Second Attempt
‘Are you ready?’ Nalos inquired from behind his controls.
‘Are we?’ Talen asked Jeremias, who nodded. The inquisitor was trying to look confident, but Talen had already noticed the way he gripped the chair. He was nervous, maybe even scared.
And all the time Grimm barked through the locked door.
‘Doesn’t that thing ever shut up?’ Talen asked.
‘Not if it senses danger.’
‘Danger to you?’
The inquisitor shook his head. ‘Not exactly.’ He held out his palm. ‘The lume-compass, if you will.’
Talen passed the star to Jeremias and the inquisitor wrapped his fingers around the bloodied points, his body arching in the chair. The cables connected to the helmet pulsed, brighter than before. Talen shielded his eyes, the same terrible pressure already building in his head. His vision blurred, the sound of Jeremias’s screaming distorting, merging with the incessant bark of the cyber-hound outside.
Wait – Jeremias was screaming? Talen tried to focus on the inquisitor but was having difficulty concentrating. It felt like hot needles were being plunged into his brain. He couldn’t imagine what it was doing to Jeremias.
The inquisitor’s body started to shake uncontrollably. He was having some kind of seizure. Nalos pressed a button and restraints snapped around Jeremias’s arms and legs, holding him in position.
‘What are you doing?’ Talen shouted at the tech-adept. ‘You’re killing him!’
‘I concur,’ Corlak burbled. ‘Disconnect the Cognis.’
‘No!’ Jeremias gasped. ‘I can almost see them. I can see Amity and her pet. They are near.’
Talen sank to his knees, clutching his head. ‘The pressure,’ he sobbed. ‘It’s too much!’
‘The power must be stabilised,’ Nalos said, connecting three of his mechadendrites directly into the terminal. ‘I will make contact with the psychic boosters, use my own neural pathways to regulate the fluctuations.’
‘Negative,’ Corlak snapped. ‘The risk is too great.’
‘A risk to me?’ Nalos asked. ‘Or your master?’
‘Both! Without you, he may perish in the attempt.’
‘Let him continue,’ Jeremias bellowed, the muscles in his neck standing out like ropes. ‘I almost have their location!’
Nalos threw a switch and energy surged along his mechadendrites into the cluster of cybernetic implants on his crooked back.
Talen staggered back, still grasping his head. In the chair, Jeremias started to babble, a strange guttural language that sounded more like someone choking than speaking. If they didn’t stop soon, they would burn out the inquisitor’s mind, marooning Talen and the others with no way off the planet.
He forced himself towards the control terminal, reaching for the tech-adept, who convulsed where he stood.
‘Need to stop…’ Talen gasped. ‘You’re going to kill him… You’re going to kill us all.’
He grabbed Nalos’s robes, spinning the tech-adept around. The adept teetered unsteadily on his cybernetic feet, his hood falling back.
Talen felt the gorge rise in his throat. Nalos’s pale skin had turned green, pulsating boils spreading virulently from the tech-adept’s implants. The breathing apparatus fell away to reveal a drooling mouth, its tongue purple and swollen, blackened teeth jutting from receding gums like gravestones.
Nalos grabbed Talen’s vest with mottled hands and pulled him close, his breath rancid as he wheezed a strangled plea:
‘Help me… please…’