Doom-mates - Kidnapped

Mellideth clutched her coffee mug tightly. “I’m sure it’s nothing, you know she’d been talking about taking a few days off.”

“But she was slated to help Richardson with the report today! And she’s been gone all week!” Replied Zethorel, who’s eye darted around nervously. “No emails from her, no notes, I’ve checked with HR and they don’t have ANY info on how to get in contact with her! Something’s going on!”

Mel placed a reassuring hand on her Cacodemon Coworker’s shoulder. “Zethorel, we’re not on the other side anymore. We don’t need to be afraid for our lives anymore. I’m sure Sandy will be back next week like nothing ever happened. Just, don’t worry, okay?”

Zeth nodded, but her eye betrayed how little she believed Zeth’s reassurances.

After that awkward coffee break, Mel went back to her office. She still had a whole stack of submitted designs to look over.

She passed by K’luth’s office, and saw it was empty. Her desk barren. Odd. She had met her this morning, she had a huge report to file today, they even joked about how she’d be stuck her after closing.

…Maybe she just wen to do an errand and kept the file with her for safekeeping. Yeah. Perfectly reasonable explanation.

She passed by a janitor and his cart just before entering her office. He nodded as she walked by, and she did the same. There was something so new about passive, polite greetings like that. So refreshing.

Mel sighed as she sat in her desk, looking over the stack of graphic design submissions. The Imp  cracked her knuckles and got to work.

+++++++

Ugh. So. Many. Awful designs. Her eyes were already starting to tired. How long had it been since she-

*knock knock*

It was the janitor, coming in to empty out the trashbin.

She scooted back and pulled out the thing to be helpful.

As she looked over the looming tower of remaining files, a single thought passed through her head.

“Isn’t the janitor on this floor usually a posessed?”

She wasn’t able to think anything more as a foul smelling rag was shoved into her face.

+++++++++++

She awoke sore, head pounding. There was this awful smell that reminded her too much of “home”. And loud grinding, pounding, CHURNING noise. And… sobbing?

Her eyes shot open, and she took in her surroundings.

She was in a cage. Outside was some random warehouse or. or storage room or SOMETHING big. But there was a cobbled together computer set up, and a lot of medical equipment. The gurney in the middle of the room was stained with blood.

There were markings everywhere. Dark rituals, OLD rituals. And… and there was a portal. Some massive machine had been dragged in here, generating the energies necessary to open a portal between the realms. It wasn’t “open” yet, just a big orange circle in the air.

Mel’s breath grew sharp and panicked as she looked around. Her cage was one in a big row. In the cell to her right, a cacodemon bound and weighed down to keep from floating to the top.

“…Kl’uth.” Whispered Mel hoarsely. To her left, was a bruiser, kneeling on the ground and clutching her head. Her screen was cracked and displaying static.

What was going on? What the FUCK was going on?!

Then her kidnappers walked into view. Five of them. The one as a janitor took of his cap, revealing his bald head covered in demonic writing. His eyes shone with a pale madness. All of their eyes did.

The one who looked to be the leader stepped forward. His lab coat was stained red with blood. “REJOICE, PITIFUL TRAITORS!” He shouted. Another cultist was lifting up a ring of keys.

“Our ritual nears its completion! No longer shall your cowardly betrayal of Hell be a blight upon his eyes! We shall tear open the barriers, and show these usurpers who is the true master of this world and all others!”

They opened the cage and dragged out a hell knight, clasping a heavy weight onto her legs to keep her from running. She spitted black curses at them while they drew out a massive syringe and shoved it into her, drawing out a huge amount of blood. She was already weak, and now her struggles were pathetically limp. She cried like a whelpling as they shoved her back into her cage.

“We are merciful. We shall keep you alive as your blood is used to weaken the barriers, so that your eyes so blinded by the coddling of this -weak- society may gaze upon his glory one final time! You shall see we chosen few ascend in his eyes, and be true masters of infernal power!”

They came for her now. She fought them, but her arms wouldn’t move right. The drug still had its grip on her. They clasped the shackles on her, and dragged her over to the gurney.

“So what did the Icon promise you? You honestly think he’ll keep his end of the deal?” She spat, trying to do SOMETHING to hurt them. “We LOVED deceiving you with promises of power.”

He laughed, way too long, way too loudly. “THE ICON?! Oh child, hehehehehaaa, The Icon is weak. He is nothing but a shadow of his former glory, and he has failed to keep hell in order, allowing so many of his subjects to flee his rule, to become fat sow for the humans to deceive with their pathetic, wasteful ways.”

The leader drew a dagger, gnarled and stained with ritual blood. “We serve a new master. One who has CLAIMED the power of hell, and shall show us the way to follow in his stead!”

She struggled against her bonds. If she had any strength at all, she was going to do whatever she could to stop this. She couldn’t let everything her people had done, the humiliation of begging for safety, the complete abandonment of their old blood thirst, go to waste because of a few mad humans.

“Your vim is admirable child. It is a shame you have so let it go to waste, sitting like a worm in their offices. They believed they could be MASTERS of hells power, to suck at the teats of our masters like a parasite and build an empire upon it! But now they shall see there is always a price.”

He raised the dagger, and it gleamed in the light of the unopened portal.  “AND THEY SHALL ALL PAY FOR THEIR SINS!”

Before anything, she felt the splatter of blood on her face. The world froze, and she saw his eyes boring into her.

His hands had been blown clean off his arms.

The portal was open.

The barrel of a gun was sticking out.

And then… HE stepped foward.

The brief feeling of hope in Mel was snuffed out as she looked into the impassive helmeted gaze of the Slayer. The Bringer of Death, He Who’s Blade Had Cleft Hell in Twain. The mark of the Night Sentinals emblazoned upon his brow.

Tears fell freely down her face as she realized this was it. This was the day she died. And so would K’lurth and Zethorel and every other demon she knew and loved. It would be swift and terrible and it would be the END.

The cultist closest to the portal screamed madly and ran forward with another knife. The Slayer blew him away with a single shot. More cultists appeared from the shadows, with stolen UAC machine guns, firing madly.

He moved ahead of their line of fire with terrifying speed. He leapt and tackled one, tearing off his arms and commandeering his weapon. He fired at the others, their heads popping open like little fireworks.

The legends of his wrath true. Oh Icon they were -all- true.

The leader, swinging his stumps with desperation, screamed in some ancient tongue, and the sigils around them began to glow. The Doom Marine just punched him the face and sent him flying into a wall.

The cultists were dead. Their bodies staining the ground. And The Slayer turned to face her.

She began to hyperventilating. Whispering pleas for mercy to whatever deity would be willing to take pity on her. He certainly would not.

‘Just let it be quick.’ she prayed, ‘Just let it be quick for everyone please.’

He stepped forward, but jsolated as buckshot collided against the back of his armor. One cultist remained, wielding a shotgun, firing at the Slayer over and over.

The Doomslayer turned and faced him. The gunfire was nothing but a mild breeze to him. He stepped foward, slowly.

“YOU THINK YOU HAVE WON SLAYER!? YOU THINK YOU CAN EVER WIN?! HELL IS ETERNAL! OUR MASTER HAS SHOWN US! THE MALADICT SHALL RISE AND BURN ALL TO CINDERS! I HAVE SEEN IT WITH THESE EYES!”

The Slayer knocked the gun out of his hands with a single angry swipe, then grabbed his head. Mel watched as he pressed his thumbs into the cultist’s sockets, heard as the madman screamed in bloody agony until his skull crunched loudly, and the slayer dropped him to the ground.

The slayer turned towards her again, then looked at his hands and brushed them quickly against his legs to wipe away the blood and brain matter.

“Please… please please please please…” She was beyond fear now. He crept closer and closer, then raised his gun.

She shut her eyes, dreading the end.

*BANG*.

She opened her eyes. The chain binging her legs had been blown apart. Suddenly he was on her, tearing open the bindings of the gurney with his bare hands. Roughly, but not spitefully, he pushed her off.

She stumbled to the floor, brain completely frozen with shock. He moved over to the pile of dead men, searching through the corpses for something.

This didn’t make sense. She should be dead. Was he saving her for later? No, he never bothered with that. His vengeance was swift and immediate. He never took the time to torment, to interrogate, to hesitate. He killed. He WAS the act of killing.

“Why…” She choked, mustering the strength to speak. “Why did you spare me?”

He turned back to look at her. Light reflecting against his helmet, obscuring any possible look at his real face.

With a voice coming from a throat scorched by the heat of hell, driven hoarse by screams of fury unending, solid and unyielding as stone, he spoke.

“I don’t shoot civilians.”

He threw something that landed right in front of her. It was a ring of keys.

With that he stood upright, and walked back to the portal. He looked back one last time at her, and spoke again.

“Stay out of trouble.”

And he was gone.

++++++++++++++

It had been some days after that. She and all her fellow victims were on paid leave, and were all offered free counseling to help overcome the trauma. A massive company-wide investigation had been undertaken, and everyone who had a connection to the conspiracy was rounded up, and then disappeared by the company.

No one could confirm it, but the rumor spreading around was that the cult leader had survived, and Saldana himself had personally tossed him into a lazarus field generator and turned him into a possessed, then had the zombie altered into a company sex-toy.

No one would ever admit to it, but you’d sometimes hear people from the upper floors commenting on the quality of one particular Recreational-Assistant possessed, who could do great things with just her mouth, not hindered at all by the lack of hands.

Mel just was glad to be home, her real home, on mars, in her apartment with her plants and her classical music. Parts of her believed she had dreamed the encounter with the Doom Slayer, that it was just a hallucination pasted over the security team that had come to mop up the mess half an hour later.

But either way, she was grateful. Grateful for the life she still had. She had finally made love with the human girl she had skirted around admitting to liking, and immediately settled on it being a relationship. She couldn’t dare let life slip her by.

He had saved her. Had saved everyone. She would never dare be ungrateful in that way.

And she sure as hell would stay out of trouble.