First District, on a wide street.
Alexander, along with many other believers who had entered the First District to await baptism, leaned against the wall of a building.
Joan, her brows tightly furrowed and her forehead beaded with sweat, curled up in Alexander's arms.
Ever since entering the First District, Joan had been trying to use her precognitive abilities to uncover the secrets of the genestealer patriarch.
What did that herald of the Great Devourer, that Tyranid demigod lurking in the shadows of the Bottom Nest, truly want?
Previously, Joan was too far from it and could only see the pitch-black Warp Shadow entanglement around it.
Now, Joan and the genestealer patriarch were both in the First District, close enough for her to see the future more clearly.
Joan seemed to wince in pain, shrinking further into Alexander's side.
Alexander reached out, held Joan tightly, and gently stroked her hair.
"Is your child sick?" a somewhat hoarse woman's voice asked.
Alexander looked towards where the voice came from.
He saw a middle-aged woman with a sallow face, wrapped in a headscarf, sitting beside Alexander, holding a child.
"Is it a fever?" The middle-aged woman gently reached out and touched Joan's forehead: "So much sweat."
"She started feeling unwell after entering the First District; perhaps she caught a cold on the way," Alexander said, stroking Joan's hair, feigning a look of concern for a child.
"You fathers are just not careful enough."
The middle-aged woman couldn't help but shake her head, pulling a synthetic cloth from her pocket to wipe the sweat from Joan's forehead.
Then, from a deeper pocket in her clothes, she carefully took out a small half-bottle of purified water and put it into Alexander's hand:
"Let the child drink more water; it's all clean water."
Alexander nodded slightly, thanking the woman.
He silently placed the water into his four-dimensional pocket, confirmed it was safe, and then gave some to Joan.
"Alas, it doesn't matter if we suffer, but the children suffer."
The woman looked at the child in her arms with a pained expression, sitting beside Alexander and whispering:
"You look quite neat; are you also from the Lower Nest?"
Alexander merely nodded slightly, and the woman sighed, beginning to speak volubly:
"My husband and I were devout followers of the Emperor, but after we had the child… alas, everything changed."
"Everyone around us insisted this child was a mutant. But we are devout Adeptus Ministorum followers; how could we give birth to a mutant?"
"They all went mad, killed my man, and wanted to burn my son. I held my child, ran and ran, all the way here."
As she spoke, the woman lowered her head, took another bottle from her clothes, and began to feed water to her child.
Alexander glanced at the child in the woman's arms.
The child had a bony protrusion on its forehead and an insect-like chitinous carapace on its body.
It was a living, breathing human-form insect.
It was a genestealer.
genestealer inject corrupted genes into a host's body, causing them to conceive blasphemous offspring.
The host itself also becomes controlled by the offspring, turning into a blasphemous kin of the genestealer.
This woman was in such a situation.
"I entered the Government Building; there are many followers of the Four-Armed Emperor inside, and their mutation level is very high."
The small insect by Alexander's ear vibrated its wings, transmitting Mont's voice.
"I've entered the Government Building; there aren't many followers of the Four-Armed Emperor inside."
"They are leading a group of people underground; the patriarch should be there."
Listening to Mont's words, Alexander nodded slightly.
He took this opportunity to observe the genestealer outside.
There weren't many genestealer outside either.
What caught Alexander's eye most were several genestealer wearing heavy robes, as if trying to conceal their appearance.
Alexander vaguely saw mutated claws, pincers, and a third arm beneath their robes.
Hybrid Aberrants!
They were Hybrid Aberrants.
They were more deeply mutated genestealer; their Tyranid genetic code was more active than others, granting them terrifying weaponized limbs and acid glands.
And these types of genestealer only emerged when a Tyranid fleet was approaching, stimulated by the hive mind.
The Tyranid fleet was already very close.
Alexander stared at the few genestealer, his brow furrowing involuntarily.
Too few.
Why were there so few genestealer?
Didn't Mont and Marquite say earlier that the genestealer were already desperately expanding?
After expanding for so long, there were still so few people.
And,
Alexander looked at the woman beside him with a hint of strangeness.
This woman and her child were clearly already infected by genestealer, having already received baptism.
Why did they also mix in with the crowd, following them to the Government Building's underground to receive the patriarch's baptism?
Wait.
A guess rose in Alexander's mind.
But there was no precedent for this; how could it be?
"Alexander."
The small insect by Alexander's ear vibrated its wings, transmitting Mont's voice:
"I'm about to enter the underground area; I should see the genestealer patriarch very soon."
"The number of genestealer on the way isn't very large; I think our chances of winning are very high."
"..Mont."
Alexander's mouth twitched, and he said in a low voice:
"I have a guess, and if this guess is true..."
At this point, Alexander paused. He remembered Joan's warning,
Always be careful of Chaos.
"..Never mind, you go ahead." Alexander said to Mont.
"Huh?"
In the underground area of the Government Building, Mont blinked blankly.
He didn't understand what Alexander meant.
Mont followed the spiral staircases and the crowded flow of people, slowly descending into the Government Building's underground.
Upon passing through a doorway, the sight before him startled Mont.
Before his eyes, beneath the Government Building, there was actually a massive underground palace.
The palace was wide, stretching over a hundred meters deep and more than twenty meters high, supported by thick, heavy metal pillars.
Promethium lamps, glowing with a hot, orange-yellow light tinged with blue, hung from the pillars, illuminating the surroundings.
And the first thing Mont saw in this underground palace was the metal tower at its far end.
The tower was constructed from dark grey metal, layered and intricately covered with complex, cipher-like cables and components.
In the upper-middle part of the tower, there was a three to four-meter-wide ring, deep and dark within, occasionally traversed by flashes of lightning imbued with psychic power.
A door! It's a door!
It's the Warp Engine!
The Warp Engine, the door that Marquite and he had painstakingly searched for, was right here!
As long as he could corrupt the genestealer patriarch's genetic sequence in return when it tried to infect him, he could control the entire First District.
Mont's gaze fell upon the alien demigod coiled beneath the Warp Engine.