The alien was getting weaker. Her stumbling steps became more and more slack until Morgue was half dragging her. Even for her considerably slight build, she was surprisingly light. Her vitals were dangerously faint. He had to get her patched up now. Morgue pulsed for enemies several times, but always the enemy contacts were too close. Finally they staggered into a clearing enclosed by tall shrubs. Morgue decided they would hide here, hope for the best, and silence anyone who found them. Psionic signatures crowded around them, at one point completely circling them. Morgue kept his psychic cloak at full strength as he quietly laid down his burden and opened his emergency med-kit. His captive's own signature was already low enough and required no extra shielding.

Morgue patched the wound and gave her an injection of viscosity enhancement, hypertonic saline, a blood thickener. The needle of the syringe was also coated with nano-bots that would fight off infection and mend the skin. At least they would on a human. Morgue made a pillow of his pack and watched the unconscious woman while he mentally pinged for enemies. The searchers had passed them over, and their safety cushion was widening. The Specter relaxed his shields and released his face-mask. Cool, moist air, smelling strongly of the native vegetation, pressed against his sweat-slick face. Morgue took the rare opportunity to observe nature through his own eyes and not the HUD of his goggles.

Morgue absently pulled a Terrazine phial from his belt and opened it. A dose without the Twitch was always less sharp, but it was nice to let the fumes mix with natural oxygen. He exhaled through his nostrils, violet smoke wreathing his head. Morgue blinked the unnatural colors out of his eyes and glanced at his prisoner. She was awake and glaring at him with tired eyes.

Morgue looked up through the leafy canopy at the emerging stars. This was camp for the night. It occurred to him that the alien might not remain conscious for long. His objective was information retrieval, and he intended to collect. He sat up and matched her glower. "Answers." he said.

She looked away, disgust lining her perfect face. "How large is your force deployment here?" he asked. "How many patrols?" She closed her eyes and pretended to fall asleep. Morgue continued, "How long will you stay here? Are you fortifying?"

Clearly, no answers were forthcoming. The Specter would not be deterred. Morgue reached into his pack and pulled out her glittering jewel. Even in the fading light it gleamed brilliantly. He toyed with it, letting the delicate chain jingle loudly. She finally looked at him, danger flashing fiercely in her eyes.

"Answers." Morgue repeated more forcefully. "Information for progress. More answers, better chances." He leaned forward, dangling the gem from his fingers. "Force deployment..."

She sat up painfully and hand a hand to her bandages. "Animal filth." she hissed, "Even for a savage Mon-Keigh, you are brutish and crude. It pains me more than my rent flesh that such affinity for the Warp resides in your foul carcass."

Morgue was above insults. He swung the necklace back and forth. "What is your objective on this planet?"

The alien sniffed. "How typical," she retorted, "That a human toys with an object they cannot possibly understand, just to achieve their own ends. Such behavior has destroyed countless fools before you. You have but to add your name to them."

Morgue grunted. He was not making headway. He stuffed the necklace back in his pack and balanced his rifle on his knees in ready position to shoot her in she made the slightest motion to escape. "You may feel better in the morning." They stared at each other for a long time, each waiting for the other to nod off first. Morgue pulled out a ration bar and began chewing it, showing her he could out last her. There was an odd look to her as she watched him eat. Recovering from a would like that, she must be starving. He broke off a piece and held it up. "Compromise. I'll settle for your name."

She stared down at her feet. "I will not partake of your human food."

"Then feed it to your pride."

"I am not hungry." she lied. A piteous gurgle rumbled up from her belly. Her cheeks turned pink.

Morgue's mouth cracked into an amused half-smile. "Name."

She reached out slowly and took the morsel, snatching back her hand quickly. As she nibbled the bar she whispered, "Sa'antha, of Craftworld Rauco'dangir."

Morgue nodded. Now he was getting somewhere. "The rest of it is yours if you answer a few more questions. Just low priority information for tonight. I do need you rested after all if you're going to be any use."

Sa'antha glared at him but accepted the food. "Perhaps it is human custom to abuse their betters. Just what does your primitive mind seek enlightenment upon?"

"Let's start there: why the attitude?"

Sa'antha let her eyes drift sky-ward. "My people commanded the stars before the lesser races stumbled upon the art of speech. A few species we tutored, others we simply watched. More still were beneath our attention."

Morgue leaned back against his pack. "You think very highly of yourselves."

"And humans do not? Our glory was a gift from the gods themselves. The Mon-Keigh make themselves the masters of all they see. How many innocent lives have withered in the name of humanity's 'magnificence?' And this culling extends not only to the Xeno, but to your own kind."

Morgue decided to change the topic. "What is 'Craftworld Rauno'dangir?'"

"My home." she replied, swallowing more of the ration bar.

"That I gathered." The Specter pressed, "What is a Craftworld? Is it your home world?"

Sa'antha bowed her head sadly. "Eldar have no home world." she whispered.

Morgue heard in her voice that this was sensitive information. He redirected. "Your people are nomadic then. Are you tribal?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps not in the sense you are using for that term. The Craftworlds and their people are separated by the chill void, but we are all Eldar." Sa'antha shifted uncomfortably and winced. "At times of great shame we have occasionally been plagued by internal strife. This is not common."

Morgue chose his words carefully. She may be answering only because she was caught up in the history of her race, and not because he actually sought this information. He had to keep her talking. "Your people travel in these Craftworlds?"

"Yes. It has been so for longer than you can fathom." Sa'antha winced again and rubbed her bindings.

Morgue glanced at her bandages. Her wound was obviously bothering her. "That's all for now."

Sa'antha looked him over cautiously. When it was clear he was truly finished with his questions, she took the opportunity. "I have told you much. I believe that merits some answers from you in return."

"Oh, does it?"

Her will was equal to his. "I gave you my name, now what is yours?"

Morgue grunted. "I travel light. A name doesn't fit in my pack."

"Curious." Sa'antha tilted her head. "You are a wanderer yourself then. Such a path is not taken without a troubled past."

Morgue patted his rifle. "My past is death. I prefer to leave it in its grave."

"You soul bears the scars of a soldier. You shield yourself well, human, but even a faint touch reveals the gashes."

Morgue tightened the grip on his gun. He had to stay focused. He hadn't even felt her psychic probe! "I'm more than a soldier." he hissed. "I'm a Specter!"

Sa'antha gulped the last piece of the bar. "Specter? In the poetic sense or military?"

"Poetry is for the weak. The strong kill the weak. And Specters kill the strong."

"You are the elite of your warriors then." Her eyes flicked to his belt. "Does your strange gas have anything to do with that?"

Morgue stared for a moment, then laughed coldly to himself. How easily he had allowed her to move the conversation that way. He decided to humor her. "Yes, it is part of Specter augmentation."

"You seem to treat it like medicine or - what did you call it earlier? - "candy?"

Morgue shrugged. "Strictly speaking, I'm not supposed to."

"Why is that?"

He answered her with silence. Sa'antha pressed. "Where can it be found?"

Morgue idly flicked off a spider crawling up his boot. "Why? You feeling the craving? Why are you so interested?"

Sa'antha hugged her knees with her good arm. "The power I felt when I breathed it. All Eldar are psykers, but that gas...in the hands of an Exarch or Farseer. It could change the fate of the war, perhaps even the whole galaxy."

"Change it to what, exactly?"

Sa'antha gave him a very serious look. "Peace."

Morgue snorted. Peace was a dream, a fantasy of idealistic fools. Let the alien have her delusions. Sa'antha kept going. "If we could acquire merely a sample..."

"No."

"We might be able to replicate it. Improve it."

"No."

Sa'antha fell into a frustrated silence, a frown creasing her beautiful face. She sat quietly for a long time, favoring her wounded shoulder. Morgue watched her closely, she seemed near to dozing off any moment. It wust have been close to midnight when she suddenly put a hand into her side pack and began to rummage through it. Her searching grew agitated when she could not find what she sought. After a futile search, she cursed in her native tongue. "Atha-nah! Shin 'al fan'ireth!"

Morgue blinked in surprise. He could not only hear her words, but could also sense them. Even the Eldar language was psionically tuned. Her meaning was perfectly clear, even if he did not know the translation of the words themselves. A vital piece of equipment was missing, something that also had deep personal significance.

He decided to down-play. "Lose something?"

Sa'antha shook her head and sighed angrily. "It's nothing." she lied. After a few minutes her frustration seemed to cool, and she at last dozed into a fitful sleep. Morgue felt secure enough now to grant himself some shut-eye as well. Keeping his gun trained on the alien, the Specter allowed his eye-lids to slowly close.

All Specters have nightmares. The lucky ones just get more mild ones, and Morgue didn't consider himself lucky at all. He had heard other Specters talk about theirs; targets' faces flashing in their vision, dead relatives talking to them, and an emotion long burned away by Project Shadowblade called 'guilt.' All sorts of weird, bump-in-the-night stuff. People thought the Specters were eccentric? They had no idea what bizarre was.

"Subject is ready for treatment, sir." said a woman standing above him.

"Proceed." replied a harsh, static-riddled voice.

"What are you gonna do to me?" quivered a child's terrified question. "Where's my mom?"

The woman ignored him. "Set the restraints. Prep the implants for insertion."

A male assistant somewhere behind him said, "Doctor, this tech is still experimental. Not even the animal subjects have-"

"We aren't trying to make psychic rats. He'll be fine. I've never seen a better candidate."

"I still think we're moving too fast."

"if we wait any longer, he'll be too old for augmentation. It happens now, or not at all. And I am not losing this one."

The child was crying. "I want to go home!"

"You'll be ok." the assistant said quietly. "It won't take long, just try to-"

"I said prep the implants! If you want him to live through this as much as I do, then do what you are told!"

"Yes, doctor."

"And get me a sharper scalpel while you're at it."

The sounds and images clouded. Morgue was now kneeling over a horrifically mangled body. His own body was small, at least much smaller than he ever remembered it being. His tiny hands were searching the pockets and belt loops of a burly adult male. Keys, ID card, codes, notes, anything! As he searched he was suddenly hoisted off the ground by invisible forces and hurled into a nearby wall. Morgue's combat instincts kicked in, but this body was far too sluggish.

"Impressive." said a wheezy voice rich with deadly pleasure. "Haven't seen carnage like this in a while. You're a real killer, kid. You've got blood on your hands, now. Welcome home."

Morgue's body was older now, much more tuned and fit. The same wheezy voice gargled up from between his tightly clutched hands. "This can't be happening! This...can't be..."

Suddenly squeezing the life out of the man wasn't enough. Images upon images flashed through his mind of how many ways he could make him suffer even better. The flurry on thought built and built until they collapsed upon themselves and formed a mental projectile, while Morgue did not hesitate to launch at his victim with all his might. Something wet and hot splashed his arms, chest and face. All at once his hands didn't have anything to hold onto.

He sat there, straddling the corpse, gagging and crying. A rumble of approaching footsteps hailed his re-capture. He didn't care. He had done what he had set out to do. A male voice, "Holy-! It's like a slaughter-house! Get that freak in solitary right now! Maximum security, level Shadow-Alpha! And get these bodies to the morgue..."

Heavy hands grabbed him and dragged him away. They took him down a long, long dark hallway. There was only one door at the end. Something bubbled up from this body's memories about this place. He'd been here before. Several times actually. A room spoken off only in whispers. What he and others called 'The Basement.' The men did not merely throw him in. That was not how the Basement worked. He was hung upside down with his arms chained spread-eagle to either side. A beeping collar was fastened around his neck. The collar shut off senses he had come to rely on. Everything was now dark and lifeless as the men slammed the thick, metal door as they left.

Morgue woke and reflexively brought his rifle into firing position. The first fingers of daylight were beginning to chase the stars away. Sa'antha was still sleeping. He wondered mildly what sort of things she was seeing. The grisly events stills swimming in his mind made him sick. he couldn't stay here any longer. He made sure the clip in the gun was fresh and snapped the firing chamber. The sharp clang of metal roused the alien.

The Specter hauled her to her feet. "Come on. I hate this place."