The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 04: The Beginning of the End

Watts gasped awake, sitting straight up in his bed.

"What is it?" Fletcher asked from somewhere nearby. "What's wrong?"

He gasped again and snapped his gaze right and down. She was propped up on one elbow, looking up at him, then around the surrounding environment.

"...nightmare," he managed as he realized that he was fine. "Sorry."

She reached up and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pulling him back down. Reluctantly, he laid down, and she moved against him beneath the blankets. "It's okay," she said, wrapping an arm around his chest and holding him close. "I understand. I get them, too. You've been taking your Insomnium, right?"

"Yeah," he replied, his pulse dropping back down to something more manageable.

"Do you remember the nightmare?"

"...no, I don't," he murmured.

"I usually don't remember them now, either."

They laid there in silence for a few minutes more. He didn't remember the nightmare, only the emotions that it had left him with. Chief among them being stark, yammering terror that jettisoned all other thoughts.

Watts finally looked over at his clock. Only a few minutes before his alarm went off. He reached over and killed it, then laid back and stared at the ceiling. The drugs seemed to be helping, because already he was beginning to feel better. Or maybe it was Fletcher. He glanced over at her. She'd stayed with him all through the night.

"Why did you leave, the night before last?" he asked suddenly. He'd meant to ask her but kept forgetting all of yesterday.

"Sorry about that," she replied. "I kind of...I don't know, really. Panicked, I guess? I know I came on strong and confident but it's actually been a little while since I've been with anyone, even in a one-night-stand capacity. I thought...I didn't know what I was thinking. Sorry."

"It's fine, I'm just glad you came back. You're really awesome."

She laughed. "What a ringing endorsement." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Come on, we need to get up, brush our teeth, shower, all that crap. And since we missed out on it yesterday, I'm totally willing to have wake-up sex with you."

Watts grinned. "You've just been upgraded from awesome to excellent."

* * *

"Hurry up, okay?" Fletcher asked.

"I will," Watts promised.

He slipped into the infirmary. After he'd heard a couple of Marines talking about Murphy being locked up in a nearby infirmary, instead of the brig, he knew he had to take the chance. Because he just had to know.

There was no one around.

Quickly moving between some examination tables, he opened a door at the back of the room and went inside. Here was a corridor and alongside it were patient rooms. A couple of them were made of tough material to hold more unruly patients. There was no one around here, either, no guards or doctors.

Watts thought it was strange, but he'd seen an odd trend lately in Command Control. Everyone was getting busier. Too much was happening. There'd been a couple of rumors of disappearing personnel. Not from teams going into the other world, but here in the base. And there were also rumors of people snapping, going crazy. And then there were all the power outages that had the technical staff overworked and frustrated.

So when he found Murphy, locked up in a patient room, it was just the two of them.

"Murphy," Watts whispered, looking around again. "Murphy, what happened with you and Wilson?" he asked.