Chronicle, entry number seventeen.
Now I know what the gas mask was for.
The Death Guard don’t talk much.
When they do, it’s to say things like “acceptable contamination” or “the Primarch disapproves of the city.” I have discovered that Primarch Mortarion disapproves of almost every city.
This week he disapproved of two, in different universes.
The first was called Raccoon City.
The second was disapproved of by his brother Konrad Curze, which is worse, because Primarch Curze doesn’t disapprove of cities: he punishes them.
I.
Raccoon City Fails Inspection
Rain was falling on Raccoon City, and the rain was the only clean thing left in it.
The dead walked the streets.
The living hid in basements.
And amid the rubble of an avenue, a rookie cop and a college student ran from one corner to the next with more courage than ammunition.
“How many rounds have you got left?” asked Leon S.
Kennedy.
“Six,” said Claire Redfield.
“You?”
“Three. And I’m not sure if one of them is a bullet or a cough drop.”
Then the sky rumbled.
A metal pod fell out of the night sky, crushed two cars, and punched a crater in the middle of the avenue.
Out of it came giant soldiers in bone-white and pale-green armor, with filter masks that exhaled steam.
Without a word, they began clearing the street of infected with a frightening efficiency.
“Who are they?” Claire whispered.
“I don’t know,” said Leon.
“But if they’re fighting those things, we’re on the same side. Right?”
The Valkyries came in behind them, and with them, tanks.
A searchlight blinded them.
“Hands up!” shouted an Astra Militarum sergeant from the turret of a Chimera.
“Don’t shoot! We’re not zombies!” Leon raised his hands.
“Leon Kennedy, Raccoon City Police. She’s… a friend.”
“I came looking for my brother,” said Claire.
“There are people trapped. Kids. Families.”
The sergeant looked them up and down.
“Take them to the Primarch. He’ll know if they’re worthy.”
* * *
The Imperial command post had gone up in less than an hour in a multistory parking garage.
Leon and Claire were brought before a Death Guard Marine, a giant whose armor was decorated with little skulls and whose respirator hissed every time he spoke.
“So these are the remnants of this civilization,” he said.
“Weak humans. But they still fight.”
“If you’re killing those things, we’re on the same side,” Leon repeated.
“The rot must be purged. We have not come to save individuals. We have come to eradicate the infection.”
“Not the whole city is infected!” Claire protested.
The Marine didn’t answer.
At that moment, an enormous shadow blotted out the light of the searchlights.
A ship descended from the sky, and from the ship descended a giant wrapped in a black-and-green mantle, a scythe in his hand and a respirator on his face that exhaled a pale mist.
Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard, looked at the ruined city.
Then he looked at the two humans.
“Tell me,” he said, in a voice that sounded like damp earth.
“Is this world worth saving?”
Leon swallowed.
“We’ve lost a lot. But there are people still fighting. If there’s a chance to save them, we have to try.”
Mortarion studied him for a long while.
“Then so be it. The purge will continue. But those who prove themselves worthy will live.”
* * *
Leon led a platoon of Imperial Guardsmen through streets he knew by heart, rescuing survivors from basements and rooftops.
Meanwhile, the Adeptus Mechanicus descended into the Umbrella labs like kids in a toy store.
“Fascinating,” murmured Tech-priest Dominus, passing a scanner over a broken incubator.
“A virus capable of rewriting flesh. Primitive. Brutal. Utterly heretical. Download everything.”
From the back of the lab came something that had once been William Birkin.
Now it was a mass of muscle with an enormous eye on its shoulder.
“My research is the future of humanity!” it roared.
“The ultimate evolution!”
“Contamination detected,” reported a skitarius.
“Requesting authorization to purge.”
“Negative,” said Dominus.
“The specimen will be captured and analyzed. If it resists… disintegrate it with academic respect.”
Birkin resisted.
The skitarii opened fire.
The Kastelan robots charged with their power fists.
Birkin regenerated; the Mechanicus took notes.
“Note: regeneration is faster than projected,” Dominus dictated.
“Note two: switch to phosphor.”
The phosphor worked.
What was left of Birkin ended up in a stasis container with a label that read MARS — DO NOT OPEN — SERIOUSLY.
* * *
On the other side of the city, Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira were running for their lives.
“S.T.A.R.S.!” roared Nemesis behind them, a rocket launcher on his shoulder.
“Why won’t you just die, you disgusting freak?!” Jill screamed.
A las-shot hit Nemesis in the head.
Then another.
Then a shell from a Leman Russ tank.
Out of the smoke came an Astra Militarum regiment firing at will.
“Reinforcements?” Jill asked.
“They don’t look like army,” said Carlos.
“As long as they want to kill that thing, I like them.”
Nemesis mutated.
A tentacle burst out of his back and he threw himself at the soldiers.
The Kasrkin answered with melta grenades.
Nemesis got up again, uglier, angrier.
Then a Death Guard Marine dropped from the sky with a power scythe.
He landed in front of the monster.
“You have lived too long, creature.”
A single cut.
Then plasma, missiles, and Imperial patience.
When the smoke cleared, Nemesis was a smoking stain on the asphalt.
“They killed him,” said Jill, not quite believing it.
“They actually killed him.”
“What the hell are you people?” Carlos asked the Marine.
The Marine looked at him, said nothing, and walked away.
A Commissar stepped forward in his place.
“Raccoon City is ours. If you want to live, follow our orders.”
* * *
In the labs, Claire found a little girl hiding in a ventilation duct: Sherry Birkin, daughter of the man who was now in a container bound for Mars.
The Mechanicus scanners detected traces of the G-virus in her blood.
A Tech-priest extended a mechanical arm toward her with a syringe the size of a forearm.
Claire stepped in between.
“If you touch her, you’ll have to go through me.”
The Tech-priest scanned her.
“Human. Unarmed. Statistically irrelevant.”
“Statistically very annoying,” Claire corrected.
The Death Guard Marine escorting them watched the scene for a while.
Then he pushed the mechanical arm aside with two fingers.
“The girl comes with us,” he said.
“Alive. The Primarch said the worthy. The one defending her is.”
Claire didn’t know whether to say thank you or faint.
She did both, in that order.
* * *
Then Umbrella’s self-destruct alarm went off.
“If this blows, all of Raccoon City goes up!” Claire shouted.
“Typical data-elimination strategy,” Dominus remarked, still downloading files.
“Too late. I already have them.”
Mortarion gave the order.
A metallic voice rang out over loudspeakers across the whole city.
“All detachments, evacuate immediately. The city will be eradicated in twenty minutes.”
“That’s all we needed,” said Carlos.
They ran.
Leon with a group of survivors, Claire with Sherry in her arms, Jill and Carlos behind a column of Guardsmen.
They boarded the last Valkyrie as it was already lifting off, hanging from the ramp.
From the air, they watched a single orbital shot fall on Raccoon City.
A white flash.
An enormous silence.
And afterward, where there had been a city, there was only a clean crater.
“At least,” Claire murmured, hugging Sherry, “this won’t happen to another city.”
* * *
Days later, at the White House, Mortarion testified before the world’s leaders with the survivors at his side.
The Mechanicus recordings spoke for themselves: experiments on prisoners, military contracts, corpses labeled as “assets.” The United Nations signed a treaty with the Imperium that same week.
Umbrella ceased to exist.
Or almost.
In a secret base beneath the Antarctic ice, a man in dark glasses was watching the news.
The hand gripping the edge of his desk was splintering it.
“Idiots,” whispered Albert Wesker.
“Sir,” a scientist stammered, “they’re… they’re dismantling everything. Our assets. Our networks…”
“We will adapt. As always.”
Wesker entered a code into a terminal.
The screens showed cryogenic pods full of things that should not exist.
“The Imperium wants to play god,” he said, with a cold smile.
“Soon it will learn what it costs to defy a real one.”
The lights turned red.
Somewhere beneath the ice, something began to wake.
II.
The Bat and the Night King
The Mechanicus report on the next city was brief:
Name: Gotham City.
Crime index: excessive.
Corruption: structural.
Current status: overflowing with criminals.
Additional note: a nocturnal vigilante exists who fights crime.
They call him Batman.
He kills no one.
Konrad Curze read the last line three times.
“A bat who shows mercy to murderers,” he said, in a voice like a knife dragged across a chalkboard.
“No wonder this city is a rats’ nest.”
He rose from the throne.
“Ready the Legion. Gotham is going to learn what true justice is.”
* * *
That night, the Gotham police received a call about a jewelry store robbery.
When the patrol car arrived, they found the thieves hanging from the roof of the building.
Above them, written in red paint, was a single word: JUSTICE.
The next night the same thing happened in a warehouse at the docks.
And in an alley in the Narrows.
And in a city councilman’s office.
Batman went over every scene with his jaw clenched.
It wasn’t the Joker.
It wasn’t Zsasz.
It was something methodical, precise, cold.
“This isn’t justice,” he muttered.
“It’s a message.”
* * *
Meanwhile, in Arkham Asylum, a shadow passed through the security measures as if they didn’t exist and stopped in front of one particular cell.
Inside, lying on his back staring at the ceiling, was Lyle Bolton, former asylum guard, fired and jailed for treating the inmates with a brutality that even Gotham had considered excessive.
“Who’s there?” Bolton growled, without moving.
Out of the darkness stepped a pale giant in midnight-blue armor painted with red lightning bolts.
“Lyle Bolton. They locked you up for doing what no one else dared to do.”
“You’re the one with the hanged men?” Bolton sat up.
“Those bastards had it coming.”
“The law in this city is weak. It lets murderers walk free again and again. I have seen that cycle. It ends in ruin.”
“Those people don’t need second chances,” said Bolton.
“They need fear.”
Curze smiled, barely.
“Fear is the only justice they understand.”
Bolton reached his hand through the bars.
“Let’s call it an alliance.”
* * *
When Batman returned to the Batcave, the Batcomputer was doing things it shouldn’t be doing.
The screens flickered, the cameras shut off, and on every monitor at once appeared a cog with a skull: the symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
“Alfred,” said Batman.
“Tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”
“I’m afraid it is, sir. Someone has just broken into a system I myself considered impenetrable. And, if I may, I take that personally.”
Every screen in Gotham switched on.
On them appeared the face of Konrad Curze.
“Citizens of Gotham. Your era of impunity is over. I have come to eradicate the parasites that feed on your misery.” The footage showed criminals hanging from gargoyles.
“Batman. I have read about you. You claim to fight crime, yet you let the same scum return to the streets again and again. You are a failure. This city no longer belongs to you. Now it is mine.”
The transmission cut out.
“Then it’s war,” said Batman.
* * *
In their hideouts, Gotham’s villains each reacted in their own way.
The Joker laughed so hard he had to sit down.
“A bat that’s bigger and more serious than boring old Batman! It’s a Christmas present!”
“Puddin’, those guys don’t look like the type to laugh at your jokes,” said Harley, worried.
“That’s exactly why, Harley! I want to see if the space bat knows how to play!”
The Penguin slammed his umbrella down on the table of the Iceberg Lounge.
“If they won’t take bribes, we’ll find out what they will take.”
“Boss,” a henchman whispered, “I don’t think they take anything.”
Two-Face flipped his coin.
It came up on the scarred side.
The Riddler filled a whiteboard with questions.
Bane crossed his arms and said he would wait.
The Scarecrow prepared his gas.
And Catwoman, from a rooftop, looked at the dark ship floating over the city and decided, with a common sense rare in Gotham, that she was going to stay home that night.
* * *
It did the Joker no good to set a trap in a chemical plant.
The Night Lords didn’t laugh at his jokes.
The Penguin tried to negotiate and they didn’t let him finish his sentence.
Two-Face flipped his coin into the air and an Astartes named Melek Valen caught it before it came down.
“Fate doesn’t decide, murderer. We do.”
The Riddler posed a riddle.
Curze didn’t answer him.
Bane fought like a demon, and the Night Lords treated him like a child throwing a tantrum.
The Scarecrow released his fear gas and waited for the screams.
A Marine walked through the cloud, immune, and stopped in front of him.
“We are fear,” he said.
The next morning, Gotham woke to find its villains hanging from the City Hall tower.
Curze stood at the top, and beside him, in new Imperial armor, stood Lyle Bolton.
* * *
The fight everyone was waiting for happened that same night, on the city’s highest rooftop, in the rain.
“You’re no better than them, Curze,” said Batman.
“You think fear is the answer, but all you do is feed the same violence you claim to fight.”
“How many times did you catch them only to watch them escape and kill again?” the Primarch replied, without turning around.
“How many lives were lost because you didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary?”
“We’re not judges or executioners. There’s a line.”
“I crossed that line long ago. And the city I protected was made clean.”
Batman threw a smoke bomb and attacked.
He was fast, precise, the best a human being could ever become.
But Curze saw the future: his visions showed him every blow before it landed.
He blocked one, two, three.
He grabbed Batman by the arm and hurled him into a chimney, which shattered to pieces.
“You are no match for me. You are a man playing at being something more.”
Batman got up, staggering.
“Then… why are you still talking instead of killing me?”
Curze stopped.
He looked at him for a long while.
“Because deep down you are more like me than you dare to admit.”
And he left, leaving him on his knees in the rain.
* * *
Weeks later, Gotham was a different city.
Wayne Tower had been renamed the Bastion of Night.
Where the Bat-Signal once shone, the emblem of the Night Lords now glowed.
Lyle Bolton patrolled with Imperial Guard regiments, and crime had vanished.
Completely.
“The streets are clean, my lord,” said Bolton.
“The Imperium brought what they could never give them: peace.”
Curze smiled.
It was a peace that smelled of fear, but it was peace.
And far below, in the sewers, in a tunnel that appeared on no map, Bruce Wayne watched the city from the darkness with a half-sketched plan in a notebook.
The Imperium might rule Gotham.
But the bat hadn’t fallen yet.
* * *
Chronicle, entry number twenty.
I asked a Night Lords officer whether it didn’t worry them to leave Batman alive.
He told me the Primarch “had already seen it.” I asked him what he had seen.
He shrugged.
“The Primarch always sees something. He almost never tells us what.”
I’m writing this before going to sleep.
For some reason, I left the light on.
I’ll be releasing 2 chapters a day until we reach the final 10 chapters.
After that, I’ll switch to 1 chapter per day.
Thank you for reading and for your support!