Necroepilogos

Elpida echoed Yola’s words; she kept her voice neutral.

“You want me to join you?”

Sitting in her little wooden chair, on the filthy floor of a ruined public toilet, her undead flesh wrapped inside layers of purple-gold steel, ceramic plating, servo-motor muscles, and bio-uplink sensor surfaces, Yola nodded. She stared upward at Elpida, laid out on the tilted surgical table, chained to a metal spike rammed into the floor. Yola’s bright green eyes burned with fascination and faith.

“Oh yes, superhuman,” she began to repeat herself. “You are so very b—”

Elpida croaked: “What does that mean, exactly, in practical terms?”

She did not want to hear Yola call her ‘beautiful’ again; Elpida doubted that she and Yola shared a compatible definition of beauty.

Yola’s smile turned shrewd. She leaned back in her chair; the wood complained with a tortured creak — not strong enough to support the weight of all that powered armour for long. Wooden furniture was obscene enough — such an object would have been prohibitively expensive in Telokopolis, a rare thing to extract from the botanical stock in the buried fields beneath the city — but to abuse it to breaking point was a statement of careless power.

Or perhaps Yola didn’t mean it that way. Perhaps no object or artifice or art mattered anymore; it was all nanomachines in the end.

Yola purred, her lips slick and wet and clicking on the syllables: “In a way you are already one of us, by definition. You simply need to be shown how. The rest will come to you naturally.”

“And you propose to teach me?” Elpida said. She could not fully mask her scepticism.

Yola said: “This world, this obscene lie, it is all very confusing. Even for one as resourceful and tenacious as yourself. I know. We all know, we have all been through it, some of us for years, for many rebirths. But I promise, we can make it all make sense.”

The other two Death’s Head revenants — the medic, Cantrelle, with her perfectly bald head, her mechanical tentacles, and her long, equipment-stuffed coat, and Kuro, the taciturn giant in the faceless grey powered armour, built like a tank, bristling with weapons — reacted to this little speech with a shadow of Yola’s own rapture.

Cantrelle tilted her head back and briefly closed her flat, disc-like eyes, the tiny screens going grey and empty. Kuro didn’t move, but the fluttering air-intake sound of her back-mounted reactor whirred with sudden increased throughput, then subsided again.

And Amina went: “Mmm! Mm!” through her metal gag.

Kuro’s faceless grey visor twitched down to stare at Amina; the giant took a step toward her, heavy armoured boot slamming into the floor tiles. Amina squeaked behind her gag and tried to scramble away, panting with sudden panic, metal chain scraping against the floor. She raised her bloodstained hands, still slick with Elpida’s own drying gore.

Elpida tensed her shaking legs and her quivering core muscles — and sat up.

Her gut wound scoured her intestines with burning flame, bursting past the lingering anaesthetic; her face streamed with sudden flash-sweat; she heaved and choked and gagged for breath through clenched teeth; she grunted or screamed a little — she couldn’t be sure, the moment was a blur of agony. But then she was sitting upright on the tilted surgical bed. She raised her cuffed hands, her own chain clanking as it rose from the floor.

Kuro stopped. Elpida stared into the blank grey faceplate.

“Come near— her,” Elpida panted, “and I’ll kill you— with just this chain. Gut wound or— not. Powered armour won’t— save you.”

Elpida felt a string of bloody drool sliding down her chin. She’d never bluffed so hard before.

Yola burst into a delighted smile, showing all her sharp little teeth; her eyes lit up. She touched two fingertips to Kuro’s armoured thigh.

“Down, Kuro,” she said, without looking away from Elpida. “Leave the little one alone. Take no offence. She may babble and warble as the superhuman pleases.”

Kuro made a click-buzz of closed radio transmission.

Yola said, sharper: “Kuro.”

Another click-buzz from Kuro. The giant spoke out loud, in a high-pitched, girlish voice, muffled by deep static: “This is an indulgence.”

Yola sighed fondly. “Of course it’s an indulgence. I really do think she could kill you, Kuro. I love you too much, puppy. Down.”

Kuro stepped back, slowly. Amina buried her face in her arms, sobbing silently through her gag.

Cantrelle hissed at Elpida: “Fucking hell. Sit back down! Sit back down before you open all the fucking stitches I just put in you!”

Elpida stared Kuro down for another ten seconds, searching that blank faceplate. Then she let the chain clank back down to the floor. She lay back on the metal surgical bed. She returned her cuffed hands to her chest. She focused on not showing the searing pain in her belly.

Cantrelle sighed and turned to Yola — gesturing at Amina: “Boss, come on. The little one is unstable. Prey. Eager to get eaten. You’ve seen that look enough times to—”

Yola raised a hand. “We’ll put her with the tyke squad.”

Cantrelle frowned. “What? Fuck no. Fuck—”

“From what we saw earlier, she could make a very good close-quarters fighter. A little berserker. Like Gulba.”

Cantrelle made a face like she wanted to spit on the floor. But she turned away and folded her arms.

Yola said to Elpida: “You and your companions will not be harmed — that is not my intention.”

“Yeah?” Elpida croaked.

Yola nodded. “Yes. You have my word. If you can convince your former companions to surrender their weapons, you and they will be under my protection. Our protection.”

“You were doing a— a lot of shooting at us— earlier.”

Yola composed her face into a sombre look and bowed her head. Her ruby-red hair fell about her cheeks in artful disarray - but then seemed to spring back into place when she looked up again.

“And I apologise for that,” she said. “Between the trio of worm-guard—” Cantrelle shuddered at the mention of the machines; Kuro went clonk inside her armour. “—and that degenerate tank, armed engagement became a necessity. Our intelligence was confused and incomplete. We were not aiming at you. Except for Leuca — or Pira, to you — and your little friend here, we have not recovered any of your other companions, alive or dead. If I had bodies, I would present them to you, with deepest apologies.” She bowed her head again. “We have gotten off on the wrong foot, superhuman. I don’t wish to exacerbate that. After all, we may be working together for decades. I am your friend, Elpida; that I promise.”

Elpida didn’t have an answer to any of that; she couldn’t know if Yola was lying.

But she was certain of one thing — this woman was not her friend.

Elpida gestured at Kuro with her eyes. “Yeah? Then why’d she go for Amina just now?”

Yola smiled with fond indulgence. “Kuro here is a little overzealous when it comes to my pronouncements — that’s her way. There are many ways to be one of us. One core, one set of principles, but many expressions. After all, it is nearly impossible to achieve perfect synchronicity and continuity across so many separate resurrections, all of us drawn from different peaks in the sine wave of human history, different expressions of perfection. Kuro regards me as a prophet. Others think of me as simply the current leader of this one group. Some have been with me for many years, and trust me to lead well.”

Elpida croaked: “And what do you think of yourself?”

Yola’s eyes lit up with that inner fire again, the green burning beneath white-hot sunlight. Her lips made a wet click. “A cutting question, thank you. I consider myself a place-holder, a seeker, an imperfect leader waiting for the true leader — whether she has been resurrected in times before and we are simply trying to locate her, or if she is yet to be reborn to us, or … ”

Yola trailed off, staring at Elpida, smiling in delight.

Elpida almost retorted out loud: she was not born to lead. Old Lady Nunnus and Howl and every one of her sisters had made that clear in a million little ways. Elpida had been Commander of the cadre because they had chosen her to lead, not because the genetic engineers had made her a leader.

Nothing made her a leader. She led because she acted and others followed.

Yola saw something else.

Elpida was used to being looked at without being seen — all the cadre had been. First by the genetic engineers and biologists and sociologists and bone-speakers and the Silico studies experts from the Legion, all the clean staring eyes of the pilot project; they saw only their little soft machines. Then Old Lady Nunnus, for all her kindness and humanity, had seen Elpida and the cadre as a means to an end, the perfect expression of the expeditionist position on the green; at least she hadn’t pretended otherwise, even if she was the human face over the expeditionist factions after they took control. Civilians saw impossible semi-human beauty, little angels in their midst, always out of reach; Legionaries saw unpredictable, wind-up weapons, too young and inexperienced to be real soldiers — and then later, after the cadre had proved themselves, the Legion saw saints, saviours, striding through the green. The Civitas had seen a problem or a political bargaining chip or a promise to sell to the masses. The Covenanters had seen—

Subhumans.

Yola had used that word, when she’d gotten too excited, when she had started describing the Death’s Head philosophy too early.

Elpida had never heard the word before; it made no sense to her, just like that word Vicky had used back in the bunker when they’d been getting to know each other — ‘homeless’. ‘Subhuman’ — the linguistic components made sense, but Telokopolan culture had no equivalent. How could anybody be ‘below’ human when the city responded to all human beings? Telokopolis would even respond to those who couldn’t speak and couldn’t use sign language, though the process could become clumsy and prone to errors. Certain branches of philosophy entertained a thought experiment of a theoretical human being to which the city would not respond, but the idea was too academic to penetrate popular culture. What was the point?

But the Covenanters had invented plenty of colourful language for the cadre: inhuman experiments, bodies without souls, pure cyborgs dressed up in flesh.

Subhumans.

And now Yola looked at Elpida with just as much projection as any Covenanter fanatic.

Elpida tried not to let the disgust show on her face. She had very few options; her best bet was to buy time for her gut wound to heal, to buy trust in search of an opening, and to keep Yola talking. The more she talked, the less likely she was to separate Elpida and Amina — or just have Amina killed.

Elpida said: “You still haven’t answered my question. What do you mean exactly by ‘join you’?”

Yola relaxed her smile. “Forgive me. My words run ahead of my thoughts. Let me start at the beginning.”

Cantrelle had been staring at Elpida — frowning at her belly, as if a good glare might keep her stitches in place; but she turned her frown on Yola. “Boss, seriously? Have we got time for this?”

Yola smiled with faint amusement. “Of course we have time, Ella. We’re not going anywhere without that mech — and neither is the graveworm, I think. Besides, it’s the middle of the night. What better time for a bit of girls’ talk?”

Cantrelle glanced at Elpida, then back at her boss, then tilted her head with silent meaning. Yola raised her eyebrows a fraction, as if saying ‘yes, and?’ Cantrelle sighed and shrugged. She made no attempt to conceal her irritation.

Elpida croaked: “Something wrong?”

Yola smiled at her. “There are always things wrong in this world. We are at the very edge of the graveworm’s halo. Vulnerable to degenerates from the empty places of the city. We can repel almost anything, of course, but we must be vigilant. Now, Ella, you don’t have to stay for this.”

Cantrelle said: “I’d rather hang about, cheers.”

Elpida decided something was wrong — something they didn’t want to tell her. It wasn’t one of her comrades; if it was, they would be using that against her. Some kind of tactical problem they were having? A flaw in their current position? Something to do with the combat frame, perhaps? She studied Yola’s face, but she couldn’t see any hints. The Death’s Head commander was sculpted like a mask.

Yola lay her armoured gloves on her armoured thighs, purple on purple, laced with gold. She sat up straight and said: “As I said, I will begin at the beginning. Have you divined the purpose of all this? This nanomachine ecosystem, this undead afterlife, us revenants, the graveworms, the tombs — all of it? Have you taken a guess, or built a theory? You have not been out of the tomb for long, but your mind must be sharper than most.”

Yola waited for an answer.

“Maybe,” said Elpida.

Yola apparently didn’t care if that was an evasion. She smiled all the same.

She said: “Evolution. Survival pressure — survival of the fittest. Darwinism.” She allowed that last word to linger for a moment, then said: “Did you have those concepts in your culture?”

Elpida frowned; ‘evolution’ was straightforward — that just meant how organisms changed over millions of years, via random mutation and selection pressures on breeding. Telokopolan science held that humans must also have been the product of evolution, many hundreds of millions of years ago, entire epochs of time before the city, in some environment none truly understood. A radical counter-position held that perhaps the city had always existed, or been built by some kind of creatures other than humans, and humans had ‘evolved’ out in the green, developing hands to move the city’s levers and speech to communicate their needs to the city’s innards. Elpida had always found that idea ridiculous.

Yola nodded gently. “I see you did, but you do not fully comprehend my point.”

“I don’t, no.”

Yola said: “The biosphere is dead. Humankind is dead. No natural reproduction is possible, no way to ensure the continuation of our race, or nation, or culture, or anything. There is no human race. The worms and the tombs resurrect queens and chattel alike, and cast us out into the wilderness, naked and confused, with no answers — why?”

Elpida took a gamble. She said: “To eat each other.”

Yola broke into a sunburst smile. She slapped her thigh, metal on metal. “Yes! Yes! You see, Ella? Kuro? I told you! The superhuman already understands. She comprehends at the lightest touch. Her mind is like a steel rapier. She is already one of us. Yes, Elpida. To eat each other. To contend. To fight for survival — and through survival, to grow.” Yola relaxed, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. She closed her bright green eyes for a heartbeat. “In all the past ages, evolution was a slow process, too vast to be glimpsed in a single lifetime. But now?” She raised one hand. “The best may eat their fill and grow ever stronger.”

Pira had explained all this before, but in very different terms.

Elpida said: “You mean the revenants who consume enough nanomachines to leave the graveworm safe zone?”

Yola shook her head, smiling with indulgence. Cantrelle snorted out loud.

Kuro went click-buzz, and said: “No longer human.”

Yola gestured at the giant in the grey powered armour. “Kuro speaks wisdom, yes. Those who change far enough that they can leave a graveworm safe zone — leave for the wastes of the city, or for the empty west — they are no longer human. They may believe they are the next step in evolution, or that they are ascending, or fulfilling the graveworm’s intentions — but they are merely choosing to abandon any cause at all. They are leaving behind the echo of humankind. Useless navel-gazing. They chose degeneration. We — us, the people, the ones you call ‘Death’s Heads’ — our intention is very different.”

“And what about everyone else?” Elpida took a calculated risk. “The ‘subhumans’?”

Yola smiled. “You are troubled by the implications. Elpida, why do the graveworms resurrect both queens and peasants? Masters and chattel? The finest examples of the human race—” She gestured at Elpida, then at herself — and then at the wall, vaguely outside. “And worthless mud that mewls and dies at the first obstacle?”

Elpida couldn’t keep the frown off her face. Yola sighed gently.

“A figure of speech,” she clarified. “I mean the monsters who eat each other in mindless orgies. I’m sure you’ve seen them? The inelegant predators who live alone in dark holes and stop thinking for years on end. The mad religious fanatics who decide this is all a dream, or hell, or something else, and talk in riddles. The ones who lose themselves completely, letting their body plans melt into plastic goo, or turn themselves into something alien. Why does the graveworm resurrect them too?”

Elpida frowned harder. “I saw plenty of nanomachine modifications among you people.” She glanced at Cantrelle’s metal tentacles. “Right there.”

“Oi,” Cantrelle grunted.

Yola sighed again, a little less patient. “Look at me,” she said. “I am human — or at least humanity’s echo. Heavily modified, but still a human being. I am having a conversation with you, not trying to bite your face off, or melt you in acid, or lay eggs in your belly. I am not a twenty foot insect, or a bag of gas, or a blob. Cantrelle fixed your stomach. Kuro is quiet and scary and big, but I promise you inside that armour is a human being, however difficult.”

She reached out to pat Kuro’s leg. Kuro didn’t move.

Elpida couldn’t hold back. She said: “You’re zombies, like the rest of us. We’re all zombies now.”

Yola’s face went stiff with matronly indulgence. “Do not use that word to refer to us — or to yourself. We are not zombies. Subhuman, zombie, same concept, slightly different mode of expression.”

“But what does it mean — to you?”

Cantrelle was frowning harder now. Kuro was perfectly still, a grey statue. Yola opened a purple gloved hand toward Elpida.

“Take yourself as an example, Elpida. What did you do when you were rebirthed in the tomb? You did not curl up and cry, and wait for death, like cattle. You did not wait for another to lead you, or wait for somebody to come fetch you and explain the situation. No, you did none of those things.”

Elpida recalled her first moments in the resurrection coffin; she’d almost gone mad with grief, before she’d heard the others screaming in pain and terror, before they’d given her something useful to do. To lead them. Yola had no idea.

Yola was already saying: “You rallied a group of girls who had no right to survive as long as they have done. And you led them out. Some people are born to lead, others are born to be led. Those who are led are necessary, of course, they are still of us, those who see the point in this system and have the willpower to remain human. But not all are capable of survival. That is the point of competition.”

How would Yola judge the others? Vicky, with her fear and her need for a leader. Kagami, with her malfunctioning legs. Amina, scared and mousy. Atyle with her unique view of this world, full of gods and their mysterious works. Ilyusha, with her hatred of these people. Or Pira, with her refusal to engage in cannibalism.

Pira’s refusal to eat human meat suddenly clicked into place; she had been a Death’s Head. She’d believed in this. And then she’d turned against it; no more cannibalism.

“We are humankind’s echo,” Yola was saying. “And we will roar once again. None of these monsters will triumph over us. But again, Elpida, I pose you the question — why do the tombs resurrect all, without distinction?”

Elpida struggled to maintain the facade. “I don’t know.”

“Because the systems are searching for the best — and the systems themselves are blind. And we will show them that the best are those with the will to continue being human. Those who were true humans in life, who can resist the urge to fall into bestial degeneration, and who can grasp the potential of this nanomachine ecosystem. That is what we’ve been put here for. The others, those who have chosen other paths, they seek to drag us down. To supplant this second rebirth of human potential with something else. Something alien. Through the deaths of others — who have abandoned their humanity, or never had it in the first place — we can grow forever, into true superhumans. That is the true purpose of the tomb system.” Yola inhaled a deep, cleansing sigh. “If only those who built it understood that not all homo sapiens have what it takes to be people; but their mistake is to our benefit. We may feed on their mistake, forever.”

Elpida grunted, trying to control her reactions. She said: “Why is it only women?”

Yola frowned.

Cantrelle sighed, and said: “We don’t know. We—”

Yola said with a slick-sharp click: “Ella.”

Cantrelle looked surprised. “Boss? She—”

“We do not know why the tombs only resurrect women,” Yola said, raising her chin. “We do not know why humankind died out, or who exterminated them — it doesn’t matter. What we do know is that we are in the greatest crucible ever made. An eternal conflict in which we will be the victors, no matter how deep or how wide the ashes.” She smiled again, eyes burning with belief. “And now the tombs have finally happened upon a true superhuman. Pre-nanomachine. Your potential is unrivalled. I believe you are what we have been searching for, for so long.” A single tear rolled down one of Yola’s too-perfect cheeks. “A true leader. Born for the role. History has generated you. And now you are here.”

Elpida had heard enough.

Perhaps it was the pain in her gut. Perhaps it was pure recklessness, or the memory of being captured and bound once before. Perhaps it was how Yola’s tone and expression reminded her so much of the Covenanters, even if the exact language was so different.

Elpida had heard plenty of Covenanter speeches on the floor of the Civitas chamber; they weren’t shy or secret about their policies. No more expeditions into the green. No more bringing back materials for study — and certainly not Silico, dead or disarmed or otherwise. No pushing deeper. No search for truth. The plateau was to be re-fortified with ten times the number of Legionaries. Telokopolis was to be sealed and inviolate and perfect, as it had been in the earliest ages of the city. No more bone-speakers, no more deep communion, no more pulling data from the city itself; no more growing what it requested or feeding it excess nanomachines — that was human meddling in something best left to nature.

And no more pilot program; the pilots were unnatural, not human, a step toward something else.

Silico. Like the ‘zombie’ Elpida had fought at the tomb. Zombie. Not human. Degenerate. Subhuman.

Eat your own kind, grow strong — but never change, never leave, never go out into the green, never discover the truth.

Elpida knew she was getting the palatable version of the Death’s Head philosophy; this was only the introduction, and they were already trying to sell her on cannibalism without end.

“So,” Elpida croaked, staring down at Yola. “The subhuman failures. They die. Get eaten.”

“Exactly.”

“And those who eat — they win. Humans. People.”

Yola nodded.

Elpida said: “Self-fulfilling, isn’t it?”

Yola smiled and tilted her head. “A common enough critique. But that is the point of competition, of the fight for survival. You have already proven that you are—”

“You’re working with a Necromancer,” Elpida said.

Yola froze. Cantrelle hissed between her teeth as if stung, turning away and raising both hands, done with this.

Kuro went click-buzz, and said in her weird, static-filled, high-pitched voice: “Needs means any allies are acceptable. Don’t criticise what you don’t understand.”

“Kuro,” Yola said gently. “Allow me to explain, please. Elpida, you’ve met the Necromancer as well, then? I presume it was the same one. Guiding us to meet each other. She has been assisting us with you.”

Cantrelle was muttering: “It’s not fucking real, it’s not fucking real, it’s not fucking real.”

Elpida shrugged — which hurt, but the display was important. “Lucky guess. Only way you could know my name.”

Yola smiled again. “We can put nothing past you, superhuman.”

“Mm. Why do you want the combat frame?”

“The mech?” Yola raised her eyebrows. “Who would not? It is one of the greatest opportunities that has ever fallen into our collective laps. I want to use it, to capture and control a graveworm.”

Elpida blinked. The graveworm was the size of a mountain range. The combat frame was big, but not that big.

Yola must have misinterpreted her expression, because she smiled with playful delight. “You see, yes? Many of us have been working toward this goal for decades — centuries in some cases. We’ve tried so many different methods, but the worms are unassailable. But now, this mech, this is new. This is power. I believe it is all connected. The systems chose you somehow. Perhaps they knew we were here, knew we were ready for your leadership. Perhaps they drew the mech from orbit somehow. And now the worm is within our grasp. And you, your companions too, you would not be denied the spoils either. If you cannot yet believe in us, surely we can come to a—”

“Why?” Elpida said. “Why control the worm?”

Yola blinked. “You understand what it is, yes? A gigantic nanomachine factory?”

Elpida nodded. “Mmhmm.”

“It is the ultimate competitive advantage. Infinite resources. We could go from grubbing the dirt for survival, getting smashed apart every few years or decades — into true ruler-ship, in one leap. A rebirth of civilization. A nation. The evolutionary processes could be accelerated a hundredfold. We would control who was reborn and who was not! We—”

“Boss,” Cantrelle grunted through her teeth. “She’s so not into it.”

Elpida said nothing; her plan was falling apart, but she couldn’t help it. The disgust was like a twin to the pain in her gut.

Yola took a deep breath. “I know that some of the things I’ve said are shocking, or wrong to your sensibilities — but your experiences here so far must have shown you the truth. I don’t expect you to believe me straight away. Accepting our position, as human beings, is a difficult road.” She spread her armoured hands, purple and gold glinted amid the filth. “But we have plenty of time. I don’t believe this graveworm is moving any time soon.”

Cantrelle turned on Yola, suddenly angry: “Did the fucking Necro corpse-rapist tell you that too, huh?”

Yola’s face went hard as ice. “Ella.”

“Fuck you, Yola! You’re doing deals with a fucking monster. You trust that thing? You’re more of an idiot than I thought.”

Kuro stepped forward, looming several feet taller than Cantrelle. Click-buzz: “Stop it.”

But Cantrelle jabbed a tentacle at Kuro’s breastplate. “You shut the fuck up. The only reason you’re still breathing is because Hatty and Paaie like you so much. You think I won’t adjust your fucking intake levels and choke you in your own blood? Fuck you. And you know I’m right. A Necro would go through you like nothing.”

Yola stood up, interposing herself between her subordinates. “Ella. Kuro. Stop, now. We are not having this conversation in front of the superhuman. She … she … Elpida?”

Elpida lifted her cuffed hands from her chest and reached down toward her bandaged gut; the angle was difficult, but she managed to dip a fingertip into the crimson mess leaking through the clean white fabric. Then she raised her hands back to her chest and did her best to smooth out the bunched fabric of her grey thermal t-shirt.

Yola’s eyes went wide. Her mouth hung open, lips trembling. She held out a hand to shush the other Death’s Heads.

Elpida paused. Draw a skull on herself, or not?

She knew she should play along. Pretend that Yola had convinced her. Go along with this for now, and then turn on them at the first opportunity, just to get these cuffs off and escape. But these people were going to keep her chained up for days, or weeks, or months — they weren’t stupid, they knew she was not going to be convinced in a single conversation. They would use her to bring her companions in — and then they would kill them, one way or the other.

She’d played along with the Covenanters. She’d played nice in the Civitas. And the Covenanters had murdered all her sisters and shot her in the back of the head.

And here were their descendants, in philosophy if nothing else.

Elpida made a new plan — and told the truth.

She daubed a symbol on the chest of her t-shirt, in her own blood. The lines were wobbly, poorly balanced, and she ran out of blood toward the end, the symbol trailing off. She didn’t know what it meant, or how it was supposed to be displayed, or where it came from. But she got the shape right.

A crescent, intersected by a line.

The symbol which Ilyusha had daubed on her own t-shirt in camo paint. The symbol which Serin had tattooed on one of her many arms. The symbol that said she belonged to the people who hunted the Death’s Heads.

Yola sighed and closed her eyes. She looked genuinely pained. “And where did you learn that?”

“Telokopolis is forever,” said Elpida.

Cantrelle said, “She probably picked it up from some rat—”

“Telokopolis is eternal.”

“Ella, stop,” said Yola. “Let me think.”

Elpida chanted Howl’s words, from the dream that was not a dream: “As long as one of us is still up and breathing, the city stands.” But then she added, in a moment of pain-fever defiance: “I am a child of Telokopolis and I will never abandon my mother.”

Where had that come from?

Yola was saying: “I would like to know where she learned that. If there’s an apos—”

Elpida interrupted, dry and croaking: “From somebody who helped me and my comrades. She’s probably hunting you right now. She’s a good shot. I’d be careful around the windows if I were you. Bang bang.”

Cantrelle and Yola glanced at each other. Cantrelle said, “Shit. The sniper, earlier. You think—”

“Shut up,” Elpida snapped. She raised her head so she could look at all three Death’s Heads. “Stop giving me the bullshit version of your philosophy, Yola. What do you people really believe? If you think I’m going to be your leader, give it to me without the mask on.”

Yola opened her mouth — but Cantrelle stepped forward.

“You’re never going to lead anything,” she said.

Yola said — surprisingly gentle: “Ella … ”

Cantrelle ignored her. “All the natural cycles are abolished. Birth, growth, mating, death. All of it. We are conquered by death, undone by death, remade by death — and we live it, we wield it, we use it. We become it. No race or realm in all of history has been able to shed dead weight as quickly as the Kingdom of Death. The only answer to all this is to join with death, in victory. For ever and ever. We will glut ourselves on the worm, cease all further rebirths except our sisters, and then consign everything else to death.”

Elpida nodded. There it was.

Yola tapped her hands together in gentle applause. “Ella, Ella, Ella, what would I do without you?”

“Die, probably,” Cantrelle grunted. “Now, can we—”

“Graveworm,” Elpida said. She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling. “Graveworm? I hope you’re listening. Hope you heard all that. Send one of your guard in here.”

The Death’s Head trio stared at her — Cantrelle wide-eyed, her screen-eyes enlarged and dark, Yola with a delicate, feminine frown, Kuro just blank behind her visor.

Another bluff. Keep them guessing. Disrupt their plans.

Cantrelle forced a laugh: “She can’t broadcast. That thing in her head is receiver only. Stop bluffing, you—”

Kuro suddenly twitched around, staring at the closed door. Yola’s segmented purple helmet clicked upward from its stowed position in the collar of her armour, stopping halfway so it enclosed her neck and ears. The click-buzz of radio transmission came from within. Yola frowned.

Cantrelle stared at the others, then at Elpida. “Fuck no. No way. Fuck.”

Yola raised a hand, calm but serious. “It’s not that. It—”

The door of the public toilet slammed open with a wet ripping sound as the lock disengaged. A short, stocky revenant darted inside, dressed in a suit of ragged black armour plates. She had too many eyes and a weapon grafted onto one arm, crawling with tiny spider-like machines.

“Boss! Yola!” yelped the newcomer. “There’s an ART!”

She said it ayy-are-tee, an acronym.

“Yes,” said Yola, smooth and collected. “I can hear the reports. Pholet had eyes on it?”

The stocky newcomer nodded. She glanced at Elpida and Amina quickly, but then ignored them. She said: “It came out of that tank. There and then gone again. Pholet thinks it’s optical camo, but we can’t see through—”

Yola put one hand on the newcomer’s shoulder, quickly. “That’s enough, Nahia. You go relieve Pholet, tell her to come straight to me — we’ll be back in the command post. Understand?” Nahia nodded. “Good. Now go.”

Nahia turned on her heel and shot back out of the room, racing down the corridor. Kuro reached out and held the door open.

Cantrelle and Yola turned back to Elpida.

Cantrelle said: “It’s not her, boss. That thing in her head is receive only.”

Yola frowned delicately. “Still. Curious. Was that you, superhuman? The tank is yours, is it not?”

Elpida smiled. Keep bluffing. Let them think she was masterminding her own rescue.

Her own rescue — did this mean the others were coming?

Cantrelle stomped forward a few paces, her patched coat swaying. She jabbed a finger and a tentacle at Elpida. “That tank won’t come anywhere near us. If you’re hoping for it to pull you out, then you’re fucked, and so are your mates.”

Yola said: “Ella. We’re not going to harm them.”

Cantrelle pointed back over her shoulder — at Kuro. “You see that plasma cannon on Kuro’s back?”

Elpida squinted at the folded-away heavy weapon, mounted on articulated arms, powered down. It looked formidable, whatever it was.

“Two shots,” Cantrelle said. She raised a finger. “One to bring down the shields. That tank took a hell of a beating from the worm-bitches, and I know how those kinds of shield capacitors work — it needs days to recharge. So, one shot for the shields.” She raised a second, v-shape, pointed at Elpida. “Then a second round goes through that armour and into the hull, and fries the crew. Understand? Wanna broadcast that to your friends?”

Elpida said: “Thanks for stitching up my stomach.”

Cantrelle gritted her teeth and looked like she wanted to spit — but then she turned away and stalked towards the door.

Yola’s bright green gaze lingered on Elpida. She said: “Superhuman, you will join us. You will come to understand our way of seeing this world, the opportunities we offer, the truth of our vision. But for now — we will not harm your companions.” She glanced at Cantrelle. “Ella, fetch another pair of cuffs and bind her feet. Kuro, command post, with me.” She glanced at Elpida. “We will speak again later, superhuman.”

“Telokopolis is forever,” Elpida said.

Yola smiled. “Of course it is.”

The Death’s Head trio swept out of the room. The door slapped shut behind them.

Elpida allowed herself three seconds of rest. She put her head against the metal surgical table and closed her eyes. One, two, three.

Then she stood up.

She almost didn’t make it to her feet; her gut wound burned like pieces of molten metal lodged deep in her flesh, searing away her nerve endings and turning her thoughts to blank white fire. Her legs shook with pain and her knees refused to lock. She streamed with sweat and heaved through her teeth.

But then she was on her feet, standing next to the surgical table, socks in the filth and blood, shaking all over and panting for breath. Her cuffed hands weighed her down. Her chain slid across the floor as she staggered sideways.

The Death’s Heads were going to regret giving her enough slack to stand up.

Amina uncurled from her protective ball. She looked up at Elpida with wide eyes. She held out her bloodstained hands.

“Mmm? Mmmm?” she went.

Elpida nodded. “Yes— the medic— coming back to cuff— my feet—”

“Mmm?”

Elpida looked at the door; her boots stood next to the door frame. Yola had left the wooden chair behind.

A grin split Elpida’s face. This time there would be no Covenanter bullet in the back of her head. This time she would fight early, when she still had her sisters by her side.

“They took the bait,” she said. “Right. Amina. Let’s get that gag off you. Time to use those teeth again.”