[Can’t Opt Out]

“That way,” Simeon signed, his hands easily falling into the variant of Emilia’s sign language they used for their combat classes. Quick, precise, and to Simeon at least, always Emilia’s.

In many ways, the language belonged to all of them, a million little alterations originating with those of them who knew the language as well as they knew Baalphorian; yet, Emilia was its source—was the one who had disregarded her minders and signed secrets of love to her brother, then she had burst into their classroom and disregarded Simeon’s parents and teachers and signed to Simeon himself despite knowing he wouldn’t know a single sign, all an invention of her and her siblings’ minds and love.

Now, they had all given pieces of themselves to her sign language. So much of the last twenty-five years had been spent developing Emilia’s sign language, breaking it down into different variations, all so they could communicate more efficiently, no matter what they were doing.

For Simeon, Emilia’s sign language was the place where he had found a home, and every small bit of innovation he had been able to add into it had been akin to him carving a piece of himself out. Then, whenever he used the language, his hands shifting and flicking and catching his emotions with far more ease than his tongue ever had—ever would—he gained pieces of himself and his friends back.

A flick here, and that was Darrian, making a spur-of-the-moment alteration because the previous cycle of signs to convey the ideas of move and be safe and be slow and a million other things had been too long.

A shift of the wrist here, and that was Halen, commenting that, given they were supposed to not be calling attention to themselves as they staked out another team’s hiding spot, the sign for stay low needed to be smaller.

A twitch of fingers here, and that was Leerin, messing around with combining signs and inadvertently giving the rest of them more ideas on how to adapt their signs for a million different reasons.

Bigger and brighter when they wanted to be loud or call attention to themselves. Small and subtle when they were passing notes in class or setting up a coup during their combat classes. Solid and menacing when they wanted someone who knew only the barest of details of their language to know their entire class was coming for them—a rallying call because even the most terrible members of the other side of the class knew the rules: those who didn’t fight for equality and kindness from their teachers or those who dared speak negatively of irregular deviations and Free Coloniers would be chased away by their class.

It had only happened once, shortly before Halen had transferred in—had been the reason there was a place in their class for him, Warren’s death eventually leaving space for Coral, although she had come in years after he had been killed. Oddly enough, it hadn’t been Emilia, with her new Censor, driving their former classmate out of their class, but Darrian, soft until he was all glares and crossed arms and strength enough to bodily remove people from the area.

Before having their D-Levels tested and their Censors installed, classrooms at most schools in Baalphoria were more fluid. It hadn’t been uncommon for their friend group to be split between three or four classes, although with how influential a few of their parents were, even Simeon’s parents hadn’t been able to force their school to put their daughter into a class apart from the rest of his friends—or, as Simeon’s parents put it, those bad influences on their daughter.

Simeon really couldn’t wait to be free of them.

Regardless, it was only once they started school the summer after their Censor installations that more set classes were created. Usually, little would change in that class makeup until they graduated, fourteen years later. Within days, Darrian had been threatening one of the girls who had originally been put into their class out.

That girl had been transferred into Polianna’s class—the one that existed just below theirs in terms of how heavy the school had anticipated their needs would be. The way the classes were split at their school had been strange, Simeon had learned. In most schools, class splits focused on friend groups and cooperation. Their school had focused on a mixture of friend groups and putting the most troublesome children together. So, from the beginning, their class had been signalled out as the one that would need adaptations, the one that was liable to cause trouble.

Ironically, as one of the calmest members of their friend group, known by even the teachers to be able to wrangle all of their most chaotic members with little effort, Darrian wasn’t supposed to be causing problems.

Yet, there he had been, threatening that girl—telling her that, if she didn’t request a transfer out of their class immediately, he was going to make sure she regretted it. Almost a decade and a half later, Simeon still wasn’t sure what the girl had said or done to upset Darrian so much. Later, she had become one of Polianna’s friends—one of those girls and boys who pretended to like Polianna, simply because she was rich and influential. Even Polianna, as far as Simeon had ever seen, hadn’t liked the girl; yet, neither she nor Darrian would fess up as to why.

As they moved through the building—a new one, as after a few scuffles and learning that members of the Department of Housing and Expansion were significantly more hostile towards them than seemed reasonable, they’d managed to get through the Cooperative Stand—searching for the headquarters of the department that managed the xphern transmission network, Simeon wasn’t sure why his mind had drifted towards this particular memory. One of those meandering thoughts, he supposed, that rose and fell with the shifts of the mind.

Simeon wasn’t even sure when he’d last thought of that girl and the fact that she had once been destined to be a member of their class. It was good that she’d left—for as much as many of his friends didn’t like Halen, Simeon thought their lives would be infinitely worse without him.

That this moment as an example: had Halen not come into their class and sparked their prank war and the combat classes that eventually followed, Simeon doubted they’d be capable of any of this. Their lives would be so different—their personalities and souls something so not what they were now.

As someone who quite liked himself—a sentiment he owed to all his friends, who had never ceased to insist he was perfect despite everything his parents and a handful of teachers and even his mind itself had constantly told him—Simeon would never wish for a world where he wasn’t exactly who he was today. Change would come, of course. They would grow and experience so much more of the world. Really, it was unlikely they would even escape the day without becoming entirely different people; yet, they would be the same. Their education and wars and training had left all of them so impossibly solid and confident in who they were that Simeon doubted they could be changed so easily.

Perhaps that was too optimistic. Simeon still thought it the truth: it would take something bigger than this mess to change any of them so entirely that any shift in personality that occurred because of their time in Falmíer would come as a surprise to him. To others… no, Simeon was sure a few of his friends would be shocked by the changes at least one member of their friend group was experiencing in real-time as they moved through the hanging city. Simeon was in no way surprised.

Sometimes, changes—or a lack thereof—were things that were a given; rather, it was simply a question of when the change would finally occur. A situation like this could certainly become the catalyst for huge changes; at the same time, it was the sort of situation that, when it didn’t lead to changes, could be just as shocking.

Simeon thought a few people might be hoping Leerin would take this situation as a catalyst for change. Simeon thought that unlikely, simply because nothing bad had so far happened to her because of her behaviour. Darrian muting her had been the worst thing, perhaps. Leerin was seemingly already over it, simply because she wasn’t an idiot and knew that she could be annoying. Upset at her cousin for muting her—and then forgetting to unmute her—or not, it wasn’t the sort of thing Leerin would hold a grudge over.

No terrible moment? No life-changing event? No epiphany of maybe I need to work on myself for Leerin.

“Ready?” Halen signed, hand placed to the door of the office they had come to, intent to figure out if they could get the xphern transmission network back up—or, at the very least, figure out who had taken it down.

As one, almost every member of their group assented, and as one, they let a sequence of skills slam out of them, just as they had done for years.

Barriers exploded out of Rafe and Leerin—Rafe protecting them from attacks that might come through the doorway or the wall itself as Halen blasted the door open, while Leerin focused on protecting their rear and sides. Simeon pulled dozens of offensive skills into his Censor’s queue, preparing for a fight that might never come, that might break out the moment the door slammed to the floor.

It was, for the moment at least, an attack that wasn’t coming—not that Simeon let his preloaded skills fizzle out. Against core users, the few milliseconds it would take to load them back up was unlikely to cause much of a problem, but Simeon’s Perfect Load Levels were more than enough to support leaving them prepped and ready without taxing his mind, while his recently upgraded Censor meant it could support sustained queueing for quite a while before it started to complain.

The scene behind the door… the only way that Simeon could describe it was to say it was a bloodbath.

Body parts lay strewn across the ground. Hands severed from arms, flaps of skin torn away from muscle and bone. Several heads had been seemingly ripped off bodies, their spines grotesque things that had been partially pulled free of necks. A collection of fingers had been torn free of someone, their body laying beside the lumps of flesh, their other hand reaching towards them as though seeking to be reunited in death. An eyeball lay squished on the ground, someone having stepped on it—Simeon could make out the tread of the shoe in the mush of it.

Oddly, he couldn’t see the head it had come from. Someone still alive? Or a body that was so entirely gone that nothing else remained of it?

Behind him, Leerin groaned and said something about how gross it was, but was otherwise quiet. Simeon could feel her shifting, though—could see her awareness of their surroundings and the halls laying out over their collective cataloguing of the area as she finally started paying attention. That was the thing: while they had been attacked a few times, until now, everything had been relatively calm. There had been death, yes. There had been Rafe, swinging violently when the rope was severed as he made his way across the chasm of the city. Dozens of people had attacked them since they’d entered that first building.

Aside from Lux being kidnapped—something that they had all been compartmentalizing, as they had no way of knowing anything about that situation at the moment, and they all knew better than to panic over something they had no control over—nothing serious had happened to their group. Other groups had it far worse, but again: panicking over things they could do nothing about was pointless. Let those groups deal with their problems and offer advice when needed. Otherwise, push thoughts of them as far aside as they could manage.

Perhaps, Simeon mused, as Leerin shifted, every part of her whiny personality falling away as the reality that they actually might be in danger fell over their entire group, there was something to be said for the older clones’ fear of their friend group.

They were monsters… most of them, anyways.

Behind Leerin, Janie turned and vomited, and it was such a small thing, for her to lose what little food she had in her stomach over the grotesque sight of the Department of Communication and Propaganda’s Mechanical Division’s front office. It was also the first time she had called attention to herself since they had entered the Secretarial Stand; even before that, she had been increasingly quiet and subdued.

The reality was, Simeon still thought this situation unlikely to change any of them so profoundly that they would emerge entirely different people. From what he had heard of the drop group, BJ seemed to be internalizing that he needed to work harder in order to feel like less of a burden as he mostly trailed his group, effectively useless. Leerin would continue being Leerin: someone whiny and annoying but always serious and useful when it was actually necessary. As for Janie?

Janie, Simeon had thought for a long time, resented being stuck with their friend group. Had she been given a choice, she would have preferred a different class to theirs. Janie had been put with them, however, and for one reason or another, she had never requested a transfer out. Instead, she had stayed with them, yet, she had never quite fit; now, her decision to not leave their group long ago was coming to a head.

There were several other people who, from the outside, didn't seem to fit with their group. Darrian was often viewed as soft. BJ as an unmotivated hanger-on. Simeon himself knew people thought him only included because the rest of their class was protecting him.

These opinions were all missing so much context. When it came to Janie, however? Simeon truly didn’t think she belonged. The rest of them, regardless of how the world saw them from the outside, were just as troublesome and demanding and innovative and motivated and entitled and every other word anyone had ever used to describe the more notable members of their friend group as those members themselves were. Sometime, it was subtler, but it was there.

They loved the chaos, the learning, the troublemaking, the vendettas.

Janie enjoyed little of it, often tucking herself in tight and vanishing when things got to be too much. Usually, it didn’t matter—it wasn’t like any of them were ever forced to take part in an activity or prank. Right now, it mattered, and she was still hiding, and it was going to break their friendships.

When they left this city, it would not surprise Simeon if she left their friend group as a whole—their classmate had, after all, wanted to leave them for decades. Why she hadn’t, Simeon wasn’t sure they would ever know.