Bleeding Out (Warhammer High)

The following article is a /tg/ related story or fanfic. Should you continue, expect to find tl;dr and an occasional amount of awesome.

This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.

This is the second of writefag Someone else.'s major forays into the Warhammer High universe. Specifically, this project was created because he was asked to make something a bit darker than his usual happy endings. Given that the story opens with someone being shot, he probably succeeded.

Part One

Shots Fired

Freya Russ rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Dad. Enough. Are you ready to go?”

“Almost, almost,” her father grumbled. Leman tugged the little cloth band around his wrist irritably. “Does this matter that badly? I’m kind of hard to miss.”

“Believe me, I know. Now come on!” the perky redhead instructed, pushing her father towards the door of the mansion. “We’re going to be late!”

The man rolled his sleeves up to the shoulder, preparing to go to work.

“Jake, you feel like grabbing some air?” Venus asked, stretching. Her boyfriend looked up from their homework.

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“Eh, how about the gardens downtown? Great day for it,” Venus suggested, gesturing at the beautiful pseudoweather out the window.

“All right, let me grab my keys,” the pale young man said, standing up.

The man opened the latches on his military spec case, rummaging around for his tools.

“I’m glad you could make it out, Morticia,” Kelly said, downing the rest of her drink, letting the warm spring breeze blow past her on the little café patio.

“A bit cold, though, isn’t it?” her chronically-ill cousin responded, hugging her shoulders against the breeze.

“Not really,” Kelly said, raising her voice a little over the traffic. “You’re just always cold.”

The man slid the receiver of the weapon together, gently clicking the device into place.

Roberta huffed into her vox. “No, I don’t need a ride, thanks. My legs still work.”

“Just checking, young madam,” her father’s chauffer said placatingly. “Will you be home for dinner?”

“Sure, I won’t be long,” Roberta said, walking down the bustling surface street. Remilia was already waiting at the corner for her cousin to catch up.

The man looked over the stub rifle he was building. It looked good. Useful. Ready.

“That, of course, assumes that the Navy can hold Corlsic against the greenskin filth on their own,” Warmaster Horus said. “I assume they can, too, of course, but there is a force of Salamanders within dispatch range.”

“Unnecessary,” the Emperor responded, looking over the Navy dispatch. “I suspect that battle will be over before our intervention is needed. Speaking of battles,” he said, smiling faintly, “how’s Isis doing with that college hunt?”

“She’s dragging her heels,” Horus grumbled.

The man slipped a few rounds into the magazine, then looked out the window at the poster of the Emperor shaking hands with Eldrad Ultran, across the street. The man’s jaw tightened, then relaxed. He’d make it right today.

“No, she’s smarter than that,” Lyra said, leaning back at her table. WD slid down her shoulder to the table, sitting on the edge and swinging his legs over it.

Isis shrugged. “If you say so. I never thought she was a particularly good listener.” The two girls made way as the waiter arrived with their meals, throwing a disapproving look at the tiny xeno on the table as he did.

The man chambered a round in the rifle, ejected the mag, and refilled it, sliding it back into place. He glanced over the cardboard box as he did so: the label read .402, HPFT FT1. The man nodded. That would work.

Angela laughed. “Really. Well, I’m not much of a holovision person, but if it’s that funny,” she said with a shrug. Miranda nodded, counting the points off on her fingers.

“One, they don’t stop for commercials every fifty seconds, two, it doesn’t have any of that insipid pause-for-laughter crap that throws off every other comedy out there, and three, it’s actually funny, that’s more than most other shows out there,” she added wryly.

The man clicked the bipod down, carefully locking it in place. He stretched out on the towel he had padded up underneath him.

Farah slowly spun her keyring over her fingers, waiting for the call. At long last, her vox buzzed, and she snatched it up. “Hey, is it ready?” she asked eagerly.

“Sure is,” Hana reported. “Come pick it up.”

“Awesome,” Farah said, heading out the door already. “Be right there.”

The man snugged his rifle against his shoulder, sighting down the highlighted scope.

“Nah, too far,” Furia said, flicking a butt into the trash.

Simon rolled his eyes. “Fine, somewhere closer. Reidel’s? It’s quieter, at least.”

“Works for me,” Furia said uncaringly, shrugging her tattered leather jacket on.

The man slowly squeezed the first of the two double-set triggers. *Click.*

Victoria paused in front of the store window, adjusting her hair in the reflection. The Twins shared a weary expression. “Vicky. It’s still there. We can go.”

“Not yet,” Victoria said absently. “Hang on.”

“Fuck it,” Cora grumbled, walking past her cousins. “Catch up when she’s done.”

The man slid his finger down the curve of the second trigger, pulling gingerly. Such a light break…there. *Click.*

“There you are,” Faith scolded, tapping her foot as Petra caught up with her at the door to the seminary. “I thought you got lost.”

“That does not happen,” Petra said evenly. She cocked her head, frowning. “Did you hear something?”

*BOOM*

Kelly blinked as something ran into her eyes. She wiped her hand over her face, and it came away red. “What? Where did that come from?” she asked aloud, then looked up as another dot of blood appeared on the white tablecloth in front of her…

As Morticia, daughter of Death Guard Lord Primarch Mortarion, slumped back in her seat, blood pouring from a hole in her chest.

The man nodded once. A clean torso hit. At that range, quite a feat. He racked the bolt, chambering the next round, then decided not to fire it, setting the rifle down gently and waiting for the end.

“MORTICIA!” Kelly screamed, lunging across the table. Half-remembered emergency protocols kicked in, as she ducked under the metal mesh surface, her eyes racing across the screaming crowd. Half a dozen Treasury agents sprinted through the panicked group, one lashing out with elbows and pistol butts, forcing passers-by to the ground.

“Down, down, everybody down, now!” he screamed, sweeping the crowd with his bolt pistol. The other five dropped into defensive positions around the hysterical Kelly and Morticia, who had slumped out of her chair to the ground.

“Dispatch, Code Red Seven, shots fired, package critical, need a lift lift lift!” another one reported crisply. With a flash of light, both girls vanished, disappearing air with a crackling of displaced air. All six Treasury agents leaped to, sweeping nearby windows and doors for any sign of a gunman.

The man quietly settled back against the bare concrete walls of the room, crossed his arms over his chest, and rested.

“SHOT?! My daughter’s been SHOT?!” Mortarion roared into the vox. The eyes of every single one of the Navy officers in the tiny conference room shot open, as the breathmasked Primarch rose to his feet in horror. “When?! Is she…no? WELL BLOODY FIND THEM! I’m on my way!” he yelled into the speaker, running out of the room as fast as he could, leaving the Naval officers stunned in his wake.

A Treasury officer in the gold and black ‘beehive’ uniform of a security agent stepped up to the Emperor’s shoulder, as Horus and Lorgar Aurelian paused their heated discussion of the Ork encroachment on Imperial shipping. “My Liege, Field Sergeant Carver reports that Lady Morticia has been shot by an unknown sniper, only seconds ago, in the township outside Hive Tetra,” the officer whispered urgently.

“Lock it down,” the Emperor said grimly, standing immediately. “Send in the Seekers.”

“Aye,” the man said softly, pressing a few buttons on his wrist implant.

In a garage under the Hive Tetra airlock, a flock of hovering sensor servitors leapt from their racks, swooping out into the sunlight, spreading over the wooded, artificial township. The streets below jammed up in an instant as Treasury officers and plainclothes Arbites fanned out over the community, encircling the entire area in a ring of police.

“Of all the days to NOT wear my teleporter to work,” Mortarion snarled, angrily clenching his fists in the back of his aircar. The driver had the pedal floored, and an escort of Treasury agents in their airtrucks were clearing traffic ahead. They weren’t going fast enough, though. They weren’t going fast enough.

Freya pulled up in her aircar to the curb, bounding out and slamming the door. Her father stepped out behind her, grimacing at the milling crowds outside the school. “Why are the crowds here so huge for such a small student body?” he asked in genuine confusion. “It baffles me. It’s a season game.”

“Compliment my driving,” Freya instructed, tossing him her keys.

“You didn’t get us killed,” Leman noted after a seconds’ thought. Freya had just enough time to glare at him before a tidal wave of black and gold uniforms swept over them both.

“Wha-?” Lord Russ started.

“Back in the car, sir, NOW,” the nearest Treasury agent said quickly, guiding Freya into the car’s passenger seat.

“What the hell’s going on?” Russ demanded, planting his hand on the roof of the car.

“Morticia’s been shot,” the guard said brusquely.

“…Understood,” Russ said, climbing back in and letting the Treasury agent start the car back up.

Jake glanced out the side window of his air car and groaned. “Shit, it’s the cops. Was I speeding?”

“Not police or Praetors,” Venus said after a second’s appraisal. “Treasury?”

“What did I do this time?” Jake grumbled, sliding over to the side of the airlane.

“Not you, I don’t think,” Venus said softly, staring at the car. The aircar stopped over an emergency service strip and the Treasury car slid to a halt in front of it. Several beehives jumped out and ran up to the windows, pulling the doors open as Jake hurriedly unlocked them.

“Lady Venus, come with us at once. Code Red has been declared,” the first beehive said, pulling Venus bodily out of the car.

“All right,” Venus said. Jake stood up to follow her, but another beehive pushed him back in to the car, cracking his head on the doorframe.

“Venus, what’s going on?”

“Sergeant, let him come with us,” Venus said, trying to shake the beehive’s arm off of hers.

“No,” the beehive said flatly, grabbing Venus by the collarbone and pushing her down into the Treasury car. The car lifted, the other beehives jumping into the closing doors, and took off, lights and sirens blaring. Jakes stared at the receding car, cradling his swelling head.

“What…the hell?” he muttered, climbing back in. He took off for his apartment, hoping the news holos would provide some answers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program to bring you a news break,” the pile of clothes behind the news desk said, reading the date stream across her retina. The cameras broadcast her message across the Sol system. “As of fifteen minutes ago, Lady Morticia, of the Imperial Royal family,” as if there were any others, “has been shot. The Arbites have cordoned off the area, and the Lady has been transported to a hospital, where she is undergoing emergency surgery. We will keep you updated as news arrives.”

Mortarion stared at the thick glass separating the operating room from the viewing room, his knuckles white. The glass obscured all details; all he could see was a cluster of humanoid shapes around an operating table covered in blue gauze and sheeting. Kelly and her father, Lord Curze, were sitting in the chairs behind him, Kelly still reeling, and Curze seething, shooting acid glares at the beehives guarding the door.

A doctor tapped on the glass, making Mortarion jerk his head back. The robed surgeon jerked a thumb to the side, and Mortarion nodded, opening the door next to the window. Before he could come in, however, the surgeon rounded the corner, poking the Primarch in the chest with an angry finger.

“Lord, you’re not helping.”

“It’s my bloody daughter,” Mortarion snarled.

“And she’s got more problems than a bullet in the lung, Lord,” the surgeon said coldly. “If you REALLY want to be of help, go get about five doses of that medicine in her inhaler and the prescription card. Quickly.”

“Her medicine?” Mortarion blinked his dead, gray eyes. “It’s not-”

“QUICKLY, Lord, we may have to go to intravenous and do so with little forewarning,” the surgeon said, closing the door before Mortarion could protest. The Death Guard watched the door in quiet rage for a long second, before his shoulders slumped. He wearily dug a vox out of his pocket and tapped his butler’s speed-dial, muttering instructions into the microphone.

“…Dad?” Kelly asked quietly, squeezing her hands together.

“Kelly?” Konrad asked, his attention drawn back to his daughter.

“She’s alive, right?” the black-haired girl asked, her voice tight and confused.

“She is, Kelly, don’t worry,” Curze said, lowering his voice.

“It was a sniper,” she managed, her eyes tracing the hairline cracks between the floor tiles, finding security in the pattern. “I didn’t even hear the shot, he must have been…”

“Baby, it’s OK, you don’t have to talk,” Curze said, glancing at the clock, and cursing every single traffic light between his wife’s car and the hospital.

“A sniper?” Remilia asked, paling. The beehive driving the truck with her and Roberta crammed in the back nodded.

“Aye, ma’am, don’t know more than that.”

“Is she going to make it?” Remilia asked in shock.

“Don’t know more than that,” the driver said again.

“Where are we going?” Roberta asked, eyeing the row of beehives along the passenger bench of the truck.

“The Palace bunker,” the driver said, swinging the wheel to round a blockade, lights ablaze and sirens squealing.

“I understand,” Andrew said wistfully, listening to Hana explain the circumstances of her abrupt departure. “Well…I’ll talk to you later, huh?”

“Sure thing, Andy,” Hana said. “You take care, OK? This could go on for a while,” she added, glaring at the mass of beehives and Arbites guarding the tiny bunker.

The surgeon returned, sliding his gloves off and dropping them in the trash inside the door, closing it behind him with a sigh. Mortarion was on his feet in an instant, walking over to the window and staring through it at the tableau of surgery beyond. “Well?” he demanded.

“Lord Mortarion, your daughter will probably not agree with me, but…she is the luckiest girl I have ever seen,” the doctor said tiredly, tugging off his mask. He grimaced as the sterile air washed over him, loosening his scrubs’ collar. “It was a stubber shot, flatpoint. The round impacted on the top of her seat back, and fragmented. Only a small piece actually hit her. The rest lodged in the chair,” the doctor said, straightening up. “The frag passed clean by her sternum, and somehow did so without pulping her heart.”

Mortarion sagged against the wall, hanging his head in relief. The doctor continued. “It will be a good long time before she can speak, though, sir, it clipped her lung on the way through.” The Death Guard Primarch nodded, holding out the little metal tin of medicine from their house. The doctor took them silently, slipping them into his pocket. He waited a moment longer. “Sir? Any questions?”

“No, no,” Mortarion said slowly, staring through the thick glass at his daughter’s table, clenching his fist in helpless emotion. “…thank you, Doctor.”

“Certainly,” the surgeon said, bowing back into the operating room at the dismissal.

Curze stood, stepping back from his daughter as his wife arrived at full speed, slamming into Kelly. The leather-and-gauze-clad teenager snapped out of her trance to look briefly astonished before she vanished into her mothers’ panicked embrace.

“KELLY! Oh god, honey, are you hurt?!” she gasped out, a cadre of Treasury agents filing in behind her.

“…Not really,” Kelly said, shuddering. Her mother pulled back a few inches and stared at her anxiously.

“Honey, what happened?”

“I think she needs to rest up a bit before she’s ready to tell us,” Konrad said gently. Kelly nodded, once.

“I…need a little time,” she said flatly.

Jake sat on the couch in his apartment, staring at the holoscreen in his living room, more or less the same way half the human population of the planet was, at that moment. His parents sat on either side of him, watching in silence as news anchors and reporters repeated the same few static lines the Treasury had stated. “As of now, the shooter has not been apprehended,” the reported said for the tenth time, showing a looping holo of a Treasury vehicle parking at the scene of the shooting and a team of forensic officers examining the site.

“What the hell…” Jake muttered. “How have they not caught the guy?”

“They probably have, and just don’t want to air it,” his father said. “How else could they know how many there were?” The vox rang. Jake leaned forward and grabbed it out of the cradle, muting the screen.

“Hello?” he asked breathlessly.

“Jake, hey, it’s Freya,” the voice on the other end said. “Venus just arrived here, and she wanted me to call you and say she’s OK. She left her cell in your car.”

“Oh, yeah,” the young man realized, thinking back to the chaotic extraction. “I have it. Uh, how are you doing? And where are you?”

“We’re fine, we’re at the Palace,” Freya said, putting her hand over the mic for a second. She looked over the small crowd of nobles and royalty in the grim little bunker. “They’ve got most of us here, but…well.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks for the update. How’s she doing?” Jake asked.

“No clue, I can’t get a hold of Kelly,” Freya said worriedly.

Hana leaned forward in her chair, staring at the little screen in the panic bunker, taking in the news. Several of the other Royal Daughters clustered around, waiting for…for something, anything, that would explain the day they were having.

“So far, the Royal branch of the VIP Protection Office has refused to comment on the motives of the shooter or shooters responsible for this attempted murder,” the anchor said, a looping image of a forensics officer poking a bloodstained table in the background. “However, sources close to the Treasury have stated that the search is intensifying as the lockdown of the township, Startseite, is now extending to the nearby hive entrances.”

“And by ‘sources close to the Treasury,’ of course, he means a different news channel, since they’re all saying the same damn thing,” Furia grumbled, balling a fist. She stood from her chair and stomped angrily over to the bathroom, as Miranda slid into her seat.

“At least Morticia’s OK,” she said faintly, rubbing her eyes distractedly. The psychic pressure of the whole planet reacting at once was overwhelming her. Angela looked on in sympathy.

“And Kelly. Have they-” she started to ask, before the news anchor suddenly touched his earpiece.

“E-excuse me, viewers, but we…we have a new development,” the anchor said, staring into the camera as more information poured into his ear and eyes. “The shooter has been captured.”

Revelations

The man sat on a steel chair in a windowless interrogation room, staring with mild interest at the inside of the two-way mirror. He’d never been arrested before. It was new.

A team of Treasury agents had swarmed in, kicked the rifle away from him, and zapped him with some kind of energy weapon. He had woken up here, with a splitting headache and a group of Arbites staring at him coldly.

He’d been read his rights, curtly and clearly, and been offered a lawyer. He had politely declined. He had no argument to make. The door swung open, and a man in a neat black suit walked in, a small recorder in his hands. He sat down at the table, closing the door behind himself as he did. He clicked the recorder on and started talking.

“My name is Arthur. What’s your name?”

“Useless,” the man said.

“I can hardly converse with you if I don’t know your name,” Arthur pointed out.

“No, my name is Useless. My father was very dull.” Arthur stared at the man for a moment, then sighed and dug out the wallet the man had carried when he had been captured.

“Says here your name is Ulysses Keiter.”

“Maybe, but I’m Useless. To my friends,” the man said, shrugging. Arthur nodded slowly.

“All right, Siuer Keiter. I’m the lead legal counsel to the Emperor’s Courts, representing the Treasury and VIP Protection offices. They would very much like to know why you shot Lady Primarch Morticia this morning.”

The man’s mouth dropped open. “I…did what?”

“You shot a Lady Primarch. A sixteen-year-old girl. Royalty too. Why’d you do it?”

“I didn’t shoot a Lady Primarch!” the man exclaimed. “I didn’t!”

“The slug we found in her back matched the ones from your rifle’s magazine perfectly,” Arthur said.

“But I didn’t! I swear, I didn’t! All I did was shoot some random bitch at the café! Some greedy bitch!” the man said, slapping his hands down on the table and propelling himself upwards, voice rising to a desperate shout.

“The ‘greedy bitch’ you shot is the daughter of Lord Primarch Mortarion,” Arthur said, concealing his own surprise.

“NO!” the man said, paling. He gripped his hands on the edge of the table in desperate fear, every inch of his body racing with adrenaline-fuelled horror. “No, no, no, no, I didn’t, I didn’t! I shot…I…she was just some rich bitch, some little moneyslut from Startseite, nobody who…no…”

“Nobody who…what?” Arthur asked.

“Nobody who…” the man sank back in his chair, his hands shaking. “…nobody…”

“Just a nobody? Why did it not matter who you killed?” the lawyer asked.

The man’s eyes widened, shock grabbing him and shaking him by the stomach, until he lurched out of his chair and violently emptied it into the drain on the floor, heaving until he felt like his sides were going to implode.

“No…” he managed, spitting the taste away.

“So, it did matter who you killed. Just pick a rich girl and shoot?” Arthur said, shaking his head.

The man sank down to his knees, holding himself over the drain, eyes and skin white with shock. He couldn’t answer.

“May I assume you want that lawyer now?” Arthur asked. The man nodded once.

The Emperor opened the door into the bunker, taking in the tableau of anguish. His grandchildren – and a few others – were arranged around holoscreens and tables, all looking angry or scared. His son Leman was there, and spotted the Emperor first, gently shaking Freya’s shoulder. “Hey. Short stuff. Look who’s here.”

Freya looked up blearily, and spotted the Emperor at the door. She launched out of her seat and nearly tackled him, holding back tears. “Grandpa, Morticia’s hurt,” she managed.

“I know,” the Emperor said heavily, as the rest of the room took notice. The guards snapped off brisk salutes, the daughters generally queued up for a hug of reassurance, and the assorted boyfriends and others just stared or genuflected. “I’m glad the rest of you are safe. Where are Isis and Lyra?”

“On the way, my Liege,” one of the guards said, tapping his earpiece. “They were in a café in the middle of a mall, didn’t want to start a panic.”

“Very well.” The Emperor made eye contact with Russ, and jerked his head towards the hall. Russ nodded and walked out discreetly, as the Emperor gradually disentangled himself from the flock of his granddaughters. As he closed the door to the hall, Russ glared at the nearest guards until they edged off a few reluctant meters.

“Did they find the shooter?” Russ asked. “The news said it was one man.”

“It was, and they did. He’s being interrogated now,” the Emperor said. He hesitated before delivering the next line. “And it seems that Morticia was not the target.”

“What? Who was? Kelly?” Russ asked in surprise.

“Apparently not. I’ll let you know when I have more,” the Emperor said, turning back down the hall. “Take care of them, Leman.”

The man huddled against the surface of the interrogation room table, trying to die. Arthur kept pressing. “The woman you were trying to shoot, you’d never met her?”

“I don’t know anyone,” the man said, his head reeling.

“Listen to me, Ulysses, you need to focus, here,” his lawyer said, trying to get his client to pay attention.

“No, no, no, no, I’m nobody, I didn’t, I couldn’t,” he mumbled, squeezing his fingers against his skull until the knuckles turned white. “No no no…”

“All right, then. Tell me why you decided to shoot someone this morning,” Arthur said, hoping that it would be enough to break the man from his chattering.

“…I had to do it…” he whimpered.

“Had to shoot someone?” Arthur pressed.

The public defender glared at the Emperor’s counselor, but the reedy voice from the tabletop kept going. “…It’s too much; they have to be stopped…”

“Who has to be stopped?” Arthur demanded.

“…those selfish vermin…” the man muttered, then shot bolt upright in sudden rage, his teeth clenched. “Those self-centered TRASH!”

“Who?”

“Those PARASITES!” the man roared, then lowered his voice to a hateful whisper. “Those Startseite and New Arks and Albiona parasites…”

“Those are the three richest cities in the entire system,” Arthur said. “I assume that isn’t a coincidence.” He leaned back in his seat, glaring at the man. “Was it?”

“Of course not!” the man shot back. “They’re a DISEASE!”

Arthur nodded slowly, thinking. “You know. I was a senior DA for Startseite for two years. One thing I learned, is that there’s really only six reasons that someone ever, ever commits a high crime.” He raised his fingers and counted along. “Money, compulsion, madness, ideology, ego, and conscience. You’re not completely insane. So that’s madness gone. Which other one are you? Hmm? Compulsive?”

“Stop trying to provoke my client with such juvenile arguments, Sieur Hane,” the PD said tartly. “Ulysses, we’re leaving.”

“No,” the man said, jerking his arm away from his lawyer’s grasp. He turned to glare back at the counselor. “I’ll tell you. This was payback.”

“Ah. Ego, then? Were you trying to kill someone who had insulted you?” Arthur said, playing the role a bit longer.

“Insulted me?” the man said coldly, leaning forward, his remorse melting away. “No. DAMAGED me. Like I don’t matter. Like I don’t have a place in this Imperium. Me, or anyone else who wants things to get fucking BETTER around here!”

“Do tell,” Arthur said patiently.

“This Imperium…it’s straining at the seams,” the man said angrily, his eyes turning to the table, staring right through it to some unknown destination. “The parasites and the real people. Can you even tell us apart?”

“ ‘Real people,’ eh. Define ‘real.’”

A pair of forensics officers gingerly lifted the rifle, carrying it over to the air-tight evidence case in the back of their truck. Neither of them saw much point, since the killer had already been caught, but the media had this strange idea that the more famous the crime, the more twists and turns there were in the trial, so they did it anyway, both studiously avoiding the literally hundreds of reporters and on-lookers outside the police cordon. At the edge of the ring of Arbites and beehives, a small cluster of formally-uniformed Treasury officers were briefing the press.

“No, ma’am, we do not yet know why this attack was launched, but I have been authorized to report that it does not appear to have been part of an assault on the Royal Family specifically,” the officer at the front of the cluster said, before raising his hands to head off the surge of questions. “I will say that the shooter seems to have been working alone. Lady Morticia is stable and undergoing treatment.”

“Major, do you know how long this attack was planned?” one reporter yelled, brandishing a microphone like a cudgel.

“No comment,” the Major said. Another reporter stepped up, waving their hand.

“Major, for the people elsewhere in the Imperium, what can you tell us about the attacker?”

“It was a male, working alone, Terran, and that’s all we have to say so far,” the Major said. A beehive stepped up to his ear, whispering a new dispatch. The Major nodded slowly, then turned his attention back to the anxious blob of reporters. “That’s all I have time for, folks, thank you for your patience.” He stepped back within the cordon, two more beehives brandishing riot shotguns stepping up to fill the empty spot.

Arthur stepped into the bunker, eyeing the sorry crowd. The guards had been forewarned of his arrival, and silently lined up against the walls, as the lawyer nervously cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Lord Russ, Ladies Primarch, but I wanted you all to hear the news.”

“Who are you?” Furia asked bluntly, as the other girls took notice of their visitor.

“My name is Sir Arthur Hane, madam, Chief Counsel to the Emperor’s Courts, and I was present for the interrogation of the man who shot Lady Morticia,” Arthur said, drawing the immediate attention of nearly everyone in the room. Before he could continue, the door swung open again, and Isis and Lyra walked in, completing the set. The others welcomed them in, as Arthur took advantage of the pause to collect his thoughts.

“I suppose I should say…first and foremost…I’m sorry you all had to go through this. I can’t imagine what it’s like,” he said solemnly.

“Don’t try, either,” Lyra said. “What happened?”

“Apparently…” Arthur hesitated as the enormity of what he was about to say held him up. “Apparently, he wasn’t aiming for Lady Morticia at all.”

“WHAT?!” Roberta snapped, as most of the other people in the room shared a look of astonishment and various other proclamations of disbelief. “Then what the hell was he doing?!”

“Apparently, he thought that killing a random passer-by in the richest city on the planet would…break the Imperium free of cultural inertia,” the lawyer reported uncomfortably. “He’s a long way from rational.”

“So this was a political statement?” Roberta pressed.

“He himself said that he was proving a point,” the lawyer replied cautiously. “However, I must repeat that Morticia was not the target.”

Cora sank down into her chair, head in her hands. “She…was just unlucky? How…”

“How did the shooter not know who she was?” Victoria demanded.

“Well, his roost was over two klicks off, madam, it would have been almost impossible to identify someone at that range. Especially since he wasn’t specifically looking for her.” Arthur shrugged uncomfortably. Why, he wondered, was he having more trouble talking to a room full of young women than he did a room with a hardened killer in it?

The door swung open again, and the guards on either side snapped to attention. The Emperor walked back in, eliciting a chorus of confused questions from the Royal daughters. He greeted them in turn, before turning to his counselor.

“My Liege,” Arthur said, bowing respectfully.

“Stand up, Hane. We need to talk about this revelation you’ve had regarding the man who shot my granddaughter,” the Emperor replied.

“Yes, Sire,” Arthur said, straightening back up and marshaling his thoughts. “Well, I can’t run it as a murder case since he didn’t actually kill anyone, but I could try to get him on the Attempted Murder charge. That said, Sire, I suspect I would find more success if I offered him a plea, of Attempting an Act of Terrorism.”

“And what’s the sentence for that?” Remilia asked.

“The sentence for accepting a plea of guilty would be seventeen years per act,” Arthur reported, “and since it’s his first charge, did not resist arrest, purchased the gun legally and didn’t break into the building where he fired from…it may be the best I can do.”

“Seventeen years in prison for trying to kill a member of the Royal Family?” the Emperor asked quietly, his face darkening. “Unacceptable.”

“Sire…he wasn’t trying to kill a member of the Royal Family,” Arthur said, shrugging helplessly.

“Then do as you see fit, Sieur Hane,” the Emperor said grimly, turning away before his disgust became too evident. He addressed his granddaughters next. “You are, of course, all welcome to stay here, but since the threat seems to have abated, you may choose to return to your homes, instead.”

“I’ve sure had enough of this place for one lifetime,” Roberta said heavily.

Several hours passed. A small ocean of reporters lapped at the base of the Palace gates, waiting for a chance to grab the images of the Royal Daughters. None were so fortunate, since they left as they arrived: in Treasury vehicles or their own cars, flying back to their respective families’ homes.

Andrew had been nearly pacing in his room hen his vox finally rang, with Hana’s tone. He snatched it off the table. “Hana?” he asked breathlessly.

“Hey, Andy. I’m back home.”

“Thank God. Is it cool if I come over?”

“No, sorry. The Treasury guys are still swarming the place, and I don’t think they’d let you in,” Hana said regretfully, looking out the window to the street, where a Treasury vehicle was parked in nearly every spot.

“Ah, damn. Well, call me as soon as you can, all right?”

“Of course.”

Coming Home

The next day, for the people of the Imperium, couldn’t have been much farther from a normal Monday. The entire Palace district, and the towns around it, were still crawling with Arbites and Treasury, but the airlanes had been released, and the sky was thick with people trying to catch a glimpse of where the shooting took place.

The lockdown continued. Though Imperator High was open for classes, the place looked like a firing range, with beehives and local police at every hall. None of the Royal family even attended, but the paparazzi was still clustered at every corner, catching shots of their neighbors and boyfriends and distant relatives, dispersing after the bells.

Jake made his way back to his car, wondering if it was too soon to call, and deciding that he didn’t care. Sitting down in the cab of his aircar, pointedly ignoring the reporters clustering outside the parking lot, he flipped his vox open and called Venus’ number, then jumped a handspan sitting down when it went off from the cupholder next to him. He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed, turning off the vox where she had dropped it the previous day.

Idly, he started up the car, wondering if the Treasury would let him return it. A thought struck him, and he dialed her house. The vox immediately turned off in his hand. “Thought as much,” Jake said to himself, starting the engine. The autopilot lifted him smoothly off the ground.

“Let’s try…this,” he said, dialing the house again, this time with Venus’ vox. The cell buzzed once, and an unfamiliar voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Uh, hello. I’m trying to return Lady Venus’ vox?” he tried.

“Excuse me?” the voice on the other side said, chilling about seventy degrees.

“She left it in my car yesterday,” Jake said, suddenly placing the voice, “after you pulled her out of it.”

“Sir, the Royal Family is uninterested in solicitation,” the voice said flatly. “Lady Venus will be free to retrieve any property of hers after the lockdown ends.”

“Solicitation,” Jake said. He stared at the vox for a second. “All right.” He tapped an extension number into the vox and waited. A moment later, the vox sounded another dial tone.

“Hello?” Lord Vulkan’s voice said on the other end.

“Hello, S…Vulkan. It’s Jake. I found Venus’ vox in my car,” Jake said quickly, before the no-doubt-enraged vox operator could cut him off.

“Oh, yes, hello, Jake. Yes, she was wondering where it was. Are you offering to drop it off?”

“I’m in the neighborhood, yeah,” Jake said, glancing out at the ocean of red, gold, black, and orange uniforms on the ground beneath him. “But I doubt they’ll let me in.”

“True. Can you just bring it back to your apartment, and I’ll send someone to pick it up?” Vulkan asked, from the line in his office.

“I certainly…could,” Jake said.

“Ah.” Vulkan was quiet for a moment, then snorted. “What the hell. Come on by. I’ll waive your car for the security.”

“Thanks. I’ll be by in a few minutes,” Jake said, then tapped his finger against the microphone. A moment later, he heard the *click* as the Treasury agent on the main line hung up, and smiled. “Vulkan?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“No problem, Jake.”

Several minutes later, Jake parked his aircar outside the now-familiar mansion, grabbed Venus’ vox, and clambered out, noting the cluster of beehives at the door. Slipping the vox into his pocket, he walked up to the sealed door, reminded subtly of the last time he had seen Treasury agents standing outside a locked door, and glad that his previous verbal sparring partner hadn’t returned. Before he could even reach the door, however, one of the Treasury agents at the door spoke up.

“Be aware, sir, that your presence here continues at Lord Vulkan’s sufferance.”

“The house is ringed by bolter turrets, Sergeant, everyone’s here at his sufferance,” Jake shot back, tapping his pocket. “I’m just here to return Venus’ vox.”

“Then you won’t mind when we keep this entire visit of yours under recording, just for the sake of clarity,” the beehive said crisply.

“I can think of four or five different, very good reasons why you really shouldn’t do that,” Jake said on a moment’s reflection. Before the beehive could reply, however, the door creaked open, and Venus launched out of it, squeezing Jake in a bear hug.

“Mmmph, tookyousolong,” she managed, burying her face in his neck.

“Sorry, baby,” Jake said, squeezing her back. “How are you feel-”

“Get in here,” she cut him off, pulling the door back open. He followed her back in, ignoring the glowering beehives behind him and shutting the door.

Venus’ arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him into a vice-grip. “I needed to see you,” she muttered darkly.

Jake turned around and returned it, directing a stare of malice at the beehive loitering at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m here,” he said softly, returning his attention the girl clutching his shirtfront. “How are you feeling?”

Venus tilted her head back and glared at him, red-hot light bathing his face. “Guess,” she said bitterly, then immediately turned her eyes away from his hurt expression. “I’m sorry. That…damn it.”

“It’s all right,” he said, gently disentangling her from his clothes and directing her towards the couch in the sitting area. “Have you heard? The Heads are just repeating the same things over and over.”

“She’ll make it. When? Don’t know,” Venus said, dropping heavily on the leather sofa. Jake sat down next to her and threw an arm across her shoulders. “But she’ll live.”

“Good. Good.” Jake leaned back on the sofa and searched for something to say. “Here,” he said, digging the vox out and dropping it on an end table.

“Mmm.” Venus dug her fingers into the couch, clearly at a loss as much as he was. “…guards give you any trouble?”

“A bit, but I don’t blame them. Thank your dad for me, ok? For letting me in,” Jake added, rationalizing that his odds of actually talking to Vulkan himself were pretty low.

“Yeah.” Venus sighed, leaning back into his arm and closing her eyes. “…What do you have planned this weekend?”

“Uh, just the last Senior Project report…what did you have in mind?”

“Well, a few of us were planning to go visit Morticia if we could. It would mean a lot to me if you could go,” she said.

“Sure thing, I’ll go.” Jake said. “When should I be here?”

“I’ll have to pick you up.” Venus sighed again, squeezing the leather until it creaked in her hands. “This is not a fun way to be reminded of your own mortality.”

“There’s a fun way?” Jake quipped.

Venus managed a snort of laughter. “Probably not. Uncle Mortarion called from the hospital, this morning. He said she was still out cold, but she’s recovering.”

“Good,” Jake said. Venus shook her head.

“Why Morticia?” she asked of nobody in particular. “Why her? The poor thing barely even sets foot outdoors at the best of times, and then…” She opened her eyes and stared into space, lighting up the corner of the room with a diffuse red glow. “It’s just not fair.”

Jake grimaced. “No. It isn’t.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in. “But what can we do?”

“I dunno,” she said sadly. “I dunno.” Her eyes slid shut again as she leaned into him. “…you’d think I’d be used to this happening by now.”

“It’s happened before?” Jake asked.

“Yeah. I told you, someone tried to shoot Grandpa once,” Venus said. “Back when-”

“When the Fiat was imposed, right,” Jake said, remembering.

“Yeah. That was…scary too,” Venus said, grinding a palm against her eyes. “Agh, fuck. This is the worst!” She turned her head up to look at him, her blank red eyes dim and sad. “Did the Treasury tail you to your house again?”

“Not visibly,” Jake said dryly. “And there was no door-to-door solicitation this time.”

Both of them managed a brief laugh. Venus settled back against him as the sound faded into the cavernous sitting room. “Nothing keeps you down for long, does it, Jake?”

“Nope,” he replied, wrapping his arm around her back. She snuggled back against him. “But then, I didn’t get to see you at all today.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Here,” he said, sliding down the couch a stretch and lying down sideways, jutting his lower elbow out. She settled down in front of him, resting her head on his arm and draping his free arm across her stomach. With one pointed glance at the two beehives visible from the seat, they had the room to themselves. “I’m here now,” he said, and gently kissed the top of her head.

“Yep,” she said, clasping her hand over his. The room went silent. They had both run out of things to say, after all.

Jake closed his eyes and tried to relax, to let the stress of the past day fade. Slowly, the little knot in his stomach unwound.

“That girl can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, can’t she?” a voice asked quietly. Jake cracked an eye open to see Lady Misja, Venus’ mother, standing over them, her expression between maternal indulgence and exasperation. Jake peeked over his girlfriend’s head to note that she was, in fact, fast asleep.

“I didn’t need this arm for a while,” Jake murmured.

“Poor thing didn’t sleep a wink last night,” Misja sighed. She looked up to Jake, now pinned between her daughter and the couch. “Stay a while, will you? Keep an eye on her?”

“Count on it,” Jake said softly, settling back down.

A Very Bad Idea

Michael stood in Angela’s doorway, all but radiating his nervousness. Angela herself was face-down on her bed, which was really the only way she could be comfortable. She was just as morose as she had sounded on the phone, too, and Sanguinius hadn’t even hesitated to let her boyfriend through the cordon. But then, he lived next door.

He sank down on the bed next to Angela, who lifted her head to stare at him, pain evident on her face. The shock Morticia’s attack was still fresh enough, but as news spread, the surprise and fear –and worse: derision and glee from the insensitive and indifferent – were slamming into her mind, over and over.

Michael wasn’t a psyker. He couldn’t comprehend the pain she was going through, as fear and uncertainty compounded days of exhaustion and waiting by the vox for news. But he still had to be there. He couldn’t NOT be there.

Angela reached out and squeezed his hand, pulling him closer. He lay down next to her, kicking his shoes off and wrapping his arm around her shoulders, propping himself up on his side and looking down at her.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. She sounded weak. Tired. Angry, maybe…and hopeless. Michael nodded, leaning down a hair to whisper.

“I wish I’d been here earlier.” She managed a snort.

“I think you’re too heavy to jump the gutters these days.”

“Probably.” They both lay in silence, letting their words hang on the air. “Angela…I thought about what you said before.”

Angela didn’t respond, but she did cross her arms under her chest, leaning on them to stare at Michael sidelong. “You want to try again?”

“Not if you’re too tired,” he said, remembering what had happened last time. Angela rose up on one arm, her sadness fading a little, behind a mask of intense focus.

“If you mean it…” she said quietly, her eyes locked on his. “I nearly hurt you last time.”

“That was scary,” Michael admitted, “but if ever you needed it…”

“True,” she said softly, sitting upright, her wings folding back against her back as she let her head sink a bit, lost in thought. “…You know what? Alright. I hope your schedule’s clear,” she said with sudden mischief.

“I have all night. My parents aren’t expecting me,” Michael responded, getting up and locking the door.

Angela stayed on the bed, staring at her boyfriend as he shucked his jacket, sitting back down on the covers. Shrugging the shoulder pieces off of her custom version of the school uniform, designed to accommodate her unusual anatomy, she paused as her hand reached the lower row of buttons. “Are you sure about this?” she asked suddenly, turning to face him. “I mean…this isn’t particularly safe. I’ve only done this twice.”

“I want it, though, and I can tell you do,” Michael replied, sliding his own shirt off and tossing it aside.

“I do,” she said, low and thoughtful. “You know Dad might find out. He’ll ruin me.”

Michael shrugged. “Your call.” Angela bit her lip, smiling at last.

“OK.”

She tugged her shirt and bra free, lying down next to her lifelong friend, and more recently lover, who brushed her hair out of his eyes, looking up at her contentedly. “Go ahead…” he said softly.

Angela’s eyes rolled shut as she sank down, half-on top of him. In the instant before she landed, Michael felt the first, faint tug of something at the edge of his mind-

-Then he was gripped, for a fraction of a second, in the most horrible agony he had ever experienced, as his soul was literally ripped from his body. His radiant being drifted forth from the meat body that carried it, invisible to all but the most gifted psykers. Like Angela.

With exquisite care, she cast herself out as well, their souls instantly meeting in the void of the Warp, bound in place by their living bodies. Michael’s soul drifted in place, a tiny spark next to Angela’s roaring, deific bonfire.

Their souls met, linked. She flickered, ethereal as the Warp itself, gently wrapping around his, pulling him closer. He allowed it, spreading across hers in turn, insignificant next to hers and all the more noticeable for it.

Raw, jagged rents of emotions in her psyche raced around her spectral body like mobile wounds, leaking anguish and self-recrimination and terrible, terrible uncertainty. Michael’s soul sidled up to hers, looking, no doubt, like a calving whale, following its mother.

His faint presence approached hers, his own raw, frightened mind dwarfed by hers. He could see himself for an instant, there in the roiling void, next to her, faint and insubstantial, incomparable to her brilliant, vivid outline, and invisible next to her father, down below. In the distance, the torrent of burning light of the Emperor and Astronomican flared, too far to see and right next to them at once.

He didn’t care. He slid a faint thought across her mind, slowing the pain racing through her.

His body, still tied to Earth and reality, twitched and moved, wrapping an arm across her lower back, just below where her wings erupted from her back.

Her mind flinched, racing and frightened and impossibly crowded. She withdrew, her fear for her family lending her soul a reddish purple hue.

Her body bit its lip, so hard it leaked a drop of blood. It landed on Michael’s chest, staining the skin red.

Michael did not relent, extending his thoughts to hers. She relaxed, a tiny bit, gingerly accepting it. He slipped his soul’s membrane across hers, trying to soothe the anguish.

Far off, too far from the Emperor for him to see, a tiny sliver of malice drifted through the Warp. A remnant of the darker realms of Chaos, it was fleeing a stinging defeat of its own, a humiliation that had cost it its form and minions. Seeking refuge in the Emperor’s vast shadow, it came across the spectacle, and paused, watching.

Michael’s soul drifted across hers, trying patiently to calm her, ignorant of his audience. Angela’s godlike presence slowly shrank, still weeping from a thousand nonexistent cuts, and so walled-off that nothing could get in or out. Michael traced a slow circle, trying to get her to relent, to let him in.

She paused, her psyker’s light burning evenly, illuminating the nothingness. With the greatest of care, she extended a thought of her own to him, allowing him closer.

He accepted, moving up against her, his empty light nearly invisible against her. She flared instinctively, her emotions racing again, but he wasn’t afraid. She wouldn’t harm him.

The daemon lurked, gliding closer, drinking in the new sights. What was this?

Angela’s body moved, clenching its fists so hard the nails nearly but the skin, muscles tightening in helpless frustration. Her soul did the same, expanding in the nonreality of the Warp, pushing Michael back. Her form changed, sprouting her father’s wings, and deep, oozing reds of anger and regret and bitterness pouring out of her hands. He slid his thoughts across hers, pushing away her fear and self-loathing, finding her need, her uncertainty, and covering them with himself, sharing them a little.

She paused, feeling her anguish fade, and shrank back to her normal size, the fearsome wings and blood-soaked hands of her soul’s form fading away. Michael kept going, pushing the inadequacies of her persona back, and her body sobbed aloud, a pair of teardrops joining the blood on his chest, running down onto the covers, and her soul turned the blues of remorse and pity.

Michael paused, reaching out to hold her, and she collapsed, her instinctive anger vanishing as she confronted her regret. Guilt brought weakness, and her soul shrank further yet, its brilliant light fading in tune with her emotions, until there was almost nothing left. His soul crossed hers, enveloping her, glowing faintly in the ether, giving her some modicum of shelter.

The daemon shifted silently, weighing its options. Should it strike? Or wait, to see what happened?

Angela’s body went limp, guilt and recrimination cutting her puppet’s strings. Michael’s soul caressed hers, eliciting a sigh of primal familiarity from hers, and she slowly moved away, pulling herself back from his embrace. Her light returned, expanding to fill her mind’s shape, and wrapped herself back around him, seeking his stability. He returned it, sliding around and through her more intimately than a physical hug ever could, and the blues of her remorse faded away to a dull, exhausted gray. The thousand crawling wounds closed, one at a time and all at once, fading into faint scars on her soul, as her physical body slumped aside, rolling off of his chest onto her flank.

Relief, like a thousand doors opening, rushed through him, and his own soul flared, bright and passionate for a moment, throwing a shadow across hers, and her soul responded in kind, finding solace in his love. His mind moved against hers again, satisfaction lending him playfulness, and her glorious form replied, the faintest hue of pink coloring it as she moved back.

As one, they woke. Angela hissed as blood flow returned to the hand she had fallen on, and Michael blinked groggily, unused to the feeling of projection.

The daemon sighed in disappointment, sliding on the through the void. It would have found nothing if it had struck, it decided, nothing but sour grapes.

Angela smiled, slipping her legs astride her boyfriends’, resting her ample breasts against his chest. She glanced down to where her blood and tears had fallen on his collarbone, raising her eyebrows. “No wonder my lip’s sore,” she said, rubbing them away.

“…Yeah,” Michael said with an effort, his vision swimming. Angela looked up at him in sympathy. The feeling of soul-stripping, even at the best of times, hurt like nothing else could. He tried to hold up a hand, and couldn’t do it. He was shaking, head to toe, his breath thin and reedy.

“Sorry,” Angela said softly. “I knew that would be a lot for you.”

“Forget it,” Michael managed. “Are you feeling better?”

“Like it never happened,” Angela lied. She knew the scars of her emotional trauma would take much longer to fade…but as far as she was concerned, it may as well have been true. The horror of the ordeal was gone completely. The ennui that had robbed the day from her was fading away, and in its place was a rock of certainty. She smiled faintly, cocking her head so that a lock of blond fell across his forehead. “In fact…”

“No,” Michael said flatly. “Sorry.”

“I know.” She grabbed his shaking jaw, holding him still enough for a deep, passionate kiss. “Think of it as something to wake up to,” she whispered in his ear.

“I…will…” he said with a grin, before his eyes slipped shut. His muscles went slack as he surrendered to the mental, physical, and spiritual exhaustion that the soul-stripping had brought about. Angela waiting a moment longer before planting another, gentler kiss on his cheek, then carefully lifted herself free, grabbing the rest of her clothes and pulling them off.

She slid the covers out from under her boyfriends’ sleeping body, and pulled the covers up to his chin, before wiggling up next to him, lying on her side, and resting her head on his shoulder. She snapped her fingers and the lights died, plunging the room into darkness.

The tanned angel watched in the darkness, Michael’s breath the only sound. She slipped her free arm across his chest, hugging her bare skin against his body, the rough feeling of his pants contrasting with the soft warmth of his flesh. Angela pulled the skein of the Warp back from her sight, and looked on in contentment as his ethereal form drifted next to hers, glowing a little brighter than before.

She smiled to herself. The first time they had tried that, she had been so scared it hadn’t even worked. The second, they had made the mistake of trying while he was bone-weary from work, and he had nearly gone into a coma. That time, though…

“Third time’s the charm, hmm?” she asked the man asleep in her arms. She smiled at his lack of reply, and let her own exhaustion pull her to sleep. For the first time since the beehives had pulled her and Miranda aside, she slept; and it was deep, restful, and healing.

Freya leaned against the frame of her bay window, staring listlessly at the fields outside. The lights in the pseudosky were dimming as the hour turned late, but it wasn’t an impediment to her. Her inhuman eyes looked out over the grass surrounding the mansion as if it were already morning, sighting every crevasse and shadow. The old-fashioned window creaked on its hinges as she pushed it open, and let the night wind blow into the room.

Her boyfriend stirred in the bed as the cold wind reached him. She glanced over her shoulder at him, but didn’t move from her spot. The faint noise of ground cars moving along the distant road carried over the wind to her ultra-sensitive ears, turning into a distant background rumble.

The cold wind pushed the curtains back against her, silhouetting her naked form against the white cloth. The smell of the ash in the cup by the bed blew away, replaced by the smell of the outside’s fake, circulated air, and the more comfortable smell of the flowers in the field.

Freya stood, gripping the top of the bay and leaning over the seat, staring out at the field, looking for…something. The chill wind blew the curtains back on either side of her, flowing back like Angela’s wings, and, she hoped, was responsible for the tears in her eyes.

The breeze on his cheek roused Alex from his sleep. He squinted in the darkness, trying to find the source of the cold, and paused at the sight of Freya’s outline against the window, his breath catching in his throat. Fully awake in a moment, he drank in the sight in silence, before her hearing alerted her to his rising heartbeat. She let go of the window frame and turned around, smiling sheepishly. “Hey. Did I wake you up?”

“No, you didn’t,” he mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “You OK?”

“Just can’t sleep. Weed keeps me up,” she lied, pointing at the remains of the joint in the impromptu ashtray.

“Mmm. ‘Kay.” He blinked against the glare from the outside. “You comin’ to bed?”

“Nah. Not tired.” Freya sat back down on the seat, looking back out over the grassy fields. “I just want to think.”

“Ain’t you afraid of someone taking a picture from the road?” Alex asked blearily.

Freya didn’t turn around. “Holofield. The house always looks the same.” She flicked one red dreadlock over her shoulder. “Go to sleep.”

“…You say so,” Alex said tiredly, rolling over to face away from the window, trying not to lie on the wet spot. “’Night, baby.”

“’Night,” Freya whispered.

The next morning, Arthur Hane sat down in a cold, concrete room and stared a terrorist in the eyes. “Sieur Keiter, you’ve stated that your intention was to inspire panic in the civilian population, but only a select slice of the population. What exactly did you mean?”

The man stared right back. “What I said. The Imperium’s the best thing that ever happened to humanity, as a whole. But not on the fringes. What do you think most of the planet does, Sieur Hane? What jobs do they have?”

“According to the Bureau of Labor, nearly all Terrans either work for the Administratum, Munitorum, or various manufactoriae,” the lawyer responded from memory.

“Yeah. The cogs in the Imperial machine. Indispensable, don’t you think? You think the Imperium can maintain its standards of living without them?”

“Probably not, no.” Arthur sipped his coffee and thought about the conversation thus far. “So you think you’re striking a blow for the working man…against the wealthy?”

“Not specifically.” The man leaned back in his seat, grinning wistfully. “The nouveau riche. The spoiled, the petulant, the knee-jerk reactionaries. The parasites, Sieur Hane.”

“The new rich. Industrialists,” Hane continued.

“No, no, the people who think the status quo is just fine, thanks, and doesn’t need to improve,” the man said coldly.

“But the nouveau riche are those who achieve wealth within the span of their own careers. People who struck it rich through success and cleverness. What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s WRONG?” the man asked, his eyes hardening. “What’s wrong. Oh, Sieur Hane, so much is wrong with them. They think the Imperium is their cash cow, their machine to be ignored when it works and berated when it doesn’t, like some rank amateur techpriest.”

“And what do you believe?” Hane asked, his gut sinking.

“That the world needs a blooding,” the man said ominously. “That people who strike gold and forget their pasts need to be expunged. That people who oppose the Emperor’s judgment are fools, and those who exploit His gifts…are…parasites,” he said, ice dripping from the last few words.

“So…people who forget the working man,” Hane offered.

“You’re damn right.”

“But you couldn’t have told the spoiled rich from the career humanitarian through a scope at two kilometers,” Hane pointed out.

“I took a guess,” the man said, misery cracking his mask of ideological rage. “I guessed wrong.”

Hane nodded slowly. “So who got you the rifle?”

“I bought it,” Hane said. “Hunting weapons are legal on Terra.”

“No they aren’t, actually,” Hane said. “They’re legal to ship and store, but not to carry. You can buy them for off-world safaris. Using them on-planet is punishable.”

“Oh, what does it matter,” the man asked dismissively. “It’s over. You have it.”

“Who got you into the building?” Hane pressed.

“I did. I worked there,” the man said, glancing to the side.

“The room we found you in was empty. Completely empty.”

“Remodeling,” the man said shortly, looking aside. Hane perked up. Had he hit a nerve?

“Why Sunday? Any particular reason?” he asked, glancing down at the pad of paper he was using and making a show of writing, as if the question was barely even important.

“It just fit the schedule,” the man said.

“All right.” Hane nodded, thinking over what the Treasury had told them of the preliminary background check they had conducted on Keiter. He was a member of the Civil Honors Union, a volunteer organization that distributed mutancy testing kits in the hives. No criminal record. Civil rifle and pistol permits. Membership in the Sons of the War, a veteran’s families’ support group. “Sieur, can you tell me about the Civil Honors Union?”

“They’re good people. We distribute goods to the lower levels. The places the surface scum forget,” the man said solemnly. “People down there are just as important as the rest of us, and forgotten all the more often for it.”

“Did one of them ask you to do this?” Hane asked.

The man’s hackles rose. “Of course not! They’re a humanitarian group!”

“Well, your definition of ‘humanitarian’ includes murder, so I’m not ready to rule it out yet,” Hane said. The man’s lawyer bristled.

“Sieur Hane, that was un-called for.”

“I plead guilty to shooting a-’ the man’s voice caught for a moment. He struggled on. “-a Primarch’s daughter. I have to live with that now. But I damn well TRIED to do the right thing, SIEUR Hane, and nothing you say will change that.”

“But not for yourself, right? You’ve stated several times that you did this for the forgotten hivers,” Hane said.

“Forgotten and abused,” the man said, his eyes growing cold with anger-by-proxy. “We’ve covered this.”

“Yeah, but you’re dancing.” Hane leaned forward. “You still aren’t saying how exactly the new rich are abusing anybody. You keep saying that the poor and the hivers are forgotten, but how can they be forgotten AND abused? You think the Emperor isn’t doing enough for the common man?”

“I think the Emperor is the only thing the common man has left,” the man said tiredly, sinking into his chair with a sigh and looking wistfully at Hane’s coffee.

Hane nodded. A very uncomfortable pattern was materializing in front of him now. He decided to try one more thing. “Sieur Keiter, tell me. Why do you think the common man, the hivers, whatever you call them, need the mutancy kits from the Union?” “Why?” the man blinked in confusion. “Why do they need…mutancy testing

“Yes. Surely not all the people in the hives have mutations.”

“No, of course not!” the man said angrily. “But it must be found wherever it hides. It must be expunged. We don’t force people to act on the results, but they should know what they are!”

“Why? Isn’t that their business?” Hane asked.

The man scoffed. “It’s the business of the pure humans who have to live with them.”

Hane nodded. “Then why target someone topside? Why not just kill one of the mutants? Don’t they hold the Imperium back even more than the rich?”

“Of course,” the man said darkly. “But who’d miss them?” The man’s lawyer shifted slightly, shutting him up, but Hane was done. “Thank you, Sieur Keiter, Counselor Felger. I’ll be in touch,” Hane said, scooping up his personal effects and coffee. Without a word, he turned from the table and left, wondering how in the world he was going to break this to the Emperor.

The sun glinted off the hive walls, so bright a normal human couldn’t look at it for too long. Remilia was so used to it that she barely noticed. She walked slowly alongside the inside wall of the courtyard of her father’s manor, rolling a soccer ball across the grass every few steps. The small handful of guards on the courtyard wall stood sentry, occasionally glancing down to see if she was still there. The lanky blond drew her foot back over the ball and flipped it up onto her toe, balancing it against the breeze. The warming air of summer (such as it was) filtered through the wrought-iron fence of the enclosed athletic courtyard Dorn had had built in his manor, and carried the smell of cut grass, charcoal, and the sink of the ionic jets the Treasury cars used to get around. Remilia kicked the ball up to eye level, tracking it and taking a step back, then slammed it with a side kick, bouncing it neatly off the crossbar of the goal at the end of the field. She watched the ball roll to a stop, burning her angry glare into its plastic skin. Goddamned cross-breezes.

Her father watched from the window of his study, several stories above, resting his chin on his fist, equally lost in thought. Some part of him wanted to take the blame for this. After all, had it not been his security systems, his instructions, and the training provisions he had created, that the Treasury had used that day?

With a heavy sigh, he stood from his desk and walked down the hall to the stairs, wending his way down. He walked out into the courtyard, staring in silence as his daughter practiced.

Remilia rolled the ball down the field, trying to balance it against her new shoes, and trying just as hard to ignore her father. He waited, patiently. He knew she had to come to this on her own.

Finally, she slammed the ball with all her might, sending it caroming off the fence. Dorn sighed aloud, and Remilia whipped around. “What?” she snapped, then raised her hands as Rogal’s face darkened. “Sorry, Dad. What?”

Rogal tried to keep his voice level. “Are you feeling better?”

Remilia exhaled through pursed lips, ramming her hands in her pockets. “…A little, yeah.”

“Good.” Her father looked down at the ball as it rolled to a stop on the fresh grass. “I didn’t tell your mother.”

Remilia’s eyes flattened. She clenched her fists in her pockets, feeling a spike of horrified realization in her belly. “How did you know?” she asked tightly.

“I smelled it. In the bathtub.” Rogal met his daughter’s eyes, and she shrank from the fiery rage she saw, her own fear melting into instant remorse. “Do it again. One. More. Time. And we’ll see if I can’t get you back into the same place they’ve got Morticia. Am I clear, daughter?”

“Yes, father, I understand,” Remilia said, fear turning her demure. She broke eye contact, desperately looking for a smoother topic, but Dorn turned on his heel and marched back into the house without a word.

Remilia sank down cross-legged on the field. She grabbed the grass-stained ball and squeezed it between her arms. “And we can’t have that, can we?” she whispered bitterly, hurling the ball away. She stared at the grass clippings on her arms, then raked them off with her nails, leaving the bright, fresh scars on her arms bare. “Not this time.”

The Night Staff

One of the staff of the intensive care unit poked his head into the break room and coughed discreetly. “Grant? You awake?”

“Naturally,” one of the nursing staff replied, glancing over his slate. “Which room?”

“Not a call, just a heads-up. Your screening came back negative. You’re cleared for the isolation wing.” Grant raised his eyebrows and very carefully set the slate down.

“Really? Which shift?”

“Midnight, if you can make it.”

“Count on it. Tonight?”

“Yeah, you might want to get over there. Meet the Treasury guys.”

“Sure.” Grant stood, cricking his back. “Hey, why didn’t you get past the screening?”

“Dad’s in the Ahmaku League.”

Grant blinked. “It’s a fucking video game club.”

“And they took sponsorship money from a member of the Council once. That’s all it takes.”

“That has to be,” Grant grumbled, hitching his scrubs up and attaching his mask, “the dumbest background screening ever.”

“I’ll say. You got through it.” Grant shot the other nurse a cold stare and shouldered past him.

“Cards?” he asked, holding his hand out. The other nurse dropped a few small, plastic squares in his hands, color-coded for the medicines on them. Grant eyes each one as he walked down to the isolation ward, pausing as he reached the elevator. “Seriously? Orange? What the fuck?”

“Degenerative lung disorder. BEFORE she was shot.”

“Yikes,” Grant mumbled.

Both men entered the elevator, Grant still shuffling the cards. “How many active ingredients were in that inhaler?” he asked in surprise, reading off chemical codes he certainly hadn’t seen on his grad school application.

“Something like twenty-eight in the primary, plus two more in the emergency. She carried two.”

“Well, that’ll be fun. How do I look?” Grant asked, holding his arms out.

“She can’t tell,” the other nurse quipped. Grant stared at him.

“Are you dumb?”

“Yeah, that…yeah. Good luck,” the nurse said, holding the door open as Grant walked out, letting the door close behind him. Grant glanced from side to side, taking in the number of guards in the hallway with a shiver of apprehension. No mere beehives these, they were wearing the green, black, and white of Death Guard serfs, several of whom were even wearing the skull masks. As one, they had turned to look at him as he stepped off the elevator, and when they sensed his hesitation, at least a fifth had, completely without hesitation, drawn or gripped sidearms.

Grant shook his head, unlocking his legs. With a glance at the flags on the doors of the relatively widely-spaced rooms, he found his destination. The process was accelerated somewhat by the cluster of doctors outside, some of whom were looking nervously at the Guards. He walked down the hall, both hands on the cards, his mind shifting into professional mode.

The cluster of doctors outside the sitting room were busy arguing amongst themselves when Grant walked up. “No, no, the cloned organ will be safer despite the tissue scarring, specifically BECAUSE the immunosuppression from her first operation is in effect,” one doctor argued, gesturing angrily at the fistful of documents in his hands.

“We agree that cloning it in is the answer, but shouldn’t we ask what SHE wants? Wouldn’t an augmetic lung that has no necrotic damage after a month be more conducive to her standards of living?” another asked with strained patience.

“If Lady Morticia were capable of telling us, she would. In the meantime, a machine is breathing for her. We don’t have time to debate,” the first one said, as Grant slipped by into the waiting room.

That room was full of people too. A pair of Treasury agents and few more Death Guard serfs were lingering near the door, one of them speaking quietly into his collar radio. On the chairs in the center of the room were a few piles of detritus. Clearly, someone had made the room their home. A few piles of get-well-soon cards and other knickknacks were stacked on the end tables of the couches near the walls of the rooms, and…standing next to the observation window was a man in full Power Armor.

Grant pulled his eyes away and walked straight up to the door of the isolation room, grabbing a pair of sterilized covers from the box at the door. Snugging them over his face and hair, he reached for the door handle.

“One moment, sir,” a raspy voice next to him said. Grant turned to see one of the Treasury agents waving a card scanner. “Let me see your ID card.”

The young nurse held out the card, and the Treasury agent swiped the reader over the barcode. Glancing at the little machine, he nodded once. “Go on in.”

“Thanks,” Grant said crisply. Didn’t he have to use his ID to enter the elevator anyway? Pushing the door open, he walked into the little room beyond, looking for his patient.

He didn’t have to look far. Lady Morticia was on the only bed in the room, plugged into about seven different machines, including two respiratory systems and a heart stabilizer. A woman in scrubs, probably a new ICU doctor, was glancing over the readouts from the machines and jotting them down. The Lady herself was out cold, of course. Grant looked sidelong at the chemicals on her IV. Several different sedatives and antibiotics, of course, and one he didn’t recognize. The medicine for her respiratory disease, maybe?

“Doctor. How does she look?” Grant asked, slipping the cards in his scrubs pocket.

“Stable, poor thing,” the doctor said, glancing over her shoulder. “Don’t make eye contact with the man at the window. Lord Mortarion doesn’t like the fact that he can’t come in.”

“L-lord Mortarion?” Grant stammered, his fists clenching in sudden fear.

“Yeah. Didn’t you wonder why there were Death Guard troops in the hallway?” the doctor asked, stepping back from the bed. She slid her dataslate back into its hermetic bag and sealed it. “What do you need here?”

“I was supposed to match her IV contents to the prescription cards,” Grant said, fumbling the cards back out.

“All right, I’ll leave you to it.” The doctor left the room, speaking a few words outside the door to Lord Mortarion, who stirred from his view of the room long enough to respond. Grant glanced over the girl on the table, and gingerly ran his fingers over the IV line.

“Okay…blue, blue, green, blue, white, red, orange. Looks right,” he said aloud, trying to suppress his nerves. He fanned the cards out over the table under the IV, glancing them over. “…Vantercin. Wow.” He looked over at the comatose girl again, shaking his head, and slipped the seven cards into the pocket hanging off the IV tree. “All right, Lady Morticia, be back soon.”

“…mgh,” she murmured faintly. Grant started.

“Lady Morticia?” he asked.

“…ow,” she managed, eyes still shut. Grant’s jaw dropped. He stared at the sedative bag on the tree. It was full. He stepped to her side, his heart pounding. He ran a nitrile-clad finger over her neck below the IV point, and felt her pulse: strong, slow, but very slightly faster than it had been. He stared at the heart rate monitor, to confirm his results. She was waking up.

“Fuck, what are you made of, girl,” he muttered. “There’s enough sedative in your system to put a wrestler in a coma.” He twisted the dial on the IV a bit, carefully tweaking the spigots on the bags to increase the dosage of the sedative alone. Her facial muscles twitched a bit, then slackened as the sedative hit her system. She settled back into the bed, briefly, then cracked her eyes open.

“…wherr am I,” she slurred. Grant’s pulse spiked as he fumbled for an answer.

“Startseite hospital, Lady Morticia. Intensive Care.”

“Whysit bright,” she said.

“Ah, we had the lights on so we could attend the equipment, my Lady.”

“Who…whoshotme,” she mumbled, her gray eyes peeking out from beneath her unkempt hair.

“A sniper. They caught him.” Grant heard a loud tapping on the glass behind him and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw Mortarion glaring at him through the glass. He walked over quickly, pressing the talk button next to the window.

“She’s fine, my Lord, the sedative is just starting to wear off. I’m going to increase the dosage so she can get some sleep,” Grant said quickly.

“She’s awake? She can talk?” Mortarion asked, his throaty rumble shaking the glass.

“Not for long, sir, she’s still very dizzy from the sedatives. Please, let her rest,” Grant said.

“I want to talk to her.”

“Naturally, my Lord, but she’s in no shape for it. She’s still missing a lung.”

Mortarion stared at the young nurse, his jaw flexing. “Fine. Fine. Tell her I’m…I’m here for her.”

“Of course I will, my Lord,” Grant said, backing up with a small bow. He walked back to the girl in the bed, her father’s grey eyes burning into his back. “Lady Morticia, I’m going to increase the dose a bit, so you can grab some sleep. All right?”

“Legs asleep…already,” Morticia, said gamely, trying to lift her head to see her limbs. Her muscles were too slack to allow it, and she sank back into the bed with a groan. “Hard…to talk…”

“Your lung is missing, my Lady, you’re on a respirator,” Grant said, examining the bag. He discreetly pressed the call button next to the bed as he did so.

“Wheredi…get hit…” she managed.

“Straight through the back, my Lady,” Grant said, before a gaggle of doctors burst through the door, rushing over to the bed.

“Grant what the HELL did you do?” one hissed, elbowing the nurse aside, and nearly sending him into the IV tree. At the last second, he managed to grab the metal rail of the bed and stabilize himself. He pulled himself straight up, glaring at the doctor.

“Nothing, SIR. The sedative dose was too small.”

“Whass going on?” Morticia asked, her eyes glassy and unfocussed. The doctors’ voices overlapped each other as they each tried to explain, their hasty declarations ranging from the complex to the patronizingly soothing.

“Enough,” the Head of Surgery declared, her voice slicing through the babble. “Doctor Morgan, increase her dosage and let the Lady sleep.”

“I did already,” Grant said tightly, pointing at the IV tree behind him. A dozen pairs of eyes examined the bags of medicine, confirming the claim. He leaned past the cluster of doctors to look the Death Guard Lady in the eyes. “Madam, your father wants you to know that he’s here for you. OK? He’s at the window, looking over you.”

“Dad?” she asked weakly.

“That’s right. He’s here, all right? And he’ll try to be here when you wake up next, OK?” Grant said, glancing over at the window. Mortarion nodded, confirming Grants’ suspicions about the Primarch’s hearing.

“…okay,” she said weakly, as her eyes slipped back shut. The heart rate monitor slowly spun its rhythm down as the girl drifted back off to sleep.

“Doctors, I would appreciate it if one of you could tell me what just happened,” Mortarion said. The tone in his voice could have frozen magma. The doctors all looked at each other, trying to find a volunteer.

“Her tolerance for the sedative is substantially higher than it was when she first went under, my Lord,” one of them finally said, holding the Talk button down.

“Well, that’s Progenitor biology for you,” Mortarion rumbled. “Now, let her sleep.”

“Of course, my Lord,” the Doctor said, as the group filed out. Grant was last out, closing the door and dimming the lights as he did so. Mortarion waited by the window, his arms crossed.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Her body is adapting to the sedatives we’re using, my Lord,” one of the doctors admitted. “It’s…unnaturally fast. There should be no way-”

“She’s not human, doctor, she is more than human, and I want to know what our options are,” Mortarion interrupted, staring sideways through the glass at his sleeping daughter.

“Few, Lord. A different sedative, perhaps?” the doctor offered. “But we need to decide whether to give her a cloned lung or an augmetic once. Immediately. Or we won’t be able to sedate her during the surgery.”

Mortarion huffed with impatience. “And what do you recommend?”

“I recommend a cloned-in lung, Lord. Much lower chance of rejection,” the doctor said, to which half the room grumbled or shook their heads.

“Then do it.” Mortarion turned back to the room, his superhuman eyes staring at his sleeping daughter for a long moment before he sighed, and sank into a reinforced chair next to the window. “Will she wake up again?”

“I increased her dosage such that she should stay under for another day or so, my Lord, but the dosage she had should have done it too, so…” Grant volunteered, trailing off uncomfortably.

“Fine.” Mortarion rubbed his eyes, weary from the day’s vigil. “…I should be getting home. Let me know if anything changes.”

“Of course,” one of the doctors said, allowing the Power-Armored giant to walk out of the room. A few seconds of silence passed, before the collection of doctors dispersed, some into Morticia’s room to check on her, the rest either following the Death Guard out or heading down the hall to check on other patients.

And unseen by his target, one of the Death Guard serfs who had observed the exchange silently scanned Grant, locking him into memory.

Healing a Wound

Roberta sat with her arms crossed over her knees, staring out over the neatly-trimmed square of grass in front of her father’s mansion. Her vox dangled from her hands, inert. The morning sun was blocked out by the mass of the house, rising behind her. In the dim light, she could just make out the animal lying down in the grass beneath the trees by the road. The little creature had been lying there, without moving much, for an hour. It was alive, clearly. It had been staring at her for a few minutes, then lost interest.

It was small. Maybe the size of a small dog, with mottled brown and white fur, and long, spindly legs. It was lying in the shade of a tree, as if waiting for something. Roberta racked her brain, trying to remember what they were called, but the name eluded her. The little animal was blinking feebly in the dim light, looking around as if waiting for something. Roberta flipped her vox into the air and caught it, and the critter jerked its head over to stare at it, blinking with its blank brown eyes. The bespectacled girl smiled at that. “Didn’t like that? Sorry.”

A faint thumping noise behind her drew her attention. Roberta glanced over her shoulder to see a much larger animal – the mother, maybe – walking across the grass, and stood up, backing out of its way. The larger animal stared at her for a moment, before walking quickly to the infant and nuzzling it. The smaller animal stared at the larger, before wobbling to its legs and meekly following the larger one into the woods.

She watched the animals disappearing into the forest around her house, inexplicably happy. After they faded from view, she flipped her vox open and speed-dialed Six. On the last ring before it kicked over to voicemail, someone picked up. “Hey, Freya,” Roberta said in greeting.

“…ngh,” someone on the other end mumbled.

“Did I catch you at a bad time, or are you always this dead at 0600?”

“Whozzat?” the redhead asked, fighting back a burning headache. Alex stirred in his sleep, but didn’t wake.

“It’s Roberta. How hung-over are you?” Roberta giggled.

“I’m not drunk,” Freya groused. She slid out of bed, wiping cobwebs of sleep from her eyes, trying not to wake her boyfriend up. “What do you want?”

“Get over here. I have something to show you.”

“At six in the morning?” Freya growled, irritation cutting through her sleep fog. “What is it?”

“But, see, if I told you, you wouldn’t have anything to be mad over when you get here,” Roberta said cheerfully.

“…Fine. Fuck.” Freya said, hanging up. She dropped the phone on her bed and pulled some clothes on, glancing at herself in the mirror to make sure she was presentable. Deciding that she was, she walked back to the bed, leaning over her boyfriend. “Hey, sleepyhead. Be back later, OK?” she whispered, nipping his ear with her fang.

“Mmm,” he said faintly, not waking up. Freya silently grabbed the cup full of ash and put it in the sink of her bathroom, running it under the water until the cup was clear. Satisfied that it was clean, she tiptoed out the door, heading for her own car.

Roberta leaned against the façade of her father’s garage, waiting as Freya’s car pulled through the Treasury line. As soon as she clambered out, she stomped on over to her cousin, anger written all over her face. “What?” she demanded as soon as she was in earshot.

“You’re so lucky that the paparazzi are afraid to come here right now,” Roberta said, holding in a laugh with some effort.

Freya snarled under her breath, baring one canine. “What?!”

“Did Alex wear a button-down shirt last night?” Roberta said, struggling through a smirk.

Freya started, and slowly glanced down her front. She was wearing her boyfriends’ shirt.

With a muffled “eep!” of modesty, she grabbed the collar and hem, pulling them shut, but Roberta was already laughing. “It’s OK, it’s OK, you got…a few buttons,” she managed, trying to keep her face straight.

“Fucking…boyshirts…” Freya mumbled, buttoning the few stray buttons shut. “Fine, I’m here, I’m embarrassed. Now what?”

“Come with me,” Roberta instructed, all business now. She turned and walked away, heading alongside the house. Freya stomped after her, silently daring one of the Treasury agents or Ultramarine Auxilia to stare at her too long. It was only when they were nearly all the way to the small, wooded area behind the house that Freya noticed that they weren’t going in.

“You wanted to show me something out here?” she asked snippily.

“Fear not,” Roberta said, pausing when they reached the edge of the woods. The line between the carefully-groomed grass and the bare dirt beneath the trees was so fine it could have been cut with a razor.

“Okay. Now we need to be quiet,” Roberta said, holding a finger to her lips. She kicked off her sandals, walking barefoot into the woods. Freya stared.

“What?”

“Shh!” Roberta exclaimed, glaring back over her shoulder. Freya blinked, but kept her lips sealed, curiosity overcoming resentment.

She slid her own flip-flops off, padding silently into the woods after her cousin. “I found them this morning,” Roberta whispered, so faint it wasn’t even audible, had normal humans been listening. Freya, of course, could hear perfectly. “It’s just one and the mother.” She slowed until she was barely moving, walking on the edges of her feet, so the shifting of her weight wouldn’t give her away. She stopped completely at the edge of a small clearing in the wooded area, pointing in silence.

Freya moved up behind her, peering over her shoulder. The baby animal from before was wobbling back and forth in the clearing, getting a feel for its legs. The mother was lying down on her stomach, legs tucked away underneath her body, watching her offspring carefully.

Roberta allowed herself a few seconds to watch, before turning to Freya with a smug grin. Her Space Wolf cousin was entranced. Freya took a few silent steps forward, her eyes locked on the display. She cast her eyes over the scene, taking in every detail, watching as the little animal learned how to use its legs.

Very slowly, she turned to face her cousin, who nodded once, a knowing grin on her face. “They’re adorable!” Freya whispered, glee raising the pitch of her voice. Roberta beamed.

“Enjoy,” she mouthed, leaning back against the tree next to her, settling in for a wait.

Freya rolled her sleeves up to her elbows and melted into the shadows of the wooded stretch. Lord Guilliman had only insisted that it be there because he knew it would be a rarity on the urban world of Terra, and scarcity creates value. Roberta watched her cousin silently move around the clearing, until she actually lost sight of her. How her red-headed cousin could vanish in non-camouflage clothing was beyond her, but she did, leaning low to the ground and disappearing into the shadows. Roberta cleaned her glasses with the hem of her shirt and stared, but no – she was gone.

Roberta’s eyes drifted back to the animals in the clearing – deer, that’s what they’re called, she suddenly remembered – and stared. Neither the mother nor the baby had noticed them, somehow. The mother was clearly just resting, and watching the infant patiently, and the baby was just figuring out what knees were for. She watched them both, unmoving, wondering how long it would take Freya to…

There. A tiny shift of a branch, to the side of the clearing. Both deer turned to look at it, staring with bovine eyes. The branch wasn’t moving with the wind at all. Roberta strained her eyes, trying to spot Freya in the brush. She leaned forward a hair, squinting through the morning glare. Was that her behind the branch itself?

Nope. With a suddenness all the more abrupt for its total silence, Freya slunk out from the completely opposite side of the clearing, and dropped onto her haunches, staring at the infant deer from less than five feet away. Roberta shook her head. How the FUCK does she do that? she wondered in silence.

Freya stood still, leaning back on her bare ankles, staring at the deer with a feral intensity that belied her usual, goofy demeanor. The baby deer turned back to its wobblings, but froze when its saw the girl, its little black nose twitching. The mother turned back and rose to its feet in an instant, staring at Freya, clearly wondering what to do. Freya kept still, her eyes locked on the scene, as the baby took a wobbling step towards her, sniffing the air. The mother walked over, tilting its head down behind the infant’s head, stopping it short. Both deer froze, watching Freya sit there, unmoving. Finally, the mother herded the baby to the edge of the clearing, nudging it into the woods, to find some other place to practice.

Freya gave them a ten-count before standing with a *pop* from her knees and brushing the leaves off her hands. Roberta straightened up and walked over to her, listening to the deer move through the underbrush. Freya turned to her with a radiant grin, her fangs glinting in the sun. “That…was awesome. Thanks, Roberta, I really needed that.”

Roberta nodded sagely. “I bet. Now, go return Alex’s shirt.”

“Oh my god, I hate you,” Freya giggled, tugging the sleeves back down. Both girls trudged back to the edge of the woods, pausing to pick up their shoes. “But really, call me again if they come back, I could use some exercise.”

“Or a snack,” Roberta quipped.

“I’m not Dad,” Freya said primly. She slid her sandals back on and dug her keys out, walking back to her car. “Hey, though, if you want to come over later, we should make sort of thing to send to the hospital.”

“Oh, yeah, good call,” Roberta said. “Uh, I’ll see who’s available and we can congregate somewhere. Where do you want to do it?” “Uh, Farah’s if we can,” Freya said, pausing in the door of her car. “If not, I can host.”

“Sure. I’ll call you,” Roberta said, waving goodbye and stepping back to let the air car lift off. Freya peeled off, flying under the Treasury line, heading for her own house. Only a few minutes passed before the mansion’s fence resolved in the distance, and Freya soared over it, her car’s IFF passing the Treasury sensors automatically. She pulled up in the garage annexed onto the house, blowing past the pair of Space Wolves serfs at the door into the house with a cursory wave. Her father wasn’t present, it seemed; the house was empty. She marched straight up the stairs and back into her room, stopping at the bedside to stare down at Alex’s still-sleeping form under the covers. With a huff of impatience, she closed and locked the door, and hastily pulled her sandals and pants back off, leaving her borrowed shirt unbuttoned. Finally, Alex stirred in his sleep, screwing his eyes shut against the light.

“Mph. ‘Morning,” he mumbled, shielding his eyes.

“Wakey wakey,” Freya said, her voice low and intense. Perhaps sensing danger, Alex’s eyes flew open, catching an eyeful of Freya, now naked save for his own shirt, leaning over him.

“Uh, hi. Where did you go this morning?” he asked.

“Roberta wanted to show me something. Good thing she did, too,” she said, her eyes traveling up and down Alex’s silhouette under the covers.

“Really? Why’s that?” Alex asked with distinct nervousness, propping himself up on one elbow.

Freya swept his arm out from under him and half-rolled onto the bed on top of him, vigorously pulling the covers out of the way. “Well,” she said thickly, emotion and hunger pushing through her voice, “it left me feeling a little primal.” She grabbed his wrist and held it over his head, pulling him into a vigorous kiss, sinking the fingers on her free hand into the flesh of his shoulder. He instinctively pulled back before he realized what was happening through his sleep-induced fuzziness, sliding his own free hand down her back to her waist and pulling her in. “Good idea,” she whispered roughly, wrapping both legs around his. “Now, let’s see you follow through…”

Her hair was in her eyes again. Farah tugged her headband loose and brushed the offending lock of platinum blonde aside before retying it. Her metal hands felt uncomfortably hot to the skin of her forehead, and she sank them into the bucket of water next to the little forge in her basement. Her father glanced over from his own station, which featured a microsolderer instead of a heating element today. “Careful, Farah.”

“Yeah, I know, Dad,” Farah muttered. “Do you need coil?”

“No, I have one.” Ferrus paused his work to look harder at what his daughter was crafting. “What exactly are you working on over there?”

“A present for Morticia,” Farah said. She gestured at a cooling block of metal on the table next to her. “I already made one for Kelly.”

“I see. What do you have in mind?” Ferrus asked.

“Well, for Morticia, I thought I’d just do something like…this,” she said, pressing a tiny line of copper against the semi-molten steel in her hands. “A little get-well.”

Ferrus stared. “…Is that an embossed inhaler cozy?” he asked after a moment’s scrutiny.

“Maaaybe,” Farah said coyly, gently kneading the copper coil around the outside of the metal case.

“If she has a sense of irony, she’ll love it,” Ferrus said dryly.

The wall-mount vox over his station beeped. Glancing down to see if his hands were anywhere near cool enough to answer – they weren’t – he called aloud. “Answer.” Waiting a moment for the speakerphone to turn on, he then called out again. “Hello?”

“Hello, Uncle Ferrus, it’s Roberta.”

“Ah, hello, Roberta.” Ferrus held his hands away from the heating element, letting the extra heat bleed out of his hands. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine, but I was wondering if a few of us could come over this afternoon and make a get-well-soon present for Morticia,” Roberta said.

Farah smirked at the speakerphone. “Way ahead of you.”

“Farah? Hi! Did you buy something already?”

“A Manus ‘buy.’ ‘Buy’ something. Oh, ho ho ho ho, no,” Farah said, shaking her finger at the vox speaker in scolding. Her father slowly turned to face her in his seat, eyebrows raised. “I made her an inhaler cozy, out of two solid pieces of steel.”

Roberta burst into laughter, eliciting a proud smirk from Farah. “Oh my god I love it,” Roberta managed through peals of laughter. “That’s awesome.”

“I think so,” Farah said happily, turning back to her work. “And for Kelly, I made a little backpack token, since she likes the one Cora has.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, good call. I forgot…OK. Well, when will it be done?”

“I already made the one for Kelly. I’ll be done with the one for Morticia in maybe…ten minutes?” she guessed.

“Awesome, just in time for me to drive over and take credit for it!” Roberta declared.

“Uh huh, sure, Morticia totally won’t wonder when you learned metalworking,” Farah deadpanned.

“Foiled again.” Roberta thought for a moment. “Hmm, so should the rest of us make something too?”

“No, you can sign this if you want. I tried to get a hold of you earlier, actually. Should we just hand it over to them when we meet at the hospital Saturday morning?”

“Sure. Will she be awake by then?” Roberta asked, penciling down the information.

“No,” Farah replied sadly.

Morticia blinked against the harsh glare of the operating room lights, lucidity fighting past her chemical stupor. A pair of doctors in full-body clean suits were standing in the corner of the room, arguing over their closed-circuit feed. Several more doctors and a nurse in the same outfit were cleaning up too, running tools under sterilizers in the edge of the room. Two medical orderlies were doing something under her table, probably preparing it to be moved back into her room.

She tried to speak. All she managed instead was a thin gasp. Instantly, every single head in the room snapped to her, and about fifteen pairs of hands reached for the valves on the IV drip in her arm. The world swam back out of focus, and she sank back into oblivion.

Seconds passed, and suddenly she was wide awake, with a feeling like spiders under her skin crawling up and down her hands and feet. Still, she could feel her feet, that was an improvement. Her vision darkened, but this time it wasn’t drugs causing it. Her father leaned over her, his grey eyes wide. “Morticia?” he asked, his voice muffled.

“Dad?” she asked weakly. His eyes slid shut, and he grabbed her hand, with a gentleness that put a lie to his horrifying appearance.

“You’re OK, sweetheart. You’ll be all right.”

“Morticia?” another voice asked. Kelly’s distinctive hair blotted out another light as she leaned in. “Oh…my god, you’re OK,” she said, tears leaking out of her eyes. She sank down next to her bed-ridden cousin, sobbing. “I was…” she struggled to swallow. “I was so scared.”

“That was pretty scary,” another voice said, one she didn’t recognize. An arm reached across her and gently tugged a clear plastic tube from under from Kelly’s hands.

“Ah, sorry,” Kelly sniffled, hastily shifting her arm away before she could pull the IV out.

The strange voice came back, and Morticia placed it as one of the doctors she had spoken to last time she had woken up. “I’ll be in the hall if you need me, sir.” Mortarion nodded curtly, and the voice and its matching arm disappeared.

“Daddy…” Morticia struggled to lift one arm. “How…how long have I been out?”

“It’s Saturday the ninth, so six days.” Mortarion fought back a tide of anger that was starting to wash in around the edge of his voice. “They caught the guy who did it to you, Morticia.”

“Did you or…uncle Konrad…get to him first?” Morticia asked.

“The Treasury,” Kelly said bitterly.

“Oh…damn,” Morticia said. She flexed her fingers experimentally. “Where…did I get hit?”

“Back. Right through the lung,” Mortarion said, the anger pulling at him again. How DARE some common filth do this to his daughter?

“Then why…is the air so light?” Morticia asked, gingerly shifting herself up on the bed. A lance of agony shot through her back as she did so, and she decided against it.

“You have a new lung. They cloned it in to replace the old one,” Mortarion explained.

“So…no scarring. Right.” Morticia smiled weakly, like a ray of sun peeking around a cloud’s edge. “I should enjoy that while it lasts.”

Kelly managed a tiny smile. Morticia focused on her for a moment. “Are you..okay?”

“I’m…” Kelly struggled to say yes. “No, I’m not. I was so scared…” She screwed her eyes shut, wiping at them with one hand. “I’m a wreck. I haven’t slept in days.”

“Sorry I scared you,” Morticia said apologetically. Mortarion visibly winced.

“Not your fault. God, nobody’s blaming you,” Kelly said immediately. “I just…I was sitting there, and you just fell…” Kelly buried her head in her hands and gasped, sobs of relief and loathing ripping her carefully-constructed emotional façade apart. “…Sorry, sorry, I’m…”

“Hey!” a voice that was far too loud suddenly interrupted. Mortarion nearly jumped. “Look who’s up!” Remilia’s face suddenly appeared next to Kelly’s. Kelly quickly dried her eyes, leaning back from her cousin’s bed. Morticia tried to sit up a bit more, and her father slid his had gingerly behind her back, helping her sit without aggravating the incisions. “You’re looking better!” Remilia said cheerfully.

“You’re lying to me on my recovery bed?” Morticia asked, smiling wearily.

“Yep! But it’s good to see you sitting up and taking notice,” Remilia said, squeezing her free hand. Mortarian sat back a bit and watched as the rest of the Royal daughters filed in, most either carrying flowers or something similar, save Hana and Farah, both of whom were acting rather secretive.

“Hey, there she is!” Isis said, crossing the room under the watchful eye of several Death Guard serfs. “How the hell are you?”

“Exhausted and sore,” Morticia responded, cheering up at the sight of her cousins. “I’m glad you could all make it.”

“Like we wouldn’t?” Angela noted. “Although I don’t know how long we can stay…”

“I would advise that you not stay more than an hour at most, my Lady,” the doctor noted from the hall, where he was hovering impatiently.

“Then, I should do this now,” Farah announced importantly. She leaned forward and presented the box in her hands with a flourish. “Just in case,” she started, enjoying the spotlight. “Should the worst come to pass yet again, you see.”

Morticia blinked. “What?” She took the box and pulled the lid off, wondering what could make Farah so giddy. She pulled a piece of metal out of the container and stared at it. “Is this…is this an armored inhaler cozy?”

“It IS!” Farah said proudly, as at least a third of the other girls sighed, giggled, or just stared.

Morticia stared at Farah’s radiant smile, until a slight, pained giggle forced itself out. She doubled over in the bed, flinching. “Ow, it hurts to laugh.” Mortarion helped her settle back against the pillow, and she ruefully shook her head. “Thanks, Farah. That made my day.”

“So glad you like it,” Farah said happily. The other girls clustered around the bed, just chatting with her and getting her caught up on the world outside the hospital, until all too soon, the hour was up. The doctor poked his head in, tapping a phantom wristwatch.

“Ladies, I think Morticia needs her sleep now,” Mortarion said, eliciting a few grumbles, but no complaint. One by one they said their goodbyes, filing out until only Kelly and Morticia herself were left. Before she walked out, though, Hana paused.

“Hey, Kelly. This one’s for you,” she said, leaving it on the table by the door.

“Oh. Uh…thanks,” Kelly said, managing a wave as her cousin shut the door behind her. Morticia sunk back into the pillows, letting the exhaustion of her ordeal show. The doctor opened the door, pushing in a small handcart of IV bags, and moved over to the tree, carefully checking the cards on the lines. Mortarion watched him for a while, weighing his words. He hadn’t let his simmering rage show in front of his nieces – most wouldn’t have understood – but he knew Kelly would.

“Morticia…I want you to understand…I wish I could have stopped this,” he started.

“Of course you do, Dad,” Morticia said wistfully.

“Right. But…” his hands tightened on the metal bar on the side of the bed with an audible squeak. “…I wish I’d been the one to find him,” he finished, his voice darkening. The doctor shivered and hastily finished his work, leaving the room with all due decorum.

“Dad, if he was caught, he’ll hang. I’m sure of it,” Morticia said.

“No, he won’t. Lord Hane said he’ll get seventeen years at the most,” Mortarion growled.

“…Really?” Mortician asked, her grey eyes widening in surprise.

“I wasn’t sure how to tell-”

“The fucker was shooting into the crowd,” Kelly said, her own rage bursting forth. “He was just shooting at RANDOM!”

Morticia paled further. “He wasn’t…h-he wasn’t aiming for me?”

“He was making a political statement,” Mortarion said bitterly. “And you were just the first one in the line of fire.”

“Why? Why, why, why would he…” Morticia ran her hands over her eyes, dazed. “Why did he do it?”

“Good question,” Mortarion answered, his lips twisting into a bitter grimace. “Lord Hane’s answer is…unsatisfactory.”

A Bitter Pill to Swallow

The Emperor set the dataslate that Hane had placed before him down, seething. “They’re a CULT?” he snapped.

“No, my Liege, he’s no cultist, not at all, but his fixation does explain his reaction to the news that he had shot your granddaughter and not some random stranger.” The counselor fidgeted a bit under his master’s angry stare. “I can’t admit complete surprise. He seemed to be more than just distraught when he learned the truth. He was devastated. Appalled.”

“And this…Honors Union,” the Emperor said, glancing back down to the dataslate, “they’re responsible for indoctrinating him?”

“Apparently not, Sire. The organization distributes mutancy testing kits in the underhives, they’re not a doctrinal group.” Hane sighed, wondering about the best phrasing. “The problem lies in the fact that Keiter is convinced, absolutely convinced, that the rich and the mutants are more than just problematic for humanity, they’re actively holding it back from your ideal.”

“My ‘ideal’ involves leaving matters of corruption and disease to the police and doctors,” the Emperor said with a frigid wrath, which he then immediately blunted. “I apologize. Do not interpret this as a slight against you, Arthur. But this…this can not stand.”

Hane nodded. “I agree, my Liege. However…the fact that he worships you is not something I can charge him for.”

“I have purged WORLDS for that crime, Hane,” the Emperor said sharply. “I think, if you look hard enough, you can find a statute that applies.”

The lawyer felt the blood drain from his knuckles. “I will…search, my Liege.”

“Yes. Find me something. Let me know what you uncover,” the Emperor said, dismissing his counselor with a wave of his hand.

Jake looked up from the magazine he was reading at the end of the isolation hall as he heard the Royal Daughters returning. With one, final, acid glare at the beehives that had prevented him from staying with them when they went to see Morticia – and a warning glance at the other well-wishers that had accompanied him – he dropped the magazine and stood up. “Hey. How is she feeling?” he asked as soon as Venus was in earshot.

“She’s awake, and she’s going to be OK,” Venus said, offering him a quick hug. The other boyfriends and non-Royal visitors stood too, and the hallway filled with the sounds of the Daughters delivering their reports.

“Any idea when she’ll be out?” James asked the crowd.

“Nope. She has a long way to go,” Farah said ruefully. “She liked the cozy, at least.”

James chuckled. “Good. Did Kelly like her pendant?”

“I gave it to her, but it was right at the end,” Hana put in. “I’m sure she will, though.”

“Good.” Farah looked around at the crowd of people at the end of the hall. “Maybe we should get going. This is pretty crowded for a hospital.”

“I agree,” Isis said. “I’m heading back to the Palace. I want to go tell Grandfather the news. Who else is in?”

“I’ll tag along,” Remilia said, and a few others in the group nodded or murmured their assent.

Hana followed her security detail’s leader out of the hospital’s vehicle annex to the waiting motorcade, shielding her eyes against the blinding light reflecting off the windows of the office building across the street. The Treasury agent ahead of her opened the door to the aircar in which she had arrived, glancing over the sea of reporters for any potential troublemakers. She climbed in and tapped the glass at the front of the cabin. “Driver, head for the Palace instead of home, please. Dock Forty.”

“Yes, madam,” the driver said, changing his autopilot’s route. The cars lifted, some peeling off to return to the noble district, most heading to the Palace. Hana settled back in the seat, watching the screen in the side of the compartment. It looked like yet another biography in brief of Morticia.

“Can you believe this shit?” Andrew muttered, staring at the news reports on the holoscreen as well. “It’s a farce.”

“What is? The fact that so much of it is wrong, or that fact that it exists at all?” Hana asked.

“Yes.”

The new channel was blathering on about the shooter, and simultaneously claiming not to be relaying speculation while wildly speculating on his motives. Andrew watched in silence for a few minutes before cutting the Head off. “Load a’ crap.”

“I wonder if Morticia will give an interview,” Hana mused.

“Maybe. She’s not ready, I don’t think,” Andrew said, “from what you told me.”

The Emperor stood in front of the array of holoscreens in his public office, watching the same news feeds as his granddaughter. The talking heads were going into a biopic about Morticia again, and displaying interviews with people in the hives, asking what their reactions were.

The Emperor sighed and rubbed his hands together. The feedback from the people was disappointingly banal. He had the feeling that negative reactions and ignorant responses had been pruned from the footage. “The Lady remains stable, and the spokesman for Startseite Hospital has refused all comment.”

“As well he bloody well should,” the Emperor muttered, turning back to his desk.

“As has the Royal Family,” the Head concluded. The Emperor paused, looking back to the screen with his eyebrows raised. He hadn’t been contacted for comment yet, save in the immediate aftermath of the arrest of the sniper. Had Mortarion and Konrad refused comment as well? That was unlike them.

“So far, the Arbites and the Administratum have refused to release any notice of the shooter’s motive-”

The Emperor cut the feed with a gesture, clasping his hands behind his back and thinking the news over. After a moment’s contemplation, he reached for his vox panel, and was moments from dialing Curze’s number when it beeped.

“Answer,” he said, sitting back down at the desk.

“Hello, Grandpa,” Isis’s voice said from the speaker.

“Hello, Isis. What can I do for you?” the Emperor asked.

“Well, we’re coming back from seeing Morticia; I thought you might want to hear the good news in person.”

“I appreciate that, Isis, but I’m afraid I must decline,” her grandfather replied. “I have a meeting in fifteen minutes that I can’t postpone.”

“Oh.” Isis paused for a moment, then forced a laugh. “I…probably should have called ahead. Well. Anyway, she’s awake, and she’s feeling a lot better.”

“That’s a relief,” the Emperor, who had been so informed by the hospital staff over an hour before, replied.

“I think, if you don’t mind, we’ll come back to the Palace anyway and just…be here, for a while, anyway,” Isis said. “We haven’t had the chance to see each other much since…you know.”

“You never need my permission to come over, Isis, make yourself at home,” the Emperor replied, looking over the surface radar feed and noting the approach of the motorcade. “I’ll try to come by an greet you if I can get away.”

“Thanks, Grandpa. Bye,” Isis said, hanging up.

“No joy on the burn?” Julius offered, glancing up at Isis from his seat. Alone amongst the ‘consorts,’ he might – might – have been able to get into the Palace on his own, since he was the son of the greatest living mortal warrior in the galaxy. That the public knew about, anyway.

“No, he’ll be busy.” Isis slipped the vox back into her pocket, leaning back on the leather seat. “Still, we can hang out at the Palace for a while. It’s been too long since we got to just…be together, without a cluster of Treasury agents hanging over us.”

“They already caught the fucker, why are they keeping security in place?” Julius asked.

Isis shrugged, shifting her blond hair over her shoulders. “They don’t know he was acting alone.”

“I guess.” Julius was quiet for a second, and watched the lights of the hives below vanish into the white and gold of the Palace. “That kind of uncertainty…it’s a long way from fun.”

“No kidding.” Isis reached over and grabbed a drink from the refrigerated console in the console, flipping the cap into the trash with a practiced flick. “Well, once we get there, I think we should ask Dad if we can lower the Treasury screens a bit, he should be there.”

“Will he do it?” Julius asked, waving off his own bottle.

“Nope, but I can ask.” The sky darkened a bit as the aircars descended into the shadows of a tower at the edge of the continent-spanning Palace.

The cars landed in the cavernous space of a VIP bay, and several ranks of Treasury and Arbites personnel – and a brace of Custodes – assembled in rank before the vehicles. As the passengers climbed out, Jake stared at the golden-armored Custodes with undisguised fear, but Isis simply walked straight up to them.

What a sight she made. The casually-dressed teenager, complete with shoulder-length blond hair and calf boots, needed nod and salute once to dismiss a rank of soldiers and bodyguards, one of whom was easily two thousand years old. The other girls and passengers walked up behind her, with her cousins looking like nothing of significance had happened and their companions looking awestruck.

“I’ve never been in this part of the Palace,” Jake said with wide-eyed amazement.

“I’ve only been here once or twice myself,” Venus said. “Isis used to live here, though. More or less. Rarely left.”

Isis must have overheard them, because she fell back from the front of the little troupe and slowed next to Jake. “If you want to know something about the Palace, Jake, I’d be happy to answer,” she said, smiling reassuringly.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Jake admitted, looking around the hangar as the procession entered a corridor. “You used to live here?”

“Not literally. Father did, for a period of about three years. I came over every day,” Isis said. “I was in the VIP wing most of the time, of course, there’s only room in the Residence for the Emperor himself.”

“I’ve only ever been to one of the rooftop gardens and the museum,” Jake said.

“The gardens are nice. Uncle Rogal designed them himself,” Isis said. “What did you think of the museum?”

“Incredible. It had more room in the bathroom than my entire apartment does,” Jake said. Isis was quiet for a moment.

“Right. Hiver. I forgot.” Jake quirked an eyebrow, but he knew she hadn’t meant it to be insulting. “Anyway. I think you’ll like the place we’re going.”

“What is it?” Jake asked. The décor of the rooms around them was growing steadily more grandiose, he noted.

“The closest thing the Palace has to a modest room,” Isis said dryly. Angela, now in the lead, turned from the main hall into a side corridor, and immediately turned again to enter a nearly-hidden door. Jake followed her through, curious, and his jaw dropped. The room beyond was so far from ‘modest’ that it was honestly a little ostentatious to his taste. The room looked out over the hivescape beyond, and was filled with luxurious leather chairs, glass tables, and, on the far side, what sure looked like a bar. A servitor slot next to the glassy table hung open, with nothing inside.

“Is this a…nightclub?” Jake asked.

“Hah! It may as well be. It’s a lounge for visiting Overlords,” Isis said, walking up the bar and looking expectant.

“Yet it’s empty,” Jake observed, sitting down next to her.

“Well, there’s several,” Isis said, glancing side to side.

Remilia ignored the exchange, sinking down into a couch by the end of the spacious room. The other girls dispersed around the room, but she disregarded them completely. The zipper of her loose-fitting jacket snagged on the edge of a cushion, and she tugged it free, glaring at the carpet. Freya noticed and wandered over. “Hey. You OK?”

“Just a little upset that we can be here while Morticia and Kelly are off in the hospital,” Remilia said evasively. “Kelly?” Freya asked.

“Didn’t you hear?” Remilia asked, consciously avoiding her cousin’s gaze. “She checked in for psychological counseling yesterday.” Freya was quiet for a long minute. “Kelly’s just trying to get her problem solved.” She crossed her arms and stared down at Remilia, who finally met Freya’s gaze. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Remilia grumbled. Freya sighed faintly. She sat down next to Remilia and searched her face with her inhuman eyes. “You’re hurting too, Remilia,” she said softly.

“Damn it, furball, I don’t need a mother right now,” Remilia hissed under her breath.

Freya’s eyes narrowed. Remilia felt remorse tug her heart, and sighed again, grinding her hand over her eyes. “Sorry…I didn’t mean…”

“Yes you did.” Freya’s statement wasn’t a question.

Remilia’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Freya.” Freya’s stare drifted pointedly down Remilia’s arms, and she flinched in sudden self-consciousness. “…Can’t keep anything from you.”

Anger and confusion leaked into Freya’s voice. “Why do you do it?” she asked.

“Once. I did it once,” Remilia said, anger starting to color her voice too. “And it’s none of your damn business.” Freya looked away for a moment, then looked back, sadness etched onto her face. “…And don’t give me the puppy eyes.”

“Remilia…fine. If you don’t want to tell me, fine.” Freya reached over and squeezed her cousin’s shoulder. “But it hurts to see you do that.” Her fingers tightened their grip. “So knock it off.”

“How…” Remilia seethed. “How can you even say…fine. Whatever. I’ll stop,” she said, completely done with the discussion.

Freya nodded, apparently willing to drop it too. She wrapped her arm around her cousin’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Remilia grumbled.

A Meeting

The other occupants of the room – who were largely ignoring the heart-to-heart in the corner – were distracted by the door behind the bar suddenly opening. A man in a neatly-pressed white suit walked out, taking in the room in a moment. His wrinkled face split with a smile the moment he saw the Daughters. “Girls! Been too long!”

“Al!” Angela proclaimed happily. The others wandered over to the glassy bar, exchanging greetings with the bartender, who knew them all by name. The other guests exchanged confused looks. “It has been too long.”

“Hasn’t it? Let me see,” he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I’m going to guess most of you are too young to be drinking still…”

“Ah, but today we have something to celebrate!” Isis declared cheerfully. “Morticia woke up today. She’s gonna be all right.”

“Ah! Then we do indeed have a reason to celebrate.” The barkeep reached under the counter and pulled out a double armful of long-neck bottles, each filled with something bright orange. “On the house,” he declared, handing them out.

“It’s an open bar,” Roberta said, continuing their ancient joke.

“Really?” the barkeep asked pensively. “Don’t tell the Ambassador that, he didn’t know.” The girls dutifully laughed.

Venus plopped down in a chair by the window and looked out over the expanse of gold and white. The pseudoweather was turning grim, she noticed. The sky was darkening rapidly. Andrew grabbed a soda from the counter and wandered over, sitting down across from her. “Hey, Venus.”

The Forgefather’s daughter turned her eyes to him. “Hi, Andrew.”

“How did Morticia seem to you?” he asked, popping the cap on his soda.

“Happier than I expected. I don’t think she really knew what was happening,” Venus said, twisting her own cap off.

“Yeah. I wish I had gotten to see her,” Andrew said, glancing out the window. “Hell of a view.”

“I love it here.” Venus took a long drink of her soda, rolling the cap between her fingers. “How have you been, anyway? It’s been two years since we had a class together.”

“Pretty well, actually,” Andrew said. “Thinking about joining the Army after I get out of school.”

“Really?” Venus asked. “Wow. That’s interesting. Officer candidacy or enlisting?”

“Thinking I might go for enlisting, then work my way into the Warrant program. Field Artillery,” Andrew said. Hana dropped down next to him on the couch.

“Who knows, we might even get stationed together,” Hana said with a laugh.

“You’re joining the military?” Venus asked in surprise.

“It was a joke,” Hana laughed.

“Oh.” Venus breathed a sigh of completely un-feigned relief. “Okay.” Jake flipped his bottlecap into the trash and stood next to the window, looking out over the vista. He lifted his hands to shield his hiver eyes from the blinding glare of the sun off the white rock walls. Andrew tapped him on the shoulder. When Jake glanced back, Andrew proffered up his sunglasses, with Jake took with gratitude.

“Thanks, man. How do you people live up here? It’s so goddamned bright.”

“You just sort of get used to it,” Andrew shrugged.

“I can’t see that happening without ample practice,” Jake said, looking out over the streams of distant traffic.

The bartender swept the discarded caps off of the counter into a bin, then looked around the room. A pair of Treasury guards and a Custodian were visibly patrolling outside the room, but nobody else was coming or going. Al caught Isis’ eye and beckoned her over. “So, what else can I do for you? And how late can you stay?”

“Not long, sadly,” Isis replied ruefully. “But I wanted to give the good news to Grand…the Emperor in person.”

“Well, I’m sure he would have been happy to see you, Isis,” Al said. “Where are the rest of your cousins?”

“Oh, they had other places to be, I guess,” she replied with a shrug.

The Emperor clicked the holoscreens of his office off with a sigh of disappointment. So, the Rogue Traders Coalition weren’t willing to play ball. How unfortunate for their Senator.

After a moment’s deliberation, he clicked the holos back on. From memory, he dialed a secure line to Mortarion’s home, wondering is he would be there or the hospital. The line was picked up on the first ring. “Lord Mortarion’s residence,” the voice on the other side began.

“Is the Lord in?” the Emperor asked. The man on the other end must have recognized his voice.

“Indeed not, my Liege. He remains at his daughter’s side for now,” the butler said humbly.

“Thank you,” the Emperor said, hanging up and sighing again. He pushed himself up from his desk, walking over to the wall of monitors, switching them over to the security camera feeds. He cycled through them until he reached the wing where he had sensed Isis and her sisters – he could never think of them as cousins – arrive, passengers in tow.

As he watched, they dispersed throughout one of his dignitaries’ lounges, chatting amongst themselves. It seemed Isis had a bit of a breather on her mind.

Angela looked up from her drink and stared at the door of the lounge for a moment, a smile playing around her lips. Michael leaned over and raised an eyebrow. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” Angela said happily. She turned back to face the room, taking a quick headcount. Twelve of the Royal daughters remained, and about half again that many guests. Just enough for an audience. Isis caught her eye and smiled, clearly divining the reason for her cousin’s sudden good mood. She stood and stretched luxuriously, wandering over to the window where Jake and Andrew were still discussing the merits of in- and out-hive living.

“Hey,” she said, clapping both men on the shoulder and leaning between them. “So what do you two think of home-away-from-home?”

“It’s awesome,” Andrew replied. “Now all it needs is a water park and I’m set.”

“In a word?” Jake said carefully. “Profligate. I can’t imagine His Excellency actually needing this much room in his Palace.” “This Palace houses over six billion members of the Administratum, you know,” Isis pointed out. “And a museum, two full garrisons of Custodes, and a guest wing or nine.”

“And I think the Emperor gets to put as many rooms in the place as he wants,” Angela put in from the door, watching a faint glow in the hallway grow brighter.

“Naturally.” Jake took a long drag on his orange soda, staring out over the endless expanse of gold and white. “Still.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I must sound like a broken vox right now. I like it here.”

The Emperor paused at the door. The bartender spotted him and genuflected deeply, balancing a few empty bottles in his hands. Angela had known he was coming, and she was beaming a grin at him from the bar. Several of the other Daughters had also seen him and immediately moved in to say hello. The rest of the room’s occupants seemed to become aware one-by-one, with reactions of varying degrees of humor.

“My liege, welcome!” Al said, rising from his bow. “How my I serve you?” At that, the rest of the people in the room turned around, and the air pressure dropped a few PSI as they inhaled as one.

“Not at all, thank you,” the Emperor said politely, moving over to where Angela was still sitting, acknowledging his other guests and relatives on the way, with the same patient smile he had used for the last four thousand years. “Angela. How are you feeling?”

“A lot better, this far from the hives,” she admitted, rubbing her forehead. “Yourself?”

“I am well. Your uncle Mortarion isn’t picking up the vox, however,” he said, leaning on the bar.

“Can you blame him?” Angela asked.

“No.” The Emperor glanced over the cluster of ‘Royal’ boyfriends and hangers-on that had congregated near the window. “And who might my other guests be?”

“Ah. In order, Alex, Andrew, Jake, Michael, Aaron, James, Pietro, and Adam,” she said, pointing each one out in order. “Over there, Julius and Kevin.” She then identified the four or five students from their school who had accompanied them.

“Gentlemen,” the Emperor said, inclining his head a few degrees. “Welcome.”

“Sire,” Julius, who had met the Emperor several times, replied on their behalf, to a chorus of assent and nodding heads.

Isis walked back over to where her grandfather was standing. “I guess you must have heard from the hospital by now, but I wanted to let you know in person. Morticia will be all right, the lung took.”

“Excellent,” the Emperor said, allowing himself a smile. “I hope she’s in high spirits, inasmuch as she can be?”

“Yeah, from what we saw,” Isis said. Jake and few of the other guests were shifting a bit, wondering if it would be poor decorum to sit down. Julius noticed and sat back down on the nearest couch, and the others took their cues. “It’s Kelly I’m worried about. She’s taking this hard.”

“Indeed, she is.” The Emperor nodded gravely. “Still, I’m sure she has what it takes to overcome this.”

“Speaking of,” Isis started, but the Emperor shook his head once. Clearly, discussing any leads on the investigation was verboten, “do you think you’ll be able to visit her in the hospital?” she improvised.

“I imagine I will, but I’ve taken Mortarion and Konrad’s duties of commanding my fleets upon myself until they can return to duty.” “The midnight oil, she burns fast,” Angela said.

“Indeed.” The Emperor glanced at the clock over the bar, noting the time with a grimace. “Well, I must return to it, in fact. Isis, as ever, you and your sisters are most welcome to stay here if the security detail on your homes becomes too overbearing. I’m rather more used to it,” he added with a wry grin.

“I imagine so, but I suspect the Custodes are less intrusive than the Treasury,” Isis giggled. Jake muttered something inaudibly. The Emperor noticed, of course. “Something to add, Sieur Seager?” he asked.

Jake’s blood froze. “Nothing Lord Vulkan didn’t already see to, Sire,” he said quickly.

“Ah, the incident with the overzealous bodyguard?” the Emperor asked rhetorically. “Yes. I was informed, and Lord Vulkan was absolutely right. The Treasury had no grounds to harass you like that, I apologize.”

Jake boggled. “Not a…problem, Sire.”

“Well, then.” The Emperor stood straight once more, addressing the crowd. “I must return to work. Safe journeys.”

“You as well, my Liege, Remilia said formally, for the group. Pausing to shake a few hands, the Emperor made for the door, glad to see his granddaughters taking their trials well.

Turning from the corridor, a few Companions falling behind him, he thought over the meeting. Surely, Isis would be able to keep the others from asking about the investigation until he had something to tell them.

His jaw tightened. Worship. Keiter worshipped him. He resolved once more to root out the source of the corruption that had nearly taken a granddaughter from him.

Isis looked over the assemblage of people in the room and smiled at the contrast. The Royal Family members and Al were acting like nothing at all had happened, and everyone else was looking awestruck. Even those who had met him before were looking a bit sandbagged.

“Out of curiosity, anyone actually going to take him up in it?” Angela asked. A chorus of ‘no’ met her question. “Me neither.”

“In fact,” Venus said, dropping her bottle on the bar, “I should head out.”

“Me too,” Freya added dolefully, lining her bottle up with Venus’. “Who here is planning on being back in school on Monday if the Treasury lightens up?”

“Aye,” Remilia said with feeling. “Enough of this lockdown.”

“Me for sure,” Isis added. I need to hand in my Senior Project anyway.”

“Oh blast, I forgot that was due Tuesday. Aaargh, how could I forget?” Angela asked. “Uh, uh, damn. I haven’t even written the speech.”

“What’s your topic?” Andrew asked.

“Differentiation of Civil and Military Law in the Aftermath of the Demobilization of the Imperial Army,” Angela said.

Andrew looked at her with newfound respect. “In a school full of veterans? Gutsy.”

“Not if I botch the speech Thursday,” she said worriedly.

“Ah, you’ll do fine,” he said.

“Just talk about how your father broke Ka’Bandha over his knee that one time,” Michael said. “And reap the A-plusses.”

“Oh, please,” Angela grumped.

Al finished putting away the empties under the bar and cast his eye around the room for strays. Finding none, he bowed formally as the little troupe marched past. “’Til we meet again, ladies and gentlemen,” he said by means of farewell.

“Bye Al!” Isis said, waving over her shoulder as they moved back down the hall.

Julius leaned towards her, glancing meaningfully towards the next corridor into the tower. Isis caught his meaning, looking over to the Custodian protecting the procession. “Brother, is my father in the Palace right now?”

Discord and Disquiet

“He is, my Lady Isis. Shall I take you to him?” the gold-clad giant asked.

“Please do, Brother. And Sieur Pius as well,” she added. Angela cast a glance over her winged shoulder at the two conspirators, but decided not to interfere.

“As you wish, lady Isis,” the Custodian said, diverting down a nearby corridor. Isis and Julius followed their guide away from the rest of the group, into the more utilitarian parts of the Palace, and stopped at a tram station. “Your father should be in Bunker Three, in the Palace Core.”

“Thank you, Brother,” Isis said, as the doors of the tram closed. She tapped the coordinates of the Bunker into the tram, and it lifted, soaring away.

“Game plan?” Julius asked, looking intently at the tiny holographic map of the Palace on the inside of the car.

“Honesty. We ask for answers, we look for more if we don’t get enough.” Isis leaned back against the seat of the tram.

“Will he answer us?”

“Who knows,” Isis replied heavily. The air outside whipped into streams as the car accelerated to nearly six hundred miles per hour, launching into the heart of the continent-spanning structure. Julius closed his eyes and relaxed as the tiny force field around the car switched on, and its inertial dampener reduced the momentum of its occupants to zero. Isis wiggled across the seat to Julius and leaned against him, her mind turning over at blazing speed. Conversation plans, speculation over what Horus could be doing in the middle of the Palace anyway, reviewing her aborted questioning of the Emperor…they sped through her mind as fast as the tram over its magnetic rails.

Julius wrapped his arm behind her shoulders, and she absently squeezed his hand. “We have ten minutes until we arrive. What should we ask?”

“Why is the Emperor convinced that there’s more to this Keiter guy than one whacko with a vendetta and a rifle, for starters,” Isis said quietly, her mind kicking into detective mode.

“He thinks there’s something more?” Julius asked.

“You saw the way he cut me off when I started to ask,” Isis pointed out.

“Right, right.” Her boyfriend thought over the conversation, trying to remember what the Emperor had said precisely. “Well…we can ask who the Treasury is investigating.”

“He won’t answer that in front of you,” Isis said, bitterness darkening her voice. Julius frowned.

“You think so?”

“He likes you a lot, Julius, and he trusts your family, but we’re talking about information so heavily classified I don’t even think he’s technically allowed to tell ME,” Isis said heavily. “I can ask anyway.”

Julius went quiet. After another minute of silence, Isis looked up at him. He was looking away, torn. “Should I stay here? I just tagged along without thinking.”

“Come with, Julius,” she said. It wasn’t an order, it was a statement of preference.

Julius shrugged, looking back down at her. “All right.” A smile quirked his lips, quite against his will. She felt a sudden and inappropriate wave of good humor wash over her too, and had to look away herself to prevent a sudden giggle.

“OK. We should make sure we’re not pressing him, if he’s busy,” she said.

“We could call him,” Julius suggested.

“He won’t commit to anything over the phone.” Isis wiggled free of her boyfriend’s arm and eyed the holographic map. “We’re nearly there. Any last-minute ideas?”

“Fresh out.” Both teens watched the holographic map fizzle out as the door under it opened, and they both clambered out. This wing of the Palace looked like no other; this was the command hub, far from the public offices of the Primarchs and the Emperor, far from the Audience halls and the guest wings. This was the part of the Palace with walls made of reactive armor, with security Servo-skulls every few dozen meters, with Custodes in armor that could block lascannon beams stationed at the corners. Isis, of course, breezed past the security checkpoints, with Julius along in her wake, drawing a mean eye from every guard they walked by.

After several minutes of descending stairs and passing Custodes, they finally arrived at an incongruity: an unassuming block of offices. Several Administratum and Munitorum higher-ups were bustling in and out, exchanging data bursts on their implants, fussing with cogitator banks, or just generally making themselves busy with the inner workings of the Imperium. Several paused to watch the pair wend their way through the block, but none stared for too long; the heart of the Imperium never stopped beating.

Beyond the block was yet another of the ubiquitous Custodes checkpoints, and a Mechanicum station for tending to the machinery of the offices, and beyond that was one of the most closely guarded offices in the Imperium: that of Warmaster Lupercal.

Isis stopped at the checkpoint outside the office and sketched a quick bow before the Companion leading the guard contingent. “Brother. Is my Father in?” she asked.

“He is, my Lady, however, he is not to be disturbed,” the Companion said. He swept his inscrutable black visor over Julius. “Who is your guest?”

“Sieur Julius Pius,” Isis replied.

“I see.” The Companion looked over the both of them, apparently speaking on his helmet vox. “The Lord Warmaster will see you when he can. It may be a while.”

“I can wait,” Isis said, nodding her head again. “Thanks.” She and Julius made their way over to a small sitting area near the checkpoint, under the watchful gaze of the Custodian.

“Now what?” Julius asked sotto voce.

“Now we wait,” Isis replied.

Arthur Hane sat down in front of the imposing mahogany desk before him and brandished a thick sheaf of paper. “I have the case file, Provost.”

Fourth Provost Marshal Rachnus accepted the proffered dossiers and rifled through them. “Seems in order, Counselor.” He glanced over at Keiter’s lawyer. “Counselor Felger, anything to add?”

“Yes, I do have something, Provost,” Felger said, drawing a dataslate from his pocket and piping some data to the Arbites’ own. “A motion to dismiss the case, on the grounds that my client is not capable of performing the act of which he has been accused.”

“You ARE kidding. He confessed,” Hane said flatly. Rachnus peered over his spectacles at Felger.

“The case has yet to begin formally, Sieur Felger. What grounds are you basing this on?”

“Provost, my client has been charged with two crimes: firing a weapon with the intent to kill, and Attempted Regicide. He was not trying to kill anyone with the shot. Least of all a member of the Royal family,” Felger explained.

“You must be hoping for high pressure fronts in the jury room, Sieur Felger, if you think that shit will fly,” Hane said curtly. “I have an audio recording of your client specifically admitting that he was trying to kill someone with that shot.”

“That statement was made under an inadmissible level of duress,” Felger said, waving his hand dismissively.

“Duress? He was proud of what he had done! He told me as much! You were there!” Hane said.

“I was. And I saw the tears in his eyes when he told you how much he regretted harming a member of the Royal Family.”

“He worshipped them. Which, lest we forget, is a violation of the Imperial Creed,” Hane said darkly.

“Counselor, I see nothing in your brief about prosecuting Sieur Keiter for a violation of the Creed,” Rachnus pointed out.

“I wasn’t going to prosecute him for it. If Sieur Felger’s motion passes, I will,” Hane promised.

“Well, you needn’t worry yourself,” Rachnus said, dropping the paper sheaf into a binder. “It’s not going to pass. I’ve read the transcripts being offered up as evidence, Counselor Felger. Your client was completely remorseless about shooting someone. He showed remorse for harming Lady Morticia not because he shot her, but because he shot Royalty. That does not constitute a defense against a charge of Attempted Murder.”

“But Provost, that’s not the charge in question,” Felger pointed out.

“Then let’s discuss the third charge on the docket,” Rachnus said, lifting his dataslate. “Attempting an Act of Terrorism. I see no motion from you to dismiss that.”

“He’s no terrorist, I can assure you of that,” Felger said with a theatrical sigh. “He wasn’t trying to terrorize anyone.”

“No, just murder them and change the political views of the survivors,” Hane riposted. Felger glared at him.

“Counselor Felger, your client has admitted to harboring the desire to force political and economic change by murdering a member of the upper class,” Rachnus said, tapping one of the transcripts on his screen.

“And yet no such murder occurred,” Felger pointed out. “The magazine in his gun was fully loaded. He could have simply fired again if that was his desire.”

The Arbitrator stood, shrugging the metallic chains of his office on over his shoulders. “Counselor Felger, your client was attempting a change of the status quo of the Imperium through killing someone. Your motion is dismissed.”

“I see.” Felger sat still for a long moment, then reached back into his bag, pulling free a small piece of blue paper. “Then this is all I have to pass along.”

Rachnus picked it up, glanced it over – “Is this a motion for a Trial Seclusarius?”

“It is,” Felger confirmed.

“Well…you have the right to one if your client insists on it, of course, but are you sure you want one?”

“We are both in agreement,” the Public Defender said. “This is what’s best for my client, for Lady Morticia, and for all incidental parties.”

Hane stared. A Seclusarius would mean little time for either party to assemble evidence, no public evidence vetting, no holocams in the courtroom, a Judge Arbitrator instead of a jury weighing the guilt, and separate verdicts and sentencing, by individual Judges. It was the right of all Terrans. Few enacted it, finding their odds improved in a trial-by-jury. In reality, it was harder to get people convicted by a Judge than a jury, in Hane’s – and Felger’s – experience. This was playing into his hands. Wasn’t it?

“Well…then so be it,” Rachnus said. “Any final motions, gentlemen?”

“No, Provost,” both men replied, standing up as well.

“Then I will see you both in court.”

Faith’s aircar slid to a halt outside the Aurelian manor, kicking up a thin pall of dust. As it settled, the estate servant opened the door for Faith, who marched on by without a word, shoulders hunched. She walked straight past the guards at the door and stormed into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

“Faith? Is something the matter?” her mother, Viera, asked from the dining room.

“Hi, mom,” she called back, reigning in her temper. “Morticia says hi.”

“Glad she’s feeling better,” Viera said, appearing at the door. “Did you stop somewhere on the way home?”

“We stopped by the Palace to let Grandfather know,” Faith replied, yanking the fridge open.

Viera didn’t answer. Faith looked over her shoulder to see her mother standing in the door, arms crossed, in the look of slight maternal concern she did so well she could have traded on it. Faith huffed. “It’s nothing. I’m a little worried about Kelly and Remilia. That’s all.”

“What’s wrong with Remilia?” Viera asked, sitting down at the kitchen counter.

Faith drummed her fingers on the tabletop, debating her words. “…I think she’s started cutting again.”

“Oh, god,” Viera breathed. “Did you see?”

“She had a long-sleeve jacket on. In mid-May.” Faith grabbed an apple from the basket and slammed the fridge shut. “Why does she DO that?”

“She’s hurting,” Viera sighed.

“Cutting yourself makes pain worse,” Faith grumbled.

“It gives the illusion of control,” a new voice put in from the door. Lorgar stepped into the kitchen too, tugging his robe of office across his shoulders. Clearly, he had been about to head out. “By causing a pain to the body, a pain one can influence and expand or stifle, it makes the pain of the soul seem lessened.”

“I thought she was smarter than that,” Faith said. She tore into the apple, ripping a chunk out. “Freya tried to talk some sense into her. At least I think that’s what she was doing.”

“This was at the hospital?” Lorgar asked.

“The Palace, afterward,” Faith said. “Isis wanted to pass along the news to the Emperor.” She grabbed a glass and filled it. “We almost didn’t catch him, meeting ran long.”

“I see.” Lorgar thought for a moment. “Do you want to talk to Remilia about it?”

“What’s the point?” Faith asked coldly. “She won’t listen to me.”

“Why not?” Lorgar asked in mild surprise.

“She thinks I’m patronizing. Thinks I’m too nosy, or something,” Faith muttered. “Because Freya totally isn’t.”

“Faith…” Viera started.

“Mom, if she’s going to be dumb, let her. Her father can deal with it,” Faith said. “I bet Rogal’s read her the riot act anyway.”

Though Lorgar wanted to point out that Rogal Dorn was hardly one to lecture anyone on the subject of masochism, he merely nodded. “What did Freya tell her?”

“Couldn’t hear,” Faith said. “But she looked pissed. And she did the eyes thing.”

“That usually works, in my experience,” Lorgar said, forcing a note of levity into the exchange. “Well, if you think it’s out of hand, I can talk to Rogal about it. Until then, I suggest you focus on that graduation paper.”

Faith gave a long-suffering sigh, but dropped the subject. “Yes, Father. Will I see you tonight?”

“You shall, assuming Magos Calbrin doesn’t try to chew my ear off about instituting the Doctrine in Mechanicus seminaries,” Lorgar said. “I’ll be back for supper.”

“All right,” Faith said. “See you then.”

The Companion outside Horus’ door beckoned silently to Isis. She caught Julius’ eye and stood, calming her nerves. It was her own father, for goodness’ sakes. The Companion stood aside, allowing her to pass, but held out one massive hand to halt Julius’ passage. “I apologize, Sieur Pius, but your presence is not allowed.”

“What?” Julius asked. His eyes darted to Isis, back up to the Companion. “Then why was I allowed this far?”

“Sieur Pius, I have no doubt in your ability to remain discreet, but this is non-negotiable,” the intractable Companion declared. “You are not entering this office.” Julius’ hands clenched in his pockets, but he kept himself impassive.

“…Very well. I’ll be out here, Isis,” he said crisply, walking back down to the seats and sitting back down. Isis turned back to the Companion, who merely looked at her through his black lenses. She shook her head, resolved to make mention of it to her father, and continued into the office.

The bare, stone floors bounced the sounds of her footsteps into the air, which felt oppressively tight in the shielded hallway. The walls were nearly a meter thick: all armor and Faraday shields and sound mufflers. No expense was spared for the headquarters of the Imperial Armed Forces. There were several small offices spread amongst the hall, but they were just for functionaries and secretaries. The Warmaster’s office was much harder to miss.

The door was set into the wall a small ways, ostensibly to look more imposing. Those trained to see them, however, found the concealed pulse cannons in the in-set doorframe rather more intimidating. Isis, of course, took more to intimidate.

As she walked through the solid marble frame, her father looked up from his dataslate with a warm grin. “Isis, my daughter.”

“Father,” Isis said, ever-mindful of the decorum of the office. “Sorry if I’m interrupting.”

“Not at all. I must apologize for making you wait.” Horus stood behind his desk, his fur-rimmed armor gleaming on the stand behind him. “I am afraid you caught me on the vox. Dispatch orders for the new Terran Battle Groups.”

“Problems?” Isis asked, sitting down in front of the desk.

“Always. Easily resolved with the nebulously-phrased instruction ‘Don’t Make Me Come Down There,’” Horus noted. “What brings you by?”

“I wanted to tell you that Morticia’s feeling much better. She should be all right in time, and we had a chance to meet her at the hospital,” Isis said.

“Wonderful. I trust you passed along my well-wishes?” Horus asked.

“I did. But I was wondering if you had heard anything about the man who shot her,” Isis said, coming to the point.

Horus slowly sat back in his control chair, gauging his daughter. “Nothing you haven’t already heard…”

“Dad. Please. A junior maintenance guy does not smuggle an anti-infantry gun into Startseite. Where did he come from?” Isis asked.

The Luna Wolf slowly shook his head. “Isis. Do not lecture me.”

“Father…”

“His background you know. He smuggled the gun in, because who looks for guns in a town that quiet?” Horus leaned forward. “There is nothing more to it. Trust me.”

Isis met her father’s eyes without flinching. They sat still, only the ticking of the pre-O’Neill clock on Horus’ desk making a sound. Finally, Isis let her shoulders slump. “I understand, Father.”

Horus nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Isis.”

“I would ask, though, that Julius be added to the Admitted Persons list for this office,” Isis said.

“No.” Isis drew her head back, hurt or surprised. “He is a fine young man, and his father an old friend, Isis, but he is still non-military, and does not bear the Emperor’s trust as you do. He is not getting in.”

“Then, at least, tell me the Treasury lockdown around the District will be lowered enough that we can go to school and visit each other?” Isis asked.

Horus thought for a moment. “Yes, that’s fair.” She didn’t let her surprise show at her father’s unexpected agreement.

“Well…thanks for that much,” Isis said.

Horus’s brow creased. “My daughter, do not mistake me. I know the danger has passed. But the appearance of laxity from the government here would be catatrophic. Our inability to produce anything more substantial than ‘a lone gunman’ has the media in a frenzy. Were we to disband our guard now…”

“Our all-important public image would be tarnished?” Isis offered. Horus’ eyes narrowed.

“Isis.”

She sighed. “I mean…” she struggled with her emotions for a moment, trying to take the barb from her words. “It’s interfering with the graduation schedule.”

“Then I will have the Treasury lower their travel restrictions, though I understand that Freya at least, and possibly Faith as well, are already openly flouting them,” Horus said.

“Thanks. And…if you do hear anything else about the shooter…his motives, his sponsors, anything, you WILL tell me, right?” Isis asked pointedly.

“If I can,” Horus said.

Isis stood, glaring daggers at her father across the desk. “The uncertainty in your voice does nothing for me, Father.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know, Isis. If the Arbites learn anything, and should they tell me, I will-” he said.

Isis held her hand up for silence. “Wait. Wait. Did you hear that? That papery sound?”

“I hear nothing,” Horus said after a moment.

“I hear it, five by five.” Isis leaned forward, the heat in her eyes spilling into her voice. “It’s the sound of the buck being passed.” She let the angry silence fill the room for effect, before shrugging her fleece back on. “I’ll see you if you get home tonight, Dad. Thanks for your time.”

“Yes. See you when I can, Isis,” Horus said, his voice carefully controlled.

Isis nodded formally, backing out of the office. As soon as her father could no longer see her face, she let a grimace of disgust twist her lips. She walked back to where Julius was still sitting, his patience fraying.

“How did it go?” he asked immediately, nearly leaping to his feet.

“As you yourself said,” Isis growled, “no joy on the burn.” Julius scowled.

“Blast.” He sighed shortly, shrugging the tension from his shoulders. “Worth a shot.”

“Yeah. I did get him to lower the Treasury guard a bit, so we can go back to school,” she said, leading him back down the halls to the tram.

“Hey, that’s a thing,” he said.

“A thing, that it is,” Isis said.

“Well.” He looked for more words, but couldn’t find them. “We could always go, you know. See for ourselves.”

“Not yet,” Isis said tightly. “Maybe not ever.”

“We’ll see,” Julius said ominously. The rest of their journey back to the Lupercal manor was conducted in silence, with each lost in their thoughts.