Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 63

I know where Alice is now. I think I'll always know. But maybe it's a fantasy. The line between my implants and my craziness is getting blurry now. When I breeze through the door the doormen don't even try to stop me. They know me, I guess.

Getting across town ain't so hard now I have all this Siren magic. Weavers taught me how to be invisible, Sirens taught me how to attract and how to be scary. And I know because I've been staring at my own reflection in the black mirror of the underground train windows, and I look awful scary tonight.

They're partying of course. They'll be partying when the hunters come for them. It's a religion for this crowd, Alice's crowd. She hasn't seen me for days. Probably thinks I'm dead. yet she's out of course. Always out.

Maybe they know I'm alive, maybe they know where I am. Months at the Secret School and they've hidden more than they taught me about this goddam implant. This sentient disease.

I push through the crowd. And there she is, sitting with her closest allies like a flock of crows on a stack of speakers. All of them dressed in an array of funereal shades of high-status streetwear, some of that Hackney Seoul style. Understated textural animations.

But when she sees me, her imperious mourning mood drops away and she jumps down and runs towards me like an excited little girl. I'm stunned.

"I thought you were dead!" Screaming in my ear over the thundering bass.

She literally picks me up and spins me around, and I try not to feel blessed. She's so beautiful I could cry. Is there some way...? Is it all a mistake?

But the demon inside me claws at my guts, reminding me that it's there. I'm just a passenger on a train to damnation.

And I notice for the first time, that she looks at me in a way she does not look at the others.

And I think, good.

I'll drown her in that feeling. I'll reel her all the way in, make her feel like she's finally found her one true love. So, I'm playing the most flirtatious version of myself. Which is absurd because I have crawled out of a grave and I'm wearing the same clothes I've worn for three days.

Alice is so excited to see me, she's talking and talking. So, the spell is working, never seen her so effusive. Letting her words wash over me, and a lot of people are watching, kinda pretending not to watch. But we're the power couple here now, and anything could happen once we're together.

"Hunters going crazy tonight. They done some kind of deal with the Republic. Got military tech. All kinds of new toys they never had before, and they working with the police now. They're shooting air bikes outta the sky. Heard you got shot down. Thought...and now you're here. You look like a real witch now, like some mad crone from a fairy-tale."

She wants to take me upstairs, get me cleaned up, and look at my leg. I'm still limping. But the crowd is hyper, they want us on stage. We get dragged up there. And before we know it, she's dropping rhymes, doing her thing, freestyling about Applethorn, turning my misadventures into some kind of legend, and she offers me the mic and I have no idea what to do, but something comes outta me anyway, it's nonsense. But the crowd seem so hyped they love it anyway.

And the witches doing the visuals pass me the controls, not physically, it's all linked up to the Rhizome, they just pass me access, so now the whole cellar bar, tiny place with sweat dripping from the ceiling, it's all rigged with high end 3D laser projection tech, kinda thing sirens love. And I'm just turning the whole environment into an ever mutating, interactive landscape of lights and patterns, following the music and Alice's words.

I want to stay in this moment forever. I want to forgive her. I don't care if she faked it. This is the best thing I've ever had. And she's about to surrender herself to me. I can feel it, she is winding her lyrics around and around upward to the declaration of love, in front of everyone.

But I'm just a passenger in a train to hell. The demons already have me. I want to destroy her from the inside out.

And she declares her love. The music stops. The room is silent. Everyone holds their breath.

And then the visuals turn into a dining table with three women sitting around it. I'm playing back a recording of the meeting I saw, to everyone on the building.

"Where were you at the witching hour Alice?"

"No, no, no, no." She's transfixed, her face like one of the suffering martyrs in my abuela's church.

The first time I ever saw fear in her eyes.

"Were you upstairs, jacked into the Gap alone?"

Everyone is watching the scene play out around them, super-sized, every micro expression available to reach out and touch, realer than realer than real. And it could be fake, but Alice has missed a beat, has failed to respond quick enough to sell the lie that she wasn't there, and she missed that trick because she really is in love with me, and the demon in me is howling with joy, to know that, to know that this is hurting her more than I could have ever hoped.

And yet I still want to take her in my arms and run away with her. But I can't. I'm not in control.

Then the bottles start flying.

"TRAITOR!"

And I am pulled away by the Sirens that I know, the ones who have become my crew now. As Alice panics and tries to make for the door. And I see her submerged in furious bodies, drowning in swinging fists.

The party is over, and the sirens sweep me away. Tending to me like a fallen leader. And I guess I am now, I guess Alice's gang has become mine.

Butall I can feel is how much I want her back.