40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 718 11. Joint Consultation (I)

The lights in the operating room were a pale and steady color, bright but not blinding. The pungent smell of disinfectant and the large medical arms reflecting the bright lights worked hand in hand to make the atmosphere even colder.

A child was lying on the iron bed in the middle of the room, with his neck, hands and feet tied up. Various medicines were injected directly into his body through syringes extending from medical arms.

His eyes were already wide open to the limit, and his expression was extremely painful—and all this was due to his now wide-open chest.
"You're calm," Jairzinho Guzman told the shaking boy. "Keep it together, okay? I promise you this won't last long."

The boy uttered two short muffled groans in response. The medical officer raised his hand silently and tapped the operating panel of the medical arm a few times. A new injection was pushed into the boy's vein to help him stop the bleeding better.

Of course, its effect might not be very good for the boy's current body, but fortunately, the medical officer did not need too long.

He leaned down, approached the boy, and carefully observed the gene seed in his chest that had not yet fully grown, his brows furrowed.

Five minutes later, he left the operating room covered in blood.
Any major surgical operation is like this, with blood flying everywhere, flesh shredded and bones broken, and the operating table will be as bloody as a slaughterhouse, sometimes even worse - after all, the livestock in the slaughterhouse are drained of blood in advance.

Without the flying blood, the large chunks of steaming meat and pale bones would not be so impactful.

"What's going on?" asked Saul Tarvitz.

"Very good, just like I said four days ago, he is a natural son of the emperor." Guzman replied with a frown.

"But you don't look like you think that's a good thing."

"No, I'm just worried about him."

As Guzman spoke, he took off his gloves and coat and threw them all into the waste disposal pool nearby. The machinery inside began to hum, and flames spewed out, and in a flash, they were completely destroyed.

"Worry?"

"Yes, Chapter Master Tarvitz. Considering what I am about to do to him, I cannot help but worry about his life out of my duty as a medical officer."

His answer was serious and earnest, but Saul Tarvitz lowered his head. He understood what Jairzinho Guzman was talking about - the day after the conversation four days ago, the Eighth Army's medical officer proposed a completely new idea.

In that brief meeting, he described his current form of existence to them in an extremely rational tone.
He said frankly that he was actually a very special entity in the warp now. This specialness was provided by certain events during the Great Crusade and his own profession, and was extremely widely spread after his "death".

Coupled with the tireless promotion over the years by the 'Jairzinho Guzmán Medical Association', an organization that now spans the empire, he had no choice but to gain control of some power that did not belong to him.

But he couldn't describe this power in complete and detailed language, and could only roughly express it as 'healing' - "I don't think it can directly solve the problem of the Third Legion. But I think it can at least relieve some of the child's pain."

Fulgrim agreed to his idea on the spot and gave him high authority to support him. However, Saul Tarvitz knew that it would take great effort and cost to turn his ideas into reality.
"When are you going to start?" he asked.

"A week later," Guzman said. "Then the great sage Belisarius Cawl should arrive. My instructor told me that this sage has some skills that may help us on this rugged and difficult road."

Tarvitz looked at him deeply, turned around, and strode forward, but stopped when he was about to leave the medical hall.

"If you need anything, call me directly."
-
Anazion Sosa Cole slowly opened his eyes, feeling cold, heavy, and a sense of sadness that came from nowhere. He pursed his lavender lips out of habit, twisting them into a sullen look again.

He sat up and wanted to stand up, but he put his legs back and sat cross-legged. He raised his hands and covered his pale face with those broad hands that contained amazing strength.

Time passed little by little, and the old-fashioned clock carefully made by Belisarius Cole was chiming on the wall, but Anazion still did not move. He seemed to be dead, and although he was still breathing, there was no longer any warm air coming out of his nose.

His shoulders slumped down so much that he sat in a strangely stiff and numb manner.
I don't know how long it took before he finally came back to life.

His palm slid down, his fingers passed through his eyebrows, eye sockets, cheeks and jaw, and finally fell to his knees. He turned his palm up, letting it face up, and spent another ten minutes enjoying the silence of midnight.

The portholes in his room had no blinds drawn, and the marvelous sights and twinkling stars silently observed the giant who was falling into an unknown silence, and finally awakened him with a strong flash.

Anazion Sosa Caul suddenly opened his eyes and breathed deeply, like a resurrected dead man.

His broad chest kept rising and falling, and his expression gradually changed from calm to uncertainty. He quickly stood up, grabbed his training shirt and robe, put them on, and ran out the door barefoot.

Outside the door was an empty grey corridor, dark and without light. The roar of the never-stopping machinery came from deep within the walls, the machine spirit was roaring, and Anazion no longer had the time to stop and listen like he used to.

He ran to the end of the corridor like a whirlwind, and then pushed open a heavy metal door - there were no complicated security measures, no highly modified sentry guns, and not even the most basic security measures. He pushed open the door easily and saw a huge, bloated and busy figure behind it.

His red robe dragged all the way to the ground, and the appendages on his back were connected to the pipes hanging from the ceiling. Countless screens floated around him in an anti-gravity manner, and a torrent of data flashed endlessly.

Anazion Sosa Cawl—or the Firstborn—forgot for a moment what he was about to say.

After hesitating for a moment, he came to the man's side and looked at his workbench. On it lay a servitor. Judging from the mark between its eyebrows and the degree of transformation, Anazion soon realized that this servitor was a death row prisoner who had committed a heinous crime.

Even though he didn't know much about the Empire, he still wouldn't sympathize with such a person. However, he was very curious as to why Belisarius Cawl would personally place such a servitor on his workbench.

He decided to ask a question.

"What are you doing?" he asked as calmly as possible.

"Reprogram it," Kahl replied, his old, hairless face smiling. "I want to make it smarter, so it doesn't always misjudge itself as damaged when performing its daily checks."

Anazion was silent for a few seconds, then asked, "Is it worth your effort?"

Kaul finally laughed. "Of course it's worth it. No matter what it did in the past, the moment it was transformed, that person was already dead. Om Messiah gave him a new life with the power of gears and machinery."

"And I am just like it, a servant of the God of All Machines. It does its job and I do mine. There is no distinction between high and low. You know, even for a battleship of the Queen of Glory, a small screw is very important."

Anazion fell silent again, feeling a strong sense of annoyance.

Several years had passed since he was reawakened on Sosa. It was now 010.M40, and apart from getting his name, reading many books, and meeting many characters in the books, he seemed to have gained nothing else.

He was still the same as he had been when he was awakened hundreds of times before. He always acted stupidly in front of Belisarius Cole, like an innocent child who knew nothing about the world.
Kaul saw it all, but made no comment. He simply put down his work, turned to face his first casting, and made a gesture with his real hands.

"It's time for you to sleep, Anazione, and you don't usually come to my workshop at this time. What do you want?"

"Yes," Anazion replied in a muffled voice, as if he was ashamed of what he was about to say. "I had a dream."

Kaul pondered for a moment, then one of his appendages swung forward and tapped his prosthetic eye. "Okay, what did you dream about?"

Anazion took another deep breath and, with pain, began to describe the dream that had awakened him.
He mentioned a giant eagle flying above the clouds. Below its wings were only rolling clouds, and no land or sea was visible. A warm sun radiated its heat at the end of the clouds, guiding the giant eagle and allowing it to fly freely.

The giant eagle flew like this safely for at least thousands of years. Although it was tired and in pain, its wings became extremely strong. However, at some point, the clouds became thinner and the sky became as red as a summer evening. The land and the sea reappeared in the eyes of the giant eagle.

After thousands of years of asceticism, there is finally hope that it will end, so, naturally, it begins to look for a place to settle down.
"And then?" Kaul asked seriously.

"Then I saw creepers, creepers beyond number," Anazione answered, with a shudder he had sensed but refused to admit. "Breaking through the land, filling the sea, endless."

As he said this, he seemed to be back in the dream again. He didn't know where he was in the dream, but he saw it all.

He saw the vines rising up into the sky, weaving into a huge net, trying to tie up the giant eagle and make it fall. It was dark at that time, and the storm blew away the clouds, the sun disappeared, and the giant eagle flew hard in the rain.

The wind had blown away many of its feathers, the rain had made it extremely cold, it was surrounded by darkness, and the net was slowly wrapping it up.
It was getting closer and closer, and Anazion finally saw its true appearance - stiff and swollen fingers, dim and diseased eyes, pale, rotten, and full of malice - all of the above were connected and wrapped by a strange green, one as thick as a mountain, and at this time they were everywhere, covering the sky and the sun.
In his dream, Anazion screamed.

Countless eyes turned and stared at him intently.

"I'm done," he told Call hoarsely, his head bowed, fear still on his face.

His creator narrowed his one remaining eye and without hesitation, stirred up a storm in his mind.

His memories are too many, too messy, and too complicated, so every search becomes a task that consumes a lot of his computing power, and there is even a risk of getting lost in it. But he is willing to take the risk to do this, and there are many reasons, but if someone asks, Cole will probably only be willing to answer one.

Because I am Belisarius Cole, he thought with pride and sincerity. I can do this.

He is right.

A fragment slowly emerged, and his mind cheered for it. Many images rushed into his eyes, bringing back this long-forgotten memory.
In it, Cawl saw the young Anazion Sosa Cawl. At that time, he had not yet been given this name, and he had not even been given the code name of First Casting. He was only called Experiment No. 1.

Test subject No. 1 was lying on a large iron bed, in a deep coma. His chest and abdomen were completely opened, his naturally grown ribs were placed aside, and the bleeding had already stopped.

Caul saw one of his appendages pass across the right side of the screen, then gently touch the second heart of Subject One.

I'm checking him, Kaul thought. Then I started to modify him, at a more microscopic level.

I put many designs into his body that had not been tested or had only been tested once or twice. But not only that, what else did I do to him?
The scene flashed by, and finally stopped at the bloody body of the first test subject, and a data board in front of Cole, on which was a design drawing, with words and formulas written next to it.

I awakened his psychic gifts.

"Creator?"

The Great Sage came out of his memories and saw the former Test Subject No. 1, the First Cast who later carried his great ideals but also suffered endless torture, and the current Anazion Sosa Cawl.

"I've made a note of that," Kahl suddenly assured him, in all seriousness. "We'll find a think tank to handle this once we get to Chemos, Anazion."

The latter was shocked by his words: "Think tank?"

"Yes, Think Tank."

"But I don't understand, it was just a dream-?"

"That's true for ordinary people, but you have a gift that's different from most people. I didn't tell you in the past, but it's actually a psychic gift, so your dreams can never be regarded as ordinary nightmares."

"Psychic power?!" Anazion was even more shocked.

"Yes, don't be too surprised, Psycho. Come and help me lift him up, and let old Kawl teach you some new transformation techniques - how about it? Are you willing? Little Kawl?"

The First Caster was silent for half a minute because of the title, then he walked stiffly to the workbench and helped up the robot servant.

Kaur hummed a strange ballad with glee.

(End of this chapter)