Ga'duk's spiel was certainly... succinct. From the sound of things, it seemed the heresy in question involved... Horse, Horus? And bastard that he was, his armies apparently made it all the way to Terra itself, only to be slain by the Emperor. Well, as the lug said, the Emperor was very good at protecting what was his... and yet somehow, that hadn't been enough to defend himself from Horus? Leaving him confined to a throne of some sort as a result. And frankly, that was quite unbelievable, for what sort of harm could possibly leave the Emperor of Mankind so damaged for so much time? It might actually be [i]more[/i] believable to assume he was truly dead, but without any counter-arguments, he had to assume most of the immense fool's testimony was somewhat accurate.

Around this point in his musings, the Dark Apothecary started to get in his face about exactly how unlikely Xepherial was to survive if he wasn't healed, and quickly. He disliked the red-armoured Marine's demeanour. Actually, he disliked a lot about him, including the obviously heretical allegiance. Even so, if what he said was true, then Lucius would have to concede the point in this case - his skill would be necessary to revive Xepherial after all. Assuming he was truth-telling, that is, and there was every reason for him to not do so.

Even so, the Dark Angel kept a hawkish lookout over the proceedings. Though it took an inordinate amount of time for them to actually start, it happened that once they did, they began to work extremely rapidly indeed, the Marine and his subordinates apparently communicating in various clicks and whirrs... or, perhaps it was just signalling. He had no way to tell.

Two minutes in, Xepherial seemed to begin to awaken. Before he could properly do so, however, a needle was pushed into his neck, pumping some substance or another into his body that made him go limp once more, not seconds before a pile of machinery was dumped on to the table next to the Marine. Were they not done yet? Was all this really necessary? In spite of himself, he tried to tell himself that, perhaps it would assist in recovery. Or maybe they were to boost strength? He didn't know, couldn't say, and yet there was certainly a lot being modified.

It was about six minutes in that Lucius finally glanced toward Xepherial's face, finally saw his eyes were still open... finally saw the glazed expression he had. Not like his. An appearance of that sort was only caused by unbearable amounts of pain.

Lucius shivered as he barely restrained his anger, desiring little else than to tear the Chaos Marine apart limb from limb... and yet to do so now would surely be foolish, would surely leave him more dead than desired. And so, to distract himself, he called Ga'duk over to him, and for him to arrive quickly. Once he did, he would whisper into the Ogryn's ear, quietly enough that it'd hopefully go unnoticed by the surgeons over their workings: 'When I say "now", charge the main surgeon. Try to get one of his subordinates with the charge as well.'

And with that said, he managed to hold himself together for yet another forty or fifty seconds, until finally the artificial creatures around him began to sow the Dark Angel up.

And then another needle was plunged into Xepherial's neck. For half a second, Lucius tried to believe it was some form of healing accelerant... only to have his belief destroyed by the sound of a circular saw, and the turning of Xepherial on to his front, and there was no possible reason for the Apothecary to bring that towards the Techmarine's skull-

'Okay, no, you're done,' Lucius stated, intervening and pulling Xepherial's body off the operation table with a somewhat pained grunt. Not two seconds after he'd done so, however, he found himself in the grip of one of the Apothecary's minions, the power armoured arms wrapping round his own from behind in a way that attempted to encourage dropping his charge, and which would probably be inescapable for any normal human... luckily, he was no normal human. Alas, since it seemed this course was inevitable, he supposed the earliest opportunity to gain the upper hand was appropriate here.

'Now!' he called, in the same moment dragging one arm painfully free of the Marine's grasp, his other hand gripping Xepherial's armour where he had as much grip as possible, using the Techmarine's own substantial weight as momentum to spin himself round and toss the Marine toward the wall, or at least away from the psychopaths that called themselves Apothecaries for the moment. Continuing the spin in spite of the nerves of his arm protesting the skin twisting like that underneath the fabric, he yanked his other arm free, gripping his foe's helmet with the first freed hand, and with the second drawing his combat knife and holding it to the throat of the Chaos Space Marine he now stood behind. They were armoured, but even they had joints that needed flexibility, which could be exploited as weak points if one had the time to focus on such a possibility.

And all this in no more than a second. Considering the lack of armour, he was quite impressed with himself. On the other hand, how the Marine reacted to suddenly being held hostage was... somewhat more debatable. And he did hope he had the strength to maintain his advantage, after all that effort to get him in this position to begin with.