Emilia was not going to be well-behaved today, Olivier could already see that written through the universe itself. Yesterday, he had already had an inkling that while he was sure the silverstrain was trying to behave as well as she could, it had, in the end, been more Lan’za influence—and to a lesser extent Halen’s—that had kept her in line. Both of them had seemingly had a knack for pulling the girl back to solid ground. Olivier wasn’t entirely certain, but he was almost positive Lan’za had promised Emilia something for behaving as well. While he was unsure whether she had gotten her reward or not, given they’d been apart for the last portion of the trip, he was almost certain she had been well-behaved enough to have earned it.
That sort of reward system worked for the girl, as did redirecting her attention to less disastrous thoughts and intentions.
Olivier did not foresee Cameron Fulbrun’s attempts at controlling Emilia through force ending in anything other than disaster.
For the moment, Emilia was contenting herself to trailing their group, Cameron walking several steps ahead of her because apparently even the silverstrain couldn’t break the energy leash that connected the two of them—or, if she could, she wasn’t inclined to reveal it yet. For her part, Cameron Fulbrun was effectively ignoring everyone. It was so unlike what they had experienced with Lan’za, her cheerful personality allowing every member of their group the comfort to ask her even the most probing of questions. If someone dared ask Cameron Fulbrun if she had a harem—not that those were a thing in Lüshan, as far as he knew—the woman might very well arrest them.
Olivier really hoped no one would dare ask, but for the moment, it wasn’t a serious concern as all his students were giving the Drinarna officer a wide berth—Emilia too, her entire being radiating annoyance. Honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised to turn around and find his not-quite student gone. He wouldn’t even be able to fault her; he didn’t want to spend time in Cameron Fulbrun’s presence either, and as they trailed the tour guide leading them through the city and towards its central spire, he couldn’t help himself from messaging Secretary General Miles Starrberg, asking why he had requested someone Emilia clearly didn’t like or respect as her babysitter for the day.
Immediately, an automated message bounced back, informing him that Secretary General Miles Starrberg would be in meetings for the majority of the day and would get back to him as soon as he was able. Attached was the contact information for his second-in-command, Wilfred Zernestra, as well as his Hyrat bodyguard. Another note informed him whom to contact in a number of situations, ranging from diplomatic incidences of varying importance—and learning what Emilia’s father considered only vaguely important and what was dire was fascinating—to anything having to do with
his family
, the vagueness of it allowing the children most people didn’t realize he even had to retain as much privacy as they could.
It was so unlike Olivier’s own mother, who had flaunted his non-dev status and all his achievements as though they were her own for as long as he could remember. Emilia’s father, from what he could tell, loved his children unendingly. Perhaps he had been too indulgent of Emilia at times, if some of the stories he’d heard were anything to go by, but it was clear that he had long trusted her to make her own decisions. It was her life, and even when she’d been younger, and not on the cusp of becoming an adult in the eyes of Baalphorian law, he had allowed her to forge her own path.
Jealously roiled through Olivier when he thought of it, his mind circling questions of why he had been born to such selfish and negligent parents. He knew it could be worse—certainly, Emilia’s Dyad friend, with his parents who seemed intent to hold him hostage for the remainder of his life with the help of the Dyad Containment Laws, had worse parents than he. Still, the knowledge that his life could be worse didn’t stop Olivier from mourning what life—what he—might have been like, had he been born to more accepting, less demanding parents.
[
Malcolm Laprise:
What did she do?
]
Olivier blinked at the message from
Malcolm Laprise
—one of the three Laprise boys Emilia had mentioned knowing?
[
Olivier:
How did you get my contact information?
]
[
Malcolm Laprise:
Emmie and her father both gave it to me, and any messages about Emmie that go to her father are automatically forwarded to me. I am aware he is busy. So, I repeat: what did she do?
]
Interestingly, Malcolm Laprise wasn’t the person the automated note had informed people to contact regarding Secretary General Miles Starrberg’s family; rather, that person was the Loren Hyrat Emilia had also spoken of the night before. The Hyrat clone she said was like a second father to her growing up, but had also been the first person she had sex with once she was
free of Baalphoria’s age of consent laws.
Just thinking about that conversation made Olivier blush, his mind unhelpfully supplying him with images of Emilia with a far older clone, letting him enjoy her body and—
And he couldn’t be thinking about this. It was… not weird— Well, it was a little weird. Mostly, it was arousing in a way he couldn’t explain, and the last thing he needed was to pop a semi when Emilia was most likely just waiting for something to amuse herself with. The fact that the barriers he had erected between them were quickly crumbling, thanks to their many conversations and night spent tangled together in bed, was already a problem. Even now, he couldn’t imagine himself pushing off her advances or teasing with nearly enough severity. Hence, he was just going to do his best to avoid letting her get that close. Also, he was going to continue refusing to let his eyes linger on her too long, his fingers aching to push his stolen sweater up and reveal whatever was hiding under it—those too-short shorts, her bare skin, some shirt she’d slipped on in case he decided to steal his sweater back.
He was so fucked.
[
Olivier:
Nothing. I was simply curious why Secretary General Miles Starrberg requested the babysitter he did. Emilia clearly does not like or respect the woman, as she did Lan’za.
]
It was odd, speaking to someone he had never met, nor even been properly introduced to. Emilia’s father had sent an introductory message—long and slightly disparaging of his daughter—when he had first contacted Olivier, along with a promise to meet properly one day—apparently he was quite busy with something and currently finding it difficult to even go home more than a few nights a month. With Malcolm Laprise, Olivier knew who he was—both in the general sense of
eldest child of the current leaders of The Black Knot and generally considered a candidate to become the next leader of either the entire organization or one of its main branches
, and in the sense that he was Emilia’s friend. He knew nothing else of the man, however. Not his personality, his particular tolerance for Emilia’s mayhem, nor even his general level of patience.
[
Malcolm Laprise:
Who did he send?
]
[
Olivier:
Cameron Fulbrun.
]
[
Malcolm Laprise:
What. You’re in Lüshan?
]
It wasn’t a question—not really. Olivier could feel the man’s bafflement, his concern, each so strong it was echoing through the message.
That couldn’t be good.
That definitely couldn’t be good.
A moment later, an invitation to a group message unlike anything he had ever seen popped up over his Censor. Where normal invites usually added the person automatically, forcing the person to manually remove themself from it—although, Olivier wasn’t convinced Axelle hadn’t done something to his Censor during her various modifications, just so he couldn’t avoid joining the various group messages his cousins set up for this or that—this one didn’t automatically add him. Instead, when he clicked on the oddly coloured dialog—most dialogs followed the colour theme of the user’s Censor System, and his was mostly grey, but this dialog was a purple so deep it was almost black—a notification popped up informing him he had to agree to certain terms before he would be allowed in.
A moment later, a message from Emilia followed, telling him to read the terms and accept. It was nice, if somewhat disconcerting, that she already knew him so well: for as much as he was often assumed to be technologically illiterate, as so many Baalphorians oddly were, Axelle had forced lessons on safe Censor usage into all of her cousins. Accepting terms for a random group message, regardless of the small Black Knot logo of twining malina flowers that he could barely make out over the dialog boxes, was definitely against those safety precautions.
Skimming through the terms—which in his case, simply meant he wasn’t searching for hidden meanings or vague wordings—Olivier learned that he would be locked from speaking about the group message and its contents in a way similar, but distinct, from the way {A Private Moment} locked away conversations held within its influence. Olivier hadn’t known The Black Knot were capable of sending such secretive messages, and while he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, several moments in his short career and the thousands of case records he had read suddenly seemed to make a little more sense.
There were a collection of moments where something about
how
someone had learned about this or that had been a giant question mark. It wasn’t such a large amount that he or anyone else had thought the person’s inability to explain their reasoning for showing up at a certain location, only to difficult find themself in the position to stop a crime or save a life, odd enough to warrant looking into. Personally, he also might have thought it a case of
people following the will of the aether
—even if they didn’t believe or didn’t realize they were doing it—except that in the cases that now came to mind, there had been something in the person’s testimony that had seemed untruthful. Not some malicious lie, nor a white lie intended to protect themself or someone else. Just something that wasn’t true, calling up a recollection of clones and other Black Knot agents brushing aside questions they couldn’t answer on the record, despite their denial of knowing
how
they’d come to be in the right place to interact with some incident being distinct from a denial of being allowed to answer. Hence, he at least had sometimes assumed it was the result of {A Private Moment}’s influence, although more often than not, Baalphorian’s movements were so well documents by security footage that there wasn’t time in those brief moments away from the OIC’s eyes to learn about a crime in progress without the OIC having an idea of when it could have occurred.
Now, knowing The Black Knot could message people in a way where they could never speak of what they learned within it, Olivier wondered if those people he thought of had simply been beholden to the terms he had just agreed to. If so, he wasn’t sure what to do with that information. The terms had also locked away his ability to discuss even the existence of such messages—not that he would have shared that knowledge. The Black Knot were, he thought, an overall positive influence in their nation. But now he knew they might be using civilians to do this or that via these secret messages, or that they might be letting information slip to civilians so they could intervene to save a friend or family member—most of the cases he had thought of involved exactly that: someone mysteriously stumbling across someone they cared for who might otherwise have died.
Whether The Black Knot was using civilians as pawns, or offering them a chance to save a loved one: that was what Olivier wasn’t sure what to do with. Neither was he sure what to do with the first message of his new group message—which included himself, Malcolm Laprise, Emilia, Grenner, and several other clones, including Byron and Loren Hyrat—worrisome as it was:
[
Malcolm Laprise:
Please tell me you aren’t in Lüshan? Or that, at the very least, you aren’t in Falmíer?
]
There had been a moment when they were working their way through the papers checkpoint with near perfect ease and speed, where Olivier had felt like they should turn back.
“Something is wrong. Go back to the ship,”
the world seemed to say. Despite all his musings the night before—increasingly in the days and nights since meeting Emilia—where Olivier had wondered if many of his instincts really were a message from the aether, he had ignored those words.
Now, he worried that he really should have listened.
.
!
Arc 9 | Chapter 365: Should Have Listened
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