The hideout was a PMC's safe haven, a task force operator's comfort zone, and a place agents could truly call home.
In extraction-style raid games, the hideout is where the player's character rests. It is used to store supplies, upgrade facilities, and manufacture advanced items—such as weapons, armour, ammunition, food, drinks, and medical injectors.
The higher the hideout's level, the more advanced the items that can be produced. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, a sufficiently upgraded hideout could even fabricate localised high-grade equipment—for example power armour, power swords, or even bolt weapons.
Of course, that would require the hideout to reach an extremely high tier.
For now, Alex Emry's hideout was nothing more than a run-down room in the underhive.
The space itself was fairly large—over 500 square metres. It had probably once been a warehouse. The walls, floor, and ceiling were constructed from blackened steel and plasteel, standard hive-world industrial materials.
The air was stale, carrying the smell of rust. Illumination came only from a few bubble lamps, casting dim greenish light. There was no power grid, no running water, and the living conditions were terrible.
But this was Alex's home.
It was located in an absolutely secure section of the underhive, sealed off by a thick iron door. Once locked, the inside and outside were completely isolated.
The moment Alex entered this safe zone, exhaustion hit him like a hammer. He had been awake and on the move for an entire day.
He tossed his backpack and the recovered firearms into a corner, then collapsed onto a makeshift bed—just a floor mat made from synthetic fibre—and fell asleep instantly.
He slept like the dead.
Only when his stomach began protesting did Alex finally wake up.
He clutched his sore lower back and groaned.
"If I keep sleeping on the floor like this, my spine's going to snap."
He got up, walked to the corner, and cracked open a plastic bucket.
"I really need to install a proper toilet. Otherwise this place is going to stink like piss."
After eating a few biscuits and drinking some water, Alex went over to where the guns were piled. He picked one up and moved under a bubble lamp.
This lamp wasn't just lighting—it was a local hive status indicator. Green meant the sector was operating normally. If it ever turned red, it meant infrastructure failure and that maintenance crews—or enforcers—would be dispatched.
Beneath the lamp, Alex had set up a metal workbench, covered in tools he had scavenged over time. It was a raid-system-certified workstation, capable of basic item crafting.
Alex sat down, secured an autogun in a clamp, and began filing away the serial number and the Imperial Aquila stamped into the receiver.
Workbench Level 1 – Manual
Input:• PDF-pattern autogun ×1• Metal file ×1
Output:• Unmarked "black gun" (autogun) ×1
Crafting Time: 10 minutes
Alex sat there, filing away again and again. The hideout filled with the harsh screech of metal grinding against metal.
Ten minutes later, the file snapped.
The serial number and Imperial eagle were gone, replaced by ugly scrape marks. A clean, anonymous weapon—one suitable for circulation among underhive gangs—was born.
If those markings weren't removed, the gun would sell for only half price on the black market.
Officials from the upper hive occasionally sent inspection teams into the underhive. Black-market dealers wanted profit, not trouble, which was why this rule existed.
Because of that, Alex bought files from the black market and processed the weapons himself before selling them.
Still, Imperial-grade materials were absurdly durable. Filing down a few small markings had taken ten exhausting minutes.
He needed better tools.
"Yeah… it's about time I upgraded the workbench to Level Two."
Alex wrapped the black gun in cloth, slung it over his shoulder, pulled a small-calibre solid-slug pistol from under his pillow, tucked it into his waistband, and pushed open the iron door.
The door itself was upgradeable. Higher levels could improve hideout security. For now, it was just a thick steel slab with a rotary mechanical lock, the code known only to him.
Outside was a pitch-black steel corridor.
Left led to the surface routes, accessible via ventilation shafts.Right descended deeper into the underhive, where the locals gathered.
A hive city was a vertical monstrosity—its upper spires pierced the atmosphere, while its foundations plunged deep underground.
The elite lived above, enjoying atmosphere gardens and artificial skies.
The mid-hive housed merchants, soldiers, workers—the planet's backbone. Their lives were decent.
The underhive, however, was hell.
Criminals. Mutants. Outcasts. The fallen. The malformed. Cultists. And sometimes worse—warp-tainted things that should not exist at all.
It was true lawlessness.
After walking for over thirty minutes with a flashlight, Alex saw light ahead. A massive open space emerged.
This was an underhive activity zone. A fertiliser processing plant operated here. Gang-controlled slave labour produced fertiliser, which the gangs handed over to officials in exchange for resources.
A quiet, filthy collaboration.
Ignoring the choking stench, Alex moved forward—until two gang members armed with homemade shotguns blocked his path.
"Stop right there! What's your business?"
Alex pulled out a pack of cigarettes, handing one to each of them. Their expressions softened slightly.
He lit his own with a flip-top lighter, then lit theirs. Smoke curled into the air.
"Looking for the black-market dealer Nepal. Got some good merchandise."
He shifted the wrapped gun on his shoulder.
At the name Nepal, the two stepped aside immediately.
"Go on in. Don't cause trouble."
Alex tossed them the rest of the cigarette pack and waved as he entered.
On an agri-world, getting real tobacco was easy. He'd heard that on nearby forge worlds, civilians couldn't even get plant-based cigarettes—only some foul by-product of industrial smelting.
Alex entered the gang-controlled zone and headed straight for a special shop built into steel and plasteel framing.
Calling it a shop was generous. It looked more like a junk heap—electronic parts, scrap metal, fertiliser bricks, chemical containers. You could find anything here, just not at good quality.
Nepal, the black-market dealer, was a thin, gloomy man. When he saw Alex, he put on a fake smile.
"A generous customer. Buying, or selling?"
Alex unwrapped the cloth and placed the gun on the table.
"Selling first. Buying after."
Nepal's dry lips licked themselves at the sight of the weapon.
His bony hands disassembled it in seconds. He inspected each part carefully, peered down the barrel to check the rifling, then named his price.
"PDF-pattern autogun. Eighty percent condition. Markings removed.I'll offer 2,700 fertiliser tokens."
Alex placed a fully loaded 30-round magazine on the table.
"Add this. I'm buying as well.How about 3,400?"
Nepal considered briefly.
"3,200. And you spend every token here."
Alex nodded.
"Deal."
Nepal had an underling take the gun, then asked:
"What are you buying?"
Alex began listing.
"One plasma-cell battery, two 30-metre power cables, one electric motor, one angle grinder, ten light bulbs, fifty sets of bolts and nuts, four one-metre steel pipes, one standard tool kit, and four electrical control switches."
All materials needed for upgrading the hideout.