Seleched on curiously as the girl — the woman, really, Zara was by all ats a grown woman … just a thihat looked barely a meal above malnutrition — just tried to busy herself with something.

  Zara was to be the first citizen of the Imperium of Man — Zedev and his eional intelligence didn’t t — who might join in with ‘the crew’, as Ea liked to call their disroup of misfits.

  Ea might have thought the young Psyker’s joining and iion was going to be a bygone clusion and just a bit rocky at best, but she never lived in the Imperium. Never had to sit through the sermons citizens had to attend from childhood and never really uood the full weight of humanity’s collective faith.

  Selene had, and while she had waltzed right out from uhe weight of all those things with the nihilistiism of ohat had nothing to lose and everything to gain — namely, immortality, unlimited power and a stunning alien lover — Selene also khe vast majority of humans wouldn’t be like her.

  No, dogged determination and faith in the Emperor till death ractically sacrosand a staple on most worlds.

  For someone chosen to be a saned psyker, for someone who went through the Schostica Psykana and actually came out outwardly sane?

  Zara must have been raised on sermons, fed scriptures aehe head with holy symbols for as long as she could walk.

  Selene didn’t know what it took to break an ingrained faith that strong, she didn’t know what would be left of a person who’s been built up from the ground to be a tool for the Imperium when that very purpose has been torn away from them.

  That was the problem, and the main reason for her i in the woman. She didn’t believe anyone would act so … sane, normal, so muer betraying what they’d been raised up to be.

  Selene knew she’d have been a wreck … she had been a wreck. So why wasn’t Zara? What was she hiding? How much of her posure retence? How much of her willio ge was real?

  It was time to see for herself. Mental shields up and reinforced again with a sed and third yer of active shielding with psychic power pulsing through them like a heartbeat to detey intrusion or interference, Seleepped out into the open and approached the violet eyed psyker.

  “Hey there,” Selene said, almost smirking at how the woman jolted up at the sudden souo her. “Mind if I sit?”

  “ … make yourself fortable?” Zara asked, looking down at the sb of rock that somewhere would be called a bench by someone who thought fort was something that only happeo other people.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Selene said easily, sitting down, and for a few seds of stretg silence just watched the Orks warring down i a few dozeres down. An arena wouldn’t have been Selene’s first choice of a building to be made outside the fortress, but Ea wanted a pce for her pet Orks to let loose. “What do you think? Curious, isn’t it? Watg Orks fighting to the death for our amusement, though I suppose they do it more so for their own.”

  “Yes?” The psyker said, clearly perturbed by a seemingly normal human sitting dowo her on a p full of aliens. Still, Selene could practically see the moment when the woman decided that cautious politeness was the best choice. “I have never seen Orks this … well behaved?”

  “They are killing each other, though?” Selene mused, sending a sideward g the woman. “That’s well behaved?”

  “They aren’t trying to kill me.” Zara shrugged, the motion seeming forced and almost meical. “That makes them better than every single greenskin I’ve e across before them.”

  “That’s fair,” Selene said, squinting at the fight below. “You’ve seen a few Orks in your time, I take it?”

  “Some, yes.” Zara answered, a dubious look slipping on her face as she was clearly trying to figure out just who it was she was talking to. “Excuse me, but … is there a purpose to your talking to me?”

  “There is,” Selene said, almost chug at the expet look turning to frustration on the woman’s face as she refused to eborate. She knew psykers weren’t the most social creatures — mostly by societal pressure and by the willio exclude them from any and all versations not actually needing their input. “What do you suppose it is?”

  “I’d like to say d boredom on your part,” Zara said. “But I’d likely be wrong. Putting me in my pce? Establishing some hierarchy in this … crew I’ve not been made privy to?”

  Selene was amused at the curiosity shown clearly on the woman’s face even as she threw up those guesses, though it quickly turo a darker emotion as she realised why. Zara likely thought there wasn’t anything a random human could do to her that would be worse than what she’d been forced to gh.

  “Not quite,” Selene said. “I’m merely curious. You’re the first human psyker other than myself here and you’ve been actually taught in a Scho about wielding your powers. You’ve also served with an Inquisitor … which made it doubly surprising that you eveertaihe idea of joining us.”

  Seleed nont, her gaze locked on the rger Ork beating a pair of smaller oo pulp with a third one while she had her resting on her knuckles, seemingly entirely absorbed in the fight. She was watg though, a little trick Val had thought her allowio clear up her peripheral vision and make it the ter-point of her sight so she watched on in slowed time as tiny micro-expressions formed on the psyker’s face.

  There was an ingraiwitch, as if she was trying to move away from Sele the implication that she was a rogue psyker — known to be more likely to explode with daemons than do anything else worthwhile with their life — then stiff stillness at the word ‘Inquisitor’ and finally a hint of uanding.

  Her non-physical senses also felt a veritable fortress quickly struct itself around the woman’s mind almost as an afterthought, leaving not even a hint of erraions and thoughts to seep through. Not that Selene elepathy to read the woman like an open book.

  Selene Voss had been a Rogue Trader first, noble dy sed and a guardswoman somewhere down the lihe few months spent as a Psyker and with Ea hadn’t even made her people skills go rusty, so those tiny expressions were all she needed.

  “You want to know why I betrayed the Emperrace?” Zara asked, though it sounded like a rhetorical question. Still, Selene gave a halfway ied nod as she kept watg the Orks. “Because I see what happens to those who die, I see the fate of all those foolish souls who trusted the Emperor to wele them into his prote to their dying breaths.”

  “Is that so?” Selene mused, gng visibly at the woman. “I was made to believe only Navigators had the ability to actually catch glimpses of the itself, no?”

  “Rightly so,” Zara said, her dead expression and faraway look telling Selene more about the things she’d seen than a hundred words could have. “Few dare to take a look, fewer still try to force it when they realise it's harder than merely opening one's eyes. Most of them still die in blissful ignorance.”

  “So you want immortality?” Selene mused, leaning back with a hmmm as the fight came to an end. “To run from that dreadful end? To escape oblivion?”

  “Oblivion is paradise pared to the fate waiting for psykers like … us?” Zara said, saying the st words slowly as she squi Selene suspiciously. “You knew.”

  “Yes,” Selene said with a shrug. “She showed it to me.”

  “Then what need is there for these questions?” Zara said, appearing mildly frustrated. “I want salvation, just like you. Simple as that.”

  “Salvation,” Selene chewed over the word. “I suppose it fits. Why not just … serve the ‘Great Enemy’ like so many others who are terrified of their own mortality? Why stay with the Inquisitor?”

  “Because I’m not that desperate, or idiotic.” Zara shook her head, looking at Selene weirdly. “The Immortality they grant es at a much steeper price than I’m willing to give. What use is it if it’s not even me who lives on, but some ed monstrosity with a thin recolle of what I had been? I have seen ‘asded’ Chaos Sorcerers before. That is not something I’d ever want for myself.”

  “What makes you think the ‘salvation’ Ea offers is any different?”

  Zara fell silent for a few moments, her eyebrows furrowing as she thought before just sighing with a x shrug. “I guess nothing more than my gut feeling? I’ve … felt what she’d doo that poor woman Thrace let loose on her. It felt right.”

  *****

  “Deep breaths,” I murmured, hands csped together as if in prayer. “Deeeeeeeep breaths.”

  Letting the air out of my lungs in a huff, I cracked my ned looked over the results of my test test and could feel my blood pressure starting to climb again. I might have spent mere hours of objective time on it, but with the speed at which my bio-energy and soul energy charged thoughts flew stretched every sed into dozens, more if I wanted.

  Meaning, I’ve spent subjective days on this thing and I had absolutely nothing to show for it. Worse, I didn’t even have a dire. The damned Pariah genes just refused to turn any bio-material I had made into having actual Bnk properties.

  I even tried ing an already living Ork with the gehinking that maybe the Pariah genes didn’t have a soul to twist into the inverse to create a Bnk like I’d wanted, but the enes just chewed over my addition before spitting it back out while the preenskin iion died from more types of cer than I’d known to exist prior to the experiment. Every single an in his body just … gave up and died as his geic sequence came apart.

  I had o option of course: huma subjects.

  The problem was, I had hand and I really wouldn’t feel right just nabbing some poor sod off the street to experiment on. Especially with such a high ce of the very painful death of the subject being the result of my experiment.

  My initial idea with Bnk genes was to shoot off projectiles of my eldritch flesh which would turn the projectile into a Bnk, anti-rojectile mid-flight. It would have beeimate fuck-you on to anyone and everyone wielding the powers of the and it would have been dirt cheap.

  As, life wasn’t so nice as to give me something that powerful. Still, the ake Bnks of my own was there … especially once I had a citizenship on hand from which I could draw test subjects. I wouldn’t just nab my own citizeher of course, but I’m sure there would be a steady supply of idiots who thought doing crime was cool in my city and would as such, voluhemselves for my experiments.

  Still, my only citizens as ht now were Orks and animals. I wonder whether the Tau’ll ever allow some of their own people to settle here? Maybe as an attempt to shackle me with responsibility or something?

  At least, the other projects were doing well. My improved bat form was ready, and the majority of my mind-cores were now back to streamlining most of the designs, including my ‘Psyker Form’, which I used for almost everything other than melee brawling.

  Trazyn had been good on his rewards, and barely resisted me when I asked for some of his rarer stuff, likely on at of feeling a bit embarrassed about failing to mind-trol me so utterly. I doubted it, but I mean, he was a 60 million year old super advanced alien, and I just spat his fancy mind-trol bug at his face. That must have been at least the slightest bit shameful.

  Thankfully, Trazyn didn’t tend to hold petty grudges, as far as I knew.

  The jewel of my geic colle was still the Norn Emissary’s sword, but Fulgrim’s geic tempte and the Swarmlord’s had joi as close tenders. Sadly, while the Primar question had a special anic ability, it was extremely rapid healing.

  It was useful in streamlining my healing process and use of bio-energy, but not revolutionary in the way I went about anything. The best part was still just getting to examine and recreate a body designed personally by the Emperor himself and built with pre-Heresy Mankind’s best teology.

  It certainly beat the Custodiae I had and trouhe Swarmlord in some aspects, too.

  I felt a mental ping from the mind-core assigo watg over dear Bob. Grinning, I let the dozen pns f in my mind about other projects fall into the background as I opened up a portal to the room the man was just waking up in.

  The room around me went from a barely lit underground chamber to a hospital room recreated with all the details I could remember, it even had that distinct hospital smell. The portal hissed closed behind me and I could see little Fae startle and turn, eyes wide in surprise that quickly turo that ad glee she had whenever she id those crystalline eyes of hers on me.

  I smiled, but waved her away as I stepped up to the bed where Bob was blinking in a daze, then squinted up at me as I came into view.

  I could have washed it all out of his system with a hint of bio-energy, but I wanted some time off anyway and this was as good a distra as any. Plus, it’d keep him a bit more stational and careful as he slowly got used to his new body instead of being overly-eid hasty that overcharging him with bio-energy would leave him as.

  “How do you feel?” I asked, putting on a polite smile as I thought about turning my clothes into that of a nurse’s … unfortunately, no one here would appreciate my effort at authenticity. Maybe Selene would appreciate the skin a skimpy fit would show though. Hmmm. Thoughts for ter. Fun thoughts.

  “Like a Titan stepped on me,” Bob wheezed, looking around for a moment before his gaze nded on Fae, who rushed back to his side to iwine her fingers with his. “Though marginally more alive than I’d expect to be after that.”

  “Good.” I grinned. “I’ll let you have some time, I’m sure Fae’ll enjoy nursing you back to full power before we go over what ges I’ve made and what I’ll be expeg of you going forward. Hmmm?”

  “Yes,” Bob said, sitting up slightly as he made an attempt to stare into my eyes as he nodded seriously. “I’m at your service.”

  “Good man.” I patted him on the shoulder, letting a trickle of bio-energy sweep over his body and anic signals just in case something slipped by my less intrusive senses. He felt nothing of course, and I also found nothing outside expectations, so I just smiled and stepped back before disappearing bato my ‘b’.

  I could go over a few more experiments while the two lovebirds had their bonding time.

  P3t1