[Can’t Opt Out]

“How the fuck does someone end up with a cannibal stalking them? Better yet, how do they end up befriending their cannibal stalker!?” Baylor muttered to himself. He had pushed Halen out of the position of power—the place where the other boy had somehow managed to receive a few messages from Emilia—and was now pacing the path, hoping that he would receive whatever messages the girl had sent to them, and that the messages he’d sent off himself would actually send.

So far, no luck.

Halen had forwarded the messages he’d received to the rest of them—and how unfair was the world for him of all people to have been graced with Emilia’s words!? He wasn’t the one who loved Emilia! And they’d been walking virtually the exact same path! Why did the aethernet decide that it was only when that asshat was passing by that it would suddenly reconnect and then BOOM! Messages from Emilia! And then, BOOM! Aethernet access: gone.

So fucking unfair. Anyone else getting that access would have been better than Halen, and seriously!? Why was Halen even here, having somehow ended up their de facto leader alongside Taelor no less? The guy didn’t even like Emilia.

His older brother had explained—after Baylor had refused to shut up in their triplets-only relay about how much Halen SHOULDN’T BE THERE—that he had gone to see Emilia in Seer’ik’tine the day before and somehow ended up consulting on her original, stalker version of {{Blissful Silence}}, which her soon-to-be lawyer—assuming he wasn’t dead—had never bothered updating.

Baylor couldn’t exactly argue with her decision to ask for Halen’s help with this—although Baylor would have happily ordered Olivier de la Rue to update the function, then kidnapped and threatened him if he refused. Still, WHY HALEN!?

It all sucked and was highly annoying. They were supposed to hate Halen, and yes, he knew Emilia and Halen sometimes collaborated in the most passive and distant of ways on skills and functions, especially ones that impacted Mikhail, but that was different! That was during school! They were graduated now and Halen was supposed to be out of their lives—someone they passed on the street and ignored, or better yet, threw pranks at before running away.

Yeah… that was how it should have been: rarely seeing Halen, never talking or thinking about him; then, if they ran into him, they’d throw aether bombs at him, or hit his Censor with viruses that wouldn’t hurt him—Emilia had long ago instilled in all of them that they weren’t allowed to actually hurt Halen—but would certainly make his life miserable for at least a few hours.

Yeah… that was the good timeline. Whatever this fuckery was, it was the bad timeline. Baylor wanted to return to the good, sensible timeline, where their sides of the class never mingled!

Well, Coral could mingle with them, and Baylor would begrudgingly accept Mikhail as long as he wasn’t talking about his brothers or Emilia. Codeth could maybe stay as well, but that was more because he had never done anything worse than be friends with the terrible people on the other side of the class, and even that had always seemed more like a tolerance of them than anything, stupid as that tolerance was. If stupidity were a bar that people had to pass to be part of their friend group, half of them wouldn’t be part of it. Most notably, Levi wouldn’t be part of it!

Now, Baylor wasn’t stupid and knew his distant cousin was, at least to some extent, faking how much of a dumbass he was, but running off into the darkness, chasing after that stupid not-a-rock that he had picked up? Baylor wasn’t even sure what to do with that level of dumbassery. Certainly, it was the level of stupid that might erase anything Levi would ever do, even long into the future, that wasn’t stupid. It was up there with the time he had punctured his lung and then run off from the clinic before it was fully healed—one of those moments that would live on in infamy for the rest of time.

“What are you thinking about?” Simeon asked, having taken over Baylor’s attempts to connect to the aethernet, Valor suggesting that Simeon’s Excess Connection Levels might lend him a bit more of a chance at doing so—so far, no luck.

“How stupid Levi is for running off,” Baylor replied, glaring at the tunnel wall.

What he wanted at the moment, himself, Simeon, and Halen lingering behind a few minutes longer to see if the aethernet connection returned, was to lean against the wall and rest. Unfortunately, the stone of this section was jagged and while his class uniform would protect him to some extent, it would still be uncomfortable—not to mention potentially rip his clothes, leading to his brothers needing to rip theirs to match. Also, there were a lot of bugs. Baylor wasn’t afraid of them, but that didn’t mean he wanted them rooting around in his clothes or hair.

“You don’t think so?” Halen asked in response to something he saw in Simeon’s movements or expression, Baylor assumed. He was also glaring, but his glare was directed into the darkness they’d come from. So far, there had been no sign that their attackers were following them, but given the group had attacked them out of nowhere, no one was expecting that to last… unless Levi caused so much chaos that they couldn’t regroup to come after them again. That was what they were waiting for: for their attackers to regroup and bring along more people for a second assault. Baylor would very happily rip more of them apart, and this time, he wouldn’t hold back.

No… instead, he and the other members of their group had agreed that if another attack came, the majority of the group would get out of his way. Their entire group was well-trained, but some of them had more of a sense for battle than others. Even just between the black knots of their group, he and Levi were the ones who were brutal by nature. Samina could be vicious, but there was always something not quite right in the way she fought, while Taelor was methodical. Valor and Rafe, on the other hand, could fight, but it was in no way something they enjoyed.

The thought of how much his baby brother didn’t enjoy fighting or killing sent a clench through Baylor’s heart. This was the life that was laid out for them, and yet, just as Finn and Cyan would never really fit into the mould of being a clone, pieces of the generic shape of a Hyrat clone missing from their personalities, Valor was the same. In a different world, Valor would have been left in the same position as Finn and Cyan—would have been removed from the normal cycle of their existence as clones and agents for The Black Knot.

Baylor didn’t fit either, but in his case, it were as though he had too many of the pieces that made someone a black knot. Sometimes, he joked that he must have taken some of Valor’s black knotted-ness with him, back when they were snuggled together in the womb. It didn’t work like that, but sometimes, it seemed like it must. Too bad he couldn’t give those parts back—even them out a bit so they could be happier.

Valor, able to accept his life with The Black Knot a little better.

Himself, able to let the part of him that wanted to rip into people go, so he didn’t feel as though living what would inevitably be the unsatisfying life of a Black Knot agent were the only path he could take—the only life he could live that wouldn’t result in Emilia looking at him as the monster he was.

Behind him, Halen and Simeon were discussing Levi’s not-a-rock, the annoyingly useful function Halen had made cataloguing the signed conversation for him. It would have been so much easier if the guy a fucked that up as well, but no. It was all perfect Halen with his perfect Halen-ness.

Baylor hated it.

They were mostly alone back here. What were the chances Simeon would let him kill Halen and then go along with a claim that they’d been attacked?

“You cannot kill Halen,” came a message from Taelor, and what the fuck!?

Halen had, with his annoying, perfectionist ways, made it so his version of Emilia’s stalking function would work through the non-aethernet, short-range communication mode that all Censors had, but people rarely had to use. It was so rarely used, in fact, that he was pretty sure most people weren’t even aware of its existence. Regardless, as a result of Halen’s perfect Halen-ness, the stupid stalking function still worked between members of their group, as long as they weren’t too far from one another. It made sense for him to have added in that functionality, as Lüshan only had partial aethernet coverage, but still! How dare the guy be so fucking perfect!

Also annoying!? It was so unfair that after only a few hours of using the function, his older brother already knew exactly what his vitals would look like when he was contemplating killing someone!

“I could be thinking about killing Simeon,” Baylor retorted. It was such a ridiculous suggestion, unfortunately, that his brother didn’t even bother replying. Rude. Baylor could so totally imagine killing Simeon! He so totally could.

As though to prove his point, Baylor turned and glowered at the other boy, who was discussing how strange the not-a-rock was with Halen. Apparently, Simeon had also felt some sort of connection to the not-a-rock, and didn’t think Levi crazy for going after it.

“Levi had a connection to it, from the moment he picked it up,” Simeon was saving, his gaze aimed absently forward as his hands shifted, his body tilting back and forth, as though seeking that connection to the aethernet. “I would have liked to look at it longer, but it felt like he might bite me if I didn’t give it back soon.”

Baylor tried to imagine biting Simeon—digging his teeth into the boy and leaving a mark. Sometimes he bit Emilia, which was nice. He never bit her hard enough to do more than leave a nice bruise—it was surprisingly difficult to bite hard enough to break skin. That could have been a I love Emilia and can’t actually hurt her thing, or it could have been a it’s actually quite difficult thing. Baylor wasn’t sure, but he could practice on someone like Simeon. He so totally could.

Maybe.

Probably.

Uh…

“Besides,” Simeon added, his eyes slowly sliding towards Baylor, “from what I saw, it seemed that the group who attacked us were trying to take the not-a-rock from Levi. That alone might be a reason to go retrieve it. Why are you looking at me like that?”

The other boy’s bright-blue eyes, colour muted through {Starlit Eyes} met Baylor’s, and what the fuck!? Simeon didn’t meet people’s gaze! He looked past them, into the distance! What the fuck!?

“I— nothing? I’m not— I’m not looking at you any sort of way!” Baylor managed to stammer out in a mess of spoken and signed words, his hands flying in a jumble that just became more of a disaster the longer Simeon stared at him—stared into his fucking soul.

“What’s wrong?” a collection of people asked in their group relay, his brothers also asking in their triplets-only relay.

“I— I think Simeon is bullying me?” he said—or was it more a question?—into the relay with his brothers.

Across the tunnel, Simeon continued staring into his soul, and fuck if it wasn’t strangely disconcerting. He continued to stare, and stare, and stare as their main group relay filled with queries as to what was happening, Taelor assuring them it was fine and self-inflicted.

To the side, Halen glanced between the pair of them, confused—that was fair! Baylor was also confused and—

And he had to be the one to look away first, a small sorry sliding over his fingers. Simeon continued to watch him for a long moment, expression blank, before he nodded and turned back to staring into the abyss.

“Was it nice, at least?” the other boy asked, continuing that rocking motion as Halen asked what was happening.

“No, not really,” Baylor admitted—apparently, he really couldn’t think about killing Simeon, even those thoughts of biting the sweet boy having turned his stomach over. Plus, he was now a little afraid of the boy! If he tried to kill him, he’d definitely have to blindfold Simeon because fuck if he wouldn’t get performance anxiety under the guy’s intense gaze!

Halen looked about ready to ask once more what they were talking about, but then, Simeon was sending a message into their group relay informing them that he had managed to connect to the aethernet for a second, and thought that his message to Emilia about the state of things might have sent. Then, he was walking and Baylor and Halen were trailing after them.

If they had a better relationship, Baylor thought Halen might have asked what had happened. Fortunately, they didn’t, so he kept quiet. Unfortunately, his brothers had no such qualms, and their relay was filled with jokes about his newfound fear of Simeon for a good while.