Life as a penal convict was one of contradictions. Gate hated the food - Emperor could only know what went into it - and yet he ate it anyway. Gate hated the water - he heard that they put things in it, the sort of things that made you behave like the screaming lunatic gesticulating down the table - and yet he drank it anyway. Gate hated the air - it was dry and stale and stung your eyes, making it hard to think - but he kept breathing anyway. Gate hated his superiors and yet he lived his life at their beck and call.

He stared into the slick grey surface of his gruel and begin to slip into thought, until something out of the ordinary caught his eye; new officers arriving into the mess hall. Normally they didn't change the guard so regularly, so he wagered something unusual must have been occurring. From his appearance and demeanour, the Captain reminded Gate of the private enforcers of the noble houses that ruled his hive homeworld; arrogant, overpaid and concerned only with pursuing their own personal power fantasies. Gate respected that. He couldn't imagine why one would come here, and part of him didn't want to know; sometimes prisoners he had known had disappeared one day, and never came back. Who would miss them? What better place for a bored noble or adept to collect human fodder from? As badly as Gate wanted to leave, he didn't wish to leave only to become a plaything or a human lab animal.

And yet... Gate did badly want to leave. So badly that any opportunity, even one that proved fatal, was worth taking; because in that opportunity lay the faintest glimmer of hope. Hope. Gate considered hope to be of deep significance to life on the penal world. Hope is what men of ambition had. Hope is what survivors had. It was only those who were broken - little better than animals, waiting to die here - that didn't have hope. Gate dearly wished to keep hope.

He shook himself out introspection. He was still staring at the Captain, who seemed to be observing the massed rabble in the canteen. Gate sensed the need to attract his attention, as though he was looking for something. But how? How was he different to this man from the hordes of grey-clad souls surrounding him?

Despair gradually sunk in as Gate realised... he wasn't.