Lately, I have found my greed overtaking my empathy. No, "overtake" does not represent the reality of my situation well. I have ht ignored any sembnpathy a my greed guide me. This thought was the culmination of all the logs one of my Mind-Cores made over a retrospective survey of my as up until now. I didn't even sider helping or healing the mutants hiding uhe hive city. I've had logical reasons for not doing that. They'd die either way. Being a mutant must be worse thah, and so on and so forth. Iy, I just couldn't be bothered. I was on a new p, in an alien body, aing them gave me poushed my expiration date back a few days. I looked through the many horrifically dismembered 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 some were. The Magos was monit life funs and such, and with several subjects from the same species, he robably doing intensive resear them. I let soul energy trickle into my mind, suffusing it, and I used it to se 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 ed this whole b dimmed and ushed to aionless Mind-Core to sider. I barely held back a grimace as I felt self-loathing overwhelm me for a moment. I had sughtered i 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 me. 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 plicated calcution revealed that if I only used a human body, my current reserves would keep me going food three thousand years, at least. With my average ption over my rather short new lifetime, though, I only had a little over a tury. All this pyed out in my mindscape in a fra of a sed. By the time the Magos might have noticed the distressed state of my body, I'd already forcefully trolled it to show nothing. My flig emotions still boiled uhe surface. I still wao get a p out of everything here and anything else that moved for that matter, but I also felt waves of shame bubble up inside my stomach like twisting knots whehe target of my desires ient aient being. "You have quite the colleagos," I said as my eyes peed deeply into the darkness, and I saw hundreds of meters before a bulkhead separated this boratory from the , "This makes it seem like I was asking for far too little when you have such a diverse set of samples." "Agreement: 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 iurn for some 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? es? Replig samples? I could do it all." "That is far outside of the recorded capabilities of any Psyker of the Biomancy School." "Does your Meicum share its most prized knowledge freely, Magos?" I asked but tinued, 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 me to the Inquisition?" I finished with a slight sneer. "Uanding: Each of us has some... peculiarities, Inquisitor. I am more than willing to overlook yours if it aids me in my quest for knowledge, though I'd appreciate this boratory remaining... undisclosed." "I bet," I said as I eyed a floating body, only kept somewhat alive by the dozens of tubes and mecha-tendrils eg to it, "just that one would certainly earn you some unfavorable attention." It was a hybrid, pin and simple. The b 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 me, I could s a bit of its gehe Human DNA stood out to me 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 angur jaw and slightly pointed ear were a dead giveaway. This madman has mao make a somewhat funal Human-Eldar Hybrid. "Agreement: Hiding it from you would have been terproductive as my first request would be your assistan seeing whether you make the genome of this spe more stable." "You are asking a lot from me, Magos," I walked up to the rge tankard and touched the clear gss with my palm, "tally I'd like to have an Ambull sample before I attempt to fulfill your request." "I do not want i DNA inating it, Inquisitor." "I assumed as much," I nodded, "but as I'm sure you know by now, the Ambulls are one of the most geically stable beings iire gaxy. I'd like to study them first." "Agreeable: It is not a rare sample, so sider that done, Inquisitor." "You said 'first request,' Magos. What else do you want for some samples gathering dust in here?" "I have some 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 cyb towered over me by more thaer, "the process of that destroys the inal sample." "Peculiar,... if you demonstrate your capability of replig said samples perfectly on some less valuable ones before, I have no qualms about that." "And my payment for that?" "The Crotalid sample is among the ones I'd like for you to replicate. I assume the process of replig grants you an uanding of the sample, so that should be suffit pensation." "I guess so," I turned fully to face him, "When do you want to proceed with the transa?" "I have prepared the Ambull sample," one of his thick meical tendrils peaks out from under his robes and it carries a sealed metalloid box, "This should also serve as a great test for your replication capabilities, as I assume 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 uhe cover of his Mars-Red robes, "well the's get to it then." I didn't have to restruct a whole Ambull from the fist-sized sample, so the process of multiplying it was simple. The plicated part was making it look like I was using my Biomancy to do it. So far, I mao boost my natural healing and give myself a slight regeion with Biomancy, but that was so energy ineffit pared to doing it with Bio-energy that I teo just not do it. I could get bio-energy easily, but replenishing my fading stores of soul energy required me to open up my soul to the and all of its horrors. In the end, I used a bit of that regeion and my natural shapeshifting capabilities to make it look like the nele just grew out of the palm of my hand before I dropped it bato the box. Abs it was just the same as before. I grimaced, and with a widened jaw, I swallowed the whole sample. I felt Zedev's astonishment in his aura clearly before his emotional suppressants came baline. After popping out three replicas of the sample, I stopped. The taste of the ioid's flesh bined with the feeling of new flesh growing out of my palm mao ule me a bit. Before this, I always used my white flesh as an intermediary and didn't grow stuff straight from my body, but now I couldn't do that with the Magos me with both his eyes and around a dozen servoskulls. "Fasating." His syic voice sounded out as he was cutting apart one of the neles, "A perfect replica, down to the cellur level and I assume the DNA too... yes it is." After making sure that I wasn't fleeg him, he urged me to get on with the rest of the samples. I didn't keep him waiting, and it was all fine up until the 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 bck hair and an angur jaw, plus pointy ears resting on the side of her head. The only thing lessening her perfe was a rge gash running from shoulder to waist and exposing her ans, "We do this one in one of two ways, Magos, either you leave me alone and cease all observations, or I'll have to take a week to map out the genome of the Eldar." "You haven't done so already?" the Magos asks, "I'd have assumed you'd have e in tact with the Eldar already as a member of the Ordo Xenos." "There are only so many of the damhings I remember," I raised an eyebrow at him, "you must know how much memory it takes to record the perfect tempte for a whole body." "Uanding: Indeed, memory is a finite resource, and we ever have enough of it." "So?" I crossed my arms, "What is it going to be?" "I provide you with a separated smaller boratory in which I will cease observations." "That is agreeable," I nodded, levitating the Eldar corpse along with the rest of the rger samples, the smaller boratory was still the size of a whole family home ba Earth with several separate floors and stairways, but it'd do for the purpose. Zedev left the boratory in a way that I felt was relut, and I had to stifle a giggle as I instantly felt servoskulls and well-hidden cameras me along with a myriad of sensors, the asshole was as ho as he was hungry for knowledge. I shivered once as the soul energy sped through my body, transf into bio-electricity before it leaped off of my skin and sashed out in a storm of white lightning, causing every camera and sensor in the boratory to short-circuit and burn out. There were more still and after a moment of not feeling them turn off, I shook my head with a bit of amusement. "I sehe rest of them too, Magos, but destroying those would do rather rge damage to the boratory so if you want to keep it intact, I reend you cease observation." My active psychic abilities needed direput and guidance from me to work, but I've discovered a few passive abilities that came to be aension of myself. One of these was my ability to read the aura of people to dis the emotions they thought they could hide from me, and another one was this tingle on the bay neck when I was being watched. Said feeling vanished after another few seds, but I wasn't vinced. I spent another five minutes just b through walls and carefully feeling around the boratory and beyond with my senses. I could see most of the eleagic spectrum, and I could also hear the firing of electric maery, so I was rather sure I wasn't being watched anymore. I stared down at the perfectly preserved corpse of a female Eldar. Now the's see what you are hiding, you little beauty. P3t1