Septday, Rami 28th 067.M42

I'm sitting in an ordinary hab-room in the thirty-ninth precinct, trying to write my journal on the dataslate that I'd been so happy to buy for myself just four months ago, but which now makes me want to throw it out the window. I have the death sentence of my home caught in this web of ones and zeroes and it feels like a ticking bomb just waiting to go off in my hands.

We finished the data dump yesterday just after the morning shift change was rung. I'd spent the entire time trying to stave off panic, sure that someone had the data we were searching for flagged, that someone would realise a data leech in the central stacks was a dangerous thing. Surely they'd be looking for such a thing, you'd think anyway. Or worse, that they'd realise that our documents were falsified, that I was the only one of the two of us who was actually doing the data cleansing, that we'd stayed well beyond our "assigned" shift times, that we'd been there for a day and then some. But nobody seemed to care. It almost makes me despair - no wonder Asphodel is on the brink of collapse, if nobody ever seems to pay the slightest attention or care to anything out of the ordinary. I feel like I've gone mad in the last few months, trying to bring things to the attention of others without being written off as a madman and I wonder too how many things I personally ignored in the past, because they just weren't my problem?

But while we were ignored for the most part, we couldn't risk being caught up on our way out. If we'd tried to leave mid-shift, that would have aroused suspicion. Kel chose the moment we were discussing this quietly in a facilities break to notify me that several of her implants are not Mechanicus-standard either - and that being caught with them would lead to several unpleasant consequences that she didn't elaborate on and I didn't ask for. We decided to wait until midday, to make our way out with the receding tide of adepts making their way from the stacks to find something for lunch. It was easy enough to shuffle our way in to a group and from there to make our way back out onto the streets.

Thankfully my paranoia of the day before had receded somewhat. I'm sure the cult hasn't given up looking for me, the fact that my vox is filled with alerts saying I've missed calls from Mum speaks to that if nothing else. But it seems at least that chasing down data in the central stacks isn't something that is high on their list of ideas of things that I would do. I'll admit to getting more nervous and watching more intently for followers or observers as we made our way closer to thirty-ninth, but we were able to make our way back unimpeded and with no obvious signs that we'd gotten anyone on our tail. Thank the Throne for small mercies.

Maddy and Nate and the others weren't here when we got back, and they still haven't returned as of the time of writing this. Fear once again grips my heart when I think of them. We wouldn't know if something had happened, until either enough time had passed that there could be no other conclusion, or until the cultists or their Xeno masters were knocking down our door. However their absence has given us enough time to review the data that we stole and to start filtering out the evidence we needed.

There's a lot of it.

I'd hoped, prayed that we'd find nothing. Or perhaps some minor blips that might warrant further investigation, but that might buy us some time. I couldn't be so lucky.

Tartarus has floods of medicae reports referring to the symptoms of some kind of "walking plague", showing all the signs of the illness that Arlean was reporting had swamped her infirmary and was running rampant through our lower hive and underhive. Though the spread in Tartarus seems to be much wider, the reports we found included communication between the spire chirurgeons and medicae on many other levels of the hive, suggesting that it had made or is making its way up to the higher tiers of the hive.

Reports from the Magisters in Nyx have been asking for Arbites help looking into a supposedly Imperial Cult that has arisen in the mid-hive. They call themselves the Blessed Children of the Emperor and, well, let's just review the description of one of their cult leaders, shall we?

"He is a tall man, though despite the confidence in his dark and brooding gaze, he hunches in such a way to make himself appear much shorter and bulkier. Wearing voluminous robes and hoods, his bald countenance is sickly pale, seeming to have somewhat of a bloodless, bluish cast. Were he not standing and walking about, one could be forgiven for thinking him a man several days dead, with his vitae drained to his lower extremities."

And while Achlys seems to be as-yet unaffected, a secret missive from a midwife in Styx has offered the most damning indictment. A letter sent from a woman to her sister here in Minos, talking of the horrifying abomination that her noble client's daughter gave birth to late one night. Apparently the girl had been ill for a while and had been in confinement for a period, but that she was finally called up to see to the birth of the child that she'd apparently been carrying in secret. She reports a horror of teeth and claws, a bulbous-headed, purple-shelled creature with six limbs that came forth in some obscene mockery of holy and pure birth. Apparently the girl clutched the creature to her breast like an actual child, crooning and clucking to it. The midwife says she fled the manse, leaving the girl to her mutant child for the family to deal with, but that she fears they're coming for her, to silence her about what she saw.

Kel says the midwife's report is proof for sure that the xeno infection has spread to other hives, that the creature that the girl gave birth to was an example of what she referred to as a "First-generation Hybrid" and the existence of one meant it was likely there were many more, hidden amongst the poor and disenfranchised of the hive. The fact that the family brought in an external midwife means that the cult has not taken over all of them, but she said that the parent of a first-generation hybrid will defend it to the death, and that the rest of the cult will seek them out and find them to bring them back into the fold as soon as possible.

I want to ask her what this means for Asphodel. If it's not one hive but all of them, how the infestation can possibly be purged. I think that she will tell me, she's got no reason to want to try to spare my feelings like Maddy seemed to want to.

But I'm a coward. I don't think I could bear to carry on if I find out the true price that my home is going to pay for this. Emperor grant me strength, I wasn't made for this.