[Can’t Opt Out]

Emilia was resting in Hyr’s lap again when she finally slipped free of Samina’s Censor, feeling… off. That was to be expected—her friend had already informed her that what she could remember, if not speak of, from her conversation with Professor A wasn’t something Emilia would want to remember. Indeed, looking inwards, Emilia could feel the telltale signs of her memories having been… not hidden, but completely ripped out of her. A few minutes of emptiness, only the feeling that someone knew the truth and would be sure to share when needed remaining.

That, and a feeling that Professor A wouldn’t do anything to harm them or stymie their search for the person distributing the knotter. Probably.

Hyr’s hand pressed more cool energy into her, they and Payton having volunteered to test out an enhanced version of the cooling skill Payton had used on her during their infiltration of the purist building on her and Samina. The cooling skill, {Iced Access}, had been good on its own, allowing the user to cool another’s neck and Censor while they accessed the Virtuosi System straight from their Censor, rather than through a rig.

There had been some limits to that skill, however, simply because Censors got really freaking hot as they worked, especially with a time skew involved. While a Virtuosi Access point could support most of a time skew strain, regardless of whether the person was actually sitting in a rig or not, that was only relevant when hacking a computer system. When hacking another person’s Censor without direct support from the Virtuosi System? Not so relevant. With the previous version of {Iced Access}, attempts to skew time while hacking a Censor would have quickly overwhelmed the skill and risked brain damage to the hacker.

Emilia’s enhanced version of {Iced Access}, Payton having gotten her an unencrypted version of the skill from the medic’s association on the condition that she keep the code to herself and a few people she trusted and share any modifications she made with them, allowed for direct Censor hacking, turning the cooling aspect up several notches, even when used on a hacker the user didn’t trust.

When the person activating {Iced Access ver. Frozen Affection}—Emilia had never claimed to be good or sensible in her naming of skills—did trust the hacker, and vice versa? Oh, stars above.

At its most powerful, the enhanced skill allowed the user to connect with the hacker’s Censor, creating a resonance for the skill to fluctuate as needed. Whereas the original {Iced Access} had simply allowed Payton to keep her Censor from overheating, relying on real-time, physical monitoring to understand how much cooling she needed at a given moment, this was so much more.

With Hyr connected to her Censor, they had been able to increase the cooling factor as she needed—something that was all the more important with a time skew active. Censor temperature could fluctuate massively in skewed milliseconds. This was part of why newer Virtuosi rigs could support much higher time skews: they could also monitor their user’s needs at such extreme levels, the cooling aspect more intense, more specific and able to shift as needed to reduce mental strain and the risk of brain damage.

On Samina’s side, Payton had been testing the unconnected version of {Iced Access ver. Frozen Affection}, in order to see how it would work on the random victim of someone’s hacking, working to both keep the victim’s Censor from overheating and pushing their consciousness down to make the whole process easier. Now, Payton was sitting on the couch in Emilia’s living room, eyes closed as he went over the data, highlighting bits of information in their shared files that he thought she’d be interested in when she found a moment to tinker with the skill.

It wouldn’t be for a while. They had to go, even this having taken time that they were quickly running out of. Figuring out why Samina had allowed Professor A to take the tickets had been important, however, even if Samina and Hyr had both assured her it was fine.

Emilia really hated that they’d both been right, her curiosity having wasted time they didn’t have. Plus! With her memories gone, she didn’t even have anything but her sense that they’d been right and it was fine, to keep her company.

“It needed to be done,” Hyr assured her when she muttered this to them in the two minutes she allocated herself before she needed to get up, their hand still slipping coolness over her neck. The skill was gone, and instead the syn seemed to be using their energy to keep her cool, their existence a soothing balm over her tired, aching body.

“I should have trusted you two, when you said it was fine,” she grumbled, wondering what the chances were she could talk Hyr into carrying her to the ship. Probably pretty high, if she could work up the courage to be so shameless. Maybe, if not for that inappropriate moment on the couch, she might have.

“I said it would be fine. I did not tell you there was no need to check.”

Emilia pulled out of the crook of Hyr’s neck to glare at them. “What?”

The northerner smiled softly back at her, their eyes blinking slowly. With the difference in their timezone, Hyr’s bedtime would have been approaching, if not outright passed. If they’d had time, she might have offered them an energy drink. Something to do when they got to their suite, she supposed.

“You needed to look. You needed to tell,” Hyr told her, helping her unwind from their lap when someone knocked on the door and her self-imposed laying in Hyr’s lap time limit had passed by several minutes.

Conrad stuck his head around the corner a second later. “Yo~ little syn. You need me to take you to get your stuff?” the man asked under narrowed eyes, taking in the fact that she was once again in the northerner’s lap, albeit more intentionally, more politely—she was cradled there, rather than straddling—and fully clothed. “What are you doing?”

“Hacking. Skill testing,” Emilia said, pretending to help Hyr up after she’d managed to get her feet under her. She groaned dramatically, leaning back with all her weight in her attempts to haul them up. Dutifully, the syn acted as though she were helping and not actively hindering their own rise.

“Thank you,” they said, leaning down to press their foreheads together. “I will be back.”

Then, they were gone, Conrad—having apparently deemed them a risk for taking too long to say goodbye—microsparking across the room to grab Hyr and spark off.

Hopefully he’d actually connected their Censor’s properly. Hyr getting sick would suck. That said, brute force was often the best way to get someone used to sparking. Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on NoveI(F)ire.net

Grabbing her own bag, Emilia nudged Payton with her foot. “Time to go.”

Light-brown eyes flickered open, and for a blink of time, Emilia was reminded that there was something familiar about Payton—something she couldn’t place, couldn’t remember. Unlike within the raid, where she’d had no Censor to help her figure out what the mysterious feeling was, this time, it spun.

A thousand memories split through her mind, making her dizzy enough that when she refocused, Payton was standing, hands on her hips and frowning down at her. Apparently, her hack still needed a bit of tweaking.

“Are you alright?” he asked, a skill scanning her over as Emilia began dragging him along, grabbing their shoes and bags from the entryway.

“Yeah…” she said, annoyed that her Censor hadn’t found what she was looking for. Either she was crazy, and there really wasn’t anything about Payton that she was missing, or there was something else going on. A missing memory. A memory too small for her Censor to have properly categorized the details of it—not exactly uncommon when it came to wartime memories, unfortunately. Still, it was annoying.

Payton hummed quietly when she finished telling him about it, the two of them having sparked over to the dock to wait for the others. Unsurprisingly, despite arriving a few minutes after the agreed upon time, no one else was there. That was exactly why the meeting time was a good half hour before the absolute latest they could show up.

Technically, the dock wasn’t exactly a dock—airships really only landed for maintenance, guests and crew sparking up or delivered by smaller aircraft. There were dozens of docks throughout Baalphoria, and hundreds more scattered throughout the Free Colonies. Not every ship could be checked into at every dock, although these days, most had services for sparking guests to docks that could check them in for a small fee.

The particular dock they were using actually was a dock, however. Located on the southern side of Rosalia, the dock extended far into Jibur Bay, offering physical docks for yachts and cruise ships, as well as check in booths for numerous airships. Nearby, smaller docks offered moorage for private watercraft, the water currently active as people set off to spend their evening at sea.

While the pink tide had mostly hit the northern side of The Penns, the bay—where pink tides more commonly hit—was still tinted a light pink. There was little pink in their air, however, and as far as Emilia could tell the decontamination systems weren’t even running—no highs to be found in this air, then.

There could have been a stronger pink tide further out in the bay, however, out towards The Grey Sands, The Strats and the now-destroyed Alliance Ridge. Emilia didn’t know—she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to look. It seemed too soon to look.

“Perhaps it will come to you at another time,” Payton said, positioning himself to the northern side of her, so she could turn her back on the bay.

“Maybe…” Emilia sighed, complaining that she’d hoped whatever it was would come to her with the help of her Censor. “It’s weird. It feels like I’m missing something important? Why wouldn’t my Censor remember something important when my brain thinks it is, though?” As much as her Censor’s searching had turned her mind and stomach over with the effort, it didn’t feel like it had missed something in that search. Rather, the answer just wasn’t there to find.

“Maybe it was something erased in The Flaming?” Payton suggested, glancing back towards the entrance of the dock when Sil sparked in with Pria. A second later, Samina appeared with Beth. Emilia had never really asked if Beth could spark—there was no way anyone would trust Pria to spark, she was the sort of person deemed a hazard, due to the chances she’d fuck up and mess up the skill’s safety record—and now realized she should probably ask. They needed to know who could evacuate as needed, and who’d need help, in case things got dicey.

“Or something you learned while drunk or high? That can compromise Censors,” he continued as the other four made their way over, Pria looking a little green after the spark, Samina’s chair hovering over the wooden beams of the dock and earning her a few curious glances.

What he wanted to suggest, Emilia was sure, was that something in her knots may have interfered with her Censor’s capacity to store memories. That was possibly, she supposed, if unlikely—it wasn’t like she’d ever really had this problem before, something she told him. “Also, I wasn’t hit by The Flaming.”

“Seriously?” Pria asked, hand idly rubbing her stomach, trying to calm the turn of it as she craned her neck, looking around the dock,

It didn’t take a genius to realize she’d never been anywhere like this before—maybe had never even been on an airship. Emilia hadn’t been on one in a while—not since the war, and that hadn’t exactly been a vacation, more a nightmare—but the Rosalia dock was… Well, it wasn’t anything impressive, which was why the people who passed were giving them funny looks, although they quickly stopped when they realized the rest of their little group were sending them nasty looks in return.

“Yeah,” Emilia admitted, explaining that she’d been inside a de la Rue bunker, where they kept records of old case files offaether to protect them from hacking and, well, things like The Flaming, when The Flaming had happened. “Mostly, I remember annoying Olivier, being told he knew I wasn’t so stupid I couldn’t help him go through the files, and eventually, someone banging on the door, trying to get our attention.”

“Lucky,” Pria said, frowning off into the bay. “No one in my family was ever able to afford memory reconstruction, so we lost a lot.”

“Is that why you’re in the Data-Recovery Program?” Payton asked, and oh. That would make sense.

Pria smiled sadly at him, telling him it kinda was, and kinda wasn’t. “I never really thought I’d be good at it—and I’m not. More… back then, I hoped maybe I’d find someone who’d help me recover some of our memories?”

“Yet, you never asked,” Sil noted, tone probably more accusatory than he meant. “We would help you, of course,” he said, speaking for all of them because he could—because he was right.

Of course, if Pria wanted their help recovering what they could of the fragments The Flaming had left behind within the minds of her family members—like all the program’s students, Pria would have been given Data-Recovery Counselling early in her education, but her memories alone wouldn’t have been enough to reconstruct her family’s entire history—they would help.

“Why didn't you ask?” Beth asked, following Payton’s gaze to find Conrad and Hyr had returned, each carrying their own luggage.

Emilia’s roommate shrugged, muttering that there had never really been a good time so unconvincingly that every member of their group was left staring at her incredulously.

“Do not,” Hyr said, sending a sharp glance Conrad’s way, his mouth open on an aborted comment. “Whatever you were about to say. Do not,” the syn repeated when the other Free Colonier began to complain that he wasn’t going to say anything.

As a group, they turned their dubious looks on Conrad, who proceeded to cross his arms, his plump lower lip pushing out until he looked like a pouting a child. Emilia was about to comment on it—coo about how adorable he was—when someone beat her to it.

“Wow~ how do you both seem like an old man and a child all at once?” the twinkling voice asked, Conrad turning a frown on the small creature who had popped up beside him. “Ooh~ now you just look old. Was that your intention? Actually, are you more old or more toddler? I should probably get that straight, so I can tease you properly.”