Hello, if you took the time to read this please review it, I appreciate constructive crticism as much as praise so tell me what you think :)
Also, if you like my writing please read my Crysis story for something with a (little) bit more depth, as that's the story I'm currently working on.
PART 1
++Automated message running…no.3789++
+DANGER+
Unit 217763-34A combat enhancing chemical stimulants at dangerously low levels
Proceed to pick up point immediately for debrief and re-administration
Cogitating…...
+Trace unsuccessful locator Beacon not found+
Cogitating…...
Proceed on foot to nearest known RV point
++END++
My name is Andrei Dharmer.
I smile as I remember this, this is the first thing I have known about myself in a long time.
Nobody else, alive or dead has ever known my name, for I stole it from a dead Munitorium worker when I was 5 years old.
It was the last thing I heard him say before the gangers stabbed him, leaving him to bleed out in the darkness of the alley where I was hidden, laying still among the refuse where I had just been hunting for food.
I had just escaped from the orphanarium, not content to toil my way to an early death in the work houses of the underhive and was nearing starvation, my body resembling a bag of bones and skin.
To this day I can not fathom why that man chose his name as his last words, nor do I care, but I learnt a lot from the ganger's actions that day, particularly about survival.
It was simple, if you do not have, take.
I have been here for approximately fifty seven standard years.
I know this because my mission timer stopped that long ago, my tactical overlay informs me everyday of this fact.
For the last month or so my mind has become more coherent, the random thoughts and memories coalescing into some semblance of intelligence.
Am I intelligent?
I am intelligent, I know this because my order does not recruit stupid people.
The rest is a confusing mixture of half truths and feelings, a mess of contradictions and chaotic recall, starting with absolute clarity at my youth.
I remember my capture, being dragged into the back of an Inquisitorial Rhino troop carrier after stabbing two arbite enforcers that stumbled across me attempting to rob a habitation block in the hive of my birth.
I had used an improvised shiv, made from a plastek spoon, filed into a point.
I was 6 years old.
The look on the Inquisitor's face was a curious mix of disgust and admiration, the grizzled old man looking at me with a morbid fascination I didn't understand.
To me it was terrifying.
There was a long journey.
The Inquisitor came to my cell to feed me and talk to me every day, telling me about a mighty being called the Emperor, and that if I was good enough, I would be chosen to serve him.
I liked the Inquisitor, he gave me food.
After the journey I found myself among other children, all of us silent and assembled in ranks on the bare stone floor of a gigantic theatre, robed giants pacing up and down to our front, regarding us with silent stares.
The boy next to me started to sob, tears cascading down his young features as he cried, leaning on me for support.
I regarded him and immediately judged him worthless.
I pushed him to the ground, annoyed at the physical contact, and looked around the aisles in front of me.
I wondered where the Inquisitor had gone.
I remember the tests, endless trials of body and mind, along with thousands of other boys and girls at a bleak, featureless facility worlds away.
I just did as I was told at this time, fearful of my captors, deciding early on that compliance was the best way of staying alive.
Others were not so fortunate.
The weak, feeble minded or defiant were mercilessly punished, flogged, shot or lobotomised into child servitors in front of our eyes as a warning to others.
It fuelled my desire to live, and I pushed myself as hard as any 6 year old could.
I didn't want to die like that, I knew I was better.
I specifically remember the look of dismay on the Inquisitor's face. It was the first time I had seen him in weeks and I was actually pleased at his presence, my childish mind latching onto the only thing I recognised in a lonely place.
My face lit up upon his arrival and he suppressed a smile, his grim facade fading for the slightest of moments.
He stood at the back of the small interview room where I sat many psychological tests.
The faceless adept would ask me torrents of random and senseless questions, none of which I understood at the time, but answered as honestly as I could.
It was strange to me, they always asked my opinions, nobody have ever done that before.
"What would you do if…."
"How do you feel about…"
"What do you think when…"
It frustrated me and made no sense.
A the end of this particularly long session, the adept told me to stay still while he talked to the Inquisitor.
They spoke quietly, the Inquisitor's tone terse, bordering on angry while the Adept used words I had never heard.
Sociopath.
Borderline Psychotic.
Incompatible.
After a time the Inquisitor seemed to concede to whatever was being said and turned to look at me one last time, only for a second.
To think back now, the Inquisitor looked almost sad, as though he had lost something important and knew he couldn't get it back, but the look was fleeting and he said nothing as he departed.
Had I failed?
I felt a stab of panic when he left, instinctively reacting, preparing myself to escape should they try and kill me.
I knew the Inquisitor was never coming back.
Giving me food was the first and last act of kindness I ever experienced.
Another man appeared, stepping from the corner of the room as though he had been present the whole time and I had simply failed to see him.
He was robed in black, his vestments totally without markings and his bald head was covered in scars and inlaid with what looked like intricate circuitry covering his entire scalp.
This man regarded me with dead eyes, staring at me, analyzing for the longest time before nodding to the adept and leaving.
I remember his movement made absolutely no sound.
I remember training.
Running so hard I thought my lungs would burst, fighting for days without food or water, sometimes without light or even air.
Fighting without end, using any tools to hand, using nothing but our own bodies and the environment, all the while being told we are living weapons.
The fear is also without end, fear of the trainers, fear of failure, fear of death.
Each day I stare up at the robed man who instructs us, his shaved head and gnarled features embodying the emperor's will to me, knowing that he would snuff my life out in a second if I were to be found wanting.
Indoctrination, learning to love the emperor, learning about the ruinous powers and the danger they represented, learning how to hate with such purity that the emotion alone would protect us.
We were educated, first through hypnotic flash training and later by hardwired datastream, taught everything the Imperium knew about it's surroundings, cultures, beliefs, and how to exploit them all for the kill.
I remember my first kill vividly, age 9.
Chancing across another trainee, my quarry, in the training pits.
They had been configured into claustrophobic corridors, with deafening white noise and strobing lighting providing the backdrop for the hunt.
The strobes had caused my fellow initiate to have some sort of seizure, his body in a kind of spastic spasm when I found him, vomit covering the floor and walls.
It was a simple case of strangling the life out of him while he couldn't defend himself.
The exercise was meant to stop at first blood, but even at that age I understood that his condition made him worthless to the order, better to end his pain then leave him a mind scrubbed servitor.
As the custodians dragged the lifeless corpse away I remember deciding that I would struggle to gain pleasure doing the Emperor's holy work.