[Can’t Opt Out]

The architecture of Piketown was, to put it lightly, batshit crazy, in Emilia’s so, so humble opinion. The city hadn’t originally been intended to be anything other than a commercial zone, was the problem. For over a thousand years, it had primarily been a shipping port. Ships arrived from both northern Baalphoria and foreign countries via the sea. Rivers and bubble transport lines brought in goods and materials from the south and west, including the occasional product from the Free Colonies. From there, materials were transformed, the goods distributed, sent for trade with other countries or Baalphorian cities, who heavily relied on Piketown’s infrastructure. Manufacturing and shipping had been its main economy for so long it had been a surprise when the first families had begun to move to it, intent to make it their home, despite having no connection to either industry.

Then more had come, and more.

Largely, they had been workers from Roasalia, the capital of Baalphoria, which was only a short bubble to the south of Piketown. Roasalia had experienced a housing crisis, being not just home to those who worked in the capital, but also to so many people who worked in the Penns, commuting there daily rather than living in Baalphoria’s most expensive province. The solution had been for its lower-class workers to move north, seeking lower living costs in exchange for a longer commute—which, really, wasn’t that much longer, given how fast bubbles and slide lines were, even then. They had turned Piketown into something closer to what it was today—into a town brimming with different cultures and classes. It was a far cry from the boring town it had been before, so empty that residents had needed to head into Roasalia for any fun… or even the most basic of necessities.

The ocean side areas, to the south and east, of Piketown were still dedicated to shipping and manufacturing, along with the Alver slums, which had originally been company housing. The northern part was edged by the mountain range Mount Pike belonged to, and had been where the majority of the first arrivals from Roasalia had set up their homes and commercial districts, winds from the ocean pulling over the mountains and taking most of the pollution the industrial areas created out of the area, before proper climate and decontamination systems had been acquired.

By the time the more affluent members of Baalphorian society decided they also wanted a piece of Piketown, not much had been left. Now, their homes and commercial districts were set up along the western edge, and the residents were constantly fighting for the best view of the ocean. The result was a disgusting array of obscenely tall buildings, reaching as high as their owners could afford to make them, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the ocean.

It was embarrassing, to be honest, and it had only worsened in the last few decades. More and more people had moved to Piketown, one of the few areas that had been largely untouched by the war. Moreover, as Astrapan became increasingly influential, more children of the rich and powerful began to attend, their parents erecting tall, hideously white buildings for their university years. Worse? By the time those students graduated, their building wasn’t likely to have much of a view anymore, meaning they’d have problems selling it. So they wouldn’t sell it, and taller buildings would pop up behind it, or it would be sold and demolished, so a new building could rise higher and impede the views of those behind it.

Capitalism at its finest.

The building Emilia wandered through now was one of those buildings. She’d only been inside one once, but she’d heard a few of her classmates rant about how stupid they were because most of the building was usually empty. There was no need to use the parts of the building that only had views of other white buildings, after all, no need to even rent the space out, when the building would be demolished within a few years.

Emilia walked and walked, coming across exactly zero doors that went towards the centre of the building. She turned a few corners, went up two flights of stairs, exited out into another hallway, and repeated… and repeated… and repeated. Nothing. Just an empty hallway, then stairs.

Empty hallway.

Stairs.

Empty hallways.

Stairs.

It was stupid, and she really wanted to reach out through the aether, see if there even was anything inside the centre, or if it was just a solid block, supporting the rich bigots high above.

Logically, she knew there was something inside, though. She had seen it, inside the bartender’s fragmented mind. There was an entrance to the centre, where the purist meetings were held, somewhere. She could not, however, figure out where the fuck it was.

“Fuck,” she sighed, sagging against the blank, white wall of a hallway. She’d at least gotten to the point where there were windows to look out of, but they just showed her the windows of the white buildings pressed too close to this one. Who had decided this nonsense was allowed? Why wasn’t anyone regulating it even now? She’d never voted in a local election—she might have been able to register at Astrapan as Emilia Daniels without the system flagging it as a fake name, but she doubted she’d get away with that if she voted—but she was half tempted to look into the candidates next election, see who she could support, if not with her vote than with something else. Someone must be running on a platform that this shit needed to be regulated, right!?

Emilia sighed, sagging further down onto the floor, her dress sliding against the smooth tile, and reached out to Payton. Fortunately, it was illegal for anyone’s security to monitor or interfere with communication, except with some pretty hefty permits. The aethernet was everywhere and belonged to no one. You could monitor your building, people, and electronics, to keep them safe, but you couldn’t monitor the aether itself, unless it was specifically interfering with something you owned. Well, you could, but the fines were no joke.

[Em: find anything?]

[Payton: No. You?]

[Em: nothing]

[Payton: There were no clues in what you found?]

Emilia released a long puff of air, scanning through the fractured images she had received from the bartender yet again. There really wasn’t much there. The outside of the building, so generic, but then the de la Rue compound. She’d been able to count the buildings between them, pick out small landmarks, to find the correct white building. Inside it, however…

The bartender had talked to the faceless man, received the information her Censor was still analyzing, and the moth virus. He’d turned, taking in vague details of the room that had slowly been eaten away by the moth. There were no windows, only giant screens broadcasting the Penns, of all things. Ocean waves crashed over pale white beaches. Perfectly manicured grass and plants spread over the hills. There were no people, even though she recognized a few places that were constantly filled with locals—at least, they had been last time she had been there.

The bartender had taken a step, then another, towards a silver door—no, not a door. An elevator. He’d only made it a few steps, however, before he was pushing his way out of the building. Either the moth or the building’s security had messed with his memory. It was rare, but sometimes security manipulated your mind to disallow forming memories. Hard to resist, unless you were paying special attention, which she and Payton were. If anyone was going to use such a technique, well, purists were probably pretty high on that list. The Black Knot took purist activities pretty seriously, and no one wanted them showing up at their door.

She scanned back through the memory, trying to force it to go back further. Even a little further back in time could hold a clue and—

[Em: nope, nothing, nada]

[Payton: Annoying]

[Em: very]

[Payton: Better keep going then.]

Emilia groaned, but pushed herself up nonetheless. She glanced back down the hall before beginning to walk again, and walk, and walk, and walk, and—

She scuffed a shoe along the ground. So boring and annoying. They couldn’t even use an elevator—assuming they could even find one—because that would certainly flag security. All they could do was walk up and up and up, and her clothes were the least of her worries at this point. She was going to walk holes in her shoes. Up and up and up and—

Emilia stopped, frowning as she glanced behind her. Now that there were windows, more light was coming in from the moons, but it still wasn’t super bright. She could barely see the end of the hall. There was nothing there, but she knew that something was there. She turned fully around, readying her Censor to reach out, to find whatever was there. It shuddered and—

[Payton: I found something]

Just like that, whatever she felt vanished. Her Censor still echoed out of her, reaching into the dark and coming up with nothing—nothing it could detect, anyways. She was still running it at a lower spec, in order to not trigger the security system, after all. She reached out with her own core, ever so slightly.

You weren’t technically supposed to try and touch or analyze things with your core. It could backlash and, you know, kill you. Censors acted as a barrier, but Censors were much easier for security systems to detect. Direct core skills? Not so much.

Mostly, because very few people were insane enough to use their core.

[Payton: You’re going to have to circle back around to me.]

Emilia’s core shuddered as it slid through the hall, rubbing over the edges of the smooth glass and wall and floors and—

[Payton: I’m on the 31st floor. Sorry.]

Emilia frowned. She was only on the 18th. How had he moved so fast?

[Payton: Em?]

[Em: sorry]

[Em: distracted]

[Em: how did you get up there so fast?]

[Em: and you didn’t happen to see any doors from your side to mine along the way, did you?]

This building was so weird, with each staircase going up two floors at a time, so they had yet to actually come across each other. They were also forced to walk back down the hall to get to the next set of stairs, which took them two floors up, then a hall and two floors and who designed a building like that? What if there was an emergency on the other half of the building? You wouldn’t be able to reach the other side unless you blasted a hole through the walls—a skill most people, thankfully, did not possess. Honestly, she wasn’t convinced the point of this building wasn’t to make people who tried to break into it lose their minds!

A laugh flittered through her mind, soft and huffing. Seriously, what had her classmate’s father been thinking when he’d advised his son to hide himself away behind bold laughter and lies?

[Payton: Med skill, meant for sneaking through hostile territory. The code is kept pretty confidential, and changes a little every few months, to keep it out of security systems.]

[Payton: Officially, it’s illegal to even try to track it, not that many people outside of medics even know it exists.]

[Em: cool]

Too bad she didn’t have anything like that herself—

[Payton sent {Light of Soul}]

[Em: i thought you said confidential?]

[Payton: It’s due to change soon, and I don’t think you’ll go spreading it around.]

No, she wouldn’t spread it around, but she probably would analyze and adapt it for herself—make it just unique enough that if someone caught her using it they wouldn’t know where it came from.

[Em: thanks]

[Em: be there soon]

[Em: and keep an eye out]

[Em: something doesn’t seem right]

Payton didn’t respond as she loaded up the skill into her Censor. It did a cursory analysis of it, before deeming it safe and letting her activate it. Much like {Med Search}, {Light of Soul} was incredibly lightweight. Seriously, who was programming this stuff for them? She’d never heard anything about these skills, even during the war, when information and secrets had been shared with perhaps too much ease. Yes, the military’s medics had been known for being incredibly skilled, but not to this extent.

She glanced over the specifics of the skill before she began to run, her body feeling light and invisible as she floated down stairs and around corners. It felt almost like she were vibrating with the aethernet, fitting inside its form and disappearing from sight.

She was so ripping into the code of this skill tomorrow.

Her fingers brushed the hole they had left in the first floor as she bolted past it. It had taken barely any time at all to make it this far, and while she knew going down was far easier than going up, it still surprised her that Payton had only made it twice as far as her.

At least, it did, until she reached the top of the 3rd floor and skidded to a stop. Oh.

[Em: dude, your side is so much more… interesting than mine]

[Payton: It is?]