The Inquisition War Read Free Page A

the topography of your tattoos...’ She heard a laser-scalpel descending, buzzing like a busy fly. The process was beginning.
    An assassin could block off agony, could largely disconnect her consciousness from the screaming switchboard of pain in the brain. Thus was an assassin trained. Thus was the web of her brain restrung. How, otherwise, could she fulfil her missions if injured? How else could she focus her empathy without distraction during the polymorphine change? However, during a total dissection such as this some muscles might well spasm instinctively, thwarting the chirurgeon’s delicate manoeuvres. Consequently she was anaesthetised, awake.
    The gnome’s words registered. Yet in her heart – in her wounded heart – Meh’Lindi was still hearingTarik Ziz announce how she would be desecrated.
    ‘I NITIATES OF C ALLIDUS can imitate all sorts and conditions of people. Who can do so better than you, Meh’Lindi? You have even mimicked a humanoid eldar, sufficiently well to convince human beings.’
    ‘And well enough to persuade another eldar for a while, secundus,’ she reminded him discreetly.
    Ziz nodded. ‘Yet we cannot adopt the form of other alien creatures whom we might wish to copy. We are constrained by our limbs, by our bones, by the flesh that is available... What do you know about genestealers, Meh’Lindi?’
    At that point Meh’Lindi had experienced a chilling, weakening, cavernous pang, as though her entrails had emptied out of her. It took her moments to identify the unfamiliar sensation.
    The sensation was terror.
    Terror such as she believed had been expunged from her long since, torn out of her by the root during training. ‘What do you know?’ he repeated.
    ‘Genestealers have four arms,’ she recited robotically. ‘Two arms equipped with hands, and two with claws that can tear through plasteel armour as if it is tissue. Their heads are long and bulbous, with fangs. Their horny spine bends them into a permanent crouch. They have an armoured carapace and a powerful tail...’
    Yet it was not the creatures themselves that appalled her. Oh no. It was the implication behind Ziz’s question.
    ‘Polymorphine could never turn us into one of those, secundus.’
    ‘Not polymorphine alone, Meh’Lindi.’
    A S THE MEDICUS murmured his commentary, interspersed with pious invocations to the Emperor – echoing those of the presiding chirurgeon – she squinted askew at the homunculi of herself being dissected open and knew that the very same was happening to herself. Tiny stasis generators were clipped inside her to stop her blood from spurting and draining away.
    She was a snared hare stretched out on a butcher’s block.
    ‘W E SHALL USE body implants,’ Ziz had continued. ‘We will insert extrudeable plastiflesh reinforced with carbon fibres into your anatomy. We will introduce flexicartilage which can toughen hard as horn. In repose – in their collapsed state – these implants will lurk within your body imperceptibly. Yet they will remember the monstrous shape and strength programmed into their fabric. When triggered, while polymorphine softens your flesh and bone, those implants will swell into full, active mode.’
    The mosaic of tiny, glittering knives on the wall had seemed to take wing, to leap at Meh’Lindi to flay her.
    ‘We will graft extra glands into you to store, and synthesise at speed, growth hormone – somatotrophin – and glands to reverse the process...’
    ‘But,’ she had murmured despairingly, ‘I still could not become a perfect genestealer, could I?’
    ‘At this stage that is not necessary. You will be able to transform into a convincing genestealer hybrid form. A hybrid with only one pair of arms, and lacking a tail... One closer to the semblance of humanity – yet sufficiently polluted, sufficiently grotesque to persuade those whom you must infiltrate. If this experiment succeeds as we hope, subsequently we shall attempt to implant secondary