[Can’t Opt Out]

“Be… careful…”

Blinking, Emilia managed to pull her gaze away from the beautiful eyes of the child tucked against her legs to glance back at the two adults. “Careful?” she asked, wondering if the sick person was really about to warn her that the tiny lavender code smiling so cheerfully up at her could suddenly snap and kill her. Emilia didn’t buy into the government’s claims that they were so dangerous; more, it was clear that prejudices forced most lavender codes into crime, where they flourished due to their power.

Well… sometimes flourished. It wasn’t a secret that lavender codes were so valuable they were coveted by some governments and virtually all criminal organizations. The things those entities would do to get and keep lavender codes… Unfortunately, it wasn’t unheard of for lavender codes to be kept addicted to drug cocktails that only the organization that owned them knew how to make. They weren’t even fun drugs, just the sort that would drive anyone addicted to them crazy with want if they went too long without a dose, effectively locking them to the organization and its whims, lest they lose their minds—or worse, die from withdrawal—when they no longer had access to the drugs.

No fucking way was she letting this sweet child become some abused, drug addicted pawn for anyone, and if she had to fight these two to get them away…

“The… olthagri…” the person wheezed, and oh yeah. That.

Waving off their concerns and telling them she’d already had it, she turned back to the child and asked if she could pick them up. Fortunately, just as she had been when she was about the same age, the fact that they were both silverstrains was a uniting factor and the child greedily lifted their arms in permission to be hauled up; in the eyes of the little child, they were the same. Unfortunately, that genetic connection could definitely backfire if they tried to befriend some terrible person intent on kidnapping them—or potentially worse, some silverstrain who thought giving into their genetics was terrible, and they should force themself to be a prude.

Okay, maybe silverstrains being convinced to suppress their love of sex wasn’t as bad as being kidnapped, but it was still pretty bad!

Child safely in her arms, Emilia nodded to the other two. “We should get out of here, before someone else shows up.”

Luckily, even if the adults didn’t trust her—but who really knew what was going through their heads—they also realized they really needed to go. While she carried the child back to the tunnel entrance, the sick person trailed behind her and the man went off to quickly gather some of their things. They either didn’t have much, or had little of value, and he slid into the tunnel after them only a minute after them, bag thrown over his shoulder. During that time, the child had happily babbled about how delicious the snack Emilia had given them from her bag was as they stuffed it into their mouth, leaving a trail of crumbs tumbling between them. They’d asked for more, which was good—at least their appetite wasn’t gone—but Emilia had needed to explain that since they presumably hadn’t been eating much recently, she couldn’t give them too much at once, in case they got a tummy ache.

While handing a protein bar over to the sick person—she trusted them not to stuff it all down their throat and end up worse off for it—she had then explained what presumably meant to the child, the sick person eating a few delicate bites in the background.

The moment the man returned to them, Emilia started moving, already wondering if one of the adults would be better off leading. She was about to ask when she realized neither were following. Instead, they were still at the entrance, the man arguing against the sick person doing that.

Emilia had no idea what that was, and even when the aether rippled through the tunnel, shifting the walls like it was a pliable, wriggling bug, before the entrance seemed to snap shut, filling in like it had never been there at all, she still had no idea what they had done. Her Censor’s awareness crashed down around the sick person, trying to analyze what in all the stars they were doing. It couldn’t figure it out—it had never seen anything like that before, and even when it tried to run through various stories of rare varieties of Dyadism and other irregular deviations, it came up with nothing that could shift matter like that.

Core abilities and skills could both move matter, destroy it, pull aether into the form of something new. It was far easier with Censors, which could hold the molecular makeup of different elements and objects within a skill, then draw the aether into atoms, those atoms into the configuration the skill called for. Even then, it was difficult—there was a reason Emilia’s Censor had tutted at her for creating a glass vessel to hold the toxic remains of their assailant, said bottle now tucked into her bag. For core users, it was even more difficult—something considered the hallmark of a low-dev or someone with a rare irregular deviation that allowed them to more easily manipulate the physical world.

Emilia knew of a handful of irregular deviations that allowed such things. The glashial were perhaps the most famous, known for their ability to create various amorphous solids from aether. While not all glashial made a living creating things like glassware, it was a common profession, and one of the few Free Colony products that could be found in many Baalphorian homes was imported glassware, and occasionally artwork, from the most famed of the glashial. While it was an irregular deviation that occasionally appeared following genetic spams in uteri, it was primarily hereditary, and most of the glashial were located in Free Colonies north of Baalphoria, like Lu Ros and Halvery, while smaller offshoots existed in the Grey Sands and southeastern Free Colonies, like Zironia—as glashial used their cores, they had avoided settling in Baalphoria for millennia.

As they were far past where she knew the most western of the glashial lived, it was, therefore, unlikely that the very sick person—who very much should not have been up, let along using core abilities—was a glashial. Plus, that new wall did not look amorphous, and a gentle prod with her Censor as they got moving again, the man pushing his way to the front of their group so he could lead, told her it definitely wasn’t amorphous.

That left something even less common, which… Well, that would explain why some group had wanted them back—some group they had escaped before, by the sounds of it. The concern now was whether anyone else would be coming after them.

“Where are we going?” Emilia asked, wondering if she should try and ditch them with instructions to go to the Baalphorian embassy with her name or not. It would suck to put more pressure on the embassy, especially considering how understaffed it currently was, but she really didn’t want to leave these three just running through the city for fuck knew how long.

Abruptly, the man pulled up short, Emilia almost barrelling into his back.

“You don’t know, do you?” the sick person rasped, a tinge of amusement in their voice, and really, Emilia needed to learn their names, if only so she could stop referring to the one as the sick person.

“I am Emilia,” she said, abrupt and mostly aimed at the child. “You can call me Emmie.” Only the kid could call her that, and she tapped them on the nose, in an attempt to make that clear.

“I am Candence!” the girl—their word choices indicated they were a girl—cheered, surprisingly carefree for a child who had been living in squalor for who knew how long and had just been in the room when someone was killed.

Since Candence had been facing away from the woman Emilia had killed, it was possible she hadn’t noticed. Emilia thought that unlikely; more likely, the girl already seen enough horror on the streets that it hadn’t bothered her much. What a horrible thing to be content with—not that Emilia herself was particularly bothered by the death. Still, she knew her own mind and ethics—knew how terrible that woman was; knew there was no reason to give her more than the same sort of passing mourning she’d given the corrupt Drinarna officers. This child, unless she was a genius, was highly unlikely to have the mental capacity yet for those sorts of big thoughts.

Emilia seriously needed to get this kid somewhere healthier, before their mind was completely twisted.

“You can call me…” the girl began to say, her own finger already pressed to Emilia’s nose in an adorable mimicry of her own movements. Unfortunately, the child clearly had no nickname—they weren’t exactly common in Lüshan—and after several moments of concentration, Candence’s frown growing deeper with each passing second, Emilia offered to come up with a name for her.

Suddenly, that frown was gone, replaced by a radiant smile, and yeah, Emilia could definitely understand how children turned people into murderers and thieves. How could someone see a child frowning and not do everything in their power to make it better? Assuming it was reasonable, anyways. Emilia had seen enough temper tantrums over random things from both her friends and the various young children she knew—the many tiny clones, Halen’s cousin, when he had first moved to the Penns a decade ago—to know that fixing every little problem they had wasn’t always a good thing.

Giving this small child with hair and a smile that matched her own a nickname, however? Totally reasonable.

“Candie?” she offered, quickly telling the child most of her friends had names that ended in an -ie sound, either naturally—like Levi—or through a nickname.

Candence was quite happy with this, agreeing and tucking herself back into Emilia’s neck. So cute.

“Vern,” the man introduced himself in what might have been the first thing he’d actually said to her. He barely looked at her as he did so, his eyes instead scanning the tunnel like someone might suddenly pop out of a wall. Maybe they would. Hopefully not.

“I am Jerrial,” the sick man—who was either aware that his appearance offered no clue of his gender or was very polite and defaulting to a formal introduction—said. For a long moment, his eyes fluttered closed as he tried to breathe. Somewhere along the way, he’d completely pulled off his mask, probably because he knew she wouldn’t catch anything from him. Still, all that time in the mask, combined with the standing and the exertion, and the guy was looking far worse than when they’d met, something that had really only been a handful of minutes earlier. “Where were… you going?” he asked, when his breath was finally caught—caught as much as it could be, anyways.

Maybe these people couldn’t be trusted, but Emilia was already unsure what to do—how to find Olivier so they could get the fuck out of there, preferably before her dumbass friends showed. So, trust it was! Especially since she also needed them to trust her in return. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novel~fire~net

Quickly, she summarized the main things that had happened: how she was on a trip from Baalphoria; how Olivier had vanished and how her Censor—which she promised to explain to Candence later—was reporting him dead, but she wasn’t willing to accept that yet; how she’d run off looking for him and accidentally stumbled into some sort of weird situation with the Drinarna; how she’d been intending to get into the tunnels so she could more properly use a skill to see if she could find Olivier.

Unfortunately, due to having come to a bunch of conclusions about the situation because of information that was locked behind The Black Knot relay, she couldn’t share everything she knew—the relay locked those conclusion as well as the information she had been given directly. Fortunately, between her saying what she could and talking around what she couldn’t, as well as the men’s knowledge of the criminals in the city, it didn’t take them long to connect the dots she left. That was nice, considering her friends had yet to connect the dots themselves, lacking knowledge of the city doing them no favours there. People to discuss the situation with. Woo.

“That sounds like the Drini may have been part of his kidnapping, at least passively,” Jerrial noted, his eyes flickering in thought, teeth digging into his lower lip.

“He’s probably dead,” commented Vern—so unhelpful. “What?” he asked when the three of them turned big eyes on him. “I don’t know a lot about your Censors, but aren’t they supposed to be good? If it says he’s dead, why don’t you think he’s dead?”

Apparently, the man could talk. It might have been better if he stayed quiet.

“The place I came out, where the Drini attacked, blocked my Censor from transmitting anything while I was in it,” she explained, adding that while she wasn’t sure if anything similar, but mobile, existed, she wasn’t currently willing to give up on Olivier being alive.

Vern didn’t scoff at her, but he looked like he wanted to. The guy even crossed his arms like he was a pouting child!

“How did you get away from the Drini?” Jerrial asked. Fortunately, he had agreed to at least sit while they talked and his breathing was slowly easing. It would be better if he could lay down properly, but the tunnel was kinda gross.

“This guy showed up—the one they were trying to set up, I think?” Thank fuck Malcolm had set the relay lock to let her speak more freely about what she knew with people who already knew enough. ”It definitely seemed like the place was his, so I assume the Drini were trying to find evidence to arrest him?” Emilia shuddered just thinking of that man, Candence making a soft, sympathetic sound and snuggling further into her. Seriously, so cute.

“Who was it?” Jerrial asked, something in his eyes clocking her reaction, his body tensing as though he already suspected who it would be.

“I don’t know. Someone scary. He turned a few of the officers to… mush. It didn’t even look like he was trying. Didn’t attack me, though; seemed aware that I was being manipulated by the Drini as well—or just overheard them threatening me, maybe? He never turned anything on me, but he was still terrifying enough that I hope I don’t run into him again. Definitely don’t want to run into him if we’re on opposing sides.”

Jerrial watched her, his lids heavy, even if his eyes were burning. “How badly do you want your Olivier back?”

“Jerrial!” Vern hissed in that same, annoyed and put out tone he had used in most of his conversations with both of them.

Ignoring his companion, Jerrial continued staring into Emilia’s soul like her immediate answer wouldn’t be that she wanted him back badly enough that she was willing to risk her life to find him.

“I think… I know who took him,” Jerrial said, Vern groaning beside him and turning, his hands running through his dirt-caked hair. “Fortunately, I also want to get where your friend probably is. You help me get what I want, I’ll help you get your Olivier back.”

In hindsight, Emilia probably should have insisted Jerrial tell her what, exactly, it was he wanted. It wouldn’t have made a difference—there was little Emilia wouldn’t do to get Olivier back—but if she’d known, they could have done it so much less… chaotically.