Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

I'm sitting at the kitchen table with grandma. The last 36 hours have been a blur of deep weirdness. Cells and statements and youth support officers and state solicitors. But the cops released me in the end. A thousand times I have said, it was an accident, until the phrase lost all meaning and sounded like a foreign language. You're free for now kid, but the hunters will want to talk to you next. I never felt so tired. Soul tired.

The twins are in bed. Dad's mom has been spoiling me rotten. I'm wrapped up in the thickest bath robe I've ever seen sipping gourmet hot chocolate. And I feel like it's my last night on Earth. I don't know if I'll be coming home tomorrow, don't know if I'll ever speak to her again.

'Grandma, I need to know everything you know about mom.'

I'm totally level, surprised by my own calm. But it's all I can say, I can't force her to tell me the truth.

'Every now and then, I see a look of James about you.'

I reach down to try and scratch my ankle, it's wrapped in a high-tech band, broadcasting my precise location to every police computer in the city.

'Grandma. Please.' I never noticed how angry I was with him till just now.

I know I'm probably not coming home tomorrow. Grandma already helped me pack. There's going to be a trial. Grandma begged them to let me come home. Last night with family.

'You're coming home Ursula. You're going to get through this. You've done nothing wrong.'

I wish I felt braver than this.

'Mom could fix this.' Tears brimming in my eyes.

I catch a cloud of anger pass across her face, before the calming mask returns.

She takes a piece of paper and a pen, and while she talks to me about nothing much, she writes a completely different text. Impressive.

Your mother worked with augmented girls. She worked with vulnerable girls all over the world, but most often here in London. Her research was about using brain implants to rehabilitate young people with post-traumatic stress. It was not illegal at the time.

How did I not know this? Was I never listening? Did I ever even notice that she had a life outside of me? All I ever thought about was impressing her with my projects. Never thought to ask about her actual job.

She wanted to use biological computation to modify brain function. She was part of a big trend in tech in that respect. She wasn't the only one. But she was the biggest name in the field.

And I think about all the projects we did together. Half did. Never finishing anything because she never had time. Always trying to write systems that could adapt, could learn. Transference. She talked about that a lot. We made games in the beginning, then software for drones. I got my idea, to make a real fairy, and she fed that fantasy. Almost became an obsession.

Grandma writes fast, scribbly but legible. Still masking with her waffling.

Then everybody was talking about these two gangs. After the civil war, they half took over London. The Weavers and the Sirens. Working together.

This is new. I never heard anything like this before. Maybe she thinks it'll help, to know this in the trial.

People used to love them. Like the Krays. Like Robin Hood. Then children started getting sick. A lot of people blamed them, starting calling them witches. Blamed them for the kids getting sick.

I take the pen from her hand and write her a question.

Do you believe that?

'A lot of people, used to have a good life, lost everything during the war, all those slums down by the river, they were middle class people not so long ago. Anger needs a direction.'

'So, you don't?'

'All I'm saying is that a lot of people, looking for guidance, turned to this new religion, started worshipping the Weaver and the Siren. People get weird when they get into that kind of thing.'

'I saw something out in the park, some kind of shrine.'

'Yeah, that'll be it. Secret shrines all over the place. So much of London is empty now. Easier to hide things.'

'So, mom was involved in tech, involved in implants, so they figured she was into this Weaver thing?'

'That's my best guess.'

'So, they took her away and what that's it? Did she get a trial?'

'We just don't know.'

She passes me the note she's written.

'Your ankle is bugged. I can't tell you everything. And it's better you don't know. Tell them everything. Don't try to lie. The twins are relying on you now.'

Then she takes a candle and a frying pan and she burns the note by the open back door, wafting the smoke outwards with a magazine. And now she won't talk anymore.

Tell them everything?

Yeah, I will. I'll tell them everything. They can't touch the twins if I tell them everything. No reason to arrest my sisters if they get all the information they want from me. But what the hell do I know exactly?

Who was my mother?

And I'm pushing down this thought that won't leave me alone, this great big shadow of a thought that creeps out from under every effort I make to squash it...

If my body acts like it's augmented, and everybody is accusing me of being augmented...

Occam's Razer, mom used to say.

The simplest explanation is usually correct.

Whatever is coming, I know I won't sleep tonight.

###THIS NOVEL IS IN OPEN BETA###

Join the beta reader team at cyberwitchacademy.com

I'm here for your feedback. Thanks for reading!