Chapter 28 : The Hunt Begins
The bio-scanner looked like a loyalty assessment device because Nash told people it was a loyalty assessment device.
Helena's equipment — compact, Imperial-grade, designed for xenos biological detection — arrived in crates marked ADMINISTRATUM SECURITY EVALUATION MATERIALS. Krauss's armsmen distributed them to screening stations positioned at the compound's four internal checkpoints, where they sat beside data-slates and interview tables like bureaucratic props in a theater production.
"Ork sympathizer investigation," Nash briefed the council. Corso, Vasquez, Marcus, Sigma-9 — the same faces, minus one. The empty space at the doorframe where Volkov had stood was occupied by a weapons rack now. Nobody leaned against it. "Intelligence from the supply raid indicated possible collaborators within our population. Standard security screening, conducted professionally. No accusations without evidence."
Corso's expression held steady. She'd been briefed on the real threat — Nash, Sigma-9, and Helena's team were the only ones who knew — but the lie tasted wrong in a room where honesty had been currency.
Marcus studied Nash from his position near the door. The priest's bandaged hands clasped his aquila, the burned fingers curling stiffly around the metal. "Ork sympathizers. Among people who lost everything to the greenskins."
"Fear makes people vulnerable, Father. The screening protects everyone."
Marcus held his gaze for two seconds. Then nodded. Nash couldn't tell if the priest believed the cover story or simply trusted Nash enough to accept its necessity.
"He held a breach with a flamer. He walked into las-fire to stop a rout. And now I'm lying to his face because the truth — Genestealer hybrids breeding among his congregation — would shatter morale faster than any Ork assault."
Vasquez ran the screening teams.
The process was designed for efficiency and discretion: population processed in groups of twenty, each individual passing through the bio-scanner under the pretense of identity verification. The scanner read biological markers in eight seconds — skin contact, dermal analysis, the device calibrated to flag Tyranid-derivative protein chains that Genestealer hybridization produced.
Green meant clean. Amber meant retest. Red meant a quiet conversation in the isolation room behind the medical bay, where Krauss's armsmen waited with restraints and a locked door.
Nash monitored from the command bunker. The system overlaid scanner results on his population roster — each name updating in real time, green tags accumulating like a ledger of innocence, the twelve confirmed red marks burning against the amber ocean of the suspected.
The first three days produced eight confirmed identifications. Each one matched the system's prior analysis — the Organic Hierarchy Interface had tagged them during passive observation, and the bio-scanner confirmed what the alien AI had already detected through means Nash couldn't explain to anyone.
Eight people. Three women, five men. Ages ranging from nineteen to fifty-four. A hive worker, a transit operator, two former PDF privates, a cook, a maintenance technician, and two individuals who'd arrived with Volkov's contingent — their hybridization predating the Commissar's recruitment, the infection hidden among baseline humans whose loyalty was genuine even if their biology was compromised.
Nash ordered quiet elimination.
The word he used was "detention." The reality was a locked room, a sedative administered by Helena's specialist — a gaunt woman named Doctor Eris who handled xenos biology with the clinical detachment of someone who'd done this before — and then nothing. No trials. No public announcements. No explanation for why eight people disappeared from work crews and hab-block assignments overnight.
Priscilla noticed. Of course she noticed. The administrator who tracked every name, every assignment, every head in her population count found eight missing entries in a single week and appeared at Nash's door with the data-slate held like evidence.
"Eight people, Nash. Gone from the roster. No transfer notes, no death records, no reassignment orders."
"Security matter."
"I run civilian administration. Security matters involving civilian personnel are my jurisdiction."
Nash looked at her — this woman who'd kept him alive in a bunker, who'd counted heads through massacres, who'd tracked his sleep and delivered ration bars and compiled reports with a precision that rivaled the system's output. The first person he'd met in this universe. The first person who'd chosen to trust him.
"Priscilla. I need you to trust me."
Her mouth thinned. "I've been trusting you for nine weeks. Don't make me regret it."
"These eight individuals posed an active security threat. They've been dealt with. I can't explain more right now."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both."
She held the data-slate to her chest. The maternal concern warred with the administrator's precision, and for a moment Nash saw both — the woman who worried about his sleep and the professional who demanded accountability.
"When you can explain," she said, "you will."
"I promise."
She left. Nash stared at the door and tried not to catalogue the promises he'd broken in this life and the one before it.
The eighth body burned in the manufactorum's furnace — or what remained of the furnace. Sigma-9 had salvaged the thermal unit from the collapsed building, repurposing it as an incinerator that served double duty: waste disposal and the erasure of evidence that would panic a settlement already traumatized by siege.
Nash stood at the furnace's observation port. The heat distorted the air, turning the chamber beyond into a wavering abstraction. Inside, biological matter reduced itself to carbon and ash.
"In my old life, the worst personnel decision I made was terminating a developer who'd been falsifying his sprint metrics. I gave him two weeks' notice and a recommendation letter. Here, I give them a sedative and a furnace."
"The system awards experience points for 'threat elimination.' I've stopped looking at the notifications."
Sigma-9 approached. The Magos moved with mechanical precision through the salvage yard that surrounded the furnace — her domain now, the ruins of the manufactorum transformed into a working space where her servo-arms sorted components and her analytical mind planned the reconstruction.
"The biological specimens have been preserved per Captain Mordant's contract terms," Sigma-9 said. "Tissue samples, hormonal profiles, and neurological mapping from each subject."
"Good."
"Administrator." The middle lens focused. "The eighth subject exhibited third-generation hybridization markers with a 94% genomic overlap to baseline human. Externally indistinguishable. Neurologically integrated. Her cognitive function showed no impairment — she was, by every measurable standard, a functional member of this settlement."
"She was also a biological weapon waiting for activation."
"I am not disputing the necessity. I am noting the precision of the infiltration methodology." Sigma-9 paused — a rare hesitation from a mind that processed at machine speed. "The Tyranid genus achieves through biology what the Mechanicus achieves through technology: perfect integration of foreign elements into existing systems. It is... an elegant threat."
"Elegant. The Magos is admiring the enemy's engineering. That's the Mechanicus in a sentence — appreciation for the mechanism even when the mechanism is designed to destroy you."
The fourth morning brought the complication Nash had calculated but hoped to avoid.
Father Marcus was conducting morning prayers in the chapel — the converted storage room with its salvaged aquila, its tallow candles, its congregation of frightened people seeking reassurance from a man whose burned hands still trembled when he lifted them in blessing. Forty-two worshippers knelt on the ferrocrete floor. Marcus spoke the Litany of Protection with the practiced cadence of a career that had survived everything the galaxy threw at faith.
The hybrid came from the back of the congregation.
A man — system tag: LYDEN, Potential D, third-generation hybrid, one of the forty-three amber suspects who hadn't been processed through screening yet — stood from his knees, produced a stolen combat knife from beneath his shirt, and lunged for the priest.
Marcus turned at the wrong moment. The knife grazed his arm — the left, already weakened by the flamer burns — and would have buried itself in his chest if Krauss's armsman, posted at the chapel door per Helena's security protocol, hadn't put a las-bolt through Lyden's shoulder.
The hybrid didn't fall. The bolt rocked him backward, the wound smoking, but he came forward again with the knife raised and something alien behind his eyes — the third-generation consciousness overridden by the Patriarch's command, the human mind shoved aside by biological imperative.
The second bolt hit his forehead.
The congregation screamed. Marcus stood with blood running down his arm, his brass aquila splashed red, his face carrying the expression of a man who'd spent weeks praying beside a creature that wanted to kill him.
Nash arrived four minutes later. The chapel was chaos — frightened worshippers, the body on the floor, Marcus being treated by a medical assistant while Krauss's armsman stood guard with a still-smoking lasgun.
"How bad?" Nash asked.
"Shallow." Marcus's voice was steady. The burned hand pressed a bandage to his arm. "He was aiming for the heart. He missed because I turned to begin the benediction."
"Turned. A half-second of timing, the difference between a living priest and a dead one. Marcus is alive because of liturgical choreography."
Nash looked at the body. LYDEN. A quiet man. Maintenance crew. Had helped rebuild the eastern wall after the siege. Had attended Marcus's prayers every morning for three weeks.
The Patriarch was responding. The purge had been felt — eight eliminations, and the hive mind knew its nodes were being cut. The remaining hybrids were activating, the dormant biological programming overriding months of integrated human behavior.
The hidden war was no longer hidden.
Want more? The story continues on Patreon!
If you can't wait for the weekly release, you can grab +10, +15, or +20 chapters ahead of time on my Patreon page. Your support helps me keep this System running!
Read ahead here: [ patreon.com/system_enjoyer ]
dropped extra chapters + full translations on unwrittenrealm.com
Arabic / Spanish / Hindi / Korean / French / Russian and more — all free