[Can’t Opt Out]

“Which side would you like to take?”

Emilia’s eyes slid away from the piece of art she’d been glaring at, trying to determine what in all the fibres of the aether it was supposed to be depicting—her bet was on in being an… artistic rendering of a vol, although there were none this far south, and yet, while travel north of Dion was practically unheard of for Lüshanians, the style of the art was definitely Lüshanian—to glare at Rayleen. “What do you mean, ‘which side?’”

They’d finally reached what Clemence had called the bottom floor, but not a few minutes ago, only for Rayleen to fall silent and their trek to halt. As the woman hadn’t led them wrong yet, they’d all been inclined to wait for her—at least for a little bit—to tell them where to go next. Jerrial and Vern had taken to digging through the boxes of the floor, which, much like those found on the few floors above them, were filled with contraband. While no one had said as much, it didn’t take a genius to realize these were the decoy floors, in case a raid occurred. There were things of value on this floor, certainly. Lots of illegal stuff, from drugs and weapons to yanswt material. It was in no way as valuable as the people hidden beneath their feet.

So, this was the bottom floor of the building, and yet not. Another stairwell was hidden somewhere… or not?

“There are two stairwells, one on each side of the building,” Rayleen explained, which, sure, Emilia had already known that.

Their trek down had involved similar stairwells, each going down a floor—which, from what Emilia could tell, were oddly far apart, seemingly spanning two, perhaps even three, floors, rather than one—before being forced to walk through the level to get to the next set of stairs. Thus, they had spent the last little bit weaving their way through the levels, an annoyingly time-consuming affair, especially given the floors were stuffed full, making microsparking potentially treacherous.

The last thing Emilia needed was to get this close to retrieving Olivier, only to accidentally injure herself by microsparking into impaling herself on something.

No weapons through her stomach for her! Or potentially worse, ending up with drugs in baggies inside her. Fuck would that be terrible. Emilia knew her friends had, uh… more or less kidnapped Doctor Vickers after he happened across Coral and BJ raiding his clinic, but she didn’t think even he would be able to help if she accidentally ended up with a baggie in her bladder or something. No, that was the sort of shit that would require her to be cut open, and no one had time for that.

Plus, if that happened, she’d usurp Levi in having attained the stupidest injury of their friends, and that was an absolutely unacceptable outcome.

So, no microsparking through the floors. Just moving through them like normal people with rushing feet and aching hearts, and why weren’t they moving yet?

“These floors are different,” Jerrial explained, his eyes shifting between two seemingly benign spots in the room. “There are two stairwells going down to different floors. It’s another method of obfuscation. If the Drini come here and find one of the hidden stairwells, they’ll skip over half the floors.”

“That’s why the floors are so far apart up here?” Emilia guessed, reaching her awareness above them and finding nothing but stone and dirt and other building materials. There definitely wasn’t a secret floor above them, only the floor they’d walked through above that space—a space which, yes, was definitely big enough to house another floor or two but wasn’t. “So… we have to choose a side, and miss half the floors?”

“There are several points with secret passages to the alternating floors,” Rayleen said, her eyes staring blankly forward. “They are often difficult to get to.”

“Inside people’s personal rooms and such. While the people on the higher floors are more trusted by Fräthk, they got there through betraying and using other captives, so they don’t trust one another much—not that many are probably around with everything happening in the city,” Jerrial told her—as well as Vern, who clearly had no idea of any of this either. Possibly, Clemence hadn’t known either, their soft getting to know one another so they can be friends conversations as they moved revealing that she had long been on the outs with Fräthk—on the outs enough that the girl didn’t even refer to them as a parent.

Instead, it was always just Fräthk, or occasionally, the organization, which Emilia had eventually come to realize referred to both Fräthk’s specific branch of the criminal organization they belonged to, as well as the organization as a whole. Odd, for there to be no differentiation in her words, although, perhaps it was simply the result of the girl’s distance from the organization, leading her to not really seeing them as different entities?

Emilia had no idea, but it was something to keep in mind—this question of whether viewing them as the same thing were limited to Clemence, or if others felt the same way. If she had a moment with Jerrial, she’d ask. As it was, she didn’t want Clemence to feel as though her perspective and beliefs about the organization her family was part of were being questioned—who knew if she would take offence, the way so many teenagers seemed to, when their knowledge of the world was claimed to be wrong. Worse, it could sadden the girl, who, despite her black knot, clearly felt something about her not being welcome within Fräthk’s part of the organization—possibly the organization as a whole.

Again, it had been a little unclear, especially as the teenager had constantly been slipping slang into their conversation. Emilia might have been speaking Lüshanian and a handful of other languages since she was small, but some of the slang being thrown her way was just… what even was it!?

It felt like a reversal of her own days as a teenager and young adult, but not nearly as bad—after all, she and her friends had signs and Baalphorian slang and slang from the various Free Colonies she visited to torture the adults of their lives with. This was nothing, and after hearing a word a few times, Emilia was more or less able to grasp the meaning, if not the origin, of whatever words Clemence was using. Still, it did mean some things were being lost in translation.

At the very least, she was doing better than the constantly confused Jerrial and Vern, the latter having warmed up to the teenager a bit, after she’d agreed to Emilia’s condition to coming with them: she couldn’t attack any of their allies without a reason that Emilia would consider reasonable—and wasn’t it interesting that the girl seemingly had no concept of the fact that many black knots based their own mortality on that of their friends and loved ones.

Some part of their trek down had also been consumed with discussion of that: what sort of situations Emilia would consider attacking allies acceptable. The reactions to her responses had been mixed: Clemence had been disappointed that there were so few situations where killing allies outright was acceptable; Vern had been horrified that she thought it acceptable to knock people out if they were even giving vibes that they might be betraying them; Jerrial had told her he mostly agreed with her opinions, which led back to Vern being horrified with him as well.

Rayleen, for all Emilia could tell, hadn’t been listening to the conversation.

“What happened to you knowing exactly which way we should go?” Emilia couldn’t help but ask, levelling an unimpressed look at Rayleen. Had she so far been successful in leading them where they needed to go? Sure. Aside from running into Clemence—something Rayleen had refused to discuss having missed or not informed them about—their travels had been easy and without issue. Emilia still didn’t trust the woman—certainly, she hadn’t missed the way Clemence’s eyes had continuously slid to the woman when she’d been explaining her lack of relationship with the organization or Fräthk. The teenager hadn’t said as much, but Emilia could tell Rayleen had likely contributed to her being on the outs. It also didn’t escape her notice how Clemence was constantly putting herself between Emilia and Rayleen, and as much as the teenager was an unpredictable danger herself, Emilia trusted her more than Rayleen.

All of this may have said a lot about her personality, but Emilia would examine that later… probably whenever someone who wasn’t Simeon managed to get messages through to her. Fuck if she wasn’t grateful to have received anything from her friends. The message from Simeon had been brief, containing the barest of details, but it had still been enough to bring her to tears. Then, Clemence had been there, tucking herself under Emilia’s chin and just squeezing her—giving her that selfless hug she had needed since her breakdown in the bathroom. Jerrial and Vern had given her a hug, back in the alley, when she’d first noticed her friends were missing.

It hadn’t been the same.

There was just something about hugs from black knots, she thought. They were obsessive in their love, and for the most part, people tended to focus on how black knots could take and take and take from the people they loved until they were able to consume every aspect of their being—every molecule of their existence. There was the other part, as well—the part people rarely talked about. It was the giving part. To be obsessed with something was to both take everything you could from it, and give all you could of yourself to it in return. Sometimes, this was still fucked up—like, when it came to Lux and ‘ariah, Lux had wanted nothing of what ‘ariah demanded she take from him, and wanted to give up nothing of what she was to him.

‘ariah’s behaviour, Emilia knew, was an outlier. Instead, most black knots would give up even their own desire to consume for those they loved… at least, those of the Laprise-Baxter-Hyrat families would. Emilia would have to get to know this teenager better before deciding if black knots from other families, as well as new-gen ones, would hold up to the high standard of her friends.

Still, as the teenager had just stood there with her, letting Emilia cry softly into her hair, it had felt just as safe and comforting as it did with… well, not with any of the boys she loved and trusted with her life or Samina, or even their other, older families members—the ones she trusted, even if she knew they would leave her and her friends to die, if they thought it necessary.

Instead, she thought it felt like a hug from a clone she didn’t know well—this tiny spark of potential to become friends. It wasn’t a hug with expectation of anything more. It was safety and comfort, and yet, Emilia had known that Clemence was getting virtually nothing from it, this odd feeling circling the hug that left the teenager just a statue, giving but not taking.

It was a strange feeling—one Emilia didn’t think she could explain well. Darrian would get it. Coral would perhaps be able to confirm her thoughts with an analysis of Clemence’s feelings. It didn’t really matter if anyone else ever got it. It was a good hug, but inherently different from one given by someone without a black knot.

Emilia hugged Clemence to her again now, her eyes shifting between the two spots Jerrial had been glancing towards while they stood there because Rayleen was looking at her in expectation. The woman didn’t need to say it—although, it would certainly have been less annoying if she had—for Emilia to know that, for whatever reason, Rayleen couldn’t see which path they should take. So, instead, she was leaving it up to Emilia.

What a bitch, putting the decision on her the moment her abilities abandoned her—putting a decision that could lead them to their destruction onto her. Then again, maybe it was something more insidious than that—not for her, but for Rayleen.

It was just as possible that, without her abilities tugging her along, the woman had no ability to decide for herself. What a sad life that would be, to be so wrapped up in your abilities that you couldn’t function without them. If that was the case, whoever had trained the woman had failed her—after all, one of the first lessons the Blood Rain General taught any student was to never rely on a single ability, lest they lose it, their ability to function vanishing alongside it.

“Who trained you to use your abilities?” Emilia asked, trying to find even the smallest bit of something telling her which stairwell to take. There was… nothing. No tug. No nothing. What was she even looking for? She had no idea, and fuck.

“No one,” Rayleen replied, heading towards the wall Emilia hadn’t realized she had begun pointing to. Placing a hand on the wall, the golden one began tugging the secret entrance open.