For Qin Mo, research and creation were the greatest forms of entertainment.
War, command, politics, and survival all demanded his attention, but none of them gave him the same quiet satisfaction as taking a problem apart until its internal logic lay bare. A battlefield could be won through force. A city could be rebuilt through labor. But a mystery, especially one that involved physics, dimensional boundaries, and the possibility of freeing humanity from the Warp's tyranny, had to be conquered piece by piece.
His hands moved swiftly across the luminescent data panel, engraving knowledge into its interface with the precision of a Tech-Priest inscribing a prayer to the Omnissiah. Lines of formulae unfolded beneath his fingertips. Three-dimensional schematics rotated in the air above the workstation, each layer tagged with tolerances, failure points, energy requirements, and projected distortions in local space.
His eyes remained fixed on the streams of information. His mind worked through quantum calculations, gravitic harmonics, and multidimensional transition models with a speed that would have burned out any ordinary cogitator. One theory was tested, rejected, and dismantled before the next had fully formed. One design flaw became three possible solutions. One solution exposed a deeper limitation. That limitation became the next subject of study.
Every day since he had begun studying dimensional transit technology had followed the same pattern: focus, discovery, refinement, failure, adjustment, and another attempt. The cycle was repetitive only from the outside. To Qin Mo, each iteration was a step closer to something the Imperium would have called impossible, blasphemous, or both.
There was, however, one exception in his otherwise disciplined routine.
From the Shapeshifter, he had learned the C'tan method of communication.
The Star Gods did not rely on crude vox-transmissions, fragile astropathic messages, or psychic conduits polluted by the Immaterium. Their speech was not carried by air, wire, or Warp-touched minds. It traveled through stellar magnetic fields and the underlying structure of realspace itself, encoded in resonant pulses that could cross distance without begging the Warp for passage.
No matter how vast the gulf between two points might be, if both parties were willing and knew how to shape the signal, they could speak across the void with a speed that made human communication look like smoke signals scratched into mud.
Unfortunately, that also meant Qin Mo had given the Shapeshifter a way to talk to him whenever he permitted the link to remain open.
〈"How's your power recovery going?〉
〈Think you can come rescue me yet?〉
〈You don't actually believe I told you everything I know about dimensional technology, do you?〉
〈I'm only a fragment. I don't remember much. Even if I were whole, I'm not a Star God like you. I remember you had a good relationship with some C'tan that specialized in technology… but I forgot its name. If I remembered, I could tell you, and then you could simply go find it instead of struggling to learn everything from scratch. By the way, when are you leaving the Underhive?"〉
Qin Mo ignored the rapid-fire stream of words pulsing through the magnetic fields around him.
Perhaps the Shapeshifter had always been this talkative.
Or perhaps it was simply lonely. A fragment of an ancient god, imprisoned, diminished, and starved of meaningful conversation, now clinging to the first being in ages capable of answering it without screaming, worshiping, or dying.
That possibility did not make Qin Mo more sympathetic. It only made the constant chatter more understandable.
If not for the occasional useful insight into dimensional theory, he would have severed the link long ago.
....
〈"Why do you keep verifying the knowledge I give you before using it?"〉
The Shapeshifter's voice carried genuine irritation now, thinly disguised as amusement.
〈"Are you truly that wary of me?"〉
〈"Shut up."〉
Qin Mo snapped the words through the link with the same impatience he might have used on a malfunctioning servo-arm.
The voice vanished.
For a while, silence returned to the chamber. Only the hum of the data panel, the faint vibration of hidden power systems, and the soft clicking of automated instruments filled the air. Qin Mo continued working without looking up, only realizing much later that he had severed the communication instinctively rather than deliberately.
The moment he considered reconnecting, the Shapeshifter's voice returned, as if it had been waiting with its mouth already open.
〈"What do you plan to do after developing dimensional transit technology?"〉
A pause followed, brief but pointed.
〈"Head to Terra? Show it to that psychic ape and spread dimensional engines across humanity?"〉
Qin Mo's hand stopped above the panel.
The hovering schematic continued rotating without him. Data cascaded down its side in neat columns, but his attention had already moved elsewhere. He set the data slate aside and looked toward the reinforced viewing panel beyond his workstation.
There was no true sky outside. Only darkness, industrial haze, and the buried architecture of the Underhive. New Kato's lights glimmered in the distance like a stubborn constellation trapped beneath the earth, but the polluted vaults above offered no stars. The void was hidden from him by kilometers of metal, stone, smoke, and history.
He had never seriously considered the Shapeshifter's question.
If this had been the Great Crusade era, or if the Emperor still walked among men, the answer would have been obvious. Find Him. Give Him the technology. Help free humanity from the Warp's tyranny.
His human consciousness made it impossible not to want that. Whatever he had become, however alien his power might be, he still understood mankind as his own species. Saving humanity would also benefit the material universe itself. Fewer Warp routes. Fewer daemonic breaches. Fewer ships swallowed by unreality because some Navigator misread a storm that should never have existed.
But reality was not kind enough to offer simple answers.
The Emperor was half-dead, entombed upon the Golden Throne. His body endured in a state that was neither life nor death, His will forced to hold together a galactic empire that had turned stagnation into doctrine. Even if Qin Mo reached Terra, even if he crossed every defense and survived every suspicion, he could not simply walk into the Imperial Palace and present a technological salvation like an inventor approaching a patron.
The Adeptus Custodes would never allow it. The Palace's defenses would never allow it. The entire paranoid machinery of the Imperium would move to contain, dissect, worship, or destroy him long before anyone important understood what he was offering.
Which meant even success raised a worse question.
How would he implement it?
Convince the High Lords of Terra?
The thought was almost funny.
A council of bureaucratic predators, political survivors, religious hardliners, and institutional corpse-feeders dressed in robes of authority would not embrace a revolution simply because it could save mankind. They would ask who controlled it, who profited from it, whose influence it weakened, which faction could claim theological ownership, and whether suppressing it would preserve their position for another generation.
They would sooner let humanity burn slowly than risk losing dominion over the ashes.
〈"Humanity has never lacked creativity."〉
Qin Mo finally replied. His voice through the magnetic link was colder now, stripped of distraction.
〈"The Imperium's greatest struggle is not developing new technology. It is implementing it, spreading it, protecting it from institutions that fear change more than extinction."〉
The Shapeshifter sounded puzzled.
〈"I do not understand. If you can replace Warp travel, why would humanity not immediately adopt it?"〉
Qin Mo scoffed.
〈"By that same logic, why would the Silent King reject immortality? You lack perspective."〉
He leaned back in his chair. The metal frame creaked softly beneath him.
〈"When the C'tan met the Necrontyr, the Warp was not the nightmare it is now. Not like this. Not a sea filled with predators that can reach into a mortal mind through fear, ambition, grief, or inspiration."〉
His voice grew quieter, but sharper.
〈"Imagine you are not a Star God. Imagine you are a mortal being made of flesh, bone, instinct, and weakness. You know the Ruinous Powers can whisper into your thoughts. You know every sudden flash of brilliance might be your own genius, or it might be bait. Every dream, every theory, every beautiful solution could be a hook lowered by something laughing in the dark."〉
He tapped one finger against the edge of the data panel.
〈"Would you still dare to use unknown technology? Would you stake your species on the hope that your inspiration was truly yours, and not the lure of a daemonic predator?"〉
A long silence followed.
〈"…"〉
〈"That is miserable."〉
The Shapeshifter's voice was laced with distaste, and beneath that distaste was something close to bafflement.
〈"If humanity has fallen into that much paranoia, what is the point of existing? It might as well have the decency to go extinct."〉
Qin Mo laughed.
It was a dry, mocking sound, entirely human in its cruelty.
〈"You say that, yet here you are, a fragmented husk clinging to existence. I do not see you trying to end yourself."〉
His eyes returned to the data panel, but his focus remained on the link.
〈"In fact, you are doing everything in your power to win my favor because you hope that one day I will go beg the Silent King to put you back together."〉
〈"…"〉
The link went silent.
For a long time, the Shapeshifter did not respond. Qin Mo let the silence stretch. He preferred it that way.
Finally, the voice returned. Quieter. Less playful.
〈"If the Forgemaster's consciousness still existed alongside yours…"〉
Another pause.
〈"You two would get along perfectly. You both wield words like knives."〉
Qin Mo smirked, closed the unnecessary conversational channel, and returned to his research.
....
New Kato
The Underhive knew no true time.
There was no sunrise to divide one day from the next, no stars to mark the passing of night, no clean horizon to remind a man that the galaxy existed beyond layers of rusted metal and poisoned air. In New Kato, clocks existed because Qin Mo's systems enforced them. Work shifts changed because logistics required it. Lights dimmed and brightened because human bodies performed better when lied to in regular intervals.
For Grey, days blurred together anyway.
Only when he woke, walked to the mirror, and noticed that his beard had grown long did he realize nearly a hundred days had passed since Qin Mo had locked himself away for research.
He stared at the wiry growth on his chin with mild surprise, as if his own reflection were a stranger sent to report the passage of time. The face looking back at him was leaner than before, marked by old scars, sleepless campaigns, and the peculiar hardness of a man who had survived long enough for survival to become habit.
For those hundred days, Grey had done one thing.
Hunt.
He and Anruida had scoured the Underhive depths, accelerating the extinction of heretics, xenos remnants, and anything else that still believed the darkness belonged to it. They fought until exhaustion dulled their reflexes. They returned, repaired armor, recharged weapons, ate, slept, woke, and fought again.
It was not glorious. Most of it happened in tunnels too narrow for banners, manufactorum basements flooded with sump runoff, collapsed hab-warrens where the dead had to be dragged aside before the living could advance, and service shafts where the enemy came crawling from walls with knives, claws, or bombs strapped to their ribs.
But it was work that mattered. Grey understood that. Every nest burned meant fewer ambushes. Every cult cache destroyed meant fewer shells falling on civilians. Every patrol that came back alive helped convince New Kato's people that the city rising around them would not be swallowed again.
He grabbed his vox-communicator from the bedside table.
"Anruida, you awake?"
A brief crackle answered him. Then Anruida's calm voice came through.
"Awake."
Unlike Grey, Anruida always sounded as if he had already been awake for an hour and had spent that hour judging everyone else for needing sleep.
"I'm ready to move out whenever you are."
Grey took a drink of water, then dropped onto the sofa with a grunt. The apartment still felt strange to him. Clean floor. Functioning water. A door that locked because it was supposed to, not because someone had welded scrap across it.
"Grot's still locked in the fortress?"
"Still unable to deploy," Anruida confirmed. "Before beginning his research, the Lord Commander ordered him to remain behind and guard the fortress."
Grey snorted.
"Qin Mo doesn't need protection. I bet Grot was punished for something."
"Possibly." Anruida's sigh carried faint amusement. "Or the Lord Commander wanted someone loud, stubborn, and difficult to kill standing between his research chamber and everyone else."
"That also sounds like punishment."
"For whom?"
Grey chuckled despite himself.
"Fair point."
There was a brief pause on the line. In the background, Grey could hear the faint mechanical hiss of armor seals engaging.
"I'm suiting up," Anruida said. "Ending transmission."
The vox clicked off.
Grey rose and walked to the window.
As one of Qin Mo's Thunderborn, he had been assigned a residence in New Kato: a twentieth-floor apartment overlooking the city center. The height still felt unnatural. Underhive people were used to stacked habs, gantries, and unsafe vertical spaces, but this was different. This building had been designed, not merely accumulated. Its walls were straight. Its supports did not groan in complaint. Its glass did not rattle every time machinery woke three blocks away.
Below him, half the fortress-city was already complete.
Logistics drones moved across the skyline in disciplined streams, their anti-grav engines humming as they carried beams, pipes, armor panels, water tanks, and prefabricated housing modules. Construction drones crawled over skeletal towers like metallic insects, welding supports, printing wall sections, embedding conduits, and sealing insulation layers with tireless precision.
The city did not grow like an Imperial settlement normally grew: through delay, bribery, accidents, priestly obstruction, and ten thousand men hauling bricks until their backs failed. It rose according to plan. District by district. Function before ornament. Power first. Water second. Shelter third. Defenses always.
Civilians moved through the streets with a purpose Grey still found unsettling. They were not wandering, scavenging, hiding, or queuing for scraps beneath the eyes of men with guns. Parents delivered children to education blocks before reporting to manufactorums, militia yards, recycling stations, medicae centers, or administrative offices. Workers passed through ration dispensaries where food appeared on schedule and no one had to fight over the last portion.
Massive holo-screens projected battlefield reports above public squares. Imperial forces advanced through the remaining rebel pockets. Cult shrines burned. Recon maps updated in real time. Names of recovered districts scrolled beneath the Aquila and the sigil of New Kato.
Thousands of patrol drones watched the streets. Not with the lazy brutality of enforcers waiting for an excuse, but with constant, mechanical impartiality. Theft, violence, sabotage, and panic were all detected before they could spread. For some civilians, that order was comforting. For others, it was frightening. Grey understood both reactions.
He exhaled slowly, and his breath fogged against the reinforced glass.
For him, this was entertainment.
Watching the city rise. Watching old filth become streets, old gang territory become housing, old tunnels become transit arteries. Watching people who had once lived like vermin begin to stand straighter because the world around them no longer expected them to crawl.
The rise of New Kato was a sermon in steel, concrete, discipline, and functioning plumbing. Grey had a front-row seat.
A transport drone appeared on the horizon, cutting through the haze between towers with smooth precision. It slowed outside his building, engines shifting from forward thrust to hover.
Anruida stood in the open hatch, helmet tucked under one arm. Even from twenty floors up, Grey could recognize the exasperated look on his face.
Grey grinned.
"On my way."
He turned from the window and crossed to the armor cradle. His Thunderborn warplate waited open, interior systems glowing faintly. As he stepped inside, the suit closed around him with practiced efficiency. Layered plates locked over muscle and bone. Servo-motors woke with a low hiss. Neural contacts brushed against his skin, and his HUD unfolded across his vision in crisp lines of data.
For a moment, he stood still while the armor checked him. Heart rate. Respiratory rhythm. Blood oxygen. Joint response. Weapon connections. Shield alignment. Jump pack stability. Ammunition load.
All green.
Grey opened the window. Cold Underhive air rushed into the apartment, carrying the smells of metal dust, machine oil, recycled atmosphere, and distant industry.
Then he leaped.
The jump pack fired once, correcting his descent just enough to carry him into the transport's open hatch. He landed with a heavy metallic thud. The drone compensated instantly, barely dipping under his weight.
Anruida watched him secure himself to the deck rail.
"You could use the lift like a civilized person."
"I did," Grey said. "It lifted me down."
Anruida closed his eyes for one second, as though praying for patience he did not expect to receive.
Grey laughed and ran diagnostics on his weapon systems. The HUD flickered briefly, then stabilized. Green runes marked all systems optimal.
"Where to today?"
Anruida turned toward the tactical display projected inside the transport bay. A map of the northern Underhive unfolded between them, layered with infrastructure scans, patrol routes, unstable zones, and civilian distress markers.
"Seven hundred kilometers north," he replied. "Five minutes ago, we received a distress call. A woman reported her husband missing. He vanished while exploring an ancient ruin buried beneath an old manufactorum block."
Grey frowned behind his visor.
"Infiltration or stupidity?"
"Maybe both." Anruida enlarged the marked sector with two fingers. "The site is outside the stabilized districts. Old manufactorum foundations, pre-war service tunnels, unidentified voids beneath the main structure. The garrison is occupied with training exercises and perimeter sweeps, so command assigned it to us."
Grey studied the map. Ancient ruin. Missing civilian. Remote manufactorum block. Too many possibilities, none of them pleasant. In the Underhive, curiosity was often just another word for walking into something that had been waiting in the dark longer than your bloodline had existed.
"Any signs of cult activity?"
"No confirmed signals. No vox chatter. No heat blooms large enough to suggest a nest. But the local drones lost line-of-sight inside the ruin, and the woman claimed her husband's lamp went out all at once before the signal cut."
Grey's expression hardened.
"So definitely stupidity."
"And possibly infiltration."
Grey reached over his shoulder and secured his weapon. The magnetic lock clicked into place on his back.
"Alright."
The transport drone rotated north. Its engines deepened into a steady growl, and New Kato began sliding away beneath them.
Grey looked once more through the open hatch at the rising city, then turned toward the dark beyond its borders.
"Let's go."