Love Story

Granary Seven, second underground level.

[Remember this site's domain name. Taiwan Novels has a vast collection of books, ƚɯƙαɳ.ƈσɱ lets you read to your heart's content.]

This had originally been a low-temperature cold storage room for perishable meat, its four walls covered in white frost.

Rovi stood behind the one-way glass, holding a cup of cheap synthetic coffee that had long since gone cold.

He did not drink it.

He merely used the faint warmth from the cup to keep his fingers nimble.

His gaze passed through the glass.

It settled on several torture chairs in the middle of the Interrogation Room, welded together from industrial scrap.

So this is what they call an "asset inventory," Rovi silently told himself.

In his eyes, those seated there were not grotesque, terrifying aliens, but a pile of erroneous accounts awaiting clearance.

Alpha Priest was busy circling one of the captives.

The Mechanical Tentacles behind the priest danced nimbly.

Their tips were fitted with various probes and cutters that blinked red.

For this member of the Adeptus Mechanicus who had chosen to walk the path of heretical technology, the creatures before him

were no longer blasphemous things that needed purging.

Instead, they were precious "samples" yet to be entered into the database.

"Advisor, based on the preliminary dissection and examination of their physiological structures, their genetic sequences display a highly unstable sense of being 'cobbled together.'"

Alpha Priest's voice came through the speakers with a faint electronic distortion.

"It is like a clumsy programmer trying to forcibly stitch together two entirely incompatible pieces of code."

"Human genes form the base layer, while another aggressive alien gene is attempting to domineeringly overwrite it."

Rovi set down his coffee and pressed the intercom button.

"What are the specific generational traits?"

"There is a very obvious stratification." One of Alpha Priest's tentacles held up a freshly sliced tissue sample.

"The male who tried to attack the widow looked almost entirely human, apart from pale skin, the lack of body hair, and the ovipositor hidden deep in his throat. Those are traits of a highly evolved form."

"As for those others..." The priest pointed at several monsters nearby that were still hissing.

"They retained more chitinous carapace, their arms had malformed multi-jointed structures, and their intelligence was low. They were closer to beasts."

Rovi nodded.

This confirmed the knowledge in his mind regarding the Genestealer race.

This was not a simple mutation.

It was an invasion model based on a five-generation cycle.

Extremely precise.

Rovi pushed open the heavy lead door of the Interrogation Room and entered.

He stopped before a monster with three arms and a raised purple carapace on its back.

A typical third-generation hybrid.

The monster's mouth was forced open by a metal gag, leaving it able to make only muffled whimpers.

Its eyes were large, with cloudy yellow pupils full of fear.

"Release his mouth," Rovi calmly ordered.

Alpha Priest operated the console, and the metal gag sprang open.

"Hiss... for... the Star God..." the monster gasped hoarsely. "You... will all die... the Star God will descend... all living beings are equal..."

Rovi was not angered by such a cheap curse.

He pulled over a chair and sat before the monster, crossing his legs.

His posture was elegant.

As though he were listening to a subordinate deliver a work report.

"Star God?"

Rovi gave a quiet laugh.

It was the laugh of an auditor who had found an obvious logical flaw while reviewing accounts.

"You mean the masters who treat you as disposable goods, making you hide in sewers and eat rats while they feast on flesh and blood above?"

A flicker of confusion and anger passed through the monster's eyes.

"This is a trial! We are... pioneers! In the Imperium... we are monsters... trash... but in the cult... everyone is brothers and sisters... there is no discrimination... no hunger..."

"Because you're all food." Rovi cut him off coldly. "In the eyes of diners, the meat on a plate is indeed equal."

He rose to his feet.

He no longer paid any attention to this brainwashed wretch.

These lowly hybrids were merely worker ants in a vast colony.

They spent their lives struggling in the shadows of the Imperium, spat upon by society because of their deformed bodies.

To them, even the false "warmth" and "sense of belonging" offered by the Genestealer Cult were enough to make them give their lives for it.

This was the Imperium's tragedy.

And the most ironic reality in this sea of stars:

The most devout believers often threw themselves into Chaos;

while those at the bottom who yearned most for salvation became the vanguard of destruction.

Rovi walked over to the Fourth Generation Hybrid.

This captive was much easier on the eyes.

Other than his bald head and slightly pale skin, he looked like an undernourished mid-level clerk one could find anywhere.

At this moment, his limbs had been locked down with specially made alloy shackles.

The ovipositor in his throat had also been removed.

Rovi took an evidence bag from his pocket.

Inside was a bloodstained diary.

Its cover was made of cheap synthetic leather, with a crude heart drawn on it.

"This was found in your underwear." Rovi gave the bag a shake. "Your handwriting is good—neater than that of most of my scribes."

The Fourth Generation Hybrid, who had remained silent all this time with venomous eyes, began to tremble violently the instant he saw the Diary.

"Give it back..."

He forced the words out from deep in his throat.

Rovi ignored his plea.

Unhurriedly putting on a pair of white gloves, he opened the Diary, its pages worn fuzzy from repeated handling.

"...There was too much sand mixed into today's ration of Corpse Starch. Mary got an upset stomach."

"I gave her my share of filtered water. She smiled and called me a fool. In that moment, it felt as though a crack had opened in the Hive City's eternally gray-yellow sky, and a beam of light had spilled through."

Rovi's voice remained even, devoid of inflection.

"...That voice sounded in my head again. It screamed and roared, urging me to give her that kiss, urging me to plant the sacred seed in her body. It said this was a blessing, an eternal union as one."

Rovi turned the page.

His gaze paused for a moment on a section written in such scrawling handwriting that it had nearly torn through the paper.

"...I'm almost losing control. When she sleeps beside me, with her neck right by my mouth, that desire nearly burns through my reason. So I went to the maintenance room and used a soldering iron on my inner thigh."

"It hurt. It hurt so much. But pain keeps me clear-headed. As long as I can still feel pain, I am still her husband—not that monster's slave."

Rovi closed the Diary.

Rather than tossing it away like garbage, he gently placed it on the iron table.

He lifted his head, his black eyes seriously studying the twisted-faced man before him for the first time.

"Alpha told me they found twelve scars from deep burns on your inner thighs."

"And your gastric fluid test report contained excessive levels of industrial sedatives—enough to kill a person. Those were the drugs you used to resist the Hive Mind's call."

The Fourth Generation Hybrid's originally ferocious expression froze.

His entire body trembled.

Like a mollusk stripped of its shell, exposing its most vulnerable core.

"With your meager human will, you fought a tug-of-war between 'genetic instinct' and 'acquired emotion'—one you were destined to lose. For three whole years."

Rovi did not mock him.

Instead, he gave him an objective assessment.

"As a living creature, your willpower is astonishing. To keep your wife from becoming a breeding vessel, you were willing to torment yourself until you were barely recognizable."

"This isn't an act." The Fourth Generation Hybrid lowered his head, his voice filled with heartbreaking despair. "I really... love her."

"That voice told me that as long as I assimilated her, we could be together forever inside the Star God's belly..."

"But I didn't want her to become a monster. I only wanted her to be Mary—the Mary who would smile at me over half a bottle of filtered water..."

Two murky tears slid down his hairless, pallid cheeks.

"Please... don't let her see what I look like now."

"Tell her I died in a factory accident. That it was quick and clean... please..."

This humble plea plunged the Interrogation Room into a brief silence.

Even the Alpha Priest beside them, who had been calibrating the equipment, paused his Mechanical Tentacles almost imperceptibly.

Yet Rovi remained silent for only two seconds.

Then he turned around, his back to the weeping man, and said:

"Regrettably, while your soul belongs to humanity, your genes belong to Xenos."

"In biology's grand ledger, there has never been an entry called 'love.' There are only 'reproduction' and 'survival.'"

"Your love may have been real, but it was far too fragile."

"If that so-called 'Star God' sent even a slightly stronger psychic signal, your sanity would collapse in an instant."

"When that happened, all your love for her would turn into the most efficient predation and infection."

"It is a dead end written into your genes. There is no solution."

"Shut up! What do you know?!" The Fourth Generation Hybrid finally lost control. He roared, tears actually streaming from the corners of his eyes. "All you people know is exploitation! You only know how to turn people into Servitors! At least we... we have love between us!"

"Love?"

Rovi shook his head.

"In biology's ledger, that isn't called love. It's camouflage for an 'efficient reproductive strategy.'"

"You evolved human emotions only so you could hide better and assimilate more effectively."

Rovi raised a hand.

He made a slicing gesture.

The last trace of emotion vanished from his voice.

"Alpha, remove his vocal cords."

"His noise is interfering with my thoughts."

"As you command, Advisor."

Accompanied by the faint buzz of the laser cutter.

The roaring behind him abruptly stopped, leaving only heavy breathing.

Compared to the Ordo's brutal methods of dealing with hybrids.

Rovi had already been exceedingly merciful to let them live this long.

He walked to a corner of the Interrogation Room.

There was a tactical whiteboard there.

He picked up a marker and drew a pyramid on it.

"First generation: infected."

"Second generation: malformed hybrids."

"Third generation, like that multi-armed monster just now."

"Fourth generation: near-perfect human infiltrators, such as this 'great lover.'"

Rovi's marker tip jabbed heavily at the apex of the pyramid.

"So, what about the fifth generation?"

It was a perfect biological cycle.

Genestealers were like carefully designed "Trojan horses" planted within the Imperium of Man.

They began with a tiny infection.

Then, through generation after generation of reproduction, they continuously refined their genes until they produced the perfect "purebred":

Fifth Generation Genestealers.

Through the psychic network, these fifth-generation purebreds would send signals to the Tyranid fleets in the depths of the vast cosmos:

[There is food here.]

[The defenses here are weak.]

[Come and feed.]

"Advisor, what did you discover on that Fourth Generation?" The Alpha Priest asked as he wiped bodily fluid from his scalpel.

"The smell," Rovi replied flatly. "Besides the sewer stench, there was also a scent on his cuffs—something like vanilla mixed with aged Amasec Wine."

"What was it?"

"High-end 'Saint George' incense. Only nobles from the upper levels of the Hive City use it. They use it to cover the rotten stench they produce from generations of inbreeding."

Rovi's gaze sharpened as he voiced his conclusion.

"A Hybrid hiding in the sewers couldn't possibly carry this scent. Unless... he was frequently in contact with someone in a high position."

"Or rather, his 'handler' already lived in the upper district."

Rovi wrote several words on the whiteboard:

[Infiltration]

[Center of Power]

[Spy]

If even a fringe area like Granary Seven had Fourth Generation Hybrids.

Then, according to that damned breeding pyramid model.

The core of Fertility II's Hive City—the Spire where the Governor's Mansion stood.

Definitely concealed higher-ranking commanders.

Perhaps even a Genestealer Patriarch.

He might have been a department Supervisor.

He might have been the illegitimate son of some noble.

Or he might have been a deacon of the Ecclesiarchy.

They wore human skin and sat upon thrones of power.

Drawing salaries from the Imperium while secretly opening the gates for the swarm.

That explained why this planet's defense system had been so fragile.

Why Nurgle's plague had spread so quickly.

Because someone was deliberately paralyzing its immune system!

"This is fucking rotten."

Rovi angrily tossed away the marker in his hand.