Sister Figgsin, with a swift, almost tactical evasion, stiffly but extremely controllably pulled back from the withered, branch-like fingers of the old woman, her Power Armor joints emitting a suppressed hydraulic whir.
She stepped back to her original surveillance position with steady strides, as if that brief, non-combat contact had been an unexpected disturbance requiring an emergency disengagement.
The old woman, still shaken, was pulled more quickly by her granddaughter into the surging crowd, her hunched figure instantly swallowed by ragged clothes and mutated outlines.
The crowd, in a deeper, stickier oppression, dispersed rapidly like a receding tide into the intricate shadows of the shantytown, leaving behind only messy footprints on the metal floor and the lingering smell of low-quality fuel in the air.
Sister Figgsin stood alone, the Power Armor servo system emitting a low, continuous hum, like an unquenchable tremor within her.
The brief, chilling touch of the old woman's fingertips, and her rambling, chaotic whisper—muddled by old age, blindness, and mutation—were like a tiny pebble dropped onto the surface of a ten-thousand-year-old frozen lake.
The ripples it created were silent, yet beneath the ice of her steel creed, strange and cold waves spread.
That cold touch and the chaotic, rambling whisper created an irreconcilable friction with her deeply ingrained creed.
Inquisitor Chen Xi's words from not long ago echoed heavily at this moment, each word like a stone dropped into the lake of her heart, overlapping with the image of a little girl in her memory, licking a rough holy glow candy at the distribution point, her face filled with pure satisfaction.
A strange ripple of cognition gently spread at the edge of her steel-like will.
She almost instinctively pressed her armored hand onto the hilt of the Bolter at her waist, which was engraved with "fiona."
The familiar cold, hard sensation transmitted through her ceramite glove—it was the lighthouse that had guided her through countless paths of purification, an anchor of strength and duty.
She gripped it tightly, letting this solid sensation steady her mind and dispel the strangeness brought by the unexpected contact and chaotic perception—which felt more like a certain discomfort with Inquisitor Chen Xi's unconventional plan.
Sister Figgsin's gaze, like a precise augur, slowly swept over the space reconfigured by the new policy.
The sight she beheld prompted her to re-center her observational focus.
It was no longer merely countless potential threat points requiring isolation, screening, and, if necessary, purification.
A struggling, mutated populace was being forcibly integrated into an unprecedented management system.
The core of this system was Inquisitor Chen Xi's concept of "survival and utilization under surveillance," rather than her familiar "isolation or purification."
To obtain the rations needed for survival, people began to habitually gather at prayer points, uttering uneven chants under the Imperial Aquila.
To exchange for medicine that could alleviate the pain of mutation, they queued silently under the supervision of Adeptus Arbites officials, cautiously presenting their rosters.
Imperial maxims painted on the walls, exceptionally conspicuous under the new lighting, became the new spiritual coordinates of this space.
Even the old canvas bearing the Imperial Double-Headed Eagle, retrieved from a scrap heap by an unknown hand and painstakingly hung high, though stained with oil and badly damaged, still stubbornly flapped in the wind.
These scenes, like symbols of order forcibly implanted onto cold industrial ruins, declared the extension of the Imperial will to this place.
The scenes of careful ration distribution; the glimmer in Old Cripple's eyes as he received a bottle of medicine; the hanging Imperial Aquila banner…
All of this constituted evidence of the new policy's difficult implementation in this community of Mutants, a fragile symbiosis formed between the need for survival and the order imposed by the Imperium.
Her fingers remained as if welded to the hilt of the Bolter at her waist.
Her ingrained combat instincts, the eternal duty to defend pure faith, fiona's silent reminder on her shoulder—none of this had changed.
Driven by an almost fanatical piety, stemming from an extreme sense of responsibility for Imperial order and human purity, she was now meticulously, almost rigorously, supervising the integration of Inquisitor Chen Xi's will with the nascent framework of D-7.
She intended to execute this controversial policy as impeccably as the Emperor's law.
Sister Figgsin clearly realized that every step of D-7's reconstruction of order precisely trod the boundary between traditional Imperial tenets and Alex's new policy.
Within the policy framework defined by the Inquisitor, allowing "mutated citizens" to survive under strict surveillance, her adhered-to creed of resolving mutation through complete purification faced an unprecedented, execution-level complex challenge.
This complexity, like the chilling touch of the old woman's fingertips, like the little girl's focused licking of the candy, broadened her understanding, while her faith, like the tightly gripped gun hilt, remained unmoving.
—
The outline of D-7 gradually became clear under the forcibly implemented order.
Daily prayers at dawn, noon, and dusk, like a regular pulse, began to inject a predictable rhythm into this industrial ruin, silent for many years.
The Mutant residents slowly became accustomed to gathering at specific times, chanting the short and rigid phrases of the "Basic Creed Prayer" in unison, in the shadows cast by discarded maintenance platforms marked with the Imperial Aquila.
On the walls, maxims like "Doubt is Treason" and "Purity is Strength" were clearly visible under the new xenon lights, emanating a cold glow.
Sister Figgsin's silver-white figure still stood by the makeshift holy emblem stand, her vigilance like an unquenchable flame, the first barrier guarding the new order.
However, in her sharp gaze, in addition to scrutinizing potential threats, there was also a quiet focus on how this new order would operate and affect this "testing ground."
Her fingers habitually rested on the grip of the Bolter at her waist, engraved with sacred rose patterns; "fiona" behind her leaned calmly against her Power Armor's backplate, together reminding her that the shadows had not completely dissipated.
However, the establishment of a new order, like building a house on ruins, is destined to be accompanied by the disturbance of old dust.
Deep within the labyrinth of lower pipes, beyond the reach of Imperial searchlight beams, in the few souls steeped in old despair and long-corroded by resentment, the embers of chaos had not completely extinguished.
Several blasphemous images, scrawled with poor quality paint and defiled blood, were secretly posted like ghosts on the rusty inner walls of the pipes.
This was the dying struggle of old chaotic beliefs, the final screams of those fallen who were unwilling to lose their deceptive soil, under the increasing pressure of Imperial order.
Their whispers entwined with the souls still harboring doubts about the new life, confused by the pain of mutation: "The Imperium's 'grace' is merely poison coated in sugar! They will always see you as aberrations!
Only by returning to the embrace of the 'True Gods,' by embracing the unity of flesh, can you achieve true purification and liberation! Destroy this false cage!"
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