Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 55

Here in the real world the prison ship is not so lightly guarded.

The rain helps, makes it harder to see, to hear us creeping around.

Alice hisses in my ear, "We can't do it tonight, Sula. Mission is off. The witchFinder herself is on that ship tonight. Just got it hot from my source on board."

"No way we're calling this off Alice. Weeks we been planning this. If she's on board it's probably because she's planning something nasty, maybe got her lobotomy doc with her."

I look at the others. And I realise they're waiting for my decision, not Alice's. Maybe I made one too many speeches. Oh no. Are they here because of me? Yes, they are. Siren Leaders tried to shut this mission down. They lost face letting me make my move tonight. Maybe Alice is working for them, still? My Alice?

She's giving me the look. I'm trying to act like I'm not still scared of her.

"Alice, you know we can't wait. We have maps, we have cell numbers, we have ready-made data files for most of the security staff. Marketta is just one woman; we have a small army tonight. If we wait, we could lose your people on the ship, they could move the ship, move the prisoners."

Alice is already looking resigned to the action. But this surrender, it'll cost me. I feel it. I feel something snap in the ties that bind us. It's too late. The twins need me.

"You have sisters on the boat too. Think of them." Will we still be together after tonight? I've faced her down in front of her own coven. I doubt it. My heart is breaking. The twins.

She turns her back on me and sets to work.

Alice sends the signal along the Gap for the action to begin. We have a local net set up between us, I can see the action in the wireframe on a 3D model in my head, all while looking at the meatSpace version with my real eyes.

When the action starts, it happens fast.

The guards on the front of the ship are drawn away by Sirens on the rooftops of the buildings on the river shore. Like lemmings they wander straight into the road. Cars swerve madly around them.

We run down the long-angled gangway, going off towards Tower Bridge before sharply turning back on itself towards the warship. AirBikes swoop down out of the rain clouds running distraction for us. Two guards run towards us; night sticks raised above their heads. They're wearing old school face blurring tech, tights over their heads. But it does them no good, we already know who they are.

We unleash the terror on them and they throw themselves into the murky river shrieking.

On the ship it is chaos.

I know that Siren teams are boarding from the water at several points. Some have dropped in from the airBikes. The alarm bell is literally a guy ringing a bell. And then beyond that, sirens. Helicopter blades.

We have only a few minutes before the cavalry arrives, and these cheap merc security guards are replaced by London's finest.

We move through the boat fast, having practised in simulations dozens of times. We reach the deck where my sisters are kept, and I swear I can hear them calling me when suddenly Marketta steps into my view.

Marketta is dressed like a witch finder from a history book, if such a look were designed by Versace, eyes madly gleaming, babbling in a language that you'd swear was demonic. The two girls with me glitch out so violently that I can hear bones crack. they drop to the floor in impossible positions. They stop breathing. Alice's coven sisters.

Then I hear screaming from all over the ship. In my mind's eye, I see the action collapse and turn into a chaotic retreat. Little red lights going out everywhere. Witches getting disconnected from the net.

One of Marketta's men hits me in the stomach. I take a knee in the face. Then I'm being dragged backwards upstairs. I can feel the back of my head turn wet. I'm tossed onto the floor in front of Marketta, who sits in a captain's chair regarding me with gleeful malice.

It's like she's continuing a conversation we've already started. No acknowledgement that she hasn't seen me in months. She's just as overwhelming as ever.

"I will let your sisters go free tonight, if you swear your loyalty to me, Ursula."

I try to speak, but I'm still too woozy from the crack on the back of the head.

"If you do not do this thing, I will torture them while you watch."

This is a Marketta I have not met. She's weirdly up beat, like a spiteful little girl having a fantastic time.

"You have thirty seconds to decide."

I throw up.

She laughs.

Then the boy appears. the Golden Boy, standing at her shoulder. And I know straight away that he's doing the black magic, the terror magic. Doing it on me just to show me that he's better at it than I am.

And I'm half-crazy with fear, ready to say anything.

"Whatever you want! Just let them go please!"

"Like hell you will." It's Alice.

An explosion. Not an explosion, a sound. A sound that takes over everything. It makes everything else insignificant. It vibrates, in the nastiest most jarring way, every atom of my body and soul.

It rings every filament of the Rhizome, plays every tendril of my nervous system like a harp on fire.

I turn. Alice has thrown open her mouth like snake swallowing a capybara. She is screaming. Alice's scream becomes the universe. And I do not know what else there is in the universe. Because there isn't room in it for Marketta and her son. Alice's scream is the word of God.

It works. The enemy is paralysed for just long enough for us to be extracted.

Now we're on an airBike flying away from the ship, me and Alice back together, while my raw and bloody brain tries to piece reality back together.

"That's a little spell I've been holding back for an emergency. Banshee." She mutters to me.

"I wouldn't count on it working twice. Next time she'll be ready for it."

But we're alive, and we're together.

The twins.

"We have to go back for the twins!"

You'll be the death of me, sugar. Like I always told you.

Did she think that, or say it?