[Can’t Opt Out]

“Yo, get up.” Emilia stared down at her roommate, plus guest. Neither moved, and she gave the base of the bed a stern kick.

Pria mumbled in her sleep while her guest slept on—whatever the star eater had been on last night had apparently been even heavier than the shit Pria had gotten them. That, or she was using her Censor to dull out the sounds of the world, which was kinda a shit move when you were in someone else’s bed, if you asked her.

In the corner of her vision, an alarm lit up across her Censor:

[Better leave for class now, dumbass]

Emilia blinked it aside. It wasn’t the last chance alarm—that one screamed at her and wouldn’t stop flashing red across her Censor until it knew she was actually heading to class fast enough to make it. It wasn’t even the penultimate one that vibrated her mind like a thought she couldn’t quite catch hold of. She was good to keep prodding her roommate for at least another minute.

“If you don’t get up now, Professor A is gonna stick you on paper duty,” she said, hoping fear of their oldest, if most charismatic, teacher would scare her awake. Nothing.

“Fine,” she said, turning to leave. She really couldn’t afford to miss another class, not when a message from her Censor had informed her she’d spent too much last night.

“Really, high as the night sky Emilia, mood rain?”

She needed Professor A to give her a couple hours of something—anything—so she didn’t starve till next paydrop. Don’t piss off the hand that offers you easy work. Not when the other alternative was raids. No, thanks. Somewhat tedious work was better than raids any day.

She halted at the door to her roommate’s room, cringing as the physical alarm her roommate favoured started blaring. Pria and her guest slept right through it. Impressive, although Pria’s own Censor’s sound dampening shouldn’t be affecting her perception of the alarm…

She glanced back over her shoulder. Maybe…

“PRIA!” she yelled—practically screamed, really, her voice echoing through the aethernet and slamming into her friend in a dust of purple vibrations.

Her roommate scrambled upright, blinking comically at her, her curly black hair a messy ball around her. “Why are you yelling!?” she whispered back, voice raw and scratchy from sleep and all the shit she’d done the previous night, before frowning. “What? What? What the—?” she repeated to herself at increasingly loud volumes.

“Aftereffect from the drugs. Must be messing with your hearing,” Emilia noted, turning to truly leave this time. “Turn off that damn alarm and hurry up. We’re gonna be late.”

“What? Oh! Shit!”

Emilia wandered through the house, grabbing drinks for both of them, as her second most serious alarm crackled across her Censor and brain. She sent it flying into the aetherlands as well. “Hurry up,” she yelled again, smiling to the sound of her friend cursing.

[Error: Door Jammed]

She slid her shoes on and kicked the door. It popped open. In theory, it was supposed to open through her Censor, but something was wrong with the connection, and she could never quite bring herself to go down to dorm management and get it sorted. Mostly because she was pretty sure it was an issue on her end, and issues meant questions. She didn’t need questions or someone shuffling through her Censor—or worse, asking to check her knots for interference.

Behind her, something crashed. Her roommate swore, and Emilia continued on. Pria would catch up.

Her silver-grey hair swept behind her as she strode down the long hall. Despite being in her typical high ponytail, the ends still brushed the tops of her thighs, tickling the bare skin slightly. She’d woken up later than she would have liked, rushed to pull her hair up and splatter on the most basic of makeup. Her Censor had informed her it was going to be hot and to dress lightly—although it had been oddly cagey on how hot it was going to be, which was concerning. It had been acting up more and more recently, although in this case, she figured it was just that it didn’t want to horrify her with how hot it was outside. Awesome.

She’d followed its advice, though, throwing on a pink and purple, sleeveless romper that hugged her ass quite nicely, her cheeks just barely hanging out. She’d forgone any jewellery today, save her willbrand, still in her favoured necklace form. She never took that off—not unless she was using it.

Emilia was watching the elevator doors close when her roommate caught up, a night black hand—still covered in galaxy dust—shooting between the doors just as they were about to snap closed.

“Lot of trust you have in this thing,” she noted as the doors opened. Her roommate stepped inside, panting and holding her shoes, her hair now pulled up into a huge, imposing bun. She had thrown on some dark-grey lounge clothes, the kind she normally only wore around their dorm, which would most certainly be too hot, assuming her Censor wasn’t lying to her about the heat.

“It’s supposed to be safe,” the other girl sighed as she shuffled inside, the elevator hissing in what Emilia swore was annoyance as it snapped shut. It didn’t make that noise unless someone had held it up because they were running late—judgy thing.

“And our door’s supposed to open at the flick of a thought. It doesn't.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a you issue, not a door issue,” Pria teased, trying to force her shoes on. They were cute, shiny and purple. They matched her hookup’s hair. They were nearly impossible to get on at the best of times. Now was not the best of times, Pria’s skin sticky with sex and sweat and all that damn dust.

“You’re gonna get yelled at for the dust,” Emilia said nonchalantly. It wasn’t like her roommate had had time to scrub it off, but their professor wouldn’t be happy about it being around his babies—fuck, he might even relegate Pria to paper duty because of it.

“Like I could have scraped it off in the two minutes I had to get ready,” Pria huffed, futilely scrubbing at her face. “Fuck, why’s my hearing still so hot,” she complained to herself, pushing at her ears, as though that would make the aftereffects disappear. “That for me?” she asked, motioning to the drink Emilia held in her hand, even as she grimaced.

Emilia handed over the thick, green juice. It was a great hangover cure. Really, it was a great dietary supplement in general, filled with all the nutrients you could possibly need. It even bumped up your stats, if you cared about that kind of thing, which Emilia most certainly didn’t. It was also absolutely disgusting. The kind of shit you chug and hope to keep down. Emilia had already chugged hers and ignored the notification from her Censor about buffed stats. She dropped her empty can into a bin as they stepped out of the elevator and the abnormally hot summer heat hit them.

All the buildings were climate controlled—most all the buildings in Baalphoria were, except in the slums, but those had been growing rarer every day since the war. For whatever reason, the architects had chosen not to install microclimate controls throughout the university’s outdoor spaces, though. Something about nature and misery. Personally, Emilia figured it was because the founders had been trying to court a researcher from the far south, where outdoor climates were never tampered with. Hadn’t worked. There was no fancy, non-dev southern teacher, and instead all the staff and students suffered.

“Fuck~” Pria moaned as they hurried down the long path that led to their first class, her heels clacking on the uneven stones. “Why is it so damn hot!?”

“Pink tide,” Emilia said, her Censor lighting up with a weather report about a rare pink tide on the northern side of the Penns. “They tend to make everything a lot hotter,” she explained when her friend—who had grown up in the north-western part of the country and probably only ever seen a pink tide through her Censor—shot her a confused and sweaty glance. She had managed to wipe a small amount of the galaxy dust away, so now only half her face sparkled like the night sky. If anything, it kinda looked even worse now.

“I thought it was like… a goal, to be able to climb the Strats during a pink tide, though?”

“It is,” replied a male voice, and a moment later an arm was swinging over Emilia’s shoulder. “Hi, babe,” Elijah said, smiling that smug, lopsided smile of his at her. Bright blue eyes peeked out from beneath his dirty blonde hair, all of him shimmering in the mid-morning sun, the mess of curls more of a mess than usual—probably the result of him dragging his hand through his sweat damp hair as he hurried to class. He was always nearly late, always rushing and cursing and nearly bowling people over on his way to the slide lines.

He wasn’t wearing his normal clothes, though, this outfit leaning too far into the clean-cut, preppy college student he was supposed to be, not the jock-head he was. Formerly normal clothes, she reminded herself. He’d been dressing like this since his visit home a few months ago. Elijah had once been bright and sloppy and infuriating. Now his smile was dimmer, his clothes ironed and expensive. He wouldn’t talk about what had happened with his parents—or older siblings, perhaps—but something had changed. About him, about them, about the clothes he wore and the things he expected in life—the things that were expected of him.

“Want a lift?” he asked, just as he always did. At least that hadn’t changed.

“Sure,” she replied. The only reason he got off the lines a stop early was so he could give her a lift, so who was she to refuse? Especially in this heat.

[Access: Glide Along Request from Elijah]

[Access: Granted]

She smiled up at him as he pressed a little kiss to her forehead and their Censors connected. His smooth slide barely stuttered as she surrendered control of her movements to him, and he activated the slide across her shoes. These ones—a pair of flats so purple they were almost black—barely glowed as the skill activated, just the slightest shimmer of darkness flowing out of them, and then she was being pulled along by her boyfriend, his own superior skill moving them effortlessly forward. Well, it took a little effort, but it was nothing compared to walking, nothing compared to the awareness that riding the lines themselves with a glide along required.

“Not fair,” Pria pouted, her steps speeding up to match their new pace.

“Hey, I told you,” Elijah said, his tone already edged with annoyance—they’d had this same conversation too many times, usually when one or both of them was hungover—“I’ll teach you how to glide along. Just say when.”

“Nah,” Pria replied on instinct. Instinct to complain, instinct to offer, instinct to refuse. “Why would anyone want to climb the Strats in this misery?” she asked instead, rather than the traditional line of making excuses that her Physical D-Level would make learning to glide along impossible. It wouldn’t. It would make it harder, sure, but anyone could glide along, even those with completely deficient Physical D-Levels. Pria’s might be low enough that she’d never be able to slide solo, but it wasn’t completely deficient, and her excuses were lame.

Elijah shrugged, happy to not have to argue with her about D-Levels and her weight—she also said she was too fat to glide along, another meaningless excuse. “It’s pretty.”

“It’s pretty?” Pria repeated, staring at him like she didn’t force herself into painful shoes and uncomfortable outfits every day simply because they made her look cute. “That’s insane. It’s like a billion degrees out!”

[Current Temperature: 40°], Emilia’s Censor happily informed her. That was definitely hot for most of the country, save the Grey Sands and the Strats themselves, where the pink tides could drive the temperature into the high 50s on occasion. The 40s were definitely unpleasant—and the sight of the Data-Recovery Lab’s metallic roof coming into view through the trees was a welcome sight—but it was far from the worst heat Emilia had ever experienced.

It wasn’t even close to the worst.

[Error: Memory Access Denied]

[Input Access Code?]

The request fizzled out automatically.

Beside her, her roommate and boyfriend were bickering with each other—Pria’s voice booming under the effects of the drugs—as usual, and she tuned them out as she was pulled along. The wind slid through her hair, just a little coolness in the oppressive heat, and she let her eyes flutter shut, just for a few moments. The joy of no longer being able to slide herself: she could glide and let her mind slip away as she was safely escorted wherever she needed to go. Kept her close to campus, more often than not, and the slide lines were more convenient—not to mention less expensive—than getting a bubble, but…

They turned a corner and the lab came fully into view. Three floors of towering metal walls and huge windows that offered views of the ocean to the east and the city to the south-west, both located at the base of the mountain the university sat on. Designs were etched into the metal, delicate and mysterious. Emilia had once heard the designs came straight from the OIC, but the system had refused to elaborate on what they were for—if they were for anything. You didn’t disobey the OIC, though, so on the designs went, beautiful and slowly being covered in vines that wound their way through the trellises that the OIC had also demanded be installed over the building. An odd choice, given that nearly a decade on, trellises and the vines covered the majority of the design.

Ahead of them, Sil Xu popped out of a slide line in a spark of teal, dressed as always in a baggy sweater and sweats—light green and black today. He shook his head slightly, black hair shifting with the movement, and readjusted the bag slung over his shoulder, the one that contained all his expensive comp stuff—because apparently his Censor alone wasn’t powerful enough for whatever it was he did inside the Virtuosi System.

“Aren’t you burning up?” Pria asked when they reached him, interrupting Elijah in the midst of explaining that, were it not for the exuberant cost, he would totally, completely, go climb the Strats during a pink tide, regardless of the heat.

Emilia wasn’t particularly convinced. Her boyfriend loved climbing, yes, but there was something different about the Strats during a pink tide. It wasn’t just the heat, or the waves crashing against the shimmering rocks more violently than usual. It wasn’t even the vapour of the pink tides that hovered in the air, offering a hallucinating high to anyone brave enough to make the climb.

There was just something different, something that she had seen scare away even the most experienced of climbers.

“Ah…” Sil breathed out, quite obviously trying not to cringe at her loudness, and eyeing up the mess of galaxy dust covering her with distaste. “Yes.”

“Yes? Yes, he says,” Pria complained as she practically ran into the building. She let out a loud moan as the cool air surrounded her, and more than a few of the students lingering around looked towards them. A few of the girls blushed. A few of the boys, who obviously didn’t know which way Pria bent, gave her an assessing look. Stars protect them if they decided to hit on her.

[Glide Along with Elijah Disconnected]

[Access: Revoked]

Emilia, Elijah and Sil let their slides shimmer back into the aether before they followed. Technically, you didn’t have to heel-up inside most of the buildings, but the Data-Recovery Lab had its own private lines, and if you weren’t connected to the building’s system and hit one, well. Once, Elijah had been run into a wall. Another time he’d ended up in a supply closet, locked in from the outside. It had taken his friends nearly two hours to find him. Technically, Emilia had found him almost immediately, but this had been back when they hated each other, and she had been disinclined to either let him out or tell his asshole friends where to find him

As for Sil, he was never stupid enough to have his slides active in the building. Emilia had the sense there was a story behind that, but she’d never been able to get it out of him. For someone so quiet and soft, the guy was particularly adept at keeping his secrets—hers too. He didn’t know many of her secrets, didn’t even know any that were particularly important to keep, but he kept them all the same.

“Sil isn’t outside long enough for it to matter how hot he gets,” Emilia said for her friend. It was true. Sil’s dorm was close to a slide line. He probably only spent a few seconds outside between his dorm and the lab. That said, he was also definitely using a personal cooling skill—the one he didn’t want Pria to know about because she would 100% be shameless enough to beg him to use it on her.

Sil shot her an appreciative glance as they moved through the building, its security system scratching lightly at their Censors as they worked their way further inside, eventually reaching the elevator that would take them deep into the mountain.

The Data-Recovery Lab—with its main research facility buried under rocks and concrete and reinforced walls—was one of the most protected places in the country. The university as a whole was, really. It had only been founded after the war had ended, a decade earlier. So many people had died, so many people had dropped out of their own elective education to fight and die. People had emerged different after the war, and many of the former students and their teachers had had no desire to return to the cold, harsh world of other Baalphorian universities.

People wanted a new place—a new home. If they had also added in state-of-the-art security and defence systems that would hopefully never be needed again throughout the place… well, none of the people who lived and worked on campus were complaining.

Astrapan: Home to All Who Need a Home

That was how most of the residents thought of it. True to that ideal—and unlike, all those old-school universities—Astrapan even allowed citizens of the Free Colonies to attend… in theory. In practice, Emilia only knew of a handful of students from the Free Colonies, mostly from the ones that had already had close ties to Baalphoria before the war. One day, though. One day, this place would be filled with people from all the myriads of Free Colonies. Even without them, the school had already done a good job of making sure Baalphorians from every social class were welcome, even if sub-50s were rare, although…

“Man, you look ever worse than Pria,” Emilia teased as they stepped out of the elevators to find Bethany Haelstrum—one of the few sub-50s she knew, not just here, but anywhere—waiting for them.

Beth grumbled, her short blonde hair hanging sadly around her tanned face as she leaned back against the wall, eyes firmly shut against the horrible artificial light. She didn’t move as they passed her, and Emilia had to circle back to drag her along, her own lightly tanned arm slipping through Beth’s golden brown, tattooed one. The taller girl slumped weakly against her, but at least her feet were moving, if moving slowly.

“Dude, I thought when you didn’t join us last night, you were being sensible and staying home to study. But no! You obviously went and had fun without us! Didn’t even give us a call!” Emilia half-teased, half-complained. Honestly, if this was the way Beth was looking after whatever night she’d had, she was glad her friend hadn’t invited her along. Beth was hardcore, and Emilia had been in the mood to get smashed. She was glad she hadn’t been anywhere near whatever her friend had taken last night.

Beth grumbled something that may have been, “Fuck you,” before falling silent again and letting herself be dragged further down the long corridor.

“Well, at least Professor A is less likely to stick me on paper duty when that shows up,” Pria whispered—or, at least, Emilia assumed it was supposed to be a whisper. Hopefully, the aftereffects from the drugs would wear off soon; otherwise she was going to be dragging her roommate to a clinic to get her hearing sorted out, and Pria was notoriously difficult to convince into going to a clinic. Most aftereffects would go away eventually. Emilia was not inclined to wait it out. The last time one of them had had a bad aftereffect, it had taken a week to dissipate. Emilia was not living with a nearly screaming roommate for the next week, thanks.

This time, when Beth grumbled, it was definitely a, “Fuck off, Pria.” She raised her head from Emilia’s shoulder just enough to glare at the other girl before her eyes slid to Sil. “How are you not dying too?”

Sil blushed slightly. “I didn’t take what I got.”

Beth raised an eyebrow, a weak smile tugging at her lips. “The beautiful sub-30?”

Pria whistled and Elijah coughed awkwardly, while Sil’s blush burned a bit brighter. “You don’t know that he was a sub-30.”

“Yeah, I do,” Beth said, a look of pain briefly crossing her face. She shook it off, though. It had been years since she had let family and sub-50 training—sub-50 obligations—darken her day. “Was he good?”

Based on the way Sil’s face managed to turn an even brighter shade of red before his steps widened, and he was leaving them behind, Emilia would say yes, the maybe-probably-definitely-sub-30 had been very, very good.