Andy's heavy hydraulic legs slammed onto the floor, crushing the expensive solid-wood planks beneath his weight.
A Nurgle cultist, who had managed to shove his arm through the door, was still giggling idiotically, muttering some nonsensical madness about "sharing body heat." Andy didn't bother with pleasantries. He reached out with his mechanical hand, still dripping with corrosive acid, and clamped down on the man's pustule-covered wrist.
The hydraulic pumps hummed.
Squeltch—
A sickening sound of tearing meat followed. Andy ripped the cultist's arm clean from the shoulder. No blood sprayed from the stump; instead, a thick, yellow-green sludge poured out like a garden hose left running.
The creature blinked, staring at its bare shoulder, not yet feeling the pain. Andy raised his leg and delivered a kick to its chest. The massive kinetic energy sent the hundred-pound pile of rotting meat flying backward, knocking over several other lunatics crowded in the corridor.
The doorway was temporarily cleared. Andy turned to Sisyphron, who was still cowering under the desk.
"The money?" Andy's voice was void of emotion. "We're leaving. Don't tell me you didn't prepare the travel funds."
Sisyphron crawled out from under the desk, trembling, and pointed to a massive safe in the corner of the office.
"There... it's all in there! Gold bars, and high-value bearer credit chips!"
Andy strode over. He extended a finger and drilled directly into the lock cylinder. Sparks flew. Seconds later, the heavy door popped open. Inside were dozens of neatly stacked gold bars and several bulging document bags.
Sisyphron lunged forward, grabbing the bags and stuffing them into his backpack. He muttered to himself as he worked: "My ledgers... my secret stash... my retirement fund..."
Andy looked at the heavy gold bars. Gold was dense, took up little space, and was an excellent material for high-precision circuit contacts—not to mention a universal hard currency. But he didn't have the patience to take them one by one. It was a waste of time, and the current situation didn't allow for careful packing.
Andy slammed the safe door shut and gripped the sides of the entire unit with both hands.
"Up!"
The hydraulic system pushed to full power. Andy hoisted the solid steel safe—which weighed at least half a ton—onto his shoulder.
Sisyphron finished packing and looked up, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. Good grief, he's taking the whole safe?!
"Move!" Andy shouldered the safe with one hand and drew his chainsword with the other. "Stay close. If you fall behind, I'm leaving you here as fertilizer."
They burst out of the office. The corridor was a living nightmare. The walls and ceiling were covered in writhing carpets of flesh. The cultist Andy had kicked earlier was lying on the ground, the rotting meat in his wound already rapidly regenerating.
More "Beak Doctors" swarmed from all directions. Some held scalpels, others needles, their faces twisted into hauntingly benevolent smiles.
"Boss... don't leave..." "Join us... Grandfather's embrace is so warm..."
"Get back!" Andy roared, sweeping his chainsword in a wide arc. The high-speed teeth tore through the decayed bodies without resistance. Flesh and severed limbs flew everywhere. Andy acted as a living bulldozer, plowing a path of gore through the crowd.
Sisyphron followed behind. His plasma pistol was dead, so he used the useless weapon as a brick, frantically bashing any former employees who tried to get near him.
They sprinted through the mutated atrium toward the airtight bulkhead leading to the underwater docks. Suddenly, a figure ran out from a corner. The man wore a relatively tidy suit; though his face was stained, he lacked pustules or tentacles. It was the Human Resources Director, one of Sisyphron's most trusted confidants.
"Boss! Boss!!" The director cried out, rushing toward them. "Save me! Take me with you! I'm not infected! I've been hiding in the locker room!"
Sisyphron stopped. Having fought alone for so long, the sight of a normal human—his own subordinate—triggered a surge of empathy that momentarily overrode his survival instinct. "Quick! Get over here! We have a boat! We're leaving!"
The director's face lit up with ecstasy. He opened his arms to embrace the rescue.
Bang!
A sudden, muffled gunshot echoed. A wisp of smoke drifted from Andy's autogun. The director's head vanished in a spray of red and white matter. The headless corpse stumbled forward two steps before collapsing at Sisyphron's feet.
Sisyphron froze, his hand still outstretched. His mind went blank. After two seconds, he whirled on Andy, screaming: "What are you doing?! He wasn't mutated! He was normal!"
"He was beyond saving," Andy's voice was chillingly cold. "Look at the back of his neck."
Sisyphron looked down. On the corpse's nape was a purplish-blue patch the size of a coin. It was spreading visibly, and a cluster of tiny white fungal hairs was already sprouting from it.
Nurgle's blessing was not a mere virus; it was a corruption of the soul. In an environment saturated with Warp energy, simply breathing could lead to damnation. Once that patch appeared, the person's soul already belonged to the Plague Father.
Bringing him aboard would have been like carrying a time bomb. Within half an hour, he would have become a new source of contagion, turning the submarine into a coffin of rotting meat. Giving him a quick death was a mercy.
"Move." Andy didn't offer further explanation, giving Sisyphron a shove.
Sisyphron shuddered. He looked at the body, gritted his teeth, wiped the blood from his face, and kept running. The man was dead; dwelling on it would only get him killed too.
They finally reached the underwater docks. The air here was slightly better, the sweet scent of decay less overwhelming. Andy turned and hammered his fist into the control panel of the half-meter-thick alloy blast door.
CLANG—!!!
The heavy bulkhead dropped with a thunderous boom, sealing the tunnel behind them. Seconds later, a frantic scratching of fingernails against metal began on the other side, a sound that made the skin crawl.
Andy dropped the safe, the impact shaking the ground. He looked around. This dock was clearly also the Beak Doctors' shipyard. Several submarines sat in the massive dry docks—some were skeletons, while others were complete, undergoing final testing. Say what you will about their medical skills, their shipbuilding was hardcore. In an environment like an acid lake, a poorly built ship didn't just sink—it dissolved.
"Which one works?" Andy asked.
Sisyphron hurried to the innermost berth. A sleek, pitch-black medium submarine sat there, its hull perfectly streamlined. It had no visible weld marks, appearing to be cast from a single mold, coated in a thick layer of specialized anti-corrosive plating.
"This one—the Abysswalker," Sisyphron said, patting the hull. "A prototype acquired from the Helios Group. It uses the best pressure-resistant materials and a twin-turbo pump-jet propulsion system. It was meant for deep-sea smuggling, but now it's our ticket out."
Without another word, they opened the hatch and climbed in. Sisyphron took the pilot's seat and expertly brought the systems online. Andy sat in the co-pilot's chair, clutching the safe tightly.
"Flood the dock! Release the hooks!" Sisyphron's fingers flew across the panel.
With the hiss of pressure valves, the dry dock began to fill. Murky green acid rushed in, lifting the black steel beast.
"Hold on tight!" Sisyphron pulled the throttle.
VROOOOM—!!
The pump-jet at the stern let out a low-frequency roar. The ship shot out of the dock like a torpedo, plunging into the bottomless subterranean river.
Minutes later, the submarine cleared the danger zone and entered a steady cruise. The world outside was a tomb of darkness, broken only by the pulsing green waves on the sonar screen.
Sisyphron slumped in his chair, gasping for air, the post-adrenaline exhaustion leaving his limbs weak. Andy, however, was full of energy, already studying the submarine's control systems.
"Good ship," Andy praised sincerely. "Compact structure, low noise, and the anti-corrosive coating is interesting. It seems you doctors are better suited for shipbuilding than saving lives."
Sisyphron gave a bitter laugh, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. "No choice. In the Underhive, if a doctor wants to survive, he first has to be a good drug dealer. To be a good dealer, he needs a good transport. Most of the money we made over the years—aside from the kickbacks to Helios—was dumped into these steel shells. Helios refused to sell us the manufacturing technology, so we had to figure it out ourselves. We reverse-engineered, bootlegged, and modified until we got this."