Flesh and plastic. Oil and blood. Bee recognised the dead body of a patcher. No. It was still alive. Rigged and bound against a table, its legs and wings twitched by some comatose impulse. The drone’s head had been sawn open — or at least the space that passed as its head between its dull compound eyes. Colourful yellow and green wires frayed into delicate metal fibres that touched the brain meat within.

  Bee turned to the Wire-Witch. Unlike Mother, the witch had harmlessly disengaged herself from her seat. To the Wire-Witch, standing and disconnecting herself from the city — if this bunker could be called a part of the city — was as simple as unplugging the metallic sockets in her flesh and unclipping herself from the seat. It made Bee’s heart ache to see it.

  “What have you done to it?” Bee asked, unable to take her eyes off of the patcher.

  “Oh, Bee. Do not let this frighten you,” the witch said. Taking hold of a tube of plastic extending from the creature’s open wound, the witch ran her fingers along its length until she reached a pumping membrane. She unsealed a metal clasp upon the arterial hose and poured sanguine waters into a basin.

  “I’m not scared.” Bee wasn’t — not of this, anyway.

  The child’s arm still stung from where the Wire-Witch pierced it, drawing two vials of liquid — the first deep red and the second a liquid metal — before hiding them inside the machinery of the chamber. Despite being reminded of the pain, Bee couldn’t look away.

  “Good.”

  The Wire-Witch turned her grinning skull to the child, chrome teeth catching the diode-light of the chamber and scattering it. All the while, she ran the tip of a finger through the bowl. The witch drew metal from the blood, collecting at her touch. The slick material gathered around her titanium nail in spines and then built itself into cubes, creating a solid structure from the fluid. After inspecting this, the witch discarded the mass into the water with a flick and drained the basin.

  “This is a drone. They call its physio-type a patcher,” the Wire-Witch explained slowly, her empty eye sockets appraising Bee, watching for any reaction at all. For her part, the child set her lips tight, tongue swallowed down, staring back intensely.

  So the witch continued.

  “It is not like you or me, or even the freaks out there. It is a part of the city, no more a creature than your hand without your head. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Bee said. A hot temperament built up in her chest, witnessing its cruel fate, but she managed to stop herself from saying more.

  After catching Bee’s trembling, the Wire-Witch looked back towards the butchered body.

  “I have been trying to communicate with the cities for a very long time. They have been stubborn. Really, it is a pity that no one will know relentless Sestchek’s final words after all these centuries. Do you not think so?”

  Bee swallowed a lump in her throat. Then, realising her hands were fists and her legs were taut, the child looked away.

  “I don’t think they would have much to say to you anyway,” Bee growled.

  “Ah?”

  The Wire-Witch laughed, caught off guard by the child’s reaction. The witch turned and walked away, practically gliding barefoot upon her two slim bipedal legs. Bee followed in her wake, crawling with her armoured limbs scratching the floor. Envy touched the child, watching as the older woman seemed to steal her mother’s form, using it with perfect poise and posture. Why didn’t she get to look like her mother? They passed between chambers.

  “It is no matter,” the Wire-Witch said. “I have long set a plan into motion to get all I need from the cities. Your mother’s little rebellion was just that. She could not possibly outwit herself, much less the rest of us in concert.”

  They crossed a walkway suspended high in the air. Bee looked around. Bound upon the walls, concealed in the dark surrounding them, were drones of all shapes and sizes. Sharp beaks and armoured bodies turned to follow the child with their eyes and antennas. They sneezed, communicating a demanding scent.

  “Now, isn’t that interesting?” The Wire-Witch asked out loud, gauging their reactions.

  The pheromones that they spat made Bee salivate. Despite her every intent, she wretched, tongue emerging.

  Clasping both hands over her mouth, Bee struggled to restrain her dribbling, and the emerging blade that tipped her tongue escaped her lips into her fingers. The child was frightened, losing control. She hurried closer to the Wire-Witch’s heels as a doorway was unsealed, opened, and then slammed shut in their wake.

  Bee collapsed to her hands and knees, heaving the cold, acrid air - free of pheromones, free of that wordless communication, clinical and filtered.

  “Oh, little Bee. Here.”

  The Wire-Witch extended her hand. Still gulping down clean air, Bee took it, confused at first by its warm softness. Then, trembling, the child struggled to stand with the witch’s help, the flutes on her back heaving and gasping.

  “Have some dignity,” the Wire-Witch said, holding a small woven cloth. She dabbed at Bee’s face, drying the sticky saliva.

  “Um... Thanks.”

  “Yes, yes.” There was a reluctant edge to the Wire-Witch, but still, something warmed in her, up close to her sister’s child. Then, her skull turning grim with some unspoken realisation, the witch turned away again.

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  Bee looked around. This chamber was more intricate than the last, machinery loud and without number. She honed in on something that looked right.

  “What’s this?” Bee asked, staggering on unsure footing. Standing upright, she looked at the whirring, pipe-cooled metal beast caged against the hard wall.

  “It’s a computer. But it’s less about what it is, little Bee, and more about what it can be persuaded to do.”

  Now Bee had been taken to exactly where she needed to be. Mother had instructed her that the Wire-Witch would not be able to resist talking about her designs. It was so easy. The witch paced the depths of her domain — the subject of her machines exciting, even intoxicating, to her.

  “It can send messages,” Bee reasoned.

  Her face creased with distaste as she looked it over once more.

  “Do the Bone Monks have one?”

  “They do. Yes,” the witch answered, looking over the caged device. “I built many for the monks and taught them the ancient rites to maintain such a creation.”

  “Who do they send messages to?”

  The witch cackled.

  “They do more than send messages, little Bee. In a time before time, our progenitors used them to recreate the greatest miracles of the universe.”

  “Like what?” Bee asked, dubious.

  “Creating life, mapping the stars, inventing civilisation,” the witch said, her faceless skull transfixed on the mainframe, silver-toothed grin somehow wider in the electric light.

  “The great inventions of prehistory — fire, steel, and electricity. We have so much more to rediscover. But even the little scraps they left behind, back-ups from another age, let us recreate the unimaginable.”

  Bee wasn’t sure what to make of that. There was an obsession in the Wire-Witch’s empty eye sockets, and she felt like the slightest offence to the witch’s electro-religion would be met with another furious outburst. However, the silence, too, caught the Wire-Witch’s attention.

  “Life isn’t all about eating, fucking, and trying to muscle your way to the top.”

  “I know.”

  Bee didn’t. She had been hungry for as long as she could remember.

  “Good. Then you are a smarter girl than your mother.”

  Bee didn’t know what to say to that. The witch reached across and pulled on one of the screens. With a snap, it levered out on an arm. Then the arm became a throat as the Wire-Witch wrapped her hand around it, forcing the screen to meet the child’s face.

  “Have you ever seen yourself before?” Djay asked.

  Bee shook her head, unnerved by the thing. Its flat head was so close.

  “Look at this,” the Wire-Witch said.

  The screen flashed to life. Bee flinched, suddenly close to a monster, eyes wide with surprise.

  “There. Do you see?”

  “Yes?” Bee said, not sure if she did see.

  It was the right shape. Where the sockets of Bee’s mother and the witch were empty, this creature had eyes, though. Bee knew she had eyes. Grey skin was tainted by raw pink, the sore sunburn that the child knew so well.

  “That’s me?”

  “It is.”

  It was all wrong. Bee knew she had skin, but the skin didn’t belong on a face. She leaned back, jaw-dropping, dark eyes widening further. Reluctantly, she brought a hand to her chest plates and traced a line up her neck to her smooth jaw. The image on the screen followed her every movement.

  “How do I send a message?” Bee asked the Wire-Witch.

  “Speak into the screen. Tell it what your mother told you to say. What you see on the screen is what the Bone Monks will get.”

  Bee peered up to Djay, who seemed a little too amused. She brushed a wave of greasy hair out of her eyes to better see the screen. However, the witch then made a quiet suggestion.

  “You should know, though, Bee, that you are being used. Your mother is throwing your life away, in some vein attempt to hurt everyone around her.”

  Bee’s breath caught in her throat. Part of her knew that. Part of her didn’t care. She wanted to hurt everyone, too, for what they did.

  “You could walk away and live your life however you want. Forget about what Eye said. Or you could even stay here with me, and I can hide you from—”

  “Do I just talk now?” Bee asked, interrupting her.

  The Wire-Witch considered the child at length before nodding.

  “Go on then.”

  “Hello. My name’s Bee. I have a message for you from my mother. My mother, the Vat-Mother of Sestchek.”

  The child looked terrified. Lost, she found her own eyes and fixed her gaze upon them. They drew her in.

  “It’s a prophecy, one that has to be inked.”

  Her mother had told her that part was important, even though Bee wasn’t sure why. Her hands squeezed into tight fists again. Her knees shook.

  “I am coming to Acetyn. My arrival will seal the Immortal’s fate. She will die. The noble lineages will all die, and it will be justice for… For killing mother.”

  A hot breath escaped her, her heart beating in her chest so hard that she was dizzy. She hadn’t said it right, but the monster on the screen looked angry, all traces of innocence and youth on her face forgotten.

  “That’s it,” she told the Wire-Witch.

  The witch’s skull turned away, and she shoved the screen aside again. Her jaw worked, chrome teeth grinding. She tried to take a breath, calm herself of her disappointment, and suppress another outburst. Instead, the frustration turned to hostility.

  “Brave but stupid, girl.”

  However, the weight between them had already shifted. Bee looked up at the Wire-Witch, seeing the sister hiding from the world as it died around her. The child leaned towards her, and the witch stepped back. After all, despite appearances, she was still her mother’s daughter.

  And they had too much in common for forgiveness.

  “I’m leaving,” Bee told the Wire-Witch, her quiet voice filled with conviction, tears stinging her eyes. “I'd never want to stay with you.”