[Dosdamt]

If I told you everything, I'd probably break down.

I've been so long in the field, I can't remember my original identity. I have contact. I receive instructions. I report back.

I know I work for the Holy Ordos.

I know I work for an Inquisitor - distant, faceless - who gives instructions.

I attend my role in the administratum. I process cases. I review purchase orders. I watch where the money goes. I am excellent at this. I watch where funds flow, back and forth, and through hands, departments, individuals. I track the thrones. I endlessly log the transactions. I report back to my handler. I report back through my handler up to the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor sends back instructions. Purchase Order numbers. Administratum requests. She asks me for dates. She asks me for sign-offs. She asks me to audit the trail of request, approval, transaction. She asks me to re-review cases, and document what I find.

She asks me to look into requests one hundred years old. Occasionally even older.

****

I am back in my room. I have a 10 by 8 cell. I have a bed. Storage is built into the walls - grey, bland. Functional. I store my clothing. I have no personal effects. I cannot remember my life. I have been working in this role for nearly nineteen months. I have responsibilities. I came highly recommended - I always come highly recommended. I remember preparing all my own transfer documents. I write my own references. I write my own recommendations.

I have an excellent grasp of my own capabilities.

I stare at the wall. I remember a time when the wall would be full of pictures. There would be a family. Friends. Perhaps even a social life. A family life. There would be others I could rely on, accept as people of blood tie or socials ties, perhaps even just acquaintances. That is a life I no longer recognize as my own. I own several books. I enjoy the hymnals. I have a Guardsman's Primer - another artifact of a previous life. I have lived so many now. The Primer... Isn't familiar. But it is there. A memory is there. They are distant. Hazy. I pick up the sharp glasses of memory but they are jagged. My hands bleed.

****

Today is a day like any other day.

Today I found an invoice for more thrones than I can remember ever seeing.

I see the purpose.

I see my name. I see that I am scheduled for death. I see that this is a mercenary company that I am well aware of - CRimson - who are extremely capable.

For a moment, I sit in my seat. I draw a breath. Isolated, relaxed and perfect.

[Dosdamt]

I reload my autopistol. I check the magazine fits. The yawning magazine hold is slick with gun oil. The magazine slides in smooth and sits in the handle of the pistol with a satisfying click. I check the safety. I flick it on and off. I test the hair trigger. It begs to be pulled. It aches. I haven't exercised this muscle in the longest time. I haven't killed in a while.

I remember the face of the last man I had to kill. We grappled, hand to hand, for several minutes. I groaned as he tripped me, sliding me over his shoulder. He pressed the advantage, grappling my arm. He slung it behind my back, reaching for my neck while ramming the useless limb up behind my back. The agony was acute. I felt my joints wrench and my ligaments screech with the pressure. My arm burned. Yet I must live. I must fulfill my mission. I slung my weight into my other arm, dislocating my shoulder. My attacker was off balance. He didn't expect I would willingly destroy my own joints. My arm is loose, useless, like a thick flesh whip. He had to loosen his grip on my neck. I drew a deep breath as I flick my head back. The sharp of my skull, at the back, cracks his nose. I feel warm crimson on the back of my neck. It feels like victory. I felt his grip on my arm and neck loosen. I flick myself around. I use my arm like a dead weight. I sling it at him, my hand striking him as a sharp side chop, catching him around the cheek. I felt his cheek bone compress and crumplue. I headbutt him again, this time a thick, primal connection between the thick of my brow and his soft, delicate nose.

I followed through with a broad chop onto his trachea. I followed up with a sharp jab to his solar plexus, and a pin point knee to his genitals. I see my assailant fall to the floor. Agony rippled through his body. Hatred transfixed his face. I see my opponent - bloodied, defeated - held no great regard for me. I sensed a feeling of deep shock.

I am a savant. I am a clerk in the adminstratum.

I do not kill hired assassins.

I cocked and loaded my autopistol - the autopistol I now hold in my hand. It is a beautiful piece. Precise. Engineered for my hand. A delicate silver filigree runs the full length of the weapon - both sides - illuminating what should be a simple weapon with a gloriously beautiful pattern of flora and cherubs. Each tiny flower is handcarved. I cocked my head, not able to understand my enemy.

Why assault me? Why try to kill me?

I was an acolyte. I am a perfectly able member of the Inquisition.

I pulled the trigger. The mess was atrocious. I see brain. Blood. Skull fragments are mixed into both - tiny chunks of bone.

I reload my pistol. I check the chamber. I flick the bullet out, and re-insert it into the magazine. I unload the magazine. I reload the magazine. Slick. Routine. Habit.

Safety on.

Safety off.

The mechanism provides me with comfort, the routine the same.

The weapon feels the right weight in my hand.

Sometimes, at my desk, the response - a response - primal, unbidden, will sneak into my head. I cannot receive this feeling. I cannot deal with it.

Primal, it calls to my very core. It howls. It yearns and hungers and screams.

Murder. Blue bloody violence. Blood smells like satisfaction. I execute people for fun. This is the truth of being an Acolyte. You must love violence.

[Dosdamt]

The where of this conspiracy is important.

Yawvin IV is an administrative hub in the centre of a segmentum, on the edge of the Imperium of Man. It is remote and isolated, and is mostly a cluster of mining concerns, deep space exploration to Halo Stars, and archeoxenan work. It is desolate and cold. There are a few larger cities, clustered around the equator. For the most part, the cities themselves are self contained hubs, with black snake roads connected the covered shells that keep out the worst of the cold.

The planet itself barely has a climate. It is cold, no more and no less than that. The fixed rotation of the planet which is idle and dense means there is simply no heat from the dying star it orbits. The planet's surface is unforgiving and banishment from the settlements - a common occurance - is quite simply a death sentence. Any life that does survive on this ball of misery is hostile.

Men included.

I work within the main administrative hub. I have a desk, an allocated work load and work schedule. I have several juniors to whom I allocate the work load, and am responsible for ensuring we meet the work schedule. We follow, track, and authorize the flow of funds. We monitor who is authorizing the release of funds. We monitor tax contributions. We review requisition orders. I alone have clearance to monitor the higher requests; Arbites, Governor, Segmentum - Inquisitional.

Thrones flow.

I dress no different to many on this world - a plain black robe, thickly lined with an artificial material that keeps heat in; hardy boots with a thick sole creased with grips and tough laces; skin tight trousers, again made from an artificial material that clings to the skin. In my robe, there is space to conceal a weapon without any noticable outline. This is where my autopistol is hidden. There are thin armoured plates woven into a vest I wear over my torso. My boots are knee high, and have a knife hidden in each. The scabbard for each of the knives contains custom agents for envenoming the blade. The blades themselves are covered in curved micro-needles which, after the cut, sit in the wound infecting it and leaking their deadly load. I prefer fast acting neurotoxins which range in efficacy from rendering my enemy unconscious to those which kill quickly.

My clothing is not standard issue. When performing so many infilitration roles, you learn the art of the tailor quickly or you perish.

I think this world, more than any other I have been on, bleaches the humanity from all who dwell on it. The cold presses onto your flesh when you go outside. Even under the great domes that shield the cities - the sky by the way is always blue - they cannot keep out the cold. It penetrates your flesh stripping out your bones and pulling them through your muscles. It a singularly perculiar and unpleasant sensation.

The reason I am here on this hostile iceball is because someone is embezzling funds. Moreoever, they are embezzling munitions, machinery, minerals, and people.

The invoice is a warning and an intention. Which means I am getting close.

****

CRimson are predictable.