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Record Extract: Curation Log 994.M41
Source: Unsanctioned Data-Crystal (High Necrontyr Translation)
Subject: Empirical Analysis of Biological Integration (Subject "Steve")
Entry I: Initial Observation & Biological Anomaly (Vondrac Prime)
The acquisition of the C’tan Shard of the Endless Swarm should have been the sole highlight of my decade.
I stood upon the upper ridge of the ruined hive city on Vondrac Prime, adjusting the focus of my phase-visor. Down in the ash-choked courtyard below, a company of Imperial Guardsmen was attempting to secure the relic, an ancient, dormant Necron containment obelisk housing the dormant godling, using ropes, a cargo crane, and an appalling amount of shouting.
Humans. Always moving fast, always dying, always treating galaxy-altering relics of the Yngir like heavy machinery.
I stepped forward, preparing to deploy a stasis-field to immobilize the entire squad and collect the obelisk cleanly. But as my optical sensors swept the courtyard, my necrodermis froze.
Among the muddy flak coats and bayonets stood a figure a full head taller than the rest. It was silver. It glinted under the toxic smog. And draped over its shoulders, held together by rusted staples and sheer desperation, were several thick, overlapping layers of harvested human skin.
A Flayed One.
A cold, primal terror flared through my engrammic pathways. It was not a fear of destruction; bodies could be replaced. It was the dread of the Virus. The curse of Llandu’gor the Flayer was the one plague our race feared above all else, an absolute degradation of the mind into mindless, gore-drenched madness.
I did not raise my Staff of Light. I immediately broadcast a priority command across all sub-frequencies:
“Containment Protocol Sigma.”
At once, every Canoptek scarab and spy-drone in the sector severed sensor-linkage and retreated a full two kilometers into safe orbit. Even the cold logic of Canoptek machinery fled the curse. We do not fight Flayed Ones; we quarantine them.
I raised my particle-containment barrier to maximum yield, holding my breath through a lungs-equivalent protocol I had not used in millennia.
Down in the courtyard, the skin-draped nightmare turned. Its glowing green eye-lenses locked directly onto my cloaked position atop the ridge.
Then, the monstrosity raised a long, wicked metal talon, carefully tucked into an oversized woollen mitten, and gave me a stiff, polite wave.
“GOOD AFTERNOON,” a voice rasped across my open vox-frequency, sounding like a rock grinder trying to speak High Gothic. “STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THIS QUADRANT. PLEASE ENSURE YOUR OUTER DERMIS IS SECURED.”
My ocular sensors blinked once. Then twice.
A Guardsman walked past the metallic terror, patted its skin-draped hip, and called out, “Fancy a brew after we crate this thing, Steve?”
“THAT WOULD BE MOST PLEASANT, CORPORAL,” Steve replied, using a two-meter razor talon to delicately assist with the crane’s winch. “I SHALL PREPARE THE TANNA LEAVES.”
I simply stood atop the ridge, my containment field humming, and stared.
Entry II: Behavioral Recording & Field Hypotheses
The C’tan Shard was temporarily deprioritized. My primary objective had shifted completely.
As a Necron of noble lineage, I possess millions of years of patience and an absolute faith in empirical methodology. An anomaly does not exist in isolation; it is merely an unquantified variable. I was determined to quantify it, no matter how many solar cycles it required.
For nearly two decades, I shadowed the entity across seven warzones and four separate military reassignments, adopting the posture of an ancient natural scholar observing the irrational migration of low-order fauna. I deployed thousands of microscopic spy-scarabs into trench lines, mess halls, and supply depots to record the creature's every movement from the dimensional shadows. Every hypothesis I formulated was subjected to increasingly rigorous, and, I admit, frustrated, field testing.
- Hypothesis 1: Localized Conditioned Familiarity. My initial theory posited that the 12th Valhallans had succumbed to a form of collective psychological trauma, tolerating the construct out of long-standing familiarity. When the Departmento Munitorum inevitably reassigned Steve to an orbital vanguard of the Cadian 114th, I recorded the exact moment of separation. I assumed the social bond had finally been broken. I was wrong. Within three solar months, I observed Cadian veteran officers quietly approving Steve's inclusion on the company roster, and a grizzled mess sergeant leaving a double portion of tanna leaves outside his maintenance shed. When a subsequent logistics mix-up transferred him yet again to an armored detachment of the Mordian 42nd, the results were identical: rigid, parade-ground officers were soon overlooking his non-standard uniform regulations while troopers trusted him to inspect their lasguns. The phenomenon was not a localized aberration; it was wildly, inexplicably infectious.
- Hypothesis 2: Visual Obfuscation. I hypothesized that human acceptance relied entirely upon Steve maintaining a vaguely humanoid silhouette. When Steve lost his flak helmet during an artillery barrage on Kasr Tyrok, leaving his bare, metallic skull and mismatched, decaying organic ears entirely exposed, I predicted human acceptance would decline by at least eighty-four percent. I waited for them to execute him as a xenos horror. Instead, his squad spent two full solar days scouring No Man's Land under active, heavy mortar fire to retrieve it. When I intercepted local vox-transmissions to ascertain the tactical rationale for this suicidal recovery mission, a young Cadian private simply stated: "We have to find it. Steve likes that helmet."
- Hypothesis 3: Warp Interference or Psionic Manipulation. I scanned for latent psionic influence, suspecting Steve might be unconsciously projecting a charm-field. Long-range bio-scanners immediately disproved this during Steve's tour with the 12th Valhallan Ice Falcons. Commissar Cain's aide, Jurgen, was positively identified as a Blank, one of the exceedingly rare individuals whose very presence violently neutralizes warp energy. Yet this living void walked right up to Steve without hesitation, casually handing the seven-foot metallic terror a damaged meltagun and asking if he could "take a look at the ignition coupling."
- Hypothesis 4: Tactical Subversion. I monitored Steve’s private activities during periods of down-time, expecting to uncover covert intelligence gathering for an invading Dynasty or preparations for a violent rampage. Instead, my scarabs recorded sixty-four continuous hours of Steve sitting alone in a Mordian supply bunker, meticulously polishing flak armor plates by production batch and military shine, occasionally pausing to oil his own elbow joints with industrial motor grease.
- Hypothesis 5: Olfactory Deception. I briefly postulated that the decaying human skin Steve wore emitted a specific pheromonal compound that lulled baseline humans into a docile state. To test this, I utilized a targeted tractor beam to pluck a three-inch square of rotting flesh off his back while he slept. Chemical analysis revealed nothing more than stale trench mud, cheap Imperial ration grease, and an appalling lack of basic hygiene. In fact, the biological decay was so pungent it rivaled the ambient olfactory cloud radiating from Commissar Cain's aide, a stench so powerful my bio-scanners briefly flagged it as a potential corrosive agent.
With every hypothesis that collapsed, my logic engines grew increasingly overheated. I was no longer merely documenting a specimen; I was becoming obsessively invested. This construct was forcing me to question fundamental assumptions regarding Necron engrammic decay that I had held sacrosanct since the War in Heaven.
Eventually, after thousands of hours of data logging, my logic engines were forced to accept the only remaining conclusion, one so profoundly absurd it nearly triggered a cascade failure in my central processing core:
The humans knew exactly what he was. And they genuinely liked him.
Entry III: Controlled Empirical Stress-Testing (Krynn)
On the moon of Krynn, I forced the issue. It was time for a controlled stress test.
Using a suppressed dimensional displacement beam, I rigged the ruinous collapse of an ancient Eldar waystone spire. I placed Steve in a mathematically engineered dilemma:
Option A: Retrieve an irreplaceable, 10,000-year-old Spirit Stone cluster falling into a plasma fissure.
Option B: Shield three pinned, low-ranking Mordian infantrymen from falling masonry.
To any Necron, the choice was self-evident. Biological life was temporary, fleeting, and cheap. Relics were eternal.
Steve did not even look at the Spirit Stones.
With a deafening mechanical groan, the Flayed One threw himself over the three troopers, taking the full weight of a five-ton wraithbone pillar across his spine. The Spirit Stones tumbled into the plasma fire and vanished forever.
Watching from the dimensional fold, I suffered what could only be described as a digital nervous breakdown.
“You absolute fool!” I hissed to the empty air, clutching my optical array. “That was Third-Dynasty Craftsmanship! They were mortals! They would have died of old age in forty cycles anyway!”
Yet as Steve pushed the pillar off his dented back and checked the terrified troopers for concussions, I realized the horrifying truth.
Steve was not malfunctioning. He was making a moral choice.
Entry IV: Interrogation & Curation Assessment (Vaults of Solemnace)
The capture itself was trivial. I simply dropped a stasis-grid over Steve while he was taking out his squad's trash.
When Steve was released inside the grand holding vaults of Solemnace, surrounded by millions of static, perfectly preserved historical figures, Space Marines, Orks, Eldar Exarchs, all frozen in moments of glory, he did not panic.
Instead, he began walking down the central gallery, reading every display plaque out loud to himself like an overly earnest tourist.
“TYRANID LICTOR,” he rasped into the quiet hall, his vox-speaker buzzing. “PRESERVED M40. VERY IMPRESSIVE SPECIMEN.”
I stood cloaked in the shadows, utterly baffled.
Then, Steve stopped before a ten-thousand-year-old, impossibly fragile silk banner from the Heresy era. He noticed a tiny loose thread along the bottom hem. With terrifying speed, Steve reached into his kitbag, pulled out a strip of coarse, muddy Imperial sandbag burlap, and began to hand-stitch a structural patch directly into the priceless relic.
Five minutes later, he stepped back, admiring his work. The ancient silk was now crude, lopsided, and securely reinforced with military-grade sandbag fiber.
I nearly suffered a total core processor failure where I stood.
“IT WAS BEGINNING TO FRAY,” Steve announced proudly to the empty vault, adjusting his mitten.
I stepped out from the gloom, my Staff of Light humming gently as I fought down a surge of sheer agony over the banner. “Do you know what you are, construct?”
Steve turned his glowing green optics toward me. “I AM GUARDSMAN STEVE. CURRENTLY ATTACHED TO THE MORDIAN 42ND.”
“No,” I said, stepping closer, my voice laced with ancient authority. “You are a Necron. You are a victim of the curse of Llandu’gor. You are a nightmare of necrodermis and flayed meat.”
Steve paused, adjusting the lopsided flak helmet resting on his skull. “I AM AN EXPERIENCED GUARDSMAN.”
I vented a stream of hot coolant in frustration. "Do you know how old you are?"
Steve paused. His ocular array whirred as he calculated.
A long, agonizing silence filled the quiet vault.
"I BELIEVE I AM THIRTY-EIGHT."
My optics literally dimmed as my logic engines attempted to reconcile a sixty-million-year-old biotransferred terror claiming the age of a middle-aged Imperial warrior.
I managed to stabilize my visual sensors, glaring at him. “Why do you wear that skin? Why do you drape yourself in the hides of biologicals?”
Steve tilted his head. A wet, slapping sound echoed in the quiet vault as a loose flap of cheek-flesh shifted.
“BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE SKIN,” Steve said simply.
I waited for further explanation. None came. “That is your entire rationale?”
“IT WOULD BE RATHER IMPOLITE OTHERWISE,” Steve added, sounding genuinely puzzled by the question. “ONE MUST DRESS FOR THE OCCASION.”
I stood in silence for a long time. The logic was so profoundly, absurdly simple that it defied millions of years of Necron philosophy. The Flayer Virus made Necrons crave skin because they missed their flesh. Steve wore skin because... he wanted to fit in at their tea time.
Entry V: Chronomantic Anomaly & Disposition Conclusion
The decision to release him came later that cycle, brought on by an event that was entirely unscripted.
The catastrophe began, as so many avoidable catastrophes do, with Orikan the Diviner deciding that the laws of causality were merely advisory. His latest unauthorized chronomantic experiment beneath Gallery 12 destabilized a temporal matrix, and a creeping cascade of localized time inversion began erasing whole exhibits. Displays were disappearing forever, dissolving into raw sub-atomic static.
I sprinted down the concourse, deploying containment pylons in a desperate, frantic bid to manually haul stasis-cubes out of the collapse zone before millennia of history were unmade.
Steve did not know what the artifacts were worth. He did not know the value of a pre-Fall Aeldari crown or a Crusade-era dreadnought chassis. He just saw me trying desperately to save them.
So he helped.
No questions asked. No reward expected.
With terrifying physical strength, Steve hoisted multi-ton stasis-blocks over his dented shoulders, sprinting back and forth through the shifting temporal distortions to stack them safely on stable ground alongside my scarabs. For three hours, the Flayed One worked alongside me until the cascade was finally contained.
When the last display was secured, I leaned against my staff, my coolant pumps hammering. I looked at the skin-draped terror standing in the center of the hall, his flak helmet crooked, his mittens covered in chronal dust.
“Why?” I asked, my vox-synth barely above a whisper.
Steve tilted his head, his ocular array whirring softly.
“IT IS YOUR MUSEUM,” Steve replied simply.
A long silence stretched between us across the silent vault.
“YOU APPEAR TO CARE ABOUT IT.”
My logic engines froze.
That was Steve. He did not need to understand history. He did not need to comprehend sixty million years of loss and obsession. He only needed to understand that his host valued something.
I walked down to the main transit arch and deactivated the containment seals on the dimensional portal.
“The exit portal is calibrated to drop you two kilometers outside your regiment’s forward perimeter,” I said quietly.
"THANK YOU FOR THE TOUR. IT IS A VERY NICE MUSEUM." Steve inclined his head, gave a crisp, textbook Imperial Guard salute, and stepped through the shimmering green doorway.
A moment later, a flash of chronomantic light signaled the arrival of Orikan. The astrologer looked at the empty platform, then at me.
I looked at him and sighed before saying "You're early."
Orikan looks puzzled. "I arrived precisely when intended."
"Yes. That is, unfortunately, the problem."
“You let him go,” Orikan said, his tone dripping with disdain. “The only sane Flayed One in the galaxy. A specimen of infinite academic value. And you simply opened the door.”
I turned my back on the Diviner, looking out over the saved galleries of Solemnace.
“History is only valuable because someone lived it, Orikan,” I murmured. “If I kept him here, he would just be a corpse in a box.”
I walked over to a newly prepared display plinth near the front of the gallery. A golden plaque had already been etched for the exhibit. It read:
FLAYED ONE, UNIQUE SPECIMEN
Subject: "Steve"
I reached out. With a slow, deliberate movement of my talon, I removed the plaque and threw it into the recycling chute.
I took a blank silver plate, etched a single word onto it, and mounted it back onto the pedestal.
RESERVED
Orikan frowned. “Reserved for what?”
I did not answer. I simply looked at the empty space, allowing myself a single, fleeting cycle of hope that somewhere out in the dark, cold galaxy, the curse was not as final as we had believed.
Afterword
Shortly after receiving this recording, I checked the casualty rosters for the 12th Valhallans, Cadian 114th, and Mordian 42nd. Sure enough, all three regiments contained anomalous reports of a tall, remarkably resilient soldier named "Steve" who periodically transferred between units whenever Munitorum auditors got too close.
The file on Steve remains open. I have no intention of closing it. Equally, I have no intention of attempting to "acquire" its subject. If Trazyn the Infinite considers that a poor idea, I am inclined to agree. -A.V.