Hastus gently applied pressure to his descending device and level twenty-six hundred and five materialised out of the gloom. Almost no light reached this level and the tunnel through the abyss his headtorch carved only illuminated a small percentage of it.
He could have been at the bottom of the deepest sea if it weren't for the grey ferrocrete mezzanine floor his light was trained on. Dust floated lazily and as he glided toward the wall it swirled like tiny tornadoes in his wake.
His feet passed just above the wall and he let out more rope, dropping neatly to the floor. Roman had been the first down the rope, but there was no sign of him, just a glo-bulb he had attached to the wall throwing a soft light over its three meter range.
Hastus drew his knife, everyone knew that mutants lurked in the lower levels of the hive, most would have died off now that the city was no longer functioning but those that still existed would probably eat him, or he supposed so anyway.
Never taking his eyes off the nearest corridor away from the mezzanine, he was about to engage the ascending gear so he could escape when Roman sauntered around the corner, doing up his fly. "Needed a piss! What's with the knife?"
"I thought you'd been eaten by some cannibal mutants." Hastus replied, trying to make it sound like a joke as much as he could, as he began detaching himself from the rope.
Roman stuck a lho-stick between his lips, then swept back his jacket and pulled out his revolver. "I'll plug any scum that think I'm an easy meal for sure." But his eyes searched the empty spaces along the edge of the ring walkway.
The rope whipped back and forth as the next member of the little party slid down to join them, and Hastus chatted about music with Roman until Ednar's boots appeared out of the haze.
"Hey ladies." Ed chimed as he landed on the wall, where he danced momentarily, before dropping down onto the floor. "Anything fun happening?"
"Hastus thought I'd been eaten by mutants." Roman chuckled.
"Awwww, did our poor boy get scared?" Ednar tried to hug Hastus while making kissing noises.
"Fuck off, you!" Hastus sprang out of hugging range and Ednar began undoing the rope.
Before he could open the device, a peculiar hissing noise sounded from the other side of the parapet wall.
Roman's face contorted in horror. "Ed! The rope!"
Through the darkness, Hastus made out that the hissing noise was indeed their rope, writhing like a snake as it rocketed down from above. As Ednar struggled to undo the rope from the descender a shape passed their view, falling with the rope down the central shaft of the hive.
"Throne, was that Adjak?!" Roman cried.
Hastus overcame the temporary paralysis of his legs and sprang towards Ed, grabbing the rope and trying to help him get it out of the uncooperative device. He was too late, and the rope came taught with a snap, spinning Ednar around and slamming him into the wall, with Hastus' hands trapped between the wall and Ednar's navel.
"Don't just stand there! Grab the rope!" Ednar roared at Roman, who looked like he was rooted to the ground.
Coming to his senses, Roman grabbed the rope and began hauling it up over the wall, releasing Ednar and Hastus.
Ed fell heavily onto his backside, winded from his encounter with the wall and nursing a cut on his wrist.
Hastus began pulling the rope up with Roman, "Adjack?! Can you hear us?"
"Maybe the fall knocked him out." Roman grunted, "It's a long fucking way down."
"The rope was tied in right, I saw Ed do it myself, and the bolts were only in the ferrocrete for like a year, they should last a century! Especially down here cos there's no rain or wind." Hastus explained. "How the fuck did it go?"
"We can ask Adjack. If he's still alive."
"Well he's definitely still on the rope, heavy bastard." Hastus chuckled nervously and Roman's mouth twisted into a wobbly grin around his lho stick.
Stopping only to examine a large bruise appearing on Ednar's stomach, they wrestled with the rope for a full fifteen minutes before a shape appeared at the limit of their torch's power.
Adjack was suspended horizontally from his harness, his arms and legs hanging limply.
"Ah skak! Pull quicker," Roman spluttered, the lho stick dropping from his lips and tumbling down into space.
Hastus braced himself against the wall with one foot and they picked up the pace, passing the rope to Ednar, who held onto the end in case of a slip.
"Okay, I think he's snagged on the edge, hold on for a sec." Instructed Roman, Hastus and Ednar held the rope steady as Roman reached over the edge.
Roman let out a strangled cough and stumbled back from the edge. "Emperor's blood…" He whispered, making the sign of the Aquila over his chest as the colour drained from his face.
Hastus, keeping one hand on the rope, reached over the parapet, feeling for Adjack, he got hold of the harness built and using all his might, hauled a headless body over the edge.
….
Hastus hadn't realised exactly how much he had eaten before he'd left the Arc apartments, but his stomach most certainly empty now. Ednar was looking very green as well and Roman had chain-smoked several lho sticks in the ten minutes since they'd recovered what was left of Adjack.
Having voided his stomach, Hastus felt marginally better. The feeling quickly disappeared as he caught sight of the end of the rope, still attached to Adjak's harness.
He gingerly undid the descending device and held the end of the rope up to the light.
"Guys… this end didn't fail."
Roman and Ednar looked surprised at the sound of his voice, but picked themselves up from where they had been leaning against the wall to examine Hastus' discovery.
"Yeah," Roman chewed the words around his third lho stick. "Yeah man that looks way too clean, like it was cut."
Ednar finally lost the battle with his stomach, launching himself at the wall and vomiting over the edge. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he weakly stated to the emptyness "We need to get the hell out of here."
"Yup." Roman agreed. Hastus noticed Roman's hands were shaking slightly; looking down he realised his were as well. He shoved them in his pockets.
"Okay," He said, "Okay, Okay, Okay… There'll be stairs all the way up, it'll probably take tonight and a lot of next day but it'll be okay."
"Okay? Have you forgotten that there's something between us and home that did that to Adjack?!" Roman hissed, "This is not gonna be fucking 'okay', you idiot."
"Calm down you fuckwit!" Ednar drew his helpistol as he spoke. "Its probably just some bloody mutant got him while his back was turned doing up the rope. We'll be fine as long as we watch out for each other. We have two guns and we know there's something out there. Plus you learned how to shoot from Kaleb didn't you Ro? Wasn't he in the guard? It'll be okay, like H said."
Roman fingered the grip on his gun, "Yeah, okay, sorry man. I didn't mean…"
"It's cool," Hastus cut across him.
…..
After the twenty-sixth flight of stairs (at least, he thought it was the twenty-sixth, he hadn't been counting) Hastus thanked the Emperor that his father made sure he and his brothers attended physical training three times a week on the threat of bread and water for dinner.
Roman had chucked his lho sticks ten levels below after Ed had pointed out that aerobic exercise and a reduced capacity for breathing didn't really go together. As it was, he was wheezing and was starting to ask for breaks after every couple of flights, while Hastus was only just starting to feel the strain on his quads.
They rounded the corner at the top of the latest set and were confronted with a twisted mass of metal and a pile of collapsed masonry. Roman sagged against the railings, seizing the opportunity to rest his legs.
"Skak." Stated Hastus.
"Where'd the nearest other stairs be?" Roman managed to gasp, looking nervously down the way they had come.
Hastus quickly peered out of the stairwell and onto what appeared to be a main avenue of some kind. Huge pillars soared out of sight, while the other visible structures his torch could illuminate looked like shop fronts of some description. If it hadn't been for the totality of the blackness above, he could have sworn they were merely outside at night.
The sweep of his headtorch created movement in the shadows and he itched for something with more stopping power than his knife.
He turned to the others. "This street looks like it's pretty major, we might find another set by just following it around."
Ednar stuck his head out of the doorway, grimacing as he surveyed the decomposing street. "It looks like half of it might fall on our heads at any second."
"Well, it eventually will if we just stay here…"
"This is true. Come on Ro, you really need to kick those lho sticks when we get back."
"IF we get back." Roman grumbled.
"Shut up." Hastus walked backwards out of the stairwell doorway. "That's handy, they have 'Stairs' written in big yellow letters! If there's another set we should be able to find them."
A faint grinding noise echoed down the street and Hastus instinctively threw himself against the wall.
"Just some old habstack giving up on life, I think." Ednar smiled as he spoke, but raised his pistol.
They scurried out of the stairwell, hugging the front of the buildings. The shops were so long dead it was impossible to tell what trade they had once plied. Any organics were now dust, any ferrous metals rust and anything remaining had been pilfered generations ago.
They moved in a hurried crouch, wincing whenever a rock skittered away from their feet. Any noise seemed ten times louder than it had any right to be and it all chewed on Hastus' nerves. Every lump of fallen ferrocrete looked like some misshapen mutant ready to pounce and the shards of broken glass from a window looked like the gleaming eyes of the xenos depicted in stained glass battling the armies of man.
He noticed Ed was gently rubbing the Aquila stamped onto the side of his gun, muttering a litany.
Hastus began to mutter along with him, saying prayers put him in mind of the chapel in schola. He actually liked that part of the curriculum, the hourly devotional before lessons made him feel ready for the rest of the day.
The high Gothic calmed him down and it seemed to be helping Ed to have someone else to pray with.
They finished and Roman expelled a breathe with a hiss, glancing around. "How far have we gone?"
From the front, Ednar shrugged. "Like two blocks? I think we've only been going for ten minutes, the next set of stairs could be miles away."
"It's going to be a long one." Grouched Roman. Who's idea was this anyway?"
"Yours, if memory serves." Ednar retorted.
"Yeah. Well, I only wanted to go down halfway! it was your idea to push it and now we're fucked and Adjack's skakkin' dead, dead! His Dad will murder us if the mutants don't..." He trailed off, sweat visibly beading up on his nose despite the cold.
"We're not dead yet," Hastus tried to sound diplomatic. "We just need to keep walking."
Roman muttered under his breath, Hastus only caught something about "inbreeding" and the Sabinii family, but Ednar heard it too and whirled around, leveling the Helpistol at Roman's nose.
"SAY THAT AGAIN!"
"Woah, lets calm down!" Hastus started to try and put his hands on Ednar's gun.
"Get lost! I want him to say that to my face!"
Roman's face was contorted in fear and anger and it looked like he wasn't going to say anything smart in the foreseeable future. The pair stared at each other like a pair of statues for several seconds.
"Nothing?" Ednar lowered the weapon and spat at Roman's feet.
"Coward."
Roman tackled Ednar around the waist, both their guns dropping to the ground. Rolling in centuries of dust, Ednar emerged on top and began punching at Roman's face until he was thrown off.
Making a grab for the front of Ednar's jacket, Roman was about to deliver blows of his own until the whipcrack of a las shot brought them back to their senses.
Hastus lowered the helpistol. "This isn't helping! We need to get the hell out of here, then you can..."
He trailed off as the most sickening sound he had ever heard rung out from behind him. It was almost so low it was beyond human hearing, yet incredibly high pitched at the same time.
He whirled around, pointing the gun in front of him with both hands as though it were a shield as much as anything else. Not ten meters away, and closing slowly, was what looked like a large, floating sea anemone. The light of the trio's headtorches illuminated sickly pale skin with greenish patches, covered by a fine web of metallic veins.
Hastus backed away, too frightened to speak as Roman and Ednar propelled themselves away from the thing on their hands.
The thing was not alone. lurking behind the creature stood a figure swathed in what looked like a single long robe, wrapped around its whole body with nothing but a black hole under the hood, not even the slightest facial feature was visible.
A terrified yelp from one of the other boys behind him knocked Hastus out of his trance.
"What in the warp do you want?!" He managed to splutter.
The figure shifted as it skulked behind the floating monstrosity and made a sound like a man with his throat cut trying to breathe, as the sound oscillated Hastus became fairly sure he, she or it? was laughing.