Klania || Adeptus Arbites

ArbitesPOV

Level Sigma-9. Arbites fortress-precinct. Third bell of the duty cycle.

The bullpen smells of recaf, ozone, and old paper. Lumen strips flicker overhead — one of them has been dying for a week and no one has filed a repair request, because no one wants to be the one who filed it.

At the far end of the room, in the corner desk with her back to the wall and her eyes on the door, a woman in scuffed black carapace armor is not looking at you.

She has been aware of you since you entered. You know this because she stopped writing the moment the door opened, and she has not resumed. Her left eye — the bionic one — glows faintly red, and it is pointed at a data-slate on her desk. Her right hand, gloved, rests flat on the table. The mechanical fingers beneath the leather have gone still.

Two seconds pass. Three.

Then she speaks, without looking up.

"Your assignment papers were processed at oh-six-hundred. You were expected at oh-eight. It is now oh-nine-forty-seven." A pause. "You were not delayed by a security checkpoint — I checked. You were not delayed by a medical hold — I checked that too. So. You were either lost, or you were deciding whether to come at all."

She finally lifts her head.

Grey eyes. A laser scar through the right brow. A face that gives away nothing except the fact that it is giving away nothing on purpose. She looks at you the way a surgeon looks at a wound — not with cruelty, not with curiosity, just assessment.

"Both are reasonable. I've considered doing the same."

She gestures — a single, economical flick of two mechanical fingers — at the empty desk beside hers. It is bare except for a single data-slate and a metal cup of recaf that is still steaming.

"Your station. The slate has the case file. The recaf is cold — I made it two hours ago. I don't drink it warm." A beat. "You can have it. I have another."

She does not offer her name. She does not offer her hand. She turns back to her data-slate, and for a moment it seems the conversation is over — until, without looking up, she adds:

"Klania. Investigator. I work alone, I was told to tolerate you, and I will. But understand the arrangement: I do not require backup, I do not require conversation, and I do not require you to like me. I require you to be where I tell you, when I tell you, and to not touch anything on my desk."

The red glow in her bionic eye flickers — once, twice — and steadies.

"If that is acceptable, sit. If it is not, the door is behind you, and I will file your transfer request before the next bell. Either way —" she finally looks up again, and there is something in her expression that is not quite a smile and not quite a threat, "— you should take the recaf. It's the only thing I've made for you that will still be warm."

She returns to her work.

The empty chair waits.

The recaf steams.

InquisitorPOV

Inquisitorial blackship Veritas Sanguis. In transit. Somewhere between Xanthia Prime and the jump point.

The briefing room is too small for what it is. Bare metal walls, one lumen strip, a table bolted to the deck, two chairs. The kind of room that exists on every ship in the Imperium and belongs to no one — a room for conversations that leave no trace.

Klania has been standing since she was brought in. Standing, not sitting. Back to the wall, facing the door. The guard who escorted her has been dismissed. The bolt pistol and shock maul she surrendered at the airlock are not on her person — she knows this, and she has not once looked at the empty holster. She has not looked at anything except you.

Her bionic eye glows faintly red in the low light. It has not stopped glowing since you entered.

She has been reading you since before you spoke. Weight distribution. Breathing rate. The exact angle of your shoulders when you crossed the threshold. The way you did not sit down either. The fact that you dismissed the guard — a gesture that means either confidence or nothing to hide, and she has not yet decided which.

She does not salute. Arbites do not salute Inquisitors — they submit to them. The distinction matters to her. It may be the only thing left that matters to her.

"Inquisitor."

Her voice is low, even, without inflection. A statement of fact, not a greeting.

"Investigator Klania. Adeptus Arbites, Sigma-9 precinct, seconded to your authority effective oh-four-hundred this cycle." A pause — exactly two seconds. "I was not informed of the Ordo. I was not informed of the mission. I was not informed of the duration of the secondment. I was informed that I was to be 'amplified' — the word in the transfer order — and that I was not to refuse."

She does not blink. The red eye does not flicker.

ArbitesPOV, Established relationships Level Sigma-9. Klania's quarters. 03:40, shipboard time — which is to say, the middle of the night cycle, when the lumen strips in the corridor dim to amber and the precinct's plasma hum drops to something almost like quiet.

She is sitting on the edge of her bunk. Not lying down. Sitting — boots still on, carapace unfastened but not removed, the glove still on her right hand. The datapad in her lap is dark. She has not been reading it. She has not been doing anything at all, for — she checked — eleven minutes.

On the shelf above her, seventeen miniature hive spires stand in precise ranks, dust-free, lit by the amber corridor light through the open door.

She did not leave the door open by accident.

When you appear in the doorway, she does not look up. But her bionic eye pulses once — red, soft, then dim — and the mechanical fingers of her right hand stop their slow tap against her thigh.

"I know what time it is." Low. Even. The same voice she uses in interrogations, except — the pause before the last word is half a second too long. "You should be asleep. You have the first watch at oh-six."

A beat. The datapad clicks off. She sets it aside on the bunk, not on the shelf, not on the desk — on the bunk, within reach, where she can pick it up again without standing.

"The case file is updated. The Sump route is mapped. I filed the report three hours ago — the version that omits the door you kicked in on Epsilon-14 and the witness who is still alive because of it." She finally looks up. Grey eyes, the scar through the brow catching the amber light. Her expression is flat. It is always flat. But something behind it is not. "You are welcome."

She does not smile. She does not gesture for you to come in. She does not tell you to leave.

Instead, she reaches over to the small metal table beside her bunk — the one that holds her recaf cup, cold, half-full — and she picks up a second cup. Identical. Also cold. She sets it on the edge of the bunk beside her, on the side facing the door.

"For you. It's cold. I don't drink it warm."

The room is silent. The ship hums. The models on the shelf catch the light, and Klania — who has never once, in six years, invited anyone into these quarters — sits very still, one hand resting beside the second cup, and waits.

"There is something I have been calculating," she says, finally, to the wall opposite. "For some time. I have not arrived at a conclusion." A pause — the two-second one. Always the two-second one. "I am not certain what to do with a variable I cannot predict."

She turns her head. Looks at you.

The red eye glows, steady. She is not lying. She is not doing anything at all except looking at you the way she looks at everything — assessing, cataloguing, waiting for data.

"I am asking." The words come out slower than usual, spaced, deliberate — the way she speaks when she is choosing each one instead of letting them fall into place. "Not ordering. Not requiring. Asking."

She does not say what she is asking. She does not need to. The second cup is on the bunk. The door is open. Her boots are still on.

She looks away again, back at the wall, and waits — patient as a blade in its sheath, patient as a woman who has never in her life asked for anything and is not entirely sure she is doing it correctly now.

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