The surgery Massino Varnus conducted on Gerhart Heirene unfortunately took considerable time to perform, and the traitor Inquisitor’s recovery took longer still. I was only concerned for his survival insofar as his ability to provide information on his cell was needed of the Inquisition. When he had served his usefulness, I would have him stand before the Throne in meeting his maker. I would not envy him that eventual conversation.
The Gronheims, meanwhile, were still having their existence examined in full by Zha Trantos. I accepted Skardak Tertium’s Regulator, Ramiel Kanius, into a probationary position among my ranks, tasking him with studying Trantos’s interrogation of the Gronheim and telling me what he thought of her and them alike. I already knew what I thought of Trantos—she was incredible. While not a day goes by in which I do not miss my former Interrogator, Hans Okustin, I must admit she has managed to surpass him in virtually every regard. She is brutally capable in the extraction of information, incisive and analytical to the extreme. Were it not for my means to invade the minds of the unwilling, she may have even bested me in terms of interrogational skills. Her combat training was impeccable as well—while she possessed a slightly frailer body than the two of us, she was able to understand, contend with, and strategize against both myself and Lucene Flint in combat.
Zha Trantos was the very definition of a model Inquisitor, and as I may have been for Thaddeus Scayn, she may be my greatest success. Throne, were she in possession of equipment like my own, she may have been able to thwart Gerhart Heirene as capably as I had. It was an honor to guide her from the role of my Savant to that of my Interrogator, and then to that of a subordinate Inquisitor; it is a greater honor still that she yet serves the Throne by my side.
Suffice to say that if the Gronheims once thought they were getting off a bit easy by being interrogated by the smaller and less-physically-imposing female Inquisitor of my retinue, they would have been more mistaken than they were in getting involved in the flect trade to begin with. Speaking of which, I turned the flect over to Varnus as well; rather than destroy it immediately, I wanted to keep it around a bit longer. Not only was it evidence on the trail we were following, but it may prove relevant in deciphering whatever it was that the Phaenonites have been up to, because I already knew that the bodily fluids of Pariahs and the importation of flects were not required for the mass-production of puppet Astartes. Been there, slaughtered that.
That, then, left but a single task remaining for the day. It was one I approached with two close friends directly behind me—Lucene Flint and Xavier Gradshi, the latter of whom I had not seen in several decades. On our journey to this task of mine, we caught up, and I allowed him to express his sorrow for the loss of Coraline, a Psyker he trusted and had grown to admire. One of many casualties in our pursuit of the heretic, and I promised him the wrath of the Divine would befall her murderers. For now, however, our task was—hopefully—less violent.
We entered Jack Harr’s interrogation chamber from behind the Whiteshield aspirant. Unlike the Gronheims, at least, he was not chained to the table ahead of him, and he was able to turn to face our entry, whereupon he marveled at the sight of us. Lucene in particular, I think—which was fair; I often do the same—but his eyes did scan over our trio in full. I was without my cloak now, but still adorned in the Ignatus power armor Varnus had personally created for me. Lucene, likewise, was still in her power armor. Gradshi did not possess power armor, but was impressive all the same, carrying himself nobly in fine green attire and with a tall power staff adorned with a handful of purity seals.
“Jack Harr,” I greeted him with a nod, smiling gently.
“Bliss had said she had told you my name,” he replied. “Uh, should I rise to shake your hand?” he asked.
“You can if you’d like,” I chuckled before stepping closer to him as he rose. Gradshi and Lucene stood by the door of the room. I did not feel his grasp, for my hand was still clad in ceramite, but I entertained the cultural greeting all the same. Afterward, I invited him to return to his seat, saying, “Relax, Mr. Harr, it is my hope that the day’s violence is concluded—for us, at least. Are you well? I understand you were in the, err, ‘care’ of the Arbites. Do you require medicae aid?” I asked as I circled around his table and took a seat across from him.
“I am fine, sir, thank you. Sorry, I believe I heard you tell Hager not to call you ‘sir;’ funny enough, he made the same request of that Luther fellow,” Harr admitted.
I could not help but release a grin and nod. “Yes, some of us have…grown close over the years. It feels wrong to entertain such formalities as we once used in the Guard. I understand you were part of the Guard as well, for a time, and quite capably at that?” I asked, intending to ease him into his background. I quickly realized I bit off more than I was ready for at the time.
Harr’s demeanor quickly changed, and the radiant mood he gave off swerved from optimistic innocence to a more fearful contempt. Upon sensing this, I at first cursed myself for having neglected the details of Harr’s acquisition as Iblis Kyle—then Bliss—had told me of the violent ends she visited upon Harr’s detail in Prareus’s service. Had I, in reflecting on my closeness with my retinue, made Harr jealous of that? Perhaps so, but Harr’s response indicated something more to the change in mood. “Some years now, yes,” he replied. That answer emitted two red flags, both of which took me a moment to process. One was that a Whiteshield would not have had years under their belt. The second was the voice that gave the answer—it was not the voice of Jack Harr. It was gruffer, and, sparing a crack in its pitch, deeper too. “You’re in my head, aren’t you?” this not-Harr asked me. My eyes flicked upward, across the room, to meet the slits in Lucene’s helmet where her eyes would be. At once, she began to tense up, and gradually, without a sound, began to reach for her Bolter.
“Who are you?” I asked the man before me, also tensing up. I was not scared, then, of the answer to my question, but I will admit the shift in our conversation had caught me completely off-guard. In the moment, I felt like I was on Hestia Majoris again, in the Governor’s office, learning of the full reach of an unknown foe. This, despite the fact that one of my best Agents had not merely recommended Jack Harr to me, but also had fallen for the man himself. But Jack Harr was a lie that even she had missed.
“It’s not in there, then?” the not-Harr asked, gesturing to his head. “Good. Inquisitor, the answer to that question—which I will give—will likely see this conversation turn to violence. That is not my intent. I am not a creature who, cover revealed, would match yourself, your very tall Sister, or that Psyker in the back corner, and certainly not the three of you altogether. I ask, instead, that you hear what I have to say.”
I looked on at the not-Harr before me, silently observing the change not only in his speaking patterns but also in his physical appearance. His face aged before my eyes; subtly, mind you, in the form of drearier eyes and taught cheeks, with lines upon his brow. Frankly, though his eyes differed in color, he almost looked like Silas Hager. Perhaps that is why I gave him the chance to speak, nodding to him in tense silence.
“I am Vilk Issik, Tempestus Scion of the Severan Dominate,” he replied. In a heartbeat, Lucene both drew and leveled her Bolter to the back of Issik’s head. I but raised a finger from the table, asking for her hesitation, which she gave me and spared Issik’s life.
“You were reprogrammed by the Phaenonites into being Jack Harr,” I surmised at once.
Issik nodded before expanding on the notion. “It was some time ago. Back then, perhaps I thought they were genuine Inquisitors like yourself. Obviously, the Severan Dominate holds the Inquisition as enemies, but on the ground, there are those of us naïve hopefuls believing that some peaceful resolution could arrive between the Dominate and the Imperium. Whatever I thought at the time, I know now that they were not real Inquisitors. Not like you are. In any case, yes, they crafted Jack Harr from me, a do-good, faithful servant of the Imperium—or so he thought, anyway. The façade was to slip away in psychic contact with you, which it began to on the ground in Skardak Tertium, as you gave your orders to your Sisters and your men—Harakoni, are they not?”
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“That group is,” I admitted, but gave him little else save for a hand gesture to continue.
“Yes, well, the façade fell away more here, and Vilk Issik emerged hence,” he shrugged. “But I don’t want to be him.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“Please, what does my future look like as Vilk Issik? Assuming I even leave this room—which I doubt you’ll allow—if by some miracle the best-case scenario occurred and I returned to my people, and even then if they didn’t take me for a traitor for desertion, the Dominate is doomed. One subsector can’t stand against the Imperium forever just because they dream to. Death is the only destiny in the Dominate, and Jack Harr knows that death beyond the Emperor’s Light is filled with nightmare. And again, that’s the best-case scenario,” he explained.
“What’s the alternative?” I offered, probing his intents.
He leaned in over the table toward me, making Lucene step forward and plant a hand on his shoulder to tug him away. Even so, now closer, he replied, “I want you to destroy Vilk Issik. Jack Harr is in love with Bliss Carmichael, and she is fond of him in turn. He has a future in the galaxy. I do not. It helps that, in terms of matters of the flesh, she’s quite the looker, too,” he chuckled. “Give Jack Harr this body. Let him serve you as he so desperately desires. Make him real, and make me a myth.”
“There would be a price,” I replied, to which he nodded. “You would pay it now, while I have you here,” I furthered. He nodded again, and eased back in his chair. Lucene did not step back from him, shrouding him in her shadow.
“What do you want to know?” Issik asked.
“Is your head safe?”
“As far as I’m aware, yes. They wanted me to isolate and capture you. Their plan was to have you brought to Amnes Minoris. I don’t know what they intend to do with you there, but they wanted you alive,” he answered.
I gestured to Gradshi, waving him forward. He stepped up and readied himself to enter Issik’s mind. “No hesitation,” I told Lucene, not that she had ever hesitated to act in her life. She nodded in silence, and in return I nodded to Gradshi. He opened a psychic pathway into Issik’s head, and joined me in descending into the Scion’s subconsciousness. Our journey was as a plunge into darkness, as thought had not yet given form to our surroundings, nor to Issik’s self-image or interpretation of our presence. In time, shadows coalesced into the rough imagery of the very room we had just been in, and the three of us appeared at a far larger table than the one we were sitting at in realspace. Issik appeared in his mind as he looked in real life, far away from me across the slab of steel between us. Gradshi was behind him, humanoid but faceless, lacking any distinguishing characteristics—Issik had not gotten a good picture of him in his mind. Lucene was missing altogether, but standing to Issik’s left was a younger-looking clone of himself: Jack Harr.
“Hello, Inquisitor,” both Issik and Harr nodded to me in unison. Their voices were just barely different from one another, such that their greeting was almost as an echo.
“Issik, was Prareus the Inquisitor you first met?” I asked him.
“No, I never got his name.”
“But you’re confident it wasn’t Prareus?”
“Contrary to this guy’s memories,” Issik started, gesturing to Harr. “I did in fact meet Prareus on Canicus.”
“When?” Harr asked in disbelief, turning to Issik. I winced a moment, and the scene reset itself, with Harr looking toward me. The question was not important to me, so I skipped past it in his inner dialogue. When their mind finished reconstituting the scene following the mental-skip, our conversation continued.
“Can you describe the first Inquisitor you met with, then?” I asked Issik.
He mouthed a reply, but no words came out. Harr turned to him again in stunned confusion. Issik himself was shocked, and began to panic. I skipped past that panic and reconstructed the scene once more. “Issik, the Inquisitor you met with is at the door. Gradshi, would you turn to let them in?”
“Yes, sir,” Gradshi replied with a nod, despite still not possessing a face or a mouth. Gradshi turned to the rear of the room and opened the door, where a figure even more formless than my fellow Psyker was waiting. The blur of a figure walked into the room, and I stood to greet them.
“You look well,” I tried, offering the figure a hand to shake. They took it, and while I felt the touch of flesh—my ceramite armor gone in the thoughtscape—there were no distinguishing characteristics about the hand—no wear or softness of age, no coloration of skin. Nothing but a suppressed blur of swirling greys.
+You are Callant Blackgar,+ the figure replied without voice.
“Have we met?” I asked.
+Not yet.+
“But you’ve met Vilk Issik,” I suggested. The figure, still formless, managed a nod. “Where?”
+Aerialon.+
“Are you there now?”
+Yes, it is my station.+
“And what is the purpose of your station?”
+Your undoing.+
“That never seems to work for your kind.”
+Go to Amnes Minoris.+
“What awaits me there?”
+Ruin.+
“I just met Gerhart Heirene. Do you know him?”
+Go to Amnes Minoris.+
“What was Heirene’s objective with the flect trade?”
+Ruin.+
“What was Prareus Avrodam doing on Canicus?”
+Go to Amnes Minoris.+
“What was being harvested from the Pariahs?”
+Ruin.+
I sighed, sensing the broken trend, and winced our guest away. I appeared back in my seat at the much-too-long table, again across from Issik and Harr. Gradshi had not moved in my resetting of the scene, but did walk himself back to Issik’s rear. After mental reconstitution, I returned to questioning the pair. “Issik, how many like you were the Phaenonites recruiting?”
“Hundreds, maybe thousands. They were pulling a lot of manpower from the Dominate. Perhaps the Dominate was colluding with them to sabotage beyond Calixis? I can’t say. But the Dominate did give over more than an army’s worth to them,” Issik replied.
“Any armor?”
“Plenty,” Issik confirmed. “Armor, airships, yeah. Not much in the way of voidships to my knowledge; those Inquisitors seemed to possess them already.”
“Is the operation continuing? Are they still trading with the Dominate?”
“I believe so,” Issik nodded. “Can’t really say. I haven’t exactly been out in the open world for too long now.”
“Harr, what do you want most out of life?” I asked, turning to the psychologically-younger of the pair.
“To serve the Throne, sir,” he replied. Issik nodded, confirming that programming.
“Have you no other needs?” I asked. Seemed a bit one-dimensional, frankly. Most zealots were, and I had seen plenty, even among my Ordo. One might think the Phaenonites did not need to build a complex character for Harr to possess, as he only needed to get close to me once before Issik’s character could return. And, yet, Harr had fallen for Carmichael. Desire remained.
“I am one of trillions of servants of the Throne, sir. I need only be that much,” he replied.
“When Jack Harr dies, as many have in my service, why should I remember him?”
“I don’t need you to, sir.”
“Do you need anyone to?”
Finally, a pause.
The pause was long enough to provide me with the opportunity to more accurately ask about his wants. “Do you need Bliss to?”
“Bliss is…better than she needed to be,” he replied.
“To you?”
“Yes.”
“And what impact did that have on you?”
“It brought me here, didn’t it?”
“I would have hoped your loyalty to the Throne could have gotten you here,” I shrugged.
“My loyalty stood out to Bliss. And she believes in the Throne in a more profound way than most others have. I admire that in her. I admire her.”
“You love her.”
With a pause, “Yes.”
“Would that love ever compromise your relationship with the Throne?”
“No, sir, it would not,” Harr replied at once, possessing a touch of a resoluteness that I had assumed to be a character quality of Issik’s. But, with the two having been mentally separated in this interrogation, it was indeed a facet of Harr’s character.
‘I think you have mistaken your love for hate, as that is as the Imperium would want of its citizenry. But you are not its citizenry, so it is important that you learn better. Hatred is a resource, yes. Love can wield it,’ Lord Inquisitor Halloid van der Skar had told me during my trial some ages ago. Harr’s love for Carmichael is what had brought us here. It had revealed Issik to me, and through him, my next destination: Aerialon. Love was a thing my foe could not anticipate. I intended to wield it.
“Issik, I will do as you requested, with a slight alteration. Your skills in combat and your tactical intuition as a Scion are too valuable to waste. Harr will inherit them. I suspect they had already bled through to Harr in times of desperation, as Bliss was quite impressed with Harr’s performance in battle. Is this agreeable?”
“It is, sir, thank you,” Issik nodded to me.
“Harr, this conversation will seem to you like a distant dream. In time, you may forget the man sitting next to you. In time. But in the immediate, you will remember everything here. Do your best to keep it to yourself. Keep it from her. I think your relationship with her will demand of that. But to that end, I have immediate orders for you, too, as a member of my retinue,” I explained to him.
“I look forward to serving the Throne under your command, sir,” he nodded eagerly.
“Keep an eye on Bliss Carmichael. She is not who she says she is,” I told him.
“She had told me she was Iblis Kyle,” Harr admitted, which momentarily caught me in surprise.
“Well, she shouldn’t have. But to rephrase: she is not Iblis Kyle. I do not know who or what she is, but if she is a threat to the Throne, you and I need to know as soon as possible.”