[Can’t Opt Out]

✮ ✮ ✮ Halen ✮ ✮ ✮

“Five… four… three… two… o—”

“SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!” I yelled, startling the few people who had been tuning out mine and Baylor’s ongoing… disagreement. Was disagreement the way to put it? Possibly. Possibly not. Argument seemed a bit too strong—especially as I hadn’t done anything to him! If anything! This was bullying, and I should just push the clone over the edge of the ledge the cave system had led us to.

Baylor had been counting down from seven-hundred after informing everyone that when he got to zero, he would be jumping and leaving everyone not confident in their ability to stick the landing behind. Hence, pushing him overboard probably wouldn’t kill him. If he jumped and died, Emilia would be sad, but she wouldn’t be able to blame anyone but the idiot himself—Baylor was almost as bad as Levi when it came to refusing to listen to reason. On the other hand, if I gave in and pushed the little shit into the abyss of the city below and he was injured, Emilia would blame me… probably. If the girl hadn’t set her relays to emergency messages only, I might have messaged her to ask if Baylor being an annoying little shit would get me some leeway, as it was…

“Fuck!” I spit out, twisting to look at Simeon, finding him glaring in Baylor’s general direction, his hands moving in a flurry of reprimand that effectively amount to telling him to start counting again in his head.

Baylor grumbled, shooting glares between myself, Simeon, and his brothers—who were attempting to teach Simeon and me how to use their recon skill, so we could continue trying to find another way down once the three of them led the drop group—but stomped off to count silently in a corner all the same. Likely, he knew there would be no arguing with the reality that, for one, his counting had been disruptive to my learning—although, now that I had thought or it, I supposed I could make like Simeon and mute out Baylor’s voice, although… was the function specific enough to pick up on the differences in the triplets’ voices? Were there differences in their voices? If there were, wouldn’t that be potentially dangerous to them, if someone were to track their distinct voices? They were generally pretty good at matching their inflections, when they wanted and—

No! Bad brain! Focus!

We are learning to use recon skills in mere minutes; therefore, focusing is paramount! Also, what did it even matter if I could pull out their specific voices while Valor and Taelor were signing their instructions to us???

The other reason Baylor was likely cooperating with our learning was that the pair of us were actually learning rather quickly—not surprising, as both Simeon and I were already skilled with monitoring the aether. Simeon was better, but it was clear that even just learning to use the skill was taking a toll on his brain.

The problem with varieties of Dyadism that included Excess Connection Levels was that their brains already brought in too much information. That was why Simeon’s primary function limited what his active mind took in, relegating his Censor to monitoring as much of his environment as it could, while filtering it away from his active awareness. The problem with recon skills was they leveraged the user’s Connection, Load, and Expansion Levels to create maps of information about the area. The recon skill that the clones used was designed for the clones. As a result, it used as much of each Category as was available.

For the average person, this wouldn’t be much of an issue.

If one of their Categories wasn’t large enough, the skill wouldn’t return as much information. Connection Level on the lower side? Less information would return—bits about the exact dimensions of a room might be a little off, guesses of what materials objects were made of less certain, etc, etc. Low Load Levels? The skill would fail sooner, resulting in less being mapped, while the maximum size—were their Load Levels sufficient to reach it—was dependent on the user’s Expansion Levels.

All that came together to make recon skills difficult for most people to use. Low-devs had an easier time, but even for us, it was time-consuming, requiring we stay still and not disrupt the expansion of the skill—and believe me, the moment I had a second to think on it properly, I’d be looking into ways to at eliminate that nuisance requirement. A number of other Categories played a part in the skill’s execution as well, of course—skills were never something so simple that only a handful of Categories dictated whether it would work and how well it would work—but these three were the more important for recon skills, and that reality of how much the skill was forcing into his brain was having an effect on Simeon, even after only a handful of minutes practicing.

✮ ✮ ✮ Simeon ✮ ✮ ✮

The world had long been a burning place of too much, too much, too much. Everything was always so much. Blades of grass, brushing against one another and driving my brain to insanity. The whistle of wind through the smallest of leaks in the window’s seal. Fine threads of fabric both rocking over my skin and drawing in my eyes to count and question because why was the pattern off?

Where had the missing thread gone?

Missed in manufacturing?

Pulled free during transport? Cleaning? A mistake on my part, damaging the cloth irreparably?

The world had been a heavy, miserable place for so much of my life. Emilia had made it better, with her shifting hands, teaching me to sign, so I would rarely ever need to open my mouth again, my then-too-feminine voice like a deadly chime through my head. It was deeper now, although not as deep as I would like. A little reminder of the girl my body had never belonged to, and yet still reflected.

“One day, we’ll make you even more perfect than you already are,” Emilia had assured me, back when our Censors had just been installed. “However you want your body to be, we’ll make sure you can have it.”

People were supposed to wait several days after having their Censors installed to do a number of things. They were not supposed to do drugs. It was not recommended that they make any big decisions, nor try anything new. They were meant to wait until their first official Censor class to do anything to their Censor—even exchanging contact information with friends and family was not recommended.

We had waited for none of it.

We had exploded into the world, Andre and BJ procuring us drugs and alcohol as we stole away to the tree house, not yet tainted by the traumatic night that would come, years later. Emilia had snuck off to have sex with Codeth at some point, although she had later admitted that they had lost their virginities to each other the night before. That was after all the programming, of course, Emilia pulling her mind into the Virtuosi System for the first time—far sooner than was recommended—and forcing out functions to make all our lives easier—smoother.

I was first because of course Emilia would want to make the world a little kinder to me that first night of having a Censor burying itself into my mind and consciousness. She had been talking about it forever, studying everything she could about functions and skills, all for me. Sure, it was for herself and everyone else as well, but it was mostly for me.

What a strange thing, to know someone had pushed themself to the forefront of an entire, nearly dead industry for you. Halen had come a few months later, pushing Emilia—pushing everyone, really—further into this world of odd expertise in things none of us should know anything but the bare minimum about. Still, the number of times Emilia had dragged me off, intent to update my Censor because something from our prank war had inspired her, wasn’t something I could quantify.

Emilia was always thinking of me, somewhere in the back of her brain, wondering how to make my world a little kinder.

This world that cracked through my head as I learned to use the clones’ recon skill was not kind, and I was not hiding it well. Taelor and Valor, and even Halen, were all looking at me, concern written clear through their eyes. Even Baylor, when I told him to go count quietly far, far away from us—Halen really wasn’t doing well under the oppression of Baylor being a nuisance—looked worried. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising—as far as I knew, I was one of the few people the clones considered more an actual friend than the rest of the people in our friend group, who were people they tolerated being around for Emilia alone.

So, of course they would worry for me, even if no one would tell me to stop.

No—no one I considered a friend would ever tell me to stop, as though I needed someone’s advice on how to live my life and assert my autonomy. Then again, when it came to how I was going to evade my parents and their plans to have me locked away in their home for the rest of my life, all access to the outside world locked behind their will and cruelty? Well, there I would accept advice.

✮ ✮ ✮ Darrian ✮ ✮ ✮

Simeon and Coral should stay here—not in Lüshan or Falmíer specifically, but in the Free Colonies as a whole. That was the conclusion I had come to during the latter part of our travels through the cave system. It wasn’t something I normally thought about, but I had needed to distract myself from the ire that I felt towards my cousin. Apparently it had been such a strong anger that Coral had been able to feel it through even the odd, aethernet-blocking rock of the cave system.

The EEC Dyad wasn’t impressed with Leerin’s actions or words within the cave system either, her anger bubbling through the private relay we had going between us. Mostly, the relay was my telling Coral what had happened—Halen would normally be responsible for such things, but he was occupied learning to use that recon skill. Coral in turn was updating me on their side of the situation—namely, that they were still trying to get though the papers checkpoint, and had finally decided to try the diplomatic route. As Emilia had now informed Malcolm of our presence in the city, it didn’t really matter if someone informed the embassy or the Baalphorian government directly of their presence, either.

I did feel rather bad for Malcolm, who had been messaging all of us in a mixture of grumbling and yelling and asking if we were okay and telling us we were stupid. I couldn’t disagree—we were exceptionally stupid for letting a few people come with us, my cousin top of that list.

We—we, as in, my Censor and I—weren’t thinking about that, however. Instead, we were chatting with Coral about the likelihood that she and Simeon could just stay in the Free Colonies. It was a possibility, I thought. While most nations were in no way friendly to Dyads, neither did many have the same sort of anti-Dyad policies that the Baalphorian government had either—and while the government itself would certainly argue they were acting in the best interests of all Baalphorians when they kept laws like the Dyad Containment Laws on the books, we all knew that was a load of shit.

As we were in the Free Colonies right now, what better time to just sort of… lose Coral and Simeon? I’m sorry, Coral and Simeon’s equally shitty parents, we have no idea what happened to your children! Do you even want them back? Cause if not, we suggest you let them stay lost!

Sounded like a good plan to me—although, neither Coral nor I would put it past Simeon’s parents in particular to try to sue us for some sort of monetary value for their missing child. Fuckers—it wasn’t even like they wanted Simeon around; rather, they just wanted to control her.

Double fuckers.

Plus, Emilia had friends all over the place! Surely, she must know of somewhere we could hide the pair away—but not too tucked away! We didn’t want them to be prisoners! Somewhere that was safe, but not so locked up tight that they couldn’t move around and oh shit!

My gaze shot to Halen and Simeon, still diligently learning to use the clones’ recon skill. Simeon looked… pained. It was a subtle thing, but there all the same, and I would bother them with this later. In the meantime, Coral and I had a small issue to deal with… which really meant she had to talk Polianna into dealing with it, as she was the only other person who could use a xphern well, and I was almost positive that no one had bothered letting anyone else know that we hadn’t died in the cave system.

Not Yujao or Hurinren, nor Lan’za—Lan’za, who we were supposed to be checking in with regularly. Fuck. Unfortunately, Polianna hadn’t bothered telling anyone that we were alive yet. Instead, she had just told Yujao that she still couldn’t contact us, the last time he had checked in, while she hadn’t ever contacted Lan’za—apparently they didn’t get along—and that wasn’t good; they were definitely far past the point at which the Seerish girl should have been panicking. Hopefully, in that panic, she hadn’t done anything too stupid.