It was working. As he ran, Sebaton tried to gauge the distance from which the shot or shots had been taken, but panic was affecting his mental acuity. His legs were burning, lactic acid setting fire to his joints, and his chest ached. Leaden fear was adding to the strain on his body, and even though he regarded himself as fit and strong, the constant changes of direction were becoming taxing. He wanted to stop, get a breather and his bearings, but survival instinct wouldn’t let him. Stop now, die now.

There was no help here, Sebaton knew that. He was alone, although he sensed the presence of something lurking in the stacked domiciles and manufactorums he had passed. Like standing next to a recently dug grave, death lingered about this place and was given form by a palpable sense of outrage and violation that had left a stain on everything around it at the point of life’s ending.

Eyes fixed ahead, he ignored the barren shells of buildings that were not quite empty, fearful that a side glance might reveal to him some revenant of that lingering death. But like a corpse bloated by putrefaction, an old memory rose to the surface of Sebaton’s mind.

He had been a child, no more than eight years standard, in his first life, long before the war. A boy had died in his township, trawling in one of the drainage basins that bled out of Anatol Hive. The boy had waded in too deeply, got snagged on a piece of debris hidden by the murk of the water and been dragged to his drowning as the machine processors that kept the basin churning activated, creating an artificial current.

Though the town’s men had dredged the water, no body was ever found.

It was several months later that Sebaton had gone to the basin to see if there was treasure left to salvage in the water, excited by the dark reputation of the place. Standing at the plascrete bank, all he found was sorrow and an abiding sense of rage. When he walked into the drainage basin, ankle-deep in the water, he saw something small and pale lurking beneath the surface. It filled him with such disquiet that he bolted and never returned, only later swearing that he felt something scrape at his skin and finding five tiny weals left in his flesh afterwards. The wounds never healed. Life to life, he carried them like the growing burden on his conscience, a reminder of his encounter.

The memory had come unbidden, and Sebaton wondered if its resurfacing was a symptom of what was being done to Ranos or had been stirred up by the presence of the artefact wrapped in cloth under his arm.

Staying on the street and in the open suddenly felt unwise. The back of his neck itched, and though he didn’t really want to enter any of the buildings that seemed to slowly close about him, Sebaton had no desire to be next in the hunters’ crosshairs either.

He saw a warehouse, its gate ajar, and headed for it.

As he ducked inside the building, the darkness cloaking Sebaton intensified. He stayed still, allowing time for his vision to adjust. After a few minutes, an expansive storage yard stretched out in front of him. Above, crisscrossing gantries and beams put him in mind of a spider’s web as the moonlight streaming through an upper window hit them. The irony of that was not lost on Sebaton. For he was trapped, his arachnid predator looming close and preparing to pounce.

Staying low, Sebaton ran across the store yard floor into a cluster of packing crates, drums and pipes. He’d seen no door or gate other than the one he had entered by, so he assumed that the exit was somewhere within this maze. He nervously twisted the ring on his finger, pausing at every junction, trying to tell the difference between sounds that were real and imagined.

Halfway down a corridor, flanked on both sides by a rack of heavy pipes that were secured by metal cabling, Sebaton realised he wasn’t alone. An infinitesimal movement, the minuscule shifting of metal as pressure was applied to it had given the hunter away. Most ordinary men would have missed it or dismissed it as cargo settling in its container, but Sebaton was not an ordinary man.

Sebaton stopped and reversed direction, just as something large and heavy thundered down behind him. An instant later massive metallic footfalls clanged in his wake as Sebaton sprinted down the corridor. Spinning around as he reached the end of the corridor, just past the stacked pipes, he uttered a single word.

‘ Stop!’

His voice resonated, like it was two voices, one overlaid upon the other, rooting his pursuer to the spot. For the first time, Sebaton got a good look at who was hunting him. He didn’t like what he saw, not remotely.

Clad in crimson and black, the legionary’s war-plate was engraved with scripture. One of Lorgar’s zealots, then. Sebaton had no wish to be taken by this man. He knew enough about how the Word Bearers tortured and killed their prisoners – that even death was not the end of it, but rather the beginning of an eternal torment that threw their immortal soul into jeopardy – to be certain he had to escape.

It was a struggle to hold him. The legionary’s will was immense, straining constantly against Sebaton’s psychic command as a rabid hound does against the leash. Sebaton’s forehead was already layered in sweat. His temples throbbed painfully with the effort of maintaining the mental strength needed to harness this monster. But he only needed a few seconds. He briefly considered using his flechette pistol, but his other weapon was easier to use and fit for the task. He lashed out with his ring and a bright beam of energy lanced from the digi-laser concealed within, severing the cable securing the pipes and sending them crashing down on his pursuer.

Sebaton didn’t wait to see what happened next. He heard the clash of metal against metal, the grunt of the Word Bearer. He knew it wouldn’t kill the legionary but it might give him a few seconds to get away. He ran in the opposite direction, barrelling round another junction and straight through a door just beyond it. Confronted by a stairwell, Sebaton only paused long enough to see how far it went up, then took the steps three at a time. Still dizzy from using his psychic ability, he stumbled and hit the wall hard. The impact jolted his arm and he lost his grip on the cloth bundle, snatching at the air and turning just enough to see it bounce down the stairs and into the darkness.

He cursed loudly but couldn’t go back. There was no time. Glanding a measure of additional adrenaline into his system, he pushed forwards, trying to put as much distance between himself and the Word Bearer as he could.

Head pounding, the extra adrenaline making his heart thump like a cannonade, Sebaton emerged onto an upper floor. It was much more open than the one below, and he suspected it was there for overspill when the lower part of the warehouse got full. There were few places to hide but he noticed a room at the back of the spartan chamber that was partitioned off. An overseer’s office, he assumed. A row of windows to Sebaton’s left looked like they might open easily. If he could reach one, he could scale the roof, drop down in a side alley and–

Who am I kidding, thought Sebaton, this is the end of the game.

From downstairs he heard a crash as the legionary pulled himself from the wreckage of the pipes. Thundering up the stairwell, a battered-looking Word Bearer burst through the door spitting fury and taking most of the wall with him.

‘No more running,’ he said, advancing with the slow finality of a predator who knew he had caught his prey.

Backing up, Sebaton considered his options. Go for the window and he’d be quickly brought down. He was too weak to stop the legionary psychically for a second time and the digi-weapon in his ring was still charging. Even at full strength, Sebaton doubted it would trouble power armour. The flechette pistol was even worse at cutting ceramite and adamantium. He was starting to wish he had packed something a little more serious when the Word Bearer spoke again.