[Can’t Opt Out]

Rayleen wouldn’t tell them how she had learned to use her abilities or whether she had received any advice or even used anyone as inspiration in her learning journey and it was the most annoying thing that had happened to Emilia in a long time.

The woman was just so quiet, refusing to speak unless it was under her own terms, and yeah, sure, consent was important, blah, blah, blah, but also! Emilia still wasn’t convinced they hadn’t effectively been kidnapped by the woman, and she should be giving them at least a little bit of information in order to keep them compliant, right? Seriously, how hard was it to say, “No, I’ve really focused on never learning how to learn from anyone else,” or, “Well, I’m sure that without intention, I must have internalized some of what I saw Fräthk’s other captives doing and heard them saying and was inspired by that,” or even, “Yes, I did listen in on the various lessons and advice of people, but never had a formal teacher.”

All it took was one sentence, and at least she would know something, but no~ Rayleen was too good to even cure her curiosity! Instead, as they trudged down and across empty levels, lined with conference rooms and bedrooms that didn’t seem to be occupied but had a distinctly terrible feeling and a phantom scent of sex and fear, the woman was quiet.

Down they continued, silent in their rushing… for a bit, anyways.

Eventually, both Clemence and Jerrial began to regale her with their own stories of learning—Clemence telling tales of her days learning at a proper school, while Jerrial focused on how he had learned what little he knew of using his own abilities. Carefully, he seemed to skirt around his own schooling, but the way Vern tensed whenever Clemence told stories of her schooling told Emilia that it might simply be that the men had originally gone to school together, before Jerrial had been kidnapped. Perhaps now it was just a bitter memory—a reminder of what should have been, and yet now could never be.

Still, Emilia had to wonder how much schooling the men had done—as well as whether Vern had continued in his own schooling after Jerrial was taken, or if he had hit the streets, searching for her friend and love. It was all sad, but perhaps there was a way to set them back onto the course they had been struck off of. Having no idea what either man wanted to do after they got out of the city, at the very least—she still thought they would be idiots to linger in Lüshan unless they somehow managed to kill Fräthk, the place likely no longer safe for Jerrial in particular—it wasn’t like she could make plans as to where to take them or what to do with them.

Well… it was probably more than she shouldn’t start making plans for them—inside the safety of her head, she could make all the plans she wanted, even if nothing may ever come of them. So, during another moment of silence, everyone contemplating the horror of just how much hands-on training Clemence was already receiving, despite her age—seriously, how was it that at sixteen she had already had her hands inside someone’s stomach cavity, feeling along intestines for blockages?—Emilia let little plans settle through her mind.

Jerrial and Vern, safe in Baalphoria and using the Virtuosi System to fill in their education until they could decide to either go to school somewhere in the Free Colonies that would be more accepting of them, or in Baalphoria—although, as that would require they install a Censor, it probably wasn’t the best option. The better option might be that they go to Seer’ik’tine, where there were enough foreigners and children of diplomats roaming about that few people ever looked at anyone who wasn’t Seerish twice.

There were also a few international schools, which she had occasionally attended while visiting with her father, in the city-state. They were split between offering learning spaces and teachers for those who generally attended school in their home nations, but would be in Seer’ik’tine long enough that they needed to have a place to go and learn and get help when needed, and actual schools for those foreign children who lived in the nation long-term. Emilia had attended them in both capacities, keeping up with her classmates when she managed to talk her father into taking her with him while school was in session, as well as voluntarily taking courses when she’d travelled with him while school was out.

Really… there was a chance that she and many of her friends were a little too into their educations, none of them ever really taking a break from learning. There was a small chance this was why she was so annoyed with Rayleen for not sharing her own methods more honestly—after all, for all she knew, the woman had some secret learning technique buried inside her mind and she was refusing to share it and—

“What was that?” Emilia asked, the privacy bubble she had pulled around them tightening, catching the vibrations of their voice and their steps and refusing to let even the smallest whisper of their presence escape.

Everyone was quiet for a long moment, Emilia’s Censor opening {{Blissful Silence}} so she could look back on what it had recorded. Unfortunately, as she was holding so many skills prepped for use, the function wasn’t able to run at full capacity—and really, Emilia couldn’t imagine how this would be going without that upgrade, and now, despite the annoyance of upgrading, she was thinking of contacting the Ridge Rind, asking if they had any further upgrades she could have installed, or if there was anything she could contribute to hardware research. As a result of everything running, Emilia couldn’t exactly trust that the lack of it recording any odd sounds was accurate—after all, she’d pushed it towards cataloguing the things she wasn’t actively seeing, like the world behind them, while leaving the things she could hear or smell or feel to only be catalogued if her Censor wasn’t being taxed.

It was, needless to say, extremely taxed at the moment, the burn of it a constant ache in her skull at this point. It had yet to reach the point of being awful, but it was adding up, and out of all the reasons she wanted her friends there, this was perhaps the most pressing: with more people, they could split the load of keeping the group safe between them. There were a number of them who had low enough D-Levels that they could sustain these sorts of solo missions, but it certainly wasn’t anything pleasant.

“I don’t hear anything,” Jerrial finally said, his hand brushing over her lower back and urging her to keep moving. The man still hadn’t revealed what it was that he wanted from this place, but as they went down floor after floor, the tension within him built higher and higher. Honestly, Emilia was surprised he’d allowed them to pause for even this long.

Tentatively, she took another step down their current stairwell, another. Pushing {{Blissful Silence}} into focusing on any sounds she heard for a bit, Emilia contented herself to sending off various messages to Halen and Vrin, complaining to both about how she needed a better Censor… or to simply figure out a way to run functions and skills with less resources. Her relay with Halen remained inactive, his name greyed out to indicate he was offaether and would be back soon, the last message she had received from him the one that had come through when he had momentarily reconnected to the aethernet. It was not a helpful message—hence why Simeon had apparently been left to try reconnecting in the same spot, trying to send her a proper update on their situation.

What Halen’s last message said? Basically that Levi was an idiot, but that something told him he was being an idiot for a good reason. Emilia had no idea what Levi had done—although she could read between the lines of Simeon’s message to glean that he hadn’t been completely honest in his description of everything as more or less fine—but it was interesting that Halen of all people seemed to think Levi was justified in whatever it was, especially since the last time she’d heard about Levi’s antics, it had involved a video of him pouting in Darrian’s lap as he received medical care. It was an adorable video, but perfectly illustrated the problem many people had with Levi: he was too unaware of himself and the situation half the time.

Emilia, of course, knew that her friend was playing up how empty-headed he was, as did Halen—Levi had been forced to confess to her that Halen also knew about his trips to Dion and that he sometimes had Halen create skills and functions for him. Still… Emilia didn’t know what to make of any of it anymore, honestly. For so long, her feelings for Halen had skewed in one direction: towards animosity. It had lessened over the last few years into something that toed the line between cruel and playful, but it had always been Halen on one side and her and her friends on the other. It didn’t take more than a few seconds of analyzing all they had done together since meeting to know it wasn’t such a clear-cut line as her brain had convinced her it was, however.

It was strange, how easy it had been to ignore that ambiguity until yesterday, how easy it was to accept that her understanding of what existed between them was wrong—and yet, at the same time, somehow right.

The two of them had been meant to be enemies, their being allies in things between meeting and now obscured by not generally talking about those moments of cooperation. Now, they were meant to be… something else. Emilia didn’t know what, but as she glanced over the messages she’d sent Halen throughout the day, more and more adding up since his last, chance message… Well, Emilia didn’t know what to think about it, other than to think it was easy, what had popped up between them like a flower springing free of the snow as winter drew to a close.

Unstoppable, even under the weight of all that snow and icy cold.

Other words slid through her mind, insane and clearly induced by all the stress of the day—or maybe there was some sort of gas down here, poisoning them, although her Censor told her there wasn’t—but Emilia pushed them aside, instead pulling up Vrin’s message to glare at it. Apparently he was in the same super important meeting as her father, so she’d gotten an automated message back, telling her he’d get back to her soon. Strange. While her father and Vrin occasionally crossed over in their jobs—Vrin was one of the premier skill designers who didn’t work for the Ridge Rind and often contracted for the government, after all—it was rare for them to end up in the same meeting. Usually, it was more that they’d cross paths at conferences or in the offices of people who had to interface with both of them; even that wasn’t often, Vrin avoiding such things with the vehemence that had left him pretending to be a random security officer at the conference where she had first met him.

“Have you not been able to get through to daddy?” Emilia asked in her relay with Loren, who had been assigned to go try and talk to him, so they could find out how Cameron had been assigned to watch her. Oddly, Loren was also offaether, due to some insane security within the building the meeting was taking place within, so she also received an automated message back from him. Annoying.

It had been several hours since Malcolm had first realized they were in Lüshan and Loren had been sent off to speak with her father. Since then, she hadn’t heard much from anyone besides the clones, who were still attempting to wrangle Olivier’s runaway students back to the embassy. Even they had been relatively silent; instead, it had mostly been Norrayn and Raalian letting her know what was happening, while Nivel had simply told her that he and Candence were struggling to get back to the embassy, due to the Drinarna upping their patrols as it became clear that something was happening with the city’s criminals. Even when it came to all that, she was getting more information from Coral and Mikhail’s end, rather than the clones, and if it weren’t for their contacts still showing up as active and alive on her Censor, she might have assumed something bad had happened to the few clones who were in the city.

As it was, however, something felt off. While she knew that she was also being quiet as she moved through the city, only sending the barest of updates to anyone…

No, something was clearly off about the whole situation, and her only thought of what was happening was a mirror of her own situation: just as she was avoiding contacting anyone because she was hiding the reality of her friends trying to sneak into Falmíer from The Black Knot and Baalphorian government, the clones and Malcolm were hiding something from her. Rather than have to lie to her, they were instead cutting back on communicating with her at all.

Yeah… that wasn’t concerning at all. Realistically, it was probably time for her to fess up and hope they were honest with her in return. Had she been thinking this for a while and avoiding actually doing it? Yes, but it really was time to tell Malcolm and Loren what was happening, if only so she could get some honesty from them in return.

Unfortunately, just as she was opening up her relays, debating whether to confess their sins in the locked relay or normal ones—just to Malcolm to start—the sound returned, and this time, everyone heard it.