“This is not a crisis of command,” said Elpida. “That much is clear to me now.”

  She paced as she spoke. Exertion had set her thoughts in motion. She wanted to maintain the momentum.

  She continued. “The problem initially appeared to me as a crisis of command, but that was a mistake. Why? Because that’s the only set of standards I have to judge myself. I could tell there was a flaw in my thinking, in my self-discipline, or in something else I couldn’t quite identify. So I applied the only intellectual framework I have, and attempted to critique myself.”

  She reached the far wall of the cadre’s rec room. This wasn’t the real rec room, of course. Elpida reached out with her left hand and brushed her fingertips against the wall. Did the real version of this room still exist, deep inside the dry and echoing shell of the real Telokopolis, empty and quiet for uncounted years? If the cadre’s private quarters had survived the extermination of the cadre, then doubtless the rooms had been repurposed. But the bones would have endured.

  This was merely a software ‘dream’. A simulation, generated inside the private network space of Elpida’s own nanomachine biology. But it was a welcome retreat, real or not. Memory had helped untangle her mind.

  Elpida turned around sharply and resumed pacing in the opposite direction, back across the width of the rec room, bare feet padding on the warm floor. The big screen lay blank, the sofas were cold. Ventilation ducts whispered with recycled air — which could not quite erase the sharp tang of blood and the salt-rich scent of sweat and mucus.

  Each step tugged at the bruises on Elpida’s abdomen, and threatened to chafe her shorts against her sore and tender groin.

  “It’s how I was raised, what I was trained to do,” she said. “It’s the way I solve most problems, and usually it works. But it’s simply not applicable to this. It led me to an erroneous conclusion — namely, that the only way to unpick this problem was to seek external guidance. At a loss for how to proceed, I wanted to pass the question further up a chain of command that does not exist. Telokopolis is not my ‘commander’. Even if she does ‘exist’ in some kind of incorporeal form, as a ghost in the network, she cannot tell me what to do, and I should not expect such clear instructions and orders.” Elpida paused and swallowed, then forced herself to admit: “However much I might desire that clarity.”

  Elpida continued to pace; she passed the big table. The wooden chess set was still laid out there, just as it had been when she had first found herself awake and lucid in this software dream. She stared at the pieces as she passed, then carried onward, toward the opposite wall.

  “So, if my problem is not a crisis of command, what is it?”

  Elpida fell silent for a while, then stopped, facing the wall. She glanced down at the stump of her right arm, terminated at the elbow. A software mirror of reality, of the wound she had taken removing a bomb-vest from a girl she had never met before.

  And why had she done that?

  “My problem is a paradox,” she announced — then turned around, pacing back the other way again.

  Elpida continued: “I have two conflicting priorities, and I cannot reconcile them. Conflicting, but not opposed. That’s very important. If these priorities were simply in opposition, I wouldn’t have this problem. I would figure out which priority matters more and I would follow it. If only this were that simple. Instead, these two priorities are mutually reinforcing. They rely on each other. They cannot be cleanly separated.”

  She halted next to the table and the chess set. She reached out and plucked a piece from the board — the white city, a simple spire-like representation of the physical body of Telokopolis. This was the same piece she had picked up earlier, when she had mused upon her status as a blind pawn in a game played by powers she could not see.

  Elpida held the white city in her left fist, cradled within the cage of her bruised knuckles.

  “Comrades, and cause,” she said. “Cadre, and Telokopolis. They cannot be parted. To prioritise one at the expense of the other is to abandon both. And that’s no different to what I did before. It’s the same mistake I made when I was alive.”

  Elpida’s momentum was running out; she felt both invigorated and exhausted by thinking via speaking. She nudged a chair out from the table with one foot, turned it around to face the rear of the room, and sat down.

  “It’s so obvious to me now,” she said, staring at the white city piece in her fist. Edges of lacquered wood pressed into the skin of her palm and fingers. “I feel like my mind is clear for the first time in weeks, maybe months. Perhaps since I was resurrected. Or perhaps since … before that.”

  Lykke groaned.

  “Uhhhh?”

  The Necromancer was laid out on the floor, lying on her back halfway between the rec room door and the nearest sofa. Elpida had propped a cushion beneath Lykke’s head, to spare her tender skull. The gesture had seemed only right, in the aftermath, but now Elpida thought it faintly ridiculous.

  Lykke was a big mess.

  Her shimmering white party dress was stained with blood all down the front — mostly from a massive nosebleed — and by smears of dried vaginal mucus in several other places; the latter belonged to both herself and Elpida. The crescent-and-double-line symbol of Telokopolis which she had daubed on her chest with a pinprick of her own blood was smeared and blurred by crimson struggle, almost blotted out by the more recent stains. She’d lost one of her delicate white lace gloves somewhere, and Elpida couldn’t figure out where it had gone. The other glove was torn and twisted, bare fingernails poking out from the first two digits. The matching white choker from around Lykke’s throat now lay on the floor, neatly snapped by one hard yank from behind. The silken ribbons around her ankles and calves had survived intact, but they looked a bit rumpled. Her golden ponytail had come undone, bright tresses fanned out in a sunburst halo against the floor.

  She was bruised all over; the initial marks Elpida had left on her flesh were outshone by a dozen more. Her sharp and elegant face was puffy, one eye squinted half-shut as a dark bruise blossomed around the socket, painting her pale skin the violet blush of ashen sunset. Blood was dried all down her chin, nose knocked crooked, lips split. Her throat was a map of Elpida’s hand prints, trailing off into addendums down her collarbone and upper chest — smaller bruises, finger marks, a single row of tooth indents.

  Beneath the thin gauze of her dress her belly was a wide canvas of purples, pinks, greens, and yellows, all spilling outward. The bruises had matured during the handful of hours that she and Elpida had napped on the floor in the aftermath of their coupling. She bore additional bruises on her hips and thighs, and a nasty one right down on her left ankle. Elpida couldn’t even recall how she’d inflicted that particular wound.

  But Lykke sported no broken bones, except for the nose. Elpida had made sure of that; she would never have broken one of her sister’s bones by accident, after all.

  Though she suspected Lykke had helped with that. She suspected Lykke had bent the rules she’d set herself.

  “Unnh?” Lykke repeated.

  She gazed up at Elpida, emerald eyes still lost in afterglow bliss, a dazed smile on her battered lips.

  Elpida wet her own lips; that stung, she had a split there too. “I meant … perhaps since before I and my sisters were murdered. This might be the most clear-headed I’ve been since then, since my own death. That’s what I meant.”

  “Unnnn,” Lykke grunted.

  Elpida straightened up in the chair. She winced, placed the white city piece between her legs, then adjusted her black shorts. Her groin ached.

  “And,” she added, “that means I think I can solve this problem I’ve been backing myself into.”

  Lykke’s smile widened. Her eyes fluttered shut. She croaked: “There.”

  “There?”

  “There you go. All better now. Isn’t that so much better?”

  Elpida nodded. She opened her mouth to carry on exploring her thoughts, then reminded herself that she was still talking to a Necromancer.

  Elpida eased back in her chair.

  Lykke was correct — Elpida did feel much better. Fixed. Cured. Whole. Her analytical faculties were unclouded.

  After beating Lykke into squirming, writhing, unstable submission — whatever that meant for a Necromancer projected inside the network — and then fucking her senseless, Elpida’s mind was clear.

  The fight had not actually taken very long; Lykke had lasted about thirty five minutes in total, from the first impact of Elpida’s fist against her eye socket to the final heaving orgasm as Lykke’s slender body had twisted and bucked beneath Elpida’s unyielding attention. And Lykke wasn’t the only one with bruises; she had put up a real fight, as best she could in that slender body, and had obviously enjoyed every moment of the process — even when Elpida had straddled her, pinned her down, and held her face against the floor.

  Elpida wouldn’t have enjoyed it otherwise. She would have gotten less than nothing from forcing herself on an unwilling partner. Her furious coupling with Lykke had only worked because the Necromancer had wanted it as much as Elpida had.

  Perhaps more, in fact. Elpida wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Still, Lykke had folded quickly, and gone down easy. Elpida had one bruise around her right eye, a deep ache in her belly where Lykke had managed to get fists and feet into her gut several times, and a few superficial bumps and grazes scattered across the rest of her body from Lykke’s ineffectual but spirited enthusiasm. She also had a series of shallow bite marks on her shoulders and collarbone, delivered right through her black t-shirt. Lykke was a biter. Elpida had almost laughed at that.

  Elpida also had a very sore groin. Down there, Lykke had given as good as she’d got, knuckles and all.

  After the fight — and the fucking — they’d both collapsed into a nap, directly on the warm floor of the rec room, spent and satisfied. They’d both woken up a handful of hours later. Or what felt like a handful of hours, simulated.

  And Elpida’s mind was clear.

  “There I go,” Elpida echoed. “What does that mean?”

  Down on the floor, Lykke rose into a sitting position. She gasped as she sat up, one hand fluttering across the landscape of bruises on her belly, another to the mass of purple hand prints and deep-tissue contusions on her throat. Her gasp melted into a soft sigh. Eventually she got herself upright, swaying back and forth, legs haphazardly crossed, white dress riding up her hips. Her eyes fluttered open, gentle green glow beneath her lids.

  “There you … go,” Lykke murmured. “Or come.” She hummed a little close-mouthed giggle. “I explained all this to you before we started, didn’t I? You’ve been so pent up. Sexually frustrated. Lacking proper release. All you needed was a good hard dose of reality, zombie— no!” Lykke’s eyes flew wide, though her left struggled against the bruised socket. “Elpida! Elpida! Elpida! Let it be your name, nothing else. Nothing else will pass my lips again. Not after this.”

  Elpida snorted. “All I needed was reality? That’s ironic.” She gestured with her left hand and the stump of her right arm. “In case you’ve forgotten, this is software.”

  Lykke mewled and pouted. “You know what I meant. And please, don’t sully this.” Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “Please.”

  Elpida restrained another snort. Lykke’s appeal to the sanctity of her afterglow appeared genuine.

  Necromancer or not, fake tears or real emotion, Lykke had done as she said she would. She had not transformed her flesh during the fight, but had seen the whole thing through as Elpida’s ostensible equal. She had not rapidly healed her bruises, but continued to pretend they were real. She had fought and fucked on a level field.

  “Alright.” Elpida raised her left hand. “You kept your promise. I respect that. And … ”

  Lykke leaned forward, arms shaking as she propped up her weight. “Yes? Yes?!”

  “Thank you.”

  Lykke broke into an infatuated smile, brimming tears rolling down bruised cheeks, gazing up at Elpida with a fragile tenderness. “Was it good for you, too?”

  “Yes,” Elpida said. She took a deep breath, adjusted her aching groin inside her shorts, and picked up the white city piece again. “Though you don’t compare to any of my sisters. Nobody does. Nobody could replace even a single one of them. But you were … adequate.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Lykke shifted closer, dragging her bruised and quivering body across the floor. “I’m your first, aren’t I?”

  “What?” Elpida looked up from the chess piece. “No. My cadre, all my sisters, we all—”

  “Your first beyond your incestuous little pack, I mean.” Lykke paused and swallowed. “I-I meant no offence by that—”

  Elpida shook her head. “Whatever. You’re not my first anything, Lykke.”

  Lykke smiled. “But I did uncork you. I uncorked your mind. Untangled your knot, with my insides.”

  “You did.” Elpida tightened her grip on the white city piece, and hardened her heart. “But I’m not going to suddenly trust you, Lykke.”

  Lykke’s face fell. Her lips quivered apart. “What? But … ”

  “You must understand that.”

  “But we … we … we fucked. We fucked!”

  “We did,” Elpida said. She forced herself to look at Lykke’s crocodile tears. “And you got what you wanted. Pain, pleasure, me beating the shit out of you. Whatever it was you were after in this arrangement, I’ve given it to you. You and I have used each other. What difference does trust make?”

  “I kept my promise! I kept it! This—” She held out her arms, showing her bruises and her flushed skin. “All this—”

  “Lykke. Necromancer. You’re not really bruised. That isn’t your physical body.” Elpida gestured at herself — or tried to, waving the stump of her right arm. “And this isn’t mine.”

  Lykke laughed softly and rolled her eyes, as if Elpida was being coy; her distress vanished in an instant. “Oh, little zombie, you can’t pretend this doesn’t count just because we did it inside your mind. My soul is bruised, marked by the imprint of your knuckles and fingers, with indents and creases that I will never be able to smooth out.” Lykke bit her lip and shook her head. “You can’t understand what you’ve done to me. There’s no going back after this, not for me.” She smiled, enjoying the husky crackle of her own voice. “I am a ruined woman now. Impregnated with thoughts I was never supposed to have. You’ve slipped a piece of fruit between my lips, so sweet and juicy, and I could not help but bite down. Ahhhhh.” Lykke sighed and closed her eyes again, drifting off to the pleasures of her bruised and battered body.

  Elpida stared at Lykke for a long time. When the Necromancer did not lapse into further rambling, Elpida said: “So this really is permanent, for you?”

  “Mmm?” Lykke cracked her eyes open.

  “Those bruises around your eyes, they’ve already started to heal faster than they should in reality. How can you expect me to believe this is permanent?”

  Lykke’s smile turned teasing. “I already explained. But I don’t expect you to understand. Why try? After all, why concern yourself with me when you have been so beautifully uncorked?” Lykke fluttered her eyelashes. “You are perfect, little zombie. In the moment of climax, with my fist in your gut, your hand around my throat. I have met a celestial being, and I have been elevated.”

  Elpida ignored the absurd compliment, but she took the practical advice. She nodded slowly and stood back up, flexing her bruised and weary muscles. “Good point. I need to finish unpacking my thoughts.”

  “You do, you do,” crooned Lykke. “Where were you?”

  Elpida resumed pacing. This time she walked in a slow circle, around where Lykke sat on the floor. She tucked her left arm behind her back and let the stump of her right hang by her side.

  “The paradox of comrades and cause,” she said. “Cadre and Telokopolis.” She frowned down at Lykke. “And why do you care? You didn’t earlier. You made that clear.”

  Lykke had closed her eyes and turned her face toward the ceiling. She was smiling, humming softly, swaying gently in a little circle.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps you have fucked it into me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Hm!”

  Elpida paced on, circling the rear half of the rec room. She briefly considered not saying another word. If this encounter had been a ruse to gain intel or corrupt her mind somehow, then speaking more of her thoughts aloud would only play into Lykke’s hands. But Lykke had already proved that she could pick up and read pieces of Elpida’s memories and thoughts, just by being present in this software dream. If Elpida was going to be compromised, then it was already too late. And if this was not a ruse, then she may as well keep using Lykke for her own ends.

  “In life,” Elpida said, “I prioritised my cadre, my sisters. I put their cohesion and their safety first, above all other considerations. When the isolationists started making gains in the Civitas, I kept us out of it, out of politics. I kept the cadre neutral, apolitical, standing apart. When the politics turned ugly, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters started shouting slogans on street corners, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters took their oaths of solemn and complete humanity, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters spoke about sealing the city within itself, I kept us out of it. When the Covenanters planned on purging the expeditionists, I kept us out of it. When they called us … whatever they called us, and they called us a lot of things, I kept us out of it. I believed that standing back would keep us out of harm’s way. I thought that even the Covenanters would not be so stupid as to get rid of the pilots and the combat frames altogether, even if they wanted the program itself gone. I believed we would simply become part of the Legion. That was the worst case scenario.”

  “And you failed,” Lykke murmured.

  Elpida nodded. “Yes. I abandoned the cause to protect my cadre. The cause had been given to us by Telokopolis herself, though I don’t think I really understood that at the time. The pilot genome was crafted with assistance from the city herself, I know that much. The combat frames too, the designs came from the city’s own internals. We were her children, her daughters. And I abandoned that cause, the expeditionist cause, and that led to the murder of all my sisters.”

  “A poor choice.”

  Elpida swallowed. “Yes. The wrong decision.”

  Elpida’s chest tightened at the memory; she bottled it up, forced her back straight. Grief was not her current purpose. She turned the white city piece over and over in her left hand, tucked behind the small of her back.

  “And now, here, in this nanomachine afterlife? At least since Pheiri, and Howl, and Thirteen Arcadia, I’ve been doing the opposite. As long as one of us is up and breathing, Telokopolis stands. Telokopolis is forever. Telokopolis is for all. And I have been willing to put every member of my … my … ” Elpida swallowed hard. “My new cadre, in danger. I have been risking them, for the sake of Telokopolis. For the sake of a whole that is greater than the sum of all our parts. Even my own death wouldn’t matter, not compared to that. If my own death was the price of my companions carrying Telokopolis onward, I would accept it. Anything for Telokopolis. For something more than this … this end. Anything for hope.”

  “You love her,” Lykke murmured.

  Elpida glanced down Lykke. “Pardon?”

  Lykke was still facing the ceiling, eyes closed, swaying gently. “You speak of her as a woman. You love her.”

  “What would you know about love, Necromancer?”

  A shrug. “Mmm.”

  Elpida paced onward. “Anyway, that’s the paradox. I cannot abandon the cause, or my comrades will be destroyed. Our obligate cannibalism proved that. The need to sustain ourselves through hunting and murder almost tore us apart. If I had not had the principles of Telokopolis to cling to, I do not think I would have endured. But I cannot abandon the safety and solidarity of the cadre either. I cannot treat them as pawns to be used and sacrificed, not even for the sake of Telokopolis. That goes against my every instinct. Above all else, I have to protect my sisters, old or new, in my previous life or this new undeath.”

  “An impasse,” Lykke whispered.

  Elpida stopped in front of Lykke. “It was. But no longer.”

  Lykke opened her eyes and blinked up at Elpida. “You have solved your paradox, so quickly?” She smiled. “A little pain is like magic, no?”

  “The answer was in front of me all along. I was ignoring it.”

  Lykke pursed her blood-stained lips and gestured at her chest. “M-me?”

  Elpida sighed. “No. My comrades.”

  Lykke blinked several times. She hadn’t kept up. Elpida wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting — this was a Necromancer, after all, no matter the form she took. A post-human feedback loop, crammed into an imitation of a woman. She might fuck good, but she didn’t understand people.

  Elpida explained. “It isn’t my decision to make. That’s why seeking an answer from some network remnant of Telokopolis would make no difference. Nobody can make this decision for me, because it doesn’t belong to me. It’s down to them — my comrades, my new cadre. Each and every one of them, as individuals. I’ve assumed command, and I’ve gotten them this far, but it’s been ad-hoc and desperate, done out of necessity rather than proper evaluation of our options. I’ve been holding up Telokopolis as an ideal, to keep them intact, and some of them are fully committed. But I need them all to think. It is up to them, one by one, of their own accord, if they wish to risk themselves for the cause of Telokopolis.” Elpida raised her chin. “It is not up to me.”

  Elpida left an important addition unspoken. She recognised now that this was what Shilu had been trying to explain to her earlier, in their little debate up on Pheiri’s hull. This was no different to Shilu’s ‘mass line’ — a methodology for combining leadership and mass action.

  But she didn’t say that part out loud. A mention of Shilu might drive Lykke to distraction.

  Lykke tilted her head. “And you will shed the ones who do not follow?”

  Elpida frowned. “No.”

  “Then—”

  “Telokopolis is for all. Even those who are too afraid. Even those who don’t think it’ll work. Even those who hate it. No exceptions.”

  Lykke puffed out a little sigh from her bloody lips. “Even me?”

  Elpida almost laughed — then stopped herself. “Are you serious?”

  Lykke shrugged, moaning softly at the way the gesture pulled on her bruises. “I don’t know. What if I am?”

  Elpida considered her answer very carefully. She was under no illusions that her sexual prowess had somehow rewritten Lykke’s entire allegiance and motivation structure. But she couldn’t rule out the possibility that the Necromancer was doing more than merely teasing. What if Elpida had planted a seed here, without realising it?

  At the very least, Lykke would be useful, if Elpida could keep stringing her along.

  “Then I don’t know, either,” she said. “It’s not up to me, Necromancer.”

  Lykke let out a little sigh again, forlorn this time. “As you say, zombie. And what about this need for Telokopolis herself? Are you still determined to go meet her?”

  “No.” Elpida shook her head. “If a glimpse was all she could show me, then that’s enough. I don’t need proof. I have all the proof I need, right here.” She raised her left hand and tapped her ribs, just over her heart. “I don’t expect you to comprehend. Besides, you may be correct. Perhaps what we saw was not Telokopolis at all. And that changes nothing.”

  Lykke tilted her head to one side. “Oh, but you’d go after her if you could. Wouldn’t you?”

  Elpida held Lykke’s gaze, then nodded. “I would. I’m still fighting blind. I don’t know who or what is on my side, beyond my cadre. I can’t see the contours of this conflict in the network. Unless you’re willing to tell me.”

  Lykke shrugged, looking supremely bored by this question. “I was sent to tidy up Shilu. A fun little diversion. I don’t care to ask why.”

  “Mm,” Elpida grunted. Lykke was useless for real intel, even if she wasn’t pretending. “Which is why I would go after what we saw earlier, if I could. But I can’t. This … retreat, in here, it’s the closest I’ve ever come to betrayal. My cadre needs me. Howl needs me. Pheiri needs me. I should be with them. It’s time I woke up.”

  “Awwww!” Lykke tutted. “So soon?”

  “If you try to keep me here, Necromancer—”

  “Lykke, Lykke!” Lykke purred, then made a sad little noise down in her bruised throat. “Please, aren’t we at least that close now?” She sighed, suddenly resigned. “Oh, I suppose this was more than I could hope for. And no, zombie. I have no power to keep you inside your own head, however much I’d love another round, or two, or three. Your own presence here is all your doing. You can leave any time you like.”

  “How?”

  Lykke laughed, a scratchy, rubbed-raw sound. “How should I know? It’s not my network. Probably go lie back down in bed with that … ” Her lips twisted. “That goblin of yours.”

  “Howl?”

  Lykke’s expression soured. She flicked her fingers. “Yes. That.”

  Elpida nodded. “Alright then. Lykke … thank you. If this isn’t some kind of trap. Even if you don’t understand. Thank you.”

  Lykke smiled and shrugged, then winced and moaned at the way her shoulders pulled on her bruises. “No tearful goodbyes for you and I, please, Elpida. In fact.” Lykke lit up, then raised a hand. “Help me to my feet? I want to come with you. I would love to see you lie down and close your eyes and return to your boring zombie friends. Hmhm!” She pulled a nasty smile. “What would they think of you now, if they knew what you’d gotten up to with a Necromancer? Scandal and shunning!”

  Elpida looked at Lykke’s hand. “Really?”

  “Really! This isn’t some kind of trick. I merely want my face to be the last thing you see before you slip back to all that tedium out there. A little reminder of what you’re missing.” Lykke mimed a kiss. “Mwah!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, please!” Lykke pouted. “You said ‘thank you’! Can’t you indulge just one little request? Or are you going to leave me here on the floor, leaking fluids and spanked raw? Wham bam, thank you ma’am? Can’t you at least let me see you to the door, give me one last little kiss? I know we’re not going to do this ever again. I just know it. Let me have this fantasy of a proper farewell, won’t you?”

  Elpida sighed. “We didn’t kiss. And we won’t.”

  Lykke rolled her eyes. “Figure of speech.” She waved her hand again. “Please. Just to your bedside. I promise I won’t get in with you! I wouldn’t dare risk waking up that … that … her.”

  “Why does this sound like a trick to steal my body?”

  “Ugh! I said I won’t! And I can’t, besides!” Lykke waved her hand, growing more irritated. “Help me up!”

  “You can watch from the doorway in the dorm. Not a step further, or you really will get a round two, and I won’t hold back. If I think you’re trying anything, I’ll break every bone in your body with my bare hands. Understand?”

  Lykke batted her eyelashes. “Oh, don’t tempt me.”

  “I am allowing this out of gratitude. If you disrespect that—”

  “I won’t! I won’t. Please?”

  Elpida took Lykke’s hand. The Necromancer’s human form weighed so little that Elpida could drag her to her feet with the strength of one arm alone, and from a poor angle. But Lykke could barely stand without support. She staggered sideways, knees quivering with effort, emitting little breathy gasps and whines at the hundred aches and pains of her bruised body.

  She tried to cling to Elpida.

  “Stand and walk under your own power,” Elpida said, gently but firmly rejecting Lykke’s grip. “I’m not carrying you there.”

  Lykke flashed a dazed, flushed, needy smile. Slowly she straightened up and took her weight on her own feet. Eventually she let go of Elpida’s t-shirt and blinked hard, several times, as if to clear her sight. The big bruise around her left eye socket suddenly seemed a shade less dark.

  Elpida squinted. “I thought you were too bruised to stand. What happened to the promise of making this permanent?”

  Lykke flicked a hand. “It is permanent, in a way you couldn’t possibly comprehend. I have internalised it, I told you that already. Don’t worry yourself over it.”

  Elpida gave up her argument. If Lykke was a liar and a cheat, there was nothing Elpida could do about her.

  Elpida turned away, toward the rec room door. She still carried the chess piece in her left hand — the white city. She intended to carry it to sleep with her. She knew she couldn’t take it out into the real world beyond this software dream, but she liked the symbolism. It helped her resolve.

  She hit the palm-pad to open the door and stepped back out into the central corridor of the pilot project cadre’s private quarters; she cast a quick glance to her right, where the secret additional hallway had yawned at the end of the corridor, showing the hidden bones and crimson-glowing guts of the city. But hope was not enough, the additional hallway had not appeared. Elpida put that from her mind. She had decided against pursuit, anyway.

  Lykke’s feet stumbled after her, punctuated by breathy gasps. Elpida didn’t turn back to make sure the Necromancer was able to follow, she simply crossed the corridor to the dorms and hit the corresponding palm-pad with the back of her hand.

  The doors parted. Elpida stepped back into the dorm.

  The cadre’s dormitory was just as she’d left it. The bunks stood in neat rows, littered with discarded clothes and other detritus. The blankets and sheets lay in the familiar disarray that followed a busy night. The air smelled faintly of all her sisters, the cadre’s combined bodily scent lingering in the air, the evidence of sex and sleep. A trio of fans turned lazily in the light shadows of the ceiling.

  Elpida’s own bunk was—

  Empty.

  Elpida launched herself across the dormitory. She leapt over two beds, almost caught her foot on a third, and scrambled to a halt beside her own empty bunk.

  “Howl?”

  The sheets had been ripped back and flung aside. The bed frame had been knocked out of position. The mattress was cold; the neat imprint of Howl’s sleeping body had turned to unreadable chaos — by writhing, by hands pinning her down, or by something else?

  Blood was smeared across the underside of the sheets in one single sticky streak — still wet and warm. The line of crimson ended in a bloody hand print upon the wall.

  Howl’s hand print.

  Elpida ripped back the sheets and looked under the bed and cast around the room.

  “Howl? Howl? Howl?!”

  Howl was gone.

  “Oh!” Lykke said. “Oh my. Oh, oh, oh!”

  Elpida rounded on her.

  Lykke was sagging against the door frame, still bruised and battered, barely able to stand.

  But her eyes were alight with mirth. She started to cackle.

  “Ah! Ahaha! Hahahahahahaha!”

  “You— you—”

  “Oh, zombie!” Lykke crooned, lips curled into a smile of joyous cruelty. “I am such a lucky, lucky, lucky girl!”

  Death (a wonderful interpretation of post-Change Thirteen Arcadia, like a fruiting fungal body), and (Serin! Making good use of her many arms.) Thank you so much for the incredible fanart; I am flattered and delighted and it's just so much fun to see!

  a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I'm plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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