[Can’t Opt Out]

Hyr shuddered under the collapse of Emilia’s dream, its tendrils reaching into them in a strange way that left them aware of what she was seeing and yet unable to grasp more than wisps of the reality she had once lived through. They’d known this would happen, of course—they’d lived through this moment time and time again, after all—and yet, they could not have appreciated the full weight of what it would feel like until now.

To dream and vision of the future was to look backwards upon it. It was to see and yet not, a million knots of intentions and decisions leading to the moments seen by the synat and anyone else who claimed such a connection to the aether’s will. Sometimes, the lines that led to a particular future were impossible to untangle, too many things leading into it. Sometimes, the tangle was much more understandable—a layering of nodes of import, a disruption to any one of them sending the future flying elsewhere.

Once disrupted, a node might scatter into the aether, never to become reality. Futures that included the dead were like that, their death a node that disrupted any future they were a part of. The children they might have brought into the world a splatter of blood over the aether. The relationships they had with people—the holes only their personality and love could fill within another—a scattering of sand back into the world. Perhaps another person would come along to conceive a child with their beloved; perhaps another person might fill their place in the world—might become the best friend they were meant to be, might become the innovator or warmonger they were in a thousand fragmented futures that could never be because that was the thing: most nodes could shift with the tides of time and reality. Snuffing out an entire future was nigh impossible; more often, the future simply shifted as the people and place changed.

This particular node that Hyr found themself living was like that: a moment they and Emilia would experience together in every reality they were allowed to meet and exist in each other’s presence for more than a scattering of time.

Emilia in their arms, dreaming and nightmaring of decades past. Eventually, Hyr would have to make a decision of whether to undo the knots on a piece of her past. Not the big knot, tied into her by the clones with her consent.

No, unlike the manipulations of the clones, which she was passingly aware of at times, this twisting of her memory was something Emilia dreamed of and yet never remembered. Hyr could stop that forgetting, although they had time yet to decide if this was the right time to do so or not. If they decided to leave it, there would be more opportunities to free the flood of memory later.

The aether shifted over them, a gentle ripple of power exploding out of one of Emilia’s teammates—the one who the late syna Gru had aided in learning to utilize their power, the one Hetexia now complained about constantly. At least, Hyr had heard she complained about the Shadow of Jinkai and the girl they lived alongside. As a high-ranking syn of the Bur, Hyr had heard the hy Bur rant numerous times about how she understood the hy Gru's frustration with the Shadow of Jinkai so casually walking the continent but also thought the hy Gru far too concerned with the blowback Division 30 may one day receive for allowing the Shadow of Jinkai so much freedom, especially when another member had been confined to a Norvellian prison for years. In the hy Bur’s opinion—and Hyr’s as well—the Shadow of Jinkai striking down evil wherever the aether took them did make the world a better place, even if they never bothered asking for leave to enter or kill upon the soil their feet touched, whereas Ophani Harlow had been imprisoned for a very important reason. Hyr couldn’t blame the hy Gru for being frustrated with that situation—after all, very few people knew the whole truth of it, even within Division 30.

Blood and blackness from just moments before fractured through Hyr, a dozen more moments that would come in the following weeks as well. Most of the futures seemed to be focused in Piketown, several of them slicing into the innocent, more slicing into people whom Emilia loved.

“Darrian?” they asked.

Korrin, who had seated herself between her twin brothers and seemed content to power nap while Darrian and Conrad intended to do some training with the Virtuosi System before they moved to the second level of the PVP Entrance Raid, started. The teenager blinked wildly several times before shifting and pressing her nose to Borien’s shoulder and slipping back to sleep.

Across the room, Leerin leaned against the wall, arms crossed, and while she glared at her three cousins, she did extend a bubble of silence around them. Since they had run into her, Leerin had gone from anger to sadness to regret and frustration, right back into anger. Hyr wasn’t sure who her anger currently was directed at: herself, Emilia, Darrian, their family and the purism they were forcing into their family system, or perhaps the situation as a whole.

Leerin was a hard person to understand, the rare future Hyr saw her within featuring what might as well be completely different people. No matter what future they saw, however, Hyr never found a place of contentment with her. Always, she was something unpleasant: someone who would defend Emilia’s long-dead ex to her dying breath; someone who interfered in her cousin’s relationship in hopes of dragging him back into their toxic, enmeshment; someone who found happiness with new friends and didn’t hesitate to leave her childhood friends to problems she had helped create.

The worst part was that Leerin existed in many of the future Hyr saw, but was generally reduced to a phantom too far away for Hyr to taste her intentions across their soul, an oddity given how pivotal she was at times to the things that would occur, blurry as those were to even Hyr. Someone disconnected, and yet not. Hyr didn’t know what to make of it any more than the late syna Gru had. Rexanti had taken a stance of never getting too close to the girl, something that Hyr suspected may have done more harm than good, but who really knew.

Some pyr of the Gru likely had all of Rexanti’s sights and opinions on the world and its future etched into them, just as Hyr had a pyr to hold theirs. As someone who had come late to the synat, and with an avalanche of information on things no syna had seen in centuries, the identity of the late syna Gru’s pyr was as well guarded as Hyr’s own pyr’s. They saw futures no one else could; therefore, their words and sights were to be hidden from the prying eyes of those who would oppose them—those who would seek to tug apart all the knots they had spilled so much blood to lay.

Perhaps, somewhere within Rexanti’s pyr’s etchings, lay the truth of why they had chosen the path they had. Perhaps, the knowledge of why had died with them. Hyr doubted killing the girl now would do much to—

A vision flickered through their mind—nothing concrete or even formed into more than the vagueness of death and necessity—and no, killing Leerin now would most certainly cause more harm than good. Hyr couldn’t see why, could only taste the truth of it—this blandly sweet message that told them it was the aether speaking to them and not something more nefarious, not that such things attempted to sway them these days. When they were younger and less attuned to the aether they had, but Hyr could always tell.

Hyr also wasn’t stupid; they would not become a synat who found themself accidentally following the trail of something that was not the aether.

“How can you tell what’s the aether and what’s not?” a small version of themself asked, that conversation having come to them years before it would play out in reality. Like many conversations that held such weight, Hyr had seen it in dozens of iterations, each version influenced by what the Hyr of that reality had seen and experienced through the aether’s guidance. For his young self, this was a node that had to be—a node they had to experience. Yet, there had been a possibility it wouldn’t come to pass.

If Rexanti had died too early, someone else would have answered Hyr’s question—and their thousand follow-up questions—without near enough understanding or patience.

If Hyr had managed to escape their babysitters and find their way to Division 30’s doorstep, no one would have been able to pry them away from the people they were born to love.

If Hyr had let themself be called by the voices of the things that were not the aether had had already begun tugging at them.

There were hundreds of ways their young mind might not have come into that conversation, so the aether made sure they experienced it a thousand times over. Even if reality never came to be, they would always have those unrealized futures because they had to know how to tell what to listen to and what to ignore.

It was somewhat rare for synat to be so thoroughly entwined with the aether, their minds a constant torrent of messages as it left gifts in its wake—the occasional cruelty as well. Sometimes, there was little difference between the two. Hyr loved so many of their memories of futures that could never be, death snuffing out the possibility of them ever coming to pass. They were a torturously precious thing, and even now, the aether still spread out visions of impossible futures for them. Dıscover more novels at novel⁂fire.net

Jerrial and Vern smiling at Candence, grown and happy and not quite free, but excited that maybe the laws would eventually give her the freedom she deserved.

Halen and Coral, both alive and laughing about how terrible their pregnant wives were.

The Princess of Crishar free to love her sibling openly, rather than slip between gaps in security and the eyes of the entire continent because there were already suspicions circling them that no one who knew the truth wanted to see reach the light—no yet, anyways.

Hyr’s own mind still burned from burying so many truths of the world so they could join {A Life (not) in the Stars}, the syna Vurn having helped to pull things from their conscious mind in hopes of keeping them from the raid platform. They had been so effective in their temporary erasure of their memories that Hyr had completely forgotten that meeting Emilia within it was a possibility—almost a guarantee, really, as it was exceptionally rare they didn’t meet by their thirtieth birthday. Only days from the turning of another year, however, Hyr had begun to suspect this would become one of the rare realities where they wouldn’t meet for a few seasons—not until the hy Gru would finally facilitate a meeting between them just hours before the first purposeful mission Division 30 would run since the war ended.

Purposeful mission—that was the way the people in those visions referred to the mission, the implication of another, accidental mission that Hyr could never grasp spilling between the words. Despite never being able to find the reality of that accidental mission, Hyr knew both it and the purposeful one were pivotal, inescapable nodes, just as the mission that would eventually see Ophani Harlow released back into the world was. Unless something terrible occurred, Hyr doubted anything could force those nodes back into the aether, never to be heard of again save in what those of them who could look within the aether might see and say of their visions.

Still… being this close to the purposeful mission, Hyr wondered if they would find themself part of the accidental mission, especially considering how off the aether felt at the moment. The will of the aether was still there—still communicating with them. Yet, something in it was sluggish. It was subtle, however, and Hyr doubted any synat but themself and perhaps the syna Chroy—if the stories about their power before they were imprisoned were to be believed—would be able to feel the difference.

The aether loved Hyr, however, so of course they would feel when something was wrong.

“Hey, little syn~” Conrad cooed, peering down at Hyr. “Seeing anything fun inside that cute little head of yours? Darrian was trying to ask what you wanted!”

Across the room, Leerin scoffed and Conrad scowled.

“Just lost in thought,” Hyr told the other Free Colonier, glancing over at Darrian and apologizing for begging his attention, only to then ignore him.

“It’s fine…” the man said, his voice tight as he stared down his cousin. After a long moment of the Zentaris glaring each other down, Leerin pushed herself off the wall and left for the bathroom.

“You sound like you’re gonna be a while. I’m gonna clean up,” she said, vanishing into the section that contained the showers, according to a sign on the wall.

“So, what’s up?” Darrian asked, coming to stand beside Conrad, their arms brushing slightly.

As he watched Conrad beam up at Darrian, Hyr wondered if they should tell either what else they had seen of the future they might be able to shape with one another. Had it been more set, they might have. As it was, their future was a blur of possibility, depending on what path Darrian took with his cousin—what paths he allowed her to drag him down.

No, it was likely better to leave Darrian and Conrad to simply exist for the moment. Conrad might be the sort to enjoy knowing the vague lines of the aether’s will, but an outright push and pull into a specific future likely wasn’t something he would appreciate, especially if Hyr choose to pull apart the decades’ old manipulations on Emilia’s mind.

Better to just leave it. They would figure it out.

“Were you aware criminals are newly hunting your unit?” Hyr signed, slow and steady because although they had spent quite a bit of time practicing within the Virtuosi System, they wouldn’t be fast or fluent for some time. Had they the ability to ask the aether a specific question, they might have asked why it had never allowed them to learn Emilia’s sign language.

Darrian blinked wide eyes back at them, while Conrad turned a glower on them. “What?” they both signed in near unison, although where Darrian was confused, Conrad was upset. Hyr would not be telling either where to find any of these criminals. It was enough for the Shadow of Jinkai and most of the clones to be hunting them, as well as a few of their unit’s criminal contacts. The last thing the world needed was someone like Conrad seeking out all those who would attempt to trap Emilia and her friends in their claws.