Part 1 – The Black Ship
Chapter 4 – Your True Name
She was strapped to a huge metal table; it was flat and cold and very, very uncomfortable. They had taken her jumper (she couldn't look down to check, but from the feel of the leather against her skin, they had taken everything) and replaced it with tubes running into her arms. She supposed that some were putting things in, and others taking blood out.
It was hard to tell by feel alone.
The room was completely black. She had been there – she couldn't figure out how long. There was nothing to mark the passage of time. Be of worth… be of worth ran through her head over and over again. Doctor Trixie had been scared for her… sweet Doctor Trixie, who had given her books to read in her office while she was working on a man whose arm had gotten crushed in a pneumatic door and a boy from her class whose gums had gotten badly infected after he lost a tooth. She had read to her at bedtime for the week and given her a shot that kept the dreams away. It hadn't hurt a bit. Doctor Trixie would be a good mother one day.
'Be of worth,' she had said, right before the men had bruised her shoulders to separate them. It was the only thing that mattered now. She had to be of worth.
"What is your name, witch?" a gruff voice interrupted her thoughts. She hadn't even heard him come in.
"E-" her voice cracked a little and she cleared her throat, "Ellie, sir."
"Your real name," he was impatient.
"Giselle Reiker."
"I said your real name."
"But…" she looked to where she thought his voice was coming from, "it's Giselle Reiker, sir."
"I told you to tell me your true name!"
She flinched back against the table. He made her nervous – he made her feel like she was lying. Doctor Trixie said to be honest – that they would know. Why couldn't he see she was telling the truth? She took a breath and raised her chin, "My name is Giselle Reiker."
"What do you know about the Emperor?" this was a new voice, raspy, a little higher.
"He's mankind's savior… our guiding light… he watches us from the Throne and protects us against our enemies," she was trying to think of everything she had ever heard in chapel.
"And how have you cursed him?" the gruff voice demanded.
"Cursed?" he confused and terrified and saddened her. The very idea of cursing the God-Emperor was appalling. "But I haven't. I love him."
"What is your name?" the raspy voice fired at her.
"Giselle Reiker." Hadn't he been there when the other man asked?
"Your true name!" the gruff voice bellowed from somewhere to her right.
She began to wonder if they were both hard of hearing. Her mother's brother had been in a boarding fight and couldn't hear out of his left ear from the detonation of a frag round. Maybe that's what had happened to them. "Giselle Reiker," she said it slowly and clearly, just like talking to her uncle.
"Are you possessed?" the raspy voice demanded.
"Would I know?" she didn't think she was, but she didn't want to lie.
The gruff voice began screaming at her, so close to her face she could smell his breath and feel the flecks of spittle hitting her cheeks; it was a prayer of banishment.
"Are you possessed?" a new voice repeated the question; this one was cold, clipped – he sounded a little like her father.
"I don't think so, but I'm not sure if I would know," it was hard to answer calmly with the man still screaming in her face.
"What is your name?"
Weren't they listening? Would all of them ask her? "Giselle Reiker."
"Your true name!" the raspy voice hissed venemously, close to her ear.
Didn't they have a file on her? Doctor Trixie had known her name before they even met. "Giselle Reiker."
"How many daemons have you consorted with?" the cold voice had come to fill the ringing silence left just as the gruff voice finished his prayer.
"I'm sorry?" she wasn't sure what he meant.
The voice turned to hateful ice, "How many?"
"I don't think I know what consort means," she was following the sound of his voice around the table. Like a ghost, the memory of her conversation a week ago on the Lacertus ran through her mind, Be honest, Ellie, only honest…
"Bargained! Bartered! Made a pact with!" the gruff voice was in her face and shouting again.
"But daemons come from the Warp –" the Gellar field protected the ship from the Warp… daemons couldn't get through it.
"How many have you consorted with?" the raspy voice sounded like he had been facing away and turned as he was screeching.
"I don't understand."
The gruff voice began screaming a prayer of banishment again before he fell silent, cut off by a new voice. It was calm, reasonable. "Have you ever heard voices from people you can't see?"
"Sometimes… when I'm asleep," she didn't like those voices. She didn't want to talk about them.
"Have they asked to be friends?" She had a feeling he was asking something more important than it sounded. Be honest… the churgeon's voice whispered in her memory, They'll know.
"They grow teeth because I tell them no." There was silence for a moment, and because it seemed they expected more, she explained, "The bad dreams start, and when I wake up I've broken things. I don't mean to."
"If I ask you something, will you promise to tell me the truth?" the nice voice coaxed.
"Of course," why couldn't they all be nice like this? Why couldn't they tell that she wasn't lying, like Doctor Trixie had said they would?
"What's your name?"
It was silent – finally. Quiet and dark and still, and her heart was full, full. After countless hours – perhaps days – of interrogation, the silence was as golden as the Throne. There had been a sharp pinch just beneath her ear and then the darkness around her swam inside her, and if they asked her any more questions, she didn't hear them and didn't reply. She woke now, still in the oppressive darkness; still strapped to the table; still without her jumper, her dress, her boots; still terribly cold; but she was alone with unbroken silence and peace.
There was a noise – somewhere far away… maybe the next room… It was high, soft, like a chime, but it didn't sound like a chime… it sounded like a trumpet. She twisted her head to look towards where it might have come from. There was only black, and the silence resumed.
Then from the corner of her eye there was a flash of light; it was so tiny… so far away… she didn't think the room could possibly be this big. It blipped soft and pink and then it was gone.
The sound came back from somewhere new this time. It blared like a claxon from the hall would, it sounded like the organ from chapel but distorted, like it was broken – she tried to pick out the melody before it stopped but it was gone. It left a smell… something strange – something pungent – like salt and machine oil.
The light whirled quickly this time, a burst of yellow-pink-blue mottled together in no particular pattern; it washed over the white skin of her legs and left them cold and numb and on fire. The noise followed quickly, louder again with arrhythmic clinking like chains that whistled after they hit, like a round firing in reverse; she flinched at each percussion, looking about to find its source, but it was everywhere. It was nowhere. It was silent.
The light was red and wet this time, it oozed over her as if trickling down onto her; warm, dripping on her face, metallic pinging when it hit her cheeks and spattered like blood from an open, spurting wound that was all at once visible, festering in horrid, inhuman flesh fixed directly in her line of vision. She twisted her head but it was still there with crackling static over the rush of liquid through pipes. Cotton wool was separating, nauseating her; it roared an animal sound like the deck hand had when he'd been run through with steel girding. His eyes glowed out of the dark. There was shine and glint – like the cabinets in the infirmary – but green, and something was moving in the darkness; she caught glimpses of it off the shine.
Its steps made a noise like grinding metal on ferrocrete with the hiss of an open vox filling the space between. It left a taste in her mouth like rancid carob and liquid cherry vitamins, resonating in her back teeth. The eyes watched her shrink from the ping ping ping of the wound opening and closing like a mouth. She didn't want this anymore. Safe – she needed safe – the bubble… she'd make a bubble. It came around her like the rubber-plasticine ball her father'd taken away from her. He'd said it wasn't safe.
It wasn't safe.
She watched something small grow, but it rotted as it did, like fruit that grew green and then black fuzz and withered under the orange light, coming from inside the ball. Orange was bad. It meant something was coming. The white noise hiss formed a whispered word… the word she was afraid of… "Friend…"
Her scream of 'no' was drowned out by the non-music of the broken organ, loud, ringing inside her head. She threw the rotten fruit away without her hands, it spattered and stank of iodine and rosewater and ammonia. The crackling static hissed its displeasure. Then there were no eyes, no wound. But there were teeth, bathed in dripping orange congealed light that turned the chiming trumpet into, "Come…"
She wouldn't. She couldn't run. She needed – something stronger than the bouncing ball. Her mother, cooking dinner on the gas stove – the water boiled in the pot above a ring of fire. The water was orange and gelatinous and bubbling thickly. The fire…
She clicked. A blue spark clicked over her heart, like her mother turning on the stove, waiting for the ring of gas to catch the flame. It didn't catch. She clicked again as the teeth separated and came to rip at the skin of her belly. She squirmed desperately. She clicked. The ring had to catch. She clicked. Orange gooey light dripped into her navel and pooled there. She clicked.
Somewhere, a lifetime and worlds away, a voice sounded like distant thunder, rumbling ominously, "I've seen enough."
One more click and it would catch, she was sure.
"End it," the thunder said.
She clicked, and the world went dark.