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Serin’s voice purred behind the painted black teeth of her metal mask, seeping into the dim red twilight of the crew compartment.

“Meat,” she said, “is the medium and measure of all strength and growth. Muscle and fat will suffice, for metabolic maintenance. Gristle, tendon, cartilage. Those are enough for mere survival, scraps for the bottom feeders. Organs are better. Fresh and hot and dripping with blood. The lowest of suitable fuels for accelerated healing, nanomachine accumulation, self modification. Bone marrow is superior. Higher nanomachine density. Tastes good, too. Even cold. Buttery. Rich. Congeals on the tongue. Sticks to the roof of the mouth. Goes down smooth. Even the weakest scavenger can lift a rock to crack open a femur. But brains — brains are best. One mouthful of pink and grey neurons is equal to all the bone marrow in a body. All the muscles in five or six corpses. Enough gristle to fill this room. A whole brain is a prize worth contesting. Or killing for.”

Serin paused. Her crimson eyes burned against the bloodless skin of her face, a bionic glow to match the ruddy night-cycle gloom of Pheiri’s internal illumination. Her shapeless black robes hung as if from a bundle of sticks, revealing nothing of the form beneath. She was framed by the scuffed metal of the infirmary door.

Elpida chose not to interrupt; she guessed that Serin was pausing for effect, or to allow for displays of disgust. Nobody else in the crew compartment reacted.

Amina was listening with rapt attention, staring up at Serin from the nearest seat, at the end of the bench. She looked very comfy, wrapped up in her blankets. Elpida had considered a quiet intervention, to relocate Amina into a seat further away from Serin, in case something went wrong; but Serin would recognise the obvious gesture of distrust, especially after Serin had spoken so kindly to Amina up on Pheiri’s hull. Elpida allowed Amina’s new infatuation to pass without comment, despite Howl’s grumbled objections.

Vicky was sat on the bench seat opposite Amina, as close to Elpida as possible, still dressed in the clothes in which she had slept, all tomb-grey in the low red light. She’d fetched a drink of water to help her wake up, and was now holding the empty cannister in tight hands. She was frowning at the floor, looking queasy.

Melyn appeared to be listening, but Elpida wasn’t certain — the artificial human had not asked a single question since she had snuggled down in Hafina’s lap, enveloped inside Hafina’s six arms. And Hafina herself was half-asleep; she stifled several massive yawns as Serin spoke. Her big black eyes kept drifting shut. Her colour-shifting skin had faded to a dusken grey, blending with the red shadows among the blankets on the floor.

Elpida was standing at the head of the compartment, as if blocking the way into Pheiri’s spinal corridor. She still wore her armoured coat and her boots, submachine gun still strapped over one shoulder. She maintained the position on purpose — authority and protection, implied but not aloof.

The air smelled faintly of Serin’s unique odour, like rotten wood and fungal blooms.

With no objections, Serin continued.

“Meat needs meat,” she said. “Nothing else will satisfy the hunger. Bellies may be filled. Intestines packed with shit. Minds tricked. Bodies diverted. But growth will halt. Slime and rocks are like eating grass and bark. Low energy, high investment. The nanomachines are too used to being things other than meat. Too solid, too slow, too still. Chew on concrete and you will become as concrete, dull and cold and grey. Suck down slime and you will turn soft and pliant, bovine, dependent. Eat meat and you will live as a person. Steal the seat of your prey’s soul, and you will thrive. Eat, or cease. Eat, or end. Eat, or be eaten.”

Serin trailed off, watching her audience. Vicky swallowed loudly. Amina sniffed, breaking the silence.

Elpida said: “I think that’s the longest single statement I’ve heard you make, Serin.”

Vicky muttered, “Yeah, very poetic.”

Serin’s eyes crinkled above her mask, the tell-tale sign of a hidden grin. “Have I offended your gentle principles, coh-mander?”

“No,” Elpida said, telling the truth. “Far from it. That was intended as a compliment, not as sarcasm. Thank you for going into so much detail. Those kinds of details matter a lot for the sorts of decisions we have to make.”

Vicky snorted, still staring at the deck. “Yeah, lessons on cannibalism. Tell us something we don’t know.”

“Mmm,” Serin grunted at Vicky. “Changed your mind fast. Didn’t you?”

Vicky finally looked up with a frown for Serin. “What are you implying?”

“Mood swings,” Serin rasped. “Irritation. Next comes difficulty with focus. Can’t think about anything else. Then the gnawing. Chewing on anything you can fit into your mouth. Then … ahhhhh. Then friends become food.”

“Hunger,” Elpida said, cutting through Serin’s poetic meandering. “You’re talking about hunger, yes. We all know.”

Vicky snorted with sarcasm. “What, like in an old cartoon? I’m gonna look at my comrades here and see chicken drumsticks running around with little legs? Is that part of being a zombie? Am I gonna hallucinate Elpi into a loaf of bread?” Vicky cleared her throat. “No offence, Commander. Just an example.”

“None taken,” Elpida said. “In fact, that’s a very good question.”

Vicky looked taken aback. “Eh? What?”

Elpida addressed Serin again: “Answer the question, please, Serin. As revenants, does hunger become unbearable? Can we lose control of ourselves?”

Serin stared at Elpida for a long time, red eyes burning in her pale face. “Were you ever hungry in life, coh-mander?”

“Of course I know what hunger is like. I know—”

“How long did you ever go without food? Days? Weeks? Did you ever eat waste? Mouldy bread? Rotten meat? Have you ever caught a rat with your bare hands and squeezed the life out of it just to tear the scraps of raw meat off with your teeth? Have you ever eaten worms, or flies, or a favourite pet? Have you ever made soup from lichen and moss? How empty has your belly ever been, coh-mander? Have you ever lived without food long enough for your body to start digesting your own bone marrow? Have you ever starved?”

Elpida dipped her head, giving way to Serin’s point. “I’ve never been that hungry, no. I never experienced such things. My apologies.”

Vicky sighed. “I have. I remember what it was like, when I was a kid. Get hungry enough and you’ll do anything.”

“Mm,” Serin purred. “Hunger. Breaks you down, fast. Disgust fades. Anything to fill the belly. Anything to feed the soft machine. Zombies? Nothing to do with it. Alive, we were all the same. Hunger is our inheritance. Human beings will kill and eat each other before they starve to death.”

Vicky straightened up and gestured with the empty cannister. “Serin’s got a point, sure. Hunger is a terrible motivator. But I’m not irritable because I’m hungry, thank you. In fact, I’m not really hungry at all, not yet. How about you, Commander? Amina? How do you both feel?”

Elpida let the use of ‘Commander’ go without further comment, at least until she could get Vicky in private; she didn’t want to correct Vicky again in front of Serin. She knew what Vicky was doing, though she didn’t know for sure if the behaviour was intentional or subconscious. Serin was an outsider, an other, standing apart from the group, not subject to whatever ad hoc command structure and interpersonal dynamics they had built thus far. And now she was saying things that nobody wanted to hear. Vicky was asserting her own place in that same structure, asserting Elpida’s authority, and asserting her refusal of this information.

Which was not what Elpida needed. This was a bad sign.

Elpida shook her head. “Not yet, no. I could eat, I think, but I don’t feel any particular urge. Amina?”

Amina shook her head as well, then spoke in a quavering voice. “T-the blue stuff … ”

Elpida nodded. “That’s correct, Amina. Good memory. We all drank from the raw blue nanos before the fight, even if just a little bit. And we ate those brains, up in the penthouse, before we descended toward Arcadia’s Rampart. And, Serin? Thank you again for the meat you gave us. We might not have survived without it.”

Serin dipped her head. Her neck and shoulders moved across strange angles beneath her ragged black robes.

“So,” Elpida said. “You’re right, Vicky. We’re still topped up on fuel.”

“For now,” Serin rasped, then chuckled behind her mask — a nasty, grating, metallic sound.

Vicky raised a hand and gestured at Serin. “Yeah, that? That sentiment, that’s what’s making me irritated. You’re telling us there’s no alternative. There’s no way to survive but to eat people. I don’t know if I can do that, even if it’s our only choice. Pira had a good point. Participation is predicated on carrying on all this murder and cannibalism.”

Serin shrugged, robes rising and falling. “Eat and live. Or lie down and die. Choice is yours, zombie.”

Vicky shook her head and looked at Elpida with a helpless shrug. “What are we going to do? Seriously, are we gonna … what, go out hunting?”

Elpida raised one hand — her bandaged right hand. “I’m not saying that. We haven’t come to any kind of decision yet.”

Amina squeaked: “What if—” She flinched when everyone looked at her.

Elpida said, “It’s okay, Amina, your suggestions are welcome too.”

“Yeah,” Vicky said, forcing a difficult smile. “It’s alright, Ami. I’m not mad at you or anything.”

Amina swallowed, eyes darting back and forth. “What if … what if we only eat bad people?”

Elpida smiled sadly. Vicky cleared her throat.

Amina’s eyes went wide; she was much smarter than she sometimes seemed. She must have understood exactly what that reaction meant. “I-I-I mean— I mean people who attack us first! M-monsters and— and— people who want to eat us! I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry!”

Elpida said, “It’s okay, Amina. We understand what you mean.”

“Sorry!”

“It’s alright. I promise.”

Vicky sighed a big sigh, raised one hand, and rapped a single knuckle against the metal wall of the crew compartment. “Who’s gonna attack us inside Pheiri?”

Amina bit her bottom lip. “Oh … ”

“Yeah,” Vicky said. “We’d have to go out there and act like bait. Nobody’s gonna assault this tank. We may as well have Pheiri mow down a crowd with his guns and then slink out to stuff our faces with the fucking burning meat. Great. That’s a great solution.”

Vicky resumed staring at the floor. Amina shrank down inside her blankets. Serin watched the exchange with unreadable interest. Melyn and Hafina were totally detached, the only two who didn’t need to worry about meat.

Elpida was losing control.

She did not like Serin’s conclusion — it was materially identical to Pira’s position on the nanomachine ecosystem, varying only in the resultant attitude. Survival meant participation in a system of predation. There was no other choice, no other way to live, no alternative food source. Before Vicky had emerged from the bunk room, Serin had said much the same thing. She had outlined three possible options for Elpida’s group: one, as ‘big game hunters’ bringing down heavily modified zombies with vast reserves of nanomachines packed into their bodies; two, as opportunistic predators picking off the weak, the loners, the abandoned, and any others unable to defend themselves; and finally, three, as scavengers, picking over the cold and stringy remains of better kills. Pheiri’s excellent protection, mobility, and armament opened all three possibilities. The third option would mean the least participation in the nanomachine ecosystem of killing and cannibalism — but according to Serin, it also meant slow and grinding starvation.

Elpida and her comrades had been faced with this basic material fact on the previous occasion they had run into Serin, when she had gifted them a grisly harvest of beheaded brains. Events since then had postponed confrontation with the needs of their new bodies, but now it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later, hunger would gnaw at their undead bellies once again.

Three cannisters of raw blue nanomachines remained, stored in Ilyusha’s backpack. Elpida wanted to retain those for emergencies.

Elpida did her best not to show her indecision. She did not have a solution to this problem. She had dealt with this same rejection in Pira, by accepting personal responsibility for Pira’s nanomachine load — feeding her mouthfuls of fresh blood. But in the long run, other zombies would still have to die to feed Elpida, if Pira was to drink Elpida’s blood in turn.

All she’d done was move the problem around.

In the back of Elpida’s mind, Howl was growling and grumbling, grinding her teeth, grumpy as all hell.

Howl? Elpida prompted. You got something to say?

Howl made a frustrated noise. Unnnh! Elps, shhhh! She might hear me.

Elpida resisted a sigh. I think if she was going to see you running about inside my skull, she would have done so by now. Howl, you don’t have to come out of hiding, but if you have something to say, I would like to hear it. I’m … stuck. I don’t see a way out of this, and maybe there isn’t one. If not, then we need to convince the others, especially Vicky. Do you think Serin is telling the truth? Is she right, is there really no other—

Howl took control of Elpida’s vocal cords.

“S’not what you said up top,” she growled at Serin, through Elpida’s mouth.

Crimson eyes flickered back to Elpida. “Coh-mander?”

Howl smiled with Elpida’s lips. “You think I wasn’t paying attention? Think you could slip that trick past me? Nah, I don’t think so, you’re not stupid. You were testing. On purpose. And I’ve already passed.”

Howl, Elpida said. What are you doing?

Shhh! Elps, lemme work her! I think I’m onto something.

You’re doing a very poor job of imitating my tone, if that’s your intention. Let me take over. You can feed me the lines.

Howl hissed: You won’t get it! You didn’t pick up on what she really said. You’re so hung up on all this bodies and meat shit that you didn’t even notice.

Notice what?

Howl didn’t answer.

Serin dipped her head to examine Elpida’s face in more detail, red eyes burning in an expanse of mushroom-pale skin. The smell of damp wood and fungal growth intensified. “Oh?”

Vicky looked up too. “Yeah, what are you talking about?”

Amina murmured: “Live and change.”

Howl broke into a grin and pointed at Amina with Elpida’s bandaged hand. “Give that girl a biscuit! Same wavelength, tyke bomb! Ha!”

Amina blinked at Elpida in surprise, eyes wide, dark lashes fluttering. Vicky raised an eyebrow too. Melyn and Hafina didn’t seem to care. Serin tilted her head to one side, peering closer at Elpida.

Howl, that was nothing like me, Elpida said. What is this? Have you changed your mind now, are you trying to provoke her on purpose?

Howl used Elpida’s lips to say: “That’s what you said, Serin. Up top, out on Pheiri’s back. You said ‘eat or die, or live and change.’ Eat or die,” Howl echoed again. “Or live and change. Bitches like you pick your words real carefully. So, yeah. We’re smart enough to read that shit.”

Serin straightened up again. She wasn’t smiling behind her mask. “You have a passenger, coh-mander.”

It wasn’t a question.

Elpida was still dressed for combat, in her armoured coat, carrying her weapon. None of the others were armed. Vicky was wearing the clothes she’d been sleeping in. Amina was within reach of Serin’s arms, let alone her weapons. Melyn and Hafina didn’t seem to feel the tension in the air; Haf was sleeping, sitting upright with her eyes closed.

Elpida moved her left hand closer to her weapon’s grip, under the guise of adjusting her armoured coat; the ruse would fool the others, but Serin would understand what she meant.

“I do,” Elpida said. “Do we have a problem?”

Come on, you cunt! Howl screeched inside Elpida’s mind. Fucking swing at me, you lying sack of shit! Do it! Take a shot!

Howl. Stop. Right now. What are you attempting?

Calling her bluff! This is the only way, Elps! She keeps fucking lying, about everything! We can’t trust her!

Howl—

“No problem, coh-mander,” Serin purred. “I know you are no Necromancer. You’ve already been tested. Found wanting. Your passengers are your own business.”

“Thank you,” Elpida said. “I appreciate the respect.”

“Mm,” Serin grunted. “Same.”

Bullshit! Howl snapped. Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! She’s bullshitting us! Come on, shoot me, you fuck! I showed you my face, right there! I am a Necromancer! I’m exactly the sort of shit you say you’re looking for! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck youuuuuu—

Elpida sighed out loud. “She also doesn’t like you or trust you. She believes you’re lying to us about certain things, mostly about Necromancers and the reasons you’re hunting them. For the record, so do I — or at least I believe that you’ve been misled, and are passing those mistakes onto us. Here, Vicky.” Elpida pulled the strap of her submachine gun off her shoulder and handed it off to Vicky. “Can you put this on the seat for me, please? It’s getting a little heavy.”

“Uh, sure, yeah.” Vicky accepted the gun, checked the safety, and placed it on the seat next to her.

Elps, what the fuck are you doing? Howl snapped.

Making sure you don’t dynamite this meeting, Elpida replied.

I wasn’t gonna shoot her! Howl screeched. I want her to tell the truth!

Serin watched the performance with the gun in silence. Elpida could not tell if Serin found herself in check, or if she was simply continuing her stubborn refusal to tell the whole truth.

“Eat or die,” Elpida echoed. “Or live and change. Is my ‘passenger’ correct about the wordplay?”

“Rephrase the question,” Serin rasped.

Elpida nodded. “There’s no other source of nutrition available to revenants, just each other, or the occasional raw blue from a tomb opening. So, is there a way of eliminating a revenant’s metabolic burden?”

“No,” Serin said. Too fast. Too certain.

“Alright,” Elpida said. “Is there a way to reduce a revenant’s metabolic burden?”

Serin took a deep breath — or at least appeared to. Her shoulders and chest inflated as a rasping noise came from beneath her mask. When she exhaled, she closed her crimson eyes, and kept them closed.

“There are many ways,” she said. “To do that. More than I know of.”

Bingo, bitch, Howl said.

Vicky frowned. “What? Excuse me? There are other ways? Why didn’t you mention this before? Why the fucking stupid games with us?”

Amina didn’t complain, but she did look at Serin in a new way, chewing on her lower lip.

“Zombies,” Melyn said — but did not elaborate. Hafina blinked open sleepy eyes, then closed them again.

Serin said: “Because you will chase perfection at the cost of survival. Because you must walk before you can run. Because you will lose yourselves in a mirage of purity. Pick your metaphor. Whatever works.”

Elpida said, “Explain. In plain language, please, Serin.”

Serin’s blood-red eyes opened again. She was not smiling behind her mask. She stared at Vicky. “This is not something shared lightly. The knowledge will destroy you, but you’ve already reached the question. Yes, there are ways. To reduce metabolic loads, metabolic needs, metabolic speed. But. The work to reach that point is measured in thousands or tens of thousands of corpses. A mountain of meat and muscle. More brains than I can count. Years or decades of predatory cannibalism. The road to self-sufficiency is more predation, not less. And even in success, small inputs are still necessary. Even the most well-tuned body does not stand alone. We are all meat, little zombie. Every one of us. Nobody is free.”

“Except us,” said Melyn. “Us. Us.”

“Hooraaaaaay,” murmured Hafina, without opening her eyes.

Serin glanced at the pair of artificial humans. Her eyes crinkled with a smile. “Except those who stand outside. Envy them already, don’t you?”

“A little,” Elpida admitted. “How do we do it, then? How do we reduce our reliance on meat?”

Serin shrugged. “As many ways as zombies. Many possible downsides. Compromises. Trade-offs. Vulnerabilities. Grow fusion reactors from meat and gristle. Turn your cells into self-replicators. Feed on ambient radiation. Certain limited wavelengths of photosynthesis. Many more, most beyond my knowledge. Zombies come from their own times. Carrying ideas.” She shook her head. “And too many dead ends.”

“Dead ends?” Vicky asked.

“Mmm,” Serin grunted. “Like our mutual friend out in the road.” She nodded sideways, at the wall.

Vicky frowned. “What? Who?”

“I think she means Iriko,” Elpida said. “Serin, what do you mean by ‘dead ends’?”

“Iriko, yes,” Serin replied. “She made a metabolic choice. A long time ago. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Growth and flexibility. Made her a good hunter. Surface area increased to harvest the mould and concrete. But she locked herself into a niche. And now she is always hungry, always needing to eat. Can’t get out. Can’t think. Any choice to grow and develop can turn into a dead end. Tread with care.”

Amina wet her lips. A question was poised on the tip of her tongue. Elpida caught Amina’s eyes and nodded. “Amina, go ahead, please. You’re allowed to ask questions, too.”

Amina nodded, swallowed, and said: “Have you … Serin, have you done that, too? Do you eat … differently?”

Serin looked down. Amina didn’t flinch. Elpida decided that was a good sign.

Serin said: “Yes.”

“How?” Amina asked. “I-if that’s okay to ask … ”

Serin paused for a long moment, then said: “It is upsetting to hear, little one. Are you sure?”

Amina swallowed again, wide-eyed, her breath coming in little gasps. She nodded.

Serin said, “I rot. Rot becomes a bed for fresh meat. In time, rot becomes meat. I recycle my own flesh. It is not a perfect system, but I require less meat, less input, with less regularity. It means I can stay in one place, very quietly, for a very long time. Like a crocodile. Do you know about crocodiles?”

Amina stared at Serin in awe. “I don’t know,” she breathed.

Vicky muttered: “Explains the smell.” Then she spoke louder. “But you still need meat?”

Serin nodded.

Vicky shrugged and shook her head. “And where do you get that?”

“I hunt. I eat.”

Vicky hissed between her teeth. “And how do you justify that? How do you justify eating other people, even zombies, even when they come back to life or whatever? Aren’t you supposed to be against those fash we fought back there, the Death’s Heads? How do you justify acting like them?”

“I do not.” Serin grinned behind her mask. “Can’t hunt the death cult if you don’t eat. Can’t do anything if you don’t eat. Can’t fight without strength.”

Elpida nodded along. She saw the logic, even if she didn’t like where it was going. “Nothing is achievable if we don’t participate. This is the same conversation I had with Pira, just on a larger scale.”

Vicky looked up at her, face twisted by a pained frown. “Elpi, there’s gotta be another way.”

If what Serin said was true, then no one zombie could achieve internal self-sufficiency, and no group could be a closed system.

Even Telokopolis itself was not a true closed system. The city’s population had relied on the bounty of the buried fields, which produced more than enough to feed every mouth in Spire and Skirts combined. But the soil of the fields had to be replenished and regenerated by the city’s waste products, by water pumped upward from the deep aquifers miles beneath the city, and by the unseen alchemical processes of the city’s own nanomachine circulatory system. Fresh intakes of nanomachines had to be fed into the body of the city, manufactured by sucking dust and grit and particulate from the air, filtering it of any taint from the green before rendering it down into atomic components. Elpida had not understood the process — that was the purview of the bone-speakers and the many functions of their sprawling guild. Telokopolan nanomachine technology was nothing like the raw blue nanos that made up her revenant body now; it was closer to the chunky grey vomit that Thirteen had supplied for Pheiri. Elpida was not sure if Thirteen’s fluids were descended from the technology she had known, but it made a kind of sense.

Elpida understood enough to know that Telokopolis had guzzled oceans of water and devoured mountains of dirt, turning it to metal and plastic, to food and clothes, to machinery and computers and everything else the population needed.

And to flesh and bone — the body of the city itself.

As long as Elpida was up on her feet, Telokopolis also stood. And she would do anything to protect her comrades, her new cadre, the human core protected by Telokopolis the body and Telokopolis the set of principles. And this little slice of Telokopolis also had to feed.

“Vicky,” Elpida said gently, “if there’s no other way, then we need to find a source of meat. If we can modify ourselves, given time, then we can try to minimise those needs. But for now—”

“What about Iriko?” Vicky said. “Can she grow stuff for us to eat?”

Serin chuckled behind her mask. “You’ll make her hunt for all your mouths, as well as her own? She will be less discerning in her choice of prey.”

“Dammit, fair enough.” Vicky looked away, frowning hard. “What about … cultured meat?”

“Vicky,” Elpida said, gently.

“No, I’m serious,” Vicky replied. “It was only just coming back in, when I was alive. But they used to do it a lot, back in the Old Empire — the country that existed before I was born. They grew meat in vats. Chicken, pork, beef, all of it. They were doing it up in the Chicago arcology right until the end, I think. Okay, yeah, we don’t exactly have access to a clean-room bio-factory or anything.” She gestured with the empty cannister again, indicating Pheiri. “But surely we can figure out a way to grow meat. It’s not like we have to worry about infections or getting sick.”

Serin said, “Meat means nanomachines. Grow it clean, no nanos.”

“So?” Vicky laughed a little, warming to her subject. “You say we can’t eat the mould outdoors — the black gunk everywhere, right? Why? Because it’s low-energy or whatever. It’s like being a cow and eating grass. You’ve got to eat lots and lots of it to extract the energy, so you end up slow-moving and dull in the head. Whatever. Why can’t we take that stuff and concentrate it?”

Serin said nothing, watching Vicky with those burning red eyes. Vicky paused, as if expecting an answer.

Elpida said: “Go on, Vicky. I’m listening.”

“That’s basically what vat-grown meat is, right? Or real meat, too, I guess.” Vicky gestured over her shoulder, toward the bunk room door. “Kaga would probably know more about this than I do. I bet they didn’t raise cattle on the moon. Bet all her meals were synth-meat. Anyway, you get the cells, you feed them sugars, or … or whatever, I don’t actually know how it works. And they concentrate the energy you give them, into protein, into meat. Why can’t we do the same thing with the black mould?”

“Why indeed,” Serin purred.

Vicky sighed, staring at Serin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Serin shrugged. “Somebody has probably tried it before. The world remains the same.”

Vicky snorted, rolling her eyes. “So what? We shouldn’t try to change anything? We shouldn’t try to make the world a better place, even just for us, because things might have been tried before, and failed? I kinda expected better theory from a person who defines herself by shooting fascists. Fuck’s sake.”

“Change is stamped out,” Serin said. “By Necromancers.”

“Not the one we met,” Vicky said. “From the sounds of it, she wanted to blow up her boss. Sort of.”

Serin went very still.

Before Serin had a chance to speak, Vicky set down the empty cannister and stood up. “Fuck this,” she said. “Hey, Melyn? Excuse me, sorry, I know you’re sleepy.” Melyn blinked at her, not sleepy at all, while Haf’s eyes remained closed above Melyn’s head. Vicky pointed at the machine set into one wall, the dispenser that Melyn had used to produce food sticks. “How does your nutrient paste thing work? How do I get it to give me a stick?”

“Vicky,” Elpida said gently. “It’s not going to work, not for us.”

Vicky gestured impatiently. “Commander, just— just let me work. Melyn? What buttons do I press?”

Elpida opened her mouth again, but Howl stilled her lips. Let her cook. I wanna see where this goes.

Melyn answered in a rattling staccato: “Left top. Twice. Twice. Then middle row for size. Small medium large. Press the bottom row to adjust the taste. The taste. I like it all the way over to the left. On the left. The left. Tastes like chocolate.”

Vicky walked over to the food stick dispenser and jabbed at the controls. The machine disgorged a greasy-looking, dark brown rectangle. Vicky picked it up and sniffed the result. Serin looked on with amusement crinkled in the corners of her eyes.

“Thanks, Melyn,” Vicky said. She broke off a corner of the food stick, popped it into her mouth, and chewed slowly. “Mm. Not bad. Does taste a bit like chocolate, I suppose. Melyn, I need to see this thing’s guts, if that’s possible. I need to know how it works.”

Melyn looked up at the ceiling, and said: “Thank you, Pheiri!”

Vicky nodded, chewing another piece of greasy protein block. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Thanks, Pheiri.”

Elpida said: “Vicky, our bodies can’t draw any nourishment from that. I know you don’t want to—”

“Hey, hey, Commander. Elpi. I know! I’m not stupid.” Vicky waved the food stick. “Pheiri makes these from scratch. If I can understand whatever system he’s using to pull resources together, maybe I can improve it. Maybe he can manufacture nanomachines. Who knows? We won’t know unless we try. I’m not grasping at straws here. I’m not drinking seawater while dying of thirst. I’m just trying to work with what we’ve got.”

Heeeeeeeeey, I like this girl, Howl snorted. Elps, you’re wound too tight. She’s on fire. And standing up to your bullshit.

Elpida paused, then nodded to Vicky, accepting her error; she’d been so focused on stopping Victoria from mounting an effective anti-participation argument that she hadn’t seen what her own comrade was trying to do. She’d been on the verge of a very bad leadership mistake. She hadn’t been listening.

Maybe hunger was more of a threat than she expected.

“Thank you, Vicky,” said Elpida. “That’s a brilliant idea. I would not have thought of that. And I’m sorry for interrupting you. Well done.”

Vicky laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, whatever. I’m just an old grease head in the end. Get me in the engines and I’ll see if I can tighten them up, that’s all.”

Melyn spoke up: “Might have trouble getting down there. Trouble getting down there. Too tight for zombies. For zombies.”

Vicky popped another crumb of food stick in her mouth. “I’m sure we can figure something out. I can take some panels off or something. I’ll be gentle with Pheiri, I promise.”

Serin said to Vicky: “Tell me about the Necromancer.”

“Uh-uh,” Vicky said, chewing slowly. “You tell us first. You’ve been insufferable so far. Give up some goods.”

Elpida almost laughed. Howl cackled inside Elpida’s head. Victoria’s real sharp on the uptake sometimes, huh? Gotta get this bitch laid, she’ll be running your crew like I did.

You never ran the cadre, Howl.

Did too.

Elpida spoke out loud: “Yes, Serin, I’m with Vicky on this. We’ll keep our end of the deal, of course. We will tell you about everything the Necromancer did and said, until she left Arcadia’s Rampart and left us behind. But I want to hear the truth from you first. About why you hunt Necromancers. About where you got that gravitic weapon.”

“Hnnnnnh,” Serin grunted. A wordless refusal.

Elpida backed up the conversation and tried a different angle of attack, before the others could foul her moves. “Alright then, let’s start with something less sensitive, but no less essential. What about you, Serin? Can we know about you? If you’re going to join us — and again, I’m not saying you have to — it would be nice to know a bit more about you. Where are you from? Or when are you from? I told you about Telokopolis, but I don’t know anything about you.”

“Beyond your comprehension,” Serin said, but she said it with an amused smile in her eyes.

“Try us,” Vicky said. “Kaga’s from the moon.” She gestured at Melyn and Hafina. “These two are androids. Gynoids. Whatever. You can’t be much weirder than that.”

“Yes, try us,” Elpida echoed. “Even if we don’t understand.”

Amina said, in a tiny voice, “I … I want to know, too … Serin.”

Serin said: “Furthest.”

Elpida and Vicky shared a look. Vicky shrugged. Elpida shook her head. “Serin?”

Serin said: “Furthest. The dark giant. The secret wife. No? All these are proper names.” Serin chuckled, a low metallic rasping behind her mask. “As I said. Beyond your comprehension. In life I hailed from somewhere very strange.”

Howl muttered in the back of Elpida’s head: Cryptic bitch.

Amina said, “I— I want to know! Please!”

Serin looked down at Amina, then ducked slightly, so she wasn’t towering quite so much over the smaller girl. “It was a dark place, and very far away. I will tell you more, between just you and I. But I fear you will not understand.”

Amina frowned with determination. “I’ll try!”

“Mm. You will.”

Elpida shared another look with Vicky — a silent prompt to follow Elpida’s lead. Vicky raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement.

Elpida said: “Serin, we need to start somewhere with sharing more intel. Can’t you at least tell us about the gravitic weapon you’re carrying? If we’re being hounded by Necromancers, then we need to understand how to stop them, disrupt them, or kill them. Why does that weapon work on them?”

Howl snorted. Yeah, that’s the right question, Elps. Push that angle.

Serin straightened back up to her full height. “The gun works because I trust the one who told me it works.”

Elpida said, “And who told you?”

“The one who gave it to me.”

Vicky laughed, shaking her head. “Do we have to play this game all night? Just answer, or say you’re not going to. Damn, I may as well go back to bed at this rate.”

Serin slowly extended a spindly arm from beneath her black robes, sliding the bony limb between rustling layers of ragged fabric. The mushroom-pale flesh was dyed red in Pheiri’s night-cycle illumination.

A row of crossed-out skulls glinted black and glossy, terminated by the now-familiar symbol — the crescent-and-line.

“The weapon was a gift,” Serin said. “From the same one who taught me this.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Meat. Rich red and dripping raw. But is that really the whole tale? What about mushrooms, Serin? What about that fungus stench?

So yeah, Serin’s a mushroom girl. Vicky wants to tinker with Pheiri’s food-production systems. Elpida is sliding toward some worrying leadership errors (why’s that? What’s got you so riled up, Elps?) Melyn and Hafina would quite like to return to sleep, thank you very much. And Amina has a crush. Sort of.

This one carried on a lot longer than I was expecting! I was predicting the entire conversation was gonna be in one chapter, but then the girls really wanted to get into that debate about food, so I let them do it. But! There’s surprises coming up next chapter, and the the one after. In fact, I think 10.7 miiiight be the end of the arc? We might go to 10.8, but I’m not certain just yet! Gotta let these zombies herd themselves in the right direction, after all.

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, there is a tier for it on my patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 4.5k words.  Feel free to wait until there’s more story! I’m focused on trying to push this ahead for now, trying to make more time in my writing schedule to get an extra chapter or two out. I’ll keep trying! I promise!

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! Thank you!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for reading my little story about zombie girls and nanomachines after the end of the world. Even now, I still feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface. And I couldn’t do it without all of you! Thank you so much! Seeya next chapter!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Try as she might, Victoria could not sleep.

Consciousness clung to her mind with subtle claws, digging deep whenever her eyelids creaked shut, jolting her awake in little snorts and starts. She was greeted again and again by the peeling cream-white paint of the bunk room wall, or by the jumble of thin blue sheets and tiered beds on the other side of the narrow room, or by the sound of soft breathing from within warm shadows.

The first time that happened, Vicky had no idea where she was.

For several racing heartbeats she thought she was back in a tent or a pre-fab, deep in the heart of an artillery park, somewhere in the staging grounds south of the Chicago Arcology. If she rolled to one side and hopped to her feet, she would see her comrades, the regiment’s other engineers and gunners, spread out in cheap steel bunks, or wrapped up in sleeping bags on the floor, or just dozing on their packs whenever they’d dropped. No matter the arrangements, Cirilo and Petir would both be snoring their heads off; Andrew might be drunk, unless Elmer and Christman had gone with him on one of his night-time wanderings. Gale and Sonia would be tucked up in their own corner, probably still awake, probably playing some card game Vicky had never heard of. She could always join them, no matter how awkward she felt. They appreciated her company. All the younger soldiers did. She’d been around longer than most, and spoke more sense than some.

The Colonel would still be awake, of course, poring over maps or fire plans sent down from divisional headquarters — there was simply so much to do these last few days. Vic should get up and help, she’d had enough sleep; this would be a good time to check the regimental fuel reserves and make sure the shells were stowed properly. She didn’t want another cook-off incident like those poor bastards over in the 14th. Everyone was getting sloppy during this lull in the fighting, ever since the Arcology’s Euro-trash mercenaries had turned tail and fled. Nothing stood between the GLR lines and the Arcology’s automated defences now — but those defences were nasty. Old Empire robotics, mostly. Some of those things would shrug off hi-ex shells like water balloons.

The child-eating monsters up in the Arcology were quiet for now. Their Old Empire jets were wary of the foreign AA missile systems guarding the GLR staging grounds. But after more than twenty years of war, they could smell their end coming. They could hear it in the camp songs on the wind, see it with their long-range telescopes from the tip of their glittering spire, taste it in the brackish water reserves; the GLR had blown the main supply pipeline sucking Lake Michigan dry, two weeks back. The Arcology would get desperate soon; everyone was lucky they didn’t have any nukes left, not after the big raid three years ago. Soon they would throw their aircraft into the teeth of the guns, just for one last roll of the dice. And Vic did not want any stray rounds landing on an unsecured pallet of 155mm.

For a split-second Vicky was back inside the military machine of the Great Lakes Republic, held like a sharpened sword to the throat of her lifelong foe, poised on the eve of a battle she had worked toward for her whole life. The second battle of Chicago. The revolution had come full circle, come back to where it had started, come back to finish the job.

Then Vicky’s heartbeat made the rear of her skull throb with pain, and she remembered where she was.

Two hundred and fifty million years in the future, curled up inside the belly of an armoured vehicle the size of a barn, surrounded by nanomachine zombies.

The Chicago Arcology was long dead. So was the GLR, or whatever it had become.

And so was Vicky.

“Yuuup,” she grumbled to herself, the first time that happened. “You’re dead too, dumbass. Mmhmm.”

At least her bunk was comfortable enough — scratchy sheets and a lumpy old pillow were luxurious by her standards, infinitely preferable to the hard insides of the combat frame’s control room, or the freezing mud of a shallow foxhole — but she could not toss and turn.

The back of her skull was still a spider-web of half-healed fractures. Even the fanciest feather pillow or the most expensive memory foam could not have cradled her cracked cranium softly enough to avert the nausea, the disorientation, and the headache spikes, whenever she put pressure on the rear of her head.

Melyn had examined Vicky’s skull earlier, but the sweet little med-bot hadn’t been able to do much except wash off most of the dried blood. Vicky’s only choice was to let the raw blue nanomachines work their magic, fuelling her undead biology, sealing skin and knitting bone — and hopefully regrowing a few damaged neurons.

She knew she was lucky; in life a wound like this would have killed her, or left her with permanent brain damage. Recovery alone would have taken months or years. She would have needed surgeries to remove blood clots, then replace or reinforce the shattered bone with metal plates or pins. She’d be on anticonvulsants, barbiturates, and opiate painkillers, perhaps for the rest of her life. She might lose some memories, or her entire personality. She might never taste or see or hear again. She might have been a bed-bound vegetable. She’d seen other soldiers end up that way, people she’d been close to, people she’d fought beside. Waadey had been too close to the blast-wave of an air strike outside Charleston — he’d lived while a dozen others had died, but his brains had been shaken inside his skull; he’d been discharged on full pension, a drooling mess of quivering and shaking, shitting into his pants every couple of hours. Walter Keogh had been one of Vicky’s older comrades, from back in the early days just after the first battle of Chicago; he’d somehow survived a dart of shrapnel directly through his right eye, with the tip lodged in the front of his brain. He’d never been the same again, mean and cynical when he wasn’t distant and dazed.

But lucky Victoria was a zombie now. All she had to do was wait and rest. Resurrection would handle the mess.

Undead biology retained other indignities, among the silver linings — like insomnia.

Vicky had tried everything. She’d lain on her right side, facing into the darkness of the bunk room, watching the shadows between the tiers. Then she’d tried her left, staring at the old paint and cold metal of the wall. She’d snuggled down beneath the sheets, spread out on her front, head pointing one way, then the other. She’d tried curling up into a ball, chin tucked tight to her knees, but that just made her cough, which in turn made her skull ache.

She ended up splayed out wide, one arm dangling off the side of the bunk, trying not to think.

She hadn’t expected insomnia.

She’d assumed she would fall into easy unconsciousness the moment she lay down, lulled to sleep by the deep rumble of Pheiri’s engines down below the decks, soothed by the knowledge that she was finally tucked away somewhere safe. She felt like she could sleep on the bare floor, or on her feet, or under fire. She was exhausted in both body and mind — by post-combat adrenaline crash, yes, but also by the sheer amount of mind-boggling information she’d tried to absorb. She didn’t even know how to process half of what she’d seen — the golden diamond airship thing, the biological miracle of Arcadia’s Rampart, and even the lesser surprises like Iriko and Serin, or whatever was going on with Elpida’s head, or the Necromancers.

Perhaps that was the paradox. Too many things to think about, too many things she could not process, too exhausted to sleep.

After what felt like hours of fruitless inaction, Vicky gave up and got out of bed.

She was careful not to make any noise as she swung her legs over the side of the bunk and lowered herself to the floor. She didn’t want to wake the others; everyone needed rest for their own wounds and stress, they didn’t need to hear about her problems. When she stood up, waves of slow pain throbbed through the back of her skull. She had to squeeze her eyes shut and take deep breaths. She gripped the bunk for support.

The pain passed, leaving behind an echo of fractured bone.

Vicky glanced around the cramped confines of the bunk room and suddenly felt very silly. She asked herself what she was doing — how would she have dealt with this kind of insomnia in life?

The answer was not useful. She would have gotten up and tended to her duties. She would have spent the lonely hours of the night stripping down and oiling up an engine, or checking on the maintenance schedules on the tubes, or even just walking a perimeter to look for holes in a fence. She’d probably go pester the Colonel. Make some coffee. Grumble.

But here? Could she go bother Elpida? Probably; Elpi wouldn’t mind, though what could they grumble about together? They had almost nothing in common, despite both being soldiers.

Could she make herself useful? That was another matter entirely. Probably not, Vicky guessed.

On her feet and fully dressed; Vicky was still wearing her tomb-grey clothes, t-shirt and trousers and thick socks, swapped out for fresh ones after the journey through the muddy crater. But with nowhere to go.

Inside this armoured vehicle which was so far beyond Vicky’s technical skills, she had nothing to do.

“Not yet,” she whispered to herself. She reached out and tapped the side of the bunk — tapped Pheiri. “Wanna get to know you, thinking machine. You got user serviceable parts? Mm. Must do.”

Her new comrades were all asleep, deep in the grey haze of the bunk room. Kagami was curled up tight on her side, on the bunk below Vicky’s, almost completely concealed by the privacy curtains. Vicky smiled and shook her head. Who cared about privacy in this place? In these bodies? They’d started this afterlife naked and covered in slime.

Or should she care more? Should she feel skittish and furtive? Was that the right thing to do?

Maybe Kagami was more authentic than her.

Vicky was suddenly thankful for being fully dressed. She wished she had a mirror. She’d spent a while examining herself in the reflective surface of one of those space blankets from the tomb, but that wasn’t the same. She needed to stare into her own eyes again — her eyes, set in a face twenty years younger than the one in which she had died, with the sharp edges rounded off, the wrinkles smoothed out, the forehead uncreased.

She took a deep breath and gently chastised herself; it was very hard to maintain that this was not the time for personal matters. They were all safe inside Pheiri now, right?

Atyle was also sleeping soundly, flat on her back, hands crossed over her chest like an Egyptian Mummy from a silly cartoon. Vicky wondered if Atyle was in her original body as well. The pre-modern woman was by far the most taciturn of the group; perhaps she had secrets too. Vicky peered into the top bunks, then realised somebody was missing. She went up on tiptoes to confirm. Ilyusha was sleeping alone, clutching a pillow to her front, black-and-red bionic claws sticking out of the blankets.

Vicky checked the other bunks to see if Amina had moved in the night, but there was no sign of the girl.

Worry suddenly gnawed at Vicky’s guts. Amina was by far the most vulnerable and inexperienced of her new comrades.

Several items were missing from the equipment on the lower bunks, among the weapons, body armour, extra coats, Kagami’s auspex visor, and the coilgun; Elpida’s submachine gun was gone, along with her coat and several other clothes.

And the bunk room hatch was shut, flush with the door frame.

Vicky hadn’t heard Amina climb out of bed, nor close the door. She certainly hadn’t noticed Elpida entering the room and arming up.

Must have slept after all, she told herself. Weird.

She held her breath and concentrated, but she couldn’t hear anything except the low rumble of Pheiri’s engines, the muffled grinding of his tracks against the ground outside, and the slow, stately, steady throb of his nuclear reactor, far beneath her feet.

Nothing out of the ordinary. No clattering bones or spooky whispers. Vicky doubted that a Necromancer had ghosted into the room, stolen Elpida’s gear, kidnapped Amina, and then shut the door. If that was the case, Vicky couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Amina was probably just talking with Elpida. Perhaps Elpi was teaching Amina how to use a gun. That would be good. The kid deserved some confidence, poor thing, despite her fancy knife work.

Vicky looked over the equipment and supplies again. Perhaps she could make herself useful, after all. She could take all the regular guns out into the crew compartment and do an inventory of ammunition and spare parts, strip and clean all the firearms, make sure everyone was provisioned and prepared. Maybe if she tired herself out with work, she could sleep. Maybe if—

A groggy mumble came from behind Kagami’s privacy curtains: “Go back to fucking bed, Victoria.”

Kagami sounded like her throat was full of sand.

Vicky almost laughed. She had to put a hand over her mouth. She knelt so she didn’t have to crouch, then gently parted the privacy curtains over Kagami’s bunk.

Kagami was curled on her side, facing the wall, making a bulwark with her upper back. The thin blue blankets were falling away from her raised shoulder. Vicky couldn’t see Kagami’s face, but she could imagine the curled lip, the grumpy sneer, the narrowed and scornful eyes.

Vicky whispered: “Hey Moon Princess. How did you know it was me?”

Kagami didn’t answer. Vicky assumed she’d gone back to sleep. Seconds ticked by. Vicky swallowed, suddenly self-conscious. She was invading Kagami’s personal space, no matter how silly the privacy curtains seemed in these cramped quarters. A faint scent entered Vicky’s nose, drifting out of the shadows — soft cool sweat and warm skin. Was that Kagami’s bodily odour? Vicky started to withdraw.

Kagami muttered: “Distinctive tread.”

Vicky froze. Her heart fell. She tried to pull a smile, but it hurt. “Heavy footfalls, right?” she whispered. “Great clomping—”

“Mmm, no,” Kagami grumbled. “Tread like you’re sneaking. Not actually. Don’t know how to sneak. Do you?”

Vicky smiled for real. She reached down and pulled the sheets up over Kagami’s shoulder.

Kagami flinched and rolled onto her back. Her soft brown face squinted up at Vicky from within the warm grey shadows, framed by a halo of black hair, floating as if detached from the body beneath the covers.

“Fuck—” Kagami snorted to clear her throat. “Fuck are you doing?”

“Sorry,” Vicky whispered. “I was tucking you in. You were slipping out of your bedsheets.”

Kagami blinked slowly, twice. “Go back to sleep. You still have a head wound. Lie the fuck down.”

Vicky smiled and nodded. “Good night, Kaga.”

She moved to withdraw again — but Kagami suddenly lashed out with a hand from beneath the covers and grabbed one of Vicky’s wrists. Kagami scowled, groggy and heavy-eyed.

“Kaga,” Vicky said gently. “You’ve got a wound on that arm, haven’t you? Look, you shouldn’t strain—”

“That’s a liar’s face. A lying face,” Kagami grumbled, smacking her lips, still half asleep.

“Kaga? What are you talking about?”

Kagami took a deep breath, trying to rouse herself. She hissed: “You’re not going back to sleep at all. You just smiled and nodded because that’s what you think I want to hear. I got very skilled at sniffing out that sort of bullshit. My father’s attendants, doing lip-service to me while fulfilling his orders. Oh yeah, I’m real good at that, Victoria. Don’t you treat me the same. Don’t you dare.”

Vicky almost sighed. “Kaga—”

“You’re no butt monkey for taking orders,” Kagami slurred. Her eyes wavered shut again. “Your own woman. Far as I can tell. All you. Mm.”

Kagami fell silent, voice trailing off. She drew in a lazy half-snore. Her eyelids fluttered, then ceased to move.

Vicky gently peeled Kagami’s hand from around her wrist, then tucked her back beneath the covers, careful not to press against the dressings around Kagami’s upper arm.

Vicky paused for a moment, then whispered, barely more than a breath: “Not even sure I’m that.”

Kagami’s eyes flicked open. “Not sure you’re what?”

Vicky sighed and rolled her eyes. “Why are you so hair-trigger? I know you weren’t faking, you haven’t got it in you, but—”

“Answer the question,” Kagami croaked.

Vicky stared into Kagami’s dark eyes. Suddenly her heart was pounding, sending pulses of pain through the back of her skull. She felt sick. Her face was hot. Her stomach churned, with hunger and worse.

Kagami was objectively awful, Vicky was under no illusions about that. Grumpy, fussy, arrogant, and demanding; secretive, bitter, vengeful, and bigoted — at least against those she saw as ‘primitive’, which seemed to include basically everybody who wasn’t grown in a vat on the Moon. Her background was horrifying to Vicky’s most dearly-held values — a linchpin of imperial domination, the central command point of a remote-controlled military, installed on the actual Moon like an untouchable godlike being in the skies, subjecting the surface to unanswerable violence committed by brain-wiped cyborg slaves. If Vicky had understood Kagami’s position correctly, her duties and powers had also included a vast nuclear arsenal, pointed down, like a boot on the neck of the whole world.

Vicky had made it a joke, back in the combat frame. But now it didn’t seem like anything to laugh about.

So why did she trust Kagami?

“My own woman,” Vicky echoed in a whisper.

Kagami squinted hard. She snorted, then muttered: “You don’t have to take Elpida’s every whim like gospel if you don’t want to. Haven’t you figured that out yet? She’s a pushover if you say the right words. If you disagree with her, you better bloody well speak up, Victoria. Stop serving in silence, stop scraping and bowing and—”

Vicky sighed. “Kaga, that’s not what I meant. And you’re wrong about Elpi.”

“Oh?” Kagami snorted again. “Am I really?”

“She leads from the front. She risks herself. She’s for real. And she’s not a pushover, not about the things which matter.”

Kagami rolled her eyes.

Vicky hissed: “And she came for us! She pulled us out. She didn’t leave us behind. She could have, very easily! And then she … I don’t know, fought a giant flying god machine for us? Kaga, what the hell is your problem with her? Don’t you feel grateful? At all?”

Kagami turned sullen and sulky. “Rescuing people is easy. I should know. I did it plenty of times—”

“Stop deflecting. She’s doing a good job. She’s kept us alive.”

Kagami sighed. “So she has. Fine, alright, whatever. And I’m following her, yes, because she’s keeping us alive and feeding us brains and recruiting fascists.”

Vicky winced. “I don’t think she had a lot of choice about that. And anyway, Ooni seems … damaged.”

Kagami glared. “Yes, fash generally are — in the fucking head.”

Vicky hardened her expression. “You can talk, Kaga. Didn’t you spend your entire life sat on the moon with a clutch of nukes pointed at the surface? What do you call that, huh?”

Kagami’s face went cold. “Really?”

Vicky’s stomach lurched. “I mean—”

“You’re equating me with race-war obsessed primitives? The kind of people who run death camps and do genetic testing on foetuses? Really?”

“I— Kaga, I just—”

“I expected a pre-NorAm revolutionary brat to know better,” Kagami hissed between clenched teeth. “I suppose I shouldn’t, seeing as your future countrymen spaced me rather than cut a deal! Didn’t want some moon-cunt in their famous little orgies!”

“Kaga, wait—”

“I am not a fascist, Victoria! I am many things, all of which I am well aware of, thank you very much. And you know what? You were right first time — I should have been elected, Queen of Luna! Should have joined in the little game and had my father poisoned when I was twelve. Do I really need to walk a committed revolutionary soldier through the basic differences in political economy between feudalism and fucking heads-on-spikes fasc—”

“Okay!” Vicky hissed, hands raised. “Okay, fine, okay. You’re gonna wake the others up, geeze. Fine.”

Kagami glared, mouth set, eyes fully awake now. “I expect an apology, if our friendship is to continue.”

“ … we’re friends?”

Kagami snorted and turned her head to face the wall.

“Are you sulking? Kaga?”

“Apologise or go fuck yourself.”

“Alright, alright,” Vicky hissed. “You’re not a fascist. I’m sorry I said that.”

Kagami muttered, “And why did you say it?”

“I was … jumping at rhetorical shadows,” Vicky whispered. “Though you’re definitely an imperialist—”

“None of us are anything, anymore,” Kagami grunted. “We’re all zombies now. Who cares what you or I were? Why does it matter? Why do you give a single solitary dried-out turd what I was in life? I’m right here, aren’t I?”

Vicky made a placating gesture with both hands again, though Kagami was still glaring at the wall. “Fair point, okay.”

“Huh,” Kagami grunted. “So you believe the little rat can be rehabilitated, but I can’t? Is that it? I stand by your fucking side and neutralise a Necromancer and that doesn’t count for anything, but some shit-painted skull-measuring primitive comes in with a sob story about ‘just following orders’ and you’re ready to have her gnosh down on your fucking lap?”

“No, I—” Vicky lost her temper. “For fuck’s sake, Kaga, that is not what I meant. Stop it.”

“Uh huh.”

Vicky took hold of her patience; Kagami was being impossible. “I don’t believe that Elpida made the wrong decision by letting Ooni live. I think people like her can be reformed and rehabilitated. Maybe not all of them, okay. But, Ooni? You only have to look at her. That’s why I changed my mind. I think Elpi is right. And I’m sorry I called you a fascist. Whatever my opinion would have been of you in life, we’re … we’re not alive now. We’re all dead. All zombies here.”

Kagami snorted softly.

Vicky said: “Can we be friends again, Moon Princess?”

“If you stop calling me that.”

“No way,” Vicky said with a laugh in her whisper. “Make up your mind. You’re my little Moon … ”

Vicky trailed off, suddenly uncomfortable. Without the emotional blur of brain damage, this felt rude and weird and wrong somehow. Was it right for her to treat Kagami like this, with pet names and gentle teasing — with flirting? Or was it intrusive and unwanted? Was she a freak, acting like this?

Kagami finally twisted her head back around to look up at Vicky. She frowned with irritation. “What? What is it now?”

“N-nothing,” Vicky said. “Just that I agree with Elpi’s judgement, and I wish you would too.”

Kagami sighed, sharp and hard. “And here we are, talking about her again. Our Commander is unavoidable, hm?”

Vicky rolled her eyes. “You’re the one who brought her up, talking about how I’m a good little yappy dog for her or whatever.”

“Tch!” Kagami pushed her sheets down with her right hand, revealing her slender chest wrapped in a tomb-grey t-shirt, then levering herself up on her elbows. Her head almost brushed against the underside of the next bunk. “I’m trying to give you confidence, Victoria. You are your own woman, you don’t need to follow every last—”

“Kaga, that’s not what I—”

“—order and copy every last piece of her inner motivation just to be—”

“Kaga!” Vicky grabbed Kagami’s face, squeezing her cheeks. Kagami flinched and went silent, eyes wide. “Dammit, I’m trying to tell you something. Something I … I couldn’t tell Elpi.”

Vicky let go of Kagami’s face. She braced for a slap or a screech; she shouldn’t have handled Kagami like that.

But Kagami stopped scowling. She went still and focused. She whispered, barely moving her lips, “And what would that be?”

Vicky took a deep breath. Her heart was racing again, making her skull creak with pain. Her palms were sweaty. Her chest was tight.

“I’m not sure that I am my own woman,” she whispered.

“And what does that mean?”

“This body, it’s … it’s not mine.” Vicky gestured weakly at herself, hands shaking. “I-I mean I do look like me, it’s still my face, my hair, my build, mostly. And I have all my old scars, too. Got the big one on my upper left thigh where I got hit by a piece of shrapnel up in Appalachia. And the two dots on my shoulder from the incendiary in upper New York. That one burned like a bitch, but they’re only the size of my little fingernail, which is crazy. And I’ve still got the surgical marks from getting my appendix removed, and the one missing wisdom tooth, and—”

“Victoria,” Kagami hissed through her teeth.

Vicky swallowed. Her throat felt dry. “This body is twenty years younger than when I died. Maybe more, I can’t tell. I was forty one years old when I died, Kaga. I was a lifelong career soldier. I feel fake.”

Kagami’s face unfroze. She frowned and squinted at the same time. “We’re zombies.”

“Yes?”

“The undead,” Kagami went on. “Nanomachine abominations. Our minds have been mathematically rotated out of the quantum foam, or dredged up from hell, or something I can’t even figure out. We have been resurrected past the end of all recognisable human civilization, surrounded by blob monsters and borged up cannibals who want to fuck us dead and eat us at the same time. Giant worm machines. That bio-tech wet dream out there. This living tank, in which we are currently sleeping — or not sleeping, at this exact moment. I’ve modified my left hand and arm into a data input-output device by drinking blue nano-slop. You had your arm glued back on. Are you following me here, yes?”

“Uh, Kaga, where are you going with this?”

“Yes. Or. No.”

“Yes.” Vicky shrugged. “But I don’t see what that has to do—”

Kagami raised her right hand and snapped her fingers and thumb shut in a be-quiet gesture, face scrunching with irritation. “But the part you’re struggling with is a bit of de-aging? The graveworm saving you the trouble of old person knees and a weak bladder? Really? That’s the part which is keeping you awake?”

“Well—”

“You are a moron, Victoria.”

Vicky’s throat was bone dry. She almost couldn’t say the words. Kagami’s mockery did not help. “It’s not just that.”

“Then what!?” Kagami hissed, eyes bulging in her face. “Just say it! By all of Luna’s silver soil, my heart is going to explode!”

“W-what?”

“Just say it!”

“I-I— it— my … my body … it’s the wrong … or the right, I don’t know … ” Vicky screwed up her eyes. “Sex.”

Silence.

Vicky opened her eyes, heart racing, skin gone cold. Kagami was staring at her, expression unchanged but waiting, frozen halfway to horror.

“Kaga?”

Kagami whispered: “So you’re not a Necromancer?”

“What? No, I’m not a Necromancer. I’m trying to tell you I’m—”

“Not being a Necromancer is infinitely more important and relevant than whatever weird gender stuff you had going on in life, or whatever other pre-NorAm bullshit you’re so caught up on. Fucking hell, Victoria!” Kagami’s eyes blazed. Her face shook. “I thought you were doing the big reveal on me! I thought you were about to tell me that you’re been hiding in plain sight all this time, and invite me off to … to … Luna knows what! Recruit me into the next layer of this death-fuck game! Do not terrify me like that, you absolute dirt-sucking, womb-born, shit-mating—”

“Kaga, isn’t this important?!” Vicky boggled at Kagami’s response. “The— the graveworm, the resurrections, the fact that there’s no men here? Isn’t this important somehow?”

“I doubt it. You really think that much of yourself?” Kagami snorted. “You think one little gender swap matters to whatever is going on here?”

“I … well, no, but—”

“You were a trans woman in life, then? Is that really it? That’s what you’re freaking out about?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I … ” Vicky’s stomach clenched up hard; she had to let out a slow breath. “I was, yes, but I never went through with anything much. I always told myself I would, after the war. Told myself I’d get seen by a shrink. A proper one, back out east. The GLR was good about that.” Vicky shook her head, putting into words things she had previously been unable to express — and asking herself why on earth she was unburdening herself to Kagami, of all people. “And I could have. I’d served for twenty years formally, more than that in the Irregulars. I was an old hand. I could have retired on a full pension, gone to live on the coast in one of the big cities, far from the war. But I … I kept telling myself ‘after the war’. After the war. But the war went on and on. And I really believed in it. I still do, I still believe in the GLR, even here, even now we’re all dead, or zombies, or whatever. So I never did. Always after the war.”

Kagami waited, looking very uninterested and unimpressed. When Victoria finished, Kagami shrugged. “Well, good for you? I suppose? Stars above, you’re stupid.”

Vicky’s hands were shaking. She wasn’t sure what response she’d expected, but this was not it. “Kaga,” she hissed. “Kaga, I didn’t earn this or—”

Kagami’s right hand shot out and mirrored Vicky’s earlier gesture — she grabbed Vicky by the chin. She leaned forward on the bunk, so her eyes were inches away from Vicky’s.

“You think I earned these legs?” she hissed. “You’re a zombie! We’re all zombies!”

“Kaga—”

“I do not give a shit, Victoria! I don’t care what fucked up dirt-eater bathtub-biohack nonsense you had going on down there in the dark ages! On Luna, you would be exceedingly unremarkable.”

Vicky opened her mouth again, about to protest — what? Her own innocence? Innocence of what? That Kagami should be mad with her for some other reason?

But then Kagami jerked her head forward and mashed her lips against Victoria’s mouth.

Vicky did not have much to compare with — a few fumblings in her early twenties — but even she could tell that this was an exceptionally bad kiss. It was mostly just uncomfortable. She could feel Kaga’s teeth through her lips.

Kagami pulled away, still scowling, then wiped her mouth on the back of her modified hand.

“Now, do as your Moon Princess says,” Kagami whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

Kagami let go of Vicky’s face, flopped back onto her bed, and yanked the privacy curtains shut.

Vicky stood up and stumbled back, the rear of her skull pounding in time with her frantic pulse. She stared at Kagami’s shoulder through the narrow gap in the privacy curtains for a moment, then let out a slow breath and shook her head. She shot a guilty glance at the other occupants of the bunk room, but Atyle and Ilyusha were both still fast asleep.

She would have to disobey her Moon Princess. She needed some fresh air.

Vicky stepped away from the bunks and walked over to the door. Her hands were still shaking as she gripped the handle. She paused and made a fist, then flexed it open again. What was she panicking about? Kagami was the one who’d initiated—

She heard voices on the other side of the door. No more than murmurs.

Pheiri’s internal structure was so thick and sturdy that she couldn’t make out the actual words, even when she pressed her ear to the door and closed her eyes. But she could tell there was more than one speaker. One of the voices sounded like Elpida.

Vicky turned the handle and cracked the door open, desperate for somebody to take her mind off everything.

The voices ceased as soon as she broke the seal on the bunk room door. Dark red light flooded through the widening gap — night-cycle illumination, designed not to wake the uninterested sleepers. She slipped through the door and out into the crew compartment.

Five faces turned to meet her, among the blankets and benches and bulkheads.

Elpida stood by the entrance to Pheiri’s spinal corridor, wearing her armoured coat, submachine gun at her side, boots on her feet; her arms were crossed, chin raised in wordless command, white hair fanned out down her back, purple eyes alert and awake. Amina was sitting curled up on one of the long benches, the seat straps unsecured, half-swaddled in blankets from the floor. Hafina was awake, a huge mass of muscle and naked colour-shifting skin, sitting up in her makeshift floor bed; she looked bleary-eyed, barely awake, not really listening. Melyn was snuggled in Haf’s lap, tiny by comparison, her grey-white skin dyed dark in the red light.

Serin was standing by the infirmary door, halfway between Elpida and the rest.

Or was she sitting? Or reclining against the wall? Vicky couldn’t tell. The posture wasn’t quite human.

Serin was a scarecrow of black robes, topped by a grinning metal half-mask and a pair of burning red eyes. Stringy blonde hair was raked back from a mushroom-pale forehead. A faint scent of rotten wood and fungal growth lingered in the crew compartment.

Elpida nodded a greeting to Vicky, then mouthed: ‘Shut the door.’

Vicky closed the bunk room door, so as not to wake the others. She made sure it was flush with the frame once more.

“It’s shut,” she confirmed, speaking softly. “The others are all sleeping.”

Serin made a raspy noise behind her mask. “Hnnnh. Another voter.”

“Sorry, what’s this?” Vicky asked. “Are we having a meeting?”

Elpida said: “An informal discussion. You’re very welcome to join us, Vicky, but you won’t miss anything if you choose not to. Everyone else will be informed later. And … ” Elpida gave Serin a meaningful look. “Serin will answer any questions.”

“Hnnh,” Serin grunted.

Amina suddenly said: “She will! I think she will.”

Amina was sitting close enough to reach out and touch Serin, though her hands were hidden inside the blanket. Vicky gave her a smile. Amina smiled back, a little hesitant.

“Mm,” Serin grunted again.

Vicky felt relieved. This was safer ground than talking about the past with Kagami. “I couldn’t sleep. Need to do something, feel useful, all that kind of stuff. What are we discussing?”

Serin’s gaze caught her. She couldn’t see the smile beneath the mask, but she saw the crinkles at the corners of those glowing red eyes.

“Meat,” said Serin.

“Food,” Elpida elaborated. “Food, predation, nutrition. Our options for survival. There’s other topics to discuss too — Necromancers, allies, maybe more. We could be here all night, well into the morning. This is difficult stuff, Vicky.” Elpida reached over and put a hand on Vicky’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “You sure you want to join in? If you just want to stretch your legs and head back to bed, you’re perfectly entitled to do that instead.”

Vicky felt strength and certainty flow from Elpida’s touch. She filled her lungs and nodded.

“I’d like to be here for this, sure. Thank you, Commander.”

Elpida smiled. “You don’t have to call me that all the time, Vicky.”

“Well, sometimes I want to.” Vicky cleared her throat and nodded to Serin. “Sorry for interrupting. Please carry on. So, what about meat?”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

A moment of levity amid the metal and meat. Just a couple of zombie girls, whispering in the night. Kaga’s got a point, though, Vicky. Is this really important, right now?

Hoooooo, well. You wanna know how this worked out behind the scenes? These two were not meant to have this conversation yet! This entire sequence was meant to be 500-1000 words, just an intro before the meat of the chapter, talking to Serin about … well, meat. But then Vicky and Kaga just went right at each other, and I was powerless to stop them. I didn’t want to cut them short or interrupt them once they got going! As I’ve said before, often it feels like I’m not the one really charge of the story. The characters are. And I don’t think I’d win an argument with Kagami. Still, arc 10 continues as a nice little tone breather, sandwiched between darker stretches of the night.

No Patreon link this week, as this is the last chapter of the month! I never like the risk of double-charging any new patrons. So, if you were just about to subscribe, feel free to wait until the 1st. 

In the meantime I want to shout out something kinda weird and different. Some of you may be aware that Necroepilogos is heavily inspired by the manga Blame! (yeah, the exclamation mark is part of the title, it’s a mistranslation of the sound of a gunshot), among many other inspirations. A couple of weeks back a reader made me aware that there’s an indie pen and paper RPG also inspired by Blame! called DEATHGRIND!!MEGASTRUCTURE (yup, it’s in all caps, amazing, right?) I haven’t had a chance to play it myself, just to flick through the rules, but it’s just way too relevant not to mention, if you’re into some of the more extreme post-human themes in Necroepilogos so far. I don’t know the author or anything, but here’s a link to the itch.io page if you wanna see what I mean! Just thought I’d share!

As always, there’s still a TopWebFiction entry for Necroepilogos! 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 me!

And thank you all, dear readers, for enjoying my little story! I know I say this every week, but I really could not do this without all of you. Thank you for being here! Necroepilogos continues onward, toward the inevitable terrors of the next arc. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida stepped through Pheiri’s top hatch, onto the carbon bone-mesh of his exterior deck, out into the night.

Darkness stretched away in every direction — a tarry soup congealed in the streets and alleyways, clotting the torn arteries of the corpse-city. Elpida’s revenant night vision could barely penetrate into the lightless gaps between the buildings. The sky was a smothering blanket of absolute black, empty of stars, flat and featureless in the night’s quiet grip. The pitiful excuse for sunrise was still several hours away, the horizon unblemished by blood-red bruise. Noises carried far in the night air — muffled shouts, the crack of occasional weapons discharge, the scurry of claws on brick. The graveworm was a line of writhing motion towering over distant rooftops, easily mistaken for churning clouds. Arcadia’s Rampart strode closer to hand, climbing across the buildings ahead; the combat frame’s silhouette was lost against the blackened skies. Down in the streets, Iriko was completely invisible to Elpida’s eyes.

Far to the south-east — past Pheiri’s rear, back the way he’d travelled for the last twelve hours — a corner of the sky glowed with a faint aura of toxic golden light. The last remnant of central’s downed airship, entombed within the ossified guts of the dead city.

Pheiri ran dark. A handful of exterior lights broke the dirty white of his hull, casting a dim red glow at the skirts of his armour. Warning lights, to ward off the attention or curiosity of unwise predators. The deep crimson bloom extended only a few feet into the road. Pheiri’s tracks chewed through crumbly asphalt and churned up broken concrete. He was moving no faster than a walking pace, just enough to keep level with the distant graveworm.

Every minute put Elpida and her comrades further away from central’s physical asset.

Elpida wasn’t certain how to feel about that: on one hand, if the airship achieved self-repair, every inch of distance would buy Pheiri more time to evade or hide; on the other hand, every mile meant less chance of ever returning to extract intel from the wounded machine.

Howl hissed inside Elpida’s mind, How would we even do that, Elps? It took everything we had just to survive that fight. Focus on your shit! Deal with this zombie bitch first.

The top of Pheiri’s hull was a forest of shadows. Beyond the relatively flat area of the exterior deck, curls and horns and knots of nano-composite armour grew wild in frozen waves, supporting and cupping the turrets and sponsons and rack-mounts of his weapons, sprouting upward in crazed fractals of tumorous bone. Pheiri’s turret loomed behind Elpida, a great hill of shade in the night. The main gun was in the rest position, aimed forward, away from the rear area and the exterior deck.

Serin was nowhere to be seen.

Elpida murmured: “We may be too late. She may have already left.”

Amina said: “O-or maybe she’s hiding?”

Elpida looked over her shoulder, down into the shelter of the open hatch. Amina and Melyn were huddled together on the top steps, peering around the sides of Elpida’s boots. Amina was clutching her sheathed knife in one hand, her eyes barely rising above the level of Pheiri’s armour. Melyn was shivering a little, pressed into Amina’s side like a cat seeking body heat. Her massive black eyeballs reflected nothing from the night beyond the hatch; her white-grey skin was dull in the darkness.

Love how that little sprog thinks, Howl purred. She’s smart, you know that?

Elpida nodded. “Good point, Amina,” she whispered. “Serin might be sleeping somewhere nearby. You two stay here, I’ll go check. If anything happens, if anything approaches the hatch, or if you hear any unfamiliar sounds, shut the hatch right away and go wake the others. I’ll be fine by myself.”

Melyn clicked her tongue. “Not by yourself. Not by yourself.”

“Melyn?”

Melyn raised one tiny, delicate-fingered hand. She gestured across the hull. “Pheiri.”

“Ah,” Elpida said. “Of course. We’re never alone, not with Pheiri. Thank you for the reminder, Melyn. You two wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Elpida pulled up her armoured hood, wrapped her left hand around the grip of her submachine gun, and stepped away from the hatch.

She walked to the edge of the exterior deck, where the flat surface gave way to the gnarled and knotted bone armour. Outcrops of soot-stained white climbed level with Elpida’s chest, or spread wide in striated coils of curled bone, or formed pits and dry abscesses in Pheiri’s hide. Shadows pooled in hollows and gathered in the lee of encrusted stalagmites. Elpida stepped into that miniature forest of shadow and bone, then slowly worked her way clockwise, skirting the edge of the exterior deck. She peered around dark corners and into gaping holes, penetrating the shadows with her revenant night vision. She paused to look upward and examine Pheiri’s weapons as she passed beneath them, admiring the clean precision of his autocannons and missile pods, sleeping soundly as they were slowly re-armed from deep within his belly. She wove her way through jutting spears and humped masses of nano-composite bone. She brushed her fingertips over patches of pitted and gnawed material, already slowly re-filling with fresh white bone, where this thick and hoary armour had turned away titanic weaponry. Her breath misted in the air, forming little plumes; the night was cold, much colder than it felt to her undead flesh. No sunlight, no warmth, not even during the dim and dusken hours of ‘daylight’. No wonder the nights were freezing. She stayed close to the edge of the upper deck, never straying more than half a dozen paces deeper than necessary; she kept the open hatch in view as much as possible.

It would be so easy for a small and stealthy revenant to hide up there on Pheiri’s back.

Good thing he’s got great eyes, huh? Howl whispered. Little brother watches himself just as much as he watches the tree line.

Tree line?

Howl tutted. Green metaphor. You know what I mean.

This isn’t the green, Howl. Though perhaps it works the same way, sometimes.

Elpida agreed with the principle; the last thing she wanted was to run into something unknown, out here in the dark.

Three quarters into her circuit of the exterior deck, Elpida found something new — when she peered into a shallow abscess of bone armour, the shadows looked ragged and rough around the edges. She waited, but her night vision did not resolve the dark into the familiar surface of dirty white bone-mesh. She adjusted her position, inching to one side. A strip of mushroom-pale flesh floated out of the darkness.

Serin — curled up inside an abscess in Pheiri’s armour.

Serin’s closed eyelids were framed between layers of black rags and the naked metal of her mask. The face mask covered her mouth and nose and chin, still painted with jagged black teeth. The rest of her was one with the shadows. Elpida couldn’t see any hands, nor any hint of Serin’s long blonde hair, and no sign of a weapon.

Shit! Howl hissed. Would’a missed her for a turd in a cesspit in all this dark. Sneaky little cunt.

She’s out here, alone, Elpida replied. Hiding is only rational. I would do the same.

Tch. Or it’s a ruse. I don’t like this. Tread lightly, Elps.

Will do.

Elpida backed up a couple of paces, keeping Serin’s exposed eyes in view. She did not want to make Serin jump or flinch; this revenant was very well-armed beneath her robes. Elpida opened her mouth and—

A metallic rasp rose from within the shadowy pit: “I know you’re there, Commander.”

Serin pronounced the final word as ‘coh-mander’, emphasising the first syllable.

Inside Elpida’s head, Howl flinched.

Elpida said, “Hello, Serin. I thought I’d caught you napping.”

“Smarter eyes than yours do not see me. Unless I wish.” Serin stayed absolutely still as she spoke. “All your clomping about. Woke me up.”

“Stealth was never my specialisation,” Elpida replied. “Besides, I didn’t want to surprise you.”

“Mmm,” Serin grunted. “Could have put a round through your face from a dozen paces away. All that noise and talking. You would make a poor ambush predator.”

“Good thing I’m not trying to be one, then.”

“No? Were you not?”

Howl tutted, and said: Don’t get drawn into this shit, Elps! She’s playing with you. Just move on quick. Don’t get pinned down.

I know, Howl. Relax. Serin is cryptic and standoffish, but I know this game very well. I played it with enough of the cadre, back in the day, when we were all younger. What’s got you so wound up?

Howl just hissed, then fell silent.

Elpida opened with her strongest volley: “Serin, you wouldn’t have to worry about being ambushed in your sleep if you came down inside Pheiri, with the rest of us. There’s plenty of room. If you need privacy, there’s plenty of cubby holes and secret spaces inside, too. You can hide just as well, inside his armour.”

“Mmmm,” Serin purred. “‘Us’.”

Serin saturated that word with amused scorn.

“It’s an open invitation,” Elpida said. “That’s all. You fought alongside us, you helped me escape the Death’s Heads, and I think I understand that without your mediation, Iriko wouldn’t have been in position to assist Pheiri, either. You have a place inside Pheiri’s security, with the rest of us, if you want it.”

Red eyes opened down in the darkness. High-grade bionics, glowing with inner light. Serin stared up at Elpida.

“Perhaps I was trying to avoid you, coh-mander,” she said.

“Ah?” Elpida raised her eyebrows, miming surprise. “Why might that be? Still don’t trust me?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps I was avoiding this little chat.”

Elpida smiled knowingly, trying to include Serin in the rueful conclusion. “Spooked you with that, did I? ‘You and I need to talk’? It’s not a big deal. I just need intel.”

Serin shifted and coiled within her abscess, fabric rustling against armour, shadows curling down in the dark. Her distinctive scent floated upward, like rotten wood and meaty fungus. Her red bionic eyes turned away and back again. “I see your two little scuttlings. Over in the open hatch. Is this an ambush, coh-mander?”

Elpida sharpened her smile. “If I wanted to ambush you, I’d probably get Pheiri in on the plan. Lure you out into the open, and then have him turn you into red mist with a burst from an autocannon. In fact, if you believe I’m going to betray you, you’re stuck in that dark hole forever. What do you think, Serin?”

The pale skin around Serin’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “I think you can be goaded. Too easily.”

“Perhaps I can,” Elpida admitted. “But that’s not what I’m here for.”

“No.”

“I’ve come to find you because I want to talk to you, yes.”

“No,” Serin repeated.

“No?”

“You want me to talk,” Serin said. “To you. Not the other way around.”

Elpida nodded. That was a fair point. Inside her head, Howl tutted with derision.

Elpida said to Howl: Something to add?

Shhhh! Howl hissed.

Sorry? Howl?

I’m hiding! Shhhh! Don’t talk to me so much, not with her eyes on us.

Elpida almost laughed, but she controlled herself in front of Serin, for Howl’s sake. Howl, I don’t think her eyes are like Atyle. If she could see you, she would have said something by now.

No, she wouldn’t! She’s all secrets and bullshit! And shhh, stop talking to me! She might go spare on us if she thinks I really am a Necromancer hiding inside your head.

Serin’s burning red eyes bored into Elpida.

“Fair point,” Elpida said out loud. “I do want you to talk, Serin. I want your help and your advice, because I suspect you have more experience with survival out here than anyone else in our group. Except possibly Pheiri, but his terms of survival are a little different to ours. We, me and my comrades, whether that includes you or not, we have decisions to make, so I need intel.” She gestured toward the exterior deck and the open hatch. “The two over there, that’s Amina and Melyn. They’re here because they’re my crew, my cadre, my comrades, and it’s not up to me to make decisions or assess intelligence by myself. They’re here because they want to listen as well. Will you come talk to us, Serin?”

Serin’s eyes went dark, then red again — a blink. “Is this an interrogation, coh-mander?”

Fucking bitch, dammit, Howl hissed. Just fucking talk to us! Fuck, you—

Elpida used her broadside again, before Howl could lose her temper. She said to Serin: “Seriously, why don’t you come down inside Pheiri? I’m not going to be offended if you don’t trust us, I’d just like to know why.”

Serin said, “You cannot make me do anything, coh-mander.”

Fuck—

“Hmmm,” Elpida said, clicking her tongue against her teeth. “I seem to recall me and Ilyusha getting the better of you, back when we first met. In fact, I think I countered your sniping techniques, avoided your explosive drones, and then Ilyusha surprised you and knocked you down. If it wasn’t for that symbol on your arm, Illy would have taken your head off with her shotgun.”

Serin chuckled, low and raspy behind her metal mask. “Only because you confused me, not-a-Necromancer. Thought I had you scrambled. Guessed wrong.”

“A draw, then,” Elpida said. “But we’re not on opposing sides now, either by mistake or design. Is that right?”

Serin blinked again. Two red pools closed, then opened, down in the dark. She did not answer.

Elpida said: “Serin, will you help us, or not? If not, I want to get Amina and Melyn back below, just in case.”

Serin said nothing for a few seconds — then climbed out of the abscess and stood up, like a bundle of sticks pulled on a string.

Nine feet of ragged black robes towered over Elpida, topped by a narrow strip of mushroom-pale flesh around two glowing red eyes. Raw meat mushroom reek rolled off Serin’s body. Lumpy shapes adjusted beneath her robes.

“Lead on, coh-mander,” she said.

Elpida turned away and led Serin toward the flat area of the exterior deck. Serin followed in silence, without even a whisper of cloth against the carbon bone-mesh armour. Howl hissed and growled inside Elpida’s head the whole way, muttering dark insinuations about the risk of turning one’s back on Serin.

Elpida reached the hatch, then nodded down to Melyn and Amina; the smaller girls were both staring at Serin’s approach. The massive revenant swayed gently as she crossed the outer deck. She stopped six feet clear of the hatch, haloed from behind by the toxic golden glow in the south-east.

Amina shrank back. Melyn stared openly, shivering in the cold, her massive black eyes reflecting Serin’s glowing red bionics.

Serin said: “Boo.”

Amina smothered a squeak. Melyn didn’t react.

Elpida cleared her throat. She gestured at the hatch. “We could speak inside, Serin. There’s places to sit, or lie down. There would be inches of armour between us and the night. Once we’re done, if you’re not comfortable, you’re free to leave again.”

Serin’s eyes crinkled with crow’s feet at the corners — a smile hidden behind her black-toothed mask. “Too convenient.”

Melyn snapped: “What does that mean? What does that mean? Answer.”

Serin regarded the pixie-like artificial human with mild surprise, red eyes boring into grey flesh. “Oh?”

Elpida said: “Yes, what does that mean, Serin? Don’t leave my comrades in the dark, please.”

Serin did not stop smiling. She said, “You are too convenient, coh-mander. All of you. All of this. Your survival from fresh meat to power player. In less than one life. This tank.” She unfolded one spindly pale arm from inside her robes. Long fingers uncurled and gestured past Elpida, to point at Arcadia’s Rampart. “That mech. The golden mystery back there. And you come away, yet again. Too convenient.”

Elpida nodded slowly. “That’s a fair point, too. We seem to be breaking a lot of norms and expectations. You’ve already tested me, to make sure I’m not a Necromancer.”

“Mmmmmm,” Serin purred, rough and metallic behind her mask.

“Is that not enough?”

“Mmmmm.”

Elpida smiled. “Will you not be satisfied until you test the rest of my comrades?”

Serin made a harsh rasping sound behind her mask. A laugh.

Three spindly pale arms burst from inside Serin’s robes, faster than Elpida could react. She pointed a smooth, boxy, grey oblong down at the open hatch, at Amina and Melyn. A long finger worked a trigger mechanism in silence — once, twice, three times.

Melyn flinched. Amina yelped and put a hand over her mouth. Inside Elpida’s mind, Howl scrambled into a corner, hissing and spitting.

Elpida jerked her submachine gun out of her armoured coat and aimed it at Serin, resting the forward grip on her bandaged right hand.

Nothing happened.

Howl?! Elpida snapped. Howl, are you okay? Did that hurt you? Are you—

I’m fine! Howl spat. Deal with this bitch!

Serin was staring down at Amina and Melyn, ignoring Elpida’s submachine gun. Both of the girls were unhurt, though Amina was panting, flushed in the face. Serin grunted: “Hmm.”

Melyn snapped: “What is this? What is this? This? This gun?”

Elpida spoke quickly. “It’s her anti-Necromancer weapon. Hold steady, both of you. Just hold, you’re perfectly safe. The gun can’t hurt you. Amina, relax. She can’t hurt you.” Elpida took a deep breath, then played a trump card: “In fact, I don’t think the gun does anything at all. I think it’s either a placebo, a show-piece, or Serin is mistaken.”

Serin pulled the gravitic weapon back beneath the black waves of her robes. She was still smiling with her eyes, mouth hidden behind metal. “Then why point your gun at me, coh-mander?”

Elpida lowered her weapon as a gesture of good faith, but kept it ready, mostly to make a point. “Because you shot at my crew. My comrades. I don’t care why, and I don’t care that it doesn’t work. If you want to line everyone up and test them with your gun — sure. You can even cross-reference it with Pheiri’s Necromancer detection systems.” Serin’s eyebrows crinkled at that; Elpida left it unexplained, dangling as bait. “But we organise it first, you understand? Don’t surprise us with a gun. If you do that again with the others I can’t promise that nobody will shoot you.”

Serin chuckled, rough and raw. “The point is surprise. Necromancers play games with us. Hide in plain sight.”

Elpida said: “I know. We’re pieces in a game.”

Serin’s laugh cut off. She stared at Elpida, two red points burning against the night, beneath the distant golden halo.

Elpida went on. “It’s a logical conclusion to draw from what I’ve witnessed so far. You’re right, Serin, all this is too convenient. My working theory right now is that my own resurrection was the catalyst for some kind of plan or scheme, or perhaps just a very small cog in a larger machine. By who, or to what ends? I don’t know. We could be the unwitting pawns of a Necromancer, certainly. Or maybe we’re being puppeted and guided by something else.” Elpida considered how far to push this, then said: “I have reason to hope that my city — Telokopolis — has somehow survived into this afterlife, perhaps as some kind of echo or ghost, perhaps within the nanomachine ecosystem—”

Serin scoffed. Elpida pointed at Arcadia’s Rampart.

Serin ceased her laughter. “Hnnuh. Point to you, coh-mander.”

Elpida smiled. “Yeah. Hard to deny a combat frame, right? I do have other reasons to believe that Telokopolis may have survived, somehow, but … ”

Serin raised her eyebrows.

Elpida turned those reasons over in her head quickly, but found them too raw, too tender, and too tentative to relate to Serin. The city itself may be dead and gone; perhaps Howl’s experiences were nothing but a mirage in the underworld. But while Elpida lived on, Telokopolis stood, whatever unseen phantoms held true to her cause. Right now, Elpida and her comrades were Telokopolis, sheltered within the nano-composite bone armour of Pheiri’s hull.

Elpida continued: “But, even if that is the case, it’s likely that other powers are very interested in either destroying me or using me — or Pheiri, or Arcadia’s Rampart. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know the rules of this game. I can’t see the board, or the players. But I do know one thing.” Elpida raised her bandaged right hand and gestured past Serin, over her shoulder, to the south-east — to the faint toxic golden glow on the horizon.

Serin glanced over her shoulder, then back again. “Mm?”

“Whatever forces set us in motion or guide us now, if they are inimical to us, then I don’t think they expected us to wound that golden diamond. I don’t think they predicted a combat frame. Only one force could have called me to Arcadia’s Rampart, and that’s Telokopolis.”

“Your living city,” said Serin.

“Yes. And from what little I’ve seen so far, I don’t think there’s any other force which would want us free and loose upon the world. If we were meant to be yoked to some purpose not our own, we’ve broken those fetters by now.”

“Hrrrrnh,” Serin rasped. “Lofty words.”

“Perhaps. But I have practical goals. Serin, if we are loose and unconstrained, or if Telokopolis set us in motion, or if none of this is true and I’m just making it up as we go, then I still need intel. I need as much as I can get, to form a picture of this game board, or at least to survive well enough so we can make our own choices. And—”

Elps! Howl snapped. Don’t—

“I think you know more than you’re letting on,” Elpida said. She felt Howl wince. “Some of the things you said earlier don’t quite add up. If you don’t trust us, well.” Elpida waved her bandaged hand to indicate the bone armour on which they both stood. “We won’t be able to make informed decisions about what we should do. Follow the worm, or plunge into the wilderness? But we’ll do one of those things anyway. This is your chance to exert some control over that.” Elpida shrugged. “Or you can keep your silence, and leave us to our own decisions.”

Serin smiled behind her mask, eyes crinkling. “The price of a place is all my secrets?”

“No,” Elpida said.

Serin frowned — Elpida couldn’t see her forehead, but the skin between Serin’s eyes bunched up.

Elpida said: “You can stay and keep your secrets all you like. The price of staying here is nothing. Just don’t be a Death’s Head, I suppose, but I don’t think I have to worry about that with you.”

Serin rasped with laughter behind her mask, harsh and metallic. “Coh-mander. You make it seem too easy. What about—”

“I’ll trade you,” Elpida said, thinking fast. “Your advice and intel, in return for everything the Necromancer said to us. Everything she said while inside Arcadia’s Rampart. Everything she said to me, to Vicky, to Kagami, to Hafina. All of it. Everything she did. Everything we know about her.”

Serin stared at Elpida, eyes burning like twin fires against the dark backdrop of the night. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

Guess that can’t do any harm, Howl grunted. Got her hooked with that. Fuuuuck, this bitch got a one-track mind.

Serin said: “What do you wish to know, coh-mander?”

Elpida smiled. “I want three things from you. Plus.” She gestured down at Melyn and Amina, huddled in the shelter of the open hatch. Melyn was snuggled against Amina’s front now, soaking up warmth. “You answer any questions these two have, in simple enough terms that they can understand it.” Serin glanced at the smaller pair again. Elpida went on: “One, I need to know everything you do about food and predation. We’re on the cusp of running out of raw blue nanomachines. I know we’re going to have to feed, sooner or later, and I don’t have a solution except hunting for meat.”

“Mm,” Serin grunted. “Eat or die. Or live and change. There are no other choices.”

Elpida ignored that for now. She needed to reel Serin in. “Two, I want to know everything you know about Necromancers, because I need to smooth out the inconsistencies. You claimed that you targeted me because my phenotype and my neural lace matches a Necromancer you’d seen before. But that means either you saw a pilot, or a Necromancer imitating a pilot. I need to know why. I need to know what that Necromancer looked like. And I need to know why you hunt them.”

Serin rasped behind her mask. Not a laugh. Something darker. A refusal.

Elpida pushed on before that could turn into an argument. “And third, the symbol. The crescent and line tattooed on your arm. If anything, I think that is more important than the first two questions. If I have potential allies out there, against people like the Death’s Heads, then I need to know about them.”

“Ahhhhhhhhhh,” Serin purred. “Ahhh. Yes. The cause.”

Serin slowly extended another mushroom-pale arm from beneath her black robes. She presented the naked flesh to Elpida, at an angle so Melyn and Amina could also see. Serin’s tattoos glistened black in the night: nine crossed-out skulls indicating nine kills, with the crescent-and-line symbol at the head of the row.

“The cause?” Elpida echoed.

“Ask your Ilyusha,” Serin said.

Elpida sighed. “She can’t — or won’t — explain it, not really. I don’t think she’s capable of it. And I want to hear it from you, Serin. I want you to—”

Amina said: “Why only nine?”

Serin looked down into the hatch, eyes burning. Amina stared back up at her, throat bobbing with a gulp.

Elpida murmured: “Serin, please answer her.”

“Rephrase,” said Serin. “The question.”

Amina frowned in thought, then said: “If you hunt … the … D-death’s Heads, and you’ve been doing it for a long time, why only nine skulls? There were so many of them. Haven’t you killed more?”

Serin grinned behind her mask. “I only mark kills that matter. Not the followers. The foot soldiers. If I counted those, I would be coated in black. But these?” She extended another arm and caressed her tattoos with a hand of long and spindly fingers. “All of these were true fights. Death cultists true. Better off reduced. Better off for humankind that they stay dead.”

“Humankind,” Amina murmured, frowning harder.

Elpida realised Serin had not added to her kills since the first time she’d seen the tattoos. Elpida said: “Didn’t get Yola, then?”

Serin grunted. “The leader? No. Slippery. Lucky. She would not count as one of these. Anyway.”

Elpida opened her mouth to once again request an explanation from Serin — but Amina spoke up a second time.

“How do you do it?” Amina whispered. “How do you … ”

Serin tapped her tattoos. “With great care. And—”

“No!” Amina squeaked. Serin blinked, red eyes going out and black, then back again. “How do you stay so … so strong? And … and … ” Amina panted softly. “I want to be like you.”

Serin stared for a moment, then said: “I will not say it here. Not for the coh-mander. But if you and I are ever alone, maybe I will draw you a picture. Of how I used to look. And then you will know, how far you can go.”

Amina swallowed, loud in the dark. She sniffed, nodded, and glanced at Elpida.

Elpida said: “Well said, Amina. Serin, I would appreciate it if you would do that for her.”

“No promises, coh-mander,” said Serin.

Elpida nodded. “Fair enough. Now, the symbol, the crescent and line. Please, if you—”

Serin interrupted: “Better question. What do you believe? Coh-mander? Telokopolitan?”

“Telokopolan,” Elpida corrected gently.

Howl hissed: She’s fucking bluffing! She made that up on the spot to mess with us!

Maybe. Maybe not. I think she’s being genuine.

“Telokopolis,” Serin rasped behind her mask. She sounded unimpressed. “I have heard of living cities before. All before this. Before the endless corpse of this city.”

“You have?”

“Mm,” Serin grunted. “Zombies tell stories about their own times. Living cities, common enough. Cantor. Yorksend. Irentograd. Hoijing.” Serin shrugged. “Nothing special. Seen demagogues before too. Like you. Capable leaders come and go. But this.” She twitched her tattooed arm. “This is the only eternality. The immortal principle.”

“Telokopolis is forever,” Elpida said.

“Hmmm,” Serin purred. “Maybe. But what do you believe in, Telokopolan?”

Elpida took a deep breath and looked out into the dark and clotted night beyond Pheiri’s hull. Alley mouths rolled past, each one filled with the shades of the dead.

She decided to tell the truth.

Elpida said: “I have a Death’s Head down inside Pheiri. An ex Death’s Head, now. Ooni.”

“Mm,” Serin grunted. “Saw her. Worthless follower.”

“No,” Elpida murmured.

“No?”

Elpida looked at Serin again. The halo behind her seemed faded, dying in the dark. “Ooni is one of us now. Or she will be, given time and support and comradeship. She was something else, something wretched and exploited, turned toward evil ends. But now she’s in my hands, and that is not her purpose anymore. Now she’s within Telokopolis.”

Serin waited, eyes burning red.

Elpida went on: “If I could, I would go out there into the dark, and gather up every lost soul I can find. I would lead them all to Telokopolis. None would be rejected, none left behind, none sacrificed. Not even the Death’s Heads, if they could be contained, made to change, made to see otherwise. Not even the Necromancers—” Serin snorted behind her mask, but Elpida kept going “—if they could be communicated with.” She nodded at Serin’s tattoos. “I will fight as hard as you, when I have to. You’ve seen that up-close, Serin. But I will fight in the spirit of Telokopolis, be the city alive or dead or a memory or something else. None will be rejected, not unless they choose so themselves.”

Serin waited, to be sure Elpida was done. Then she gestured out at the night, down into the street. “What about her?”

“Her?” Elpida followed the gesture, but saw nothing. “You mean Iriko? I can’t see well in this darkness.”

“Iriko. Yes. What about her? A very hungry mouth to feed.”

Elpida laughed. “Didn’t you hear me, Serin? None would be rejected, not even her. None. That was what Telokopolis was for, no matter what the people inside made of it. The city, the only city, for everything and all. You included.”

On a hopeful whim, Elpida extended a hand toward Serin — her bandaged right, vulnerable beneath the dressings.

Serin raised her eyebrows.

Elpida said: “Come down inside Pheiri. Let’s you and I talk. If you don’t want to stay after that, then don’t. If you don’t want to come down inside, then we can talk right here. If you don’t want to talk, then you’re welcome to stay up here, in the cold, in the dark, as long as you like. You want to leave? You’re welcome back any time.”

Serin rasped a metal laugh. “You are too naive, coh-mander. I thought otherwise. Thought you had learned.”

“Learned what? To abandon Telokopolis?”

“The undead will eat you alive.”

“Too late,” Elpida said. “I’m already dead, in case you hadn’t noticed. We all are. You too, zombie. Now, are you coming inside, or not?”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Come on in from the cold, Serin. Isn’t it lonely out there? Maybe this grizzled old zombie has her reasons. Maybe trust is a treacherous coin, when the only food is each other.

This chapter kind of went in a couple of directions I didn’t expect! Or at least it revealed certain things I hadn’t thought would happen so soon. Amina and Serin making a little personal connection. Elpida being forced to better articulate where she’s going with her new ‘Telokopolan’ philosophy, and where it might lead, given time and fed with flesh and blood. Ahem. Anyway! I hope you’re enjoying this slightly more relaxed arc, dear readers; the girls really need this decompression time, before they face the horrors on the horizon. I think we’re just about hitting the midpoint of the arc, but I can’t tell for sure, there’s other POVs still waiting in the wings for a turn.

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, there is a tier for it on my patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 4.5k words.  Feel free to wait until there’s more story! I’m focused on trying to push this ahead for now, trying to make more time in my writing schedule to get an extra chapter or two out. I’ll keep trying! I promise!

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! Thank you!

And thank you! Thanks for being here and reading my little story! Thank you so much for all your support, and thanks for enjoying what I’m doing here. It means the world to me. Couldn’t do it without all of you! Onward we plunge, into the corpse-littered night of this festering city. Seeya next chapter!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Melyn climbed out of Pheiri’s innards, tired and sore and sated.

She wriggled up through the narrow aperture of the engine access hatch, emerging into the soft shadows and open space of Pheiri’s spinal corridor. Dead screens, threadbare seats, and scuffed bulkheads greeted her return.

She perched on the edge of the open hatch, dangling her naked legs and bare feet through the slit which led down into Pheiri’s guts. She gripped a rung of the ladder with her toes, stretching her aching calf muscles. She sucked on her fingertips, digging beneath each fingernail with the edge of a tooth, to clean away the final morsels of grey goo.

She sat in satisfied silence for a long and solitary moment. All the others — zombies and otherwise — were sleeping, as far as Melyn knew. All but Pheiri himself. She listened to the purring of his body, to the click and buzz and hum of his nervous system and bloodstream and muscles, and to the steady, deep, powerful beat of his nuclear heart.

The screen of Melyn’s mind told her this was good.

It also reminded her that this was not her function; she ignored that part, dismissed it with a flicker of thought, and locked it out so it could not repeat.

Melyn had spent most of the night down in Pheiri’s engine decks — six hours, nineteen minutes, and three seconds.

First she had stowed the grey goo for later use; the zombies had handled collection, up on Pheiri’s outer deck. Melyn and Hafina had scurried around inside Pheiri to provide the zombies with every possible container they could find, from hand-sized drinking vessels to ancient plastic buckets. Melyn had not dared venture up onto the outer deck herself — not with so many dangerous things nearby, and with how the sight of Arcadia’s Rampart affected the screen of her mind. Instead she had focused on what she could achieve within the safety of Pheiri’s hull.

The sheer amount of grey goo did not all fit into Pheiri’s ‘secret room’, deep down in his guts, where his original stash of grey goo was kept. Melyn had poured as much as she could into the big tank which was plugged directly into Pheiri’s internal machinery, until the fluid reached the brim. She and Haf had eaten great messy handfuls of the stuff; Haf had gorged herself into unconsciousness, but even that had barely reduced the available quantity. Melyn had resorted to cramming the extra containers into new nooks and crannies down inside Pheiri’s engine decks, in places she had never needed to use as storage before. The zombies couldn’t get down there, but they didn’t need to; the zombies couldn’t eat it, not like Melyn and Hafina.

This was all for Pheiri.

Arcadia’s Rampart and Thirteen had done Pheiri a generosity that Melyn could not comprehend. She wished she could think clearly about their godlike benefactors, but she could barely picture the vast machine in her mind without almost blacking out.

After securing and storing the priceless bounty, Melyn had begun the long and painstaking task of smearing the grey goo all over Pheiri’s viscera.

She had squeezed through narrow passages of throbbing red light to wipe greasy grey gunk on machines she only dimly recalled, following fragmentary instructions from the screen of her mind, slathering sticky sludge on copper wires and optical cables and blinking panels and pulsing plastic mucosa. She had revisited the steel ring of Pheiri’s nuclear heart, to add an extra layer of fresh goo to all the joints and seams and plates; thankfully the chamber was no longer flooded with the invisible power which had blinded her and scrambled her mind, so she took the opportunity to lie against the warm metal of Pheiri’s most secret engine, wrapping her arms around the machine that kept him alive and moving. She had whispered a thank you, and a love poem she could not recall composing, before she had moved on.

She had opened hatches marked with yellow warning symbols and wriggled into the periphery of Pheiri’s thumping, grinding, clacking manufactory systems, to dump bottles full of goop directly into the machinery, snatching back her fingers before she could lose a digit to the metal teeth. She had smeared the gloopy, chunky, glistening mess over what she thought was probably Pheiri’s water processing and nutrient-growth machines. She had teased open wet red sphincters deep in Pheiri’s nervous system, then reached through to massage grey goo directly onto the hot and quivering meat of his most delicate membranes.

She had sustained bruises and bumps, grazes and cuts, and even a couple of dislocated joints as she had contorted herself to squeeze through the narrow passages of Pheiri’s body; Melyn had smeared small quantities of grey goo on each wound, and fed herself by licking the warm slime off her own hands. That was more than enough to accelerate her own healing process. By the time she’d finished and climbed back up the ladder, her cuts were scabs and her bruises were dark purple blotches, rapidly turning yellow and green beneath her pale skin.

Melyn sat on the lip of Pheiri’s guts, completely exhausted.

Nobody else had helped her. Nobody else could. Nobody else was small enough and flexible enough for the job — not even the smallest of the zombies, Amina and Ilyusha. Melyn suspected those two might just be able to descend the ladder, past the bulge of Pheiri’s brain. But no deeper.

She wanted to crawl into bed next to Haf and not move for twelve hours. She wanted to eat her own body weight in nutrient blocks. She wanted to curl up in the storage racks with a familiar book and read it from cover to cover six times.

The screen of her mind reiterated praise, but Melyn did not need the reminder to feel satisfied.

Pheiri was on the mend; that mattered more than anything else.

Melyn was exhausted for more than physical reasons, but those reasons were impossible for her to articulate. The last few days of her life had changed everything. She had finally recovered from the mind-scrambling side-effects of fixing the fatal defect in Pheiri’s heart, but now she was overwhelmed. She was still numb from the fight against the golden diamond in the sky, from Elpida piloting Pheiri, from the activation of Pheiri’s main gun, not to even mention ‘Iriko’, or the additional zombies she had to deal with, or Arcadia’s Rampart, or— or— or—

Melyn clicked her tongue. Thinking clearly was very difficult.

The screen of her mind was obsessed with Arcadia’s Rampart and Thirteen, but not in a way that was of any use to Melyn. The smallest stray thought was enough to summon a cacophony of clashing information, inscrutable terminology, and incompatible instructions. The physical sight of Arcadia’s Rampart triggered an explosion of overlapping nonsense inside Melyn’s head: ‘priority warning XK class nanomechanical replication threat’, ‘disengage and retreat, report to superior officer immediately’, ‘Telokopolan artefact recovery all other orders rescinded’, ‘I am the way and the truth and the future of all your generations’, ‘cease contact initiate EM-shutdown firewall procedure return to charging cradle’. Her eyeballs had tried to block out the sight of Arcadia’s Rampart several times, blooming with patches of white rot before she had dismissed the interruption.

The metal smell and salty taste of the grey goo itself was even worse — the screen of her mind had locked up several times, paralysing her until she had taken control and wiped her thoughts clean. When she’d watched Thirteen vomit the stuff onto Pheiri’s hull, she had physically passed out for three seconds.

Melyn had ended up manually locking away every single response to Arcadia’s Rampart, but the screen of her mind summoned fresh nonsense every time she thought about or approached the machine, as if there was an endless well within herself. She couldn’t function with all that input.

And it didn’t help. It didn’t tell her what was going on, or how her world was changing, or what she should do.

Her home was full of zombies. She had witnessed a battle she could not comprehend, fought by beings which had no place in her model of the world. Her own mind was conspiring to paralyse and confuse her. And nobody — not even Haf — seemed to be even half as lost.

Melyn had never before felt so small.

But six hours down in Pheiri’s guts had made the world right again.

Pheiri was home. Pheiri was life, and love, and safety, even if he was a bit more crowded now. As long as Melyn cared for Pheiri, and Pheiri cared for her and Hafina, everything else beyond this hull did not matter.

Melyn smiled as she finished sucking grey goo from beneath her fingertips. She knew her purpose.

“Thank you, Pheiri,” she whispered.

From the shadows down the spinal corridor, something whispered back:

“—sure about that part, Howl? I’m not so certain we can go without—”

Melyn raised her head and peered down the spinal corridor, past the jumble of Pheiri’s ancient systems and overlapping parts. She spotted the hem of a dark coat and a hint of snowy white hair, vanishing around an internal corner.

Elpida (zombie) (‘Commander’ provisional).

Elpida hadn’t replied to Melyn, she’d been whispering to herself. She was heading away from Melyn, making her way toward the crew compartment.

Melyn wasn’t the only one still awake in the night.

Melyn stood up and closed the engine access hatch, careful not to pinch her fingers between the hatch and the hole. Her clothes were folded in a neat pile nearby; she had stripped almost naked to squeeze down inside Pheiri’s innards. She quickly pulled her socks back on, followed by her pajama bottoms and her large baggy jumper. She tied her hair back with a twist. Then she set off after Elpida.

Catching up to the ‘Commander’ took only a few moments. Melyn spotted Elpida’s distinctive white hair and tall physique just ahead, ducking beneath an overhang of dead screens; Elpida stepped out of the spinal corridor and into the crew compartment, straightening up and rolling her shoulders. She let out a quiet sigh and ran a hand through her hair.

Melyn hung back, watching.

Elpida glanced around the crew compartment, then went left — into the infirmary, beyond Melyn’s line of sight. Melyn waited, tucked behind a twist of ancient machinery inside the corridor. Elpida reappeared a few moments later, crossed the crew compartment, and vanished to the right, presumably into the bunk room.

Melyn slipped out of the corridor and into the crew compartment.

All was quiet and dim, with the main lights extinguished. Soft red shadows coated the walls and pooled on the floor, vibrating in time with Pheiri’s distant heartbeat and the nearly imperceptible motion of his tracks. Hafina was asleep in her usual spot, snuggled up beneath a nest of blankets on the floor, between the benches. Haf was very large and soft beneath the covers, blonde hair fanned wide in a big untidy wave. She was on her side, three arms flung outward.

That was Melyn’s spot, on those arms. Melyn’s Haf. Melyn’s place.

Melyn said a silent apology. Sleep and closeness would have to wait.

But why? Why did she feel the need to follow the ‘Commander’? Did she think Elpida was up to no good? Of course not, no. Elpida had proven that she loved Pheiri too, and Pheiri was her brother, and that was good enough for Melyn.

Melyn’s curiosity was unmoored from reason, from the screen of her mind. She followed it anyway. She needed something she could not articulate, even to herself.

She crept up to the open doorway of the bunk room and peered inside.

Elpida was standing in the narrow gap between the bunks, framed by scratchy blue sheets and cream-white metal, all drenched in deep shadows with the lights out. Elpida was so tall and so large that she barely fit into that space, especially while wearing her long coat. Elpida was simply too big. All the zombies were too big, crowding Pheiri’s limited internal capacity. Haf and Melyn still had the crew compartment to themselves for now, but what about the future? What about the two zombies currently sleeping in the cockpit — Pira and Ooni? Wouldn’t they need somewhere more permanent? What about the zombie up on the roof, Serin? What if the bunk room got too cramped? It was already half-full of equipment, armour, guns, and other assorted zombie detritus. Melyn could wriggle down into Pheiri’s guts for some improvised privacy, and there were many other nooks and crannies hidden inside Pheiri’s superstructure, but she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to sleep in a gunner’s compartment or venture into the terrifying darkness of the charging cradle.

She didn’t like the thought of these zombies being so big and getting in everywhere, even if they were under Pheiri’s protection. They needed to stop being so untidy.

Elpida was checking on the others. Melyn watched.

The two smallest zombies — Amina and Ilyusha — were sleeping together in one of the topmost bunks, cuddled up with Amina in front and Ilyusha behind. Elpida reached up and touched one of them, perhaps making sure they were both tucked in properly.

The other three zombies were all sleeping alone, in separate bunks. The dark-skinned zombie with the one green eye was on her back, serene and peaceful, with a little smile on her lips. That was ‘Atyle’. Her face and neck and hands were wrapped in bandages, compressing medical gauze and thick greenish salve into her burn wounds. Melyn had not relished applying those dressings. Atyle had stared at Melyn the entire time. Atyle was spooky.

The second dark-skinned zombie was sprawled on her belly, with one arm hanging off the side of her bunk. That was ‘Victoria’, or Vicky for short. Her dangling hand seemed to be reaching for the zombie on the bunk below her — ‘Kagami’. Kagami was the only zombie who had drawn the thin blue privacy curtains over her bunk. Kagami had also required considerable medical attention, lots of gauze, and a few stitches. She’d submitted with grim determination.

Melyn was doing her best to remember all the names. They were not easy.

Elpida stared at Atyle for a long time, standing motionless. Melyn bristled inside; was the ‘Commander’ judging her work on the dressings, evaluating her treatment of Atyle’s burn wounds? She had no right, no right to pass judgement! These zombies kept getting beaten up and cut open and burned. Melyn felt as if she could barely keep up.

Elpida moved over to Vicky and smiled down at her, shaking her head at the sight of Vicky’s dangling arm. Elpida twitched open Kagami’s privacy curtains, but Kagami was curled on her side, facing the wall, breathing softly.

Melyn recalled that Elpida had done this before; when Elpida had woken up from the surgery on her gut wound, her first priority had been to check on the others.

Melyn relaxed inside. The ‘Commander’ was only fulfilling her purpose, just like Melyn had done, down inside Pheiri.

Maybe Melyn should go sleep with Haf. She was very tired. There were no answers here.

But then Elpida stepped over to the equipment and weapons spread out across the lower bunks. She moved quickly and quietly, tugging on her trousers, stepping into her boots. She squatted down and did something to the controls of the very big gun, the one with the backpack and the magnetic rings.

Melyn watched.

The screen of Melyn’s mind suggested that she should make her presence known to her Commander. She made that suggestion go away.

After a little while, Elpida stood up again. She strapped her submachine gun beneath her coat, then mimed raising it with her left hand a few times. Her right hand and wrist were still wrapped in bandages — Melyn’s own work, some of the best she had done these last few hectic days. Elpida had asked Melyn to leave her fingers free, and Melyn had carried out the instruction. Was her best not good enough for Elpida’s dexterity?

Eventually Elpida turned around to leave the bunk room. Melyn slipped away from the door, hurried over to Hafina, and slid inside the nest of blankets. She did not snuggle into Haf’s arms, but stayed out of reach, peering over the edge of the covers.

Elpida emerged from the bunk room doorway. She paused to tuck her long white hair down the back of her coat, then pulled her hood up over her head. She turned to her left and mounted the narrow staircase which led to the top hatch. She vanished into the darkness.

Melyn waited.

Was Elpida going up to the outer deck? Why? It was the middle of the night! Pitch darkness and freezing cold waited up there. Anything might be watching from the edge of the ruins, beyond Pheiri’s hull. And Pheiri was tired, still recovering. His guns could protect Elpida, of course, but he needed to rest!

What was the Commander doing?

Melyn crept back out of bed and tiptoed over to the narrow metal staircase. She peered around the corner, up into the dark. She hadn’t heard the hatch open. Perhaps Elpida was making certain the hatch was closed and locked. But then why had Elpida taken her gun? Why—

A small pale face appeared around the edge of the bunk room door.

“Ah!”

Melyn flinched.

The face flinched as well, letting out a strangled squeak. Hands fluttered to cover a mouth.

Melyn stared. The zombie stared back, shocked to be discovered creeping around at night.

Amina, the littlest of the zombies.

Amina took her hands away from her mouth, panting softly, red in the face. She bobbed her head, eyes wide and dark.

“S-sorry!” Amina whispered. “Sorry. I-I saw Elpida. Going up there. Sorry, sorry. I’m very sorry.”

Amina was almost as small as Melyn, but much chunkier beneath her baggy grey clothes. She was brown and soft and mousey. Her left hand was wrapped in bandages and gauze, pressing creamy salve into burn wounds, the same as Atyle’s dressings. Melyn had applied those bandages too; Amina had bitten her own tongue and lips to stop from whimpering as Melyn had tended to her, screwing her eyes up tight and panting through her nose.

But Melyn understood that Amina was just as dangerous as any other zombie. Amina’s danger was concealed.

That’s why Amina didn’t straighten her right arm all the way. She pressed it awkwardly across her stomach, with her elbow bent.

Amina hesitated, then raised her bandaged left hand, and whispered: “Um … t-thank you. M-Melyn? Is that how your name is pronounced? For this, I mean, thank you, for this. For earlier. I didn’t get a chance to … say … ” She trailed off. Her throat bobbed. “Do you … do you speak?”

“Yes,” Melyn whispered back. “Yes. I speak.”

Amina dipped her head again. “S-sorry for interrupting you. Following Elpida, I mean.”

“You move very quietly. Very quietly. Made me jump.”

Amina winced as if terribly ashamed. She averted her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I … I … ” Amina sniffed, paused, then sniffed again, smelling the air. Her eyes travelled back up to Melyn. She sniffed the air a third time. “Is that smell … is that the … the sick?”

“The sick? Sick?”

“The grey stuff. The mud. You … you smell of it … ” Amina trailed off. Her eyes were huge and wide in the dark red shadows. She looked Melyn up and down, then eased back from her as if afraid. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Sorry. I’m just worried about Elpida. Do you think she’s doing something without telling the rest of us?”

Melyn considered this question. The screen of her mind offered suggestions about the Commander’s prerogative for independent action and the lack of responsibility for informing subordinates. Melyn cancelled that suggestion and tutted. Amina flinched. Melyn frowned at her.

Amina hissed: “S-sorry … just … your stare is very intense.”

“You’re correct,” Melyn whispered. “Correct. Correct.”

Amina blinked several times. “Ah?”

“Elpida shouldn’t be doing things without informing the rest of us. Informing the rest of us.” Melyn wasn’t certain about ‘the rest of us’, but the screen of her mind provided no better phrase. She wasn’t about to start calling the zombies Pheiri’s crew. “Pheiri doesn’t do things without informing us. It’s not right. Not right.”

Amina stared for a moment longer, then nodded. “Nobody has to be alone!” she hissed. “Ever again!”

Melyn wasn’t sure about that part, but she was glad Amina agreed with the basic principle. She stared up into the dark passageway which led to the hatch.

“Let’s go,” Melyn hissed. “Go. Go. Go get her back. Her back.”

Amina whispered: “W-what? Sorry? Us? Now?”

“Yes,” Melyn said. “Us. Now, now.”

Melyn mounted the steps. Her socks cushioned her tread on the bare metal. A few paces onward she stopped, turned around, and stared at Amina. The zombie hadn’t moved.

“Come on. On. On,” Melyn said. Her temper and patience were both fraying. Amina was a zombie. What did she have to be afraid of?

Amina glanced back over her shoulder, toward Haf’s huge lumpy form, asleep beneath her blankets on the floor of the crew compartment. “Don’t you want to wake … Haf— Hafina?”

Melyn shook her head. “Haf needs sleep. Haf did lots of fighting today. We didn’t. You didn’t.” She stuck out her hand. “Come on. Come on. On.”

Amina’s face went pale and waxy. She glanced into the open door of the bunk room.

Melyn hissed: “Why are you afraid?”

Amina cringed, screwing her eyes shut and shying away.

Melyn said, “I wasn’t insulting you. Insulting you. I don’t understand. Understand. We’re inside Pheiri. The hatch didn’t open. Why are you afraid?”

Amina blinked up at Melyn. The small zombie was framed at the foot of the stairs, drenched in red shadows. Her delicate forehead creased with a frown.

“How are you not afraid?” Amina whispered. “All of you? How are you not? Everything — everything! It’s terrifying! I … I can’t … ”

Amina lowered her eyes and stared at nothing, gaze darting back and forth over invisible memories. The screen of Melyn’s mind provided rapid diagnoses, warned of an oncoming panic attack, and suggested she render aid. She decided not to. She waited and listened.

Amina went on: “I felt stronger for a while. After certain … certain things. After I … did what I was supposed to. But then today all the fear came back again. And how could it not?” Her eyes jerked back up and caught Melyn, wide and wild. “I don’t understand anything, anything I saw today. Anything that happened. Did we fight a demon? Did we fight God? Was that God? Or an angel, or—” Amina stopped and shook her head, eyes full of suspended tears. “Illy tried to explain, but the words don’t make sense. The others keep trying to tell me it’s okay now. But I saw. I saw! What … what did I see? And what are we following now? Arcadia’s Rampart, what is that? What was that?” Amina’s eyes bulged from her face. She was panting now, rough and ragged. Any louder and she might wake the others. “I don’t even understand what you are. You ate that thing’s vomit. You. What are you?”

“I’m Melyn.”

Amina smothered a sob. She bit her bottom lip and crushed her right arm against her own belly. She panted through her teeth. “I don’t understand.”

The screen of Melyn’s mind flashed with a lot of words she didn’t care to read — ‘anxiety attack’, ‘psycho-reflexive breakdown’, ‘trauma response.’ She dismissed them all and walked back down the stairs.

Amina flinched away.

Melyn whispered: “Same.”

Amina blinked several times. “S-sorry?”

“Me too. Same. I don’t understand. I don’t understand most of what’s happening.”

Amina’s tears stopped. She stared with huge dark eyes. “You … but you’re … you’re one of … you ate the … ”

“The only thing I understand is Pheiri,” Melyn whispered. “And maybe Haf. I don’t even understand myself. Understand myself. But I’m not afraid, because I know my purpose.”

Amina swallowed, sniffed down her tears, and gently wiped her own eyes on the back of her bandaged hand.

Melyn added: “But I should really be afraid of you.”

Amina stared. “S-sorry?”

“You’re a zombie. A zombie. You can’t be killed easily. You might eat me, or Haf, or something. Something. You’re stronger than you look. I know you have a knife up your right sleeve. That’s why I can’t see your hand, why you keep it in your sleeve. In your sleeve.”

Amina froze.

Melyn sighed. “It’s not a bad thing. You can take it out if you want. If you want. Holding it makes you stronger.”

Amina boggled at her, wide eyed with amazement, tears drying on her cheeks. “How do you know?” she whispered.

Melyn shook her head. It was too much effort to explain how the screen of her mind had informed her that Amina was carrying a blade, held at an awkward angle up her right sleeve; that’s why her right arm was pressed to her belly, to stop the knife from slipping downward.

Amina straightened her arm and fumbled the knife into her right hand, cradling and sheltering it as if Melyn was going to spring at her and take it away. The knife was nothing special — a black combat knife in a plain sheath. Amina stared, blinking, confused.

Melyn said: “Take it out, if you want. If you want. If it makes you feel better.”

Amina’s jaw hung open. Her voice quivered. “Are you sure?”

Melyn shrugged. “Will you use it to stab me?”

“No!” Amina hissed. “No, no! Not you, not— not you or even the angel, not anymore. I’m … I’m more useful now. I’m not … not for that. So, no.”

Melyn shrugged again. “Follow me or don’t. Up to you.”

Melyn turned and mounted the short, cramped flight of metal steps. A moment later, soft feet scurried up behind her. A bandaged hand bumped against her own. Amina wriggled up alongside Melyn, with her sheathed blade held in her other fist.

Amina smiled, tight and nervous. Melyn nodded back. The knife did not frighten her.

The diagonal passageway up to the top hatch turned only once, to the right, at a ninety-degree angle; Melyn knew this was to prevent the unlikely event of an aerial attack breaching the hatch while it was open, and penetrating straight into the crew compartment. Any attack would be fouled by the single turn. The area at the top, just below the hatch, was very small and very cramped. Melyn and Amina turned the corner together.

Elpida was sitting at the top, beneath the hatch.

Her long armoured coat was spread under her backside. Her submachine gun lay across her knees. She had her chin in one hand and her hood pulled down around her neck. She seemed much too large for the limited space. Bright purple eyes burned in the darkness. She looked at Melyn and Amina with a distinct lack of surprise.

“Hello, you two. Melyn, Amina,” Elpida murmured softly. “Didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“N-no!” Amina squeaked. “No, no, not at all, not at all, not at all … ”

Melyn stopped two steps short of Elpida’s boots. She had to look upward to meet Elpida’s eyes. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

Elpida took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said: “I was heading up to the deck, to talk with Serin. Or, more accurately, I’m hoping Serin is still there, hoping that she hasn’t moved on. But then I realised I needed to consider my strategy, so I sat down to think. I also happened to hear two girls whispering at the bottom of the stairs, so I thought I might wait to see if they were going to join me.”

Amina turned bright red in the face. She opened and closed her mouth several times.

Elpida smiled. “I’m not teasing you, Amina,” she said. “And it’s okay. Everything is going to be—”

“Liar,” said Melyn.

Elpida looked at Melyn. “I’m sorry?”

“Liar liar. You’re lying, Elpida. You’re lying to us.”

Amina blinked several times. “She— she is? I don’t—”

“Lying,” Melyn repeated.

Elpida frowned gently. “What am I lying about, Melyn?”

Melyn sighed. Where could she even begin? Elpida was not sitting down to think — she was sitting down because she was exhausted. The screen of Melyn’s mind provided a rough catalogue of wounds: Elpida’s right hand was still bandaged tight, the deep cut not yet healed; the remains of her gut wound still formed a dangerous breach across her stomach, closed with stitches and wrapped in gauze, far from ready to stand unaided; deeper still, Elpida’s heartbeat whispered of lingering tissue damage from terrible trauma, from shredded muscle re-knitted with the dark miracle of undead biology. And those were only the wounds Melyn knew about. The ‘Commander’ (provisional) sported countless bruises and scrapes, grazes and cuts, not to even mention the sleepless exhaustion hanging like lead weights on every muscle of her body.

Melyn understood that Elpida — like any zombie — had imbibed vast quantities of raw nanomachines to heal her wounds. But even undeath had limits.

“Lying by omission,” Melyn said eventually. “You need rest.”

Elpida sighed and chuckled at the same time. But she nodded. “You’re right, Melyn. We all need rest. But all I’m going to do is have a little chat with Serin.”

“Then why are you carrying your gun?” Melyn asked. “Pheiri will protect you.”

Elpida tapped the submachine gun across her knees. “Security. In case I need it. I don’t expect to. Serin is on our side, after all.”

Melyn frowned. She didn’t like Serin.

All the other zombies had come down inside Pheiri, happy to be included, protected, sheltered within his hull. They’d all spoken to Melyn, even if only a few words — Kagami had mostly complained and screamed, but at least that was communication. Victoria had made sure to pronounce Melyn’s name properly. Even Ooni had bobbed her head and muttered a bit.

But Serin wasn’t like the other zombies, Elpida’s zombies, the ones who called Elpida Commander. Melyn hadn’t even gotten a good look at Serin yet. She had smelled Serin through the open hatch when the others had been collecting the grey goo — mushrooms and rotten wood, earthy and loamy. None of the other zombies smelled like that.

Melyn decided that Elpida was right to go armed. And this meant she wasn’t right to go at all. She should stay inside Pheiri.

When Melyn didn’t speak, Elpida said: “Melyn, have you finished Pheiri’s maintenance? Finished with the grey goo?”

Melyn shrugged. “For now.”

“Thank you,” Elpida said. “I know it’s a lot of work. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to do any maintenance at all. Nobody else is small enough to go down inside Pheiri. I know he needs more, much more than we can achieve with the resources we have. We need to stop somewhere secure, somehow, to give him time, open up his insides, and … ” She trailed off, sighed, and smiled. “If there’s anything we can do for Pheiri, anything at all to provide better maintenance, I want you to let me know, Melyn. Please.”

Melyn nodded. She didn’t trust herself to answer. If she said anything she might stop being angry.

Elpida went on: “That goes for you as well. You’re our medic now, Melyn. You’ve treated almost all of us, with expertise the rest of us do not possess. Thank you. If there’s anything I can do to make your life easier, please let me know.”

Melyn nodded again.

“One more thing,” Elpida said. “I have a favour to ask you, Melyn. I know Pheiri has a lot more internal space than we’ve explored — me and the other revenants, I mean, not you and Hafina. You’ve known him for so much longer. I know he’s got gun compartments and little storage areas all along that main corridor, and there’s a bigger compartment on his left side that I can’t access. If and when you feel ready, would you please show me as much of Pheiri’s internals as you can? I need to understand how we’re going to manage space, privacy, storage, and such, if we’re going to be living inside Pheiri for the foreseeable future. I want to maximize our available space, without disrupting Pheiri’s current operations, while minimizing our impact on the spaces we’re already using.”

Melyn tutted softly. Elpida raised her eyebrows.

“Yes,” Melyn huffed. “Yes, Elpida. Yes. Fine. Thank you. You.”

“Thank you,” Elpida said. She smiled again. “Now, you’re probably right. I should probably be sleeping, or at least resting. But I can’t sleep, and I need to confront Serin about some difficult questions, and I don’t know when she might decide to up and leave. But I also shouldn’t do this alone — not because I think I might need physical backup, but because I cannot make decisions for the whole group by myself. We’re a collective now. A … ” Elpida paused. Her lips twisted with amused satisfaction, like something else was speaking through her. “A cadre!” she growled. “Yeah. Good shit, eh? Haha.” She sniffed and blinked. “A cadre”, she repeated, normal again. “Which means any long term decisions belong to all of us. That includes both of you, Amina, Melyn, no matter how unqualified you feel. So.” She thumbed at the hatch just above her head. “Do you two want to come with me, to question Serin?”

Melyn and Amina shared a look. Amina was wide-eyed with surprise. Melyn considered going to wake Hafina.

“This isn’t an order,” Elpida added. “You are under no obligation to accompany me. You are welcome to leave, or stay and listen from the shelter of the hatch. You probably won’t understand what Serin and I are going to talk about, but that’s okay. You don’t have to understand the words to judge her character, her intent, or where her allegiance may lie. If you want, I can do my best to explain to you as we talk.”

“Or—” Amina squeaked, then recoiled under Elpida’s attention. Elpida waited. Amina chewed her bottom lip, then carried on: “Or make Serin explain to us. Make her do it.”

Elpida smiled with surprise. “That’s a very good idea, Amina. Very clever. Very sneaky. I like it. Thank you.”

Amina beamed with pride, taking a sudden deep breath.

“Melyn,” Elpida said. “Do you understand why I like Amina’s suggestion?”

Melyn nodded. “Intrigue. Subterfuge. Not my preference. Preference. But I can watch. Not stepping beyond the hatch. Not beyond the hatch.”

Elpida nodded, suddenly very serious. “You two can be my audience. Use your own judgement on what to say and when to speak up, just be honest. You have complete permission — no, complete encouragement — to press Serin for explanations on any point. I’ll back both of you up, no matter what you ask. But if you don’t smell a rat, you don’t have to interject, there’s no pressure. If you get uncomfortable, just walk down the steps and leave. I won’t think less of either of you if you need to do that. How does that sound?”

Melyn had no idea what ‘smell a rat’ meant, but the screen of her mind provided the context. She nodded. Amina nodded too, shaking a little with over-excitement. Her sheathed knife creaked in her fist.

“Good,” Elpida said. “Let’s get this started.”

She rose into an awkward crouch in the cramped stairway, turned around, and grasped the release handle for the top hatch.

“You two ready?” she asked.

“Ready!” Amina squeaked.

“Ready,” Melyn said, then added: “Commander Elpida.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

What goes bump in the night, down inside Pheiri’s guts? Melyn, wriggling through blood-red passages, healing her home and friend with handfuls of nutritionally super-dense slime, apparently.

This one was a bit of a surprise, even to me! It was meant to be a lot shorter, and I didn’t expect Amina’s emotional state to be quite so … fragile. But this was inevitable, I suppose! Elpida’s crew and Pheiri’s “maids” need to get talking and get to know each other, especially if they’re going to be deciding on a future goal together, if nothing gets in the way first. Elpida needs to keep these girls together, but she can’t do it alone. Good job, Melyn. And now we step out, into the dark and the cold, to address the one girl who won’t come down in to the warm.

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Previous Chapter Next Chapter

You want the whole story, Elps?

Yes ma’am, yes Commander. Sure thing, sister. Not like I don’t owe it to you, anyway. Guess I may as well start at the beginning — or at my end! Ha!

Get it? No? Come on, Elps. Don’t make me draw you a diagram.

Fine.

I went out the same way you did. One bullet to the back of the head. Blam.

Actually, nah, that’s kind of a lie. It was more like four to the body, then one to the head. That’s right, yeah, it took five bullets to put me down. I always was a stubborn little bitch, wasn’t I?

The Covenanters did me, Asp, and Fii all together. That’s not how you remember it, I know. They led us away from that spire room one by one, hours apart from each other. But they didn’t kill us right away, at least not me. They stuck me in a room alone for like, what, twelve hours? Then Asp turned up on the next day, then Fii on the following night. Fii was blindfolded, don’t know why they did that. We thought maybe they were trying to fake us out, or let us stew before — what, interrogating us? What intel could we possibly have? We came to the obvious conclusion, eventually.

You wanna know my theory? Well, fuck, you’re gonna hear it anyway. I think the Covenanters had internal strife. Disagreements about what to do with us, all of us, the pilots, the cadre. Or maybe they were negotiating with whatever was left of the Civitas. Maybe they were gonna spare us, use us as bargaining chips. I dunno. Not like it mattered for shit in the end.

Next morning after Fii joined us — I think it was the morning, anyway — three Covenanter fucks walked into that room to execute us. Guns in hand. Greensuit hoods on. You know, too chicken-shit to show their faces. Same thing they did to you. Same thing they did to everybody else.

But they’d left me, Asp, and Fii alone together, in a room, for hours, pretty certain we were about to get domed.

Asp got loose and bit one of the Covenanters to death. Went straight through his jugular. Fii distracted the others. I almost strangled a second, was bouncing his head off the floor so it went crack crack crack!

But hey, they had guns and we didn’t. Still, one dead bastard and one brain injury is better than three-nil, right?

We went down fighting. I think we all did. You too. Knew you’d be proud of us, Elps.

Don’t … don’t fucking cry. Fuck! I’ll cry too! Just, stop. Don’t get me stuck on this, this is just the start.

…

Anyway. That was the last thing I knew, just like you did. I died, just like you did. Then I woke up again, just like you did.

Yuuuup, in a metal box full of blue slime.

Resurrected.

I had a body, a real body, my body. I could feel it and touch it and everything. Didn’t know the blue gunk was nanomachines, didn’t know where I was, didn’t know what was happening. Thought some of the same shit you did, that the Covenanters had buried me somehow, or stuffed me in a med-pod, but that didn’t make sense.

Nah, I don’t think it was a ‘resurrection coffin’, not like how you and the girl squad and all the other zombies woke up. I was upright, floating, naked. No windows or buttons, nothing like that. Couldn’t hear anything from outside the box. And there was no lid, no way out, just a metal tin full of Howl soup.

Yeah, of course I fucking panicked! But then I figured out I didn’t need to breathe. Thought maybe that was the afterlife or something. Trapped in a metal box, alone forever, drowned in glowing gunk. That stuff was inside my lungs, packed into my sinuses, up my fucking arse hole and cunt and all. Didn’t figure out that I was literally made of it, not until much later. Makes more sense now.

Floated there for seven hours, thirty eight minutes, and three seconds, give or take a bit before I got my bearings and started keeping count.

Then I died, again. Faded out. Dissolved.

Nah, it didn’t hurt. Felt my skin start to melt, but it was like somebody was lulling me to sleep. Getting recycled. Much better than being shot four times, ha!

Here’s where shit gets real weird. Bear with me, okay?

And … and you have to promise to believe me. Promise me, Elpida.

Okay. Yeah, shit, you don’t have to get all sappy. Just promise me.

Cool. We’re cool. Alright. Hold on.

…

After I melted, I woke up in hell.

Like an actual afterlife, you know? But I can’t describe the place. One moment it was one thing, then the next it was another. My memories don’t make sense, like I wasn’t wired for it right, or the place was giving me the wrong inputs.

Yeah! Yeah, I know, it sounds like crap. I know, okay?

Nah, I haven’t grown religion all of a sudden, Elps. It wasn’t literally hell, or heaven, or anything else. It was a software spirit-realm. The world with the graphical user interface stripped away. A nanomachine noosphere.

But fuck me, it didn’t feel that way at the time.

Sometimes it was a big black void, all cold and dark, and I couldn’t see shit no matter how wide I opened my eyes. But there were things moving around in that dark, things much bigger than me — titans, and I was an ant. And I had to avoid them or they would notice me and … and then I would stop being myself. I’d lose myself, if I got spotted.

Other times it was endless mist and cloud, so dense I couldn’t see my hand at the end of my arm. The floor was frozen marble, my feet were black and bleeding with frostbite. And those titans were still out there, churning the mist with even the smallest of their movements. Sometimes it was a jungle of rusted metal, or a pulsing mat of endless meat, or a dozen other things I don’t wanna think about. Occasionally it was even the green — yeah, weird, right? Like I was down on the forest floor, naked and unarmed, all my flesh getting itchy and raw from pathogen exposure, and I had to keep ducking behind the tree trunks to avoid those … those—

Nah, no Silico, not even when it was like the green.

Giants. Titans. Gods? I dunno, fuck gods.

They felt like gods.

All I knew for sure is that I was not supposed to be there. Somebody or something had smuggled me in. If I was challenged, then I wouldn’t have the right credentials, the right authorizations. I wasn’t even the right shape! All those giant gods in the dark — if they noticed me, I was fucked. I’d be removed, or I’d stop being myself. I’d stop being free.

Nah, I have no shit fuck idea how I knew any of that. Still don’t. I just knew it, okay?

Okay.

Anyway.

There was a trail. Sometimes it was a scent, sometimes it was a damp string on the ground, or a path through the undergrowth, or a blinking light across a marsh, or a dozen other things. But mostly it was a scent. That’s how it made sense to me. You know why?

‘Cos it smelled like one of us. Your smell, my smell. One of the cadre. One of us.

Following the smell wasn’t easy. Time — time wasn’t relevant there. Fuck, I don’t know if this all took a split-second on some processor somewhere or if I crawled along for a thousand years. But I crawled and crawled and crawled. I got bloody hands and sliced up knees and grit in my wounds and shit all over my face, but I followed the scent. I followed it all the way.

To her.

No, not one of us.

She was …

Look, shit, I can’t describe her any better than I can describe this stupid afterlife, this noosphere nanomachine bullshit. If I try to picture her in my mind right now it’s all just shadow and static. Sometimes she looked like one of us, pilot phenotype — brown skin, purple eyes, white hair, all that, just much, much older than any of us ever got, like she got to grow all the way up. But I knew she wasn’t one of us, not really! But somehow she had the right to wear that face, the right to be one of us. Other times she was white and red and bleeding all over. Sometimes she was just bone. Or white metal. Or mist.

But she was warm.

She was … a-always warm.

She was the one who’d smuggled me into that place. She’d laid the trail for me to follow. And then, when I found her, she … she …

She held me.

…

Yeah, no shit this is hard, Elps. Gimme a sec. Fuck! Yeah, I’m crying!

Nah, it’s just …

I was warm there. I was safe. I was loved.

Yeah, I know. Love you too. That’s what I mean. You get it? It was like being back with the cadre.

No. No, that’s not right, scratch that.

It was like having a mother.

A real one. I know, we had Old Lady Nunnus, she gave a shit about all of us, she really did. But did she ever hug any of us? Tell us a bedtime story? Kiss our boo-boos and make them better? Nah, we had to do that for each other. We had to do everything for each other, we learned from nothing. But this … this god, whatever she was, she was a mother. To me, to you, to all of us. Fuck. Fuck, Elps, I can’t—

Okay. Okay. Gimme … gimme a sec. You go handle your zombies for a bit. Get that grey goop stowed, whatever.

…

Yeah, hey. I’m good, I’m good to go.

So, the god.

I stayed with her for a long time. She hid me in her skirts, where it was safe from the other things in that software space.

How long? No idea! Like I said, time didn’t mean anything there. That’s what it’s like to be dead, I guess. But it felt like years. Hundreds of years? I dunno. I didn’t learn or grow or change, I was just kept safe. She had a couple of others there alongside me, but they weren’t cadre, weren’t pilots, not one of us. We didn’t talk or anything. There was nothing to talk about. We were just snuggled up shoulder-to-shoulder. Safe and sound. Waiting. Sleeping? I dunno.

Names? Nah, I don’t remember. We didn’t have names there. If I met either of them again now, though, I think I’d know them. I think we’d know each other.

But all good things end, right? Eventually the god said she needed me to do something for her, and it had to be then, right then, because the other gods had gotten wind of what she was hiding. She apologised, but she said it was the only way to stop me from being found. She kissed me on the forehead and — pow!

Here I was.

Nah, not inside your fucking head, Elps! I wish it had been that quick! Nah, I mean here, out here, in the physical world. With the zombies and the rot and the nanomachines.

But I didn’t have a body. I was just floating around, like a loose fart.

Couldn’t think. No brain, see? And I hadn’t learned how to imprint myself on a neural network of distributed nanos, let alone pull them together, command them to take a shape. I think that’s how Necromancers do it — they turn themselves into webs, spread out over miles and miles, linked together with quantum comms. But me? Pffft, I was sludge. Struggled just to remember who and what I was. Stuff from that period is hard to remember, bits and pieces of it come and go.

If you’re a zombie, what am I?

Come on, it’s not hard. What do you call a revenant without a body?

A ghost.

Ha! No, I’m serious. It fits. I’m a software ghost, Elps. That’s why ‘Necromancer’ is such a dumb-arse word. Necromancers are just software entities with enough control to give themselves bodies. We should be calling them liches. Or poltergeists!

On second thought, maybe I’m a poltergeist.

Wraith? Haha. Yeah, cool, I like that. Tell your new girlies that you’ve got a wraith in your head, that’ll go down a treat.

Anyway, we’re getting lost in semantics.

When I was a ghost, I learned by watching other ghosts — Necromancers. Didn’t see them very often, only a handful of times ever, but whenever I did I paid real close attention. Watched how they flowed and swam through the noosphere, how they manipulated nanomachines, how they called up and put down other, lesser spirits. I learned how to anchor myself to objects and fiddle around with the edge of control systems. I didn’t even know I could hijack the worm-guard until I tried. Fuck knows where I learned that, I just kinda knew I could. Like you know how to walk, yeah? Or breathe. Or throw a punch.

Then, one day, there was a … a current. Like in water. Pulling on me, pulling me toward a graveworm.

I’d never seen a graveworm up close before. Instinct had kept me away. Big thing like that might notice me, suck me up, eat me. But the current pulled me in, then down into a tomb.

And there you were, Elps. Naked and shivering, rounding up those other girls, getting everyone moving.

Yup, I’ve been watching you since the start. Saw it all! Haha! Embarrassed yet?

Nah, I wasn’t really conscious, not really thinking. Not like now. I just sort of floated along.

When that crazy cunt, Pira — no offence to her, by the way, she’s fucking mental, love that bitch — when she shot you in the gut, and the Death’s Heads tied you up, and you were stretched out on that metal table, you were right on the verge of giving in. You were so close. Right on the edge. You were gonna choose death.

Becoming a ghost. Like me.

Nah, I don’t know the technical details. I don’t know how any of this shit works. All I did was reach out and touch you, touch your dreams, all those memories in your head about Telokopolis. And suddenly I was just there, inside you, all myself. I could think!

You know what I’m doing to you, right? I’m probably hijacking part of your brain, running like software on your hardware. Borrowing your meat. Couldn’t think before ‘cos I was just a signal. But neurons let me self-organise. Got myself sorted out.

I was a ghost, just a memory. You made me Howl again.

And that’s it. That’s all there is. You know the rest. Everything since then, we’ve done together. Ha, sure, yeah, except when I left to go boot Thirteen in the arse to get her moving, and hijack those worm-guard for us. And I didn’t do anything else in that window of time, promise. Swear on the soul of Telokopolis, Commander, I didn’t do anything else. If I did, I would tell you.

Ha! What do I know? Good fucking question! Shit, not much more than you, Elps. I don’t know what’s in the graveworms. Don’t know what’s going on here. Don’t know why we’re here or what for. Don’t know what other Necromancers are up to, not really.

Your chess metaphor? Yeah, I like it, it’s good. But I’m not a player. I’m not looking down at the board from above. Never was. I’m just a different kind of piece.

But … but hey, you know what I think?

The goddess, the one who hid me in her skirts.

I think she was our mother, literally. I think she was the city. I think she was Telokopolis.

…

Yeah, yeah I’m fucking crying. No shame.

Fuck, I gotta take a breather. Not like there’s anything more to say. Gimme a few, okay?

Love you too.

* * *

Pheiri’s control cockpit was quiet and dark.

Systems and consoles hummed and hissed, buzzing and purring in a chorus of soft static. A soporific rumble vibrated upward through the decks and bulkheads — Pheiri’s internal manufactories, shunting fresh ammunition toward the exhausted muscles of his guns. Deep down in Pheiri’s belly, his nuclear heartbeat kept time in a slow, steady, stately throb. The occasional crunch and crack of material beneath his tracks was barely audible through the armour of his exterior hull.

Internal lights were dimmed to embers amid metal shadows. The gloom was interrupted here and there by brief LED-flickers and the scrolling of muted green text on drowsy screens. Most displays and readouts lay blank and empty; the few screens still awake had their back-lights turned low, shadows dancing across their surfaces.

The tiny steel-glass observation window — far up in the top right of the cockpit — was once again unarmoured. The window showed the night sky, a blanket of ruptured black, pierced from below by the skeletal fingers of the corpse-city.

Elpida was sitting in one of the cockpit seats, tucked away toward the rear.

She was stripped down to her t-shirt and underwear. Her right hand lay in her lap, palm and wrist now properly stitched up and wrapped in bandages; Melyn had insisted on doing a proper job the second time, so the bandages were clean, not stained with blood. Elpida had her bare feet up on a console. She’d asked Pheiri permission to do that. He hadn’t minded.

She’d been sitting there for four hours. She couldn’t sleep.

Pira was asleep in another seat, at the front of the cockpit. She was in the same seat she’d occupied all day; she was too exhausted to drag herself back to the infirmary. She slept beneath a tomb-grown coat pressed into service as a blanket, pale eyelids still, lips slack, fire-bright hair framed by the faded headrest. Ooni was asleep in the neighbouring chair, turned on her side so she could face her beloved Leuca, curled up tight beneath a scratchy blanket taken from the bunk room.

One of Ooni’s hands was exposed, dangling in the empty space between her and Pira, alone.

Their twinned breathing was barely audible above the background hum of Pheiri’s body.

Elpida realised she’d been staring at Ooni’s lonely hand for more than thirty minutes — thirty three minutes and twenty one seconds. She admonished herself for needless melancholy, and turned her attention elsewhere.

Three of Pheiri’s dimly lit screens showed exterior views, tracking three different subjects beyond his hull.

The first showed Iriko — the strange iridescent slug zombie who had assisted Pheiri in the final moments of the battle with central’s physical asset. Iriko crept along in the lee of Pheiri’s bulk, sliding across the debris and ruin like a living mass of molten metal. She was partially camouflaged beneath an ever-shifting layer of glossy armoured scales, almost invisible to the naked eye in bright light, and completely unseen in the darkness, even to Elpida’s revenant night-vision. Pheiri’s sensors highlighted her in yellows and oranges and greens — but never red; apparently Iriko was not that sort of threat anymore. Various warning labels were appended to her, instructing Pheiri’s crew not to approach Iriko on foot, not to attempt wireless communication, and generally to just let Pheiri himself handle her presence, for now.

The second screen showed Arcadia’s Rampart — or perhaps Thirteen, since the line between pilot and frame was now so blurred. The combat frame strode diagonally ahead of Pheiri, a giant in charred bone and glistening garnet meat, framed against the blank canvas of the night sky. She stepped over or on top of most of the buildings, only diverting her route for true skyscrapers or unexpected geographical features. Pheiri kept a running log of her omni-broadcast poetry on one darkened screen, scrolling upward in dim green text.

Elpida read a few lines, then winced; Thirteen had not developed into a better poet over the last twelve hours.

She considered turning up the brightness on the screen showing Arcadia’s Rampart; the combat frame was so very beautiful. Watching it in motion made Elpida’s heart ache with nostalgia and admiration. The way the limbs unfolded and reached forward was so much like the combat frames she had known in life. But Elpida did not wish to wake Ooni or Pira. Everyone needed to rest.

The third and final exterior view showed the graveworm, though there was little to see.

A dark grey line of mountainous peaks was slowly turning on its side, grinding into the material of the corpse-city as the worm spiralled forward, using a corkscrew motion to pull itself through rotten world-flesh.

Elpida could not hear the sound of the worm, not through Pheiri’s hull.

She’d puzzled over that question several times in the last twelve hours; true, Pheiri’s current position was distant from the worm itself — but the sound of such a giant in motion should have ripped through the ground and air with a earth-shattering noise of smashing concrete and pulverising brick. How did the graveworm move in such relative quiet?

Elpida almost sighed at herself. The question was academic. She should focus on practical problems.

Pheiri, Iriko, and Arca travelled at the very limit of the graveworm’s safe-zone, in the grey area beyond true security, where the worm-guard would not venture out to deal with undead threats. They moved no faster than a zombie’s walking pace. One of Pheiri’s screens of dim green text was keeping a log of long-range sensor encounters — predators moving into the spaces behind and beside, as the safe zone itself receded, rapidly filled in by the wilds beyond the worm.

Elpida leaned forward to check that screen, but all the sensor readings were distant and furtive — nothing close enough to warrant visual confirmation. The undead from beyond the graveworm safe zone were staying well clear of Arcadia’s Rampart; or perhaps they were wary of Pheiri himself. He had survived out there for a very long time, after all.

Elpida settled back into her seat and smothered a sigh.

She spoke into her own mind: Howl? Howl, are you awake?

Howl replied in a sleepy grumble. Yuuuup. Can’t sleep, huh? I napped already.

Good. You need rest too, the same as everyone else.

Right back at you, Elps. Not sleeping, huh, Commander?

Too much on my mind, without any avenues for action. You know what that does to me.

Howl snorted, then said: You need a good hard railing so you can sleep right.

Perhaps, Elpida admitted. But that’s not available right now. Are you feeling up to going over the facts one last time? From the top?

Howl snorted again. She sounded more awake when she replied. What, with me getting shot in the head? You already know everything I do, Elps. I’ve told you literally everything. You tryin’ to get me to slip up? Looking for cracks in my story?

Elpida smiled into the gloom, staring at the screen of Arcadia’s Rampart. No. You know that, come on.

It’s what I’d do. Howl laughed. I’m a ghost. A ghost living in your head, possessing your grey meat. How do you even know I’m real, huh?

You’re software. You said it yourself. And you’re welcome to a place in my meat, Howl.

More like malware! I’m a mobile virus buried in your think-meat, Elps. You sure you don’t wanna dig me out and—

Howl, Elpida said gently. Stop that.

Howl fell silent for a moment. Elpida felt Howl roll her eyes.

Yeah? Howl said eventually. Why should I?

Because I believe your story. I believe you’re telling me the truth.

Why? Elps, come on, I could be exactly what you’re afraid of. I could be some Necromancer infiltrator trying to gain your trust and turn you away from a goal. I could be—

Even if you weren’t the real Howl, I would still trust you right now. You got me up and got me on my feet, when I was about to give up. You set me straight and got me to protect the others when I doubted my purpose. You put yourself at risk to protect Thirteen. And then you came back. Howl grumbled under her breath. Elpida smiled. Howl or not, you’re on my side. You gave me hope.

I … I did? Howl asked.

“Telokopolis,” Elpida whispered out loud.

Toward the front of the cockpit, Ooni shifted beneath her scratchy blanket. One eye snapped open, looked at Pira, then found Elpida — and stopped as if frozen.

Elpida mouthed: “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

Ooni just stared.

Elpida whispered: “Go back to sleep, Ooni. You’re perfectly safe. Nothing is wrong. Sleep. That’s an order, from your Commander.”

Ooni glanced at Pira again, then back at Elpida, then closed her eye. Her breathing deepened and slowed. Within a minute or two she had returned to slumber. Pira hadn’t reacted at all, fast asleep beneath her coat.

Howl tutted. Real twitchy, isn’t she?

Elpida nodded. If I’ve understood her position in the Death’s Heads correctly, she was at the bottom of their hierarchy, or near the bottom. Years of conditioning for sudden violence, from people she called her comrades. Light sleeper.

One of us, now, Howl said.

She may take years to adjust, to unlearn old habits. Elpida sighed. I’m not entirely sure what to do with her, Howl.

Howl snorted. Years to adjust? Do we have years?

Elpida sat up a little in her chair. Maybe. I don’t know. But you’ve given me hope for something more than just survival.

Howl fell silent.

Elpida closed her eyes and pictured Howl as she had known her in life — petite and wiry, copper-brown skin and purple eyes and a mop of white hair, always with a grin of some kind, always ready to show her teeth. She tried to sense Howl inside her own head, tried to feel out the position of Howl’s hypothetical body, the pose of her limbs, the expression on her face.

Blushing. Teeth gritted. Eyes sideways, narrowed and cynical.

Elpida smiled. That was her Howl.

Elpida said: There’s one question I didn’t ask you earlier.

Eh? Yeah? What?

Elpida braced herself for inevitable disappointment. She opened her eyes and stared at Pira and Ooni again — at Ooni’s hand, halfway exposed, waiting for Pira’s touch.

Can you make yourself a body? Elpida asked. Like the other Necromancer did?

Howl didn’t reply for a long moment. Eventually she said: Nah. Tried like a dozen times. Just can’t. Locked out. Or maybe I’m not the right shape or some shit.

Elpida swallowed and nodded. The disappointment hurt. She tried to hold herself back, but the words slipped out as a raw whisper.

“I wish I could hold you.”

Howl growled. Shut up! You’re gonna make me fucking cry again!

Elpida said nothing. She wrapped her left arm around her own ribcage, squeezing herself tightly. Pheiri’s cockpit buzzed and purred. Shadows flickered across the ceiling.

Hey, Howl said after a moment. You know what I can do, though?

What’s that?

Howl took control of Elpida’s left arm. She held up two fingers. I can fuck your brains out stupid-style, with your own hand. I still know how to make you squeal, Commander. Being a ghost doesn’t mean I can’t get all up in your cunt.

Elpida almost laughed. We need somewhere a bit more private for that. This isn’t the cadre.

Tch! Howl relinquished control of Elpida’s arm. Yeah, no kidding, Elps. Pheiri’s great and all, but your girls are crammed in here like canned meat. If we’re gonna fuck sick nasty then doing it when everybody’s sleeping is probably our best bet!

Elpida contained a sigh; Howl had more of a point than Howl realised, but there wasn’t much that Elpida could do about that issue, not yet.

For all Pheiri’s security and safety, he did not have a lot of internal space, not for eleven people. All the others were currently sleeping — some in the bunk room, some in the crew compartment, along with Pira and Ooni up front in the cockpit — all except for Melyn, who was still down inside Pheiri’s guts, smearing handfuls of grey goo on his innards. Everyone was exhausted after the battle, the flight, and the frantic efforts to scoop up Thirteen’s bounty of nanomachine vomit into containers and bottles.

With all eleven revenants and artificial humans awake and active, Pheiri’s insides would quickly feel cramped.

Elpida was all too familiar with the risk of internal conflict inside tightly knit groups confined to small spaces; but unlike the cadre, these zombies were unlikely to deal with it by having sex.

Another problem on the pile. Elpida could not tackle this right now. She needed to sleep, like all the rest.

Howl grumbled, then said: So, Elps, you believe me about Telokopolis? Really?

Elpida considered her reply carefully. I believe that you believe, Howl. I believe you met something, inside the ‘noosphere’, that was aligned with Telokopolis. I don’t know more than that. I have no data to go on, no intel other than your impressions. But … yes, I’ve been thinking about it for hours. That’s why I can’t sleep. Regardless of whatever entity helped you or put you here with me, Telokopolis exists regardless. As long as one of us is up and active, the city still stands.

Fucking right, Howl purred.

If Telokopolis — the city itself, somehow — exists inside a software noosphere, then good. But right now that has very little to do with our practical circumstances. All I know is that I have a group of women, my comrades, my … cadre, inside this mobile armoured vehicle, who is also our brother. I have a command responsibility. I have people to take care of.

Elpida felt Howl grin — with Elpida’s own mouth.

That’s my Commander, Howl purred.

It’s the only thing I know how to be.

Elpida and Howl both lapsed into silence. Pheiri’s insides ticked and whirred. Pira and Ooni’s breathing filled the cockpit. On one of the dimly lit screens, Iriko flowed over a sharp spike of corroded rebar and dissolved it into sludge.

So, Howl grunted. What now? What’s the plan?

Elpida stared into the shadows. I don’t know, not yet. We still need more intel. I still don’t know the shape of the game board, or the state of play, or what sort of piece we’re meant to be. Or even who’s playing. I don’t even know what ‘central’ is, or if Thirteen is right about other pilots and other combat frames still existing, still fighting, out there beyond the drop-off. And it’s been a long day, Howl. A hell of a long day. We all need rest and recovery.

But—

Howl, I know what you’re going to say.

Howl snorted. Oh yeah?

You’re going to ask several questions. What about my plans for Thirteen’s departure? What about my plans to follow the graveworm or plunge into the wilds, in search of the towers Pira mentioned? What about the plan to capture Yola and force her to talk about Necromancers? I haven’t forgotten that one, though it seems like a long shot now, after the fight, with the graveworm moving. What about the physical asset we left behind? What about Pira and Ooni? What about Iriko? What about Serin? What about Kagami’s self-modification with nanomachines? There are many issues to consider, many things I must decide on. I know.

Howl hissed through her teeth: You’ve gotten better at this.

I’ve had to be.

Howl said, You’ve forgotten something, though.

I’m sure I have. That’s why I have you, Howl. Go ahead.

Howl lowered her voice into a nasty growl: What are you gonna do about meat? You’ve not got much of the raw blue left, right? You’ve all gotta feed, sooner or later. We gonna hunt, Elps? We gonna be predators?

Elpida said: I haven’t forgotten about that at all.

Ah? Could’a fooled me.

That question is bound up with the decision about where to go — follow the graveworm until it cracks open a new tomb, or dive into the wilds, heading for a tower. That decision changes everything about our access to nanomachines, to nutrients, to food. And it’s not a decision I can make alone.

Howl spluttered with laughter. You gonna put it to a vote?

Elpida nodded. She sat up and stretched, abandoning all hope of sleep. Yes. But an informed vote. We have one source of intel on predation and food — and also on Necromancers — who I have not yet properly debriefed.

Howl hissed with sudden hostility: Serin.

Elpida stood up and rolled her neck from side to side. She grabbed her coat off the back of her chair and dragged it over her shoulders. She didn’t need the warmth now, but the coat reinforced her authority. You don’t like Serin?

Don’t tease, Howl growled.

I’m not, said Elpida. Howl, I trust your gut more than I trust my own judgement. Why don’t you like Serin?

She doesn’t like Necromancers, Howl growled. But she never explained why. She claims to know the pilot phenotype, but how? Fucking bullshit. And that gun she has, the gravitic weapon, to disrupt Necros? More bullshit! She’s lying. I’m software. How would gravity disrupt me?

Elpida considered that. Perhaps the gun disrupts the mechanism Necromancers use to make bodies?

Tch. Whatever. Still don’t like her. Don’t trust her, Elps. Where is she, anyway? She’s not sleeping with the others, right?

Elpida glanced down at one of Pheiri’s screens. She could easily ask him to display everyone’s current location within his hull, but some things were better done in person, for the sake of intimacy and comradeship.

Let’s go find out, said Elpida. I’ll do the rounds, check on everyone, make sure nobody else is struggling with insomnia. Then we can have an informal chat with Serin, if she’s awake.

Bitch is probably on the fucking roof, Howl snorted.

Elpida stepped toward the corridor, leaving the cockpit, leaving Ooni and Pira behind.

Elps, Howl growled again. Elps, I’m serious.

About Serin? Howl, I believe you, but I have to talk to her sooner or later. Not just about meat and Necromancers, but about that symbol as well, the crescent-and-line symbol, and what it means. If we have potential allies out there, I need to know about them.

Yeah yeah, not that part. Howl tutted. Just be careful, Elps. Be careful around her. And maybe don’t let on what I am, okay? Don’t tell her you’ve got a wraith in your head. Don’t tell her I’m a Necromancer.

Elpida reached out and touched the doorway rim, staring into the gloom of Pheiri’s connecting corridor; her comrades slumbered in those guts, little twists of undead flesh tucked away behind layers of cold metal.

I won’t let Serin hurt you, Howl, she promised. Besides, I think she and I are on the same side.

Elpida stepped into the connecting corridor.

Howl growled, low and raw: We don’t even know what the fucking sides are, Elps. Be careful. She’s not one of us. Not yet.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Howl speaks. The veil draws back, revealing the rocky shores of an unwanted afterlife. But what lurks in the tidal pools? We may not want to find out.

Arc 10! Here we are at last, dear readers, as our zombie girls pick up the pieces after the explosive changes of arc 9. This arc is likely to be a fair bit shorter than arc 9 was, and probably a little less action-packed. Things scuttling around Pheiri’s insides in the night. Elpida and Howl making plans. And … well, we’ll see!

I also have some art to share this week! There’s several new things over on the fanart page, including a pair of animations, one of central’s physical asset, and one of Pheiri and Iriko throwing a rave. Unfortunately due to how wordpress animation uploads work, I can’t link those directly, so you’ll have to click through to see them. They’re near the bottom of the page! But we also have this illustration of post-Change Arcadia’s Rampart (by DreamLupus), and this picture of Iriko eating a piece of rebar, from this very chapter!!! (by Melsa Hvarei). Thank you again to everyone who’s ever made fanart, it’s all incredible to see!

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, there is a tier for it on my patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 4.5k words.  Feel free to wait until there’s more story! I’m focusing on trying to push this ahead for now, seeing if I can make more time in my writing schedule to get an extra chapter or two out. I’ll keep doing my best!

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! Thank you!

And thank you reading my little story! Thank you for being here and enjoying Necroepilogos. I almost can’t believe we’ve come so far already, but we’ve still barely broken the skin. Until next week, dear readers!