The servitors dragged her through corridors that all looked the same—cold metal, dim red lighting, the omnipresent hum of machinery that seemed to vibrate through her bones. Her feet scraped uselessly against the floor, too weak to support her weight, too uncoordinated to even attempt resistance.
This is real. This is actually real. I'm—
Her thoughts were a chaotic spiral, spinning faster and faster without ever landing on anything coherent. Fear. Confusion. The lingering phantom sensation of tubes being ripped from inside her body. The wrongness of this skin, these limbs, this—
The Magos spoke.
The voice was layered, distorted through mechanical filters and vox-grilles, but the words cut through the noise like a knife.
"...Project Alpha Plus."
Her eyes widened.
I understood that.
Not English. Not any language she'd ever heard. But she understood it, the meaning translating itself directly into her mind as if it had always been there.
What the fuck—
Before she could process that revelation, the servitors came to an abrupt halt. A door hissed open ahead of them—thick, reinforced, the kind that sealed hermetically. They shoved her inside without ceremony, and she stumbled, barely catching herself on hands and knees.
The impact jarred through her small frame. Pain flared in her palms, her knees, sharp and immediate.
The door sealed behind her with a pneumatic hiss and the heavy clunk of mag-locks engaging.
She was alone.
No—not alone.
Movement. In the corner of her vision, something shifted.
Maverick's head snapped up, and she froze.
Another girl.
She sat against the far wall of the small, featureless room, her knees drawn up to her chest. She looked young—maybe the same age as this body Maverick now inhabited. Her hair was white, almost luminescent in the dim light, falling in tangled waves around a face that seemed caught between awareness and some distant, hollow stillness.
The girl's eyes locked onto Maverick.
Red.
Not brown, not hazel, not any natural color. Red. Glowing faintly, like embers banked beneath ash.
Maverick's breath caught.
The girl stared, expression slack, dazed—but there was something there. Recognition? Confusion? It was hard to tell.
Focus. Calm down. Assess the situation. You need to—
Maverick tried to push herself upright, and that's when she noticed.
Her left eye.
Or rather, the lack of vision from it.
She blinked, once, twice, instinctively trying to clear whatever obstruction was blocking her sight. But nothing changed. The left half of her vision was just... gone. Not dark, not blurred—just absent, like trying to see through a wall.
Blind.
Her left eye was blind.
Oh god. Oh god, what else is wrong with this body? What else—
Panic clawed its way up her throat. Her hands flew to her face, fingers trembling as they traced the contours of features that weren't hers, skin that was too smooth, too soft, too young. Her breathing came faster, shallower, hitching on the edge of a sob she couldn't quite suppress.
How did I get here? Where is this? What happened to me? What—
A light touch on her shoulder.
Maverick flinched violently, jerking away and nearly toppling over in her haste. Her head whipped around.
The black-haired girl stood there, closer than she'd been a moment ago. Had she moved? Maverick hadn't even heard her.
Up close, the girl's features were... striking. Delicate, almost ethereal, like something out of a fairy tale—the kind that ended with the beautiful maiden locked in a tower or cursed to sleep forever. But those eyes. Those glowing red eyes were anything but comforting.
They stared at Maverick with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
The girl's lips moved.
"Lilith."
The word was barely a whisper, soft and tentative, but Maverick heard it as clearly as if it had been shouted.
She swallowed. Her throat was raw, still aching from the tube extraction. When she spoke, her voice came out hoarse and shaking.
"Me?"
Wait.
Her own voice stopped her cold.
That wasn't English. Those sounds, that phonetic structure—it was the same language the Magos had spoken. The same language this girl was using.
I'm speaking a different language.
The realization sent another shockwave through her already fractured mind.
The black-haired girl nodded slowly. Then, moving with careful deliberation, she reached out again.
Maverick wanted to pull away. Every instinct screamed at her to maintain distance, to not let this stranger—this thing with glowing eyes—touch her.
But she was frozen. Locked in place by exhaustion, fear, and the sheer overwhelming weight of everything that had happened.
The girl's hand settled on her arm. The touch was light, almost hesitant.
And something shifted.
It was subtle at first. A warmth that spread from the point of contact, seeping into her skin like sunlight through a window. The frantic spiral of her thoughts slowed. The sharp edges of her panic dulled, just slightly.
What...
The girl leaned closer, her glowing eyes never leaving Maverick's face. She spoke again, slower this time, enunciating each word with exaggerated care.
"I'm Lilith?"
Maverick's mouth moved on instinct, forming the question even as her brain struggled to process it.
The girl nodded. Then she pointed to herself with one pale finger.
"Eve."
She pointed at Maverick.
"Lilith."
Oh.
Understanding clicked into place with a sickening clarity.
This body. This child's body that Maverick now inhabited. It had a name.
Lilith.
And this girl—this other experiment, because that's what they both were, weren't they? Experiments. Projects.—was Eve.
But why? What's the connection? Why was Lilith in that tank? Why is Eve here?
The questions piled up, one after another, each more desperate than the last. But before Maverick could even attempt to voice them, Eve moved again.
She leaned in, her head tilting slightly, and pressed her forehead against Maverick's shoulder.
It wasn't aggressive. It wasn't even really affectionate, not in any way Maverick could parse.
It felt like... seeking. Like a wounded animal looking for warmth.
And against all logic, against every screaming instinct that said this was wrong and dangerous and she should run—
Maverick felt herself relaxing.
The pain was still there, a dull, pervasive ache that covered every inch of this small body. But the storm of emotions that had been tearing her apart began to settle. The panic receded, just enough to breathe. The tension in her muscles eased, fraction by fraction.
What is this?
Eve didn't answer. She just stayed there, close and still, radiating that strange, inexplicable sense of calm.
Maverick—no, Lilith now, at least in this body—closed her eyes and let it wash over her.
For a moment, there was something almost like peace.
After a while, the door hissed open.
Lilith's eyes snapped to the entrance, heart lurching back into panicked overdrive.
Servitors. Multiple units, moving in perfect synchronization as they filed into the small room.
Eve pulled back immediately, her expression shifting to something wary and hollow. The warmth vanished with her, leaving Lilith suddenly, achingly cold.
"Wait—"
The servitors didn't wait.
Mechanical hands clamped down on Lilith's arms, yanking her to her feet with brutal efficiency. She tried to resist, tried to pull away, but her body was too weak, too small, too useless.
"No! Eve—!"
Another set of servitors grabbed Eve, dragging her in the opposite direction. The black-haired girl didn't struggle. She just stared, those red eyes locked on Lilith with an intensity that felt like a physical weight.
Then the servitors pulled them apart, forcing them toward opposite ends of the room, and Eve disappeared through a different doorway.
No, no, no—
Lilith thrashed, or tried to. One of the servitors adjusted its grip with mechanical precision, and fresh pain shot up her arm.
They hauled her out of the room and down another corridor. More red lighting. More endless metal. The air tasted of oil and ozone and something acrid that burned her nose.
They brought her to another chamber.
This one was different. Larger. Filled with equipment she couldn't identify—tables, restraints, instruments that gleamed with cold menace under harsh white lighting.
The servitors strapped her down.
Thick leather restraints across her wrists, her ankles, her chest. She couldn't move. Could barely breathe.
Oh god. Oh god, please—
The Magos entered.
Its robes swept across the floor with a faint rustling of fabric and the clink of metal. Mechadendrites writhed behind it like metallic tentacles, each tipped with a different tool—scalpels, syringes, things Lilith had no name for.
It approached the table, and those glowing optical implants focused on her with the detached curiosity of a scientist examining a particularly interesting insect.
It spoke.
The voice was flat, emotionless, filtered through layers of distortion.
"Subject Lilith. Project Alpha Plus. Commencing full physiological evaluation."
No. No, please, I don't—
A mechadendrite descended toward her arm.
The tool at its tip hummed to life.
And then the pain began.
It was beyond anything Maverick—Lilith—had ever experienced.
Not the dull ache of exhaustion or the sharp sting of a scraped knee. This was agony, clinical and methodical and unending.
She screamed until her voice gave out.
The Magos worked with mechanical precision, each cut, each injection, each brutal test measured and recorded. It spoke constantly, narrating its findings in that same emotionless monotone, but Lilith couldn't understand the words anymore. Everything had dissolved into white-hot pain.
At some point, mercifully, her body gave out.
Consciousness fled.
Darkness swallowed her whole.
She didn't know how long she was gone.
Time lost all meaning in the dark. But eventually, awareness crept back in, slow and reluctant.
The pain was still there, but distant now, like an echo.
Lilith became vaguely aware of voices. The Magos, speaking to someone—or perhaps just dictating notes to itself.
"...durability significantly below baseline parameters. Physical capability inferior to Subject Eve by substantial margin..."
Eve.
The name cut through the fog.
"...regenerative properties confirmed. Complete cellular restoration observed. Severed limb regrew within forty-three minutes. Remarkable. Matches Subject Eve's capabilities..."
They cut off my arm.
The thought surfaced with a strange, detached horror.
"...cognitive function exceptional. Memory retention superior to Subject Eve. Linguistic acquisition spontaneous..."
They're cataloging me. Like I'm a product.
"...Navigation Eye non-functional. No psychic manifestation detected. Subject lacks psyker potential. Conclusion: Project Alpha Plus is a failure."
Failure.
The word hung in the air, heavy with finality.
"However," the Magos continued, and there was something in its voice now—not emotion, but a shift in inflection that suggested... interest? "Subject Lilith's awakening coincides with dramatic suppression of Subject Eve's Pariah field. Effect unprecedented. Requires further investigation."
A pause.
Mechanical sounds. The whir of servos, the click of data-slate inputs.
"Project Alpha Plus: experimental psyker gene-seed implantation. Result: non-viable. Subject lacks psychic capability."
Another pause.
"Project Omega Minus: experimental Pariah gene-seed implantation. Result: complete success. Subject Eve exhibits Blank properties of extraordinary magnitude. Suppressant effect now active."
Gene-seed. They put that thing in us? In this body?
The implications crashed down on her even through the haze of pain and exhaustion.
Gene-seed. The biological material used to create Space Marines. Sacred, irreplaceable, the genetic legacy of the Primarchs themselves.
But this wasn't normal gene-seed. Experimental. Psyker. Pariah.
They were trying to create something. And I'm the failed prototype.
"Observation: Subject Lilith remained dormant for five standard years post-implantation. Awakening occurred spontaneously at 0347 hours, Terran Standard. Subject Eve's vocal capability manifested simultaneously. Causation unclear but correlation statistically significant."
Five years.
This body—Lilith's body—had been asleep in that tank for five years.
"Conclusion..." The Magos's voice dropped, flattening into pure mechanical dispassion. "Project Alpha Plus yields no strategic value. Subject Lilith is expendable."
Expendable.
The word echoed in the darkness behind Lilith's closed eyelids.
"However, Subject Eve's condition warrants preservation. Project Omega Minus remains viable."
Footsteps. The Magos was moving away.
"Servitor units: transfer Subject Lilith to Disposal Protocol Chamber Seven. Prepare for termination and biomass reclamation."
No.
Hands gripped her again. Mechanical, cold, unyielding.
No, please—
They lifted her from the examination table. Her body hung limp in their grasp, too exhausted to even twitch.
The servitors carried her toward another door.
Another chamber.
Disposal.
I'm going to die.
The thought was strange. Distant. Almost abstract.
I'm going to die, and I never even understood what happened to me.
The door hissed open.
Darkness waited beyond.