As the squad prepares to investigate a suspicious civilian group, Elias finds himself under the scrutiny of Fira Vorn — a medicae with no patience for liars, and even less for mysteries. She tests Elias with questions, warnings, and sharp words. Something about him isn't right — and she knows it.
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The corridor ahead narrowed, walls scorched and cracked from previous firefights. Somewhere deeper inside the manufactorum, a damaged cogitator sputtered — each pulse of static-laced sound echoing like a heartbeat through the concrete.
The PDF squad advanced in a loose formation. Weapons raised, fingers taut on triggers. The two scouts who'd returned fell in at the rear, one of them whispering nervously to the other.
Elias stayed toward the middle, trying to look small — harmless — despite the dried blood on his shirt and the borrowed revolver on his hip.
He wasn't fooling anyone.
Especially not the medic.
She walked just ahead of him, sidearm holstered but her hand close. Her armor bore scratches along one shoulder pad, the faint lettering of her name etched in paint that had faded with fire and time.
F. VORN.
He studied her carefully now — not just her uniform or her face, but her presence. Calm, collected, efficient. Eyes always scanning. A soldier who'd spent more time saving the dying than shooting the enemy, but could still shoot fast enough if it came to that.
She looked over her shoulder.
"You walk like a soldier," she said.
Elias blinked. "Do I?"
"You don't flinch at corpses. You keep your head down in tight corners. You scan your exits. That's trained behavior."
He said nothing.
She stopped and turned, slowing her pace to match his exactly.
"I'm going to ask you again, Elias Mercer. Where are you really from?"
He glanced around. The squad had gone several paces ahead, fanned out and busy checking the corridor. None of them were listening.
Fira's voice stayed low, flat, and very dangerous.
"You don't smell like hive. You don't talk like underhive scum. You speak clearly. You look people in the eye. You kill clean."
"I got lucky."
"Bullshit."
They stopped near a half-melted doorframe. Smoke clung to the edges like frost. Elias leaned against the metal, more from exhaustion than attitude.
"Let's say I did tell you I was a soldier," he said carefully. "What does that buy me?"
Fira crossed her arms.
"A cell. A bullet. Or worse — an interrogator with scalpels."
"So, you're not asking to report me."
"I'm asking to decide if I should."
Elias met her gaze. "Do I look like a cultist to you?"
Fira didn't blink. "You look like someone trying very hard not to be noticed."
She studied him again — this time more clinically. Her eyes swept over his injuries, his posture, the slow way he was clenching and unclenching his left fist.
"You're in pain," she said.
"Yeah."
"But you're not breaking. Not yet."
"I've had worse."
She narrowed her eyes. "That's the part I believe."
A shout came from ahead.
"Contact — visual!" someone yelled.
Fira looked toward the sound, then back to Elias.
"Stay close," she said. "If you're not a threat, this is the time to prove it."
He gave a tight nod.
"Understood, medic."
She smirked faintly. "Not a bad answer. Almost like a real Guardsman."
They moved forward together.
The corridor opened into a collapsed dome, once a factory-floor or shrine, now blackened and cracked. Metal ribs of the ceiling arched overhead like a beast's spine. In the center, huddled beneath a tilted statue of a servo-skull, were civilians — filthy, shivering, barely alive.
Children. Old men. A woman holding a cloth bundle too still to be breathing.
Sergeant Kael was already speaking to them — low voice, steady. Trying not to spook them.
But Elias didn't look at the civilians.
He looked at the walls.
There were scratches.
Fingernail-deep. Carved over and over, layered like desperate scripture.
"She comes in the ash."
"She sings with knives."
"We gave our pain. She gave us silence."
Fira noticed too. Her hand moved toward her pistol again.
Elias stepped beside her.
"You've seen this before?" he asked.
She nodded once. "Once. A hab block four levels down. Every man, woman, and child dead when we got there."
"Dead how?"
She didn't answer.
One of the civilians — a boy, maybe nine years old — looked up.
He was smiling.
Not fearfully. Not nervously.
Blissfully.
Like something beautiful was whispering in his ear.
Elias froze.
He'd seen that expression before.
On the cultist who'd whispered in the tunnel. On the ganger who charged him laughing. That wasn't trauma.
That was devotion.
Fira saw it too. Her voice turned razor-sharp. "Kael! That kid's marked!"
The boy opened his mouth to speak — but no sound came.
Just a scream.
From somewhere behind the civilians, a woman lunged forward — face torn with surgical lines, mouth split in a Glasgow smile. Her hands were fused with hooked blades.
She shrieked a single name — unintelligible, wet, ecstatic.
Chaos had followed them.
The squad opened fire.
The civilians scattered — half screaming, half collapsing in place. The woman rushed forward, blades raised.
Kael fired. Missed.
Fira shoved a trooper aside and tried to shield the child behind her.
Elias didn't think.
He moved.
[END OF PART 2]