[Doctor Thunder]

Chapter 5

Tella’s consciousness faded in from a dreamless sleep. Bright lights shown overhead, silhouetting several heads, hooded and cloaked, chittering over her intently in some machine language she couldn’t understand. She tried to move, but found herself securely fastened unto the table she lay on. One of the figures produced a needle from a mechanical appendage and jammed it into her neck. Fire rushed through her veins, then all went dark again.

Tella heard distant noises, like the ticking of metallic insects. She opened her eyes weakly and found the hooded figures turning and inspecting a large grey lump with their prosthetic limbs. It took her a moment to realize that it was one of her lungs, then all went dark again.

When Tella finally awoke, she found herself alone on the floor of a prison cell. The bars hummed greedily with energy, waiting for anyone careless enough to touch them. Her robes had been replaced with a rough woolen wrap, and an explosive collar had been fitted about her neck.

She became aware of a dull throbbing, and as she placed her hand on her chest, it was pricked by something hard embedded in her skin. She pulled her smock aside and found a long scar that reached from the hollow of her throat straight down to her belly button. The flesh had been crudely sewn back together with a black wire. She found similar scars on her back, arms and legs.

She had no real sense of how much time had passed, but as she pulled her filthy hair away from her face, she could tell that it had grown several inches longer since she had last been fully awake.

The cellblock doors opened heavily and Hanover hobbled in slowly, flanked by two Sisters of Battle. “Inquisitor Harokai would like to speak with you.”

Tella was lead by a chain attached to her collar. Her wrists and ankles were shackled, making ti difficult to walk. The two armored Sisters followed behind her, weapons trained at the back of her head, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Above the sounds of her chains scraping along the stone floor, she could hear them softly singing the litany of purity.

After what seemed like miles of long corridors and pressure blast doors, they walked out into sunlight of a light azure sky. Glancing behind her, she could see that they were leaving a rusty unmarked pressure door set into the side of a cliff.

Birds were chirping happily as they walked out into the prairie beyond, which was dotted with tall bright yellow flowers, but Tella felt no comfort. Her mind felt overflowing with questions and doubts. Nothing made sense to her anymore. She no longer had her rosary beads, but still habitually moved her fingers to advance them as she whispered her morning prayers.

They came to a small rocky outcropping where Taddius sat quietly. Tella was beckoned to sit alongside him, and the guards walked away, leaving the pair sitting in silence. Tella was ready to burst, but she had enough experience with prisoners to know the protocol. If she spoke without first being spoken to, the collar would detonate.

“I need you to draw something for me.” Tad asked after an agonizingly long pause. “The Space Marine who attacked your father’s ship, what was the symbol on his shoulder pad?”
Tella froze in confusion, unsure of how to respond.
“Draw it for me on the ground,” he insisted, forcing a stick into her shackled hands.
“I-I don’t know what you mean,” she finally managed to force out. “My Father’s fleet was never…”
“Stop, just draw it for me, I don’t have a lot of time.”
Tella’s eyes narrowed. “I-If this is some kind of test…”
“I assure you, this isn’t a test. I ordered you to never speak of it again, and now I am rescinding that order, it is as simple as that.”
Tella hesitated, but then began drawing in the dirt before them.
“He had a six-pointed star with an eye in the middle,” she began as she drew.
“Emperor’s teeth,” Tad swore, scattering the drawing with his boot. “That’s the Black Legion. How could I be so blind?”
Tad slumped forward, rubbing his temples with his fingers.
“I-I’ve seen that name etched on temple foundation stones,” she admitted. “The Sons of the Emperor that betrayed his pure light.”
“Aye,” Tad confirmed. And they won’t be satisfied until every last human is dead. They’re working together with a madman named Fabius Bile to make it happen.”
Tella sat in silence for several minutes while Inquisitor Harokai mumbled quietly to himself, until he suddenly say up and asked her a question.

“What do you see?”
Below them was a small nest with three tweeting chicks being fed by their large white mother.
“A bird’s nest, though I don’t recognize the species,” Tella admitted.
“Two of them are Perras, but the third is actually another species called a Striker.”
“They look the same to me,” Tella observed.
“Aye, even their own mother can’t tell the difference. Several weeks ago a Striker ate one of the eggs and replaced it with one of its own. The Perra mother has been feeding all three ever since they hatched.”
The mother flew away to gather more seeds. As soon as she was out of sight, one of the chicks squawked strangely and grabbed onto its nestling, pecking fiercely at its neck and drawing out thick gushes of blood. Sensing the danger, the other chick began crawling away, peeping out for help, but the striker chick leapt onto it with surprising strength and speed. Inquisitor Harokai reached down and snatched up the striker chick before it could kill again and unceremoniously twisted its tiny head until it broke.

“The only reason why Perra’s haven’t been wiped out,” he explained, casting the corpse aside,” is because the local farmers know something. They know that strikers kill their adopted siblings exactly 23 days after hatching, so they watch the nests and pluck out the strikers.”
“Why show me this?” Tella asked, her patience waning.
“Because you are a Striker,” he said, turning towards her. “At least, that’s what I’ve chosen to call you. My order has designated your kind as Organism 196Y21BIO1.55, but that just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well. You are a living weapon designed with a single purpose. The genocide of the human race.”

Tad paused, allowing the gravity of the situation to sink in. “If you need some time alone,” he began.
“No, continue,” Tella insisted.
“Okay. We believe Yemahoit was first seeded with a Striker three hundred and thirty years ago, and they’ve been quietly breeding amongst the population ever since.”
“That’s really not a lot of time.”
Tad shrugged. “The average lay-citizen has just over three children, multiply that over fifteen generations it comes out to nearly forty five million people. When Yemahoit declared open revolt, we figure nearly half the population were Strikers, including most of the royal family and PDF command staff.”
“And my mother,” Tella concluded.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “You are taking all this rather well.”
“The truth is,” Tella admitted, “I’ve always known something was wrong with me. I’ve never told anyone, but The Emperor has never once answered my prayers.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Taddius said, wiping his brow. “I suppose it’s kind of a relief after all this time.”
“With all due respect, it’s not a relief at all. It’s like a nightmare I can’t wake up from.”
Tad nodded slowly.
“So, am I possessed or infected with something?” she asked, looking for a ray of hope.
“No,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “Possession and infection both involve the corruption of a healthy human. As near as we can tell, you never were human to begin with. Your genes have additional base pairs, and your body contains extra organs and systems, though mostly in a dormant state.”
Tad sat forward and wiped the blood off his hands. “I know what you’re asking, and the answer is no, this isn’t something that can be cured.”
“How long have you known?” Tella asked quietly, a tear running down her cheek.
“A while now,” Tad assured. “Strikers only bear female offspring, so any world infested with them will experience a population shift as their numbers grow, with fewer and fewer males born with each generation. At the moment, it’s the best way to identify an infected world.”
“Is that why the women of Janos were purged?”
“Aye.” Tad confirmed. “And we’ve purged another ten since then, but its nothing but a stop-gap at the moment. We believe thousands of worlds may have been seeded, which could further spread to hundreds of thousands more. We can’t purge them all and expect the Imperium to survive.”

Tella’s eyes grew wide and she wiped the tears from her face. “The Mechanicus only has a handful of Genetors in each sector, there’s no way they could test trillions of citizens.”
“Aye,” Tad nodded. “I’ve had Hanover run countless simulations. Even if we mobilized the entire Genetor Subscriptorium, we’d only have a 21.7% chance of identifying an infected population before the infection reached irredeemable levels.”

Tad turned and looked at her for the first time, and she saw something she did not expect an Inquisitor was capable of. She saw pity in his eyes.
“I have no right to ask this of you, but I am out of alternatives. I need your help, Tella.”
“My help?” she asked in amazement.
“Yes,” he nodded. “We removed all records of it, but The Black Legion was there at Yemahoit before we drove them off. Somehow, they awoke the demonic nature of all the Strikers on the planet below. If we can learn what that trigger is, we can save lives beyond count. We can root out the strikers without culling the innocents. We can kill the weeds without burning down the whole orchard.”
“That’s why you had me train with the Sisters and sent me into battle, isn’t it?” Tella accused.
“Yes, we thought the rush of battle might be the trigger. We pumped you full of enough dopeamine to kill a rinox, but that didn’t work. Since then we’ve tried every toxin and drug we could think of. The best Genetors in the Imperium pulled your body apart looking for the secret. The only thing that came close was during the battle of Janos when Ekatarina probed your mind psychically. That managed to partially awake your true nature, but she couldn’t sustain it, and the exertion nearly killed her.”
“Witchcraft?” Tella scoffed. “You used witchcraft on me?” Of all the hypocrisy. The Inquisition exists to destroy witchcraft.”
“And sometimes we must use the tools of the witch to destroy the witch,” Tad fired back. “Don’t pretend to lecture me. You cannot begin to understand the weight of my responsibilities, nor the consequences if I should fail.”

Ekatarina walked over to them, her white cape and hood of The Order Famulous glistening in the sunlight.
“I’m afraid the real Sister Superior Ekatarina has been dead for nearly two centuries,” she explained. “Her identity was just part of my cover. My real name is Catherine Harokai.”
“Harokai?” Tella asked, looking at the both of them. “You’re his wife?!”
“Unfortunately,” Catherine grumbled.
“But, you said she hated you.”
“276 years of marriage will do that to you,” Tad said humorlessly.


A few hours later, Tella was lead by Anthon back to her cell. As she stepped behind the bars, the last of her composure she had been falsely maintaining gave way, and she fell to her knees. Her entire life, her existence had revolved around one simple fact. If she served The Emperor, her soul would be saved. Nothing else really mattered. Suffering of the flesh and mind could be endured, because they lead to the salvation of the soul. Now, that fact had been dashed from her lips, and she sat in terror of the void left in its place.

Tella dropped her face into her hands and cried bitterly. She cursed her flesh and wished she had never been born. It didn’t matter how many times she prayed, or how dutifully she served. It didn’t matter how much she sacrificed to The Emperor. She could never be saved, because she wasn’t human. She didn’t have a soul to save.

Tella screamed out in rage, tears dripping off her chin onto the stone floor below. She had denied herself every one of life’s pleasantries, and would receive nothing in return. Everything that might have made her happy she had withheld on the promise that one day she would be happy forever, and now that promise was revealed to be nothing but a lie. She had just been giving to the void, and it spitefully took everything from her until now she had nothing left.

Warm arms closed around her from behind as she cried, and she realized that Anthon had entered the cell and knelt behind her.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he held her. “Taddius didn’t tell me until this morning. I didn’t know.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” she asked as she sobbed, “When I die?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly.
“No more lies,” she demanded. “Just tell me the truth.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me!” She screamed.
Anthon held her tightly from behind and buried his face into her shoulder. “Your life essence will have no protection from The Emperor, and will be devoured by demons.”