Kai bit his lip as control returned to his body. His limbs were his own again, but it was more than that. This was rejuvenation, a stimulus that was restoring his body with vitality. He wanted to ask Scharff what he was doing, but an instinct for danger warned him to keep his mouth shut. His actions couldn’t escape Hiriko’s notice for long, and the machines monitoring Kai’s vital signs registered his increased brain activity and elevated heart rate.

Hiriko glanced over at the bio-readouts with twin lines creasing the smooth skin at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes darted from readout to readout, taking in at a glance Kai’s return from the brink of dormancy.

‘Scharff? Have you seen these readings?’ she asked, putting aside the data slate and rising to her feet. When her companion didn’t answer, she finally turned to face him and the surprise in her face was compounded with irritation.

‘Sharff? What are you doing? We need Kai unconscious for this procedure.’

‘No,’ said Scharff.

‘No?’ replied Hiriko. ‘Have you lost your mind? Stop whatever it is you’re doing.’

‘I can’t do that, Adept Hiriko,’ said Scharff, in a voice that suggested he very much wished he could. Scharff’s hands danced over an exposed keypad on the black box that had been the source of so many of Kai’s nightmares recently. Hiriko circled the chair and took hold of Scharff’s arm. Kai saw her register what he had understood only moments before.

‘Adept Scharff,’ snapped Hiriko. ‘Back away from the prisoner immediately. I believe your mind to be compromised.’

Scharff shook his head, and the veins at his temples throbbed like a heart on the verge of cardiac arrest. ‘The subject must be conscious and motile if he is to leave the facility.’

‘He’s not leaving, Scharff,’ insisted Hiriko.

Kai felt the metal restraints that bound him to the chair release with a pneumatic hiss as the blare of alarm klaxons sounded throughout Khangba Marwu.

‘Oh, but he is,’ said Scharff in a voice that was not his own.

NATRAJ WAS DEAD before Tirtha hit the ground. Uttam’s guardian spear spat a bolt from the weapon beneath the blade and the man’s body blew apart into vaporised blood and bone shrapnel. Two of the nearest soldiers went down with the force of the explosion, but Uttam was already moving as alarm klaxons and warning bells filled the cavern with noise. Natraj had been compromised, and the loyalty of his fellows was likewise in doubt. For that, all would have to die.

Uttam swayed aside from a hellgun shot and rammed his spear through the chest plate of a soldier armoured in crimson battle plate. Blood sprayed the golden visor of his helm as he was cloven from hip to collarbone. A rifle barked to the side, deflected by Uttam’s shoulder guard. He spun low, his spear sweeping in a low arc that sliced through the knees of four of his attackers. A searing blast of plasma blinded him momentarily as it flashed past his helmet and he dropped into a defensive crouch, sweeping his spear around him in a spinning blur of silver and adamantium.

Shots ricocheted from the blade, but none penetrated his defences. His sight returned a moment later, and Uttam pulled his spear in tight to his body. Diving forward he rolled to his feet and another shot punched a warrior armoured in mirror-black armour from his feet. The pulped remains slammed into the wall of the nearest cellblock.

Threat protocols picked out the dangers.

Uralian Stormlord with a hellgun. Minimal threat.

Two Vitruvian Commissars, one with an ion breaker the other with a grenade launcher. Moderate threat.

Three Crimson Dragoons: webber, plasma carbine and a mass crusher. Immediate threat.

They were firing and moving, working better as attackers than they ever had as gaolers, but even six highly trained mortals with advanced weaponry were no match for a warrior of the Legio Custodes. Uttam swung his spear around and killed the dragoon armed with the mass crusher, taking his head off with a neat cut that cauterised the wound even as it decapitated. The plasma carbine fired again. Uttam deflected the shot with a horizontal slash, sending the superhot bolt into the chest of the Commissar with the grenade launcher. He fell with a strangled scream that changed to a shrill howl as the air in his lungs ignited.

A hellgun shot impacted on the side of his helmet, and Uttam spun to face the shooter, but the two surviving dragoons obscured his aim. They fired at the same time, but Uttam was already among them. His blade sliced the first soldier’s arm from his body, and the return stroke of the haft shattered every rib in his chest.

A warm mist of sticky mucus-like liquid enveloped Uttam, and he felt the rapidly solidifying web gel hardening around his armour. Anyone not blessed with the preternaturally swift reflexes of the genhanced would have been trapped completely by the web’s ultra-rapid setting, but Uttam pulled clear before the worst of the gel had done its work. His spear arm was gummed with sticky strands of the stuff, but his left was still free and lethal.

A pistoning jab caved in the front half of the web gunner’s face and a following elbow broke the neck of the plasma gunner even as he brought his recharged weapon to bear once more. That just left the grey-clad Stormlord, and Uttam jogged in the direction the man had run, shaking the last strands of dissolving web gel from his arm.

‘You have to die now,’ said Uttam, rounding the corner of the cellblock.

Shock and horror pulled him up short as he saw the Uralian Stormlord standing before an opened cell with Sumant Giri Phalguni Tirtha’s bloodstained signifier ring pressed to the locking panel. A towering figure of rage and scar tissue stood by the opened door, pumping muscles bunched and writhing beneath his tattooed skin.

‘I am going to kill you,’ said Tagore of the World Eaters. ‘Rip your spine out through your chest.’

FROM A CROSS-legged position, Atharva watched the dance of his puppets with a satisfied smile. A tug of thought brought the Uralian Stormlord running towards his cell while Tagore and Custodian Uttam faced off against one another. Time was critical. He couldn’t let the World Eater kill the Custodian or this escape would be over before it began.

His other thrall was already rousing Kai Zulane, though it was proving difficult to maintain his control over Scharff. The man had some training in resisting mental intrusion, basic training compared to that endured by adepts of the Thousand Sons, but he had natural talents that ensured his will was a slippery thing. His attempts to break Atharva’s control were amusingly naïve, but he had help from his compatriot, and she was a sly little fox.

Beads of sweat trickled down Atharva’s face like tears. Though it was an uncomplicated matter to exert control over mortals, maintaining it through psychically warded permacrete and without being able to seehis thralls took great effort.

A shape appeared at the door to his cell, a man in a grey tabard marked with lightning bolts and a crude representation of a diving raptor. The soldier’s face was pale and he wept even as his hand shuddered with the effort of trying to resist Atharva’s control.

‘Don’t try to fight it, Tejas,’ said Atharva. ‘You don’t have the strength.’

Tejas Doznya had served with the Uralian Stormlords for six years, and had been passed over for promotion three times. Too reckless, his superiors said, which, in a regiment renowned for leaping from perfectly good aircraft with nothing but a flimsy grav-chute to prevent gravity working its inevitable end result on their fragile bodies, was saying something. This secondment to the Legio Custodes was intended to temper his reckless streak with the discipline of the Emperor’s praetorians, but his resentment at being sidelined had only festered until it was practically begging to be used as leverage to open his mind to control.