I stand with Huron-Fal at the shallow ridge before the bunker’s steel hatch, shouting at our kinsmen to run and run, to flee and not look back. A cold pang of fear twists in my gut, not for myself, but for my men. They respond perfectly to my command, falling back in good order and surging away from the enemy along the trench lines we’ve already cleared. Hundreds have already sealed themselves in the bunkers to weather the imminent bombardment, but too many more will never reach safety. I look up again at the sickly sky and feel torn apart inside. "Who betrayed us?" I whisper, echoing the aged Dreadnought’s earlier question. "Why, in Terra’s name, why?"

"Captain!" The old warrior barks, stomping to my side with metallic footsteps that vibrate through the earth. "Get in there! We have only seconds left!"

When I refuse, Huron-Fal grumbles, his mechanical voice filled with equal parts frustration and concern. "Idiot!" he growls, throwing protocol to the wind as his massive form shifts before me. "I will stay! Nothing will crack my hide. You go, now!" He shoves me with his Dreadnought Powerfist, the impact surprisingly gentle despite his immense strength. "Go inside, damn you!"

I stumble back a step, but my gaze remains fixed on the sky where flickers of brilliant light have turned the day a sickly white. At high altitudes overhead, the first wave of virus warheads detonates in series—a wall of airbursts instantly unleashing a black rain of destruction that begins falling toward us like some unholy judgment.

The viral clades, engineered for hyper-fast mutational change and near-exponential growth, feast on native airborne bacteria as the thin, dark bloom of the death cloud rolls out over Choral City. Even as I watch, the second wave falls—shells that detonate only upon impact, bursting to smother city districts, open fields, and trench lines with tides of destructive haze that hisses and steams where it touches the ground.

The life eater does as it was designed to do. Where a single molecule touches organic matter, it spreads instant, putrefying death. Choral City, every living thing—human, animal, plant, even microbes—torn apart by the virus that leaps species boundaries in seconds, burning out the life of the entire planet. Flesh rots while still on the bone, blood turns to viscous ooze, bones shred and turn brittle as ancient parchment.

Isstvanians and Astartes alike die screaming, united in death by the unstoppable germs. I watch warriors running toward me, dying on their feet as their bodies break down even as they flee. Figures collapse to the mud as their corpses transform into red broth of fleshy slurry, viscous fluids seeping from the chinks in their power armor.

I order the men in the bunker to close the hatch, even as I taste blood in my mouth and feel my skin prickling with budding lesions. The metal door slams shut and hisses with a pressure seal, locking me out. I hope they were quick enough—with luck, they won’t have taken any of the virus inside with them. I manage two stumbling steps before my legs give way, muscles singing with agony as the virus begins its terrible work.

Huron-Fal catches me before I hit the ground. "I told you to run, you fool," he says, his mechanical voice softened by an undercurrent of sadness.

I fling off my helmet with a final, agonized gesture of defiance. It’s useless now—the virus has already moved through the breather grille and into my lungs. My hand flails at the metal flank of the Dreadnought, tracing a runnel of dark fluid leaking from my mouth.

"You lied," I accuse him, my voice already failing.

"Veteran’s prerogative," he replies simply. "We’ll go together then, shall we?" Huron-Fal asks, embracing my failing body to him as he moves swiftly away from the bunker. It takes every last effort to nod. Blinded now as the tissues of my eyes burn and shrivel in their sockets, the soft meat of my lips and tongue dissolving away, I can still feel his mechanical embrace.

Huron-Fal’s systems stutter and whine on the verge of shutdown as he stumbles to a halt at what must be a safe distance. "This death," rasps the voder, each word an effort against failing systems, "this death is ours. We choose it. We deny them their victory."