“Starving.”

Elpida echoed Serin’s choice of word — but it wasn’t a question.

Elpida had suspected the truth of their metabolic needs since Pira had explained the nanomachine mechanics of their undead bodies. She was not good at denial, or pretend lack of comprehension, or learned helplessness; Elpida’s mind had already found the logical conclusion. She had not thought about it very much; she had hoped that Pira was correct about the ambient nanomachine particulate in the atmosphere around the graveworm. But now she was wounded, and slow, and her body needed fuel.

Serin said, “Starvation. Tends to happen. When you don’t eat.”

Serin’s blood-red eyes crinkled at the corners: she was smiling behind the black teeth painted on her metal mask. She towered over Elpida and Kagami, deep in the tar-thick gloom of that filthy corridor, hidden from the midday twilight of the undead sun in the grave of the sky. The hulking revenant stank like wet wood and meaty fungus.

Kagami was clutching the sleeve of Elpida’s armoured coat. She panted as she spoke: “She m-means- she means we’re not engaging in cannibalism. We’re not eating the flesh- t-the nanomachine-flesh, from the zombies. Other zombies! Fuck! That is what you mean, isn’t it? Serin? It’s necessary for survival here, isn’t it? Eating flesh? That’s what you mean. Say it! Just say it!”

Elpida said, “Kagami, take a deep breath.”

“We don’t need oxygen, but we need meat!”

“Kagami, breathe. Now.”

Kagami drew in a shuddering breath.

Serin made a metallic rasp. “Wise.”

Elpida addressed Serin: “I don’t feel any hunger. I haven’t felt hunger since we arrived here — sorry, since we were resurrected.”

Serin tilted her head from side to side; vertebrae cracked and popped in sequence. She looked out of the bank of windows, across the rotten teeth of the corpse-city. She said: “Not an injector? Confused? No?”

“Excuse me?”

Serin settled her blood-red bionic eyes on Elpida once again. “Some zombies never ate in life. Don’t know how to chew and swallow. Only inject into nutrient ports. Others wake without their microbe-stack gut replacements. A few feed like plants.” A spindly finger pointed out of the windows, at the black sky. “Not enough light for photosynthesis. Hunger is strange to them. But that type is rare enough. Rarer still to live long. You’re not one?”

Elpida shook her head. “In life I ate with my mouth. I am genetically modified for increased starvation endurance, but I know how hunger feels. I don’t think we have any strange eaters in our group, either. Serin, I’m serious, I’ve not felt hunger, and neither has anybody else. Kagami, have you?”

Kagami swallowed. “Not … exactly.”

Serin chuckled. “Not hungry for meat. For what lives within the meat.”

Elpida sighed. “Yes, I follow the logic. We need fresh nanomachines. But nobody has spoken of feeling—”

“Nothing?” Serin rasped. She dipped her head close again, leaning down eye-to-eye with Elpida, her neck and spine moving like the body of a snake. Red orbs burned in the dark. “No need at all? A thirst? An urge? Desire to mount? Fuck? Take? It comes in different ways. We are ridden by machine ghosts. Sometimes they pull the wrong strings. Tell me true — you have felt no needs?”

Elpida paused, then told the truth: “I have. Twice. I felt thirsty when looking at the cannisters of raw nanomachines. I can’t deny that. Is that what—”

“Meat.”

It was a cheap trick — the kind of conversational feint that Old Lady Nunnus would have loved: Serin had coaxed Elpida into recalling her own thirst, then forced her to imagine the object of attention. Drawing a tiny neurological pathway.

But Elpida shook her head. “I don’t feel any hunger … for … ”

Elpida’s salivary glands tingled. Her stomach spasmed and clenched. Her imagination filled her mouth with the taste of hot, red, dripping meat, sliding off bone and slipping down her throat. For a split second she was speechless; in life, in Telokopolis, she had eaten plenty of vat-grown clone-meat, both cooked and raw, plain and fancy, red and white and everything in between. But real meat was extraordinarily rare in Telokopolis; the genetic stocks of the buried fields were too valuable to be served up as food. And besides, why bother with butchery and slaughter when the city itself could grow as much as the population needed?

Except once, for Elpida. The very first time she had tasted meat. That had been human.

This urge, this hunger, did not recall the regular routines of cloned protein. It dredged a deeper memory.

Elpida swallowed down a mouthful of saliva.

Kagami had it far, far worse; she gasped, panting for breath, throat thick with need. “Oh … n-no … ”

Serin straightened up, grinning behind her mask. “There. The shell is broken. Have fun.”

Kagami forced out a strangled laugh. “Oh, yes, as if eating human meat would be the obvious fucking conclusion to all this, in the absence of hunger. Of course. Stupid us! Fucking cannibals.” She spat drool on the floor. “Should have glassed the surface when we could. Fuck Earth. Fuck all of you!”

Serin turned blood-deep eyes on Kagami. Elpida felt Kagami’s hand tighten on her sleeve and heard Kagami swallow. But the petite, doll-like woman held her ground. Elpida was impressed.

“Fuck you, cannibal. Don’t look at me like that.”

Serin laughed. “Once bitten, twice shy. For you, six times. No?”

Kagami spat again. “Fuck you, zombie. Why is everyone down here obsessed with eating each other!?”

Serin said, “Eat or die. Eat and grow. Noble fools become food.”

Elpida took a deep breath and took control of herself. The strange hunger was already passing. “Pira said we didn’t need food, didn’t need to eat. She was very clear that proximity to the graveworm would sustain us on ambient nanomachines alone. Are you saying that isn’t true?”

Serin made that hissing metal rasp again, sniffing loudly. “I can smell your wounds. Both of you. Falling apart. Ready to drop. Easy prey. You can sit and heal for a year — if the worm does. Or you can eat.”

Elpida said, “I have no ethical problem with human meat, but cannibalism is going to be difficult for the others to accept.”

Serin turned her head to look at the wall. Tiny lenses flexed and focused inside her blood-red bionic eyes. “Others, mm. ‘Pira’? Must have a word with ‘Pira’.”

Elpida allowed one hand to drift back to her submachine gun. Was that recognition in Serin’s rasping metal voice? Elpida asked: “You don’t know Pira, do you?”

“No.”

“If you do, and this is a trick to kill her, then I will fight you, Serin. She’s one of us.”

“Huuuunh,” Serin made a sound that might have been a laugh. “No. A word. And a gift. Your others can decide for themselves.” She turned back to Elpida and Kagami. “Lead on, false Necromancer. Show me your comrades.”

Elpida said: “No violence.”

Behind her mask, Serin grinned. They both knew she could cut them to pieces if she wished.

Serin extended another spindly pale arm from inside her black robes; Elpida recognised the exposed tattoos — a row of nine black skulls, with little crosses for eyes, limp tongues hanging from dead jaws, and comical bullet-holes in their foreheads. Each skull was crossed out: kill markings for the death cult who Serin hunted. At the head of the tally was the same symbol as on Ilyusha’s t-shirt: a crescent intersected by a line.

Serin tapped her own arm. “Showing my side. In case of twitchy trigger fingers.”

Elpida led Serin back into the depths of the structure. The towering revenant followed with barely a whisper of cloth against the cracked tiles — though Elpida could detect a faint infrasound hum, far too low for unmodified human hearing, so quiet that she couldn’t pinpoint the source within Serin’s body. Kagami smothered her pride for the return journey; she clung to Elpida’s arm for support, swallowing the pain of her bionic legs in little grunts and gulps.

When they reached the refuge, Elpida knocked on the door. She called out, low and calm. “It’s us. We have a guest — a friendly. Leave your guns down. Fingers off triggers. Acknowledge, please.”

A chorus of confused murmurs. Vicky raised her voice: “Elpi, what’s wrong?” Ilyusha made a snarling noise. Elpida heard the click-crunch of a charging handle — Pira’s submachine gun.

Atyle called out: “The warrior brings a mystery at her back. But she is not coerced.”

“Atyle is right,” Elpida replied through the door. “We’re not being threatened. Guns down — that means you, Pira. No violence. We’re entering now.”

Elpida opened the door and led the way, with Kagami hanging off her arm. Serin followed. She had to duck to get through the door frame, then straightened up once inside. Black robes hung from nine feet of hunchbacked frame; blood-red bionic orbs scanned the room; a hissing sigh rattled behind her painted metal mask. Serin kept her tattooed arm on display, kill-tally turned outward.

Vicky scrambled to her feet, open mouthed and staring. She glanced to Elpida for guidance; Elpida shook her head. Kagami slipped out of Elpida’s grasp and slumped against the wall, sliding away from Serin on stumbling feet. Ilyusha was up already, with Amina clinging to her side. The younger girl was silent and wide-eyed. Ilyusha’s tail lashed the air in angry swipes — but when she saw the ‘friendly’ was Serin her tail dipped in a little bobbing motion, like a laugh. She snorted and said: “Shit for brains is back again.”

Serin acknowledged her: “Little comrade.”

Atyle wasn’t surprised; she stayed sitting cross-legged in front of the makeshift game board drawn on the floor in grease paint, examining Serin with her peat-green bionic eye, like an aristocrat judging an expensive animal. She must have seen their approach through the walls; perhaps Atyle had witnessed the entire conversation. Straight-backed and high-headed, she managed to radiate ritual dignity in her refusal to stand.

Pira was up, submachine gun in her hands, eyes fixed on Serin’s centre of mass.

Elpida spoke quickly, hands out: “Guns down. I mean it, guns down. Everyone relax. This is Serin. She’s the sniper, the—”

Vicky spluttered, “The crazy one who shot at us?”

“She helped us last night,” Elpida said. “She wants to help us now.”

Kagami laughed, low and bitter and unstable. Vicky glanced at her in alarm.

Elpida said: “Kagami’s in shock because of information. Nothing more.”

Kagami spat, “Information! Oh, spare me your creative euphemisms, mud-eater.”

Ilyusha was saying to Amina: “She’s fine! Ami, she’s fine. Big and stupid. But like me, kind of.”

Serin was still smiling behind her mask. Her head swivelled on that snake-like neck, framed by her humped back, examining the others one by one — and finishing on Pira.

Red eyes waited. Pira stared back, ready to leap.

Elpida said: “Pira, do not open fire. She doesn’t want to fight. If she attacks you, I’m on your side. But she doesn’t want to fight. Pira, lower your gun. Pira!”

Pira didn’t even twitch.

“Pira?” Serin said. She cocked her head at the flame-haired girl.

Pira’s eyes flickered to the dead-skull tattoos on Serin’s exposed arm, then back to Serin’s red-burning eyes. She shook her head sharply, and said: “I’m not with—”

“How many times reborn?” Serin asked.

Pira frowned. “What?”

“How many times have you been around, zombie? How many times resurrected? You’re no fresh meat. I can see. Truth?”

“Plenty. What do you want?”

“How many?”

Pira spat: “I’ve lost count. What do you want?”

“So many cycles,” said Serin. “And nothing to show but one bionic arm. Why keep coming back if you won’t grow? Why tell a clutch of chicks to starve themselves?”

Pira’s fear froze on her face — then vanished, shuttered behind sky-blue eyes. “Nobody has to be a predator.”

“Ha!” Serin barked. “Predation? Survival!” Serin’s head twisted; her blazing red eyes found a new target — Ilyusha. “And you, little comrade. You aren’t fresh meat. You should know better.”

Ilyusha bared her teeth and hissed — but she averted her eyes, sulky and cowed. Her tail lay limp on the floor. “Tried.”

“Truly?”

“I fucking tried!” Ilyusha spat.

“You balked. First sign of disgust. Easier to avoid conflict. New friends, new start. Hope not to be cast out. No?”

Ilyusha hissed again, eyes down. Elpida realised that Ilyusha was deeply humiliated. She didn’t like that; she was losing control of this situation.

Elpida said, “Serin, stop. Ilyusha is one of us, too. Don’t—”

“Little comrade. Should have shown more spine.”

Ilyusha muttered. “Fuck you … ”

Vicky cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?”

“Starvation, zombie,” Serin said. “By ignorance. Or worse, by foolish choice.”

Elpida stepped forward and raised both hands; she’d been willing to entertain this strange argument for the purposes of extracting more information from Serin — and possibly from Pira. But she’d heard enough. And Ilyusha’s hangdog humiliation was an insult too far. Elpida would not allow that blow to their morale.

“Stop,” she said, command in her voice. “Serin, stop, right now. Everyone else — Serin has informed me we’re all starving to death. We need to eat.”

Vicky said, “Eat what? What are you talking about? Pira said—”

Kagami laughed, hard and loud and shrill: “Use your brain! What else is there to eat in this place? Each other!”

Pira said, cold and unyielding, “Cannibalism. She means cannibalism.”

Elpida quickly explained her summation of Serin’s lesson; there was little to say. They needed fresh nanomachines, preserved in the bodies of other revenants. Their new physiology demanded constant input, no different to the requirements of a mortal metabolism, the demand for protein, carbohydrate, and fat.

She finished by saying: “We’re all wounded and we’re healing very slowly, except when we drink the raw nanomachines we took from the tomb. The thirst I felt is proof of that. And the … desire for meat, that was real. If anybody else has experienced similar cravings or hungers, don’t be ashamed or afraid; I believe it’s strong evidence that our nanomachine bodies are craving more input. It’s a biological imperative, now. We can’t control that.”

Only Vicky and Amina seemed truly shocked; Vicky was shaking her head, mouth hanging open, while Amina was just staring. Atyle’s expression had not changed at all; perhaps she’d already figured it out. Pira was cold and closed. Kagami had a strange, manic smile on her face, laughing softly behind her teeth. And Ilyusha was looking away, sulky and embarrassed.

After a moment of silence, Vicky said: “What happens if we don’t? Serin, right? What if I don’t want to eat human meat?”

Pira answered: “Nothing. Ambient is enough for survival.”

Serin laughed, a harsh metallic rasp. “You weaken with every wound. You get slow, and clumsy. Easy to hunt. Damage piles up. A predator catches you. Crunch crunch. Yum.”

Pira said: “You don’t have to participate. Vicky, don’t listen to her. You don’t have to participate. You have a choice. We all have the choice to refuse.”

Kagami laughed so hard she shrieked: “Choice?! You were keeping this from us, you bitch! You lied to us! So what, you could starve us out and then feed our corpses to your real friends, you—”

Elpida snapped, putting the whip-crack of command into her voice: “Kagami, stop. Right now.” Kagami flinched hard, staring at Elpida with wounded anger. “Pira had her reasons. Pira?”

Pira said, “Nobody has to participate in this.”

Serin laughed. “Eat or die.”

Kagami spluttered: “She lied. She lied to all of us. She’s been lying to us this whole time!”

Vicky was saying: “No. No, no, no. It was right there in front of us. Back in the tomb. Illy — Ilyusha! Back in the tomb, when we woke, you were … ” Vicky put her hand to her mouth, miming a memory. She was shaking. “The corpse-water, the blue goo, the goo in the failed coffins. You were drinking it. You were going to eat them, weren’t you? You were going to eat them, like … like aborted foetuses? The revenants who didn’t make it to resurrection. And I was disgusted, I was horrified.” She was panting, cold sweat running down her face. “I’m … I’m sorry?”

Ilyusha wouldn’t look up. “Corpses eating. Gotta do it.”

Serin made a hissing noise. “Your limbs came from somewhere, little comrade. How many corpses to grow those?”

Ilyusha’s head snapped upward, teeth bared, grey eyes blazing like burning lead. Her augmetic tail whipped out, stinger pointing at Serin. “I’m no fucking reptile! You gotta eat, so you gotta eat!”

“Yes. No nobility in starvation. Don’t be ashamed of survival, little comrade.”

Ilyusha hissed disgust between clenched teeth.

Vicky said: “Are there truly no other options? No other way?” She laughed. The sound worried Elpida. “I always wanted to go vegetarian, but … ”

Kagami answered, “Of course there’s no other way! There’s nothing else alive on this rock but us! Not even plants.”

Vicky shook her head. “What about all the bio-film stuff? The black rot we’ve seen? Some of that stuff fills whole rooms. Isn’t everything made from nanomachines? Can’t we eat that?”

Serin said, “You are what you eat.”

Kagami snorted, “What, you’ll turn into a building? May as well! Can’t get more absurd down here.”

Serin shrugged. “Low energy. A zombie would have to eat more of structural nanites than a body could hold. We need them in high-energy states. The blue — or the flesh. Eat concrete? Worse than sucking air like a filter feeder.” Her red-glowing eyes turned to Pira again; Pira stared back with open contempt.

Vicky said, “The blue, right! The raw nanos. We can drink that, we can live off that!”

Atyle spoke from the floor: “Only from the graves. Each one a risk. Each one a trial.”

Serin pointed at Atyle. “Yes. Raw blue is good. High demand. But only on tomb refills.”

Pira said, “No. There is another way. You’ve been around long enough to know.”

Serin grinned wide behind her mask: “Utopian madness.”

“It is possible to get inside a graveworm.”

“Fool.”

“It is possible. It can be done. It will be done.”

Vicky said, “Serin?”

“Mm?”

“Do you eat other people? Do you eat human flesh?”

Serin answered by spreading her limbs: a dozen spindly-white mushroom-pale arms emerged from beneath her black robes; she stretched upward until the hunch-back hump straightened out and her head almost brushed the ceiling; that infrasound hum Elpida had noticed earlier intensified in volume, throbbing through the air. The dull red-tinted light from the single frosted window caught in her eyes, red-on-red.

Kagami spat: “Of course she fucking does, you moron! Look at her!”

Vicky shook her head. “I-I-I can’t, I can’t eat other people, I can’t—”

Pira snapped: “You do not have to participate. Don’t listen to her.”

Serin said, “Yes. Your choice. Lie down and die.”

Elpida raised her hands out wide, to include everybody. She raised her voice, level and calm. “We’re all wounded and it keeps getting worse with every encounter, every fight. One way or another, we have to eat.”

Vicky shook her head. “You can’t be serious. Elpi, we can’t. I won’t.”

Kagami said, “We’re all starving! You all heard her!”

Ilyusha hissed: “Gotta eat, gotta eat … ”

Elpida said, “Vicky, I’m not suggesting we act like predators. Nobody is suggesting we start preying on the vulnerable or attacking other groups for food. I understand, I agree, and I won’t ask you to do that. Serin — when you spoke to me earlier, you specifically said ‘eat our kills’. Did you mean that?”

Serin tilted her head at Elpida. “Mm, you understand. I do not kill to eat — I only eat my kills. There is a difference. Last night you left fresh corpses untouched. You killed them — and then nothing. Left them for carrion. Wasted.”

Vicky lit up with sick relief. “The corpses from last night! Yes! We could eat— I mean, we could, but … ”

Serin shook her head. “Too long. Gone by now. In the bellies of early birds.”

Vicky sighed. “Right. Because everyone’s competing for meat.”

Elpida said, firmly but gently: “For nanomachines. Not the meat itself.”

Vicky nodded along. “Right. Right.”

Atyle said: “Even the gods eat other gods. Truly we are worms.”

Kagami laughed. “Dog eat dog! Zombie eat zombie! Fuck it, why not?”

Serin relaxed her posture. She withdrew most of her arms back inside her robes, resumed her hunchbacked stoop, and stopped humming. But a grin creased the corners of her eyes.

“A gift.”

Serin produced a bundle from inside her robes and tossed it into the middle of the floor. It landed with a wet squelch.

Severed heads.

Five human heads, inside a loose net of ropes. Each head was missing the lower jaw, the tongue, and both eyeballs; but muscles twitched around the empty sockets and in the remains of the cheeks.

Amina cried out in a soft whimper and clung to Ilyusha; the heavily augmented girl just rolled her eyes and snorted. Vicky held a hand to her mouth and made a retching sound. Kagami went pale and green. Pira stared with open disgust. Atyle just looked, unmoved. Elpida felt her stomach turn over with nausea — but also with a terrible hunger.

“Oh my God,” Vicky said. “They’re still … they’re alive? They’re m-moving, twitching, oh … oh fu—”

Vicky turned away and vomited, but there was almost nothing in her stomach. She spat bile onto the floor.

Kagami made a choking sound too, but she didn’t vomit. She spat drool. “W-why … why heads? Why heads?”

“Brains,” said Serin.

“What?”

“Brains. Best place. High-energy, high-activity nanomachines. If you won’t eat flesh, eat brains.”

Ilyusha spat on the floor. “True. Works.”

Kagami started laughing, slowly at first, then building toward a panting hysteria. “Brain! Hahaha, fuck. Brains. Brains!”

Serin withdrew all her hands inside her robes again. “Decide for yourselves. Eat or die.”

Elpida said: “Who were these people?”

Vicky was doubled over, hanging onto the wall: “They’re still alive, Elpi.”

“Are,” Elpida corrected herself. “Serin, who are these people? You told me you hunt the death cult. Are these people from them?”

Serin shook her head. “Following you. Not death cult. But working for them, for promise of pay.” Serin wasn’t grinning. “Work for monsters, you are monsters. No quarter.”

Pira echoed, “Monsters.” She sounded unconvinced.

Elpida said: “What’s ‘pay’, in this context?”

Kagami said, “Meat! What else?”

Serin shook her head. “Raw blue. Portable. Easier than flesh.”

Elpida said, “Why are the ‘death cult’ after us? Last night, they were trying to take us alive — take me alive. Why?”

Serin shrugged. “You are interesting. Eat, and keep being interesting. I will watch.”

Without another word, Serin folded herself up and stepped backward out of the door. Her robes blended with the shadows in the corridor. She whispered away without a goodbye.

Elpida leapt after her. She turned as she moved, pointing toward the twitching heads on the floor and flicking a finger across the others. “Ilyusha, cover those with a coat. Atyle, help Vicky. Kagami, sit down, breathe. Pira — we’ll talk. I’ll be right back.”

Elpida hurried out into the corridor. A hissing argument broke out behind her — Pira snapping, Ilyusha snapping back, Vicky stammering in horror. But Elpida couldn’t allow this source of information to slip away.

Serin was only a few paces down the corridor, wreathed in shadows. Elpida caught up with her. “Serin, I have questions, please listen to me.”

The hulking revenant stopped and turned around. Her blood-red eyes were creased with fresh amusement.

Elpida said: “What do you know about the combat frame?”

Serin raised her eyebrows. “Nothing?”

“The object which fell from orbit. You must know that’s what we’re trying to reach. If this ‘death cult’ wants me alive, they may know about it. They may be trying to capture me so they can use it.”

“Orbital impact. Right at the edge of the worm’s cradle. Dangerous place. Worm-guard, maybe. Perhaps worse.”

“We met one of those,” Elpida said.

“I know. I shot at it.”

Elpida blinked. “That was you? Thank you. Serin, you saved us twice. It doesn’t quite make up for shooting me before, but thank you.”

“Mm. No thanks. Sport.”

“Serin, why not come with us? We stand a better chance of reaching the combat frame with a more competent group. We—”

“Your little comrade, ashamed of what she eats. Pira, fool, too noble to live long. And Kagami, huh.” Serin grinned wide beneath her mask. “She’s been at your raw blue. Smell it on her. Growing new parts beneath your nose. Good luck, Elpida. Don’t eat each other.”

Serin turned and whispered away down the corridor again, leaving Elpida behind.

“Serin, please. If—”

“If you want to touch the stars, false Necromancer, first bury your snout in meat.”