[Can’t Opt Out]

“My name’s Emilia!” Emilia blurted out because somehow, despite decades of practice, she was still terrible at knowing what to say to a potential new friend when they first met. Abrupt introductions generally worked for her, even if they constantly left her internally cringing. Maybe one day she’d be better at speaking to people for the first time. Clearly, between meeting that scary criminal—who she had very sensibly run away from at the first chance—and stumbling into meeting and kinda-sorta befriending Candence and Jerrial—she didn’t think Vern liked her, but that was okay—and now literally face planting into this woman’s chest, staring into her eyes for way too long, and then blurting out her name, today was not the day she would be getting better at making people’s acquaintance.

Thankfully, the woman didn’t seem put out by her awkward introduction—although from their hiding place, Vern was now complaining to Jerrial about how dense she was and how that was liable to get them killed. It was very possible he was right. Emilia wouldn’t be surprised if her inability to always use her brain to its full capacity one day got her killed. Hopefully that day wouldn’t be today—or if it was, hopefully she wouldn’t be getting anyone she cared about killed.

The woman, whose hands Emilia only now realized were gripping onto her waist, tilted her head. “Death may come, depending on how the aether shifts. Maybe people you like… I doubt anyone you love.” A sad smile crossed her face as she added, “No one so loved your heart will shatter apart. Still, people you will mourn.”

Okay… that was a little creepy, right?

“Uhm… okay?” Emilia asked, unsure what she was supposed to say to someone who allegedly could see the future to some extent seemingly reading her mind. It wasn’t the worst answer in the world—although, obviously, no one dying was ideal—but at least that meant none of the friends she loved would die? Assuming the woman could see the future. Emilia remained unconvinced on that front, especially since she knew how easily Coral was able to guess at what people were thinking.

EEC Dyads like Coral had Excess Empathy and Connection genes. Essentially, they could feel people’s emotions through the aether. Lots of people didn’t believe such things were possible, but even before meeting Coral and witnessing her abilities herself, Emilia hadn’t seen any reason why emotions couldn’t be felt through the aether. Stupidly, despite the majority of Baalphoria—and a significant amount of the Free Colonies, from what she could tell—not believing that EEC Dyads could feel emotions through the aether, most also seemed to admit they themselves could feel strong emotions rolling off people.

The creep of someone watching you.

The uneasy energy of someone who meant you harm.

The itch of someone being upset despite everything else about them saying nothing was wrong.

Sometimes, people could feel those things. EEC Dyads were just better at feeling them than most people. Still, most people didn’t believe, including Coral’s parents. It had taken a bit of time, after Coral transferred to their school, for her to relax and start revealing the feelings her Dyadism gave her to their class, but eventually, she’d gotten there. As a result of all the things she had shared—not to mention all the time several of them had spent sitting with her, letting her feel their emotions so she could gain a better understanding of and tolerance for her abilities while Halen coded a function to catalogue the feelings for her—Emilia knew just how much ECC Dyads could see and guess.

Something told Emilia this woman wasn’t an EEC Dyad—or if she was, she was perhaps a hereditary one, Dyadism presenting a bit differently depending on whether it was first-gen or hereditary—but she could easily have another form of Dyadism that was giving her some ability to read her mind.

There were so many forms of Dyadism, on top of all the other irregular deviations that gave people strange and unique abilities, and Emilia wasn’t the sort to say anything was impossible—after all, lots of people would say the ryohua's abilities were impossible, and yet, they were very much possible.

Still, it was a little off-putting to know this woman might be able to dig into her mind with so little effort.

“You can come out, Jerrial and his friend. I mean you no harm,” the woman said, although even when Emilia felt Jerrial and Vern move back into the alleyway, those golden eyes didn’t stray from her own.

“And what is your definition of harm?” Jerrial asked, his body still vibrating with energy just waiting to explode. Not having seen the full extent of the man’s abilities, Emilia loaded up a microspark in case she needed to move, fast. If he really was the last Lowdouran, who knew how skilled he actually was. He could be all power and no training—after all, if he was the last one, he could easily be self-taught—and even if he had received training, Emilia couldn’t imagine it was easy to actually practice while trying to avoid anyone noticing his near-mythical abilities.

Better to just be prepared to get the fuck out of there if necessary.

“I do not mean to hurt you or those who come for the girl. I will not hand you over to Fräthk—although my offer to help find what you seek, what the silverstrain seeks, may lead you into Fräthk's gaze.”

“You know where Olivier is? The person I’m looking for?” Emilia cut in before Jerrial could ask anything more. “He did end up here, then?”

The woman nodded, that same soft smile gracing her face. Somewhere within it, there was a hint of confusion, Emilia thought, the woman’s eyes shifting over her as though looking for something. “My name is Rayleen. If you would trust me, I would take you to your friend.”

“Why?” It seemed the thing to ask, Emilia thought. There were tons of reasons to help someone, some good, some bad. Finding out the motives behind someone’s actions, especially someone she only knew through the stories Jerrial had told her, seemed important.

A soft hum leaked out of the woman—out of Rayleen—her eyes finally leaving Emilia for the first time since they’d collided. “A feeling that I need to help you.” Eyes flickering closed—and what a confident thing to do, to close her eyes when so close to people who might very well decide to kill her, rather than risk trusting her—Rayleen continued that she had always known this day would come. “There were so many times I could have left Fräthk, yet I knew, I couldn’t. There was something important to do. That thing is now here.”

“That thing… as in, helping us?”

Rayleen hummed a non-committal sound that Emilia didn’t much like—Vern either, based on the way he shifted in front of Jerrial, as though Jerrial weren’t the far stronger party, from what she could tell.

“It is the ‘us,’” the woman cut in before Vern could get more than a few words of complaint out. “I am meant to help you,” she explained, nodding to Emilia. “You have chosen to both accept and offer aid with Jerrial, and I will not stand in his way, but neither am I here to help him through more than leading the way to what you both seek, close as they are. He and his are not important here.”

Vern let out an affronted sound that only grew louder when Jerrial muttered an okay, before moving to step forward.

“You can’t be serious!” Vern hissed, tugging Jerrial back when he tried to pass him. For all that Jerrial was sick and thin, Vern was still smaller—both shorter and skinnier—than Jerrial and his efforts to pull his friend back completely failed. Instead of Jerrial being stopped, Vern was left being tugged forward. “She works for Fräthk! She says she’s on the girl’s side—”

“Hey! I have a name!” Emilia complained, turning to glare at the man. Vern didn’t even seem to hear her. Rude.

“—but who knows if even that’s true, and for her to admit she’s not going to be helping you!? Come on, Jerrial. Let's just get out of here. Let this be the girl’s problem now.”

Jerrial’s smile was sad when he turned it onto his friend—sad and accepting of this fate. “I also have things to get. Regardless of whether the golden one means to help me or not, I cannot turn back now. This will likely be my only chance to—”

“Fuck that! There will be more chances! Going along with this… what’s to say that they won’t prioritize getting the girl’s friend out—”

“He also has a name,” Emilia noted, not really sure who she was speaking to. Definitely not Vern or Jerrial. Rayleen might have been listening, but Emilia wasn’t even sure the woman was paying attention to the two men arguing; rather, her head was tilted again, as though she were listening to something happening afar.

Tuning out the sound of Vern and Jerrial arguing—it seemed pretty clear that no matter what Vern argued, Jerrial was coming with them; it was more a question of whether Vern was coming or abandoning his friend at this point—Emilia followed the golden one’s gaze when it shifted upwards. Based on where they were in the city—at least, where Emilia thought they were, the running through the tunnels having turned her around a bit regardless of her sketchy map—Emilia thought the area above them was where the aetherstream that crisscrossed the northern portion of Lüshan was.

In other words, it was the general location where her dumbass friends would be arriving anytime now. For that reason, she wasn’t particularly surprised when Rayleen muttered softly that people were arriving above their heads, confusion marring her face as she frowned. Okay, maybe not marring—the woman really was too beautiful, even the frown suiting her. Her lower lip was plump, and even the small frown made it appear that she was pouting. It would have been cute, if the woman were a little younger. As it was, Rayleen must have been pushing at her late hundreds, and the effect didn’t really work with her otherwise calm vibe.

Still, Emilia could understand her confusion as to why there were people popping into existence far above them—and that was definitely another check in the irregular deviation list because even if she had focused on reaching her awareness out that far, Emilia doubted she’d be able to feel her friends up there, even as Halen’s version of her stalking function confirmed they were more or less right above them. It also confirmed that if the woman could actually see the future somehow, she couldn’t see the entirety of it, something Jerrial had said as well: that Fräthk didn’t hold the woman missing things against her. Certainly, if she had somehow known Emilia’s friends were coming, she definitely hadn’t seen them coming from above because while there might be an aetherstream above them, very few people used it; rather, it was older infrastructure from before the subterranean trains had been built. Lüshan continued to maintain them for emergencies—it wasn’t like moving all the Drinarna for an emergency would be easy under any circumstances, and doing so through the trains would be a logistical disaster. Hence, the aetherstream remained maintained, workers making sure that it didn’t move too much year by year—something she had heard complained about, as it was apparently not in the position it naturally wanted to exist in, resulting in it requiring constant maintenance. Still, almost no one used it… and it was actually a little odd that the government was so insistent on keeping it somewhere it didn’t naturally want to be?

[Emmie:y'all arrive in one piece?]

[Levi:yeah. only one of us fell off again. one guess who.]

[Halen:hes fin]

[Rafe:I don’t think Emmie cares if he’s okay or not]

[Levi:shhhhh]

[Levi:that’ll give away who it is! it has to be a secret!]

[Emmie:did someone push mikhail off?]

[Mikkie:HAH! I tld you Emmie wld no!] ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel✦fire.net

Emilia had rarely messaged Mikhail, aside from during the one unfortunate group project they had worked together on. He wasn’t exactly mean or anything; rather, his head was just impressively empty. Mikhail himself even joked that all his good genes were in more physical Categories—and indeed, many of those Categories were Perfect—while his more mental Categories… were not. They weren’t Deficient, but the man definitely had the vibe of someone who didn’t know he had a brain most of the time—although there were some very good genetic reasons for that! Still, their group project had mostly involved Emilia telling him what to do, while doing most of the heavy lifting herself. She couldn’t even be mad at him for it! The guy was just so simultaneously empty-headed and aware of that fact that, on top of having a genetic condition that explained his quirks, it made it impossible to hold anything against him!

Still, the lack of forethought for anything he said or did add up, and the fact that he knew he sometimes deserved to be pushed off of aetherstreams—for instance—made him an easy target for actually being pushed off of aetherstreams. The fact that he would just laugh and smile about it—and maybe try to get the person back later—made him a nice guy… or it would have, except again, he was so obtuse that being around him for too long was tiring.

The fact that it had been the always sweet Coral of all people who had apparently pushed him off kinda proved that point. Then again, when a video popped into the feed of the incident, Emilia realized it was more that Coral was protecting Mikhail when she pushed him off. Given the conversation happening in their group relay, poor, dense Mikhail didn’t even realize how close he’d come to being killed for his words.