Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

Janice XXII: Red Riding Hood

The drive up to Massachusetts is tense and exhausting. It take Janice five hours to get out of New York City. It feels like every light is against her. Each cop car she saw is a jolt of adrenaline.

"Still, at least that's over," says Seth, riding shotgun in the passenger seat. He's re-appeared with no explanation of where he was for the entire meeting. It's probably for the best - and he is a cat. His nature is to vanish off and then show back up without explanations.

"Not yet," Ami whispers in her head.

"Not yet," says Janice out loud, peering out from the snow-covered windshield. "We haven't heard back from the Euthanatoi yet. Which is one of the reasons I want out of the city. If they fail, we're fucked."

"... that's not the worst point," admits Ami reluctantly. "But I will make sure I do everything I can to hurt you if you try to cheat me."

"I won't. I know the rules," Janice thinks.

The weather is worsening. The storm the Technocratic sorcery called isn't going away. It's shifted the weather patterns and it isn't going to just vanish. The salted highway is slushy and other cars and trucks kick up vast sprays of dirty water.

She can feel the pounding in her head and the bone-deep exhaustion. She checks her phone in a free hand, looking for any news or signs that things might have already started to go down in New York.

What she sees shocks her. It's not something big or dramatic - not on the scale that she was afraid she was going to see, at least. But the Shoreham Hotel is burning. There's pictures of it on fire. They say it's a gas explosion.

Janice is sure it's a lie. Because that's where Chris' squat is.

Someone tried to kill Chris, and covered it up. Thank the goddess Chris isn't there, but this has to be premeditated. Someone is going after her. Someone is going after her allies.

She pulls over, and stares at her phone. Should she call Luke? To warn him?

"I wouldn't, if I were you," Ami says. She sounds almost sad. "If the people you're up against know what they're doing, he'll already be dead. It only hit the news as bait. So you'll try to call him."

"Fuck," Janice whispers, her eyes blurring. "You could be wrong…"

"If I'm wrong, the people you're up against are incompetent. And I don't think they are. Roth is part of the latest face of the Eye. We knew how to do this kind of thing properly."

Damn it, damn it. She roughly wipes her eyes on her sleeve. How to… okay. Okay. There are still people in NY who owe her enough for this. Why not burn all her favours?

"What are you doing?" Ami asks, as Janice swipes a very specific pattern on her screen which opens a secured browser window and starts typing with practiced speed.

"Technology marches on, and so does magic," Janice says, lips barely moving. "I'm not contacting him directly. I'm making sure TradWiki knows what's going on and there are some people there who might be able to contact him - and know how to handle the risk that 'Crats are listening in."

"Someday you'll need to explain to me who you're talking to," Seth observes. "I'd be very insulted if you replaced me with another familiar."

"A voice in my head," Janice says.

"Oh, well, that makes it all just fine. Just fiiiiiiiiine."

She ignores the backchat of her cat as she finishes her message. Pinching her brow, she rests her forehead on the steering wheel. She needs sleep.

"Then sleep," Ami says unsympathetically. "Find a safe place to stop, do whatever witchery you need to, then grab a few hours. It'll do neither of us any good if you smear us over a wall when you fall asleep and crash. And it reduces the risk you'll lead them to your Selene's place if you make sure you're not being tailed."

There's something off about Ami's logic, but Janice can't pin it down. She's just too exhausted to think clearly - and that's a good sign that Ami is right.

Janice pulls off road under the cover of trees. Stiffly she gets out of her car, and builds a little shrine to the wood and the spirits therein, thanking them for protection and offering them a few drops of her blood. She feels the warm-pulse of the winter trees, promising to shield her from spies and onlookers. That's good. That done, she stretches out on the back seats and tries to make herself as comfortable as she can manage.

---

Her dreams are not her own. Janice is used to nightmares, but before they were always scattered, nonsensical scenes. Things of killing and death and the horrors of what she knows to be a Caul.

But now things are different.

The air is humid. The sun above the trees is bloody. The air is filled with little buzzing things. Creatures move in the undergrowth. The ancient stone temple here is part of the jungle, embraced by the life.

Western history doesn't mention the empires of the Amazonian rainforest. There are remnants of stone towers broken off at the base and mouldering away, ancient roads that have been tarmaced over and erased; the ruins of cities that died when the poxes came. These places entered the culture of the Sleepers as rumours and legends of El Dorado and other fabled cities.

There's life in these ruins, though. Half-outside the world, they're beyond the sight of Technocracy aerial spies. Only people who know the right paths to walk can enter their sacred walls, and so those who have tried to escape the claw of the West have found a bolthole. There's human voices audible outside; the laughter of children, the noise of cooking and eating, and all the little sounds that make up life.

But over the rich humid smell of the jungle, there's something else within the temple. Something coppery and rich, that shouldn't be here.

There's no locked doors in here. Just a net curtain that she brushes silently aside, her feet making no noise. A wrinkled and naked man kneels here, in silent contemplation of a rough stone idol. His beard is long enough that it serves as his sole concession to decency.

"Master," she says. "We've found a body. Nala is dead. Someone killed her. She was shot, but no one heard it."

The old master opens his eyes. "So that is what the gods warned me about," he says, sadly. His eyes roll back in his head, and the air smells like thunderstorms. "Come with me, Lela. At least I can trust you to--"

He doesn't say anything more. Because the little needle held in her hand is now in between two of his vertebrae and the neurotoxin in there derived from local poisonous frogs has rendered him quite, quite helpless.

She kneels, breaks his neck, and crushes his chest just to make sure.

Probing around in her mouth with her tongue, she activates the hidden radio implanted in a molar. "Squid here," she says, face rippling as she sheds the appearance of the woman she was pretending to be. "Deviant Prophet is dead. RD statistical shield is down. You can begin the attack."

As per her orders, she retreats into the civilian population, lurking and waiting. She isn't the one who calls in the artillery bombardment that indiscriminately scythes through the village around the temple. She isn't the one who's leading the HITMARKs that gun down the survivors. She isn't the one who's sitting back, forcing their mind into civilians and forcing them to pick up weapons and betray their allies.

But she is the one who's part of the small group who get evacuated to a safe place. And they take her another 'safe' compound.

People always make the mistake of trusting her.

---

Janice wakes, groaning, rubbing her brow. Still the nightmares. Fuck. So much for the hope that by coming to terms with her past life, she'd be over them. It's chilly in the car and the sun hasn't risen yet, but it's starting to get lighter.

Checking her watch, she sees she slept for five hours. Less than she might have liked, but it's something. At least she feels slightly less groggy. Mentally, she curses the rules of her pact. Usually she just would have trapped her fatigue somewhere for just long enough to get to Selene's and pay off the sleep-debt later, but… no. Ami wouldn't let her do that.

The horizon is a dull red in the east. Dawn is coming, somewhere above the cloud layer and the sleet. She needs to hurry up and get to Selene's. And eat. Yes.

Janice massages her brow. God, that was probably the most expensive meal in her life, and she barely ate any of it. Yes, she'd been trying to save the Traditions, but she should have taken a doggy bag. And a doggy bottle.

That much produces a laugh from her. She starts the engines and huddles her hands over the heater in the car until she feels up to typing. Fumbling in her pocket, she has a moment of panic when she can't find her phone. Oh wait, it was in her outside pocket. She must have been exhausted to put it there. It's a bad idea to keep a phone somewhere vulnerable in New York. Even a witch can be pickpocketed.

And thank goodness, Luke has checked in safe. And there's a verification from someone else, so that makes it unlikely he's being spoofed. Whoever hit the hotel didn't go for their chantry. Which is something.

Something that might not be good. She's not willing to be as naive as to believe that it was really a gas blast at the hotel. Whoever did that is still out there.

"Well, come on," she tells Seth. "Not far to Selene's."

"Hmm," says the black cat. He scratches at the door.

"What?"

"Let me out. I need to go to relieve myself." Seth mews for emphasis.

Janice looks at him flatly. "Really?"

"I'm a cat."

She sighed, opening the door as quickly as possible. "Be fast about it," she said, rummaging around in the glove compartment to see if she'd left anything edible around.

---

For possibly the first time ever, Janice is pleased to drive into New Salem. She's exhausted, she's hungry, and she's hurting. The fact that she's good at hiding her magic doesn't mean that she's proof against the Scourge, and everything she's done over the past few days has added up.

"Oh thank the gods, you're OK!" It's Chris, dashing up to her car in a bright red skirt, lime green leggings, and a lavender puffy jacket. Even the gloom can't defeat her indefatigable lack of colour coordination. "And you brought Seth!"

"Mew," says Seth. He doesn't mew. He just says the word.

"I was so worried and you were acting so strange but you're here and how did everything go?"

Stiffly, Janice levers herself out of her car. Leaning on Chris' shoulder, she is quickly ensconced in Selene's parlour, wrapped in blankets, and provided with a hot mug of herbal tea. She drinks it gratefully, cat on her lap. The room is soft and gentle and smells of herbs and beeswax.

The other two women in the room are staring at her. She realises what she must look like to them; someone who's been wearing her new pantsuit since yesterday and whose makeup is smudged from sleeping in the back of her face. "Well," she says, putting her mug. "That was more complicated than I thought it was going to be."

"At least you're alive," Chris says, running her hands through her hair. "You were talking all like you were about to die when you sent me here."

"She might still," Selene says. Her full lips are thin and tight; her usually flawless brow is frowning. She's dressed more simply than she was the last time and it only makes her look more pregnant. Selene gestures over to the window, where cursecatchers hang by the window. Every one of them dangles freely, the complicated weaving of threads and small trinkets shredded. "They're shredded. Every single one burst when you stepped through the door. Seeker, what did you do? Why are you cursed like this?"

Janice considers what to say. It's Chris who speaks first. "So that's what you were playing around with for your past life stuff! Jan!"

She sighs. "My past life had a great karmic debt," Janice admits. "She was a killer. I accepted her debt and agreed to help her pay it off, in return for things she knew that'd help me with… what I had to do."

"That's not what exactly we agreed," Ami points out in her head. Janice wishes she'd shut up. She's just… brushing over the truth. Putting it in a more Selene-friendly format.

"I didn't plan to do this," Janice continues. "I just had to, because of the situation that…" she bites back what she was about to say.

"Because of what?" Selene demands.

Janice takes a deep breath. "Please accept my word when I tell you this. I should have started with it, but I've had an awful past few days." She drains her mug, and puts it down. Chris can read her, and carefully eases Selene's own mug out of her hands.

"What are you-"

"I'm sorry, Selene, but Liam betrayed you," she says sadly.

Selene blinks, pale eyes widening. "I don't… why would he…"

"I can't tell you everything. Not yet. There are still things happening and I promised. But he betrayed you. He's either dead, or would-be-better-off-so."

"You… you found him?" Selene's hands are balled into fists.

"I tracked him down on the astral plane. There are factions on our side who want to see war, full-on bloody war, with the Technocracy. There are factions in the Technocracy who want the same war. Liam was a pawn in someone else's game to start a war afresh. People who were willing to sacrifice this entire town to do it."

"Who?"

"I can't tell you." Janice sighs. "I promised the Golden Chalice. They're the ones handling this."

"I understand," Selene says.

Janice blinks. That was easier than she thought it would be. Some of her surprise must show on her face, because Selene raises her pale eyebrows elegantly. "I trust Francesco bani Euthanatos. He is a…" she considers her words, "confidant. And nearly a friend. If he is doing something important with what you found, that means it must be kept secret even from me, then it must be crucial."

"Tha-" begins Janice.

"Of course, I will speak with him and if you lied to me, we will be having… words."

She wouldn't expect anything less, and she says as much. "And," Janice adds. "We - that is, us, the Traditions - might be in for an easier time in the next bit. As part of this, I think - well, hope - I managed to sway a major Syndic from his bloody path."

"What? Wait, what were you doing, Jan?" Chris demands.

"Last evening, I tricked Warren Roth into having dinner with me," she says.

"Only dinner?" Surprisingly, that's Selene, not Chris.

"Yes," Janice says flatly.

"There is power in-"

"I did not sleep with him!" That came out louder than it was meant to. "That wouldn't have worked. He's not the sort of man who… honey would have worked for. No, I gave him truth and tribulation."

The other two Verbena in the room nod. They know the power of truth and they know the power of tribulation. "You managed to find something that would do that?" Selene asks.

"I'm a Seeker. It's what I do," Janice says. "I forced him to look at what he was becoming and the scars of his past, and the cost of his actions. The pain has bettered him, I hope. He's still a Technocrat, but I showed him the price of his bloodthirst and he balked. I think he's no longer a witch hunter."

"I've heard of him," Chris says. "If he diverts his hate into hunting vampires, I'd cheer him on."

"Well, we can hope," Selene says primly. She sighs. "Thank you," she tells Janice begrudgingly. "For… for going above the call of duty." She glances over the the cursecatchers. "You'll pay for it."

"I know I will."

"I wouldn't have asked you to do that to yourself."

"If you had," Janice says acidly, "I'd have refused. Probably just to spite you."

"I know." Selene purses her lips. "If this dooms you, I'll make sure your teachings are preserved."

"Oh?" Janice raises her eyebrows, wrapping herself tighter in her blankets. "Even if they, what was it? 'Pollute the purity of our teachings'."

"I'm making a big concession here. Please don't make it any harder." Selene gets up, one hand supporting her baby bump. "And yes. If we lost Liam because of… of this, if we lost him because of some of… our teachings. Then we'll need to think about how to approach things.

She looks between Janice and Chris. "Like you said last night, Chris, the world isn't going away. We want it to leave us alone, but it won't - and when we go into it, we can't go in blind. Otherwise we're just little children wandering into the den of cruel and vicious wolves."

Something about that snags in Janice's mind. "The wolves are still out there, in the dark," she says without meaning to, her voice speaking words she never willed. "They will dress up in human clothing."

The other two women fall silent. "That was prophecy," Selene says, eventually.

"I know." Janice groans. "I hate it when I do that. Or at least I wish I could control it. That'd be nice.

"And how long have you been able to do that?"

"Uh… at least since I became a witch."

"The gods speak through you. You're an oracle, and you didn't think to ever tell me?"

"I told you she could see the future sometimes," Chris points out.

"No, no, that's just… I thought you were talking about scrying! She's being a god-vessel and… argh!" Selene jabs her finger at Janice. "Stay there, and think about if you have any more talents that you forgot to ever tell me! I need to look at something in my library!"

"Hey," Janice says, who's feeling unfairly blamed, "I don't have to tell you these things! We don't like each other much and--"

"Shh! This is very important, more than you'd know!" She waddles out, and Chris and Janice are left looking at each other.

"Hey, don't ask me," Chris says with a shrug. "She's the smart one."

Janice yawns, rubbing her eyes. There was something she meant to… oh. "Chris."

"Mmm."

"Have you been following the news?"

Chris looks at her wryly, spreading her hands. "With what? Selene doesn't even have a radio, and keeps the phone hidden away where people won't be easily tempted by it."

Right. Yes. "When I was driving out, I checked the news looking to see if… well, never mind. But they're reporting a 'gas explosion'," the irony drips from her voice, "at your place. I've checked that Luke is okay, but someone was after you."

"... you're shitting me."

"I'm not."

"Fuck." Chris paces back and forth. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. Which fucking bloodsucker did that?"

Janice doesn't say anything.

"Gods, thank you for making sure I was out of town. You might've just saved my life," Chris says, turning around. "Now, where…"

There's a crash and a scream in the library. Janice and Chris come running. There's a snapping noise as all the cursecatchers they pass give way. Selene has fallen, and she's bleeding from the head. But it's not the side she's fallen on. There's a shallow circular gash on her temple. She whimpers, curling up into a ball, and moans.

Even as they look, a second circle appears - then a third, in the centre of her brow.

"Sel," Chris says, rushing over to kneel beside her girlfriend. "What's happening?" She hugs her close to her chest, biting her thumb and easing it into her mouth. "Take my strength!"

"No…"

Janice spits on her finger, and draws an eye on her own brow. Opening that third eye, she can see the thin threads leading out from Selene - hundreds of them. Even as she watches, another one catches fire and burns. "Someone's cutting her bonds," she says.

"My people," Selene gasps. She's crying. "Someone… they're killing my people!"

Something explodes in the distance, and Selene convulves. A whole cluster of threads catch fire. Red stains her once-undyed dress.

"What did you do?" Janice demands.

Chris looks up, eyes wild. "She… she shares her life with everyone here," she says. "A little bit so… so they're under her protection. So her power supports all of them. If they die…"

"Stigmata. Fuck." That's what the marks are, the injuries. Janice kneels down, and checks them, diagnosing the wounds that must have killed from the stigmata on Selene's body. "Bullet wounds. And," she undoes Selene's dress, "that has to be shrapnel." More and more threads snap and burn, and more injuries appear.

"Precise," Ami observes in her head. "The trajectory of each shot to the head passes through the brainstem."

"How did they get through the wards around the town?" Chris demands. "They weren't broken! I'd have felt that! So they had to have walked through them and you can't do that!"

"Unless you were made of primium," Janice says slowly. "Or someone let you in."

"HITMarks?"

Janice swallows. "Or… or someone making use of Liam. I thought I destroyed his memory enough, but…" she shakes her head. "We need to get out of here."

"No." Selene's voice is weak. "They're killing my people. They're killing me. We can't run."

"I can't leave her," Chris insists. "Jan, we have to save her! I can't lose her! And we can't lose New Salem!"

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!"

---

The cost of such knowledge will make her a party to the sins of the past, though, imparting the full karmic weight of who she was - and if she thought she was caught up in bad luck before, things will just get worse.

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There's always a price.

Someone - or something - is coming.

Also, remember, @MJ12 Commando just updated with the main story. Remember to vote for that too!

At the Door

[ ] There's no time for Selene's sappiness - not when she's a living archive of so much of the Verbena knowledge. With Chris to support her, and Janice to try to cut away the bonds before they can hurt her, they might be able to get out. It'll be abandoning people who rely on Selene, and they'll lose so much. (x0.5)
[ ] Maybe it's coming for her. Just her. Janice can try to draw it off and stop anyone else dying. If she's wrong, though, she's abandoning them. And if she's right, she's going to face it alone.
[ ] This is a Traditions town. Selene will have defences and arrangements. Janice and Chris can try to rally the defences and fight back against… whatever this is. This is Verbena home turf, even if it's got the general technodigm overlapping it. They might be in with a chance. But in the time that takes, a lot of people will probably die.
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