[Can’t Opt Out]

Arabella was not happy. This, rather unfortunately, wasn’t exactly new; it had been years since she was truly happy, and her parents continuously putting pressure on her and her siblings to do better, be better, do more, be more had certainly not helped matters.

Her work was rather terrible—she had been stuck working as a staffer for an impressively unpleasant member of the Baalphorian government for years now, and while it was certainly helping her network for her own future in politics, the woman she worked for was turning increasingly to purist beliefs. This had left Arabella in an unfortunate position. She could quit and risk her political aspirations being squashed under labels of quitter, a problem, too sensitive and reactionary. Alternatively, she could continue working for the bitch, but being associated with someone so… evil wouldn’t do her—or the nation—any favours. Were it entirely her decision, Arabella would have chosen the former; her parents were insisting that, at this point in her boss’ career, with so little of her purism public even in rumour, staying in her current position was for the best—would garner their family the most profit.

The Richmond clan weren’t purists, but they certainly put their family above such trivial matters. Thɪs chapter is updated by novel⟡fire.net

“Once we gain more power, we can do more good,” her mother would say, and to be fair, the woman’s own political career had been run over by gossip and drama on many occasions as she carved out more power for herself; in the end, however, she had managed to use her position with the government to do good. The world was a better place because of her mother. What did it matter that she’d been a cutthroat bitch while getting there?

It did matter to Arabella, was the thing, and while she did like politics, she didn’t like the cost—not to herself, not to the people she slashed down in her attempts to rise, and certainly not to her siblings.

To be a member of the Richmond family—at least as her parents were forming it, her mother the first to work for the Baalphorian government while her father happily supported her from the sidelines—was to be good, polite, respectable. Arabella was busy, but she was also more respectable than either of her younger brothers, while their youngest sister had been a wonderful accident and was only sixteen to the rest of their 60s and 70s.

Arabella was busy, but responsible.

Arabella’s mother didn’t have time to clean up her children’s messes; therefore, the duty had fallen to her instead.

Arabella hated cleaning up after her brothers, even if it was usually far more minor than what her youngest brother had done.

“You, Eli, are a fucking dumbass,” she said, glaring at him across the table they’d been seated at in the expensive restaurant. The table was tucked out of the way, into a corner, and soundproofed. It was nice—Arabella could yell at her brother and tell him off to her heart’s content; let a little of her anger and annoyance at her entire family out on him.

The problem? Elijah seemed… off—broken from him time in The Black Knot’s custody, she supposed. He’d recover. Probably, their mother would try to make a fuss about it. Given the way the current regime was treating The Black Knot—more like a nuisance, putting its clones and agents where they had no business being, although Arabella was of the opinion they definitely had business digging into some of those things, terrible as even her passing knowledge knew them to be—she might even get her way and have whoever was responsible for questioning her darling baby boy reprimanded.

What happened to clones when they were reprimanded? Were they killed? Would her mother really have someone—possibly multiple someones—killed for questioning Elijah when he had definitely needed to be questioned? Sure, he was a little jumpy. Sure, he might need a little therapy—both of the mental health and knotting variety, the guy clearly suffering a few traumatic knots from the experience, which, impressive much? Just what had the clones done to him in only a few hours? The only visible sign of abuse she could see on her youngest brother was a bruise forming over his jaw, hand prints over his wrists—or were those from skills?

Regardless, she had seen the video of Elijah’s dorm, and her brother had definitely deserved some retribution for that alone. Not standing up for his now-ex when she was locked in his room by those pathetic men he considered his friends? Disgraceful. Then to voice support for Victor, after what he had done? What fucking planet was the guy on?

Their mother had sent her to clean up his mess, but Arabella wasn’t even sure if that could be done—it wasn’t like that video could be called back from the aethernet, where it seemed to have already spread far beyond the nation’s borders because fucking stars above was the girl powerful!

Ironically, her mother had been pushing for Elijah to break up with the silverstrain for months—something about how a girl who most certainly has had a lot of bedfellows is not someone appropriate for you or our family. Somehow, her mother had managed to say it with the air of someone who didn’t actually care that most silverstrains were either intensely anti-sex—some attempt to convince the world they weren’t run by their genetic inclination to enjoy sex—or were seemingly happy to enjoy virtually all varieties of sex. Either option, in her mother’s eyes, made any silverstrain a nonviable option for any member of their family, although Arabella thought it more a case of Emilia Daniels having no connections for them to abuse—something Arabella wasn’t convinced was even accurate, as it wasn’t uncommon for people to attend school under a pseudonym. It hadn’t been uncommon before the war, and now, with so many people trying to keep themselves from being associated with their records as veterans, it was even more common. Given the precision with which Emilia Daniels had ripped a hole in her brother’s dorm room… No, it wouldn’t surprise Arabella if the girl had an impressive service record—not that such things always equated to the networking opportunities their mother coveted. Still…

“Can you ask mom to stop messaging me?”

Arabella glanced back at her brother, her attention having slipped to the window that offered a view of the mountain range that reached around the northern edge of Piketown. “She asking you to get back together with Emilia Daniels?”

Elijah nodded, tugged at the hem of his shirt.

Yeah, that was about what she was expecting: for their mother to attempt to backtrack her demands that Elijah get his life together—or, she was backtracking that part of her demands, anyways. Elijah was to graduate next year. Elijah was to get a good job. Elijah was to stop spending all his time raiding and partying and seeing that girl.

Now, of course, knowing that the silverstrain he had been seeing wasn’t just the empty-headed party girl that Elijah had spent years ranting about before they’d started hooking up, their mother, of course, wanted her back on track to become a member of their family. In their mother’s head, she was probably already imagining their wedding—perhaps this summer, or was that too soon?

Arabella thought, based on a less distributed video she had seen shortly after arriving in Piketown to search for her missing brother—it had only been later that she discovered he and his roommates had been taken into Black Knot custody—she didn’t think Emilia Daniels was likely to forgive her brother anytime soon. Possibly, she might refuse to speak to him ever again; certainly, if that scary Free Colonier who had taken Elijah to his knees for just touching her were around, Arabella didn’t think her brother approaching his ex a good idea.

A couple messages to their mother later, trying to convince her that, at the very least, Elijah should let Emilia Daniels cool down before trying to earn her forgiveness, nothing had changed. Samantha Richmond was still demanding Elijah find Emilia Daniels now and apologize—she even dropped extra pay into both of their accounts, so they could find an apology gift. Maybe if she shared the second video of Elijah being brought to his knees by that Free Colonier, her mother would let it go? Chances were she wouldn’t—that Free Colonier offered yet another powerful connection Emilia Daniels could bring to their family. Her brother didn’t need even more pressure from their mother to make things work, especially since, from everything her brother had been saying in their sibling group chat these last few months, things had already been strained between him and Emilia Daniels.

Their relationship had already been coming to an end, and if she had correctly read between the lines of the stories her brother had told them, neither of them had been sure how to break up with the other. This wasn’t a surprise to Arabella; in her mind, their relationship had never seemed the sort to last. Neither of them seemed to like the other’s friends or interests much, and they had never introduced the other to their families—fuck! Elijah hadn’t even been clear on whether the girl had any siblings! And even though she may have mentioned siblings once while drunk, he’d never bothered to clarify because they weren’t serious. They were a university fling, meant to die at any given moment and never rise again. Their relationship had died, and it would be staying dead; their mother would just have to accept that.

If Elijah had expressed any interest in getting his ex back, Arabella would have supported him—stupid as she would have thought it. He had neither expressed interest nor was he in a mind space to do much of anything, and that had to change.

There was little to nothing she could do to stop the shitstorm that would happen when someone eventually realized who his mother was—all her siblings had managed to keep their privacy, as Richmond was a relatively common name and they had never broadcast their connection to their mother. Videos of Elijah would be out there forever, and eventually, it would come back on their family—end of story.

What she could do? Get her brother out of this mood—get his nervous system moving before those traumatic knots fully settled.

“Come on,” she said, sending a ping to their waiter that they were done. Elijah had barely touched his food, and had this not been a restaurant that almost exclusively used fabricated food, she might have felt bad for the waste.

Standing, she tugged her younger brother up, sending a message off to Sterling as well, asking if he was available for Emergency Sibling Care Hours—he wasn’t at the moment, but would be soon. Apparently, he was in the middle of a card game in… Crishar? Where even was that? Some southern Free Colony between Lüshan and Seer’ik’tine that had only barely joined the war effort due to a coup? It also didn’t seem particularly open to foreigners, especially not Baalphorians? Something about an incident with a visitor some forty years ago? Fuck, how bad did an incident have to be for a single person to get their entire nation effectively banned from visiting?

Was her older brother even there legally!? Forget about Elijah’s drama! As bad as his actions—or lack of action—and support for his asshole friend had been, at least he hadn’t actually done anything illegal!

“You better hope mom doesn’t find out where you are!” she hissed into their chat as she dragged Elijah into the street, her Censor automatically paying the bill and leaving a sizeable tip on their way out. It may have also made an anonymous donation to a local food bank because despite her trying to think of the fabricated food at not being wasteful, it still kinda was, and the Baalphorian government did a truly awful job of making sure those who struggled to make enough could properly feed themselves.

A laugh echoed down her connection to Sterling—ass. One of these days he was going to find himself in big trouble and no one was even going to know where he was. Personally, Arabella thought the love he had found for other cultures during his career as a war medic was inspiring, even if it had left him even more of an outcast in their family than he had already been, floating in a gap decade that had exceeded the normal decade before the war began because he’d had no idea what to do with his life.

Now, he knew what he wanted: to travel and write about what he saw, even if the majority of the continent’s population preferred visual media over the written word. Still, several of his articles and books had been used as inspiration for transnational media—a currently booming industry, even if it was rife with issues in how production companies portrayed different cultures, or even its own if it was pandering to audiences outside its home nation.

Arabella knew her middle brother was happy. Their mother wanted him to at least make connections with important people while he was abroad. Sterling didn’t care for what their mother wanted; instead, he wrote about whatever caught his interest, and with his biting honesty, the guy had offended far more people of import than he had befriended.

“Where are we going?” Elijah asked as he was hauled along. He wasn’t resisting, and Arabella wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign—probably more the latter.

“To get you moving and smiling,” she told him, her Censor drawing her a path to a raid that would be starting soon, only a few blocks away. “Or to piss you off, if it's a mech raid—those are hard at the best of times, right? So close to the end of the season, they must be miserable. Either way, we’re gonna get you feeling something unrelated to whatever happened while you were—” Arabella took a moment to think of the right word, not wanting to explicitly draw her brother’s mind back to the Hyrat clones who had questioned him “—in custody.”

Still, Elijah flinched, and Arabella had to force herself not to roll her eyes or smack him. It might be his fault he had ended up there, and yes, he had needed a little shit scared into him—because what even had this entire day been!?—but for him to be this out of it, the clones seemed to have been a little too harsh with him.

The question was, why? The Hyrat clones could certainly be cold, brutal, nightmare-inspiring; yet, as bad as Elijah’s behaviour had been, unless he had done yet another thing she didn’t yet know about, was it really something so terrible he deserved to be left like this?

No—even if he had done something else, if it had been terrible enough to deserve this, he wouldn’t have been let go. So, then, why? Unfortunately, the only thing she could think of was that Emilia Daniels had a connection to someone far more powerful than even her mother would dare believe—someone who either had connections of their own to The Black Knot, or worse, was a member of the dangerous organization themself.

Arabella hoped it was the former; no one wanted to get on a black knot’s bad side—and if her mother pushed things? Asked that the agents responsible for Elijah’s treatment were punished? If they had a direct connection to Emilia Daniels, what were the chances that terrifying girl wouldn’t punish Elijah in return? If she were friends with a Black Knot agent, surely her own morals must be a little… off.

Better to not think about it; better to keep their heads down and enjoy the raid, their feet taking them into the RaidZone as the minute countdown began, people rushing in and out of the raid’s range all around them.

A few people called out to her brother, friendly, is also hesitant; more than a few glanced his way, intent to see the man who was currently the main topic of discussion on the local raiding message boards. It wasn’t exactly the ideal place to snap Elijah out of his current mood—to try and break him free of the traumatic knots currently spreading through him, trying to force him down. It would have to do, and as she slipped her arm through his, dragging him further into the square they had found themselves in, she began telling him about how horrifically high her season level was: just under 80. Raiding wasn’t exactly her thing, and she worked far too much anyways.

He graced her with a small, weak smile—at least it was something. “Guess I’ll be carrying you, then.”