[Can’t Opt Out]

✮ ✮ ✮ Vtraní ✮ ✮ ✮

Prex had the little boy. It had only been a matter of time before it happened, those women passing the child off to the man because all they had ever cared about was doing what was best for them. It was the sort of mindset many of us had gained over our years, decades, centuries even, of servitude; usually, even those of us whose hearts had been flayed and cracked open weren’t so cruel as to use children to gain favour.

It really was too bad that Prex had little incentive to kill the women themselves—if nothing else, someone else might have killed them both for daring to bargain away a child in exchange for their own freedom. Prex wouldn’t—something about being a man of his word, as though anything were so unbelievable.

In my hand, my xphern buzzed, messages coming through from different people as the reality that Xavier had been handed off to someone who would flay his soul into ribbons before passing him back to Fräthk landed with the other groups.

There were so many people mixed into the message threads, the most interesting of which was Gëon. Such a strange thing to have wound up not only working against Fräthk but working, even if only peripherally, with another group leader. Gëon and Fräthk were part of the same overall organization, of course, but their loyalty to one another—or even to the organization as a whole—was something that didn’t exist; both would swipe a blade over the other’s throat, seize control of the entire organization, if given the chance.

“So, the changes of the women being killed by him are pretty low?” one of the people asked—there were too many people in the chat, and a number of them were using a single xphern to communicate. Already, I’d been told that Levi was using Gëon’s xphern to relay the messages of the Baalphorian who had been captured by Qoréa, as well as occasionally comments from Gëon and the little mind eater, although he and Gëon’s little shadow were no longer with their group.

No… they were increasingly closer to where our group currently was, although Curtisal and I would be leaving Anarch behind soon enough and moving on to aid another group.

That girl… when she fought, no one wanted to be in the area, and she was about to be given all the permission to destroy that she wanted.

As for Curtisal and I…

Something tugged at me, just as it had been tugging at me for hours—since I had first laid eyes on the Baalphorian man, Olivier. No, that was a lie. It was a tug that had existed since well before that—since I had woken that morning, perhaps? As I kept little schedule in my day-to-day life, it wasn’t uncommon for me to find my feet taking me to one holding cell or another as the mood took me. To have been so pulled to the 18th, however, even before the man was in the city itself…

Really, as Curtisal pulled his vehicles of death into the smoke and destruction of the Covráni district—we’d been travelling through it for a while, chasing destruction as we went, but until now, it had mostly been debris and dust floating through the air, rather than heat and licks of flame slicing up buildings—I wasn’t sure what to think.

Something was strange, that was all I knew.

✮ ✮ ✮ Darrian ✮ ✮ ✮

I pulled Baylor closer as we moved, fighting down the urge to scream my frustration into the world. It was a terrible thing, to realize that we were powerless to protect a little kid. Maybe the man who had him would take his time, and Levi’s group would be able to get to him before anything too terrible happened to him, as though there were a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

There was no line. Everything that had been done to all of these people Fräthk had captured—to Westrial as well, her hand gripped tight in Baylor’s as we hurried along—was unfair and terrible. Who was to say one aspect of what had happened to them was worse than something else?

What is rape when compared to someone forcing you to kill over and over again?

What is being forced to kill someone compared to a lifetime of sexual slavery?

What is that lifetime of letting your body be used when compared to living in the sewers until your skin had soaked in so much shit and piss that I suspected Halen was going to need to create a special skill to clean Westrial up—drain those putrid liquids from her pores?

It was all terrible, yet, the reality that the little boy was facing seemed worse. Maybe it was because it was so close to all our hearts; we’d all seen people looking at Emilia like they wanted to eat her up. Occasionally, those eyes had shifted to other members of our friend group as well—Levi, quite often; occasionally Simeon, whom Malcolm had once described as something of a perfect victim. Usually, a combination of Emilia and the triplets were enough to protect the rest of us from those eyes, but we’d all seen them.

Children, I tended to think, were either terrible or wonderful at seeing those predator eyes. They were the sort of thing that no child should ever have to be aware of turning their way. All it took was a single second of a child realizing that someone could look at them like that—an internalization of the echo of cruelty and desire within those eyes as they skimmed over them. Then, I generally didn’t think there was any way to not see that predatory gaze whenever it popped up.

At the same time, we’d all missed it in Warren’s eyes, hadn’t we? Then again, maybe it had never been there to begin with—it weren’t as though, if I turned back my memories to those years of recordings of when he’d still been alive, I could see him looking at Emilia or anyone else as though—

“Darrie?”

I started as Baylor called my name, my friend pulling me up short as the rest of the group continued to move. Beside him, Westrial stopped as well, her bright-brown eyes shifting between Baylor and me as the middle triplet urged the rest of our group to continue on.

“We’ll catch up,” he promised, giving his brothers a wide grin as he bullied me towards an alleyway entrance, hauling Westrial behind him.

The look Taelor gave him was highly unimpressed—I couldn’t blame him, given all of us were still rather rattled by Baylor’s fight against the lavender code—but whatever words they exchanged were within a private relay, and then everyone was moving, leaving us behind for a few moments.

The alleyway we found ourselves in was dark in the way so much of Falmíer was. Dark and dreary and how did people live like this? While I knew that many of Lüshan’s subterranean cities were considered near-impenetrable, it seemed like a lot to give up light and fresh air for safety from other nations, especially when the last true conflict Lüshan had been in with anyone was during the last Colonial War.

Staying trapped underground for centuries, all because maybe another war would break out, didn’t seem worth it, honestly.

Cool fingers brushed over my cheek, Baylor having pulled his hand free of mine. It was rather funny to consider that, somewhere along the line, he had come to care for Westrial enough that he didn’t dare let go of her hand. If we were attacked, Baylor and I could microspark away; Westrial would need one of us to protect her.

“What’s wrong, Darrie?” Baylor asked, and what a strange thing, to suddenly find myself the recipient of his sweet and caring side, always reserved for the people he loved—for his brothers and Emilia; now, for myself and Westrial as well.

Swallowing, I pressed my eyes closed. “That little boy. I just— I’m worried about him, and it’s reminding me of how close Emmie came to being hurt like that when she was little, and how Warren did hurt her.”

Regardless of whether I had also been drugged that night, waking to find Doctor Vickers watching over me as I recovered from a serious hit to my head, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if things had been different if I hadn’t let Leerin talk me into leaving the party early. If I had been there…

I don’t know. Maybe nothing would have changed. Maybe Emilia would have been safe—wouldn’t be afraid to let someone touch her while she was even the smallest bit intoxicated.

Baylor’s thumb rubbed over my jaw, and while feelings bubbled inside me, there was no point in voicing them—no point in bringing up how wrong Baylor’s own lack of worry for that little boy was. Baylor would fight to protect the little boy, but he wouldn’t really care about him. That was just the way black knots were, and there was no point in mentioning it, nor any point in dwelling on it.

It just was, as was the reality that with Baylor now considering me a friend, everyone I cared for would find themselves victim to his protection, including that little boy. That was good enough for me—and really, there was something nice about the reality that Baylor’s affection for me had become something so powerful that he would bend himself, all for me.

Westrial, however, didn’t seem to know enough about black knots and their strange emotions to not ask why the clone wasn’t worried.

“Oh… well…” The laugh Baylor let out was strained and weird—weird enough that, when I opened my eyes, it was to level him with a glare.

“Baylie, do you know something?”

“I mean… not officially?”

“But you know something unofficially?” I asked, wondering if I could glare the other boy into submission—I doubted it. Baylor was the sort of brat who would need to be forced to give up the truth and while I had long ago figured out how to not make things too sexual while forcing Emilia and Levi to behave, I had no idea how to make Baylor behave, nor the time to figure it out. Plus, I was still slightly concerned that, if I were to push too hard, our fragile friendship might crack.

Maybe it wouldn’t—maybe, as I was increasingly coming to suspect, in the aftermath of that fall, Baylor had immediately wrapped the whole of his affection around me. Still, I didn’t really want to push it.

“I mean… I’ve made an educated guess about something—and really I’m surprised that, like, no one else seems to have guessed? Or, if they have, they haven’t said anything, and I guess I haven’t said anything until now either, so maybe that’s it? Everyone is worried about how everyone else will react if they know what’s probably going on—and it’s, like, not like we can do anything about it, so bringing it up wouldn’t be helpful, but—”

Pressing my fingers to Baylor’s lips shut him up. “Baylie, what do you think is probably going on? Something that means we shouldn’t worry about the little boy?”

“I mean… maybe worry about it a bit? But, don’t let it consume you?” the other boy said, his lips moving against my fingers, soft and plush, and I was hit by the sudden urge to stuff them down his throat and see if he had a gag reflex, an image of Baylor pressed fully to my groin and blinking up at me through teary eyes shooting through me along with a good dose of arousal.

This, of course, was when Halen messaged, asking if Baylor was arousing me again. Rude. I sent him the image my Censor had made for me in response, enjoying the way his own stalking function betrayed Halen as feeling something over the image. Having seen it a few times, I wasn’t quite sure if what Halen was feeling was arousal—something close, but also… complicated? I’d been able to pull up a handful of moments of various members of our group feeling aroused since installing the function, and something in Halen’s vitals always seemed off in this regard.

It was strange, and perhaps if I knew him better, I might have asked or been able to guess what was up with him. As it was, I simply updated him on what was happening after he asked why Baylor and I had separated from the others.

“Wait… Baylor knows?” he asked into our private relay, and what did Baylor and Halen know?

✮ ✮ ✮ Halen ✮ ✮ ✮

Out of all the people I had realized might have figured out Emilia would immediately ditch her group after learning about the little boy’s kidnapping and those women’s plan for him, after Codeth had pointed out that it would be more out of character for her to not go after him alone, the triplets had been on my list, but they’d been in a strange place on it.

Those three boys adored Emilia, but they also tended to have a blind spot when it came to her. It would have neither surprised me if they never figured out she left her group, nor if they suddenly realized there wasn’t a chance in all the aether she was still with them. Things that hadn’t been on my list of People Who Might Know Emilia Is On Her Way to Find Xavier Alone and What Their Reactions Will Be? The possibility that one of the triplets—and especially Baylor—realizing she was gone and then doing nothing about it!?

From what Darrian was saying, however, it didn’t seem like Baylor had told anyone had he’d realized Emilia probably wasn’t with her group anymore. That was weird—like, weird enough that I started going back through the middle triplet’s vitals, looking to see if anything strange was going on with his nervous system. Unfortunately, since the function had only been installed earlier that day, I didn’t have a lot of information to work with, but even Baylor’s vitals from shortly after the function was installed, back when he and his brothers had been waiting for our group at the slideline transfer station…

No… how had he managed to become calmer as the day wore on when virtually everyone else’s stress levels were rising? Was it Darrian and the Lüshanian girl? The fact that he’d been able to release stress multiple times through doing things he enjoyed: killing and fighting?

It was strange, and I rather hoped he would keep the function installed so I could get more data points—and really, while his brothers, as well as the few other clones I’d given the function to, like Grenner, were also coping far better than even Rafe was, Baylor’s coping was so much higher it was insane.

Behind me, the rest of the group was awkwardly staring at the bone puller, no one sure what to say or do in the tense minute since we’d all decided to stop fighting and figure out if we were on the same side or not. Momentarily, my own attention had been pulled down to the city, where smoke and flames were growing in a—thankfully still small—section of the city.

We really needed to get out of the city before the entire fucking place went up in smoke.

✮ ✮ ✮ Anarch ✮ ✮ ✮

My mom was going to be soooo mad.

Oh well.

My mom’s obsession with keeping me safe had never once stopped me from jumping before. It sure as fuck wasn’t going to stop me from jumping now.