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To spurn one’s body for the cold efficiency of the machine was an act of piety for some, a matter of mere practicality for others, but it was a choice that Heinrix never quite understood, not until his affliction had revealed itself. He knew better now, that flesh was a fragile thing, with endless horrors contained within it – he had, after all, been cursed with the ability to expose them by his own hand, and expose them he did.
Hearts did not have to beat on time. Lungs did not have to make space for air. Skin could peel away with ease, only to be regrown and flayed again by the easy glide of a sharp knife. Blood could boil, and scald – it could just as easily freeze.
Decades of practice had whetted him into a weapon – keen, exacting, and above all lethal, but it had taken only a short time in the Rogue Trader’s retinue to leave his edges blunted. This investigation of his, if it could still be regarded as such, had long since devolved into a hollow, fruitless endeavor – one that saw neither answers nor progress, only the steady accumulation of bodies in the ship’s airlock.
A few standard months with her had felt like a lifetime. One without her? An eternity. But if he was doomed to failure, then let this be his undoing – let him be consumed in the attempt. Perhaps his service to her could be its own form of contrition, and he might be cleansed by it, just as she had been made anew by her warrant.
That the God-Emperor, in his infinite grace, had granted him a position through which he might redeem himself could never undo the truth of his nature. He was the grave upon which wasted efforts were laid to rest – a failed Knight Pilot, a failed Interrogator.
But still, he stood poised, gloved hands clasped firmly behind his back as he cycled through the same rehearsed motions, the same tired dialogue, the same litany of torments that had delivered results from lesser men in the past.
Heinrix cleared his throat, so that his voice rang clear when it came. “You were here when the Rogue Trader was taken, were you not?”
“Y-yes, I’ve already… but I-I had nothing to do with it… I –”
His words tumbled in a garbled, slurred rush, thick with spit that clung to his chapped lips and pooled at the corners of his mouth before sliding down his chin. There was blood mixed in there as well, the taste of iron no doubt heavy on his tongue, or rather what remained thereof – the man had bitten clean through it in his agony, and now the mangled, swollen mass lolled uselessly in his mouth, making a mess of his speech.
He was stalling.
So the Interrogator elevated the temperature of his blood in slow increments, teasing at the threshold of his suffering before wrenching it higher – and he watched, impassive, as the body before him convulsed, limbs jerking violently, contorting at odd, unnatural angles. He moved like a dying thing – an insect with its legs plucked off.
“I asked a simple yes or no question. Let us try again.” His tone was stripped of patience now, and as he took a step forward, the man before him flinched. “Were you or were you not aboard this vessel when the Rogue Trader was taken?”
“Y-yes.”
“Then you must know something. I’ve questioned the others already, do not play coy with me,” he lied, watching carefully for even the slightest shift in countenance.
Biological indicators were less reliable under duress - pain had a way of twisting the body’s responses, turning once useful signals into meaningless noise. Still, Heinrix monitored the man’s heart rate, the minute spasms in his overtaxed muscles, the way his bloodshot eyes darted to and fro. The prisoner blinked once, and then shook his head rapidly – too quick, too forceful. He was just as twitchy as he’d been moments earlier as he writhed across the floor like a worm, the floor that was almost entirely covered in frost – and he was lying.
“Please! Please, have mercy… I don’t know anything, I-I don’t even know what you’re asking for, they didn’t tell us where –” The heat of his breath formed a vapor against the frigid air as he choked back sobs. “Let the Emperor strike me down if I’ve…”
There it was, a delusional plea to the undying one himself, as if he weren’t conversing with the very hand of his judgement, as though divine intervention could manifest as anything other than the fire smoldering beneath his skin.
“Then I shall repeat it for you, listen carefully.” His jaw clenched, teeth grinding in an attempt to contend with his mounting irritation. “You have, whether by ignorance or intent, aided and abetted xenos, and for that, death would be too kind a penalty. But I am willing to ease your suffering, should you prove yourself worthy of such consideration.”
A deep sigh escaped Heinrix’s lips as he stepped forward and began to pace, the sound of his soles against the floor threading through the silence – it was a nervous habit, one he had never quite been able to shake, as though he were mapping his thoughts across the floor as he moved. He worried that it betrayed his desperation, as well as the sheer amount of time he had dedicated already to dragging a confession from him. The day had begun to wane, and soon he would have to leave the prisoner to macerate in his own blood, sweat, and piss – until tomorrow.
And what then?
Another wasted day, another wasted night. He would be damning Mette to another night in Drukhari captivity, at the mercy of those things. And though he was loath to imagine what they were doing, no, what damage had likely already been done… the ways in which her corpse had been desecrated – the thoughts seeped in nonetheless. His gloves crinkled in a thousand places as he clenched his fists.
“Tell me where the xenos have taken the Rogue Trader.” His voice had unraveled into a slow, venomous drawl. “And I will grant you a swift death.”
Perhaps the man had sensed his weakness then.
“I… don’t… know,” he rasped, each word dragging, punctuated by a labored breath. His arms trembled as he tried to push himself upright, before quivering from exhaustion, and slipping on the ice. As he crumpled down, his lips peeled back, half sneering, half scowling. “... where they took that stupid bitch.”
The words had barely left his mouth before Heinrix delivered a sharp, merciless kick to the man’s ribs. The impact sent him sprawling, and a strangled yelp tore its way from his throat as he struggled to regain his composure, lungs failing to catch breath that had been stolen from him.
“I should remove your tongue for disrespecting the Emperor’s chosen, heretic.”
Again, his boot drove into the prisoner’s ribs, harder this time. As the man convulsed, he coughed up fresh blood that dotted the pale sheen of ice in uneven spatters. The biomancer closed his eyes for a moment, exhaled slowly, and rolled his shoulders back – it would do no good to allow his own sentimentality to color his actions, but to let such insolence go unpunished would have been a gross neglect of his duty, so Heinrix willed the blood to begin siphoning from his leg.
“You do still crave the release of death, is that correct?” He mused. “I’ve been told by enforcers that you tried to slit your own throat with a jagged piece of metal you pried from the walls of this very room, but you failed.”
He let his words hang for a moment, before making a big show of the way his eye gravitated towards the prisoner’s hands, mangled, and now bereft of fingernails. It was a shame, really, that he’d been so hasty – Heinrix had been planning on removing them himself.
“What a shame… if only you’d shown that same resourcefulness in resisting the enemies of humanity, rather than this pitiful attempt at escape. But you see, it is not for you to decide when this ends, that authority rests with me alone, and until then, you will endure exactly as I see fit.”
Once the blood left one’s extremities, it didn’t take long for once living tissue to be rendered useless, and the sight of the prisoner’s leg tinged black let him know that the process had already begun in earnest - his time was running out.
Had Mette been here, she would have made clear the ways in which his efforts constituted a brutish display of force, one she would not excuse, even as it was done in her name. The old blood that had since oxidized, painting the walls in saturated, irregular spatters, belonging now to eight different men, would have disgusted her. He could see it so clearly as he envisioned her now, watching from just over his shoulder, her lips pressed thin, pale eyes narrowed and cast towards him in disdain.
“Why don’t you just let him go, Heinrix? Or at the very least, put him out of his misery,” she might have said, her eyes wide, arms crossed.
The dangerous manner in which she favored leniency, and showed it to those who least deserved it was once an endless source of frustration, an ever present footnote in his reports – a sign of weakness, if not outright corruption. But in the suffocating stillness of this room, he would have done anything to hear her voice cutting sharp again, pleading with him to stop. Mercy had only ever been his to wield at her command, and he thought he would always be grateful to her for granting him that reprieve, fleeting as it may have been.
“I don’t know anything, I swear on –”
The sound of the prisoner’s voice broke him from his reverie - it was grating, cracking as he spoke, hoarse from thirst and fear. So he constricted his lungs, depriving him of breath, and watched as he gasped, veins bulging against sweat-slick skin. It wasn’t quiet, but he supposed it was better than listening to the maggot speak.
“Even my patience has its limits.”
Just moments ago, his heart struggled to push oxygen starved blood through his body – now, his veins burned with a fresh agony.
“This is your last chance,” the Interrogator warned. “Tell me where the xenos have taken the Rogue Trader.”
His screams were utterly incoherent, and it was in that moment that he'd outlived his usefulness.
The prisoner’s body arched, and he began thrashing again, but Heinrix wasn’t finished. With a pop, his eyes went next, and his throat opened with another shriek – inhuman now, as his fingers clawed at his face in blind, animalistic horror. His veins followed, swelling, lining his skin with blackened fractures where they had blistered to the point of breaking. A steady stream of blood seeped from his nostrils, oozed thick and sluggish from his ears, and drained from the hollow sockets where his eyes had once been before forming a steaming puddle on the floor – and his body, plagued by tremors mere seconds ago, stiffened.
He decided that he would leave the corpse where it lay – let his next subject see their fate, should they resist, slumped in a pool of its own boiled insides. With any luck, the stench would be unbearable by morning.
Heinrix knew he should not have been here, knew from the moment he slipped into Mette’s quarters in the dead of night that there would be no undoing this – and yet, his body, weak from overuse of his biomancy and deprived of sleep, carried him forward against his better judgement.
The bridge had been near empty, his path to the elevator seemingly clear, but all it would have taken was a single wandering glance from one of her officers and then, well – part of him wished that someone had taken notice, for it was perhaps the only thing that may have stopped him.
Should anyone inquire as to his presence here, he supposed he could cite duty, explain this away as part of his efforts to see the Lord Captain safely home. The clandestine nature of his work as well as the reputation he carried as its executor would have been enough to deter any further questioning. None would dare press him on the finer details, nor ask whether his methods strayed beyond necessity, though a twinge of guilt seized him at the thought of using his own failed investigation as an excuse for what he was about to do – yet another sin to lay at her feet.
Still, he pressed on, the carpet swallowing his heavy footfalls as he crept through her space. It had only been hers for a short while – she’d hardly even begun to make it her own, hadn’t left enough to cling to, and yet, his heart raced as though he were on the precipice of being caught.
When he reached her bedroom, he stripped away his outer layers, still sown with bloodstains from the day’s work – he’d removed his pauldrons, and unbuttoned his coat countless times before, but it felt profane to do so here, in her domain. He should have turned back, before he could defile this place any further – but what did it matter now?
She would not, could not return, not now, not ever. And he only had himself to blame.
He trudged towards the closet, and for a moment, he hesitated, hands glued to his side until he forced them to move. Once he’d turned the handle, and the door swung open, he was met with a row of clothes, hung neatly and arranged by color. It didn’t take long for him to find what he was looking for – light blue silk, delicate lace trim, untouched as if it too were awaiting her return. He ran a hand over the fine fabric before plucking it from its hanger.
With the nightgown in hand, he retreated to the bed. It was enormous, so vast that the thought of Mette curled alone upon it struck him as comical. When he lowered himself onto the mattress, it sank beneath his weight as he leaned back and reclined against the stack of pillows. Heinrix crushed the fabric in his fist, his fingers trembling as he brought it to his nose and drew a shaky breath. The scent struck him instantly – a cloying vanilla that circled him like a noose, mixed with something else, something distinctly reminiscent of her that would soon fade with time. He could drown the damned thing in her perfume, soak it until it reeked, but it wouldn’t change the fact that she would never wear it again.
How long could he keep the secret of the Rogue Trader’s disappearance? He dared not commit it to writing, not until he had well and truly exhausted all options, but soon the truth would have to come out. And with no living heirs, those two vultures would begin warring for her territory. For as long as possible, he wished for there to be something remaining of her protectorate, for there would be something so – final about formally announcing her death, an irreversible acknowledgement of his own failure. Already she was beginning to fade, and so he would have to make use of his memories while they were still fresh in his mind.
Would she hate him for this? For allowing his grief to twist into something so base, so depraved? He wasn’t sure why he still cared, why the thought of her scorn still held the power to wound him even when she was not here to wield it.
His right hand traveled in a slow, damning descent, while his left clung to the nightgown as though it were a lifeline, and he closed his eyes so that he might surrender to a fevered illusion of her – her body wrapped in the same garment he now clung to.
And before he could come to his senses, Heinrix freed his throbbing erection, and sighed as the cool air brushed against his now exposed skin. As he brought the nightgown to his nose again, his grip tightened until his knuckles blanched white. He inhaled deeply one last time, before bringing it to rest on his stomach, spitting into his hand, and curling it around his cock, eliciting a low moan as he stroked himself – languid, torturous, punishing.
He deserved none of this, not the silk pressed into his skin, not her scent wrapping around him, not the fantasy creeping into his mind, desperate and all consuming, but still his hand continued to work in slow, aching strokes.
He saw her now as she had been in the quiet of their nightly regicide matches – armed folded under the soft swell of her breasts, watching him through half lidded eyes, with a smile curling the edges of her rosebud lips as she leaned close, and whispered something in his ear. Her breath would be hot against his skin, and her voice low, teasing.
“Do you miss me?”
A chill ran the length of his spine.
“I want you to show me how much you’ve missed me.”
A whimper escaped him as he jerked into his own grasp. By the throne he could almost feel her – her warmth, her weight straddling his lap, the silk pooling against his legs as she settled against him. She’d roll her hips slowly, reveling in the way he clenched his jaw – how his fingers dug into her waist, fighting the urge to seize control.
“Poor thing.”
His hand pumped faster at the thought of how she might have looked splayed out beneath him on these sheets, with thick lashes casting a shadow over her flushed cheeks, lips parted in anticipation – like she wanted this just as much as he did, her need as all consuming as his own. Then, he humored himself with another fantasy – that somehow, through his efforts, she’d been brought home, that one of his stubborn prisoners had finally yielded. And she would thank him by sinking to her knees, and stretching her small mouth around his cock. He imagined the soft press of her lips, how she might sigh against him, her breath hot, her tongue tentatively flicking the tip before taking him into the wet heat of her mouth.
He thought of how she would move, slow at first, savoring the taste of him before growing needy, her hands gripping his thighs as she tried to take him deeper, his fingers carding through her thick waves as he guided her down. That caused his breath to come faster now – the way she might struggle at first before adjusting to his size, eyes pleading for more, until he heard her muffled choking sounds.
With a low moan, he spilled into his own hand, hot and thick. And for one perfect, fleeting moment, he could almost make himself believe that she was here – that if he turned his head, he would find Mette beside him, rosy-cheeked, lips curled in satisfaction. Their limbs would tangle, and her body would be soft and pliant against his own, her breath fanning over his chest as she threaded her fingers through his hair.
He was so tired, and it would have been easy to continue laying like this, caught in the haze between sleep and wakefulness, where his grief was almost dulled. But he knew he could not stay here any longer.
When he opened his tired, burning eyes, he found the bed empty. The air? Cold. His body? Thoroughly spent.
His head felt impossibly heavy as he lifted it, and every muscle ached in protest as he sat up, and dragged himself from the comfort of her bed. And as his gaze settled on the ruined nightgown that now hung limp in his grasp, damp from sweat, and stained by the evidence of his own pathetic indulgence, the aftershocks of pleasure began to curdle into something that made him sick.
A single sob tore past his lips before he could choke it down, but when another threatened to break free, he clenched his jaw until it ached.