Content Warnings

Masochism
Sexualisation of wounds
Brief reference to rape
Incest mentioned

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“This is not a crisis of command,” said Elpida. “That much is clear to me now.”

She paced as she spoke. Exertion had set her thoughts in motion. She wanted to maintain the momentum.

She continued. “The problem initially appeared to me as a crisis of command, but that was a mistake. Why? Because that’s the only set of standards I have to judge myself. I could tell there was a flaw in my thinking, in my self-discipline, or in something else I couldn’t quite identify. So I applied the only intellectual framework I have, and attempted to critique myself.”

She reached the far wall of the cadre’s rec room. This wasn’t the real rec room, of course. Elpida reached out with her left hand and brushed her fingertips against the wall. Did the real version of this room still exist, deep inside the dry and echoing shell of the real Telokopolis, empty and quiet for uncounted years? If the cadre’s private quarters had survived the extermination of the cadre, then doubtless the rooms had been repurposed. But the bones would have endured.

This was merely a software ‘dream’. A simulation, generated inside the private network space of Elpida’s own nanomachine biology. But it was a welcome retreat, real or not. Memory had helped untangle her mind.

Elpida turned around sharply and resumed pacing in the opposite direction, back across the width of the rec room, bare feet padding on the warm floor. The big screen lay blank, the sofas were cold. Ventilation ducts whispered with recycled air — which could not quite erase the sharp tang of blood and the salt-rich scent of sweat and mucus.

Each step tugged at the bruises on Elpida’s abdomen, and threatened to chafe her shorts against her sore and tender groin.

“It’s how I was raised, what I was trained to do,” she said. “It’s the way I solve most problems, and usually it works. But it’s simply not applicable to this. It led me to an erroneous conclusion — namely, that the only way to unpick this problem was to seek external guidance. At a loss for how to proceed, I wanted to pass the question further up a chain of command that does not exist. Telokopolis is not my ‘commander’. Even if she does ‘exist’ in some kind of incorporeal form, as a ghost in the network, she cannot tell me what to do, and I should not expect such clear instructions and orders.” Elpida paused and swallowed, then forced herself to admit: “However much I might desire that clarity.”

Elpida continued to pace; she passed the big table. The wooden chess set was still laid out there, just as it had been when she had first found herself awake and lucid in this software dream. She stared at the pieces as she passed, then carried onward, toward the opposite wall.

“So, if my problem is not a crisis of command, what is it?”

Elpida fell silent for a while, then stopped, facing the wall. She glanced down at the stump of her right arm, terminated at the elbow. A software mirror of reality, of the wound she had taken removing a bomb-vest from a girl she had never met before.

And why had she done that?

“My problem is a paradox,” she announced — then turned around, pacing back the other way again.

Elpida continued: “I have two conflicting priorities, and I cannot reconcile them. Conflicting, but not opposed. That’s very important. If these priorities were simply in opposition, I wouldn’t have this problem. I would figure out which priority matters more and I would follow it. If only this were that simple. Instead, these two priorities are mutually reinforcing. They rely on each other. They cannot be cleanly separated.”

She halted next to the table and the chess set. She reached out and plucked a piece from the board — the white city, a simple spire-like representation of the physical body of Telokopolis. This was the same piece she had picked up earlier, when she had mused upon her status as a blind pawn in a game played by powers she could not see.

Elpida held the white city in her left fist, cradled within the cage of her bruised knuckles.

“Comrades, and cause,” she said. “Cadre, and Telokopolis. They cannot be parted. To prioritise one at the expense of the other is to abandon both. And that’s no different to what I did before. It’s the same mistake I made when I was alive.”

Elpida’s momentum was running out; she felt both invigorated and exhausted by thinking via speaking. She nudged a chair out from the table with one foot, turned it around to face the rear of the room, and sat down.

“It’s so obvious to me now,” she said, staring at the white city piece in her fist. Edges of lacquered wood pressed into the skin of her palm and fingers. “I feel like my mind is clear for the first time in weeks, maybe months. Perhaps since I was resurrected. Or perhaps since … before that.”

Lykke groaned.

“Uhhhh?”

The Necromancer was laid out on the floor, lying on her back halfway between the rec room door and the nearest sofa. Elpida had propped a cushion beneath Lykke’s head, to spare her tender skull. The gesture had seemed only right, in the aftermath, but now Elpida thought it faintly ridiculous.

Lykke was a big mess.

Her shimmering white party dress was stained with blood all down the front — mostly from a massive nosebleed — and by smears of dried vaginal mucus in several other places; the latter belonged to both herself and Elpida. The crescent-and-double-line symbol of Telokopolis which she had daubed on her chest with a pinprick of her own blood was smeared and blurred by crimson struggle, almost blotted out by the more recent stains. She’d lost one of her delicate white lace gloves somewhere, and Elpida couldn’t figure out where it had gone. The other glove was torn and twisted, bare fingernails poking out from the first two digits. The matching white choker from around Lykke’s throat now lay on the floor, neatly snapped by one hard yank from behind. The silken ribbons around her ankles and calves had survived intact, but they looked a bit rumpled. Her golden ponytail had come undone, bright tresses fanned out in a sunburst halo against the floor.

She was bruised all over; the initial marks Elpida had left on her flesh were outshone by a dozen more. Her sharp and elegant face was puffy, one eye squinted half-shut as a dark bruise blossomed around the socket, painting her pale skin the violet blush of ashen sunset. Blood was dried all down her chin, nose knocked crooked, lips split. Her throat was a map of Elpida’s hand prints, trailing off into addendums down her collarbone and upper chest — smaller bruises, finger marks, a single row of tooth indents.

Beneath the thin gauze of her dress her belly was a wide canvas of purples, pinks, greens, and yellows, all spilling outward. The bruises had matured during the handful of hours that she and Elpida had napped on the floor in the aftermath of their coupling. She bore additional bruises on her hips and thighs, and a nasty one right down on her left ankle. Elpida couldn’t even recall how she’d inflicted that particular wound.

But Lykke sported no broken bones, except for the nose. Elpida had made sure of that; she would never have broken one of her sister’s bones by accident, after all.

Though she suspected Lykke had helped with that. She suspected Lykke had bent the rules she’d set herself.

“Unnh?” Lykke repeated.

She gazed up at Elpida, emerald eyes still lost in afterglow bliss, a dazed smile on her battered lips.

Elpida wet her own lips; that stung, she had a split there too. “I meant … perhaps since before I and my sisters were murdered. This might be the most clear-headed I’ve been since then, since my own death. That’s what I meant.”

“Unnnn,” Lykke grunted.

Elpida straightened up in the chair. She winced, placed the white city piece between her legs, then adjusted her black shorts. Her groin ached.

“And,” she added, “that means I think I can solve this problem I’ve been backing myself into.”

Lykke’s smile widened. Her eyes fluttered shut. She croaked: “There.”

“There?”

“There you go. All better now. Isn’t that so much better?”

Elpida nodded. She opened her mouth to carry on exploring her thoughts, then reminded herself that she was still talking to a Necromancer.

Elpida eased back in her chair.

Lykke was correct — Elpida did feel much better. Fixed. Cured. Whole. Her analytical faculties were unclouded.

After beating Lykke into squirming, writhing, unstable submission — whatever that meant for a Necromancer projected inside the network — and then fucking her senseless, Elpida’s mind was clear.

The fight had not actually taken very long; Lykke had lasted about thirty five minutes in total, from the first impact of Elpida’s fist against her eye socket to the final heaving orgasm as Lykke’s slender body had twisted and bucked beneath Elpida’s unyielding attention. And Lykke wasn’t the only one with bruises; she had put up a real fight, as best she could in that slender body, and had obviously enjoyed every moment of the process — even when Elpida had straddled her, pinned her down, and held her face against the floor.

Elpida wouldn’t have enjoyed it otherwise. She would have gotten less than nothing from forcing herself on an unwilling partner. Her furious coupling with Lykke had only worked because the Necromancer had wanted it as much as Elpida had.

Perhaps more, in fact. Elpida wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Still, Lykke had folded quickly, and gone down easy. Elpida had one bruise around her right eye, a deep ache in her belly where Lykke had managed to get fists and feet into her gut several times, and a few superficial bumps and grazes scattered across the rest of her body from Lykke’s ineffectual but spirited enthusiasm. She also had a series of shallow bite marks on her shoulders and collarbone, delivered right through her black t-shirt. Lykke was a biter. Elpida had almost laughed at that.

Elpida also had a very sore groin. Down there, Lykke had given as good as she’d got, knuckles and all.

After the fight — and the fucking — they’d both collapsed into a nap, directly on the warm floor of the rec room, spent and satisfied. They’d both woken up a handful of hours later. Or what felt like a handful of hours, simulated.

And Elpida’s mind was clear.

“There I go,” Elpida echoed. “What does that mean?”

Down on the floor, Lykke rose into a sitting position. She gasped as she sat up, one hand fluttering across the landscape of bruises on her belly, another to the mass of purple hand prints and deep-tissue contusions on her throat. Her gasp melted into a soft sigh. Eventually she got herself upright, swaying back and forth, legs haphazardly crossed, white dress riding up her hips. Her eyes fluttered open, gentle green glow beneath her lids.

“There you … go,” Lykke murmured. “Or come.” She hummed a little close-mouthed giggle. “I explained all this to you before we started, didn’t I? You’ve been so pent up. Sexually frustrated. Lacking proper release. All you needed was a good hard dose of reality, zombie— no!” Lykke’s eyes flew wide, though her left struggled against the bruised socket. “Elpida! Elpida! Elpida! Let it be your name, nothing else. Nothing else will pass my lips again. Not after this.”

Elpida snorted. “All I needed was reality? That’s ironic.” She gestured with her left hand and the stump of her right arm. “In case you’ve forgotten, this is software.”

Lykke mewled and pouted. “You know what I meant. And please, don’t sully this.” Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “Please.”

Elpida restrained another snort. Lykke’s appeal to the sanctity of her afterglow appeared genuine.

Necromancer or not, fake tears or real emotion, Lykke had done as she said she would. She had not transformed her flesh during the fight, but had seen the whole thing through as Elpida’s ostensible equal. She had not rapidly healed her bruises, but continued to pretend they were real. She had fought and fucked on a level field.

“Alright.” Elpida raised her left hand. “You kept your promise. I respect that. And … ”

Lykke leaned forward, arms shaking as she propped up her weight. “Yes? Yes?!”

“Thank you.”

Lykke broke into an infatuated smile, brimming tears rolling down bruised cheeks, gazing up at Elpida with a fragile tenderness. “Was it good for you, too?”

“Yes,” Elpida said. She took a deep breath, adjusted her aching groin inside her shorts, and picked up the white city piece again. “Though you don’t compare to any of my sisters. Nobody does. Nobody could replace even a single one of them. But you were … adequate.”

Lykke shifted closer, dragging her bruised and quivering body across the floor. “I’m your first, aren’t I?”

“What?” Elpida looked up from the chess piece. “No. My cadre, all my sisters, we all—”

“Your first beyond your incestuous little pack, I mean.” Lykke paused and swallowed. “I-I meant no offence by that—”

Elpida shook her head. “Whatever. You’re not my first anything, Lykke.”

Lykke smiled. “But I did uncork you. I uncorked your mind. Untangled your knot, with my insides.”

“You did.” Elpida tightened her grip on the white city piece, and hardened her heart. “But I’m not going to suddenly trust you, Lykke.”

Lykke’s face fell. Her lips quivered apart. “What? But … ”

“You must understand that.”

“But we … we … we fucked. We fucked!”

“We did,” Elpida said. She forced herself to look at Lykke’s crocodile tears. “And you got what you wanted. Pain, pleasure, me beating the shit out of you. Whatever it was you were after in this arrangement, I’ve given it to you. You and I have used each other. What difference does trust make?”

“I kept my promise! I kept it! This—” She held out her arms, showing her bruises and her flushed skin. “All this—”

“Lykke. Necromancer. You’re not really bruised. That isn’t your physical body.” Elpida gestured at herself — or tried to, waving the stump of her right arm. “And this isn’t mine.”

Lykke laughed softly and rolled her eyes, as if Elpida was being coy; her distress vanished in an instant. “Oh, little zombie, you can’t pretend this doesn’t count just because we did it inside your mind. My soul is bruised, marked by the imprint of your knuckles and fingers, with indents and creases that I will never be able to smooth out.” Lykke bit her lip and shook her head. “You can’t understand what you’ve done to me. There’s no going back after this, not for me.” She smiled, enjoying the husky crackle of her own voice. “I am a ruined woman now. Impregnated with thoughts I was never supposed to have. You’ve slipped a piece of fruit between my lips, so sweet and juicy, and I could not help but bite down. Ahhhhh.” Lykke sighed and closed her eyes again, drifting off to the pleasures of her bruised and battered body.

Elpida stared at Lykke for a long time. When the Necromancer did not lapse into further rambling, Elpida said: “So this really is permanent, for you?”

“Mmm?” Lykke cracked her eyes open.

“Those bruises around your eyes, they’ve already started to heal faster than they should in reality. How can you expect me to believe this is permanent?”

Lykke’s smile turned teasing. “I already explained. But I don’t expect you to understand. Why try? After all, why concern yourself with me when you have been so beautifully uncorked?” Lykke fluttered her eyelashes. “You are perfect, little zombie. In the moment of climax, with my fist in your gut, your hand around my throat. I have met a celestial being, and I have been elevated.”

Elpida ignored the absurd compliment, but she took the practical advice. She nodded slowly and stood back up, flexing her bruised and weary muscles. “Good point. I need to finish unpacking my thoughts.”

“You do, you do,” crooned Lykke. “Where were you?”

Elpida resumed pacing. This time she walked in a slow circle, around where Lykke sat on the floor. She tucked her left arm behind her back and let the stump of her right hang by her side.

“The paradox of comrades and cause,” she said. “Cadre and Telokopolis.” She frowned down at Lykke. “And why do you care? You didn’t earlier. You made that clear.”

Lykke had closed her eyes and turned her face toward the ceiling. She was smiling, humming softly, swaying gently in a little circle.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps you have fucked it into me.”

“I doubt that.”

“Hm!”

Elpida paced on, circling the rear half of the rec room. She briefly considered not saying another word. If this encounter had been a ruse to gain intel or corrupt her mind somehow, then speaking more of her thoughts aloud would only play into Lykke’s hands. But Lykke had already proved that she could pick up and read pieces of Elpida’s memories and thoughts, just by being present in this software dream. If Elpida was going to be compromised, then it was already too late. And if this was not a ruse, then she may as well keep using Lykke for her own ends.

“In life,” Elpida said, “I prioritised my cadre, my sisters. I put their cohesion and their safety first, above all other considerations. When the isolationists started making gains in the Civitas, I kept us out of it, out of politics. I kept the cadre neutral, apolitical, standing apart. When the politics turned ugly, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters started shouting slogans on street corners, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters took their oaths of solemn and complete humanity, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters spoke about sealing the city within itself, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters planned on purging the expeditionists, I kept us out of it. When they called us … whatever they called us, and they called us a lot of things, I kept us out of it. I believed that standing back would keep us out of harm’s way. I thought that even the Covenanters would not be so stupid as to get rid of the pilots and the combat frames altogether, even if they wanted the program itself gone. I believed we would simply become part of the Legion. That was the worst case scenario.”

“And you failed,” Lykke murmured.

Elpida nodded. “Yes. I abandoned the cause to protect my cadre. The cause had been given to us by Telokopolis herself, though I don’t think I really understood that at the time. The pilot genome was crafted with assistance from the city herself, I know that much. The combat frames too, the designs came from the city’s own internals. We were her children, her daughters. And I abandoned that cause, the expeditionist cause, and that led to the murder of all my sisters.”

“A poor choice.”

Elpida swallowed. “Yes. The wrong decision.”

Elpida’s chest tightened at the memory; she bottled it up, forced her back straight. Grief was not her current purpose. She turned the white city piece over and over in her left hand, tucked behind the small of her back.

“And now, here, in this nanomachine afterlife? At least since Pheiri, and Howl, and Thirteen Arcadia, I’ve been doing the opposite. As long as one of us is up and breathing, Telokopolis stands. Telokopolis is forever. Telokopolis is for all. And I have been willing to put every member of my … my … ” Elpida swallowed hard. “My new cadre, in danger. I have been risking them, for the sake of Telokopolis. For the sake of a whole that is greater than the sum of all our parts. Even my own death wouldn’t matter, not compared to that. If my own death was the price of my companions carrying Telokopolis onward, I would accept it. Anything for Telokopolis. For something more than this … this end. Anything for hope.”

“You love her,” Lykke murmured.

Elpida glanced down Lykke. “Pardon?”

Lykke was still facing the ceiling, eyes closed, swaying gently. “You speak of her as a woman. You love her.”

“What would you know about love, Necromancer?”

A shrug. “Mmm.”

Elpida paced onward. “Anyway, that’s the paradox. I cannot abandon the cause, or my comrades will be destroyed. Our obligate cannibalism proved that. The need to sustain ourselves through hunting and murder almost tore us apart. If I had not had the principles of Telokopolis to cling to, I do not think I would have endured. But I cannot abandon the safety and solidarity of the cadre either. I cannot treat them as pawns to be used and sacrificed, not even for the sake of Telokopolis. That goes against my every instinct. Above all else, I have to protect my sisters, old or new, in my previous life or this new undeath.”

“An impasse,” Lykke whispered.

Elpida stopped in front of Lykke. “It was. But no longer.”

Lykke opened her eyes and blinked up at Elpida. “You have solved your paradox, so quickly?” She smiled. “A little pain is like magic, no?”

“The answer was in front of me all along. I was ignoring it.”

Lykke pursed her blood-stained lips and gestured at her chest. “M-me?”

Elpida sighed. “No. My comrades.”

Lykke blinked several times. She hadn’t kept up. Elpida wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting — this was a Necromancer, after all, no matter the form she took. A post-human feedback loop, crammed into an imitation of a woman. She might fuck good, but she didn’t understand people.

Elpida explained. “It isn’t my decision to make. That’s why seeking an answer from some network remnant of Telokopolis would make no difference. Nobody can make this decision for me, because it doesn’t belong to me. It’s down to them — my comrades, my new cadre. Each and every one of them, as individuals. I’ve assumed command, and I’ve gotten them this far, but it’s been ad-hoc and desperate, done out of necessity rather than proper evaluation of our options. I’ve been holding up Telokopolis as an ideal, to keep them intact, and some of them are fully committed. But I need them all to think. It is up to them, one by one, of their own accord, if they wish to risk themselves for the cause of Telokopolis.” Elpida raised her chin. “It is not up to me.”

Elpida left an important addition unspoken. She recognised now that this was what Shilu had been trying to explain to her earlier, in their little debate up on Pheiri’s hull. This was no different to Shilu’s ‘mass line’ — a methodology for combining leadership and mass action.

But she didn’t say that part out loud. A mention of Shilu might drive Lykke to distraction.

Lykke tilted her head. “And you will shed the ones who do not follow?”

Elpida frowned. “No.”

“Then—”

“Telokopolis is for all. Even those who are too afraid. Even those who don’t think it’ll work. Even those who hate it. No exceptions.”

Lykke puffed out a little sigh from her bloody lips. “Even me?”

Elpida almost laughed — then stopped herself. “Are you serious?”

Lykke shrugged, moaning softly at the way the gesture pulled on her bruises. “I don’t know. What if I am?”

Elpida considered her answer very carefully. She was under no illusions that her sexual prowess had somehow rewritten Lykke’s entire allegiance and motivation structure. But she couldn’t rule out the possibility that the Necromancer was doing more than merely teasing. What if Elpida had planted a seed here, without realising it?

At the very least, Lykke would be useful, if Elpida could keep stringing her along.

“Then I don’t know, either,” she said. “It’s not up to me, Necromancer.”

Lykke let out a little sigh again, forlorn this time. “As you say, zombie. And what about this need for Telokopolis herself? Are you still determined to go meet her?”

“No.” Elpida shook her head. “If a glimpse was all she could show me, then that’s enough. I don’t need proof. I have all the proof I need, right here.” She raised her left hand and tapped her ribs, just over her heart. “I don’t expect you to comprehend. Besides, you may be correct. Perhaps what we saw was not Telokopolis at all. And that changes nothing.”

Lykke tilted her head to one side. “Oh, but you’d go after her if you could. Wouldn’t you?”

Elpida held Lykke’s gaze, then nodded. “I would. I’m still fighting blind. I don’t know who or what is on my side, beyond my cadre. I can’t see the contours of this conflict in the network. Unless you’re willing to tell me.”

Lykke shrugged, looking supremely bored by this question. “I was sent to tidy up Shilu. A fun little diversion. I don’t care to ask why.”

“Mm,” Elpida grunted. Lykke was useless for real intel, even if she wasn’t pretending. “Which is why I would go after what we saw earlier, if I could. But I can’t. This … retreat, in here, it’s the closest I’ve ever come to betrayal. My cadre needs me. Howl needs me. Pheiri needs me. I should be with them. It’s time I woke up.”

“Awwww!” Lykke tutted. “So soon?”

“If you try to keep me here, Necromancer—”

“Lykke, Lykke!” Lykke purred, then made a sad little noise down in her bruised throat. “Please, aren’t we at least that close now?” She sighed, suddenly resigned. “Oh, I suppose this was more than I could hope for. And no, zombie. I have no power to keep you inside your own head, however much I’d love another round, or two, or three. Your own presence here is all your doing. You can leave any time you like.”

“How?”

Lykke laughed, a scratchy, rubbed-raw sound. “How should I know? It’s not my network. Probably go lie back down in bed with that … ” Her lips twisted. “That goblin of yours.”

“Howl?”

Lykke’s expression soured. She flicked her fingers. “Yes. That.”

Elpida nodded. “Alright then. Lykke … thank you. If this isn’t some kind of trap. Even if you don’t understand. Thank you.”

Lykke smiled and shrugged, then winced and moaned at the way her shoulders pulled on her bruises. “No tearful goodbyes for you and I, please, Elpida. In fact.” Lykke lit up, then raised a hand. “Help me to my feet? I want to come with you. I would love to see you lie down and close your eyes and return to your boring zombie friends. Hmhm!” She pulled a nasty smile. “What would they think of you now, if they knew what you’d gotten up to with a Necromancer? Scandal and shunning!”

Elpida looked at Lykke’s hand. “Really?”

“Really! This isn’t some kind of trick. I merely want my face to be the last thing you see before you slip back to all that tedium out there. A little reminder of what you’re missing.” Lykke mimed a kiss. “Mwah!”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, please!” Lykke pouted. “You said ‘thank you’! Can’t you indulge just one little request? Or are you going to leave me here on the floor, leaking fluids and spanked raw? Wham bam, thank you ma’am? Can’t you at least let me see you to the door, give me one last little kiss? I know we’re not going to do this ever again. I just know it. Let me have this fantasy of a proper farewell, won’t you?”

Elpida sighed. “We didn’t kiss. And we won’t.”

Lykke rolled her eyes. “Figure of speech.” She waved her hand again. “Please. Just to your bedside. I promise I won’t get in with you! I wouldn’t dare risk waking up that … that … her.”

“Why does this sound like a trick to steal my body?”

“Ugh! I said I won’t! And I can’t, besides!” Lykke waved her hand, growing more irritated. “Help me up!”

“You can watch from the doorway in the dorm. Not a step further, or you really will get a round two, and I won’t hold back. If I think you’re trying anything, I’ll break every bone in your body with my bare hands. Understand?”

Lykke batted her eyelashes. “Oh, don’t tempt me.”

“I am allowing this out of gratitude. If you disrespect that—”

“I won’t! I won’t. Please?”

Elpida took Lykke’s hand. The Necromancer’s human form weighed so little that Elpida could drag her to her feet with the strength of one arm alone, and from a poor angle. But Lykke could barely stand without support. She staggered sideways, knees quivering with effort, emitting little breathy gasps and whines at the hundred aches and pains of her bruised body.

She tried to cling to Elpida.

“Stand and walk under your own power,” Elpida said, gently but firmly rejecting Lykke’s grip. “I’m not carrying you there.”

Lykke flashed a dazed, flushed, needy smile. Slowly she straightened up and took her weight on her own feet. Eventually she let go of Elpida’s t-shirt and blinked hard, several times, as if to clear her sight. The big bruise around her left eye socket suddenly seemed a shade less dark.

Elpida squinted. “I thought you were too bruised to stand. What happened to the promise of making this permanent?”

Lykke flicked a hand. “It is permanent, in a way you couldn’t possibly comprehend. I have internalised it, I told you that already. Don’t worry yourself over it.”

Elpida gave up her argument. If Lykke was a liar and a cheat, there was nothing Elpida could do about her.

Elpida turned away, toward the rec room door. She still carried the chess piece in her left hand — the white city. She intended to carry it to sleep with her. She knew she couldn’t take it out into the real world beyond this software dream, but she liked the symbolism. It helped her resolve.

She hit the palm-pad to open the door and stepped back out into the central corridor of the pilot project cadre’s private quarters; she cast a quick glance to her right, where the secret additional hallway had yawned at the end of the corridor, showing the hidden bones and crimson-glowing guts of the city. But hope was not enough, the additional hallway had not appeared. Elpida put that from her mind. She had decided against pursuit, anyway.

Lykke’s feet stumbled after her, punctuated by breathy gasps. Elpida didn’t turn back to make sure the Necromancer was able to follow, she simply crossed the corridor to the dorms and hit the corresponding palm-pad with the back of her hand.

The doors parted. Elpida stepped back into the dorm.

The cadre’s dormitory was just as she’d left it. The bunks stood in neat rows, littered with discarded clothes and other detritus. The blankets and sheets lay in the familiar disarray that followed a busy night. The air smelled faintly of all her sisters, the cadre’s combined bodily scent lingering in the air, the evidence of sex and sleep. A trio of fans turned lazily in the light shadows of the ceiling.

Elpida’s own bunk was—

Empty.

Elpida launched herself across the dormitory. She leapt over two beds, almost caught her foot on a third, and scrambled to a halt beside her own empty bunk.

“Howl?”

The sheets had been ripped back and flung aside. The bed frame had been knocked out of position. The mattress was cold; the neat imprint of Howl’s sleeping body had turned to unreadable chaos — by writhing, by hands pinning her down, or by something else?

Blood was smeared across the underside of the sheets in one single sticky streak — still wet and warm. The line of crimson ended in a bloody hand print upon the wall.

Howl’s hand print.

Elpida ripped back the sheets and looked under the bed and cast around the room.

“Howl? Howl? Howl?!”

Howl was gone.

“Oh!” Lykke said. “Oh my. Oh, oh, oh!”

Elpida rounded on her.

Lykke was sagging against the door frame, still bruised and battered, barely able to stand.

But her eyes were alight with mirth. She started to cackle.

“Ah! Ahaha! Hahahahahahaha!”

“You— you—”

“Oh, zombie!” Lykke crooned, lips curled into a smile of joyous cruelty. “I am such a lucky, lucky, lucky girl!”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida and Lykke, sitting in a tree, f-i-g-h-t-i-n-g … wait, no, that’s not fighting. That’s something else. Ahem. 

Lykke, however, may have had slightly too much fun.

Is this the most spicy chapter I’ve ever written? Possibly, yes! I’ll let you be the judge of that, readers.

Anyway! We’re almost at the end of arc 13; the next chapter is the final one of the arc, for real this time! And then we’ve got an interlude (or two? Or three???) waiting in the wings. Something dark and nasty lurks within this tomb, and too much digging might just uncover it. Onward we go!

And! I also have more art this week! Once again, from over on the discord, we have another pair of tarot cards, (once again made by the incredibly talented spring): Death (a wonderful interpretation of post-Change Thirteen Arcadia, like a fruiting fungal body), and Justice (Serin! Making good use of her many arms.) Thank you so much for the incredible fanart; I am flattered and delighted and it’s just so much fun to see!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And, as always, thank you! Thank you for being here and reading my little story! Necroepilogos continues, going from strength to strength, and that is thanks to all of you. Elpida couldn’t have fixed anything without the audience, after all. No zombie is an island, certainly not her. Telokopolis welcomes you all. And I will welcome you all back, next chapter! Seeya then!

Content Warnings

Suicidal ideation (sort of)
Burn wounds/flesh sticking to surfaces

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

The nameless ghost of Ooni’s sister — if a sister she truly was — stared down with cold serenity as she lowered her blade into Ooni’s throat.

Ooni made no effort to avoid the slow and stately violation.

She deserved this, didn’t she?

Ooni felt the phantasmal sword-point part her skin like a whisper of silk, then slide through the tissue and cartilage of her trachea and oesophagus. The plates of her carapace armour did nothing to stop the incorporeal blade. The metal felt like ice as it entered her flesh. Her sister’s ghostly face was framed by the darkness of the passageway above, bracketed by the stone walls to either side. Ooni searched those eyes of marsh-light blue for a hint of mercy or forgiveness, or even simple satisfaction in revenge.

She found nothing.

“Sister … ” she wheezed through her torn throat.

The ghost rammed the blade down into Ooni’s body, into her chest, scraping against the back side of her breastbone. The cutting edge sliced into the fluttering, feathered meat of her lungs. Her breath left her in a frozen gasp. Frigid tears blinded her sight.

The sword bisected Ooni’s heart. She felt the muscle spasm once, coiling away from the frost like a dying slug.

Then her heartbeat stopped.

Ilyusha was raging at Ooni’s side, trying to disrupt the ghost, bludgeoning empty air with the butt of her shotgun; she let go of Ooni’s arm and swiped at the blade with her bionic claws, raking crimson razorblades through ghostly blue material, as if trying to drag the weapon out of Ooni’s flesh. But Ilyusha could touch neither ghost nor sword. She spat insults and invective, her voice ringing off the metal and stone of the narrow passageway, drowned out by the rush of blood in Ooni’s ears and the crashing chaos of the hurricane so far beyond the walls.

The ghost paid Ilyusha no mind. Her lips moved. Ooni heard her sister’s voice clear as birdsong on a winter’s morning.

“Revenge is sweeter than forgiveness,” said the ghost. “One day you will learn that.”

The ghost ripped the sword out of Ooni’s chest and throat; the blade’s passing left behind a void of ice.

Ooni crashed to her knees. Ilyusha grabbed for her, claws scraping off Ooni’s carapace armour, but Ooni made no effort to accept Ilyusha’s aid. She could not allow her evil to drag Ilyusha down with her; Ilyusha was still wounded, barely able to walk, and she would not be able to carry Ooni. This burden could not be shared.

Besides, there was no point now; Ooni was dying.

Guilt and shame forced her down.

Ooni hit the floor with a long scrape of carapace plates against bare black metal. Her submachine gun clattered from her grip. Her skull bounced with a single loud crack. Her vision fluttered black, then returned as murk and mist; she was lying still, with one cheek flat against the ground. Her heart wasn’t beating — a loss she could never have imagined until then, but now just another step down into the inhuman state of nanomachine biology. Another piece of her long-forgotten mortality, stripped away by yet another death. Her throat and lungs were freezing cold, their heat stolen by that ghostly sword — no, by a just and proper revenge, by the price of Ooni’s transgression against a sister she could not recall.

Ooni wanted to sob, but she could not find the strength.

She deserved this. Her forgotten sister had done a service to Telokopolis, by cutting down Ooni’s evil before it had time to grow, to fester, to ruin—

“Get the fuck up!” Ilyusha screeched. “Get— up—!”

Ilyusha’s tail was still wrapped around Ooni’s waist, squeezing the carapace plates of her armour into her numb flesh. Ilyusha heaved, trying to drag Ooni back to her feet. A squeal and rasp of claws skittered across bare metal — Ilyusha staggering sideways with futile effort.

“Nothing fucking wrong with you!” Ilyusha screamed. “Get up! Get up!”

Ooni tried to tell Ilyusha it was better this way. Instead she merely gurgled.

Ooni knew she was evil. She was not merely weak, or foolish, or unlucky; Elpida had been wrong about her. She had murdered her own sister in cold blood, long before her resurrection, a million years before the Death’s Heads, an eternity before any of this. She was a slayer of her own kin, even if she could not recall the details. Her filth would surely sully the innards of Telokopolis if she was allowed to live. The promise of Telokopolis was not for her, not for—

“Fucking get the fuck up you fucking cunt!” Ilyusha screamed again, heaving at Ooni’s waist, armour plates creaking beneath the strength of her bionic tail. She howled with pain and effort. “Stand up! Get up! Fuck!”

Ooni tried to apologise. She tried to tell Ilyusha to leave her behind. She felt cold drool pooling on the floor at the corner of her own lifeless mouth.

It was better this way; in death she could not betray anybody ever again, especially Telokopolis. Even as her eyesight faded and her insides seized up, she clung to that truth — her death was better for Telokopolis, better for Elpida, better for all the others, even for Leuca. Ooni’s evil would be snuffed out here, drowned in guilt, not given space to grow in the guts of the very principle and promise which had saved her.

Telokopolis was for everybody, but not for Ooni.

If her death could serve, then she counted her second chance well spent.

In her fading peripheral vision, the boots of her ghostly sister took a step back, blue phantasm soundless against the black metal floor. The sword flickered sideways, sheathed in a hidden place.

“That’s correct, sister,” said the ghost. “There is no place for kin slayers. No place for you. Never. For ever you will wander—”

Footsteps rang out.

Far beyond the ghost, far down the passageway, another pair of boots appeared from the tomb-depth gloom, ringing against the black metal floor.

Kuro.

For the first time in Ooni’s afterlife, she was no longer afraid of Kuro.

Ilyusha shouted a barrage of fresh insults: “You! Fucking coward bitch rotten cunt! This is for you, you fuck—” Ilyusha drowned out her own words with a double discharge from her shotgun — boom-boom! — but the gunfire was cut short by the slip-stagger metal-skitter of her claws against the floor, accompanied by a screech of frustration. Ilyusha’s tail dug into Ooni’s waist, dragging Ooni back a few inches. Ilyusha was so unsteady that the recoil of her own gun had almost sent her flying; only the anchor of her tail kept her in place, bound to Ooni’s dead weight.

“Fuck!” Ilyusha screamed. “Fuck you, bitch! Take off that fucking metal and fight me! Chicken-shit dung-eating—”

Click-buzz.

Kuro’s voice projected from her suit’s external speakers, high and breathy as it echoed off the walls. “We had a deal, spirit. It’s done.”

The ghost of Ooni’s sister did not turn around. Her ghostly blue boots glowed in Ooni’s peripheral vision. “Not I.”

Ilyusha was still shouting. “Come down here and fight me, shit-gut coward reptile dogfucker—”

Kuro shouted over her, voice twisting with girlish rage. “Take it back! We had a deal! Rescind the forgiveness! Take it back!”

The ghost sighed. “That was not I, fool. You made a deal with another, not me. Leave us. You are interrupting my revenge.”

Kuro snorted. “Then they’re both mine.”

Her external comms went click as they cut out.

Kuro launched into a sprint from a standing start, metal-clad boots ringing as they pounded against the floor, a black-clad blur in Ooni’s peripheral vision. Ilyusha was shouting — “Take off that fucking metal shit and fight me proper you fucking pig-bait coward—” — and Ooni felt her stagger sideways again, trying to brace her shotgun with unsteady limbs. The ghost did not turn, careless of Kuro’s headlong charge at her rear.

Ooni’s eyes fluttered shut at last, sinking into the haze of the storm, coiling within her own body. She would be gone before Kuro reached her—

“—shit down your fucking whore neck—”

—safe in the embrace of death—

“—coward can’t fight without your whole-body foreskin—”

—safe from betraying Telokopolis—

“—fuck you fuck you fuck you—”

—safe from Kuro’s hands—

“Think you’re gonna get me—” Ilyusha’s voice cracked “—again, huh!?”

But Ilyusha would not be.

Ooni forced her eyelids up, not quite dead. Kuro was going to kill Ilyusha, wasn’t she? The ghost didn’t care; Ooni was helpless, dying. In a few moments Ilyusha would be alone with Kuro, still injured, her bionic limbs weak and shaky, wracked by the pain of the reconnection process, while Kuro was strong and healthy and clad in ferromagnetic tomb-metal over her suit of powered armour.

And Ilyusha was afraid. She hid it well, but that crack in her voice, Ooni had never heard anything like that before.

Ooni had never heard Ilyusha afraid, had never heard anything less than absolute confidence from the little cyborg berserker. Anger and disgust, yes. Caution. Care. Grumpiness and agitation. Never fear. Never a crack in her voice.

Ooni realised her earlier resolution had been choked by a torrent of guilt — that for Ilyusha, right now, she had to be Telokopolis.

But Ooni was unworthy. Such arrogance, to think that she could ever be anything except the sum of all her filth. This proved it, this failure, this death. She was never even a sliver of Telokopolis, she was nothing.

But still, she wished she could save Ilyusha.

She wished she was worthy of—

Telokopolis is forever, and I don’t want martyrs. It is only your worth which makes this possible.

But this will burn you. I am sorry.

On your feet!

A flame exploded inside Ooni’s chest — a memory of home, garbled and jumbled, of a fire burning in a great hearth. Ooni’s sister clutching her shoulder, smiling at her from above — alive! whole! warm and fleshy and beside her, speaking soft words lost beyond time’s cruel shores.

Up!

Ooni surged to her feet, obeying the order; nothing could have resisted that voice, not even death. Her limbs were numb and her lungs were freezing cold, but her heart spasmed and jerked in a parody of beating. She wheezed for breath, rattling air down into her chest, though she had no need for oxygen. The ghost’s expression broke, electric blue eyes flying wide in shock. Ilyusha gaped and stared, even as she groped for Ooni’s arm, flailing for support.

And behind the ghost, slamming down the corridor, Kuro was sprinting directly at the trio; a towering giant still clad in the metal of the tomb, boots ringing against the floor, head down, unstoppable.

Aim your weapon.

Ooni fumbled for her submachine gun; the strap was still around her shoulder, a stroke of luck. But this would be a futile gesture. The bullets would bounce right off the ferrofluid tomb-metal wrapped around Kuro’s armour.

Ooni’s hands faltered. What was the point—

I can only act with safety in the margins between your deeds. Aim your weapon. Pull the trigger.

Clear orders steadied Ooni’s grip. She aimed the submachine gun at Kuro as best she could, braced against her hip. She squeezed the trigger and held it down, spraying bullets at Kuro’s bull-rush.

Kuro burst through the ghostly form of Ooni’s sister, like an iron statue falling through mist.

The bullets hit her, lead rounds plinking off her ferromagnetic second skin.

And then the black metal parted like cobwebs and mist.

Kuro’s tomb-metal wrapping fell away like a layer of sand before crashing waves, revealing the dark grey powered armour beneath, falling to join the floor, lying inert. Kuro skidded to a halt, one hand flicking upward to re-summon those black filaments from the floor and walls — but nothing happened. A split-second later her suit-mounted weapons sprouted from her arms and shoulders, muzzles and barrels flicking toward Ooni and Ilyusha. Her panic was short lived. She would still win, still kill them both. Ooni braced for the end.

Ilyusha cackled at the top of her lungs, dropped her shotgun, and pounced.

Ooni gaped in surprise. Ilyusha had been so wounded that she couldn’t walk properly, still recovering from having all her limbs jammed back into their sockets. But now she leapt through the air in a graceful arc, razor-red claws extended, tail-tip whipping forward to strike Kuro across the helmet.

Kuro dodged the tail-strike. Ilyusha landed right on top of her.

“Haaaaaaaa!” Ilyusha screeched. “Got you, bitch!”

Kuro tried to grab Ilyusha by the ankles, but Ilyusha dodged, clambering over the head and shoulders of Kuro’s powered armour, her claws dragging sparks across the exposed grey plates, scratching and slicing, gouging and cutting as she went. Kuro’s suit-mounted weapons twitched and jerked, trying to draw a bead on Ilyusha, but the cyborg was too close now, clinging to Kuro’s shoulders from behind. Ilyusha screeched and cackled, ramming her claws into seams and sockets, forcing Kuro to close up the weapon-ports or lose her guns. Ilyusha tore a small plasma-weapon off Kuro’s upper left arm before Kuro could retract it, then beat Kuro across the helmet with the broken stub of the gun. Kuro grabbed for her again, but Ilyusha threw away her prize with a clatter, wrapped her tail around Kuro’s legs, and dropped lower to avoid Kuro’s grasping hands. Kuro missed by inches, yanking out a few strands of Ilyusha’s blonde hair.

“Got your fucking number this time, you rancid cunt!” Ilyusha screamed. “Thought you could get me again, huh?! Fuck you! This time your fucking limbs are coming off!”

Ilyusha scurried back up Kuro’s rear as Kuro twisted on the spot. Kuro turned and tried to slam Ilyusha against the wall, but Ilyusha dipped sideways, hanging from Kuro’s side, anchoring herself with claws hooked around Kuro’s shoulder plate.

Kuro reeled away from the wall. Ilyusha scrabbled to find a weakness, a joint in the powered armour, anywhere to ram her claws in deeper. She kicked with her bionic feet and scraped against the grey plate with her hands, but the powered suit was too well-made. Ooni knew from experience that Kuro was perfectly sealed inside the suit; she only needed to open her faceplate to eat. There was no feeding aperture, no waste-removal, no weapon-ports with access to the interior. For all Ilyusha’s mysterious sudden strength, even she could not punch through armour designed to turn away high-energy anti-tank rounds and protect the wearer from the weight of building collapses. Ilyusha had a read on Kuro’s fighting style now, but Ilyusha would eventually tire; the servo-muscles of Kuro’s suit could fight forever, even without power.

Power?

Ooni opened her mouth and shouted: “Underside of the backpack! Air intakes, one on either side!”

Ilyusha’s tail jerked outward, then stabbed back in, ramming upward at the underside of Kuro’s suit-mounted reactor. Kuro wheeled, trying to throw Ilyusha off, but Ilyusha’s tail struck over and over, like a panicked scorpion, whipping in and out. Something broke with a loud metal crunch; Ilyusha’s tail-tip was stuck half inside the reactor-pack.

Kuro was frantic, grabbing, twisting, trying to get Ilyusha off her, one hand raising and gesturing for her ferromagnetic armour to resurface.

Ilyusha’s tail tore free with a screech of metal, then whipped outward again. She rammed it upward; this time it penetrated deep, over two feet of black-red bionic tail slamming upward into the backpack. A machine-squeal split the air — Kuro’s voice inside the suit, or some essential component of the reactor, Ooni couldn’t tell.

Kuro lurched, staggering as if struck by a bull, shaking her helmet.

Ilyusha howled with victory. “Ha—”

My window closes.

Ooni shouted, though she knew not why: “Illy! Get off her, now!”

Ilyusha dropped from Kuro’s armour and scurried back — just in time. Kuro gestured with her right hand again; the black metal of the floor leapt at her command, ferromagnetic filaments rising in an iron-black wave to cover her armour with an imperishable second skin. Whatever interruption she had suffered was now over.

Ooni levelled her submachine gun again.

No. I cannot risk a second time.

Ilyusha limped and lurched back to Ooni and scooped up her shotgun. She twisted to aim at Kuro, slumping against Ooni’s side, panting with the effort of the close-quarters combat.

But Kuro was already stumbling away down the passage. She staggered, careening into one wall, then bouncing off the other with a deafening crash of powered armour against metal and stone. Ilyusha had done serious damage to the suit, but Kuro was still fast; she put her head down and picked up speed, hauling herself away, into the dark.

A couple of seconds later Kuro vanished into the shadows. Her footsteps turned to echoes, then ceased altogether.

Hurricane static filled the silence.

“Gone?” Ilyusha snapped.

Ooni nodded. “Y-yes. I think— think so. She wouldn’t feint like that. I think. We’ve driven her off. Until she … fixes herself.”

“Unnnh.” Ilyusha let out a deep rasp of pain. Her legs gave way and she collapsed onto her backside. Her shotgun muzzle scraped against the floor. Ooni almost panicked again, but then she realised that Ilyusha was just exhausted, hissing through a grimace, her limbs quivering.

Ooni sagged as well, blinking away tears of pain.

Her right shoulder blazed where she had bruised herself earlier; she must have landed on it when she went down, further punishing the already pulped tissues. The throbbing agony radiated down her arm and into her right hand, raw against the inside of her stripped-down carapace glove. She tried to flex the fingers; skin peeled away from bare carapace plate, stinging hot. She winced and hissed, then used her left hand to remove the glove.

Ooni’s right hand was scraped and grazed all over, wet and sticky with fresh blood, quivering with eroded nerve endings; she would have assumed that she’d scraped it inside the stripped-down glove when she’d fallen, and then again when she had used it to grip her submachine gun, heedless of further damage. She’d been so flushed with purpose that she hadn’t felt pain at the time.

That’s what she would have assumed — but patches of her flesh were blackened, like she’d held the hand in a fire. Some of the blood was dark and crusted, as if cooked by open flame.

The pain was incredible, dulled only by the shock of combat and the lingering numb cold in her extremities.

“How?” said the ghost.

The ghost of Ooni’s forgotten sister had not gone anywhere. She stood a few feet away, now unarmed, face lined with sorrow.

Ooni remembered the sword.

Her burned hand flew to her throat, but there was nothing. No wound, no blood, no gaping hole to excavate her chest cavity. Her heart felt odd, as if she had recovered from some terrible interruption, but it was beating strong now.

Ilyusha growled, “Fucking ghost shit. What’chu fuckin’ looking at?”

Ooni slid her glove back on — she didn’t know why, but she felt the need to hide the unexplained burns. “Illy … I-Ilyusha, how did you do that? Fight Kuro, I mean. I thought you were … ”

Ilyusha broke into an exhausted smirk, down on the floor. “All fucked up? Yeah. I am. No fake. But I was putting it on worse. Got that dog-fucker shit-brains reptile out there to get real close. Close enough to rip her face off.” Ilyusha started to laugh, then keened through her teeth, limbs quivering with a fresh wave of pain. Her tail coiled up. “Still hurts like fuck, yeah. Ahhh … ”

“Oh. Oh, w-wow. Uh … well done. Illy, you- you saved us.”

“You too.” Ilyusha jerked her chin at where Kuro had vanished. “And how’d you do that shit?”

Ooni considered saying ‘What shit?’ But she could not bring herself to play dumb. The animating presence she had felt was gone now. It seemed unreal, like an auditory hallucination, or a voice from a dream. Perhaps she was simply going mad. But the words had been undeniably real, and a miracle had happened, catalysed by her bullets.

“I … I don’t know. There was a voice in my head. Orders. I followed them, shot when I was told to shoot. I didn’t know it would peel off Kuro’s metal. I didn’t, really! I-I don’t know what happened.”

Ilyusha frowned, squinting her eyes. “Huh. Nice.” She jerked her head at the ghost. “What about her?”

Ooni looked to the ghost of her sister.

“You have taken away my revenge,” said the ghost. “This is not fair.”

Ilyusha snorted. “She really your sister?”

“I … ” Ooni shrugged, then winced — the gesture made her right shoulder burn inside. “I have no idea. Ghost … sister? What is your name?”

The ghost did not answer.

The ghost had Ooni’s face, or at least something very close; if she was not real, then she was a marvellous fake. Had Ooni really committed a murder she no longer remembered, before this nanomachine afterlife, before the weakness and surrender of her time with the Death’s Heads? Her heart and her memory told her no. The clarity of the orders from nowhere told her no. She had shed the guilt and shame like ash washed away in clean rain. She could easily accept that this was nothing more than a Necromancer trick — or Kuro’s trick, though Kuro had seemed betrayed as well, frustrated in some confused deal she’d made with another ghost.

Ooni could be clean again, if only she denied this sister’s accusation as a lie.

Ooni decided otherwise.

“B-but,” she said, answering Ilyusha though she spoke to the ghost. “I think it’s better if I accept she’s real.”

“Mm?” Ilyusha grunted.

Ooni took a step toward the ghost. She reached for the face, so much like her own, but her right hand spasmed with pain. The translucent figure stepped backward, ghostly features deepening with sorrow and hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Ooni said. “I … I don’t remember you. I don’t know if you were real, or … or a dream, or … I don’t remember. But I’m sorry. If I hurt you. I’m sorry. I’ll … I’ll make it up to … to whoever I can. I’ll be better, I promise. I promise. You … you should have a place in Telokopolis too.”

“I will hate you forever,” said the ghost.

Ooni tried to shrug, then swallowed a cry of pain. Her right shoulder hurt so much, worse than before, like a fire was eating her flesh from the inside. “T-that … that’s okay. I know that I won’t ever be forgiven. I don’t … deserve forgiveness. But that’s why I’m saying all this. If I live, I can help. If I’m dead, that’s just an escape. It’s … cowardice. Telokopolis, it’s for everyone. Even the dead. Even the guilty. Even the monsters. R-right?”

The ghost shook her head. “You soothe yourself with words you don’t believe.”

Ooni smiled through cold tears. “No. I’m going to do this for you, even if I don’t remember you. That’s the only answer. It’s the only right thing to do. Telokopolis is forever.”

The ghost stared with wounded eyes.

“If … ” Ooni said. “If you are truly my sister, I don’t remember you. And I don’t remember what I did to you. It’s all lost. This … this nanomachine afterlife, all this time, it’s erased so much. If you’re my sister, I … I want that. Whatever came between us, whatever I did, I … I love you.”

The ghost closed her eyes before they brimmed over with tears. “I hate you.”

“Doesn’t change a thing.”

The ghost began to fade, the blue glow of her body rejoining with the shadows.

Ooni reached for her again, then hissed with the pain in her right hand. “Wait! Wait, why are you here, where did you come from, how—”

“Go down this corridor,” the ghost whispered. “Left, left, then right, then left, then straight ahead. There is an archway blocked by metal. It will open for you.”

“Wait, what—”

The ghost faded, and then was gone.

Ooni lowered her hand. The tears were from pain, nothing else.

Silence returned to the passageway, filled with the muffled static of the hurricane, of whipping winds and pounding hail. Ooni stared into the shadows, hoping the ghost might return.

Down on the floor, Ilyusha grunted. “Wanna trust that?”

Ooni wiped away her own tears. “Maybe. Maybe not. I-I have no idea. I don’t even know if that was real, o-or some kind of Necromancer trick, or … ”

“Huh,” Ilyusha grunted. “Better than waiting for that big armoured bitch to come back.”

“I suppose so.”

Ilyusha glanced up at Ooni, giving her a strange, squint-eyed look. “That voice in your head got anything to say?”

Ooni swallowed. “No. And it’s not a voice. Not exactly. Just a … a feeling.”

Ilyusha snorted. “Got any funny feelings, then?”

Ooni waited, hoping for orders.

None came.

She shook her head. “We may as well follow the ghost’s directions, I suppose. Like you said, it’s better than waiting for Kuro to come back. And we don’t have any other directions, this place is a maze, it makes no sense. Can you walk?”

“Eh,” Ilyusha waved one hand, then retracted her crimson claws. “Help me up.”

Ooni helped Ilyusha back to her feet. Ilyusha was even more unsteady than before the fight with Kuro. Her limbs shook all over; every exertion of muscle seemed to bring her a fresh twinge of pain. She cursed and spat and hissed through clenched teeth. She wrapped her tail tight around Ooni’s waist again and looped one hand through Ooni’s left arm, shotgun wedged against her opposite hip. Her crimson claws scraped against the floor, but she held her footing.

“Are you sure?” Ooni asked. “I could … try to carry you. I-I don’t think I have the strength, but I’ll try, I’ll try—”

“I can walk. Sorta. Just don’t fucking lie down again, yeah?”

Ooni managed a small laugh. That helped. “Right,” she said. “Right you are, Illy. No lying down on the job.”

She tightened her grip on Ilyusha’s arm and made sure she had a good hold on her submachine gun; her right hand burned inside as if a fire had been lit in her flesh, but she could just about hold the grip on her weapon and get her finger on the trigger.

“Left left right left straight,” Ilyusha croaked. “Then a door. That it?”

“That was it, I believe.”

They stepped forward together, plunging back into the bowels of the tomb.

Ooni was braced for Kuro to reappear at any moment, looming from the shadows. She gripped her submachine gun as tightly as she dared, right hand on fire, shoulder smouldering, dragging Ilyusha down the narrow passageway. Ilyusha had exaggerated — she could barely walk now; that burst of strength and speed had cost her a great deal of additional pain, and perhaps done more damage to the sockets of her bionic limbs.

Hurricane winds howled beyond the walls. Hailstones fell like waves of distant gunfire. Ilyusha hissed and grunted in Ooni’s grip; she couldn’t even keep the shotgun upright. Ooni’s right arm felt like it was going to fall off.

Left at the first junction, deeper into passageways of stone, all identical, all alike. Left again at the next, and all was the same. If the ghost wanted to kill Ooni anyway, then this would be a perfect time for a trap. But there was no other path. No way out but to believe in mercy.

Another junction loomed out of the dark, the same soaring walls of stone and metal, identical to the ones they’d passed. Ooni dragged Ilyusha to the right.

Ilyusha was sagging hard by the time they reached the fourth junction.

“Left, left here.” Ooni hissed, though the passageway they turned into looked just the same as all the rest. “We must be there, we must almost be—”

Clack-clack.

The sound of metal boots on metal floor, far to Ooni’s rear.

Click-buzz.

Ooni cringed. “No no no no—”

Kuro’s voice rang out, echoing off the walls and the distant stone ceiling. “Ooni. Ooni, I’m going to eat you. I’m going to start with your face.”

Ooni’s feet faltered. She wanted to turn around, to aim her gun and fire, even though she knew that would do nothing.

Kuro’s words floated out of the dark: “This time I’ll take more than limbs from your little friend. I’ll take her guts out and wear them until the storm passes. Ooni. Ooni. Stop running, Ooni. Stop—”

Ilyusha jabbed Ooni in the ribs. “Keep fucking going!”

“There’s nothing here!” Ooni whispered. The corridor ahead was just empty shadows. “There’s nothing!”

“Keep going anyway!”

Behind them, Kuro’s boots were thumping against the metal floor, drawing closer with every step.

Ooni let out a wracking sob and forced herself not to turn and look. She dragged Ilyusha forward, into the shadows, praying the ghost had been telling the truth. But even if she had, what help was a metal door? Kuro would catch up before they could get inside. She would break it down. There was no place to hide, no refuge, no escape from—

A dark mouth loomed out of the shadows ahead.

Ooni almost staggered to a halt. But Ilyusha hissed, “Fuck yeah!”

The mouth was the barrel of a gun — an autocannon, set into an emplacement on the wall. Ooni dragged herself and Ilyusha forward. More guns emerged from the darkness, mounted in swivel-sockets and armoured domes, jutting from the walls or hanging from the shadow-shrouded ceiling far above. Autocannons, plasma weapons, great rotary machine guns, laser lances, and more that Ooni could not name.

The guns twitched as Ooni and Ilyusha passed beneath and between, but they did not swivel to take aim.

The hidden defences aimed down the corridor instead, jerking around on near-silent servo-motors, glowing with targeting lights, clicking and clacking as they readied to unload themselves upon an intruder.

Kuro’s footsteps slowed, then ceased.

Ilyusha snorted. “Not dumb enough to run into the guns. Pity. Bitch.”

Ooni was wide-eyed with disbelief. What was protecting them? The tomb itself? The gravekeeper? Had Kagami and Pheiri and the others somehow gotten control of the tomb systems? Or was this something else — the mysterious voice inside her head?

The corridor terminated suddenly, as if the shadows had coalesced into solid matter.

A door, twelve feet tall, set in an arch, all made from the same black tomb-metal that Kuro had commanded.

Ooni and Ilyusha halted together, huddled before the arch.

“She said it would open … ” Ooni whispered. She looked back down the corridor, past the bristling throat lined with guns. “We’re safe from Kuro here, I-I think, unless she tests the guns and they don’t actually fire. Some of them looked old, or dusty. I-I hope they really are loaded, I hope—”

Ilyusha raised her shotgun and banged on the metal door.

Ooni winced. The sound was like a black bell inside her guts.

“Open the fuck up!” Ilyusha shouted.

The door parted like a waterfall split by a rock, black metal rolling aside in fluid waves. The chamber within was dark and full of machinery — black glass blocks lit from within by tiny lights, strange scrolling screens made of liquid metal upon the walls, and coils of pipe winding across the ceiling.

At the rear of the large chamber lay half a zombie, propped inside an upright resurrection coffin, flesh wired into the machines.

Ooni squinted. “Is that … another interface for the gravekeeper?”

“Huh,” Ilyusha grunted. “Let’s go say hi.”

Ooni nodded, then helped Ilyusha limp over the threshold.

The black metal door quivered shut behind them, like water flowing free. The automatic guns shivered and twitched, tracking the shadows.

The corridor was silent once again, except for the haze of the hurricane so far away, and the cautious tread of Kuro’s boots on naked stone.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ooni rises to the challenge – or at least listens to the voice of a god. We’ll make a priestess of her yet! Ilyusha wasn’t slacking either. Ever tried to catch an angry cat? Me neither.

Anyway! There they go. Ooni and Ilyusha make it to … safety? We can hope so. Depends on what that room is for. This one was an absolute blast to write, completely surprised me several times. A few things here I didn’t plan at all, they just happened as the girls hit the page. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did!

Speaking of unexpected things happening, plans have changed slightly, behind the scenes. The next chapter was supposed to be the final chapter of the arc, but now we’re going to 13.14. We’re almost certainly not going beyond that – the arc is almost over, I promise. You’ll see why things are a little extended, soon enough!

Also! I have some fanart to share, from over on the discord! These pieces are real special. The Lovers, and The Hermit – tarot-card style illustrations of Vicky and Kagami, and then Uusop (the mysterious swordswoman who Thirteen Arcadia met out in the wilds). Both of these pieces are by the very dedicated and talented Spring! Thank you so much, these are a delight!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you so much for being here and reading my little story about zombie girls after the end of the world. Even after all this time, I still feel like the story has barely scratched the surface of all the potential I have yet to unfold. We’ll have to keep digging in that black ash and dead soil, turning up more corpses. Until next chapter! Seeya soon!

Content Warnings

Medical pain

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Reattaching Ilyusha’s bionic limbs was not as easy as Ooni had hoped.

Ooni’s role in the process was simple. All she had to do was lift the ragged ball-joint — a partial sphere of black bio-polymer, encrusted with dark red circuitry, smeared with sticky clear fluids and pinkish froth — and jam it into the socket of Ilyusha’s right shoulder, where the interior circuitry waited to re-establish the connection, wet membranes fluttering with delicate urgency deep inside. But Ooni was not strong enough to shove the joint into place; her own right shoulder was growing stiff and sore, still blossoming with the bruise she had taken by firing Ilyusha’s shotgun to drive away Kuro.

She fumbled with Ilyusha’s joint for a moment, pushing and twisting at the socket, the bionic muscles slipping in her sweaty hands. “I-I don’t think I can get it in, it’s not—”

“Knees!” Ilyusha snapped. “Knee it in! Grab me and knee it in!”

“Are you sure? I-it feels like it’s going to snap and—”

“Do it! Shove! Do it!”

Ooni did as Ilyusha instructed. She had to lean over Ilyusha’s prone, helpless torso, bracing both hands against Ilyusha’s opposite flank, fingers sinking into the padding of Ilyusha’s bulletproof vest. Ooni wedged her knees against the shoulder of the detached bionic arm, then tensed her legs and core muscles all at once, squeezing harder and harder, until—

Clunk!

Ilyusha’s right shoulder joint slammed home. Ooni almost sprawled onto Ilyusha’s face, catching herself at the last moment, then scrambling upright.

Ilyusha screamed.

She gritted her teeth and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed — eyes bulging, blood-flecked drool running from one corner of her mouth, tendons standing taut on her neck. Her one remaining leg thrashed and stamped, crimson talons scraping and squealing against the black metal floor. Thin fluid leaked from around the reattached shoulder joint. The arm twitched, claws flicking in and out, bionic muscles trembling.

Ooni had witnessed so many kinds of terrible pain across her long afterlife in the nanomachine ecosystem, most of them blurred by the haze of endless memory, some the result of ruined bionics or botched attempts at nanomachine-driven self-modification. But this was new. Ilyusha’s bionic limbs had not been designed for removal and reattachment. Whatever Ilyusha was doing, she did it without anaesthetic, wide awake and screaming, reconnecting bionic nerve pathways and cybernetic synapses.

If Ilyusha passed out from the pain, Ooni would be alone.

“Ilyusha?! Illy!?” Ooni’s hands hovered over Ilyusha. “What— what can I—”

Ilyusha’s screams subsided, replaced by heaving breaths hissing through her clenched teeth. Bloodshot eyes whirled in Ilyusha’s bloodstained face, open but blind with pain — then suddenly blazing up at Ooni.

“Get—” Ilyusha croaked. “—next— get—”

“The next limb? The other arm? B-but you’ll—”

“Get!” Ilyusha screamed, jaws snapping wide, the talons of her good leg screeching across the floor.

Ooni shot to her feet and lurched back over to the black metal table which projected from the wall. She grabbed Ilyusha’s other arm, heavy and awkward, crimson claws catching on Ooni’s t-shirt. She fell to her knees on Ilyusha’s opposite side. Ilyusha jerked her head back and forth, eyes wild with pain and terrible need.

“In!” she screeched. “In!”

Ooni repeated the process, leaning over Ilyusha’s prone torso, knees wedged against the shoulder of the detached limb. She squeezed with her core muscles and her thighs, harder and harder, pressing the joint into place. The shoulder socket creaked with the sound of tortured metal and warping bio-plastic, then—

Clunk!

Ilyusha didn’t scream this time; somehow that was worse.

Her mouth opened in a wide, silent cry, eyes clenched shut, back arching off the floor like a terminal tetanus victim. The dried blood all over her face and hair began to run with rivulets of cold sweat. She clenched her jaw so hard that Ooni heard teeth creak and crack; if Ilyusha had been a mortal human being, she would have burst a blood vessel or given herself a hernia or simply died of a heart attack.

Ooni didn’t know what to do. She didn’t dare touch Ilyusha. She couldn’t do anything but watch.

Ilyusha slowly descended back down from the apex of her pain, torso collapsing to the floor, lungs heaving for breath. Her eyes were unfocused, staring up at the featureless ceiling, clouded with a sheen of tears.

Neither of Ilyusha’s reattached limbs were moving properly; fingers twitched, claws jerked in and out, muscles shivered. But nothing more.

“Illy?” Ooni hissed. “Illy, are you—”

“Next … ” Ilyusha wheezed. “Leg. Leg! Leg … ”

“Maybe … uh … maybe we should wait, just a moment, so you can recover and—”

Ilyusha’s eyes rolled in their sockets, suddenly thrown wide again with rekindled rage, tears brimming over and rolling down her blood-caked cheeks. “Shit-eating bitch fuck—” Ooni assumed Ilyusha was insulting her, but then Ilyusha squeezed out: “—coming back— back—”

“Kuro?” Ooni shook her head. “No, no. She won’t come back, not until we step into the next part of her game.”

Ilyusha managed to squint her eyes in silent question.

Ooni struggled to swallow, to slow her racing pulse long enough to speak coherently. She wiped her long black hair out of her face; that helped. “When she rushed back into the room earlier, she was letting me shoot her. She let us do that! She could have wrapped herself in the black metal and made herself invulnerable to our guns. But she didn’t! She let that happen. She does this, it’s how she thinks. She likes to play with her food. She got bored with this phase, or she got what she wanted out of me, so she’s moved on to another one, the next part. She wants us to feel like we’ve maybe got a chance.” Ooni shook her head, trying not to tremble. “She— she wants us to leave, to try to escape, so she can play with us. This is what she does with other zombies, it’s what she enjoys, I’ve seen her do it before, to dozens of others. She won’t come back here, not yet, not unless … unless we give up and … and refuse to provide her any … ‘sport’.”

Ilyusha’s lips twisted with disgust. “Put … leg. Leg. In!”

“But—”

“Pleassse!” Ilyusha gurgled, gritting her teeth.

Ooni nodded and stood up, trying not to shake too hard. She grabbed Ilyusha’s leg from the table; it was much heavier than either of the arms, with stronger muscles, more built-in bio-polymer superstructure layered on top, and the huge bird-like foot with long crimson talons dangling from the shrouded ankle joint. Ooni staggered back to Ilyusha and lowered the limb to the floor. Positioning this joint was more awkward than with the shoulders. Ooni had to grope around inside what was left of Ilyusha’s shorts, to expose the massive bionic socket of her hips — a gaping hole of black-red bio-plastic and fluttering membranes, framed by the pale, clammy, sweat-soaked flesh of Ilyusha’s abdomen and groin. Ooni pushed the shorts aside, angled Ilyusha’s hips upward, then got the joint into place, pressed against the socket. She leaned on the knee of the detached leg, putting more and more of her own body weight against the bionic joint. The whole hip-socket creaked with the sound of tortured metal and deforming polymers; Ilyusha flinched, then gritted her teeth and screwed her eyes shut. Ooni pushed harder, until—

Clunk!

Ilyusha thrashed like she was having a seizure. Ooni scrambled clear, narrowly avoiding the razor-sharp blades of Ilyusha’s good leg; reflex action made her kick at the air. She drooled and spat bloody mucus, heaving and keening and whining like a spear-stuck boar.

“Illy, Illy!” Ooni said. “Y-you can do it, you can ride it out! I’ve got you, I’m … I … I … ”

Ooni couldn’t do anything. She didn’t ‘have’ Ilyusha. She had nothing. All she could do was wait and see, and pray to Telokopolis that this was going to work.

Eventually Ilyusha’s seizure trailed off. She lay still, wheezing for breath, face sticky and slimy with a sheen of sweat and blood.

The reattached leg quivered and twitched, just like the arms. Ilyusha did not seem able to lift the limb.

Ooni’s hopes curdled; she felt sick, a fist gripping her intestines. If Ilyusha couldn’t stand or walk, there was no way Ooni could carry her out of here, let alone through whatever sick game Kuro had planned. With all four limbs attached, Ilyusha weighed a ton, and Ooni was not strong enough to lift her. The only option would be to wait for rescue, to hope that Kagami was able to pinpoint their location from the brief moment of comms contact. But if Kuro thought they were stalling, perhaps she would come back again, armoured in the black metal, game abandoned.

Tears gathered in Ooni’s eyes. She bit her lip, jaw trembling, retreating inside herself. She couldn’t do this alone, could not stand up to Kuro without help. If Ilyusha couldn’t walk, Ooni’s only option was to flee in shame and hide in some dark hole and wait to—

Telokopolis is forever.

Ooni sniffed back her tears and shook her head, hard enough to hurt.

It was as if somebody had slapped her across the cheek and poured a cup of hot wine down her throat, a taste she had not known since true life. The memory lingered upon her tongue, filling her with something adjacent to courage.

She could not and would not leave Ilyusha behind. Telokopolis leaves nobody behind. Nobody gets left out in the cold, alone and helpless, to be taken by the elements and the wild animals. If Ilyusha couldn’t move, then Ooni’s role was clear — protect her, or die trying, and fall atop Ilyusha with her wounds to the fore, not upon her back. Telokopolis made that clear. There was no other option.

The relief was incredible, a burden lifting from Ooni’s shoulders. She did not have to think, did not have to make a decision. She only had to obey the principles she had already thrown in Kuro’s face, the principles she had already adopted as her own, and had washed her clean of her past mistakes.

Ilyusha hissed, “Tail. Tail!”

“Y-your tail, right!” Ooni started to rise, then hesitated. “Can you … can you turn over?”

Ilyusha flexed her torso. Her one good leg moved properly, trying to get into position, but her three reattached limbs only shivered and convulsed, like an elderly person with the shaking palsy. She gritted her teeth and peeled back her lips, furious in humiliation.

“ … roll me.”

Ooni did as Ilyusha asked, trying to roll her onto her front as gently as possible. Ooni’s own wounded right shoulder screamed with the effort of supporting Ilyusha’s body weight, but she got Illy onto her front without any additional bruises. Ilyusha’s cheek was pressed uncomfortably against the black metal floor.

“Tail!”

“On it, right, yes!”

Ooni leapt over to the table and picked up Ilyusha’s tail as best she could. The specialised bionic was impossible to lift cleanly — six feet long, thicker than the other limbs, and heavily armoured, made for combat. Most of the tail dragged across the floor as Ooni pulled the joint over to Ilyusha, the crimson spear-tip end scraping against the black metal. Ooni fumbled with the waistband of Ilyusha’s shorts to expose the base of her spine. The tail socket was just as thick as Ilyusha’s leg-joints, a massive junction with her spinal column. Ooni braced the joint, then put her whole body weight into a shove, bearing down—

Clunk!

She slipped and fell forward onto Ilyusha, briefly squashing Illy against the black metal floor. Ooni scrambled upright. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, I … Illy? Il—Ilyusha?”

Ilyusha was unconscious.

She wasn’t faking it this time. Ilyusha had gone limp, eyelids fluttering, eyes rolled into the back of her head. A thin stream of bloody drool hung from her slack lips, pooling on the metal floor. She was breathing, a reedy whisper hissing from laboured lungs.

“Illy? Illy?!” Ooni shook her, but Ilyusha did not respond. “No, no, no, no no no! No! No! No, please, no! Illy! Illy, I can’t— I can’t do this alone, I can’t, I can’t do this.” Tears ran down Ooni’s cheeks; her earlier burst of courage turned to ice and ash in her heart. She glanced back over her shoulder at the hole Kuro had left in the wall, half-expecting a figure in powered armour to loom out of the shadows. But there was only darkness. “I c-can’t— I can’t— I— Illy, I-Illy please, please wake up, please, p-please—”

Telokopolis is forever.

The reminder was like another pull from a jug of hot wine. Ooni’s insides flushed with heat, the fear ebbing back just enough to avert collapse. She remembered — firelight? Firelight deep in a smoke-filled hall, the soft murmur of speech, the scent of roasted meat and vegetables, the sensation of wool and fur against her skin. A full belly. A hand on her shoulder. A voice so much like her own, whispering in her ear — up, up, up!

Ooni forced herself to scrub her eyes on her sleeve. Ilyusha was helpless. Ilyusha needed Telokopolis. Ooni had to get to her feet and arm up.

Right now, Ooni had to be Telokopolis.

She staggered upright and lurched over to the table, eyeing Ilyusha’s powerful shotgun. She’d blind herself with pain if she tried to fire it again. Instead she crouched down and grabbed the plates of carapace armour, assessing the damage.

The helmet was useless — forehead caved in, visor-display broken, built-in comms busted. The main chestplate was intact, along with the plates for Ooni’s belly, hips, back, and shoulders. The buckles and straps and lock-points were a little bent and cracked where Kuro had ripped the armour off her, but they were designed with multiple redundancies; the armour would be looser and less reliable, but still usable. Ooni strapped herself back into the main components; the process was awkward and slow without anybody to help her, and she couldn’t get the under-layer braces to sit right across her stomach — those were the layers of gel padding and hex-foam meant to distribute kinetic force. If somebody shot her in the gut the plate would still turn the bullet away, but the impact was much more likely to leave deep bruising or internal bleeding. She had no choice, it would have to do. She found her greaves and overboots were also intact, then sat down to strap her legs into the protective plates. Her gauntlets were scuffed and dented — had Kuro struggled with her hands? — but she slipped them on and found they moved alright, though the inner layers for her right hand were mangled and torn, as if she’d fought against Kuro disrobing her, even when unconscious. She removed the gauntlet, stripped out the inner layers, then put it back on and locked it to the rest of the suit. Her right hand would chafe raw within an hour of use, but it was better than nothing.

Her right arm was increasingly useless anyway. The bruise in her shoulder was swelling up inside her clothes, throbbing in time with her heartbeat and the echo of pain in her skull, turning stiff and increasingly difficult to move. Ooni was worried she’d dislocated something or damaged a tendon. Within an hour or two her range of motion would be seriously limited.

She grabbed the ruined helmet and clipped it to her hip, then scrambled for options.

Ooni grabbed all the weapons from the table. She jammed the sidearm and the three grenades into the pouches on her armour, slung Ilyusha’s shotgun over her back, then used the strap on her own submachine gun to brace the weapon against her left hip, holding it one-handed.

She turned and pointed the gun toward the gap in the wall, then placed her right hand flat against her chestplate, clutching the crescent-and-double-line symbol of Telokopolis.

“Telokopolis is forever,” she whispered. “Telokopolis is forever. Telokopolis is forever.” Her voice rose into a shout. “Telokopolis is forever! I am part of Telokopolis, Kuro! I am part of her!”

The tomb swallowed her voice — then returned it as a ghostly echo from the labyrinthine dark, drowned out by the distant fury of the storm beyond the walls.

Ooni shivered inside her ill-fitting armour.

She fiddled with the comms headset and tested Ilyusha’s set as well, but the uplink with Pheiri’s network was gone, every band was filled with nothing but static. Kuro’s on-board jamming had caught the transmissions and blocked them, or somehow fried the sets themselves. Ooni lacked the necessary technical knowledge to repair the sets or counter the jamming.

She whispered into the headset regardless, talking to the static, on an open broadcast: “Pheiri, if you can read this, this is Ooni, and we still need help.” She swallowed, considered her next words carefully, then spoke on. “If any revenants are reading this message, this is a child of Telokopolis speaking. We have been cut off from our allies and … and we need help. Any of you who heard and believed Elpida’s words, please … please tell Pheiri. Please contact the others. Please … do … ”

Ooni trailed off.

A blue glimmer had appeared in the darkness, far beyond the hole punched through the wall of the little black chamber.

A wisp of transparent blue, coiling in the air, like steam or smoke or semi-visible flame. It cast a cold glow over the black walls to either side. Ooni struggled to estimate the distance, squinting her eyes, wishing she had her armour’s visor to help; she guessed the glimmer was perhaps a hundred feet away, at the end of a long corridor. The colour reminded Ooni of — clear sky?

Blue skies on an empty morning.

Ooni shivered again, struck by a phantom memory of winter cold.

The blue wisp floated forward, moving toward the chamber.

“Unnnnhhhhh,” Ilyusha groaned.

Ooni whipped around in surprise. Down on the floor, Ilyusha was blinking her eyes and working her jaw. Her reattached bionic arms finally moved, drawing up beneath her. Ilyusha pushed off the floor, onto all fours, limbs trembling.

Ooni glanced back into the corridor. The blue wisp was gone.

“Unn!” Ilyusha grunted again.

Ooni turned back to her, hurrying over and dropping to her knees, hands out to help Ilyusha stand. She’d thought the sound was just a grunt, but Ilyusha had been trying to call her name.

“Ilyusha! Ilyusha, you’re awake, thank— thank Telokopolis. Y-yes, yes!”

Ilyusha just hissed, drooling and shivering. She grabbed Ooni’s armoured gauntlets and used the support to climb to her feet. She looked dazed and unsteady, eyes squinted with lingering pain, face slimy where the dried blood had mixed with her sweat. Her arms and legs shook with effort, the bionic muscles still not back to normal. Her tail hung limp.

“Fuckin— b-biiiiiitch,” Ilyusha wheezed. “Can’t keep me— from your— cunt throat … cunt … ”

Ooni smiled, panting with relief. Ilyusha’s rage toward Kuro was undimmed. Ooni started to believe that perhaps they could make it out of here.

“Illy,” she said. “Illy, we have to get out, we have to get moving. I checked the comms and I can’t make contact, it’s just us. Can you … walk?”

Ilyusha staggered a few steps, pulling Ooni along with her, clinging to Ooni’s right arm. Her tail lifted, weak and limp, then wrapped around Ooni’s armoured waist, locking itself tight. Ilyusha scrubbed her face and wiped away her drool on one forearm, then grinned through the exhaustion and the pain. “Walk. Sure. Like this.”

“I— I’ve got you, okay,” Ooni said, trying to figure out how to make this work. “We— we can move like this. We— we can. We can do it. We can!”

Ilyusha held out her right hand, fingers jerking. “Gun.”

“Are … are you sure you can … with your arms, I mean, can you—”

“Gun! Now!”

“Okay, okay!”

Ooni dragged Ilyusha’s shotgun off her back and pressed the grip into Ilyusha’s clawed hand. Illy blinked hard, then retracted her claws so she could get her fingers around the trigger guard. She tucked the shotgun against her side, into the crook of her elbow. An unaugmented human discharging that weapon from that stance would dislocate their own elbow, but Ilyusha’s bionics could probably absorb the recoil. Probably.

Ooni knew she had to hold on tight, or one shot would send Ilyusha sprawling, likely dragging Ooni down with her.

“Lessgo,” Ilyusha slurred. She staggered forward, making for the hole in the wall; Ooni kept pace, arms linked tight, holding Ilyusha upright.

Beyond the little black chamber lay a junction — a knot where several corridors converged, dozens of dark passageways leading off toward blind corners. This part of the tomb did not look similar to the intestinal tangle where Kuro had ambushed the fireteam; the corridors were all ruler-straight and very narrow, barely wide enough for three people to walk abreast — but also very tall, their ceilings lost in vaulted shadows. The little black room sat in the centre of the junction like a blister extruded from the floor.

Ooni strained her ears, listening for the whisper of Kuro’s suit reactor, or the subtle creak of her boots against the floor.

Silence and the storm, and nothing besides.

There was no sign of the strange blue wisp, either.

“Fuck are we?” Ilyusha rasped, heavy-lidded eyes peering about, claws clicking against the body of her shotgun.

“I … I think this is a different part of the tomb,” Ooni whispered. Her voice echoed down the tall corridors, soaking into the distant static of the storm beyond. “I spotted something moving out here while you were unconscious, a-a light or something, a blue light. But it’s gone now. I don’t know which way to go.”

Ilyusha sagged against Ooni, then jerked her shotgun at a random corridor. “That way.”

“Why that way?”

“‘Cos I says so.” Ilyusha managed a grin and a snort. “C’mon.”

Ilyusha lurched forward. Ooni held on tight as they crept into the narrow, tall, silent corridor.

She did not have the heart to ask — was Ilyusha merely hoping to draw out Kuro?

The corridors were empty, nothing here but the faraway fury of the hurricane, the rhythmic click-tap of Ilyusha’s clawed feet, and the thump-thump-thump of Ooni’s own heart racing against her ribs. Her left hand quickly grew clammy inside her gauntlet, wrapped around the grip of her submachine gun. Her right shoulder ached and throbbed as she did her best to support Ilyusha’s weight. She tensed at every corner they approached, expecting this to be the moment, ready to face whatever cruel twist Kuro had planned.

But the corners turned and Ilyusha staggered onward and Kuro did not appear.

After half a dozen corners and several minutes of cautious exploration, they turned up nothing but more of these vaulted passageways, straight and angular like runes cut into rock — and they were partially made from stone, or at least simulated stone. The black metal floors and lower parts of each wall gave way to great slabs of raw masonry, vanishing up toward the unseen ceiling.

Eventually Ilyusha hissed: “She’s playing with us, huh? That right?”

Ooni kept her eyes peeled as they eased around another corridor. “Yes. Yes, she does this with other zombies, I’ve seen it before.”

Ilyusha grunted. “Like how? How’s she gonna fuck with us?”

“I … uh … I’m not certain.” Ooni swallowed, trying not to think about how cruel Kuro could get. “She wants us to think we’ve gotten away, to give us hope, so she can take it away again. B-but she knows me, and she knows that I know. So … she knows I won’t believe it, not for real. She has to get us to believe it, for real, to let us think there’s a real chance of escape. So she can … crush it.”

Ilyusha grinned, wide and nasty. “Escape? Fuck that. Fuck her!” She raised her voice in a raspy shout, echoing off the stone walls. “Hear that, cunt-face?! I’m not going anywhere until I fucking eat you! Gonna peel you open, rancid fucking shit! Fight me!”

Ilyusha fell silent, voice trailing off into the darkness, whispering echoes crawling back. She snorted with disgust.

“Coward. Puss-fuck chicken bitch. Eat my shit.”

Ooni tried to take heart in Ilyusha’s fire, but she knew if Kuro wasn’t responding, she must have something worse planned. Ilyusha did not pose much of a threat to Kuro, not in her current state.

“She … she might try to separate us,” Ooni said. “Or spook us, or … or something else. I’m not sure. But we should expect anything. Anything at all. If she gets bored, she might just … just kill us.”

Ilyusha growled, eyeing the shadows ahead. “Biiiitch. Bitch. Reptile … fuckin’ … cunt … ”

They crept past two more corners, passing through junctions each identical to the last, with no change in the structure of the corridors. Ooni began to worry that Kuro had picked this part of the tomb on purpose, knowing it was laid out in a maze almost impossible to navigate, every hallway exactly like each other. There were no rooms or open chambers, as if the spaces between these corridors contained nothing but solid stone.

“Ilyusha,” she whispered. “I-I still don’t know where we’re going. There’s no landmarks, there’s nothing. I can’t even hear any sounds out there. We— we may be playing into Kuro’s hands, we might be—”

The darkness burst asunder.

Ooni and Ilyusha’s conjoined shadows suddenly exploded onto the floor and walls in front of them, outlined by a swirling blue glow; the light source had bloomed to their rear, far too close.

Ilyusha roared with fury, dragging Ooni sideways as she tried to twist the pair around; Ooni yelped and lurched, Ilyusha’s tail around her waist threatening to unbalance her. She staggered three paces to one side under Ilyusha’s weight, accidentally slamming Ilyusha’s hip in the stone wall. Ilyusha howled with pain — but she’d gotten the pair turned around, facing toward the light source. She yanked the trigger on her shotgun; a round split the air with a deafening boom. Ooni felt the recoil ripple upward through her arm, but she planted her feet to stop Ilyusha losing control.

The shot plinked off stone and metal.

Ilyusha didn’t fire a second shot, jaw hanging open, bloodshot eyes gone wide. Ooni froze as well, finger on the trigger of her submachine gun.

A ghost stood twenty feet away.

Blue — the pale blue of electric skies after a storm; semi-translucent flesh and clothes and hair were all that same impossible colour. The shotgun round had done nothing, passing harmlessly through the figure. The ghost was a woman, with long hair down to her waist, dressed in a rough woollen skirt and long shirt, furs draped over her shoulders. She carried a short sword in one hand, and a circular shield in the other. She wore no expression.

She had Ooni’s face.

Ilyusha snarled: “Izzat … you? The fuck?!”

Ooni stared back at herself, dressed for a war that time had swallowed.

“It … it can’t be,” Ooni said. “It’s not— Kuro said ghosts, but— it can’t— it’s a hologram or a t-trick or—”

Ooni’s ghost took a step forward. Ooni scrambled to aim her submachine gun, but she already knew the bullets would do nothing. Ilyusha bared her teeth, but the ghost continued to advance, then stopped safely beyond sword-reach.

“Fuckin trick, right,” Ilyusha growled, turning her head to check the rear. “It’s Kuro! Kuro fuckin’ with us. It’s not real. It’s the tomb, it’s—”

“Hello, sister,” said the ghost.

Ooni couldn’t breathe. The ghost had her voice — almost. Her face — almost. Her build — almost, but not quite.

But she couldn’t recall a sister. She couldn’t even recall the feeling of sunlight, or the smell of vegetation, or the taste of fruit. The memory of hot wine faded to nothing, leaving her cold inside. Courage fled. Confusion and dislocation made her head spin.

“ … I … I don’t … a sister? I don’t—”

“You threw me from the cliffs,” said the ghost. “One winter’s morning. Into the sea. My body was broken on the rocks.”

“W-what?” Ooni stammered. The blood drained from her face. Her muscles slackened. Her stomach felt like it needed to empty upward, through her throat. Ilyusha was pulling on her, but Ooni couldn’t move. “No. No, I would remember, I would remember if I— if I had a sister, I would—”

“You forgot.”

“I … n-no … ”

“I have come to remind you of your crime.”

Ooni felt the ground give way beneath her heart. She felt walls collapsing about her head. She let go of her gun, trying to pull away from Ilyusha.

“You think you only did bad things because of the people you fell in with, after you died,” said the ghost. “But that’s just a lie, one you’ve been telling yourself for too long. I have not come to forgive you, Ooni. I have come to—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Ilyusha jerked her shotgun at the face of the ghost and pulled the trigger again — but the round passed harmlessly through the shimmering blue light and hit the wall instead. Ilyusha almost dragged Ooni off-balance, scrambling to stay on her feet. “Shut up! Shut up! Ooni, fucking— don’t listen! Fuck her! Fuck you! Fuck! Fuck!”

All Ilyusha’s shouting couldn’t drown out the ghost, like she was speaking inside Ooni’s head.

“—remind you that you were always like this. And you always will be. You will never make it up to me. I hate you.”

Ooni sagged. She would have fallen to her knees if it wasn’t for Ilyusha’s tail wrapped around her waist. No memory came back to her, no clarity of sudden revelation. She could not recall if she had ever had a sister, let alone if she had committed a murder — before the nanomachine afterlife, before the starvation and the madness, before the Death’s Heads, before all of this.

But the guilt and the hatred rang true, twisting an invisible knife in a hidden wound.

Ilyusha was shouting, waving the tip of her shotgun barrel through the ghost’s blue flesh, but the ghost ignored her, undisturbed. Ooni’s eyes filled with tears, clouded with a phantom of old grief; she was evil, wasn’t she? Even within the walls of Telokopolis, she was still evil, she had done terrible things. How could she atone, if even her own sister — sister? — could not forgive her? She was not worthy of Telokopolis, nor of Elpida’s second chance. She was filth on Kuro’s boots.

Ooni gazed up at the ghost, lips parting to beg for a forgiveness she didn’t deserve, bearing her throat in a gesture of submission. Why did the ghost suddenly seem a hundred times larger?

Was this what Kuro had felt, when the ghost of the hiver had forgiven her? No wonder Kuro had seemed so different. Nobody could survive this unchanged.

“Beg for nothing,” said the ghost.

She raised her sword in one steady fist, point arcing down, aimed at Ooni’s throat.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Zombies, Necromancers, tombs – why not ghosts, too? Why not, indeed! Well, this is why. Because ghosts come with unfinished business in the world of living, and the world of the living is all gone now.

Don’t give up, Ooni!

Ahem. Anyway! We’re back!!! Hello, everybody! It’s very good to be back to my usual writing schedule; once again, I do apologise for the long break, I really did not intend it to be so long, but I had to recover from some rather taxing tasks. Necroepilogos is now back to the usual 3-on-1-off schedule! Thank you all for waiting, thanks for being here, things should continue as normal, now.

And speaking of continuing, it looks like the arc is almost over. I’m not 100% sure yet, not until I write the chapter, but it seems like the chapter after this next one will likely be the final one of the arc. If that’s right, we’ll be ending on chapter 13.13, which is just … you know, perfect! I love it! Spooky numbers for a spooky story.

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you! As always, thank you for being here and reading my little story. Thank you for enjoying Necroepilogos! The story has so much more to go, so many more dark depths to explore. And we haven’t seen Elpida herself in a little while, have we? Anyway, until next time! Seeya next chapter!

Necroepilogos is currently on a short break, and will be returning on the 6th of March! More information over here, for anybody interested!

Content Warnings

Torture
Confinement
Brief dialogue mention of sexual violence

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“Telokopolis was a—”

Ooni winced, biting her bottom lip until she tasted the blossom of blood on her offending tongue. She refused to blame her mistake on the concussion, or the fear, or the static haze of the storm, or the unblinking focus of Kuro’s stare.

The mistake was her own. Her faith felt so fragile.

She tried again.

“Telokopolis is a city. A living city, with meat and bone and brains on the inside. Alive, with a mind, and a— a soul, I guess. It’s built in the shape of a spire, like … like this.” Ooni raised both hands and put her fingertips together to form a sharp wedge, pointing toward the occluded heavens beyond the tomb. The gesture helped to steady her shaking hands. “It’s a very— very special city. Unique, in all— all the ages before this, before us. It’s where Elpida came from. She was, uh … it’s hard to explain, and I don’t understand all the details, but she’s a daughter of the city. Literally, physically, biologically. The city made her, and gave birth to her, and all her sisters. And— and Telokopolis still exists, that’s the important part. Even in this afterlife, it’s still out there. It’s on a plateau, very far away, but we know where it is. We have proof of that—”

“We?” Kuro echoed.

Ooni choked on the rest of her sentence.

Kuro’s expression was unreadable, eyes wide inside the open faceplate of her helmet, pink skin framed by the feather-soft folds which cradled her skull, her powered armour a grey smear against the featureless black wall of the small circular chamber. If Ooni turned her gaze aside, Kuro was reduced to a face floating in the black, emerging from a bloom of pale-flesh petals.

“ … w-we, yes,” Ooni confirmed. “Elpida … and … and the others. Elpida’s comrades. Her … girls. Her … ”

Ooni trailed off. Her words felt so inadequate. She longed to express herself with the same clarity and charisma as Elpida; if only Elpida was here, then even Kuro would be forced to understand.

“You belong to her now,” said Kuro.

It wasn’t a question, but Ooni shook her head. “No, no, that’s not—”

“Don’t try to mislead me with something so simple, Ooni.” Kuro’s high-pitched voice filled the small chamber with airy irritation. “You’re not smart enough for that. You’re no double-agent, playing both sides. That way out is closed. You are no longer one of us, no longer a Sister of the Skull. That’s a statement of fact.”

Kuro reached for Ooni’s face again, armoured gauntlet rising through the shadows, fingers curling to cup Ooni’s chin, to deliver punishment and correction for the wrong answer. Ooni’s hands fluttered with surrender and submission. She squeezed against the wall at her back, trapped by the metal band around her belly. Her lips tried to form an apology—

“It doesn’t work like that, Kuro!” she spat. “You don’t understand!”

Ooni was stunned by the fire in her own voice. She didn’t sound like herself, as if a hidden passenger had crawled up her throat and spoken the truth in her defence.

Kuro’s hand paused, then returned to her armoured lap. She tilted her head, helmet unmoving, skull brushing through the layers of feathery white flesh-folds.

“You’re right!” Ooni said, clinging hard to this sudden hot spark in her mouth, though her words quivered and her chest was shaking. She lowered her own hands and wrapped them around the metal band which held her pinned to the wall. “I’m not a Sister of the Skull anymore. Not a ‘Death’s Head’. I … I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be! I wouldn’t come back if you begged me! But that’s not what I meant. Not what I meant at all. It’s not about Elpida, not about the others. Not even— not even Leuca! I-I haven’t been seduced or coerced or corrupted. That’s not how it works. It’s about Telokopolis.”

“A city.”

“No,” Ooni hissed. “More than a city, more than her physical body. I am inside Telokopolis, right now. Even here, alone in the dark, as your captive, I am armoured by her walls. I am inside Telokopolis. I am one of her daughters, no matter what I was born as, no matter what I’ve done in the past. No matter what. I am inside Telokopolis! Right now!”

Kuro just stared.

Ooni shook all over, panting hard, throat closing up. She knew her words were not enough, her passion meant nothing. Her eyes flickered past Kuro, to where the discarded plates of carapace armour lay against the opposite wall. The crescent-and-double-line of Telokopolis, daubed in green on the chestplate, still glistened despite the near total darkness.

Kuro turned her head to look. “That’s what the symbol means? That’s Telokopolis?”

“Y-yes. Yes. The spire, and … and the world. I-I think.”

Kuro started to turn back to Ooni, but then paused halfway, to stare down at Ilyusha lying on the floor, a dismembered torso with only one bionic leg left attached; Ilyusha had already closed her eyes again, pretending to be unconscious or dead.

Kuro spoke without looking up. “You think?”

Ooni swallowed, then nodded. “Some of the others say it’s … t-the moon, or a symbol for unity, or infinity, or a zero, or … or other things. But I think it’s the world.”

“You think.”

Ooni’s words ran out; the brief fire she had felt upon her tongue was fading back to an ember, slick with blood and chilled by fear. The black metal wall was so cold against her back and legs. The band around her waist seemed tighter than ever.

Kuro gestured toward Ilyusha. “Is she a daughter of Telokopolis as well?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. We all are, we—”

Kuro reached down to Ilyusha’s helpless body and stuck the fingers of one armoured gauntlet into the exposed bionic socket of Ilyusha’s left shoulder. She yanked hard, dragging Ilyusha sideways by several inches, pulling her by the softly fluttering innards of the violated cybernetic implant. Ilyusha let out a strangled gasp of pain, eyes rolling behind closed lids, cold sweat breaking out on her face. But her eyes stayed shut. After a moment her breathing settled, then ceased once again.

Kuro raised her head, finally looking back up at Ooni.

“Not very good armour, this Telokopolis,” she said.

Then Kuro smiled.

Ooni fought down the urge to scream; that would only inflame Kuro’s desires. Ooni knew that smile — wide and sweet, accompanied by a crinkling in the corners of the eyes, like Kuro really was nothing more than a young girl playing in a meadow, showing all her shiny, sharp, metal teeth. This was just another one of Kuro’s cruel games, like every other time she had cornered Ooni in a dark, cramped, lonely place. How could Ooni have been so naively optimistic, to believe that Kuro really wanted to know about Telokopolis? Whatever Ooni said, her chances of survival were still slim to none.

Her words did not matter. She was already dead.

For the first time ever, it didn’t matter what she said to Kuro; there was no Sisterhood here, no slender excuse of greater purpose to keep her alive. No matter how much she wanted to make it out, she was not going to. Avoiding pain was impossible; Kuro would do worse to her before the end than sticking fingers into her sockets. Fear would have left her crippled and muzzled, but for a single handhold.

Ooni had spoken the truth — even now, she was still within the embrace of Telokopolis.

Ooni swallowed and took a deep breath. She was shaking all over, covered in cold sweat, and completely powerless. She did not want to be a martyr, but the choice was not her own. The only thing she could do was ruin Kuro’s fun, and that was cold comfort.

All Ooni had was the truth, and the truth felt like victory.

“Telokopolis is greater than the sum of its parts!” she hissed. “Me, her, Elpida. It doesn’t matter! Telokopolis rejects nobody, leaves nobody outside. It’s for everybody, everybody! Even me! That’s what Elpida has been doing. She did it with the others, then with Pheiri, the tank. Then with me! That’s what it means, Kuro! Nobody gets left behind!” Ooni’s voice rose to a reedy shout, echoing off the walls of the little black chamber; her head throbbed with every word, but her veins rushed with fire and thunder, in a way she had not felt since true life. “Nobody gets left behind, or eaten because they’re weak, or cast out because they can’t measure up! It’s nothing like the Sisterhood, nothing like you!”

Kuro opened her mouth — but Ooni already knew what she was going to say, and shouted over her.

“And it’s strong!” Ooni almost screamed, straining forward across the band of metal around her belly, pushing at it with both hands so hard her fingers ached. “It’s a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times stronger than the Sisterhood, than any Death’s Heads! It’s stronger than Yolanda could ever be. It’s stronger than you, Kuro! Telokopolis is stronger than you!”

Ooni paused, heaving for breath, tears running down her cheeks.

Kuro waited a moment, almost as if for Ooni to continue. Then she said: “And yet I am free, and you are bound.”

A strange laugh clawed up and out of Ooni’s throat. “You think that matters? You know why Telokopolis is strong? Because it’s united! We! We! We! Me and Leuca and Elpida and Ilyusha here and all the others! Even the ones who think I’m a traitor and a coward and a weakling, they’re all one with me and I’m one with them! Because we’re not in competition with each other! We’re together! Together!”

“Like a hiver,” Kuro muttered.

“And we’re strong!” Ooni shouted again. “We’re strong!”

“We were strong,” Kuro said. “We could do whatever we wished, to whomever we wanted. The Sisterhood was—”

“We were never strong!” Ooni spat, rage taking her, face burning, kicking out at Kuro in a way she never would have dared before, though her boots could not reach Kuro’s armour. “We picked on weak targets and ate those who couldn’t defend themselves. You call that strong?! Scavengers, carrion-eaters, and weak! We ate each other! I remember you, Kuro, eating bits of me, because I couldn’t stop you! Does that make you strong, or a coward?! You don’t have the courage to face Telokopolis, because you’re weak and you’re alone!” Ooni’s voice dropped to a cold point, squeezed out between panting breaths. “Don’t think I can’t see that.”

Kuro’s face flickered with a delicate, girlish frown. “I’m not—”

“Where’s Yolanda, hmm!?” Ooni said. “Where’s your beloved mistress with her orders and her punishment and her hands all over you?! Where are the others? They’ve abandoned you, haven’t they? Or you’ve abandoned them. And I’m not abandoned. I’m not alone.”

Kuro’s frown darkened with something Ooni had never before seen on her face — real anger. “Your friends won’t find you, Ooni. They’re not going to—”

“But they’re trying!”

“And they won’t succeed. So much for Telokopolis.”

Ooni barked with laughter. “You still don’t understand, Kuro. Telokopolis is forever! You can’t kill her, you can’t even wound her. Killing one of us does nothing. Nothing!”

“What if I kill Elpida?”

A brief tremor of disgust gripped Ooni’s bowels. She knew better than almost any of the others that Elpida was not invincible. She had watched Leuca empty a magazine of bullets into Elpida’s gut, and had witnessed Elpida chained and tortured by the Sisterhood. Elpida could bleed and die, just like any other zombie.

“Elpida is not Telokopolis,” Ooni said. Her courage rallied to the words. “If she falls, the rest of us carry it on. Me and Leuca and—”

“What if I blow up your tank? Kill all your companions? Eat the flesh, eat all of you, turn you into more of me. What if I wipe out the whole group? What then, Ooni? What’s ‘forever’ then? Your meat in my gut?”

Ooni forced herself to laugh through the fear; it helped more than she had expected, and the laugh became real. “It doesn’t matter! Others would take up the mantle! We’ve converted so many now, Kuro. All those zombies we gave meat, all the zombies Elpida spoke with, even if they don’t get it like we do, not yet. But they will. Are you going to kill all of them, too?! Hunt down any whisper of Telokopolis? What about when Elpida is resurrected again, are you going to go from worm to worm, looking for her, specifically? You can’t!”

“No zombie can sustain such—”

“She can!” Ooni shouted. “I can too! We all can! You cannot fight Telokopolis, Kuro. She is larger than you. You can’t kill this with guns and strangling and- and- eating flesh, and- and all of it! She is more than this.” Ooni raised one booted foot and thumped her heel on the black metal floor. “More than this! More than this!”

Kuro said: “And what if I just kill you?”

Fear stopped up Ooni’s throat.

She thought she had accepted the inevitable — that her death did matter. But still she faltered, trying and failing to swallow.

Kuro snorted softly; her frown turned back into a little smile. “Abstract principle is all well and good. But practical reality is meat and bone, and you are both—”

Telokopolis is forever.

Kuro stopped.

“Telokopolis is forever,” Ooni repeated; she was so numb she wasn’t sure if she’d said the words the first time. “If you kill me, it doesn’t matter. She will find me again.”

“Elpida?”

Ooni laughed — a hacking, wheezing, desperate sound, as if a fraction of the tempest outside had entered the quiet dark of the tomb via her lungs. “No! You still don’t get it! Telokopolis will find me again. Maybe it won’t be Elpida, or Leuca, or Pheiri. Maybe … maybe I’ll never see any of them, ever again. Maybe it’ll be a thousand years, or a million years. Or … or longer. But Telokopolis is forever. She will find me again. Or … or I will be how others find her.” Ooni’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if speaking it too loudly might force Kuro’s hand. “You can kill me. I can’t stop you. But it simply doesn’t matter. It changes nothing but the details. Telokopolis is forever.”

Kuro stared into Ooni’s eyes; Ooni stared back.

The hurricane howled beyond the walls of the tomb, a chorus of the dead turned to static by the drumming of rain and hail upon the black metal hide. Ooni tried to keep her expression hard and defiant, but she couldn’t stop herself from bracing for the moment that was surely approaching. Kuro was going to reach forward and hurt her, perhaps for a very long time, and then finally kill her. She had thrown the truth in Kuro’s face, spited her with the impossibility of her victory; the future would turn to ash in Kuro’s mouth, but for Ooni there was no escape but death.

Kuro moved like a striking snake — a flash of motion against the dark. Ooni winced, teeth clenched, eyes scrunching up, not ready, not ready, not—

But Kuro simply stood up.

Powered armour towered over Ooni, grey-on-grey in the black chamber, Kuro’s face a bright blossom of pink and white.

Ooni drew a shuddering gasp of relief; she couldn’t help herself.

Kuro muttered, “All this for a city you’ve never even seen.”

Kuro turned away and walked over to the opposite side of the room, where Ilyusha’s detached limbs and the confiscated weapons waited atop the table extruded from the wall. She picked up the chestplate of Ooni’s armour, then returned, sitting back down again. She held up the carapace plate, examined the symbol of Telokopolis for a moment, then propped it next to her, so that the symbol faced toward Ooni. She traced the crescent-and-double-line with an armoured fingertip.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” said Kuro.

Ooni blinked, confused. “I … I have? I have. You asked about Telokopolis, and I answered. I answered, I told you. If you can’t understand it, then that’s your fault.”

Kuro looked up from the armour plate, eyebrows raised, almost as if surprised. “I saw a ghost. She forgave me. Why? You said ‘because Telokopolis is forever’. What does that have to do with the ghost of a hiver I killed, back in another life?”

Ooni slumped against the metal band around her belly. She didn’t care; Kuro’s question was nonsense, and Kuro knew it. Kuro was going to kill her anyway, and Kuro refused to understand.

“I’m not playing your games anymore,” Ooni muttered. “Just kill me or let me go. Torture me. Rape me. Eat me. I am inside Telokopolis, and I don’t have to do this anymore, I don’t—”

Kuro slapped the black floor with an open palm, armoured gauntlet ringing against the tomb-metal. “No!” she shouted.

Ooni shot upright, cramming herself against the wall. Kuro’s eyes were ablaze with frustrated anger, her lips peeled back from her metal teeth.

“W-what? I won’t, I won’t play anymore—”

“When you said ‘because Telokopolis is forever’, you meant it.” Kuro’s voice was rushed and urgent. “You weren’t just blabbering to save your skin. You meant what you said. I could hear you meant it. Tell me what you meant. Tell me why that ghost forgave me.”

Ooni didn’t know what to say. She’d never seen Kuro lose her temper like this. Even through the pounding of her head and the resignation of death, Ooni realised she had been wrong.

This was more than one of Kuro’s cruel games.

“ … K-Kuro, are you—”

“Answer the question. Why would the ghost forgive me? Why would she do that? What does that have to do with Telokopolis? Explain the connection.”

Ooni opened her mouth to answer — then hesitated.

Kuro wasn’t quite correct; when Ooni had blurted out the words, she had been grasping for any handhold, any statement which would stop Kuro from eating her face. But now that she had been given time to explain what Telokopolis was, to turn her inner turmoil into concrete statements, she knew exactly what she had meant. She also knew that she had already said it to Kuro, but that Kuro had not understood. She would have to spell it out, but she didn’t want to. The bright spark in her mouth was turning toxic and dark. Her heart curdled. Her tongue tasted of blood.

She did not want to give this truth to Kuro.

Did this make her unworthy of Telokopolis? No, nothing could do that now, nothing but betrayal. Would Elpida have agreed with this desire? Probably not, but she would have understood, she would have talked it through, and found a way.

What would Elpida do?

“Tell me,” Kuro said. “Tell me!”

Ooni swallowed. “When … when Elpida took me, she … she cut the Skull symbol off my flesh. She ate it, right in front of me. Destroyed it by eating it! She … she brought me into Telokopolis. Made it so what I’d done in the past was … washed away, made clean. It took the others time to accept me, and some of them … maybe they’re right, maybe I don’t deserve it, but … but they did let me stay. I’m not pretending they accepted me instantly. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be so … so … important, because we’d all be doing it already, and there would be no Death’s Heads, no Sisterhood.”

Kuro frowned delicately, girlish face scrunched up. “I don’t understand.”

“I already told you. Telokopolis rejects nobody. Nobody is abandoned, or left behind, or cannibalised. Not Elpida, and not even me.”

Kuro’s frown relaxed. “Ah.”

Ooni grimaced. Kuro had worked it out. But she said the words anyway. “I was forgiven, when I didn’t deserve to be forgiven. Telokopolis rejects nobody.” She swallowed the taste of blood and bile. “You included.”

Kuro shook her head slowly, face and hair brushing against the cradle of fleshy white folds inside her helmet. “And you think that’s why the ghost of the hiver forgave me?”

Ooni shrugged. Earlier, with the fire on her tongue, she had felt almost like Elpida, like the voice of the city was speaking through her; now she was spent and cold, and had little more to say. She had no power over Kuro anymore, nothing more to offer. She was going numb, retreating to the walls inside herself.

“Answer the question,” said Kuro.

“Whether she knew it or not,” Ooni said, weak and quiet. “She was embodying it. You’re … you’re forgiven too, Kuro.”

Kuro broke into another smile, sweet and girlish and full of sharp metal teeth. A shiver shot straight up Ooni’s spine. She tried not to whimper or squirm.

Kuro said, “And what about you? Do you forgive me, Ooni? For all those moments we shared?”

Ooni shook her head. She whispered the truth, “No.”

Kuro nodded. “Good. I don’t want to be forgiven.”

“A-ah?”

Kuro straightened up in her armour. She let the carapace chestplate fall, so the crescent-and-double-line of Telokopolis lay face down on the black metal floor. “What does Telokopolis do with things like me?”

“I … I don’t understand?”

Kuro filled her lungs with a deep breath; the bulk of the suit hid the rise and fall of her chest, like a body entombed behind metal and stone.

“I like being what I am,” Kuro said, still smiling. “Being what I was before this reincarnation. I know what I am, and I don’t pretend to be otherwise. I am a serial killer, Ooni. I am a monster, and I love it, because it was meant to be. I found it very hard to accept at first, for most of my twenties, after that first hiver woman, when I had to hide what I’d realised about myself. I felt … alone, and confused. Like maybe I shouldn’t exist, like I didn’t have a place in the finely tuned systems of Factory Head, no matter how many holes I hacked and vulnerabilities I exploited. But over time I came to realise that it was the systems which were wrong. I belonged to the natural order of things, and I found a place for myself as the systems broke down. I know what I am, and I am not ashamed. What does Telokopolis do with things like me?”

“ … I-I don’t—”

“You do know. Your Elpida did plenty of it already. What does Telokopolis do with things it cannot contain?”

“ … Telokopolis should kill you,” Ooni whispered. “Elpida should kill you. I would— I would kill you. If I— if I could.”

Kuro smiled wider, cheeks dimpling, delight sparkling in her black-on-red eyes. “I don’t need forgiveness, it makes me feel … stifled. Yes, stifled! Like my early life in Factory Head. Thank you, Ooni. Talking to you has helped me figure that out.” Kuro shook her head; faint tears shone in her eyes. “I don’t want any ghosts to forgive me, no matter what they teach me in return. I would have preferred if she had fought. I would gladly fight a ghost, even if she won. That would be interesting.”

Ooni didn’t know what to say. She would never understand Kuro.

But then Kuro tilted her head, inside her helmet. “Would you fight, Ooni?”

“I … I already said, I would … kill you if I could.”

“Would you?” Kuro sighed. “If I let you go, right now, would you forgive me, and feed me secrets, trying to get me to do your bidding? You got halfway there, before I made you tell the actual truth. You gave me the secrets of Telokopolis. But you couldn’t forgive. And that’s much better, I think it’s much more honest. No, I think you would fight. Even if the odds were nothing. Especially if the odds were nothing.” Kuro’s smile died down, still burning behind a curious little frown. “You were never like this before. You were always the first to run and hide, trying to stay unnoticed, laughing at jokes you didn’t understand. Even when I caught you, you never fought back properly, because you knew I wouldn’t finish you off. Even just now, you tried to hide behind the skirts of Telokopolis. But I drew you out. And here you are. Declaring that you will kill me. You’ve changed, Ooni.”

Ooni found her voice. “Telokopolis changed me.”

“A city you’ve never seen, and never will.”

“I will. We all will.”

“No. You changed you, Ooni. This dream of an immortal city, that’s just a catalyst. I’m almost impressed. I think I’d have you—”

Kuro suddenly sprang to her feet, moving so fast her grey armour became a blur.

Ooni thought this was it, this was the moment Kuro was going to kill her. She yelped and jerked back against the wall, hands pushing at the metal band around her waist.

But Kuro twisted on one ankle, toward the right-hand wall. The faceplate of her armour descended from inside her helmet and snapped back into place with a soft hiss, giving Ooni a momentary glance of the holographic readouts, flickering back to life before Kuro’s eyes. Guns extended from the forearms of her suit, as one of the plasma weapons on her shoulder twitched and jerked to life, barrel glowing with a gathering charge. Kuro’s suit reactor ramped up with an audible rush of air through the armoured intakes.

Kuro broke into a sprint from a standing start, powered armour joints slamming through the dark like pistons, boots ringing against the floor. She hit the black metal wall and vanished as if plunging through the placid surface of a dark pool.

But this time the gap did not close behind her.

Kuro’s passing left a ragged hole in the curved wall of the little black room, streamers of ferrofluid freezing into long spikes in her wake. A way out — into the lightless dark beyond.

Kuro’s racing footsteps vanished a few moments later, sprinting off into the corridors of the tomb. Ooni gaped at the hole in the wall.

Ilyusha’s eyes snapped open, little bloodshot circles in her crimson-caked face. Her lips peeled back from her teeth, clenched with rage and pain. Kuro’s momentary torture had dragged Ilyusha a few inches closer to Ooni; when she raised the clawed foot at the end of her one remaining leg, she was now almost within range of the metal band around Ooni’s belly. She reached for the metal, hissing with effort.

“Pull me! Ooni, pull me in! Pull me!”

Ooni reached out and grabbed Ilyusha’s bird-like bionic foot, gripping the thick joints of her toes, trying not to touch the dark red talons.

But she didn’t pull Ilyusha in; she held her back.

“Illy, Illy, we can’t! We can’t!”

Ilyusha’s eyes blazed with fresh fury. She shoved hard, kicking at Ooni with razor-edged claws, forcing Ooni back against the wall. Ooni’s fingers slipped on the complex joints of Ilyusha’s foot, opening a shallow cut down the back of her right hand. She winced with the pain and scrambled for a better grip on Ilyusha’s ankle, trying to hold her steady as she jerked and bucked.

“Illy! Illy! Listen, listen—”

“Fuck you, reptile! Fucking— let me cut— cut you out! Put my limbs back—”

“Ilyusha, please! It’s a trap!” Ooni hissed, trying not to raise her voice, because surely Kuro was still listening. “She left the hole there on purpose, she’s testing us, or testing me! This is what Kuro does! She didn’t get what she wanted, so now she’s drawing me into another game! She’s playing with us, playing with her food, she—”

“I know!” Ilyusha spat, pulling her head up off the floor. “I know!”

“ … t-then you know we can’t, we can’t—”

“We have to get her! Fuck her up!”

“I-I-I c-can’t,” Ooni stammered. Standing firm with Telokopolis at her back was one thing, but fighting Kuro? “It’s impossible, I can’t, I can’t fight her, I—”

Ilyusha’s lips ripped into a manic grin. “Yeah, but we can! You and me! Come on!”

Ooni froze. Surely Ilyusha was wrong. Kuro had beaten her once already. Kuro could beat them all. Kuro could not touch Telokopolis itself, because Telokopolis was beyond harm, but Ooni and Ilyusha were doomed. Any zombies would be doomed in their position. Leuca, Elpida, even all the others, with Pheiri to protect them, would be nothing more than meat, for sport and—

Telokopolis is forever.

Ooni felt a spark catch in her gut.

Ilyusha was talking: “Got me once with her magnet bullshit tricks but I’m dialled in for that bitch now! Won’t get me twice! Won’t get me again! Come on, Ooni! Come—”

“We,” Ooni echoed, nodding. “You and … and me! Right, right, okay. Okay! Okay, Illy!”

Ilyusha flexed the toes of her taloned foot. “Let go?”

Ooni released Ilyusha’s talons. Ilyusha lowered her foot toward the band of metal around Ooni’s stomach, gritting her teeth with the difficulty of aiming; Ooni grabbed Illy’s toes again, guiding the sharp cutting edges around the band of black metal. She sucked in her gut as much as possible, pressing herself against the back wall of the little chamber, to make room for Ilyusha’s claws. Even with her best efforts Ooni still ended up with Illy’s thick bionic toes digging into her belly. One wrong jerk and Ilyusha’s talons would spill Ooni’s intestines.

Ilyusha grunted and strained, clenching her foot, bearing down on the metal bar with her claws. Crimson edges bit into the black steel; Ilyusha wiggled her foot from side to side, working the notch deeper and wider. Ilyusha relaxed, strained again, relaxed a second time — then flexed so hard that her whole limbless torso rose up from the ground, arching with her skull as support, as she exerted every muscle in her bionic leg.

Snikt!

The metal band snapped with a loud twang. Ilyusha collapsed, her foot slamming into Ooni’s abdomen, knocking the wind from Ooni’s lungs; luckily her claws were already curled inward. Half the metal band flew across the room, somehow broken from the wall with the tension of the cut — it bounced away with a deafening chorus of metal-on-metal, clang-clang-clang. The second half of the band jabbed Ooni in the gut as she scrambled forward.

She was free, and she wasn’t wasting a single second.

Ooni didn’t even pause to thank Ilyusha. Winded from the kick, head spinning with fresh nausea, adrenaline and terror pumping in her veins, Ooni shot forward on her hands and knees, crawling across the room to the little table with all the equipment and Ilyusha’s severed limbs.

“Arm first!” Ilyusha was shouting. “Arm first, right arm! Right arm!”

Ooni grabbed the edge of the table and hauled herself upright. She didn’t reach for Ilyusha’s limbs. That could wait.

Ilyusha didn’t know Kuro like Ooni did.

Ooni grabbed Ilyusha’s automatic shotgun. Her hands shook so hard she almost dropped it; the weapon weighed a lot more than she expected, bulky and awkward and hard to get her grip around. She slapped at the breech to check the shells — still loaded! — then made sure the safety was off. She jammed the weapon against her shoulder, then twisted to face the opening which Kuro had ripped in the wall of the little black room.

Ilyusha was screaming: “What are you doing, you reptile fuck!? Get my limbs, get my fucking arm! Put my arm back—”

The makeshift doorway was empty, a wide black void fringed with frozen streamers of metal, like molten rock in black seawater.

Ooni kept the shotgun trained on the opening. She braced the weapon against the crook of her arm as best she could, and took her left hand off the forward grip. Eyes on the gap, ears tuning out Ilyusha’s screaming anger, she groped for one of the two comms headsets next to the guns. She found one, fumbled it over her head, pressed the mic to her mouth, and toggled the activation switch.

“Kaga? Kaga!? Elpida? Victoria? Leuca!” she stammered. “Anybody there, Pheiri! Pheiri, record—”

Ping-ping!

Pheiri’s wordless reply dinged in her ear — emergency acknowledged. The comms network was still online. This headset was still connected.

Ooni felt herself almost sag with relief, but she couldn’t afford that, not yet. She blinked hard, eyes on the dark opening in the wall before her, both hands back on the gun, stock against her shoulder.

A voice crackled in her ear a split-second later — Kagami: “Ooni! Where the fuck— no, don’t waste your breath, I’m tracing the signal. Is Ilyusha—”

“Listen!” Ooni hissed. “Kuro is using magnetic fields to move the material of the walls around. The black metal is a ferrofluid. She’s coming back any moment, you need to get that, you need to understand! Ferrofluids, magnetics in her suit. Illy’s here but she’s hurt and Kuro will be—”

The comms cut out with a burst of static.

Ooni pulled the trigger.

The recoil almost dislocated her shoulder; Ilyusha made it look easy with her bionic arms, but the weapon was not designed for unaugmented human beings. The impact slammed the breath from Ooni’s lungs and threatened to jerk her aim off-target.

Kuro appeared in the opening a split-second later — a grey-on-grey blur moving at high speed, returning at the same dead sprint with which she had left the room. The burst of static had given Ooni the warning she needed, the near-field interference from Kuro’s suit arriving a moment earlier than Kuro herself.

This time, Kuro wasn’t wearing the tomb metal.

The early shotgun blast hit Kuro like a brick to the gut, slamming her to an instant halt, jerking the suit back through the opening. Ooni clamped her muscles and pumped the trigger — boom! boom! boom! — chasing Kuro out of the room with round after round, knocking the suit away until it was nothing more than a shadow in the outer darkness. The recoil felt like being punched in the shoulder over and over by an iron fist. Ooni screamed and kept firing and—

And then Kuro was gone.

The final shotgun blast caught the black walls beyond. No Kuro, no armour, no trace.

A moment of silence fell, filled with Ooni’s ragged breathing and the distant static of the hurricane. Her right shoulder was on fire and her head rang like a cracked bell.

Ilyusha broke into a war cry, down on the floor. “Yeeeeeah! Fuck her! Get fucked! Fuck! Fuuuuuck!”

Ooni lowered the shotgun in numb fingers, wincing at the pulped bruise on her shoulder. She tapped the comms headset, but the line was dead, blocked by jamming from Kuro’s suit. Kuro hadn’t expected Ooni to do that, or she would have simply trashed the headsets. Or maybe this was what she wanted, drawing more victims into her web.

“You did it, Ooni! Hahahahaaaa!” Ilyusha was cackling, grinning, kicking out with her one leg. “You fucked up that shit-eating bitch cunt—”

“No, I didn’t.” Ooni shook her head. “I didn’t. Those rounds didn’t even penetrate her suit, all I did was knock her around. And she wanted it. She wanted that. She wanted me to do that, I knew she was going to come back, I had to do it! She could have armoured herself in the black metal, she could have killed me with a hail of bullets, but she didn’t. She’s playing with her food. This is just another game. We’re not— we’re not free.”

Ilyusha’s face fell, then twisted with rage, lips pulling back from her teeth. “Fuck!”

Ooni put down the shotgun and lifted Ilyusha’s detached right arm from the table. The limb was incredibly heavy and awkward to carry, especially with the fresh bruise blossoming deep in Ooni’s shoulder; the claws would easily slice through her t-shirt and skin if she brushed against them at the wrong angle. She hefted the arm and staggered over to Ilyusha.

“Yeah! Yeah!” Ilyusha said. “Arm, do it! Do it!”

Ooni fell to her knees at Ilyusha’s side, cradling the arm, turning the exposed joint toward the open socket.

“R-right. Right. We need to get you back together, Illy. We need to get you back together. I can’t do this alone.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Good answer, Ooni. Very good answer. It even seemed to help Kuro! Though perhaps that wasn’t the best outcome. Oh dear.

Now it’s time for rebuilding Ilyusha, like lego. Let’s hope she snaps together just as easily as she came apart. (She did not come apart easily. Not at all.)

I hope you enjoyed the chapter, dear readers! This one was another prime example of the characters not following my outlines; we are wildly beyond my plans at this point, accelerating down into the unknown depths of the tomb. Both Ooni and Kuro totally tore up my plans and went their own ways, and I am powerless to stop them. As always, I do hope it was fun, and that you’re all enjoying reading Necroepilogos just as much as I am enjoying writing it. Onward we go, with the last(???) parts of arc 13! (I have no idea how many more chapter before the end of the arc, so we will find out together!)

Also! Just a quicker reminder, for those who may have missed this: Necroepilogos is taking an extended break, for 2 weeks, and the next chapter will be up on the 27th of February. This has been planned for a while, I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s why I’ve kept writing for a while without the usual breaks. I didn’t want to have to do this, but I don’t have any choice, unfortunately. So! Things will be back to normal soon, and I will see you then!

I had to extend the short break for one additional week! I’m very sorry about that, but I didn’t have a choice, so please bear with me for another week. Necroepilogos will return as normal on the 6th of March!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And, as always, thank you for reading my little story about zombiegirls and spooky techno-tombs and weird bionic ladies. I am still having an absolute blast with every single chapter of Necroepilogos; this story is wildly fun to write, and I have so much more to explore in this setting, so much more story to tell, from so many strange and scary zombie girls. See you all (and Ooni, we hope) next chapter! Until then!

Content Warnings

Head wounds/concussion
Eye wounds
PTSD
Torture

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ooni woke slowly, in fitful halts and choking lapses, to the muffled static of the storm, an iron grip around her belly, and a painful throbbing in her head.

For the span of several dozen laboured breaths, Ooni stared at the black metal floor between her own outstretched legs. Each and every beat of her heart pounded on the drum of her skull with a dull thump of oblivion. Her vision blurred and swirled. She grew dizzy for a time, tossed about on the tides of her own bloody pulse, until the dizziness receded; but then it would return in a slow creep, before pulling back again. Ooni’s body was a rocky beach beneath the cold waves of a winter ocean. When that metaphor entered her mind, Ooni could almost see that winter-bound shore in her memory — the heavy grey skies, the dead grass on a headland, a line of withered seaweed on the rocks below, a warm arm around her shoulders. A memory of true life, shaken loose by a head wound. She struggled to hold onto the memory, but it slipped away as the waves scoured her empty.

The static of the storm went on and on and on. The throbbing and the spinning and the static seemed eternal.

Ooni was sitting on the floor, with her back rounded against a wall, sagging forward from her hips. An uncomfortable support around her stomach kept her from slumping face-first onto the black metal.

She couldn’t remember where she was, or how she’d gotten there.

Ooni knew she was concussed. She had been concussed before, more than once. Nanomachine biology would recover from this condition quicker than a live human being, though there was nothing Ooni could do but wait and breathe.

Time trickled over Ooni’s body. She must have passed into unconsciousness again, because she roused to find that she had drooled a little, her cold saliva pooling on the floor. After a while, perhaps minutes, maybe an hour, she grew used to the dizziness and the pain, though she could not tell if they had receded. Ooni realised there was another sound, beside her own instinctive breathing and the far-off roar of the hurricane — a gentle metallic ticking and scratching and clicking, like somebody nearby was working on a delicate machine.

Ooni blinked several times to clear her vision, but the darkness was near total. When she tried to sit upright she discovered the source of the grip around her belly. A smooth band of seamless black metal encircled her waist at the narrowest point, exactly the same colourless void as the floor, pressing against the fabric of her tomb-grey t-shirt.

She was pinned to the wall with a metal bracket.

“Unnhh … uhhn?”

Ooni pawed at the bracket, but her hands were weak and the metal was strong. She pushed herself into a sitting position with the support of her booted feet. The effort sent a wave of dizziness and nausea washing upward from her guts and downward from her throbbing skull. She closed her eyes for a long moment to weather the storm, gasping and whining, leaning against the wall at her back. A deep chill seeped out of the metal and through her clothes, invading her shivering flesh.

When the pain and dizziness had passed, Ooni opened her eyes and raised her head.

A grey-white carapace helmet lay just beyond her boots. The visor was shattered. The forehead had been crushed inward.

Her helmet? But how—

Kuro!

Ooni jerked forward, trying to lurch to her feet, forgetting the metal band around her waist; the bracket dug into her guts and forced the wind from her lungs. She sagged forward with pain, head pounding with pressure, sobbing dry and breathless. She quickly swallowed her sobs and tore at the bracket; she keened through her teeth and pulled until her fingers felt like they might fracture. But the metal would not give, it was part of the wall, or else buried too deep for her to dislodge. She pulled herself upright again, panting rapidly, sweat beading all over her skin, eyes thrown wide.

She was in a small, circular, black room; the floor, the walls, the curved dome of the ceiling — all were made from the same featureless, seamless, smooth, black tomb-metal. There were no doors or hatches or holes, no way in or out. The only interruption to the perfect inner surface of the room was a long table at the opposite end, also made of black tomb-metal. The table looked like it had been extruded from the wall and floor, with curved, half-melted edges, and simple flat sides instead of distinct legs.

Kuro was standing at the table, with her back toward Ooni.

Eight feet of silver-grey powered armour, blocky, angular, and functional. The suit bristled with weaponry set into every surface — short-range guns sunk-mounted on her arms, digital weapons inside her gauntlets, mechanical braces on her shoulders carrying plasma rifles, and the heavy weapon she kept mounted on her back, currently folded down and away. The massive reactor pack on Kuro’s back whispered and hummed as it drank the air through armoured ventilation grilles.

Kuro no longer wore the outer layer of black tomb-metal, which had been wrapped around her armour like a second skin. This was the Kuro Ooni knew.

She was holding up a long mechanical object of some kind, poking at it with her other hand. Ooni didn’t comprehend what she was looking at for a moment. The object was a slender mass of black and red, meaningless curves and angles, blurred by the pain in Ooni’s head and the lack of illumination in the room. The only light came from the tiny overspill from within Kuro’s suit reactor. A living human being would have been blind in this darkness.

Three similar long objects lay on the table in front of Kuro; beside the table was a pile of carelessly discarded carapace armour plates, including the chest-plate from Ooni’s armour, which still bore the crescent-and-double-line symbol of Telokopolis, green paint catching what minimal light it could. At the end of the table a set of weapons sat in a line, next to a pair of comms headsets — a sidearm, a trio of grenades, a submachine gun, and a big automatic shotgun. The first three belonged to Ooni, but the shotgun—

Ooni lowered her eyes.

Ilyusha was lying about ten feet to Ooni’s left, on her back, eyes closed. Sticky wet blood was smeared all over her face and matted into her hair. She still wore her bullet-proof vest. She wasn’t breathing, but that didn’t mean anything with zombies.

Ilyusha had been dismembered.

One of her bionic legs, both of her bionic arms, and the full length of her bionic tail had all been pulled from their sockets. Ooni stared into the exposed socket of Ilyusha’s left shoulder — a spheroid cradle of black bio-plastic and hardened circuity in bloody crimson. Soft membranes fluttered deep inside, wet and red, leaking clear plasma from the violated joint.

Ooni realised what Kuro was holding — Ilyusha’s left arm.

Ooni felt herself begin to withdraw, seeking the safety of Telokopolis within the confines of her own mind, all other thoughts receding behind a thick grey fog. She fought the impulse for a while; she told herself that such surrender would disappoint Elpida, would disappoint Leuca, and bring shame upon the very ideals of Telokopolis to which she now clung. But those ideals turned to dust, as grey and hazy as everything else. What point was there in struggling against the inevitable? Fighting would only make the pain worse, force Ooni closer to the surface of herself, to feel the torment all the sharper. At least if she pretended she was not here, she would not feel the bite of Kuro’s teeth and the invasive probing of Kuro’s fingers quite as much. Fighting would avail her nothing. She was stapled to a wall and stripped out of her armour; her companions were elsewhere or defeated or dead; she was an apostate and traitor, at the mercy of the one most of the terrifying members of the Sisterhood of the Skull.

Telokopolis had been a brief and brilliant illusion, but nothing more.

Ooni felt herself dwindle to a single cold point. A moment longer, and she would be extinguished.

On the other side of the small black room, Kuro lowered the severed bionic arm back to the table with a faint scrape of Ilyusha’s red claws.

Click-buzz. Kuro’s external broadcast speakers.

“Holding your breath won’t help,” Kuro said. Her high-pitched, airy, girlish voice filled the small black chamber. “I can hear that you’re awake—”

“Telokopolis is forever.”

Ooni had not meant to speak; it was as if some alien force had squeezed her lungs and gripped her tongue, to make her say the words. The dying ember in her chest flared with sudden life again. She sobbed once, swallowed a second, then bit her own lips until she tasted blood. Her eyes found the gentle green glint of the crescent-and-double-line on the discarded chestplate of her armour, shadows threatening to swallow it up.

Kuro turned around.

The faceplate of Kuro’s helmet was a blank grey slab. The grinning skull painted in the middle of her chestplate had been added to, with fangs and horns and additional eyes.

Seconds stretched on, filled with the distant static and whipping winds of the hurricane. At first Ooni whimpered, fighting against her sobs, feeling the tears running down her cheeks, kicking with her boots as if she could somehow push herself through the wall, scrabbling at the metal band around her belly with both hands, until her fingers were sore and her nails broken and bloodied with fruitless effort. Moments became minutes; Ooni sobbed out those words again, holding them up like a shield — “Telokopolis is forever, Telokopolis is— forever— Telo-telo-t-t-Telokopolis is f-forever—”

But as minutes lengthened and Kuro’s silence continued unbroken, Ooni realised something was not right. Her sobs dried up, her words fell quiet, and her terror coiled back, held briefly in check by bewilderment.

Kuro liked to play with her food, but Kuro wasn’t playing.

And Kuro was alone.

Ooni had to swallow several times before she could talk. She spluttered, stammered some meaningless sounds, then said: “Uh … where … where are … Yolanda, and Cantrelle? I thought I would be … t-taken to them.”

Click-buzz.

A long pause. Kuro left her exterior broadcast line open, without speaking.

“I … I mean,” Ooni added. “If Yola ordered you to just kill me, then—”

“Yolanda and Cantrelle went on ahead,” said Kuro.

More silence. Was this bait? Ooni had no choice but to bite.

“W-without … you?”

Kuro didn’t answer. Seconds ticked by. Ooni expected Kuro to close the external broadcast line with a soft click, but none came.

Through the dregs of a concussion and the terror of impending torture, Ooni realised this situation was upside down. Ooni should have found herself bound and gagged and tossed at Yolanda’s feet, or already being skinned and eaten alive by Kuro, or simply dead, waking up in another resurrection coffin, decades or centuries apart from Leuca once again, never to find Telokopolis a second time.

Kuro had never acted like this before, not towards her, not towards any other members of the Sisterhood, not that Ooni knew. Silences, stalking, savouring the fear of her prey, whether for food or simple pleasure — certainly, often, always.

But Kuro was talking to her.

Ooni was baffled, but she knew she had to keep Kuro talking.

“Did they … ” She swallowed, rough and hard. “Yola and Cantrelle, I mean. Did they leave you behind?”

Kuro’s helmet turned to the featureless wall, as if looking at something far away. “I’m playing at being rearguard.”

“P-playing … at? You mean, not … not rearguard for real?”

Kuro did not respond.

A strange thought crept into Ooni’s mind, a possibility she never would have considered during her days in the Sisterhood, let alone risked voicing out loud. But Kuro was acting in a way she never had before, as if she had been replaced, or changed, or had never been Kuro at all.

“H-how did you— uh!” Ooni flinched when Kuro looked back at her, faced by the blank plate of Kuro’s helmet. Ooni took a moment to find her words again. “How did you do that, back there, with the walls and the black metal? Have you … made a deal with a … a Necromancer?”

“No,” Kuro answered instantly. “Don’t insult me, Ooni.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Ooni hurried to say, making a placating gesture with both hands. Kuro’s voice had not sounded angry, but Ooni did not wish to risk her wrath. “I-I just thought, that kind of control. When you came out of the wall, I thought you were a Necromancer or something, or— or— not really you, or … ”

Kuro reached toward the nearest wall with her gauntlet and touched the black metal with a soft click of her armoured fingers.

When she withdrew her hand, the metal followed.

Black filaments adhered to Kuro’s fingertips, stretching out from the wall like loops of hot tar, first sagging toward the floor, then pulling taut as Kuro dragged them further. With a flick of her wrist, Kuro detached the lines of flowing black goo from the wall; the separate strands waved in the air like seaweed in the shallows. Kuro twitched her fingers and the strands suddenly leapt together, combining into a single shard of black, long and straight, with a sharp point at the end.

Kuro held the slender metal pick in her massive grey gauntlet. Ooni stared at the point and tried not to shake. Kuro tilted her helmet. Ooni knew Kuro was thinking dark thoughts.

Kuro was going to ram that spike through Ooni’s eyeball and into—

Kuro dropped the metal spike. It hit the floor without a sound, absorbed back into the black metal, like shadow joining shadow.

“Ferrofluid.”

“ … w-what?” Ooni looked back up at Kuro’s blank faceplate. Kuro did not repeat herself. “Ferrofluid, right, yes. Uh— I-I know what that means, magnetic fluid, right, yes—”

“The tomb metal,” Kuro said. “The black stuff. It’s a kind of ferrofluid. It’s held in place by internal fields, projected from the nanomachines themselves. The tomb is a magnetic sandcastle.”

“ … okay.”

Kuro raised the fingers of her right gauntlet again. “Magnetic actuators in my suit. Code injection to take control of the fields. Just have to know how.”

Ooni shook her head. “The Sisterhood has been inside tombs before. You never … you never did this before. Were you … hiding this?”

“I didn’t know how. Not until last night. Night? Is it night?”

Ooni blinked several times before realising that Kuro had asked her a direct question, and was waiting for a reply. “I don’t know. Sorry.”

“Mm.”

Ooni was terrified that the show was over; Kuro would lose interest now she had revealed her bizarre little trick. Ooni had to keep her talking, no matter what. Perhaps rescue was already on the way. Perhaps Kuro would present an opening that Ilyusha could use — but Ilyusha was in pieces, and Ooni was alone. Nobody was coming. Telokopolis was just—

Telokopolis is forever.

Ooni swallowed, and said: “But how— how did you learn to—”

“A ghost.”

Ooni paused. “I’m sorry?”

“A ghost taught me how,” Kuro said. Her voice crackled, as if she was breathing hard inside her helmet. She raised a hand and gestured at the ceiling. “This storm, it’s full of ghosts.”

Ooni didn’t know what to say. She opened her mouth anyway, hurrying to say something, anything, anything at all to keep Kuro talking.

But then Kuro suddenly turned toward the wall on the right side of the chamber, striding away from Ooni and Ilyusha.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Kuro said. Then she stepped through the wall, as if the black metal was nothing but a layer of falling water.

Kuro was gone. The room was plunged into near-complete darkness, buried beneath metal and storm.

Ooni let out a quivering breath, swallowed a dry sob, and struggled to hold back a tidal wave of fear, whimpering softly. Why had she not retreated into herself when she had the chance? Her mouth could have spewed any lies she needed to beg Kuro for her life — that she had left the Sisterhood under duress, that she intended to act as a spy, that she was sorry, that she wished for the symbol of the skull to be carved back into her flesh once more. But instead she had shown defiance, she had refused surrender. She had pledged herself to Telokopolis anew.

But she did not want to be a martyr. She wanted to be safe.

She had to get out of here, had to find a way to free herself, but the metal band around her belly was so hard and strong she couldn’t shift it even with all the strength in her hands and—

Ilyusha’s eyes snapped open, staring right at Ooni, blood-pale circles in the dark.

“Illy!” Ooni almost wailed, catching herself at the last moment, in case Kuro might hear. She tried to reach out toward Ilyusha, but the gap between them was too wide. “Illy, you’re alive! Okay, okay, we can, we can … ”

Amid a mask of drying crimson, Ilyusha’s lips peeled back from clenched teeth. Bloodshot eyes blazed with fury. She twitched her single remaining bionic leg against the floor, claws scraping on the metal; but she couldn’t move herself, not at that angle, not with only one leg.

“Put my limbs back in!” she spat. “Ooni! Put my limbs back in!”

Ooni pulled at the metal band around her gut. “I— I can’t, I’m trapped here, I can’t get out of this!”

“Try harder!”

Ooni tried harder. She pushed and pulled at the metal band, then felt for where it joined with the wall, but she could not find even an inch of give. She tried to pull her hips upward through the bracket, but the opening was far too narrow. She tried to wriggle her ribcage downward through the metal, but that was impossible too.

“I-I can’t!” she said. “Illy, I’m sorry. I can’t pull myself out of here, I’d have to break my pelvis just to—”

“Then break it!” Ilyusha hissed, spitting between her teeth, face a mask of rage.

“How?!” Ooni wailed. “I don’t have the strength to do that! I can’t—”

“I’ll fucking break your pelvis for you, you reptile fuck!” Ilyusha spat. “Get my arms back on! Get them from the table! Put them back in the sockets!” Ilyusha kicked at the metal floor with her one foot, claws extended and clutching air, but she couldn’t move, just wriggling on the spot.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Shut up! Shut! Up!”

“I-I’m sorry, I—”

“Get me closer!” Ilyusha raised her leg and waggled it in Ooni’s direction. “Might be able to cut you free! Grab! Grab!”

Ilyusha strained as far as she could. Ooni did the same, both arms outstretched, compressing her belly against the metal until her insides were screaming. Her fingertips brushed one razor-sharp metal claw. Ilyusha grunted and stretched and—

Ilyusha yanked her leg away, went limp on the floor, and closed her eyes.

“Bitch is coming back!” she hissed.

Ooni collapsed against the wall again, panting for breath.

A moment later Kuro strode back into the room. She entered from a different direction to the one she had taken, appearing through the wall as if walking through a sheen of water. The metal closed behind her without a hint of whatever lay beyond, leaving the seamless circular room unblemished once again.

Kuro stood still for a moment, staring down at Ooni and Ilyusha. Ooni held her breath, expecting retribution to be swift and final.

But then Kuro stepped over to Ooni, moved the ruined carapace helmet aside, and sat down in front of her.

Sitting cross-legged in a carapace suit was difficult enough; in powered armour the process seemed almost impossible, but Kuro made it look easy and natural. Ooni did not understand the details, but she knew from her time in the Sisterhood that Kuro lived inside the armour; she was physically bonded with it in some way, reliant on it for her biological processes. She sat down cross-legged as if wearing nothing more awkward than simple cloth.

Ooni was so shocked; she didn’t even flinch when Kuro reached for her face.

Cold grey gauntlet fingertips touched Ooni’s brow, then ran around the orbit of her right eye, pressing cold metal to fragile bone.

Ooni began to shake as she realised what was happening. Kuro had grown bored of her, or was more interested in moving on to the next phase of her usual games, and was about to hurt Ooni very badly, with her fingers in Ooni’s face. Ooni resisted the urge to screw her eyes shut as tears brimmed against her lids; that would only make it worse, inviting Kuro to yank her eyes open and stick her fingers into the sockets. Kuro’s blunt armoured fingertips brushed across Ooni’s nose and down to her lips. One questing digit pressed against her cheek. Ooni braced for her teeth to be broken, or perhaps her jaw. She whimpered, and knew that was a mistake. Don’t show fear, never show fear, it makes Kuro so much worse.

Kuro removed her hand.

Click-buzz.

Ooni stared at Kuro’s empty grey faceplate. The heavy static of the storm was joined by the gentle static of Kuro’s open line. The moment ended in a soft click as the line lapsed shut.

Then, Kuro opened her helmet.

The blank faceplate slid upward into the armour, revealing a glowing recess inside, flooding Ooni with gentle yellow-red light. Kuro’s head was cradled by feather-soft layers of white bio-plastic membrane, as if held amid the diaphanous folds of an oceanic mollusc. Her face was briefly obscured behind layers of holographic readout, but those swiftly vanished, their lights fluttering off, leaving nothing between Ooni and Kuro but the shadows and the air.

In all her time in the Sisterhood of the Skull, Ooni had rarely seen Kuro open her helmet. Kuro made no special secret of her face, but she preferred to stay sealed within her armour as much as possible.

Kuro had always looked weird to Ooni, a human monster from the far future. Her skin was neon pink, dyed like plastic, patterned with deep orange spirals, and oddly poreless. Her facial features were small and delicate, with a neat little nose and bow-shaped lips. Her hair was a strange bronze-orange colour, like frozen rust, swept back in a smooth wave, vanishing into the feathery folds inside the helmet. Her eyes were both bionic, but of a kind that Ooni had never encountered elsewhere in the nanomachine ecosystem — red sclerae with no irises, just huge black pupils in the middle of each eye, flickering with tiny lenses.

Ooni dared not speak first.

Kuro said: “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Without her helmet and the comms, Kuro’s voice was sweet and melodic, but clipped and short; she let words trail off into murmurs, as if growing unsure of them the moment they left her mouth. Her teeth were pointed and made of metal, shiny chrome behind soft lips.

“Um … ” Ooni answered eventually. “Ghosts? I don’t know. Maybe.”

Kuro nodded slowly, her helmet unmoving, her head brushing against the delicate membranes inside.

“I was twenty one,” she said — then paused, eyes wandering up and to the left. “Or … maybe I was twenty two. It’s so long ago, I struggle to remember. But it was the year after the floods at the coast, when the trailing edge of the factory got washed away. I remember that sight, all those millions of tons of metal, washed downstream and out to sea … so much … waste … ”

Kuro trailed off. Ooni swallowed; Kuro’s eyes jerked back to Ooni.

“Twenty one or twenty two,” Kuro said. “It doesn’t matter. Does it?”

Ooni shook her head. “No. No, it doesn’t matter … ”

Kuro nodded. “Twenty one, then. That was the age I killed my first human being.” Kuro lowered her eyes to a spot on the floor, lost in places Ooni could not follow. “I’d killed plenty of factory jacks by then. Maybe one or two dozen. I’d lost count. Started when I was seventeen, ish. Each of those kills just blurred into the next, because the factory jacks were so … ” Kuro sighed. “They felt pain. I knew they felt pain, because if I wanted to kill one, I had to rip it off the factory systems first. I had to dump its log into my local terminal so I could lead it off somewhere quiet, else the factory would detect a malfunctioning part and send the recycling bots, and then I would be interrupted. Not that they cared, but it was a bother. So I always had all the readouts, I knew the jacks felt pain, but they never reacted to anything I did to them. A factory jack doesn’t complain, doesn’t scream, doesn’t do anything. Just stands there and takes it. Once or twice I even got bored and let them go, rather than finishing them off. And you know what they did? They just shuffled back to their places in the factory, dragging their guts along behind them. Recycled for parts an hour or two later. It was … boring. Boring, boring, boring. Just nothing.”

Kuro fell quiet for a moment. Ooni wasn’t sure if she should respond. Eventually Kuro raised her eyes and frowned.

“I couldn’t kill an actual human being, you understand?” Kuro said. “You understand?”

Ooni swallowed and nodded. This seemed to satisfy.

“There were eighty million jacks in the factory,” Kuro went on, “and more being spat out every hour of every day. But in Factory Head there were only three thousand actual human beings. Every single one of us was chipped, tracked, catalogued, all that, traced and monitored and looked after all the time. I could hack the system to hide myself from Factory Head, move around unrecorded, hide other people, do whatever I wanted. And I did, several times. Did things, stole stuff, went places people weren’t meant to go, though everybody had forgotten why.” Her lips curled upward at the corners, in fond nostalgia — then collapsed back into a frown. “But a missing person? A body?” Kuro shook her head. “Impossible. Every human being at Factory Head was of incalculable value. There were no ‘undesirables’, no ‘subhumans’. I could not have gotten away with it. Had to go elsewhere.” She began to nod, taking a deep breath. “Had to go kill a hiver.”

Ooni nodded along. She had no idea what Kuro was talking about, but nodding seemed the right thing to do.

Kuro carried on, eyes drifting aside as she continued.

“I started by stealing a lifter, for transport, from the factory systems. Could have taken a bike or a real hopper pod, but those would have drawn more attention from actual people. So, pulled a lifter, erased all the logging. Didn’t tell anybody where I was going, or that I was going at all. I had to pull a complex hack, make the systems think I was in my quarters for two whole days. Had a circle of fuckbuddies and special friends, kept them out with a lie about being deep in meditation. Once I was ready, I had to pilot the lifter past the perimeter on manual.” Kuro’s lips curled upward again. “Nobody had touched the perimeter systems for decades. All those guns and walls and anti-air bubbles, all pointing outward, not fired a shot in half a century. Minefields, hidden bunker complexes, whole legions of combat bots on standby. But I made it through alright. Didn’t wake up any killer robots. Got pinged by a concerned Def-Syst Agent, all worried about a human heading out alone. But I hacked it and made it not see me. That was fine. Then I went north.”

Kuro fell silent, staring at the black metal wall, her strange red eyes very far away. Ooni swallowed. Kuro still didn’t respond.

“North?” Ooni risked.

“North, yeah,” Kuro said softly. “North. Into the empty. Did three hours on manual just for the hell of it, then set the lifter to auto and drifted off in the driver’s seat. There wasn’t much to see, just scrub and bush, red soil for mile after mile, low hills. After a few hours I got a good view of the coral mountains to the west, but you could see those well enough from Factory Head.” Kuro shrugged, the shoulders of her powered armour rising and falling with a gentle whine. “That wasn’t what I was there for. I was there to find a hiver.” Kuro took a deep breath and sat up straighter, towering over Ooni inside her armour. “Rode the lifter for about twelve hours when I realised I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. Nobody from Factory Head had come that far north in generations. I started to feel … odd. Like I was a space traveller or something, out there in the stars. What was I expecting? Hivers just wandering around, ripe for the picking?” She shook her head. “I didn’t go far enough to see the hives themselves. I wasn’t that stupid, or that desperate. It would be another … thirty years? Mm. Another thirty years before I’d see the hives themselves. I just wanted to catch a stray.”

Kuro took a deep breath and let it out slowly; Ooni realised with numb shock that Kuro’s lips were trembling.

“It was dawn when I spotted them.” Kuro’s voice trembled too, just like her lips. “I assumed they were out foraging, or hunting wild game, something like that. A fool’s assumption. The hives didn’t need to hunt and gather. But I thought … hunting, right, because they all had these spears made of extruded chitin. I thought they were just bone or something. They were standing on a low ridge, silhouetted against the sky.” Kuro raised a gauntlet and gestured at nothing. “They didn’t have to fear predators. They didn’t fear anything. This was their domain, and they’d seen nothing like me for decades.”

Kuro’s eyes were wide. When she stopped speaking, her lips hung open.

Ooni said: “And?”

Kuro swallowed. “When I looked at them through the lifter’s cameras, I was … confused.” Kuro squinted and shook her head inside her helmet, as if reliving the moment. “They didn’t look like the pictures and videos of hivers I’d seen. I don’t mean that I’d found something else, they were hivers, I wasn’t mistaken. But they just weren’t … weren’t what I’d expected to see, and I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. They were standing upright, backs straight, expressions composed, watching me approach in the lifter. They had this mottled skin, red and white, with fur down their backs and all over the rear of their legs and arms. It took me a long time to realise why they looked so odd to me.” Kuro suddenly turned her head and stared directly into Ooni’s eyes. “Do you know why?”

Ooni shook her head. “No. No, I-I don’t.”

“I’d never seen an unaugmented human before.”

“Oh … ”

“Everyone at Factory Head was augmented. I had two extra arms, skin art, some bionics. Everybody was covered with them. The most recent birth was seventeen years ago, so I’d never seen a fresh baby, either. The factory jacks, they were encrusted with machinery too. But the hivers?” Kuro’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Nothing. Untouched. Natural.”

Ooni stayed silent. Kuro trailed off, then sat up straight again, nodding to herself.

“I drove the lifter right at the hivers on the ridge. Straight on, charging them. They scattered. I picked one to run down. Not the slowest or the weakest, that wasn’t what I wanted. I picked one who ran fast. A female, young, fit. If hivers were humans, she would have been in her twenties. I turned the lifter and ran her down. I’d planned to bump her with the front of the machine, just enough to knock the wind out of her and keep her down for long enough so I could get to her. But she turned at the last second and levelled that spear. Bone against metal, I thought. Or I didn’t think. Ha … ”

Kuro smiled to herself, flashing metal teeth, eyes distant.

“The spear wasn’t bone, it was hiver chitin. She rammed the end into the ground and let the momentum of the lifter carry it onto the point. Tore through the front bumper like a blowtorch through butter. Punched the chassis, went right into the engine block, then out into the driver’s compartment. Missed me by a foot or two. I panicked, slewed the lifter, hit her with the side, harder than I’d intended to. Broke one of her legs. She went down, but the lifter was broken too.”

Kuro let out a huge sigh. The smile was gone.

“I’d had a plan, you see. Tranq the hiver, pull her onto the lifter, then speed back south. Find somewhere quiet, wait for her to wake up, then do to her the kinds of things I’d done to the factory jacks. But this time with screaming and … and … and all of it.” Kuro’s eyes were wide and staring, her breath ragged, almost panting. “But she’d wrecked the lifter, and she was screaming, and … and when I jumped down out of the lifter … ” She shook her head. “We’d always been taught the hivers were small, stunted, muties. That’s how they made them look in all the old footage. And they were short and small, that’s true. She … ” Kuro faltered. “She was no more than four feet tall. But she was muscled like a crocodile. Must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. Dense bones, lots of muscle. Long hair, real long. Purple, like oil on water. She was beautiful. And she’d wrecked my ride. She’d already won.”

Kuro went silent. The silence stretched on, filled with the static of the storm beyond the tomb.

“Did you … ?”

Kuro looked right at Ooni again. “I couldn’t do it. Not in the way I wanted. She was a human, you understand? Hivers, they were just human beings. Different. Drifted far from factory stock. Eusocial, whatever. But they were humans. She, the hiver, she fought like a human. I didn’t expect that, and I wasn’t ready for it. All I’d done were factory jacks. She fought like a cornered animal, ‘cos that’s what we all are. Cornered animals. And I couldn’t do it. She spat and hissed and bit. Got my hands around her throat, but then she … she spoke. Spat words at me. Insults, probably. But words.” Kuro shook her head again, cushioned inside her armour. “Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it.”

“But … you did kill her.”

Kuro pulled her lips back, hesitant and jerking, as if in memory of a snarl. The expression subsided. “Mm. Left her on the ground. Got my gun from the lifter. Shot her in the head. Felt like nothing. By that point the other hivers were sprinting back, waving their spears. I shot at them to drive them away. They followed me for a week, back south. That was … a different story. Too long. I made it back, but … ”

“But?”

Kuro eased back, growing calm again, eyes still far away. “The hive remembered me. That’s how it worked. Not those ones, those specific hivers, but the hive itself. The hive had a long memory. That’s how I died in the end. Hive got me. Revenge for a murder.”

Kuro lapsed into a heavy silence, then suddenly jerked upright and stared at Ooni, eyes wide and manic.

“Last night, I saw her ghost,” Kuro said. “The hiver woman I killed, an eternity ago.”

“T-that’s— okay, Kuro, okay—”

“She came to me. The others couldn’t see her, not even Yolanda. I thought she was a hallucination, but she was real. She spoke to me in that hiver language, and this time I understood every word. She gave me the code structure for this.” Kuro tapped the black metal floor with a fingertip of her gauntlet. “Told me the secrets of moving the ferrofluid. And then she forgave me. Imagine that, Ooni. Forgiving a serial killer. Forgiving your own murderer.”

Ooni expected Kuro to laugh; the old Kuro would have laughed, cruel and sadistic, hissing with static inside her helmet.

This Kuro just stared, and somehow that was worse.

Ooni struggled for words. “I … I don’t—”

Kuro leaned forward. Ooni cringed away, pressing herself against the wall, trying to turn her head aside. Kuro reached out and took Ooni by the chin, gently but firmly, the strength of her suit impossible to resist. She turned Ooni until their eyes met again. Her lips were parted, showing those metal teeth.

“This storm is full of ghosts,” Kuro said. “They’re all around us, all the time, watching us, inside us. Ghosts, Ooni. Ghosts.”

“Okay, okay, okay, I believe you, I believe—”

“They want things from us. I don’t understand what, or why. Why would my first victim forgive me? Why would she think that was something I wanted? Why would she do that? Why?”

Ooni whimpered, trying to turn her head away, but Kuro would not let her.

Kuro had not truly changed; she had simply been using Ooni, unburdening herself of the irreconcilable contradiction caused by the appearance of this ‘ghost’. Now the process was reaching a climax — the responsibility for resolving this paradox was passed to Ooni, and Kuro demanded an answer.

“Why did she do that, Ooni? Why did she do that?”

“I don’t, I don’t know, Kuro,” Ooni panted. “I don’t—”

Kuro yanked Ooni’s head forward, then slammed it backward, against the black metal of the wall.

Pain blossomed in Ooni’s skull like a wave of fire, chased by a heave of nausea, leaving behind a scoured landscape as her vision blurred with tears. She gasped for breath, straining against the metal band around her belly, but there was no escape.

Kuro’s face filled Ooni’s vision, metal teeth parted, red eyes burning.

“Why would a ghost forgive me, Ooni? Why would she give me the secrets of the tomb? Why do that, why give me anything?” Her hand tightened on Ooni’s jaw; if Ooni could not answer, Kuro would start to break her. “Why? Ooni? Why? Why would she—”

“Because—” Ooni spluttered.

Kuro’s grip loosened. “ … yes?”

“Because … because … ”

Kuro’s grip tightened again; she could tell Ooni was just stalling. “Ooni. Why?”

“Because, I— I don’t— Kuro, st— I don’t—”

Kuro’s face loomed closer, blotting out the little black chamber, filling Ooni’s vision with her pinkish skin. Her metal teeth parted, jaw opening wide; she was going to clamp down on Ooni’s offending lips and bite them off Ooni’s face. A scream started to claw its way upward from Ooni’s guts. Ooni pushed at the band of metal around her belly and slapped at the front of Kuro’s armour, but she was so weak. She tried to get her fingers inside Kuro’s helmet, but Kuro’s other hand shot out and clamped around her wrist. In her peripheral vision Ooni saw Ilyusha’s eyes snap open with alarm, but Ilyusha could not do anything to help.

Ooni screamed, right into Kuro’s open maw.

“Because Telokopolis is forever!”

Kuro paused.

Ooni panted for breath. She did not know where the words had come from.

Kuro closed her mouth, withdrew her hand, and sat back.

“Telokopolis,” Kuro echoed. “You said that earlier. Yolanda’s superhuman said it as well. ‘Elpida’. Telokopolis. What does that mean, Ooni? Tell me what that means.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

That’s a very good question, Kuro. What does it mean, to say that Telokopolis is forever? I’m not sure Ooni’s the best person to answer that question, but she’s the only one here right now, and she better give a satisfying answer.

Well well well! Arc 13 is slipping out from under my hands, just like so many arcs before it; I’ve quite lost control of Kuro and Ooni, though hopefully it doesn’t seem that way on the page. Both of them are straining against my outlines and going wildly off-script, and I’m just letting them do it! As a result, arc 13 might not actually be that much longer; it might end on chapter 12 or maybe 13. Chapter 13.13 would be a wonderfully fitting concluding number for this arc, but I can’t be sure things will line up, so no promises on that front! For now, arc 13 continues, and Ooni is in a very dangerous bind.

And hey, you didn’t seriously think I would kill Ilyusha off-screen, did you? It’ll take more than one Death’s Head to put her down.

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you! Thank you for being here and reading Necroepilogos. I hope you’re enjoying the story as much as I am enjoying writing it, as always! I know it’s been going for quite some time now, but I still have a blast with every single Necroepilogos chapter, and I hope that shows. There’s so much more flesh to dig through, so many more zombies to see! Seeya next chapter! Until then!

Content Warnings

None this chapter.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ooni knew the others felt humiliated by the necessity of retreat.

So did she. Turning tail to flee from the grinning skull of the Sisterhood made Ooni feel weak and wretched. But she was used to swallowing her humiliation, washing the bitter taste down her constricted throat with an addictive cocktail of fear and relief. This was not the first time she had run from Kuro, nor from other members of the Sisterhood of the Skull. She had thought those days were over. The armour of Telokopolis now stood between Ooni and her own unclean past — imperishable, unblemished, and true. Telokopolis was for all. Telokopolis rejected nobody. Telokopolis protected her own.

“Telokopolis is forever,” Ooni whispered inside her carapace helmet, off-comms, one final time.

Telokopolis was not here.

The others tried not to show their humiliation as they scurried back through the intestinal tangle of the tomb. The fireteam had paused before setting off, just outside the circular planetarium chamber, so Kagami could shoot down the wire-skull effigy with one of the escort drones; she had used some kind of heavy energy weapon to target the bundle of wires at the apex of the ceiling. A trio of bright purple bolts had melted the plastic and turned the metal to slag. The whole sordid assembly had crashed to the floor in a slithering slump of cables, the outline of the skull crumpling into chaos. The electromagnetic trap had fizzled out.

Ooni had struggled to summon spite or satisfaction at the destruction of the symbol, but she felt nothing at all. Her head pounded in time with her heart, her hands were slick with sweat inside her armoured gloves, and her shoulder blades itched. The others had muttered some hollow celebration over the comms. Somebody had laughed and made a pun about skulls — Atyle, perhaps; Ooni couldn’t concentrate on the words.

But then Ilyusha had stomped forward and spat on the ground, right in front of the ruined skull.

Ooni had felt a rush, a brightening of her senses, a light in her chest. She had twitched inside her armour, ready to move forward and follow that example. But her first step faltered.

The Sisters would know of this desecration. They would be angry and offended, and they were all so much more dangerous when their dignity was wounded.

Kuro might be watching.

Ooni had donned her helmet and fallen in for the retreat.

The fireteam spoke very little as they retraced their steps through the twisted passages and lightless tubes of this knotted tumour within the tomb. Leuca didn’t complain out loud, but Ooni could read the frustration in her body language, even more curt and blunt than usual, despite Leuca’s own vote for pulling out. Shilu said nothing at all, but she moved to stride at the head of the formation, just behind the vanguard of the forward drones, pre-empting Kagami’s orders and directions. On the comms Victoria and Kagami both sounded tense and grumpy; their usual sniping at each other was cut off mid-sentence multiple times. Kagami’s comments turned monosyllabic, while Victoria’s orders grew simple and clear. Howl didn’t speak at all. If Amina and Atyle were still in the cockpit they weren’t saying anything. Pheiri himself sent the fireteam a couple of soft acknowledgement pings over the comms uplink, but that was all.

Only Ilyusha managed to turn the humiliation into clean anger. She made no attempt to control herself, scraping the black metal floor with her clawed footsteps, banging the sharp spike of her bionic tail against the walls, unslinging her ballistic shield from her back and swinging it about. She hurried to every junction and side-passageway so she could stick her shotgun in there before the drones got into position, baring her teeth into the shadows.

She spat and snapped and howled insults into the darkness beyond the drone escort — “Come out and play, fuckwad coward!”, “Piss drinking reptile rot-cunt!”, “Cowering in a puddle of your own piss?! Come and fucking fight me! Rancid cunt bitch fuuuuuck! Come fucking fiiiight!”

The lack of response did not dissuade her efforts. Kagami and Victoria gave token orders for her to cease. Once, Amina said something soft and worried over the comms.

Ilyusha didn’t care. She just kept going.

Ooni wished she could be like that, free and wild and without fear. Her gun felt like a lump of iron in her hands; her own ballistic shield felt little better than a turtle’s shell strapped to her back.

As the fireteam crawled along the slow and winding path through the hidden guts of the tomb, guarded by the unblinking eyes of the drone escort, following the slender umbilical of a white line on the map in their heads-up displays, Ooni found herself beginning to admire Ilyusha.

The petite cyborg berserker had terrified her at first, when Elpida had claimed Ooni and Leuca and brought them back to Pheiri. Ilyusha wasn’t the only one who had shown open animosity, of course: Kagami had voiced her opinion several times, that Ooni and Leuca should both be shot out of hand, and probably eaten; Amina was obviously a born killer and wanted to cut out Ooni’s guts, at least at first. Ooni’s own growing respect and devotion to the ideal of Telokopolis had seemed to soften Amina’s attitude somewhat, though they had not exactly shared a polite conversation since then.

But Ilyusha?

The way Ilyusha had looked at Ooni in those first few days was pure hatred. Only Elpida’s orders had kept Ilyusha from tearing Ooni limb from limb. Ooni didn’t complain. When Ilyusha looked at her, Ooni turned her eyes down. When Ilyusha shoved past her, Ooni apologised for being in the way. When Ilyusha insulted her, Ooni swallowed the venom and accepted that she deserved the mockery.

After all, Ilyusha had never been so weak as to become a Death’s Head.

Yet, over the long weeks of companionship and close proximity before they had reached this tomb, Ilyusha’s potent hate had curdled into mere contempt and dismissal. The insults didn’t stop, but sometimes they were less aggressive. Ilyusha no longer glared with open desire to rip out Ooni’s heart.

And now she was trying to draw Kuro out of the shadows, into a stand-up fight.

Ooni felt such gratitude. She had not shared a single kind word with Ilyusha — not least because Ilyusha would probably not want it from Ooni — but she resolved to thank Ilyusha when they were all safely back inside Pheiri, even if Ilyusha sneered at her and slapped her across the face.

This was what it meant to be inside Telokopolis. Ooni clung hard to that new clarity. She felt her spine stiffen again.

Three hours crept by, time measured in footsteps and junctions and the flex of armoured hands on steady guns. Three hours of progress through the pitch-dark innards of the tomb, lit by the blood-red illumination from the drones, following the thin white band on the map through the vast unknown patches of empty void, retracing their steps back toward the open spaces, back toward Pheiri, back to safety.

Slowly, Ooni’s relief turned to confusion.

At three hours, twenty minutes, and forty seven seconds, in the middle of a single narrow corridor which curved away to the left, Kagami called for a halt.

The fireteam was lost.

“Kaga, Kaga, hey, hey,” Victoria was saying over the comms. “Calm down, just calm down and talk to me. Surely there’s some explanation for this, a glitch in the mapping software, a mistake we made somewhere on the path, something we overlooked. Just talk to me. This— this can’t be right. They’re not lost, that’s impossible. They—”

“The software is fine!” Kagami was shouting, thumping on something, probably the arm her chair. “We did not fuck up! Pheiri did not fuck up!”

“Kaga—”

“I know where my drones are, Victoria! They are exactly where they are supposed to be! I have been measuring every step of the way, mapping and scanning and recording, and it is all so much fucking bullshit!”

“Kagami!” Victoria snapped. “I need solutions, not more of this tantrum—”

“All the corridors are all fucking wrong! They’ve changed!”

The sounds of a brief struggle came over the comms. Kagami snapped and squealed. Victoria said something about how Kagami needed to not pull on her own hair. Howl stepped in with a soft growl through Elpida’s throat.

A moment of silence was filled by the distant static of the hurricane outside, and the gentle hum of the drones in front and behind.

Shilu, up ahead, said nothing, staring past the drones. Ilyusha hissed and rolled her eyes and stamped her clawed feet. Ooni tried to stay silent, this was not her place to say anything.

Leuca said, inside her helmet: “Fireteam still holding position. Requesting orders.”

Victoria’s voice returned to the comms a moment later. “Uh … okay. Pira, Pira do you, uh, do you read me?”

“Loud and clear,” Leuca replied. “Go ahead, Victoria.”

“Alright. Uh … can you confirm that you’re still on the same route you took on the way out there? According to the map in your heads-up display. You’re still on the same path back, right? Does it look right to you?”

Ilyusha snapped into her comms headset, “‘Course we are, Vicky!”

“Confirmed, yes,” Leuca said. “We’re in a long corridor, curves to the left. Pheiri has this corridor marked as e-dash-forty-four. Junction up ahead is labelled jay-dash-seventeen, junction we just passed is jay-dash-eighteen.”

Kagami shouted, further away from Victoria’s mic: “But the junction wasn’t there! And neither is the one up ahead. I can’t see it on the drones! And the corridor should be going right, not left! It’s all fucked!”

Victoria took a deep breath. “Okay, so, the interior layout of the tomb has changed—”

“How!?” Kagami raged. “I haven’t detected a single sign of that! You’re telling me the innards of this place can rearrange without any detectable motion, or sound, or energy signatures, just nothing?! Just fuck you, just like that?!”

Ilyusha snorted. “Yah! Just fuck you!”

Victoria said, “Kaga, it’s a tomb, it’s a giant nanomachine construct—”

“And I’ve been watching it since the moment we got stuck in here!” Kagami screamed back. “Me and Pheiri both! There’s machinery inside the walls, gears and circuits and everything you can fucking imagine, and it’s all right there! Visible! I can see what it’s doing! How can it be moving, hm?! Explain that to me, Victoria, explain—”

“I don’t care!” Victoria thundered.

Kagami fell silent. Somebody cleared their throat. Howl grunted. Ooni heard a sound which might have been Victoria wetting her lips.

“I don’t care,” Victoria said, calm again. “We need to get them out.”

Howl said, “Enough flirting. Ideas?”

In the cramped tomb tunnel, Ilyusha gestured with the butt of her shotgun. “Hey. Corpse-fucker.”

Shilu turned away from the drones. “Yes?”

“You can see through walls, right?” Ilyusha shrugged, then tapped the black metal wall with the tip of her bionic tail. “What do you see?”

Shilu looked away from Ilyusha and stared directly at the nearest section of black metal wall. Her brow furrowed very slightly. She stepped up to the wall, raised her right hand, and made it turn into a blade. Ooni flinched, hidden inside her armour; the Necromancer’s shape-shifting was so sudden and silent.

Shilu put the point of her blade against the wall, then frowned harder. She pushed, first with her arm, then her whole body weight. The blade sank into the blank metal, then stopped, only about an inch deep. Shilu grunted with effort, then withdrew the blade and straightened up.

“The hell … ” Victoria muttered over the comms. “You cut through powered armour earlier, what the … ”

“The metal has been densified,” said Shilu. “I can’t see through this, not more than an inch or two. Can’t cut through it either. It wasn’t like this before.”

“Fuck”! Ilyusha spat.

Kagami hissed; several of the drones turned their sensor arrays to examine the walls. “She’s right. She’s right! The metal here is dense now, much denser than before. It’s almost like synthetic diamond. Pheiri—” Kagami paused. “Yes, Pheiri’s scans confirm that hasn’t happened out here, back in this chamber. Whatever we’re looking at is a local phenomenon.”

Leuca said, “To stop us from cutting our way out.”

Kagami barked. “Ha! Absolutely not. Even at that density I could still cut through this with a drone’s laser. It would take us a while. Twenty minutes for a hole, perhaps … ”

“There are a lot of walls between us and Pheiri,” Leuca said. “It would take tens of hours. Not viable.”

“Yes, I know that,” Kagami hissed.

Victoria said, “Shilu, could the gravekeeper be doing this?”

“No,” Shilu answered without hesitation. “The gravekeeper has no reason to care. Gravekeepers are not controlled by Central. They cannot be suborned by Necromancers. They don’t give a shit about us, not unless we bother them. This is something else. I don’t know what.”

Ilyusha snapped, “Don’t sound like you care much!”

Shilu replied. “I don’t panic.”

“It’s Kuro,” said Ooni.

The others all looked at her, Leuca through her visor, Ilyusha swishing her tail with frustration, Shilu an unreadable corpse. It had taken Ooni so much effort to squeeze out those words, as if speaking them would make it true.

A moment of silence passed on the comms, filled with static from beyond the walls.

Ooni cringed inside.

Kagami tutted, then said, “We’ve not picked up any of the audio Ooni described. Even if you were being followed by something on the way in, it’s gone now, I can’t detect any sign of it, nothing. And I don’t think it was there in the first place. Let’s stick to things we can confirm with sensors, yes?”

It didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like an order.

But Ooni couldn’t stop. Her jaw shivered and her teeth chattered, but the words poured out of her.

“You didn’t hear the walls moving, but they’re different now, aren’t they?” Ooni’s hands were shaking around the forward grip and stock of her submachine gun. She didn’t need to breathe with her undead lungs, but she was panting now. “Kuro must be using the same method. Whatever it is, she’ll be using it to hide. She’s hiding from your sensors, so she can follow us. It’s her. It’s her. It is her. It is her!”

Victoria sighed. “Ooni, Ooni, look, I know you’re afraid, but that doesn’t make any sense. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you were being followed, and whatever it is can adjust the insides of the tomb. Why reveal that to us, rather than saving it for an ambush? We’re tipped off now, we know to be cautious. Right? If … ‘Kuro’ was doing this, wouldn’t she have set up an ambush before revealing that she can change the local geography?”

Kagami grunted. “Right, right. Exactly, Victoria.”

Ooni shook her head. Her eyes flashed up and down the dark corridor in which the fireteam had paused, past the winking running lights of the drones, to where their floodlight illumination splashed crimson and scarlet up the walls. The visor of her carapace helmet tried to fill the darkness with night-vision green. Beyond that lay mile after mile of compressed shadows and tangled passageways.

“I already told you,” Ooni said; her voice felt so tiny. “She likes to play with her food.”

On the comms, Kagami snorted. Victoria drew in a breath, then said: “Ooni, I’m listening to you, but I need you calm down—”

An unfamiliar voice broke in, rough and tired.

“Listen to your point woman, hey? She’s out there, down in the shit. You’re in here, leading from the rear.”

Was that — Sky, the newcomer?

Kagami started to snap at Sky, telling her to shut the fuck up, she didn’t even know them, what was she even doing in the control cockpit. Victoria sighed heavily and raised her voice too, arguing half against Kagami, half for everybody to stop. Howl joined in as well.

Ooni couldn’t take it.

“Please!” she shouted into the comms, her own voice deafening inside her helmet. The argument halted. “Please, listen to me. This is how Kuro works. This is what she does. I know this pattern! She didn’t hide this from us, because she wants us to be afraid! She wants us to be scared, so we make mistakes. She torments her targets, exactly like this, this is just on a bigger scale than ever before! She made the noises earlier on purpose, so I would know it was her, so I would know! Now she’s got control of this area somehow, and she doesn’t need to keep showing herself, she just needs to trap us and tire us out and terrify me— us, I mean! Or just me! I don’t know! I don’t know what comes next. But it’s her! Please … please. She’s going to kill us … ”

Ooni’s courage drained away.

Elpida would have believed her. Elpida would have listened.

Leuca reached out and touched the shoulder plate of Ooni’s armour, just a brush of fingertips, before returning her hand to her own weapon. Ilyusha started to nod, chewing on her own tongue, then said, “Yeah! I’m with fucknuts here.”

On the comms, a second of silence passed. Then Victoria spoke.

“Alright. Alright, Ooni. Pira. Ilyusha. Shilu, you too.” Victoria swallowed and blew out a breath. “We’re going to proceed with the assumption that Ooni is correct—”

Kagami interrupted. “My drones still don’t see or hear anything out there—”

“We will proceed with the assumption that Ooni is correct,” Victoria repeated herself, slow and clipped. “Those are my orders. Do you want to take command, Kaga? Because you can. Come on. You want this seat? No? Didn’t think so. Okay then, help me.”

Ooni felt like her head was ringing. They … believed her?

Victoria was talking again. “We are going to assume that a hostile is hunting the fireteam, and that the hostile is capable of adjusting the corridors in that section of the tomb. Which means you four need to stick close together. I mean like real close together. Close enough to touch. Shilu, that means you too, I don’t care if you can turn into metal and wriggle your way out. And try to keep each other visible at all times. If the corridors adjust fast enough, they might be able to cut you off from each other. We don’t have any idea how it’s achieved or how fast it can be done, and I’m not losing any of you down there. Close formation, now.”

“Understood,” Leuca replied. She took a step close to Ooni and shrugged her shoulder. “Ooni, left hand. Hold onto me.”

Ooni grabbed Leuca’s shoulder plate, as ordered.

Ilyusha snorted and shook her head, but she stomped over. She eyed Ooni through the carapace helmet faceplate for a moment, tail swishing, then pulled a nasty grin. “Better watch my back good, shitbrains.”

“I will,” Ooni said. “Thank you.”

Ilyusha narrowed her eyes, then turned around, tail spike waving only a foot from Ooni’s face.

Shilu strode over without a word, until all four were close enough to touch, shoulder to shoulder. The drone cordon was already pulling inward as well, retracting the scouts and narrowing the circle of protection.

Kagami muttered, “This reduces our forward scouting and limits any early warning, but sure, it’ll stop me from losing any drones if the walls all start playing musical chairs.”

Victoria said, “Kaga—”

“Yes, I’m turning their cameras on each other. A nice little circle of drones, all watching each other’s backs. I’ve got eyes in every direction, including up my own backside. Don’t tell me how to do my job, Victoria. I’m three steps ahead.”

“Just keep doing it, Kaga.”

Leuca cleared her throat. “Commander, orders?”

“For now, keep moving,” Victoria said. “Your directional orientation relative to Pheiri is still correct, so keep taking turns that lead you toward us. Ignore the map, we’re going to refresh it in a sec. Keep moving, stay tight. We’ve got you. We’ll bring you home.”

Ilyusha snorted. “No vote this time, Vicky?”

Victoria tried to laugh. “No vote.”

She was trying to sound like Elpida, but she couldn’t quite get there. Ooni wished she couldn’t hear the tremor in Victoria’s voice.

The fireteam set off again, advancing along the narrow tunnel, following the leftward bend. They reached the spot where the next junction should be, but there was only more passageway, interrupted further along by two entirely new junctions. They used the drones to scout ahead, then took a right-hand fork, heading in Pheiri’s general direction.

Progress was slower than before, bogged down by the necessity of the tighter formation, sticking close together, hands on each other’s shoulders, walking right on each other’s heels. The two dozen drones still took point, brought up the rear, and ducked into side-passages to confirm they were clear; but the drones’ range was narrower now, barely leaving visual of the fireteam for more than a few seconds each, and always watched by at least one other drone. Kagami removed and refreshed the map in the fireteam’s comms-uplink data-stream, to show only the areas they had visually confirmed since leaving the planetarium chamber.

Ooni didn’t like the new map. An ocean of darkness lay between her and Pheiri, a sprawling web of cancer in the tomb’s dead flesh.

The storm raged and screamed far beyond the walls, filling the air with heavy static, even this deep inside. The darkness crept up behind the fireteam as they moved, squirming back across the black metal as the drones withdrew their light. The corridors seemed to narrow and tighten as the fireteam took turns and branches, but they were still moving toward Pheiri, back toward the sane and sensible parts of the tomb; this realisation was the source of much unspoken relief. Whoever or whatever had adjusted the maze of twisted tunnels, they were unable to force the fireteam back into the depths. Ooni took heart from Leuca at her side and Ilyusha right in front of her, and from the now constant chatter back and forth with the control cockpit. Kagami slipped into a quiet professional tone, cataloguing each side-corridor anew, marking them on the map, directing the drones with all her wordless skill. Victoria kept up a nervous pep talk, reassuring herself as much as everybody else, but growing in confidence as the minutes stretched out.

After an hour of creeping progress, the ocean of darkness narrowed to merely a wide river. Ooni was exhausted, but Pheiri was close.

The fireteam exited a complex junction, with several separate chambers like the valves and pockets of a heart. They stepped out into a long corridor which seemed to twist back on itself up ahead, perhaps in a hairpin bend.

Kagami was saying: “I calculate you’re no more than five hundred meters from where you went in. I’ve dispatched a pair of drones to where the corridors narrow, and I can literally see the walls where it gets denser, though the density isn’t as bad as it was. Here, coming up in your hud, bottom right.” Kagami sent the team a visual feed; it showed a much larger corridor, with a high ceiling and sharp corners, as expected from the less tangled part of the tomb. A series of narrow entrances punctured the wall ahead.

“I recognise that!” Ooni said. She couldn’t help herself, the relief was too great.

Kagami snorted. “I should hope so, that’s where you went in. That, at least, has not changed.”

“Fuck yeah,” Ilyusha growled.

“Stay sharp,” said Leuca.

Victoria spoke over the comms too: “We’ve got a few stragglers from the tomb chamber who’ve followed the drones — zombies, you know, our, uh, ‘friends’. So be careful when you exit, don’t fire on them.”

Kagami tutted. “Fools and dirt should keep clear.”

Victoria spoke with a smile in her voice. “You’re almost out. Keep going. Take the corner around, then the left branch up ahead, that should bring you closer to—”

Bang-bang-bang!

Large calibre shots rang out, far to the fireteam’s rear.

The passageway exploded with sound and fury.

Ooni swept the ballistic shield off her back, brought it around in a narrow arc, planted the base against the floor, and braced her shoulder against the rear of the mobile cover. Her other hand was firm and steady on her submachine gun. Her body had reacted before her mind had time to panic, the fear finally transmuting to action. Leuca slammed into a kneeling position behind the shield, rifle in both hands. Ooni felt something bump against her back and something hard and flexible wrap around her leg — Ilyusha’s tail anchoring the team together, Ilyusha’s back against Ooni’s own, Ilyusha’s ballistic shield covering the fireteam’s other side.

The passageway rang with the thump-crack and ratatatatat of firepower, energy weapons and solid-shot guns blasting away, the noise and back blast shaking Ooni’s helmet. Green IFF indicators on her HUD confirmed all the shooting was outgoing — Kagami was drowning the rear of the corridor with bullets and bolts and laser beam stabs into the darkness. A drone shield flared, then went out in a burst of electric crackles.

The firing ceased. The corridor was full of smoke and heat, trapped by the sudden silence.

Ooni was panting, wild with adrenaline and shock, sweat running down her face inside her helmet. But her hand was steady on her submachine gun, and she was grinning like mad.

Not Kuro! It wasn’t Kuro! Kuro would never do something so overt and stupid as firing on a bunch of drones. It couldn’t be her!

Ooni felt like laughing. A firefight, that she could handle. A firefight with Ilyusha’s tail wrapped around her shin? Even better. She couldn’t believe this was happening, she couldn’t believe her luck.

Everyone was shouting on the comms. “What was it?! Kagami, what was that, what were you firing at? What was it? What was—”

“Nothing!” Kagami snapped, cold with panic.

“What?”

Leuca said: “Orders? Commander? We’re sitting still here.”

But Kagami was already rattling on: “Nothing. Absolutely nothing on the sensors except the bullets themselves. Three armour-piercing rifle rounds from apparently nowhere. No motion detected, no heat, no infra-red, nothing. Like they came out of the fucking wall!”

Ooni’s heart went cold.

“It’s her,” she whispered.

Leuca said: “Victoria, we have to move—”

“Yes!” Victoria snapped. “Go! Follow the drones! Keep those shields up, we’ll—”

Bang-bang-bangbangbang-brrrrrt—

A fresh hail of surprise gunfire erupted from the dark — this time from the fireteam’s front. This barrage was not a few rounds from a solid-shot rifle, but a full-auto trigger-squeeze from a heavy weapon, spraying a storm of bullets down the passageway, loud enough to drown out the hurricane outside. Ilyusha yelled an insult as rounds pinged off her ballistic shield, the impacts forcing her backward with a squeal of claws on the metal floor; Ooni felt a piece of shrapnel deflected by the rear plates of her carapace armour, bracing herself to support Ilyusha’s weight as she pressed against Ooni’s back. Drone shielding crackled to life a split-second later, soaking up the worst of the bullets.

Kagami’s drones woke up and returned fire, filling the corridor with deafening fury, followed by Kagami’s shout over the comms: “Nothing, again! There’s nothing there!”

Victoria snapped, “We need to get them out! Can we advance under fire, can we—”

Howl interrupted: “Fuck no, that’s high-velocity autocannon fire. Those drone shields are scrap in under a minute.”

“The walls here aren’t as dense,” Kagami rattled off. “I’m detaching a drone to start cutting. At least we can get them out of this trap.”

One of the heavy drones jerked past Ooni’s shins and turned to the wall, extending a pair of bright cutting lasers. The black metal began to glow and melt beneath the lasers’ touch.

Victoria snapped: “Everybody around the drone! Get in close, keep those shields up!”

Ooni followed her orders, shuffling sideways, Ilyusha’s tail still wrapped around her shin, Leuca sheltered by the shields. A few stray bullets got through the drone cordon, pinging off the walls and leaving dents in Ooni’s armour.

Leuca asked, “How long to cut—”

“Fifty, sixty seconds!” Kagami said, then laughed. “It’s still dense. This’ll be close, unless—”

Shilu strode past.

The Necromancer had abandoned her human disguise, once more a scarecrow of black metal and sharp angles, her face a perfect white mask, stray rounds bouncing off her body like raindrops on concrete. Shilu stepped up to the drone cutting through the wall, made both hands into blades, and added her own strength to the task. She punched through the weakened metal left behind in the wake of the drone’s cutting lasers.

“Alright, maybe twenty seconds,” Kagami admitted. “Work fast, Necromancer!”

Perhaps it was twenty seconds. To Ooni it felt like an hour, sheltered from a storm of lead pounding down the passageway.

The drone finished cutting and jerked backward. Shilu rammed both sword-arms into the remaining scraps of metal, then kicked at the weakened outline. The metal popped out and fell down on the other side, falling through lightless air for a couple of feet, before landing with an almighty clang. The gap was just large enough for the team to duck through, edges glowing with residual heat.

“Hold position, hold!” Kagami snapped. The escort drones pulled close around the fireteam, a hail of bullets still slamming into their forward shielding. Half of the drones whizzed through the hole cut into the wall, throwing crimson light and shields up on the other side. “Okay, it’s clear! Three foot drop, do not break your fucking ankles! Go, move, now!”

Shilu was closest; she folded herself up and leapt through the hole like a diver into water. Leuca scurried out from behind Ooni’s shield, then scrambled through the gap, booted feet vanishing through the wall. Ilyusha was turning to cover Ooni’s back, shouting “Go, fucknuts, go next!” Ooni started to duck, to turn, to awkwardly lower her ballistic shield to get it through the opening—

A passageway had appeared — opposite the hole cut into the wall, where no passageway had stood before.

The drones were not covering it, because it had not been there a split-second earlier.

Pitch black, filled with shifting shadows, like a tongue in a yawning mouth.

Ooni was the first to see this new passage, because she had been turning to get through the hole. Ilyusha was looking the wrong way; Shilu and Leuca were already through. Kagami’s drones took a moment of machine-confusion to register the silent, unseen, inexplicable change to local topography.

Ooni raised her submachine gun, aimed into the shadows of this surprise passageway, and pulled the trigger.

The gun bucked in her hand, rocking against her elbow, spitting out half the magazine before she could stop herself. Bullets sprayed into the darkness, bouncing off walls, finding no target.

Empty.

Comms was full of shouting.

“Fucking what!?” Kagami screamed. “That wasn’t there a second ago! I told you, I told you the walls were moving—”

“Ooni, Ooni!” That was Leuca, calling her name. “Follow me, Ooni!”

“Get out of there!” Victoria shouted. “Both of you get through that wall, right now!”

The drone escort was already turning to cover this new passageway mouth, lighting it up with crimson beams and throwing temporary shields to block any ambush. A clawed hand grabbed Ooni’s shoulder and yanked her back; she almost turned her weapon on Ilyusha before she realised who it was.

“Got my back, ha!” Ilyusha barked with laughter as she dragged Ooni toward the hole in the wall, shield up, tail unwinding from Ooni’s leg and wagging in the air. “Nice one, fucknuts! Nothing there though! Hahaha!”

“Nothing there … ” Ooni panted, heart pounding; she realised the rest of the gunfire had ceased, the autocannon had stopped, the silence was so sudden. “Nothing there, nothing— but—”

Ilyusha ducked to scramble through the drone-cut hole. She shoved her shield through before her, then—

The hole closed like a sphincter slamming shut, inches shy of Ilyusha’s skull. Her ballistic shield was cut in half with a hollow thunk of severed metal.

Part of the wall to Ooni’s left moved — detaching, folding forward, striding free.

A human figure slid from within the wall itself, as if out from behind a curtain of silk and oil. A thin sheen of black metal clung to the figure’s surface like a coating of water, as if the metal of the tomb itself was a pool from which it had emerged; the effect was similar to Shilu’s true form, a human outline wrapped with metal. But where Shilu was sharp and spiked and covered with edges, this figure was tall and blocky, heavyset, angular.

But this was no Necromancer. It was a suit of powered armour wrapped in tomb-metal.

Ooni knew the outline of that suit.

Kuro.

Yolanda’s hound, the Sisterhood’s strongest muscle, the worst sadist among all who followed the skull, was wearing the metal of the tomb like a second skin.

Ooni raised her submachine gun in shaking hands, fingers suddenly slick with sweat, her own ballistic shield falling with a clatter. The comms was screaming in her ears, the drones were turning and throwing up shields and extending weapons. But she heard nothing, saw nothing, nothing except Kuro, looming over her, featureless behind a mask of black metal. If only Ooni could get her finger on the trigger, if only she could—

Ilyusha was faster.

The cyborg berserker whirled to her feet, fouling Ooni’s shot, confusing half the drones. She rammed the muzzle of her shotgun into the black metal of Kuro’s face, lashing toward her with the tip of her bionic tail.

“Fuck you! Reptile fuck—”

Kuro’s hand shot out, wrapped in the black metal of the tomb, and grabbed Ilyusha by the throat. Ilyusha pulled the trigger on her shotgun, three times in rapid succession — boom! boom! boom! — discharging slug-rounds point blank against the front of Kuro’s metal-shrouded helmet.

Kuro didn’t even stagger.

She lifted Ilyusha by the throat, ignoring the whirling of razor-sharp claws and red-tipped tail, and hurled her against the nearest drone, hard enough to send the machine crashing into the wall. Ilyusha hit the floor with the sound of breaking bones and snapping bionics. Kuro lashed out again and caught Ilyusha’s tail, lifted her up like a flail on the end of a chain, and smashed her against the next drone. The machine careened off, firing wildly. The drones were peppering this metal-clad Kuro with firepower, but nothing was happening, as if the tomb itself protected her with imperishable metal, unblemished and true.

Ilyusha tried to lurch back to her feet, spitting and hissing, clutching for her shotgun. Kuro backhanded her across the jaw so hard that Ilyusha slammed off the wall and slid to the floor.

Ooni raised her submachine gun again — when had she lowered it? Why? — and curled her finger around the trigger.

Kuro turned to look at her, ignoring the bullets from the drones, paying no attention to Ilyusha lurching upright and screaming obscenities. Even with her helmet and powered armour hidden behind that sheen of black, Ooni felt Kuro’s gaze like a fist in her gut.

Her trigger finger froze.

Click-buzz; Kuro opening her exterior broadcast.

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Kuro, high-pitched and girlish, muffled by static interference from her suit. “Put it down.”

Ooni hesitated — then yanked the trigger, screaming at the top of her lungs.

The bullets did nothing.

Kuro reached out, ripped the gun from Ooni’s hands, and clubbed her across the helmet with the butt of her own weapon; Ooni’s world went red, then black, then spiralled down into darkness.

The last thing she saw was Ilyusha, striking like a bird of prey.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

An unquiet tomb is no place to tread without care. Even with strong arms and stout armour, one must practice vigilance.

Oh dear, Ooni. Oh dear. You’re no knight, not like this.

Ahem. Well then! We are deep, deep, deep in the middle section of arc 13 now, burrowing though cold flesh and looking for an exit. I’m honestly not sure which way things are going to go, and I won’t know until we get there! We are likely to go at least another 3-4 chapters in this arc, I think. We’ve absolutely got some POV shifts still coming up, though probably not right away. These zombiegirls are on a tear and I’m just along for the ride, yet again. And I wouldn’t have it any other way!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and reading my little story; as always, I hope you are enjoying reading Necroepilogos just as much as I am enjoying writing it, which is, you know, a lot! I’m really grateful that I get to do this, thank you so much for your support. Zombiegirls return again, next week. Seeya next chapter!

Content Warnings

Implied physical abuse (not sexual abuse)
PTSD
Deadnaming (sort of?)

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“We’re not lost,” said Leuca. “We know exactly where we are. We can retrace our steps back to Pheiri any time we like, with no need to deviate or change our path. Comms are uninterrupted. Our maps are detailed. I repeat, we are not lost.”

Ooni knew that Leuca was correct. Leuca was always correct. She’d always been wise where Ooni was foolish.

But being lost or not was beside the point; Ooni couldn’t stop shaking.

Leuca’s voice hissed and crackled across the comms network, dousing the sparks of a nervous argument which had just begun to flare with Kagami and Victoria, safe and sound back in Pheiri’s control cockpit, observing the feeds from the drones. Before Kagami could rally a reply, Leuca reached up with one dirty grey gauntlet and removed her helmet, releasing the seal and slipping the armour off her head. A waterfall of flame-red hair fell across the gorget about her neck and over the narrow plates on her shoulders; her hair was dimmed by the heavy shadows of the tomb, dyed a sickly turquoise by the glow from the monitor screens, and pinned by the comms headset strapped to her skull.

Eyes the forgotten blue of a cloudless sky flashed about the chamber, ringed by dark bags of stress, framed by pale skin dusted with freckles. Leuca filled her lungs with a breath of stagnant air.

When Leuca spoke again, her voice melded with the distant hailstones and hellish wind of the hurricane beyond the walls.

“But I’m pretty sure we’re being followed.”

Ooni wanted to tell Leuca to put her helmet back on. She hesitated for three reasons: one, the bland confidence on Leuca’s face did more to calm Ooni’s nerves than any words possibly could; two, Ooni was not in charge of this fireteam and had no right to give orders; and three, she had to actively remind herself to call Leuca ‘Pira’ in front of the others. Leuca had made that clear as they had stood in Pheiri’s rear airlock together, just after Ooni had made the mistake of trying to kiss her, before they’d donned their helmets. Leuca had rejected that kiss with a turn of her head, pushed Ooni against the wall of the airlock, and given her three very clear instructions.

Concentrate on the mission. Come back in one piece — I do love you, Ooni, I do, but you have to concentrate. And stop confusing the others by using the name of a woman who died three hundred million years ago.

Professionalism and discipline, until they returned.

Not that Leuca had accepted any of Ooni’s prior attempts to kiss her, either. Ooni told herself that was okay. Twenty three years of companionship had been drowned by decades of resurrection and the shame of both their betrayals. Leuca was not the same person she had been in the era of The Fortress, and neither was Ooni. They both still loved each other, but that love was different now, bruised and tender and shivering. It might take a long time to come round. But at least it was sheltered now, within the walls of Telokopolis.

Ooni did her best to swallow her complaint about the helmet. There were no clear lines of sight into the circular chamber where the fireteam had paused. All four routes into the room were covered by Kagami’s drones, out there in the corridors beyond, blocking any undetected intruders. No secret sniper or sudden ambush could draw a bead on Leuca’s unprotected skull. The innards of the tomb were not like the streets and buildings of the corpse-city, rife with an infinite proliferation of firing angles and tangled cover. Here the exits were limited and verticality was rare.

But Ooni’s armoured gloves tightened on her firearm all the same; she could not bear the thought of losing Leuca again.

Which was why she was here, deep in the lightless bowels of the tomb, not yet lost.

Kagami’s voice crackled over the comms network, speaking to the whole fireteam. “I never said you were lost. I literally never used that word. There is no need to waste your limited attention stating the obvious, I can see the map right in front of me, just as well as you can, thank you.”

A second voice muttered, a little further from the audio pickup inside Pheiri’s cockpit — Victoria. “Kaga, Kaga, don’t rant at them—”

Kagami carried on. “What I did say is that this structure makes no fucking sense! The layout of this place is a nightmare, designed by an insane intelligence, and we just keep going deeper and deeper. What are we going to find, hm? Because I’m starting to think we’re not following the fucking Death’s Heads at all! And now that … that thing! That is a mockery aimed directly at us. It’s a provocation! Don’t assume I can’t see that, I’m not stupid. We can hardly leave it unanswered.”

Victoria again: “Kaga, stop, please—”

“It has to be destroyed!” Kagami snapped, voice wavering as she whirled away from the microphone, presumably raving at Victoria. “Order it destroyed, or I’ll take responsibility myself.”

Ooni couldn’t swallow, let alone speak, the lump in her throat was so tight. She’d been trying not to think about this, to stay focused on Leuca.

But she agreed with Kagami, totally and completely.

Over by the ‘provocation’ in the centre of the room, Ilyusha growled, then spat on the floor. “Fuckin’ right. Fuckin’ burn it. Rip it up! Fuck!”

Shilu, hands in the pockets of her armoured coat, said the first words she’d spoken since leaving Pheiri. “I concur. This is bait.”

Ooni tried to keep her eyes off the effigy in the middle of the room. If she thought about the implications, she might start shaking again.

She had to stay alert, lest some undetected ambush force its way through one of the entrances.

She knew her vigilance was pointless. If the drones couldn’t detect an ambush and their firepower couldn’t deter it, Ooni had no hope. But the ritual of discipline and the weight of the gun in her hands helped her fight the terror.

Ooni was under no illusions as to her own utility. The three-strong fireteam — herself, Leuca, and Ilyusha — were surplus to the actual mission of hunting down the remnants of the Deaths Heads, the Sisterhood of the Skull, Ooni’s former ‘comrades’. If the fireteam made contact then the drones would do all the real fighting, and any confrontation would likely be over in moments. Ooni and the others were there for show, a visible human component at the core of the remote combat machine, controlled by Kagami and Pheiri, directed from the enclosed safety of the cockpit. Ooni and the others had only mattered at the start of the operation, when they’d stomped down Pheiri’s rear ramp and set out before an awestruck audience, watched by all the zombies who had remained in the tomb chamber before Pheiri.

The decision to send them along with a dozen of Kagami’s drones had been debated for over two hours, with everybody crammed into Pheiri’s main crew compartment.

Kagami had been firm that she could carry out the operation with nothing but the drones. Howl had insisted that they needed to send soldiers, with faces, holding guns. The gesture was just as important as the hunt. They had to show that Telokopolis — the promise of Telokopolis which Elpida had made — would not let the attempted suicide bombing go unanswered. They couldn’t do this with drones alone, like a mechanical arm reaching into the dark. They had to show they cared.

Listening to Howl speaking through Elpida had been an unsettling experience, even though Ooni knew she had spoken to Howl before. Howl kept smirking in a way that made Ooni shiver. But she spoke the same basic truths as Elpida, and Ooni agreed with all her points, even though she had not spoken up. Ooni’s sole contribution to the discussion was to repeat the only thing she was confident of — “Telokopolis is forever.”

Whenever Ooni saw Sanzhima lying in the infirmary — the girl the Death’s Heads had captured and sent against Pheiri with a bomb strapped to her — Ooni saw herself.

Howl had easily won the debate and the ensuing vote. Victoria had asked for volunteers. Leuca had raised her hand.

Ooni had volunteered as well. She didn’t want to let Leuca go alone, even surrounded by drones. The others had exchanged silent glances, followed by not-so-silent suspicions. Victoria was polite about it. Atyle was dismissive and cryptic. Amina stared in that disconcerting way. But Kagami and Ilyusha both said it out loud, with varying degrees of vehemence; Pira was a turncoat twice over, and Ooni had been a member of the very group they were hunting, up until her so-called conversion at Elpida’s hands. A ‘reptile fuck’, as Ilyusha had said.

An argument had started, loud and awkward. Ooni had wanted to withdraw herself from consideration and apologise for her arrogance. To be sent on such a mission was an honour she did not deserve. But Leuca had not withdrawn, and so Ooni was nailed to her mast.

In the end, Howl had overruled the others.

“Pira and Ooni are Elps’ bitches too, right? Just like the rest of us? They any different to any of you? Ooni alerted us to the bomb and told us how it would be trapped. Pira’s made her beliefs clear. Trust ‘em now, or shoot ‘em dead. Like, right now! Shoot them both! No? Chickenshits. Trust them, then.”

Ilyusha had volunteered after that. Everybody knew she was itching for a real fight, and she was the perfect candidate to keep an eye on the distrusted. Ooni had been concerned that Ilyusha would be too distracted by that to focus on the mission, but the moment they’d all gotten beyond Pheiri’s hull Ilyusha had slipped into an easy, alert, natural professionalism.

Shilu joined as insurance. If everything went wrong, the Necromancer would handle it.

Both Ooni and Leuca were armoured in the best carapace suits that the cadre had looted from the tomb armoury — chunky plates of grey-white armour, strapped to their limbs and torsos, locked together with articulated joints, with external hard-points for supporting heavy weapons. The helmets offered basic atmospheric protection and low-light vision, both pointless for the undead.

Leuca was armed with a pump-action shotgun locked to her back and an automatic rifle slung up front. Ooni carried a ballistic shield strapped to the rear of her armour, and a heavy submachine gun in her hands, straps looped over one shoulder. Both of them had side-arms and a couple of grenades, just in case.

Ooni was surprised by the trust the cadre had placed in her, even after Howl’s words. It was only yesterday that Elpida herself had pressed a gun into Ooni’s hands; now, after the bombing and a restless night and half a day of debate and planning and preparation, she was wearing carapace armour again, carrying a gun into battle, wearing the symbol of Telokopolis.

Ilyusha had rejected most of the heavier armour, but she wore a comms headset, a stripped-down helmet which was mostly just visor, and a grey bulletproof vest over her torso, leaving her red-and-black bionic limbs free. Another ballistic shield was strapped to her back.

Shilu wore no protection except the armoured coat over her clothes; she had accepted a comms headset, but Ooni was convinced it was purely for appearances. She had gone unarmed, in her human disguise.

Prep was awkward. Howl had joined them at the airlock, acting funny. When they’d all been ready to leave, she’d paused and said, “Good hunting. Hurry home, sisters. Sisters, ha! Guess you are … ”

They had set out from Pheiri — three heavily armed zombies and one disguised Necromancer, surrounded by a bristling phalanx of a dozen heavy combat drones, supported by constant comms chatter and regular updates from the control cockpit. For four hours they had descended into the lightless corridors of the tomb, with drones leading the way, drones bringing up the rear, drones guarding the flanks, and drones piercing the gloom ahead with blood-red lights, sending stray zombies scuttling for the shadows. Shilu had strode near the front of the group, following Kagami’s directions with wordless obedience. Ilyusha had struck out, often circling around the drones themselves, leapfrogging their progress, pausing to pat their matte-black armour as if they were war hounds; she checked each corner manually, automatic shotgun rising and falling, claws clicking on the tomb’s black metal. She cast only the occasional glance at Ooni and Leuca.

Ooni had felt confident, strong, protected, and right. She wore the crescent-and-double-line of Telokopolis daubed on her armour’s chestplate, same as Leuca and Ilyusha. Shilu was the odd one out, but that didn’t matter.

The prospect of going up against her former ‘sisters’ filled Ooni with an excitement she could not share, not even with Leuca. In brief fantasies she imagined herself presenting Yolanda’s head to Elpida and Howl. Cantrelle in chains, dragged along the floor. Kuro peeled out of her armour and peeled out of her skin and—

Ooni had swallowed those fantasies. She knew they were not worthy of the Commander. Elpida did not approve of needless torture.

But were they worthy of Telokopolis? Surely the enemies of the promise had to be humiliated, paraded in their defeat, killed for this offensive transgression. Ooni hoped an opportunity would fall into her lap. If it happened, and it wasn’t her fault …

For the first two hours of the journey the fireteam found themselves with an escort; about thirty stray zombies from the tomb chamber picked themselves up and formed an improvised rearguard, hooting and cheering, jeering for the Death’s Heads to be destroyed, begging for more meat, thumping their chests to pledge eternal allegiance. Most of them were the bottom-feeders and half-starved wretches, daubed with the symbol of Telokopolis in imitation of Elpida. Most of them didn’t even have weapons, but a few carried knives or battered firearms. The others had not approved of this behaviour, but Ooni’s chest tightened with joy; these ragged undead were hardly a suitable auxilia, but if they were armed and given meat, maybe, just maybe …

Most of them had turned back when Kagami’s voice had boomed from one of the drones — “If you foul our shots, we won’t hesitate, you band of morons! Get clear, or it’s your own skin at risk! Nobody will pause to help you if you get filled with holes!”

The bravest few had held on until about the two-hour mark. As the innards of the tomb had grown more tortuous and serpentine, even those few faithful had fallen behind.

The fireteam had plunged onward, accompanied by the winking lights of the drones, the hiss of the comms network, and the fury of the hurricane beyond.

Ooni could tell that something was wrong with the tomb.

Her time in The Fortress, when Leuca had been proud of her name, was many subjective decades in the past now, but Ooni had not yet lost the clear memories of the tomb they had managed to clear and occupy for so long. Any two given tombs only shared certain parts in common — the top levels around the resurrection chamber, the route to the armoury, and the route to the front gates. Beyond that each tomb was unique. The inside of the Fortress had been confusing and strange, full of airy, echoing, mysterious vaults, built on a scale larger than human, shot through with vertical shafts, riddled with hidden spaces behind the walls, like the structure contained a secondary lymphatic system. The revenants of The Fortress had mostly stuck to the areas they had understood fully — the few dozen rooms close to the gates and the armoury, and the outer shell of the building, where windows and corridors were sensibly human-sized. But even when they had ventured into the twisting innards of The Fortress, seeking controls and machinery and resources, it had never been like this.

The corridors in this storm-bound tomb seemed to double back on themselves over and over, forming intestinal layers in a tight warren of lightless curves and dizzying twists, sometimes spiralling up and down as if ejecting effluvia from rotten organs. Cavernous rooms came upon the fireteam suddenly, with no warning, emerging from the mass of narrow corridors like gas-bloated abscesses bulging in rotten flesh. Slick machinery, dripping oil, naked circuitry, bundles of cable warm to the touch — all of these bulged from slits and rents in the walls, like herniae in a ripening corpse.

A few side-passages bristled with automatic gun emplacements, blocking the routes to areas where the inner configuration of the tomb changed form yet again. This was not unexpected; Ooni and Leuca had warned the others, any tomb was full of dead guns, guarding empty graves.

But these guns were active, twitching back and forth, like cilia waving in the air; they threatened with target-locks and IR-beams if approached, but did not open fire at a distance. Luckily none of them blocked the route the fireteam needed to take. Shilu and the new arrivals had claimed the passage to the armoury was like this. Ooni had not really believed them.

Who had turned on the guns? And why? There was nothing to defend down here, was there?

The fireteam had made their way through this endless, lightless, echoing tangle in near-silence, communicating by whispers over the comms network. They had paused often, waiting for the drones to scout ahead down some particularly twisty corridor, or check each branching side-passage for potential ambushes. They had paused again for Kagami and Victoria and Howl to debate the best way forward. They had paused yet again when one of the new arrivals on board Pheiri had joined the others in the cockpit — Sky, apparently, finally awake. Sky had contributed nothing but some curious grunts, then fallen silent.

Ooni’s helmet contained a basic heads-up display, nothing fancy, just a simple IFF tracker for the other members of the team, some built-in comms in case she lost the separate headset, and a data uplink back to Pheiri; Kagami could use the latter to display anything the team might find useful, or plug drone feeds into their vision. She was currently using it to display a map for the whole fireteam, tracking their progress through the tomb, laying a trail of electronic breadcrumbs along the route home.

Ooni did not like to glance at that tiny map in the corner of her visor. It showed a fragile thread of known territory twisting and turning through great yawning darkness, surrounded by blind corners and empty voids, pressed tight by the fossilised tangle. She felt like a morsel of food, trapped and squeezed by peristalsis.

The earlier rooms and spaces, those closer to Pheiri, had not been like this. Why had the Death’s Head fled into such a place?

Ooni’s confidence had begun to flag; this didn’t seem like a course of action Yolanda would willingly endorse. As leader of the Sisterhood of the Skull, Yola was not above ambushes and underhanded tactics, not when presented and bracketed with the right rhetoric. But to withdraw so deep into a maze, without showing resistance, without leaving traps, without even a rude message scrawled on a wall? Ooni’s gut had clenched and her mouth had gone dry. She smelled a rat.

She whispered this concern over the comms network, to Leuca, to Kagami, to the others. They agreed without argument — this was all very odd. But the drones were functioning normally, and they had not yet reached their destination. Ambush was impossible. Keep moving.

Five hours into the journey, Ooni had started to hear the sounds.

At first she had doubted her own ears, or perhaps the pick-ups on the outside of her carapace helmet. A scuff of distant feet there, a shuffle of armour here, a soft hum echoing down the twisted corridors from far away, back on the route the fireteam had already crossed. This mangled mass of passageways played funny tricks with sound, perhaps she was only hearing the fireteam’s own echoes, or illusions created by the storm outdoors. Kagami’s drones would surely pick up anybody trying to follow the fireteam. Leuca and Ilyusha were perfectly competent, and they didn’t say anything. And Shilu was a Necromancer.

All in Ooni’s head.

Except, when she concentrated, those sounds seemed so familiar. They made Ooni’s heart rate climb. Cold sweat broke out on her skin. She felt small and hunted.

She ignored the reason for that anxiety.

At six hours, twelve minutes, and fifteen seconds since leaving Pheiri — according to the small clock in Ooni’s HUD — the fireteam reached their destination.

They knew the Death’s Heads would not be there anymore. Ooni had offered that advice during the debate about what to do. She knew that Yolanda and Cantrelle were not stupid, they would not have accepted the radio contact from Elpida only to then wait for death. They would leave booby-traps in their wake, or set up an ambush from which they could melt away. They would not be here. They would be gone.

As the fireteam approached the contact point, Ooni found herself hoping she was wrong.

As the drones moved forward and the fireteam crouched silently in a pitch-black corridor, Ooni’s lips peeled back from her teeth, hidden inside her helmet. All those years at the bottom of the pile, all that abuse and hate shovelled on her head. Let Yola be there, she prayed to the old gods who she had once believed in, trying to dredge their names from the sunlit world she could not even remember. Let Yola be there. Let her try to fight. Let her struggle!

Ooni felt a war cry clawing at the base of her throat. She hadn’t felt that since true life — never with the Death’s Heads. Where was this feeling coming from? Had some speck of life’s bright memory returned to her? For a second she felt like she was poised to charge uphill, a smear of woad on her sun-kissed face, an axe raised high in one hand, descending toward the gormless scream of some Roman teenager cowering behind his steel shield.

She panted inside her helmet, comms off. When the moment came, she would cry at the top of her lungs — “Telokopolis is forever!”

Kagami’s drones advanced those last hundred meters with great care, scanning every surface, fanning out further than before, checking and rechecking for bombs or traps or hidden surprises.

Nothing.

The big room up ahead was unoccupied. The fire-team had entered on foot, weapons raised, following the drones, into what Kagami had laughingly called a ‘planetarium’.

The room was a large circular space about one hundred feet across, with rings of wide tiered steps dropping down into a shallow pit in the middle. The outer wall was encrusted with a thick layer of computer terminals made of dull metal and grey plastic; surprisingly for the tomb, many of the terminals were aglow with toxic light, though the data on the screens was a meaningless jumble of corrupted symbols and system glitches. Masses of cable ran from the computers and snaked up the walls, gathering across the high ceiling of the chamber into a heavy bundle which hung over the pit, from which dangled a vast array of shattered projectors. According to Kagami’s distracted explanation this room was meant to display a three-dimensional picture of the spheres beyond Earth.

The Death’s Heads had ripped down vast quantities of cable, so it hung from the ceiling in ragged masses, trailing across the floor in loops and coils of rubber-sheathed metal, like vines in a deep forest. In the centre of the room they had woven the torn cables together into a rough sphere about fifteen feet wide, with an open base. It was a lattice punctuated by two large holes high up and a curved slash lower down.

A black skull, grinning wide.

Ooni’s battle fever had been extinguished by a wave of cold in her blood. She had started to shake. She couldn’t breathe.

Beneath the black skull of the Death’s Heads, a partial corpse lay on the floor in the middle of the shallow pit — a skeleton, just a chest and a right arm, picked almost clean, with only the most inedible scraps of gristle left clinging to the bloody bones.

This was the provocation, a message from Ooni’s former ‘sisters’.

None of the others understood. Not even Leuca.

Shilu was standing a few feet from the massive black skull, hands in her pockets, impassive eyes staring back into the empty sockets. Ilyusha stood a little further back, cradling her automatic shotgun in folded arms, cutting the air with the swishing tip of her bionic tail. Leuca had not yet approached the Death’s Head effigy; Ooni stayed close to her side. It was a good excuse to avoid the gaze of those dead eyes.

All but two of the drones were covering the four exits to the room. The remaining pair of drones had drifted close to the wire skull, running their invisible scanners up and down the construct. They were big, black, bulky combat drones, bristling with sensors and weapons, floating on their tiny gravity-engines, all under Kagami’s remote control.

Kagami and Victoria were arguing on the comms.

“—don’t make me repeat myself, Victoria! Order it destroyed, or I will—”

“Kaga! Fucking— give me time to—”

“You’re in command! Make the decision!”

“I’m trying to—”

Ilyusha took a step toward the skull and raised one red-clawed bionic hand as if to rip through the wires.

Shilu put out an arm to block her. “No.”

Ilyusha whirled on the Necromancer, gesturing with her shotgun. “Fuck you, reptile! You’re not in charge, you—”

“It’s a trap,” Shilu said. “I suggest you don’t touch it.”

Ilyusha shut her mouth with a click of her teeth, grimacing at Shilu, then up at the wire skull. On the comms, the argument died away.

Ooni felt her throat closing up. Of course it was a trap. But it was so much more.

Leuca spoke into her headset microphone: “Kagami, please confirm that.”

Kagami sighed loudly. The two drones she had been using to scan the skull backed away from the effigy. Silence reigned for a few moments.

Victoria said: “There, see?”

Kagami sighed again. When she spoke, she sounded very grumpy. “Yes, yes, the Necromancer is probably correct. There’s a current running through those wires, projecting a sort of electromagnetic cone inward, over the body. I don’t have a clue what it would do, and I don’t think we want to find out. Don’t step inside, don’t touch it at all.”

Ooni wanted to sob.

Another voice spoke over the comms network, slightly behind Kagami.

“Free finger-bangs all week to anybody who can figure out how to destroy it anyway,” said Howl.

Ooni’s heart soared. Tears prickled in her eyes. Howl was not Elpida, but Howl understood almost as well. This symbol had to be destroyed. It had to be burned, wiped out, ruined and wrecked and—

Shilu was speaking, staring up at the skull. “Those coils of wire, where it’s been wrapped into spirals. See those? Those are jury-rigged electromagnets. And the spacing is expert. Whoever made this created a perfect cone of electromagnetic interference. I’m not sure what it would do to a revenant. I’m not willing to speculate. But this is challenging work, performed by an expert. I am confident in that.”

Ooni bit her lower lip so hard she tasted blood. She knew, she knew, she knew who had made this, she knew what this meant, she knew it was—

Ilyusha snorted. “Saying we can’t tear it down, necro-bitch?”

Shilu didn’t move. “I didn’t say that. I could disarm this. But it might take an hour or two.”

Howl chuckled down the comms. “Ever the pessimist, cheese-grater. Worst comes to worst, we can have the drones shoot it up.”

Ooni swallowed her plea of agreement. Leuca was staring at her, blue eyes boring into her helmet. Could Leuca see her distress? She wouldn’t be surprised.

Ilyusha growled behind her teeth, gesturing at the skull with her shotgun. “Why fuckin’ do this, then?! Shitfuck reptiles can’t ambush us, can’t get us to blunder into a trap neither.” She jerked her chin toward one of the drones. “Not with the doggies here. Why do it? Just to piss us off? Fuckers! Shit eating fuck, bitch, fuck!”

“A statement of power,” Shilu said, still staring up into the eye sockets.

Leuca said, “Are we certain this is the origin point of the signal?”

Shilu nodded. “I am.”

Kagami concurred over the radio, “Yes, Pira, this is where they made contact with Pheiri, via their own comms network. He’s totally confident about that.” She sighed through gritted teeth. “If that corpse was even slightly less devoured, we could probably identify it. I would bet a handful of lunar soil it’s one we gave out yesterday.”

Ilyusha frowned. “What? The fuck?”

Leuca grunted. “Mm. Likely enough.”

Kagami tutted. “The Death’s Heads probably scouted us by disguising one of their number as a starving zombie, then accepted the meat. The remains beneath that trap look like half a torso with one arm attached. There’s only three possible matches who we gave that exact portion, but all three of them are zombies who then left Pheiri’s tomb chamber. Not that tracing them would help us. We’re not looking for them in the middle of a city, among a crowd. That would be easy compared to this … crawling nonsense.”

She huffed and made her chair creak, back in Pheiri’s control cockpit.

Silence fell, both on the comms and in the flesh. Ilyusha snorted as she stared at the skull made of twisted wires, tilting her head from side to side as if she could see the invisible cone of electromagnetic power. Leuca ran her naked eyes across the consoles and computers around the edge of the room, but she didn’t move. Kagami’s drones hovered in the four doorways, still and steady, eyes and weapons turned outward.

Beyond the walls, muffled by distance and the black metal of the tomb, the hurricane raged on.

The comms network crackled. Victoria spoke.

“Hey, Ooni, I’ve got a question for you, since you’re our expert,” she said. “Do you think the Death’s Heads would have done that? Sent somebody in disguise, to beg for meat?”

Ooni didn’t speak for a long moment. She wished she could give the useful answer, but that would be a lie.

“I … I don’t think so,” Ooni said, speaking slowly inside her helmet. “Yola would never allow it, it would be too humiliating. But … but maybe they’ve grown desperate. I … I’m sorry. I know I used to be one of them, but … but I don’t know. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Mm,” Victoria grunted.

“Bodes well for us,” Kagami muttered.

Shilu turned away from the skull and looked directly into the visor of Ooni’s helmet. Ooni flinched; it was like the Necromancer could see through the steel-glass.

“Ooni,” she said. “Why do you think this skull is here?”

Ooni felt her whole body go stiff. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t make herself think. She knew exactly why the skull was here, but the thought made her want to run.

She did the only thing she could. She reached up, unsealed her neck-ring, and pulled the helmet off her head. Her hair slid down her neck. The air was cold and stagnant and reeked of wet metal. She glanced at Leuca; this way she was that little bit closer to her, breathing the same air, their bare skin both exposed to the same flickering toxic shadows from the computer monitors.

Leuca held her look, but said nothing.

Hissing voices whispered on the comms network. Ilyusha barked something, perhaps a rebuke. Ooni couldn’t process any of it. She raised her eyes from Leuca’s blue gaze and forced herself to acknowledge the skull.

“It’s—”

—it’s aimed at me, it’s aimed at me, it’s aimed at me—

“—a message,” Ooni managed to say. “A statement, that we can’t … dislodge them, remove them, get rid of them. That’s why it’s such an obvious trap. We can’t remove their symbol without hurting ourselves.”

Ilyusha spat on the floor again. Shilu nodded and said, “Thank you.” On the comms network Kagami tutted, and Howl snorted with derision.

“And—”

—she’s going to catch me, she’s going to pin me to the floor and rip chunks off my back with her bare teeth and pull my skin off and—

“—and—”

—it was her it was her it was her—

“—uh—”

“Ooni,” said Leuca. “Concentrate.”

Ooni took a deep breath and tried again. “I think I know who made it. The skull, I mean.”

Shilu raised her eyebrows. On the comms, Kagami said: “Go ahead. Explain. Quickly.”

“ … Kuro,” Ooni said, forcing the name past her lips. “The big one, in powered armour. The bomb-vest was her design, too.”

Howl made a contemplative noise on the comms. “Hrrrrrm. The big bitch. She’s the one who strung up Elps. Locked into her armour or something, right?”

Kagami was muttering — “Great. Wish she had a different name.”

Ooni struggled to keep speaking. “Kuro has always been Yola’s … dog. She’s very technically minded, good with jury-rigging machines, making things from scrap, that sort of thing. I think she was some kind of engineer, when she was alive. She pretends to be stupid, but I know she’s not. And she … she likes to be cruel. She knows how to get inside your head. Yola would just have painted a skull and written some words, then been done with it. But Kuro, she likes this sort of thing. This is how she thinks. It’s meant to … bother us.”

Ooni couldn’t express what she really meant. She didn’t have the words.

Victoria spoke over the comms: “But it was Cantrelle on the radio. That implies she’s in charge now. Would she do this?”

Ooni shook her head, then remembered the crew in the cockpit couldn’t see the gesture. “This is Kuro’s work. I’m certain of it. And— and—” The fear was too much; Ooni started shaking again. “And I’m … I’m certain we’re being followed. I agree with Leuca— Pira. Pira! I agree with Pira. We’re being followed.”

High winds howled far beyond the tomb’s outer walls.

Ilyusha snorted. “Scared?”

Ooni finally looked away from the skull. She met Ilyusha’s iron-grey eyes, then averted her gaze. She found it so hard to maintain eye contact with Ilyusha.

“Of Kuro? Yes.” Ooni swallowed. Her body remembered Kuro’s hands. “She’s like a … a cat. She likes to play with her food.”

Kagami sighed. “You’re not being followed. The drone sensor suites haven’t picked up anybody in hours, let alone a revenant wearing powered armour, glowing like a fucking lantern. I would know. Pheiri would know. Nobody is going to sneak up on me.”

Shilu said, “I haven’t seen or heard anything either.”

Leuca shook her head. “I have.”

Ooni was shaking now, hands creaking on the grip of her submachine gun, teeth threatening to chatter. “I’m certain— certain we’re being followed, yes. It’s the— the little sounds! I know them because they’re her sounds, the ones you always had to listen for in the Sisterhood. She blends in with the echoes and footsteps, she’s so good at it. Don’t you see? That’s how she does it, it’s how she always does it! Even in powered armour she moves like a cat. I should know, she—” Ooni felt her throat closing up. Kuro always used to like tormenting Ooni, but the words wouldn’t come. “She’s so good at sneaking up behind you, at the times you’re not thinking about it, the exact times you think she’s elsewhere. And you can never tell she’s coming. And then she’ll be in the corner of a room, or blocking a door, and you can’t escape, and she’ll just— just stand there until you move, making you think about what she’s going to do to you, and she wants you to make the first move, she wants you to feel it and—”

“Ooni,” said Leuca.

“She’s doing that to us right now! She is! That’s what this skull is about! It’s a statement, there’s no escape, there’s no—”

“Ooni!” Leuca snapped. “Stop.”

A moment of silence. Ooni took a deep breath, trying not to sob. She couldn’t look at anybody. She had shamed herself.

She touched the symbol of Telokopolis on her breastplate.

Kagami muttered, “I’ll adjust the pick-ups on the drones. Get Pheiri to run the audio through a different algorithm, whatever. Fine?”

Ooni wanted to say no, but she said nothing.

Shilu turned back to the huge wire skull. “They’re attempting to goad us. I agree with that.”

“Agreed,” Kagami grunted.

Victoria said, “They can’t hope to mount an ambush against all the drones. What are they drawing us deeper for?”

Leuca asked: “Are we pulling out?”

Kagami snorted, “That would be my advice. The tangle only gets more dense from here. This was a mistake. This operation should have been drones only.”

A long moment of silence passed over the comms. Distant hailstones drummed on the tomb.

Eventually, Victoria said, “I don’t know.”

“With drones alone, perhaps—” Kagami started.

Victoria cut over her. “Kaga, let me think.”

Howl said, “Can’t come crawling back with no trophies, hey. That’s a fail. A big one.”

Shilu said, “I could go ahead alone. Follow the signal ghosts, whatever spoor they left, sounds, breathing, heat signatures.”

“Nobody goes off alone,” Victoria ground out between clenched teeth. “We still haven’t made contact with Iriko and Serin. Anything could have happened, anything. Nobody wanders off. Understood?”

“Kuro?” Ilyusha snapped, jerking her head; Ooni looked up in surprise, because Ilyusha was talking to her. “She’s behind us? Then let’s hunt some big cat, huh?!”

Ooni shook her head. “You can’t. You can’t. You can’t—”

“Can!” Ilyusha barked, then grinned — actually grinned, right at Ooni.

For the first time since they’d met, Ooni felt an inkling of affection for the little berserker cyborg. If anybody had the courage to hunt down Kuro, maybe it was her? Or maybe she would just go missing in the tunnels, never seen again. Ooni shook her head. Ilyusha snorted.

A tiny voice spoke up — “I think they should come back. I think they should.” That was Amina. Ilyusha grimaced and looked away.

Victoria rattled on. “I agree with Amina. It’s not worth the risk. We should pull back. Pull back out. They’ve fled too far. Maybe Iriko and Serin will get them, or maybe not. But … we can’t … we can’t risk … ”

Leuca said, clean and crisp: “You need to make a decision, Victoria. If we stay here too long, that could also be a problem. Your orders, commander?”

Ooni heard Victoria’s tense breathing down the comms uplink. She didn’t envy her.

“A … vote,” Victoria said.

Kagami hissed between her teeth. “You can’t hold a fucking vote, Victoria, this isn’t one of your NorAm commune meetings, you dirt-brained—” Kagami cut off with a huff, then: “Command, or I will! Take charge, for fuck’s sake!”

“I am taking charge!” Victoria snapped. “And I’m ordering a vote. We’re not in combat. We can vote. All for pulling out?”

The ayes — Leuca, Victoria, Kagami, and Amina too, in a small voice.

“All for pushing on?”

Howl, Atyle — who had not spoken until then, tucked somewhere inside Pheiri’s cockpit — plus Shilu, and Ilyusha.

Pheiri himself abstained from voting. Sky, if she was still in the cockpit, didn’t make a sound. Nobody else seemed to be present.

Leuca, Ilyusha, and Shilu all looked at Ooni. She felt the silence waiting on the other side of the comms uplink.

Victoria said, “Ooni? I didn’t catch you on either side of that.”

Ooni felt tears gathering in her eyes. She raised her face and stared at the wire skull, at the grinning provocation of the Death’s Heads.

Kagami was hissing something about how they couldn’t put that decision on her, about how Victoria was being irresponsible, about how they had agreed not to manage the operation like this. Victoria tried to shush her, saying it was all a formality, Ooni did not have to decide, of course not, of course. Leuca sighed and said Ooni’s name. Howl started laughing. Shilu stepped away from the skull, preparing for the inevitable, preparing to leave before Ooni even spoke. Ilyusha spat on the floor and looked disgusted.

Ooni knew that this decision was not actually down to her — if she pushed the matter at all, Victoria could easily be forced to take responsibility, to take command properly. It was already happening, without any effort on Ooni’s part; Victoria was drawing breath to give the order. The drones were pulling back. Everyone was resigned to retreat, before Ooni even spoke.

Ooni wanted to feel that courage again, that moment of sunlit triumph when she had dreamed of laying Yolanda’s head at Elpida’s feet.

But when she glanced over her shoulder into the flickering shadows of the tomb, she could only imagine Kuro’s hulking form looming out of the passageway. She felt the sticky heat of Kuro’s grasping hands on the back of her neck, peeling away her armour, pinning her down, slapping her when she squealed. She felt Kuro’s reeking breath on her shoulders, teeth getting ready to teach her her place. Her nerves remembered it all too well, and her nerves were shot to pieces.

Ooni put her helmet back on, so Leuca would not see her tears.

“Alright, Kaga, alright! Fuck! Fine!” Victoria said over the comms. “We’re retreating. That’s your order. Same route as before. Nothing’s in the way. Come home, all of you. We’ll figure something else out.”

Howl purred: “And the skull?”

Victoria sighed. “We’ll shoot it from the doorway. First, everybody out.”

In the end, Ooni didn’t even cast her vote.

As the drones drifted back across the chamber and the fireteam formed up to plunge back into the twisted innards of the tomb, Ooni cut her comms and whispered to herself in the privacy of her own helmet.

“Telokopolis is forever, Telokopolis is forever, Telokopolis is forever—”

The words were blurred by the static of the storm, and marred by the chattering of Ooni’s own teeth.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Oh, Ooni. The walls of Telokopolis are very far away, and long gone cold, and she’s never even seen them. Only in her dreams …

This chapter was a very difficult one to write, I’m not gonna lie about that. Ooni is a very interesting POV to explore, but my gosh, this woman is a mess, and not in the fun ways. There’s a core of trauma there so tightly wound that Ooni just cannot unclench her muscles. Well, she’s on the way back now, scurrying away from her fears. Perhaps this isn’t the best outcome for her. Behind the scenes, I think arc 13 really is going to go long, perhaps even 15 chapters. I had considered splitting it, but now I’m thinking otherwise. But, as always, I will play it by ear, stay on my toes, and let the characters lead!

And, in related news, I have a small notice about changes to the upcoming schedule. As I am currently not writing my other serial, Katalepsis (planning for Book Two!), Necroepilogos is briefly going on an every-week publishing schedule, but will then take a two week break in February, on the 13th and the 20th, due to some non-writing-related matters I have to go take care of. The regular three-on/one-off publishing schedule will resume as normal when Katalepsis Book Two gets underway, some time in March. I’ve put this all on the table of contents, so everybody can see!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you! Thank you, dear readers, for following along with my little story about zombiegirls and firearms and big sentient tanks and girls kissing biting other girls in the long-rotten aftermath of the world. I’m still having an absolute blast writing Necroepilogos, and I hope you’re enjoying the story as much as I am! Seeya next chapter, for another step deeper into the tomb. Until then!

Content Warnings

Slurs
Sexual slurs
Mention of sexual assault used as a metaphor

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Sky was awake.

Sky had been awake for a while, but she was going nowhere fast.

Sky felt like shit on a shingle cooked over a tire fire — and she should know, she’d eaten worse.

Her head pounded like a jackhammer fuck, threatening her with waves of sticky, cloying nausea, though she kept her eyes closed tight and her body lying still. Every shallow breath strained at a mass of deep bruises across her chest and belly, worse than any beating since her teenage street-rip years. She counted three fractured ribs between her own stuttering breaths, and maybe a couple more in the blurred pain between. Her neck was stiff with whiplash, her back was sore with pulled muscles, and the rear of her skull had bloomed with a cluster of nasty bumps, like some gutter trash had been bouncing her off a pavement. Her nose and throat felt raw and rough, burned by her own stomach acid from too much vomiting, but also by some violation which lurked at the edge of uneasy dreams. She’d spent hours drifting among nightmares of smothering and choking and drowning; she could almost still feel the liquid death coating the inside of her lungs and bloating her stomach.

Her eyes were crusted shut. Her memory was a swamp.

Sky counted her blessings. This was far from the worst condition in which she had ever woken up. The thin mattress on which she lay was clearly a bit shit, but it was better than the alternatives.

At least she was breathing with her own lungs, with fabric and air against her skin. She could wiggle her toes and clear her own throat, though the former had gone numb and the latter hurt like she’d been throat-fucked by a suspended animation rig. Her pain level was high, but not urgent, not panic-inducing, not the kind of pain which demanded dampeners and synth-opiates. And it was infinitely preferable to the blurry pins-and-needles of nerve disconnection, while her flesh hung open and some vital part of herself regrew in a glass tube for six weeks. She couldn’t feel the tell-tale tug of IV lines or electro-hookups in her arms or legs, nor hear the beep and whirr of medical machines, nor smell the faecal reek of some field hospital in a rotting mountain hovel.

The air was filled with the static of a rainstorm and the howl of high winds, muffled beyond distant walls.

The deep throb of a powerful engine seemed to keep time with Sky’s own heartbeat.

Sky groaned involuntarily, then clenched her teeth — then groaned again. Even her jaw was bruised. Somebody had worked her over nasty style, somebody who leered down through her memories with a mouth full of bloody teeth and sunshine hair and white—

Sky hissed and tried to spit.

A beating? Ha! This was nothing. Even as a kid a beating hadn’t been enough to stop her, and she wasn’t a kid anymore. She was seasoned, she was fire-hardened, she was a rabid Black Dog spat up from the darkest corner of Sol’s entrails. Whoever had pinned her down and knocked her about was going to regret not putting a round in her skull. This wouldn’t stop her.

Sky had once spent three months in a tube of gel after the battle of Hellas City, paralysed so she wouldn’t vomit out her own digestive system before what was left of the Black Dog’s med-techs could purge the designer plague leftovers from her body. Down on Earth she’d once taken a shotgun blast to the chest, right into the armpit seam of her armour — a booby-trapped door in some abandoned Euro-trash village; the surgery to keep her alive had lasted six hours, with plenty of anaesthetic but not the mercy of unconsciousness. She’d taken head wounds and gut wounds and broken bones — and even briefly lost an eye — in half the Outer System conflicts of the last thirty years. And further back, when she’d left home, her real home, the one to which she could never return, she’d lived in the hold of one of the last lifters off-planet, no showers or hot water or changing out of her voidsuit for eight long months, stewing in her own recycled piss. And before that there were the days she didn’t like to think about too often, the cold hungry days after her world had fallen apart for the first time—

“Stop,” she hissed through bruised lips. “Stop. Stop thinking shit that doesn’t matter. Move. Now. Move or die.”

Sky opened her eyes, which took her a while. Her vision was blurry with sleep, pain, and exhaustion. She raised her right arm and rubbed her eyes, then winced — her face was puffy with bruises. She forced herself to rub and blink and squint until her vision cleared.

Deep shadows, metal walls, narrow bunks.

Sky’s memories began to consolidate. She knew where she was — still in the little bunk room where the others had dumped her, lying on one of the bottom bunks. Nobody else seemed to be around, but Sky could hear soft breathing from behind a curtained alcove.

Sky let herself vegetate for a few minutes, gathering her thoughts, flexing her legs to feel out her bruises.

This wasn’t the first time Sky had awoken since she’d been carried into this war machine, whatever it was. She had drifted in and out of consciousness for hours, perhaps the better part of a day or two. She recalled being carried through the dark corridors of the tomb, then tossed onto a slab in some kind of infirmary, cramped and crowded and awash with blood; she remembered a pixie-faced medical bot probing her to make sure she wasn’t broken inside, stitching up a few cuts and slathering gunk on a few gashes. She remembered being carried in here — she’d woken up and asked where she was, and one of the women had said, ‘Safe. Inside Pheiri. We’ve got you, zombie.’

Zombie, huh?

Sky also remembered the gravekeeper’s chamber, though that was fuzzier. She remembered vomiting — lots of vomiting — and coughed softly at the crawling sensation in her oesophagus. She remembered something liquid being forced down her throat, squirming and writhing and bloating up to fill her innards. She remembered—

Lykke!

Sky jerked upright, wincing and hissing through the pain, swinging her legs off the side of the bunk. Her heart was racing, her skin was drenched with sudden sweat, and her hands were shaking. Her chest screamed with her own heaving breaths. The effort of sitting up made her vision blur and spin.

She clutched the side of the bunk so hard that the metal dug into her palms.

“Fuck,” she hissed. “Fuck that— fucking bio-job bitch. Fuck. Fuck her. Fucking gonna— fuck. Kill her. I’ll fucking kill her.”

Sky’s memories were clear now: from the ‘resurrection chamber’, the journey through the tomb, the shock and awe of it all, beside Eseld and Cyneswith and that full-body plastimetal cyborg, Shilu, and then—

Lykke.

The cloud of flies which she’d forced down Sky’s throat. Sky had drowned in little wings and greasy bloated bodies and filth and fluids and—

Sky was shaking.

“Snap out of it, bitch,” Sky hissed at herself. “Wise up. Get it together.”

Sky slapped herself across the face, regardless of her bruises. The pain made her eyes water, but she clenched every muscle until she stopped shaking. After a moment she leaned to one side, gathered a glob of saliva in her mouth, then let it slowly drip to the floor.

Her spit was tainted with the pinkish froth of her own blood, but not with any white — no fly wings, no little crushed bodies, no remnant of Lykke’s violation.

Sky’s vision blurred with relief; she wiped the glob of spit across the metal decking with one foot. She sagged toward the thin mattress again, then shook her head and made herself sit up. She was acting like some civ-levy conscript retard.

She was alive, wasn’t she? What else mattered?

Or not alive, technically.

Sky examined herself. She was wrapped in a scratchy blue blanket and dressed in a grey t-shirt, with matching shorts — clothes from the tomb armoury. She lifted the hem of the t-shirt and found a very impressive patchwork of bruises, already turning a familiar mess of yellows and greens and browns, punctuated by the clean white of bandages and dressings, where Lykke’s claws had cut into her torso. She probed carefully until the pain brought tears to her eyes. She had a little chorus of broken ribs in there too; she needed to make sure to breathe deeply, despite the pain, or she might risk pneumonia or a collapsed lung.

Was that right? How did these new bodies work, anyway?

She had all her limbs, her senses worked right, and she wasn’t tied up or chained down or studded with fresh incisions from organ-raiding. She pulled her dark hair into a twist over one shoulder to keep it out of the way, then glanced around the room and asked herself ‘what next?’

Sky almost laughed.

She was dead, right? She vaguely recalled her own death, though it didn’t seem important now — a stupid death, an idiot’s death, blown to pieces by a bomb in a shopping mall, planted by some snot-nosed Eurasian terrorist, in a country she barely identified with, on a planet that she barely knew. Now that shit-hole planet was dead too, wiped off and repopulated by nanomachine zombies and plastic monsters. Sky was hundreds of millions of years in the future, rebuilt from fairy dust and bullshit.

Sky looked at her own hands. Her skin looked real enough — the same ruddy-red brown she’d been born with — and young again. The left side was high quality bio-polymer, almost exactly the same as real skin; she found a seam which ran roughly down the left side of her body, over her left shoulder and the side of her neck, down to her left thigh and her groin. Was that where the bomb blast had torn her apart? Resurrection had patched her up with spare parts.

And then, after resurrection, Sky had almost been raped to death by some bio-mod monster dressed like a street slut, then rescued by this unknown crew and taken inside this machine, ‘Pheiri’, whatever that meant.

The world was over, but Sky was still here.

“Again, huh?” she said — then laughed at the perversity of it all. The laugh made her ribs hurt, but she didn’t care.

Sky knew she should feel horror, or shock, or some kind of dislocation. Wasn’t that what normal people felt when the world ended? True, she’d been surprised and a little overawed by the sight from the top of the tomb — all that ruin and wreck, that choked-out sun, the mile after mile of destruction. But she’d gone numb, nice and quick, just like always.

She’d been through this so many times already. First her parents had died when she was eleven years old, killed by Jovian Security in some botched response to a terrorist attack which wasn’t even real. Ten years later, after a decade of street life, Sky had lived through Ganymede’s Murder, up close and personal. Then had come the Black Dogs, for seventeen long years; real comrades, real purpose, real pay, and nice warm squirming meat in her bunk every night — women, toyboys, bio-mod freak shows, meat-dolls, whatever she fancied. But then February Twice had taken the Dogs down the gravity well, in-system, and Mars had eaten them alive. Sky was just lucky enough to end up as gristle, spat out after being chewed up. After all that, peace had broken out and fucked up everything. The Dogs had disbanded after Hellas; there were so few of them left, February Twice was dead, along with all of Sky’s friends. The Pavonis Mons Commune had accepted her readily enough, because they were desperate for experienced soldiers by then — sadsack civvies who’d sat out the war and knew they were next on the chopping block. That period of Sky’s life had lasted a lot longer than the three-month contract she’d signed. She’d stayed on when the contract ran out, because she’d found somebody she liked to be with, a Martian called Onira. Onira had two kids and always knew the right things to say, even when Sky couldn’t talk. Sky had walked the walls and carried a gun by day and gone home to a real home at night, and not fired one shot the whole time.

She tried not to think about Onira. Made her weak.

Four years and then that had ended too; Pavonis Mons had been crushed like all the other experiments in ‘radical self-government’. Mars was a sick bucket of bad memories by then, so Sky had left for the biggest shit hole in Sol — Earth, glittering with dreams, with thick greenery, with ancient culture. Earth’s promises had turned to ash in the grinding reality of being just another merc from nowhere. She’d settled into a high-risk security job on the edge of the Eurasian Republic, spending her pay check mostly on booze and meat-body sex-dolls. Her co-workers had been pussies and whiners, nothing compared to the larger-than-life giants of the Black Dogs. Now and again some pencil-neck journalist would track her down to ask questions about Ganymede, and less often about the Mars Unification War; once she got in legal trouble for breaking a journo’s jaw with the butt of a rifle. Why ask her? Why not some other Gany-diaspora dipshit?

She’d felt dead already. A walking husk. She’d considered going back to Jovian space — not Europa or Io, those cunts could rot, but to one of the bigger station habitats, somewhere she could lose herself in the crowds, somewhere people would sound like her. But Earth’s gravity had sucked her down. And then she’d slipped up one day. Boom! Sky’s world had ended in one bright flash.

Sky’s world had ended so many times. What was different about this one?

Lykke?

Sky had never seen anything like Lykke before. She’d gone up against some pretty extreme bio-mods on Mars, and witnessed far worse things out past Titan, on old habs and empty stations and burrowed-out rocks. But Lykke broke all the rules of even the most messed up bio-mods; she was closer to some of the nanomachine nightmares Sky had seen at Ganymede’s Murder.

Sky noticed her hands started to shake when she thought about Lykke again, so she stopped.

World’s dead, and you got beaten up. So what? Keep moving.

Sky glanced around the bunk room; she needed a plan, an exit, and fast. The crew here hadn’t hurt her, but that didn’t mean much. Sky needed to arm up and learn the lay of the land. She wasn’t sure what she was even on board; the cramped bunks reminded her of a void-ship, or a bird farm, but the noises were all wrong for the former, and the deck wasn’t rolling, so it probably wasn’t the latter.

And she could still hear the distant drumming of heavy rain and high winds. Was that the storm they’d seen earlier? It sounded big.

Sky’s eyes passed over the bunk to her left, then paused and went back.

Guns?

The bottom bunk to Sky’s left was stacked with guns, armour, and equipment. She stared for several moments, caught between disbelief and confusion.

The crew of this machine had left her unsecured in a room full of firearms?

Sky climbed to her feet. This took several abortive attempts, a lot of wincing and grunting and gritting of teeth, and much silent bitching. Her back was turbo-fucked, her stomach quivered whenever she moved, and her neck twinged if she turned her head to the right. She almost ended up on the floor, gripping the edge of the next bunk up, shamed by her weakness. She thumped herself in one thigh, swallowed a scream, and felt tears of pain run down her cheeks.

Eventually she got herself upright as best she could, bare feet on the metal floor. She stood there for minutes — way too long, if she didn’t want to be found — swaying and panting, until she felt strong enough to hobble forward.

She shuffled over to the impromptu armoury laid out on a bunk.

None of it was booby-trapped. No wires, no pressure plates, no tell-tale flicker of IR beams. Sky experimented by poking a bullet-proof vest, but nothing happened. She nudged at a boot, then reached out and wiggled the butt of a submachine gun. Still nothing.

She was sorely tempted by the massive coilgun which lay one bunk over, but she wouldn’t be able to lift the thing with her wounds. Firing it would probably knock her out. Instead she picked up an automatic handgun, something light and easy, chemical propellant with lead bullets. Primitive, but reliable. She slid the magazine out and stared, then smothered a laugh. The gun was loaded! She quietly pushed the mag back into place, made sure the safety was on, and boggled at the weapon.

The crew had left her in a room full of loaded guns, body armour, and high-tech combat gear.

They were morons.

Wait, no. Sky shook her head at her own naivety — then winced again, ow. The rescue crew, whoever they were, they’d driven Lykke off, right? So they couldn’t all be complete fools. They were well-equipped and highly skilled, must be hard as nails. Maybe they were so beyond being threatened that leaving an unknown alone with a bunch of guns didn’t matter. Yeah, that was probably it. Bitches probably had grav-plates and personal shield implants, like Sky used to back on Mars.

Or maybe this was just the way things were done here. Maybe they trusted her, despite not knowing her?

Sky stared at the gun. She didn’t know what to do. She’d been thinking of arming up and escaping, but she was too wounded and bruised to get into this gear.

What if they’d wanted her to find the guns?

When Sky had been twenty one years old, just another refugee crammed into a lifter hold among the other last-outs off Ganymede’s smouldering corpse, a woman had approached her one day — straight up, striding across the no-man’s-land in the middle of the hold. She’d thought she was in for yet another fight over food and water. But the woman had pressed a gun into Sky’s hands.

She had said: “Hey, skinny bitch. Seen you around. I like your style. You’re with me now. You’re gonna help me take the bridge of this bucket.”

The woman had seemed like just another nobody; Sky hadn’t known then that she was the owner, leader, and commander of the Black Dogs of Saturn — February Twice. Sky had no idea. Sky hadn’t understood anything, except the weight of a gun in her hands and the flash of a confident grin behind a voidsuit visor, turning away from her, expecting her to follow, utterly confident that Sky would not shoot her in the back for the meat on her bones.

And Sky had followed. Sky was good at that.

She weighed this new gun. Nobody had handed it to her. They’d left it here, for her to take.

She couldn’t have escaped even if she’d wanted to. She’d have passed out just trying to strap on a bulletproof vest, let alone arming up like the good old days.

Sky needed to find the cunt in charge of this outfit. She’d heard bits and pieces earlier, while sleeping and waking.

‘Elpida’?

Yeah, that was it. Elpida. Commander.

Sky double-checked the safety on the pistol, shoved it into the front of her waistband where it could not be missed, and decided to go find Elpida. She toyed with the idea of picking up some heavier firepower too, but anything she had to brace against her shoulder would probably cause more pain than she could handle right then. She’d have to use her words and keep her head down, until she was healed up and ready to rock.

She did take the extra time to put on a pair of socks and lace up some boots, sitting on the edge of the bunk and trying not to grunt too hard whenever she had to lean forward. Had to protect her feet, after all. Some things never changed, no matter where you were killing.

Getting out of the bunk room was not easy; Sky was so bruised she struggled to walk without pain, even with the added stability of the boots.

Only one of the other bunks was occupied. Sky got halfway to the hatch, then paused to peek around the curtain.

And who should she find sleeping there, curled up together, but Cyneswith and Eseld?

Sky’s lips curled with jealousy and disgust. Fair, the pair weren’t actually cuddling in their sleep — Eseld was pressed to the wall, while Cyneswith was a good hand-span to her rear. But they were together, weren’t they? The two she had woken up with, minus Shilu. And she’d rather not run into Shilu again. Shilu was too much for Sky to take, even healthy and healed. She half-hoped that Lykke had gotten Shilu.

Sky stared down at Cyneswith, at her delicate features and wispy light hair. Cyneswith had reminded Sky of the kind she liked — small and needy and desperate for protection. But Eseld? Huh. Eseld had saved her in the resurrection chamber, and arguably again in the gravekeeper’s chamber, but Eseld was a mouthy little shit with a face full of fangs. Sky didn’t like her.

Eseld was also cradling a human skull against her chest. Freak shit.

Well, not that Sky could talk. She’d kept trophies too.

Sky turned away, letting the curtain fall back into place. She could negotiate her position in regard to those two later — or she could give Eseld a good pistol-whip to the jaw and drag Cyneswith out with her, after shooting this ‘Elpida’ in the face, if Elpida turned out to be anything less than worth Sky’s respect.

She tried not to laugh as she made it to the bunk room door. Yeah right. The Commander was probably protected. Sky had to be sneaky.

The door to the bunk room reminded Sky of the inside of a void ship, heavy and bulky, made for atmosphere seals. She opened it quietly and stepped out into a large compartment, illuminated by low red night-cycle lighting.

The compartment was stuffed with equipment, strewn all over the floor and overflowing from built-in seat benches on either side — more guns, heavy weapons, piles of clothing, body armour, even a few drones; Sky recognised some of it from the tomb armoury. The far end of the compartment framed a single door with an atmosphere-seal indicator light. The near end had a set of stairs leading up into darkness, a ladder to some kind of storage area above, and a corridor which led forward into a mass of cables and metal corners and old screens and closed hatches. Directly across from the bunk room door was another, matching door, left slightly ajar. Sky’s sense of direction told her that was the infirmary, where she had been poked and prodded and patched up.

Sky shuffled across the big compartment. She would have preferred to be stealthy, but walking hurt too much. Her wounds ached and stung and she felt unsteady with every step, but she made it to the door and eased it open, peering into the room beyond.

Infirmary. Dried blood all over the floor, peeling paint on the walls, a work surface covered in medical equipment. A girl she didn’t recognise was lying on a medical bed, wrapped in bandages, breathing slow, shallow, and rough, out cold. She looked about how Sky felt.

Asleep on a little fold out seat next to that bed was the medical bot Sky recalled from earlier — a tiny, pixie-like android, with greyish artificial skin.

The bot was bundled up in a blanket, as if somebody had tucked her in for a nap. The area around her was blurry, as if Sky’s eyes were watering. She squinted and peered closer — then flinched, almost jumping out of her skin. She hissed at the pain in her chest and belly.

The little medical bot was not sitting on the chair directly; she was snuggled down in the lap of a second bot — a big one, with lots of arms, and chameleon-skin chromatic matching. The big android was blending in with the grey and off-white of the infirmary walls. Thankfully it was also fast asleep.

Sky cleared her throat. “Hey. Hey. Med-tech. Hey.”

The little bot opened her eyes — massive, dark, and liquid. She blinked at Sky several times, but said nothing.

“Med-tech, yeah?” Sky repeated. “You’re the one who patched me up?”

The bot blinked again, then nodded. Her eyes jumped up and down Sky’s body, as if examining her for wounds. Sky paused to let the bot do her work; always good to let the med-techs work without bullshit, even if she bristled at the intrusion. It was only a bot, after all.

“You should be in bed,” said the med-bot. “In bed. In bed. You’ve got fractures, compound and simple, and more. More. More. Didn’t expect you to wake. Wake. So soon. Soon—”

“Stop,” Sky grunted. Poor thing was on the fritz. “Tell me who’s in charge here.”

The bot blinked. “Pheiri? No. Ha ha.” She spoke the laugh out loud, but didn’t seem amused. “Elpida’s the Commander. You want to see her?”

“Please.”

“She’s up front, in the control cockpit. With all you other zombies. Watching the screens.” The bot wormed one delicate grey arm out of her blankets, then pointed, indicating the corridor back in the big compartment. “She’s the one with the white hair. White hair. Can’t miss her.”

Sky nodded. “Thanks, med-tech.”

“Melyn.”

Sky paused. “You have a name?”

“Melyn.” The bot nodded.

Who the hell gives med-bots names? Sky decided that was a good sign; she liked people who named their machines. Sky cleared her throat again and tried to ignore the second android, the big one — her eyes were open, peering at Sky over the med-bot’s head. Sky turned away without saying goodbye.

With considerable difficulty, Sky hobbled back across the compartment, then limped into the cramped, jinking, jumbled corridor, presumably heading toward the front of this war machine.

The corridor was a mess, crammed with old subsystems, abandoned crew seats, and masses of hanging wire. Sky passed open hatches which led off into tight spaces, ducked beneath flickering screens showing frozen readouts, and limped across a swell of armour as if walking over the brain of an artificial intelligence; perhaps that was the deep rhythmic thrumming she felt, like a heartbeat in the core of the machine. She passed beneath a ladder which seemed to climb up toward some kind of turret. No way, was this a tank? It was huge, bigger than any armoured vehicle had any right to be. It had to be a walker, or a water-craft, not a tank.

Sky heard a low mutter from up ahead — several voices, speaking in urgent whispers and speculative mumbles, blurred by the clicking and humming and buzzing of screens and computer readouts.

She felt a sudden rush of nostalgia, and a pang deep in her chest.

It sounded just like the war room on the Black Dog’s cruiser, Saturn’s Knuckle. Those tones, those voices, whoever they were, Sky knew they were watching and directing an operation in progress.

She started to hurry forward, clinging to whatever handholds she could find.

But then a figure stepped around one of the last turns before the control room.

White hair, long and straight all the way down to her waist. Copper-brown skin, wrapped in tomb-grey clothes, rippling with the subtle motions of tight, toned, compact muscle, held still and ready with all the practice of a career soldier. Purple eyes burned with intelligence and amusement at the sight of Sky, but no surprise.

The woman paused, left hand grabbing a piece of machinery to brace herself. Her right forearm was missing, just a stump wrapped in fresh bandages.

Sky was used to often being the tallest person in a room, but this woman had a whole head on her. She was massive. A bio-mod job, surely?

The bio-mod soldier-girl said nothing. She waited, as if for Sky to make the first move.

Sky straightened up, despite the pain. She lifted her chin. She made sure to cock her hips, showing the pistol in her waistband.

“ … Elpida, right?”

A curious smirk crossed those lips; she didn’t even glance at the gun. “Nah. Not right now, anyway. Elps is busy.”

Sky frowned. She didn’t want to be rude, not right away, but she wanted to talk to the Commander, not the Commander’s internal sub-selves. “You’re a partition?”

‘Elpida’ raised her eyebrows. “Funny word. Partition, huh?”

Sky nodded. Partitioning had been common enough on Ganymede, especially among techs and synth-workers; some of her comrades in the Dogs had practised it too, with one partition for combat, one for everything else. That always gave Sky the shivers. Combat-partitions got weird, twitchy, aggressive.

“Partition, yeah,” she repeated. “Are you not Elpida? Are you not the one in charge here?”

The smirk grew wider. “I’m Howl. I share the Commander’s head. While she’s busy, I’m what you got. Sky, right? We got your name from the others. Didn’t think you’d wake up so fast.”

“Sky, yeah. You can just call me that.”

“Sky. Nice name. Simple name. Pick it yourself?”

“Yeah, actually.” Sky bristled; she didn’t want to talk about herself, about her birth name, or anything else. She placed a hand on her hip, next to the pistol. This was a nobody, then — a combat partition, or something else. “I want to speak with the person in charge. Your commander.”

Howl started to laugh. “You’re a hot-head, aren’t you? Me too, bitch.”

Sky allowed herself to smile. “Glad we understand each other.”

Howl snorted. “Actually, we don’t. You sure do seem confident for somebody who’s never been a zombie before. You up to speed? Shilu said you were, but Shilu’s a bit cracked in her own way. Am I right, or am I right?”

“Huh,” Sky grunted. “Yeah, I’m up to speed. World’s dead. We’re all dead. Whatever. Where’s your commander?”

Howl said nothing, turning her head to one side, as if examining Sky from multiple angles. Sky didn’t like that. This ‘Howl’ was giving her the shivers, and she still didn’t spare even one glance for the handgun in Sky’s waistband. This was not a subordinate she could beat up in a secluded corridor. She doubted she would be able to draw the gun. This was real shit. This was like her early days in the Dogs.

She kept her mouth shut. Tried to stand straight. Look smart, look confident, look sane.

“You’ve adapted real fast,” Howl said. “Haven’t you?”

Sky grinned; now this, this felt familiar enough — Earth-bound dickheads and civvies looking at her like she’d stepped out of a movie.

“I’ve seen worlds die before,” Sky said, sneering. “I was on Ganymede.”

Howl didn’t react. She waited, eyebrows raised. Sky hesitated. She had no idea what else to say.

Eventually Howl said, “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

A void opened up inside Sky’s chest.

‘I was on Ganymede’.

Since Sky’s home was murdered, those words were the only thing she’d ever needed to establish her place in another person’s mind. ‘I was on Ganymede’ earned her instant respect from the others in the Black Dogs, a leg-up the ladder, a way into the established cliques. ‘I was on Ganymede’ turned heads in the Outer System, on Titan, on the Neptune habs, on any rock or metal where she set foot, even out in the Oort with the freaks on Furthest. ‘I was on Ganymede’ got her mountains of pussy on Mars, showered in attention, in drinks, in whatever she wanted. ‘I was on Ganymede’ got her into the Commune. ‘I was on Ganymede’ got her a job on Earth, free passage, room and board.

‘I was on Ganymede!’

Sky had been there on the ground at the death of a world — a little world compared with Earth or Mars, but a world all the same, the world where she had been born, the world where her parents had raised her. Those four words had never before failed to impress, to quieten, to bludgeon, or at least to lead to follow-up questions and a round of drinks.

What was it like, Sky? Hell, to her comrades in the Black Dogs, embellished with adventure and danger and dozens of kills. Hell, to Onira, when Sky had spoken about the reality. Did you fight the machines, Sky? You must have done, you lived, right! The fractal nanomachine monsters everybody’s seen in old news broadcasts? Sure did. How many did you kill, Sky? Dozens! No, that was a lie. Just one, a three-meter pale thing all made of arms and mouths, and the kill had been a screaming panicked mess of blood and horror and dead friends. Did you see the Tros dome collapse? Sky sometimes said yes, sometimes no. She’d been there, Tros was her home, and she’d been in a voidsuit when the bubble had popped. Three million had died from atmospheric exposure; millions more in the ninety percent of the city which lay underground, buried in the ice layers, they’d died differently, killed by the machines. She tried not to think about that very often in the years which followed.

‘I was on Ganymede … ’

She’d fought machines on the frozen surface for four weeks in the retreat to Eshmun — never saw what she fired at, never got the enemy up close, kept herself alive by stuffing chunks of dead people into her voidsuit nutrient intake ports, rendered down to slurry, tasting like pork. She’d been there on the surface when ships had turned up from all over Sol — Earth, Mars, Luna, Titan, even a single black hulk from the Oort. Io and Europa and Callisto had been fucking about in orbit for months by then, for all the good they could do popping nano-hive masses from over the horizon. She’d been in the wrecked bubble-fields of Eshmun when the Lunarian scum had broken cordon and sent actual ground troops to start ‘mopping up’. Sky had killed three Lunarian soldiers herself; she never told that to anybody, not outside of the Dogs. Luna had a long memory and held grudges hard. If journalists could track her down, a Lunarian wetwork sleeper sure could do the same.

She’d been on the surface when Titan started dropping the nukes. She’d seen the machines pull a starship from orbit and drown it in the subsurface oceans. Sometimes she still dreamed about that, the great bulk of a Martian warship screaming like the end of the world as it came down.

She’d been on Ganymede; she’d seen a world murdered.

And now that meant nothing.

Two hundred and fifty to three hundred millions years in the future. Until this moment, staring into these uncomprehending purple eyes, that time had been only a number. But this partitioned woman — Elpida, Howl, whatever she was — had never even heard of Ganymede, let alone its end.

Howl grinned. “Hitting you, is it?”

Sky tried to speak, but her mouth was numb.

“Yeah,” Howl purred. “There you go. Take a moment. Sit if you gotta. No shame.”

“G-Ganymede was a … a world. A moon, technically. Jovian. It … I was born there. It died. The world died.”

“Huh,” Howl said. “Another space case.”

Sky felt her chest lurch and her vision blur. The most important thing about her is that she was born off-Earth? That was it? Really?

She grabbed the gun in her waistband.

Howl just watched as Sky drew the weapon; she could barely grip it, her fingers felt so numb. Sky didn’t flick the safety off, she didn’t even point it. The pantomime of aggression seemed meaningless now, robbed of all context. She just held the gun out.

“I picked this up,” she said. “When I woke. You left me in a room full of guns. Why?”

Howl eyed Sky up and down, then sighed. She shook her head. “You gotta talk to Elps, right. You’re up to speed, but you are one hell of a mess. Tell you what, why don’t you come join us up in Pheiri’s noggin? Watch what we’re up to. Meet the crew. C’mon.”

Howl didn’t even take the gun from her. She just turned away, showing Sky her back.

Sky stumbled forward, trying to put the gun away and follow Howl, both at the same time. She’d not felt this clumsy since she was a teenager.

“What— what happened to your arm?” she asked. “That’s real fresh. I can— I can tell that much.”

Howl glanced back with a smirk on her lips.

“Elpida — the Commander,” she purred. “She got it saving another clueless little bitch like you. Welcome aboard, meat-brains. Welcome to all that’s left.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Isn’t it sad, Sky? Nobody even remembers the name of your planet, let alone what happened there.

Ahhhhh, and there we go. I’d been waiting a loooong time to finally get Sky’s POV onto the page, and I’m surprised how well it worked. I actually didn’t expect this chapter to go at all how it did. Sky surprised me, too. Which is not always a good thing with a traumatised mercenary. Anyway! Arc 13 carries on at a steady pace, and it’s looking to be a long one. And for those of you who want to see more of what Elpida and Lykke are getting up to – fear not! I promise the arc will return to them too. Not next chapter, but soon.

And! And and and, though some of you have already seen it over on the discord server (or perhaps on the front page of the Necroepilogos site itself, or up there at the top of this chapter?), it is with great pleasure that I wish to present the new cover art for Necroepilogos, by the absolutely incredibly talented and skilled Carter W Jessup (that’s a link to her site, by the way! She’s a reader and fan of the story as well, so, hi! Your artwork is incredible! Thank you so much!) There’s multiple variations, one with the title, and a clean version! I am so very happy with this piece, it’s a delight, and exactly what I wanted. So, there you go! New cover art!!! Hype!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and reading my little story about zombie girl trauma bitches and their endless quest to escape the cycle of meat. None of this would exist without all of you! Seeya next chapter! Until then! Stay comfy, down in the tomb.

Content Warnings

Masochism (extreme)
Sexualised violence (again)
Brief mention of suicide

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida woke up.

She leapt out of bed and sprinted for the armoury — her third attempt at this strategy.

She paused to upend one of the dormitory beds, grabbing the bed frame with both hands and flipping it over; the bed crashed into several other bunks, scattering discarded clothes and knocking mattresses to the floor, all to deny Lykke one of her previous ambush vectors. Elpida did not wait to see if the Necromancer crawled from the wreckage. She shot out of the dormitory and into the corridor, then pressed her back to the wall as she passed beneath the overhead ventilation duct. Lykke had burst from behind that metal grille on Elpida’s prior attempt, snatching her up with razor-sharp claws and a pair of snapping jaws.

Elpida skidded to a halt outside the armoury doors and slapped the palm-pad. The access light blinked green. The doors slid open.

Lykke was right over the threshold, inches from Elpida’s face.

The front of Lykke’s body was split from throat to groin, like a gigantic sideways mouth, filled with the writhing snake-pit of her guts and the pulsing knot of her heart. Her glossy white dress was torn to ribbons by rows of glittering diamond teeth.

“Too obvious!” Lykke gurgled.

She fell on Elpida, biting and tearing with her giant mouth. Elpida felt her stomach rip open and her intestines bubble forth, mingling with Lykke’s own exposed organs. Lykke’s hands and arms burrowed up inside Elpida’s torso, cupping Elpida’s heart in slender fingers, then gripping hard, crushing—

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Elpida woke up.

She sprinted for the armoury. Attempt number nine.

Last time she’d gotten her hands on a gun, loaded and cocked and ready to fire. But then Lykke had dropped from the ceiling, her body twisted into a cackling ball of flailing limbs, each finger tipped with a long white spike. She’d landed on Elpida, rammed her fingers into the soft tissues of Elpida’s joints, and pulled her apart before Elpida could get off a single shot.

Elpida followed the same pattern as before. She upended the fifth bed from her own, then ran out into the corridor, dodged the vent shaft, entered the gym, avoided going near the pile of crash mats, accessed the armoury from the gym-side door, locked that door behind her, and sprinted for the racked firearms.

Last time she had grabbed another lightweight pistol, something she could fire one-handed; but that was beneath the spot where Lykke lurked on the ceiling, ready to drop out of the shadows. This time, Elpida veered off, heading for an open case of chunkier side-arms.

She selected a heavy handgun by sight and sprinted toward it — a 117-MCS, a big shiny chrome beast of a gun, a hand cannon designed for last-ditch, up-close, no-second-chances personal defence, for use against Silico constructs out in the green, for when you only had time for one pull of the trigger, with no need to aim, and you needed that single bullet to count. One round from that would blow Lykke’s entire spine out through her back, if Elpida could land the shot.

Elpida grabbed the gun at a dead run, ripping it from the foam cushion in the case. She had to trust that this ‘software dream’ had pre-loaded the weapon for her, no time to check.

A screaming cackle rang out from above.

Elpida hit the floor and rolled. Displaced air swished past the back of her neck; a meaty wet slam hit the floor tiles right behind her, buckling the metal with a screech of bent steel.

“Almost!” Lykke howled, her voice mangled by a mouthful of bloody meat. “Almost, zombie, but not—”

Elpida came out of her roll into a kneeling position, smooth and quick, ignoring her bruises. She braced the 117 across her own knee, aiming at Lykke’s chest. The Necromancer was a mass of quivering, bleeding, naked meat, studded with drooling mouths and gnashing teeth and little sucker-tipped feelers.

Elpida pulled the trigger — boom!

The handgun snapped her wrist back, recoil rocking all the way to her shoulder.

Lykke’s centre of mass exploded outward, splattering the gun-racks and steel tiles with crimson viscera and streamers of intestine. The Necromancer paused, looked down at the huge hole blown in her body, then broke into a chorus of high-pitched giggles. The massive wound in her midsection sprouted a dozen rows of extra teeth. She threw herself at Elpida.

Elpida aimed again and pumped the trigger — boom! boom! boom! — blowing holes in Lykke as she charged.

The Necromancer didn’t even slow down. A wall of mouths crashed into Elpida’s face and body, tearing at her exposed extremities, slicing into her face and cheeks and ears and through the bone of her skull as the world went dark and—

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Elpida woke up.

She took her time to don a pilot suit before leaving the dorms — difficult with only her left arm, but worth the effort. Lykke had declined to interfere with this ritual, perhaps because Elpida was still within arm’s reach of Howl, or perhaps to give Elpida time to consider her next move, to keep this sick game as fun as possible. Elpida used the time to analyse the failures of her previous attempts. Once she was wrapped tight and secure within the familiar embrace of the dark grey bodysuit, she took a deep breath, and sprinted for the armoury.

Attempt number fifteen.

Or was it sixteen?

Elpida had reached her own hardshell suit on the previous attempt. She’d climbed inside the suit easily enough, but locking and sealing the front plates with only one arm had taken more time than she had expected. Lykke had come up in the elevator at the back of the armoury, sauntered out from the big double doors, and taken her time walking over to Elpida. Then she had simply reached into the suit and ripped Elpida’s throat out with a handful of scissor-like claws.

Elpida retraced her steps again — corridor, gym, armoury, don’t bother with the guns, get to the hardshell.

This time she stepped into the suit, stuck her head into the helmet, skipped the boot up sequence, and slammed the shell-plates into place as quickly as she could. One of the four plates locked tight with a familiar click-click-click. Then the second, clunking and whirring as it secured itself. Elpida had to hurry, the elevator was rising with a familiar mechanical hum. She yanked the third plate down and rammed it into position — click-clunk-clunk.

The fourth and final shell-plate slid into place, followed by the gentle hiss of atmospheric seals. The suit visor lit up with the warm orange of a hardshell HUD; boot up sequence text scrolled past Elpida’s left eye.

>Good morning Commander
>Reactor: online
>High impact reactive plating: online
>Musculoskeletal system servo-support: online
>Atmospheric recirculation and oxygen supply: online
>Biometric monitors: online
>Automatic emergency medical systems: online
>Communications interface: online
>Weapon uplink sensors: online
>Squad-interface local comms network: online
>Threat detection display: online

And all just in time. The lift arrived at the armoury a second later. The doors parted.

Lykke stepped out of the lift, a nasty smile playing across her lips. Her body was a mass of tooth and claw, dripping with acidic blood which left burning trails in the steel floor.

Elpida stepped back; the suit acted as a second skin, but she was still unarmed. She turned away to sprint for a gun — something heavy, something only the suit could handle, a high-power plasma-projection rifle. Even Lykke couldn’t survive that. One shot would cook her whole body, inside and out.

But before she could take a single step, Elpida felt a fist slam into her flank.

The punch hit like an anti-armour round. Elpida went flying; the hardshell suit crashed through the back wall of the armoury in a shower of masonry dust and broken metal, tearing through pipes and cables, slamming through a layer of white tiles as she burst into the cadre’s private shower room.

Elpida landed on her back, skidding across the tiles. The hardshell’s HUD flashed crimson with servo-motor errors and emergency medical warnings; the suit injected her with painkillers and stimulants, sent out distress signals, and tried to auto-start the built-in personal shields — but those were damaged as well, dying in a flicker of blue electricity.

Elpida couldn’t stand up; her spine was broken.

Lykke leapt through the breach and landed on the chest of Elpida’s hardshell, her feet transformed into razor-sharp talons. The white claws cut through the suit like hot wires through butter, sinking into Elpida’s flesh, parting her ribs, impaling her heart. Lykke laughed in her face, mouth a grimace full of dripping teeth—

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Elpida woke up.

Attempt number — twenty? Twenty two? Twenty three?

She made it to the suit. Got her hands on a gun. Lykke put a fist through her chest and pulled out her heart.

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Elpida woke up.

Plasma-projection didn’t work. Elpida burned Lykke to a crisp, but Lykke stepped from inside her own charred skin like it was a chrysalis and she was a butterfly. She ripped off the hardshell helmet and ate Elpida’s face.

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Elpida woke up.

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Elpida woke up.

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Elpida—

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Elpida woke up.

She awoke in her own bed, greeted by the muted colours and soft lights of the dormitory, within the pilot project cadre’s private quarters.

She was wide awake, and she had lost count.

She lay in bed for several minutes, holding Howl in her arms, luxuriating in the feeling of Howl’s body curled against her own. Howl’s breathing was slow and soft and even. None of Elpida’s previous attempts had drawn more than a brief murmur from Howl, even when Lykke had crawled out from under one of the dormitory beds.

Elpida considered the sum of all her previous attempts to kill Lykke. Complete failure. She had tried guns, swords, and heavy weapons. She had tried with the hardshell, and without any protection at all, not even clothes; she had died naked plenty of times. She had tried bare hands — well, hand, singular, currently — and combat knives. She had even bitten Lykke several times, but that had achieved nothing but a mouthful of rancid blood.

Elpida considered staying in bed. After a little while she felt her eyelids grow heavy and her thoughts begin to blur.

She shook herself awake. She could not afford to sleep. She couldn’t return to reality, not yet, not until she had resolved this inner conflict which had compromised her ability to command, her ability to do right by those who followed her, and her ability to discern the correct path.

Not until she spoke with Telokopolis.

She disentangled herself from Howl’s embrace and got out of bed, yet again, pausing only to kiss Howl on the forehead. She stood in one spot for a long moment, curling her bare toes against the warm floor tiles, scanning the dormitory for any fresh sign of Lykke. She squatted down to check under the beds. She concentrated on her hearing, to pick out any muffled giggles from a vent shaft or behind a door. She pulled back the covers on a particularly suspicious looking lump, but it was only a trio of discarded pillows, in Kos’ bed; Kos did like to sleep with one between her legs and one under her back, after all.

Elpida decided she didn’t care anymore.

“I’ve had enough of this game, Lykke,” she said out loud. “You win. Just come out. Show yourself.”

Nothing happened.

Elpida sighed. “Fine. I’m going to take a shower.”

She didn’t bother getting dressed; what was the point, if Lykke was just going to kill her on the way there? Elpida walked to the door, half-expecting Lykke to burst out from beneath the floor. She hit the palm-pad and stepped out into the corridor without looking. She walked directly beneath the vent duct. She ignored the armoury and strode into the shower room — the wall was intact once more, of course. The ‘software dream’ repaired everything, except Elpida’s own right arm.

The cadre’s private shower room was a long space tiled in clean white, punctuated by plain steel fixtures, and separated into a series of large communal showers; the room also hosted a big bath, but almost all of the cadre preferred to shower. A row of toilet cubicles stood at one end, though it was rare for any of Elpida’s sisters to bother closing the stall doors. The other end of the room connected to the gym. An area near the front held sinks and toiletries, a little rack of familiar toothbrushes, a trio of hair-dryers, and all the other debris of physical maintenance that even gene-engineered transhuman super soldiers could not forego.

Elpida took a shower. She stepped directly into the stream of freezing cold water while it warmed up. A wave of goosebumps rose all across her skin. She ducked her head beneath the stream while it was still cold, gasping as the water soaked through her hair and chilled her scalp. She stood beneath the water as it slowly turned warm, then hot, then hotter.

She closed her eyes, expecting a bone-talon in her back at any second.

Minutes ticked by. Elpida’s skin began to sting. No sign of Lykke.

She opened her eyes and got on with it.

In life, Elpida had not often showered alone. Even when she was not particularly excited about company, somebody always wanted to join the Commander, and there was always room for more. She paused for a moment, half-covered in thin soap, and realised she may have had sex more times in this shower than everywhere else combined.

But now she was alone, except for Howl, who was dead asleep, and Lykke, who was not meant to be here.

“I really did think you would surprise me in the shower, Lykke,” she said out loud. “You disappoint me.”

Elpida finished up, rinsed herself off, and dried her body with a towel. She walked to the other end of the shower room and opened the double doors to the gym, then crossed the sparring mats and stepped into the armoury, one more time.

She ignored the guns and the hardshell suits. She didn’t have to pretend; she knew it wouldn’t work.

She went over to the bins full of fresh clothing; usually she would have walked back to the dorm for clothes, or taken some with her, but she wanted to see how accurate this software space really was. She pulled out a pair of black shorts and a matching black t-shirt. She stepped into the shorts and pulled the t-shirt on over her head, considering her next move as she got dressed. Rec room? Briefing room? What if she just left the cadre’s quarters entirely and went out into—

Her head popped through the neck-hole of the t-shirt; Lykke was standing ten feet away, a manic grin on her lips, a lightweight pistol aimed at Elpida’s face.

“Bang!” Lykke shouted. She jerked the trigger.

The gun went click.

Elpida sighed. “Very clever.”

The Necromancer burst out laughing, clutching her stomach, tears gathering in her emerald eyes. She dropped the empty pistol with clatter and waved one hand in Elpida’s general direction.

Lykke had reverted to her human visage, done up for a party in her sheer white dress, showing off long bare thighs and the wide flare of her hips, arms and hands encased in white lace gloves, ankles and calves wrapped in silken ribbons, her slender throat encircled with a white choker, blonde hair gathered in a ponytail, golden tresses falling across her exposed shoulders. She still bore the first wounds Elpida had inflicted upon her, before this cycle of repeated death and restart — a nasty shiner across her cheek and the left side of her lips, a patchwork of bruising on her belly, and a purplish hand print on the pale flesh of her delicate throat.

Elpida waited for Lykke to stop laughing. The Necromancer eventually trailed off, fanning her face with a hand.

“You should have seen the look on your face, zombie,” Lykke purred. “Almost worth all this mucking about.”

“I’m glad one of us found it amusing.”

Lykke snorted. “No you’re not. Don’t lie.”

“I give up,” Elpida said.

Lykke tutted softly. “Yes, yes, I heard you the first time. And I just said, don’t lie.”

“I give up,” Elpida repeated. “I have no interest in continuing this—”

Lykke stamped one dainty foot, her snowy brow creasing with a scowl, fists clenched either side of her hips. “No! No, you’re not giving up! Stop lying!” She gestured at Elpida, up and down. “This? This is just another stage of self-denial, no different to what you’ve been doing for the last few hours!” She huffed and tutted and tossed her hair. “At least it’s passive denial, I suppose, rather than active denial. I’ll give you that much. You’re ‘making progress’, or whatever. But my gosh, zombie! Really! Are you having fun doing this?” Lykke looked her up and down again. “Though I will admit that you have some very serious stamina. Any other zombie would have broken hours ago, but you just kept going, and going, and going. I was starting to doubt you even have limits.”

“That’s what I do,” Elpida said. “I keep going.”

“Hmmm,” Lykke purred. “If only you could turn some of that stamina on me. And I must say, you do look good in black. I would suggest a little black dress, so we could, you know, coordinate as opposites! But I suspect you would sooner lick my feet than wear a little black dress. Not that you would do either.” She huffed. “Aren’t you getting bored, yet?”

Elpida crossed her arms over her chest — an incomplete gesture, with no right forearm. “You seem to be enjoying yourself well enough.”

Lykke slumped her shoulders, rolled her eyes, and let out an exhausted moan. “Uuugh! Is that what this looks like? I can get this kind of petty entertainment from any zombie. I can take it, any time I like! And I’m bored of it!”

“And who’s fault is that?”

“Yours!” Lykke shrieked. “You’re the one who keeps insisting on this cycle! Come at me properly, zombie! Elpida! There! I’ll use your name as much as you like, I’ll moan it under your fists, only come at me properly, not with these guns and—”

“I did use my fists,” Elpida said. “And my teeth. And knives. And a monoedge sword. None of it stopped you.” Elpida spread her arms. “The only thing which seems to stop you is this. Disengaging.”

“Arrrrgh!” Lykke yelled, mouth wide, balling up her fists, stomping both feet up and down on the spot. “Stop being so wilfully obtuse! You know none of that counts! Trying to kill me doesn’t count! It’s a waste of both our time! I want you, zombie. I want what only you can offer. And … ” Lykke’s mouth twisted with frustration. Her cheeks flushed with rosy red. “And I can’t take it from you. You have to give it, willingly. And … oh, this is so humiliating!”

Lykke stomped in a little circle, throwing her hands up in the air.

Elpida sighed. Lykke was correct about one thing — Elpida knew exactly what the Necromancer really wanted. She was just choosing to ignore and reject her.

But that was not a viable option anymore.

“I know exactly what you want, yes,” said Elpida. “You want me to fight you, like I did with my sisters.”

Lykke ended her tantrum. Her lips parted and quivered, breath suddenly stopped up. “Y-yes. Yes! Yes, I—”

“And it’s a distraction. I need to talk with Telokopolis.”

Lykke screwed her eyes up, curled her fingers into fists, and screamed at the ceiling.

Elpida waited for the scream to die away. “If you can direct me toward the figure we saw earlier, then I will consider granting your request. If you can give me intelligence about Central, or other Necromancers, then I will consider granting your request. If you … ”

Elpida trailed off, because Lykke was ignoring the offer; the Necromancer turned away and wandered over to the hardshell suits. She stepped behind the row, dwarfed by the bulky plates of green-grey armour. Her white dress flickered in the gaps between the suits. She paused, then poked her head out.

“So, zombie,” she said. “Who was—” She leaned back to examine something. “Yeva? Or how about … ‘Orchid’? Huh! What a name.”

Elpida bristled. “How do you know those names? The suits only have serial numbers.”

Lykke rolled her eyes. “Because they’re all over the place! They’re coating your memories like dust!” She ducked back again. “Okay then, how about Scoria? Who was that?” She leaned to one side, reading the Telokopolan script across the back and shoulders of each hardshell suit. “Or Velvet? Feel like talking about any of them? Is where we should start, to get you properly unclogged?”

Elpida walked away, toward the armoury doors.

“Wait! Wait!” Lykke tutted — then squealed in pain, followed by a heavy clatter as a piece of unlocked armour crashed to the floor. She had tried to squeeze through the gap and gotten herself tangled. “Don’t just walk off, you—”

Elpida hit the palm-pad. The doors slid open.

She left the armoury and stepped out into the corridor. For a moment she hoped she might find the additional hallway re-added to the space, but she had no such luck. She walked down to the opposite end of the cadre’s quarters, heading for the rec room.

“Where are you— zombie! Wait— for— argh!”

The armoury doors slid shut on Lykke, muffling a squawk of surprise. Elpida smiled with grim satisfaction as she entered the rec room. She made sure to shut the door behind her, then turned the lights on, clear and bright. The big screen was off and the sofas were cold, no Persephone or Nunnus, dreams or otherwise. Elpida walked over to a stack of video discs and began flicking through them. Would they actually work, here in this virtual place built from her memories? Or would they be full of holes, missing segments of narrative, made from only the parts she actually remembered?

She settled on an old Skirts action film, a crime drama full of gunfights and lots of overwrought death scenes — Magnet Time On Floor Zero Five.

Howl had loved this one, and the two sequels. Elpida had always hated it, especially the bits with the sword fighting. Monoedge blades did not flash with sparks and electricity when they made contact, nor did they go ‘shhhring!’ when drawn from a stealth. But ninety-nine percent of Telokopolis would never see a blade in action, let alone a firearm.

If the details were all wrong, she would know this was nothing but memory. But if the picture was correct then—

The rec room door swished open. Lykke strode inside, arms up, eyes ablaze.

“Zombie!” she snapped. “You can’t just ignore me like that! This is even worse, what are you doing?! What is this?! What are you messing about with now?!”

Elpida showed her the movie. “If I can’t speak with Telokopolis, and I can’t get rid of you, then I’m going to occupy my mind while I’m here. Perhaps I can get some thinking done, solve my problems.”

“Ugh!”

Elpida walked over to the big screen and tried to find the remote control.

Lykke sighed. “You don’t even know if that thing we saw was your ‘Telokopolis’ in the first place. And neither do I.”

Elpida didn’t bother to look round. “All the more reason to speak with her. All the more reason I need confirmation. All the more reason I need … ”

“Why?”

All the mockery was all gone from Lykke’s voice.

Elpida turned back. The Necromancer had her hands spread, face blank, eyes clear.

“Why?” she repeated. Her voice was gentle and high, almost girlish.

“Because … ” Elpida sighed and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m seriously considering having this conversation with you.”

“And I can’t believe I’m entertaining this absolute poppycock!” Lykke snapped, her gentle facade cracking instantly. “But seriously, why? Why do you need to know if that little glimpse was the ‘genuine article’? I saw all that you saw! Nothing more than a slip of leg and a swish of white skirt! In here that could have been anything. That might be all which your idol wanted you to see, just a glimpse of bare ankle to keep you drooling. Or it could have been something else, projecting your own expectations back at you. Like me, but less pretty.” Lykke shrugged. “It could have been the graveworm, for all we know. Or something else, something lurking in this horrid little tomb that you’re buried in right now. Or anything! It might not be your precious lost mother at all. It might be a trick.”

Elpida shook her head. “It’s still worth following up. I can’t ignore that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m doing everything wrong. I’m putting my comrades, my cadre, all of them, in danger, all over again, for a principle that … ”

Elpida trailed off and shook her head, a third time. Her throat felt blocked. She shouldn’t be discussing this with Lykke; the Necromancer did not have her best interests at heart, even if she wasn’t working directly for Central. The Necromancer was alien. Her words were self-serving, at best.

Lykke waited, eyebrows raised, then sighed and rolled her eyes when she realised Elpida wasn’t going to say more. She looked left and right and then up at the ceiling. She put her hands on her hips and removed them again. Finally she straightened her spine and took a deep breath.

The Necromancer raised her right index finger and bit into the tip, hard enough to draw blood. She traced a shape on the front of her own white dress, in glistening crimson.

She drew the crescent-and-double-line — the symbol of Telokopolis, Elpida’s own invention, here in the nanomachine afterlife.

“This?” Lykke asked, with ostentatious disinterest.

Elpida nodded. “That.”

Lykke sighed again. “Not that I care, zombie, but … let’s say you went off and met your ‘Telokopolis’, this network ghost or whatever. And let’s say that she turned out to be an imposter, the graveworm fucking with both of us, or something like that. Or another Necromancer, like me. Or maybe it is her, but she’s … I don’t know, evil! Would any of that change what you’re doing, out there in the flesh? Would you just lie down and give up? Would you end your life? Would you change your whole nature?”

Elpida opened her mouth to reply — but Lykke clicked her fingers rapidly.

“Ah!” Lykke said. “No, no! Don’t just answer reflexively. Think about it. Seriously! Think about your beloved ur-mother. Think about if she was a fake. Or dead. Or not what you think. Really think about it, zombie. Don’t just give me the party line again.”

Elpida put the video disk case down on the sofa. She crossed her arms and looked away from Lykke.

If Telokopolis was dead or gone — or worse — what would Elpida do?

The same thing she had done since her resurrection.

She shook her head. “No. Of course not. Telokopolis is forever. Even if the city is dead and gone, I’m still here.”

“Then what does it matter if she’s ‘really’ here or not?”

Elpida raised her eyes and held Lykke’s flat gaze for a few moments, then sighed in frustration. “I’m still making mistakes. I’m still putting the cause before my comrades, but back when I did the opposite, that got everyone killed, too. I need a … a … not a Commander of my own, but a … I’m still—”

“Pent up as all fuck!” Lykke shouted. “Ugh! I cannot believe I’m having to spell this out for you, zombie. How often did you get it on when you were alive? Every day? Multiple times a day? You’re like a fish which doesn’t know it’s suffocating in the open air! Explaining this makes it so much less exciting for me. Tch!”

“Excuse me?”

“Your judgement is clouded,” Lykke said. “Because, quite simply, you have not had a good fuck in months.”

Elpida almost laughed. “Howl and I have been fucking plenty, thanks. I’m not sexually frustrated, that’s not the cause of this.”

“I’m not talking about fingers — or anything else — going in and out of your cunt, zombie. I’m talking about what we did earlier, in the tomb. Or almost did. I’m talking about the thing I can offer you, in here, which she can’t, because she’s sharing your body. And apparently you’re unwilling to do it with others, either.”

Elpida frowned. “You mean a fight?”

“Yes! You came very close with the little redhead bitch, but you didn’t quite get there. What was her name again?”

“You mean Pira?”

“Mm!”

Elpida was surprised; Lykke was talking about the time Elpida and Pira had a fistfight, before they found Thirteen Arcadia, long before Pira’s betrayal. When Elpida had ‘won’ — with Pira pinned beneath her fists — she had almost kept going. She had almost grabbed Pira between the legs, driven by instinct and habit. She had stopped at the last second, because Pira was not a clade-sister, Pira was not a gene-engineered pilot, Pira was not like her. Pira had not seen their fight that way, not the way that Elpida’s sisters had thrown themselves at each other so often.

“How do you know about that?” Elpida asked.

Lykke slumped her shoulders and rolled her head. “Because you’re thinking about it right now, zombie! Look, you’re all pent up, you’re wound so tight that you can’t function, and you can’t figure any of this out or go back to your little friends until you get some relief and clear your head. Whatever else is going on — ‘Telokopolis’ or not — you can’t ignore that need.”

“Huh.”

Lykke spread her arms and smiled. “And here I am! The perfect canvas. Paint me, zombie. Paint me all the colours you need.”

Elpida decided to entertain a hypothetical — what if Lykke was correct?

Elpida had very rarely experienced true sexual frustration in life. She and her clade-sisters in the cadre had been physical with each other constantly, in lifelong matured habits and familiar patterns which had endured right until the end. And they had fought, oh yes they had — in the gym, on the sparring mats, but also informally, in a constant animalistic process of playful domination. She and Howl especially had pushed that habit and instinct past the limits of all their other sisters, beating each other to pulp, bruising each other all over, only to spend the next day curled up together in mutual recovery and rest and physicality.

Was Elpida really just pent up from lack of physical expression, in a way she could not obtain when Howl took control of her hands?

She had been grinding herself down with responsibility, with no true downtime, with no real way to work out all that stress. She briefly tried to imagine engaging in that kind of sexual fighting with Victoria — no, absolutely not, Vicky wouldn’t be able to return even a tenth of it. How about Ilyusha? Maybe. The cyborg might go for it, but it wouldn’t be the same. She and Pira had the right chemistry, but Pira saw things differently; besides, Elpida was worried that might stir some terrible jealousy in Ooni. None of the others were viable candidates, were they? Atyle, no, she didn’t rouse those feelings in Elpida. Neither did Serin, or Hafina. Perhaps Shilu, but Elpida barely knew her, there was nothing to grasp, not yet.

Elpida raised her eyes back to Lykke.

The Necromancer’s lips parted with a soft, wet click. Her emerald eyes glittered, widening in anticipation. She must have seen some change in Elpida’s face.

“Zombie? Live in the present! I’m right here! Please … ”

Elpida sighed and shook her head. Lykke wasn’t right for this either.

“It wouldn’t be the same, not with you,” she said.

Lykke clenched her teeth, eyes flaring with frustration. “But—”

“You don’t get it,” Elpida explained, quietly and slowly. “You’re not a human being, Lykke. You were never a human being. You’re just playing with pain. Damage, pain, bruises, they don’t really mean anything to you. You can switch them off and get rid of them at will. Pain is just … data, right? So it won’t mean anything. I’d be going through the motions, sure, but that would be all. And when we’re done, you can just fly away. You’ll come back in the flesh and kill me. None of this is real. So, no, it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t mean anything. Not with you.”

Lykke’s lips quivered. Her eyes were full of tears. When she spoke, it was a whisper. “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Then … ” Lykke swallowed. “I’ll make it real.”

“What?”

Lykke let out a shuddering breath. Her cheeks were flushed, but there was no smile on her lips now. She blinked, breath caught in her throat. “I’ll play by the exact same rules as you, like I promised before. No more bodily changes, no more secret teeth. I’ll lock myself out of that. Just this, just what you see, right here.” She tapped her chest, hands fluttering. “Even if you go for a gun. And— and please, don’t!” Lykke’s face scrunched with distress. “Promise you won’t! Promise!”

“That’s not—”

“And I’ll make the damage permanent.”

“But what does that mean? For something like you, what does that mean?”

Lykke sighed, almost laughing, but too nervous to do more than squeak. “I can’t even begin to explain that, zombie. But if you hit me … I’ll hold onto it. I promise.” Her lips curled into a shivering smile. “All of it will be real. And I’ll fight back! I’ll do my best!” She raised her hands and made little fists, holding them up in an awkward pose. “I’ll try! To give as good as I get!”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Lykke nodded.

“If this is a trick, Necromancer … ”

Elpida trailed off. This wasn’t a trick.

“Please, zombie. Elpida, I mean.” Lykke blinked rapidly. Her breath was coming faster and faster. Her face was flushed so bright she looked about ready to pass out. “Please!”

Elpida looked down at her left hand and made a fist; she looked at the stump of her right arm, terminated at the elbow. She considered all the things she really wanted here — intel from a Necromancer, a conversation with the network ghost of Telokopolis, resolution to her inner contradictions.

All those concerns seemed pale and fragile when compared to the beating in her chest and the pulse between her legs.

She raised her eyes and smiled at Lykke. The Necromancer flinched.

“A one-handed fistfight,” Elpida said. “Against a girl two thirds my size and half my body weight, who doesn’t have a clue how to throw a punch. Really?”

“I’ll … I’ll do my best!” Lykke said, voice gone high and squeaky.

“Necromancer—” Elpida stopped, grinned wide, and corrected herself. “Lykke.”

“Y-yes?”

“Lykke, I am going to drag you around the cadre’s private quarters until my name is the only thing you can remember.”

Elpida mounted the sofa in one step, leapt the back in two, and landed on Lykke with her left fist.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Never say never, Necromancer; looks like Lykke got what she wanted in the end, she just had to commit to the bit. And Elpida? Will a little, ahem, ‘dance’ help unclog her mind as well as her body? We’ll see. And so will Lykke.

This chapter was actually kind of experimental, behind the scenes. I wasn’t sure if I should keep the opening half on the page, or just skip past it, right to the end of the process. In the end I’m glad I kept it all on-screen, but it’s a funny sort of balancing act! We haven’t seen the last of these two rolling around on the floor, for certain, but we might be in for a surprise or two, up next.

And speaking of surprises, I have more art from the discord! Specifically this wonderful illustration of Pheiri in the tomb, titled ‘Dragon’s Hoard – First Supper’ (by FarionDragon). It’s amazing to see this scene rendered on the page, thank you so much!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and reading my little story! I couldn’t do it without all of you, the audience; Elpida couldn’t throw a punch without all of you here to watching. Hmm. If a transhuman supersoldier fucks a post-human feedback loop, but nobody is around to see it, do either of them climax? I guess we’re finding out.

And last, but not least, Merry Christmas!!! Some of you will get this chapter on Christmas evening, some of you on Boxing Day morning (like me!) But whatever you’re up to, I hope you had a very good time. And I’ll see you again soon! Until next chapter!

Content Warnings

Masochism (extreme)
Sexualised violence (extreme) (but not sexual violence, if that makes sense?)

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“Dance?” Elpida echoed. “You want me to hit you again?”

Down on the floor, her sun-kissed skin clothed in a silken white party dress, with her ribbon-wrapped calves, her delicate lace elbow-gloves, and a white choker encircling her slender throat, Lykke nodded.

She gazed up at Elpida from behind thickly curled lashes, eyes wet and wide, dyed dark by the scarlet light which glowed from the secret inner walls of Telokopolis. Lykke’s breath came in quivering little hitches; her chest heaved beneath the thin fabric of her dress. Her skin was shiny with sudden sweat. She smelled faintly of fresh grass under hot sunlight, spiced with the iron tang of blood. One hand clutched the hem of her dress, crumpling the fabric in trembling fingers; the other hand fluttered upward to her throat. She brushed the dark purple bruises which began to flower beneath her choker — the imprint of Elpida’s hand.

“Yes!” Lykke hissed. “Oh, yes. Please, little zombie. Let’s dance! As long as you like, any way you like! Do your best!” She tapped her bruised throat. “Do this again, if you need somewhere to start! Do it harder, for longer, until I’m all … all … ”

Lykke trailed off, panting hard, eyes wide and manic.

Elpida almost laughed. She should have expected this. “And you really can get away any time you want?”

Lykke nodded. “Yes! Yes! Don’t even ask that question, don’t concern yourself with it, just pretend I can’t! Pretend you’ve got me at your mercy and—”

Elpida stepped back. She raised her chin and crossed her arms.

Lykke responded exactly as Elpida hoped she would — her face crumpled with confused rejection, sudden desperation burning in her glittering green eyes.

Lykke scrambled to her feet, still panting and quivering with a cocktail of pain and lust. She had to brace herself against the bone-ribbed wall of Telokopolis, as if her knees had gone weak. One lace-gloved hand moved across her own belly, probing the tender flesh where Elpida had gut-punched her. Her pink tongue darted out to wet thin, glistening lips. She hesitated, jaw twitching, unable to form words.

“Go ahead,” said Elpida.

“You don’t— you don’t want to? But— you— please! Please, zombie! I stayed, I stayed, for you—”

Elpida kept her distance. “Howl awoke something in you, with that beat-down, didn’t she?”

Lykke’s face scrunched up, brow furrowed, teeth clenched. “Don’t say her name! Don’t ruin this with talk of that … goblin!”

Elpida raised her eyebrows. She needed to lead Lykke on, but with great care; it seemed that Howl was not the correct pressure point. “But Howl hurt you, didn’t she? She made you feel real pain, possibly for the first time ever.”

Lykke hissed through her teeth. “No! That was you, zombie. Your fists on my flesh. Your face filling my vision. Not her! I could see her, grinning through your muscles, but she was … inconsequential to what we did, you and I, together. She’s not you. I’m not interested in talking about her.”

Elpida considered pushing harder — more talk of Howl might get Lykke to leave. But this opportunity was too good to pass up. Howl had broken something inside Lykke, and now the Necromancer was compromised. Forget intel; if this was not a trick, then Lykke was ripe for plucking.

Elpida cast a different hook: “Alright then. I hurt you. And now you want what — more of that?”

Lykke took a deep breath, straightening her spine and standing upright again, puffing out her chest and cocking her hips beneath her dress, ponytail falling across one naked shoulder. She put one hand around her own throat, fingers mirroring the bruises left by Elpida’s grip. “Pain. That … that experience, I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s all I’ve thought about since then. I didn’t go back home, I didn’t return, I didn’t even leave the boundary of that storm, because I didn’t want to risk losing sight of you, zombie.”

“Should I be flattered?”

“No other dance, no other sensation I’ve ever felt can compare to it. I … ” She trailed off and swallowed, eyes fluttering shut as if in the prelude to an orgasm. “I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this, for so, so, so long! And you— you zombies!” Her eyes flew open, cheeks flushed with rosy passion. “You zombies, this is what you feel?! I want more, yes. I want it all. And I want it from you, zombie. You’re the only dance partner I’m interested in now, you’re the best I’ve ever had. It was your hand which made me feel pain, with your face in my eyes. I want more, yes! Yes, little zombie, I want—”

“Say my name.”

Lykke blinked rapidly. “Excuse me—”

“Say. My. Name.”

Elpida gambled. The prize would be worth the risk.

“Zombie?” Lykke giggled. “What does that have to do with—”

“You don’t want Howl,” Elpida said. “So say my name. Call me zombie one more time and I’ll go wake Howl, she can work you over with both fists while I go speak with Telokopolis.”

Elpida made a point of looking away, down the vaulted corridor of giant bones and crimson flesh, to where she had seen that strangely stiff white dress slip beyond sight. A phantom of Telokopolis, gracing her moment of doubt. She longed to follow, but she could not ignore the chance to turn a full-blown Necromancer.

“Elpida!” Lykke blurted out. “Fine, fine! Elpida, Elpida, Elpida! Please, just, let me have this—”

Elpida lashed out with an open palm. She backhanded Lykke across the face.

The slap sent Lykke tottering several steps to one side. She let out a quavering gasp, eyes streaming with fresh tears. Both hands rose to cup her stinging cheek. She held a pose of wordless ecstasy for three full seconds — then coiled back around, breaking into a nasty little smirk, eyes tight, teeth showing.

“Oh, come on, zo— Elpida!” she purred, rubbing her glowing cheek with one hand. “You can do better than that!”

Elpida held her gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Look at you, look at your muscles, your upper body strength! You could slap me halfway down this corridor if you tried. You could knock a girl unconscious with one slap. I want a dance, a real one. Don’t disappoint me now.”

Elpida reconsidered her strategy; perhaps she was being hasty. Elpida knew how to handle partners who needed a little pain — she and Howl had beaten each other black and blue back in life, and half her most intense relationships within the cadre had often involved some kind of physical fighting, mostly on the sparring mats. She was no stranger to the blurred line between a good fight and a hard fuck, though she knew most baseline human beings did not feel that connection quite so strongly, or at all. Every one of her sisters always gave as good as they got, and the shared pain meant something between them.

But Lykke was not a pilot; Lykke was not even human. According to Shilu, Lykke had never been human in the first place — this Necromancer had begun life as a ‘post-human feedback loop’. Was Elpida wading out into waters beyond her depth? Should she turn around and head after the phantom of Telokopolis after all?

Lykke spoke before Elpida could decide. “Do I disgust you?” she said, giggling. “I know this would disgust other Necromancers. This is the most unsanctioned behaviour I’ve ever indulged in! But if this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

Elpida pushed, testing the ground. “Who or what sent you after Shilu?”

Lykke sighed and rolled her eyes, shoulders slumping. “Ugh. Don’t talk about her! We’re just getting started, don’t ruin the mood!”

“I hurt you, you give me intel. That’s the deal,” Elpida said. “If you’ve got nothing for me … ” Elpida spread her hands and took another step back.

Lykke followed, trotting forward, eyes thrown wide, hands up as if trying to soothe a difficult animal. “Fine, fine! Um … Shilu, right? Yes! Er, Shilu is … um … very annoying, and … y-yes, I was sent to mop her up. And … and … that’s it!”

“Were you sent by Central? Or by some other faction?”

Lykke shrugged, arms held out, expression desperate. “I don’t know! I don’t care about that! Zom— Elpida! Why do you care?! Why do you care about any of that boring old shit? I’m right here in front of you, I’m here, right now, and—”

Elpida grabbed Lykke’s right wrist in her left hand. The Necromancer had a split-second to gasp, eyes flying wide, lips curling with the anticipation of pleasure — and then Elpida’s right fist crashed into Lykke’s face.

The Necromancer went flying backward, knocked off her feet, suspended from the anchor of Elpida’s hand around her wrist. Blood sprayed from her nose and a burst lip, splattering across the cold floor of the vaulted corridor. She heaved for breath behind the veil of her golden hair, spluttering and moaning through a gush of blood dripping from her face; a few droplets fell just short of Elpida’s naked feet.

“When the storm ends,” Elpida said, “are they going to send more Necromancers after us?”

“ … mm-what?” Lykke moaned.

“Stand up.” Elpida yanked on Lykke’s arm, dragging her back to her feet.

Lykke’s head jerked up and around; she was bleeding from her nose and her upper lip, right cheek blooming with a fresh bruise. Her eyes were full of tears, glazed with trance-like pleasure. She smiled and let out a high, whining moan. “Moooooreeeee—”

“When the storm ends,” Elpida repeated. “Are they going to send more Necromancers after us? Or are you going to attack us again?”

Lykke’s joy curdled; her smile died, her gaze flattened, her wounds no longer seemed to cause her pain.

“You’re so constipated, zombie,” she said. “How do you stand it?”

“I told you to use my name.”

“Perhaps we should do this another way,” Lykke sighed. “Perhaps. You can do so much better, zombie.”

“I hurt you, you share intel. That’s the deal, Necromancer. No intel, no deal.”

Lykke grinned, all white teeth. “Deal? I don’t recall making any deal.”

Elpida let go of Lykke’s wrist. “Then you can go handle yourself—”

Lykke unhinged her jaw.

Her cheeks split open — first to her ears, then further, the sides of Lykke’s throat ripping apart as if her whole neck was a concealed mouth. Her pretty white choker burst in two. Her skull rolled backward, mouth and throat and neck transformed into a giant crimson maw lined with hundreds of razor-sharp teeth, dripping loops of sticky saliva. She reared up, legs suddenly extending, then fell upon Elpida.

Lykke’s giant mouth slammed down over Elpida’s head, plunging her into moist, reeking, humid darkness.

Elpida reacted fast, digging her fingers and thumbs into the pliable flesh of Lykke’s extended neck-mouth. But Lykke was all muscle. Elpida was trapped.

Rows of teeth lanced into Elpida’s neck. She felt flesh part and bone scrape, followed by the unmistakable sensation of her own head parting from her shoulders with a slick wet riiiiiiiip—

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Elpida woke up.

She awoke in her own bed, greeted by the muted colours and soft lights of the dormitory, within the pilot project cadre’s private quarters.

She was wide awake. She remembered everything.

Elpida kicked the covers back, pulled herself from Howl’s embrace, and leapt out of bed. She hit the floor ready to fight, fists raised, empty handed, eyes scanning the cold dormitory for a weapon, for the position of her enemy, for the inevitable surprise attack, for—

Ceiling fans, recycled air, distant vibrations. Nothing moved in the dormitory except herself. Nothing made a sound except Howl’s breathing, deep and soft in uninterrupted sleep. Nothing was hiding beneath the beds. She was back at the start of the ‘dream’, but there was no sign of Lykke.

Elpida forced herself to relax. She swept her hair out of her face. She put one hand to her neck and throat, feeling for a wound. But there was nothing, not even a bruise.

“Howl?” she said, voice pitched hard and urgent. “Howl, we have an intruder. Howl, wake up. Howl!”

Howl grumbled in her sleep. Elpida turned and reached out to shake Howl’s shoulder, loathe to take her eyes off the dormitory, but for some reason she couldn’t reach Howl, couldn’t shake her, couldn’t—

Elpida stopped short and raised the stump of her right arm; the limb was gone from her elbow down, terminating in a long-healed amputation wound.

“Right,” she muttered. “That’s reality.”

Howl grunted. “Elps?”

Elpida almost repeated her earlier request, but then paused; there was a very good reason for Howl to be asleep. “You can’t wake up, can you?” Elpida said. “Because I’m the one who’s asleep, and you’re busy, you’re looking after the others. How is everything going, out there?”

Howl turned over, rubbing her face against the pillow, eyes still closed. “S’fine. You deal with you, Elps.”

“I’m dealing with a bit more than just myself. Lykke’s in here. She’s playing with me, I think.”

Howl grumbled again. “Then play harder. Play hard ‘till the bitch breaks.”

“ … I’ll try.”

Howl let out a soft snore. Back to sleep.

Elpida considered her options. She could stay here, next to Howl, which would probably keep Lykke away; she could even lie back down in bed and return to sleep — though she wasn’t quite sure what that would represent. She did not wish to return to waking control of her own body; her comrades were likely hunting down the Death’s Heads right then, and she felt they would do better without the burden of her clouded judgement.

And Telokopolis was right here.

Telokopolis had appeared to her, as a network ghost or phantom memory or simple embodiment of everything Elpida believed in. Lykke was nothing compared to the chance to speak with the city. Elpida had to know, she had to ask — was she doing the right thing? Was she on the right path? Did she have the blessing of her true mother?

Elpida grabbed a pair of shorts again, just as she had the first time, dragging them on over her hips. She considered stopping to don one of the pilot suits which lay about the rumpled dormitory beds, but Lykke’s Necromancer tricks would probably not be turned away by a thin shell of polymer weave filled with bio-reactive circuitry and telemetry monitors.

She hurried to the door and hit the palm-pad from the side, in case Lykke was waiting to leap out at her. Then she pressed herself against the wall, to obtain the best view of the corridor before she stepped out of the dormitory. The main hallway of the cadre’s private quarters was empty, just as before. Muted silver and dark cream and soft treelike greens concealed no hidden Necromancer. Elpida made sure to run her eyes carefully along the surfaces, in case Lykke was camouflaged somehow. She checked the ceiling, too — a cheap trick, but she couldn’t afford to be lazy.

Elpida stopped into the corridor.

All the doors were shut. The floor was warm. The recycled air smelled clean and dry. This time there was no buzz of a screen left switched on overnight; the cadre’s quarters were silent, all except for the distant sounds of the body of Telokopolis.

And this time there was no additional corridor; the door to the shower room stood at the end of the hallway, right where it should be. The vaulted corridor of Telokopolan bone and living flesh was gone.

Elpida had missed her chance.

“Fuck,” she hissed. “Lykke.”

Elpida checked the rec room first, hoping to find the dreams of Persephone and Old Lady Nunnus still waiting for her inside. But the rec room was empty, the screen quiet and dark, all the lights switched off. She shut the door and turned back to the corridor; as she did, a low hiss came from the ventilation ducts, trailing off into the faintest whisper of an inhuman giggle.

Elpida held her breath. She stayed as still as she could. She willed her heart rate to slow.

She waited thirty seconds, then a minute. Nothing happened.

Elpida crept down the corridor, moving silently on bare feet, making for the large double-doors which led to the cadre’s private armoury. She considered entering through the gym instead, but she needed more than a sparring staff or a blunt blade; besides, she was not confident using either of those weapons with only one hand.

She reached the big steel doors and hovered her fingertips before the armoury’s palm-pad. Then she stomped her feet twice, a couple of big heavy steps right in front of the door; quickly she hopped to one side and hit the pad. The armoury access light blinked green. The door slid open.

Elpida counted to five, then peered around the door frame, fingers still on the palm-pad.

No sign of Lykke. Elpida stepped inside. The door slid shut behind her.

The pilot project cadre’s private armoury was the equal of any Legion infantry arsenal — just on a smaller scale. A wide room floored in the same matte steel as the rest of their quarters, the armoury was lined with weapons, all plugged into charging ports or cradled in specialised racking or cushioned in soft foam to avoid incidental wear and tear. Handguns, side-arms, personal defence weapons, blades and knives both monoedge and mundane, batons and shock-clubs and big heavy machetes, rifles and carbines and everything in between, shoulder-and-back-mounted autonomic defence rigs, weight-splaying carry-frames for heavy firepower, and all the other infantry-level weapons and systems Elpida had known in life.

The guns were all of familiar Telokopolan manufacture, uniformly matte black or pale silver, made of ultra-lightweight polymers and specialised alloys; most of them were energy, laser, or plasma-projection based, but almost all the solid-shot firearms used either caseless ammunition or shaved their projectiles from miniaturized blocks of nano-manufactured reaction mass. A small table in one corner held Emi and Kit’s passion project — a set of black-powder ‘slug throwers’ in various sizes, all hand made and assembled from raw steel. That little diversion had proven very popular over the years, waxing and waning as different members of the cadre decided to try their hands at tests of mechanical skill, such as building a shotgun which would dislocate the operator’s shoulder when fired.

The cadre did not have much occasion to use this stuff in battle — there was not a lot of point, when one went out into the green inside a combat frame — but Elpida had always made the cadre take personal defence and weapons handling as seriously as they could. Her girls were always the equal of any Legionnaire. They had never been caught out when they had to defend themselves.

Except when Elpida had not allowed them to do so, right at the end.

She quashed that thought. This was no time for it.

In addition to the weapons, the armoury also contained a stock of additional pilot suits, folded up and stowed, along with all the other functional clothing the cadre could need; none of it was particularly interesting, but they never wanted for spares. Rows of greensuits stood along one wall, their flimsy-looking plates hanging loose from the racks. Heavy full-body stands held a set of fifty full hardshell suits, two for each member of the cadre, just in case.

Some of the suits showed evidence of minor repairs here and there; a moment’s glance was enough to bring a dozen memories to the surface of Elpida’s mind, but she did not have time to think about her sisters right then. She bottled that emotion. This place, though not real, was getting to her.

Her own hardshell suit stood at the very end of the row. Could she don it with only one arm? Probably yes, but not quickly. She would be vulnerable.

The armoury had three other exits — one to the gym, one to the firing range, and a big heavy elevator door in the rear. That elevator was large enough for all twenty five of the cadre, all in hardshell suits; it led directly down to the combat frame hangers in the Skirts. That elevator ride would take ten minutes. Elpida wondered if it would work, here in this network ‘dream’.

She hurried over to a rack of side-arms. She needed something she could use one-handed; that ruled out the close-quarters comfort of a monoedge blade, or the stopping power of a rifle.

She grabbed a compact pistol, a lightweight model with as little recoil as possible. She used her left hand to pop the magazine free, then pulled it out with her teeth. Caseless rounds were stacked nearby, and she could load one-handed, but she needed to hurry, before Lykke crawled out of a vent.

But the magazine was already loaded. Sixteen caseless rounds gleamed within.

Elpida almost laughed. Her girls would never have left live ammo in a racked gun. Perhaps the dream was helping her.

She pushed the magazine back into the gun against the side of the racking, shoved the pistol into the waistband of her shorts, and crossed to the PDWs. She lifted a GSD-114 from its charging rack — a ‘Grasshopper’ personal defence weapon, light enough to fire in one hand, tight enough to use in small spaces, forty centimetres of miniaturised magnetic acceleration. She slapped the controls with her chin; the gun’s indicator lights were all green, fully charged and ready to go.

She hefted the weapon in her left hand and struggled to press the stock against her shoulder, then gave up and braced her elbow against her hip. Point shooting would have to suffice.

“Tch!”

The tut echoed off the steel walls of the armoury. Elpida whirled on the spot, finger on the trigger.

“I always assumed you were ambidextrous,” Lykke drawled.

The Necromancer was draped over a hardshell suit — Elpida’s own suit. Her arms lay across the shoulders, chin resting beside the helmet, melting against the grey-green amour like a cat in sunlight. She bore the wounds Elpida had left her with — hand-print bruises on her pale throat, a bloody nose and a split lip, a purple blossom spreading across her cheek — but no sign of the elongated face-maw. Lykke was back to normal.

“I am,” Elpida replied. “That doesn’t mean I can one-hand a gun like this.”

Lykke rose from the hardshell suit, cradling her own bruised stomach. Her fingers fluttered over her flat belly through the fabric of her dress. She winced and flinched, letting out a soft gasp.

“Then why are you waving it around, zombie?” she said.

Elpida didn’t reply. She kept the PDW trained on Lykke. The Necromancer smiled, rolled her eyes, and turned away. She sauntered over to the pilot suits, pulled one out from a bin, and unrolled the soft grey fabric. She held it up to her front, looked down at herself, and did a little twirl. Then she pulled a disgusted face and let the suit fall to the floor.

“You said you couldn’t hurt me here,” said Elpida.

Lykke broke into a smug little smirk and gestured at Elpida with both hands, arms held out wide. “Uh huh! And here you are, untouched!”

“Mm. Neat trick. Felt very real.”

Lykke giggled, biting her bottom lip. “Did you like it? Was it a unique experience, being all the way down my pretty little throat?” She tilted her head back and ran one lace-gloved hand across the bruised flesh of her exposed throat, hooking a finger briefly into her regenerated choker — then she clacked her teeth together three times. “Hahaha!”

“Never had my head bitten off before,” Elpida said.

“Mm!” Lykke purred, hands clasped together, wiggling one leg back and forth. “Your first time! Let’s see how many other firsts we can take from you, shall we?”

Elpida said, “What other lies did you tell?”

Lykke stamped one slippered foot. “Oh, you’re no fun! I was telling the truth, zombie! I can’t actually hurt you. I can’t wipe you! I don’t have that kind of access. No Necromancer does. And this is inside you, dummy. No matter what it feels like in the moment, all I can do is bat you around a bit. Not that I won’t keep going!”

“Why?” Elpida demanded. “I thought you’d discovered a love of pain. Why do you want to fight me?”

Lykke raised both hands in a little shrug. “Because it turns out you are an incredibly boring dance partner when you lack the proper motivation. So! You and I, little zombie, we’re going to play on equal footing.”

Elpida scoffed. She smiled, despite herself. “Equal footing? You’re obviously the one in control of this dream. You can do whatever you want. You just came out of nowhere.”

“Uuuughhhhh,” Lykke moaned. “No, no, no! How many times? This isn’t a dream! Zombie— ugh, don’t give me that look! Elpida, fine. This is not a dream. It’s more like … software!” Lykke lit up. “It has rules, like gravity, inertia, solid objects, muscles. And pain! All the good stuff which makes reality so juicy.”

“And you expect me to believe you can’t break those rules?”

Lykke shrugged. “Out in the real network the rules are more … flexible, for things like me, sure. I won’t lie about that. But here? Mmmm, not really. You’re just a zombie, which means you can’t actually see what’s really going on. I can, and I can fuck around a bit.” Lykke flicked her fingers, as if brushing away a mote of dust. “But I don’t want to! I want to dance! With you.”

Elpida’s stomach tightened, low down, with an excitement she had not expected. She took a deep breath. This was a distraction she could ill afford.

“Equal footing?” she echoed.

“Yes! I’ll stay subject to all the same rules as you. No more teeth, no more claws, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die!” Lykke ran a fingertip over her chest, over her heart. “Just throw the gun away and come at me. You want this too, zombie. I can tell.”

Elpida didn’t move. “If this is software — my software — why can’t I summon help?”

Lykke sighed. “Obviously because you don’t really want to!” She tutted, then batted her eyelashes and bit her lower lip again. “Zombie, forget about all that. This … this is a first time for me, too. I’ve never done this with a zombie before, inside your own private network, not like this. I feel quite vulnerable, you know? With me it’s always one and done.” She sighed, twirling a lock of hair in her fingers, turned half-aside as if embarrassed. “I’ve never … come back to the same zombie. It’s such a different feeling. You’re the first.” Lykke let out a little moan and shook herself, as if gathering her courage. “And you’re going to have so much fun. I know you will! We’ll both get what we need.”

Elpida felt a tug, deep down in her belly — but she clamped down hard. “And every time you rip my head off, I’m gonna wake up back in my bed?”

Lykke shrugged again. “I don’t know! You can do whatever you want! Why not try to return the favour?”

Elpida shook her head. “I’m not going to let you do that a second time.”

Lykke tutted. “Then why are you still here? You can leave whenever you like! Go back to your little pack of kittens or whatever. But you won’t, will you? Because you’re all twisted up inside. So, as long as you’re here and hiding from responsibility, why not play with me? That’s got to be better than moping about, right?”

Elpida ignored that. “You only got the drop on me because this place is emotionally compromising.”

Lykke tilted her head, blinking innocently. “Oh?”

“ … you really don’t know?”

Lykke wet her lips. “I’ve picked up a little. Something about dead sisters? This is the world you lived in, right? This is the place you lost, and the loss that broke you.” Lykke smirked. “Does talking about it help get you ready? Unconventional, perhaps, but I’m all ears.”

Elpida felt words rising up her throat — yes, yes, this is all I lost, all the echoes and imprints of my sisters are here, and—

And Lykke was a distraction; Lykke was pumping her for info; Lykke had to be dealt with.

Elpida lowered the PDW. “All this is to keep me from speaking with Telokopolis, isn’t it? You took away that corridor. You’re a distraction, keeping me from following, keeping me from finding the certainty I need. That’s your purpose.”

Lykke rolled her eyes, threw up both lace-gloved hands, and let out a strangled scream.

“How self-centred can you be?!” she shrieked. “Can’t you just live in this one moment, zombie?! You can’t even see how bricked up you are, or what I’m offering you! How are you even still going like this?! If I was in your position, I’d be curled up on the floor in a ball!”

Elpida frowned; was she wrong? She’d not really meant the words she’d said, she was testing, but she had not expected this response. Lykke’s answers were difficult to trust, but she asked anyway: “Tell me the truth, Lykke. Did you remove that additional corridor?”

“Does it matter?!”

“Yes,” Elpida said. “Because I need to talk to Telokopolis—”

“How do you even know it’s her, hmm!? Or whatever it is you’re trying to talk to. How do you know?”

“Because it looked like how I … ”

Elpida trailed off. She realised what she had been about to say.

“Ha!” Lykke barked. “How you imagine her, right? Face it, zombie, you’re chasing your own memories. Pay attention to the moment. I’m right here!”

Elpida shook her head. “No. No, she has to be here. I need—”

“What you need, zombie, is a dance you don’t know how to dance!”

Lykke flew at Elpida, hands outstretched, lace-clad fingers hooked like claws. Elpida dropped the PDW to the floor with a clatter; her bait had worked. She drew the pistol from her waistband, aimed one-handed at Lykke’s centre of mass, and pumped the trigger — thock-thock-thock!

Caseless rounds tore through Lykke’s shiny white dress and punched into her ribcage, tearing a trio of bloody holes in her chest. The Necromancer went down in a tangle of limbs, carried forward by the momentum of her headlong charge. She slid to a halt a few feet from Elpida’s toes, twitching and wheezing, blood spreading in a shallow pool on the metal tiles.

Lykke slapped at the floor. She struggled to raise her head.

“Cheater!” she rattled.

Her eyes glazed over. She went limp, then still.

Elpida stepped back and aimed the pistol at Lykke’s head. She pulled the trigger three more times, putting a trio of rounds through Lykke’s skull. Bone and brain matter splattered across the floor. Elpida waited another two full minutes, watching the corpse for signs of motion.

“My network space,” Elpida said. “Which means my rules. I don’t believe that for a second. Get up, Lykke.”

The Necromancer didn’t move.

“Get. Up.”

Nothing. Elpida felt a terrible disappointment — but why? Did she really want to fight Lykke hand-to-hand? She would gain nothing from the experience.

She had to go after that phantom vision of Telokopolis. She had to know. Perhaps the corridor would be there once more, now that Lykke was ‘dead’.

Elpida backed toward the armoury door, not once taking her eyes off Lykke’s body. She touched the palm-pad with her elbow.

Beep!

The access light stayed red. That was not supposed to happen. Back in life, that never happened.

She had to stoop to press the palm-pad with her stump.

Beep. Red light.

She leaned against the wall and awkwardly bumped the pad with one foot.

Beep. Red light.

She stared at the corpse. She waited another sixty seconds. Lykke didn’t move.

“Get up, Lykke,” Elpida said.

Nothing.

As carefully as she could, Elpida moved her left hand toward the palm-pad, still holding the gun. She had to turn the barrel away from Lykke, for just a moment. Her knuckles brushed the pad.

Beep. Red light.

Lykke jerked upright, a whirling vortex of blood-soaked white dress and golden blonde hair.

She scuttled toward Elpida on all fours, bleeding and screeching and cackling from a mouth full of sharp teeth. Elpida flicked the gun around and pulled the trigger, but the rounds cut through Lykke like stones through water, and then Lykke knocked the weapon out of Elpida’s hand. Lykke was on top of her, reeking of blood, a fanged maw pressed into Elpida’s face. She knocked Elpida to the floor. Elpida got a foot into Lykke’s belly, but the Necromancer flowed around the kick like her body was made of liquid.

“That one doesn’t count, zombie!” Lykke screeched. “Equal footing means equal footing! You cheat, I cheat! Next time, use your fists!”

Lykke’s teeth closed around Elpida’s throat. Elpida felt razorblades tear her windpipe open, cold air rushing in to freeze her gullet, blood gushing down her front and—

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Elpida woke up.

She awoke in her own bed, greeted by the muted colours and soft lights of the dormitory, within the pilot project cadre’s private quarters.

She was wide awake. She remembered everything.

“Fuck.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Wakey-wakey, Commander! It’s time for your scheduled getting-eaten-by-a-masochistic-Necromancer session!

But Elpida can leave anytime she likes, right? Right?! Right.

Ahem. Well then! Welcome to the meaty innards of arc 13! We’re really getting up to speed now. Behind the scenes, things are shaping up quite nicely; I suspect arc 13 is gonna be maybe 10-12 chapters, pretty chunky, certainly, but we’ve got some major POV shifts and jumps and things coming up as well. Don’t worry, for readers of my other serial, we’re not about to spend 38 chapters in Elpida’s dream (and it’s not a dream, it’s software! Lykke just explained it!), though we might be there for another chapter yet. We’ll see!

In the meantime, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers, for reading my little story! I hope you are having as much fun reading about these wild zombie girls as I am writing about them. We have so much yet to go! So many graves to dig up and so many bones to rebuild. Until next chapter! Seeya then!