The chambers of the Magos Biologis were a labyrinth of steel.
Archimedes followed the mechadendrite-limbed servitor that guided him, his eyes wide as the walls changed from bare iron to shelves lined with jars. Inside floated organs — human, xenos, and things he could not name — suspended in liquids that gleamed under lumen light. Eyes blinked without lids. Hearts twitched as though still beating. Fingers flexed against glass, though no nerves remained to command them.
He felt no revulsion. Only fascination.
At the chamber's center stood the Biologis. Its crimson robe was stiff with oils, its torso overgrown with tanks and tubing that pumped strange fluids through its remaining veins. Its mask was studded with six lenses, each one focusing and whirring as Archimedes approached.
"You will serve," it rasped. "You will observe. You will remember. The flesh is scripture, the organ is archive."
Archimedes bowed his head, though not in fear. "I understand."
The Magos tilted its mask, optics flickering. "No. You seek to understand. That is different."
It beckoned, and servitors wheeled forward a slab. Upon it lay the body of a soldier — or what had once been one. His chest had been cut open with surgical precision, organs displayed like relics.
The Biologis gestured with a mechadendrite tipped in a scalpel. "Read."
Archimedes stepped closer. His breath caught — not from horror, but awe. The scars told their stories clearly to him:
"This man carried weight," he murmured, fingers hovering just above the bone. "Fractures healed here, here. His spine is bowed — burden carried too long. His lungs scarred with ash. The Furnace burned him, but he endured. Until…" He touched the split sternum. "Until blade. Precise. Surgical. He was taken apart, not by the desert, but by you."
The Biologis did not move. "Correct."
Its vox crackled with binharic cant, as if recording his words. Then another mechadendrite extended, presenting a preserved secondary heart in a jar. "Name function."
Archimedes stared at the pulsing muscle, his reflection warped in the glass. "Astartes," he whispered.
The Biologis inclined its head. "Yes. Gene-seed. The sacred harvest. You will learn this. You will catalogue. You will preserve."
Archimedes' chest tightened. He thought of the bone-keepsake beneath his tunic, of his father's scalpel. He thought of the oath he had spoken in the Hall of Ashes: I will not waste your stories.
"I will preserve," he said aloud.
The Biologis turned away, its voice cold and final. "Then you will remain. Apprentice of flesh. Archive of memory. Until the Omnissiah delivers you to other hands."
Archimedes looked again at the organs in their jars, each one a life stripped to its function, yet still whispering its tale to those who would listen.
And in that moment, he knew: he would learn everything these iron priests could teach him. He would master their precision, but never abandon the stories the flesh still carried.
For in every scar, every sinew, every fragment of bone, he saw not just data — but memory.