“An outlier.”

Night had fallen, locally. Elsewhere it was day. Mentok’s billion eyes saw it all, felt it all, moved everywhere at once. I am Legion, for we are many; Mark 5:9.

Yet it was to a satellite image flagged by one of Rakowski’s subordinates, a young woman named Azleena, to which he now swung the spear-tip of his attention. A figure. A body. Dark-skinned and motionless, standing in the middle of the Gobi Desert staring blankly ahead. Wind whipped around its features, small hills of sand building around its feet. Waiting, without heat or heartbeat. Far from any home.

Mentok smiled at the sight. Here it came now – the desperate manoeuvrings.

“Bring Mjolnir into position. Sweep thermal and full-spectrum scans. Ready defences worldwide.” From the Chinese city of Bayannur, a teleporter stepped-along a suit of armour into the air a thousand feet above the desert, teleporting back to safety a moment later as he tumbled down. The robot’s boosters activated and it sped towards the figure.

“A trap?” queried Rakowski. Mentok snorted.

“For what? A single Siegfried? Pray he’s so unambitious.” The image of the motionless man atop the sand dunes grew larger, and Mentok recognised the reanimated body of the teleporter Will Herd. Siegfried flew closer and inside his sanctum Mentok’s eyes gleamed. “I see no movement. His thrall may be offline.”

“We could study the connection. Trace it back.”

“Precisely.” Across the globe Mentok’s teleporters were already moving, joining ranks with illusionists whose projections would render them all but invisible, and telepaths who would pick through the corpse’s mind. His units began appearing in threes around the desert, a safe distance from their prey. Mentok brought the armour to hover a hundred feet above the target, keeping it within view but behind line of sight.

“No movement on satellite.” One of his geniuses, somewhere. “No heat signatures.”

“Could it be?” Mentok murmured, giddy despite himself, “Poor insipid Nemtsy, did we find where you parked your car?”

The figure stood unmoving, a lone speck beneath the desert sun. No life moved; the wind hissed in sheeting eddies, and through Siegfried’s telescopic vision Mentok could see the sand’s slow ablation against dead, greying skin.

A moment passed – a heartbeat.

Then suddenly without warning the body moved. Its head snapped up; its eyes opened. Will Herd’s face twisted round and he gazed upwards to where the armour hovered. A single word crawled from his undead lips.

“Mindtaker.”

“Ah,” said Mentok to his underlings, “It seems we are expected.” His smile twitched. “Maintain vigilance. Let’s hear him whimper.”

His thoughts flicked without thinking and the Siegfried descended, the boosters on its feet firing at the final seconds to land steadily on the ground. The dead man’s eyes tracked the machine’s approach with a blank, milky stare, but it made no move to run or vanish. Its arms hung limp by its side, sand crusted over the lips of the slit across its throat.

The two surrogates faced each other, lone aberrations in a desolate wasteland. Mentok turned his speakers to direct voice.

“Too scared to face me in person, you inbred Nemchura filth?”

The corpse’s slackened face gave neither expression nor movement. “A communist and a hypocrite – would I ever be surprised.” The voice that spoke was marginally Will Herd’s, but had the same ethereal curdling that made it clear it came from somewhere inhuman and afar. “Come face me in person Iwan, see who wipes who from their boots.”

“Goading, is it?” replied Mentok, “That’s your dull and brainless scheme? Or maybe this is an attempt at misdirection, as if there was anything you could say that would sufficiently occupy my attention. I confess, runt, I thought you at least beyond such a patently obvious ploy. Or is your miserable Kraut brain so starved of human interaction that you’ve come to trade insults, to gnash your little vermin teeth while I tighten the noose around your neck?”

The dead Acolyte’s body remained silent, staring down the dune at Siegfried with white and empty eyes. Despite the carcass’s blank expression, Mentok thought he sensed some anger when its words finally came.

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“Your arrogance will be your undoing Mindtaker. I will still eviscerate you.”

“You will kill no one and do nothing,” Mentok spat, “But die a sobbing, piss-stained death and feed the maggots with your corpse.”

“I know where you are hiding.”

“Oh?” the genius chuckled, “How so?”

“Even you, Iwan, cannot escape physics. Signals still must travel. I thought over our first encounter and realised you would have wanted to be as close as possible. You would not risk losing due to a microsecond’s delay.” The Black Death’s zombie tilted its head. “From there I simply probed the mountains for Disruptance fields.”

“Very good Nemetskiy, you understand computers. How quaint for a septuagenarian.”

“You think you can hide from me in your burrow?”

“I think if you could penetrate my defences, you would already have done so.”

The corpse’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot stop me Mindtaker. I have hypercharged a replica. Even now it hurtles towards you like a stone.”

Mentok snorted. “Your lies are as weak as your people, you feckless Nazi scum. Our satellites can detect that violet energy of yours anywhere on the planet, and our Disruptance fields extend far and abroad. If you want to end our struggle, come knock on my front door.” Across the room, on his central screen, data and scans flashed in rapid succession, confirming there was no incoming attack. “Besides, I understand you, fascist. You’ve no urge to preside over a ruined planet. What’s that, two continents now you’ve devastated? Not many more remaining. A few more detonations like Africa and there’ll be no kingdom left to rule.”

The body remained silent. Standing at his console, Mentok smirked. “I know how much effort it takes to infuse one of those bodies. Can you spare another failure, failure, to test the extent of my defences? Can you afford the weeks it takes you to recharge? Every day my net grows tighter. Every day you lose places to run. Soon, coward, I will find you. Soon you will see Hell.”

The grey skin curled around Will Herd’s teeth. “Keep stalling Hiwi. Your drones will pull nothing from my mind.”

“No, well, I expected as much,” Mentok replied. The psychics under his command had indeed been probing the lifeless contents of Will Herd’s skull for the entirety of their conversation, finding no link down which their living minds could travel. “Though it is not entirely pointless. I always regretted not studying the Fleshtide’s ability while Ana Bloodbane was still alive.”

“It is not Bloodbane’s.” Suddenly, some of the fight seemed to leave the body. Its shoulders slumped, and the words that came next were hesitant, maybe even distracted. “There was another. In Ethiopia. A rare power, but not unique.” It paused. “He was a shaman of sorts. A farmer. The dead worked his fields.”

“Do you I think I care where you pilfered your powers from, worm?”

“No. I do not.” Heydrich lapsed into subdued silence. “I underestimated you Mindtaker,” he said finally, “I should never have shown you mercy.”

“You will carry that regret to your grave, Hitlerovsty.”

The Black Death shook his head. “You call me evil,” his voice echoed, “Yet my atrocities pale in comparison to yours, Russian. As in history. As in life.” The grey face stared unblinking. “Can you hear them screaming Mindtaker? Three billion souls, trapped in a fate worse than death. Do you listen when they sob for release? When they beg to breathe free air again, to hold their children one more time?” Alone in his central chamber, Mentok felt his jaw tighten. Across the network, a hush fell across his genius subordinates. Heydrich pushed on.

“Do you see the hell you have created? Do you see the poisoned land and blotted skies? Do you see the dead-eyed slaves standing in the ruins of civilisation? Do you see anything at all?”

“I see a world saved from your domination.”

“Saved?” the dead man answered, “You call this saved?” The vessel sneered. “I hear your revulsion when you speak to this body. Your righteous indignation, as if you stand on higher ground. They called her a monster, Ana Bloodbane, for controlling a few thousand corpses, for reusing those who were already dead. What will they call you Mindtaker? How will they remember your legacy? I injured humanity, yes, but you… you’ve destroyed it.”

Mentok’s lips curled. “I have destroyed nothing. I have protected. I have preserved.”

“You are Lenin’s grandchild – sick with justification.” The body paused. “I know now what I must do,” it said finally, “Though I take no pleasure in it. In a way, Mindtaker, I’m grateful. You have achieved what I thought impossible. You have turned me from tyrant to liberator in the eyes of this simpering world.” The Black Death shook his head. “I suppose I should thank you. But even I cannot bring myself to rejoice in your atrocities. Know this – once I win, I will tear down your network. I will give the people more freedom under my rule than they ever had under your guard. Think on that, ‘hero’.”

Then without another word the boy’s eyes unclouded, and the corpse collapsed on the ground.

*

Inside his command centre, Viktor Mentok stood in silence. His endless thoughts continued to move those who were under him, but for a moment, just a moment, the world around him blurred and his hands felt light and loose.

Maybe… just maybe…

No. Mentok’s head snapped up, his teeth bared. Words. Mere words.

“Analysis report,” he demanded from the chain of geniuses beneath him, “What did you find?”

There was the briefest hesitation – no more than a heartbeat – but finally one of Rakowski’s subordinates piped up.

“We couldn’t trace a connection. No shifting brain patterns or electromagnetic waves. However the body was being controlled, it’s not analogous to telepathy.”

Mentok closed his eyes and allowed himself a deep, precarious breath. “Prep the Berlin lab for dissection,” he ordered, “If this is somehow a Trojan horse, I want it to be Heydrich’s homeland he blows up.” A thousand miles away his metal servant leant down and picked up the corpse.