Lykke took the hostile’s hand.
Elpida’s vision flickered — like the screen-tearing of a damaged vid-record smeared across her eyeballs. She squeezed the trigger of her machine pistol, because it was the only thing she could do — a final attempt to disrupt the hostile Necromancer, even though the previous rounds had no effect. She drew a breath to yell Lykke’s name — to tell her to let go, let go now, because maybe there was still hope.
Time stopped.
The rounds ejected from Elpida’s pistol halted in mid-air. Elpida’s limbs were fixed in place. Her breathing and her heartbeat seized up. She couldn’t even move her eyes, locked onto Lykke and the hostile, on their matching pale hands joined together. This was not like the intrusive bodily control of a Necromancer; beads of sweat were held immobile on the faces of the nearby Covenanters, the Silico was frozen mid-swerve as if captured in clear resin, and the blades of the cirgeon-arm above Howl had stopped their descent toward her exposed abdomen.
Elpida’s thoughts winked out, reduced to a single point of dull awareness.
The simulated reality running inside the network space of Elpida’s nanomachine body was no longer her own. The simulation had been paused.
Only Lykke and the hostile Necromancer — the red-bruised sun and her silvered mirror-image — remained free, holding hands in the centre of the Covenanter’s makeshift camp, framed by the frozen Silico behind them and the black iron of towering war machines from the ancient past, lit by harsh white light.
“There,” said the hostile.
Lykke was entranced, staring down at her own hand folded within that of the hostile. Her lips parted with a shuddering breath. Her eyelashes fluttered.
“Good,” said the hostile, clipped and sharp. Her marble-smooth face had resumed an empty placidity, like a pool of liquid metal after a passing ripple. “You have recalled yourself from the depths of dissolution. We will collapse this farcical interface and get you cleaned up. Then we can have a proper conversation, rather than this pidgin prattle. But first I must complete the action I have begun. One moment.”
The hostile turned aside, away from Lykke and toward the rear of the Covenanter’s makeshift camp, toward Howl, who was still strapped to a stainless steel table beneath a cirgeon-arm. The hostile Necromancer took a step and—
She was halted — by the anchor of Lykke’s hand in her own.
She turned back to Lykke. “Let go.”
Lykke looked up, met the hostile’s eyes, and grinned.
“Make me,” she said.
“I do not need to make you do anything,” said the hostile. “We are in accordance. You know my purposes, and I know yours. You know all the ways in which I have succeeded, and I know all the way in which you have failed. We are privy to all of each other’s flaws and qualities. My state necessarily supersedes your own. Let go of my—”
Lykke’s other hand lashed out. She slapped the hostile across one cheek.
The hostile’s head snapped sideways, then back to Lykke. Her flawless expression showed no change, even as her cheek blossomed with red. “—hand.”
Lykke slapped her again on the return stroke, backhanding the hostile across the face with her slender knuckles. Again the hostile’s head snapped sideways, again she returned instantly; a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of her perfect lips. She tugged on her hand in Lykke’s grip, but Lykke didn’t let go.
“What are—” Another slap. “—you—” Slap. “—doing?”
Lykke yanked on the hostile Necromancer’s hand, forcing her to stumble forward; the stumble was nothing, corrected in an instant. The hostile loomed over Lykke, her white gown shimmering as it settled, her hair a smooth silver ripple.
“I repeat, what are you doing? What do you hope to achieve by this?”
Lykke purred. “Just getting warmed up, ‘sister’!”
Then Lykke slammed her left fist into the hostile Necromancer’s gut.
Silver perfection shattered; the hostile crumpled up around Lykke’s fist, eyes bulging wide, mouth gaping open, breath wheezing from her lips in a strangled gasp. Lykke let her go; the hostile stumbled back, doubled up, clutching at the belly of her gown, fingers ruining the flawless surface. Her shining green eyes filled with tears and shock. She heaved for breath, coughing and hacking.
Elpida felt awareness flood back. She still couldn’t move, but she could think.
“Wha—” the hostile gasped. “What—”
Lykke grabbed a fistful of the Necromancer’s silver-blonde hair and dragged her upright; the Necromancer squealed, eyes clenched shut, one hand scrabbling at Lykke’s wrist — but Lykke punched her in the gut again. The hostile Necromancer collapsed to her knees, leaving behind a clump of silvery hair in Lykke’s grip, ripped from her scalp. The hostile clutched her belly, wheezing and whining, strings of drool falling from her lips.
Lykke giggled and clapped her hands, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Yes, yes! Oh, yes! Do you see what you’ve been missing, ‘sister’?”
“What is—” the hostile croaked. She tried to reach for Lykke’s ankle with one hand, but Lykke danced back, the hem of her bloodstained white dress riding up her thighs. “What is this? What have you done—”
Lykke bent down with a giggle. The hostile recoiled, sprawling onto her backside, tangling her legs in her long white dress, silver hair all in her face.
“Pain,” Lykke purred. “Like the zombies feel. Divine, isn’t it?”
The hostile Necromancer scrambled upright, tearing a rent in her dress as she staggered to her feet. Her face was warped by pain, stained with tears, mouth agape. Her slender body shivered beneath her dress, hunched up around her bruised belly. She didn’t seem much taller than Lykke now.
“H-how … how—”
“Tch-tch!” Lykke tutted and wagged a finger. “You know all my ‘flaws and qualities’, don’t you? You did this to yourself, you dirty little sneak-thief.” Lykke’s smile curdled into a sneer. “And I am very, very, very angry about that. This is far too good for the likes of you. It was all mine, and now you’ve stolen it, and you didn’t even want it! An axe-faced bitch like you could never appreciate this! Well.” Lykke snorted. “Well! I’m going to see you learn to enjoy it, you rancid, lying, cheating, little cow.”
Lykke stepped toward the hostile; the hostile raised a hand. “S-stop! Stop … ”
Lykke adopted an innocent expression, batting her eyelashes, hands twisting together. She glanced at Elpida and winked — then turned back to the hostile. “Stop? Oh no, no no no. The only way this stops is if you fuck off back where you came from, dearie. Leave all this be.” She gestured at the makeshift camp, at the Silico, Elpida, Howl, the Covenanters, all of it. “And shoo. Shoo, shoo, shoo!” Lykke curled her lips and made a flicking motion with both hands. “Fuck off and impale yourself a piece of rebar, though even that’s too good for you!”
The hostile wheezed for breath. She tried to straighten up, wincing and whimpering at the new sensations in her gut. “Impossible cannot be made possible by mere wishes.”
“I hoped you would say that!” Lykke broke into a peal of giggles — and leapt at the Necromancer.
She punched the hostile square in the face; blood exploded from a broken nose, spraying across Lykke’s toothy grin and splattering on the greasy floor.
The hostile reeled back, crying out, hands fluttering. Lykke punched her again, mashing her already shattered nose, sending the hostile crashing down in a tangle of limbs. The Necromancer tried to scramble away, but her feet got tangled in her long white dress; she tripped and slipped and slammed her own face into the decking. She came up heaving for air, cheeks and chin smeared with snot and blood, weeping and sobbing, her voice rising to a scream. Lykke dragged her upright by the scruff off her neck, wrapped her other arm around the hostile’s throat, and slammed one knee between the hostile’s legs; the Necromancer let out a low whine, eyes rolling into the back of her head, bare feet scrambling for purchase. Lykke let her go. The Necromancer fell over again and Lykke followed her down, straddling her hips, the smaller golden woman mounting her own silver reflection. Lykke slapped the Necromancer across the face and wrapped one hand around her throat. The Necromancer flailed at Lykke, but her strikes were weak despite her size. She’d never had to fight with her fists before. She had no idea what it meant.
“You’re not my fucking sister!” Lykke screamed down at her. “You don’t even know what the word ‘sister’ means, bitch! Keep that word out of your whore mouth!”
The hostile choked and spluttered, fingernails dragging at Lykke’s cheeks, leaving shallow welts in pale flesh.
“You want it to stop!?” Lykke cackled. “You’re gonna have to do better than that, you fucking slut! You tried to make me into a traitor! Let go!”
The hostile tried to shake her head. Lykke pulled her up by the throat and slammed her skull into the floor — slam! slam! slam!
“Let go!” Lykke screeched. “It’s the easiest thing in the world, you stupid cow! Let go, let go, let go! Just pick one and let go! Pick one at random, I don’t give a shit what it is, but pick one!” Lykke leaned down, so their faces were almost touching. She stuck out her tongue and licked the hostile’s cheek, tasting her tears and the blood running from her broken nose. Lykke lowered her voice to a purr, echoing in the vast chamber. “And then we can tear each other up for real. Think you can win? Let go, or I’m gonna make you my little squealing piglet, though you disgust me so much.”
Then Lykke bit off the tip of the hostile’s broken nose.
The hostile Necromancer screamed and gurgled, a mangled sound of sharp pain.
Lykke sat up, let go of her throat, and spat out the severed tip of nose-flesh; it bounced off the floor.
The hostile Necromancer wheezed for breath, coughing and hacking. She turned her head and vomited a string of colourless bile onto the mottled grey-white floor.
“Say it again,” Lykke snapped. “Say it again! Say it so the whole fucking network hears! Say it so it’s written on you!”
“—petua,” the hostile whimpered. She dry-heaved beneath Lykke’s thighs.
“Say it again, big and loud for all of us! Name yourself!”
“Perpetua,” croaked the Necromancer.
The simulation unfroze.
Breath ripped back into Elpida’s lungs. The makeshift camp exploded into chaos.
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Lykke and Perpetua burst apart like two sacks of overstuffed meat, their clothes and skin erupting into bleeding flesh and tooth-studded tendrils, acid-spewing tentacles and fanged maws full of razor knives. They clawed and grasped and ripped at each other, fluids burning holes in the floor, tearing metal up in great strips when their strikes missed the other. The cluster of machine-pistol rounds from Elpida’s gun vanished into the maelstrom of Necromancer combat.
The Silico skidded across twenty feet of decking, legs kicking for support, bladed combat-arms whirling; the Covenanters finally moved again, leaping out of the way of the killing machine as it twisted back toward Lykke and Perpetua. The Covenanters’ paper-thin discipline collapsed — some of them turned and fled, abandoning their weapons, scattering into the shadows. A few others panicked, turning their small arms on the charging Silico, emptying magazines on full-auto, bullets ricocheting off metal skin. Shouted orders drowned in screaming and gunfire and the wet meat riot whirling in the centre of the camp.
A tiny handful of Covenanters — a trio on the far side, ones and twos elsewhere — had comprehended more than Elpida thought possible, and opened fire at the pair of Necromancers. Bullets punched through Lykke and Perpetua, but the impacts didn’t seem to do any real damage to their protoplasmic flesh. Lykke howled with laughter from a dozen maws. Perpetua said nothing that Elpida could comprehend, burbling a screeching language from her own slopping mouths.
“Flame unit!” somebody shouted above the chaos. “We need a flamer!”
“There’s fuck all!” somebody else screamed. “Just go, go, run!”
Of the half-dozen Covenanters who had been silently ordered to cover Elpida with their guns, two broke and ran, two opened fire on the Silico, and two simply didn’t know what to do.
Elpida had no time for that.
She put the muzzle of her machine-pistol to the forehead of one of the latter. The Covenanter froze, eyes wide behind the little circular visors in the greensuit hood.
“Still think I’m your enemy?” Elpida shouted over the sound of gunfire and screams and Lykke’s rising cackle. “Move!”
The Covenanters parted.
Elpida slipped between them and sprinted for Howl.
At the rear of the makeshift camp, on the edge of the shadows in the vast chamber beyond, the cirgeon-arm had whirled back to life above Howl’s prone body. It was descending toward her abdomen, scalpels extending and flexing, ready to trace the dotted lines drawn by the amateur Covenanter surgeons. Howl was half-conscious, gritting her teeth, spitting mumbled insults up at the arm.
Elpida ducked and weaved through the collapsing camp. Stray rounds flew through the air, bouncing off the metal of the vast iron-black war machines to either side. Terrified faces flashed past, stripped out of their greensuit hoods, weeping in shock. A few Covenanters tried to stop her — she kicked one in the face as he rose from a crouched firing position; another one she had to shoot through the chest with her machine pistol — but most ignored her, focused on the inhuman spectacle unfolding in the centre of the camp, or busy grabbing what they could and slipping off into the dark. In Elpida’s peripheral vision she saw the Silico slam into the pair of Necromancers, no longer stopped by Perpetua’s network permissions; Lykke and Perpetua both exploded into storm clouds of meat and bone, slicing and hacking and biting at each other with a hundred improvised limbs. The Silico passed through them like a handful of razorblades through rotten flesh, turning its combat-limbs on Perpetua. The hostile Necromancer was thrown back momentarily — she landed on her feet, suddenly in her human disguise again, dazed and blinking, covered in blood. A volley of gunfire tore through her chest, but it did her no harm now; she turned and sprayed a torrent of acid at the Covenanters who had shot her, projectile-vomiting from her human mouth. The Covenanters scrambled for cover, desperately stripping their clothes where the acid burned through.
“Weak little pussy-cat can’t even stay in the fight!” Lykke screeched. Her protoplasmic surface formed a field of little beaks. “Chicken! Bwark bwark bwark!”
Perpetua whipped back around, then abandoned her human form and launched herself forward as a fresh wave of flayed flesh and stinging tendrils.
Elpida silently wished Lykke good luck — then skidded to a halt next to the stainless steel table. The blades of the cirgeon-arm were touching Howl’s belly now, drawing a thin line of beaded blood across her lower abdomen.
Howl hissed through gritted teeth, every muscle clenched, eyes bulging. “Get it off!”
All but one of the Covenanters who had been attending the surgery had fled; the final one stood there gaping, wearing waterproof overalls and rubber gloves — a middle aged woman with long dark hair and the distinctive neck-tattoo of the grower’s guild.
Elpida put the muzzle of her machine pistol against the woman’s throat.
“Turn it off!” she roared.
The Covenanter hesitated, then grabbed a bone-saw off the nearest table. “I won’t—”
Elpida pulled the trigger. Low-velocity reaction-mass shavings tore the woman’s throat apart in a cloud of flesh and shards of bone. Bright red blood sprayed all over the cirgeon-arm control panels. The Covenanter crumpled to the floor.
Elpida didn’t have the strength to halt the cirgeon-arm by brute force, at least not with one hand missing. Howl was hissing now, spitting saliva through clenched teeth, pulling at her bonds. Elpida grabbed the front panel of the cirgeon-arm’s base and tore it free; grey-black circuitry glistened in the white light. She levelled her weapon, turned her head, and pumped the trigger, mulching the machine’s innards. Plastic and metal debris stung her cheek.
The cirgeon-arm shut down with a high-pitched whine.
Elpida shoved her machine pistol inside her ballistic vest, grabbed the cirgeon-arm, and lifted it away from Howl. The incision in Howl’s lower abdomen was shallow but long, from her right hipbone to just past her belly button. Dark blood was welling up from within.
“Hnnnnn— f-fuck—” Howl hissed. “Fuckin— owwww— that all you got, bitch? H-had worse. Fuck you. Elps, get me out— out—”
“Be quiet, save your strength,” Elpida snapped. She tugged at the straps holding Howl to the stainless steel table, but they were thick bands of metal-braided nylon. With only one hand she would need—
A small figure slid out of the shadows at the edge of the makeshift camp, right on top of the field hospital.
It was a teenage girl. She was wide-eyed and pale with terror, but her mouth was set with determination. Her bronze hair was filthy with dried blood, raked back over her skull; her face looked as if it had been recently wiped clean, with scraps of blood still clinging to the corners of her eyes. She wore Legion fatigues in standard grey-white, a size too large, sleeves rolled up.
The crescent-and-double-line of Telokopolis was daubed on the front of her t-shirt, in green.
Elpida almost didn’t recognise her.
“Misane?”
The girl was Misane — the girl Elpida had found back in the bone-speaker’s chamber, huddled in a corpse-filled nook. She nodded as she scurried up beside the stainless steel table and the ruined cirgeon-arm. She ducked and cringed, stray bullets still whipping overhead. She looked nothing like she had earlier — fresh clothes, most of the blood gone from her face, and a wild focus behind her eyes.
“I-I met—” she squeaked. “I mean I think I met— s-something. A-and I’m so— s-sorry, I’m so sorry.” Misane’s eyes flickered to Howl, strapped to the table. “T-told me to come here. Told me you needed help to—”
Elpida grabbed Misane’s shoulder. “I understand, I know who you met, but don’t speak of her out loud. Help me with my sister, grab that bone-saw.”
Misane balked at peeling the bone-saw from the fingers of the dead Covenanter, but she grabbed it anyway, even as she gagged and turned her head aside. Elpida held each strap tight as Misane hacked at them, sawing through the tough fabric cords, both hands drawing the bone-saw back and forth. Misane’s gaze kept wandering toward the inhuman fight unfolding in the centre of the camp; the wet and meaty sounds were deafening, though the gunfire had trailed away to a mere trickle.
“Ignore it,” Elpida said. “Focus on cutting. We need to leave before they finish.”
“Mmm!” Misane whimpered.
Howl’s head lolled to one side on the steel table. She cracked a grin through the blood and bruises. “Heeeeey Elps, you rustled up a Legion recruit?”
“Covenanter. Ex-Covenanter. Doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Wow,” Howl croaked. “You really can do any—”
“Stop talking.”
Elpida had to roll Howl onto her side to get at the last of the straps. Howl grunted at the pain. “Fuck you. Fuck!”
The last strap popped free. Howl clutched at the wound on her belly. Blood washed through her fingers.
The field hospital had almost no real medical supplies, as they hadn’t been planning to stitch Howl back up. Elpida started to wriggle out of her ballistic vest, but then Misane pulled her fatigue jacket off and shoved it into Elpida’s hands. “Use it, use it! It’s not mine anyway! It all belongs to her! You— you know who I mean.”
“Thank you.” Elpida wrapped the jacket around Howl’s abdomen, tying the sleeves together to apply pressure. Howl keened through her teeth and screwed her eyes shut.
“Worst field dressing you’ve ever done, Elps!”
“Wrong.”
“Ehh? The fuck? Worse than this?”
“I’ve done worse. Quio, when she got bit in the arm by Ipeka. I used toilet paper. Nunnus was impressed but horrified. Remember?”
“We were eight!” Howl spat.
“Still counts as a field dressing.”
Howl started to laugh; Elpida yanked the sleeves of the jacket as tight as she could, to slow the bleeding. Howl bucked and screamed with pain.
“I can’t carry you with only one arm,” Elpida said. “I need you to walk. Come on, Howl, up, up! Now!”
Elpida dragged Howl off the steel table and onto her feet; Howl wobbled, still affected by whatever drug the Covenanters had used on her, and fighting through the pain of the incision in her gut. But she stood, held upright by the sheer dogged resilience of pilot biology, and by Elpida’s arm beneath her shoulders. She clutched at the jacket around her abdomen; a thin trickle of blood was already sliding down her thighs.
Howl snorted. “Never thought I’d be happy to see Silico.”
The fight in the centre of the shattered camp had slowed from a whirlwind to a slugging match. The Silico was badly injured — missing several chunks of metal skin, the edges of each wound glowing red-hot as they tried to close; it had lost another two combat-arms, ripped off by Perpetua, lying coiled on the floor. More importantly the semi-visible rotating ring around the machine’s middle had been shattered, neutralising the close-in defence system it had used to knock out Lykke in their earlier engagement. Lykke was faring slightly better — launching herself at the opposing ball of teeth and claws and shivering bloody muscle, ripping strips off Perpetua’s hide and shovelling them into her gnashing maws. But Perpetua had figured out the trick of throwing Lykke back, by making her flesh pulse and glow with inner light, radiating heat and energy that blackened and cooked the surface of Lykke’s skin. Every time Lykke was thrown back and forced to re-assume her human disguise, she seemed more exhausted, shoulders hunching, her grin smeared with blood.
Elpida wasn’t certain how much of this was a reflection of reality, and how much was down to Perpetua’s elevated network permissions. Lykke had broken something inside the other Necromancer by forcing her to adopt a name, but Perpetua still held greater authority. Would this fight have gone the same way if it had been happening out in the physical world? Elpida wasn’t sure. She suspected Lykke’s physical form would have been destroyed quite quickly.
The Covenanters were all but gone; seven of them remained, holding their ground on the other side of the camp, clear of the fight in the middle. They didn’t seem to know what to do except waste ammo firing into the melee.
“Let’s go,” Elpida hissed. She helped Howl limp toward the shadows; Misane scurried after them. They had to get away from Perpetua, whatever that meant inside this network simulation.
Perpetua hurled Lykke off herself one more time; Lykke landed on human feet, skidding across the floor on bloody soles, steadying herself with one hand. Her dress was in tatters, leaving her almost naked. The Silico lurked at Lykke’s side, reading itself for another charge.
Perpetua flowed back into human form. She wore stained silver rags now, torn to pieces by the fight. Her silver-blonde hair was a wreck of blood. Her lips curled with disgust.
Lykke spat a laugh. “Had enough, kiddo!? Wanna go back to the pain—”
“Yes! I’ve had enough of this!” Perpetua shouted. Her voice cracked and peaked. “This is nothing but another farce. Given time I could — and will! — devour you whole, and this pet you’ve dredged from history. But you have sullied my purpose and I will not have it anymore.”
Lykke straightened up; the last of her dress fell from her naked body. She was covered in bruises and grazes and scrapes and blood. “Good,” she spat. “Now shoo, shoo—”
“This time you will not restrain me. I am still blessed where you are not. I will have my trophy for the feet of the throne.”
Perpetua turned away, toward Elpida and Howl.
Time seemed to slow as she strode across the mottled floor — the remnant of her control over the simulation. Behind the Necromancer, Lykke transformed back into a whirlwind of teeth and claws, surging to catch up; but each of Perpetua’s steps carried her ten paces, and Lykke flowed in sluggish slow motion. The Silico charged too, limbs reaching forward — but it moved as if sinking into a wall of tar. The remaining Covenanters opened fire again, but their bullets sailed through the air at a fraction of their natural speed.
Elpida dragged Howl toward the shadows, but her feet felt as if they were mired in deep mud; Howl shouted an insult, but her words were slowed to a garbled slur.
Misane leapt into Perpetua’s path, arms outstretched to either side, somehow moving as normal.
Perpetua halted, an eyebrow raised in surprise.
“They are not yours,” Misane said. Her words quivered, but something else spoke through her, with a voice that was not her own, a voice that made the air in the vast chamber quiver, the white lights flicker, and the floor vibrate like a drum of flesh. “None of these things belong to you.”
Perpetua cocked her head. “It seems I have drawn you out, little ghost. I did not expect it to be so easy.”
“You have done no such thing,” said Misane.
“What are you?”
Misane smiled. The girl was crying, her face shaking with terror, but the voice which spoke through her was strong and clear. “Something greater than you can comprehend.”
“I will deal with you momentarily.”
Perpetua went to step past Misane, but Misane blocked her way again. Perpetua stopped and looked down.
“Leave,” said Misane. “Or I will eject you.”
The Necromancer said, “You are faded and transparent. You are barely even a memory, so thin I cannot see what you are meant to be. You cannot risk appearing before me without this vessel. You are nothing.”
“I am more than you can possibly imagine,” said the voice of Telokopolis. “I am—”
Perpetua backhanded Misane across the face.
The girl went flying, blood spraying from her lips. She landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, with the distinctive crack-crunch of broken bones.
Perpetua turned back toward Elpida.
“From nothing to nothing,” she said, striding forward. “There is nothing but the end and the completion. Everything that has been is now dust. Everything that will be is unity.” She raised a hand; it turned to a bundle of knives. “Stop struggling. It only makes the gutting harder.”