After a moment, the net-scape around her turned watery and she found herself transformed into a two-tailed mermaid, a melusine, as she moved deeper into the ocean. “Swift-Current!” she sang, the waves carrying and amplifying the song. Entering another runner's realm was always a little disconcerting. She liked the ocean and the way Swift-Current saw her. It was a sweet departure from her own faux-medieval program, or the harem girl she became in the Gemini's desert or especially Niall's forest, where she appeared as a great black she-wolf instead of her usual sorceress.
The merman fluked toward her, his head shaved for greater speed in the water. “My queen, how may I serve you?”
“I need to know who has been hitting EIT and Tatsutatchi, calling themselves Irishgirl. Bring me anything you and Deep-Dives can find, at once!”
“At once.” The merman did a full flip and pressed her hands to his lips before speeding away with powerful strokes of his delphine tail.
Zara smiled and began the second phase. She had helped rescue Swift-Current, runner Shelby Carter, and his beloved Mark Grayson from a life of servitude to the Wheelman on the day they extracted Niall from his clutches. The Immortals had feigned death through judicious use of flat-line programs, and she had requested their corpses to experiment on, to see the changes in their brains and bodies and whether such runners would be useful to Leda. The Wheelman had surrendered them without the usual decapitation procedure, for some serious remuneration. Now, fully revived and comfortable in a well-tended apartment, they were quite pleased to serve Leda, with occasional side jobs for Zara herself. They adored her unstintingly and did their best for her.
Now, she went to the Obsidian Tower. Glad to be back in her usual form, a tall sorceress in a long black gown embroidered in green, she made the six quick hops that brought her to her own private node. As she approached, giving off proper recognition codes, the ice deactivated. The forest of thorns parted before her, a drawbridge lowered over the moat of lava and the caltrops skittered away on newly-animated legs. A door appeared in the sheer glass side of the tower and she swept in.
A thought let her bypass the winding staircase and ascend to the top of her tower on an updraft. In the workroom, she ignored the bubbling potions in glassware, the endless tomes of dark magic and all the atmospheric huggermugger. Her scrying dish might be useful when her help returned, but for now, it remained in the corner.
She pulled down a black glass jar as large as her head from a high shelf, its lid sealed with wax inscribed in runes of protection. Inside, something moved, not pleased at being disturbed. A simple password made the wax seal of warning programs fall away. The Boring Worm within could damage her own programs as badly as EIT's records. She yanked a dress out of a huge battered wardrobe. When she slipped it on, the sorceress was gone and an ordinary blond woman with no particular costuming stood there. She smiled at her reflection, deeply out of place in the mirror held by bronze gargoyles. The blond had been one of her earliest avatars and was not at all recognizable as the formidable Technomancer. Ever her ID code read “Suzie.”
She stuffed the Boring Worm jar into her purse and headed to EIT.
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