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Deus Ex Machina

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Chapter 1 - The Ministry

Winston couldn't remember how he'd got there, but he knew where he was. Information that was less reassuring than one might think. They'd taken him in the night; that much he knew at least. Quite apart from it being how they worked, his last memory before waking up here in this plain white tiled, excessively-lit, and extremely Spartan holding cell had been lying in bed, in his modest and slightly-cramped but nevertheless acceptably comfortable apartment, contemplating... well, he couldn't remember exactly what he'd been contemplating but it probably wasn't anything massively interesting or relevant.

And then here, in the Ministry, in one of their holding cells. The Ministry of Inner Peace, to give it the full title. The Ministry was one of several such facilities owned and controlled by the Clergy, and used by them to own and control the Clay - the ordinary people who lived and toiled in this imperfect world. Like all of the other such ministries, its name was true in a sense, but not in the sense you'd want it to be. Unlike the rest, it was the only of the ministries to be known simply and ominously as "The Ministry". It concerned itself with spiritual matters. Generally of a fairly final variety, after the less terminal but no-less sinister Ministry of the Soul had failed to suitably mould a member of the Clay to the Clergy's liking, or after a moulded piece had cracked and decided to think for itself.

He had no idea how long he'd been here. That was something of a speciality of the Ministry and one that they certainly excelled in - keeping you guessing. The room that he'd awoken in - and now sat in the middle of - was ten tiles long, ten tiles wide, and ten tiles high, with each square, super-clean, and shiny white tile being slightly less than half a metre across. There was no obvious light-source, but the room shone with a level of light designed to be only just beyond what most people could comfortably tolerate. And if they caught you not squinting, then they'd raise the luminance levels; or maybe lower them, to let your eyes settle back down, and then raise them back up again just as they stopped stinging. There was a bench, in the wall, set at a height just too high for him to be able to sit comfortably on it, and the bench itself - a plain, dull grey steel affair - was far too thin to be able to fit his buttocks. More of a shelf, really.

To bring back to the point about guessing - there was, and this is important, no window or clock. Nothing to tell the time of day by. Within the cell, one would not have the least bit of inkling as to whether it was day or night outside. And as the room's temperature was carefully kept at just a shade too cold to be wearing the lightweight, paper-thin and paper-frail fatigues he was wearing, he couldn't even rely on the warmth of the day to give him a clue.

He couldn't even hazard a guess at where he was in the building. The Ministry was a tall, elegant structure that looked slender only because of its enormous height, and the outside of the building would take a full twenty minutes to walk around, assuming that it was possible to do so without being accosted by guards every fifty paces. Below those dozens of storeys, there were rumoured to be dozens upon dozens of basement levels below-ground; but the only people who ever had the chance to wander around and find out were members of the Clergy - Clay like him could only go on hearsay and scattered reports from the very few and much-addled souls who survived being purified. Normally, he'd be able to at least hazard a guess as to where he was relative to sea level, but the Ministry even had that one covered by keeping the entire building pressurised - every door to every room and every corridor formed an airtight seal and near-silent fans were at work behind the tiles to adjust the air pressure for every location to keep it constant. He could hear them whirr to life to adjust the air pressure in the room, but the adjustments were too slight for him to tell if the pressure was increasing or decreasing, and the ventilation of the room was designed so as to make any breeze from the fans utterly diffuse.

Really, he'd like to think it was just the day after they'd taken him, but he knew from underground reports that he would have been drugged on a slow-release anaesthetic to keep him under for as long as they wanted, and he had awoken to discover himself clean-shaven, freshly-washed, and with his nails clipped short. No doubt they would have taken care of his bodily needs while he was under, if necessary. Really, it could have been an hour since he fell asleep at home, or a week.

With nothing else to do, and nothing at all to see, he remained sitting upon the cold floor, staring at the wall in front of him, and waiting to see what the Clergy's next move was.

There were five hundred and ninety one tiles in the room. That didn't make sense - there were ten along each side of the square that formed each wall, the floor, and the ceiling, meaning a hundred to the side of the cube he was in, and six sides to the cube that made the room. Yet, five hundred and ninety one tiles he'd counted. He'd even checked to see if there were indeed ten tiles in every row and column, and he had found that there were, but whenever he tried to count them all, the answer came back time and time again as five hundred and ninety one.

He'd not seen anyone yesterday. Well, relative yesterday. Eventually he'd fallen asleep on the floor, and when he's woken up he was again clean shaven and freshly washed. He didn't feel hungry or full, either, so they must also have fed him something while he was out.

Later, he had dozed again, not long after waking up for the second time, and there was another person in the room, dressed identically to him. An older man, with his head-scales greying at the temples and who looked to be just starting to head into his senior years. The markings of his beak were faded, and his eyes were sunken and somehow aged far more than the rest of him. The elder sat on the bench, perched awkwardly on that detestably straight and narrow platform, his rump not even slightly fitting. In the silence of the room, Winston fancied he could hear the cartilage of the other man's knees creak with the effort of keeping him seated. He flounced his crest in greeting, and stood slowly and stiffly from the tiles floor - nine along each side, he noticed - to wander over to the other occupant of the room. Right primary raised to greet the older man, he coloured his pleasure in seeing another person, whilst being careful to keep himself as non-threatening as possible. It didn't seem to matter, however; the elder just stared at him in wide-eyed horror for a moment, before looking away and seeming for all the world to shun his existence.

"Vessel C142/572/K845!" Screamed the electronic voice, coming from all the walls at once. The elder on the bench flinched at the painfully loud noise and fell from the bench and onto his creaking knees, while Winston froze at the calling of his number, "You will not approach the other Vessel! Return to the middle of the room and remain seated!" Hurriedly, and bemused and confuddled, his ears still ringing from the noise, Winston moved to comply.

When nothing further was said for a full five seconds, the older prisoner prostrated himself upon the floor of the cell, his arms aligned at ninety degrees to each other in the traditional prayer position, and hastily muttered out an earnest beseeching to the Great One in the old tongue. He'd not managed a full verse before a door swung open in the wall opposite the cell's bench and two black-clad, helmeted and visored guards, their beaks masked, stormed into the room and hauled the older male onto his haunches as a third guard - presumably their commander for he wore no helmet or mask - strode in behind them. Hoof-tipped toes thudded out a sharp, menacing rhythm as he strode almost casually across the cell, his crest vibrating with threat. As the elder was held up, arms wide and pinned away from his body, the guard commander's skin flushed a violent purple colour and his beak opened, hissing an oath before one heavy fore-foot swung back and was launched into the hapless prisoner's breast like a wrecking-ball. The elder screamed - a thin, hoarse sound of terror, regret and shame - as the curled digits of the fist-like foot slammed into his chest with a sickening thud; his crest flattened and his skin faded to the palest of blues but the surrender was lost upon the commander.

"Wretch! Unworthy! Your clay is weak and not fit to hold the splendour of our God's love!" The foot swung in again, and this time there was an audible crack from the elder's chest as something gave way under the commander's assault. He screamed, again, then sobbed and let his head droop. "We will save you. We will break your clay so that it might be made whole again with His grace and held true to His honour! And at your end, you will give thanks to us that we allowed you to once again be pure in His Sight!" Again the old prayers were rushed out from his faded and worn beak, and again the commander delivered another venomous kick to the old man's chest, knocking the speech out of him. The guards released the old man's arms and he fell to the ground without another utterance, rolling onto his side and slowly gathering all four arms around his wounded chest, drawing his legs up and just lying there, sobbing quietly as the guards and their leader left the room.

Winston sat there in silence throughout it all, his crest hugging his head and his skin so pale as to be almost white. The elder had done nothing! He had prayed for forgiveness, prayed that he might redeem his sins and be given the strength to live a good life! Wasn't that what the Clergy wanted? Piety, faith, contrition? He couldn't help but feel that it was his fault, that the old man had been so savagely beaten because Winston, in his innocent stupidity, had sought to show him compassion and friendship. They hadn't hurt him because he had prayed, they had hurt him because Winston had tried to establish some sort of human contact with him, and the Clergy did not like the Clay to be united in anything other than love for their god and hatred for their sinners. And so Winston sat there still, hind-limb tucked under him and hugging his knees to his chest while he nervously tapped the claws of his fore-feet on the tiles of the floor.

He must have slept at some point, even though he didn't recall feeling tired at any point. Once again, he had been shaved, trimmed and cleaned, and so had the old man, who now lay there on the floor, exactly as before, his breath rasping and laboured but his frame otherwise completely still. Winston counted the tiles - ten along a side, again, and six hundred and fourteen in total. He sighed to himself, and looked again to the elder. Winston wasn't especially well-versed in medicine but he was reasonably sure that the old man was dying - his breathing was definitely not healthy and Winston had never seen anyone's skin go that pink before. Every few seconds, the elder's crest twitched and fluttered spasmodically.

"Please! I think he's dying!" There was no reply. His eyes desperately looking around the room as Winston fervently searched for some sort of signal that he'd been heard. "It... It's my fault! I shouldn't have tried to speak to him! I'm sorry, I am so sorry!" He threw himself to the ground, hindquarters raised and his arms splayed in a cross. "I was weak and unworthy! Punish me but let him live! Please, help him?" Still, no reply. The room was entirely silent save for the sound of his blood rushing in his ears, and the sputtering breaths of the elder by the bench. Winston lay there for some minutes, trying to will a guard to open the door and send an apothecary in, but he did not succeed. Eventually, he pulled himself up onto his haunches and, with a pitying and sorrowful look to the old man, went back to hugging himself.

Winston woke again. The old man was still there, exactly where he'd been the last time he'd seen him, and his condition hadn't improved at all; quite the opposite. Every breath sounded like it was taking all of the elder's strength to draw, though he remained unconscious. Winston started to count the tiles to pass the time, but stopped before he'd got halfway along one wall; why bother? Every time he woke it was different, so either he and the wounded elder were being moved to different rooms that were identical in everything except for the tile count, or the tiles were being changed while they slept. Either way, it was a pointless and futile task that served him nothing. Winston sighed. He was actually hungry, this time. Come to think of it, he'd been hungry the last time he'd woken up, but he'd been too concerned about the elder's condition to pay much attention to his own. But now, yes, he was definitely hungry. He rubbed his chin with a secondary; stubble on his neck, so apparently they'd stopped shaving him as well as no longer feeding him.

At some point, the old man died. Winston heard the elder's breathing slow right down before entering a brief, panicked rasping, and then cease altogether. A few moments later there'd been a horrible, rattling noise as the old prisoner's chest sunk for one last and very final time, and then Winston was alone. Time passed, and still nothing. No guards, no voice, not even a hint that they were imminent. He sighed and looked over to the elder, saw his body cooling, already a few degrees lower than when he'd breathed his last.

-Winston?-

He blinked. The voice was firm but gentle, and unmistakably female. Winston looked around; was this another trick?

-Winston Mount-Chappel? Don't say anything, keep looking blankly at the wall in front of you, and scratch your right knee if you can hear me. -

Winston hesitated. If this was a trick, then he'd probably get in trouble for doing what the voice said. He'd probably get in trouble if he didn't do what it said, too. The Clergy were like that. Weighing up the options, he figured he'd rather get in trouble for obedience than rebellion, given the situation. He scratched his right knee.

-Okay, good. Now, you're probably thinking that this is a trick - Don't look up!-

He ducked his head back down again, eyes wide; how had the voice, whoever she was, known what he was thinking?

-You won't like the answer to that one, Winston. Now, we don't have much time, because even though you think they've been ignoring you, in about three more minutes the door is going to open and some very unpleasant men are going to come in here, beat you till you black out, then drag you away to be interrogated, tortured at great length, redeemed, and eventually purified.-

Winston's skin went pale blue and his crest hugged his head so tight it hurt. He was also fairly sure that he'd just evacuated his bladder, a little bit.

-I can't explain everything now, and I can't answer any of your questions, there just isn't time. I can't even tell you why you should trust me, just that it's very important to both of us that you do. Do you trust me? Scratch your knee again if you do.-

Winston hesitated for a moment - as it was, he was almost certainly going to die, after suffering torture at the hands of a group who had spent a lot of time and effort in getting the act down to a real science. Really, there was no conceivable way his situation could get worse. He scratched his knee.

-Good. I want you to close your eyes, and picture a door. It's your door, to your home. On the other side, knocking patiently, is me. I'm an old friend, and you've invited me round for dinner. I'm at the door, Winston. I need you to open it for me and invite me in. Can you do that for me?-

He scratched his knee again and concentrated. The door to his home - slightly oval, painted a soft green on the inside, with a small glazed panel inset at head height. He saw her there on the other side of the door, her scales bright with youth and energy, her skin flush with excitement at seeing a dear friend again, and her crest standing high, rustling slightly. She was beautiful, she always had been, and Winston had loved her since the first day he met her, loved her as a true and honest friend, in a way that he'd never thought to be possible. He opened the door.

Koto opened her eyes too wide and immediately regretted it. Screwing them down to the narrowest of squints, she let the body do its thing while she got familiar with her surroundings. Okay, so... Male, just barely an adult, little on the skinny side but in reasonable physical condition with no bone or tendon weaknesses, a little on the short side. She could work with that. She'd counted - about forty seconds left, better get up to speed and fast. Standing on wobbly legs, Koto took a step forward to get a feel for his range. Another step, less hesitance and wobble. She jumped in place, pulling her knees up high, then stretched her arms out wide and twisted her back from side to side. Turning, she threw a punch at the wall - not hard, just enough to get a feel for the muscle capacity.

"Vessel C142/572/K845!" She knew that voice. She was sick of it. "Cease your ungodly behaviour and return to the middle of the room to be seated!" Koto made on obscene gesture to the ceiling with two out of four arms, then kicked at the wall. His joints were good, his muscles could be better but at least had plenty of fizz and twang in them. Ten seconds. "Vessel C142/572/K845! Desist your behaviour immediately!!"

"Fuck you." Growled Winston's body, in a tone of voice he didn't even know he was capable of. Right now, he'd be terrified, she thought. You let someone into your body and they just go and get it set up to get horribly killed. Typical, right? Well, if he was scared now, he'd be metaphorically shitting his britches in about five more seconds. The door slammed open - whups, four seconds out - and two burly and uniformly black-clothed guards burst into the room, batons held high and ready to deliver some righteous smiting. Her left primary shot out and grabbed the truncheon of the first guard before he could swing, and one solid kick from both fore-legs into the onrushing guard's solar plexus sent him sprawling in the other direction, his weapon lost. Stolen baton transferred to her right primary, Koto pirouetted on her hind-limb and caught the surprised second guard across the side of the beak with the length of rubber-coated metal, landing only a glancing blow but enough to put him off balance. Both left fists drove into the guard's mid-riff, driving the wind from his lungs, and then the baton came crashing down right upon the ridge of his beak and the guard's agonised shriek drowned out the sound of cracking keratin and bone. The stricken guards raised two hands to his wounded face as thin greyish-yellow blood gushed out from his shattered maxilla, turning quickly to a dark blue as it was exposed to the air of the room.

Behind her, the first guard was just getting to his feet, his secondaries clutching the bruised muscles of his abdomen and his primaries holding onto the doorway for support. Shaking his head to clear it, he was still too dazed from the kick to react much as the body of weak and feeble Winston Mount-Chappel launched itself at him and his own baton was smashed into his throat, crushing his windpipe before he could even start to make a noise, and he went down with a gurgle coming from his beak and a look of confusion in his eyes.

Koto wasted no time in dragging the guard into the room and pushing the door to, leaving the baton to stop it from shutting. She stripped Winston's prison robes from him and could feel his psyche blush as he realised he was effectively naked in the presence of a strange female. How adorably cute, she thought, in a life or death situation and he's embarrassed that I might be able to see his genitals. Koto smirked as she likewise stripped the skinnier of the two guards while his comrade rolled and twitched on the floor in an ever-growing indigo puddle, and then donned his clothes for herself. The trousers were a touch long but not so much that she could trip on them, and the shirt was slightly baggy around Winston's chest but it would have to do. Just a shame the interior guards didn't wear any body armour, because she was sure as shit going to need it to get out of here.

-Winston, you still with me?-

He gibbered a garbled and nonsensical response in the back of her/his mind, terrified beyond his wits.

-Uh, okay... good. Hang in there, Winston. We're going to get out of this. And if we don't... well, I promise you that I'll make sure you get fatally shot or something; way preferable to the alternative.-

She grabbed the mask and helmet of the guard whose throat she'd collapsed, swiped his pass key and side-arm, then snatched up both batons as she went out the door, shutting it behind her. A quick glance down the corridor showed that nobody had been alerted by the screaming - not surprising in this place, where screams were commonplace and the idea of a prisoner attacking a guard was beyond laughable and into the realms of crazy-talk.

Up ahead, the door to the connecting corridor - and behind her, too; really, either was as good as the other until she could get her bearings. She'd tried before to fine-tune a host's senses enough to try and detect any sort of infinitesimal differential in the pressure or heat of the place and knew it to be a waste of time - the Clergy hadn't just set this place to a uniformity beyond casual detection, they'd made it beyond the delicacies of her people's sensory organs' theoretical capabilities, and they'd not been slipshod about it. She pressed the stolen card to the scanner and the door hissed and then popped as the lock disengaged. Pushing through to the other side, she saw a guard at the far end of the corridor, a dozen paces away. Keep calm, act natural, you're supposed to be here. Five paces away and still no challenge; two steps from the door and he noticed that something wasn't quite right, but before he could finish raising an arm to block the door off, Koto's baton was rammed hard into the soft patch at the back of his mandible and the guard crumpled to the floor with a gurgle. Bending her fore-legs, she knelt to examine the guard's clearance card - looked to be the same low-level access so no help there. She grabbed his gun, stuffing it into the back of her belt, then snatched the spare clip from his webbing and thrust that into a pocket in her trousers before swiping her card against the scanner and continuing on into the next corridor.

_-What... What the hell was that?- _Gasped Winston, the voice of his thoughts high and shrill with fear.

-That was you kicking arse like you'd always wished you could. That was your body getting to reach to its limits without the restraint of your conscious mind. Hopelessly optimistic question but do you have any idea where we are?-

There was a lengthy paused before Winston answered. If he was in control of his own body, he'd probably be leaning on the wall for support, head in his hands and mouth agape.

-I... no. You mean to say that you don't?-

-Not a clue. I could only see so much from my vantage point, enough to know we're in the Ministry of Inner Peace, that we're somewhere above ground, and towards the western facing side of the building. Which narrows it down to, what, about a cubic kilometre?-

She stared at the walls and doors, hoping against the odds to find some sort of subtle coding in the design that would tell her which floor they were on and where the nearest exit was. Oh well, better just hope for stairs or, better yet, an elevator and head down. A lateral direction would be handy, mind.

-Oh. Well, I guess that's still more than I knew. Um. Also... I don't want to sound rude or ungrateful for you getting me out of certain death and into equally certain death, but who in the hells are you?- Koto laughed, both in the privacy of Winston's mind and out-loud. -Did I say something funny?-

-Yes Winston, you really did. And you were pretty spot on - my name's Naoko-Tove and I have, in a very real and literal sense, been through Hell to get here. You see, technically I'm dead.- There was silence after that statement. And then a lot more silence. _ -If you're about to ask me if I'm a demon, I shall be most upset.-_

-No, I... I just wasn't quite sure to respond to that. I mean, "Oh, really? That's nice" just didn't seem to cut it.-

Koto grinned and swiped the next door, into her third empty corridor in a row. A lack of guards was good, but similarly absent stairs, corners, or other features was bad. As hellish as this place was for those incarcerated here, she couldn't imagine it was pleasant for the guards, either. Probably went some way to explaining why they were such vicious bastards.

-So... you're dead? How's uh... how's that working out for you?-

-Honestly? Kinda sucky. Believe me when I say that Hell lives up to its reputation. Though I should probably explain a little more before you become convinced you're going mad.-

-Thought had crossed my mind.-

_-Ha, well. It's not quite how you think. Hell is a real place, sort of.- _Another door, another corridor free of guards. _-Finally! A corner!- _

Picking up the pace, she bounded down the corridor and swung out around the corner, running straight into the guard that had been walking the other way. Reacting far quicker than the guard, and far quicker than Winston believed he was capable of, Koto elbowed the guard in the side of the head as he tried to get up, probably hurting herself - or, rather, Winston - more than the guard as bone met reinforced helmet, then brought her pistol out with a secondary and jabbed the barrel into the guard's chest, leaning against him to muffle the sound as she pulled the trigger. The guard jerked once and then was still, a wisp of smoke coiling out from the scorched entry wound in the side of his angular torso. Koto was quickly back up on her feet, gun held ready in case anyone came running at the sound of the report. She held her place for five more seconds before carrying on into the widening corridor as it branched out. Truly, she was blessed - for there sat two elevator doors, side by side. Grinning with relief, she hurried over to swipe her card over the call button of the lifts.

-Sort of?- Asked the still nervous voice in the back of her head, his tone laden with please-god-let-this-be-a-dream.

-Huh? Oh, yeah.- The elevator lights dinged and a symbol indicated that a car was coming up to her; still no indication of floor numbers, however. -Yeah. Hell's not what you think it is. Sure, it's a place you go when you did to be tortured for eternity, but it's not real.-

-I'm confused - you just said it was?-

Another ding and the elevator lights seemed to suggest that the car was close, but still without any quantitative way of gauging what that meant for her location.

-It's real in that it really exists, it's just not really real. Look, are you familiar with the concept of a simulated reality? A computer-run software simulation that's immersive?-

-You mean like the ones at the underground bars that we're not supposed to know exist? Put on a bulky helmet, close your eyes and suddenly you're in a world that's a lot more fun?-

She nodded, pointlessly but out of sheer habit. Ahead, the doors started to slide open as the car arrived, and Koto pulled both guns out with her secondaries, while her primaries wielded the batons, ready to batter anything she couldn't gun down.

-Yeah, like that, but a whole lot more realistic and immersive to the extent you don't realise it's not real, and a lot less fun.-

The doors opened to reveal a guard captain, in full combat uniform and with a sub-machine gun hanging by its strap from his shoulder; she raised her guns and-

"KOTO! Hell above, girl! It's me!" The captain spread his arms wide, his crest fluttering submissively.

"Drake?" The guns lowered, but not by a lot, and the captain didn't move while they were still pointed at him.

"Who else? Took me ages to figure out the maps they have here and find you, even after I'd pin-pointed your signal. I've got good news and bad news. Good news is, as you can see, I've found a suitably weak-willed officer to override, and I've also managed to requisition a jalopy without any questions being asked. Bad news is you are ugly!"

-Hey!-

"Chill, Winston, this is Drake; he's sort of a friend. I say 'sort of', because he's about as friendly and cuddly as a spring-loaded trap. But the main thing is that he's on our side. And Drake, this 'ugly' host of mine is Winston, as you already know." She lowered her guns fully, and then slipped them back into her holster and belt, doing likewise with the two batons. Before her, Drake's host grinned broadly.

"My lady, my lord, your chariot awaits." He stepped to one side, gesturing for Koto to join him in the lift car. As soon as she was in, he scanned his access card and thumbed the button that would take them to the hangar where he'd wrangled a ride.

"Thanks. And good timing, Drake. Wouldn't have had a clue which floor to opt for. Doubt my card would have worked, either."

"It wouldn't," confirmed the rebel in captain's clothing, "and the shaft would have locked down and you'd have been arrested, tortured, and executed." She could feel the sudden pall of fear from Winston at Drake's casual exposition of the fate that would have been suffered.

"Easy Drake, you're scaring him. And while I'm riding his mind, him being scared makes me scared."

-You didn't seem scared before- Observed Winston, recalling her earlier demolition of the guards in his cell.

"Yeah well, I hadn't properly synched then - barely had enough time to get to grips with your muscle control without worrying about your glands." Drake quirked a brow at his colleague's apparently random explanation, "Don't mind me, Drake; just talking to myself!" The captain shook his head and chuckled quietly as the elevator roared down the shaft at speed.

"I can tell you've been saving that joke up for a long time."