Seekers upped the charge on their poles, the humming now a swarm of angry wasps.
The parts would have made ten or so bodies. It was hard to be certain. There was no order to how the limbs and torsos had been ripped apart, then tossed about the chamber. Arms, legs and heads lay amidst congealed blood, painting the ceiling, walls, and floor.
Forty years. Forty years, and he’d never seen anything like this.
There was a large metal box in the center of the room. Pipes and wires were plugged into its base, its rectangular front cover had fallen open. It was empty. He’d never seen a generator container that size. But where was the generator?
“Flies,” Saarg snapped.
“What?”
She indicated a nearby leg. “Where are the flies?”
Stunned to motionlessness, Reeben took stock of the room. “By the state of the limbs… it’s been over two weeks.”
“Complement, search this room,” Saarg called. “Touch nothing!”
The Seekers complied, whispering and making frantic gestures to one another, leaning over scattered body parts like dogs taking a scent.
Saarg joined Reeben, who stood over a mangled torso. He stared at it, waiting for his brain to clear. She bent and pushed the torso over.
“Head! It’s a crime scene. Leave—” He gasped. The lower half of the body had been torn away, but enough remained for him to recognize the large tattoo on the back: the image of a ruby flame encased in a blue cage.
“They’re Seekers?”
Saarg neither moved nor spoke.
“Saarg?”
“This… These… They went deep undercover. A month ago,” she said, her tone flat.
Reeben squinted. Something was off in her behavior. Of course she was upset; he’d be surprised if she wasn’t. But there was something he couldn’t put his finger on.
“I’m sorry, Saarg, about your colleagues. But Darkness worshippers didn’t do this to them. Nothing human could have. What was this undercover mission—”
The earth trembled. Not hard, nor loud, although the shake was resolute. It subsided.
Oh Gods, no.
Saarg stood quickly. “It’s going to be Swallowed, Reeben. Polis is coming, now. We must adopt Swallowing protocol.”
“I concur.” So much for procedure. There was no rule of law when a Swallowing began: Few professionals worked well as the ground shook. “How long do we have?”
“An hour. Maybe less. I have a siren, don’t worry.”
He’d ask about the undercover mission later.
They moved to the empty metal box.
“Look.” He indicated an imprint on the empty generator box’s side. “A hexagon sigil. This box came all the way here, to Polis Armer, from Polis Sumad?”
Saarg was motionless. “Where’s the generator?”
He touched the fittings. “Saarg, what energies do you lot sense down here? You haven’t mentioned chaos energy.”
Saarg still hadn’t moved. “We can’t sense any, Reeben. We’re somewhat confused.”
Chaos energy powered evil. It was the energy of Darkness worshippers, of dark shrines and cadvers. Whatever had painted these walls with Seeker entrails was evil, so why couldn’t Saarg’s troops sense chaos remnants? Unheard of.
“Head!” called another Seeker.
Gods, what now?
Reeben followed Saarg and her Seekers further into the structure, the stillness punctuated by their footsteps and amplified breathing. Hopefully there wouldn’t be another shake anytime soon. After passing more offices, lounges, sleeping chambers, and a kitchen, a Seeker indicated a door. Reeben pushed it open and drew back his hand in shock.
Another dark stairwell, spiraling downward into ever-deepening gloom.
“Impossible,” he whispered to Saarg. “Nothing can be this large underground. Nothing! Polis Armer would’ve seen it being excavated.”
“We go together,” she said.
Everyone was equal under Swallowing protocol. Any of their troops could have run back to the surface at any moment, without fear of recrimination. He wouldn’t mind running himself.
Was it colder down here? He’d never been this far underground. It should have been impossible to dig this far down. Polis wouldn’t have allowed it – if He’d known.
At the bottom step they readied their weapons. Then they stepped through the door together.
Had his lenses failed? He peered into the darkness as his lenses whined, struggling to adjust to the room’s massive dimensions. No, not a room. A warehouse, filled with rows of enormous sacks hanging from metal racks. Most of the racks had fallen over, and the sacks had been torn apart, ruptured, like broken eggs. Scattered beside them were irregular lumps of clay. No, not clay.
Reeben gagged. “Polis Armer preserve us,” he whispered.
Saarg wheezed frantically.
Cries of revulsion and dismay erupted around them.
Fragments of bodies. A sea of severed limbs, scattered in all directions, with hardened dark ooze pooling. Hundreds of souls torn from those strange bags and ripped to pieces. Gods, something had gone methodically through each row and killed each person in each bag, then tipped over each rack as it finished. But it had stopped in the middle of its work, where one rack was incompletely massacred. The racks beyond still stood, their bags untouched.
Behind him, someone vomited.
Slowly, the living edged forward. They grouped automatically, Seekers and Investigators together, not caring for political distinctions in the carnage. They kept a sweeping, rotating scan of the chamber. Reeben’s unsteady boots squelched underfoot. Saarg stumbled on an arm. She righted herself, sweeping the area with her shockpole.
Gods, nothing made sense! There was about to be a Swallowing, and Reeben could only gape in terror. The dead needed him aware and functioning. They deserved justice.
Look around, Reeben. Use your brain. Start where you see something different and work your way out from there.
“Let’s check the racks that are still standing,” he said.
If anyone or anything was waiting, surely it would have attacked by now?
The ruptured sacks were leathery. “Here. These sacks,” he said. “The ones standing. The bodies were inside. This clear stuff that’s mixed with the blood… some sort of preservative, maybe? Oh Polis, they were kept alive, fed oxygen and food with these tubes. Look, those tubes carried away their waste, because they were inserted…” He shook his head.
“These power cables head up,” Saarg said, “probably to that Sumadan generator box…”
That missing Sumadan generator was at the center of all this. But how?
Reeben went on. “Something pulled each person out, tore
