The nameless ghost of Ooni’s sister — if a sister she truly was — stared down with cold serenity as she lowered her blade into Ooni’s throat.

  Ooni made no effort to avoid the slow and stately violation.

  She deserved this, didn’t she?

  Ooni felt the phantasmal sword-point part her skin like a whisper of silk, then slide through the tissue and cartilage of her trachea and oesophagus. The plates of her carapace armour did nothing to stop the incorporeal blade. The metal felt like ice as it entered her flesh. Her sister’s ghostly face was framed by the darkness of the passageway above, bracketed by the stone walls to either side. Ooni searched those eyes of marsh-light blue for a hint of mercy or forgiveness, or even simple satisfaction in revenge.

  She found nothing.

  “Sister … ” she wheezed through her torn throat.

  The ghost rammed the blade down into Ooni’s body, into her chest, scraping against the back side of her breastbone. The cutting edge sliced into the fluttering, feathered meat of her lungs. Her breath left her in a frozen gasp. Frigid tears blinded her sight.

  The sword bisected Ooni’s heart. She felt the muscle spasm once, coiling away from the frost like a dying slug.

  Then her heartbeat stopped.

  Ilyusha was raging at Ooni’s side, trying to disrupt the ghost, bludgeoning empty air with the butt of her shotgun; she let go of Ooni’s arm and swiped at the blade with her bionic claws, raking crimson razorblades through ghostly blue material, as if trying to drag the weapon out of Ooni’s flesh. But Ilyusha could touch neither ghost nor sword. She spat insults and invective, her voice ringing off the metal and stone of the narrow passageway, drowned out by the rush of blood in Ooni’s ears and the crashing chaos of the hurricane so far beyond the walls.

  The ghost paid Ilyusha no mind. Her lips moved. Ooni heard her sister’s voice clear as birdsong on a winter’s morning.

  “Revenge is sweeter than forgiveness,” said the ghost. “One day you will learn that.”

  The ghost ripped the sword out of Ooni’s chest and throat; the blade’s passing left behind a void of ice.

  Ooni crashed to her knees. Ilyusha grabbed for her, claws scraping off Ooni’s carapace armour, but Ooni made no effort to accept Ilyusha’s aid. She could not allow her evil to drag Ilyusha down with her; Ilyusha was still wounded, barely able to walk, and she would not be able to carry Ooni. This burden could not be shared.

  Besides, there was no point now; Ooni was dying.

  Guilt and shame forced her down.

  Ooni hit the floor with a long scrape of carapace plates against bare black metal. Her submachine gun clattered from her grip. Her skull bounced with a single loud crack. Her vision fluttered black, then returned as murk and mist; she was lying still, with one cheek flat against the ground. Her heart wasn’t beating — a loss she could never have imagined until then, but now just another step down into the inhuman state of nanomachine biology. Another piece of her long-forgotten mortality, stripped away by yet another death. Her throat and lungs were freezing cold, their heat stolen by that ghostly sword — no, by a just and proper revenge, by the price of Ooni’s transgression against a sister she could not recall.

  Ooni wanted to sob, but she could not find the strength.

  She deserved this. Her forgotten sister had done a service to Telokopolis, by cutting down Ooni’s evil before it had time to grow, to fester, to ruin—

  “Get the fuck up!” Ilyusha screeched. “Get— up—!”

  Ilyusha’s tail was still wrapped around Ooni’s waist, squeezing the carapace plates of her armour into her numb flesh. Ilyusha heaved, trying to drag Ooni back to her feet. A squeal and rasp of claws skittered across bare metal — Ilyusha staggering sideways with futile effort.

  “Nothing fucking wrong with you!” Ilyusha screamed. “Get up! Get up!”

  Ooni tried to tell Ilyusha it was better this way. Instead she merely gurgled.

  Ooni knew she was evil. She was not merely weak, or foolish, or unlucky; Elpida had been wrong about her. She had murdered her own sister in cold blood, long before her resurrection, a million years before the Death’s Heads, an eternity before any of this. She was a slayer of her own kin, even if she could not recall the details. Her filth would surely sully the innards of Telokopolis if she was allowed to live. The promise of Telokopolis was not for her, not for—

  “Fucking get the fuck up you fucking cunt!” Ilyusha screamed again, heaving at Ooni’s waist, armour plates creaking beneath the strength of her bionic tail. She howled with pain and effort. “Stand up! Get up! Fuck!”

  Ooni tried to apologise. She tried to tell Ilyusha to leave her behind. She felt cold drool pooling on the floor at the corner of her own lifeless mouth.

  It was better this way; in death she could not betray anybody ever again, especially Telokopolis. Even as her eyesight faded and her insides seized up, she clung to that truth — her death was better for Telokopolis, better for Elpida, better for all the others, even for Leuca. Ooni’s evil would be snuffed out here, drowned in guilt, not given space to grow in the guts of the very principle and promise which had saved her.

  Telokopolis was for everybody, but not for Ooni.

  If her death could serve, then she counted her second chance well spent.

  In her fading peripheral vision, the boots of her ghostly sister took a step back, blue phantasm soundless against the black metal floor. The sword flickered sideways, sheathed in a hidden place.

  “That’s correct, sister,” said the ghost. “There is no place for kin slayers. No place for you. Never. For ever you will wander—”

  Footsteps rang out.

  Far beyond the ghost, far down the passageway, another pair of boots appeared from the tomb-depth gloom, ringing against the black metal floor.

  Kuro.

  For the first time in Ooni’s afterlife, she was no longer afraid of Kuro.

  Ilyusha shouted a barrage of fresh insults: “You! Fucking coward bitch rotten cunt! This is for you, you fuck—” Ilyusha drowned out her own words with a double discharge from her shotgun — boom-boom! — but the gunfire was cut short by the slip-stagger metal-skitter of her claws against the floor, accompanied by a screech of frustration. Ilyusha’s tail dug into Ooni’s waist, dragging Ooni back a few inches. Ilyusha was so unsteady that the recoil of her own gun had almost sent her flying; only the anchor of her tail kept her in place, bound to Ooni’s dead weight.

  “Fuck!” Ilyusha screamed. “Fuck you, bitch! Take off that fucking metal and fight me! Chicken-shit dung-eating—”

  Click-buzz.

  Kuro’s voice projected from her suit’s external speakers, high and breathy as it echoed off the walls. “We had a deal, spirit. It’s done.”

  The ghost of Ooni’s sister did not turn around. Her ghostly blue boots glowed in Ooni’s peripheral vision. “Not I.”

  Ilyusha was still shouting. “Come down here and fight me, shit-gut coward reptile dogfucker—”

  Kuro shouted over her, voice twisting with girlish rage. “Take it back! We had a deal! Rescind the forgiveness! Take it back!”

  The ghost sighed. “That was not I, fool. You made a deal with another, not me. Leave us. You are interrupting my revenge.”

  Kuro snorted. “Then they’re both mine.”

  Her external comms went click as they cut out.

  Kuro launched into a sprint from a standing start, metal-clad boots ringing as they pounded against the floor, a black-clad blur in Ooni’s peripheral vision. Ilyusha was shouting — “Take off that fucking metal shit and fight me proper you fucking pig-bait coward—” — and Ooni felt her stagger sideways again, trying to brace her shotgun with unsteady limbs. The ghost did not turn, careless of Kuro’s headlong charge at her rear.

  Ooni’s eyes fluttered shut at last, sinking into the haze of the storm, coiling within her own body. She would be gone before Kuro reached her—

  “—shit down your fucking whore neck—”

  —safe in the embrace of death—

  “—coward can’t fight without your whole-body foreskin—”

  —safe from betraying Telokopolis—

  “—fuck you fuck you fuck you—”

  —safe from Kuro’s hands—

  “Think you’re gonna get me—” Ilyusha’s voice cracked “—again, huh!?”

  But Ilyusha would not be.

  Ooni forced her eyelids up, not quite dead. Kuro was going to kill Ilyusha, wasn’t she? The ghost didn’t care; Ooni was helpless, dying. In a few moments Ilyusha would be alone with Kuro, still injured, her bionic limbs weak and shaky, wracked by the pain of the reconnection process, while Kuro was strong and healthy and clad in ferromagnetic tomb-metal over her suit of powered armour.

  And Ilyusha was afraid. She hid it well, but that crack in her voice, Ooni had never heard anything like that before.

  Ooni had never heard Ilyusha afraid, had never heard anything less than absolute confidence from the little cyborg berserker. Anger and disgust, yes. Caution. Care. Grumpiness and agitation. Never fear. Never a crack in her voice.

  Ooni realised her earlier resolution had been choked by a torrent of guilt — that for Ilyusha, right now, she had to be Telokopolis.

  But Ooni was unworthy. Such arrogance, to think that she could ever be anything except the sum of all her filth. This proved it, this failure, this death. She was never even a sliver of Telokopolis, she was nothing.

  But still, she wished she could save Ilyusha.

  She wished she was worthy of—

  Telokopolis is forever, and I don’t want martyrs. It is only your worth which makes this possible.

  But this will burn you. I am sorry.

  On your feet!

  A flame exploded inside Ooni’s chest — a memory of home, garbled and jumbled, of a fire burning in a great hearth. Ooni’s sister clutching her shoulder, smiling at her from above — alive! whole! warm and fleshy and beside her, speaking soft words lost beyond time’s cruel shores.

  Up!

  Ooni surged to her feet, obeying the order; nothing could have resisted that voice, not even death. Her limbs were numb and her lungs were freezing cold, but her heart spasmed and jerked in a parody of beating. She wheezed for breath, rattling air down into her chest, though she had no need for oxygen. The ghost’s expression broke, electric blue eyes flying wide in shock. Ilyusha gaped and stared, even as she groped for Ooni’s arm, flailing for support.

  And behind the ghost, slamming down the corridor, Kuro was sprinting directly at the trio; a towering giant still clad in the metal of the tomb, boots ringing against the floor, head down, unstoppable.

  Aim your weapon.

  Ooni fumbled for her submachine gun; the strap was still around her shoulder, a stroke of luck. But this would be a futile gesture. The bullets would bounce right off the ferrofluid tomb-metal wrapped around Kuro’s armour.

  Ooni’s hands faltered. What was the point—

  I can only act with safety in the margins between your deeds. Aim your weapon. Pull the trigger.

  Clear orders steadied Ooni’s grip. She aimed the submachine gun at Kuro as best she could, braced against her hip. She squeezed the trigger and held it down, spraying bullets at Kuro’s bull-rush.

  Kuro burst through the ghostly form of Ooni’s sister, like an iron statue falling through mist.

  The bullets hit her, lead rounds plinking off her ferromagnetic second skin.

  And then the black metal parted like cobwebs and mist.

  Kuro’s tomb-metal wrapping fell away like a layer of sand before crashing waves, revealing the dark grey powered armour beneath, falling to join the floor, lying inert. Kuro skidded to a halt, one hand flicking upward to re-summon those black filaments from the floor and walls — but nothing happened. A split-second later her suit-mounted weapons sprouted from her arms and shoulders, muzzles and barrels flicking toward Ooni and Ilyusha. Her panic was short lived. She would still win, still kill them both. Ooni braced for the end.

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  Ilyusha cackled at the top of her lungs, dropped her shotgun, and pounced.

  Ooni gaped in surprise. Ilyusha had been so wounded that she couldn’t walk properly, still recovering from having all her limbs jammed back into their sockets. But now she leapt through the air in a graceful arc, razor-red claws extended, tail-tip whipping forward to strike Kuro across the helmet.

  Kuro dodged the tail-strike. Ilyusha landed right on top of her.

  “Haaaaaaaa!” Ilyusha screeched. “Got you, bitch!”

  Kuro tried to grab Ilyusha by the ankles, but Ilyusha dodged, clambering over the head and shoulders of Kuro’s powered armour, her claws dragging sparks across the exposed grey plates, scratching and slicing, gouging and cutting as she went. Kuro’s suit-mounted weapons twitched and jerked, trying to draw a bead on Ilyusha, but the cyborg was too close now, clinging to Kuro’s shoulders from behind. Ilyusha screeched and cackled, ramming her claws into seams and sockets, forcing Kuro to close up the weapon-ports or lose her guns. Ilyusha tore a small plasma-weapon off Kuro’s upper left arm before Kuro could retract it, then beat Kuro across the helmet with the broken stub of the gun. Kuro grabbed for her again, but Ilyusha threw away her prize with a clatter, wrapped her tail around Kuro’s legs, and dropped lower to avoid Kuro’s grasping hands. Kuro missed by inches, yanking out a few strands of Ilyusha’s blonde hair.

  “Got your fucking number this time, you rancid cunt!” Ilyusha screamed. “Thought you could get me again, huh?! Fuck you! This time your fucking limbs are coming off!”

  Ilyusha scurried back up Kuro’s rear as Kuro twisted on the spot. Kuro turned and tried to slam Ilyusha against the wall, but Ilyusha dipped sideways, hanging from Kuro’s side, anchoring herself with claws hooked around Kuro’s shoulder plate.

  Kuro reeled away from the wall. Ilyusha scrabbled to find a weakness, a joint in the powered armour, anywhere to ram her claws in deeper. She kicked with her bionic feet and scraped against the grey plate with her hands, but the powered suit was too well-made. Ooni knew from experience that Kuro was perfectly sealed inside the suit; she only needed to open her faceplate to eat. There was no feeding aperture, no waste-removal, no weapon-ports with access to the interior. For all Ilyusha’s mysterious sudden strength, even she could not punch through armour designed to turn away high-energy anti-tank rounds and protect the wearer from the weight of building collapses. Ilyusha had a read on Kuro’s fighting style now, but Ilyusha would eventually tire; the servo-muscles of Kuro’s suit could fight forever, even without power.

  Power?

  Ooni opened her mouth and shouted: “Underside of the backpack! Air intakes, one on either side!”

  Ilyusha’s tail jerked outward, then stabbed back in, ramming upward at the underside of Kuro’s suit-mounted reactor. Kuro wheeled, trying to throw Ilyusha off, but Ilyusha’s tail struck over and over, like a panicked scorpion, whipping in and out. Something broke with a loud metal crunch; Ilyusha’s tail-tip was stuck half inside the reactor-pack.

  Kuro was frantic, grabbing, twisting, trying to get Ilyusha off her, one hand raising and gesturing for her ferromagnetic armour to resurface.

  Ilyusha’s tail tore free with a screech of metal, then whipped outward again. She rammed it upward; this time it penetrated deep, over two feet of black-red bionic tail slamming upward into the backpack. A machine-squeal split the air — Kuro’s voice inside the suit, or some essential component of the reactor, Ooni couldn’t tell.

  Kuro lurched, staggering as if struck by a bull, shaking her helmet.

  Ilyusha howled with victory. “Ha—”

  My window closes.

  Ooni shouted, though she knew not why: “Illy! Get off her, now!”

  Ilyusha dropped from Kuro’s armour and scurried back — just in time. Kuro gestured with her right hand again; the black metal of the floor leapt at her command, ferromagnetic filaments rising in an iron-black wave to cover her armour with an imperishable second skin. Whatever interruption she had suffered was now over.

  Ooni levelled her submachine gun again.

  No. I cannot risk a second time.

  Ilyusha limped and lurched back to Ooni and scooped up her shotgun. She twisted to aim at Kuro, slumping against Ooni’s side, panting with the effort of the close-quarters combat.

  But Kuro was already stumbling away down the passage. She staggered, careening into one wall, then bouncing off the other with a deafening crash of powered armour against metal and stone. Ilyusha had done serious damage to the suit, but Kuro was still fast; she put her head down and picked up speed, hauling herself away, into the dark.

  A couple of seconds later Kuro vanished into the shadows. Her footsteps turned to echoes, then ceased altogether.

  Hurricane static filled the silence.

  “Gone?” Ilyusha snapped.

  Ooni nodded. “Y-yes. I think— think so. She wouldn’t feint like that. I think. We’ve driven her off. Until she … fixes herself.”

  “Unnnh.” Ilyusha let out a deep rasp of pain. Her legs gave way and she collapsed onto her backside. Her shotgun muzzle scraped against the floor. Ooni almost panicked again, but then she realised that Ilyusha was just exhausted, hissing through a grimace, her limbs quivering.

  Ooni sagged as well, blinking away tears of pain.

  Her right shoulder blazed where she had bruised herself earlier; she must have landed on it when she went down, further punishing the already pulped tissues. The throbbing agony radiated down her arm and into her right hand, raw against the inside of her stripped-down carapace glove. She tried to flex the fingers; skin peeled away from bare carapace plate, stinging hot. She winced and hissed, then used her left hand to remove the glove.

  Ooni’s right hand was scraped and grazed all over, wet and sticky with fresh blood, quivering with eroded nerve endings; she would have assumed that she’d scraped it inside the stripped-down glove when she’d fallen, and then again when she had used it to grip her submachine gun, heedless of further damage. She’d been so flushed with purpose that she hadn’t felt pain at the time.

  That’s what she would have assumed — but patches of her flesh were blackened, like she’d held the hand in a fire. Some of the blood was dark and crusted, as if cooked by open flame.

  The pain was incredible, dulled only by the shock of combat and the lingering numb cold in her extremities.

  “How?” said the ghost.

  The ghost of Ooni’s forgotten sister had not gone anywhere. She stood a few feet away, now unarmed, face lined with sorrow.

  Ooni remembered the sword.

  Her burned hand flew to her throat, but there was nothing. No wound, no blood, no gaping hole to excavate her chest cavity. Her heart felt odd, as if she had recovered from some terrible interruption, but it was beating strong now.

  Ilyusha growled, “Fucking ghost shit. What’chu fuckin’ looking at?”

  Ooni slid her glove back on — she didn’t know why, but she felt the need to hide the unexplained burns. “Illy … I-Ilyusha, how did you do that? Fight Kuro, I mean. I thought you were … ”

  Ilyusha broke into an exhausted smirk, down on the floor. “All fucked up? Yeah. I am. No fake. But I was putting it on worse. Got that dog-fucker shit-brains reptile out there to get real close. Close enough to rip her face off.” Ilyusha started to laugh, then keened through her teeth, limbs quivering with a fresh wave of pain. Her tail coiled up. “Still hurts like fuck, yeah. Ahhh … ”

  “Oh. Oh, w-wow. Uh … well done. Illy, you- you saved us.”

  “You too.” Ilyusha jerked her chin at where Kuro had vanished. “And how’d you do that shit?”

  Ooni considered saying ‘What shit?’ But she could not bring herself to play dumb. The animating presence she had felt was gone now. It seemed unreal, like an auditory hallucination, or a voice from a dream. Perhaps she was simply going mad. But the words had been undeniably real, and a miracle had happened, catalysed by her bullets.

  “I … I don’t know. There was a voice in my head. Orders. I followed them, shot when I was told to shoot. I didn’t know it would peel off Kuro’s metal. I didn’t, really! I-I don’t know what happened.”

  Ilyusha frowned, squinting her eyes. “Huh. Nice.” She jerked her head at the ghost. “What about her?”

  Ooni looked to the ghost of her sister.

  “You have taken away my revenge,” said the ghost. “This is not fair.”

  Ilyusha snorted. “She really your sister?”

  “I … ” Ooni shrugged, then winced — the gesture made her right shoulder burn inside. “I have no idea. Ghost … sister? What is your name?”

  The ghost did not answer.

  The ghost had Ooni’s face, or at least something very close; if she was not real, then she was a marvellous fake. Had Ooni really committed a murder she no longer remembered, before this nanomachine afterlife, before the weakness and surrender of her time with the Death’s Heads? Her heart and her memory told her no. The clarity of the orders from nowhere told her no. She had shed the guilt and shame like ash washed away in clean rain. She could easily accept that this was nothing more than a Necromancer trick — or Kuro’s trick, though Kuro had seemed betrayed as well, frustrated in some confused deal she’d made with another ghost.

  Ooni could be clean again, if only she denied this sister’s accusation as a lie.

  Ooni decided otherwise.

  “B-but,” she said, answering Ilyusha though she spoke to the ghost. “I think it’s better if I accept she’s real.”

  “Mm?” Ilyusha grunted.

  Ooni took a step toward the ghost. She reached for the face, so much like her own, but her right hand spasmed with pain. The translucent figure stepped backward, ghostly features deepening with sorrow and hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” Ooni said. “I … I don’t remember you. I don’t know if you were real, or … or a dream, or … I don’t remember. But I’m sorry. If I hurt you. I’m sorry. I’ll … I’ll make it up to … to whoever I can. I’ll be better, I promise. I promise. You … you should have a place in Telokopolis too.”

  “I will hate you forever,” said the ghost.

  Ooni tried to shrug, then swallowed a cry of pain. Her right shoulder hurt so much, worse than before, like a fire was eating her flesh from the inside. “T-that … that’s okay. I know that I won’t ever be forgiven. I don’t … deserve forgiveness. But that’s why I’m saying all this. If I live, I can help. If I’m dead, that’s just an escape. It’s … cowardice. Telokopolis, it’s for everyone. Even the dead. Even the guilty. Even the monsters. R-right?”

  The ghost shook her head. “You soothe yourself with words you don’t believe.”

  Ooni smiled through cold tears. “No. I’m going to do this for you, even if I don’t remember you. That’s the only answer. It’s the only right thing to do. Telokopolis is forever.”

  The ghost stared with wounded eyes.

  “If … ” Ooni said. “If you are truly my sister, I don’t remember you. And I don’t remember what I did to you. It’s all lost. This … this nanomachine afterlife, all this time, it’s erased so much. If you’re my sister, I … I want that. Whatever came between us, whatever I did, I … I love you.”

  The ghost closed her eyes before they brimmed over with tears. “I hate you.”

  “Doesn’t change a thing.”

  The ghost began to fade, the blue glow of her body rejoining with the shadows.

  Ooni reached for her again, then hissed with the pain in her right hand. “Wait! Wait, why are you here, where did you come from, how—”

  “Go down this corridor,” the ghost whispered. “Left, left, then right, then left, then straight ahead. There is an archway blocked by metal. It will open for you.”

  “Wait, what—”

  The ghost faded, and then was gone.

  Ooni lowered her hand. The tears were from pain, nothing else.

  Silence returned to the passageway, filled with the muffled static of the hurricane, of whipping winds and pounding hail. Ooni stared into the shadows, hoping the ghost might return.

  Down on the floor, Ilyusha grunted. “Wanna trust that?”

  Ooni wiped away her own tears. “Maybe. Maybe not. I-I have no idea. I don’t even know if that was real, o-or some kind of Necromancer trick, or … ”

  “Huh,” Ilyusha grunted. “Better than waiting for that big armoured bitch to come back.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Ilyusha glanced up at Ooni, giving her a strange, squint-eyed look. “That voice in your head got anything to say?”

  Ooni swallowed. “No. And it’s not a voice. Not exactly. Just a … a feeling.”

  Ilyusha snorted. “Got any funny feelings, then?”

  Ooni waited, hoping for orders.

  None came.

  She shook her head. “We may as well follow the ghost’s directions, I suppose. Like you said, it’s better than waiting for Kuro to come back. And we don’t have any other directions, this place is a maze, it makes no sense. Can you walk?”

  “Eh,” Ilyusha waved one hand, then retracted her crimson claws. “Help me up.”

  Ooni helped Ilyusha back to her feet. Ilyusha was even more unsteady than before the fight with Kuro. Her limbs shook all over; every exertion of muscle seemed to bring her a fresh twinge of pain. She cursed and spat and hissed through clenched teeth. She wrapped her tail tight around Ooni’s waist again and looped one hand through Ooni’s left arm, shotgun wedged against her opposite hip. Her crimson claws scraped against the floor, but she held her footing.

  “Are you sure?” Ooni asked. “I could … try to carry you. I-I don’t think I have the strength, but I’ll try, I’ll try—”

  “I can walk. Sorta. Just don’t fucking lie down again, yeah?”

  Ooni managed a small laugh. That helped. “Right,” she said. “Right you are, Illy. No lying down on the job.”

  She tightened her grip on Ilyusha’s arm and made sure she had a good hold on her submachine gun; her right hand burned inside as if a fire had been lit in her flesh, but she could just about hold the grip on her weapon and get her finger on the trigger.

  “Left left right left straight,” Ilyusha croaked. “Then a door. That it?”

  “That was it, I believe.”

  They stepped forward together, plunging back into the bowels of the tomb.

  Ooni was braced for Kuro to reappear at any moment, looming from the shadows. She gripped her submachine gun as tightly as she dared, right hand on fire, shoulder smouldering, dragging Ilyusha down the narrow passageway. Ilyusha had exaggerated — she could barely walk now; that burst of strength and speed had cost her a great deal of additional pain, and perhaps done more damage to the sockets of her bionic limbs.

  Hurricane winds howled beyond the walls. Hailstones fell like waves of distant gunfire. Ilyusha hissed and grunted in Ooni’s grip; she couldn’t even keep the shotgun upright. Ooni’s right arm felt like it was going to fall off.

  Left at the first junction, deeper into passageways of stone, all identical, all alike. Left again at the next, and all was the same. If the ghost wanted to kill Ooni anyway, then this would be a perfect time for a trap. But there was no other path. No way out but to believe in mercy.

  Another junction loomed out of the dark, the same soaring walls of stone and metal, identical to the ones they’d passed. Ooni dragged Ilyusha to the right.

  Ilyusha was sagging hard by the time they reached the fourth junction.

  “Left, left here.” Ooni hissed, though the passageway they turned into looked just the same as all the rest. “We must be there, we must almost be—”

  Clack-clack.

  The sound of metal boots on metal floor, far to Ooni’s rear.

  Click-buzz.

  Ooni cringed. “No no no no—”

  Kuro’s voice rang out, echoing off the walls and the distant stone ceiling. “Ooni. Ooni, I’m going to eat you. I’m going to start with your face.”

  Ooni’s feet faltered. She wanted to turn around, to aim her gun and fire, even though she knew that would do nothing.

  Kuro’s words floated out of the dark: “This time I’ll take more than limbs from your little friend. I’ll take her guts out and wear them until the storm passes. Ooni. Ooni. Stop running, Ooni. Stop—”

  Ilyusha jabbed Ooni in the ribs. “Keep fucking going!”

  “There’s nothing here!” Ooni whispered. The corridor ahead was just empty shadows. “There’s nothing!”

  “Keep going anyway!”

  Behind them, Kuro’s boots were thumping against the metal floor, drawing closer with every step.

  Ooni let out a wracking sob and forced herself not to turn and look. She dragged Ilyusha forward, into the shadows, praying the ghost had been telling the truth. But even if she had, what help was a metal door? Kuro would catch up before they could get inside. She would break it down. There was no place to hide, no refuge, no escape from—

  A dark mouth loomed out of the shadows ahead.

  Ooni almost staggered to a halt. But Ilyusha hissed, “Fuck yeah!”

  The mouth was the barrel of a gun — an autocannon, set into an emplacement on the wall. Ooni dragged herself and Ilyusha forward. More guns emerged from the darkness, mounted in swivel-sockets and armoured domes, jutting from the walls or hanging from the shadow-shrouded ceiling far above. Autocannons, plasma weapons, great rotary machine guns, laser lances, and more that Ooni could not name.

  The guns twitched as Ooni and Ilyusha passed beneath and between, but they did not swivel to take aim.

  The hidden defences aimed down the corridor instead, jerking around on near-silent servo-motors, glowing with targeting lights, clicking and clacking as they readied to unload themselves upon an intruder.

  Kuro’s footsteps slowed, then ceased.

  Ilyusha snorted. “Not dumb enough to run into the guns. Pity. Bitch.”

  Ooni was wide-eyed with disbelief. What was protecting them? The tomb itself? The gravekeeper? Had Kagami and Pheiri and the others somehow gotten control of the tomb systems? Or was this something else — the mysterious voice inside her head?

  The corridor terminated suddenly, as if the shadows had coalesced into solid matter.

  A door, twelve feet tall, set in an arch, all made from the same black tomb-metal that Kuro had commanded.

  Ooni and Ilyusha halted together, huddled before the arch.

  “She said it would open … ” Ooni whispered. She looked back down the corridor, past the bristling throat lined with guns. “We’re safe from Kuro here, I-I think, unless she tests the guns and they don’t actually fire. Some of them looked old, or dusty. I-I hope they really are loaded, I hope—”

  Ilyusha raised her shotgun and banged on the metal door.

  Ooni winced. The sound was like a black bell inside her guts.

  “Open the fuck up!” Ilyusha shouted.

  The door parted like a waterfall split by a rock, black metal rolling aside in fluid waves. The chamber within was dark and full of machinery — black glass blocks lit from within by tiny lights, strange scrolling screens made of liquid metal upon the walls, and coils of pipe winding across the ceiling.

  At the rear of the large chamber lay half a zombie, propped inside an upright resurrection coffin, flesh wired into the machines.

  Ooni squinted. “Is that … another interface for the gravekeeper?”

  “Huh,” Ilyusha grunted. “Let’s go say hi.”

  Ooni nodded, then helped Ilyusha limp over the threshold.

  The black metal door quivered shut behind them, like water flowing free. The automatic guns shivered and twitched, tracking the shadows.

  The corridor was silent once again, except for the haze of the hurricane so far away, and the cautious tread of Kuro’s boots on naked stone.

  not going beyond that - the arc is almost over, I promise. You'll see why things are a little extended, soon enough!

  The Lovers, and - tarot-card style illustrations of Vicky and Kagami, and then Uusop (the mysterious swordswoman who Thirteen Arcadia met out in the wilds). Both of these pieces are by the very dedicated and talented Spring! Thank you so much, these are a delight!

  a single chapter ahead, about 6k words. Behind the scenes I'm plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

  TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!