"I thought the damn collar was broken."
Qin Mo raised his hand to his neck. Static crawled over his fingers, faint blue-white sparks snapping between skin and metal. A moment later, fire ignited at his fingertips, not wild, not explosive, but focused into a narrow, disciplined tongue of heat.
The psy-dampening collar encasing his throat glowed dull red, then orange, then white. Its engraved wards flared in protest. The silvered pins along its inner rim hissed as their inlaid circuitry failed. The smell of scorched metal mixed with old sweat and battlefield smoke.
Then the restraint softened, buckled, and collapsed into slag at his feet.
He should have felt relief. Instead, cold dread coiled in his gut.
Fighting under psychic suppression should have been impossible. A sanctioned psyker might force a flicker through a damaged inhibitor. A powerful one might overload a cheap restraint and die for the effort. But this had not been a flicker. Qin Mo had burned hybrids to ash, torn tanks open, redirected shrapnel, and bent the battlefield around himself while the collar was still locked around his throat.
The device had not merely failed to stop him. It had barely mattered.
The collar was no mere restraint. It was a Witch-Cage, a crude local version of the tools used to sever a psyker's reach toward the Immaterium. It should have choked off the soul's grasp on the Warp, leaving him helpless, blind, and ordinary.
And yet, he had wielded fire and lightning, manipulated gravity, forced metal to obey him, and survived damage that should have left him as meat scattered across a trench wall.
That shouldn't be possible.
There were only two explanations. Either his abilities didn't originate from the Warp, or the collar simply wasn't strong enough to suppress them.
Neither possibility comforted him. One meant he was an unknown quantity in a universe that exterminated unknown quantities as a matter of policy. The other meant he was a psyker so far beyond local containment that every sane Imperial authority would either chain him to a Black Ship or order artillery on his coordinates.
A cold realization settled over him, seeping into his bones like winter frost.
Had he been captured by the Imperium and thrown onto a Black Ship, he would have had his answer. The Sisters of Silence, nulls who radiated anathema to psychic energy, would have revealed the truth. If they could suppress him, then his power was psychic in nature, and the collar was merely defective. If they couldn't…
Then his abilities were something else entirely.
Qin Mo shuddered.
No, he had no desire to test that theory.
The Black Ships did not ferry their cargo to answers. They carried screaming holds full of souls toward sanctioning chambers, battlefield assignments, the Astronomican, and the Golden Throne's endless hunger. Curiosity was useful. Curiosity also got people vivisected by the Inquisition.
He looked down at the slagged collar. A few melted ward-marks still glowed faintly before cooling into dead metal.
"Congratulations," he muttered under his breath. "You were useless and terrifying. Very on-brand."
....
"You alright?" Grey's voice cut through his thoughts.
"I'm fine." Qin Mo shook himself free of speculation, refocusing on their predicament.
Fine was a generous word. His clothes were torn, his skin was streaked with soot and drying blood, and every surviving soldier nearby was staring at him with the careful fear men reserved for unexploded shells. But he was upright, conscious, and not currently on fire. In the Underhive, that counted.
His gaze swept over the battered remnants of their squad. Dust swirled in shafts of pale light filtering through the collapsed ceiling, illuminating torn banners and broken armor scattered across the rubble. The air was thick with pulverized ferrocrete, hot metal, spent propellant, and the sour stink of ruptured bodies. Somewhere deeper in the ruins, ammunition cooked off in slow, irregular pops.
"First, we need to move. After that, we have two choices: either we take the tunnels up to the Lower Hive, or we stay and keep fighting."
A heavy silence fell over the group.
They all understood what staying meant.
Death.
Not the clean kind spoken of in sermons. Not martyrdom with banners overhead and priests promising glory. Staying meant bleeding out in a maintenance tunnel, being dragged screaming into cult lines, or dying beneath collapsing hive-metal while no one above ever learned their names.
The front lines were crumbling, and the rebels would be upon them soon. The Lower Hive was the logical escape route. But logic didn't always align with reality.
"If we try to leave…" Grey's expression darkened. He glanced toward the service tunnel leading upward, as if expecting a commissar's firing squad to step out of the shadows. "Will the friendlies guarding the tunnel exits even let us through?"
Qin Mo exhaled sharply. "The Hive is desperate for manpower, but deserters from the Underhive are likely executed as examples. That's just my assumption, though. I don't know for sure."
Doubt spread among them like a plague.
They had seen the bodies of deserters before, strung up on hive walls, left as a warning. Escape might mean survival… or a las-bolt to the skull.
For some of them, it would be worse than death. A dead soldier could be recorded as fallen in service. A deserter could doom his family to ration cuts, labor penalties, confiscation, or whatever punishment a clerk with a stamp and no mercy decided was administratively convenient.
Grey was the first to break the silence. He raised his hand. "I have family. If I get executed, they'll suffer for it. I have to stay."
"I'll stay too," another soldier muttered. His voice was hoarse from smoke, but steady. "If I die fighting, at least my wife and daughter will get a widow's pension. If I run… they'll get nothing but shame."
"I don't have family," another spoke, his fists clenching. "I just want to kill more traitors. For the Emperor! For the Master of Mankind!"
The words sounded half like faith and half like a man trying to give his terror somewhere useful to go.
One by one, those who chose to remain raised their hands, five in total.
The remaining thirteen stayed quiet, their silence speaking louder than words.
Some looked ashamed. Some looked relieved. One man stared at the floor, lips moving silently around a prayer he did not dare speak aloud. None of them looked like cowards. They looked like exhausted men who had found the edge of what duty could demand from them and discovered they had already crossed it hours ago.
Qin Mo nodded. "Then go. But leave your weapons and ammunition behind. I need them."
There was a moment of hesitation, but only a moment.
In another regiment, another officer might have screamed treason and shot the first man who moved. Qin Mo did not. He was not their captain. He was barely even a soldier. He was a convict with burned-off restraints and too much power, standing in a ruin and asking men to choose how they wanted to risk death.
Then, in a gesture that had never been offered to their officers or noble commanders, the deserters saluted him in the manner of the Aquila.
He was a convict. And yet, without him, none of them would have survived long enough to make this choice.
"We'll leave our weapons," one of them said. "And our rations and water, too."
"May the Emperor watch over you, loyal warriors."
The words were clumsy, almost embarrassed, but sincere.
Lasguns, charge packs, and ammunition were stacked neatly. Canteens and ration packs followed. One soldier stripped off his jacket and boots, offering them to Qin Mo, whose own uniform hung in tatters, little more than bloodstained rags.
Qin Mo accepted them without ceremony. The boots were too large, the jacket smelled of sweat and recycled smoke, and both were the finest gifts he had received since waking in this universe.
Then, without another word, the thirteen turned and walked away, casting glances back with every step. Their boots crunched softly over the broken ground, each retreating figure swallowed by the deepening shadows.
Six remained.
Qin Mo watched until the last deserter vanished around a bend in the tunnel. He did not bless them again. He did not condemn them either. The Underhive would decide whether mercy or punishment found them first.
"What now?" Grey asked, his voice quieter now that their numbers had thinned. "Do we go hunting for rebels, or do we hold this position?"
"Staying put isn't an option," Qin Mo replied. "The explosion that saved us was likely caused by friendly forces. We need to find them and link up."
He looked toward the direction of the blast. The rubble pattern, scorch marks, and collapsed support beams suggested heavy ordnance or an internal detonation. Friendly fire was possible. So was a munitions dump cooking off. So was another part of the line dying loudly enough to sound like rescue.
None of the possibilities were good. One of them might still be useful.
He dropped to the ground, crossing his legs as he dismantled a lasgun with swift, practiced motions. "But first, I need to build something."
Grey frowned, watching as Qin Mo stripped the weapon down to its electronic components. His fingers, still smoldering with residual flame, melted the casing with precise heat.
The others gathered around, equally bewildered.
"Don't just stand there," Qin Mo ordered. "Two of you, keep watch. The rest, gather every scrap of metal and electronics you can find."
"Yes, sir."
The answer came instantly. That surprised them as much as it surprised Qin Mo. A few minutes ago, half the squad had been deciding whether to desert. Now the survivors moved like men grateful that someone was giving orders simple enough to obey.
Grey nodded, signaling another soldier to join him on lookout while the rest scoured the battlefield for salvage.
....
Thirty minutes later
A pile of disassembled weapons, scavenged electronics, and jagged scrap metal lay before Qin Mo.
The salvage was ugly, mismatched, and contaminated with half the Underhive. Lasgun regulators lay beside cracked auspex lenses, vox-circuitry, spent charge connectors, armor buckles, ration tin lids, broken suspensor fittings, stripped wiring, and a fist-sized lump of machine housing still wet with oil. Someone had dragged over a section of Chimera internal plating with three deep gouges torn through it.
"Did you guys seriously take apart Captain Burr's Chimera?" Qin Mo asked without looking up.
"Yes," one soldier admitted. He sounded both guilty and proud. "I wanted to fix it, but the engine had three claw marks gouged through the core."
"Then it's junk," Qin Mo muttered, already engrossed in his work.
Technically, it was not junk. In Imperial terms, it was a blessed armored carrier that should have been mourned over by an Enginseer, surrounded by incense, and subjected to three hours of binharic complaint before anyone dared remove a panel.
In practical terms, it was a dead box full of useful parts.
The others watched in fascination as he molded steel with his bare hands. The metal softened as if it had turned to clay, shifting under his will before cooling into new shapes.
Two thin rods hovered beside him, held aloft by an unseen force, acting as precise tools for fine adjustments.
Stripped wires twisted and reconnected seamlessly, circuits repairing themselves in a process that seemed almost unnatural.
Qin Mo did not pray over the machine spirit. He did not anoint anything with oil. He did, however, mutter threats at a damaged regulator until the contacts aligned properly, which was probably close enough by Underhive standards.
Piece by piece, a backpack-like device took shape.
It was not elegant. A proper version would have been compact, sealed, and manufactured with tolerances measured in microns. This one had a frame of scavenged steel, power couplings cannibalized from lasguns, heat sinks bolted onto the sides like tumors, and a crude control core protected by overlapping plates. It looked like something a desperate man had built in a trench because that was exactly what it was.
Grey finally broke the silence. "What the hell is that? A backpack?"
"Put it on."
Grey hesitated before slipping the device over his shoulders. He staggered under the sudden weight. "Holy shit, this thing is heavy!"
Qin Mo smirked. "It's a personal gravity shield. It'll stop solid projectiles."
Grey stared at him. "A what?"
Instead of answering, Qin Mo casually flicked a grenade toward him.
Grey barely had time to register what was happening before the pin popped free.
"Get down!" someone shouted.
Everyone except Qin Mo hit the dirt.
The grenade detonated.
The blast cracked through the ruin. Shrapnel burst outward in a lethal sphere, then dropped. Not slowed. Not deflected in a neat halo. Dropped, as if every fragment had suddenly remembered it was supposed to fall and had been given far too much gravity to do it with.
Metal shards slammed into the ground around Grey's boots, punching little craters into dust and ferrocrete. The pressure wave still shoved him backward, and he nearly fell on his ass, but nothing pierced him.
Slowly, the soldiers lifted their heads.
A pile of twisted metal shards lay harmlessly around Grey's feet.
"As you can see, it protects against kinetic attacks," Qin Mo said, completely unfazed. "It runs on lasgun charge packs. Each one gives you about ten minutes of protection."
There was no pride in his voice. No boast. He spoke as if crafting a personal gravity shield was nothing more than an idle pastime.
Grey took a deep breath. "And what about lasguns?"
"A lasbolt will burn straight through you and the shield," Qin Mo admitted. "The field can distort heat transfer and scatter part of the beam path, but this version doesn't have the stability or power density to stop coherent energy properly. Don't stand in front of lasfire and expect a miracle."
Grey blinked. "So bullets bad. Lasguns worse. Got it."
"But most of the rebels are using scavenged solid-projectile firearms," Qin Mo continued. "Autoguns, stubbers, mining shotguns, thrown scrap, grenade fragments. Against those, this buys time."
"Stopping bullets is good enough," Grey muttered, still shaken.
"In war, better gear is never just 'good enough,'" Qin Mo corrected, already working on the next shield. "Now, send out scouts. Find any surviving friendlies. If we locate them, we move immediately."
The soldiers snapped to attention, their hesitation gone.
Grey adjusted the heavy frame on his back and looked down at the dead grenade fragments around his boots. His fear had not vanished. None of theirs had. But fear with equipment, orders, and a direction became something men could use.
Qin Mo worked.
The shield hummed.
Somewhere beyond the ruined chamber, gunfire echoed through the Underhive tunnels. The war had not paused for them. It had only given them thirty minutes to steal a breath, bury nothing, and turn wreckage into a chance.
War waited.