33 – Negotiation
Lately, I have found my greed overtaking my empathy. No, "overtake" does not represent the reality of my situation well. I have outright ignored any semblance of empathy and let my greed guide .
This thought was the culmination of all the logs one of my Mind-Cores made over a retrospective survey of my actions up until now. I didn't even consider helping or healing the mutants hiding under the hive city. I've had logical reasons for not doing that. They'd die either way. Being a mutant must be worse than death, and so on and so forth. In reality, I just couldn't be bothered. I was on a new planet, in an alien body, and eating them gave power and pushed my expiration date back a few days.
I looked through the many horrifically dismbered bodies here with that thought kept at the forefront of my mind, and while I realized they were in a pitiful situation, I also knew freeing them would be worse than killing these half-living beings.
Not all of them were still alive; most weren't, but so were. The Magos was monitoring life functions and such, and with several subjects from the sa species, he was probably doing intensive research on them.
I let soul energy trickle into my mind, suffusing it, and I used it to cleanse the instinctual greed clouding my thoughts for a bit. The haze of hundreds, if not thousands, of possible upgrades I could give myself if only I consud this whole lab dimd and was pushed to an emotionless Mind-Core to consider.
I barely held back a grimace as I felt self-loathing overwhelm for a mont. I had slaughtered innocent people for nothing but selfishness and to satisfy my greed.
My ever-helpful Mind-Core pushed a report about all the gains I've received from the excursions, managing to push the emotional thoughts away from . What's done is done. I don't have to do anything like that again...unless I starve.
With a quick thought, I checked up on my bio-energy reserves, and a complicated calculation revealed that if I only used a human body, my current reserves would keep going for a good three thousand years, at least. With my average consumption over my rather short new lifeti, though, I only had a little over a century.
All this played out in my mindscape in a fraction of a second. By the ti the Magos might have noticed the distressed state of my body, I'd already forcefully controlled it to show nothing. My conflicting emotions still boiled under the surface. I still wanted to get a chomp out of everything here and anything else that moved for that matter, but I also felt waves of sha bubble up inside my stomach like twisting knots whenever the target of my desires was a sapient and sentient being.
"You have quite the collection, Magos," I said as my eyes penetrated deeply into the darkness, and I saw hundreds of ters before a bulkhead separated this laboratory from the next, "This makes it seem like I was asking for far too little when you have such a diverse set of samples."
"Agreent: Should the Inquisitor's capability also overshadow my expectations, I am willing to match it in value."
"Well," I shrugged my shoulders, "let's hope you don't have too high expectations then."
"Query: What exactly are you offering in return for so of my samples?"
"That entirely depends on what it is you desire, Magos," I stared into his unblinking eyes, "do you wish for rejuvenation? Healing? Clones? Replicating samples? I could do it all."
"That is far outside of the recorded capabilities of any Psyker of the Biomancy School."
"Does your chanicum share its most prized knowledge freely, Magos?" I asked but continued, cutting him off as the blue light started flickering on his throat, "But you are entirely correct, this is far outside of what other Biomancers could do. Will you report to the Inquisition?" I finished with a slight sneer.
"Understanding: Each of us has so... peculiarities, Inquisitor. I am more than willing to overlook yours if it aids in my quest for knowledge, though I'd appreciate this laboratory remaining... undisclosed."
"I bet," I said as I eyed a floating body, only kept sowhat alive by the dozens of tubes and cha-tendrils connecting to it, "just that one would certainly earn you so unfavorable attention."
It was a hybrid, plain and simple. The lab was warded to high heavens and back, so I couldn't exercise my psychic powers as much here, but with how close it was to , I could scan a bit of its genes. The Human DNA stood out to as I was already familiar with it, but it was mixed with another, more uniform and, dare I say, elegant.
I could have never identified the species based on just the DNA, but the floating body's angular jaw and slightly pointed ear were a dead giveaway. This madman has managed to make a sowhat functional Human-Eldar Hybrid.
"Agreent: Hiding it from you would have been counterproductive as my first request would be your assistance in seeing whether you can make the geno of this specin more stable."
"You are asking a lot from , Magos," I walked up to the large tankard and touched the clear glass with my palm, "coincidentally I'd like to have an Ambull sample before I attempt to fulfill your request."
"I do not want insect DNA contaminating it, Inquisitor."
"I assud as much," I nodded, "but as I'm sure you know by now, the Ambulls are one of the most genetically stable beings in the entire galaxy. I'd like to study them first."
"Agreeable: It is not a rare sample, so consider that done, Inquisitor."
"You said 'first request,' Magos. What else do you want for so samples gathering dust in here?"
"I have so samples that were... challenging to get ahold of. I'd like you to replicate them."
"I'll warn you now," I turned my head so I was looking into his eyes, even if the cyborg towered over by more than one ter, "the process of that destroys the original sample."
"Peculiar,... if you demonstrate your capability of replicating said samples perfectly on so less valuable ones before, I have no qualms about that."
"And my paynt for that?"
"The Crotalid sample is among the ones I'd like for you to replicate. I assu the process of replicating grants you an understanding of the sample, so that should be sufficient compensation."
"I guess so," I turned fully to face him, "When do you want to proceed with the transaction?"
"I have prepared the Ambull sample," one of his thick chanical tendrils peaks out from under his robes and it carries a sealed talloid box, "This should also serve as a great test for your replication capabilities, as I assu you haven't had the opportunity to extensively study an Ambull before, correct?"
"Yes," I say as I take the skull-sized box from his appendage, which quickly retreats under the cover of his Mars-Red robes, "well then, let's get to it then."
I didn't have to reconstruct a whole Ambull from the fist-sized sample, so the process of multiplying it was simple. The complicated part was making it look like I was using my Biomancy to do it. So far, I managed to boost my natural healing and give myself a slight regeneration with Biomancy, but that was so energy inefficient compared to doing it with Bio-energy that I tended to just not do it.
I could get bio-energy easily, but replenishing my fading stores of soul energy required to open up my soul to the Warp and all of its horrors.
In the end, I used a bit of that regeneration and my natural shapeshifting capabilities to make it look like the new sample just grew out of the palm of my hand before I dropped it back into the box. Absorbing it was just the sa as before. I grimaced, and with a widened jaw, I swallowed the whole sample. I felt Zedev's astonishnt in his aura clearly before his emotional suppressants ca back online.
After popping out three replicas of the sample, I stopped. The taste of the insectoid's flesh combined with the feeling of new flesh growing out of my palm managed to unsettle a bit. Before this, I always used my white flesh as an interdiary and didn't grow stuff straight from my body, but now I couldn't do that with the Magos observing with both his eyes and around a dozen servoskulls.
"Fascinating." His synthetic voice sounded out as he was cutting apart one of the new samples, "A perfect replica, down to the cellular level and I assu the DNA too... yes it is."
After making sure that I wasn't fleecing him, he urged to get on with the rest of the samples. I didn't keep him waiting, and it was all fine up until the next sample was a whole-ass Eldar. Now, it'd be easy to just eat it without this guy looking over my shoulder, but it could be problematic otherwise.
"Hmm," I eyed the dead body of the female space elf, even as she was, she was still a sculpted beauty with long black hair and an angular jaw, plus pointy ears resting on the side of her head. The only thing lessening her perfect form was a large gash running from shoulder to waist and exposing her organs, "We can do this one in one of two ways, Magos, either you leave alone and cease all observations, or I'll have to take a week to map out the geno of the Eldar."
"You haven't done so already?" the Magos asks, "I'd have assud you'd have co in contact with the Eldar already as a mber of the Ordo Xenos."
"There are only so many of the damned things I can rember," I raised an eyebrow at him, "you must know how much mory it takes to record the perfect template for a whole body."
"Understanding: Indeed, mory is a finite resource, and we can never have enough of it."
"So?" I crossed my arms, "What is it going to be?"
"I can provide you with a separated smaller laboratory in which I will cease observations."
"That is agreeable," I nodded, levitating the Eldar corpse along with the rest of the larger samples, the smaller laboratory was still the size of a whole family ho back on Earth with several separate floors and stairways, but it'd do for the purpose.
Zedev left the laboratory in a way that I felt was reluctant, and I had to stifle a giggle as I instantly felt servoskulls and well-hidden caras observing along with a myriad of sensors, the asshole was as honest as he was hungry for knowledge.
I shivered once as the soul energy sped through my body, transforming into bio-electricity before it leaped off of my skin and sashed out in a storm of white lightning, causing every cara and sensor in the laboratory to short-circuit and burn out. There were more still and after a mont of not feeling them turn off, I shook my head with a bit of amusent.
"I can sense the rest of them too, Magos, but destroying those would do rather large damage to the laboratory so if you want to keep it intact, I recomnd you cease observation."
My active psychic abilities needed direct input and guidance from to work, but I've discovered a few passive abilities that ca to be an extension of myself. One of these was my ability to read the aura of people to discern the emotions they thought they could hide from , and another one was this tingle on the back of my neck when I was being watched.
Said feeling vanished after another few seconds, but I wasn't convinced. I spent another five minutes just boring through walls and carefully feeling around the laboratory and beyond with my senses. I could see most of the electromagnetic spectrum, and I could also hear the firing of electric machinery, so I was rather sure I wasn't being watched anymore.
I stared down at the perfectly preserved corpse of a female Eldar.
Now then, let's see what you are hiding, you little beauty.
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