Janice XVII: Faithless
Janice XVII: Faithless
They bargain. It is a bargain of witches - dark, bloody and full of sacrifices. Janice wishes that her past life wasn't apparently so willing to whittle her to the bone - but then again, even friendly spirits bargain hard. And she's far from sure that the woman she once was is a friendly spirit.
But she makes the deal. Ami will be a voice in her ear, a whispering familiar who shares knowledge about the Technocracy and their tools, who aids her with words and who will share with her a terrible magical secret she took with her to the grave. Janice shudders to think at what she now knows - one of the words of power that the masters of the Technocracy stole from ancient gods and reforged into a new shape.
Of course, that comes at a cost. All things do. Ami Shirai is in her head now, and their souls are one - so she has a claim on Janice's body. The dead woman will be able to fight her for control while this contract lasts. Likewise, a ban now holds her, and she will suffer terribly if she uses any of her Verbena magics which affect the mind or the flesh. The Progenitor insisted on it. Finally, and perhaps most darkly, she has accepted the weight of fate for the actions of her past life. The sins of the dead woman are hers - and the mere echoes of those sins before left her with nightmares and bad dreams.
Still, Janice shoulders these burdens willingly. She is one of the Verbena, and though she and people like Selene may not get along, they both know that power lies in sacrifice.
Emerging from her astral spaces, she gulps down air. She feels faint, like she hasn't been breathing properly. Every muscle hurts. It feels like her head is full of eyes, sudden insight showing her things about the Technocracy she never knew before.
"What the fuck were you doing?" Chris breathes, jolting up from where she had been sitting on a couch working through a bottle of vodka. "I could see the power in your veins. Still can. Jan, what the fuck?"
Janice moves to stand, and winces. Her legs have gone to sleep and she nearly topples. Chris barely catches her. "Thanks." She takes a deep breath, massaging her thighs. "I… found my past-life. Talked to her. Found an old legacy."
All of it is true. None of it is truthful. She hates to spread such falsehoods to someone she trusts, but she only trusts Chris in very specific ways. She'd trust her with her life, but she can't trust her not to gossip.
"An old legacy?" Chris echoes sounding impressed. "Damn. Past life stuff never worked for me, and the bitchy feathered snake never gave me anything like this."
"It won't last for long," Janice croaks, pulling herself up and lurching over to the sink. She begins cleaning herself up, wiping off the ritual markings. Chris rushes over to help her, getting the bits she can't see. "Long enough for what I need to do, I hope." She almost reflexively goes to invoke the Fool to endure through this ache, only for sudden nausea to overwhelm her. She almost vomits. It feels wrong at a soul-deep level to do something like that - and she knows that's likely a sign of benevolence, or something close to it, from Ami. A warning shot of the feelings of a Technocrat who tries to do 'reality deviance', rather than accidentally breaking her oath.
"There, there," Chris whispers, not knowing the real reasons. "Now, are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"The Golden Chalice have…" she shifts, and adjusts her phrasing. "I owe them, okay," she says. Her words come easily. She can play Chris like a fiddle, because this double-sense of her-ness and Ami-ness just works so well. It's like looking at the world in stereo when everyone else is stuck in mono. "And so they won't let me tell you."
Chris pouts, and blows a raspberry. "Stupid Euthanatoses. They're just as gothy as Hollow Ones, but way less fun to be around. Well, I mean, the fun ones to be around, that is. San Fran-style ones, not Miami-style ones." She knots the bottom of her sleeveless top. "So you're going to be off."
"Soon," Janice admits. "I have so many things to do and little time to do them in."
"Can't I help?" It's almost a plea.
And that's what Janice has been leading up to. "Yes, you can," she says. She wants to cry - but she can't show it. She won't let it out. "I have something to ask of you."
"Oh?"
"I'll have a letter for you to deliver to Selene. In person. I need it to… to come from someone she trusts. And I can't send it myself. Even if I were to trust its delivery to the will of the gods, the risk of it falling into hostile hands would be too great. The Technocracy has its ways - and there are others listening. I don't trust anyone but you to deliver it personally."
Chris narrows her eyes. "It's not just that," she says bluntly.
"No. It's not. If you can get me the things I'll need, I'll write it for her."
Rummaging around, Chris produces a sketch pad. "Will that do?" she says, handing it over. "Pen, pen, pen… I'm sure I've got one around here somewhere."
Janice takes the chance to flip through the pad as she looks for a free page. Her friend has a quite distinctive art style that she uses to channel her own power using inks made up with her own blood. She sees veiled winged women with a bow, lewd many-armed hermaphroditic idols and a horned moon god whose arms are spread wide in innocent benediction. She pretends she hasn't seen them. She doesn't recognise them as any of Selene's gods, and that suggests that Chris might be doing what Janice has been trying to get her to do for a while and inventing new masks for old gods. But Chris would just get awkward if she pointed that out.
As a result, she isn't looking at any of the pictures when Chris returns with a pen. She quickly describes the current situation in a note, explaining it as best she can - well, apart from the 'I'm a reincarnation of a Technocrat' bit because that would ruin any chance of Selene listening to her - and then borrowing a candle to seal it with wax and her own thumbprint
"Take care," she tells Chris. "Don't go too quickly, and don't rush. And don't read it. Promise me this, Chris. I've laid a curse on it so it'll burn up if anyone but me reads it."
"Jan." Chris looks serious, scared, even lost. "That's… is that a will?"
Janice smiles at her with a confidence she doesn't really feel. "No. You know where my will is. No, this is what I found out about Liam." She pauses, and considers it. It's a bad idea, but she owes Chris this much. "I'm doing this - with the Euthanatoi - to help Selene. The Verbena need someone like her. But she needs people to stop her just turning into something that's just as unchanging as the 'Crats. You know I left you a bunch of my books and notebooks and stuff from my astral exploration in my will, right? Make sure she gets copies. If I'm going to put myself at risk for her, she better archive my shit."
Chris laughs, but it's a hollow, worried noise. "I want to stay and help you."
"You are helping me," Janice reassures her, looking around this cramped, trash-filled apartment. "This isn't the kind of fight you're good at." She sighs, and starts looking for her outside clothes. In the mirror she looks wild-haired and a mess, but she's going to have to make do. "It's a war of ideas, when it comes down to it," she says, to herself. "Doesn't make it any less real."
Heading down in the hidden elevator, Janice hugs herself. She hopes that wasn't the last time she'll see Chris.
"You're not the first person who's told me it's all a war of ideas," Ami says in the back of her mind, amusement in her voice. "Of course, the others were much more… towerish. In an ivory way. Now, about the deal…"
"Yes, yes, I know," Janice mutters. "Coffee shop. Food. And I'll get you a paper. In fact, I'll get you something better. It might just blow your mind."
"Oh, so they rolled out EntertaiNet to the Masses," Ami says, looking at the rented computer in a safe coffee shop that Janice knows. It's positioned so she can see the door and no one can see her. "Neat. Is that the thing which is meant to blow my mind?"
Janice scowls. It had been meant to.
"I died in the 1980s, not the 1950s," the voice in her head says with a lilt. "Just because you by definition hadn't been born yet doesn't mean everything was just bashing stones together. It's a terminal linked to a mainframe. We had those."
She's not a computer person, so she agrees. "Now. I'm going to give you fifteen minutes on TradWiki to check the state of the world and confirm that I wasn't lying to you. Then in return…"
"Yes, yes, the truth. Let's see what your VA infocache says first."
Janice begins the secure log-in procedure. "I'll take back control if you do more than just browse," she whispers.
"Yes, yes. So… where do I input commands?"
"Just type into that box in the right hand corner and click 'Search' or press 'Enter'," Janice says. She feels cold and almost like she got turned upside down as she feels her own mind's control of her body be pressed back and something deep within her take control. What's worse is that she doesn't feel totally locked out. Her hands move and she doesn't feel like she has total control, but a bit of her feels like… like it's still her doing it. It's like the precise opposite of having one's arm go to sleep so it doesn't feel like yours. It's like feeling like someone else's arm is yours.
--which is something Janice has done, of course. She doesn't like subjugating the will of another, but she knows how to worm into the spaces of their mind and puppet them from from within. And from how at-ease Ami feels doing what she's doing, she strongly suspects that her past life had some kind of Technocratic tool for subjugating the wills of others or something like that.
But there's not so much time to think of that - not when she's busy trying to watch for betrayal from Ami as she rapidly scans through TradWiki pages. She goes straight to the Progenitor(Convention) page and hisses with annoyance at the sight of the fact that, yes, a Professor Li now runs the organisation. And then she's off in an erratic pattern of names and dates and locations that gives Janice simultaneous feelings of deja vu, presque vu and jamais vu.
It's a deeply unpleasant experience and she hopes she never has to go through it again. The memory-flickers she's receiving from the emergence of her past-life in her consciousness makes her feel like she's once again in the mind of someone with early stage dementia, trying to cure them - only it's her own mind and she realises the 'cure' would destroy her sense of self, fusing her and Ami. And neither of them want that.
"Shit," Ami says in her head, when she seems to have everything she wants. "What a mess. Control is really gone?"
"I think so," Janice whispers.
She feels the hair raise up on the back of her neck and shivers. "Brr," Ami says. "Wow, that's such a weird thought you had it too."
"Don't do that."
"Sorry." Ami pauses. "Well, if they're gone, maybe things will be fine." She seems to be talking more to herself. "Okay. Let's talk. Confession time. I may have not been utterly honest when I said I was a Damage Control monster hunter."
"I suspected that."
"Well, yes, I always was too clever for my own good, so you must be too clever for my own good." Janice flinches. That struck a nerve, and she hears Ami laugh. "Well, I started off as that. Then I moved into hunting higher-value targets. The most dangerous game, so to speak."
"You were an assassin."
"That's such a harsh term. I always preferred 'terminator'. But those Iteration X bastards stole the name for their full cyborg exojocks."
"It's a movie about a killer robot now," Janice says. "Came out 1984. Union propaganda about the HITMark V."
"Damn them," Ami growls. "They're appropriating my culture!" She pauses. "Wait, that wasn't me. I don't talk like some Ivory Tower twit."
"... yes, I think that was me," Janice says, ignoring the jibe. "Going on like this too long will be dangerous - for both our senses of self. So you were an assassin?"
"A terminator, yes. They picked me out as a 'heavy' unit for a specialist force. Ami looks down, and looks up again. "Have you ever heard of HELMETSHRIKE?" she asks.
Janice thinks. "It's a type of bird, isn't it?" she tries.
"So, no." Ami sighs. "It was a Union task force in the 70s and 80s. Mostly New World Order and Syndicate - but not like you might think. See, after the CyberSyn thing, Iteration X got very annoyed at everyone else and the Order and the Syndicate started thinking about how to bring more combat assets in-house."
"CyberSyn? Cyber Sin?"
"An Iteration X backed 'technosocialist' plan or something. Basically, they tried to break the Timetable in... Chile, as I recall, with advanced AI and sociological planning. It was all the Time Motion Managers and the Statisticians. Then they got slapped down for it and Iteration X collectively got super-mad. But that's not important. The main thing is that HELMETSHRIKE was a light force designed to go into non-technological areas and kill Reality Deviants on their home turf. Very little advanced technology, biological implants instead of cybernetics, psychic powers, captured Etherite and Virtual Adept technology… fringe science, basically."
Janice feels faint. Even when she was young, before Awakening, she'd been outraged at things like tales of South American deathsquads and black-ops murderers - and Western governments acting in other countries. Now she finds in her past life, she had been one of the guiltiest parties. One of the Technocrats who went into the places where they weren't winning and murdered anyone who stood up to them. That had been her.
"You hate me for that," Ami says softly.
"You went after people who weren't fighting back!"
"No." Ami's laugh is hollow. "That would have been much easier. People who didn't fight back didn't get a HELMETSHRIKE team. They got a deathsquad sent by the Masses or a US SEAL team. We cleaned up messes when the lesser options got wiped out. You know your 'modern' Rogue Council? They're exactly the sort of people we were sent after. We went after the hardcore fanatics on their own turf." Ami's voice get a cutting note. "And considering the situation you find yourself in, can you really say we were wrong. You're the one who unleashed the Golden Chalice on your own side. The Golden Chalice were our counterparts. We studied their training manuals and their fighting styles."
"That's not the same." Janice doesn't raise her voice. She's in public - but she needs to move. She's been here too long.
There's only laughter from Ami.
Mind in a blur, Janice stomps through slushy New York city streets. She finds her way into a park, and silently curses the way that she's feeling so… weak against Ami's jibes. It's unpleasantly clear how much she relies on minor magics to ease her way through her day, and now it's taken away from her, she misses it.
Sitting down on a park bench, she does it the other way, the way Ami can't say a thing against because before she was Janice Moullin she was someone else and that woman was a trainee psychiatric nurse. She thinks positively. She considers her own cognitive biases. And yes, she comes to terms with things - at least for the moment.
"Isn't it strange?" Ami observes more softly, after Janice has been sitting here for half an hour, trying to centre herself. "I began life as the daughter of a shinto priest, and then the Progenitors picked me up. You began life as a medical professional, and then the witches picked you up.
"I know why you did it," Janice whispers, holding her head in her hands. She lets the attempted distraction pass her by like water. "I do, I really do. I know my own vices. When I have a cause, I don't let go of it. You were the same, weren't you? Under the layers of flirtiness and the way you're a willow tree, who bends. You assume new selves and new faces to hide the fact that at heart, there's something that refuses to bend. You could quieten the voices down that told you that you were killing people because you had a cause,"
"Ha. Even the other killers, as you call them, didn't grasp that. I just kept on smiling and kept my masks up." Ami pauses. There's a siren going by, but it passes them. "So what's your cause, then?"
Janice sighs, rubbing her eyes. "You know, the classically trained witches say I'm not a very good witch," she says. "They're probably right. At least how they define it. Did you ever have people tell you that you were a bad Progenitor?"
"Not really. I mean, there's always the way DC gets treated by lab types, but…" Ami trails off "I've changed my mind. Yes. The answer is yes. Lab types consider the practical applications to be inferior. Save us all from the people who actually have to use things in the field, no, all that matters is everything going right in perfect lab conditions. And I can tell that you find that familiar."
"They call me a bad witch because they think I don't care about the proper way of doing things. And I think they're right. But not in the way they think they're right." Janice pinches her brow. "I think in the end, I care more about the ends than the means. I want a world where people are equal, where there aren't rich bastards screwing over everyone else, where the Syndicate isn't probably richer than everyone else in the world put together. They think I'm a bad witch because I care more about feminism than the moon goddess.
"But," she emphasises this point, "this doesn't make me a Technocrat. I know the moon goddess exists. I just think they're wrong, and the real way to venerate the feminine principle isn't dancing in a circle in the woods. The real way to venerate the feminine principle is to make sure that women get respected for doing 'women's work' - but don't get forced into it."
Ami is silent. A cold wind blows. "Well," she says eventually. "I'm not sure what you're doing not being in the leftie wing of the Ivory Tower. Are you sure you don't want to join the right side?"
"Quite sure. But… returning to the topic. You were an assassin. For a black ops unit called HELMETSHRIKE."
"Yes. Codenamed Cunning Squid."
"... really? What kind of name is that?"
"Oh, everyone had anima code names like that. Wolf, Raven, Starl-" the woman pauses, "Starling."
That was a raw memory. Janice feels the pain - and it's the pain of her nightmares. "Is that really what elite Technocratic assassins do all day?" Janice ask quickly. She just has to distract Ami. "Sit around working what kind of animal they'd be if they were an animal?"
"Well, not all day…"
Janice sighs. "So your fursona was a squid."
"My what?"
"Never mind. Any other notable ones?"
"Well, there was the team lead. Furious Ratel. So called because he just refused to die, would go fight super-enhanced RDs hopped up on drugs with just a knife, and wouldn't go down even if someone shot his eye out. Which happened on more than one occasion."
"... more than one occasion," Janice says faintly.
"The same eye, if you'd believe it. Then there was Stalking Hyena, who got it because she acted like she had a dick."
"... what?"
"Haven't you ever had to deal with the kind of… right, you probably haven't. Take it from me, there's a certain kind of woman in the Union who tries to out-macho the men. Officially, of course, she had the code-name because of the whole 'pack-hunter, vicious predator, actually more dangerous than a lioness' thing, but personally I'd totally say it was because of the hyper-competitive 'trying to be one of the men' streak."
"Oh," Janice says disapprovingly. "I've met a few women like that."
"I notice you're an incredibly driven single woman in her thirties who doesn't mention any children."
Janice tries to glare at a voice in her head, and fails. It really would be much easier if she was seeing Ami, but that wasn't a good idea. If she'd started seeing her, she'd have given the dead woman control over her perceptions - and who knew what else she'd make her see, then? No, she knew well the tales of witches who'd been lost to madness because they'd let a familiar spirit or a god-presence or a past life affect their eyes.
"And HELMETSHRIKE was a lie itself. Well, our squadron was, at least."
"I beg your pardon?" Janice asks.
"HELMETSHRIKE was just a cover for another Technocracy special operations division," Ami admits. "One that actually existed for internal security. Called Vigilance. We pretended to be specialists in hunting RDs in their own home ground - so we had the tools and the knowledge to pretend to be RDs when we killed other Technocrats. All on Control's orders. We did the bloody work they didn't trust the New World Order with."
"... why are you telling me this?" Janice asks. She feels numb.
"Because it's all to do with how I died," Ami whispers. "Because… because you have to understand what I did. What you could do, too. If you believed. What you've already done, unleashing the Golden Chalice on other Traditionalists."
"I… I didn't… that's not the same."
"Only in terms of degree. You're not the one holding the knife, but you're willing to kill people on your own side if they don't live up to your standards."
That comment hurts. It hurts because it cuts too close to the bone. Janice stares at a man walking his dog. Does he have to worry about things like this? Almost certainly not. No one else does.
"Continue," she says eventually.
"I don't have to tell you how hard that work was, psychologically," Ami says. She's picking each word with care. "We had to be capable of independent action. No worthless constructs who couldn't think outside the box. We had to be able to take on false identities at a drop of a moment. We'd spend months out in places where there was no power. I'd go undercover in Traditionalist groups and other amalgams, and worm into their confidence, until they trusted me. Until they liked me. And then I'd kill them. Or I'd lower the defences and then the others would move in. Do you have any idea of how lonely that was?"
"No," Janice admits.
"No. No one ever did. Not even the others, because none of them had to go into deep cover in the way I did. We all had our coping mechanisms. Some… some of them just didn't care because they'd been doing it too long. Some wrapped themselves in machismo - chomping on cigars, coming up with one-liners, you know, living the testosterone-powered superspy dream. Some of them were tight-assed true believers in the Union's cause. Some of them were just arrogant psychic assholes who had the sort of ego you could bend primium around. I had my cause - and when that wasn't enough, I pretended I was someone who just didn't care anymore." She laughs, a hollow noise that drowns out the sounds of the New York cars. "I even managed to believe it myself. I was bouncy and flirty and extroverted and everyone underestimated me."
"It chewed you up and spat you up," Janice says softly.
"No. Not me. Or, really, not just me. There… there was a man. Starling, He was one of those Bond NWO types. Either from some British public school, or faking it. He and Hyena - the two of them had a thing going on. Not a very well-hidden thing, either. Everyone knew, but even our superiors turned a blind eye when she got pregnant. She was the prodigy of some super-high-ranked Order member, so I think she pulled some strings."
"You were jealous," Janice whispers.
"No. Yes. Not like that." Ami sighs. "I was lonely. Somehow… somehow they'd found something that was working out for them in the middle of all that death and lies and bloodshed and… and I liked both of them. But… but every relationship and friendship in my life always ended in death. They die quick, or they waste away slowly. Sometimes it felt like I was cursed.
"And then a mission went really bad. Just stupid, stupid... we had bad intel and hit the wrong target and… we'd attacked chantries with no enlightened losses but then Hyena went down from a stray bullet from a farmer and then Starling lost his head and… and it was a massacre."
"How many did you kill?" Janice asks.
"I wasn't even there," Ami says, each word dragged out of her. "I was on a deep cover op. And then… then I got back feeling like shit because I'd had to kill someone whose only fault was that they were too curious for their own good who Control wanted to be turned into a martyr. And everything was falling apart and I tried to comfort Starling and… and, well. I was lonely and he was a mess and…"
"Oh."
"Yes. 'Oh'."
Janice tries to put things together. "So you slept with your dead friend's partner and-"
"She wasn't dead. Not for very long, at least," Ami admits. "But she'd been dead long enough that it was a slow, painful recovery. And then… and then things got worse. As they always do when I fall for someone. He spiralled down into a black depression and he wouldn't talk to me except in bed. But I'd still come back, because I was so damn lonely."
"I thought I was just a fuck-up when the man I loved willingly defected to the Technocrats," Janice moans. "Is this something my soul does time and time again?" She pales. Fuck. What if it was related to that vision she had, when she was an Order of Reason witch hunter. Had he burned the woman he loved because she was a witch?
"But that wasn't it," Ami whispers. "He… he got worse. He spiralled down and down. He… he Fell. He joined the Nephandi. He betrayed us all and… and he went after Hyena to try to make her into one of them and… and there was an incredibly messed up little bit of me that hated that he went for her, not me."
Janice has no words.
"I… I killed him," Ami says, voice flat. "I think I went mad then. Or maybe I wasn't mad. But I was sure that there had to have been some great conspiracy. That someone had planned everything. Made sure Hyena was hit by the bullet. Made sure Starling was in Vigilance. Made sure I'd watched my little sister die slowly and painfully from radiation poisoning. And I was sure that I was planned to be next, which meant I had to make sure I was dead before they came for me."
The sky overhead seems to have darkened. Janice can smell that there's snow on the way. "Maybe you were right."
"I still don't know. Maybe I was just mad. Trying to deny the role I'd played in everything. That if I hadn't slept with him, he wouldn't have torn himself apart. But I found some tentative links that… that Jodi Blake was at least somewhat involved. That seemed as good a way to die as any."
"Better than most," Janice says bleakly. "And then the suicidal charge into the Labyrinth. The things in there. The bodies. The screams. The children."
"I'm sorry that it's haunted your nightmares for a decade," Ami whispers. "The memories were meant to die with me. I went AWOL to make sure they'd never bring me back. I was meant to escape so… so I'd never become like him. I was going to get out of her trap." She laughs bitterly. "You know, now that I tell it out loud, my life - I have the worst luck in the world."
"I think you did," Janice says, crossing her arms. She rams her hands into the pockets of her winter coat. "I don't know what caused it. Maybe it was the blood on your hands. Maybe it was that you didn't die when you should. But I'm just going to have to live with it."
"Or die with it," the dead woman says morosely.
Rising, Janice brushes down her coat. "Maybe. I'm a witch. I know the power of sacrifice." Inside, her heart twinges. She doesn't feel half as certain as she sounds, and Ami can feel that. And there's a flicker, and she feels her past life worm into her memories, tasting them just she knows Ami's nightmares.
"Wait. You have-"
"Not a word," Janice says firmly. "This is my path, and there's no changing it."
And there's just a little more time to prepare before there's the call from the Golden Chalice.
"You young fool," Francesco says. It's the first thing that comes out of his mouth when she climbs into the back of his yellow cab.
"Excuse me?"
He flicks a little golden chain that hangs from his rear view mirror. It looks like it used to be an icon of some sort, but-
"It's melted."
"Melted as soon as you climbed in," Francesco confirms. "I can feel it radiating off you. You've taken your doom into your own hands and embraced her tight. Mad. You're mad."
"Maybe," Janice admits.
"I have half a mind to kill you right here and now," the old man says bluntly. "Maybe your next life might be less of a little fool as to embrace something so toxic. Your aura is sick."
"You were right," Janice says. "There is something terrible in the history of my soul. I found out what it is. But you won't kill me, because my path leads to Warren Roth. And if it kills me, you'll have your body."
"Climb down from your wicker man," Francesco says with disgust. "I had thought you had better sense than most witches and weren't so prone to self-immolation."
"Weren't you the one who just said you wanted me dead?"
"No, I said I am considering whether your soul would be better off if I killed you. I'm a professional at judging such things. You're an amateur."
"I thought you said you had the help I asked you for."
"Yes! And I said that before I knew what you did to yourself!"
"He's angry," Ami observes from within Janice's head. "He's actually surprised. He didn't expect me and he didn't expect you."
"What's done is done," Janice says firmly.
The old man exhales. "I hope I do not regret getting you involved," he says bitterly. "But yes. I know more about Warren Roth. And I know who killed his parents."
Janice leans forwards. "Who?"
"It was us," he admits.
"What?"
"The ones who killed his parents. It was one of the Euthanatoi. I've called in a few favours and found out everything I could. And I acquired their diary." He reaches into his briefcase, and pulls out a vacuum-wrapped notebook bound in black leather. "Here."
Janice takes it from him. "I was hoping it was going to turn out to be vampires," she says sadly. "It might have been possible to divert him to wiping out the undead."
"Yes, that would be nice, wouldn't it?" Francesco rubs his hands together, blowing on them in the cold taxi. "But no. Robert Segador - the one who did it - noted that he cast auguries on every family member, and slew the ones that Fate said the world would be better without."
Pinching her brow, Janice tries to constrain her irritation. With Ami in her head and the leaden weight of Technocratic modes of thought weighing on her, she has even less patience than usual for such bloody, murderous actions. "So you people murdered an entire family and left a five year old boy orphaned and alone," she says hotly. "No wonder he's devoted his life to revenge."
"Segador was always said to be too free with the knife," the Euthanatos mage says. He isn't even condemning the action properly, Janice thinks irritably. "Oh, I can see you're angry at me, but what do you want me to do? Apologise for the actions of a man who's lost to us?"
Damn. She'd been hoping that she might be able to offer up the man who killed Roth's parents. "He's dead?"
"Not dead to us," the old man says, with a sigh. "But lost. Fanatics like that seldom last long. He attacked a Technocratic base attached to MIT in Boston in the early eighties - they call it MIHT. It's an Iteration X facility and they took him alive. We have records of him as an Iteration X Armature - I've also got a print out of his full service records there, and everything they used him for. Terror work, as it happens - making examples. He was killed in combat in the early nineties, to the best of my knowledge, though most of him was salvaged for a HITMark that was lost in '99."
"Goddess. What a mess," Janice groans.
"That much is true," he agrees.
"The killers on both sides are just as bloody," Ami says bleakly. "He could be an Operative and you wouldn't know the difference. He's even wearing black."
"So," he asks Janice. "Do you even have a plan, or were you too busy weighing yourself down with karmic debt?"
The Plan
How is Janice going to get in to talk to Roth?
[ ] Roth is a Technocrat. He'll listen to Control when they tell him to go to a nice restaurant and listen to a woman. [Expends Vigilance Control Code]
[ ] The Golden Chalice should be able to get her in [Option invalid, Chalice committed to dealing with the Disciples]
[ ] Wearing Ami's face, she should be able to get a meeting with him. After all, she died in suspicious circumstances, didn't she? [Option invalid, foolproof appearance changing option not taken]
[ ] Maybe she can 'arrange' to stumble into him when he goes to get coffee or something (x0.7)
[ ] Or maybe she can get into his home and surprise him when he's going to bed (x0.2 unless a really, really good method is provided)
[ ] Write-in
The Periphery
Is there anything else she gets done before she meets Francesco
[ ] Write-in rotes, plans, going out and buying a nice smart black suit, etc
They bargain. It is a bargain of witches - dark, bloody and full of sacrifices. Janice wishes that her past life wasn't apparently so willing to whittle her to the bone - but then again, even friendly spirits bargain hard. And she's far from sure that the woman she once was is a friendly spirit.
But she makes the deal. Ami will be a voice in her ear, a whispering familiar who shares knowledge about the Technocracy and their tools, who aids her with words and who will share with her a terrible magical secret she took with her to the grave. Janice shudders to think at what she now knows - one of the words of power that the masters of the Technocracy stole from ancient gods and reforged into a new shape.
Of course, that comes at a cost. All things do. Ami Shirai is in her head now, and their souls are one - so she has a claim on Janice's body. The dead woman will be able to fight her for control while this contract lasts. Likewise, a ban now holds her, and she will suffer terribly if she uses any of her Verbena magics which affect the mind or the flesh. The Progenitor insisted on it. Finally, and perhaps most darkly, she has accepted the weight of fate for the actions of her past life. The sins of the dead woman are hers - and the mere echoes of those sins before left her with nightmares and bad dreams.
Still, Janice shoulders these burdens willingly. She is one of the Verbena, and though she and people like Selene may not get along, they both know that power lies in sacrifice.
Emerging from her astral spaces, she gulps down air. She feels faint, like she hasn't been breathing properly. Every muscle hurts. It feels like her head is full of eyes, sudden insight showing her things about the Technocracy she never knew before.
"What the fuck were you doing?" Chris breathes, jolting up from where she had been sitting on a couch working through a bottle of vodka. "I could see the power in your veins. Still can. Jan, what the fuck?"
Janice moves to stand, and winces. Her legs have gone to sleep and she nearly topples. Chris barely catches her. "Thanks." She takes a deep breath, massaging her thighs. "I… found my past-life. Talked to her. Found an old legacy."
All of it is true. None of it is truthful. She hates to spread such falsehoods to someone she trusts, but she only trusts Chris in very specific ways. She'd trust her with her life, but she can't trust her not to gossip.
"An old legacy?" Chris echoes sounding impressed. "Damn. Past life stuff never worked for me, and the bitchy feathered snake never gave me anything like this."
"It won't last for long," Janice croaks, pulling herself up and lurching over to the sink. She begins cleaning herself up, wiping off the ritual markings. Chris rushes over to help her, getting the bits she can't see. "Long enough for what I need to do, I hope." She almost reflexively goes to invoke the Fool to endure through this ache, only for sudden nausea to overwhelm her. She almost vomits. It feels wrong at a soul-deep level to do something like that - and she knows that's likely a sign of benevolence, or something close to it, from Ami. A warning shot of the feelings of a Technocrat who tries to do 'reality deviance', rather than accidentally breaking her oath.
"There, there," Chris whispers, not knowing the real reasons. "Now, are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"The Golden Chalice have…" she shifts, and adjusts her phrasing. "I owe them, okay," she says. Her words come easily. She can play Chris like a fiddle, because this double-sense of her-ness and Ami-ness just works so well. It's like looking at the world in stereo when everyone else is stuck in mono. "And so they won't let me tell you."
Chris pouts, and blows a raspberry. "Stupid Euthanatoses. They're just as gothy as Hollow Ones, but way less fun to be around. Well, I mean, the fun ones to be around, that is. San Fran-style ones, not Miami-style ones." She knots the bottom of her sleeveless top. "So you're going to be off."
"Soon," Janice admits. "I have so many things to do and little time to do them in."
"Can't I help?" It's almost a plea.
And that's what Janice has been leading up to. "Yes, you can," she says. She wants to cry - but she can't show it. She won't let it out. "I have something to ask of you."
"Oh?"
"I'll have a letter for you to deliver to Selene. In person. I need it to… to come from someone she trusts. And I can't send it myself. Even if I were to trust its delivery to the will of the gods, the risk of it falling into hostile hands would be too great. The Technocracy has its ways - and there are others listening. I don't trust anyone but you to deliver it personally."
Chris narrows her eyes. "It's not just that," she says bluntly.
"No. It's not. If you can get me the things I'll need, I'll write it for her."
Rummaging around, Chris produces a sketch pad. "Will that do?" she says, handing it over. "Pen, pen, pen… I'm sure I've got one around here somewhere."
Janice takes the chance to flip through the pad as she looks for a free page. Her friend has a quite distinctive art style that she uses to channel her own power using inks made up with her own blood. She sees veiled winged women with a bow, lewd many-armed hermaphroditic idols and a horned moon god whose arms are spread wide in innocent benediction. She pretends she hasn't seen them. She doesn't recognise them as any of Selene's gods, and that suggests that Chris might be doing what Janice has been trying to get her to do for a while and inventing new masks for old gods. But Chris would just get awkward if she pointed that out.
As a result, she isn't looking at any of the pictures when Chris returns with a pen. She quickly describes the current situation in a note, explaining it as best she can - well, apart from the 'I'm a reincarnation of a Technocrat' bit because that would ruin any chance of Selene listening to her - and then borrowing a candle to seal it with wax and her own thumbprint
"Take care," she tells Chris. "Don't go too quickly, and don't rush. And don't read it. Promise me this, Chris. I've laid a curse on it so it'll burn up if anyone but me reads it."
"Jan." Chris looks serious, scared, even lost. "That's… is that a will?"
Janice smiles at her with a confidence she doesn't really feel. "No. You know where my will is. No, this is what I found out about Liam." She pauses, and considers it. It's a bad idea, but she owes Chris this much. "I'm doing this - with the Euthanatoi - to help Selene. The Verbena need someone like her. But she needs people to stop her just turning into something that's just as unchanging as the 'Crats. You know I left you a bunch of my books and notebooks and stuff from my astral exploration in my will, right? Make sure she gets copies. If I'm going to put myself at risk for her, she better archive my shit."
Chris laughs, but it's a hollow, worried noise. "I want to stay and help you."
"You are helping me," Janice reassures her, looking around this cramped, trash-filled apartment. "This isn't the kind of fight you're good at." She sighs, and starts looking for her outside clothes. In the mirror she looks wild-haired and a mess, but she's going to have to make do. "It's a war of ideas, when it comes down to it," she says, to herself. "Doesn't make it any less real."
Heading down in the hidden elevator, Janice hugs herself. She hopes that wasn't the last time she'll see Chris.
"You're not the first person who's told me it's all a war of ideas," Ami says in the back of her mind, amusement in her voice. "Of course, the others were much more… towerish. In an ivory way. Now, about the deal…"
"Yes, yes, I know," Janice mutters. "Coffee shop. Food. And I'll get you a paper. In fact, I'll get you something better. It might just blow your mind."
***
"Oh, so they rolled out EntertaiNet to the Masses," Ami says, looking at the rented computer in a safe coffee shop that Janice knows. It's positioned so she can see the door and no one can see her. "Neat. Is that the thing which is meant to blow my mind?"
Janice scowls. It had been meant to.
"I died in the 1980s, not the 1950s," the voice in her head says with a lilt. "Just because you by definition hadn't been born yet doesn't mean everything was just bashing stones together. It's a terminal linked to a mainframe. We had those."
She's not a computer person, so she agrees. "Now. I'm going to give you fifteen minutes on TradWiki to check the state of the world and confirm that I wasn't lying to you. Then in return…"
"Yes, yes, the truth. Let's see what your VA infocache says first."
Janice begins the secure log-in procedure. "I'll take back control if you do more than just browse," she whispers.
"Yes, yes. So… where do I input commands?"
"Just type into that box in the right hand corner and click 'Search' or press 'Enter'," Janice says. She feels cold and almost like she got turned upside down as she feels her own mind's control of her body be pressed back and something deep within her take control. What's worse is that she doesn't feel totally locked out. Her hands move and she doesn't feel like she has total control, but a bit of her feels like… like it's still her doing it. It's like the precise opposite of having one's arm go to sleep so it doesn't feel like yours. It's like feeling like someone else's arm is yours.
--which is something Janice has done, of course. She doesn't like subjugating the will of another, but she knows how to worm into the spaces of their mind and puppet them from from within. And from how at-ease Ami feels doing what she's doing, she strongly suspects that her past life had some kind of Technocratic tool for subjugating the wills of others or something like that.
But there's not so much time to think of that - not when she's busy trying to watch for betrayal from Ami as she rapidly scans through TradWiki pages. She goes straight to the Progenitor(Convention) page and hisses with annoyance at the sight of the fact that, yes, a Professor Li now runs the organisation. And then she's off in an erratic pattern of names and dates and locations that gives Janice simultaneous feelings of deja vu, presque vu and jamais vu.
It's a deeply unpleasant experience and she hopes she never has to go through it again. The memory-flickers she's receiving from the emergence of her past-life in her consciousness makes her feel like she's once again in the mind of someone with early stage dementia, trying to cure them - only it's her own mind and she realises the 'cure' would destroy her sense of self, fusing her and Ami. And neither of them want that.
"Shit," Ami says in her head, when she seems to have everything she wants. "What a mess. Control is really gone?"
"I think so," Janice whispers.
She feels the hair raise up on the back of her neck and shivers. "Brr," Ami says. "Wow, that's such a weird thought you had it too."
"Don't do that."
"Sorry." Ami pauses. "Well, if they're gone, maybe things will be fine." She seems to be talking more to herself. "Okay. Let's talk. Confession time. I may have not been utterly honest when I said I was a Damage Control monster hunter."
"I suspected that."
"Well, yes, I always was too clever for my own good, so you must be too clever for my own good." Janice flinches. That struck a nerve, and she hears Ami laugh. "Well, I started off as that. Then I moved into hunting higher-value targets. The most dangerous game, so to speak."
"You were an assassin."
"That's such a harsh term. I always preferred 'terminator'. But those Iteration X bastards stole the name for their full cyborg exojocks."
"It's a movie about a killer robot now," Janice says. "Came out 1984. Union propaganda about the HITMark V."
"Damn them," Ami growls. "They're appropriating my culture!" She pauses. "Wait, that wasn't me. I don't talk like some Ivory Tower twit."
"... yes, I think that was me," Janice says, ignoring the jibe. "Going on like this too long will be dangerous - for both our senses of self. So you were an assassin?"
"A terminator, yes. They picked me out as a 'heavy' unit for a specialist force. Ami looks down, and looks up again. "Have you ever heard of HELMETSHRIKE?" she asks.
Janice thinks. "It's a type of bird, isn't it?" she tries.
"So, no." Ami sighs. "It was a Union task force in the 70s and 80s. Mostly New World Order and Syndicate - but not like you might think. See, after the CyberSyn thing, Iteration X got very annoyed at everyone else and the Order and the Syndicate started thinking about how to bring more combat assets in-house."
"CyberSyn? Cyber Sin?"
"An Iteration X backed 'technosocialist' plan or something. Basically, they tried to break the Timetable in... Chile, as I recall, with advanced AI and sociological planning. It was all the Time Motion Managers and the Statisticians. Then they got slapped down for it and Iteration X collectively got super-mad. But that's not important. The main thing is that HELMETSHRIKE was a light force designed to go into non-technological areas and kill Reality Deviants on their home turf. Very little advanced technology, biological implants instead of cybernetics, psychic powers, captured Etherite and Virtual Adept technology… fringe science, basically."
Janice feels faint. Even when she was young, before Awakening, she'd been outraged at things like tales of South American deathsquads and black-ops murderers - and Western governments acting in other countries. Now she finds in her past life, she had been one of the guiltiest parties. One of the Technocrats who went into the places where they weren't winning and murdered anyone who stood up to them. That had been her.
"You hate me for that," Ami says softly.
"You went after people who weren't fighting back!"
"No." Ami's laugh is hollow. "That would have been much easier. People who didn't fight back didn't get a HELMETSHRIKE team. They got a deathsquad sent by the Masses or a US SEAL team. We cleaned up messes when the lesser options got wiped out. You know your 'modern' Rogue Council? They're exactly the sort of people we were sent after. We went after the hardcore fanatics on their own turf." Ami's voice get a cutting note. "And considering the situation you find yourself in, can you really say we were wrong. You're the one who unleashed the Golden Chalice on your own side. The Golden Chalice were our counterparts. We studied their training manuals and their fighting styles."
"That's not the same." Janice doesn't raise her voice. She's in public - but she needs to move. She's been here too long.
There's only laughter from Ami.
...
Mind in a blur, Janice stomps through slushy New York city streets. She finds her way into a park, and silently curses the way that she's feeling so… weak against Ami's jibes. It's unpleasantly clear how much she relies on minor magics to ease her way through her day, and now it's taken away from her, she misses it.
Sitting down on a park bench, she does it the other way, the way Ami can't say a thing against because before she was Janice Moullin she was someone else and that woman was a trainee psychiatric nurse. She thinks positively. She considers her own cognitive biases. And yes, she comes to terms with things - at least for the moment.
"Isn't it strange?" Ami observes more softly, after Janice has been sitting here for half an hour, trying to centre herself. "I began life as the daughter of a shinto priest, and then the Progenitors picked me up. You began life as a medical professional, and then the witches picked you up.
"I know why you did it," Janice whispers, holding her head in her hands. She lets the attempted distraction pass her by like water. "I do, I really do. I know my own vices. When I have a cause, I don't let go of it. You were the same, weren't you? Under the layers of flirtiness and the way you're a willow tree, who bends. You assume new selves and new faces to hide the fact that at heart, there's something that refuses to bend. You could quieten the voices down that told you that you were killing people because you had a cause,"
"Ha. Even the other killers, as you call them, didn't grasp that. I just kept on smiling and kept my masks up." Ami pauses. There's a siren going by, but it passes them. "So what's your cause, then?"
Janice sighs, rubbing her eyes. "You know, the classically trained witches say I'm not a very good witch," she says. "They're probably right. At least how they define it. Did you ever have people tell you that you were a bad Progenitor?"
"Not really. I mean, there's always the way DC gets treated by lab types, but…" Ami trails off "I've changed my mind. Yes. The answer is yes. Lab types consider the practical applications to be inferior. Save us all from the people who actually have to use things in the field, no, all that matters is everything going right in perfect lab conditions. And I can tell that you find that familiar."
"They call me a bad witch because they think I don't care about the proper way of doing things. And I think they're right. But not in the way they think they're right." Janice pinches her brow. "I think in the end, I care more about the ends than the means. I want a world where people are equal, where there aren't rich bastards screwing over everyone else, where the Syndicate isn't probably richer than everyone else in the world put together. They think I'm a bad witch because I care more about feminism than the moon goddess.
"But," she emphasises this point, "this doesn't make me a Technocrat. I know the moon goddess exists. I just think they're wrong, and the real way to venerate the feminine principle isn't dancing in a circle in the woods. The real way to venerate the feminine principle is to make sure that women get respected for doing 'women's work' - but don't get forced into it."
Ami is silent. A cold wind blows. "Well," she says eventually. "I'm not sure what you're doing not being in the leftie wing of the Ivory Tower. Are you sure you don't want to join the right side?"
"Quite sure. But… returning to the topic. You were an assassin. For a black ops unit called HELMETSHRIKE."
"Yes. Codenamed Cunning Squid."
"... really? What kind of name is that?"
"Oh, everyone had anima code names like that. Wolf, Raven, Starl-" the woman pauses, "Starling."
That was a raw memory. Janice feels the pain - and it's the pain of her nightmares. "Is that really what elite Technocratic assassins do all day?" Janice ask quickly. She just has to distract Ami. "Sit around working what kind of animal they'd be if they were an animal?"
"Well, not all day…"
Janice sighs. "So your fursona was a squid."
"My what?"
"Never mind. Any other notable ones?"
"Well, there was the team lead. Furious Ratel. So called because he just refused to die, would go fight super-enhanced RDs hopped up on drugs with just a knife, and wouldn't go down even if someone shot his eye out. Which happened on more than one occasion."
"... more than one occasion," Janice says faintly.
"The same eye, if you'd believe it. Then there was Stalking Hyena, who got it because she acted like she had a dick."
"... what?"
"Haven't you ever had to deal with the kind of… right, you probably haven't. Take it from me, there's a certain kind of woman in the Union who tries to out-macho the men. Officially, of course, she had the code-name because of the whole 'pack-hunter, vicious predator, actually more dangerous than a lioness' thing, but personally I'd totally say it was because of the hyper-competitive 'trying to be one of the men' streak."
"Oh," Janice says disapprovingly. "I've met a few women like that."
"I notice you're an incredibly driven single woman in her thirties who doesn't mention any children."
Janice tries to glare at a voice in her head, and fails. It really would be much easier if she was seeing Ami, but that wasn't a good idea. If she'd started seeing her, she'd have given the dead woman control over her perceptions - and who knew what else she'd make her see, then? No, she knew well the tales of witches who'd been lost to madness because they'd let a familiar spirit or a god-presence or a past life affect their eyes.
"And HELMETSHRIKE was a lie itself. Well, our squadron was, at least."
"I beg your pardon?" Janice asks.
"HELMETSHRIKE was just a cover for another Technocracy special operations division," Ami admits. "One that actually existed for internal security. Called Vigilance. We pretended to be specialists in hunting RDs in their own home ground - so we had the tools and the knowledge to pretend to be RDs when we killed other Technocrats. All on Control's orders. We did the bloody work they didn't trust the New World Order with."
"... why are you telling me this?" Janice asks. She feels numb.
"Because it's all to do with how I died," Ami whispers. "Because… because you have to understand what I did. What you could do, too. If you believed. What you've already done, unleashing the Golden Chalice on other Traditionalists."
"I… I didn't… that's not the same."
"Only in terms of degree. You're not the one holding the knife, but you're willing to kill people on your own side if they don't live up to your standards."
That comment hurts. It hurts because it cuts too close to the bone. Janice stares at a man walking his dog. Does he have to worry about things like this? Almost certainly not. No one else does.
"Continue," she says eventually.
"I don't have to tell you how hard that work was, psychologically," Ami says. She's picking each word with care. "We had to be capable of independent action. No worthless constructs who couldn't think outside the box. We had to be able to take on false identities at a drop of a moment. We'd spend months out in places where there was no power. I'd go undercover in Traditionalist groups and other amalgams, and worm into their confidence, until they trusted me. Until they liked me. And then I'd kill them. Or I'd lower the defences and then the others would move in. Do you have any idea of how lonely that was?"
"No," Janice admits.
"No. No one ever did. Not even the others, because none of them had to go into deep cover in the way I did. We all had our coping mechanisms. Some… some of them just didn't care because they'd been doing it too long. Some wrapped themselves in machismo - chomping on cigars, coming up with one-liners, you know, living the testosterone-powered superspy dream. Some of them were tight-assed true believers in the Union's cause. Some of them were just arrogant psychic assholes who had the sort of ego you could bend primium around. I had my cause - and when that wasn't enough, I pretended I was someone who just didn't care anymore." She laughs, a hollow noise that drowns out the sounds of the New York cars. "I even managed to believe it myself. I was bouncy and flirty and extroverted and everyone underestimated me."
"It chewed you up and spat you up," Janice says softly.
"No. Not me. Or, really, not just me. There… there was a man. Starling, He was one of those Bond NWO types. Either from some British public school, or faking it. He and Hyena - the two of them had a thing going on. Not a very well-hidden thing, either. Everyone knew, but even our superiors turned a blind eye when she got pregnant. She was the prodigy of some super-high-ranked Order member, so I think she pulled some strings."
"You were jealous," Janice whispers.
"No. Yes. Not like that." Ami sighs. "I was lonely. Somehow… somehow they'd found something that was working out for them in the middle of all that death and lies and bloodshed and… and I liked both of them. But… but every relationship and friendship in my life always ended in death. They die quick, or they waste away slowly. Sometimes it felt like I was cursed.
"And then a mission went really bad. Just stupid, stupid... we had bad intel and hit the wrong target and… we'd attacked chantries with no enlightened losses but then Hyena went down from a stray bullet from a farmer and then Starling lost his head and… and it was a massacre."
"How many did you kill?" Janice asks.
"I wasn't even there," Ami says, each word dragged out of her. "I was on a deep cover op. And then… then I got back feeling like shit because I'd had to kill someone whose only fault was that they were too curious for their own good who Control wanted to be turned into a martyr. And everything was falling apart and I tried to comfort Starling and… and, well. I was lonely and he was a mess and…"
"Oh."
"Yes. 'Oh'."
Janice tries to put things together. "So you slept with your dead friend's partner and-"
"She wasn't dead. Not for very long, at least," Ami admits. "But she'd been dead long enough that it was a slow, painful recovery. And then… and then things got worse. As they always do when I fall for someone. He spiralled down into a black depression and he wouldn't talk to me except in bed. But I'd still come back, because I was so damn lonely."
"I thought I was just a fuck-up when the man I loved willingly defected to the Technocrats," Janice moans. "Is this something my soul does time and time again?" She pales. Fuck. What if it was related to that vision she had, when she was an Order of Reason witch hunter. Had he burned the woman he loved because she was a witch?
"But that wasn't it," Ami whispers. "He… he got worse. He spiralled down and down. He… he Fell. He joined the Nephandi. He betrayed us all and… and he went after Hyena to try to make her into one of them and… and there was an incredibly messed up little bit of me that hated that he went for her, not me."
Janice has no words.
"I… I killed him," Ami says, voice flat. "I think I went mad then. Or maybe I wasn't mad. But I was sure that there had to have been some great conspiracy. That someone had planned everything. Made sure Hyena was hit by the bullet. Made sure Starling was in Vigilance. Made sure I'd watched my little sister die slowly and painfully from radiation poisoning. And I was sure that I was planned to be next, which meant I had to make sure I was dead before they came for me."
The sky overhead seems to have darkened. Janice can smell that there's snow on the way. "Maybe you were right."
"I still don't know. Maybe I was just mad. Trying to deny the role I'd played in everything. That if I hadn't slept with him, he wouldn't have torn himself apart. But I found some tentative links that… that Jodi Blake was at least somewhat involved. That seemed as good a way to die as any."
"Better than most," Janice says bleakly. "And then the suicidal charge into the Labyrinth. The things in there. The bodies. The screams. The children."
"I'm sorry that it's haunted your nightmares for a decade," Ami whispers. "The memories were meant to die with me. I went AWOL to make sure they'd never bring me back. I was meant to escape so… so I'd never become like him. I was going to get out of her trap." She laughs bitterly. "You know, now that I tell it out loud, my life - I have the worst luck in the world."
"I think you did," Janice says, crossing her arms. She rams her hands into the pockets of her winter coat. "I don't know what caused it. Maybe it was the blood on your hands. Maybe it was that you didn't die when you should. But I'm just going to have to live with it."
"Or die with it," the dead woman says morosely.
Rising, Janice brushes down her coat. "Maybe. I'm a witch. I know the power of sacrifice." Inside, her heart twinges. She doesn't feel half as certain as she sounds, and Ami can feel that. And there's a flicker, and she feels her past life worm into her memories, tasting them just she knows Ami's nightmares.
"Wait. You have-"
"Not a word," Janice says firmly. "This is my path, and there's no changing it."
And there's just a little more time to prepare before there's the call from the Golden Chalice.
...
"You young fool," Francesco says. It's the first thing that comes out of his mouth when she climbs into the back of his yellow cab.
"Excuse me?"
He flicks a little golden chain that hangs from his rear view mirror. It looks like it used to be an icon of some sort, but-
"It's melted."
"Melted as soon as you climbed in," Francesco confirms. "I can feel it radiating off you. You've taken your doom into your own hands and embraced her tight. Mad. You're mad."
"Maybe," Janice admits.
"I have half a mind to kill you right here and now," the old man says bluntly. "Maybe your next life might be less of a little fool as to embrace something so toxic. Your aura is sick."
"You were right," Janice says. "There is something terrible in the history of my soul. I found out what it is. But you won't kill me, because my path leads to Warren Roth. And if it kills me, you'll have your body."
"Climb down from your wicker man," Francesco says with disgust. "I had thought you had better sense than most witches and weren't so prone to self-immolation."
"Weren't you the one who just said you wanted me dead?"
"No, I said I am considering whether your soul would be better off if I killed you. I'm a professional at judging such things. You're an amateur."
"I thought you said you had the help I asked you for."
"Yes! And I said that before I knew what you did to yourself!"
"He's angry," Ami observes from within Janice's head. "He's actually surprised. He didn't expect me and he didn't expect you."
"What's done is done," Janice says firmly.
The old man exhales. "I hope I do not regret getting you involved," he says bitterly. "But yes. I know more about Warren Roth. And I know who killed his parents."
Janice leans forwards. "Who?"
"It was us," he admits.
"What?"
"The ones who killed his parents. It was one of the Euthanatoi. I've called in a few favours and found out everything I could. And I acquired their diary." He reaches into his briefcase, and pulls out a vacuum-wrapped notebook bound in black leather. "Here."
Janice takes it from him. "I was hoping it was going to turn out to be vampires," she says sadly. "It might have been possible to divert him to wiping out the undead."
"Yes, that would be nice, wouldn't it?" Francesco rubs his hands together, blowing on them in the cold taxi. "But no. Robert Segador - the one who did it - noted that he cast auguries on every family member, and slew the ones that Fate said the world would be better without."
Pinching her brow, Janice tries to constrain her irritation. With Ami in her head and the leaden weight of Technocratic modes of thought weighing on her, she has even less patience than usual for such bloody, murderous actions. "So you people murdered an entire family and left a five year old boy orphaned and alone," she says hotly. "No wonder he's devoted his life to revenge."
"Segador was always said to be too free with the knife," the Euthanatos mage says. He isn't even condemning the action properly, Janice thinks irritably. "Oh, I can see you're angry at me, but what do you want me to do? Apologise for the actions of a man who's lost to us?"
Damn. She'd been hoping that she might be able to offer up the man who killed Roth's parents. "He's dead?"
"Not dead to us," the old man says, with a sigh. "But lost. Fanatics like that seldom last long. He attacked a Technocratic base attached to MIT in Boston in the early eighties - they call it MIHT. It's an Iteration X facility and they took him alive. We have records of him as an Iteration X Armature - I've also got a print out of his full service records there, and everything they used him for. Terror work, as it happens - making examples. He was killed in combat in the early nineties, to the best of my knowledge, though most of him was salvaged for a HITMark that was lost in '99."
"Goddess. What a mess," Janice groans.
"That much is true," he agrees.
"The killers on both sides are just as bloody," Ami says bleakly. "He could be an Operative and you wouldn't know the difference. He's even wearing black."
"So," he asks Janice. "Do you even have a plan, or were you too busy weighing yourself down with karmic debt?"
The Plan
How is Janice going to get in to talk to Roth?
[ ] Roth is a Technocrat. He'll listen to Control when they tell him to go to a nice restaurant and listen to a woman. [Expends Vigilance Control Code]
[ ] Maybe she can 'arrange' to stumble into him when he goes to get coffee or something (x0.7)
[ ] Or maybe she can get into his home and surprise him when he's going to bed (x0.2 unless a really, really good method is provided)
[ ] Write-in
The Periphery
Is there anything else she gets done before she meets Francesco
[ ] Write-in rotes, plans, going out and buying a nice smart black suit, etc
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