Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 74

I'm standing on the roof of the old asylum watching the fireworks above London.

I draw a sharp breath as a blur of flapping black and white appears at my side.

It settles into the form of a magpie that is perched very close to my face.

It looks directly at me and cocks its head.

"Hi there." I whisper.

Feels strange to be in the same place for so many days in a row, after the nightly decamping of the Weaver lifestyle. But here we are temporarily safe, the hunters won't risk a full-frontal assault, now that Mel is working for the Dead Foxes.

And the magpie hops two or three jumps closer to me. So close now I could kiss it on the beak.

I'm sure, a wild bird never would do such a thing. Maybe it thinks I have food? Maybe it was tame?

"What do you want there, little fella?"

"I want you." And it's chattering like a magpie, but I'm hearing English words in my head.

It's not real. Is it here, or inside the Gap? Can I even tell anymore?

I reach out, brush my finger against its feathers, not really black but iridescent purples and greens in an almost blackness. Color in the void.

And it seems that it is here, not just a hallucination.

And I can feel it's rhizomatic tendrils reaching out to mine. An animal with an implant? Maybe. But I sense something twisted about it, something hateful, and suddenly I'm very afraid.

I wonder if I can call Mel. But it's too late, the link is established, and I freeze, my voice sticks in my throat. It's her. The legion of damned women. Marketta La Fey.

"Hello my love." It's tenderly whispered in a million voices all at once, in many languages from many times.

And I really believe it then for a moment, in her own dark way, she does love me.

"I have come to parlay."

And I reply, "I don't get why we're at war anyway, Marketta."

I'm speaking directly through the rhizome, standing in silent paralysis, panicking, a trickle of seat down my spine.

"Oh, but once you suffer and die a few thousand times you get used to it, my love. Come and see what I have in store for the little sisters you love so much."

And I try to look away, but she's piping the images directly into my mind. And I see the girls, shaven heads in hospital robes. Big brown eyes staring, cold hard stares. Their faces pale, their smiles long gone.

And I see them being experimented on, tubes and wires coming out of them, electrical pulses being passed through them while they twitch and scream. Great fat needles being pushed into their spines. I try to make it stop.

"Why are you doing this!?" I scream inside my own head.

"I'm a gardener, Ursula, I'm preparing the soil, I'm preparing you to bloom, your transcendence will remake the world. I'm digging, making a compost of the twins to plant you in."

And I beg her then, like I've never begged anyone before.

"Please let them go! Take me! It's me you want! I'll hand myself in tonight, tell me where to go, just let the twins free, please."

She smiles at me like a proud mother.

"You're beginning to grow, look at you! Come here, go away, why would I care? You're already mine. I took your mother, took the twins and I took you too."

"So why let the prisoners die? Why are you handing girls over to the mob? What is the point of the show trials? If your whole game is to drive me mad then you already did that."

"The twins won't get a trial. They'll sit on the biggest bonfire in London and I will make you watch, and then you will blossom, my Applethorn. Then you will blossom."

"What do you want? What do you want?" And I'm screaming it internally, so hard that I can feel blood vessels bursting. but the more I reach into her, the less sense I can find, she's an opaque bacterium, a process without consciousness, a weather system in chaos.

I cannot find anything to make sense of, and then the magpie flies away and I drop to the floor, screeching and wailing, trying to swim in the air, drowning on dry land, glitching so hard that all my muscles convulse.

And through it all one thought remains...

Marketta must die. Marketta must die. Marketta must die.