[Can’t Opt Out]

Emilia let her escort guide her through the maze of hallways and floors, gathering her up in his arms every time they reached another set of stairs, before gently setting her back down. He didn’t release her hands from the cuffs, however, and slowly her shoulders were beginning to ache.

Unlike in her spawn building—where the hallways had run down the centre of the building, blocking out views of the outside world—these halls were situated near the outside of the building. Giant windows spanned the length of one wall, looking out onto the empty street below. Occasionally, a door sat on the opposite wall, but they were rare. The building didn’t appear to be rectangular, either, although her brain was fuzzy with lack of proper sleep or food—because she was finally starting to feel the starvation that her knots suppressed until her stomach was beginning to eat itself—so she wasn’t exactly inclined to trust her mapping abilities at the moment—especially considering they were rather sketchy to begin with.

They were on the twelfth floor when her escort stopped, opening one of the doors with an ominously blood coloured key. It reminded her of the {Blood Dagger}—which she amazingly still had, no one having bothered checking her for weapons, not that she could have used it at the moment, what with her arms still trapped behind her. She had no idea if the key was made of blood, though. Instead, she had to content herself with only catching another, fleeting look at it as he pulled it free of the lock and ushered her inside with a hand because despite the fact that he could communicate with her, he’d only said one thing to her since they left the others: ⸄You will see.⸅

Even that had been hard-earned, on her part. She’d spent the first three floors asking him where they were going, what his name was, what day it was, if there was any food, etc, etc. Her questions had been met with silence, and if not for the increasingly annoyed look on his face, she would have been convinced he couldn’t hear her. Eventually, he’d cracked and told her she would see where they were going soon.

She had the distinct feeling that what he had really wanted to say was, ⸄Shut the fuck up.⸅

His near refusal to speak was odd, given he’d been quiet but slightly more talkative while they made their way to the building. If the man hadn’t remained standing so close behind her the whole time, she would have assumed that that quiet, apologetic man and this quiet, stern man were entirely different people. Still, not wanting to overly annoy someone who had so far been nothing but nice to her, she’d kept quiet for the remaining floors.

For a time, she’d kept herself distracted from her increasingly stiff legs and aching feet thinking of potential reasons for his suddenly palpable reticence. He was more comfortable speaking with his helmet on. There was something about the building—whether the building itself or someone who could overhear him—that was keeping him silent. Something had upset him during their meeting with that woman, and he was sorting through his thoughts and emotions. He had multiple personalities.

Emilia really hoped it wasn’t the last option. She’d known a few people during the war whose personalities had been fractured by what they’d seen and done—or, worse, by some skill that had backfired and caused significant brain damage. She’d tried—relatively unsuccessfully—to shake off thoughts of those broken people, some of them still alive and confined to military hospitals, others put down because they had been too dangerous to be allowed to live.

Fortunately, she’d never had to do any of that putting down with her own hands. She had handed people over to The Black Knot, though, knowing exactly what the organization would do with them if they deemed them too dangerous. The Black Knot hadn’t actually been the main organization who dealt with soldiers who went off the rails, but Emilia had connections to them, which had made handing problems over easy. As much as their reputation was harsh, the things she’d heard about the other, even more secretive organization who actively sought out and dealt with rogue soldiers…

Emilia had actively forced her thoughts to float away from those stories, urging her mind to forget about the horrors of the war. With Payton doing stars knew what to her knots, she needed to not rile herself up with traumatic memories as much as she could. She wasn’t particularly skilled at staying completely silent and unthinking, though, and every so often, she had hummed to herself as they went—her escort hadn’t seemed to mind that—and when she’d asked to stop for a moment, because her feet hurt, he’d guided her towards the windows, letting her rest and watch the desolate world outside.

His own eyes had stared into the red fog above, the expression on his face something she couldn’t quite decipher. He’d caught her looking at him, given her a blank stare and a slow blink.

Something about that look had made her cheeks burn, and she was glad she’d decided to put on so much blush—not that she had any idea whether it was still in place or not. The appearance editor had implied her makeup would be permanent, but until she got a chance to actually she herself in a mirror, she wasn’t going to rule out the possibility that her makeup could fade and smudge.

The room she stepped into now was much nicer than the one she’d spawned in, even if it was still obnoxiously red. It didn’t have a kitchen, as far as she could tell, but there was a small table and a bed. A nearly black couch. A small shelf with several… books? It was unclear from this far away, but something about the maybe-books looked weird. A door that she assumed led to a bathroom—hopefully one less disgusting than the first building’s.

“Yours, or mine?” she couldn’t help but ask, smiling innocently at her escort.

He did not look convinced of her innocence—if anything, he looked mildly confused—but he did reach to release her hands as the door hissed shut behind him, the floor vibrating ever so slightly under their feet. ⸄Yours.⸅

“Ah~” Emilia sighed, rolling out her stiff arms. “A prison, then, is it?”

Her escort slipped the cuffs back into his belt. ⸄No.⸅

“No?” Emilia waited for him to explain himself, but he was annoyingly quiet—even quieter than Olivier, somehow. Something about this man’s silence, however, felt wrong. Her ex-lawyer’s always felt natural, as though the speaking, not the silence, were the unnatural part of his existence. This guy…

⸄It is not a prison,⸅ the man’s modulated, aethervoice said. ⸄It is a transitional house.⸅

“Transition from?”

⸄From your world to ours.⸅

Emilia blinked rapidly at him, surprised. Most of the time, with these kinds of short-term raid platforms, the residents didn’t know people were coming from different worlds. Often, the system would prompt you to say you were from some far away land—offer you some logical explanation as to where and how and why in the stars you were there.

Of course, that wasn’t possible without access to the system, but there was nothing stopping the platform from briefly overwriting your person with an avatar to give locals details of a fabricated backstory. Even as inexperienced with these raid platforms as she was, Emilia knew that sort of override was common. Many platforms had specific storylines, which relied on such overwriting to make the story come together, and many more had rules forbidding heroes from telling locals their world wasn’t the real world—whatever that meant. This place—these people—felt pretty damn real to her.

“Do people come here often?” she asked, spinning and taking in more of the details of the room.

There was a window, hidden behind some blinds. Still no physical lights, despite the brightness of the room. The water in the bathroom still ran red, but at least it wasn’t quite so thick. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, finding her makeup perfectly untouched.

She peeked out of the bathroom, half expecting her escort to have left, given he hadn’t answered her question—she also hadn’t heard the door open, but who was keeping track? He was still standing there, watching her. Hands tucked behind his back like the soldier he was.

⸄Yes,⸅ he finally said, walking towards the window, pushing the blinds aside. He looked up into the red fog again. It was still so high above them. He started slightly when Emilia appeared by his side, staring diligently upwards as well. ⸄Every few decades or so, a group of visitors arrive. Usually, everyone arrives within a few hours of each other. You are…⸅

“An anomaly?”

The man nodded. He still hadn’t told her his name, and she tried asking again. He didn’t even glance her way before telling her that the men—because they were usually men, she was also an anomaly for that—usually caused disturbances, so their forces were sent out to bring them into custody until they could learn the rules of the world.

“I bet they cooperate until they learn you have no idea how to access the system—or if you do, you have no intention of telling them how to access it?” Emilia guessed.

Her escort’s lips twitched, the first sign of a smile she had seen. Fuck, if he smiled, he’d most certainly be even more stunning. It fell away quickly, though, so she was safe from death by smile for the moment. ⸄Visitors do not usually guess at that so quickly, either.⸅

“How long do you keep people here, searching for clues they’ll never find?”

⸄A while.⸅ Another barely there smile.

“So, until they naturally disappear, then.”

⸄Not always,⸅ he said, eyes finally meeting hers. ⸄If they can prove they know our laws, and we feel that we can trust them, we let them go. They usually disappear within a few weeks. There isn’t much damage they can do in that time.⸅

Emilia was not convinced by his words. Even in normal raids—which this, anything goes, raid certainly was not—heroes were known to cause large amounts of damage and change within platforms. Some raids had much stricter rules, limiting the effect of heroes on the platform, though, and she supposed this could be the first time a raid in this world had allowed much. If it was, she felt even worse for the locals than she already did. They could be expecting calm, considerate heroes. Instead, they would be getting chaos.

Anything goes meant mayhem—often meant the platform was either left in tatters once people left, or that constant backups were needed. That could also be the reality of this world: it was a backup of a backup of a backup, its residents perpetually stuck reliving these short, bloody visitations. If that were the case, how often had these people—this man—been replaced by a previous version of himself? His existence, personality, history, so meaningless that the platform’s owners didn’t even care if they overwrote him.

“Just ones and zeros. Who cares if you write over them with a set of slightly different ones and zeros? Isn’t that what humans do? When they rewrite their genes?”

Emilia had fucking hated that ethics class. The teacher had been so biased—and changing the way your body interpreted your genes didn’t completely erase you!? Fucking stars, had he been a dumbass.

Emilia glanced back at her escort, finding him watching her with something between curiosity and concern. “Ah… I see!” she cheered, doing a little fist pump that truly seemed to concern him, if his growing frown were anything to go by. “So… school? Law school?”

⸄Something like that,⸅ he said slowly, eyes shifting between hers before turning back to the window. ⸄You are late, so joining the others would be pointless.⸅

“So… private tutor?”

⸄Yes,⸅ the man said, his modulated voice holding more than a little annoyance at what she assumed was his new job.

“Great! When can we start?”

He was silent for a long moment, content to stare out into the fog. She wanted to ask what was up there. What mysteries did the stars hold. She had a million questions to ask him about just about everything. How many days since people had arrived? What was with the air? The spice? Could they talk? Where did their voice skill come from? Could anyone use it, or just him?

Emilia blinked at herself, the reality of the situation rushing through her. The reality that, yes, her physical abilities were weakened in this place. Everything felt far away—far farther from her than her normal knotting took them—but her mind? She couldn’t be sure if Payton had already unknotted some of her more extreme mental knots or if there was something about the world itself that had brought her back, closer to the person she had once been.

Curious. Impatient. Impulsive.

Brave. Fearless. Reckless.

Bratty. Confident. Kind.

Not fully, but enough that her mind was racing in ways that it didn’t in class. Logically, she always knew that those classes—the things they covered—were fascinating. A younger version of herself would have loved them—yearned to learn more, read ahead, submitted assignments worthy of praise and publication. The current version of herself was a ghost, floating through classes and living as wild and free as she could manage outside them. A side effect of knots, of trauma—of trying to escape her past.

The world blurred for the second time that night—should she consider this one night? She’d already be in here long enough—at least a day or two—that it seemed silly. It also seemed normal. 25 days squished into one giant, fucked up night. Yup, that sounded about right.

She glanced back towards her nameless escort—teacher? babysitter?—only to find him watching her. He didn’t mention her crying, didn't make any move to comfort her, but she could see the concern in his eyes deepening.

She wiped away the tears, swallowing down her conflicted feeling—pushed down the fact that she missed being this person she hated with every fibre of her being. “So? Shall we?” she asked, turning back to the room and taking a seat at the table. Most of her tutors and babysitters had objected to her sitting on couches, or worse, lying on beds, during the lessons. Safe to assume this dude was the same.

His steps were slow, soft as he followed. He didn’t sit, just stood opposite to her. He was so quiet, but it felt like his thoughts were filling the room. Maybe they were. Maybe he was screaming and cursing at her, but she just didn’t have the proper ability—the proper connection to this world—to hear him.

⸄You should rest,⸅ he said after a long moment of watching her.

“I don't—” she started to say, only to cut off when his eyes glazed over. It wasn’t quite the same glazing over that people in her world experienced, when they were interacting with their Censors, but it was close enough that she assumed someone was contacting him through whatever means the people here communicated.

⸄Rest. Food will be delivered shortly.⸅ He set the key to her room on the table. ⸄You are free to wander the building as you please. Do not leave the building.⸅

Emilia had the feeling that even if she tried to leave, there were guards lingering about to stop her. Better not to get into even more trouble with the locals, if she could help it. Given the urge to fuck with everyone—especially this man in front of her—was currently vibrating through her, however…

She smiled innocently up at him. He did not look particularly convinced, which, rude! She was good at smiling innocently! There were only a few people who had never been fooled by her most innocent of smiles! How dare this man add himself to the list without her consent!

“Rest and food!” she cheered, smiling wider as he frowned at her. “Oh, ah… question?”

The man nodded, dark eyes staring straight through her. It made her want to squirm. Worse, it made her want to annoy him until he snapped and wanted to kill or fuck her—it was usually one or the other, although Olivier had spent many months simply leaving her presence before he’d snapped.

“So… do I need to drink? Cause your water is—”

⸄Red. Yes,⸅ he said, mouth quirking in amusement for the barest of moments before it flattened back out. ⸄It has been a common… complaint,⸅ he added, when she tilted her head in question. ⸄We have not noted any issues with visitors consuming it. Nor with our food, which is similarly—⸅

“Really fucking red?”

The man seemed to hum in agreement, although the sound wasn’t exactly human—or a sound. More a feeling melting through the aether that made her shudder as it met her.

He tensed, just for a moment, before turning to leave. ⸄I will return, once you are rested.⸅

“Vague.”

⸄Yes.⸅

Emilia felt like he was laughing at her, as the door hissed closed behind him.