[Can’t Opt Out]

“This was… oddly easy?” Izurial panted, the majority of his weight on Olivier, as they worked their way through what was apparently the last of the building’s levels before they could escape onto the street. After so much climbing, the poor man was struggling to catch his breath, despite them having been on level ground for several minutes.

The silverstrain’s sentiment wasn’t exactly something Olivier could argue with. Aside from the near run-in they with someone who had later been explained to be one of Fräthk’s most loyal people—someone who was more their friend than captive—nothing particularly interesting had happened. They had gone up, gathered a few people on those lowest levels, switched the set of levels they were going up and… that was about it. Olivier wasn’t complaining—it wasn’t like he had wanted to run into anyone or anything—but at the same time it seemed… wrong.

An itch lingered over him, urging him to not let his guard down until they were safe—not safely out of the building or safely to the embassy, but safe. Something told him it would be a while yet before they could even pretend they were safe.

“Yes,” he agreed, watching several members of their group disappear around a corner—now former members, he supposed.

Many members of their group were becoming anxious, their steps quickly leading them further and further away from those of them lingering at the back of the group. It wasn’t a surprise that several of those people were looking to quickly abandon them—and good riddance to a number of them, their energy bringing down the group—but a few of them…

Well, it was sometimes impossible to tell how people would react to gaining freedom—the number of young adults going into their gap decade with seemingly completely different personalities than they’d graduated with reflecting the odd effect freedom could have on people. Still, it was exceptionally awkward when the two women who had been primarily responsible for watching over the children tried to take off. It was one thing for the adults in their group to decide for themselves what was best for them—more power to them; even if it meant leaving the rest of them, they deserved to grasp their freedom with the autonomy they had otherwise been denied—but when they had attempted to take the children…

Well, things had gotten awkward, and in the end, the women had decided to leave the children with them—they didn’t want to lose the chance to get away, all because the rest of them had refused to let them take the children. Yes, the children had been left with them by the girl’s parents, but from what Olivier could tell, the children were often left with whoever was awake when her parents had to go on missions; hence, they all felt responsible for the children and refused to let the women take them. The children, at least, hadn’t seemed to care who they stayed with—well, the girl hadn’t. Xavier had become somewhat attached to, well, him, oddly enough.

Apparently the few times he had held the boy had made an impression on him?

Regardless, as they continued making their way through the maze of hallways that composed the final level of the building—no one knew it well enough to easily find their way out—their group was split into those who left and those who stayed. Olivier made sure to tell those who left that they could seek aid at the Baalphorian embassy. None of them seemed to believe him—and in the end, that might have been one of the biggest reasons so many of them were leaving: they didn’t believe they would be any safer in the group than on their own.

Instead, it seemed that those who left were part of two camps: those who were intending to either hide on the streets or attempt to leave the city on their own terms, and those who were planning to request Gëon allow them to join his group. The latter seemed the better option, in Olivier’s estimation. Even with the aid of the Baalphorian government, getting everyone out of Falmíer was likely to be difficult, if not impossible. The people might at least be able to find safety within the embassy’s walls—and to be honest, Olivier was mostly hoping that Emilia would be able to talk the clones into either hiding them there, or convince her father into negotiating something with the Lüshanian government.

He, of course, had said none of this to anyone, although whenever the topic of what they would do came up he insisted they start with the embassy, which he was sure would at least offer them short-term refuge. So, all of the people who left them were told to go there if they needed help, as well as to send the little girl’s parents there, if anyone ran into them.

“They are unhappy…” Porsq noted when the women who had been caring for the children vanished. “I… don’t really know why… I… I don’t like how much they were pushing for the children to go with them…”

“The children are powerful,” Cordk said, his voice a wheezing gasp that was even worse than Izurial’s. “You did the right thing, making them leave,” he told the boy, and what?

The preteen awkwardly scratched the back of his neck with his free hand, the other wrapped around the little girl’s—and had anyone ever actually used her name?

“They’re from a small ethnic group,” Cheska explained when he asked about her name. “I don’t know much about it, but they don’t really give anyone their names? Something about how true names have power, and that they should only be given to family members and those the person is closest with? That’s why we’ve all just been using ‘little heart’ to refer to her: we don’t know her name.” Leaning in, so the girl herself couldn’t hear them, Cheska admitted that she wasn’t even sure the child knew her own name. “There’s no privacy down there, you know? And her and her parents have been down there so long, they might have never been able to tell her, since there was always someone else around to listen.”

“Reminds me a bit of the Grey Sands,” Olivier noted, quickly explaining that they were a secretive culture, but one of the few things that was known about them was the power they placed in names. “Children are even able to choose their own names, once they’re old enough, as they are seen as the only ones who can actually know their true name.”

“That would be nice,” the teenager they had picked up on the second floor said. “I hate my name.”

“You could choose a new one,” Olivier suggested. The teenager had said little as they travelled, and to some extent, he was surprised they had even stuck around. When so many people had been leaving, however, they had never given the slightest inclination they were going to leave; instead, they had tucked themself close to the wall, as though to hide themself even more than their baggy clothes already did. Also, Olivier couldn’t disagree that their name was… not good, the teenager visibly cringing whenever someone called it.

“You think?” the teenager asked, blue eyes lighting up as they peered at Olivier from under their brownish-red hair—Olivier thought it might have been so brown only due to being so dirty, but it was rather hard to tell. Everyone, unfortunately, needed a long shower.

“Of course!” Izurial exclaimed, finally pushing himself off Olivier. He wobbled slightly—really, it was amazing he’d even managed to make it up all the stairs with so little help—but it seemed to just be a head rush, and a moment later, he was shaking it off and smiling at the teenager. “Pick whatever you like. You won’t have to go back to your parents, so don’t worry about it.”

“She ran off, after telling her parents that she didn’t like being a boy,” Porsq tried to whisper to him, although his voice was far too loud. “They didn’t like that, so she left. That’s part of why she’s been trying to be better behaved for Fräthk as well, I think? To get more girly things?” The preteen shrugged, muttering something about how, while he was a boy and liked being a boy, he also liked pretty things and didn’t really get it.

Giving Porsq a cursory piece of advice—that it was a complicated subject, and he didn’t need to understand it, just accept what the teenager, who was quietly discussing name options with Izurial, was just as valid as his own views on his identity—Olivier turned the conversation back to where they had started: that Porsq had used his abilities to make the women go away.

The preteen shrugged again, his gaze trained down at his feet, scuffing bare over the floor. While they’d managed to find clothes for most of them, shoes had been more difficult. A few of them, like Cravena and Renton, were taken out of missions often enough that they had shoes tucked away on one of the higher levels. Some of the other members had been able to find shoes that fit them in the same place, but due to a combination of rarely being allowed out of the building and not wanting to make running away easier when they were taken out, they had no shoes specific to them.

For Porsq and the children, there had been nothing close to their side. For the moment, it was just a nuisance. Once they were outside, however… Well, the children could be carried—that was part of why they were making both walk now, so the few of them who could carry them would be more rested. Porsq, however…

Really, Olivier needed this oil off his neck, so he could reconnect to the aethernet. Axelle had made sure he would have access to the blackaether while travelling, in case he needed to find a skill or function. Somewhere on an AetherealBoard, he was sure he could find some design to create rudimentary footwear from the aether—that sort of thing generally wasn’t available on the normal aethernet, as companies were always pushing to have the government force anything that could affect their profits off MemoryBoards for this reason or that. It didn’t matter if there was no copyright being violated—the government was beholden enough to corporations that they allowed this or that law to be stretched far past what was reasonable to force the content down. It would eventually come back up, if whoever had been forced to take it down bothered pushing back. As expensive as it was, very few pushed; instead, it was just the sort of content that was moved to the blackaether.

One day, Olivier was sure, the blackaether wouldn’t be quite as scary a place as people seemed to believe it was. One day, it would be the place Baalphorians went to escape government overreach. Unfortunately, that day was likely still a ways off.

“They just… felt wrong,” Porsq slowly explained as they moved. “Not quite like they were going to betray us, but like it was on the tip of their mind? Like, if they were pushed, they would?”

Cordk—still being helped along by Renton—once again repeated his statement that the children were powerful. “Those women as well, but less than the children.” His gaze turning up to Renton, the old man explained that there was a reason Fräthk preferred children: they were easier to manipulate. “You are attached to me, and so it makes you easier to control. Fräthk has gotten even better at manipulating people since you came, and now knows how to make children not just afraid to lose a loved one, but to be loyal. Those women were more valuable and useful together, but they also only cared for one another. It was difficult for Fräthk to use one as leverage against the other, making them do this or that, as they had to be together to be useful.”

“You’re saying those women wanted the children to go with them in case they needed to negotiate their freedom?” Olivier guessed, jaw tightening at the cruelty of that—at the reality that the little girl’s parents had left the children in their care, and they had apparently been prepared to hand them back to Fräthk, as long as they were allowed to retain their freedom.

Softly, Porsq told them that what he thought as well: the women hadn’t thought the children would be better off going with them; rather, the women had thought they would be better off taking the children. So, he had pushed at their minds a bit, encouraging them to give up and leave, rather than either stay or push the issue further.

The three of them fell silent, the little girl looking between them in a mixture of concern and confusion while Xavier, happy snuggled into Olivier’s chest, snuggled a bit deeper into his warmth. In the background, the others were discussing how they were going to get out of the building—apparently there was a security system, but it wasn’t exactly the most well-designed and likely wouldn’t go off unless something big happened, or the outermost door was forced open.

“Wait…” Olivier said, cutting through the conversation. “There’s a security system attached to the door? Wouldn’t the others have needed to go through the front door to get out?”

On cue, an alarm began to blare.