If I had a world for everytime Emmaline collapsed, I would own the ultima segmentum, and yet I never got comfortable with the feeling. I still ran to her, scooping her up in my arms and helping wash and tend to her, despite the amalgamation of weirdness and the strange closeness we had with our minds linked. I knew we would need to speak of it. Letting things like that go undiscussed was the same as allowing a wound or an underhive cult to fester. However, we had other, more grim tasks to deal with. While Emmaline slept, I contacted Lazarus and spoke in binary, using numbers rather than the screeches most tech priests used, to relay the information we had received so he might utilize his databanks. 

However, I was not satisfied, yet I also could not leave Emmaline to sate my curiosity. Not without some protection, at least. I was ambivalent, at first, however I felt as if I needed to find more cognizant answers than the bastard Demick could show us. There was bound to be another in this metropolis that could give more information, and so with hesiation, I pulled out what was left of my luggage and checked the encrypted compartment beneath my personal belongings. Gingerly, I lifted out a consecrated scroll I had no expected to use, and here I was about to use it not for banishing a daemon, but protecting my lover and my second. 

Unrolling it, I found the Stigmata Incantamentum. It was a ritual of Theosophamy, a sister study to Daemonology. The latter was used for direct conflict typically, or more specifically, controlling the warp's energies through force. Theosophamy was more esoteric and passive in its application of immaterium manipulation, and with a small cut to my finger and the proper incantation, I conducted it within the hotel room. It required psychic strength to be performed, but it was not an immensely taxing work. Concentration and the proper pronunciation was key, and within minutes I had warded the material plane within fifty meters from my exact spot in all directions. If a daemon approached and met the barrier, it would dispel, and if a proper heretic stepped into it, I would feel it and they would experience an immense sense of foreboding and vertigo. As for mercenaries, I planted a small, controlled explosive device by the door that could only be disarmed by the proper code 'Omega Lambda 7-X-L-9.' 

Emmaline was privvy to it, but if she woke and I was gone, I would hope she believed I went to the authorities for a quick chat. It might be the only thing I could accomplish this night anyway. 

I grabbed my coat and my weapons, and kept the scroll in my pocket just in case. I left my comm there. It was clean, as far as I was aware, but I did not wish to be tracked. Which meant I could take both comms and leave Emma without one, or leave both so she could call the authorities or even a hospital while I was away. I left a small note, telling her I would return soon, and locked the door behind me. I would first check the precinct, and work my way back from there. Wherever the shithole in the gleaming jewel of the north was, I would find it.