Aldric walked over and took the tin from both of them.
The moment it left the younger sister’s hands, the older brother’s face went pale.
*Clack*
The cup hit the floor.
Water spread across the ground.
His face paled even more.
“Could you…
that was our food for tomorrow…”
Aldric’s gaze settled on him.
He didn’t have nearly as many white patches as his sister.
His skin was simply a warm brown.
The two of them looked very much alike.
Neither of them could be called healthy by any measure.
Both were skin and bone, which made their eyes look oversized, though more unsettling than striking.
Their ribs were visible through their skin.
The cold look in Aldric’s eyes nearly made the older brother cry on the spot.
The temptation of clean water had led him to do something foolish, like someone had whispered in his ear and he had listened.
His sister had been saved because of this man.
And he had repaid that by stealing water.
Combined with what he read in Aldric’s expression, the fear made complete sense.
Aldric’s Modeling Optimization didn’t only work in warm directions.
When he was stern, those around him felt a particular tension, something closer to being in the presence of a leader.
Reverence and fear in equal measure.
Put simply, when he was gentle he came across as a saint.
When he was serious, he carried a different kind of magnetism entirely.
“I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t have taken the water…”
“Angel, please don’t blame my brother.” The younger sister clutched her brother and wept openly.
“Stealing water?”
Aldric’s gaze dropped to the older brother’s visibly full stomach, then to the clean water pooled across the floor.
The high-tech wash room only had one tap you could draw water from directly.
The sink.
“I’m sorry.
I’ll do anything to atone for my sins.” The older brother pressed his forehead to the floor immediately, but her brow was limp, It looked like his head was being held up by air.
In the mining city, stealing water was a serious offense.
Quality water was reserved for the nobility or the household guard.
And what he had quietly drunk while bathing was cleaner than anything the nobility received.
“There’s no sin here that you need to atone for.”
“It was water.
The Federation doesn’t concern itself with that.”
Aldric’s gaze moved to the tin.
“On the contrary, some people need to atone for their sins!”
Two words on the label.
Different from the Premium Starch tin.
This one read…
Standard Ration.
To test what he already suspected, Aldric spoke.
“Septimus, analyze the contents of this tin.”
When Septimus returned the results, Aldric suddenly laughed.
Good news: no biological fragments in this one.
Bad news: one hundred percent industrial chemical byproducts, blended with a compound fuel derivative, classified as a theoretical starch substitute extracted from pure fuel stock.
Reading the ingredient list out loud would have made anyone laugh.
“So that is what premium means?”
“Interesting.
The only difference between premium and standard is whether real protein is present?”
“Or rather, eating something natural is like winning the lottery?”
Aldric laughed, a relieved laugh.
Heresy! New chapters come out on g.com first.
Heresy!!
The fury that rose in Aldric was almost tangible.
The two siblings pressed together, gripped by fear so complete it felt like the space around them was warping.
If a Grey Knight had been nearby, they would have noticed the veil between realspace and the Warp had grown paper-thin in this spot, one poke away from tearing.
But where such places were usually saturated with corruption, this one was strangely, unnervingly clean.
“They are feeding this to human beings?”
“Heresy.
There is heresy in this Imperium of Man.
Heretical”
Even in the Federation’s darkest hours, even when entire planetary civilizations of xenos had been reduced to primitive animals by suppression fields and their worlds converted to farming colonies, the Human Federation had never once put its own people on the menu.
This kind of heresy would bring the Federation’s purges down like a tide of blood.
Just like what had been done to the Earth Federation.
“Stop eating that.”
Aldric flicked his wrist.
An apple arced through the air toward the two siblings.
It slowed to a stop and hung suspended just in front of them.
The siblings stared at the floating apple, completely at a loss.
They reached out carefully and took it.
They looked at each other.
The same bewilderment in both pairs of eyes.
“What is this?”
“Fruit.”
“Fruit?”
“You don’t know what fruit is?”
Both of them looked entirely blank.
Aldric’s brow furrowed.
Something about this was more complicated than he had thought.
“Have you been eating nothing but rations?”
“No.
We’re not strong enough to mine much, so we don’t eat this well every meal.
Most of the time, we can only eat some minerals.”
???
???
What?
Was that a sentence?
Did those words mean what he thought they meant?
Aldric took a slow breath.
“Fruit is edible.”
“Eat it.”
The two siblings exchanged a glance.
Fruit?
You can eat it?
Skeptical but willing, they each took a small bite.
The moment their teeth broke the skin, a fragrance neither of them had words for flooded their noses.
Then a cool, clean sweetness touched the tips of their tongues.
In that instant, they felt their lives hadn’t been in vain.
They looked at each other in shock, their eyes filled with indescribable joy.
The sweet, crisp flesh instantly refreshed their tongues, which hadn’t been nourished by sweetness for over a decade.
Oh, no, sometimes even water has a sweet aftertaste.
“Little Sister, eat well, you, hurry…”
Aldric poured a glass of soda without looking and held it out to the older brother.
“Drink this.
Get your strength back.”
The dark liquid made the younger sister nervous.
When the soda hit her tongue, she felt like she was melting.
Pure sweetness, sharper and more overwhelming than the apple had been.
The sensation was so complete she nearly drifted somewhere else entirely.
Just stay here, she thought.
Just let this keep going.
Even if it meant selling her soul to the angel.
The younger sister passed the cup to her brother.
“Brother.
it’s delicious.
The angel’s liquid.
It’s so good.”
The older brother held the cup and felt tears coming, though not from sadness.
He had drunk so much water and eaten a few bites of apple, and now there was simply no room left.
“There is no hurry.
It is yours now.”
They tore into the apple like something had come loose in them.
They swallowed the soda in long pulls.
It felt worth it even if Chaos itself came for them the next second.
They were about to swallow the core.
Aldric flicked his wrist again.
Another apple appeared in front of them.
The younger sister reached for it immediately, but the older brother caught her wrist.
His eyes were full of reluctance, but he gave a small, quiet shake of his head.
The younger sister almost cried out in distress.
The fruit was too tempting.
“Go ahead and eat it.
I don’t like apples.”
Aldric pressed his fingers to his temple.
He had seen the older brother’s gesture.
And it was true, he had never liked apples, even before his transmigration.
These two were the last ones left anyway.
Through what little had been said, and through that absurd ration tin, he already knew these two had lived a hard life.
The fact that the older brother had managed to hold back at all, that thin thread of self-control, said something.
“I still don’t know who you are.”
The older brother pulled his sister down and they both knelt, pressing their foreheads low.
“My lord.
My name is Antor.
This is my sister, Annie.
We are miners from Mine Pit Three.”
“Are these rations standard issue for everyone?”
“The defence troops receive three a day…”
Through Antor account, Aldric pieced together the basic workings of the mine pit.
Rations were the staple food, the main meal, and the only thing the supply chain provided.
Through uninterrupted mining work, they could occasionally earn one or two extra tins.
The soldiers ate rations three times a day as well.
They had heard that even the officers inside the mining city ate rations.
Aldric stood before the holographic display, his expression heavy.
In other words, this was the norm.
He looked at the spatial anchor in front of him.
Between the energy recovered from the ork bodies fed into the bio-power plant, and Marcus’s promise to petition for an energy allocation, the threshold for activating the spatial anchor was no longer out of reach.
All it would take was patience.
Contact the Federation.
Go home.
But right now, he found he wanted to see something first.
He wanted to know exactly who had allowed all of this to happen.
The Federation, at this moment, could not look away.