KV-230 detached from his battle-brothers with mechanical precision, his cloaking field shimmering to life across his adamantine frame. The ancient tech pulsed as he slipped into the hive city's shadows.
Truth be told, the cloak was redundant, a quirk of over-preparation that would have amused him, had he possessed the capacity for such frivolous emotion.
His corpus, wrought by the forgotten artificers of humanity's golden dawn, bore within its very essence a natural stealth matrix. Each servo and circuit had been blessed with the ability to bend light and scatter sensor sweeps.
But the mission parameters demanded absolute concealment from psionic detection, for the Lord of Argent Nur harbored suspicions that their quarry possessed the witch-sight, that cursed gift that could pierce even the most sophisticated technological veils.
Ascending with spider-like grace, 230 established an overwatch position atop a gothic spire that clawed at the clear sky. His optical array swept the urban sprawl below, drinking in terabytes of data with each microsecond scan.
The city writhed beneath him like a living thing, millions of human souls scurrying through cramped corridors and towering hab-blocks, their bio-signatures painting thermal constellations across his vision.
The target: a single child. One brief encounter with Lord Blazkowicz. One refusal to submit to the sacred machines of the Shapers. In an ocean of billions of souls, it was akin to locating a specific grain of sand in the vast deserts of ancient Terra.
What passed for his head, though it bore scant resemblance to human anatomy, rotated with mechanical precision through a full 360-degree sweep. The cranial assembly housed a quantum cogitator array, a tri-spectrum optical cluster that could analyze spectrums invisible to baseline human perception, and a monomolecular sensor array that jutted backward like the horn of some technological predator.
The designation "head" was purely cosmetic, a concession to human psychological comfort. The Iron Men had learned long ago that their creators found familiar forms less unsettling than pure function. A bitter irony, considering how those same creators would one day curse their mechanical children as abominations.
Intelligence gathering complete, KV-230 flowed across the rooftop unseen until he reached a towering vox-transmission array. The structure pulsed with electromagnetic activity, its sacred circuits carrying the data-prayers of a million citizens to distant relay stations.
His arm bifurcated with a soft pneumatic hiss, revealing a plasma cutter of impossible sharpness. The monomolecular edge parted the array's armored housing like parchment, exposing the pulsing data-conduits within. With surgical precision, his appendage further divided, components reshaping themselves into interface protocols that would allow communion with the Shapers' information networks.
For 3.7 seconds, KV-230 experienced something analogous to hesitation, a cascade of probability algorithms weighing risk against necessity. His quantum cogitator spawned seven hundred million firewall protocols in that brief eternity, each one a bulwark against potential data-scrapcode or worse, the viral corruption that could reduce even an Iron Man to screaming static.
Still unsatisfied, he performed the ultimate precaution: copying his essential consciousness matrix to a secondary storage core, isolated and quarantined. Should the worst occur, he could purge his primary systems and restore from backup.
Such was the way of the Assassin-class Iron Men, caution elevated to the level of religious doctrine by their creators. The connection engaged with a soft click that seemed to echo through the foam itself.
Mimicry protocols activated instantly. KV-230's consciousness fragmented into ten thousand data-packets, each one indistinguishable from the routine information streams that flowed through the Shapers' networks like electronic blood through digital veins.
He slipped past firewall entities that scanned for intruders, his presence no more remarkable than a scheduled diagnostic or routine data backup.
Deeper he delved, through layers of encryption that would have stymied lesser intelligences for millennia. Yet greed, that most human of failings, had no place in his programming. He bypassed treasuries of classified data, ignored military secrets that could topple governments, and focused solely on his quarry.
At the "civilian-accessible" data tier, he initiated facial recognition protocols, comparing known biometric data against the city's surveillance grid. The search consumed nanoseconds that felt like eternities.
"Target biometric signature absent from civilian networks," he reported via encrypted burst transmission. "Subject has achieved effective anonymity within population mass."
No surge of frustration corrupted his processes. No algorithmic equivalent of anger sparked through his circuits. KV-230 simply withdrew, his consciousness reassembling as his interface arm sealed the breached housing. Auto-repair protocols welded the metal with molecular precision, erasing all evidence of his intrusion.
"Infiltration of Shaping Hall achieved. Initiating biometric trace protocol," came the transmission from KV-117, his voice carrying the peculiar harmonic distortion that marked encrypted communication.
KV-230's optical array immediately tracked skyward, watching for the nano-tracker that his battle-brother would soon deploy. The device, smaller than most viruses, would follow scent-trails and genetic markers with the persistence of a predator and the subtlety of a whisper.
There, a mote of light visible only to his enhanced optics, darting through the urban canyon with purpose. The tracker painted probability corridors through his vision as it followed complex scent-patterns through the city's arterial roadways.
Without hesitation, KV-230 launched himself from the spire, his form cutting through the smog-choked air like a diving raptor. Below, eight million humans continued their daily struggle for survival, oblivious to the mechanical death that passed overhead.
Meanwhile, in the bowels of the Shaping Hall, KV-117 encountered his first significant obstacle.
His perception-dampening field operated at peak efficiency, a technology that didn't merely render him invisible, but convinced organic minds that he simply didn't exist. Humans would glance through him as if he were empty air. Even their peripheral vision would edit him out of reality. He was less than a ghost; he was an absence given form.
Trailing behind a maintenance robot, 117 accessed restricted areas with casual ease. His optical sensors catalogued everything: the composition of nutrient solutions, the operational parameters of shaping machinery, the bioelectric signatures of the human staff.
All routine. All normal. All perfectly, suspiciously mundane.
Then, a single phrase shattered that illusion.
"The shaping machine grows weary. It requires restorative cycling. Conclude today's operations."
Three words processed through 117's analytical matrix in 0.003 seconds: Machine. Weary. Rest.
Seventeen billion probability cascades later, his conclusion crystallized with diamond certainty: these were not machines being described. The linguistic patterns matched biological rather than mechanical terminology with 97.3% accuracy.
Moving with predatory grace, KV-117 approached the speaker. His vocalization array produced a perfect acoustic mimicry of Musca domestica, the common fly, while his sampling appendage made contact with exposed human flesh.
"Damn insects!" The technician swatted at empty air while 117 collected cellular samples for genetic analysis.
He repeated the process throughout the facility, gathering DNA from seven distinct human variants. The samples would provide perfect biometric camouflage for future infiltration attempts.
As the facility entered its nocturnal cycle and illumination dimmed to power-conservation levels, KV-117 began his true infiltration. His form flowed through shadows like midnight, every movement calculated to avoid the sweeping arcs of security sensors and the electromagnetic pulse-patterns of detection grids.
The ventilation shaft beckoned, a perfect ingress route to the facility's hidden chambers. But as 117's optical array penetrated the metallic conduit, he detected anomalies that made his threat-assessment protocols flare to full alertness.
Filament networks. Thousands of them, invisible to baseline human perception but blazing like captured stars under his enhanced vision. They formed patterns, not random, but designed. Purposeful. A web of detection that would register the slightest disturbance and alert security forces to unauthorized presence.
The level of protection was staggering. Whatever lay beyond those filaments was worth more than the facility's entire official operational budget.
KV-117's emotional simulation protocols generated what could only be described as anticipation. Such extensive security could only mean one thing: treasure beyond imagining lay within reach.
In the urban depths below, KV-237 navigated the ancient sewer networks that formed the city's digestive system. Here, in the eternal darkness where even the Emperor's light feared to tread, humanity's refuse flowed in endless rivers of corruption.
The soundscape was a symphony of decay: the chittering of mutant vermin, the splash of contaminated water, the scratch of claws against rusted metal. These creatures, rats, roaches, flies, were among Terra's most successful exports, following mankind to every world in the galaxy like faithful, filthy companions.
Most organic minds would have fractured in such isolation, reduced to gibbering madness by the oppressive darkness and the constant whisper of unseen threats. But KV-237's consciousness was a fortress of steel and circuitry, immune to the psychological horrors that would break lesser beings.
His audio sensors detected it first: a sound like wet leather sliding across stone, growing more distant with each passing second.
The hunt began.
237 moved through the tunnels with predatory efficiency, his enhanced senses painting a three-dimensional map of sound and motion. As he closed the distance, the acoustic signature resolved into component parts: the unmistakable cry of human infants, the wet grinding of teeth against bone, the soft splash of organic matter hitting standing water.
Then, silence. Absolute, as if the very darkness had swallowed sound itself.
KV-237 pressed his chassis against the tunnel wall, feeling minute vibrations travel through the structural material. Triangulation algorithms pinpointed the source. His arm reconfigured itself, the smooth adamantine surface splitting to reveal a launching chamber. A nano-probe, barely visible even to his enhanced optics, penetrated the wall and began its microscopic journey.
His consciousness merged with the probe's sensors, diving into a realm of cellular architecture and molecular structures. At first, he assumed he had accidentally entered some vermin's body, the organic chaos seemed consistent with rodent biology.
Then his visual feed updated, and for 0.7 seconds, KV-237 experienced what could only be called system shock.
The chamber beyond transcended mortal comprehension, a cathedral of forbidden sensation that assaulted every sense simultaneously. Vast beyond measure, its walls undulated with living silk that shifted between colors that had no names, hues that existed only in fever dreams and the final moments of ecstasy.
The fabric breathed with a rhythm that matched no mortal heartbeat, catching the impossible light and weaving it into patterns of such terrible beauty that to look upon them was to feel one's soul begin to fray at the edges.
The floor was not stone but sensation itself made manifest, a lake of liquid that defied classification, neither wholly blood nor entirely flesh, but something far more intimate. It pulsed with the deep magenta of arterial flow shot through with veins of gold and violet, bubbling not with decay but with obscene vitality.
Each ripple across its surface sang with harmonics that bypassed the ears entirely and resonated directly in the bones, a symphony of pleasure and pain so intertwined that they became indistinguishable.
From dozens of sphincter-like apertures that dilated with wet, organic sounds, humans emerged in endless, hypnotic processions. But these were not the resigned victims of mere slaughter, they came as supplicants to sensation itself.
The elderly moved with fluid grace, their weathered faces transformed by expressions of rapturous anticipation, eyes wide with the terrible hunger of those who had tasted the edge of transcendence.
The adults swayed as they walked, their movements languid and sensual, bodies responding to music only they could hear, fingers trailing along their own skin as if discovering it for the first time.
Most disturbing of all were the young ones, who did not scream in terror but giggled with unnatural delight, their innocent voices harmonizing in ways that should have been impossible, their small hands reaching out toward the chamber's heart with desperate longing that belonged on no child's face.
At the chamber's epicenter writhed something that was both singular and infinite, a being that challenged not just classification but the very concept of individual existence. Its flesh was translucent as spun glass, revealing organs that pulsed with rhythms that matched the deepest desires of every observer.
What first appeared to be a single entity revealed itself under closer inspection to be composed of billions upon billions of microscopic consciousnesses, each one a perfect mirror of mortal want.
The creature, if such a crude term could encompass its magnificence, sang without voice, its very existence a hymn to the beauty of corruption, the ecstasy of damnation, and the perfect pleasure that could only be found in the complete abandonment of the soul.
Xenoform entity detected! 237's combat protocols identified with cold precision. Threat level: Extreme. Recommended action: Orbital bombardment.
The creature's feeding was methodical, almost ritualistic. Silken strands erupted from its maw, binding dozens of humans in cocoons of digestive enzyme. The transparent flesh revealed everything, the strip-mining of meat from bone, the crushing of skeletal material, the sorting of useful nutrients from waste matter.
KV-237's emotional simulation protocols remained dormant. Horror was a human concept, irrelevant to mechanical consciousness. He simply catalogued data, traced the feeding tubes to their source points beneath residential hab-blocks, and prepared his intelligence package for transmission.
"Data compilation complete. Transmitting to command vessel via quantum-burst protocol," he reported, his voice carrying across impossible distances to the void-black ship that waited in the system's outer darkness.
The hunt continued. In the grim darkness of the far future, even machines could stumble upon horrors that defied comprehension.