Elpida woke up.
She awoke in her own bed, greeted by the muted colours and soft lights of the dormitory, within the pilot project cadre’s private quarters. A trio of ceiling fans turned lazily in the high shadows. Ventilation ducts whispered with a trickle of warm recycled air. Distant vibrations murmured upward through the layers of the city, so gentle they could only be felt during the liminal moments between sleep and awakening. She knew exactly where she was — nestled in the core of the Legion District on spire-floor 186, surrounded by miles of living metal, acres of sturdy bone, and endless sinews of hot, red, wet machine-meat, deep in the heart of Telokopolis.
She was wide awake. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been asleep, which was odd.
Elpida lifted her head from the pillow, wiping the crust of sleep from her eyes with her left hand. The suite of screens at the far end of the dorm was switched off, as always while the cadre slept, all except for one screen which showed the current time in big grey numbers — just past oh-six-hundred in the morning.
The dormitory was still and empty. So early? Elpida frowned.
She kicked the sheets away from her naked body and moved to climb out of bed, but then discovered that she was not alone in the dormitory after all; she was not even alone in her own bed.
Howl was entangled with Elpida. She was snuggled down against Elpida’s side, concealed beneath the bedsheets, fast asleep. Howl’s strong, compact legs were hooked around Elpida’s right thigh, her arms hugging Elpida’s waist; her head lay on Elpida’s shoulder, dusting Elpida’s collarbone with white hair, staining Elpida’s skin with a patch of long-dried drool from her parted lips. Elpida’s right arm was pinned beneath Howl’s body weight, gone numb and tingly from nerve compression.
“Howl?” Elpida croaked. “Howl?”
Howl grunted, but refused to wake.
Elpida disentangled herself from Howl’s embrace, pulling her right arm out from underneath Howl’s weight. Howl grumbled with disturbed sleep, then rolled over without further complaint.
Elpida stood up, bare feet flexing on the warm floor tiles, naked skin freshened by the open air. She started her usual sequence of wake-up stretches, then stopped to spread the fingers of her right hand and massage the wrist. The whole limb was still numb with pins and needles.
The rest of the dormitory beds were empty, though they had obviously been slept in; blankets and sheets were rumpled, pushed back, left in their usual disarray. Discarded clothing lay all over the place, a disciplinary problem Elpida had never managed to solve, not least because she indulged in that herself. The dorm smelled as it always did — of her sisters, of sweat and sleep and sex.
But the air was silent and the beds were cold, all except Howl’s soft breathing in Elpida’s own bunk.
Had Elpida forgotten some important muster or briefing? She didn’t think so, she would never have done that, though she could not recall precisely what the cadre’s schedule was for today, nor what they had all done last night. There were no emergency warnings flashing up on the screens, no alarms blaring out in the Legion District, no Old Lady Nunnus growling at her from the intercom panel by the door. Had her other sisters scurried off on some early morning escapade, leaving only Howl to distract the Commander, likely by shoving a sleep-addled groin in her face? Elpida smiled at the thought, but shook her head; if that was the plan, Howl was doing an uncharacteristically bad job. No, if the others were up to something, they would have left Metris and Silla, maybe Third too, or perhaps just Quio pretending to be half-asleep in one of the beds, bare arse stuck up in the air. Howl would be leading the mischief, not left behind as the distraction.
Struck by a sudden urge she did not understand, Elpida reached over to the nearest bunk and picked up a discarded t-shirt — with her left hand, because her right still felt numb and clumsy. She pressed the sweat-stained fabric to her face, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. Yeva mostly, with a bit of Fii. Had the two shared that bed last night?
Elpida shuddered. Her eyes watered and her chest tightened. She didn’t know why. She’d seen both Yeva and Fii last night — hadn’t she?
“Where is everybody?” she said out loud.
Howl shifted on the bed. “Elps, you gotta wake up.”
Elpida turned and looked down at Howl, at her petite form snuggled beneath the covers, her eyes still closed, her short shock of white hair crushed against the pillow.
“What are you talking about?” Elpida said. “I’m up. You’re the one dozing.”
Howl sighed into the pillow, barely awake.
“Where is everybody?” Elpida repeated. “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
Howl didn’t reply for a long moment. Elpida assumed she had fallen back asleep. But then Howl muttered, “Whatever, fuck-nuts. Just do what you gotta do. I’ll hold the fort. Keep the troops in line. Take as long as you gotta. Just … just come back. K’?”
Howl trailed off, then ended on a little snore. She rolled over onto her front, fast asleep.
Elpida sighed. Maybe there was a prank brewing. She bent down and kissed Howl’s hair before stepping away from the bed.
She couldn’t be bothered to drag on a pilot-suit base layer, let alone the whole kit, but she did grab a pair of shorts from another bed and pull them up to cover her hips — they smelled of Kit, which was nice. Nobody cared about nudity in the cadre, but she never knew when they might have a visitor in the mess hall or the briefing room. Today was already starting off weird; she didn’t need some Legionarie’s eyeballs popping out at the sight of her naked groin.
Elpida left Howl behind with a backward glance, then walked through the maze of bunks, opened the door, and stepped out into the corridor. Freshly recycled air pumped from the overhead ducts. The floor was warm beneath her naked feet, body temperature to match her needs. The muted silver and dark cream and soft treelike greens of the corridor set off a terrible longing in her chest.
But a longing for what? This was just the main hallway in the cadre’s private quarters, nothing special, a fragment of her life she never really thought about.
Elpida took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. She was going funny.
She couldn’t hear anybody in the briefing room, the rec room, the mess hall, the armoury, the gym, the shower room, or any of the other little facilities which made up the cadre’s private quarters. She even strained to hear if anybody was in medical, but the whole complex was voiceless. The only sound she could hear was mechanical. At the edge of Elpida’s hearing, at a frequency most baseline humans would not have noticed, she detected a slight buzz — the hum of a screen left switched on, probably in the rec room.
She decided to check there first; this would not be the first time some of her sisters had slept in rec. She slapped the palm pad. The door slid open.
Elpida froze.
The big screen at the rear of the rec room glowed with baleful light. It showed a dark place, full of dead things — undead things, with bionic limbs and sharp teeth, clad in scraps of scavenged armour, clutching half-broken weapons in scabby, filthy claws. The undead wretches were sprawled about on a floor of black metal, gnawing on human flesh and blood-stained bones. No sound came from the screen, only silence.
A figure was waiting for Elpida, facing the doorway, framed by the dark light of the screen, bordered by the row of sofas and chairs, standing next to one of the wide tables in the middle of the room.
Eight feet tall, a massive frame more metal than meat, bristling with cyborg limbs and implanted weapons. The skin of her face was smooth bio-plastic in a fluid pattern of dark blue and soft black. A pair of bionic eyes the colour of raw sunlight peered out from that face, framed by hair made of spun gold. She wore plates of carapace armour, dirty and stained with soot and blood. She carried a rifle over her shoulders, a heavy weapon designed to punch through a hardshell suit or cut smaller Silico in half.
The figure neither moved nor spoke. She just stared, hands clasped behind her back.
Elpida realised who the cyborg was. Relief and rest faded away to nothing, replaced with cold familiarity. Reality suddenly made sense.
Elpida sighed, strode forward into the room, and said, “This is a dream.”
Persephone — the eight-foot tall revenant who had formed the most attentive audience to her performance with Sanzhima — opened her mouth and spoke in a buzzing machine-voice, deep and crunchy.
“How can you tell?”
Elpida replied, “Because this is Telokopolis, my past, but you’re from the future, my present. Because I passed out in Pheiri’s airlock, once it was safe to let go and give in. I remember passing out. I’m unconscious.”
Persephone said, “It is a very vivid dream.”
Elpida nodded. She raised her right hand and stared at her open palm. The creases were perfect. Her hand was numb. “That it is. Which means it might be more than a dream.”
Persephone said, “And why would you dream of me?”
Elpida laughed, shook her head, and walked over to the table which Persephone stood near. The tabletop was scattered with the usual detritus — books, data readers, bits of disassembled equipment, a piece of discarded underwear; Elpida hesitated over a scrap of poetry by Kos, and some kind of metal sculpture she recognised as Snow’s handiwork.
The middle of the table had been cleared off, allowing a chess set to stand alone. It was the wooden chess set she had received as a gift from a Legion general, the single most expensive object the cadre owned — with the exception of their combat frames, which were neither truly theirs, nor possible to own. Elpida had dreamed of this chess set once before, dreamed of playing chess with Howl. But this time there was no opposing player; Persephone stood at an angle to the board, not opposite. The pieces were positioned as if in mid-game, white toward Elpida, black on the other side.
Elpida sat down in the chair before the chess set and put her bare feet up on the edge of the table. She examined Persephone for a moment; the cyborg giant wore no expression.
“I’m not really dreaming of you,” Elpida said. “You don’t even sound like yourself. I didn’t have much time to get to know you, but you’re mostly arrogant, brash, bold. You wouldn’t stand there asking me bland questions. I’m not dreaming about you at all, you’re just a … ” She faltered, then swallowed. “A symbol. My subconscious, talking to itself. You might also be a Necromancer trick, but I doubt that. This is all me, doing this to myself.”
Persephone raised a bio-plastic eyebrow. “Oh?”
Elpida lowered her eyes to the chess set and put her forehead in one hand. “Is this really what my subconscious wants me to do? Justify myself, to myself? Haven’t I done too much of that already?”
Persephone tossed a twisted cage of metal onto the table, blackened by fire and blast damage, covered in splashes of cooked blood. The bomb vest.
“You could always wake up,” said Persephone.
Elpida shook her head. “No.”
“Then why are you dreaming about me?”
Elpida folded her arms and looked back up at Persephone; those false sunlight eyes told her nothing. “Because everything I just did, every risk I just took, it was all to impress you.”
Persephone raised both eyebrows. She opened her mouth.
A second voice interrupted from Elpida’s left, tinkling with the threat of giggles — “Oooooh, a crush, on her?! Absolute scandal, zombie!”
Elpida turned and stared at the thing which sat coiled upon the cushions of an armchair.
Blonde hair fell in thick and bouncy ringlets across bared shoulders the colour of fresh cream. Clad in a sheer white dress which clung to her flesh, very little of the figure’s form was left to the imagination — full chest, wide hips, narrow little waist which looked painfully easy to snap. Long bare legs were crossed one over the other, ankles encircled with white ribbons, tied into stiff bows of shiny silk all the way up her calves, feet cradled in neat little slippers. A pair of bright green eyes shone like emeralds in a dark room, set in a plush, plump, pinkish face, with lips and lids and lashes all painted, eyelids fluttering with amusement. A white choker encircled her throat. White gloves of delicate lace encased her slender arms and long-fingered hands. A white bow sat in her hair, pulling the great mass of gold into a ponytail.
Lykke — Necromancer, once again restored to human form, dressed like an upper spire socialite eager for a party — drew a white-gloved fingertip over her lower lip.
“Hiiiiiii, zombie,” she purred. “Got a crush?”
Elpida said, “And what part of my psyche do you represent?”
The dream of Lykke shrugged her naked shoulders. She kissed a fingertip and pressed the air as if passing it to Elpida. “Search me, zombie.” She flexed on the armchair, arching her back, pressing her body toward Elpida. “I mean that literally. Come over here and frisk me. Stick your hands into my—”
“Howl is asleep in the dorms,” Elpida said. “I can go get her if you like. She’ll be happy to frisk you.”
Lykke’s flirtatious smile slipped. She glanced at the door with disquiet fear, then swallowed hard and slumped back into the armchair, waving away the suggestion with one lace-gloved hand.
“Behave,” Elpida said. “I don’t care if you represent some part of my mind.”
Lykke pouted, eyes averted. “I wish you had a crush on me, instead.”
Elpida sighed. “And to answer your question seriously — or rather, my own question, posed back at me, no.” She returned her gaze to Persephone. “Not Persephone specifically. She’s just the most prominent example in my mind, because she was standing at the front of the crowd. I had to impress you. I had to win you over.”
Lykke started to speak again, but Persephone glanced at her, sunlight eyes burning against the backdrop of the screen. Lykke snorted with irritation, but said nothing.
Persephone said, “Win me over?”
Elpida leaned back in her chair again, gazing past Persephone and Lykke, past the dream, at the big screen which showed reality — a view of the tomb chamber, or at least as Elpida imagined the tomb chamber, full of zombies.
“The bottom feeders,” she said. “The scavengers. The starving, the hungry, the abandoned, the lost. They’re easy. I can give them some meat now, promise them more meat in the future, offer them protection, security, empathy, understanding, and they’ll flock to me. To us. To the promise of Telokopolis. They have nothing, no better options, and they’ve experienced the utter desolation of living as prey. To them, I can offer a better future, and I don’t need to do much to prove that.” She turned her eyes back to Persephone. “But you?” Elpida shook her head. “The others out there, the ones in powered armour, the ones who’ve been successful, the predators, the raiders, the high-end cyborgs, all those who have carved out some real power in the nanomachine afterlife. I can’t just offer you meat and expect you to buy in. You can take meat. I suspect that if I told you about the meat-plant project, you might not even want to be part of the result. Why scratch for sustenance when you can just take what you want from the bodies of other zombies?” She shook her head again. “No, I had to prove to you that my conviction is stronger than death. I had to prove that my alternative is not just superior, it’s inevitable, and it is in your own best interest not to resist. I had to show you that Telokopolis is forever.”
“You speak with such clarity,” said Persephone.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Elpida sighed. She rubbed her chest, over her heart. “This is a dream. The burnout, the pressure, it’s suspended here, somehow.”
Lykke murmured: “Dream, dream, dream on, zombie.”
Persephone said, “You don’t seem happy with your success.”
Elpida felt a tug inside her chest. “Success?”
Persephone nodded. “I was impressed. You saw my face at the front of the crowd, as your comrades led you back into your machine. You saw that I was surprised. You hope this surprise will kindle belief. There were many like me in that crowd, even the ones who left. They witnessed. They know.”
Elpida shook her head. “It doesn’t feel like victory.”
“You saved the girl.”
Lykke slapped the arm of her chair. “You did! Zombie, you rescued that little mewling lamb. You pulled her from the brink of death. You know you did! Why are you whining about it now? You deserve a triumph!”
Elpida stared at Lykke’s glittering lashes and shiny lips, at the cheeky smile which curled on her face, the flush of arousal in her cheeks.
“She didn’t want to be saved,” Elpida said. “She begged me for a bullet in the head, and I told her no. I put her through more pain.”
Persephone said, “None can truly consent to death when conditions like ours prevail over all.”
Elpida shook her head. “I made that choice, I took it from her. And more, I risked everybody’s safety, everybody’s life. I risked my own, which puts all of them at risk. I blew up my arm, which seriously reduces my own operational capability for weeks, or months, or maybe more. I put everything on the line.”
Persephone said, “It was the only choice.”
Elpida nodded. “Yes, and that’s the problem. It was the only choice, which means it was no choice at all. I’m not being a proper leader anymore. I’m not acting like their Commander. I’m failing, because I’m … I’m becoming something else.”
A double thump of heavy boots came from the doorway to the rec room, followed by a familiar clack-clack-squeak sound, a sound that Elpida had known almost her whole life.
A voice spoke, a hard and scratchy crackle clawing up from an aged throat, a chunk of fire-warmed granite wrapped in felt.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” asked Old Lady Nunnus.
Elpida shot to her feet, standing to attention.
“Ma’am!”
Nunnus was already striding into the rec room with her swaying iron gait, a heavy double-thump of tightly laced combat boots augmented by her automatic crutch — a cage of padded metal around her left forearm, the support of the crutch adjusting back and forth to the needs of her ravaged body. Nunnus was mostly bionics from the hips down, her hipbone itself fused and ruined by Silico weapons and the toxins of the green, decades before Elpida had been decanted from a uterine replicator. She walked straight-backed despite the old war wounds and her incredible age. Grey eyes pinned Elpida, sharp as needle points behind wire-frame glasses, peering out from within a heavily-lined face, topped with bone-white hair cut short upon a liver-spotted scalp.
Old Lady Nunnus — General Symphora Eupraxis Nunnus — was ancient, even by the standards of the upper spire, the Legion, the Civitas, or even the bone-speakers’ guild. She had been old before the pilot program’s first genetic engineers had been born. Elpida was never certain of her exact age, but she knew Nunnus was well north of a century and a half, her body sustained by multiple rejuvenation treatments, extensive bionic work, and what Nunnus herself jokingly called ‘load-bearing tumours’. Her intellect was sustained by a sheer bloody-minded refusal to die — and by her position as the most senior, most well-respected, most well-decorated Legion general who held to the ideals and hopes of the expeditionary faction of the Civitas. Without her support, the pilot program would not have survived the ‘failure’ of Elpida and her sisters in their early days. Elpida often suspected that she and her sisters were, in turn, what sustained Nunnus.
Nobody in the cadre called Nunnus ‘General’; everybody outside the cadre did, even the early seeds of the Covenanters. Nunnus had not worn a proper uniform in decades. She stomped about Legion barracks and staff meeting rooms and the halls of the Civitas in a long silver-grey skirt the colours of her old Legion posting, wearing a cold-weather jumper and a pair of combat boots.
Nobody in the cadre called her ‘mother’, either. But as this dream of Nunnus stomped into the rec room, Elpida felt tears prickling in her eyes.
The real Nunnus had died a year before the cadre. Heart attack. Elpida had always known it was poison.
Nunnus came to a stop just short of the table, frowning at Elpida. “Well?”
“Ma’am.” Elpida swallowed. There was a lump in her throat. “Ma’am, I … ”
“You do know I’m not real?” Nunnus said. “This is a dream. Correct? I’m just a phantom, built of your own memories. Don’t get verklempt over me.”
“I … I don’t care. It’s good to see you, Ma’am.”
Nunnus held her gaze, eyes a deep, warm grey. Eventually she grunted. “Yes, I expect it would be. Now, stop ‘ma’am’ing at me and answer the question. Why are you doing this to yourself?”
Elpida hesitated. “Because … ”
Because I failed you. I failed the cadre. Everyone died, because I made the wrong choices. And now I’m making the wrong choices again, but there’s no other way, there’s no other choice, there’s no other road back to Telokopolis, and I’m not made for—
“And sit down,” Nunnus snapped. “You think I need you jumping to attention every time I walk into the room?”
Elpida nodded. She pulled a chair out for this dream of the Old Lady, and Nunnus sat down with a little grunt, sighing at the creaking of her old bones. Elpida followed her orders, sitting back down in her own chair.
“Well?” Nunnus asked.
Elpida said, “I’m doing this to myself, because … because I am acting like a poor excuse for a Commander.”
“Unpack that statement,” Nunnus ordered.
Elpida couldn’t help herself, she smiled. ‘Unpack that statement’. How many times had she heard those words? The familiarity unlocked her tongue.
“As Commander — whether in the cadre of my own sisters, or as leader of a group of undead girls who need me — my first duty is to those who stand at my side. My sisters. The children of Telokopolis. My comrades, my girls. I should be prioritising them, protecting them, doing my best to lead them. But what I did back in that chamber, that wasn’t … ” Elpida had to pause, swallow, and take a breath. Nunnus waited. “I wasn’t putting them first. I risked everything, their safety, their lives, my own life, our security, for the sake of this … this other thing. This thing greater than me. Telokopolis. The promise of Telokopolis that I’ve made. And maybe that was the right choice, but it was also the only choice. I couldn’t see any other. And that means I should not be in command. Not in the way I have been.”
Nunnus leaned back. The chair creaked. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Ma’am?”
Nunnus held Elpida’s gaze, the way she always had, soft and knowing and without judgement. Everyone else thought Nunnus was a hard case, a sharp-tongued disciplinarian.
“You’re doing a very good job of enumerating your perceived failures,” Nunnus said. “But that is not what I asked for. I did not ask you for the reasons you’ve retreated from your responsibilities. I asked for an explanation for this.” She cast her eyes up and around. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“I don’t understand, ma’am.”
Nunnus sighed. “Your girls need you. You are their Commander. But you’ve locked yourself away. You never did this while I was alive. Why now?”
“With respect, ma’am, you are incorrect. They don’t need me.”
Nunnus frowned. “Really.”
Elpida went on. “Right now, they’re better off without me. I’ve breached their trust, they can tell that something is wrong with me, that I’m being driven by this … this other, contrary priority. With the cadre, I made every mistake possible, because I was trying to protect them, to protect us. I chose wrong. Right now, my new comrades, they’re better off with me stepping back from command. Kagami, Serin, Ilyusha, Atyle, they can put together a strike against the Death’s Heads, they don’t need me getting in the way. Not like I am now, not with how I’ve been behaving.”
Nunnus frowned harder. “I’ve never heard such nonsense from you. You are the most capable Commander I’ve ever known. Those girls, they’re relying on you to lead them, even if you make mistakes, even if your judgement is clouded. That’s why you don’t lead alone, by pure authority. You lead with consent, because you have their trust—”
“I don’t think I do, not—”
“Your plan worked,” Nunnus said. “It was wildly irresponsible of you, but it worked. You took a calculated gamble, and while I would not recommend taking such a gamble a second time, to win and abandon your cause now is the height of foolishness. You know this. You won. Exploit that opening.”
“I’m not abandoning anything, I just—”
“Then why are you here?” Nunnus pressed. “Why are you hiding?”
“To keep myself out of everyone’s way. Because, given the opportunity, I will do it again, because it’s the only choice. Without me, my new comrades will hunt down those who attacked us. With me … the situation becomes unpredictable.”
Nunnus raised her eyebrows. Persephone tilted her head. Elpida glanced between the two of them. Both dreams, both fake. Over in the armchair, Lykke stared on with shining eyes, rapt with attention, lace-gloved hands clasped beneath her chin.
Elpida sighed. “Is this really the best my subconscious can muster?”
Nunnus smiled, a crinkle of her ancient lips. “You’re doing your best, my girl. You need to trust yourself more. Right now you are doubting.”
Elpida almost laughed, shaking her head. “I got it right first time, Ma’am? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Perhaps.”
Lykke broke out into a peal of giggles. “Is this really what you tell yourself, zombie?! A pep talk from mummy? Isn’t working very well, is it?”
Elpida snapped around, scowling. She still couldn’t tell what Lykke was meant to represent.
Lykke shot her a glittering wink. “What you need is a whirlwind one-night stand to lift your mood. A good hard railing up against the edge of a hundred-floor drop. Look at you!” She ran her eyes up over Elpida’s almost-naked body. “You’re already stripped down and ready for it. And you’re so pent-up, zombie. I can smell it from a mile away, like a bitch in heat.”
“Huh,” Elpida grunted. “Not entirely untrue.”
“When’s the last time you got properly turned inside out and upside down? Not by any of your ‘new’ ‘comrades’, eh? You want to do that redhead one, don’t you? But you’re worried her quivering childhood friend will try to strangle you in your sleep! Why not fuck both of them? Or fight one, fuck the other? Hell, you could—”
“Stop. I get the—”
“Have one on each hand, one on each—”
“Stop!”
“At ease,” said Nunnus.
Elpida relaxed.
Lykke giggled — a light, tinkling, glass-like sound — and said, “Oh yes, please do. I’m all easy for you, Elpida.”
Nunnus said, “It was a good question, even if it was from an unreliable source.” She glanced at Lykke; the Necromancer winked. “You don’t seem to be feeling very confident, Elpida. This conversation isn’t helping you. Is it?”
Elpida gestured for permission to stand. Nunnus nodded. Elpida got out of her chair and started to pace the length of the rec room, glancing up at the big screen which showed the zombies back in the tomb chamber.
“I can’t take the pressure,” she said eventually. “I’ve had trouble admitting it to myself for months now. But back there, after the bomb, after everybody dragged me back inside Pheiri, I … I passed out. Not from exhaustion. From failure. I don’t have any control, not anymore. I keep taking risks, because there’s no other option. But I wasn’t made for this.”
Nunnus grunted. “Mm. But you’re doing it anyway.”
“And it’s burning me out. Howl was right. But at the same time, what other choices do I have?” Elpida strode the other way across the length of the rec room. She knew she was talking to herself, none of these dream apparitions were real, but perhaps this was what she needed. “The storm, the tomb, Eseld’s sudden reappearance, Shilu being dumped into our laps, all of it — if only this had all happened a few months later, with the meat plant project bearing ripe fruit. Then I could offer those zombies real hope, real material support. Right now all I can do is balance everything on this knife’s edge, relying on theatrics, rhetorical tricks, and risky pay-offs.” Elpida shook her head. “I wasn’t cut out to do this. I wasn’t made for it. I was made for commanding a small team, not this … this … ”
“Politics,” said Persephone.
“Mm,” Nunnus grunted. “Sowing the seeds of future institutions.”
Elpida shook her head. “No, not that, not exactly, though that’s part of it. It’s more like … ”
“The great game,” purred Lykke.
Elpida stopped pacing. She pointed at Lykke. The Necromancer’s lips curled in a little red smile. She coiled in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her exposed legs.
“Yes,” said Elpida. “Yes. A great game.”
She stepped back toward the table and reached for the chess set. Her hand hovered over the white end of the board — her end? She hesitated over a raven, a wall, the white empress, but then settled on the piece which represented the city itself, an elegant spire carved from pale wood. She plucked the white city from the board and held it up, framed by the screen and the vision of the chamber in the tomb.
“I feel like I’m a playing piece,” Elpida said. “An important one, perhaps, but still just a piece. I can’t even see the board. The meat plants, getting Shilu on our side, feeding the zombies, rallying them by saving Sanzhima — are these moves, or not? Are they the right moves? I don’t know, but they’re the only moves I can make. I’m clinging to every move I can possibly make, and every move has to be perfect, because I cannot see the board. I am fighting blind. I am blind.”
“Oooooh,” Lykke moaned. “Poor baby.”
Elpida ignored that. She stared at the white city piece in her hand. “There is a player on my side. Or at least, I have to believe there is. I have to, or … or none of this makes any sense. I have to believe the city is at my back. Telokopolis is at work, inside the network, and she has my back.”
Nunnus said, “Do you really believe that?”
Elpida could not answer. When awake, she would never allow herself to entertain this seed of doubt. But asleep, unconscious, in a dream, she could not turn away from the playing piece in her hand.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I only wish I knew. I wish I knew if I was doing the right thing or not. I wish I understood her plan. I … I wish I … I wish I knew.”
In Elpida’s peripheral vision, Lykke’s eyes flickered to the doorway.
Elpida turned quickly. She caught a glimpse of a figure as it stepped out of sight — a bone-white dress fluttering over dark red flesh.
Elpida’s heart leapt.
She rushed to the rec room door and burst out into the corridor, but there was nobody there, only a lingering scent of blood and warm skin, so quickly washed away by the recycled air from the ventilation system — and a new corridor entirely.
The end of the little hallway — the one she knew so well, with all the doors which led off to other parts of the cadre’s private quarters, which should have terminated in the door to the showers — now opened out into a high, wide, vaulted corridor, like the abandoned places in the thick centre of Telokopolis, down in the Skirts. The oldest parts of the city, where her bones and her flesh lay so close to the surface. The roots from which she had been grown, by divine processes which none in Elpida’s time understood.
Exposed bone lined those walls, yellow and crusted with mineral build-up, eroded here and there by great age, rising in sweeping curves toward the pointed ceiling. Membranes of warm flesh throbbed and pulsed, carrying the blood of the city, casting a deep crimson glow on the corridor below.
Far ahead, a flicker of white dress vanished around a corner.
“It’s her,” Elpida whispered.
She glanced back into the rec room. Persephone nodded. Lykke examined her own fingernails, suddenly bored. Nunnus said, “You wanted certainty. Go get it.”
Elpida left the rec room behind, walked the length of the familiar corridor, and then plunged into the crimson light of that vaulted hall. She considered pausing to duck into the armoury and fetch a sidearm, but this was a dream, and the figure she followed was the one she trusted more than anything, even herself. She crept forward, beneath the yellow layers of the ribs and through the glowing machine-meat of the secret innards of the city. A chill crept into her feet from the metal floor. Goose pimples rose on her naked skin. The air here was cold and still and smelled of iron.
She strained to hear a sound from up ahead. Was that the patter of dainty feet on unpainted metal, or the spasm of a struggling heart, or—
A footfall from behind. Elpida turned quickly.
Lykke smirked, giggling in silence, a finger pressed to her lips.
The Necromancer must have followed Elpida out of the rec room, but Persephone and Nunnus had not done the same. Up close, Lykke looked like she was dressed for a night of drinking and flirting, with those silken white ribbons about her bare legs and those lace gloves enclosing her arms, her sunny blonde hair up in a bouncing ponytail, her dress a second skin against her curves. Green eyes turned black in the crimson light. The blood-red illumination of Telokopolis dyed the Necromancer a deep and bloody scarlet.
She was very short. Elpida had not noticed that before, when Howl had beaten Lykke black and blue.
“I’m busy,” Elpida said. “I need to go meet—”
“Tch!” Lykke tutted. “Oh, don’t follow that old thing. You’re being led by the nose, zombie.”
Elpida shook her head. “Why follow me? I’m still not clear on what you represent.”
Lykke clasped her hands before her groin, upper arms pushing her breasts together. She dipped her chin and looked at Elpida from upturned eyes. “Do you want to know a secret, zombie?” she whispered. “Just between you and me. Our little secret. For nobody else.”
Elpida considered leaving this apparition behind, but perhaps she had misunderstood the situation. She needed to be sure.
“Go ahead,” Elpida said. “Tell me your secret.”
Lykke smirked, eyes twinkling. She leaned in close, one hand to her mouth as if shielding her words from eavesdroppers.
“I’m really here,” she whispered.
Lykke quickly leaned back again, biting her lower lip and wiggling her eyebrows.
“But this is a dream, isn’t it?” Elpida said.
Lykke rolled her eyes. “No, no, no! No, it’s not. It’s not a dream! You think dreams matter this much? You think I’d be here for a dream?” Lykke sighed and tutted. “Well, yes, it is, but also it’s not, but that’s also incredibly boring to—”
“Enlighten me.”
Lykke paused, biting her lip.
“Now, Necromancer,” Elpida said. “If you’re really here, why haven’t you killed me?”
Lykke’s lips sparkled back into a little smirk; so easy to bait.
“Becauseeeee,” she purred, “I don’t want to! Look, this is all a ‘dream’, yes, but I’m actually here. You’re in your own local network, just the part of it made out of your own body and mind. Normally zombies don’t do this, but you’ve got that … ” Lykke’s lips curled for a second. “That horrid gremlin along with you, and she’s given you more room to play with than little zombies should usually have. So, welcome!” Lykke wiggled her fingers. “It’s like I’ve snuck into your bedroom!”
Elpida nodded. “Then what are you, a virus? A bad thought?”
Lykke sighed, flopped her arms, and rolled her head back. “No, I’m me! It’s Lykke.” She batted sun-white lashes at Elpida, dyed bloody by the light. “Don’t say you’ve already forgotten me, zombie. Unless I’ve lost track of time, it wasn’t that long ago you and I met each other. Have I really slipped from your memory so fast? I’m not certain my heart could take such a bruising. I would expire, right here, and then you’d have to carry me to bed. Will you carry me to bed, Elpida? Or … ” Lykke bit her lower lip and reached out with one lace-gloved hand. She drew a fingertip down Elpida’s chest. “Or maybe we could dance, right here?”
Elpida said, “Can you hurt me, if this is inside the network?”
Lykke pressed her fingertip harder, pressing the white lace against the soft flesh of Elpida’s chest.
“Oh, not really,” she mused, as if disappointed. “I’m projecting, that’s all. I’m nowhere near you, out there in the physical. I can’t achieve actual direct network access to you, I’m just … riding in on a stray wave, so to speak. You and I might tussle a little.” Her face fell into a strange, girlish melancholy. “But we can’t dance for real. Only within the limits of your imagin—”
Elpida slammed her left fist into Lykke’s stomach.
Her knuckles sank into the Necromancer’s slender belly, sliding across the sheer white dress.
Lykke’s eyes flew wide with shock and pain. The breath burst from her lungs in a choking gasp. She started to double up.
Elpida lashed out with her right hand and grabbed Lykke by the throat, shoving her backward, pinning her against the yellowed bone of Telokopolis. The Necromancer weighed almost nothing. Her legs dangled, one slipper falling to the floor as she kicked and writhed, trying to find a foothold, feet glancing harmlessly off Elpida’s legs. Her hands flew to Elpida’s wrist, tugging at her forearm. Green eyes burned in the red shadows, bulging from their sockets.
Elpida held her there for ten long seconds, testing her hypothesis. Nothing happened — just Lykke, fluttering between flesh and bone.
“And you can’t escape,” Elpida said, voicing her theory. “Good. You’re going to tell me everything I want to know. Understand?”
She slackened her grip, just enough for Lykke to suck down a wheezing breath.
“Y-yes—” Lykke gasped. “Ye—”
Elpida dropped her.
Lykke hit the floor in a heap, heaving and panting, choking and coughing, drooling from slack lips. She struggled into a sitting position, veiled behind her golden hair.
Elpida said, “Howl’s pinned you somehow, hasn’t she? Or you came back, when you know you can’t get away. You’re going to tell me everything I want to know, Necromancer. And then we’re going to walk down this corridor and … meet … ”
Lykke raised her face — cheeks flushed red, pupils dilated with pleasure, quivering lips curling into a carnal smile.
“More!” she whined.
“Ah,” said Elpida. “Right.”
Lykke swallowed, bearing her throat, chest heaving with sharp and hitching breath. “Oh, little zombie. I can get away any time I like! But I’ll tell you anything, if you keep going. Grab me again, zombie. Hit me, choke me, throw me about! Whatever you want! Just please, let’s dance!”