No good deed
Graham Mcneill

They found the burned man on the frothed shores of a sump pool at the edge-drifts of the wastes. The last shift klaxon echoed from the ashward manufactories, and it was long past time for them to get back within the walls of the schola progenium. But the opportunity of a maybe-dead body was too enticing to let slip away.
 	Strang was looking to rob him; Pasco thought it’d be funny to push him further into the toxic sludge to see if he floated. Zara wanted them to drag him from the muck, but she was always the one with the biggest heart. Probably why Cor was a little in love with her, even if he could never bring himself to say that out loud.
 	‘Go on,’ said Strang, elbowing Pasco in the ribs. ‘Check him. Big fella like him’s bound to have a few credit chits on him.’
 	Pasco shook his head. ‘I ain’t touching him,’ he said.
 	‘You scared?’ said Strang, bending to pick up a length of corroded rebar. He gave the body an experimental prod. ‘Think he’s some ash-scavvy, gonna get up’n bite ya?’
 	‘Ain’t clever to touch dead meat,’ said Pasco. ‘Sister Caitriona says corpses down here get all yukked up inside. Says spine-worms nest up in ’em. That’s bad goo, Strang!’
 	‘Yeah,’ said Cor, bending down to get a closer look at the dead man. He was big; bigger than anyone Cor had ever seen, but his flesh was pale and wasted, like he’d been powerful once, but somehow the bulk had been sucked out of him.
 	His skin was punctured across his chest and arms, with what looked like plastek rings around the holes.
 	‘What d’you reckon they are?’ asked Cor.
 	‘Look like medicae shunts,’ said Zara.
 	‘See!’ said Pasco. ‘Told ya. Sick, he is. Looks like he got ash-blight or summat.’
 	‘Nah, they don’t put medicae shunts like that in folks who’re gonna die,’ said Strang. ‘Sister Caitriona’s got a couple in her back.’
 	Cor nodded, though he wondered how Strang knew that.
 	The man had taken a bad blow to the head, and one of his legs was bent at an angle that made Cor wince. He looked into the haze overhead, past the dripping pipes and hissing vents worked into the stained rock of the cliffs to the soaring silhouette of the hive spires in the sulphurous yellow clouds. 
 	Had the man fallen from somewhere there?
 	‘Who’d y’reckon he is?’ said Pasco. ‘A heretic that got left behind when the Fists kicked the rest of ’em back to the Eye?’
 	‘I don’t think so,’ said Cor, kneeling and pointing to the remains of an eagle tattoo, partially obscured by a nasty burn on the dead man’s shoulder. ‘Don’t know of any heretics wear the Aquila, do you?’
 	Pasco shrugged and said, ‘This guy got smacked up hard. Looks like a Dreadnought beat on him.’
 	The dead man groaned and rolled onto his back.
 	Cor yelled and fell back on his haunches. The others laughed as he scrambled to his feet. Zara helped him up and he wiped the grime from his patched and worn out breeches.
 	‘This son of a grot-rat’s still alive!’ said Cor.
 	‘Not for long, he ain’t,’ said Strang, and Cor saw him toying with the idea of sending the man to meet the Emperor with the sharpened bolt-shiv he kept in his pocket.
 	The older boy claimed to have bled three people, once boasting he’d even killed a slumming uphiver who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Cor didn’t know if that was true, but Strang had a quick temper and wasn’t above using his fists on the smaller kids of the schola progenium.
 	‘Don’t,’ said Cor, placing his hand on Strang’s arm.
 	Strang threw off his hand and pushed him away. ‘Don’t you touch me! I’ll bleed you deep and good!’
 	Cor backed away, his hands raised. Strang’s normally sallow complexion was ruddy and his bloodshot eyes were wide with fury.
 	‘Easy, Strang,’ said Cor.
 	The boy coughed and spat a wad of dark phlegm into the pool.
 	‘Help… me,’ said the wounded man, holding a wasted and burned arm out towards them. His hairless scalp was coated in vivid red blood, and fragments of broken glass were embedded in his skin. ‘Now…’
 	Zara stepped between Cor and Strang.
 	‘Enough, you two,’ she said, pushing them apart with a confidence Cor wished he possessed. ‘We have to help this man.’
 	‘Why?’ said Strang. ‘Don’t look like he’s gonna live, even if’n we could drag him out. You seen the size of him?’ 
 	‘That’s not the point,’ said Zara, fixing Strang with a stare that had seen kids much older do what she wanted. ‘That eagle tattoo tells me he’s a fella as needs our helping. And anyhow, where’d you be if Sister Caitriona hadn’t taken you in, Orson Strang? You’d be dead or worse in the forge-mines of the Mechanicus, that’s where. So I’ll hear no more from you on this. We’re helping this poor man and that’s that. Am I clear?’
 	‘As up-spire air,’ replied Strang.
 	Cor hid his grin as Strang nodded like a broken servitor and moved his hand away from the bolt-shiv.
 	The man was heavier than he looked, and it took their combined efforts to lift him from the pool. They hoisted him between their shoulders, groaning under his weight.
 	The man winced as his leg banged into a jutting piece of exposed pipework, and he turned pain-filled eyes on Cor.
 	Dark and depthless like a pool of clean oil, they were set in an impossibly wrinkled skull, rheumy with age and gunky ­cataracts. His breath reeked and his skin smelled like the vents around the crematoria.
 	Strang was right; this fella likely wasn’t long for this world.
 	‘Hey, what do they call you, old man?’ he asked.
 	The man slumped between them, blinking in confusion, as if trying to dredge a memory up from an impossibly dark abyss.
 	‘I don’t… I don’t remember,’ he said.
 	When the Departmento Munitorum first built the Saint Karesine schola progenium in the lower reaches of Agri-Hive Osleon, they envisioned an institution dedicated to crafting new generations of officers for the Astra Militarum. Filled with orphans made in the First Equatorial Rebellion, it had been a magisterial edifice of ironwork columns, mosaic-frescoes depicting the heroes of the early Imperial crusades, and wide steps leading to its grand portico.
 	More than two hundred orphans of that war had been raised within its walls, many of whom had gone on to lead traitor regi­ments in the Second Equatorial Rebellion, forever poisoning its reputation and tainting the heroism of its later progena.
 	In the three centuries since then, the institution’s fortunes had further waned as sector-adjacent crusades shifted vectors and that ill reputation had settled upon its walls like a curse. Uphive nobility and the commissars of the Officio Prefectus eventually decided they’d wasted enough time and effort on its upkeep, and that the sons and daughters of the Astra Militarum would be better served in other Imperial institutions.
 	As the hive grew and the influx of orphans dwindled, the Saint Karesine schola progenium became something of a joke among Osleon’s sump-dwellers and juve-gangs. Its once-mighty roof leaked, the basement dormitories were partially flooded with noxious runoff, and the pipes supposed to pump warm air around its many rooms now spread fumes that smelled like an ogryn’s crotch.
 	At last headcount, a mere thirty-three progena slept with any regularity at Saint Karesine’s.
 	Cor and the others barged through Saint Karesine’s front door, scattering a bunch of the younger kids prying nails out of the warped floorboards. The old man hadn’t said much that made sense since they’d struggled to drag him from the pool, just some gibberish about someone named Nesh. Cor didn’t know the name.
 	Maybe it was whoever had jumped him.
 	‘Sister Caitriona!’ shouted Zara. ‘We need your help!’
 	The door to the prayer rooms swung open on rusty hinges and the mistress of Saint Karesine’s emerged, wiping one hand on her grimy robes. The other hand gripped the leather-wound hilt of a long-bladed chainsword that hadn’t housed a powercell in decades.
 	‘What’s all the noise?’ she demanded. ‘I’ll have no shouting here!’
 	Sister Caitriona towered over the children in her care. Dressed in the flowing robes of the Orders Hospitaller, she was a dark-skinned woman with an augmetic arm she alternately claimed was the result of an ork cleaver or a tyrannic monster.
 	Her hair was shorn close to her scalp, and despite her severe appearance, Cor thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Apart from Zara, of course.
 	Sister Caitriona had stayed on even when the coffers ran dry and every other member of staff had left in search of more fulfilling roles. She took one look at the injured man and said, ‘Strang and Pasco, you boys take him to the back dormitory.’
 	Cor shucked the old man from his shoulder, relieved to be rid of his weight and his smell. He went to follow after the others, but Sister Caitriona stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
 	‘Corvus,’ she said. ‘Wait here, there’s something I need to tell you.’
 	She knelt beside him with a wince and creak of popping joints.
 	‘It’s about your brother,’ said Sister Caitriona, and Cor felt a cold hand make a fist over his heart.
 	‘Nicodemus? He…’
 	‘I’m sorry, Cor, but the blight–’
 	‘Stop,’ said Cor. ‘Your voice only goes like that when someone dies.’
 	The back dormitory was quiet, its occupants mostly asleep.
 	Ever since the roof of the actual infirmary had collapsed, Sister Caitriona used this long, high-ceilinged room as an ad-hoc infirmary, and a dozen beds were occupied by children with rasping coughs or any number of the sicknesses that stalked the lower reaches of the hive.
 	Cor sat on a stool next to Nicodemus’ bed with his head hung low over his chest. Tears and snot coated his lips in a greasy film, and he wiped them away with his sleeve. Cor held his older brother’s hand, still finding it impossible to imagine he was gone.
 	Nicodemus had been three years older than Cor, built like one of the Adeptus Astartes and twice as mean. He’d looked out for Cor ever since their parents, a captain and a strategos savant, had been killed when their Aquila crashed over the ash wastes.
 	His older brother had put out three of Big Augie’s teeth when he kept stealing Cor’s water ration, and had gone in search of two uphive nobles who’d thought it was funny to throw rocks at Cor and his friends when they’d been walking by one of the exterior lifters.
 	And now he was gone. The ash-blight had gotten into Nico­demus’ lungs and he’d deteriorated fast, his skin losing what little colour it had and his eyes filling with black fluid. A hacking cough had bent him double until he was retching blood onto the sheets every day. Counterseptics didn’t help, nor did any of the medicines Sister Caitriona was able to obtain from her Order.
 	Nicodemus had rallied over the last few days and had been able to keep down some moist bread and soup. Cor had heard of folk who’d recovered from the blight and his heart had soared at the prospect of his brother beating this sickness like he’d beaten everything else in life.
 	Now he was dead and Cor was truly alone.
 	He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a tiny mechanical toy he’d been given by a pretty girl on the day his parents had died. A tiny clockwork dancer, he’d treasured it all through the years, but now he just wanted to smash it to pieces. Tears spilled down his cheeks, but instead of breaking the dancer, he placed it in Nicodemus’ palm and closed his cold fingers over the warm metal.
 	‘You take her. I hope she dances for you at the Emperor’s side.’
 	‘He was your brother?’
 	Cor pulled the filthy sheets up over the dancer and turned on his stool. The old man they’d brought in was awake. He’d drifted into unconsciousness almost as soon as Strang and Pasco laid him down, and Sister Caitriona had warned them he might not wake up. Zara had cleaned the blood from his head wound and Sister Caitriona stitched it closed before wrapping the man’s hairless head in clean bandages. 
 	‘Yeah, he was.’
 	‘The… What was it you called it? The blight?’
 	Cor nodded and the old man let out a wheezing sigh. ‘You have my sympathies. I have seen many people succumb to all manner of sicknesses over the years. It is never easy.’
 	Cor wanted to tell the old man to shut up, to stop talking, but Sister Caitriona had taught him better than that. The man was a guest in their house, and guests were always to be treated with courtesy.
 	‘I wish he hadn’t died,’ said Cor, hating the childishness of his words as the tears flowed all over again. ‘I wish I had him back again. I miss him.’
 	The old man swung his legs out from his bed, and Cor was struck by how wiry and muscular they were. The one that had been bent strangely was swollen and purple at the joint, but didn’t seem to be giving the old man too much pain. The man reached over and handed him a square of soft cloth.
 	‘To wipe your eyes,’ he explained. Cor dried his tears and handed the cloth back to the old man, who neatly folded it and placed it under his threadbare pillow. 
 	‘What’s your name, boy?’ asked the old man.
 	‘Cor. It’s Cor.’
 	‘Is that short for something?’
 	‘Corvus. Sister said he was some important man from history.’
 	The old man nodded. ‘He was one of the Emperor’s Primarchs. A hero, they say. Didn’t your parents teach you any history?’
 	Cor shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. They died when I was little.’
 	‘Ah, well, one should always pay attention to history. Those who don’t will only repeat the mistakes of the past,’ said the old man, reaching up to touch the wound on his scalp.
 	His fingers came away tipped with blood.
 	‘Does that hurt?’ asked Cor.
 	‘No,’ said the old man. ‘I imagine it should, but I do not feel anything. Is that a good or a bad sign, do you suppose?’
 	‘I don’t know.’
 	‘Bad, I should think,’ said the old man. ‘Pain should be embraced, it keeps us alive and teaches us valuable lessons. It tells us not to be so stupid the next time we think of trying something reckless.’
 	The old man twisted around to take in his surroundings.
 	‘Tell me, boy, where am I? I don’t recognise this place.’
 	‘Saint Karesine’s,’ said Cor, wiping his eyes dry again.
 	‘A schola progenium?’
 	Cor nodded.
 	‘How did I get here?’
 	‘Me and the others found you in a sump pool at the edge-drifts. Looked like you’d been attacked or you’d fallen from higher up the spire.’
 	‘Like I’d fallen?’
 	‘Yeah, maybe from one of the commercia levels.’
 	‘How curious,’ said the old man.
 	‘Hey, do you remember your name yet?’
 	The old man looked thoughtful for a moment, his brow furrowing as he chewed his bottom lip.
 	He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, but I expect it will come in time.’
 	‘So what we ought to call you ’til then?’
 	‘I’ll tell you what, boy, why don’t you pick a name until I can remember my real one?’
 	Cor sniffed and wiped his face with his other sleeve. He smiled and said, ‘How about Oskyr?’
 	‘Oskyr?’
 	‘Was the name of a cliff-hawk I had when I was real young. It was my friend until it bit me then flew away.’
 	The old man laughed, the sound thin and reedy, but full of genuine amusement. He nodded and said, ‘Oskyr. Yes, that will do.’
 	The old man stood, testing his bruised and swollen leg. It held his weight and seemed to satisfy him. Drawing himself up to his full height, Cor was struck by how tall he was.
 	The old man smoothed his long shirt down and cleared his throat.
 	‘The children in this room? They are all suffering from blight?’
 	‘Most of them, yeah.’
 	‘Then we must get to work,’ said Oskyr. ‘Tell me, Cor, do you have any medicae supplies in the building?’
 	Cor shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe Sister Caitriona has some. Won’t be much, though.’
 	‘Then you must ask, boy! We will need supplies if we are going to heal these souls!’ cried Oskyr, with a sudden burst of energy. ‘I’ll not have such kindness as you and your Sister Caitriona have shown me go unrewarded.’
 	‘Are you a medicae?’ asked Cor. ‘Can you heal them?’
 	Oskyr grinned and gave a curt bow.
 	‘I believe I may have some skill in such matters,’ he said.
 	Cor and Oskyr set to work immediately.
 	Sister Caitriona had been sceptical at first, but when the old man outlined his plan for the care of the sick children, she reluctantly allowed Oskyr to stay.
 	There had never been credits enough to keep a proper medicae on staff, so the prospect of Oskyr’s help was too good to forego. The children set to work sweeping the back dormitory and warming it with fires banked in the grates. Blankets were washed in boiling water and Oskyr prepared a list of supplies he required.
 	Sister Caitriona excused herself from the room whenever supply runs were discussed, claiming she couldn’t know the details of how they planned to obtain what was needed.
 	As the days and weeks passed, Oskyr’s health improved markedly, though his memory remained clouded and no hints of how he had come to be lying bloody returned to him.
 	Cor and Zara went out together, hitching lifts up into the upper reaches of the hive on the exterior risers, and swinging from the bridge chains to reach the glassed-in commercia. The victory celebrations following the Archenemy’s defeat on Gandor’s Provi­dence were winding down, and Agri-Hive Osleon was suffering a collective hangover.
 	The storekeepers were tired and less vigilant, but pilfering their goods was dangerous work and the hive wardens were still out in force. Everyone in the up-spire districts knew to look out for guttersnipes from below, and the shopkeepers were wary as soon as a sun-starved face showed itself. The children worked in pairs, one distracting the shopkeeper while the other darted in to steal what they needed.
 	Strang and Pasco hit the Mechanicus yards in the forge levels, making off with rubber tubing, glass beakers and flasks, crucibles, mortar and pestles, as well as a host of items whose purpose was a mystery. Other children procured ingredients from a variety of other sources, many of which seemed strangely at odds with the notion of healing. Over the course of five days, the progena of Saint Karesine’s stole a small fortune in equipment and ingredients.
 	Then the real work began.
 	Saint Karesine’s became a hive of activity, with a fully stocked infirmary of sorts set up in a section of the basement that wasn’t completely flooded. Fluid from bubbling vats was drawn through yards of pipes and filters, dripped into spherical beakers and boiled before being mixed with powders, tinctures and acrid chemicals. The schola progenium was filled with sweet vapours that cleared throats and kept the occasional algal-blooms at bay where it vented into the outside world.
 	Cor acted as Oskyr’s assistant, mixing vials of strangely coloured liquid and grinding powders with the mortar and pestle. He laboured night and day, and often the old man would carry Cor to his bed in the upper dormitory with paternal affection and lay him to rest.
 	Oskyr himself was no less tireless in his researches, working long hours to find the perfect balance of medications. By this time, Oskyr – or Papa Oskyr as he was now known – was as much part of Saint Karesine’s as Sister Caitriona.
 	Progress was slow, but over the course of only a few weeks, the children in the back dormitory began to respond to Papa Oskyr’s treatments. First in ones and twos, then in ever greater numbers they began to recover until, at month’s end, the last child was given a clean bill of health.
 	Finally, the schola progenium didn’t feel like a sick joke.
 	Cor woke one morning to the weak glow of light reflecting on the underside of pipework outside the cracked glass of his window. His head was pounding with a splitting headache and he groaned as he sat up in bed. The dormitory was deserted, every bed except his and Zara’s empty and with the sheets pulled back. Zara sat on the bed across from him, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
 	‘Morning,’ Cor said, his tongue struggling to form the words, and his thoughts moving sluggishly, as if through a thick fog.
 	‘It’s morning?’ she said, blinking and rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
 	‘I think I see light,’ said Cor, wiping a clear patch in the window’s grime and peering out.
 	She nodded and said, ‘Damn, it’s hot in here.’
 	Cor leaned down and put a hand out towards the wire-mesh grille on the wall next to his bed. Warm air blew softly from the vent, sickly sweet and curiously fragrant. Cor coughed and spat a mouthful of thick, gummy saliva into the chamber pot beside his bed.
 	‘Feels like I spent too long in a chem-fug last night,’ he said.
 	‘Me too,’ said Zara, wiping sweat from her brow.
 	‘Did we?’
 	‘No. At least I don’t think so.’
 	‘Would we remember if we did?’
 	Zara shrugged and yawned. ‘You know where Pasco is?’
 	Cor shook his head and looked out through the window. The high clouds parted for a second and he thought he caught a glimpse of sky through the murk. He smiled to see light reaching this far down into the depths.
 	‘I ain’t seen him,’ he said. ‘Figured he went out late with Strang and Hetta. Maybe Oskyr sent them for some more compounds.’
 	‘I thought I heard him come back.’
 	Zara rose from the bed, steadying herself on its iron frame. Cor offered her his arm and the two of them walked towards the doorway. Cor felt weirdly light-headed, exhausted from the late nights and all-day supply runs up-hive.
 	When this was all finished, he’d sleep forever.
 	They reached the top of the stairs and gingerly made their way to the lower hallway. Halfway down, something struck Cor as out of place.
 	‘Can you hear anything?’ he asked.
 	‘No.’
 	‘You ever know this place to be quiet?’ asked Cor.
 	Zara screwed up her face, as if he were asking her to describe the inner workings of a warp-engine. She gave up and simply shrugged, using the wall to support herself as she took the last few steps down to the ground floor. She made a half-turn and screamed at something beyond Cor’s line of sight.
 	He ran down after her and it took him far longer than it should have to process the scene before him. A low-lying vapour drifted through the hallway, a noxious yellow green, and Cor covered his mouth at its reeking stench. He saw Sister Caitriona on her knees, her head resting on the floor in a pool of blood. Zara sank to the floor, staring in horror at the grisly sight.
 	‘Sister!’ cried Cor, and the fog wreathing his thoughts blew away like morning mist. He ran over to Sister Caitriona and lifted her shoulders, trying to shake her awake. ‘What happened? Where is everyone?’
 	Sister Caitriona’s forehead was bloody where it had been bashed on the floor, and her eyes were rolled back in their sockets. Thin ropes of greenish saliva drooled from her slack mouth. He saw the timber floorboards were splintered where her head had been lying. Cor tried to make sense of what he was seeing, but the only conclusion he reached was insane.
 	‘Looks like she did this herself,’ he said.
 	‘What?’ said Zara, pressing her hands over her mouth. ‘Why would she do that? It don’t make no sense.’
 	‘None of this does,’ said Cor, cradling Sister Caitriona’s body in his arms and feeling his world come crashing down around him again.
 	He looked up as he heard a scrape of metal.
 	‘Look out!’ screamed Zara.
 	Cor threw himself to the side as a hulking form emerged from the door to the basement. He felt searing fire burn his shoulder, swiftly followed by warm wetness spilling down over his chest. He rolled to his feet in time to see Strang coming at him with his sharpened bolt-shiv. Its entire length was wet with blood.
 	‘Strang? What are you doing?’ yelled Cor.
 	‘I’ll kill you!’ yelled the older boy. His eyes were wide and bulging, and yellow green saliva coated his lips.
 	‘No, wait!’ cried Cor, but Strang wasn’t listening.
 	He charged Cor, swinging his bolt-shiv wildly. Cor ducked and threw a punch with his good arm. More by luck than judgement, it connected with Strang’s chin and sent him sprawling. Pain shot up his arm from what was likely a bunch of broken fingers. Strang had a jaw like iron.
 	‘I have to kill you!’ yelled Strang, pressing his fists to his temples and drawing blood where the bolt-shiv sliced his skin. ‘The worms in my head! It’s the only way to get them out! Gnawing, gnawing me. They want your eyes, Cor! They’re so pretty and wet!’
 	‘Strang, please! What are you talking about?’
 	The older boy threw himself at Cor again, and this time there was no evading him. Strang’s speed and strength was too great, and Cor was barrelled to the ground. The bolt-shiv stabbed down into his wounded shoulder again and he screamed in agony. He tried to throw a punch, to get his attacker off him, but Strang pinned his arm to his side.
 	‘The worms, Cor! They wanna eat your eyes!’
 	Strang lifted his bolt-shiv high, ready to plunge it down into Cor’s chest. He heard a screeching roar somewhere nearby. Cor screamed, but the blade never fell.
 	He looked up to see Strang staring in disbelief at the juddering teeth of a chainsword jutting from his chest. Blood dripped from its rusted edge. The blade tore clear and Strang toppled sideways, crashing to the floor with a bubbling sigh.
 	‘But the worms are hungry…’ said Strang, before the life fled his eyes.
 	Cor saw Zara standing over Strang with Sister Caitriona’s chainsword held tightly in both hands. She was breathing heavily, looking down at the weapon she held. Whatever charge was left in the weapon died, and Zara let it fall from her fingers with a cry of horror. The ancient blade clattered to the floorboards.
 	‘I killed him,’ she sobbed. ‘I killed him…’
 	Cor struggled to push himself upright, but only succeeded in propping himself up on one elbow. Thick mist was drifting from the basement, and Cor coughed, wincing as the wound in his shoulder sent a jolt of pain down his spine.
 	‘You had to,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘He was gonna kill us.’
 	She shook her head. ‘No. No. No… this can’t be happening. What’s going on here, Cor?’
 	Before he could answer a blurred shape loomed out of the mist behind Zara. Cor shouted a warning, but it was too late. Tall and powerful, yet slender and wiry, the figure wrapped one arm over Zara’s chest and planted another over her face. The bronzed mouthpiece of a rebreather covered the girl’s mouth and nose, thick with wadded gauze that dripped chemicals from its outflow nozzle.
 	She struggled briefly, but whatever concoction was in the mask swiftly overcame her strength to resist. She slumped against the figure, who dropped her limp body to the floor.
 	‘It never ceases to amaze me, all the different reactions to the chemicals,’ said Papa Oskyr, looking down at Strang and Sister Caitriona. ‘Of course, there will always be some individuals more resistant to the soporifics, and, given your natural immunity to the blight, I really should have suspected you might not have succumbed. Sloppy of me. I blame the blow to the head.’
 	Oskyr reached down and Cor flinched as a needle punctured the meat of his upper arm. He cried out as Papa Oskyr lifted him from the ground and slung him over his shoulder. Even bloodily wounded and groggy, Cor was stunned at the old man’s strength.
 	‘Who…?’ managed Cor. ‘Who are you?’
 	‘I’m Papa Oskyr,’ said the old man brightly as he bent to drag Zara by her hair. He bore them both into the back dormitory, propping Cor up against a bed and lying Zara on the floor next to him. Cor tried to get up, but whatever Papa Oskyr had injected into him rendered his limbs leaden.
 	It was all he could do to turn his head.
 	Every bed in the back dormitory was occupied, each figure’s cheeks sunken and drained, their eyes fixed open and empty of life. A looping mass of rubber tubing ran from every bed to a pair of heavy tanks like a custom chem-lung rebreather rig. Viscous green fluid swirled in the tanks and brass-rimmed gauges were maxed out in the red.
 	‘Why are you doing this?’ said Cor. ‘You healed them all…’
 	‘Well, of course I healed them,’ said Papa Oskyr. ‘What good are sick people to me? Only fit and healthy specimens could provide what I needed to restore my physiology and memory.’
 	Papa Oskyr marched towards the rebreather tanks and checked the gauges. Satisfied by what he saw, he unhooked the pipes and slung the tanks onto his back. He fitted a fabric rebreather mask to the pipes and slipped it over the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes exposed. Eyes Cor now saw were cold as napped flint.
 	‘It has been quite diverting spending time here, and you have my thanks for giving me a place to hide from Imperial sweep teams while I healed, but, alas, all good things must come to an end, and I have much to do.’
 	‘But… you wear the eagle…’ said Cor, raising a trembling, palsied hand to point at Papa Oskyr’s shoulder.
 	The old man glanced down at the pink flesh of his shoulder and the two-headed eagle tattoo there.
 	‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you that history was important? You see, this eagle is special, Cor. This is the Palatine Aquila. My Legion was granted the honour of bearing this icon after we saved the life of the Emperor Himself during the Proximan Betrayal. In hindsight a foolish act, but we weren’t to know that at the time.’
 	Papa Oskyr marched back down the chamber towards Cor, and squatted next to him. He reached inside the pocket of a wet coat that looked like three coats sewn together, and withdrew a small mechanical dancer, the one Cor had placed in the cold hand of his brother. The old man closed Cor’s numb fingers over the toy and placed his other hand over his heart. His head cocked to the side as he listened.
 	‘Your heart flutters like a little bird, boy, it’s just aching to be free,’ said Papa Oskyr, reaching into another of his coat’s pockets. Cor tried to speak, but nothing came out.
 	Something sharp and metallic glinted at the corner of his eye.
 	‘This may hurt,’ warned Papa Oskyr.
 	Saint Karesine’s schola progenium burned with bright, promethium-rich flames as Papa Oskyr strode down the steps of its grand portico with the spry vigour of a young man.
 	Not only was his physique restored, but his memory also. 
 	His name was not Oskyr, it was Scaeva, and he was of the lineage of Primarch Fulgrim, Lord of the Emperor’s Children. Long ago, he had served as an Apothecary, and – in a sense – he still did, albeit for a pallid master who scoured the depths of sensations possible in post-human flesh.
 	Scaeva paused at the bottom of the steps and watched as a crowd of sump-dwellers gathered to watch the growing inferno.
 	Imperial citizens liked novelty, and even the most macabre sights would draw a crowd. But he couldn’t linger, not when there was work to be done.
 	Fighting alongside Hellbreed’s Hounds of Abaddon on their failed invasion had been a terrible misstep, and he’d lingered too long in search of interesting flesh for his master’s surgeries. He’d been cornered by a squad of loyalist Adeptus Astartes, trapped and wounded, before being hurled from the highest levels of the hive by a vengeful Imperial Fist.
 	He’d fallen over a kilometre, careening from stanchion to rooftop to pipe. Such a fall would have killed almost anyone else, but his master had elevated his flesh and bone beyond mortality, to something akin to godhood. A mere fall was not enough to end him.
 	How long had he lain in that pool?
 	Months, most likely, his life sustained only by his inhuman physiology entering a low-level dormancy and cannibalising its own mass to stay alive.
 	Judging by the state of his skeletal frame and memory loss when the progena had found him, it had been a close run thing. But he was alive, and he had to contact his fellow legionaries.
 	And secure fresh test subjects.
 	His master’s great work must continue.
 	Scaeva adjusted the tanks on his back and took a deep breath of the sump level’s distinctive atmosphere. This was air with character, air that had been around the hive’s lungs more than a few times to acquire a texture all of its own.
 	He’d missed such flavours.
 	Only the toxin-laden air of Chemos, rich with the aroma of dying souls, possessed the same tang. 
 	Yes, decided Scaeva, this tasted of home.