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The red warning line was still flashing on the system panel. Karen was already running.
"Move!"
Horus didn't move. He turned toward the tunnel the Stealers had burrowed through the Sanctum floor, studying it like a general reading a battlefield.
"The Inquisition." The Warhawk God rolled the word around on his tongue. "What kind of Imperial institution is this? There were similar organizations during the Great Crusade, but they answered to Malcador back then. How many are coming?"
"You don't understand." Karen ran back and grabbed his cloak. It didn't budge. He switched to pushing. That didn't work either. He planted himself directly in front of Horus and craned his neck up.
"The Inquisition doesn't co to save people. Their standard procedure: step one, eliminate the Xenos. Step two, purge all witnesses. Step three, burn the entire area to ash. Hundreds of believers in that Sanctum just watched you, a three-and-a-half-ter bald giant, tear Stealers apart with your bare hands. Take a guess how the Inquisition is going to classify you."
Horus frowned.
"I am a Primarch."
"Right. Go explain that to an Inquisitor. 'Hello, I'm Horus Lupercal, the Imperium's number one traitor, but I've turned over a new leaf.' Guess whether he shoots first or calls for Exterminatus first."
The Warhawk God's frown deepened.
"We are undocunted right now!" Karen's voice shot up a full octave. "No Legion, no warships, no logistics. Just one bare-chested wounded man! Think bigger. Staying alive is winning."
3 seconds.
Horus was silent for 3 full seconds.
Emotions warred across that sharply defined face.
Pride. Reluctance. Reason. In the end, reason won by a narrow margin.
"Go."
One word, forced out through gritted teeth.
Karen thought, Finally. You stubborn bastard.
They slipped into the mid-level freight passage through the drainage ditch running along the Sanctum's outer wall.
This passage was the Hive City's main artery for ammunition and industrial raw materials, wide enough that Horus didn't have to hunch. Red ergency lights flickered. The air was thick with ozone and sothing burnt. The ventilation system above their heads scread.
Karen walked point, stopping at every junction to check the tracking countdown on the system panel.
9 minutes.
7 minutes.
5 minutes.
At the fourth junction, he stopped.
50 ters ahead, a hastily erected barricade blocked the passage.
2 silhouettes stood behind it. Their black Storm Armor swallowed most of the light, leaving only the T-shaped red visor slits on their faceplates.
Inquisition Stormtroopers.
One of them held a device that emitted a steady high-frequency whine. A Psy-Detector, scanning every living thing that passed.
Karen yanked Horus into a maintenance alcove.
"Damn. Faster than expected." He cursed under his breath and pulled up the System Shop.
[Psy-Disruption Beacon (Disposable)]: Emits false psychic signals, capable of diverting tracking protocols in a designated direction. Effective duration: 15 minutes. Price: 3,000 points.
Buy.
A thumb-sized tal clasp dropped into his palm. Karen peered out and swept both sides of the passage. His eyes locked onto a mutated giant rat gnawing at cable insulation near the base of the wall.
Half a ter long. Tail thicker than Karen's arm. Fist-sized tumors bulging under its fur.
Karen pressed the beacon onto a scrap of ration debris and slid it toward the rat.
The rat snatched up the scrap. The beacon lodged itself into the folds of skin at its neck. Karen grabbed an iron pipe off the ground and slamd it against the floor behind the rat.
CLANG!
The rat bolted, dragging its half-ter tail as it fled in the opposite direction.
5 seconds later, the Psy-Detector's whine behind the barricade lurched into a different pitch.
"Signal deviation! Northwest, moving fast!"
The 2 Stormtroopers exchanged a glance and took off running.
Karen grabbed Horus by the cloak and hauled him through the empty barricade. The sheer absurdity of a Primarch being dragged along by a mortal hung in the air between them. Horus said nothing.
Out of the freight passage, they slipped into the gap between the Hive City's mid and lower layers.
The Grey Zone.
No administrative designation. No jurisdiction. No one who claid it.
Shacks of corrugated iron and plastic sheeting were stacked layer upon layer, piled crookedly all the way up to the ceiling. Underfoot was nothing but compacted garbage. Mutated fungi sprouted from every crack in the walls, their fluorescent green caps giving off a faint glow.
That was the Grey Zone's only light.
The air was damp and close. Boiled synthetic protein and industrial waste mingled into sothing that could turn a normal person's stomach inside out.
Horus stopped in front of one of the iron shacks.
The door was open. An old woman sat on a tattered mattress, a little boy cradled in her arms. The boy was so thin his bones showed through his skin.
He was already asleep. She was still murmuring.
"Emperor above, grant us tomorrow's sustenance... Emperor above, protect our souls..."
Her voice was dry and cracked, like wind moving across rusted iron.
Horus stood in the doorway and didn't move.
Karen didn't rush him.
3 seconds.
The Warhawk God shifted his gaze and walked on. Seven or eight steps later, his voice dropped so low it was barely there.
"Father truly never imagined being prayed to like this."
A pause.
"But if these prayers help them survive tonight, then let them pray."
Karen glanced at him and said nothing.
But he filed those words away. This was the first ti Horus hadn't gotten angry at the Imperial Cult.
The Grey Zone ended at a structural bridge.
Half a bridge.
The middle section had collapsed. The gap was at least 15 ters wide. Below was an industrial wastewater pool with no visible bottom, green toxic vapor rising in slow plus that stung the eyes. On the other side was the abandoned industrial zone of the lower layer. Cross it, and they were safe.
Karen lay flat at the edge of the break, looked down, and pulled back.
"Can't jump it. You can. I can't."
He was still working through options when a voice ca from behind.
Very close.
"In the Emperor's na."
Karen felt cold at the back of his skull.
The muzzle of a hellpistol. Less than 20 centiters from his head.
"Xenos and their collaborators are to be executed on the spot."
An Inquisition operative. Neither of them had heard him coming.
All the blood in Karen's body went cold.
In the instant before the gun fired—
Horus moved.
Not toward the operative.
His right fist drove into the bridge's load-bearing pillar.
The reinforced concrete column, 1.2 ters in diater, snapped in half. The upper section toppled backward. Then the chain reaction: 3 floors of slabs, drainage pipes, ventilation ducts, all of it coming down at once.
The ceiling fell.
Literally.
An avalanche of rubble, rebar, and shattered pipe crashed down between them and the operative, throwing up a wall of wreckage 3 ters thick.
The gunshot was buried on the other side. The bullet disappeared into the debris.
The blast wave knocked Karen off his feet. He scrambled up covered in dust, stared at the still-expanding collapse zone, and his mouth twitched.
"You tore down their building! That's more conspicuous than the Inquisition!"
Horus shook the concrete dust off his knuckles. His tone was unreasonably calm.
"I'm simply not yet accustod to fleeing."
He bent down and scooped Karen up by the back of his collar with one hand.
Karen didn't even get the words "what are you doing" out before he was tucked under the Primarch's arm.
Horus took 3 steps back. Ran. Jumped.
15 ters of open air. Toxic vapor in their faces.
He landed on the other side and the ground cratered half a ter deep. Karen's internal organs were jolted so hard they nearly ca out of his mouth.
"Put DOWN!"
Horus set him on the ground. Karen braced his hands on his knees and dry-heaved twice. Then he straightened up and ran.
"Don't just stand there. That operative isn't dead. He'll call for backup!"
15 more minutes of running. 3 abandoned blast doors. Then they were inside a derelict chanicus shrine.
Lead walls half a ter thick, their surface carved with faded cogwheel heraldry. A ruined forge sat in the corner, surrounded by rusted chanical arm parts and withered sacred oil bottles. Overhead, a single ventilation opening the size of a palm. The low-frequency rumble of the distant circulation system filtered in through that small hole.
The walls blocked psy-scans. This was one of the few safehouses Karen had mapped out across 3 months of scavenging.
He collapsed onto the floor and pulled up the system panel.
Points: 91,900.
Psy-tracking signal status: Target lost.
He closed his eyes and let out a long breath.
Horus sat down against the ruined forge. The iron shell still held a trace of warmth against his bare back.
Silence.
"Your judgnt far exceeds that of an ordinary mortal." Horus spoke without any pleasantry in it. "That disruption beacon, 3 seconds later and we would have been surrounded."
"Survival is carved out by staying low, not by fighting." Karen waved a hand. "You'll understand eventually."
Horus didn't respond.
But his gaze moved from Karen's face to the ltapistol holstered at his waist.
Yesterday it was the repair solution. Then the projector. The stealth cloak. Today, a psy-disruption beacon and a pistol.
All of it appearing out of thin air.
The Primarch's mind was running at full speed.
The timing of each item's appearance. Karen's hand movents in those monts. The brief loss of focus in his eyes. Every detail was categorized, archived, cross-referenced.
So kind of external supply system. Non-psychic in origin. Trigger conditions linked to Karen's conscious activity.
Horus didn't ask.
Not because he didn't want to.
The timing wasn't right.
This mortal had saved his life. And when he'd wanted to end it, this sa mortal had lunged forward, hung off his arm, and called him a coward.
Trust requires ti.
The reverse was equally true.
The Warhawk God closed his eyes and pressed every question down into the deepest cabinet of his mory palace.
Locked.
But he didn't throw away the key.
Karen leaned against the wall and stared at the palm-sized ventilation opening in the ceiling.
The operative wasn't dead.
That man would report it. "Suspected superhuman biological entity." Those words alone were enough for the Ordo Xenos to raise the search level to maximum.
Next ti, it wouldn't be a few advance operatives.
It would be the Inquisitor himself.
Running wouldn't hold forever.
He needed to get Horus an identity. Or find sowhere even the Inquisition wouldn't casually reach into.
Was there such a place on this planet?
There was.
The underground black market.
That lawless territory where even the planetary governor looked the other way.
Karen rolled over and pulled the cloak tighter.
"Tomorrow we go to the black market," he muttered.
"The black market?"
"Yeah. If we don't solve your identity problem, we're at on the chopping block. We can't spend every day getting chased."
Horus didn't answer.
Then, after a mont, Karen heard a soft laugh.
"The Dao of Hiding." The Warhawk God turned the phrase over. "A novel expression."
"That's because you've always marched in with a hundred thousand troops at your back. You've never had to play the broke-man ga."
"Are you questioning my résumé?" A rare ease crept into Horus's deep voice. "Before my father found , on my howorld of Cthonia, I was just a small-ti gangster too."
➤ Next: Horus: What Do You an, Second Imperium?
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