Reality Hack (11 page)

‘Yeah…’ Nisa’s lips twitched a little as she tried to maintain a straight face. ‘I need to buy a strap-on before October.’

Even Kellog’s cheeks reddened a little. Nisa chalked up a point for her side.

Tower Hamlets, July 16
^th
.

There was still light in the sky, but the sun had set, and that seemed to be enough for whatever magic allowed Faline to change shape. She padded out of the bedroom, naked, but not looking as hungry as she had since Saturday.

‘I thought,’ the Witch Cat said, ‘that it would be easier to talk like this.’

‘Just talk?’ Nisa replied, closing her book.

‘I’m back to being normal, less lustful, Faline, and we should consider those consequences.’ Faline sat down on the sofa, curling up and resting her arms on the back cushions and her chin on her arms. It looked like an uncomfortable position, but she was
very
flexible.

Nisa stretched. ‘Does there have to be any? We fucked. In three months we’ll do it again, and maybe a few times before then. These days we call it “friends with benefits.”’

‘If you think we can get along like that, then that’s good for me. I’m not usually so, um, insistent.’

‘I think it’ll work.’ Nisa opened her book again, paused, and said, ‘The males, they’re really that bad
all
the time?’

‘No. We’re worse when we’re in season. Though… You are a very attractive young woman. I think you’re lucky I claimed you.’

‘Yeah,’ Nisa replied, not sure about the ‘claimed’ part, ‘I think I am.’

Part Three: The City Of Shadows

The City, London, August 4
^th
, 2014.

Nisa looked through the railings at an old, tall, rather grand building nestled into a corner off Temple Place. King’s College London was just around the corner. Up the street was the Australian High Commission building. The river was close enough that she could smell it. But they were there so that she could see that particular building.

‘The High Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Eternal Flame,’ Kellog said, keeping his voice to a level where anyone passing by would have lost it in the traffic noise. ‘That place is the main college of wizardry in the country.’

‘I’m going to assume that a tour isn’t on the cards,’ Nisa said. The building looked to be of Gothic design; there were arched windows and a lot of stone, but the upper storeys were brick. There was a tower at the back, away from the road.

‘It’s hard enough to get in there when we have an official reason for doing so,’ Kellog replied sourly. It was the most emotion she had ever heard in his voice. ‘They’re secretive,
very
secretive, and the new High Grand Master has made things worse rather than better.’

‘About ninety? Long, white beard? Dresses in robes? Maybe an Irish accent?’

‘Actually he’s not thirty yet. He was only twenty-one when he took over from the last one. English. Wears expensive suits and he has his hair cut at places we’d be thrown out of. His family has a lot of old money.’

‘You don’t like him, or them, much, do you?’

‘I don’t like them much, no, but that’s not why we’re here. Come on.’ He walked off up a narrow alley between the wall and railing which bordered the Temple grounds and another Gothic building, an art gallery. Nisa hurried after him; the man had long legs.

He stopped after maybe fifteen yards; up ahead of them was Milford Lane and the cut-through seemed to have been left in to join the two roads. People likely walked through it all the time, but it looked to Nisa as if someone had come to a sudden halt.

There was no body, but there was… the shadow of one. It looked like someone had airbrushed a shadow onto the white stone of the wall, or part of one, the lower half. It looked weird, but it could have been someone’s idea of a joke. A fairly sick joke.

‘Hiroshima,’ Nisa said quietly.

‘Sorry?’

‘The bomb vaporised people close to the detonation site, but if they were close to a wall it left a carbon shadow. This looks like one of those. Could be a Glitch. Could be a vandal.’

‘Anti-nuclear protest? A little vague, don’t you think?’

‘Yeah, but something capable of doing that to a human should have lit up half the city.’

‘Glitches,’ he reminded her, ‘don’t obey the rules. We’ll get Norbery to test the “residue” and see what he can find before it’s scrubbed off.’

Nisa nodded, her eyes on the shadow. There was something slightly odd about it and it took her a second to work it out. ‘It doesn’t touch the floor,’ she said and got a raised eyebrow. ‘It’s kind of like he was pushed through the railing, hard, and his feet lifted off the ground.’

‘Doesn’t that suggest some sort of blast?’

‘Yeah… maybe.’ She shuddered. ‘If it’s real, I don’t think it was a nice death.’

‘Death,’ Kellog replied, ‘is rarely nice, no matter how it happens.’

Westminster.

‘It’s not a carbonisation effect,’ Norbery said. ‘I currently have no idea what it is, but it’s not natural. We managed to scrape almost all of it off and there’s a measurable element of Probrum. We’ve put it down in the vault.’

Nisa frowned. ‘I thought Probrum was something magicians got?’

‘It is, but certain effects, often from Glitches, can produce the same sort of taint.’

‘Excessively large magical effects can leave traces of it in the area they’re performed,’ Kellog added. ‘Certain unethical methods of obtaining power can taint an area for years.’

‘So we’re back to a Glitch,’ Nisa suggested.

They were sitting in Hanson’s office and she had listened silently to the reports so far. Now she spoke. ‘It seems likely, but we should follow it up. I want Nisa taking the lead on this one.’ She held up a hand as both Kellog and Nisa opened their mouths. ‘You have three open cases as it is and this one looks like it’ll be fairly open and shut. I realise it’s throwing you in at the deep end, Nisa, but you have to learn, and we have to see whether all that training has sunk in. You’ll assist Kellog on his cases, and you’ll see what you can dig up on this shadow.’

Kellog looked like he might protest but nodded. ‘I doubt it’s going to get closed properly, but it’s something to flex your investigative muscles on.’

Nisa was less keen. ‘I… guess if it’s just some transient Glitch then I can’t mess it up
too
badly.’

‘Precisely,’ Hanson stated. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Nisa replied a little morosely. ‘I figure I’ll screw up somehow, but it just can’t be horribly bad.’

Tower Hamlets.

‘You sell yourself too short, Nisa,’ Faline said as she padded into the lounge.

Nisa looked up at her, sighed, and said, ‘Where are your clothes?’

The human-shaped Witch Cat sagged. ‘Do I
have
to wear them?’

‘Yes, until ten, like we agreed. You’re a distraction.’

Faline turned around and went back into the bedroom. It had been a good three weeks since Faline had revealed her human form to Nisa, and she now changed as soon as the sun set, but the one thing she would not do was allow Nisa to
see
her transform. She always hid herself away and then came back a different shape. And she was back to being a cat before Nisa awoke in the morning.

It took Faline next to no time to return wearing the shortest denim shorts Nisa had been able to find and a lacy camisole top which barely hid her small breasts.

‘And this, seriously, is not a distraction?’ Faline asked.

‘It’s less of a distraction.’ Nisa went back to her book as Faline curled into her place on the sofa. The truth was that Nisa just wanted the cat-girl to get used to wearing something and this was a start. Faline was drastically shy of humans, but Nisa had hopes of introducing her to some of her friends at some point in the future. Probably a long way in the future, but still…

‘As I was saying,’ Faline said, ‘you’re an intelligent woman with a remarkable ability to retain information. You will make an excellent detective.’

‘I guess. I’d have liked to have observed Kellog at work first, that’s all. I’m going to make mistakes…’

‘Of course you are. We learn best from our mistakes. We learn best by doing. You will have the opportunity to assist in the wizard’s cases and see what he does. You will learn and do, and make mistakes, and so learn more.’ Nisa gave a grunt, not looking up from her book. ‘Where will you start?’ Faline asked.

‘Uh… Go back to the site, see if there’s anything I missed. Check the photos of the scene and Norbery’s report. Take a look at this residue he found.’

‘You already have a plan, excellent. What are you reading?’

‘
A Natural History of the Unnatural
,’ Nisa replied.

‘Ah, DeWinter. No one has surpassed his studies of the phenomena.’

‘Which is a shame, because this reads like it was written by someone in his nineties who didn’t like people anymore.’

‘He was almost a hundred and a recluse when he finally wrote it all down. That was in eighteen-ninety-three.’

‘Explains a lot.’

‘Were you looking for anything in particular?’

Nisa gave a small grimace. ‘Not sure… Something that could blast a man into a shadow on the wall but not be seen?’

‘It would need to be a Glitch, and a powerful one, so you are unlikely to ever find an explanation.’

‘Why not?’

‘The more powerful a Glitch is, the less time it can exist before reality tends to assert itself. A Daath beast might have that kind of power. Bugs, as you so prettily describe us, must exist within the framework of the universe. The kind of power you are talking about is so unnatural that it lies beyond the realms of our power.’

Nisa looked at her. ‘How am I supposed to think of you as a cat when you come out with statements like that?’

‘I can just sit here saying “meow” every so often if you prefer, but I’m not wearing these horrible rags to do it.’

‘The clothes stay. And I want you to speak English.’ She turned a page. ‘And I do value your insights.’ Another page. ‘Faline?’

‘Yes, Nisa?’

‘You’ve heard this idea that we’re all programs, bits of software in a computer simulation?’

‘I have heard the theory spoken of. It became popular in the sixties, I believe.’

‘Do you believe it?’

‘Not really. Not any more than any of the multitude of ideas created to explain our existence.’

‘Kellog says they have evidence. Things, beings, sent by The System who sometimes talk about what’s going on–’

‘And in ages past such things would be angels or devils, and they would tell people that God was watching them, or whatever deity people believed in at the time anyway. In this modern age of science, something comes and explains the universe away as a computer program. Is that any different from “God made the world in seven days?” Your detective says these things are agents of The System, but he describes other things as Daath Beings. How does he know the difference?’

‘Huh. Not sure
he’s
actually ever met one. Hey, if you don’t like being called a Bug, what do you prefer?’

‘Witch Cat,’ Faline replied with a shrug. ‘It’s what I am. Classifying the supernatural the way your people do is just that, classification. Humans, I’ve found, like order. They like to codify and categorise. Why does my nature make me anything like a vampire or even a Skinwalker? Only because someone decided to place us in the same class.’

Nisa nodded and fell silent, continuing to flick through the book but not really seeing it. Faline was right, of course. People liked things to be explicable. They liked order. They would find order in disorder, even in the absolutely random. It was one of the reasons statistics was disliked; statistical analysis tended to show that apparently real strings of events were unrelated and people hated that.

So, maybe The System was just another attempt to explain the inexplicable. Nisa liked it as a concept because it gave a reason for… Well, it explained things like Faline. She was not supernatural; she was a program which might not have been designed to work as she did, but at least the reason she could change shape was not ‘magic.’ Magic was not magic: it was just bending the rules of a computer simulation. It was more Neo than Morpheus, but it was part of how the world worked, a function of simulated physical laws instead of something outside them.

But who said everything had to work the way science said it should?

August 5
^th
.

She could hear voices. Snatches of conversation seeped into her consciousness, but they made little sense.

‘We’re losing her.’

‘We can’t…’

‘…take steps…’

‘…option. We have to…’

She managed to prise her eyes open. There were more than four of them. Tall, shadowy figures with no visible faces, but they all seemed have eyes which shone brightly down at her.

‘She is aware…’

‘She can’t…’

A hand reached out toward her face…

~~~

Nisa woke up with a start, letting out a strangled, dry-throated scream which brought Faline upright in an instant.

‘Nisa?! What…?’ Faline reached out a hand and Nisa slapped it away, the dream still fresh in her mind.

‘Oh! God… Sorry, Faline. Nightmare. Something was reaching for me and…’

The cat-like woman reached out more tentatively and this time Nisa allowed it. Faline pushed herself up the bed, rested her back on the headboard, and pulled Nisa up against her.

‘It’s all right now. You’re safe. Just relax.’

Nisa settled herself against warm skin and tried to do just that. ‘It’s easier when you purr,’ she said, her voice hushed.

‘That only works when I’m a cat. If you’re having trouble in a little while, I’ll change. It’s not that far from dawn anyway.’

‘Why won’t you ever let me see you change?’

‘It’s not… me at my best,’ Faline replied. ‘The process is not very pleasant to watch.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘No. From my point of view it’s just a little confusing. I have to lie down or I tend to fall over.’