The Beast Arises

Cautiously, Urquidex re-extended his eyes. He could still smell ozone, a sore-throat tightness down the back of his mouth.

‘Proceed, magos.’

The voice was female, piped into the chamber like gas through the walls.

A clunk sounded from the far end of the cubicle, followed by a whoosh of evacuating air. Urquidex winced as it flowed over his sunburned flesh and the door ground open. His ears popped under the change in pressure.

A biologis laboratorium, then: the design adhered to schemata laid down by arch-magi from an era before the Dark Age of Technology, and to Urquidex was more familiar than his own surgically modified face. A slender needle of curiosity pricked his skin of fear. Such a place was an unlikely venue for an interrogation, or even an execution.

He walked through the door to be met by another skitarius. This one was female, that much of her original body plan evident even through her heavy robes and obtrusive techno-refinements, and was covering the door with an arc pistol. Her left hand had been retrofitted with a combat glove with an integrated transonic razor. Urquidex absorbed those prosaic details at a glance, for her most unique feature was too stunning to devote time and attention elsewhere. Head to toe, the skitarius had been physically remodelled in dazzling silver. Other agencies of the Imperium exploited that precious metal for its anti-psychic properties, but the Adeptus Biologis archives retained many fragmentary references to its ancient bactericidal application.

She watched him sceptically, and Urquidex, fearfully, said nothing.

‘Stand down to readiness level, Zeta-One Prime,’ came the deep, breathy voice of Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken, each word enunciated with a puff of mechanical diaphragms.

Eldon stiffened and froze.

The artisan trajectorae emerged from the incense pall that cloaked a bank of shuddering ruminators. His spindly shoulders were slumped under the weight of a servo-harness and multitools, and his forehead had been broadened and deepened with the installation of a thick plasteel plate. He emitted a hiss of pistoned air and dismissed his sterile and glittering adjutant with the flex of a mechadendrite.

‘You have no questions, magos? Do you forget the Eleventh Universal Law?’

Urquidex answered by rote. ‘The universe is uncertain until it is observed.’

‘Your locum trajectorae expressed concerns regarding your state of mind. It was her conclusion that you were distracted, that the Grand Experiment was in some way insufficiently fulfilling.’

Urquidex opened his mouth, but there was no subjective rebuttal to the locum trajectorae’s objective conclusions. He remained silent, mouth dry. Van Auken knew. The thought ran round and round his higher functions like a scrapcode algorithm on a recursive loop.

‘You are frustrated by the lack of progress,’ Van Auken continued for him. ‘I understand. It is not your proper specialism. You have been unable to devote your full energies to this grand task.’

‘Yes, artisan,’ he said carefully. ‘But my lapse of purpose is inexcusable.’

‘Indeed so, but the Fabricator General has another task more meritous of your talents, magos.’

The artisan trajectorae turned and for the first time, Urquidex took a proper look at the glorious scale of the laboratorium.

Instruments filled the floor, spaced apart from one another, as machines of their type were known to be jealous of their status within the schemata, and could be cantankerous when the proper attention was not afforded them. Adepts of the first level chanted soothing psalms, scattering the straining machines with crystals from their aspersoria, carbon dioxide produced and sanctified in the manufactories of Marcotis Temple. Even so, electrical smoke seeped from the instruments’ backs and pooled on the metal tiles. Wheezing scrubbers did their best to filter the pollutants from the air.

Servitors clumped from instrument to instrument carrying plastek plates indented with tiny wells containing organic serum. Attendant techno-magi received the sample dishes, commended them to the all-seeing attentions of the Omnissiah, and fed them into the machines under their care. And through the semi-transparent plastek view-plates that overlooked the sterilisation chamber, the exact repetitive routine was enacted over and over, identically laid out levels stacked one atop the next high into the smog layer.

‘Samples are brought to this laboratorium from across the Imperium,’ said Van Auken. ‘You can understand the demand for secrecy. And for biological integrity.’

Urquidex nodded.