[Can’t Opt Out]

✮ ✮ ✮ Halen ✮ ✮ ✮

The xphern transmission network was down.

The xphern transmission network was down? But only for locals? I hadn’t even known that was possible—although, really, when would I have needed to know such things were possible? At the same time, it made sense that the network would have some ability to be shuttered. Censors had similar abilities, although those internal blocks were easy to get around with hacks. Shut-downs of the aethernet were also possible, only alternative communication protocols able to get around an area going offaether.

Most of the time, such outages in Baalphoria were accidental or the result of some sort of big event. The most recent incident I could think of, where the aethernet had become inaccessible to almost everyone in the area, was during the terrorist attack that had killed my aunt and uncle about a decade ago. Not only had the nearest aethernet hubs been destroyed by the terrorists, leaving coverage spotty, but SecOps and The Black Knot had activated the emergency, aethernet shutdown function for all non-law-enforcement Censors in the area.

There were reasons for cutting off civilian aethernet access, of course. For one thing, while any terrorists still in the area were likely defaulting to some other form of communication, cutting off the aethernet did cut them off from communicating with anyone too far away—good for keeping anyone working behind the scenes from learning how things were going.

Then there was the information management aspect. The less information that leaked out into the world—or made it back to people law enforcement needs to question—the better.

The bigger reason, however, was colder: the emergency, aethernet shutdown function forced all working Censors in the area to send out a small data packet, containing information about their owner—name, location information, emergency contacts, as well as their current medical condition. This gave law enforcement facts about whom to prioritize saving and where to start looking for them, as well as whom to consider a lost cause. The worst part, however, was the reality that shutdown had forced thousands of guests at the convention centre, including my aunt and uncle, to die alone, their Censors unable to send out last messages to loved ones, or drag them into calls so they could die with a friend or family member whispering into their mind. With the aethernet so spotty, however, law enforcement had needed as much of it for themselves as possible.

I had no idea if the xphern transmission network was ever taken down for similar reasons of reserving resources for law enforcement—although, I would be asking about it once out of this horrible little city—but it was a giant oversight that we hadn’t realized the network could be taken down either entirely or for specific xphern exchange protocols.

Both Hurinren and Yujao were apologetic as they relayed what their more-or-less hostage was telling them about how the network worked. While neither of them had known exactly how the network worked to block xpherns, nor that Lüshan was known for blocking local xphern exchange protocols during civil unrest, both had known that blocking was possible. Hurinren even had knowledge of how such blocking would work during Dionese civil unrest.

None of us could blame them too much for not having realized it could also become relevant in our situation—although, Polianna tried to put the blame on them. Coral quickly took her xphern away, sending me a message in our private relay and asking that I apologize to the Dionese men for her girlfriend’s rudeness. Apparently, the other girl was stressed because her mother had finally been dragged out of the mysterious meeting that was keeping her and Emilia’s father—and oddly Vrin Devano—occupied, and had been informed of the situation.

Her mother had yelled at her a bit, before needing to force her way back into the meeting to drag Miles out.

“It’s odd that even Malcolm is having such a time getting your father out of that meeting, right?” I asked Emilia, who was in the middle of doing too many things, her story to Hurinren and Yujao about her recent realization that she wasn’t using {Hidey Hole} to its full capabilities due simply to never having used it in other contexts falling silent as something happened on her end.

Having heard the story of how she had ended up sleeping in Olivier’s bed, due to losing her key in Seer’ik’tine and not having realized she could use {Hidey Hole} to get back into the room, I finished typing out her story into our group chat. I omitted the bit about the bed sharing, of course, but it was a relevant story for all of us, and I transcribed the similarities into our group relay because clearly, this was something a number of us were struggling with.

Despite having spent years using our knowledge and skills in both our prank war and combat classes, we were all still children who lived within a vacuum. It was easy to rely on past experiences to guide our way, but it was causing us to overlook things that should have been obvious.

Obviously, {Hidey Hole} could be used to get into locked rooms.

Obviously, all nations that used the xphern network to any true extent, or had foreigners who used them within its borders, would have the same capabilities as Dion’s government in blocking their usage.

Obviously, there were other bits of information and potential plans that we were overlooking, and we needed to keep that in mind.

Confidence was great and all, and certainly, a number of us could be somewhat deranged in what we used our skills and abilities for. Still, we needed to be careful of falling into patterns that might get us killed.

We weren’t going into a fight with other children who would only kill us in some sort of freak accident—although, thankfully, the worst that had ever happened was two of my other friends accidentally getting themselves stuck together and then falling off a cliff. They’d been fine, aside from the concussions, two broken legs, a shattered knee, several cracked ribs, and their hands being stuck together for three weeks—the skill they’d used had been stolen from Emilia, who had locked it to certain users only. When they’d tried using it, the thing had backfired, causing them to tumble off the cliff as it did some sort of sticky-equivalent of her long-lasting glitter bombs—and oh, that was actually a good idea.

✮ ✮ ✮ Clemence ✮ ✮ ✮

“Despite popular belief,” Emilia said, her smile a cutting edge as she stared down her very stuck quarry—a man whom none of us, not even Rayleen, recognized—“I actually can get rid of these semi-permanent skills.”

Emilia ran a long finger down across our new captive’s chest, leaving a line of glittery aether that I could feel through the universe. Beside me, Rayleen stiffened, her eyes blowing a little wider in the dim, flickering light of the stairwell as she took in whatever the silverstrain girl had just done.

“This here? Even a lavi’s code can’t get rid of this. It’s like a little, mini aether scar. It’ll fade in a few weeks, but until then? Nope. Here to stay. Like I said, I can get rid of it, but I don’t let anyone know that.” The other girl’s head tilted, a spark of derangement in the movement that made my heart clench. Emilia was beautiful, and her acting abilities? Superb, and had I not already learned that she was ridiculously sweet, if also a little stupid, I might have through her actually so terrifying and murderous. Instead, I just wondered where she had learned to act like that—whether she had taken acting lessons, which all medical students had to take, in order to fake that they weren’t freaking out, or if she was pulling from her experience watching someone else.

I couldn’t say I liked the idea that she knew someone who could pull this sort of energy out of themself, nor that this sweet girl had been forced to see them like this. Silverstrains already experienced so much hurt, and the idea that maybe, whoever she had seen act this way, might have been hurting her made my blood boil.

“This stickiness is the same~” Emilia sighed, her entire body deflating as she watched our captive squirm. Much like Arinesi—whom we had left tied up and unconscious further up the stairs, Rayleen having done something to her that would keep her core from properly connecting to her meridians for a bit—Emilia had surrounded this person with what she called junk skills as well. The way she had explained it, as we worked our way further down the stairs, was that she used so many tiny, meaningless skill around a person that it made it impossible for all but the most powerful of people—although she had added some caveats for people with certain Perfect and Excess Categories and lavender codes—to use any skills or abilities themself. As it was a resource- and aetherstore-intensive skill she couldn’t use it for too long. As she had a razor-quick aether recovery rate, however, it didn’t take her long to get over the strain of the skill.

As I knew little about core abilities or skills or the aether, I didn’t really understand anything other than that Emilia was more powerful than I think any of us, save Rayleen, had realized. As a result, I felt more than a little stupid for running around Emilia when I had heard Arinesi scream. Clearly, Emilia didn’t need our help, and all I had done was hurt her when I landed on her. The other girl had gotten over her annoyance with me within a few minutes; still, I needed to make it up to her.

So, while I was keeping track of Emilia’s conversation—which included her singing the praises of someone named Halen who had apparently suggested she could use this semi-permanent sticky skill as a way to lock someone up—I was mostly focusing on following her request that I see if anyone from Fräthk’s network would respond to my xphern messages.

“We want to see if any of their people are still receiving messages, mostly. Yours obviously works, but it could just be a random xphern without a Lüshanian—or maybe even Falmíer-specific—exchange protocol, or it could have some private exchange protocol that the organization managed to set up. I don’t know if knowing will help us any, but who knows. Plus, if you say you’re in the city and want to be kept in the loop so you can stay out of everyone’s way, they might keep you updated on what’s happening. Even better, maybe you’ll be added to a group chat or something.” The silverstrain had shrugged, telling them that any information they could get at this point was better than nothing.

“Mostly,” she had added, her body tensing in a way that I was learning meant she had sensed something—someone—nearby, “the problem is that it doesn’t seem like any government officials anywhere know what’s happening unless they’re informed by our group. We don’t even know if the corrupt Drini are being given information at the moment. While we wanted to keep things about all our Baalphorian involvement quiet, before Lüshan and Baalphoria could start fighting about what to do and who had jurisdiction and whether we should just leave my teacher to die, we still thought that, by this point, someone in both our governments would know more. The fact that they don’t, and that the Drini seem to be locking at least some officers out of knowing the entire city is collapsing into a war zone? Yeah, that’s bad, and while we can guess at who might be responsible for that, it would be good to know a little more, so we can make some more educated guesses.”

✮ ✮ ✮ Lan’za ✮ ✮ ✮

Mother was angry, although not quite furious. I couldn’t really blame her.

I had waited too long, hoping that someone would contact me to let me know what was happening in Lüshan. No one had. Now, of course, I knew what had happened, Polianna having finally sent me a collection of coded messages about the situation and an update that everyone was okay—more or less, Samina, Levi, and Lux still missing in Falmíer’s cave system.

I had not even realized anyone was missing because while I had a personal xphern, it had been illegally attained for me. It was not something I could carry around without care, and as a result, the messages I was to receive on my government-issued xphern from those involved in the trek to Lüshan had to be more subtle—had to be passable as generic messages. As my mother looked through the messages I had received, they were innocent enough. Of course, now that she knew what was happening in Lüshan, it was easy to see that the messages were meant to inform me that everyone was okay—the sort of messages that could get me in trouble, but could also be brushed aside as nothing but children talking, even if all the people sending me messages were currently in the midst of a growing conflict.

Unfortunately, as my government-issued xphern could not be included in the larger group message where the more important details of what was happening were being given, I hadn’t even realized anyone was missing in the cave system to begin with. Instead, I had waited to hear from anyone about the situation—to have some sort of confirmation given to me that Emilia’s friends hadn’t run into trouble enough to kill them on their way into Falmíer, my last communication with them a note that they were heading into the cave system and would check in soon. It was in code, of course, but I understood the messages well enough.

They were going in, but not all of them, because something had gone wrong. With our simple code alone, this wasn’t enough for me to make sense of what had happened. All I knew was something was wrong, but not so wrong that I should worry.

Then, no one had contacted me. So, I had waited and waited. I had even waited past the point when I should have been telling my mother what happened, cursing myself for not having risked carrying my personal xphern with me so I could send out queries as to what had happened. It would be bad if I were caught with it, but it would be far worse if I used my government-issued xphern to communicate with anyone.

The last thing this situation needed was our governments to start claiming this had been more than a bunch of children trying to help their friend, especially with Hurinren and Yujao taking part. If things went badly in Lüshan, it would be easy to point to Dion, Seer’ik’tine, and Baalphorian—as well as Crishar, with Prince Meridian now involved—as having been party to some conspiracy to cause some crisis or another.

Of course, as a message vibrated through my xphern, my mother handing it back to me to demand what the coded message meant—she could figure out enough of what they said, but it would be faster for me to decipher it for her—this turned out to be the last thing we should be worrying about.

“It says… the xphern network is down… but only for locals?” I said, glaring down at the message and trying to make sense of it. “I think it’s asking if there’s another way to get in contact with Wander Fulbrun? Saying that… he might not know anything of what is happening?”

My mother—whom I had already filled in on the details what little I knew of the various criminal groups and their cooperation with some faction of the Drinarna—turned, swearing, and stomped off, the security officers who had been standing outside the private room I had brought her to, so she could yell at me in private, yelping as the doors burst open. The woman was so irate that she didn’t even bother demanding I followed.

Still, I followed, stumbling as I sent a message off on my xphern, letting everyone know that my mother was now involved. I had been hoping to talk her down—convince her that, now that I was once again in contact with my friends, she should forget all about what was happening unless they actually needed help—so had forgone letting them know that she knew anything of the situation until now.

As she seemed to have more of an idea of what the messages I had just received meant, however, it seemed pointless to try and talk her out of taking over the situation now. Plus, in no world had any of us guessed that, after so many hours of increasing violence breaking through the streets of Falmíer and the papers checkpoint effectively grinding to a halt, the higher ups of the Lüshanian government might potentially have no idea that anything was happening. Perhaps they wouldn’t have known that Emilia was involved, but to potentially know nothing?

No, that wasn’t something any of us had expected, and that seemed very, very bad.