There was no time for questions.
Grey's instincts screamed danger.
Without hesitation, he engaged his jump pack, twin jets of fire roaring to life, launching him into the sky.
He ascended one hundred meters in an instant, servos compensating for the sudden thrust, stabilizing into a hover as his visor scanned the battlefield below.
Even at this height, the acrid stench of burning promethium and scorched flesh clawed at his senses through the olfactory filters.
Something was very, very wrong.
The defenders had realized it too.
Some fled in blind panic, scrambling over debris in their desperation.
Others, the more disciplined or the hopelessly fanatic whirled, weapons snapping up, fingers tightening on triggers.
Their target?
Qin Mo.
It was a pointless effort.
The world ignited.
A blinding detonation erupted from the ground, so intense that Grey's visual sensors overloaded, his HUD flickering into static before his armor's auto-cogitator began emergency recalibration.
Then came the shockwave.
A deafening explosion ripped through the outpost, consuming nearly one-third of the fortifications in an infernal blast.
Grey had never seen destruction on this scale.
Qin Mo wasn't just using his power.
He was enraged.
And his rage had amplified his destructive potential to terrifying levels.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!"
Grey's voice thundered over the comms.
"I already told you, this place is compromised!"
Qin Mo's voice was calm, but cold.
"That female officer was a heretic psyker. Everyone here is a traitor."
"Impossible!"
Qin Mo said nothing.
A long, uncomfortable silence crackled through the vox-link.
Then—
An unseen force yanked Grey out of the sky.
Hard.
He plummeted.
Before he could react, he slammed into the ground, ceramite plating scraping against stonecrete, his armor's kinetic dampeners barely absorbing the impact.
Grey grunted, rolling to his feet in a battle stance.
His glare locked onto Qin Mo.
The man stood motionless amidst the smoldering ruin, the raging inferno licking at his armor.
And yet, his warplate was unscathed.
Scarred, yes. But not destroyed.
The same unnatural energy that had obliterated the outpost… had shielded him.
Qin Mo wordlessly pointed.
"Look."
Grey followed his gaze.
A charred corpse.
The remains of the female officer who had greeted them so warmly.
Or at least, what was left of her.
Her uniform was gone, her flesh blackened beyond recognition.
And her head…
Grotesquely elongated.
Not merely mutated.
Warped. Twisted beyond anything human.
A monstrous cranium, swollen and malformed, as if her very essence had been sculpted by the unnatural influence of the Immaterium.
Her skull, now cracked and jutting at alien angles, mocked the sacred symbol Grey wore over his heart. Not the grim reminder of mortality it should have been, but a perversion.
It was not merely grotesque. It was blasphemous. A desecration of the very image the Imperium held sacred.
In the Imperium, the skull was not merely iconography, it was truth. It was duty. It was sacrifice. A relic of the Emperor's eternal vigilance and the fragility of flesh in the face of the divine. This thing had dared to wear a human face, but its skull bore only heresy.
Grey's stomach churned.
His gauntlet clenched into a fist, then smashed the abomination's skull into fragments.
"You see now?" Qin Mo asked.
Grey exhaled sharply. "…I still don't fully understand."
He flexed his fingers. "But you've never been wrong before."
No more arguing.
No more hesitation.
His armor's combat protocols engaged.
The twin-linked lasguns on his gauntlets hummed to life.
Survivors emerged from the inferno.
Grey raised his weapons—but then hesitated.
At first glance, they were human.
They wore the armor of the Planetary Defense Force.
But something was off.
Some drooled mindlessly, their eyes unfocused.
Others moved in perfect, unnatural synchronization, their weapons raised in eerie unison.
Puppets.
Controlled.
And suddenly, Qin Mo understood.
The revulsion he had felt upon entering the outpost.
The hatred burning in his veins.
It was them.
A powerful psyker, maybe more than one was here.
And every 'normal' human in this outpost was their puppet.
....
Grey fired first.
A burst of lasfire lanced into the nearest heretic, vaporizing both flesh and ceramite in a blinding flash.
More figures shambled forward.
Grey's voice cracked over the vox. "Do we fight, or do we retreat?"
Qin Mo's decision was made before the question finished echoing.
"We fight."
He exhaled slowly.
Anger burned inside him.
But he did not allow it to consume him.
Not blind fury.
Not reckless destruction.
Instead, he let it sharpen, forging it into a weapon.
And in that clarity, he sensed it.
The source.
700 meters ahead.
One figure.
One soldier within the encroaching ranks.
A single mind directing the others like puppets on invisible strings.
Qin Mo's head snapped forward, his visor locking onto the target.
A female soldier.
She hesitated, only for a fraction of a second.
But that was enough.
She hadn't expected to be discovered.
Her disguise had failed.
Her expression twisted into something vicious.
Grey noticed immediately.
"That's her?"
Qin Mo's voice crackled with static.
"Cover me."
Grey followed, his laser cannons spewing death, cutting down any who tried to intercept them.
Qin Mo's power armor servos roared as he built momentum, pushing forward with relentless speed.
A hundred meters.
Then—he jumped.
His jump pack flared, sending him soaring through the battlefield.
Grey followed suit, matching his trajectory.
They landed with a crash, gravity shields activating just before impact. The sheer force created a shockwave that sent dust and debris outward, crushing the enemies nearest to them into bloody pulp beneath powered boots.
The psyker's terror intensified.
She barked orders to her enthralled soldiers, forcing them forward in a desperate attempt to buy herself time.
But Qin Mo was already moving.
"Kill her."
Grey understood immediately.
They diverged—one left, one right—encircling her from two angles.
Grey pushed his armor's energy output to the limit, redirecting core power to reinforce his gravity shield and amplify his reactive plating.
Then, suddenly—pain.
An alien whisper slithered into his mind, cold and slick like oil, coiling around his thoughts.
〈"For the Emperor… For the Cult of Evolution! For our Savior!"〉
Grey collapsed, thrashing violently, his limbs seizing as the foreign presence rooted itself deeper, turning his muscles against him.
His voice was no longer his own.
Qin Mo didn't look back.
He had expected this.
The psyker's influence had begun corrupting Grey's mind.
That confirms it.
Qin Mo had spent too much time designing psychic inhibitors when what he truly needed was personalized defense—gear that would nullify mind-affecting attacks rather than simply dampen a psyker's influence in an area.
The inhibitors hadn't activated yet—he was still outside their effective radius.
But that didn't matter.
He was already at full speed.
His jump pack ignited again, a vortex of fire blasting from his back.
The psyker turned, panic in her eyes, and launched a psychic assault.
It did nothing.
"Impossible!" she shrieked.
Qin Mo closed the distance in an instant.
With a single motion, he deactivated his gravity shield.
His chainsword ignited, its jagged, adamantium teeth spinning with a scream, ripping into the psyker's flesh.
Then—he reactivated the inhibitor.
Every soldier under her control convulsed.
Some screamed. Others fired wildly, their minds unraveling as their master's will faltered.
The psyker gasped, her body half-severed, yet her lips curled into a twisted smile.
Her violet irises darkened, and a deeper, older presence emerged through her.
Her voice, now laced with an eerie resonance, spoke.
〈"What… are you?"〉
Qin Mo's grip tightened. His voice was low, but unwavering.
"I'm just a human."
The psyker's mouth opened to scream.
But the flame-wreathed teeth of the chainsword tore through her skull, silencing her forever.