Four in the morning, the coldest time in the Lower Hive.
There was no wind in Ventilation Duct No. 44, only the stifling stench of fermented dead rats.
A layer of slimy green fuzz clung to the sheet-metal walls, mutant mold that could rot a hole in your skin with a single touch.
Lil Mouse crawled in front, his rear stuck high in the air and his legs trembling uncontrollably. With every forward shuffle, his knees struck the iron plates with a crisp clatter.
"Quieter." Cyril followed behind, clutching a handful of dark ash and occasionally dabbing more onto his face. "You trying to invite those Iron Crows over for a meal?"
Lil Mouse looked back, his soot-streaked face frighteningly pale. "But.. Sir... the junction is just ahead. If someone's there..."
"Use my gutter-slang nickname or just call me brother, and if someone's there, shut up and follow my lead."
Cyril pressed his body against the pipe wall and tilted his head to listen.
There was indeed movement ahead.
It was the sound of heavy boots stepping on metal plates, accompanied by the rustle of gun slings rubbing against protective suits.
Lil Mouse froze, curling into a ball, his breathing as ragged as a broken bellows. He wanted to retreat, but Cyril's hand clamped onto his ankle, hard as an iron pincer.
"Who's there!"
A piercing white light cut through the dark.
Two dark silhouettes in exoskeleton armor blocked the pipe's exit, the black muzzles of their shotguns pointed right at them. Serrated blades were welded onto the barrels, customized gear the Iron Crow Gang used specifically to blast people into mush in cramped spaces.
A short whimper escaped Lil Mouse's throat, sounding like a chicken being strangled.
Cyril did not hide.
Instead, he crawled forward two steps and cursed in a gravelly voice that sounded like he had just woken up. "Fuck, you're blinding me. Can you turn that damn light off?"
The light beam wavered.
The sentry holding the gun faltered, clearly not expecting someone to be so confrontational. "Which unit? You looking for a death wish?"
"Scrapyard," Cyril said, raising a hand to block the light, his face full of impatience. "Lord Rust ordered the last batch of 'scrap' to be sent to the Sanctuary. Those servitors blocked the road last night, so my brother and I spent half the night freezing in that shitty pipe up there. Dammit, if you don't let us in to unload, these two are going to go stiff."
As he spoke, he kicked the shivering Lil Mouse in front of him. "You mute? Say something!"
Lil Mouse shook even harder, crying out with a sob, "B-Big brother, I don't want to die..."
He looked exactly like a coward who had been scared out of his wits.
The sentry lowered the light slightly, scanning the two of them.
They wore two sets of porters' overalls so filthy their original color was unrecognizable, covered in grease and bloodstains. Cyril's face was even more of a mess, charcoal ash mixed with dried blood scabs, a nauseating sight.
Most importantly, his hands were covered in calluses made from lime powder and glue, rough enough to sharpen a knife.
"The stench is overwhelming," the sentry on the left said, covering his nose and stepping back. "The rats from the Scrapyard always stink."
"Fine, fine," the one on the right lowered his gun. "Get in there quickly. You know Lord Rust's temper. If you're late, I'll be the one getting punished too."
Cyril did not waste any more words, not even to say thank you. He grabbed the tool bag on the ground, pushed Lil Mouse inside, and spat a thick glob of phlegm on the floor as he passed the sentries.
"Fucking bad luck."
The two of them crossed the blockade and entered a wider underground space.
Only when the sentries' footsteps were out of earshot did Lil Mouse's legs give out. He collapsed on the ground, gasping for air, his ragged overalls soaked through with cold sweat.
"H-How did you do that?" Lil Mouse looked at Cyril, who was nonchalantly dusting off his knees, his eyes filled with awe. "That gun barrel was practically touching your forehead."
Cyril pulled out the pack of cigarettes, intending to light one, but glanced at his surroundings and stuffed it back in.
"They're human too, and humans get annoyed," Cyril said, leaning against the wall, his tone flat. "When you act more annoyed and entitled than they are, they think you're one of them. After all, who the fuck wants to be crawling through pipes in the middle of the night in this hellhole?"
Lil Mouse nodded as if he understood, picking himself up from the ground. "It's just ahead... we have to be careful."
This was an abandoned underground power station.
The massive turbines had long since stopped spinning, leaving only rusted skeletons like the carcasses of giants.
But the place was not deserted.
The ring of sheet-metal rooms originally meant for worker dormitories was now draped with colorful neon signs.
A pink glow looked particularly suggestive and gaudy amidst the smog.
"Elysium Gambling Den," "Den of Ecstasy," "Terrace of Forgotten Sorrows."
The pungent smell of engine oil in the air faded, replaced by a sweet scent that was cloying enough to make one uneasy.
Cyril stopped, his nostrils twitching.
This smell was wrong.
It was not some cheap essence, but a sweetness that could burrow into your bones. With one sniff, images of desire began to surface in his mind.
Slaanesh incense.
And it was high-purity stuff laced with extras. Countless times more advanced than what a bumpkin like Morozha used.
Cyril looked down, pretending to tie his non-existent shoelaces.
A few Iron Crow Gang thugs were squatting in a nearby corner. Although they held bolters, their eyes were unfocused and their pupils were terrifyingly dilated. They leaned against each other, drooling and giggling, completely ignoring the two "porters" walking by.
Cyril glanced at their necks.
Their veins were covered in dense needle marks, some already festering and inflamed, the remnants of long-term drug injections.
"These guys are finished," Lil Mouse whispered. "The Iron Crow Gang used to forbid touching this stuff, saying it ruined your aim. I don't know what's happened lately, but everyone's going crazy for those 'Elysium Needles'."
"It's not that we don't know what happened. It's that someone needs them to be crazy."
Cyril stood up, his gaze falling on a nearby support pillar.
Engraved upon it were Adeptus Mechanicus prayers.
They should have been neat and rigorous High Gothic, praising the logic and order of the Omnissiah. But now those metal inscriptions had been defaced beyond recognition with dark red paint.
"Logic" had been changed to "Pleasure."
"Steel" had been changed to "Flesh."
"Eternity" had been changed to "Ecstasy."
It was practically like smearing filth on the face of the God-Emperor.
Cyril pulled his gaze back and lowered the brim of his hat. "Stop looking, or you'll end up needing a needle too. Lead the way to the Sanctuary."
Passing through this foul red-light district, a massive blast door appeared ahead.
A large Iron Crow emblem was painted on the door, but in place of the crow's eyes, two purple crystals were embedded, emitting an eerie light in the gloom.
This was the so-called "Ascension Sanctuary."
The former core area of the thermal plant.
No ordinary guards stood at the entrance. There was only a single figure in dark red robes.
The person had their back to them, tinkering with a sparking servo-skull.
Lil Mouse's footsteps faltered, his face turning deathly pale instantly. "It's... it's the red robe. The Rust Sage."
The figure moved.
The sound of mechanical joints turning was extremely grating, like rusted gears forced to mesh together.
He turned around.
It was a face out of a nightmare.
The left half was still human, though the skin was as withered as tree bark. The right half had been replaced by a crude iron plate, with several writhing red cables snaking out from the gaps in the plate and plugging into his jaw and eye socket.
There were no eyes.
Only two red photoelectric sensors, contracting and expanding as they scanned the surroundings.
"Two lost little mice."
The Rust Sage's voice came from a speaker on his chest, carrying the static and electrical hum of an old-fashioned radio. "This isn't the dump. Scram."
Lil Mouse was so terrified he was about to kneel.
Cyril grabbed him by the back of his collar, hoisted him up, then stepped forward himself, extending his filthy hands.
"My Lord, we're here to deliver."
Cyril's voice showed no trace of emotion, sounding even a bit dull. "Yesterday's batch of 'scrap' was too heavy. Those piece-of-shit servitors couldn't move it, so the superiors sent us to lend a hand."
The red sensor beam hit Cyril's hands.
The layer of calluses faked with lime powder and glue looked exceptionally real under the intense light, marks that only came from years of heavy labor.
The Rust Sage took a step forward.
A nauseating smell of engine oil wafted over.
A long, thin mechanical tentacle extended from his sleeve, as agile as a snake, sweeping across Cyril's palm.
Cold and slimy.
Cyril's hand remained steady. Not even a single hair stood on end.
"Hmm..." A series of buzzing data calculations came from the speaker. "Stratum corneum thickness reaches standard. Muscle fiber damage degree consistent with characteristics of heavy physical labor. An original biological body without any cybernetic modification."
The tentacle retracted.
"Though the smell is a bit foul, you're barely usable." The Rust Sage's only remaining human hand gripped a blood-stained scalpel, pointing to the blast door behind him.
"Go in. Those few failures are piled in Tank Three. Take them to the septic tank. If you dare look at one thing you shouldn't, I'll stuff you both into the reactor as fuel."
The blast door gave a dull roar and slowly slid open to both sides.
A plume of purple mist billowed out from within.
Lil Mouse's legs were so weak he could not walk at all, relying entirely on Cyril dragging him to keep from collapsing on the floor.
The two of them crossed the threshold.
The door slammed shut behind them, completely cutting off the outside world.
The sight before them made Cyril's pupils contract sharply.
This was not a factory.
It was a freakish hybrid of a slaughterhouse and a temple.
In the massive space, dozens of translucent cultivation tanks were arranged in neat rows. The tanks were filled with pale green nutrient solution, but soaking inside were no normal biological specimens.
In the tank on the left was a strong man. His spine had been completely removed and replaced with a thick metal pillar. His chest cavity was splayed open, and his heart was still beating, though it was covered in connected tubes.
In the one on the right was a woman. Her limbs had all been sawn off, and the wounds were not stitched up but instead directly plugged with mechanical prosthetics resembling octopus tentacles. Those prosthetics were still twitching unconsciously in the water, churning the nutrient solution into a murky mess.
And further in, some things could no longer be called human.
They were lumps of flesh and metal forcibly fused together into mush, with only an occasional exposed eye or half a mouth proving they had once been living creatures.
"Blegh—!!!!"
Lil Mouse finally could not take it anymore, covering his mouth as he prepared to vomit.
Cyril was quick, clamping a hand over his mouth and forcing the bile back down.
"Vomit if you want to die," Cyril whispered in his ear, his voice cold as ice.
He looked up toward the very center of the hall.
There was an altar built of skulls.
Atop the altar hovered a purple crystal the size of a fist.
The thing did not look like stone, but rather some kind of living organ. It was rhythmically contracting and expanding.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
With every pulse, it released a visible ripple of pale purple light.
The ripples swept across the cultivation tanks.
The half-dead monsters in the tanks began to twitch violently as if electrocuted. It was not a struggle of pain. It was... a climactic spasm.
On their faces, or what remained of their features, appeared an utterly bizarre smile.
It was enjoyment.
Extreme pleasure brought by extreme pain.
Cyril felt the rose knot in his sleeve grow burning hot, the instinctive rejection of a holy object toward the profane power of the Warp.
The system in his mind, which had been playing dead, suddenly popped up, with red warning boxes nearly covering his retinas.
[Warning: High concentration of Warp contamination detected.]
[Warning: Slaanesh psychic reaction index exceeds limits.]
[Warning: Undergoing mental pollution check... Check passed.]
[Suggestion: User should evacuate immediately. Danger level here: Extremely High.]
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