The chamber was colder than the rest of the vessel.
No incense smoke curled here, no chanting servitors beat hymns into the metal. It smelled instead of glass, preservative fluids, and steel — sharp, clinical, clean.
Archimedes sat on a slab of black iron. Restraints still locked his wrists, though looser now, as if his captors wanted to test how far he would pull. Lumen strips glowed white above him, throwing every scar on his skin into stark relief.
The Magos who had judged him stood in the shadows, mechadendrites clicking as it signaled. From another door glided a figure robed in crimson, its hem stiff with dried fluids. Where the first Magos was bristling with augmetic limbs, this one was simpler in form, but its torso swelled with glass tanks, each holding a drifting organ suspended in nutrient fluid.
A second heart. A cluster of lungs. A pale eye still twitching faintly in its jar.
"Designation: Magos Biologis," the first intoned. "Assessment required. Subject displays anomalous fixation: memory within tissue."
The Biologis inclined its head, vox-crackle rasping like parchment torn. "Proceed."
It approached Archimedes, a mechadendrite uncurling with a surgeon's grace. A small jar was placed before him, fluid bubbling faintly inside. Within floated a severed hand, its flesh grey and shrunken, its fingers curled as if still clutching at life.
"Observe," the Biologis said.
Archimedes stared. Not with revulsion — but with hunger. He leaned forward, ignoring the restraints. "The knuckles are swollen. Scar tissue here, here… from fractures, healed long ago. This hand labored. Hammer or pick. He endured. But the pallor — the veins collapsed. He died of blood loss, not toil."
The Biologis' optics flickered. Its mechadendrites clicked in approval. "Correct."
Another jar was set before him: a heart, split open by incision. Archimedes traced its lines with his eyes, every scar a story.
"Multiple layers of tissue, thickened," he whispered. "Too much strain. He carried burdens until his flesh tore itself apart. This is not just a heart. It is a ledger."
"Ledger," the Biologis echoed, metallic voice flattening the word. "Archive of stress. Archive of life."
The Magos who had brought him leaned forward, hissing in binharic: <>
Archimedes felt his pulse thunder. He was no longer a prisoner. He was a reader, a witness to truths hidden beneath the skin.
He looked up, daring to ask: "Who was he?"
The Biologis froze. "Who?"
"The heart," Archimedes said. "It belonged to someone. He lived, endured, died. Not just data. A man. Who?"
Silence stretched, broken only by the hum of the jars.
At last, the Biologis inclined its head. "Most aspirants ask for power. You ask for memory."
Its vox lowered to a hiss. "This fixation will either corrupt you or preserve you. The Omnissiah records without compassion. But perhaps compassion has… utility."
It turned away, its robes whispering. "He is fit for delivery to the Wardens. Record him: Archimedes of Helios. Archive of flesh."
The restraints unclasped. Archimedes rubbed his wrists, eyes fixed on the floating jars. The organs bobbed like relics, silent scriptures of suffering.
For the first time, he knew the truth that would define him:
The body is not just a vessel. It is memory, written in scars and tissue.
And he would learn to read it all.