Jhon knew that they had to get off the street before they were noticed so he quickly hastened Mesarine and the Genator into what had once been a Departmento Munitorum storehouse. Mesarine led them up the crumbling stairs and into a room stacked high with crates of corpse-starch. They had to be as quiet as possible so as not to attract the cultists' attention. This was easier for the Genator who slithered his way up, mechadendrites braced against the walls and floor. "We need to request evacuation, activate the Vox-Link '' Mesarine's voice came through so quietly on his comm that he took off his mask to hear her voice naturally instead. He then dropped to one knee and set up his vox-unit again. He was always careful, but he gave thanks to the Emperor that it hadn't been damaged during the fight in the Alcazar.
Mesarine took the handset while he selected the Emergency frequency. Jhon was well aware of the atmospheric and electronic disturbance which would block his signal. Even if he got through, there was a very real possibility that the Aeronautica fleet coordinator wouldn't deem it worth the risk to send an extraction flight. Jhon touched the golden Aquilla stamped into his carapace as Mesarine tested the channel. "3rd Battalion 836th Psian Pegasi to Fleet Command. Come in Fleet Command." She waited and the deafening silence made his heart sink. Mesarine repeated herself twice more and looked over at the Genator as if his mere presence could in some way make the Voxcaster suddenly spring into life.
Jhon fiddled with the controls, modulating the frequency. To his credit, the Genator wordlessly offered a benediction to the device's Machine Spirit. Nothing. Mesarine sat back as Jhon pushed himself up against an aging crate of Generic Nutritional Supplement. For the first time in hours they relaxed. It was a resignation that he was essentially going to die in this city. But at least it was rest. Now that he let himself stop, his legs gave up entirely, pain shot through his calves and his feet seemed to swell until his boots felt as if they were half their size. A wave of mental exhaustion washed over him as well as the grief for the comrades he had lost, people he'd grown up with from the Schola, it threatened to bring him to tears.
Then he realised that the Genator was gesturing to them, flailing Mechandrites and blurting out binary. He was clearly trying to get them moving, but neither he nor Mesarine cared anymore. After what felt like an hour of not moving and staring into space, Jhon shifted himself over to the nearest crack in the badly maintained wall. There were so many more cultists filling the streets now, they'd emerged from the tunnels and were grabbing at those who had been cavorting above ground, pressing them into the search. Jhon used battle signs to indicate this to Mesarine, but it was as lackluster as her response. They hadn't given up, they were Tempestus Scions after all, but they were tired and they had to rest. Jhon's chest heaved and felt heavy under his armour. He had to stifle his breathing so as to make sure it wasn't too loud.
Sleep was obviously out of the question but Jhon couldn't have said how long he was there, propped against the almost comfortable plastek crate. His mind wondered in his exhaustion and his eyelids felt heavy. He forced them open again, but when he did it wasn't Mesarine and the Genator in front of him. Instead he saw the stained devotional window of his Schola Progenium Chapel. He checked his arms and legs, he was still in his carapace, still had his Hellgun across his lap. But he could also feel the stone below him, he could smell the incense in the air and he could hear the litany being chanted by the Ecclesiarch behind him in his reculsium. Jhon tried to stand but he couldn't move. He couldn't even move his head, his vision remained locked onto the window, with its depiction of the God Emperor striking down the Arch Traitor. He'd always wondered why the Arch Traitor had been depicted as a silver Dragon, or why the word Mag'ladroth was written beneath it. The beating he'd received the first time he asked these questions, made sure that he never asked again.
As he looked at the beauty of the window the light behind it got brighter, at first it seemed as if the sun had simply come out from behind a cloud. But it kept intensifying, brighter and brighter, brighter as if the searchlight of a Chimera was shining directly through it. Then on until it was the blinding light of a plasma blast, until it was blocking out all of the detail on the window. None of this seemed threatening to Jhon however, he just felt a great sense of peace and tranquility, like nothing he'd felt before. He didn't want to leave, he wanted to stay safe and warm in the idealised version of his childhood.
He only felt a deep sense of sadness and disappointment when the hard prodding of a Mechadendrite wrenched him out of his reverie. There were no messages, nothing had been spoken or imparted into him. Jhon knew that he'd not been chosen as a Saint, he couldn't have hoped to have been selected by the God-Emperor out of the untold Trillions. But it had been a holy experience, the sort of vision that usually only the Ecclesiarchy or the Holy Adepta Sororitas could be sufficiently devout to experience.