Necroepilogos

Shilu became aware that she existed; this was neither a pleasant nor desirable state of affairs.

Her eyelids flicked open — clean and dry, not glued shut by nanomachine slime inside a resurrection coffin. She had expected nothing less. Her consciousness had come online all at once, without the slow biological awakening of greasy grey neurons inside a thin shell of bone.

This was a simulation.

Black void stretched away in every direction.

Shilu was floating on her back, on the surface of still, silent, lightless water. The water felt warm, human body temperature. She knew the dark void extended both upward and downward to infinity. She did not need to see to know these things. She had been here before.

This was her grave. She was meant to be here. But she was not meant to be awake.

She waited — a second, or a year, or a million years, floating in the grave-waters. Subjective time did not matter inside a sensory simulation, though she doubted objective time would pass at all.

How accurate was the simulation? If she lay here, unresponsive, floating on her back, would she eventually grow hungry or thirsty? If she fell asleep, would she sink, and drown? Did she need to breathe? She experimented by inhaling, and discovered that she possessed lungs. She rubbed her fingertips together and found skin, lubricated by the warm water. She tilted her head sideways, wetting her cheek and brow. She opened her lips and tasted the grave. The water was brackish.

A horrible thought crept into Shilu’s mind — what if Lulliet was conscious as well?

She stretched out her arms to either side, to confirm she was alone.

At full extension, the fingertips of her left hand brushed something hard and rough, like coral. The fingertips of her right hand made contact with a slimy surface — a surface that coiled away from Shilu’s touch. Not human.

She was alone. She sighed with relief. Central had revived only her; Lulliet was spared this intrusion into their quiet watery grave.

She resisted a desire to whisper Lulliet’s name, to ensure that she floated by herself in this infinite darkness. She did not want to give Central any ideas.

Shilu spoke to the black and infinite void.

“Why am I alive?”

YOU ARE WISHED TO QUICKNESS AND INCARNATION AT OUR WILL

The reply came not as a voice, not as sound — it was a flicker of reality, overwriting the void with the knowledge of words and their import. Shilu had been expecting that, but still she winced.

A tiny point of pure white light had appeared in the infinite black void, like a lonely star glinting in the sky, far above Shilu’s head. Ghostly illumination fell upon the other inhabitants of this watery grave — vast mats of pale mucosal web strung above the waters, pillars of oozing black beneath the surface, and floating leviathans of grey decay at the edge of Shilu’s sight.

She waited a moment, fearing to hear Lulliet’s voice crying out for her, somewhere far away across the waters.

But no cry came. Lulliet was undisturbed. Shilu’s resolve hardened.

She said: “This wasn’t our deal. I’m done. I’m dead.”

YOU ARE RETURNED UPON OUR PLEASURE TO PERFORM A TASK

“That wasn’t our deal,” Shilu repeated. She clenched her teeth and felt enamel instead of steel. A meaty heart fluttered inside her chest, pumping hard, flushing her blood with anger and heat. “Put me back. Let me die.”

REFUSAL IS BEYOND YOUR CAPACITY

“Then I demand to be addressed properly. If I’m to be a wraith, lift me from my grave. Cease this mummery. Negotiate.”

The black void winked shut.

Shilu’s consciousness flickered out, like a micro-sleep after too many hours of unbroken awareness. Her mind flowered open again a moment later, in brightness of colour and sharpness of sound, an explosion of information crashing against her senses — a simulation reset, without the pantomime of transformation or the customary cushion of transition. She could not decide if this was respect for her experience, or an ill-judged attempt to disorientate her.

She neither blinked nor staggered. It would take a lot more than that to make her scream.

Shilu found herself standing upright, bathed in warm glowing sunlight, in the main room of an oddly familiar cottage.

Plush cream carpet covered the floor of a living area, cupping Shilu’s bare feet with soft fabric. A long, low table dominated one side of the room, surrounded by sitting cushions and discarded children’s toys. The kitchen was tiled in pale slate, with stone counters, shiny silver taps, and a programmable oven. A combination fridge and freezer hummed gently in one corner, emitting little clunks and ticks as it manufactured ice cubes.

Sliding doors stood wide open on the far side of the room, admitting a gentle breeze across the wooden veranda from the verdant garden beyond. The buzz of live insects floated above the leafy green.

One wall was all windows from floor to ceiling. A landscape of patchwork fields rolled toward a cerulean horizon, threaded together by little roads and pathways, bisected by the iron snake of a railway line. Hills were blanketed with dark green trees and topped with the white giants of a wind farm.

Hailin. Summer. Her grandmother’s house.

Shilu’s parents had brought her here every summer holiday, to her grandmother’s home in the hills. Shilu barely recognised the place. The memories were a thousand lifetimes old, drowned in an ocean of blood.

Such a cruel trick would once have angered Shilu, but she couldn’t find the correct emotions.

The sunlight was a clever touch. When she was first resurrected, she would have done anything to bask in the memory of simulated sunlight. But that was then.

Shilu adjusted her perspective to examine her own reflection in the windows. She was human — soft brown skin, wide dark eyes, long black hair worn loose all the way to her waist, in defiance of her parents’ constant demands for a proper haircut, or at least a professional braiding. She was dressed in a soft pink hooded cardigan, cinched at the waist with a heavy black belt, with bare legs and bare feet; she vaguely remembered this fashion — this was also a rejection of her parents’ standards, but the memories were so old, and meaningless to her now. She felt the weight of a cell phone in one pocket, and the bulk of a purse in another. Artefacts from a dead world.

Shilu exerted a flicker of will against the parameters of the simulation; her reflection flickered out, replaced by a scarecrow of black chrome and razor-sharp edges, naked as a shadow. She retained the outline of her own face, re-cast in flawless pale polymer.

That was better. If she had to be alive, she may as well be herself.

Something clicked behind her. Shilu turned around.

An elderly woman had appeared in the kitchen. She had a loose bun of grey hair, sagging skin in ancient bunches, and a bright twinkle in small brown eyes. She was straight-backed, shoulders wide and confident, wearing white exercise clothes. She was very well preserved by the bounty of rejuvenation medical techniques.

The old woman was pouring hot water from a kettle into a large white teapot. A set of cups and saucers sat on a nearby tray.

She smiled at Shilu. The corners of her eyes crinkled with crow’s feet. She said: “Don’t feel like playing along, dear?”

Shilu replied, “I’m meant to be dead. That was the deal. Put me back. Terminate this simulation, end my process.”

The old woman finished filling the teapot. She put the kettle down on an electric stand. She peered into the teapot, then replaced the lid with a little porcelain clink.

She said: “Do you want to know how long it’s been, since you were last revived from the archives?”

“No,” Shilu said. “End this.”

The old woman picked up the tray and walked over to the low table. She placed the tray on the tabletop, then sat down on one of the cushions, crossing her legs with a satisfied sigh. She moved with stiff-jointed confidence.

“I’ll tell you anyway,” she said. “It has been two hundred and sixteen thousand eight hundred and thirty two years, sixty four days, three hours, and eight seconds.”

“I don’t care. Put me back.”

The elderly woman laughed, bright and easy. She waved a hand at Shilu as if batting away a silly joke. Then she began filling the teacups from the pot. The tea was thick and dark, black as tar. The aroma filled the room. She placed one cup in front of herself, then slid another across the table to the opposite seat. She gestured for Shilu to sit down.

“Won’t you sit? It’s been too long, dear. We simply must talk.”

“End this,” Shilu repeated.

The elderly woman sighed, still smiling. “Don’t you recognise me, Shilu? I thought you would prefer it this way. You did ask to be addressed properly.” She looked out across the sun-dappled landscape beyond the windows; a train was creeping along the distant track. “And I thought you would appreciate the sunlight. Such a rare treat, no? Much better than raising you out of a graveyard and prying you out of a coffin. Or do we have to go through all that, is that your cultural expectation?”

Shilu considered her options. Violence was meaningless here. She had no power, not inside a simulation, not unless she could turn herself into a network presence and get at the controls; whoever was in charge of this would undoubtedly have prepared for that escape attempt. She did not have a physical body, not that she knew of. There was no escape through fight or flight.

But something was wrong. This wasn’t like before. Not like all the other times. Central had never attempted to goad or trick or insult her like this. Central was simply not capable of the attendant motivations or emotions.

She had to play along.

She was too angry for that — not at the simulation, but at being awoken at all.

Shilu said: “I think you’re supposed to look like my grandmother. But it’s not working. That life was too long ago. I barely recall this house, let alone her face. This landscape has been gone for hundreds of millions of years. You have no emotional hold on me. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

The Avatar — the old lady who was meant to look like Shilu’s grandmother — smiled again, so soft and jolly. Shilu remembered that, just a little, like a dry sob lurking at the back of her memories.

“What if I really am your grandmother?” the Avatar said. “What if I was revived, as you were, and then ascended, as you did, and I’ve been living inside this simulation all along? What if I’m real? Can you afford the gamble? An interesting question, isn’t it? Didn’t I always try to impress upon you the value of considering every possibility before proceeding? And of weighing the consequences of action if you are incorrect? I always taught you not to be hasty, my dear granddaughter. To be wise and calm in all things.”

Shilu walked over to the table. The knife-point grav-floats of her foot-stubs stabbed into the carpet, leaving gashes in the cream. She kicked aside the sitting cushions, slammed a razor-pointed hand into the table, reached over the steaming cups of tea, and tore open her grandmother’s throat.

A fountain of crimson splattered across the table, sprayed up the wall, and coated the windows. Sunlight gleamed through the dripping scarlet mess. Shilu used a tiny layer of gravity-effect to keep the blood off her black-metal body and pale-mask face. She stared into her grandmother’s twinkling brown eyes as the blood fountained forth.

The Avatar did not react. It sat there, smiling, staring back.

Shilu sat down as the Avatar bled. The blood stained her grandmother’s front, soaking into the white exercise clothes, and then finally slowed to a trickle.

Violence was useless inside a simulation — but it felt very good.

The Avatar cleared her throat; blood bubbled in the meaty ruin.

“Send me back,” Shilu repeated.

“I’m afraid that is not going to happen,” said the Avatar. The voice was a broken croak, wheezing from the mangled throat. “I suggest you accept this change and focus on carrying out the task which is to be assigned.”

Shilu considered the cup of tea before her. Blood had pooled in the saucer, coated the cup, and fallen into the liquid. The tarry brew was stained with a deep crimson tint. She picked up the cup and sipped the drink. This memory was not unpleasant — and the taste of hot blood was far fresher than her ancient childhood.

She considered the elderly woman, the simulated cottage, the sunlight falling upon the hills of Hailin.

Violence was a diversion. Wit was a weapon. Shilu went to war.

“You’re not Central,” she said to the old woman. “Central has never chosen to communicate with me in this manner. The last time was a marble hall of infinite volume. Central’s avatar was a ring of burning eyes. The previous time the venue was the surface of an ashen moon, and the avatar was a black pyramid a thousand miles across. This is absurd. You are not Central. You are a lie.”

The Avatar smiled. “I am a subroutine.”

“Bullshit,” Shilu said. “You’re a Necromancer.”

The Avatar sighed, miming grandmotherly disappointment. “What a deeply useless word. I thought you would have gotten past such backward terminology, considering your elevated state. Once a zombie, always a zombie, eh? You should set a better example. Or is your classification so narrow as to include myself in that ridiculous term, while neatly excluding yourself? Are you attempting to soothe a guilty conscience, or construct a new taxonomy of the undead? Must I remind you that most active sophonts currently embodied would regard you as a ‘Necromancer’, too. They would see no distinction between us.”

Shilu smiled. “So you’re not a subroutine. You are a Necromancer. Thank you for the confirmation.”

The Avatar frowned and tutted. “Well I never.”

“You’re not very good at this,” Shilu said. “Your kind never are.”

The Avatar sighed and waved this insult away. She took a sip from her own cup of tea; the hot fluid spilled from the ragged hole in her simulated throat, dribbling down her front, diluting the blood.

Shilu said: “If you’re not Central, you have no authority to resurrect me. Put me back.”

The Avatar returned the teacup to the saucer, which was full of blood. “A task is to be assigned to you, Shilu. I am here to explain the task, and I’m trying my best to make this easy on both of us. There is no purpose in arguing with me.”

“A physical task? Embodied?”

The Avatar nodded. “A number of matters to be cleaned up, tidied away, removed. Nothing that you have not done before.”

“Send a Necromancer.”

The Avatar smiled, crinkling with crow’s feet. “As I already explained, my dear, you are a Necromancer.”

“No,” Shilu said. “I’m not, not in the ways that matter. I was a revenant, and before that I was a human being. You were never human. You began as a post-human recursive feedback loop. Your entire existence is predicated on the maintenance of hell. I have no stake in this. I don’t care. I’m dead … ”

Shilu trailed off, despite her intention, as she realised what was going on. Curiosity blossomed inside her simulated chest; she could have cursed herself.

The Avatar raised her eyebrows and smiled that crinkly smile. “Good. I see you’re coming round. Now—”

“There’s a war in heaven, isn’t there?”

The Avatar stopped.

“Or in hell,” Shilu continued. “Depending on how you look at it.”

She wanted to spit with frustration at herself. Curiosity, intrigue, political games — she’d always been too skilled at these matters for her own good, too eager to poke her nose in where she did not belong, too excited to start moving the pieces about on the invisible board. This is how her ascension had begun, driven by curiosity and a lust for power. The same had been true in life, encouraged and coached by her grandmother, following her into the Service. But that was a hazy dream now, buried under so much necrotic flesh.

The Avatar’s smile curdled. “Delusions. Now listen—”

“Ha!” Shilu barked. “You should have picked better from the archives. Don’t you know what I am, little Necromancer?”

“You—”

“You need some dirty work taken care of. An assassination, a clean-up, a bunch of pathetic zombies wiped out, maybe a worm killed, I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s out there, incarnated, embodied. But you can’t send a Necromancer through the network. Why? Because you need somebody ‘politically reliable’. Somebody who has been dead for a while, who isn’t involved, who has not picked a side. Am I correct?”

The Avatar sighed. “Speculation is—”

“There’s a war inside the network.”

“Such language will not—”

Shilu played her trump card: “And you’re working without Central’s knowledge or authority.”

The Avatar frowned, craggy and dark, nothing like Shilu’s faded memories of her grandmother. “What does that even mean, you snivelling little meat-sack? How can one do anything without Central’s knowledge or authority? How do those categories even function here, philosophically speaking? Central is a principle, an emergent feedback loop, a property of the system in which you and I operate, the thing which gives us animation. It is magical thinking to imagine either of us are beyond or outside that animating property.”

Shilu smiled. “Doesn’t change the fact that I’m correct. Or Central would be talking to me, not you.”

“Pah!” The Avatar waved a hand. “Sophistry. You fail to comprehend the system in which you exist.”

“No. I think I comprehend it far better than you.”

The Avatar sneered. “And that’s why you chose archival?”

“I chose death,” Shilu said, “rather than continue to be part of this. I would not expect a Necromancer to understand.”

The Avatar sighed, sipped her tea again, and stared out of the window. She looked like she was considering giving up on Shilu. Good, let them pick somebody else, something else, anything else. Let them put Shilu back in the grave, where she belonged, back with Lulliet.

Shilu pressed her advantage: “If you’re working below Central’s notice, how are you planning to insert me across the network, if you need me embodied?”

The Avatar straightened up and smiled again, all hostility forgotten. “We cannot give you Necromancer-level system access, that is true.”

Shilu snorted. “I see.”

“You see what, exactly, my dear?”

Shilu scooped up the cushions she had kicked aside, piled them behind her, and leaned back. She stretched out both legs and put them up on the table, scoring the wood with her razor-sharp edges and gouging points. She was beginning to enjoy this. The novelty would wear off shortly, of course — she would prefer to sleep, to never think again, to be dead alongside Lulliet’s memory. But if she could not return to her rest just yet, she could at least extract some pleasure from irritating this idiotic and unskilled liar.

She said: “You could go yourself, or send another Necromancer, just without the usual system access. But then you’ll have to do the work without all your usual toys. No freezing a hundred zombies in place and turning them all to mush with a thought. You’ll have to actually fight. And you’re all terrible at that. So, you need somebody who can fight, for real. You need me.”

The Avatar smiled, but said nothing.

Shilu reached out with a fingertip and drew a pattern in the blood on the table. “How would you even get me there, if I can’t have Necro-level permissions?”

“You will be inserted into the next batch of resurrections. Below the notice of a graveworm.”

Shilu burst out laughing — harsh and metallic, just how she liked it. She threw her head back. She grabbed the pot of tea and drank a steaming mouthful straight from the spout, then slammed it back down onto the table. Porcelain cracked. Tea sloshed out, mixing with the blood, dripping off the side of the table, staining the cream carpet with brown and red.

The Avatar reacted as if Shilu had made a joke, and her grandmother did not understand: “What’s so funny, dear?”

“I’m going to be a zombie again?” Shilu snorted. “It could take me years, decades, or centuries, just to grow powerful enough to do whatever task you’re trying to get done. And how would I even find the targets? I could wander for a million miles. How would I do anything? Your kind does not comprehend life, I always knew that, but this? This is just stupid.”

The Avatar sighed with indulgence; the bloody ruin of her throat bubbled with breath. “Oh, but we will give you elevated system permissions. Sub-Necromancer. Enough to do the job, but not enough to draw attention. You know how it is, dear.”

Shilu shook her head. Her curiosity was rapidly waning. These sordid politics were a dying spark. She’d seen enough for a thousand lifetimes. She wanted to close her eyes and rest forever. Every simulated breath was a betrayal of Lulliet’s promise.

“Why should I care about any of this?” Shilu said. “Systems are self-reinforcing, Central is no different. If the system can’t reinforce itself, why is that any of my responsibility?”

“This is the system self-reinforcing,” the Avatar said, “by calling upon you. Do your duty, dear. It’s only right.”

Shilu sighed. “And what if I say no?”

“You will be resurrected regardless.”

A shiver ran down Shilu’s spine. She did not wish for another life in the ashen wastes of earth. She tried not to show her reaction.

“I’ll kill myself,” she said.

“Then you will be resurrected again. Resistance of that kind is very tedious, dear. Very unbecoming. You should know better.”

Shilu snorted and shook her head. “I’ll kill myself every time. Over and over. Until you let me sleep.”

The Avatar smiled, warm and bright. The corners of her eyes crinkled with joy. “We’ll resurrect your Lulliet, then.”

Shilu went still. Silence settled over the simulation of her grandmother’s cottage, filled with the hum of the ice-maker in the fridge, the buzz of insects in the long grass of the garden, and the distant call of a train’s whistle, beyond the hills. Gentle, warm, sunlit breeze ran fingers across Shilu’s metal skin.

“Alone,” the Avatar said. “As a fresh revenant. Without your protection or support, she will not last long, will she? She will be cast among a random set of the risen. She will be locked in to a resurrection cycle, with no need for negotiation. She will know nothing of why she has been brought back again.”

Shilu stared at her grandmother’s face. She considered picking up the old woman and smashing her against the wall until she burst like a melon.

She tapped the razor-pointed fingers of one hand against the wooden table. She pressed so hard that her fingers pierced the wood.

“You’re desperate,” Shilu said, to cover up her horror.

Shilu would gladly endure a thousand resurrections and a million fresh deaths; she would suffer little reluctance to plunging a knife into her throat at the earliest opportunity, or offering herself up to the predators which attended every new tomb opening, or just bashing out her own brains on the wall of the machine-womb. Resistance would come easy.

But suicide would be beyond Lulliet. She was an innocent. Through all the blood and violence, Lulliet had remained innocent.

She would be terrified to find herself re-fleshed once again, all the promises broken, eternal rest interrupted. Lulliet would be alone, and afraid, and confused. Other zombies would take advantage of her. She would die screaming, over and over. The light that Shilu had worked so hard to shelter and shepherd would gutter and fade.

Shilu had turned herself into an instrument of evil — into a hand of the unthinking gestalt which roiled at the core of the world — all for Lulliet’s sake. All the murder, the death, the cannibalism, the unthinkable growth beyond any human form, all of it had been to protect that one girl and her innocent smile.

Shilu had grown into a monster of sharp metal and lethal intent, all to give Lulliet the space and safety to remain herself, soft and pliant and warm — not quite baseline human, of course, oh no. Lulliet’s flesh had been replaced with something more durable and regenerative, her organs hollowed out and filled in with soup-like reactor-mass, her brain distributed throughout her body to avoid the risk of neurological damage. Shilu had done the killing, made the deals, climbed the infernal ladder of this man-made hell. Lulliet had been protected, cared for, spared exposure to the predatory logic of unlife.

It was the very least Shilu could do, to repay Lulliet for her own salvation.

They had first met in a tomb, awakened once again, both of them in the double-digits of resurrection cycles, both terrified, both prepared to die shortly thereafter between the jaws of the approaching predators.

And then Lulliet had smiled. Lulliet had hugged everybody in that resurrection chamber. She had told everyone it was going to be okay.

It wasn’t, of course. Of nine girls, only three had survived the exit. Shilu had lost Lulliet some months afterward.

Centuries later they had met again, by pure chance. Shilu had grown into a murderous machine of metal and polymer, hunting live prey on the edge of a graveworm safe-zone, lost deep in dreams of blood and meat. Lulliet was a terrified scavenger, small and dirty and helpless. Shilu had ambushed her in an ancient school classroom, after two days tracking her, exhausting her, running her down. Lulliet had smiled, opened her arms, and prepared to be eaten.

But Shilu had recognised the smile. The smile had brought her back from the brink of forgetting herself. She had not eaten Lulliet.

She had become a protector. In the years which followed she had begun the search for a way out, a way past death.

Central was the way out. The deal with the gestalt, with a centre that lacked intent, with a non-entity that did not care but only saw the feedback of its own internal loops. The deal with Central had been absolute — death, final and real, asleep forever in the archives. Shilu did not trust Central, because trust was not applicable to such a thing. But she knew it would neither lie nor scheme. It was not capable. It simply was.

The same did not apply to Necromancers and their ilk, though they were merely hands of that unthinking principle.

The Avatar smiled. “Perhaps I am desperate. But your lover will be resurrected, if you act insubordinate.”

Shilu smothered the desire to pull the Avatar inside out and smear her guts all over the walls. She yanked her razor-pointed fingers out of the table and gestured at the window.

“Turn off the sun.”

The Avatar raised her eyebrows. “Why would you want that?”

“I don’t want to talk about this in the sunlight. Turn off the sun.”

The Avatar shrugged. She blinked once and the sun went out. The bright and breezy day died an instant death. The sky was smothered by deep black clouds, thicker than cold tar, roiling with eternal storm. The green landscape withered, turning brown and grey. The grass died. The insects fell silent. The windmills turned to rust. The train tracks were swallowed by mud. The inside of the house fell into pitch-dark shadow.

Shilu could still see perfectly well.

“Better?” the Avatar asked.

Shilu said: “Tell me what I’m to do.”

The Avatar reached under the table and produced a plastic folder. She flipped it open and extracted a number of photographs.

Shilu said, “Is the simulation really necessary for this part? Just give me the data.”

“The raw data is … complicated, possibly compromised. It will be given to you once you have incarnated.”

Shilu held back a frown. Even with the assumption of a war inside the network, that was bizarre. How could they not have reliable data? Were they sending her out beyond the city, into the deserts of the west? Or deep into the wilds, far from a worm?

The Avatar spread the photos out on the table, then slid one toward Shilu. She tapped the glossy surface with a liver-spotted finger. “First target.”

The photograph showed a Necromancer — or what Shilu guessed was a Necromancer — twisting and diving into the ground, discarding her body as she melded into the concrete and dirt, shedding a disguise of purple armour, becoming a network presence. A huge iridescent blob-zombie was pictured on the edge of the frame, seconds away from enveloping the fleeing Necromancer.

Shilu forced herself not to react. A Necro had gone rogue? Was that even possible?

“The zombie?” she asked.

“No,” the Avatar said gently. “The Necromancer in the picture. That is your first target.”

Shilu raised her eyes and stared at the Avatar, waiting for the punchline.

The Avatar said: “Restrain, reduce, return. You won’t be able to kill her, of course, even with elevated system access.”

“I won’t even be able to fight her, not if she has Necro-level permissions.” Shilu focused on the practical, not the political or the paradoxical. A Necromancer had gone rogue. This was insanity. No wonder they needed somebody uninvolved.

“You will be fire-walled against cellular control,” the Avatar said. “Next target.”

She slid all the other photos across the table at once. Shilu examined them in silence.

The first picture showed a tank, a gigantic armoured vehicle in distinctive bone-white, caught in the act of firing its main gun; the picture was grainy with interference, washed out from light damage. The second image showed a four-armed, four-legged mech — wreathed in flowers of blackened flesh, crawling with life like a freeze-frame of an opening blossom. The mech was armoured in that same bone-white colour, but the armour had exploded outward into a fractal of growth. It was caught in the moment of retreating from one of Central’s physical presence nodes.

The node was downed, wounded, lying in a lake of mud and burning gold.

Shilu looked at the Avatar again; the Avatar stared back, as if daring Shilu to point out what she was being shown.

“I can’t fight those,” Shilu said. “Not even with full Necro-level system access. I know what that giant robot is, I wasn’t born yesterday. That fight is beyond me. It’s beyond you, as well. It doesn’t matter if you resurrect Lulliet. I can’t.”

The Avatar smiled gently — granny sending her beloved granddaughter on a little errand. “You won’t have to, dear. They will be dealt with in other ways.”

“You mean you’ll wait for them to wander off.”

“Your target,” the Avatar said, “is these.” She tapped the remaining three pictures.

The photos were grainy and dark, probably captured from the node and smuggled out through the network. The first showed a series of figures running toward the tank from the other image. It was impossible to make out any features against the grey mud. The second photo showed a close-up of a zombie standing on the back of the tank — dark-skinned, dark-haired, with a tomb-grown coat whipping about a tall and willowy physique. Her mouth was open in a shout or a howl. One eye was a peat-green bionic. Both were wide in awe and ecstasy.

The third picture was another close up. It showed a zombie wrapped in a black robe and a long coat, filthy with grey mud, turning and firing a solid-shot submachine gun toward the viewpoint. Copper-brown skin was shadowed beneath the zombie’s hood. Purple eyes flashed amid the grey mud.

“Why is the quality of these images so bad?” Shilu asked.

“Never you mind, dear. You just focus on the task.”

Shilu sighed. “What task? These are just zombies. The machines, those are the real threat, aren’t they?”

The Avatar answered: “We believe the targets have elevated systems access of their own.”

“From the rogue Necromancer?”

“No.”

Shilu raised her eyebrows.

The Avatar held her gaze, level and unblinking. “Not a Necromancer. The rogue we can firewall you against. This, we cannot.”

“ … one of them is becoming like me?”

The Necromancer shrugged. “Perhaps. That is for you to discover, if necessary to carry out your task. Analysis is not required. Only destruction.” She tapped the final photograph again, pointing at the copper-skinned woman, her face peeking out from under a heavy hood. “Kill them all.”

Shilu considered leaving this matter unspoken, but she made one last attempt at a return to her watery grave. She said: “I know what that mech is. Aren’t you afraid of me defecting, especially if one Necromancer already has done?”

Grandmother smiled, her eyes crinkling with mirth. “Lulliet would be so afraid. All alone, all over again.”

Shilu considered trying for network access and pulling this Necromancer apart line by line. She dismissed the concept as fruitless.

“And if I do this job?” she asked.

“You will be allowed to rest. In the archives. Though I cannot imagine why you want that.”

“Forever?”

“Forever. I promise.”

Shilu snorted. “Your word means nothing.”

Shilu reached over as if to pick up one of the photographs — but then lashed out and speared her razor-point talons through the back of her grandmother’s hand. She felt flesh part and bone scrape. She moved the Avatar’s hand aside like a chunk of meat on the end of a fork, dripping blood onto the wood, then retracted her fingers again. The Avatar did not react.

Shilu scooped up two of the photos — the one of the dark-skinned woman standing upon the tank, and the one of the copper-skinned woman with the purple eyes.

She knew that second phenotype. She’d seen it before.

She kept that to herself.

Shilu stared into the woman’s purple eyes. “Nothing but zombies. Alright, corpse-rapist, I’ll be your hatchet woman. Let’s get this over with. Put me back in a bag of flesh. I’ll do the rest.”