Live Not on Evil

“Who goes there?”

An Enforcer barred the entrance to the hab-block, shock maul brandished in gauntleted fist like a talisman. A touch of territorialism there—we were infringing on their ground. They get the drug runners, the thieves and murderers, the crimes of passion and greed; we get everything worse.

Kill him, put a bolter round between his eyes. Trust me, it’s the only language Enforcers understand.

Hush, I told my inner voice, though the idea was tempting. I’d been one of Governor Varjutus’s Enforcers before I joined the Order, and Braccus Tye was one of my old squad mates, but I was in no mood for empathy—the power lift had quit ten floors above with a calf-quivering jolt and an ear-shattering blat, so Inquisitor Hallah, Interrogator Eve and I had to leg it all the way down.

“Interrogator Nayan, Ordo Hereticus,” I threw back my hood. “Stand aside.”

“No heresy here Nayan,” he grunted, not backing down. “Just one of the gangs raiding across the Gap.”

One bullet, just one teeny tiny bullet, that’s all you’d need.

An iron hand touched my shoulder from behind and I instinctively stood aside, head bowed, looking hard at my feet.

“You seem very sure,” Inquisitor Hallah said to Braccus. Hallah was a lean whipcord of a woman, like skin stretched over too many bones. I risked a quick glance up and saw that she gave a tight smile, a narrow slash across her angular face, and I prayed the Enforcer would take the hint.

Braccus shrugged in discomfort, suddenly unsure. “Well…”

“Very well-informed about gang activities, for an Enforcer. Curious.”

“It’s not that—”

“Then spare us your ignorance and. Stand. Aside.” Her voice cut like a monofilament wire.

Braccus gulped audibly through his helmet vox and clanked aside. Hallah beckoned peremptorily to the other Interrogator, Eve, and myself, and stalked into the dark corridor beyond.

Just tribalism, or something else? Rattle him a little. Make him sweat.

It seemed a petty thought, but all the same I gave Braccus a tiny, wordless shake of my head and followed after. As we brushed past, I noted the numbers over the door: Hab-block 111, Unit 689.

There was a narrow hallway, empty rooms to either side, walls painted in some kind of surgical green that had long ago cracked and flaked and now crunched underfoot. Dark shapes skittered in the corners and along the walls, ants and spiders, our fellow travelers from Holy Terra. Here and there lay discarded detritus from before the Gap’s collapse: posters warning against heresy and the four Chaos Gods, Nurgle, Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeentch; a dull-eyed Enforcer doll staring vacantly at nothing, a large black feather; a cracked mirror that had vomited reflecting razor shards of itself in a glittering arc.

Unit 689 was located right at the edge of the Gap, an almost vertical gash than ran the length of Margram Hive where the lower floors had partially collapsed during a hivequake and the upper ones had settled, crushing those beneath it and creating a canyon about 20 kilometers long, 10 meters wide and 500 meters deep. On the other side was Margram’s dark reflection, the abandoned quarter than was home to gangs, mutants, heretics, the homeless and hopeless, the disgruntled and the dispossessed.

At the end of the corridor we came to the crime scene. One wall of the room was missing, open to the Gap, the floor suddenly hacked off in a ragged fringe, from which skeletal fingers of loose wiring and plumbing seemed to reach longingly across the gulf. The room lurked in shadow, the sun still sulking beneath the horizon, the sky visible only as an indigo scar above the jagged mouth of the Gap.

In the center stood a handful of Enforcers and two black-clad Arbitrators, Ekko Istina and Maara Lazhan. The two presented opposite ends of the continuum of human physique—Istina was ebony dark, short, rotund and jocular, while Lazhan was nearly albino-pale, tall, etiolated, and severe. Istina looked up, nodded to Inquisitor Hallah and sketched and aquila. Lazhan scowled, turned her back towards us and crouched by the body.

The body. It was as though someone had detonated a grenade filled with red paint. A blood bomb. Dried and crusted, it clung to every wall, splattered the ceiling, and you could see the darker stains where it had pooled and run down the slope of the floor and waterfalled into the Gap. The body itself lay supine upon the floor, on its back. It too was red, shockingly, obscenely red, red from crown to toes, save the whites of its bared teeth and lidless eyes. Muscles and ligaments and veins stood out in clear detail, an anatomical drawing come to life, or rather, made into death.

The smell was overpowering—sweet and rancid, metallic and rotten. I heard Eve gag beside me, and I focused on taking breaths through my open mouth.

Weak. Pathetic.

“Skinned,” Istina commented as Hallah approached, Eve and I in tow.

Lazhan crouched by the head. Although my view was largely blocked by her back, I thought I saw her probing and reaching around the back of the neck.

Odd. Why look there?

“Skinned—every inch of skin expertly removed,” Lazhan grunted as she worked.

“‘Expertly?’” Hallah echoed, looking at Lazhan’s face and then back to Istina’s, one slim eyebrow cocked.

Istina sighed instead of answering, reached into an inner pocket of his long black coat, withdrew an obsidian black case and pulled out a fat lho-stub, wrapped in dark chocolate paper. When he lit it, the orange-red ember was the only spot of color about him. The acrid smell of the smoke, like burnt recaf, helped smother the worst of the rot.

“You got here awful fast. We haven’t even filed a report yet.” Istina waved the stub at the circle of Enforcers. “Which one of them do you have your claws in?”

“And likewise, you do not seem surprised to see me. I wonder who the squeaky cog in the machinery of the Inquisition is? One of my Interrogators, perhaps?” Hallah’s steel gaze swept over Eve and myself, and I did my best to look innocent. Hallah’s eyes narrowed, but she turned back to Istina again without comment.

“Someone has to keep an eye on you,” Istina shrugged. “The Inquisition is not above the law.”

“Who watches the watchers, eh Istina? Why, we watch each other. Always.”

With his teeth clenched about the stub, Istina gave a grunting half-laugh, and went to stand by the body, opposite Lazhan. They flanked it like a raven guard of two. Quite literal blood angels.

“It’s just a murder, Hallah—” Istina began.

“—albeit a theatrical one—” Lazhan continued, quickly, as though rehearsed.

“—indeed, a touch over-dramatic—”

“—but still just a murder—”

“—so this one is ours,” Istina finished.

Oh bravo. You should clap, Nayan. Those two put on a fine little performance for their captive crowd of Inquisitors.

It was territorialism, again. Arbitrators and Inquisitors alike wanted to claim the juicy cases, the shocking ones, the over-dramatic ones, the better to attract attention to their mighty efforts in the service of the Governor, their Adepta and the Imperium. Such cases were what fueled careers. An occult murder was good news, a real chance to shine and Hallah wouldn’t let this one go so easily.

“The manner of death suggests some ritual or occult purpose,” Hallah said, arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Suggests some lunacy,” Istina retorted.

“Some artistry,” added Lazhan softly.

Artistry.

I blinked, unsure I’d heard her correctly. Has she said that, or had I imagined it?

“If a motive has not been established, then there is no harm in my team aiding your investigation.” Hallah managed to look smug without moving a single muscle in her face.

Istina gave a half-laugh, half-snort and waved at the corpse. “Be my guest.”

“Suit yourself.” Lazhan stood and took a quick step away, like a carrion bird retreating from a kill when wolves arrive.

Hallah nodded to Eve and myself. I took a deep, steadying breath, and immediately wished I hadn’t. That smell, that awful smell, drilled itself into my sinuses. I took a hesitant step forward, Eve already striding ahead of me.

Move it, Nayan. Won’t do to look less eager than your fellow acolyte.

Something hard scraped under my boot. I lifted my foot. Something metallic there, half-buried in the exfoliated paint chips, dust and grime. I bent down, picked it up. It was square, no bigger than the end of my thumb, attached to a short dark chain, a necklace or pendant. One half was onyx, the other ivory, and on the ivory side the profile of a man looked out into darkness—but no, reverse it, upside down I saw a face of purest midnight, looking into a world of blinding light. I found I could see either the man of light or the one of dark, but never both at the same time. It was fascinating, intricate. Beautiful.

“What’s that, Nayan?” Hallah’s voice cracked from behind me.

Don’t let her see.

My fist closed about the pendant, almost on its own. “Nothing, Inquisitor, a bit of old junk,” I said, and mimed throwing the pendant away, into the Gap. Hoping that in the dark, nobody would see it remain in my hand, as I slipped it into my pocket.

I was saved by Eve, who suddenly doubled at the waist, skin slightly green under her pallor, and clapped a hand over her mouth. She lunged, for the edge of the room and was noisily sick over the edge, into the Gap. Istina chuckled, Lazhan’s lip curled.

I approached the body now, breathing through my mouth, pendant still in my pocket. I could feel it there, like a gram of radioactive fuel, like pins and needles prickling my skin even through the clothing. I ignored it, focused on the corpse.

It was male, about my age judging from the musculature, about my height, no apparent wounds other that the lack of skin. The victim would have been alive when it happened.

Skinned alive.

Lazhan had disturbed the head in her pawing, and thick clotted blood oozed between the teeth and down the fleshy cheeks. I wondered if some hair was left—but when I moved to probe the scalp, the neck suddenly rolled sideways towards me and I yanked back my hand. The eyes stared accusingly back at me, into me, through me, as blind as the discarded doll.

Skinned alive. Skinned alive. Skinned alive.

Eve came tottering back from the brink, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. It gave me an excuse to look up and away. Eve bobbed her head in wordless apology.

She got over that quick. Maybe she’d faked the whole thing just to avoid examining the body. A sly trick. Better watch her.

“Nayan?” Hallah demanded.

I reported my observations: “All digits, limbs and features are baseline human-normal.”

Skinned alive.

“Not a mutant. In overall good physical condition, suggesting he was a resident of the hive, not the Gap.”

Hallah nodded in acknowledgement.

“Look Inquisitor, we’ll send a few snatch squads across the Gap, bag some of the locals, pull a few fingernails, break a few kneecaps, see if anyone squeals,” Istina offered.

“There has been an uptick in raids recently,” nodded Lazhan.

“Something or someone has them riled up over there.”

“A new gang leader.”

“Called the King with Two Faces.” Istina nodded towards the corpse. “Maybe he has three, now.”

“This is doubtless some display of strength, intended to cow would-be challengers,” Lazhan concluded. “We’ll let you know if we find anything interesting.”

“I know you will,” Hallah said to Lazhan, but she was looking at me. “We will, of course, assist with any interrogations. My assistants could use the practice.”

Skinned alive.

Hallah stayed behind to talk with the Arbitrators while Eve and I went in search of a working lift to ride back up to the Ordo Hereticus complex. The corridors were narrow down here and the walls wept with condensation as the air settled, the conical hive structure functioning as a kind of massive evaporator cooler. We splashed through the scummy, dank puddles and garbage and worse, squeezed past a shambling cortege of corpse-white servitors, shepherded by a quartet of floating servo-skulls.

The lift was a steel sarcophagus, a black cylinder that could barely fit four, lit by feeble yellow lumen fitted into the ceiling behind an anti-theft cage. The lift groaned and clanked and shuddered its way back up the Hive. A row of illuminated red numerals above the door kept track of our progress.

“Sorry,” said Eve, looking straight ahead at the doors just beyond her nose.

“For what?”

“I’d never seen a body like that.”

A likely story. She’d hoped you would slip up, look bad in front of Hallah. Or worse, she’s one of them. She knows who skinned that man.

Too cynical, I told myself. Too suspicious.

Too naïve, too trusting. Great golden throne, you’re in the Inquisition, Nayan. Cynical and suspicious keeps you alive. She knows, mark my words. She knows.

“Forget it,” I said.

I’d seen plenty of death in my time as an Enforcer. The enemies of the Imperium were numerous and deadly, but not especially devious. Berserk, shape-shifting Chaos creatures of Tzeentch, talon-studded Tyranid genestealers, self-immolating suicidal rebels, heretics eager for martyrdom—our enemies were about as subtle as a bolter round to the brain. A dead body or two was just how these people announced their presence.

“Buy me a drink to make up for it?”

“Absolutely not,” she replied. “You’re a terrible drunk—it’s like you’re a different person.”

The lift gave an especially violent judder, there was a dull thud, and then it jerked to a halt. I flailed, put a hand out against the metal wall to stop myself from falling. The lumen flickered, failed, plunging the car into total darkness.

“Not again,” I groaned. “Just isn’t our day, is it Eve?”

Thick, turgid silence answered me. I dug into my pocket, curled my fingers protectively around the pendant. It felt warm to the touch. “Eve?”

Now is your chance, Nayan. It’s either her or you. No shame in it, that’s just how the game is played. Now is your chance. Nobody will see if she has an ‘accident’.

Keeping my hand clutched about the pendant, I swept the other out in a wide arc. “Eve?” No resistance. My knuckles banged sharply against the metal wall on the opposite side of the lift and I winced. “Eve?”

She knows. She knows, Nayan. She knows you have it.

“Eve?”

If you don’t strike, she will. Maybe she sabotaged the lift. Maybe there’s a dagger at your back, even now.

“Eve, I know you’re in here, just let me know if you’re hurt.” The pendant was really warm now, almost painful to the touch.

“Eve? Eve! EVE!” I was frantic now, bellowing, flailing about the compartment, meeting nothing. I might have been standing in the middle of an infinite plain, surrounded by nothing and nothing and nothing.

Your pistol, Nayan. Draw your pistol. Shoot. It’s your only chance. Your pistol.

The lumen stuttered back on. Dusty sepia filled the compartment. I blinked hard against the sudden light and when I could see, Eve stood against the back wall of the lift, face expressionless and watching me with hooded serpent eyes.

I blew out a long breath and tried to loosen the coils of anxiety about my chest.

A lucky escape. I probably saved you, you know. Might not be so lucky next time.

The lift chugged into motion, stopped and the doors screeched open.

“You are so high-strung sometimes,” Eve muttered, and stepped out of the lift.

She strode towards the Ordo Hereticus complex, boots cracking like gunshots against the floor. She machine-gun-marched past the door guards, paused under the doorway auspex scanner, palm against the door lock, waited for it to pulse green and the heavy armaplas doors to grind open. The guards turned from watching her to me, still standing in the doorway of the lift, which was now buzzing angrily at me and trying to close the doors.

The guards recognized me, of course, but that meant nothing. Guilty until proven guilty, at which point you wind up dead, that is the philosophy of the Inquisition. Everyone was a suspect, nobody could be trusted, especially not if they hung suspiciously around in lift doorways. Satisfied that Eve was well and truly inside, I ran a hand through my hair and followed in her fading wake. I waved to the guards. They didn’t wave back.

I stood under the auspex and pressed my hand against the lock. It honked. Glowed red.

I lifted my hand, pressed it against the panel again. Red. Honk, honk, honk.

The guards were both eyeing me now, weapons shifting in their hands.

“What a day,” I laughed, short and false. “Had two lifts quit on me, now this. Guess the Machine Spirit must be mad at me, huh?”

The guards were stone.

I whispered a silent prayer and pressed my hand to the door lock again. There was a pause. A long pause. Two metallic clicks of stub-guns being readied.

Ching. The panel glowed green.

“See?”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, regretfully, the two pistols were lowered. I hurriedly squeezed through the still-opening door before it could change its mind and slam shut again.

The Ordo Hereticus complex filled one corner of one of the higher levels of the Hive, consisting of a cluster of offices, interrogation-slash-torture chambers, examination and dissection rooms, storage areas and execution pits. As an Interrogator I had just a small cube for an office, with a tiny porthole window of hardened transparisteel, a desk, a storage cabinet, a balky cogitator, a framed monochromatic pict of black birds becoming white fish becoming black birds again. I shut the door, thought about Eve outside there somewhere, pushed the cabinet against it.

I spent the day going through missing person reports, looking for anyone who might fit the description, but gave up when the list of possibles reached a hundred. So many vanished into the bowels of the Hive, lost to accident or malice, fleeing or pursued by enemies both real and imagined, so very many disappeared, so very many that might fit our vague profile.

Eye-witness accounts were of no more help. People cultivated a kind of professional blindness that far down the Hive, that close to the Gap. An anonymous tip to the Enforcers had led to the discovery of the body. Squatters and scavengers had all gone to ground at the first sign of trouble, other citizens claimed not to have seen anything or anyone at all.

Maybe somebody had been seen entering Unit 689, maybe not.

Maybe two people, one of them a woman, maybe three, the third one large and muscular, a mutant, vaguely amphibian. It was hard to say for sure.

A mutant? On this side of the Gap?

Useless.

I found myself looking at the pendant instead, turning it over and over in my hands, admiring the delicate craftsmanship of its detailed face, the ingenuity of combining the two faces into one. The clasp still worked. I tried it on. It fit comfortably, and when I tucked it beneath my clothes, cool against my skin. Odd, it had felt warm before.

Eve was looking for it. That’s why she faked feeling sick.

Had she been faking it?

Don’t be stupid. It’s the only explanation.

That would mean she had known of its existence before it turned up under my foot. There were a number of possible reasons for that, a few that were understandable, and a far longer list of ones that were much less innocent. She might have knowledge of this new two-faced underhive leader she simply hadn’t shared with me yet—or.

Or. Or she might be in league with the killers. An accomplice. A traitor within the Order.

Hallah buzzed on the vox. “Progress report.”

I opened my mouth to voice my suspicions about Eve, then shut it.

Eve has probably already run squealing to Hallah, spewing conspiracy theories and accusations about you. You know how it works: Denounce before you are denounced. Making accusations now, without hard evidence, would only make you look even more guilty.

“Well?” Hallah snapped. I’d taken too long.

“Very little progress, Inquisitor,” I admitted. Best to be truthful. My office was probably monitored in any event, Hallah surely knew what I’d been doing before she even called. “We might be looking for a mutant, described as frog-like.”

“Disappointing.”

“We have only just begun, Inquisitor.” I tried not to sound defensive. And failed, miserably. “We have little evidence to go on.”

“Perhaps.” There was no change in her tone. “Or perhaps you are not sufficiently motivated.”

“I assure you, Inquisitor, I am pursuing all avenues.” The back of my neck began to tickle with sweat. “Reports are sketchy and unreliable.”

“This is the truth the Inquisition encounters daily. Everyone wears two faces, it is up to us to undercover which one is true.” Even over the scratchy vox, Hallah’s disdain was clear. “A frog-like mutant, you say? There cannot be many of those. Let us hope you have better progress tomorrow with any songbirds provided by the snatch squads.”

She cut off the vox without waiting for my reply.

That was my cue to leave, I figured. It was dark out again. I’d missed the sun both going and coming. I used my hip to shove aside the cabinet, open the door a crack, expecting Eve to leap out in ambush.

Nothing.

I needed a drink.

I wound up at a bar on the lower levels, an Enforcer hangout, called the Teetotal Eclipse. The eclipse was the personal mark of Governor Varjutus, a ring of white fire about a dark circle, now turned into the rim of a drinking glass on the glowing sign above the door. It was pupil-dilatingly dark inside, filled with blue lho-smoke so thick you could swim through it, erratically illuminated by searing pulses of multicolored light that left dancing spots on my retinas. The music was mechanicus metal, droning vocals set to wailing electronic feedback and thunderingly loud, crunchy machine sounds.

“Look who came crawling back,” a voice and then an arm emerged from the mist like the tentacle of a kraken and curled about my shoulder. A moment of ferocious squinting revealed that the arm belonged to Braccus Tye. “What’s the matter, looking for people to torture?”

“Yes, but judging from the music you’re already well ahead of me.”

“Insulting our music is heresy,” Braccus sniffed, pressed a sweaty bottle into my hand and steered me towards one of the back booths.

“Making jokes about heresy is heresy.”

“Your face is heresy.”

“Insulting members of the Inquisition is also heresy.”

Braccus drew back a little, eyed me sidelong to see if I was joking. I kept my face as serious as I could for as long as I could, before I sniggered and cracked a smile. Braccus just nodded, slowly and the hand around my shoulder tightened.

“You’re not here to make trouble, are you Nayan?”

“Furthest thing from my mind.”

“Don’t make this personal. I was just following instructions from Istina and Lazhan. My squad is sound, witch-hunter. Rockcrete solid. One hundred percent armaplas, every one of them. Not a one of them I wouldn’t trust with my life.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“No? Doubt is kind of your job though, isn’t it? Kind of what you do. Even if folks are loyal, you’d have to invent heresy just to stay in business, wouldn’t you?” The arm tightened, his fingers beginning to dig into my shoulder like iron claws. “There’s no heresy here, you got me Nayan? You leave my team alone.”

He is awfully insistent on that point. Might be worth checking up on what Braccus has been up to since you joined the Order.

“Absolutely. Our suspect is a mutant, an abhuman.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. Besides, you’ve got other things to worry about,” said Braccus.

“Such as?”

“Hah, you’ll find out.” Braccus grinned woozily, and made a show of buttoning his lips closed. Then immediately blurted: “Lazhan said to keep an eye on you.”

“On me?” I couldn’t hide the outrage from my voice. Eve was clearly unbalanced and her behavior in the power lift made it clear she was hiding something, and yet the Arbitrator suspected me—Me!—of heresy.

“Should’ve stayed with us,” Braccus caught my tone, and shook his head with sad regret. “Enforcers not good enough for you, eh?”

“Come on, Braccus, the Inquisition asked for me. Not like you can say ‘No’ to an offer like that. You know how it is.”

“No,” his reply was tinged with envy. “I’ve no idea.”

There were nine in the booth including Braccus; five Enforcers and four working boys and girls, worn mean-looking things. Enforcer bars were magnets for the milder brands of illegality like prostitution—nobody would be arresting anybody on their evening off. One of the girls had some kind of full-body tattoo, every inch of visible skin covered in black geometric patterns within patterns within patterns, almost like a second skin. She winked when she noticed me noticing her. Even her eyelids were tattooed.

“This is Nayan,” Braccus introduced me. “Come down to bless us from his lofty perch among the Inquisition.”

“Well, he can bugger off back,” growled one of the Enforcers, probably upset at the growing male-female imbalance in the group.

“You gonna let him talk to you like that?” Braccus elbowed me.

I groaned internally. I wanted a drink, not a fight. Coming here had been a mistake. Already the music was starting to give me a headache, and it was too hot and stifling. The pendant felt warm against my chest. “What’s it to me? I’ve never even met the guy.”

“Nayan, this is Gagao, Gagao, Nayan. There, now you know each other well enough to break a few bones.”

“Hey,” the one named Gagao complained to Braccus. “What’re you encouraging him for? You’re in my squad.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Braccus shrugged, letting fall from his shoulders such insignificant nothings as friendship and loyalty. “But I’m getting bored. Entertain me!”

Is this just Braccus’s way of getting back at you for leaving the Enforcers to join the Inquisition, or is he trying to get you hurt, even killed? Remember what I said about ‘accidents’. What better way to hinder our investigation?

It looked like Gagao was about to let the matter drop when the tattooed girl said to him, “I wouldn’t fight him, if I were you. He looks like he could take you, easily.”

Then there was a punch headed my way at high velocity, and I didn’t remember much after that.

Something woke me. A hivequake, maybe. Found myself lying in the bed of my shoebox housing unit, listening to the ventilator’s asthmatic wheeze. The sky outside was liminal grey, an unfocused in-between time, neither dawn nor dusk. My head was ringing, my mouth sour, and my knuckles bruised and bloodied. A lump in the blanket beside me turned out, after lifting the corner in cautious inspection, to belong to the tattooed woman from the Teetotal Eclipse.

Aya, I think she said her name was. Yes, probably Aya.

I heard footsteps in the hall outside go past, stop and return before the door buzzed. An insistent, saw-toothed chitter, chitter.

I shook Aya awake, and in answer to her quizzical look pressed a finger to my lips, then pointed at the bathroom door. She nodded, wrapped the sheet around her and disappeared inside, her every movement a vertigo-inducing shimmer of shapes within shapes. I shook my head to clear my eyes, and dressed only in a pair of shorts, padded across on bare feet and thumbed the exterior cam. The tiny wall screen showed an unfamiliar figure, androgynous, dressed in underhive street clothes. A pendant hung at their neck, black and white dots within a swirl of black and white.

“Yeah?” My voice, echoey in the vox: Yeah—yeah—yeah.

“Is this Nayan—Nayan—Nayan?” the voice asked me and asked me and asked me.

Well, they knew my name. I gave a mental shrug, racked the bolt back, let the door open a crack. Black. Great black pupils directly in front of mine. My own distorted reflection there. Their face was jammed against the gap.

My head snapped back, I bit down on a yelp. “That’s a little close.”

“Sorry.” They didn’t look it. “Let me in.”

“What is it? Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s time you let me in.”

“Do I know you?”

They frowned. “It’s me, Nayan. Enough screwing around, hurry up and let me in.”

I let go the door, retreated in bafflement to the corner kitchen. Thinking about the service pistol I usually kept in the drawer. Leaned against the stained, steel counter, one hand casually above the handle.

The stranger crossed the threshold, clicked the door closed with their heel, stood in the exact center of the room, under the single overhead lumen. Sharp shadows divided their face into black and white vitiligo, like two people fused together. Their eyes flicked, took in the mess, the unmade bed, but otherwise they stood spider-still. “Nice place.”

“Compared to what?” I snorted.

“Oh, there are plenty of worse places, Nayan,” they smiled, revealing a line of white tombstone teeth. “Plenty, plenty worse. You’ll see.”

I knew how this game was played. Out positions should have been reversed—I should be the one standing in their home, making them feel trapped, guilty, exposed. No answer was expected, so I gave none. The ventilator’s rhythmic death rattle filled the silence.

“How did you know I live here?” I finally asked.

“Oh, we always know where our members are. Always.”

“Members?”

Their head snapped around towards me, cocked at a raptor angle. Eyes dilated, intense. The sudden movement made me jump. My hand fumbled blindly in the drawer. Pistol, the pistol, where was the pistol?

“Members,” they repeated. “We are very protective of our members. That’s why we keep such a close watch. There are many who might try to harm us. The Inquisition, for example.”

The pistol. “I bet.”

“We’d take it hard if one of us was working with them. Very hard indeed.”

The pistol—

I risked looking down. The drawer was empty. The pistol was gone.

“Looking for this?” asked a voice from the bathroom.

Aya came out, letting the sheet fall negligently to her feet, clad only in her rippling, interlocking lines of ink. In her hands she held my service pistol, black pupil of the muzzle held steady at eye level. She went to stand beside the stranger, who placed a proprietary hand about Aya’s hip.

“Well?” asked the stranger, but not to me.

“He’s confused, forgotten who he is.”

The stranger made a tut-tutting sound, and shook their head slowly.

“If anything happens to me—” I began.

“Hush,” said the stranger. “If anything happens to you, sweet darling Nayan, nobody will discover until it is far, far too late.” They traced a long finger along the lines of Aya’s tattoo, across a shoulder, down an arm, the back of a hand, coming to a slow and gentle stop on the index finger about the pistol’s trigger. “Is anything going to happen to him, darling?”

“He still has the mark,” Aya said. “And he’s given us another. An Enforcer, no less. Perhaps he just needs something to jog his memory.”

The stranger pursed their lips, appeared to think it over. “Well? Do you?”

I did not ask: My memory of what? Whatever they thought I had or hadn’t done, they were wrong, and my life depended on them not discovering their error. The Inquisition never asks a question it does not already know the answer to, and neither did these two. Under interrogation, the moral universe was inverted—those who offered you pain were the only ones who spoke the truth. Kindness was a weapon, mercy a knife at your throat.

“What do you think?” I hedged.

“Ah, ah, ah, he’s playing a dangerous game, isn’t he my pet?” The stranger gave a hissing laugh through their teeth. “Luckily for you we like games, don’t we?” Aya nodded, grinning. “Let’s play one. It’s called ‘hide and go seek.’ Let’s see how good you are at it.”

“At hiding or seeking?”

The pair of them laughed together in unison. “That’s what you have to figure out.”

I watched helpless as Aya scooped up her clothes and then the two of them slowly backed away, keeping the gun trained on me. Aya opened the door, slipped outside, the stranger held it a moment and blew me a kiss before letting the door slam shut again.

I thought about reporting it.

Report you’ve been contacted by heretics? Oh no, that would raise uncomfortable questions. Why you? Why would heretics feel you were approachable? Surely, you’ve said or done something to draw their interest. No. Damned if you say anything, damned if you stay silent.

Made sense to me. So I stayed silent.

Hallah was waiting for me at the entrance to the complex in the morning. A tiny tap of her toe betrayed her impatience. There was no sign of Eve, and I didn’t ask. In the Inquisition, it wasn’t healthy to ask about people who weren’t around. I felt like a child with a face smeared in the chocolate they’d been forbidden from eating. Surely Hallah could feel the guilt radiating from me, as sure as I felt the heat from the black and white necklace.

“There was another,” Hallah said without preamble or greeting.

“Another what?”

“Another victim, skinned alive. An Enforcer, this time.”

I didn’t really have anything to say to that, only a clammy premonition, a creeping sense of dread. “How about that,” I squeaked.

“We have an ID for the victim this time. A man named Gagao.”

Of course. I closed my eyes. Of course.

“Istina and Lazhan are investigating. There are witnesses, apparently.”

“Good.” It was good, wasn’t it? They’d find the murderer, catch them, bring them to justice. “That’s good.”

Hallah held out a data-slate. I took it, numbly. It showed a picture of a vaguely froglike man, a mutant, built like a squat Astartes, outsized musculature ready to burst out of his skin. “In the meantime, our investigation of the first case continues. The Adeptus Arbites snatch squads have brought back a number of suspects from across the Gap,” Hallah said. “This one fits the witness’s description. You will handle the interrogation.”

Hallah led the way to room number 9.

The prisoner was even more massively muscled in person, his shirt stretched thinly over his mottled green skin. His hands were clenched into boulder fists and black-on-black amphibian eyes watched me, unblinking, as I entered the room and sat in the chair opposite. He was manacled to the table, the chains run through a ring set in its center. All four walls were mirrored, each facing pair creating infinite nested reflections. The mutant watched me and his reflections watched me and watched me.

Inquisitor Hallah folded her arms and leaned against the wall by the door. A heavy autopistol hung at her hip, for use on either of us. The Inquisition guards against threats both within and without.

I wiped sweat from my forehead with my palm, acutely aware of the Inquisitor’s hard stare on my back, the mutant’s stony silence to my front. I swallowed hard, wished for water. I placed the data-slate on the table, tapped it to call up the mutant’s details.

“You work in construction?” I began.

“As a builder, not the architect.” He put odd emphasis on the last word.

“Family?”

“Of sorts. You know how it is.”

“No, I have no idea. Why don’t you tell me?”

“But I think you do.”

“You might think about being more cooperative.” I crossed my arms and shook my head in mock regret. “What are we to do with you, Mister … Baab?”

“Get me out of here,” he growled, gravel-voiced, and rattled his manacled wrists. The metal bands looked like delicately thin bracelets. On the walls around us a thousand mirrored men raised their own wrists.

“I understand, Mister Baab,” I smiled thinly. “Maybe we can help each other. What do you know about the King with Two Faces?”

Baab leaned forward, the black holes of his eyes wide like a starless sky. “No more than you, Nayan.”

The sound of my name in his lips was a cold icicle shock. How, how was that possible, how could he know.

“It’s me, Yarrow Baab. You promised you’d keep us safe from the Inquisition!” His muscles flexed, his chains gave a tortured groan. “You promised us, you promised.”

I suppressed the urge to shrink back, and instead sat very still.

The wrong word, the wrong move and you are dead.

Behind my shoulder, I heard Hallah shift, no doubt reaching for her autopistol. “Nayan, what’s he talking about?”

Of course, until today I had never met this man, never seen his face or even heard his name.

A gamble to implicate you and so win his freedom.

“Accusing Inquisitors of membership in cults is heresy,” I said icily. “If you were not damned already, you are doubly damned now.”

“Apostate!” Baab howled and with a sudden heave his chains snapped like a gunshot. He vaulted across the table.

I was half out of my chair when his shoulder hit me. Hit me like a rockcrete block, lifted me off my feet, sent me airborne, slamming into the glass wall behind, the mirror detonating into diamond hail. Boab roaring like an ork. Gunshots, deafening in the small room. Pop, pop, pop. I don’t know who Hallah was aiming at, me or Baab, maybe both. A wet crack, the gunfire stopped.

I was on my knees, pushed myself up. Baab standing over me, red crater wounds where Hallah had shot him, swaying on his feet. One hand matted with blood and gore. Beyond, Hallah sliding slowly down the wall, leaving long streaks on the glass behind her, head oddly misshapen. Eyes starting accusingly at me. She tried to lift the pistol in her hand, it wobbled, dipped, and then her knees finally gave out and she folded into a heap.

“Apoth-tate,” Baab bubbled, and when he spoke blood dribbled down his chin. “Traithur.”

“I’m dead,” I whispered, staring at Hallah’s crumpled form. “You’ve killed me. I’m dead. Dead.”

Alarms are ringing. Guards on their way. If they don’t shoot you down immediately, there will be questions. Endless questions. Infinite questions. Questions you can’t answer—how did the mutant know your name, why did he claim you offered him protection, why did you allow him to kill the Inquisitor, would you like to make a full confession, do you want a blindfold?

Innocent or not, it made no difference. Dead.

You’ll have to kill them all.

The door to the interrogation chamber crashed open, and a pair of smooth black round cylinders rolled through the open doorway. Bellowed orders echoed from the corridor outside, the metal-on-metal sound of weapons being readied. I recognized Eve’s voice.

Baab lunged forward, scooped up the two grenades, one in each oversized fist, and plunged back into the corridor. He was instantly met with a wall of stubber fire, his form disappearing in overlapping micro-explosions, crack, crack, crack and then the detonation of the two grenades in his hands, colossal, thumping booms like roundhouse kicks to the stomach. The corridor disappeared in a haze of smoke, spewing a shotgun blast of splinter fragments into the room. There was nothing I could do but curl into a ball, arms over my head, and pray. My arms and hands stung from the angry insect stings of shrapnel. My ears rang like temple bells.

Then sudden, dread quiet.

I uncurled, rose and staggered out into the corridor.

Eve and a quartet of acolytes were waiting outside. Eve’s face was soot-stained and the clothing at her shoulder, right arm and right leg was shredded, revealing vivid red lines carved by flying shrapnel. The hand holding her autopistol was fine, though. The four other men shouldered their weapons, all aimed at me.

Do it.

“I knew it,” Eve spat. “Kill the heretic!”

Kill them.

“No—” I threw up a desperate, useless hand, “—wait!”

NOW.

The corridor seemed to bulge, warp, shudder and distort, like the skin of a beaten drum. The metal at my neck blazed into searing heat, scorching my skin. The air pulsed, seemed to close in around me, crushing in, smaller and smaller and smaller and then bursting, detonating, roaring out in every direction in a blast wave of blue and pink particles.

Eve and the acolytes were flung away like discarded toys, pulped against the corridor walls and ceiling and blown into bone-flecked clouds of crimson.

I stared at the back of my hand. Then at the palm. Fingers. I stared at the messy, wet lumps sliding down the walls. I stared at the corridor walls and ceiling—the metal had buckled and blown outwards, like a boiler after a pressure explosion. In places the metal glowed orange, now pinging as it cooled to red.

How could I—how was it possible—what had I done? I wasn’t a psyker. I wasn’t.

Get away. You have to get away.

The Inquisition might just have tortured and killed me before. They wouldn’t let me off so easily anymore.

Run. Escape.

Feet slipping in the ooze of the corridor, reeling like a drunk, out, out, I had to get out. I flung my hand before me and the doors parted at my gesture. Two men there, guns raised to shoot. Another pulse of pressure. Lights before my eyes, blue and pink. The two men were gone. Man-shaped holes in the walls to either side of me, rimmed in red.

Escape. This way. Let me show you.

I burrowed down into the Hive, down, down, further down, like a blind worm, seeking the sanctuary of the dark. I kept to abandoned stairwells, disused corridors. Derelicts and drunks watched me pass, cold guarded gazes that would mark and remember and spill all they knew for a thimble of rotgut. I was a prize, a beast to be hunted, a trophy to be mounted on somebody’s wall. Our Hive’s bones were suspicion, muscled with distrust and self-interest, under a skin of fear and hate. It was a beast, a pack, and I was no longer part of it.

The surroundings began to seem familiar. I recognized the slick corridors, the garlanding of garbage, the stale scent that hung in the air. I realized where I was heading, where my footsteps were taking me, unasked. Towards the Gap. Towards Hab-block 111.

A probing trio of lights appeared in the corridor. Thudding, echoing footsteps, vox-filtered indistinct voices from up ahead, coming my way.

You know what you have to do.

No. No, no. I’d been an Enforcer, once. Not that. Hide instead. I pressed myself against the tunnel wall, held as still as possible. The heavy tread grew closer, closer. The guttural chatter was louder too, clearer, distinct. “Septima squad … block 107 secure … acknowledged … tagged and bagged … does not meet the description of the individual … continue sweep …”

Three armored figures stepped past my hiding place.

Get ready.

Let them pass, please let them pass. Don’t make me do this.

The white circle of the eclipse visible on the obsidian plate of their breastplates and shoulder guards, Enforcer bolters held at ready, sweeping back and forth across the hallway. Tactical lights snapped under the barrels stabbed at the darkness, clawed along the wall, nearly brushed against me, slid past.

Yoo-hoo. Over here, boys. Over here.

The three Enforcers seemed to walk like men underwater, painfully, achingly slowly.

That’s it. Closer. Closer.

The leader raised a fist. They stopped. Turned. Searing light flared in my face, blinding me.

“Nayan?”

I recognized the voice and sagged in relief.

“Braccus, sweet golden throne,” I started, then realized I had no idea how to explain, well, anything. “They’re after me.”

“They?”

“The Inquisition. They think … throne knows what they think.” I shook my head. “But they’re wrong, it wasn’t like that.”

“It wasn’t?” There was a long pause. I realized Braccus and his two squadmates had not moved the whole time we had been talking. “How was it, then?”

“It wasn’t anything, Braccus. Some mutant makes wild accusations—”

“What kind of accusations?”

“Braccus, it’s me, Nayan. You know?” The last time I’d heard ‘it’s me’ spoken like that, I’d been on the other side of the door, at home, and the world had not yet lost its mind. That was just it, though. The stranger had sounded crazy to me then. I must sound crazy to Braccus now.

“No.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t know. I have no idea who you really are. All I know is you and Gagao stepped out, and the next morning he turns up minus his skin.”

“You can’t think, there’s no way that—”

“I saw it. I saw the body. I saw what you did.”

“Me?”

“Peeled him like a fruit, still alive, screaming every second of it. Is that what they taught you in the Inquisition? You sick, deranged animal.”

“Will you listen to me, Braccus?” I begged him. “I. Didn’t. Do. It. How could you even think—"

“You’re the Interrogator, Nayan. The Inquisition. They must’ve trained you to do all kinds of things.”

Do it, you idiot. No. Do it now, before it’s too late. No, I won’t. I can’t.

Suit yourself.

We were interrupted by a new light flaring in the tunnel. A tactical light, bobbing as it approached. You couldn’t see who held it, but the outline of the shape was Enforcer armor.

“Halt,” said one of Braccus’s men. “Identify.”

The light slowed and stopped. The tactical light clicked off, and the figure reached up, removed its helmet and tucked it under one arm. “Hey guys, what’d I miss?”

It was Gagao.

“No,” Braccus breathed. “They told me—I saw. You’re dead, Gagao. Nayan murdered you. I saw the body. How?”

“Did you see me? Or just a lump of meat they told you was me?”

Braccus’s helmet shifted from side to side. “I don’t understand.”

Gagao grinned and winked. “Let me explain,” he said, and fired.

The Enforcer bolter in his hands boomed, Braccus’s head disappeared and an eggshell fragment of helmet whizzed just past my head before embedding itself edge-first into the corridor wall. The firing stopped and there were three bodies lying on the ground.

“Who—” I began. “What?”

Gagao raised a hand and touched his cheek, and pulled and pulled and pulled. Features stretched, distorted and then the whole face slid away, lifted away in his fist. A new face revealed underneath. Faint lines etched across the skin appeared, grew darker and gained definition. A network of lines and arcs and circles, patterns within patterns within patterns. Strange. Familiar.

“Found you! I knew you hadn’t betrayed us!” the tattooed face of Aya chirped happily. “An Inquisitor, half a dozen acolytes and now three Enforcers! The King will be so pleased!”

Her eyes nearly glowed with delight.

To be caught in that gaze was to be an insect in a spiderweb. Every thought was crushed under the weight of inescapable dread. Every movement had only entangled me further in their web, every decision had ended in disaster. I had tried to fight and look what had happened. I had tried to run and they had still found me. All that was left was resignation and despair.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Aya chided, slipping her helmet back on. The voice became Gagao’s: “Come on now, no stumbling at the finish line. You’re almost there!”

I was propelled along the corridor by a gauntleted hand to the back, like a little push of encouragement towards the open window for a suicide, here you go, this way is easier, no point in fighting back, gathering speed, hurtling towards my inescapable end. I was a passenger in my own body, walking on autopilot to my own execution.

Here was Hab-block 111, now unguarded, the building mouth yawning wide and hungrily open. Here was Unit 689. The body was gone, the blood had been hosed away. Only a faint ring of rust-red was left on the ground, like a crude outline. Loose wiring and pipes rattled in the gale channeled down the Gap.

“I brought him,” the thing claiming to be Gagao told the empty room.

A flicker. The smell of burnt recaf. A tiny red dot burned in the shadows.

“Ah, there he is,” said the voice of Arbitrator Ekko Istina. “Returning to the scene of the crime, eh? What did I tell you, Lazhan?”

Istina oozed from the shadows, a black cloud following a burning red star. His face was set in grim satisfaction. I could have screamed or shouted, I could have warned him. I could have told him about the thing inside Gagao’s body. He wouldn’t have believed me. Even if he had—it would have merely postponed what was coming.

Lazhan said nothing, she just seemed to materialize soundlessly from the opposite corner of the room. Her face was turned towards Istina, away from me, a pale profile etched against the background shadow. Familiarity nudged me with half-formed memory. I’d seen this image before. The necklace was warm again, tingling, and I could picture it, the alabaster face set in onyx, and knew.

“I don’t know how you did it, or how you killed Hallah and the others, but that’s okay,” Istina was saying, evenly, slowly, every word a promise. “We’re good at finding out answers, almost as good as the Inquisition. We’ll have a nice, long talk, just you and us. No rush. We’re going to take our time with this. Aren’t we Lazhan?”

Lazhan smiled at me, and that smile was familiar, too. I’d seen it recently, in my own housing unit. “Hello again, Nayan.” A voice I’d heard before, too. The stranger at my door in the middle of the night. “I think you’re better at seeking that hiding, really.”

The other piece of the puzzle, eh Nayan? Here’s your other midnight visitor, the one pulling the strings.

Istina was looking at Lazhan oddly. And gently easing his gun out of its holster. He tossed his lho-stub away with the flick of a finger. Tiny half-life embers scattered and died. “Should’ve known,” he said. “You too, Lazhan?”

Aya-as-Gagao shot first. High, wide. Punched craters of dust in the wall behind the Arbitrator. Istina was a swirl of shadow, rolling, rising, firing. Gagao’s head snapped back then lolled forward and the Enforcer’s body crumpled. Istina swung, teeth bared, bringing his gun to bear on Lazhan.

Light flared at my chest. My arm jerked up and a lash of blinding light slammed into Istina, lifting him off his feet and blowing him out the open wall of the room, into the Gap. He hung for a smoking, agonized instant and then plunged out of view. It seemed to take forever to hear the body hit bottom.

What had I done?

What we had to.

But, but, an Arbitrator.

You would have killed him, if Hallah had ordered it. This is no different.

A polite, almost diffident clapping filled the room. Lazhan smiled and bowed to me, a grateful audience before the virtuoso. Appreciation for my last act in this performance. I sank to my knees, head bowed, and awaited the end.

White fingers appeared before my eyes.

“I think you have my pendant,” said Lazhan. “I’ll take it back, if you please.”

I could not move as she reached behind my neck, undid the clasp and lifted the double-faced pendant away. It was as though a great weight had been lifted.

“The King with Two Faces?” I said.

“That’s me.” A flourish and a bow.

I struggled to form a coherent thought. There was only: “Why?”

A derisive laugh told me that I’d asked the wrong question. “The Architect’s buildings exist for their own sake, the point of the Weaver’s patterns are the patterns—there is no ‘Why’, Nayan. We change in order to go on changing.”

The Architect, the Weaver, those named I’d heard before: the titles of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of Change. The Enforcers and Istina had been right, the murder had not been heresy. Not mere heresy. Worse—the work of chaos.

Give this man a medal, he finally figured it out.

I heard footsteps, Lazhan walking, receding, heading towards the Gap. When I lifted my head Lazhan stood at the precipice, toes hanging over the edge. Lazhan paused and looked at me, expectantly.

“Who was it?” I asked. “Who died here?”

I did. I died here. You killed me.

“Haven’t you guessed yet?” Lazhan waited, but I made no answer. With a sigh, Lazhan explained: “Why, the man who was killed and skinned in this room was Interrogator Nayan of the Ordo Hereticus, of course.”

You. You killed me and took my face.

But how—if the voice, the voice urging violence and suspicion and death, if that was Nayan, then who—

Not so different, you and I. Black and white, two faces of the same pendant.

“My poor little servant,” Lazhan’s smile was mischievous. “Something went awry in the process and you forgot what you are. I could probably fix that, but it’s more amusing to leave you as you are.”

Lazhan’s back rippled. Their black overcoat tore, and out sprouted great black-pinioned wings. With a single beat she was carried across the Gap, landing as daintily on the other side as a high-born lady alighting from her carriage. With one last look and mocking wave, Lazhan was devoured by the shadows.

—I mean what, how could, who—

“Wait,” I cried after her. “Who am I?”

There was no answer.