Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 14

I don't know how long I have stayed in this windowless coffin, shivering like a fool. But eventually I picked up the heart to leave the room. I dare not breathe as I turn the door handle, but it opens easily. I step through and look around. Nobody appears to lynch me.

I'm creeping around the corridors of this area of the school, where the management offices are, up in the staff mezzanine. Nobody is around. It's like a ghost town. My body is beginning to do strange things again. And that voice. It is rambling and stuttering and dribbling on glitching away like a rain maker toy, a hiss of static and noise, some human words and strings of numbers and it isn't my voice exactly but it's not not my voice.

And I look down at my arms. The lights again. I pull my school jumper down over my wrists as far as possible. I'm walking, and it's like you walk after you've just finished a long ass run. I'm not exactly staggering but not moving in a straight line either. I find my way back to the upper walkways.

I'm hardly aware of where I'm going. The panicking animal in me is looking to get back to Mrs G's office as quickly as possible. It's still lesson time. not many bodies in the soulSpace. But the ones that are, mostly look at me. There is a weird, pregnant atmosphere in the building. Everybody is waiting for something to happen. The lessons are unusually quiet.

As I walk past classroom doors, teachers are teaching, students are working, but quieter than normal. Everybody is keeping their head down.

I hear her footsteps first. And way up ahead I see a girl moving towards me. It's obviously Sienna. It's awkward, trying not to stare at one another. Takes a while before we're about to cross paths. I'm hoping she won't talk to me at all, still fighting the urge to give her a weak smile.

Her gleaming cyberLeg flashes in a brief moment of glorious sun pouring through the plastic roof top of the school. She has an expression on her face like she doesn't want to talk to me and yet she wants me to know that she's not remotely afraid of me. As if anyone had ever been afraid of me.

It's odd. Things have changed so much. The very idea that I could be the scary one. And then we're face to face and I realise I have stopped her. I've moved into her path. And I'm saying 'hey' And I feel really sorry for her all of a sudden. I'm thinking about what it must be like to have a chrome leg in the middle of all this fear, all this hatred of augmented girls. And here I am some goddam snob from Manhattan judging her. And I really need her to know that I'm not an asshole.

It's pouring out of me this blubbering torrent of an apology.

"Look I'm real sorry Sienna, I know I came off as an asshole yesterday. I was so nervous."

And she softens her face just a little. Still firm around the lips, not totally trusting just yet.

"I was hoping you would apologise actually."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, cause I thought maybe we could talk. I found out about your mum and well, I lost my mum too. In the crash. When I lost my leg."

And I want to hug her but she's still kinda British and stiff right now and I'm concerned I might fall over.

Then the glitch voice comes out of me. Without warning.

IF NOT BECAUSE YOU STRICT EQUAL DIRTY;

"What?"

AND NOT BECAUSE YOU STRICT EQUAL CLEAN;

"Oh right. Oh, is it. Oh, is it."

And she's smiling, it's a cruel smile.

I'm not! But I'm not in control. I want to scream it to her, but it doesn't come. Instead...

THEN BECAUSE MY MOTHER SAYS;

Just keeps coming out, high and weird and mocking.

YOU RETURN THE FAIRY QUEEN;

And now, she's looking at me with impotent rage. She balls her fists, wanting to hit me or something. But she can't do anything so visible out here and she knows she can't stay out of class for long before the teachers notice, but God she wants to hurt me real bad now.

"Please, I'm sick. Don't listen. It's like Tourette's." My voice comes back, but I'm kinda shuddering, could be mistaken for suppressing giggles.

"Bullshit." She hisses.

"I've been talking. I've got another friend online from America. Yeah, and we all thought you were gonna be so cool cause you're from New York, but she says you're probably just a little rich girl from Manhattan. She says only the super-rich people can still fly to Albion."

And yeah, maybe that was true till dad spent all mom's money, but I'm literally hanging on to the rail now, and my leg is shuddering and it's all I can do to stand up. And she thinks, I can see it, read it in her face, she thinks I'm mocking her leg.

"Your bloody posh mum probably fucked off with her personal trainer to live in a sex cult in a Chelsea compound or something. At least my mum had the decency to die. You freak!"

And she goes to storm off, tears in her eyes, but I'm feeling something weaken in side of me, like a door left open, my will slipping away, and something steps in through the door, something like a nasty sprite. Something in me is thinking, why let her get away with talking about your mom like that? Come back here you little...

And I can see, sparkling static, fireworks in my field of vision. And I can feel molten rage in my veins, then some other network of veins, turning black under my skin, flowering under the epidermis. And something goes out from me and into her, into her leg, like I can feel it from the inside, and then I can hear the thoughts, hear what the computer inside her leg is thinking. The firmware is laid out before me like an annotated poem in an English Lit class, and somehow I know, if I say a certain sequence of words, it will dance for me.

I try to stop it. But I'm milliseconds too late.

It reverberates up through my chest and leaps out of my throat. The noise hits her ear drums. Words but not words. Coded noise. The panic in her eyes as she spins back to face me, flung AROUND by her own leg. Her consternation and she try to re-assert control with the patch in her skull, and then her leg crouches right down into a dep squat, dragging her good leg out in front of her limply and she screams in animal fear.

And I'm saying, deep and loud like my whole body is an amplifier...

IF MEET OLD_MAN

AND OLD_MAN !SAY_HIS_PRAYERS

THEN TAKE LEFT LEG

RETURN THROW_DOWN_STAIRS();

Her leg fires, catapulting her whole body over the edge of the balcony. It's so fast. She's just gone.

I'm left blinking. Wondering if it has even really happened. The long seconds stretch out, no response. Then the wailing, it comes quietly at first, then it grows. And I grip onto the edge of the railing and peer over the edge.

She's spreadeagled, limbs facing in directions they shouldn't blooding seeping out from her head, but she's not unconscious, she's wailing in pain.

And she's surrounded by adults now. And some other staff in yellow jackets are holding back the gathering crowd of students comes to see.

And I almost don't notice that I'm running. Don't know where the strength came from. But I'm running as fast as I can toward, the door that leads to the stairwell and down towards reception. And the door is locked. But the electric lock just springs open as I pass, flicking its lights from red to green and I sprint down the stairs, five at a time and then I'm outside, running for the main gate, it too pops open for me, no time to wonder why, and I'm just running, running, running.

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