It was a cathedral of flesh. A single immense xenos organism—if it could be called that—filled the hive’s central geothermal shaft. It had no head, no limbs, no recognisable organs. It was a neural matrix : a continent-sized brain made of woven nerve-cords, each one terminating in a human skull. Thousands of skulls. Hundreds of thousands. All fused by crystal, all still alive—their eyes moving, jaws clacking silently.
Zephyr was unscathed. But when he removed his glove, his right hand bore a single cerulean vein, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of a dead gravity signal.
Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Lord Helix Vaun, a gaunt man whose left arm had been replaced with a crystalline augmetic that wept slow oil, convened his Deathwatch kill team within the hour.
“They’re learning,” Vorek said, his voice calm even as a shard lodged in his chest. “The neural matrix is updating their combat protocols in real time.” Warhammer 40K - Deathwatch - Mark Of The Xenos.pdf
“The Mark of the Xenos is not a brand,” he told them, his voice like grinding slate. “It is a transformation. On Serekh Secundus, something is rewriting flesh into a weapon. You will identify it. You will contain it. You will not—under any edict—allow it to touch your bare skin.”
“No plan. Just die loud.”
They crashed into the thrall horde like a meteor. Karn’s claws bisected three at once. Xavian’s chainsword whined as it chewed through crystal-ribcages. Vorek’s bionic arm transformed into a melta-cutter, vaporising thralls in white-hot arcs. It was a cathedral of flesh
From every spire, every collapsed hab-unit, every shadow, more of them emerged. Hundreds. Thousands. A tide of ivory flesh and cerulean veins.
“Fifteen minutes is too long. The thralls will overrun you in five.”
“Contact front!” Aldric roared. “For the Emperor, purge them!” It was a neural matrix : a continent-sized
“The mark of the xenos,” he said quietly.
He made it three hundred metres before the singularity tore open. The gravity-crystal, the neural matrix, the thousand-year harvest of human skulls—all of it collapsed into a fist-sized point of impossible darkness, then vanished with a thunderclap that shattered every crystal spire on Serekh Secundus.
He found the .
It worked. The thralls dropped mid-stride, their cerulean veins flickering. Karn carved through the remaining dozens like scythes through wheat.
The crystal screamed. Not audibly, but psychically. Every human skull in the matrix opened its mouth in a silent wail. The thralls on the surface froze, twitching.