[Can’t Opt Out]

In the background, Porsq was losing his shit laughing.

In Olivier’s arms, Xavier was giggling.

Their sullen, currently nameless teenager snickered.

Everyone else was a mixture of unimpressed and suppressing their own laughter.

Olivier, on the other hand, was somewhere between relieved, embarrassed, and amused. Fortunately, most of the laughter was good-natured, if relatively unappreciated. Still, he was mostly just relieved, a tension that he hadn’t realized had coiled itself within him releasing as he glanced over the rarely seen paper product that had, well, smacked him in the head. As he gazed down at it, a smile that had Izurial giving him a look pulling over his lips, Olivier didn’t care.

He would take a thousand people looking at him like that—a million people laughing at his expense—for only a fraction of the emotions that were now vibrating through him.

How, one might ask, did they end up in this situation of laughing while also working to make their escape from people who would quite happily torture, reimprison, or just plain old kill them? Well, their escape from the building had all been going fine for about five minutes—not long in the grand scope of the estimated several hours it would take for them to get to the Baalphorian embassy, assuming not went wrong, but five minutes was significantly better than no minutes.

They had been moving through the alleyways that cut between—and occasionally through or over—the nearby buildings. This particular holding cell was, relatively fortunately, located in one of the safer areas of the city, being more commercial and residential zone than criminal stronghold. As a result, while the general appearance of a number of their group’s members was liable to attract attention—they were all filthy, even Olivier covered in a layer of dust and dirt, not to mention quite a bit of sweat and even some blood, after all he’d been through—it also wasn’t as though they were liable to be running into people who were loyal to Fräthk at every turn.

The alarm was blaring even now, and it wasn’t exactly a secret that the holding cells were there—and seriously, what were the Drinarna doing if such a thing were common knowledge? Things to obsess over latter. For the moment, this information was only relevant as, due to the potential danger of something happening within the holding cells, most people had scurried into businesses—where their group wouldn’t want to linger, even had they been welcome within—or their homes. A few people were still lingering on the streets, but for the most part, they were rare.

All that meant was that if they ran into anyone, there was a good chance they would be loyal to Fräthk. At the same time, Cordk had insisted that the alarm going off was rare, and if anyone were on their way there, it was more likely they would head straight to the building and hope to find out whatever was happening once they got there.

This, in Olivier’s estimation, did not seem like a good plan—after all, why would Fräthk’s people not immediately start looking for escapees, even in the vaguest of while heading to the holding cells senses, as soon as they heard the alarm going?

“I think you’re overestimating how smart the people loyal to Fräthk are,” Cravena had noted when he first mentioned how badly thought out just heading to the holding cells was. “Personally, I don’t even think Fräthk is that intelligent—I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s the same alarm that went off the other day, when Vtraní accidentally set off the fire alarm?”

A course of nods and groans had followed, Porsq complaining that the smell of the burning food had suffused the air for hours after somehow spreading all through the building.

“It is rare anyone manages to escape the building itself,” Cordk had added, listing off a handful of times when people had attempted such a thing. There weren’t many cases, and instead, most people were like Porsq, and had waited until they were being moved between locations to attempt escape. “It is possible anyone in the area will assume there is just something happening within the building, as it seems to be the same alarm that goes off regardless of the situation. That is why we were sure to close and repair as many doors as we could while leaving.”

More than a few of the doors couldn’t be put back into place, of course, due to the effort required to remove them. As a result, Cravena may have melted a few back into place—and they really were putting quite a bit of faith in Fräthk’s people having minimal brain cells, to not figure out something was wrong from that alone. A few more were just sort of… sitting in the door frame, and were likely to topple over on the next person who tried to open them. Considering that the people left inside the building were either more loyal to Fräthk or had been too sick—or sad—to attempt leaving, it was unlikely anyone who didn’t deserve to be smushed or stuck would be affected by their inadvertent sabotage.

At least, that’s what Olivier had thought as they were travelling upwards. Now, of course, he wasn’t so sure.

They had been a few streets away from the building when Porsq had first noted that something was following them, his lips pulling down as he admitted that there was something that was shifting through the streets with them, but it probably wasn’t a person. This was exceptionally odd as, when he had explained his abilities, the preteen had easily admitted that he generally didn’t feel anything but people and their emotions through the aether.

“There were plans to teach me to feel more from it, but after I tried to run off…” the boy had explained, when the scope of his abilities had first been brought up. At the time, Olivier hadn't known anyone well, but when it came up again, now that they were out of the building and having spent some amount of time together, Porsq had simply smiled and shrugged, mutterings about how Fräthk hadn’t trusted him not to become even more of a nuisance if he were taught more, so such plans were dropped. “I don’t know why I can feel the thing behind us. It feels a little like a person, but also not? There’s like… an echo of desperation in it, I guess? I’d think it was an ability, cause I can sometimes feel the emotions of the person who activated the ability within it, if their emotions are strong at the time? But there’s really no one around?”

“Can’t some core abilities be left to activate later?” Olivier had asked.

It wasn’t something he knew much about, but in the war game function he had gotten from his cousin, there was a bit of information about numerous rare abilities. It wasn’t all encompassing—and really, a few of the abilities the people in their group had either weren’t listed at all or were passingly mentioned as possibly real, possibly fabricated. Still, the function’s database of information did contain a few references to slow- and conditional-release skills, with a footnote that they were inspired by core abilities generally used in traps. Unlike a lot of the other information in the function, there had been few details about these slow- and conditional-release skills, and until he was once again onaether and able to look at official sources, he was going to assume that they were such rare skills as to be practically unheard of.

They were something he presumed Emilia and her friends—as well as perhaps The Black Knot and military—could use, but had enough sense to not actively distribute. Of course, it was at this point that his mind caught on the state of a former school in the Penns, which had been rendered unusable several years previous after it was vandalized. While officially, the government stated that the building and the land it sat on had been physically affected by the vandalism so profoundly that the school couldn’t even be demolished—it would be a risk to the neighbouring homes and businesses, as well as the demolition crew, apparently—there were rumours that wasn’t true.

Lawyers were always sharing knowledge and rumours with one another, and despite how awkward he was with his colleagues, he had been included in a number of private relays and MemoryBoards dedicated to such things. As many lawyers had close relations with SecOps and the government, quite a lot of the rumours came straight from people who worked for both. They weren’t rumours anyone could do anything with directly—although it wasn’t exactly uncommon for lawyers of certain pro- and anti-government persuasions to be able to pull together enough information to find evidence of such-and-such things more officially using what they learned within those rumours as a starting point. Instead, such information was often used as a way to get possibilities into the minds of other lawyers.

It was possible that the government was actively discouraging people from learning how to code new skills and functions.

It was possible that they were still actively trying to keep the Grey Sands as small and powerless as they could.

It was possible that that school in the Penns still had skills activating within it, even years later.

So, for a handful of reasons, Olivier had stopped, his feet slamming to a halt on the stairwell they had been climbing, seeking to get onto one of the higher street levels, so they were neither visible to every single level above them, nor so high that they would be visible to anyone who had the sense to search for escaped captives from the highest of the levels—and why did the city need so many road levels, each leading to a dozen other levels via different stairwells and paths? It was all very confusing. Usually, he just let the tour guides lead him and his students around, but it felt like finding a specific address in this place would be impossible.

“I’ve heard the mishmash of streets and buildings is far worse in Jinkai,” Izurial had said as the pair of them waited for whatever was chasing them to catch up, everyone else having moved a little further away, hoping to be out of the blast zone if Olivier turned out to be wrong about what was chasing them.

There had been a dark flinch in Izurial’s words as he explained that Fräthk was trying to extend their influence out of the city. For that reason, Fräthk was both trying to get their more loyal people out of the city and working to connect with other criminal enterprises who had any power within Falmíer. The implication that Izurial was often handed over to these random criminals for a night hadn’t needed to be said. At the very least, Izurial had often been able to get information out of the people he was forced to entertain. While this didn’t make up for what he had been through, the man clearly enjoyed knowing bits of information that few other people knew—and in the case of a nation like Jinkai, which few people ever had opportunity to visit, he seemed to know a lot.

“Someone once told me that men in particular love to talk after sex. They don’t want a sex worker for the sex itself, but the connection that occurs after the orgasm,” the silverstrain had explained with a shrug and an admittance that he didn’t necessarily believe that—although that could simply be due to the people filling his unwilling bed. Still, he had learned a lot—none of which he had shared with Fräthk. Apparently, for as much as many people enjoyed chatting after sex, they didn’t share that fact with the person who had given them Izurial for the night, and Izurial wasn’t stupid enough to point out that Fräthk was missing out on intel.

Izurial had whispered a few more things about Jinkai to him as they waited, each of them on edge because they had no confirmation Olivier was correct until a creature he didn’t recognize smacked right into his face.

Then, the laughter had started, Olivier fumbling to grab the creature which struggled in his grip until finally falling still when he managed to grab the end of its long tail. It was then that he realized it was actually a piece of paper, folded into the shape of a creature that, now that it wasn’t wiggling about so much, seemed vaguely familiar. Something to ask about later, once he actually managed to meet up with Emilia and not just be stalked and assaulted by some odd skill of hers.

Ignoring the laughter of the people behind him, several of whom had come closer in order to take a look at the thing in his hands, Olivier unfolded the paper creature, finding a message written inside it.

“Is that Baalphorian?” someone asked—Olivier wasn’t even sure who, his attention focused on the letter from Emilia.

“Yes…” he whispered, willing his fingers not to clench as he summarized what it said: that the silverstrain he had thought would come for him had done so; that she was inside the building, and they had missed one another; the skill was set to activate if it saw him; that she was with some new friends and would be fine.

“Don’t come after me if we miss each other. Just head to the embassy—that’s where most of your class is. It’s a whole thing, but the clones are on locating the little shits who ran off. Just go be safe. I’ll catch up.”

There was also a short note about the three people she had ended up travelling with, including an escapee of Fräthk’s who wanted something within the holding cells, and someone who Emilia didn’t really trust, but who was currently helping them.

“Shit… she was with Rayleen?” Porsq asked, pulling Olivier’s attention away from the letter. “She’s the one we just missed, when we were switching between the level splits. Your friend was right there, but we all pulled in our abilities when I sensed Rayleen, so I didn’t notice your friend or the others…”

Quietly, Olivier pulled the boy in for another hug, murmuring a soft demand that he not blame himself into his curls. “You were keeping us safe. Do not stop doing so, simply because you are worried you might miss something like this. You are doing your best, and that is all we need from you.”

“Will you go back?” Cravena asked, and that was the question, wasn’t it.

Olivier skimmed over the letter again, thinking of the competent silverstrain and the reality that the alarm was still going off and there were two sets of disconnected floors within the building. “No,” he finally said. “Even if I go back, we might miss each other once again. There is no reason to put myself in more danger when Emilia is far more capable of keeping herself safe than I will ever be.”

“We should get moving again then,” Renton, one of the less amused members of their group, muttered, his eyes scanning the area they had managed to get to before Olivier was assault by Emilia’s paper messenger.

Olivier couldn’t disagree, even if he wished he could go back and find Emilia—make sure she was as safe now as when she had first written the message to him. It wouldn’t do any good to go back, however, and instead, he let his Censor memorize the letter, Xavier’s little fingers dragging over the delicate Baalphorian script—the child had been quite unhappy to be handed over to Cravena to be taken further away while they waited for Emilia’s creature to catch up and had immediately demanded he be handed back to Olivier the moment it was deemed safe.

Then, he followed the instructions at the bottom of the letter, under the addendum that said a bunch of her Baalphorian friends were apparently attempting to get into the city, so if he ran into any random Baalphorians, that was probably them. Aether leaked out of him, colliding with the paper and burning it to ashes that seemed to shudder off into the universe. Xavier giggled, tucking himself further into Olivier’s chest.

Hopefully, in following that instruction, Emilia would know he had gotten her letter.

Hopefully, when she learned he was outside the building now, she would be able to turn around and come find him. Given what everyone thought her new ally Jerrial was likely looking for down there, that didn’t seem likely.