tenebrae - 13.5_Necroepilogos

Elpida woke up.

She leapt out of bed and sprinted for the armoury — her third attempt at this strategy.

She paused to upend one of the dormitory beds, grabbing the bed frame with both hands and flipping it over; the bed crashed into several other bunks, scattering discarded clothes and knocking mattresses to the floor, all to deny Lykke one of her previous ambush vectors. Elpida did not wait to see if the Necromancer crawled from the wreckage. She shot out of the dormitory and into the corridor, then pressed her back to the wall as she passed beneath the overhead ventilation duct. Lykke had burst from behind that metal grille on Elpida’s prior attempt, snatching her up with razor-sharp claws and a pair of snapping jaws.

Elpida skidded to a halt outside the armoury doors and slapped the palm-pad. The access light blinked green. The doors slid open.

Lykke was right over the threshold, inches from Elpida’s face.

The front of Lykke’s body was split from throat to groin, like a gigantic sideways mouth, filled with the writhing snake-pit of her guts and the pulsing knot of her heart. Her glossy white dress was torn to ribbons by rows of glittering diamond teeth.

“Too obvious!” Lykke gurgled.

She fell on Elpida, biting and tearing with her giant mouth. Elpida felt her stomach rip open and her intestines bubble forth, mingling with Lykke’s own exposed organs. Lykke’s hands and arms burrowed up inside Elpida’s torso, cupping Elpida’s heart in slender fingers, then gripping hard, crushing—

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Elpida woke up.

She sprinted for the armoury. Attempt number nine.

Last time she’d gotten her hands on a gun, loaded and cocked and ready to fire. But then Lykke had dropped from the ceiling, her body twisted into a cackling ball of flailing limbs, each finger tipped with a long white spike. She’d landed on Elpida, rammed her fingers into the soft tissues of Elpida’s joints, and pulled her apart before Elpida could get off a single shot.

Elpida followed the same pattern as before. She upended the fifth bed from her own, then ran out into the corridor, dodged the vent shaft, entered the gym, avoided going near the pile of crash mats, accessed the armoury from the gym-side door, locked that door behind her, and sprinted for the racked firearms.

Last time she had grabbed another lightweight pistol, something she could fire one-handed; but that was beneath the spot where Lykke lurked on the ceiling, ready to drop out of the shadows. This time, Elpida veered off, heading for an open case of chunkier side-arms.

She selected a heavy handgun by sight and sprinted toward it — a 117-MCS, a big shiny chrome beast of a gun, a hand cannon designed for last-ditch, up-close, no-second-chances personal defence, for use against Silico constructs out in the green, for when you only had time for one pull of the trigger, with no need to aim, and you needed that single bullet to count. One round from that would blow Lykke’s entire spine out through her back, if Elpida could land the shot.

Elpida grabbed the gun at a dead run, ripping it from the foam cushion in the case. She had to trust that this ‘software dream’ had pre-loaded the weapon for her, no time to check.

A screaming cackle rang out from above.

Elpida hit the floor and rolled. Displaced air swished past the back of her neck; a meaty wet slam hit the floor tiles right behind her, buckling the metal with a screech of bent steel.

“Almost!” Lykke howled, her voice mangled by a mouthful of bloody meat. “Almost, zombie, but not—”

Elpida came out of her roll into a kneeling position, smooth and quick, ignoring her bruises. She braced the 117 across her own knee, aiming at Lykke’s chest. The Necromancer was a mass of quivering, bleeding, naked meat, studded with drooling mouths and gnashing teeth and little sucker-tipped feelers.

Elpida pulled the trigger — boom!

The handgun snapped her wrist back, recoil rocking all the way to her shoulder.

Lykke’s centre of mass exploded outward, splattering the gun-racks and steel tiles with crimson viscera and streamers of intestine. The Necromancer paused, looked down at the huge hole blown in her body, then broke into a chorus of high-pitched giggles. The massive wound in her midsection sprouted a dozen rows of extra teeth. She threw herself at Elpida.

Elpida aimed again and pumped the trigger — boom! boom! boom! — blowing holes in Lykke as she charged.

The Necromancer didn’t even slow down. A wall of mouths crashed into Elpida’s face and body, tearing at her exposed extremities, slicing into her face and cheeks and ears and through the bone of her skull as the world went dark and—

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Elpida woke up.

She took her time to don a pilot suit before leaving the dorms — difficult with only her left arm, but worth the effort. Lykke had declined to interfere with this ritual, perhaps because Elpida was still within arm’s reach of Howl, or perhaps to give Elpida time to consider her next move, to keep this sick game as fun as possible. Elpida used the time to analyse the failures of her previous attempts. Once she was wrapped tight and secure within the familiar embrace of the dark grey bodysuit, she took a deep breath, and sprinted for the armoury.

Attempt number fifteen.

Or was it sixteen?

Elpida had reached her own hardshell suit on the previous attempt. She’d climbed inside the suit easily enough, but locking and sealing the front plates with only one arm had taken more time than she had expected. Lykke had come up in the elevator at the back of the armoury, sauntered out from the big double doors, and taken her time walking over to Elpida. Then she had simply reached into the suit and ripped Elpida’s throat out with a handful of scissor-like claws.

Elpida retraced her steps again — corridor, gym, armoury, don’t bother with the guns, get to the hardshell.

This time she stepped into the suit, stuck her head into the helmet, skipped the boot up sequence, and slammed the shell-plates into place as quickly as she could. One of the four plates locked tight with a familiar click-click-click. Then the second, clunking and whirring as it secured itself. Elpida had to hurry, the elevator was rising with a familiar mechanical hum. She yanked the third plate down and rammed it into position — click-clunk-clunk.

The fourth and final shell-plate slid into place, followed by the gentle hiss of atmospheric seals. The suit visor lit up with the warm orange of a hardshell HUD; boot up sequence text scrolled past Elpida’s left eye.

>Good morning Commander

>Reactor: online

>High impact reactive plating: online

>Musculoskeletal system servo-support: online

>Atmospheric recirculation and oxygen supply: online

>Biometric monitors: online

>Automatic emergency medical systems: online

>Communications interface: online

>Weapon uplink sensors: online

>Squad-interface local comms network: online

>Threat detection display: online

And all just in time. The lift arrived at the armoury a second later. The doors parted.

Lykke stepped out of the lift, a nasty smile playing across her lips. Her body was a mass of tooth and claw, dripping with acidic blood which left burning trails in the steel floor.

Elpida stepped back; the suit acted as a second skin, but she was still unarmed. She turned away to sprint for a gun — something heavy, something only the suit could handle, a high-power plasma-projection rifle. Even Lykke couldn’t survive that. One shot would cook her whole body, inside and out.

But before she could take a single step, Elpida felt a fist slam into her flank.

The punch hit like an anti-armour round. Elpida went flying; the hardshell suit crashed through the back wall of the armoury in a shower of masonry dust and broken metal, tearing through pipes and cables, slamming through a layer of white tiles as she burst into the cadre’s private shower room.

Elpida landed on her back, skidding across the tiles. The hardshell’s HUD flashed crimson with servo-motor errors and emergency medical warnings; the suit injected her with painkillers and stimulants, sent out distress signals, and tried to auto-start the built-in personal shields — but those were damaged as well, dying in a flicker of blue electricity.

Elpida couldn’t stand up; her spine was broken.

Lykke leapt through the breach and landed on the chest of Elpida’s hardshell, her feet transformed into razor-sharp talons. The white claws cut through the suit like hot wires through butter, sinking into Elpida’s flesh, parting her ribs, impaling her heart. Lykke laughed in her face, mouth a grimace full of dripping teeth—

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Elpida woke up.

Attempt number — twenty? Twenty two? Twenty three?

She made it to the suit. Got her hands on a gun. Lykke put a fist through her chest and pulled out her heart.

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Elpida woke up.

Plasma-projection didn’t work. Elpida burned Lykke to a crisp, but Lykke stepped from inside her own charred skin like it was a chrysalis and she was a butterfly. She ripped off the hardshell helmet and ate Elpida’s face.

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Elpida woke up.

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Elpida woke up.

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Elpida woke up.

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Elpida—

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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.

She was wide awake, and she had lost count.

She lay in bed for several minutes, holding Howl in her arms, luxuriating in the feeling of Howl’s body curled against her own. Howl’s breathing was slow and soft and even. None of Elpida’s previous attempts had drawn more than a brief murmur from Howl, even when Lykke had crawled out from under one of the dormitory beds.

Elpida considered the sum of all her previous attempts to kill Lykke. Complete failure. She had tried guns, swords, and heavy weapons. She had tried with the hardshell, and without any protection at all, not even clothes; she had died naked plenty of times. She had tried bare hands — well, hand, singular, currently — and combat knives. She had even bitten Lykke several times, but that had achieved nothing but a mouthful of rancid blood.

Elpida considered staying in bed. After a little while she felt her eyelids grow heavy and her thoughts begin to blur.

She shook herself awake. She could not afford to sleep. She couldn’t return to reality, not yet, not until she had resolved this inner conflict which had compromised her ability to command, her ability to do right by those who followed her, and her ability to discern the correct path.

Not until she spoke with Telokopolis.

She disentangled herself from Howl’s embrace and got out of bed, yet again, pausing only to kiss Howl on the forehead. She stood in one spot for a long moment, curling her bare toes against the warm floor tiles, scanning the dormitory for any fresh sign of Lykke. She squatted down to check under the beds. She concentrated on her hearing, to pick out any muffled giggles from a vent shaft or behind a door. She pulled back the covers on a particularly suspicious looking lump, but it was only a trio of discarded pillows, in Kos’ bed; Kos did like to sleep with one between her legs and one under her back, after all.

Elpida decided she didn’t care anymore.

“I’ve had enough of this game, Lykke,” she said out loud. “You win. Just come out. Show yourself.”

Nothing happened.

Elpida sighed. “Fine. I’m going to take a shower.”

She didn’t bother getting dressed; what was the point, if Lykke was just going to kill her on the way there? Elpida walked to the door, half-expecting Lykke to burst out from beneath the floor. She hit the palm-pad and stepped out into the corridor without looking. She walked directly beneath the vent duct. She ignored the armoury and strode into the shower room — the wall was intact once more, of course. The ‘software dream’ repaired everything, except Elpida’s own right arm.

The cadre’s private shower room was a long space tiled in clean white, punctuated by plain steel fixtures, and separated into a series of large communal showers; the room also hosted a big bath, but almost all of the cadre preferred to shower. A row of toilet cubicles stood at one end, though it was rare for any of Elpida’s sisters to bother closing the stall doors. The other end of the room connected to the gym. An area near the front held sinks and toiletries, a little rack of familiar toothbrushes, a trio of hair-dryers, and all the other debris of physical maintenance that even gene-engineered transhuman super soldiers could not forego.

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Elpida took a shower. She stepped directly into the stream of freezing cold water while it warmed up. A wave of goosebumps rose all across her skin. She ducked her head beneath the stream while it was still cold, gasping as the water soaked through her hair and chilled her scalp. She stood beneath the water as it slowly turned warm, then hot, then hotter.

She closed her eyes, expecting a bone-talon in her back at any second.

Minutes ticked by. Elpida’s skin began to sting. No sign of Lykke.

She opened her eyes and got on with it.

In life, Elpida had not often showered alone. Even when she was not particularly excited about company, somebody always wanted to join the Commander, and there was always room for more. She paused for a moment, half-covered in thin soap, and realised she may have had sex more times in this shower than everywhere else combined.

But now she was alone, except for Howl, who was dead asleep, and Lykke, who was not meant to be here.

“I really did think you would surprise me in the shower, Lykke,” she said out loud. “You disappoint me.”

Elpida finished up, rinsed herself off, and dried her body with a towel. She walked to the other end of the shower room and opened the double doors to the gym, then crossed the sparring mats and stepped into the armoury, one more time.

She ignored the guns and the hardshell suits. She didn’t have to pretend; she knew it wouldn’t work.

She went over to the bins full of fresh clothing; usually she would have walked back to the dorm for clothes, or taken some with her, but she wanted to see how accurate this software space really was. She pulled out a pair of black shorts and a matching black t-shirt. She stepped into the shorts and pulled the t-shirt on over her head, considering her next move as she got dressed. Rec room? Briefing room? What if she just left the cadre’s quarters entirely and went out into—

Her head popped through the neck-hole of the t-shirt; Lykke was standing ten feet away, a manic grin on her lips, a lightweight pistol aimed at Elpida’s face.

“Bang!” Lykke shouted. She jerked the trigger.

The gun went click.

Elpida sighed. “Very clever.”

The Necromancer burst out laughing, clutching her stomach, tears gathering in her emerald eyes. She dropped the empty pistol with clatter and waved one hand in Elpida’s general direction.

Lykke had reverted to her human visage, done up for a party in her sheer white dress, showing off long bare thighs and the wide flare of her hips, arms and hands encased in white lace gloves, ankles and calves wrapped in silken ribbons, her slender throat encircled with a white choker, blonde hair gathered in a ponytail, golden tresses falling across her exposed shoulders. She still bore the first wounds Elpida had inflicted upon her, before this cycle of repeated death and restart — a nasty shiner across her cheek and the left side of her lips, a patchwork of bruising on her belly, and a purplish hand print on the pale flesh of her delicate throat.

Elpida waited for Lykke to stop laughing. The Necromancer eventually trailed off, fanning her face with a hand.

“You should have seen the look on your face, zombie,” Lykke purred. “Almost worth all this mucking about.”

“I’m glad one of us found it amusing.”

Lykke snorted. “No you’re not. Don’t lie.”

“I give up,” Elpida said.

Lykke tutted softly. “Yes, yes, I heard you the first time. And I just said, don’t lie.”

“I give up,” Elpida repeated. “I have no interest in continuing this—”

Lykke stamped one dainty foot, her snowy brow creasing with a scowl, fists clenched either side of her hips. “No! No, you’re not giving up! Stop lying!” She gestured at Elpida, up and down. “This? This is just another stage of self-denial, no different to what you’ve been doing for the last few hours!” She huffed and tutted and tossed her hair. “At least it’s passive denial, I suppose, rather than active denial. I’ll give you that much. You’re ‘making progress’, or whatever. But my gosh, zombie! Really! Are you having fun doing this?” Lykke looked her up and down again. “Though I will admit that you have some very serious stamina. Any other zombie would have broken hours ago, but you just kept going, and going, and going. I was starting to doubt you even have limits.”

“That’s what I do,” Elpida said. “I keep going.”

“Hmmm,” Lykke purred. “If only you could turn some of that stamina on me. And I must say, you do look good in black. I would suggest a little black dress, so we could, you know, coordinate as opposites! But I suspect you would sooner lick my feet than wear a little black dress. Not that you would do either.” She huffed. “Aren’t you getting bored, yet?”

Elpida crossed her arms over her chest — an incomplete gesture, with no right forearm. “You seem to be enjoying yourself well enough.”

Lykke slumped her shoulders, rolled her eyes, and let out an exhausted moan. “Uuugh! Is that what this looks like? I can get this kind of petty entertainment from any zombie. I can take it, any time I like! And I’m bored of it!”

“And who’s fault is that?”

“Yours!” Lykke shrieked. “You’re the one who keeps insisting on this cycle! Come at me properly, zombie! Elpida! There! I’ll use your name as much as you like, I’ll moan it under your fists, only come at me properly, not with these guns and—”

“I did use my fists,” Elpida said. “And my teeth. And knives. And a monoedge sword. None of it stopped you.” Elpida spread her arms. “The only thing which seems to stop you is this. Disengaging.”

“Arrrrgh!” Lykke yelled, mouth wide, balling up her fists, stomping both feet up and down on the spot. “Stop being so wilfully obtuse! You know none of that counts! Trying to kill me doesn’t count! It’s a waste of both our time! I want you, zombie. I want what only you can offer. And … ” Lykke’s mouth twisted with frustration. Her cheeks flushed with rosy red. “And I can’t take it from you. You have to give it, willingly. And … oh, this is so humiliating!”

Lykke stomped in a little circle, throwing her hands up in the air.

Elpida sighed. Lykke was correct about one thing — Elpida knew exactly what the Necromancer really wanted. She was just choosing to ignore and reject her.

But that was not a viable option anymore.

“I know exactly what you want, yes,” said Elpida. “You want me to fight you, like I did with my sisters.”

Lykke ended her tantrum. Her lips parted and quivered, breath suddenly stopped up. “Y-yes. Yes! Yes, I—”

“And it’s a distraction. I need to talk with Telokopolis.”

Lykke screwed her eyes up, curled her fingers into fists, and screamed at the ceiling.

Elpida waited for the scream to die away. “If you can direct me toward the figure we saw earlier, then I will consider granting your request. If you can give me intelligence about Central, or other Necromancers, then I will consider granting your request. If you … ”

Elpida trailed off, because Lykke was ignoring the offer; the Necromancer turned away and wandered over to the hardshell suits. She stepped behind the row, dwarfed by the bulky plates of green-grey armour. Her white dress flickered in the gaps between the suits. She paused, then poked her head out.

“So, zombie,” she said. “Who was—” She leaned back to examine something. “Yeva? Or how about … ‘Orchid’? Huh! What a name.”

Elpida bristled. “How do you know those names? The suits only have serial numbers.”

Lykke rolled her eyes. “Because they’re all over the place! They’re coating your memories like dust!” She ducked back again. “Okay then, how about Scoria? Who was that?” She leaned to one side, reading the Telokopolan script across the back and shoulders of each hardshell suit. “Or Velvet? Feel like talking about any of them? Is where we should start, to get you properly unclogged?”

Elpida walked away, toward the armoury doors.

“Wait! Wait!” Lykke tutted — then squealed in pain, followed by a heavy clatter as a piece of unlocked armour crashed to the floor. She had tried to squeeze through the gap and gotten herself tangled. “Don’t just walk off, you—”

Elpida hit the palm-pad. The doors slid open.

She left the armoury and stepped out into the corridor. For a moment she hoped she might find the additional hallway re-added to the space, but she had no such luck. She walked down to the opposite end of the cadre’s quarters, heading for the rec room.

“Where are you— zombie! Wait— for— argh!”

The armoury doors slid shut on Lykke, muffling a squawk of surprise. Elpida smiled with grim satisfaction as she entered the rec room. She made sure to shut the door behind her, then turned the lights on, clear and bright. The big screen was off and the sofas were cold, no Persephone or Nunnus, dreams or otherwise. Elpida walked over to a stack of video discs and began flicking through them. Would they actually work, here in this virtual place built from her memories? Or would they be full of holes, missing segments of narrative, made from only the parts she actually remembered?

She settled on an old Skirts action film, a crime drama full of gunfights and lots of overwrought death scenes — Magnet Time On Floor Zero Five.

Howl had loved this one, and the two sequels. Elpida had always hated it, especially the bits with the sword fighting. Monoedge blades did not flash with sparks and electricity when they made contact, nor did they go ‘shhhring!’ when drawn from a stealth. But ninety-nine percent of Telokopolis would never see a blade in action, let alone a firearm.

If the details were all wrong, she would know this was nothing but memory. But if the picture was correct then—

The rec room door swished open. Lykke strode inside, arms up, eyes ablaze.

“Zombie!” she snapped. “You can’t just ignore me like that! This is even worse, what are you doing?! What is this?! What are you messing about with now?!”

Elpida showed her the movie. “If I can’t speak with Telokopolis, and I can’t get rid of you, then I’m going to occupy my mind while I’m here. Perhaps I can get some thinking done, solve my problems.”

“Ugh!”

Elpida walked over to the big screen and tried to find the remote control.

Lykke sighed. “You don’t even know if that thing we saw was your ‘Telokopolis’ in the first place. And neither do I.”

Elpida didn’t bother to look round. “All the more reason to speak with her. All the more reason I need confirmation. All the more reason I need … ”

“Why?”

All the mockery was all gone from Lykke’s voice.

Elpida turned back. The Necromancer had her hands spread, face blank, eyes clear.

“Why?” she repeated. Her voice was gentle and high, almost girlish.

“Because … ” Elpida sighed and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m seriously considering having this conversation with you.”

“And I can’t believe I’m entertaining this absolute poppycock!” Lykke snapped, her gentle facade cracking instantly. “But seriously, why? Why do you need to know if that little glimpse was the ‘genuine article’? I saw all that you saw! Nothing more than a slip of leg and a swish of white skirt! In here that could have been anything. That might be all which your idol wanted you to see, just a glimpse of bare ankle to keep you drooling. Or it could have been something else, projecting your own expectations back at you. Like me, but less pretty.” Lykke shrugged. “It could have been the graveworm, for all we know. Or something else, something lurking in this horrid little tomb that you’re buried in right now. Or anything! It might not be your precious lost mother at all. It might be a trick.”

Elpida shook her head. “It’s still worth following up. I can’t ignore that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m doing everything wrong. I’m putting my comrades, my cadre, all of them, in danger, all over again, for a principle that … ”

Elpida trailed off and shook her head, a third time. Her throat felt blocked. She shouldn’t be discussing this with Lykke; the Necromancer did not have her best interests at heart, even if she wasn’t working directly for Central. The Necromancer was alien. Her words were self-serving, at best.

Lykke waited, eyebrows raised, then sighed and rolled her eyes when she realised Elpida wasn’t going to say more. She looked left and right and then up at the ceiling. She put her hands on her hips and removed them again. Finally she straightened her spine and took a deep breath.

The Necromancer raised her right index finger and bit into the tip, hard enough to draw blood. She traced a shape on the front of her own white dress, in glistening crimson.

She drew the crescent-and-double-line — the symbol of Telokopolis, Elpida’s own invention, here in the nanomachine afterlife.

“This?” Lykke asked, with ostentatious disinterest.

Elpida nodded. “That.”

Lykke sighed again. “Not that I care, zombie, but … let’s say you went off and met your ‘Telokopolis’, this network ghost or whatever. And let’s say that she turned out to be an imposter, the graveworm fucking with both of us, or something like that. Or another Necromancer, like me. Or maybe it is her, but she’s … I don’t know, evil! Would any of that change what you’re doing, out there in the flesh? Would you just lie down and give up? Would you end your life? Would you change your whole nature?”

Elpida opened her mouth to reply — but Lykke clicked her fingers rapidly.

“Ah!” Lykke said. “No, no! Don’t just answer reflexively. Think about it. Seriously! Think about your beloved ur-mother. Think about if she was a fake. Or dead. Or not what you think. Really think about it, zombie. Don’t just give me the party line again.”

Elpida put the video disk case down on the sofa. She crossed her arms and looked away from Lykke.

If Telokopolis was dead or gone — or worse — what would Elpida do?

The same thing she had done since her resurrection.

She shook her head. “No. Of course not. Telokopolis is forever. Even if the city is dead and gone, I’m still here.”

“Then what does it matter if she’s ‘really’ here or not?”

Elpida raised her eyes and held Lykke’s flat gaze for a few moments, then sighed in frustration. “I’m still making mistakes. I’m still putting the cause before my comrades, but back when I did the opposite, that got everyone killed, too. I need a … a … not a Commander of my own, but a … I’m still—”

“Pent up as all fuck!” Lykke shouted. “Ugh! I cannot believe I’m having to spell this out for you, zombie. How often did you get it on when you were alive? Every day? Multiple times a day? You’re like a fish which doesn’t know it’s suffocating in the open air! Explaining this makes it so much less exciting for me. Tch!”

“Excuse me?”

“Your judgement is clouded,” Lykke said. “Because, quite simply, you have not had a good fuck in months.”

Elpida almost laughed. “Howl and I have been fucking plenty, thanks. I’m not sexually frustrated, that’s not the cause of this.”

“I’m not talking about fingers — or anything else — going in and out of your cunt, zombie. I’m talking about what we did earlier, in the tomb. Or almost did. I’m talking about the thing I can offer you, in here, which she can’t, because she’s sharing your body. And apparently you’re unwilling to do it with others, either.”

Elpida frowned. “You mean a fight?”

“Yes! You came very close with the little redhead bitch, but you didn’t quite get there. What was her name again?”

“You mean Pira?”

“Mm!”

Elpida was surprised; Lykke was talking about the time Elpida and Pira had a fistfight, before they found Thirteen Arcadia, long before Pira’s betrayal. When Elpida had ‘won’ — with Pira pinned beneath her fists — she had almost kept going. She had almost grabbed Pira between the legs, driven by instinct and habit. She had stopped at the last second, because Pira was not a clade-sister, Pira was not a gene-engineered pilot, Pira was not like her. Pira had not seen their fight that way, not the way that Elpida’s sisters had thrown themselves at each other so often.

“How do you know about that?” Elpida asked.

Lykke slumped her shoulders and rolled her head. “Because you’re thinking about it right now, zombie! Look, you’re all pent up, you’re wound so tight that you can’t function, and you can’t figure any of this out or go back to your little friends until you get some relief and clear your head. Whatever else is going on — ‘Telokopolis’ or not — you can’t ignore that need.”

“Huh.”

Lykke spread her arms and smiled. “And here I am! The perfect canvas. Paint me, zombie. Paint me all the colours you need.”

Elpida decided to entertain a hypothetical — what if Lykke was correct?

Elpida had very rarely experienced true sexual frustration in life. She and her clade-sisters in the cadre had been physical with each other constantly, in lifelong matured habits and familiar patterns which had endured right until the end. And they had fought, oh yes they had — in the gym, on the sparring mats, but also informally, in a constant animalistic process of playful domination. She and Howl especially had pushed that habit and instinct past the limits of all their other sisters, beating each other to pulp, bruising each other all over, only to spend the next day curled up together in mutual recovery and rest and physicality.

Was Elpida really just pent up from lack of physical expression, in a way she could not obtain when Howl took control of her hands?

She had been grinding herself down with responsibility, with no true downtime, with no real way to work out all that stress. She briefly tried to imagine engaging in that kind of sexual fighting with Victoria — no, absolutely not, Vicky wouldn’t be able to return even a tenth of it. How about Ilyusha? Maybe. The cyborg might go for it, but it wouldn’t be the same. She and Pira had the right chemistry, but Pira saw things differently; besides, Elpida was worried that might stir some terrible jealousy in Ooni. None of the others were viable candidates, were they? Atyle, no, she didn’t rouse those feelings in Elpida. Neither did Serin, or Hafina. Perhaps Shilu, but Elpida barely knew her, there was nothing to grasp, not yet.

Elpida raised her eyes back to Lykke.

The Necromancer’s lips parted with a soft, wet click. Her emerald eyes glittered, widening in anticipation. She must have seen some change in Elpida’s face.

“Zombie? Live in the present! I’m right here! Please … ”

Elpida sighed and shook her head. Lykke wasn’t right for this either.

“It wouldn’t be the same, not with you,” she said.

Lykke clenched her teeth, eyes flaring with frustration. “But—”

“You don’t get it,” Elpida explained, quietly and slowly. “You’re not a human being, Lykke. You were never a human being. You’re just playing with pain. Damage, pain, bruises, they don’t really mean anything to you. You can switch them off and get rid of them at will. Pain is just … data, right? So it won’t mean anything. I’d be going through the motions, sure, but that would be all. And when we’re done, you can just fly away. You’ll come back in the flesh and kill me. None of this is real. So, no, it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t mean anything. Not with you.”

Lykke’s lips quivered. Her eyes were full of tears. When she spoke, it was a whisper. “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Then … ” Lykke swallowed. “I’ll make it real.”

“What?”

Lykke let out a shuddering breath. Her cheeks were flushed, but there was no smile on her lips now. She blinked, breath caught in her throat. “I’ll play by the exact same rules as you, like I promised before. No more bodily changes, no more secret teeth. I’ll lock myself out of that. Just this, just what you see, right here.” She tapped her chest, hands fluttering. “Even if you go for a gun. And— and please, don’t!” Lykke’s face scrunched with distress. “Promise you won’t! Promise!”

“That’s not—”

“And I’ll make the damage permanent.”

“But what does that mean? For something like you, what does that mean?”

Lykke sighed, almost laughing, but too nervous to do more than squeak. “I can’t even begin to explain that, zombie. But if you hit me … I’ll hold onto it. I promise.” Her lips curled into a shivering smile. “All of it will be real. And I’ll fight back! I’ll do my best!” She raised her hands and made little fists, holding them up in an awkward pose. “I’ll try! To give as good as I get!”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Lykke nodded.

“If this is a trick, Necromancer … ”

Elpida trailed off. This wasn’t a trick.

“Please, zombie. Elpida, I mean.” Lykke blinked rapidly. Her breath was coming faster and faster. Her face was flushed so bright she looked about ready to pass out. “Please!”

Elpida looked down at her left hand and made a fist; she looked at the stump of her right arm, terminated at the elbow. She considered all the things she really wanted here — intel from a Necromancer, a conversation with the network ghost of Telokopolis, resolution to her inner contradictions.

All those concerns seemed pale and fragile when compared to the beating in her chest and the pulse between her legs.

She raised her eyes and smiled at Lykke. The Necromancer flinched.

“A one-handed fistfight,” Elpida said. “Against a girl two thirds my size and half my body weight, who doesn’t have a clue how to throw a punch. Really?”

“I’ll … I’ll do my best!” Lykke said, voice gone high and squeaky.

“Necromancer—” Elpida stopped, grinned wide, and corrected herself. “Lykke.”

“Y-yes?”

“Lykke, I am going to drag you around the cadre’s private quarters until my name is the only thing you can remember.”

Elpida mounted the sofa in one step, leapt the back in two, and landed on Lykke with her left fist.

tenebrae - 13.5

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