Miracles by Nicholas Wolf

Author:Nicholas Wolf
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2019-07-17T13:28:34+00:00

Chapter Four

I flee the medicae facility as quickly as is humanly possible.

Clattering orderly servitors attempt to record my information on reams of parchment as I pass through each wing of the hospital, but I run past each one without saying a word. The lobotomised menials do nothing to stop me. The Sisters are too concerned with saving lives to realise mine was just threatened. I feel the eyes of enforcers tracking me as I all but sprint into the streets. I can’t see anyone following me, but I know they’re there, watching me.

Only when I’m out in the streets, turning left and right at random, losing myself in the shadows of the hive, do I allow myself to actually breathe. The air is hot, hotter than it should be at this time of day. It smells of sulphur and ash. The explosion?

How far away was it?

How long was I in the medicae?

I wander, eyes on my boots, seeing nothing but ferrocrete passing beneath my feet. It doesn’t feel real. None of it does. This morning I was kissing my wife and children goodbye and walking to the manufactorum, fully prepared to spend the majority of my day building power packs. Now the manufactorum is gone, most of the people I know are dead and a damned enforcer thinks I’m somehow responsible?

You need to focus, Jacen.

‘Shut up,’ I say aloud. ‘You’re a dream. You’re not real.’

I trudge through the darkening streets of the hive, turning this way, then that way, drifting into a grey rumination and letting my feet guide me on the familiar path home. I pass into a tunnel, and the glow of the street-lumens fades to black, black as skies bleeding madness across the world. In the shadows I see glowing eyes watching me, following my every movement.

Why do you doubt what you’ve seen?

‘Because it’s insane!’ I snap, walking faster. ‘I mean, angels, miracles… I just… it’s all just…’

It’s not that you don’t believe, Jacen. It’s that you fear what the Emperor has asked of you.

‘I’m not going to kill my daughter!’ I yell, loud enough for my voice to echo. Onlookers give me a strangely knowing look and scuttle away, murmuring to each other.

I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders and all but run for home. A darkness is setting in, painting the hive in a gloom that not even the street-lumens can touch.

You saw what awaits them, should you fail.

The vision. I can’t escape it; even when I blink I see it. The urge to gouge out my eyes is kept at bay only by my desire to look upon my wife and children again. But still it’s there, embedded in my heart. Even trying to not think about it twists my stomach into nauseated knots.

‘Why does it have to be her?’ I ask, feeling tears brimming in my eyes. ‘Why?’

Power requires sacrifice, Jacen. The Emperor is promising you the power to save a world, and the rest of your family. Such power does not come without a price.

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