dsm Posted April 19, 2002 The Shores of Hell – Part 4 **** The room I entered was dark. All lights, save one blinking light on my left, were out of order or turned off. I had just arrived at the Deimos Labs facility after clearing out the Refinery beyond the Warehouse. The Refinery had provided another shock for me. Several of the walls there had been covered with a sticky, disgusting fleshy substance, which stank horribly of rot. I had also found walls of pure flesh and ceilings which appeared to be made of the same solid blood-like substance, which the teleporter tiles in the Deimos Anomaly had been made of. It had seemed that the whole construction of the building had been mutated and several devices had been either ruined or transformed. Several switches had turned into skull-shaped buttons. I reconstructed the battles fought at the Refinery in my mind. There had been one particularly nasty surprise for me there. I encountered yet another of these horrifying goat freaks that hurled goo shrouded in that green fire. It almost got the edge on me, because I wasn't expecting to encounter one of these bastards as I thought they were unique guardian creatures, but I prevailed and managed to exterminate it despite the shock. It had been surrounded by lesser monsters, and in a way, it seemed to command them. Did these demon-like aliens have an actual hierarchy? At least now I knew that these things could be lurking within the bowels of the Deimos base and I was reminded that I might encounter more creatures, which I hadn't seen before as well as more of these horned nightmares on hooves. Another disturbing find was the discovery of more candelabras. After having realized that the aliens where somehow infecting the base, mutating its interior, I wasn't surprised to find more candelabras like the ones in the Phobos Anomaly. What unsettled me was that an eerie, green fire glowed from some of these candelabras - like the fire shrouding the goo that the goat monsters used against me. This odd fire stank horribly of rot and decay and had none of the pleasant attributes of normal fire, like the ability to provide a cozy source of light, as the lighting emitted from this fire was spooky and unnerving. There was something indescribably evil about this kind of fire. I was beginning to become more and more convinced that those alien creatures were true demons from Hell, yet what were they doing here? I remember that I retrieved useful info from the Phobos labs. The Deimos labs might have some useful items for me to use. Maybe I can a find a few nice presents here I thought, hoping that I might find the BFG 9K I had found written material about on Phobos. Ahead, I saw another of these devilish teleportation pads and I stepped onto it without further deliberation. I found myself in a gloomy hall with a thick, blocky pillar ahead of me. A few of the smaller creatures were standing next to the pillar. Regretting that I had been incautious and stepped through a teleporter without having my chain gun ready instead of the shotgun, I quickly took down the first former human I saw, while the brown "imps" charged at me, hurling fireballs. While I pumped the shotgun, another former human appeared into view. It raised its shotgun, but in the next instant one of the "imps" ran in the way, just as the grunt fired. I took a few pellets in the chest of my armor, but took no further damage even though it hurt a bit, while some of the pellets from the same shell ripped ugly holes in the "imp's" flesh. It howled angrily and turned its rage against its attacker. Since my experience with the "Bull demon" and the "imp" in the Warehouse, I had learned to take advantage of pitting the monsters against each other – it worked wonders. I could hear that several other monsters, including "bull demons", had become aware of my presence, as I heard sinister growls from a hallway on my left. After disposing of all the monsters in the area, I took a closer look at the area. On the other side of the blocky pillar I saw a wrecked computer console. Behind the pillar was a lift. A sign read: "Lab XB98 - Special drugs" I decided to check it out. - The walls in the room were covered in dirt – definitely not a typical clean lab. I saw a computer monitor on a desk. The monitor was miraculously still working and displayed text. I walked towards it, wanting to read the info, but suddenly the wall ahead of me collapsed, revealing another of those weird, floating balls. I noticed some odd lights behind the cloud of dust that arose from the rubble – as if there were a few torches in the room, but I couldn't see it clearly and I was too occupied with the loathsome thing in front of me. A ball of lightning flew out of its mouth but I easily dodged it. I heard a terrifying, shrill cry and something fiery flew out of the dark room behind the floating head and hammered into the belly part of my armor. I felt a burning heat as well as the impact of the thing. I let out a suppressed grunt of pain and leapt behind cover as yet another ball of lightning flew at me. I heard the shrill cry again and the fiery thing flew right past me, but collided with the lightning ball, which made a flash of electricity upon impact. Now I saw what the fiery thing was. At first it looked like a living cone of fire with a skull-like face within the flames, but then I noticed that there was a coal black skull amidst the flames, which appeared to be formed of solid ash or something like it. Two horns protruded from the sides of its head. I stared wide-eyed at the thing, wondering if it was possible to kill it. The thing suddenly spun around, facing the floating, bigmouthed head and suddenly, through some force unknown to me, flew straight at the head with great speed and hammered into the head. The floating head made an aggressive hissing sound and sent a lightning ball into the fiery skull's face. The skull-thing was thrown backwards by the force of the lightning attack, screeching with pain. Looks like it's vulnerable I thought to myself, slightly relieved and watched as the floating head spewed another glowing ball at the skull. The skull exploded in a flash of flame – I was glad that I wasn't standing any closer, because that might have hurt. The area was too narrow for me to use the rocket launcher so I had to use the shotgun against the thing. I fired a couple more shots at it before it died. Another of these skull things flew into view. I immediately fired a shot right into its face, sending it backwards. My clip was empty and I quickly reloaded it, while retreating. I had just finished reloading, when the burning skull rounded the corner. The shotgun roared, giving a satisfying kickback and the burning thing exploded in a cloud of flames. I went over to the computer screen. The screen was showing weird symbols – apparently the static electricity, which hadsurrounded the floating one-eyed horror had messed up the computer, so I couldn't read a thing, but I saw a notification on my Heads Up Display that my helmet computer could download and restore some information from that computer. I clicked the "initiate" button on my helmet control pad - a small, flat item with buttons that allowed me to control the non-automatic computer functions in my helmet, and the helmet computer downloaded the info. When my computer had recovered the info, readable text appeared on my faceplate. It was about a classified project. Not much info could be drawn from the text though – most of the text was gone and could not be recovered. The interesting part of the text read: ...oject outcome: The experiments yielded a strange drug, which turned out to be a revolutionary healing drug. One injection tried on the subjects quickly regenerated all wounds and restored all health. Further info requires yellow security level and can be found on computer T354 in the testing room. A small smile came over my face. this could be something I might want to know more about I thought, raising one of my eyebrows. ... 0 Share this post Link to post
