Despite their meeting at the restaurant, their strange interaction in the bathroom, and the flirting from tables away, things continued on as normal for Emilia and Olivier, more or less.
Emilia was still living in the clones’ dorms, working on the function the triplets had requested. It was a complicated, mess of a function that had become a bane on her existence. Luckily, the job the triplets wanted it for didn’t have a solid start date.
Sometime in the next few years
was the general timeline. If Emilia was working a little slower and being far more finicky with the function than usual, even for her, the triplets were kind enough not to say anything of it.
The triplets knew she didn’t want them to take any job, let alone this one that would put them in so much palpable danger and take them from her for months, possibly years. So, they wouldn’t push. They would let her take her time, testing out each of the functions she designed and tweaked and ultimately discarded as
not quite right
for as long as they could. All the while, they would all live in their little bubble, loving and fucking and pretending that none of their lives were as messy as they were.
Emilia continued attending Olivier’s classes. Olivier still had her removed whenever she became too disruptive, although Emilia did notice he spent more time pulling her back under control when she went on tangents, or when she became more argumentative than appropriate for a class she wasn’t even enrolled in. It were almost as though he understood her a little more, now—almost as though he wanted her there, brightening up his classroom.
Despite their tentative understanding of one another, the man still refused to take her case, and Emilia still lingered after class most days, attempting to convince him. Every time, Olivier brushed her off, if slightly more politely than previously, something that almost seemed to be regret lingering in his eyes for just the barest moment before he forced his gaze away.
Occasionally, the triplets would pick her up, and slowly, as the weeks passed, her pseudo-classmates grew used to them. A few even learned their names, and although none could tell them apart, Emilia thought a few might be able to differentiate the triplets from other clones. Of the people who became more friendly with her boys, the most notable was perhaps Norrayn, who, on Olivier’s advice, had allowed herself to be questioned by several of the clones regarding the situation with her friend being drugged.
The three boys Norrayn had accused of being behind her friend’s drugging never returned to class, and although he wasn’t technically supposed to tell her, Grenner confirmed for her that peeks and dives into everyone’s Censor had revealed one of them had been responsible for giving the girl the Censor interference drug, while another had taken part in assaulting her. The third hadn’t participated, but he had found out about the incident and not ed it to SecOps.
What was perhaps more concerning than the boys' assault and cover up was that there was a hack going around that had allowed them to cover it up, something that had been suspected but not confirmed until the clones started rooting through the boys’ minds.
It was one thing for the Censor interference drug to stop the victim from having any evidence of the assault, it was another for the assailant’s Censor to not them to SecOps for their own violation. Until now, it had been a bit of a toss up whether the assailants were taking the drug themselves to cover their tracks or using a hack to do so. The latter had been considered much more likely, as an update had gone out to all unhacked Censors months ago, instructing them to notify SecOps if their owner even heard whispers of the drug being distributed. Virtually all hackers who put out hacks had pushed the update as well, save those catering to criminals and distributing their hacks on the blackaether, and those weren’t something even random university students who had souls capable of assaulting a classmate generally risked installing.
It wasn’t exactly uncommon for even normal hacks to manoeuvre around some of the functions that tattled to SecOps and the OIC. Even Emilia’s personal hack worked around those monitoring functions, but she’d never distributed that hack outside of her friends, and they only ever used it for silly things… like vandalizing other schools for being shitty.
Covering up an assault was not a
silly thing.
Worse, even The Black Knot couldn’t figure out where the boys had gotten the hack from, and their own memories of it were gone—completely gone, no less. This wasn’t a case of {A Private Moment} being used to lock up memories so they couldn’t be spoken of. This was {A Private Moment} being used to completely wipe the memories out—and not just a single moment of their lives, either.
If only a single moment—a few minutes—were missing from their minds, the clones would have been able to find it and compare information with other sources, like the ever watching eyes of the OIC, to pinpoint where they had been, who else had been in the area at the time. So many moments were missing from the boys’ minds that finding whoever had given them the hack was nigh impossible.
There was also some speculation that the hack hadn’t been installed consensually, none of the boys expressing any moment where they had found out about the hack, nor set out to figure out where to acquire it. While it was possible they had just happened upon someone distributing it at a party—this was where most of their missing moments lined up—and decided to install it and have their memories of it wiped, it was equally possible a hacker had forced it into them.
Most likely, it was the latter, due simply to the fact that the boys barely seemed cognizant of it being inside them—not exactly surprising, given how subtle its flavour was, a mere brush of power and obfuscation over their minds and their connection to the systems that supposedly kept Baalphoria safe. They had known the hack was there, and yet, not really known. A tickling that something wasn’t quite right in their minds, but nothing serious enough to worry about.
“I just thought it was stress…”
the boy who had covered for his friends had told the clones.
“I didn’t really want to cover for them, but when no one showed up to question us, they begged me not to say anything. I just tried blocking the whole thing out of my mind, even when I first found out. I wondered if they’d installed a hack that could do that—how else would they have even been able to do… that to that girl!?—but I didn’t! I just thought I was compartmentalizing so good my Censor couldn’t even it. Then, I felt so guilty, I buried it even further inside me.”
Of course, there was the possibility they had
also
been using the Censor inference drug on themselves, intent to figure out what it felt like to be without their Censor for even a few minutes. If they hadn’t known the hack was protecting them, the blank spots in their memories may very well be the result of using the drug to cover up their crimes, plus the recreational drugs they apparently all indulged in regularly. It wasn’t a secret that Baalphorians relied on their Censors to remember so much of their lives that even small blips in its record keeping made them useless at remembering anything.
Still, what kind of idiot would assume that their Censors wouldn’t still tattle on them for even the barest memories of assaulting someone? Unhacked Censors were known to alert The Black Knot just for the
intent
to do shit like that, if it deemed there to be too much legitimate risk. And it didn’t explain why they hadn’t thought their Censors would turn them in for buying the drug in the first place, if they really hadn’t known about the hack.
Fuck, was it messy. So messy that even The Black Knots hackers and investigators were struggling to work anything concrete out.
Technically
, they hadn’t asked for Emilia’s help on this matter—although they had certainly been slipping her
a lot
of information about their investigation, plopping her into group messages and including her in the database holding all their data—but that had never stopped her from investigating anything on her own again.
Hacking was, in the end, where she often felt most comfortable, and not knowing what was happening with the hack and the drug was an itch, dragging through her soul, urging her to look into it, regardless of how much other stuff she had going on.
Step one in her genius plan to outpace The Black Knot’s hackers’ progress and figure things out before them? Get her hands on the Censor interference drug.
In a small, passing way, Emilia had already been considering trying it before all this. There was this tiny ache inside her that yearned for the days before her Censor, something most people forgot once their Censor became their constant companion. Emilia, however, remembered her childhood far too well.
There had been a freedom, then. Before D-Level tests. Before her Censor was there, monitoring and supporting her in equal measure. Before boys and sex and her body covered in mud as someone loomed over her. Before she or Rafe had killed anyone. Just… before.
Before was nice, in a way.
That said, while a part of her wanted to feel that empty, formless life again, she was also just… traumatized.
The last time her Censor had gone effectively offline she had been drunk and assaulted, a boy—one who, assuming Rafe hadn’t killed the wrong person, she might not have been friends with but certainly hadn’t feared—sober and blurry and fucking into her while neither her Censor nor her mind could make sense of the world, the only things they retained amounting to wrong, violated, filthy.
Rafe had been the one to figure out who did it, to track them down and make them disappear using skills that should have never been given to him—not at that age, not when he didn’t want to become part of The Black Knot to begin with.
So, maybe she wouldn’t actually use the drug on herself—one of her friends would test it, if she asked. Still, it was nice to have the option! And if she decided to use it, she’d just do so around someone who would be sure to keep her safe!
That said, the timing of her finally getting her hands on it was impressively terrible, coinciding with the morning Olivier was taking them on days long class trip.
Probably, she should've waited until after they were back to buy some, but when she’d spotted a dealer between buildings on her way to their meeting spot, she hadn’t been able to resist checking if they had any. They had. Now, they were being questioned by The Black Knot, and she had semi-illegal—but not fully illegal!—drugs burning a hole in her bag as they were about to go on some mystery trip that required their passports.
Olivier had told them about the trip early in the semester, apparently. Having missed those first few classes, Emilia had had no idea until Olivier had messaged her shortly after their meeting at the restaurant, asking if leaving Baalphoria was even an option for her.
Amazingly, the only thing that had really changed since their meeting was her teacher continuing to send her transcripts for his classes. Every time, she read them and responded. He responded in kind, sent over more to read. They had no less than forty threads of conversations happening at the moment, and maybe that was why he was including her in the trip?
Before the restaurant, Emilia was sure she would have shown up today and discovered the classroom empty, everyone having already left for wherever they were off to. As it was, they were all gathered in the small park that edged up against the bubble stands, ready to head to some mysterious Free Colony—Olivier was refusing to tell them where they were actually going—for a lesson on international forms of justice.
Personally, she was expecting him to take them to Zironia, where their non-dev gave lectures on everything under the sun and had some pretty intense views on justice, if the recordings she’d seen of the man were any indication. Pylenius was an oddball, to say the least. Brilliant, but strange, his beliefs far out there compared to what she knew of more normal Zironian beliefs. Then again, from what she’d seen, the man seemed to be messing with people half the time, taking a position in a debate just to stir up thoughts in his audience.
Fortunately, virtually none of the Free Colonies would care about the drugs tucked into her bag—only a few had adopted Censor use, and most of their laws were close enough to Baalphoria’s that going there wouldn’t really showcase the diverse justice systems of their continent—and it was highly unlikely she’d be searched on returning to Baalphoria… probably. Honestly, even if she was found to be carrying the drug, it wasn’t like adding
possession of semi-controlled substances
to her charges was going to make any difference.
Hence, the drugs would stay with her on her adventure to the Free Colonies!
As Olivier organized the majority of the class into groups—a few students wouldn’t be coming due to other obligations or a general fear of the Free Colonies—Emilia watched him, wondering if he actually wanted her there. He’d asked if she would be able to come, sure, but part of her figured it had been more polite obligation to be nice to her, given he’d effectively ruin their growing friendship if she found out he hadn’t even told her about the trip.
Probably, he had assumed she wouldn’t be able to come—a fair assumption, given it was only due to her father’s pull that her passport hadn’t been revoked when charges were laid. Was she a flight risk? Yes, but her father had made it clear that she had connections in so many Free Colonies that it wouldn’t make any difference if her passport were revoked.
It wasn’t like the entire southern border, situated in the middle of the Cyrenix desert, was secured, and while using it as route to either Zironia or Mitine Dyn—neither of which she had much of a connection to, but virtually no one would turn down a non-dev owing them a favour for allowing them to hide within their borders or use it as transit elsewhere—would take her a little too close to Chinsata for comfort, it also wouldn’t stop her from doing so if required.
So, she still had her passport. There was a little extra paperwork required for her to leave Baalphoria’s borders, and in the case of the class trip, Olivier had been required to fill out a few forms explaining where they were going and when they would be back. If something changed with their plans, he had to let them know, and if she disappeared, he would face consequences.
Interestingly, he had never bothered to even threaten her with consequences, should she cause him problems on the trip. Apparently, he just expected her to behave, and honestly, it surprised Emilia that he knew her that well.
While she might love fucking with people, and had been known to vanish from her babysitters’ sight the entirety of her life, she had never done so when she knew someone would get in trouble for her actions. Yes, sometimes she fucked up and people got in trouble anyways—a few of her babysitters had been unfairly fired from their actual job for losing her—but it was never purposeful… unless the person deserved it, and Olivier definitely didn’t deserve to be punished for anything she did.
Behaving it was! Not complaining when Olivier assigned her to shadow him the entire trip it was! Not that Emilia would ever complain about having to spend almost two weeks in Olivier’s company! The man was beautiful and brilliant and so, so fun to annoy! If she couldn't wander and cause problems in other ways, she was definitely going to be annoying her soon-to-be lawyer to the best of her abilities, especially since, despite his complaints and glares, she was almost positive he actually enjoyed her company in return.
Now, if only he would admit it.
Arc 8 | Chapter 294: Off We Go!
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