Septday, Rami 21st 067.M42

It took us most of the day and a significant portion of the night to make our way back up to hid-hive yesterday. They knew which lifter we'd taken, so Maddy insisted that we get off at about the third-way point, just some random industrial level between the lower hive and mid-hive, where we could slip off in the shadow of some cargo vehicles that were alighting and make our way across-hive to another lifter. We did this twice before she judged that we'd both moved far enough away from our original path, and also come close enough to her intended destination that she was happy for us to ride the rest of the way up. The interruptions in the journey, traversing the levels through the manufactorum districts, finding our way through where there were no pedestrian pathways, it all took so much more time. Where I thought we'd be home and at least somewhat further away from peril by about lunchtime, we didn't get in until somewhere around the middle of the night.

We didn't go back to my place either. Maddy took me to the residence that she'd hired out for herself, a spartan room in the thirty-ninth precinct. I already knew that the story of her family was fabricated - though she told me that some parts of it were actually drawn from her life, she never elaborated which ones - but it explained even more visibly why she always insisted on coming to my place and she never took me back to hers.

I'd honestly thought that by "home" she'd been referring to my place, just the assumption of reference, I guess. But it makes more sense that we'd stay here. Though Arlean's never actually visited my home, we don't know if the cultists were watching me in any fashion before I made that last trip down there, and she had my hab address anyway. So it wouldn't be hard to find me.

Because we got in so late, I didn't make a call to Mum and Dad. I didn't want to panic them. Maddy tells me that they can't ever know the truth, that we have to find some way to convince them to get off-world without actually exposing them to what exactly is going on and what's happened to Arlean. She said that if they ever found out even a fraction of the truth, that their lives would be forfeit - at best they'd simply be executed outright for knowing things that Imperial citizens were not supposed to know, at worst they might be taken for servitor conversion. And where the cultists most likely would not be able to take either Lizzy or Cordell due to their being embedded in their respective organisations, the Inquisition could not take the chance that they might have later contact with Mum and Dad and it would mean their destruction as well.

When I asked her what that meant for me, after the things that she'd told me, she just looked at me sadly and said that it wasn't her decision to make.

I wanted to yell at her for that. I'm ashamed to admit that I… I want to say that I might have raised my voice at her but that I remained calm overall, but I know I didn't. I think I did yell at her, before I remembered myself and the fact that I didn't know who could hear what through the walls. The last thing we would want would be for some well-meaning neighbour to call the Magisters because they could hear a domestic dispute. Not that there's any guarantees the Magisters would do anything, because Throne knows they have so many more important things…

I asked her again what it meant for me. She wouldn't look me in the eye for the longest time. I didn't think she was going to answer, until she looked at me again. I don't know what I expected, but it certainly wasn't for her to be crying. I don't know if I believed her at first, she's lied about so many other things… it was the first time I'd had to sit down and process things, the first moment of safety where we weren't constantly watching over our shoulder for death to come calling… and it was the first point, I think, where I realised that she'd been using me. But she looked up at me, there were tears in her eyes and though I tried not to fall for it, tried to tell myself it was another ploy to get me on side and behaving… She sounded utterly wretched for it.

She told me then that from my first direct encounter with the… things… my life was on a timer. Even though I'd never met one of the actual creatures itself, I'd had enough contact with the cultists, and they'd been in my brain, interfering with my dreams and thoughts. That was evidence enough alone that I was potentially corrupted. That without her intervention I'd surely be put to death. I'd seen too much for my own good, and I'm not important enough or valuable enough to mind-wipe of what I've seen and put back into society. I'm just a small cog in a vast machine, and if I break it's easy enough to just trash me out and replace me. She says that my only hope now lies with her, to do exactly as she says and that if I can, she might be able to plead my case to her superiors. She told me she was sorry and kissed me then before she told me again that I'd have to just sit and wait, that she had to go and try to make contact with her team, and that I'd just need to sit and be patient while she did.

I wanted to ask her what she meant by that comment, about pleading my case to her superiors, but I'm not entirely sure I want to know. All I know of the Inquisition is faint rumour. A story of monstrous men and women who will stop at nothing to preserve the Imperium from unnamed threats that are too horrifying to consider.

I don't know if I want to be a part of this, but it's very bloody clear that the choice isn't and possibly never was mine to make.