[Can’t Opt Out]

In a strange twist of things Halen had never thought would happen, he had never been as happy to be a low-dev as he was at this moment. This was saying a lot, considering he had spent nearly a decade and a half at war with a non-dev. As a 2D, there wasn’t the biggest of differences between himself and Emilia; yet, he had heard her speak of her perspective on the non-dev status a few times. Generally, he tended to agree with her: outside of war and specific professions, the difference between being a non-dev and a low-dev, between being a low-dev and a sub-30 and every other delineation of D-Levels, was relatively small. In class, for instance, they all had their strengths and weaknesses, their interests and things they hated learning with a fiery passion.

The problem was that, prank war or not, he and Emilia had been at war; hence, keeping up with her had often been a bit of work. That single D-Level—his own Balance Levels were a single glitch of genetics away from being Perfect—was somehow enough to make a difference.

Perhaps, with how close the two of them were suddenly becoming, Emilia would be interested in trying to figure out why his Balance Levels of all things—a Category that was more noted for affecting mental health and should have made little difference in their war—somehow did make a tiny bit of a difference. It wasn’t a lot, and Halen actually doubted that Emilia herself knew that he had to work to keep up with her flawless perfection. It was still enough to give her that tiny bit of an edge.

This was all to say that, for the last fifteen years, he had been impossibly glad to be as close to Perfect as someone could get without actually being a non-dev. It was what allowed him to keep up with the girl he loved—to make sure that she kept looking his way, something between hatred and appreciation and awe always written through her silver-shot eyes. Had he been even the tiniest bit less perfect, this beautiful, brilliant girl might have barely spared him a glance—might have treated him as she did some of the other people on his side of the class: as though they were beneath her.

Emilia, Halen knew, was one of the sweetest people in the world. The silverstrain was also a snobby brat, petty to her core. Ironically, he had come to realize that some of the qualities she disliked Polianna for were things that Emilia herself also contained within her. The difference was that Polianna exuded those qualities nearly all the time, whereas Emilia only treated some people as though they were beneath her, only interacted with some people as though she were entitled to their person, affection, money. In neither case was it malicious; rather, Polianna simply wanted to keep people at a distance—it was easier to be hated because of something so obvious, rather than due to her actual personality, Coral had once told him—while Emilia had accidentally ended up that way, mostly due to the clones.

They had spoiled her, this little girl who recognized and loved all of them, and that had consequences.

Halen was still impossibly in love with her, and what he wouldn’t give for her to treat him like one of her beloved clones: like the lovesick boy he was, who would carve his heart out, if only she asked him to.

Yeah, he had a problem. It was fine… probably.

Regardless, being a low-dev kept Emilia looking at him; yet, in this moment of doing a dozen things at once, Halen had quite seriously never been happier to be a low-dev. Getting the girl’s attention was great and all; staying alive might have been a bit more important.

Well, at least his priorities weren’t completely fucked-up? Like… they were pretty fucked-up—love did that to a person, his father had once said. The man had then begun to regale him with a collection of mortifying stories from when he had courted his wife. Halen could have done without hearing about a few of those instances of his father being a lovesick fool. Having recently pushed Emilia off the Huss’tra, all so she could get the fall and climb she’d been promised, then having climbed the wall without any skills, all so he could see her smile—not to mention launching a mission to come all the way to Falmíer, all the make sure she was okay—Halen wasn’t sure he could judge his father anymore.

As far as he knew, his father had never risked his life for his mother—that instance of possibly beating up, possibly killing some purists didn’t count, as his father was a low-dev and trained like a Grey Sander. Those purist fools had never stood a chance.

Dozens of messages slotted into Halen’s relay with Leerin, who was currently responsible for trying to figure out why the bone puller had been poking around at the one machine. Unfortunately, Leerin’s ability to understand even Baalphorian technology was… mediocre, at least in terms of what their class knew. This put her leaps and bounds ahead of the average Baalphorian—who tended to barely understand Censors or skills—but tech stuff wasn’t something she enjoyed learning about, nor something she had a great aptitude for. Combined with her needing to go through a non-Baalphorian computer system… yeah, there was no chance she was going to be able to figure anything out herself.

Still, Leerin wasn’t stupid, and she could follow Halen’s instructions with relative ease.

In an ideal world, Halen would have switched places with her, and really, had their attacker even been a lavender code, Halen might have considered it. Lavender codes might have brutal power, but there was little chance Simeon would lose against one, willbrandmaster that he was. When it came to the bone puller, though? One slip of the defensive skills he and Simeon had wrapped around every member of their group, and the bone puller would be tugging their bones free of sockets, teeth free of their jaws—they might even remove their limbs altogether. Leerin was a skilled support, and it was possible she could manage to keep the defensive skills cycling properly. Realistically, the bone puller was so dangerous that Leerin hadn’t even been offended when Halen had told her she was going to need to be his hands and eyes over at the computer.

So, Leerin was feeding him information while he worked to keep the bone killer from killing any of them, and he supposed Simeon and Rafe had been correct: now that shit was serious, Leerin had shifted into someone focused and reliable. Gone was the whiny, complaining girl. In her place was someone confident in her abilities and taking instructions well. It was a rather horrific counter to Janie’s own presence, lingering in the corner doing nothing but cowering.

The girl hadn’t even bothered to erect a defensive ability around herself, if only so he and Simeon didn’t have to focus on protecting her. Instead, she cowered, her head buried between her knees as she rocked. Messages to her went unanswered. Screams for her to do anything—protect herself, run away, join Rafe in fighting, join Leerin in figuring out the machine—all did nothing, and Halen understood that people could become overwhelmed by stress and horrible situations. This, however, seemed like too much, and if it were up to him…

Halen’s heart clenched as he realized that, were it entirely up to him, he would remove his defensive skills from her. The bone puller was dangerous enough that the rest of them could always use more defensive skills—there was a reason why Leerin was cycling her own defensive skill underneath Halen’s while she occasionally threw out attacks to disrupt the bone puller’s assault of Rafe, the Laprise boy shifting perfectly with each of her attacks, highlighting their decades of working alongside one another.

Still, Halen worried. If anything happened to Rafe—the one primarily fighting the young woman as well as the one she was most heavily targeting with her abilities—Emilia would crack apart.

Back when Rafe had broken up with her… that had been the most upset Halen had ever seen her. Emilia had tried to kill him. All Halen had wanted to do was wrap her in a hug and tell her it was okay—that she could be sad and mad and heartbroken. He would be there. He would love her. He would give her the unending affection and adoration she so dearly wanted and didn’t think herself worthy of.

If he let Rafe die, Halen wasn’t sure Emilia would ever forgive him. It didn’t matter that Rafe had broken her heart: Emilia still loved him, and losing him would rend her heart—leave her a puddle of grief that she may never be able to recover from.

It was a bit terrible, but Halen loved her all the more for the fact that she loved so completely. It was sweet.

What he wouldn’t do for her to layer that sort of all-encompassing love onto him. That wouldn’t happen if Rafe died; therefore… yeah, he would happily leave Janie to die if the other three members of their group agreed. Unfortunately, none of them agreed.

Apparently, Emilia would also be unimpressed if they left Janie to die. At the very least, the other three did agree that Janie was being a brat and that none of them should actively risk their lives to protect her.

No jumping in between her and incoming attacks then. Interestingly, Leerin mentioned something about looking back on her friendship with Janie and beginning to question whether any of it had ever actually been genuine. Now wasn’t the time to chat about that—Halen was already busy with attacking and defending and looking through everything Leerin found and talking her through the next stage of working her way through the computer—but he kinda wanted to know what sort of things she’d realized, looking back.

Janie, in the end, was someone Halen barely knew existed most of the time, slipped into the background and out of the action as she usually was—it was part of the reason he’s been surprised she’d come.

“Wait… go back,” he said into his relay with Leerin, having opted for audio because, for one, he tended to message in shorthand by default and Leerin had already expressed how much she hated that, and for another, he really didn’t want to be having to send a million messages to her. Better to just say it clearly.

Diligently, Leerin went back—without needing to be talked through it this time, as she was a fast learner and after being given instructions once or twice tended to remember what to do. “What are you looking for?” she asked, scrolling through the screen of error logs when Halen asked to see more.

Loading his Censor full of defensive skills and directing Simeon to take over managing the coordinates for where and when each would activate—Halen wanted to be able to focus on the logs, but the slight lag between each activation of skills as the Rafe in particular moved meant he and Simeon were both needing to protect Rafe, lest they leave a gap in their protection—Halen focused on the logs.

“Can you check the bodies for time of death?” he asked Leerin, unsure if she would have a skill capable of doing so—she didn’t, but it was easy enough to request one from Taelor, whose group was quickly reaching the 17th holding cells, and while still leery of further assaults, currently wasn’t engaged in active combat.

It took a moment for the skill to arrive, another for Leerin’s Censor to load it up. Then, it was just a matter of her activating it a few times, getting the hang of it, before timestamps began filtering into their relay.

“Oh,” Leerin said as she let her Censor snap up more time of deaths—which tended to have an accuracy of several minutes, although readings of several bodies gave error margins of a few hours for reasons that didn’t make sense to Halen. Something for him to look over later; clearly, The Black Knot needed a better skill. A few minutes inaccuracy was one thing, but for deaths that had only happened in the last twenty or so minutes, an error margin of hours was unacceptable. If the body had been left to rot into some strange environment, feasted on by animals and bugs, sure; inside a climate-controlled room? Absolutely unacceptable.

At least it was enough for both he and Leerin to easily see what he’d already begun to suspect based on the logs alone: the bone puller might be exactly what she appeared to be.

“Hey,” Halen yelled, throwing his voice into a skill that the young woman wouldn’t be able to avoid, while Rafe pulled back, perfectly happy to trust that Halen wasn’t fucking them over by telling him to not take the distraction as a chance to take the bone puller out.

In the end, killing one of their classmates together—not to mention both being stupidly in love with the same girl—had bonded them. They might not like each other much, but that didn’t mean they didn’t trust one another.

The bone puller’s eyes slid his way, her entire body pulled taut, ready to attack them once again. Yet, the fact that she wasn’t attacking them—as well as the fact that her attacks had always seemed a little half-hearted, more fearful than filled with killing intent—implied that she had realized the same thing: they may very well be here for the same thing.

“You’re trying to get the xphern transmission network back up?” Halen asked, raising his hands as though that would make him any less deadly. “That’s what we’re here for, too”—not quite the truth, as they’d been more interested in who had taken down the network to begin with; bringing it back up if they could would simply have been a bonus… that may have created even more chaos in the city. Something they’d decided to discuss later, should they happen to figure out how to bring it back up.

Regardless of the small stretching of the truth, Halen was willing to bet the bodies strewed around them belonged to the people who had taken the xphern transmission network down. This girl had come to get it back up, then killed them when they wouldn’t let her fix it, or perhaps attacked her for daring to try, given she also appeared to be from the department. Then, their group had arrived when she’d been trying to bring it back up—as a bone puller, she would have felt them coming, and really, they were lucky she hadn’t attacked them when they first approached the room. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to kill innocents. Then, however, they hadn’t left—had instead begun poking around at the bodies and the computers. So, she’d decided to attack them because at the rate they were going, she might never get to try bringing the xphern transmission network back up.

The girl continued watching him, wary, before giving a slow nod. “Yes,” she replied, and Halen thought the rest of the groups had been lucky: as much as the one girl, Westrial, had attacked the drop group, she wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the bone puller. It was a stressful thing, to have to decide if they should trust this woman, when lowering their guards could give her space to snap their spines, pluck out their teeth, dislocate any limb she wanted.

Yeah… all the other groups had it way easier.