Content Warnings

Masochism (extreme)
Sexualised violence (extreme) (but not sexual violence, if that makes sense?)

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“Dance?” Elpida echoed. “You want me to hit you again?”

Down on the floor, her sun-kissed skin clothed in a silken white party dress, with her ribbon-wrapped calves, her delicate lace elbow-gloves, and a white choker encircling her slender throat, Lykke nodded.

She gazed up at Elpida from behind thickly curled lashes, eyes wet and wide, dyed dark by the scarlet light which glowed from the secret inner walls of Telokopolis. Lykke’s breath came in quivering little hitches; her chest heaved beneath the thin fabric of her dress. Her skin was shiny with sudden sweat. She smelled faintly of fresh grass under hot sunlight, spiced with the iron tang of blood. One hand clutched the hem of her dress, crumpling the fabric in trembling fingers; the other hand fluttered upward to her throat. She brushed the dark purple bruises which began to flower beneath her choker — the imprint of Elpida’s hand.

“Yes!” Lykke hissed. “Oh, yes. Please, little zombie. Let’s dance! As long as you like, any way you like! Do your best!” She tapped her bruised throat. “Do this again, if you need somewhere to start! Do it harder, for longer, until I’m all … all … ”

Lykke trailed off, panting hard, eyes wide and manic.

Elpida almost laughed. She should have expected this. “And you really can get away any time you want?”

Lykke nodded. “Yes! Yes! Don’t even ask that question, don’t concern yourself with it, just pretend I can’t! Pretend you’ve got me at your mercy and—”

Elpida stepped back. She raised her chin and crossed her arms.

Lykke responded exactly as Elpida hoped she would — her face crumpled with confused rejection, sudden desperation burning in her glittering green eyes.

Lykke scrambled to her feet, still panting and quivering with a cocktail of pain and lust. She had to brace herself against the bone-ribbed wall of Telokopolis, as if her knees had gone weak. One lace-gloved hand moved across her own belly, probing the tender flesh where Elpida had gut-punched her. Her pink tongue darted out to wet thin, glistening lips. She hesitated, jaw twitching, unable to form words.

“Go ahead,” said Elpida.

“You don’t— you don’t want to? But— you— please! Please, zombie! I stayed, I stayed, for you—”

Elpida kept her distance. “Howl awoke something in you, with that beat-down, didn’t she?”

Lykke’s face scrunched up, brow furrowed, teeth clenched. “Don’t say her name! Don’t ruin this with talk of that … goblin!”

Elpida raised her eyebrows. She needed to lead Lykke on, but with great care; it seemed that Howl was not the correct pressure point. “But Howl hurt you, didn’t she? She made you feel real pain, possibly for the first time ever.”

Lykke hissed through her teeth. “No! That was you, zombie. Your fists on my flesh. Your face filling my vision. Not her! I could see her, grinning through your muscles, but she was … inconsequential to what we did, you and I, together. She’s not you. I’m not interested in talking about her.”

Elpida considered pushing harder — more talk of Howl might get Lykke to leave. But this opportunity was too good to pass up. Howl had broken something inside Lykke, and now the Necromancer was compromised. Forget intel; if this was not a trick, then Lykke was ripe for plucking.

Elpida cast a different hook: “Alright then. I hurt you. And now you want what — more of that?”

Lykke took a deep breath, straightening her spine and standing upright again, puffing out her chest and cocking her hips beneath her dress, ponytail falling across one naked shoulder. She put one hand around her own throat, fingers mirroring the bruises left by Elpida’s grip. “Pain. That … that experience, I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s all I’ve thought about since then. I didn’t go back home, I didn’t return, I didn’t even leave the boundary of that storm, because I didn’t want to risk losing sight of you, zombie.”

“Should I be flattered?”

“No other dance, no other sensation I’ve ever felt can compare to it. I … ” She trailed off and swallowed, eyes fluttering shut as if in the prelude to an orgasm. “I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this, for so, so, so long! And you— you zombies!” Her eyes flew open, cheeks flushed with rosy passion. “You zombies, this is what you feel?! I want more, yes. I want it all. And I want it from you, zombie. You’re the only dance partner I’m interested in now, you’re the best I’ve ever had. It was your hand which made me feel pain, with your face in my eyes. I want more, yes! Yes, little zombie, I want—”

“Say my name.”

Lykke blinked rapidly. “Excuse me—”

“Say. My. Name.”

Elpida gambled. The prize would be worth the risk.

“Zombie?” Lykke giggled. “What does that have to do with—”

“You don’t want Howl,” Elpida said. “So say my name. Call me zombie one more time and I’ll go wake Howl, she can work you over with both fists while I go speak with Telokopolis.”

Elpida made a point of looking away, down the vaulted corridor of giant bones and crimson flesh, to where she had seen that strangely stiff white dress slip beyond sight. A phantom of Telokopolis, gracing her moment of doubt. She longed to follow, but she could not ignore the chance to turn a full-blown Necromancer.

“Elpida!” Lykke blurted out. “Fine, fine! Elpida, Elpida, Elpida! Please, just, let me have this—”

Elpida lashed out with an open palm. She backhanded Lykke across the face.

The slap sent Lykke tottering several steps to one side. She let out a quavering gasp, eyes streaming with fresh tears. Both hands rose to cup her stinging cheek. She held a pose of wordless ecstasy for three full seconds — then coiled back around, breaking into a nasty little smirk, eyes tight, teeth showing.

“Oh, come on, zo— Elpida!” she purred, rubbing her glowing cheek with one hand. “You can do better than that!”

Elpida held her gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Look at you, look at your muscles, your upper body strength! You could slap me halfway down this corridor if you tried. You could knock a girl unconscious with one slap. I want a dance, a real one. Don’t disappoint me now.”

Elpida reconsidered her strategy; perhaps she was being hasty. Elpida knew how to handle partners who needed a little pain — she and Howl had beaten each other black and blue back in life, and half her most intense relationships within the cadre had often involved some kind of physical fighting, mostly on the sparring mats. She was no stranger to the blurred line between a good fight and a hard fuck, though she knew most baseline human beings did not feel that connection quite so strongly, or at all. Every one of her sisters always gave as good as they got, and the shared pain meant something between them.

But Lykke was not a pilot; Lykke was not even human. According to Shilu, Lykke had never been human in the first place — this Necromancer had begun life as a ‘post-human feedback loop’. Was Elpida wading out into waters beyond her depth? Should she turn around and head after the phantom of Telokopolis after all?

Lykke spoke before Elpida could decide. “Do I disgust you?” she said, giggling. “I know this would disgust other Necromancers. This is the most unsanctioned behaviour I’ve ever indulged in! But if this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

Elpida pushed, testing the ground. “Who or what sent you after Shilu?”

Lykke sighed and rolled her eyes, shoulders slumping. “Ugh. Don’t talk about her! We’re just getting started, don’t ruin the mood!”

“I hurt you, you give me intel. That’s the deal,” Elpida said. “If you’ve got nothing for me … ” Elpida spread her hands and took another step back.

Lykke followed, trotting forward, eyes thrown wide, hands up as if trying to soothe a difficult animal. “Fine, fine! Um … Shilu, right? Yes! Er, Shilu is … um … very annoying, and … y-yes, I was sent to mop her up. And … and … that’s it!”

“Were you sent by Central? Or by some other faction?”

Lykke shrugged, arms held out, expression desperate. “I don’t know! I don’t care about that! Zom— Elpida! Why do you care?! Why do you care about any of that boring old shit? I’m right here in front of you, I’m here, right now, and—”

Elpida grabbed Lykke’s right wrist in her left hand. The Necromancer had a split-second to gasp, eyes flying wide, lips curling with the anticipation of pleasure — and then Elpida’s right fist crashed into Lykke’s face.

The Necromancer went flying backward, knocked off her feet, suspended from the anchor of Elpida’s hand around her wrist. Blood sprayed from her nose and a burst lip, splattering across the cold floor of the vaulted corridor. She heaved for breath behind the veil of her golden hair, spluttering and moaning through a gush of blood dripping from her face; a few droplets fell just short of Elpida’s naked feet.

“When the storm ends,” Elpida said, “are they going to send more Necromancers after us?”

“ … mm-what?” Lykke moaned.

“Stand up.” Elpida yanked on Lykke’s arm, dragging her back to her feet.

Lykke’s head jerked up and around; she was bleeding from her nose and her upper lip, right cheek blooming with a fresh bruise. Her eyes were full of tears, glazed with trance-like pleasure. She smiled and let out a high, whining moan. “Moooooreeeee—”

“When the storm ends,” Elpida repeated. “Are they going to send more Necromancers after us? Or are you going to attack us again?”

Lykke’s joy curdled; her smile died, her gaze flattened, her wounds no longer seemed to cause her pain.

“You’re so constipated, zombie,” she said. “How do you stand it?”

“I told you to use my name.”

“Perhaps we should do this another way,” Lykke sighed. “Perhaps. You can do so much better, zombie.”

“I hurt you, you share intel. That’s the deal, Necromancer. No intel, no deal.”

Lykke grinned, all white teeth. “Deal? I don’t recall making any deal.”

Elpida let go of Lykke’s wrist. “Then you can go handle yourself—”

Lykke unhinged her jaw.

Her cheeks split open — first to her ears, then further, the sides of Lykke’s throat ripping apart as if her whole neck was a concealed mouth. Her pretty white choker burst in two. Her skull rolled backward, mouth and throat and neck transformed into a giant crimson maw lined with hundreds of razor-sharp teeth, dripping loops of sticky saliva. She reared up, legs suddenly extending, then fell upon Elpida.

Lykke’s giant mouth slammed down over Elpida’s head, plunging her into moist, reeking, humid darkness.

Elpida reacted fast, digging her fingers and thumbs into the pliable flesh of Lykke’s extended neck-mouth. But Lykke was all muscle. Elpida was trapped.

Rows of teeth lanced into Elpida’s neck. She felt flesh part and bone scrape, followed by the unmistakable sensation of her own head parting from her shoulders with a slick wet riiiiiiiip—

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Elpida woke up.

She awoke in her own bed, greeted by the muted colours and soft lights of the dormitory, within the pilot project cadre’s private quarters.

She was wide awake. She remembered everything.

Elpida kicked the covers back, pulled herself from Howl’s embrace, and leapt out of bed. She hit the floor ready to fight, fists raised, empty handed, eyes scanning the cold dormitory for a weapon, for the position of her enemy, for the inevitable surprise attack, for—

Ceiling fans, recycled air, distant vibrations. Nothing moved in the dormitory except herself. Nothing made a sound except Howl’s breathing, deep and soft in uninterrupted sleep. Nothing was hiding beneath the beds. She was back at the start of the ‘dream’, but there was no sign of Lykke.

Elpida forced herself to relax. She swept her hair out of her face. She put one hand to her neck and throat, feeling for a wound. But there was nothing, not even a bruise.

“Howl?” she said, voice pitched hard and urgent. “Howl, we have an intruder. Howl, wake up. Howl!”

Howl grumbled in her sleep. Elpida turned and reached out to shake Howl’s shoulder, loathe to take her eyes off the dormitory, but for some reason she couldn’t reach Howl, couldn’t shake her, couldn’t—

Elpida stopped short and raised the stump of her right arm; the limb was gone from her elbow down, terminating in a long-healed amputation wound.

“Right,” she muttered. “That’s reality.”

Howl grunted. “Elps?”

Elpida almost repeated her earlier request, but then paused; there was a very good reason for Howl to be asleep. “You can’t wake up, can you?” Elpida said. “Because I’m the one who’s asleep, and you’re busy, you’re looking after the others. How is everything going, out there?”

Howl turned over, rubbing her face against the pillow, eyes still closed. “S’fine. You deal with you, Elps.”

“I’m dealing with a bit more than just myself. Lykke’s in here. She’s playing with me, I think.”

Howl grumbled again. “Then play harder. Play hard ‘till the bitch breaks.”

“ … I’ll try.”

Howl let out a soft snore. Back to sleep.

Elpida considered her options. She could stay here, next to Howl, which would probably keep Lykke away; she could even lie back down in bed and return to sleep — though she wasn’t quite sure what that would represent. She did not wish to return to waking control of her own body; her comrades were likely hunting down the Death’s Heads right then, and she felt they would do better without the burden of her clouded judgement.

And Telokopolis was right here.

Telokopolis had appeared to her, as a network ghost or phantom memory or simple embodiment of everything Elpida believed in. Lykke was nothing compared to the chance to speak with the city. Elpida had to know, she had to ask — was she doing the right thing? Was she on the right path? Did she have the blessing of her true mother?

Elpida grabbed a pair of shorts again, just as she had the first time, dragging them on over her hips. She considered stopping to don one of the pilot suits which lay about the rumpled dormitory beds, but Lykke’s Necromancer tricks would probably not be turned away by a thin shell of polymer weave filled with bio-reactive circuitry and telemetry monitors.

She hurried to the door and hit the palm-pad from the side, in case Lykke was waiting to leap out at her. Then she pressed herself against the wall, to obtain the best view of the corridor before she stepped out of the dormitory. The main hallway of the cadre’s private quarters was empty, just as before. Muted silver and dark cream and soft treelike greens concealed no hidden Necromancer. Elpida made sure to run her eyes carefully along the surfaces, in case Lykke was camouflaged somehow. She checked the ceiling, too — a cheap trick, but she couldn’t afford to be lazy.

Elpida stopped into the corridor.

All the doors were shut. The floor was warm. The recycled air smelled clean and dry. This time there was no buzz of a screen left switched on overnight; the cadre’s quarters were silent, all except for the distant sounds of the body of Telokopolis.

And this time there was no additional corridor; the door to the shower room stood at the end of the hallway, right where it should be. The vaulted corridor of Telokopolan bone and living flesh was gone.

Elpida had missed her chance.

“Fuck,” she hissed. “Lykke.”

Elpida checked the rec room first, hoping to find the dreams of Persephone and Old Lady Nunnus still waiting for her inside. But the rec room was empty, the screen quiet and dark, all the lights switched off. She shut the door and turned back to the corridor; as she did, a low hiss came from the ventilation ducts, trailing off into the faintest whisper of an inhuman giggle.

Elpida held her breath. She stayed as still as she could. She willed her heart rate to slow.

She waited thirty seconds, then a minute. Nothing happened.

Elpida crept down the corridor, moving silently on bare feet, making for the large double-doors which led to the cadre’s private armoury. She considered entering through the gym instead, but she needed more than a sparring staff or a blunt blade; besides, she was not confident using either of those weapons with only one hand.

She reached the big steel doors and hovered her fingertips before the armoury’s palm-pad. Then she stomped her feet twice, a couple of big heavy steps right in front of the door; quickly she hopped to one side and hit the pad. The armoury access light blinked green. The door slid open.

Elpida counted to five, then peered around the door frame, fingers still on the palm-pad.

No sign of Lykke. Elpida stepped inside. The door slid shut behind her.

The pilot project cadre’s private armoury was the equal of any Legion infantry arsenal — just on a smaller scale. A wide room floored in the same matte steel as the rest of their quarters, the armoury was lined with weapons, all plugged into charging ports or cradled in specialised racking or cushioned in soft foam to avoid incidental wear and tear. Handguns, side-arms, personal defence weapons, blades and knives both monoedge and mundane, batons and shock-clubs and big heavy machetes, rifles and carbines and everything in between, shoulder-and-back-mounted autonomic defence rigs, weight-splaying carry-frames for heavy firepower, and all the other infantry-level weapons and systems Elpida had known in life.

The guns were all of familiar Telokopolan manufacture, uniformly matte black or pale silver, made of ultra-lightweight polymers and specialised alloys; most of them were energy, laser, or plasma-projection based, but almost all the solid-shot firearms used either caseless ammunition or shaved their projectiles from miniaturized blocks of nano-manufactured reaction mass. A small table in one corner held Emi and Kit’s passion project — a set of black-powder ‘slug throwers’ in various sizes, all hand made and assembled from raw steel. That little diversion had proven very popular over the years, waxing and waning as different members of the cadre decided to try their hands at tests of mechanical skill, such as building a shotgun which would dislocate the operator’s shoulder when fired.

The cadre did not have much occasion to use this stuff in battle — there was not a lot of point, when one went out into the green inside a combat frame — but Elpida had always made the cadre take personal defence and weapons handling as seriously as they could. Her girls were always the equal of any Legionnaire. They had never been caught out when they had to defend themselves.

Except when Elpida had not allowed them to do so, right at the end.

She quashed that thought. This was no time for it.

In addition to the weapons, the armoury also contained a stock of additional pilot suits, folded up and stowed, along with all the other functional clothing the cadre could need; none of it was particularly interesting, but they never wanted for spares. Rows of greensuits stood along one wall, their flimsy-looking plates hanging loose from the racks. Heavy full-body stands held a set of fifty full hardshell suits, two for each member of the cadre, just in case.

Some of the suits showed evidence of minor repairs here and there; a moment’s glance was enough to bring a dozen memories to the surface of Elpida’s mind, but she did not have time to think about her sisters right then. She bottled that emotion. This place, though not real, was getting to her.

Her own hardshell suit stood at the very end of the row. Could she don it with only one arm? Probably yes, but not quickly. She would be vulnerable.

The armoury had three other exits — one to the gym, one to the firing range, and a big heavy elevator door in the rear. That elevator was large enough for all twenty five of the cadre, all in hardshell suits; it led directly down to the combat frame hangers in the Skirts. That elevator ride would take ten minutes. Elpida wondered if it would work, here in this network ‘dream’.

She hurried over to a rack of side-arms. She needed something she could use one-handed; that ruled out the close-quarters comfort of a monoedge blade, or the stopping power of a rifle.

She grabbed a compact pistol, a lightweight model with as little recoil as possible. She used her left hand to pop the magazine free, then pulled it out with her teeth. Caseless rounds were stacked nearby, and she could load one-handed, but she needed to hurry, before Lykke crawled out of a vent.

But the magazine was already loaded. Sixteen caseless rounds gleamed within.

Elpida almost laughed. Her girls would never have left live ammo in a racked gun. Perhaps the dream was helping her.

She pushed the magazine back into the gun against the side of the racking, shoved the pistol into the waistband of her shorts, and crossed to the PDWs. She lifted a GSD-114 from its charging rack — a ‘Grasshopper’ personal defence weapon, light enough to fire in one hand, tight enough to use in small spaces, forty centimetres of miniaturised magnetic acceleration. She slapped the controls with her chin; the gun’s indicator lights were all green, fully charged and ready to go.

She hefted the weapon in her left hand and struggled to press the stock against her shoulder, then gave up and braced her elbow against her hip. Point shooting would have to suffice.

“Tch!”

The tut echoed off the steel walls of the armoury. Elpida whirled on the spot, finger on the trigger.

“I always assumed you were ambidextrous,” Lykke drawled.

The Necromancer was draped over a hardshell suit — Elpida’s own suit. Her arms lay across the shoulders, chin resting beside the helmet, melting against the grey-green amour like a cat in sunlight. She bore the wounds Elpida had left her with — hand-print bruises on her pale throat, a bloody nose and a split lip, a purple blossom spreading across her cheek — but no sign of the elongated face-maw. Lykke was back to normal.

“I am,” Elpida replied. “That doesn’t mean I can one-hand a gun like this.”

Lykke rose from the hardshell suit, cradling her own bruised stomach. Her fingers fluttered over her flat belly through the fabric of her dress. She winced and flinched, letting out a soft gasp.

“Then why are you waving it around, zombie?” she said.

Elpida didn’t reply. She kept the PDW trained on Lykke. The Necromancer smiled, rolled her eyes, and turned away. She sauntered over to the pilot suits, pulled one out from a bin, and unrolled the soft grey fabric. She held it up to her front, looked down at herself, and did a little twirl. Then she pulled a disgusted face and let the suit fall to the floor.

“You said you couldn’t hurt me here,” said Elpida.

Lykke broke into a smug little smirk and gestured at Elpida with both hands, arms held out wide. “Uh huh! And here you are, untouched!”

“Mm. Neat trick. Felt very real.”

Lykke giggled, biting her bottom lip. “Did you like it? Was it a unique experience, being all the way down my pretty little throat?” She tilted her head back and ran one lace-gloved hand across the bruised flesh of her exposed throat, hooking a finger briefly into her regenerated choker — then she clacked her teeth together three times. “Hahaha!”

“Never had my head bitten off before,” Elpida said.

“Mm!” Lykke purred, hands clasped together, wiggling one leg back and forth. “Your first time! Let’s see how many other firsts we can take from you, shall we?”

Elpida said, “What other lies did you tell?”

Lykke stamped one slippered foot. “Oh, you’re no fun! I was telling the truth, zombie! I can’t actually hurt you. I can’t wipe you! I don’t have that kind of access. No Necromancer does. And this is inside you, dummy. No matter what it feels like in the moment, all I can do is bat you around a bit. Not that I won’t keep going!”

“Why?” Elpida demanded. “I thought you’d discovered a love of pain. Why do you want to fight me?”

Lykke raised both hands in a little shrug. “Because it turns out you are an incredibly boring dance partner when you lack the proper motivation. So! You and I, little zombie, we’re going to play on equal footing.”

Elpida scoffed. She smiled, despite herself. “Equal footing? You’re obviously the one in control of this dream. You can do whatever you want. You just came out of nowhere.”

“Uuuughhhhh,” Lykke moaned. “No, no, no! How many times? This isn’t a dream! Zombie— ugh, don’t give me that look! Elpida, fine. This is not a dream. It’s more like … software!” Lykke lit up. “It has rules, like gravity, inertia, solid objects, muscles. And pain! All the good stuff which makes reality so juicy.”

“And you expect me to believe you can’t break those rules?”

Lykke shrugged. “Out in the real network the rules are more … flexible, for things like me, sure. I won’t lie about that. But here? Mmmm, not really. You’re just a zombie, which means you can’t actually see what’s really going on. I can, and I can fuck around a bit.” Lykke flicked her fingers, as if brushing away a mote of dust. “But I don’t want to! I want to dance! With you.”

Elpida’s stomach tightened, low down, with an excitement she had not expected. She took a deep breath. This was a distraction she could ill afford.

“Equal footing?” she echoed.

“Yes! I’ll stay subject to all the same rules as you. No more teeth, no more claws, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die!” Lykke ran a fingertip over her chest, over her heart. “Just throw the gun away and come at me. You want this too, zombie. I can tell.”

Elpida didn’t move. “If this is software — my software — why can’t I summon help?”

Lykke sighed. “Obviously because you don’t really want to!” She tutted, then batted her eyelashes and bit her lower lip again. “Zombie, forget about all that. This … this is a first time for me, too. I’ve never done this with a zombie before, inside your own private network, not like this. I feel quite vulnerable, you know? With me it’s always one and done.” She sighed, twirling a lock of hair in her fingers, turned half-aside as if embarrassed. “I’ve never … come back to the same zombie. It’s such a different feeling. You’re the first.” Lykke let out a little moan and shook herself, as if gathering her courage. “And you’re going to have so much fun. I know you will! We’ll both get what we need.”

Elpida felt a tug, deep down in her belly — but she clamped down hard. “And every time you rip my head off, I’m gonna wake up back in my bed?”

Lykke shrugged again. “I don’t know! You can do whatever you want! Why not try to return the favour?”

Elpida shook her head. “I’m not going to let you do that a second time.”

Lykke tutted. “Then why are you still here? You can leave whenever you like! Go back to your little pack of kittens or whatever. But you won’t, will you? Because you’re all twisted up inside. So, as long as you’re here and hiding from responsibility, why not play with me? That’s got to be better than moping about, right?”

Elpida ignored that. “You only got the drop on me because this place is emotionally compromising.”

Lykke tilted her head, blinking innocently. “Oh?”

“ … you really don’t know?”

Lykke wet her lips. “I’ve picked up a little. Something about dead sisters? This is the world you lived in, right? This is the place you lost, and the loss that broke you.” Lykke smirked. “Does talking about it help get you ready? Unconventional, perhaps, but I’m all ears.”

Elpida felt words rising up her throat — yes, yes, this is all I lost, all the echoes and imprints of my sisters are here, and—

And Lykke was a distraction; Lykke was pumping her for info; Lykke had to be dealt with.

Elpida lowered the PDW. “All this is to keep me from speaking with Telokopolis, isn’t it? You took away that corridor. You’re a distraction, keeping me from following, keeping me from finding the certainty I need. That’s your purpose.”

Lykke rolled her eyes, threw up both lace-gloved hands, and let out a strangled scream.

“How self-centred can you be?!” she shrieked. “Can’t you just live in this one moment, zombie?! You can’t even see how bricked up you are, or what I’m offering you! How are you even still going like this?! If I was in your position, I’d be curled up on the floor in a ball!”

Elpida frowned; was she wrong? She’d not really meant the words she’d said, she was testing, but she had not expected this response. Lykke’s answers were difficult to trust, but she asked anyway: “Tell me the truth, Lykke. Did you remove that additional corridor?”

“Does it matter?!”

“Yes,” Elpida said. “Because I need to talk to Telokopolis—”

“How do you even know it’s her, hmm!? Or whatever it is you’re trying to talk to. How do you know?”

“Because it looked like how I … ”

Elpida trailed off. She realised what she had been about to say.

“Ha!” Lykke barked. “How you imagine her, right? Face it, zombie, you’re chasing your own memories. Pay attention to the moment. I’m right here!”

Elpida shook her head. “No. No, she has to be here. I need—”

“What you need, zombie, is a dance you don’t know how to dance!”

Lykke flew at Elpida, hands outstretched, lace-clad fingers hooked like claws. Elpida dropped the PDW to the floor with a clatter; her bait had worked. She drew the pistol from her waistband, aimed one-handed at Lykke’s centre of mass, and pumped the trigger — thock-thock-thock!

Caseless rounds tore through Lykke’s shiny white dress and punched into her ribcage, tearing a trio of bloody holes in her chest. The Necromancer went down in a tangle of limbs, carried forward by the momentum of her headlong charge. She slid to a halt a few feet from Elpida’s toes, twitching and wheezing, blood spreading in a shallow pool on the metal tiles.

Lykke slapped at the floor. She struggled to raise her head.

“Cheater!” she rattled.

Her eyes glazed over. She went limp, then still.

Elpida stepped back and aimed the pistol at Lykke’s head. She pulled the trigger three more times, putting a trio of rounds through Lykke’s skull. Bone and brain matter splattered across the floor. Elpida waited another two full minutes, watching the corpse for signs of motion.

“My network space,” Elpida said. “Which means my rules. I don’t believe that for a second. Get up, Lykke.”

The Necromancer didn’t move.

“Get. Up.”

Nothing. Elpida felt a terrible disappointment — but why? Did she really want to fight Lykke hand-to-hand? She would gain nothing from the experience.

She had to go after that phantom vision of Telokopolis. She had to know. Perhaps the corridor would be there once more, now that Lykke was ‘dead’.

Elpida backed toward the armoury door, not once taking her eyes off Lykke’s body. She touched the palm-pad with her elbow.

Beep!

The access light stayed red. That was not supposed to happen. Back in life, that never happened.

She had to stoop to press the palm-pad with her stump.

Beep. Red light.

She leaned against the wall and awkwardly bumped the pad with one foot.

Beep. Red light.

She stared at the corpse. She waited another sixty seconds. Lykke didn’t move.

“Get up, Lykke,” Elpida said.

Nothing.

As carefully as she could, Elpida moved her left hand toward the palm-pad, still holding the gun. She had to turn the barrel away from Lykke, for just a moment. Her knuckles brushed the pad.

Beep. Red light.

Lykke jerked upright, a whirling vortex of blood-soaked white dress and golden blonde hair.

She scuttled toward Elpida on all fours, bleeding and screeching and cackling from a mouth full of sharp teeth. Elpida flicked the gun around and pulled the trigger, but the rounds cut through Lykke like stones through water, and then Lykke knocked the weapon out of Elpida’s hand. Lykke was on top of her, reeking of blood, a fanged maw pressed into Elpida’s face. She knocked Elpida to the floor. Elpida got a foot into Lykke’s belly, but the Necromancer flowed around the kick like her body was made of liquid.

“That one doesn’t count, zombie!” Lykke screeched. “Equal footing means equal footing! You cheat, I cheat! Next time, use your fists!”

Lykke’s teeth closed around Elpida’s throat. Elpida felt razorblades tear her windpipe open, cold air rushing in to freeze her gullet, blood gushing down her front and—

01110111 01100001 01101011 01100101
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Elpida woke up.

She awoke in her own bed, greeted by the muted colours and soft lights of the dormitory, within the pilot project cadre’s private quarters.

She was wide awake. She remembered everything.

“Fuck.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Wakey-wakey, Commander! It’s time for your scheduled getting-eaten-by-a-masochistic-Necromancer session!

But Elpida can leave anytime she likes, right? Right?! Right.

Ahem. Well then! Welcome to the meaty innards of arc 13! We’re really getting up to speed now. Behind the scenes, things are shaping up quite nicely; I suspect arc 13 is gonna be maybe 10-12 chapters, pretty chunky, certainly, but we’ve got some major POV shifts and jumps and things coming up as well. Don’t worry, for readers of my other serial, we’re not about to spend 38 chapters in Elpida’s dream (and it’s not a dream, it’s software! Lykke just explained it!), though we might be there for another chapter yet. We’ll see!

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

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

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

And thank you, dear readers, for reading my little story! I hope you are having as much fun reading about these wild zombie girls as I am writing about them. We have so much yet to go! So many graves to dig up and so many bones to rebuild. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

Content Warnings

Sadomasocism
Sexualised violence (sort of, I’m erring on the side of caution here)

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida woke up.

She awoke in her own bed, greeted by the muted colours and soft lights of the dormitory, within the pilot project cadre’s private quarters. A trio of ceiling fans turned lazily in the high shadows. Ventilation ducts whispered with a trickle of warm recycled air. Distant vibrations murmured upward through the layers of the city, so gentle they could only be felt during the liminal moments between sleep and awakening. She knew exactly where she was — nestled in the core of the Legion District on spire-floor 186, surrounded by miles of living metal, acres of sturdy bone, and endless sinews of hot, red, wet machine-meat, deep in the heart of Telokopolis.

She was wide awake. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been asleep, which was odd.

Elpida lifted her head from the pillow, wiping the crust of sleep from her eyes with her left hand. The suite of screens at the far end of the dorm was switched off, as always while the cadre slept, all except for one screen which showed the current time in big grey numbers — just past oh-six-hundred in the morning.

The dormitory was still and empty. So early? Elpida frowned.

She kicked the sheets away from her naked body and moved to climb out of bed, but then discovered that she was not alone in the dormitory after all; she was not even alone in her own bed.

Howl was entangled with Elpida. She was snuggled down against Elpida’s side, concealed beneath the bedsheets, fast asleep. Howl’s strong, compact legs were hooked around Elpida’s right thigh, her arms hugging Elpida’s waist; her head lay on Elpida’s shoulder, dusting Elpida’s collarbone with white hair, staining Elpida’s skin with a patch of long-dried drool from her parted lips. Elpida’s right arm was pinned beneath Howl’s body weight, gone numb and tingly from nerve compression.

“Howl?” Elpida croaked. “Howl?”

Howl grunted, but refused to wake.

Elpida disentangled herself from Howl’s embrace, pulling her right arm out from underneath Howl’s weight. Howl grumbled with disturbed sleep, then rolled over without further complaint.

Elpida stood up, bare feet flexing on the warm floor tiles, naked skin freshened by the open air. She started her usual sequence of wake-up stretches, then stopped to spread the fingers of her right hand and massage the wrist. The whole limb was still numb with pins and needles.

The rest of the dormitory beds were empty, though they had obviously been slept in; blankets and sheets were rumpled, pushed back, left in their usual disarray. Discarded clothing lay all over the place, a disciplinary problem Elpida had never managed to solve, not least because she indulged in that herself. The dorm smelled as it always did — of her sisters, of sweat and sleep and sex.

But the air was silent and the beds were cold, all except Howl’s soft breathing in Elpida’s own bunk.

Had Elpida forgotten some important muster or briefing? She didn’t think so, she would never have done that, though she could not recall precisely what the cadre’s schedule was for today, nor what they had all done last night. There were no emergency warnings flashing up on the screens, no alarms blaring out in the Legion District, no Old Lady Nunnus growling at her from the intercom panel by the door. Had her other sisters scurried off on some early morning escapade, leaving only Howl to distract the Commander, likely by shoving a sleep-addled groin in her face? Elpida smiled at the thought, but shook her head; if that was the plan, Howl was doing an uncharacteristically bad job. No, if the others were up to something, they would have left Metris and Silla, maybe Third too, or perhaps just Quio pretending to be half-asleep in one of the beds, bare arse stuck up in the air. Howl would be leading the mischief, not left behind as the distraction.

Struck by a sudden urge she did not understand, Elpida reached over to the nearest bunk and picked up a discarded t-shirt — with her left hand, because her right still felt numb and clumsy. She pressed the sweat-stained fabric to her face, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. Yeva mostly, with a bit of Fii. Had the two shared that bed last night?

Elpida shuddered. Her eyes watered and her chest tightened. She didn’t know why. She’d seen both Yeva and Fii last night — hadn’t she?

“Where is everybody?” she said out loud.

Howl shifted on the bed. “Elps, you gotta wake up.”

Elpida turned and looked down at Howl, at her petite form snuggled beneath the covers, her eyes still closed, her short shock of white hair crushed against the pillow.

“What are you talking about?” Elpida said. “I’m up. You’re the one dozing.”

Howl sighed into the pillow, barely awake.

“Where is everybody?” Elpida repeated. “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

Howl didn’t reply for a long moment. Elpida assumed she had fallen back asleep. But then Howl muttered, “Whatever, fuck-nuts. Just do what you gotta do. I’ll hold the fort. Keep the troops in line. Take as long as you gotta. Just … just come back. K’?”

Howl trailed off, then ended on a little snore. She rolled over onto her front, fast asleep.

Elpida sighed. Maybe there was a prank brewing. She bent down and kissed Howl’s hair before stepping away from the bed.

She couldn’t be bothered to drag on a pilot-suit base layer, let alone the whole kit, but she did grab a pair of shorts from another bed and pull them up to cover her hips — they smelled of Kit, which was nice. Nobody cared about nudity in the cadre, but she never knew when they might have a visitor in the mess hall or the briefing room. Today was already starting off weird; she didn’t need some Legionarie’s eyeballs popping out at the sight of her naked groin.

Elpida left Howl behind with a backward glance, then walked through the maze of bunks, opened the door, and stepped out into the corridor. Freshly recycled air pumped from the overhead ducts. The floor was warm beneath her naked feet, body temperature to match her needs. The muted silver and dark cream and soft treelike greens of the corridor set off a terrible longing in her chest.

But a longing for what? This was just the main hallway in the cadre’s private quarters, nothing special, a fragment of her life she never really thought about.

Elpida took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. She was going funny.

She couldn’t hear anybody in the briefing room, the rec room, the mess hall, the armoury, the gym, the shower room, or any of the other little facilities which made up the cadre’s private quarters. She even strained to hear if anybody was in medical, but the whole complex was voiceless. The only sound she could hear was mechanical. At the edge of Elpida’s hearing, at a frequency most baseline humans would not have noticed, she detected a slight buzz — the hum of a screen left switched on, probably in the rec room.

She decided to check there first; this would not be the first time some of her sisters had slept in rec. She slapped the palm pad. The door slid open.

Elpida froze.

The big screen at the rear of the rec room glowed with baleful light. It showed a dark place, full of dead things — undead things, with bionic limbs and sharp teeth, clad in scraps of scavenged armour, clutching half-broken weapons in scabby, filthy claws. The undead wretches were sprawled about on a floor of black metal, gnawing on human flesh and blood-stained bones. No sound came from the screen, only silence.

A figure was waiting for Elpida, facing the doorway, framed by the dark light of the screen, bordered by the row of sofas and chairs, standing next to one of the wide tables in the middle of the room.

Eight feet tall, a massive frame more metal than meat, bristling with cyborg limbs and implanted weapons. The skin of her face was smooth bio-plastic in a fluid pattern of dark blue and soft black. A pair of bionic eyes the colour of raw sunlight peered out from that face, framed by hair made of spun gold. She wore plates of carapace armour, dirty and stained with soot and blood. She carried a rifle over her shoulders, a heavy weapon designed to punch through a hardshell suit or cut smaller Silico in half.

The figure neither moved nor spoke. She just stared, hands clasped behind her back.

Elpida realised who the cyborg was. Relief and rest faded away to nothing, replaced with cold familiarity. Reality suddenly made sense.

Elpida sighed, strode forward into the room, and said, “This is a dream.”

Persephone — the eight-foot tall revenant who had formed the most attentive audience to her performance with Sanzhima — opened her mouth and spoke in a buzzing machine-voice, deep and crunchy.

“How can you tell?”

Elpida replied, “Because this is Telokopolis, my past, but you’re from the future, my present. Because I passed out in Pheiri’s airlock, once it was safe to let go and give in. I remember passing out. I’m unconscious.”

Persephone said, “It is a very vivid dream.”

Elpida nodded. She raised her right hand and stared at her open palm. The creases were perfect. Her hand was numb. “That it is. Which means it might be more than a dream.”

Persephone said, “And why would you dream of me?”

Elpida laughed, shook her head, and walked over to the table which Persephone stood near. The tabletop was scattered with the usual detritus — books, data readers, bits of disassembled equipment, a piece of discarded underwear; Elpida hesitated over a scrap of poetry by Kos, and some kind of metal sculpture she recognised as Snow’s handiwork.

The middle of the table had been cleared off, allowing a chess set to stand alone. It was the wooden chess set she had received as a gift from a Legion general, the single most expensive object the cadre owned — with the exception of their combat frames, which were neither truly theirs, nor possible to own. Elpida had dreamed of this chess set once before, dreamed of playing chess with Howl. But this time there was no opposing player; Persephone stood at an angle to the board, not opposite. The pieces were positioned as if in mid-game, white toward Elpida, black on the other side.

Elpida sat down in the chair before the chess set and put her bare feet up on the edge of the table. She examined Persephone for a moment; the cyborg giant wore no expression.

“I’m not really dreaming of you,” Elpida said. “You don’t even sound like yourself. I didn’t have much time to get to know you, but you’re mostly arrogant, brash, bold. You wouldn’t stand there asking me bland questions. I’m not dreaming about you at all, you’re just a … ” She faltered, then swallowed. “A symbol. My subconscious, talking to itself. You might also be a Necromancer trick, but I doubt that. This is all me, doing this to myself.”

Persephone raised a bio-plastic eyebrow. “Oh?”

Elpida lowered her eyes to the chess set and put her forehead in one hand. “Is this really what my subconscious wants me to do? Justify myself, to myself? Haven’t I done too much of that already?”

Persephone tossed a twisted cage of metal onto the table, blackened by fire and blast damage, covered in splashes of cooked blood. The bomb vest.

“You could always wake up,” said Persephone.

Elpida shook her head. “No.”

“Then why are you dreaming about me?”

Elpida folded her arms and looked back up at Persephone; those false sunlight eyes told her nothing. “Because everything I just did, every risk I just took, it was all to impress you.”

Persephone raised both eyebrows. She opened her mouth.

A second voice interrupted from Elpida’s left, tinkling with the threat of giggles — “Oooooh, a crush, on her?! Absolute scandal, zombie!”

Elpida turned and stared at the thing which sat coiled upon the cushions of an armchair.

Blonde hair fell in thick and bouncy ringlets across bared shoulders the colour of fresh cream. Clad in a sheer white dress which clung to her flesh, very little of the figure’s form was left to the imagination — full chest, wide hips, narrow little waist which looked painfully easy to snap. Long bare legs were crossed one over the other, ankles encircled with white ribbons, tied into stiff bows of shiny silk all the way up her calves, feet cradled in neat little slippers. A pair of bright green eyes shone like emeralds in a dark room, set in a plush, plump, pinkish face, with lips and lids and lashes all painted, eyelids fluttering with amusement. A white choker encircled her throat. White gloves of delicate lace encased her slender arms and long-fingered hands. A white bow sat in her hair, pulling the great mass of gold into a ponytail.

Lykke — Necromancer, once again restored to human form, dressed like an upper spire socialite eager for a party — drew a white-gloved fingertip over her lower lip.

“Hiiiiiii, zombie,” she purred. “Got a crush?”

Elpida said, “And what part of my psyche do you represent?”

The dream of Lykke shrugged her naked shoulders. She kissed a fingertip and pressed the air as if passing it to Elpida. “Search me, zombie.” She flexed on the armchair, arching her back, pressing her body toward Elpida. “I mean that literally. Come over here and frisk me. Stick your hands into my—”

“Howl is asleep in the dorms,” Elpida said. “I can go get her if you like. She’ll be happy to frisk you.”

Lykke’s flirtatious smile slipped. She glanced at the door with disquiet fear, then swallowed hard and slumped back into the armchair, waving away the suggestion with one lace-gloved hand.

“Behave,” Elpida said. “I don’t care if you represent some part of my mind.”

Lykke pouted, eyes averted. “I wish you had a crush on me, instead.”

Elpida sighed. “And to answer your question seriously — or rather, my own question, posed back at me, no.” She returned her gaze to Persephone. “Not Persephone specifically. She’s just the most prominent example in my mind, because she was standing at the front of the crowd. I had to impress you. I had to win you over.”

Lykke started to speak again, but Persephone glanced at her, sunlight eyes burning against the backdrop of the screen. Lykke snorted with irritation, but said nothing.

Persephone said, “Win me over?”

Elpida leaned back in her chair again, gazing past Persephone and Lykke, past the dream, at the big screen which showed reality — a view of the tomb chamber, or at least as Elpida imagined the tomb chamber, full of zombies.

“The bottom feeders,” she said. “The scavengers. The starving, the hungry, the abandoned, the lost. They’re easy. I can give them some meat now, promise them more meat in the future, offer them protection, security, empathy, understanding, and they’ll flock to me. To us. To the promise of Telokopolis. They have nothing, no better options, and they’ve experienced the utter desolation of living as prey. To them, I can offer a better future, and I don’t need to do much to prove that.” She turned her eyes back to Persephone. “But you?” Elpida shook her head. “The others out there, the ones in powered armour, the ones who’ve been successful, the predators, the raiders, the high-end cyborgs, all those who have carved out some real power in the nanomachine afterlife. I can’t just offer you meat and expect you to buy in. You can take meat. I suspect that if I told you about the meat-plant project, you might not even want to be part of the result. Why scratch for sustenance when you can just take what you want from the bodies of other zombies?” She shook her head again. “No, I had to prove to you that my conviction is stronger than death. I had to prove that my alternative is not just superior, it’s inevitable, and it is in your own best interest not to resist. I had to show you that Telokopolis is forever.”

“You speak with such clarity,” said Persephone.

Elpida sighed. She rubbed her chest, over her heart. “This is a dream. The burnout, the pressure, it’s suspended here, somehow.”

Lykke murmured: “Dream, dream, dream on, zombie.”

Persephone said, “You don’t seem happy with your success.”

Elpida felt a tug inside her chest. “Success?”

Persephone nodded. “I was impressed. You saw my face at the front of the crowd, as your comrades led you back into your machine. You saw that I was surprised. You hope this surprise will kindle belief. There were many like me in that crowd, even the ones who left. They witnessed. They know.”

Elpida shook her head. “It doesn’t feel like victory.”

“You saved the girl.”

Lykke slapped the arm of her chair. “You did! Zombie, you rescued that little mewling lamb. You pulled her from the brink of death. You know you did! Why are you whining about it now? You deserve a triumph!”

Elpida stared at Lykke’s glittering lashes and shiny lips, at the cheeky smile which curled on her face, the flush of arousal in her cheeks.

“She didn’t want to be saved,” Elpida said. “She begged me for a bullet in the head, and I told her no. I put her through more pain.”

Persephone said, “None can truly consent to death when conditions like ours prevail over all.”

Elpida shook her head. “I made that choice, I took it from her. And more, I risked everybody’s safety, everybody’s life. I risked my own, which puts all of them at risk. I blew up my arm, which seriously reduces my own operational capability for weeks, or months, or maybe more. I put everything on the line.”

Persephone said, “It was the only choice.”

Elpida nodded. “Yes, and that’s the problem. It was the only choice, which means it was no choice at all. I’m not being a proper leader anymore. I’m not acting like their Commander. I’m failing, because I’m … I’m becoming something else.”

A double thump of heavy boots came from the doorway to the rec room, followed by a familiar clack-clack-squeak sound, a sound that Elpida had known almost her whole life.

A voice spoke, a hard and scratchy crackle clawing up from an aged throat, a chunk of fire-warmed granite wrapped in felt.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” asked Old Lady Nunnus.

Elpida shot to her feet, standing to attention.

“Ma’am!”

Nunnus was already striding into the rec room with her swaying iron gait, a heavy double-thump of tightly laced combat boots augmented by her automatic crutch — a cage of padded metal around her left forearm, the support of the crutch adjusting back and forth to the needs of her ravaged body. Nunnus was mostly bionics from the hips down, her hipbone itself fused and ruined by Silico weapons and the toxins of the green, decades before Elpida had been decanted from a uterine replicator. She walked straight-backed despite the old war wounds and her incredible age. Grey eyes pinned Elpida, sharp as needle points behind wire-frame glasses, peering out from within a heavily-lined face, topped with bone-white hair cut short upon a liver-spotted scalp.

Old Lady Nunnus — General Symphora Eupraxis Nunnus — was ancient, even by the standards of the upper spire, the Legion, the Civitas, or even the bone-speakers’ guild. She had been old before the pilot program’s first genetic engineers had been born. Elpida was never certain of her exact age, but she knew Nunnus was well north of a century and a half, her body sustained by multiple rejuvenation treatments, extensive bionic work, and what Nunnus herself jokingly called ‘load-bearing tumours’. Her intellect was sustained by a sheer bloody-minded refusal to die — and by her position as the most senior, most well-respected, most well-decorated Legion general who held to the ideals and hopes of the expeditionary faction of the Civitas. Without her support, the pilot program would not have survived the ‘failure’ of Elpida and her sisters in their early days. Elpida often suspected that she and her sisters were, in turn, what sustained Nunnus.

Nobody in the cadre called Nunnus ‘General’; everybody outside the cadre did, even the early seeds of the Covenanters. Nunnus had not worn a proper uniform in decades. She stomped about Legion barracks and staff meeting rooms and the halls of the Civitas in a long silver-grey skirt the colours of her old Legion posting, wearing a cold-weather jumper and a pair of combat boots.

Nobody in the cadre called her ‘mother’, either. But as this dream of Nunnus stomped into the rec room, Elpida felt tears prickling in her eyes.

The real Nunnus had died a year before the cadre. Heart attack. Elpida had always known it was poison.

Nunnus came to a stop just short of the table, frowning at Elpida. “Well?”

“Ma’am.” Elpida swallowed. There was a lump in her throat. “Ma’am, I … ”

“You do know I’m not real?” Nunnus said. “This is a dream. Correct? I’m just a phantom, built of your own memories. Don’t get verklempt over me.”

“I … I don’t care. It’s good to see you, Ma’am.”

Nunnus held her gaze, eyes a deep, warm grey. Eventually she grunted. “Yes, I expect it would be. Now, stop ‘ma’am’ing at me and answer the question. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

Elpida hesitated. “Because … ”

Because I failed you. I failed the cadre. Everyone died, because I made the wrong choices. And now I’m making the wrong choices again, but there’s no other way, there’s no other choice, there’s no other road back to Telokopolis, and I’m not made for—

“And sit down,” Nunnus snapped. “You think I need you jumping to attention every time I walk into the room?”

Elpida nodded. She pulled a chair out for this dream of the Old Lady, and Nunnus sat down with a little grunt, sighing at the creaking of her old bones. Elpida followed her orders, sitting back down in her own chair.

“Well?” Nunnus asked.

Elpida said, “I’m doing this to myself, because … because I am acting like a poor excuse for a Commander.”

“Unpack that statement,” Nunnus ordered.

Elpida couldn’t help herself, she smiled. ‘Unpack that statement’. How many times had she heard those words? The familiarity unlocked her tongue.

“As Commander — whether in the cadre of my own sisters, or as leader of a group of undead girls who need me — my first duty is to those who stand at my side. My sisters. The children of Telokopolis. My comrades, my girls. I should be prioritising them, protecting them, doing my best to lead them. But what I did back in that chamber, that wasn’t … ” Elpida had to pause, swallow, and take a breath. Nunnus waited. “I wasn’t putting them first. I risked everything, their safety, their lives, my own life, our security, for the sake of this … this other thing. This thing greater than me. Telokopolis. The promise of Telokopolis that I’ve made. And maybe that was the right choice, but it was also the only choice. I couldn’t see any other. And that means I should not be in command. Not in the way I have been.”

Nunnus leaned back. The chair creaked. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Ma’am?”

Nunnus held Elpida’s gaze, the way she always had, soft and knowing and without judgement. Everyone else thought Nunnus was a hard case, a sharp-tongued disciplinarian.

“You’re doing a very good job of enumerating your perceived failures,” Nunnus said. “But that is not what I asked for. I did not ask you for the reasons you’ve retreated from your responsibilities. I asked for an explanation for this.” She cast her eyes up and around. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“I don’t understand, ma’am.”

Nunnus sighed. “Your girls need you. You are their Commander. But you’ve locked yourself away. You never did this while I was alive. Why now?”

“With respect, ma’am, you are incorrect. They don’t need me.”

Nunnus frowned. “Really.”

Elpida went on. “Right now, they’re better off without me. I’ve breached their trust, they can tell that something is wrong with me, that I’m being driven by this … this other, contrary priority. With the cadre, I made every mistake possible, because I was trying to protect them, to protect us. I chose wrong. Right now, my new comrades, they’re better off with me stepping back from command. Kagami, Serin, Ilyusha, Atyle, they can put together a strike against the Death’s Heads, they don’t need me getting in the way. Not like I am now, not with how I’ve been behaving.”

Nunnus frowned harder. “I’ve never heard such nonsense from you. You are the most capable Commander I’ve ever known. Those girls, they’re relying on you to lead them, even if you make mistakes, even if your judgement is clouded. That’s why you don’t lead alone, by pure authority. You lead with consent, because you have their trust—”

“I don’t think I do, not—”

“Your plan worked,” Nunnus said. “It was wildly irresponsible of you, but it worked. You took a calculated gamble, and while I would not recommend taking such a gamble a second time, to win and abandon your cause now is the height of foolishness. You know this. You won. Exploit that opening.”

“I’m not abandoning anything, I just—”

“Then why are you here?” Nunnus pressed. “Why are you hiding?”

“To keep myself out of everyone’s way. Because, given the opportunity, I will do it again, because it’s the only choice. Without me, my new comrades will hunt down those who attacked us. With me … the situation becomes unpredictable.”

Nunnus raised her eyebrows. Persephone tilted her head. Elpida glanced between the two of them. Both dreams, both fake. Over in the armchair, Lykke stared on with shining eyes, rapt with attention, lace-gloved hands clasped beneath her chin.

Elpida sighed. “Is this really the best my subconscious can muster?”

Nunnus smiled, a crinkle of her ancient lips. “You’re doing your best, my girl. You need to trust yourself more. Right now you are doubting.”

Elpida almost laughed, shaking her head. “I got it right first time, Ma’am? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Perhaps.”

Lykke broke out into a peal of giggles. “Is this really what you tell yourself, zombie?! A pep talk from mummy? Isn’t working very well, is it?”

Elpida snapped around, scowling. She still couldn’t tell what Lykke was meant to represent.

Lykke shot her a glittering wink. “What you need is a whirlwind one-night stand to lift your mood. A good hard railing up against the edge of a hundred-floor drop. Look at you!” She ran her eyes up over Elpida’s almost-naked body. “You’re already stripped down and ready for it. And you’re so pent-up, zombie. I can smell it from a mile away, like a bitch in heat.”

“Huh,” Elpida grunted. “Not entirely untrue.”

“When’s the last time you got properly turned inside out and upside down? Not by any of your ‘new’ ‘comrades’, eh? You want to do that redhead one, don’t you? But you’re worried her quivering childhood friend will try to strangle you in your sleep! Why not fuck both of them? Or fight one, fuck the other? Hell, you could—”

“Stop. I get the—”

“Have one on each hand, one on each—”

“Stop!”

“At ease,” said Nunnus.

Elpida relaxed.

Lykke giggled — a light, tinkling, glass-like sound — and said, “Oh yes, please do. I’m all easy for you, Elpida.”

Nunnus said, “It was a good question, even if it was from an unreliable source.” She glanced at Lykke; the Necromancer winked. “You don’t seem to be feeling very confident, Elpida. This conversation isn’t helping you. Is it?”

Elpida gestured for permission to stand. Nunnus nodded. Elpida got out of her chair and started to pace the length of the rec room, glancing up at the big screen which showed the zombies back in the tomb chamber.

“I can’t take the pressure,” she said eventually. “I’ve had trouble admitting it to myself for months now. But back there, after the bomb, after everybody dragged me back inside Pheiri, I … I passed out. Not from exhaustion. From failure. I don’t have any control, not anymore. I keep taking risks, because there’s no other option. But I wasn’t made for this.”

Nunnus grunted. “Mm. But you’re doing it anyway.”

“And it’s burning me out. Howl was right. But at the same time, what other choices do I have?” Elpida strode the other way across the length of the rec room. She knew she was talking to herself, none of these dream apparitions were real, but perhaps this was what she needed. “The storm, the tomb, Eseld’s sudden reappearance, Shilu being dumped into our laps, all of it — if only this had all happened a few months later, with the meat plant project bearing ripe fruit. Then I could offer those zombies real hope, real material support. Right now all I can do is balance everything on this knife’s edge, relying on theatrics, rhetorical tricks, and risky pay-offs.” Elpida shook her head. “I wasn’t cut out to do this. I wasn’t made for it. I was made for commanding a small team, not this … this … ”

“Politics,” said Persephone.

“Mm,” Nunnus grunted. “Sowing the seeds of future institutions.”

Elpida shook her head. “No, not that, not exactly, though that’s part of it. It’s more like … ”

“The great game,” purred Lykke.

Elpida stopped pacing. She pointed at Lykke. The Necromancer’s lips curled in a little red smile. She coiled in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her exposed legs.

“Yes,” said Elpida. “Yes. A great game.”

She stepped back toward the table and reached for the chess set. Her hand hovered over the white end of the board — her end? She hesitated over a raven, a wall, the white empress, but then settled on the piece which represented the city itself, an elegant spire carved from pale wood. She plucked the white city from the board and held it up, framed by the screen and the vision of the chamber in the tomb.

“I feel like I’m a playing piece,” Elpida said. “An important one, perhaps, but still just a piece. I can’t even see the board. The meat plants, getting Shilu on our side, feeding the zombies, rallying them by saving Sanzhima — are these moves, or not? Are they the right moves? I don’t know, but they’re the only moves I can make. I’m clinging to every move I can possibly make, and every move has to be perfect, because I cannot see the board. I am fighting blind. I am blind.”

“Oooooh,” Lykke moaned. “Poor baby.”

Elpida ignored that. She stared at the white city piece in her hand. “There is a player on my side. Or at least, I have to believe there is. I have to, or … or none of this makes any sense. I have to believe the city is at my back. Telokopolis is at work, inside the network, and she has my back.”

Nunnus said, “Do you really believe that?”

Elpida could not answer. When awake, she would never allow herself to entertain this seed of doubt. But asleep, unconscious, in a dream, she could not turn away from the playing piece in her hand.

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I only wish I knew. I wish I knew if I was doing the right thing or not. I wish I understood her plan. I … I wish I … I wish I knew.”

In Elpida’s peripheral vision, Lykke’s eyes flickered to the doorway.

Elpida turned quickly. She caught a glimpse of a figure as it stepped out of sight — a bone-white dress fluttering over dark red flesh.

Elpida’s heart leapt.

She rushed to the rec room door and burst out into the corridor, but there was nobody there, only a lingering scent of blood and warm skin, so quickly washed away by the recycled air from the ventilation system — and a new corridor entirely.

The end of the little hallway — the one she knew so well, with all the doors which led off to other parts of the cadre’s private quarters, which should have terminated in the door to the showers — now opened out into a high, wide, vaulted corridor, like the abandoned places in the thick centre of Telokopolis, down in the Skirts. The oldest parts of the city, where her bones and her flesh lay so close to the surface. The roots from which she had been grown, by divine processes which none in Elpida’s time understood.

Exposed bone lined those walls, yellow and crusted with mineral build-up, eroded here and there by great age, rising in sweeping curves toward the pointed ceiling. Membranes of warm flesh throbbed and pulsed, carrying the blood of the city, casting a deep crimson glow on the corridor below.

Far ahead, a flicker of white dress vanished around a corner.

“It’s her,” Elpida whispered.

She glanced back into the rec room. Persephone nodded. Lykke examined her own fingernails, suddenly bored. Nunnus said, “You wanted certainty. Go get it.”

Elpida left the rec room behind, walked the length of the familiar corridor, and then plunged into the crimson light of that vaulted hall. She considered pausing to duck into the armoury and fetch a sidearm, but this was a dream, and the figure she followed was the one she trusted more than anything, even herself. She crept forward, beneath the yellow layers of the ribs and through the glowing machine-meat of the secret innards of the city. A chill crept into her feet from the metal floor. Goose pimples rose on her naked skin. The air here was cold and still and smelled of iron.

She strained to hear a sound from up ahead. Was that the patter of dainty feet on unpainted metal, or the spasm of a struggling heart, or—

A footfall from behind. Elpida turned quickly.

Lykke smirked, giggling in silence, a finger pressed to her lips.

The Necromancer must have followed Elpida out of the rec room, but Persephone and Nunnus had not done the same. Up close, Lykke looked like she was dressed for a night of drinking and flirting, with those silken white ribbons about her bare legs and those lace gloves enclosing her arms, her sunny blonde hair up in a bouncing ponytail, her dress a second skin against her curves. Green eyes turned black in the crimson light. The blood-red illumination of Telokopolis dyed the Necromancer a deep and bloody scarlet.

She was very short. Elpida had not noticed that before, when Howl had beaten Lykke black and blue.

“I’m busy,” Elpida said. “I need to go meet—”

“Tch!” Lykke tutted. “Oh, don’t follow that old thing. You’re being led by the nose, zombie.”

Elpida shook her head. “Why follow me? I’m still not clear on what you represent.”

Lykke clasped her hands before her groin, upper arms pushing her breasts together. She dipped her chin and looked at Elpida from upturned eyes. “Do you want to know a secret, zombie?” she whispered. “Just between you and me. Our little secret. For nobody else.”

Elpida considered leaving this apparition behind, but perhaps she had misunderstood the situation. She needed to be sure.

“Go ahead,” Elpida said. “Tell me your secret.”

Lykke smirked, eyes twinkling. She leaned in close, one hand to her mouth as if shielding her words from eavesdroppers.

“I’m really here,” she whispered.

Lykke quickly leaned back again, biting her lower lip and wiggling her eyebrows.

“But this is a dream, isn’t it?” Elpida said.

Lykke rolled her eyes. “No, no, no! No, it’s not. It’s not a dream! You think dreams matter this much? You think I’d be here for a dream?” Lykke sighed and tutted. “Well, yes, it is, but also it’s not, but that’s also incredibly boring to—”

“Enlighten me.”

Lykke paused, biting her lip.

“Now, Necromancer,” Elpida said. “If you’re really here, why haven’t you killed me?”

Lykke’s lips sparkled back into a little smirk; so easy to bait.

“Becauseeeee,” she purred, “I don’t want to! Look, this is all a ‘dream’, yes, but I’m actually here. You’re in your own local network, just the part of it made out of your own body and mind. Normally zombies don’t do this, but you’ve got that … ” Lykke’s lips curled for a second. “That horrid gremlin along with you, and she’s given you more room to play with than little zombies should usually have. So, welcome!” Lykke wiggled her fingers. “It’s like I’ve snuck into your bedroom!”

Elpida nodded. “Then what are you, a virus? A bad thought?”

Lykke sighed, flopped her arms, and rolled her head back. “No, I’m me! It’s Lykke.” She batted sun-white lashes at Elpida, dyed bloody by the light. “Don’t say you’ve already forgotten me, zombie. Unless I’ve lost track of time, it wasn’t that long ago you and I met each other. Have I really slipped from your memory so fast? I’m not certain my heart could take such a bruising. I would expire, right here, and then you’d have to carry me to bed. Will you carry me to bed, Elpida? Or … ” Lykke bit her lower lip and reached out with one lace-gloved hand. She drew a fingertip down Elpida’s chest. “Or maybe we could dance, right here?”

Elpida said, “Can you hurt me, if this is inside the network?”

Lykke pressed her fingertip harder, pressing the white lace against the soft flesh of Elpida’s chest.

“Oh, not really,” she mused, as if disappointed. “I’m projecting, that’s all. I’m nowhere near you, out there in the physical. I can’t achieve actual direct network access to you, I’m just … riding in on a stray wave, so to speak. You and I might tussle a little.” Her face fell into a strange, girlish melancholy. “But we can’t dance for real. Only within the limits of your imagin—”

Elpida slammed her left fist into Lykke’s stomach.

Her knuckles sank into the Necromancer’s slender belly, sliding across the sheer white dress.

Lykke’s eyes flew wide with shock and pain. The breath burst from her lungs in a choking gasp. She started to double up.

Elpida lashed out with her right hand and grabbed Lykke by the throat, shoving her backward, pinning her against the yellowed bone of Telokopolis. The Necromancer weighed almost nothing. Her legs dangled, one slipper falling to the floor as she kicked and writhed, trying to find a foothold, feet glancing harmlessly off Elpida’s legs. Her hands flew to Elpida’s wrist, tugging at her forearm. Green eyes burned in the red shadows, bulging from their sockets.

Elpida held her there for ten long seconds, testing her hypothesis. Nothing happened — just Lykke, fluttering between flesh and bone.

“And you can’t escape,” Elpida said, voicing her theory. “Good. You’re going to tell me everything I want to know. Understand?”

She slackened her grip, just enough for Lykke to suck down a wheezing breath.

“Y-yes—” Lykke gasped. “Ye—”

Elpida dropped her.

Lykke hit the floor in a heap, heaving and panting, choking and coughing, drooling from slack lips. She struggled into a sitting position, veiled behind her golden hair.

Elpida said, “Howl’s pinned you somehow, hasn’t she? Or you came back, when you know you can’t get away. You’re going to tell me everything I want to know, Necromancer. And then we’re going to walk down this corridor and … meet … ”

Lykke raised her face — cheeks flushed red, pupils dilated with pleasure, quivering lips curling into a carnal smile.

“More!” she whined.

“Ah,” said Elpida. “Right.”

Lykke swallowed, bearing her throat, chest heaving with sharp and hitching breath. “Oh, little zombie. I can get away any time I like! But I’ll tell you anything, if you keep going. Grab me again, zombie. Hit me, choke me, throw me about! Whatever you want! Just please, let’s dance!”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

A dream? You wish this was a dream, Elpida. This is something so much worse – software.

We’re finally getting into the real meat of arc 13 now! Behind the scenes, the characters have once again completely derailed the plans I had, and I’m just sort of getting dragged along for the ride by a gaggle of hyperviolent zombie girls (which, hey, I’m not complaining about). Things are shaping up very nicely, though in some perhaps unexpected directions. We’ve still got a few POV jumps baked in, but this arc might actually be longer than I planned??? Maybe??? We’ll see!

Also, I have a little note on the upcoming schedule. We’ve just come off a break week, which means the usual 3-chapter chain – except, the third chapter happens to fall on the 26th of December, the day after Christmas. As of right now, I am planning to publish that chapter like normal, despite other commitments that week; if that happens to change for reasons beyond my control, I will try to let everybody know the week beforehand, or ASAP otherwise. But it should (should!) go up as normal!

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

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

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

And thank you, dear readers! As usual, as always, I couldn’t write this little story about zombie girls after the end of the world without all of you, the readers, here to watch it happen! So, thank you! Even now I still feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of this rotting world, there’s so much more to see, so many dark corners to explore. Seeya next chapter! Until then!

Content Warnings

Amputation
Surgery

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Victoria examined the stump of Elpida’s right arm.

The bomb had annihilated everything south of her elbow; the joint itself survived only as a shredded mass of skin flaps, shattered bone, and mangled cartilage. Melyn had done her best to tidy up the damage, slicing off any bits of flesh which lacked circulation, pulling out chunks of minced tissue, and extracting shards of blackened bone. Pira had assured everybody that zombies could not suffer gangrene — tissue death did not work the same for nanomachine biology. But Melyn had operated as if on a real live human being, debriding cauterised flesh, suturing severed arteries, and discarding unsalvageable meat. None of that meat had been wasted, of course; every scrap was recycled, straight back into Elpida’s mouth. One grim advantage of being undead.

Now the stump was slathered in thick ointment, wrapped in dry gauze, and dressed with several layers of clean white bandage. The infirmary still reeked of cooked human flesh.

Vicky had seen worse wounds in life — gut wounds, head wounds, sucking chest wounds; brain damage caused by pressure-wave concussions; soldiers blasted apart by artillery barrage, cut in two by high-powered autocannons, melted by white phosphorus, or burnt to cinders by the clinging jelly of napalm. She’d seen worse wounds on Elpida before — she’d watched over Elpida’s seemingly lifeless corpse, shot through the heart by the monster they’d fought outside their own tomb. Vicky herself had suffered almost as badly from that fight, her own arm mangled beyond mortal recovery, only saved by the horrible miracle of zombie biology.

But there was something different about Elpida’s arm just gone, just like that. Nothing left to stick or stitch onto the end of the stump.

Vicky had personally scraped the charred remains of Elpida’s forearm off the floor of the tomb, picking morsels of burnt bone out of the twisted wreckage of the bomb-vest. The resulting handfuls of blackened meat had not seemed large enough to account for a whole human arm and hand, let alone the right arm of the Commander.

That had gone down Elpida’s throat as well, bones and all.

Six inches further up from the dressing was the start of Elpida’s bionic upper arm — a ‘pass-through’ bionic, as she had once explained, passing blood and lymph to her biological forearm. The bionic was a sleek collection of bio-plastic plates, in the exact same copper-brown as Elpida’s real skin. Apparently she had woken with it, back in the tomb, upon resurrection. All too easily forgotten. Vicky rubbed at her own chest, over her heart — her bionic heart, another easily forgotten advantage.

What was the point in the pass-through bionic now? Would Elpida regrow the limb as a full cybernetic arm? Would she abandon more of her simulated flesh?

Victoria looked up and met Elpida’s gaze.

Purple eyes were ringed with dark circles, pinched with echoes of pain, but not the least bit clouded.

Elpida was sitting on one of the two slab-beds in the infirmary, stripped to the waist, holding out her stump for inspection. Her mouth was curled in a subtle smirk.

“Had enough of a gander?” she purred.

Vicky cleared her throat and straightened up from the infirmary bed. “Yeah. Yeah, looks good. Thank you.”

“Looks good?” Kagami echoed from behind Vicky. “How can you even tell? Since when were you a field medic, Victoria? Did I miss that particular chapter in the story of your life, or have you been holding out on us this entire time?”

Elpida’s smirk grew wider.

Victoria turned to look over her shoulder, glad for an excuse to avert her eyes from Elpida’s naked body, away from that knowing grin.

Pheiri’s infirmary was very crowded. Kagami floated close to the bulkhead hatch, suspended on an invisible gravitic field from a trio of her little silver-grey drones, her black hair hanging down in a dark wave; she had her arms folded across her chest, lips compressed with irritation, eyes glaring daggers at everything and everybody. Pira was sat in one of the two fold-out metal chairs attached the walls, wedged at an awkward angle between dead medical machines and blood-stained countertops, her boots planted amid the dried blood on the floor; Pira wore her usual shuttered expression, giving away nothing, but giving Victoria plenty of cause for caution. Shilu — the Necromancer, thankfully still in her human guise — was standing about as far as possible from both the others, at the other end of the infirmary, which was not very far, considering the limits of the cramped space; she held her hands behind her back, feet braced at parade rest. A compliant captive.

The girl for whom Elpida had sacrificed her right arm was laid out on the second of the two slab-beds.

Sanzhima’s body was a wreck. She had been cut out of her clothes, intestines crammed back into her belly, stomach stitched shut. Her chest wounds were stuffed with gauze, right hand swaddled in a mitten of bandages, face plastered with ointment and dressings. She was wrapped in more bandages than the infirmary could spare. Long dark hair was still matted with her own blood, raked back out of her eyes, glued to her scalp. Her face was so puffy that Victoria couldn’t really judge what she looked like beneath all the damage.

Melyn had spent over two hours working on Sanzhima, after Hafina had carried her into the infirmary and lowered her onto the slab. Three times Victoria was certain that they’d lost Sanzhima, but Melyn was a miracle worker — three times the girl had gasped and screeched back to this unkind afterlife, clawing at the slab, writhing to get away, Haf holding her down, everybody shouting and screaming and slipping in the blood. All but Melyn, who had worked in busy silence, sure footed as a mountain goat.

Sanzhima was mercifully unconscious now, covered with a scratchy blue blanket. Her chest rose and fell with each ragged breath.

A half-empty empty cannister of raw blue nanomachines stood next to her head — the secret ingredient to her recovery.

Melyn had not fared well. Life-saving surgery seemed to take an emotional toll on the diminutive Artificial Human. She was slumped in the other fold-out metal seat, wedged into the narrow gap next to Sanzhima, bloody hands curled in her lap, big dark eyes staring at a point on the wall.

The distant shriek and wail of the hurricane whispered far beyond Pheiri’s hull, out there against the black walls of the tomb.

Victoria gave Kagami a look. “Kaga, don’t. We’re all too tired for this. Can it.”

Kagami glared back. “‘Can’ what, Victoria? You’re the one who said it ‘looks good’. Go on, tell us, why does it look good? What’s good about any of—”

Melyn said: “Dressing’s good. Good. Dressing’s good. Clean wound. Wound. Clean. Mm.”

It was the first time Melyn had spoken in over an hour. Her voice was robotic and sharp. She did not look up.

Victoria spread her hands in a shrug.

Kagami cleared her throat. “Yes, well. I’m not trying to disparage Melyn’s work, of course. That wasn’t what I was doing! It wasn’t! Okay?” She glanced down at Melyn. “I wasn’t insulting your work. Do you understand? Melyn? Melyn, are you … ? Tch!”

Pira said, “We get it.”

Kagami rounded on Pira instead, eyes spitting fire, jabbing with one finger. “You don’t have the right to give input, you insect. Shut—”

Victoria raised her voice. “Kaga! She does, we’ve been over this. Any of us—”

“She’ll probably suggest we finish the job!” Kagami snapped. “Pull the rest of the arm off, beat Elpida over the head with it. Why not?”

Victoria sighed, closed her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She was developing a headache. Not surprising. How many hours had she been awake?

Pira said, “Where’s Hafina?”

“How should I know?” Kagami snapped. “Do I look like Pheiri?”

Victoria opened her eyes again. She said, “Uh, crew compartment, last I checked, getting all her armour off. But that was … what, an hour ago? Why?”

Pira nodded a silent acknowledgement, got out of her chair, and walked over to the hatch. She turned her back to Kagami without flinching, which drew a silent snarl from Kagami’s lips. Victoria resisted another sigh; she couldn’t lose her temper right now, they couldn’t afford that. Pira stepped out into the crew compartment. A few moments later she re-entered, followed by Hafina. The six-armed giant was stripped out of her armour, mostly naked, her skin a slow kaleidoscope of shifting colours.

“Hello hello?” Haf said, swinging her head left and right. “Nasty times in here, yeah? Hear you lot shouting.”

Victoria tried to smile. “Don’t worry about that, Haf. Unless you want to give your own input. Everybody’s got a right to, uh, participate?”

Haf shook her head.

Pira gestured at Melyn. “Look after her, please. We can call you if either patient needs further medical attention.”

Hafina nodded and squeezed forward, massive in the cramped space of the infirmary, but graceful and careful despite her size. She plucked Melyn out of the little metal fold-out chair with four of her six arms, cradled the smaller ART to her chest, and carried her back into the crew compartment. Pira gently pulled the hatch almost closed.

“Good thinking,” said Victoria. “Good idea. She probably needed that. Melyn, I mean. We take her for granted.”

Pira shrugged and returned to her own seat.

Kagami tutted. “One problem down, three hundred and sixty five to go. Where do you want to start, Victoria? All the extra mouths to feed? Sleeping arrangements? How about a headcount, see if we’ve picked up any extra passengers? I’m sure we can find a nook or cranny to squeeze in another half-dozen.”

Victoria wanted to cross the room and drag Kagami out of her gravitic suspension field. She entertained a fantasy of slamming Kaga up against a wall and telling her to get the fuck back in line. But she knew that wouldn’t work, not like it worked for Elpida. Victoria could not do what the Commander did. She didn’t have it in her to do violence to Kaga.

Instead she took a deep breath and counted to ten inside her head before she spoke. “Kaga, I know you’re wound up. We’re all wound up. We’re all tense. We’re all uncomfortable. But I can’t deal with you doing this, not right now. I just can’t. Reel it in, or … ”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll head back to my bunk and crash for eight to ten hours. And you can deal with this by yourself.”

Kagami let her eyes slide to Pira, then to Shilu. “By myself? I wish.”

Shilu said, “I can go sit out on the hull, if you prefer.”

Kagami rolled her eyes. “Not what I meant.”

Victoria gestured at Shilu — at her eyes, then her feet. “No, you … you stay here, you stay where we can see you.”

Shilu nodded. “Understood.”

Kagami launched off again. “And what’s to ‘deal with’, anyway? The damage is done. Our suicidal moron of a Commander nearly achieved the glorious martyrdom she so obviously craves, we have yet another badly injured mouth to feed, and a crowd of malnourished charity cases outside who think she’s their cannibal messiah. Great! Wonderful! Let’s have a debriefing, hm? Shall we start with, oh, I don’t know, lessons learned—”

“Kaga—”

“—then we can move onto tips for future operations, swap some knowledge. Compare recipes for cooked arm meat—”

“Kagami, stop—”

“—and get some clarity on not setting off fucking bombs next time!”

Kagami stopped, red in the face, breathing hard.

Pira looked up and met Victoria’s eyes; she didn’t need to say anything to make her message clear — let her rant, she needs this.

But Victoria wasn’t having it. The anger and fear was one thing, but the critique was another.

“What else was Elpida supposed to do, huh?” Vicky said. “What other options did we have? She was right about that part, Kaga. We were in front of a crowd out there, a crowd to which we’d made promises. We had to pull that off, or all we’ve done here would be for nothing. She made the right choice.”

Kagami snorted. “All we’ve done here? Pray tell, Victoria, what exactly have we ‘done here’? Attracted a crowd of hangers-on who we can’t feed? Painted a great big target on our foreheads? Oh, I suppose we’ve spread the name ‘Telokopolis’ about, for all the good that does. Great work, really worth doing, certainly won’t be taken apart the moment this fucking storm ends!”

“None of that changes that Elpida did the right thing.”

“In the most stupid fashion possible!” Kagami shouted. “She could have used a drone, I’ve got plenty of them now! They’re expendable, that’s what they’re for! Or ask Hafina to do it, she’s got a few arms to spare. Hell, Ilyusha has armoured limbs, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten turned into chunky mince! Or Shilu, you — you can regenerate yours, I assume?”

“Within certain limits,” said Shilu. “But I had to do the cutting. And that had to be from the rear, there was no way to hold the vest together from the front.”

“Tch!” Kagami hissed. “Whatever. Bottom line, Elpida didn’t do any of those very sensible things, oh no. She just had to do it herself.”

“Yeah,” Victoria said. “And I still think that was the right choice. I’ll stand by that. You heard that crowd, you heard them cheering. It worked.”

“I also heard half of them screaming! And more than half fleeing the chamber. Shouting and screaming and a lot of running away. Was that part of Elpida’s plans?”

“That … that was inevitable,” Victoria admitted. “But the ones who stayed—”

“Want free meat!” Kagami snapped. “And they’ll stop getting it soon enough. Do you think they’ll keep on cheering then? Do you really think—”

“Elpida only heard the cheering,” said Elpida’s mouth.

Victoria braced herself before she turned back around. She was glad she did; Elpida was still wearing that weird little smirk.

But it wasn’t Elpida.

The Commander had not been present for hours, not since she had slumped into Pheiri’s rear airlock, clutching her stump, howling encouragement at the crowd beyond the picket line. The moment the ramp had thumped shut, Elpida had stumbled sideways as if passing out from pain and blood loss. She had caught herself with an awkward lurch, then straightened up, blinking like she was surprised to be there. It was not Elpida who had walked to the infirmary and sat down to wait. It was not Elpida who had hurried off to the control cockpit to give dangerous suggestions to Iriko. It was not Elpida who wore that smug look. Elpida would never have made that face.

She sat there, naked from the waist up in her tomb-grey trousers, face dirty with blood and soot, white hair raked back with her grimy left hand, the bandaged stump loose at her side.

Howl looked back from behind those purple eyes.

Kagami tutted. “Then she’s even more delusional than I feared. Great news, thank you.”

Howl let her eyes rove over Kagami, then Pira, then aside to Shilu, looking her up and down. Finally she returned to Victoria.

“What’s the matter, Vicky?” she said, still with that smirk. “Do I give you the creeps? Got you all itchy?”

Kagami sighed, loudly. Pira shifted in her seat.

Victoria shook her head. “No offence, Howl. It’s just really weird seeing you … piloting her, like this, in control. Like she’s here, but she’s not. She’s really not there, not at all?”

Howl shrugged with a little coquettish tilt of Elpida’s head. She raised Elpida’s left hand and wiggled the fingers, as if testing. “Nah, Elps ain’t here right now. You got all me, all the time. But hey, don’t sweat it, this is weird as shit for me too, no joke.”

Pira said: “Where is she?”

Howl tapped Elpida’s forehead with Elpida’s left index finger. “She’s no Necromancer, she hasn’t gone anywhere.”

Victoria sighed. “Yeah, but, metaphorically. Where is she? What’s she doing?”

Howl puffed out a bored sigh and rolled her eyes. “Sleeping. Unconscious. Down and out for the long count.”

“Have you tried ‘waking’ her?”

“Sure. She’s not ready to wake up though.”

“This has never happened before,” said Victoria. “Unless you’ve been up and walking around when she’s been sleeping.”

Howl gave Victoria a sullen look — another expression Elpida would never make. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, grease-head, but this is a bit fucking different to usual.”

“Ha!” Kagami barked. “At least Howl has a sense of humour. Hopefully more instinct for self-preservation than our ‘Commander’, too.”

Victoria closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, Howl was still right there.

“How long?” she said.

Howl grunted. “Eh?”

“How long is this likely to last? When is Elpida going to be back?”

Howl smirked. “Miss her already, huh? It’s okay, I can pretend for you. Snap out some commands, pat you on the head, all that shit.”

Victoria counted to ten inside her head, slowly. “How long?”

Howl dropped the smirk. “Search me, pussy-cat. I don’t fuckin’ know. She’s out. That’s all I got.”

Victoria stepped back, leaned against the other slab-bed, and raised her face to stare at the low grey ceiling. The infirmary was so cramped, there was nowhere else to go. She let out a deep sigh.

Kagami said, “You’re showing surprisingly little pain for somebody with a missing arm. More Necromancer trickery?”

“Yeah, I can block some of that. Stings a bit!”

Shilu said, “You should be able to speed up the regeneration process.”

“Pfffft,” Howl snorted. “Nah, I ain’t got that level of access. Might just pull the whole stupid bionic off. Start from scratch. Enrichment for Elps! Maybe that’ll wake her up, ha!”

Pira sat up in her chair. The metal creaked. “I think you know more than you’re letting on.”

Howl stared at Pira.

Kagami hissed, “Oh for fuck—”

Victoria said, “Let her speak.”

A moment of silence passed, filled with storm static. Pira said: “I think you know why she’s retreated, Howl. We need to talk about it.”

“Oh yeah?” Howl sneered. “And what’s that?”

“She’s all fucked up.”

Howl broke into a smirk. “Sorry, carrot-top, but the only one around here who gets to fuck Elps right now is me.” She raised her left hand and the ragged stump of Elpida’s right arm. “Though I’m down to only one set of fingers. Might need some help to make her squeal. You offering?”

Pira didn’t rise to the bait, but Kagami snorted with blushing laughter.

“Kaga,” Victoria said.

“Are you serious?” Kagami asked. “Is that what you two get up to, alone in the night, when she slinks off to some empty compartment? Does that count as sex, or masturbation?”

Howl stuck her tongue out and waggled it at Kagami. “Definitely sex.”

Kagami laughed again, a little too shrill for Vicky’s comfort. Bad sign. Everyone was fraying.

Howl went on: “You’re welcome to try your luck if you’re ever up and awake and ready for the five-knuckle piston—”

Vicky slammed a fist on the edge of the slab-bed. “Stop!”

All eyes turned to her.

Kagami opened her mouth, but Victoria pointed at her. “Not a word. Shut up, right now.” Kagami scowled, but shut her mouth. Victoria took a deep breath, and said, “We need to talk about her.”

“Elpida?” said Pira.

“Who else? Kagami is right, even if we might disagree on the details. The way she handled that bomb. The fact she’s out cold. Even the decision to save Sanzhima here, it was … messy, yeah, I’ll admit that. All of it. You’re right as well, Pira. She’s all fucked up. She’s been fucked up since the hunt, since we killed Eseld and her friends. At least since then, if not before. That did something to her which she’s never come back from. We all know it, we can all see it.” She glanced at Shilu. “You weren’t there, but I take it you can follow this?”

Shilu nodded.

Kagami muttered, “Why the hell is she in here, anyway?”

“So we can keep an eye on her,” Victoria snapped, then turned to Howl. “Is Elpida going to remember anything we say right now?”

Howl shrugged. “If I tell her.”

“Are you going to?”

Howl closed her eyes and stuck her tongue into her cheek. “Hmmmmmmm. Who knows? I think you bitches need to concentrate on the practical shit right now. You don’t got time for playing fifty questions with me.”

“Practical concerns?” Pira said.

“Yeah!” Howl opened her eyes again and smirked. She lingered on Pira for a moment, then skipped across Kagami, and landed on Victoria. “Vicky, hey. Where’s everybody else right now, huh?”

“Pardon?”

“Everybody else. The others. Your girls. Your bitches. Where they at?”

Victoria frowned, trying to focus through the haze of exhaustion and post-stress energy crash. “Why? What does that matter?”

“Just gimme the run-down. Imagine I’m Elps, if it helps you. Chop chop, hop to your orders! Double time! Woo!”

Victoria sighed. “Other than us in here? Alright then. Mel and Haf are in the crew compartment now, I assume. Sky, she’s still unconscious, we moved her into the bunk room, right?”

Pira said, “She woke for a few moments. Asked where she was. She wasn’t coherent.”

“Right,” Victoria said. “Uh … Eseld and Cyneswith, they’re in the bunk room too. Illy and Amina are meant to be in there with them, keeping an eye on them, but who knows for sure? I wouldn’t be surprised if half the crew is asleep by now. We’re burning the midnight oil here.” She sighed again, feeling the heavy drag in her limbs and head. Howl just kept nodding along. “Atyle went to the control cockpit. Ooni … ”

“Asleep,” Pira provided.

“Thanks. Ooni, sleeping. Serin, whereabouts unknown. She vanished after the bomb and now she’s beyond comms range. And we can’t raise Iriko, either. That’s probably your fault, Howl. You filled her head with orders and she ran off to hunt the Death’s Heads.”

Howl shrugged. “I said no hunt.”

Victoria tutted. “As for the rest, there’s a small crowd of zombies still out there in the chamber. Pheiri’s watching over them. About twenty-something of them, all the ones who didn’t run.” She glanced at Kagami. “Speaking of which, who’s on the drone picket, if you’re here?”

Kagami rolled her eyes and gestured at the ceiling. “Who do you think?”

“Ah, Pheiri, right. Okay.”

Howl flashed Elpida’s teeth. “Huh. Cool. Alright then, Victoria Volcano, what’s your plan?”

Vicky blinked. “My plan?”

“Is there an echo in here?” Howl cackled. “Yeah, bitch. Your plan! What you gonna do now?”

Victoria spread her hands and felt like laughing. “Hunker down? Wait for Elpi to—”

“Ehhh-errrr!” Howl made a noise like a buzzer. “Not good enough!” She waggled her stump. “You get blown up by a bunch of shit heads, you don’t retreat into your shell, that’s a signal they can push their advantage. You gotta strike back, fuck ‘em up, make ‘em know there’s consequences for this shit. Make everyone know we’re not to be messed with.”

Kagami grunted. “That’s what I would do. I’m glad we can agree on something.”

Victoria sighed and raised her hands in the air. “Then why ask me?”

Howl said, “‘Cos you’re in command now, cunt.”

Victoria’s stomach lurched. “What? No, no, I’m not in command.”

Howl gestured at Vicky’s face. “Then why are you wearing the headset?”

Vicky raised her fingers to the comms headset still wrapped around her skull, earphone still covering one ear. “In case Pheiri needs to alert us to something. Kagami’s wearing one too! It doesn’t mean anything! And I can’t take command! I don’t know the first thing about that. I know guns, preferably big guns. I don’t know how to do what … what Elpida does. No.”

Howl snorted. “Weak.” She glanced at Pira.

Pira said, “Me neither.”

Kagami sighed. “I could—”

Vicky turned to her. “Kaga, no—”

“—if everyone was a wire-slaved drone,” she finished, voice brimming over with sarcasm. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Victoria. Really, thank you so much.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You mean I’m an incompetent. I know exactly what you mean.”

“I mean you’re not her! You’re not Elpida!”

Howl cackled and kicked her legs against the side of the slab-bed. “You girls are not dropping this to me, fuck no, no way, I ain’t taking that wheel.”

Victoria said, “You’re not her. You’re not Elpida. You’re not the Commander.”

“Damn right I’m not!” Howl snapped. “I’m not made for it! One of you bitches needs to step up, ‘cos you’re the closest thing she’s got to a command staff!” Howl glanced at Shilu. “Cheese grater here excluded.”

Shilu nodded.

Kagami snorted. “What are you made for then, Howl? Insults and profanity?”

Howl cracked a grin. “Killing big things, fast and dirty, in small spaces.” She stared at Elpida’s missing arm. “If I had two hands I’d go after those shit-fuck bitches myself. Take one of those super-compact combat shotguns from the armoury. A ballistic shield. Armour, grenades. Take Illy with me, she knows how to rock. Let me do it, I’ll get it done in an hour tops. Bring back a string of heads, mount them on Pheiri’s front.”

Pira said, “You’d get taken apart.”

Howl stared at her with sudden pinched anger — then grinned. “Oh yeah, cunt face? I never forgot that you mag-dumped into Elps’ belly. You’re one of us, you’re one of her girls, but that doesn’t mean I can’t knock some teeth out, even one-handed. You wanna take that bet, you—”

“You’re in the wrong body,” Pira said, calm and slow. “I saw it earlier. The way you walk, how you hold yourself. Or rather, how you hold Elpida’s body. You’re not familiar with her gait, her body weight, her height, her reach, all of it. Normally, when you use her mouth to speak, you don’t actually take over her whole musculature, only what you need. You did control her whole body once before, to fight Lykke, but Lykke was so incompetent at close quarters combat that your imprecision didn’t matter, you could just brute force with Elpida’s muscles and win anyway. But if you arm up and go after the Death’s Heads, they’ll take you apart.”

Howl’s grin died. She sighed through her nose, eyes sliding away, across the infirmary. All the fight seemed to go out of her.

Storm-static filled the silence, roaring far beyond the walls.

Victoria wasn’t sure what to think of Howl.

Intellectually she knew that Howl and Elpida were separate people. They just happened to be sharing one body. One brain, two occupants. This was no more impossible or bizarre than anything Victoria had witnessed since bodily resurrection three hundred million years in the future. But over the last few weeks, as the crew had settled into new rhythms of life inside Pheiri, Victoria had found it hard to consider Howl as distinct from Elpida. In practice Howl only came out when she wanted to say something that Elpida would not. This habit made Howl feel like simply another side of Elpida herself — a mood or an emotion, rather than a separate individual in her own right. It didn’t help that Howl generally kept to herself; Elpida liked to talk to everyone, sometimes at great length, taking interest in every member of her new ‘cadre’. But Howl hid inside Elpida’s mind, emerging only to emit the occasional cackle or comment. She was an enigma to the others, most of the time.

But now Howl was right in front of her, looking back from inside Elpida’s purple eyes.

Everything about Howl was different — mannerisms, microexpressions, even the way she modulated her voice. The motion of her eyes was different to how Elpida looked at others, or examined a room, or made contact. Elpida’s gaze was often slow and methodical. When Elpida looked at Victoria, Vicky felt that Elpida saw her in full, inside and out, in a way few others had ever done. But Howl’s gaze was quick and jerky, always darting off to some other point in the infirmary. When she looked at Victoria, she seemed to see something amusing, a joke Vicky did not share.

Elpida would never have slumped in defeat, either.

Elpida wasn’t here; Vicky had to step up.

“It’s … it’s alright, Howl,” she said, slowly, testing the words. “I think I get it now. You’re deflecting, trying to protect Elpi. I get it, I really do. We need to take some of the weight off her shoulders. It’s the only way.”

Howl sighed. She swung her legs up onto the slab-bed, then lay down on her naked back. She rested Elpida’s stump on the slab and covered her eyes with her other hand.

“Yuuuuup,” she grunted. “Because Elps is alllllll fucked up.”

Silence crept back, filled with the static of the storm. Victoria didn’t know what to say.

Eventually, Pira said, “She rarely lets others take real responsibility. She doesn’t delegate anything she can do herself. Admirable, but not sustainable.”

“Mmhmm,” Howl grunted.

Vicky weighed her words carefully. “Was she like this with the … the ‘cadre’? You and her other sisters?”

“Nope.”

“You know her infinitely better than we do. You grew up with her. In her own … your own time and culture, right? Has she ever done anything like this before?”

“Nah,” Howl grunted. “Even in the worst of times, she’s never crumpled like this.”

Kagami snorted. “Then what the hell is she doing?”

Howl didn’t answer. Beyond the tomb’s walls, dark winds screamed across the black metal. Victoria could barely think.

Shilu said, “From what I’ve seen of you lot so far, Elpida has sole command responsibility here. But this group is small, easily led. Internal friction is common, but you’re all working for the same goal, mostly. That’s not the problem. The problem is more abstract. I don’t know her well enough to say more.”

Kagami rolled her eyes. “Can’t believe we let you inside the hull.”

“Once again, I can leave, if you want.”

“Shut up,” Kagami grumbled.

Howl drawled from her bloodstained slab, speaking to the ceiling. “Deep down, Elps still thinks of you all as civvies. Or maybe Legion, at best. You’re all her responsibility. This whole fucking situation — the whole world! — all her responsibility. She’s the only one of us, the only Telokopolan. She’s got all the weight. And she won’t give it up, not for shit. S’why she saved that girl. S’why she won’t ease up, not even for a second.”

A long silence. Pira swallowed. Kagami looked sullen and guilty. Victoria didn’t know what to say.

Shilu said, “Her burden is a moral one.”

Howl snorted, still hiding Elpida’s eyes behind her one remaining hand. “Could say that. She always avoided that kinda thing, back when we were alive. Moral burdens, big choices, all that rubbish. She kept us away from the big decisions, the politics, the stuff that could have gotten us in bad, in deep, where we couldn’t get back out. Kept us focused on training, on our skills, on each other. Made us stand apart.” Howl shook her head. “She could have rallied the Civitas, the parts of it which liked us. Or even just the people, at least the fucking Skirts. They loved us! Lapped up the fiction, the news, all of it. She could have used us as a symbol. But she didn’t.”

Howl paused. Victoria shared a look with Kagami, then Pira. She opened her mouth, but suddenly Howl was carrying on.

“We almost did it ourselves, without her say so,” she said. “This one time. We were gonna take a combat frame without permission, a rip and run. The Stargazer, little fucker who would have behaved good on camera for us. We were gonna walk it out onto the plateau and make sure we got on all the newscasts, declare against the Covenanters.” A grin grew across Howl’s lips. “Mad plan. It grew as we went. From one frame to three. From putting our case to the public, to calling for a round-up of those fucks. Civil war inside the Spire. Would have worked, too.” Her grin died. “But Elps, we couldn’t keep shit from her. She got wind of it, shut it down.”

Pira said, “Why?”

Howl sighed. “Because she was afraid it would paint a target on us. Because she thought we could stand apart from all the shit going on.”

Silence, storm-static, black winds raging. Howl pressing that hand to Elpida’s eyes.

Victoria said, “But she was wrong.”

Howl nodded. “Ohhhh yeah. She was wrong. You gotta remember, she watched all her sisters die ‘cos she got it fucking wrong. Me too. And now she’s doing the opposite. She’s made herself into a symbol and she can’t let it fail. She can’t let a single soul go, even if we’re all already undead. She can’t do it all over again.”

Howl lay there for a moment, saying nothing. Then she quickly drew her hand across Elpida’s eyes and sat back up, red-rimmed gaze darting across the others.

“Don’t tell her you saw me like this,” Howl said. “It won’t help her.”

Victoria said, “Can you get through to her?”

Howl shrugged. “Probably not.”

Silence returned again, filled with the tiny sounds of Pheiri’s body, the clicking and whirring of his innards, the distant nuclear heartbeat down in his core — all drowned beneath the howling hurricane outside.

Kagami was staring at Sanzhima’s unconscious form. “That girl didn’t even want to be saved,” she muttered. “You all heard her, begging for mercy. She didn’t even want this. She wanted a bullet.”

Pira straightened up. “That doesn’t matter.”

Kagami squinted at her. “What? What doesn’t matter?”

“Elpida never leaves anybody behind,” Pira said. “She never abandons anybody.””

Kagami snarled. “Perhaps she should have left you behind! You saw what that girl—”

“It’s the only way any of this continues to work,” Pira said, cold and calm, face shuttered. “Without that promise, all this falls apart. Nobody is left behind. Not even the dead.”

Howl grunted, growling with sarcasm. “Right.”

Victoria stared at the ceiling again. This was exhausting. How did Elpida deal with this, all the time, this pressure and this burden?

She shouldn’t have to.

“Look at us,” Victoria said, glancing around at the others. “We’re paralysed without her. This is absurd. We can’t rely on one point of failure like this. We can’t keep putting this on her, that’s part of why this has happened, why she’s … retreated. She’s burned out.”

“She takes it on herself,” Kagami grunted. “That’s not our fault.”

“Doesn’t matter who’s fault it is,” Vicky said. “We gotta step up anyway. Are we just Elpida’s … minions?” She shrugged. “Or are we … are we … ”

Victoria trailed off. All the words she could think of felt inadequate. Are we a team? Are we comrades? Are we Pheiri’s little helpers? Nothing she could say seemed right, everything seemed silly, especially when said in her voice. She felt the moment slip away from her. Maybe they really should hunker down and hide, until Elpida woke and the storm passed. She wasn’t cut out for this, none of them would have survived without Elpida, none of them-

“We are the children of Telokopolis,” said Pira. “Even if she was not our birth mother.”

Pira raised her eyes to look at Howl.

Howl held that gaze, without any hint of a smirk. She nodded and swallowed. “Sure. Sure, yeah. Sure.”

Shilu said, “Even me?”

Howl swung a grin toward Shilu. “If you wanna be, cheese grater.”

“Then I am.”

“Telokopolis is forever,” said Pira, though her voice lacked all conviction.

The others echoed the refrain. Kagami muttered it under her breath. Howl thumped herself on the chest with Elpida’s left hand. Shilu said the words slowly and carefully. Victoria whispered, drowned out by the storm.

After a long moment, Shilu spoke up again. “Victoria, I have to echo Howl, but with a slightly different emphasis — what’s the plan?”

Victoria shook her head. “Whatever we do, we all have to agree on it. And we should get Pheiri’s input too, he’s the closest thing to a command position we have right now, outside of ourselves. We don’t take any decisions unless we agree. No unilateral action.”

Kagami snorted. “I sense a ‘but’ on the way.”

“But,” Victoria sighed. “But I think Howl has a point. We can’t cower. As long as we’re stuck in this tomb, we need to hunt down the Death’s Heads, show some spine, put heads on spikes, all that. I mean, metaphorically. I’m not putting heads on actual spikes. Anyway, Serin and Iriko may already be on it, but they’re acting without support. It’s time we stopped doing that.”

Howl grinned, wide and toothy, in a way Elpida would never.

“Let’s go take some skulls, bitches!”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Taking skulls off those who wear them! Quite a double meaning there, Howl. I wonder which way she intends?

Looks like the crew is going to have to learn how to operate without their commander, at least for a little while. Victoria filling Elpida’s boots? Seems unlikely. Serin and Iriko are already off. Howl isn’t up to the task, and that arm isn’t going to regrow all by itself! As for the arc as a whole, ohohoho, I’ve got some POV shifts and nasty surprises waiting in the wings for you, dear readers. I hope you’re enjoying this one, because I certainly am! We’re on the regular break next week, like always, but I am very excited for where this is going.

And, meanwhile! Yet again! I have more art to share, from the discord! This week we have an illustration of Elpida and Howl, in a moment of repose, (by Falco!) And, oh, do watch this space; there might be something art-related rising up out of the tomb, in the (not-too-distant) future.

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Normally I wouldn’t include this along with the final chapter of the month, but! I finally switched over to the other kind of patreon billing, so if you subscribe now, you won’t get double charged! Yay! Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and reading my little story about zombie girls and all the different ways they eat each other. Ahem. Seriously, couldn’t do it without you, the audience! Seeya next chapter! Until then, enjoy the sound of the drumming rain, deep down inside the tomb.

Content Warnings

Dysphoria

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Iriko was very sore.

The ache was on her insides, not her outsides. Since crawling into the shelter of the tomb, she had done very little except rest and heal — lying in a heap, licking her wounds, slowly digesting the handful of corpses donated by Pheiri’s zombies. She had filled the time by swapping occasional tight-beam check-ins with Pheiri, and by picking through the cold scraps of several unfinished poems. On the outside she was all better now; she hadn’t lost much actual biomass when the Necromancer had screamed at her, the damage had been mostly surface, more cosmetic than structural, more shocking than substantial. Iriko’s refractive mail was re-knit and newly strengthened with bio-extruded metals. Her bruises and burns were healed up as if they had never happened, the damaged sections recycled and repurposed inside the core of her body. Her belly was full of meat, satisfied for now.

But she was still sore.

At first Iriko was worried the Necromancer had left something behind — a virus in Iriko’s flesh, an intrusive instruction injected into her cells, a biochemical agent which she could not detect. Iriko spent a while rummaging through her own innards, checking for uncontrolled tumours or unexplained growths, making sure all her internal data was uncorrupted, looking for bits of her that were no longer Iriko. But she came up short. She was healthy and well, without any uninvited passengers.

Sitting in the dark, surrounded by the rage of hailstones and the torrent of rain beyond the tomb, Iriko was forced to accept the truth.

What she felt was humiliation.

The emotion ate away at her insides, just as if she had swallowed a toxin customised to corrode her biochemistry. Failure, defeat, retreat — it all made her feel so small and useless and wretched.

Iriko was used to running and hiding. That was how she had survived on the edge of the graveworm safe zone for so long. Whenever something bigger and scarier walked out of the wastes beyond the worm, Iriko always burrowed into the dirt or wriggled inside the concrete and metal guts of a building; she turned her refractive mail to mirror the dust and ash of the world, and made herself look like a lump of nothing important. On the previous occasions when this tactic had not worked, Iriko had fled — flinging herself down wrecked streets and sliding inside gaps too narrow for the bigger monsters to follow. She was neither too proud to admit that nor ashamed of her methods. She was still alive, wasn’t she?

But this time felt different. Pheiri, Elpida, Howl, Victoria, Serin — and all the others, even the ones she didn’t like! — they had all relied on her. They had given her a mission, a special important mission that nobody else could do. Howl had trusted Iriko to catch the Necromancer.

And Iriko had failed. She had been too afraid. She had turned tail and ran away.

Iriko hated this feeling. She was an ugly, useless, stupid failure. Her body was a failure, and her mind was even worse. And this was all Pheiri’s fault! Pheiri had spent weeks making her feel valued, making her feel smart again, making her feel like her mind was working better, faster, clearer than ever before. Pheiri’s praise and Pheiri’s puzzles and the chatter of Pheiri’s zombies, it all made Iriko feel like she was more than just a hungry mouth.

The old Iriko would never have felt this shame.

Stupid Pheiri. Stupid boy. Should have left her to starve.

Iriko sat with that thought for a few minutes. Then she felt bad about it. She didn’t really mean it.

The tomb was not helping, either. Iriko still did not like the tomb, even if the hurricane outside was much more uncomfy.

She was not frightened by the clinging darkness, the chorus of echoing whispers, or the warren of crooked corridors — oh no, not frightened, not at all. Iriko was a big girl, not some cringing child, she was too sensible to be afraid of the dark. She simply adjusted her senses, peeling back the shadows with low-light and infra-red, mapping her surroundings with soft pulses of echolocation and the mathematical perfection of predictive terrain algorithms. She tracked hushed zombie voices with an aural matrix unfolded from her back, like a bouquet of quivering flowers, dark red and slathered with sticky mucus.

She was not a scared little girl afraid of walking to the toilet in the middle of the night. She was not! She was big, and clever, and ate nasty zombies for every meal!

But she would have preferred to be cuddled up next to Pheiri. Or even better, squeezed into the narrow gap between the floor and Pheiri’s underside armour. Pheiri had nothing to fear inside the tomb. Pheiri was brave and bold and brash. But joining him now would require a long and lonely journey through the dark, down into the deepest parts of the tomb.

No, Iriko decided. She was fine up here, even if she was by herself. She was fine. She was not afraid of the journey, just … just fine. She was not a little girl cowering under the bed covers, while a storm full of monsters raged outdoors.

But there was a monster in the storm, wasn’t there? A real one.

The great whirling typhoon screamed on and on and on, all slashing rain and drumming hailstones and wind howling across the exterior surface of the tomb. Iriko knew there was a monster waiting out there in the wind and the rain. She had heard it earlier, hooting and bellowing, making a terrible old racket, just like monsters were supposed to do. Iriko didn’t know what it was; she never did know much about the monsters beyond the graveworm. But she knew what it was doing — it had taken advantage of the storm to get close to the graveworm, where easy prey teemed in their hundreds. Now it wanted to crack the tomb open and eat all the zombies inside.

Iriko couldn’t blame it for that. A few months ago she would have salivated at that prospect.

Hours crawled by. The monster was outside, the darkness was everywhere, and the sounds within the tomb — the ticking and the tocking, the sliding and the slithering, all the terrible slimy slippery slapping — was it all really just zombies scurrying around in the corridors?

Iriko tried to distract herself with poetry. First she attempted to compose a poem about her own fear, but she hated the result so much that she destroyed the poem and made herself forget all about it. Then she tried a couple of poems about defeat and humiliation. That just made her angry, she couldn’t get a single line out. She extruded a spiked tendril and slammed it against the nearest wall until the anger was all burnt out.

Iriko lapsed into a long silence. She knew she was sulking. She didn’t care. She could sulk all she wanted.

Iriko’s sulk — and it was a very long sulk, because she started to feel very silly toward the end of it — was eventually interrupted by the distinctive crunchy crack-thoom of a little explosion, far away, deep down in the darkly coiled viscera of the tomb.

That was odd. Were the zombies fighting again?

Iriko exchanged a tight-beam handshake with Pheiri. He acknowledged her with a double-ping and a demand for a full status update; Iriko could have blushed!

「all okay okay healed and sealed happy for now big bang bang zombies okay? okay? pheiri okay? okay okay?」

Everything was not okay.

Pheiri sent Iriko a hefty data package. Iriko got all interested for a moment before she realised it was mostly just the sort of thing Pheiri found exciting — endless reams of data from his sensors. Silly boy! There were also a lot of images of zombies getting overexcited; some of them looked a bit hurt. There was Elpida, and Victoria! There were a bunch of stills of an explosion, but it seemed like quite a small one. Iriko couldn’t understand what most of the fuss was about, but she understood that Elpida had gotten hurt, and that was bad.

「zombies okay?」

The zombies were okay. Nobody was dead. Nobody had gotten eaten. But they were having an emergency.

And Howl had another job for Iriko.

Howl’s voice unspooled as raw audio inside Iriko’s body, transmitted down Pheiri’s tight-beam connection.

「It’s not a hunt, blob girl,」 Howl said. Iriko could tell that Howl was in a lot of pain, speaking through clenched teeth. 「You understand that, right!? Yeah?! These bitches are gonna expect retaliation, they’re gonna be prepped for it, wired to rock the shit out of the first thing that comes after them. All you gotta do is find them, blobbo. Sniff them out. Bloodhound time. But don’t fight them. Don’t fight them! You got that? Don’t fucking fight them. Tell me you understand, come on.」

「eat eat no eat?」

Howl laughed — a big hearty cackle, despite the pain. Iriko liked Howl’s laughter, it was very honest. Iriko could always tell when Howl was speaking through Elpida’s mouth, even though Elpida and Howl sounded exactly the same because they were using the same body. Sometimes Elpida and Howl liked to swap back and forth a lot, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence. But this transmission was all Howl, no Elpida at all. Iriko hoped Elpida was alright.

「Nah,」 said Howl. 「Your appetite ain’t the problem here. If you catch one of them alone, go for it, fill your boots. You got my blessing. Eat all you like—」

A second voice broke in — Vicky! 「But nobody else,」 Victoria said. She sounded rushed. 「Iriko, please, don’t eat anybody else out there in the tomb. You can eat a Death’s Head, but nobody else. You got that?」

Another voice said: 「If she starts eating random zombies, everything the Commander just did will be for nothing. She has to indicate she comprehends. Howl, make her answer.」

Pira. Bleh.

「Yeah yeah yeah,」 Howl hissed, then snorted a laugh. 「She knows that, both of you. She knows! Cool your heads. Iriko, you can eat them if you catch them, sure, go wild, but don’t try to fight them. They’ll be ready, for us, for you, for anything, and they’ll hurt you real bad if you let them see you. We just need to know where they are. Just get us that. You can do it, blobbo! Go on, girl! You can!」

A fourth voice snapped, further from the microphone — Kagami, all angry and hot, like Kagami always was. 「She’s still bleeding on the controls! Victoria! Victoria, I’ve got a medical bot who is about to have a fucking tantrum if we don’t haul this moron back to the infirmary five minutes ago! Pira, you little rat, you should know better. And Howl! Howl, stand up. Up, right now! Don’t make me drag you there. Don’t.」

Howl laughed. 「You and who’s army, Moon cunt?」 A pause. Howl grunted. 「Alright, fair point.」

The zombies grumbled and argued a little more. One or two of them stomped off.

Vicky’s voice returned to the tight-beam uplink. 「Hey, uh, Iriko. Sorry about that.」

「sorry sorry」

「Are you … are you apologising?」

「yes yes」

Vicky sighed. 「Ahhh, don’t do that, please. You’ve got nothing to apologise for, Iriko.」 A big thump and a metal creak — Vicky sitting down. 「Look, you don’t have to do any of what Howl just said. She’s not in her right mind at the moment, she’s hopped up on pain and … and victory, I guess. You don’t have to follow her orders, nobody is going to be upset if you don’t. Nobody’s going to be disappointed with you, or anything like that. Just … only if you feel like it, tracking down the Death’s Heads might help. Hell, any intel you can gather on the inside of the tomb would help us right now, even if you just map some spaces. But you don’t have to, Iriko. I know you don’t like the tomb. You can just sit tight. We’ve … we’ve got this under control.」

「victoria sad and sad?」

A little laugh. 「Sad? No. Stressed, absolutely. Look, Iriko, I gotta go. We gotta go help, uh, deal with this. I don’t know if anybody is gonna be at the comms station for a little while. Maybe Amina or something. But hey, anything you send us, Pheiri will see it, and he’ll pass it onto us. Seeya later, Iriko. Stay safe up there, kiddo.」

「bye bye bye」

「Later.」

Pira spoke, almost beyond microphone range: 「If she starts preying on easy kills, we can’t let her—」

The audio feed ended.

Pheiri sent Iriko a schedule for regular check-in broadcasts, then followed up with a geometric puzzle for Iriko to solve. Iriko ignored the puzzle and shrugged off the tight-beam. She liked being patted on the head, but she didn’t deserve it right then.

Iriko sat in the dark, listening to the storm.

She composed a poem.

「fear is nothing to
fear without the sting of pain.
and fear can fear too」

Iriko pulled herself together. She tightened her musculature, darkened the scales of her refractive mail to a light-drinking black, and flowered open a dozen sets of sensory apparatus, pulsing and throbbing in the cold static beneath the hurricane.

Iriko slipped off into the tangle of the tomb.

At first she kept the fear in check by thinking about Pheiri and his zombies. Pheiri was relying on her to do something he could not — explore all these twisty little passages and narrow gaps and secret spaces. Elpida, Howl, Victoria, all the others, they couldn’t do this either! Iriko was important. Iriko was useful. Iriko was more than just a mouth, more than a stomach, more than the sum of her hunger. She could help!

The corridors and passages and chambers and halls and promenades and galleries and alleyways and secret back routes of the tomb were all pitch dark. Iriko had to ignite pinpricks of bioluminescence inside her own sensors, just to create enough light to enhance. Her every movement sent echoing sighs spiralling off down the ossified sinuses all around, forcing Iriko to pump out more mucus with which to reduce her friction, and to rely on suction-cup tentacles to pull herself along the ceilings. For zombies down on the floors the tomb was complex enough already, but for Iriko the vertical passageways and narrow gaps and profusion of strange angles made her mind ache. Pheiri’s clever geometric puzzles had given her just enough understanding to know that she did not understand anything.

But she kept going. She had to keep going. She had to help!

Iriko squeezed herself down narrow passages too cramped for any zombie. She wormed her bulk up through apertures full of machinery and circuits and sleeping electricity. She slithered into vast dark rooms in the heart of the tomb, filled with luminous machinery and the whirring of secret mechanical thoughts. She climbed the sluice-pipes which had carried the massive quantities of raw blue required to resurrect zombies, all empty and dry now. She wriggled into the gaps between the walls, where the tiny cogs and gears and wheels moved in silent concert, playing a game Iriko could not comprehend. She ventured into the mouths of corridors lined with big guns — and found they were still alive, still awake, still angry, warding her off with the promise of a warning shot if she advanced any further.

She stayed away from the outer walls now, away from the howling voice of the storm, away from the risk of any windows; the monster outdoors was waiting for prey, waiting for the right moment to crack this shell open and scoop out any tasty morsels it could spy. Iriko knew she was quite the snack. She did not want to tempt a predator.

She passed huddled zombies and whispered arguments, slid beneath the greased motion of great pistons, and past corridors filled with traps to skewer any unwary little revenant.

After an hour of searching and slumping and sniffing for Death’s Heads, Iriko was so deep in the tomb that the static haze of rain and hail was almost cosy.

She was also hopelessly lost.

Iriko had done her best to compile a mental map of the areas through which she had passed, but when she consulted that map and attempted to retrace her steps, she found her path was a infinitesimally thin lifeline dipped deep into a sea of black. The way she had come was so narrow — like a fishing line which might snap if she grasped it too tightly. She knew the route by which she could return to the chamber where she had started, but she quailed at her own insignificance, compared with the ocean of the tomb.

Suddenly all the passages before her seemed so much tighter and darker, choked with shadows. Iriko might get trapped! How had she ever squeezed herself down those corridors only moments before?

The walls were closing in. The darkness would drown her. The weight — she was under a mountain! Under miles of ground! She would be crushed into paste and bone fragments, legs trapped beneath rock, lungs pinned by—

But no, no, Iriko didn’t have legs or lungs anymore. What was she afraid of? She had been underground earlier, when she had chased the Necromancer, and she had conquered her fear then, hadn’t she? She had swam through the rock like water, she had been on a mission, an important mission, she had been unstoppable!

And now she was a scared little girl, all alone in a dark corridor.

Perhaps the outside world had stopped existing, perhaps all the planet had become this endless dark warren, and Iriko would be trapped here forever, until she starved to death, by herself. Down in the dark, everyone else dead, screaming for help until her mouth was dry and her tears had stopped and only the cold rock was left for her to embrace.

Iriko stopped. Iriko climbed the nearest wall and hugged the ceiling and crammed herself into an upper corner.

She wanted to scream and sob. She wanted to call out for help; she did, casting tight-beam comms out to Pheiri. But there was no reply. Iriko was too deep, behind too many walls of black tomb-metal, her signals lost in the labyrinth. All Pheiri’s bravery could not reach her, not here, not down in the dark.

For a long time Iriko managed to do her best — she stayed very still and very quiet. She made the scales of her armour so dark that not even a big scary zombie with lots of metal parts could see her. She compacted her flesh to maximum density, making herself as small as possible. She rammed spikes of bone into the metal of the tomb, anchoring herself in place, though the black tomb metal was very hard and very tough and she could not burn through it with acid. She stopped breathing and allowed many of her internal processes to lapse. She almost stopped thinking, turning her thoughts inward to focus on one of Pheiri’s little geometric puzzles. She stayed in her corner, beneath the rain and the hail and the howling of the winds beyond the walls.

In time the fear became too much. Iriko let out a little wet sob. Droplets of mucus fell to the floor far below. She sniffed and whined, as if anybody would hear and come to her aid.

A few minutes later, four zombies crept into the chamber.

Iriko went silent. She folded away the bits of herself which had sobbed and whined and sniffed.

The zombies were right below her as they entered the room, peering about with wide eyes, holding their collective breath, hands on each other’s shoulders and arms. They were nothing special — a quartet of half-naked, half-crazed, half-starved scavengers. They had very little meat on their bones; they reeked of sweat and fear and blood and ash. Out in the ruins of the city, Iriko would have eaten these four without a second thought, but she would not have gone out of her way to hunt them down. They possessed no bionics, no nice dense reserves of nanomachines. They were not worth the bother of a chase.

“There’s nobody here,” hissed one of the zombies — tall and willowy, black-haired, with mottled red skin like a pretty lizard. “It was nothing. This place plays tricks with sound, could have come from the other side of the pyramid for all we know.”

“Can we, like, sit down now?” said a second zombie, pale and freckled and slender beneath her clothes.

A third zombie spoke — scrawny and tiny and twitchy. “Nah nah nah nah. This ain’t far enough, this ain’t far at all.”

The second zombie sighed. “Come on, Azzy. I’m so tired. Zidra’s right. There’s nobody here.”

“You’re such a fucking wet slap, Leeu,” said the scrawny one — ‘Azzy’. “Tired is better than dead.”

‘Leeu’ sighed again. “We’re already dead, you twat.”

The first speaker, the one with mottled red skin — ‘Zidra’ — was about to say something. But then the fourth and final zombie detached herself from her companions and strode into the centre of the room. The other three hissed and winced. Zidra reached out as if to restrain her companion, but faltered at the last second.

“Fuck, fuck!” Azzy spat. “Riki! Riki, stop!”

‘Riki’ walked into the middle of the room and peered in all directions, hands on her hips, chest thrust out. Dark yellow eyes slid over Iriko’s hiding place. Strong hands raised in a double-fisted gesture. Red hair glinted in Iriko’s night-vision.

“It’s safe,” said Riki. Her voice was a weird hissing, like she’d been recently punched in the throat. “Let’s stop here.”

“Who made you fucking leader?!” Azzy spat. “There’s no leader, we agreed, there’s no—”

Leeu, the freckled girl, whined: “Azzy, shut up! I’m tired.”

Azzy rounded on Leeu and hit her in the chest — lightly, just enough to surprise. “We said no leader! No leader! No—”

Zidra — the one with the red-mottled lizard-like skin — grabbed Azzy by the hair and yanked her back, then hissed in her face. “Step off!”

Azzy hissed and tutted, yanking her hair free.

Leeu was on the verge of tears. “Uh— uh— I only meant—”

Zidra reached over to take Leeu’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay, for real. We all just have to stop fucking bickering. Got it?”

Azzy snorted. Leeu shrugged and swallowed. Zidra sighed through clenched teeth. The leader — Riki — pointed to a corner, seemingly at random, but not the corner above which Iriko hung.

“Let’s sit over there,” she said. “Sit and think a bit.”

The four bottom-feeders slouched and scurried over to the corner. Riki spent a few moments running her hands over the walls, searching for secrets. Azzy squatted in a grumpy, pouting, scrawny heap. Zidra ran her tongue over her teeth, then sat directly on the floor, chin in her hands. Leeu lay down on her back, limbs spread out, staring at the ceiling.

“Fuck,” said Azzy.

“Yup,” Zidra said. “Fuck. Sounds about right.”

“Anybody got any meat left?” Azzy said. “Anybody pocket some without saying? Got some stuck between your teeth? Shoved up your arse?”

“Wish we did,” said Leeu.

“Fuck.”

The zombies lapsed into sullen silence. Iriko grew a single additional auditory matrix and pushed it out through her night-black flesh, in case she was about to miss a whisper. The flower of meat and mucus hung in the air, picking up the tiniest vibrations from below.

Riki finished checking the walls. She turned back to her companions, dusted off her hands, and said: “Let’s see the gun.”

Leeu screwed her eyes shut. “Do I gotta?”

“Yeah. Unless you dropped it. Did you drop it?”

Leeu sat up and rummaged in her ragged clothes. She was wearing an oversized flak jacket and a pair of trousers, both of which looked as if they had been looted off a bullet-ridden corpse. She pulled out a long-barrelled handgun and showed it to the others.

Azzy whistled. “You weren’t joking. Way to go, shit head. Love you sometimes.”

Zidra crossed her arms and nodded. “Nice. Good score.”

Riki said, “And you’re total sure the borg bitch didn’t see you take it?”

Leeu shook her head. “Everybody was looking at the bomb go off. I just thought … you know, why the hell not? Don’t we deserve some guns too?”

“Mm,” Zidra purred — a weird little trilling noise in her chest. “Maybe the Telokopolans should be handing out weapons instead of meat. Even things up a bit. Give us a fighting chance.”

“Mutually assured destruction,” Riki muttered.

“Eh? What’s that mean?”

Riki shrugged. “An idea from back when I was alive. Doesn’t matter now. Leeu, how many bullets in that thing? How much bang we got?”

Leeu fumbled with the pistol for a long moment, unsure how to get the magazine out. Eventually she slid it free and held it up, squinting at the grey metal. “Ten … no, eleven bullets. Yeah, eleven.”

Zidra sighed. Riki sucked on her teeth.

Leeu slid the magazine back into the gun. “Yeah, it’s … it’s not much. They’re big bullets though. I think.”

Azzy snorted. “Pity you didn’t lift some blue.”

“Nobody back there has any blue,” Riki said. “Nobody but the Telokopolans. And they wasn’t sharing.”

“She was,” said Zidra. “She was sharing a lot, Elpida was. We’re all full of it. Literally.”

“Yeah,” said Azzy, “but not the blue! Bitch could have given some up, right?”

Zidra turned her head to glare at Azzy, then gestured at something on Azzy’s chest, looking at her as if she was very stupid. Azzy rolled her eyes and snorted. Iriko could not quite see what the disagreement was about — she was at the wrong angle, up in her corner. She sprouted two extra eyes and slid them a few feet along the ceiling, but Azzy wasn’t wearing anything out of the ordinary, just ragged t-shirts and a pair of torn-up shorts.

Riki said, “Alright, so, who’s the best shot?”

Leeu said, “Not me.”

“Me neither,” said Azzy. “Guns. Fuck guns. Get me a plasma cutter next time. Industrial style. Go right through one of those power armoured bitches like the side of a shipping container.”

Zidra sighed, yet again. “I don’t think they have ‘plasma cutters’ here, dumb arse.”

“You don’t even know what that is!” Azzy spat back. “The highest tech you’ve ever seen is a fucking water wheel. You eat handfuls of your own dung. You get shat out by the dozen from a hive cunt like some—”

Zidra leaned toward Azzy, face full of wrath. Azzy tried to scramble back, but Zidra grabbed the front of her clothes.

“H-hey, gettoff—”

“I will bite your nose off, you little streak of piss, you—”

“Off! Off!” Azzy kicked at Zidra’s knees. “Fucking mutant fuck, bite me—”

Leeu spoke as if her companions were not about to eat each other; she was staring at the firearm in her hand. “What would we use the gun for, anyway?”

The fight stopped as quickly as it had broken out; Zidra let go and Azzy pushed herself back, spitting and hissing. Iriko decided they must be really close friends after all. That was nice.

Riki raised her eyebrows. Azzy just stared.

Zidra said: “To get some more food?”

Leeu chewed her tongue. “We could have gotten more food by staying in the chamber.”

“What?” Azzy laughed. “After ‘Elpida’ got her arm blown off?”

“She won, didn’t she?” Leeu said.

Riki shook her head. “Plenty others was running. We all saw what the Dead-Head freaks wrote on that zombie.”

Azzy snapped, “You scared?”

“Yeah,” said Riki, standing tall. “Aren’t you?”

Leeu said, “What did it mean, anyway? What’s a ‘degenerate’?”

Zidra looked up at the ceiling. “Anybody the skull freaks don’t like. Anybody they feel like killing. Anybody who makes friends with the Telokopolan lot and their tank. Right?”

The zombies fell silent. Azzy swallowed. Zidra kicked at the ground, though there was nothing to kick. Leeu looked pale.

Azzy tugged at her own t-shirt and muttered, “Maybe we should get this shit off us.”

Zidra shook her head. “I like it. I’m keeping it.”

Azzy said, “Telokopolis doesn’t exist. Whatever that weird bitch meant, whatever she was talking about, it’s all dead, like everything else. Everything’s dead! Commonwealth, Kingdom, spacemen on Mars, robots in Asic, even the fucking monkeys! Come on, and I’m not being a rude cunt this time. It’s obvious bullshit. Everything’s dead. We’re just what’s left over.”

“Maybe,” said Zidra. “Maybe I don’t care.”

Riki said, “I’m keeping it too.”

Azzy snorted. “Thought you said—”

Leeu interrupted. “We only ran ‘cos I lifted the gun!” she complained. “We could have stayed!”

“And gotten stomped by the cyborg you stole from,” Zidra said. “Yeah, real smart.”

Leeu swallowed and slumped her shoulders. She held the gun like it was a punishment.

“None of us know how to shoot,” Riki said eventually. “And we only have eleven bullets. That’s not enough to test with. Maybe we should trade the gun for meat.”

None of the four zombies said anything to that; even Iriko knew it was a hopeless suggestion. Trade away a gun and you’d get a bullet for your troubles. Anybody capable of obtaining fresh meat would not give up a mouthful for a single pistol and eleven rounds. The weapon was only any use for hunting meat of one’s own.

Iriko realised her fear was gone. These four zombies were so much smaller than her, and they didn’t fear the dark, tight, enclosing corridors. They weren’t afraid of getting crushed and pinned and dying alone, miles underground. They were afraid of more obvious things, like starving, or getting in a fight. It had been a long time since Iriko had watched and listened to a group of zombies without eating them.

She rather liked the feeling.

Maybe they could lead her back to Pheiri.

Iriko extended a thick pseudopod toward the floor. She concentrated very hard for several minutes, while the zombies moped about in the opposite corner, muttering about plans they all knew had no hope of coming to fruition. Iriko twisted the pseudopod — pinching tight here, puffing up there, smoothing curves and gentle angles, extruding fibres and textures, forming layers of chitin and filaments of bone. She sculpted slender thighs and slim hips and a nice elegant little waist. She made the shoulders fine and delicate and kept the chest modest. She pushed arms out from the sides, long and lithe and clean. She pulled a head upward from between the shoulders, with a heart-shaped face wrapped in smooth, soft, creamy skin. She pressed features into the face — pretty dark eyes and long sleek hair. She tried a ponytail, then twin-tails, but in the end she decided that simplicity was best; she left ‘her’ hair loose, hanging down the back of her perfect little doll.

She finished by wrapping the whole thing in a kimono — nothing fancy, just pale pink petals on a pastel background. She couldn’t do anything with the feet, sadly, because the doll had no feet, just the end of the pseudopod trailing off into the darkness.

When Iriko was done, she felt disgusted.

This thing she had crafted, was it meant to be herself?

The puppet-pseudopod was ugly and wrong. The hair was like straw and the limbs were like rubber. The skin was the colour of blotchy, mouldy, rotten rice-mash, but she couldn’t seem to get it any closer to the soft brown she wanted, the colour she could just about recall from some deep well of melted memory. The eyes were holes punched in starch, full of coal dust and pitch. The teeth were curved and jagged; they wouldn’t straighten out no matter how hard she tried. The design on the kimono looked like flesh, not flowers.

Iriko wanted to cry. She hadn’t gotten any better at this. She hadn’t practised.

But the darkness would hide all her flaws. The shadows of the tomb would now be her ally.

Iriko ‘walked’ her puppet out of the corner, out of the enclosing dark, toward the four sad little zombies. She used the rear of the pseudopod to simulate the sound of wooden sandals clacking against metal; she didn’t want to surprise the four, after all.

The scavenger quartet scrambled to their feet. Riki leapt in front, arms wide, as if trying to protect the others.

“Woah, shit!” Zidra yelled. “What— where—”

“Stop, stop!” Riki snapped. “Stop there!”

“Where did she come from!?” Azzy kept saying, backing up to put herself in the rear. “Where did she come from!? Where did she come from!?”

Leeu pointed the gun right at the puppet’s face.

Iriko stopped the puppet, still deep in the shadows. She pulled a smile and raised a hand.

Azzy screamed. Riki went pale, mouth hanging open. Zidra went very still. Leeu said, “It’s a— uh— one of them disguised—”

“Yes, we know!” Azzy screeched. “Leeu, shoot it! Shoot! Pull the trigger, you dick head!”

“I don’t think we should!” Leeu said. “It won’t work, right?!”

Riki raised her voice. “On our left, on the count of three.” She reached out without looking, grabbing Zidra and Azzy’s hands. Leeu was left out, still clutching the pistol in both fists. “On three, just run! Maybe it won’t understand. One—”

Iriko realised she had forgotten to grow any organs for speech. She quickly reorganised the insides of the puppet, forming some rudimentary lungs and a vibrating flap for vocal cords. She opened the puppet’s mouth.

“Guns don’t work on me,” she said via the puppet. The voice was not very good, but she kept talking. “But don’t worry about that. I can help you eat—”

Leeu pulled the trigger.

Bang!

Recoil threw her arms upward and sent her staggering back.

The bullet slammed right through the puppet’s face, blowing apart all of Iriko’s hard work, splattering her beautiful kimono with crimson gore.

Leeu landed on her backside with a thump. A trickle of smoke rose from the barrel of the gun. The other three zombies froze, staring at the bubbling ruin of the pseudopod-tip.

The biomass loss was negligible; Iriko knew she could slurp up all the flesh and fluids to regain everything she’d just shed. One bullet was nothing. It had only done any real damage because she’d been trying so hard to maintain the illusion of the puppet’s face and head.

But these girls, these horrid girls, they weren’t supposed to treat her like this! They were supposed to say — say what? Hello there, lost girl? Do you want to sit in our little circle with us? Do you want to trade the useless gun for a mouthful of meat? They were supposed to accept that Iriko was just like them, just another scared girl, lost in the dark, all alone!

But Iriko knew she was none of those things, not really. She was an ugly mass of protoplasmic flesh, hiding the truth in a dark corner.

This was the curse of her improved cognition under Pheiri’s tutelage. Iriko knew exactly what these zombies thought of her.

Iriko detached her anchor-spikes, bunched her muscles against the corner, and pounced upon her prey.

At least like this she could make the pain go away. These zombies were only little, they would not be missed. Nobody was here to witness her meal, nobody had to know. Pheiri could not be disappointed in her if he was not aware. Elpida would not be sad if she never found out.

Iriko landed on the floor a few feet in front of the four zombies with a heavy wet splat of meaty mass. All four of them screamed now, scrambling back, wide-eyed with terror. Leeu pulled the trigger of her gun again and again — bang! bang! bang! — but the bullets pinged harmlessly off Iriko’s refractive armour. Azzy screamed and screamed and screamed. Riki put her fists up, teeth bared. Zidra, with her strange mottled skin, went still and silent, as if she could blend into the walls. But she was crying big wet tears.

Iriko reared up, ready to slam down on all four girls at once. She would crush these horrid, rude, awful little bullies, digest their bodies, and then forget all about the way they screamed at her—

Iriko froze.

Elpida’s special symbol was scrawled on the chest of Azzy’s t-shirt.

It was very crude, drawn with a fingertip dipped in blood, but the symbol was unmistakable — a pair of lines, like a tower or a narrow mountain, standing tall against a curve, almost like dawn or the moon or the edge of the world itself. Elpida had explained the meaning of the symbol to Iriko, though Iriko had trouble understanding why it mattered, until Howl had simplified it for her.

The symbol of Telokopolis. The symbol which meant that one day, Iriko would never go hungry again.

All four zombies were wearing it. Iriko had not been able to see it before, relying on low-light vision and infra-red and echolocation. It was daubed on Azzy’s ragged t-shirt, painted on Zidra’s shoulder with black, and cut into the fabric of Leeu’s flack jacket. Riki drawn it on the back of both her fists.

The screaming trailed off, replaced by four pairs of panting lungs. Leeu stopped pulling the trigger — she was out of bullets, going click click click. Riki reached out, fumbling for her her companions again.

“R-run!” one of them squeaked. Iriko couldn’t tell which.

The four zombies scrambled away — along the wall, then out through the opposite door. Iriko let them go.

When the hurried footsteps had been swallowed by the static of the storm, Iriko slumped to the floor. For several minutes she did nothing. Eventually she reeled the remains of the pseudopod-doll back into her body, reabsorbing her sad attempt at making something pretty. She slurped up the flesh and blood which the bullet had scattered about the chamber.

She wanted to cry. Just as she was about to, a short range radio contact crackled across the surface of her skin.

「Good choice.」

Iriko bristled with spikes, extended threatening tentacles, and hardened her outer layers.

A tall figure wrapped all in black stepped out of the shadows, from the same direction the four zombies had entered the room. Red eyes glinted with amusement above a metal half-mask. A long rifle was cradled in six pale arms.

Serin!

Iriko did not reply to the radio contact. She blanketed Serin with a rapid-fire series of echolocation pings, then extended several tubes of flesh and hooted as loud as she could in Serin’s stupid face. She blew the biggest, dirtiest, rudest ‘pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt!!!’ she could muster.

Serin’s red eyes twinkled with amusement.

「I mean it,」 Serin broadcast. 「I wasn’t sure which way you would leap. Not that I could — or would — stop you, either way. But it is a good thing you let those little weeds go. They may grow yet, who knows for certain? I’m told that’s the point.」

Iriko did a big huff, so big that even Serin had to blink.

「mock mock laugh laugh haha haha iriko so stupid stupid!」

Serin smiled behind her mask. 「Stupid? No. Far from it. The opposite, even. It takes wisdom to let the weak thrive. It’s been a long time since I acknowledged that. Perhaps I have things to learn from you, Iriko.」

「iriko not stupid?」

「That is what I said.」

Iriko brooded on this for a moment. She considered reaching for Serin and swallowing her whole, but that would make Elpida unhappy and Pheiri wouldn’t like it either, so she refrained, though she imagined what it would be like. Crunchy Serin, with all those special bionics, all those nanomachines. Mm.

But Serin had called her smart, yes? That was better than eating.

「why here here? serin is too far from pheiri don’t want to be far from pheiri take me back take me back lead out out?」

Serin hefted her gun and moved her head, looking into the dark passageways which led off from the chamber. 「I am doing the same thing as you, Iriko. The coh-mander … she cannot give the order. I am anticipating her needs. Which is not a thing I ever expected to say. Hmm.」

「elpida elpida okay? didn’t talk to iriko didn’t talk at all could only hear howl. howl!」

Serin’s robes rustled, like a sigh. She spoke out loud in her scratchy metal voice, muffled by her mask. “You are asking after Elpida?”

Iriko waved a pseudopod — yes!

Behind Serin’s mask, her smile faded.

“The Coh-mander is indisposed.” Serin sighed again, making that odd rustling sound. “I know the others told you not to fight. But how would you like to continue where we left off, Iriko? I’m going to do what we should have never failed to do in the first place.”

「do? do? what what what?」

“Hunting. Hunt the prey which escaped us last time. Death Cult leaders, all of them. And this time there’s no Necromancer to foul our shot.”

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Poor Iriko! It’s been a long time since her cognition was clear enough to feel things like humiliation, or shame, or failure. But now she’s more of a person again, and that comes with downsides too. Good thing she’s not alone, out there in the dark of the tomb. Serin can help! And maybe she can make some ‘friends’. Ahem.

Welcome, dear readers, to arc 13! We start off with everybody’s(?) favourtie(!?) blob(!?!?) This arc is prrrrrobably gonna be around about 10 chapters long, it depends how many more unexpected explosives we find lurking in dark corners and shadowy corridors. Somebody’s gotta go clean up those zombies, after all. But I’m sure we’ll be hearing from everyone else as well, soon enough. Expect a lot of POV switching, once again!

And! A treat! I have, yet again, more art! This week we have something delightfully unconventional – A Future Grown in the Nanite Soil, (by Melsa Hvarei!), as yet the sole attempt to depict the meat-plants growing in Kagami’s lab. I’m delighted by this one! How very meaty!

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I hope to share more advance chapters with patrons!

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

And thank you! As always, thank you all so much for reading my little story! None of this could exist without you, the real ‘presences in the network’. Wait, that’s kind of a spooky thought, right? Best not worry about it. Thank you for all your support, dear readers! We’re all stuck in this tomb together, for now, until the storm clears and Elpida finds a way out. Until next chapter! Seeya then!