Prologue: Contempt
The world is pain.
I wake to the taste of blood on my tongue, my throat raw, and my body burning from the inside out. My arms are stretched wide, pulled tight by metal rings cutting into my skin. I try to move, but I can't. My right arm, my augmetic stretches dead, numb, and as useless as the rest of me. My body is slick with sweat and filth, and the smell hits me before anything else, like something rotting deep inside my chest. My stomach clenches, threatening to heave, but there's nothing left to bring up. I've already lost everything.
Everything but the pain.
The excruciator hums softly around me, a soft, constant noise like a wasp's wings. I know it too well. I don't know how long I've been here, how many times I've woken like this. There's a blur in my mind, a smear of agony that stretches back to when… to when…
Sister Helena. She found me.
There was fire in her eyes, fire from her hands. Then there was… this.
I can't think past it. Can't breathe past the weight of it. The marks, the brands on my skin throb beneath the ropes of blackened oozing tissue. I can feel them, crawling, writhing, whispering. My vision swims. I try to pray, but the words are broken, stuck in my throat. "Emperor... protect me..."
A sound cuts through the haze, footsteps. Slow, deliberate. The scrape of boots on metal grates, each one dragging me back to the surface, to the here and now.
Him.
Explicator Sullivan stands before me, his thin frame casting a long shadow in the harsh light of the chamber. His face is sharp, too sharp, like a blade ready to cut. He holds the excruciator's control like a relic, something sacred and powerful. He looks at me like I'm something less than human. An insect. A worm. Something that needs to be crushed by the weight of the mighty Ordos Hereticus.
"Ready to be honest now, are we? Still alive?" His voice is calm, soft, the way a serpent might speak. "I was wondering how long it would take for you to wake up this time."
I can't speak. My mouth is too dry, my lips cracked. I can't even muster the strength to glare at him. A shiver runs along my whole body that has nothing to do with the cold air on my naked flesh and everything to do with the gaze of the man that tracks over it, seeing not me, not Aurora, not even a person, just a heretic.
"I tire of this, girl," Sullivan says, pacing slowly in front of me. "Lucious. Tell me about him. The marks. The chaos taint you carry." He flicks the excruciator, and a jolt of white-hot pain sears through my chest, arching my back. I scream, but it's hoarse, a ragged sound. The sound of a wounded animal dying in a trap, a hopeless, empty noise.
"I don't... I don't know," I rasp. The words taste like dirt in my mouth, but I say them because they're true. I don't know what he wants, what he thinks I know. I don't know what I did to deserve this. I told him everything that happened. I told him that Lucious... he... he—
"Wrong answer," Sullivan hisses. The excruciator hums louder, and from inside me comes heat. My bones feel like they're melting, and I scream again, but it's weak, too weak.
"Where did he get the book?" Sullivan's voice slices through the haze of agony. "The living page? The eye! Who else is in the cult? How deep does the corruption run?"
I don't know. I can't think. There's just pain, and his voice, and the burning.
"I... I don't know," I whisper again, tears running down my face. "I don't... know... please… I'm not… heretic…"
"Pathetic." He presses the control again, and the excruciator flares to life. I thrash against the restraints, every nerve on fire, but I can't escape. I can't breathe. The pain... it's too much. The edges of my vision go black, and for a moment, I think I might pass out again. I hope I do.
But I don't. I just hang there, shaking, sobbing, broken.
Sullivan leans in close, his breath hot on my cheek. "The Emperor protects, girl. But only the faithful. Are you faithful?"
I don't answer. I can't.
"Tell me, child," he whispers, his lips curling into a cruel smile. "Are you still faithful after everything? After the marks, the burning, the running, the suffering? Does the Emperor hear your prayers?"
He flicks the switch again, and my whole body convulses, my vision bursting with red, with fire, with screams. I can't think, can't breathe, can't... anything.
He's going to kill me. I know it. He's going to kill me here, and no one will ever know. No one will care. Because I'm a heretic. I'm a heretic and this is what I deserve. He said so. At least… if he's right… then I do, I do deserve it.
But then... then... a sound. Distant, faint, but there. The steady thud of ceramite boots. The slow, heavy scrape of metal on metal. It cuts through the fog, through the agony. I know that sound…
Sister Helena.
My heart skips. She's coming. She's here.
Sullivan hears it too. His eyes narrow, and for a moment, he hesitates. Just for a moment. But then he sneers, flicking the control again. Another wave of pain rolls through me, but I grit my teeth, forcing myself not to scream.
He will not hear me scream again.
I scream regardless…
The footsteps grow louder, so does the shouting, then, somewhere close by, a door slams open with enough force that I feel the vibrations through the rings holding me suspended in the air. The air shifts, cold and heavy, and a flat, blank wall becomes suddenly transparent, revealing Sister Helena in her power armor battered, scorched. Her eyes, burning like twin suns, lock onto Sullivan with a fury that makes my heart lurch with hope.
Sullivan straightens, turning to face her, but there's still a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes that I observe with weak but definitive relish. He doesn't speak. Not before she does.
Helena's voice cuts through the silence like a blade. "Explicator Sullivan."
The air in the room turns colder. Sullivan's back stiffens. I can't see him now, but I hear the sudden halt in his pacing, the tension crackling through the air.
"Sister Helena."
Her voice. I know that voice. It cuts through the haze, through the pain, colder and harder than anything I've ever heard. It's like steel, like the burn of a blade drawn across skin.
"I was not aware," Helena's voice is low, simmering with barely restrained wrath, "that the Ordo Hereticus had the authority to take my flesh tithe without so much as a word. Or is it common practice now to treat Sisters' property with such flagrant disregard?"
Her tone drips with fury. I can just barely see her, but I don't need to. I can feel her anger, the weight of it pressing into the room. It's like she's filling the air with her rage, swallowing up the suffocating stench of sweat and fear. New scents, burning, ozone, and blood, flow under the cracks of the door.
There's silence. Then, Sullivan speaks, his voice strained and dripping with false politeness like a sneer expressed vocally.
"You forget yourself, Sister. This is a matter of Chaos contamination. The girl is—"
"Do not speak to me of Chaos, Explicator," Helena interrupts, her words sharp and hard as a bolt round as they crack over the intercom. "I've just fought through a battalion's worth of actual, organized cultists, only to discover that while I was defending the Emperor's children, you saw fit to torture mine."
The coldness of her words sends a shiver through me. I try to move, to shift even slightly in the excruciator's grip, but the restraints hold firm. My body feels like it's made of lead. My augmetic is still dead weight, burning where it connects to my flesh.
Sullivan stammers, but quickly recovers, his voice dripping with condescension. "Torture!? Sister, this is interrogation. The girl is marked. She's—"
"I know what she is," Helena snarls. "and, I know what she is not. She is my flesh tithe. My responsibility. And if you damage her beyond repair, Explicator, it will be you explaining to Inquisitor Haziel why the Ordo Malleus must now involve itself in your petty affairs."
I hear the sharp intake of breath from Sullivan. He's rattled now. He wasn't expecting that. Helena... she knows Haziel, his boss maybe? I cling to the thought, to the faint hope it brings, even if I don't fully understand it.
There's the hiss of a door opening and closing. The brief breeze that wafts in carries the distinct stench of death and fire and battle to my nose. Compared to everything else, it tastes like holy incense.
"I am well within my rights to interrogate her!" Sullivan snaps, though his voice trembles at the edges. He's on the intercom to now. Some part of me not reduced to a quivering mush wonders if he realizes that Helena set her helmet down on the broadcast key. "This is an Inquisitorial matter. The girl may yet be a Chaos agent, and I will not be cowed by your... empty threats, Sister."
A pause. Silence stretches, thick and heavy.
Then, Helena speaks again, her voice slow and deliberate, each word a hammer blow. "If you believe my threats to be empty, you are a greater fool than I thought, explicator. If you cannot extract the information you need from a ten year old child without breaking her mind or body, you are truly worthless to the Inquisition. I will see to it that Haziel knows of your incompetence. I've been playing these games a lot longer than you, upstart. I will make sure that you face the consequences and more than that, that I'm the one to deliver them. Test my word to your peril."
Another long pause. I can hear the tension in the air, like a wire pulled tight, ready to snap. I can't breathe, can't think past the thudding of my heart. What if... what if he doesn't listen? What if...?
The sound of footsteps, then. Quick, hurried. Sullivan.
"I... I understand your concern, Sister," he says, but his voice is different now. There's a hesitation in it, a crack. He's scared. "Perhaps... perhaps there's been some... misunderstanding. I will adjust my methods. No permanent damage to your tithe, I assure you."
The relief is like cold water, but it's faint, fragile. I don't trust it. Not yet. I'm still hanging here, still trapped, but… She believes me? She's protecting me? I'm not tainted? I'm not... lost, not in her opinion?
God Emperor… hers is the only opinion I care about right now.
Tears well up, hot and stinging, as I cling to that thought. Helena... she's here. She's here.
The Emperor protects. I hear Sullivan's footsteps retreating, the door hisses open again. I crane my neck to see.
There…
"Do not speak to her!" Sullivan's voice echoes from the other room, hollow, tinged once more with arrogance.
I can barely see through the haze of pain and exhaustion, but I know she's here. Sister Helena.
My head lolls to the side, my vision swimming as I force my swollen eyes to focus. The metal rings bite into my wrists and ankles, the raw skin beneath them slick with blood and sweat. My body is... ruined. There's no other word. Filth clings to me like a second skin, bile, blood, everything pooling beneath me in a grotesque mix. I must look... wretched.
The footsteps are slow, deliberate. I hear the faint clink of her armor as she moves, the soft hiss of the servos in her joints. Helena doesn't rush. She never does.
A shadow falls over me, and there she is, standing before me. A titan of ceramite and wrath, the warrior I've always admired, even feared. Her armor is scorched and blackened, gold sigils chipped and smeared with ash and gore. Her helm is still off, her eyes—those terrible, burning eyes—look down at me. I can't tell what she's thinking, but... I know she sees me. All of me.
I don't want her to.
My body trembles as I try to move, try to lift my head, but I can't. Every inch of me screams in protest. My right arm... dead. The augmetic is useless, limp and heavy, the connection to my flesh seared and blackened. It burns where it fuses to me.
Helena steps closer, her shadow swallowing me whole. I try to look away, try to hide from her gaze, but there's nowhere to go. I'm trapped here, exposed, helpless. And she... she sees everything.
The places where I burned away the marks still throb with a sickening heat. The flesh is raw, blistered, oozing. The infection's already set in—I can smell it, the rancid, sour stench of rot creeping into my skin. I can't bear to think what she must see. I'm... filthy. The mark of Chaos is gone, but I am... broken. A heretic.
I want to speak, to say something, anything, but the words die in my throat. What could I say? What could I possibly tell her that she doesn't already know?
Her eyes narrow, and she gives me a look. It's fierce, commanding, like she's trying to burn something into my soul just by staring at me.
But she doesn't speak.
Instead, her fingers move, quick and sharp, flashing in the air. Use your armor!
Armor? My mind is a blur, trying to make sense of the words, of the world around me. What armor? I don't have anything left. There's nothing protecting me. Not anymore.
Fingers twitch on my left hand—my only hand—and it shakes, the motion weak and broken as I manage to sign back. What armor?
Helena doesn't flinch. Her fingers move again, smooth, precise. Mental armor. Contempt. Contempt for the xeno. Contempt for the mutant. Contempt for the daemon. Contempt for the heretic.
Contempt.
I blink, trying to make sense of it. My mind is sluggish, heavy, but the words anchor themselves in the fog.
Contempt.
For all the things that twist and defile the Emperor's light. For all the things that seek to break me, to stain me.
Helena's expression hardens, but I see it—just for a moment. There's something else beneath the surface, something... I can't place it. Something I've never seen in her before. Maybe it's pity. Maybe it's something worse.
She turns away, her form resolute, unyielding as she strides toward the door. The clink of her armor is the only sound in the room now, heavy and metallic.
She pauses, just before she leaves, and without looking back, she makes a simple gesture in the air. Battle-sign, but not, simpler, military, a clear message to me and clearly lost on Sullivan.
Hold, the name for the movement, one of many that each mean to stand one's ground in the face of the enemy. But this one is temporary, hold out, hold out for reinforcements, don't break, don't break because help is coming.
And then she's gone.
The room falls silent, save for the soft hum of the excruciator and the distant sound of my own shallow breathing. I hang there, my body aching, my mind a jumble of thoughts I can't quite grasp. But her words linger, her presence still filling the room even though she's gone.
Contempt.
I repeat it to myself, over and over, clinging to the word like a lifeline. Signing it until my hand locks in a rictus of permanent cramp from the attempt.
Contempt for the heretic.
Contempt for Lucious.
Contempt for the marks that tried to claim me.
The Emperor protects, but what does it mean to contempt? I've never thought about it before. Now it's all I can think about.
The Emperor protects, so then, what shall I fear?
Fear.
That insidious motivating force which drove me to flee from being a student, which nearly drove me to flee from being alive.
Fear.
The Emperor protects, and if that is true, if I believe it, then I can hold in contempt my fear, anything that would try to harm me, to harm Him, to harm His Imperium of which I am the smallest part.
Contempt.
I giggle. It's a choked, urping noise which bubbles around my lips and snorts out my cracked nostrils. It builds to a laugh which shakes me until the pain of the movement threatens to pull me back into unconsciousness.
Contempt.
Helena is right. The Emperor protects. If I have faith, then I have nothing to fear. If I have faith then everything that stands against me, even Lucious, even the marks he wrought on my skin, all of it is a lie, a lie with no power over me, futile. And what is futile, is contemptable. Suddenly, the idea that marks carved in flesh could overpower the light of the Emperor I carry inside… is laughable…
Sullivan's footsteps return, slow and deliberate, as he walks toward me. His breath is cold on my cheek, and I can hear the sneer in his voice as he speaks.
"Do you think she'll save you?" He whispers, his voice low and venomous. "The Sister can't protect you, girl. You belong to the inquisition now."
"But… the… Emperor… can." I force the words out, one after the other, and put everything I have left into them.
Contempt, I think. I focus on the word, letting it fill me, blocking out the pain, the fear, the darkness.
Contempt.
I will hold onto it, until it kills me…
Time continues to pass, I know it must because I've been given water, fluid is injected into my good arm at intervals. More than water is injected. Ever since Helena left the world has been a shifting murk of half remembered questions, unprompted answers, and patches of nothing that seem to take up more and more memory.
Is it morning, evening? Has it been hours, days, a year?
Contempt.
Will Helena come back for me?
Contempt.
The world is slipping away again, fading into a slow, gray blur. The taste of blood still coats my tongue, my throat still raw, my body a furnace of pain. But it's... distant now, almost like it's not mine anymore. Like I'm floating above it, away from it.
The drugs are creeping in again, thick and slow, turning everything to smoke. They hum through my veins like a swarm of bees, buzzing in my ears, making the edges of everything soft and slippery.
I blink.
Try to blink.
The light above me swims, bending and twisting like it's underwater. I can't tell how long I've been here. It feels like forever. Like time doesn't mean anything anymore. The rings bite into my wrists and ankles, but even that's dulled, numbed. I feel... empty.
But the infection festers. I can still feel that. It's slow, crawling through my skin like worms, gnawing at me from the inside. The marks I burned... they're rotting. I can smell it. I can feel it, every sickening pulse of decay.
I think I'm dying.
Slowly.
Sullivan's voice comes through the haze now and then, but it's warped, strange, like it's coming from a faraway place. His words bend and break, twisting in the fog that fills my mind.
"Lucious," he says again, always Lucious. "Tell me... tell me about the cult... the book... the eye..."
I try to focus, try to catch the words, but they slip away, swirling in the drugged mist. I want to answer, to make it stop, but I don't know what to say. I don't know anything. I've already told him. I've told him everything, my whole life's story, even parts I don't remember. But he keeps asking, keeps pushing, like there's something he thinks I'm hiding. Like there's some secret locked away inside me that I don't even know about.
I do answer him, even when I don't mean to, even when I have nothing to say, even when I don't hear the answers I give.
The excruciator doesn't hurt as much anymore. The pain is still there, but it's distant, muffled, buried under the weight of the drugs. I almost wish it didn't fade. It's something, at least. Something solid, something real.
He's standing over me again. I can feel his breath, cold and sharp, as it ghosts over my skin. His hand is on the excruciator's control, his fingers light, teasing the device. He hasn't pressed it yet, not again, but he will. I know he will.
And when he does, I'll scream. I always scream. I try not to, try to hold it in, but it breaks out of me, tearing through my throat like a jagged blade. I hate him for making me scream. I hate myself for screaming.
But I hold onto something else now.
Contempt.
It's a word I don't fully understand, not yet. But I repeat it, over and over, like a prayer. Contempt for the heretic. Contempt for the mutant. Contempt for everything that defiles the Emperor's light.
Contempt for Sullivan.
Contempt for myself.
The Emperor protects.
Sullivan's fingers twitch on the control, and I brace myself, my body tensing even though I'm not sure I can feel anything anymore. The hum of the excruciator rises, the tension building in the air, thick and heavy. I grit my teeth, clutching the word in my mind like a shield.
Contempt.
I will not scream this time.
I will not scream this time.
The world flashes red, the pain crashing through me in waves. I bite down hard, my jaw clenched, but the scream rips free anyway, hoarse and broken.
Sullivan's voice comes again, cold and sharp like broken glass. "Tell me about Lucious. Tell me about the cult. Who else is involved? How deep does it run? When did you first become aware of it? When did you first become a member? Was it in the scholam itself? Are there faculty members involved?"
I don't know. I don't know anything. I don't...
"I don't know," I whisper, my voice barely a breath. "I don't... I don't know..."
He sneers. I can hear it in his voice. "You're lying. You know something. You remember something. Tell me, girl, and this can all end."
The buzzing in my head grows louder, drowning out his words. The drugs... they make everything soft, hazy. I can't think. Can't remember what's real. Time stretches, bends, twists. I don't know how long I've been here. Hours? Days?
I think...
I think I'm dying.
The infection is spreading, the fever burning through me like a wildfire. My body is failing. I can barely lift my head, barely keep my eyes open. Each breath is a struggle, a battle I'm losing.
But I won't give him what he wants. I can't. I don't even know what it is he wants anymore, but I won't give it.
The Emperor protects.
I hold onto that. I cling to it with everything I have left, even as my body withers and rots around me. The Emperor protects, even now. Even if I die here, in this cell, He will protect me. My soul. My faith.
Contempt.
It echoes through my mind, the only thing I can grasp, the only thing that feels solid in the endless, drug-induced fog. I will hold onto that. I will hold onto my faith, even as everything else slips away.
I close my eyes, letting the word sink into the darkness.
Contempt.
The Emperor protects.
I think...
I think I'll die fairly soon now.
But if I die with contempt in my heart, with faith still burning... then I will die in the Emperor's light.
And that... that is enough.
I close my eyes, for long moments I stop breathing and forgo the effort of starting again.
Hold.
I groan and tears glisten in my eyes.
I don't think I can anymore.