[Can’t Opt Out]

For over half his life, Olivier had found himself excluded from events. A large part of that was self-imposed, the result of the awareness that his presence put people off. There were small gathering with his cousins, just them and the occasional friend and lover who would have to get used to him if they were to stay a part of the family. When it came to the large parties his cousins threw, both for their own amusement and events like birthdays and graduations, he hadn’t attended any since shortly after his non-dev status had been publicized.

That last time… it had been terrible enough that the moment he declared, tears still lingering over his lashes when he’d finally be allowed to leave, that he never wanted to be invited to another group party again, none of his cousins had questioned it—none of them had ever bothered to invite him again. All the questions that had come that night, probing and rude; demanding of his time and intelligence, treating him as though he were a party trick just waiting for someone to activate…

It was one of his worst memories, the inability to leave that terrible place as his mother glared him down, willing him to stay and take the snarky remarks and pinching jibes, still haunted his dreams even decades on.

So, it had become normal for him to not expect an invitation from his cousins. The few classmates he had managed to become friendly with during school had shuttered themselves away from him in the aftermath of their D-Level tests as well—no more invitations to do things with them, sparse and tinged with the feeling that they were only inviting him due to his family as those invitation has been. Then, he’d pushed his way through compulsory schooling. On to law school, and who wanted to be friends with the non-dev freak who was decades ahead of where he should be? Who faced each class assignment with jealousy inspiring ease? Who barely ever spoke and death glared everyone who dared speak with him?

No one—no one wanted to be his friend. Googlᴇ search novel_fіre.net

Except, maybe Emilia did. It was impossible to tell—the girl was so friendly with everyone—but perhaps…

In the end, it didn’t matter whether she wanted to become his friend or not. Her sunshine was so bright he would accept ever drop of it she was willing to grace him with, and if she was demanding he not invite anyone else to their meal—to their evening together—there wasn’t a chance in all the galaxies he would let anyone disturb them.

There was even a chance that, were the horrid woman who birthed him to show up, he would tell her she wasn’t welcome—not that he wasn’t positive Emilia wouldn’t tell her to get lost first, the silverstrain clearly not approving of his mother. Most likely, she could see the truth of their relationship, just from the dinner she had witnessed; Emilia was far too observant, her eyes and mind always moving and catching on the finest and most revealing of details, and his mother’s toxic nature had been far from subtle.

Olivier didn’t mind her knowing, didn’t mind her righteous fury being directed at his family for their treatment of him, nor at his students and every other person who had disregarded him for one reason or another.

He won’t come, even if we ask.

Why would we want him to come?

He’ll ruin the mood.

A stick in the mud.

Gloomy.

Too proud and arrogant.

What would we even talk about with him?

Decades of hearing those things, both in whispers he wasn’t meant to hear and words clearly meant to shatter through his heart, it hadn’t even occurred to him to be upset that his students hadn’t even had a moment where they looked like they were considering inviting him. Instead, they had all rushed off. Even the few he was friendlier with hadn’t stopped to consider him—although, perhaps Norrayn had. Norrayn’s friend was simply so intolerable that she may have realized Olivier would refuse to do anything with them on the grounds that the vapid woman was also in attendance.

Still, it hadn’t occurred to him. Still, Emilia was right: as much as there was a power discrepancy between them, shouldn’t they have invited him? If not to relax, then to one of their meals? Certainly, he had seen other teachers—both during his own school years and while teaching himself—invited out by their students. Students and teachers stumbled across each other constantly on campus, and while the power dynamics meant it had to be the student inviting the teacher to join them, he had seen it happen, constantly. Never, had he experienced it himself.

Even in cases where his students had a question about class, they didn’t ask him to sit or walk with them. They asked their question, then said goodbye, rushing off to have fun with the friends he had never had, turning away from him to continue their conversations.

“Olivier?”

Olivier blinked back into the present, his favourite function—the one Halen had been oddly interested, almost obsessed, with knowing more about—slotting the details of what Emilia had been saying into his mind, each word carefully catalogued for the moments where his mind and attention slid away from the conversation.

The girl had moved on from stories of her escapades with Loren Hyrat and had been relating a story about hanging out with Halen’s young cousin, who had come to live with the Mhrinas after his parents died in the terrorist attack that had destroyed a section of the Voguna Convention Centre in Roasalia a little over a decade previous, and Cyan Hyrat, whom she described as the most non-clone clone to ever clone.

“Apologies. I was thinking of something else and not fully paying attention. I—”

“Was still monitoring the conversation,” Emilia finished, waving a hand like it meant nothing that his full attention hadn’t been aimed at her—maybe it didn’t. “I do the same thing—probably use the same function. You just looked sad, is all. Or, maybe not sad? But… hmm… like you were reevaluating something?”

Olivier gave an affirmative hum. “Something like that. You were saying that you used to babysit Alaric Mhrina and Cyan Hyrat?”

“Mhm! They were so cute! Still are. Cyan has been kinda obsessed with Alaric since they met, and that’s not exactly weird for a black knot, but he really split off from the clone pod he belonged to? That’s the weird bit. Like, the triplets love me, but they’ve always been the triplets at their core. Cyan has only had eyes for Alaric since they met, and eventually, he was removed from his pod and given to another clone to raise.”

“Is that uncommon?”

“There are some precedents for it…” Emilia said, biting into her lower lip in a way Olivier had come to realize meant she was choosing her words and wanted the person to know whatever she said, it probably wasn’t the whole truth and definitely wasn’t meant for other ears. “Everyone assumes the clones are all the same, but they have different personalities and interests, and even the way their black knot presents can be different. Usually, the clones’ cspecific genetics give them… I suppose you could call it a softer black knot.”

“Softer?”

“Yeah. Think of it as a difference between I have low empathy and will kill without remorse and I have low empathy and love killing. Softer is the former. Most clones can kill for work and not care—assuming it doesn’t interfere with someone they love or that person’s opinion of them, anyways.”

“They aren’t dangerous, if left to their own devices,” Olivier concluded. That lined up with what he knew of the clones, who were a mix of assassins, interrogators and people who worked behind the scenes. Some of them, he imagined, never killed anyone—or perhaps, only killed early in their career. The ability to kill didn’t equate to the desire to; if all the clones desired to kill, they would be impossible to control, and the entire clone line would have been put down long ago.

Oh.

“So… if a clone isn’t soft, and has the desire to kill, they will be removed from their pod?”

The smile Emilia bestowed upon him was bright—proud of his ability to put together what she was saying—but also pained. Being friendly with so many clones, perhaps it was difficult to accept when one was such a danger they had to be removed for everyone’s safety—maybe even killed to keep Baalphoria safe.

“Only sometimes. One of the triplets falls into that category, but he wouldn’t do anything I wouldn’t approve of, and he wouldn’t want to leave his brothers without him.”

Olivier blanched slightly, catching on Emilia’s phrasing. He wouldn’t do anything I wouldn’t approve of, as in, if Emilia approved of killing someone, whichever triplet it was wouldn’t just kill them, but do so with relish.

“Makes me a bit dangerous, doesn’t it?” the bratty little silverstrain asked, reading the conclusions he’d come to in his expression. There was no sign of shame or concern in her own smile, only amusement and a hint of power because she knew, if she asked for someone to be snuffed out of this world, she had a clone behind her who would do so without question.

Emilia’s eyebrows raised when he asked her if it bothered her the clone would kill for her, true surprise marring her features. “Oh, you misunderstand. This one clone would enjoy killing for me, but if I asked, most of the clones would kill for me. A few would ask questions, and a lot more would call Mallie in to be like, ‘Excuse me? Why are you trying to use the clones as your personal army?’ Only a few would enjoy it, though; only a few are leashed from their killer side by their love for other people.”

“Mallie?” Olivier heard himself ask over the cacophony of most of the clones would kill for me rattling around in his head. He definitely shouldn’t have asked anything about the clones. He should stop talking about black knots with Emilia. Unfortunately, he had always been far too curious, and the fact that he was learning more about both Emilia and the notoriously private clones was just too much to pass up, even if his stomach was feeling a bit queasy.

“Malcolm Laprise.”

“You know Malcolm Laprise?”

“I know all of the Laprise; my house is next to theirs. Mallie is about your age, so he’s generally been more annoyed-older-sibling than friend—although I still imposed invitations on him that he rarely refused. Andie and Rafe are my age. We were all in the same class, along with Halen,” she added, more as an afterthought. A few other names followed, Simeon Dryden and Lux Archer, as well as a mention of two Baxter children, and the Hyrat triplets. “Tons more, obviously.”

“That is a lot of black knots in one class.” Why was that the only thing he could think to say? Idiot.

Fortunately, Emilia just laughed and told him the black knots in their class had definitely scared off a number of teachers. “Every time a teacher quit or was fired, it was a bit of a struggle to find a replacement. Someone once told me that it was a bit funny; yes, we had a lot of black knots in that class, but it wasn’t the fact that they were black knots that was actually causing so many teachers to leave.”

“What was the reason?”

Smile sharp and threatening—a monster waiting to snap out and devour anyone who dared get in her way—Emilia easily admitted it was a combination of how low their average D-Level was, along with her and Halen’s prank war. “We all moved so fast—fast enough that, in the interludes where we had no teacher, we pushed the class schedule so far forward the next teacher had to readjust their own expectation of what they were meant to teach. That was part of the problem, actually: by the time we were about nineteen, we were all a few grades ahead of all the other classes. So, even though we were a massive pain in the ass—and I know there were conversations about splitting us into different class—they couldn’t really split us up without the hassle of how chaotic our education was.”

“Around that time… I think we were almost five years ahead in history, three in language studies, six or seven in math, and about on track for cultural studies—although, we all knew way more about the Free Colonies than the average Baalphorian. Try sticking those kids into a class that’s actually following the curriculum. The last thing anyone wanted was to take a bunch of kids known for being worse when they were bored and make them retake classes they were years ahead of. Accepting our mayhem and chaos was just easier.”

“If you were years ahead, why did none of you graduate early?” Olivier asked blankly. While he had been ahead in his own studies from a young age, this was an entire class Emilia was talking about. How often had they been without a teacher, allowing them to push themselves forward so far? Also, what sort of terrifying self-motivation did all these kids have?

“We enjoyed school? Being with our friends? Plus, it wasn’t like we could have the true freedom of our gap decades without being of age. It was easier to just stay in school and cover more advanced topics—I think we’re all about as trained in combat skills as the average soldier, thanks to the last few years of our teachers trying to slow down our schoolwork with that sort of education—I think they felt bad for knowing less than us in most things by then.”

“Did it work?” Olivier asked, filling away the fact that Emilia thought of herself as having the combat skills of a solider. Interesting on its own; fascinating in relation to her manslaughter case.

Had the boy she killed been just as well-trained?

“Absolutely not. We had a list of things we wanted to cover before graduating, and there was no way we were giving any of it up.”

“What sorts of things?”

Smile wide, her lips stained red with the spice of the one dish he wouldn’t touch, Emilia happily launched into telling him about the quite frankly insane things her class had been taught in their last years of compulsory schooling.

Olivier had known The Penns produced monsters, but this was obscene. Thankfully, it did seem to be limited to this one class, but still, if people thought him too smart, too fast, too intelligent, what in all the galaxies would the public think about these children, just beginning to step into the real world as their gap decades began?

Even he couldn’t completely suppress the apprehension that welled within him to hear Emilia talk of everything she and her cohort knew, the things they were passionate about, the things they planned to do with all their knowledge and skills.

A group of friends and acquaintances, powerful and connected by affection and stories, by gossip and drama and apparently purposefully torturing a few teachers so badly they had quit teaching altogether.

What would the nation—the entire continent—do if they ever realized the terror that was rising out of The Penns?

And that wasn’t even taking into account Emilia’s connections with the Hyrat clones as a whole—not to mention the Baxter and Laprise families—nor the years of mayhem that connected her with her coren’taz and every other person she had befriended during her years of travelling with her father.

A monster, just waiting to snap its thousand fangs around whatever—whoever—next annoyed them.