The air in the repair station was still murky, carrying the sour smell of aged, fermented machine oil.
The flickering lumen lamp, with its poor connection, cast shadows that distorted the two men into monsters with bared fangs and brandished claws.
Cyril casually placed the glass jar containing the spinal column on the table with a sharp clink.
He took off his coat, stained with the filth of the Lower Hive, and elegantly rolled up his shirt sleeves, revealing his pale forearms.
"Block the door."
Cyril commanded without looking back, his voice as calm as if he were telling a butler to pour tea.
Scarface gave a start and hurriedly moved several heavy, discarded valves to firmly block the rickety iron door.
After finishing, he turned back, only to see Cyril holding a half-length charcoal pencil he had picked up from the floor, staring blankly at the rust-covered metal wall.
"Cyril... Big Brother, what are we doing?"
Scarface rubbed his hands, his heart fluttering with anxiety.
Along the way, after witnessing exploding rats, corpses enjoying pain, and the crazed Broken Finger, his nerves were stretched to their limit.
Cyril did not answer.
He went over all the clues in his mind.
The green fluorescent sewage and exploding rats Old Cripple mentioned.
The "puzzle" corpse on the Stitch Hag's autopsy table with displaced organs and cross-wired nerves.
And the "Living Metal" feared by the terrified apostate, Broken Finger.
These seemingly scattered fragments were slowly piecing together into a giant web before his eyes.
Cyril raised his hand, and the charcoal pencil touched the wall with a rasping sound.
At the very top of the wall, he wrote three square characters in Simplified Japanese: [Iron Crow Gang].
Scarface widened his eyes, craning his neck to try to see those mysterious symbols clearly.
"This is..."
It was a script he had never seen before, square in structure with sharp strokes, neither the Low Gothic common in the Imperium nor the obscure High Gothic.
In Scarface's eyes, these mysterious symbols seemed to contain some kind of psychic fluctuation from an ancient era.
"Don't stare."
Cyril's voice rang out coldly, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.
"Some knowledge will make your nose bleed if you look at it."
Scarface was so frightened that he quickly pulled back his neck, only daring to peek from the corner of his eye.
Cyril drew an arrow below [Iron Crow Gang] pointing downward, then wrote [Rust Sage].
Next was [Adeptus Mechanicus White Glove], and further down, a thicker arrow pointed to [Dark Mechanicum].
The charcoal pencil swept across the rough wall, and dust fell in flurries.
Cyril's movements grew faster and faster, as if those clues were not the result of thought but were flowing directly from his mind.
Beside [Dark Mechanicum], he heavily wrote characters: [Change of Knowledge].
And in parentheses, he noted a word that would make any Inquisitor's nerves tense: [Slaanesh].
Finally, at the very bottom, he wrote [Forbidden Biological Modification Experiment] and drew a large circle, encompassing all the clues together.
"Phew..."
Cyril tossed away the tiny bit of charcoal and pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
"Lend me a light."
Scarface hurriedly leaned in, fumbling to strike the lighter, the flame trembling.
Cyril took a deep breath, and the pungent smoke flooded his lungs, instantly clearing his chaotic mind.
He turned around, leaning against the wall covered in mysterious symbols, his gaze scrutinizing the trembling gang thug through the curling smoke.
"Scarface, tell me, why would a Lower Hive thug who only knows how to use a gun and collect protection money be able to make a high and mighty Adeptus Mechanicus Sage act as his dog?"
Scarface was stunned and scratched his bald head, looking completely bewildered.
"This... maybe that grandson Crow sold his own mother?"
"His mother isn't worth that price."
Cyril sneered and flicked his cigarette ash.
"In the eyes of those Adeptus Mechanicus lunatics who replace their bodies with scrap metal, flesh is a burden. Only knowledge and technology are eternal."
He pointed to the position of [Rust Sage] on the wall.
"To make a Sage willing to risk being burned to ashes by the Inquisition just to come to a gutter like this for illegal experiments, the Iron Crow Gang must be holding something he cannot refuse."
Scarface nodded half-comprehendingly, his eyes reflecting clear stupidity.
"Then... what is it? Gold? Women?"
Cyril sighed, feeling like a Priest reciting High Gothic to a Grox.
"STC."
He uttered the three letters, his voice as soft as a sigh, yet as heavy as a slab of lead.
"What's that?"
As expected, Scarface looked completely bewildered.
"Standard Template Construct."
Cyril explained patiently, his gaze growing deep.
"It is the crystallization of humanity's Golden Age technology from the old era. Even a mere fragment, if a bit of useful data can be parsed, can make an ordinary grease monkey an Archmagos in a heartbeat."
"It's even enough to make them betray the Imperium and defect to the Dark Mechanicum without hesitation."
Scarface was confused, but he understood the concept of 'more valuable than gold.'
He gasped, his eyes widening into circles.
"Good grief... then hasn't the Iron Crow Gang struck it rich? With a treasure like that, that grandson Crow wouldn't even feel safe hiding it in his underwear!"
"Precisely because it can't be hidden, he needs power."
Cyril turned, his finger lightly tapping the large circle on the wall.
"Look. Old Cripple said the green sewage discharge isn't fixed, which means the experiments aren't an assembly line but are conducted based on specific conditions."
"Stitch Hag said those corpses secreted dopamine in their brains and 'volunteered' for the experiments, meaning the Iron Crow Gang has strict screening standards for recruiting subjects, perhaps even some kind of religious-style brainwashing."
"And Broken Finger confirmed that those active metal interfaces lead to mutations, showing that the technology is far from mature and has an extremely high failure rate."
Cyril's voice grew colder, as if he were dissecting an invisible corpse.
"So here's the question."
He turned his head, his pitch-black eyes staring intently at Scarface.
"Why would the Iron Crow Gang risk the annihilation of their entire gang to create these unstable monsters?"
Scarface felt uneasy under his gaze and stammered in reply:
"To... to fight? To take down our Black Hand Gang?"
"Fight?"
Cyril sneered, as if he had heard the world's biggest joke.
"If it were just to seize territory, a few Heavy Bolters would be enough. Why go through the trouble of experiments that turn you into a monster?"
He walked to the window and looked out through the narrow, oil-stained pane at the sea of neon lights in the distant Lower Hive that never went out.
That was the Iron Crow Gang's territory, currently shrouded in an eerie red light.
"If I were Crow, holding a hot potato like an STC, with the technology of the Dark Mechanicum and the support of hidden Chaos cults, what would I do?"
Cyril narrowed his eyes, the red light reflected in his pupils.
"I would manufacture 'products'."
"Products?" Scarface felt like his brain was about to burn out.
"Exactly. Not just thugs, but perfect 'vessels'."
Cyril's voice was low and raspy, carrying a bone-chilling coldness.
"Those active metal interfaces, those restructured organs, and that trait of enjoying pleasure in pain..."
"They are creating mortal flesh capable of bearing the power of the Warp."
"They are creating... something akin to Daemonhosts."
Boom!
A thunderclap exploded in Scarface's mind.
As a native of the Hive City, though he had never seen a real daemon, he had grown up listening to the sermons of the Ecclesiarchy's priests and had an instinctive fear of the term "Daemonhost."
It meant destruction. It meant the soul would never find peace.
"B-Big Brother, this... this is no joke!"
Scarface's legs went weak, and he almost knelt on the ground, the flesh on his face trembling.
"If a daemon really shows up, won't we... won't we all..."
"Die?"
Cyril turned around, a meaningful smile appearing on his face.
In the dim light, that smile looked exceptionally eerie.
"In this Hive City, wanting to die is actually quite easy."
"The hard part is how to crawl out of the pile of corpses and climb up by stepping on others' bodies."
He walked to the table and picked up the glass jar containing the spinal column, shaking it gently.
The liquid inside was murky, and the bone struck the jar wall with a dull thud.
"The water is too deep, Scarface."
Cyril spoke softly, a frantic light flashing in his eyes.
"The Iron Crow Gang wants to play with fire, the Adeptus Mechanicus wants to play with technology, and Slaanesh wants to play with souls."
"Since this pool of water is already murky, there's no need for us to be cautious anymore."
"What do you want to do?" Scarface swallowed, feeling that the man before him was even more terrifying than a daemon.
"Muddle it."
Cyril threw the cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it under his toe until the sparks were completely extinguished.
"Muddle it completely."
"Make all the monsters and demons hiding beneath the surface come up for air."
Cyril stood before the wall covered in writing and watched it quietly for a moment.
Then he reached out and wiped away the charcoal marks on the wall bit by bit with his sleeve.
As those mysterious square characters disappeared from the rusty wall, a system chime sounded in his mind.
[System Notification: Detected the host completing a Prophet's "Precognition" - Deep Deduction in front of the mortal unit Scarface, causing faith-level intense emotional fluctuations in Scarface.]
[Deception value +10.]
[Current balance: 45 points.]
"Nice—"
Thump-thump-thump!!
But just as the joy arrived, a rapid and orderly knocking sound came from outside the window.