Secret War: Warhammer 40,000, Ben Agar [list of ebook readers .txt] 📗

was hardly reassured as I saw the gigantic blood vessels bulged from her face and forehead. Her blank blue gaze and her teeth were hideous, sharpened incisors.

The fear finally overtook me, and I screamed, tearing my hand free and retreated further into the corner.

As I ran, the room around seemed to devolve into a blur of black and white nothingness. However, Karmen, Brutis, Arlathan and Wesley were still visible as they approached me with wild blank eyes, sharpened smiles and fingers that curled into black elongated talons, reaching out to tear me to shreds.

My heart was hammering so hard, and painfully now, it felt like it was about to burst, and blood thundered through my ears. Then there were the screams, the screams! They were no longer intermittent but completely consistent, just a vast cacophony of hundreds of voices crying out in utter agony and terror. Arlathan, Karmen, Brutis and Wesley were still coming closer and closer and as their claws came right in front of my face.

I closed my eyes.

Immediately the screams were gone, disappearing so suddenly that it shook me to my very core, but I kept them closed, hoping if I did, they wouldn't come back. It was the contemptuous sigh that caused me to open them again.

I found myself back in black nothingness, but standing over me now was the Eldar; her thin, lithe form towered over me and the red glowing eyes of her helm looked down on me with distinct disdain.

I yelped out in fright and threw myself back, scrambling to gain as much ground from the Xenos as possible.

"Oh, do not be so pathetic!" It snarled so sharply I immediately stopped in my desperate retreat. "If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you a long time ago!"

"W-who are you?" I managed through my gasps. "What happened? Where the hell am I?"

She sighed even more profound than before. "You are the one I am going to work through, I thought, perhaps, you might be a bit less pathetic than the rest of your kind. But alas."

I lay there, only able to gape up at her.

The Eldar sighed yet again and shook her head.

"Well, we may be working together for a while from now on. So, if you truly must know, my name is Faleaseen; I am a farseer of the craftworld, Dalorsia. What happened? You were almost turned into a mindless, slavering daemon in the service of the ruinous powers and, where are you? You are now in the dark recesses of your mind. Any more questions?"

"I-I-I-I."

"It seems that Inquisitor Nonin Edracian did not just inject you with a nerve agent, as he had first claimed, but with some primitive sort of warp sorcery. If I believed in your race's first, abstract concept of 'luck', I would say you were 'lucky' I was here to save you."

"You...saved me?" I asked dumbly.

Faleaseen attention turned slightly to the left, and it took a long time before she finally answered.

"Yes, I just told you that, and here I was hoping you would be somewhat smarter than some of your kind. But alas."

"B-but...Why?"

Faleaseen groaned loudly. "Because, human, I have placed much time and effort into you, letting you die now would have been a waste."

I wasn't sure how to reply to that; all this had happened so frigging abruptly that I shouldn't be blamed for being taken aback and frightened. Yet here was this Xenos holding such contempt for me for having a perfectly reasonable and human reaction, and now here I was beholden to this farseer?

This new revelation I didn't like, this I didn't like at all.

She shook her head again, contempt oozing from her every pore.

"The Inquisitor has set his trap," said Faleaseen. "As we speak, daemons are slaughtering your people; it is a blood-fest outside that building. When you awake, you need to be ready; you need to escape."

"Nah!" I said sarcastically.

Faleaseen tilted her helmeted head suddenly. "I mean this; there are those you would deem as 'innocents' in that building, do not throw away your life protecting them; they are nothing. Not worth the effort, you have far more significant problems you need to live to attend to, do not be a fool. Time to awake, Mon'Keigh."

"But-!"

Before I could say anything more, the darkness was engulfed in a sudden blaze of blinding bright white light, and I awoke.

 

 

The light cleared, revealing the grey, rockcrete ceiling above me and slowly, the images of the concerned Karmen, the confused Karkin, Wesley and Brutis standing over me.

Brutis had the barrel of his bolter levelled right in my face.

"D-don't! Don't shoot!" I cried, quickly raising my arms to cover my head for all the frigging good it'd do.

"What happened?" demanded Brutis bluntly, his bolter not moving an inch.

"I-I don't know," I lied. "I-I, I just was listening to you guys, th-then everything turned black! I must've fainted."

"You forgot about the going mad and screaming like a little girl and hiding in the corner part," said Karkin.

"I-I don't remember that."

Before anyone else could say anything more, there was another sudden, horrid crash! That seemed to shake the entire building around us, then followed by the blood-chilling screams with the intermittent roar of the desperate gunfire.

"Frig! That came from the inside," said Karkin, voicing what we all thought.

"Alright!" said Brutis. "We're fething moving! Get him up; we're going!"

"But-!"

"'But' what detective Karkin? As far as I see, we'll have to face down whatever it is out there eventually anyway; I'd rather not have to with a wall at our backs."

Karmen was the only one to offer her hand, which I took with an appreciative smile, and she pulled me to my feet.

"That's not what I meant!" said Karkin. "I agree with you, but you've seemed to have forgotten; we're unarmed."

"No, I haven't," stated Brutis. "And no, you're not getting one, either. I don't trust any of you enough. So enough of this meandering, let's get moving."

He looked at me. "And you. You, I trust the least. I'm keeping an eye on you, understood?"

I nodded, thinking, fair enough, I wouldn't trust me either.

"Good," then with bolter raised, he opened the door and stepped outside.

 

 

Chapter 17

 

Despite my newfound determination, I found I couldn't run much farther, making it only five or six metres down the corridor, before stopping to catch my breath again.

+Attelus,+ said Karmen. +Attelus you've got to keep moving.+

I nodded and forced my body onward, ambling while using my forearm to pull myself along the corridor, glancing around at every crash and roar that echoed through the building from Darrance's and the daemons' struggle. There were, without doubt, more daemons; I had to be careful.

I made it to the end of the corridor, finding another window. With battered, bloody and hurt hands, I clumsily slid it open and leaned to look outside. The next building over was another long, six-story hab unit. It was nearly a three-metre gap, and the nearest fire escape was a few windows on my left. I quickly recalled that there was a fork in the corridor a while back.

Most of all, what caught my attention was the light; the blood-red light had grown in intensity. It was like my eyes had blown their blood vessels.

I sighed, about to push back into the building but stopped as I felt slight droplets of rain on my head. I blanched in bemusement and looked up at the thick, crimson clouds above.

It never rained in the underhive; it couldn't rain in the underhive; the ceiling of the over hive forever prevented that.

The few droplets quickly escalated into a full-on downpour, but I couldn't see the rain; I could hear it, feel it, but couldn't see it. I reeled inside, abruptly shut the window and backed away in disgust and horror.

It was raining blood, frigging blood.

Another great crash down the hall made me jump and brought me back to reality.

I turned and ran to the intersection, turning right. As much I didn't want to go outside, I had to get to the roof; it was the best way to go. Making it to the next turn, I ran to the fire escape door and, without looking back, opened it and stepped outside.

The force of the blood rain hit me like a punch to the jaw, and I raised my arm to protect my face with a growl of anger and fighting the urge to vomit. I started up the metal staircase. Edracian wasn't just throwing daemons at me but the very elements.

I couldn't help but take some pride in that.

Clenching my teeth, I trod carefully, all the while clutching hard at the handrail to keep my feet on the treacherous, slick surface.

Finally, I made it to the top and looked about, trying to find this church.

I saw it through the blood-red, a large, two-story monastic and overly grandiose thing; its two towers stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the simplistic hab buildings around it. It would've been gaudy if it wasn't in such disrepair.

My brow furrowed involuntarily, the Ecclesiarchy, always having the thrones to build such monstrosities but never really helping those in need. Ohh, they did but only 'spiritually', which meant nothing to me and not just that they'd charge for it too.

I shook away such thoughts and walked to the other side of the roof. After wiping my sticky, blood-slicked hair from my eyes, I spun on my heels, fell into a sprint and lunged over the three-metre gap.

Landing well, I finished into a crouch and ran to the next edge, stopping to look along the side, trying to find another way down. The tallest building was only four stories high and was a good one hundred metres away, which would've made me curse, but I froze in fear as I saw daemons frigging dozens of the bastards. They stood perfectly still throughout the streets and the buildings below. SUDDENLY, as I noticed them, all their snouts simultaneously snapped upward, somehow looking straight at me.

Desperate with utter terror, I threw myself to the floor, although I suspected it was fruitless.

"Karmen! Karmen! You could've frigging warned me of this!" I hissed through clenched teeth.

It took a good few seconds before Karmen finally replied that her voice was pained and distant when she did.

+Warn you of what Attelus? I am sorry, I am...busy. I cannot see everything.+

Slowly, I climbed up and peered over the buttress, but what I saw scared me even more.

All the daemons were all gone.

+Attelus? What's wrong?+

"I-"

My reply was interrupted by a massive crash followed by another, then another that came from below.

I furrowed my brow in bemusement, climbed to my feet; then the realisation hit me; it hit me hard.

+Attelus!+

"They're collapsing the frigging building!" I roared, more to myself than to her, and as if on cue, the roof under my feet began to sway and tilt, making me stumble to keep my feet.

Panic gripped me so hard I couldn't think straight, and I sprinted straight for one of the rooftop doors. Then found much to my distress; it locked.

Without thinking, I kicked at the door; the first did nothing, the second not much more. It was only after the fifth that my panicked mind finally remembered, I was carrying a frigging powersword. I activated it,