For each, there is a circle in hell. Far more than one might imagine, and certainly more than the nine most plebeians are familiar with. For a poor shackled Progeny of lost Earth, Dante did well to illustrate the proper order of the cosmos, the path Man must take to be made true. What a pity that the craven ancestors of man spent so long misunderstanding the well and truly Divine nature of Dante's poetry; they might well have saved themselves, if not their realm.
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Virgil awoke, alone and astray, in what appeared to be a very dark and very dangerous wood. As his vision cleared, the ever-present display lights coruscated across his retinas, and the canopy of gnarled and twisted trees revealed itself to be a much more familiar horror. Nestled as he was upon his makeshift cot between two of the many towering vats, he had become uniquely familiar with the grotesque experiments incubating in the darkly verdant glow of aerobic gel. Much about his new job and home had become commonplace, yet every morning – just before his Lacework fully acclimated his senses to the low light environ – some part of his mind quailed at the hauntingly familiar sensation man has known since before we were Man. That of being lost and alone in the forest with the sun wavering as it slipped below the horizon. Fully awake now, though most definitely against his will, the sense that something was deeply wrong remained. To be very clear, he scarcely remembered a day (or what passed for one there) where the harsh jolt of awareness that one might charitably describe as waking up left him feeling anything but panicked and full of foreboding. Hands unconsciously sketching the puckered and still-weeping scar at the back of his neck, he deflated, realizing that despite his earlier tampering, he had neither solved the larger problem of his newly acquired neural leash nor the smaller one of the pain that accompanied the never-healing scar. Carefully shielding his thoughts, he filed away the results of his tampering, and tampering it was for such shoddy and ill-advised experimentation. Still, the results at least spared him the mercy of figuring out how exactly he would proceed once the Leash was dealt with. Feeling the edges of his Shield quiver, he quickly folded the pocket of neurospace in on itself, within moments transforming into what hopefully appeared to the Leash's ever searching eyes as a mass of deadspace.
As the shock of being awoken so unnaturally faded, Virgil began to finally rise from his cot, doing his very best not to worry that all the microfolded neurospace would eventually flag him for Substration. Vergil instinctively suppressed the urge to gag as images of repossessed workers flashed through his mind. He grimaced, reminding himself that being able to recall memories in such perfect detail could be a double-edged sword, especially considering he had little to no control over his own memories now. Shrugging on one of his dull green work shirts, Vergil caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the nearest vat, where beads of condensation, combined with the perpetual gloom, obscured the finer details of his appearance. What he could make out, however, served only to remind him of how quickly his body had adapted to this new, seemingly hellish, environment. His once vibrant hair had shifted from dark red to nearly black, its vibrancy disappearing with the lack of starlight. The same held true for his skin, whose pale white pallor had come to more closely resemble the paste they provided workers with for most meals. Despite the lack of external light, Vergil could easily make out the faint sheen of silver in his eyes that signified that his implants had fully acclimated.
"At least it matches the color," Sellen joked to himself. Unlike the rest of his family, his irises had taken on a dark grey color from an early age, creating a clear distinction from the green inherited by his two siblings. Deciding to once again do the best he could to tidy his appearance in the murky glass surface, he ran a hand across his jaw, surprised at both the presence of thin stubble as well as the much starker outline of his jaw.
"Well, at least that proves one thing. They're not starving us exactly." Vergil recalled having carried a lot more fat and muscle on his frame when he had arrived. Well, factor in the weeks of recovery from his procedures and the slight but noticeable calorie deficit he and all the other employees were kept in, Vergil was simply surprised he hadn't noticed sooner. Sighing to himself, Vergil finished tying back his hair and vainly attempted to smooth the wavy strands that refused to stay in place. Mumbling curses about the awful quality of soap in the common showers, he took two steps before coming face to, well, optical sensor, with an administrator. Vergil suppressed a gasp as he quickly backed away, remembering suddenly to straighten his back and avert his eyes downward.
"How may I be of service, great one?" Vergil asked, adopting to forgo his usual flattery, as time and experience had shown him that it was wasted on even the more complex Fernae machines. Vergil gasped as a sudden flare of pain shot down his spine, sending him to his knees as he gasped in shock.
"Well now," an almost sultry mechanical voice whispered in his ear, "what an awful thing to think of your most gracious benefactors." Sellen jerked away, falling to the ground as his eyes locked on the body of the administrator. Long segments of dull metal plates overlapped in a concentric ring, the thin blades of which spiraled outward in what only the truly delusional, or truly devout, some might say, could describe as resembling the rays of a star. Placed at its center, amid inner rings of gearlike teeth, lay a lone optical sensor made to resemble a single vertical eye. Sellen shuddered as he fled backwards, arms and legs scrambling until he collided with another of the many vats, his impact causing the being inside to stir slightly.
"Now now, I believe we went over this just yesterday, Vergil," the machine purred, its voice a mimicry of human speech just close enough to perfection as to instill fear in a way no inhuman monster ever could, "you simply must rid yourself of these notions. I happen to find such a term repulsive, though I understand it is... difficult for one still chained by the flesh to modify their thought patterns. Lucky for you, however," The administrator laughed, the plated segments of its "neck" extending and shifting as it lowered itself further from the ceiling to peer at Vergil, "we can aid you in that process." The Fernae fixed Vergil with its singular eye as a fog began to settle over his thoughts. He could feel something foreign and... cold, pierce the veil of his neural shield with a mechanical precision. A whimper escaped Vergil as he clutched at his head, his sluggish thoughts desperately trying to evade the tendrils that had begun seeping into his mind.
"Now then, let us remove such a notion directly," the machine said, its voice having dropped any pretense of feigned humanity. Vergil knew what was happening; he could see it all from the small pocket of space he had carved for himself within the more remote recesses of his mind. With all the strength that remained, Sellen conjured up an image, one he couldn't have forgotten even before his augmentation.
Hidden away from the fog and inky black tendrils that had begun tearing through his neurons, forcibly and painfully rewriting connections in his brain, Vergil held tightly to a scene he had witnessed long ago, that of what was once his mother reaching out to him with a hand fully infested by the Fernae, wires and sections of metal peeking out from torn skin as the bones in her forearm snapped at the elbow with a sickening crunch, metal quickly filing the space as the arm elongated, extra joints and ligaments festering as the machine sought to complete its host. He remembered holding his younger brother as they crawled away in horror, Vergil stumbling over his words as his cries and prayers of warding against the machine fell on deaf ears: "Fernae ilocentos, Deldia curaseInFernae". Sellen held on to that horrifying nightmare, knowing it was the only way to retain what was being so forcibly stolen from him, the only way to combat the greater nightmare before him. With a shudder, the administrator's rings began to whir as it forcibly severed the neural link between Vergil's lacework and the machine. Sellen's mind screamed as the presence vanished.
"Much better," the machine cooed, reaching one of its thin needle-like appendages towards Vergil as though to soothe him. The arm drew red lines across Vergil's cheek in a perverse attempt to mimic a soothing motion as he lay prone on the floor, his eyes glazed and his body shuddering.
"Don't forget, you are required at your post in one hour. The Emmisary is scheduled to arrive today, so be sure to prepare for his briefing with all haste. Good luck, Vergil," it said, its tone now suddenly conciliatory. The Administrator then retracted itself into the darkness that permeated the ceiling without so much as another word, its task finished.
Vergil lay on the floor, shuddering, until he was sure the Administrator had left. Slowly, he worked himself into a sitting position, his arms shaking as he pressed his palms into the textured ground, the small spikes meant for traction digging into his palms. Vergil violently retched on the floor, his head spinning, though not entirely from the Removal. There had been... something else. Another presence had been there right after the Administrator had severed their link. Something much grander and more horrifying than even the Fernae. Sellen chuckled as he wiped his face, his spirits brightening slightly as he tried to recall what the machine had taken from him. He had called it something, something inflammatory and downright sacrilegious, given where he was. He had thought something he shouldn't have; he had been careless. A small measure of panic set in as he frantically called upon the memory, the screams, the snapping of bone, his frantic prayers. Vergil's eyes widened as thought bloomed from the tiny pocket of "dead" space in his mind, branches of neural pathways propagating through his recently scarred mind, filling in wounds left by the machine, the Fernae. Calm returned to Vergil, and he carefully toyed with the word, letting his lace recall related images, terms, lines of thought, all related to the plague, the blight on all of mankind that was the Fernae, or more plainly, the Infernals as they were called in most of the galaxy. Vergil let out a long sigh of relief as he staggered to his feet, leaning heavily on the vat he had collided with. A sense of triumph, small as it was, suffused Vergil. He had done it, his hunch had been right. After losing so much upon his arrival and partial "completion", Vergil now knew he had some measure of defense, some means of retaining his very self against the constant surveillance and onslaught against his very sentience.
As he made his way haltingly to the commisary, he stopped dead in his tracks, his mind recognizing something... new? A neural object originating from somewhere other than his own mind. As he accessed the object, a presence seemed to gaze at him. A pressure of unimaginable strength pressed down upon his mind. Choking and gasping for air, Vergil once again found himself on the floor, a malestrom of voices and thoughts violently tore through his mind, and at the center of it all came an image. Three half-lidded green eyes arranged as though circumscribed by a triangle, almost resembling some sort of flower, flashed across his eyes, and all at once, the presence vanished, chased away in an instant and replaced by a ghostly silver halo, though it too began to fade before long. Unable to take the stress, Vergil's lace began to shut off as part of its safety protocol. The towering vats around him began to spin, the edges of his vision darkening as a voice drifted down to him as though echoing down a large and lofty hall.
"My poor little lamb. How unexpected that you should catch any of Our attention." The voice laughed to itself, sounding almost friendly. "Well, now this changes things greatly. Oh, but I always did love a surprise." Vergil's vision had narrowed to a single point of pale argent light, which was odd considering the ceiling above him lay in total darkness.
"Your little trick was certainly entertaining, though no doubt vexing to Them." The voice contained hints of triumph at such a notion. "Though now that you have caught their attention, it's only a matter of time." Vergil's eyes finally closed as his head echoed with the otherworldly voice. "Should you seek to... rectify your situation, seek the Sign of Silver, and know that the Queen herself," the voice chuckled again at that, "shall be willing to make a deal."
As the presence vanished, Vergil suddenly shot awake, seemingly revitalized. Dimly, he was aware of a burning sensation on his left forearm, and as he sat up to glance at it, he nearly shot up in shock. Etched into his skin lay the image of a resplendent silver crown, flanked by a circle of seven wings. Just as Vergil moved to inspect it closer, the image faded until it was almost indistinct, just in time for him to hear a voice call out behind him.