Elias is marched through the upper hive by a battle-worn PDF squad. As he rises from the underworld into a broken manufactorum sector, the true scale of the Imperium's decay reveals itself. Distrust hangs heavy in the air. And Elias knows — he doesn't belong here.
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The air was thicker above.
Not cleaner — never that — but less metallic, less sour. The stench of rotting blood gave way to the acrid tang of burned plasteel and the oily aftertaste of promethium residue. It clung to Elias's throat as the squad led him up a service lift that groaned like it hadn't moved in decades.
Six soldiers. One medic. All in mismatched flak armor, patched with scrap and soot-smeared insignia. The double-headed eagle looked faded — not with age, but with exhaustion. Everything about them looked half-dead, held together by ritual and spit.
Their eyes rarely left him.
The leader, Sergeant Kael, was a wide-shouldered man with burn scars down one side of his face and a voice like cracked stone. He hadn't said a word to Elias beyond "Walk, or we shoot."
Elias had decided to walk.
The lift shuddered to a stop, and the gate opened with a mechanical shriek.
Light.
Real light — or at least, what passed for it in the hive.
They emerged into a manufactorum-level transit corridor, open on one side to the hive city's deeper chasms. The sky was a sick yellow-grey, clogged with smoke and industrial discharge. Far above, towers reached upward like shattered fangs — most dark, many burning.
Below, the underhive vanished into a black abyss, bottomless.
Elias stepped out and froze.
The scale of it hit him like a blow.
On Earth, he'd seen cities. War zones. Urban decay. But nothing… nothing like this. It was megalithic. Unreal. A city the size of a continent stacked vertically in layers like a cake made of rust and broken dreams.
Ash rained slowly from above like snow.
The floor beneath his boots was cracked stone and melted metal. A statue lay shattered beside the path — the remains of a cloaked figure in golden armor, face eroded by fire. Elias knew that image.
The Emperor.
There were burn marks around the statue's base — black spirals, slashes, sigils etched in what might've been blood. Someone had tried to cleanse it with fire.
Someone else had defiled it again.
"Keep moving," Kael barked.
Elias didn't argue.
They moved in formation — military, but loose. Professional enough to be dangerous, but not by-the-book. These weren't parade ground soldiers. These were survivors.
Elias listened as they moved, soaking in the chatter.
"Last vox check says Bravo sector's gone."
"No resupply for two days. Ammo's tight."
"Got more cultists than rounds, sarge."
"Then aim for the head."
Each voice held that same note — the dry, gallows fatigue of men who expected to die and simply hadn't yet.
One soldier, a wiry man with a face like sandpaper, kept glancing over his shoulder at Elias.
Finally, he muttered, "Who the frak is this guy anyway?"
Sergeant Kael didn't answer.
But the woman walking beside Elias did.
She wore flak armor like the others, though hers was etched with the red cross of the Medicae. Her helmet was clipped to her belt, revealing a pale face smudged with dirt, short black hair tied messily back, and sharp eyes that had seen more than they should've.
"Probably some hiver," she said, "dragged himself out of the pipes."
She looked at Elias directly.
"Right?"
Elias hesitated. "I… yeah. Guess so."
The trooper behind him snorted. "He smells like sump slime."
"Means he's been lower than us," she replied flatly. "You ever been that low, Brann?"
The man didn't answer.
She turned back to Elias. "You got a name?"
He nodded. "Elias. Elias Mercer."
She didn't offer hers.
They passed through a breach in the corridor wall, into an open space that might once have been a loading dock. Now it was rubble and ruin. A half-destroyed rhino transport lay flipped on its side, blood streaked across its treads.
Elias stepped around the body of a fallen trooper — half-vaporized by some kind of blast.
Something glinted in the corpse's flak plate.
He paused.
There — carved into the armor. Not painted. Etched.
A spiral.
Sharp, deliberate. Chaos-marked.
None of the others reacted.
Elias looked around. They don't see it. Or maybe they do, and they don't care anymore.
He moved to catch up.
The medic fell into step beside him again. Her eyes flicked toward the pistol at his hip — the stub revolver he'd taken from the ganger.
"You know how to use that thing?"
Elias gave a faint shrug. "A little."
She raised an eyebrow. "You shoot like PDF?"
"I shoot like I want to live."
She smirked — just slightly.
"Good answer."
They reached the edge of the dock, where a crude defensive position had been set up — sandbags, laswire, a heavy stubber nest manned by a half-asleep gunner chewing something foul. Beyond it, a half-collapsed hallway led deeper into the manufactorum sector.
Kael gave orders. Two soldiers broke off to scout. The others circled the area, weapons raised.
The medic motioned for Elias to sit.
"You're limping. Let me see it."
"I'm fine."
She shot him a look that made it clear that wasn't an acceptable answer.
He sighed and lowered himself onto a broken crate.
She knelt and began examining his leg, unstrapping the boot, checking for swelling.
"You're lucky," she muttered. "Not broken."
Elias studied her as she worked.
"You always patch up strange men in sewers?" he asked.
She didn't look up. "Only the ones dumb enough to follow us out of one."
A pause.
Then, softer: "You're not PDF. You're not from this sector. You don't move like a ganger. So where the hell did you come from?"
Elias hesitated.
"I… don't remember much. Just woke up in the tunnels. Something happened. I think I hit my head."
Her hands stilled.
"Memory loss?"
"Yeah."
She looked at him again. Longer this time.
Not with suspicion — with something worse.
Recognition.
"People come out of the lower levels changed," she said. "They go down, they come back wrong."
"I'm not wrong."
"Not yet."
Footsteps returned — the scouts, out of breath.
"Sergeant — contact ahead. Looks like civilians. Maybe ten, fifteen. Huddled near a machine chapel. No weapons, but… something's off."
Kael cursed under his breath.
"Frak it. Prep for contact. No sudden moves."
Elias stood.
The medic was already moving. Her hand strayed near her laspistol.
The others were lining up, scanning the path ahead.
Elias could feel it.
Something bad was coming.
Not yet. Not here.
But soon.
[END OF PART 1]