Into Dante's Inferno

[Doomguy]

It wasn't so much the first explosion that was the problem. The explosives might have been impressive on their own, but were contained into the rooms that I threw them into. It was the secondary blast, from the critical failure of the reactors themselves, that reduced everything around it into scrap metal. I barely had enough time to run into cover before the whole thing went off with a boom. Well, "a boom" isn't really a good description. It was more like a steam locomotive and an electric train that smashed into each other, fused into one public transport monstrosity, that exploded with he force of a supernova. The original furnace ballooned out wherever it didn't ruptured, and fire and shrapnel spewed out of any structural weakness. Doors were ripped from their frame and thrown through the wall on the opposite end while anything near a window how hatch were fried instantly. I managed to get my ass (and everything else) behind a lathe before my insides turned into my outsides, the pressure wave alone felt like I got hit by my own BFG (again) and I couldn't imagine what would have happened if I was out in the open. I laid out on the floor, and waited for what would happen next to happen and the ringing in my ears to stop.

Everything was plunged into darkness, the only light was the hostile glow of molten goop, the basin above pierced through by the reactor going off and it now leaked through the roof in glowy, burning columns. The world was silent, ringing aside, as for a brief everyone still alive were in shock.

Then the red emergency lights turned on, revealed the full extent of the damage, and chaos broke out.

A war cry went out along the convicted as they realized the vicious blow done to their prison. Those that had previously been put to work at the machinery now found themselves in far more equal levels to their oppressors and charged the guards that survived the explosion with whatever they could salvage as weapons. Those still locked up took this four lane underpass of opportunity to slip or break out, and the stormtroopers found themselves under a wave of angry rabble.

I would have been happy to just lie there and wait for everything to cool down so that I could slink to the level below and regroup with the pantyhose patrol, let all my organs to settle back into place and and get over the splitting headache. But unfortunately the later wasn't to happen, as beside from the riot above me I could hear the grinding of gears inside the walls like a poorly tuned engine about to rattle itself apart. That was bad enough when you're trying to sleep off a hangover in the maintenance hanger, but what in the Hell made that racket.

In an instant I realized that the movement meant that something still powered the machinery hidden inside the walls.

I barely had enough time to get to a sitting position before the walls and floor itself turned into a violent storm of mechanical arms and tools. The wall panels shot out of their place, prisoners and machinery were crushed under the weight and velocity of the arms. Even the storm troopers weren't spared, ground into the floor as the walls indiscriminately smashed and swiped at anything in reach.

I was almost a bloody pancake when the wall closest to me tried to flatten me across remains of the wood burner's hull. I climbed up the lathe I used as covers a seconds ago, and when the servo arm threw itself at me I vaulted over it. The landing was sloppy, I landed on my bad leg and tumbled to the floor with a jolt of hot pain down my already jostled bones. It was a temporary annoyance, as I got back up, told myself that pain was just weakness leaving the body, and looked back to the core. The reactor had been barricaded and between the cracks I could see the whirl of massive tools cut and weld parts pulled up from out of the floor. It was rebuilding the entire reactor.

I wasn't about to let that happen.

My mind slapped back to the briefing room. If the AI was controlling the automatons, then it may very well had it's own separate power source so that it could repair the main power grid should it fail as back up. It was not enough to take out the reactor, I needed to send that computer sky high as well before it undid all the damage of gone through. Not too mad, just a slight hiccup, get another chance to blow everything up.

And it gave me a VERY big hole to get to it. Behind the walls were the maintenance tunnels, and from there, I could get to it.

I jumped in through gap left by the servo arm, where I found underneath was a massive drop into the space between floors, crisscrossed rails made to transport material where needed, now held still by the reactor's destruction. And down not too far was a catwalk that should lead me to the core. I jabbed a stimm into my neck, felt pain wash away and replaced with chemical energy, the combat drugs would keep me going for a little longer.

With the arms frozen in place they made for convenient platforms down to the catwalk, and from there I sprinted down to where I figured the center to be. It was a long distance through the void, nothing but frozen machines for scenery, but at the end was the wall that separated the core from the rest of the prison, a final protection against invaders. And the door was wide open.

It was a trap. An obvious trap, as obvious an obvious trap could obviously get. The door would shut as soon

And I was going to jump right into it. Because the best way to break a trap was to set it off on your own terms.

I walked in with the rocket launcher in my hands, a cautious sweep revealed nothing blatantly hostile, and I walked in. The room had columns of servers stacked up to the ceilings, wires coiled around everything in bundles that let to a center cylinder that contained a liquid of some sort withing, some movement seen through the armor plates that surrounded it. The door closed behind me, as expected, and a voice played over the PA system.

"So you are the rat who's walked into my maze" The voice made no attempt to hide it's origin as mechanical, but unlike my previous run ins with AIs this one made no attempt to be user friendly. it sounded almost like a meat grinder someone stuck a motherboard through, neither masculine or feminine sounding but just words forced through the universe's angriest speak 'n' spell. "It is admirable that you have gotten this close, but you will not get any farther"

From the ceiling turrets revealed themselves, each armed with two miniguns slowly whirling and aimed right at me.

"The Empire's secrets stay here"

"Or I can just shoot you to death from over what"

"Wait, wha-" and I answered back with a rocket fired straight at the core. Rocket fuel burned light a a flare in the night as the projectile traveled down the barrel of the launcher, an otherwise unassuming and perhaps even underwhelming weapon to look at and hear yet packed a dangerous payload. The shot picked up speed as it traveled closer and closer to it's target until it slammed into the armor and exploded with a forced that rended the metal into shards and the resulting shrapnel turned the electronics under it to shreds.

A electric scream pierced the air, and a moment later another explosion when off as something crashed through the plates from inside the core. I couldn't see what it was, but it had no problem with the containment wall and punched a hole through it, then only the sounds of more metal on metal violence of it's retreat. Then more explosions as the core broke down in a violent matter.

"Whelp, that's someone else's problem" No point sticking around to solve that mystery I decided, turned around and just kicked down the door and went back to where I came from.

Now I can rally with the others and finally work on escape from this far too familiar hellhole.