Sahaal had considered his options. That he must enter the hive was without question, but where to begin? Where to hunt the thief? On the cusp of this vast edifice, hunkering amongst the pipes and cogs of its dermis, he found himself assailed by hopelessness. To find one man within all this... He might as well search a desert for a single grain of sand, or a galaxy for a single star.

But, no. No, he could not allow himself the luxury of doubt. He must be focused. He must be driven.

He must be ruthless.

He'd slipped into the foundation-crevice like a knife between ribs, swallowed by the dark.

And now, a day later - a day of exploring, of haunting the wastes below the city itself, of stalking this endless parade of corridors and tunnels and pits - was he any closer to his prize?

No.

There was no logic to this underhive realm. Where above tiers crested tiers, joined by tapestry-strewn stairwells and columns of elevators, flanked by devotional statues and preachers' pulpits, here there was madness.

Ancient stairways led to nowhere. Tunnels twisted through knotted girders and plastic waste, collecting chemical sludge. Visceral cables spewed from haphazard

partitions, coiling away ever upwards into the city. Collapsed tunnels were rebored or circumvented, uphive-sluices opened to vomit acid upon duct-strewn channels, and elevator shafts full of snowmelt rippled and splashed where slime-scaled things coiled in the deep. The weight of the hive settled across pillars and posts like an ever-present promise; like a clock counting out the hours until the fall of the sky.

And the people... Cowering in ghettos around scarce resources, these were the hopeless, the useless, the dispossessed. Divided amongst the petty empires of criminal gangs, scavenging in the dark to feast on fungus and beetle-meat - these were not people. They were animals. Rats.

In that first day, as he'd slipped through the under-city's heart like a wraith, Sahaal had felt himself sickened. If this was the reward for devotion to the Emperor, he had chosen his side shrewdly.

He returned his mind to the present, focusing all his attention upon the step-step-step of his imminently-arriving prey, and unclenched his right hand. At its tip the gauntlet's hooked claws flexed, mirroring the internal movement: a second set of fingers, power-bladed and bloody-red, slaved to the movements of the first. These too had been a gift from his master, whose generosity was as unpredictable and spectacular as his moods. Sahaal had received them as gratefully as he had his bolter, but had wielded them with far greater relish: finding in them weapons worthy of the precision and purity he craved.

He had named them the Unguis Raptus - the Raptor's claws - and in so doing had coined the name of his command company. Before even the Great War his Raptors became justly feared, and in the name of first

the Emperor, and then his master alone, they had brought swift death from above to their foes.