Inferno! Volume 5, page 16
Vector Phi, their magus, was awe-inspiring. She floated in the amniotic tank, suspended somewhere between angelic rapture and burgeoning chrysalis. Her flesh was pale, hairless, coloured only by the violet fluid that surrounded her. Glassy eyes stared through him, un-seeing and all-seeing. Her awareness dwarfed him, forced him to his knees. He heard the whispered voice again as she graced him with the communion of the broodmind rather than base flesh-speech, his mind expanding in unity with hers.
Arlen, my child, my father.+ He smiled; so many of the later generations, the ruling aspects of the cult, had been forged of his genetic experiments, given life in nutrient tanks and splice dishes. They were as much his children of the needle, as they were scions of the Helix. +How do our civilian concerns fare?+
‘Well. Yes, quite well.’ His head remained bowed, unwilling to look up at her avataric perfection. ‘Exports remain steady. There have been no external inquiries.’ He paused, weighing his words. ‘We have overcome the setbacks from last month’s meteorite impact. Queveron Production Hub has repaired the damage and restored itself to full operation. Void anti-emetics and pain-relief supplies have been dispatched to the Fifteenth Hydran Rifles at Rathla. All saturated. Within the year, we will have them.’
Admirable. Within and without, our strength grows. The Deucalion Expanse knows the enlightenment of the Credo Vejovian, and the blessing of the Twisted Helix. He is pleased.+
Arlen looked up at her words, as something stirred in the darkness behind the great tank. The bloated shadow moved with a power and intelligence unmatched upon Respite, so graceful that he had not even noticed its approach. A primal shard of divinity, the pinnacle of their ambitions. The core of their faith nosed the air, tongue lolling from its mouth as though it could taste him. The progenitor watched him for a moment and he felt its scrutiny. Before it he was laid bare. He felt its psychic touch recede, and then it retreated through another arch of brick and bone. He finally allowed himself to breathe at the passing of a god.
‘If it pleases you, I have arranged for the next rounds of inculcations. Support staff, mostly. Those who show promise despite the soporific intake. Hard workers all, minds yearning for purpose.’
The voice burbled with mirth inside his skull. +So even-handed with your blessings, Arlen. Your dedication shames many others. Though you must remember the credo – there are kin, and kine. Not all deserve our gifts, we must–+ She paused, hesitating as the first bells rang. Arlen had never heard them before, the muted, ancient alarm, dredged up as though from nightmare.
‘What is that? Those bells never ring.’ He looked around, as other biophaguses and their attendants started, confused. Guards straightened, while others clutched at helical symbols or muttered prayers.
It has not sounded since our earliest days here. It is the Bell of Sorrows. It heralds disease within our blessed protectorate.+
‘That’s impossible. We have sheltered them from harm, we have kept the people hale.’
Arlen blinked, shook his head.
‘There is no sickness here.’
Respite had known no ailment since the Twisted Helix caught it within its coils; a healthy populace was compliant and well prepared for the inevitable days of Biological Sublimation. Biophaguses maintained the drug regimens and clinics that kept them healthy, but there was always a divide.
It was as Vector Phi had said; there were kin and there were kine – exalted luminous beings and the base and bestial flesh. They were weak, fundamentally mortal, but a threat in their flailing multitudes. The Helix-touched could not afford to see them sicken, panic and die. Arlen gathered a small squad of sanctum guards, leading them towards the lower wards and the alarm. Whatever else he was, he was still a healer.
The tunnels beneath the mega-manufactories were inconstant, littered with dead ends and alcoves. Dust and cobwebs hooded the lights, pipes gurgled with runoff, and strange fogs coiled up from vents and drains.
Arlen and his escort pushed on towards the source of the disturbance, sanctified men all. Vox-links clicked as they moved, the guards talking amongst themselves. Worrying. The sound of the bells carried eerily, drawn out and made stranger by the acoustics of the underway. They wound their way down, spiralling into the darkness and the rot.
As they moved, the sounds of the alarms faded, beneath a low atonal moaning. The sounds of human agony, the dull bleating he had learned to live with. ‘This way,’ he breathed, and the guards followed without hesitation. The front two raised their lasrifles, while others dragged crates of medical supplies. They passed nests where acolytes had gathered, the blessed misshapen, to watch their intrusion. The acolytes nosed the air and keened, aware of the wrongness in their world.
We have ensured that this world is a paradise for those who toil for us! We have kept them quiescent. Tended their every need. How could this happen? Arlen could not put aside the doubts. Had they erred?
The door ahead lay half-open, and Arlen saw the bodies as he entered. Most were writhing, ever in motion. They coughed, spluttered and moaned, thick mucus streaking their chins or pooling on their chests. Bleary, bloodshot eyes looked up at him, full of pain and the yearning for comfort.
‘Pater!’ one of them crooned as he noticed Arlen, and the cry was taken up by the others. The air rang with the chorus of it, abating the sounds of agony. The rhythm of the word was like the pounding of a heart. Pater. Pater. Pater!
‘Hold still.’ Arlen muttered, his hand on the weeping man’s shoulder, while fussing with the injector. He forced it to the victim’s neck, depositing a mild anaesthetic while another needle dipped, and drew blood. He had to keep them calm, but he needed to understand. Was it contagion from the works? Chemical taint? Or from off-world? A darker cause?
There was a strange buzzing, like the wings of insects, though he hadn’t noticed any on his initial inspection. The sound danced around the chamber; growing, changing, clarifying. He heard… laughing? He rounded on his aides. ‘There is nothing amusing here!’ They looked at him like he was mad, but he heard it. Again. The thick, mocking laughter flowed, and he became sickly aware that it was coming through his vox-bead. The man he was tending to spasmed, convulsing in seizure. Arlen struggled to hold him down, battered by bucking limbs. He jerked back as a fist collided with his skull. ‘Hold him!’
Still there was the laughter. Hateful, tormenting, resolving slowly into a voice.
‘Oh, Arlen.’ It whispered, curdled like old milk and ancient spite. Arlen looked around at the patients. They had fallen deathly still; faces locked in rictuses, hideous strychnine grins. The guards shook and prodded at them, before retreating. Shaken. Terrified of the shadow of death.
‘Do you like my opening move, in our little game?’
He sat alone in his private laboratorium, feverishly working over schemata and diagrams. He had torn the sacred, many-limbed depiction of Vejovian Man from the wall, replacing it with the documents that categorised the disease they faced. It was a coiled, terribly effective thing: morphogenic, hyper-infective. The only thing with similar adaptability was the holy germ-seed itself. He looked at the sprawl of data, spread across the walls like crawling mould. His stomach clenched; for a moment he feared the sickness was already within. Outside he could sense the psychic wailing of the broodmind, the frenzied communion between Vector Phi and the progenitor. If this continued, he would likely have to decant her.
‘Arlen?’ The voice hissed from the vox-emitter bolted into his desk, and he jumped back as though burned. ‘I know you can hear me, Arlen. You alone are worthy of my attention here, such as it is. Do me the favour of at least engaging.’
Arlen hesitated. He scribbled a single word on a scrap of paper and slammed it against the window to the outer sanctum. An assistant started at the sudden noise, blinked as he read the note, and then scurried off. Arlen waited till he was gone before picking up the broadcast horn. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘Who am I? Well that is the question, isn’t it? Who are any of us truly? Are you Arlen Cedano, medicae primus of the salve-world of Respite? Biophagus majoris of the oh-so-holy touched of the Helix? Or just a man, flailing at the dark, convinced he is the light?’ The toxic laughter burbled up again, filling the chamber in a heavy fug of bleak joy.
‘You seem to know a lot about my world and my work. I should at least know the name of my admirer. This virus, it’s your doing?’ He gestured idly at the paper-colonised wall, more for his own benefit than his tormentor.
‘Jast.’ The word oozed out like an exhalation. ‘You may call me Jast. It has served me long enough, it will suffice a trifle more.’
‘And what is it you want, Jast?’
The laughter returned, cruel and barbed. ‘Isn’t it obvious, Arlen? I want the world.’
‘The world?’ Arlen blinked. ‘A little artful biochemistry won’t pry it from us. We are of the blood Vejovian – we have wrought divinity. You kill mind-dulled cattle – a loss certainly, but you cannot think to shake our order from the earth.’
It laughed again, and Arlen found himself despising the sound. Its crawling curdled sweetness. Wet and cloying like new rot. ‘There is a broken beauty in you, Arlen. I have watched your world blossom from the bosom of malady, seen you pump poison and panacea into the Imperium’s veins. Against such potential must the future be tested.
‘You have skill, Arlen. Let us cast it to the crucible. In suffering is advantage born.’
Death no longer scared Mortuary Clerk Dorval. It was an old friend, one he had looked in the eye a hundred times. The bodies before him, though, represented something else. A defilement beyond death.
The symptoms were odious. Widespread necrosis, threaded through the organs to the point where it seemed the result of a long wasting sickness rather than a sudden total systemic collapse. Strange tumours flowered throughout the chest cavity of his current subject, and he lifted them cautiously with the blade of his scalpel.
‘I’ve never seen a disease state quite like this before,’ he muttered. His breath was close and tight in the confines of his respirator hood, the glass visor fogging. The anti-contamination gear made his movements clumsy, laboured, like walking underwater. It irked him. When the danger had passed he would petition Medicae Primus Cedano for a transfer; the older man had mentioned advancement before, induction into the mysteries of his special projects. He had put in his time, and he would be rewarded. He–
Dorval froze. There was a noise drifting through the mortuarium, a low rustling just out of sight. He turned, looking around, but he was alone. Alone with the dead. The drawers were silent, the cadaver-bags still on their slabs. There was only the cold tile, and the background reek of preservatives. He was safe; the dead could not hurt him.
He was turning back when it came again – louder, more insistent. The sound resolved, became familiar. He watched as the bags suddenly juddered and jerked, contents hideously in motion. There was a muted banging from within the drawers as limbs flailed at their confines, feet beating against the steel. He stumbled backwards, knocking over a tray of implements. Scalpels and bone-saws skittered across the tile. He felt something wet fill the suit with the stink of his own shame, barely able to stop sobbing.
He only began to scream when the body rose up before him and took hold of him.
‘Yes. Of course. I understand.’ Arlen had stopped truly engaging twenty minutes before. He gave token responses, and instead took notes as Jast rambled, threatened and cajoled. He was a determined orator, that much was clear, veering from pathological doctrine and religious fervour to intimate details of how he would vivisect the entire cult. Arlen only looked up when the door opened, and Heinrich sat opposite him.
The cult’s clamavus, born of the Word Helical, was an odd sight in repose. His armour thrummed and clicked as it processed massed inloads of data. He toyed with the keypad chained at his wrist, fingers in constant motion. His eyes struggled to focus, and when they did they were black, pupils dilated as the information sieved through him. ‘Your note found me. What do you require, biophagus majoris?’
‘I’ve told you before to call me Arlen.’
‘And I have told you before that hierarchy must be respected. How we order data is important – it shapes society, and so shapes victory.’ He huffed, leaning back. The wan light of the chamber caught on the angular cast of his skull, making clear the gene-gifts of his generation. ‘I ask again, you wished to see me? Why?’
‘This.’ Arlen waved his hand at the ongoing broadcast. ‘There is an intruder. He’s the source of the virus plaguing the underworks, the canker that threatens everything.’
‘Are you there, Arlen?’ The voice intruded again, and Arlen gestured for Heinrich to listen. ‘Am I boring you? I would hate to think that you were not invested in this experiment of ours. You will be soon. The seeds are already planted, and when they blossom it shall be into a garden, worthy of his name. Stronger, and better. You should be proud, as you co-father the future.’
His hand hovered over the horn. Heinrich nodded, and Arlen took it up again, hearing the click as it engaged. ‘I am here, Jast. I simply had to take down your… sermon. A most interesting faith that you practise. You must put great stock in it, to think that it can deliver you all that we possess.’ He looked up; Heinrich was fussing with vox-baffles and signal splicers, brow furrowed as he carefully turned a dial. ‘We will have the measure of your sickness. There is nothing that science cannot overcome. In the embrace of our most sacred gift, there can be no true infirmity of the flesh. There is only the Helix.’
‘Shall we put that to the test? The next phase beckons. I have learned so much already.’ Somewhere another klaxon began to ring. Automated voices joined it in a grating chorus, and Jast’s laughter slithered behind the machine-parroted words.
Contagion. Contagion. Alert. Contagion in Core Mortuarium.
‘Here is the game, Arlen. I will move, and you will oppose. Equals, opposites, as simple as a regicide board. Revelation is always painful, I know this myself, but in time you will all thank me, as I thank you.’
The line went dead. He looked up at Heinrich, who broke from his work to return Arlen’s gaze. ‘He’s savvy, I’ll give him that.’ Heinrich breathed deeply. ‘Hiding himself in our own systems, like a parasite. I can find him, but it will take time. Some creative systems analysis.’
Arlen swallowed hard, reached into the desk drawer, and drew out an autopistol. ‘Find him.’ The words left his lips in a snarl. ‘Find him, while I undo what he has done.’
The mortuarium passages were cold and silent, lined with drawers, littered with abandoned trolleys. Arlen’s makeshift fire-team pushed through the clutter, ten men of the Helix with flamers primed. Their leader, a hulking brute named Johan, grinned as he jostled the weapon, thrusting it at every shadow.
‘Careful,’ Arlen hissed. His gun was in his hand, its weight reassuring. There was a solidity to it that he clung to, beset as they were by the microscopic and the ephemeral. If Jast or his agents showed their faces, then he would end them. He would burn them from his world, cast the ashes before the progenitor and call it what it was. Justice.
Sometimes, one fought with needle, knife and vaccine; other times, the steady sword hand was required. Either way, the infection was driven out.
As they rounded the corner towards the Core Mortuarium, the group paused. A laboured shuffling greeted them, coming from the doors to the main chamber. The doors rattled open and a figure stumbled through, blood coating his containment suit, a ragged hole at the throat where something had torn through the material and the flesh beneath. Every weapon was raised as the figure sluggishly regarded them, dead eyes staring, already grey and unblinking. Arlen found himself thinking of Vector Phi’s penetrating gaze. Bile rose in his throat at the blasphemy of it. His blood chilled. He knew this man, he was certain.
‘Dorval?’ he whispered. The dead thing turned, hearing without understanding, without knowing itself. It gave a snarl, shambling with greater urgency, arms outstretched, hands clasping. He could sense its feral hunger, the complete absence of any human sapience.
His hand was up before he was aware of it, already firing. He unloaded the pistol into the thing that had once been a colleague, someone he might one day have called brother. Arlen watched it falter, tumble, hitting the ground with a bloody thud.
‘Burn it!’ he snapped, surprising himself with his own vitriol. Johan grunted his assent and lumbered forward, tanks sloshing as he hefted the weapon. There was a splutter, like a consumptive’s cough, and the flamer belched cleansing fire. The body crisped in the inferno as Johan directed the stream of burning flame onto it. The tiles blackened beneath it, cracking in the sudden furnace-rush of heat. He was so focused on the task that he never saw the other corpse as it barrelled through the doors towards him.
The pox-thing hurled itself through the flames, slamming against Johan as its arms wrapped around him. The man struggled, lost control of his weapon. There was the squeal of buckling metal as the cabinets were doused in fire, mixing with Johan’s screaming. The corpse was one of the plague victims – its limbs emaciated, stomach distended with gaseous rot, gums drawn back over cracked teeth. It bit at him, blood spraying as it caught the artery, locked onto him like an animal. Arlen had no time to reload, his limbs were seized with shock. He could only watch as Johan grabbed for the fuel tank, and tugged the stop free.
The sharp smell of promethium drove back the stench of decay. The corpse looked up from the ruin of Johan’s neck, from the flesh already beginning to putrefy, suddenly aware of the danger. They all ignited as the vapours caught, a sudden burst of light and sound that drove Arlen back onto the tiled floor. He flailed in panic, beating at the flames that had caught on his coat. More of them stalked through the tumult, passing through the fire that had consumed their fellows. It was almost as though they were learning, adapting. An immune response crafted from disease and ruin.
