Author: Wildbow

In Absentia – 21.8 | Pale

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One of the worst things about living like this, Lucy felt, was how much it chipped away at life, around the edges.  She’d woken up, and after lying on the pull-out couch with the other two, being very careful with getting her notebooks out and reading, she’d gotten up, really wanting to sneak in a shower before everyone was up.

The dogs had asked to go out and unsure if she should, if there were any rules or precautions, and not really having any actual dog experience, she’d suited up, leashed them, and taken them into the back yard one by one.

Strange kitchen, but she didn’t want to take food she shouldn’t.  Bathroom… no shower on the ground floor and as much as she really wanted to sort herself out to feel more human, she didn’t want to wake Zed and Brie, especially when Zed had been up late with his project.

So she’d used the little bathroom downstairs, and she’d spent a while by the sink and mirror, door open and ajar so she wasn’t keeping the others from the bathroom- no, that wasn’t wholly honest.  She’d hear approaching footsteps.  She kind of wanted to invite either of the others to come talk if they happened to open their eyes and look over.

She’d first redone her bandage, at the cut on her arm, from the St. Victor’s kids.  Then she unwound the t-shirt from her hair and now, very unsatisfied with it, badly wishing she had more stuff for it than the things Liberty had let her take, she pleated it into two truncated braids.  A bit of a self-soothing thing.

When there wasn’t any more fussing she could do, she stepped out, feeling a bit lost.  She went over to the pull-out couch to get her notebooks and take them to the dining room table, then heard Verona groan.

Verona was at the very edge of the bed, forced over because Avery had a very splayed-out sleeping style.  Verona had one knee and one hand sticking out, Trooper was snuffling around the side of the bed, investigating, putting his face close to hers.  Verona turned over, her back to the dog, and simultaneously had Avery’s outstretched arm in the way of her face, and got a cold nose to the small of her back.  She tried to pull the covers over, but Avery wasn’t especially cooperative.

Verona moaned inarticulately, flopping like a fish on dry land, eyes screwed shut.

Lucy approached it like a puzzle.  She went for the opossum-mode Snowdrop, who was splayed out like Avery was, a tiny opossum occupying the middle of the spot Lucy had been sleeping in earlier.  With pats, she made Snowdrop turn over, then, heavy patting from the top of the head to the end of the snout, and pats to the lower back, she coaxed Snowdrop to curl up into more of a ball.

A dozing Avery turned over onto her side, faintly mimicking Snowdrop.  Verona scooted and turned back over, reclaiming the space, her back to Avery’s now, hand gripping a corner of the blanket near her face, as if to guard against Trooper.

More Snowdrop manipulation- pats, encouraging more curling.  Avery complied, just a little.

Lucy took her hands away, adjusting the covers.  Let Snowdrop get a little colder-

Snowdrop’s eyes opened, offended.

Avery reached over, to pull Snowdrop close, and Lucy moved Snowdrop out of the way of Avery’s hand.  The hand, even with Avery apparently sleeping, moved unerringly toward the opossum.

Snowdrop mock-bit Lucy, making her jump.  The look in her eyes made it clear she wanted to be fully warm and snuggly again.

Then Avery moved over, curling up around a curled up Snowdrop.

Verona reclaimed more bed.

And, because Avery was holding the pillow under her head and holding Snowdrop, Lucy was free to adjust the covers, tucking Snowdrop in better, making sure Avery wasn’t uncovered, then giving Verona the blankets she’d wanted to bundle up, before patting down around the edges to keep the heat from escaping.

Verona pulled the blankets up around her head, until the hair at the top of her head was the only thing sticking out and lying across her pillow.

Avery had her weird sleep positions which Lucy figured Snowdrop only tolerated because the familiar bond made things mesh better, but Verona could sometimes sleep in ways that seemed to give her no oxygen at all.

“Thanks,” Verona mumbled, voice muffled by the blanket.

Lucy settled in at the table, and Trooper settled in in front of her, lying down on top of her toes.

“They don’t let you upstairs, huh?  Glad for the company?”

Bear was watching out for Snowdrop.  Lucy called him over, and gave him head scratches, and then he settled down, partially on top of Trooper, which put more pressure on Lucy’s toes.

She focused on her notebooks, taking notes, recording the interaction with the Alabaster.

The wrist of her writing hand faintly hurt, but she’d expected it to bother her more.  From the way it had felt last night, she sort of expected her arm to be a bruise from fingertip to elbow.

Lucy and the dogs all turned their heads as someone came down the stairs.  Zed.

The dogs picked themselves up, nails clicking on the floor as they ran up to greet their owner.

He stopped to check on the living room, then came to the kitchen, where he had a view of Lucy through the counter-window.  He whispered, “You’re up.  Didn’t sleep?”

“Slept a bit.”

“Did you go outside?”

She nodded.

“Thought I heard.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  Checking on your Faerie guy?”

“No.  I took Trooper and Bear out.  I hope that’s okay.  They were asking.”

“Yeah,” Zed whispered back.  “That’s great.  They bark if they need out, which is… a lot.  They drink water like they’re trying to drown themselves, then pee to match.  Love ’em but they drive me nuts.”

Lucy smiled.

“My only company for some pretty lonely stretches.”

She nodded.  “Makes me want a dog.  Verona would be annoyed, I bet.”

Zed smiled at her.  “New hairstyle?”

“Just while we’re in guerilla mode, I guess.  It seemed like a choice between either this or I look like a dried out clown.  Liberty gave me a few odds and ends but…”

“If you need to hit the store, I can take you.  We’re probably low on food.  Brie’s catching up on school stuff and I’ve had this one project.”

“You were up until, what, one?”

“Five.”

“Five?” she asked, trying not to be loud in her incredulousness.  She looked at the clock.  It was ten past seven.  “Zed…”

“I’m pretty wiped, but mentally I’m…” he considered for a moment.  “Feels good.  Tackling that.”

“You went upstairs around one.”

“My main computer setup’s up there.  I had to transfer everything, then I went up, quiet as I could.”

“This isn’t the main one?” Lucy asked, indicating the four monitors, two computer towers, and pile of nondescript tech stuff in the corner.

Zed chuckled.  “Nah.  That’s all the, dunno, old systems, stuff that won’t worry the neighbors if they see it through the windows or if Brie’s old school friends stop in.  If I’m not doing any big technomancy stuff, I like to be down here.  Signals to Brie I’m available for a chat.  Me in my office?  No interruptions unless they’re brought up beforehand.”

“Huh.”

“Works for us, I think.

“Black Box?”

“Yeah.  I know it’s this thing Ray did to start as a showcase of how it could be done, just really cobbled together.  I think he hoped he could pawn it off on an apprentice, or that someone would pick up the concept and do it better.  And he didn’t have me up to speed yet, Judah left… a fix has been a long time coming.  Sucks for him that, you know, he can bind some super scary Technomancy Other and someone’s going to undercut it or ruin the mood by reminding him of this side project he never got around to polishing.  No Blue Heron for the next while, good time to do it.”

“Cool stuff.”

“Faster, a bit prettier.  A little more intuitive, I think.”

“Get any feedback?” Lucy asked.

“It’s only been a couple hours.  Initial feedback from the others who were helping.  Anyway, what do you need?”

“I was hoping to call home, without getting attacking Others summoned through the phone or whatever.”

“Ah,” Zed replied.  “I was thinking in terms of breakfast, other stuff.  I can help with that for sure, but give me a few minutes to wake up?”

“You barely fell asleep to start with, it sounds like.”

“Yeah.  You got attacked?”

“We think it was a Deus Nex Machina who summoned technomancy-related urban legends and stuff.  Probably made by Phreak- Freeman.  Technomancy guy who worked for Musser.”

“Know of him.”

“Figured.”

“Pretty hefty.  Not his usual scope.”

“He’s working for the Carmine now.  Teaching apprentices.  Sicced a video game Other on us in Kennet, we think- or they made it and accidentally sicced it on us.”

“What game?”

“Opera of the Void, uh, my boyfriend- my ex boyfriend- guy I know, played it.  Gave it to him for Christmas, even.”

“The new version?”

“Yeah.”

Zed nodded.  He ran his fingers through his hair, walked around the dining room table, and sat in his computer chair in the corner, spinning a quarter-circle to face Lucy.  “What triggered their arrival?”

“We arrived at the Garricks, went by the front desk, talked to Adorea Garrick, there.  Jude’s cousin.  Jude’s the non-top Garrick guy Avery contacts most.  Otherwise it’s Cliff, Jude’s Dad, or Peter Garrick, head guy.”

“Right.”

“They sent us through to the back area.  We put our stuff down, Avery changed out her SIM card, immediately tried calling home, and it didn’t go through.  Got a breathing noise on the phone, then the guy, who we think was a Deus Nex Machina, manifested in the walls, ceiling, floor.  Broke tech, used broken tech to open the way for effects.  Flood of dead animals, dog in computer screens that emerges if you look at it too long, girl with dismembered hands gripping her… started phasing us into another realm.”

“Phasing you or phasing the area?”

“Area.”

“Okay.  Very different.  The main Nex Machina?  Old man?”

“Belly, scraggly hair and beard.”

“Yeah,” Zed said.  “Okay.  Tenant 2603 is a Deus Nex Machina.  Thought to be Aware, he was an old man who started learning computers in the second world war, codebreaking stuff, and stayed on top of tech into the eighties and nineties.  Came across some stuff that probably pushed him into Awareness or basic practice.  Skip forward a bit, he’s a tenant in a tall apartment building, got access to the building-provided network.  Starts doing weird stuff.”

“Lewd, spying stuff or-?”

“Practice stuff, or Others, or something.  Hard to say.  Reading messages, for sure.  Apartment he’s in stops existing in tangible reality, while exploding into the internet.  Twenty-six-oh-three becomes a semi-common username commenting all over the place, especially on sketchy sites and message boards, anything to do with Others and practice.  Then the next phase kicked off not long after.  You could surmise that other higher powers tried to push him into a role like how we’ve got Alabaster and stuff.  Custodian, manager, keeper of balance, with incentives to do all that.”

“Huh.  So, sorry, this is interesting, and it’s good to know how stuff happens, but is this relevant to what we’re doing?”

“You’re going after the Aurum, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I think there’s some overlap.”

Lucy nodded.  “Should the others be up?”

Zed shrugged.

They looked over at the bed, where Verona and Avery appeared to be fast asleep.

“Keep it short?” Lucy asked.

“He got elevated to something more.  Might’ve been there was so much unclaimed real estate online he didn’t have much competition, could’ve been he got made into something like the Aurum.  Either way, he grew without much resistance.  The things that could stop him didn’t care about tech.  He took over the building, sucked everyone in the building into that other realm, sucked others in.  Then he moved onto the neighborhood and that’s when the powers in charge of the area started noticing.”

“Huh.  I’m thinking less of the Aurum and more of the Carmine.  How far does he have to push before people start noticing?  He’s kind of said he expected to be stopped before now.  He was almost… disappointed?”

“Disappointed?”

“That nobody’s tried yet.”

“Is that a personality thing or a greater plan thing?” Zed asked.

Lucy shrugged.

“Huh.”

“What’d people do?”

“Technomancy wasn’t that big back then.  Or- it was being done, but it wasn’t respected, maybe better to say.  That was around the time, maybe one of the big incidents, when councils started to think, you know, might be a good idea to have a technomancer on call, if you don’t have one on the council.  Some practitioners moved partially into technomancy stuff just to be able to cover that niche.  There’s one in Toronto, for example.  Or was.”

Lucy nodded.

“They rounded up some big names.”

“Ray Sunshine?” Lucy asked.

“No.  He- I think he was seen as too goofy, too casual about it all.  They wanted people who’d take it seriously.  Lots of that is tied into technomancer culture.  Or politics?  I’m tired, I’m- I think I’m going to prioritize coffee here.  Want anything?”

“Cereal?”

A phone rang.

A half-second later, a silent alarm seemed to go off.  Every screen on the ground floor and even surfaces that weren’t screens, like the microwave and oven glass, all flashed a deep purple, flooding the entire ground floor in the lighting.

“Uhh.”

Zed held up a finger, looking for and finding his phone beside the computer.  He paused as he looked at the call display, then hit the button to answer.  The flashing stopped.

Lucy frowned.  Something to do with the Black Box?

Why the alarm?

Verona and Avery had woken up.  Avery sat upright, back near the back of the couch, while Verona knelt near the foot of the bed, blankets pooled around her.

“Zed Sadler, technomancer, apprentice to Raymond Sunshine speaking.”

“You know who I am.  You should know why I’m calling.”

Slight French accent.

“Strong suspicion, sir.”

“They’re there.  The three.”

“Yes sir.”

“Their phones are off, or I would have called them directly.  Put me on with the one in charge.”

“Nobody in charge, in that sense, but Lucy’s right here,” Zed said, glancing at her.  “Can I take a moment, get them set?  For your benefit and theirs.”

“Keep it brief.”

Zed hit a button on the phone.  “Paris.”

“Lord of Paris, practitioner, Other?  City spirit of Paris?  Or-”

“Doesn’t matter, same thing.  He’s probably the smartest, most powerful, most connected practitioner you’re ever going to talk to.”

Zed slid the phone toward her.

She looked at him, bewildered.  That’s the warning?  That’s the fucking debrief?

She ran hands from forehead and temples to scalp, to back of her head, then stabbed a finger down, for mute.  Imagine if I hit the end call button by accident.

She leaned over the phone.  “Lucy Ellingson, first witch of Kennet.  May I put you on speaker?  My partners are-”

She picked up the phone, putting it to her ear.  “Okay.”

“You slew the Alabaster?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it, and fast.  The fastest way for this to become a problem for both of us is to waste my time here.”

“We held an audit over her failings to do her duties, maintain her role.  She failed, she destroyed herself.”

“Why the audit and removal?”

“We need a functional Alabaster, she was supporting the Carmine, who’s working against the region, its people, the Seal.”

“And the replacement?  A city spirit.”

“Regional spirit, but in that category of spirits, yes.”

“Why that?”

“It seemed like a good way to make everyone happy with a representative was to make it a representative of everyone.”  It was weird to be volunteering details, but Zed seemed so serious about this… okay.

“You’re aware she was Old?”

“Yes sir.”

“You did this unilaterally?”

“I- sorry?”

“…By yourselves?”

“Yes.  If we consulted the people who’d be most affected, the rogue Carmine at least would’ve known.  She’d have known.”

“I may be in touch with further questions.  Obtain a working phone.”

“Working on it.  We got attacked through the phones recently.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Sir?”

“What is it?”

Again, volunteering details, but if this call was meant to cow them or let them know bigger things were at stake…

“We’re planning on addressing all of the Judges of the region.  If there’s a reason we shouldn’t…?”

“The turnover for those seats is different.  No matter.”

“If it’s about her being Old, we’re also possibly interacting with and helping against the Beorgmann.”

There was silence on the other end.

“He’s a child-taking monstrous Other who-”

“I know what it is.”

“Okay.  Sir,” she replied, adding that last bit belatedly.

She couldn’t see this Paris person’s face, so she looked at Zed, for some clue she was doing this right or wrong.

“We cannot condone what you are doing.”

Lucy startled at that.

She looked at her friends.

“Neither can we censure it.  We will not get involved in regional affairs.”

Oh.  Being hands-off.

“Yes, sir.”

“As I said, I may be in touch with follow-up questions.  If there’s nothing else?”

“No, sir.”

The call ended almost as soon as she said ‘no’.

She put the phone down and slid it across the table to put it in Zed’s reach.

Zed put his hand on the phone, then slid it to a point in front of him.  His fingers drummed the space around it.

“That’s a thing,” Lucy said.

Verona was getting up, bundled up in blanket, while Avery carried Snowdrop over, sitting cross-legged in a chair at the end of the table opposite Zed.

“I guess I would interpret that as… Old beings like that who are cooperative are major repositories of knowledge,” Zed told them.  “And they’re tied into a lot of subtle things.  Maybe Fae plots, maybe things bound long ago, forgotten by the rest of us.”

“There wasn’t any book or anything saying not to.  The Alabaster didn’t mention any of that.”

“No.  And if you got in trouble with international forces or whatever, I’d hope that worked as a defense.  But…”

“Are we in trouble?” Lucy asked.

“I didn’t get that vibe but it’s not like I know the man.  I think, best way to put it, forces like London proper and Paris, um, some of the big families elsewhere, they’re like Lords- they are Lords, but on a scale that’s different.  A Lord is expected to track most of their territory: who comes, who goes, disputes.”

“But international,” Avery said.  “Global.”

“I think it’s the same as if, I dunno, Thunder Bay’s Lord wanted to know more about a mid-tier goblin murdering a Fae Lord in her area.  She’s not going to punish the goblin, necessarily, but if people come asking questions, she looks really bad and incompetent if she can’t answer.”

“It’s… kind of reassuring?  Or ironic?  I don’t know which,” Lucy suggested, wincing as she said it.  “One of the things we called the Alabaster out for was not checking on or backing up other forces.  And now she dies and a major Practitioner or whatever checks in?”

“Kind of annoying it didn’t happen with the Carmine,” Avery said.  She was being careful to keep her arm between Bear and Snowdrop, in case he did anything or got too close.  “Like, it had to be us?  And if we hadn’t been involved, what would’ve happened?”

“A less dramatic taking of the throne?” Verona suggested, shrugging one shoulder.  “Then doing a lot in secret before ramping up?”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “Charles doesn’t seem like the ‘in secret’ type.  The show and the blatant-ness of it feels like part of the point.”

“Those Others in your town sure threw you into the deep end, huh?” Zed asked.  He sighed.  “I’m getting coffee.  Lucy wanted cereal, I’ll show you where that is.  But since you’re all up, if you want, I can do pancakes or waffles.  Easier to feed everyone at once instead of each of you alone.”

“You’re awesome, Zed,” Avery said.

“Is that a yes?”

Yes.  Avery nodded, as did Lucy.

“Got any cool technomancy waffle makers?” Verona asked.

“Knowing how your modem bleeds all over, and the computers had flesh and stuff jammed in them, you really want to eat food from a technomancy waffle maker?”

“In my defense,” Verona said, sitting up and pressing both hands over her heart, “I partook of some weird-ass stuff in the nightmare dinner party with Montague.”

“I’m not sure that’s a defense,” Lucy told her.

“And you puked and woke yourself up,” Avery said.

“But I had the grit.  I will try stuff.  I get points for that.”

“Do you though?” Lucy pressed the line of doubt.

“Need one extra set of hands,” Zed said.  “So I can make my coffee.”

Avery jumped right up to be that second set, passing a sleeping Snowdrop to Lucy.

“We do have some technomancy.”

Verona perked up.

“I installed another outlet for this one… I think it’s in the front hall, in the go bag.  Ave?”

Avery went over.

“Same bag as the power glove and laptop.  It’s a box.  So that’s coffee, food, I’ll look into your phone situation as soon as I’m more awake, though that phone call helped.”

“Is the coast clear?” Brie asked.  She’d come downstairs, and was looking between Avery and Zed.

“Yeah.”

“Code purple?  I wasn’t looking until the final flash.”

“Yeah,” Zed said.

She leaned into Zed and gave him a peck on the lips.

“Can you cover coffee and waffles?  They’re anxious about being able to call home,” Zed said.  “Gotta figure out the phone situation.”

Brie nodded.  “For sure.”

Zed went to sit down at the table.  Lucy passed over her phone.

Avery brought the machine over to Brie, who seemed to know how to use it.  It looked like a computer had been turned inside out and wrapped around a cube, less than a foot on each side.  Brie plugged three different power plugs into three different outlets, moved the faucet for the sink all the way around until it would be pouring onto the counter, and opened a drawer.  Water gushed from the faucet into the drawer in the side of the box.

It didn’t overflow, even when it obviously reached capacity.

“So there’s different alerts?” Verona asked.

“Purple for important, do-not-ignore calls, meetings that must not be interrupted,” Brie said.

“Because royalty?” Lucy guessed.

“Yep.  We also have code red, danger, code black for serious injury or risk of death.”

“Help vs. get help,” Zed said.

“Code blue, that’s the code for weird stuff.  Reality stops making sense, start seeing things, you code it.  Code green, that means go, run…  Blueberries?”

“Is that a code?” Verona asked.

“For your waffles.”

“Please,” Lucy said.

“Are they sour?” Verona asked.  “Some blueberries are.  Or tart.”

“I think they’re regular.”

“Plain, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

“Yellow yellow off?” Brie asked.

Zed craned his head around, looked around the kitchen, and his eyes flickered as he used his Sight.  “Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Zed was booting up his computer.  “I was telling Lucy about the Other that came after you when you made a phone call.  It’s known, it’s strong, and the cost to summon it rises every time someone does.  Freeman spent a lot to secure that.  I have to guess it’s still active, and he might have other things.”

“I feel bad, visiting the Garricks and immediately dropping that mess on their laps,” Avery said.

“The way technomancy Others tend to work… Technomancy’s usually classified as a realms practice, like studies of the Abyss, Paths, Ruins, whatever.  That’s because distance takes on different meaning when you’re talking about wires and signals traveling at the speed of light.  It becomes about territory, all around the world, and the connections that tie them together.”

He got up, and placed down a salt shaker.

“Imagine that’s a cell tower.”

Butter dish.

“Server farm.”

Power brick with a cord attached.

“Power plant.”

Chewed up dog toy.

“Failed business with a lot of money and resources put into it like that alternative currency that never took off.  So that’s one aspect of it, right?  And each of these things, they might mean slightly different things to different Others.  An electricity elemental with a tie to technomancy?  Needs power.”

Verona stuck an arm out of the blanket and tapped near the cord.

“But that’s only part of the puzzle.  Technomancy?  It’s new.  Not always commonly accepted or understood by ambient spirits, or by the powers that be.  So over here we have Lucy, let’s pretend she’s a Lord.”

“Prosperity for all,” Lucy said.

“And your arm?” he asked, gesturing.

“Other arm?” she suggested.  “This one got cut.”

“Sure.  Just scoot a bit…”

He had her sweep her arm across the table.  Only over some objects.  “Only has so much reach.  And in her territory, there’s only a certain amount of acceptance and understanding of tech.  Sometimes that means an Other has free rein and can get up to a lot of crap.”

“Like the old man in the apartment building.  Nothing stopped him.”

“Tenant 2603.  Yeah.  And sometimes it means a power will just block what they don’t understand.  It’s a rare power that’s really on top of stuff.”

“I do okay,” Lucy said.  “For understanding tech.”

“So… centralized vs. decentralized server infrastructure?” Zed asked.

“I meant, more, uh, apps, and maybe some video games Wallace talked about.”

“Don’t gatekeep,” Brie said.

“I’m not trying to.  I’m… saying tech gatekeeps itself,” Zed protested.  “Convoluted terms and niche areas even I don’t get.”

“My dad works with server setups and stuff, talks about it all the time,” Verona said.  “I try not to absorb any of it, so I bet I know less than Lucy.”

“So the server farm in Lucy’s reach isn’t always going to be a good choice for certain Others.  But the same setup in Judge Verona’s reach?  Yeah.  Certain technomancy will or won’t work, depending.  Older, retro stuff is more consistent.  Which makes the Digital Aether a patchwork of territories where different Others exist on different levels and comfort zones, which we term channels, and again, distance doesn’t matter as much.  Usually.”

Zed put a fork on the table, then slid it between two points.

“So our hypothetical electricity elemental with some technomancy aspects can jump between these two points in his ideal channel,” Zed explained.

“You can have physical technomancy Others,” Verona said.  “Less… jumpy?  Right?”

“Yeah.  Some are plodding on foot, but if they meet the right conditions, they can ride the lightning and zip over somewhere else.  But they might have a preferred channel they like to operate in.  They might like to go between here and there, but over there, the Lord might be more restrictive with letting anything happen, after a Bugge incident, for example.  So they just end up hanging out here, where there’s a cluster of workable things they need, local power isn’t interfering with them.”

Avery, stirring more mix, said, “Like ghouls needing food, and running into a lot of trouble with local powers clamping down on them.”

“Sure, absolutely.  I mean, you can extrapolate all this out to other Others, but especially with technomancy and urban legends, you can run into situations where they move so fast between spots they can seem to exist in multiple places at once.  The nightmare scenario is a dangerous technomancy Other hits a critical mass where they exist at full power in too many places at once, and reality starts to break down.”

“Is that where the Tenant guy pulled the apartment building out of reality and into… his channel?” Lucy asked.

Zed smiled.  “Exactly.  Exactly, yeah.  We use the terminology of zones and channels and other stuff because we’re playing a game that’s unfair.  You can’t outrun an Other that may be able to move from one key tactical point to another like they’re flicking a light switch.  You have to anticipate, you have to plan ahead, cut them off.”

“Which is your plan here, with the Tenant?” Lucy asked.

“I’m going over the 101 while thinking about it,” Zed replied.  “We call the conditions, requirements, the list of ideal, preferred, and no-go channels of a technomancy Other, and their behaviors with those channels their  protocols.  The Tenant of 2603 is well known, protocol-wise, but strong.  Chances are good he’s stationed across the cell network, looking for incoming calls.  He’s versatile, he may have minions which he can put on channels he himself is less comfortable in… tricky.”

The waffle maker hissed as the batter was poured in.

“You were thinking of going around the cell network?” Verona asked.  “Channel switch?”

“Yeah.  You’ve read up on stuff?”

“A bit.”

“So the question, the riddle, is how do we cut him off, trick him, overpower him, or otherwise deal with the Tenant?” Zed mused aloud.  “He’s one big guard dog.”

“With lots of little guard dogs,” Avery said.

People saying ‘dogs’ so much was making Trooper and Bear perk up, tails wagging.

“Oh, that’s cool!” Avery exclaimed.

Lucy sat up in her seat to see past the little counter-window that partially separated kitchen from dining room.  The metal box was steaming.  Avery pulled out waffles.

“Plug it into three systems, it randomly copies the function of the other ones,” Zed said.  “In this case, the ‘systems’ are the breakers and operating devices… waffle maker, coffee maker, and…?”

“Clock.”

“Does multiply and combine drawbacks, though.”

“So if I used it with my bloody modem-”

“You’ll get more useless blood.  Lots more.  Plus whatever the other two devices are.  And it does admittedly take nice, working items and create drawbacks in them.  Like that clock could potentially stop being accurate with the time.  Or start bleeding.  Or doing obscene things.”

“We have extra stuff,” Brie said, brightly.  “Combining Zed’s stuff with mine.  So we’re using it more for boring things.  Especially when we have company.”

Brie brought the first plates through, with some sliced fruit and waffles.  Avery came with more.

“Work it out?” Brie asked, hugging Zed from behind as he moved his chair to the head of the table.

“Thinking on it.  It’s annoying it’s Freeman.”

She loosened her hug, leaning over Zed’s head, and put fingers to his chin to raise his face so she could kiss him, her face upside-down to his.

Then she didn’t let go of his face.

“What’s up?” Zed asked.

She was silent.

“Not that I’m complaining.  I like what I see,” Zed said, looking up at her face.

She raised her eyebrows.

“If there’s a signal I’m supposed to have gotten, or if you’re mad I asked you to make breakfast while I brainstormed uselessly…”

“No.  Zed,” she said, in a bemused, slightly frustrated tone.

“I’m tired, I was up until five.”

“I know you were.  Take a second.”

She leaned forward, past Zed, and took a fork, holding it up, her chest pressing into the back of his neck.

“Fork,” Zed said.  “That was our lightning elemental.”

“Your whatever,” she said.

She leaned away from Zed, and with arched eyebrows, pressed the fork down over her heart.

“Ohhh,” Zed replied.

“You know how to lure him in?”

“Calling.”

“And what better way to cut him off or weaken him than by trapping him?” Brie asked, as she went to get more waffles.  “I’ve been learning practice for it.  I’m equipped, I’ve already got a good sized Hallow inside me.”

“He’s pretty intense,” Zed said.

“So was the Hungry Choir,” Brie told him.  “Is this a situation where I’m hosting him or where I’m taking the Harbinger route?”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable doing this.”

“I ate an eleven year old girl alive,” Brie told Zed.  “That was pretty uncomfortable, but I thought it was for something.  I got full-body tattoos to seal the Choir in there.  I thought there was a reason for it.  For all of that.  To stop others from getting hurt.  They took that away from me.”

“They did,” Lucy said, quiet.

“I fought my way through the Choir.  With help.  But also by hurting people in a way that meant they didn’t get their victories.  I have to live with that.”

“We stopped it after,” Avery said.  “We found what we needed, we stopped it.”

“It still… I hurt people.  They didn’t get missing eyes and fingers and other body parts back.  They’re Aware, they’re scared, they’re frustrated.  I see them online.”

“Brie’s been looking into magical healing.  More of the sort of stuff Durocher teaches,” Zed said.

“I was going to be the last one hurt by that.  That’s what I told myself.  That the cycle stopped there, at least.  They took that away from me,” Brie said.

There wasn’t any heat in her words, or in her expression, exactly, but there was a look in her eyes that Lucy felt, deep down.

“This screws with them?” Brie asked.

Lucy nodded.  “A bit.”

“They invested a lot into it,” Verona said.

“I’ll take it,” Brie said.  “Is this Host or Harbinger?”

“If we had Durocher on call like we did at the Blue Heron?  I’d say you could host most things.  But here?  Harbinger.  Constant leakage and overflow which we’ll do our best to equip you to manage.”

“Okay.  I’ve got a tiny bit of experience from my just-in-case tutorials with Durocher.  Let’s give it a try.”

“We’ll need to go somewhere with some clearance, away from Innocent eyes,” Zed said.

“Okay.  After breakfast, then?” Brie replied.  When everyone nodded, she turned to Zed again, adding, “Maybe you catch a nap while the girls are going through the shower?  An extra hour?”

Zed snorted lightly.  “I don’t nap well.  I’ll manage with caffeine, I think.”

“I’ll get you more coffee.  Whipped cream, anyone?  While I’m up?”

Lucy plastered up a connection blocker.  The paper stuck to the concrete like glue.

The construction of the parking garage had paused for the winter, and a lot of the equipment and materials had been carted away, with locked fences around some of the bulk stuff.  There were no windows, and cold air blew through the gaps.  Some snow had managed to get in too, and formed tiny snowbanks in parking spaces.

Zed grunted as he placed a weight on the floor.

Cold, slightly damp concrete didn’t lend itself to stuff being screwed in or taped on.  Zed had anticipated this, though, and had brought a set of weights in the back of the car.

There were outlets at some of the light panels, and Verona and Zed were threading extension cords out from outlets toward the center of the space.  The round weights that were meant to go on a bar or dumbell were placed on the ground, and used so the cords could turn corners, with gently curved right angles, at roughly the same curvature.  They were doing some connection stuff, so the curved lines were fine.

Wires going over and under one another were balanced, and with a whole slew of extension cords, all feeding into something that looked like an electric chair, they made a diagram on the concrete of the parking garage, in an open space where there weren’t any painted lines that could disrupt things.

Zed clipped a clear cover over one of his station wagon’s headlights.  “The other part of this, I was telling Lucy before you guys were up.  There are parallels to draw here… the Aurum.  You’re after him, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  She was helping to draw marks on Brie’s skin, who was sitting in the car, where it was a little warmer.

Zed clipped on the other cover.  “He is, in a way, both the person sitting in the chair with reach over an area, and the entity that moves very similarly to our hypothetical forking electricity elemental.  He defines his own zone, and he has his own preferences inside the zone.  The Alabaster makes a good contrast because technically, she’s the same.  But when you dig into it, part of the area she has Judgeship over is Nature, open space, and the places you go to in order to get away from it all.”

“And the Aurum is about the places you get away from,” Lucy said.  “His portfolio is the urban, tech, innovation, roads and factories, the human churn, fortune in the luck sense, fortune in the cash sense.”

“His weakness,” Verona said, “any Aurum’s weakness, is their inability to keep up.  It’s inevitable that society outpaces them.  Whatever foundation they’re rooted in, whoever they were, it anchors them some.  Past a point, it gets harder and harder for them to follow what’s happening.  Can’t go fast enough, but another Other can?  Get replaced.”

“High turnover,” Lucy said.

“If I share the plan, is there a risk that Brie’s thing goes bad, Tenant 2603 reads her mind, and gets too many details?” Verona asked.

“Shouldn’t be.  He’s not that kind of Other, that’d be good at that,” Zed said.  “Isn’t it better to focus on this?”

“It’s semi-related.”

“Alright, then.  Sure.”

“Okay.  The plan is similar but different.  We do a bit of what we did to Charles, we lock this guy down some.  Then we set up the stage for the contest.  A bit of city magic in there, some stalling tactics… but the idea is we hamstring him, lay it out there.  That he either stops backing Charles, or we act.  He gets an out, he gets a chance to make his case with us, maybe he was scared, maybe he was actually playing games with Charles all the while.”

“Aurum, conceptually, is most likely to be for a revolution like Charles is doing,” Lucy noted.

Verona nodded.  “And we have to plan this as if he won’t go, like, oh shit, you’re right, I’ve been an asshole.  He says he won’t play ball?  We let the region know a few things.  Starting with the fact he’s hamstrung, not in the ideal position for an Aurum wanting to compete for his position.”

Lucy nodded.  They’d talked over general plans some.  “Two, the seat’s open for a challenge.”

“Three,” Avery said, “we use the market thing we’ve setup, change the region some.”

Lucy explained, “Carmine contest is about strength and dominance.  Alabaster contest is about mercy and interplay.  Aurum contest is about being able to stay on top of a constantly shifting dynamic.  If they don’t fudge it and make it about luck.  So we make it so he can’t stay easily on top of that dynamic, maximize how much it shifts.”

“That gets us about ninety percent of the way,” Verona finished.  “So to speak.”

“Who’s the contender?” Zed asked.

“That’s most of the other ten percent,” Lucy admitted.  “We’re not sure.”

“A lot depends on what they say if we’re able to call home or call around,” Avery said.  “If it’s an emergency, Kennet is held hostage, and there’s not much time?  We might force it.”

Lucy had her hands in the pocket of her Dog of War coat.  “Catch him, set up the arena…”

Avery nodded, “If we can keep him blind to the full picture of what’s going on and keep him hamstrung long enough for the contest to start, and if we vet the incoming candidates wanting to challenge the Aurum?  We back the ones who’re willing to play ball and who look like they’ll be cool by looping them into the market.  It’s a seat a lot of things and people want.  So we make it look attractive, and we hand a ticket to winning to anyone cool.”

“And if nobody accepts or shows?” Zed asked.

“Then we’re boned,” Verona replied.

“There’s a lot of moving pieces here.  If you can’t catch him?”

“Very much boned,” Verona replied.

“If negotiations get complicated?”

“Boned, probably.”

“If we’ve already lost the markets?” Avery asked.  “If they’ve disrupted it or messed things up?  Boned.  Which is part of why we need to call.  Plus, you know, letting people know we’re alive.”

“Let people know we’re alive, figure out how much time we have to make this happen, check the market’s okay, maybe call key people about the market stuff, reinforce that,” Lucy reiterated the key points.

“Key thing standing in our way?  Apartment building busybody geek turned tech god,” Zed said.  “How are we doing, Brie?”

“Bindings look good.  It’s only permanent marker, though.”

“Is it going to be an issue, that he might go after you guys after, in revenge, if we capture and trap him for a short time?” Lucy asked.

“Maybe we do the same thing summoners do?” Verona asked.

“It’s covered,” Zed said.  He handed Brie a torn corner of comic book page.  “Do me a favor, don’t push hard with Sight to see past the h-anonymizer.  It’s most effective against technomancy and technomancy Others, anything else could shake it.”

Brie double-tapped the comic book page, and blocky pixellation began to consume her head, like a cubic blurring on a photograph.

Head blurred, Brie took a seat in the electric chair, which wasn’t an electric chair.

Surrounded by extension cords feeding into the chair, and the framing of the chair itself, with an uncovered computer beneath the seat, bounded in by chair legs, and more at the back, markings on her neck, arms, and hands, Brie cut a pretty badass figure.

Lucy unzipped her jacket, made sure her spell cards were available, then went through her curse cards.  Those were good too.

The three of them took up positions around the circle’s perimeter.  Lucy put on her mask, cape-as-scarf, and weapon ring, with hot lead for power, just because she didn’t want to drain too much of her Self too fast, and pay for it for the rest of the day, especially if they had to move on the Aurum fast.

“We have concentric rings to the diagram,” Zed explained.  “There may be some fighting as we work our way to center.”

Lucy nodded.

Avery was stretching, right arm outstretched, pulled to the left with her left arm.  She switched arms, pacing.  Snowdrop was in human form, with her jacket similarly open, sweatshirt reading ‘pouch to the gut’ with an opossum standing up, paws and nose pointed at the sky, stomach-pouch on display.  The pouch at the front of the hoodie was highlighted for extra effect.

Verona stood with hands in her pockets, mask pushed up to the top and side of her head.

Brie sat in the center, waiting.  She’d gone without the coat, so she was probably cold, but they’d thrown some extra runes in there to try to help insulate.  Practices around the edges of the parking garage to keep people from looking in.  Drawn-on tattoos up and down her arm.  Plus the existing tattoos that hadn’t been ripped away- the eight moon phases running from wrist to crook of the elbow.

Zed hit the switch.  Electricity sparked.

Lucy dialed, then she tossed the phone across the ten feet of extension-cord-and-metal-weight diagram work to Brie, who caught it.

A dull thudding sound shook the parking garage.

He moved through concrete, until he found a portion that had already cracked some, and came through.  An old man, shirtless, with stained sweatpants, a scraggly beard, scraggly hair, and bare feet.

Zed threw a switch.  More electricity surged.

The lines on Brie’s skin turned bright and crackled with electricity.  A burning smell filled the air.

“Hhhhhhhhh,” the old man breathed.

Brie reached out toward him.  The cords on the floor illuminated, light chasing down their length.  The old man tensed.

She pulled at the air.  He moved a few inches closer, bare feet scraping on the surface below.

In the pixel mosaic over her face, a dark patch opened.  Brie’s mouth, opening wider than it should.  The electricity intensified.

He held his ground, crouching.  Around him, the parking garage’s surfaces began to flicker.

The open window that looked out at nearby rooftops of one-story buildings flickered, then became the exterior of an apartment building with a balcony and reflective windows, but turned inward, facing the parking garage.  The lighting changed dramatically with the disappearance of one entire wall worth of sunlight streaming in through the gap.

He was intensifying it.  Transforming the area around him.

Verona moved, throwing a spell card.

He moved in reaction.  Another slice of apartment building, glowing screens visible through glass window or door.

The card erupted into water, splashed off the glass at an angle, that cut him off from Brie. He backed up a few paces, crouching low, breathing hard.

“Sorry!” Verona called out.

“It’s fine!” Zed reassured.  “This is what he does.  Gotta hit him with a bunch of stuff at once.”

The Tenant seemed to hear that and reversed course.  He spotted a partially fenced in area, wires leading toward something beneath a tarp.

He lunged for it, and electricity struck out from the diagram, pulling at him, so it was like he was running against a strong headwind, or crashing waves that hit him in the face, one after another.  Verona, Avery, and Lucy all converged on him from different sides, Avery running from the far end of the diagram, around, toward him.

He reached the tarp, threw it back, and the runework beneath it flared out.

A wall with an apartment door inset in it blocked Lucy’s way as she ran.  She used a spot of glamour, and became a fox of smoke, a fox of fang, and a fox of tattered cloth, chains, and dog tags, flowing under, around, and through it.

Under the door led her into the apartment, deep in the digital space.  Through the window, as that fox of tattered cloth.  Same deal.

She cast off the guise of a fox made of smoke as it circled around and found a way clear.

Zed hit the headlights on his car.  The covers on the headlights were transparent, but they’d been painted with lines and runework.  The shadows were barriers.

The old man leaped into the air, and suspended there.  Lucy felt her stomach do a roller-coaster kind of flip-flop as he reached hands out and altered reality.  The ceiling raised, the scene around them flickered and changed.  The electricity pulled away from wires and fed him.

She found her center of balance- crucial in a moment like this, then found the stance and footing she needed to roll with the shifting ground, as everything folded and turned inside out.

“He’s burning a lot of power to do that!” Zed raised his voice.

“Is he burning too much?” Verona called out.  “Can we use it?”

“I think he’s got plenty to spare!  He has reserves from whatever was used to summon him!”

The interior of the parking garage, pillars, concrete ceiling, concrete floor, and scattered construction materials, all changed.  All resembled a slightly old-fashioned apartment building, but turned inside out, with most of the ground being glass doors, apartments that had been dragged into the Digital Aether on the far side.

Have to get him into Brie’s grip.

Lucy picked her footing carefully, running along the struts that separated the glass from everything else.

Avery just hurdled the worst of it, going full-bore.

The old man reached an air conditioning unit that was embedded into the floor- which was essentially wall turned on its side.  He tore out the back half, and gore streamed out behind the torn out section, splattering glass.  It flickered.

Lucy gave it a wide berth, but she could see through the glass, to where a scene was unfolding.  A group of students all sat at their desks, using school supplies to carve identical marks onto their foreheads.  Blood flowed freely, and it flowed straight out in front of them, all the individual streams and spatters splashing together at a central point.

“The one who is slowest to cut is the sacrifice.”

“Weirdness here!” Lucy called out.

The old man was moving toward a far window.  He stepped onto a railing, then leaped up to the ceiling, now a good height above them, and grabbed onto wires that ran up the ‘wall’.  Tearing them out.

Everything around them was just a jumbled apartment exterior aesthetic in an expanding ‘room’ that had once been the parking garage.

Only Brie’s patch was relatively okay.

A giant bloody hand struck out from the room where the kids had been carving symbols on their foreheads.  Lucy stumbled, nearly falling as she carefully placed feet on struts instead of stepping on glass she could potentially fall through.

The smell of burning air was way more intense, not helped by literally everything else.  The bloody hand came with this thick-in-the-air blood smell, and came down in a fist, smashing glass and parts of building.  The entire floor caved in a little.

Lucy looked ahead and saw men in an office building, standing facing the window, shoulder to shoulder, which meant, in Lucy’s perspective, they were all horizontal, facing ‘up’.  Each had a hand raised, using office supplies to carve into their foreheads.  Some looked terrified.  The blood node at the center was more intense.

“Cut, cut!  Last to finish the mark is the one to die.”

“Fucking-”

She leaped.

The blood node smashed into one of the office workers, and another giant hand that could have picked up and thrown a car on its own erupted up and out of the point of impact, splattering the man across the surroundings.  The ground started to form a depression, Brie at the lowest point, debris sliding toward her.

Lucy had to find her equilibrium, post leap.  The hand took advantage of it.  Lucy braced herself, ready to lose some ground.

Brie, using the diagram and the power in it, reached out.

The ‘scene’ broke a little, flickering like bad television, and the hand wasn’t able to support itself.  Lucy ran through the gap.  “Thank you!”

Another one.  Going for Avery.  Lucy jumped up, feet on the back of the wrist, paper becoming spear that she impaled the hollow at the back of the wrist with.

She let go of the paper, careful to jump away onto safe ground, and the spear became paper again.  Marked with runes.

It detonated inside the wrist.

Giving Avery clearance to throw one of her ‘down to earth’ baseballs.

Shattering scene around the old man before he could get to the next piece of tech.

“Avery!” Verona shouted.

With two hands, slinging it underhand, Verona threw a bottle.

Avery reversed direction, seemed to hesitate a hair-

Couldn’t intercept it without treading on tricky ground.

“Grab it!”

Avery made the leap.  She caught the bottle out of the air.

And crashed through glass.

Lucy changed direction too, going after Avery.

Avery was in a hallway that ran parallel to the windows.  Lucy almost passed her, as Avery backed away from the woman with disembodied hands grabbing her, saying the words, demanding the keyword.

This whole fucking thing.  Just to make a phone call.

Lucy smashed the glass with a weapon she made out of her weapon ring, then threw a spell card up at the ceiling.  Making thick smoke.

Another one, between Avery and the hands woman.

Making more smoke.

“Rope!”

Avery looked, then tossed Snowdrop sideways out of the broken window.  Snowdrop, in her opossum form, flailed her limbs until Lucy caught her.  She became human, and Lucy steadied her, one arm holding her weapon, the other wrapped around the kid’s ribs.

“Coming!” Avery shouted.

She’d apparently wanted Snowdrop to help catch her.  The ceiling was way up, and she didn’t want to crash through more glass.  Lucy had it, though, and managed to catch Avery and redirect her fall, almost flinging her sideways down onto a flat bit of metal that separated the windows, almost clotheslining her to deliver her to the target ground, neck first.  Snowdrop helped some.

The metal rippled, Avery’s magic absorbing the fall, so it didn’t hurt her.  Avery rolled to her feet, jar tucked under one arm, huffing out a breath and nodding at Lucy.

A hand erupted from the ceiling above them.  Lucy moved one way, Avery and Snowdrop the other.

The hands woman was emerging from the window.

“Hair, eyes-”

Lucy silence-runed her.  The paper stuck to the woman’s chest.

Just needed a few moments to get a handle on this situation.

The hand that had appeared above moved, fingertips raking glass, sending up a spray.

Avery hucked the bottle at the old man, who was accessing more Others by destroying a television that sat on a balcony.

The bottle shattered.  Something like mist poured out.

All the glass became marred, blurry.  Scenes on the other side faded away, becoming dark shapes.

Powerless dark shapes.  He needed clarity.

Avery bonked the guy on the head with another baseball.  He fell over.

Lucy had her weapon ring, and kept the weapon out, pacing carefully along the space between windows.

The tenant put hands down on glass.  Quickly clarifying the blur, overwriting it.

Three bloody, giant hands smashed their way out of glass around him.  Encompassing and protecting him.

All three hands moved outward, swatting, each one at a different one of them.

Lucy manged to avoid hers.  As she did, she looked back, assessing the situation.  Brie was being boxed in.  She was pushing back.  Zed was helping.

Verona was halfway between them and Zed and Brie, apparently doing what she could to assist both.

And Lucy, as she recovered from avoiding the giant bloody hand, saw that in the moment the hands had gone out, Tenant 2603 had reset his surroundings, overwriting the paint.

He looked tired.  But he’d kept his advantages and overwritten what they’d done to set him back.  No more head injury from the baseball, no cuts, no scrapes.  And the various technomancy Others and urban legends were crawling out, surrounding them.

“Big red button?” Lucy called out.

“No need.”

Guilherme.  They’d caught up with him on the way out, and he’d said he’d continue to be around.

Here he was.  Sitting with his back to one wall.

Tenant 2603 turned to Guilherme, tense and hostile.

Guilherme snapped his fingers.

Glass shattered.  Metal shattered.  Hands and Others shattered.  The space that had seemed so big became the normal parking garage once again.

Guilherme looked casual, but a lot of the shattering glass had embedded in him, especially in the upraised arm he’d used to snap his fingers.  Each piece of glass was reflecting images, like they were pieces of television screens or computers where things were being played in fast forward.  As they sped along, little flecks of glass all over Guilherme and his surroundings illuminated, catching that light and animation, spreading-

Lucy didn’t let it go further.  She lunged, her weapon becoming a mancatcher, a staff with a loop of rope around the end.  She caught Tenant 2063 around the head, twisted the staff in her hands to tighten the rope, then pulled the old man away and back.

Avery approached at a run, moving full speed now that she was running on proper concrete again.

She jumped, knees tucking against chest, and hands tapped rapidly against her shoes.  She thrust both legs out at the same time, smashing them into Tenant 2603, and Lucy dismissed her weapon, letting it become a pen again, so she wouldn’t have it torn out of her hands as Avery air-kicked the old man away.

Toward Brie.

He’d started to enclose Brie again already, but Verona was there, and used the wand taken off Kira-Lynn, blasting away the obstacle that Tenant 2603 would have smashed into.

Probably more advantageous for the Tenant to smash into something so much ‘his’, of his world.  Maybe he could’ve even smashed through.

“Ow, ow, hurts to use,” Verona said.  “Ow, fuck.”

Lucy went to Verona’s side.  She was clutching her left hand, the damaged one.

But they’d sent the Tenant far enough toward center that the diagram was doing its work again.  He tried altering reality, and it was slow, overriden, eaten by electricity.

As he stumbled, Zed threw more switches, and the diagram intensified.  The outer ‘ring’ became a barrier.  Then the next ring, just a little closer to center.  Then the next.  A cross-shape across the entire setup limited the Tenant to one quadrant.  A burst of electricity and a reaching hand from Brie, and he stumbled further.

She got her hands on him.  Face pixelated, her mouth opened wide as she began to swallow him, more or less whole.  He flickered and glitched, seemingly helping the process by not being wholly physical.

Lucy exhaled slowly, squinting her eyes because the light show and electricity was so much.

“We’re not done,” Zed said, as Brie finished eating.  “Brace yourselves!”

Zed threw switches.

The chair broke.  Brie stumbled to her feet, and as she did, the flickering happened all around her.  The apartment building began to emerge again.

With Brie wearing a short-sleeved top, Lucy could see the strain in her neck and arms as she fought to resist a lesser tech god that was now imprisoned inside her body.  Each part of the fight led to outbursts- glitches.

A whole pane of window to Brie’s left, with a group of east Indian teenagers standing in a bathroom, top buttons on their school uniforms undone, carving the symbols into their chests, below the collarbone.  Many were crying.

“Heads up!” Lucy shouted.

The slowest of the schoolkids exploded into carnage, the hand spearing out of the ground.

“I can’t-”

“Easy, Brie!  Just get a handle on it!  Find the balance inside you!”

“It’s a hell of a lot different without Durocher holding my hand!”

“Yeah,” Zed replied.

The hand tore through some of the barrier.  The outermost circle served to wall it off, stopping it from smashing into Lucy.  But those wires split and spat out bright white sparks before the insulation started melting across their entire length.

More hands.  More glass, more fragments of apartment painting the area around Brie.

“Out in front of the car!” Zed shouted.

Brie moved out that way.

Zed hit the headlights again.  Surrounding her with suppressive diagram work.

The situation calmed down by maybe… twenty percent.  Brie hunched over, hands in her hair, veins standing out in neck and arms.  A few of those veins surged, flickering like the apartment projections did, pulling briefly away, where they became extension cords, before returning to being flesh.

Verona tossed another bottle, underhand.  It smashed against the ground a few feet from Brie.

Glass fogged, concrete was soiled, images obscured.  Muddy colors stained things in the area, including Brie’s clothes.

In this case, Brie was an intentional Harbinger.  Not binding the power completely, but letting the pressure out in a steady, constant leak that became a small, localized storm around her.

She obviously couldn’t do this forever.

It looked like the mottling was fading, and Brie was starting to lose the fight again.

She pressed fingers against the moon phase tattoos on her left arm.  Counting them, silently, like something meditative.  She whispered to herself.

“I won.  Being able to handle what I swallow is my prize.”

The flickering went down to a jolt or two a second.  It wouldn’t go away with the way this had been set up.  Harbingers were most often those who were given so much power that they couldn’t keep it handled.  Usually by a god who wanted someone to clear the way of problems or spread their influence.  Fire and lava for a fire god, darkness for a dark power, and so on.

Brie dropped her hands, then stood straighter.  She sighed.

“Stay put,” Zed said.  He hurried, gathering up extension cords, sorting them out.  He found one that was intact enough, and made a circle around Brie, plugging it into itself.

As power leaked out of her, it flickered, formed electric jolts, they fed into that loop, and it was absorbed, the cord glowing slightly.

Lucy helped, taking some cord and helping to untangle it.

“Let me summon some of my own technomancy Others to occupy some of that territory this guy had staked out,” Zed told them.  “Then you can make your call.”

Lucy nodded.

She walked over to Guilherme.

Without observers, without reinforcement, he’d been able to dust off the worst of the glass in his arm.  No cuts, no real damage.

She had little doubt that if things had carried on, if Tenant 2603 and Guilherme had ended up in a scrap, some of that would’ve been lasting.

I hope that fulfills some of my duty to Winter, helping our guy avoid looking hurt or anything, she thought.

“Good?” she asked.

“We were victorious, at the least, but you need more training.”

“Wouldn’t object, so long as we wait until things are quieter.”

“When things are most intense, is the best time to learn.”

“I know, I know,” Lucy replied.  She leaned against the open exterior window of the parking garage, blue sky and gray town behind her.

“If you know, I shouldn’t need to tell you.”

“Thanks, by the way.  Very cool.”

“Why belabor the obvious?  Have you known me to do anything that was not graceful and impactful?”

“When you act.  Sometimes you just give annoying advice.”

He gave her a look.  “Be careful, student.”

She nodded.

Verona was helping Zed with the summoning stuff.  Avery was talking to Brie.

Lucy sighed.  She was anxious.

How bad is it?

“It’s bad.”

“What’s happened, Dad?” Avery asked.  She’d won the rock-paper-scissors.

“We don’t have the full picture yet.  The Others have backed off.  Louise and Matthew left, because it wasn’t safe.  Others left too.”

“The ghouls?”

“Gone.  Some of the goblins.  They set up a church, I think?”

“A church?”

“Of Bloody Glory.  It came out of nowhere, apparently it’s tied to Kennet below?  I don’t understand all of this, I’m sorry.”

“Damn,” Avery said.  “Church of Bloody Glory.”

“There’s nobody to give us a full picture.  I think they’re stopping us from meeting and communicating.  They’re not hurting us, they’re not doing much with us- us humans, anyway.  I wish I could give you better answers.”

“It’s okay.  I’m glad you’re safe.  Are you able to talk to mom?”

“They don’t interfere with that.”

“I don’t know how things are with the Garricks, but if you’re feeling the pressure, even if you’re technically safe… you could go.  All of you, or just mom’s side, Sheridan and Rowan?”

“I’m- maybe.  We’ve been keeping our heads down.  A Dog Tag guarded us last night.  A lot of this is vague.  If you’re not calling us, should we not call you?  Who do we talk to for more information?  We tried the Garricks, nothing.  There are scary people blocking the way to Miss and Kennet found.  I think things aren’t great there.”

“And the market?”

“On hiatus.”

“Fuck,” Lucy muttered, as Avery said something very similar.

“From what I heard from Angel, they were trying to run it and take it over.  Some people went along with it, some decided not to show up.  Some from Kennet below decided to start their own businesses without the rules you would’ve had, I think?”

“Okay.  I just needed to know if it was running.  I think the way to the Garricks was blocked, but if you try now you might get through.  I didn’t leave them on the best of terms, but I don’t think they’ll turn you away if you need help.”

“I call and…?  Or your mom calls, more likely?”

“And she might need to leave the Carmine’s territory.  Past the border down south or a ways West.”

Lucy’s earring picked up Avery’s dad sighing.

“How are you?  I know you said you’re alive, you’ve got food, shelter.”

“Zed’s backing us up right now.  We’ve got other friends.  We’re figuring it out.”

“I wish I could be more help.  I’m so scared for you right now.”

Avery curled up, drawing knees to her chest, sitting with her back to a concrete pillar.

Lucy removed the earring as things got a little more vulnerable and personal.

The phone rang.  Lucy’s leg bounced anxiously.

“Lucy.”  Her mom’s voice had so much emotion in it.  Lucy could hear hospital talk in the background.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting you at work.”

“What?  No.  It’s fine.  Are you okay?  Wait, I’m getting texts- Connor’s texting me.  And my superior-“

“Personal call, Mrs. Ellingson?”

“-a family emergency.  My daughter got stranded while traveling to see her grandparents- yes.  Just ten minutes?”

“Can you make it five?  Whatever was happening this summer feels like it’s happening again.  People going around the bend.”

“Ten, please.  I’ll make it up to you- yes.”

“Sorry,” her mom said.  Apparently the superior had left.  “Connor’s texts say Avery called.”

“We were blocked, Avery won rock-paper scissors.  My phone got electrocuted.”

“Electrocuted?”

“Long story.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m… intact,” Lucy replied.

“That’s not that reassuring.”

“I don’t know how to reply to that question.”

“Just be honest.  Please.”

“I’ve got a cut on my arm, hurts pretty bad.  Tweaked my wrist shooting a gun.  Lots of little scrapes and bruises.  Tired.  Hard to sleep, going from couch to couch.”

“Oh honey.”

“Weirdly getting to me that I can’t properly do my hair like usual, don’t have my own clothes, my own room.  Don’t have you near.  I killed a woman.”

“You killed a woman?”

“The Alabaster.  I shot the gun, but she killed herself, technically.  I shouldn’t say I killed her, but I did, to punctuate things.  We’re- Zed said this call is secure.  We’re going after others.  There’s a lot to do.  We have a plan, it’s just a lot.”

“You killed someone.  That is a lot.  Even I’ve never- that’s heavy.”

“The others are okay.  I think we’re getting along.  I could see a situation where we’re doing this and we want to kill each other, especially with the sleep habits of those other two, Avery flopping around in bed, heh.”

Lucy let out a soft laugh.

Her mom didn’t reply.

“But… it’s good.  They’re pretty good, I think.  I thought, you know, that righteous indignation would really help carry me through this, but it’s rough.  I’m tired.”

She looked across the parking garage.  Avery was petting Snowdrop.  Verona stood off to the side, looking out the window.

“You still there?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  I love you.  I don’t know what to say, exactly.”

“Yeah.  Me either.”

“What happened?”

“Oh.  I thought Connor would pass that on.  Charles’s people came after us, now he’s coming for us, we’re going for them… it was going to happen eventually.  I think they took over Kennet?”

“Yeah.  I think so.  It’s hard to get a full picture.  Grandfather and Doe came over last night.  They were guarding the front door, I made them come in.”

“Good,” Lucy said.

“They were wondering why you hadn’t called them.”

“I didn’t want to without permission, taking them this far away from their people.”

“I think you have their permission.  So use it.  Be safe, please.  Please.”

Lucy blinked.  Tears were suspended on her eyelashes.

“I might call Booker later.  Depends if we have the chance.  Avery wants to call Nora.  I’m not sure who Verona’s calling.”

“Her dad came.  Worried.  Annoyed.  He’s been left with her cat, apparently.  He was upset he’s having to take care of her.”

“She doesn’t use the litter box, does she?  She doesn’t… poop?  What taking care of her does he have to do?”

“I think she did leave some in the litter box.  On purpose.  Doesn’t have to, but did.”

“Ah.  She would, wouldn’t she?”

“Be safe,” her mom said.  “Please?”

Lucy leaned back.  She was used to having to be careful not to squash her ponytail, but she still had her hair in the two tight, smaller braids.

“I love you so much,” her mom told her.  “And it scares me you’re not telling me you’ll be safe.”

“I love you too,” Lucy replied.

“…and feed and water my goblin, make sure that if any mold grows on stuff in the fridge, you save and label it for future use in alchemy, keep an extra eye on the bleeding modem, make sure the living book downstairs doesn’t get out and mate with the other books, be nice to my pigeon, make sure Luna gets her hot chocolate.  Have you checked on Tashlit?” Verona asked.

“You’re so annoying.  Oh my god.”

“If you want annoying I can do a summoning that I’m fully prepared to unleash on you.  You eat my food, sleep over at my place, you can do some general upkeep.  Please.”

“Please.  Sounding like such a namby-pamby.  Just tell me to fucking do it.”

“Do it.”

“Nah.”

“I can sense my damn demesne through the phone, and I know you’ve had a party.  I want to be clear, if anything goes missing during one of those parties, you are making it up to me.”

“It was only a bit of a party.  More… something else.”

“What was it, then?”

“Dunno the word.  Regrouping?  Licking wounds?  Shit’s not the same and it’s getting less samey all the time.”

Verona sighed.

“Your place is one of the only places that you don’t need to sweat the other stuff.”

“Just confirm for me… market’s out?”

“Kinda went to shit real fast.  I think Toadswallow told your business partners in other markets to hold off.  Because we were getting robbed, or we’d take stock and try to set up a stall and we’d get crowded out.”

“Fuck.”

“Church thing is fucking weird.  They found the Family Man.  I don’t think they figured out the thorn thing.  So he’s still weak.”

“Shhh.  My side of the call is secure but yours isn’t.”

“Right.”

“Do we have hours before people start dying?  Days?  Weeks?  Is it a different sort of danger?” Verona asked.

“People are dying now.  Undercity folk, people in Kennet found.  Just a few, to make examples, or when someone steps too far out of line, trying to take a stand.”

“Because we can do this fast, or we can do it right,” Verona said.  “Making our next move, trying to get out ahead of what they’re doing.  What’s your gut?”

“Aren’t you always telling me my- how do you say it?  My judgment is suspect?”

“Yeah, Mal.  It is.  But you’re the one I’ve got on the phone and it’s been hell to find anyone who can give us the full story.”

“I don’t have the full story.”

“Or… something in that direction.  What’s your gut feeling?”

“The thing that’s fucking them up right now?  They’re disorganized.  Saw this when Kennet below was new, you know?  The way we all crashed into one another, fought, pushed, tried to find our place in the pecking order?  They’re doing that.  But in a big fucking way.”

“Gotta act before they get their shit together?  That’s your gut?”

There was a pause.

“I know you, Mal, and I think you’re shrugging on the phone and I can’t see it, you know?”

“I’m not good at this, I don’t use the phone much.  I don’t pay the bill half the time.  Who even has a phone?  It’s so inconvenient.”

“Lots of people.  Most people.”

“Bah.”

“Glad you were able to pick up, at least, jerkface.”

“Same.  I’m glad you’re alive and stuff.  Because if you died, this place would stop working like it works, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So don’t die.  I like your magic house.”

“So do I.  You stay alive too, eh?  You’re weak as balls and you’re close to me, you make a good target.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Look, Ave wants to call her girlfriend, Zed’s signaling he wants to check his Others are holding the fort and aren’t getting removed, so I’m going to let you go.”

“Thank Maricica, she who is forever bathed in blood and whatever.”

“You’re joking right?”

“Yeah.”

Verona snorted out a half-laugh, then hung up.

Lucy nodded.

“Can do this well, or we can do it fast…” Verona trailed off.  She looked at Lucy.

“And we should do it fast, huh?  Figures.”

Next Chapter