The thought came and went quickly.
The Mind Stone sat in Nolan's awareness the way it always did: present, available, patient. He understood exactly what it could do to a room full of people who had not consented to have their minds touched. He understood, more precisely, what it could do to an entire nation if the application were scaled correctly. He had run the logic in the space of a few seconds and arrived at a clear conclusion about why he was not going to do it.
The practical objection was real enough. The Mind Stone was not a permanent solution. This world contained enough individuals and enough kinds of power that a compulsion applied today could be countered, exposed, or broken by any number of means he had not yet mapped. The moment it failed, the Guardians of Terra would have a country full of people who had excellent reason to consider them enemies, and the resentment of a mutant nation was not a problem he needed to create for himself.
But the other objection was the one that settled it.
He was a Primarch. The title had weight precisely because it was not ornamental. A Primarch who conquered through psychic coercion rather than genuine alliance was not leading the Emperor's project forward. He was shortcutting it in ways that would compound over time into exactly the kind of brittle, fear-based structure that the traitor Legions had built and then watched collapse. The Emperor was watching. That was not a comfort Nolan reached for lightly, but in this case it applied with particular clarity.
He let the thought go and returned his full attention to the old man across from him.
They talked through the night.
Magneto asked questions that were precise and well-informed, the questions of someone who had been building toward this conversation for longer than he had let on. Nolan answered with the directness he had promised, giving enough to establish the genuine shape of what the Imperium was and what membership in it meant, withholding only what was not yet relevant. By the time the sky outside the Winter Palace began to lighten, they had covered enough ground that the outlines of a workable arrangement were clear to both of them.
In the morning, the core personnel of both sides assembled. The covenant was signed in front of everyone present.
The Guardians of Terra and the mutant nation would share resources and capabilities and stand as firm allies. That was the public form of it. The private form, which both parties understood without requiring it to be written down, was that the mutant nation had just joined the Imperium of Man as a vassal state with Magneto as its governor, operating within the framework of the Emperor's project on terms that respected the mutant people's identity and history.
David produced the first concrete expression of the alliance on the spot. Blue light moved in his eyes as he accessed his stores, and he laid out a set of technological blueprints covering energy equipment and lasgun manufacturing, a starting point that would allow the mutant nation's industrial base to begin integrating Imperial-grade production without requiring the foundry's direct involvement.
Nolan outlined the longer-term plan to Magneto after the signing.
The mobile city project would be transferred to the mutants as their first major construction task. The scale of their country meant the labor and logistical capacity was there; the production would not compete with the foundry's existing commitments. If they executed it well, destroyer and frigate production would follow. He also indicated that a selection of mutant combatants would be drawn from across the country's various military formations, transferred to Stormtrooper supervision for retraining, and integrated into the broader force structure.
Magneto listened to all of it with the attention of a man who had been running a country for thirty years and knew how to hear what was actually being said beneath what was being said. He asked several clarifying questions. He did not push back on the framing.
Then Nolan produced the elixir.
He set several doses on the table between them. Magneto looked at them for a moment, then picked one up and swallowed it without ceremony, with the manner of someone who had made a decision and saw no value in dramatizing the execution of it.
The change was visible within minutes. The white hair darkened, root to tip, the color returning with the unhurried consistency of something biological reestablishing a state it had originally held. The lines around his face did not disappear, but the deeper exhaustion behind them did. He sat differently afterward. Not taller exactly, but more present.
He looked across the table at Nolan with the eyes of a man who had just been given several decades back and understood perfectly well what that meant in terms of obligation.
"I believe," he said quietly, "that I now have sufficient reasons to ensure that the mutant people honor everything we have agreed to today."
Nolan held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.
The warning did not need to be spoken. They both knew the Imperium's history with worlds that had joined and then chosen a different path. The elixir was a demonstration of genuine investment. It was also, structurally, a reminder of where the investment originated and who controlled its continued supply.
Neither of them was under any illusion about which of those two things it primarily was.
The azure portals assembled outside the Winter Palace, square frames of light hanging in the morning air, and the return journey began. The Astartes went through first, their heavy footfalls on the ground replaced by the silence of a completed transit. The Knight Dominus suits followed, their enormous frames stepping through with the measured patience of machines designed to operate in spaces far less accommodating than a teleportation threshold.
Nolan stepped through last.
The Twin Islands base resolved around him, familiar and operational, the foundry's low hum audible through the floor plates. He was still settling his bearings when David appeared beside him, the Man of Iron's eyes running blue as he completed a handoff of received intelligence.
"My Lord. While we were in communication with the mutants, Dr. Banner entered the Chernobyl site. He located Natasha."
Nolan stopped.
"She was alive," David continued. "The gamma exposure has transformed her. She is currently presenting as a female variant of the blue giant form, approximately the same scale. She had lost conscious control of herself entirely. Dr. Banner subdued her in his transformed state and she has been secured on-site."
Nolan was quiet for a moment.
"Also recovered from the facility was a mutant officer named Colossus. He was stationed at the Chernobyl plant before the incident. The gamma contamination interacted with his existing mutation in a way the mutant medical staff could not treat. Their own resources have been exhausted. He has been transferred to Reditus's foundry. I believe Reditus intends to use the opportunity for experimental study."
"I believe you believe that," Nolan said. He turned and started down the passage. "Tell Reditus that the scale of what we recovered at Chernobyl earns it room to conduct experimental procedures. But it keeps its methods within bounds I would consider acceptable if I were standing there watching. If the mutant cannot be restored, give him a clean end. I am not going to have the people who just signed an alliance covenant come to me with a casualty they handed us in good faith."
"Understood, my Lord. I will supervise directly."
"Natasha. Try every option available before accepting that she is permanently gone."
"Yes, my Lord."
The passage ended at his private quarters. Nolan stepped inside, noted the servo units positioned at their stations around the room, and raised his arms. The vibranium armor came away in sections, the seals releasing in sequence, each piece carried away to the maintenance queue as it was removed. By the time the last segment had been transported out toward Reditus's foundry, he was standing in the quiet of the room with the accumulated weight of the past several days settling into his body all at once.
He lay down on the metal bed.
Sleep arrived without ceremony.
The page opened itself.
It had never done that before.
The blessing page for the Chaos Gods unfolded in the air above the sleeping figure without being summoned, its familiar layout of sacred numbers and markers arranged in the pattern that had tracked the Chaos Gods' attentions since the system had first initialized. No hand had opened it. No thought had called it forward. It had decided, on its own internal schedule, that now was the moment.
Tzeentch's sacred number went first. The marker collapsed inward and was gone, following the same quiet conclusion that Nurgle's had already reached.
Then Slaanesh moved.
The Prince of Pleasure's sacred number lurched across the page toward Khorne's position, the trajectory unmistakably aggressive, the kind of movement the page had not previously displayed between the remaining active entries. It reached for Khorne's sacred number with the particular character of a sneak attack, the angle oblique, the intent clear.
Something intervened.
The golden throne that occupied its fixed position on the page did not move in the way the sacred numbers moved. It struck Slaanesh's marker with a force that had no visible source and considerable evident effect, driving the Prince of Pleasure's sacred number back across the page and pinning it at the starting position, unable to advance.
Khorne's sacred number remained.
Its countdown was still running.
The numbers on it were very small now.
They moved toward zero with the steady indifference of a clock that had been set a long time ago and had no interest in the significance of what it was measuring.
The page hung in the air above Nolan's sleeping form and waited.
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