Maidens of the Fall

Unnumbered headlong heartbeats later — careening down shadow-clotted concrete corridors, skidding sideways in heedless haste to scramble round blind corners, plunging deep into dark places where all lights have failed, chased by distant echoes through empty vaults, beneath monumental quiet, past grave-thick dust in abandoned rooms, hopping bulkhead ridges and warning-taped steps, ducking around fossilised damage and skirting the edges of forgotten battle-sites, hip bone screaming and left knee buckling, lungs pumping and throat rasping raw — I finally slow and stumble and stutter out to a tentative stop.

Because I think, when I glance back, and there is no sign of toxic golden glow, that I have lost Willow.

Nerys balances near-weightless on my left shoulder as I double up, heave for breath, try not to crumple to my knees or empty my stomach, clutching my prosthetic to my chest. Her claws dig through my t-shirt, breaking skin against clavicle and shoulder blade. Spittle drips from my lips. Tongue tastes like iron.

Magical girls are good sprinters, amputees and cripples are not; I’m still an incomplete version of the former, a perfect specimen of the latter. My hips have exploded into jagged shrapnel, the stump of my right thigh chafed to exposed bone, the muscles of my left leg pulverised to jelly, weak and wobbly from the hopeless effort of matching the piston-power in my prosthetic right. I haven’t run that fast since I was a little girl, since never. My escape from Dream Control Oxford Headquarters was a gentle jog by comparison.

Plato Base has guided me deep into half-lit stony viscera, dim LED bulbs ceiling-strung at irregular intervals, stairways stabbing down into pitch darkness, rooms looming with shadowy suggestion. Vast storage spaces tower on every side, crammed with rotting pallets and threadbare tarpaulins, some with curious designs carved or inked onto walls and floors, linked by a lacework of sharp-cornered corridors.

No zoogs back here, no monuments to brave Moon Beasts or the forgotten habitation of Ghouls. Just old damage, inches of dust, dense concrete. Unlike the easy journey to the makeshift graveyard a few days ago, I would not be able to retrace my steps from memory.

Nerys rasps in my ear: “Octavia, your arm! Arm up! Arm!”

Too breathless to reply, coated with sickly sweat, shivering with fear’s ugly cousin, I give Nerys a look that says ‘I know, I have not taken complete leave of my senses, you giant rodent made of road tar’. She gives no indication of comprehension, rapping my spine with the tip of her tail, snout on a swivel, alert for signs of pursuit.

I straighten up, swallow a convulsive cough, stagger toward the wall, gait crooked from pain in my hips. Cold concrete braces my back, shoulders a moment of rest.

Absolute silence.

Hundreds of meters of concrete and lunar rock muffle any hint of the rainstorm outdoors. This is the north end of Plato Base, dug deep into a flank of the Montes Alpes, nestled in the dark beneath the moon. Even the ever-present furtive shufflings and distant creakings from the depths have fallen still. Nobody takes the risk, not while a monster stalks the halls.

A wordless echo whispers from the dark, a voice heard from across an abyss. Might be my imagination. Could be my name.

A handful of heartbeats later I hear it again, lost in the rat-nest of corridors.

“Is that her?” I whisper. “Is that Willow?”

Nerys bares her teeth beside my face. “Yesssssss. Yes.”

“Why can’t she find me? Teleport to me, appear behind my back, whatever. She’s a Dreamer, surely she can just—”

“Luna is not her world,” Nerys whispers back, tightening her tail around my upper arm. “She has no dominion here, I do. She does not know this place. Huunnhh! Octavia, your arm!”

I nod, try to squat, discover the pain in my hips is worse than I thought. Choke down another broken cough, slump against the wall. I end up sprawled on my arse, legs out straight, prosthetic arm laid across my lap. During the sprint I managed to transfer the roll of carbon fibre tape from clenched between my teeth to wedged around my left wrist, but removing it again proves an unexpected challenge. My left arm hurts almost as much as my hips. My shoulder and elbow are wrenched all wrong, tendons twisted, muscles strained, all from smashing a chair over Willow’s head. The exposed skin on my hand and forearm is turning red and raw, tiny blisters forming beneath the surface; brief immersion in Willow’s golden corona has inflicted something very much like a fast-forward radiation burn.

The carbon fibre tape makes an escape attempt as it comes free, rolling off toward the dark. I lunge, catch it, force a grunt from my lungs, try not to scream at the abrasive pain against my palm and fingers. Nerys goes very still on my shoulder, tail tight around my bicep. I hold my breath, alert for the echo of Willow’s voice.

There it is again. Calling my name. Closer now, can almost make out the syllables.

Cold mucus unfolds a putrescent blossom in the back of my head, mycelial filaments sliding between the whorls of my brain, the dream-parasite reawakened by Willow’s call. Anger has burnt out, all spent on the sprint, nothing left to kill the seed she planted. Fear settles onto my chest and into my gut, a physical weight. Frozen sweat chills my skin. I start to shake.

She is coming for me again and this time there is nobody to help. Willow is already inside my head and there will be no escape. Of course I belong to her. This brief period of playing pretend with my ‘freedom’ is coming to a close.

And wouldn't that be better, to let it end?

At least I’d be happy.

Of course—

I grit my teeth, shake my head like a wet dog, hope it gives the parasite whiplash. Drag my prosthetic hand from my pocket, fumble it against the wrist-mount. Focus.

“Nerys,” I hiss. “Nerys, I can feel a … a p-parasite in the back of my head again. She’s done it again, put a fresh one inside me. W-what do I do?”

“Get as far away from the Dreamer as you can,” Nerys hisses. “Keep away, keep your scent from her! And don’t let her at your eyes, don’t let her look. Don’t look!”

“No!” I snap. “I mean how do I get it out!? Can you get it out? Nerys, can you get it out of me?”

“Not I! I can’t!” Nerys rasps. “You, you! Like before!”

A whine claws at the base of my throat; I was afraid Nerys would say that. The previous dream-parasite was surgically removed by my other self — that steel angel of paradoxical red-black light and imperishable metal, the presence at my back who had stepped into my skin up on the hospital rooftop, a clarity of purpose I have had no further glimpse of since the severing of my arm. That I was ever her, that she was ever me, seems impossible from the nadir of my current state, lost and alone and in pain, hiding in the dark from an embryonic god to whom I have always belonged.

Transformation or slavery. Either this works, or I am forever Willow’s creature.

With the prosthetic hand locked into place, I lay the arm across my lap and press the battery level indicator. The little white bar reads 100%, a welcome impossibility. Three quick presses should reset the articulation on the hand. I pray that I have not missed a wire, made a mistake, miscalculated. Pray to the universe, to the Dream-God on my shoulder, to the memory of my own red-black transformation. My left hand shakes so bad I can barely keep a grip.

Three quick presses, click, click, click.

The hand twitches. Four fingers and one thumb straighten out.

A grin gibbers onto my face, borderline hysterical. “Yes! Yes, yes, okay, okay, we’ve got it, I’ve got it— it— it’s okay— going to be okay— here— here I am, here I am, right here, right here, get on, get on, get on, get on— you useless fucking cripple get it on get it on get it on—”

I hike up the right sleeve of my t-shirt to expose my stump, yanking so hard I almost rip the fabric. Phantom pain builds to a quivering crescendo, forgotten muscles of my dead right arm clenched in anticipation, the raw skin of my left hand burning as I awkwardly raise the prosthetic socket toward my stump.

The ugly flesh of my amputation site slips smoothly into the familiar embrace of padding and silicone and myoelectric pickups. Warm, almost body temperature already, my own pulse reflected back from the snug enclosure. A sigh of desperate release shudders through my parted lips — then a wince of something close to pain, as I jam the stump in harder than I strictly should, wedging it deep. My blistered left hand fumbles at the silicone sleeve, rolling it up all the way to my shoulder, completing the seal, locking myself back together.

Relief pours silent tears down my cheeks. A panting, high-pitched, insane laugh escapes me, echoes off into the gloom. Phantom pain ebbs away as the ghost of my limb inhabits a new machine.

I raise my prosthetic arm and make a fist.

In a dark, cold, concrete corridor, crumpled against a corner, lost and alone in the depths of the moon, exhausted and wounded, burned by dream-stuff, I am once again made whole.

Deep breaths. Scrub away the tears. Still in danger.

“What now!?” I hiss, fumbling for the straps, just to make sure my arm isn’t going anywhere. “Nerys, how do I transform? Or how do I … ” I swipe at the back of my head with my prosthetic fingers, poking at the junction between skull and spine, beneath which that speck of cold mucus broods like a nucleus of internal frostbite, ready to freeze my thoughts and drown my furnace. “How do I get this thing out!? Nerys?”

Nerys is staring off to the left, where the corridor vanishes into a deep patch of sticky shadow before a grey junction of concrete veins. I glance both ways, hoping to see a hint of red-black light, praying for my other side to make herself known.

Nothing but shadows, blank concrete, old dust.

“Transform,” Nerys hisses. “Yes, yes, transform.”

“Yeah, but how?!”

“Up to you, Octavia. All up to you!”

I open and close my right fist, work the elbow joint up and down, test the weight and heft of the newly repaired limb. It’s not quite right, not the same as before; I always knew that would be the case, but it’s one thing to estimate weight and density in a design document, quite another to feel the result as a part of your body, and know that you are not the exact way you were before. The new forearm components are a touch lighter, the whole thing feels less robust. I needed longer for the adhesive to set, needed those eight hours of sleep, but I didn’t have a choice. Perhaps transformation demands complete structural integrity.

“Where are you?” I whisper to that other self as I grab the carbon fibre tape. Not finished yet. “Where am I, I suppose? Nerys, how do I—”

“Octaviaaaaaa?”

Willow’s voice floats from the shadows and echoes off the concrete, fading like distant thunder.

She could be a hundred meters away, lost in the tangled corridors. Or she could be around the nearest corner.

“Octaviaaa? Where are you, Octavia?”

Her voice trembles as if about to crack, dripping with strained sorrow and the empty husk of indignant anger. Thick, viscous, roiling, like her throat is choked with hot tears.

A hint of light creeps into the end of the corridor, grey concrete lit from far away by flickering banners of toxic gold.

I scramble to my feet, forearm not yet reinforced with carbon fibre tape. Nerys tightens her grip on my shoulder, bears her teeth at the approaching light, tail wrapped around my left arm.

Cold slug-flesh spreads and widens inside the back of my head, creeping feelers down my spine, worming through the inner spaces of my brain, whispering thoughts I never knew were mine.

Willow would know how to strengthen my arm. She knows how to replace it entirely, with something much better than carbon fibre. She made that promise, don’t you dare forget. A Dreamer’s promise, she could do it if she wished, if I only asked, if I apologised and accepted. Willow would regrow me an arm of true flesh, and a leg too. She could make my skin inviolate and my bones unbreakable. She could grow me into whatever new shape I wish. All I have to do is open my mouth and call out to her, and she will remake the world for me, and me for the world.

I clamp my jaw tight, froth hissing through clenched teeth. Lies; Willow would reshape me according to her desires, not mine.

Raise my right fist, will myself to transform.

“Come on, come on,” I grunt. “Come on!”

But I will never achieve transformation. Octavia Carter had her one chance, and proved she was not worthy. I will remain forever a corpse, cooling in an unmarked grave. The only route back to life and warmth is beneath the light of Willow’s sun. Let her embrace me, and I will live again and never die.

Nothing happens. No transformation. No red-black glow in my peripheral vision.

The uneven golden radiance at the end of the corridor grows brighter and harder in fluttering bursts, auroral streamers flowing from a collapsing core, swirling across the grey concrete walls, pooling against the floor. A scent like the sunlight of half-remembered childhood afternoons fails to cover the reek of electrical burning and raw petroleum.

“Octaviaaaaa!”

Nerys hisses in my ear. “Octavia, hide! Hide, now!”

Fear overrides the lying whispers from that slime-soaked slug-parasite in the back of my brain. I turn and stagger away, lopsided and wincing, dragging myself a few paces further into the corridor, then slumping through the first doorway on the right, a bulkhead portal ringed with rusted steel. The room inside is a massive echoing concrete vault, unlit except for the backwash of light from the corridor. Detritus covers the floor, coated in thick dust, spotted with bits of old paper, half-obscured scrawlings in faded black. Another exit looms on the opposite side, as does a third far off to the left, portals into deeper shade. Pallets and rotten crates are stacked up in sagging lines. I limp over to the nearest row and slip into cover, then grab the carbon fibre tape and prepare to finish my arm.

“No, no!” Nerys rasps, claws tightening, surely drawing blood from my numb shoulder. “She’ll hear the tape, it’s loud, loud, loud stuff!”

My hands freeze. Nerys is right, the carbon fibre tape rasps worse than a zoog when it peels from the roll.

“Octaviaaaa?”

She’s here.

Golden incandescence seeps into my peripheral vision. Pressure builds inside my ears. The burned skin on my left arm throbs and aches. Humid air draws freezing sweat from my brow.

Light footsteps from the corridor, soggy and damp. Shoes off, socks wet; she must have defeated Gregory, got drenched in the process.

Don’t breathe. Don’t blink. Will my heart to stop.

A blaze of toxic golden light suddenly washes over the walls, throws the room into stark illumination cut by hard-edged shadows, eating at the edge of my cover, as if burning away the periphery of the ancient wooden crates with powerful acid. Golden light swirls and coils like oil on the surface of the sun, guttering and flickering, seething and pulsating. A damaged engine running out of control, spewing fuel and coolant.

“Octavia?” Willow says. “I can tell you’re nearby.”

A laugh, half-girlish and half-crazed, bubbling over with humiliation and overripe anger.

“I’d love to say that I can smell you.” When she speaks again, her voice drifts deeper into the room. Quivering, fragile, each breath sending streamers of toxic gold rushing overhead. “But it’s nothing so mundane as all that. No, it’s more like … like my heart is a magnet, and I can feel you tugging at it whenever you’re close by. It’s always been that way, ever since the very first day we met.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out as a sigh; the golden light unfolds like a solar flare. “I’ve never told you that before. Perhaps I should have done so, perhaps you would have known what you mean to me, then maybe all this ugliness would never have happened.” A sniff, holding back tears, a thickening in her voice. “I’m not just saying this to win you over, Octavia. I am not weaving some cheap romanticism. This is the truth. Do you believe me? You must, you simply must. I can’t live without you, Octavia. I can’t. I’ll die.”

Damp footsteps plod to the centre of the room, dragging the epicentre of the light. I stay perfectly still, resist the absurd, alien tugging that tells me to reply, to stick my hand out from cover, to give myself what I’ve wanted all along. Nerys has turned cold as old tar on my shoulder.

“I made mistakes,” Willow says. “God knows, I made so many mistakes, and I won’t resent you for blaming me, for wanting me to account for my actions, my poor decisions, all of it. There has been a double betrayal here, you are not to blame for that. Back in the hospital … ” Willow’s voice breaks, stutters in time with the gutter of her toxic corona. “I said … I said it wasn’t … that what we felt for each other wasn’t … wasn’t … love.”

Golden light rotates in slow spirals against the wall, the off-gassing of a dying star. Tendrils of visible toxin drift through the air overhead, thick bands of glittering acid.

“And now I take that back,” Willow says, voice thick with fake emotion. “Yes, I take it back.” A pause. “Octavia? I take it back.”

Don’t breathe. Don’t blink. Don’t twitch. Give her nothing.

Willow screeches at the top of her lungs: “I take it back! Octavia! Answer me!”

Her noxious aurora throbs and whirls like a silent hurricane in golden miniature, bannering past my cover to buffet against the walls. The air reeks like rancid petrol, boiling salt water, rotten cabbages. But then she’s panting for breath, catching herself, swallowing hard. The corona ebbs back down.

Light shifts to one side, brightening on my right, edging toward the end of the row of rotten old crates; she is coming for my hiding place. The cold slug in the back of my head tries to root me to the spot, whispering promises of forgiveness and understanding. But it has no power over the piston of my prosthetic leg. I creep down the row of boxes with a lopsided hobble, shoulders low, left leg dragging, breathing open-mouthed, silent as I can.

Smashing a chair over Willow’s head stunned her earlier, but she’s beyond that now. I can’t turn and fight her anymore than I could split a storm with my fist.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” Willow says, sniffing back more tears, “being a Dreamer.”

I stumble round the next corner just in time. Willow’s golden gleam floods the row behind me, chewing at the shadows, filling the air with a reek like superheated plastic.

“Or rather, you do, you see?” she goes on. “That’s part of why I chose you, Octavia. Part of what forged our special bond, something only you and I can have together. Nobody else can replace you. I lost my parents entirely by accident, that wasn’t a lie, it really happened. I never meant for it, and it left me … confused, alone, hurting. You lost yours too, the same way. You understand what it feels like to be the only one of your kind, lost and left behind, without anybody to turn to. That’s why I knew, when we first met, when both of us were still just children, that you were the one for me. I just couldn’t see it before. Couldn’t understand what I already had. I didn’t understand myself, Octavia. But now, I do, I do!” Her voice hitches with sickly mania. “I understand now what I had, what we had together. And I never want anything else. Please, Octavia? Please say something. I know you’re nearby.”

In questionable silence, I limp the length of the next row of crates and boxes and old tarpaulins. Willow’s searing light blooms on the other side of the row, where I was moments before, barely two feet away. We pass within touching distance.

I creep onward fast as I can move, but Willow is in motion too. She is going to reach the far end and turn the corner before I can escape, and then she will see me. The cold slug at the base of my brain slows my steps, forces me to linger, muscles quivering, fighting against the gravitational pull of Willow, a black hole spewing death from her accretion disk.

“I know I was acting wrong,” she says. “But I’m ready to be normal again now. Octavia, do you hear me? I’m ready to be normal again. Please. I’ll even forgive you for hitting me. I know you didn’t mean it, not really, that’s not who you are. I forgive you, Octavia! I forgive you!”

My escape — from the row of boxes, back out into the corridor — is still twenty feet away, and Willow is almost at the opposite end of the row, golden light bleeding around the corner in great glittering washes. In another three paces she will round that corner to my rear and her golden radiance will wash over me and blot out everything but her; the cold slug-thing in the back of my head squirms against my spine, trying to turn me around, turn me to face her, stop me so she can see. I fight for the corner, reaching for the rotten old wood of a crate, right hand outstretched, heart hammering, muscles straining, squeezing toward another collapse.

As if by a miracle, Willow stops walking. She lets out a huge sigh. Golden light flares and flashes overhead.

Gravitational pull releases. I scramble forward, around the next corner, into deep shadow, trying not to heave for breath lest she hear.

Willow pauses for a long moment, light guttering and stuttering. Is she finally running out of fuel?

“I … ” Her voice falters, high and dry, breathy with something akin to anxiety. “I know what you’ve been … doing.” Heavy on that final word, brittle with strange dignity. Her toxic golden light leaves the rows of boxes entirely, wandering back out into the open middle of the room, casting long jagged shadows overhead. “I know you’ve been trying to … to do … certain things, to yourself.”

I squint with disbelief.

“Oh,” Willow sighs, despairing at herself. “Why must I be delicate about this? You reek like an animal in heat, Octavia.” Her voice rushes with disgusted relief. “I know what you’ve been up to, up here with these loose women, their tricks and their lies. And I know you haven’t been able to … to achieve satisfaction.”

Masturbation. Willow is talking about my attempts to masturbate, and she can’t even say the word.

Silence stretches thin, tortured by the sputtering, hissing breakdown of Willow’s dream-stuff form, spiralling out from her in streamers and outflows of golden pseudo-matter. She is coming apart, new holes punctured by this unspeakable taboo.

“And I … ” She says. “I can … no, I will. I will.” A deep breath, steeling herself. “I will do it for you, Octavia.”

An involuntary rush runs from my groin to my head. Willow — my Willow, the girl I thought I had a thousand times — is promising to jill me off.

The clammy mucosal parasite in the back of my head hijacks that hormonal rush, uses the chemical impulse for catalyst, takes hold of my brain and my jaw and my mouth, tries to move my tongue, shouting yes, yes, yes!

I clamp my prosthetic hand over my lower face, hold my jaw shut by force, plug my nostrils with my thumb and forefinger, stab my cheek with my nails.

“I can be gentle,” Willow is saying. “You know just how gentle I can be. Or I can be forceful, if that’s what you need. Whatever you require, I can shape myself to fit. Whatever you need in order to … to feel … good.” She forces that word out, like an olive pit against her teeth. “I can make myself an expert, to give you what you need. We’ll learn it together, Octavia. Please? I can learn, and then you’ll be my good girl again, you’ll see. You’ll be my good girl … ”

Willow’s voice trails off, dragged by soggy footsteps. Her toxic golden light grows dimmer, swallowed up into the corridor. She has left through the opposite exit.

A ruse? Golden brilliance shimmers in my peripheral vision for a time, then ebbs away, lowering me back into thick grey gloom.

I wait, prosthetic hand clamped tight over my mouth, until my lungs ache for oxygen. Then I slowly let go, try not to shake too badly.

“Octaviaaaa?” Willow’s voice floats from the dark, lost deeper in Plato Base. “Octaviaaa?”

She fades to mere echo.

Soaked with sweat, still clutching the carbon fibre tape, left hand and arm hot and tight and itching like mad, I sag against the old wooden crates. Nerys finally moves again, flexing her tiny claws against my shoulder, relaxing her tail.

“Move move move,” Nerys hisses. “Move now!”

“Why can’t you fight her?” I whisper, lips thick with saliva, numb with adrenaline. “Nerys? You’re a Dream-God. I saw you bite that cat’s head off. Can’t you stop her?”

“I am only a small god,” Nerys hisses, tiny and fragile, a zoog hiding from the hounds. “Move!”

Carbon fibre tape peels from the roll with a loud rasp; I wince and grit my teeth, Nerys lets out a low hiss of alarm. I pick myself up and hurry to the doorway through which I entered, back out into the concrete corridor. Willow went north, deeper into the Base, so I turn back the way I came, due south.

Willow’s passage has left a trail — streaks of wall melted as if by brushes of airborne acid, petite footprints burned white into the concrete floor, rapidly cooling puddles of golden ooze settled like cold slime, leeching light from the air and giving nothing back. An easy route, the way we came, though I take extra care not to step in any of her strange blood.

Deja vu shudders up from my core as I hurry away, coupled with a strange feeling that I am leaving somebody behind.

Perhaps this is not my first rebellion, not the first time I’ve tried to escape from Willow. But any memory of prior flight is gone, same as any memory of my drinking habit, drowned in dreams.

I slap the end of the carbon fibre tape to my forearm, just below the wrist, and stick the fingers of my left hand into the middle of the roll, then wrap it around and around and around, spiralling down my forearm toward the elbow in a tight, controlled motion, coating the structure with additional layers of black tape. My left hand burns with the friction, popping sensitive fluid-filled blisters on my damaged skin, but I grit my teeth, ride out the discomfort, for the sake of survival.

It’s overkill, covering even the battery compartment and the indicator with layer after layer of crimped, uneven black. But tape can be cut later. Right now I need structural integrity at any cost.

“She didn’t even mention the zoogs and Tissy, or those cats she brought with her,” I hiss to Nerys, hurrying down the shadow-drenched corridors, shooting backward glances over my shoulder. “Oh god, the zoogs.” I sniff back the threat of tears, the purity of my anger forever tainted by a wound that I have not yet examined. “I’m so sorry, Nerys. I’m so sorry. Will Tissy be okay? Can Tissy save some of them?”

“Tistis has saved more zoogs than you will ever count.”

“Good. Good, well, I hope she can save some of those ones.” Don’t think about them. Can’t let myself crumble right now. “Those cats, though. Nerys, what were they? What was that?”

“Assassination,” Nerys hisses.

“Ah?”

“An assassination attempt,” Nerys rasps a little louder. “Cowards. Cowards! It was known you were not yet transformed. Known you were alone. They would never have dared if I were not wounded. Never would have dared. Could have eaten a dozen of those. Two dozen. Three. Rrrrrrrrrr.” Nerys growls, a sticky-wet zoog-sound down in her throat.

“From the Dream-God you fought?” I ask, still moving, coming to the end of the roll of carbon fibre tape. I cut the end with my teeth, spit out the bitter taste of adhesive, toss the cardboard core aside. “They were from her?”

“Mmmm,” Nerys grunts.

I halt somewhere deep in the bowels of Plato Base, along the path of Willow’s damage, adjacent to a pair of metal bulkhead doors standing half-open, the room beyond a jumble of naked steel bed frames and old metal racking.

Raise my arm, make a fist. Swing it out wide, sketch a punch at my own shadow.

Ugly, uneven, tape crimped and bunched. But it’s stable, solid. Enough to throw a hundred punches.

Deep breath. Close my eyes. Keep my prosthetic fist tight. Visualise red-black light, my limbs clad in steel, veined through with molten metal. My face a mask of void. My heart an engine.

“Transform,” I whisper. “Transform.”

Click my fingers, like Grimgrave. Stomp a foot, like Burning Bright. Nothing happens.

My eyes fly open. “Nerys? Why can’t I transform?! It almost happened earlier, when I was shouting at Willow, so why not … not now … ”

I know why.

Nerys lets out a low rasp. “Your humours are all out of balance. Your chemicals and cocktails are not right.”

“Anger,” I say. “I need to be angry again. But … ”

But the clarity of my anger is tainted by a hundred other emotions. Fear, terror, guilt. Indignant outrage. Sorrow and grief.

A blush of guttering golden light creeps around the far end of the corridor, washing across grey concrete. Willow’s voice echoes in the middle distance, my name still a blur.

I raise my fist and think of England, of Oxford, of Grimgrave’s face, Grimmy’s weight in my arms. Ready a punch, tighten my knuckles, feel my feet tilt as if pulled by invisible tide. I can’t do this alone, can’t face Willow by myself, have to get out, get help, get—

Get away? Run away?

My fist unmakes itself.

“Nerys, can you translocate?” I hiss.

Nerys digs her claws into my shoulder, hard enough to hurt. “Yes, yes! Outdoors is easier than indoors, but yes! But not without being followed. Octavia, I am not the one in danger, you are! Run, run—”

“How much longer can Willow keep this up?”

Golden light intensifies down the corridor, melting the shadows, bleaching the concrete. My name drifts from the deep, spoken in a voice like boiling water dripping on hot metal.

“Nnnnn!?” Nerys rasps.

“She’s a Dreamer,” I explain, eyes glued to that golden light. “She’s on the moon, and she’s not meant to be here. She’s coming apart at the seams. How long can she do this for?”

Nerys sways her snout from side-to-side, desperate to be away. “Don’t know! Don’t know! She’s losing control of herself, going from lucid to madness. And then she might still tear through Plato Base to reach you. Octavia, you can’t wait her out, you have to—”

“I can’t let her get back to the zoogs.”

“Octaviaaaaaa.” My name floats from the dark, gentle at first, then a hard, wild snap. “Octavia!”

“I can’t let her back to the Big Room, can’t let her at the zoogs, or Tissy. She’s … vindictive.” How do I know that? Long experience, beneath the level of washed-out memory. “If I run, she’ll hurt them just to get back at me. I know she will. You have to get back to the zoogs and Tissy, Nerys, you have to translocate them, tell them to hide, whatever, doesn’t matter, just … hide them.” Swallow hard, past a lump in my throat. No time for fear. “And I — I have to get Willow out of Plato Base. I have to get her off Luna.”

Nerys’ eyes have gone wild with terror, little black marbles reflecting the distant golden glow as Willow draws closer. Her lips peel back, her tail tightens around my upper arm.

“Think like a zoog,” she rasps. “Octavia—”

“That’s what I’m doing. Nerys, I’m still a magical girl, yes? Even if I can’t transform, I’m still a magical girl. Metaphysically, ontologically, whatever you want to call it. Is that right?”

“Yesssss?”

“You’re certain? Yes or no. My survival will depend on the answer.”

“Yes! Yes!”

Deep breath. Nod to myself. I can do this. I hurt Willow by hitting her over the head with a chair.

“Then I don’t need to be transformed to kill her.”

I step to the side, stretch out my prosthetic knuckles, and thump one of the old bulkhead doors. Rusted metal rings like a tortured gong — clang, clang, clang, echoing off down the corridors of Plato Base.

“Octavia!” Nerys rasps right in my ear. “What are you doing?!”

“Baiting the hook.” Raise my voice. “Willow!”

Golden light flares and flickers, rushing across the walls, streaming toward me like a slow-motion blast-wave.

I turn on my right heel and break into a fresh sprint, loping, lopsided, wracked by pain, following the fading trail of Willow’s golden blood, passing the scorch marks her dissolution has left on the concrete walls, hurrying around corners and stepping over the rims of rusted bulkhead doors, heading back toward the Big Room. I pass a pair of shoes melted to the floor; Willow’s shoes, discarded as her dream-like nature took over. My phone rings in my pocket, but I ignore it, ploughing on ahead.

With the damage I’ve done to my hips and my thigh-stump, I cannot outpace her now, a thousand tiny pains slowing my stride, the heaving and panting of my lungs dragging me back with every breath, the cold thing in my head trying to make me stop and wait. Golden light flows around the edges of my peripheral vision, the tendrils of a great beast at my heels. Nerys is shivering and drooling and clawing at my shoulder in panic, but she clings on hard, not to be left behind.

A familiar cobalt glow appears up ahead, radioactive light leaking around several corners. Tissy, in the Big Room. We’re close.

I skid to a halt in the middle of a junction, scrambling to catch my balance, nearly toppled by the throbbing ache in my hips. Golden light throbs from behind, my name like the pounding of thunder. Big Room ahead, corridors on my right, old metal stairs to my left.

“Nerys, the stairs, do they go up to the roof? The outer roof of Plato Base?”

“Yes, yes! But—”

With both hands, I pull Nerys off my shoulder. Her stubby little zoog-paws tear rents in my t-shirt and skin, in pure surprise. She lets out a confused ‘yaaaaah!’ and tries to cling on with her tail, but I yank her free.

I set her down and shove her toward the Big Room. Obsidian eyes blink up at me in confusion; her black-ooze surfaces glint with reflected golden light, brightening like a nuclear dawn to the rear.

“Go!” I shout at her, already running for the stairs. “Go! Help Tissy! Now, or this is all pointless!”

Nerys opens her jaws to argue — then twists about and scampers off, claws skitter-scraping on the concrete floor, tail dragging behind.

I launch myself up the stairs, right leg leading, left leg lagging, pain jolting through my hips with every lopsided lurch, prosthetic foot scraping on bare metal. My right knuckles ring out against the rusty banister, and I pause at the first little landing between floors, bellowing back down the stairwell, into the rising tide of toxic gold already lapping at the lowest steps.

“Willow! Come get me, Willow!”

A wordless cry replies, in the voice of a dying star.

The stairwell spirals upward, punctuated by landings between each floor, lit by omnipresent LED bulbs wired to the ceiling. One floor flashes past, more concrete corridors like below, then another, and another. I grit my teeth and pray that I haven’t undershot my target, or else the stairwell will run out and I’ll be lost in the maze with a monster at my back.

My prayers are answered; the stairwell terminates in a final landing, a wide concrete platform lined with banks of empty lockers and mouldering benches. A massive metal blast door dominates one wall, left ajar on rusted hinges, rubber seals rotted to scraps.

Rainstorm static fills the air, loud and close and wild, heralded by the scent of wet concrete.

I wriggle through the door and into a dark, narrow antechamber, perhaps once some kind of airlock or arming station, walls studded by heavy glass slit-windows streaked with water. Wind whistles past the open portal ahead. No time to take in the view; I burst through a narrow, door-less aperture, splashing out into the swirling shimmer of the lunar storm.

The roof of Plato Base, a wide concrete mouth jutting from the side of the Montes Alpes, ringed and ridged by the broken teeth of forgotten fortifications.

Above, the sky is a whirling chaos of dark silver and bone-white, washed out by reflective sheets of falling rain, the firmament juddering and jerking with strange convulsions. Mountains tower at my back, the slopes coming right down to the edge of the roof, buttressed by a crumbling wall, lunar vegetation colonising the concrete with vines and creepers in silver and black, rustling and swaying in a million-strong chorus of branch and leaf. Rusted artillery and anti-air guns point at the lunar sky, row upon row of giants sagging in their long afterlife. The outer walls are a hive of crenellations, gun-slits, shelters, bunkers, enclosed walkways, all howling in low broken voices as the wind whips through aged concrete. Horizon beyond is lost in the violence of the storm.

Toward the front of the roof stand a cluster of flagpoles, most of their flags forever too faded to make out, ragged remains sagging in the rain. The modified Union Jack somehow still stands tall, the Welsh Dragon breaking the Cross of Saint George, red skin gleaming in unnatural storm-light.

Beneath the flags is the electric jumble of our communication equipment, rising above the empty ruin of the roof. Modern antennae set in wide concrete blocks, several large satellite dishes mounted in metal cradles, and a jumble of auxiliary equipment, big metal boxes with warning signs on their sides, electrical transformers, other things I cannot identify at a glance, Signal’s expert domain.

I hurl myself down a set of slippery stairs and sprint across the open concrete of the rooftop, drenched in seconds, hair plastered to my skull, clothes soaked, skin frozen, rain in my eyes, running down my scarred cheek. None of it matters, as long as my right leg and right arm still work.

Scramble up more steps, half on all fours, left hand so numb I can’t feel the cold. I plunge past the towers of ancient gun batteries, toward the little stand of comms equipment. At the last moment I glance back; toxic golden light is pulsing out onto the rooftop, overpowering the storm, my name howling against the rain.

“Octaviaaaaaa!”

I duck into the tangle of concrete and satellite dishes, press my back against a metal sheet, try to hold my breath.

“Octavia! Octavia!”

Golden light strobes and stutters out over the rooftop, soaking into the clouds above, staining the rain. The storm fights back with pulses of wind, forcing Willow’s toxic aurora down toward the roof, but in seconds her presence has won, a spreading taint washing the storm clouds with her golden light, co-opting the weather with her acid halo. The centre of the storm begins to bunch and pucker, a stubby tendril reaching downward from the clouds, an embryonic tornado.

A strange hissing, sizzling, crackling noise joins the static of the rain — water boiling off Willow’s body? She calls my name into the storm over and over, wet footsteps slapping across the standing puddles, slopping tendrils of golden light streaming past my hiding place.

“Octavia! Why are you doing this to me!?” Weepy, wretched, broken, the storm speaks with her reflected voice; perhaps twenty feet away, to my left. Wrong position. I need to catch her coming right around a corner. The cold slug in the back of my head stirs again; Willow is in so much pain, why can’t I see that? Why can’t I offer her just a moment of solace? “Why are you doing this to us!?”

“There is no us!” I roar over the rain — then melt away, to my right, around a concrete block beneath the shadow of a towering antenna.

“Octavia?!” Willow’s voice hitches, scraping against the sky. The clouds shudder and roil, their underside stained with golden taint.

She enters the tangle of concrete and metal, following the sound of my voice; I can track her by the glow.

Raise my fist, squeeze my knuckles tight. If Willow continues on her current trajectory she’ll step around that corner, barely two feet away, right into the path of my fist.

Deep breaths. Shaking too hard. Too much fear. Not what I need. Too early.

“Octavia?! Octavia, are you there? You are right there, are you not?!” She’s sobbing now, the rain her tears, the wind her wailing. “Wait for me, please, please! I only wanted you to listen, to—”

Willow stumbles around the corner. But I’m already gone, sideways and to the left, into the thicket of electrical junction boxes and transformers, shoulders low, footsteps hidden by the storm.

Need to be angrier.

“Did you have other women, Willow?” I shout over the rain. “Was I the only one, or did you have a harem down there? How many other pets did you keep, huh?!”

Grit my teeth, feel a grin pull at the corners of my mouth, the engine of my heart shaking off the rust.

Willow doesn’t answer for a moment. Her toxic golden light slews sideways. A stumble?

“I … I … ” She can’t answer.

“Whore!” I shout. “Liar!”

“I broke so many!” she sobs, an awful sound like the cracking of rotten, frozen sunlight. The sky twitches and flickers. “So many. And I never meant to. But not you, Octavia! Not you!”

“You chose me because I was easy! Because I was an orphan. A cripple. Easy pickings, right!?” I shout, slipping out of the tangle of junction boxes, into a narrow path formed by a pair of tall concrete foundation blocks, feet splashing through puddles, the lunar horizon a narrow slice of grey and black and silver in the distance, beyond the golden stain.

Do I see tiny hunched figures on that horizon, gathering on ridge-tops and outcrops of rock, to watch this duel? Hard to tell through the rain.

“Never! Never!” The cry comes from too close, golden light wavering as she approaches the little canyon where I’m hiding. “You are why I stayed, Octavia! You think I chose you because you were easy? Nothing could be further from the truth! You needed so much, you needed … l-love—”

“Love?!” I spit. “More lies!”

Step to the mouth of the concrete canyon. Raise my fist, pull back my elbow, load the punch like a musket ball.

Anger pounds through my veins; I was not her only woman, not her only victim. My head is a crucible full of molten metal, rising to the boil. My heart is an engine straining a billion gallons of oil. Raindrops run down my prosthetic arm, over the tape and carbon fibre. Can’t feel the rain on my skin anymore. Breath like smoke. Heat haze and steam rises from my skin. I am coming online, waking up, ready to live again.

“Love, yes!” Willow shouts, so close now. “I can give that to you again, Octavia! I promise, I promise, I promise, with all my heart and more!”

The cold slug-thing writhes in the back of my head, a thick layer of mucus threatening to sap my clarity. Willow will take me back if I step forward now, if I lower my fist and tell her that I accept. My eyes grow heavy, almost as if I’m tired, force me to squint through the rain.

Isn’t that what I want, more than anything? To go home, back to how things were. Forget all this ever happened.

Return to the Willow I knew in dreams.

“I was eavesdropping on your little chat with Miss Scarlet,” Willow purrs, a voice like the burble of sunlight on boiling water, so close now, barely ten feet away, muffled by rain and concrete. “Very cosy. Very sweet.”

“You … ” Words won’t come, choked in cold slug-slime. Did I get it wrong? Will I crumble before I can throw a single punch? “You shouldn’t have … been able to … ”

She knows all about what I like. She knows the things I kept inside my head. Knows my desires, my tastes, better than I do.

Willow giggles, as if she’s right against my ear. Tighten my knuckles, eyes forward, focus on the concrete corner, ears on the shuffle of her waterlogged feet.

“I thought you were smarter than that,” she whispers through the wind. “But no matter. Octavia, if that’s what you need, if that’s what you like, I can give you that too.”

“ … give me … what?”

“Woof woof?” Willow purrs, her voice is coming from all around me. “My … my little … puppy,” she forces the words out, but she does say them, she is trying so hard, to give me what I want. “I can give you all that and more.”

Golden light floods around the corner of rain-drenched concrete, washing surfaces with pyroclastic flows of toxic glow; sizzling heat drowns out the sound of the rain, puddles flash-drying to acidic vapour, trails of steam swirling up as if toward a hole in space. A scent like sunlight on spilled blood tugs at my nose.

Cold mucus blossoms wide in the back of my skull; Willow is promising me everything I ever wanted, isn’t she?

My filthy desires, my deviant purposes. I will be her little puppy and she will drag me along on a leash. I will be happy when she deigns to touch me, gloved hand between my legs to unlock the cage around my loins. She will graciously allow me to lick her face, and rut against her leg, but I will always be left on the edge of satisfaction, and I will like it, I will love it, I will love her as she cages me again and cuts pieces of me out, as she parades me on all fours and shows off my nude body to her friends, as she closes me in the dark as she goes off to bed, alone and clean and untouched by my filth.

“Not— not what I— want—”

“The world is ending, Octavia,” Willow says. Her voice creeps around the corner, carried on streamers of toxic gold. “We all know it. It’s a wonder to me that the teeming masses can’t feel it too. How much longer can this go on? Not long, I think. At least let us pretend, let us comfort each other in the meantime. At least let us have this, together.”

My fist slackens. Willow will give me what I want. Of course she—

Never will.

Grimgrave, white shorts and tank top, flushed and panting, pinned to the bed, my knee against her cunt. Burning Bight, tucked under the covers, my hands lingering over her brow and her hair, ready to stroke her off to sleep. Scarlet Edge, makeshift collar around her neck, pulling it taught, leash in my hand.

Cold mucus pauses and hesitates; her parasite connection cannot grasp these feelings. Willow does not and cannot and will never understand what I want or what I am.

She steps around the corner. A golden inferno, toxic light bleeding from empty eyes, running down her face in tracks like molten metal, leaking from the corners of her mouth. Her footsteps melt the concrete, warped and bubbling. The air around her throbs with the pulse of a distant star, bending light toward an impossible shade of scorched and empty gold. Her clothes are sodden with rain, her hair limp with water, tresses writhing with the sputtering and flickering of her golden corona, like electrical power running through a sun-baked corpse.

Willow smiles, parts her lips, drools waves of golden ruin. She looks me in the eyes. Her cold parasite makes contact, expands to fill my world.

But I have built myself a clever redoubt, made from the women I want to fuck.

“Octavia—”

Red-black light floods my vision. I hear the sound of machinery. My heart is an engine, red-lined and pounding. My arm, a piston, my fist, a wrecking ball. The machine of my body roars into life, right elbow slamming back. Dark metal armour flickers and gutters in my peripheral vision. A mask comes down over my face, black as the void, blotting out Willow’s false gold, drowning her in red and black.

The parasite slug in the back of my skull scrambles to squirm tendrils through my brain, to shut down my intent, but every part of me is red-hot now. The parasite squeals as it cooks to death with nowhere to run, charred to a cinder that falls from my spinal column to slap down in the puddles on the concrete.

Earth, England, Oxford. Grimgrave, Signal, Bright. Deliver to them a Dreamer, translocated with my fist.

My punch splits the air with superheated gases and boiling rainwater. Willow’s eyes fly wide, pools of golden radiance. Her mouth drops open, a tidal wave of toxic flow.

In the final split second before impact—

—she snarls.

My knuckles connect with the universe, ring reality like a brass skull. A golden hand falls on that bell, struggles to keep the silence, to keep the world from splitting, fighting to stop the wound opening anew.

“You’ve ruined it all, Octavia!” Willow hisses through clenched teeth, golden blood seeping from her gums. “I made a special place, for just the two of us. But now it’s ruined! Ruined! Ruined!”

Storm blows out like a candle. Moon crumbles to ash.

All light — golden, red-black, lunar, waking or dreaming — falls away into interstellar darkness. Until only Willow is left.

She struggles toward a tearful smile, mouths a platitude of regret, about how it’s not over yet, that despite my ungrateful tantrum, we can still go home. She will still take me home. She will still forgive.

She’s still trying to talk when my fist crashes into her face.

And then the world goes away.