Witch of the Web

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Welp.

Things have gone from insane, to impossible, to impossible with a side of improbability.

I look at Willow, who’s clearly just as surprised as I am. My parents made her. They might have known I was trans before I did. And they were a part of this dumb fucking resistance. 

To top off the expositional onslaught, they left me a clue as to where to find this code that would unlock any restrictions on Willow.

What the fuck has my life become? This is the sort of hackneyed garbage that would be in some thirty something’s half assed writing.

Absolutely unbelievable. 

Still, I should probably do something with this, so I search the folds of my skirt for a pocket and am about to complain about women’s fashion bullshit when I find something more akin to a large bag hidden in the fabric. 

Haha. What the hell?

Willow comes to the rescue with an article about old fashioned dresses having these pockets as a precursor to purses. 

Thank fuck whoever made this dress was a history nerd. 

Slipping the disk into the frankly almost too big pocket, I turn around to see the door open and Roger standing there. “Finally ready to get down to business?” I ask him. “Or are you here to do something pointless like trying to apologize for someone else’s actions?” 

He winces, I guess he had come to apologize.

Fucking old people. 

“I’m surprised you found this room all on your own,” he mutters after a solid minute of silent gaping. “Though perhaps I shouldn’t have been,” he admits. “Will you come back to continue our conversation?” 

“Depends,” I muse aloud. “Has everyone given up on holding a pity party for me?” He winces at my words, but I’m just done giving a shit at this point. “Well?”

He silently nods and leads the way back towards his office. It’s a bit interesting that he takes a less efficient route. I guess even he doesn’t fully understand the layout of his base. 

Soon enough though, we’re back in front of the others who all look like they’ve eaten something sour. 

Fucking stupid. 

We stand there for several long minutes without anyone talking before I get impatient. “Well since nobody else wants to start, I guess I will,” I sigh dramatically. “Hi, I’m Rose. Gonna get this out of the way: I have an AI cat that my parents apparently made before it was stolen by LOG. She can do some crazy shit like edit both Lanadel and to a slightly lesser extent, meatspace.” I pause to soak in the shocked reactions of Lonnie and Roger before continuing. “I’m all on board with taking down the Jacks because fuck those guys, but I’m not interested in getting involved in some mass reform.”

Roger and Lonnie share a look that just screams desperation. “I get why you’d be focused on taking down LOG, but have you considered why it even exists in the first place?” Lonnie asks, her tone tense and worried. “If we took down LOG, but left the corporations in power, another, possibly worse organization would take its place within a month at most.” 

“Who do you think pays LOG to do what it does?” Roger asks. “It’s the corporate leaders who have a vested interest in keeping the lower class subjugated.”

So, sure. They raise some good points, but…

“Look, I’ve only just started figuring myself out. I just do not have it in me to give a rat's ass about some holier than thou cause.” As I lay out my stance, it doesn’t escape me the looks Felicia and Summer are exchanging, and I find myself worrying whether they’re buying into this righteous crusade crap. “Besides, I have something vastly more important to do,” I explain as I pull out the disk my parents left me. “This has clues to something important. And I’m going after it.”

Roger frowns at my outright dismissal of his goals, but doesn’t seem ready to give up yet. “Maybe we could arrange a trade of sorts then?” he suggests. I can already guess where he’s going with this, so I don’t let him continue.

“Let me guess, you’re going to offer help with my goals in exchange for my help with yours?” The look on his face confirms it.

“Maybe… Maybe we should consider their offer?” Summer suggests. 

Should’ve figured she’d be on board. Her Aunt that she clearly idolizes is already a part of it. 

“Fine. You can help, and in exchange I’ll listen to whatever elevator pitch you want to spout at me. I’m not making any promises about changing my mind though. Fuck that.” Fortunately, my compromise seems to appease Roger at least. “Now, if you’re so eager to help, do you have a long term delving pod or three?” I ask, eliciting some confused looks from everyone.

“Why?” Lonnie questions, her expression carefully neutral.

“I need to go deep into Lanadel to get that important thing I mentioned? It’ll be easier if I can just stay inside. I’d double dip, but frankly, I’d rather not make the trip by myself.” I pause as I consider whether to explain further.

Eh, fuck ‘em. Let them be confused.

“So yeah. I need to go on a trip with Summer and Felicia to retrieve the thing. It’s gonna take a few days on foot and there’s no gateways near the location.” 

Roger frowns and thinks it over for a few moments before sighing. “We don’t have any, but I know where we can discreetly get some,” he explains. “Are you sure this is important enough?” 

“It is if you want my help at all,” I point out with a smarmy smirk. He lets out another sigh and nods. 

“Fine, I’ll see it done. In the meantime, we have rooms you can stay in until we get the pods here.” 

With that, Roger has one of his merry men (technically they were a woman, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it) take the four of us and Lonnie to a suite of rooms. Felicia grumbles a bit about how her safe house is perfectly safe, but relents when Lonnie is able to rattle off the location's address.

I glance at Willow who has the same train of thought as me. We’re not gonna take Felicia being berated by someone other than us sitting down. “Roger Applewood, Lonnie Everbloom, Francis Rockburrow, Margaret Steelblossom…” I begin naming the name of every single member of the resistance, and only stop when Lonnie holds up her hands in defeat with a shocked look of fear.

“H- how do you know all those names?” she asks shakily. Clearly she thought their roster was privileged knowledge. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed with their info-sec protocols. I didn’t even need Willow to help me cheat, I just used her to connect to the network and worked my own weaving magic. 

“You have an easily exploited flaw in your network security and your roster is laughably easy to find once in,” I explain to the shock and disappointment of the others. “Sooooo yeah. Don’t act like you guys are hot shit just because you were able to find Felicia’s safehouse. I had to actually ask permission to access her network while I was there.” 

Felicia had been looking a little annoyed at my antics but when I reveal why I did it, her face shifts to something a little harder to pulse. She’s blushing though, so that’s a win.

Lonnie just stares at me before slumping into a chair with a defeated sigh. “Ok, point made. Though if you want something to do while we wait for those pods, we could pay you to better secure our network.” 

Ah. Money. Now she’s speaking my language.

“See, here I was, thinking you didn’t understand my motivations,” I say with a giggle. Still not used to those. “But money is a great motivator.” I close my eyes and let myself shift into Lanadel while maintaining awareness of my body. “Let me just get a good look at things and I’ll give you an estimate.”

With network access, it was pitifully easy to locate the Lanadel representation of the resistance’s network. I soon found myself wandering a warren of tunnels burrowed deep into a mountain cliff face with Willow beside me. 

The two of us wander the maze for a good several minutes before beelining it for the central console. “Oof,” I say through my meat body. “You guys really love your mazes huh? They aren’t good substitutes for proper warding though.” I giggle as I briefly consider just undermining their whole operation. I have the power to, but Willow quickly brings me back to the task at hand and reminds me that these are good people. In hindsight, it’s obvious my parents made Willow. They clearly programmed her with their own bright and shiny morals. 

It does make me feel like I haven’t fully lost them though.

In any case, it’s fairly quick and easy work to reinforce the tunnels with wards, and I decide to get creative while I’m at it. A lot of people hate spiders. Now, many aren’t afraid of them, but they do get creeped out. The only thing preventing full on fear is the size disparity. So what better than to deter wandering individuals than some giant spiders. I may or may not have introduced a bunch of them to the wild to obfuscate places I set up this sort of security.

That handy little roster that I grabbed will be useful too, since I can whitelist everyone on it so the new guards don’t attack them. But the spiders are only a single piece of the puzzle. We need webs, proper sticky icky webs. The sort that alerts the spiders to come and feast on any poor unsuspecting Jacks who get too curious. They also have another purpose which I am particularly proud of. Even if someone escapes the webs by cutting themselves loose, or dying, the webs will take something from them. Specifically any location data they have. Not specifically for this place, that’d be too obvious, they take all of it. A complete wipe of any mapping software they have. 

The spiders are no slouches either, they have a toxin that lingers after respawn and messes with a victim’s sense of direction in Lanadel, making it easier for them to get lost. 

Once I’m done, I go through the tunnels once more and ensure nothing looks too intentional. It has to look like the simple spider AIs set it up themselves. I’ve done a few jobs like this, setting up subtle security, and caves are a prime location for spiders. If we were in a more obvious compound, I’d probably have done wandering predators or something. 

Once I’m done, I pull my focus back to meatspace and look at Lonnie. “I’ll send you an invoice once you’re satisfied,” I say with a smirk. “You’ll want to check it out, just be aware that to gain access, you need to be on that roster file you have. It’s much safer now though, so don’t worry.”

Lonnie blinks and looks at me like I have a second head. “You never used a system? How could you have…” she trails off as she puts things together pretty quickly if I’m being honest. “You can enter Lanadel remotely?” she demands, getting back to her feet. “How? Is it the familiar? I mean of course it is! But, oh my god.” She slumps back into the chair, her face a portrait of shock.

“I know, we’re amazing, aren’t we?” I tease, eliciting a gentle jab from Summer. “Now, before we get settled, I want to show my girlfriends a video, so could you please step out?” 

Lonnie nods and makes her way out of the room, stopping only briefly at the door. “Please consider helping us. You’d make all the difference. We could stop tragedies like what happened to you from happening to others.” That more than anything gives me pause and I briefly entertain the notion before waving her off.

Once she’s gone, I have Willow create a holo screen that we all can see and start playing the video. I wonder what they’ll make of it.

End Chapter 16