Flesh and plastic. Oil and blood. Bee recognised the body of a patcher. No. It was still alive. Rigged and bound against a table, its legs and wings twitched by some comatose impulse. The drone’s head had been sawn open - or at least the space that passed as its head, between its dull compound eyes. Colourful wires, clad yellow and green, frayed into delicate metal fibres that touched the brain meat within.

Bee turned to the Wire-Witch. Unlike Mother, Djay had harmlessly disengaged herself from the structure. To the Wire-Witch, leaving the city - if this bunker could be called a part of the city - was as simple as unplugging the metallic sockets in her flesh and unclipping herself from the seat. It made Bee’s heart ache to see.

“What have you done to it?” The child asked quietly.

“Oh, Bee. Do not let this frighten you,” Djay said. Taking hold of a tube of plastic extending from the creature’s open wound, the witch ran her fingers along its length until she reached a pumping membrane. She unsealed a metal clasp upon the arterial hose and poured sanguine waters into a basin.

“I’m not scared.” Bee wasn’t - not of this. The child’s arm still stung from where Djay pierced it, drawing two vials of liquid, the first red and the second black, before hiding them inside the machinery of the chamber. Despite being reminded of the pain, Bee couldn’t look away.

“Good.”

The Wire-Witch turned her grinning skull to the child, its chrome surface catching the diode-light of the chamber. All the while, she ran the tip of a claw through the bowl. Then, collecting at her touch, she drew metal from the blood. The slick material built up around her titanium nail in spines and then organised itself into cubes, creating a solid structure from the fluid. After inspecting this, Djay discarded the mass into the water with a flick, draining the basin.

“This is a drone. They call this physio-type a patcher,” The Wire-Witch explained slowly, her empty eye sockets appraising Bee, watching for any reaction at all. For her part, the child set her lips tight, tongue swallowed, staring back intensely. So the witch continued, “It is not like you or me, or even the freaks out there. It is a part of the city, no more a creature than your hand without your head. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Bee said. A hot temperament built up in her chest, witnessing its cruel fate, but she managed to stop herself from saying more.

Catching the trembling of the little one’s body, the Wire-Witch said, “I have been trying to communicate with the cities for a very long time. They have been stubborn. Really, it is a pity that no one will know relentless Sestchek’s final words after all these centuries. Do you not think so?”

Bee swallowed a lump in her throat. Then, realising her hands were fists, her four legs were taut, the child looked away.

“I don’t think they would have much to say to you anyway.”

“Ah?” The Wire-Witch laughed, caught off guard by the child’s reaction. Djay turned away and walked, practically gliding, barefoot upon two slim bipedal legs. Bee followed in her wake, her own mismatched limbs slumping and catching the floor. Envy touched the child, watching as the older woman seemed to steal her mother’s form, using it with perfect poise and posture. Why didn’t she get to look like her mother?

As they passed between one chamber and another, the Wire-Witch said, “It is no matter. I have long set a plan into motion to get all I need from the cities. Your mother’s little rebellion is just that. She could not possibly outwit herself, much less the rest of us in concert.”

They crossed a walkway, suspended high in the air. Bee looked around. Bound upon the walls, concealed in the dark surrounding them, were drones of all shapes and sizes. Those with distinct heads, sharp with beaks and armoured with plates, turned to follow the child with their eyes and antennas. They sneezed, a demanding scent.

“Now, isn’t that interesting?” The Wire-Witch asked herself.

The pheromones that they spat made Bee salivate. Despite her every intent, she wretched, tongue emerging.

Clasping both hands over her mouth, Bee struggled to restrain her dribbling, and the emerging blade that tipped her tongue escaped her lips into her fingers. Losing control, now the child was frightened. She hurried closer to the Wire-Witch’s heels as a doorway was unsealed, opened, and then slammed shut in their wake.

Bee collapsed to her knees, heaving the cold, acrid air - free of pheromones, free of that wordless communication, clinical and filtered.

“Oh, little Bee. Here.”

The Wire-Witch extended her hand. Still gulping down clean air, Bee took it, confused at first by its warm softness. Then, trembling, the child struggled to stand again, the flutes on her back heaving and gasping.

“Have some dignity,” the Wire-Witch said, holding a small woven cloth. She dabbed at Bee’s face, drying the sticky saliva.

“Um... Thanks.”

“Yes, yes.” There was a reluctant edge to Djay, but still, something warmed in her, up close to her sister’s child. Then, her skull turning grim with some unspoken realisation, the Wire-Witch turned away once more.

Bee looked around. This chamber was more intricate than the last, machinery was loud and without number. Finally, she honed in on something that looked right.

“What’s this?” Bee asked, looking up to the whirring, pipe-cooled metal beast caged against the hard wall of this new area.

“It’s a computer. But it’s less about what it is, little Bee, and more about what it can be persuaded to do.”

Now the Wire-Witch paced in the depths of her domain. As she spoke, the subject of her machines was exciting, even intoxicating, to her. Mother had instructed Bee that the Wire-Witch would not be able to resist talking about her designs. So now Bee had been taken to exactly where she needed to be.

“It can send messages,” Bee reasoned. Her face creased with distaste as she looked it over once more. Then she asked, “Do the Bone Monks have one?”

“They do. Yes. I built many for the monks and taught them the ancient rites to maintain such a creation.”

“Who do they send messages to?”

Djay cackled. “They do more than send messages, little Bee. In a time before time, our progenitors used them to recreate the greatest miracles of the universe.”

“Like what?” Bee asked, dubious.

“Creating life, mapping the stars, inventing civilisation,” Djay said, her faceless skull transfixed on the mainframe, silver toothed grin somehow wider in the electric light. “The great inventions of prehistory – fire, steel, and electricity. We have so much more to rediscover. But even the little scraps they left behind, back-ups from another age, let us recreate the unimaginable.”

Bee wasn’t sure what to make of that. There was an obsession in the Wire-Witch’s empty eye sockets, and she felt like the slightest offence to Djay’s electro-religion would be met with another furious outburst. However, the silence too caught the Wire-Witch’s attention.

“Life isn’t all about eating, fucking, and trying to muscle your way to the top.”

“I know.” Bee didn’t. She had been hungry for as long as she could remember.

“Good. Then you are a smarter girl than your mother.”

Bee couldn’t know what to say to that. Djay reached across and pulled on one of the screens. With a snap, it came away, levered out on an arm. Then the arm became a throat as the Wire-Witch wrapped her hand around it, forcing the screen to meet the child’s face.

“Have you ever seen yourself before?” Djay asked.

Bee shook her head, unnerved by the thing. Its flat head was so close.

“Look at this,” the Wire-Witch said.

The screen flashed to life. Bee flinched, suddenly close to a monster, eyes wide with surprise.

“There. Do you see?”

“Yes?” Bee said, not sure if she did see. It was the right shape. Where the sockets of her mother and Djay were empty, this creature had eyes, though. Bee knew she had eyes. Grey skin was tainted by raw pink, the sore sunburn that the child knew so well.

“That’s me?”

“It is.”

It was all wrong. Bee knew she had skin, but skin didn’t belong on a head. She leaned back, jaw-dropping. Reluctantly, she brought a hand to her shoulder plates and then traced a line up her neck to her smooth jaw. The image on the screen followed her every movement.

“How do I send a message?” She asked the Wire-Witch.

“Speak into the screen. Tell it what your mother told you to say. What you see on the screen is what the Bone Monks will get.”

Bee peered up to Djay, who seemed a little too amused. She brushed a wave of greasy hair out of her eyes to better see the screen before speaking.

“Hello. My name’s Bee. I have a message for you from my mother. My mother, the Vat-Mother.”

The child looked terrified. Lost, she found her own eyes and fixed her gaze upon them. They drew her in.

“It’s a prophecy, one that has to be inked.”

That part was important, even though Bee wasn’t sure why. Her hands squeezed into tight fists again. Her four knees shook.

“My first step into the city will seal the Immortal’s fate. She will die, and it will be justice for… For killing mother.”

A hot breath escaped her, her heart beating in her chest so hard that she was dizzy. She hadn’t said it right, but the monster looked angry, all traces of innocence and youth on her face forgotten.

“That’s it,” she told the Wire-Witch.

Djay’s skull turned away, and she shoved the screen aside again. Her jaw worked, silver teeth grinding. She tried to take a breath, calm herself of her disappointment, and suppress another outburst. But instead, the frustration turned to hostility still.

“You stupid girl.”

However, the weight between them had already shifted. Bee looked up to the Wire-Witch, seeing only the sister hiding from the world as it died all around her. They had too much in common for forgiveness.

“I’m leaving,” Bee told the Wire-Witch, her tiny voice filled with conviction, tears stinging her eyes.