[Can’t Opt Out]

“It wasn’t funny,” Leerin bit out, glaring at her laughing cousin. She’d only been able to hear bits and pieces of Darrian’s story from the bathroom, where she had sequestered herself in an attempt to get away from all her guilt and the watching, judging eyes of everyone. Still, she had heard enough, her heart rate skyrocketing despite how distant the memory Darrian spoke of was, and she was so, so glad she’d turned off their stupid stalking function long ago.

The last thing she needed right now was anyone asking if she was okay—and really, they all must know she wasn’t okay, even without the stalking function monitoring her the way she knew the majority of her friends and former teammates still let it watch them. None of them had contacted her directly, and it didn’t surprise her. There was a reason why, as much as their unit was still active duty, she didn’t often consider them to still be her teammates. They were people she knew—people she would maybe go help if they asked for aid.

The fact that not a single person had messaged to ask if she was okay—if she needed anything—was proof enough that they wouldn’t help her either. It wasn’t surprising, and really, it didn’t even hurt as much as it once would have—not that back when it would have hurt anyone would have abandoned her. No, the leaving her to her fate was something new—something she couldn’t even argue she didn’t deserve.

Part of her had died when Alliance Ridge was destroyed, all the friends she had made during those first years of war vanishing into the aether.

“Childhood friends,” Daniel had once said to her, “are just people you end up with because they’re there. They aren’t people you choose to love, just people to fill your time with. It’s not a bad thing to outgrow them—or even to have never really loved them to begin with. Humans need companionship, and as children, we don’t have the sense to realize that being lonely is better than having terrible people around us.”

Leerin didn’t think her childhood friends were as bad as Daniel had sometimes made them out to be. Certainly, he hadn’t liked anyone but her and Emilia. If he’d had his way, Leerin was sure their leader would have gotten rid of the rest of them—sent them off to a different unit to flourish, away from the more normal members of their unit, which had mostly amounted to the regular military side, plus her and Emilia. That would have been a little sad—Leerin would have missed her cousin and Lux in particular—but Emilia wouldn’t hear of it.

Emilia always had to be the centre of attention, so that really shouldn’t have been so surprising. If it had just been the regular military part of their unit, she would have faded into the background—wouldn’t have been the overwhelming existence she always was. Even now, sleeping in the syn’s arms, she still shone and why couldn’t she have seen that Daniel just wanted what was best for her? Wanted to get her away from the bad influences of their friend group? Plus, the girl had insisted on keeping Rafe around, and on letting the triplets visit their unit regularly! What sort of person brings people they’ve had sex with around their new boyfriend?

Someone who is selfish, that’s who.

“Come on, Leerie,” Darrian tried to laugh as she poked her head further out of the bathroom, intent to tell him off for daring to bring up that stupid, terrible story in her presence. His smile strained—faltered into something sad and broken and just so done. “It’s been forty years. It wasn’t something to obsess over back then, and it certainly isn’t now.” Her cousin’s bright blue eyes stared into her own, something between annoyance and exhaustion living there now. It wasn't an exhaustion born of the raid or their family—no, this was exhaustion with her, exhaustion with the fact that forty years on, she couldn’t get the image of Baylor pushing Darrian over that ledge out of her head.

It wasn’t funny. It was traumatizing, but virtually no one had ever seen it like that because they were fine and nothing bad had happened, as though the fears that had raced through her brain before her cousin had safely landed hadn’t buried themselves in her brain like worms—parasites that could never be removed.

Then, of course, she had been forced to stay with Halen and Simeon’s group, separated from her cousin through the rest of that disaster. Still, people thought she should get over it. It was almost like no one knew her at all—didn’t have the brain space to retain the fact that she didn’t get over anything.

Unfortunately, while her cousin looked at her with mild apathy and the syn barely glanced her way—they really only had eyes for Emilia, fast asleep against their chest—the little Free Colonier who had attached himself onto Darrian looked almost as horrified by the story of that terrible fall as she felt. That sharing of an opinion was unfortunate because she didn’t like the man—didn’t like the reality that he was on this ship, and if their family saw him and her cousin together it was going to cause a problem. The reality that she and Darrian were non-public members of their unit had made it easier to keep their close association with various Free Coloniers from causing issues within their family, but her cousin had always been clear that while, for her sake, he wouldn’t purposefully cause ripples with their relatives, neither would he do anything to actively avoid causing them either.

If they said bad things about Free Coloniers or people with irregular deviations, he would call them out.

If they talked around their beliefs in the vaguest of terms, he wouldn’t say anything.

If they were rude to someone in public, he would defend the other person.

If they stopped inviting him to events, he wouldn’t bother complaining—it wasn’t like he wanted to be there in the first place.

With Emilia and the Free Coloniers on board, there was little chance something wouldn’t happen, and then things would crack—assuming they weren’t already cracking. Their other cousins already knew something was going on, while Emilia had done something to her Borien and Raven’s Censors before passing out.

Something that they hadn’t even bothered to include her in.

It was funny, in a way, that, when the syn had asked what Darrian remembered from their mission to Lüshan—as though something as stupid as all that had been deserved to be called a mission—Leerin had known she would be pulled back to some of the worst moments of her life.

Darrian almost dying was high on that list, but so was the reality of how unwanted and excluded she had felt that whole trip. Some of it was self-inflicted, she knew—the result of her not wanting to be there, not feeling confident in her ability to be a useful member of the team, and simply not knowing how to communicate. Other bits of it were the result of the situation—the result of there being a few people in that group, as well as amongst the people Emilia and Olivier picked up along the way, who were monsters, and what was she compared to those monsters?

Useless.

A waste of space and aether.

Someone to not even consider when making plans.

Leerin could look back on that whole situation through the eyes of both the her that existed now, as well as the her who had existed forty years ago. Neither of them saw it as anything but the stupid thing it had been. Emilia, causing problems for all of them. People had died. People had been hurt. Darrian had almost died—as had Lux and Emilia herself. There had been so much blood and gore, and really, none of them had seen it coming because they were children being dragged into something they didn’t understand and weren’t ready for and should have been nowhere near.

Those first hours of travelling, even through the caves above Falmíer, had been easy. Even with Levi running off and Lux being kidnapped by the group of smugglers, even with leaving Samina behind to look for them and having to deal with the reality that several members of their group had killed people, it had all been nothing compared to what was to come. Her younger self had hated what was happening even during that trek. She could still feel the ache of wanting to apologize for causing problems—for trying to get them out of that cave system faster, even if it meant leaving Lux and Levi behind.

If she’d had her way, Leerin would have stayed home, but she couldn’t let Darrian go without her. Ironic that they’d been separated by the push—by Baylor having a moment that was both so him and so not. Baylor was almost as bad as Emilia and Levi had always been, in acting without thinking, in letting his instincts run the show. At the same time, he was control—the fact that he had never snapped and become a serial killer was proof enough of that.

Leerin had no idea if anyone had ever figured out why the clone had freaked out so badly. Janie had suggested that it was because he realized he had told Halen he was attractive, then given him a slow once over. That seemed insane, however—it wasn’t like anyone ever tried to deny how hot Halen had been, unless they were a purist. Even then, Leerin had heard numerous purists get into arguments over the years about whether Halen really was a Grey Sander, given real Grey Sanders would never consider him one, and he had never even lived amongst them.

Halen was attractive and represented the pinochle of what Baalphorians could do with their Censors—at least, he represented that to the general public. Everyone in their unit—as well as many members of the government and people who worked for The Black Knot and the Ridge Rind and perhaps even Hail itself—knew the truth: that Emilia sat at the top of Censor development. Seriously, the fact that even after a decade of barely coding anything—Helix made a point to start long discussions in their unit’s group relay whenever a new skill or function that was actually designed by Emilia was approved for use under Rafe’s name, rare as such things were—Emilia had managed to so quickly and easily create a handful of skills for the syn and the little Free Colonier proved that, even after all that time, she was still the best.

“She also coded something to allow for use of her core.”

The syn’s voice startled Leerin out of her glaring at the little Free Colonier—and yes, she knew she should start using his actual name, except, from what she’d heard, it wasn’t his real name, and Emilia and Darrian had already been given permission to call him by a nickname.

Also, was the syn… what? Reading her mind!?

“I am not,” the syn replied when Leerin demanded answers from them. “I simply saw a reality where you would ask how much she has been coding, and decided to answer you, regardless of whether you asked.”

So… they had been reading her mind and just refused to admit it. Fucker. Leerin had met a handful of people who could read thoughts and intentions through the aether since they first met Coral. It was never something she enjoyed being around—really, the only ability she could think of that was worse than Coral’s ability to read emotions was the ability the Lüshanian boy, Porsq, had. His abilities had been terrifying, even when he was a teenager, and from what Leerin had heard, that ability to manipulate people’s minds had only grown as he did—she had avoided coming into contact with him since they had parted after returning to Baalphoria from Lüshan because once in that child’s company had been enough.

“Emmie figured out a way to use her core with her Censor?” Darrian asked, his tired gaze finally leaving Leerin to turn back to the syn—not that they were allowed to answer. Instead, the little Free Colonier piped up, all hyperactive energy that reminded her so much of Levi, but with an edge of severity—the edge of someone who would cut down enemies without a blink of remorse—and so much confidence it was nauseating.

What was it with her cousin and befriending hyped up, too confident people who could easily slice people apart? They needed less chaos in their life, not more; yet, somehow, Darrian was just as bad as Emilia at bringing more energy into their lives.

Leerin didn’t need that sort of energy in her life right now, and instead of staying to listen to the Free Colonier talk about helping Emilia test out her new Censor System, Leerin slipped back into the bathroom. As far as she could tell, no one noticed her leave.

Shocking—it had been a long time since her leaving was met with anything but empty silence or joy that she was gone.