LIGHTNOVELONLINE Arc 3 | Chapter 82: Of All the Things
“There are at least a dozen people in there.”
⸂Shit, that’s way more than we expected.⸃ The man spit on the ground, and Emilia was reminded yet again of the strangeness of this world—of the fact that it had no technology, no ability to analyze fluids found at a crime scene in order to test it for DNA.
Granted, testing and comparing that DNA wasn’t quite as cut and dry as it could be. In the real world, there were laws in place that stopped the government from matching that DNA to anyone in Baalphoria, despite their genetic sequences being stored in the OIC System following their D-Level assessment. Well, it was a law, but not one that the government was usually happy about.
“Does anyone know why law 23, section 176, ‘The Right to Genetic Privacy’, exists?” Olivier had asked in a class she had snuck into, this one before he had agreed to take her case, and she had been hoping to wear him down with her persistence.
The class had grown shockingly quiet, and Olivier had looked disappointedly out at them, carefully avoiding looking at her, the annoying irregular who was stalking him, trying to become his client.
“Because the OIC System is a stubborn bitch.”
Olivier’s eyes had snapped to her, narrowing when he realized she was the one who had answered. “Do not give snarky, half-answers,” he had chastised her, which was better than telling her to get the fuck out of his classroom, which had been his go-to comment—albeit in slightly more polite language—every other time she’d spoken in the few weeks she’d been stalking him.
Granted, all those previous times she’d been making truly egregious comments, but still. The man had been rude and infuriating and wouldn’t even sit down to discuss her case or look over the basic facts of it! He had deserved to be heckled a bit.
Why she hadn’t heckled him in this case—why she’d given an accurate, if still snarky, answer to his question…
At the time, she hadn’t known why she had spoken up. Now, she knew it was because she hated seeing her the man disappointed. Even back then, before they had even liked each other, something inside her had churned at seeing that dead, let down look cross his face.
She had sighed and shook out her long hair. Several of the other students had looked back at her with a mixture of awe and annoyance. Beautiful and annoying, back then she had radiated power—how could she not? Designer clothes and perfect everything. Her accent had told everyone exactly where she hailed from, and here she was, invading their classroom day after day and talking to non-dev Olivier de la Rue like he was just a regular person.
The little irregular girl that even their teacher couldn’t keep out of his classroom.
Within Olivier’s classroom, Censors were not permitted to research answers. As she wasn’t a student, she was under no obligation to follow that rule of his, but she had still forced herself to follow it nonetheless. She’d been half expecting him to brush her off, when she nudged his Censor, offering him access to her logs so she could prove she actually knew what she was talking about. Not that she couldn’t have just altered those logs, but he hadn’t known that, and she hadn’t altered them anyways.
To her surprise, he had let himself be pulled inside her, his presence dragging over her logs and memories and making her squirm slightly in her seat as she began to speak. “The Right to Genetic Privacy, officially, came into existence near the beginning of Baalphoria’s founding. Not much is known about it, due to information loss during the Colonial Wars, however, what is known is that in 3:179, during the hay days of the wars, a more militant political party came into power.”
Around her, students had begun to mumble and fidget, wondering where her random history lesson was going. Someone less confident than herself might have balked and backtracked—claimed they were sorry and didn’t actually know what they were talking about.
Not her. She knew she was right, and while she didn’t need the subtle nod of encouragement from Olivier—and what a surprise that had been!—she appreciated it nonetheless.
“Two years later, in an attempt to control increasing civil violence and protestation of the war and the government, the party altered several laws. These laws included a handful of privacy rights. The Right to Genetic Privacy, The Black Knot Doctrine, various laws that managed drug use, personal safety and responsibility, as well as the way in which SecOps—although they were known by another name at the time—dealt with those who violated related laws,” she had continued, watching with fascination as Olivier increasingly relaxed.
The man’s ever stiff posture and glaring eyes shifted into something softer. He had leaned back against his desk, crossing his legs and arms and reminding Emilia of the teachers she had often seen in movies and shows. The hot teachers, flaunting their brilliance so they could get students into their bed.
Okay, maybe not so much normal movies and shows as porn. A girl had needs, okay!? And she had always had a thing for stronger, smarter, older men.
“What does that have to do with the question?” someone snapped, a boy from the northern Penns, closer to Roasalia, based on his accent. Dark brown eyes and plain features had glared up at her from the front-row seat. Turned as he was towards her, he hadn’t been able to see the venomous look his teacher had given him. A couple of people around him had noticed, however, each of them edging away from him like he was suddenly poisonous.
Emilia had simply smiled down at the student—the same, confident and teasing smile that she had so often given her teachers throughout compulsory school when they had questioned her on something. Off she had gone, explaining in detail all that was known about how the OIC System had refused to follow any of the government's new rules.
“So many of our laws and regulations rely on the OIC System to be properly monitored and enacted. If the system refuses to cooperate, there is little to be done to convince it. While it is true that many records have been lost, we do know that the government has tried to change several laws on multiple occasions. The OIC never allows it. The OIC does not change its mind. Therefore, laws such as The Right to Genetic Privacy exist because the system refuses to let them not exist. Today, laws that will rely on the system are preemptively run through it, to make sure it will comply with enacting them.”
Olivier had nodded in seeming approval, looking as though he were about to say something when she had cut him off, watching gleefully as all that approval vanished into near anger.
“Some would even argue it can be inferred that the OIC System itself is the true architect of most of our laws.”
Wherever Olivier had been intending his question to lead into, she never learned. The rest of the class had devolved into the two of them debating whether her suggestion had any merit to it, ending in a stalemate when Tariq had appeared to tell them, “Class is over, Master Olivier. You need to release your hostages,” more or less.
Emilia assumed he had completely his lesson the next day, but she didn’t actually know for sure. It was the first class in weeks she hadn’t attended, because that night he had appeared at her hotel room door and told her he would look at her case.
Of all the things to change his mind, knowing a random history fact—one she only knew from being so closely associated with one of the most powerful Black Knot families—and being able to hold her own in a debate with him had not been one she had been expecting.
Emilia’s eyes flickered away from the clear spit slowly evaporating in the sunlight, wondering how the Risen Guard investigated crimes without access to more modern, technological techniques. Skills in her world were important to investigations, but she couldn’t imagine doing it all with skills or magic.
“Should we reassess?” someone was asking, their face screwing up in worry and frustration. “Come back later and—”
⸂We can’t!⸃ one of the women snarled. She’d only joined up with the group at the last minute, and Emilia wasn’t sure they’d actually been introduced. ⸂Someone is already dead. If we abort now, there won’t be another chance.⸃
Yuka took a step towards the new woman, bright red eyes glittering in the sweltering sun.
The air was spicier here than it had been at the Stringer Estate, yet was nothing compared to the world far below them. It still tingled at Emilia’s nose, and she wanted to sneeze, but sucked it in as best she could—as much as their intel said no one here was a visitor or capable of hearing them, that information was only so reliable.
The last thing she wanted was to catch anyone’s ire by risking their location when everyone was already running so hot.
⸂We will go on,⸃ Yuka assured the woman, placing a placating hand on her shoulder. ⸂There is no turning back, I thought I made that clear!⸃ they growled, turning back to the other woman, each of their eyes flashing with too much aether—with too much uncontrollable anger.
Emilia sighed, taking a step into the firestorm, just moments from breaking loose.
✮ ✮ ✮ One Week Earlier ✮ ✮ ✮
“So… your name is Toby?” V asked, squatting in front of their so far quite cooperative captive.
The blue-haired man nodded vigorously at V. “Yes, sir!” he cried.
Emilia wasn’t sure why he was treating V like a drill sergeant, but he was. She also wasn’t sure why he—Toby—was all but completely ignoring her, but he was doing that as well.
V either hadn’t noticed the fact that their captive was ignoring her yet, or he was waiting for the right moment to bring it up. Emilia rather thought it was the latter, although the fact that she hadn’t gotten to watch the other visitor reprimand the, well, other other visitor was a bit disappointing.
“Why were you spying on us?”
Toby’s eyes flickered up to Emilia, one of the first times he had even bothered to look her way. “I’m a pervert?” he said, sounding thoroughly unconvincing.
“Do you want me to kill you?” V asked, all soft coercion gone from his voice.
The other man swallowed, eyes the same shade as his hair blowing wide behind his bangs. “No! No! Please don’t! Oh, I’m going to be in so much trouble,” he cried before bursting into tears.
“Dude,” Emilia hissed when V pushed himself out of his squat and came to stand beside her. “How old do you think this kid is?”
Technically, you only had to have a Censor to partake in most virtual raids, although usually ones that were this intense had age limits. This one hadn’t had any, but most parents had enough sense to require their children get their permission to join more than the most basic raid platform. Either this guy’s parents were crazy, or he was older than his wailing implied.
V simply shook his head, cringing as their captive’s cries grew louder. “Should we, I dunno, gag him or something? Who knows who else is hanging around and might hear.”
“I think even the locals would hear this,” Emilia said, pushing her chair back until it bumped against the kitchen table, as though those few inches would make the sound more tolerable. It didn’t. “So… maybe?”
Her friend didn’t need to be told twice. He did, however, apparently need to be told not to use his borrowed clothing as a gag.
“V~” she moaned, giving him a despondent look. “Really? There are towels right over there! Or you could have used a sock!”
The man stared down at the strip he had torn off the grey-brown sweater he had pulled on. Emilia couldn’t say she’d be sad to see him forced into something else—the colour didn’t suit him, and V had only chosen that particular sweater because it looked comfy—but wasting clothing was just stupid!
“Whatever,” V mumbled, stepping forward to stuff the fabric into the (likely) teenager’s mouth. “Now, I’m sorry about this, but you really are too noisy,” he said in the relative silence, their captive too shocked to continue crying. Then—
“Fuck,” V sighed, voice barely audible over the teenager’s muffled screams. He flopped back into the chair beside her. “This sucks. Maybe we should just leave him here and fuck off?”
Emilia didn’t respond, instead frowning at the crying teenager. She felt a bit bad about potentially leaving him here, but if he continued with the waterworks, they would be risking anyone who was still wandering about the city finding them. That said, other than this guy, there’d been no sign of anyone else. There also hadn’t been any sign of the others exiting the library labyrinth—not that they’d been awake the whole time, but during those first few hours, when they had both assumed the others wouldn’t be far behind them, no one had appeared. Either the others had ended up somewhere else entirely—back at the proper exit, perhaps—or they were still stuck inside, trying to free Rin and Key or just plain old stuck.
Emilia felt a bit bad for them. She’d been stuck in various places throughout her life—see: shitty first home, flooding sea cave, middle of the wilderness with monsters lurking in the shadows, just to name a few—and definitely knew the sort of stress being stuck could cause you, especially when you had no idea when or if you were ever getting out.
“Maybe we knock him out until we actually leave?” she suggested. Leaving the guy here really seemed too cruel. Plus, if someone did come along and find him, they’d know exactly where to start looking for secret doors.
V hummed in contemplation, popping his last piece of food in his mouth. “Sure, why not,” he said, standing and stretching, arms reaching high above his head as his back cracked.
The teenager shook his head vigorously, a comical contrast to his earlier nodding. If he had stopped crying, perhaps they would have let him remain conscious. Unfortunately, his wails simply grew more frantic. Before either of them knew what was happening, however, he was gone.
“Well, fuck,” V said, dumbfounded. He looked back and Emilia, and they shrugged at each other.
“I guess… we should probably get out of here?” she suggested, scratching the back of her head before popping up and heading off to find V a new shirt.
