Editing Bleeding Out (Warhammer High) (section)

===A Scheme===
-Two days later-

Morticia shifted uncomfortably in her bed, holding onto the rails for support.  Grant glanced over his clipboard, seeking the issue.
“Are you all right, my Lady?” he asked.

“No.  When can I get up and walk farther than here to the head?” she asked irritably.

“Presumably, right now.  That said, I didn’t say that,” Grant cautioned.

“Hmph.  You ever been in one of these?” she asked, halting her fidgeting as she found a place to lie comfortably.

“I have.  An accident when I was a kid.”

“Yeah?” Morticia looked over at him.  “What happened?”

“Fell off a jungle gym, landed chin-first on a block of corrugated aluminum,” Grant said.

“…Ow, that makes me cringe just thinking about it,” Morticia said.

“As does a lung replacement.  How are you feeling?” Grant asked, returning his eyes to his clipboard, carefully checking off the chemical components of her IV.

“A lot better, actually.”  Morticia flexed her hands experimentally, felt nothing amiss.  “Did Dad happen to say when he’d get back?”

“He did not, my Lady…but it is 0100.  You should really get some sleep,” Grant said.

“Eh.  Sleep is for people who aren’t gene-seeded,” Morticia said.  Grant raised his eyebrows.

“Excuse me, madam?”

Morticia stared.  “You didn’t know?”

“Know…know what, my Lady?” Grant asked.  He started to wonder whether it would be wise to call in one of the normal staff.

“Oh.  I guess I assumed Dad would have…never mind,” Morticia said.  “Well…you wondered why I kept coming out of sedation, right?  It’s because I’m genemodded.  The guy they have operating my life support really ought to know that,” she added with a smile.

A cold chill descended over the young nurse.  “I…forgive me, my Lady, I had no idea,” Grant said, a twinge of desperation in his voice.

“Relax, I was kidding.”  Morticia cocked her head at him.  “Who are you, anyway?”

“My, my name.  I’m Grant, my Lady, and I’m your night care specialist for the foreseeable future,” Grant said, pulling himself together.

“Not by yourself.”

“Well, yes, my Lady.”

“Isn’t that unusual?” she asked.  “Having a single staffer in an Intensive Care unit?”

“The background check carried out on my colleagues was…exhaustive, my Lady,” Grant started.

“Probably for the best,” Morticia said, reading between the lines well enough.  She watched Grant finish his checklist, gauging him through her clear, grey eyes.  “Sorry if I made you nervous.”

“It’s not your fault, my Lady, that my superiors have not seen fit to alert me to your atypical medical requirements.”

“How old are you?” Morticia asked.

“I’m twenty seven years old, madam,” Grant said.

“Then please stop treating me like I’m made of glass, Grant,” Morticia said.

“Madam, I don’t think you’re made of glass.  However, if I treat you in any way that could be interpreted as inappropriate by those strapping young men outside, they may well treat me like I’m made of ballistics gel,” Grant deadpanned.


Mortarion stood before the Emperor’s desk.  The Emperor had steepled his fingers over his desk, and looked at his son with an air of patience.  “Mortarion, I think you should know I refused a request by Ahzek Ahriman to perform a psychic augur on the would-be assassin.”

Mortarion stood agape.  “What…”

“Morticia…she means the world to you, my son.”  The Emperor stood behind his desk, and was dwarfed by his son, but did not turn his gaze away.  “I can fully appreciate how you feel, I assure you.  But…the shooter.  Keiter.  He worships Morticia.  He thinks of her as a demigoddess.”

The Death Guard reeled.  “He…that’s treason, a violation of the Creed!  Why is he not being prosecuted for it?”

“Because we don’t have the evidence to prove it.  Yet,” the Emperor pointed out.  “I held this from you because you have had, I think, far too much on your mind of late.  I did not want to burden you overmuch.  But to be honest, with the declaration of intent for Seclusarius on his trial, the assassin leaves us little room to work.”

“If he even seems to be eluding justice, I will carve his heart out,” Mortarion said flatly.  It wasn’t a threat.

“I have no doubt.  But I suspect that such an approach will go over poorly with the trillions of Morticia’s well-wishers.  Have you seen how she is being portrayed by the media?”

“I make a point of avoiding such drivel,” Mortarion scoffed.

“As well you should, Mortarion.  My point is that your daughter, primary victim though she may have been of this catastrophe…she deserves better than a streak of vengeance.  Of her attacker being violated, as she was.”  The Emperor’s gaze skewered Mortarion’s seething visage.  “She deserves to find her closure in the arms of justice.”

“Listen to you!” Mortarion said angrily.  “I watched as you FORCED Lorgar to bend the knee!  I watched as you purged loyal worlds for the sin of worship!  Now you spare an ideologue murderer his punishment because of…what?  Media pressure?  Or is it location?  Can you not bring yourself to harm Terra itself?” Mortarion’s blank grey eyes narrowed to slits.  “Or do Morticia’s life and well-being not mean as much to you as I had hoped?”

The Emperor was silent for all of one second.  In that second, his eyes flashed a burst of cerulean blue, like a robin’s egg, piercing through his skin and through the lights of the office.  In a moment, they vanished, and his temper was reined.  Mortarion saw it all, and two weeks before, would have flinched away, in surprise or even anger.  But now, he stood.  His dead, empty eyes met his fathers’, and he stared straight back.

“…Morticia means more to me than you know, my son.  For that reason, I will forgive you your insinuations, and your lapse of memory,” the Emperor said.

“Lapse of memory?” Mortarion hissed.  “I remember the horror as my wife was taken from me by a disease I gave her.  I will not let my daughter be taken from me by a madman with poor aim.”

“No, my son, you will not.  She lives.  She will be strong again.  But that to which I refer is not the loss of your wife, nor my actions in the Crusade.  The thing to which I refer is the identity of the other injured party to that attempted murder,” the Emperor said coldly.  “And, lest we let the knowledge fade from our minds, her father’s methods are somewhat more subtle than yours.”


Kelly Curze ran her hands together, trying to calm her nerves.  Her new therapist was supposed to arrive soon, and she didn’t know what to expect.  She had been persuaded to wash her makeup off, but it sure didn’t make her feel better.

Her father stood near, trying to sort his own thoughts.  Her problem was alien to him.  He had slain his way across entire arms of the galaxy, left grown men shivering in fear of his name, and frightened entire star systems into solving their own rebellions before he arrived to handle it in person.  On Selgura, he had been the sole survivor of an entire joint Army/Astartes battalion, sent in to cleanse a particularly recalcitrant horde of Dark Eldar.  He had witnessed blessedly false visions of his own father killing him.  He had watched his homeworld slip dangerously close to falling back into the ways of corruption and evil that he had so laboriously purged in his childhood.  He thought – he had to think – that if he had been the one who had watched Morticia being shot, he would have been far more capable of overcoming it.

But he, he reminded himself, was not his daughter.  And she didn’t have his millennia of killing to harden her soul.  Perhaps that was for the best.

“Kelly…you know that as soon as the session’s over, I’ll be here to pick you up, right?  You don’t have to stay in the hospital,” he offered.

“Dad, please…I’m scared.  I don’t want to go home yet,” Kelly said, her voice thin.  Even without her eyeshadow, there were dark circles under her eyes.

Curze clamped his teeth around his tongue.  He didn’t think his daughter was weak.  He didn’t.  But all he could see was someone who had reacted poorly to something he saw every single day – or near enough – for several thousand years.  His wife gave him a reproachful glare, then leaned forward, squeezing their daughter’s shoulder.  “Kelly, if you want me to be here for this-“

“No, thanks, Mom,” Kelly said, clenching her hands tighter.  Her shoulders hunched a bit at her mother’s touch, but she looked up and made eye contact.  “Thanks, though.”

“Kelly…” Konrad struggled to find words.  “I want to understand.”

“I know you do, Dad, but I don’t really understand either,” Kelly said sadly.  “That’s why I’m here.”

“Okay…okay.”  The doctor’s footsteps sounded from down the hall.  Konrad made his mind up.  “Kelly, I’ll be back to hear how it went, OK?  I hope you feel better.”

“Me too,” Kelly said.  She made a little wave of farewell as her parents walked out, her mother pausing to speak to the doctor.  Konrad walked down the hallway, making for the elevator to the aircar lot, planning his route.  As he ascended to the lot, his mind churned, thinking over the precious little information he had gleaned thus far.  He was sure the Emperor would not approve of his taking matters into his own hands…but it wasn’t like it was unprecedented.  The door pinged open, and he stepped out into the cordon of waiting Night Lords serfs.

“My Lord Curze?” a gravelly voice asked from the shadows of the lot.  The serfs each took a long step back from the Primarch, leveling their lasrifles at the speaker.

Ahzek Ahriman stepped forth from the darkness, his eyes locked onto Curze.  “May I speak to you a moment?”

Curze looked at the old warrior askance.  “You’re Ahriman, right?  Magnus’ man?”

“I am, Lord.  I have a piece of…valuable knowledge to pass along to you.”  One of the Night Lords looked over his shoulder subtly.

“…Give us the room, men,” Curze said at length.  The Night Lords serfs snapped to attention, then marched off in the direction of their staff car.  He waited until he was out of earshot before speaking back up.  “What is it?”

“My Lord, I suspect that Sieur Ulysses Keiter had some assistance in his deed,” Ahriman said frankly.  “I suspect also that the Arbites, for all their zeal, are overplaying their hand and disregarding some potentially valuable sources of information.”  Ahriman tapped his staff on the ground for emphasis.

“Such as?” Curze asked.

“Such as those who resent them.  Any figure of law enforcement is going to be resented on a world where crime runs so rampant as Terra.  They will have questioned the obvious suspects, like the Civil Honors Union, his relatives, what have you.  But sources of information in a criminal investigation are rarely cooperative with the Arbites, I have learned.  Besides, we are both of the…enlightened race.  Are we not?”

“What of it?” Konrad growled.  His psychic talents had certainly never helped him much.

“My point, Lord, is that we would be better served in our search amongst those who revile this Keiter than amongst his friends.  Look for information from those who would offer it up gladly…and look for a lie where it forms.”

Curze was silent.  Two men in Power armor would be as far from subtle as it is possible to be.  But, as he had so frequently learned, fear was a weapon.  And if Ahriman was right…

The Emperor had spoken to him in private after the incident with Furia.  He had been told to never employ such measures against civilians again.  He had given his word.  He had intended to keep them.  And then he had watched his daughter shivering in terror in a hospital room, blood soaking her clothes.  All it would take, he was sure, was one visit by the Night Haunter, and nobody in his path would fail to yield the information he sought.

He closed his eyes for a moment, seeking the tendrils of fate, but they were clouded and out of his reach.  He opened them again to see Ahriman staring at him through the visor of his helmet, inscrutable.

“Where did you get this lead?” Curze asked.

“From a vision I received.  It was abrupt, and full of things that do not seem to have come to pass…but enough did that I think this warrants investigation.”

“We will be spotted.  This will not be stealthy,” Curze said.

“And yet…” Ahriman let the statement hang in the air.

“Where?” Curze asked of the psyker.

Ahriman opened his palms.  “The hive-tops.  One of the areas not supposed to have been reconditioned like Startseite, but instead one that sprung up from whole cloth.  They are full of the worlds’ most destitute…but also the worlds’ most loyal."

“Very well, Brother Ahriman.  We go.  And let us hope you are right,” Curze growled.