"W-wait… don’t be hasty…!"
"I—I can tell you more…!"
Vanessa couldn’t read Qin Mo’s mind.
Which meant—she had no idea what to say to make him stop.
Qin Mo remained silent, his gauntleted hand radiating a searing heat. The air around it shimmered, distorted by the sheer intensity of the energy coursing through his armor.
"Genestealer… Patriarch… its psychic powers… I was the one who interfered…!"
Vanessa, in a desperate gamble, blurted out the truth.
Qin Mo released his grip, allowing her to collapse onto the cold, steel-deck plating. The sound of her knees striking the floor echoed through the chamber.
"You?" His voice carried a note of skepticism. "You interfered with a Genestealer Patriarch’s psychic powers?"
He scoffed, as if she had just claimed she could topple a Hive Tyrant with a laspistol.
A Genestealer Patriarch—a being whose psychic will could impose utter dominion over its xenos brood, whose powers had been honed through generations of corruption. Its will could enslave entire worlds, bend the minds of the faithless, erode the discipline of even the most hardened warriors. And this woman was saying she had disrupted it?
But—he didn’t attack again.
Which meant—he was willing to listen.
Vanessa coughed violently, her chest heaving as she sucked in precious air. When she finally managed to speak, her voice was hoarse but steady.
"You and your Thunderborns executed the decapitation strike.
I was nearby, hidden. I used my psychic abilities to disrupt the Patriarch, preventing it from unleashing its full power against you."
She recounted every detail, down to the exact moment Qin Mo had delivered the killing blow.
The precise timing, the minute fluctuations in the Warp, the crackling backlash of the Patriarch’s severed psychic link to its spawn.
Qin Mo listened—silent, motionless.
Some of these details… even he wouldn’t have recalled so precisely.
Which meant—she had either been there…
Or—she had seen everything through psychic means.
After all, certain psykers possessed clairvoyance. Some could even glimpse the future.
Sanctioned Imperial diviners, sanctioned by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, harnessed such visions to guide Imperial war efforts.
But Vanessa was no sanctioned psyker.
Qin Mo pointed outside the fortress walls.
"There are ten Leman Russ tanks parked outside. Crush them with your mind, and I’ll believe you."
Vanessa didn’t even glance outside. She shook her head.
"My powers aren’t tools. I can’t just use them at will."
Qin Mo exhaled sharply, crossing his arms. "Fine. Let’s assume you really did help me that day."
His tone shifted, growing colder.
"But you’re a psyker. Have you been registered with the Imperium? Do you even understand how dangerous you are?"
"At minimum, your classification would be Zeta-level or higher. What happens when you lose control?"
His voice carried no sympathy.
Years ago, he himself had been accused of being a psyker. And yet, he had never harbored sympathy for them.
Because psykers were walking time bombs.
It wasn’t just the threat of uncontrolled warp-energy eruptions that could incinerate entire squads.
It was the Warp itself.
A psyker who lost control wasn’t just a liability. They were an invitation. A beacon for the Great Enemy.
A gateway for daemons to claw their way into realspace.
If Vanessa lost control, she wouldn’t just destroy the fortress.
She’d doom Tyrone Hive. And if the infestation spread… perhaps the entire star system.
Vanessa, however, didn’t hesitate.
"I can help you fight the rebels."
"No thanks." Qin Mo shook his head immediately. "I’d rather you sit still and do nothing. What if you lose control on the battlefield?"
Vanessa’s tone didn’t waver.
She reached forward, grabbing Qin Mo’s gauntleted hand and pressing it against her throat.
"Let’s assume you’re facing a bomb. Would you destroy it immediately, hoping it doesn’t detonate?
Or would you delay the explosion—giving yourself time to us it?"
Qin Mo narrowed his eyes, falling into deep thought.
What if—he couldn’t kill her in one blow?
What if—she lost control in her final moments?
The most logical solution would be to turn her over to the Imperium’s Black Ships, where the trained psyker-handlers would dispose of her properly.
But—where in the Throne’s name was he supposed to find a Black Ship right now?
"I’d put the bomb inside a stasis field. Then I’d study it—find a way to disarm it.
That way, next time I encounter the same type of bomb—I’ll know exactly how to neutralize it."
Vanessa blinked, stunned.
Then—without another word, Qin Mo turned and strode toward the exit.
He glanced at the Guards standing outside.
"Restrain her with psychic inhibitors.
However many we have left—put them all on her."
The Guards exchanged glances.
"Are you sure, Lord Commander?"
"Yes." Qin Mo nodded. "Until I find a way to defuse the bomb—this is what we have to do."
The guards nodded, then turned to Vanessa.
"The Lord Commander is always right… This is for your safety, ma’am."
Qin Mo had considered studying Vanessa to develop a Stronger psychic nullifier—but for now, he had more urgent matters to attend to.
Unlike Warp-based powers, C’tan technology did not interact with psychic energy. This made psionic research painfully slow for him.
His current anti-psyker technology was simply an enhanced version of the Imperial psi-inhibitor collars of the Tyrone Hive.
Since the nullifier project would take too long, he shifted focus back to his Genestealer bioweapon.
And—he had finally perfected it.
A liquid-based weapon.
The application method was simple—
Spray it anywhere Genestealers might be hiding.
Any Genestealer that came into contact with it would begin to dissolve.
Within one to two weeks, they would liquefy entirely—reduced to a viscous puddle of organic matter, indistinguishable from the runoff of a decayed corpse.
The dissolution process would spread among their kind.
Qin Mo had rewritten the very rules of biological transmission.
Normally, such contagions were influenced by environmental factors.
A single infected brood-kin, no matter where it skulked in the galaxy, would bring ruin to its entire lineage.
A Genestealer hybrid birthed in the squalor of Tyrone Hive, one that, by some vile fortune, escapes the culling and finds its way to a distant system, thinking itself beyond his reach.
One of its distant brood-siblings, thousands of light-years away, begins to liquefy on Tyrone Hive.
And no matter how far it runs—
This was the "Tyrone Extermination Spray."
Qin Mo was the only one who could manufacture it.
He immediately began work on prototypes—refining the dissolution liquid, optimizing delivery mechanisms, and perfecting dispersal systems.
"I read Grot’s mind. I know you’re developing a weapon against the Genestealers. And this is what you came up with?"
Vanessa stood behind him, arms crossed, her piercing cerulean eyes locked onto his research.
"A weapon that sprays a special liquid onto Genestealers?" she said, tilting her head slightly. "Why not just build a flamethrower?"
Qin Mo narrowed his eyes.
The psi-inhibitors were working. Otherwise, her very presence would have already triggered his innate revulsion to psykers.
"Do you even understand who you’re speaking to about weaponry?"
Vanessa’s expression remained unimpressed. "I’m talking to a man who just invented liquid flamethrowers."
"Fire and poison have collateral damage. I needed something that only kills the targets I want dead."
"I still don’t see how this is different from a flamethrower…"
In Qin Mo’s mind, Vanessa was missing the point.
The delivery method wasn’t important.
What mattered was that once deployed, the bioweapon would exterminate every single Genestealer of the same genetic strain—Permanently.
"You might as well let me use my psychic abilities to help you."
"Try that—and I’ll detonate the bomb manually."
Qin Mo grabbed her by the arm, dragging her toward the exit.
Walk up to them and tell them you’re a prisoner, not a guest."
Qin Mo released her, voice cold as the void beyond the stars.
"Then go where you belong."