He is an eighteen-year-old killer, and the sniper rifle is very heavy in his hands.
He had watched for a long, long time, he had been trained for this, he knew how to slow his heartbeat, how to control his breathing and the natural tremors of his body until his whole body was as still as a statue.
Predator.
prey.
His mind gradually became cold, his attention was absolutely concentrated, and the prayers he recited silently in his heart became the only way to see the world.
Predator.
prey.
With no other thoughts besides this, he pulled the trigger, and two thousand meters away, a life passed away.
hunter.
The hunted.
"Target eliminated."
He said this to himself.
——————
He was a twenty-year-old man sleeping on the same operating table as before.
The chemicals coursing through his veins lulled him into sleep, and he dreamed of the scene again.
The mind is suspended in silence and enters the dreamland of two worlds.
A world where his brain was sleeping, and his thoughts were rolling and echoing in compressed memories.
In another world, his eyes were observing the intersection of the corridors, but his thoughts were beating slowly, like his blood pulse.
His eyes were open, and his pupils were zooming and trembling as if he saw something moving in front of him, but there was nothing in front of him, only three long, dark corridors.
He had been like this for fifty-six hours, more than half awake and the remaining half half-awake and in the sleep he could now control.
In the real world, needles and medical probes drilled into the flesh and blood on his back, injecting various liquids directly into his spine.
He coughed, his sleeping body reacting to the intrusion of a foreign object. The acidic saliva spurted from his mouth hissed where it landed, etching several deep pits into the tiled floor.
When he woke up, it was several days later.
He could feel the slots that lined his spine, the scars, the metallic nodules...
He knew that in a universe with only endless war, only by approaching death infinitely could one achieve final sanctification.
The gray-eyed pharmacist looked at him like an artist contemplating his most perfect work, and for the first time he smiled from the bottom of his heart.
——————
He was a new recruit looking into his own eyes.
He stood naked in a dark room, standing in a row with a dozen other people. The other newcomers beside him were also naked, and their pale skin was full of traces of surgery.
Eros is a forgotten concept that does not exist in his mind, and it is just one of the tens of thousands of human desires abandoned by his consciousness.
He could no longer remember his parents' faces. He only remembered his own name because the instructors of the Legion never changed his name.
He stared at the pair of eyes that were now his, and the pair of deep, slanted "eyes" stared back at him - a pair of eyes embedded in the helmet whose visor was painted gray-white.
When he looked at the battle helmet that was as white as a skull, the helmet was also looking at him with its dark reflection.
This is his face now.
Through these eyes, he will see the entire Milky Way.
Through this helmet he would roar with fury at those traitors and xenos who dared to defy the Emperor.
"You are Soshyan Alexei."
A Chapter instructor said to him.
"Belongs to the Seventh Company."
——————
He is a champion who lives to win.
"Status confirmation——"
Soshyan sent a message to two other people through the communicator.
"Intersection 21 is stable, not moving, just like before."
"They're right outside."
Axel, who was in the same team, responded like this, and his voice turned into a low roar in the communication.
"They are coming. Didn't the rotten hole in the hive where you were born teach you to be patient?"
"Oh, it taught me, but somehow it didn't teach me to enjoy floating in a vacuum waiting for unknown enemies to appear. Besides, the place I live in is not a hive."
There was not much extra emotion in Soshiyang's voice, but the other party laughed, and the sound echoed in the silence like a rapid barking.
"It won't end like this-"
The cautious tone of another person in the team came. His name was Nad. He came from the same planet as Soshyan and was also a recruit from the same group.
"If we are here, the enemy is also here."
“What if that’s not what’s being taught?”
As Soshiyang said, he changed his body shape and stared into one of the three passages.
Several cables hung down from the cocked inspection box cover, and the pipes leaked from the protective tube like severed blood vessels. They were in a dangerous area in a transport ship that was opened and parked in the void, and there were other reconnaissance teams scattered. Throughout the hull, each has a different mission, but no one knows where the other squads are or the details of their mission.
Soshyan, Axel, and Nad were tasked with monitoring a dead-end passage, all wearing only a spacesuit and armed with a bolter and chainsword.
"What do you mean?"
Axey growled, and Soshyan took a careful breath before answering. This young man could change from cheerful and generous to furious in a heartbeat. All the changes to his mind and body were not erased. This characteristic made his temper even more obvious.
"What if waiting is the wrong thing to do? What if there's no danger? The only thing trapping us here is that we think there's a threat."
"No, Soshyan."
Nad retorted, before Axel could speak.
"We have a mission, and we're going to see it done."
"But what is the mission?"
Still asking questions, Soshyan turned to look into the second passage, and the movement brought him down so that he had to hold on to the safety rope connecting him to the wall to steady himself.
That second channel is empty, just like the first one.
"What if we don't understand it correctly?"
"this……"
Nad still wanted to speak, but was interrupted by Axe's intervention.
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that maybe there are no enemies here. They may be somewhere else. Because we are standing here, there is a bitter fighting elsewhere."
"This is due to duty, not fear."
"Yeah?"
Soshyan asked, not having time to control himself, but he regretted it when the words blurted out.
He noticed that this was happening more and more, that emotion and impatience would suddenly appear out of nowhere, as if there was another person living in his mind, someone who was cold and impatient. He had no clue as to why.
"I'm very sorry……"
"okay."
Nad's voice was very calm, and he didn't seem to have such trouble.
"We're brothers, you don't have to say anything more, just don't say that again."
Brother, the word was still as foreign to his world as the organs added to his body.
——————
He is a demigod, a complete superman, ageless and immortal.
He looked at the surface of the world through the crimson mirror, a series of data represented by sharp, clear white runes scrolling on his retinas, and he watched the lives of his brothers displayed in the form of numbers. , he felt the temperature outside the sealed armor, and he watched the target locking frame flash as his eyes moved.
He felt the tightness in his hand, the one clutching his bolter, as he tried to follow each target lock.
The residual ammunition counter lets him know how many enemies have died today.
The aliens fell around him.
Ten, a hundred, a thousand, his brothers fought their way through this garbage dump-like city.
"Bros!"
When he shouted this word, he fired a burst of explosive shells into each passage, which was enough to shatter the arms of ordinary people, but the recoil was as light as a feather in his hands.
"I'll be at your place soon."
Axey was roaring.
"I'm moving towards you!"
Nad's voice was filled with electromagnetic explosions.
He fired again, cycling from shot to shot, and he saw the enemies too.
They crawled on the wall like spiders, with linked metal limbs replacing the arms and legs. The head was raised on the neck made of steel rings. The weapon bay was connected from the back of the spine to a device like a scorpion tail, and There are dozens of them.
"I see you!"
Axel's voice came.
"I have some targets."
The flash of firing lit up the distant passage, flickering as shrapnel tore through the air.
Soshyan also fired again, firing three rounds. Four balls of metal and flesh exploded. He glanced over his shoulder. Axel was ten meters away, stuck between the wall and a group of machines. He moved toward the alien closest to Soshyan. They were on fire.
"Hey!"
He was still in the mood to shout through communications between battles.
"At least we found the enemy this time."
Soshyan also laughed.
Bolters roared, chainswords roared, and in the chorus of battle noises, the battle-brothers roared their fury at the enemy through the loudspeakers in their helmets.
The sound is always the same.
The bolters roared, the chainswords roared, and the Astartes shouted their rage.
He shouted the words that were engraved in the deepest part of his brain, the words that would soon become the value of his life to him.
And now, he and his brothers were shouting loudly, words that he had not thought about, words that he had not felt.
For the Emperor!
