Chapter 151: The Nightingale Theater
The House Steward led the way, weaving through the opulent wreckage of the Spire. Kian and his twenty men followed, their boots muffled by the thick, hand-woven carpets that lined the boulevards.
After seven minutes of frantic movement, Kian's hand shot out, grabbing the Steward by his silk collar and dragging him into a crouch against a marble wall.
"Down! Everyone hit the dirt! Vox-silence, now!!"
Kian's command was a whip-crack. His twenty soldiers, wound tight as spring-coils, dropped instantly. Some pressed themselves into the shadows of ornamental planters; others lay flat against the cold stone, minimizing their silhouettes.
The squad had barely settled when a dissonant, bubbling chorus of laughter drifted from the intersection two hundred meters ahead.
A procession of Poxwalkers—hundreds of them—shambled across the street. They moved with a rhythmic, jerking gait. Many had木質 (wooden) horns protruding from their foreheads, and their limbs were twisted into jagged, sickle-like shapes. The sound of their collective giggling was a psychic sandpaper that grated against the soldiers' nerves.
Kian's men held their breath, clutching their autoguns so hard their knuckles turned white.
"Boss," Egghead whispered, his voice barely a vibration in the vox. "Should we cycle back? There's too many of them."
Kian peered through the gap in the masonry, his eyes cold. "Negative. They haven't pinged our heat signatures yet. We wait for the 'Cycle' to pass, then we breach the lane."
Kian turned to the shivering Steward. "Listen to me, 'Lord' of the Spire. How did this happen? How does a fortress-tier sector fall to a localized infection in a single day?"
Kian was genuinely baffled. Nurgle's rot usually started in the Sump, where the water was foul and the bodies were weak. The Spire had the best medicae-adepts and the most advanced atmospheric scrubbers in the sub-sector. A plague shouldn't have been able to breach the filters.
The Steward's voice was a terrified tremor. "I... I do not know the origins. I only know that a month ago, a 'Minor Malaise' swept through the Spire-estates. Everyone was coughing, everyone had a slight fever. The doctors called it a 'Seasonal Grippe.' They gave us stimulants and sent us back to our duties.
"But a week ago... during the Night-Cycle... the screaming started. Those who had the 'Grippe' began to wail as if their very souls were being harvested. I heard reports that their hearts had stopped, their blood had cooled to ice, and their skin had turned a bruised, necro-purple. They were medically dead."
Ash shivered, his grip tightening on his squad-stub. "Dead? Then why are they walking?"
"That is the horror of it," the Steward whispered. "They were dead for a full day. Then, the screaming stopped. They stood up, let out that... that giggling... and began to embrace everyone they could find. Half the Spire population was infected with the 'Grippe.' When they turned, the entire social hierarchy liquidated in a matter of hours."
Kian processed the data. This wasn't a natural outbreak. It was a biological "Logic-Bomb." A slow-acting virus planted weeks in advance, timed to trigger all at once. This was the work of a high-level cult or a traitor within the Spire's own infrastructure.
He waited until the last of the Laughing Dead had vanished into the darkness of a side-conduit. The street returned to its eerie, toxic silence.
"Move! We're burning daylight," Kian hissed. "Find the Nightingale. Get the key. Get out."
Fifteen minutes later, they reached the Nightingale Theater.
It was a gargantuan structure of white stone and stained glass, designed to seat three thousand of the Hive's wealthiest patrons.
The tactical situation was grim. Roughly five kilometers behind the theater sat one of the primary Spire-Tips—the massive, needle-like villa of a true High-Lord. The villa was currently an island in a sea of rot. Hundreds of thousands of Poxwalkers were swarming the base of the tower, a carpet of grey flesh that made the skin crawl just looking at it.
The High-Lord was still fighting. From the heights of the villa, automated turrets and heavy Las-batteries were raking the ground, turning entire blocks into craters. The thunder of the big guns and the shriek of the lasers acted as a permanent backdrop to the silence of the streets.
"Even the rich bleed," Kian muttered, watching a Las-beam vaporize a row of mutants.
The elite were safe for now behind their independent air-scrubbers and private armies, but they were trapped in Gilded Cages. They would wait for the PDF to clear the streets, then resume their parties as if the millions of "Dispossessed" below them had never existed.
Kian turned back to the theater. A few dozen Poxwalkers were wandering the foyer, but most were ignoring the building, drawn instead to the noise and "aggro" of the villa-siege nearby.
"This is our window," Kian said, checking his mag. "The heavy ordinance is keeping them distracted. We hit the theater hard and fast."
He turned to his squad, his voice taking on the authority of a Sergeant-Major.
"Egghead! Take ten men and hold the primary extraction gate! If anything bloated tries to enter, you erase it! Do not let them breach the foyer!"
"Ash! You and the rest are with me. We storm the theater, find the Nightingale or her Key-Slate, and we get the hell off this floor! Move out!!"
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