by P. S. Power
That was it though. No television, or even a foreign language Telesar in the room. After four days she felt herself slowly losing it, the sensory deprivation of the white space getting to her. When she was just about to lose it, Katherine spoke to her again.
'Four months, Miss Farris. I can't take this any longer, and can't kill myself. You're the only hope I have left. Our only hope.'
"Great, I'm Obi Wan now. Fuck it. Fine, I'll try to get us out of here, but after that... I'm going home." She didn't really know where that was now however, did she?
The Vernors?
They probably couldn't help her, and if Kat took over again, she was stuck. It would have to be something else.
'I understand. I'll do what you want. I promise. This was never about you. I never hated you. Nor did I blame you for what you did. I tried to, to make killing you all right, but it never worked. You were always the better woman, Gwen Farris.'
Just not good enough to hold on to her new life. Gwen felt that keenly now, and kind of wanted it back. Here she was though, chained to a bed, hand and foot. The thick links were warm against her skin, the ugly green glow never wavering in the slightest.
"We move at dark then."
She didn't share more, and really didn't have to. Katherine might have been a ditz, once upon a time, but the last few years had taught her a lot it seemed. One of those things was not running her mouth when there was no need for it.
When the time came, after a mind numbing day of waiting, she tried to teletransport as hard as she could. It didn't work. It wasn't that nothing at all happened, but as she tried to leave, pushing as much magic into it as possible, her wrists and ankles didn't go with her. Given everything that meant she was left in place. Tied to the bed, rather than free.
It had nearly worked though, Gwen could feel it, so she kept trying, until hours later, exhausted, she had to give up.
Inside her mind, Kat cried. It was pitiful.
'Nothing? Nothing?' She just kept saying it over and again. Because that was going to help them do better in the end, Gwen didn't doubt. Constant whining about failure was a great way to improve. Everyone knew that.
Gwen murmured softly, trying not to call a nurse or orderly in by making too much noise.
"Not that way. Don't give up yet. We just need to change tactics. Do they ever take the chains off? Or roll you over so you don't get bed sores? If we can get free of these things for a bit, that could help."
The answer was yes, but a lot of drugs were used then, which would keep them in place. More than what they were on already. Since they didn't give her shots very often, the daily doses probably came in either the food or water. Whatever they gave her was strong enough that her arms and legs didn't actually ache all that much, which they should have, after months of not being used.
Gwen tried to think through the whole thing then, and finally made a face, realizing what the answer was.
If the null radiatives were being a problem, stopping the magical instructions from working like they were, by wiping them out when they were made each time, then she'd need to rewrite the instructions that caused that to happen. That was all. That she didn't know how to make that kind of thing happen was a problem, but it wasn't like she didn't have time to teach herself.
Rather than explain the new idea, she started right into work. The first thing to do, naturally, would be understanding the field on the metal. There were sigils there, but she was nearly certain that had to do with the kind of old fashioned magic that the things were made with. Similar ones were used in the Western Kingdom.
Sumerian, she thought. Nearly meaningless to her, and what little she did know was all from her own world. She'd built a web-site once for a man that was a historian. It was a far cry from learning how the things worked.
Each one of the letters had a slightly different feeling to them, when she focused on them intently enough. Making up the spell, which at the end of the pattern grabbed any incoming magic, and washed it clean of ideas. The spell itself had to live, as it were, underneath that.
It would have been impossible for her to overwrite them, using brute force, since they used a kind of magical aikido, twisting any other instructions away just at the right time to make them ineffective.
The trick then, would be to break the instructions there, along the line that set the pattern, just enough to allow her to get away. Kind of like programming a computer, she hoped.
If she had to write a new program, she'd be screwed, lacking the proper coding skills, but if she could get into the code, it wouldn't be that hard to mess things up enough for the program to not work anymore. A monkey could pound on a keyboard until the thing just didn't work anymore, adding no more than random junk.
She didn't know how you impressed an idea into metal though. Not really. She'd been planning on lessons, just before she'd left and then... Yeah. Things were fucked up now.
"Thanks, Kate."
The other girl didn't say she was welcome for basically stealing all the good from both their lives. Again. For a moment Gwen let herself feel slightly smug. She'd been born crippled and with a hard lot. There was a dirty end to the stick of life and her name had come pre-engraved right there on it. At the other end it said Katherine Vernor, and yet here they both were, chained to a bed in a different country, because Kat was a moron.
Well, honestly, the other end of the stick from her world probably said Paris Hilton, but it was still pretty close.
The fact was though, they were both trapped there, and not going anywhere until she worked out how to get them free. They weren't just leaving, either, as nice as that would have been.
The first night was spent with her focusing as hard as she could, not actually making any noticeable changes on the null radiatives. It was pretty clear that just thinking at it wasn't going to work. It left her with a problem, because how she was supposed to fix the things when any magic she sent at the thing would be cleansed instantly. It left her feeling annoyed and frustrated, but not hopeless. After all, people made the things in the first place, which meant they had to be worked with in some fashion. If others could do it, so could she.
The next day she just had Katherine stay up while she slept.
It felt funny, sharing that way, but it wasn't the same as being locked away. That was a scary blackness, filled only with terror, as the Elder Gods scrabbled to get to her. They weren't really doing that, but it always felt like it. Like she was about to die, and nothing she could ever do was going to be enough to save herself.
That became the pattern for a long time. Gwen lost track actually. The food coming, which was twice a day, was how she tracked things, after a while. It was basically bland pudding the whole time, for every single meal. How they were supposed to live for any length of time on it, she didn't know.
The fact was, they probably weren't. It would make more sense to simply kill them. That way there could be no escape later. It was probably so that they could try and get more information from Katherine later then, but if that was the case, no one was busily trying to find out what she might know.
Sometime later, months at least, Gwen finally managed to figure out something.
She was screwed.
Smiling, she was about to mention that to Kate, when it occurred to her that she'd been going about the whole thing wrong, the whole time. Pushing the radiatives aside wasn't going to work, but what if she tried to increase the power of part of the field itself. It gave the instructions to the magic, to smooth everything else out, but the null field had to be telling the magic what to do. It was a thing.
Magic needed that kind of information component to do anything.
Better, over the time she'd been working on it, she'd figured out which sigil did what. The first one, which was on the top of each cuff more or less, caught the magic coming in. Making that one stronger would be stupid. The seventh one though was different. It just kind of told the magic to stall in place, before washing out totally, at the next
sigil. At that one point, the magic stood still, but also had whatever information was coming in.
It was a risk, but working as hard as she could, in just three days the right hand cuff stopped working. It wasn't enough, and was sort of obvious since the thing stopped glowing, but she managed the others faster after that. Where the first one had taken days, the other three were done in about an hour each. She had to work in a near panic on the last one however, which was on her right ankle. If she were caught, they'd be replaced, and she might just be killed for it.
So she hurried, which was both needed, and led to making mistakes.
Just as the nurse came in to check on her for the last time before daylight would be coming, Gwen pushed everything she could into the move, and teletransported away.
It had been in a rush, and not as well done as it might have been thanks to drugs and the field on one of the chains still partially working. Gwen knew that, since her right ankle broke for some reason, but was still attached when she came out on the other side of the world. The pain nearly dropped her to the floor, and then, after a second, she was sitting on the ground, with hardwood underneath her. Free, and well away from the sanatorium, thankfully.
It made a thump, her falling like that, the wooden floor under her still bare, even after all that time. From the look of the room, no one had been using it, so there was no need to put in carpeting.
"Ouch." It stung, since even though she'd been rotated regularly, there were still sores all over her body. On top of that, she hadn't walked around, or moved, for months. She felt a bit like an astronaut after coming back from space, if just for a second. Only without the cool part that would have people happy to see her. Or the neat being in space thing.
She looked around, and noticed that things hadn't been changed all that much. The room was about the same, except that the furniture was covered here. It was her old room, at Park Street. The bed, right next to her, was unmade, the sheets and blankets having been stripped off at some point.
No one came because of the noise of her falling, so she started yelling. It wasn't as if she were going anywhere without help, not for a bit.
"Hello! Is anyone here? Um, not to be a pain in the rump, but help? Anyone? Hello? I'm starting to feel really awkward, calling out like this, so, you know, anytime you want to notice me!" She had to keep it up for a long while before someone came in.
An armed man, who held a crin, and didn't look like anyone she knew at all.
"Halt!" The man stared, and then started screaming for her. "Intruder! To arms! To arms!"
"Wait, did you actually just say to arms? That's... Wild." Her voice seemed fine, but it took work to sit up, feeling as weak as she did.
The man didn't listen to her, probably being too smart to be swayed by her witty charms, just holding the copper tube so the business end pointed directly at her face. She didn't even bother arguing that it wasn't needed. After all, she was in the body of a woman that had betrayed the entire kingdom. There was going to be hell to pay.
'So why did you come here?'
She didn't say the words out loud, not wanting to be crazy and the scary intruder, but the answer was simple. As very fucked up as her life was now, no doubt, this was the single safest place she could think of. If she hadn't gone there, she would have had to go to Central, directly. Odds were the beating she got here would be less than half what the Westmorlands would have offered.
It wasn't until the butler got there that she recognized anyone. Three other men had made it first, but they were all in uniform. Not government either. Some kind of private guard, she thought. In brown and red. Aubrey house colors, but that wasn't where she was. So it was a bit strange, seeing them here.
Winslow stared at her, his face hard, his hands holding a PC, which was pointed at her just as directly as the others were doing with their weapons.
"Miss Vernor?" He sounded so chill the words were nearly an insult.
She grimaced, getting the idea.
"Nope, it's me, for now. Gwen. Don't trust that though, since Kate can take over whenever she wants. We were being kept captive in Europa. In an insane asylum." It was true, but she didn't have to explain it all, since one of the men moved to slap shackles on her. The room was still sort of dark, so Winslow tapped the nibs on a couple of the glow lamps on the wall, which left her a little bit blind for a bit.
The man grabbing her arm stopped then, so there was that.
"Look here. Shackle wounds. Wrists and ankles. Long term, so that fits the tale."
Winslow nodded.
"I see. Very well, we can risk leaving them off for now, I believe? Will you come with us please, Miss Farris? We'll need to call in some support. There are people that will want to see you." From the tone there would be people that would want to beat her up, too.
"Yeah. I think I broke my right ankle, escaping. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm heavily drugged. If someone will help me, I'll go though. I haven't been able to move for a while, so... Fighting would be out, really."
The dapper looking butler, who looked a little thinner, and if possible harder than he had before, nodded.
"Very good, miss. We can save that portion for later."
It was almost funny.
Chapter twelve
She'd been led to the front sitting room, the house seeming very different as Winslow helped her hobble through it, his arm around her in a fashion that probably would have forced him to kick his own butt, if he'd been anyone else. The armed guards moved efficiently though, and now that she had a chance to see the uniforms in the light of the hallway, she noticed that they didn't have any badges on. So they weren't specifically Aubrey forces, which wouldn't have made much sense anyway.
Surely, she couldn't let herself be surprised to find that people had moved on without her.
Three years was both a fairly short time, and forever, when you hadn't been allowed to live it.
Things looked to be closed down however, at Park Street. White sheets covered the tables and furnishings as they moved, and the carpets had vanished from the floors in most places. Winslow noticed her looking and smiled a bit.
"No one died. Mr. Vernor has just taken to working from their main country estate during the summer months. It used to be his habit, before you came, Miss, so it's a return to the old ways. Things have been hard for them both, the Vernors, since you left. Forces here have rather turned against them. Social ones, mainly." He helped her sit, being careful not to jostle her right foot too much.
He looked at her her bare legs though, which got her to notice them too. They were hairy, and very thin. Almost wasted stalks. It wasn't how she'd have wanted to keep herself, but it hadn't been about free will for her. Not for a long time.
"Would you like a drink? Perhaps some tea? We don't have the kitchen at full working condition at the moment, but I'm certain we can do something, while we wait." The butler looked at her warmly enough that one of the guards frowned at him.
At first she figured it was just the normal guy-girl thing there, the man thinking that the butler was being too familiar or whatever they called it. It wasn't that one, this time.
"This traitorous whore gave the Europans' rifting power! We should kill her now, and make sure she can't do whatever she has planned next." His crin moved to point at her, again, she realized, since he was the first man she'd met there.
She didn't even know how to explain it to him. Gwen hadn't done anything wrong, as far as she knew, but no one in the world would understand that. No one was going to believe her, without her mind being read, and even then, she expected very little from people.
Maybe a quick death was honestly the best she could hope for, unless something else made itself clear soon. She certainly couldn't see another way out now.
Kat made a sound, in her head, which sounded pissed off, instead of scared.
'I think not, Miss Farris. This kingdom isn't perfect, but they don't blame the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. Not too often. Not if t
hey know about it, which in this case they do.'
That wasn't going to help her not die right then however, and no one else moved to stop the man. That left her looking at him, his blue eyes locked with her brown.
"All right. I didn't do it, but you already know that, or I'd be dead. Or did everyone claim that it was the alien that did it this time, and the good heiress that was the innocent captive? I have to admit, that does sound like a better story, doesn't it?"
The man sneered, his face unlined, but still upset looking, and pulled the crin up and away, pointing it at the ceiling.
"The rumors are split, all told. The fact is that no one knows for certain. Some claimed you did it to free the Westmorlands, but it didn't work, if that was the case, did it? Others say that Katherine Vernor came back from the grave, and took her body back. That doesn't seem too likely to me. Which is it? Ghosts or misplaced honor?"
It seemed an easy thing to lie about to her. Not that she planned to, wanting to live, but still, he seemed kind of trusting, once he stopped plotting her demise.
"Katherine Vernor was inside of her body the whole time. She could have taken over at any point as it turned out, but let me have a bit of freedom for a while. Probably so everyone else would let their guard down. Then, after her attempt to have Ethyl killed failed, she took a chance and ran off. To answer the next question, yes, she's still in here. It's her body, and brain, so I can't stop her, as far as I can tell. At first I really thought I was stronger than she was. Really, I probably am, mentally, but this just isn't my body, so I can only do so much. I guess possessing people is harder than it sounds like? It's the truth though and I can back it, if we can get a telepath in to check it out?" She addressed Winslow, who wasn't in charge, but was the one she recognized.
"Of course, Miss Farris. I don't know how long that will take, however. I am certain that your Westmorland friends will want to see you, as soon as possible, but they may be rather busy, at present. Things have been tense with Europa for some months now. We're at war, to be exact. No one knows what's going to happen. Thankfully no one has used rifting yet. It's only a matter of time, I fear. Our enemies are too new to their power, and wish to make it known that they have it."