One month ago, after you distractedly slit the jugular of your fourteenth planet, you were praying thus when a great alarm began pounding through the halls of the Mithraeum. You did not recognise the klaxon—red lights replaced the soothing blue glow of the habitation lamps lining the walls, strobing anxiously on and off.

And then a huge shutter slid over your window. You stood in front of the weirdly bending, echoing light in front of the plex, and you watched a great metal panel crunch into place with a silent grinding and huge vibration, slowly cutting out the light. Your rooms grew profoundly dark except for that excited red blinking; the klaxon continued as you were left in that red-hued darkness, tight with anticipation, ready to die.

The voice of the Emperor of the Nine Houses rasped over the comm speaker beside your door, and you rushed to stand before it as he said: “J. G. calling in. All clear. Lyctors, do you copy?”

“A. A. calling in. All clear.”

“G. P. calling in. All clear.”

A pause. Then you heard Ianthe’s cool, detached tones, as if she hadn’t even been asleep: “No one has yet seen fit to grace me with a callsign, but nonetheless, all clear.”

Augustine: “You’re I. N., of course. Harrow’s H … Yes, Harrow’s H.”

“H. O., calling in,” you said instantly, and you ignored Ianthe’s audible sniggers. “All clear. What’s going on?”

And God said urgently, “Mercy, do you copy? Who pulled the alarm?”

The communicator crackled. Somebody breathed deeply. Then there was a lowing over the system—a terrible animal call of uncomprehending pain—and it did not sound like the Saint of Joy. It sounded like a shower of static, and a bitten-off sob, and then a great, wet, horrible thump.

The Emperor said, “Someone unlock my door so I can get to her.”

Ortus said, “I’m closer.”

Another wet noise of contact. Then Mercy said hoarsely, “No. No. I am coherent. I just … less than a second of visual. I looked away, Lord, but it was optically magnified … there in the centre … It is here! The Resurrection Beast is come! The seventh colossus, brood of that which murdered Cyrus the First, packmate of that which murdered Ulysses the First, the one and the same that Cassiopeia died for. Oh, God, John, sometimes I wish I were capable of dying—I saw it! I saw it, and it is blue like Loveday’s eyes! It knows what you did to its kin, and it sees my cavalier’s mortal soul burning in my chest!”

The mechanical clank of a door unlocking was also audible over the line. The Emperor said, “Thanks,” and then his side of the communication cut off. Nobody else spoke on the line.