The Renegade Within

by Mark Johnson

  Oh Gods! Between the pain in her side and the panic in her mind, she could barely function.

  Makkdarm hadn’t even given her time to explain. He’d just come at her, angry as a wounded bear! Why hadn’t he just held still long enough for Fejak to restrain him while she sprayed his face? Why?

  Hurt. Yes, she was injured. But she’d been wearing plate. That wound, just above her left hip. No man should have been strong enough to pierce Seeker plate with a cleaver, and he’d not stopped attacking her even as he died. Had not noticed her knife in his throat. The knife she’d thrown.

  Armer forgive me, I killed a man. The greatest of sins.

  Makkdarm still lay with his blade outstretched. Had the man an ounce of life left, she was certain he’d have spent it attempting to extinguish hers. And she would be forced to strike him again, and again, and again until she was safe.

  A light, some brighter part of her, flickered and guttered.

  From the doorway came a scuff. Fejak stared dully at Makkdarm, seeing him but not seeing. Fejak’s face was white, his eyes constantly darting. He looked as though he preferred watching Makkdarm’s dead body than what he’d seen inside those doors. She removed her glove and felt at her side, then screamed again. And then again, but quieter. Fejak watched her. The cut was deep and bleeding. Not her first injury, but definitely her worst.

  “Help me up, Fejak,” she said. “Take me, take me to any person in this place.”

  Fejak wrapped an arm around her unwounded side but didn’t move. She let out a shallow sigh of relief. So, Makkdarm had been alone. Thank all the Gods and Sumad Himself, something had gone right. Except for…

  Keeper Makkdarm. She’d killed him.

  The Gods allowed self-defense.

  But she’d come prepared to kill, so did that make it invalid?

  No, she’d come prepared to mindlock.

  Why then, had she brought the knife?

  No, it was time to think of herself, for now. The wound would kill her if she didn’t get it treated.

  “Take me to the closest medical kit,” she gasped.

  Fejak started toward the door. Good. Two and a half hours until his serum wore off. Five hours until sunrise and guard rotation.

  Fejak stood at the door, reluctant to go beyond. Strange. She looped an arm around his neck and commanded him forward, pushing open the door.

  She gasped again, although not in pain. She couldn’t process the sight, couldn’t understand what she saw.

  “Oh,” she said faintly, squeezing Fejak’s shoulder as realization dawned. “That’s why he needed a cleaver.”

  What she saw was not a collection of corrupted mechanisms being assembled into a dark golem.

  It was the product of the Immersion Chamber, and those who had created it.

  17

  Splitting pain blurred Terese’s vision. She squinted at the papers in her hand. Dammit, she couldn’t remember nearly as much as she needed to. All the while the unceasing cacophony assaulted her ears, hindering her mind as much as her wound. It would have been so much easier to take the papers, but she dared not. In fact, everything had to be left exactly as before she’d disturbed Makkdarm.

  It had taken Fejak time to carry the dead man and re-position him near the cages lining the walls. The next person to enter this room would see Makkdarm’s body in the spot where his cause of death would not be queried, nor deemed terribly surprising.

  Because of the cadvers.

  Makkdarm’s body would be found sprawled beside a row of cages containing active cadvers, who’d already clawed his throat and face open.

  The pale, slender cadvers had snarled, spat and screamed at Terese and Fejak from toothless mouths for hours, snatching at them with taloned fingers from within the cages. Not all the cadvers had arms to grasp with, however. A gray, unholy arm had been lying on the operation table before she’d pushed it off, making room for Fejak to operate on her.

  And there were things downstairs that were worse.

  The anesthetic Fejak had given her before sewing her back together was wearing off. She checked the damaged plate at her side, gently poking the neatly stitched wound and gasping in pain. Yes, she needed another anesthetic shot.

  But they’d taken too long. Poor Fejak was already on his second dose of mindlock, and looking more miserable every minute they remained in the room. He clearly hadn’t known what was down here.

  She replaced the papers in the desk drawers as she’d found them. She’d expected answers but found more questions. The document that most seized her attention had been a map of the Cenephan weaver training academy Patzer hated so much: HopeWall. In red ink, someone had drawn circles around a tower inside the oval-ringed Wall, scrawling ‘Here!’ nearby. Elsewhere the same hand had drawn arrows to four tall towers outside the HopeWall oval, writing beside them ‘Golem?’. There were what looked like assault plans against HopeWall on other documents, but no explanation of what the attackers seemed to be searching for.

  It wasn’t Lijjen’s handwriting. It could have been Keeper Makkdarm’s, or any other Keeper’s. Or Patzer’s.

  Now she had the knowledge she’d chased for months, and had a better theory on what was happening.

  Patzer had a grudge against the renegades for whatever they’d done to him. Added to her capture by those renegades; whoever was responsible for this abomination beneath Sumad Reach, had suspected Head Saarg’s true mission was to expose it.

  That workshop in the Wastes hadn’t been for making dark golem or any such thing. It seemed the workshop was some sort of… ‘bait station’, to lure cadvers with all that chaos energy. Patzer had said there were more cadvers in Serenity Territory than anywhere else. These ones down here, somehow pacified with technology she could only guess at, had been locked in the boxes by Jools and her fellow mindlocked dark ops Seekers and brought here. Jools thought she’d been transporting antiques.

  Whatever punishment awaited her for participating in the Immersion Chamber was a slap on the wrist compared to what awaited this perversion of the ancient Seekers’ Charter. At least she’d believed she was doing something that would benefit humanity at the time, much as she’d deceived herself.

  She turned gingerly, to survey the room for signs of her visit. Finding none, she donned her helmet.

  “We’re going, Fejak. If you see any signs of our time in this place, other than Keeper Makkdarm’s remains, correct them now.” She had to shout to be heard over the cadvers.

  It wasn’t the time to think of the cadvers. She had to get out safely before allowing herself to think, or she’d start making mistakes. The implications couldn’t rest in her head, or she risked a collapse from which she might not rise.

  Fejak looked around dejectedly, his shoulders drooping, then helped her out to the corridor, carrying the bag they’d filled with soiled cloths. She shut the door behind them, the noise cutting out immediately. Thank the Gods. Had Fejak been able to speak, she was sure he’d have implored her to hurry.

  Fejak had cleaned her and Makkdarm’s bloodstains from the floor with an alcohol-based cleaning solution.

  “You lead,” she said, her voice wavering. It was hard to speak clearly.

  Fejak held the door, then locked it with his code. She followed him, pushing at the wall to stay upright. Her helmet lenses flickered on again, bathing her world in cold green light. The lenses had never been at fault; they operated on vibration energy, and she’d entered a hotbed of unholy energy.

  Fejak peeked through a spyhole at the garage-end of the passage, then opened the secret door. Into the dim garage, where soft grey light leaked from outside. Only minutes until the shift rotation bell and the chapterhouse would awaken. Gods, they’d taken so long! She stumbled from dizziness and blood loss. She waited for Fejak to open the internal garage door and slide it closed behind them.

  She removed her helmet and looked into Fejak’s eyes, which darted nervously in his horrified face. If he looked like that, she’d look worse. She spray
ed his face with the memory solution.

  “Head Fejak,” she said. “Thank you for your expertise with the surgery kit. You are very good at field surgery. I would be close to death without you, right now.” She was not supposed to speak so directly, but it felt wrong not to acknowledge him. “You will give me your gloves, return to your apartment, undress, and go to bed with your wife. You will forget all our interactions, and all you have seen and done tonight. You will return discreetly to your apartment, ensuring you remain unseen. You will erase, completely and utterly, all memory of this night, and when you wake, you will believe utterly that you slept an unbroken sleep from bedtime to waking. If your wife mentions your absence, you will recall that you listened to the waves in your floor’s lounge room and did not go to the garages. Repeat these instructions.”

  He did, perfectly, with a sigh of relief. Fejak might remember this night as a dream—or nightmare—but wouldn’t consider it real. Holder Moorcam said the subconscious needed to work out what it had seen, and so Fejak might have strange emotions or flashbacks. But he was unlikely to do anything other than wake up feeling oddly tired in an hour or so.

  Without a backward glance, Fejak walked up a nearby staircase, his footsteps fading to nothing.

  Once again, Terese was alone. With her thoughts, her memories. Her deeds, and her conscience.

  18

  Almost safe. Her lips were dry, and she was hot all over. So close. In full plate armor, she tottered unsteadily from the garage with the soiled bag of surgical remnants and her satchel over her shoulder. The anesthesia was wearing off and the bag’s weight made the scar above her hip angrier. The sun would be nearing the RimWall. In seconds the bell would tell the guards to change duty.

  She couldn’t return to her room in stolen, damaged plate armor with a bag of bloody cloths. There was every reason to believe someone would find Makkdarm’s corpse within the hour, see through Fejak’s clean-up operation and spark an emergency chapterhouse-wide inspection. She could keep the surgical equipment, spare dressings and painkillers she’d taken—a med kit was standard in an officer’s apartment.

  Two destinations before she was safe.

  First, the spare property room to ditch her damaged Sumadan plate. Second, the incinerator to dispose of the bag of bloody cloths and surgical swaddles. If either were found on her, she was good as dead.

  She waited in alcoves as footsteps passed by. She hid under staircases. The more she walked, the more her side ached.

  The spare property rooms were open all day and night. The bulb lay in its tray, waiting to be placed on its coil. She left it off. The room was stacked with shelves on every wall, with free-standing shelves in the center. She stripped off her arm, leg and groin plates, then her helmet and boots, then finally the broken chestplate that had saved her life, leaving her clad only in underclothes. Each item was unceremoniously hurled behind other discarded plate, used blankets, spare boots or old sharpening kits. Hopefully, no one would ever realize a full fresh set of head’s plate had been distributed around the room. She pulled simple, casual clothes and shoes from her satchel, grunting at the pain of stretching an arm through its hole in her clean shirt.

  Movement in the corridor. Footsteps, mutterings. She pushed against the wall, too tired to think. If she were found, it was over. No strength for another fight. She held her breath, willing the guards to keep going.

  Waited…

  They passed by, although surely her heartbeat had been loud enough to give her away.

  Of course they didn’t come in. They’re on the way to change the guard. Relax, Terese. Act normal! Get rid of the rags.

  The cloth bag and the clothes inside would burn easily. The bell sounded as she approached the incinerator room, surprising her and crumpling her to her knees. The day had begun. The bell echoed down corridors and across courtyards. Had it rung longer and louder than usual? She pushed herself up and into the incinerator room, checking to ensure the room was dark. She put on the bulb and hurled the bag over the rail, into the incinerator with her good arm. Pressed the ignition. She winced at the pain in her side. She shook her head and pressed a hand to her temple. The orange firelight spread, burning bag and rags. The light of safety. She leaned back, pushing her hot face against the room’s cool stone wall. She allowed herself a minute’s rest.

  Nothing tied her to Makkdarm’s corpse. Once inside her apartment, she was safe.

  Thank the Gods she’d timed her weekly two days off to begin today. Two days to hide, sleep, heal and think before facing the world.

  Her bed sheets and pillow called to her. The taste of the water carafe on her bedstand…

  She made it to the chapterhouse’s center. People seldom came at this hour. Just the corridor, and the staircase to climb to her apartment. Two minutes’ walk.

  She limped toward the residential wing.

  Voices echoed, coming in her direction. Two people. Routine conversation. But…

  Oh Polis, one voice was Lijjen’s! Of all people! He would interrogate her simply because he could, and even if he let her be, he would remember seeing her the night Makkdarm died.

  Where could she hide? All the storerooms were locked. Gods, what was she supposed to do?

  Suddenly, she had a blessed spark of memory. Every chapterhouse kept an unlocked chapel on the bottom floor. Symbolic remnants of the temples all chapterhouses had been built on, five thousand years earlier.

  The voices closed in. She turned and ran, losing her breath and stumbling. The chapel was always at the chapterhouse’s center. She had a perfect reason to be in the chapel – she was praying for her daughter. The voices bounced along the corridor. Her mouth was a desert. She couldn’t read the signs on the wall.

  Sweet relief, the chapel was where it should have been. A six-sided chamber the size of an apartment, its entrance was marked by a wooden arch. Inside, six rows of wooden pews surrounded Polis Sumad’s devotional statue. She was alone, oh blessed luck!

  She slung her satchel under the pews and collapsed at the foot of Sumad Himself, the effigy erected on a circular plinth at the top of three small carpeted steps. It hurt to look at Him, ashamed by what had become of these Seekers. To think, when she’d achieved Assistant status eight years earlier, she’d proudly worn the singlet with the cut-outs, showing off her flame and cage tattoo and all it stood for.

  Did she really hate herself? Or did she hate Keeper Lijjen, Holder Mathra, and whoever had created that underground workshop? Possibly she hated the whole order. Tears fell on her hands and her jaw ached from clenching. This was what came of spending a life trying to prove her worth to her father. No matter that she hadn’t known everything, she’d taken innocents and stuffed them into Immersion Pods. It was wrong, but imagining her father’s pride at her promotion ceremony had been too tempting. She’d needed to prove to him and the world so dearly, that she was worthy.

  Stupid, selfish pride. Useless, petty ambition.

  This was where it ended: Weeping like a child, her squad taken from her, running about a corrupted foreign chapterhouse in the dark. And she’d killed a man. She had to fix this. But who could help her? Jools was mindlocked and Toornan could do nothing. The four renegades might help, for they’d want answers too. But they probably weren’t even in Polis Sumad anymore. Who?

  Unable to see properly, she looked up at Sumad.

  Who indeed?

  Legend said the Gods had once appeared in human form to be approachable by humanity. For humanity was Their greatest creation. When the Gods had chosen those twenty-four of their number to remain on Earth, they’d ordered the names of those who’d gone on to the heavens forgotten, so humanity could worship their own respective Gods. Their Polis.

  There was no way of knowing this statue’s age, or if it had been modeled on how Polis Sumad Himself was reputed to look. It didn’t matter though: All prayers went to the same place.

  His bearded, muscular figure was painted in chipped colors showing gray beneath, with purple rob
es over his dark skin. Very well, then.

  “Sumad, God and Polis,” she whispered, barely audible in the chapel’s small arches. “I have failed Armer, I have failed you. Your brothers, my family. I have done things for my own benefit and brought harm on others.” She swallowed. “I deserve consequence.” She didn’t even deserve Pella, given how she had treated other families. “I ask only that you allow me to right what is wrong, to defend those who cannot defend themselves. I do not ask for revenge. I do not ask for justice. I ask You to help me to destroy evil.”

  A deep breath. She recalled one passage of the Seeker’s Charter, word for word:

  When judging, keep your mind clear and calm so you can know wrong from right, and give punishment suitable to the extent of the crime.

  Whether her mind was clear was debatable, but for their crimes against Polis and nature, only one consequence was right.

  Another deep breath.

  Just say it.

  “For their transgressions against You, Sumad, God and Polis. To rid this evil from the world, please grant me the means to destroy Sumad Reach Chapterhouse.”

  When Terese had become a student Seeker at sixteen, things had seemed so right. There were stories of virtuoso musicians who stroked a piano as a child and even after hours of play, had to be dragged away from it screaming. Or future architects who received dominoes and created miniature country estates. A good Seeker child was not memorable as a prodigy, but there was a fire within them that could not give up the hunt for evil. Everyone had seen it in her. Years went by and the world had become more complex. Black and white had turned to gray and then into colors and gained texture and shape. The sense of doing right and knowing the call of light, effortless purpose had been missing for years. She had made bad compromises and stepped out of harmony with everything around her.

  The path had been so clear when she was young. She’d hunted cadvers because she had an instinct for it.