Cryptek Jzahth floated down the corridor, his mechanical legs humming with gentle energy. Pale green lights, cold and stark, lit the route. Metal arches curved overhead, etched with glyphs of the Sulekh Dynasty. The hum of hidden power sources thrummed beneath the floors. Other Necron constructs scurried about. Each one followed a prearranged task. Jzahth, however, had a far more interesting duty. He carried data-slates pinned against his chassis, each containing reams of notes on the subject known as "Angron."
He paused at a pair of sealed doors, scanning them with a single wave of his tri-digital staff. They slid open with a hiss, revealing the laboratory's interior. There, swirling viridian mists clung to the edges of tall cylinders. Complex apparatuses lined the walls, each alive with alien energies. Tomes of datascrolls floated in shimmering stasis fields. Coils of living metal twitched, ready for the next procedure.
He stepped inside. The door closed behind him, sealing out the quiet noise of the corridor. He directed his eyeless gaze at two tables set apart, each holding a motionless figure. Angron. Or rather, Angrons. One was the original body, the other a clone perfected by Argall's attempts. Jzahth had insisted on acquiring them. Phaeron Khoteph had allowed him, though with limits. High Chancellor Argall had likewise granted permission.
Argall possessed no squeamishness about what Jzahth might do with dead flesh. Yet Argall still expected courtesy, which meant no living experimentation—sadly.
Jzahth glided toward the first table. It bore the original Angron. The remains still carried faint traces of the infamous Butcher's Nails. Metal implants sat lodged in the skull, fused with bone and sinew. The dark metal glinted beneath the overhead glow-lamps. Jzahth let his slender fingers trace the edges of the exposed device. The nails were complex, clearly an archaic creation. He would have liked to remove them in front of a living test subject. He had so many tests in mind: neurological mapping, psycho-synaptic flares, gene-limited regeneration cycles. But the subject was a corpse, which meant he couldn't do any of that.
No matter. He'd glean knowledge either way.
He parted his lips in a silent clack of satisfaction. The Butcher's Nails perched on the threshold between mechanical augmentation and advanced wetware. Jzahth leaned in, focusing a scanning beam from his ocular array. The readouts flared across his internal HUD. The device extended filaments deep into the brain. The cryptek's metallic brow might have furrowed if such an expression were possible. He recognized a cunning blend of chemical and electronic impetus. It forced the subject's fight-or-flight reflex to run constantly, feeding the limbic system with aggression. More importantly, it made it so that the pleasure center functioned only when the subject was engaged in violence.
Fascinating.
Primitive but clever.
He peeled back a portion of the scalp, uncovering more wires. His limbs moved with perfect finesse. No gore spilled; the body had long since lost its fluids–now kept within a nearby jar for separate testing. Jzahth extracted a minuscule fragment of the device, lifting it to the light. He wanted to see how it bound to the neural tissue. The physical link was crude. He had encountered more elegant solutions among the War in Heaven's relics and even from other alien races. But, for a lowly subject of a lesser age, it impressed him.
He set that fragment aside, preserving it in a stasis jar. Next, he gestured to a hovering platform. It drifted over, carrying a suite of scanning instruments. He keyed in commands with slender digits, letting the instruments whir to life. A fan of green light passed over Angron's bodice, layering the data-slate with three-dimensional images.
Nothing new.
He left the original body, letting the scanning instruments continue their work.
His mechanical legs clacked lightly across the metal floor as he approached the second table. Here lay the "perfect" clone. Argall's creation, he presumed. It lacked the Butcher's Nails. Jzahth felt a surge of interest. The subject's body was intact, the gene-craft immaculate. He ran a hand along the clone's arm, feeling the tension of artificially maintained muscle. Yes, it was definitely near perfection, but that was the closest anyone could possibly get. True Clones were an impossibility, even with Necron Technology; there was simply no way for two beings to be completely and utterly identical.
He retrieved a slender probe from a side tray. He pressed it gently against the clone's chest, letting it sink beneath the flesh. The flesh parted smoothly. Jzahth studied how the cells responded to intrusion. They maintained cohesive elasticity, reminiscent of some gene-coded regeneration factor. That they maintained such a thing now, even in death, was nothing short of marvelous. He saw no direct sign of the nails, obviously. This body was never forced to endure such crudeness.
He tapped commands into his data-slate, linking the probe's feed to an analysis module. A swirl of glowing text hovered in the air. The clone's genetics were stable, perhaps more so than the original. This was reminiscent of the ancient War in Heaven's legends, where certain advanced gene-races were crafted by the Old Ones. The Krorks had possessed unstoppable might, shaped through deliberate engineering. This clone was not as tall as a Krork, nor as bestial, but the complexities of its genome rivaled them. Though Jzahth would never publically admit it, Argall was a genius of unparalleled ability.
He withdrew the probe, stepping back to a console. He pressed a series of glyphs, letting an overhead beam pass across the clone's body. The scanning field gleaned every micron, layering his data-slate with morphological details.
Once again, nothing new.
He drummed his fingers on the console, reading the lines of text. The solution to reversing the Bio-Transference process had eluded the Necrons for countless eons. Many of his peers considered it a lost cause. Yet Jzahth saw a glimmer of hope in these bodies. If one could be physically perfect, biologically unstoppable, perhaps that body might host the consciousness of a Necron. A new shell for the soul. Or what passed for a soul among the Necrontyr.
Yes, that was the real dream. The New Necrontyr. Reborn in flesh, free of the curse of eternal metal.
Long ago, the War in Heaven had forced the Necrontyr to abandon their fragile biology, but the price had been their souls. Now, glimpses of the Old Ones' methods or emergent techniques from the Hyperboreans might reveal a path back to flesh. Even if it meant grafting minds into a host derived from something like Angron. For the first time in a very long time, Jzahth felt something akin to excitement.
He moved along the clone's side, scanning the arms. He flexed a synthetic muscle fiber with a remote manipulator. The limb didn't respond—there was no life. But the morphological harmony pleased him. He took a small scalpel from a tray, slicing an incision to examine the subdermal tissue. The cut parted like water. He peeled back a layer, revealing corded muscle. Neatly arranged, no sign of scarring or mutation. He recorded the data, referencing old logs from the Krork dissection.
Surprising parallels existed.
The clone's design was similarly robust.
His mind drifted to old data-slate entries from the War in Heaven, describing how the Krorks had been shaped to fight. They had unstoppable resilience, brutal cunning. This Angron matched some aspects: unstoppable ferocity, engineered might. That said, they never really quite figured out how the Krorks were created, only that they were the most physically gifted creations of the Old Ones.
If they truly perfect the reversal of Bio-Transference, then bodies like these might be the answer. The ultimate vessel for the resurrected minds of the Necron nobility. Could the entire Sulekh Dynasty be reborn in bodies derived from such powerful stock? The idea teased him relentlessly. He pictured Phaeron Khoteph striding in a form like Angron's, unconquerable, merging advanced intelligence with unstoppable biology.
He turned aside, moving to a small station stacked with data-spheres. He rummaged among them, retrieving one labeled "N." It contained some of the earliest attempts at reversing Bio-Transference. Many had ended in catastrophic failure. The Necron-coded intellects simply overloaded the biological shells, or the shells rotted upon contact. Jzahth wanted to see if the unique traits of Angron's body might circumvent that. The high resilience, the redundant organs—maybe they could hold a Necron mind.
That was, of course, if they perfected the reversal of Bio-Transference. It was much simpler for Angron's case, because it was a simple transfer of one flesh body to another. The complexities of having to transfer the consciousness that has been locked within a metal cage for millions of years into a fleshy body were an entirely different matter.
He loaded the sphere into a projector, letting streams of data swirl overhead. He cross-referenced them with the code gleaned from Angron's clone. The lines flickered, merging in arcs of logic. Jzahth's mechanical features remained impassive, but inside, cogs of excitement whirred. The synergy was promising. Not guaranteed, but promising. Perhaps Argall, if properly convinced, would allow further experiments on new bodies grown from this genetic sample.
Perhaps not. Or, maybe he wouldn't care at all.
Argall was unpredictable—though ironically more pragmatic than Phaeron Khoteph suspected.
There were many who thought Argall, High Chancellor of the Hyperboreans, was driven by emotion and instinct, that he was affected at all by banal concepts and feelings. No, Jzahth had spent many hours with Argall, discussing scientific wonders and ideas. The Cryptek's understanding of Argall was that of a cold, emotionless beast that merely wore the skin of man for the sake of civility, followed the laws and customs of men to avoid scrutiny and because doing so was the most efficient approach. But beneath Argall's eyes was an emptiness that stretched almost infinitely–alongside a cruelty that'd been caged and kept hidden. And yet, the High Chancellor was still very much a creature of science, a researcher at heart.
Argall was very much like Jzahth himself.
And so, Jzahth knew that if he asked and properly explained, Argall would say yes to even the vilest and most demented experiments, provided that said experiments yielded tangible results.
With an absent command, Jzahth sent the two bodies into stasis. A soft hum filled the air as energy fields flickered to life, encasing the Primarch's forms in shimmering green light. The preservation fields would hold indefinitely, ensuring the tissue remained pristine for future examinations. Yet Jzahth's mind was already wandering, spinning through possibilities that extended far beyond simple dissection. He turned toward a console embedded in the laboratory wall, his metallic fingers tapping a series of commands into the glowing interface.
The cloning process began immediately. Cylindrical chambers along the far wall hummed to life, their internal mechanisms calibrating with mechanical precision. The tanks, filled with nutrient-rich amniotic fluid, glowed faintly. Within them, cells would divide and multiply under Jzahth's meticulous direction. Unlike the original clone of Angron, these would not be grown to full adulthood. No, Jzahth intended to cultivate these bodies from infancy. It was an unusual decision, even by Necron standards, but his logic was sound.
Raising one from childhood might reveal insights into how such a biologically advanced specimen could develop under controlled conditions. The thought intrigued him. He had witnessed countless cycles of death and destruction, his long existence largely consumed by research, war, and the unrelenting silence of undeath. The prospect of raising a creature—of watching it grow and learn—was novel enough to stir his ancient curiosity. For a Necron Cryptek, novelty was a rare treasure. There was little to do, after all, when one had eternity to think.
Jzahth stepped closer to one of the cylindrical tanks, observing as the cloning chambers began their delicate work. Microfilaments extended into the nutrient fluid, injecting carefully sequenced genetic material derived from Angron's DNA. The cells were already replicating, forming the earliest stages of what would eventually become fully realized bodies.
The rest of the clones would serve a different purpose. Jzahth planned to keep them for long-term experimentation, each one a stepping stone in his broader quest. The idea of restoring the Necrontyr to flesh had consumed his thoughts for millennia, ever since the first disastrous attempts to reverse the Bio-Transference process. It had always seemed an impossible dream. The Necrontyr had long since lost their connection to the mortal coil, their minds and bodies entombed in immortal necrodermis. Yet now, with the bodies of Angron as templates, there was a glimmer of hope.
He had a theory—one that had taken centuries to refine. Necron Warriors, the mindless soldiers who formed the bulk of their legions, had little of their original identities left. Their thoughts were reduced to scraps of instinct and vague memories, their souls scattered and hollow. But what if they could be reborn in a new form? Not as adults, but as infants? What if those shattered minds could develop alongside their new bodies, forging fresh personalities over the course of years?
Jzahth moved to another console, pulling up data from earlier experiments on neural development. His hypothesis was simple: the younger the host, the more likely the fractured remnants of a Necron soul would integrate and adapt. Infants offered the perfect vessel, their minds malleable and unshaped. It was unlikely they would ever truly become Necrontyr again—not in the way they once were—but they might become something close.
He glanced at the tanks again, his gaze lingering on the swirling fluid. The Silent King's vow echoed faintly in his mind, a promise made millennia ago to undo the curse of Bio-Transference and restore their people to life. That promise extended to every Necrontyr, from the highest Phaeron to the lowliest Warrior. No one was to be left behind. Jzahth had taken that vow to heart. Even the mindless soldiers who marched endlessly across battlefields deserved a chance to reclaim some semblance of identity.
For the higher-ranking Necron nobility, however, the situation was different. Those like Jzahth, who had retained their full minds and personalities through the eons, had no need to be reborn as infants. Their transition back to flesh would be more direct, their memories and intellect preserved intact. But that, too, presented its own challenges. What if the bodies they created were imperfect? What if they no longer resembled the beings they had been before the War in Heaven?
His own memories of life before Bio-Transference were dim, fragmented like old, degraded recordings. He could recall the sensation of breath, the faint warmth of sunlight on skin. But his face, his hands, the specifics of his body—those details were gone. Time had eroded them, leaving only a hazy impression of who he had once been. It was a cruel irony. They sought to restore their flesh, yet none of them could say with certainty what that flesh should be.
And was that not a most ironic tragedy?
AN: Chapter 62 is out on (Pat)reon!