A/N: Chap 10 review responses are in my forums as normal. After this chapter, we're going to have several Taylor-centric chapters in a row.
Chapter Eleven: Serpens Decepit
"Lyta, wake up!"
Corantha's panicked pleas jogged her from her fugue state. Over her cousin's cries, she heard the harsh zap of las fire. "Report."
"People are shooting at us," Maerya said helpfully. Corantha was actually holding the psyker, sheltering her. "I would like us to run away now, please."
Evidently Lord Moro's psyker was no more a combat asset than Lyta's cousin was.
She'd fallen during her vision. A las bolt streaked across the open chasm from the other side, two levels up from the M33 stacks. Laying right in front of her, her Stormtrooper escort lay scrawled in a pool of blood from multiple lasrounds.
Archeotech force shields shimmered across all the shelves to protect the invaluable contents within, and in the process gave them shelter. Corantha and Maerya had dragged Lyta behind one of them, where they now hid.
She touched her vox bead. "I'm taking fire."
"I'm on site," Artigan reported over the vox. "One level above you. Confirm two shooters, one male, one female."
"The female is a blank," Maerya muttered from her sheltered spot. "She makes my stomach ache."
"You can feel her from here?"
"Like a bad smell carried on the wind," the psyker said.
"I want them alive," Lyta declared.
"We suspected you might," Artigan said over the vox. "They're not cooperating."
"I'm going to play bait," Lyta said. "My armor should be up for at least one or two lasbolts."
"I have men nearly in position. Wait until my signal."
"On your mark, then, Commander," Amelyta said.
"Three, two, one… Now!"
The fiber bundles of her power armor amplified not just her strength, but speed as well. She exploded up from the floor and ran down the open stretch along the banisters. Almost immediately she took fire, and the fire came from accomplished marksmen.
A blast struck her side, and a second the pauldron of her armor. The reactive outgassing of the ceramite blasted her off her feet. However, it was enough of a distraction to give Artigan's surviving men the window they needed to act. "Engaging now!" one of Artigan's men declared.
"Winged the female, she's retreating," Artigan said. "Opils, Vaun?"
Lyta looked up in time to see movement across the chasm. The distance was not so great that she couldn't see two stormtroopers engaged in a distressingly even fight with a single hooded figure. He'd managed somehow to disarm two of the best-trained men the Astra Militarum could field, and was effectively using the narrow space between the shelves and balcony opposite to keep the two between him and the third armored trooper. He wielded a thin blade that seemed to blink in and out of existence in the most dangerous ways.
Artigan fired from the level above Amelyta, and to her shock the assassin's form fuzzed for a moment under a refraction field. Lord Moro's commander was nothing if not prepared. He switched to specialized hardpoint countermeasures. The Martian-designed heavy caliber electro-dampening projectile disrupted the enemy's field. It also gave one of the stormtroopers the opening he needed to get in a blow with his gauntleted fist.
The assassin stumbled back. There was only the briefest hesitation, caught between the sniper above and the two troopers, before the man leaped the banister and began plummeting to the floor below twenty levels below.
Lyta rushed to the banister and looked down, expecting a grapple or some technical means of escape. Instead, she saw the man strike the floor in a head-first dive, as if to ensure no possibility of a brainscan or survival.
"Tell me we have the other one," she said into her vox.
"We have her," one of Artigan's men said. "She's injured and tried to suicide, but we stopped her."
"Good work, Opils," Amelyta said. "Artigan, get a full team here. I want you to tear this place apart looking for where those two came from."
Standing, she turned and looked back at her cousin.
"What in the Emperor's name was that, Lyta?" Corantha asked, wide-eyed. "What happened to you?" She was not talking about the assassination attempt.
"She was remembering," Maerya said. "It must have been a fascinating memory."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The female assassin had rich black hair and porcelain skin of a tone that still spoke of sunlight and breathable air. Even with the bruising from her captivity, and the bandages and medi-cup on the stump of her left arm where Artigan had winged her, she held herself in absolute stillness with her chin raised defiantly.
Still, even with her courage and bravery, the biometric auspex of the room caught her distress. She was shivering, though she did her best to hide it. Likely from shock over her injuries. Her heart rate was thready from blood loss, and her breathing shallow. She was not a large woman, weighing under 60 kilos wet.
Lord Moro himself sat in the observation room, and it was by his order that the woman's interrogation room was being pumped full of a powerful narcotic agent. He took assassination attempts against his interrogators seriously.
The woman watched in silence as Lyta stepped into the interrogation room that just two days ago held her cousin Corantha. The prisoner winced when the door sealed shut, and again when se deliberately dragged the feet of her chair loudly against the rockcrete of the chamber.
Lyta remained standing a moment and studied her would-be assassin, confident the antidote she took kept her mind clear from the narcotics in the air.
The appearance of youth was often misleading, but something about the woman spoke of relative inexperience. She was most definitely a pariah, just as Maerya noted. The absence of her soul created a miasma in the air around her that made Amelyta's skin crawl. The inquisitor's own native psyker talent was extremely limited, but even having that meager talent disrupted was nauseating.
Lya solved the issue easily with a limiter collar. The young woman made no move to stop her from securing it, and in fact had faint marks on her skin that hinted at similar collars in the past. Only once the blank field was restrained did Amelyta sit and speak.
"What shall I call you?"
"Eta," the woman said. There was a tremor of pain in her voice, but also an odd accent, as if Low Gothic was not her first language.
"How are you enjoying Botan Hive, Eta?"
The woman blinked, thought for a moment, and then said, "You might as well kill me. I will tell you nothing."
"You've already told me you're from off world," Amelyta said. "From your clothes and complexion. Your accent. You've not been here long. Your partner's body and your weapons confirmed that you were well funded."
Amelyta placed the report from Kandwire on the table. The young woman glanced briefly at it, and for one split second started to frown. With her own very faint psyker ability, Lyta felt absolutely certain that it was a frown of confusion. "Do you recognize this?"
"It is a stack of papers."
A literal answer, as if she were trying to fight the chemicals that were even now circulating through her system. She didn't know. "That is a compilation of reports by the very first Marshal Provost of the Imperium of Man. A woman named Kandawire who undoubtedly died ten thousand years ago. The report details her investigation into someone named Taylor Hebert."
The woman went absolutely still. No trembles, no frown. She held her stillness for half a minute before physical weakness reasserted herself and she began her light shivering again. "And?"
"She's in a room two doors down."
Perhaps if she were not so badly wounded, the woman would have been able to control her reactions better. But with blood loss and pain, her body shivering in shock and her mind influenced by suggestive narcotics, she momentarily lost herself. "You lie! Your kind always murder…wait. You do lie." She sank back from her brief surge of emotion and looked away toward a blank wall, realizing how much she had given away.
Even as she studied the young assassin, Amelyta considered the evidence of their early investigation. "Why were you there, at my family's library? It must have taken you weeks to establish yourself with the librarians. Perhaps even months. Why there?"
A single tear ran down the young woman's cheeks. Her breathing had grown more shallow as she tried fighting the narcotics in the air. "No," she whispered to herself. "Just kill me and be done with it."
"Eta, we're a long, long way from just being done with it. You attempted to assassinate an agent of the Throne. A member of the Holy Inquisition. We are far, far from being done. This? This is just the foreword. The prologue. The real story will involve pain and permanent mutilation like you can't imagine, and then likely a cold, dark cell where you will be forcibly kept alive for as long as I think there's something I can pull from your mind. Then, if you're lucky, I will partially lobotomize you and turn you into a servitor. You'll retain enough sentience to scream for the rest of your life, but that portion of your brain will be disconnected from your body. There is no respite for traitors."
"You're the traitor!" The girl's sudden scream surprised Amelyta enough that she leaned back.
"You're the traitor," she repeated softly with a sob. "You and your kind. You were supposed to protect her! To guide her steps back home! You betrayed her, and now she's lost in the trees. We're all lost. The throne will go dark. Hope is lost, and the throne will go dark, and we'll all die. Because you're a traitor."
The sob turned into a stream of tears as the young woman broke down under the mutual influence of severe injury and the drugs in the air. The clinical part of Lyta viewed it as a successful interview. She signaled for their chirurgeon to get Eta ready for their next interview and left.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
When she returned to the observation room, Lord Moro had already left. A single slip of parchment left instructions to attend him in his quarters.
She went immediately, of course. It was her first time on the twenty-fifth level of the Lord's hab spire. The lift opened onto a secured foyer with portraits, again of alien worlds, this time of various forest scenes.
The Lord Inquisitor's doors opened with a low pulse of sound, and with that invitation she stepped into his chambers.
More wood paneling. The chamber had multiple display cases of trophies earned over three centuries of work. One large case held what looked like an odd bladder of some material connected to multiple pipes and lined in animal fur.
Another held the burned, disfigured helmet of a traitor marine.
An alter to the Emperor stood under the double-eagle Aquilae of the Imperium.
Moro sat at a desk near floor-to-ceiling crystalflex windows, dictating to a skull servitor while at the same time rapidly typing on a rune keyboard for the cogitator unit on the desk.
"Sit, Interrogator."
Lyta didn't need to hear the tone to know it was not going to be a pleasant meeting. She came and sat at one of the chairs facing his desk. He continued working for a few moments before finishing. As the skull servitor floated away to its task, he regarded her with dark eyes.
"You were compromised at your family library. And Artigan tells me that it might have also occurred before, during your first assignment here in Gimel. You did not tell me. You kept vital information from me, Interrogator, and now one of my senior men is dead."
He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. "You implied in your report that you were going to the library to try and trace where the proscribed dataslate you found came from. Instead, you pulled an item that seemed to have no relation to the first from the shelves, and fell into a fugue state caused by….what did Maerya call it? Ah. 'A Warp resonance.' She explained that you experienced someone else's memories."
He moved the parchment note to a stack on the side of his desk, and in its stead placed a standard-issue Astra Militarum laspistol. Lyta went very still–even attempting to defend herself would be seen as an admission of guilt. Instead, she watched his face closely. It was the first time she noticed an old scar above his right eye.
Removed tattoo. Was a Guardsman before joining the Inquisition.
"I wanted very much to believe that Luna was simply the mistake of a talented but inexperienced agent. But you should have told me the moment you were compromised. I will give you something I rarely give, Lyta. I will give you a third chance. Share."
"Lord…"
Artgan stepped out of a side room, in full armor, helm closed and his repeater las hellgun in hand and pointed at her.
"I cannot afford to let you leave this chamber, Lyta, if I cannot trust you."
She took a deep breath and began repeating prayers in the back of her mind. "Lord…when I opened the after-action of Major Stein that I found in Father Colindaus's chapel…I experienced the memories of Stein himself, engaging in a sanctioned raid on a cult in the final days before the Siege of Terra."
He didn't appear to be expecting the answer. "Experienced?"
"Sight. Sound. Taste. I was Stein. The cult was here, Lord. In what we now call Gimel. They called it Bostan Arcology then, ten thousand years ago. A cult of Telosia. Not Elosia as we call her today. Not an Imperial saint, but…a religion that predated the Imperium by thousands of years. And…and Malcador was there, Lord. He spoke to Stein personally about one of the cultists who was arrested. They knew each other."
Moro did not move. Artigan shifted his balance but remained silent.
"And at your family library? You entered a fugue state handling an early Arbites report."
"The first Marshall Provost of the Arbites. Hundreds of years before Stein, Lord. She sought the…the same exact cultist. The same woman. I was Uwoma Kandawire, and I spoke to the woman through her. Lord…the cultist was at the Battle of Veda Wastes."
"I'm not from Terra, Interrogator. I'm not familiar with that battle."
"It was where the Emperor defeated the free Arcologies of Merican and forced us into the Imperium. There was an implication that this woman…did not die. Or, if she did, she always returned. And when I entered her name in the family library, there were thousands of purged works that were indexed. Thousands of works, written across thousands of years, about this one woman. Somehow, she's related to Father Colindaus's corruption. And, possibly, to Malcador the Hero."
"The name of this person? This woman?"
"Taylor Hebert, Lord."
Lord Moro was very good at hiding his reactions. If not for her power, she wouldn't have seen that he was familiar with the name. Artigan shifted his balance again.
"That name didn't appear in either of the works you touched."
"No, Lord. Only in the…resonance. The memories. I'm not sure where you know the name from, though."
"Careful, Lyta," Artigan said.
Moro, though, held up his hand to stay the commander's concerns. "Upon being elevated to full Inquisitor, many us are given a list of high target names. These are beings of untold evil and danger, some thousands of years old. Sorcerers, demons, arch-traitors, whom the Inquisition feels require the utmost prejudice and persecution. And among those names is that of Taylor Hebert. She is regarded by some in the inquisition as one of the most dangerous people to ever live."
"Why, Lord?"
"It was thought by one of the founders of the Inquisition that Hebert knows the Emperor's true name."
She slumped back into her chair, held upright solely by her armor. Her mind raced through the implications of a Chaos sorcerer with the Emperor's true name. "The Sigillite…ordered Stein to shoot her if she were ever captured by Chaos. That if she fell, mankind would fall."
"That would seem to support the idea," Moro noted, dryly. "Why didn't you report these fugues, Lyta?"
"I…needed to understand them, Lord. I needed to understand how, and why. To know if…if I was tainted."
He waved a hand in dismissal. "I keep Maerya for that purpose. She's a powerful psyker, if not a little unbalanced. She assures me you are not tainted by the Ruinous Powers. But you failed to trust me. I am not only your Lord Inquisitor; I was your father's friend and ally. Your grandfather's before him. I helped your aunt maintain power in his memory. And you failed to trust me."
"I…trust no one, Lord."
To her shock, Moro suddenly laughed. "If that isn't the answer of a future inquisitor, I don't know what is!"
The laughter was short lived. "Interrogator–you will return the dataslate of Sidozie personally back to the Gallentist Collection of the Fortress Library within the next five days. I will take over your investigation of this assassin personally. Commander Artigan will go with you, since we are also requisitioning more men. You will immediately report any future fugue experiences, or you will be dismissed from the service. Trust is hard earned among our kind; in this case your fugue state compromised you, and resulted in the death of a valued member of my retinue. Never again. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Lord. Thank you, Lord."
"Dismissed."
Lyta fled the room while her mind ran in circles.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
As a young acolyte under Lord Norquis, Lyta often visited the Fortress of the Inquisition with her master. He was an Inquisitor-in-Residence, operating from the Fortress itself while on Terra. Mostly he worked through the Sol System on the various terraformed worlds and moons that formed part of the bastion that guarded the most Holy of Holy Worlds.
Moro did not have residence status; and her time with Norquis meant nothing.
Moro gave her five days, because it took that long to get clearance to visit. When the clearance came through, she wasted no time and requisitioned one of Lord Moro's two Thunderhawk transports. They needed the larger vehicle for the troops that Artigan was to requisition.
What she was not expecting when she arrived, though, was Moro's pet pysker. "Are you here to babysit me, Maerya?"
"You are not a baby, so I would think not," Maerya said. Her distracted voice took on a distant tone. "I wonder what it would be like to be a mother."
"You'd forget the babe in the bath and it would drown," Artigan said bluntly as he joined them and began walking up the ramp of the armored, heavily armored transporter.
Maerya seemed to sink in on herself. "Yes, likely. We shall never know, I suppose. The Psykana made sure of that much."
They were soon on their way.
The Fortress of the Inquisition was built deep under Holy Terra's north pole in one of the most secure facilities on the planet outside of the Imperial Palace itself. If not for her pre-authorized clearance runes, they would have been shot down a dozen times over when they reached the surface entrance to the hangar.
The moment they left their transport, Lyta felt her hackles rise as sensors, auspex, cogitators and savants all focused their attention on her and her two companions. She could almost feel the false color interrogator's mark on her neck warm against the constant security pinging of the facilities security system. The only people visible, however, were menials in enginseer garb who came to service the transport itself.
No one met them or interfered as they took lifts down into the depths of the fortress. There were no security codes any longer–only the arcane, intricate systems within her Interrogator's mark bought them passage.
When the lift doors slid noiselessly open, they were met by the first show of force. Five Tempestus Scions, bearing the sigil of the Ordos on the pauldrons of their carapace armor, stood at strategic points in a secure anteroom. The space was lined with hexagrammic runes carved into thick rockrete and ceramite-armored walls. The only door was obscured by a powerful void shield, while repeater las cannon turrets hung from three cardinal points.
It was not her first time coming to the fortress, but it was her first time as an Interrogator. She removed her mark of office and placed it on a scanning plate. "Amelyta Rothid, Interrogator of Lord Inquisitor Moro of the Ordo Hereticus. With me are Maerya, a sanctioned psyker adept, and Commander Laers Artigan of the Ordo Tempestus."
"Purpose of the visit?" The speaker was not in the room.
"Per the command of my Lord, I am returning a proscribed item to the library."
While her own psyker gifts would never give her the power to throw lightning or tear apart the minds of her enemies, it did assure her that a choir of psykers were analyzing her every word for truth. And so she spoke only the truth, or nothing at all.
Which is why the next question was always asked. "Do you affirm your loyalty to the Emperor, and renew your vow to serve as His will in the eternal defense of the Imperium of Mankind?"
"I so affirm."
The void shield dropped and they stepped into the wide passage of the central Inquisitorial presence on Terra.
She stepped out into a feeder hall. The Drum Fort was the only entrance that she knew of, but she had no doubt it was one of several similar structures built around the pole. No one was permitted direct access to the fortress from the surface. Instead, she led Artigan and Maerya through a feeder tunnel to a narrow maglev tube station.
A single car arrived, large enough to hold a hundred riders. They were the only ones aboard. The car accelerated with hardly any internal feelings of movement. Several minutes later, they arrived at the Sigillite's March.
Across the hundred-meter span of the main entrance of the fortress, she spotted several armored chimeras bearing the skullform of the Inquisition. The tracked vehicles served as effective mobile firing stations. Hundreds of Scions held additional stations at various tactical points down the entire kilometer length of the March.
Wheeled transports carried prisoners and persons of interest to the fortress; none were likely ever to return. There were monsters in this fortress, Lyta knew, the likes of which even the most strong-willed inquisitor would find daunting.
The troopers ignored her. She was just one of thousands.
The squads of Adepta Sororitas likewise paid her no mind. The enginseers and techpriests and Mechanicus adepts that helped keep the fortress as one of the most protected sites outside the Imperial Palace itself went about their daily duties without a second glance at the junior interrogator and her two escorts.
The other inquisitors, though?
"I had to see for myself. But now that I see, I still have difficulty understanding Abrim's motivation."
Lord Inquisitor Falturna Abequand was a wide-bodied woman who wore her hair in an extravagant bouffant that added nearly a foot to her squat stature. She chose to wear a thick velvet dress in the classical gothic style, with black combat boots and laspistols with hand-carved nalwood handles on her gunbelt. As was the case when Amelyta first met the woman, she was accompanied by a three meter tall ogryn she named Tim.
"Lord," Lyta said, dipping her head in greeting.
"Lord Norquis was a good friend of mine. He told me of your potential, child. But all potential means is that it hasn't happened yet. And now, for him, it never will. Why did Lord Moro give you that mark?"
"Lord Inquisitor, I could not claim to know the mind of Lord Moro."
The much, much older woman laughed, but it was a grim, humorless sound. "No, I suppose not. Perhaps you will find redemption. Experience, dear, is an Inquisitor's most valuable tool."
"Guns help as well, Lord," Artigan said behind them.
Abequand laughed gaily. "So she snagged you, Laers? I'm surprised Moro let you out of his tower."
Artigan shrugged. "I just go where I'm told. Shoot who I'm told to shoot."
"Indeed. Perhaps it's just as well. I have never prosecuted so many cults as I have in these past few months. Ever since that frightful mess at Cadia first reached our Astropaths, it seems the Great Enemy has made more inroads into Holy Terra than we've seen in ten millenia. This past Sanguinala pilgrimage only opened the door wider for them. We can use all the agents in the field we can find. Good luck, Interrogator. Come along, Tim. We have work to do!"
"Yas, Lord." Despite standing three meters tall, with a breadth of shoulders as wide as a space marine, Tim the Ogryn sounded like a child with his high-pitched voice and heavy lisp.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Artigan left them shortly after for his own tasks. Lyta made her way forward, being familiar with this part of the fortress because of her first job for Lord Norquist as a researcher.
"These books have very bad words," Maerya said as she drifted like flotsam in Lyta's wake. She was staring down at the chipped, polished black stone of the floor with all the eagerness of a child of the Progenium being dragged to a drill abbot for punishment. "I do not like it here."
"We won't be here long."
The Inquisitorial Library did not contain restricted works or dangerous objects. Such contraband, at least that which actually reached the fortress, was kept in psychically contained null cells deep below where very few ever traveled. Instead, what the library held were reports and works of Inquisitors over the last ten thousand years. Stipulations being, of course, that it could only hold those reports that reached it.
Young or not, Amelyta knew that Lord Norquis rarely bothered to submit reports himself. Few Lord Inquisitors did. But what often happened was that the works and records of inquisitors made their way to the nearest fortress upon the death of that inquisitor. It was not a complete record, but it was the most likely place where Amelyta could find the origins of Corantha's purloined dataslate.
Even a handful of reports annually added up to a daunting number over the course of ten thousand years. They had to walk through many stacks of physical books, collected parchments containing hand-written notes, and many metric tonnes of data slates until, at last, they reached the central Indices.
A pair of servitors occupied the central island of order in the spoke-like vastness of the library. Legless, armless, the miserable cybernetic corpses served in death for the crimes committed in life.
"Inquiry, indices," she said upon reaching them.
"Request received," the two servitors responded with twin mechanical voices.
"Location, Gallentist Collection."
"Gallentist Collection. Access restricted. Authorization?"
"Amelyta Rothid, Interrogator for Lord Lord Inquisitor Moro. I am returning a stolen item from the collection."
"Item to be returned?"
"Item EOTer-CCR10M31."
"Index number received. Item reported missing 990.M41. Authorization received, Lord Inquisitor Moro. Access granted. Gallentist collection in Black Cell Omega 57, Section Omega TH-13. No documents may leave the designated section."
A floating servitor skull rose up from the index desk and activated a bright, colorless lumen to guide them through the stacks. She started to follow, but had another thought. "Inquiry, indices."
"Request received."
"Who was the last person to access the Gallentist collection?"
"Access records restricted for all restricted collections."
"Access parameters?"
"Inquisitorial representative eyes only."
Hmm. She turned to follow the patiently waiting skull servitor, and then had to come back to take Maerya's arm to catch her up.
"You're being even more psyker than normal," Lyta said in a low tone. Whispers carried further than simply speaking low. "Are you well?"
"I find that some inquisitors are not good people," she said. "Collecting their words just makes the bad multiply."
The Black Omega cells were cordoned off by secured void shields. The servitor skull secured their entry through an automated gate that Amelyta had no doubt would close and lock behind her. Each cell was equally secured, and held hundreds of dataslates or other works that, while not strictly proscribed, were restricted for various reasons, at various levels of authority. Many were likely restricted for a set period of time, and were simply never removed from the cell after.
Some were bound never to see the light of human interest again.
Cell 57 consisted of a rectangular cubby of two meter by four-meter walls. Every centimeter within was covered in shelving, and the shelving itself was filled to capacity with ancient dataslates, books of leather-bound parchment and plastek-bound official reports.
The floating skull blinked its lumen, and in a moment it went from a beam to a broad spectrum of light that illuminated the entire room. It floated up to the ceiling and stopped moving.
"Look around for any missing spots on the shelves," Amelyta said.
"Like that?" The partially blind psyker was pointing. "It is a void in the words."
The shelf was indeed missing a single data-slate. Each one was labeled EOTer–the Elicidatum Order of Terra, she now knew. It was obvious when she placed the purloined dataslate back that it was the missing one.
CCR10M31 was year ten of the 31st millennium. That was, she remembered from her restricted Progenium days, the height of the Solar War during the Heresy, when the great Blasphemer Horus led his traitor forces into the Solar system to wage his war against Terra. No fighting happened on Terra yet, but she saw from the other dataslates that the reports continued through the heresy itself.
She started to reach for CCR14M31 when Maera moved to her side and took her hand.
"What? Another resonance?"
The psyker tilted her head. "Very much so."
"You told Lord Moro I wasn't tainted."
"You aren't. I don't understand it," Maera said. "It is as if you are summoning memories from the past through this work."
"How? I don't do that with other items I touch. I've never evidenced that power before."
"Other items do not take on the resonance in your soul. Perhaps this work is a part of the song your soul sings. I'm not sure this is your power."
Amelyta took a deep breath and put the purloined dataslate back. She then took the next one out in the collection. Nothing happened, which came both as a relief and disappointment. Then again, nothing happened the first time until she opened it. She walked back to the center of the room and sat at the long table on the lone metal chair.
She stared for the longest time, bracing herself for what she knew was coming. Like the first she countered, it had the same labeling and warning, but with minor differences:
EOTer-CCR14M31
Warden Transcript
Stein, Renald, Maj.
Rec. G. Sid Elicidatum
Omega-Omega-Black Clearance Only
Unauthorized access TBPWP
Despite being over ten thousand years old, the dataslate turned on. It moved slowly, but she watched as the ancient gothic runes took on a dull, ominous green glow as they formed. She stared down at them, watching as each pixel lit like a distant star, until suddenly she was falling up into the stars themselves.
"… The Lion's Gate has fallen!"