[Can’t Opt Out]

“What was that?” Emilia asked, directing her question at Rayleen, the woman’s head tilted in the direction the sound seemed to have come from.

Without thought, Emilia’s Censor reached out towards the woman, searching for any sign that she was using some ability or another. When it came to the Dyads she knew—Simeon, Coral, and her brother were the three she was most familiar with, but she had met others over her years of designing functions for people who struggled with getting on in the world—she knew that even when their abilities were running at full capacity, the effect they had on the aether was quite limited. Mostly, she assumed it was because forms of Dyadism that included Excess Connection Categories were more common, as were Excess Control and Balance Categories, all of which contributed to the ease and smoothness with which a person could affect the aether.

As a result, it didn’t surprise her much when she felt no more than the smallest of vibrations from Rayleen. If her own understanding of the aether weren’t so high—and that wasn’t even considering her own Perfect Categories—Emilia would have assumed the vibrations were simply the result of life itself. Automatically, her mind slipped back to the scary man she’d met hours earlier and his ability to seemingly just slip into the aether, vanishing so profoundly even from her usual ability to feel people when she was paying attention.

The smallest of frowns pulled over Rayleen’s face, her feet beginning to move again. “It is either nothing for you to worry about, or the end of your journey.”

Beside her, Jerrial tensed, all them renewing their downward trek as Emilia demanded Rayleen explain herself, mostly expecting the woman to once again fall silent and refuse to explain herself—which, rude, when she had just said something so cryptic that it could have meant whatever they're heard either wouldn’t bother them or might kill them.

So, imagine her surprise when the woman actually explained herself! Clearly, the world must be coming to an end!

“I told you I am not concerned with helping Jerrial, only you,” the woman began, Jerrial immediately shushing Vern in his automatic move to start arguing with her again.

“That’s cold,” Clemence said, leaning in to whisper in Emilia’s ear. “Kinda cool for you, I guess? That you have someone like her on your side, but also…” The teenager peeked forward, giving Jerrial a sympathetic look, before peering back up at Emilia, who had to fight down the urge to scold the girl for not looking at the stairs—the last thing they needed was someone to go tumbling down them, but also, it wasn’t her job to be the girl’s parent! Clemence looked like she was about to say something, but Rayleen’s soft, monotone voice cut her off.

“The man you seek escaped with a number of Fräthk’s little bugs. They were previously on this set of stairs as well, but they changed over to the other set just now. I believe we heard the sound of them scuffling through the passage between the alternating levels.”

“What!?” Emilia squawked, wondering if she’d be able to activate {Hidey Hole} and just burst through the walls to find them—maybe not, if Olivier had other people who had fuck-knew-what sorts of irregular deviations with him. “So, we just have to go find the passage and catch up with them!? What are we waiting for? Let’s go! Wait— What’s that look for? Oh… fuck…” Emilia frowned over at Jerrial, now wearing a grimace. “What you wanted to get… we haven’t gotten to it yet.”

The man shook his head, his gaze fixed downwards. “It is closer to the level your Olivier was likely being held on, far below us.”

“Yes,” Rayleen agreed, her gaze trained in the direction she had vaguely motioned towards when explaining that Olivier and the people he was helping escape had switched levels. “Several people from the lower floors are with him. They appear to have noticed… me. I do not know if they have noticed you, as they appear to have pulled in their abilities in order to avoid my detection.” A soft note of amusement floated through the woman’s voice. Considering how easily she seemed to have noticed them, clearly their attempts weren’t enough—actually it was possible that no one could escape the woman’s notice, although Emilia’s mind still shifted towards the scary man, wondering if he could slip by Rayleen without her notice.

“I suppose we will be parting, then,” Jerrial stated, a soft slice of ice in his voice.

Beside him, Vern looked unhappy, his eyes sliding towards her in not quite accusation, not quite not. They had come so far together, and Emilia knew she should be going after Olivier—making sure he was okay, and that whoever he had decided to help get out of here was okay and safe, not just as in not injured, but also safe for him to be around.

At the same time, these were people who had chosen to help her, and she had chosen to help in return. When she met up with Olivier again, did she really want to have to tell him that she had help finding him, but had then abandoned those people to search alone down here for whatever they wanted?

Did she really want to have to confess to him that she had prioritized him over her new friends? All while knowing that if their roles were reversed, she would be pissed at him for coming to her over helping someone else?

“You said they—the sound they made—are either nothing or the end of my journey?” Emilia muttered to Rayleen, already knowing that her answer wouldn’t matter.

She had already made up her mind that she would be going with Jerrial and Vern, helping them get whatever it was that Jerrial wanted. Somewhere along the line, she had decided to do that, of course. It was just that she had assumed they would either have already found Olivier and be dragging him along with them, or that he and what they wanted would be closer together, not requiring her to choose one mission or another.

“Yes—although, it may be more accurate to say this part of your journey will end. There will be yet more,” Rayleen agreed, confirming what Emilia had already suspected: she could choose to catch up with Olivier’s group, and therefore end this part of her journey—another actual answer from Rayleen to a clarifying question made it clear that there were too many variables for her to anticipate what sort of things would occur once any of them left the building—or she could leave them to escape and face whatever came without her while she helped Jerrial.

“I thought you weren’t going to be helping Jerrial?” Vern muttered, and yes, Emilia was having that same thought. If Rayleen wanted to help her alone, she could easily have lied and said that unless Emilia went after Olivier now, something terrible would befall him. That would have gotten her out of there faster—gotten at least a few of them all to safety faster.

“Is there just no danger far below us? Or at least no danger you can see?” she asked, wondering if it was simply that the woman couldn’t see what lay on either path, so had no opinion on what they do.

Rayleen, in typical Rayleen fashion, was quiet for a long time, only their steps keeping them company as they reached the next level, which opened to another floor that was in more disrepair than the previous. More stains marred the floor and walls, while everything smelled damp and lifeless—and, Emilia supposed, that this far underground it wasn’t surprising that the world would seem increasingly dead.

Most Lüshanian cities felt cold and lifeless compared to the world above ground. Many of them pumped chemicals into the air, trying to make everything that lived within its caverns healthier—trying to make all the plant life grow. It had limited success—as much as many of the continents plants could live without direct sunlight, few of them could thrive without it—but from her conversations with various Lüshanians, it seemed that after millennia of living within the subterranean cities, they had adapted through knots and small genetic changes to find the environment less constricting than those who didn’t grow up within the cities found them. Even as someone who had visited the nation a number of times over the years, Emilia wasn’t a fan of spending more than a few days within them. After more than a week, even she would start to feel a little crazy, the walls of the caverns seeming to press in on her. It wasn’t so much that she would refuse to stay in them longer than a week or anything, just enough that she was aware that her body and mind weren’t super happy with their environment.

The woman paused in front of a door, the scent of damaged aether so strong that Emilia didn’t even need a function or skill to detect it.

“Fuck,” she hissed, slapping a hand to her nose, as though it would help block the scent—it wouldn’t. Aether didn’t care about most physical barriers. Plus, while it tickled her olfactory senses, it wasn’t technically a scent; rather, it was her body computing what it felt into a sense her mind could more easily comprehend.

Rayleen’s eyes shot towards her, and fuck if they didn’t seem to be glowing from the inside as they assessed her. “Interesting,” the woman said, head tilting in that way of hers—in that way that made Emilia feel like every fibre of her being was being analyzed by a predator. Unlike Clemence—who had stepped fearlessly between her and Rayleen, as though to block her from view, despite being the shortest of them—who seemed to want to consume her when she looked at her like that, with Rayleen, Emilia felt that it was something else—something she couldn’t quite place, although there certainly seemed to be an air of possessiveness within the woman’s eyes.

Oddly… Emilia wouldn’t say it was a possessiveness born of Rayleen, despite the energy coming from her.

It was annoying, not really understanding what the woman wanted from her. Occasionally, she said something that implied she had seen bits of some future Emilia would be involved in—all that stuff about doing something with someone’s child, that stuff about her and the heir. None of it was stuff the woman would expand on, but it left a roiling anxiety inside her. It also left her suspecting that for all that Rayleen saw things that she claimed were inevitable, at the same time, she had little idea of what sort of person Emilia was, and that that was perhaps why she looked at her with those analyzing eyes so often: she was actually being given the chance to see what the person in some amount of these futures she saw was like.

Of course, Emilia didn’t know whether to believe anything the woman said—and seriously, for all she knew, Olivier might not even be on the other set of floors. When she’d been going down the stairs, she had tried to reach out with alternative communication methods, but assuming Olivier was conscious, whatever was stopping his Censor from reconnection to the aethernet was also keeping other communication methods from working. Part of her had wanted to reach out and try to find him with a recon skill, but Rayleen had already told her not to—apparently, the entire building had an aether-sensitive security system. While it wasn’t great, and generally didn’t notice anything was wrong until something went off right on top of it, if she reached out too much aether, searching the area, it might trigger the system. Then, the few people loyal to Fräthk lingering within rooms above them—people who had thankfully all been napping or relaxing and hadn’t noticed them slip by—would be notified of an issue and, well…

Emilia glared at the door that presumably held the passage that would take them to the other set of floors. Something had made her choose this set of floors, which would have led her to Olivier had they moved a little faster. They hadn’t, though. Instead, they’d been too slow—for good reason, as they hadn’t wanted to risk attracting unwanted attention—and missed them. They could catch up, but…

Beside her, Jerrial bounced gently on his toes, not looking at her. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t meet her gaze, Emilia could see his emotions written through his body—through the bounce and the tight press of his lips, through his tense posture and the hands stuffed into the pockets of his pants. Throughout their journey, he hadn’t put his hands into them once, preferring to keep them free so he could pull Vern back from his arguing with Rayleen, so he could press a hand to her back and urge her along. Just a floor ago, he had even caught Clemence’s hand, despite his vague fear of the girl, before she tripped.

Yeah, there was no way she could leave him to search out whatever was down here, not after all he had done for her. Plus, if they split up now, he might never be able to get out of this place—the building, the city, the nation itself.

Still, there was no way she would be going any lower without finding out just what, exactly, he was so intent on finding. Whether he had been purposefully avoiding telling her what he wanted, or if it just hadn’t occurred to him to tell her, it didn’t matter.

Emilia wasn’t letting any of them move another foot without answers. As much as she wasn’t going to leave Jerrial and Vern down there by themselves, she also wasn’t going to let them go deeper if whatever they were searching for was something stupid either.