"You're beyond saving. Goodbye."
Adam stood up abruptly.
The motion was so sudden that the chair scraped against the floor with a harsh metallic shriek.
Grot stared at him, confused.
A moment ago, Adam had been talking about helping him, about discipline, training, control, routines, all the small methods by which a man could cage the worst parts of himself and keep functioning.
Now Adam was walking away. Not hesitating. Not struggling. Not looking for kinder words.
It was as if some conclusion had settled behind his eyes, cold and final, leaving no room for pity.
"If this were merely a matter of controlling your emotions, I could help you learn discipline," Adam said. His voice remained quiet, but the softness had gone out of it. "Anger can be trained. Impulse can be restrained. A man can learn to stop his hand before it reaches for a weapon."
He stopped at the door, one hand resting against the frame.
"But if the root cause is genetic, then there is nothing I can do."
Grot's brow tightened. "You don't know that."
"No," Adam admitted. "I don't."
The admission should have offered comfort. It did not. Adam's tone was too clinical, too controlled, the voice of a man laying out a fatal diagnosis because delaying the words would not change the disease.
"I cannot say with certainty that your genes are flawed," Adam continued. "This is not a definitive conclusion. Not yet. But unless you or I can produce a better explanation for what happened to your brother, for the pattern in your own evaluations, and for the instability appearing in your neural responses…"
He did not finish the sentence.
He did not need to.
The silence between them completed it.
Then Adam turned and left without another word, his boots striking the steel corridor with hard, even echoes. Each step sounded deliberate. Each step carried him farther from the impossible little project he had almost allowed himself to believe in.
The plan to rehabilitate a former Thunderborn?
A chosen warrior?
Grot?
To hell with all of it.
As he walked away, Adam's jaw clenched until it hurt. He told himself this was logic. He told himself a mortal's perception was limited, that there were reasons greater minds made decisions lesser men could not understand. If the Angel had allowed Grot to be removed from the Thunderborn, perhaps He had seen what Adam had refused to see.
Otherwise, Adam would not have wasted time trying to save a man who might already be beyond saving.
A flicker of guilt passed through him.
He buried it beneath procedure, probability, and the clean cruelty of reason.
Behind him, Grot felt as though someone had cut the floor out from under him.
He stood slowly, watching Adam's back recede down the corridor. The words had landed harder than an insult. An insult could be answered. A challenge could be met. Even pity could be spat on.
But this?
This had been abandonment spoken in the language of diagnosis.
Grot's hands curled once, then relaxed. He did not curse Adam. He did not shout after him. For a moment, he simply stood there, a large man in a quiet room, trying to understand when hope had become embarrassing.
Then he called out, voice rough but steady.
"I hope you make it through crew training… and get to pilot that warship."
Adam did not answer.
He kept walking.
Grot watched until the corridor swallowed him. Only then did his expression twist.
"Son of a—" he muttered under his breath.
Then he turned and left as well.
....
In the following days, Grot continued his routine because routine was easier than thinking.
During the day, he worked in the factory, repairing the logistical drones most citizens still called "servitors" out of habit. Their bodies were all clean angles, sealed joints, gravitic lift housings, and tool-limbs designed for cargo handling, battlefield recovery, construction, ration distribution, and a hundred other tasks the Imperium would normally have assigned to lobotomized slaves or half-dead laborers.
Grot knew their systems well enough by now to diagnose a damaged actuator by sound. A whining pitch meant grit in the joint housing. A stuttering vibration meant a faulty power regulator. A drone that paused too long before obeying an order usually had corrupted routing data, not a sulking machine spirit, no matter what some of the older workers muttered.
He repaired them with large, careful hands while the factory around him shook with activity. Conveyor lines carried replacement armor plates. Fabricators stamped structural ribs for new hab-units. Cargo lifters moved crates of charge packs, medical supplies, water filters, and prefabricated wall sections toward deployment bays.
People talked while they worked. They always did.
They talked about the last pockets of resistance in the Upper Hive sewer systems. They talked about Spire districts bombarded into rubble before infantry entered. They talked about the new Governor, the coming counterattack against Talon II, the relocation orders, the construction schedules, and the rumor that another batch of orbital workers had been selected for voidship training.
Grot listened. He answered when spoken to. He laughed when others laughed.
Most of the time, he could not remember what he had said afterward.
In the evening, he collected his nutrient-dense synth-food ration and visited his younger sister, Maya. He never missed that part of the routine. Whatever else was wrong with him, that remained fixed.
Maya's assigned quarters were small but clean, one of the temporary hab-cells issued to civilians relocated during the Lower Hive reconstruction. The walls still smelled faintly of fresh sealant. The ventilation was too loud. The lumen-strip over the table flickered whenever the corridor power draw shifted. Compared with the old Underhive shelters, it was practically a noble estate.
Maya had tried to make it feel lived-in. A folded blanket softened the edge of her bunk. A cracked cup held a few thin strips of metal shaped into flowers by some bored workshop hand. A small slate by the table displayed construction updates, ration schedules, and public announcements from the new administration.
They ate together because that was what family did when the galaxy had not yet succeeded in grinding the habit out of them.
One night, halfway through dinner, Maya stopped eating.
She watched Grot for several seconds. He did not notice at first. His spoon moved from tray to mouth with mechanical regularity, his eyes fixed on nothing.
"Why do you seem so… out of it lately?" she asked.
Grot blinked, spoon halfway to his mouth. "Huh?"
Maya tapped the edge of his ration tray. "Tell me what this food tastes like."
Grot looked down.
The synth-food had been shaped into something that resembled sliced meat, root vegetables, and thick gravy. It even steamed convincingly. Qin Mo's logistics systems had improved the texture and flavor enough that workers complained less and ate faster. By Imperial standards, it was excellent.
Grot stared at it.
After a long pause, he shook his head.
He had no idea what it tasted like.
He had been eating for ten minutes and had not noticed a single flavor.
Maya's expression darkened. Not with anger. With confirmation.
"Just as I thought," she murmured.
Grot forced a shrug. "I'm tired."
"You're always tired."
"Everyone is."
"Not like this."
He looked away first.
Maya watched him a moment longer, then changed the subject with visible effort. She had learned, as children of war often did, that some wounds could not be touched directly without making the wounded person flinch.
"How's the war going?" she asked.
Grot seized on the safer topic. "Still fighting in the Upper Hive's sewer systems. Some units have pushed into the Spire approaches. They shelled entire districts flat before sending infantry in."
"That bad?"
"That practical." Grot pushed a piece of synth-meat around his tray. "No point losing soldiers room by room when the enemy turned every floor into a trap. Should be over soon."
Maya's mouth curved into a small smile. "So that means 'Lord Commander' is about to become 'Governor,' huh?"
Grot snorted.
"From a grunt soldier to ruler of a world," Maya continued. "A legend in the making."
For the first time that evening, Grot's eyes focused properly.
"Of course."
The word came out with more conviction than he expected.
As one of the survivors of the original 44th Regiment, Grot knew better than most what Qin Mo had truly been at the start. Not a noble. Not an officer. Not even a soldier in any respectable sense.
A prisoner.
A condemned man wearing a collar in the Underhive's deepest war zone.
With the power Qin Mo possessed, he could have escaped the Underhive whenever he wished. He could have walked away from the 44th, from the prisoners, from the PDF survivors, from the whole rotting hive and everyone trapped inside it.
Instead, he stayed.
He rescued people. Organized defenses. Built fortresses. Armed the abandoned. Fed civilians. Led counterattacks. Turned broken regiments into an army and then an army into a government no Spire Lord could ignore.
Tyrone Hive was not a prize Qin Mo had stolen.
It was one of the spoils he had earned by dragging it back from the mouth of extinction.
Maya noticed the change in her brother at once. His shoulders had straightened. His voice had gained weight. He was still unhappy, still distant, but for a few moments he sounded like himself again.
So she continued.
"I heard the Governor is planning to build multiple new cities in the Lower Hive," she said. "The construction drones have already started clearing foundations."
Grot looked up sharply. "When did that happen?"
"You really didn't hear?"
"No."
That surprised him more than he wanted to admit.
Building cities in the Lower Hive was far more difficult than raising settlements in the Underhive. The Underhive had ruined districts, abandoned industrial spaces, buried caverns, and dead zones large enough to repurpose. The Lower Hive was different. It was crowded, layered, inhabited, and jammed full of unstable infrastructure that generations of administrators had ignored because ignoring decay was cheaper than repairing it.
To build there, the drones would have to demolish existing structures before laying down anything new. Hab-blocks had to be evacuated. Power lines rerouted. Water systems separated from sewage channels. Weak foundations reinforced or cut away entirely. Millions of citizens would have to be moved without triggering riots, hunger, disease, or noble-sponsored sabotage.
It was not merely construction.
It was surgery performed on a living city without permission to let the patient die.
Maya reached beside her and handed him her data-slate. "Official announcement. I thought you'd already seen it."
Grot took the slate and began reading while he ate.
Maya was right. Construction had already begun. Residents in the affected sectors were being temporarily relocated to New Kato and several auxiliary hab-zones while the old districts were dismantled section by section. The announcement listed water guarantees, ration distribution schedules, transport timetables, compensation claims, work reassignment offices, and militia patrol routes.
It was too organized to be a noble decree. Too practical. Too concerned with what happened after the announcement ended.
More importantly, Qin Mo had not been focused solely on war.
He had plans. Many of them.
City-building was only one part of a much larger design: industrial redevelopment, orbital shipyard expansion, military standardization, civilian relocation, agricultural synthesis, power-grid stabilization, and a planetary education program that would have made most Imperial scribes accuse the slate of sedition just for existing.
Then Grot reached the section mentioning Talon II.
His expression hardened.
The industrial world had fully embraced the so-called Lord of Wisdom. Official worship of the Emperor had been displaced almost completely, replaced by a new cult structure wrapped in manufactured revelation, technical promises, and the familiar poison of false salvation.
Talon II had not merely rebelled.
It had openly turned traitor.
A system-wide war was inevitable.
Grot lowered the data-slate.
"This war will be over soon," he said.
Maya nodded. "Talon II won't be able to stop our counterattack."
"No."
He stared at the announcement for another moment. The words blurred slightly.
"Everything is getting better," Maya said softly.
Grot did not respond.
He looked down at his food.
Everything was getting better.
For the civilians being relocated out of deathtrap habs. For the soldiers receiving armor. For the workers whose labor finally built something other than misery. For the regiments preparing to carry Qin Mo's war beyond Tyrone Hive. For Maya, maybe, if the galaxy could be bullied into leaving her alone.
For everyone.
Except him.
Adam's words returned with unwelcome clarity.
If it's a genetic issue, then there is nothing I can do.
Whether Adam was right or wrong no longer mattered as much as Grot wanted it to. The facts remained. His brother had fallen into madness. Grot had inherited the same blood. And now even Maya, who wanted more than anyone to believe he was fine, had noticed something was wrong.
The city's logistical drones conducted routine psychological evaluations as part of public health monitoring. Every worker, soldier, and relocated civilian passed through scans, reaction tests, sleep reports, and neural stress assessments. Most people complained about them. Grot had begun to dread them.
His results were getting worse.
Increased aggression. Diminished emotional response. Delayed pleasure recognition. Abnormal stress spikes. Anomalous neural feedback during simulated threat exposure.
Each result could be explained away alone. War did that to people. Grief did that. Sleep loss did that. Being a Thunderborn and then removed from the ranks did that.
Together, they formed a pattern.
If the pattern continued, it was only a matter of time before he lost control completely, just like his brother.
One day, he might find himself screaming about the Champion of Blood, the Lord of Skulls, or some other butcher-god hiding behind courage and rage.
Then he would slaughter everyone around him.
Maya. Workers in the factory. Civilians in the relocation zones. Soldiers who still called him brother.
And when that day came, the Thunderborn, his brothers-in-arms, would put him down.
They would not hesitate.
He would not want them to.
Grot stared at his hands.
They looked normal. Rough. Calloused. Human. A worker's hands. A soldier's hands. A brother's hands.
But he knew better.
Monsters did not always have claws. Sometimes they had familiar faces right up until the moment everyone learned what they truly were.
If that was his fate, would it not be better to die in battle before the change came?
Not in a cell. Not restrained in some medical chamber while specialists debated whether he could still be salvaged. Not executed by Grey or Qin Mo after becoming something his sister would have nightmares about.
Battle was cleaner.
A frontline death on Talon II would have meaning. His name would go onto a casualty roll that mattered. His ashes could be enshrined in the orbital shipyard alongside honored dead. His end would be recorded as service, not containment.
A controlled detonation, before the reactor breached.
The thought should have frightened him.
Instead, it brought relief.
That relief frightened him more than death.
He set the data-slate down.
"I want to rejoin the military."
Maya froze. Her eyes widened. "What?"
"I want to rejoin the military."
"But…" She looked at him as if waiting for the sentence to become less insane. "You're not Thunderborn anymore."
"I know."
"You can't just walk back in and ask for your armor."
"I'm not asking for that." Grot's voice remained calm. Too calm, perhaps, but it did not shake. "I'll ask the Governor to let me enlist in the regular army. Just as a normal infantryman."
Maya stared at him. Then her expression hardened in a way that reminded him painfully of their mother.
"And if you die?"
Grot leaned back, forcing a grin. "Out of the entire 44th Regiment, fewer than twenty of us survived. Thirteen more went missing in tunnels, buried under rubble for all we know. I made it through that."
"That is not an answer."
"It is."
"No, it's a story you tell yourself so you don't have to say the truth."
The grin faded.
Maya's hands clenched around her spoon. "You think I don't see it? You think I don't know what you're doing? You're not talking like a man who wants to serve. You're talking like a man looking for somewhere respectable to die."
For a moment, Grot said nothing.
The ventilation hummed overhead. Somewhere in the corridor outside, a drone rolled past with a soft mechanical whir. Distant voices filtered through the thin hab-wall: neighbors arguing over relocation paperwork, a child laughing, someone coughing too hard for too long. Life, continuing in defiance of everything.
Grot looked at his sister.
He wanted to lie. He almost did.
Instead, he gave her only the part of the truth that would not destroy her.
"I need to be useful."
Maya's mouth trembled. Anger and fear fought across her face, neither winning. "You are useful here."
"Repairing drones?"
"Yes."
"Eating food I can't taste? Failing evaluations? Pretending I'm fine because everyone else is rebuilding and I don't want to be the broken thing left in the corner?"
She flinched.
Grot regretted the words immediately, but once spoken, they could not be taken back. He softened his voice.
"Maya…"
"Don't."
He stopped.
She looked down at the table. Her voice came quieter now. "You survived the Underhive. You survived things people should not survive. You came back to me. And now you want to go away again."
Grot swallowed.
"Talon II needs soldiers," he said. "The Governor will need soldiers."
"The Governor has armies."
"Then one more won't hurt."
Maya looked up. Her eyes were wet, but she refused to let the tears fall. "And if you die?"
Grot forced the grin back onto his face, rougher this time, more shield than humor.
"You really think I'd die on Talon II?"
There was no bravado in it. Not truly. Only resolve.
Maya saw that too. It made her look away first.
She wanted to argue. He could see it in the set of her jaw, in the way her fingers tightened against the table edge. But she also knew him well enough to understand that something inside him had already moved beyond the point where pleading could easily reach it.
Grot stood.
"I'll visit tomorrow," he said.
Maya did not answer.
At the door, he paused.
"Food was probably good," he said awkwardly. "I'll try to notice next time."
That almost broke her.
Almost.
She nodded once without looking at him.
Grot left before he could change his mind or make everything worse.
....
That night, after returning to his quarters, Grot sat at his desk.
His room was spare, almost military despite belonging to a civilian worker now. A narrow bunk. A storage locker. A weapon rack with nothing on it. A work jacket hung neatly beside the door. The small desk had been bolted to the floor, and its surface bore the scratches of someone who repaired drone parts there when sleep refused to come.
For a long time, he did not write.
He sat with both hands resting on the desk, listening to the faint sounds of the city beyond his walls. Construction crews worked through the night. Transport drones passed in distant corridors. Somewhere overhead, the hive's reinforced ventilation system pushed cleaner air through districts that had once choked on industrial poison.
A world was being repaired around him.
Grot picked up the stylus.
He began writing a formal request to enlist as a frontline soldier.
The language came slowly at first. Then faster. Name. Former service record. Surviving member of the 44th Regiment. Former Thunderborn candidate. Current civilian labor assignment. Request for reassignment to regular infantry. Willingness to serve in any frontline capacity deemed appropriate by command. Acceptance of all risks. No request for special privilege. No request for Thunderborn reinstatement.
Each word felt like a confession made in bureaucratic form.
He did not write that he feared madness.
He did not write that he wanted a clean death before he became a danger to the only family he had left.
He did not write Adam's name. He did not write Maya's.
He simply wrote the request, sealed it, and sat staring at the finished document until the lumen-strip above him dimmed for the night cycle.
For the first time in days, his thoughts felt orderly. Not happy. Not hopeful. But aligned.
A final act of control in a life slowly slipping beyond it.
When he next met Grey, he would ask him to deliver the request to the new Governor personally.