bound_gabriel (![]() ![]() @ 2014-08-13 17:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, gabriel thorne, mairead, one-shot, private |
After Midnight (Part One of Three)
Date: 14 August 2013
Time: 08.08 AM
Location: Richard's Road / Burnt Wood, Crescent Cove
Characters: Gabriel Thorne, Mairéad
Description: Mairéad has a task in mind, and knows just the witch for the job. Part one of three.
Status: Private, complete (one-shot).
He didn't feel that he was necessarily doing anything wrong. Really, it was Verizon's fault. Promise and deliver was a basic tenet of capitalism after all, and quite frankly, the speeds that Richard was getting for his "super fast" broadband made dial-up look like a Lamborghini in comparison.
So, crusader for consumer justice that he was, Gabriel thought he'd take a look at the problem. Which was how he ended up being elbow-deep in a relay box, five minutes from the house, at a time when the morning traffic was starting to pick up and his concern about being spotted by Crescent Cove's finest was rising accordingly.
He'd been there for a few hours now, ever since he'd been responding to an e-mail from Adair saying that he wouldn't be needed today, and the Wi-Fi had cut out. Again. It was the last straw.
"This is the last straw," he'd said, furiously pulling on his jeans as he climbed out of the guest bed he shared with Talia, who had already been up, complaining about an upset stomach. Gabriel didn't think too much of it, considering that his own gut was warbling alarmingly. He just wasn't sure if it was sympathetic, or the sole Tandoori restaurant in this ridiculous place really did deserve the local buzz about rat meat being a principal component of its curries.
He spliced the wires with practiced ease, shifting them onto the high-yield circuits used primarily for the businesses in the area - which ones, he didn't know, given that they were firmly situated in suburbia - which he thought would benefit everyone else in the immediate vicinity as well. He was like Batman, with a pair of cable strippers, a multi-tool, an alarming lack of probity when it comes to such things and the power of eldritch forces at his command.
"I'm Batman," he whispered to himself with glee, as he completed the re-routing, passing the current through the small app he'd built over the past few days and installed onto his iPhone. It all checked out, and now there was true 100mb broadband, rather than the dribble of piss they'd been served up for months.
Truth be told, though, he was getting tired of living on Richard's charity. He paid rent now, and contributed fully to the house, but he knew that they were at risk of overstaying their welcome if they couldn't get things sorted out sooner rather than later. The raid on City Hall had helped, as they now had all of the documentation (and an appropriately flawless credit rating) to apply for pretty much any apartment in the city, but Talia had been somewhat hesitant to discuss it in depth whenever he'd raised the possibility.
He was lost in his reverie, then, so much so that he almost missed the glint of silver cable that caught a slight gasp of morning sunlight, refracting into his face as he began closing up the circuit box.
"And what," he murmured, as he moved cables aside gingerly to investigate. "Are you?"
Gabriel was familiar with network hubs, unhealthily so, given his career path to date. This was a foreign component, and he couldn't see any immediate function for it. Connections to the telecommunications network were strewn throughout, but this seemed to be a recent install, burrowing in directly from beneath the pavement and into the box.
He sat back and frowned. It was as if someone had tapped into the network.
He withdrew his notebook, and flicked through it without much care, wincing as the cover tore that little bit more with every rotation around the rings, until he found the spell that he'd been looking for. A simple little thing, one that would send a signal through the cable without necessarily disrupting the flow of energy through it. Technomancy was particularly delicate at the best of times, given that he was introducing a foreign element into something that relied wholly on the regulated movement of electrons and protons through a fibreoptic cable, but there were ways and means of sneaking the magic in. He'd initially developed this back in London, as a means to determine where a line had been cut by the city's constant road works, but it would apply just as well here. All it took was a little thought.
He began reaching out with his extra senses, feeling the hum of static that emanated from the box as he opened himself to the electric field. The hairs on his arm began to stand on end as energy snapped between his fingers, but this was a subtle exercise. He touched a finger tentatively to the cable, then more firmly as it became clear he wasn't going to be catapulted back through Richard's front door from electrocution. His mouth began to move, the sounds and sibilance of his magical formation barely audible as the tip of his finger began to glow. This went on for the best part of a minute until finally, with a wave of energy, and a streak of light, the spell fired down the length of the cable.
He packed up his tools, securing them in the small rucksack he'd taken with him on leaving the house, and allowed his magical senses to fully permeate the environment around him. He could see the lines of current pass overhead and underground, feel the restrained hum of vehicular computers as they breezed past, and even, if he stretched out, sense the warm glow of cellular telephone screens in the houses around him as people checked e-mails, read the news, responded to overnight text messages, and called work to say that they definitely, absolutely had a migraine and couldn't possibly come in today, shortly before their televisions and Xbox Ones ignited with electrical fury, ready for a day of illicit gaming.
He closed his eyes, continuing to murmur the incantation, and opened them again. The light from his spell lanced out ahead of him, creating a glowing route through the street, pulsing gently with a golden incandescence that only he could see.
Well, that wasn't true. Anyone with the Sight or enough magical facility could see it, if they were tuned in to his frequency. Few people were.
He debated sending a message to Talia, and reasoned that he wouldn't be gone that long. Surely, the cable was a recent installation.
Two hours later, as he trudged towards the city limits, sipping from a bottle of Coke he'd bought en route and nursing the last remains of what had optimistically been called a bacon sandwich from a street cart vendor, he began to rethink his assessment. God, but this just went on and on. He'd walked from Richard's house through four different boroughs - or whatever the City Council called them here - until he could spy the treeline of the Burnt Wood coming up on the horizon. His legs burned, his feet ached, and even though he'd given up smoking years and years ago, he felt like he could really do with a fucking cigarette about now.
He paused, taking another mouthful of coke, and repeated the ritual once more, re-tuning his senses before he re-opened his eyes.
"You must be having a giraffe," he moaned, as the light regained its intensity, streaking right into the treeline and beyond. He reached into his rucksack, and pulled out his trusty can of deodorant, giving himself a liberal spray, before placing it back and shouldering the bag. Mouth set firmly into a thin line, he texted Talia about being out for most of the morning, and set off into the unknown.
Or at least, as he saw it, the Place Where Cellphone Reception Dared Not Tread.