It's night when they drag me off the bus. I'm shaky on my legs. Shuffling like an old woman. I look around, trying to figure out how long I was on the bus. Fail.
The two hunters are leading me toward the field, and I look up to see the completed wooden tower, like a siege engine from a mediaeval war. I'm surprised to find I can feel even more despair, but I do. My heart sinks. The refreshing touch of the open air, the stars above, the respite is blocked out by the dark tower.
I can hear whimpering and moaning from inside the tower as we approach the entrance. I realise it is filled with cells, filled with other prisoners.
I almost wish Marketta was here. But I seem to be just another lost soul now. no longer of interest.
Inside you can only crawl. The hunters have torches. As we crawl around the awkward spiral ramps inside the tower, prisoners whisper, entreating the guards to let them out, to stretch their legs, one girl promises to confess, offers names. I don't recognise anyone. Until we get to my cell.
The guard padlocks me inside. It's designed to be too small to stand, too small to lie down, too narrow to sit comfortably. I understand it immediately. A glimpse of that bottomless ingenuity for torture that we as a species seem to have, like none other. Something we thought was only in museums, now suddenly come back to life.
I stink. Everything hurts. I don't know how I'm gonna make it through the next minute.
Then she whispers to me. Ms. Grigore.
"Who's there?"
I freeze. I stop breathing for a moment.
"Are you hurt? Can you talk?"
"You the com sci teacher right?" My voice trembles. And then a sob comes.
"Oh you poor darling. You poor thing."
I force the crying down into my throat, force it to stop. Nearly choke on it.
Someone in the cells below screams. In the woods beyond the sports field, an eruption of horrifying noises, like a woman being attacked, seems to echo the call. Not quite human.
"That's a fox. You were raised in the middle of a big city right? Did you have urban foxes in New York?"
She's trying to distract me from the other scream. Playing mom.
"I have a cousin in the Bronx. He told me he saw one once."
I notice the splinters in my hands. The crust of dried sweat on my skin. The pinching of the gaps between the hastily nailed together planks. My muscles are seizing up in my neck and shoulders. Ms. Grigore reads my silence, my shallow panicky breaths.
"You have to keep changing position."
I try it. The relief is small, but it's just enough. A different set of pains.
"You remind me of my Tassa."
"You have kids?"
"I have two. Tassa works for the Republic now. She's the smart one. Dol is in the London Army. Hard as nails. But they're both still my babies."
I'm trying to remember that this could all be lies. But I'm so tired. I wonder if her daughter in the government can pull strings for her at the trial.
I can feel the glitch wearing away at the walls of my mind. It's like an acid corroding my synapses. I can see the lights under my skin begin to cast a dim reflection on the walls of the coffin I am in. The voices sing out high and wild. They want access to my vocal cords. I have to fend them off. If I glitch out at the trial, I'm doomed. I'm so tired.
"I'm innocent. I'm innocent. I didn't do anything. I'm just a kid."
"Dragostea mea." She whispers something, almost Spanish sounding. I can hear tears in her voice. And now I'm crying too.
"Ursula, you have to tell them everything you know."
"I don't know anything."
"If that is true, then you must have guessed by now, there is technology inside of you. You have to tell them it was controlled by someone else. It wasn't your fault."
I start to feel sleep creeping in, impossibly, through the cracks of pure exhaustion in my agony.
"I hope to see my girls again, Ursula. Please, don't give them my name. I want to live."
And then, she sings. And it's so sad and sweet and ancient. A language I don't recognise but here and there I catch a scrap of Latin. But it's not the words, it's the sentiment. A song for soothing a child in pain, soothing them to sleep. Like our mother's sang ten thousand years ago in the wild dark, before doctors, before medicine, before law.
I slip into dreams of an Ice Age.
###THIS NOVEL IS IN OPEN BETA###
Join the beta reader team at cyberwitchacademy.com
I'm here for your feedback. Thanks for reading!
YOU ARE READING
Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn
Science FictionImagine you wake up one day and discover that your body is a cursed organic computer. To make matters worse you keep getting possessed by AI demons. You know you can use their power, if only you could figure out how. But the clock is ticking, becau...
