Necroepilogos

“Shilu?”

Shilu terminated her meditation, rejoined the present moment, and reopened her eyes.

Still alive. She acknowledged a dull pang of disappointment.

Shilu was once again faced by the interior of a tomb — black and grey metal, punctuated by blind portals and winding passages like the ossified innards of a beached leviathan, echoing with hushed whispers and muffled footsteps like the worming and gnawing of carrion insects in barren flesh, all drowned in darkness so deep that even her multispectrum vision struggled to penetrate the gloom.

Shilu had known so many tombs, they all blurred together. But this one offered something new — a blanket of storm-rain static and the distant howl of hurricane winds.

A lake of blood-red illumination pooled on the black metal floor of the nameless chamber, lapping at the bone-white skirts of the great armoured machine — the tank, the anomaly, the unaddressed breach in normal system operations. The backwash of crimson light picked out irregularities in the bone-armour, snagging on humps and whorls and abscesses, turning the hull into a landscape of blood-dappled shadow, glinting and gleaming upon the stubs and cylinders and lances of cannons and missiles and big guns.

He called himself ‘Pheiri’.

Shilu re-counted the number of weapons systems aimed at her: still sixteen, four of which could obliterate her current physical form before she would make it seven paces in any direction.

She was confident in those seven paces. Pheiri was a glorious example — perhaps the very pinnacle — of the art of the armoured fighting vehicle, lost now to the aeons before Central and the nanomachine ecosystem; Shilu felt a faint glimmer of awe, as her ancestors must have done at the genetic reconstruction of Mammuthus primigenius or Gigantopithecus blacki. Pheiri was a titan from a prior age, and quite beautiful.

But he wasn’t perfect. Even with rounds chambered in his autocannons, and the irises of his missile pods peeled back over the high-explosive tips, Shilu would still survive a handful of seconds in a firefight against Pheiri.

While meditating, Shilu had allowed her subconscious mind to chew on many subjects; she had learned this technique in her true life, in a world of sunlight and rich soil, and had preserved the habit down the millennia more by chance than intent. One current subject of consideration was how exactly Pheiri could be defeated, in theory. She had concluded that any attacker like herself would necessarily have to begin the fight inside Pheiri’s body. Even then the challenge presented a problem; Pheiri’s brain — the machine-meat globe-seat of his consciousness — was one of the most heavily armoured objects Shilu had ever witnessed, sealed behind layers of material her eyes could not analyse, similar to his bone-armour, no matter which spectra she used for examination. Her only option would be to cut her way down to his lower decks and destroy the nuclear engine tucked deep in his mechanical core. Doubtless Pheiri had ways of stopping that.

Shilu had not yet attempted communication with Pheiri, despite her awe. Shilu was cut off from the network — and Pheiri was not part of the ecosystem, not constructed from the ecosystem’s nanomechanical components, so was not on the network anyway — but she did have a short-range comms set-up running on the nanomachine-meat of her own brain.

Pheiri, however, was not in charge. Elpida was in charge, and Shilu did not wish to pre-empt Elpida’s next move. She was content to wait and see. She wanted to observe and understand this ‘Commander’, in order to make her judgement.

Shilu needed to know if Elpida could ensure the sanctity of Lulliet’s grave.

One additional weapon system was also aimed at Shilu, with far less accuracy than Pheiri.

The zombie who went by the name ‘Serin’ was curled up inside one of the shadowy abscesses in Pheiri’s frontal armour. Her sniper rifle rested on a lip of white bone, cradled in a quartet of mushroom-pale arms, tucked against a cloaked and spongy shoulder. Serin had briefly re-targeted when Elpida’s trio had moved to speak with the other zombies, but now that conversation was over, and Serin had returned her scope to aim directly at the centre of Shilu’s skull. Serin’s pose and stillness marked her as a seasoned professional; her aim was disrupted by neither breath nor heartbeat. Shilu respected that professionalism, despite the futility; Shilu saw the millions of tiny motions in Serin’s body, of which Serin was unaware. She saw the chemical signals in the customised fungal meat of Serin’s arms, and the subtle impulses running down her mycelium-analogue nerve fibres. Shilu calculated the flaws in Serin’s firing plan, just because she could. If Shilu rushed at Serin — assuming Pheiri’s non-involvement — then Serin would achieve perhaps eleven or twelve shots, and miss every one, before Shilu could cover the distance, reach Serin’s firing position, and rip the sniper rifle out of her hands. Serin had many backup weapons and concealed systems beneath her black robes, but Shilu was confident at close range; her blades would bisect that mushroom-flesh before Serin could—

“Shilu?”

Shilu raised her eyes.

Elpida — the ‘Commander’ — was standing exactly six paces away, flanked by two subordinates. Three dark outlines were backlit by Pheiri’s blood-red illumination, framed by the ghostly bone-white giant of their armoured home, backed up by a loose ring of heavy drones hovering in the gloom.

Shilu was impressed. A cheap trick, but an effective one.

Shilu was beyond any intimidation, of course; Elpida must have known that, yet she still paid attention to the details, to the need for proper presentation. Shilu would have done the same if their positions had been reversed. A display of power and intent. That was a good sign.

She had paid close attention to Elpida’s other displays of power and intent, not least the negotiations a few minutes earlier, between Elpida and the two hungry opportunists — ‘Puk’ and ‘Tati’ — who had crept close to plead for a spare corpse. Shilu had listened with great interest; was Elpida everything she appeared to be, or was this all just a surface of lies, like so many other prodigal undead? Shilu had been impressed when Elpida had offered the corpse freely, a display of wealth and magnanimous charity, and then was impressed a second time when Elpida had leveraged her donation into the beginning of resource dependence and an information network.

She had heard Hafina — another unaddressed breach in normal system operations, an Artificial Human — return to Pheiri’s rear ramp. She had listened to Puk and Tati scurry back off into the tomb. She had heard the approach of Elpida’s trio across the black metal floor.

And now the Commander was making her move.

Elpida’s fireteam were dressed to intimidate and impress. Elpida wore her hair loose and long, the white dyed to a deep crimson by Pheiri’s bloody illumination — another statement of power. Her right sleeve was rolled up, a bandage wrapped around the bite wound. Victoria, on the right, was dressed like a little tank herself, with a grenade launcher slung over her belly; another kind of power, blunt and less subtle. Atyle, on the left, was half naked beneath her coat. Shilu felt a glimmer of ancient discomfort at that, but did not disapprove. That, too, was power.

All three wore short-range communication headsets. Shilu saw the electromagnetic crackle of tight-beam radio contact with Pheiri. The other zombies — Elpida’s comrades — were watching, perhaps to provide additional input.

Coordination, teamwork, skilled operations.

Shilu felt an ancient ache in her chest, and recognised it as hope. It was distant and far away.

She crushed it in a cold metal fist; she did not yet know what to make of Elpida, she did not know if this revenant was the answer to her dilemma. Hope was premature and dangerous. She reasserted precise self-control.

“Yes?” she said.

Elpida didn’t smile. “Are you ready to talk?”

“Yes.”

“May we sit down?”

Asking permission was another cheap trick. In Shilu’s experience this was often effective, but far less impressive. Shilu had used this technique herself too many times to fall by accident into the desired pattern. She decided not to play along; she wanted to see what Elpida would do when faced with intransigence.

“Why do you need my permission to sit?” she asked.

If their positions had been reversed, what would Shilu have said next? She attempted to cast her mind back to one of her own countless sessions in dingy little interview rooms, in true life, before her first death. But the memories were all blurred static. The faces blended together, obscured behind one-way glass, warped by tears and bruises and broken teeth.

Shilu decided she would have smiled, and claimed that she was just being polite. She would have insinuated that she could stop being polite. She would have veiled a threat behind custom and normalcy. Would Elpida do the same? Shilu needed to know. Veiled threats without weight would be a poor sign of a good steward.

Elpida still did not smile. “I don’t need permission. I want permission.”

Atyle tilted her head to the side, one peat-green bionic eye fixed on Shilu. Victoria seemed much less comfortable; her heartbeat was racing and her skin was damp with sweat. A curious pair to bring along to an interrogation.

Shilu said: “What will you do if I refuse to give my permission?”

Elpida shrugged. “Then I won’t get what I want. We’ll stand, right here.”

“And if I refuse to stand as well?”

“Then we’ll talk like this. I’ve got strong legs. Vicky, you got strong legs?”

“Sure do, Commander,” Vicky said.

“Atyle, how about you? Strong legs?”

“As trunks in a forest,” Atyle murmured.

“There you go then,” Elpida said. “If you’d rather we not sit down, we’ll stand right here.”

Shilu cycled her eyeballs through several visual spectra, examining Elpida in visible light, infra-red, heat-mapping, nanomachine-density, and more. She counted Elpida’s heartbeat and tasted the chemical composition of her sweat. She measured the microexpressions on Elpida’s face and the oils on her skin. She stared into those dark purple eyes, and tried to read the lie.

Shilu’s eyes were one of the few Necromancer techniques she had not been denied by her unexpected network severance. She saw the world in multispectrum detail, with no greater effort than small adjustments of focus, and was able to overlay multiple visual spectra with relative ease, though the processing power did strain her network-isolated nano-meat brain, limited to the capacity of her own body. She could see through Elpida’s clothes and armoured coat to directly examine the flex and pump of her heart muscle. She could measure each line of Elpida’s face to read the hidden meaning in her expression. She could stare directly through the distant walls of black tomb metal, into the secret mechanisms and circuits and systems hidden within, waiting for the turn of some esoteric key. She could see the zombies scurrying about in nearby passageways, drawn by the smell of fresh meat, still warded off by Pheiri’s big guns.

Shilu felt a faint rush of surprise as she finished her examination.

The Commander was perfectly calm and fully confident. She was not lying or exaggerating. She would, if needed, stand there for hours.

Either Elpida was in total control, or she was mad.

Shilu considered which of these would be preferable; would she trust the sanctity of Lulliet’s grave to a woman who had everything under control? No. Nobody was ever in total control. The fantasy was unattainable.

Would she trust a madwoman?

Perhaps she would. Once she had believed that only the insane could prosper in this nanomachine infinity.

“You have my permission to sit,” said Shilu.

“Thank you,” Elpida replied.

The trio sat down; the picket line of drones behind them held position. Pheiri kept Shilu in his sights.

Victoria shot several uncomfortable glances at her Commander, but received only a wordless nod in reply, then awkwardly lowered her armoured bulk to the floor. Atyle dropped into a low squat, never once breaking her unblinking stare. Elpida sat cross-legged and straight backed, mirroring Shilu’s own pose; she took two pistols out of her waistband and laid the guns on the floor, then rested her exposed right arm across her right knee. Between the red light and the deep shadows, Elpida’s copper-brown skin looked like blood-rich meat.

Shilu kept her hands in her own lap, non-threatening, unmoving.

She felt that dangerous emotion again — a light in her chest, hope taking spark. Elpida was acting how Shilu would have acted.

Elpida gestured left and right. “This is Atyle,” she said; Atyle smiled. “You’ve met her already, back in the gravekeeper’s chamber. This is Victoria, or Vicky.” Victoria nodded, tight and tense, then attempted to conceal a swallow; her hands gripped her weapon. “She’s not formally my second in command, since we have no official hierarchy, but she’s the closest thing I have.”

“I know.”

Elpida raised her eyebrows. “You know?”

“I can overhear most of what you say,” said Shilu. “Though not through Pheiri’s armour. I know your names, or at least the ones you’ve discussed amongst yourselves.”

Elpida nodded. Vicky hissed through her teeth. Atyle didn’t react at all.

“Thank you for being up front about that,” said Elpida. “I appreciate the honesty.”

Shilu examined Elpida’s microexpressions again, and decided she wasn’t lying, wasn’t angry, wasn’t even surprised or knocked the slightest bit off-kilter by this information. Framed by the dark of the tomb, by the red-dyed moonscape of Pheiri’s armour, and by the howl of the hurricane beyond the walls, Elpida showed nothing but absolute confidence.

Yes, Shilu decided. Mad.

“So,” Elpida carried on, “Shilu. Let’s start with the basics, so we’re all on the same page. You’re a Necromancer, is that correct?”

Shilu considered the purpose of this question. Was Elpida calibrating, or gathering more information? The former, Shilu decided; Elpida had Howl, which meant she had more information on Necromancer definition than Shilu herself actually knew. Shilu used the opportunity to test Elpida again.

“That depends on how you define the term ‘Necromancer’,” she replied.

“An entity with network access.”

“Then I am not currently a Necromancer.”

Elpida smiled. “And you expect us to just believe that?”

She gestured with her exposed right arm — the arm which had heralded Howl’s arrival, the arm which had beaten Lykke to a bloody pulp and sent her scrambling back into the network. The threat was plain: don’t play games, Necromancer.

Hope grew. Shilu crushed it again.

“By your definition,” she said.

Victoria cleared her throat. “Yeah, no. Elpi, she’s like us now, isn’t she? She can’t escape into the network, she can’t freeze us or mess with our bodies or anything like that. She’s gotta eat, too, isn’t that right? She’s trapped in that one body, just like us. You’re a zombie now, aren’t you, Shilu?”

Shilu didn’t bother to answer. The question wasn’t really for her. She knew this pattern.

Elpida nodded slowly. “Perhaps we need a different definition of Necromancer. Shilu, how would you define ‘Necromancer’?”

“I do not care to do so,” said Shilu.

Elpida raised her eyebrows, and waited.

Shilu decided not to play along; Elpida was an enigma, radiating absolute confidence and competence, not lying, not concealing anything. Elpida and Victoria were playing the opening moves of a red-face white-face dynamic, a dance Shilu knew all too well. They held Shilu at arm’s length, desperate for information, balancing her on the edge of a conversational knife, yet ready to kill her if she should prove other than what they expected.

Shilu approved. Shilu was impressed. Hope was like old fire in her chest; she stamped it out. She needed to test this woman, this ‘Commander’.

“Alright,” Elpida said eventually. “Let’s reword the question. What are you, Shilu?”

“I am an agent of the system, of the nanomachine ecology, of Central. I have — or I had, until very recently — a stake in the continued operation of the system. But I started like you. I was born human, then I died. Then I was resurrected as a zombie. I have sat where you are.”

Vicky grunted. “Mmhmm. But not all Necromancers are like you, right? We’ve met others. Before Lykke back there, I mean. The first one we met couldn’t even pretend to be human, she didn’t get it, but you seem about right. I’m willing to accept that you used to be one of us.”

“Most Necromancers began as post-human recursive feedback loops.”

“Fuck.” Vicky puffed out a big sigh; that sounded genuine too, she was not good at dissembling. “The hell does that even mean?”

Shilu did not bother to answer. She had already given the answer.

Vicky said, “Okay, wait a sec, how did you become a Necromancer?”

“I climbed a metaphorical ladder, by stepping on the heads of those below me. I consumed other revenants and rose as high as I could. I looked for somebody in control, somebody at the centre of the world, because I knew only that would have the power to grant me rest. I looked for release from all this. To be dead, and stay dead.”

Victoria and Elpida shared a glance.

Shilu examined Victoria for a moment. She adjusted the penetration of her eyes to observe the signs of stress inside Victoria’s bloodstream, in the beat of her heart, and the chemical signals in her flesh. She discovered that Victoria had a bionic heart — a powerful piece of cybernetic enhancement, a much smarter choice than the ostentatious cybernetics chosen by so many revenants. A bionic heart made the user more efficient in all ways.

Atyle finally spoke: “You see much, little slave.”

Shilu reverted her vision to basic visual light. The darkness of the tomb chamber crashed back down like a wall of oily rain and melted resin.

She turned to stare at Atyle. The revenant smiled back, face lit by blood-red backwash, peat-green eyeball rolling in the socket.

Elpida said: “Atyle?”

Atyle explained. “The little slave here has good eyes. Not as good as a gift from the gods, but still, she sees much.”

Shilu said: “Slave?”

Atyle nodded. “You slave away at the feet of a thing that sees you not.”

Elpida raised her eyebrows. “Shilu, is that true, about your eyes?”

“Yes.”

Elpida nodded. “So, you’re cut off from the network, but you’ve still got some tricks up your sleeve. Are you willing to share those with us?”

“What do you mean?”

Elpida gestured with her right arm again. Threat, or statement of intent? The power was obvious, the statement loud and clear. Shilu felt a quiver deep down inside her belly — hope mixed into a cocktail with something deeper and darker, something she no longer recognised. She quashed that too; this body made it easy to murder passion with cold metal.

Elpida said: “I think you know exactly what I mean, Shilu. Enough wordplay, enough games. I want to know what you’re capable of. Tell me, please.”

“Why should I do that?”

Elpida paused, then broke into a grin — wide and toothy, full of menace, ready for a fight.

Howl.

“Because, you bitch-cake cheese-grater cunt,” Howl said, “you’re still a Necromancer. Let’s drop all the pussyfooting about with big definitions and clever words. We both know nobody gives a shit about that. You decided not to shank Elps in the back of the neck, but we trust you about as far as we can throw you. You gotta lay out those cards. Show us your hand. Tip them aces, bitch — then hand ‘em over. Or I’ll fucking bite your fingers off to get at them.”

Shilu was beyond intimidation, but she liked Howl’s style.

“Why?” she repeated.

Howl vanished. Elpida blinked, and said, “Because you’re a threat to my cadre, and I can’t ignore that or pretend to trust you, Shilu. But also because I want to believe you’re not a threat. Because I would like to make a friend and ally of you, if I can. Because I think you can help us.”

“Help you to do what?”

Elpida grinned — and this time she was not Howl. “To find the fulcrum on which the world can be turned.”

Shilu didn’t answer; she was too busy stomping out the flame of hope inside her cold metal breast. It had grown too large. She was losing control.

“Now,” Elpida went on, “if that makes sense to you, I would like to know what you’re capable of, what control you have over your own body, all the tricks and techniques you still have access to.” She raised her right hand. “And Howl will help me verify, before we go on.”

Shilu considered leaping forward, into the promise of Pheiri’s guns.

“Shilu? Are you considering your answer?”

Shilu was considering death.

Elpida was everything Shilu had hoped for — and more than she had dared predict.

Back in the gravekeeper’s chamber, Elpida had dodged Shilu’s blade and proven that she was no common zombie, no mere revenant, but a network presence in her own right. Elpida’s followers had fought Lykke with drones, with gravity and electromagnetic jamming — that was nothing new, but when they had inevitably failed, Elpida had fought Lykke toe to toe, with nothing but fists and teeth. And she had won.

A revenant, a scrap of undead flesh, had fought and banished a Necromancer.

What a breach of system integrity — new, novel, different, after thousands of years of the same patterns and cycles repeating themselves over and over. Whatever Elpida was, she was a revenant unbeholden to Central. That had planted the seed of rebellion in Shilu’s own mind.

But this?

“Shilu? Still playing games? Alright then, let’s try something else first. Tell me who sent you to assassinate me, tell me who our mutual enemy is, who your boss is — or was.”

A faction of the war in heaven. But which faction? Shilu did not even know what the factions were, or what the war was about, let alone on which side she had been forced to stand.

All she knew was the threat she had received, in that simulated mockery of her grandmother’s home, delivered by a Necromancer wearing a dead woman’s skin. If Shilu did not follow orders, then her beloved Lulliet would be pulled from Central’s archives, dragged from the watery grave which Shilu had worked so hard to ensure would go unviolated — and then resurrected again, somewhere far away from Shilu’s protection. True death, a final end, release and relief and rest, would be denied once again.

But without a map of the war, how could Shilu know on which side she fought? How could she know which side truly held Lulliet’s grave? How could she ensure anything?

By seeking one who could overthrow the whole system, and kill it all, forever.

“Or how about this — why did you give up on the assassination? Why did you decide not to kill me? Start there, if you’d prefer.”

Why? Because there was no reason to carry out her mission anymore.

Upon arriving in the tomb, stripped of network access, Shilu had no way to verify that promises would be kept or threats would be rescinded. Would following orders ensure the quiet of Lulliet’s grave? Maybe. But maybe not. And then Lykke had turned up; if a faction of the war was willing to send Lykke to stop her, then they would be willing to dangle that same threat of exhumation over Lulliet’s grave. Fight, or not fight, it made no difference now.

Not killing Elpida left Shilu with more options.

Now Shilu realised too late that Elpida represented so much more.

The Commander was not merely a powerful network presence unbeholden to Central. The zombies to her left and right were not mere subordinates. Their daring plunge into the tomb was not just a rescue mission for fresh meat or nanomachines. The meeting with Eseld was not drama or futile gesture; some power had reached through the network to arrange that impossible coincidence, to put Elpida on the path of accepting as comrade one she had consumed as meat. Pheiri was not just a tank. This group of zombies was not just flesh and bone. Elpida’s commands were neither guile nor lies. Those purple eyes saw further than Shilu.

She was not dealing with Necromancers now, or with inscrutable network presences at Central’s feet, or even with a shard of Central itself. Everyone and everything had lied to Shilu for so long. Even Central had lied in the end, and allowed her to be woken from the archives. Central had failed her.

Elpida was not lying; Elpida was temptation.

The temptation was greater than Shilu had ever experienced. She knew why; she had attached herself to the most powerful entity she could find — Central — in order to pursue her own goals. She had done the same thing in true life, with the Service, and the State, and the power it gave her. Now Central had failed her, had allowed her to be resurrected, and put Lulliet’s grave at risk. Without the guarantee of protection, she had no loyalty to anything.

So she was attaching herself again, to a promise of future power.

That was why she’d been sent, wasn’t it? Because some faction feared this woman, this ‘Telokopolan’, and the power she was growing.

Shilu decided they had good reason for fear; this wasn’t a zombie, this was a seed.

Elpida, Pheiri, all of the zombies at her sides; the tomb, the hurricane, Eseld — even Lykke. Something had reached through the network and placed these elements in concert. Some side on the war in heaven, some player of a great game, had brought all this together.

Which included Shilu herself; she had been selected with such precision.

Shilu’s heart burst with hope — rancid, rotten, already ash. She could have extended a hand and given Elpida the help she needed, become part of the soil and water and sunlight in which to grow — into what? Revolution? Upheaval? Destruction, final and total and without a single lie? The peace and quiet of the grave, at long last, at least for Lulliet.

But whatever Elpida might become in the future, she could not yet offer Lulliet’s grave any true protection.

A quick death was more certain.

Shilu had to die.

Shilu knew she was panicking; the cold metal logic of her body was not enough to hold it back. If she’d had network access she could have slowed herself down, offloaded her own emotions, and approached the problem with calm and simple logic. Perhaps there was a way through this thicket, but she could not see it from this level.

Her best move — the only move with any certainty — was to make herself useless to any and all factions. Only then would Lulliet’s rest be assured.

The trio of zombies were chattering questions now. Elpida was gesturing with her naked right arm. Vicky was mouthing platitudes. Atyle watched.

Shilu bunched the carbon fibre muscles inside her black steel legs. She prepared her arms for transformation into blades. She would lunge at Elpida, and make it as real as she could; Pheiri would knock her back with a storm of autocannon rounds, then obliterate her with something more powerful. If she was resurrected inside the network, she would have all the excuses she needed.

They would send her back, of course, whoever had sent her the first time. They would send her again and again and again. And she would obey, over and over, to keep her beloved safe in the grave. And she would ensure her own failure, time after time. She would protect this seed in her own way.

Shilu smothered her emotions beneath cold metal. She could afford no tremors now.

She focused on Elpida’s trio one last time; she cycled through different visual spectra, examining the tiny tells and microexpressions on Elpida’s face, regretting that she would not have more time to get to know the Commander. She stared into Elpida’s bloodstream, read the pulse and beat of her heart, measured the oil on her skin and the hormones in her flesh and the salinity of her sweat. Then she went deeper, reading the nanomachine density of Elpida’s meat and bone, tracking the flare and flash of synaptic action inside her undead brain. She ran her eyes across the delicate tracery of metal embedded in Elpida’s grey matter, as if touching it with her fingertips. What a curious implant. Perhaps Shilu could develop a way to warn Elpida of her next coming; she would have to be clever. She could never let any others know.

Elpida would have protected Shilu’s beloved, if she’d been able. But that arrangement could not be.

Shilu readied herself to leap, then—

Her vision glitched.

A flicker of static jerked from right to left, blooming across her eyeballs. For a split-second the darkness in the tomb chamber flared brighter than day, glowing like a crimson ocean over nuclear fire.

The glitch passed.

A fourth figure had joined Elpida’s trio, standing behind Atyle.

A young girl, dressed in a gown of pearlescent bone. Her hair was ash and flame. Her eyes were black and old, charred and ruined. Her skin was blood, bright and burning. A crown of silver sat atop her head, melted to her skull.

Shilu was paralysed.

Elpida was caught in the moment between one word and the next, her right arm frozen mid-gesture. Her subordinates were frozen too, Vicky’s lips caught on a sound, Atyle unmoving on her haunches. Serin had stopped twitching like a mushroom sprouting in the dark; Pheiri’s guns were dead, his mechanisms paused, his brain empty. Even the black shadows of the tomb stood still. The hurricane beyond the walls had fallen silent. The wind held its breath.

Shilu had experienced this before, in Central’s presence. None of this was happening in physical space, but running directly on Shilu’s mind, so fast that no time appeared to pass.

Network intrusion, on a level no mere Necromancer could hope to achieve. A gravekeeper could do this. Maybe a graveworm. But this was neither.

She — the Crowned Girl — stared at Shilu with cold and quiet fury.

Whatever this thing was, it was a network presence of such power that Shilu felt an emotion she had considered herself beyond — a crawling in her gut, a pressure in her chest, a tightness in her throat.

The Crowned Girl spoke without moving her lips. Shilu heard the message inside her skull, in her own internal voice.

No, said the Crowned Girl.

But I want to be dead, Shilu thought, the words ripped out of her mind. She could not stop herself. Her innermost secrets were peeled from her core like dripping slices of skinned fruit. She grasped at them, but she could not resist the extraction. She felt her metal body cracked open, her organs scooped out and examined, her brains burned down and the ashes sifted by a great and bloody hand. Elpida is not what I expected. She cannot protect my Lulliet, not yet. She is more than I hoped. This is the beginning of something new, but I cannot be part of it. She cannot ensure Lulliet stays dead. And I—

No. You are cursed to live.

Shilu rejected that. She tried to turn away, but she could not.

The Crowned Girl stepped through Atyle, a network ghost without flesh of her own. She crouched before Shilu, gathering her skirts of bone about her knees. She stank of blood and fire and melted flesh, of ancient ashes and charred entrails and far worse.

She cupped Shilu’s face in both hands. Her touch burned. Her eyes were black voids, full of stars.

Live. Help. And I will shelter your beloved beneath my skirts.

But what if I don’t? Shilu thought. What if I say no, or I fail, or I can’t—

Then I will shelter her all the same, until the end of time.

But what if you fail too? What if you are overwhelmed, or you lose? What if they come for her, and resurrect her again, and again, and again, and—

I will end her, said the Crowned Girl. I will give her a truer death than any before.

Shilu felt moisture and heat prickle in her eyes. She could barely recall the sensation, and now it was forced upon her. The violation was complete and total.

She wept into the hands of the Crowned Girl. She felt her tears scooped up and pressed to bloody lips. She felt herself claimed.

She surrendered.

“—Shilu? Shilu?”

“She’s not listening. She’s gone off inside herself, or something. Elpi, are we sure she’s, like … here?”

“The slave is present. Of that I am certain. See? She blinks.”

Shilu blinked again.

The Crowned Girl was gone. The network intrusion was over. The darkness of the tomb chamber was back. The roar of the hurricane had resumed.

Shilu raised a hand to her eyes. Dry as a bone.

The network encounter had the quality of a dream — intense while active, sensations now rapidly fading. Shilu had been forced to feel emotions she had not experienced in longer than she could recall; they felt like echoes, irrelevant and absurd to her current situation. But the network intrusion was real, that had really happened. Shilu had been contacted directly by a primary participant of the war in heaven, who had offered to protect her one personal fulcrum.

Shilu glanced around the tomb chamber, into the dark and black, but there was no sign of the Crowned Girl.

Elpida was speaking. “Shilu? I need you to answer our questions. Or just one of them. I need you to give us something, somewhere to start. You’ve got to work with us. You seemed willing to work with us earlier. You mentioned that you had questions of your own, too. I would be willing to trade information, if that’s what you require.”

Shilu tried to open her mouth and ask about the Crowned Girl, but found she could not.

Had her network permissions been rewritten? Only in that one respect. An answer floated upward from her subconsciousness, planted there by the network presence. The hurricane functioned as protection, brief as it was, from the prying eyes of Central. The Crowned Girl had taken a great risk in direct communication. She had to remain hidden. She must not be spoken of, even to her greatest champions.

Shilu acquiesced to this need.

“Are you even listening to us?” Elpida was saying. “Are you—”

“What is Telokopolis?” Shilu asked.

Victoria blinked. Atyle broke into a smile, eyebrows raised in pleasant surprise.

Elpida laughed softly. “Am I interrogating you, Shilu? Or are you interrogating me?”

“This is meant to be an interrogation?”

Elpida shrugged. “Perhaps. Interrogation. Debriefing. Friendly conversation. Armed negotiation. Call it whatever and whichever you prefer, as long as you—”

“You don’t have the capacity to interrogate me,” said Shilu.

“Oh?”

“You suspect me of many potential things. I am — or was — an agent of Central. This is a reasonable suspicion. I would suspect the same in your position. You and Victoria are attempting the beginnings of a red face white face dynamic — sympathetic and threatening, safety and danger — but you lack the necessary resolve.”

Elpida frowned. Victoria muttered, “She means the good-cop bad-cop thing. She’s rumbled us there, Elpi.”

Elpida nodded. “What makes you say I lack resolve?”

“Everything,” Shilu answered, then turned to Vicky. “You are supposed to be the red face, to offer me sympathy. But you can’t, because you are terrified of me. Don’t lie, I can see it in your eyes and your pulse, and read it on your face. You would rather stand a hundred paces back and blow me up with that grenade launcher. I don’t blame you.” She turned back to Elpida before the trio could muster a response. “And you’re meant to be the white face, the threat. But you are uniquely unsuited to the role.”

Elpida said, “Why’s that?”

“Because you don’t believe in it. You naturally default to the other role, that of the sympathetic. But in that you are an abject failure.”

Vicky growled, “Hey now.”

“Vicky, hold on,” Elpida murmured. “I want to understand where she’s going with this. Shilu, please, continue?”

“You cannot be the red face either,” Shilu continued. “Because the role of the ‘good cop’ is to lie. You offer sympathy and understanding, while leading the subject deeper into self-recrimination. You offer identification with the agent of the institution, while the institution sharpens the knives on the subject’s own emotions and statements. You offer a human face on an inhuman process. But you, Elpida, you are not lying. You mean it. You are too real. You are offering something else.”

Elpida chuckled. “And you see through all that, do you?”

“I do.”

Victoria burst out laughing, then sighed and slapped her armoured knee. “Sorry, Elpi, but yeah, she’s got a point. We don’t know what the shit we’re doing.”

Elpida sighed as well, staring directly at Shilu. Atyle just smiled, as if she had expected this outcome from the start. Radio contact crackled back and forth, but none of the trio answered the voices in their headsets.

Shilu said, “I have sat where you are a thousand times, in true life. I know how this works, and you’re failing. But that’s not an insult.”

Elpida nodded. “Alright, fair enough. What were you, in life, before all this?”

“I was a counter-intelligence agent.”

Vicky’s eyes went wide. “You were a spy?”

“I hunted spies.”

Vicky let out a low whistle. Elpida frowned, not quite comprehending; Vicky muttered, “Imagine somebody who’s whole job was hunting traitors and moles, kinda.”

“Yes,” said Shilu.

“And you were good at it, huh?” Vicky asked. “Hunting spooks?”

“Very.”

Elpida gestured for Vicky to continue. Vicky said, “For who? I mean, where, where did you live?”

Shilu opened her mouth — then stopped. Her memories of true life were hazy at best, drowned beneath so much meat and blood and raw bone marrow. For a moment of vertigo she realised that she could remember her home on the coast, and her grandmother’s house in Hailin, and even recall her parents’ faces — though with some difficulty and much bitterness. But the name of her country was lost to both her and history.

Perhaps it had never been that important.

She answered with something she did remember. “The Interior Service of State Security.”

Vicky frowned. “Yeah, but like, for who?”

Shilu shook her head. “It’s been too long. I don’t remember.”

Elpida said, “And you’ve run interrogations like this before?”

“I can run rings around you.”

Elpida laughed. Vicky shrugged. Atyle finally stopped squatting, moving to a cross-legged sitting pose.

Vicky said, “So what, we’ve just gotta accept you, as is? Little miss ‘death to spies’, and that’s that?”

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

Elpida said, “We could solve this my way.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Vicky.

“Shilu and I could beat the shit out of each other until we reach mutual comprehension.”

Shilu almost sighed — Elpida was a seed of power, but she wasn’t perfect, not yet. “I can tell you whatever you want to know,” she said. “But I think you should stop trying to interrogate me. You’re very bad at it. And answer my question first — what is Telokopolis?”

Elpida said, “Why do you want to know that?”

“Because I’ve heard you discussing it. I heard what you said to Eseld, and I’m not a fool, I picked up the context and your relationship to her. You told her that you are a promise, and that promise is called Telokopolis. I wish to hear that promise too. I need to know who and what I’m fighting for. I need to know … ”

Shilu needed to know that Lulliet would stay dead, and that Elpida would pour concrete on her tomb.

Elpida nodded slowly. “Fair enough. Telokopolis rejects nobody, even a Necromancer. Alright then—”

“And,” Shilu added, as part of a trade she had not realised she was making. “I suspect I’ve seen it once before.”

Elpida froze. “Seen what?”

“Telokopolis,” said Shilu. “I’ve seen Telokopolis once before.”