Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 61

I cling to the back of the air bike rider, shivering with my overloaded nervous system. The air hits my face and wakes me up a little, but there is so much static in my head I can barely hear my own thoughts.

Something went wrong when I let Ariadne in. Something has changed. But there's no time to dwell on that now. Just need to focus on not falling off, as London shrinks into a patchwork of lights below us, with the winding ribbon of black that marks out the river.

Suddenly, the engine cuts out. I don't hear anything, the familiar noises of an air bike in operation, all gone. The body of the rider stiffens, I can hear her trying buttons and switches, manual overrides, but the thing begins to dip forward, losing its trajectory, turning into a heavy falling object.

"We've been hit with an EMP." She shouts back to me.

"Jump! Jump for the river!"

And then she twists and dives off and I freeze, there is a loud bang and I'm spinning and spinning, tumbling like a rag doll. And when I hit the water, it feels like hitting a wall.

And it's dark. And I want to give up.

I think I blacked out for a while because I'm floating face down and the river is carrying me along. But I do not drown. My disease can breathe for me. I roll myself over to look up at the sky. And I see there are people on the south bank following me. Trying to see where I wash up. Scavs, maybe.

So, I swim for the north bank. It feels like my whole body is made of lead, takes everything to keep swimming. I make it to a place where there are old stairs carved into the wall and I drag myself up onto land, breathing in great ragged gasps. But I can hear sirens, and horses.

I'm being hunted again. And I'm alone. Got to get up. Got to move.

I quickly bind a shiver that will lend me some frantic energy, a much-needed booster demon to liven up my aching bones. And I half run, half limp. Something went badly wrong in my left leg when I hit the water. Lots of pain. And I'm looking for somewhere to hide.

There's a churchyard, and a little old church. Can get up there and hide among the grave stones. And maybe the spirit I just bound has a penchant for a Halloween vibe, but I tell myself it's just common sense, only place I can get off the street and out of sight real fast.

And to my surprise there is a children's play area right in the middle of the graveyard. And I go I find the biggest gravestone, and I lie down in the wet grass behind it, hoping that nobody is inside the church at this time of night.

Then I lie there, and a long time seems to pass, until I hear it. I'm trying to get access to the CCTV cameras on the nearby street, using shivers to burrow into the net that they may be connected to, but it doesn't work this time. Maybe they're not even switched on. And I have to rely on plain old hearing. But I can hear it, deliberate movements of a small group of people, maybe three or four, trying to move quietly. And they're not going anywhere, so I guess they must have found some trace of me, and now they are beginning to systematically explore the churchyard, and I want to cry.

I can still hear her, Arachne, disdainful of my fear. She wants me to fight them, wants me to terrify them. Thinks I am behaving like a snivelling mortal. And I don't know what to say to her, because I am just a kid, and I'm so far from home, and then something happens, something calls me from across the churchyard, like a flash of the crone's face, beckoning me, and I take a chance, make a run between the stones, keeping low, trying to keep quiet.

And I make it around the other side of the church, and there is an open grave. This is wrong, this church is really old, nobody is using this bone yard anymore. Why did someone dig this hole? But I'm not really in control anymore. Too many people steering this ship, and I'm horrified, but also weirdly amused to find that I am climbing down into a grave.

And I lie down at the bottom of it, and then all the mud and earth just collapse down, tumbles down on top of me and it feels like a blanket, feels so comforting. And I feel writhing underneath me, I'm on a writhing patch of dancing rhizomatic tendrils and they grow right into me and through me and my own rhizome grows out to meet it and up through the mud towards the air, channelling oxygen down for my blood.

But also connecting to all kinds of other networks, connecting the Gapside through me as a node into the data streams of nature, and I let go of myself. I just let her die.

And I become something I used to be a very long time ago. And there in the dark and the warmth I learn things that cannot be written. I learn things that cannot be understood.

And I am Applethorn. And Arachne even, seems to be happy with me, and she does not pressure me anymore, because this comes before her, comes before the Weaver and the Siren, comes before everything.

Ninguna de ella le preciede.

And I know that, I will come up out of the earth again, because I know that Ursula has got work to do. But the witch hunters will never find me here. So, I let go, and then I realise that I am connected to everything.

And suddenly I know that I can directly link my network to other minds. I can grow literal physical connections to other minds, conjoined nervous systems, the rhizome isn't a series of separate devices, it seeks connection, it wants to be a worldwide mycelium. And I know all that, because the Crone wants me to know that. Because she who comes before all has a purpose for me.