Vex Chronicles 1: Infection

Free from the grave

Lucena's Ascent, prow section, laboratory

Kressman stared at the xenos thing strung in the frame of her prison. The machines had mostly completed their work. The rear of Cassilia's skull was mostly gone and metal and cables stood in its stead. The last step had been a scary sight. Kressman had see the cylinder shape of the cogitator array slide into the girls head. And it was mind boggling that all of that had actually found a place in her head. How much had the machine cut away? And how was Cassilia still conscious?

The machine had started to strung Cassilia's scalp back over the metal of the implants. The skin looked drum. Drum enough that you could even see the faint cables that ran from her temples to the back of her head. A bundle of thicker cables and flexible antenna reached out like a pigtail of dreadlocks.

Cassilia had tried to hide fright and pain as the knifes had wandered down her body to graft communication antenna into her spine and rib cage. But her stoic expression had been only paper thin. And if she hadn't been a xenos creature, Kressman would have admired her endurance. She had endured pain, fear and entrapment without breaking.

Cassilia had been pale before. But now she also looked frail and drained. She had dark circles around her eye from lack of sleep and exhaustion. The machine had barely cared about her sleeping rhythm. And the only chances to get some rest had been the episodes in which her mind had simply shut down. Cassilia was very well aware of her flickering mind. During her episodes she had been unable to talk and think straight. Sometimes senses of smell, feeling or sight were just shut down. She knew that her mind was dangling from a thin string. And she was frightened stiff.

Cassilia had tried to play it down by developing a sharp tongue. She had tried to rile Kressman up by bad mouthing him. The fragile girl had turned feisty in the face of death. But in a sense he could understand where the xenos woman's outbreaks came from. And to Kressman's disdain, her attempts of hide her fear and pain behind sharp tongue made her appear even more human.

Kressman had never lost his empathy after all he had been through as a soldier in the Cadian army. A gift that had allowed him heal the hurt of honest Imperial people during and after his service. But right now Kressman cursed that gift. Because it made a vile xenos thing look human.

"You like that, eh?" Cassilia pressed out as she slurped her drink through the straw. "Your own little helpless pet. Could you at least try to be gentle?"

"Just shut up! You want me to feed you or not?"

"As if that is food..." Cassilia grumbled. "Does it always have to be warmed up rye-cheese?"

Kressman just groaned and returned to his carving. He already had one memento for the mission on Eredius III. But with nothing else to do, two more Aquila's had already joined his collection.

"Your little escape plan failed, creature. Where is our rescue?"

"As if I wanted to save you!," Cassilia barked back. But then her voice quickly turned to worry. "Whatever this machine put into me... It blocks my mind. W-Why does my head feel so cold, so lonely?"

Kressman stayed silent. To make room for the cogitator implant, some parts of her brain had to be removed. The cogitator must have taken over some of her lower brain functions. And her collective xenos mind must have been impaired by that. At least that was Kressman's assumption.

Cassilia had been turned into something similar to an eredian examinatus auspex servitor. Just that her auspex was not a creation of technology but of her unique genestealer biology.

"Whatever Vex turned you into... It is working."

Kressman pointed at the auspex unit that rested on the table. He was no technician. But all he had to do was pres the synchronization button and it connected to the cogitator array in Cassilia's head. The handheld auspex unit soon displayed a scan of the surrounding area as it tried to identify people infected by genestealer genetics. Right now it only registered Cassilia. And when Kressman changed the resolution and shifted the scanning area, Cassilia actually twitched a bit.