Necroepilogos

Elpida stared into the bloody mess of her gut wound and tried to make sense of what had just happened.

The toxic blue glow of raw nanomachine juice was already fading beneath the saturated bandages, like rampant mould overrun by wet meat — absorbed straight into her ruined flesh, her undead physiology ravenous for resources. Pira’s friend had shoved her fist into Elpida’s belly, jamming the bandages into the ragged wound — and then somehow deposited a payload of raw nanos?

Why? Because Pira asked her to? Because Pira felt guilty? Because the friend wanted Pira not to hate her?

Or was this a move in some kind of internal power struggle?

Motivation eluded Elpida’s analysis; the raw blue had begun re-knitting her flesh at the cellular level, but that took time, and did nothing for the incredible pain, the molten conflagration burning outward from her stomach, incinerating her innards and her thoughts. Pira’s friend had made sure of that with her fist and fingers stirring up Elpida’s intestines.

She watched the fading blue glow. She shivered in pain-fever, beads of sweat rolling down her forehead, hanging from her eyebrows and lashes, and pooling above her top lip. She panted and heaved, then forced herself to breathe slower, letting the agony roll over her in waves. Without cadre-standard hormonal pain-blockers, she would be a thoughtless, screaming lump of meat.

The pain did not ebb, but Elpida eventually got used to it — just enough to claw her mind and senses back into coherence.

Amina was making noises through her metal gag: “Mmm! Mmmm! Mm-mm-mm!”

Elpida turned her head to look. Amina was still slumped on the floor, wide-eyed with confusion and fear; she needed guidance.

Elpida said: “Ami— na. She— Pira’s friend— helped us? I don’t— don’t know why. But this is good. Raw nanos. If I can— heal. Might be able to. Work these bonds free, I—”

Amina shook her head, hard. “Mmm! Mm!” She jerked her head toward the door. “Mmm!” Then she nodded — at Elpida’s belly.

Elpida blinked the sweat and tears from her eyes.

“Oh shit,” she whispered. “The— the other one, the— the medic, I think, she said she’s going to come back. That’s what you mean, yes?”

Amina nodded. “Mmm!”

The revenant who had entered this makeshift prison cell just before Pira’s friend — she had inspected Elpida’s gut wound, critiqued the first-aid work, and then said she’d be back, in half an hour, to re-stitch Elpida’s belly. There was nothing Elpida could do about the fading blue glow, except will her body to absorb the nanos quicker. How long had she been locked in pain-fever? Ten minutes, fifteen minutes? She stared at the weird bio-tech tar-lock attached to the door of this ruined public toilet. She couldn’t recall how long since the medic had been in the room; pain had scrambled her internal clock.

It would not take a medical expert to see that the gut wound had been tampered with, that the bandages had been disturbed, pushed into her flesh.

Elpida needed an excuse for the damage to the wound site.

“Amina,” she hissed. Her body was already tensing up in anticipation of further pain. “Amina— I need you to— get up, and push your hands into my gut.”

Amina froze, eyes wide, face quivering around her metal muzzle.

Elpida explained: “We have to make it— look like we did this. Damaged the bandages. The blue— that’s just time, have to hope it goes away. But I can’t— can’t do the hands myself.” Elpida yanked on the handcuffs, secured above her head and chained to the wall. “Amina— please! Quick! They could— come back in— any second.”

Amina whined. “Mmmm … ”

“I won’t— hate you. I’m asking you— please. Just get my blood all over— your hands. Amina. Now. Quickly.”

Amina started crying silent tears from scrunched-up eyes. But she stood up. Her own chain clanked against the floor; she raised her bound hands. She stepped over to Elpida’s makeshift surgical table, at the limit of her chain, then looked up into Elpida’s eyes, tears running down her cheeks.

“Mmm?”

“Do it,” Elpida hissed. “Just rub your hands in my blood. Don’t— press too hard.”

Elpida gritted her teeth, laid her head back, and braced her body; Amina rubbed her hands on the front of Elpida’s belly, smearing her soft brown skin with Elpida’s tainted blood and intestinal fluids. The gentle pressure ran a standing wave of agony through Elpida’s gut, into her spine, up her back, down into her hips; she strangled a whine in her throat, panting hard through her nose. She forced herself not to scream, for Amina’s sake.

Amina finished. She held up both hands for Elpida to inspect.

Elpida nodded. She could barely speak. “Go— good. Good girl. Yes— good. Ami— na. Well— well done. Thank— go sit back— ba— down.”

Amina staggered away and clattered back to the floor. She stared at her bloodstained hands.

Elpida counted time. She watched her ruined belly; after another two hundred and fifty three seconds the blue glow was undetectable to her eyes. And her eyes were very good. She leaned her head back against the metal bed and allowed her eyelids to close.

Two minutes later she heard a trio of booted footsteps clattering down the corridor outside.

The footsteps stopped. The bio-tech tar-blob lock on the door opened with a wet tearing sound. Three distinct pairs of footfalls entered the room. The door slapped shut behind them.

Strange noises came from the newcomers: a low mechanical hum almost below Elpida’s hearing range, like a miniature power plant; a wheezing, hissing, fluted intake of air; the ticking and clicking of machine-arms adjusting articulated joints.

One of the trio spoke up, in a half-mechanical buzz — the revenant from before, the medic:

“Told you she’s a right fucking mess, boss. Pain-crippled. She needs re-stitching. Maybe some mould. Probably meat.”

There was a long pause — then a click-buzz split the air, like a transmission acknowledgement. Another voice spoke, muffled and distorted by more than just an exterior speaker.

“Why is she chained up in a public toilet?”

Rich and rolling; steel coated with caramel; darkly amused. Soft lips and slick tongue slipped along the words.

Elpida recognised that voice — that was the revenant she had spoken to over two-way radio broadcast, when she and her comrades had approached the rear of the skyscraper occupied by the Death’s Heads. The medic had called her ‘boss’. This was their commander.

Silence.

Click-buzz. The commander again: “Answer out loud, Kuro.”

Another click-buzz of open voice transmission. This one was higher pitched, full of static, muffled to near inhumanity: “Only secure location.”

“And why,” asked the Death’s Head commander, “did you chain her arms over her head?”

Silence again.

The commander said, with gentle warning: “Kuro.”

‘Kuro’ answered with another burst of static: “I like it.”

The Death’s Head commander sighed. “When I want you to crucify somebody, I will ask you to crucify somebody. Don’t get all crucifixion-y on your own initiative.”

Silence.

A sharper warning: “Kuro.”

Click-buzz. “Yes ma’am.”

“Better. Now, Kuro, get that spike out of the wall and re-secure it somewhere lower down, so she can talk comfortably. She and I have much to discuss. Cantrelle, you’re free to stay if you want to observe, but you can head back down to—”

The medic — Cantrelle? — interrupted: “Kuro, wait. Boss, that gut-wound needs re-stitching. I probably need to get in there and reattach pieces of her small intestine, just to save her the nano-load. And if she’s got her arms by her sides she might be able to slap me one while I’m doing that, or palm something off me. Or worse.”

The commander said, gently: “Cantrelle.”

“Hatty did a shit job on this. Why didn’t you have me do it?”

“You were needed elsewhere, Ella. I needed you elsewhere. The others needed you.”

“This bitch is the whole reason we got into that fight; least you could do is ensure she’s not gonna lose her mind from the pain. Let me fix her first.” Silence. Then the medic — Cantrelle — added: “Yola, if you have me wake her up so you can talk to her now, she’s not going to be sane by the end of the conversation.”

“Ella, this revenant — she is far, far more robust than even I dared to hope. She is managing her pain with incredible endurance.”

“What? How can you … ?”

The Death’s Head commander — Yola — said, in that sugar-iron voice of moist clicking lips: “After all, she’s wide awake.”

“ … that’s not possible,” said Cantrelle. “She’d be … ”

Elpida opened her eyes.

A trio of revenants stared back at her from the other end of the room.

On the right was Cantrelle, the one Elpida thought of as a medic. She was a rail-thin scarecrow figure, wrapped in an armoured coat identical to the ones that Elpida had looted from the tomb armoury, but threadbare in many places, patched with plates of dirty armour in others, with dozens of extra pockets sewn both inside and out; beneath the coat she was festooned with equipment, little bags and pouches, a sling over her shoulder, her pockets stuffed with all manner of objects. A shiny black shotgun was strapped to her back. She had a series of four segmented metal tendrils or tentacles extending from her shoulders, poking through slits cut into her coat — one was tipped with a short saw, another with a long needle, and the other two with grasping metal pincers.

Cantrelle was completely bald; she didn’t even have eyebrows or lashes. Metal implants covered her throat — her jaw was an exposed curve of shining steel. Her eyes were flat black discs, like mirrors reflecting a void. She had black skull symbols stitched into the shoulders of her coat and another one painted or tattooed on her left cheek.

Elpida guessed the one on the left was ‘Kuro’ — a giant inside a sealed suit of powered armour.

Kuro was even taller than Elpida, almost eight feet. The armour was grey, functional, bulky, and humming gently with an internal reactor source, probably mounted in the backpack, with ventilation grilles sucking in fresh air. Kuro bristled with weaponry set into every available surface: arm-mounted rifles and finger-knuckle micro-guns, shoulder-cannons on short mechanical arms, some kind of heavy weapon mounted on her back — currently tucked away in a deactivated position — and even a laser set-up locked to the side of her grey helmet.

The helmet had no eyes, just a blank plate of silver-grey. A grinning black skull was painted in the middle of her chestplate, the eye sockets filled with crazed scribbles.

She was also carrying a wooden chair.

Yola — the commander — stood in the middle, to the fore.

She was also wearing a suit of powered armour, but it was wholly unlike a Telokopolan hardshell, or any of the heavy personal armour that Elpida had seen in this nanomachine afterlife so far. Dark purple plates, softly curved in imitation of athletic musculature, with fluted soft-gold ridges and gold-leaf designs running up the arms and legs; it seemed shaped more for elegance and display than to turn away a high-explosive anti-armour round. It was not particularly tall, perhaps five foot seven. The armoured gloves were empty; she carried no weapon that Elpida could see, but that was probably a deception. She had grinning black skulls painted on her shoulder plates and low down on her belly, neat and angular and plain.

Yola’s helmet was segmented, with a pointed muzzle like a beak, below eye lenses of deep emerald green.

Cantrelle gaped at Elpida. “She’s awake? Through all that? How the fuck? She’s barely augmented. Something we missed?”

A soft hiss-click echoed off the dirty tiles and broken mirrors; Yola’s helmet folded back, segment by segment, tidying itself away inside the rear of her armour.

Yola’s face was artistically beautiful — like an Upper-Spire aristocrat who had undergone decades of subtle plastic surgery, and rolled the dice on successful rejuve treatments. Sun-blessed amber-bronze skin, so smooth and fine she must have removed her own pores; nose delicate and tiny, jaw an elegantly sculpted point, cheekbones high and sharp. Her eyes were the colour of the green, her hair ruby-red, tumbling free as her helmet clicked back into her suit.

Yola smiled with perfect bow-shaped lips. She met Elpida’s gaze.

“A true superhuman,” Yola breathed. “I told you.”

Kuro, the one in the massive suit of armour, made a clank noise. Cantrelle swallowed and said: “Yola, we’re certain this isn’t a Necromancer or something?”

Yola shook her head. She did not look away from Elpida. “No, there’s no chance of that. We would have picked it up by now. She is a revenant, Ella, just like us. Like you or me. I believe the tomb systems finally found a prime example — the best of all the human races. Hello, superhuman.” Yola gestured to Kuro again. “Get that spike out of the—”

Cantrelle interrupted: “Boss, superhuman or not, she’s got a stomach wound the size of my fucking arm. Let me close her up right.”

Yola glanced at Cantrelle.

Elpida took her chance.

She rattled her chain, then croaked the words. “I won’t be able to put my hands down,” she said. “Not with this wound. Arms will put weight on my stomach.”

Yola stared at Elpida with a delighted smile, then nodded. “Just so. Ella, fix her up.”

Cantrelle sighed with relief, then said: “This might take a while, boss. You want me to come get you?”

Yola shook her head. She gestured Kuro forward with the little wooden chair. Kuro obeyed, placing the chair in the middle of the room, facing Elpida. Yola stepped forward and lowered herself into the chair, straight-backed, crossing her armoured legs. She stared right at Elpida.

“I’ll stay and watch. She deserves witness to her pain.”

Elpida stared back at Yola; she was still in too much agony to muster a coherent response, but her mind was trying to gain traction.

What had Kagami said about this group, when she’d observed them from a vantage point, through her auspex? Thirty three individuals, with nine suits of powered armour, plus a few semi-autonomous drones. Two suits of powered armour were in the room with Elpida — a significant show of power. Yola was in charge, Kuro was — what, a walking tank? And Cantrelle was the best medic. These were the leaders, or at least some of the most powerful revenants in this group of so-called Death’s Heads.

Elpida needed to gain their trust, or at least lull them into a false sense of security.

And she couldn’t resist the surgery anyway.

Cantrelle walked up to the side of the makeshift surgical bed, opening her coat; her metal tentacles were already pulling out fresh gauze, surgical thread, bandages, and several sealed vials of black slime. Then she frowned down at Elpida’s gut wound and did a double-take, over at Amina.

“Did— what the fuck? Have you been at the fucking wound, you little bitch?” she snapped at Amina. “Did you jam your hands in here?”

“Mmm-mmm!” Amina grunted back. She raised her bloody hands, showing them off. “Mm!”

“Oh what the fuck? You—”

Elpida croaked: “Leave her alone.”

Cantrelle said to Elpida: “Did you ask her to do that? To go rummaging in your guts? Yola, these two have to be split up—”

Elpida said: “I asked her to do it. Leave her alone.”

Cantrelle gritted her teeth. Those flat black disc-eyes showed so little emotion, but the muscles of her face showed everything else.

Yola said in her molten-honey voice, lips clicking: “Everyone has strange practices of their own. It is not for us to judge the superhuman. Just do your job, Ella.”

Cantrelle tutted — but she got to work.

The medic laid out her tools on the side of the surgical bed next to Elpida — her bandages and knives and strange little bottles — then she leaned close to inspect the wound. She sniffed the meat, tutted, and lifted a corner of the bandages. Elpida clamped her teeth and tensed up all her muscles, preparing herself for the pain to come.

But then Cantrelle looked up and met Elpida’s gaze — and one of her tendrils offered Elpida a piece of folded gauze.

“Don’t care how superhuman you are,” she buzzed in that half-metal voice. “This is going to sting a bit. I’ve got anaesthetics but they don’t do much. Synthesising amino amides for nano-biology is a bullshit puzzle. So here, take this. Bite down. Do your best not to writhe or buck, because the insides of a person are slippery and I will lose my grip. And don’t fucking kick me, or I’ll get Kuro to sit on you.”

Elpida opened her mouth. “Thank you,” she croaked, before Cantrelle jammed the wad of gaze between her teeth.

Elpida bit down.

Cantrelle gave her the anaesthetics — one of her tendrils injected something into Elpida’s belly, just above the wound, and the agony fell away into a background roar inside her body. Cantrelle worked fast, with expert hands; she used a pair of scissors to cut away the bandages from Elpida’s midsection, then cut out the low-quality stitching, tugging the thread free from her flesh. Then she went inside, wrist-deep, with metal clamps and translucent glue and surgical thread.

Elpida bit down so hard she felt a tooth crack; would the nanomachines repair that as well? She whined and panted and streamed with sweat. Her heels drummed on the metal bed. She screwed her eyes shut and moaned Howl’s name into her gag. She didn’t kick.

Little pieces of hard material went clink on the surgical table. Cantrelle snorted: “Glass? Trying to armour your belly? Learn some organic chemistry first.”

Glass?

From Pira’s friend.

From a cannister of raw blue nanomachines?

Through tears of pain, Elpida saw Cantrelle open a small bottle of oily black slime. Elpida rattled her chain for attention, and mumbled through her gag: “What is that?”

Cantrelle sighed. But Yola gestured for her to answer properly. Cantrelle reached up and tugged the gag out of Elpida’s mouth.

“What is that stuff?” Elpida repeated.

“Nanomachine mould,” Cantrelle snapped. “If you’ve been out of the tomb for more than one day, you’ve probably seen it growing all over the place. It’s the best we have right now for sealant. My most gracious apologies, superhuman, but we’ve not seen raw blue in a while. You’ll have to make do.”

Then she jammed the gag back in and poured the black gunk all over the edges of Elpida’s gut wound.

No raw blue? But what about Pira’s friend?

The pieces clicked into place inside Elpida’s pain-fogged mind. When the firefight had gone bad, Ilyusha had been carrying the backpack containing their remaining cannisters of raw blue. The Death’s Heads clearly had not secured that stash, which hopefully meant Ilyusha was still at large. But when they’d all left the tomb together, days ago now, Pira had been carrying one additional cannister, crammed inside her bulletproof vest. Elpida remembered that very clearly. She’d seen the glowing blue before she’d even known what it was. Pira had not spoken of that extra dose.

And now she’d given it to her ‘friend’, to sneak to Elpida.

Cantrelle finished closing Elpida’s wound with needle and thread, hands slick with blood; then she wrapped Elpida’s belly with fresh bandages. She made no effort to clean her off; blood began seeping through the bandages, but she paid that no attention. She removed the gag from Elpida’s mouth, produced a large bottle of water from somewhere inside her coat, and held the straw-nipple up to Elpida’s lips.

“Drink, you horse,” Cantrelle grunted. “You need hydration.”

Elpida gulped down mouthfuls of water until she felt she might burst. Cantrelle removed the bottle. Elpida nodded sideways, toward Amina, and panted: “Her— too—”

Cantrelle stepped back, frowning with confusion. “You want meat? Not hungry?”

Elpida shook her head. She wasn’t hungry, not like earlier — the fistful of raw blue in her gut had satisfied her nanomachine physiology, for now.

She nodded at Amina again. “Her too. Water.”

Yola said, amused lips clicking: “You see, Ella?”

Cantrelle shook her head. She put the bottle of water away. “It’s a rough job. Best I can do. Three bullets really tore her up. At least she’ll stop leaking now.”

Yola purred, “And?”

Cantrelle huffed. “Alright, fine. She’s in far better condition than I thought. Superhuman or whatever. Maybe her nano-load was higher than we expected.”

Yola smiled with crimson lips and gestured Kuro forward. Cantrelle tidied up her equipment. The power-armoured giant strode past the bed, then spent almost a full minute working the metal spike out of the wall above Elpida’s head.

When the spike came free with a puff of masonry dust, Yola said: “Gently.”

Kuro lowered the spike and the chain, which allowed Elpida to lower her arms. Her shoulders felt like rusty wire. Slowly, carefully, she brought her cuffed wrists down to rest on her chest.

Kuro braced the spike against the floor, then raised one power-armoured foot and drove the spike through the marble with a kick powerful enough to shatter granite. The room rang with the impact; Amina flinched, Yola blinked, Cantrelle ignored it. Kuro stomped away again, to loom behind her commander. Cantrelle withdrew as well, to lean against the wall with folded arms, as if Elpida had somehow pissed her off.

Yola stared into Elpida’s eyes. So very green. She smiled.

“My apologies for leaving you chained up,” said Yola. Her voice was husky and moist, hard and springy, a steel rapier. “You do deserve better, but you’re far too strong and resourceful to leave you unrestrained. If I took those cuffs off I’m certain you’d get out of here and arm yourself within minutes, even with a gut wound. Even if I posted a guard.”

Yola waited for a response.

Elpida knew she could not wait for rescue; even if the others were still free and plotting her recovery, they would have to fight through highly-modified and heavily-armed revenants. She could not expect the others to save her, she did not want them to die in the attempt — and besides, what reason did they have to save her? She’d dragged them into a terrible plan, almost gotten them all killed, and then reacted too slowly to Pira’s betrayal to understand what was happening. She did not deserve their rescue.

Shut up, idiot, Howl whispered in her memories.

That sharpened her thoughts, through the pain and the anaesthetics.

At the very least she had to buy time to heal. Or maybe she could play along, win Yola’s trust, and get these cuffs off.

Elpida nodded. “Yeah,” she croaked. “Even with a gut wound. Even with your big girl there.”

Yola’s smile burst across her face, showing tiny pointed teeth. “Kuro?” She laughed softly. “Unarmed, you would outfight Kuro? Maybe you would! Kuro, what do you think of that?”

Click-buzz. “No.” Click-buzz. Then a grinding click-click-click. Laughter?

Yola spread her hands in apology. “Well, there you go. Again, I am sorry. My medics have patched you up as best they could.” She gestured to Cantrelle, who snorted and shook her head. Yola continued: “I did not want this conversation to happen this way. But we didn’t expect one of your own to mag-dump her weapon into your belly. She did it for us, in a roundabout way, but we would not have asked her to do that. Crossed wires, lack of proper communication. Most unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate,” Elpida croaked. She even tried to smile.

Yola laughed again. “Actually, in another way, you were quite fortunate indeed. Only three bullets slipped between the halves of your coat. The rest got caught on the armour. Wonderful things, those tomb-grown coats. I’d hang onto it if I were you. Your friend — or not a friend, anymore? — I think she was aiming to bruise. Oh well.”

The Death’s Head was employing a deliberate tactic: sowing doubt, building rapport. Elpida refused to think about Pira.

She croaked a question instead: “Who are you people?”

Yola and Cantrelle shared a glance. Kuro looked down at Yola too. Then Yola leaned back in the chair, chin high, spine straight inside her dark purple armour plate.

“My name is Yola,” she said. “My full name and title — in mortal life — was Yolanda Araya Calvotana, Sixth Duchess of the Northern Marches, Inheritor-Daughter of the Grey Range, Cup-bearer to the Boy-Emperor. I died at twenty three years old, beaten to death by a crowd in the Square of Triumph.”

She paused. Elpida had nothing to say.

Yola smiled again, and said, “I tell you that not because I expect you to respect that name and title — after all, it means nothing to you, nor anybody else. It is from a dead world, dead and gone, washed clean in the fires of history and the struggle for survival, more social and genetic dross on the pile. I tell you who I am because I want to provide context — because I have you at a disadvantage. I already know your name, Elpida.”

Elpida grunted. “From Pira.”

Yola laughed, softly amused. “Yes! Oh, you are sharp, yes. We heard it from your friend, indeed.” She gestured at Amina, though did not look at her. “And from that one, too. She was screaming it. But.” Yola opened a hand toward Elpida. “Elpida — what?”

Elpida frowned and grunted. “Mm?”

“Elpida. No family name?”

Elpida shook her head. Yola drew a breath between her teeth. Something shifted in her expression.

Cantrelle cleared her throat. “Boss, plenty of revenants don’t have family names. I didn’t. It’s just not universal.”

“True. That is true. Not all ages and empires understand the importance of blood. Forgive me, Ella.” Yola nodded slowly, staring at Elpida. “Why no family name, Elpida? Was that normal for your culture? Or were you chattel?”

Elpida weighed her options, then told a small truth: “Sisterhood. Soldiers. We were special. Lab-grown. Picked our own names.”

Yola’s eyes lit up with wonder. “Beautiful,” she breathed. “Oh, yes. Beautiful. Where? Where are you from, Elpida? Who were your people?”

Telokopolis is eternal, said Howl, a memory-whisper in the back of Elpida’s head.

Elpida almost spoke the words out loud, but Yola’s awe-struck expression stopped her.

“Not sure I should tell you,” she said instead.

Yola’s rapture passed. She smiled again, then spread her armoured hands. “Yes.”

Elpida said: “Yes, what?”

“Yes, I am interrogating you, Elpida. But you don’t belong to a state — there are no states, or nations, or anything, not anymore. No empires, no realms, nothing. There are no secrets you can divulge, no intelligence you can hold back. It’s all pointless now! Wherever you came from, it’s gone, dead and buried. You’re not an operative on a covert mission, captured and preparing yourself to resist torture. And we’re not going to torture you — what would be the point? We’re not on a time limit — other than the graveworm moving, and I have reason to believe she’s not going anywhere, not with that mech on the ground out there. You hold no secret codes to a bomb in a public square in the City of Fair Winds, or the Palace of the Emperor Eternal, or anything like that. The only thing you represent is a tiny group of revenants — your companions, the ones you were with, that one.” She gestured at Amina again. “The only reason to interrogate you, Elpida, is for the sake of you, yourself. For what you are, what you were made for. So, where are you from?”

“Telokopolis is forever.”

Yola’s eyebrows shot upward. She glanced at Cantrelle, then at Kuro. Cantrelle shrugged and shook her head, and said: “Never heard that name before, boss.” Kuro said nothing.

Yola formed the name slowly: “Te-lo-ko-polis?”

Elpida croaked: “You want me because I’m a combat frame pilot. That’s why.”

Yola said, “That is one reason, yes. I’m not going to lie. But it’s not the most important reason. Even without the mech out there, I would want you still.”

“How do you know I’m a pilot?” Elpida left the other half unsaid: How can you know that, if you don’t know about Telokopolis?

Yola smiled wider. She winked. “A little birdy told me. Told me all about you. Told me you were coming.”

Cantrelle turned away with a wince, and muttered, “Fucking hell.”

Yola held a hand up to her. “Ella. Relax. We are in control.”

Kuro made a clank noise again, some internal part adjusting position.

Elpida croaked: “You still haven’t told me who you are — your group. The skulls.”

Yola nodded. “Ahhhh, yes. The skulls.” She smiled fondly down at her own black-skull marking, the one painted low on the belly of her armour. She looked back at Elpida before answering. “Who are we? Well. We — that is, my girls, the ones in this building right now — we’ve gone by so many different names over the years: The Basis, The Sisterhood, Us, The Seventeen, The Twenty-Three, The Eighty-Eight, The Unbroken, The Protectors.” She waved a hand and snorted. “But those don’t matter. Names, people, places, times, those all come and go. But this?” She reached down and tapped the skull symbol on the abdomen of her armour. “This denotes a longer-term allegiance, to an ideal. An ideal that never dies, that never can die, now we all keep coming back again and again. Our type seems to recur, over and over. One group of us may be shattered by the subhumans, yes, but another will form again, years or decades or centuries later. The faithful will find their way back to the truth.”

Elpida’s memories were catching up.

Her first encounter with these people — with another offshoot group? — had been during the fight outside the tomb, just before the Silico had shown up. The Death’s Heads had been up on the curtain wall of the tomb fortifications, flying a flag which had shown their grinning skull — a flag made from stitched pale leather. And Elpida had since learned that there was only one possible source of leather in this nanomachine ecosystem. They’d also had a megaphone. She recalled what they’d been shouting.

“Those who are fresh from the mercy of oblivion, come to us and be freed of this unwelcome burden. Fear not this hell, for it is not meant for you. Your bodies are arisen from the stinking primordial ooze to which you long to return. It is meant for us, the descendants of angels. We will give you mercy and justice in this after—”

Ilyusha had cut them off with an insult and a shotgun blast — Ilyusha hated them, called them reptiles. Serin hunted them, called them a death cult.

Elpida said to Yola: “Death’s Heads.”

Yola smiled in delight. “Yes! A common enough insult for us, levelled by those who do not understand, or those who are not welcome, those who would drag us down alongside themselves.”

“I met— somebody who— called you a death cult.”

Yola nodded. “A fair assessment. Death is cleansing — or it was, in all prior ages of civilization. Death sorts the wheat from the chaff. Cleans the blood.” She spread her armoured hands. “But here, all is death. We are all dead. The world is dead. There is only death, yet still we walk.” She reached down and tapped the black skull symbol on her abdomen again. “Do you know why I have this painted over my womb? It is on my skin as well, below the armour, baked into the flesh with hardened blood.”

She waited for an answer. Elpida shook her head. “Why?”

“Because here, all wombs are dead and barren. We know that for a fact. We’ve tested it. The natural cycles are broken, ruined by mistakes that raised up this undifferentiated mass.” Yola took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I apologise, Elpida. I am running ahead of myself. It has been a very long time since I have spoken philosophy with anybody except those who are already committed to the cause. I generally leave it to others. But you are special.”

That stank of lies.

“Special,” Elpida croaked. “Yeah?”

Yola nodded. “Some of us have done this many times before, joined groups over and over again. Some of us only once, like you. This is your first resurrection, isn’t it?”

Cantrelle looked up. “Boss, fuck no. She’s no fresh meat. Fresh meat doesn’t get a gaggle of nobodies this far from a tomb on first—”

Yola held up a hand. Cantrelle sighed and stopped talking. Kuro made that click-click-click laugh again.

“This is my first time,” Elpida confirmed.

Yola nodded. “I know. And only one like you could have done that. You are everything I dreamed you might be.”

Elpida considered her responses carefully. This was going places she did not want to follow, but there was no sense delaying the inevitable.

She said: “I know I’m good, yes. Where is this going? What do you want from me?”

Yola smiled again, showing those tiny sharp teeth behind her red lips. “I want you to join us, superhuman. You are so very beautiful. Let me teach you just how beautiful you are.”