"Heh..."
The corners of Lorgar's mouth rose, slowly and unmistakably.
His golden eyes watched the Fabricator-General of Mars before him with mockery, like a raptor eyeing prey caught in its trap.
Utio's reaction—his suddenly erratic breathing, the frantically flashing red light of his mechanical eye, and the irrepressible shock and fury in his flesh-and-blood eye—had already confirmed everything.
Utio knew perfectly well what the "data" Lorgar had so casually mentioned meant: the coordinates and security vulnerabilities of the Forbidden Furnace, unauthorized reverse-engineering data on sealed STC fragments, and details of the "private projects" in his personal workshop that clearly skirted the gray areas of the Treaty of Olympus—or crossed its boundaries entirely.
Those were not merely scandals. They were fatal leverage, enough to doom him utterly in the power struggles on Mars, or even bring a purge down on him from radical factions within the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Secrets that should have been completely destroyed or sealed away with Kelbor's "failure" and "expulsion" had somehow become bargaining chips for Lorgar to toy with at leisure!
"What's wrong?" Lorgar tilted his head slightly. "Angry? Because you didn't clean house thoroughly enough back then, and left behind... a few loose ends?"
He took a small step forward, narrowing the already dangerous distance between them until he could almost smell the faint scent of lubricant from Utio's mechanical joints and overheated metal.
Lowering his voice until only the two of them could hear, he spoke unhurriedly, as though savoring fine wine:
"Thank you for your hospitality, Fabricator-General Utio. I must say..."
"The data on those 'little private projects' of yours is very, very... 'interesting.' I'll be sure to 'treasure' it," Lorgar added, twisting the knife.
"You—!"
Utio's breathing filter let out a piercing shriek, almost a roar, as air driven by his savage emotions