Doom 3™: Worlds on Fire

9

MARS CITY—INSIDE DELTA LAB

KELLIHER LOOKED AROUND THE LARGE CONFERENCEroom. Everyone in attendance was now hidden from everyone outside. He glared at Hayden, who—he imagined—knew what was coming.

“I know about the experiments…” Kelliher said quietly.

Hayden looked at Campbell and Swann as if wondering if they were as confused as he was.Or as confused as he was pretending to be…

“What do you mean, Ian? The work that’s been going on, everything Betruger has been—”

Kelliher put up a hand. “No. Not that little show we saw today. Everything looking so good, proceeding according to plan. When the truth is…well…something else, right?”

Several emotions played across Hayden’s face, and Kelliher wondered if the general would try to deny the truth or give in and accept that Kelliher already knew what was really going on in the lab.

“Mr. Kelliher,” Swann added, “perhaps you want to mention to General Hayden about our liabilities, our exposure—”

“In good time,” Kelliher said. “There are more important things to discuss now.”

Hayden cleared his throat. “You obviously know something that we need to talk about.”

“Exactly. The smaller chambers that Betruger has been using…his tests withanimate objects—live specimens…they have not gone well, have they?”

Hayden hesitated, as if considering a lie. Then: “There have been—what does he call them?—anomalies. All to be expected, he has explained.”

“Expected? And yet you and he saw fit to keep those results from me. In fact, you have done everything possible to make sure that no one outside of Delta knew about any of those experiments.”

Hayden nodded. “Yes. That’s true.”

“And why is that?”

“They were too disturbing, too alarming, Betruger said. I myself haven’t seen much. But Dr. Betruger felt that the impact back on Earth, back at the UAC offices, could hurt the project.”

“And so the security lid was tightened?”

“It was the only way he could—”

Kelliher turned away and spoke to Campbell.

“Show him, Jack.”

The room’s lighting fell to a pale blue glow and the wall behind Kelliher turned into a screen. Campbell had his PDA out and sent the first 3-D image to the room’s display system.

It was a little gray mouse. Except the rear of its body tapered off into what looked like a chunk of segmented worm, or a snake, hairless, thick—

“Nice, huh? Next.”

The mouse vanished, to be replaced with what looked like a cat. This vid moved in a loop, showing the cat moving, twisting.

“I’ve kept the sound off. It’s a little much for my stomach.”

Kelliher was sure that nobody wanted sound, not when they saw the cat’s head opening and shutting like a clamshell rimmed with teeth. The only clue that the mouth of teeth belonged to something feline was the whiskers that sprouted around the gaping mouth.

“There is a second part to this vid where it begins gnawing at its own body. We’ll pass that one up, I think.”

In the pale blue light he saw Hayden turn away.

“You’ve seen these before, right?”

Hayden nodded. “Some. I—”

“One more. Just so we know exactly what we are talking about—”

A new image flashed on the screen.

“God,” Swann muttered.

Kelliher looked at the screen. Would Swann start gagging? That wasn’t entirely out of the question.

Private James Walker, on break from his security detail inside Delta, sat alone in the cafeteria. On his tray were soy patties shaped to resemble sliced beef, covered in a thick dark gravy, with imitation potatoes and corn to the side.

He held the fork in his hand, ready to scoop up some of the food. But his hand remained poised, as if taking that first stabbing plunge were a momentous decision.

He didn’t always eat alone. He used to sit with the others.

But when he realized that he had nothing to say, when he saw the others looking at him, wondering why he was so quiet, why he was acting so strange, he started sitting by himself.

It was better like this.

Better for thinking. Better for planning.

Sleep had grown ever more elusive. Most nights he spent hours tossing and turning. And then, of course, when he did fall asleep, the nightmares came, the parade of things that he had only glimpsed in the lab.

Only, in the nightmares, it didn’t end there.

No, the creatures from the lab were only the beginning of the parade, as other things marched out of the chambers and slithered, chewed—things that no longer had any resemblance to the animals that had been used for the experiment.

And, in the nightmare, they would see him.

The ones with eyes, that is. Look at him, trying to corner him, until he knew—absolutely knew—that they would feed on him.

Most evenings, that’s how the nightmare went.

But then—

—onother nights, something different happened. Something filled the lab—a reddish light, an energy, touching everyone inside it. And Walker could see the other guards and the scientists, all changing, and their mouths opened and shut in some dull mimicry of the nightmare creatures.

They were hungry.

Then the realization…

I am hungry—and I will never be satiated.

And Walker would wake up screaming, begging for help, shouting the words, babbling, “No, God, no…please no…”

Until the room came back into focus. The darkened bunks, now filled with other marines telling him to shut the hell up, we’re trying to sleep here.

And one would think that they would be mad at him. But he wasn’t alone. Others did exactly the same thing. Though commanders would shift them around to different quarters, there were always a few more.

Most of them probably had the exact same thought:I have to get out of here. Before I go completely insane.

Unless…

Unless…

I already am.

Walker’s eyes looked left and right, checking whether anyone was looking at at him, studying him as he sat there, thinking, planning…

But no.

No one seemed to be watching.

He let his fork plunge down into the gravy volcano of the potatoes, already cold.

“Hey, Axelle—over here.”

Dr. Axelle Graulich had been carefully working on a small section of the wall, slowly brushing away the red stone, trying to uncover as much of the detail below as possible.

Delicate and tedious work. But the reward would be huge—a full section of this wall and the carvings underneath would be exposed. And then—perhaps deciphered.

The very idea made her heart beat fast. To read and understand something from perhaps aeons ago, from the dawn of Martian history, when other intelligent organisms were here.

Except, there were a few curious things…

For example, how come they hadn’t found any traces of those organisms? No fossils, no organic material—at least, not in the areas they had dug into so far.

Graulich knew that they had only scratched the surface. With most of Mars permanently frozen just a foot below the ground, not much excavation had been done at all. But this cave was an incredible opportunity. She was thankful for UAC’s support of this work. Of course, they probably imagined there would be something for them to exploit.

No matter. That’s what Mars City, this whole base, was about, wasn’t it?

Except for the rumors she heard.

She turned to the voice—Tom Stein, a young but talented paleobiologist with a lot of geology training as well. He was a bit overeager but knowledgeable. He had been working with an advance team, probing the depths of the cave. Graulich got up and walked into the dark of the cave.

“What’s up, Tom?”

A few assistants had used pneumatic picks and hammers to clear away a pile of rubble. “Look at this.This is interesting.” He pointed toward where there had once been a smooth pile of giant red stone.

“You’re making good progress—that’s great.”

“No. That’s not it.” She was close enough to hear Tom’s voice echoing from inside his helmet.

“See—we thought this was some kind of rock fall. Like”—he pointed his light to the cave ceiling above them—“from there. But that’s impossible. I mean, the geology guys said there are no signs of a major collapse.”

Graulich let her lamp point at the cave ceiling. And it was true—there were no signs of anything having plummeted to the ground, no massive gouges, no indentations, no holes.

“So, this didn’t fall from up there?”

“Right.” Under his faceplate Stein smiled. “So how’d it get here? What happened?”

“I assume your geology team is working on that…”

Stein shook his head. “No way. I mean, they’re doing analysis of the rock all right. But I think we have the answer already. Guys, hold up a minute.” His assistants stopped their work.

Stein tilted his head, signaling that Graulich should follow him. “Careful—some nasty edges.”

Graulich clambered on top of a large rock and followed Stein, being careful not to let her boots slide into a crevasse and get trapped, looking for a perch, and then at spots even scrambling on all fours. Until they reached what looked like a hole.

“Teddy here noticed this yesterday.”

“Noticed what?”

Stein’s grin widened under his helmet. “This. Look.”

He opened his fist, and Graulich could see that he had a handful of red dirt. “Observe—” he said with glee. He let a thin trail of dirt trickle down into the hole…and the tiny dust-sized particles blew backup. A thin red stream of Martian dust…being blown away.

“Wow. You mean—”

Stein stood up. “It’s a hole, Axelle. It goes somewhere, where there are drafts, some currents of air, winds strong enough to blow this dust back. This cave entrance is only just that—an entrance. This”—he pointed at the small opening—“goes somewhere.”

Then Axelle looked at the jumble of rocks that they stood on.

“Yeah. And these rocks?” Stein continued. “These rocks didn’t fall ‘from’ anywhere. My guess is that they were…put here.”

“Put here?”

“To seal this off. And now, millions of years later, we’re going to open it. Pretty cool, hmm?”

Axelle nodded. Though she wasn’t surecool was the word she’d use. She turned and looked out at the cave mouth, a giant opening where she could see a curved slice of Martian terrain, hills in the distance, a bit of the unfinished Delta Labs, the Martian sky burning with its usual afternoon intensity.

And as if in a reflex, she backed away from the hole, taking care not to fall, as she started thinking about the implications of this discovery, not quite knowing where to begin.