He could smell it, always lingering the background, a stench of smoke and blood and tainted meat. Whispers, like scratching against his mind, always ebbing away at his sanity. Nobody else could hear them, those things trying to get in, always there, always speaking in whispers like nails on a chalkboard. His hands ached as his wrists flexed against the restraint bindings to his bed. How long had he been here, he wondered? He was alone. He had been alone for a long time. Always alone. Always… he was going to die alone, and nobody cared.

He blinked his eyes. The world turned red and he was standing in a primitive Gue'la masonry chamber with a lumbering monster, a Vash'aun'an screeching in anger as it ascended from a well of dark and terrible power. It was massive, a form of red static electricity being emitted from its glowing body. Pink, its flesh was pink, formed from raw energy radiating like a harsh stinking heat, like a fountain of raw primal power, as it slowly marched forward towards him.

He blinked again, sweat pouring from his brow. His body ached, his skin sticky as it stuck his flesh to the clothe bedding. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones. The room was white, pure white, perfectly white. Everything shined with flawless perfection provoking a false sense of safety, but the whispering was there, loud in his ears, yelling at him, mocking him.

He blinked, the Vash'aun'an [demon] swung a massive red axe at his prone body. He rolled and dodged, his left leg nothing more than an aching mash of decomposing flesh rendered into paste. The monster was back upon him, swinging that massive axe to cleave him in two while unleashing a maniacal laugh at the mere mortal's expense.

He blinked, his wrists pulling at the blinding's, veins bulging against his blue skin. The whispering was practically yelling in his ears. The lights were glowing, brighter, brighter, everything was turning white. A white froth of spittle foamed on his lips as a voice echoed within his twilight moments of consciousness, "Easy, easy… you're having another episode. Kais… Kais… it's not real… None of it is real!"

But it was real. It had happened, and as the fallen Fire Warrior fell into the drug induced darkness he spoke those words in a whisper, a faint whisper which no one else could hear, "Rip and tare. Rip and tare."

….

Did he even have a name? A purpose? What was a Tau without those two things? He lived, he breathed, but he was a mere shadow, broken, a mere cheap parody of his kind. There was no place for him. There were just the whispers, mocking him, in the shadows of his mind. He could hear them now, the scratching at the boundary of his sanity. If he could reach out with his bound hands, he could swear that he could touch them, like a puddle of water just inches away from his face. This… was annoying.

The room shook with an explosive thud. Was this real, or was this yet another illusion? He had been the victim of so many waking dreams, of monsters, of death and blood, only to find himself always in this bed soiled in sweat. He wasn't well mentally, and he knew he never would be. He had seen too much. Odd that he didn't feel bad about any of his actions. In fact, he didn't feel anything at all. He was… hallow on the inside, blank, numb, ambivalent.

There was another quake. This time the lights in his pristine white room blinked on and off. The shadows closed in around him, ghosts, voices, shrouds which were once people pressed against the glass viewing window to his cell. He could see them, faces pushed flush against the panels, screaming, screeching in agony, leaving black bloody finger prints as they tried to claw their way in.

He pulled against his restraints. The lights dimmed again from another explosive thud. More of them were now pressing against the glass cracking it. They screamed for his soul. He pulled against his restraints with all his might, veins pulsing against his neck as sweat trickled down his back.

This wasn't real. It couldn't be real. Then again it was real on Dolumar IV, and the scratching, the scratching was there. They were trying to get in. Always trying to get in. He was damaged, broken, and they had a way in.

Blood started to creep down his wrists as the restraints bit into his flesh. The lights flashed off.

He could hear his breathing, harsh, desperate, catching in his lungs. He could feel the cold, the sweat on his skin turned to ice crisping his flesh. The lights didn't come back on, but he could see it, the face of his father emerging from the darkness inches away from his face. It looked in the eyes with two black orbs, his lined face aged and passive.

He couldn't speak. What was this? And when his father at last uttered those words, as his face distorted unnaturally with an unhinged jaw revealing a throat of nothing but darkness, "Rip and tare. Rip and tare."

…..

Shas' la T'au Kais felt his skin prickle as the lights came back on. The things which were pressing against the glass, the ghosts, were gone leaving their blackened fingerprints and fractured spider webbing from which they had tried to invade their way in. He was safe. It had been real. Real? Kais wasn't sure if he even knew what real was anymore.

He deeply inhaled and slowly exhaled, his breath forming a mist in the crisp and cold room. His hands pulled against his… they were free. His restraints had been cut loose. But, his father? No, that wasn't his father because his father was dead. Yet he wondered, why was he free? There was no answer. Then again, did it really matter? No, Kais supposed that it didn't because at this very moment the only thing which mattered was escaping those things before they came back. Before they got him and tore him into pieces' soul and all.

Slowly, Kais sat up in his bed and massaged the wounds on his wrists from his earlier attempts to free as those things had encroached upon his cell for the kll. Had his father, or the thing which wore his father's face done this? If so, then why?

Questions, he only had questions. With care, he reached forward and started to unravel the restraints to his legs. Well, more to the point, his one flesh and blood leg, and one robotic prosthetic. The prosthetic had been given to him as a replacement following the events on Dolumar IV. It was the rot of flesh and bone from alien disease which had gone untreated. That was why it had been amputated. Secretly, Kais laminated the loss of his limb. The replacement felt cold… alien, against his flesh. It was a feeling of wrongness.

Or so he thought as his heels pressed against the floor. One step at a time upon legs which hadn't stood upon land in months. His muscles felt like jelly, and he struggled to maintain a sense of balance as he limped across his cell and pressed against the door.

He felt his arms quiver as he tried to lever the door open with his numb finger tips. It was no use as he fumbled weakly against the pressure seal, the weight of his body eventually fumbling awkwardly in the wrong direction as his numb legs caved out from under him.

Kais slid against the pressure door to his cell. His hands feebly sliding against the glass with a squeal as he sat upon the floor, his back against the glass and steel. With a gasp, he felt his lungs burn with cold crisp air. Something was wrong, something was…

He suddenly retched forward on his palms spasming a mucus of blue and purple fluids upon the floor. It came out of his stomach, lungs, and the mucus lining within is mouth. Some of it lingered as spittle from his mouth as he once more deeply inhaled, his head throbbing with pain. The whispering was there, he could still hear it, drawing his attention from the rancid smelling medical fluids upon the floor. He glared up, and he saw… his father, the ghost of his father walking away down a nearby hallway.

Disoriented, his back covered in a cold sweat, Kais slowly forced himself onto his hooves and leaned with his shoulder against the glass paneling adjoining the door. He glared sickly at the locking mechanism and fumbled with his fingers to pry open the digital controls pressed into the containment seal. Kais was no Earth Caste Engineer, but he could make an educated guess as to the workings of the security lock. His fingers felt numb as he ran them along thin wires, deducing basic purposes. He coughed at the dry sour bile in his parched throat and pulled at several small wires in the locking mechanism. The doors locking system sparked several small embers of yellow light and he heard the pressure seal disengage. Once more, Kais put his weight against the door, his numb fingers pressing against the edges, and then he pushed it open.

He edged out into the hallway, noticing all the black muddy footprints, some hooves some apish upon the floor. He leaned against the wall and used it for support, his head swimming with disorientation. It was quiet, too quiet. Where were all the Earth and Water Caste personal responsible for the medical patients? Slowly, he came to a three-way junction in the hallway.

Kais glanced around both corners and noticed the ghost of his father walking around another corner. Grimacing, he marched on until at last ending up in a large empty gallery of perfect white beds. Nothing was out of place, pristine, flawless, and in the center of his room, waiting with folded arms, was his grimacing father.

The broken fire warrior pushed off the wall and upon numb legs approached the ghost of his father in the center of the room. They came face to face with one man showing nothing but contempt upon his face, and the other, his son nothing but unbearable sickness.

It was now that his father uncrossed his arms and presented Kais with something. It was a holodisk, the holodisk of his youth, cracked and broken, still displaying those words. Kais took the small token and read it aloud,

My son,

No expansion without equilibrium.

No conquest without control.

Pursue success in serenity

And service to the tau'va.

With pride.

Shas'o T'au Shi'ur

Then, his father disappeared, and for the first time since escaping his cell Kais noticed all the Tau corpses covered in green scabs, blood, gore, and the battle worn sundered ruins of the hospital. In that moment, he felt nothing. Well, that isn't exactly true… he felt laughter swelling in his lungs. Laughter born from unspeakable pain. Laughter… heard from a madman about to go to war.

…

When they first came, they attacked him from behind. Kais calmly delayed looking over his shoulder at their tiresome moans, as things… dead-things, shuffled across the floor like sickly infants. He could smell the rotting festering taint sticking to their green rancid flesh, that smell of spoiled meat and decay. He could feel it in his gut, down to the bones… like a sickness of the soul.

The Fire Warrior turned around to see the twitching shambling corpses of those broken and dead Tau dragging the diseased remains of their shambling corpses across the floor in limping gaits, he smiled. This was real. They were real. He wasn't insane. Oh no, he was far from insane.

The first broken dead-thing came at him in a lurch, in an attempt to clamp down upon the fevered Fire Warriors exposed shoulder with an open mouth of drooling fanged teeth. The wretched dead-thing would have succeeded had it attacked a far less… prepared enemy. Unfortunately, for this dead-thing, Kais wasn't normal. He was the furthest thing from normal. So, when the Tau Fire Warrior slammed his fist into the maul of the dead-thing throwing it against a nearby bed with a sickening snap you can imagine how happy the Fire Warrior was. After so much time in isolation dealing with things which were unreal, those rancid illusions of monsters, at last he was confronted with horrors he could lay his hands upon. They were real again. He could kill them. He had to kill them.

With a limp upon a numb leg and unused prosthetic, the broken fire warrior crossed the room with those shambling things lingering behind him. He reached for a shelf of surgical tools, inadvertently throwing most of the contents unto the floor as he fumbling for something he could use. His hands danced over the numerous assortment of useless clutter, eventually grabbing a laser scalpel. He turned around, thumbing the activation rune upon the tool, just as the second dead-thang lunged at him.

Kais knew what he was doing, grabbing the dead-thing by the neck, using the lumbering corpses momentum to switch places and push the dead-thing against a poorly kept blood smeared bed. He took the laser scalpel and stabbed it like a dagger into the corpses eye socket, "Die!" he yelled with a grimace as he stabbed again and again and again until the head of the walking Tau corpse was nothing but a blue bloody stump.

Blue blood smeared his white clothes, and he wiped the corpses brain matter from his face with a tattered sleeve as the other dead-things slowly crept up from behind. Calmly, he pushed the rotting corpse he had just silenced away, watching as it thumped lifelessly upon the blood-stained floor with a thud. He turned, eager, stepping forward to attack one of the remaining dead-things.

His scalpel was like a paint brush as he sliced open the next dead-things throat. With a gurgle of coagulated blood the Tau dead-thing fumbled backwards without turning over until Kais kicked it in the sternum with his prosthetic forcing it to crumble, sitting unto it's chest with his thighs splayed against the dead-things ribs. He used his fist, punching again and again, barbarity, it was pure barbarity, but it felt sooo good. He continued punching the dead thing until it's head was a gory stump and it stopped moving.

Then he stood up, smiling, and approached the last dead-thing. Lifeless, the final Tau lurched towards him like a drone. Then something changed. The room seemed to spin, his mind whirled, and he was standing in a room of screaming orderlies. Living breathing Tau dressed in white bodygloves. Surrounding him, screaming in anger and fear as he stood over the dead bodies of two innocent men, his hands coated in blue blood.

He didn't feel anything. There was no pity. There was no remorse. This wasn't real. Oh no, the dead-things were real. He knew they were real. He had seen them. He had touched them. He turned towards the screaming Tau orderly who just prior had been a shambling living corpse, and grinned. Once more it became a dead-thing as reality phased from an illusion to someone far more real. The man screaming at him in fear once more became another dead-thing. It attacked him. He killed it, bashed its head in like a melon, laughing the entire time. He enjoyed it. The feeling of the rotting brain matter between his fingers.

The whispers were at the back of his mind, scrapping against his sanity. He could feel his head throbbing, almost like something was trying to escape. Kais knew better, it wasn't something trying to escape. It was something trying to get in.

With a sweat stained body the former Tau Fire Warrior stood to his feet and scuttled away down a nearby hallway lined with blood stains and strafed rifle fire. Everyone was dead, dead or worse. He saw more walking corpses scrapping against a blood smeared doorway. One of them noticed him and broke away to attack.

Kais grabbed the dead-thing by the head and slammed his melon against the wall with a wet smack. Brains and blood splattered upon his chest as the corpse fell lifeless once more upon the ground. Two more broke away from the door to attack him. He slashed the first in the neck in four quick hand gestures until it was decapitation. Then, in once quick fluid motion, he grabbed the head and used it as a projectile causing the second dead-thing to fall to the ground as it was struck in the sternum by the severed head of its compatriot. Before the corpse could arise once more, he stood above it and used his hove as a bludgeon to smash the skull into paste.

The last dead-thing looked at him, and in two quick lurches attacked with a gaping maw of sharpened teeth. Kais grabbed the corpse by the arm, and used its own momentum against it, throwing the dead-thing against the wall with a wet smack. Then he took the laser scalpel and stabbed down ripping a long gash along the length of the spin before smashing its forehead against the wall again and again until it stopped moving.

Kais looked at the rotting corpses and his own handy work. It was good work. He felt proud of it. Smiling, he approached the closed door and looked through the glass window. In front of him, on the other side, was a… no… that wasn't possible. It couldn't be.

"You have to wake up blue skin. None of this is real." Said the blue armored space marine. It was him, the one called Captain Jehnnus Ardias of the Ultramarines. But, that wasn't possible. How was he here? How was he behind that door?

"No," said Kais while backing away from the door. Something was wrong, something was terribly wrong. This was real wasn't it? He could feel the blood and broken flesh upon his fingers, the prosthetic leg upon his knee. This was real. It had to be real, but… this Gue'la shouldn't be here. And then, everything went dark. The lights were gone leaving Kais with the sharp wisps of air in his lungs and the whispers in his mind.

"Rip and tare!" screamed a voice at the reaches of his mind. He perceived the words being echoed by hundreds, thousands, millions of voices. It was like white noise, the screeching and screaming woes which forced him to his knees. Kais screamed to himself as he covered the sides of his hearing ducts to blot out the noise, "Rip and tare!" Rip and tare! Rip and tare!"

Then, something gave. Something… got in.