After leaving the stench of the wastewater treatment area, the smell in the air did not improve.
On the contrary, that simple odor of decay turned into a pungent mix of high concentrations of formalin, burnt alcohol, and stale blood.
Scarface led Cyril into a narrow dead-end alley called "Red Light Lane."
There were no streetwalkers here, only a precarious red lumen lamp hanging at the entrance.
The filament flickered, emitting a dying sizzle and staining the surrounding damp walls a dark red, like clotted venous blood.
"Boss, we're here."
Scarface lowered his voice, as if afraid of disturbing something. "This old hag specializes in collecting all sorts of corpses to recycle usable parts. She's not a bad person, but her temper is very strange. Please bear with her."
Cyril looked up at the rusted iron door. An uncomfortable chill seeped through the cracks.
He straightened his cuffs, his expression indifferent.
"Knock."
Scarface swallowed hard, stepped forward two paces, and tapped on the iron door three times in a specific rhythm.
Thump, thump-thump, thump.
After a few seconds of dead silence, the iron door let out a tooth-aching screech and slowly opened inward.
A strong smell of chemicals instantly rushed out, stinging the eyes.
It was cold inside the room, and a dozen shadowless lamps illuminated the place in a deathly white.
The walls were covered with rusted scalpels, bone saws, rib spreaders, and various unnamed medical instruments that looked like torture devices.
They were polished to a shine, reflecting a cold light like a morbid artist's private collection.
Several cold metal dissection tables stood in the center of the room.
Several corpses that had not been processed yet lay scattered across them. Some were missing limbs, others had their chests wide open.
A thin figure stood with her back to the door, busy working on one of the corpses.
It was an old woman with gray hair combed meticulously, wearing a rubber apron that had long since discolored.
She held a curved needle and catgut thread, suturing the abdominal cavity of a corpse with movements as elegant and skillful as if she were embroidering.
"Scar, bringing me business again?"
Without looking up, the Stitch Hag's voice sounded as dry as two bones rubbing together. "Which unlucky bastard is it this time? If they've been shredded by bolt shells, I won't be able to give you a good price."
Scarface forced a smile and carefully stepped around the blood gutters on the floor.
"Granny, I'm not here to deliver today. My boss wants to ask you something."
At the word boss, the Stitch Hag's movements paused.
She snipped the suture and slowly turned around.
She wore a pair of terrifyingly thick magnifying glasses. Behind the lenses, her eyes were enlarged several times over, appearing exceptionally eerie and sharp.
Her gaze bypassed Scarface and landed straight on Cyril.
The Stitch Hag pushed the glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"Most of the things I deal with are dead. What could there be to ask?"
Cyril did not answer.
He stepped elegantly into this slaughterhouse filled with the aura of death, his leather shoes clicking sharply against the metal floor.
Stopping before the dissection table, he pulled ten throne coins from his coat.
Clink, clink, clink.
One by one, the coins landed on the metal surface, their crisp sound echoing in the quiet room.
The Stitch Hag narrowed her eyes, her gaze lingering on the pile of golden coins for two seconds.
She pulled off her blood-stained rubber gloves and tossed them casually into a nearby recycling bin.
"Speak. What do you want to know?"
She wiped her hands on her apron. "As long as you're not asking me to resurrect the dead, I won't let these lovely golden things leave this place."
Cyril took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket, covered his nose and mouth, and frowned slightly.
"The Iron Crow Gang corpses you've received lately. Is there anything unusual about them?"
The Stitch Hag froze for a moment.
Surprise surfaced in her magnified eyes, which then turned into a meaningful, playful smirk.
She pointed to a corner where a corpse covered by a white sheet lay in the shadows.
"Of the goods the Iron Crow Gang has sent recently, seven out of ten are wrong. Rather than corpses, they're more like... puzzles."
Shua!
She whipped off the white cloth stained with black blood.
A foul stench instantly burst outward.
Cyril took a few steps closer, his gaze falling on the dissection table.
It was the corpse of an adult male. The skin had an unnatural greenish-gray hue, as if it had been soaked in some kind of toxin.
The chest cavity had been crudely cut open, the ribs peeled back to reveal a mess of internal organs.
"See for yourself."
The Stitch Hag picked up a metal probe and pointed to the corpse's abdominal cavity. "Anyone who knows a bit of anatomy knows that the human liver is on the right and the stomach is on the left."
The probe pierced into the mass of rotten flesh and stirred it.
"But in this corpse, the positions of the liver and stomach are completely reversed. And..."
With a flick of her wrist, the Stitch Hag used the probe to lift a dark lump of flesh.
The lump was still twitching slightly, its surface covered in fine blood vessels, looking utterly disgusting.
"He only has one kidney left. The space for the other has been taken over by this thing."
Scarface couldn't help but gag, covering his mouth as he retreated to the door.
Cyril, however, remained unfazed, though his eyes grew deeper.
"What is this?"
"I don't know."
The Stitch Hag shook her head and tossed the lump back into the abdominal cavity. "It looks like some kind of artificially cultivated organ, or perhaps a tumor. But while this thing was alive, it must have been desperately leaching nutrients from its host."
Cyril reached out and pointed to the corpse's back.
"Flip it over."
The Stitch Hag complied.
The corpse was turned over, revealing its pale spine.
In the very center of the spine was a shocking surgical incision.
The incision had been sutured, but the stitches were crooked and messy. Clearly, whoever did it didn't care about aesthetics, only about keeping it from splitting open.
The Stitch Hag picked up a scalpel and skillfully picked apart the crude stitches.
The flesh peeled back.
Cyril's pupils constricted suddenly.
At several key points on the spine, small metal interfaces had been implanted.
These interfaces were not a clean silver but a sickly dark bronze, their surfaces covered in rust-like spots.
The bone around the interfaces had turned black, as if corroded by some strong acid over a long period.
"What are these interfaces for?"
Cyril's voice was soft, but it carried a chill.
The Stitch Hag shrugged and gripped one of the metal interfaces with tweezers.
"Neural linking, but not the standard cybernetic kind."
She pointed to the radial cracks in the bone surrounding the interface.
"Look at these cracks. They're caused by excessive muscle spasms. In other words, when these things were implanted, the person was not only alive but also had no anesthesia."
The Stitch Hag looked up, her strange, large eyes staring at Cyril.
"They experienced extreme agony before they died. The kind of pain that could boil a person's brains."
"But that's not even the strangest part."
She tapped the metal interface with the tweezers, producing a dull clink.
"The strangest thing is, I can't find even a trace of resistance in their brains."
Cyril's gaze sharpened. "What do you mean?"
"It means," the Stitch Hag grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, "these people lay down on the operating table voluntarily. Even as they died, their brains were still secreting massive amounts of dopamine."
"They were enjoying the pain."
Dead silence fell over the room.
Enjoying pain.
The phrase was like an ice pick, stabbing deep into Cyril's nerves.
Slaanesh?
Only that depraved Lord of Pleasure would make its followers feel ultimate ecstasy in extreme agony.
It seemed the Iron Crow Gang had not only colluded with the Adeptus Mechanicus, but had also gotten involved with something even more troublesome.
"Take that off."
Cyril pointed to the metal interface on the spine.
The Stitch Hag didn't waste words. She picked up a bone saw and pliers and, accompanied by the tooth-aching sound of bone shattering, pried off the section of vertebrae containing the interface.
She dropped the bloody piece into a glass jar and handed it to Cyril.
"Thank you for your patronage, my lord."
Cyril took the glass jar. The object inside felt heavy in his hand and still carried a lingering warmth.
Without another look, he turned and walked toward the door.
"Scar, let's go."
It wasn't until they stepped out of Red Light Lane and back into the musty air that Scarface dared to take a deep breath.
"Oh, my sweet mother... Is that old woman crazy? Enjoying pain? Is this some kind of damn mechanical penance?"
Scarface wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, glancing back at the red light with lingering fear.
Cyril toyed with the glass jar in his hand, looking at the dark bronze metal inside, his eyes dark and unreadable.
He tucked the glass jar into his coat and lit a cigarette.
"Where would all this penance come from in the Lower Hive? By the way..."
He exhaled a ring of smoke and looked at Scarface.
"You mentioned before that there's an exiled Grease Monkey nearby?"
Scarface froze for a moment, then realized.
"You mean Broken Finger? There is. The guy lives in an abandoned prayer room about 1 Kilometer from here. But he's a bit touched in the head, spends all day kowtowing to a pile of scrap metal."
"Lead the way."