[Can’t Opt Out]

“Do you think he knows we’re here?” Olivier asked into Porsq’s hair, his voice a low whisper as the boy pressed into him as his little mind fell apart.

Hwris had been one of the people Porsq had been positive he would be able to recognize by mental signature alone, and yet, he hadn’t been able to. This was a failure of his abilities—something that, as far as Olivier could tell, the preteen had never experienced in quite this way before. It seemed that up until this moment, once he had pinpointed the unique qualities of a person’s mind, he was confident he would always recognize them.

Evidently, this wasn’t the case, and it had taken its toll and Olivier needed to snap the boy out of his shock and worry. So far, his few attempts hadn’t helped, the boy just muttering an endless stream of I don’t knows into him as he fought down his tears and sobs. That was good, at least. Of what he knew of the man watching them from afar, he had some sort of ability related to the air. This was likely how he had found them—how he had found Porsq the one time the boy had managed to escape.

It wasn’t so much that the man was seeing or watching them in the physical sense, nor that his awareness of the aether was so high that he was able to feel them through it; rather, his ability to feel things through the air itself, as well as manipulate it, meant that he could feel people move, could hear their voices from far further off than most.

So, they had to keep quiet.

So, they didn’t know what to do now.

It was unclear if Hwris knew they were there, or if he was simply waiting to see if some stray sound or instinct that had pulled his attention in their direction were correct or not. According to the rest of the group, it was unlikely anyone would know for sure they were missing yet. As a result, it was unlikely the man knew someone had escaped. The question then became whether they should wait and see if he lost interest in waiting around for them to do something to give away that they weren’t a figment of his imagination—to move or try to make a more solid plan—or if they should try to get out of there immediately.

“I don’t know,” Porsq mumbled again, his hands clenching into Olivier’s shirt while Xavier pet his hand slowly through the older boy’s hair—some soothing gesture that he had learned from his deceased parents, perhaps?

The little boy was so slow and meticulous in his movements, aware despite his age that they needed to be quiet. The little girl was also quiet, but something in the way she moved, in the way her eyes twitched, gave the impression that she would bolt at the smallest provocation and Olivier needed Porsq to come back to himself, if only so he could help the girl calm herself.

“Hey,” he called to the preteen. With both of the smaller children cradled in his arms, Porsq squished between them and resting against his chest, he couldn’t reach out to touch the boy the way he wanted to—instead, Xavier had taken on that role without prompting, knowing that the preteen with shaking shoulders needed some extra comfort—but when he asked Porsq if he could look at him, the preteen did.

The boy was cute, if emancipated to the point that he looked younger than he was. His blue eyes were an oddly muted colour, peering out from under hair that could be any shade for how dirty it was. There might have been a little red within it, but Olivier would be wagering no money on the boy’s actual colouring, even the darkness of his skin a question due to the dirt and grime sticking to it. He could have had beautiful, sky black skin, or a shade closer to the gorgeous browns found in so much of the natural world. Mostly, like all of them, he needed a bath. Olivier would recognize him when he was clean, however, no matter what shades spread over his cheeks or fell down across his forehead in curls of hair that even the dirt couldn’t quite contain, based on those eyes alone.

The soft blue of a clear sky. The gentle blue of a quiet sea.

Porsq’s lips wobbled in a small, tender smile while Olivier whispered these things to him, seeking to distract him from the chaos of emotion and self-doubt bubbling within him.

“My uncle used to say our skin was like that of curstian gem. They can be so many shades of brown, but they all have this undertone that’s the same, no matter the colour it ends up looking.”

Olivier hummed softly, telling the boy he had seen artwork made of the gemstone, all three children peering up at him in curiosity, their expressions of interest alone enough to make him continue. Anything to bring Porsq’s heart rate back to normal. Anything to keep the little girl from bolting. Anything for Xavier.

“There are a lot of gems that can have a myriad of shades and colours, but curstian can be cut into thin slices, and it can be shaped further without easily shattering, allowing the pieces to be brought together to create mosaics. Depending on the way light shines through them, different pieces will be different colours, creating patterns in a piece of art that, without light, often looks to be the same shade of brown. Some of the most skilled artists can puzzle the pieces together so that, when hit with different amounts of light, or with light from different directions, different images will shine through,” he told them, keeping his voice as quiet as he could. While he considered activating a privacy skill around them, he was almost positive most of those primarily affected the way air vibrated, in order to keep sound contained. As Hwris had an ability directly related to air, he didn’t much want to risk accidentally giving away their location trying to hide their voices through more than whispering.

To his explanation, he added information about how every material on the planet had different qualities that made them good for some things, bad for others. It seemed, within his mind, like something simple—something all three of the children should be old enough to know the basics of. Really, it varied from child to child. Porsq got it, muttering about how whenever they received blankets made of different types of fabric, people would complain or rejoice. Some fabrics fell apart too easily. Some were too cold. Some too warm.

“I think the ones that fall apart quickly are nice—they feel and look nicer than the other types, but they don’t last more than a few weeks,” he said, his heart still a strong beat against Olivier’s chest, but at least it was slowing, the thump, thump, thump of it no longer so loud that he had briefly worried that it would give them away to Hwris.

Xavier got it as well, adding in his own little explanation that it was like the situation with the toxic building insulation: it was good for keeping the building warm, and really cheap—that was why it had been used in so many buildings throughout the city—but turned out to be a bad thing.

While Olivier had no idea if the child had heard someone talk about this particular issue before, he was impressed with how much the child had understood of the conversation happening around him—after all, it wasn’t as though the adults who had explained the history of the building material to him had brought their language down to the level of a child while discussing the issue, nor as though Xavier had asked any questions regarding the topic. This, as well as his ability to grasp on to their current conversation and supply examples of his own, combined with a handful of other things the boy had done and said throughout their travels, made Olivier think the child may be a sub-30—perhaps even a low-dev.

His cousin’s older children—a twin boy and girl—were likely around Xavier’s age of four or five, he thought. The nameless girl, he assumed, was a year or two older than Xavier, although given how underfed they all were, she could be closer to eight or nine. While he was always a little awkward around Gabrielle’s children, he had seen them grow up, all of them quickly realizing the twins were likely low-devs. This wasn’t exactly uncommon in their family—between himself, his brother, and his cousins, more of them were low-devs than not—but they all knew how troublesome having a low D-Level could be within more mainstream Baalphorian schooling. There was a reason so many Sub-30 families relocated themselves to the Penns, just as there was a reason why, despite their age differences, their cousin group was so close.

It was easier, sometimes, to be friends with people who would hold the same interests and passions and power within themselves as you yourself did. Sometimes, it wasn’t anything so palpable as to create issues with people who weren’t sub-30s, but other times, it was an uncomfortable drag through friendships for everyone—no one, Olivier had found, enjoyed knowing they were inherently less than someone else, as ridiculous as he thought that idea to be. Many ex-30 people couldn’t shake the feeling, however—couldn’t live with the knowledge that, if their sub-30 friend were only to push themself a little bit, they could potentially be better at everything.

Every passion they had, reduced to dust under the pressure of their sub-30 friend’s interest.

Every ounce of time they spent dedicated to a project deemed meaningless by an off-handed comment from that sub-30 friend.

Everything they viewed as special about themself nothing compared to a sub-30’s shine.

Again, Olivier generally thought these things all overblown, but he had heard his cousins admit they had to end friendships due to a lingering tension within a relationship before. Sometimes it was a perpetual discomfort, sometimes it was something more insidious—Clovis had needed to cut a friend off after they began forcing him to try and do better than them at this or that. Not only had this been annoying, but Clovis’ former friend had then become upset whenever Clovis did whatever the thing was better than them.

When it came to his cousin’s children, Olivier had seen how different they were on the occasions he had accompanied Gabrielle out and about with them. The way they played and interacted with the world, the words they used, and ideas they could understand were just different from all the other children. Some people, he knew, considered their alleged higher intelligence and awareness of the world to be a blessing, but the reality was more complicated.

They didn’t fit with most of the children they came across. Other children quickly became annoyed with them using bigger words that they didn’t understand—especially as their ability to articulate what those words meant could be limited—nor did they like the more complicated games and storylines his little cousins came up with. They were smart, and it wasn’t always a good thing. No one would wish them any different, but Olivier could see the appeal of having a child who fit in with the average child.

Average children had their problems as well, he was sure, but even when it came to those problems, they had peers who could understand their difficulties, while their parents could seek advice and comfort from other parents of average children.

There was a reason Olivier had suggested that Gabrielle and her husband try to move to the Penns. While there was something to be said for learning to get along and empathize with people who were different from yourself, Olivier thought that for children especially, such things could be isolating. There would be time enough, once they were older and more mature, for them to learn how to be friends with people who weren’t sub-30s—and obviously, as Clovis’ friend had shown, there was something to be said for both sides being more mature, so healthy friendships could form.

Having now seen the way Emilia had flourished in the Penns—having seen the way she interacted with the clones and Halen, having heard the way she spoke of her friends… Well, Olivier thought he would be pushing a little harder for his cousin to move her family into the Penns whenever he was out of this terrible situation.

Really, he might send her a message the moment his Censor could connect to the aethernet once more—after all, he could very well die in this horrible city and never get the chance to tell her she was making a mistake by not moving her family there!

Regardless of all that, Olivier thought he was a relatively good judge of what differentiated a low-dev child and an average child. Where Porsq’s abilities seemed to betray that he had at least a few Perfect Categories, all of which possibly added up to him being a low-dev, Xavier seemed to clearly be one.

The child was too aware of the world, his eyes always swishing over people and the area, assessing everything he saw and heard. He was too calm as well. Aside from his moment of ire against the woman who had been at least partially responsible for his mother’s death, and his slight distress and annoyance whenever the two of them were separated—something that was likely exasperated by his tiredness—he had been relaxed for the majority of their trip. Even the boy’s feelings towards the woman had seemingly softened, and while he still glared at her occasionally, Olivier wasn’t convinced the boy hadn’t internalized the conversation that had occurred back in the holding cells—the one in which Olivier had been told that, usually, when someone was rising through the bottom ranks of Fräthk’s loyal, people didn’t die. Combined with the woman’s guilt, it seemed as though she hadn’t meant Xavier’s mother to die, and the little boy seemed to have realized that and just… decided to forgive her.

It wasn’t something a child this young should be doing, Olivier thought—and certainly, even his own very likely low-dev cousins didn’t forgive so easily. His fingers brushed through the little boy’s hair, just as his own small fingers were still brushing through Porsq’s messy curls, as he gave a few more examples of materials having different uses in an attempt to make the little girl understand. When he finished and she nodded, saying she understood… Olivier was not convinced she did.

That was fine—everyone learned at their own pace. What he was concerned about, however, was the way she had suddenly hit a point where she seemed to think she needed to say she understood. If it hadn’t been for Porsq frowning and tilting his head towards her, Olivier might have thought her just done with the conversation—some internal judgment call on her part that she wasn’t going to get it and didn’t need to. It didn’t seem to be that, though; instead, it seemed a self-defence mechanism—an insistence that she understood, the tremble of a fearful lie echoing through her voice as though she were afraid of what would happen if she didn’t claim to understand.

If he had the chance later, he would need to ask around about that. As it was, Hwris still seemed to be standing there, waiting, and he needed Porsq calm and confident and using his abilities again. The fact that the preteen had used his abilities on the little girl was a good sign, but Olivier needed to be sure the boy wouldn’t work himself into another panic of self-doubt again.

So, rather than just ask him to look over Hwris’ mental state again, to see if he was suspicious they were there or not, Olivier opened his mouth and asked, loud in the shockingly quiet world—everyone really had vanished under the strain of the still audible alarm at the holding cells—when Porsq had briefly managed to escape from his captors and how he had even come to decide he wanted to try and escape at all.