[Simulation initializing.]
[Current identities available: Nolan — Space Wolf, Company Commander of the Thirteenth Company (Subspace, in Combat); Nolan — Cypher, Lord of the Fallen (Ark Mechanicus, in Hiding).]
[Current companion: David the Man of Iron (Standard Configuration).]
[Please select an identity and companion configuration before descent.]
[If no selection is made, immediate deployment will follow.]
[No identity selected. Companion descent confirmed.]
[Simulation restarting.]
[You are now entering the Warhammer universe. Arrival time and location are being assigned at random.]
[Era: M31.]
[Location: Solar System — Terra.]
[Deployment complete. You have arrived inside an adamantium coffin sealed with binding runes and reinforced throughout by dense cabling.]
[You opened your eyes slowly.]
[The darkness around you was total. The air was close and stale, with the particular quality of a sealed space that had not been disturbed in a very long time.]
["What manner of place is this? A coffin, from the feel of it. And did David actually make it through?"]
[Your senses, already reaching far beyond anything your previous frame had offered, expanded outward through the sealed walls of the coffin and mapped the room beyond it in the same moment you were registering the interior. Extraordinary. Whatever body you were currently inhabiting, it was operating at a level that bore no resemblance to standard Astartes baseline.]
[Heavy adamantium chains had been wound around your arms and bound them tight against your chest. Your hands, submerged in something cold and viscous, rested against the smooth inner surface of the coffin wall. You flexed your fingers slowly, feeling the material part around them, and began gathering force into your shoulders and arms.]
[The chains were thick. They held for approximately one second.]
[The screech of snapping adamantium links filled the interior of the coffin as the restraints gave way, and the same force you had gathered into your arms drove upward into the coffin lid above you. The lid — also adamantium, also very heavy — was launched off its seating and hit the floor of the room beyond with a concussion that shook the walls.]
[Light entered. Pale, dim, sufficient.]
[You were lying in a coffin filled almost entirely with a viscous, jelly-like substance, clear in color, resistant in texture. You raised one arm and held it in front of your face. The substance clung briefly before dissipating into the air. You turned your arm over and examined it.]
[Adamantium restraint armor. Massive. Well-fitted to the frame currently wearing it.]
[You brought your feet under you and stood.]
[The ceiling was not close.]
[Your current height was approaching four meters.]
["Where has the Emperor thrown me this time? This is not my original body."]
[You stepped out of the coffin, the last of the jelly-like substance dispersing as you cleared the lip, and stood on the stone floor of the chamber beyond. It was a tomb room, ancient in construction, with the particular dryness of a space that had been sealed and maintained for a very long time. Around the coffin, a network of cables connected it to a ring of instruments that were still operating, their readouts cycling with the slow patience of machines set to a task and left to it. Several of them emitted occasional sparks, the quiet sign of systems running well past their intended service life.]
[You turned your head, taking in the chamber from above. A single thick braid rose from the crown of your otherwise bare skull. You reached up and touched it briefly, confirming the detail, then lowered your hand.]
[Near the far wall, there was a door. Adamantium construction, heavy gauge, sealed.]
[You crossed to the coffin, reached down into it, and pulled out the severed adamantium chains you had broken free of. You wound them around your right fist and the restraint armor covering your right forearm, layer over layer, until the improvised reinforcement was solid and tightly bound.]
[Then you backed up, drew a breath, and ran.]
[Four meters of mass moving at speed hits differently than a standard-sized object moving at speed. The chain-wrapped fist connected with the center of the adamantium gate and the impact traveled through the door's entire frame. The door held. You drew back and struck again. And again. The rhythm of it settled into something almost meditative: the gathering of force, the release, the boom of impact, the slow accumulation of damage in the metal.]
[Dozens of strikes. Perhaps hundreds. The door eventually ran out of structural integrity before you ran out of patience, and it collapsed outward into the corridor beyond with a final, definitive crash.]
[You felt nothing that resembled fatigue. If anything, you felt more settled than when you had started, as though the exertion had simply cleared away the last residue of the coffin's stasis effect.]
[You glanced back at the chamber once before stepping through the ruined doorway, and something on the coffin's interior caught your eye. You bent down and lifted the fallen door enough to read the inscription on its outer face.]
[Experimental Subject Eleven.]
["Eleven," you said quietly. You set the door down. "Interesting."]
[You did not pursue the thought further. You straightened, oriented yourself in the corridor — long, dim, the occasional lamp casting pale light across a gleaming metal floor — and picked a direction.]
[The corridor was silent except for the sound of your own movement. The restraint armor was not designed for comfort or subtlety; it was designed to contain. It was doing neither of those things effectively at the moment, which suited you well enough.]
[You had not traveled far when your senses flagged the approach.]
[Heavy footsteps. Disciplined. Accelerating.]
[A figure in black power armor trimmed in gold rounded a junction in the corridor ahead of you at a run, a relic spear held in a combat grip, the blade crackling with an active electrical field. The bearing and the equipment and the particular quality of controlled aggression in the movement identified the type immediately.]
["Forbidden object attempting to escape the Shadow Prison! You will go no further! Lie down and be still!"]
[The Shadow Prison Guard's voice carried the practiced authority of someone who issued commands that were normally obeyed without discussion.]
[You studied the incoming guard's approach, noted the gaps in the spear's arc, and exhaled.]
["Shadow Prison Guard. Then this place is the legendary prison beneath the Palace of Terra."]
[You moved.]
[Four meters of momentum launched from a standing start crossed the distance between you faster than the guard's swing could be corrected. Your chain-wrapped fist intercepted the spear at the shaft just above the grip point, deflecting the crackling blade completely off its line. You stepped through the deflection, closed the remaining distance, and struck the guard in the center of the chest and abdominal plate with your unarmored fist, deliberately pulling the force to something below your current maximum.]
[The ceramite cracked in a starburst pattern across the impact point. Fragments scattered across the corridor floor. The guard was driven backward several steps before the armor's mass and their own trained reflexes stabilized them. They came back immediately, the relic spear swinging in a new pattern, faster and less predictable than the opening attack, committing fully to a sustained offensive.]
["Are you actually going to keep this going?"]
[You put your foot down on the metal floor. The impact rang through the corridor.]
[The force that came up through your legs and into your frame was nothing like the warm-up you had just finished with the door. It was the full weight of whatever this body was capable of, finally moving at the speed it was built for.]