Evelyne was already dying when the bomb went off. She felt the tremor of the explosion through the cold concrete floor, the vibration sending the pulverised bone fragments in her right leg into sickening, jolting motion. Instinctively, she drew breath to scream, but the motion of her punctured lung as it sought to expand only served to ignite fresh fires of agony in her chest. The sound that eventually emerged out of her mouth was halting and feeble. It was followed a moment later by a gobbet of bloody matter, which dribbled down her chin and onto her tunic.

She waited for the pain to settle, to become the dull ache with which, in the last few minutes, she had become familiar. The bright red flames within her became a more manageable, sullen glow. She licked her lip, tasted iron and something richer, darker. Not for the first time since she had been flung aside to rest against the central cogitator bank, she found herself asking the question: how had this happened? How had it happened so quickly?

Gingerly, by slow almost infinitesimal increments, she turned her head so she could see the nightmare that had fallen upon her and, in a few short moments of savage violence and feral terror, utterly changed her world forever. It was there now, its head half-buried in Kapensky's abdomen, a horrible snuffling, sucking sounding unnaturally loud in her ears. Its horn in the centre of its forehead glistened with streaks of blood; its broad, powerful shoulders flexed slightly as it sought to thrust its fang-filled mouth deeper into the flesh of its victim.

She tried not to think of Kapensky dying but it was difficult. The young enginseer had been caught out on one of the launch pads when the lockdown had sounded, and she had been pleasantly surprised by his unexpected appearance in her control station a few minutes later. They had had a polite, if slightly awkward exchange, speculating on the reasons for the disruption, and Evelyne had followed that with an offer of recaf from the portable stove at the back of the station. She had been secretly delighted when he had agreed and had taken care to make it as well as she could, frothing it up with the small whisk she hardly ever used except on special occasions. She had had a feeling that today might be special, that the Emperor (she had supposed that Kapensky would have said 'Omnissiah') moved in mysterious ways and that maybe... just maybe... His providence was at work then. Oh, she hadn't entertained anything romantic about Kapensky, but he was personable enough and the days could be so lonely and dull in the auxiliary security centre.

And now she knew that she had been wrong. The Emperor sat on His Golden Throne in distant, mythical Terra. He oversaw the destruction of worlds, the conquests of systems, the annihilation of His enemies; He did not gently manipulate the lives of lowly adepts on backwater worlds like Phrysia Secundus. She had been a fool.

The thing looked up at her. Its eyes were reptilian, nictitating membranes flashing across them, cold, utterly alien. Strings of flesh hung down from its mouth, like fronds of vermilion seaweed. She felt her stomach rebel at the sight but fought down the urge savagely. To vomit now would probably kill her. Not, she reminded herself, that it would make much difference. She was dying anyway. The damage the thing had done to her, unthinkingly, casually, was too great. She was broken inside.

It was staring at her, its face unreadable. Where it had come from – how it had suddenly appeared in a whirling, vicious frenzy of claw and horn – she simply did not know. But it was here now and, when it finished with Kapensky, it would take her.

Suddenly, it tensed, head whipping round towards the door. She watched as it hissed, sucking in the remains of Kapensky's flesh absently. She wondered what had distracted it.

And then she heard it. The sound of an engine roaring then fading outside. A curious double slam of car doors; the scuffling of footfalls.

The thing was moving. Fast. It leapt towards the doorway, grasping an overhanging fuel pipe with a single powerful claw, swinging itself up into the shadows, digging into the concrete wall with its feet and claws. Evelyne felt a brief surge of hope in her ruined chest, but it was coupled with a horrible trepidation. She had seen what the thing could do. Whoever was making their way towards the auxiliary control suite was... could...

But, her eyes were tired now and a strange greyness bordered her vision. She was finding it hard to focus, hard to think.

She could hear footsteps and a shocked cry, but they were distant things, unimportant, peripheral, and she was falling into a soft enveloping blanket of fading sensation and sweet, suffocating light.


Heat hammered his face. Brecht opened his eyes tentatively, allowing only a tiny sliver of light to fall upon them through the fringe of his eyelashes. His mouth was dry and his lips were cracked and sore. He was still wearing the greatcoat; underneath it his tunic and trousers clung to his body, damp and awkward.

He blinked, opening his eyes wider. Light and colour flooded his mind. The colour was predominantly blue, a subtle delicate hue like the egg of an exotic bird. He blinked again and with the colour came perspective, depth. A ghost of a cloud drifted lethargically above him. It did not promise rain, shade or much of anything.

His lower lip felt numb and unnaturally large. With a sudden flash of unpleasant memory, he remembered Patroclus' punch. And the mysterious ancient Astartes who had, apparently, sent him here.

Wherever here was.

Sniffing the hot, dusty air philosophically, he sat up and looked around him. A dry, largely featureless plain stretched away from him, ochre rock sprinkled with a light coating of orange-grey grit. The ground was uneven but essentially flat. Here and there a handful of small rock formations punctuated the landscape. They were made of the same rock as the surrounding plain, their surfaces weathered by the elements, lending them an oddly smooth, bulbous appearance.

With a sigh of resignation, Brecht clambered to his feet, observing a strange double shadow stretch away from him, an angle of perhaps thirty or so degrees separating his two dark selves. It was only then that he looked at the sky again and swallowed nervously.

There were two suns in the sky, one small and bright – far too bright to look at directly – and the other a bloated orange disc that hung just above the horizon. Brecht frowned. Interesting. There weren't many worlds he'd visited that were part of a binary system. This place didn't look like any of them. Returning his attention to the lifeless landscape around him, he found himself with a simple, yet perplexing question: which way to go?

Thrusting his hands into his greatcoat pockets, he suddenly stiffened as his fingers came into contact with a well-worn rubberised grip. Slowly, he drew the dagger out of his pocket. Its blade reflected the light dully, the simple steel nicked and scratched along its length. It had been wrapped in the coat's lining, almost as if it had been burrowing into it, hiding, waiting. Lurking.

For some reason he could not quite understand, the sight of it filled him with a nameless sense of foreboding. It was a thing of subterfuge and treachery, an instrument of shadow and blood. Despite the heat that weighed upon him, a small subtle shiver rushed through him. Blood again.

A sound, indistinct yet still recognisable as human, reached his ears. He span towards it, the dagger still clutched in his hand. Only the emptiness of the ochre plain greeted him, its vast blankness calling into question what he had just heard. Or thought he had heard. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his free hand.

The cry sounded again, muffled by distance. It was a curiously choked sound, but there was human emotion in its quivering timbre and high pitch. He took a step towards it. And another. Again, the sound reached his ears and he stopped. This time there was no doubt. It was a quiet, despairing sob – perhaps made by a woman. Or a child.

It appeared to be coming from behind one of the low rock formations and he approached it cautiously, stealthily, putting the dagger back in his pocket although not relinquishing his hold on the grip.

He stepped carefully, trying to minimise the tell-tale scratching of his boots on the gritty rock. He was a handful of metres away now. His greatcoat was heavy, cumbersome, but he was loath to remove it. The stink of his sweating body and the damp fabric of his tunic were unwholesome reminders of the price he was paying for that decision.

His boot scraped against rock. He could hear a sharp intake of breath from behind the curved mass of stone.

Straightening up, he sighed. There was no point in trying to be cautious now.

"Hello?" he called, trying to inject as much reassurance into his voice as he could. "Are you alright?"

"No," came the weak reply. It was a child's voice, small and pathetic in the emptiness of the plain. "I think… I'm lost."

"Aren't we all?" muttered Brecht under his breath, as he made his way briskly towards the rock which seemed to have grown like an orange-brown boil out of the surrounding landscape.


Livia moved quickly through the cloistered passageways of Heirat's laboratoria, Grent and DeLong flanking her. If either of the stormtroopers felt as uneasy as she did, they weren't showing it. But then she'd been here before; they hadn't. She knew what to expect and the subtle changes in the place since her last visit were unnerving.

No robed acolyte had greeted them when they had entered the Adeptus Mechanicum complex. The place had been eerily quiet and a strange faint smell – or taste – hovered on the recycled air. Their footfalls echoed in a manner that was both unnaturally loud and entirely unwelcome. No distant machines whirred and hummed. No indicator lights winked on the control consoles that lined their path. When they passed it, the deactivated construction servitor seemed less like a project to be worked on and more like a hulking, lifeless symbol of whatever mysterious fate had befallen the complex.

At least the lumen globes still functioned, casting a feeble, inconstant light.

"Sister."

A nearby vox speaker, embedded into an asymmetrical tower of consoles and cogitator banks, hissed softly into life. It was Heirati's voice, but there was no way to acknowledge it much less respond. Livia glanced at it and then at DeLong, whose answering shrug was proving to be the extreme limit of his eloquence.

"Quickly."

Another vox speaker a few metres further on coughed and spluttered.

"... not much time..."

They moved forward cautiously, led from speaker to speaker by Heirati's disembodied voice. On another occasion, Livia might have found the subtle differences in tone and clarity that each speaker produced interesting, but she was too aware of the very real possibility that the voices could be leading them into a trap. Behind her, Grent must have been having similar thoughts because he flicked his hellgun's safety off with a loud click.

"To your left."

In unison, Livia and the two stormtroopers turned their heads. Through a gap in between two large, sloping mounds of defunct tech, a sickly yellow light shone. They edged forward, both the stormtroopers' guns parallel with the floor, black snub-nosed barrels casting about from side to side. Another two steps and they found themselves in an open, raggedly circular space.

After the close, almost claustrophobic, warren they'd just negotiated, Livia was aware of an almost overwhelming sense of space, but it was the light that held her attention. It spilled from the surface of a large workbench in the centre of the room.

"Discretion... discretion is advised."

Heirati's voice, not distorted or modified by the vox speakers, echoed around them. Livia thought it came from a point roughly opposite where they were standing, but it was difficult to tell for certain. The light emanating from the workbench was curiously opaque and, as Livia approached it, she saw that it possessed subtle variations in brightness, striated bands of gold, amber and dirty yellow that drizzled upwards from an object that she could not quite identify.

"Sister."

A warning? Heirati was an outline, a formless shadow behind a curtain of luminescence. She licked her lips. Another step.

"What is it, Heirati?"

The footsteps of Grent and DeLong were becoming muffled, unclear. The light was all around her and the scent she had caught on entering the laboratoria returned with a surging tang of citrus, underlaid with something bitter-sweet, corrupt. She was reminded of the all-too familiar odour of gangrenous flesh and that realisation brought her up short. Was her mind providing her with the closest analogue it could manage for an experience for which it had no better frame of reference? She squinted. The bench was only a few paces in front of her, but she still couldn't quite make out what lay on it.

"The book."

As if engaging a hitherto restricted part of her brain, Heirati's words caused her perception of the light, the bench and the thing that was lying on it to change. Of course, it was the book. It was open and the light... The light wasn't light at all. It was...

"Emperor!" she heard herself say, panic amplifying her voice. "Stay back!" She had no way of knowing whether Grent and DeLong had obeyed her. With a sudden shiver of fear, she realised it had been a good few seconds since she had heard them moving behind her. But she didn't dare look away.

"What... what's happening, Heirati? Why is it... doing this?"

"Seventeen point three minutes ago, Sister," said the magos, "the book became... active."

… which way to go?

Livia frowned. "What did you say?"

There was a pause. "I said," repeated the magos, slowly, "that the book became..."

"No. After that."

A longer pause. "Sister Livia, I did not engage my vox modulators after that utterance until my repetition of it four point nine six seconds ago."

Livia looked at the book. Its pages were open. It was difficult to be sure from where she was standing, but she thought they were not entirely blank. She sniffed. The smell was stronger now. Lime fresh and corpse rank. An olfactory impossibility. A mouth-watering, nauseating collision of polar opposites.

What had Dranguille said about the book?

… subterfuge and treachery...

She shook her head to clear it, licked her lips. "What happened, Heirati?" she called out.

"A discharge of unknown energy incapacitated much of our equipment."

"It left the lights on."

… shadow and blood...

Another shake of the head. The words were in her mind, slipping between her thoughts like ocean-going predators in a tidal lagoon, languid, implacable.

"One needs light in order to read, Sister."

Her heart was thumping in her chest; blood pulsed loudly in her ears. But the words were in her head. They didn't need to be heard.

Blood again.

She took another step and then suddenly the words were there. Not just in her mind, but on the page, welling up darkly onto the clear crisp paper like blood from a wound.

A sound, indistinct yet still recognisable as human, reached his ears.

"What... what in the Emperor's name is this?"

She thought she saw Heirati move towards her, but the light that was not light made it difficult to be certain.

"Where is Inquisitor Brecht?"

The question took her aback. It was unexpected, a distraction from the compelling sight of the words manifesting in front of her.

Only the emptiness of the ochre plain greeted him, its vast blankness calling into question what he had just heard.

"Wh... what?"

Or thought he had heard. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his free hand.

"Where is Inquisitor Brecht?"

She tore her eyes away from the book, tried to clear her mind, to focus on the question she'd just been asked.

"Med-bay... He's in the med-bay, of course. He's..."

More words spilled onto the page.

The cry sounded again, muffled by distance. It was a curiously choked sound, but there was human emotion in its quivering timbre and high pitch.

"That is the current location of his body, yes." Heirati's voice was louder. A shadow loomed through the shimmering curtain of glowing strands. She tried not to think about what they might be. She forced herself to concentrate on the magos' words. "But what of his mind, his soul, the insubstantial essence that defines him? Where is that, Sister?"

She tried to think, but her mind was rebelling. After all she had seen today – all she had done – she felt mildly surprised – and disappointed – that it was resisting the obvious impossible thing right in front of her.

"Hello?" he called, trying to inject as much reassurance into his voice as he could. "Are you alright?"

She looked at the outline of Heirati through the strands of light and finally accepted them for what they were. Not beams of radiance, but tiny twisting fibres of unravelling paper, floating and streaming in the exhilarating suffocating wind of the warp.

"No," came the weak reply. It was a child's voice, small and pathetic in the emptiness of the plain. "I think… I'm lost."

They were all around her, dancing and sparking in the electric air. She was surrounded by them, enclosed by them. They were a cocoon of minute fireflies, a shroud of flickering, ever-changing light.

"Aren't we all?" muttered Brecht under his breath...

"Emperor," breathed Livia. "He's in the book!"