CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Carefully. Firmly. He was secure as she carried him, her body powerful against his. He was weak compared to her, small and fragile. But he was content. So content. He could just close his eyes, just sleep here. Sleep here forever, in her arms. In this warmth, in this darkness. In this safety.
But something was wrong. Something wrong with his body. He knew his body. It was his body after all – his alone – the body he had been born in and grew in and lived in. He knew its freckles and scars and hairs and lumps better than he knew any other place, and something was wrong.
His weight was off. That was it. His weight was off. He was slipping within her embrace and – oh Throne, it hurt! – he was listing to one side, the absence of something, something so painful, causing him to howl in agony, to unbalance, and to fall, fall, fall…
Arqat woke with a scream on his lips.
There was a hand, too. Tough and leathery, it had stopped him from calling out.
‘Shh,’ Sanpow hissed, his voice a low whisper, urgent. The old man’s deep-lined face loomed over Arqat, eyes white even in the gloom. He slowly removed his hand and pressed a finger to his own lips, miming silence.
‘Who?’ Arqat mouthed.
‘Gassers,’ Sanpow responded, the sound of his lips parting the only noise inside the pipe.
‘How many?’
Sanpow held up three fingers.
Arqat nodded. The adrenaline had hit his system now, and he was wide awake, the memory of the nightmare already fading. He had it every night he slept in the pipes, and he knew how to shake it off. He had to recover his wits quickly when he kept watch on the edge of the territory, especially when there were Gassers about. They couldn’t be reasoned with, couldn’t be bought off. They might not kill you immediately like a lot of the other gangs fighting for Refinery Cedille-Five, but if they took you, then you’d wish you were dead. They’d choke you out with their gas, until the pink of the world became grey, then carry you back to their secret places. There they’d snip a bit here, slice a bit there, until a person wasn’t a person any more.
Sanpow’s eyes bugged. Arqat knew that look: it meant the old man was listening hard. Arqat joined him, focusing on a corroded bloom of rust on the pipe wall as he waited for the telltale slap of bandage-wrapped foot on metal.
Nothing yet. Just the slow drip of liquid somewhere, condensation mixing together with old sap residue to ring out the ever-present sound of Serrine’s refinery complexes. That drip had infuriated Arqat when he first arrived in the undercity; now it was a comforting sound, the background rhythm of the arterial system of pipes that made up his new home.
The old man raised a hand. ‘There!’ he mouthed.
Arqat could only hear drips, the tap-tap-tap on rusted metal. Maybe the old codger was hearing things, decades in the pipes addling his brain meat. Maybe they’d have to retire him from outings.
‘You sure?’ he mouthed back, raising an eyebrow. They’d been careful: they’d scuffed away their footprints as they walked through the miles of pipes that made up Serrine’s vast undercity refinery complexes, and when they’d found their sleeping spot for the night, Sanpow had kicked away the spent powercell they’d used to climb into the maintenance hatch.
Sanpow nodded furiously and cupped his ears. Still nothing.
Wait. Between the taps, a gentle sound.
They moved quietly, the Gassers. They didn’t like a fight, much preferred to knock you out without getting their hands dirty. They were immune to their poison, of course, or as close as it was possible to get. They wore old refinery suits, patching them up with bandages, tape, and anything else they could get their grubby hands on. It made them look like nightmares, Sanpow said, all saucer eyes and long noses. The youths said that was what they’d turned into, spending so long in the gas, but Arqat knew better: that was just their masks. At least, he told himself that.
All of Serrine’s undercity residents lived below the haze line, but the Gassers had gone deeper still, into the bowels of the refineries. They were the first down after the filtration units failed, the most ragged and most desperate of the undercity’s rats, willing to trade their bodies and their brains for an opportunity to thrive. It was full of poisonous gas, sure, but there was real estate down there too, the kind of room that would make a gang boss green with envy – the kind of room that would spark full-scale gang warfare in the upper reaches of the undercity.
But you had to pay the price. The first gangers who ventured down there came out wrong, they said. Arqat had been too young to see them himself, too new to the undercity, but Sanpow had told him about monsters that had stumbled out of the depths – howling, gibbering things. They’d been stretched, squeezed by the gas they sucked in.
There was a new sound: a hiss. Wisps of green smoke crept from a grate in the base of the pipe, about fifty yards away, close to where they’d entered for the night.
‘Gas!’ Arqat shouted, and reached for his mask. He fumbled for the scavenged rebreather with one hand, trying to loop the strap around the back of his head in a single motion. He missed, and the mask slid sideways, bouncing uselessly in his grasp. He tried again, panic rising in his chest as the thick smoke blotted out the far end of the pipe. He missed again. His hand was shaking, and he forced himself to breathe. He felt he could taste the gas on the air already.
He felt rough hands on his wrist, and Sanpow helped him pull his mask into position, clamping it tightly over his mouth and nose before closing the clasp at the back.
The old man slapped him on the shoulder, and Arqat nodded shakily. The scavenged rebreather wouldn’t protect his lungs from the thick green substance for long, but it would buy him valuable seconds.
‘We have to go,’ Sanpow said, and set off down the pipe in a half-crouch. Arqat followed him. Sanpow was built for this: the old man had grown up in the undercity, and even before the angels came, he had already spent a life scuttling around in its secret places. Arqat was a head taller and far broader, the narrow shoulders of his youth having expanded with age and training. He ducked, awkwardly shuffling after his guide until he almost bumped into the back of the old man. The pipe was narrow, but he could see why he had stopped over Sanpow’s stooped shoulders. More gas, in clouds as thick as those that blocked out the sky, barring their way. The Gasser crew had herded them in, and now they were trying to smoke them out.
The old man turned, caught Arqat’s gaze. Together they looked down at the maintenance hatches beneath their feet. They ran the length of the pipes, these hatches, installed so that work crews could inspect every inch of the thousands of miles of pipework that carried Serrine’s precious sap to the surface for export off-world. Now many were rusted shut. They nodded at each other, plan agreed wordlessly.
Sanpow moved to stand over one grate, pointing his younger companion to another. They’d practised this before. ‘Multiple points of exit to sow maximum confusion, limited application of violence, and then make good your escape.’ That was how Galletti had explained it, during her drills.
‘Why “limited”?’ Arqat had asked once, raising the stump of his arm. ‘Why don’t we stick it to ’em? We’re strong – stronger than the Gassers, even the Screamers.’ He’d drawn a chorus of approval from the other youths, but Galletti had rolled her eyes and explained. They hadn’t got to where they had by picking fights with other gangers. ‘That’s why we ain’t got anywhere,’ he had mumbled under his breath.
Sanpow caught his wandering gaze with a wave, and reached down between his feet. He pointed, then cut his hand down on his palm, the message clear: drop and run. They would meet at the pre-agreed location, close to their own turf. Arqat nodded, reached down, and pulled the grate with his hand, ready to drop into the maintenance corridor below.
There was a face below him. Huge eyes shone in its featureless surface, their shiny blackness reflecting the wan light of the last flickering glow-globe illuminating the corridor. The Gasser cocked its head, quizzically. There was something in its hands – something dull silver, shaped like a bottle.
Arqat dropped onto the Gasser. His boots connected with his target’s torso, and they both crashed to the floor with a thud that echoed along the corridor.
He heard the old man drop a few yards further down: a thud, and then a crunch. Sanpow must have landed on something, Arqat realised, as he saw his mask skitter out of his hand and away across the floor. He watched it slide, until its movement was arrested by a bandage-wrapped boot. The owner of the boot turned to look at the old man, splayed out on the floor, and brought its foot down on the rebreather, crunching the glass faceplate.
Sanpow tried to rise, but his leg buckled under him. The lower portion was bent at an unnatural angle. Arqat was no healer, but he knew even from here it was broken. There was only one way out for the old man: he would have to be carried.
Arqat drew himself up to his feet, shaking off the impact of the collision, and started to move towards his downed friend. He barely made it a step before thin arms snaked around his body, holding him in place. He struggled, but the Gasser’s arms were cable-strong, and he heard a wheeze in his ear. He realised with disgust that it was a laugh.
The first Gasser brought itself to its feet, jerky movements and huge black eyes making it look like one of the huge refinery spiders that lived in the darkest tunnels down here. Arqat had been terrified of the creatures when he was first brought to the undercity. He didn’t like them much more now.
It knelt across the back of the old man’s legs and wrapped an arm around his neck, presenting his face to Arqat. Sanpow’s eyes, always so sharp and composed, looked frantic as they glinted in the gloom.
The Gasser pulled a small silver bottle from its bandolier, and placed it just below Sanpow’s chin. Keeping its bug eyes on Arqat, it removed the stopper from the bottle with a careful motion. There was a small hiss, and thick purple smoke crawled from its depths and up over the old man’s face.
Sanpow aged a decade in a moment. His skin, already drawn and leathery from decades underground, puckered further as the gas touched it.
‘Run,’ Sanpow gasped, his tongue shrivelling in his mouth as he tried to speak. ‘Ruuun…’
‘No!’ Arqat screamed, struggling in the arms of his attacker. The wheezing laugh in his ear was louder now.
The flesh of Sanpow’s face died in front of Arqat’s eyes, blackening and dissolving to reveal the white bone of his old friend’s skull beneath.
Arqat screamed again, howling through his rebreather mask in an impotent rage as he struggled in the Gasser’s grip. Sinewy fingers reached over his face, unseating his rebreather as they tried to stifle his screams.
Suddenly, he could smell the air of the tunnel: damp, cloying and ripe. His consciousness lurched, and a memory surfaced – of swaying censers, of sickening incense, and of Tumas, the old priest. He had been so weak, unable to save his flock. Arqat hated him.
He took his chance. He grabbed for his machete with his good arm, and reached over his shoulder, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing at air until he found a target. There was a scream, and the Gasser’s arms fell from his torso. Arqat spun to find his attacker with its hands to what was left of its face, blood gouting through bandaged fingers.
The other Gasser let Sanpow’s shrivelled head fall from its grip, and reached into the folds of its protective suit, pulling out an autopistol. It raised the weapon and pulled the trigger, but the gun, like most of the Gassers’ equipment, was poorly maintained, and it clicked, the round jammed in its chamber. The Gasser slapped the weapon against its free palm, and raised it again, but this time, it didn’t have the chance to squeeze the trigger. Arqat tackled the figure, wrapping his good arm around the Gasser’s waist as he brought it to the slimy tunnel floor.
They wrestled next to the corpse of his mentor. His friend. Arqat glanced at the ruin of Sanpow’s face. The sight drove him on, and he fought with a feral rage, raining blows down on the Gasser’s torso, neck and head. This one was much like the other – wiry and powerful – and it gave as good as it got, Arqat’s grunts of exertion and anger met by the Gasser’s infernal, inhuman hissing. The Gasser pulled a knife from somewhere inside its robes, and slashed wildly, catching across the skin and muscle of Arqat’s stomach.
Arqat had expected the wound to slow him, but the pain was white hot, and he used it, a furnace at his core, driving him on. He slammed his elbow into the Gasser’s neck, grinding cartilage and constricting airflow. The Gasser gurgled, and Arqat smiled a cruel smile. He had killed before – everyone had, down here – but he would enjoy this one. He rolled, hooking his legs around the laughing Gasser until he was on top of his masked enemy, knee across its throat. He slammed the heel of his fist against the insectoid face mask, hard enough that he could feel something crunch. The blank glass eyes remained indifferent to the blows.
Still the Gasser hissed.
‘Stop laughing!’ Arqat screamed, and dug his fingers into the rubberised seal at the side of the mask. He pulled with his new-found strength, tearing the mask from the Gasser’s face. Part of its nose came with it. Blood gouted from the hole, inky black against the ghost-pale skin of the man beneath. Hazy pink eyes regarded him with amusement – at least he thought he saw amusement, beyond the blood – and he roared with anger.
‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’
Arqat used the gaping hole in the Gasser’s face as a target, slamming his fist down again and again and again into the man’s skull. He stopped only when there was no longer any skull to speak of, just a wreckage of meat and bone, and looked up. The final Gasser had watched the decapitation of its colleague in mute horror. Now it hissed in panic and turned on its heels, trying to run. It had nowhere to go, though, and Arqat’s rage made him faster.
He caught the Gasser in the back with his blade, embedding it tip first through the masked figure’s spine. The Gasser’s legs buckled immediately, nerves severed by the wide blade’s passage through its wiry body. Arqat rode it to the floor, knees in the small of its back. He felt its pelvis crunch against hard metal, felt bone break.
‘No…’ the Gasser hissed, voice distorted by his breathing mask. ‘Please, mercy…’
It twitched as Arqat pulled the blade from its spine, an unnatural movement that made it look like a marionette. Blood rose from the wound, like the sap that these tunnels once pumped to the overcity. He drove the blade in again, through the back of the Gasser’s neck, hard enough that its tip pierced the metal floor. The reddened weapon stuck for a moment, a monument to Arqat’s anger, before he pulled it loose.
‘No… mercy,’ Arqat breathed through clenched teeth. ‘Just… blood.’
S’janth wore his body more often these days. It was an accord they had reached, he told himself, but he knew the truth: he could no longer stop her wresting control of his form when she chose to. The daemon had swollen with power. She had been a husk of the creature that she once was when he was called to her, weakened from millennia in aeldari captivity, but she had grown in his body, refilling her essence on the suffering and ecstasies of Serrine’s populace.
He had learned to marshal his consciousness while she was in the ascendancy. He had lived a long life – even with the exact span muddled by millennia spent in the warp’s changing tides – and he had forgotten more than most beings would ever know. He filled his time dredging through these memories, caught on fickle currents of interest.
He rode them now, passing time. He savoured the memory of his rise to power on Serrine, the sound of his name on tens of thousands of tongues. He was loved, then – truly loved – for the first time in his life. It was a sweet taste still, that love, but it was familiar to him now. It had turned stale in the years since his arrival. Tiresome. He moved on.
He delved further back, reliving his flight from the Black Legion on board the Exhortation. He had taken the ship, and his warband, from Euphoros. The small-minded fool had cast in with Abaddon’s rabble, sublimating Xantine and his brothers among the warband into the Children of Torment. Xantine, too charismatic and too skilful to suffer such indignation, had challenged Euphoros to a duel, the winner to be given command of both the ship and its warriors. Naturally, he had triumphed, and the surviving members of the warband – seeing him as a paragon of the virtues of the Emperor’s Children – elected to join him in his noble quest across the stars on board his new ship.
No, a voice said. That was not how it happened.
He found himself deep in an ancient aeldari temple. Vast statues towered over him, their heads encased in tall helms. Xenos filth. There was death in this place, warriors armoured in plate the colour of the obsidian walls. He had fought them; he had killed them. That was his task: to kill them.
And more. Always more.
There was another purpose. A presence in this place. It spoke to him. It was speaking to him. The spear, pristine, unbroken, lay on a bed of flower petals. How did flowers grow in this place of death? He ached to touch them, to take the spear, to become one.
‘I don’t want to see this,’ he murmured, and the image flickered.
No? the voice said.
‘No. Something died here. Something ended.’
What would you like to see?
‘Something new.’
Of course.
He saw himself as his Neverborn prey saw him. He was a black maw, sharp teeth spattered with blood. His eyes were pits of pure darkness, solid as gemstones, from which no light could escape. Nothing could escape. He felt their emotions. They were not as he understood them – these creatures were fear, or anger, or lust, or malice, or one of countless emotions, given twisting bodies in the ocean of the warp – but they all radiated one sensation. They were scared. Scared of him. They lived in a world of soft edges and shifting shapes, thoughts and souls and questions given temporary form. He was a monster to them: hard, rough, real. He took them from their womb and ate them whole, laughing as he destroyed their essence. They quivered in his belly, trying to die.
He felt a new sensation, a tiny spark.
Pity. That was new.
‘Yes,’ he whispered, enjoying the feeling.
He saw pink and purple, wisps of pearl white, pierced by a dagger of pure black. He heard the sound of a thousand glass spires, wailing their agonies to the heavens. He smelled perfume and smoke. He tasted blood. He felt pain – crushing pain – in his legs. In his heart.
Canticle City. No. Even for him, that one was still too painful.
‘Take me elsewhere.’
Are you sure?
‘Yes… yes. Please, take me away.’
Where will you go?
‘Anywhere. It hurts too much.’
The dagger of black stabbed downwards, growing in a moment to darken the sky. The pink and purple were gone, replaced by fire and then… nothing.
Black sand, running through purple fingers.
He recoiled as if he had been struck by a mass-reactive shell. The effect was physical, and he felt himself dragged through memories. He saw Canticle City, the temple, the Exhortation in a heartbeat as he hurtled through layers of consciousness. He felt S’janth in his body, filling it up like water in a cup, but he brushed her aside with ease.
He came back to reality screaming a single word.
‘Father!’