"Has she attained Type 3 readings on any of the personnel?" asked Inquisitor Bellik as he watch Eros through the viewscreen. Beside him a small greying man, dressed more like a monk than a scientist, adjusted the dials on the chemical feed.
"Not at all. We're keeping the suppressant dosage high. She can get Type 1s and partial 2s, but nothing classified. The facility is still very secure."
As the two men talked, a servant came into the control room with a tray of drinks and set them carefully on the table.
"And the others?" Bellik asked, adjusting his sterile gloves as unblinking eyes watched Eros toss and turn in her sleep.
"A fine contrast," answered the scientist. "In the 69 hours since capture, Rhiannon hasn't moved - virtual catatonia - whilst Zion on the other hand hasn't kept still. He's been probing every inch of his cell, looking for chinks. We haven't found a sedative compund yet, but we will."
"You had better," the Inquisitor answered with the level grace of a serial murderer, "And I want this Eros fully baseline by the time of the Ghosting Feast. No Eximus brain functions."
"You can't..."
Bellik and the scientist turned as the frail voice reached them from across the room. The servant who had brought in the drinks stood hunched by the door, hands clasped as he smiled apologetically.
Charles Grazer, once Minister of Corporate Affairs, was now little more than a ghost. Through pale skin the bones pressed like ivory, hung around with grey prison fatigues the likes of tattered flesh. Though malnourished he smiled - the smile of one utterly broken and resigned to helpless love of the machine that had destroyed him.
"You can't sedate her," his black, wet eyes looked up at Eros and he held the drinks tray to his chest, "She's the Messiah's heart. Compassion, you see? And heartache. It makes us weak... thank God it makes us weak."
He gathered up some used plates and coffee mugs, even as the Inquisitor watched him. "We tried so hard," he uttered softly, "All these years, didn't we? Yes - tried so hard to kill it, so we only cry when no one's watching. Hide the weakness. But Eros is love, the helpless and unveiled. The Messiah's heart that bleeds. We have to smile... we have to smile so the cameras don't see us, so the Thought Police don't see us being Eros. It's her. She betrays us, all our weakness, the human flaw."
"Be on your way," Bellik ordered, cutting through the broken chatter of the ex-minister, who simply nodded and shuffled out of the door. The old man carried the used cups and plates away, checking for dust on the metal walls even as his brain tried to process something. And all the while his vacant smile held.
The Ministry had reduced him to rapture - to a prophecy of what man would become in the shadow of the Messiah. For only a moment and little more, Bellik considered this. For what else was the Messiah but an extension of his own role - a force of terror and persuasion that would break the initiative of a single mind? Just as Charles Grazer's individuality had been erased and his body reduced to a servant vessel that trudged the halls of the Ministry, so too would Semile be rendered to the base mechanics of perfection.
Glorious.
Bellik removed his sterile gloves and fixed his stare on the scientist once more. "I want the sedative compound perfected by first light. All security teams at the Ghosting Feast are to be equipped, should the 00s get out of hand."
"Rest assured, Inquisitor," answered the scientist as he made another adjustment to Eros's chemical intake. "Security procedures are being coordinated by Lieutenant Lars Mullman of the Semilian Police. He comes highly recommended."
For a moment Bellik paused, as if remembering the name from somewhere before, but then there was a crash from down the corridor as Grazer dropped his tray. With a sneer Bellik continued onwards, disposing of his gloves and exiting the control room. He passed Grazer at the end of the corridor, stepping over the man as he held the broken shards of a coffee mug and chuckled to himself, helplessly. The broken ceramic cut him, but still he smiled and clutched, as Eros would clutch Dayne until the ending of her days.
* * * * * * *
"Where are you taking me?" Heinrich asked. His voice echoed down the hallway as he glided effortlessly over the luxurious carpets. The butler, Reza, was pushing him in a wheelchair, for Heinrich's legs had not yet fully regained function. On either side he saw mahogany doors and hallways stretching off into other wings of the mansion. The one they were moving down was adorned with old paintings and the occasional statue - relics from the time before the Ghost Bombs fell. It seemed that Dayne had made this place a sanctuary, the last abode of the works of Ancient Greece and the Renaissance. The paintings must have been priceless, but Heinrich could not tell who had painted them or how long ago. All he could feel was the weight of history, vast and terrible.
It was as if Dayne was purposefully surrounding himself with works of greatness, perhaps to dwarf his own murderous existence. For even a man who had consigned thousands to death might perchance feel small amidst the works of Da Vinci and Van Gogh. Perhaps in this Dayne found his conscience, and thought to himself that a little genocide was nothing when others could move humanity through a painting or a sculpture.
Or perhaps Dayne counted himself amongst these masters, and hung the last vestiges of their works like trophies in his own hard-won abode.
Heinrich did not know and did not care. He just wanted out. As Reza pushed him along he willed his legs to restore themselves - for his strength to return so that he could fight or flee his way from the bowels of Semile.
"I'm taking you to his greatest treasure," Reza answered, his breath on Heinrich's neck as he pushed the man along. "He's only allowed three of us to see it, and we've guarded it for decades. But now you'll be the fourth. He wants you to see."
"See what?" Heinrich asked as they came to the end of the hallway. Ahead of them, a plain wooden door was inscribed with the crest of the Dayne family - a sword lain upon a heart and pushing it slightly out of shape. Reza reached over Heinrich's shoulder and turned the brass handle, opening the door into bright and dazzling whiteness.
And then, with a soft motion, Heinrich was ushered forward into the light.
* * * * * * *
Three days had passed.
Ada had managed to get an old radio working, and what little she could intercept from the Tower of Solon was conclusive enough: the Messiah had returned after vanquishing the Norfolkians, and in a few days time she would be inducted as the next leader of state. At the Ghosting Feast she would be proclaimed and her ascension celebrated by the crucifixion of the Fallen Angels - Rhiannon, Eros and Zion.
Chestel had ignored most of the propaganda and had tried to keep herself occupied. Ada was customising a speeder from the wreckage of the ship she and Altair had crashed in, and Chestel did her best to fetch parts and help with the work. She had even done some welding under Ada's supervision. It felt good to be useful, and even better to have Ada watching over her. With the soldiers gone the camp was eerie and wasteland-like, the other tents in tatters and the old buildings smoking and burnt-out. She and Ada had worked for most of the three days, as if by the act of continually making noise and shaping metal they might stave off the darkness that hung over them.
It was near the end of the third day that Chestel broke for water, sitting on a piece of sheet metal as she sipped from a canteen. When she heard an unsteady noise behind her she did not turn, but simply swallowed and spoke. "How do you feel?"
Altair was moving slowly from the infirmary building, each step a shaky, painful motion. A prosthetic, crudely-shaped by Ada, held up his weight along with a crutch tucked beneath his arm. The man's hair was now pure white, as if leached of all colour, and his body bore the marks of Norfolkian malice. His left eye was swollen almost permanently shut, making it seem like he was squinting as he looked at her. For all the pain he must have been in, Altair's recovery was a force of will. He kept himself moving, even as the girls worked on the speeder, and endeavoured to adapt to the crutch and the prosthetic.
"Like someone hacked off my leg," his voice rasped.
"There's food by the campfire."
"Still not hungry." Altair limped in front of her, looking out across the wastes as evening wind tussled his hair. His good eye watched Ada, who was crouching by the hull of her scratch-built speeder and soldering wires together. "I guess I should thank you."
"Ada told me you were ungrateful."
"I was..." Altair whispered, more for himself than for Chestel. She saw him shake a little, but it was not from the effort of using the crutch. For a long time the 00 stood with his back to her before speaking again. "I thought there was a difference, y'know? I thought good people use power to survive and evil people use it to prosper. That's why I hated them - the Crusade. Semile had clung to God in order to survive the Ghost Bombs, but then the Crusade had used the same God to justify their decadence."
Chestel handed him the canteen and Altair's hand shook as he raised it to his lips. "But you were wrong?" she asked, her voice level as she looked up at him.
Altair swallowed and nodded slowly, "My rebellion set out to tear down the Crusade. But I never planned for what I would put in its place. The people still need God, even after all this time. They still need a way to deal with the horrors and the unfairness of life." His eyes lowered. "Just as I did. The Infinity Rebellion was all speeches and idealistic bullshit, just like the Crusade. I trusted in my powers and my righteousness to deliver me. But now my friends are dead and my sister is no safer from her abusers."
He looked at her for the first time, his half-swollen eye birthing tears as his body shook. "What comes after the revolution, Chestel? What do people live by when the walls are torn down? Tell me... please... what would you put in place of these monsters?"
[SUMMARY: Bellik, the Crusade's chief interrogator, gives instructions for the captured 00s to be sedated on the day of the Ghosting Feast. However, there is a hint that the double-agent Lieutenant Mullman is already sabotaging security arrangements for the ceremony. Meanwhile, Altair recovers slowly as Ada and Chestel work on fixing up a speeder. He is now a broken man, unsure of his cause.]
