"Okay," you say.
"Matthew claps his hands again and strides off down a side hallway, murmuring to himself. Gavin watches him go, then ducks down under the faux round table and pulls out a cardboard box filled with spray paint, chalk, and various other art supplies.
"Up," he says to Ginny and Bailey, both of whom are sitting on the table. The girls roll their eyes but hop out of their seats, Ginny stretching her arms above her head while Bailey drains the last of her beer. Gavin places his hand in the center of the table, and with a flare of power the heavy wood begins sinking into the floor. "I can't set up the interface until I know how many of us are going in," he says, staring at the box of art supplies. The table finishes its descent, top now level with the ground. The wood forms a sharp contrast with the floor around it – a magic circle as functional as any you've seen.
"You and Matthew have to go," Piper says. "I think I'd like to come too."
"I'm not letting you guys out of my sight until we make a decision about him," Ginny says, glancing your way. "So I'm in."
"I'm coming," Annabelle says. Nobody looks particularly comfortable with the idea, but nobody challenges her on it.
"Bailey?" Piper asks.
The green haired girl shakes her head. "No. Someone has to watch Gemma."
"She won't be up for a while," Gavin says. "The only sleeping spell I have that's strong enough to affect one of you is…strong stuff."
"Bailey," Annabelle says. "I know this would be hard for you, but…we need you in there. I trust you to be objective. To make sure that…to make sure."
You bite the inside of your cheek. Looks like Annabelle might not be as far into your corner as you thought. Is she afraid you were manipulating your shared dreams together? Even if you'd wanted to, you weren't sure you could've done anything in the face of the hurricane that is her psyche. But she's worried, all the same. Afraid of you, all the same.
Bailey paces back and forth, a multitude of emotions flicker across her face. Her fingers clench tight around the handle of her battleaxe.
"It'll be different than it is with you," Gavin says, his voice level, almost soothing. "I promise."
Bailey opens her mouth, then closes it again. She nods, then stalks over to a minifridge to crack open another beer.
"Okay then, that's six of us," Gavin says. "Good even number. Should be pretty easy." He shakes up a can of red spraypaint and gets to work, painting circles on the ground just beyond the limits of the table.
Matthew emerges from a doorway on the opposite side of the room to the one he vanished into, a mess of wiring and machinery in his arms. He checks over Gavin's head.
"All of us?" He asks.
Gavin nods. "Everyone's on board."
"Good, an even number," Matthew says with a satisfied nod. He lays down the jumble in his arms and gets to work stringing the wires around the circle.
In the far corner of the room, Ginny and Piper talk quietly, Ginny grasping Piper's hands. Not far behind you, Bailey kneels behind Annabelle's wheelchair, her arms draped over the blonde's shoulders. Even without being able to work spellsigns, it wouldn't be hard for you to eavesdrop, but spying, here, now, strikes you as…the kind of plan you shouldn't be hatching anymore.
"Gavin, Matthew," you ask. "Is it okay if I stand up? Watch you guys work?"
Matthew and Gavin exchange a glance, then shrug. "Why not?" Matthew asks.
You get to your feet and wander over to where they're working, glancing over them as they shuffle around the circle on hands and knees. Gavin has drawn seven small circles whose edges kiss the outer boundary of the main circle, one at due south with the others spaced evenly between east and west. Now he's tracing bold, direct lines between each of the circles, like digging canals for the power to flow through. Matthew has a macbook booting up, connected to the various circles through dozens of feet of black wire.
Strangely, their work looks even more alien to you than Talia's did, when the two of you were restructuring the Roosevelt wards together. The runes she had used were foreign, but you understood their functions – to shape and mold energy as it moved, refining it from raw, uncontrolled power into polished spellwork that did what you wanted it to do. Matthew and Gavin, by contrast, seem to be leaving no space for runes of any kind.
"Where are you going to put the runes?" You ask, curiosity finally getting the better of you. Magic had never been your life, like it had been for some scholars back in Camelot, but it had been a vital piece of your childhood curriculum, and you had never liked the feeling of a puzzle you couldn't solve.
Gavin taps his fingers against the macbook without looking up from his painting. "There's an app for that," he says. "Matthew and I found it when we first discovered magic. You'd be surprised how much real shit is floating around on the internet, pretending to be a cheap Harry Potter knock-off."
"It gets the basics down, but it's super limited," Matthew explains. "I've been having to recode the thing on the fly as we learn, but it's faster and more convenient than doing all the runework by hand."
"You do all that through a computer?" You ask, unable to keep the incredulity out of your voice. You've always known it was possible, you suppose – the Architects were said to have married magic and mundane technology, and at the Ivory Palace you had met a young girl who wove spells in clockwork. But the idea that humans might do something similar had…never really occurred to you. Each race wove magic differently.
Matthew nods. "I've been working on a way to digitize the entire process. The theory is sound…runes, paint, computers, they're all just different interfaces we use to access the same energy. Think about how many spells you could carry on your phone."
You're chewing on his words when Bailey comes up from behind you, shooting you a glare as she passes. She kneels down net to Matthew and whispers something in his ear, hands hiding her lips from your vision.
"Now?" Matthew asks. "With everyone here?" He glances over at you and shoves a thumb in your direction. "With him here?"
Bailey turns her head to you, a crimson blush sneaking up her neck and into her cheeks. She breathes deeply through her nose and the blush freezes, then slowly fades. "Everyone else has already seen it," she whispers. "It would help. I…need help."
"Okay," Matthew says, nodding. "Is Ginny joining in, or is it just us?"
"I've already said yes," Ginny calls from across the room. She gives Matthew two thumbs up then gestures to a pair of laptops set beside her. "Ready to set up when you two are done."
Gavin gets to his feet, recapping the spray pain and studying his work with a critical eye. "I'm done," he says. "Should we start getting people into position?"
"Yeah, give me a chance to double check this code," Matthew says, eyes skimming over long lines of white text on a black background. "I stitched this together from whatever neuromancy was left in our brains, so I'd like a chance to give it a once over."
Gavin nods and points at you. "Morgan," he says, "you need to lie on your back, with your head in here." He taps his foot against the southernmost circle. "Get it?"
You nod. From the way Gavin has drawn his pathways, the energy will well up under the heads of the Breakfast Club, then emanate outwards through the circle to you. If you had to guess, you'd say the energy will carry microimpressions of their psyches along with it, like projecting their consciousnesses directly into your brain. Matthew and Gavin built this from whatever neuromantic remnants they found in their own heads? That was like…rebuilding a car from the wreckage of its own explosion. And then taking that car apart and building a motorcycle instead. "Um, I need…" you turn slightly, drawing attention to the shackles locking your hands behind your back.
"Oh, right." Gavin strides over and touches the shackles, exerting power. The shackles don't vanish but they do disconnect, leaving you free to separate your hands. Gavin grabs your wrists and guides the shackles back together, this time in front of your body. They shackles click back together on impact, sealing as tightly as if they had never been separated. That done, Gavin moves on to Annabelle, kneeling in front of her and speaking in a low whisper. You see her smile and lean her head forward so that her forehead gently touches Gavin's. The pink haired boy hooks one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulder, then lifts her gently from the wheelchair. He carries her over to the circle and places on the floor. The back of her head rests in the northernmost mini-circle, her feet pointed away from you.
"Comfortable?" He asks.
"The floor always makes me super sore," Annabelle says. "I already can't feel my legs."
Gavin rolls his eyes and lays down with his head inside the circle just to the right of hers. "We almost good?"
"Good to go," Matthew says. Piper takes this as her cue to lay her head down in the easternmost circle, but instead of joining them Matthew, Bailey and Ginny all take seats cross-legged in the floor, fingers resting lightly on their keyboards.
"Ready?" Bailey asks. If you crane your neck a little you can see her, staring at her screen with a furious intensity.
"Ready," Ginny says.
"Ready," Matthew says. He presses a button on his keyboard.
What the fuck is happening?
"Exotic energy signature detected!" Ginny shouts, keyboard furiously clacking away.
"Analyzing on all wavelengths!" Matthew shouts. "Blood type is blue!"
Bailey catches your eyes over the lip of her computer screen and immediately looks back down, blocking you out. "It's an angel!" She shouts.
What the fuck is happening?
"Reversing the ego border!" Ginny calls.
"C-Mode is already breaking down!" Matthew says. His fingers are moving so fast across the keyboard that there's absolutely no way he's typing anything coherent. Are they all just smashing random buttons?
"It's not going to hold!" Bailey shouts. "Empty our particle wave matter reserves!"
"Emptying!" Ginny and Matthew shout at the same time.
"Reroute neural composites!" Bailey says. "Core pulse is at plus five and dropping!"
You crane your neck to get a glimpse of Piper, Bailey and Annabelle. They don't seem to be worried, so at least Ginny, Matthew and Bailey aren't undergoing a bizarre three-way mental breakdown.
"The uh…the positron barrier is cycling!" Ginny shouts. "It's do or die!"
Bailey slams a hand into the ground. "It's too soon!" She shouts. "Aboot, what are our AT specs?"
"Not looking good, Commander. T minus ten!"
"Fuck it! Do it now!" Bailey roars. "Launch! Launch!"
Matthew hits one last key, and the three leap to their feet, scrambling to their places on the circle.
"Got that out of your system?" Piper asks.
"You're ruining the immersion," Matthew says. "Now get-"
The floor drops out from under you.
You jerk, eyes going wide. For a moment it's like you're back in the nothingness, the crystal cage that trapped you in the void between infinities. But you feel here. You are here. You breath in through your nose, and suddenly your back slams into the ground, pain jolting through every nerve of your body. You reach for Caledfwlch but find only an aching emptiness.
"Shit!" You shout. Your exclamation of pain joins in a chorus of similar cries, and as you roll to your feet you see the Breakfast Club doing the same around you. Each of them is dressed in rumpled, familiar clothes – you look down and see you're wearing Bone's hand-me-downs. The world around you is black on black on black, the color shifting like mists in the distance. You think you can make out a few trees, but it's hard to see in the darkness – though the Breakfast Club is bright and pick out.
"Hey!" Annabelle shouts. "I can move again!" She pirouettes and strikes a pose. Piper and Ginny mob her, and the three bounce excitedly as a single unit for a moment.
"Is everyone okay?" Matthew asks, rubbing his hands together nervously. "Anyone feel anything weird?"
"Not weird, but this doesn't feel anything like when Morgan and I shared dreams," Annabelle says, hugging Ginny and Piper tighter against her. "Sorta…colder. Emptier."
"Psyches are distorted by perception," you say quietly. "There are seven people here, perceiving, influencing…it makes everything less personal. More distant."
Matthew grunts. "Usually I'm the one that has to explain all this stuff. The theories and principles."
You shrug. "I learned from the best." It's not a compliment, not really – just a statement of fact.
Matthew regards you curiously for a moment. "Anyway," he says, "I built this little area we're in now as a stepping off point. Right now, we're seeing a really simplified overview of Mordred's mind, the part that's directly affected by the spell."
Realization dawns on you. "That's why I can't see anything. It's a…really obvious metaphor."
"Exactly!" Matthew says. "The spell works by stopping the brain from connecting abstract concepts. Like Mordred and Morgan, or Morgana and Ms. Badwitch."
The Breakfast Club groans collectively.
"Yeah, yeah, it gets worse every time," Matthew says, clearly out of patience with that particular tradition. "Abstract concepts are hard to deal with directly because…you know…they're abstract. So we're gonna deal with more concrete stuff. Memories associated with the concepts being blocked."
"How does sifting through his memories help?" Piper asks.
"From Morgan's reaction when we talk about Lucy, the spell that's affecting him is pretty crude," Matthew explains. "I'm willing to bet that if we poke around in affected memories enough, the spell will unravel."
It makes sense. Filling your head with unaffected minds, shaking whatever you can…neuromancy is complicated, delicate work, and prone to falling apart when confronted. The fact that you can even think coherently about the spell is evidence that its grip on your thoughts is weakening.
"Now everyone take a second to get acclimated, and let me talk to Mordred really quick," Matthew says. He walks a few steps off into the fog and gestures for you to follow.
When you come up alongside him he's resting his back against a tree, arms crossed, expression pensive. "Talk quiet," he says. "The girls don't have their heraldries in here, but they're nosy."
"Is everything okay?" You ask. "Is something wrong with the ritual?"
"What?" Matthew asks. Then he shakes his head. "Oh. No, everything's going fine. I just…" he trails off, tapping his foot against the ground. "I didn't realize you knew about magic."
That's a bit of a non sequitur, but you roll with the punches. "It was just part of my education," you say. "Like physics, or literature."
"Like Harry Potter," Matthew says wistfully. "Bet it beat High School. Look, I…this isn't really the time, but considering we might execute you when we all wake up, there isn't really a better one. I was…I was wondering…can you use neuromancy to affect long term changes in a subject's psyche? Stable changes, not like the mess in your head, or whatever you did to ours."
What is this about? "Well…neuromancy wasn't really my specialty, but theoretically I don't see why not. If you had enough time and patience you could edit someone's psyche without any loss of cohesion." A sudden, terrible thought strikes you. "Are you trying to brainwash people?"
"What? No!" Matthew shakes his head, as if offended at the mere idea. "No, I would never…no. I was just…I was thinking…" he sighs. "I could use this ritual to fix Gemma."
"Fix her?"
Matthew looks pained. "Fix was the wrong word, too many implications, but…she's, she's not okay, man. She's sick…she's hurting in a way that none of us can help her with."
"Except you."
"Maybe. Except me, maybe. I know…it sounds insane. I know it does! But we need Gemma. It's not about her Heraldry…it's not just about her Heraldry. It's about…it's about a lot, and…she's my friend." His eyes meet yours, and they have a strange, crazed redness that you recognize from soldiers who'd been on the march too long. "She's my friend, and I can help her. There isn't a therapist in the world…not enough drugs in all the worlds. But I can help her. And if I can help her, isn't it wrong not to? Don't I owe it to her, as her friend, to help her through this? She's done so much for me…she's lost limbs, she's taken bullets, she's lied and stolen and killed, and, and, and I couldn't do anything…but now I can! And if I can but I don't…" he hangs his head. "If I can but I don't…"
What do you say?
[] Write In
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