[Whom Do You Serve?] A Matter of Death - Vander Forrick

It does. It's been occurring to him regularly for years, now, and as the order is given it's as though it's all the proof he needs. He's just shot a man in the arm, a Senior Judge's personal assistant, and now he's being taken into custody by his fellow Arbitrators. He's insane, it's quite clear for all to see. For some reason, it's almost a relief to be relinquished of his responsibilities to prove to people that he's anything else.


A final crack forms in his composure, but soon the panic drains away from him entirely as though through a puncture in its vessel. It's replaced by a numbness, a vacancy of real feeling that wells up from within and spreads through his limbs like the cold. He understands, belatedly. This was the impending murder. This was what he was trying to prevent, and being unable to prevent it, he has at least aided in the apprehension of one of the Chirurgeon Killer's accomplices.


He falls silent as he turns his back to the guard who's aiming the weapon at him, offering his hands out behind him to be manacled. He feels looks and oddly content, even as he stares across the table at the man he's just shot and the man who's just died. For however long he's in custody, he knows that he's temporarily absolved of duty, and for a man who's been working around the clock for months, that's almost a welcome relief. And they say only in death does duty end.


He wonders, distantly, if he's going to die.


A Verispex technician knows better than anyone that an undue struggle will disturb a crime scene, so he closes his eyes and lets them get on with it. For the lack of visual stimulus, however, his thoughts and his ears are drawn back to any sign of that rumbling he heard earlier . . .
 
The guard clamps manacles on you willingly, and the other man is clamped. They drag you out andthrough an empty courtroom. How they got it emptied so silently, Emperor only knows. But everyone's gone, as if they were never there to begin with. The rumbling was faint at this point. Might've just been your imagination by now.


...


It occurred to you that you'd rarely been to the dungeon before. Never had much of a reason to, and now you were getting thrown in. It's reasonable to believe that your Verispex colleagues are already getting a handle on the crime scene. Maybe they'll acquit you...


...


It's been hours. No clue how many, but you've been in the blackness for several at least, and it's starting to mess with your head. As if that hadn't been done enough by months of following the shithead in the cell next to you.


And he's silent. The whole place is silent. So silent, in fact, it feels like you can hear the blood flowing in your veins. Terrifying.


And then, a door. The hall door wrenches open and you see a man wearing a long black coat step in, chainsword and bolt pistol strapped to his hips. Never seen him before. No fucking clue who he--


That symbol around his neck. They did call them, it seems. He stops at your cell, and a guard opens it. "Get up," he mutters. Something's off about this guy, though. Unnerving. You could swear he was a serial killer or some such thing, but it's a silly thought. Then again, given his line of work, maybe he was.
 
Vander furrowed his brow and stared ahead into the blackness, stranger's eyes grappling for details that weren't there. The silence was deafening, the emptiness was claustrophobic. For a man who by holy vocation surrounded himself in clutter and data, this was hellish. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.


He'd spent the past few hours praying, of course. For Judge Taell's soul, for forgiveness in letting it slip free of this mortal coil when it could have been saved. For his own, and for the strength he knew he'd need to redeem it when the opportunity arose.


The door opened.


'Out of our hands.'





He was no longer alone.


'Ordo Hereticus.'


He stumbled to his feet, unsure if the shape and significance of the man's medallion were not simply the effects of isolation playing upon his brain. These were effects he'd advised perps be subjected to to soften them up for interrogation. They were effects that every Arbitrator knew about, but precious few had experienced; and what was he, now, if not a perp for interrogation?


An Inquisitor. Here. How could that be? Even if they'd heeded his words regarding Judge Taell's last orders, how could an Inquisitor have arrived in such short notice? Warp journeys took weeks, not however many hours he'd been consigned to the dark. Unless . . . He straightened up briskly and straightened his crumpled coat with a sharp tug on each lapel, then signed the aquila.


"Ave Imperator, my lord. Thhh-- . . . thank Him you're here."


An Inquisitor. Here. In a cell with you. You've shot a man, and you've just scrawled a mark of the Dark Gods over an antique map, you've just . . .


He was dimly aware that absolute terror was only a scant few inches from setting in and swallowing him, and so with a clenching jaw he bit it down and did his best to keep his nerve. He glanced down at his hands and noticed them shaking as he lowered them, then quickly stowed them away in the expansive outer pockets of his overcoat. Slowly, surely, and with a great deal of effort, he looked up and met the man's stare. He dredged his banks of memory for any hint of the appropriate protocol here, but could find nothing, so he decided on plebeian deference to an aristocratic better and averted his eyes once again.


"How should I address my lord?"
 
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"If you must, then my lord works well for now. Now get out and come with me." He seems almost angry to you. Maybe it's the scowl on his face. Maybe it's the unnverving feeling he gives you, beyond the normal one you get. But anger is an emotion you could easily use to describe this man.


Eventually, you're lead to a dimly lit room. You've only ever been here twice before. It's where part of your examination--the part you prefer to forget, the interrogation--took place when you first joined the Verispex squads. How fitting you should be brought back here to be interrogated once more.
 
Vander ducks his head like a whipped dog and quickly makes his way out of the cell, falling into step beside the Inquisitor. He takes in the layout of room with only the briefest of glances up and feels a chill in his stomach as he recognises it almost immediately . . . but of course, this dark-coated man made him feel unnaturally cold all over.


Give them nothing, he recalled from his induction, not even the truth, for the enemies of the Emperor are creatures of lies and are not worthy of its grace. He wondered how well those maxims that had been so deeply ingrained into him during his training and conditioning as an Arbitrator would serve him now, now that he was at the mercy of the apparatus he'd been a part of for so long.


The innocent have nothing to fear in the hands of His justice, he reminded himself, straightening his coat once again by impulse. He had done nothing but his duty, after all.


. . . But of course, there was no such thing as innocence. Only degrees of guilt.


He swallowed the nothing in his throat and swilled whatever meagre spittle he could muster through his painfully dry mouth. The Inquisitor must have requistioned these facilities for his investigation upon his arrival. That was something, he supposed.


It could've been worse. He could've been hauled off into one of the Holy Ordo's black voidships and never seen or heard from again.


"May I sit down?"
 
The Inquisitor before you drops into one of the two seats surrounding the central table, and motions you to the one across from him. He reaches down with his left arm and you hear a clicking sound, followed by a snap. Like a holster opening. A brief second later, you see him raise a bolt pistol, setting it on the table, barrel facing you. "You may sit. Now tell me, what happened in that room? I'd rather give you the opportunity to answer, rather than have one of my Psykers rip the secrets from your flesh."
 
Vander studied the bolt weapon's barrel for a fleeting instant before lowering himself precariously into a seat opposite the Inquisitor. Hands folding in plain view on the table before him, he cleared his throat and kept his head bowed deferentially low. The space of table, blank and utilitarian, between himself and this terrible man abruptly became incredibly interesting, and he stared at it with intent as he proceeded with an explanation.


"I was explaining to Senior Judge Taell a pattern I had determined in the work of a local serial killer whose identity and methods have so far evaded us," he began. He keep his voice painstakingly level and even, no matter how much his nerves might have wanted to shake it. "The next step in the sequence pointed to a killing occurring imminently within the Precinct itself, so I sought an audience with the first Senior Judge I could find to discuss the implications. I feared that the killer or one of his agents had infiltrated the Arbitrators here on Holtstrad.


"When I had actually had a chance to map out the pattern I had determined, he . . . identified it as a mark of the Ruinous Powers," he managed slowly, "and said that the Inquisition had to be brought in." He dared look the Inquisitor in the face for a split second as he says as much. "Shortly thereafter, the aide who had shown me to the Senior Judge reenterred the room and stabbed him in the back.


" . . . He referred to 'his master' and his plans, something that had been 'set in motion'. He was gloating. I deduced that the aide was the Chirurgeon Killer's agent within the Precinct and that the Chirurgeon Killer himself was a servant of the Archenemy, and so I . . . shot the heretical filth." There's not even the slightest fluctuation in his measured tones thanks, to only the greatest of exerted efforts. "In all likelihood, I would have kept shooting if I had not been interrupted." His attention dropped down to his lap as he braced himself for what inevitably was coming next.
 
"So you are the one who drew the symbol on the map? You shot the man who stabbed the Senior Judge, as well... But you drew a symbol of Chaos on paper in the center of the Precinct-Fortress. Why?" He fiddles with his gun, never quite bothering to look up at you.


"I could just as easily assume that you are an unwitting plant by Chaos itself, and that you are the actual killer, and not the lad stuck up in the other cell, because you drew that symbol, you know." You find yourself staring down the barrel of his bolt pistol. "I could shoot you here and now for that crime, and no one would ever know the difference. But if you are not that man, then prove it to me."
 
"I . . . "


Despite the bolt pistol aimed in his face, Vander soon found himself vigorously fighting down a horrifically inappropriate urge to burst out laughing. The absurdity of it! Him! The Chirurgeon Killer! It . . .


It hit him like icy water to the face. He had spent so long trying to understand the minds of those who rejected the Emperor's truths, who had fallen from His grace and rejected His holy laws . . . it could have happened, somewhere along the line. He knew blessed little about the workings of the Archenemy, but he knew enough to recognise that the Ruinous Powers were infinitely insidious, and that mortal men were infinitely corruptible. He hadn't trusted himself -- not really -- since he left the homehive, and for some reason he felt that there could easily be some truth in the Inquisitor's words. Perhaps there was a reason he'd felt that disgusting rune had been familiar.


It was perfect. Rogue Arbitrators were as dangerous and shadowy an enemy as any heretic, he knew, and he had no convincing alibi to prove he wasn't one, witting or unwitting. Now he didn't want to laugh so much as shed tears. It seemed that faith alone would not redeem him here. The gun in his face refused to waver. "Very well," he croaked weakly, staring at the table. "I must concede that what you say is a valid possibility."


He inhaled. In through the nose, out through the mouth. His life, and the lives of potentially countless innocent others, was on the line. If he could not prove here and now that the Chirurgeon Killer, or at least one of his agents, was in the cell next to him, then they were all damned, and like the Inquisitor said -- no-one would know the difference. The question became, then -- what could acquit him? What could prove beyond revocation that he was not the man this agent of the Holy Ordo threatened to believe he was?


"The guards on the gates of the Precinct-Fortress keep tabs on everyone coming in and out. In the past three months, I've only left with my Verispex team to investigate the crime scenes that the Chirurgeon Killer's left behind. My divisionary supervisor and the logs in the gatehouse cogitator could confirm that for you. By all accounts, at the time the Killer committed each of his crimes, I was more often than not within the Precinct." He paused. No, that wouldn't be enough. He'd slipped the gates before -- it was trivially easy for anyone who knew what they were doing. They'd had to deal with terrorists and other criminal scum doing just that before, and getting out would be no more difficult than getting in.


"If I was really a Chaos plant, then why would I secure my own detainment by shooting one of my collaborators? Now two potential agents of the Killer have been placed in the hands of the Inquistion," he reasoned, daring to look the man in the face again. "Had I been any less composed in there -- and it was difficult to shoot to disable rather than to kill in those circumstances, my lord, believe me -- I would have shot that traitor straight in the face and been dangerously angry enough that the guards would have gunned me down the moment they burst in. There's two would-be servants of Chaos dead, spent in one throw when the same end could have been achieved without such expenditure of agents." He was painfully aware that his logic was as perforated full of holes as the Senior Judge's back had been after the knife had done its wicked work upon him, but he had to try.


"W-why would I not kill Taell myself when I was in the room alone with him? O-or slip him some kind of slow-acting contact poison in a handshake, only to let him leave, die later and remove myself from suspicion? Or . . . "


His words were running out. He swallowed, then nearly choked. The room was freezing cold, he realised, but he'd been sweating too heavily to notice until a draught had blown across his damp forehead. He allowed his head to hang.


"If you deem it necessary, my lord, I would submit to examination by one of your psykers," he murmured, keeping his voice low so it didn't break. "Tear the truth out of my skull if needs be. I will readily embrace any consequences. If what you say is true, my lord -- if I am an unknowing agent of Chaos -- then I assuredly deserve death and damnation and worse, but . . .


"I-- I need to know. If I have been compromised in His service and subverted to the Archenemy's designs, then I must be dealt with immediately. If I have not . . . " The words felt like a weight being lifted off his chest and shoulders. A relief, even. Death, it seemed, could be around the corner. He looked up.


" . . . then I h-have a killer to catch."
 
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"Very well then." You hear a clicking sound, as though his finger was squeezing down on the trigger. As you look up, you do notice that he is. The trigger squeezes, and you see the hammer wrench backward, painfully slowly. Any moment now and the trigger would depress, and your life would likely end.


... Click.


The hammer swings down, making that click, but nothing happened. The Inquisitor presses a button on the side of the bolt pistol, and you see an empty magazine fall out. "Arrogance is the first sign of the Archenemy. If you believe yourself infallible, you have already lost yourself to Chaos."


He sets down the bolt pistol in front of him. "I believe you. You began by making excuses, but accepted your fallibility, a mark of a true servant of Him on Terra. I will have you examined, but it shall not be as miserably painful as it would otherwise have been. I will send him in." He stands, grabs gun and magazine, and moves over to the door.
 
Vander deflated with a long sigh, relaxing all the muscles he hadn't realised he was tensing at once. After the relief of survival, the offhanded praise the Inquisitor was about as appetising as another fine meal after he'd gorged himself. He had nothing to say -- couldn't muster words in the state he was in even if he did -- so he simply nodded at the Inquisitor and bowed his head, half in thanks and half in sublimation. As he left, the Verispector shut his eyes and wrapped one hand around the other, squeezed them tight together, acutely aware of something damp trickling down out of the corner of his eye.


Breathe. Breathe.


There was nothing to do but do just that and wait for the psyker to come. His skin began to crawl at the prospect of Warpspawned powers probing inside his head, but he'd been submitted to such an examination before in training. Surely, this would be no different . . . except his life was balanced upon the psyker's conclusions.
 
Moments after Turchetillus leaves, a robed, bald-headed man without eyes enters the room. He bows his head respectfully, and sits in the seat across from you. "Lean toward me, please. I will try to make this as painless as possible." He extends his hands out, as though waiting for you to place your head between them.
 
Swallowing, keeping his muscles taut to contain his trembling, Vander obliges in silence.
 
The Psyker reaches forward and touches the tips of his bony fingers to either side of your head. At first, you feel a faint itching sensation as he probes through your mind, searching for memories. When he finds them, you feel a slight sting in the back of your head. He sets to pushing aside those he need not examine, and you see flashes of instances from across your life: images from your childhood home in the hives, to your initiation to the Adeptus Arbites, and beyond. Then, he hits on the ones he needs, and you feel a deep, sharp pain tearing into your head, as though someone were trying to split your skull. The pain of dredging up long-repressed and painful memories.


The pain only grows as you see flashes of the easily hundred corpses scattered across Macabee, all in a brief instant. The long hours spent tearing your notes apart in that cramped space, piled high with papers of all kinds. Could it have been then, if it happened at all? They say, after all, that the desperate turn easier. Those who want something, and are desperate to get it. The seeds of Chaos breed in such feelings, but it couldn't have happened, could it?


Bodies, bodies filling the streets. Blood everywhere. Blood running through the streets. Countless liters of blood, pouring through the streets. Macabee had been a bloodbath since the Chirurgeon Killer began to wander, and you'd done nothing to stop him, not until it was too late.


Liters of blood running the streets, and kilos of decaying flesh. Those were once people, killed in Chaos' machinations, and you hadn't stopped it. Could that have been the moment? When you simply failed to halt the advance of this plot of Chaos? Could that have been your unwitting corruption?


The psyker pulls away, and you snap backwards, sweat pouring down your face. He stands, examining your features but for a moment, before walking out. "Thank you for your time," he whispers, as he leaves.
 
Vander sits frozen rigid for a moment, staring up into the psyker's eyeless face before slumping back into his seat. He reaches up to clutch his head, rub his eyes, mop his face, but by the time he looks back up the psyker's already most of the way out the door. He opens his mouth to speak, as though to protest -- what did you see? Please, tell me, what did you see? Tell me all that made more sense to you than it did to me? -- but by the time he works a single croaking syllable up through his now-impossibly dry throat, the robed man has left the room and left him in the cold, aggressively lit interrogation room.


Elbows on the table, head in his hands, Vander pushes his fingers through the slick stubble on his scalp and does his best not to revisit the images that were dredged up in too much detail.


Comprehension comes to him like staring into a sunrise, brutally slow and increasingly painful.
 
Moments later, the Inquisitor walks in. "I have good news and bad news, son. Which would you like first?"
 
"Whichever set of news confirms or denies those suspicions of yours, my lord," Vander responds without missing a beat, surprised by how at ease he feels with whatever is to come. 'Son', is it?
 
The man smiles slightly wickedly--or at least you feel it's slightly wicked. "The good news is, you are not a latent heretic, as far as we can tell."


He drops into the chair in front of you once more. "The bad news? The man you shot was not actually the Killer, either. He was merely a pawn put in place by a greater organization on this world."
 
That was it, then. His mind was his own and his soul was the Emperor's -- for the time being. It was . . . inexplicably disappointing, he had to admit. Simple survival seemed an anticlimax after the ratcheting tensions of the past few minutes.


"He spoke of a master, and of events already set in motion," Vander concedes, doing his utmost to maintain a dutiful composure. "His modus operandi seemed a tad too mundane for the good doctor's tastes, as well, but I imagine that had something to do with my shooting his arm off before he could carry out whatever vile experimentation he saw fit upon Judge Taell, rest his soul." He shuffles slightly in the seat across from the Inquisitor, faintly disquieted by his now almost candid and friendly manner.


"I . . . am not sure how much of your investigation I'm privy to, my lord -- and this is your investigation now, I believe -- but do you suspect that the Killer is a single individual at all, or a network of such pawns?"
 
"You have been on this case for far longer than I have, so I might as well tell you my suspicions. I do believe that there are many more than just him, so uprooting them will be difficult. However, I assume you are not aware of what has happened in the outside world since your arrest yesterday, yes?"
 
Distant rumbling like a landslide played back through his mind's ear. He swallowed. " . . . I dread to think, my lord."
 
"Hundreds of murders, planned out with the utmost cunning, executed ruthlessly and efficiently, carried out on their chosen targets with extreme prejudice, and set up in such a way that every last detail would fall into place... Exactly as planned." He frowns, looking at you. "Servants of the Changer of Ways, as they call him, no doubt. Of course, that's much more obvious looking at this place from orbit. Macabee has his symbol carved into its very surface, along the lines of the murders. The quakes you heard was the ground splitting, and buildings crumbling, within the city, as the symbol formed."


"Tzeentch is trying to claim this planet."
 
Tzeentch. The word was like a slap. It's Chaos, then. It really is the servants of Chaos. Here. On Holtstrad. It felt like he'd known it all along. He could scarcely comprehend how hundreds of murders could be carried out overnight, nor how the mere nature of such deeds could tear cracks in the crust of a world, but perhaps it was better, he decided, if he did not try. He briefly contemplated trying to disguise the fear that had seized his guts in a vice grip, but it was plain to see on his face before he could even adjust it. He nodded to himself several times over as he processed the idea.


"Then he must be stopped," he eventually declares, voice soft. "The Archenemy must not be allowed to defile the homeworld of Saint Gregor.


"Can . . . can it be stopped, my lord? The man I shot said that it was . . . 'already in motion'."
 
"Of course we can stop it, boy. But how much of this world can be saved depends upon how quickly we remove the head of this beast trying to take over." He pushes his chair back, stands, and makes his way to the door. "But if you want to save your beloved world, you'd best stand up. We've got work to do."
 
It takes Vander longer than it really should to puzzle through the words that have just left the Inquisitor's mouth, but when he pulls it off he's so fast to his feet that his interrogation chair would've toppled over behind him if it wasn't bolted to the floor. He hurries on in the Inquisitor's wake. "But . . . my lord," he manages, already out of breath and wrestling back coughs. Terrible habit. "I'm Verispex Division. When we're not at a crime scene, we're in a lab. It's regulation."


A moment after he's said it, he's seriously contemplating the utility of defying an Inquisitor and finds himself nervously wondering if the bolt pistol offer is still standing.
 
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