Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 81

When I open my eyes, the twins are gone. I'm in the real world. Everything hurts. Six men lie on the floor around me, not moving. Hot red liquid everywhere. A head that should not be the shape that it is. One man sits on the floor bleeding, hyperventilating. He's frozen in panic, staring at the blood-soaked nightstick in his own hand.

One thought alone moves me. Marketta is getting away.

I can feel her, through the Rhizome. See that she is in the control room, firing up the engines. I can feel the boat break free of its moorings and lurch up the river.

I can see other things too. Mel is wearing a cam, broadcasting on WIFI. All the witches are. They are filling the boat up with handy vantage points for me to use. I can hop my perspective from camera to camera. Mel is going cell to cell, opening them all. Freeing the jailed witches. Searching for me and the twins.

Marketta. Only I know where she is. Only I can stop her.

An idea comes to me. I pull off the hunter's uniform, a man around my size. Pull it on over my clothes.

I summon shivers to dampen the pain in my battered body. I summon shivers to make me stronger, faster. I summon a shiver who understands the layout of the boat and the workings of the portals. I move through the boat as fast and as quietly as I can.

A low blast punches through the silence above me. Guns. Must be the London Army, or Armed police. Hunters don't carry guns.

I feel Marketta's panic, now the gig is up. The Republic is coming for her. As am I. She tries to counter my rhizomatic espionage, flooding my brain with memories of my mother. I stumble, trying to clear my head.

Ty and Vash, also wearing cams. I can see them loading up a rescue boat with shivering prisoners. I can hear the sirens of approaching ambulances, police wagons. Police boats suddenly light up the Thames with their floodlights. But they hold their distance, fearing the Weaver magic.

A group of hunters charge at Mel. She and her Weaver Spiders battle them on the deck, knocking them over the railing into the water below. Then they pile down a stairwell, and there they are, the twins. She's found the twins hiding under a table in an officer's room. She's wrapping them in foil blankets. Someone passes them a flask.

I am energised. I force myself to move on through the fog of mental manipulation. I become a thing that moves, relentless, without a mind. Marketta's loyalists try to stop me entering the control room, but the glitch is in me, and then somehow it is in them, and they squeak and squeal, rolling on the floor, grunting and squealing like the pigs they are.

Marketta has her arms buried in a mess of wires, directing her mind into the bowels of the ship, controlling the engine and the rudder, like she has become a part of the ship. But I am her and she is me. And I begin to unpick the atomic chain of the metal in the hull. I feel the satisfying feeling of the river water pouring in. We're sinking. And I hear myself laughing and laughing. Enjoying the moment.

"Go on child!" Marketta is beaming, enjoying my unhinged celebration. And I realise how close I am to atomic meltdown. The blinding glow of the rhizome under my skin, lighting up the whole ship, visible from space. And the squares gathering on the river bank will never understand what it is that they are seeing.

I force myself to take back control, dialling down the levels, relocating myself inside my meat body.

It's enough time for Marketta to complete her desperate manoeuvre.

I'm thrown to the ground. Everyone is thrown to the floor, Mel, Vash Ty, the Twins. The ship ploughs into the river bank and rides up, while the back of the ship begins to sink rapidly thanks to the dozens of holes I have put in the hull. Marketta pulls herself out of the bizarre control unit, arms bleeding from hundreds of tiny wounds and she runs to the door out and across the hull. I chase after her.

The night sky fills with lights as the airbikes take to the air carrying their share of rescued prisoners. Ty, and Vash flee down river with the twins. Mel is searching for me, hampered by armed police and the last few guards still resisting.

Marketta jumps over the prow. We're right in the middle of the riverside slums. Throngs of terrified and angry slum dwellers surround the boat, still too stunned to respond. If she makes it to the crowd, we'll lose her. She'll disappear into the crowds of New London. Nobody left but me who has eyes on her now.

I throw myself over the prow. I land hard. Something goes wrong in my left leg. But I force myself to ignore the pain, and I get up and limp after her. She turns, face a rictus of rage and fear. She's a hunted witch, surrounded by stupid violent terrified peasants. Again. It's happening again.

"That girl is a witch! She escaped from the prison ship!"

Marketta screams to the crowd. But I keep moving towards her. She's injured too. The fall must have hurt her. She can't get away fast enough.

But Marketta isn't wearing a Hunter's uniform. And her eyes are wild and her voice is harsh. And I'm about to lay my hands on her when she says it.

Vintery mintery cutery corn, apple seed and applethorn.

As she says it, she sends an enormous wave of power through our collected rhizome sending my skin into a kaleidoscope of throbbing lights, it's extremely painful, like someone taking hold of my nervous system and tearing it apart. I fly into the air backwards like I've been thrown and land on the floor writhing in agony. Then as suddenly as it started, it stops.

A long silence.

A man stands next to Marketta with a broken bottle in his hand. The crowd is packed tight around her as she staggers, not quite falling. Blood running down her face. Another man comes forward with a heavy chain, something like you'd use to secure a motorcycle. More people move in, younger, stronger ones. Taking hold of her, holding onto her mouth to prevent her from casting spells. They drag her to a lamppost and slowly, deliberately they chain her to it, and make her secure with other found ropes. Stuffing her mouth with rags.

And there are others leading me away, up a flight of metal stairs to a low balcony.

"We'll look after you till the other hunters arrive. You done a good job lovey. Very brave you were."

And I'm too drained to do anything except watch. She locks eyes with me and I see through her eyes. I watch myself watching me as the people in hoods with the masks pour gasoline over me. The smell assaulting my nostrils.

I've been here before.

"Please." I mutter, almost whisper to the people around me.

"There are proper channels. She needs a trial." Sounds so pathetic when I say it out loud.

"I know it's tough love, but sometimes it has to be the old ways."

And I can feel her tears evaporate as the heat rises up from the flames at her feet.