‘Follow me,’ said Uttam, turning and leading the soldiers between the cells. The lingering traces of combat stims danced in his veins, and Uttam scanned the spaces between the cells for enemies. The only enemies on the island were locked up, but the brief exchange between the mortals had disquieted him. He was no believer in omens, but taken together with the drizzling rain, it had set him on edge, combat ready and instinctive.

Not a good state to be in when caution and thoroughness was key.

‘Which one first?’ asked Tirtha.

‘Tagore,’ said Uttam, indicating a cellblock to his right.

Uttam despised Tagore, he had killed three hundred and fifty nine men before he had been subdued, and that made him almost as dangerous as a Custodian. The soldiers hauled the nutrition dispenser around as Uttam took position in front of the door.

The warrior inside paced the length and breadth of the cell like a caged raptor, tension knotting his muscles and keeping his jaw clenched like a rabid wolf. The prisoner’s physique was enormous: a giant clad only in a tattered loincloth. It had once been a standard issue prison bodyglove, but the inmate had torn it to shreds. His body was a lattice of scars layered over gene-bulked muscle and ossified bone, while his flesh was a canvas of linked tattoos. Axes and swords mingled with skulls and jagged teeth that swallowed worlds whole.

The back of the man’s head was a nightmare of metal plates embedded in furrowed grooves cut into the bone of his skull, and there was a demented look to the warrior that no amount of self-control could quite mask.

‘Back away from the door, traitor,’ ordered Uttam.

The warrior bared his teeth, flinching at the word traitor, but complied. His back was to the far wall, but his muscles were bunched in anticipation of violence. Tagore was a World Eater, and Uttam had never seen him in anything less than an attack posture. The others of his Legion were just the same, and Uttam wondered how they could stand to be so highly poised at all times. Some called the World Eaters undisciplined killers, psychopaths with tacit approval to be mindless butchers, but Uttam knew better. After all, what kind of discipline must it take to maintain such a level of aggression so close to the surface on so tight a leash?

The World Eaters were more dangerous than anyone gave them credit.

Tagore eyed him with a feral grin, but said nothing.

‘You have something to say?’ snapped Uttam.

Tagore nodded and said, ‘One day I will kill you. Rip your spine out through your chest.’

‘Empty threats?’ said Uttam. ‘I expected better from you.’

‘You are more foolish than you look if you think I make empty threats,’ said Tagore.

‘And yet you are the one in confinement.’

‘This?’ said Tagore, as the nutrition dispenser dropped a pair of foodstuff bags into the cell. ‘This won’t hold me for long.’

Uttam smiled, amused despite himself by Tagore’s posturing. ‘Do you really believe that, or is it just that abomination hammered into your skull that makes you think so?’

‘I am World Eater,’ snarled Tagore proudly. ‘I do not deal in abstracts, I deal in the reality of absolutes. And I know that I will kill you.’

Recognising the futility of further discussion, Uttam shook his head and moved deeper into the prison complex. The other inmates gave him cold glares or venomous hostility, but as always it was Atharva who perturbed Uttam the most.

The witch stood in the centre of his cell, hands straight down at his side and his chin tilted slightly up, as though he was waiting for something. His eyes were closed and his lips moved as though in silent supplication. The rain fell harder here, dripping from the hard permacrete edges of the cellblock. Uttam’s eyes narrowed as the same chill he had felt upon entering the chamber grow stronger still. His combat instincts, already honed from the brief stim shunt drew in close as he sensed danger.

The spear spun in his hand as Atharva’s eyes opened, and Uttam gasped as he saw they were no longer amber and blue, but the shimmering white of a winter sun.

‘Pull back,’ he ordered, moving away from the cell door. ‘Evacuate immediately.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ said Atharva.

‘Tirtha!’ shouted Uttam. ‘Danger threatens!’

A blast of superheated air sounded like the crack of a whip, and Uttam spun on his heel. Natraj of the Uralian Stormlords held his plasma gun pulled in tight to his shoulder, the vents along its barrel drooling exhaust gasses.

Custodian Sumant Giri Phalguni Tirtha fell to his knees with a smoking hole burned through the centre of his stomach.

‘The mountain weeps,’ he said, before pitching onto his front.

THE INTERROGATION CHAMBER was cold, as it always was, but Kai sensed a strained atmosphere that had nothing to do with Scharff and Hiriko’s continued failure to reach the information Sarashina had placed within him. Though Kai’s physical frailty made restraints unnecessary, he was still strapped into the contoured chair in the centre of the chamber. Adept Hiriko sat opposite him, and Kai saw dark smudges under her eyes that hadn’t been there the last time they had met in the waking world. The process of interrogation was draining her almost as much as it was draining him.

Kai said, ‘Please, do we have to do this again? I can’t give you what you want.’

‘I believe you, Kai, I really do,’ said Hiriko, ‘but if the Legio Custodes cannot have the secrets in your head, they will settle for you dead. They are an unforgiving organisation. And if you won’t give me what I want willingly, then I have no choice but to tear it out of you.’

‘What does that mean?’

Hiriko fixed him with a stare that was part melancholy, part exasperated. ‘It means exactly what you think it means, Kai. You won’t survive this.’

‘Please,’ said Kai. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die like this.’

‘That doesn’t matter anymore,’ said Hiriko. ‘Others have decided that you must, but it if it is any comfort, know that you will soon be unconscious and won’t feel a thing.’

The door to the interrogation chamber opened before Kai could answer. Adept Scharff entered, looking as though he had been deprived of rest for weeks. The man gave Kai a weak smile and Hiriko looked up with a concerned glance.

‘You are late,’ she said. ‘You’re never late.’

‘I slept badly. I dreamed of a figure armoured in crimson and ivory,’ said Scharff, and something about that description tugged on a thread in Kai’s mind. ‘He was calling to me.’

‘What was he saying?’ asked Hiriko.

‘I do not know, I could hear nothing of his words.’

‘Residue from the umbra perhaps?’ asked Hiriko. ‘Should I be vexed?’

Scharff shook his head. ‘No, I believe it to be bleed off from the psychic trauma caused by the arrival of Primarch Magnus. The crimson and ivory of the figure’s armour suggests a link to the Thousand Sons after all.’

Hiriko nodded. ‘That appears likely.’

Scharff took a seat beside Kai and sifted through the many chem-shunts and canula needles piercing his pallid skin. Kai couldn’t move his head to see what he was doing, but his peripheral vision was almost as clear as his binocular vision. Scharff’s eyes were ever so slightly unfocused, like a sleeper suddenly awoken from a deep slumber. The man’s hands were out of sight, but Kai heard a soft hiss as one of the drug dispensers introduced yet another foreign substance into his bloodstream.

Expecting unconsciousness, Kai was mildly surprised to feel tingling at the extremities of his limbs. His eyes flicked to Hiriko, but her beautiful green eyes were perusing lines of text scrolling down the face of a data slate. Kai looked over to Scharff, now able to move his head as whatever chemical Scharff was feeding him began to fully counteract the muscle relaxants and anaesthesias keeping him docile.