Reality Hack (3 page)

‘You aren’t making any sense.’

‘Says the girl who spends her time working out how to do magic spells.’

‘I–’

Kellog lifted the file, waving it at her. ‘Please, we’ve been watching you for a while. You and your little… gang of misfits. We got a notification from the States about your friend, Mister Truman. We know he accessed a certain website before it was taken down by the NSA. We know he has been attempting to discover what happened to that site. He’s good, it took effort, but we know.’

‘And… and you think that means I’m working magic?’

‘Actually, that device over there tells me you’ve been working magic.’ He pointed at the device beside the deactivated heart monitor which was now showing a pulsing, green zero. ‘It detects… aberrations in reality. Creatures like the one that attacked you can sense the same thing and they’re drawn to it. It chose you because you’ve been building up a charge for weeks. You’re lucky. We noticed you and I was there to stop it. Another few seconds and your nervous system would have shut down.’

Spike had said no one should know, and now she was locked in some weird,
X-Files
secret facility with people who, clearly, already knew. Had they arrested the others? ‘So what happens now?’ Nisa asked.

‘Now, you recover. We want you back at full health and it’s going to take a few days. Then… we tell you your options. I have things to do, so you won’t see me for a while. Sandra will be looking after you, Norbery will be in to run a few tests, and you’ll meet Hanson at some point.’ He turned and started for the door.

‘Uh… thanks,’ she said to his retreating back.

He stopped. ‘For what?’

‘Saving my life, I guess.’

‘Decide whether you want to thank me when you’ve heard what your choices are,’ he said, and then he walked out.

June 10
^th
.

Nisa thought it was her third day in the room. That was based mostly on meals since she had slept through almost all of it. There was nothing to do aside from stare at the walls or ceiling, and by the end of the first day she could have drawn a perfect schematic of the room from memory. At least Sandra had decided that she was allowed solid food, and she was feeling less tired.

That was when Norbery turned up. She guessed he was in his forties. There was a little grey in his brown hair and there were lines showing, especially around the eyes, but he still kept himself fit and he had a nice smile. He was quick with it too, which was a nice change from the taciturn Kellog and Sandra’s professionalism. He walked into the room pushing a trolley with a scattering of odd items on it, along with a stack of magazines and a clipboard.

‘Miss Harper, I presume,’ he said, grinning. ‘Not like there’s anyone else here. I’m Frank Norbery.’

‘Hi. Kellog said you’d be here to run some tests?’

‘Uh-huh. First test: they’re a bit old, but I brought some magazines for you.’

‘They could be printed by Gutenberg,’ Nisa replied.

Norbery picked up his clipboard and ticked a box. ‘No apparent mental impairment,’ he said, giving her another grin.

‘Yesterday I was still pretty tired. Today… I’m going to go postal if I don’t have
something
to do.’

He nodded. ‘Tiredness is a common side effect of the feeding process. There’s typically a reduction in serotonin.’

‘I still don’t actually remember what happened to me.’

‘That’s normal too, though that’s an effect of the hypnosis. If victims don’t remember what happened, the vamp is less likely to get caught.’ He ticked another box on his form as he explained.

‘I was hypnotised?’

‘It’s more like mind control, a telepathic effect. Hypnosis suggests more of a persuasion technique, yes? This is brute force.’

‘I’m, uh, still trying to get my head around the idea that vampires are real.’

Norbery had picked up some sort of instrument. It looked somewhat anachronistic, maybe a bit steampunk. The case was a dark wood with lots of brass fittings and a silvery mesh port set into one side. There was an old-style electrical dial on the top.

‘You work magic, and you have trouble with the idea of vampires? What about ghosts?’

‘Jenna, my friend–’

‘I’ve read the file.’

‘Right. Still getting used to there being a file. Anyway, Jenna believes the ghost of her grandmother is watching over her. Lena’s into all sorts of superstitious stuff. They would say yes to vampires and ghosts.’

Norbery gave a nod, studying his gadget. ‘How about… fairies? Werewolves? Demons?’

‘I guess… I mean, if there are vampires and ghosts, right?’

‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth–’ Norbery began.

‘Than are dreamt of in my philosophy?’ Nisa suggested. Norbery raised an eyebrow. ‘I did go to school, you know?’

‘I’m aware. You have a first-class degree in applied mathematics which implies school and university. Why are you working in a kebab shop?’

‘Didn’t want to be a teacher.’ She frowned. For some reason she felt like being honest with this man. ‘It’s more complicated than that, but my options were limited and I didn’t like any of them.’ And now her options were going to be limited again.

‘And you
like
the kebab shop?’ He had put down the meter-like device and picked up something which looked far from scientific: a length of twisted wood which Nisa could not help but think looked like a wand.

‘No, but unemployment is an even less good option. Are you a magician?’

‘A witch.’

‘Oh…’ His own honesty was a little surprising. ‘I thought male witches were called warlocks.’

‘Not since the sixties. Sexual equality and all that. I practise witchcraft, ergo I am a witch.’

‘So… what is it you’re actually doing? I mean, that thing, the box, looked like something sort of technological, but…’

‘The thing in the box is a small, contained Glitch. Glitches are attracted to people who have been working too much magic. You build up what we call Probrum.’

‘Sounds like Latin.’

Norbery gave her a smile. ‘It is. In this case it’s just jargon. By measuring the Glitch’s attraction to you–’

‘I’m sorry… A Glitch?’

‘Think of it as… a fault in reality. A defect. A glitch in modern terms. This one is stable and very small. It’s an electrical effect and we can contain it in a magnetic field.’

‘So you measure disturbances in the field to measure how hard it’s trying to get to me?’

The witch gave her another smile. ‘That education wasn’t for nothing. Anyway, that was giving me nothing; you’ve shed much of your accumulated Probrum, so I’m going to cast a spell to measure what I need… Just as soon as you stop asking questions.’

Nisa blinked at him and she felt her cheeks colouring. Generally embarrassed about nothing, she felt a little abashed to be stopping him working, even if he was, effectively, one of her jailors. She closed her mouth, got another smile, and watched as he raised his wand and began muttering under his breath. None of the words sounded like words, or any words she knew anyway. The chanting continued for about half a minute, and then he shuddered and looked down at her.

‘Something didn’t go according to plan there, but I got what I needed,’ he said.

‘What went wrong?’ Nisa asked, frowning.

‘It’s hard to tell. That’s magic for you. I expect I’ll find out, or perhaps I’ll be lucky and whatever it is won’t find its trigger before it fades. These things are rarely permanent.’

‘You know, the more I hear about magic, the less I think I should have started.’

Norbery put his wand back on the trolley, picked up the stack of magazines, and handed them across to her. ‘Yes, Miss Harper,’ he said, ‘and if you continue studying it, you’ll likely discover that that wish just gets stronger.’

June 11
^th
.

Whatever the place was she was being kept in, it had a gym. Not a big one, but it did have weights, a treadmill, and a couple of exercise machines. Sandra had agreed that some
light
exercise might be good for Nisa’s recovery and had obtained permission for gym access. That had taken a couple of hours. Every door in the place seemed to have code-key locks so Nisa still felt like a prisoner, and the short walk down one, blank, institutional corridor had told her nothing, but at least she was out of the room.

Sandra had found her some athletic shorts and a T-shirt which was a little tight. She was in bare feet because the only clothes that had survived whatever had happened to her were her clogs and they were not very suitable for exercise. She was feeling fat and lazy after too much bed rest, and she knew she was going to overdo it, especially when Sandra left her alone in the gym, but when she stretched to prep herself for the weight machine, it felt like settling back into her normal routine.

She
did
overdo it, all the while vaguely expecting Sandra to appear to tell her that she had to stop. Instead it was Kellog who walked in while Nisa was working on her adductor muscles. He stopped just inside the doorway, allowing it to swing shut behind him. He was dressed in sweats, obviously there to exercise. One eyebrow rose as he looked at her on the bench, thighs prised apart by the machine she was using. She thought, for a second, that he was visually commenting on her posture, or outfit, or both. Then he spoke.

‘Sandra told you that light exercise would be a good idea.’

‘Compared to my usual workouts, this is light.’

He walked over as she squeezed her thighs together, checking the weights. ‘Really,’ he said.

‘Low weight, high rep. I don’t want thighs like tree trunks.’

He looked down at her thighs. ‘You don’t,’ he said, before turning to the treadmill.

There was silence for a while, aside from the squeak of the machine and the hum and rhythmic thumping from the treadmill.

‘Is everyone here some sort of magician?’ Nisa asked.

‘No,’ Kellog replied.

‘Norbery said he was a witch. What about you?’

There was silence for a second and she thought he was not going to reply. ‘I practise Hermetic wizardry.’

‘Oh. Hermetic. Right.’

‘It’s a codified form of magic utilising the imagery of the Qabalah.’

‘That’s the Jewish mystical system, right?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, and she could have sworn he sounded just a little impressed.

‘So you use the Sephiroth as the basis for your spells?’

‘That’s the basis, yes. The public versions are not quite the same as the esoteric ones we use.’

‘So… there are more out there. I mean, there are a
lot
of practising magicians out there and no one knows about them.’

‘They know about them; they simply don’t believe in them. Most of the people out there are rational, which means that if they can’t explain something they rationalise it. Vampires are serial killers. Ghosts are delusions. Magicians are charlatans and tricksters. Even superstitious people don’t really believe in magic. They have their little rituals which they perform. They believe in them so they remember the times when they work and ignore the times they don’t. But if they were faced with a real magician, they wouldn’t believe it.’

Nisa frowned and stopped her thigh presses. She had really done enough anyway. ‘So, those rituals…
Do
they work?’

‘Rarely, but yes. Anyone can work magic, Miss Harper. Some people are better at it than others.’

‘How long have you been doing it?’

‘About a decade.’

‘You must be pretty good.’

There was silence again. Then he said, ‘I’ve barely scratched the surface.’

June 12
^th
.

Nisa sat up in bed with a start, trying hard to get her breathing under control and forget the nightmare she had just had, all at the same time. It was not working especially well, but by the time the door opened and Sandra looked in, she was at least able to breathe more or less normally.

‘Nightmare?’ Sandra asked.

‘I get them. More than my fair share, I sometimes think.’

‘What kind?’

Nisa looked at her. The question had sounded a little too direct. ‘Tonight it was being strapped to a table while dark, faceless figures walked around me, muttering in a strange language. Actually, something like that features a lot. Being watched, or tested. Sometimes there’s more pain.’

Sandra gave a nod. ‘Do you want something to help you sleep?’

Shaking her head, Nisa said, ‘No. I usually get back to sleep. Once I’ve got it out of my head.’

There was another nod and the nurse retreated. There was the sound of the locks engaging and Nisa laid her head down. It was going to be harder to get the images out lying in a locked room. Well, she would just have to try.

~~~

‘So, what’s the assessment?’ The speaker was a woman in her middle years but still fit and attractive, if a little tired around the eyes. Her hair was grey, but that was more to do with stress than age. She was watching Nisa, back in the gym, on a monitor.

‘Physically she’s recovered well,’ Sandra said. ‘She’s fit, exercises regularly. She seems to be taking what’s going on in her stride. She’s inquisitive, obviously, but she’s also observant and retains information well.’

‘Magically,’ Norbery put in, ‘she’s off the chart. The System seems to like her. She’s got the highest tolerance for Probrum I’ve ever seen,
enormous
potential. She’s clean. There’s no indication of influence or malefic activities. The difficulty is going to be her… nature. She doesn’t have a style; she sees magic as… as hacking reality.’

The grey-haired woman gave a grunt. ‘Not far from the truth. So she just wills things to happen?’

‘There seems to be some thought-forms involved, but that’s about the size of it.’

‘Kellog? You’re going to have to teach her.’

‘She talks too much,’ Kellog said from his place leaning against the wall beside the office door.

‘You don’t talk enough,’ Norbery commented.

‘More to the point,’ the woman said, ‘you need a new partner and getting one any other way is a pain in the arse.’