[Can’t Opt Out]

Emilia hadn’t sparked in… probably about five years, and even then, when her knots had been less intense and her control more… existent, she’d sparked straight through a wall. Left a giant hole and hightailed it out of there before SecOps could arrive and start asking questions she didn’t want to answer. She didn’t spark through a wall this time, but she and Payton smacked straight into it.

Her classmate oofed. The thing smashed through the security console—through the place they had just been standing, the sound covering up any subsequent complaints about her lack of control for a technique he surely knew she should not be able to do, even badly.

“Shit,” Payton swore through their Censors. “Is that—”

“Yup,” Emilia replied, already grabbing his hand and prompting him to reactivate {Light of Soul} so they could try and get the fuck out of there. “That’s an echo.”

It really was terrible—not to mention very fucking suspicious—timing. Echo events were so rare these days to begin with, and they had always been rare in Piketown—just as rare as assaults on the city had been during the war itself. No one had ever been able to figure out why the things they had fought during the war had avoided certain areas. There didn’t seem to be anything unique about any of the locations—save the Strats, which had never once been attacked. Echo events were the same. So rare in those same places they were almost unheard of.

Emilia and Payton shot down the stairs, listening to the crashing roars of the thing behind them. Metal clanged against walls, presumably those ugly sculptures sent flying. “Good,” she thought because as bad as this situation was, at least some of their horrible art would be ruined.

“The glass didn’t break,” Payton noted, eyes peering into the dark world outside as they bolted towards the next flight of stairs. Above them, the echo was making so much noise Emilia could only assume it had lost them, {Light of Soul} helping them to fade into the aethernet and hide their presence. Highly convenient, but echos had other ways of tracking their targets.

Emilia hurled a burst of pure aether towards the glass, cursing as it was absorbed. “It’s aether proof,” she spit out. Once, aether proof glass had been popular. It protected the building from aether attacks, up to a point. Helpful during the war, when you were primarily keeping monsters and counterattacks out of your home. A huge hindrance once the echos had begun, creatures popping into existence wherever they pleased, aether proof glass trapping you inside with a monster trying to eat you.

Just like they were now.

Emilia cursed, her senses itching as she felt the echo reach out in search of them, its attention dragging over her like the predator it was. The building rumbled, and then its steps were pounding down on them as it gave chase. They were so totally fucked if that thing caught them. She hadn’t caught a great look at it, concerned with getting them out of the room before it turned on them, and they were trapped, but what her Censor had seen was so totally not good.

“You ever fight an echo? Or even on the field?” she asked, shooting Payton a look.

For once, her classmate actually looked nervous. Great. Perfect time to have an actual emotion. “Once,” he said, turning dark, humourless brown eyes on her. “I almost died.”

“Eh,” she sighed, nodding along and trying to avoid panicking herself—trying to avoid thinking about the fact that the security system was set to never contact SecOps and no help was coming. “I don’t think I know anyone who served who didn’t almost die at least once.” She hesitated for a moment, before adding, “I almost died a few times.”

Payton didn’t seem surprised to learn she had served, simply blasting the next stairwell door open for them to scurry down. “Any ideas?”

Any ideas. Emilia almost laughed. She had a few, but they were almost all either suicidal, or worse, risked taking out the entire block. She didn’t have nearly enough control of her skills anymore to take that thing out without some serious risk.

The thing crashed into the floor above them. They were losing their head start too fast.

Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen here—in this building, in this town. Part of why she had felt safe knotting herself so excessively here was because echo events were so rare! If she’d been living practically anywhere else—like she had, in the two years between the end of the war and moving here—she would have barely had any knots, too paranoid that one of her nightmares would appear before her and kill her. Kill the people she loved. Destroy. Rip apart. Eat. Consume. Burn and burn and burn them until she was breaking herself apart to keep part of her soul alive.

“Stop acting like no one will care if you die,” he had spit at her. It had been so long since she’d heard him mad. Everyone had been babying her since Alliance Ridge. No one had wanted to call her out, not until he had come. Not until he had watched her almost kill herself, being too stupid with grief and guilt to care if she lived or died. “You broke when they died. I will break if you die. Do not break me, Emilia.”

It had been selfish of him, to put that on her, but it had forced her to live. Not just then, but after the war as well. In her darkest moments, his voice was there. Even when they weren’t talking, even when almost no one knew where she was—when she wondered if anyone would even know or care if she died.

It had felt like he would have known—and she had certainly known he would definitely care—so she had pushed on. She couldn’t die. Not when someone still loved her—when someone would still mourn her death.

“Fuck,” she spit out, glaring at Payton. “We’re gonna have to have a long conversation about keeping secrets after this, you understand!?”

He nodded. He looked like he had composed himself, whatever nerves he had felt falling away into the determination and solidity that anyone trained by the military and allowed onto the field had.

[Em: hey]

[Em: long time not talk]

[Em: hope you’re awake]

[Em: kinda need help]

[Em: echo]

[Em sent {Current Location}]

[Em: any help is appreciated!]

She hesitated for a moment before throwing in a smile and a thumbs up. He was already going to be pissed—at her, at the whole damn situation. Why not just go with that?

[Olivier: WHAT!?]

[Em: oh, and like, we kinda broke in and aren’t supposed to be here?]

[Olivier: You did what? WHY?]

[Em: and the glass is aether proof]

[Em: and the security system doesn’t send reports to secops]

[Em: that was their doing, not mine]

[Em: just so you know]

Olivier swore through their connection, and she could feel how angry he was. Not that she particularly blamed him. If she received a message like that from him, she would also be less than impressed.

She also would have been less capable of helping him out, and a part of her heart cracked at that. Once, she would have been able to spark and slide across Baalphoria with ease, reach the people she loved to keep them safe if they needed her—if they trusted her enough to ask.

She didn’t think most of them did anymore. Not after she’d spent a decade running from them. Not after—

The world split apart as the thing chasing them sparked down the hall, having finally caught up to them. It smashed through the wall, crashed into the stairwell and turned on them. Liquid silver eyes glowed from the dark as they skidded to a stop, Payton’s hand in hers tugging her own questionable momentum backwards.

“What now?” he asked, aether fluctuating around them as he presumably prepared to erect a defensive barrier if the echo attacked—when it attacked.

“Someone’s coming,” she said, willbrand sparking purple and gold against her chest.

This was wrong. This was too much of a coincidence. For an echo to appear here and now of all things? That couldn’t be a coincidence, but it had to be. There had never been any rhyme or reason to echos, just like there had never been any for the war or for the initial attacks that had set the world aflame.

Not one they had ever found, anyways, not in 30 years of searching for answers that didn’t seem to exist.

“How long?”

The de la Rue compound wasn’t far, but they had only made it down to the 19th floor before the echo had overtaken them. How long for Olivier to gather what he needed, wake whatever security he trusted to come—if not trusted to protect her secrets, then trusted not to die or impede him. How long for them to make it up here? He could probably break the glass from the outside, but…

“Hopefully not too long,” she said, smiling as she reformed her willbrand. It wrapped around her wrist, the real life version of the bracelet form she had forced it into inside the bartender’s mind. One of the dozen moons and stars adorning the chains already glowed in preparation. “But, we’ll have to hold our own for at least a little bit.” A few minutes, if they were lucky. A dozen, if they weren’t.

A roar ripped out of the monster of darkness blocking their way, one long, scaled arm emerging from the shadows. Its nails—nails that she had seen shred soldiers and their planes into nothing with barely a drop of effort—scratched the polished white floor. Its nose tilted out of the shadow, those purple eyes watching them unblinkingly.

Drip.

Scratch.

Drool dripping across the floor.

Nails dragging as it stalked towards them.

Payton swallowed, aether pulsing around him. He was tried—tired from keeping her from overheating, from searching through all of this hideously beautiful artwork. He wasn’t trained for this—wasn’t ready, his only preparation having been basic training and years within the raids.

The fucking useless raids.

The raids that she knew Payton was an active player in—far more active than almost everyone else in their cohort.

An active player in the raids that limited your skills within them, your level within the raids superseding your own skill manipulating the aethernet outside its boundaries. There, within the raidlands, limits were imposed on heroes so they couldn’t do too much. Couldn’t overexert themselves or attack other players. Couldn’t destroy buildings. Couldn’t do a thousand other things in the name of keeping the world safe.

Worse than that limiting of your real skills? The raids enhanced your skills, augmented them in a way most people’s could never exist outside its walls. Your ability within a raid didn’t naturally translate into the real world.

Her jaw clenched, thinking back to all the wannabe heroes who had died when echos had been more common. People who were woefully unprepared—told they were perfectly suited for war by a fucking game—challenging flesh and blood monsters, thinking their skill within raids would lead them to a resounding victory.

It had not. So many people had died. The government had framed their deaths as heroic, and people had believed them.

“They died protecting Baalphoria!”

“Do not let their deaths be in vain! Continue your training with passion and make your country—no, your planet—proud!”

Stupid. Most people didn’t seem to realize the aethernet was condensed and artificially enhanced within a raid. Or, they did, but they didn’t think it would matter that much.

It did matter that much, but releasing your willbrand outside of a raid or echo event could land you in jail, if someone or the OIC system complained. So, people didn’t activate them, didn’t realize the true extent of the difference between a game and a war.

Emilia tried to force those facts into Payton’s head in the moments they had before the monster lunged.

“Do not die being stupid,” she tried to scream into him.

“Do not try to be a hero,” she said, knowing full well that, had they the time, he would have laughed and pointed out that she was the one trying to be the hero in this situation.

She was a hero, though, was the thing. A broken hero, yes, but a hero, nonetheless, and when her willbrand expanded through the world, when her body sparked through the aether, and she sliced a long gash in the echo’s side before reappeared behind it, it was like returning to a childhood home you had once loved. To a childhood home that had kept you safe, made you feel loved and cherished, until it had collapsed and killed half the people you loved.