"Ugh—"
Scarlet liquor, half-digested protein blocks, and meat skewers were expelled from Alexander's throat, accumulating in a foul-smelling mass on the muddy ground.
His face only regained a slight colour of blood after the freight train behind him rattled away along the dilapidated tracks.
Last night, One-Eye had bought him a cup of liquor with scarlet foam to thank him for taking the job. He then followed through on his promise and bought drinks for the Hive City workers in the bar, and Alexander himself was given plenty to drink.
God only knows how much fusel alcohol and "hard stuff" were in the alcohol One-Eye fermented in some dark sewer or cellar. On normal days, two cups would give him a headache, but after several more, Alexander felt like a naked Angron, the two Gork and Mork brothers, and the Emperor were wrestling fiercely in his mind. The pain was so intense he had to crash in the back room of the bar for the night.
The next morning, still not fully sober, he was put onto a rattling freight car by One-Eye.
This shoddy train was used to transport goods between various sectors of the Hive City. The tracks were so worn down that barely anyone maintained them, and the shaking was terrifying. All around the tracks, Hive residents had built houses, and the train was virtually passing through apartment buildings. Some people even hung their laundry on the tracks.
Several times, Alexander thought the train was about to take the residents near the track along with it to meet the Emperor.
"Ugh—"
After spitting up a few mouthfuls of bile, Alexander's throat only felt a dry, persistent nausea; he couldn't throw up anything else.
"I could actually offer you a more efficient means of transportation."
The winged figure in the white light swayed its wings and said, "I can make you soar through the sky."
"There is no sky in the Hive City—and you have that function?" Alexander gave the figure in the white light a strange look.
"Just by injecting a little of my Psychic energy into your body, I can cause you to sprout wings—"
As he spoke, the figure in the white light subtly fluttered its clean white wings behind it.
"Stop, stop, stop. That sounds like some kind of profane corruption from the Warp."
Alexander hurriedly waved his hand and refused. He had no desire to become a winged birdman. If he spontaneously grew wings, the probability of him being revered as a saint or angel was low, but the chance of being treated as a Mutant was exceedingly high.
Even in the Underhive, a place that could be described as humanity's living sewer, residents still occasionally counted their blessings when thinking of the chaos and darkness of the Undercity.
At least I wasn't born in the Undercity, and at least I have a pure human skull, not a monstrous, grotesque Mutant one.
The lowest level of the Hive City, the dark gutter beneath the Underhive, was the Undercity—the domain of Mutants, cultists, monsters, and madmen. Compared to that, the Underhive was practically paradise.
"Do you have to stand in the middle of the path with your vomit?"
A deep voice interrupted Alexander's thoughts.
Two men wearing heavy hoods stood before him.
Alexander blinked and realized that he and his mess were blocking the narrow path.
"Mong, have you forgotten the teachings of the Angel? We must maintain patience, like the God we so piously serve."
The slightly taller hooded man admonished the one who had just spoken.
Then he looked at Alexander.
Alexander stepped aside, yielding the path to the two men. The taller man slightly nodded in thanks, and the two walked past him.
Perhaps it was Alexander's imagination, but he faintly caught a sickly sweet smell of rotten fruit from the two men as they brushed past him.
He seemed to hear the low buzzing of insects, and dimly, tiny black specks like fruit flies flew past his eyes.
The white light at the corner of his eye subtly intensified, and the clean white wings gently waved twice.
These seemingly illusory images vanished from Alexander's sight.
"It was not an illusion," the winged figure in the white light said softly.
The discomfort Alexander felt immediately subsided by more than half.
He glanced towards where the two figures had disappeared but only shook his head.
Curiosity was not a good trait in this world. He had no interest in investigating the purity of others. Furthermore, those two hadn't shown any malice toward Alexander.
In his memory, Ashford had not experienced any large-scale cult incidents before the Tyranid swarm arrived.
Therefore, as long as it wasn't Genestealers, Alexander wasn't even interested in taking a second look.
He walked through the maze-like streets, following the map Lag had provided, heading towards the location where the entrance to Old Sector Eight was discovered.
In a short while, Alexander saw the so-called entrance to Old Sector Eight.
The main reason was that it was simply too conspicuous.
It was a collapsed architectural ruin that had smashed straight through the man-made ground of the Hive City, plunging into the deep chasm below.
According to the intelligence provided by One-Eye, a scavenger was collecting rubbish when he found a pull-tab can wedged between two buildings.
He yanked the pull-tab can out, completely failing to notice the warning sign next to it that read: "The nearby houses rely entirely on this can for support. Do not move."
The moment the pull-tab can was pulled out, the nearby houses instantly collapsed, violently smashing a hole in the Hive City's man-made ground and exposing the buried Old Sector Eight beneath.
To this, Alexander could only say: Just another day in the Hive, I'm used to it.
Most Hive City architecture was like a mountain of excrement code written by programmers who barely passed vocational school; it might be relying on a single bug to function. If a Hive building hasn't collapsed, it's best not to touch it. God knows if the reason it still exists is the pull-tab can right in front of you.
Alexander walked a few steps and noticed that the area around the pit was already cordoned off, seemingly by members of a nearby gang.
He shook his head, not yet eager to figure out a way in.
His head was still throbbing faintly, and his throat was surging with nausea. It would be best to find a place nearby to rest first.
Alexander knocked on the door of a simple residential building not far from the entrance to Old Sector Eight.
"Damn, who is it now? I don't let strange people spend the night here."
A string of curses sounded from inside the residential building.
With a jingle, a burly Hive worker's face, covered in flesh, peered out from the gap in the door, sizing up Alexander.
Alexander didn't speak; he just reached into his pocket.
"Listen, kid, I don't keep people in my house, go find a garbage heap for yourself—"
Alexander pushed a handful of lho-sticks into the door gap. The man's expression instantly froze, and then he forced a dazzling, albeit quite ugly, smile.
"Sir, please come right in!"