Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 48

My throat is dry, my palms sweating, my heart pounding so hard I think the vein in my neck might spontaneously open and gush blood onto the passers-by.

We're walking through another type of market, this one is real, Camden Market, open 24 hours, one of the only parts of London that is still packed with people at this time of night. And we're using the crowds to avoid eyes, hunters' eyes.

Lots of people work for the hunt, lots of people round here will sell data on anyone to anyone just make another week's rent for their families.

This market is a desperate place, still colourful, but everything here is third or fourth hand. Poverty is written into every stall and every transaction. There are stalls glittering with chrome removed from the bodies of dead or not so dead donors. People desperate enough to pawn the cyberWear straight outta their bodies.

And there are chop shops, back street grinders with buzz saws, like a nightmarish version of a tattoo parlour, and they do tattoos too of course, everyone here can sell you anything or find someone who can for a slice of the fee.

And I keep seeing mom's face, in random strangers, in posters, in reflections in old chrome. There are hardcore corpo mercs dotted around the market. My urchin travelling companions are trying to avoid their eyes.

"Been got caught thieving here, too many times." Boss boy chuckle softly in my ear. He's weaving in and out of passing groups, swiping the odd phone out of a back pocket.

But I'm just obsessing over my mom. Can't stop seeing her. Hearing her.

Amanda Loveless. Genius. The one woman in the world I know who could make all this better. And I know she's damaged, but she's alive, there is hope and hope is the most painful thing of all.

We got to approach Camden Lock through the market, cause there's hunters all over Camden Road. Says the boy to my left. We suddenly exit a building, part of the covered market straight out onto a canal. We're under Camden Lock bridge, and the change in tone is jarring.

Suddenly we're in a desolate place, a place that stinks of danger. Every terrifying thought you ever had of being alone on an urban canal path at night comes bubbling up. This is a place that seems to beg for dark actions, cold hearted attacks. How many people have been assaulted down here on a London evening like this?

But the boys seem at home here, spirits not failing, although their eyes are everywhere. They ward off an approach from a grey-haired Rastafarian in a trench coat, stinking of spirits.

"Fuck off grandad."

They flash knives and billy clubs at him, he sucks his teeth and wanders on.

"This way, this way."

"I can't promise you'll see her, doesn't show up every time."

Only people come down here now are idiots, or they want to die. And he indicates the people sleeping under the bridge. Some of them could well already be dead. The smell of urine is intense. Drug debris, empty cans and bottles carpet patches of ground. People have left camp fires down here. Looks like once there were many more homeless living by the lock.

"Where did all the street people go?"

"Yeah, they mostly moved on when the Crying Lady came to town."

"When was that?"

"About a year ago now."

So, we walk along until we get to a place they call Regent's Canal, and a little further until one of them stops us. The boy with the haunted face, has the keenest hearing. Stops and beckons us into cover. We move forward now from behind any object we can find, then I can hear the song too.