Read Online Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets by Alessio Lanterna - Free Book Online Page A

solemnly, “Reformed.”
    Oh for fuck’s sake, please excuse me for dragging Mummy and Daddy into it, but, you know how it is, the whore spewed you out of her arse into a world where Daddy had just taken a shit.
     
    Dualists. There’s the mother: i.e. feelings, nature, no rules and a big fucking mess. A whore, in fact. Then there’s the father: the architect, tradition, order and other assorted bollocks. You light a candle to him if you want a promotion. One can’t exist without the other and vice versa, but they’re in constant conflict. On the other hand, according to the reformed—the worst kind, with their smartypants attitude—they are in constant harmony, a divergence which, four hundred years ago, stirred up a real hornet’s nest, including a few dozen deaths. That’s some universal harmony. If I had to pick a religion which is less nasty than the others, then I’d go for Pantheon. The elders are nearly all much more reasonable and human, kind of. There’s Ao, the big chief, the Owl of wisdom, the Slitherer for intrigue, the Pale for death, Thunder for strength and so on, and they all argue together all the time. The sacred Pantheon texts are a sort of adventure novel featuring characters with egos as huge as their superpowers. It’s no coincidence that they do comic strips as well. The best thing is that the followers take sides, too, and blaspheme their heads off at their darlings’ rivals. It’s not like I believe a single word of their religion, but it’s pretty funny. The religious programs on Sunday afternoon hosted by Pantheon priests get really high ratings, because everyone likes watching them squabble over whose representative gets the most attention, trying to explain the week’s news from a mystical angle.
     
    “Oh, forget it,” answers Cohl, trying to avoid confrontation. But I don’t want his pity.
    “But aren’t you reformists duty-bound to ‘save confused souls’? Promote harmony?”
    “I said, forget it. Here’s the file. We’ve got nothing on that Gilder.”
    He tosses the report onto the table and makes a face when he drinks the icy-cold coffee, before calling the waiter over. I start leafing through the papers.
    “Can you please take all this away, and bring me… what do you have that isn’t spicy?”
    “Erm… salad… and bread. I mean, bread that isn’t spicy, sir,” he answers, taken aback. “Shall I bring you a mixed salad?”
    “And a bottle of still mineral water, thank you.”
    “Leave the beer,” I add, grabbing the glass without looking away.
    Inla Inla Inla. You are deep in my heart, at least until I find the ass you were riding. Arrested during the “protest” on 3 June in Cross Square. Eight years ago. I was there, too. I remember it like it was only yesterday.
    “Close ranks! Steady!” barks the sergeant from the second row.
    A hundred or so agents in riot gear guard the entrance to the main tower on the Fourteenth Level. Plastic shields, truncheons, helmets with plastic visors, gas masks hanging from their chests. I’m at the front. There are uprisings everywhere. It’s the Year of Uprisings, even though the horoscope says it should be the year of the gentle Elephant, the lesser God of Memory. In actual fact, it’s not gentle at all. All the security forces had been called to defend the institutions, so I, from the vice squad, ended up in the Abyss. And the Abyss roars. During the briefing, the colonel of the MP talked about ‘potential coup d’etat’, ‘subversive plans’, ‘risk to democracy’, ‘sacred duty to protect the Federation’. Many colleagues shouted at the language that was being used, to give themselves courage. We were all shitting bricks. Twenty-two agents died in the first two hours of the day, and more than four times that number were seriously injured. The army was just outside the City, but they were up against strong resistance on the ramps on the Third and Fourth Levels. The Special Forces, on the other hand,