When their journey through the Veiled Strike began in the Port Landing Bay, the pedestrian traffic in the form of Inquisitorial Storm Troopers and sailors had been heavy, but as Fynn and Basil approached the Conditioning Chambers, the traffic they passed had thinned until it disappeared.

Basil hurried, his legs burning as he tried to keep up with the long strides of the Space Marine. Why does he have to walk so fast? Basil asked himself. He hasn't said anything since we started either. Basil decided against trying to start a conversation and instead glanced at the corridor bulkheads looking for the markings he had noticed earlier. I know we're in the bowels of the ship, he thought. But it's been a while since I last saw one of those markers. The Apothecary abruptly stopped and Basil had to catch himself to keep from running into the Marine. He glanced around the right side of the Fynn's body to see him raise his enormous hand to a box on the bulkhead in front of him. Basil was momentarily surprised they had reached the end of the corridor; the huge body of the Space Marine having completely obscured the boy's view around him.

A door slid open and the Apothecary started walking again with Basil following him. As soon as the boy stepped through the doorway, Fynn said, "You stay here." Without another word he walked on.

Basil watched for a moment as the Space Marine's white form walked toward an open exit portal on his immediate left, then turned his attention to the right and focused on the rest of the area before him. The compartment was large and brightly lit, as was the entirety of the Veiled Strike he had seen, and contained three large white pods of some sort, each with a large windowless hatch. They were arranged into a radial pattern with a large black sphere sitting on a pedestal in the middle. They're big enough for a Space Marine to lay in, Basil noted. There were also a number of tubes of some sort leading to them as well as a heavy wiring harness leading to each one. The tubes and wiring harnesses feeding each ran across the chamber's ceiling and dropped to the pods in neatly arranged bundles. A panel on the opposite wall had three large displays as well as a number of knobs and data jacks. Must be where they're controlled from, he guessed.

"You look young to be undergoing the Malleus Conditioning," said a soft female voice from over his shoulder.

Basil quickly turned around and came face to face with the woman. She was of typical height for a human female with a typical build as well and was dressed in a white robe, but that is where normal ended for her. Her skin was very pale and her long hair was bleached white, but Basil's gaze was drawn to her eyes. Or, more precisely, to where her eyes should have been. In their place, two obviously cybernetic eyes had been installed in the sockets, and around them twin pink and white scars had formed. She was an Astropath and while she stood before the God Emperor himself, the very eyes in her head had been burned away by his presence.

"I am Sirsay," she said. Two more Astropaths, short and pale men with their eyes burned out but no cybernetic replacements, walked up behind her and stopped. She glanced past Basil to the pods that he had been looking over. "You will undergo much of your Malleus Conditioning in those," she said. "I received mine here too, long ago, but have recently returned to aid Inquisitor Matthias in his work. The portents demanded it."

Basil glanced back over his shoulder at the pods and then back to her red cybernetic gaze. "Malleus Conditioning?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered. "Malleus Conditioning is the training you will undergo to better prepare you to faithfully endure the hardships that servants of the Ordo Malleus must face." Basil stared at her, wide-eyed, listening to every word. "Within the pods you will be alternately subjected to sensory deprivation and sensory hyper-excitation as well as inducted into many spheres of knowledge through hypno-conditioning."

"Oh," Basil said. "But why are three Astropaths needed for that?" he asked.

"You are a psyker," Sirsay said. "And you will be subjected to mental and physical trauma within the pods," she added as her red gaze turned toward them for a moment, then back to Basil. "Trauma that will inevitably lead you to grasp for the Warp, regardless of what you intend before entering the pod," she added, then pointed to the large black sphere in the center of the pods. "And we will power the Occluding Sphere to not only inhibit, but eliminate, that natural reaction."

"Occluding Sphere?" Basil asked. "What's it do?"

"It will broadcast a psychic signal into your mind," Sirsay answered. "One that will disrupt your ability to concentrate and grasp the Warp. You would have felt the effects of one before, when you journeyed to Terra in one of the Black Ships."

Basil just stared at her in response.

"Your journey to Terra was not aboard on of the Black Ships," Sirsay snapped, her jaw dropping open and a look of awe on her face. "You're the One."

"The one what?" Basil asked, worry filling his head.

"That is something I am not at liberty to answer," Sirsay calmly replied, the look of shock on her face gone.

At that moment, the locking mechanism to the hatch of the nearest pod loudly disengaged and Basil's head swiveled toward it. The hatch opened fully, revealing a spacious black interior with no glare or hint of any other colour within. His head quickly turned back to Sirsay.

"All the Astropaths I met in the Scholastica Psykana didn't need cybernetic eyes," Basil said. "Why do you have them?"

"Because of the Void Spectres and others like them," she answered. "I'm certain you learned in your training, limited though it was, that despite being blinded, we Astropaths can see around us by looking into the Warp. But the Void Spectres psychic signature is hidden, though it does exist," she continued. "We cannot see them or any individual with a similarly hidden signature and that makes Astropaths very vulnerable to certain assassins."

Who besides the Imperium could make such assassins? Basil asked himself. Would she be the target of Imperial assassins?

As Basil's thoughts finished forming in his head, Apothecary Fynn stepped into the doorway and stopped. Sirsay looked over her shoulder at him and smiled while the other two Astropaths heads cocked back and forth and their faces squinted in frustration at not being able to see him.

"Now boy, strip down," snapped Fynn. "You don't need any clothes in there."

Basil quickly complied, stripping down and folding his clothes piece by piece as he did so. Some boys of his age may have been shy about stripping in front of a grown woman, but not Basil or any like him. Training within the Scholastica Psykana to be a battle psyker removed such inhibitions. They did not enter the minds of such individuals.

"Into the pod," Apothecary Fynn said.

Without another word, Basil climbed into the pod and sat down within it. He glanced up to see the grey eyes of the Apothecary staring down at him. The giant reached up and swung shut the hatch, darkness instantly surrounding Basil when it closed. All sound from without vanished too. Then, the silence was broken. He heard a trickle, a sound that grew louder, then felt a liquid pooling around him. A liquid with a foul smell, like ash. "Remember who you are", Basil said aloud within the Pod.

Outside the pod, Apothecary Fynn and the three Astropaths stood in silence, staring at the pod. After a few standard minutes, Fynn looked to a chrono on his wrist and spoke.

"It's time to break the boy."