[Can’t Opt Out]

The playground shook and split. A million fragments of wires and metal shattered and rocked. Panels seemed to melt away. Wires tugged themselves into perfect coils. Spikes and needles slipped into hiding.

Examining it now, Emilia tried to make sense of it. Now, after all these eons, she understood Curtisal’s abilities better, and yet…

And yet, it wasn’t enough. That boy was magical, his abilities reaching so far because of the strange nature of what he could do. The 17th holding cells weren’t outside of his Expansion range, but certainly, they had been on the outskirts, and combined with the reality that the dungeons had been crafted by a Lowdouran? Something that should have protected them from the boy’s reach?

Sometimes, Emilia looked back on moments like this—and unlike so many of the things that happened in Falmíer, this bit she remembered in perfect clarity—and wondered how certain pieces hadn’t yet fallen into place.

There was no way the dungeons had been created entirely around an already existing maze of tunnels and rooms within the foundation of the city—not unless something just as horrific had already existed there, making use of the strange liminal space of territory protected, excluded, transgressed by the Lowdouran’s abilities. The other option? A Lowdouran had created the dungeons for Fräthk.

Many of them had wondered later, of course, about how Fräthk had found out about Jerrial’s abilities. Jerrial had been bothered by it when he lived within the holding cells, but at some point, he had simply decided that he’d messed up—shown his abilities to someone who couldn’t be trusted—or that perhaps, his genetic testing as a child had shown something that had led Fräthk to him. What did it matter that there was no record of what a Lowdouran’s genetics looked like? Fräthk collected special people, and Jerrial, regardless of whether someone understood what was hidden within his DNA or not, clearly held a unique genetic sequence within himself.

The other option? That another Lowdouran had been held by Fräthk before? Forty years of searching later, there was still no proof that there had ever been another, yet, it dug at Emilia’s mind now.

There was no reason for this place to exist as it did before Fräthk, and yet, the story had always been that it was created when the cavern itself was first birthed. It was a dig of strangeness through her; Lüshan hoarded its history—made museums of its landmarks, crematoriums of its pain—and in no world could she see the countless dungeons Fräthk had found for themself being forgotten. Other nations forgot their horrors—attempted to bury them and deny, deny, deny. For all its faults, Lüshan rarely did any such thing. Myths rose out of their failures and evils. Yanswt would not let anything be forgotten, and while Emilia was sure some things had been slipped into holes of information, dozens of dungeons in the capital? All untouchable and strange and deformed by something? No, these were not the sorts of things Lüshanians forgot. One did not find places like this within Lüshan—no, they created them.

Yet, there had never been any indication that another Lowdouran existed alongside Fräthk, aside from Jerrial’s mother and her mother before her, no indication that either woman had ever worked for Fräthk. Then again, everything Emilia had heard and seen implied Fräthk was far older than any of them, even those who knew Fräthk, had assumed—and really, if Vtraní was correct and there was someone lingering behind Fräthk, pulling their strings, if her assumptions that it was something rather than a someone were correct…

Just how many Fräthks had there been, digging holes of torture into Falmíer’s foundation?

As for Curtisal… well, later on, more of his abilities would be revealed, but if Emilia had thought more on it now, as the boy’s creation stretched around her, opening up a path forward and a route of return for her, she would have wondered about how he had done it.

That boy, always so strange and wicked and sweet, Emilia didn’t blame him for keeping so much of his abilities secret, especially considering what she would learn later, about how even Fräthk’s loyal viewed him as a monster for what he had made of himself.

“All I wanted was a little normalcy. I didn’t— If I’d— If I hadn’t—”

Emilia could remember the conversation, displaced a little from the moment it had happened, facts not quite adding up because it had occurred in that painful, blurry place between Alliance Ridge’s destruction and the erasure of her memories, nothing within that space of pain able to be fully pulled into submission by the clones.

“It’s not your fault,” and it was a funny thing to say, considering how much words of blame for the same thing—for undeserved blame—had fallen over her and tangled themself within her entire person. “Don’t blame yourself for things you can’t change.” Too bad she couldn’t take her own advice.

Beside her, her friends hesitated as they watched the chasm of Curtisal’s playground open for them, their eyes lit up in fear and trepidation—all except Rayleen’s. Emilia wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the woman afraid. Of course, she’d heard from Vern, later, that the woman had been afraid on their ascent from this terrible place. Maybe, if she were lucky, she’d get to—

Emilia moved, abrupt and nauseating, and being pulled form place to place, mind to mind, hadn’t been like that before—hadn’t been so violent. Also, was that the sky? Well, that was nice, to not be trapped underground for a moment.

Snow spread around her, and while she hadn’t seen it before, she knew this must be Nur’tha—the place where Rayleen had lived. It was impossible to tell if this was the more permanent settlement they’d set up or something for the Bur—or perhaps a smaller group of tribes—alone, but it was definitely Nur’tha, definitely something more permanent than the few pictures she’d seen from the Gru had ever implied the tribe of their own youth to be.

Leaning forward, Emilia peeked over Rayleen’s shoulder, reading her xphern messages to someone labelled as only “G.” A part of her wondered if it was that man—the one her own rarely used xphern had labelled as G.H. Maybe it was; maybe not. Regardless, the message…

In her hands, the xphern shook, and oh… this was Rayleen afraid, wasn’t it? Annoyingly, the message wasn’t in a language Emilia knew—and strange, that. Despite how out of practice she was with a handful of languages, she still knew most by sight. So, what was this one? Something from the southern continent? A written version of whatever that strange language Lux’s kidnapper—plus that other man—were speaking? That would be quite a coincidence, but at the same time…

A growl of frustration, a scream of anger, brought both Emilia and Rayleen’s eyes shooting up to the other side of the courtyard.

“Let me go!” a small child—a small little Hyr—yelled, and fuck if they weren’t adorable. All righteous fury and—

And the small little syn—or would they have still been a sy at this point?—sent a skewer of energy surging out of them. The adult who had been hauling them along by the scruff of their coat went flying back, and Hyr was off, running back the way they’d just been dragged from. Another synat—the syna Bur, perhaps—slipped into their path, their energy reaching out to press Hyr into submission, sending them to their knees.

“Please!” Hyr yelled and Emilia’s heart broke for them—for all the pain she could feel radiating off their tiny body, their golden eyes filled with tears. “I have to go! Please? They need me— They— You don’t understand!” they yelled and yelled and yelled before curling in on themself, their body a small dot of fuzzy white in the hard-packed snow, the grime of life coating the trail.

“I am sorry, little one. I cannot let you go to them,” the person who was probably the syna Bur said. Whatever they had done to Hyr—disabled their core temporarily, perhaps—they apparently didn’t think the child—who couldn’t be more than ten, probably a few years younger—a danger anymore. So, they turned and left Hyr there, sobbing into the snow.

In front of her, Rayleen stood, wandering her way over to the child she seemingly hadn’t wanted but had produced, nonetheless, Emilia’s spirit trailing after her.

“Hyr,” she said, soft and apologetic—and apologetic for what?

“It’s not fair,” little Hyr said. “They need me—he’s hurting her, Mymaru. He’s hurting her, and I can’t be there to help. She should know people love her and that she doesn’t need to let that man break her—he’s trying to do that, you know? Break her, so she can’t save the universe, and—” Another sob broke free of Hyr as Rayleen’s hand pressed to their back, and Emilia realized that they were talking about her, weren’t they? This little child…

Had she been able to force herself awake, Emilia might have, if only to get answers from Hyr about how long they had been having visions of her—about how much they knew about her and her life before they crossed paths in the raid. Part of her had already suspected the syn had known more about her than they’d implied, but this? For them to have been sobbing because they couldn’t get to her—

Because they couldn’t get her away from Daniel?

A memory of Hyr, from earlier that day—the real day, so long ago and yet so recent—flooded through her: Hyr, coming out of the Virtuosi System to hold her as she fell apart, remembering her love for Halen, her fear of Daniel.

Had he really been trying to break her, the way this little child was claiming? How did Hyr know—or were they just guessing? Perhaps more important: how much had they seen? Emilia barely remembered Daniel’s hands on her, but she knew the clones had slipped so much of his terror deeper within her. Did Hyr—both this child and the one she currently slept against—know exactly what had happened to her? That was…

“You don’t know that,” Rayleen replied, her fingers shifting through her child’s hair, already weighty with braids that indicated exactly how skilled even this young version of the Hyr she knew had been.

“I do!” Hyr yelled, pushing up to glare at their mother. It was rather funny, even if the reality of what she was witnessing was nothing but heartbreaking. Little Hyr was so impassioned and irate, and for her—for her.

For so much of her life, the people she loved had been leaving her behind. Rafe, the triplets, Olivier, Halen. So many of those times she didn’t remember, but she knew she’d been left over and over again for reasons she understood, for reasons she didn’t; yet, here was this child, trying to apparently make their way through the snowy wilderness of a war-torn continent to get to her.

Emilia wanted to hold them close, and whisper that it was alright—in the end, it wasn’t Daniel who had broken her, but Halen, and despite how much she hated him for being the asshole the clones had made of him, for being the war hero who had died and left them behind, Halen had never meant to hurt her.

Halen had never meant to hurt her, not at the end, not in the middle, even if she knew he had hurt her.

Little golden orbs glared at Rayleen for a moment before blowing wide and finding her spectre, lingering behind Rayleen. She’d have to ask, later, whether Hyr had actually seen her—whether this vision was real because while Emily was kinda assuming it was, there was no way for her to know.

“I’ll come for you, okay?” Hyr said, tears streaming down their cheeks and leaving angry lines of red as each drop of sadness chilled in the cold air. “One day, I’ll get to you, and keep you safe.”

If Hyr could see her, Rayleen clearly couldn’t, a frown pulling at her lips when she turned back and stared straight through Emilia’s ghostly presence.

“You already have,” Emilia replied, smiling at this small child who had pulled at her from the moment they met, her gaze pulling to them within the raid, her body colliding with theirs in a brutal hug the first time they met in person. “You’re keeping me safe right now,” she added, wishing she could press her hands to Hyr’s chubby little cheeks and brush their tears aside. Neither did she have the ability to touch these memories and visions, nor did she have time to even try—the aether was already pulling her away once more.