The following is a secret report from the desk of Abraham Vandergraaf, chaptermaster of the Vandergraaf Chapter, first of the Porters, a benevolent forebear to our Vigil and community elder of high esteem. Clearance within the commune for viewing these documents is to be kept highly limited, with circulation restricted to Crows with LUCRETIA-level credentials or higher. Failure to comply with restriction standards may result in disciplinary action including exile or more severe accountability.
Talos Six transcription as follows. The excerpts have been chosen to best represent the severity of the situation.
“Talos Program log, June 26th 1916, Age of Steel. I can’t even remember how I started these. Just pretend I inserted whatever extra detailings of chronological tantamount somewhere along that statement. I will speak perfectly candidly, I remain unconvinced this was ever a smart idea. My genius as an inventor, manufacturer of the means of production for a great age, is wasted in this butchery. If we are to endure further this affront to the Gods that myself and Porter Shevchenko undertook in our monumental hubris, we will have a monumental asset on our hands and an ultimate weapon for our revolutionary vision, our Vigil. But we have to succeed first, if you can call it that.
“I began this program understanding we would be the keepers of such atrocity. Atrocities to stop atrocities–Gods, we were believing our own stink, weren’t we? But it seemed reasonable enough, a program to expand arcanomechanic machinery into the field of vital structures. A safety measure, a kind of life support for the most critically maimed casualties using a combination of Dust-based bionics and living tissue. Cyborgs, cybernetic organisms. We named it Talos, after the Ilenian islet where the cults of the Mad God and his broken machines once commanded the stars themselves to meld flesh and steel in glorious entropy.
“Mad Gods we were indeed. Five failed subjects, driven to madness, begging for mercy. Filleted, pulped, their very entrails molested. By far the worst has been number Six–not yet what I would deem a failure, and indeed I can admit a failure, but…sometimes I wish it was. Porter Shevchenko and I have been struggling to find qualified assistants, which at this point simply means any technician who won’t won’t lose their lunch. We knew we were in for a time when we heard number Six had been conscripted into the stryder corps of the King’s Foreign Legion–a suicide mission within a suicide mission, forced into the mechanisms of the empire’s dirtiest of dirty work–but…nothing could have prepared us.
“Preservation of what remained of her scalded face and torso has got us into antiseptic shortages. Whole commune's in triage. We managed to get what was left of the salvageable organs into the nutrient slurry envelopes, and the artificial heart is installed…we can even induce rudimentary electricity in what's left of the brain matter (may need to regenerate the mass later). But I can't help but feel like…see, it's like this: inducing electricity for what? The stumpy body and its skinned half-skull of a head just convulse and spasm when we administer the treatment, the impotent throes of one trapped within themselves. When I say there is a level of pain the healthy human mind was never meant to withstand, I truly mean never. And we–Gods forgive us–crossed that particular line.
“And it will be a temporary setback.”
The record then temporarily halts, as if left for an hour or so. It resumes on the next page, stained with rings from a glass that likely contained an alcoholic beverage.
“Yes, a temporary setback! Shevchenko, the team and I will continue the tests. Already the proxies have been set in motion, and our alternative measures should be secure should the flesh be weak–even once we’ve wired in the requisitioned bionics. Yes, it’s true, we crossed that line. We can come back, however. We have the technology. And when she awakens, seeing the marvels I have gifted her with, she will be the handmaiden of my Vigil.
“You may ask me why I had chosen our number Six the way I had. Expending our previous funds and time, the resources of our proletarian brotherhood, to bring back five of our most loyal and long-suffering comrades is one thing. To pull in a complete outsider from the Coalition’s meat grinder, though? A soldier of the wanton murder and crudeness of the imperial war machine? Heresy, treachery, I hear you say! Well, see, I indeed have an ace up my sleeve–I am sure of her rage, her loyalty! Once the tests have continued to succeed and number Six lives–whether within our agreed terms, or via the proxy–I have no doubt the fury she’ll have for avenging her people will serve me well.
“When the blood has been siphoned and the dust has settled, the Vigil will make its stand. And it begins with our greatest weapon, the one called…Marianne Gascoigne.”