The experiments continued.
The dim lighting of the Aru Group's underground containment center illuminated the silhouettes of players being dragged out of cages or directly collapsing beside the interrogation tables.
Adding to the eternal stench of mildew and machine oil, the air was now tainted with unsettling smells: pungent disinfectant, the sour stench of chemical reagents, and the faint, metallic tang of blood.
Another player was dragged back by two "White Butchers"—their faces hidden behind gas masks—and tossed like a bag of garbage into a crowded cage that previously held twenty people.
His ID was [Don't Want to Get Out of Bed Today]. At this moment, a dizzying string of status icons hung in his UI panel: [Mild Organ Failure], [Neurotoxin Tolerance Testing]... [Psionic Suppressant Allergic Reaction]...
He lay twitching on the ground, bloody foam bubbling from his mouth. His final words broadcasted intermittently in the regional channel:
"Bro... brothers... I think I'm gonna croak... They shot me up with a needle... It was green... bubbly... tasted like Papa Nurgle's thousand-year-old soup... barf..."
"Hang in there, brother! Resurrection costs 5 coins!" [Soul of Cadia] yelled, gripping the bars of the adjacent cage.
"I can't... hold on... My vision is turning yellow... now it's turning green... Emperor Above, I think I see the Plague Father waving at me..."
[Don't Want to Get Out of Bed Today] ultimately couldn't pull through. A few minutes later, his body stopped twitching.
A cold System notification scrolled by:
[Player 'Don't Want to Get Out of Bed Today' has died. Cause of death: Comprehensive Toxic Failure. Resurrection Cost: 5 Imperial Coins. Forcibly logged out.]
"How many is that now?"
Zeke leaned against the freezing iron bars, his voice hoarse.
He had personally witnessed three experiments. The procedures ranged from brutal bone marrow extractions and spinal taps, to the injection of suspiciously colored serums, to placing that helmet on someone's head—the one supposedly meant to test psychic potential but instead turned brains to mush.
[Fugitive Cogboy of the Mechanicus] maintained an infuriatingly calm log in the channel: "Including the gentleman who just passed, since our incarceration, we have observed thirty-seven non-combat casualties."
"The experiments cover basic physiological tolerance, neurotoxicology, psychic potential stimulation, and rough genetic sequence screening."
"The conclusion matches our previous deduction: We are undergoing a systematic quality-control inspection."
"Quality-control inspection?"
Schrödinger's Loyalist rubbed his arm, which was still throbbing from a recent blood draw. "Like inspecting livestock?"
"Worse than that."
Tax Bro's face was dark. "Livestock can at least hope to be fattened up and sold for meat. What about us? Those with low experimental value are simply scrapped and disposed of."
As if to prove his point, the heavy blast doors at the entrance of the underground space slid open once more.
This time, it wasn't the white coats who entered, but a squad of fully armed soldiers whose equipment was noticeably superior to the capture unit from earlier.
They escorted a middle-aged man wearing a crisp, deep blue uniform and sporting a standard corporate smile.
Holding a data slate, the man's eyes swept over the cages like a farmer inspecting his inventory.
He stood in the central clearing and cleared his throat. His voice, amplified by the megaphone, carried a trained, polite, yet utterly ruthless tone:
"Gentlemen... well, let us call you 'temporary detainees' for now."
"Following a preliminary assessment by the Aru Group's Life Sciences Division, it is highly regrettable that the vast majority of you... have failed to meet the expected standards for potential value in advanced biological research and genetic development."
The regional channel instantly flooded with '???' and 'Fuck!'.
"What does that mean? Are they saying we're useless?" [I Want the Halo of Tranquility But I'm Broke] said with righteous indignation.
"To be precise," [Fugitive Cogboy of the Mechanicus] corrected, "he's saying our bodies lack high value as experimental materials."
"The game-generated bodies might be too clean or uniform at a genetic level. They lack natural mutations, and show no traces of Warp contamination. To Chaos worshippers seeking breakthroughs and mutations... ahem, to researchers seeking technological breakthroughs, we lack the element of surprise."
The man in the purple uniform continued his speech, his smile unwavering: "The prosperity of the Imperium and Aurelian IV is built upon the diligent labor of countless individuals."
"Since you are temporarily unable to contribute to the grand temple of science, contributing to more practical construction efforts is also an honorable destiny."
He waved his hand. The soldiers immediately sprang into action, smashing the iron cages with the butts of their lasguns and roaring:
"Everyone up! Form a line! Move out! Quick!"
"Where are we going?" a player yelled out.
The man in the purple uniform glanced at the speaker and smiled. "To a place that can fully utilize your remaining value."
"The Ximans Trade Consortium's Aru Refinery No. 3 is currently in desperate need of... fresh manpower."
A refinery.
Hard labor.
One of the classic final destinations for Hive City underclass wage slaves.
The players were herded out, once again passing through the deep, freezing corridors, and loaded into transport pods that looked like steel coffins.
This time, there was no flight. The transport pods rumbled downward along tracks through the Hive City's labyrinthine steel intestines. The temperature gradually rose, and the air filled with a bizarre, nauseating mix of sulfur, molten metal, and sickly sweet chemical agents.
After what felt like an eternity, the pod doors opened, and a wave of blistering heat hit them.
What met their eyes was a dizzyingly massive cavernous space—or rather, a direct manifestation of hell in the industrial age.
The towering dome was lost in billowing thick smoke. Rivers of writhing, molten metal snaked through trenches like the planet's blood vessels, emitting a dull red glow.
Gigantic gears, pistons, pipes, and conveyor belts formed the skeleton and nervous system of this space, the deafening roar of machinery drowning out everything else.
Piles of ore the size of mountains and barrels of foul-smelling chemical raw materials were everywhere. True Hive City workers, dressed in rags with dead, numb eyes, staggered among them.
More noticeable, however, were the patrolling overseers.
Wearing rudimentary hazard suits and wielding crackling shock-whips or thick metal rods, their faces bore undisguised cruelty and indifference.
"Welcome to Plant 3, you scum!"
A one-eyed head overseer, carrying a humming power-whip, walked to the front of the line of new players. His voice was as hoarse as grinding rusty gears. "Here, your lives are only worth two things: man-hours and quota! Don't understand? That's fine!"
He casually lashed out with his whip, striking the back of a native worker nearby who had moved slightly too slow out of sheer exhaustion. Sparks exploded. The man screamed and collapsed to the ground, a massive black scorch mark across his back.
"This is the language we speak here! Do you all understand now?!"
The head overseer sneered maliciously. "Now, to your assigned sectors! Slag clearing, ore sorting, pipe unclogging, catalyst hauling... Just look at your soft, tender skin. Hmph, off to the sorting sector first!"
"Pick the waste rock out of the raw Promethium ore with your bare hands! Minimum quota: fifty baskets per person per day! Anyone who fails to meet the quota..."
He hefted the power-whip in his hand; the implication was crystal clear.
The players were herded to a wide-open area littered with gravel and chunks of black raw ore.
Several native workers were already mechanically toiling away here. They showed absolutely no reaction to the newcomers, their eyes completely hollow.
"So," Tax Bro picked up a heavy, sharp-edged piece of black ore, then looked at his empty 5-slot inventory, a look of sheer absurdity spreading across his face.
"We, the Fourth Scourge, over five thousand players, arrived in the Warhammer 40k universe. We start out owing the System a breathing tax. On the second day, we get abducted by a corrupt mega-corporation, skip the experimental phase entirely, and are exiled directly to be... assembly-line miners?"
"And without mechanical arm assistance or automated sorting screens. Purely by hand."
[Slaanesh Champion Candidate] looked playfully at the one-eyed overseer gripping the whip behind them and spoke in the regional channel:
"Alrighty family, we've successfully entered the sweatshop! Only problem is, we can't pack up our buckets and run away from this one!"