A multi-part audio drama told over three 20-plus minute instalments as part of Black Library’s Digital Horror Week 2019 (subsequently released as a standalone CD/MP3), Rachel Harrison’s The Way Out is a creepy little 40k story of the cracks that let the darkness in. For Captain Karina Arq and her crew, watch station Refuge offers a glimmer of hope when their ship, the Fortune’s Favour, is forced to suddenly drop out of the Warp. It’s not until Arq and her companions board the station, however, that they start to realise that what they thought was salvation may in fact be something entirely different…and much worse.
It’s a suitably sinister premise for a Warhammer Horror story – becalmed in the void, trapped with nowhere to go and no way out only for the slim hope of salvation to turn into fear, desperation and recrimination. Essentially a 40k variation on the haunted house trope, this is perfect for both 40k as a whole and the audio medium in particular, offering copious opportunities to make use of music and SFX to build tension and add further impact to a story seeped in the darkness of the 41st millennium. It’s a fully-narrated story, and while it might have been fun to go full-on immersive with more of a radio play style, without the narration to offer exposition, Jonathan Keeble’s gravelly diction nevertheless suits the tone of the story very nicely.
With little in the way of out-and-out action Harrison keeps things character-driven and dialogue-heavy, using the close confines and the horrors therein to tease out details of her characters’ personalities and motivations as the tensions within the crew come to the fore. The three instalments are titled Ambitions, Memories and Answers, and it’s appropriate that as the overall story progresses it becomes clear that each of the key characters is driven by the implications of secrets from their own past – whether that’s the Navigator’s conflicting sense of self-importance and desire to prove himself, the mixture of guilt and bravado in the ship’s security officer, or Arq’s own streak of ruthlessness. That all gradually comes to the fore as they look for both a way off Refuge, and answers to the question of what lurks at the heart of the station.
The production values of Black Library’s audio dramas never fail to impress, and this is no exception with a seamless blend of tight storytelling, compelling performances and an immersive soundscape. Each of the three instalments has its own narrative arc to a certain extent, but the three-part release structure is as much a marketing decision as a creative one – listen to it as a whole story to get the most out of it. Taken as a whole it’s a subtle, psychological sort of story, relying largely on tension and implied horror rather than outright shocks or gore. Don’t expect a happy ending, though; not only is this a full-on horror story but it’s a 40k story to boot, so it’s bleak through and through. Satisfying for sure, but the sort of darkness that might just linger in the mind.
Click the links below to order each of the three instalments of The Way Out on Audible:
