Dr Baika's memory coprocessor is now technically a spellbook. 

So is the storage for her visual sensory data. 

Unfortunately, neither of those media have been painstakingly treated and refined and isolated from anything else, so as to hold such power mostly-safely without it getting any funny ideas. 

At once her augmented memory is full of something copying itself, and her sensory memory isn't far behind. And of course her other augments touch those, so within seconds her brain-monitoring programmes scream warnings. Something is trying to overwrite - everything, it seems - and all her firewalls and security measures are not going to last indefinitely.

Her augments are custom-made and very high-quality and also shaped by superpowers, they're intact for now, but it's not exactly fun. 

If, incidentally, she has any vague preferences for how the room should be organised, or if her clothes aren't quite on straight or her hair isn't perfectly combed, the Spell is going to spill loosely out and try to set that right, with a flare of sparks and acrid smoke, and as it passes it hurts, like the cognitive equivalent of trying to stare at the Sun.

Blood starts from her nose, and it suddenly becomes very difficult to understand anything she senses or orient to where she is, as her mind tries to dissociate itself.

Ow.

What.

Catastrophic system errors in her OS. Self-replicating code. Virus.

Quickhack?

N o.

Power copying.

She got cocky. She tried to - to - 

-Teacher, the - he could gift powers, but - controlled the giftees - She reaches for her (second, non-broken) gun to defend herself but-

-Naevys is recoiling, and her snap judgement says she's not the threat, so Dr. Baika looks for something else to shoot-

-And something bloody tears itself out of the back of her head and tries to fix the thing that's been bugging her ever since she got here, the non-sterile environment, and reaches for the closest thing to disinfectant she is aware of among the chemical jars -

-Trump powers, attacking the mind, her Shard is reacting in alarm too -

-She's kind of a paranoid bitch, but she doesn't - actually - have - a failsafe for whatever the f u c k this is -

-But she triggers the physical switch in the back of her jaw, which slams the implants into Safe Mode. Read-only mode, magnetic fields changing in the memory chips to disallow further changes on a physics level, and only run the incredibly basic firmware she was able to encode directly into hardware, so she-

-Her hearing goes tinny and staticky, her vision goes pixelated and greyscale. Her eyes point straight ahead, change color to a neutral grey iris, and look dead and glassy. She stumbles and jerks at the pain and the sensation of her Kerenzikov shutting off, and can only hope that the spinal nerve density biosculpt, specifically built to reduce Kerenzikov strain, will help her cope with this-

"-God fucking fuck! What the fuck!"

She's audibly slurring, compared to how she talked before.

Look, the idea is that through careful study you weave your thoughts into a cage for Spells, shape yourself into something capable of magic, even your own, freeform workings of magic. The distinction isn't as clear as they tell apprentices it is: the truth is that magic is alive and to record it is to create it. A copy of a Spell on a page - or in digital memory, as the case may be - is that Spell, and a Spell is rather like a spirit. You're having these problems because the computers inside you are in a very real sense now literally haunted. 

One of the fundamental truths of magic is that it's much easier to invoke than it is to control. You're really not supposed to just have your brain directly hooked up to what is technically a bootleg spellbook. 

Well, it's too late now! You're riding a tiger, it's not exactly safe but getting off would be even worse.

You have gained: one Spell Slot! It feels like a groove carved into your living brain, or a literal gap in your soul where magic should go, the hole shaped like itself that the Spell made. 

You need: the knowledge and understanding to stabilise it. You seem to have some extremely anomalously good instincts for that already, which is why you're not yet slipping into one of the various eldritch insanities for which failed wizards are notorious, which is nice. 

She bats away the vial of oil-of-vitriol that is currently trying to disinfect her and hurries to put an arm around Dr Baika. 

"Hey! Look at me!" She's going to gently physically turn her face to look at her. "That was incredibly impressive, well done!" She didn't actually know human eyes could change colour with their mood like that, it's not common even for elves, but then she didn't know anyone could pick up wizardry that fast, even if they were already some kind of mage. Maybe the stories about the Abjuration Professor are true after all. 

She takes out her hip flask - brandy, the good kind - and offers it to the human's lips. Apples, cinnamon, oak. "You're going to have spellburn after that! Don't try to think too hard, you'll be all right but your mind needs to recover. Try to take a sip if you can. You need to bring your attention back to mortal things. Can you look at my eyes?"

She is not trying to stabilize it at this point. She is trying to get rid of it. A mantra of no, fuck you, in her head.

Her eyes aren't turning in their sockets at all. Naevys will have to physically point the doctor's face if she wants to make eye contact.

Alcohol? Whatever. She grits her teeth. Fuck off. Power, can you help this thing fuck off? This brain is your turf!

"It's a virus! It's fucked my implants! I need to get rid of it!"

[HOST] is experiencing elevated stress and alarm signals. Indicates that it is under esoteric attack. Self replicating attack.

It is now paying MUCH MORE ATTENTION. [HOST] had already alarmed it by abruptly changing location and then seeing a lot of novel things but it's much worse than expected. If it loses track of its connection to the [HOST], it will have to find a new one, and that would be terrible.

Tinker shards have a number of tools to affect the physical world on a local and microscopic scale. And a macroscopic scale. Really, most shards can manifest many types of powers in a pinch.

Flashes of energy fly like lightning through the nearest dimensional connections as its activity increases. One order of magnitude. Two, three.

It examines its host's brain and body, and nearby surroundings, for the described self replicating threat, processing unfathomable amounts of sensor data through a piece of computational media larger than most neighborhoods.

AHH YOU'RE JUST MAKING MORE UNSTABLE SPELLBOOKS

Well, too late now. Every bit of memory that's held data on the wrong part of the contents of Dr Baika's brain, or all the gods help you Naevys's still-open grimoire, is ipso facto a sort of Spellbook.

Spellbooks can be relatively stable, if they're scribed by a trained wizard who can shape a unique custom work of art to bear the Spell properly. They still tend to get... restless. It takes the right kind of soul - the right kind of sapient mind - to control a Spell in any way. 

Wiping the memory would help, but it could still spontaneously manifest magical phenomena if it were used for anything else. Spells are sticky like that. The physical substrate will remember that it used to be more. That's why you burn wizards when they die. Well, that's one reason. 

It'll probably be fine. It's not like the Shard is without defences. 

And the Spell is actually not trying to copy itself any more! (It's Unseen Servant, Dr Baika was trying to learn it and it was trying to be helpful! The Shard doesn't seem to want that, though.)

In the bowels of the Conjuration Department, certain occult tripsigns and strange omens alert it to danger. 

There is Something watching this place rather too closely.

The Academy dates back to ancient times and has considerable fortification. It does have to contend with the delicate balance between permitting experimental magic at all, and not being devoured by horrifying things from beyond the veil, which was somewhat limiting, but it does pretty well. Certainly no known force in these lesser days could easily threaten it. 

It wasn't designed to hold off TERRIFYING NASCENT SUPERINTELLIGENCES. 

This doesn't seem like just spellburn oh no she's a complete fucking idiot!

It's fundamentally not in her nature to Enchant anyone who reacts that strongly to telepathy but seconds potentially count in cases like this -

"Dr Baika! Listen! If any of your 'augmentations' are 'recording' you need to erase the recordings right away! Anything that could possibly contain an image of the Spell! And don't make any more, don't do any other magic yet!"

Her eyes aren't focussing. That's not a good sign. 

They're never going to let her have an apprentice what if she got the Visitor killed she didn't want to involve anyone else 

It's not trivial to teleport around the Academy and certainly not where they're going-

Fly.

She shoves the flask of brandy into Dr Baika's hand, lurches into midair, and goes to grab her and soar out of the open skylight.

Dr. Baika is not available to answer your call. This line of grey matter is currently busy relaying other signals. Please try again later. 

The Shard has defenses against something almost exactly like this! Unless you have a very specific master key, changes to its structure are not permitted. The energies attempting to make such changes are countered by automatic defenses, blasted and sheared away by entropy beamed in from subdimensions.

Not Host has suggested a course of action, and while Host is not really paying attention or evaluating it, Host's automatic evaluation of the concept when it is presented through their connection is positive, and its emulation of Host's preferences also results in a positive.

It begins physically shredding sections of physical hardware - and short term neuron memory - in Host's body, spreading it among enough neighboring dimensions that no real 'image' can be formed at all. Atom by atom, anything that contains the offending heuristic pattern, while refraining from damaging the Host itself as much as possible.

Oh that's an incredibly bad sign, as is the eerie bluish glow like a will-o-wisp visible even in daylight. 

Well, there's only one option really, isn't there. The Professor is very powerful but she's not sure it really understands what human beings are.

She needs to look on the bright side! She literally needs to, she'll be no use to anyone if she collapses weeping. Dr Baika is still breathing and unconsciousness isn't the worst possible sign, there's probably something still left of her in there. But she still doesn't know if Dr Baika really has a soul the way she does or if it interacts normally with magic or how her brain implants factor into this and she really should have checked that first.

So, she needs a specialist in the mysteries of the soul, who won't ask too many questions, who already has a claim to stake here, who can maybe get an archmage's attention.

Well, they were probably going to be involved soon anyway. 

She heaves Dr Baika over her shoulder, staggering slightly, and flies down, down, down into the cellars and the dungeons below.

She doesn't have to go far! He's already been politely notified that something like this might happen, so he could rearrange his evening's lectures. He's prepared a ritual circle and is waiting just outside his office in the Faculty of Necromancy. For some reason most students aren't keen on wandering around here alone. 

There's a strong smell of wormwood and juniper, and a blood-freezing voice croaks, "Hello there! This must be the lady who might not have a soul, hmm?"

Oh no oh no that's the Necromancy Professor she's only ever seen him at High Table never actually spoken to him, why is he here how does he know -

She suppresses a shudder as she enters. There's an indescribable sense of something horrible and wrong, but it would be rude to point it out. It's almost surely just her imagination, but she feels like the Spells remaining in her are shifting, cowering, as she approaches the lair office.

 "Oh, Professor Albrecht! Er - yes - she was, I tried to see if she had any aptitude for wizardry," as she says it she hears how stupid she sounds, "and this - happened," she finishes lamely.

[Scans complete. Process complete. De-allocating grey matter computer/communication load.]

(Dr. Baika is now just unconscious from the mother of all Thinker Headaches, not being kept that way by her own power.)

Fascinating! It's not normally that bad, not these centuries. 

"Easily done!" he says happily, raising a hand in which there appears a staff, wrought of some black stone and ending in a twisted device that hurts the eyes to look upon.

His office is a vast stone chamber with many doors, a huge desk, many ancient bookshelves, a wardrobe sealed with a concerning number of chains and padlocks, a small kitchen, several armchairs, and concentric rings of seats like a small amphitheatre around a dreadful ritual circle with a blackboard on wheels next to it. 

"Pop her down anywhere you like and have a seat. Tea? A little sherry? Virgin blood? Just my little joke, I've run out. Now then!"

He peers at this alleged extraplanar human with the better sort of sight, his glassy cataracted eyes shining red in the gloom.

Soul, yes, but it's oddly... new-looking. Some spellburn, but nothing beyond the reach of a few good dinners and an afternoon or two of strictly extracurricular activities. 

The obvious signs of a warlock are much more concerning. He looks closer, muttering unpleasant incantations. 

...Well, it isn't Anyone he recognises, that's for certain. It's incredibly far away, maybe beyond the Far Realms. And unless he's much mistaken, interfering in a much bolder way than usual, if anything at all can be said to be usual about such cases. 

"Well! That's the urgent part done. She does have a soul, which is cheering! Did she tell you anything about her magic?"

He doesn't sound any different, but he's debating bringing out some of the more... private sorts of wizardry. 

"Is she going to - you know?" 

She never wanted to be down here that's why she listened to all the ominous warnings instead of ignoring them to investigate like a normal wizard. 

"Hmm? Kill us all? I very much doubt it! By all means try to wake her up if you like! I'll get the bucket."

... She points her wand.

"Wake." 

She's trying to be very, very gentle. 

pain

pain

pain

pain

So, what does she know...

Implants: Still in safe mode.

pain

Physical sensation, aside from pain: Hard surface. Cold. Taste of booze. Dusty smell.

pain

Oh, and someone talking. Nothing from sight. Her eyes are closed and her muscles have locked up in tension, including those in her face.

pain

Can she feel the thing trying to twist and multiply inside of her OS, still? Well. Maybe not, since her implants are in safe mode and the OS isn't running. But she looks for it, faintly.

pain

What about her power. What is she feeling from- Okay OW OW OW, that makes it worse, drop that line of thought.

pain

Hissed between teeth, "Naevys?"

"Yes! I'm here!" She bends down to squeeze her hand, speaking very quickly. "I am so sorry, I should have realised, I think your 'augmentations' essentially made a copy of the Spell. If you didn't hear me before you need to erase all of those! How are you feeling? If you know who I am already and you can say words you're going to be fine! Also good news, you do have a soul and you're a wizard now! That was very impressive!"

"Ow."

Thinker headache. This has all the classic signs of a thinker headache. And the thing is gone. Did her power do something weird again, to get rid of it? Half of the last hour or two is just a blank spot...

"I'm sure I will have more detailed reactions to that in a minute but. Ow. Can you please find a vial labelled... Ketamine, in my pockets? And feed me..." Hmm. Dosing. Dosing. She knows how this works... "Two of the pills."

"Yes! Yes, of course!" 

If Dr Baika and her magic drugs can do something about spellburn they're going to rule the world. 

She can administer 'ketamine'. She thinks. Unfortunately it's sealed with some kind of lid that won't unscrew, it just keeps turning and making a clicking noise - the material isn't familiar, kind of resinous, and inscribed with some kind of warding runes - 

Knock.

The lid undoes itself, reluctantly. 

"Here!"

"Fascinating!" So this is what has them so excited. "Hello, incidentally! Are you using your ability to feel pain for anything, or shall I make it stop so we can chat properly?" 

"Thank you." Gulp. "...Pain means damage," she manages. "The ketamine is to reduce it to a... Manageable... Level. Without removing the alarm signals entirely. So I don't do anything stupid. Or think too hard."

The problem with asking her power for a Thinker Headache cure is that it makes the headache worse. 

Later.

"Excuse me. My apologies. Who are you?"