Sleep ended the way deep sleep always ended, gradually and then all at once.
Nolan opened his eyes to the ceiling of his quarters, lay still for a few seconds, and then sat up. He turned his head toward the timing device mounted on the wall opposite and confirmed what his body was already telling him: twenty-four hours. He had slept for a full day without interruption, and what he felt now was the clean emptiness of genuine rest rather than the partial recovery of stolen hours.
He got up, moved to the wash station, and opened the simulator page out of habit while he worked.
He stared at it.
The blessing page for the Chaos Gods was open. That was not unusual. What was unusual was the numbers. Every countdown, across all four entries, had reset. They were running again, descending from new starting values, which meant the previous cycles had concluded and fresh ones had begun.
He stood very still with his mouth full of toothpaste foam and ran the implication to its conclusion.
Then he turned around, crossed the room at a speed that was unkind to the door in his path, and went to find David.
The Augur array in low-Earth orbit received its activation order within minutes. David brought it to full operating power across every available sensor band and began cross-referencing the output against every intelligence feed the network had access to, from the major agencies operating under Nolan's oversight to the independent channels that the Asian powers and the mutant nation maintained.
The search ran for twelve hours.
The results were consistent across every source: nothing. The solar system's inner planets, Terra included, showed no signs of Warp incursion, no anomalous psychic activity, no structural indicators of Chaos presence beyond the background noise that was always present at some level. Regional mortal conflicts continued in their usual locations. The ordinary operations of the world's collection of superpowered individuals proceeded without deviation. It was, by every measurable standard, a completely ordinary day.
Nolan sat with the results and thought.
Then he went to the circular square.
The Emperor's statue occupied the center of the square in its usual silence, the scale of it measured in presence as much as height, the expression carved into the stone face holding its familiar quality of attention directed at something beyond the immediate.
Lexicanium Ukari stood at the far edge of the square when Nolan arrived, the Carcharodons psyker's pale eyes tracking him without comment as he crossed the open floor and went down on one knee in front of the statue.
Nolan closed his eyes and prayed.
Ukari withdrew to a respectful distance and waited.
Some time later, Ukari reappeared at Nolan's peripheral awareness carrying a large ceramic bowl of nutrient porridge, which he set down nearby without interrupting and then retreated from again.
More time passed.
A second bowl was delivered. Then a third.
Nolan opened his eyes after the third bowl had gone cold beside him. He remained kneeling for a moment longer, looking up at the statue's face with the attentiveness of someone waiting for a response that he had genuinely believed might come.
Nothing. No vision. No sense of direction. No apparition.
He stood up slowly.
"Either the Chaos Gods struck some new arrangement with the Emperor and the blessing landed somewhere He has already accounted for," he said quietly, not quite to the statue and not quite to himself, "or the target is not on Terra. It may not be anywhere in the solar system. This universe is large. There are species and civilizations scattered across it that have had no contact with us. If the blessing found one of them, then whatever is coming will develop far from here before we ever hear about it."
He stared at the carved face for a moment longer.
"I hope, if there are people out there facing it, that they have something worth relying on."
He exhaled.
Ukari had stopped pretending to look elsewhere and was watching Nolan with the composed attention of someone who had served long enough to know when to be present and when to be invisible. He began to rise from his seat as Nolan turned away from the statue.
Nolan waved him back down with one hand, and Ukari settled again, taking another slow spoonful of porridge from the third bowl with the unruffled patience of a man who had learned to eat efficiently in whatever windows were available.
Nolan walked out of the square and back into the passages of the base, the sound of his footsteps fading, leaving only the quiet of the room and the occasional sound of a Lexicanium finishing his meal.
He noticed it when he was standing in his quarters pulling on a set of clothes.
The fit was wrong. Not damaged or altered. Just wrong in the specific way that happens when the person wearing an item is no longer the same size as when the item was made. He stood in front of the reflective panel and looked at himself properly for the first time in longer than he could immediately recall.
He had grown.
Not by a small margin. The difference was approximately half a meter from where he had been, the proportions of his frame having expanded without him being present for the process, the way all changes of this kind happened in the body's own time and on its own schedule. He stood well above standard Astartes height now. Not yet at the scale that Tyberos carried, the Chapter Master of the Carcharodons existing at a size that was something of a law unto itself, but substantially beyond the baseline.
He considered this for a moment.
"At minimum," he said to the room, "I am no longer the shortest Primarch. Alpharius and Omegon would have to look up."
It was a small thing. He noted it without ceremony and went to find David.
The base hall was active in its usual way, servo units at their stations, systems running, David at the metal round table with the particular quality of focus that indicated network operations in progress. He looked up when Nolan entered and was on his feet and waiting by the time Nolan reached the table.
"David. If you have a moment, I have something I want to try with you."
David's eyes ran a brief cycle of blue light.
"My Lord. I am entirely at your disposal."
Nolan sat down across from him and set his hand on the table, palm up. Two throne coins caught the light as he opened his fingers, their golden surfaces carrying the particular quality that distinguished them from any ordinary currency. He had accumulated them one by one, each one arriving at the completion of a prayer support mission, and the count had reached eighteen.
"You know what these are," Nolan said. It was not a question.
"I do, my Lord."
"I have been thinking about whether the simulator's Throne Coin mechanism can be shared. Whether another individual can enter the same space that I enter when I use one. Whether the Emperor's spiritual power that the coins carry can reach a consciousness that is not mine." He looked at David's reflective face directly. "I trust you more than anyone I have here. That is why I am asking you to try this before I ask anyone else."
David was still for a moment.
"My Lord. I am mechanical in my fundamental nature. I am uncertain whether the Emperor's spiritual power would interact with me in the way it interacts with an organic being."
"That is exactly what I want to find out." Nolan's expression was calm and steady. "We have eighteen coins. Even if the attempt fails, the cost is recoverable. And if it works, then what I am building here extends considerably further than it currently does."
He reached into his pocket and produced a second coin, setting it on the table between them.
"The process, as I understand it from my own experience: you enter a time and place within the Warhammer universe. You cannot permanently die. When it concludes, you receive something from the Emperor in return for what you gave. What that looks like for you, given what you are, I genuinely do not know." He paused. "If you find yourself somewhere without me, adapt. Trust your judgment. And pray to the Emperor before anything else. I am not certain of the mechanism, but I am reasonably confident it functions as something like an insurance procedure."
David reached across the table and picked up the coin with deliberate care.
"My Lord. I understand. The Emperor's blessing."
"Well then." Nolan picked up his own coin. "The Emperor bless us both."
He looked at David. David looked at him.
They flicked their fingers upward at the same moment.
Two throne coins left their hands, spinning end over end, rising into the air above the metal table with the lazy, brilliant arc of coins that had been launched with intention and had somewhere to be.
The golden light caught. Held. Brightened.
And then the base hall was very quiet.