Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 51

I'm stuffing clothes into a backpack. Got to get out. Got to get away from these people. This ridiculous penthouse apartment, done up like heaven on earth. All gold and white with marble statues, playhouse of some fabulous banker a few decades ago.

And it all feels so tawdry, the Weaver complicity in everything. Their fingers in all the dirty pies that threw up the staggering inequalities that led to the civil war. I'm in bed with the 1%. And I want to get out. And I can't even look at Mel's face, hired thug for a power she doesn't understand, sitting on the end of this four-poster bed knowing she's out of bullshit to say to keep me around.

She makes her play anyway.

"We love you, kid. Me. Ty, Vash. It's not pretend."

"Am I a prisoner, Mel? Are you going to stop me from leaving?"

No response.

"That's what I thought."

Then I blurt it out...

IF(RAINRAIN){RETURN "GO AWAY"} ELSE IF(ANOTHER_DAY) {RETURN "COME AGAIN"};

"You're glitching out Ursula. You won't survive out there. Sometimes I have to make the adult decision...you're still a kid."

"You're the mom of this perverted little family, are you? So why the hell did you follow my every stupid ass plan. You're supposed to be in control. I'm just a kid, why did you let me break into a school? Break into another girl's house and torture her in front of her sick mom? This is not a family; this is a cult."

"I was stupid. But your mom, she was clear, she told me to let you lead, to follow your lead."

"So, maybe my mom was your goddam cult leader. You let her tell you to stop thinking like a real grown up. Maybe that's why you lost your real children."

"That's enough." Ty glowers at me from the doorway.

"You walk out of here and we'll get cut off. You're throwing us to the wolves, because you're having a tantrum about your mommy." This last delivered in a mock yank accent.

"Oh Ty, sweet boy who dresses like a girl and talks like a girl and is the most basic middle class white girl you'll ever meet, who pretends to be a boy because she's terrified of being as mind numbingly normal as she really is. And your art sucks, Ty. Badly copying manga is not drawing."

Ty looks down. Doesn't seem to know how to respond. I'm horrified at myself. It's like a car crash I can't stop. I'm at the wheel but the steering wheel is gone.

"OK we get it." Vash interjects.

"You're creative when you're angry. Come on, do me then we can all have a laugh. You got some racist shit for me?"

"Why would I go there when you've reached today years old before you realised, you're autistic? All you give a shit about is all the machines you own that the Weavers pay for. Good luck finding a robot boyfriend."

My inner conservative runs deeper than I realised. Still a Catholic girl after all.

"You wrote your first AI when you were nine years old Ursula, and you think you're neurotypical?"

She's laughing while she says it, which rids me of the last drop of my compassion. And control.

I'm glitching out so hard I actually collapse, they rush forward but I lash out at them. Pull myself up on the bed and put the bag on.

"I hated all that shit. I forced myself to be good at it because it was the only way I could occasionally get mom to look up from her research and notice I existed."

"Ursula please." Mel is streaming with tears. It almost knocks me off track.

"You won't last five minutes out in the Republic alone."

I gesture internally, summoning a shiver to open the door of the apartment, but Mel is fighting me for control of the building. Something dark swims up through the gap, a screaming thing, I let it into me and its scream surges through the wireless connections between myself, the apartment's network and my ex-coven sisters.

Bean Sidhe. Banshee.

Mel and the others fall to the ground shrieking in agony, the digital noise floods their brains, the door surrenders to my control and I limp out of the building, still glitching, slamming all the doors and windows behind me, sending surges of power through the wiring, popping all the light fittings and turning on all the radios and flatscreens, flooding the apartment with visual and sonic noise.

I have to force the banshee to leave, it wants to stay, carry me out into London to perch on the rooftops of the doomed screaming into the night. It takes everything to win back the Rhizome for myself.

And then I'm on the ground floor, shuffling out into the London night, scarf around my face, a fugitive. I try not to think about the things I said, try not to think about what will happen to my coven now.

All I can think about is staying alive long enough to see the twins again.