The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 20: The Pit

"We need to find a way out of this mess," Jack said as he surveyed the passageway ahead, considering the situation. With how many jump-scares he'd had recently, how many ambushes he'd walked into, he wanted to take the situation slowly. Finally, he looked back at the other three Marines. "Jennifer, Harper, stay here and cover our asses. Wells and I will scout ahead and try to find a way up," he said.

"Understood," Jennifer replied.

"Come on," Jack said, shouldering his shotgun and beginning a slow, steady walk down the stonework corridor.

"On your six," Wells replied tightly.

They passed a curious brass torch, mounted on a small platform of tiny skulls, that burned with a strange, deeply blue light. It cast a shifting, unnerving haze of shadows across the area. Just beyond it was an alcove to the left that terminated in a metal, high-tech door, completely inharmonious with the stonework masonry around it. Beside it was a platform of what might have been granite and a simple staircase leading up to it. It didn't seem to have any obvious meaning, just a raised section that took up half the space in the alcove, about six feet off the floor.

Jack ignored it for now and continued on. The area terminated ahead, with just another alcove to the right, no door this time. Some dead Imps were the only company they had for now. He found more anomalies there in his investigation. Another platform, this one embedded halfway into the wall at the far end of the central corridor, made entirely of high-tech silver and gray metal with several implications of technology embedded in its surface. Jack frowned as he got closer to it, ignoring the Imp blood that had sprayed across it.

"What's wrong?" Wells murmured behind him.

"This. What the fuck is this?" he replied. "It looks like it's part of Haydenfield, but I don't think it is. It looks like..." he hesitated, searching for the right words, "like it's trying to imitate the technology and aesthetic of Haydenfield without actually understanding it. This stuff here, it looks kind of like circuitry and motherboards and chip-sets, but it's not. It's all...off. I think the demons put this here," he muttered.

"What, like, the fire-throwers?" Wells asked uncertainly.

"No, not them personally, but like their forces."

"You think they installed it?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I don't know how, but this looks like imitation technology, not actual technology. Or maybe it's their technology? Shit, I don't know. This is all so weird, but..." He looked around. Behind him, off to the end of the alcove was one of those big silver plates with a switch. It was in the OFF position, the top glass square burning red, the bottom one dark and dead. He backed up a step and looked up over the lip of the platform, just catching sight of another one up there. "But I think it works, at least. Lemme try something."

Jack walked over to the switch on the ground level and flipped it. His heart leaped into his throat as he heard a grinding sound behind him. Spinning as he heard Wells curse sharply, he saw that a section of the floor, specifically the way they'd come into the alcove, was rising up.

"Shit!" he snapped, reaching out and trying to flip it back. But it was stuck. He turned around, prepared to do something crazy and desperate to not be trapped in here, as he could easily envision that section of floor continue raising up into the ceiling, but when it got about five feet up, it abruptly stopped. They both moved up to it and mantled it, hauling themselves upon onto it. Jack looked around for some change, prepared to throw himself off in case it suddenly kept grinding up, but nothing happened.

"We good back there?!" Jennifer called from the head of the corridor.

"Fine!" Jack called back. He looked around. "What the fuck is this for? Why did that button do that? Why is any of this here?"