[Can’t Opt Out]

Malcolm was going to kill them all.

Generally, despite his black knot, he wasn’t a violent man. There had been a few times over the last twenty-five years when he had hurt someone—killed them, even, each slice across the skin that contained their rancid, rotting soul a balm to his own cold heart. Usually, such violent delight involved Emilia. It was an unfortunate reality that nearly all silverstrains attracted attention from creeps. The fact that the girl almost willingly put herself into situations where she would attract such attention, all so The Black Knot could mark more and more disgusting scum for disposal, likely resulted in her receiving more such attention than any other Penns-based silverstrain would generally receive—few people were stupid enough to prey on anyone when a Black Knot agent could wander around a corner at any moment. None of them were under any illusions that silverstrains in other areas of the nation didn’t have it worse, unfortunately.

Still, Emilia leaving herself to be creeped on had led the clones to breaking up a number of rings of like-minded people. They were all gone now, and Malcolm was sure that even were he capable of regretting such things, he wouldn’t have.

How could anyone regret working to keep children in particular safe?

This left him in something of an odd position, currently. In his mind, Emilia and his brothers—although who the fuck knew where Andre was in this disaster of a situation—and all their stupid fucking friends, were still children. Malcolm was tempted to think that, based on the lack of brain cells that had been used in devising this plan of theirs, they either still were children, their brains not fully formed, or all their years of pranking one another had damaged said brains.

“So fucking stupid,” he muttered, stomping through the slidelines station because this was now an emergency and for some aether burning reason the building that Miles was stuck in for his seemingly unending meeting was offaether.

Loren had occasionally been popping out of the building, over the last few hours, to tell him that the meeting was still going and showing no sign of letting up. The clone would ask if there were any updates on the situation in Falmíer, and while they had been getting a few rumblings from sources outside the city of something setting the Drinarna on alert, Malcolm had stupidly believed that Emilia and all his fucking clones in the city would have let him know if something was amiss.

He was a fucking idiot. Having also partaken in Emilia and Halen’s prank war on and off over the years, he was wondering if he also had brain damage.

Seriously? When had he become so stupid as to not grow suspicious when Emilia stopped babbling to him? It had been hours since he’d heard from her, and yes, he had mostly assumed she was just continuing to look for Olivier de la Rue and had nothing to report. As he had nothing to report in return, they hadn’t needed to contact one another. His childhood friend sometimes babbled in their relay, but given he was working to find out more information about the situation in Falmíer—something of which there was, annoyingly, almost no information about—why would she risk bothering him? She had tons of friends to babble to, so obviously, she would babble and work through her search plans with one of them.

It was in this last point that Malcolm realized he was an even bigger idiot because he knew these bratty fucking children. Just his relatives alone, let alone all her other insane friends, were the sort to realize Emilia was in need and go try to find her. The fact that he hadn’t realized this—although, to be fair, he was certain no one else, such as Loren or his mothers, had thought of this reality either—just added to the feelings bubbling inside him.

“It isn’t your fault,” Finn signed one-handed, his other hand clasped in Malcolm’s as he angrily slid them through the slidelines station, brutally pushing people out of their way as they went—okay, not brutally, as he didn’t want to hurt anyone, but there was definitely a little extra pop in his pushing aside. Finn could slide on his own, just as all clones could. Malcolm thought the clone was just trying to slow him down—calm him through a little physical affection.

Finn wasn’t good with physical affection, but he could tolerate it for the right reasons. Apparently, him being on a tear fell into the category of right reason, and for that alone, Malcolm was allowing his friend to give him that little bit of physical support.

Friend—was that even what they were at this point? Two friends who spent virtually all their time together? Even when they’d been younger, they had rarely spent much time apart. Now that they were both working for The Black Knot, barely more than a handful of hours ever went by before they were once again in each other’s company.

The rare time they were apart was when they managed to get back to their own beds to sleep. Malcolm could think of four times in the last month that they’d managed that, the pair of them usually falling asleep on the couch in his office instead, their feet tangled together while their heads each rested on one end. Even showering had become something they did together, the cleaning nature of the activity allowing Finn to touch and touch and touch him all he wanted—and Malcolm was almost positive that, were his friend able to get over his issues with germs, he would happily touch more. As it was, things never went further than washing, Finn making sure his own body was perfectly clean before working on Malcolm—he would never dare dirty Malcolm with his own grime—and then doing himself all over again, his mysophobia forcing him to wash off all remnants of Malcolm dirty suds with yet more suds.

Malcolm loved his friend in a way he couldn’t quite explain. It was highly unlikely they would ever be people who could have sex, he knew. Finn might never be able to have sex, messy as it was, while he himself revelled in the joys of messy sex. That was part of why he and Emilia had begun hooking up, the girl showing up at his door whenever she let man after man take her, mess slipping down her thighs the same way it had that first time when he had caught her, clumsy and giggling at the wrong door—he never had found out why she was trying to get into his house rather than her own. He could still remember the sticky wetness leaking out of her, the pair of them simultaneously realizing how much he liked that—liked how much of a messy disaster she sometimes let other men make of her.

At the same time, it wasn’t like he had much of a sexual appetite outside of those times when Emilia popped up, asking if he’d like to fuck her sloppy cunt then clean her up. The answer was always yes, but outside of those times… Well, it wasn’t like he went out searching for orgies or anything. Really, the only passing thoughts he generally had about sex were about whether Finn would enjoy cleaning Emilia up or not.

Emilia and Finn—those were the two people he needed in his life, and if Emilia suddenly decided she never wanted to have sex with him again? As long as she would keep being his friend, that would be fine, he thought. Occasionally, the biological need for release would come for him, and he would deal with it—they would, in the end, always be friends first. Everything else was an enjoyable extra.

If Finn decided to leave him, on the other hand? If the clone suddenly decided they couldn’t be friends?

No, then Malcolm would break, and as their slide and glide along dropped, Malcolm snapping a hook for riding the slidelines tandem into his friend’s Censor instead, he squeezed the man’s hand a little harder. Soft green eyes flicked up to his, Finn’s Censor letting him in without request because his friend never bothered revoking any sort of access from him.

Malcolm could always grab him, no matter where they were, and run, slide, microspark, drag them onto a slideline—it didn’t matter. Finn trusted him to never do anything that he didn’t want without a good reason.

“It feels like my fault,” he said when they stepped off the slideline.

They’d moved from the central district of Roasalia, where the main Black Knot offices were, to the district where many of the diplomatic buildings were located, including the one where Miles had found himself trapped in his meeting. There was no information available on why the meeting was being held offaether, nor why so much of the building was offaether, but with Loren inside the building and not likely to emerge for a little under half an hour, for his regular check-in—unless he had something to report, of course—Malcolm had been forced to come down himself.

They had needed information for hours, and it was bad enough before. With the information from Emilia about crime family drama, a slew of decades—possibly centuries—worth of Lüshanians with irregular deviations having been kidnapped, and all the stupid children—and several stupid adults who might have been hostages of some sort?—on their way to jumping down into the city?

Yeah, no. Now, he was going to force his way into the meeting if he had to. This was beyond anything that he knew how to deal with, even his mother’s second looking at him with wide eyes when he had explained the situation. The poor woman had then told him his mother was out and that, with how messy and public everything was bound to be getting, they would be needing Miles and his expertise as secretary general. Actually, it seemed the situation was already at least partially public and definitely messy, according to Olivier’s students, who, along with his traitorous clones—how dare they side with Emilia in not updating him on more of the situation!?—were finally answering his questions honestly now that Emilia had fessed up to him.

This was to say nothing of the fact that, aside from Taelor, none of the little shits who had gone to Falmíer were responding to his messages. Apparently, along with Halen—and how had he even become involved in all this?—Taelor was responsible for organizing the group. As a result, he had sent Malcolm a detailed report that he must have been putting together.

Little. Fucking. Shits.

They all knew this was a problem, and despite Finn—who as the one not responsible for their slide had been reading through the report and giving Malcolm the highlights—assuring him that the logic behind their decision to not tell The Black Knot they were heading to Falmíer was relatively sound, if a little grasping, Malcolm was not impressed.

His mood did not improve as he slid them the rest of the way to the building where the meeting was being held—and why did this specific building not have an actual name!?

“It does,” Finn told him mildly, his eyes closed as he looked through more of Taelor’s document. For all that it was late in arriving, it was impressively thorough, and Finn had suggested that several people—including the oddly there Halen and the potentially kidnapped Doctor Vickers—had been contributing to it. “It simply isn’t a name anyone uses.”

“Why not?” Malcolm asked, glaring at the imposing building that appeared before them as Finn mumbled something about not actually knowing why the name wasn’t used.

As Finn had said, there was a place that appeared to have once had a plaque of some sort. It was now empty, however, ivy of some sort growing over it, just as it did the majority of the building. It was an odd building, a near solid white that could only be ten or so floors tall, and yet giving the impression that it was a block of solid, imposing darkness—an impression that the building itself might grow fangs and gobble anyone within it up.

…

…

When was the last time he had slept for more than a few hours? His Censor very rudely informed him that the last time he’d gotten more than three hours of sleep in one go had been nearly a week ago. It attempted to schedule in naptime later because even after nearly fifteen years, Malcolm had never been able to figure out how to get it to stop calling any of his breaks nap time—something that was Emilia’s doing, obviously. It had been one of her early pranks against Halen, and as far as Malcolm knew, no one—not even Halen himself—had been able to remove the virus that changed all breaks into nap times. Halen had, however, reversed the virus onto Emilia, but whether by design or accident, it had the spread and spread and spread until everyone who came into contact with any infected Censor that day had the virus.

As it had stopped spreading after the school day ended, Malcolm was inclined to believe Halen had purposefully allowed it to spread, but only for a certain amount of time. As a result, something like 20% of their school, including a few teachers, had acquired the virus. At the time, early in their prank war as it had been, few people had realized Emilia and Halen were behind the virus. Eventually, more people had figured out it wasn’t just a random virus that had somehow found its way into their school. Possibly, neither of their wayward hackers could remove the virus—as far he knew, they both still had it as well—but regardless, the virus was benign and part of their school’s lore, so, no one had bothered pushing for a way to remove it.

Mostly, as they pushed their way into the building, Finn releasing his hand and rushing to the front desk to ask where Loren was—no point alerting anyone that it was Miles they were after, with or without permission—Malcolm was left wondering how in the world Halen had ended up on this disaster mission. Granted, the kid had almost as much of a knack for getting into trouble as Emilia, but still… something was strange.

Unfortunately, no one would tell him why Halen was with them! Not any of the triplets nor Emilia nor even his own brother! Halen himself was quiet as well, only a rustle of embarrassment through their relay telling Malcolm the boy hadn’t blocked him—the last time Malcolm had messaged Halen it had been to yell at him, so he could have easily found himself blocked.

It was all highly annoying, but as they popped out the elevator onto the floor the meeting was taking place on, that would have to wait.

They had a meeting to crash.