#d_n

There had been warnings of course. Lights in the sky. Sounds. Feelings. Building up all at once, like the dull oppressiveness of the void had peeled back to fill the senses with an inaudible but sharp thrum of alien pressure. Not violent, not yet, just... there. As soon as I realised something was happening I was headed to the building like a shot, but by the time I’d got inside the whole business with the crackling sky had ended.

Abruptly.

It felt like we were all in an accelerating car that just took a hard right of a cliff and was going into freefall. The sisters had been sitting in a circle around Ezekiel, chanting in unison near the altar as I burst in. When the pressure stopped they froze. Eyes wide and mouths open as the Father continued his annointments, his paws gently and methodically ministrating oils as he moved around the circle until he had completed his task, and then, raising his head our eyes and he just smiled, knowingly.

That was when the second wave hit, the whole world felt like it had tipped down on it’s end and I went flying, falling through the front door. It was a miracle I managed to grab the outer handle on the way through to be honest. It felt different this time. Angry. An almost naked aggression assaulted all my sense as I flailed about for dear life and the chant from the sisters inside started up again as a kind of plaintiff wail..

That was about 30 seconds ago and they still haven’t come tumbling past me.

Straining I left my head to look upwards into the cathedral as the universe spins, lurching around me. I can barely see anything in this maelstrom of cause and chance and chaos I find myself in, certainly not the sisters or Ezekiel anywhere inside. I can’t even hear their wail any more, merged as it is with the wail of the void and yet somehow I can feel their presence, barely, and it is leaving this place.

Ezekiel’s knowing smile flashes in my mind.

And they are gone.

The Sisters.

The Father.

They are Everywhere and Nowhere now.

I have no idea how I know that, but I do. I know it with the certainty of a dreamer tumbling through the dark and before I can think to much about that I am blessedly distracted by the unholy screeching sound as our tiny spit of rock tears… through the dark and explosions of image flash around and through me, imprinting on my mind’s eye like fragments of the dream I am waking from.

A dark shadow spreading.

Golden fields scattering.

The rushing of water.

A thousand others that I cannot even understand, and I shake my head as above me, in a more immediate reality there is a blur of movement. The creature who wears my friends face reaches down through the doorway with an arm of liquid shadow and I almost reach out instinctively, but in a split second of uncertainty, of unwillingness to face what I had helped create my grip fails and I am falling.

The cathedral spirals away from me, and I am lost.

Again.

The breath is sucked from me, just as it was when I first fell through that blighted tear in the wasteland.

Betrayed by someone who should have known better.

There is no cold seeping into my bones this time though. There is light.

All around me there is blinding light and as time slows to an almost halt my mind races with a thousand faults and failures, of choices sleepwalked into and then…

Impact.

Not a strike, not a blow, I’ve had enough to know the difference, just… the sudden shocking  whiplash that I am not spinning anymore and there is solid, real ground under my back. My lungs gulp air and I struggle to squint through the sunlight, and catch my bearing before the finality of unconsciousness catches up with the only remaining thought my frazzled mind can muster.

I made it.

“ – that’s as far as the big lass goes; it’s the Elsie’s in from here,” someone announced from behind him, followed by a tap on the EXO’s shell, and it was only the suit’s strapping that stopped Cesar jumping at the sudden intrusion.  The wash of grey reality was a cold shock against his spiraling thoughts, and he suddenly realised how fast he was breathing.

Get a grip, Castell.

The EXO engaged round him as he turned, trying to shake away the lingering ghosts of imagined screams, and followed the general movements of the crew, back down to where the blocky shapes of the Argus’ landing craft were sat at the top of shallow, salt-splattered ramps.  He was motioned into one of the frontmost craft and made his way around the roped-down boxes and pallets that took up most of the space, until he could position himself at the front, wedged between two small towers of crates that barely came up to his armoured chest.

They wanted him visible.  People usually did.

More organisational chaos bubbled around him – boats being hauled aside, the last lots of cargo being bolted down, while a blend of voices shouted orders and instructions at each other, echoing and bouncing between the walls.  Finally, a discordant claxon rang out across the assembled boats and the deck shuddered again, as the huge doors at the bottom of the ramp began to rise, spilling harsh-bright sunlight and the edges of crashing waves up into the hold.  Cesar braced himself as the chains beneath clattered into life, hauling the craft along and down, and there was a lurch as it finally hit the water and the engines started up, foaming as they surged forwards.

He managed to get his faceplate down before too much spray blasted back into his eyes, and he could almost, almost pretend that the salt on his cheeks was entirely from that.

The boats would be coming back, soon enough.  But he wouldn’t.

- -

There were few official celebrations on Outpost 44 – outside of the annual benchmark of Mother’s Day that heralded a new year – but a Resupply could be considered to come close.  The docks hadn’t been designed for boats the size of the Argus, and the rocks and wreckage that Reclamation hadn’t managed to get hold of yet made any attempt to moor something that big too hazardous.  But there was space on the beaches behind the Tower, all broken scree and gravel-sand, but flat enough that the swarm of blocky landing craft could approach.  

A carved slope zig-zagged its way down the cliffs, crossing repeatedly underneath the angled slice of the Tower’s shadow, and knots of figures waited at the base.  They were watching the oncoming boats intently, but they weren’t the only ones.  Up the ramp, all across the cliffs, and even visible in the high-up windows of the Tower itself, faces were turned towards the sea and the approaching bounty.

The EXO was certainly getting attention.  As the boats got closer, and the armoured shape became more and more obvious to the onlookers, ripples of comment began to spread across the various groups, accompanied gesturing down to the shape of it.  Particularly as the landing craft came to a halt and the EXO climbed out, sinking deep footprints into the shingle beneath, as it began to stride forward alongside the first batch of cargo.  From there, the dings and repaired paintwork that had concerned Cesar earlier blurred with distance and novelty, and the suit gleamed in the dull sunlight.

Two pairs of eyes, in particular, were fixed on the machine as the disembarking party made its way up the cliff path.  The watchers weren't in the main pockets of crowd, crouched instead in the cover of a half-collapsed pillbox further along the cliff.  It was tricky to get to, teetering as it was against its own crumbling supports, but the view there was good and neither had ever borne much concern for precarious positioning.

Both gazes had initially widened, matched in surprise at the first sight, but the smaller of the two figures had already moved on to glaring; twin slices of blue-steel suspicion narrowed down above snubbed features, as their owner let out a low hiss.

“... what the hell is that?" Kdub leaned further forward as she spoke, shielding her eyes a little more, but it didn't serve to improve the vision. She cursed under her breath – one of the low, guttural snarls the Shepherds used, punctuated by spit – and tried to make more sense of the shape stalking up the cliff path.  It was mostly huge plates of shaped metal covered in painted Chains, extending the figure inside to ridiculous proportions – and unless her estimates were really off, from what she could see past the gaps, the pilot was pretty damn massive in the first place. If she concentrated, if she made the effort to pick apart the shape below them, it was possible to see it as just a figure in really weird, and very large, armour.

But it was easy enough to see a monster. And very easy to see a problem.

"I don’t like this,” she muttered, shaking her head as she glanced over at the man beside her.  D_N was still staring down at the beach, still with his watery grey eyes wide, and clearly wasn't listening.

“That,” he said, firmly. “Is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.  I wanna ride it.”

Kdub’s fingers tensed against the cracked concrete as she glared at him.

“Really?”

D_N blinked.

“What?”

“...never mind.” Kdub shook her head as she turned back towards the climbing figure, and watched it progress up towards the first of Jericho’s fences.  The gates was open now, to let the supplies in; of course.  Everything had to be checked first, didn’t it?  “For poison.”  And if that meant that screw-all ever came back out again, leaving everyone outside those fences to scramble for crumbs and garbage in the tainted surf – well that was just unfortunate, right?

All in this together; my ass.  

Her gaze flicked back towards the tower itself, the upright cylinder of black and grey stone that stuck out of the fenced-in grounds around it, capped with the bristling spires of the AA batteries, and she ran her tongue hard across the back of her teeth.  This armour-thing was new, and they already had plenty enough to worry about.

The planning had taken years.  Years of getting the rival Work Blocs to friggin’ talk to each other, at least for long enough to clock where the real enemies were.  Years of pouring over maps and schematics – stolen, scavenged, or just painstakingly worked out – to find any weak spot, any crack in defences that they had so long been taught were impenetrable.  But anyone in Reclamation could tell you that nothing lasts forever, when it really comes down to it.  Steel, concrete, stone – everything breaks, rusts and rots – and that damn tower was no exception.  Would be no exception.

And if wind and rain weren’t going to do it quick enough – they would find something else that would.

There was too much riding on this.  Everything was riding on this, and Kdub’s teeth ground together hard as she watched the big metal suit reach the clifftop, and saw the so-familiar figure of the Warden sliming his way forward to greet it.

“Right, I’m done,” she said, straightening up as much as was possible in the overhanging concrete and began to pick her way back out. “We got eyes enough out there.  Just hope some of them’re actually countin’ crates, not just eying up that thing.”

D_N glanced around as she slid past him, blinking a bit, and hesitated.

“Y’need me, or…?” he trailed off, looking back round at the gathering cluster of welcome at the ramp top, and Kdub pressed down on the urge to roll her eyes. She had to talk to the Bloc chiefs, and fast, before any of this shit became more myth than she needed it to be.  And rapid, logical explanation had never been one of D_N’s strong points.

“Nah, not yet.  Eyes on,” she replied, cuffing him lightly across the shoulders as she ducked past. “Find us something good, yeah?  See you back at Rec.”

Outside – or at least, more technically outside, given how little of the roof remained – Kdub retrieved the knotted rope that made their ladder, tied off securely to a jutting piece of metal in the old building’s side, and let it roll down fully before she crouched and caught on, lowering herself over the edge of the broken walkway that had once led into the main structure.  The rope was old, multiply-repaired, and the bulges were rough beneath her half-gloves – the fingers of which never lasted long – rubbing against the old calluses that lined her hands, born of salt and metal and a lifetime of hauling salvage from the waves.

She reached the bottom of the line, ignoring the sheer drop below, and twisted gently in the air until she could kick out, pushing off from the box-supports and swinging a few times before her arc carried her sufficiently over the narrow trail, and dropped free.  She left the rope swinging behind her as she edged back along the path, pressing her narrow frame against the cliff firmly in places to get around an obstacle, or jumping a chunk of missing ground.  It was a route she had taken before, well-known enough that she could let some of her mind wander as she moved – but she came back sharply as she reached the final overhang, and caught sight of a sliver of shadow lancing down across the rocks.  She froze, old instincts flaring hard as she pressed back against the cliff, but details clicked into place at the same time as a familiar voice grumbled out from above.

“I ain’t got all day, lass.”

Kdub relaxed, letting go of the chunk of stone she had been automatically starting to loosen, and swung herself around until she could see the face peering down at her.  Dark sea-shade eyes gleamed under brows like greying scrub, and the thick knot of wiry hair that was balled behind his head was woven through with white.  His weather-beaten features were furrowed at the edges, particularly around the eyes and forehead, but age hadn’t dulled the shrewd twists to his expression, or leached any of the strength from the rest of him; even if he did lean rather more heavily on the thick Shepherd’s stave than some of his younger companions.

“Wasn’t thinking to see you down here, old man,” she replied, hauling herself up around the overhang, as much to fill the air as to note the point – although it was true.  The cloaked figure in front of her was functional leader of the Shepherds, the oak-hard bunch of bastards that tended their flocks of equally tough goats up on the central highland.  Meat and milk were rare, even before the Tower took their cut, and the Shepherds held their stewardship tight, with utterly unforgiving fingers.  Their leader was a near-myth in his own right; O_G, she had once learned, who had been going by ‘Old Grey’ since well before Kdub had seen sunlight.  He was cagey on the actual number, but she reckoned he must have twice her years on his shoulders, and she was getting firm enough into her second decade as it was.

It was rare to see him down off the hills, outside of one of the few trips to pay tithe to Jericho, and Kdub raised an eyebrow as she straightened up, brushing a bit of dust off her knees.

“Down for the view?” she continued, and Old Grey waved a hand, the fingers topped by thickened nails like tree bark.

“Don’t do to fall behind,” he said, shrugging, and nodded back towards the cliff edge. “Your boy still down there, is’ee?”

“We’ve got a problem,” Kdub replied, deliberately missing the question. “Something new’s got off the boats, and I don’t like it.”

Old Grey looked at her solemnly.

“Aye?”

“Big metal suit thing.  Someone’s inside, I’m sure,” she said, tracing her hands through the air around herself, sketching out an approximation of the shape, and pulled a face. “But it’s a hell of a lotta steel be just walking around.  Gone into Jericho with the rest of the new stuff, for now, but I’d bet we’re seeing it soon.”

The old man’s brow furrowed further as he turned, peering out across towards the distant fences.  The vantage point here wasn’t nearly as good, but you could still make out the mounding stacks of pallets rising against the walls.

“Y’think they’ve twigged?” he asked, and there was a tight edge to his voice.  Kdub snorted as she shook her head quickly.

“Nah.  I think we’d be looking down rifle teeth if they knew.  But we’ve gotta think they suspect something.” She hesitated, tapping bared fingers against the opposite palm, and shook her head.  “I… want to see where this goes.  Gonna let the others know something’s up, before rumour gives the fucking thing wings or some such.  But I want to see it, before we start serious planning.”

Old Grey nodded slowly, and there was a glint of approval in his eyes that Kdub would admit that was a better boost than any cheer would be.

“Good.  You got sharp eyes,” he said, quietly. “Would’ve made a Shepherd, I always said.”

Kdub grinned, and she knew it was one of the kind full of knives, as she jerked a thumb back towards the distant shape of the Tower.

“Thanks.  But I’m Reclamation, to the bone.  I take stuff apart.”

Even walls and fences were just wreckage waiting to happen, if you looked at it right.  They had worked too damn hard to see this all unbalanced so easily, and she was not going to let that happen.

And if things started to get dicey, she’d never seen much that the cliffs couldn’t rip up, given half a chance.  The Crag had its own jaws, after all – and they were always hungry.

- -

They called the tower Jericho, but if there had been an explanation of why, Cesar missed it in the overall blur of landing and introduction.  He remembered the wash of sea water around his ankles, the crunch of gravel and scree under the EXO’s treads as he had started up the beach, but everything after that had seemed strangely… distant.  He must have climbed, following the cliff path upwards to where it ended in an open area of ground, spilling away into barren scrub in one direction, and a maze of interlocking fences at the other side.  The chain-link walls were twice even the EXO’s height, and crossed back and forth behind each other to split the ground beyond into cells and walkways, with occasional vent hatches or bits of protruding equipment visible in one section or other.

Beyond that was the tower.  It was the only thing he had seen since his arrival that was even vaguely familiar – a tall, dark-stone building, and from about three storeys upwards it was almost vintage, with angles and an architectural style that would not have been out of place in a Citizen home, heavy with the motifs and arches common in Golden Age builds.  But below that was thick, blank stone, featureless and stern compared even to the bristling tower of gun batteries that topped it all, and somehow more foreboding.  As if the layer of decoration, something that had to have been designed, with the prints of a human architect held in its sculpting, was nothing more than a veneer, a front, to the blunt stone edifice beneath and its deadly crown.

Maybe he was being unfair.  He should try and see the best in it; after all, this was going to be his home –

– home; home and that word was a black acid in his mind, struck through with hollow laughter because when had he ever, ever truly managed that?  Under his father’s sour stare, or his mother’s fetishistically-sainted patience; or the snide razors of his siblings’ pity?  Or in the army, in the EXO unit, when he smiled and posed and worked his flesh to failure and was never enough, with the ghosts of everything and everyone he had ever failed to be wrapping him like chains?

Home.  What would you possibly know about that, Castell?

– for the foreseeable future.  And the residents had made him welcome.  He wondered how much of the reason for him was known, but if any of those phantoms were close behind now, no one seemed keen to mention them.

The Warden was an all-over pale man, with shoulders a little too wide for his frame and a round face with pinched-in cheeks.  He was expressive, thick eyebrows arching above his slightly-stapled smile, and he waved his thin hands rapidly as he spoke.  He did seem to be talking to the EXO a bit more than to Cesar himself, his eyes roving across the machine, and even walking around it – exclaiming – a few times, but that was to be expected.  It might be an old suit to him, but there was clearly nothing like that on the Outpost, and both EXO and pilot were very much the centre of attentive gazes as they passed through the linked gateways that cut paths through the fence.

There was a door in the base of the tower, thick framed and half-sunken into the ground, which led into a hub with stairwells and lift shafts stretching up into the concrete ceiling and down into the ground below.  Low tunnel-like corridors punctuated the walls, leading away like the hollow spokes of a subterranean wheel.  Cargo pallets and boxes, his silent companions on the landing craft, were dragged past them even as the Warden explained… something.

He hadn’t taken much of it in.  A few bits, maybe.

“Don’t let the fences worry you, Private.  A precaution, nothing more.”

“It’s the Wards, you see.  They can get a bit riled up, at times.  Safer for everyone if they can be deterred.”

“It might take a few more links, but the Chain reaches us, even here!”

Then there had been some… different sorts of glances, after they had followed the pallets down one of the tunnels, yellow lights casting a dull illumination not unlike the Argus’ dim corridors, and found where the EXO’s charging cradle was already being set up: in a high-ceilinged room that might have been a very empty vehicle-bay.  Cesar settled the suit into place, and a pair of thin, half-masked figures detached from the back of the crowd, coming silently forward to fiddle with cables.  Assets, by their clothing, and he felt the usual twinge of discomfort at that sight.

“I’ll need some help, sir,” he managed, and it felt like an admission. “My arm. Well, I… need a hand.” He smiled along with that weak attempt at humour, half-sure the expression had come out as a grimace – although he saw a slight tinge of pink rising onto a couple of the watching faces, which suggested otherwise.  At a gesture from the Warden, the Assets set to helping, and figured out how to detach him fairly quickly.  He climbed down, sweeping his suit-mussed hair back into place, and came to attention.

Even looking firmly forwards, his gaze fixed, he could feel the change in some of the weighing stares around him.  He was taller than everybody there, and considerably broader, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was suddenly a spotlight spearing down around him.  He had to push away the urge to scramble back into the EXO’s shielding embrace.  Of course they were looking at him.

It was the only thing he’d ever been really good for, wasn’t it?

And even that.  Not enough.

The Warden looked at him, again, then.  Not with lust in his eyes, but with a flash of sharp, hungry calculation that was gone as fast as it appeared, replaced by that eager grin once more.  Cesar wasn’t sure.  He might have imagined it.  Wasn’t like he was doing too well at looking for the bright side of things, right now.

“Let’s get you settled in, shall we, Private Castell?”

So here he was.  Staring out of the narrow window of the room he had been bundled into, which was damp, threadbare, and had a kaleidoscope of strange mould curling its way across the roof.  Assured that his meagre belongings would be brought up, when they had been located amongst the rest of the cargo.  There wasn’t much else to do, so he just stared, watching the distant shape of the Argus at anchor off the coast.  It was waiting until dawn to head back, through the maze of rocks that enclosed Outpost 44 like the teeth of some titanic jaw beneath, poised to snap closed and swallow this whole damned rock down into the oblivion it deserved.  And him along with it.

Welcome to the Crag.

Behind me, however I do detect footfalls. I recognise the pattern and don't even bother to turn around.

"There you are, son.."

The priest murmurs a ways behind me. His voice sounds as if he's smiling.

"I have made more of the potion, but you weren't in your quarters."

I take the thick stoppered flask from the priest, even the liquid sloshing inside seeming muffled and muted in this place, and put it with the half empty one in my pack at my waist.

"Thanks, Preacher Man. I've mostly been keeping myself busy out here..... Weird vibe inside ya know"

He nods in response, leaning on his staff.

"I understand. I imagine you must have been shocked to see your comrade react so.. violently. But he has been improving steadily. The sisters have made him a robe and cowl."

I pick up a another rock and send it violently spinning away.

"Yeah, that's good and all. Only problem is... That ain't my 'comrade'"

Another rock goes flying into the void. The darkness devours the stone, without so much as a hiss as it vanishes from sight.

"Ahh..." The priest exhales wearily. "I see."

There is a pause before he speaks again. ".. Forgive the curiosity of an old man, but - why are you throwing stones?"

I snort.

"Ya know what? That is an excellent question. Guess I’m just showing it who’s boss. Seemed like the thing to do.”

There is a pause as the priest waits for me to go on, and I sigh. Truth was I hadn’t thought much about why I was doing it. Forwarding planning has never been my strong suit, that’s a lot of the reason why I ended up falling in here. That and the turncoat, blonde streaked bastard…

I stand up with a start and send another rock, a big one this time hurtling away at the memory before sagging somewhat realising my new friend was still waiting on an answer.

“I guess, I used to do it a lot when I was a kid. It kinda, helps me.... clear my head ya know?"

"Ahh. So there is something weighing on your mind?"

I turn to face him. The light plays over his features, bestial, but concerned as he fixes his gaze on me.

"Damn straight there's something weighing on my mind."

He huffs a soft snort and smiles gently.

"I can't seem to shake this fog in my brain, like it's getting into me. Hell just before you got here I caught myself thinking all this flowery stuff about 'oily rivers of blackness', narrating what I'm doing inside my own head like a guy in one of those fancy Opera's the Doc played for us that one time. Man. That ain't me. I’m more of a live in the moment kinda guy ya know? Getting too reflective and maudlin doesn't sit well"

I turn and sit, sending a small cloud of dust hazing around, the light from a sudden flicker of void light reflects through it like a...

Damn.

I’m doing it again.

A paw settles on my shoulder. "It is difficult. To lose so much and then be flung into darkness and doubt. Loneliness and grief can turn any mind inwards on itself.."

His voice is soft but it cuts the hungry silence that surrounds this whole drifting island.

"That is why companionship is something to treasure above all else."

He releases my shoulder and steps towards the edge, looking far out into the darkness.

"The Void has designs for us yet, this much is true."

I snap back at him, perhaps somewhat unfairly. "You really think that? That it planned to tear my friend to bits the first time he stepped into it and then replace him with that... thing after we put him back together?"

He chuckles softly. "Fate works in mysterious ways... Your friend has suffered tragedy, but God has given him a second chance. You must not be so quick to judge the disfigurement of the body, for it still houses a soul, and we have been kept sheltered yet." The Priest turns to me, dark eyes catching a glint of the golden light that spills through the glass windows. "What do you suppose has kept us sheltered and living, if not the Void itself?"

He’s not wrong, I guess. "You can say what you want about us being sheltered. Sure. I appreciate whatever it is you have going on here, but that's NOT Cesar. Arghh, I never should have even told you his name. I…. I  saw it’s eyes when we were back in there. Cesar... hell even when we were fighting the real assholes he could never shake that slight look of guilt whenever he had to hurt someone... That thing in there" I shake my head "Got nothin’ but rage when it's scrappin. It's unsettlin' "

As if to answer me the long low toll of the bell tower rings out. If I squinted I might be able to make out the large robed figure in the tower working the ropes.

"That what you've got him doing to work his keep now?"

The priest tilts his head at me curiously. "He volunteered for it."

"But I am more concerned for your well-being at this moment." Behind the tangled mane of grey-white hair, I can feel his eyes fix on me. "You seem... agitated. Beyond your distrust."

"Yeah. Fair call. I’ve been out here a lot recently, and I went for a wander earlier Up by the river, ya know. It’s just, I can’t really explain it. The whole place seems... smaller. Somehow. Like bits of it are missing "

Another rock goes flying, hard into the darkness. A smarter guy would say it was some kind of metaphor, but I still don’t really know why I’m doing it.

"I look out there and I swear I can feel it churning. Waiting for us, like it's eating this rock bit by bit. Ever since the... ritual. It's like I can feel us hurtling around, like there's barely nothing stopping this place from flying off again. It’s electric, like this great....." My hands flail as I trying to put it into words, but I shrug down as I fail "I can't explain it, feels like when we were waiting for an enemy push back in Isador, like we are waiting for the other shoe to drop"

The priest smiles again. “You are a still a military man at heart, Private D_N. But this. This is a place of peace. What the void wills is what comes to pass, and it DID will for you to be here. If it no longer has need for us then we will know soon enough.”

His other paw is on my shoulder as he turns me to face him.

Something was dripping down D_N’s shoulder, but he didn’t have the energy left to care.  He’d managed to drag himself half-upright into one rough-angled corner, leaning heavily against the cold concrete.  Exhaustion clustered thickly around what thoughts he still retained, buzzing from the handful of blunted impacts chained around his skull; and more deeply from the boot-prints already rising across his back.

Everything hurt, except for the bits that had gone numb – although he was kind of sure that everything was still attached.  So, there was that.  At least it was quiet down here.  The arrhythmic plink of falling water, the distant rumble and thud of machinery pulsing away beneath the streets, and…

A soft sound of footfall, breaking into his dulled-out personal universe.  He ignored it.  They were gonna drag him out of here in the morning.  It wasn’t morning yet.

The strike of a match was a dry echo in the darkness.  The voice that followed was unfamiliar; not quite toneless, but with a strange smoothing to the words that seemed bizarre in the half-rotten room.

“D_N. AO-Four-Four-O-S-D.  Rank: Private, grenadier.  Furtherance; unassigned.  Facility; unassigned.  Military service record: amended.  Previous incidents of violent assaults on superiors, suspended.  Accusation: Murder, category two.  Gross and persistent insubordination.  Non-compliance; Thought crime: category four; assessment pending.”

There was a pause; a long, audible breath, and the scent of ash in the air.

“Surviving one tour of duty in a suicide squad could be considered merely incompetence. Two, perhaps fortune – but three?  Three is a pattern.”

The tone didn’t change – and there was something odd about that, too, because he’d have expected even a little shift in the intonation there – but the words were enough.  D_N inched a swollen eyelid open, a fragment of curiosity surfacing, and squinted painfully across the room.  There wasn’t a whole lot to see – a dark figure, silhouette against the faint light from the corridor – but the burning tip of a cigarette was like a ruby star, alien and insistent against their surroundings.  He shifted, slightly, and tried to get a better look.

What the hell, right?

“Sounds ‘bout all of it,” he managed, through thickened lips.  A fragment of tooth caught awkwardly under his tongue and he spat it aside, where it clinked on one of the nearby bars. “Though callin’ me gross on record’s a dick move, to be honest.”

Another long breath, another fresh plume of grey smoke in the air, and he caught a gleam of glass.

“Indeed.  You didn’t run, Private, when the militia found you.  A man with your history of survival, you must have known what that would entail.”

D_N shrugged.  Something crunched unpleasantly in his shoulder at the movement, and he ignored it.

“Yeah, well.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t seem a whole lotta point.”

The dark figure gave a slight snort.

“Nothing more than that?  No sudden remorse, no pleas.  No heartfelt appeals to Mother’s… better nature?”

D_N shrugged again, although nothing crunched this time.  He wasn’t sure if that was better.

“I smashed his head in with a tray.  Can kinda see why she’d be pissed, y’know?” He shifted again, managing to pull himself a bit more upright, and jutted his chin out the best he could manage while he tried to work out where the figure’s eyes would be, to stare at. “Not runnin’ from something I did.  He was an asshole.”

“A dead asshole, now.  High ranking.  Public.  And very dead.”

“We all gotta die, lady,” he hazarded. “I’m not sorry, and if I’m hanging for it, I hang.  Had a good run.”

That seemed important.  It wasn’t quite what he meant, but words were tricky.  He hadn’t been expecting to need to talk about anything.  Seemed sorta unfair.

“Quite.” There was another pause, and this one seemed thoughtful. “So, tell me, D_N.  Do you regret any of this?”

He considered it.  It didn’t take long.

“Yeah,” he nodded, accompanied by another rumbling clench in his stomach. “Should’ve gone back for the bacon before the militia kicked my ass.”

He hadn’t been expecting her to laugh.  It was a weird sound; melodic, different to the toneless voice, and seemed out of place to the rest of her speech.  The footsteps came forward and he looked up into a grey-framed face, with a point of tainted firelight hanging from her lips.  She smiled, and it was a thin line of satisfaction, not pleasure, as she looked down at him.

“In the truncated period of your assignment to his office, you seem to have become quite aware of some of the late Officer Synott Cesare’s… proclivities.  In many ways, a loyal and inventive Son of our glorious State; and in many others, distinctly not.”

D_N didn’t try to respond.  The talking woman’s face was lined, her hair pale.  Obvious age wasn’t something he was all that used to encountering.  Maybe in a few generals, back in the day, peppered with advancing silver above frowns that had etched into their skin from years of furrowing – but not that often.  In his experience, life was something you couldn’t rely on keeping a hold of for all that long.  

She was still talking, still in that slightly strange voice, and now she was closer, it was starting to dawn on D_N that the movements of her lips didn’t always match perfectly with the words brought forth.

“I am an Auditor.  Now, a half-accidental transportee from a distant link like Outpost 44, such as yourself, may be unaware of what that means – but I assure you, Private, that there is nothing that escapes Mother’s gaze.  Your Auditor Knows.” She leant forward even further as she spoke and a wash of ashen breath stung D_N’s eyes.

“I know, so many things.  But the question now, is what I should highlight?  What information is relevant.  What face of it shall we present, evidenced and aligned, as Mother’s Truth?”

There was a sudden moment of movement, then fingers dug into his jaw, accompanied by the squeak of leather as she pulled his head aside and the pale stare swept across his face.  D_N had been stared at hard before, by a hundred folks trying to work him out, or get into his head like they did, but there was something about the feeling of grey-ice assessment in that stare that sent a few hairs prickling on his bruised neck.

“Do I send you to the gallows, Private, with Synott’s lifeblood still drying on your face?  As nothing more than an unstable, uncivilized savage from a failed and fallen colony, raised to a position you could not possibly deserve. All by the courtesy of a man who dedicated his life to correction, to bringing those lost souls back into the warmth of Mother’s embrace – a man you then struck down, with no warning.  Betrayed, brutalised, and left to die under the stricken gazes of those he sought only to aid?”

D_N tried to move, to shrug off the restraining grip on his jaw, but he couldn’t manage much more than a vague shake, which didn’t do much.  The woman’s eyes narrowed, just a little.

“Or.” Her fingers dug deeper as she spoke, as she held his gaze like a shackle. “Do I look closer?  At the years of non-compliant correspondence leaking from that office, hidden well – but not enough.  At the blatant perversion of remit, the inefficient utilisation of Resource; at the squandering of Mother’s generous stipends on personal whim?  Into the rotten core of a once-fine institution, corrupted by the prideful sedition of the creature who called himself Officer?”

The Auditor’s lips twitched, slightly, and there was even amusement in the expression now.

“In which case, Private, you may have saved us a noose.”

She let go, but didn’t move yet.  D_N licked his swollen lips.  His brain felt fuzzy enough as it was without weird conversations.

“Yeah, okay,” he tried. “One of them, I guess.”

The Auditor straightened up, folding her hands behind her back.

“You show a remarkable ability to survive, D_N.  This is… of interest to me.  Although it does appear to have come short in this incidence.  Unless.” she stopped, looking down at him again, and for a second there was a flicker of something that he could best describe as hunger, somehow, across her pale face. “Perhaps I find myself the instrument of your continued fortune.  You can meet your appointment with the hangman – or you can work for me.  Have been working for me, if anyone were to enquire, for the last few months.  Unfortunate how these things end sometimes, but the job must be done.”

D_N blinked.  He met her gaze, blurred and a little wary.

“What, you run a prison too?”

“No.” The Auditor’s lips pursed in a moment of distaste as she shook her head. “And I have no care for trophies.  Put plainly: you will report to me.  You will follow my orders, to the letter.  You will answer to me above any other voice, under any circumstances, until your luck runs out.” She leaned down again, very suddenly, until her face was ash-breath close again, and the tiny point of firelight gleamed in her eyes.  “Your life is mine, to spend as I see fit.  But you will see tomorrow.”

D_N tried not to cough.  He hadn’t understood a lot of what she’d said, but some bits had been clear enough.  Wasn’t like anyone else was likely to be coming down here with anything better.  Still...

“I've had worse deals.  Not many,” he replied, thickly, as the memory of a pistol chamber locking into place with a metal click echoed across years, and sent a fresh shiver down the back of his neck.

“I seldom deal in niceties.” The Auditor shrugged, slightly, as she stepped back, but did not loose his gaze. “Live under my direction; or die at dawn.  Ultimately, Private, the choice is up to you.”

He snorted. It wasn't much of a choice –  but he appreciated it being made up front for once, instead of trying to bullshit him into doing the dirty work.  She was direct, he’d give her that.

"...sure.  Why not. Hell, it's not like I've got anything better to do."

The Auditor nodded, and there was that flash in her expression again, a weird satisfaction – and then she was gone, striding back into the darkness in a swirl of smoke.  D_N flopped back again, and was just starting to wonder if he was supposed to have done anything, there, when there was another bloom of soft footsteps, and harsh torchlight in his eyes.  He found himself being lifted upright – not exactly gently, but with more care than he’d been dumped here – and there was medical muttering around him, as a point of something cold jabbed into his neck, and the world flared briefly to brightness, before folding in around him.

Could definitely have been worse.

He passed out.

Exactly what tends to trigger each round of Purges eludes me, even now. There is tension, sometimes best only seen in the crystal-clarity of hindsight; a tangle of building suspicion that rises like silent fog until the simplest things, the most innocent actions, are thick with it, and the world begins to tighten. In a way, the first Denouncements are almost a release – a give in the pressure – and sometimes that is all they are. A few rounds of Corrections, a few links bent back against each other, but the momentum isn’t there, and the black hysteria dies back like damped flames.

But sometimes it’s just the start.

I have walked a little quicker between CYFAC and my rooms in these last few weeks, when I’ve even left at all, but it’s hard to miss the dawn-mark pyrelight, or the clustered crowds watching the show. Some faces are downturned, unwilling or unable to watch; some seem more bored than uncertain, turning back and forth distractedly; and some are fixated on the scenes before them, drinking in each twitch of failing muscle, each lick of measured flame, with eyes set bright in terror or satisfaction – or both. You can be sure there are other eyes watching them in turn, inspecting the crowd itself: who is there, who is not, and what secrets may they let slip under the Tree's balefire light.

Cesar frets, poor lad, that I still take this route. But I stand distinct in any crowd, at any time, and in many ways to hide my face would be more marked than to not. My shined eyes give nothing away, I am very sure of that, and I have long learned not to flinch at the sight of Mother’s purgative throes, even such violent ones as these. It has not reached us yet, not properly, although I have felt the tension rising even in the tunnels and chambers of the SFAC complex, and I’m far from foolish enough to think the flames of it will not spark there soon.

We will wait. There’s not much else to do.

But life continues, even in this, and today the peculiar path of my own history takes me to a very different part of the city. The contrast to CYFAC’s utilitarian structures is striking as I pass down the wide central avenues, overlooked by facades of buildings barely touched by old shellfire, or more carefully repaired where they have been hit. Besuited Citizens and risen Wards move around me, sartorially-aligned with such precision to be razor at the edges, flanked by their own guards or trailed by subdued figures more accessory than attendant. Collectors Pieces, polished to broken perfection like geodes, and I can’t prevent my hidden focus from drifting across them as I pass, as the old shards of peculiar discomfort twist their worn paths in my mind.

I walk alone here; singular and fore, with no other footsteps at my side or cowed in my wake. Cesar doesn’t approve, but I think he understands, even if we have never specifically spoken of it.

Some things are important, if only for myself.

Still, even here the sense of tightening unease is threaded through the air, sketched in the movements of those same figures, as they glance around perhaps more frequently than they might have done before. There are city guards at post along the roadways, their featureless faceplates reflecting all around them, while concealing all within. Some turn and watch me as I pass, but I do not hesitate, and soon my destination rises up out of the cityscape.

The Audit Office. A towering building, which is as much an exercise in foreboding geometry as it is an actual, practical structure. Ribs of sharpened concrete run down the iron-seamed walls, dwarfing most other architectural features, aside from the twin-set statues that stand aside of the doors. Mirrored in androgyny and expressionless, each bluntly-stylized figure holds at attention, one wrist pressed into the small of their back, the other hand held up in stone-bound salute across sealed lips. The heavy doors they guard are subtle only in comparison – the actual entrance is a good ten feet high at its apex, and inset across with the branching runework angles of Icarus.

There are even more faceless guards here too, watching as I ascend the shallow steps that lead into the building. Inside, the architecture changes very quickly from grandly-imposing to clerical, and I soon find myself met by a young woman, clad in a uniform so starched that I half wonder if it bends at all. She is thin, with dense black hair cut to excruciating precision at jaw-length, and she has that tinged palor I see so often in Wards – muted, stretched, like seedlings grown without light. Her eyes are brown and deep, and she holds a clipboard in front of her like a reason, as she greets me.

“Dr Vachan. You are expected. I will escort you.”

And so I follow into the spiral maze of corridors, passed periodically by other silent figures. They are clerks, mostly; soft-shoed, thin lipped carriers of the paperwork lifeblood of this place. Reports, records, requisitions; flattened forests of ink and accusation, driven through these angular veins by the endless, interrogating pulse of the dozen or so black-clad figures that are the hearts of it. A network, a web, wrought from the Chain itself – as, file by file, link by link, every bit of information set down or found out by Mother's ever-watchful eyes will make its way here.

Your Auditor Knows.

And this is how.

The clerks pay my escort little mind, and me even less. They either know enough not to wonder, or exactly why not to care, and each carefully-downturned gaze gives no suggestion as to which. I follow my guide's steps, staying the half-a-stride behind that decorum, if not actual rule, dictates. I have been here before, of course, and sometimes it feels that I have undue familiarity within these walls, but its customs are to be observed nonetheless. I know what tends to happen to those who put themselves too far forward, where Auditors are concerned, and the gallows have no care for etiquette. So I follow, a careful model of quiet compliance.

The corridors we walk are as uniform as their inhabitants, wide enough for two to walk quite comfortably aside, or for a third to be dragged easily between them. A dark wooden rail runs at shoulder height along the white walls, broken only by door frames, and the floors are polished – although never quite enough to erase the ghostly trails of old struggles, kicked and scuffed into the grain. Decoration does exist, but is very much of a theme, and I spare the stylised images of chain and flame only the barest attention as we pass.

The blind-end corridor we turn into at last is little different, except for the shallow alcove halfway down, set into the otherwise-blank walls in such a way that the eye slides right past, until you are almost on top of it. It is an architectural sleight-of-hand unusually subtle in this edifice of authoritative statement, and there is a narrow bench set back into the inset space. As we get closer I realise that it is occupied.

A man is slouched out along the seat, his head pillowed back against one folded elbow, and I don’t miss the slight wince that dances through my escort's composure at the sight of him. He is staring up at the roof through half-lidded eyes, chewing on a thin ring of metal, and the attached pin bounces arrhythmically against his lips. He doesn't look directly at us as we approach, but does flick the fingers on his free hand loosely towards his face, in the vaguest approximation of a salute.

“Afternoon, Dr V.”

This is D_N, and him at station here tells me more about the current climate even than the tension in the clerks’ movements, or the heightened security along the roads outside. My escort hurries past without an acknowledging glance, and I can almost hear her expression tightening in disapproval. I make sure she is looking firmly ahead before I wink – briefly – down at the recumbent figure.

He’s Interesting too, of course; not that you would ever think it to look at him. I'm not sure I've ever met a Ward so near-pathologically rumpled. He'd be boyish if it wasn't for the brow, and the blunted angles of feature that speak of a nose broken too many times to reset quite right. Those brown-glass eyes are deep, barely blinking, and there's a sullen mania about him; a hair-trigger on uneasy balance. He hunches, and when he moves it's in either a half-attendant slouch, or short-burst snaps of sudden agility that all but score trails in the air.

If he has middle gears, I doubt he's ever used them.

But there are four Exceptional Service medals set out along the breast of his crumpled coat – bright, carefully-maintained in raw contrast to the rest of him – and one of those is only ever intendedto be posthumous.

I pass him by and catch up with my escort, as she halts in front of the tall doors that punctuate this corridor. There is no rank number here, no Ministry badge, just a small cluster of thin black letters running across the woodwork.

A25. M. Stewart. Auditor.

My escort stops, gripping her clipboard tighter to her thin chest, and I pity her a little.

“Shall I knock?" I ask, carefully, but my escort shakes her head, her ruler-sharp hair swinging slightly more than she may have intended.

“I will escort you," she repeats in the same thin, firm voice, and reaches up to tap her knuckles against the wood. She stands silently, counting, then pushes at the door, which swings open on silent hinges to reveal the space within.

This is not the first time that I have entered this office, and I doubt it will be the last, but I am quietly impressed that my guide’s steps do not falter as she enters. The room opens out from the doorway like an angular throat – an impression only boosted by the deep red-brown of the wooden panelling that lines the walls. The floor too is red, a blood-dark tongue of thick carpet that pours into the main room, washing up against the black desk that sits like an altar in its centre. Tall windows are set into the other walls, shrouded, letting nothing but the faintest daylight bleed into this sanctum-space. It is lit only by low artificial lights, which cling like bloated fireflies to the tiers of shelving that reach from floor to ceiling behind the desk.

The shelves are full of jars. Thick, cut-glass jars, filled with a fine powder that glitters faintly in the sobre illumination. Each one has a label in the same neat writing, fixed prominently across the centre of the glass. Names. Numbers. The final verdict, in shorthand code. And finally, a duration.

Each one a warning. Each one a promise. Each one a covenant wrought in ashes.

My guide does not look up at them and stops just inside the threshold, her knuckles whitening. The figure sat behind the desk might be thought a monochrome afterthought to the room itself, except that something about the space seems to amplify the sight, focusing the black emphasis of it all down upon her like a lens.

“Auditor,” my guide begins, although the woman does not look up from her paperwork. “Your vis - ”

“Dr Vachan.” The voice is sudden, and although not quite toneless, there is a clip to it that belies the artificial nature of the sound. “As punctual as ever, I see.”

“Auditor.” I step around my escort, shooting her a small nod. She hovers for a moment, waiting, then salutes stiffly and vanishes back out into the corridor. The door swings shut again behind her, latching, and a moment or so later the lights in the room brighten considerably. Theatre is one thing – but unnecessary eye strain is quite another.

I laugh, quietly.

“I am in eternal admiration that you can manage to be sarcastic with only three actual vocal settings.” I move towards the desk – scattered with papers and files, arranged in bureaucratic strata no more comprehensible under the stronger lighting – and swing my diagnostic kit up to rest in a clear space at the edge. The catches pop, loud in the muted air, and the pale figure finally glances up. One narrow eyebrow arches.

“You should have more confidence in your work, Doctor. I generally find myself to be quite well understood.”

Her attention shifts back downwards as she makes another mark on the current paper; a short, sharp underline that has overtones of a slice, somehow. I don’t look at the document. It is very, very far away from my remit – and besides, it’s not as if I want to know.

There’s curiosity enough prickling at my thoughts as it is, and I’d prefer not to spend my goodwill on trivialities.

Busy silence settles back down as I unfold the trays and equipment from my kit, laying each one out along the table, accompanied by the occasional strike of pen on paper. I glance sideways as I prepare, trying to judge her mood today, but even after all this time, she can be frustratingly difficult to read when she wants to be. It’s not that her face is particularly inexpressive – I’ve seen the smile that can curl those thin lips, albeit not an especially joyous kind of expression, and the lifetime of fine lines that have sketched themselves into her skin speak of features that do indeed move. And I have certainly seen her angry.

But all things are a tool, and a face no less than any other. When she chooses to, her expression can be unsettlingly blank – not so much shut down as uninstalled, as if the twist and twine of emotions are an alien thing to that canvas of flesh.

To be honest, that’s almost more telling than a scowl would have been.

“Have you been experiencing any unusual discomfort or pain?” I set the final piece of equipment down and pause, carefully running through my usual mental checklist.

“I wonder if anything about this particular situation can be considered usual,” she replies, as she makes another note, and I have to bite back on a sigh.

“This is the face you’re speaking to, Morrigan. How likely is it that my definition of ‘unusual’ has lessened?”

She looks up again, sharply, at the use of her name – my Auditor, the Auditor in many ways; this grey-knife epitome who wears her vocation as a cloak, and conceals so much within that – and for a moment my breath tightens in my chest. Then the edges of her lips twitch, just a little, and she leans back.

“Point taken. Very well, Doctor; you may commence with your assessment.”

I pull my gloves on and move around the desk as she leans forward, presenting her scalp to my attention. There are no visible lines anymore between the healing areas and the unscathed, and I run assessing fingers along the fading sutures that I know so well, concealed beneath her white-grey hair. There is a slight raising, beneath the skin, where the artificial skull starts at the lambdoid line and melds – almost seamlessly, if I do say so myself – with the remaining bone. I trace it along, up and behind her ears where the scars are already fading, following the so-familiar line of replacement concealed beneath her brow.

I remember that bizarre moment many months before, as I had stood there – safely cocooned in the sterile steel heart of CYFAC Surgical – looking down into the opened-out skull of my strange patron. The gleaming golden web of the QM3 neural net sat in its sterile bath nearby, reflecting the sharp white lights like threaded gems. My team were poised, tension twisting through the assembled figures as a near-visible thing, tight and shaking and determined; because this was It. The point of no return. We had come so far in these procedures – under various names and iterations – and I had performed enough that the method was certainly familiar, if not yet quite routine.

But this was a special case, and I felt as if the world was held there – here – poised on the finest edge of possibility. As if it were my own life I held in my gloved hands then; my work, my legacy lain out, impossibly vulnerable on the mirror-bright steel surface. Each shallow, chemically-sedated breath was like a judgement, each monitored heartbeat a tick on some otherworld countdown, and just then it was as if no one else existed. Not my assistants, not the team, not even the walls and clustered corridors above.

Just her, and me, and the gilden-progeny of a lifetime’s work awaiting us both, as history fanned out its thousand chances like waiting, grasping wings. And I…

“Doctor.” The word is sudden and breaks the shell of memory that had settled down around me. I don’t flinch, but I do blink, focusing anew on the grey-haired head still held carefully between my hands.

“...apologies,” I mutter, letting go, and step back. Morrigan straightens up, rubbing idly along the paths my fingers have traced. Her expression is unreadable, again.

“Prognosis?”

“Healing of the bones and soft tissues is progressing appropriately. No external signs of post-surgical trauma or rejection.” I pull my own sheaf of paper from the kit folder, flicking through the pages until I find four blank ones, and place them down in front of her. This time a faint flicker of distaste does make it onto her features, as I tap the first sheet.

“Please replicate the calibration documents. Precisely.”

“I am surprised you do not tire of seeing these repeated.” Morrigan picks up her pen again and looks down at the page. “I certainly do.”

“Boredom doesn’t really come under my remit,” I reply, not looking up, and turn to my sheet of questions. I wait in the moment of recall, until the first scratches of penmanship start, and then begin.

“Please answer all questions, fully, to the best of your ability.” I do look up now, and note the slightly-distant look in those pale eyes as Morrigan’s hand sketches back and forth rapidly across the page in front of her. It is not quite writing, I have noticed – there is an odd uniformity of enscribing, all elements of the page given the same effort – but in a way that is reassuring.

It is a reproduction, not a revision. That is important.

“Who are you?”

“Auditor Morrigan Stewart. Alpha two-five; Citizen. As you are quite aware.” The reply is curt, but does not interfere with the sound of writing. I shrug, and continue.

“How do you feel, Auditor?”

“Somewhat akin to a photocopier.”

Sarcasm again. Three vocal setting or not, sarcasm was good. The first sheet of paper is pushed aside and I glance over at it. My own memory may not be eidetic, in nature or design, but I have become very familiar with the four documents that I chose for calibration of the QM3 net. Each is quite different. One a heavily-annotated prosthetic schematic; one a particularly rambling, half-censored copy of the minutes from last year’s internal CYFAC contingency planning meeting; one a detailed map and then-current harvest schedule for a large AGRI-FAC unit nearby; and the final a reproduction of the opening from a popular Approved opera, complete with hand-written notation and additional information from a composer long since dead.

Each one is replicated in various inks, perfectly, a dozen times in the stack of paper kept in the base of my bag. Each time, every element exactly as it was before – including the original mistakes, the outdated theories, incorrect predictions of last summer’s invertebrate pest load, insults to the third violinist’s parentage – poorly erased – and the blacked-out censor bars. All things that might so easily be changed, with the smallest update to their source, and I am relieved every time when they are not.

It is possible to create such a net that allows for edit as well as recall; that uses the brain itself as a processing component, drawing together links and connections between the most disparate of information. In truth it is more than possible – it is proven, prototyped and wildly successful – and I have promised the shadow-whispers of my own lingering guilt, my Facilitator, and several deadly-serious Review Boards that I will never install such a System again.

We continue like this for a while, until my list of questions runs low and she reaches the bottom of the final copy sheet, placing it neatly atop its fellows. It looks fine, and I will assess it in more detail later to be completely sure, but I try not to look too hard at the pages just yet. My questions are all answered, and the little deviations from pure fact, the occasional snide comments at the dull mundanity of the actual wording, are as they should be.

There is one last question at the bottom of the sheet, in a printed hand not my own. It is a requirement, a reminding shackle from an authority above even that sat before me. My eyes narrow as I stare down at those words, and remember so, so well why they are there.

“Are you a loyal and productive Daughter of the State?” I keep my voice neutral as I look up, and meet the opposite stare. I may claim that my shined gaze gives nothing away, I may claim that I have learned to keep my own features unreadable – but it has never worked on her. At those words, she fixes me with a Look, and her lip curls slightly as she places the pen down with a firm click.

“I have always endeavoured to hold Mother’s ideals in particular regard.”

“Yes or no. Auditor,” I add, my pencil hovering over the page. Morrigan sighs.

“Yes, then. And if the thrust of this inanity is ‘do I feel inclined to permanently submerge my consciousness into a significant piece of military hardware, and abscond with it’ – then no, Doctor. I can assure you, I do not.”

“I hate to think what you’d choose to take, in that situation.” I tick ‘yes’, accompanied by a strange flutter of some emotion not quite relief. “Hypothetically.”

A faint smile ghosts across her face, before she looks back down at the stacks of her own papers that still take up most of the desk surface.

“Your assessment is completed satisfactorily?”

I nod, as I begin to tidy the contents of my kit back into its neat case, dropping the gloves on top before I close the lid. She has already returned to her paperwork, pen cutting a sharpened path through the tight knots of printed word, and I hesitate. I have not yet been dismissed, and…

“If I may ask a question, Auditor?”

“You may.” She does not look up, and I draw my breath carefully. Curiosity will get me killed one day, I am quite sure of it. But there are worse things to die for.

“FAC-19. The vanished one.”

She doesn’t react to the name. Perhaps that is telling, too.

“An unfortunate incident,” I continue, pushing a little. “The wireless, broadcaster C_Y, says demolition, but I don’t –”

“These are difficult times, Doctor.” She still doesn’t look up, but her hand moves suddenly, plucking a folded piece of paper from its fellows, and slides it over next to my own. “As such, I suggest you consider your own interests firsts; and let me handle mine.”

I open the paper and look down, at a list of names. They are familiar, and my stomach tightens at the sight of one or two. I understand. The purge has not reached us yet, but it will – and it will start here. Watch out, or watch over, and sometimes the distinction is terribly thin.

“…thank you,” I say quietly, as I slip the paper into the thin, near-invisible angle between two of the trays – so easily overlooked, even in a close search – and my fingers do not tremble. “Your advice is as… prudent as ever.”

“I should hope so. You are dismissed.”

I nod and pick up my kit. It seems strangely heavy now, and my mind is already turning to the grim requirements of forethought as I head towards the door. As I reach for the handle, she speaks again.

“The good Captain will pay you a visit soon. I’m sure I can count on your usual hospitality.”

“Of course, Auditor.”

The lights dim, abruptly, a second before the door swings back open. I meet my waiting escort’s wide gaze as I step out – unscathed – and nod to her. We head back down the winding corridors, but I pay even less attention now to our returning progress. My mind is full of preparations, already-rehearsing the hushed conversations that I must have quickly, careful and sharp, if necessary; because this is a play I have learned well, and my own embers are beginning to smoulder once more.

I will not be betrayed. I will not be denounced again. I am Asha Vachan, and I am myself a pawn – but in a far greater game than this.

Your Auditor Knows.

And now, so do I.