[Can’t Opt Out]

“Since when does the Doc’s office have such serious security? This shit could really fuck someone up,” BJ muttered from behind Coral.

Frustration—anger. A thousand fragments of trauma and hatred for the man who had sired him shattering outward—out of BJ and seeking across the aether to slice into Zirell Vickers for the audacity to set something so cruel and dangerous across a place where the only thieves would ever be those in need of medical supplies, in need of a hit and help to get clean.

Overall, between his annoyance with Doctor Vickers and his lack of knowledge in hacking, BJ was currently being rather useless—mostly, he was just complaining, but he was there for a reason: while Coral had spent many hours inside Doctor Vickers’ office, interning as she learned to manage her high Empathy Levels—the result of her EEC Dyadism—while in the presence of so much suffering, she had never actually wanted to be a doctor or even a medic. BJ, on the other hand, wanted to work in the medical field, and while he might not have interned as she had, like most of their class, he had far more knowledge in his areas of interest than anyone would expect from kids their age. The rıghtful source is noⅴelfire.net

According to the people who had known him for longer than her—she’d been their classmate for less than five years, after transferring in her mid-twenties—for over a decade, BJ had been acting as their medic during whatever mischief he and his friends got up to. From the small scrapes of climbing to the time Valor had broken a rib during a particularly bad fall off The Strats, from the scuffs and bloody noses Emilia and Halen’s prank war had caused to the more serious injuries caused by their pranks going wrong, BJ had handled it all. While he was in no way an expert, he was exceptionally skilled at it for someone with no formal training. This meant that while she was in charge of organizing what they borrowed—not stole, borrowed; they’d replace it all eventually—from Doctor Vickers, BJ was responsible for figuring out what they needed.

It wasn’t ideal—ideal would be Emilia not ending up in this position to begin with, or perhaps Halen not being the sort of dumbass who would cross time itself to make sure she was okay. Even through the distance, Coral could still feel his upset, his concern so great it felt liable to crack a hole in the aether itself.

Danger. Emilia’s in danger. Faster. Faster— No, not faster; faster becomes nothing but mistakes. Breathe. Breathe. Hatrav—the overwhelm of confusion. Was that her own emotions? A confusion of what hatrav meant—her Censor had no translation; no language within the OIC’s mind connecting the word to a culture. Was it Halen’s confusion? Did he know what language that was? Some word he heard offhand while in Seer’ik’tine, or near the border?

Coral couldn’t exactly fault her best friend for his concern for Emilia—not too much, anyways. She’d die for her girlfriend as well, after all, and while they were actually dating, Halen had been in love with Emilia for far longer than Coral had even known Polianna. So what if Emilia didn’t return the feelings she might not even be aware of? Well, might not have been aware of until the day before, anyways.

Halen had spent the previous evening telling her about his excursion to Seer’ik’tine and the mostly pleasant time he’d had with Emilia, the smile on his face so free and happy, his emotions spiralling through her to create a happy little high. Assuming Halen’s story was accurate—or even skewing things to the negative, as he tended to do when his feelings for Emilia were involved, perpetually thinking there was no way Emilia could ever like him back—Coral thought that, at the very least, Emilia might have an inkling that what Halen felt for her was romantic. Maybe not, though; it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Emilia seemingly missed that someone was in love with her.

Coral had tried to reach through the aether and let her Empathy connect with Emilia after Halen left, well past midnight. The two of them didn’t know each other well enough for Coral to get a good reading, especially when she was so far away, unfortunately. Mostly, all she’d gotten was a strange mix of anxiety and panic, of calm contentment, of fear—fear of the displaced sort, something not quite real in the quality of it. When she saw Emilia later, perhaps she would ask what it had been about, although the anxiety and panic had likely been caused by nightmares. Coral had been pulled from her own depthless sleep a handful of times over the years, even before they met, by the girl’s nightmares shattering so powerfully across the aether, and given all that she’d heard about Emilia and her past, there were only a handful things she could assume inspired those nightmares.

“Got it,” Coral cheered softly as the door’s security system finally unlocked.

BJ was right: this much security for a doctor’s office was a little over-the-top. The things was, while the fabricator that doled out meds could certainly be stolen or hacked, even assuming its security had also been upped, anyone who was able to get through the security system would likely also be capable of hacking it. So, yeah, the extra security might discourage people who wanted to steal bandages from doing so, but why bother stopping those people? If someone needed the general supplies kept in the clinic that badly, she was surprised Doctor Vickers would bother stopping them.

Doctor Zirell Vickers might be a hard ass—strict and severe even when not working—but he did want to do good in the world. He also made enough pay, his clinic covered by exorbitant insurance Coral made sure was paid every month, that so forcefully stopping people from breaking in seemed rather… intense. Seriously, the security system had been set to give anyone who broke in a mild shock! It wouldn’t do much, other than disable their Censor for a few hours and leave their extremities a bit tingly. Still, their entire class knew what could happen when someone’s Censor wasn’t working properly.

Even to her—someone who had still been years off from being a student at their school when a number of her future classmates had been drugged so severely most could barely remember over ten hours of their lives, several of them left traumatized by the things they knew happened in those missing hours—Doctor Vickers having a security system like this seemed just… wrong. He also knew, she was sure, what had happened to so many of the teenagers who came to him for medical care.

To BJ, who had eventually realized the source of the drug was the alcohol he had stolen from his father and brought to that party… No, Coral couldn’t blame him for being angry. Although she didn’t know him well, BJ was rarely angry. Frustrated? Yes. Both of them had shitty parents, and Coral could appreciate the frustration, especially knowing that his father had wanted to teach him a lesson and had been the one to drug the alcohol BJ had then shared with his friends. This was, needless to say, highly illegal. It didn’t matter that BJ had stolen the alcohol; adults couldn’t go around drugging their food and drinks just because someone might steal it and they wanted to get back at them. Unfortunately, there was no proof other than the bottle BJ had stolen, empty and edged with remnants of the drugs. The bottle had been left unattended at the party at some point, though, so while everyone collectively agreed his father had drugged it, no one could prove it.

Halen had been at the party and seen several of those drugged acting oddly before stumbling across the Zentari cousins as he left, Darrian having fallen and hit his head so hard he had spent several days with the clinic, Doctor Vickers diligently making sure he didn’t have a brain bleed or any other serious injury just waiting to pop up and take his life. Emilia had also been hurt that night, and while he would never admit as much to her, Coral knew Halen had marred his soul helping Rafe get revenge on her behalf. Now, everyone in their age group knew what Warren had done—that they would never see him again—and had collectively agreed to never speak his name again. It made things rather awkward when his parents came around, asking for people to remember him, to come to yet another memorial for him, to search for his body once more.

The pressure of Halen telling her all this, his grief not fir his friend, but Emilia—his heartbreak at having gone left, rather than right. Had he departed the treehouse by a different path, would he have happened across her instead? Warren fucking into her while she cried? Halen’s mind and emotions, spiralling until Coral was gagging on all Halen’s confliction and hatred for himself and Warren and BJ’s father, all of it racketing through her until snot and sobs were splattering out of her, over their clothes and the vomit Halen had crossed to pull her to him while they both fell apart in the unfairness of the world.

Due to the whole we don’t talk about Warren thing, Coral had only learned about the whole affair because neither Halen nor Polianna had wanted her to accidentally mourn for him—and given their entire age group, and most of the surrounding few years, refused to engage with Warren’s parents, they had still tried to pull her into their mourning and searching, despite her never having met the guy.

It was funny, in a morbid way; Coral had never seen a more guilty group of people. For all she could tell, everyone knew Warren had been killed; everyone assumed Rafe had done it—a few people even seemed to suspect Halen had helped. Perhaps it was their connections to so many Black Knot agents that kept them from facing any ramifications; perhaps it was that no one wanted to rain justice down on a bunch of teenagers who had been violated by an adult’s cruel justice—Coral had no doubt that some of their parents must have heard chatter about BJ’s father being behind the drugging, their own emotions always spiking and deepening whenever BJ’s father came around, murderous intention running through the cutting words of even the most levelheaded and contained of those parents.

Flashes of red exploding out of the aether, reaching towards BJ’s father in a toxic attempt to drag him into the depths of the planet—feed him to aether, to the things that slithered through it. Let chaos rain down on his corpse for what he did to those children—for the hurt brought to life by his attempts to force his son to behave, to not cause waves, to not be anything other than a paper doll, fluttering in the wind of his parents’ will.

“Set the bags over there,” BJ told her, already heading to the nearest cabinets and pulling them open.

Quickly, things began hurtling towards the bags she set out on the indicated tablet. She’d have to pack them later—assuming they had time; if they didn’t, she’d deal with properly packing them once they got to Lüshan. For the moment, the priority was getting the fabricator working, so they could get it started on all the things BJ wanted. Thankfully, while he had mostly been complaining while she hacked into the clinic—excuse her for not being as skilled as Emilia or Halen—he had at least made a list of things he wanted fabricated.

Oddly, hacking the fabricator took far less time than getting through the clinic’s security system had because she’d hacked it before and the process was exactly as it had always been. That was… Coral didn’t know what that was. Why up one security system and not the other? Part of her had assumed that perhaps Doctor Vickers’ insurance company had demanded the upgraded security, but why wouldn’t they demand it on the fabricator as well? Maybe they’d thought the clinic’s security system would be enough? Except, it wasn’t exactly uncommon for places to be robbed in the middle of the day, and the security system wouldn’t be active then—the fabricator wouldn’t be safe then.

Coral felt him before he even entered the clinic. There wasn’t anger echoing out of him, at the very least. Disappointment, perhaps? No… that wasn’t quite right. Concern, shifted into something darker? A severity in the quality of it that had her entire body shuddering, BJ’s movement’s stuttering because he couldn’t feel what she did, but Halen had long ago designed a function for her to share what she felt with the people around her. For the moment, she and BJ were allies, so he had activated the function, lest she be overwhelmed by something she felt and therefore be unable to tell him that someone was coming.

“Coral, breathe,” a deeper—an adult—voice said because some of the people she knew—people like Halen and Polianna, Simeon and Emilia and Taelor as well—never turned off their ability to monitor her emotions. The latter three, as far as she knew, only loaded it up when they thought it necessary; the former two always kept it up, and already, both were messaging her, asking what was wrong.

“Coral, look at me,” the voice said again, the emotions flowing off him pulling tighter—an attempt to rein in his feelings on the situation because she wasn’t breathing, and no matter what else was true, Coral knew this: Doctor Vickers wasn’t a cruel man, and he wouldn’t be upset they had tried to spare him the stress of knowing about their plan to head to Lüshan by breaking into his clinic. Doctor Vickers was a good man—someone just like Halen and Polianna, who never switched off his ability to monitor the information the aether slid into her as her Connection Levels stretched her awareness of other people’s emotions far beyond what was considered normal because he knew her parents didn’t believe in her abilities, knew that she needed every drop of belief and confidence she could get.

Even more than all that… Doctor Vickers was just understandably concerned because Coral wasn’t the sort to break into his clinic without a very good reason.

“That’s good, Coral. Just keep breathings,” the doctor said, his pretty grey eyes not leaving hers as they breathed together and he asked BJ what in all the stars above they were doing.