Albrek stares at Iacton for a long time, taking the measure of the man and if the words he speaks are truth. It is not the first time the assassin has been on the receiving end of such a look today. The acolyte does not avert his gaze for a long time, but when he does, he seems satisfied. Looking to Savalos, he chuckles to himself.
"I believe him. I don't know why I should, after today, but I believe him."
"I believe him. I don't know why I should, after today, but I believe him."
"I take everything like a grain of salt. Exspecially after today." Looking over toward Iacton. "I don't warm quickly to most, but you've had my back a few times already. So your word has weight with me. Don't give me cause to think otherwise."
"Other than Leprade, do we have any other leads?"
"I take everything like a grain of salt. Exspecially after today." Looking over toward Iacton. "I don't warm quickly to most, but you've had my back a few times already. So your word has weight with me. Don't give me cause to think otherwise."
"We both do the Emperor's will. Why would I have reason to deceive you?"
"Other than Leprade, do we have any other leads?"
"The guardsmen from the penal legions who attacked us. The same group that took Krade, if Savalos is right."
"I take everything like a grain of salt. Exspecially after today." Looking over toward Iacton. "I don't warm quickly to most, but you've had my back a few times already. So your word has weight with me. Don't give me cause to think otherwise.""We both do the Emperor's will. Why would I have reason to deceive you?"
I sigh realizing Iacton didn't understand my words.
"What I was saying is that I don't have a trusting nature. You learn to be wary when your from the Underhive."
"Basically you have my trust so far. Don't screw it up."
Over the course of the next few hours, the acolytes sequestered in the small room, along with Krade's agents, debate and discuss their various plans and stratagems to continue their investigations into the interrogator's kidnapping. The irony that all of this conversation about their convoluted situation occurs in a medicae asylum-ward buried half-a-hundred of meters or more below the streets of Vaxus district is a salient detail not lost on anyone sitting around the padded table.
The dialogue does not end until the corporeal limitations imposed on even the unflagging endurance of inquisitorial agents is wholly evident. In short, even your 'third wind' has been exhausted at this juncture, and with bleary-eyed fatigue, you make your way to your respective hospital beds to take some much needed, and much deserved rest. The tech-priest offers to take the first watch over your well-secured prisoners, Ivaanov apparently not feeling the full measure of the weariness you all feel. Whether as a result of his biomechanical body or the advantage of having fortuitously avoided the exposure the others had to the horrors of the warp this day, you cannot say. Either way, you are all grateful for his decision to stand sentinel, as none of you can say you would truly have been able to do so. Before everyone leaves, the tech-priest rifles through his small portmanteau and pulls out the ponderous copy of the Corpus Presidium Calixis, Krade's legal tome containing the hidden pict-corder with the footage of his abduction. He hands it without a word to Savalos. In a way, he seems grateful to be rid of the burdensome book and the unholy secrets festering in the holo-plates of its hidden camera.
Johnnie moves to his own private corner as he rehearses in his mind the things he will do....
Yes I do, while everything is still fresh in my mind. If I am too distracted from fatigue I will watch it again when I awake.
Even though I am more rested than the others, I will still go to relax and sleep if possible.
Johnnie takes a swig of amasec from his flask, when no one is looking. Unfortunately, the damn thing is empty. He'll just have refill tomorrow.
His hands start shaking and he hides them in his pockets.
Iacton soon falls into a deep sleep.
As the others retire to their separate rooms, Savalos takes the heavy book from the tech-priest's long-fingered hands. Ivaanov then spins around silently in the padded chair, pulling back his crimson hood before steepling his hands together on the table, focusing his undivided attention toward the two secure rooms at the far side of the asylum-ward that hold your captives. Savalos stares at the pale, withered flesh on the back of the tech-priest's wrinkled skull for a moment, noting the cables and extrusions of metal and conduit.
Something.
Something had changed about Ivaanov since they arrived in the strange underground complex beneath the Gear Box.
As if sensing this scrutiny, despite his back being turned to the ganger, the tech-priest's vox warbles into life again, its tone matter of fact, flat and emotionless.
"In my analysis of the pict-corder, I happened upon another fragment of footage that might be of interest to you, Savalos Thul. You may depress key preset number three if you wish to watch it."
Closing the door behind him, Savalos places the holo pict-corder upon the firm matress of the hospital bed, his finger wavering over the small control panel on its spine. Two numbered key-runes are lit, the first, undoubtedly containing the events from Krade's abduction, and the third, with the footage that Ivaanov indicated.
Rico collapses on his bed, his hands still shaking in the pockets of the his still grimy clothing. Removing them, he stares them into steady submission, picking up the flask from beside him. He holds the empty flask of amasec above his head, looking into the circular neck of the flask, peering into the black opening wishing there was more, just a sip to calm his nerves. The utter blackness is deep enough to fall into, utter, absolute...
Johnnie pulls the flask down to his side again, exhaling a ragged breath, his mind drawn back, unbidden, to the revelation he perceived in the consuming nullity of the Void, as it folded in on itself, banishing the daemon from the accursed chapel.
He has enough time to think that in spite of his bone-numbing exhaustion, he will not find sleep. His last thought before his heavy-lidded eyes close shut and blessedly dreamless slumber overtakes him, is of Quincus.
Closing the door behind him, Savalos places the holo pict-corder upon the firm matress of the hospital bed, his finger wavering over the small control panel on its spine. Two numbered key-runes are lit, the first, undoubtedly containing the events from Krade's abduction, and the third, with the footage that Ivaanov indicated.
I will watch the new footage first. Something nagging at me by the timing of Ivaanov finding the new piece. Then I will watch the video of Krades Abduction.
Iacton lifts his numb leg, clad in the medicae brace, up on to the bed as he lays down, hissing out through his teeth with this effort. He stares up at the pristine white ceiling, clasping his hands over his chest. The medicae complex is not so different than sleeping on a starship, the comforting white noise of the air handlers, the uniformly constructed layout, and the antiseptic lighting so unlike that organic glow shed by some dirtworlder's star.
As he massages his own mind to a restful state by dint of complex meditative exercises, the sheer fatigue of the day's events slowly overtake him. His hands, coming unclasped, fall to his chest, his left cradling the faint warmth emanating from the plume kept close to his heart, wrapped in the 'kerchief memento he could never part with.
As he plunges into sleep, Iacton, winces, his wounded leg spasms.
A whispered voice, frustratingly indistinct but so like his sisters speaks to his subconscious, repeating to him over and over again, something in a plaintive tone that he cannot make out.
It sounds like a warning.
Uriah closes the door behind him. He then stares at it for long while before turning away and sitting on the edge of the bed. The burden of his responsibilities weigh down upon him even more than the oppressive fatigue he feels. The psyker fears closing his eyes for the visions that will come, but just the same, he can barely keep them open.
Pondering the acolytes next move, questioning his own leadership abilities, and struggling to understand the labyrinthine plot that seems to be unfolding before them, he reclines upon the bed, sighing.
There was something troubling him more than his self-doubt. More even than the baffling complexities of the situation he and the other acolytes find themselves participants in. It terrified him even more so than the disturbing visions that have haunted him since they arrived on this Throne-forsaken world. He dared not speak of it to the others.
It lurked these, nestled in the deep recesses of his mind, scuttling like some unseen parasite in the dark of his psyche, barely even recognized by his own subconscious at times such as these as he drifted off to sleep.
A niggling sensation that all of this was somehow familiar.
He recalls the overpowering aversion he felt to the strange, gleaming indigo feather found in Krade's office.
It was as if he was remembering it from somewhere.
Savalos finally decides, his finger stabbing down on the third rune, watching as the flashing light goes dark and the grayscale image from the holo-picter springs into being on the flat white surface of the hospital bed. The image flickers and re-sizes, shifting perceptibly to adjust for the acolyte's visual angle.
Revealed before him is Krade's office, lit from without by the slanting light cast from Oremor's sun, shining into and through the panoramic diamantine window, casting its prismatic light, discernible even in grayscale, across the floor of the room.
The picter is focused on a tall man with a saturnine visage, clad in the official raiment of a High Arbiter of the Imperial Judicium, green and gold robes draping over his body, regally held in place by baroque clasps denoting his station. He is seated on a high-backed chair of polished wood with traditional Oremite upholstery, the light gleaming in a radiant nimbus around him.
Seated upon his lap, like a forlorn little doll, is the child Maia, her head downcast, her features solemn. Krade raises his hand, and begins brushing her long hair with a slender comb of polished jade, gently, carefully, with all of the love a father has for his only daughter. When Kalaziel's wings unfurl slightly from her back, Savalos blinks, the illusion of the child he once knew so well is dispelled by the appendages of the cherubim servitor. Krade continues to brush her hair for some time, and even though there are no further revelations, and the footage continues for some time, Savalos watches it despite his exhaustion until the interrogator's final, lovingly paternal pass of the comb, the holo finally fading to black.
After this, he watches the pict-cording of Krade's abduction in stony silence. Although his stomach still churns with the ghosts of his previous nausea upon seeing the wretched little filth daemons again, and he looks on in dumbstruck horror as the corpulent thing he knows only as the Prisoner draws Interrogator Krade into the black abyss of the bizarre mirror, he cannot help but remain largely emotionless, so affected is he by the first clip. When the later footage of the Eviscerator making off with the now-dormant mirror concludes, he switches the pict-corder off, closes the heavy book, and settles upon the bed, not knowing what to think.
Eventually, he closes his eyes, and for a time, the confusing world itself fades to black.
As I am falling asleep, I wonder why it feels familiar and the connection of the Indigo Feather, and the Feather of Infinite Possibilities. and All-seeing Eye. Why am I seeing these things? Why...
One by one, the banks of monitors flickered into life, a low, droning buzz and a crackle of static electricity sounding after each screen comes into focus, slowly illuminating the small, gray room in the strident light of their green luminen displays. The larger bank of color, call-up monitors winks into activity above the lower bank of terminals, each display showing a picturesque landscape from beyond the claustrum's mighty walls; staggeringly vast ochre-gold fields of unharvested fungoids awaiting the chitsickle blade, the jade-green Unduzian rice paddies limned with sparkling blue, wind-eddied water from the coastal plantations, expansive herds of braying maulchups ruminating on the severed mycos stalks of the fallow fields, filling their bellies for slaughter while leaving the ground they trod upon ready for future cultivation. The main terminal springs to life next, the triptych screen rapidly filling with task portals and notifications, a running scroll of almost impossible to read text tracing across the bottom in a multi-tiered marquee, listing everything from today's overseer rosters to the inventory for hundreds of shipping invoices and bills of lading. The machine was pre-configured by its primary user to function as a virtual data-loom, a master's mainframe to collect, collate, and analyze terabytes of data processed through it every hour of every day.
This man now sits in an overstuffed office chair, its green leather upholstery torn in places, the edges of the rips sharp enough to cut (something he knows from experience), tufts of the tan colored stuffing protruding like the fine hairs of some sedentary insect. The chair is worn into the comfortable shape of the body of the man who sits in it for upwards of sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for much of the last several years. He sits there now, his bleary eyes not drawn to the magnificent landscapes of the wide screens above his head, or to the grimly lit interiors of the prison complex cameras and their constantly scrutinized cell-blocks, or even to the powerful terminal directly in front of his face. No, his eyes stare blankly at the small, brown, ring-shaped stain on the console counter to his left hand side. It is as much a permanent fixture here as the man himself, and this early morning (and are they not all early mornings in clockwork prison, he thinks?) he is hypnotized by it. He exhales a low, heavy sigh, drawing the stainless steel mug to his lips, the hot caffeine burning his tongue, the lips of the dented cup scraping against the stubble lining his lips. With another weary sigh, he sets the cup down gently upon the brownish ring-stain, as he has done countless times before, and prepares to begin his day.
Just as the man is about to go through his seemingly endless checklist protocols, his sharp eyes are arrested on something on his primary display, something no other eye would even have had the slimmest chance of picking out from the jumble of numbers and scrolling text. He punches a button on the food-stained keyboard resting on the console before him, stopping the seventeenth scrolling list abruptly enough for the letters to bleed together on the old monitor for a second before resolving again. He had no need to press his finger beneath the frozen string of letters, but he did it reflexively to emphasize what he was seeing, to try to make sense of something that didn't make any sense.
There it was again...
The characters on the screen seemed innocuous enough on their own, a simple shuttle manifest for a shipment outbound for Orcut VII hive. To the untrained eye, everything appeared in order, save for one salient detail. The man knew within ~ 6-7 kilograms what the laden weight of one of the old Churraptus class birds should read. But this one was heavy by almost 360 kg. Not only that, but the manifest indicated that a rather large 4 x 4 x 4 meter crate was on board, the destination and inventory were quite clear: 361.7 kg of defective water purifying pumps for return to Vaxus Ductside. This also made no sense. The last shipment of water purifiers was over seven months ago, and all but two graded out at 100% operating efficiency. The man called up a series of itemized lists, verifying that there had not been a recall of this particular model.
Nothing.
This was a frequent occurrence of late. Like any number of other events at Unduz II Plantation Colony Claustrum #7. Vincent Sepheris scratched at his chin. He had an eye for irregularities, and this was not the first he had found. Something gave him pause though. Something he could not name.
He flicks a key reactivating the scroll, lifting the caffeine to his face again. While his eyes are lost in the comforting steam of the wide mug, one of the grayscale monitors fully out of his peripheral vision flickers with static, briefly displaying a leering, corpulent face, ringed with flabby rolls of filth-stained fat. Two black eyes, with all the humanity of a hunting arachnid rotate from the unmoving, bulbous mask of flesh that houses them to stare down at the man hungrily.
When Vincent lifts his eyes from the cup again, the image wavers, blurs and returns to an innocuous, poorly lit corridor in D block. He never sees the eyes that were watching him, but he is discomfited just the same. He begins to set the cup down upon the comforting stain on the console again, but falters, watching as an ugly black fly greedily rubs its legs together before buzzing up and away toward the air handler vent. He watches it go before uneasily falling into the familiar rhythms of his day.
The details are filed away in Vincent's mind, just one more item on a list that is uncomfortably long. There are far too many secrets being kept from him, and this he cannot abide. Secrets are the only thing that keep him sane in this backwater mud-pit, though the foibles of these simpletons is hardly worth the title. The very idea that one of these...is keeping something from him grates against every aspect of his psyche.
He exhales slowly, squelching his rising anger. Now is not the time. He lets nothing interfere with his connection to the data, there is time for that later. He briefly considers sending a maintenance crew to examine the camera system in D-block, but almost immediately dismisses the idea. That will only encourage his antagonists. He brings his mug to lips once more, letting the caffeine ward his mind against the unrelenting boredom as the data resumes its unrelenting crawl.
His fingers return to the ancient keyboard, using terse keystrokes to query the cogitator's unresting memory.
The tiny Adeptus Mechanicus drop-pod screams through the upper atmosphere of Oremor, heat-shields flaring with incandescent light as it pierces the pre-dawn sky over the continent of Orcut. It leaves a trail of burning ceramite, like tiny, winking embers in its wake as it cuts a swath across the horizon.
Remotely operated from the massive Explorator fleet highliner Kopernikos, that even now straddles the planet in high orbit, it has been tossed off from the brooding hulk of its progenitor like a parasitic gnat from a bull-grox belly. The pod banks sharply down toward Orcut VII hive, its low approach scorching the upper caps of the towering fungoid flora limning the marshy coastal estuaries at the titanic base of the hive. It continues on its seemingly suicidal collision course, tentacle-shaped directional thrusters firing off precise bursts to stabilize its rotation. Rocketing forward, it fails to explode when it collides with the monolithic city-wall, instead being swallowed by one of the many hundreds of wide flue-tunnels disgorging the waste water and pollutants from the underhive levels known as Vaxus. It follows the circuitous path of the winding out-flow pipe with uncanny precision, avoiding obstructions and impediments even as it gradually loses its bullet-like inertia.
Finally reaching a barrier that it cannot avoid, the pod punches through a wall of duralloy-reinforced rockcrete as if it were flimsy paper, flames and metallic debris spinning off from its adamantine-girded surface with motes of white-hot light. The pod creates substantial collateral damage, ripping through the subcellars of two brooding tenement-hab highrises in the encircling slums of Ductside, coincidentally incinerating a group of oblivious Yellobouros gangers lurking in one of them as they divide the spoils of a recent heist. The pod then erupts from the ground, continuing to lose velocity, bouncing and ricocheting through an unoccupied strip of shanty dwellings, leveling them in the process, before finally coming to rest with a groan of scraping metal against the straining links of an ancient chain-link fence delimiting the slums from a factory complex in Geltdown. The exterior of the pod, still cherry-red from its rapid descent, hisses and steams in the humid air, a charred portal irising open like the pupil of an awakened sleeper.
The dull crimson light from within is eclipsed for a few seconds as a figure emerges from the pod, uncurling itself from a mass of crash foam and conduit umbilicals like a fetus birthed from within some strange ball-bearing womb. The mech-wright steps free of the wreckage, pausing only to depress an activator stud on a small control wand he carries. With a dismissive flick he tosses the wand into the pod, walking away at a brisk pace toward the line of dilapidated hab-tenements, the red light from within the sphere winking on and off in ever increasing intervals.
By the time Kaltos Havelock's long strides have plunged him into one of the gloomy alleyways, the light is almost stroboscopic. A dull whump precedes a catastrophic explosion that rends the tall fence, craters the shattered rockcrete below, and blankets the nearby shanty town in a hail of fragmented debris. As the wash of flame passes by the narrow alley, the agent of the Omnissiah moves methodically on toward Geltdown betraying no sign that he even noticed the pyrotechnics.
A small auspex in his hand tones with a gentle cadence, guiding him to the homing signal of Magos Triskaedestes' missing agent.
Leading him to the heretek, Dunkan Danicos.
Using a metal staff as a walking stick Kaltos follows what seems to be instructions from an auspex. An on-looker would notice that under the vestments and robes of a Mechanicus this mech-wright is as scrawny as the staff he is holding. One would also notice that the staff is not the only possible weapon with a pistol slung low off of his waist and the Las-carbine slung over the shoulder in a out of the way position but readily available if the need arises.
Oremor 7th Penal Legion Claustrum, Unduz II
Intrigued by the inconsistency in the shuttles manifest, Vincent's fingers move deftly over the keys, the clicking and clacking sounding like the staccato burst from a heavy stubber as it chews through a belt of ammo. Data flashes across the screen almost faster than the eye can follow, but it is as if it is standing still for the schola-savant. His hand hovers over the keyboard, held aloft like a swordsman prepared to deliver a coup de gras, before jamming a single finger down and freezing the screen.
He examines the results from over the lip of his steaming mug, eyes narrowing slowly as he interprets the results of his query.
...<parse>
[MANIFEST LOG//CHURRAPTUS OUTBOUND #273]
[DESTINATION//ORCUT VII HIVE/VAXUS LEVEL -113/GELTDOWN PLATFORM #7]
[DEPARTURE//2.816.M41 @ 05:15 Local Time]
[ARRIVAL// ~ 2.816.M41 @ 13:45 Orcut Time]
...<parse>
[CARGO ITEM #117//Standard Class D crate:]
[CONTENTS: 11 ArtisanAquifer Corp Water Purification Pumps]
[LOAD: 361.7kg]
[WARNING!!! CARGO ITEM EXCEEDS RECOMMENDED LOAD FOR CRAFT]
[DISPOSITION: PRIORITY RETURN FOR SERVICE//REASON: NONFUNCTIONAL]
[AUTHORIZATION OVERRIDE KEY//77177-L7//COMMISSAR S. EKUBAL]
[LOAD CREW SIGNATORY//LC-P-14//SUPERVISOR TROOPER F. SERGES]
...<endline>
Yellobouros Turf, Vaxus Ductside/Geltdown border
With his staff clicking across the chipped and cracked rockcrete, Kaltos navigates the winding alley, turning without hesitation when indicated by the varying binary chirps from the advanced auspex he carries. He strides over the heaping piles of trash and detritus, both synthetic and organic with equal disdain, ignoring the squalling three-legged trigidonts that scurry away from him, hissing through their knobby yellow teeth. The tiny, three-legged rat-like things scamper into the smaller chinks in the alley walls, but the tech-priest watches for the larger vermin who might haunt the area, the two-legged kind who will undoubtedly be emerging from their own hiding places to examine the commotion of the drop-pod's self-destruction.
He stops for a moment, cooly examining a pair of pale white legs barely covered by tattered, filthy trousers that are splayed, unmoving, across the alleyway in front of him. One look at the slowly rotting indigen's face, half-hidden by heaped trash tells the servant of the Omnissiah all he needs to know about the threat this man poses, and he casually steps over him as if circumventing another impeding pile of strewn trash.
The disorderliness and waste of this world was completely antithetical to his Machine Cult thinking. Reclamation and recycling of this putrid mess could yield viable raw materials and useful components. The dead man's flesh and bone could be harvested for servitor construction. He draws on the teachings of the Divine Light of Sollex to comfort himself, mentally reciting a verse apropos to this heedless squandering of potential resources,
Thus do we invoke the Machine God.
Thus do we make whole that which was sundered.
His staff still tapping, he turns another corner into wider thoroughfare, moving into a roundabout court filled with milling indigens, filthy vendors behind make-shift stalls barking out their wares, and a pair of hirsute scavs, faces filled with rusty piercings picking up spent brass from the ground. The rockcrete cobbles are stained in places with blood, as if from a recent firefight. A small hive-urchin boy glares at Kaltos from atop a crumbling bench that looks like it was blown apart by some misfired munition.
Beneath the Gear Box
Savalos stirs, his waking mind slowly surfacing again as if from a deep vault of troubled dreams, his consciousness slowly swimming to a murky surface populated by too many aches and pains to count.
"Sav. Sav, get up. We're all gathering again in the madhouse suite. The doc is going to wake Uriah now. Near as I can tell in this chrono-less bunker we've slept most of the day away."
... His staff still tapping, he turns another corner into wider thoroughfare, moving into a roundabout court filled with milling indigens, filthy vendors behind make-shift stalls barking out their wares, and a pair of hirsute scavs, faces filled with rusty piercings picking up spent brass from the ground. The rockcrete cobbles are stained in places with blood, as if from a recent firefight. A small hive-urchin boy glares at Kaltos from atop a crumbling bench that looks like it was blown apart by some misfired munition.
Kaltos, please attempt a Routine (+20) Awareness test.
... His staff still tapping, he turns another corner into wider thoroughfare, moving into a roundabout court filled with milling indigens, filthy vendors behind make-shift stalls barking out their wares, and a pair of hirsute scavs, faces filled with rusty piercings picking up spent brass from the ground. The rockcrete cobbles are stained in places with blood, as if from a recent firefight. A small hive-urchin boy glares at Kaltos from atop a crumbling bench that looks like it was blown apart by some misfired munition.
Kaltos, please attempt a Routine (+20) Awareness test.
Beneath the Gear Box
A gentle touch rouses Uriah Trantor from his restless slumber. A disconcerting feeling, like being awakened just as one has fallen into a sound sleep assails him, bringing with it a bitter frustration at being disturbed. It is quickly gone when he sees the pleasant features of Danicos' medicae, Nessa, leaning over him, gently nudging him into wakefulness. Her dark, sympathetic brown eyes assess him with the practiced concern of a professional physician, satisfying herself that she did not overlook some injury. As dawning recollection of where he is and what has happened in the last day slowly returns, Uriah tilts his head awkwardly toward Nessa, a gesture to indicate that he missed her last words to him in his momentary confusion.
Somewhat exasperated at having to repeat herself for perhaps a third time, the medicae emphasizes her statement with a gesture, pointing toward the operating theatre.
"I said, the priest is somehow awake. I don't know how, given that I have medicated him with enough opiates to stun a maulchups for his pain, but he is. As I was considering the merits of upping his dosage, he actually spoke. At first I was too surprised to understand what he was whispering, but when I leaned closer, he said, and these are his words, not mine:
'Bring the psyker freak to me...I must have words with him'
My apologies at the presumption, but I'm guessing that is you."
"Do not worry about it. Most people would make that assumption even if it was not true, and have."
EDIT: I will get off the bed and follow Nessa to where Ishmael is. While walking there, I am thinking about how truthful should I be to Ishmael and how he would react if I tell him I used my psychic powers to save him.
Yellobouros Turf, Vaxus Ductside/Geltdown border
Err I placed the +20 in the roll...opps. I made it by 2 degrees.
Standing in the tall, lancet arched mouth to the rubbish-filled alley leading into the busy courtyard, Kaltos eyes the small boy warily, his gaze passing over the alley-openings on the far side of the court and the many darkened doorways leading into the condemned, poorly white-washed hab-structure on the far side. He notes the severe-looking, well-muscled and tattooed toughs that lurk in the shadowy cavities in the listing building, staring at him like necrophagic insects peering out hungrily from the empty orifices of a bleached skull they have long since consumed.
The small urchin boy makes a well-concealed hand signal toward the crumbling building from his perch.
The auspex, momentarily forgotten in the tech-priest's hand, chirps again as if to remind him of his objective.
Johnnie's already awake. He couldn't get much sleep....
I sit up rubbing my eyes as I adjust to the light. "Thanks Brek"
I mind still swimming with the remnants of troubled dreams. Images of Kalaziel's hair being combed by Krade. I use to do the same with Maia by the waterfalls. Water raining down from craked pipes that lead to the Upper part of the Hive. Course the comb I had was missing a number of teeth. But that didn't matter.
The images are broken up by brackish bubbles turning the clear water into fetid pools with the little monsters from the Gearbox playing around them like children giggling and hissing at each other.
I remember the last time I saw Aebena before I left. The silence. The empty stare. I wonder if she has any heart left for me. Was what I saw in the Gearbox a glimmer of hope. Love reunited, or just the shock of seeing a ghost from the past. Not knowing the answer haunts me.
The image change again. My mind filling in the blanks of the victims of the Mercy died. Sunshines screams echoing in my mind grasping me as she trys to hang onto her life, and sanity. Pleading for me not to let go.
"Alright lets go. Any news on Ishmael and Sigmunt?"
Returning his mug to its place on the console, Vincent spends only a moment considering this new data before launching into a new series of queries. He calls up the personnel files for Commissar S. Ekubal and Trooper F. Serges, putting them to one side while he runs a search for their current locations. Almost as an afterthought, he calls up the claustrum records on ArtisanAquifer.
Yellobouros Turf, Vaxus Ductside/Geltdown border
Standing in the tall, lancet arched mouth to the rubbish-filled alley leading into the busy courtyard, Kaltos eyes the small boy warily, his gaze passing over the alley-openings on the far side of the court and the many darkened doorways leading into the condemned, poorly white-washed hab-structure on the far side. He notes the severe-looking, well-muscled and tattooed toughs that lurk in the shadowy cavities in the listing building, staring at him like necrophagic insects peering out hungrily from the empty orifices of a bleached skull they have long since consumed.
The small urchin boy makes a well-concealed hand signal toward the crumbling building from his perch.
The auspex, momentarily forgotten in the tech-priest's hand, chirps again as if to remind him of his objective.
I take a quick look at the auspex to fix the location of the area around me as well as the various routs to get to my objective. I then place it into one the vestments pockets and then place my right hand on the butt of the pistol and continue striding toward the exit I was originally headed to.
"Do not worry about it. Most people would make that assumption even if it was not true, and have."
EDIT: I will get off the bed and follow Nessa to where Ishmael is. While walking there, I am thinking about how truthful should I be to Ishmael and how he would react if I tell him I used my psychic powers to save him.
You nod to a groggy and stubble-faced Albrek as he pushes open the door to Savalos' room to wake him. Moving past the ex-guardsman toward the surgery suite, you try to keep pace with the briskly walking Nessa as you adjust the tangled robes around your feet.
The antiseptic smells in the operating theatre are even more overwhelming than in the rest of the medicae, but even so they barely mask the pungent smells of both burnt and gangrenous flesh. The bright white lights are more subdued than when you were in the room before, and you unconsciously fall into the same quiet demeanor assumed by the good doctor.
Sigmunt remains unconscious, his breathing shallow and labored, a wet sheen of fever-sweat covering his broad brow. Tubes and various monitors have been attached to his injured leg, and you are somewhat unnerved to see that one of the gaunt servitors is even now tracing a dotted red line around the upper circumference of the Duct Wolf's thigh with a finger mounted quill attachment.
Ishmael remains covered in a thin blanket, so white that it looks like a dusting of newly fallen snow over his resting form. His face is visible however, the red hair above it blackened and scorched at the tips, his eyes sunken and hollow-looking in his head, vivid red, welt-like blisters covering his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, and his sternly set chin. The plastic tenting over his bed contains him completely now, feeder tubes pumping pure oxygen in and drawing the more foul air out. As you draw near with the medicae, he does not stir in the slightest.
"Perhaps he has dropped into unconsciousness again..."
Beneath the Gear Box
Nessa is interrupted as the priests eyes open slowly, painfully, tearing at the blistered flesh near the tear ducts, and causing livid pink tissue to seep thin traceries of blood. Unable to move his head, his eyes slowly rotate to affix Uriah. His voice is a harsh gasp, barely audible through the plastic sheeting.
"My words are for you alone. Tell her to leave us."
Beneath the Gear Box
Rico and Iacton sit quietly in the asylum-ward's assessment chamber across the table from one another, the tech-priest Ivaanov sitting at the head of the table closest to the two secure rooms holding your captives. The room is strangely silent, no one wishing to speak, as if reluctant to acknowledge your recent awakening has not freed you from the nightmares of the past day, which were far too real.
Iacton grits his teeth as he adjusts his bound leg, trying to position it better in the small chair. As he does so, he notes Ivaanov checking his built-in chrono, sliding the blood-caked cuff of his robe aside to do so. The tech-priest still seems preoccupied to you, but you find yourself wondering more what time it is locally.
Beneath the Gear Box
His voice is a harsh gasp, barely audible through the plastic sheeting.
"My words are for you alone. Tell her to leave us."
"It is all right, go. I will call you if he needs you.