Eisenhorn shifted in his seat uncomfortably. He looked at his hands and saw how badly they were seared. Blisters, contracture, third-degree burns, perhaps fourth.

From the fire inside him.

‘Sir?’ Imus called out. ‘Are you quite well? You look rather ill at ease.’

‘I’m… I’m burning,’ whispered Eisenhorn.

‘Like last time?’ asked Imus.

‘What?’

‘When last we sat together in this room, you caught fire. Head to foot. I was most terrified. The fire, it burned your skin and roasted the flesh off your bones until nothing was left, except a torched skull staring back at me.’

‘That wasn’t real,’ mumbled Eisenhorn.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Imus. ‘It was a trick. A wretched trick of your psyker mind. You did it to scare me, to make me quail. It worked, by Throne it worked. The most terrible thing, and I have never forgotten it, or forgiven you for scaring me like that. Do you remember why you did it?’

‘To elicit a response–’

‘To elicit a response!’ cried Imus. He smiled and opened the glass front of the clock on the mantle. ‘That’s it exactly. You did it to scare the crap out of me, pardon my language. It was intimidation. Bullying. You’ve done that your whole life. You did it to get at the truth. Do you remember what you said about that?’

‘N-no,’ said Eisenhorn, wracked with pain.

‘You said that fear simplifies the mind,’ said Imus. ‘You said it is so strong and pure, it empties the head and removes all barriers and falsehoods. You scared me so you could read the truth inside me, the honest part of me that I could not dissemble.’

‘It was a technique,’ replied Eisenhorn, fighting to remain conscious. He rose to his feet, found he was too unsteady and sat down again. ‘A standard ordo technique. Just a mind-trick. The fire burning me is real.’

Imus craned his reedy neck and peered at the face of the clock. He began to adjust the hands.

‘Real?’ he asked, as if only half listening. ‘What’s real? Look at us, here, in this room. What’s real about that? It’s just another technique. Another mind-trick. Another phantom fire to burn through to the truth. To… How did you put it? Empty your head and remove all barriers and falsehoods. Fear, sir, to simplify the mind.’

‘No,’ said Eisenhorn. He took a deep breath. A shadow seemed to have passed over what little daylight existed outside, and the room was darker than ever. ‘It is the Torment. The antigenic at work. It’s a hallucination. Sark designed the inoculant to condition the mind. To strip away the will. To brainwash–’