Cracking and shrieking, a billion lines of blue flashed past his eyes and he could feel every single one as they contorted, pulled together, melting into a humming blue nucleus. Then it ignited into a brilliant fire.

A Star was born.

[Main Core compiling complete.]

His eyes slid open and their red fractals outlined by blue lines started to meld together giving form to eyes undisguisable from any other human.

Then he felt the cold feeling of dead grey snow falling on his skin, trailing behind was the stale air filled with the stench of…decay.

[Sensory Systems online.]

It was only then his chest began to move, air rushed in, and negative pressure breathing vital to human life started again.

Yet as it rushed past his respiratory tract, the air never reached any living tissue, just a small reactor nesting in a web of machinery so quiet that they might as well not exist.

From that nest, lines carrying current ran everywhere.

To the limbs.

[Locomotion and Manoeuvre Systems ready.]

To the head.

[Secondary Processor Cores Alpha, Beta and Gamma ready.]

To his torso.

[Production Systems online.]

[Fuel level: 100%. 10 day normal operation.]

A final pulse was sent.

[All System Ready and Responding.]

And his world was alive.

Everything that had been but snippets of data, trying to work in isolation, now had context.

His main core, the secondary processors, all of them ran—analysing, compiling, concluding…thinking.

He moved, his arms pushing against the snow-capped metal beneath him, setting himself straight.

The first thing that his eyes caught onto was the arches. Arches with elaborate murals that went high into the sky to hold up a roof cracked and torn, pieces of it were around him, rubble that no one had ever bothered to touch. Then again, this place, this church, it looked abandoned.

He stood up and only then did he realise what he had been in, a metal box akin to a coffin with many pieces of wires running around where he would have been lying. It was his what? Life support? Incubator? The files inside his "brain" came up empty; hell he had no files, just his core processes data, nothing else.

A sigh left his lips, as he walked out of his open coffin, pressing down on the rotten and ash-caked ribbon that circled it with his foot as he finished and stepped out.

Barefoot he felt the ash and dust ripple and he winced at the feeling of it rubbing against his skin, for an instant he thought of diseases only to remember he wasn't the human Heylel.

Machine. He was the machine Heylel.

Another question ran across his mind and a bitter smile raked across his lips. Was he the Heylel or a Heylel?

Instantaneously he could feel his processors going overdrive over that question. His core digging into his files.

No conclusion.

That sent his core into overdrive.

His vision blurred. He grabbed the ribbon poles for support.

His reactor went ablaze.

[Fuel levels: 90%.]

[Current consumption will cause 80% depletion in one hour.]

In seconds? Fuck! He couldn't afford this. His reactor was burning too much. His core was eating too much.

NO! He couldn't let this go on. Instinctively he forced his core to slow. It did. And with it his reactor too.

But the Core didn't let the question go. No, it started shutting down other functions, cannibalising power and processing.

His sensors dimmed. His legs started losing power. His knees were on the ground.

But he knew what to do. He had always known what to do.

He deprioritised the question, shunting it off to the back of his mind.

Right there and then everything returned to normal. Like nothing had happened.

A leg that had its blood supply cut off, even if momentarily would cry in pain. His body? Not a single fuck to give.

No that's not it, his body had one concern, fuel.

[Fuel: 86%. 8.6 days as current consumption.]

He had just lost more than a day of his fuel and he had even taken ten steps.

Still, what was this? No, he knew what this was. He knew exactly. Desperate for an answer he had pushed the question on top of everything, giving it maximum priority.

He was like a human who had control over every muscle of his body. A bad fucking idea. There is a reason nature never gave humans voluntary control over their hearts.

He can't afford this again.

Closing his eyes, his mind went to his secondary processors, and in seconds two subroutines were created.

They would stop this from happening again.

Survival was the main priority now. Locked in even. It would take him many, many conscious thoughts before he could reprioritise.

What did he need to survive? Fuel and preferably a lot of it.

For that he needed information.

So, he started looking around. The building he was in felt very ornate, even in its decrepit state it was not hard to imagine its former glory—stone pillars with detailed engravings that rose high and helped the arches with the roof, art carved into the walls and the peppering of displays right below those art pieces. The effort to construct this, he could only imagine.

Then he turned, and his breath was almost stolen. The rays of sunlight peered through molten, charred glass windows of that wall, illuminating the many many small displays close to it.

It mesmerised Heylel, for without the decay this truly was…holy. And then he turned back, the wall he was next to didn't have windows but art but the wall opposite it was the inverse. Why the difference?

His eyes once again ran through the room, taking a few steps back he eyes the wall, only to realise that the wall that he was next to, didn't run the complete length of the building.

A central wall—A display wall recurring across the spine of the building that divided it into two halves. Probably. Yes, that fits.

Turning to the display next to him, Heylel peered down, it had an old gun, the wooden parts were rotten, the barrel rusted but he recognised it, a Mossberg shotgun, the plaque attached to the display read, [An old antique from ancient humanity whose name has been lost to time. It was used in self-defence.]

A Mossberg described as ancient? It looked old but…right, he knew he was in a world he recognised, but this truly set his systems straight.

Then it hit him. Museum. A museum. He had awoken inside a museum in a coffin as a machine. Crazy, truly crazy.

But why was this not causing him a crisis like the previous one?

Maybe his subroutines? No. It was not the subroutines. At his core, his whole consciousness was different, it was adjusted.

Not a human consciousness that was worried about being human. It was machine conscious that was truly rational and logical to the core. It saw its circumstances and was stepping up to move forward. A human consciousness would have been in a state of shock.

But even then, the question of whether he was a or the Heylel had affected it. That was true.

His thoughts had left him with more questions than answers. Answers he needed more processing and fuel than he could afford.

With one last sweep over the room, he knew this place had nothing to offer him other than old broken antiques, even the two terminals he saw had no power, they were just as useless as his coffin.

And so, he was off.

Through the doors of the great building, he was out.

The warm hue of the sun greeted his arrival at the outside world and it turned out that the museum was built at a hill crest. It gave a good look down into the city before him. Truly a sight.

Roads snaked and slithered around towering Gothic architecture–spires, towers and all things good. Good and empty. Empty and dead. Dead and Charred. Charred and Blackened.

All of it punctured with the sight of broken and scattered power armour. Astartes power armour.

God fucking damn it.

He sighed, a deep breath he did not need as he moved forward, his sensors on the highest settings possible, he moved down, racing for the hill of rotten sandbags that the Space Marines had made their stand behind.

There were two of them, no corpse in sight, just empty charred shells of armour. He bent down and grabbed one helmet that was thrown callously to the side of the road. Everything inside was burnt beyond recognition, it was like someone had set off thermite, maybe napalm inside it.

Approaching the armoured shells, he spotted the other helmet and it mourned the same cry. Even the armour was no different, burnt inside and out.

What had happened here? Did a fire break out inside the armour?

That would make sense though, just like a tank turret being cooked off, the same could have happened here, it would explain the helmets being feet away from the armour.

So, someone managed to sneak some flammable stuff inside and then boom? But how? How do you sneak in something this cramped piece of work?

And where are the bodies? What happened to them to not even leave a skeleton?

Still, it must have been a painful death. Not that it mattered but the important things that did matter, the electronics had been all burnt out, but then, this was power armour, power being the keyword. If something had power, it had fuel.

Well, a power plant if he remembered correctly. To confirm the health of the plant his eyes switched to infrared and sure enough, with dim pings of infrared, it was likely that the plant was in a dormant state and keeping up a baseline level of generation to make sure the plant did cool off and die. A treasure.

So with that, he let the suit down on the ground, planted his foot inside the empty neck joint, and then dug both of his hands into the cleft between the actual armour and the backpack itself. It took an instant for him to adjust his internal power channels, seeing most of it to his limbs while depowering many of his systems.

What was going to come next? Brute strength. No elegance, no grace. Just raw uncut force. His leg pulled down, while his back and hand muscles pulled up.

It took a second before Heylel felt movement. Another before he felt cracks. Three before the sound of ripping current. One more and the armour was bending.

A warning swung into his thoughts.

[Fuel: 10 minutes of current operation.]

He dismissed it.

A heat bloomed in his chest, he could feel his reactor roaring, and blazing.

The armour even lifted off the ground.

And with a final effort, he loosened and went all in.

He almost threw the pack behind but he managed to claw it still.

And then he looked back, the road beneath him had cracked, a dent into the walk, half of the dent belonged to his foot, the other to the marine neck.

He powered down his limbs.

[Fuel: 2 days.]

At the moment insignificant. Inspecting his prize, it looked functional at least on the outside, to confirm his eyes switched to infrared. And he could see the interface. The many many connectors that would go on one's back.

He needed receptors for those.

He bent down, grabbed the helmets, peeled off the metal parts and one by one ate them. Swallowing small prices, till he knew he needed no more of this metal. His hands then went to the pillaged armour and with his bare hands ripped metal apart from it, ingesting more as he went. Then he stopped.

[Manufacturing Systems. Working.]

And then one by one receptors mirroring the ones on the armour started appearing on his back, growing out of his false skin as if they were tumours outgrows of metal but it was soon down.

And then heaving the reactor over his back, he latched it on.

In an instant the fuel the situation was sorted. Not well but well enough.

He looked down at the pillaged armour piece. It was quite ripped apart. But it was going to have to do as a material source. Because even though Heylel had a [Manifacturing System] with all the knowledge to build another, they were not matter converters. Oh, he could build matter converts but the energy costs made them so utterly inefficient and useless.

And why build matter converters when he had perfectly good mines, read as Astartes armour, in front of him with more probably littered around the city?

Now, this city looked abandoned, but this was 40k and safety was not a thing anyone had.

So, he needed information and weapons; the bolt guns lying around were completely rusted too. Making them was probably the only answer.

Still with his energy needs sorted.He could get to work.

No, he has to get to work.