“CAN YOU JUST FUCKING STOP!?” Emilia cursed as Cameron threw another burst of energy at her, unfiltered and meant to knock her back.
Occasionally, the Drinarna officer had been using actual core abilities in her attempts to capture Emilia, but where core abilities could be more brutal in their power than the skills average Baalphorians could use with a little training, they lacked speed. Few Baalphorians outside of law enforcement and the military were skilled in combat; since Baalphoria and Lüshanian weren’t intending to go to war anytime soon, usually the lack of speed wouldn’t be a concern for a Drinarna officer, who only fought Baalphorians during their joint training or when a visitor was causing issues.
Unfortunately for Cameron, Emilia and her entire classroom full of monsters were more skilled than most of those Baalphorians the Drinarna trained with. Combined with the microsparking that Cameron had no idea how to deal with, the Drinarna officer was growing increasingly frustrated, and where frustrated Baalphorians tended to end up with failed skills sputtering out into the aether, core users ended up blasting energy alone, rather than a specific ability.
Mostly, it was just annoying because despite her temper being roused, Cameron actually was pretty powerful. Even worse, the place Olivier had disappeared from—which Emilia had been searching, discussing the situation with an equally panicked Halen, when Cameron had caught up with her—was a dead end. Cameron had situated herself in the room’s only exit, ergo, Emilia couldn’t escape so she could figure out if the museum had a security system that she could use to figure out where Olivier had gone.
“CAMERON!” she yelled again, swearing in several languages when a net of energy stretched over the whole of the room. While she tried to dodge—tried to microspark in a way that would allow her to tunnel through the net—it didn’t work, and she ended up slammed against the wall, the net pinning her.
“Tra và küvré!?” she yelled, glaring at the other girl and wondering if her Censor would let her send another burst of energy out in an attempt to free herself. It might, as Censors put the safety of their owner over restricting their core usage; unfortunately, given she’d already annoyed it by using her core earlier, it was monitoring her core more heavily and might very well stop her if it thought her trying to use it again. Moody fucking thing.
“I know you are obsessed with getting that man’s cock inside you, but you are in my custody, and you cannot run off to fuck in a back room.”
What. The. Fuck.
“Are you kidding me?” Emilia sputtered, wondering whether the political and legal ramifications of killing the bitch were worth it. “Olivier is missing—disappeared—and you think I’m running off to have sex with him? What part of missing—potentially kidnapped—do you not understand!?”
Cameron shrugged, eyes not leaving Emilia as she tugged out her xphern and placed a call through it. Emilia could only hear Cameron’s side of the conversation, but it seemed as though she thought Emilia a
risk to the city itself
and was requesting she be placed into a jail cell until the class returned to their ship at the end of the day.
That was… weird?
“Why not just kick me out?” Emilia asked, baffled because seriously? It was pretty standard procedure in Lüshan to just kick foreigners who were causing issues out, rather than detain them. Plus! She hadn’t even really been causing problems! Her father had jokingly asked that someone watch her; she’d run away from that person when her actual chaperone vanished and may have been killed. These things did not mean she was causing problems! At the most, she should have been ditched by Cameron, a message going out to their fathers that she was too much of a nuisance to watch.
What the fuck was happening? Was this related to the strange situation happening in the city? Did Cameron know Olivier had somehow become involved in something? Was the Drinarna involved in his disappearance? Or was this just Cameron being a fucking bitch?
Through her rantings about how horrible a person Cameron was—as well as a message to Halen assuring him the Drinarna officer hadn’t killed her, but
she
might kill Cameron yet—Emilia noted that Cameron was gossiping about her! Apparently, while she and Olivier had been discussing various things and ignoring the tour guide, Cameron had been listening to the whispers of the students. Several of the students had seen her and Olivier having dinner the night before, as well as wandering the ship after, and then one of them had overheard Olivier talking with a clone about how he was stuck sharing a room with her because of a missing key.
“Prèska na kǔ dàra,” Cameron snorted, which, rude! Emilia could too keep her legs shut, and while she would certainly willingly open them for Olivier, she hadn’t! She had respected his boundaries and just snuggled with him because he was nice and had let her seek comfort in his arms. Emilia was even sure that, if she asked, he’d let her do so again, even knowing that she could get in and out of her room even without the key and the night before had simply been the result of her never needing to use {Hidey Hole} for much other than sneaking in and out of—
Okay, so… the fact that she had almost exclusively used {Hidey Hole} to
sneak around
was turning into a problem. Emilia’s mind was apparently prepped to think of it as a skill that’s sole purpose was sneaking around when it had plenty of other uses: getting into rooms she’d accidentally locked herself out of; or, for instance, escaping bitchy Drinarna officers by falling through the wall behind her.
Cameron might have been watching Emilia, but she wasn’t taking her or the situation seriously—she didn’t realize that Emilia was leaving, and the only reason she hadn’t already blasted her way out of the room was because it might affect the spire’s stability. It would really suck to accidentally kill everyone in the city if it collapsed, and as much as she liked Olivier, Emilia knew that he’d be pretty pissed if she risked the entire city for him alone. {Hidey Hole}, on the other hand, was designed to avoid altering the structural integrity of whatever it was used on. While she’d never used it on anything like the spire before, she didn’t think the room they were in was near the outer edge; rather, it was an internal room made of far more standard materials. Hence, Emilia didn’t hesitate to fall through the wall, spinning and racing towards the next room, the specific variety of {Hidey Hole} she’d activated closing up behind her, so Cameron couldn’t follow—she’d have to find Emilia the old-fashioned way: running around and looking with her eyes.
The bitch wasn’t going to catch her, Emilia having slapped a skill onto Cameron that would alert her if they got too close. It would run out of juice eventually as it ate away at the aether Emilia had sacrificed to create it—a not insubstantial amount either—but for the moment, Emilia could see exactly where Cameron was in relation to the haphazard map her Censor had made of the building as she microsparked through it.
The problem was, that map was incomplete, and Emilia had no idea where she was going.
“Do you know if there are security systems in Lüshan?”
Emilia asked in both the group message with Malcolm and the clones—Olivier was still
technically
included, even if the system was currently presuming him dead, as it wasn’t completely unheard of for Black Knot agents presumed dead to pop back up—and her messages with Halen.
“There are,”
Halen replied with the speed of someone who had been watching their messages for her to say something else—to confirm she wasn’t dead yet.
“I think they’re all internal, though—not connected to some bigger server like the OIC. So if you want to get access to the museum’s, you’ll have to find their server room or an access point, and who knows what language it's in.”
In other words, even if she managed to find the server room, who knew if she could hack into it.
“We should learn how to hack all the systems on the continent,”
Emilia replied as she popped out the other side of the very thick wall that she had been pinned against—weirdly thick, and she found herself looking around this new space, which seemingly had no doors?
An affirmative came back from Halen, who seemed distracted. Had he not been outright panicking when he’d seen Olivier’s Censor go dark on his side, she might have thought him brushing her and the situation aside. Instead, it was just suspicious.
Sending out a skill that checked over the area of oddities and cursing how slow it was—mostly it was used by law enforcement who were investigating crimes and needed the scene analyzed, so speed wasn’t really a priority—she waited for Halen to respond to her query of
why
he was being all weird.
A ping from her skill, informing her there was a door hidden in the floor, came through at the same moment Halen announced that
they
were coming to Lüshan.
Who the fuck were
they
!?
Everyone was
they,
apparently.
“I’m sorry, but what kind of stupid idea is this?”
Emilia asked as she forced her willbrand into its blade form, using it to brute force the very suspect and vaguely aetherproof door open. What were the chances Olivier had vanished from a mysterious dead-end room that backed up on a seemingly doorless room that had a hidden door, and the two things weren’t connected? They might not be; Emilia was willing to bet it wasn’t a coincidence, and she quickly slipped into the winding stairwell that lead into near total darkness, her willbrand shifting into a smaller dagger—swords weren’t really ideal for such tight quarters.
The sound proofing skill she’d activated to keep her prying of the door open from reaching any nearby ears shifted with her, hiding her slamming steps as she bolted down the stairwell. It was too twisting to microspark, but she had enough experience racing friends to the bottom of the Huss’tra’s stairwells to have skills to pillow and catch her as she raced down, down, down, not caring if she slammed into the wall because those skills would protect her.
As she ran, she was added to a new group message by Halen, which included all the people she knew were apparently intent to come join this shit show? Emilia loved her friends, but sometimes, they were all pretty fucking stupid.
“It’s unsafe!”
she blasted through the message, providing what little details she could about what she’d learned from Malcolm—who had finally noticed Olivier was marked a potentially deceased and was demanding answers. That kinda took precedence—especially since who knew when Cameron would get around to ing either her escape or Olivier’s disappearance to either her father or the local embassy. So, she pushed the chat of her insane friends—who seemed to be preparing for an outright war, despite how little they knew about the situation—aside and sent off an explanation of the situation to Malcolm and the clones. Of course, she left out her insane friends, because even if they left right this minute, it took a good eight hours to get from the southern tip of The Penns to Lüshan—plenty of time to find Olivier and get the class the fuck out of there.
Back to the more important conversation with the various Black Knot agents, needless to say, none of them were happy.
What are the chances Olivier’s disappearance is unconnected to this theoretical situation occurring in the city?
seemed to be the main vibe of the chat, and none of them had an answer. Lüshan and Baalphoria might be relatively friendly, but aside from joint training sessions between their law enforcement and military, they had little interaction; Emilia didn’t know what sort of situation might lead to someone local taking Olivier hostage or outright killing him and then disposing of the body—and fuck if she wasn’t dreading finding his corpse with every turn she made.
By the time she had gotten to the bottom of the stairwell, Byron had decided to accompany Grenner back to the city, while the few other clones on board were now responsible for monitoring the students who had returned to the ship and determining if they should inform the captain that they might want to prepare to take off at any point—there was always the risk they or another crew member might be connected to Olivier’s disappearance, and putting the decision to leave off-ship passengers behind wasn’t one any of them wanted to put on the ship’s crew. Still, it might be necessary if something more serious happened, and they needed to know if the ship’s crew could be trusted.
The bottom of the stairwell had a single door, and Emilia hesitated to open it, visions of Olivier’s dead body haunting her mind. Both of her chats were going off with plans, and she wondered if she actually should tell Malcolm that a significant number of her former classmates were currently planning to illegally exit Baalphoria and make their way of Lüshan—seriously though, how they were going to get there quickly enough to do anything, Emilia had no idea. Still, if she told Malcolm, he would not only have yet another thing to worry about, but he would also have to stop them. Then, if she died, he would blame himself all the more than he already would, thinking he may have cut her off from more support by stopping them.
Better to not tell him. Her friends were all adults—or almost, anyways. They could make their own stupid decisions and face the consequences. Plus, Emilia wasn’t sure there was anyone in Baalphoria who could stop her friends and classmates if they set their minds to something, and she’d feel rather bad if they hurt Malcolm or the clones while forcing their way past them—not to mention that if The Black Knot knew what was happening, they’d be obligated to let the Drinarna know a bunch of Baalphorians were headed their way to do stars knew what.
No, definitely better not to tell Malcolm or anyone else what was happening. Maybe it would work out, maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, she had a missing non-dev to find.
Arc 9 | Chapter 375: Everyone is They
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