Author: Wildbow

Crossed with Silver – 19.4 | Pale

Next Chapter

Lucy was busy fixing up her hat as Horseman turned up.  She winced, muttering, “ow, ow, ow, ow,” as she fixed the Hot Lead to the band.

“Threat?” Horseman asked.

“You guys are at risk.  This is an Other that can kill you permanently.”

“Then I bet it can kill you permanently too,” he replied.

It was so weird talking to him, when he barely looked older than Booker, was technically the same age as Grandfather, but also closer to her own age because he hadn’t really existed while bound.  Then to complicate things further, the combat experiences in him added up to more than the raw years did, but they weren’t especially relevant experiences for dealing with a weird technomancy Other when compared to hers, so… she didn’t know.

Then there was the whole business with how she wanted to win over the Dog Tags, and Horseman was the one they all respected the most.  He’d been the first one to spring up out of this particular group.

It was all fine when she shared what she knew, he shared what he knew, and they accepted each others’ levels of expertise.  But when he was stubborn, or they disagreed, it threw her for a bit of a loop.

“Angel and Grandfather backed off.  There wasn’t much they could do,” she told him.  “I can handle it, I think.  But if you could go get Bangnut and Montague, that might help.”

“I thought the plan was that we’d pick up some of what John knew.  How to deal with spirits, how to deal with other Others.”

That was another problem when it came to dealing with some of the Dog Tags.  It felt like every conversation ended up there.  With that name being said.

“And you will, and you should,” she said.  “We’ve all shared some stuff.  But let’s not make your learning experience here a life or death one, okay?  It’s too fast, too big, and I don’t even know how to deal with it.”

The Turtle Queen appeared.  Horseman gave her a wary look.

“Most of my learning experiences have been life or death lessons.”

“Kind of, but not really death death.”

“A lot were.  The War Mages.  Being bound is a kind of death.”

The Turtle Queen stepped closer.

“Problem?” Lucy asked her.

“You said you’d call,” the Turtle Queen said.  Her eyes glinted gold as she turned her head to look to the side.

“I will.  But right now I’m having a conversation with Horseman and trying to fix up my connection block.  Do we have eyes on the Other?”

“It’s getting into the city’s power.  Extending influence.”

Lucy swore.  She started running out of the alleyway.  “Okay.  Horseman, I’m not the boss of you, but I really don’t think you should come.  It’d be great if you got Bangnut and Montague.”

“I’ll get them,” Horseman said.  “And then I’ll come.”

Lucy stopped herself from saying a swear word.  “Okay.”

Running while trying to scribble a note on her hat, she framed the slug of the Hot Lead John had given her with some connection marks and lines, a kind of ‘x’ to connect it to what was on the underside of her hat brim.  The Hot Lead glowed red-orange, and so did the connection blocking marks.

As she rounded the corner, the Turtle Queen was waiting on the other side.

“I will call!” she told her.  “Go see what you can do about the Other as-is!”

It felt weird to be running around downtown with her hat on- hat and mask, now, as she pulled that on too.  The connection blocker on the underside of her hat and her Sight gave everything a faint red tint.

She dialed her phone as she ran.

“Hello?” Louise answered.

“Invading Other,” Lucy panted.

“Angel told me.  I was reaching out to the others.”

“I told the Turtle Queen I’d ask for permission.  Does she have permission to act?  She says this Other is spreading its influence.”

“If she cleans up and gives back what she took after.”

“Thanks!”  Lucy hung up.

She followed the buzzing sound, chasing the Other to where it had camped out, at the end of downtown.  The power lines from out of town joined with a series of- Lucy guessed they were transformers, all enclosed by wire fence.  It was hacking through, and it wasn’t alone.

Six figures were with it, all dressed in black robes with heavy hoods.

Practitioners?

Some weird technomancy alien pope and the cowled cultists that worked with it?

“Why is this Other so fucking extra?” Lucy muttered.  She could see the Turtle Queen striding toward it, coming from the flanks.  The robed figures turned toward her, while the Other carried on.  The downside to it being as big as it was, was the fence and the barbed wire were doing a good job of stalling it.  One of its impractical fancy halo decorations was caught on the wire, and it was having to tear its way free.

“Turtle Queen!” she shouted.  The diagram work on the brim of her hat glowed a brighter red.  “You’re clear if you give back what you take when we’re done!”

The advertisement to Lucy’s right moved- the restaurant was a Cardboard Pizza’s, some shitty chain that tried to deflect to ‘it’s the box that’s cardboard’, but the pizza was really not all that far off from being cardboard too.  Cheap, though.  A frequent go-to when teachers bought the class pizza to celebrate, spending their own money.  Kids were pretty indiscriminate.

The mascot with the cardboard box over his head, holes carved out for the eyes, now wore a gold-painted box, and wore a green shirt.  “Thank you.”

“Sure.  Good luck.”

Lucy checked the coast was mostly clear, knowing her hat was a kind of shelter against attention, and then bent down, creating the three foxes again.  It was a lot easier this time.

One for Fae, one for goblin, and one for herself, for War, for the Dog Tags.

This was a middle ground, Guilherme had said.  This wasn’t locking herself into a form, and restricting herself there.  Instead, it was her creating a technique that was hers.  Yes, it would limit her somewhat, making everything else just a tiny bit harder to do, but this would be something she could return to again and again, and she already knew she wanted to.

Once the foxes were created, she quickly wrote something on each one’s forehead.  The four short markings that formed a loose ‘x’ shape.  Each one glowed red as she finished.

The goblin fox ran off, barking, yowling, as soon as she was done with it.  The Fae fox sprinted off, silent.

She placed the chain with the weapon ring, dog tag and Yalda’s ring around the other one’s throat, kissed it over the spot she’d marked, then hugged it, the fur bristling around her fingers and against her cheek.

The Turtle Queen smacked one of the robed figures, and the man flickered out of existence.

Also technomancy, then, Lucy thought.  She buried her face in the fox’s ruff, then let it go.  It bolted, knocking her hat and mask ajar, and nobody was around and paying enough attention to see the hat or mask fall, or that Lucy wasn’t there anymore.

Three foxes, darting in.  One aggressive, one sly, one practical, with some emphasis on the practice part of practical.

Lucy swapped her focus between the three foxes.  The goblin fox bit at the ankle of one of the robed figures, and Lucy had a glimpse of the figure- humanoid, almost human, but with blank, smooth skin stretched over and concave within eye sockets, lipless, with the same sort of exposed teeth the big Other had.  The goblin fox bit deep into the robed figure’s neck, and it flickered out of existence, making teeth clack together.

They were armed with knives, but didn’t electrocute on touch like the big one did, thankfully.

The goblin fox darted past the Other and into the enclosure, sniffing to get a sense of what was safe before climbing to higher ground.

Three robed figures were facing the Turtle Queen, still.  One drew a hand back, knife at the ready, and teeth caught at his sleeve.

He turned, and came face to face with the Fae fox, who was perched on the side of the fence.  She tugged, pulling him back, then jumped onto his shoulder and chest, leaping off him and onto the next, biting its hood and pulling the hood down with her weight.

The big Other turned its focus toward her, and the Fae fox taunted it, baiting it back.  It lunged, dropping down onto all fours, then pounced, gouging road and leaving snow sizzling where the praying mantis limb touched.

The Turtle Queen had taken one of the alien cultists hostage, holding it like she would hold someone with a knife to their throat, but there was no knife.  As the big Other turned toward her, she pushed that cultist away, into two of the ones who remained.

It reared its head, flesh gold now, the black fibers of the robe pulling away, revealing green.  It attacked its two comrades, stabbing one, losing its knife, then sticking claw-tipped fingers digging into the blank eye sockets of another.

Then there were two green-robed cultists.  One bent down to help the stabbed one up, and there were three.

They attacked the big Other, who ignored them, striding back toward the gap.  It struck out at the fae fox, crouched, facing the opening in the fence, clearly ready to charge through.

Two foxes and three cultists weren’t enough to really dissuade it or change its course.

Chalk in its mouth, the fox with the dog tags quickly drew a line, saw the big Other’s configuration changing, midsection and legs turning around-

It pounced backward, spearing the Fae fox, then hurled the disintegrating body at the fox with the dog tags.

Before that fox could get up, it was speared as well.

The Other buzzed more violently, bringing itself to an upright position, then drew its various limbs together, head bowed.

Black eggs slithered out from the base of the robe, then popped.  The fibrous coverings unfolded into tattered robes, and the gray-skinned, eyeless cultists rose up to a standing position.  Six more.

The first ones weren’t even fully standing when they got attacked by the Turtle Queen’s group.

Until she had eight, with two more backing up.

The eight attacked the big Other, some got struck down, but others were trying to spread more influence, infecting it.  Losing that battle.  It was capable of pushing back.

It made it three steps, body twisted around partway, moving toward the gap in the fence, and then stopped short.

A signboard was up, painted with graffiti, sealing the gap, a crowned turtle against a black background.

It smashed the signboard, then reacted, jerking back.

The gold-wire fence was now electric, apparently.

But the big Other wasn’t especially bothered by the electricity, it could brush past and ignore the worst of it.  The wood was barely a barrier, and it was able to move through.

The goblin fox was still up there, perched at a high vantage point, and it had come undone, like a house in a western, just a wooden house-front with nothing behind it.  Except this one had Lucy behind it.

She pushed it down and away, and it exploded into a kind of dust and muck as it crashed onto the big Other’s head.

Goblin gum, to bind one claw to the electric fence.

A spell card, to turn snow to water, and then another to turn the water to ice again.  Freezing the foot of the big Other’s robes to the ground.

Its minions crawled onto its back, stabbing it and infecting it with green and gold where the knives dug in.  That infection still wasn’t really spreading, but counting coup here and bringing it low had to help, right?

The big Other flickered and disappeared.  Its minions didn’t last for long after it was gone.

Lucy could hear the buzzing.

She was halfway there when Verona showed up, Horseman following Verona, with Bangnut at one shoulder, and a toaster in one hand.

“Hey,” Lucy said.

“Sorry, was at my dad’s house.  Long way to come,” Verona replied.

“Got stuff?”

“Info and gear,” Verona said.

“Thorn in the Flesh?”  The gift from Gashwad.

Verona shook her head.  “Still inside the Family Man, keeping him weak.”

“Wish we could get more of those.”

“You remember the process for making them?” Verona asked.

Lucy shook her head.

“It’s grisly.  I don’t think we’re that evil yet.”

“Winter glamour?”

Verona pulled out a silver box, passing it to Lucy.  “You use it.  I’m going to have my hands full.”

Lucy nodded.

“Can you track it?” Verona asked.

“I can hear it.”

“Cool.  So what is it?”

“Technomancy.  Big alien priest thing that spawns cultists from eggs.  Sound familiar?”

“Not in the slightest.  Sounds almost like a movie monster?”

“Not any horror movies I’ve seen and I’ve seen all the good ones,” Lucy said.  “But I have one idea.”

She got her phone out.

It rang twice before he picked up.  “Hello?”

“Wallace!  Quick, going to run this by you, tell me if it sounds familiar.  Big guy, purple-black skin, face a bit like a hammerhead shark and a bicycle seat had a baby, but eyeless, lipless mouth, fangs, black robe, looks like an alien, cultists, similar deal, except gray.”

“Is this a game show?  Radio contest?”

“Wallace!” Lucy raised her voice.

“Father Kabek Gobar, from Void Opera, he was the focus of Black Cadenza DLC, and one possible villain faction in Void Opera, Act Two.”

“A video game?”

“Yeah.  The DLC came out last spring, Void Opera Act Two is out for Christmas.  Why are you asking this?”

“Okay, wait, sorry, I will call you back later, if I can, but for right now, quick answers, no questions, okay?  Sorry.  Very sorry.”

“It’s okay.  What’s up?”

“Do you know how to fight him?”

“Uhhh, complicated question.  The DLC is different from the game-”

“Wallace!”

“It’s different!” Wallace replied.  “DLC is in-person, on ship, and the game that just came out, I haven’t played it, I haven’t watched any videos, but it’s totally different, it’s fighting him as a force spread across multiple planets, with him as the final boss.  If you get him as a boss.”

“How do you fight him in-person?  What does he do?”

“Black electricity jabs, pounces, teleports.  He spawns Gobar Priests-”

“Yeah.  Saw all that.”

“-and when he does, he leaves behind black ooze.  He gets on your ship, slowly takes it over, quickly moving around.  Challenges every member of your crew, rotating randomly between them, if you’ve got a crew of players.  The ones he’s not fighting have to put out fires, clean up messes, fight off the waves.  AI crew doesn’t work that well against him.”

“Ooze?”

“Gobar Priest eggs burble up from each pool, so you have to keep an eye on them.  Pools last as long as he’s on your ship.”

“What else?”

“Uh, he hacks your systems.  Corrupts them.”

“I think I’ve seen him trying to do that.  Okay.  And?”

“There’s a phase two.”

“Explain that.”

“If you defeat him, he has a brief period of invincibility, he summons two zodiac adherents, basically giant demons, then he enters an enraged mode, black ooze erupts constantly, he gets an laser artillery cannon if he’s not forced out of a room he’s in fast enough, blows holes through your ship.  Oh, and he spawns eggs at a faster rate from all the ooze.  He’ll eat his priests, to recuperate, and if he eats enough he un-enrages, goes back to phase one, and you’re starting over from scratch.”

“I hate this,” Lucy said, to both Wallace and Verona.

“Got a flamethrower?” Wallace asked.  “Set every room he’s in on fire so the priests burn to death before they get to him.  Don’t forget to manage your fire suppression, though, or you’ll lose your ship.  I’ve done that a couple times.”

“Might have a kind-of flamethrower,” Lucy said, glancing at Horseman.

Horseman lifted a walkie-talkie to his ear and stepped away.

“Any special weaknesses, tricks, bugs to exploit?” Verona asked, pushing her head closer to Lucy’s, so they were sharing the phone.

“No, nothing much except for the flamethrower, and not that I know of.  Don’t let him put holes in the ship, or the Priests will be able to use them to shortcut back to him.  Plus, again, you’ll lose your ship.  You really need a well-equipped crew, where everyone can hold their own against him.  Military starting package is easiest.  It’s easier if you have a compact ship, single floor.”

“Okay.  Okay.  Thank you.  You’re awesome.”

“I’m so curious.”

And I have no idea how I’ll explain.  “Hanging up.  See you, boyfriend.”

“See you.”

“See you, boyfriend, gag,” Verona muttered.

Lucy elbowed her.

“Flamethower?” Verona asked.  “Spell cards?”

“Maybe.”

“I could call in Ribs,” Horseman said.

“I dunno.  I’m not sure how much attention fire would attract, or the damage it would do,” Lucy said.  “It’s not just the flamethrower that’s an issue, a lot of that advice- we don’t want open areas, because the Priests can get back to him sooner, we don’t want him to eat the priests in his enraged form-”

“I didn’t hear the conversation or see the last fight, this is making very little sense to me,” Horseman said.

“Sorry, I should’ve put it on speaker.  It’s a living video game creature.  Maybe summoned.”

“That doesn’t make much more sense to me.”

“Me either.  Turtle Queen?” Lucy asked.  She slapped her hand against a pink ad that was stapled to a phone pole.  The pink flecked off, leaving it black, with gold ink, and a green figure in the middle.  The figure moved.  “Every place he’s been, there might be black ooze.  can you double check?  And maybe get on top of that, if he’s using it to create minions?”

The woman in the picture nodded.

About six other pieces of paper that were stapled to that same wooden pole turned various Turtle Queen colors in rapid succession.  Lucy watched as the effect extended across the street, to a sign over a fast food place next to the motel, then back across the street to the music store with the old devices and gross headphones.

She selected Zed from her contact list.

“Zed!” she greeted him, as soon as he picked up.  She switched to speakerphone.  “You’re on speaker.  Verona’s here.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything-”

“Thinking about making lunch.  What’s going on?”

“Technomancy Other, like a video game ported to reality.”

“Badass.”

“It’s attacking our stuff and apparently might kill our Dog Tags.  Not so badass to me.  What is this, how do we stop it?”

“Uhhhh, geez.”

Lucy stopped in her tracks as she saw Father Gobar on an office building.

“Holy shit,” Verona said.  “Look at that.”

“I’m looking at it right now, so anything you can give me…” Lucy trailed off.

“There’s a bunch of things that could be.  Seems inefficient.”

“Inefficient how?” Verona asked, not taking her eyes off the Other.

“Seems like aesthetic over function.”

“It functions.  It’s strong.  Do you know Void Opera?  Father Gobar?” Lucy asked.

“Vaguely and no.  I like older games.  Uhhh.  Could be a summoning, using something existing as a blueprint.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you sure it’s technomancy?”

“I pried off a bit of it and stuck it to the road.  It looked like code and magical diagrams inside.  He’s a hacker, too, or something, corrupts systems, but only got so far.”

“Technomancy, then.  Okay.  How are you for getting into the Digital Aether?”

“I got and looked up the stuff to do that before I came,” Verona replied.

“That’s one option, get to the root of it.  But it’ll be stronger there.  Uh, shit, I skipped breakfast, haven’t had anything except coffee, my brain is fog.  Cut it off from whatever power source it has, maybe?”

“Okay.”

“Still got the big red button?”

“Yeah.  But every time we get an edge, it fritzes out, disappears, then appears somewhere a few blocks away.”

“If you can get really close to the root of it, you could use the big red button, try to fry it at the source.  Computer Bug?  The card you got when you confiscated items from Brie.  Centipede on the one side?”

“Yeah.  Got that, I think,” Lucy said.

Verona got to her bag, pulled her wallet out of the front part, and got the card out from the mix of bank, library, and health cards.

“You can find a system he’s connected to, maybe.  You said he corrupts systems?  Maybe swipe or insert the card into something he’s working on.  Or if you end up in the Digital Aether, it’ll be a lot more obvious where you need to stick the card.  It could be a small benefit, but it’ll help some.”

“Alright.  Thanks.  Enjoy your lunch.”

“I’m going to be sidetracked looking up what sorts of Others this could be.  Lunch later.  I’ll call if I find anything.”

“Will update later, with whatever we have.  Bye.”

She hung up.

Verona was using her Sight.  Lucy looked as well.

The stain was spreading.  And the stained stuff was liquefying, dripping from the roof, where the Other was, inside.

Kennet had a few tech businesses.  One was Avery’s dad’s.  Verona’s dad handled some server type stuff, and programming.  She was pretty sure this wasn’t either of those.  But it was one, from the looks of it.  She could see the Others inside.

“I’m going to see if I can cut it off,” Lucy said.  “You want to try setting up a way into the Digital Aether, Ronnie?”

“Okay.”

“Turtle Queen?” Lucy asked.  “You back?”

“I never left,” the Turtle Queen said.  She stood a few feet behind their little group.

“But- did you go handle the pools?  The priest things?”

“Yes.  I’m doing that now.”

“…Okay.”

“What do you need?”

“Do you think you could poison the priests?  So if we get to the point he’s eating them to try to heal, we turn them into something dangerous instead?”

“It’s possible.  Difficult.”

“Montague?” Lucy asked.  “What about you?”

A coiled tentacle wrapped around a scalded red spider limb stuck out of one of the slots.  The coil of tentacle around the spiked tip of the limb vaguely resembled a thumbs-up.

“Okay.  That sounds like a bit of a plan.  Three point attack?  Turtle Queen, Montague, I’ll try to infect the systems with the card.”

Verona handed the centipede card over.  “And if we have to, we go into his domain?”

Lucy nodded.

“I kinda want to visit the Digital Aether anyway, so like, I’m not hoping you lose or anything, but if you do, it’s very okay,” Verona told her.

Lucy frowned at her friend.

“What about me?” Horseman asked.

“Get Monty in there, since he might disrupt my glamour, then protect Verona?” Lucy suggested.

He nodded.

“Insulation against electric shocks, just to be safe?” she asked Verona.  “We don’t have a great rune for that, do we?”

“Light joined to fire?”

“Sure.”

Verona and Lucy worked together to get some runes onto the backs of Lucy’s hands and onto her forearms, then around her feet as well.  She unzipped her hoodie and pulled her collar down so Verona could do something over her heart.

“What do you think he’s even trying to accomplish?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s trying to build something,” the Turtle Queen said.

“Build?”

“A pocket domain, a realm.”

“A demiurgic space?” Verona asked.  “Did whoever created him want him to make this space?”

“A huge fan of Void Opera?” Lucy asked.

“I mean… impractical, massive investment to make a thing from a video game spring to life?  I don’t think the creator is not a fan.”

“Point.”

She looked around, then used some of the glamour Verona had given her in the silvery box to set off her ‘three foxes’ technique again, each carrying the runes on their foreheads that made them hard to notice, powered by the Hot Lead.  It singed, hot, times three.

If they screwed up here, she wasn’t sure how much power she’d have left, from the Hot Lead.

She went up the fire escape with her dog tag fox, up the fast food sign with the goblin fox, and up the side of the building with the fae fox.  All three converged on the roof, Lucy leaping her way free of the dog tag fox with a card in hand.  “Aren-”

Father Gobar dropped through the roof, into the black pool.  Into the building.

Lucy landed, mid-air leap aborted, and tripped a bit on the snowy rooftop.  “Fuck!”

Flanked by the goblin fox and Fae fox, Lucy went to the door at the roof of the office building, tried it, and found her way inside.  The emergency door alarm went off, and it didn’t stop when the door closed.

She pulled out a spell card, tapped the card to her earring, and then silenced it.

Bit of extra oomph, pushing through the system and into the other speakers that would be sending off the alarm.

Fixing her hat and mask into place, she jogged down the stairs.  Hearing someone approach, she hugged the wall in an unlit portion of the stairwell.  They peeked in and the lines of her hat glowed redder.

But they didn’t see her.

She jogged down, thumb pressed hard to the ‘silence’ rune, to make her running footsteps quiet, and reduce the strain on the connection block.

Music was playing from the computers, an orchestral alien language with whooshy space sounds and deep, echoing percussion.

Father Gobar was there, in the middle of the cubicle area, surrounded by computers, and by a dozen cultists.

This isn’t even the main problem.  We don’t know who created and sent this.

The employees didn’t see or notice Lucy, the Other, the cultists, or hear the music, going about their business.  Lucy paced, watching Father Gobar carefully as she went.

One cultist who wasn’t that far away broke into a run, coming for her, and got pounced on by a fox.

Lucy kept one card in hand, walking up to one ancient computer that was playing the music, to slide the card into a disc drive.  The music shorted out, and a red centipede sign appeared on the screen.

It appeared on other computers nearby as well.

We still have to deal with this jackass alien priest Other, but we also have to figure out who sent him in the first place.

The two foxes worked in concert, one savaging the first cultist to come running at Lucy, the other deftly slashing the throat of another in passing.  Lucy fought two more, weapon ring producing a blade longer than the knives they held.  The most dangerous thing about them was that they didn’t care about protecting themselves.  Halfway through fizzling out, one nearly stabbed her, reaching out with a distorted body.  It fell just short before disappearing from existence.

Lucy picked up speed.  The foxes played interference this time, the Fae fox feinting, making three cultists turn just long enough for Lucy to push herself a little faster, her weapon extending, to behead one and almost behead the other two.  Enough to kill them.

To her right, a heavyset man with glasses, a beard and no mustache was writing programming notes on a whiteboard, oblivious as the black splatter of technomantic alien ichor landed around him and fritzed out of existence a moment later.

Father Kabek Gobar descended into the black pit of ichor around him.  Eggs were bubbling up.

Lucy sent the foxes in after him, then followed after them a moment later.  She leaped tThrough the slick, crackling darkness, and down to the next floor down.  He was there, weapons ready, killing the one fox and working on the next.

Lucy landed on the goblin fox’s back, felt the buzz of electricity through its body, runes glowing hot at her legs, then jumped off, stumbling, but catching a table for balance on the way.

Employees were scrambling to get away, and Lucy wasn’t immediately sure why- until she smelled the burning plastic, and saw the red emergency lights.

He wasn’t invisible to the humans.

And at the other end of the office, with even more territory than those red emergency lights, was the Turtle Queen.  The light from monitors cast a gold shade on green painted walls.  People in black suits with green dress shirts gathered together.  The one at the front of the group had a gold tooth that glinted as he smiled, his eyes hidden by shadow.

And all around her, the screens were displaying the centipedes, red on a white background.  Bugs crawled out of the outlets and ventilation slots in the computers.

Someone hit the fire alarm, and people began to evacuate.  Only the ones captured by the Turtle Queen remained, unmoving.

Father Gobar flickered, teleporting away- but only halfway across the floor of the building.

Traffic issues?  Lucy thought.  She sprinted toward it.  She needed the foxes to clear the little guys out of the way- and there were only a couple, with most gathering beneath the dripping hole in the ceiling they’d all come through.

“Arena!” Lucy shouted.  She held out the card with the duelist mark on it.

The bubble extended out.  The goblin fox and Fae fox disintegrated as she was cut off from them.  Not too big a deal.

But the Arena worked to encapsulate Father Gobar and a portion of the floor.  His music grew louder, echoing within this space.

“Alright,” Lucy murmured.  “Now-”

He arched his back, brought the praying mantis limbs to his chest, and slashed it horizontally and vertically, before slumping forward.

Lucy took a step back, her back touching the arena’s barrier, paper clutched in one hand.  “Okay.  Do that, I guess.  Really don’t like being disconnected from everything?”

In a bleeding heap, surrounded by black ichor, he began to shudder.  Purple-black skin became blotchy, purples and blacks separating, purple becoming red, and then the black thinning out into veins.  His mouth yawned open, saliva and ichor stringing between fangs.

The buzz in the background became a roar.  The music kicked it up another notch, with heavy percussion, and angry singing, a woman’s voice singing in an alien language alongside the man.

“I want to punch whoever made you and sicced you on Kennet, because this is way over the top,” Lucy told him.

He screeched, lurching to his feet, torn robes now exposing a body with more reach, extended limbs.  The music pounded loud enough to rattle Lucy’s senses, and the ichor on the ground was boiling, spraying up in geysers that hit the arena walls and pooled at the back half.

Lucy exhaled.  She tilted her head a few times, working the muscles in her neck, until she found a good angle to let the sound past her.  She did something similar for the ichor, her sword becoming a fan that she could use to swat aside one clump that was coming right for her.

She wasn’t one hundred percent on this last lesson of Guilherme’s, and looked forward to figuring out the rest, but she was glad she was something like sixty percent there.

He came at her, fast.  She had to fall back on her training with Guilherme and Bubbleyum both.  Because he was big, he was fast, she was outclassed, but she was also fighting in a sea of trash- of ichor, of bits of broken computer, after one swing clipped a monitor.

Electricity buzzed through her and made protective runes glow hot on her arms as she connected here and there.  She aimed for joints, mostly in the legs, because they were easy to reach.

Six seconds of intensity that felt like a minute, every movement calculated and carefully chosen, the murk at the arena floor asking questions of her legs and footing in an entirely different subject than the scythe-like limbs were demanding answers to.

When the runes got too hot at her hands, arms, and even heart, she abandoned the weapon-ring created weapon, and pulled the silver box of glamour out of her sweatshirt pocket.

More darts, aiming at the Other’s feet again.  Pinning them and the practice that fed this Other in place, making it pull with legs that had been chopped at the knees- or whatever those joints were called, in those red-black chicken wing, cabled tendon grasshopper body parts that held him up.  Pulling cuts wider, stopping it short, forcing it to lose balance and pick itself up, buying her seconds at a time to breathe.

It stopped, hunched over, breathing hard.

Lucy controlled her own breathing, shifting over a few inches to one side, so she had two places to go that matched the natural length of her stride, instead of one spot that would mean stretching her leg uncomfortably far, and one that would require a step a fraction shorter than her usual.  One of those teeny tiny things Guilherme had spent hours instructing her in.

And, at the same time, she pulled out spell cards.  She had one hand gripping the duelist’s rune, and that was the rule for this sort of arena, so using the cards was tough, but she had teeth.  She pulled some free of the bundle, pinched them between two knuckles, then threw them.  The buzzing grew deafening, the music dimming in the cacophony of fire, ice, and thunderous booms.

Don’t give them time to rest.

Father Kabek Gobar reached into the murk of ichor and started to pull out something big and technological.

“You’re supposed to do that after a while, aren’t you?  Not after like, twenty or thirty seconds.”  Lucy hurled more spell cards at him.  He dropped the weapon.  “Cheat.”

She reached for the glamour box again, prying it open in her pocket, getting a pinch, and creating a dart.  She pinned the butt of the gun to the floor.

He grabbed the gun with its weird handle, that was meant to be held by praying mantis limbs, and tore it free, the butt end shattering, black ichor flowing out of some dark battery at the end.  Holding it awkwardly, he aimed it-

She pelted him more.

And he fired.  Not at her, but the arena’s barrier.

“Father, second point of order?  If you’re going to bitch out on me, I get-”

The barrier collapsed.

Lucy’s hand was freed by the disintegration of the paper.  She hiked up her pants leg, kicked her foot through the ichor that had pooled at the base of the arena, and got moisture on the ‘dropped watch’.  The time slowing device she kept buckled to her ankle.

Time slowed, she had the edge thanks to the fact he was wimping out on the duel, and that let her decide her prize.

And she decided to make some more decisive cuts, while his back was turned.  Opening up everything that looked like a tendon in his lower body.

The office interior was a red-green horrorscape, Montague’s influence on roughly a third, the Turtle Queen on another third.  Bugs crawled through the murk, and the cultists had been partially taken over by the Turtle Queen again.

Father Gobar used his forelimbs to drag himself closer to some.  He didn’t care about allegiance- he only wanted to eat.

Lucy started to go after him, but nearly tripped.  The arena was down, and the stuff sealing him away from his help wasn’t in effect.  His priests were bubbling forth in their eggs, all over the place.

He devoured two in short order- one of the Turtle Queen’s, one that wasn’t.

And he immediately threw up.  A fountain of Montague-themed vomit.

Frenzied now, desperate, weapon abandoned, he ate again.  Two more of the Turtle Queen’s-

Another that was laced with Montague.  They’d cooperated.

Another bout of vomit, his body rejecting what he’d eaten and then some.

The fire alarm rang, the red lights giving the entire scene a macabre glint.  Father Kabek Gobar went after one of the Turtle Queen’s captured corporate workers, instead.

And his reaching limb was slapped away by the man with the gold tooth.  It broke at the halfway point, attached only by chitin.

“Stand down,” Lucy told him.  “Surrender.  I can secure you with a binding, then we can figure out a next step.”

But he couldn’t seem to help himself.  He ate another priest, then vomited.  Ate another, so feebly the green-clad priest almost fought him off… then vomited.  Collapsed.

“What a fucking mess,” Lucy murmured.  She got her phone out, dialing Verona.

“What happened?” Verona asked.

“Think we got him.  If you have the technomancy reference stuff on your phone, you want to look up how to bind the remains?  Maybe we can pull him apart, see if this code points anywhere.”

“Damn.  I had the portal to the Digital Aether all ready and everything.”

“Sorry.  We-”

Lucy’s arm jerked.

A black tendril had snaked up from the ichor.  Her arm buzzed with the electric shock, rune glowing through her sleeves.

“Well fuck that,” Lucy muttered.

He was shifting, as he lay on the ground, ichor bubbling, but each bubble forming a wormlike tendril.

The tendril at her arm reached her phone, and everything Father Gobar about the scene flickered out of existence.

“Fuck!” Lucy swore.  Her phone was an untainted connection, free of Turtle Queen, centipede card, and Montague.  “Fuck!  Let these people go, Monty, T.Q., he slipped away.  Might be near Verona.”

Montague’s effect began to recede, as did the green-gold lighting and darnkess of the Turtle Queen.  Returning the office gradually to its regular colors and lighting, brightly illuminated by the winter landscape outside.  The damage was very minor- one collapsed desk in a cubicle, one damaged monitor, and some overturned chairs and scattered paperwork.  The arena practice had the benefit of creating a little pocket world where any fire, water and damage would be contained to the pocket, gone when the arena disappeared.

“Montague!” she called out.  She wanted to be gone before too many of the Turtle Queen’s people turned back to regular people and started draining her Hot Lead powered connection block again.

A personal radio on one desk buzzed.  “…second round of the- bzz-  Kennet- playoffs…”

Snatching up the radio, justifying it with the logic that anyone using a radio with no headphones in an environment like this was a dick, Lucy left the building, taking the stairs two at a time, hand at her hat brim to pull the front down-

The connection blocker was ninety percent spent.

And outside, past the crowd.

The Turtle Queen had released her share of the office building, but she’d extended influence all down the street.  Tourists and visitors were dressed in green, gold, and black, ski goggles had a golden tint, advertisements had taken on a particular quality.

And Verona.  Her sweater was green and gold, her duffel coat black, and her eyes glowed gold with the Sight.  Horseman stood by, dog tags gold at his chest, jacket green, similar deal.

“What the everloving fuck?” Lucy asked.  “Turtle Queen, you took over Verona?”

“I had permission to take what I need,” the Turtle Queen said.

“Not Verona.”

“You weren’t specific.  I’ll give her back after we’re done.”

“I need her.  Come on.  Seriously.  Be a team player.”

The woman that looked at Lucy looked like she had very little idea of what that meant.

But Verona turned her head to look at Lucy, and her Sight was purple.

“What?” Verona asked.

“You just went from being a cat person to a massive fan of turtles and back again.”

“Wait, what?  Really?”

“The portal?”

“I was Turtle Queened?”

“Verona.  He’s out there, he’s hobbled, but we really need to get to him before he can do anything.  We will work this out later.  Ground rules that should apply to every situation, barring explicit and specific permission.”  Lucy gave the Turtle Queen her full focus as she said that last bit.

“I can beat him if you let me.”

“I’d rather we beat him, all together.  Sets a dangerous pecedent.  We did pretty good back there.  And you with Montague.”

“A rare case of a unanimous union of the- kkkzzt- and- bkkzt- weather in Kennet.”

Lucy glanced at the Turtle Queen to see what she thought of that, but she was already gone.

“Portal’s in the alley,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded.

It was drawn on a wall.  It looked eclectic, very Da Vinci, with math and phrases in code, a spindle shape contained in geometric shapes, and some city magic above and below it.

Lucy put her thumb in one box near the center.  Text appeared above it.  Thumbprint verification…

More lines, math, and code exploded out around the diagram as Verona pressed her thumb to another spot.

The spot depressed inward, the section of concrete wall brightened, then became a flickering, glowing screen, and Lucy pushed her way through.

Into the Digital Aether.

It was dark, the sky lit up by flashes of light that moved in strobing straight lines, instead of the inconsistent patterns of lightning, like a succession of ten, or three, or fifty flashes traveling along set paths.  A wilderness of wires, cabling, and connections.  The paths where power lines stretched weren’t one line, but something alien, or a tumor that had grown to extend from one end of the street to the other, made up of black, bulging wires growing out of other wires, overlapping, and exploding out into other nodes that strung out to other places.

The darkness was broken up by figures.  They were distorted too, but there was a logic to the distortion.  For every identity, there was a growth, and the growths clustered like trees, with some here or there, independent.  Heads, pale, framed by panels, primarily white, eyes blank, mouths sometimes ajar, though a few were puckered into kisses, or smiles.  Some had three faces on one shape, some were only heads, others had bodies, but in most cases, those bodies were feeble compared to the heads.  Lucy could see some inside buildings, and a few of those were heavily bound by the bulging black wires.

Here, the snow and cold were like dark gray spots on the black, barely there, barely affecting anything.  Instead, it was information, storms of square and rectangular panels flying by, clustered by topic.  Around some of the pale, glowing heads and faces, information streamed, and the faces basked in it, turning toward it like plants to sunlight.

Lucy shivered.

Lucy and Verona were both framed by their own panels, though they wore them like clothing more than they were them.

The radio in Lucy’s hand jittered, and Lucy dropped it, alarmed, as spider legs poked their way free.

Montague, free of his housing, more Montague than she’d seen him in reality, dragged himself toward one of the power poles, reached up, and infected one of the wires, turning it red, and making foul crimson fluids leak out of seams and gaps.

“Here we are…” he whispered.  His voice echoed through the dark space.  Transparent red panels appeared around the spot he’d infected.

“You good?” Verona asked, bright.

“As good as I ever am.  Sorry to scare you, Lucy.”

“I wouldn’t say scared,” Lucy told him.  “But if you happened to want to do tentacles and reaching limbs, oozing blood, and maybe not so much the spider legs… just saying.”

“If only I had that choice.  Beg pardon.  Watch your six.”

Lucy turned.  She jumped a little.  Horseman had come through, and he had so little presence here that he almost disappeared into the dark.  Like the snow.

“It’s really cool getting a chance to talk again, Monty.  We should have another dream talk soon.”

“I would be delighted.  Shall I host or will you?”

“Maybe me,” Verona said.  She met Lucy’s eyes for a fraction longer than necessary.

What was that about?  Strategy?

“Sounds good,” Lucy said.  “Let’s try to find this Father Kabek Gobar before he heals or whatever.  If he eats, he can go back a phase.”

“Damn.  Can you still hear the Father Goober thing?”

Lucy nodded.

“Lead the way then.”

“So what happened?” Verona asked.  “You sounded like you had him.”

“And Wallace said he had a second phase.  He didn’t say anything about a third.”

“Huh.”

“And he got to my phone while my guard was down… found an escape route through that connection.”

“One thing I’ve been thinking?” Verona asked.

“Yeah?”

“Remember the bogeyman Avery fought?  Back at the Blue Heron?  It was technomancy, something with a bag over its head, created its own pocket world…”

“And was video gamey,” Lucy concluded  “Which Avery was able to handle because it was a bit Path-like.”

“Same deal?  Someone from the Blue Heron?” Verona asked.  “There weren’t any straight-up Technomancers who weren’t Zed or Raymond, I don’t think it was them…”

“But most students had an opportunity to learn some technomancy,” Lucy noted.  “So that leaves things pretty wide open.”

“Okay, right, yes, but we can narrow it down some, right?  Because yes, students had the chance to learn, but from our books, we know there’s a big difference between knowing the general stuff about a practice, and having access to that practice’s limited resources.  Blue Heron library?  Lots of books about, say, goblins, but the book of different goblins you can summon?  Held by the Tedd family, mostly.”

“And the technomancy Others are a limited resource for the technomancers, and-”

“And friends of the technomancers,” Verona finished.

Lucy paused to do her best to navigate this place.  There were a bunch of spectral heads drinking in data out front of one place.  A lineup at the bakery.  So much of this place was unlit, with only power lines here and there, kept dim by their insulation, it was possible to walk up to a wall and not realize it was a wall until it was in arm’s reach.  But there were analogues to reality, vague, shifting around in a way that made Lucy think of their visits to the spirit world.

Like it was more about intuition, and how far apart things felt than how far apart things actually were, and that feeling could change, depending on focus.

Maybe that was the Aether part of the Digital Aether.

Friends of a technomancer?

“Freeman?” Lucy asked.  “The guy with the Phreak tattoo?”

“Maybe.”

“Just being a dick, making us regret letting him go, using Others to invade us and set up a home base on our doorsteps, or giving Others to people to use to pester us and set up that demiurgic realm?” Lucy asked.

“Iunno!” Verona replied, shrugging.  “I really don’t.  Just spitballing.”

“Priority one, we deal with this thing.  Priority two… deal with it in a way that lets us try to use it to track it back to its source.”

“Return to sender?” Verona asked.

“Would be nice.”

“What can I do?” Horseman asked.

“I-” Lucy struggled.  “I really don’t know.  This is a different, information-based battlefield.  There are nodes, places this Other is connecting to, latching on to.  Maybe go after those.  But stay safe, first and foremost.”

“We’ve got Montague,” Verona said.

“And the Turtle Queen,” Lucy observed.  She pointed.

In places, the wires were insulated in a dark green.

And if she followed that- she picked up speed, jogging over a sea of overlapping and tangled wires.

The dark green became green, with gold connectors.

There was another ‘forest’ of connections.  A tangle, pale faces gathered together into a large space that probably wasn’t all that large in reality, framing the walls and surrounding the floor, with only a few clear spots.  They were connected together by a tangle of black wires, but each drank in different streams of data.  A large panel at the back flickered and glowed, speakers pumping out that orchestral game music.  The Other was crouched at the back, glowing in a way he hadn’t in reality, surrounded by creeping television static that was creeping out, drawing out shapes.  Maybe a starship.

But at the edges, some panels around the faces had tinted green and gold.  And the Turtle Queen’s silhouette was there, across the street, dripping with a series of panels that broke apart as they hit ground, altering colors and spreading her influence.

It looked like he was caught up in a tug of war against the Turtle Queen.

Lucy pulled back on Verona’s sleeve, retreating, and bumped into Horseman in the process.

“Game plan?” Verona asked.

“Destroy the nodes?” Horseman asked.  “We’ve got help.”

He moved his jacket flap.  Bangnut peered out.

“That’s something.  The only thing better than a destroyed node?  A polluted, tainted one he has to work to deal with.”

Bangnut crawled out of the jacket flap and onto Horseman’s shoulder.

Verona got her bag out, and opened it, pulling out a triple-bagged item.  The grungy keyboard.

“Want to get your hands dirty, Horseman?” Lucy asked.

“It’s what I do.”

“I mean real dirty.  Summons gremlins,” Lucy said.

Verona tore the plastic away, then held the keyboard up, one end exposed.  It looked like it was sitting under a blacklight, and the blacklight was bringing all kinds of things up to the surface, in plain view.

“Sometimes unfriendly ones, but usually it’s enough to mess with anyone relying on machinery or tech,” Lucy explained.

Horseman nodded.  He took the keyboard.

Lucy went on, trying to think of how to approach this.  “He’s in a third phase, we don’t know what kinds of abilities he has, so let’s be careful.  I’ve got the centipede card.  I can get it to some of the points this Other is anchoring to as it builds its world.  I don’t think it hurts, it’s one more thing for this bastard to deal with, we can overwhelm it, I think.  Just have to be extra careful about what it can do, offensively.”

“And we’ve got the red button, in case it gets too ahead of us,” Verona said.  “I think this is a coffee shop?  Bunch of tourists warming up and using the free internet?”

Lucy took it in, mentally placed it in Kennet, then nodded.  “You hold back, keep that ready, be ready to bail us out if we get in a bind?”

Verona nodded.

Lucy looked at Horseman.  “Be safe, okay?  And Montague?”

But Horseman was already moving in.  Lucy hurried to keep pace with him.

“I’m with you, Lucy,” Montague’s voice echoed, distorted.  “Turtle Queen, shall we dance again?  Each from our corners?”

“I can take it all myself.”

“As natural and intuitive as that may seem, you must also give it all up yourself, after.  Which isn’t so natural and intuitive, is it?”

“Bangnut,” Horseman said.  He had the keyboard in one hand.

Bangnut ran down Horseman’s other arm, then became a bulky little gun.

Okay, thought we’d let the gremlin loose, but that works too.

Father Gobar rose unsteadily to his feet, grasping parts of its surroundings to help lift itself up on mangled legs.

Which unfortunately put it in the exact wrong position to be shot.  Horseman shot Bangnut, and frayed wires extended out, trailing out behind the needles.  The kinks in the wires pulled the projectiles in certain directions, and they embedded between the Other’s legs.  Horseman fired about four more times, extending the number of wires.

The Other lifted its broken laser cannon to its shoulder, wrapping three sets of praying mantis limbs around certain points-

But not fast enough.  Horseman pulled the other trigger, sending a pulse of electricity down the wires.  Sparks showered from the frayed parts, illuminating the room briefly- as did the contained explosion, as the charge from the gun ripped the needles apart.

Lucy ducked, one arm raised to shield her face and the side of her head from the spray of matter.

“Our gremlin friend is stronger here,” Horseman remarked.

“How do you know that?  How many times have you practiced using Bangnut as a gun!?” Lucy asked.  She started to rise to her feet again, ready to join the fray, but Father Gobar lunged forward, Horseman parried the praying mantis limb with the keyboard and Lucy didn’t want to get hit by that spray either.

“Careful, they aren’t always on our side!”

“Hey!” Horseman bellowed, almost interrupting Lucy.

Gremlins stopped in their tracks.  Some were going to the glowing heads and avatars of people who were currently tapped into the web, or television, or whatever information was streaming into the Digital Aether.

“Him!” Horseman ordered.

Most listened.  The one who didn’t remained frozen, inching toward a glowing head, until Horseman’s staredown won out.

The lesser gremlins were more or less immune to electrocution.  They found wounded points in the Other, and some crawled in.  Some used tools.

Horseman, wielding the half-broken keyboard, ducked beneath a swipe, moved back, and then slammed the jagged edge into one of the spots that the Other was tapping into.  Cutting off that flow.  The static energy receded.

Lucy had ducked down, and as the seconds passed, she couldn’t find a good moment to leap forward and re-engage… and there wasn’t much need to.

Horseman was on another level.  Fast.  Strong.  Aware.  The Other was wounded, and that probably helped, but he knew how to fight, and this situation, where one good hit from one of that Other’s scythe-limbs could end the man?  Really made that clear.

Montague and Turtle Queen encroached.  Horseman picked up the dropped and damaged laser cannon, then whistled.  “Gremlins!”

They leaped onto the cannon, and explored it for long seconds.  The Other slowly found its bearings again, wounded and frustrated, having lost a lot of the ground it had gained.

The gremlins each moved to one of the slash-shaped slots in the cannon that were meant for scythe limbs, fiddling.

The gun lit up.

“Don’t kill it,” Lucy warned.

“I know.”

He fired the cannon, one blinding burst, and melted away the Other’s already heavily damaged legs, leaving scarred stumps behind.  Then, as it propped itself up on forelimbs, one still broken from its encounter with the Turtle Queen, he blasted again, destroying those.  Leaving it more or less limbless.

“Can’t return that to sender, don’t think,” Verona remarked, from behind Lucy.

“No.  But… maybe we can pry in some.  See where that code is pointing.”

Verona nodded.

“We good?” Horseman asked.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Lucy said.  She almost stepped out of the space between tables and glowing heads that she’d hunkered down in and then never left, but Verona was coming, so she stepped back that way again.

The laser cannon was disintegrating, but that didn’t stop it from being a playground for the gremlins, who toyed with the pieces in the time before they went away.

“Sorry,” Lucy told Horseman.

“Why?”

“I should’ve trusted you.  That you can handle what you say you can handle.”

“It’s fine.  It’s a lesson a lot of us had to learn with you two.  You three, really.  You’re kids, it’s easy to think you can’t handle stuff.  Then you show you can.  Same deal.”

“Kinda, yeah.”

My bad, Lucy thought.  I just don’t want to lose another Dog Tag.  Not this soon.

Felt bad.  That she wanted to recognize her own instincts and feelings, but also that she didn’t want to be unfair, or underestimate the likes of Horseman.  If the Dog Tags respected him, there was probably a reason.

Verona drew a circle around the limbless Other, then sat down beside it.  She reached into her pocket, pulled out a glowing panel, and then moved it into place.  After getting a few more panels together, all near the boundary of the circle, it looked like she was able to read them for some information.

And you, Lucy thought.  Ronnie.  You pick this stuff up so fast.

What had Verona been hinting at earlier?  That gaze, held a moment too long.  About hosting Montague in the dream?

Probably they couldn’t do anything about Charles in the dream, now.  Montague wouldn’t change that.  Maybe Verona had a strategy in mind for that.

Again, Lucy was left wondering what the fuck she was meant to do, here.  What roles were their roles?

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the centipede card.  She extended it out toward Verona.  “I’ll pass this back to you, since you’ve been holding onto it.”

“Sure,” Verona said, absently.

Lucy didn’t immediately let go of the card, though, as Verona pulled on it.  Verona glanced up, and Lucy met her eyes, in that same way that Verona had met hers.  Gaze held a little more meaningfully, a little longer than before.

She let Verona take the card.  “I’ve got to get used to letting others take point on some of this stuff.  You’re taking over my usual role.”

Verona nodded.  Again, a glance, not as meaningful, but Lucy was more comfortable reading intent in there.

“Yep,” Verona said, as she looked back down at the glowing panels of information.  Something that could be used and manipulated here like water could back on regular old Earth.

“I kind of wanted to handle this sort of thing.  Free you to do other stuff.”

“Makes sense,” Verona said, nodding again.  “But don’t feel beholden to that.”

“I don’t know what to do with myself, otherwise.”

Verona glanced at her again.  “Yeah.  Sorry.  I get that.”

“Want me to take point on Musser?” Lucy asked.  “Not that I have any great ideas, but…”

Verona nodded.  “Good plan for now.”

Lucy watched as Verona worked, wondering how closely Charles was watching them.  Was he paying enough attention to track the conversation that was happening beyond the obvious?  To read the signals, the half-second-too-long moments of eye contact, that were her and Verona trying to portion out their responsibilities, Verona taking on Lucy’s job of figuring out a replacement Carmine?

Verona held up the centipede card.  “Useful?”

“Some.  Everything together.”

“Can’t underestimate the little guys,” Verona said, making eye contact again, card held up.  “They can be pretty important.”

Giving Lucy only a vague hint about the greater plan.  But it was something.  She looked at the gremlins, then at the background, where a vaguely human Montague silhouette was talking to the Turtle Queen, then at Horseman.

“Yeah.”

She sat down, and she took notes while Verona worked.  Writing down bits of code, any locations, anything that looked like it might matter or be something she could research in reality.  Everywhere that Kennet popped up, she wrote things down.

The Other lay there, unconscious.

“Sorry,” Lucy told it.  “But we really need to figure this out.”

“Coordinates,” Horseman said, pointing.

“The numbers separated by commas.  Coordinates.  The Dog Tag to ask would be Fubar, but he’s not around.  We could try radioing him.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s possible we could trace this,” Verona said.  “It’s like connections, just… code.  Needs translation.  I think we can dig deep enough here to get to the source.”

“Anything out of town?”

Verona shook her head.

“So we know it’s local?”

“Sure as shit seems like it.  And if we press a bit further-”

All the code went dark.  The panels grayed out and dimmed.

The Other began to rapidly disintegrate, dissolving.  Its meager remaining influence became nothing at all.

“That wasn’t me,” Verona said.  “That signal came from the source.”

“The creator realized it wasn’t putting up a fight anymore and sent the self-destruct?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.

“Can we trace what we’ve got?” Lucy asked.

“There,” Verona said, pointing.

“We’re sure it’s there?” Horseman asked.

“Pretty sure.”

Lucy kept her hands in her pockets, breath fogging up in the winter air.  They stood on the icy shore, looking at the river, which had frozen over at the surface, but had water running beneath the ice.

“I’m going to ask Tashlit if she’s up for trying to dig something up,” Verona said.  “Bit of swimming in ice water.”

“Whatever’s on there is probably long gone,” Lucy said.

“Sure.  But still.”

Lucy nodded.  “Can’t hurt.”

Whoever had sent the Other after them had cleaned up after.  Fubar’s read of the coordinates had given them this spot on the map.  And it seemed every other associated trail they tried to follow ended up here.  Deepest part of the river, underwater.  The devices had taken a swim.

And that wiped connections clear.

“What next?” Verona asked, looking at Lucy.

“Next… one of us reports to Louise, Toadswallow, and Miss…”

“I can handle that.  Going that direction,” Horseman said.

“…and maybe we ask some questions about that technomancer, Freeman.  Poke around.”

Verona nodded, biting her lip, looking at the gap in the ice where the laptop or phone might have gone through.

“I’ll ask Zed,” Lucy said.  “See if he knows anything about the code, if there’s anything we could use to identify the sender.”

“Good plan.  I hope this is a one-off.”

“If they have to replace whatever they drenched here, might cost them time.  But I don’t think someone willing to send in an Other like that would necessarily stop at the one,” Lucy noted.

“Frig.”

Lucy nodded.

“I’ll see about a bit of augury,” Verona said.  “Running water hurts augury too, so I probably can’t conjure up a clear picture this close to the river, but maybe I can find something.”

“Or keep an eye on this spot?  If they dispose of something here once…”

Verona nodded.

“Good plan.  Okay.  Let’s touch base later.  And keep an eye out for more trouble.”

They split up, everyone in their own directions.  Lucy headed back toward downtown, stopped at the sketchy old game store, got lunch, cleaned up the marker on her hands and arms, and then headed back toward home, calling Zed first.

Zed’s only input was that the type of code didn’t seem like any practitioner he knew.  But that any code could work so long as it could be used to create the diagrams, do math, and hold information.  This code was pretty simple stuff, run of the mill, used to make interfaces.

Which left things pretty open ended.  Lucy had snippets of code she’d written down, and she took pictures of the physical notes, sending them to Verona, Matthew, and Louise.

There were only so many possibilities, right?  The big, obvious one was that maybe their practitioner was self-taught, and had created an Other on their own.  Okay.  Then the code wouldn’t tell them much.

It was the only thread they could chase down, though.  So Verona would check with her dad.  If the code was similar to what her dad used in his server infrastructure stuff, then maybe the culprit worked at her dad’s company.  Her dad did work with making interfaces for government and healthcare.

Connor worked in hospital tech, and he’d look it over too, even though it didn’t sound similar.

It was a shot in the dark, one she wasn’t sure would turn something up.

She texted Wallace as she crossed the bridge.  Want to hang out?

The reply was an immediate yes.

She picked up the pace, a bit more chipper.  Twice, she got her phone out, to peer at her own face, making sure she didn’t have blood in a nostril or anything else that might be suspicious.

She slowed as her earring picked up Wallace’s mom.

“Savannah is a lovely girl.  Why not give her a chance?  She’s enchanted by you.”

“I don’t think she is.”

“Her mother told me, Savannah has had a crush on you for years.  She’s a beautiful girl, a ray of sunshine, she’s athletic, she plays soccer, swims, she plays the flute, and you know girls who play the flute are good kissers.”

“Mom, gross.”

“I’m only saying.  Look, you are so handsome, and I know for a fact Savannah thinks so too.  You’d be such a good pair.  Don’t be in such a rush to take yourself off the market.”

Lucy paused at the door, waiting and listening for a response from Wallace.

Savannah Pehrson.  She’d been in the other class in their grade last year, but when the school had lost students in the wake of summer, she’d joined their class.  She’d been on Avery’s soccer team.  Pretty.

Wallace was rummaging, getting stuff on, but he hadn’t said no to his mom.

“I can’t think of anything more degrading than raising another man’s kids.”

“You can do better, man.”

“Come on.  Don’t say all that.”

“She’s using you.”

“She earns more than I do.  How is she using me?”

“You’re buying a house together with that woman.  Don’t entangle yourself to that degree with someone who could be manipulating you.”

Lucy, hair done up in buns, hands clutching the front of her nice overalls, watched as Booker came down the hall toward her, a concerned look on his face.  Probably because of the look on her face, Lucy realized.

“You could make such beautiful children with someone else,” Paul’s mother told him.

Booker reached Lucy.  “Hey, baby sis.  What’s up?”

The conversation that was happening in the other room stopped as fast as it had started.

Lucy was left reeling, head full of thoughts bigger than she was really able or ready to grapple with.  Thoughts that came from other conversations like this one.  She hadn’t sought out those conversations, but she’d found her way to this one.  Maybe because she hoped to make more sense of the other stuff she’d heard.  She wished Booker had heard, because then he could explain.

They don’t look like they’re yours.

Maybe because she wanted Paul to say something.

But he didn’t.

Paul stepped out into the hallway, and for a moment, before he smiled at them and tried to hide it, he’d looked guilty.

Lucy knocked, Wallace opened the door, and for a moment, Wallace looked like someone who’d done something wrong.

She dropped her eyes.  “Hey.”

“Hey, uh,” he hesitated.  It looked like he was struggling to figure out what to say.  He smiled.  “I’m so curious about your call earlier.  About the game.”

She smiled a bit, met his eyes, and then Lucy’s eyes felt moist.  “Ah yeah.  I…”

She trailed off.

“You okay?”

She looked past Wallace to his mom, at the end of the hallway, tidying up bills on the hallway table.  Her mom met Lucy’s eyes.

“I heard that,” Lucy told her, eyes wet, but thankfully not leaking actual tears.  Yet, anyway.  She looked between Wallace and his mom.  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I have good hearing.  I heard a lot of that.”

Neither of them seemed to know what to say.

“That’s crummy,” Lucy said, working at keeping her voice level.  “Did I do something wrong?”

“I’m sure you’re a very nice girl,” Mrs. Davis told her.

“But you want to replace me with some other girl?”

Wallace’s mom replied, “I know Savannah’s mother, I know Savannah, they’re lovely, there’s no need to make more of it than it is.  I felt like I should bring it up, that’s all.”

“I’ve been around a few months, you could’ve gotten to know me too,” Lucy said.

It sounded petulant.

“I’m sure you’re right.”

The reply made her feel petulant.

Lucy looked aside, then looked at Wallace.  She laid the back of her hand against his chest.  She wanted to say something- she wanted him to say something, but he wasn’t, and she couldn’t control that- but she wanted to say something, and she couldn’t think of a good way to put the words in order.  A way to be graceful, cancel plans, something.

Instead, she just said, “Bye.”

“Wait,” he said.

She waited.

“I don’t-” he looked back at his mom.  “Would you give us a minute?”

Wallace’s mom didn’t give them a minute, hovering there at the end of the hall.

“It’s a sore spot for me,” Lucy told him.  “For reasons I’ve explained to you.  So I’m just gonna- I’ll leave you alone.  Bye.”

“Lucy, wait-”

“Bye,” she said, again, ducking her head down as she headed down the stairs.  She didn’t want to stick around and end up crying or being a mess, but a lot of old feelings were dredging themselves up, and she hated the idea it’d be some victory for Wallace’s mom.

She jogged across the snow of the lawn and then went in the direction of her house.

Was that bye for good?  Was she being unfair to Wallace, expecting him to say more, faster?  Was she being unfair to herself, even allowing the possibility that she could be fucking disrespected like that, behind her back, not even given a fair shake, and that she should allow it?  Allow Wallace to say nothing?

She had no idea but either way, it felt miserable.  A big part of herself felt like she was a little kid again, wearing clothes with hearts on them, no walls built up.  Expecting something more from someone she really, really liked, and being let down instead.

“Lucy!”

She stopped in her tracks, but she didn’t turn around.

Wallace followed her, clumping along, and circled around her to stand in front of her, no jacket on, wearing boots that weren’t laced up, snow in the gaps between the boot’s tongue and his shin.  He jammed his hands into his armpits.  “Hey.”

“I like you a lot,” he said.  “I don’t like Savannah.”

Lucy looked aside.

“I know you said before, you don’t want me to balls it up, and I sure ballsed it up once already.  I don’t want to do it again.  I like you, I don’t care what my mom says, I want to date you, I don’t want you to leave like this, I don’t want you unhappy, I don’t want to cancel today’s plans.”

Lucy nodded.

“She’s a liar with her pants on fire, you know,” Wallace said.  “She didn’t bring it up the once, she keeps bringing it up.  I got used to tuning it out.  And then you were there, and going from tuning it out to you being there it’s-”

He gestured wildly.

Lucy caught his hand and held it between hers.  Cold.  “Be careful, right?  You said your circulation in your hands isn’t great, since the surgery.”

Wallace nodded hurriedly.

“Come over?  Before you freeze?”

“Yeah.”

She led him by the hands.  Her house wasn’t far- only a block away.  They got inside, Wallace kicked off his snow-filled, partially laced boots, and they went into the living room, where she turned on the fireplace and gave him all the throw blankets, before wedging her feet between him, the blankets, and the cushions.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Nah,” she said, quiet.  “I don’t want you to feel like crap.  I didn’t want this to be a test or anything, but if it was, you’d- you passed.  Thanks for coming after me.  Because my stepdad, he didn’t.”

Wallace nodded.  He tucked her feet in some with the blanket, which made her smile a bit.

Lucy reversed position, pulling her feet around to where she’d been, and lay so her head was against his side.  It took some doing to not crush her ponytail.  She sighed.  “How are you?”

“I’m very curious still about that phone call earlier.”

“Ahh.”  She got up, reached for her bag, then pulled out the plastic bag she’d put inside, passing it to Wallace.  “Father Grobar had a phase three.”

“Wait, wait, you were playing act two?”

“I wasn’t playing that, no.  A special event, I guess, in Kennet for a limited time only.  With a prize that you can have, as the person who gave me vital, if slightly inaccurate information.”

He opened the bag.  Inside was the game, act two.

“No way.”

“Yes way,” she said.  She’d bought it after hitting the dead end at the river.  “Call it an early Christmas present.  I’ll get you something wrapped for real, later.  Just pay me back by letting me watch over your shoulder sometime.  Save at each one, maybe.  I’m curious.”

“I- absolutely.  For sure.  Can’t save like that in this game, but yeah.  I’ll figure it out.”

Research in case this asshole practitioner tries something similar, Lucy thought.

“I think my mom was going to get me this for Christmas.”

“Your mom can suck a cartload of dicks,” Lucy said.  “If she wants to coordinate present-giving, she can try talking to her son’s girlfriend.”

“Sure.  If she complains, I’ll let her know that.”

Still with her bag in arm’s reach, Lucy dug out her notebook, turned the pages, and got to the ones with the code.  “I know you took the computer elective.  Did you learn this type of code in school?”

“Why?”

“Trying to solve a mystery.”

“Is this related to the arcade that was a thing?  A new version of that?”

“I wouldn’t rule anything out at this stage.”

“We didn’t learn this code.”

“Darn.  Okay.  Maybe it was one of the local businesses.  Verona’s asking her dad, and we’re asking Avery’s dad, but it’s a long shot.  Thought I’d ask.”

“But-” Wallace started.

Lucy, settled in against his side again, propped herself up a bit.

Wallace tilted his head, looking at the page.  “-It looks like the website design stuff the kids at St. Victor’s did.”

There we go.

Next Chapter