Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 71

"So, tell me the plan." Mel stares me dead in the eye as she says it again.

"We've been through this fifty times already." Vash shouts. Losing her temper.

"Tell me again." Mel snarls at me.

"We go in, we pretend to be sirens, we sneak into the library, we get into the secret lab, use the shivers to ransack the place, get as much data as we can in five minutes and then we jack out. Five minutes?"

"Four minutes fifty-nine. The black ICE in there is strong enough to fry your meat bodies back here in the real world. This is the Gap Ursula, the most intelligent network on earth. It knows when's it's under attack, it knows things that humans can't even understand."

"And it's made of the same stuff we are Mel. This thing inside us, it's a part of the Gap. It can work. It has to work. We can't go against Marketta any other way, not without some kinda informational advantage. We're flying blind here. You know that."

Well, there's nothing more she can say.

And she sets about checking the perimeter, always making sure she's anticipating who or what might attack next while we are under, lying prone on the floor, empty bodies, brains elsewhere, elsewhen.

So, we begin the ritual, the old familiar ritual but this time it's different because we're trying to disguise ourselves as we enter. We're using shivers as mimics, trying to copy the patterns of thought of a group of sirens who we know right now are not in the Gap, we're monitoring traffic, which is a danger in itself, watchers being watched, who's watching who? But we're in.

I can feel the layers of security around the edges of the Gap give way to us. We've made it.

If the Gap finds out we're banished, ex-students, permanently excluded, sneaking back into the old school, it'll kill us, without mercy, without hesitation. Real death. Brain attack. The Gap can overload the connections to our brains, feed us a stroke right down the lines of our rhizomes and into our brains.

So, we're not talking, but that's wrong, we need to play act like we're coming to class. Just another day at school. We need to act like we're having fun.

But the school has changed. I'm feeling sea sick, the whole place is intense, even more intense than usual, roiling like the ocean, can't get a steady footing. It's like being on a boat in a storm.

And there are storms, great tropical storms illuminating the sky. It's raining and every fat drop of rain is a different colour. The surface of the black lake makes a roaring sound at the waters raining down upon its surface.

It feels like the Secret School is drunk.

We cross over the bridge slowly, holding onto to the rails. And we pass other witches, lost, some hysterically giggling, others passionately making out, but none of them seem to pay us any attention.

One of them wails like a banshee, standing on the edge of the lake, throws herself in.

I see senior girls flying like streaks of lightening across the sky in the form of strange winged animals.

And when we get to the school yard in front of the two great towers, it's difficult to tell if any lessons are even taking place.

The weaver section of the school looks like it's rotting. The siren section of the school is overgrown with gigantic wild flowers. There's been a feast out here in the courtyard, but it looks like it was abandoned hastily.

Vash gestures for us to move into the school itself, we push open the doors of the Weaver section. She turns and gestures to the places in the floor where the boards have rotted through. There are deep holes to step over.

And there are what look to be dead witches, three of them lying on the floor behind the reception desk.

Ty goes to investigate but I grab his arm. The clock is ticking.

We make our way to the library, and walk into the stacks together, suddenly a voice behind me.

"Nobody comes to the library anymore girls."

I freeze and turn. It's the librarian, sitting on the floor.

"We just need a book for an assignment."

"They're not really books, girls. It's all just numbers."

"Are you OK?"

"Everything is in love with everything else, everything is broken hearted." Says the librarian.

But she's not even really looking at us anymore so we back away and then we break into a sprint.

"They need each other, the Weaver and the Siren. They're always trying to break free of each other, but when they do..." She calls after us, more urgently.

I glance back at her as she starts to disintegrate.

"Everything starts to break down."

I place my hand on the door to my mother's secret lab. And it opens. The black ice screams, the Gap is outraged and Vash and Ty start to fit and writhe in agony.

I think fast, summon up a shiver to forcefully eject them from the sim.

It works, but I hope it was fast enough to prevent lasting brain damage.

The Gap has failed to see me as a foreign body, I guess it must be the hyper rhizome.

I have a little time. I swim into the lab, all 'underwater-not-water' now. And I send forth waves of tendrils into the data all around me, seeking for anything that sends the right type of shiver back along the network into my nervous system, feeling along the web for the tremors that will tell me what I need to know.

And there it is, the designs for Marketta. They designed her, they built a host for the spirits of all the persecuted witches of history. And they built it inside the mind and body of a living woman.

And I have found their failsafe, the back door they built in to allow a reassertion of human control in the event of catastrophe. And I know that I can use it, with the help of a very powerful AI, I can buy myself enough time to access the failsafe. I can switch Marketta off. I can shut down the insane AI that is persecuting us all.

I can hear Mel sending me the message to come out.

Something awful is coming. The mother of all black ice.

The Gap has realised that it has been tricked and it is furious.

Something like a blackhole with infinite teeth smashes its way into the lab, and I only just manage to jack out in time, before it closes its darkness around me.