10​ Replicas

IT WAS HAPPENING again.

‘Here, bite down on this,’ said Taver, stuffing a knot of rags into the undead woman’s mouth. He felt tempted to stuff another into the hole in her forehead. ‘You keep screaming like this, and we’re ghost fodder.’

‘Told you afore,’ Tezcat muttered beside him, ‘they isn’t ghosts.’

‘I don’t care. She’ll draw every one of the bastards down on us.’

‘They knows where we is already,’ noted his friend, who was too calm considering their predicament.

‘You’re not helping, Cat.’ He’d tried for an hour to ignore the obvious, but was failing. Trapped like rats inside the house of the one person who was supposed to help them escape. The same person writhing and convulsing on the floor. He felt like screaming himself. What he didn’t understand was why those wights hadn’t entered. Couldn’t they pass through the walls or something, or was that just regular ghosts? ‘Is this place warded or something?’ He’d heard of such things while attending the Necropolis, but knew little about them. He’d only been attending there for less than a year.

Tezcat shrugged.

‘Well, what are those wights after? I mean, I get the Necros and Aidari traitors, but dead angels? Doesn’t make sense.’

‘Why shoulds it?’

‘What?’

‘Why shoulds stuff make sense? You breathers thinks too much. It’s why you is always hoppin’ all over the place, like rabbits.’ She giggled.

He pointed a shaky finger at her. ‘You’ve got a thing about rabbits, you know.’

Nisky was shaking her head, mumbling something. He didn’t dare pull the rag back out. It seemed, once the pain hit, she couldn’t help but scream. Some magical talent to have, he thought. I can do without magic if that’s the way of it. He wondered where her husband was. Maybe he’d run off. Don’t blame him. Can’t see how he could’ve put up with this sort of thing, but then love was a mystery he’d yet to figure out.

While his thoughts distracted him, the undead woman reached up to tug the rags free. Before Taver could stuff her gob again, she spoke, ‘They are the unshriven. Angel deaths were once extremely rare. Some wights are blessed before they are wrought into weapons to fight the darkness. Others are created by the Darkness. These ones are the forgotten, the lost. They have descended into darkness themselves. They are slaves to the enemy they once sought to destroy.’

‘Why are they hunting us?’ He was almost certain the wights had no interest in him. Almost, but he dared not ask.

‘Someone,’ whispered Nisky before emitting a groan, ‘set them loose. It’s the same person who seeks to destroy the Necropolis, to purge the world of undead.’

‘And that person is ...?’

The undead woman looked pale and skeletal. Her hair had turned white, and the pupils of her eyes swirled like disturbed fog. The makeup was mostly gone, what remained smeared across her face.

He thrust the rags back into her mouth just in time as a violent convulsion took hold. Her body shuddered. Every viral had some form of magic, but Nisky’s was abnormal in his opinion. He could make out the form of another person oozing out of her. It was as though his vision blurred when he looked at her. He felt nauseous.

High pitched shrieks rose from outside, as the wights sought entry. Whatever protected this building, he could only hope it remained intact. How they might get out again wasn’t something he wanted to think about. As was the way of such things, it was therefore, all he thought about.

Tezcat had warned him she couldn’t fight them. She could see them, but then, so could he, though she claimed other breathers couldn’t. He only hoped whatever was happening to Nisky was something that would help them. The screeching and kicking wasn’t filling him with confidence on that point.

The trunk of what looked like a second Nisky began to extrude itself. Her dead flesh swelled as her reflection formed, gaining mass.

Taver got to his feet, lurched off to a far corner, and threw up.

***

THOSE TWO, THE PRETTY girl and her breather friend, that they remained at her side was a wonder. Seeing them together as they were felt right, however. There was a bond between them, which went beyond male and female. A bond, Nisky was certain, they didn’t understand. Knowing there was such companionship and love between the living and the undead went someway to easing her pain. Or so she told herself in those moments when the agony subsided, allowing thoughts to form.

She never liked talking about it afterwards. Until today, whenever her magic got out of control, she killed herself. How many times had she committed, what some would call murder, and others, suicide?

Not today. This time, the wights would do it for her. If I die, and my reflection lives, is there a difference? She’d never been able to find an answer, even at the Necropolis. Would she even notice? Did the other Nisky’s look at her, and think about killing her instead?

She was half way out, the birth pain lessening. She felt the other body, which was hers, and . . . wasn’t. She felt the extra ribs, another motionless heart close to her own. The distance was growing between the shrunken organs. She did it for her dead husband, a breather she’d loved as much as any undead could love.

In the girl, she saw herself as she once was. No one asked to be born a viral, not her, not the girl. No one asked, but they punish us for it nonetheless, don’t they? They hate and fear us, even as they tolerate our existence. It was always going to end this way.

Her screeches announced the end of the process. She got to her feet with slow jerky movements, to stand above herself. ‘Please,’ she begged in a whisper, looking down at what remained, ‘let it end, now. Let this be the final time.’

The girl still stroked her hair, but she couldn’t feel it. It was the snow-white hair of her other self, the self she should kill. They were one, the same, but they were also different. Perhaps this was how it was for breather twins. Yesterday, she would have killed the white-haired one on the floor. Not today. This one would be needed to recover, to do it again. She would need to fight while the younger ones escaped. She saw no other course.

‘Not long now,’ she said, her eyes refusing to meet the girl’s. ‘I’m with you both, I’m here. When I tell you to run ... run.’

The breather lad in the clothing of an Aidari stared at her, and then glanced down at the other Nisky, confusion and revulsion in his face. No, not that, but pity, yes. She saw it now. The living always felt pity, but rarely with understanding.

Shrieks lanced through her skull, and she knew the wights remained outside. She had ... or rather, the other her, had created a barrier encompassing the room. It was weakening as the angel dead battered their will against it. The process of her birth had left them both weakened. Her original body was now half the weight. She would need to give her old self time. Her new body would also develop, but it was still not at full strength.

The older Nisky on the floor moaned, body thrashing, writhing. Another form appeared, and began to pull free. Another Nisky, but no, this wasn’t right—it shouldn’t be happening this fast. There shouldn’t be another born for hours yet. The first body hadn’t begun to recover yet.

The girl and her breather friend had begun backing away, shock in their faces. The undead girl clutched the boy’s arm.

Nisky had intended to handle the wights, holding them off, while waiting for a second Nisky to be born, which should have been many hours from now. Once all three were recovered, they could help get the young ones away. She’d never attempted it at this pace, and hadn’t thought it possible. It had to be the wights. Their presence was warping her magic.

This latest version of herself didn’t even look like her. An abomination, skeletal with hardly any skin or flesh on its bones. Only one was born at a time. Then again, there had been hundreds over the centuries. Hundreds, yes, and I have killed each one with my own hands. Or was it a different me doing the killing each time? Such questions, such horrors, plagued her. She’d found herself unable to look in a mirror anymore.

The walls of the Necropolis were partly constructed of bones, and most of those are mine. It was why the magi allowed her to exist in peace among the living. They feared her return within those walls, where death was power, and there was power in death.

She could have ruled them all, had she chosen to.

One understood her, and one alone. Good old Beezer, my old friend, my love. To blame her exclusion on her marrying a breather had proved convenient, and clever. No, she could not step inside that place again.

On hands and knees, the girl wasn’t helping this latest replica. Little remained of the original body. The power of the wights was a sheer force of existence, of will and nothing more. Everyone thought viralic power was terrible, but they were clueless.

Nisky moved nearer the latest newborn, the creature-with-her-face. It saw her coming, and backed away. It knew her intent. How could it not? She had killed herself a hundred times a hundred, and it knew, although she’d never waited more than seconds before.

Only hundreds, hah, such wishful thinking. She drew the long thin dagger from the sheath strapped to the leg of her original self, which lay dead.

The magical barrier had weakened to a thin gauze. The shrieks came louder. They were on the verge of getting in.

Moments later, the wights oozed through the walls, though with difficulty. These were angelic dead, and unlike the ghosts of humans, had some substance to them. They had wings spanning into nothingness, for they transcended twin realities. Nisky faced them feeling unsteady. The latest and more skeletal of her selves, managed to rise too, tottering. The door behind the wights was the only way out.

The angel dead attacked, and her skeletal-self stepped into their path. A burst of viralic power from both Niskys halted the advance, forcing them backward. Lunging forward, Nisky stabbed the iron dagger into the hide of the nearest wight. Its shrieks produced fissures in the dirt walls. The others tried to get at her, but the second Nisky kept getting in their way.

Skeletal Nisky launched herself at a wight, dragging it to the floor. It writhed, bit, and clawed in her grasp, like a wild thing. Only certain undead could handle them in this manner. Nisky had encountered this foe before, but never in these numbers or circumstances. The wight tore itself free, having won the battle. It tossed the skeletal form aside, the head detaching and rolling across the floor.

As the iron took another wight, Nisky stabbed the final one as it lunged at her in rage. Frost covered the blade, but it was no ordinary dagger. A soul shard, and its potency had just increased.

She turned to face her charges who stared in confusion, and fear.

‘You is still, her?’ asked the girl. ‘You is still Nisky, right?’

The breather glanced down at what remained of her original white-haired self, and then back up. Was it horror in the lad’s face? No, it was still pity, the poor boy. Perhaps, one day he’d learn; pity was a waste.

‘I’m me,’ she whispered, gesturing at the corpse on the floor, ‘and so was she,’ followed by another gesture at the lone head resting by the wall, ‘and her too.’ Killing herself never got easier. She felt relieved it had not proved necessary this time. The Spectrum be praised, her loving husband had never found out the full truth. He was the one reason she’d had to continue existing. Looking at Tezcat and her friend, she wondered if they’d be enough. A new reason to go on.

‘We need to join the others at Reaper’s End,’ said the breather. She’d never asked him his name, and it was best if she never learned it. No doubt, he wanted to forget hers. ‘We need to get out of Vasara,’ he continued, ‘before any more show up.’

Tezcat got to her feet. She took hold of Nisky’s hand to guide her. Her body was still not her own. Strength would take days to return, but had there not been two of her, the wights’ numbers might have destroyed her. As it was, it had been close, the second Nisky barely serviceable. She had meant there to be three of her, and she’d planned for more time, but then things rarely worked as planned. She knew that better than most.

I am the real Nisky, she thought, but knew it was a lie. She’d murdered herself a thousand times a thousand. Centuries of death and undeath. Soon, her sanity would shatter beneath this curse. Perhaps it already had. One day, she would kill herself for the final time, and be done with it forever.

One day.