[Can’t Opt Out]

The bell above the door—a real life bell, not the digital kind that were more common—jingled and everyone looked towards it.

“Sup, man?” Beth asked around her mouthful of food. Considering their teacher had given her food—and apparently more, Beth having reported on a lovely exchange of sexual favours between her and Professor A while they waited for their food— just a few hours ago, the younger girl had managed to eat substantially more than her slender figure would suggest possible. Raids took some energy, but not enough to account for her friend’s bottomless pit.

None of them could ever remember the newcomer’s name, it being something so foreign their Censors weren’t capable of recording any sensible reading of it either. They weren’t even sure where he had come from—somewhere in the Free Colonies, most likely—but he was friendly, smiling warmly at them every time they met.

Helped that they gave him a lot of money.

“Ah~ my favourite customers!” he called cheerfully, sidling over to them and leaning against their counter. “What a lucky day this must be for me—and for you!”

Emilia slurped her soup up, wondering if she had it in her to get high again. The man always had the most wonderful shit, but it was a little soon for a repeat of last night. Given the look on Beth’s face, she had similar thoughts. They liked getting high, but too much wasn’t good for the body, soul or core.

“These two are still recovering from last night,” Sil said tightly, always the responsible one, as long as the possibility of sex with a cute guy wasn’t on the agenda—“and a raid”—or the possibility of a raid. Sil had been known, on occasion, to be extremely irresponsible when it came to raids.

“Ah~ but there’s the catch, my little lover boy! This stuff is nice, but short lasting, and you won’t suffer any aftereffects! Might even take any residual pain away from the silver one’s injuries.”

Emilia flexed her knees and hands. They didn’t really hurt, although she could feel the quickly healing skin pulling uncomfortably. Sil frowned, and Beth eyed him up with a bit more interest.

“What is it?” Beth asked, finally pushing her dish aside and resting a hand on the little bump that had appeared on her stomach. She patted it, once, twice in satisfaction.

“Something rare!” the man exclaimed, looking like he was going to break into one of his amusing, if extraordinarily long, tales of how he had come to possess such rare and delicious drugs.

“Yeah, yeah,” Emilia said. She didn’t really want to listen to his meandering stories today, thanks. She doubted they’d buy, so they’d all be wasting time listening to the whole spiel. She leaned an elbow onto the counter, her sweaty skin sticking to the worn material, and rested her head on her hand. The patch across her palm rubbed roughly against her chin, but even the added pressure didn’t hurt—apparently that student nurse was as skilled as she’d claimed. She hoped Sil had gotten her contact info, they needed more supports. “Give us the short version, please.”

The man looked around, as though worried some SecOp would pop out to arrest him, reminding her of the reason she was suspicious he had come from the Free Colonies. Countless soldiers had remained in Baalphoria following the war, especially those from more authoritarian colonies. SecOps in Baalphoria didn’t care about drugs, as long as you weren’t starting trouble or dealing something illegal. Eventually, your Censor would start harassing you to get help if your use became excessive. Technically, you could easily hack that out, but if your Censor showed concern… Well, that was generally a bad sign, and you should listen.

Emilia blinked as the man pulled a bottle of pink vapour out from inside his coat. “Is that—”

“You bet it is!” the man cheered, sliding a little closer to her. “You ever partake?”

She eyed up the bottle. She could see the remnants of a Magic Pow label attached to it. Hopefully, he’d sanitized it before turning it into a vessel for toxic vapours. “Not like that—I didn’t know it could be bottled like that.”

“Done all the time, if you know the right people—which now you do!” He smiled, eyes crinkling, the rest of his aged face following. She didn’t think he was that old, but living here and doing all those drugs had taken their toll, and like many people from the Free Colonies, he didn’t have a Censor—not even a temporary one—to monitor his body and mind for him. Not that he likely had the money to afford treatment for whatever was eating him alive—addiction, starvation, nights on the street. Government support only went so far, especially in forgotten places like this one, especially for people who weren’t technically supposed to be there, which she doubted he was.

The worst of the Free Colonies had demanded their soldiers be returned following the war, with or without their consent. The Baalphorian government had helped, as much as it could, trying to retain fragile alliances. The government had wanted to help more, but the OIC System—used to monitor most of the country for crime—hadn’t cooperated. People could still manually monitor part of the system’s records, but it wasn’t the same, and it hadn’t taken long for Baalphoria’s new residents to learn where those accessible eyes of the OCI System were. It wasn’t hard for them to avoid being caught on camera after that.

The Piketown slums were one of those places. It had a few cameras, mostly on the main roads—which could easily be avoided. It had been a decade, though, and manually monitoring the systems was expensive. Emilia was sure a few people still half-heartedly watched the feeds for ex-Free Colony soldiers on their wanted lists. She was equally sure they rarely—if ever—reported anything, even if they did see someone. It had been a decade. A decade for friendships to form. A decade for people outside the military to hear horror stories from some of those Free Colonies. More than a few ex-Free Colony soldiers—those still in Baalphoria, and those who had fled to less authoritarian Free Colonies—had shared details of what their homelands were like.

You’d have to be a sadist to send them back now, knowing they were most certainly going to find everyone they knew murdered by the government, knew they were going to be quickly killed or “re-educated” themselves.

“So~ wanna indulge a little?”

“What even is it?” Beth asked, resting her chin on Emilia’s shoulder to look at the bottle.

“Vapour, from the pink tide,” Emilia told her. “It’s a hallucinogenic drug. It’s… mostly fun, as long as you don’t get lost in it—physically, I mean,” she added, motioning to the pink vapour hovering heavy over the pink ocean, held back by the decontamination system. People did get lost in it, when they climbed the Strats during a pink tide. It was part of the reason injuries skyrocketed during them. There was even the occasional death, from someone falling just right and the monitors being unable to stop them from crashing into the sharp rocks below.

“In other words… we could take a hit, and enjoy the high without much worry?”

“Probably. I’m not sure how long a hit would last, though.” Her only experience was being physically inside the vapour, after all, each breath sucking in more vapour, more universe bending hallucinations, more stupid, suicidal confidence.

“Not long,” the man supplied. Out of all the dealers Emilia had ever met—and there were quite a few, going all the way back to her teens—he was one of the most honest. Didn’t upsell or bend the truth. It was part of why their group always overpaid him, not bothering to haggle over the price like most people would. He might be a dealer—and an addict himself—but he still needed to eat and get new clothes. Maybe it was naive, but she hoped their money made his life a bit better. “An hour, maybe a little more, if you’re lucky.”

“Seriously?” Sil asked, already shaking his head, as Emilia and Beth exchanged a look. “You two are still recovering from last night.”

“I woke up fine,” Emilia said. It was true. She rarely woke up hungover. She hadn’t been stupid enough to fuck with those genes. “Just think of it as you making up for kidnapping me. I have been injured and had an extraordinarily stressful day! This is me relaxing and releasing all my remaining anger~”

“I’ve been fine since Professor A went down on his knees and—”

“Do not,” Sil growled, his cheeks already turning red.

“How much?” Beth asked instead of continuing on with the story about her escapades in their classroom. Say what you want about Sil’s own sex adventures, but he was something of a prude when it came to discussing either his own or others sex lives—and definitely wasn’t one for public sex.

Emilia… could see the appeal, even if she’d never had sex anywhere as adventurous as a classroom full of diving students before. Command centre during the war, once, but there had been no risk of anyone walking in on them. She couldn’t really see Elijah being into public sex either, and as much as their relationship was open—although she couldn’t remember the last time either of them had taken advantage of that fact—finding someone she trusted enough to fuck her in anything close to public…

“Yo, Faylyn, want a hit?” Beth asked the younger girl as Sil grumbled but arranged to send the man some money for the drugs.

“Wha’ if someone comes in?” she asked, even as the look on her face was very, very interested. She was so young—so poor—that Emilia wondered if she’d ever done drugs before. They weren’t uncommon in the area, and any other, not swelteringly hot day you could easily see deals going down on the street, people wobbling through the world as it spun and melted around them.

“No one’s been in 'cept the four of us,” Beth pointed out, accepting the bottle from the man.

He gave her some basic instructions on how to take a hit—use the tube attached to the top to take a nice, deep breath, should be enough for five, maybe six hits—thanked them for their time and money, and slipped out the door, the bell jingling behind him.

“You don’t have to,” Emilia added as she watched the man pull another bottle from his coat—which, stars, he must be boiling alive in that thing—and head towards the ocean. He slipped a personal decontaminator into his mouth, exited the city’s decontamination systems and began making his way closer to the water, disappearing as he dipped over the boardwalk’s edge. “But, it’s a short high. You can close the store for an hour or so, if you wanted to?”

Faylyn bit her lip, fingers tapping an erratic rhythm over one of the grimy tables that even the best cleaning agents couldn’t hope to save. “Ya’ll gonna leave?”

“Do you want us to?” she asked. Getting high for the first time by yourself wasn’t exactly something she would recommend.

“I…” The younger girl broke off, nervous with energy that said she wanted to say yes. Yes, she wanted to try. Yes, she wanted to be alone when she did. Yes, she wanted someone with her when she did.

“How about this,” Beth said, tilting the bottle this way and that, watching the vapour inside sway with the movement, “we’ll take our hits and leave the rest here. You can decide later if you want to try. Maybe call that little blonde friend of yours over, when you’re more in the mood?”

Faylyn’s entire posture relaxed a little. “S’nice of you.”

Beth glared up at her, blue eyes sharp and focused as she said, voice half-serious, half-teasing, “I expect a full retelling of how it goes, next time we come in.”

Faylyn smiled, swiping up their dirty dishes and empty bottles. “Sur’ thing,” she said, skipping over to dump the dishes into the washer. It was relatively new—newer than anything else in the restaurant by far. It had just appeared one day, already paid for with a note assuring Faylyn that it was for her and not stolen or misdelivered. Her father had tried to sell it for more treatments, each one extending his doomed life a sliver more for a small fortune. Faylyn had refused, claiming it was a gift, and what if the person who had given it to them came in and saw it wasn’t there.

“They cou’ throw a fit, le’ everyone know we’re ungra’ful!” she had said—or, told them she had said, when they’d come in later that week.

Emilia didn’t think Sil would have thrown a fit, only thrown her father into the ocean. What a tragedy that would have been.

“So, who’s going first?” Beth asked, looking between Emilia and Sil.

“We don’t know what this stuff will do to us,” Sil said sensibly, always sensibly.

“It’ll be fine,” Emilia assured him, winking and taking the bottle from her friend. “It’ll also be fun.” She might not have any desire to visit the Strats—pink tide or no—anytime soon, but she had to admit she missed the high of the pink vapour. It was magical and all-consuming. She hoped the bottled variety was just as awesome as the fresh stuff.

She grabbed a sanitizing wipe from a dispenser and wiped down the top of the tube—stars knew where the thing had been. “Cheers!” she said, raising the bottle into the air and wrapping her lips around the tube.

It tasted sourer than she remembered, but that was probably the Magic Pow Beth loved so much. The pink vapours filled her lungs, and she had a moment of solid, fathomless regret. Hallucinations. Hallucinations she had only ever experienced on the Strats, and that one time when her father had dragged her on a business trip to the Grey Sands—punishment for skipping too many classes, classes she was too smart for but was still a year away from being allowed out of, once her D-Levels were tested.

Hallucinations she loved. Friends she loved. Memories of the worst day of her life.

Then, all the regret was gone, and all that remained was deep contentment and the world spinning. A timer reading, [Pink Vapour: 00:59:59] popped up in the corner of her vision. Very helpful of her Censor, best thing it had done all day. Less helpful was the notification that her stats had been lowered by the drug. She had no intention of more raids today, thank you.

She hiccuped, giggled, handed the bottle over to Sil, who eyed it dubiously but sucked in his own breath regardless. Stupid. They were all a little stupid, burying trauma and pain in drugs and dreams and sex.

The bell jingled, and Emilia only vaguely knew that it was because she was leaving. Hot air danced around her and for a moment she eyed up the ocean, the pink vapours floating over it.

No. She didn’t need to be lost in the high and drown. Not today, anyways.

Behind her, Sil and Beth popped out as well, practically falling into her as they giggled—well, Beth giggled, Sil smiled and huffed laughs that were practically giggles for him. Beth’s halting breaths were hot against her ear—how could it be hot against her in this insufferable heat?

Then Sil giggled—an actual fucking giggle—and both she and Beth looked towards him. Sil did not giggle, even high on the best shit.

“Thinking about your hookup?” Beth guessed.

Emilia frowned. How did she—

She followed the angle of Beth’s gaze and laughed. “Oh~ like that, is it, Sil?” she teased as she eyed up his half-hard dick. Sil’s preferred sweats might hide a lot of his body, but they did nothing to hide when he was popping a boner.

Sil smiled softly, even as his nose reddened. “Maybe…” he said, eyes glazing over as he did something with his Censor, then he was gone, risking sliding on the rough sidewalks as he presumably disappeared to find his hookup.

“Apparently he got the sub-30s contact info,” Beth noted, head bobbing and the world bobbing with her. She was beautiful and strong. So strong. Stronger than she should have needed to be. “How we gonna get home?”

“You can slide,” Emilia pointed out, “once we get to less”—she waved vaguely at the world—“treacherous land.”

Beth almost never slid solo, but she could. So, technically, could Emilia, but she was likely to end up crashing, her control sketchy at best and non-existent at worst. Neither of them would die sliding on the road, and they’d probably be fine, even if they went on the slide lines…

Beth looked at her like she had lost her mind, which fair, and also, yes.

“Walking it is then!” she cheered, trying and failing to loop arms with her friend.