Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 47

"Jesus Mel I just need to go for a walk. What am I a prisoner here?"

She doesn't want to let me go, but I can see she's already conceded defeat.

"I can give you one hour Ursula, then I'm going to have to come after you. Remember you have a tracker in you."

"As if I could forget. Don't worry. I'm not even going to go further than a couple of blocks."

"OK. Ok."

And I look at Ty and Vash, both pretending not to listen, Ty reading Vash tinkering with a drone.

"I have to make this decision tonight, Mel. I have to tell Bess if I'm gonna take her deal."

I've told them, finally facing up to my responsibility to keep them in the loop. And I feel like it was right, but I'm still not sure how much Mel reports back to the Weaver leadership.

One more night to pull the trigger and accept the Siren Queen's offer. Get out of London. Back to NYC. I'm thinking about the twins more than anything. They're too young for all this. Hell, so am I.

Nobody knows I killed the tracker spirit.

Found it surprisingly easy. Drowned it. Replaced it with a loyal servant, which happily lies for me. My own personal cyberWitch VPN slinging out fake IP addresses to whoever requests them.

So, I go out the fire escape. We've been in this fairly shabby safehouse just outside of Camden by the rail track. And outside the back of our block of flats the fire escape stairs come close enough to the disused railway bridge that I can easily parkour my way over onto the overgrown lines.

Some subway trains still run in London, but most of the overground lines are dead now, I still feel a sense of awe at the sheer scale of its system. It all feels like roman aqueducts now, remnants of an older civilisation. Can't imagine a society that functioned cohesively enough to build something like this. Mass transit.

And I know if I can stay up here, I'll reduce my chance encounters with other humans. Not so many hunters that they can afford to patrol every one of London's derelict spaces, even the witch hunt has budget concerns.

And normies, squares, they wouldn't dare be up here, so just got to keep my eye out for desperate scavengers then. And somehow, I've gotten so thick skinned that sounds like something I can just about handle. No longer some delicate thirteen-year-old from upper Manhattan, the fancy part.

And I'm breathing in the filthy 'fresh air' of London on a humid night, always humid in London now. I can smell the filth of the pace, the damp vegetation in the ancient Victorian brick work, and then I'm walking above a street, the odd car flies under it, a few pedestrians. Most people stay home at night these days, not like the bustling streets you see in old movies.

And then I hear the strangest thing. I hear little boys playing. Their sing song voices rising up unguarded from a patch of brush on the bridge up ahead.

I'm supposed to be soul searching, but I'm too curious to ignore it. Maybe I'll read a sign in this situation, tell me what decision to make. Give up on mom and save the twins or tell the Sirens to frack off and double down on finding mom? What's it to be boys?

So, I approach, moving from cover to cover, until I'm close enough to spy on them. And what a rabble of urchins they are. Street kids. Some with shoes, some without. And they are trying to knock down passing drones with homemade sling shots. One of them clips a whining copter splashed with a food delivery company logo. They cheer as the cargo drops, and fall upon the spoils handing out pieces of fried chicken to one another.

One of the boys is playing a game, a strange game with what looks like bits of chicken cartilage balanced on the back of his hand, and a small rubber ball, and while he plays, he's singing absent minded to himself.