Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 33

"I know. I know that pain. It never leaves, but you learn to operate with it."

"So, let's operate. Let's do something."

"I know you want to, but I'm under orders to the Weaver Queen, Ursula. And she says plain and simple, if you don't learn to control the Rhizome you're going to die. You have to go to school and keep hiding or you'll burn up from the inside out. Is that clear enough for you?"

The pieces on the board move, the hunters move out looking for the watches. One of them gets caught in a trap. Mel allows herself a small recognition of success, barely plays on her face. So sad this evening.

"What if you could end the game early. Make a move that ends the game in one turn?" I ask.

"I'm listening." She says.

And she plays a card, runs through a few gestures I can't read. She's weighing up probable moves. Looking ahead, rigging the building, turning it into her own counter attack, smoothing the passage of her coven out of the building.

"What are you thinking?"

"I know that the witch hunt is pure theater. You know it is. What if London knew it too?"

"Hmm. Maybe nothing, maybe something. You don't know London politics Ursula. The Weaver Elders are the grand masters of playing the Great Game. Way bigger than this little game of hide and seek I'm playing."

"But the hunt is funded by the city, the hunters are hired by the Republic, right? The Republic is still serving public opinion, surely, they have to, right? It's still a democracy."

"Only democracy left in Albion."

"So, what if the people knew, if they knew for a fact that the witch attacks at my school were staged, that the accusers were hired and trained by Marketta herself?"

"How would they discover that?"

"The media here, are they free to report stuff like this?"

"The Sirens have a lot of agents in the media. Weavers, less so. Big money is the power there, but they have to at least appear to be objective. They cannot ignore raw facts, especially since the post-truth laws came into effect. You can get your head up on traitor's gate for deep faking."

"Deep fake is exactly what Marketta is. I can't tell you how I know it. I just feel it. She's not what she says she is. If we get her head up there, maybe the whole witch hunt ends. They let all those people on the boat come home."

The game comes to life as a turn is played out before me. The coven, now jacked out by the Spider's alarm, moves towards an apparent dead end, the Hunters split up, another is trapped in Mel's web, the mooks remain unaware of the deadly game being played around them, pursuing their mundane goals.

Mel touches her bottom lip with the side of her thumb, staring, silent. furrowed brow.

"The girls who denounced me. I saw them with Marketta. I know they were cooperating with her in some way. I'd stake my life on it."

"Maybe the neutrals aren't neutral? Not a revelation to a spider. Everyone in the Lech is a player, regardless of whether they know it or not."

"So, let's get to them, Mel. Should be easy, right? Marketta and her circus have moved on. They're working over Blackheath now. Massive show trials. You told me yourself. We can wait for them after school. Follow them."

"No. Nothing in daylight. If we hang around anywhere near that school the Weavers will know even if the Hunters are too busy to notice."

The game comes to life again. But the coven does not move to the extraction point, one of them goes the wrong way. The ground floor floods with a dozen new hunters and their dogs. The neutrals panic. The rogue witch glitches, new pieces appear. In the green light, little shivering demons grope their way, attracted to the glitching.

"The Weavers have hackers in the Gap, right? Hexes, you called them. Easy for them to get a meat-space address?"

"Nobody there I could trust with such a mission. Sweet Morae, why am I even considering this out loud? In any case, London school systems are run by BELEV. They were a military dataSec contractor originally, they use localised Blockchains. You can't access them via the web, or the Gap and you'd need an actual physical key to open them."

"So, the key must be somewhere?"

You ever wonder why it seems like your head teacher lives at school?

It dawns on me. She does.

"School Heads have the keys implanted under their skin. They live on site, like a ship's captain. The school building defends them. After the scandals of the forties, it was the only way to win back parental trust."

"So, you're saying we have to get to the principal?"

"I'm saying this is madness. You want to break into a school and strongarm a headteacher to steal data about the home addresses of school children? If Londoners don't hate witches yet they sure will after this."

I'm stuck. I don't want to put Mel, Ty and Vash in any more danger than I already have. But the twins? Hot tears in my eyes.

"I have to. I have to, don't I?"

"The answer is no. Go to sleep, you're back at the secret school early tomorrow."

The game comes back to life. She's been distracted. Her move was weak. The spider moves headlong into the hunters as they climb the stairs, suicide move. The coven escapes. A sign flashes above the board. Victory at Great Cost.

"What's the point in trying to protect me if you know I'm dying anyway? Why the hell are you all still poisoning kids with this thing if you know it kills them?"

No answer. Now she has tears in her eyes.

"I owe Amanda more than I could ever tell you. Blood debt. She believed the Rhizome was worth the risk. That the alternatives for the kids we recruit...they were always worse."

"Then listen to me. I'll walk. I'll turn myself in tonight. Maybe on the inside I can help my sisters. But I can't do anything for them playing at being a witch in your stupid VR game. If you owe my mother anything, she'd beg you to free the twins, if she were here right now."

She loved them more than me. That's the thing I don't say.

Mel is up, has my arm in an iron grip. It hurts.

"I rue the day I met your family." She hisses in my ear. "But this operation is mine and you'll do what I say the very millisecond I say it. You are a walking baby. If you survive it'll be thanks to me alone. And it's just us."

"No, it is not just you." Vash is at the bathroom door.

"We're dead if you fail anyway so you can't tell us it's too much of a risk." Adds Ty.

Mel looks at the three of us, and mutters something vicious under her breath before locking her eyes on me.

'We'll move tomorrow night. I'll plan it while you're at the Secret School tomorrow.'

I can't meet her gaze. There's nothing more to say.

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