It seemed to Barley that there wasn't a single human - or former human - in the horde that noticed her presence. Four hooves and equine features wasn't that alarming compared to the monstrosities that towered over the masses, or slunk beneath their feet. Emphasis on the latter, a stream of tentacles that appeared to be made of human arms and fingers was crackling over the ground, pulling along a grinning head. It looked up to Barley with bloody eyes, then screamed as Thess crushed it with her foot, flakes of skin spraying out.
"Didn't expect it to just collapse like that," Barley said.
"Fell apart, yeah," Thess agreed, "Skull was brittle."
"Reminds me of those flaky pasteries back in Canterlot. Nobles liked them, but I remember that time I missed a step when I was carrying a tray of them, and how ruined they got..." Barley shook her head. "Nobles were really angry. Felt like the worst thing to happen to me in all the world. At the time, of course."
Thess laughed at that, as Barley had intended. "Gotta keep the body honest, right? Stamp out the tumors. That's how Ordal died, she just had these tumors one day in her arm and that was that."
Barley glanced at her companion. "You remember?"
"Yeah, but only 'cause of the stamping part. Idiot medicae got it into his mind that the tumor was a sign of displeasure from the Emperor, and he decided to use an industrial metal-stamping machine to remove her arm. She bled out," Thess shook her head. "What a mess. Though I've seen people die of tumors, like, in their neck or something. Coughing's the most frequent way to die, tumors are, like, the fifth. I don't remember the boring deaths."
"I'd imagine a knife to the chest or face - or across the neck - is the most common ways to die these days." Barley observed.
Thess winced, but her voice sounded impressed. "You're really not letting that go, are you?"
Barley shrugged, "It's nice to have something that gets a reaction out of you. Keeping you honest."
"If it makes ya feel better, pony," Thess chuckled, "most folks are dyin' by explosions, or gas. Heard it over the vox - the Defence Forces were bombardin' the rebel hives, keepin' the nobles safe."
Thess smirked. "Didn't seem to work, though. The spires didn't light themselves on fire."
They walked on, for thousands of paces - or perhaps mere hundreds, Barley couldn't tell in the crowd and the landscape. The wasteland of ruined buildings was impenetrable and vast, leering down on the wretches below - only the grey haze could be seen above, and ruined walls around them.
Eventually, a break appeared in the buildings - they could see that the vista of destruction stretched on until it disappeared in a red haze, boiling clouds in the distance.
"Well, we've got to find a place to hide," Thess commented at the sight. "Rain's comin', and I don't want us to get wet."
"Sure," Barley agreed, "I'm sure that the rain here melts your skin off or something, anyway."
"Well, if the lower rings are anything like my old manufactorum, it does," Thess said casually. "Anyway, I picked up a ration packet a little ways back. We eat it in the middle of this street, someone'll fight us for it."
Barley couldn't argue with that logic.
The nearest intact building was already swarming with wretches and mutants, and the pair kept walking. There, a place where the pavement of the road had split apart, a section jutting into the air and forming a crude shelter from the elements. A narrow-faced man stood inside, pushing away anyone who came too close, scowling and spitting. His limbs shook and his eyes held madness.
"I don't like his attitude." Thess said, and Barley strained to hear a hint of bloodthirstiness in her companion's voice - to her relief, Thess merely sounded weary. "He's got shelter, too. Barley?"
"Go ahead," Barley sighed. "I can't stop you."
"You're wrong," Thess said, and Barley imagined the human was half speaking to herself. "You're bloody wrong. If you told me not to, I wouldn't."
"Prove it some other time," Barley responded tiredly. Thess shrugged, and a ghost of a smile twisted the corners of her lips as she walked up to the man.
"Hey, back off-" the narrow-faced man snarled, sluggishly pulling a spiked club from his belt.
Thess glanced behind her, making eye contact with Barley - the pony turned her eyes downward, knowing what was coming, trusting her companion to win painlessly.
The club was clumsily swung and Thess simply jerked back out of its reach. She leaned forward an instant later, a hand shooting out to clutch the man's throat, and she swiftly drew her blade across his neck. A gurgling sound made Barley wince, and the man flopped to the ground. No one around them seemed to care.
"You're getting better at this," Barley observed, taking a seat on a pile of rubble. "Can't help but feel kind of complicit, though."
"Least I didn't get stabbed. My mind feels better, but my wounds hurt a lot more." Thess said, going over the man's body.
"Yeah. Still, he didn't really do anything to us." Barley sighed.
"Scrag-brained idiot. Don't cry over him." Thess scowled, wiping the bits of flesh on her blade into her skirt.
"Least you're rationalizing it." Barley said tiredly. "One life for a night under a roof."
"Oh, not just that. I'd like to think I kill people for a reason," Thess said, scooping up an oil-soaked rag from the ground. "No, the rain is pretty bad for you. When the alarms in the manufactorum sounded, you knew to get yourself inside. Not that we could get outside much. "
"Bad for you?" Barley raised an eyebrow.
"Makes the skin slough off a bit. Won't kill right away, but after a few weeks tumors appear where it touched you," Thess shrugged, "Not too bad, the medicae could usually cut the tumor out and that'd be that."
There was thundering in the distance, echoing over the horde. The bombardment, Thess explained, the Defence Forces chipping away at the vast horde of the damned. The rain came, as promised; they shared a meal as the black liquid thundered down around them, staining the skin of the narrow-faced man as he lay facedown outside the safety of the shelter.
Barley could see wretches that had not sought cover, who were dancing in the burning rain and shrieking with laughter.
Thess leaned into Barley and they lay there, watching the rain come down, and the wretches jump and writhe in the hazy distance.
Barley felt her companion's shuddering breaths take on a steady tempo and saw her eyes close - eventually, Barley joined Thess in dreamless sleep.
They woke, and set out. The rain had drained away, the corpses were rotting, and a stench filled the air as a thousand wretches and mutants emerged from their hiding places. Again, Barley wondered where they were all headed, and all Thess could offer was that they were heading for the sound of war - explosions and chattering gunfire, faint in the distance.
They walked on.
They were still walking, as the haze above began to darken.
Barley noticed it about the same time as Thess - screams echoing from the ruins in front of them, more screams than normal. Strangled cries that led to silence, only to be followed by louder, closer distress. Barley glanced around at the horde, thinned by the rough and uneven landscape - few seemed to notice or care, their attention on the uneven ground or the spiteful fights that flamed and died with brutal swiftness. Many-jointed limbs scrambling over broken walls, wretches with sharp growths stumbling in surprise as their mutations brushed against arches and doorways, normal-looking humans with empty eyes trudging blindly into walls, then turning on their fellows with an animal's snarl and a raised knife. Most, however, were bleeding wretches swathed with rags that stared at the ground, avoiding eye contact, lost in their thoughts. Barley remembered why she had not been staring at her surroundings very much - the visceral, senseless madness around her was destructive to look at for too long.
She had a bleeding wretch of her own, Barley realized, but Thess was utterly separated from the horde around them in Barley's eyes. The pony was protective of Thess, yet try as she might, Barley couldn't eke out any concern for the many others. Faint pity, maybe, but a memory of home had an answer for that - pity is the cherished tool of evil, for it lets good ponies stand by and watch as evil does its work on another. Her father had said that, usually followed with a few scornful words against the endless dithering and eloquent yet empty words of the unicorns. Barley was a good pony, wasn't she? Her father would say the same thing to her, right?
"Thess?" Barley said, frowning, "should we... I mean, should I pity these creatures?"
There was no response. Barley stopped in place, shocked to realize that Thess was not beside her. A dozen scenarios of betrayal or loss drowned her mind in fear in the time it took to snap her head around to look behind her. Thess stood a dozen paces back, staring ahead and above, looking pensive.
"Thess-" Barley began, half-choking with relief, her words dying in her throat as she bounded over to the human, nearly slamming into her legs. "Oh, thank the Stars, you didn't..."
"Barley," Thess murmured, by way of greeting. Thess was still looking off in the direction of their travel, and as Barley watched the human wordlessly placed a single raised finger on her bleeding lips. The subtlety of the action, and the silent alarm evident on Thess' face, was like a bucket of cold water to Barley's mind.
The screaming! Barley was horrified by how easily her mind had wandered off to irrelevance. The screaming was close, the shriek of incoming firepower loud. Snapped back to reality, Barley saw now that some of the horde was beginning to seek cover from the imminent barrage - yet Thess would have jumped into any of the nearby ruined buildings by now if explosions were all she feared.
Barley was struggling to understand what she had been ignoring for the past minute, and it scared her to be playing catch-up with a deadly serious situation. Equally angry with herself and afraid, she looked up to Thess, praying the human was comprehending the threat better than her own frazzled mind. Too much madness around her, too much time left to her own thoughts, too many doubts and the weight of her situation breaking upon her again. Barley could scream, opened her mouth to, when Thess spoke again.
"Barley – it’s gas. It's some kind of gas." Thess said, speaking quickly and clearly. "We need to get higher, the screams are turning into choking, and coughing-" they broke into a sprint for the nearest mountain of rubble and metal.
"I've seen it!" Thess gasped, between breaths as they ran, "Down in the tunnels below the manufactorum! Repair crews snuffed out! I've heard it!"
They crossed the cratered road in seconds, reaching the base of the mountain, a living complex of some kind collapsing into itself. They scrambled up ramps of glass, over stairways fallen to the side, up through twisted masses of piping and belts. Below them, the horde was a churning mass of activity, seeking shelter as the roaring impacts drowned out a thousand screaming voices all around them.
An earsplittingly loud crash almost sent Barley sprawling, and she could not resist the urge to look back. Down below, scarcely a dozen paces away, a leering black slab the size of a hay cart was half-buried in a crater of its own creation. A piercing hiss sounded as the slab split apart, a black cloud spreading from it with terrifying speed. The humans nearest to the crater tried to flee, but were swiftly overtaken by the cloud. With an acid burning in her stomach, Barley watched as some of the figures smothered by the blackness dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, while others writhed and screamed, agonizing screams and coughing –
Barley had seen enough. She turned away from the gas cloud to resume her frantic climbing. Distantly, she noticed Thess had been reaching out to her, not focused on the cloud but on the pony, yet when her mind confirmed that Thess was now scrambling up the jagged slope behind her, Barley shifted her focus to the task at hand. No more distractions she raged as she galloped up a winding street of broken cobblestone.
She soaked up every detail, comprehending everything now, every nerve burning with fear and adrenaline. Barley saw and understood salvation in an instant, a bulky tracked vehicle that was half buried in a collapsed building – around the rear exit hatch, open and lowered to the ground, Barley saw a lining of rubber sealing. It was of roughly the same appearance as the sealing around the airtight doors back in the underground base of the Project in Equestria, and Barley fervently prayed it served the same purpose in this city. She angled for the vehicle, barely seeing the bloody and armored corpses strewn about it, skidding to a halt next to the rear hatch.
Barley prayed that Thess saw her new destination, and understood that Barley had purpose behind her actions – she turned around, searching for the human, found that she was twenty paces back. Thess was clumsy and slower with her many wounds, re-opened and bleeding, and then she collapsed. The black cloud was at the end of the street, far below, but now Barley could see the wisps of darkness in the air, a dozen writhing figures behind Thess yet being choked by the cloud’s fiendish trick.
Barley realized the design of the gas’s layered appearance, and in the same instant she launched herself away from the vehicle’s hatch and towards her fallen companion. She was holding her breath, yet her lungs were burning after scarcely a step. Thess was stirring now, coughing wretchedly and pulling herself forward, when Barley reached her. A hoof around the human’s shoulder, trying to help her up, when Barley unwillingly sucked in a mouthful of air.
A vise closed around her throat. A siphon drained the frantic energy from her limbs, and cold horror pounded in Barley’s chest as the world fell away and she slumped to the ground.
Now she could hear more, the hiss of the slab far below, the footfalls of wretches and their screams, choked prayers and curses.
The wound in her cheek opened up again, searing pain. Barley wanted to scream, but could not. She was being dragged, her limbs scraping across the ground, deathly limp. Distantly, she wondered why ponies were so badly affected by the gas while the humans seemed to be able to struggle on a little longer.
Perhaps it was the madness, she decided. The gas must be designed to kill normal creatures. That was a relief to Barley, then she felt cold metal underneath her, cut on the grating of the hatch.
She lay there, aware of a long crash above her, then a steady roar beside her. Time slipped away, until, without really thinking, Barley could breath again.
She spent a minute lying on the floor, her chest heaving and lungs burning. The air was stale and pricked her throat with every breath, but she was not dying; sprawled across the floor and sucking in the air felt like emptying a jug of nectar into her mouth. Sweetness and euphoria, a wholesome madness filled the pony and she could almost laugh.
Eventually, Barley opened her eyes. She found herself apparently inside the vehicle, a metal box with crude seating and boxes of equipment strewn about. The compartment was dimly lit by a small lamp bolted to the ceiling, and a powered fan hummed in the corner, reminding her of similar filtration devices in the Project. Barley tried to sit up – her limbs were still weak and drained, and she collapsed as shaking legs gave way. After a pause, she reached over and set a hoof against the seating – slowly and haltingly, she pulled herself up.
Barley glanced around, looking for Thess, but she already knew the human was with her. Barley did not bother to consider any other reason that she had been saved from the gas cloud and placed in the airtight vehicle to recover, or that the filtration fan was switched on. Sure enough, Thess was sitting on the bench opposite Barley, her legs crossed, eyes closed and head down.
“Thank the Stars,” Barley said, shaking her head. Thess glanced up, outwardly placid. “This damned place wants me dead and gone.”
“What, that’s my new name?” Thess replied, cracking a wry smile.
“And thank you, Thess Li’Fortwa.” Barley added, her voice filled with good humor. “More than the damned stars. I haven’t even seen the stars once since I arrived in this city.”
“That makes two of us, Barley…” Thess trailed off, looking thoughtful. “Say, you never told me your last name. Have you even got one?”
Barley blinked, her mind churning as she tried to remember home. Everything was clouded by the rush of action and coming back from the brink of death – yet, eventually, she remembered who she was.
“Harvest, Barley Harvest. Earth pony families are like that, my relatives have names like Wheat, or Flax, or Autumn Plenty, Autumn Harvest, Fall Joy…” Barley shook her head. “Goodness, I’m glad I wasn’t born on that side of the family.”
“Same, Miss Harvest, same. If you had a name like ‘Fall Joy’, I’d probably have killed you by now. Insisting on being called your name, and all that.”
“Oh, if I had a name like Fall Joy, I’d want you to call me ‘pony’.” Barley said breezily, amused by a human saying something about killing her.
“Boy, and you think that humans are cruel? Ponies are the real monsters, namin’ their kids like that,” Thess said, nearly snorting with laughter. “May the Warp and the Emperor and scraggin’ anyone that’s out there help us all if ponies ever get any real power. You’d make the madness look like a bunch of pussies.”
“Gods can’t help ya then,” Barley drawled, the twang in her voice achingly familiar, “I’ll name you Thistle and I’ll make you name your kids Thicket.” The meaning of the vocabulary was lost on Thess, but she roared with laughter all the same.
“Fall Joy. Fall Joy, Fall Joy-“ Thess experimented with a dozen varying pronunciations and emotions, each more ridiculous than the last – bastardizations of a noble’s haughty tones, a man’s growl, even Barley’s light country accent that she was slipping back into. Each one elicited a laugh from Barley, till the compartment echoed with merriment and humor. Barley felt happy – and she didn’t feel lonely. The crushing loneliness of the march, the encroaching madness, was gone with a stupid little joke stretched out too long.
Barley wished the moment could last forever. Sitting here with Thess, talking about pointless drivel, Barley felt she could not love another creature so fiercely. Not Ma, not Pa, not her beloved sister. Ancestors bless them, if they were here instead of Thess, the ponies would probably be stewing in their own angst and misery.
Eventually it had to end, though Thess and Barley were still grinning madly and snickering like children whenever they made eye contact. There was noises coming from outside the hatch, scraping on the metal, though neither of the pair seemed particularly concerned.
“Should we let ‘em in?” Thess pondered absently, twirling her hair around a finger. “I don’t want to share this place with anyone else.”
“Come on,” Barley said, giving a look of hollow disappointment, “we’ve got to try. We’ve had our fun. I still…” she trailed off, growing serious, “I think we should try to save life, if we can.”
“It’s not like we’ve gotten the opportunity to,” Thess observed, shrugging. “Still, the second that door opens, the gas floods in and you start dying again. I’m not lettin’ that happen.”
“I could hold my breath,” Barley offered lamely.
“Big problem with that,” Thess frowned. “You’re smarter than me, yet you get stupid when you think about the lives of other people. You’d have killed yourself with kindness by now if you hadn’t met me.”
“Well, don’tcha think I would’ve remembered the gas before I finished undoing the seals and opening the hatch? Y’know, I don’t even know how to work that hatch. I didn’t close it.”
“You wouldn’t have made it in here without me,” Thess said matter-of-factly, then pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Though, come to think of it, you’re the one who noticed this vehicle in the first place. I’d still be out there, choking on my own vomit.”
“We’re wasting time,” Barley reminded her, and renewed tapping on the hatch reinforced her point. “I’d like to help them.”
“Tell you what,” Thess said, “there’s a container with gas masks here, and another with little oxygen feeding tubes you bite on. Emergency gear, the sort of thing we wore down in the tunnels to clear jams – well, not me personally, I’m still alive…”
“Let’s do it,” Barley cut in abruptly. With a nod and some considerable difficulties, Thess got an oxygen feeder into Barley’s mouth and a little oxygen tank secured inside the pony’s saddlebag. They traded glances, unscrewed the feed valves on their tanks, and cracked the hatch open.
The compartment instantly flooded with black gas, the running filter rose from a low hum to a keening wail – Thess reached down and switched it off, and there was silence. Even the distant rumble of war was muffled by the suffocating cloud.
Thess looked around, glanced down the Barley, and shrugged helplessly. “This is your business, pony.” she said.
The hatch was opened more, till Barley could see outside – figures writhed in the mist, a fresh corpse slumped against the vehicle. Barley felt pity and regret until she noticed the corpse’s arms were twisted into mottled pincers, and her sympathy vanished.
A figure in the cloud neared, perhaps drawn by the dim light of the vehicle – a normal-looking man, his face burnt and twisted with fear. Barley beckoned him over, and he stumbled over. Choking out his thanks, he collapsed inside, and Thess busied herself forcing an oxygen feeder into his mouth.
A gaunt woman and a shaking boy – the process repeated itself, mumbled thanks and a shocked expression greeted Barley as she hustled them inside. Barley did not call out to the blackness, wanting to avoid attracting the attention of too many, Thess’s warning about her kindness fresh in her mind.
Another figure, two – Barley glanced back to Thess, who was finishing with the oxygen feeder for the gaunt woman. Thess raised three fingers, and grinned. Barley was glad she would not have to choose, and resolved to shut the door and start the filter with a spare oxygen feeder left – it would take time for the air to clear.
The two figures approached, from different angles, and Barley winced as they collided – and winced again when one of the figures pulled a blade and casually slit the other’s throat. The shadow of blood sprayed across the ground, and the murderer stumbled on towards the vehicle. Barley was used to it, in a fashion – but the fact that the killer was coming to her…
Barley glanced back again, and met Thess’s gaze – her companion had seen it too. The killer approached through the fog, hacking and coughing, yet as he neared he wore a bright smile.
“Thank you!” he cried cheerfully, wiping the blood from his knife off onto his rags. “You fellows are a rarity, you know that?”
“Yes,” Barley said cautiously, staring at his back as he climbed into the vehicle.
Thess offered an oxygen feeder, but did not help him use it – from the look on her face, Barley guessed that Thess was hoping the killer would choke and die before he finished securing it. Whether it was out of self-preservation or genuine disgust with how mindlessly he killed, Barley did not know – clearly, however, Thess didn’t want the killer inside the vehicle.
Barley was contemplating what to do when a noise from outside drew her attention back to the darkness. Four figures stood – two adults, two children, all holding hands. They looked almost suspiciously normal, with mostly intact clothes of decent quality, and already had oxygen feeders in their mouths. A family, Barley realized.
“Please help us,” the father said calmly, “our tanks are running low.”
Barley quickly did the math, and came up one oxygen feeder short. She would not ask the father to deny a child a breather, or worse, watch him give up his life…
Barley’s mind thought quickly and sharply, and then she turned back to Thess. They traded glances, and Thess tilted her head towards the killer, who was fumbling with his oxygen feeder – Barley nodded. The pair had felt a happy connection earlier, but now there was a darker purpose to their harmony, and Barley was glad of it.
Thess turned, raising her knife – the killer had anticipated this, or perhaps wanted all along to have the vehicle for himself. He had been gripping his own knife already, hiding under has rags, and he was already glaring up at Thess. He didn’t, however, anticipate Barley’s collusion in the plot against him. Before the killer could strike, a hoof smashed into the back of his head.
The killer dropped, his limbs flailing, until Thess plunged her knife into his writhing form. An arm reached up and around, his shoulder rotating unnaturally, a hand reaching out to grip the knife; blood poured down, a finger was sliced off, and he went still.
Barley turned back to the family, and motioned them to come inside.
The father came first - a clerk, by the looks of his uniform robe. His wife, a plain-looking woman with bandaged wounds on her arms came next, sheparding their son and daughter. They sat down quietly.
Thess closed the hatch, sealed it, and restarted the filter. They sat in silence, till the air cleared and the blackness disappeared.
Barley looked over to the clerk - he looked excited, a contrast to the weariness everyone else exhibited.
"Looks like you've got something to say," Barley said. The man glanced up, slowly realizing she was talking to him.
"This is all fate. I'm sure of it now." the clerk said quickly, happily.
Now Barley was confused. "Fate?"
"Well... my family and I, being alive. While all those people are dying outside to the gas, and we're alive by pure chance, by pure chance-" the clerk shook his head, his hands shaking, "Pure chance, proximity to this sealed vehicle, you and your friend choosing us over the corpse lying there..." the clerk trailed off, too excited to continue.
"Yes, it wasn't a hard choice," Thess quipped.
"Unless you're crazy," Barley added, earning and sharing a wry smile while her companion.
"It is the Emperor's blessing," the clerk spoke up, "Your doubt is understandable but easily disproven. We cannot die here. We have to make it to Port Boluk. "
"That sounds pretty damned hard to prove," Thess replied, but she sounded almost sympathetic where Barley had expected to hear sarcasm and disdain. "Especially the Emperor part."
"You see, it was pure chance that my family has lived so far - so, so many others are dead, yet countless coincidences have protected us. The Emperor must be watching over us. How could we survive so many things and against such odds, only to die? It seems utterly cruel and nonsensical. There is a purpose."
Thess slowly shook her head, her voice neutral. "Hell of way of looking at it," was all she managed to say.
"Yes. There has to be a reason for us to be alive, in this vehicle, breathing clean air. One could say you are an instrument of the Emperor's will, young lady," the clerk pointed a finger at Thess, smiling.
Barley cringed, but Thess seemed more confused than indignant. "Emperor's will? What'd you mean, we're just puppets in your story?"
"Excuse me?" the clerk frowned. His wife touched his arm, her face cautious, wordlessly conveying her fear of Thess.
"So, let me lay this all out - I don't think you meant what I said - you can't die because... you've survived this far."
"There has to be a reason," the clerk nodded earnestly.
"But what you really are saying," Thess continued, her pause having been to think over her words, not give the clerk a chance to speak, "what you're saying is you can't die because you can't imagine dying. Right? Nobody can imagine their own death without lyin'. "
The clerk did not respond, and the compartment again fell silent. The children were asleep, the clerk's wife holding them close to either side.
Thess broke the silence. "What do ponies think about death?" she asked, turning to Barley.
"I - we, ponies, don't really believe in a blackness after death. We go to our ancestors and live our rewards or punishments in the next life. Like... stepping through a door."
"Yeah, but you live. It's not much different from your first life, is it? Death like that feels a bit hollow, somehow. Hollow and false."
"Well," Barley turned to her companion, "my species isn't usually a very morbid one. Trust me, I've got my own doubts now."
Barley looked down, her voice softening. "I mean, can I even go back to my ancestors now? Is there a portal in the afterlife, even though the portal that sent me here is destroyed?"
"Can't answer that, Barley." Thess shook her head.
"Are my ancestors still watching over me?" Barley continued, heedless.
"I'd say they are," Thess tried to smile, "this ought to be a pretty interesting story for them to watch, if nothing else."
"Are they still protecting me? Can I still pray to them?" Barley shuddered.
"Look, Barley - you've made it this far," Thess pointed to the clerk, "by his logic, that's proof enough."
"His logic sucks," Barley groused, shaking her head. "Say, Thess, you got something of your own to say about death? Sure like to hear it from others."
"I'm not sure what I believe," Thess murmured, her doubt coming as a mild surprise to Barley. "Of course, I mean, the good workers die and fly up to the right hand of the Emperor on the Golden Throne - they tell us what happens, very plainly."
"Do you believe them?" Barley asked quietly.
"No," Thess said, frowning, "and for the same reason I don't believe the family man." Thess dipped her head in the direction of the clerk, then her facial expression twisted from frowning to something darker.
"I've seen - I've seen -" her voice dropped to a whisper, "too much life - too many lives, just snuffed out. Accidents. Sickness. Pregnancies. Heresy. Heresy against the manufactorum consortium, usually, but it doesn't matter who's holding the stubber..."
Barley listened, but did not speak.
"But, this one time..." Thess scowled, staring at the ceiling, lost in memory. "I knew this guy. He explained to me that he was going to see his wife and daughter again, right before he climbed over the railing and dropped off the catwalk."
"...I see." Barley murmured.
"He lost them in a hab-fire - but he was so sure of it, too. Maybe a little excited. Made an impression on me, I guess."
Barley did not respond, and the night passed.