Inquisitorial data-seal Omega-Majoris. Any person or persons below Inquisitor rank found accessing, downloading, transferring, transcribing, copying, duplicating, transmitting or in any other way observing, causing others to observe or editing this file will brought before the High Tribunal and unceremoniously executed by servitor firing squad.

Final report into the Incident at the Athagonda Combat Enhancement Drugs (Research and Development) outpost, Mt Yuliana, Volk mountain range, northern hemisphere, Valhalla, Valhalla System, Jemophe sub-sector, Brassheart sector, Ultima Segmentum.

The Mechanicus Brotherhood of the Unrusting Steel have long been interested in the refining and perfection of the mechanisms of human flesh. They have always viewed the mass usage of cybernetics to be economically unviable outside the military and their own Forge Worlds. For most of their recorded history, all two and a half millennia of it, they have shown a continued interest in the usage of performance enhancing drugs. It is believed that even the frailty of flesh can perform with the beauty of the machine if treated with the right substances.

The Incident was a direct result of their misguided belief that they could make humans 'better' coupled with a lack of unbiased third party observation and oversight.

On the fifth day of the year 674M41 a group of five people were removed from Arbite prison complex Purgatoria. All five had been arrested within the last half standard year for actions in the Red Arising riots in the capital. By all accounts they were a collection of nothings, me-too-ists and slogan graffiti artists. The sort that are always arrested at such insignificantly minor events to fill out the statistics and give the new recruits some training.

The five subjects were placed in a simple vacuum-sealed communal dwelling. The dwelling was furnished with running water, a toilet, sleeping cots (but no bedding), governmentally sanctioned books and more than enough dried military food rations for the five people to last for well over the month the experiment was intended to last.

In the dwelling was also installed many hidden microphones and cameras.

The purpose of the experiment was to ascertain the effectiveness of the latest gas based combat stimulant before distribution to the Planetary Defence Force on a larger scale.

The prisoners were (falsely) promised an amnesty for their crimes at the conclusion of the experiments.

The first five days went according the predictions of the Mechanicus. All conversations were monitored and for the first four days the only complaint was a two-hour migraine by one of the subjects on day three. After the fifth day the verbal exchanges between the subjects began to take on a darker tone

After the sixth day (by which time seven of the microphones had been discovered by the subjects) they began to complain about the circumstances and events that lead them to their current situation and all five subjects began to express the symptoms of increasingly severe paranoia. By the beginning of the eighth day they were no longer talking to one another. By mid-day they began whispering into the discovered microphones. Oddly they seemed to believe they could win the trust of the Mechanicus Observers by turning over their former comrades. Initially the researchers assumed this was a result of the gas itself.

On the ninth day the first of them started screaming. He ran the length and breadth of the dwelling reputedly yelling at the top of his lungs for more than three hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but only produced the occasional squeak. The Mechanicus Observers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most note worth thing about this behaviour is complete lack of reaction from the other captives. The other prisoners continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. Two of the non-screaming captives delicately took the books apart, smeared the liberated pages with their own faecal matter and pasted them calmly over all of the hidden camera lenses. The screaming stopped almost immediately.

As did the whispering to the microphones.

After a further three days the Observers performed diagnostic rituals every hour upon the microphones to ensure they were still functional, as they believed it impossible that five confined people could produce no sound. The oxygen reprocessing systems in the dwelling indicated that all five must still be alive. The oxygen consumption in the sealed environment was consistent with that of five adults performing extremely strenuous exercise. At the dawning of the fourteenth day the continued silence provoked the Observers into doing something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives; they used the intercom inside the dwelling, hoping to get a response from the captives they half-believed had become comatose.

Anouncement: We are opening the opening the door to perform purification rituals on the microphones, step away fro the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be immediately terminated. Compliance will earn one individual their immediate freedom.

Response: We no longer wish to be freed.

Debate arose among the Brotherhood as to what the next coarse of action should be. Further attempts to provoke a response using the intercom left the Brotherhood with little option but to open the dwelling at the switchover between the fifteenth and sixteenth day of the experiment.

As a standard precaution the dwelling was flushed of the stimulant gas and filled with the standard tri-gas, oxygen/nitrogen/misc, mix. Immediately voiced from the microphones began to object. Three different voices began pleading, as if begging for the life of a loved one for the gas supply to be reconnected. The single-door airlock to the dwelling was opened and six heavy-duty skitarii were ordered to retrieve the test subjects. They began to scream louder than ever, as did the skirarii when they saw the contents of the dwelling. For of the five subjects were still alive, although no one could justly call the condition they were found in as 'life'.

The food rations past the fifth day had not been consumed. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject's thighs and chest stuffed into the drainage aperture in the centre of the dwelling, blocking the drain and allowing four inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Exactly how much of the liquid on the flood was in fact blood was never investigated. All four 'surviving' test subjects also had very substantial portions of muscle and skin torn away from their bodies. The destruction of bodily tissue and exposed bone on their fingertips indicated that the wounds were inflicted by hand, not with teeth as the Observers initially thought. Closer examination of angling, positioning and depth of the injuries indicated that all were self-inflicted.

The organs of the abdomen below the ribcage of all four-test subjects had been removed. All the internal organs above the diaphragm, and the diaphragm itself, were intact and untouched, but the epidermis and much of the musculature had been removed, allowing direct observation of the lungs and heart through the ribcage. Most perplexing of all was that most if not all of the blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had been carefully removed and laid out on the submerged floor, fanning out around the almost surgically eviscerated still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It was immediately apparent that what they were digesting was their own removed flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the days since fifth.

All of the military personnel at the facility were psyco-conditioned, veteran, skitarii heavy sentinels and yet many still refused point blank to enter the chamber to reclaim the test subjects. Even when threatened with formal excommunication. The subjects continued to scream to be left inside the chamber and begged and demanded that the stimulant gas supply be re-activated, lest they laps into unconsciousness.

To the surprise of all, not least of all the skitarii, the test subjects physically put up a fierce fight when they were removed from the dwelling. One of the skutarii expired from having his wind pipe torn out and another severely injured by having his testicles ripped off and an artery in his leg severed by one of the subjects teeth. A further five skitarii committed suicide in the weeks following the Incident.

In the struggle one of the four remaining subjects had his spleen ruptured and he bled to death. The medical personnel attempted to sedate him but this proved impossible. He was injected with more than ten times the standard human dose of opium derivative and still managed to the ribs and right arm of one doctor. The subjects heart was observed to beat for a full two minutes after he had bled out to the point where must have been more air than blood circulating his vascular system. Even after his heart stopped he continued to scream and flail for a further three minutes, straining to attack anyone in reach. He repeated the word 'more' over and over, weaker and weaker, until he finally fell silent.

The three surviving subjects were heavily restrained and moved to the facility's medical suite, the remaining two with functioning vocal cords endlessly begging for the gas and demanding to be kept awake.

The most grievously injured of the three was immediately taken to the only operation theatre present at the facility. In the process of preparing the subject to have his organs placed back in their proper place it was discovered that he had become effectively immune to the sedative they had given him to prepare him for the surgery. He fought madly against the restraints when the anaesthetic gas was brought to put hi under. He managed to tear his way through most of the four-inch wide grox leather strap on one wrist despite a the beat efforts of a two hundred and fifty pound skitarii. It too only a little more anaesthetic than normal to place him into unconsciousness. The moment his eyelids reluctantly closed his heart stopped. Initial tests on the body found that his blood had nearly triple the normal level of oxygen that it should have had. The muscles that were still attached to his skeleton were badly torn and he had broken nine of his bones in his struggle not to be subdued. Most of them were from the force his own muscles had exerted on them.

The second survivor had been the first of the group to start screaming. His vocal cords were utterly destroyed and as such he was unable to beg or object to the surgery, he reacted by shaking his head violently in emphatic disapproval when the anaesthetic gas was brought near him. He nodded his head a junior member of the medical staff suggested, reluctantly, that they operated with the subject conscious. The subject did not react for the whole six-hour procedure of replacing his abdominal organs and attempting to cover them with the meagre remains of his skin. The primary surgeon stated repeatedly throughout the procedure that it should be medically impossible for the patient to still be alive. One terrified orderly assisting the primary surgeon stated that she had seen the patients mouth curl into a smile several times, whenever his mind met hers.

At the conclusion of the surgery the subject looked at the surgeon and began to wheeze loudly, attempting to talk while straining against his restraints. Assuming this must be something of drastic importance the primary surgeon had a data-slate fetched so the patient could write. All the patient wrote was 'Keep cutting'.

The other two subjects were given the same surgery, both without anaesthetic. Though they had to be injected with a paralytic for the duration of the operation. The primary surgeon found it impossible to perform the operation while the patients laughed continuously. Once paralysed the patients could only follow the attending Observers with their eyes. The paralytic cleared their system in an abnormally short period of time and they resumed their attempts to escape their bonds. The moment their speech returned thy again asked for the stimulant gas. The Observers tried asking why they had so mutilated themselves, why they had eviscerated themselves and why they wanted to be given the gas.

Response: 'I must remain awake.'

All three subject's restraints were reinforced and they were placed back into the chamber awaiting determination. The Observers, facing the wrath of the Magos Council, for having failed to complete the experiment properly considered euthanizing the surviving subjects. The representative Magos requested that experiment resume as it had started. The Observers strongly objected, but were ordered.

In preparation for being re-sealed in the dwelling the remaining subjects were connected to bodily and brain wave monitoring equipment and had their restraints padded for long-term confinement. To the surprise of all the subjects stop struggling the moment they were informed about their imminent re-incarceration. It was obvious by this point that all three were exerting massive amounts of will power in an attempt to stay awake. One of the subjects that could speak was humming loudly and continuously; the mute subject was straining his legs alternately against his restraints. The remaining subject was holding his head off his pillow and blinking rapidly. Having been the first to have his head wired up to the brain wave monitoring device most of the Observers were observing his brain waves in surprise. They were normal most of the time but sometimes they would flat line inexplicably. It appeared as if he was experiencing brain death, before returning to normal. As they focused on the read-out only one orderly saw his eyes slip shut at the same moment his head hit the pillow. His brain waves immediately changed to that of a deep sleep, then flat lined for the last time as his hear suddenly stopped.

The only remaining subject that could speak started screaming to be sealed in now. His brain waves showed the same flat line pattern as his deceased comrade. The Magos gave the order to seal the chamber with both subjects inside as well as three Observers. One of the named three immediately drew his las-pistol shot the Magos point blank between the eyes, then turned the gun on the mute and performed the same mercy.

The gun was finally pointed at the remaining subject, restrained to the bed. 'I will not be locked in here with these things. Not with you.' He said. 'What are you? We must know.'

The subject appeared to be attempting to smile.

'Have you forgotten so easily?' the subject asked. 'We are you. We are the madness that lurks with in you all, begging to be free at every moment. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread.'

The Observer seemed to give this due consideration for several seconds. Then put a las-beam straight through the subject's heart.

The monitoring equipment flat lined as the remaining subject weakly choked out 'so nearly free.'

Full report follows. Recommend psyker mind-scrubbing events of last five years from minds of tainted Observer team, medical staff, technical staff and skitarii sentinels. Magos council members and assistants who know about and authorised this experimentation I would recommend a more unambiguous response. I personally would recommend requesting the presence of the Vindicare Temple, although not the most subtle they are unusually the most reliable.

Thought for the day: Be wary pushing back the boundaries of knowledge. Many of those boundaries were put there for a reason.