After waking up, she hadn't even stopped for coffee as her mind was a fever dream of blueprints and overlapping designs.
"Why choose between the raw, industrial output of a Titan Cameraman Core and the elegant efficiency of an Arc Reactor when you could combine the both of them?"
"If only I could get more knowledge for free," Agnes muttered, wiping a thick smear of grease and sweat from her forehead. She squinted through her welding mask at the "Apex Core" taking shape on the workbench.
"Maybe i could make something. Maybe a chair that keeps you alive forever while eating souls of people to keep it work." I chuckled at my own sarcasm, waiting for a dry retort from Z23. When silence met her ears, she realized Z23 had already left to get herfood.
"Dang... I'm actually going crazy." She blinked rapidly.
[ Assimilation: 83% ]
"Well," she whispered to the empty room, "that's awkward."
On the other side of the reinforced lab door, Z23 stood frozen, holding a tray of steaming food. Her face was a mask of pure, exhausted blankness.
"This is a new low," Z23 whispered to Martha, who was leaning against the corridor wall. "She's talking to herself. Again."
"To be fair, last time she was at least singing," Martha offered with a shrug.
"That song is still stuck in my head!" Z23 hissed, her face flushing with second-hand embarrassment. "It went... Mambo, mambo, oshin mambo!"
As Z23 attempted to recreate the bizarre rhythm, Martha burst into a fit of stifled giggles.
"Hey! Stop laughing! I'm doing my best here!" Z23 pouted, turning her head away in a huff.
"Sorry, sorry," Martha wheezed, wiping a tear. "It's just... the mental image."
Inside the lab, Agnes was blissfully unaware of her reputation crumbling. She swiped a hand through the air, bringing up the flickering blue light of the System Store.
"Let's see what the 'Big Leagues' look like," she murmured, scrolling past the affordable tech. Her finger stopped on a listing that made her heart skip a beat.
[ Low-Tier C'tan Shard ]
Cost: 67,000,000,000 Credits
Warning: Purchasing this item will cause certain ancient alien species to track your location immediately.]
"Sixty-seven billion?" Agnes felt her soul leave her body. "I couldn't afford that if Rhodes Island sold all of their stuff and my internal organs. Next."
She scrolled further down, hitting a listing that looked even more suspicious.
[ Soul of the Emperor of Mankind (1/12 Fragment) ]
Cost: 50,000,000,000 Credits
Warning: Purchasing this will draw the gaze of the Chaos Gods. It's going to get loud.]
Agnes stared at the icon a glowing golden mist trapped in what looked suspiciously like a high-grade plastic thermos.
"Fifty billion for a soul in a plastic bottle? Emperor of Mankind my ass," she scoffed, leaning back in her creaky chair. "What a scam. Judging by the name, this guy probably can't even be a good father, let alone an Emperor."
The moment the words left her lips, the air in the room grew heavy. A sudden, inexplicable chill swept through the lab, making the tools on her table rattle.
Somewhere Far, Far Away...
On Holy Terra, the impossible happened.
The Golden Throne, a machine of ancient and terrible power, groaned under a sudden surge of psychic fury. The Golden Figure seated upon it the Master of Mankind felt a twitch in his metaphorical eyebrow.
"WHO DARES SLANDER ME?!" The psychic roar echoed through the minds of the Custodes guarding the Sanctum, sending several to their knees.
"My Lord! Calm down!" a Captain-General shouted, gripping his guardian spear. "We haven't detected any heretical transmissions!"
"Strange..." The Emperor's psychic presence simmered, a sun-like wrath focused on a single point in the multiverse.
"I swear I heard someone talking about an 'ass' and a 'plastic bottle.' It's... insulting."
"I will investigate at once, my Lord!"
"No need. This voice... it is not from this reality. It might be a ripple from the Warp. Bring me Malcador. We have things to discuss."
Within the Warp
"Did you hear that?" Slaanesh asked, lounging upon a throne of silk and screaming souls.
"Oh, you mean the girl who quoted 'Emperor of Mankind my ass'?" Tzeentch replied, his many eyes twinkling with delight as he flipped through a book of infinite schemes. "Yes. I heard it. It was magnificent."
"It caused such a delicious disturbance," Slaanesh giggled. "I wonder who she is?"
"A variable," Tzeentch mused. "A very, very funny variable."
Iron Warriors Outpost
A lone Legionnaire paused in the middle of cleaning his bolter. A strange, rasping sound escaped his vocal grill.
"Heh."
"Brother?" his companion asked, looking up from a tactical map. "What's wrong? Why did you make that noise?"
"I don't know," the first warrior replied, a hint of dark amusement in his voice. "But it felt like the Emperor just got rage-baited."
"Rage-baited? What is this word?"
"Maybe another time. But look..." He pointed toward the command dais where their Primarch stood.
For the first time in centuries, a faint, terrifyingly small smile tugged at Perturabo's lips. "Everyone seems to be in a remarkably good mood today."