Content Warnings

Slurs
Finger injuries

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida whispered the plan behind a cupped hand, her words shrouded by rainstorm static, with Ilyusha’s back toward the left-hand stairwell.

She doubted that the revenant sniper up in her tangled nest of broken steel and shattered concrete could lip-read through the walls, but Elpida wasn’t going to take that risk. So she pressed the edge of her hand to Ilyusha’s bloodstained hair, and breathed into her ear.

Speed was essential — as were accuracy and visual acuity. One mistake would ruin the plan, and likely end up with both of them splattered across the stairs by an explosive spider-drone. They would lose the element of surprise the moment they moved; the sniper could see through walls.

But if they did it right, the sniper would have to relocate.

Elpida’s breath tickled the tiny hairs on Ilyusha’s neck: “If we move fast enough we can flank her before she can properly readjust. We may be able to force her into a sub-optimal position, then exploit the opening. That depends on the layout of the top floor; if it’s wide open like down here, we have to keep moving fast, to get above her. If it’s close-quarters, we can hunt her. But we must move faster than she expects.”

It’s how she would have cornered Asp, if she’d ever had need to.

Ilyusha’s face was still smeared with blood from her shallow head wound. Grey eyes shined amid sticky crimson, no trace of concussion left. She squinted and gestured with those eyes, indicating the stairwell — the opposite stairwell, on the right, with steps made of wood, and no sniper watching from the apex.

Ilyusha said, “Obvious trap?”

“Yes. That’s the point. She’s likely expecting us to take that stairwell. It’s our only option to nullify her high-ground advantage and flank her through the middle of the structure. It’s probably full of the explosive drones — not just to kill us, but to slow us down, to give her time to relocate. She wants to make us crawl.”

Ilyusha’s lips peeled back from her teeth. She hissed.

Elpida whispered: “But we’re not going to crawl; we’re going to stand tall, and sprint.”

Ilyusha’s angry sneer transformed into a grin. Her exposed red claws clinked against her rotary shotgun and tapped on the heat-damaged surface of the ballistic shield.

“Stand tall!” she barked. “Love it.”

Elpida nodded. “Illy, this is going to be very dangerous. I’m asking you to sprint through a mobile minefield. I’ll take point, with the shield, but if you—”

“I go up front!” Ilyusha snapped. She lifted the shield and tucked it in close. “You’re too big!”

Elpida wanted to argue, but Ilyusha had a point: Elpida was too tall to fit comfortably behind the shield without crouching, which might slow them down. And Ilyusha clearly wanted this: her eyes burned like lightning-lit storm clouds; her petite frame was full of muscular tension, ready to explode upward; her lips peeled back in a toothy grin, framed by drying blood; she was wagging her black-and-red bionic tail.

Ilyusha was the only one of Elpida’s new comrades who she could trust for this task. Even Pira, battle-hardened and experienced, would show too much caution. She needed reckless abandon married to unmatched skill.

She needed Howl.

Ilyusha must have mistaken Elpida’s guilt and grief for hesitation. The heavily augmented girl suddenly hissed: “I can do it! Elps! Take me!”

Elpida’s heart lurched. She swallowed a cough, which made her stomach muscles scream.

The ghost of her most beloved had somehow stolen inside the body of this girl from another era; Elpida did not believe that literally, she knew that she was projecting, seeing what she wanted to see. She was grasping for comfort at an echo inside her own mind.

But here was one last charge alongside Howl, if only in surrogate.

Elpida whispered: “All right. You take point. Shield up. I trust you, Illy. Are you certain you can spot and neutralise those bomb drones?”

Ilyusha nodded. “Fuck yeah I can!”

“Okay.” Elpida made sure her own sniper rifle was strapped securely across her back, then unslung her submachine gun again. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah!” Ilyusha levelled her shotgun and tucked the shield in tight. She bounced one leg up and down on the ball of her foot, vibrating with energy. Elpida reached over with one hand and pulled Ilyusha’s double hoods up, covering her head with the armoured fabric. Ilyusha playfully twisted her head and snapped her teeth at Elpida’s hand. Elpida tried not to think about that; Ilyusha was not Howl.

Elpida hissed, “On three, we break for the stairwell. Move as fast as you can, I’ll match your pace.”

“Race you!”

“That’s not—”

“Joking! Let’s go! Let’s go fuck her up!”

Elpida nodded. “All right. One.”

Ilyusha bounced in time with the count. Her eyes were glued to the stairwell.

“Two.”

Elpida flexed both hands on her submachine gun. Ilyusha rocked forward on the balls of her feet.

“Three.”

They launched from a standing start, slammed through the doorway together, and hit the stairs running.

Ilyusha was perfect — shield in tight, eyes up and roving, shotgun light and muzzle mobile, head swivelling in all directions as she flew up the wooden steps. She was so quick and graceful on her bionic legs. She twisted on the spot with ease, even carrying that bulletproof shield and weighed down by two layers of armoured coat. With each sinuous motion she anchored herself by digging her bionic claws into the wooden stairs, chewing into the material as she leapt and kicked. She covered every corner — and Elpida’s back — in a ceaseless rising whirlwind of motion. Elpida was impressed; she knew Ilyusha was good, she’d witnessed these skills from the moment they’d stalked out of the resurrection chamber together. But to operate like this under such pressure, to execute a difficult plan with no practice, was more than Elpida expected from anybody not of her cadre.

The wooden stairwell was a windowless vertical corridor, identical to its matching plastic and metal twin on the other side, but lacking a tangle of ruins at the top. The steps and railings were made of wood, but the walls were polished brick covered with a layer of clear lacquer. The steps climbed toward double-doors at regular intervals; eight floors, capped with a roof.

Elpida’s wounds were screaming by the time they hit the first landing; her bruised stomach muscles were stiffening and her chest felt like ground glass. She coughed hard, spat dark blood onto the wooden floor, and forced her legs to leap the steps three at a time, sticking close to Ilyusha’s heels.

The first explosive drone showed itself seconds later: a brown smudge dropped from the brick wall on their left.

Elpida shouted, bringing her submachine gun up: “Left! Ten o’clock—”

Ilyusha was quick. She twitched round before Elpida had finished shouting, then blasted the drone and half the wall with a storm of lead pellets from her shotgun. The drone detonated with a meaty crump. Ilyusha whooped, filling the stairwell with echoes. Elpida closed her eyes as brick dust and tiny pieces of shrapnel rained downward.

“Keep moving!” she shouted, already hurling herself up the steps. “Eyes up! Go!”

When the shock wave passed, Elpida opened her eyes; Ilyusha hadn’t even broken her stride. Leaping three or four steps at a time, her face still blood-slick with crimson, grey eyes like a raging storm, grin a white slash in a red face.

Howl’s ghost; an unfair thought, which Elpida did not have time to address.

The sniper threw a dozen more explosive drones at them in the forty one seconds it took to sprint to the top floor; perhaps the devices were automatic, Elpida couldn’t tell. Ilyusha shot them out of the air, blasted them against the walls or the underside of the stairs, and once lifted her shotgun to detonate one of the drones which was wedged low against a step, hiding like a landmine. She scored ten kills, whooping and cheering, bionic feet tearing into the wood to anchor herself against the recoil of her weapon; Elpida scored two, despite the relatively poor accuracy of her submachine gun against such small targets. Ilyusha tanked the explosive backwash on the shield, hurtling forward without pause, cackling at the top of her lungs.

Forty one seconds. They hit the top of the stairwell, a small landing with an open doorway.

Ilyusha was panting through clenched teeth, shield up, eyes darting back and forth for more drones. Elpida was heaving with the pain in her belly and chest, drooling blood.

The doorway led into a jumble of abandoned office space: cubicles, partition walls, support pillars, low desks with swivel chairs and personal terminals. All was draped with dust and shadows.

Eight floors up was higher than the revenant sniper’s position on the opposite side of the building. If Elpida had timed this right, the sniper would still be scrambling to catch up with them, trying to get into a new position to hold them off at range. But a tangle of office space was not a good place to hold an opponent at arm’s length. This was close-quarters work. Shield and shotgun would shine.

Elpida spat to clear her throat. “Perfect. Illy, well done. Good girl. Good.”

Ilyusha’s face lit up with ecstasy. She shouted into the depths of the ruined building: “I’m a good girl, bitch! You fucking hear that!?”

Elpida grunted: “Hold one second. No sense rushing the door. She might have more drones. We go in, straight—”

“Ha!” Ilyusha barked, twisted on the spot with her claws anchoring her feet to the ground, and mashed her bloody lips against Elpida’s mouth.

The kiss was over in a heartbeat. Ilyusha tore away, grinning madly, and plunged forward into the maze of cubicles.

Elpida wasted a precious second on shock. She could taste Ilyusha’s blood, smeared across her lips.

Then she dived into the shadows, following the clicking claws. “Illy! Wait!”

The top floor of the building was all one big room: open-plan, grey-on-grey, divided into small cubicles and a few open areas. The partitions were just shorter than Elpida’s sight-line; they wouldn’t block or deflect a shot from the sniper’s chemical propellant, solid-slug rifle, but they would foul her accuracy. One end of the building, far away to the right, had collapsed into a tangle of concrete and steel; rain drummed on the breached ruins, admitting a trickle of light to draw long grey shadows across the room. The air smelled of petrochemicals and plastic.

Elpida quickly caught up with Ilyusha, right on her heels. Ilyusha grinned back at her, blood smeared in a new way over her lower face.

“Straight for the door!” Elpida hissed as they kept low, behind the partitions. “Catch her as she’s coming in. Watch for more drones, we’re exposed here, we—”

A metallic voice suddenly screeched from the other end of the room, muffled by the partitions and the rain-static in the air: “I see you right there, corpse-shitter! And your little fuck-toy friend, too! Come get me, if you caaaaan!”

The sniper was already up here.

But she hadn’t taken a shot — she’d goaded them, again.

Ilyusha gritted her teeth and raised her head to howl an insult across the maze of cubicle partitions: “I’m gonna take you apart, bitch!”

Elpida hissed, “She’s not set up! Illy, go!”

Elpida’s heart ached all the more when Ilyusha didn’t need a reminder of the plan. The heavily augmented girl twisted on the spot and scurried off to the left, her tail bouncing as she vanished deeper into the maze of partition walls.

Elpida went right. She stayed low, moving fast, submachine gun covering corners.

Splitting up was dangerous, and not only because of the explosive drones: with no short-range comms there was a very real risk of her and Ilyusha shooting each other in confusion. Even the cadre was not immune to the fog of battle.

But the sniper could see them anyway; there was no reason to stay quiet.

Elpida called out, as planned: “Illy!”

Ilyusha shouted back. “Here!” Her voice floated over the partitions. They weren’t too far apart.

“Anything?”

“Bitch is close!”

Elpida stopped at the corner of a cubicle and projected her voice deeper into the room: “Hey, zombie! Not gonna shoot me?”

Rainstorm static drummed on the roof, spattering on the concrete and steel at the far end of the room. The revenant sniper did not reply.

The tactic was simple — Ilyusha went one way, Elpida went the other: a pincer movement. Even a very skilled sniper could not keep two opponents at bay at the same time, not in a close-quarters environment with her sight-lines complicated by all these partition walls and pillars, even if she could see through solid matter. Asp, with her perfect technique, would have retreated; this sniper was more bold and less skilled. Whoever she chose not to engage would be able to rush her. Hopefully Ilyusha, with her shield for protection.

But the sniper wasn’t shooting.

Had Elpida completely misunderstood her capabilities? In Kagami’s auspex visor, the revenant’s physical form had been difficult to make out, a jumble of limbs and torso and other parts. Had she fled from the close-quarter confrontation? Or had Elpida made a mistake?

Elpida drew her combat knife from within her coat, holding it in her left hand and bracing her submachine gun on her wrist. She peered around the edge of the cubicle, into a wider space with low benches and deep shadows.

Beneath the omnipresent chemical smell of the rainwater, she caught wind of something else — woody and meaty, like mushrooms.

She called out: “Illy! Sound off!”

“Elpi!” Ilyusha cackled back. She was muffled by the rain-static, further away now, scuttling between pillars and walls as they both looped toward their target.

“Anything?”

“I can smell the cunt right here!”

Elpida kept moving. She shot into the open space and paused behind a stout pillar; a clock and an ancient calender were mounted on the white plaster. She raised her voice again. “Come on, zombie! Take a shot already!”

Nothing.

Shadows lay thick inside the cubicles on either side. Rainwater static washed away the sound of her own heartbeat.

Elpida smelled mushrooms again. Stronger. Closer.

“Illy!” she called out. “Illy, abort!”

“What?!” Ilyusha’s shout was all but drowned by the rain.

Elpida ducked left and right, checking around the sides of the pillar. Empty cubicles penned her on all sides: a dozen hiding places for explosive drones or unbreathing zombies. Long shadows loomed in the weak light creeping in through the fallen section of roof. She flexed her hands on her submachine gun and combat knife.

“Abort!” she repeated. “Back to the door! Now!”

“Fuck that!” Ilyusha shouted back.

Elpida had made a mistake; this was a trap.

She had begun this duel by asking herself what one of her own cadre would be capable of: she had compared the revenant sniper against Asp. One of her beloved sisters, Asp, so willowy and graceful, so slow to move and so fast to strike. Asp, with her almond-shaped eyes and long fingers and low, whispery voice. Elpida had compared this sniper with Asp, and found the revenant wanting. How could she not? Her cadre was perfect, the best at what they did. Any tactic which would overcome Asp would surely overcome her inferior.

Get up close and personal. Neutralise her range. Shock her into close quarters combat, where all her skills meant nothing.

But these zombies were not Elpida’s cadre. This was not the green. This was not Telokopolis

“Ilyusha!” she shouted one more time. “Back to the door, right now!”

Elpida burst from behind the pillar, making no effort to stay low, hurrying back along the route she’d taken through the maze of cubicles. She turned quickly as she strode, trying to cover every angle with the muzzle of her weapon, flicking it back and forth between the cubicle openings she raced past. If she could catch back up with Ilyusha they might be able to extract themselves. Analysis of failure was for later. She had to move, stay alert, pull out before—

Crump went an explosion on the far side of the office space. Partitions and shrapnel flew into the air.

“Illy!” Elpida shouted.

A giant spider draped all in black slid out of a cubicle, right on top of her.

Elpida jerked back, finger tightening on the trigger of her weapon; but the spider reached out with three arms, flicker-quick. Pale papery hands grabbed her wrist and elbow, forcing her aim up and to the side with monstrous strength. The third hand got a grip on her trigger finger and snapped the bones backward with an audible crack. Elpida hissed blood through gritted teeth. Painblockers compensated; training took over. Elpida stabbed forward and upward with her combat knife, aiming at the white skin of an exposed throat.

Three more hands caught her thrust. Her knife scored a glancing blow along a naked forearm. Red blood slid from an open wound.

A metallic voice hissed, amused: “Go on corpse-fucker, turn me to shit! Try it!”

Elpida had only a second to realise what she was grappling with: it was the sniper from the battle at the tomb fortifications, the one who had shot at the Silico construct.

She was gigantic: nine feet of loose black robes were wrapped around a hunchbacked frame, topped by a moon-like face and a sheet of lank, white-blonde hair. Her mouth and chin were covered by a metal mask painted with sharp black teeth. Her eyes were dark red, without pupils or irises, bionic lenses flexing and adjusting beneath layers of bio-plastic. Spindly, pale, papery limbs jutted out at odd angles from inside her robes, lacking muscle mass despite her incredible strength — six, then eight, then a dozen limbs. She reeked of that woody, meaty, fungal stench.

Elpida grunted: “I’m not—”

Three pale arms raised a smooth grey oblong with a wide opening at one end. Elpida had never seen a weapon like it before.

The gigantic spider-sniper jammed it under Elpida’s chin, and hissed, voice like metal on metal: “Back to hell, sludge-scum!”

She pulled the trigger.

A pulse of heat passed through Elpida’s face and scalp and—

Nothing happened.

The sniper’s dark red bionic eyes blinked twice. Before Elpida could kick and struggle, the gravitic weapon was removed from under her chin and the sniper let go of her arms. The giant stepped back, massive and dark in the cramped spaces between the cubicles. Elpida dropped her knife and transferred her submachine gun to her left hand, ignoring the pain from the broken bones in her right index finger. She raised the gun, finger on the trigger.

The sniper was murmuring: “But you look just like—”

Ilyusha came crashing directly through the cubicle partitions.

A whirlwind of claw and shield and lashing tail burst through the flimsy walls and slammed into the sniper, bowling her over in a cloud of black. Spindly limbs went everywhere, reaching for weapons, righting the sniper, trying to deflect the stabbing spike of Ilyusha’s tail.

Ilyusha screamed. “Fucking got you, cunt!”

“Howl,” Elpida breathed.

Ilyusha slammed her ballistic shield into the sniper’s front as the revenant tried to rise, knocking her down into a tangle of broken partitions. One bone-thin pale arm raised a bulky handgun, but Ilyusha’s tail knocked it aside. Ilyusha planted a clawed foot into the black robes, shoved her shotgun in the sniper’s moon-like face, and-

Stopped.

The gigantic hunchbacked sniper had raised one arm between herself and Ilyusha, as if to ward off the killing shot. A set of symbols were burned or tattooed into the mushroom-pale flesh: a row of nine stylised black skulls, some of which had little crosses for eyes or limp tongues hanging from slack jaws. Each skull was struck through with a thick line. At the head of the row was a symbol Elpida recognised, a diagonal line intersected by a crescent: the same symbol which Ilyusha had daubed on the front of her torn t-shirt, with a stick of green camo paint, back in the gravekeeper’s armoury. The same symbol was still visible on Ilyusha’s t-shirt now, through the open front of her double layer of armoured coats.

Ilyusha stared at the symbols. She bared her teeth in frustration, looked back up at the sniper’s deep red eyes, and jerked her shotgun forward.

The gigantic sniper woman said: “You won’t.” Her metallic voice was scratchy with pain. “Mistake. Same side. Come on.”

“Bitch!” Ilyusha screamed.

A metal snort came from beneath the mask. Pale eyebrows flexed above deep red bionic orbs. “No harm done.”

Elpida said: “Illy, is this woman—”

“Fucking stupid cunt!” Ilyusha screamed again. Then she lowered her shotgun and stepped off the sniper.

Elpida kept the giant covered with her submachine gun as the huge woman flowed to her feet — though she could have concealed anything beneath those robes, feet or otherwise. She filled the space, massive and dark, limbs all suddenly tucking back inside her robes.

“No sudden movements,” Elpida said. “You’re going to answer my questions.”

But then Ilyusha reached out with the tip of her shotgun — and gently lowered Elpida’s own weapon.

“Illy? She’s—”

Ilyusha, sulky and bitter and gritting her teeth, shook her head.

Elpida asked: “We’re letting her go?”

Ilyusha hissed a wordless noise of humiliated frustration.

The sniper ignored Elpida, addressing Ilyusha: “Thought your clever friend here was a Necromancer, comrade. My mistake. Big sorry. Whoops.” Her metal voice did not sound apologetic. She sounded amused.

“Retard fuckhead,” Ilyusha growled. “Should fucking shoot you.”

Elpida said, “Illy, do you know this woman?”

“No!”

“Serin,” said the giant sniper. “I’ve heard your names. You shout a lot.”

Elpida spoke quickly. “Serin. Fine. Why did you think I was a Necromancer? You mentioned my skin. Explain. Now.”

Serin’s moon-like face, cupped by the metal mask, turned to look at Elpida with dark light burning inside those red machine-eyes. “Seen a corpse-fucker with your skin and hair, once. And all that metal in your head. Never seen that elsewhere. Other metal. Other heads. Not that metal.”

“A Necromancer who looked like me? What was her name? What other—”

“Too long ago.”

“How—”

“Too long for memory, fresh meat. She got away, from another. Not me. Long time. Didn’t have means then. But worth a shot, at you. No harm, no foul, right?”

“You broke my finger.” Elpida raised her right hand. Her index finger would need to be set, or at least snapped back into position. The pain throbbed down her wrist in sharp waves. She allowed that pain to carry away her disappointment at the lack of information.

But a Necromancer, with her skin and her hair? That could only mean one thing.

Serin shrugged, bony plates adjusting beneath her black robes. “It’ll fix right easy. You’ve got all that raw blue. Which you should drink up, by the way. Not everybody with peepers like mine is hunting big game. Plenty of crows out there looking for an easy score.”

“And you’re not?” Elpida demanded. “You’ve just spent an hour trying to kill us.”

Serin produced her strange grey oblong weapon again — the source of the gravitic signature Kagami had seen in the auspex visor. It seemed to suck in the faint light filtering into the office space from the section of fallen roof. She showed it to them — but mostly to Ilyusha.

“Just luring you close,” said Serin. “For this. But it doesn’t work on zombies. Only corpse-rapists, and worse.”

Ilyusha hissed: “Moron shit eater dick face.”

Elpida shook her head. “Ilyusha, we’re letting this woman go? I need to understand.”

Ilyusha snorted. “Hunting reptiles. Not gonna eat us. Just fucking stupid.”

“Reptiles? I don’t understand.”

Serin raised her tattooed arm again, showing off those crossed-out black skulls. “I hunt the death cult. Mostly.”

Elpida nodded. “I’ve seen that symbol before, a black skull, painted on the chest of a suit of power-armour.”

The sniper’s pale eyebrows shot upward. “Where? A friend?”

“Shot her,” Ilyusha snapped, pointing at Elpida. “With a coilgun. Boom! Fucked. Elpi’s cool, she’s one of us. Fuck off!”

“Huh,” Serin grunted. “Well done, fresh meat who isn’t a Necromancer. Hold onto your little comrade there, she’ll teach you how not to become a monster.”

Ilyusha snorted: “Fuck you, retard. Use your eyes next time.”

“Thank you, little comrade.”

Elpida was having trouble keeping up with this. Her wounds and bruises ached. There were undercurrents of allegiance and identification here that she did not yet know. But the fight was over. The fight had been mistaken in the first place, the product of an overzealous hunter.

She said, “So this was a case of mistaken identity? All this violence was for nothing?”

Serin shrugged again. Too many joints moved beneath her robes, massive shapes hidden in the black. She reeked of fungal spores and mushroom flesh. “Fun, wasn’t it?”

Ilyusha said, “Boring shit. You shoot like you’re blind. Cunt.”

Elpida couldn’t see any other way to end this. Her mind was already joining the dots — the skull symbols, the matching insignia she’d seen on that pale leather flag during the fight to escape the tomb pyramid, and Ilyusha’s apparent yet offended allegiance with this woman. She said, “You promise to leave us alone now? Illy, can we trust her to go? This isn’t a trap or a trick?”

Serin answered first: “No reason to hunt you more. You’re no Necromancer. Oopsie.”

Ilyusha looked like she wanted to rip the sniper’s face off, but she hissed in frustration. “Our side. Don’t shoot, I guess. Fuck-head.”

Elpida locked eyes with Serin for a long moment, then said, “Who needs enemies when you have allies like these.”

The deep red bionic eyes scrunched up at the corners: a grin, hidden behind the metal mask.

That scratching voice hissed over the rain static: “I’m not your ally, fresh meat. But if you keep killing death’s heads, you’re on the right track. Watch your shadows, I’ll be around.”

And with that the spindly giant turned and flowed away, vanishing amid the tangle of cubicles and shadows. She showed no fear of being shot in the back. Ilyusha spat on the ground as she left, but there was little anger in the gesture. Elpida grimaced at her own broken finger. She tried to catch Ilyusha’s flat grey eyes.

“Illy, none of that was your fault.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I need an explanation, intel, anything. I realise why we didn’t kill that woman — she confirmed I’m not a Necromancer. But, death’s heads? Her tattoos? That symbol on your t-shirt? Please. If we have potential allies here, that’s a good thing. But I need to know.”

Ilyusha avoided her gaze, embarrassed or ashamed. Her shotgun pointed at the floor. Her tail hung limp.

“Even the good are made bloodthirsty,” she said — and it was that other voice, that voice she had used to plead for continued kindness, when her clawed hand had touched Elpida’s face.

Elpida reached over and took her shoulder, gently.

Ilyusha’s head snapped up, eyes burning bright once again. Her tail flicked the air. She pulled a sardonic grin. “Stupid shit. S’go back to the others, yeah?”

Elpida nodded. “I’m with you, Illy.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

I’m with Ilyusha on this one. That revenant was very irresponsible. Then again, there’s worse things than zombies walking these wastes; perhaps hunting them makes one paranoid. Do you think this has brought Ilyusha and Elpida closer together? Or is Illy too mortified by the actions of her ‘ally’?

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

Patreon!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 4k words.  Please, do feel free to wait until there’s plenty more to read! I’m still trying to somehow put out more chapters ahead, maybe soon! If I can get to two, or three, that would be great, so I’m trying!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry, for voting. Voting makes the story go up the rankings, which helps more people see it!

Thank you for reading! This arc has been a blast, I’ve enjoyed it so much. Next week, it’s onto arc 5, and something very, very different … you’ll see!

Content Warnings

Slurs
Contemplation of grief

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“Ilyusha! Illy! Illy, respond!”

Elpida shouted across the road, over the sniper’s mocking laugh and the echoes of the explosion. Greasy rain swallowed her words, drumming on her hood, pounding on the asphalt, swirling around her boots as it flowed down the concrete slope, carrying away the deformed bullet which had failed to penetrate her armoured coat.

She coughed and spat blood into the water — bright and fresh: internal bleeding from the massive bullet-impact bruise spreading across her abdomen.

“Illy!”

Ilyusha did not respond.

The metallic voice howled through the rain once again, but this time it was muffled behind brick and steel, funnelled in the wrong direction, unfocused: “Your fresh meat was too heavy on her feet! Come pick her up, Necromancer!”

Elpida’s body acted on the available information before her conscious mind caught up.

She slung the rifle over her shoulder, shot to her feet, and sprinted out onto the ancient asphalt of the road. Her bruised stomach muscles and slow-healing chest wounds lit up with agony; painblockers and adrenaline flooded her bloodstream, her gene-tweaked biochemistry doing its best to keep her moving. From behind, back in the bunker, somebody shouted her name: “Elpi!”

Probably Vicky, but there was no time to respond.

Elpida’s boots splashed through dancing puddles of gritty water. Raindrops lashed her face. She vaulted the lane divider in the middle of the road; landing sent a jagged spike of pain up through her guts. She turned a stumble into a lunge, then hauled herself toward the shadow of the ruined buildings.

Compared to Ilyusha, Elpida was a large, slow-moving target, with little protection, and no covering fire.

But the sniper didn’t shoot.

It wasn’t until she slammed into the cover of the ruined buildings that Elpida’s conscious mind caught up with her training: the sniper’s metallic voice had been muffled, wavering, projected the wrong way — in motion. The sniper was either relocating to a new spot, or descending through the structure to deal with Ilyusha. That gave Elpida an opening. A risky one, yes, but one of her comrades was in trouble, perhaps injured, perhaps about to be killed. Her training, even tattered and torn, had handed her the correct response.

A calculated risk. Old Lady Nunnus would have scolded her for this one.

“You are the Commander, not a sacrificial pawn. Yes, every one of you girls is more than capable of deciding for herself, I bloody well know that. We all learned that early enough. You’re not raw Legion recruits picking your noses and waiting for the drill sergeant. But if you go down, the others will stop at nothing to recover their leader. If you love your sisters as they love you, do not put yourself at unnecessary risk.”

Elpida wasn’t Commander of anything now. And she wasn’t letting any comrade die before she did.

Sprinting across the road had aggravated the massive deep-tissue bruise on her abdomen; painblockers could dull the response, but they couldn’t stop her drooling blood into the puddles of rainwater. Hissing through her teeth with convulsive pain, pressing herself against a filthy concrete wall for cover, raindrops pummelling her hood and shoulders, Elpida had to make a conscious choice: stop breathing. She did not need to breathe, or pant, or wheeze. She was not alive, not really.

She swallowed blood. Tasted petrochemicals and chlorine and acid in the rainwater. After a few seconds, the pain ebbed down to a manageable level.

Elpida pulled her submachine gun up, pressed the stock to her shoulder, and slipped in through an empty doorway of tarnished steel.

The building the sniper had selected as a vantage point was some kind of light commercial or office space: the ground floor was a wide area of once-white tiles, with a reception desk, several banks of empty lockers along one wall, some kind of lathe-like machine along the other, and some fallen concrete at the far end. The ruin was thick with shadows, hissing with rain like sand on a drum. Empty doorways led to open stairwells on both left and right, climbing upward: the stairs on the left were scuffed blue polymer with metal railings, but the steps on the right were made of wood. Elpida allowed herself a single split-second of wonder. Walking on wood? Obscene.

On the left, one flight up on a little corner-landing, a wide area of stairs and wall was blackened with fresh soot: the aftermath of a small explosive device.

A tangle of bionic limbs and armoured coats lay in a heap.

Elpida moved quickly, submachine gun up, watching her feet for tripwires or mines or anything else out of place, eyes on the corners for mounted weapons or cameras or any sign of movement. She did not like stepping into the stairwell; it went up perhaps five or six floors before terminating in a tangle of bent steel and crumbled concrete — a vertical killing ground topped by a sniper’s nest. She kept her armoured hood up, covering the corners with her submachine gun. Her footsteps echoed upward. Rainwater dripped from her coat.

When she reached the corner landing, Elpida tore her eyes away from the vertical shaft of the stairwell and crouched next to the tangle of coats, fearing the worst. She tried to shield Ilyusha’s body with her own, in case the sniper was watching from above.

She hissed: “Ilyusha? Ilyusha, respond. Illy!”

Ilyusha gurgled.

Elpida pulled back a corner of armoured coat: Ilyusha’s face appeared from within the tangle. Dazed, dirty, disoriented, face smeared with blood from a gash on her scalp, but very much alive and conscious. Ilyusha cracked a grin and gurgled again. Elpida realised she was trying to laugh.

Elpida said: “We have to move. Can you stand?”

“Got me with a fucking cunt, bomb shit.” Ilyusha slurred. Her eyes wavered, one pupil larger than the other. Concussion. “Meant to be our thing. Thirteen thing. Fucking reptile. Fuck.”

Ilyusha squirmed beneath the coats. Elpida tried to reach out and hold her still, but Ilyusha shoved and kicked free a large piece of soot-blackened, heat-warped, bulletproof polymer: the ballistic shield. The shield had taken the brunt of the explosion. Ilyusha must have had enough sense to keep the shield to her front. Probably saved her life.

Elpida took all this in with a glance, then hissed: “We need to get out of this stairwell and into cover. The sniper is right above us. Can you stand—”

A metallic screech echoed downward, turning the stairwell into a giant megaphone: “I see you, bone fucker! Come on up!”

Elpida grabbed the ballistic shield just in time.

As she jerked it upward to shelter herself and Ilyusha, a single round ricocheted off the bulletproof surface. The impact juddered down her arm and into her shoulder, vibrating through the wounds in her chest and the bruise on her stomach. Elpida grunted with pain and effort. The sniper howled and cackled, deafening in the echo-filled stairwell. She fired again — and again — and again — slamming the bulletproof shield with small calibre rounds, forcing Elpida down to cover Ilyusha.

“Come on, necrophiliac!” she screamed. “You can do better than that!”

Elpida hissed: “Ilyusha, grab me! Grab on, I can’t do this with one arm.”

Ilyusha obeyed. From inside the tangle of coats she extended all four black-and-red bionic limbs to grip Elpida’s shoulders and wrap around her waist. Sharp red claws dug into Elpida’s flesh; Ilyusha clung to her front like an infant marsupial. Elpida crawled backward down the steps. Ilyusha’s bionic tail dragged behind, limp and loose. The sniper fired again and again, pounding on the shield, howling with laughter. She landed two additional rounds on Ilyusha’s tail, the only unprotected body part. Luckily the bullets bounced off with a resonant ping.

Stomach muscles screaming, drooling blood through gritted teeth, Elpida dragged Ilyusha back out of the stairwell.

She dropped the ballistic shield on the dirty white tiles and collapsed onto her side. Ilyusha remained attached to her front for over a minute, panting softly, chewing on Elpida’s collarbone. Elpida allowed it.

Eventually Ilyusha unclenched her limbs. Elpida propped her up against a wall and examined her for wounds, running her hands over Ilyusha’s non-augmetic flesh, down her torso and up to her throat. Luckily Ilyusha still had her rotary shotgun cradled in her lap, secured around her neck with a canvas strap. Elpida checked her pulse, stared into her flat grey eyes, and took a look at the head wound — shallow, barely a graze, clotting fast. The blood smeared down Ilyusha’s face made it look much worse.

“You’re clear,” Elpida said. She sat back on her haunches and eyed the stairwell.

Ilyusha grunted: “No.” She reached out and grabbed a corner of Elpida’s coat in one limp hand.

“No? No what?”

“No go. Don’t go.” Ilyusha’s eyes were like a dead sky before a storm, leaden and dark.

“Ilyusha — Illy, I’m not going anywhere while you have a concussion. You’ve not got any wounds except that gash on your head, and that’s visibly better already. Nanomachines, I suppose. But you need to sit still.”

Ilyusha grunted and closed her eyes. “Fucked up.”

“We all make mistakes,” Elpida said. “And you did the right thing, you kept the shield up, at your front. Well done. I’m glad you did.”

Ilyusha grumbled. She kept blinking as if trying to clear her vision.

Elpida asked: “What was it? A tripwire? Did you see?”

“Lil’ robot bomb cunt. Creeping around.”

Elpida froze. She turned slowly and looked toward the shadowy reception area, the banks of lockers, the tumbled concrete. Tripwires and traps she could manage with her eyes and ears; she could even disarm several types of anti-personnel mine if she had to. But semi-autonomous mobile robotic explosives were beyond her abilities, not without more equipment. She needed scanner devices, bomb-sniffers, ablative drones — and most of all she needed a hardshell. She stared into every dark corner, one hand on her weapon.

“Ilyusha. What did it look like?”

“Brown spider thingy.”

“How big?”

“Hand? Ish? Little piss head fuck.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Ilyusha snorted: “Fucked up.”

Elpida turned back to her, but kept her attention on her own peripheral vision. Ilyusha looked sad. Elpida said, “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I didn’t predict she might have something like this. Drones are difficult to deal with, even with a bomb team and the right tools. You didn’t have either.”

“Fucking bitch.”

Elpida nodded. She didn’t need to ask who Ilyusha was referring to. “She’s playing with us. I don’t know why.”

“Crazy cunt.”

“Maybe. She must know I’m not a Necromancer. It makes no sense. Either she’s trying to wind us up, or … ”

Elpida trailed off; through the wall of rain beyond the building’s entrance she heard a name on the wind. Her name.

She got to her feet. Ilyusha didn’t want to let go of her coat, but Elpida gently peeled her claws open and whispered that she wasn’t going far. Ilyusha didn’t fight. Elpida quickly crossed to the open doorway, staring out into the rain, across the uneven asphalt. The bunker was a low grey hump on the far side.

“—pida! Elpida! Elpi!”

It was Vicky, out of sight.

Elpida cupped her hands around her mouth and called back: “We’re okay! Illy is okay! Don’t expose yourselves! Vicky, stay hidden! Head down!”

Raindrop static filled the silence. Then Vicky shouted back: “Okay!”

A metallic screech rang out from above. The sniper cackled into the rain, then said, “Expose yourself all you like, freshies! Come save your corpse-fucker bitch! Haahaaaa!”

Vicky and Kagami were smart enough not to respond. Elpida hoped they were comforting Amina, too. They really needed long-range comms; even short range would make a difference. She wondered if such things were available in this wasteland.

She turned away from the open doorway and crept back toward the stairwell, bringing her submachine gun up, eyes alert for any sign of skittering motion.

She hissed: “Illy, I’m going to—”

“No!” Ilyusha spat.

The heavily augmented girl lurched to her feet. She staggered and swayed, naked claws scraping across the tile floor. She knocked her revolver-shotgun against the wall so hard that Elpida flinched, anticipating an accidental discharge. But the shotgun was made of sterner stuff; the mechanism didn’t fail. Ilyusha shook her head, blinking her eyes hard as she struggled to focus on Elpida. She wobbled to one side, shotgun pointed at nothing, double layers of coats hanging from her narrow shoulders.

Elpida put out one hand to steady her. “Illy, wait. You need to recover—”

“I can go!” Ilyusha shouted. She reached out and wrapped one hand around Elpida’s wrist, claws going snick-snack as they flicked out and dug into the fabric of Elpida’s coat. She hung on and pulled herself upright, then screwed her eyes shut, panting with effort. “I can!”

Elpida pitched her voice calm but firm; she’d seen this before, on the faces of her clade-sisters: a devotion to others which often defied good sense. “Illy. Illy, open your eyes and look at me.”

Ilyusha shook her head, trying to clear a blockage. “Nuurrrh—”

“Ilyusha,” Elpida ordered. “Look at me.”

Ilyusha looked, molten grey eyes in a face smeared with drying blood.

“Illy, I’m not going up there without you. I’m not taking on a sniper in a prepared position, especially not when she’s got mobile drones with explosives. The more pairs of eyes we have for that task, the better our chances of survival. But you are concussed. I need you, Ilyusha — which means I need you clear and sharp. I am ordering you to sit down and recover.”

Ilyusha squinted, sullen and sulky. Her red-clawed fingers tightened on Elpida’s wrist.

Elpida continued. “I’m not going to expose myself to her line of fire. I’m going to shout up the stairwell, without entering it. She’s playing mind-games with us. I’m answering her move.”

Ilyusha hissed through clenched teeth. She did not let go.

Elpida realised that Ilyusha did not believe her.

Elpida’s heart ached with sudden grief, pinned by those smouldering grey eyes. She had never needed to worry about whether her clade-sisters in the cadre believed her, trusted her, and placed their faith in her decisions. She had been Commander because the cadre had chosen to follow her — but not without question, never without question. Elpida was Commander because she listened to her sisters — to their doubts, their questions, their needs, right back to that very first time they had worked together. The cadre believed in her decisions because she believed in them; she was the cadre, and the cadre was her.

Howl was not always the first to question, nor always the most insistent. But without fail she was always the most personal, the closest up in Elpida’s face, the one who wouldn’t let it drop even in private, even after sex.

Ilyusha did not look like Howl: the only resemblance was physical size, her petite frame.

But this attitude, the look in those eyes — I won’t let you go alone because I don’t believe you — it excavated Elpida’s heart.

Grief was an open wound, bleeding into sodden bandages. Too close, too soon, too raw. But Elpida took a deep breath and packed it away beneath layers of gauze and painblockers and training. They had a task to complete. She was designed for carrying on. She would think about this later.

“Illy,” she said. Some of her grief edged into her voice. “I’m not going up there without you. I would not leave you alone with explosive drones around. Even though I hardly know you.”

Ilyusha’s grip finally slackened. She let go and staggered sideways, then allowed Elpida to help her sit down. Ilyusha clutched her shotgun and let her head roll back against the wall. She hissed a wordless noise of frustration.

Elpida said: “I’m going to shout up to the sniper. I’m going less than a dozen feet away from you. You’ll hear every word. If you see a drone—”

“Shout or shoot, yaaaaah.”

Elpida smiled for her, then reached down and patted Ilyusha on the head, stroking her bloody hair, avoiding the scalp wound. “Good girl. I’ll be right back.”

Ilyusha’s tail flicked back and forth over the dirty tiles. Elpida stood up and stepped away.

The doorway to the stairwell was wide enough for Elpida to project her voice upward without crossing the threshold and into the revenant’s line of fire. She picked up the ballistic shield anyway, in case of scuttling bombs or unexpected surprises. She lifted the shield to cover her front, stepped up to the door, and shouted.

“What do you want, zombie?”

A moment of rain-static against the walls and roof. Echoing silence. Elpida’s heart jerked. She coughed.

Then: “You, Necromancer!” came the screeching reply, echoing down the stairwell, twisting the strange voice.

Elpida shouted back up: “You must know I’m not a Necromancer. You’re goading me. Why bother?”

A single laugh, followed by: “Your freshies don’t know, but I do! I’m gonna eat your guts, bone-fucker! Come on, come get scrambled! You know you gotta try, or I’ll come eat your brains in your sleep!”

Elpida couldn’t decide if the revenant sniper really believed what she was saying. The taunting served little purpose now; they were already inside the building, committed to removing her, perhaps killing her. Bait or not, they had taken the decision. Where did this lead? Elpida couldn’t figure it out, not unless the sniper really believed she was talking to a Necromancer — and had a way to kill a Necromancer.

Elpida called upward again: “What makes you think I’m a Necromancer? Is it the neural lace in my head? I have a cranial implant, from life, metal inside my skull, for communication. Is that it?”

“It’s written on your skiiiiiin!”

Her skin?

The colour of Elpida’s skin — copper-brown — was artificially selected, along with her white hair and the purple tint of her irises. Same as the rest of the cadre. An artificial phenotype found nowhere else in Telokopolis, so they would never be mistaken as natural born human beings.

Elpida shouted up the stairwell: “You’ve seen somebody with my skin and hair colour before? Somebody with my phenotype? You’ve seen a revenant like me?”

“You’re no zombie, corpse-fucker!”

“Please! You’ve seen somebody like me before?”

The sniper just cackled and hurled more howling insults down the stairwell shaft. Elpida realised she’d made a tactical mistake; even if the sniper didn’t mean what Elpida assumed, the change in Elpida’s tone of voice had handed the sniper fresh bait, a new tool with which to goad and irritate. Elpida forced herself to turn away from the stairwell and walk back to Ilyusha, no matter what information the sniper may have.

Ilyusha snorted, “Biiitch.”

“Yes,” Elpida agreed.

She placed the shield on the floor and sat down cross-legged next to Ilyusha, so they could both watch the room for bomb drones. Ilyusha’s eyes were like cold lead — and still uneven. Still concussed. Ilyusha stared back. They were going to have to sit there for a few minutes, at least.

Elpida couldn’t take it, that sullen watching — so very Howl. Post-coital Howl, curled up and sulky, paradoxically grumpy, usually because her mind was working on some special problem, unknotted by the release of sex. Elpida could not endure that look on Ilyusha’s face, even if it had a totally different cause and meaning. She had to look away.

Many of the popular religions in Telokopolis had believed in reincarnation; some of the earliest records in the archives even spoke of a dominant religion during the city’s first thousand years, a religion which preached of the reincarnation and inevitable reunion of lovers separated by death. Elpida had never spent much time thinking about that. The cadre had little in the way of spiritual education, even less in long-dead cults. But as the rain-static drummed and Elpida strained her eyes for motion and Ilyusha sat there, small and sour and in some ways too familiar, Elpida’s mind wandered toward impossible hope.

In a way, were they not all reincarnated?

Training reasserted itself quickly. Elpida needed to keep her mind occupied. Ilyusha was not Howl. Without turning to look at Ilyusha again, she said: “Illy, do you mind if I ask where — or when — you’re—”

Needle points touched Elpida’s cheek. She froze.

Ilyusha pressed a bionic hand to Elpida’s jaw, cheekbone, and nose. Black augmetic, trimmed in red, pressed against coppery skin. Ilyusha’s hand was surprisingly warm.

Elpida moved only her eyes. Ilyusha was staring up at her with a relaxed and dreamlike expression. Her pupils were the same size.

“Illy?” Elpida hissed. Her heart was racing. “Illy?”

Ilyusha said, “You’re being very kind to her. Long time since that. Keep doing that, please.”

“Ilyusha?”

“Yeah.”

She sounded so sad.

Without another word, Ilyusha exploded to her feet. A grin ripped across her face. A clawed foot slammed into the tiles. Her shotgun came up in both hands, went clunk-click, and pointed outward at the room, at—

A spidery brown blob on the ceiling, scuttling silently toward them.

“Fuck you!” Ilyusha yelled.

She pulled the trigger, painting ceiling and spider and half the wall with a wide spread of shot. Elpida scrambled for the ballistic shield, but Ilyusha’s shot landed true. The tiny spider-drone was knocked off the ceiling and blasted toward the rear of the room. It detonated with a low crump. Elpida ducked behind the shield and tried to drag Ilyusha down too, but the heavily augmented girl stood tall, laughing, washed by the back-blast of tiny pieces of concrete debris.

“Got you, bitch! Smart now!” she shouted. “Try again, cunt!”

Elpida stood up, one hand on Ilyusha’s shoulder. “Well done. Well done, Good shot.”

“Good girl,” Ilyusha demanded.

“Good girl, yes. Good eyes, too. Think you can keep spotting them like that?”

Ilyusha nodded, cycling another round into her weapon. Her eyes were clear, her balance was perfect, her tail was wagging.

“Good,” Elpida said. “Then I’ve got a plan. We’re going up.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ilyusha is a good girl. A good girl with good aim and a shotgun. And she really likes Elpida. Zombies, bonding in combat, whoever would have guessed it? I hope you’re all enjoying this, dear readers, because I am having so much fun with the story. I know these extended fights/action sequences tend to take a while when paced like this, but I hope it’s worth every moment.

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

Patreon!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 3k words.  Please, do feel free to wait until there’s plenty more to read! I’m still trying to somehow put out more chapters ahead, maybe soon! If I can get to two, or three, that would be great, so I’m trying!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry, for voting. Voting makes the story go up the rankings, which helps more people see it!

Thank you so much for reading my little story! Next week, it’s the last chapter of arc 4. Let’s hope Elpida’s plan is a good one.

Content Warnings

None this chapter.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

That word again, screeching out from between the rotten tooth-stubs of this city-corpse, half-drowned in the steady static hiss of greasy, gritty raindrops, pattering on asphalt and pooling in concrete and drumming on the hood of Elpida’s armoured coat.

Necromancer.

Echoes faded; static filled the silence.

The mysterious revenant — the sniper up in a building on the other side of the ancient road — had nothing more to say.

Elpida put her eye to the scope of her rifle again, to watch the buildings across the road for any sign of motion. Twisted steel and slick-wet brick were blurred by a veil of water. Rain dripped from the rim of her hood. Droplets plinked on the barrel of the gun.

This was the second time Elpida had been accused of Necromancy. Was this a goad, a bluff, an insult intended to draw her out? Or was it simply a mistake? Had the sniper seen her turn and whisper to the distant mountain range of the graveworm? If she could see through walls, why not flesh?

Or did the revenant sniper know something Elpida did not?

Elpida looked over her right shoulder, back toward the open door of the bunker. Ilyusha squatted just inside the doorway, sheltering from the rain, bionic limbs all sharp red angles. She cradled her rotary shotgun close to her chest, barrel pointing across the concrete basin to cover Elpida’s back. The heavily augmented girl pulled a grit-toothed sneer of disapproval; she could hear every word shouted back and forth across the road. Elpida signalled with one hand: hold steady. Ilyusha huffed and tossed her head, but she stayed put.

Elpida hissed, “Ask Kagami: is she moving?”

Ilyusha ducked back into the doorway, then reappeared a moment later. She shook her head. Elpida mouthed: “Thank you.”

Back to the concrete slope, the shattered road, and the buildings like broken fingers. Elpida called out again, projecting her voice through the rain: “What do you mean, ‘sport’? Are you hunting us?”

No reply. Just the rain.

Elpida coughed once, tasted blood, and took another shot: “Why do you think I’m a Necromancer?”

Still nothing.

Elpida carried on. “If I was a Necromancer, I could just walk through your bullets, right? Why would I hide from you?”

Raindrops drummed. Filthy fluid flowed down concrete gutters. Petrochemical stench filled Elpida’s aching lungs. Grit gathered on her exposed hands. Water sluiced from her hood. She thought once again of Asp, most willowy and delicate of her cadre. Asp was able to still herself like a pool of dark water; Asp was — no, Elpida reminded herself with a throb of pain in her chest: Asp was dead.

Asp had been an expert at striking from stillness. Asp could go from nothing to everything all at once, from a standing start to an explosion of violence. Asp had not been the most skilled at close quarters combat, nor the most feared on the sparring floor mats, and Elpida knew a few of her more intimate weaknesses; but if Elpida had needed somebody to sit and endure the tension of waiting, of stillness and silence, without surrender to any unplanned reaction, without the lure of whim or wit, she would have chosen Asp.

The taciturn sniper was not Asp; nor was she Velvet, or Dusk. Elpida could never have bested Asp in long-distance single combat. None of her tricks would have worked. But as raindrops drummed and no answer came, Elpida asked herself what Asp would do.

Asp would stay still.

Elpida took one hand off her rifle and pressed her fingers against the bunker’s exterior wall; the concrete was cold and wet. She estimated the angles and distances. Then, very quickly, she reached up and tapped the highest point she could touch without rising from a crouch.

Crack-crump!

The sniper’s bullet slammed into the concrete in a shower of cold grit; Elpida had already whipped her hand back down. The sniper’s aim was perfect; the bullet would have shattered the bones of Elpida’s palm.

She whispered to herself: “Thank you, sister. Thank you, Asp. I love you.”

Then she put her eye to the rifle’s scope, aimed at a piece of brick two floors above the revenant’s position, and squeezed the trigger. Her shot rang out with a high-pitched crack; a puff of pulverised brick-dust was swallowed by the rain.

Before the echoes of the shot faded away, without raising her eye from the scope, while her hands worked the bolt to load another round, Elpida called out.

“You know something we don’t, zombie?”

She took another shot. Her second bullet hit a spear of steel rebar poking from a piece of ancient concrete. Crack-ping went the distant ricochet.

Elpida shouted across the road: “How many of us do you see, zombie? Three plus one Necromancer? Or is it four? Or six? Are you certain you see all of us?”

She squeezed the trigger again, aiming between the buildings, shooting at open air. The gunshot echoed off into the rain storm.

“Don’t play dumb with me, zombie,” Elpida called. “I said I would hunt you. You just wait right where you are.”

Another shot; another crack off the concrete; another clack-clack of the bolt in her hands.

A reply finally screeched back, like metal on rock: “Stand up, then!”

Elpida raised her eye from the scope. “Why?”

“Prove you’re no bone fucker! I’ll put one in your leg!”

Elpida suppressed a sigh, then coughed hard, three times; all that shouting made her lungs burn, still healing from the Silico’s coilgun rounds. It felt like shards of molten glass were working their way into her bloodstream by way of her alveoli. She whispered: “Nice try.”

“Ehhhh?” the revenant screeched. “What’s that? Too chicken-shit? Afraid to be proved wrong? Where’s all your big talk about hunting me? Ha! Come on! Come out! Prove you’re one of us and not some corpse-raping blob! Come ooooooon! Come ouuuuut!”

Elpida said nothing as the shout trailed off. She waited. She counted the seconds inside her head.

At thirty seven seconds, Ilyusha hissed for Elpida’s attention: “Bitch is moving!” She ducked back into the doorway again, then reappeared quickly. “Going up!”

Elpida smiled. Thirty seven seconds; this sniper was no Asp.

She lowered her own rifle, slipped around the corner of the bunker, and hurried back to the doorway. Ilyusha waited with a sour frown on her pale little face, grey eyes flat like cold lead. Elpida squatted just inside the door frame and shook her hood off, coat dripping water onto the concrete steps. Kagami was sitting a few steps further down, half in the darkness, frowning up at the concrete walls through the auspex visor. Vicky was keeping Amina company in the far corner. The air beyond the bunker was a wall of rain.

Kagami snapped, “So?”

Elpida asked: “Where’s she going?”

“Along to the right.” Kagami raised a hand, tracing lines only she could see. “Slowly. Not far. Oh, there she goes, up one floor. That’s a metal railing. Must be some intact stairs. There, she stopped. Halfway to another floor. A stairwell or something. I see glass, brick, a crack in the wall. Nice hidey hole. Clever. Do we have a plan, then, or are we just flailing?”

Ilyusha hissed, “Blow her the fuck up!”

Elpida spoke quickly. She made sure to glance down at Vicky and Amina too. “She was trying to goad me into taking a risky shot, but she’s too impatient to do it properly. That works in our favour, we can use that. But we’re still in a very bad position. She can see through walls, which neutralises all the usual tactics for this kind of engagement. She will see me coming, no matter how well I conceal myself or how slowly I move into position. She can even see us having this conversation. She will know we’re planning something. She’s also a very quick and accurate shot. I’m going to have to surprise her.”

Kagami said, “Itchy trigger finger, right, right. Get her to, what, jump the gun? Ha.”

From down in the bunker room, Vicky said: “We’re in really big trouble, aren’t we?”

Elpida refused to confirm that. She said, “There’s a way to deal with this, but it’s extremely risky. We have one attempt and we have to get it right.”

Kagami huffed. “Why not just blow her up with the coilgun?” She gestured down at the receiver and power-tank on the floor of the bunker room, bulky and angular in the glow-stick light. “Who cares what cover she has when you’re pointing that at her?”

“She’ll see it the moment we activate the power-tank.”

“And? So?”

“Kagami,” Elpida said, firmly. “We don’t want to provoke her into using that gravitic weapon against this bunker. If we threaten her life then she may decide the nanomachines are not worth the trouble; she may pull the trigger. We need to corner her without her realising. We need to present her with a close-range threat to occupy her attention.”

Elpida did not voice her other suspicion, because she didn’t want to spook her comrades: it was possible the mysterious revenant really was playing with them, for sport. Using the coilgun might break the rules of her private game.

Kagami hissed in frustration. “Great. Frozen conflict bullshit. Oh, there are so many fucking ways this can go wrong. Can’t we just make her leave?”

Ilyusha grunted, “Called us necromancers. Cunt fuck shit-eater.”

Elpida said, “She doesn’t really believe that. It’s bait, to make us angry. Ilyusha, don’t let it get to you. That’s what she wants.”

Ilyusha snorted and looked out into the rain. Her exposed red claws clicked against the metal of her shotgun. Her black-and-red bionic tail tapped at the wall.

“Ilyusha,” Elpida said. “I can’t dislodge this sniper by myself. This is a two person job. It’s incredibly dangerous, one of us is likely to get shot; in fact, I’m counting on that. With any luck the armour in these coats will stop a round or two, but I don’t know what kind of firearm she’s using. You’re the only one fast enough to cross that road in the opening I can make — but I am asking you, not ordering you. Will you help me?”

Ilyusha turned her eyes back to Elpida, head tilting sideways, mouth a funny smirk. She nudged Elpida on the shoulder, a playful little shove. Elpida’s heart lurched at that gesture. She swallowed a cough.

Ilyusha said: “In!”

Elpida nodded. “Ilyusha — Illy, thank you. Pira mentioned that you’re currently regenerating more rapidly than the rest of us, because of the nanomachines you drank back in the tomb. Is that still correct?”

Ilyusha shrugged.

Elpida continued. “Okay, I want you to take two spare coats and drape them over yourself. Take a ballistic shield, too.” Ilyusha opened her mouth to complain, so Elpida quickly said: “No arguments. If I get shot and I can’t walk, it doesn’t matter. If you get shot and downed, the plan is over. I need you mobile. I need you across that road. It’s very likely that the kill will be yours.”

Vicky’s voice floated up from the cramped gloom: “Kill?”

“We have to,” said Elpida. She looked down into the bunker and met Vicky’s eyes: a dark frown in the anemic glow-stick illumination. Amina was up on her feet now, draped with a coat, clutching Vicky’s good hand in her own small, brown fist. Elpida added: “Unless she backs down and leaves. The threat to Pira and Atyle as they return is too much. We may have to kill her, yes.” Elpida turned back to Ilyusha, reached out, and took Ilyusha’s black-red bionic shoulder. “The plan is simple — you go to where I was, to the corner of the bunker. You stay low, beneath her line of sight. Crawl forward up the slope. Get as close to the road as you can. Then you wait. I’ll go to the opposite corner and set up the shot.”

Vicky said: “Hey, Elpi—”

“I know, it’s not a good angle for a shot. It’s not meant to be good.”

Vicky sighed. She sounded almost angry. “You’re going to use yourself as bait. I don’t like that. I really don’t like that.”

“We don’t have a choice. And the coat will probably stop a bullet—”

“Probably?” Vicky scoffed. “And what if she shoots you in the face, Elpi? Isn’t that how to kill one of us? Destroy enough brain matter? Boom, head-shot, and you’re gone.”

Amina was wide-eyed with incomprehension and fear. Kagami cleared her throat and said, “Knuckle-dragger has a point.”

Elpida said, “That’s what I’m counting on.”

Vicky opened her mouth to argue, but then she stopped and frowned.

“Trust me,” said Elpida. “We have to mislead her with an irresistible target.” Then she turned back to Ilyusha. “Illy, when you hear a shot — from either me or her, it doesn’t matter which — you cross that street as fast as possible, get into the building with her. Don’t look back for me, don’t turn around if I’m hit, just sprint. If she shouts anything, ignore her. Once you’re in there … ”

Elpida trailed off. Ilyusha knew what to do. The heavily augmented girl grinned wide, clicked her tongue, and made her rotary shotgun go cluck-clunk.

“Get her fucked,” Ilyusha growled.

“Right.” Elpida squeezed her shoulder. “If everything goes to plan, I’ll be right behind you, once she’s distracted. If I’m not, then be careful in there. She may have set up traps, tripwires, mines, something to cover her rear. Kagami?”

Kagami went, “Pffft,” still staring through her auspex visor at the opposite wall. “Nothing I can pick out against the background of the ruins. Fucking hell. You’re really going to do this, you pair of berserker stim-heads. You’re both going to get shot doing this. Fuck, fuck me.”

Ilyusha barked with laughter.

Elpida said, “Likely, yes. It’s the only way. Let’s prep.”

Ilyusha sprang out of a crouch and hopped down the concrete steps, first to the backpacks. She placed her shotgun on the floor as she draped a couple of spare armoured coats over herself, then filled the pockets of her makeshift shorts with spare shells. Amina hovered nearby, as if nervous to say anything, but then Ilyusha turned to her and closed the gap. The two girls shared whispers. Hands touched, brief in parting. Ilyusha head-bumped Amina’s shoulder. Amina sniffed and wiped her eyes.

Vicky brought Elpida fresh rounds for the rifle, and her submachine gun, which Elpida slung over her other shoulder. Elpida thanked her, but Vicky just nodded, face creased with worry; she walked back over to the weapons laid out on the floor.

Kagami clicked her fingers for attention, without looking away from the view through her visor. “Are you taking the auspex with you? I can’t shout that far if she moves, and I can’t bloody well follow you. I can’t. I just can’t!”

“No, you keep it,” Elpida said. “Wouldn’t be any use to me in combat, I can’t read the intel. But I should check her location one more time. This has to be perfect.”

Kagami swallowed. “What am I supposed to do, hm? Shout to you if she … ”

Vicky selected a handgun from the floor, the only gun she could use with her reattached arm curled up against her side. She came back to the foot of the steps.

“Kaga,” she said, “you get as close to the door as you can, in case you need to shout. I’ll watch your back. I got you, okay?”

“Good idea,” Elpida said. “Vicky, thank you.”

Elpida did not like the look in Vicky’s eyes, but she knew it came from a place of concern.

Thirty seconds later, Elpida and Ilyusha stepped out of the little metal door and into the pouring rain, side by side. Ilyusha bumped her head against Elpida’s shoulder, then went right; Elpida watched her go. She was perfect: Ilyusha’s petite figure, wrapped in coats, sheltered behind the rectangle of a ballistic shield, presented a tiny target compared with Elpida’s height and muscle mass. Ilyusha scurried along the side of the bunker, splashing through the puddles, claws clicking on concrete. She dropped into a crouch, slid onto her belly, and shimmied around the corner, careless of the cold, foul-smelling water. Her tail scraped a mark on the ground. Bare bionic claws scrabbled at the concrete.

From the open doorway, over Kagami’s shivering head, Vicky hissed: “Elpi, don’t get shot.”

“It’ll work,” said Elpida.

She turned and hurried to the other corner of the bunker, raindrops pummelling her hood and shoulders. Elpida dropped to a crouch and copied the same position she’d used earlier; she unshouldered the sniper rifle and peered around the corner, so the unseen revenant’s vantage point was still below the lip of the concrete slope. She put her eye to the scope, found the right building, then shuffled out of cover and edged a few inches up the slope.

Elpida called out, “Still there, zombie? Still watching?”

She drew a bead on a random corner of brick and pulled the trigger. Millennia-old masonry shattered and joined the rainfall. She worked the bolt.

She kept shouting. “I told you we’d hunt you, zombie.” She inched forward again, crouching lower as she ascended the concrete slope. Rainwater swirled around her boots. “Last chance to back out. You wanted sport, I’m giving you a sporting chance.”

She pulled the trigger again; across the road, a shard of glass exploded into fragments.

“I’m going to count to three,” Elpida yelled.

She shuffled her boots up the concrete slope. Shoulders low, chest aching with her death-wounds, head scrunched down. Almost there. Elpida would only have to raise her head another six inches to bring the sniper’s vantage point into view of her scope — and to put her own skull in the sniper’s line of fire.

“One,” Elpida shouted. She worked the bolt on the rifle.

A screech carried on the rain: “You call this a pincer movement? You think I’m an idiot? I can see you right there!”

“Two.” Elpida willed Ilyusha not to respond.

The screech again: “You’re not much sport, are you! Come on, you can do better than this!”

“Three.”

Elpida stood up.

All the way up, straight to her full height, rain streaming from shoulders and hood; no edging her skull over the lip of the slope to hunt for a trick shot. Rifle butt firm against her shoulder, eye to the sight, she tracked the revenant’s estimated position all the way up. A glint of scope greeted her efforts, winking from between two twisted masses of rusted steel and ancient brick. Elpida’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Crack.

But the revenant shot first — several feet too low, reacting instead of thinking, aimed at where Elpida’s face should have been.

The bullet hit Elpida in the stomach, knocked the wind out of her, and ruined her own shot. Adrenaline and pain-blockers flooded her bloodstream; genetically engineered balance and strengthened muscles kept her on her feet long enough to collapse into an unsteady crouch. One foot went out from beneath her, slipping in the rainwater; she almost slid down the concrete slope, raindrops pattering on her face and filling her mouth with acidic chemical gunk. Her body tried to vomit as waves of pain radiated up from her stomach, forcing her to cough, hacking blood into her mouth. But she didn’t have time for pain.

Ilyusha’s footsteps were already sprinting across the ancient asphalt.

Elpida jammed the rifle to her shoulder and rocketed back to her feet. This time there was no bullet — the sniper was too busy trying to take aim at Ilyusha. The heavily augmented girl was flying across the road, whooping and cackling, tail lashing the air, double coats flapping out around her like bat-wings, hiding the ballistic shield clutched in one hand. Perfect to catch any bullets.

A second gunshot rang out, but Elpida didn’t see Ilyusha stumble; Asp could have made that shot. This sniper wasn’t one tenth of Asp.

Elpida took aim at the sliver of darkness between twists of metal and piles of old brick. She pumped the trigger, peppering the concealed position.

She didn’t see if the sniper retreated, but there was no return fire. Ilyusha reached the other side of the road and slipped inside the building, raindrops pattering off her rotary shotgun as she poked it out from under the coats, pushing on inside, vanishing into the tangle of ruins.

Elpida dropped to a crouch, panting with the pain in her gut. She slid a hand across her belly, across the slick wet surface of the coat, allowing herself a hard grunt at the spike of pain, and—

A little flattened disk of lead peeled off in her fingers. Chemical propellant bullet, caught by the coat. It fell from her hand into the running rainwater with a dull clink.

She’d have a bruise like a mule’s kick. But the trick had worked.

“How’s that for sport?” she called out. Then she had to spit bile and blood into the rainwater.

Steady static hiss filled the air. No reply.

Elpida had to keep talking, keep the sniper distracted, to increase Ilyusha’s chances. “How’s that—”

Crump-thoom went something on the other side of the road, muffled inside the ruins: a small-scale explosive detonation. A grenade or a mine. Exactly as Elpida had warned.

“Hahaha!” a screeching metallic laugh rang out through the wall of rain. “Come on in, fresh meat! Come right in!”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

The gambit worked, x-ray vision or otherwise; Elpida catches on quick, and she can play head-games as well as any seasoned revenant. But what’s the sniper got for back up? And was this really a bluff, or is she loaded for necromancer after all? Hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am! This arc is a blast so far, a nice slice of action, but it might not be a long one! We’ll see how quickly this all resolves.

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

Patreon!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 3k words.  Please, do feel free to wait until there’s plenty more to read! I’m still trying to somehow put out more chapters ahead, maybe soon!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry, for voting. Voting makes the story go up the rankings, which helps more people see it!

Thank you all so much for reading my little story! I’m loving where this is going. More soon! Lots more to come!

Content Warnings

Mention of cannibalism.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida held the auspex visor up to her eyes and pointed it at the blank wall of the bunker.

Matter peeled away layer by layer, flayed by penetrating radar, gravitic deep-tone wave-reflection, quantum-junction informational return, and a dozen other methods which Kagami had named under her breath as she had handed over the equipment; Elpida did not understand half of them, but she trusted the results.

Concrete, steel rebar, several hundred meters of open air above crumbling asphalt — then a tangle of broken brick, buckled breeze block, patchy plaster, shards of glass, and even wood, rotting and flaking and splintering in grand eternal silence. Wood, untouched by the green, so rare and precious in Telokopolis. All wood inside the city had been grown and harvested in tiny amounts, from the vital beating biological heart of the buried fields, tucked deep down in the city’s subterranean foundations. But here it was — wood, exposed to the elements, the acid rain and soot and exotic bacteria, left to moulder like tooth decay inside the countless buildings of this corpse-city.

Elpida reminded herself: the wood was imitation, regrown by nanomachines, no different to steel and brick and concrete. Here, after death, there was no distinction.

Vicky hissed into the darkness, “Why hasn’t she shot us yet?”

Ilyusha replied: “Bitch can’t see us?”

The auspex gear’s on-board programming also considered the wood to be unimportant; the data was captured, processed, highlighted, labelled, and then shunted off to a sub-view side-window, alongside a thousand other details about a slice of the landscape beyond their temporary refuge.

Vicky said, “But she’s aiming at the bunker. She knows we’re here. Right, Elpi?”

Ilyusha just went, “Pffft.”

A ceaseless torrent of information poured in front of Elpida’s eyes: the atmospheric composition and wind speed — there was so much more carbon in the air compared with her time, without the green blanketing the planet; the chemical balance of one hundred thousand individual greasy raindrops, drumming on broken buildings; the estimated rainfall rate as the drops pooled and puddled in asphalt ruts and concrete cracks; the distances between the bunker and the row of buildings opposite, displayed in several different forms of measurement, none of which Elpida could understand.

But even through the deluge of data, the revenant was obvious.

A live mass of high-activity nanomachinery, highlighted in yellow and orange and red. Perhaps crouched or hunched or sitting down — Elpida could not visually disentangle limb from torso, not through the auspex visor. The revenant was in a building on the other side of the road, slightly to the left, three stories up. The auspex separated and labelled an object in close proximity with the revenant, close enough to be in her hands: a long device, long enough to be a rifle of some kind. The visor’s resolution was too low for visual identification. The label was dark red: ‘gravitic weapon signature’.

Kagami whispered, as if the watcher might overhear them: “Do you see it? Elpida, do you see it?”

Elpida pulled the auspex visor off her face and handed it back to Kagami. She blinked and squinted in the sudden darkness after the technicolour explosion of the auspex-sight. Her stomach was churning and her head was spinning; she was meant to be immune to motion sickness.

“Well?” Kagami demanded.

Vicky said, “Elpi, you okay?”

They were back in the main room of the bunker, with the supplies and the guns and the makeshift bedrolls. Glow-stick illumination struggled up the walls, washing Pira’s map and diagram with fading blue. Kagami was leaning against the wall to take the weight off her bionic legs. Vicky hovered at Elpida’s shoulder, cradling her reattached right arm, face tight and drawn with fear. Ilyusha and Amina were awake too; the latter was huddled under a coat pulled up to her chin, watching the others with wide, terrified eyes. Ilyusha had exited their shared nest; she squatted on her black-and-red bionic legs, knife-tip tail slowly lashing the air, arms resting on her knees, fingertip claws extended as if to stretch tiny muscles.

Elpida said, “I’m fine. But I can’t use that visor, it’s causing motion sickness, or something similar. How do you get anything useful out of it?”

Kagami snorted. She accepted the visor and pulled it back down over her own face. The transparent surface glittered dull green in the dark; Kagami’s eyes looked huge. “This?”

Elpida nodded, “We had nothing like that in Telokopolis. Not without MMI uplink.”

“Ha,” Kagami said, but she didn’t sound amused. She was too busy adjusting the auspex again and staring up at the revenant outdoors. “Take it you weren’t exactly urban warfare specialists, then? This crap is nothing. Bulky consumer shit we’d sell to surface rubes. Every one of my own logician agents would have a full-spectrum sensor suite ten times more complex than this. I spent ninety percent of my life plugged into software a hundred times more detailed and—”

Ilyusha snapped: “Blah blah!”

She swiped at Kagami’s augmetic ankle with one clawed hand, but intentionally didn’t connect the blow; Kagami flinched and stumbled anyway, and probably would have gone over if not for the wall against her back.

Kagami hissed, “You little shit!” Ilyusha snorted.

“Illy,” Elpida said, gentle but firm. Ilyusha ducked her head in acknowledgement, tapped the concrete floor with her tail, then reached out and gently closed her clawed fingers around Elpida’s ankle. Elpida allowed it.

Vicky cleared her throat. “Kaga, we get the point.”

Kagami said, “Fine, right, whatever. Elpida, you saw where she was though, yes? You saw the nanomachine signal?”

Elpida felt numb. Her mind wanted to focus on the task, but her heart still ached. She nodded and pointed up at where she’d seen the highlighted signal. “Yes, right there.” She paused to cough as her heart jerked in the wrong direction. “I couldn’t make out which way she’s facing or distinguish any body parts.”

Kagami grunted. “Yes, I noticed that too. That’s not just user error. Can’t make out which body part is which.” In the dim light, Kagami’s eyes flickered from the visor to Elpida’s face. She pulled a nervous grimace. “Bad sign, right? What’s up there, hm? Another monster?”

Ilyusha answered, low and uninterested: “Vulture.”

Elpida said, “Kagami, are you certain she’s alone? She’s the only one out there?” Elpida turned one finger in a circle. “We’re not being watched from any other directions?”

“Alone, yes, I—”

“Check again, please.”

Kagami rolled her eyes. She glanced left and right. “There’s nothing—”

“Do a full circle, check in every direction.” Elpida spoke command, to blanket the numb feeling inside her chest. Kagami was basically a civilian, however experienced. “Not just because I’m asking, but because somebody or something else may be sneaking up on us. What we’re looking at now may be a covering position, nothing more. Do it. Please.”

Kagami turned in a slow circle, staring through concrete and steel. Down in the corner, Amina whimpered. Vicky swallowed loudly. Ilyusha clacked her exposed claws against the concrete floor, eyeing her rotary shotgun which lay with the other weapons. Black rain drummed on the roof.

Kagami spread a hand. “There’s nothing here but the one signal.”

“Good,” Elpida said. “Kagami, thank you.” Kagami snorted and waved that off. Elpida continued, “Right, what else can you tell me about the revenant out there? I need intel. Is she armed? Armoured? Muscled? Anything. Any details.”

Kagami squinted up at the blank concrete wall again. “Not much, just like with you. Lots of metal on her. Could be guns, body armour, I don’t know. Thermal shows she’s a bit cold. Colder than us, I mean. Maybe just a degree or two. Completely motionless. I didn’t actually see her arrive, just looked up and there she was. Hasn’t moved an inch. Watching us.”

Ilyusha repeated, “Vulture.”

Elpida looked down at Ilyusha’s dull grey eyes, and said: “Ilyusha, is this a common phenomenon? A lone revenant, stalking a group?”

Ilyusha shrugged.

Vicky let out an unsteady breath. “Wish Pira was here.”

“Ha,” said Ilyusha.

Elpida nodded. She said, “Yes, we need long range comms. But that’s a problem for the future. We have to deal with the situation we’re in. Kagami, keep your eyes on the signal. She twitches, you tell me.”

Kagami muttered, “Yes ma’am, three bags full ma’am. Trust me, she does anything with that weapon, we’re all fucking dead — again. That could crack this bunker like an eggshell, no doubt.”

Amina whimpered again. “S-somebody’s watching us? Illy?” She reached toward Ilyusha, fingers shying away.

Ilyusha showed Amina her teeth. “Vulture, vulture. S’nothing!”

Vicky spoke, making her voice bright for Amina’s sake. “It’s alright, sweetheart. It’s gonna be fine. It’s just somebody we don’t know. Probably she doesn’t even know we’re in here. Probably scared of us too. Chin up, we’re gonna be fine.”

Elpida said, “We have to work from the assumption that she can see us.”

Vicky stared at her in the glow-stick light. “But she’s not shooting.”

Kagami sighed, “I’m not even the only one of us who can see through walls, you limb-dragging dirt eater.” Vicky gave Kagami a cold look. Kagami shrugged and made a so-what face and said, “That wasn’t a reference to your arm, you moron. It’s a generic insult. Practically affectionate.” She huffed. “Look, our commander here is correct. For all we know that bitch up there can see us right back.”

Vicky said, colder than before, “Then why’s she not shooting?”

Elpida said, “Kagami, eyes on target, see if she responds to this.”

Elpida raised one hand over her head. The gesture pulled at the still-healing wounds in her chest and back. Her heart lurched and made her cough twice. She waved the hand back and forth in a repeating, alternating pattern of three short, three long, three short: an ancient signal even in the time of Telokopolis. She kept up the wave for almost thirty seconds. Nobody spoke in the darkness of the bunker.

“Nothing?” Elpida asked. She lowered her hand.

Kagami snorted. “Not even a twitch.”

Vicky said, “Which means she can’t see us.”

Kagami snapped, “Or she doesn’t want us to know she can see us. Lulling us into a false sense of security. But why, if she has that fucking gun? Look at that thing, it’s gravitics.” She made an angry gesture at something nobody else could see. “Miniaturised gravitics, absolute bullshit. This fucking place.”

Vicky said, “Maybe the scanner thing is wrong,”

Kagami shook her head, “It’s working fine. We have no idea what this bitch wants—

“Vulture,” Ilyusha hissed.

“Elpi,” Vicky was saying, “What do we do?”

Kagami carried on, “Could be waiting for us to go to sleep, or trying to flush us out, or get inside our fucking heads and make us all—”

Ilyusha snapped, almost angry: “Vulture!”

“What does that mean, you little goblin fu—”

Elpida raised her voice, “She won’t open fire.”

The others all stopped. Kagami frowned at Elpida, then quickly turned back to watching the mystery observer. Ilyusha looked up in curiosity, anger stalled.

Elpida gently peeled her ankle out of Ilyusha’s grip and went over to the backpacks against the wall. She located Ilyusha’s backpack and pulled out a cannister of blue nano-slime. The stuff glowed softly in her grip. Her throat tightened with an urge to drink; that was new.

She held the cannister up, over her head.

“Oh,” Kagami breathed. “Oh, yes. She was very interested in that. Moved her — head? Looks like a head. Moved it by almost fifteen degrees. Finally broke her statue impression. Got you, bitch. We got you.”

Elpida said, “She’s after the nanomachines.”

“Absolutely,” Kagami hissed.

“Duh!” Ilyusha said. “Wants our goop! And our meats.”

Vicky swallowed, dry and shaky. “And she can see us. Okay. Okay. Alright. I was wrong.”

Elpida said: “She can, or she can see the signature of our raw nanomachines.”

Elpida lowered the nanomachine cannister. She had intended to return it to the backpack, but the faint blue glow caught her eye again; the urge to drink was stronger this time, though she knew the goo was tasteless. More nanomachines would heal her heart, wouldn’t they? Without thinking about what she was doing, she reached over with her other hand to open the lid.

Crack-crump!

A shot rang out, muffled beyond the bunker — followed by the sound of a bullet hitting concrete, only inches away.

Vicky and Kagami both flinched. Amina let out a strangled yelp. Ilyusha snorted, amused. Elpida stopped reaching for the cannister lid.

Kagami stammered as she steadied herself against the wall: “Why is she shooting at us now? And that wasn’t her gravitic weapon, that was some fucking popgun!”

Vicky was panting with surprise. “She can’t shoot through the concrete, this place is like six feet thick. What the hell? What the— Amina, sweetie, it’s okay, she can’t hurt us with that, she was just trying to spook us, trying to scare us.”

Ilyusha kept laughing, hissing through her teeth.

Elpida said: “That was a statement, not an assault, yes. She’s letting us know she sees us.” She returned the cannister to the backpack, all thoughts of drinking gone for now. “Kagami, what’s she doing?”

“Motionless! Statue! I can’t even see what she shot with!”

Vicky was saying, “That’s not good, that’s really really not good. That’s really not good.”

Amina said, in a tiny voice, “Can’t we … talk to … her?”

Kagami snorted. Ilyusha didn’t even bother to answer. Vicky said, “Sweetie, that’s a nice idea, but probably not. Hey, hey, Elpi, Kaga, you don’t think this is the same person who shot at the worm-guard, right? Like … like predators fighting over a kill?”

Kagami murmured: “How should we know?” Then, louder: “Fuck this bitch. There’s only one way in and out of this bunker and we have a coilgun — right? Right. If she tries to creep up on us, then fuck her — we’ll shoot her first. You see this?!” Kagami raised a finger toward the wall in what Elpida assumed was an obscene gesture. “Fuck you! Simple! Straightforward!”

Elpida just said, “She can likely see the coilgun too. We do not have the element of surprise.”

Amina was breathing too hard, in gaspy little jerks, “B-but … she’s watching. Can’t we say please don’t—”

“Ammy,” Vicky said, “it’s sweet of you, but this person might be dangerous. Might want to hurt us. We have to be careful.”

Elpida said: “No. Amina’s right.”

Everyone looked at her. Kagami looked full away from the target for a moment before catching herself. Ilyusha cocked her head and clicked her claws against the concrete, curious, and no longer laughing. Amina blinked in surprise.

“Oh great,” Kagami muttered under her breath. “Gone soft in the head, brave leader?”

Elpida repeated herself: “We have to make contact.”

Vicky looked worried. Cold sweat was beading on her forehead. “Uh, Elpi, this isn’t one of us. This could be a cannibal. A monster. Anything. She must be after the nanos, which means, you know … ”

“I’ve considered our options. We have to make contact.”

Kagami slid one hand under her visor and gripped her own cheekbones, perhaps to contain a grimace. “How can you not understand the situation? Did you not listen to little miss fucking know-it-all earlier? This world is worse than dog-eat-dog, it’s instant cannibalistic exploitation turned up to eleven! You’re not going to make a fucking friend out there!”

“Elpi,” Vicky said, “I gotta agree, hey? Are you thinking straight? Consider this carefully, yeah? We don’t wanna draw attention.”

Ilyusha was just watching, head tilted to one side. Perhaps she saw the logic as well.

Elpida raised her chin and raised her voice, and made sure to look everyone in the eyes as she spoke. “That revenant is three floors up.” She pointed at the wall. “That’s a good vantage point. Heavy weapon or not, she’s got a good view up and down the road next to this bunker, and a perfect view into the concrete basin in which this bunker sits. We cannot communicate with Pira or Atyle, and we don’t know what direction they’ll come when they return. That revenant up there could creep up on us, and yes, we could kill her with the coilgun. But she could also sit there for the next few hours and then shoot Pira or Atyle when they return, in order to draw us out. We have no way to warn them. We can’t afford to wait. We have to remove this problem before the others get back.”

Vicky blew out a big sigh, then put her face in her good hand. Kagami grimaced, but didn’t raise a complaint. Ilyusha grinned; ‘remove this problem’ may have given her ideas. Amina just watched, chewing on her lower lip, eyes big and glistening in the dark.

Elpida didn’t share the rest of her thoughts; she didn’t want to demoralise anybody. Their options were limited. The revenant was not visible through either of the slit-windows, they were at the wrong angles. They could not relocate; even if they stuck to the shadow of the bunker and somehow avoided the sniper, and if Pira and Atyle knew where to find them, they were still short two able bodies — they could not carry all their gear. They also couldn’t bait the observer out by pretending to go to sleep; that presented the same issue, placing them on the losing side of a waiting game. But there was one other possibility.

“If contact doesn’t work,” Elpida said, “I might be able to draw her out, for a clean shot.”

She pointed at the guns laid out on the floor — at the sniper rifle Vicky had taken from the gravekeeper’s armoury.

Vicky’s eyes went wide. “Oh, hey. I— with this arm, I-I can’t—”

“I’m not expecting you to,” Elpida said. “I’ll do it.”

Kagami squinted: “Why not just blast her with the coilgun?”

“She may be able to see us moving the power signature. The first step is better achieved with stealth.”

There was no further debate. Vicky couldn’t handle anything but a pistol until her arm was healed; Kagami was getting better at controlling her unfamiliar augmetic legs, but she couldn’t crouch or squat or hug the wall of the bunker, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to belly-crawl to get into position; Amina was obviously out of the running.

“Ilyusha,” Elpida said when the heavily augmented girl hopped to her claws. “Illy. I need you to cover my back.”

“Huh,” Ilyusha grunted. She didn’t seem happy with this plan.

“I’m not just saying that to give you something to do or make you feel useful. I need you to stand in that doorway with your shotgun and cover my back. I need you close, in case I make a mistake and get shot. You’re mobile, you’re fast, and you know what you’re doing. And I trust you. I’m going to have Kagami get as close to the doorway as possible so she can relay to me if the target moves. That means you’re protecting her, as well.” Elpida put a hand on Ilyusha’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “Can you do that for us?”

Ilyusha held Elpida’s gaze for a second, eyes like molten lead. Then she broke into a grin. She flicked her tail up and down. “‘Kay. For you.”

Elpida’s heart jumped at that smile. She coughed twice, and tasted blood.

She wasn’t certain that she could change out of her bloodstained grey underlayers without tearing a still-healing muscle, or bruising her heart, or grinding the broken-glass feeling inside her chest into the meat of her lungs; Elpida would have to go out there wearing the clothes she had died in. At least the armoured coat was fresh. She zipped the coat closed over her front, with the emergency blanket still over her shoulders inside, reflective surfaces all tucked away. She slipped an automatic handgun and her combat knife into her pockets, then checked the scope on the sniper rifle and slung it over her shoulder.

Ilyusha grabbed her rotary shotgun, grinning to herself, hissing a word under her breath. Kagami was already getting into position, lowering herself to sit awkwardly halfway up the concrete steps which led to the door.

Vicky ducked her head to whisper privately to Elpida: “Are you sure you should be doing this?”

Elpida nodded. “I’m the only one who can take the shot. I’m wounded, but I won’t have to crawl far, if I have to crawl at all. And I’m going to try to talk to her first.”

“No,” Vicky whispered. “I mean emotionally. You doing okay? Half an hour ago you were … you know.”

“This is how I’m built. I’m focused, I’m ready. Let’s deal with the problem first. Then, later, I don’t know. I can’t think about them now.”

Vicky nodded. “Be safe. Don’t get shot, okay?”

Elpida and Ilyusha went up the steps to the barred metal door, where the shadows gathered. Kagami snorted and said: “Better hope she’s not wearing armour. Piece of old crap like that, no proper sights, no explosive core in the bullets. What are you going to do, tickle her?”

Elpida just said, “I know what I’m doing.”

That wasn’t a lie, but it was an exaggeration; Elpida had never been much of a sharpshooter. In the cadre she would have delegated a task like this to Velvet, or maybe to Dusk — or perhaps to Asp, if she needed somebody to sit completely still in one place for nine hours for the purpose of a single shot. But she was the only one here. As she stood by the metal door, surrounded by the black static of the raindrops, she briefly entertained the notion that the unseen observer was Velvet, or Dusk, or Asp; if it was Asp, Elpida was vastly outmatched. But all she would have to do is call out. The sound of her voice would be enough.

Ilyusha watched in curious silence as Elpida closed her eyes and whispered her cadre’s names.

Then she nodded to Ilyusha, said, “You got my back? Stick to the doorway, relay anything from Kagami,” lifted the metal bar, and cracked the door.

Elpida pulled up her armoured hood and stepped out into the rain.

The bunker squatted at one end of a shallow concrete basin, wide and filthy; dirty rainwater was sluicing along the edges, flowing into drainage holes and vanishing into subterranean darkness. The raindrops felt greasy and gritty on the exposed skin of Elpida’s hands, drumming static on her armoured hood. The air tasted of petrochemicals and wet concrete and obscure rot. Buildings like fossilised tusks reared toward the choking sky in every direction. The graveworm lay still on the horizon, wavering behind a veil of water.

Elpida stuck to the wall of the bunker and followed it to the left, only a few paces to the corner. Ilyusha peered out after her, staying low, eyes on the far end of the concrete basin. Elpida reached the corner and dropped into a crouch, trying not to cough. The rain dulled all sounds behind a wall of static.

She glanced back at the mountain-line on the horizon.

“Graveworm?” Elpida whispered. Then, with a lump in her throat: “Howl?”

But there was no reply. She turned back to her task.

From this angle, the vantage point of the mystery revenant was blocked vertically by the gently sloping side of the concrete basin. Elpida peered around the corner, eyeing the upper floors of the ruins on the far side of the ancient road: glass and steel in grand decay, brick crumbling to nothing, plaster and breeze block and wood exposed like ossified guts.

If she wanted to put eyes on her opponent, she would need to shuffle forward and raise her head.

Instead, Elpida took the rifle from her shoulder and looked through the scope, examining the building just to the left. Raindrops pattered off the barrel. Many floors above the third story were still intact, a tangle of brick outcrops and twisted steel and fragments of glass. That was bad; if Elpida moved forward, the revenant could simply climb higher to get a clean shot at her. Elpida would be exposed. She stayed where she was.

Time to bluff.

Elpida raised her eye from the scope but kept the rifle in place, then called out across the road: “Hello!”

The rain swallowed her words; the effort burned her lungs. She coughed twice, then waited, then called again: “Hello over there! We can see you watching us! What do you want?”

Raindrops drummed on concrete and dripped from the rim of her hood. Elpida waited, counting the seconds up to twenty.

She called out again: “If you don’t reply, and you don’t leave, then I’m going to hunt you. Tell me what you want. You want our raw nanomachines? We can negotiate. We can talk. What do you want?”

A reply came from deep within the rain, howling out across the road; the voice sounded like metal itself had learnt to cackle.

“Sport!” it screeched. “Sport of you — necromancer!”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

A sniper duel, in the pouring rain, from a bad position, against an opponent who can see through walls. Even Elpida can’t pull off some tactical trick to overcome this. Or can she? She’ll probably try anyway. Welcome to arc 4! This one might be quite short, I haven’t figured it out yet, depends how well our supersoldier does. Onward we go! Hope you’re enjoying this too!

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

Patreon!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 3k words.  Please, do feel free to wait until there’s plenty more to read! I’m still trying to somehow put out more chapters ahead, maybe soon!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry, for voting. Voting makes the story go up the rankings, which helps more people see it!

Thank you so much for reading my story! I appreciate every comment, every happy reader. Thank you all so much; more next chapter!