head of the first feasting ugly and sprayed its partner with gore, which caused it to snarl out a shriek and hurl a fireball her way.

It smacked her in the chest and sent her stumbling back, but Kyra quickly readjusted her aim and blew off its right arm as the slug shell connected with its shoulder with all the force of a cannonball. The thing shrieked madly as it fell to the stonework floor, flopping violently as it sprayed deep red blood everywhere. She ignored it and turned the shotgun on those above her, which were already trying to pelt her with fireballs, throwing them wildly between the iron bars. As she took a step out and readjusted her aim, she heard a warning snort from her right, and another from her left. Pinkies. Except she hadn't seen anything.

She glanced to her right as she fired and realized that it was more of the invisible bastards. Cursing, though glad that her aim was true even though she was distracted and another fiend went down with a fist-sized hole in its stomach, she pulled back into the previous room. Stomping footfalls signaled the approached of the ghosts and this time with the better light, (there were a lot more of those arm-torches burning that weird green fire on the walls and she'd caught sight of a skylight overhead), she could actually see something!

She saw a strange kind of shimmering effect, almost like heat waves that you could catch sight of if you looked at an open flame or a baking blacktop in the hot summer sun. She aimed and fired and was rewarded with a roar of pain and a spray of blood. She repeated the action and one of them went down with a meaty thud. Kyra turned and emptied her shotgun into the second one, putting it down as well. She waited, hearing only the annoyed hissing of the surviving fiends on the second story, and finally swapped to her assault rifle and stepped back out. Apparently that was it. Dodging the fireballs, she put down the remaining fiends and finished securing the area. Not a bad test of her armory, all things considered.