Chapter Sixteen - I ain't dumb, she my Tweedledee

While Alessandra was in the shower, I pulled Samantha into our bedroom and threw some clothes at her. We hadn’t bought underwear—I wouldn’t count my work wear as such—but I had plenty of perfectly serviceable old ones. A couple even were in a nice enough state to be lent out. For myself, I grabbed a bra with an unsightly hole and panties that had some permanent discolouration.

It hadn’t been on purpose, but we ended up matching. I had my underwear sorted by type, and when I found a good one, I just grabbed the next one for myself. “I like that twinsies look,” I admitted. “Let’s go all the way. If that’s alright with you?”

“Sure, why not? My only worth is in me being your doppelganger anyway…”

“Nonsense. If it was just that, Livia would have dropped you after a day or two. She gets tired of people she finds boring or annoying very quickly. How long were you together? Six weeks?”

“Eight weeks, three days.” She knew it that well? Damn, it had meant something to her and still did. I already had suspected that when her pledge had replaced the system-enforced faction loyalty, and she didn’t even pretend to not be fully committed. That could be the system, but the change had felt like a lessening in binding strength, not a harder enforcement.

I walked up to her until the tips of our noses practically touched and looked her in the eyes. We even were the exact same height, to the millimetre, not just close to each other. Was there more to that “twins separated at birth” joke she had made earlier? “You still love her,” I stated, keeping any hint of a question out of my voice. She didn’t refute it. “I can share.” Call me crazy, but I really didn’t do jealousy. Envy—all day long, sure. But jealousy? I couldn’t even fake that.

With that, I turned and dug through the bags of workout clothes we hadn’t yet put away to find two matching sets. It wasn’t perfect, but I managed to at least match the colours. For shoes, she would have to contend with a pair of stinky white sneakers. Hers hadn’t been ruined completely, but they were soaked in blood, and we left them in the gym shower.

She still stood there, seemingly not having moved a muscle when I tossed her what I had selected. We dressed in silence, every tiny difference in how we moved jumping to my attention. I needed to stop obsessing about that, I told myself.

When we were ready, Samantha wanted to leave, but I grabbed her arm. “I think I was wrong,” I said. “I cannot share unconditionally.” The look in Samantha’s eyes hurt, so I hurried to say what I had planned. “I can share if she’s also willing to share.” I pecked her lips and opened the door, leaving her standing.

Alessandra was already dressed and sat next to Gamma, who had fallen asleep on the couch, but Livia still stood there in her bathrobe. Right, her stuff is in our bedroom, too. She started walking towards it, but then, the moment Sam joined me, she stumbled over her own feet. I caught her before she could hit the floor.

“Thanks, um, Jane,” she said after looking at me closely. Did she have an issue telling us apart at a glance? Jackpot. Mission accomplished.

I lifted her up, trying not to give away what I had done or concluded. Then I gave her a quick kiss before releasing her into our bedroom. “Make it sexy,” I called after her. “Deadly and sexy.”

🙚⚜🙘

Livia got her goons to drive us around again. That large guy, Greg, whom I had met before, was driving. With four girls in the car, there was no space for anyone else, so I suspected there to be another car near us, but I couldn’t spot it. Not that I had a great view of our surroundings from the back seat.

I had given Greg a direction and distance before we left, and he did some planning on his phone, which meant I had nothing to do until we reached the general area. The lull of the drive in a car with a very nice suspension threatened to put me to sleep, so I tried to keep my mind active by fantasising about that AI princess I had dreamt up before. For some reason, all I could come up with were sex scenes. No matter where I sent her, she got jumped by a gaggle of pretty girls and ended up in a knot of body parts. That wasn’t what I needed right now unless I wanted to recreate those scenes right here in the car. But then, Greg would be watching, which would be stimulating for Livia and me, but devastating for Samantha.

I was jerked awake when the car stopped, and Greg asked in a deep base, “How far is it now?”

“About 300 steps that way,” I answered, the information right there in my head and available without effort. Livia elbowed me, which I initially didn’t understand, but then it dawned on me that it had been about Greg—he must think I was crazy, pointing out a place that way. Would he care?

“Then I suggest you get out here and walk,” he said. “We’re about as close as we can get with the car to any place over there without being conspicuous.” Whatever he was thinking, he was doing it with a brain as capable as his body.

“We will,” Livia said. “Keep back again, like earlier. This fight is out of your pay grade by a mile.”

“Sure thing, boss. Good hunting,” he said in an encouraging tone. That made no sense to me. He should complain about not being able to protect Livia if she walked off alone, not hyping her up. I lingered in the car, re-tying my shoes and asked him when the others were out of direct earshot. “What’s up with that attitude, Greg? Where’s your protective spirit?”

He answered in the same low tone. “Took a beating when I examined that machine you two bent into a pretzel and ripped into pieces earlier. Not my monkey, not my claws.” He tapped on a pair of binoculars while he said the last part, then gave me a thumbs up. Clever man indeed. I returned it and said, “One target. I’m frontlining again. Rest easy,” as I stood up into the warm afternoon air outside.

🙚⚜🙘

“Now, how are we going to handle this one?” Samantha asked.

“Depends on who spots whom first,” I said. “If we can get to it without being noticed, I suggest Livia puts it to sleep, we walk up to it and hit it with everything we got at once. Otherwise, I’ll tank it, you get behind it and Livia hits it from afar. In any case, Alessandra, please be prepared to help Samantha if she gets hit. If it drags on, and I’m tanking, I might need a heal, but don’t waste your energy on me unless necessary. I heal quickly and can take quite a beating.”

She nodded.

“Good. I will try to take it slowly so Samantha gets a chance to take part in the fight; she needs some…training,” I nearly said XP, but Alessandra didn’t know about the system, “but if things get dicey, I will go all out.” The “who knows what” game was getting annoying. At least I had no secrets from Livia aside from a couple of things I didn’t tell her outright for fun. I didn’t, had I? Wasn’t there something?

“What do we do if dere is any CCTV?” Alessandra asked.

“I’ll handle that,” Livia and Samantha said in unison. They looked at each other and then giggled.

Alessandra looked confused, so I explained. “With police and crime connections on the team, I think we have enough means to get those recordings misfiled. Just make sure not to ask the same people to do the same thing. People get nervous when mortal enemies cooperate, or so I heard…”

“Your connections probably are better,” Samantha said to Livia. “I’d have to call in favours from people I met through my father. PPP at the LJMU doesn’t really give me any clout of my own.”

“PP what?” I asked.

“She studying to become a copper,” Livia explained. “How’s it going? You didn’t get caught up in the cheating scandal last year, did you?”

“They cleared me before even talking to me for some reason. No idea why; they grilled some of my friends I knew for a fact hadn’t anything to do with it for days. And my dad swears high and mighty he hasn’t pulled any strings…” She trailed off, having seen the same poorly hidden smugness on Livia’s face I also had noticed.

“What happened?” I asked to distract her. “It hasn’t made national news, so I’m clueless. You know how it is in London—the rest of the country could drop into the ocean, and you wouldn’t hear about it.” Especially if your only contact with news is the headlines on the newsstands along your bus ride.

“Someone hacked the servers and stole all the tests for the whole uni, then someone else sold them for a quick buck,” Samantha replied dismissingly.

“Careful, Sam,” Livia said. “They still assume it was the same person.”

What did that mean? There was something going on I didn’t understand. Or…no, it couldn’t be that, could it?

“You’re the hacker or seller?” I asked, ready to eat crow for suspecting her.

“Seller,” she answered instead. “I’m rubbish with computers.”

“At least that meant you did your business with cash. I’m not sure even I could have bailed you out had you left a digital payment trail.”

“So you did bail me out! But why?”

Livia shrugged. “I never was angry at you…”

“So you kept track of me?”

“Not really. I had my head too high in the clouds most of the time. But my mom did. She did that of all people I might care about in case someone wanted to blackmail me. She told me about it when it came down and held my hand while handling it. It was as much to prove I could handle such issues as to help you…”

That gave me an idea. “So you have a database of everyone you know and where to find them, don’t you?”

“Um, yes?”

“Remember, we’re still looking for someone,” I waved to indicate Samantha, Livia and me. “Could be one of them. Very likely, in my opinion.” Please, Alessandra, ignore this.

“Thats… No, actually, it does sound reasonable based on what we’ve seen so far. I’ll do that.”

“Natural coven, ay guess? Dose are rare, only de most powerful… Ay see. You are powerful. Ay can imagine you feeling de pull.” Alessandra said.

“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.” I wasn’t inclined to dive into that memory packet yet again. “But now my claws are itching for troll hide. Should we proceed?”

🙚⚜🙘

We walked along the road next to the river towards the bridge. A narrow strip of grass to our left announced itself as a “promenade”, but who’d promenade on that small fenced-in bit was unclear to me. Close to the bridge, the road made a ninety-degree turn around a very red brick building announcing it to be the bridge offices. We debated to go through the pub that was blocking us on the other side of the road, but then Samantha pointed out there was another road further in.

It was pretty easy to see, just two houses ahead of us, but I guess we weren’t experienced in using our eyes and brains. Following that road brought us close to the bridge in all its ancient-stone-brick glory, but it ended at a 3-metre high chain-link fence with a locked gate. We could see the road continuing and crossing under one of the arches. The fence and gate looked pretty new, the sign “Closed for unsafe conditions by the authority of the city council” shining in the afternoon sun.

“We could try from the other side…” I said without much conviction.

“There’s a huge Tesco warehouse there. I doubt they’d let us waltz through,” Sam was waving her phone, showing an aerial photo.

“Swim the river? Climb the fence? Rent a helicopter?” I felt like there was an easy solution, but I just couldn’t lay my finger on it.

“Or you could circumvent the fence by trespassing on that little park,” Livia said from the other side of the fence.

“Sounds promising, we’ll keep looking,” Samantha said. I nodded, but something was tickling my mind. I looked at the map view to see if there was something funny there.

“What’s that?” I pointed at the area next to us on the map. It looked like a small football field in the photo, but I could see no way to get there, which struck me as odd.

“It says,” Samantha said while zooming in on the name. “It says… What language is that? Shouldn’t the map labels always be in English?”

“Not if it’s a proper name. But I don’t recognise the letter shapes either. Are those runes?”

“It says, ‘Witches Academy’, guys,” Livia said while pointing to a big sign above a garden entrance next to her. “Try to concentrate on seeing it for what it is; the spell isn’t that strong. Pleeeease.”

“A fence and a spell? That won’t make it easier,” I mused.

“Hold-a still a moment,” Alessandra said, then grabbed me around the waist and lifted me up.

“Hey?” I protested, but she was already putting me down again on the garden path of the plot next to the fence. The area also was fenced in, with a low and old-looking fence on top of a knee-high wall, but it had a couple of open gateways. And one of them exited on the other side of the fence that blocked the road, where Livia stood, begging me with her eyes to…to do what? I walked to her and gave her a kiss.

Then I stopped, trying to remember how I had gotten on the other side of the fence. Something about witches?

“You used your witch power to get us here?” I asked.

“Something like that,” she said, annoyance in her voice. Had I missed something?

“That’s a neat little trick,” Samantha said behind me. “Jane, try to force a willpower check against mind control magic. That’s what my log says helped.”

I had no idea what she meant with ‘helped’, but I trusted her enough to try following her advice. Not that I had an idea how to? I tried willing something, but it gave me nothing than a headache. Gamma-10? If this is an issue with that update, I’d appreciate a heads-up.

🖹

You’ve got a private message from SOL-GB-Liverpool-39-Gamma-10: “Partially. Willpower checks are for players, but you should be able to shield your mind against magical influences.” Reply? (1) Yes. (2) No.

I still had no clue how to do that, but once I tried, it came to me naturally. I felt a bubble of magic spring up around my head, and then reality hit me like a hammer. “Oh!” I said while staring at the sign above the garden gate.

🖹

You have discovered the spell “Mind Shield”. Level up your skill “spell magic proficiency (magical)” to be able to learn more spells.

🖹

You’ve got a private message from SOL-GB-Liverpool-39-Gamma-10: “Not what I meant, but that works, too. Good job! Spell discovery is quite a feat. Most people need to be taught spells.” Reply? (1) Yes. (2) No.

‘We’ll need another bedroom to house another Gamma soon,’ I thought to myself. Out loud, I said, “Got it. Good that the workers who put up that bad boy were fooled by it, too.”

“Are you sure?” Livia asked sceptically. “What do you see?”

“I see a big bad sign saying, ‘What is a Witches Academy, and will they teach you stuff?’,” I joked.

“It’s for kids, primary school level, until they learn to not spook normals,” she explained.

“Primary school right next to a troll den? I don’t like that at all.”

“That’s why we’re here. Lead on.”