Elias meets his new unit — a small team of soldiers pulled from nowhere and assigned to missions that don't exist. No one asks why he's here. Because they all know. Every one of them is broken in a way the Imperium won't admit. The Black File isn't a squad. It's a graveyard with boots on.
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Terminal K-17 wasn't part of the main hangar.
It was built beneath it — a sub-layer cut into the rockcrete foundations of the hive, accessible only by coded lift and retinal scan. No litanies. No purity seals. No guards at the doors. The silence was the security.
Elias arrived five minutes early.
The doors opened without a sound.
Inside, it looked nothing like a barracks.
The space was small — a loading bay converted into a living bunker. Black metal floors, one table, one rack of weapons, and a locker wall marked with faded names and etched-out unit tags.
There were four people already inside.
They looked up.
Then looked away.
None of them asked his name.
None of them stood to greet him.
Because no one got assigned to Black File by accident.
A woman stood first.
Mid-thirties. Skin pale from years on void-ships. Left side of her face replaced by exposed augmetics that didn't match — an old tech-priest's work, not military issue. Her voice rasped like someone who forgot what it was like to breathe air.
Dren Volst.
Squad Leader.
She lit a lho-stick, pointed at the far wall.
"Locker's yours. Don't touch Bit's. He booby-traps them."
She didn't wait for a reply. Just walked past him and opened a ration tin with her knife — not her hands. She didn't trust anything that hadn't already tried to kill her.
The second was already sitting on the table.
Legs crossed. Short-cropped hair. Wearing two different boots. A small machine skull hovered behind her, blinking in red binary as it recited static-saturated catechisms.
Tech-Adept Lirae-4.
Designation unclear.
She looked at Elias without blinking.
"Your pattern's weird," she said.
He raised a brow. "Pattern?"
"....trace," she said, absently chewing something chalky. "You've got… fractures. Like someone welded you shut from the inside."
Her mechadendrite twitched. "I like it."
The third was sitting on a crate.
Big. Shaved head. Arms covered in burned tattoos, some half-flayed from plasma exposure. He was smoking a lho rolled in paper from a prayer book.
Malk Tern.
Heavy.
He grinned at Elias.
"I bet I know what got you sent here."
"What?"
"You didn't die when you were supposed to."
Elias dropped his bag.
Sat down.
And that's when the last one appeared.
Not through a door.
From the ceiling.
He dropped silently behind Elias, landing in a crouch without a sound.
Young — maybe seventeen. Wearing Scout recon armor repainted matte gray, sleeves torn off. He smelled faintly of ozone and gun oil.
No one introduced him.
The boy just looked at Elias, tilted his head, and said:
"You bleed like a dream."
Then vanished into the rafters again.
Volst didn't look up.
"That's Bit."
Elias nodded slowly. "Of course it is."
Malk chuckled. "Bit's alright. He only bites if you lie."
Lirae tapped her cogitator.
"Mission packet uploads in six hours. We're being assigned a ghost drop in Obscurus."
"Target?" Elias asked.
"Outpost Silph-9," Volst answered. "Vox went dark. Last transmission described a man with no soul."
Malk scratched his chin. "Could be Chaos. Could be null. Could be someone pretending to be both."
Volst shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Our job's the same."
Elias said it with them:
"Go dark. Get proof. Get out."
That was the Black File oath.
No medals. No prayers.
Just evidence and exit.
Because what they found wasn't meant to be saved.
Only documented — before someone stronger wiped it clean.
As the team returned to prepping gear, Elias sat back against the wall and listened.
No shouting.
No posturing.
No comradery.
Just four broken people who moved like they'd done this forever.
And him.
The new fuse.
Waiting to be lit.
In his coat, the journal Fira had given him shifted slightly.
He opened it.
On the first page, he wrote:
"They're not afraid of Chaos. They're afraid of what it proves."
[END OF PART 3]
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- Squad Leader: Dren Volst, a void-born veteran with half a face and no allegiance to anyone but the mission.
- Tech-Adept: Lirae-4, speaks in fragments, possibly damaged, or playing dumb.
- Heavy Weapons: Malk Tern, smiles too much, drinks recaf with lho-stick ashes in it.
- Scout: "Bit," barely more than a kid, unnaturally fast, rumored to have touched the Warp.