Editing Bleeding Out (Warhammer High) (section)

===A Very Bad Idea===

Michael stood in Angela’s doorway, all but radiating his nervousness.  Angela herself was face-down on her bed, which was really the only way she could be comfortable.  She was just as morose as she had sounded on the phone, too, and Sanguinius hadn’t even hesitated to let her boyfriend through the cordon.  But then, he lived next door.

He sank down on the bed next to Angela, who lifted her head to stare at him, pain evident on her face.  The shock of Morticia’s attack was still fresh enough, but as news spread, the surprise and fear –and worse: derision and glee from the insensitive and indifferent – were slamming into her mind, over and over.

Michael wasn’t a psyker.  He couldn’t comprehend the pain she was going through, as fear and uncertainty compounded days of exhaustion and waiting by the vox for news.  But he still had to be there.  He couldn’t NOT be there.

Angela reached out and squeezed his hand, pulling him closer.  He lay down next to her, kicking his shoes off and wrapping his arm around her shoulders, propping himself up on his side and looking down at her.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.  She sounded weak.  Tired.  Angry, maybe…and hopeless.  Michael nodded, leaning down a hair to whisper.

“I wish I’d been here earlier.”  She managed a snort.

“I think you’re too heavy to jump the gutters these days.”

“Probably.”  They both lay in silence, letting their words hang on the air.  “Angela…I thought about what you said before.”

Angela didn’t respond, but she did cross her arms under her chest, leaning on them to stare at Michael sidelong.  “You want to try again?”

“Not if you’re too tired,” he said, remembering what had happened last time.  Angela rose up on one arm, her sadness fading a little, behind a mask of intense focus.

“If you mean it…” she said quietly, her eyes locked on his.  “I nearly hurt you last time.”

“That was scary,” Michael admitted, “but if ever you needed it…”

“True,” she said softly, sitting upright, her wings folding back against her back as she let her head sink a bit, lost in thought.  “…You know what?  Alright.  I hope your schedule’s clear,” she said with sudden mischief.

“I have all night.  My parents aren’t expecting me,” Michael responded, getting up and locking the door.

Angela stayed on the bed, staring at her boyfriend as he shucked his jacket, sitting back down on the covers.  Shrugging the shoulder pieces off of her custom version of the school uniform, designed to accommodate her unusual anatomy, she paused as her hand reached the lower row of buttons.  “Are you sure about this?” she asked suddenly, turning to face him.  “I mean…this isn’t particularly safe.  I’ve only done this twice.”

“I want it, though, and I can tell you do,” Michael replied, sliding his own shirt off and tossing it aside.

“I do,” she said, low and thoughtful.  “You know Dad might find out.  He’ll ruin me.”

Michael shrugged.  “Your call.”  Angela bit her lip, smiling at last.

“OK.”

She tugged her shirt and bra free, lying down next to her lifelong friend, and more recently lover, who brushed her hair out of his eyes, looking up at her contentedly.  “Go ahead…” he said softly.

Angela’s eyes rolled shut as she sank down, half-on top of him.  In the instant before she landed, Michael felt the first, faint tug of something at the edge of his mind-

-Then he was gripped, for a fraction of a second, in the most horrible agony he had ever experienced, as his soul was literally ripped from his body.  His radiant being drifted forth from the meat body that carried it, invisible to all but the most gifted psykers.  Like Angela.

With exquisite care, she cast herself out as well, their souls instantly meeting in the void of the Warp, bound in place by their living bodies.  Michael’s soul drifted in place, a tiny spark next to Angela’s roaring, deific bonfire.

Their souls met, linked.  She flickered, ethereal as the Warp itself, gently wrapping around his, pulling him closer.  He allowed it, spreading across hers in turn, insignificant next to hers and all the more noticeable for it.

Raw, jagged rents of emotions in her psyche raced around her spectral body like mobile wounds, leaking anguish and self-recrimination and terrible, terrible uncertainty.  Michael’s soul sidled up to hers, looking, no doubt, like a calving whale, following its mother.

His faint presence approached hers, his own raw, frightened mind dwarfed by hers.  He could see himself for an instant, there in the roiling void, next to her, faint and insubstantial, incomparable to her brilliant, vivid outline, and invisible next to her father, down below.  In the distance, the torrent of burning light of the Emperor and Astronomican flared, too far to see and right next to them at once.

He didn’t care.  He slid a faint thought across her mind, slowing the pain racing through her.

His body, still tied to Earth and reality, twitched and moved, wrapping an arm across her lower back, just below where her wings erupted from her back.

Her mind flinched, racing and frightened and impossibly crowded.  She withdrew, her fear for her family lending her soul a reddish purple hue.

Her body bit its lip, so hard it leaked a drop of blood.  It landed on Michael’s chest, staining the skin red.

Michael did not relent, extending his thoughts to hers.  She relaxed, a tiny bit, gingerly accepting it.  He slipped his soul’s membrane across hers, trying to soothe the anguish.

Far off, too far from the Emperor for him to see, a tiny sliver of malice drifted through the Warp.  A remnant of the darker realms of Chaos, it was fleeing a stinging defeat of its own, a humiliation that had cost it its form and minions.  Seeking refuge in the Emperor’s vast shadow, it came across the spectacle, and paused, watching.

Michael’s soul drifted across hers, trying patiently to calm her, ignorant of his audience.  Angela’s godlike presence slowly shrank, still weeping from a thousand nonexistent cuts, and so walled-off that nothing could get in or out.  Michael traced a slow circle, trying to get her to relent, to let him in.

She paused, her psyker’s light burning evenly, illuminating the nothingness.  With the greatest of care, she extended a thought of her own to him, allowing him closer.

He accepted, moving up against her, his empty light nearly invisible against her.  She flared instinctively, her emotions racing again, but he wasn’t afraid.  She wouldn’t harm him.

The daemon lurked, gliding closer, drinking in the new sights.  What was this?

Angela’s body moved, clenching its fists so hard the nails nearly bit the skin, muscles tightening in helpless frustration.  Her soul did the same, expanding in the nonreality of the Warp, pushing Michael back.  Her form changed, sprouting her father’s wings, and deep, oozing reds of anger and regret and bitterness pouring out of her hands.  He slid his thoughts across hers, pushing away her fear and self-loathing, finding her need, her uncertainty, and covering them with himself, sharing them a little.

She paused, feeling her anguish fade, and shrank back to her normal size, the fearsome wings and blood-soaked hands of her soul’s form fading away.  Michael kept going, pushing the inadequacies of her persona back, and her body sobbed aloud, a pair of teardrops joining the blood on his chest, running down onto the covers, and her soul turned the blues of remorse and pity.

Michael paused, reaching out to hold her, and she collapsed, her instinctive anger vanishing as she confronted her regret.  Guilt brought weakness, and her soul shrank further yet, its brilliant light fading in tune with her emotions, until there was almost nothing left.  His soul crossed hers, enveloping her, glowing faintly in the ether, giving her some modicum of shelter.

The daemon shifted silently, weighing its options.  Should it strike?  Or wait, to see what happened?

Angela’s body went limp, guilt and recrimination cutting her puppet’s strings.  Michael’s soul caressed hers, eliciting a sigh of primal familiarity from hers, and she slowly moved away, pulling herself back from his embrace.  Her light returned, expanding to fill her mind’s shape, and wrapped herself back around him, seeking his stability.  He returned it, sliding around and through her more intimately than a physical hug ever could, and the blues of her remorse faded away to a dull, exhausted gray.  The thousand crawling wounds closed, one at a time and all at once, fading into faint scars on her soul, as her physical body slumped aside, rolling off of his chest onto her flank.

Relief, like a thousand doors opening, rushed through him, and his own soul flared, bright and passionate for a moment, throwing a shadow across hers, and her soul responded in kind, finding solace in his love.  His mind moved against hers again, satisfaction lending him playfulness, and her glorious form replied, the faintest hue of pink coloring it as she moved back.

As one, they woke.  Angela hissed as blood flow returned to the hand she had fallen on, and Michael blinked groggily, unused to the feeling of projection.

The daemon sighed in disappointment, sliding on through the void.  It would have found nothing if it had struck, it decided, nothing but sour grapes.

Angela smiled, slipping her legs astride her boyfriends’, resting her ample breasts against his chest.  She glanced down to where her blood and tears had fallen on his collarbone, raising her eyebrows.  “No wonder my lip’s sore,” she said, rubbing them away.

“…Yeah,” Michael said with an effort, his vision swimming.  Angela looked up at him in sympathy.  The feeling of soul-stripping, even at the best of times, hurt like nothing else could.  He tried to hold up a hand, and couldn’t do it.  He was shaking, head to toe, his breath thin and reedy.

“Sorry,” Angela said softly.  “I knew that would be a lot for you.”

“Forget it,” Michael managed.  “Are you feeling better?”

“Like it never happened,” Angela lied.  She knew the scars of her emotional trauma would take much longer to fade…but as far as she was concerned, it may as well have been true.  The horror of the ordeal was gone completely.  The ennui that had robbed the day from her was fading away, and in its place was a rock of certainty.  She smiled faintly, cocking her head so that a lock of blond fell across his forehead.  “In fact…”

“No,” Michael said flatly.  “Sorry.”

“I know.”  She grabbed his shaking jaw, holding him still enough for a deep, passionate kiss.  “Think of it as something to wake up to,” she whispered in his ear.

“I…will…” he said with a grin, before his eyes slipped shut.  His muscles went slack as he surrendered to the mental, physical, and spiritual exhaustion that the soul-stripping had brought about.  Angela waiting a moment longer before planting another, gentler kiss on his cheek, then carefully lifted herself free, grabbing the rest of her clothes and pulling them off.

She slid the covers out from under her boyfriends’ sleeping body, and pulled them up to his chin, before wiggling up next to him, lying on her side, and resting her head on his shoulder.  She snapped her fingers and the lights died, plunging the room into darkness.

The tanned angel watched in the darkness, Michael’s breath the only sound.  She slipped her free arm across his chest, hugging her bare skin against his body, the rough feeling of his pants contrasting with the soft warmth of his flesh.  Angela pulled the skein of the Warp back from her sight, and looked on in contentment as his ethereal form drifted next to hers, glowing a little brighter than before.

She smiled to herself.  The first time they had tried that, she had been so scared it hadn’t even worked.  The second, they had made the mistake of trying while he was bone-weary from work, and he had nearly gone into a coma.  That time, though…

“Third time’s the charm, hmm?” she asked the man asleep in her arms.  She smiled at his lack of reply, and let her own exhaustion pull her to sleep.  For the first time since the beehives had pulled her and Miranda aside, she slept; and it was deep, restful, and healing.


Freya leaned against the frame of her bay window, staring listlessly at the fields outside. The lights in the pseudosky were dimming as the hour turned late, but it wasn’t an impediment to her.  Her inhuman eyes looked out over the grass surrounding the mansion as if it were already morning, sighting every crevasse and shadow. The old-fashioned window creaked on its hinges as she pushed it open, and let the night wind blow into the room.

Her boyfriend stirred in the bed as the cold wind reached him. She glanced over her shoulder at him, but didn’t move from her spot.  The faint noise of ground cars moving along the distant road carried over the wind to her ultra-sensitive ears, turning into a distant background rumble.

The cold wind pushed the curtains back against her, silhouetting her naked form against the white cloth. The smell of the ash in the cup by the bed blew away, replaced by the smell of the outside’s fake, circulated air, and the more comfortable smell of the flowers in the field.

Freya stood, gripping the top of the bay and leaning over the seat, staring out at the field, looking for…something. The chill wind blew the curtains back on either side of her, flowing back like Angela’s wings, and, she hoped, was responsible for the tears in her eyes.

The breeze on his cheek roused Alex from his sleep. He squinted in the darkness, trying to find the source of the cold, and paused at the sight of Freya’s outline against the window, his breath catching in his throat. Fully awake in a moment, he drank in the sight in silence, before her hearing alerted her to his rising heartbeat. She let go of the window frame and turned around, smiling sheepishly.  “Hey. Did I wake you up?”

“No, you didn’t,” he mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “You OK?”

“Just can’t sleep. Weed keeps me up,” she lied, pointing at the remains of the joint in the impromptu ashtray.

“Mmm. ‘Kay.” He blinked against the glare from the outside. “You comin’ to bed?”

“Nah.  Not tired.” Freya sat back down on the seat, looking back out over the grassy fields. “I just want to think.”

“Ain’t you afraid of someone taking a picture from the road?” Alex asked blearily.

Freya didn’t turn around.  “Holofield.  The house always looks the same.” She flicked one red dreadlock over her shoulder. “Go to sleep.”

“…You say so,” Alex said tiredly, rolling over to face away from the window, trying not to lie on the wet spot. “’Night, baby.”

“’Night,” Freya whispered.


The next morning, Arthur Hane sat down in a cold, concrete room and stared a terrorist in the eyes. “Sieur Keiter, you’ve stated that your intention was to inspire panic in the civilian population, but only a select slice of the population. What exactly did you mean?”

The man stared right back. “What I said. The Imperium’s the best thing that ever happened to humanity, as a whole.  But not on the fringes.  What do you think most of the planet does, Sieur Hane?  What jobs do they have?”

“According to the Bureau of Labor, nearly all Terrans either work for the Administratum, Munitorum, or various manufactoriae,” the lawyer responded from memory.

“Yeah.  The cogs in the Imperial machine.  Indispensable, don’t you think?  You think the Imperium can maintain its standards of living without them?”

“Probably not, no.”  Arthur sipped his coffee and thought about the conversation thus far. “So you think you’re striking a blow for the working man…against the wealthy?”

“Not specifically.” The man leaned back in his seat, grinning wistfully. “The nouveau riche.  The spoiled, the petulant, the knee-jerk reactionaries.  The parasites, Sieur Hane.”

“The new rich.  Industrialists,” Hane continued.

“No, no, the people who think the status quo is just fine, thanks, and doesn’t need to improve,” the man said coldly.

“But the nouveau riche are those who achieve wealth within the span of their own careers.  People who struck it rich through success and cleverness.  What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s WRONG?” the man asked, his eyes hardening.  “What’s wrong.  Oh, Sieur Hane, so much is wrong with them.  They think the Imperium is their cash cow, their machine to be ignored when it works and berated when it doesn’t, like some rank amateur techpriest.”

“And what do you believe?” Hane asked, his gut sinking.

“That the world needs a blooding,” the man said ominously. “That people who strike gold and forget their pasts need to be expunged.  That people who oppose the Emperor’s judgment are fools, and those who exploit His gifts…are…parasites,” he said, ice dripping from the last few words.

“So…people who forget the working man,” Hane offered.

“You’re damn right.”

“But you couldn’t have told the spoiled rich from the career humanitarian through a scope at two kilometers,” Hane pointed out.

“I took a guess,” the man said, misery cracking his mask of ideological rage. “I guessed wrong.”

Hane nodded slowly.  “So who got you the rifle?”

“I bought it,” Hane said.  “Hunting weapons are legal on Terra.”

“No they aren’t, actually,” Hane said.  “They’re legal to ship and store, but not to carry.  You can buy them for off-world safaris.  Using them on-planet is punishable.”

“Oh, what does it matter,” the man asked dismissively. “It’s over.  You have it.”

“Who got you into the building?” Hane pressed.

“I did.  I worked there,” the man said, glancing to the side.

“The room we found you in was empty.  Completely empty.”

“Remodeling,” the man said shortly, looking aside.  Hane perked up.  Had he hit a nerve?

“Why Sunday?  Any particular reason?” he asked, glancing down at the pad of paper he was using and making a show of writing, as if the question was barely even important.

“It just fit the schedule,” the man said.

“All right.”  Hane nodded, thinking over what the Treasury had told them of the preliminary background check they had conducted on Keiter.  He was a member of the Civil Honors Union, a volunteer organization that distributed mutancy testing kits in the hives.  No criminal record.  Civil rifle and pistol permits.  Membership in the Sons of the War, a veteran’s families’ support group.  “Sieur, can you tell me about the Civil Honors Union?”

“They’re good people.  We distribute goods to the lower levels.  The places the surface scum forget,” the man said solemnly.  “People down there are just as important as the rest of us, and forgotten all the more often for it.”

“Did one of them ask you to do this?”  Hane asked.

The man’s hackles rose. “Of course not!  They’re a humanitarian group!”

“Well, your definition of ‘humanitarian’ includes murder, so I’m not ready to rule it out yet,” Hane said.  The man’s lawyer bristled.

“Sieur Hane, that was un-called for.”

“I'll plead guilty to shooting a-’ the man’s voice caught for a moment.  He struggled on.  “-a Primarch’s daughter.  I have to live with that now.  But I damn well TRIED to do the right thing, SIEUR Hane, and nothing you say will change that.”

“But not for yourself, right?  You’ve stated several times that you did this for the forgotten hivers,” Hane said.

“Forgotten and abused,” the man said, his eyes growing cold with anger-by-proxy.  “We’ve covered this.”

“Yeah, but you’re dancing.”  Hane leaned forward.  “You still aren’t saying how exactly the new rich are abusing anybody.  You keep saying that the poor and the hivers are forgotten, but how can they be forgotten AND abused?  You think the Emperor isn’t doing enough for the common man?”

“I think the Emperor is the only thing the common man has left,” the man said tiredly, sinking into his chair with a sigh and looking wistfully at Hane’s coffee.

Hane nodded.  A very uncomfortable pattern was materializing in front of him now.  He decided to try one more thing.  “Sieur Keiter, tell me.  Why do you think the common man, the hivers, whatever you call them, need the mutancy kits from the Union?”

“Why?” the man blinked in confusion.  “Why do they need…mutancy testing?"

“Yes.  Surely not all the people in the hives have mutations.”

“No, of course not!” the man said angrily.  “But it must be found wherever it hides.  It must be expunged.  We don’t force people to act on the results, but they should know what they are!”

“Why?  Isn’t that their business?”  Hane asked.

The man scoffed.  “It’s the business of the pure humans who have to live with them.”

Hane nodded.  “Then why target someone topside?  Why not just kill one of the mutants?  Don’t they hold the Imperium back even more than the rich?”

“Of course,” the man said darkly.  “But who’d miss them?”  The man’s lawyer shifted slightly, shutting him up, but Hane was done.

“Thank you, Sieur Keiter, Counselor Felger.  I’ll be in touch,” Hane said, scooping up his personal effects and coffee.  Without a word, he turned from the table and left, wondering how in the world he was going to break this to the Emperor.


The sun glinted off the hive walls, so bright a normal human couldn’t look at it for too long.  Remilia was so used to it that she barely noticed.  She walked slowly alongside the inside wall of the courtyard of her father’s manor, rolling a soccer ball across the grass every few steps.  The small handful of guards on the courtyard wall stood sentry, occasionally glancing down to see if she was still there.

The lanky blond drew her foot back over the ball and flipped it up onto her toe, balancing it against the breeze.  The warming air of summer (such as it was) filtered through the wrought-iron fence of the enclosed athletic courtyard Dorn had had built in his manor, and carried the smell of cut grass, charcoal, and the stink of the ionic jets the Treasury cars used to get around.

Remilia kicked the ball up to eye level, tracking it and taking a step back, then slammed it with a side kick, bouncing it neatly off the crossbar of the goal at the end of the field.  She watched the ball roll to a stop, burning her angry glare into its plastic skin.  Goddamned cross-breezes.

Her father watched from the window of his study, several stories above, resting his chin on his fist, equally lost in thought.  Some part of him wanted to take the blame for this.  After all, had it not been his security systems, his instructions, and the training provisions he had created, that the Treasury had used that day?

With a heavy sigh, he stood from his desk and walked down the hall to the stairs, wending his way down.  He walked out into the courtyard, staring in silence as his daughter practiced.

Remilia rolled the ball down the field, trying to balance it against her new shoes, and trying just as hard to ignore her father.  He waited, patiently.  He knew she had to come to this on her own.

Finally, she slammed the ball with all her might, sending it caroming off the fence.  Dorn sighed aloud, and Remilia whipped around.  “What?” she snapped, then raised her hands as Rogal’s face darkened.  “Sorry, Dad.  What?”

Rogal tried to keep his voice level.  “Are you feeling better?”

Remilia exhaled through pursed lips, ramming her hands in her pockets.  “…A little, yeah.”

“Good.”  Her father looked down at the ball as it rolled to a stop on the fresh grass.  “I didn’t tell your mother.”

Remilia’s eyes flattened.  She clenched her fists in her pockets, feeling a spike of horrified realization in her belly.  “How did you know?” she asked tightly.

“I smelled it. In the bathtub.”  Rogal met his daughter’s eyes, and she shrank from the fiery rage she saw, her own fear melting into instant remorse.  “Do it again.  One.  More.  Time.  And we’ll see if I can’t get you back into the same place they’ve got Morticia.  Am I clear, daughter?”

“Yes, father, I understand,” Remilia said, fear turning her demure.  She broke eye contact, desperately looking for a smoother topic, but Dorn turned on his heel and marched back into the house without a word.

Remilia sank down cross-legged on the field. She grabbed the grass-stained ball and squeezed it between her arms.  “And we can’t have that, can we?” she whispered bitterly, hurling the ball away.  She stared at the grass clippings on her arms, then raked them off with her nails, leaving the bright, fresh scars on her arms bare.  “Not this time.”