We begin our story with Nora racing through the streets of Middlemarch, hot on the trail of some supernatural beastie. It’s 01:00 in the morning. She’s tracked it. She’s found it. She’s currently pursuing it.
A few hours before, she’d been called into a meeting with Charlton Brynner, the Director of the Caliber Institute. He explained there was an Epistemophage on the loose – a spirit that eats knowledge – and it needed to be caught before it could get online. If the phage were to eat, say, the internet, then all of human knowledge could be lost. Thankfully they usually prefer to eat fiction.
It was also explained that they’d normally send a team of three, but based on her known disinclination for working well with others, she’d be tackling this alone. Nora was given an Apple Powerbook 100 to contain the phage and sent on her way.
In the present, a tap on her wrist heralds a message from her ‘patron’. It informs her there’s a café nearby that doesn’t have Wi-Fi or anything. Might work as a place to corner her quarry. Nora herds the phage onwards.
*
Inside this café, which is run by an old-school family of Orcs, sit Merlin and Ursa, discussing the setup of an online store. Ursa’s YouTube is growing successful enough to warrant this, and Merlin has already set up a personal site for her – it just needs commerce adding. The precise nature and, naturally, the price has remained an unsolved mystery for several hours.
It’s almost a welcome break when the door crashes open and a flowing spectre fills the room, pursued by a woman with a grim expression and an ancient laptop she’s brandishing like a trap.
The phage weighs up its options, and rapidly funnels itself into Merlin’s high-spec laptop.
Nora promptly stalks over and tries to wrestle the laptop from Merlin. His response is to cling to it like a man hanging from a ledge, wrenching it back from her and running several loops around the room. Ursa eventually convinces him to slow down a bit and listen to Nora’s explanation, but not before trying and failing to acquire more coffee in the commotion. This explanation amounts to ‘There’s a thing that eats information and it just escaped through your laptop. Give it to me or I’ll hurt you.’
Merlin, perhaps understandably, takes an immediate dislike to Nora. He won’t just give her the laptop, but he agrees that he’ll check it on her behalf. He quickly disassembles it, removing its network interface card, and puts it back together before powering it on to check what kind of damage the phage has done.
Turns out not much. Rather than eating through the contents of the laptop, the phage travelled through it to another location. Worried about the internet being gobbled up, Nora asks if Merlin can track where it went. He can. He’s very clever.
So Merlin throws together a little tracker-type-thing which reveals that the phage has moved to the Middlemarch Central Library.
‘Am I right in my understanding that we can only track this thing through your laptop?’ asks Nora. The corner of her mouth is twitching.
‘That’s correct,’ says Merlin. You can almost hear his fingers creaking as their grip on the laptop tightens.
Ursa’s thumb is hovering over her phone’s camera app, just in case things kick off again.
‘Fine,’ says Nora, after a tense moment’s consideration. ‘You’re coming with me to fix this. It’s your laptop that’s the problem so it’s only fair you help.’
‘Excuse me?’ says Merlin, his moustache almost uncurling. ‘I would say the problem is a direct result of your incompetence!’
Ursa decides not to film their argument. It isn’t the fun kind of fight.
*
So Nora and her pressganged allies made their way to the Underground. The central library was just a few stops from their location, and just a few minutes’ walk from there. Though it didn’t feel particularly brief, what with Nora and Merlin’s bickering about capability and culpability.
Ursa soon realised they were being followed.
A group of young men in hoodies were sloping after them, occasionally stopping to shove each other or spray a wall with a can of paint they were sharing. But they were keeping pace.
Upon reaching the station entrance, Ursa told the other two to go on ahead a second. She ducked around a corner, and changed. When the group that had been following them caught up, they were stopped by a stern, solidly built woman who introduced herself as a PCSO. She didn’t use the name Ursa.
‘Oi. Can I ask what it is you think you’re doing, following us through the streets like that?’
‘Bleh,’ said what was ostensibly the leader of the gang. ‘We simply vanted to drink the blood of the gnomish hipster! He is… our prey.’
‘Right. Enough of that. What’s your name?’ said not-Ursa, pointedly ignoring the Vampire’s flash of fangs.
‘I am… Trevula.’
‘Trev,’ said one of the others, closer to the back. ‘Trevor, you don’t have to do the voice.’
The apparent leader glanced behind to see his vampiric cohort looking a bit sheepish. When he turned back, he suddenly found he couldn’t meet Ursa’s eyes.
‘We’ll, uh, we’ll prolly ‘ead ‘ome, eh lads?’ he said. The rest of the vampires nodded with maybe a 60/40 mix of haste and relief.
When Ursa returned to her still-squabbling companions, she’d swapped back to a more familiar style.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Nora.
‘You’re not very perceptive, are you?’ smirked Merlin (he hadn’t spotted anything either).
*
The phage hadn’t moved by the time they reached the library. Ursa made a quick detour to check a suspicious person on the street, but it just turned out to be a demon waiting for a date.
Merlin sent forth a figment of his will, disabling the library’s alarm with a cantrip – the panel, stamped up with some security company’s contact info, was in full view of one of the windows.
‘Quite vulnerable to magical infiltration as a result,’ Merlin remarked. ‘Sloppy.’
Quietly, they made their way inside. Nothing was immediately apparent – no phage, and no powered computer it might have travelled to. It was decided that they should split up and each search a floor, because that always works out for the best in horror movies.
Merlin, sticking to the ground floor, found himself growing increasingly paranoid. There seemed to be a little wooden puppet that belonged in the kids’ section. And he could have sworn that it had been on a different chair when he’d first come in.
Ursa took the third floor. Rather than looking for the phage, she’d found a vending machine, and helped herself to a bag of crisps. It had been a long night. Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary during her exhaustive search the third floor.
Then a voice rang out in her head. It sounded like Merlin, an edge of terror in his words. Presumably he was using a Message spell.
‘There is something here, Ursa. It’s stalking me! Oh my god!!’
In response, Ursa wiped the crisp residue from her fingers and took out her phone and swiped through her contacts.
‘Merlin,’ she said into it, sauntering back downstairs to lend him a hand. ‘Why are you using magic? We have each other’s phone numbers.’
‘I was trying to be subtle!’ came Merlin’s reply. He was definitely panicking. ‘I didn’t want to make a target of – oh no.’
Merlin dropped the call and stared at the puppet, standing unsupported at the end of the aisle he’d come down. He’d been cornered.
‘Hi there,’ said the doll. ‘I’m Nicholas Nickerbocker!’
Merlin didn’t scream, and nobody can prove otherwise. He launched a bolt of fire at the puppet from his outstretched hand, and skidded underneath the bookshelf to sprint towards the stairs. He didn’t look back.
*
Nora, on the other hand, was a consummate professional. Completely unaware of the shenanigans going on elsewhere in the library, she’d noticed a room on the second floor lit with the steady blue-grey glow of a laptop monitor.
Creeping toward the little window in the office door, she could see a figure typing away at a spreadsheet inside, and huffed out a quiet sigh. Either this person was their culprit, or they were a potential witness. Either way, it was a further complication.
Nora closed her eyes and summoned up the power she’d been granted by her ‘patron’; the power that had gotten her noticed by the Caliber Institute to begin with.
She sent a spike of psionic pain into the mind of the woman in the office.
Much to Nora’s chagrin, it wasn’t quite enough to incapacitate her. The figure in the office grasped at her head for a moment, then made a panic-fueled recovery, shutting the laptop and whirling to exit the office. This brought her face to face with Nora, who was not inclined to move.
By this time, Ursa and Merlin had reunited on the second floor. Before Merlin could explain his standoff with the little wooden boy, they’d heard the slam of the door, and found Nora interrogating a dryad with a slim Chromebook clutched to her chest and a pair of glasses on a chain around her neck.
‘Wh-who are you?’ she said. Her eyes darted between the three figures as Nora’s companions joined her. ‘Where’s Steve? Steve! Security will be here in a second, so, you’d just better not–’
‘Oh, we’re with the security company,’ said Ursa, without any hesitation. ‘We’re here to cover for Steve. He had to go home sick.’
‘Oh. Wait seriously? Why are there three of you covering for one person?’
Ursa’s response was just a smooth as before. ‘Well, it’s standard company procedure for covering other shifts. We obviously won’t have the same familiarity with the site, so this way we ensure that the security presence has the same level of diligence as your regular night guard. Could I ask what you’re doing here?’
‘Oh. I work here, don’t worry.’ The librarian held out an I.D card that listed her name as Nessarose. ‘I was just catching up on some work and I, um, lost track of time.’
That the Librarian was here with the only active computer, after they’d tracked the Epistemophage to this very location, was a bit suspicious, to say the least.
‘So, uh, what’s Chris off with?’ asked Nessarose.
‘Diarrhea,’ said Ursa, matter-of-factly.
There was a pause.
‘Steve!’ yelled Nessarose, calling out for the security guard that must still be on-site somewhere.
‘Oh, it was Steve,’ said Ursa. ‘Not Chris.’
‘Well, that nearly worked,’ said Nora, pulling her pistol from its concealed holster and levelling it at the librarian’s forehead. The click of the gun’s safety coming off was suddenly quite loud in the dark of the library.
Ursa’s jaw dropped. ‘Nora?! What the fuck? Why do you have a gun?!’
‘It’s a tool for problem solving,’ said Nora, before returning her gaze to the librarian. ‘You’re not going to be a problem, are you?’
Nessarose’s ashen face was transfixed on the barrel of the gun. She shook her head slightly, and the slight effort of movement broke whatever it was that had been keeping her still. She began to shake.
‘You can guess why we’re really here,’ said Nora, a thinning veneer of patience in her voice. ‘What have you got in that laptop of yours?’
‘It’s not dangerous!’ cried the librarian. ‘I just wanted to make a bit of money on the side, y’know?’ She noted their lack of comprehension. ‘Uh, I modified the phage to harvest info instead of erasing it. And I, um, sent it out to look for card info.’
‘Seriously?’ said Ursa. ‘You summoned up a monster and you’re using it for credit card fraud?’
Merlin shook his head incredulously. ‘There are many simpler methods for such a scheme. Though I can at least appreciate the novelty of this one?’
‘Quiet, you two.’ Nora’s pistol remained steady. ‘You. Librarian. You’re coming with me to the Institute. So is your laptop.’
Nessarose suddenly seemed to remember the laptop I her trembling hands, and just as immediately fumbled and dropped it on the floor.
The burst of eerie light that followed sent Ursa and Merlin diving for cover, and Nora fired a couple of gunshots at the emergent Epistemophage more as a formality than anything. The phage took stock of its assailants and once more decided to make a break for it – this time billowing past Nora and attempting to escape down the stairs.
Merlin had regained his composure and joined Nora in slinging arcane power at the phage’s retreating form, slowing it, throwing it off course. But it kept moving. As it reached the ground level it made a surge of speed towards the exit, then… slowed.
A lullaby rang out; pure, warm little notes plucked from a kalimba cupped in Ursa’s hands. And instead of escaping, the phage sank toward the floor and pooled there, succumbing to the effects of the Sleep spell.
‘Don’t you move,’ said Nora to the librarian. She didn’t bother with the gun this time.
Producing the Apple Powerbook 100, Nora approached the Epistemophage. She thought through logistics and found no satisfying solutions, so ended up just putting the open Powerbook directly in front of what might be the thing’s head.
‘Now what?’ asked Ursa. She was putting her kalimba away. It was pink; apparently hand-painted.
Perhaps in response, a voice called out to them. ‘I’m Nicholas Nickerbocker!’
‘Oh fuck!’ said Merlin, as a partially charred and melted doll tottered out from behind a bookshelf. Its feet clattered across the floor towards the group, its path leading it to a collision with the phage.
The phage awoke in a panic, as many do when waking from an unplanned nap. With another blaze of spectral light it shot forward, and straight into the waiting Powerbook.
Ursa beamed at her companions. ‘Right. That wasn’t too bad, was it?’
‘What. The fuck.’ said a masculine voice from the top of the stairs. ‘Was that a fucking ghost?’
A security guard stood at the top of the stairs. He was quite clearly terrified, in worse a state of shock than Nessarose had been.
Then his expression changed. It grew slack at first, before passing back through fear to a kind of blank determination. There was something of steel in his eyes, now. His clothing changed too, the colour seeping from it, leaving it the same shape and cut, but with a fuzziness like static on an analogue television.
The man had taken on the Mantle of the Auditor.
‘Shit,’ said Nora.
The thing that used to be a security guard flashed toward the librarian. There was a cracking sound, and in a sinuous movement of its arm, the Auditor had removed the dryad’s spine.
Now, contrary to what slasher films and certain videogames would have you believe, it isn’t really possible to just cleanly remove a humanoid creature’s spine like a belt from a pair of trousers. It’s a lot messier in real life, with the spine being quite integrated with a lot of other bones, and tendons, and ligaments.
So as the Auditor pulled, much of the librarian’s torso was torn apart by the force. When its hand came free, a twisted knot of muscle and bone came with it, like the roots of a bush pulled from the earth.
The Auditor held up the dripping tangle of gore for a moment as Nessarose collapsed in on herself. Then it took a step toward the three as they watched on in horror.
‘…I hate it when this happens,’ finished Nora.
But the colour had returned to presumably-Steve. The strain from the mantle had been too much for him, and besides, it had eliminated the source of the magic he had seen. He slumped down dead beside the dryad.
There were sirens in the distance. Presumably-Steve had presumably phoned what was presumably the police.
Nora, Merlin, and Ursa had already fled the scene.
*
Ursa wiped at her mouth. She’d promptly thrown up in a bin when they got back to the station, and had come to regret eating those crisps.
Merlin was castigating Nora about what they’d had to witness. ‘Is that normal for you?’ he was asking, waving his arms for emphasis. ‘Does that happen often?!’
‘It’s not supposed to,’ said Nora. She’d put away her gun and was quite pointedly staring at the tunnel the train would emerge from in lieu of anything else.
‘Don’t you think you owe us an apology?’
Nora said nothing. Until the train arrived, the only sound in the Underground was an occasional grumble from Ursa in the aftermath of chucking up her guts.
When the train did arrive, the billowing white cloud that presaged its arrival marked it as something out of the ordinary. The Middlemarch Underground tended not to employ the use of steam engines, partly because of problems using such machines in the confines of a tunnel, but mostly because it was the 21st century and we’ve all moved on.
Regardless, Nora boarded the train without hesitation, and the other two followed her example. It reached its next stop in less than a minute, and when they disembarked, it was onto an unfamiliar platform.
They were greeted by a tall man with a brass face devoid of features, save for two blue lights that served as eyes. ‘Nora,’ he said, in a clipped tone that suggested private schooling, but many years ago. ‘Welcome back. I see you’ve made some friends?’
‘Are you this one’s employer?’ said Merlin, stepping forward. ‘If so I would like to file a formal complaint.’
The lights blinked at him. ‘…Yes, well. There’ll be the opportunity for that in a moment. If you’d all like to come with me?’
Roll History 