Secret War: The Annihilation Plague (Part1)

Chapter 5

Karmen woke, her eyes fluttering open despite how much they seemed to wish to close again. She then sensed the absence and turned in the sheets. Attelus was gone; she wasn't surprised in spite of her hammering heart.

With a sigh, she sat up, careful to keep the sheet from falling despite being alone and glanced around. The strange circular room-chamber made from a peculiar alien material was beyond foreign to her. It was weird there was no humming or tang of recycled air; it was also strange that if she or Attelus approached the edge of the room wanting a shower, the walls would grow out to make a bathroom like they had a life of its own.

It was strange, alien, but also vaguely familiar like something was ticking in the back of her skull that she had seen this before.

That forced her back, back inside that damned tower lobby, facing down a daemon of The Changer of Ways. Her hands raised in a desperate bid to tear down its kine shield and open it to the withering shots of her friends.

While it managed to not only protect itself with its shield, and summon its minions from the immaterium, it got inside her head.

Karmen closed her eyes, trying to force the memory away, but it seemed to become embedded in her train of thought.

It said it found a blocked out part of her memory, hidden from her and attempted to bargain with her by promising to unlock it for her if she stopped tearing down its shield. Of course, she'd refused, snarling The Emperor's Prayer in defiance. A daemon's word was worth less than dirt so far as she was concerned.

But she'd managed it, somehow, and the daemon fell, thrown back whence it came, she'd lost all of her strength and consciousness, but she'd succeeded. The irony was that it was a part of Kalakor's plan, but he didn't want her to tear down the shield just "try to" Karmen decided to frig him and did it to prove not just her strength of will and power, but to spite the Space Marine.

It'd turned out to be a mistake as Kalakor had a way to bypass the shield and made Karmen useless for the rest of the fight. It was partly because Kalakor hadn't informed her of his plan, but that was because the daemon might've taken it from her surface thoughts.

Anyway, the abominations of the warp lied; it was a fact as old as the Imperium of Mankind itself. But the strange familiarity of this place and it had claimed that...

Karmen clenched her teeth and shook her head so hard it sent pain blurting inside her skull. She couldn't, wouldn't dwell on the daemon's claims in that waylaid madness, which was likely its true intention.

She threw off the sheets and slipped off the bed, and went to retrieve her bodyglove, clenching her teeth to keep her mind focused. A few minutes after she had dressed, the door slid open, and Attelus stepped in, a Lho stick in his mouth, hands in the pockets of his flak jacket as per his norm.

It saddened Karmen Attelus had gone back to the dirty habit; it represented a huge regression in his mental health. That and she frigging hated the smell.

'You're awake,' Attelus said as he walked in. 'Good to see. There's some stuff I wish to talk about.'

For some reason, that made Karmen's heart shudder. 'Such as?'

Attelus shrugged. 'I suppose we'll start on how we're going to talk to Jelcine about Tathe and his men.'

Karmen held back a relieved sigh. 'I would allow the Commissar to speak on his own behalf. That man...that man could...'

Attelus smirked. 'That man could what? Should I be jealous, perhaps?'

Karmen felt her face flush. 'N-no, just that it seems Delan Tathe could speak his way out of anything.'