Banneth’s herd were special; developed centuries ago when geneering was in its infancy. They were originally designed to provide organs for human transplants. A worthy project, to help people with worn out hearts or failed kidneys. Pig organs were the same size as human ones, and it was the first practical success of the geneticists to modify porcine cells so they didn’t trigger a rejection by their new host’s immune system. For a few brief years at the start of the Twenty-first Century the concept had flourished. Then medical science, genetics, and prosthetic technology had raced on ahead. Humanized pigs were abandoned and forgotten by everyone except medical historians and a few curious zoologists. Then Banneth had come across the obscure file in some long-outdated medical text.
She had identified and traced descendants of the original pigs, and began breeding them anew. Modern genetic improvements had been sequenced in, strengthening the bloodline. It was the raw primitiveness of the concept which appealed to her. The sect’s use of modern technology was so much at odds with its basic gospel. Pigs and old fashioned surgery were an ideal alternative.
When an acolyte needed boosting, it wasn’t AT muscle she implanted to enhance the original human ones. Like the rest of the porcine organs, the muscles wouldn’t cause rejection. Pig skin, too, was thicker, sturdier, than its human counterpart. Lately, she had begun to experiment with other animals. Grafted monkey feet turned an acolyte into an efficient acrobat, useful for gaining entry to upper-storey floors. Lighter leg bones allowed them to outrun police mechanoids. Given time and research subjects, she knew she could match any modification used by cosmoniks and the combat boosted mercenaries so prevalent out there among the Confederation worlds.
The surgical techniques could also be used to rectify behaviour. For example, an attempt to run away from the sect would be easily curtailed by replacing legs with trotters. In Kilian’s case, Banneth hadn’t finalized on an effective lesson. Though she did favour extending and re-routing his colon into the back of his throat, so that every time he wanted to shit, he’d have to do it through his mouth. The extra tubing would give him a very thick neck. A nice irony, that. It would match his thick head.
When he was naked, she made him lie face down on the table, then used the straps to secure him in place. Creative punishment would have to wait. Since he blurted confirmation about a possessed, only one thing had mattered to her. She smeared a big dollop of depilatory cream on the back of his neck, and squirted it off with a cold water hose. It left his skin clean and bare, ready to receive the nanonic implant package.
Kilian wasn’t permitted an anaesthetic or sedative. He groaned and whimpered continually as the personality debrief filaments pierced his brain; their brutal intrusion sparking cascades of aberrant nerve impulses that sent spasms rippling along his limbs. Banneth sat on one of the desk bench stools, sipping a chilled, hand-mixed martini as she supervised the procedure, occasionally datavising new instructions into the package. After nearly two hours, the first erratic impulses started to flood back along the invading filaments. Banneth brought her AI on-line to analyse and interpret the confusing deluge of impulses. Visualizations that were nothing more than randomized detonations of colour slowly calmed as the AI began to marshal Kilian’s synaptic discharges into ordered patterns. Once his thought patterns had been catalogued and correlated with his neural structure, his entire consciousness became controllable. The filaments could simply inject new impulses into the synaptic clefts they’d penetrated, superseding any natural thoughts he had.
Kilian was thinking about his family, such as it was. Mother and two younger half-brothers, living in a couple of dingy rooms in a downtown skyscraper over in the Edson dome. Years ago, now. Mother surviving on a Govcentral parent work-pay scheme; never there during the day. All he had was the constant noise, the shouted arguments, fights, music, footsteps, metroline traffic. At the time he’d wanted nothing more than to escape. A bad decision.
“Why?” Banneth asked.
Kilian flinched. He was sprawled on the sagging bed-settee by the window, looking fondly at all the familiar old objects that had occupied his brief childhood.
Now Banneth stood by the doorway, regarding him contemptuously. She was brighter than anything else in the room, more colourful.
“Why?” she repeated.
A spherical wave of pressure contracted through Kilian’s skull, squeezing his thoughts out through his mouth in an unstoppable stream. “Because I left this to join the sect. And I wish I hadn’t. I hate my life, I fucking hate it. And now I’m on your table and you’re gonna turn me into a dog, or chop my dick off and give it to someone else to fuck me with. Some kind of crap like that. And it’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve always done whatever the sect asked. You can’t do this to me. You can’t, please God. You’re not human. Everybody knows that. You’re a fucking weirdo freak cannibal.”
“Now there’s gratitude. But who gives a fuck about this pathetic little comfort regression you’re in. I want when you saw the possessed.”
The pressure wave found another part of Kilian’s mind to crush. He screamed out loud as memories erupted like fountains of acid behind his eyes. Home was coldly scorched out of existence, huge great sections of it peeling away like rotten flesh to reveal the Vegreville chapel’s temple. Kilian had been there three days back, sent by his sergeant acolyte to pick up some package. He didn’t know what was in it, just that: “Banneth wants it fast.”
The coven was different than before. There was a new atmosphere percolating through the dark nest of rooms. They regarded him as a joke. His urgency to complete the assignment, to get the package and leave, made them snigger and scoff. Every time he asked them to be quicker they delighted in delaying. They were like frisky kids at a day club who’d found a new boy to taunt and bully.
Eventually he’d been taken to the temple where the senior acolyte told him the package was waiting. The chamber walls were made from thousands of slim metal reinforcement rods welded together, the inside of a bird’s nest woven out of iron twigs. Its altar was a tight-packed mound of rusty spikes, their tips all shaved down to the same length. Twin flames rose out of the bristling metal at each end, long yellow tongues dancing in the gloom. Pews were composite roof planks nailed to a variety of pedestals. The sect’s usual runes were still on the walls, but they were barely visible now. A single new slogan had been sprayed everywhere: Night is coming. On the walls, on the ceiling, even on the floor.
Kilian was made to enter alone, his little escort clustering round the thick doors behind him, giggling wildly. His annoyance dropped away as he walked quietly towards the altar, replaced by growing nervousness. Three figures waited silently for him behind the altar, clad in black robes. These garments had none of the embellishments or pentagons usually favoured by senior sect members. If anything it made them appear even more menacing than usual. Their faces were almost lost inside the large hoods. Flickering yellow beams from the candles would occasionally reveal a feature within two of the hoods: bloodshot eyes, hooked nose, wide mouth. The third hood could have been empty for all that Kilian saw. Even when he reached the altar, he could see nothing inside that night-like cavity of fabric.
“The High Magus sent me,” he stammered. “You’ve got a package for me, yeah?”
“We certainly have,” a voice said from somewhere inside that veiled hood.
Alert now, Banneth ran the voice through an analysis program, though ordinary memories of voices were a notoriously unreliable source for such verification programs. Nonetheless, it showed remarkable similarities to recordings of Dexter’s voice. Kilian trembled as the hidden figure slowly held out an arm. He was almost expecting a pistol nozzle to poke out at him. But it was just a snow-white hand that emerged from the voluminous sleeve. A small plastic container was dropped carelessly on the altar.