He was barely across the threshold, the door sealing shut behind him, when the arc-lightning struck. It was a dull pain at first, intensifying into something much more invasive and burning as Nu’mean took each agonising step.

His Crux Terminatus gave him some protection, but it was his Salamanders tenacity that kept him moving across the fog-shrouded floor.

Like white-hot fingers running across his armour, the psychic lightning probed for flesh and for weakness. Slowly, the joints in Nu’mean’s once-impervious suit were eased apart.

Above the crack of energy, he heard the battle outside. Bolter fire and flamer bursts mingled with the war cries of his brothers and the shrieking of the xenos. It was a fitting requiem to their last stand in this hellish place. This was not the ship of his memory. This abomination was the Protean no longer. Only wraiths lingered here, best forgotten. Nu’mean had learned that too late, but now he would at least finish his mission.

Merely steps away from the cryo-tank, he saw the farseer slumbering, as serene as he had ever been. To look upon the alien, one would not know of the turmoil in his mind as he fought the invader that sought to kill him.

But kill you I will, Nu’mean vowed.

The horrors and cerebral tortures returned when the psychic lightning failed. Faces, rotten and withered by decay, glared at him with accusing eyes. Suddenly, there were hundreds, clogging the path to the cryo-tank, their zombified talons clawing at the Firedrake sergeant. Serfs and crewmen, brander-priests and even fellow Space Marines held Nu’mean at bay with their anger and his guilt.

Nu’mean gritted his teeth. The pain in his body was incredible, as if his nerve-endings were being stripped and immolated, one by one. He couldn’t see through the throng but felt the console. It was still primed for the lethal serum’s delivery.

The farseer redoubled his efforts, sending wave after wave of arc-lightning cracking into the Salamander.

Nu’mean screamed with every blast, the flesh peeling from his bones. His gauntlets were on fire but he saw his purpose clear enough through the bloody haze.

‘I am your death…’ he rasped, and slammed the vial into the receptor ring. The toxin emptied quickly, feeding into the mechanism like an eager parasite. At once, the farseer convulsed. The tremors looked incongruous when matched against the calmness of his expression. In a few seconds he became still.

The battle beyond the door had fallen silent long ago. The genestealers couldn’t get through, reduced to scratching the dense plating with their claws until they became bored and moved on.

Nu’mean was fading. Somewhere deep down he heard the clanging of the forge, of the anvil at the hammer’s touch.

I will be there soon, he thought. I will be joining you all soon, my brothers.