Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 67

I'm soaked in the waters of the Serpentine. Had to swim across to avoid the patrols. It was an easy jog to the lake from the Palace through Hyde Park, moving from cover to cover. South Kensington is protected by a twelve foot chain link fence along the southern edge of Hyde Park. But I found a place to squeeze through, where some other miscreants had cut a hole. I'm into the museum district.

I'm using the rhizome to access maps. But it's not like your grandma's user interface. More like a set of feelings about the environment that help me choose a path. This way I can sneak through the gardens, fancy Victorian green spaces, Prince's Gate, Ennismore then Brompton Oratory, moving through the dark, approaching the Victoria and Albert museum from the back.

Armed police patrol Exhibition Road and Cromwell Gardens. The Hunters are going wild through the districts of the city tonight, but not this one. They're not even allowed in here. This area is the Republic's Brain. A sacred space to Londoners.

I sneak through the car park at the back of Brompton Oratory Gardens, into a service road that runs around the back of the museum. It's the ugly backside of the place. Looks like a Victorian red brick warehouse with the white intestines of the museum all spilling over the back. It's very dark. I'm grateful.

And of course it would be the V&A where the Weaver Queen is hiding. A museum famous for its quilting, embroidery, patch work, knitting, tapestry and textiles collections. A museum full of fabrics. Hardly takes a genius to think of that.

I'm looking for a live access point, preferably something hackable.

But maybe that is why the hiding place has worked for so long. Because it's too obvious. Must be a few Sirens working at a museum of fashion. Even if it is closed to the public. Maybe Sadie was hiding in plain sight?

It wasn't hard to find the file Sadie deposited in my rhizome with her virtual cup of tea. There wasn't much in it, access codes to acquire emergency funding. And an inconspicuous string of figures hidden inside a file within the file disguised as a scrap of something functional.

This string of numbers, it turns out, corresponds to a microchip that I suspect is hidden inside something that Sadie either wears or has implanted under her skin.

And the chip is a GPS tag.

I tried to throw off the Sirens, headed towards Westminster then looped back to Charing Cross before sneaking through the parks. I'm pretty sure nobody is following me. I used a bunch of shivers to make sure nobody could trace me rhizomatically. This is between me and her.

I can sense her.

Now here's a little door with the tell tale LED that shows it's an electronic lock. It takes less than a minute to whisper a few words, summon a door spirit, then I'm in.

I'm in the back corridors of a museum, kind of places that hide behind doors saying STAFF ONLY. There is evidence of life. I peer into rooms with coffee cups, paperwork and laptops scattered across desks. Family photos and kids drawings stuck to walls.

But there isn't much of it. A skeleton staff I guess. Looking after the collections until better days come.

As I follow my digital trail of breadcrumbs, I find a stairwell heading down into the bowels of the building. I come out into an archive area, a kind of library of clothes. Everything around me is categorised and protected under layers of plastic, kept in atmosphere-controlled conditions. Garments from every period of history. It's a kind of wonderland.

And then I see her in the middle of it all, with a princess dress, of some long dead real princess from Scandinavia, and she's hand sewing, repairing it. Humming something to herself. It's kinda weird, like seeing a character from a computer game appear in the real world.