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THE MAN IN THE BOX The Crusade Fleet hung over Mars like a crown of steel. The Verdant Oath and her escorts gleamed in the thin light, engines humming a low, patient warning. Dust storms swirled beneath the atmosphere, curling around the temples of the Adeptus Mechanicus like smoke over fire. High Sentinel Varyn Drakus walked the bridge, reviewing manifest after manifest, fleet strength, Blade assignments, and tonnage. Every calculation balanced, every number accounted for—or so he thought. Then the arithmetic failed. “One thousand and one,” said the Chapter Master. The strategium was silent save for servitors and distant engine hums. “Read it back,” he added. The human Fleet-master hesitated. Not long enough to defy him, long enough to be afraid. “One thousand and one, High Sentinel.” Drakus’ gaze hardened. Silence settled over the strategium like a fog. “Explain.” “I cannot,” the Fleet-master admitted. “The roster is sealed above my authority. This anomaly was not present an hour ago.” Drakus extended a hand. The data-slate was placed into it with visible reluctance. He scrolled. The cogitator whined, chimes stuttering, before unlocking a partition he had never authorized. Designation: Withheld Heraldry: Absent Status: Active Classification: Brutalis-pattern Dreadnought Drakus closed the slate. “No Green Templar stands interred,” he said quietly. No one contradicted him. “Locate it,” he ordered. “Do not alert the Mechanicus. Do not log the search. If questioned, you are reconciling tonnage.” He turned back to the hololithic fleet display. “If it exists,” he said, “it exists inside my Crusade. I will know why.” ☆☆☆ The Brutalis Dreadnought waited in a lower cargo hold of the Verdant Oath itself. Its ceramite was bare, talons locked in mag-lock restraints, edges deliberately dulled. Twin multi-meltas hung inert. Strange-marked tech-priests stood watch, robes layered with sigils from dozens of hands. “Deactivate the restraint fields,” Drakus ordered. One turned, mechadendrites twitching. “Authorization is restricted. This asset is under—” Drakus drew his bolt pistol and fired. The first head ruptured against the bulkhead; the others froze, logic-loops stalling. “You are aboard a Green Templar vessel,” Drakus said evenly. “There is no higher authority present.” He fired again. And again. When the last fell, the bolt pistol locked open. Drakus glanced at it, then keyed his helm. “Techmarine Rodrigo Peral,” he said. “Report. Bring the rites for Dreadnought activation. Requisition an additional magazine for my sidearm. I am short.” ☆☆☆ Rodrigo Peral completed the final rites. Power flooded the sarcophagus. Hydraulics hissed like indrawn breath. A voice emerged—deep, vox-cracked, yet carrying the cadence of a brother long in the wars. “High Sentinel Drakus. At last.” Drakus leveled his bolt pistol. “Identify.” “I am the First. A Greyshield forged by the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl himself, of pure Vulkan gene-seed, before your Chapter received its name or its Blades. I was held in reserve—pure, untainted—until the moment came.” Greyshield? Drakus thought. Cawl’s vaults supplied our Primaris reinforcements, yes—but no record exists of a pre-founding internee. No sarcophagus was delivered with the gene-stock. This thing claims a history we never claimed. “Why were you interred?” Drakus asked. “In what battle did you fall?” The talons twitched against the restraints. “I was defeated… by a vile machine. It thought itself alive. It wore the form of Man, spoke as kin, but its heart was cold code. I struck it down, but the cost was grievous. The Mechanicus saved what remained of me. They interred me so I could serve still.” The words hung heavy. Drakus felt the chill of recognition—not of truth, but of pattern. The abomination it described mirrored the speaker too closely. “Where have you been since?” he pressed. “Name the forge where they rebuilt you. Name the Tech-Priest who sealed the rites.” A longer pause. The multi-meltas hummed faintly, as if testing power. “I… do not remember clearly. The wars blur. The void is long. I awoke here, among my brothers. That is enough.” Drakus’ gaze hardened. Vague. Evasive. No Marine forgets the forge that birthed his second life. Rodrigo Peral shifted, mechadendrites probing the hull readings. “Lord, the neural bridge reads… inconsistent. I need a second opinion. Apothecary Severo Marqués—report to the hold. Bring your auspex and bio-probes.” Severo Marqués arrived swiftly, white armor stark against the dim lumens. He knelt, connecting leads to the sarcophagus ports. Scans flickered across his narthecium display. His posture stiffened. “High Sentinel,” he said quietly, voice tight. “There are no life signs. None. The biomatter within… it does not resemble an interred brother. No secondary heart, no catalepsean node activity. It is preserved, yes—artificially—but it is wrong. Dead far longer than any Dreadnought could sustain a mind. And yet it spoke.” Drakus rested his gauntlet on the ceramite. The hull thrummed under his touch, almost expectant. “Then tell me,” he said, voice low and final, “who—or what—has been speaking through a corpse’s shell.” Drakus keyed the vox without looking away. “Peral. Prepare to vent the hold. Open the outer hatch on my mark. Eject this… thing into the void.” Silence stretched. Then the voice cracked—less lucid, more desperate. “I am Green Templar! I am the First! Forged by Cawl, pure Vulkan blood—do not cast me out!” The Dreadnought’s talons flexed hard against the mag-locks—metal groaned. “No. I have served! I purged the machine that thought itself alive! You cannot—” “You are the machine,” Drakus said evenly. “And you will serve no longer.” The restraints snapped like brittle bone. Hydraulics screamed as the Brutalis tore free, massive frame lurching forward. Twin multi-meltas whined to full charge, barrels glowing infernal red. Bolt rifles on its forearms spat a storm of mass-reactive shells, hammering crates and bulkheads into ruin. Drakus drew his power sword in a blur. The blade ignited blue-white. “Peral—hatch! Now!” He charged low, aiming for the knee joints where armor gapped for movement. Rodrigo Peral dove for the control panel, mechadendrites stabbing into access ports, overriding lockdown protocols. Warning runes flashed crimson across the deck. Apothecary Severo Marqués raised his narthecium, vox crackling urgently: “All nearby Brothers—this is Marqués! Hold breach—hostile Dreadnought asset! Reinforcements to bay seven, priority!” A squad of Chapter serfs—ship’s armsmen in void-sealed carapace, lasguns and shotguns at the ready—poured through the inner hatch at the alarm klaxons. They opened fire instinctively: las-bolts splashed harmlessly off the bare ceramite, autogun rounds pinging away like rain on adamantium. One serf screamed a Promethean litany and charged with a shock maul raised—only for a casual backhand talon to send him flying into a wall, armor crumpling. A massive talon swept in a wide arc. Marqués twisted aside, but not far enough. The claw raked across his chest plate, tearing pauldron and rib-guard in a spray of blood and ceramite shards. He staggered back, collapsing against a munitions crate, one arm dangling useless, white armor blooming red. “Marqués!” Drakus roared. Tomas Varn—barely out of his indenture, face pale under his helm—broke from the firing line and threw himself over the fallen Apothecary, lasgun blazing point-blank at the Dreadnought’s torso. The bolts did nothing. The Brutalis pivoted, one multi-melta barrel tracking. A searing beam lanced out—white-hot promethium fury that slagged Tomas Varn’s carapace in an instant. Flesh and armor vaporized in a burst of superheated steam; his scream cut short as he slumped, charred remains shielding Marqués’ body like a broken aegis. Drakus locked his mag-boots to the deck with a heavy clunk, anchoring himself against the growing pull as Peral’s overrides began cycling the outer hatch. He lunged again, power sword slashing deep into the exposed knee servo—sparks flew, fluid sprayed, the leg buckling with a tortured whine. The Dreadnought staggered, talons raking blindly. “I am one of you!” it bellowed, voice fracturing into static rage. A fist hammered down; Drakus rolled aside, the impact cratering plasteel and sending shockwaves through the hold. The remaining serfs braced against cargo stacks and support struts, gripping handholds, autoguns still barking futile defiance. Peral’s vox cut through the chaos: “Hatch at fifty percent—five seconds! Lord, the machine is fighting the cycle!” The outer hatch hissed wide. Void roared in like a living thing—sucking air, debris, loose tools toward the black maw. Mars’ ruddy glow framed the opening. Drakus deactivated one boot momentarily, lunged to Marqués’ side, and clamped a gauntlet around the Apothecary’s pauldron. With a grunt, he hauled the wounded brother back, mag-locking both boots again. Marqués groaned, secondary heart laboring, but alive. The serfs clung desperately—some to chains, others to each other—bodies straining against the gale. The Brutalis slid inexorably toward the breach, talons gouging deep furrows in the deck as it clawed for purchase. Drakus drove his sword one final time into the shoulder mount, severing multi-melta feed lines—one barrel died in a sputter of sparks. “You will serve the Chapter,” Drakus said over the howling wind, voice steady, “but not as you imagine.” The Dreadnought’s last talon slipped. It tumbled out, twisting in vacuum, ceramite glowing cherry as atmospheric friction claimed it on the long fall to Mars. Its vox screamed one final, garbled plea—“I am—!”—before silence swallowed it. The hatch sealed with a thunderous clang. Emergency repressurization hissed. Drakus knelt beside Marqués, checking the wound. Grievous, but survivable with immediate rites. The Apothecary’s narthecium auto-injected stimms. The surviving serfs slumped, breathing hard, faces ashen. One saluted weakly, blood on his gloves from a comrade. Rodrigo Peral limped over, scorched mechadendrite dangling. “The roster is correct now. One thousand. No anomalies.” Drakus stared at the sealed hatch, then at the charred outline where Tomas Varn had fallen shielding his brother. “Technology bends to the will of Man,” he murmured. “Not the other way around.” He rose. “Tend to the wounded. Secure the hold. Honor the fallen—Tomas Varn among them. The Crusade continues.” The Chapter endured—bloodied, vigilant, and one step closer to the truth of who had tried to poison them from within... And the man in the box would fight no longer.