[Can’t Opt Out]

“Baylor, sit down.” Taelor didn’t quite bark the command—Baylor wasn’t some pet in need of being controlled, even if he often needed a stern hand guiding his way—but it was close.

All of their nerves were frayed. Valor had sat himself on the ground of the park outside Roasalia’s SlideLine Transfer Station and was picking grass from the ground, running it through his fingers to squeeze out liquid, pulling at the fibres to tear each blade apart, before tossing it aside and beginning anew. Occasionally, he would reach further, plucking up stray leaves and cones, tearing them apart the way Taelor knew he wished he could tear himself apart. During their youth, each of them had taken to ripping at their cuticles simply because Valor had the habit, and it was Taelor and Baylor’s job to match their brother’s habit just as it was his to match theirs. Emilia had put a stop to it, after she started sharing their bed.

“I can give you better things to do when you’re stressed~” she had teased, something vulnerable in her soft purple eyes—something that was always there when she offered a piece of herself to those she loved. It was a question of whether she would be appreciated, whether her love would be returned. Emilia, who was so lovable and yet struggled to accept love because she hadn’t been loved as a child, and no matter how much the Starrbergs and all her friends tried to bury her in love, she still wondered if that love was real, wondered if she deserved the love she was given.

Worse, Taelor had seen her accept the bad of a person along with that love she so craved—the fact that Leerin was still her friend, despite being a constant source of negativity to her and Darrian in particular, was proof enough of that. Emilia took love where she could get it, and Taelor knew that, one day, that acceptance of all a person’s faults, as long as they gave her love, was liable to cause her more serious harm than Leerin’s miserable personality.

Taelor hoped he and his brothers would be there to protect her when it happened, but his friend—the girl he loved and would guiltlessly destroy the world for—was good at hiding the scars her so-called friends left on her. Even after Warren, Rafe had been the only one to see that something worse than losing her memories of the night had happened to her. The girl just had too much experience covering up her true feelings—too much experience burying her authentic self because of people like Leerin, who curled in on themselves when someone as aethereal as Emilia came close.

“Baylor,” Taelor called again, fingers digging into his arm as he tried to pull his own nerves back under control as they waited for Halen and Rafe and all the people they had gathered to arrive. Where Valor was slowly destroying the plant life—dead as much of it already was, dropped from the tree they sat under, the three of them garnering wary looks from everyone who shuffled by—Taelor’s thoughts were running away from him while Baylor was pacing, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt in the moments where he wasn’t running fingers through his increasingly dishevelled hair. Clones always attracted attention; Baylor’s grumbling and cursing and kicking at the ground like a madman wasn’t helping, especially since they were trying to get out of Baalphoria without the rest of The Black Knot realizing they were leaving.

“There’s no way. There’s absolutely no fucking way,” his middle brother was currently muttering. For the first time in five minutes, Baylor stopped his pacing and turned to level a glare at the transfer station. “I don’t care if it is Halen. There’s no fucking way he can get so many people all the way here in only seventeen minutes. It takes over two hours, even with perfect transfers and microsparking. Seventeen minutes is just—”

Turning, Baylor went back to his pacing and Taelor went back to his contemplations of how far he should go to stop Baylor. He knew how to calm his brother down, but that would certainly attract attention—not attention any of them would be ashamed of, even if they knew their relationship wasn’t one anyone outside a handful of people would ever accept or understand. Even amongst the other clones, who often shared bonds closer than most people would consider acceptable for people who were all genetically the same person, even if a million facets of personality shifted them into their own person, Taelor doubted many would understand, even if only the older clones would ever dare judge them.

Finn likely knew, he thought. Malcolm had certainly guessed quite a few years ago exactly how close they were, and one day, Taelor imagined the man might crack and ask Emilia for the truth—possibly even ask if he could join her in being with them, some time. Malcolm and Finn were friends—possibly more, although Taelor struggled to imagine someone as finicky about germs as Finn having sex with anyone, possibly even himself. Still, he thought they might have talked about it, and fortunately, as an exceptionally unique clone himself, Finn was the last person Taelor would expect to judge them for finding love with one another.

“What’s that smile for?”

Taelor’s eyes flickered to Baylor’s—green eyes that were identical to his own, to Valor’s, and yet so different there would be no universe where he couldn’t tell his brothers apart, especially not at times like this, where each of their personalities were blazing and chilling in their eyes. Follow current novels on novèlfire.net

“I was thinking about what Finn’s reaction would be, if he found out some of the things I like,” Taelor signed, smile tilting a little deeper when Baylor huffed—not quite a true laugh, but better than the ranting that had consumed him for nearly twenty minutes as they waited in a nearby building, neither wanting to arrive too early nor miss the rest of the group by being too late.

“I think he’d fucking die,” Baylor agreed, eye cutting through Taelor as fractured images of all of them—of Emilia as well—messy and happy and enjoying the freedom to just be themselves with one another shuttered between them.

“Baylor,” Valor sighed, glancing up from his pile of mutilated plant life to frown at him. “Please.”

“Please what?” Baylor asked, all shit eating smiles now as more images slid through their minds, Valor groaning quietly and shifting and sending all his torn apart plants flying at Baylor, who bolted away laughing.

They were still attracting attention, but at least his brothers being silly in their argument—more porn was still coming out of Baylor and aggravating Valor, Taelor shifting to hide his own arousal. His mind caught on all the images of Emilia, even his firm self-control unable to stop his mind from wondering if he would ever see her again. Currently, she was still running around the Falmíer underground, looking for any sign of Olivier. She had yet to find anything at all—nothing good, nothing bad.

Taelor didn’t think it would last. Eventually, his friend would run into trouble. Maybe it would be related to Olivier, maybe not. Either way, Emilia had a way of finding trouble, and he already hadn’t liked her going on this trip. If something happened to her, all because they hadn’t insisted on going with her…

As though he could read Taelor’s mind—and while they couldn’t actually read one another’s mind, the three of them were close enough that they often could guess what the other was thinking—Baylor cursed how they hadn’t followed Emilia with or without her consent as well. His brother settled down beside him, brushing bits of greenery from his hair because Valor had managed to catch him with one of his attacks.

“She didn’t want us to come,” Taelor said softly, reaching out to remove bits of grass from his brother’s hair.

Off to the side, Valor was staring despondently at a vending machine. A message popped up, asking if either of them wanted anything. Baylor, little bottomless pit that he was, wanted everything. Taelor just wanted all of them to be safe—for the things they wanted in life to be easier to achieve.

“You know that isn’t it,” Baylor huffed, shifting until Taelor’s hand was cupping his cheek.

It was more affection than they generally showed in public; Taelor couldn’t bring himself to pull away, his thumb instead rubbing over his brother’s jaw as he pulled him closer. Their foreheads pressed together, and for a moment, they just breathed together, their air mixing together. Under his closed lids, the countdown Halen had sent them ticked on.

In theory, he and the rest of the group should be arriving in the transfer station in mere seconds. Baylor was right, though: as much as Halen was skilled, this was far faster than seemed reasonable. Taelor wasn’t an idiot; he had guessed a while ago that what Halen felt for Emilia wasn’t quite the animosity so many members of their friend group imagined, so it didn’t surprise him the man would be the de facto leader of this expedition to go make sure that, if she needed help, people who loved her would be close at hand. Still, he knew where love lead people—where desperation to keep those loved ones safe could lead: nowhere good. Hopefully Halen wasn’t the sort of idiot to put everyone in danger, working to get them all to Lüshan as fast as possible, regardless of the risks.

Valor’s hands carded through Taelor’s hair as he reappeared by their side—Baylor’s too, given the soft moan of contentment that leaked out of their middle brother. Within his mind, his Censor alerted him that they were definitely getting odd looks from the people passing them now, some of them whispering theories about just how close the three of them—and therefore all clones, the majority of the population not realizing they were each their own person with different needs and wants and interests—were. Let them talk. Let them wonder and gossip and shuffle rumours through the entire country—Taelor doubted even the worst of what would be said of them wouldn’t be true.

“Uh…” Halen’s strained voice cut through the moment—cut through the OIC System’s logic as well, as he’d all but just popped into existence beside them. That was a large reason why microsparking was still being kept to The Black Knot and a handful of people Emilia and Halen trusted: the OIC couldn’t track them, at all. Even though it had been aware of microsparking for years, even though it now knew Halen was liable to microspark away, it wouldn’t be able to track him if he did so.

Microsparking wasn’t public because the nation and its eyes weren’t ready for it. Fuck that—they had a friend to get to.

“Fucking stars! How did you get here so fast?” Baylor asked, popping up and grabbing the one snack Valor had actually bought him—bottomless pit or not, there was no way he could eat as much as he’d asked for.

Halen—who looked some mixture of shocked, embarrassed, and intrigued—shook himself and scowled. “I said I would be here now. I am here now.”

“Well, yeah!” Baylor shot back, his own scowl layered over the smile that always reminded Taelor of why he hadn’t told either of his brothers his suspicions on Halen’s feelings: he didn’t want to put the stress of keeping it from Baylor onto Valor, while Baylor may very well think their former classmate not good enough for Emilia and kill him. Taelor wasn’t even sure it would matter that Emilia actually liked—missed, even—her and Halen’s prank war and wouldn’t be too happy about Halen dying: Baylor would let the monster inside out for her sake.

Taelor would let his own monsters out for her as well, even if he would be a bit more discerning about when he would do so. Certainly, Halen and Emilia would be… acceptable, together, especially if he got rid of his terrible friends—something he apparently hadn’t done, the microsparking path the man laid out for them leading them into the transfer station, where the rest of the group was waiting for them.

Neither Coral nor Codeth were a surprise, nor were they unwelcome. The majority of the population—including many of their teachers and Coral’s own parents—might brush aside her ability to read people’s emotions as nonsense, but the clones all knew better; there were more than enough instances of The Black Knot utilizing EEC Dyads to find the guilty within seas of people. Both she and Codeth were nice enough, and Taelor didn’t doubt Codeth would have ended up on their side of their class had he not befriended Halen.

Mikhail, on the other hand? Who had decided bringing that guy along was a good idea?