The city’s alive, a living and breathing machine. Walking its expanse, you can feel it move, with a tightening in your chest. Pressure builds behind your eyes until everything looks like an old ferrotype. The cement-laden streets run further than anyone’s ever walked, winding and merging through its depths like the veins in your arm. Running parallel to the tunnels, there’s always water and nutrients pumped around in a never-ending cycle, just waiting to be tapped.

They say that the water, full of pollution and run-off, clouds our senses - makes us weak, useless, and stupid - and it’s true. We’re all of those things. The lack of ambient light leads to blindness. The lack of anything good to eat leads to the unnaturally swollen bellies of the poor. Ironic that starvation and dehydration led the outsiders to the city in the first place. Oh, anything for a bit of gruel. Anything just to get by another day.

Well, listen to me, scabber. The nutrient gruel that the city feeds you with is a mind-control serum. It’s there to stop you from finding the truth. So stop eating it, and you’ll see the world for what it really is. Suppose that’s too much, however, if you’d care to consider another method, another way you could afford to change, well. In that case, I can get you answers if you’d, I don’t know, sell certain artificial parts of your body.

No?

Then you’ll find that it would rather behove you to watch where you’re walking...

CHAPTER 4: KEPT YOU WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

“Don’t be afraid, Bee,” came her mother’s voice. “You have done so well. You have been so strong.”

“I don’t understand.”

Bee convulsed. Soft, feathered tongues tickled at the edges of her mind. Distant, ethereal hands caressed her head, although she could not feel them amongst her greasy hair and sharp cranial spines. Confused and frustrated, she floated in the dark. It felt like hands ran over her shoulder plates and the protuberances that grew from them. She could smell notes of chlorine and plastic through the sweeping siphons that extended from just behind her upper arms. Thinking of hands, Bee remembered her own. Trying to ball them into fists, she was met with pain from her amputated wrist. In the other, she felt her six slender fingers turn tight, metallic nails digging into her palm. Her rear arms, too; they twitched, vying for her attention. Then, jerking back and forth, they flapped by some unknown, autonomous reflex.

“Please don’t struggle,” her mother said into her left ear. Distantly, however, Bee was aware that it could not have been her mother, not really.

In response, pain seized her. The child twisted in her confinement, trying but failing to hold her body and scream. Then, a flash of light, too bright, and her eyes opened and opened again. Disorientated, she was in the dark, and it took a few moments for her vision to adjust to cooler infrared. Eyelids heavy, she tried to work her jaw but found her mouth filled with cartilage and gel. Her tongue, forced down, pushed against an invader that ran down her throat.

Panic welled up inside her. The urge to flee overcame her. She tried to kick her arms and legs, finding only the barest movement as wet, warm and tightly elastic resin kept her constrained against the ceiling. No, it wasn’t the ceiling. In the dark, she was bonded to the back of something massive, moving ponderously, holding itself high above the ground. Unable to move her head, she couldn’t get a better look. It was so dark, and it felt so deep. Bee’s ears and nose popped at a distant pressure change. Exhausted, she watched the ribs in the passage at least fifty metres below as they slowly passed by.

The thing in Bee’s mouth began to tense and throb. It force-fed her, an urgent pressure in the pit of her stomach. Unable to cough or scream through her mouth or nose, Bee mutely realised it was breathing for her as well.

Unable to see them, Bee imagined the massive blackened rear legs of the creature that carried her. They must have been great crushing blocks of tough carapace, moving along the chamber ceiling in thumping strides punctuated by grasping claws. They pushed and pulled as they went, unrelenting in their advance. The cadence was her only stimulation as she listened to it walk through the darkness, a steady rhythm that lulled her into a false sense of security. Bee tried to keep track of the noise as the world grew hazy and indistinct, and a narcotic haze overcame her. Soon Bee floated in the dark once more. Confusion and dreams, alongside a realisation, she had reached the city, frightful crawling Acetyn.

In her fleeting imagination, Bee wasn’t alive. She was a dead thing, a corpse, and she was moving through a masquerade of the dead, walking amongst still forms, frozen in an eternal dance. That wasn’t right, no. Bee was alive, but her body wasn’t material. It wasn’t growing and breathing. She was a ghost of some description, which was very different from being dead.

Such a host she saw. Some were long, wormlike creatures in fancy dress. Others were shelled and squat, with many legs. Fear gripped her as she looked upon those with familiar bladed arms, held high as they moved as if to rend the stars themselves.

Suddenly, she was crushed, crushed by pressure above and below. Unable to see the source, she tried to catch her breath and continue on. Then, a rumble, and she felt the force release her, so she kicked and pushed with her legs, desperate to tread further through the mist upon the cold floor. Deeper, she moved into the dream.

The floor became a ramp, railed with ivory and milky eyes. Above the level where the freaks were dancing, Bee heard a song. The air was raw and thick, with a tang of burnt carbon and sour fluids. It was filled with the singing of taut strings and the thumping of percussive membranes.

Now Bee walked between tall tables. Seated around them were monsters of terrible forms, all shaped for murder, all old and hungry. Bee was surprised to discover that her mother sat at each table, though she looked wrong. At one table, she supported a crown of tangled horns. Another fed an armful of tumourous offspring, who guzzled from her swollen breasts. A third Vat-Mother reached forward and slammed down a heavy tentacle. Her armoured body leaned over her own assembly as she snarled muted and indistinct words. Bee watched for a time, crouched between them, crawling along the floor. Her lips turned to a pout, and her eyes narrowed, realising she was invisible to whatever phantom assembly this was.

After staring for long enough, watching their dreadful gatherings, Bee noticed something. An ephemeral and delicately thin white line arced from her mothers’ skulls and reached out into distant darkness and mist. So Bee followed it, past hundreds of tables and copies of her mother, until the lines came together into a thick glowing cable.

At the very last table, Bee faltered. Fear lurched in her belly as she discovered her real mother out of her seat and collapsed to one side. Everyone at her table was dead, carved to pieces or pulled apart in their seats. Bee lopped up to her mother and grabbed her emaciated shoulders, eyes wet out of upset and fright. Tears escaped her eyes and ran down her cheeks. But the body of her real mother was no more substantial than the rest, immaterial and inconsistent, snapping back into position when the child tried to move it.

“I’m sorry,” Bee apologised quietly when she eventually pulled herself away, standing and following the line to its very end, leaving her mother, the Vat-Mother of Sestchek, behind.

Voices carried in the dark. Bee found herself approaching a golden fireplace, casting warm and bright light. There, two women argued amongst themselves, silver teeth gleaming in the firelight. They lounged on cushioned seats, reclining, decadent, and not at all unnerved by this ghost space. This Vat-Mother wore the most decadent gowns, formed whole, the flesh of a creature, still living, with the most immaculate frills and corsage. On her skull, she wore a prosthetic lower face, red lips fixed in a sneer, whilst her upper head was kept beneath a dome of clouded glass. The Wire-Witch was nude, aside from dark metal coils around her torso and countless wires around her neck and skull. She looked much the same as the last time Bee met her.

“Of course they suspect something,” the Wire-Witch said. “More begs the question, should they care enough to do something about it. I think not.”

“But you truly believe he remains loyal?” Bee recognised her mother’s voice in the Vat-Mother, but with it real venom and years of contempt.

“He is the least of our concerns. This prison has become as much a haven,” the Wire-Witch attempted to downplay the subject, feigning a lack of worry. However, Bee watched as the Vat-Mother leaned in, making the Wire-Witch squirm as she met her evasive eyesockets.

Bee gawped, standing to the side of their otherworldly parlour. Hugging herself with her arms, the child leaned in, both fearful and thrilled that she was here and somehow unseen. Bee’s eyes widened as the Vat-Mother’s head turned directly towards her. However, the masked woman sighed instead of reacting to the child’s presence.

“Things are almost back to normal,” the Vat-Mother muttered, shaking her head. “We should be thankful of that, at least.”

Then she appeared. An electric hum, a thump, and a woman combining the bodies of her family with a face like Bee possessed stood amongst them. The child fell backwards, frightened. Looking upon this entity strained her eyes and left them stained with hypnogogic, shifting colours, almost as if she had stared into the sun for too long. Yet, beyond the pain and over-stimulation, this creature was beautiful. A haunting chill came over Bee regarding her, witnessing something so perfect and yet so wrong.

“There is the girl,” the newly arrived entity said, tight-lipped and angry.

“What girl?” the Vat-Mother asked.

“One of your sister-clones had a child,” remarked the Wire-Witch, looking away again. “A true child, in Sestchek of all places, just before they died.”

“What?” The Vat-Mother sat up straight. “That’s not possible.”

“The Vat-Mother of Sestchek uncovered, or decided to stop hiding, the genotype in her death-throes.” The brightness said, her voice issuing from all directions. “She must be found.”

“No lesser version of me could ever do that,” the Vat-Mother spat out. “You must be mistaken.”

“Hardly.” Wire-Witch leaned in this time, waving a hand as she seemed to relish adding, “I have seen her myself.”

“Yet you did not recover her genetic material,” the brightness said cooly.

“What?” A pause from the Witch before she looked away. “No, she was far too evasive.”

Bee’s eyes narrowed, looking over the Wire-Witch and frowning. Then, wondering why her relation might lie, the child crawled around the seats and looked more closely at the Vat-Mother. As she did, the masked woman sank into her chair, head down.

“Perhaps I could have children of my own,” the Vat-Mother muttered. “I would have, already, if you had not given me this body.”

“We do not get to decide our nature,” the brightness said, again without a hint of empathy.

Gritting her teeth, Bee looked again to this brightness, this woman who burned the eyes and the mind. Shielding her eyes with her hand did nothing to quell the pain, but that distortion of her vision came with the realisation. This was the Immortal. This entity doomed her mother and ruined the city that might have been her home.

“The child has entered the city,” the Immortal continued, unaware or uncaring of the misery and anger around her. “But Acetyn is hiding her from me.”

“She made it to Acetyn?” The Wire-Witch asked, suddenly looking alert. “You are certain?”

“I am,” the Immortal said. “The forces of your spouse and Eberekt in concert did not capture her at entry. Instead, the city itself has become involved. Find her. Bring her to me.”

The intensity of the entity’s demands made Bee’s skin crawl. She quickly looked between the Vat-Mother, who remained deflated, and the Wire-Witch, who had turned thoughtful. Bee’s attention remained on the latter, whose skull turned down, then aside, and finally towards the child. Swallowing a lump in her throat, Bee was sure that, this time, the Wire-Witch could see her.

“You will find her difficult to find. From what I could detect, she has no neural lace,” the Wire-Witch said, gaze now fixed on Bee and unmoving. “Or, at least, not one that can be connected to without a stinger. I have looked into the Basilica’s networks. His forces are moving into one of the Great Filters, close to the Warrens of Cruiros. Perhaps he knows something we do not.”

The Immortal turned upon the Vat-Mother, snarling another demand for intervention. But Bee did not listen. Instead, she stared into the empty eyesockets of the Wire-Witch. Mouth agape, the child held her breath as the Lady slowly shook her head in a subtle gesture meant to avoid notice.

It was acknowledgement. It was a warning. It was a threat. Then the ground swallowed Bee whole.

Falling.

Falling with the feeling that her body would lose all shape and form. Falling into the dark, forever tumbling with inevitable inertia. Eyes closed, Bee spiralled into freefall, and her mind closed itself away.

In a feverish frenzy, she imagined: that the grave city was in service to their Lord. His presence seeped through the walls and infected the flesh of the waiting cadavers. He whispered to the empty arteries and the hollowed chambers and told them their purpose.

In the low chorus, the song of the chordophages climbed to the highest echelons of the city’s towers. The congregation, formed of the faithful, received this call like a distant tide, riding it only so far. In their darkest hour, they sought to worship and pleaded for mercy, and they left petitioner’s footprints from an enclave of steel and cement only to be crushed against great stone walls. They left the cavity immobile and still. They pushed calm, pumping limbs through the gates, slowing to a halt as they reached their final resting place.

The Goddesses took the shrouding of blood and cloth and transformed its substance. Then their bodies, weak and fragile, were made capable of dissection and analysis. So all the world’s secrets became opened to them.

Slender men’s voices were creeping and scraping her ears with hate in the deep dark. Jagged and spiteful, they whispered of the faults in her. They promised that she should not be tempted by the delights of believers. They told her that this was not her place and that it was not her time. They asserted that she must not fear, that the choice for her was simple and true. These voices were unpleasant. Their tone was bitter. Bee felt a tremor of fear go through her body at the dark and quiet voices used by her captors. She failed to ward herself against their words. Shadows passing by told her tales of what the future had promised. She wept and remembered nothing that was imparted to her.

Falling.

A shockwave, then a bang. Bee opened her eyes to see the passageway alight. Spurts of oil ignited and sent streams of fire from the creature she was bound to towards the ground far below. The massive thing lurched as another thunderous crack rocked it. Somewhere ahead, the entire passage was sundered by explosives, causing its structure to buckle. Her ears were filled with the wet and sharp sounds of biocannon discharge. The child cowered against the ceiling. Bonded against the massive creature, she tasted burnt metal behind her shoulders. There was no time for her to consider what had transpired and what it might mean. Another impact, bass and thunder, made her flinch in her cocoon.

Turning her eyes as far as she could, Bee felt the creature lurch forward and then to the side. Whatever it was, it was not dead, not yet. Instead, however, shards of metal and bone tore through it again and again. First, a trickle, then a wash of blood ran over her hot and confined body. Then with a tremulous howl, it began to fall, one side before the other, clinging on to the massive passage’s ceiling for as long as it could manage.

With a final, unwholesome crack, it came tumbling down. The momentum pounded against Bee’s back. An inescapable weight pressed her down as the deep passage floor surged towards her. Grunting against the pipe in her throat, she tried to pivot herself, to curl or bend in her cocoon. It was futile. She could not find any escape.

The slow rotation of the falling body brought its left side down first. Bee felt the impact as a hammer blow to her entire body. The ribs of the vast passage below cracked, and its skin tore before giving way completely. The monster that she was bound to began to roll. It first brought Bee towards the ground. Unable to scream, she watched wide-eyed as the floor surged towards her. Then, metres from being completely crushed, the entire world shifted again. Now the creature above her was tipping forward, its head forequarters smashing through the floor and pulling Bee down with it. Dragged down, Bee’s cocoon tore against the bone and sinews that once held the floor together. One dark passage and then another flashed before her eyes as the sheer weight of the monster she was bound to destroyed multiple levels of the city.

Finally, she came to a rest in a deep tunnel. Rubble and bone tumbled around her, suspended upside down, the mass of the creature that bore her blocking the shaft. Bee blinked blood from her eyes and tried to focus on the dark. At first, all was still. Then, only the sound of rushing fluid behind her and the thumping of her heart beating filled her ears. With a creeping dread, Bee tried to pull herself free. She could not move. Trying to call for help, Bee quickly realised she could not even do that. Fear rose in her as the hungry sounds of the city depths became louder. Now that the disturbance and destruction had halted, life quickly came out of hiding. She could hear the slither of creatures in the dark, moving like ravenous serpents to the carcass.