A/N: 'The Stolen Son' takes place both before and after the events in 'Choices: A Black Legion Monologue'
I
My childhood? You wish to know what I remember about my childhood? That is a strange question. I don't see how my childhood bears any relevancy to my current situation, as it now stands. Besides, aren't we all made to forget our mortal pasts? Is that not a natural and expected part of the ascension process? Is it different for Imperials, then? Can loyalist Astartes recall their boyhoods with the same exacting clarity as they do each battle they fight as full-fledged Space Marines who have completely transcended their humanity?
Yes, I'm well aware it is you who ask the questions, not me. Then I will inform you that with the exception of one specific recollection, I do not remember my mortal years. I am young according to the measure of our kind – I have already told you this – so perhaps that is why this one memory remains so vivid in my mind; everything else before and after was lost to the agonies of my ascension. Do you truly desire me to speak of it? As you wish, though I find it perplexing why any of you would want to know it.
In the memory I am waiting eagerly for my birth-father's shift at the foundry to end. What was my father's name? I don't know – nor do I know the name of our home-hive or the planet that birthed us; believe me, I would freely give you the names if I did. I am a small boy – so small, so weak – seated at the plastek table in the kitchen-area of our two-room hab-unit. I am filled with excitement. There is a faded picture-book spread open on the table before me; the artwork depicts a heroic-looking Imperial commissar triumphing over all sorts of simplistically rendered aliens and mutants. There are Low Gothic words accompanying each illustration. I am excited because I can now make sense of the words. Perhaps I was a slow boy who took longer then most to learn his letters; I have no memory of the schola, or the faces of my teachers. My class let out before my father's shift ended so I had to wait for him, burning with excitement, so eager to show him I finally knew what the words meant. I remember that childlike eagerness keenly – I was so pleased with myself, so proud…
The hab was dark and cold. I do not recall why – energy rationing, perhaps? – I was used to it, however. When my father returned he would activate the lumens and recite the proper litanies over the heating-unit that would make the warmth return. My clothing was drab and plain. I shivered. I suspect it was wintertime. Despite my excitement, worry also gripped me – I remember feeling that emotion, too. Sometimes my father didn't always come home right after his shift ended; sometimes he would return much later with the scent of rotgut liquor on his breath, too tired or inebriated to pay me any attention. Yet on that night he returned right away. When he stepped through the door I jumped down off the chair and ran into his side, waving the book in my excitement. His coveralls smelled of soot, sweat and machine oil, as they always did. His careworn face was lined, his hair gone prematurely gray, yet he still managed a smile when he saw me. He ruffled my hair and said my name. I know this, yet the name he spoke is lost to me, for the memory is devoid of sound – how I wish I could remember my true name, and the sound of my father's voice!
He turned on the lumens and activated the heating-unit. Then he stood before the kitchen sink and held his chaffed hands under the facet so the meager trickle of tepid water could wash the outer layer of grime from his skin. His head was bowed and his shoulders were slumped; he was exhausted but I was too excited to care. I now knew what the words meant – all that mattered to me was showing him what I had learned. He relented to my pestering and sat down with me on our sagging couch with a sigh. I snuggled against him and opened the book. It was my favorite book; he'd read it to me countless times before bed and I knew all of the commissar's adventures by heart. But this time it is different. This time I am the one who reads the story to him – slowly, haltingly, tracing a finger beneath each sentence. Yet he remained patient, despite his weariness, and when I had finished he hugged me close and kissed the top of my head. He was so pleased with me, so proud…
And then it is all lost, everything after swallowed by a blank gulf of immeasurable time in which nothing is remembered. When awareness returns – when I become cognitive of myself once more – I am crouched in the center of the Killing Room, surrounded by mangled corpses, naked as a newborn and completely covered in blood. I am no longer a boy. Yet I am not a man, either – not in the way my father had been a man. I am in the process of becoming something far greater – and far, far less.
II
Ah, the Killing Room – I ended the lives of many in that death-steeped place, both before and after self-awareness returned. If not for that one solitary childhood memory I would have believed my entire existence began the moment I opened my eyes and found myself within its confines, my bare skin slicked with the blood and viscera of my latest opponents. I had dismembered each one; not a single body remained intact. I could no longer tell if they had been male or female or even if they had been human at all. Blood covered every available surface. Two hearts beat within my chest; strips of torn flesh hung from my filed teeth. I stood upright, my slablike muscles trembling with expended adrenaline. The wall opposite me consisted of a giant one-way mirror. Despite the blood-spatters I saw myself perfectly: a broad-shouldered massively-muscled giant with a shaved scalp and wild blue eyes. Sutures from the most recent implantation surgeries crisscrossed my abdomen and chest, the pallid skin surrounding each incision red with inflammation. I was in agony. Every fiber of my genhanced body seethed with the pain of its becoming. I threw back my head as if to scream like a terrified child – what came out instead was the animalistic bellow of a blood-maddened beast.
Enraged beyond reason I charged at the mirror-wall; somehow I knew they were watching me on the other side, deeming themselves safe from my wrath. I hurled my body against the reflective armorglass, putting all my weight behind the blow, yet its smooth surface did not even crack. I kicked and clawed at it, bellowing incomprehensible words. The desire to kill was so potent, so utterly consuming, I thought I must die unless I was given more things to rip apart. Those who observed me soon provided me with a fresh outlet. A door to my right slid open and a pale, limbless worm-like creature slithered into the room; its body was as thick as my torso, long and sinuous and covered with black barbs secreting droplets of milky venom. I whirled to face it – I felt no fear, only excitement and bloodlust as my enhanced eyes took in every detail of its loathsome form, searching for weaknesses. It was eyeless, yet it focused on me with unerring accuracy. I charged and it reared up, its barbs quivering, its mouth a fleshy tunnel ringed with serrated fangs. I was unarmored and weaponless, yet this did not deter me – all that mattered was the kill and the thrill I derived in the act of killing.
Yet the creature had not been pitted against me to further test my physical stamina. I was not an individual in the eyes of my creators, not yet – I was a living weapon, a complicated multi-layered tool that required much testing and tempering to ensure the various aspects of my new physiology were functioning as intended. The worm-thing struck at me, a long lashing tongue emerging from its circular mouth. It was fast but I proved faster. I closed with it, and wrapping my powerful arms about its neck I began to squeeze, putting all of my strength into the act. Yet even as I seized it its envenomed barbs pierced the flesh of my arms and chest; poison flooded my bloodstream in vast quantities. My oolitic kidney went into overdrive as it struggled to cope with the sudden influx of toxin. The venom roiled through me like liquid fire; the pain was like nothing I had ever experienced before, yet I refused to relinquish my hold. The creature thrashed and writhed about the Killing Room, mindlessly slamming me against the walls and floor as I continued to crush it in my grip. Bones fractured and muscles tore, but my embrace never once slackened – the worm went limp just as my vision began to blur. I released it and crawled away, unable to stand, shuddering and frothing at the mouth as the venom warred against my still-maturing physiology.
Only then did my masters deign to enter the room. There were two of them, two Black Legionnaires, both Apothecaries, and they towered over me in their ancient black and gold-trimmed power-armor. The stylized sigil of the Eye of Horus adorning their chest-plates gazed down upon me as if in judgment. I tried to speak but my jaws had locked up. They said nothing to me and merely waved bio-scanners over my convulsing body, indifferent to my torment. Both were helmed and they conversed privately over a shared vox-link as they studied the readouts on their arm-mounted nartheciums. I clawed at the ceramite boot of one in desperation; I no longer desired to kill; I thought death was at hand. An abstract sense of failure filled my hearts with dread – if I died now, if the implants failed to take, I would never…never…what? I did not know; my sanity was a fragile, uncertain thing I'd only just regained. Yet I knew I wanted to live, and I knew the Apothecaries held the power of life and death over me. Somehow I forced my jaws to loosen and my tongue to move. I spoke rational words – perhaps for the first time since the beginning of my ascension…
"Brothers…help me…"
The Legionnaire whose boot I was grasping at abruptly dropped to one knee and seized my head in his gauntlet. I could feel the power contained in that vice-like grip, could sense the suppressed violence, the urge to kill that was conveyed through his armored fingers as he tilted back my head, forcing me to stare into his helm's soulless emerald eye-lenzes.
"Did I give you leave to address me, Creth'kar?" he snarled coldly through his vox-grille. My eyes widened in surprise. Creth'kar? Was that my name? The Apothecary's fingers dug into my scalp; one quick twist and he could snap my neck. "No…" I gasped, still bedazzled by this unexpected revelation. "No master, forgive me. I…"
"We are not your brothers, Creth'kar," he spat the word as if it were a curse rather than a name. Then he drove a fist into my face. I reeled back, half-stunned, my nose pulped, my upper teeth shattered and my cheekbones broken. The pain was nothing compared to the dismayed confusion I felt. How could they not be my brothers? Weren't we all supposed to be brothers? We were Astartes and all Astartes had brothers – this was innate knowledge, known on an instinctual level. Having brothers – being a part of a brotherhood – was a vital, fundamental component of our very beings. How could it be otherwise? How could I not have brothers?
"I don't –" I managed, and then the boot of the second Legionnaire slammed into my chest; something significant broke and I crashed backwards to the gore-slick floor amidst the corpse-parts of the mortals I had dismembered earlier. The agony caused by the venom was dissipating yet I was hardly aware of it. The first Apothecary stood and I was suddenly convinced they were going to kill me. My slaughter-lust surged anew through my veins and I sprang to my feet with a snarl, spitting blood and tooth-fragments from ruined lips. I would fight them both if I had to – they were fully encased in their war-plate while I was naked and unarmed, yet still I would fight; I knew of no other option, for this was the Killing Room and within its four plasteel walls only death reigned.
"Where are my brothers?!" I demanded as they advanced upon me, flexing their gauntlets in anticipation. "Dead," the Legionnaires answered in unison, and although their faces were hidden I knew they were both grinning at me like leering daemons. I uttered an inarticulate howl of rage – or perhaps grief? – and rushed them, heedless of the odds set against me, my uncontrolled fury at their rejection spurring me on.
The fight was brief and exceedingly brutal. Afterwards, they beat me. The beating was so severe that upon its conclusion I was barely capable of movement or rational thought. It was only later, long after a pair of hulking mutant cellwardens had dragged me back to my small unfurnished holding cell that I realized they had baited me into attacking them, that they had wanted to gauge my combat-efficiency in the immediate aftermath of the poisoning. My oolitic kidney had not been found wanting. Another component of my developing physiology had been tested and the tempering had proved successful. In the darkness of my cell I smiled as a small surge of pride swelled within my chest, soothing the more turbulent emotions seething in my hearts. I vowed to myself then that I would live, that I would endure - that I would thrive, regardless of the challenges to come.
It was to be the first of many such testings and temperings...