Nightwalker in the Dataweb
M39.999
The smog-choked air of Hive Primus tasted of stale industry and despair. For millennia, it had festered under the weight of its population, a towering tombstone of human endeavour marred by the insidious rot of Chaos. Petty cults bloomed like noxious fungi in the underlevels, praying to dark powers for scraps of authority or freedom from the grinding reality. But recently, they had metastasised. A network, coordinated and vicious, claiming territory, sacrificing innocents openly, and challenging the beleaguered Planetary Defence Force.
Then, something changed.
Cipher-8, Vanus Temple Operative
Cipher-8 did not perch in ventilation shafts.
Cipher-8 was the ventilation shafts. And the vox relays. And the pict-feed networks. And the encrypted comm-channels of both heretical cults and loyalist factions alike.
She was the ghost in the Hive's failing machine-spirit lattice, eyes and ears composed of countless data streams. Her mission was simple: monitor the emergence of the Chaos cult network, build predictive models, feed actionable intelligence to the Ordo Hereticus when the time came for the purge.
But the data had shifted.
She pulsed another cross-sector trawl through the Arbites incident logs. The plaza where the Khorne-aligned Bloodbound gang had publicly flayed Administratum officials three days prior — now empty. No PDF strike reported. No Arbites raid authorised. No Mechanicus purge teams deployed.
Yet the gang's vox-channel had gone offline. Drone sweeps showed the gang leader, K'tharr the Butcher, found suspended from a girder, throat slit with surgical precision. No plasma scarring, no bolt impact — clean, analog blade work. A crude bat-like sigil marked the floor below.
Cipher-8 pulsed query chains through Mechanicus surveillance archives.
Result: Zero matches for symbol in Imperial lexicons. No predictive model correlation.
Next: the Slaaneshi "Choir of Ecstasy."
Cipher-8 had infiltrated their pleasure-den comm-nets. She had prepared a cascading false-flag to spark inter-cult conflict.
But before execution, the vox went dead.
Arbites response units found the cultists bound and unconscious with unknown polymer restraints. No bloodshed. Their weapons disassembled with unnerving care. The same sigil etched into the floor.
Third: the Tzeentchian "Weavers of Fate." Their encrypted scriptorium was emptied.
No mass grave. No ritual carnage. The cultists were found catatonic, their precious data-crypts wiped clean. Artefacts vanished. The sigil again, carved into a support column.
Cipher-8 ran deep-logic statistical models: Pattern anomaly probability → 99.992% deviation from known Imperial or Xenos tactics.
She parsed the timeline. The cult network, carefully grown over months, had been dismantled in six standard days.
Leadership: neutralised.
Logistics: severed.
Communications: disrupted.
Morale: shattered.
And not a single traceable energy signature or comm-residue linked to the perpetrator.
Cipher-8's internal threat-assessment matrix revised the unknown actor:
Designation: Asset-734 (temporary).
Nature: Unknown operative or micro-cell.
Methodology: High-efficiency surgical strikes; fear-based psychological warfare; non-lethal incapacitation preference; unprecedented stealth.
Technology: Unclassified. Defies standard Mechanicus schema.
The Hive dataweb, a decaying tapestry of unreliable feeds and corrupted code, whispered no secrets about the intruder. The Asset left no digital wake — an impossibility.
Cipher-8 observed patterns of fear propagating through cult-linked vox chatter. The network believed they were being hunted by a phantom.
This was not the heavy hand of the Arbites. Nor the overt fury of an Inquisitor. Nor the elegant death of a Vindicare operative.
It was a predator operating beyond sanctioned Imperial methods.
Cipher-8 updated her Vanus Temple brief:
"Subject: Asset-734 (Temp designation).
Methodology incompatible with known Imperial actors.
Possibility: unknown post-human or Xenos agent.
Probability of technological non-compliance with Mechanicus orthodoxy → 99.8%.
Recommendation: sustained observation. Integration potential low; elimination contingency high.
Subject displays operational mastery exceeding Vanus standard baseline."
---
Adept Rho-7, Forgemaster Luminary
The stench of ozone and coolant failed to mask the pervasive decay of the lower levels. Adept Rho-7, his enhanced optical sensors whirring, knelt beside a discarded piece of technology: a restraint cuff abandoned after the Arbites collected the bound Slaaneshi cultists.
His mechadendrites probed the device.
Primitive in form — yet the material defied classification. Not adamantium. Not ceramite. Not plasteel. Its structure absorbed light unnaturally.
Its function baffled his logic engines. No power source detected. No mechanical actuator. No magnetic lock. The bonds had simply… held. With unyielding force.
Litany of Comprehension engaged. Prayers whispered. The machine-spirit remained silent — alien in nature.
Other anomalies surfaced.
Sonic emitters that had incapacitated the Khorne gang — waveform analysis failed to replicate the layered frequencies. They resonated with the brain's fear centers — a forbidden effect even the Mechanicus dared not sanction.
Grappling hooks recovered from a Nurgle cult bastion: adherence beyond any known alloy or energy field. Deployment and retraction mechanisms unreadable. Internal design chaotic yet purposeful.
Fragmented projectiles: chemically tailored disabling darts, causing minimal trauma yet perfect incapacitation. No traceable manufacture origin.
Rho-7 transmitted findings to the Prefecture of Xenotechnology:
"Artefacts of Unknown Origin. Potentially Pre-Imperial or Xenos.
Technological analysis inconclusive.
Spirit signatures → silent/non-responsive.
Recommendation: priority acquisition for deep study.
Imperial industry could be revolutionised by unlocking these secrets."
He coveted more samples. He coveted the source. But the source left no digital trail — a ghost in both data and matter.
---
The Holy Inquisition
Reports filtered upward through the endless bureaucracy of the Imperium.
Arbites files of bound cultists. Administratum logs of vanishing data and cargo. Mechanicus requests for analysis of anomalous materials. PDF after-action reports citing an "unknown factor" in combat zones.
Inquisitor Valeria, Puritan of the Ordo Hereticus, reviewed the compiled briefing.
Her purge fleet had been preparing for the Chaos infestation — now the threat had evaporated. Without her intervention.
Rival Inquisitors? None reported active in the sector.
Assassinorum? Possible — but the restraint and precision were outside their normal parameters.
Xenos incursion? Possible, but the sigil and methods matched no known patterns.
Post-human agent? Perhaps — but the absence of traceable physiology or tech markers argued otherwise.
She interrogated the latest forensic reports:
"Material: unclassifiable.
Energy signature: null post-action.
Cogitation fragments: non-standard architecture.
Biological traces: inconclusive. Possible human baseline, but no enhanced markers confirmed."
The Inquisition, ancient and all-seeing, now faced an anomaly beyond its categorisation.
A lone figure, or perhaps a small cell, had dismantled a major Chaos threat with frightening speed and subtlety.
> Who — or what — was this 'Nightwalker' the cultists now whispered of?
Valeria issued a Sector Alert Gamma:
"Designation: Nightwalker.
Status: Unknown.
Classification: Potentially Hostile.
Priority: Ascertain identity and origin.
Observation authorised. Engagement only by order of senior Inquisitor."
Across Hive Primus, patrols doubled. Scanners recalibrated. Informants pressed.
But deep in the shadowed canyons between hive blocks, a figure cloaked in darkness dissolved into the night, leaving only the echo of silence and the lingering question:
What was it? Human? Post-human? Xenos?
In the endless depths of the Imperium, even the most ancient powers could still be surprised.