Updated: 2026.02.03
Chapter 15: Sanctity of Flesh
The factory floor remained silent as workers stared at Rex.
A tech-priest supervisor stepped forward. "Return to your stations. The production cycle must continue."
The workers glanced between the supervisor and Rex and hesitated. A few made the sign of the cog and murmured, "The Omnissiah's own holy hands have saved them. His imbued his divine power to his limbs and manifested a miracle before us."
Rex raised his voice and pushed past the preaching. "Thank you, but nobody is going back to work. It's clear that this place needs a rework. I will make sure that it’s safe for you guys."
The supervisor froze with confusion. "Honored Omnissiah, production cycles have never been halted mid-sequence. The sacred rhythm of manufacturing must not be interrupted."
"I'm your Omnissiah, and I say it is." Rex pointed to the damaged power coupling above them. "Look at that. It could have killed those workers. How many other death traps are waiting to collapse around here?"
Workers exchanged glances of fear and hope. One older man with augmented fingers clutched his prayer beads tighter.
Fabricator-General Valus observed from several meters away. The other Council members shifted uncomfortably beside him.
"Trust my judgement. These people matter." Rex gestured to the gathered workers. "They deserve safety and basic respect. I want what's best for everyone."
No one spoke for several moments. The concept seemed alien to the tech-priests who struggled to process such prioritization.
Rex walked to the collapsed walkway and ran his hand along a twisted support beam. Blue light pulsed beneath his skin as his nanites analyzed the metal. He pulled away a section of the corroded beam, holding it up for all to see.
'I need to be as blunt as possible for these guys.' "This metal is clearly corroded past usable. You are making it seem like your holy machines don't deserve the best environment for them to perform their duties as optimally as possible."
The tech-priest supervisor stiffened, servo-motors whining softly as several mechadendrites drew inward in reflexive shame. A ripple of binary static passed through the nearby priests.
“Omnissiah… we…” His vox cracked, tone modulator slipping out of its usual monotone. “We did not intend disrespect.”
Another magos stepped forward, robes whispering against the metal floor. He bowed deeply, augmetic spine locking him into a rigid angle of submission. “The Machine Spirits were… placated through ritual and continuity of labor. We believed sustained operation itself was an act of reverence.”
A third voice joined, quieter, almost fearful. “To permit corrosion is to permit inefficiency. To permit inefficiency is to invite error. Error leads to failure. Failure leads to dishonor.” He paused, optics dimming. “By that logic… we have failed them.”
The supervisor lowered his head fully now. “If the Omnissiah judges this neglect as fault, then fault is ours alone. The holy machines were entitled to purity of material and precision of care. We allowed them to labor in degradation.”
Several priests made the sign of the cog in unison.
“Heresy was not our intent,” the supervisor said quickly, desperation edging into his vox. “But ignorance is no shield before the Omnissiah. If we have sinned, then let correction be imposed.”
Silence followed, thick and heavy. The idea that their maintenance practices might constitute doctrinal failure clearly terrified them more than punishment ever could.
'Sheesh. I was just trying to get them in line…' Rex tossed the fragment aside. It clattered across the floor. "You see what you did wrong. That's… good. In any case, these patchwork repairs were never meant to last. This whole section has been neglected for years. In turn, you have neglected the machine."
The workers nodded in silence to what they had always known but never dared say.
"I shall determine your penance in time. That's an order from your Omnissiah." Rex stood tall, his voice carrying through the factory. "We’re checking everything before work resumes." 'Geez. Laying it on thick leaves an awkward taste in my mouth.
Ryza-Tal leaned closer to Valus. "The implications for our Mechanicum doctrine are concerning."
Valus nodded slightly. "Remember the prophecies, old friend. The Omnissiah shall walk among us, and his coming shall remake the face of Mars."
Rex knelt beside a worker with a missing arm, speaking quietly to her. The woman's eyes widened at whatever he said, hope replacing her habitual resignation.
"He speaks of protecting flesh." Ferris-Keph's mechadendrites twitched nervously. "As if the biological components hold equal value to the machines."
"Heresy?" whispered one younger magos.
"Perhaps it is something we were too blind to see," Valus countered. "We shall observe and learn. The Omnissiah tests our understanding."
Rex crouched beside another rescued worker. "Are you hurt?"
The man shook his head too fast. "No, Omnissiah. I am fine. I am fine."
He, in fact, wasn't. Rex easily saw that his pupils were dilated and that his hands were trembling.
Rex helped him stand, and the man felt alarmingly light. On second inspection, he was almost skin and bones. He thought back to those commercials about donating to those in need. Now he regrets not helping before. "What's your name?"
"Davin, Omnissiah." The words barely carried over the machinery noise. His voice sounded rough, unused to anything but work chants and prayers.
"You have a family, Davin?"
"A wife and daughter."
Rex nodded. "Just as a mechanic takes care of a machine, so should a parent care for their children. They need you in one piece." He turned to examine the press nearby.
He placed both hands on its frame. The metal felt warm against his palms. Blue light spread from his hands through the machine as he activated his nanites. They flowed into every crack and joint, analyzing, repairing, improving everything they touched. Rex could feel the machine's workings through his connection. The nanites strengthened weak points, adjusted timing mechanisms, and added safety features.
The press sounded smoother when Rex stepped back. There was no longer a harsh grinding. "I can go over it later, but the machine is safer now. Less of a chance of losing a limb."
Workers gathered at a distance, whispering among themselves. Rex noticed that Davin was limping as he stepped forward. A crude mechanical leg peeked out from beneath his worn work pants, the augmetic looking barely functional, with visible signs of infection around the connection points.
Rex’s gaze dropped to Davin’s augmetic. “How long have you had that prosthetic?”
Davin glanced down. “Twenty-three years, Omnissiah. My wife’s labor team gave it to me after the accident. Before she transferred to the stamping section.” He ran his hand over the worn metal. “I’ve kept it going myself. Patch it, tighten it, keep working.”
Rex nodded, understanding, and let a faint smile show. “May I?” He motioned to the leg.
Davin hesitated, then dipped his chin. “If the Omnissiah wills it.”
Rex knelt and set his palm against the augmetic. A cool blue glow seeped from his hand into the crude limb. The prosthetic shivered once, then steadied. The hitch in its movement eased as if a grit of years had been cleaned from the joint. Inside, things aligned and quieted. Strain points were braced. The servos responded without lag. The exposed ports sealed as if they had never been open.
The light didn't stop at metal. It slipped into the angry skin at the stump, into the ache Davin had learned to ignore. Heat drained away. The constant sting dulled to nothing.
Davin sucked in a breath. He flexed the mechanical foot, then set it down and took a cautious step.
No limp.
He tried another, then another, testing the joint through its full travel. His shoulders loosened as the pain failed to return.
A murmur rippled through the gathered workers and tech-priests. The Omnissiah himself had personally attended to the augmetics of a common laborer. Many unconsciously touched their own augmetics, their eyes filled with barely concealed envy for Davin's blessing. Several workers inched closer, as if proximity might grant them similar favor.
The factory supervisors huddled near their data slates, fingers moving rapidly as they updated records. One leaned toward another and whispered, "The worker designation must be amended. The Omnissiah-blessed cannot remain in standard classification." The other nodded in agreement, already recalculating Davin's social status to reflect his new standing.
Among the Council members, Ryza-Tal's mechadendrites twitched with interest. He glanced down at his own augmented left arm, an old war wound never perfectly calibrated. For a moment, he considered requesting the Omnissiah's touch for himself. Beside him, Ferris-Keph seemed to harbor similar thoughts. They exchanged glances with an unspoken agreement. Their requests for a blessing could wait. The Omnissiah would surely reward his loyal followers in time.
Amid everything, they were so focussed on the prosthetic, that they overlooked the healed flesh around it.
Davin looked up at Rex, something shifting in his eyes. “Does this mean the Machine God does not desire our suffering?” His voice was steadier than before, but it still wavered.
Rex followed Davin’s gaze across the factory floor. Men and women worked through pain and loss: missing fingers, old burns, crude braces, eyes gone dull with fatigue. He searched the scraps of Mechanicum doctrine he knew, not for a rebuttal, but for a frame that made sense of what he was seeing.
Then he found it. Operator and machine.
“Pain honors no one,” Rex said. He nodded toward a worker trying to lift a heavy component with a half-mechanical hand. “Tell me this. When a human puts their hands on a machine and makes it work, what is that bond?”
The workers traded uneasy looks. Valus turned his lenses fully on Rex.
“It is…” a tech-priest started, cautious. “Communion. The Motive Force flows through-”
“It is partnership,” Rex cut in firmly. “The operator guides the machine. The machine gives the operator capability they could not. Neither fulfills its sacred function without the other.” He let the words settle. “To honor the machine, you must honor the one who tends it. They are not separate.”
Silence spread across the line.
Rex kept going. “A broken operator cannot maintain a machine. A dead operator leaves it to rust. How does that serve the Motive Force?” He looked straight at Valus. “Your texts speak of union between flesh and steel. You have treated union as iron ruling flesh, instead of both held in balance.”
Valus froze mid-motion. So did the rest of the council, as if someone had cut power.
“The sacred texts…” Valus began, and for once there was hesitation in his voice. His fingers twitched through half-gestures, then stopped. “The Sixteenth Hymnal of Integration speaks of ‘the blessing of union between operator and machine.’ We have read that as the superiority of machine components over biological weakness.”
“But what if it means you must maintain both,” Rex said. “A machine without a skilled operator is nothing. An operator without a functioning machine cannot serve. The partnership brings about a greater whole.”
A hunched council member spoke, his vox-unit rasping. “The Apocrypha of the Maker states: ‘Waste not the vessel that carries knowledge, for knowledge cannot be housed in absence.’” He tilted his head. “We assumed the vessel was the machine. But if the operator is the vessel of knowledge…”
“Then preserving the operator preserves the knowledge,” another council member finished. Her lenses flicked through spectra as she studied Rex. “And knowledge is sacred.”
A murmur ran through the workers. A few made the sign of the cog, slowly, as if testing the shape of it.
Davin pushed his way to the front. “My wife lost her hand last year. She cannot work without a replacement. We barely live on my wages.” He swallowed. “If preserving the operator honors the machine… does that mean she should receive aid?”
Rex felt the room tighten around the question. This was where words became law.
“Bring her tomorrow,” he said. “I will show you that no one will be left behind.”
Valus’s lenses narrowed to pinpoints. He held the silence long enough to make it hurt.
Then, slowly, he inclined his head. “You have given us much to contemplate, Omnissiah. This interpretation… may be what the Machine God was trying to tell us all along.”
Around them, injured workers straightened. Some didn't smile, but something eased in their faces.
Rex had made them look at what they had accepted for centuries, and see it differently.
#
The cleanup efforts continued around them for the next hour.
Rex directed teams to secure the damaged areas while Valus ordered records to be compiled of all safety violations throughout the facility.
Tech-priests guided some to remove debris while other workers returned to their stations. Rex surveyed the scene, watching as safety inspections began on his orders.
A small figure caught his attention, half-hidden behind a cluster of pipes. A child, no older than fourteen, crouched on the floor. The boy's hands shook as he moved delicate components, inserting them into a complex mechanism.
Rex paused beside him. "How long have you been doing this work?"
"Since I was seven, Omnissiah." The boy continued his task without looking up. "I'm the smallest. I can reach the inner components."
Rex felt a bit sick. Child labor wasn't a new concept. He knew about sweatshops in China during his time, reports of children working sixteen-hour days, sometimes getting injured by machinery. But this... this was magnitudes worse.
He tried to rationalize it. Different time, different culture. Who was he to judge these people by his standards?
Granted, he was technically a child soldier raised to fight EVOs, but that was a unique circumstance he was reluctant to admit. At least Providence cared enough to try to let me have a decent enough childhood and social life.
But the sight of this child's trembling hands working inches from exposed gears and superheated components made his rationalization fall apart. He was their God, dammit.
How does one change a cult? Confronting the Mechanicum directly might undermine his authority, and he needed their cooperation.
Still, this was simply wrong, regardless of context. He'd seen workers dragging themselves to their stations with missing limbs. He'd seen infection, malnutrition, injury as standard conditions. And now children, treated as disposable parts themselves.
"Children shouldn't be in factories, but in school. Learning the skills to work in the factory eventually..." He paused. "Wait." Now that Rex thought about it, he would have to look into the workforce opportunities for the serf class. He wanted the scope of their future to be more than just a factory or a farm. Rex shook his head and returned his attention to the boy.
Now that Rex looked closer, the boy wore an adult uniform that hung from his thin frame. He coughed harshly and favored his right leg when he moved.
"Hey, what's your name?"
The boy looked up, startled. He tried to stand but steadied himself against the wall. "Venn, lord. Forgive me. I will return to work immediately."
"Hold on." Rex gestured for the boy to stay put.
As Venn coughed again, Rex noticed the unnatural bulge beneath his shirt. The fabric shifted oddly with each labored breath. Metal protruded from beneath his collar, crude interface ports embedded directly into pale skin.
Rex felt a pit in his stomach deepening into an abyss. Taking a chance, he used his nanites to scan the child's biometrics. What he found disturbed him deeply. The boy's internal conditions were poor. His development during puberty was severely stunted and likely permanent if his condition remained. Years of toxic exposure had damaged his organs beyond what any child should ever experience. They had literally worked parts of his humanity away and replaced it with metal.
Whatever doubts Rex had about intervening vanished. Some moral lines shouldn't be crossed, regardless of culture or time. This had to end.
One Medicae scanned Venn with a green light. "Subject: functional. Productivity: sixty-three percent below baseline. Recommendation: continue monitoring." He turned to leave. Rex put a hand on its shoulder, stopping it.
"What happened to him?"
"Archive access: Subject Venn. Age: fourteen standard years. Incident report filed three years prior. Respiratory collapse following exposure to molten slag. Augmetic replacement of thirty-two percent of pulmonary tissue. Augmetic partial replacement of liver tissue. Secondary complications: ongoing."
Rex knelt beside Venn. Green-tinged fluid seeped through the boy's shirt. His augmetics were failing.
"Don't you have medical facilities here?" Rex asked, anger rising.
Ryza-Tal stepped forward. "The boy's productivity remains within acceptable parameters despite complications."
"Acceptable parameters." Rex's voice went cold. "He can barely breathe." The words Caesar had spoken to him years ago echoed in Rex's mind. The nanites were supposed to improve human lives. They could cure diseases, grow cells, and regenerate bones.
He turned to Venn. "I can help you. Would you like me to repair your augmetics, or remove them completely?"
"Remove them? But without them, I would die."
"Not necessarily. I can help your body heal itself."
Venn looked up. "I just want to breathe again."
Rex nodded. "I understand." If he could help Davin, this one would be a few steps more advanced. He placed his hands on the child's head.
Blue light spread from Rex's hands. The nanites infiltrated the failing augmetics and organic tissue. They purged toxins, repaired cells, and dissolved the metal implants.
Venn gasped. The sickly color faded from his skin.
"I can breathe." He touched his chest.
Rex thought of his parents. They wanted the Nanite Project to end hunger, eliminate illness, and extend human life.
After the Nanite Event created EVOs and his global cure, people still feared having nanites in their bodies. His parents' vision stalled amid global fear.
Now that he saw Venn breathe freely, Rex felt his purpose return. This was what his parents wanted. The nanites were meant for healing, not for use as weapons or for control. In this distant future, he would fulfill their original mission. He would keep their dream alive here, where it was needed most.
The Tech-Priests looked at each other, then dropped to their knees. A wave of whispers rolled through the assembled workers: "A second blessing!" "First Davin, now the boy!" The Mechanicum had witnessed their Omnissiah personally attend to a laborer's augmetics earlier that day, but now he had blessed a child. The significance was not lost on anyone present.
“He restores the flesh of Man,” whispered a worker.
“Praise to the Omnissiah, master of flesh and steel,” another replied.
Ferris-Keph began a string of binary prayers. Others joined until the air filled with a thin, electronic chant.
Rex helped Venn to his feet. The boy stood steady, no longer guarding his leg.
The Fabricator-General stepped closer. “The texts speak of the Omnissiah as the perfect union of man and machine. We thought that meant mastery of metal alone. We never considered…”
“That I could heal people too?” Rex said.
“Such power is the Omnissiah’s will.” Valus made the sign of the cog.
Workers pressed in, reaching for Venn as if touch could prove it. Venn only smiled, small and uncertain, like it was new to him.
Valus turned to his council. “Omnissiah, we must reconsider much.”
Rex’s patience snapped. “No. We’re done for today. Shut it down. All of it. I’m fixing this mess.”
The tech-priests froze. The chief enginseer started to protest about quotas. Rex stopped him with a raised hand.
He headed deeper into the factory. The senior priests fell in behind him, silent, watching.
#
The day ran long. Morning was for the obvious failures. Rex had corroded conduits torn out and replaced, frayed cabling rerouted through proper shielding, valves brought back into spec. His nanites fixed decades old joints and leaks.
By midday he started changing how the place worked. He laid out new runs for conveyors. Heat that used to be wasted into the rafters was redirected into the generatorium.
The tech-priests kept close. Some tried to wrap each adjustment in a prayer. Some simply stared.
It accelerated once they understood what he was doing. They began staging the next section before he arrived, servitors clearing away dead assemblies while adepts prepared the replacements.
Rex kept everything recorded. If he could make one factory run like this, the pattern would spread.
By late afternoon the change was visible even from the catwalks. The lights could stay on without flickering. Emergency cutoffs were within reach. Ducting began to move air again.
Night found him finally stepping back. The air no longer tasted like metal filings and burnt oil. The temperature eased down into something comfortable.
Most of the forge looked unfamiliar now. His time at Providence showed in the uniform and utilitarian aesthetic, but Rex had not stripped it bare. He allowed the Mechanicus to express their religious iconography all over the place so long as it was outside the work area. Suffice to say, the break room he made turned into a miniature place of worship.
That was enough for tonight. One day closer to his expedition, and the archives hidden somewhere on this planet. Workers bowed as he left for his quarters, grateful.