The corridors and passageways of the Hole were empty around Livia. Faded sheets of paper declaring the same message in a startling variety of ways lined her route to the cells and she found her stride breaking as she began to think about what she had taken for granted so many times before.
"To yield to the Will of the Emperor is the duty of every man."
Conform.
"Only in obedience shall you find peace."
Conform.
"Worship the Emperor with all your body and all your mind."
Conform.
And she wasa dutiful servant. Of course, she was. She had served the Emperor uncompromisingly - occasionally acerbically - but always faithfully. The day when she had first stepped out of the safe, ordered world of her medical training and into the service of the Inquisition had been one of the proudest - and most frightening - of her life, but…
But.
There shouldn't be a 'but', she reminded herself. There should be unquestioning obedience. The Imperium's continued existence was guaranteed by a series of trade-offs, she knew. Protection and a shared purpose set against the loss of certain freedoms that earlier, more naïve generations of humanity had deemed sacrosanct. Inalienable. The freedom to have an opinion. The freedom to express that opinion. The freedom to dissent. The freedom to think. She had always accepted that trade-off without question. She had given her energy, her mind, her spirit to the Imperium without any doubt and without any regret.
But.
But now it was different.
She didn't feel like a servant anymore. Now she was… something else. Somewhere in the last twenty-four hours she had changed. And it wasn't just Vollex's death. It was… The image of silver filaments swaying and rippling as if in response to some unseen breeze rose involuntarily in her mind. She remembered the weight of Vollex's body jerking backwards against her. She heard the wet, gasping rattle of his dying breath in his throat. But, what she remembered most of all, what continued to burn in her mind even now, was the overwhelming desire to know exactly what was going on.
She stopped suddenly, hands thrust in her pockets, brow furrowed. She glanced across at yet another poster, long-faded, dust clinging to its surface. It depicted a half-open door, light spilling from it, casting a misshapen alien shadow across the lower half of the paper. Black, squat letters were stamped in the top left-hand quarter:
"Keep the door of doubt SHUT."
An unaccountable anger shot through her and, before she really understood what she was doing, she reached out and tore the stiff, brittle paper from the wall. She watched her hands work in a frenzy of motion, watched the simple unambiguous image distort and twist, watched the flat, rectangular shape that had probably occupied that space on the wall for at least a hundred years become an irregular ball of creased and meaningless paper. Become rubbish, trash. Heart pounding fiercely in her chest, she flung it away from her, watching it roll away down the corridor. Back the way she had come.
She stood stock still for a moment, her mouth dry, breath ragged.
Turning briskly on her heel, she headed for the interrogation cells.
"What in the Emperor's name is that?"
The comforting darkness of the auspex array flaring once. Twice. Three times. Again and again and again. In the city, on the plains, contacts appeared out of thin air.
He knows this moment like the scar on his face, like the sure swift plunge of the dagger into his side. He can still taste his fear. He can still feel the strain of maintaining the useless façade, the hollow illusion of control.
"Status report. Now!"
"Vox signals are garbled, but…" The comms officer's face was waxen in the flickering crimson light of cogitator banks and auspex displays, his eyes deep pits in which fear and incomprehension lurked. It would be easy to believe that hell was here, on the bridge of the Indomitable Wrath, not on the surface of the planet below. Words failed the comms officer in the end. He remembers that. In the end, the young officer simply patched the communications from the planet's surface through to the bridge speakers.
"… everywhere… they're everywhere…"
"… kind of daemon…"
"… claw and fang…"
"… broken through! Oh, Emperor, they've broken through!"
There were screams of terror and of dying, the almost plaintive whine of lasfire, the grumbling thump of heavy munitions, the scything shrieks of things that had no place in this reality. He looked at the auspex screen and saw the enemy contacts increase, cluster, swarm.
He heard his voice as if from a great distance. He was surprised at how calm he sounded. Gnostos, he remembers thinking, would be proud.
"Tell Major-General Farnek to pull his troops back to the city. Head for the cathedral."
Yes, he remembered this.
And now he was living it again – this time in the heart of the chaos, not suspended above it.
With an immense effort of will, he took a step backwards. The daemon's razor-thin mouth smirked and, like a dog who has suddenly acquired a newer, richer scent, it froze, its dirty yellow eyes growing distant, before it jerked its gnarled body around and loped off into the city.
Brecht glanced across at the one remaining trooper and grew still once more, a familiar cold fear settling in his bones. There had been two portals, he reminded himself. The other… thing that had come through the second one now held Dix's partner in a tight embrace. Brecht had a brief impression of a humanoid form, bound tightly in wide leather strips. Slender arms were wrapped sinuously around the trooper, holding the poor lad against the wickedly sharp hooks haphazardly adorning the creature's torso.
The thing's head was thrust downwards and Brecht couldn't quite make out what it was doing to the trooper, but, as he watched, the man twitched, arching his back, flinging his arms out wide. The creature looked up at him, then, and he was shocked to see that her eyes were human. And completely clouded by desire.
The head thrust down again and Brecht finally understood exactly what he was seeing.
"Emperor protect me from the corruption of the flesh, from the betrayal of desire. I dedicate my body to Your service and Your will. Guard my soul against the pleasures of evil. In Your Name, I pray."
The Second Catechism of Denial, first coined by Saint Luciel of Menelon over five thousand years ago, rose to the surface of his mind, but he found himself completely unable to utter it.
With a long shuddering moan of pleasure, Dix's comrade died and his body crumbled into dust. The daemon straightened up and, hips swaying provocatively, walked slowly towards him.
Suddenly, everything became sharp, more intense. The tiny granules of grit and dirt beneath his bare feet scratched against his skin. The lining of the greatcoat caressed his body as it shifted minutely against it. The austere bulk of the Cathedral of Saint Alberic the Vengeful seemed to press down on him. He could almost feel its weight looming over him.
And then there was her.
She was beautiful. Eyes the colour of a summer's sky regarded him with amusement from a face that was surely sculpted by a master artist. Cheekbones, that were so sharp he was sure he would cut himself were he to caress her face, framed a mouth that was full and wide. As he watched, it parted to reveal gleaming white teeth and a slender tongue that slid past their sharpened points to wet the bottom lip beyond. Long hair was bound in a multitude of thick strands, through which gleaming white maggots crawled and writhed, as if aroused by such close proximity to her form.
Her body was lithe and muscular, small breasts jutting proudly. She moved with the languid grace of the consummate predator. He watched the play of muscles in her legs and felt a stab of lust in his gut. She reached out a slender graceful hand and caressed his cheek tenderly.
"Hello, little man," she breathed and his knees almost gave way as he inhaled the sweet cloying scent that washed over him.
Her touch inflamed him. The voice in his brain that screamed its desperate warning was drowning in a wide red tide that washed violently through him.
"I…"
"Shhhh," she whispered, leaning in closer. He could see the maggots in her hair distend and swell, dozens of them struggling urgently in blind lust.
He slid his arms around her waist, cutting his palm open on one of the sharpened hooks that adorned it. He welcomed the pain.
She looked at him, her mouth twisting cruelly. "You bleed for me. How… sweet."
His tongue was thick and his jaw worked awkwardly. "I… want… you."
Stroking his face gently, she leaned in to lick the tears he had not even realised he had shed. "Of course you do, my little man."
Pain blossomed like sweet summer flowers in his chest and abdomen. More hooks, snaring him, penetrating his flesh. He felt the beauty of it. To surrender to it - to embrace it – seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
Sighing, she pulled back. He looked down and saw his blood glistening on her torso. He tried to pull her back, but suddenly he was too weak and he half stumbled, half fell to the ground. She knelt by him, careful now not to touch him. She needed him to hear, not feel.
"Not now, little man. Not now," she breathed, the words penetrating the sweet memory of sensation that threatened to overwhelm his mind. "But soon. He is coming and you are his and he is mine. When next we meet, little man, you will have what your flesh desires." She glanced over her shoulder at the cathedral behind her. A split second later, the ground shook and Brecht found himself thrown forwards, scraping his face on the hard concrete of the cathedral plaza.
The daemon straightened, her voice suddenly harsh. "Now run, little man! RUN!"
Dragging himself to his feet, Brecht threw one last longing look at the daemon and did exactly as he was told.
Dranguille was waiting for her just outside the detention suite door. Some small part of Livia was surprised by that. She'd half expected the other woman to have started the interrogation without her. Well, more than half, really. Perhaps the interrogator had acquired some measure of respect for her after all.
But, as Livia's purposeful stride ate up the last few metres between them, that notion was quickly dispelled by the other woman's sneer and the condescension in her tone as she spoke.
"Listen carefully, sister. This is my interrogation. I will lead. You will sit and keep very quiet." Dranguille leaned in towards her, her one good eye glinting like steel in the harsh sterile light of the corridor. Livia could smell the antiseptic emollient on the interrogator's red raw skin. "Ms LaFayette hasn't been touched. Yet. But that all might change in the next few minutes. If you find you lack the stomach for the job, you may excuse yourself quietly and walk out."
Livia thought back to the poster on the wall, to the sight of it rolling away from her, its message lost. She returned Dranguille's gaze evenly.
"I'll be fine."
Satisfied, Dranguille began to turn away, but stiffened in surprise as Livia grabbed her arm. The Sister Hospitaller gave a small, tight smile.
"But, Vivienne, if your questions don't give me the answers I need, I reserve the right to ask some of my own."
Dranguille opened her mouth to utter some sort of retort, but Livia was already moving past her, nodding to the stormtrooper who opened the door for her, and into the cell beyond.
