Infection
‘Stay back!’ Talen shouted as Nalos lunged for him. The tech-adept’s pleas had soon deteriorated into wordless groans, his cracked lips curled into a bestial snarl.
Only his mechadendrites held him back, their tips still jammed into the cogitator terminal, which was smothered in rust. None of this made sense. One minute Nalos had been fine, the next he was covered in oozing blisters, his swollen features twisted in murderous rage.
‘Do not let him touch you,’ instructed Corlak, who was trying to release the unconscious inquisitor from his restraints.
‘I wasn’t about to!’ Talen snapped, looking for a weapon to defend himself while Grimm clawed against the door. ‘Perhaps we should let in your pet?’
‘Negative,’ Corlak said. ‘The master forbade it.’
‘Your master is comatose!’
Sparks burst from the console as the putrid tech-adept ripped himself free. He lurched forward, servo-arms grasping for Talen.
‘Oh, I’ve had enough of this,’ Talen said, leaping for the door controls.
Grimm didn’t even wait for the door to open fully, scrambling through the widening gap to throw himself at Nalos, metal teeth already tearing at the adept’s robotic tentacles. Talen didn’t want to watch – he’d already seen what the mastiff could do to its prey. He ran to Jeremias, swatting away Corlak’s fronds as he tried to help free the inquisitor.
‘Is he breathing?’
‘Barely,’ the servo-skull replied. ‘You open the cuffs around his wrists. I shall release his feet.’
Talen strained against the metal, feeling it give beneath his fingers. He gritted his teeth and tried not to listen to the sounds of tearing metal and snapping jaws behind them. The first cuff cracked open, but the second proved more stubborn.
‘Haven’t you a tool for this?’ he asked, standing aside to let Corlak prise the metal apart with its pincers. With Grimm and Nalos still fighting behind him, Talen reached for the helmet.
‘No!’ the servo-skull shouted, trying to snatch his hands away. ‘Don’t! The shock will be too great.’
But Talen had already ripped the helmet from Jeremias’s head. The inquisitor’s eyes snapped open. His freed hand closed around Talen’s neck, his fingers squeezing tight.
‘What did you do?’ he hissed. ‘What did you do?!’
‘What did I do?’ Talen repeated, pulling himself free. ‘What about him?’
Jeremias turned to see the tech-adept pinned down by Grimm, blistered hands holding back the hound’s mechanical head.
‘No…’ he breathed as he took in the diseased skin. ‘The Plague Lord…’
‘Who?’
Jeremias scrambled from the chair, Corlak only just releasing the last cuff in time. The inquisitor grabbed Talen, bundling him towards the door.
‘We need to get out of here.’
‘You think?’
‘But, sire,’ Corlak began, only to be cut off by his master.
‘Grimm will deal with the corrupted. Move.’
They ran into the workshop, only stopping at the sound of tearing metal. They whirled around to see Grimm suspended over Nalos’s misshapen head by the tech-adept’s rusting mechadendrites. With a choked howl, Nalos tore the robotic beast in two, sparks raining down on the floor followed by both halves of the crudely bisected body. The cyber-mastiff’s limbs jerked, claws skittering uselessly on the ground, before lying still, the red glow of its once fearsome eyes fading until dark.
The tech-adept broke into a shambling run, making straight for them, corroded pincers snapping. Jeremias was transfixed, staring at his destroyed defender in disbelief. Talen pushed him aside, slamming the door controls. The door slid shut, separating them from the deranged tech-adept. Talen pressed every button he could find, looking for the lock, until Corlak reached across and flicked a switch.
‘The door is locked,’ the servo-skull reported as if nothing had happened.
‘Can he open it from the inside?’ Talen asked.
‘I doubt he has the intelligence.’
‘You’re willing to take that chance?’
With an electronic sigh, the drone pressed a sequence of buttons. ‘There. Happy now?’
‘Not really.’ Talen turned to Jeremias. ‘What happened to him?’
But the inquisitor wasn’t listening. ‘Where are the others?’ he wheezed.
Talen turned around. He had a point. Zelia and Mekki were gone.
‘Maybe they went out into the corridor to search for scrying devices like you said?’
Jeremias lurched over to the exit to peer out into the gloom. ‘There’s no sign of them.’
Corlak floated over to the cogitator terminal Mekki had been using and accessed the log. ‘They made no attempt to search for surveillance devices.’
Talen joined the servo-skull by the screen. ‘Then what were they doing?’
‘The Martian child attempted to send a message in binaric.’
Jeremias staggered up to them, supporting himself on a cluttered workbench. ‘Send it where?’
‘Into the void.’
‘Perhaps they were trying to contact Zelia’s mum,’ Talen suggested. ‘We’ve been looking for her ever since Targian.’
Jeremias didn’t look convinced. ‘Translate the message.’
The servo-skull accessed the transmission and read back Mekki’s words in its usual stilted tones. ‘Flegan-Pala. Come in Flegan-Pala. This is Mekki.’
Talen couldn’t believe his ears. ‘He was trying to contact the Profiteer?’
‘Your friends have betrayed us,’ Jeremias spat, as the trapped tech-adept banged against the door. ‘They must be trying to warn Amity.’
‘Warn her about what?’
‘That we know what she’s doing.’
‘But we don’t,’ Talen spluttered. ‘We don’t even know she’s behind all this.’
Jeremias grabbed him by the arms, staring deep into Talen’s eyes. ‘Really? Don’t we? Search your heart, Talen. You know it’s true. She tricked you. She tricked you all.’
Talen tried to pull himself away. Even if he was beginning to believe the inquisitor’s words, he couldn’t believe that Mekki and Zelia had turned against them, not after everything they’d been through together.
The inquisitor’s grip on his shoulders eased and, with it, the edge in his voice. ‘I know this is difficult, but you must at least face the possibility that your friends were in on it from the start.’
Talen shook his head defiantly. ‘No. You saw Zelia. She was as shocked as I was when you told us the truth about Amity.’
Jeremias’s hands fell away, but he didn’t break his gaze. ‘How well do you actually know them, Talen? The daughter of an explorator, who does what? Dig up forbidden technology from the dark times? And as for the Martian – we’ve already heard that he’s a cultist… a heretic no less.’ He looked away. ‘Perhaps I was wrong to protect him.’
Talen’s head was spinning. Had he been duped? Had their friendship been a lie all along?
In the next room, Nalos continued banging on the door, patches of rust appearing wherever his fists made contact. Talen broke from Jeremias’s grip and railed against the sound.
‘Shut up!’ he yelled. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’
He felt a hand on his shoulder, the inquisitor softly saying his name.
‘Talen…’
Wiping his eyes, he turned to Corlak. ‘Did Mekki leave any clues where they were heading? The space port maybe?’
The servo-skull glanced at Jeremias, who nodded his permission. Cogs whirred in the familiar’s head as it searched the log.
‘Yes. The Martian accessed a map of the surrounding area.’
Jeremias straightened. ‘That sounds promising. Any locations in particular?’
A grid appeared on the screen, a section of the map Mekki had been using. Talen studied it. ‘How far is this?’
‘A few blocks,’ Corlak replied. ‘Not far at all.’
Jeremias straightened his coat. ‘Are you armed, Talen?’
‘What? No. I had some bolas but they were destroyed back on Weald.’
The inquisitor rifled through the accumulated junk of a nearby workbench and, finding a power-wrench, handed it to Talen. ‘This will have to do for now. Tuck it into your belt. Corlak will watch over you.’
The servo-skull swivelled from the screen, its mechadendrites realigning to reveal a beamer.
‘As you command, sire.’
Jeremias pulled a rebreather from beneath his jacket and fixed it over his mouth.
‘We’re going outside?’ Talen asked. ‘Why not use the teleporter?’
‘We cannot be sure if that’s where they’re heading,’ Jeremias admitted. ‘We’re going to have to track them.’
Talen grinned. Now that was something he could do.
He wasn’t feeling so eager when they got down to street level. It was raining, the water hissing as it hit the floor.
Jeremias removed his coat and threw it over Talen’s shoulders, telling him to cover his head.
‘What about you?’ Talen asked.
‘Your need is greater than mine,’ the inquisitor insisted, turning up his collar and plunging into the rain. Within minutes, the man’s shirt was steaming.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Following Corlak’s directions they turned a corner to find themselves face to face with a tech-adept. Like Nalos, its mottled skin was blistered, its mouth full of blackened teeth. How had the disease spread so quickly? The revenant lurched towards them, swollen hands grasping for Talen’s throat.
A sword whistled through the air. The tech-adept wailed as its severed hands dropped to the floor. With another swipe of his sword, Jeremias sent the diseased Mechanicus adept crashing to the ground to join them.
‘Move,’ Jeremias shouted, guiding Talen through the downpour. Corlak bobbed ahead, its bone-white skull sizzling before it suddenly stopped. More infected adepts were shambling towards them, arms outstretched.
Talen turned to see even more behind. They were all the same. The same murderous expression. The same blistered skin. The same rotting flesh.
The sickness was spreading.
It had become a plague.
