Nayl fired. Centre mass. The heavy round had no effect. Drusher saw a telltale green shimmer around the figure, a pinprick green light in its empty socket. A crackle like electricity.

‘Nayl!’ he yelled. He pulled the gun out of his pocket and aimed. One shot.

The autosnub jerked in his hand. Drusher discovered it was surprisingly hard to hit a target, even one as big as a human being coming right at him, just a few metres away. His shot simply clipped the figure’s right shoulder.

He was about to curse at himself when the figure went down. It went from walking to falling without an interruption. Suddenly slack, as dead as it looked, it crumbled, bounced off the handrail and lay still.

‘An animation,’ said Drusher.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Nayl. He was taking the clip out of his gun and opening his pocket to fish out custom rounds.

‘Like before,’ said Drusher.

‘Indeed so, magos,’ said Nayl. ‘Don’t let them touch you!’ he yelled to Macks and Voriet.

‘Nayl!’ Macks called. Another figure was mounting the staircase at the other end of their platform. Before death it had been a stern, older woman. Corruption had bloated and blackened her flesh. Green electric sparks floated in her dead eyes and fizzled around her bared teeth. She too was moving rapidly, coming right at them without hesitation.

Macks squeezed off two las-bolts at her. They were solid shots, but the energy just radiated away.

‘Don’t waste it!’ Nayl told her. ‘It won’t have an effect.’ He had slammed a specialised round into the chamber of his Tronsvasse. He stepped in front of Macks and Voriet, aimed at the woman as she reached the head of the stairs and shot her between the eyes.

There was an ugly puff of matter. The woman’s head snapped back, and she toppled down the stairs. She ended up at the foot of the steps, on her back, her legs tangled in the side rails.

‘They’ve sent these things to get us, haven’t they?’ Drusher asked Nayl.

‘Yes,’ he replied. He was loading another round. ‘Raised them. That might be why the Loom’s working.’

‘But we can stop them,’ said Drusher.

Nayl nodded.

‘But it depends how many of them there are,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got a few custom rounds between us.’

‘How… how many could they have made?’ Drusher asked.

‘Depends how many people the Cognitae have killed,’ said Voriet. ‘How many bodies they have.’

‘Let’s move,’ said Nayl. ‘Only shoot if you have to.’

They hurried to the steps where the first figure had appeared. Macks and Drusher helped Voriet between them. They moved down, but another figure had appeared, striding towards them. It was hard to tell if this one had been male or female in life. Its death appeared to have involved being flayed.