[Can’t Opt Out]

Having rarely been within Lüshan’s more standard buildings, instead sticking to the spires and streets on the occasions that his class trips came to any of its cities—the ramshackle way airships swerved through the continent often left Seer’ik’tine the only consistent stop on his trips—Olivier had no idea if the inside of the building where the holding cells were located were normal or not.

Given the way Lüshan’s architecture was a mix of styles, all smushed together until they almost made sense but were never destined to actually find true sensibility, he still had no idea. The general feel of the building seemed to suit the overall non-style of the Free Colony, however.

Each level their group moved through seemed to be an entirely different existence from the other. The floor he had woken on had been dreary and cold, stones and bars making up the walls, while the doors were solid hunks of metal that had left Renton struggling with their weight and Cravena breathing hard, her hands shaking from the effort to create such heat as to melt the hinges without burning her clothing or risking a blowback that would kill the rest of them—Olivier had subsequently loaded up a defensive skill to at least try and protect them, if her ability blasted back at them. He did not possess much confidence that it would do more than garner them a few seconds more of life before any barrier collapsed under the heat of her abilities, which his Censor had informed in was pushing 3000° before it had given up on keeping track of the temperature. If his Censor couldn’t compute the temperature of Cravena’s flames, Olivier had little confidence it would be able to stop them.

While he hoped to never see a day when war would break out once more, the reality that an irregular deviation could create such heat—not to mention that the woman could withstand such heat as long as she was paying attention—had left him adding yet another item to his list of things to discuss with Emilia later. As good a skill designer as she seemingly was, perhaps she could design a skill capable of stopping that amount of heat—at the very least, she could probably design something to properly gauge the temperature, surely.

After the door to the stairwell had been forcibly removed by Cravena and Renton’s efforts, they had come to what Izurial referred to as the floor for people who are slightly better behaved, a gleam in his eyes suggesting that he would never find himself on the level and didn’t necessarily care for those who had. It seemed to be a sentiment that many of the people in the original group shared. Oliver was thankful when no one had either tried to leave the five people they’d taken from that level behind or started any sort of argument with them, but he could feel the tension radiating off a few people—mostly from Izurial, Renton, and one of the children.

While they waited for the door to the next level to be removed—it had been made of some sort of metal that Cravena claimed would start screaming if heat were applied to it, leaving Frejna, one of the women who was babysitting and had a more well-rounded education in terms of core use, to pick the lock—Olivier had been left feeling both useless and holding the hateful child. Said child—Xavier—had taken to glaring at one of the new group members in particular. The woman had actually looked abashed and taken to hiding behind a visibly annoyed Renton.

“Everyone’s always split,” Cheska, always a ball of gossip, even as her eyes shifted through the group, searching for wayward thoughts that she didn’t like the feel of, had leaned in to tell him. “There are many people Fräthk picks up who will never be loyal, and they take pride in that. Other people… well, I can’t really fault them for wanting a little bit of a better life? It can cost them, is the thing? That little one? His mama was killed when she went out with that woman. Maybe she could have saved his mama, but doing so would have ruined the mission, and it was the sort where Fräthk cared more about the success than who came out of it,” she had explained, nodding to the barely visible woman—Renton really was quite huge, at over six and a half feet, with muscles that pulled at his clothing. Olivier doubted even both his hands together could wrap around the Lüshanian man’s biceps—and those thighs. How much did someone have to work out to create thighs that thick!?

Xavier, adorable and grumpy, had pushed himself further into Olivier’s arms but continued to glare at the woman. Most of Olivier’s experience with children revolved around his cousin Vanessa’s children, and his best guess was that the boy was four or five—although, with how terrible this place was, it was quite possible the children weren’t getting enough nutrition to support their bodies. The other child—a girl, whose parents were still alive and had been effectively left to care for the orphaned Xavier, but were currently out on a mission—was perhaps a little older, resulting in her being set down by her own babysitter whenever possible.

It was cold to think, but if the time came when Cordk would be forced to fulfill his plan to sacrifice himself so they could escape, it might be best to ask Renton to carry the girl instead. For the moment, the woman was insisting that she carry the girl, as the only other people perhaps more suited to carry the girl were Olivier himself—who the girl didn’t know—or the man who disliked silverstrains.

No one, Olivier thought, trusted that man not to drop the girl if he thought leaving her behind would give him a better chance at escaping.

“So, that woman has been allowed to come up here, partially because she’s shown she’s more loyal to Fräthk’s mission than her friends. Those are the sort of people here: not people who can be trusted by Fräthk to be given more freedom, but who have shown they’ll value their own standing over everyone else,” Cheska had finished explaining as the lock clicked open, Olivier giving the second floor one more glance.

It was far nicer than the first, no stone to be seen, the only metal doors the ones that barred off the stairwells. The people who lived within them could move about as they wanted; get food from a small kitchen as they desired, Izurial taking a moment to stuff as much as he could manage into a bag he’d grabbed from someone’s room. That said, there hadn’t been nearly enough food within the small pantry to support the seven people living on the floor, and when he’d asked how long the food was meant to last, or whether they were given proper meals at other times, one of the newcomers had scoffed.

“This is far more than those below get,” the teenager had told him, rubbing at their runny nose—apparently they also had the illness the others had, but it was comparatively mild in teenagers. Olivier was somewhat concerned that he would be coming out of this with a terrible illness, but those were concerns for later. “It's meant to last a week, and there is nothing else, only ever this.”

On top of the ill-stocked kitchen—Olivier was refusing to think of how little the original members must have been getting, if that meagre selection was considered far more—there were proper bathrooms—as opposed to the buckets found below—although virtually no toilet paper. This floor even had a small library, although small meant it only had four books. The style of it all was odd, however—this mix of styles that he’d seen in a spire museum one of the other times he’d come to Lüshan, which contained examples of the nation’s culture throughout the decades. It were as though someone had wanted to make this place better without spending much money; so, instead of buying anything new, they’d instead renovated another location, moving what outdated furniture and installations were still semi-usable here.

As a result, nothing matched, even the lights casting different shades against the world because the lightbulbs didn’t match. Paint crackled. Appliances hummed in threat of breaking down any second. Doors creaked and had to be hip checked closed in some cases.

It was still far nicer than the first floor, but in a way that made Olivier think it was meant to be a trickle of kindness—this sort of look how good things are when you cooperate even a little, so imagine how good it will be if you cooperate even more.

More food.

More warmth.

More freedom.

Just… more.

It also had slightly better bedding, the first floor having left barely any fabric for the people within them, lest they try to kill themselves with anything—allegedly, anyways. Still, there was the reality that as much as Cravena couldn’t kill herself with her fire, Olivier had the sense that she, just like most of these people, would be perfectly fine killing their neighbours, if only they asked. As a result, the lack of clothing and bedding instead felt like a simple cruelty—perhaps one to break these people, just a little more. Several of the people they had left behind were like that: broken by this horrible life.

This was not a good life, living with scraps of food and clothing—thankfully, there had been clothing located in a closet on the first floor, so no one had been forced to walk around naked. It was difficult to imagine Renton and Cordk living within those cells for so many decades—not that they’d been held in these specific cells the whole time; rather, Fräthk had a number of buildings spread throughout the city, through which he moved his captives regularly. It seemed relatively rare for anyone to be kept together too long, friendships and familial bonds used as leverage to make the people behave. While most of the people they had with them had known each other for a while, it was clear that few of them were more than people who knew each other, were occasionally housed near one another, and sometimes worked together for a person they collectively hated.

Hopefully that hatred and the desire to escape would be enough to bind them together, at least for a little while.

Olivier had asked how many people Fräthk had within all his cells—within the brutal cells so many of them had come from, the comparatively nice ones, and the ones inhabited by captives who had proved themself more loyal. Having learned that the number was likely two to three hundred, he thought he would have been better off not asking. Even if they took out the people who were loyal to Fräthk—for which Cordk had been able to give a more solid suggestion that the number was likely around fifty, but that a dozen had been picked up by the Drinarna a few months ago and were not expected back—that was still so many people out there. It wasn’t much, when compared to the millions who lived within Falmíer, but still… shouldn’t someone have noticed that so many people with valuable and powerful irregular deviations were going missing?

The last question he asked, before he decided to keep his mouth shut or a while, each answer turning his stomach more, was whether the people in the group had known they were potential targets for Fräthk—as well as this other person, Gëon—before they were captured. Considering what Cheska had stated earlier, about regretting that she hadn't sought out Gëon before Fräthk got her, he suspected he already knew the answer. Still, he wanted confirmation that knowledge of the pair’s kidnappings already existed on the streets of Falmíer.

It did, but aside from the group of Drinarna who appeared to be working for either criminal, the consensus was that the organization as a whole had never been informed of the kidnappings despite it not really being a secret among the general public. Why? Partially, the corrupt Drinarna were keeping it quietly. The more important part, however, was that no one with irregular deviations wanted the Drinarna to know.

“They won’t protect us,” Porsq had huffed, pressing himself into Izurial’s side. “More like, they’ll throw us into the prisons, so no one can have us. Least here, we might escape, you know?”

Olivier knew enough about the Lüshanian tendency to just dump its problems into the darkness of its prisons. Still, to imagine that the Drinarna might support just locking these people up indefinitely, simply for being targets of criminals…

That wasn’t something he could just allow to happen, he knew, which meant that to truly rescue these people, he’d have to get them out of Lüshan itself. This was not something easy, and even with his knowledge of the laws of Lüshan and Baalphoria, he had no idea how he was going to manage such a thing.

What a mess. Clearly, he should not be helping anyone, ever. He would, of course, inevitably find himself helping people again in the future. That, however, didn’t mean he had to be happy about it—it would be so much easier to be selfish.

As they moved through the levels, there were far worse things he learned, however. The dubious honour of being the worst thing shared with him belonged to the fact that there were also several levels beneath that first floor, those levels being somewhere cursed and bloody, and thankfully not somewhere they would be needing to go. Still, he hadn’t missed the odd look on Cheska’s face when she’d said there was no need for them to go lower, something telling him that there might be people suffering beneath their feet, but just as they had to decide that some of the people they came across were too injured or sick or broken to bring along, she and everyone else had already made the decision that there was no saving the people trapped beneath their feet.

“People who go there,” she had whispered to him, when he dared ask about those levels as they reached the fifth floor, where the first of Fräthk’s more loyal lived, spread out between several levels, “don’t come back. They go there, and live and die, and it isn’t fast. I can feel them, even here—so can Porsq. I can feel their thoughts spiralling; he can feel their minds breaking.” The girl had given him a heartbreaking smile, as she added, “It doesn’t matter if we actually escape. Since the day I arrived here, I would have taken death trying to escape over being forced to hear their unending misery even an hour more.”