#sovietpunk

Her mental voice was in very deep contrast to the reverberating, metallic tone of her vocabulator. It was a voice that, under other circumstances, would have turned this man's legs to jelly. It was a voice that, by sheer virtue of its pitch and timbre, promised to give one the time of their life and then some, making the hearer promptly forget any and all potential concerns about this voice belonging, in fact, to a six foot tall cybernetic undead. However, what this voice now actually said only achieved the effect of burning shame and pants-wetting terror on the supervisor.

"Listen here, you pompous, insolent halfwit. I am an Occultist. I am tuned into the emotions and thoughts of those around me at all times. The amount of raw terror billowing through this installation and unceasingly echoing off the walls is making my skin crawl. I know that something horrendous has transpired, and I know that the personnel have been stumbling over themselves to muster any sort of effective response to it, let alone an appropriate one. And you, my friend, have, for some reason, been more terrified of delivering news of this disaster that transpired under your command, than of what the event may have unleashed. I would like to suggest that you relay to me, in your own words, what has been happening, before I wring it out of your monocellular brain myself like one squeezes the juice out of a fresh, ripe orange."

Through her monologue, the supervisor gradually pursed his lips, his eyes going wide as saucers as he stared at her, transfixed. He was growing aware that the faint, fixed smile of Istharnax's mask and the light of the pair of green photoreceptors drilling right into the core of his guilty soul would most definitely haunt his nightmares. Provided he lives long enough to have any, his treacherous brain added. The Arisen had not moved at all while she spoke, but now she crossed her arms and started drumming her fingers – fingers with such sharp and painful-looking claws, the supervisor noticed – on her elbow joint, the metal on metal going clickity-click-click.

The supervisor leaned back, unable to endure Istharnax's gaze any further and shifting his own to the surface of his desk. One of his hands grabbed onto the other in his lap to stop their shaking, as he slowly began to speak. "I... as you have likely been briefed, our task here is to... explore the possibilities presented by a new avenue of magitechnology... exponential mana splicing. We have determined that it has great potential for energy generation, as well as for weaponisation – it makes for a spectacularly powerful operating principle for weapons of mass destruction, in particular. That is... that was the research team's consensus for months. We have been running experiments in order to measure its exact capabilities, to refine the related technologies... it had all gone wonderfully smoothly, as you surely also know from previous reports that I had been sending very diligently." At this, he lifted his eyes again for a moment to meet the inspector's gaze, clearly hoping to see whether she considered this a mitigating circumstance. If she did, she wasn't showing it, silent and motionless again with her arms still crossed. The man sighed and continued.

"Everything was fine until nine days ago. The experiment we ran that day... suddenly reached critical mass. The system was shut down immediately, we did all we could, but... there was no stopping, and no way to prepare for, what would happen. There was a massive implosion, immediately obliterating everything within the experimental chamber. An anomaly was created. Before we could study it or assess the situation, it started slowly expanding. It consumes everything it touches, and within a few minutes, before we could realise the fact that it expands, it extended to the wall of the observation room for the chamber. The researchers present were sucked into the anomaly."

He paused, taking a deep, shuddering breath. To his surprise and utter bewilderment, an impulse entered his mind, which could only have been sent, judging by process of elimination, by Istharnax. It featured no words – instead, it felt like suddenly standing in a patch of warm spring sunlight, reassuring him and calming him down. He gave the inspector an astonished look, but the woman still did not move or say anything. Eventually, he spoke again, pushing the words out with great effort.

"Those it swallowed did not die, or disappear... we saw them again soon, once the growing anomaly had eaten through the walls into a corridor. They did not die, but... they came out broken. Wrong. In the worst sense you can imagine. Actually, imagine the worst thing you can. Got it? Okay, now put that on a factor of 10."

He leaned forward slightly with an expression of wild horror, digging his nails into the edge of his desk. "This... thing, is a hole in reality. A bottomless hole, where even the most essential rules of our world break down. Imagine the effects of that on people. Most matter gets destroyed by this anomaly, but not living things, for some reason. It's not a pretty sight." He was talking fast now, as if to get all of this out of his system as quickly as possible. "And you know what's even worse? These.. things that these people have become... Once they get a hold of a normal living being, can spread this condition to it. They do it purposely. Our only saving grace is that they don't seem to possess much strength or other ability to affect normal space, so they can only roam as far as we let them... until the anomaly eats its way through our walls and defenses, that is."

He went silent, and his face looked so gray that Istharnax prepared to jump out of the way in case he throws up all over the desk. She observed him silently, and eventually spoke again, with her vocabulator, in a quiet, almost kindly tone. "Why did you not send a messenger as soon as possible?"

"I... I don't... I wasn't thinking straight, none of us were. And I was terrified, okay? That this would be blamed on me, all on me... I... I realise saying this will likely get me into even worse trouble, but at this point, what does it matter? So, you know what? It would not be the first time! Not the first time that the City Council has to place blame, so it makes an example of the most readily available hapless sod involved!" He cut off, breathing heavily, and somehow his face managed to turn even more gray from horror at what he had just said, and to whom. Both guards standing across from him gave him looks one would give to a soldier who's just been shot through the lung.

But the inspector, for the first time, stopped looking at him. Her head tilted downwards slightly as her gaze wandered to the desk, and she stayed motionless and silent for at least half a minute. Then she let out a long sigh, a very strange sound coming from someone who does not actually breathe and speaks via vocabulator.

"I... see." Her eyes met the supervisor's again, and, astonishingly, he felt that the faint but ever-present menace was now gone from them. "Guards. Take him into custody, but do not send him back to Nezebgrad until I say so... or until it's your last opportunity to do so." She stood up, unfolding her long metallic limbs in a way that reminded the supervisor of a strange, bipedal, metallic harvestman. "Do not worry," she addressed him again, "I will make sure you are treated fairly. And I don't mean the usual 'fair trial' bullshit." The swearword was so out of left field and so strange to hear from the mouth of this terrifying, looming undead beanpole that the supervisor almost laughed. "You will receive punishment for the grave error of sending no message, but I will not let the Council put the blame on you for all of this. You could not have known this would happen. I have yet to find out if any surviving specialist staff members could have known, but I doubt it."