by Warhammer
‘Those creatures were not of the red world.’
‘I didn’t say they were Martian.’
‘And what are you saying then?’
‘What were you investigating?’
‘I told you, my memory–’
‘Partial retrograde amnesia does not impede your intellect or deductive capacity, inquisitor.’
Despite herself, Morgravia was actually starting to like the Broker, which had to mean they were really in trouble.
‘A cult. It has to be.’
‘Hereteks,’ the Broker confirmed. ‘Renegade magi who rebel against the strictures of the Mechanicus in the pursuit of dark science and proscribed fields of study.’
Morgravia nodded.
‘Such creatures do not simply appear at a whim,’ the Broker went on. ‘There is a design in this.’
A shrug, as Morgravia made a surprised expression. ‘Have you ever considered the ordos?’
The Broker’s contemptuous narrowing of the eyes answered for her. ‘What is the cause of all this?’ she asked.
‘Of the plague?’
The Broker scowled. ‘Yes, the plague. Have you considered that? I have. I observe behaviour. I judge. Theorise. Connect. It is how I have survived this long, though not without injury.’ She held up her augmetic arms to emphasise the point and intimate a dark episode in her history. ‘It is not biological in origin. The singer, the one in black from the bar, has been bitten. This is not the causal element of the plague. Her symptoms are consistent with mild blood poisoning.’
Morgravia’s eyes narrowed, intrigued. ‘And why do you say that?’
‘Consider the rapidity of contagion. Propagation and saturation.’
‘As if someone had flipped a lever, infecting large masses at once.’
‘Precisely.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘Exactly what I have said.’
‘A switch, is that it? You think a psyker is pulling strings?’
The Broker stiffened at the term but gave no other outward reaction. Perhaps a witch had taken her arms. ‘Have you encountered many psykers who could subjugate a population?’
‘If I could remember, I’d tell you,’ replied Morgravia, somewhat bitterly.
‘What about a psyker powerful enough to alter the mental architecture of the populace of an entire city and send it rabid? Or do you think it is faith that Low Sink is lacking? Is it a grand manifestation of Ruin, of the will of the Dark Gods and we its mere playthings?’ the Broker sneered. ‘You don’t believe any of that.’
‘Say I don’t. Where does that leave us?’
‘Us?’
‘Survival now depends on our ability to work together, so, yes, us.’
‘I felt it, didn’t you? The pain, like a headache only more invasive.’
‘We’re back to mental manipulation again.’
‘Yes, we are, but not through psychic means. I think this is something else. A frequency, one specifically attuned to the human populace of the hive, and designed to elicit aberrant behaviour.’
‘Like a canine will howl if it hears the appropriate pitch?’
‘Reductive, but yes.’
‘Doesn’t turn the canine rabidly cannibalistic though.’
‘As I said, your example is reductive, crude. This frequency is of a much more sophisticated nature.’
‘How? Why?’
‘Isn’t that where your profession comes in?’
‘Helpful as ever. See, sarcasm does suit me. Are we done here?’
The Broker seemed to consider it, as if deciding whether killing Morgravia would advantage her more or less in the long run.
‘He made his choice,’ said the inquisitor softly. ‘He chose to save you.’
‘Yes. Yes, he did.’
At this admission, the tension bled away and Morgravia retrieved her weapons. ‘Help me with this,’ she said, indicating the flak-weave. Arkyle was still on the loose somewhere, doing Throne knows what. He had to be herded, questioned, possibly sanctioned. He might have answers, given willingly or otherwise. Light might be shed on the theory of the frequency, the signal that had turned human beings into the pallid.
But then the vox crackled, and upon hearing Barak’s voice she knew it was too late for any of that.
Chapter XIX
Red ribbons
He waited at the gate, drenched in darkness as most of the lights had cut out. Those that lit the cells had been doused. Even in the shadows, the scribe looked a pitiable figure. His robes were torn and edged with dirt, his wasted body depleted by hunger and fear. He was weak. Barak had seen plenty of men like him in Hallow’s End. Meek but cruel. He would have sacrificed everything and everyone to save his own skin. And now? That desperation looked about ready to break him.
‘Arkyle,’ Barak called. He’d overhead Drover use the name, and hoped he hadn’t misheard.
The scribe turned a fraction, confirming it. He looked pale, like an exsanguinated corpse. Cadaver white with red-ringed eyes.
‘Arkyle…’ he repeated, and began to walk the corridor, ‘it’s all right. Easy to get lost in this old place.’ Barak’s guns were holstered, his hands up and palms showing, though he kept the pistol loose in its holster. He prayed the sweat didn’t give away his anxiety. His entire back was wet with it, his shirt dragging at his slick body. He was wire-taut, close to snapping. As soon as he’d seen that Jana was all right, he’d left her and Maela in the med-bay and told them to stay there and seal the door. To not let anyone in, unless it was him or Morgravia. Hurrying down to the sub-basement had left him a little breathless. In his haste, he’d forgotten he had the vox. Taking care not to make any sudden moves, edging one step after another, he flicked the audio switch to transmit and clenched the button.
The scribe didn’t react or show much awareness of anything at all, which was either good or really, really bad.
‘Arkyle, what are you doing here in the sub-basement,’ he said. ‘Nothing down here but old records and machine parts.’ Still walking, Barak paused to lick his lips. ‘Come away from the gate, son.’
Twenty feet of grimy, whitewashed corridor stood between them. The dried blood was patchy and black as pitch. A killing place.
‘I can’t…’ rasped Arkyle, then in a sobbing voice, ‘I’m sorry… it’s already too late.’
The low lumes flickered overhead, the scribe shrinking from their sodium glow as they flared and revealed that the gate was already open. Barak felt his mouth dry up like an ash desert.
‘Oh shit…’
Rank upon rank of the pallid stood on crooked limbs, dishevelled and emaciated. Gangers, low-life scum, enforcers; all and sundry stood behind the opening of the gate. Waiting. They stared dully out into the corridor.
Barak froze, torn between the urge to cross the last twenty feet and shut the gate or to run like hell.
In the end, the pallid chose for him.
They came awake as one, as if a spark had been lit, provoking sudden and violent ignition.
Turning on his heel, Barak fled. His last sight of the cells was of Arkyle, swept up by the onset of the horde. He simply vanished, absorbed into the mass. His screams only lasted a few seconds before being swallowed up too. As he released the transmit button on the vox, Morgravia’s voice came through.
‘…Barak, answer me! What the hell is happening?’
‘They’re coming.’
He slammed into the corner, jolting his elbow and nearly dropping his gun as he hit the stairs.
‘Who’s coming? We’re headed down to the sub-basement.’
‘Stay away. It’s the pallid… A shitload, right behind me.’
He fired off a shot over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the onrushing horde, skittering around the corner after him, bodies slamming into bodies in their
haste. A few were crushed, red smears lapping up the wall. Limbs tangled with each other in a disorganised scrum. Others clambered, bestial and urgent. A host of dead faces glared, withered and cadaverous. And the hunger. That awful, insatiable hunger. They had shambled at first, tight limbs finding their rhythm. Momentum threw them on like a tidal surge. Flesh, and tooth, and nail. Clawing and snarling.
Another shot. Barak couldn’t miss.
‘Med-bay…’ he gasped, heart hammering, face burning with effort. Another flight of stairs behind him, the pallid unrelenting. ‘Jana.’
‘We’ll get her,’ said Morgravia.
A third flight. Barak neared the landing to the first floor. There was door with a slide bolt. It was sturdy.
‘Kharata…’ he said, hoofing three steps at a time. Needles in his chest. Something grasped at his trouser leg but scraped cloth, then air. Fabric tore. He redoubled his efforts. More pain. He could hardly breathe. Black spots began to crowd his vision. ‘He’s gone,’ he rasped.
He reached the landing, arm outstretched for the door. Grasping it, he felt a sharp tug on his back and then he was falling. He didn’t fall far, just a couple of steps. Instinct pumped the trigger of his pistol. Three pallid lurched back, their skulls blasted outwards. Gory matter sprayed. Then came agony. Hot and bright and spiced by primordial terror. Barak kicked, felt his boot hit, a jaw yield then break. His arm came back shredded, ugly teeth marks in his flesh and blood spewing. He crawled backwards, the three pallid he had killed impeding the rest, a corpse barricade plugging up the tight corridor. The fourth had recovered, its rancid jaw hanging like a snapped hinge as it leapt and raked Barak with its claws. Skin came away in ribbons, Barak’s chest a crimson mess. He threw a punch, wrenched off the jaw completely. His gun was pressed against his body but he fired it anyway. The burst took out a chunk of the pallid’s torso: shattered rib bone dripped with gore, the cavity limned in red. He got a knee up, fighting to stay awake, to stop from passing out from the pain. He managed to extend his leg, pushing the pallid back, holding it at bay as it frantically clawed the air. Then it started scratching at Barak’s leg, and he roared.
Cold static fizzing through the vox. Black and red in his eyes.
He had led a violent life, at least at first. He had expected a violent end. A ganger’s knife. An angry patron’s bullet. Dead in an alley. Killed in his own bar.
Not this, not this way. Oh Throne, please not like this.
A bullet took the pallid in the eye, punched it back. A spray of lead followed, whipping through the horde, pinpoint and deadly. Over in seconds, it felt like minutes. The bodies jammed up the rest. Barak felt a hand grip his collar, and for a moment feared one of the bastards had got behind him.
‘You’ve been in tighter binds than this, I’d wager,’ said Drover, the labour in his voice betraying the aura of easy charm. ‘Get up, lawman. On your feet.’
They reached the door, Barak in an agonised fugue, vaguely aware of the gunslinger hauling his sorry carcass back up the stairs and through to the first floor. As soon as they were clear, Drover slammed the way behind them shut, wrenching across the deadbolt.
Drover whipped off his belt to employ as a tourniquet on Barak’s arm. Then he smiled, breathless and blood-flecked.
‘I suggest we get gone.’
Barak nodded. ‘I can stand,’ he said. The wounds to his leg and chest were painful but not so bad he couldn’t move. His arm hung by his side though, and he’d need to get it patched up sooner rather than later. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass.
Fevered scratching sounded at the door, the hinges immediately bulging against a sudden pressure from the other side.
Drover slammed a fresh clip in both autopistols. Evidently, he had reached the ammunition store after all. ‘I’ll save your hide but I ain’t carrying you, lawman.’
Barak bit back his pain. A feverish sweat lathered his body. He felt heavy, unsteady.
‘You won’t need to,’ he growled, wavering.
And then collapsed.
Chapter XX
Bind the wound
The lights flickered overhead, casting strange shadows through the dingy precinct. Morgravia held her pistol in front and trained it on every doorway, every alcove. Cold sweat dappled the back of her neck. Her mind wandered, and she fought to remain focused.
A frequency, the Broker had said. A signal that overrode human behaviour and turned it abnormal. Morgravia’s thoughts returned to what she had seen in the mirror. Every spasm of the sodium lamps provoked an image in her mind. Replayed over and over. The eye. The focusing lenses. A traitor in her own skin. A foreign object embedded in her flesh. And no memory of it. Not merely a piece to excise, but an actual replacement. It was both invasion and absence in one. She smelled blood, felt bullet casings crushed underfoot. A frantic buzzing filled her ears, a swarm of cognitive dissonance threatening to engulf her.
The red dream began to encroach…
cutting scything peeling back the layers red bone cracking cold metal blood stench pain two red suns looming closing…
She shut it off, closing her eyes and murmuring a benediction to anchor herself to the present as she felt herself slipping.
The Emperor is my shield, and I His will made manifest…
Here, now. That’s what mattered. The rest would have to come later. Like gauze wrapped around a split in her psyche, she’d keep it tight, hold back the blood, so she could keep moving. Bind the wound. Keep going. She had to.
The precinct swam back, like the reality of the world rushing in after breaching the surface of the ocean. So did the situation at hand. Barak had seen them. They were here. The pallid. And they were coming. He might very well already be dead. Drover too.
‘You look unwell.’
Morgravia opened her eyes as she heard the voice beside her. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m lying.’
‘Then what is it?’ She sounded irritated.
Morgravia stopped and turned to face the Broker. ‘Have you ever felt pain in your dreams? Pain so vivid it felt real? I have. I wake from them with remembered agony and I don’t know why. I am cut and bleeding, my flesh is sundered and split. There is heat then cold. I look upon my skin and I don’t recognise it. I see a face whose features I don’t trust. I am a foreign presence inhabiting my own body. I need my mind restored. I think I might turn insane without it.’
‘And I need a ship that will take me off-world.’
‘And I ask again, why?’
The Broker would not answer.
‘And so you see,’ said Morgravia, ‘everyone has their secrets. The difference is mine are even secret from me.’
‘I heard the vox,’ said the Broker. ‘We need to leave. They might both be dead.’
‘Thought had occurred. In any case, we are leaving.’
She carried on walking. The med-bay was close, just a few more turns.
‘I mean you and I,’ said the Broker. ‘Right now.’
‘I swore an oath.’
‘I have no wish to die a heroic death for strangers.’
‘You think of Drover as a stranger?’
‘I believe the word you used was hireling. That’s accurate. I needed a gun, he provided one. Our relationship is purely transactional.’
‘And yet you trusted him with the Empath.’
‘Did I?’
Morgravia scowled. ‘More lies? It appears you trade in them too.’
‘I do,’ the Broker said brazenly. ‘You would know. I saw it in your eyes, as you looked in the mirror.’
A spike of sudden anxiety had Morgravia’s heart thundering. Ever since that moment in the barrack room, an itch had begun to irritate her, something deep within the flesh. A sense of unease nested inside her, spreading like a contagion, consuming her thoughts. She sto
pped to regard the Broker.
‘What did you see exactly?’
‘Only that you are hiding something. And this is a secret you do know.’ The Broker paused, considering her for a moment, the two of them standing in the flicking half-light in the industrial grime of the abandoned precinct. ‘I’ll give you the Empath,’ said the Broker in a quiet voice. ‘Get me out of the low-hive and I’ll honour the bargain we struck. You have my oath.’
‘How do I even know she is alive?’
‘She is alive. I would know if she was not.’
‘And what if I need to know what’s in my head to get us out?’
‘Then,’ said the Broker, her expression one of grim resignation, ‘we are both destined for disappointment.’
Morgravia sighed and trudged on. Soon enough, they reached the med-bay.
Jana had been patched up, and a tight if slightly yellowed bandage bound her lower leg. She perched on the edge of a low bunk, still frail, but her skin had lost its waxy sheen and ashen pallor. An empty vial of pain suppressors sat within her reach. Maela stood nearby rinsing medicae tools in a basin.
‘Where is Barak?’ Jana demanded.
‘He’s coming,’ said Morgravia. ‘Can you move?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good, because we can’t stay.’
‘Not leaving without Barak,’ said Jana, and shrugged herself off the bunk. She landed gingerly but straightened as she looked Morgravia in the eye. ‘I’ll find him alone if I have to.’
Morgravia swore under her breath.
‘You know what I am?’ asked the inquisitor.
‘I don’t care. I’m not asking you to come with me, I’m telling you I am going to get my husband.’
Morgravia applauded her fearlessness. Not many ordinary Imperial citizens would dare to speak to an inquisitor in that way. Fharkoum’s indolence and arrogance were inbred and fuelled by a sense of entitlement; Jana’s bravery came from an entirely more decent place.
‘And you?’ she asked Maela.
