[Can't Opt Out]

Arc X.1 | Chapter 25: Interlude | Project Piketown Infiltration 25

“As far as I can tell, there’s no obvious sign that your mind was overwritten,” Alex said as Seven settled back into his body. Somehow, his old friend’s words both helped did absolutely nothing to help with the chaos swirling within him, pressing against his mind until he was tempted to call up a clone and ask that they remove his awareness that the heartcores might have altered his mind so profoundly that the raid system had overwritten what was done to him.Seven felt himself.

Seven felt impossibly unmoored.

“Now… don’t take this the wrong way, man, but given everything I saw while going through your memories, I think you’re just unmoored as a result of how you live.”

When Seven shifted his gaze to Alex, he found them fighting down a smile. Ass.

“Maybe,” he agreed, pushing himself up from the Virtuosi Rig he’d been sitting in, letting Alex examine his mind and memories of the raid. Occasionally, they’d taken breaks to chat—Alex had been especially interested to hear Seven’s perspective on Emilia, an ever-changing ball of light and energy. As Alex had seen her in passing now and again—although they’d made a point to avoid actually running into her—they had plenty of stories of her life and the chaos she wrought over Piketown and the university.

Seven had enjoyed hearing stories about the girl, still vibrant and chaotic, even through the traumatic knots he now knew existed within her. Alex had so many second-, third-, fourth-hand stories about her terrorizing heroes and other dorms—apparently, while she didn’t often actively take part in the prank wars that a few dorms had going, if someone knew what to look for, they could see her fingerprints on some of the more psychotic pranks that had gone down. As they knew what to look for, it had been easy for Alex to pick out all the stories that were as well as the ones that were

It felt as though it had been years since Seven had laughed so hard, hearing all about the things she did, although he knew this wasn’t true. The last decade of his life—which had stretched into centuries with how much time he spent within the time skew—had been up and down, but there had been times of joy, times of sadness; certainly, there had been times of loneliness. It wasn’t that he didn’t have friends. Seven had raiding friends, and he had a few clients that he could see being friends with.

Yet, secrets took a toll on any relationship.

They were an ever lingering scab, scratching against the fabric of friendship until someone finally couldn’t take it anymore and they either tore it off and watched it bleed, or they ran away, hoping to spare themself the sight of oozing blood.

Alex had laughed during one of their stretches of downtime, the pair of them laying side-by-side on a bed within virtual space, their bare legs tangled together because apparently they were both so touch deprived that even their virtualselves snuggling was doing something to sate their hunger.

Seven had asked, wondering how Alex could possibly consider themself an outsider to their unit. Yes, there had always been something of a hierarchy, unofficial as it was, dictating where certain people fell into the friendship of their unit. Personally, he had always been far on the outskirts, unsure how to either make friends or deal with the secret he was keeping from Emilia—a secret he should probably tell her? Maybe?

Probably, he should get someone else’s advice on the subject. The question was mostly he would ask. Olivier came to mind first, especially as Seven already knew Emilia had run into him, but given how close he was to both Emilia and the person who had demanded Seven keep what he knew about her a secret…

Well, Olivier had generally been calm and collected when it came to Emilia and the kids. Seven didn’t think the man would take the news of what had occurred, back when Seven had first joined Division 30 and realized who Emilia was, well. Another option was The Black Knot, but they also tended to take anything related to Emilia so badly. Maybe that one clone? The one who had been responsible for holding their secrets—but then again, Varo Hyrat had been specifically chosen for that job because he seemed to neither hate nor love Emilia? Could the guy even be trusted to give him good advice?

At the time he had been considering this, Seven had let his gaze drift towards Alex, and absolutely not. For as much as Alex—as far as any of them knew—didn’t have a black knot, they could be cold-hearted, as the whole thing proved. This was, unfortunately, something of the problem with their entire unit: they were all insane and perfectly happy to kill people who they didn’t deem a positive influence on the world. This, unfortunately, made getting advice from any of them on something so sensitive a near impossible task.

Maybe Hetexia? She was relatively levelheaded and distant enough from most members to maybe give some good advice?

An image of Hyr syn Bur, cute and stoic and looking at Emilia like she was their sun, had shuddered through Seven’s mind, and okay—that was actually a good idea. Other people might have balked at the idea of asking a synat for advice, but Seven had the feeling that kid had seen Emilia in visions before—just a feeling, but one he couldn’t shake.

Unfortunately, Seven hadn’t bothered to friend any of the northerners when he exited the raid—he really had been exhausted and the moment he left the system, intent to get a drink to give himself a bit of energy, he’d passed right out. From what he had heard, few northerners wore their temporary Censors unless they were actively using them, either. In other words, if he wanted to contact the syn, he’d either have to wait for someone from Nur’tha to show up as available in his contacts or go there himself and track down the kid or Hetexia.

At the time, Seven hadn’t brought his up with Alex—they had been both getting to the end of their designated snuggle time and he hadn’t wanted his friend to start asking he wanted to get in contact with the Hyr syn Bur.

After exiting the Virtuosi System, however, Seven didn’t particularly want to get into how disastrous his life and sense of self was with Alex—he knew he needed to figure his shit out and the last thing he needed was a long talk about He already knew he needed to become someone he himself wanted to be, thanks, and didn’t need a lecture on the subject.

Hence, he asked Alex if he knew which of their Nur’tha teammates came onaether the most often—while they all had xpherns as well, the kyrfa'Nur'tha were notorious for not checking those often either. While that might be a bit different for their teammates in this post-war world, Seven knew enough younger heroes from virtual raids to know getting a hold of them through xpherns was almost as troublesome as waiting for them to put their temporary Censors on.

“Wyren had his on a bit ago—bit past his bedtime now, but you could ask someone to go wake him up, I guess?” Alex had replied, apparently not realizing that while Seven had turned both their unit’s stalking function—and in the back of his mind, Seven realized that having that stalking function at all somewhat made him a more loved member of the unit, as it had only been given to people the more of the unit liked and trusted—and the ability to be messaged back on, no one had noticed.

Hence, he hadn’t been included in any of the giant group relays. Alex was somewhat scandalized on his behalf—after all, no one had actually noticed him become available to contact again. Given what he was learning about everyone was so distracted, Seven couldn’t be too offended.

He was, however, a little offended when Alex added him to their many group relays, including the one Sorvell had recently created—the one named —and still, no one said anything about his suddenly being included! Granted, there was some sort of conversation going on, his addition to the group quickly buried under a discussion of whether Axelle was going to kill any of the kids’ majenstra babysitters or not.

Tucking the relay into the corner of his vision—it was fascinating to watch everyone’s opinion on the subject go by—Seven instead contented himself to both going through who was a member of each of the group relays Alex had added him to, as well as what sorts of conversations had been occurring recently. Later, he would sit himself down in a Virtuosi Rig—one that was offaether, as the ones he and Alex had been using were—and properly read through the decade of missed conversations. For the moment, he skimmed through the plans that everyone was making and set his Censor to determine certain people had been excluded from Sorvell’s new group relay, making a few comments as the conversation went on, curious who would notice him.

Seriously, though, the guy had included Leerin despite the mess occurring on Ship o’Stars—and Seven slotted Darrian in as another person who might be able to give him good, reasonable advice on what to do about his Emilia-related secret, also, Hyr was on that ship, so talking to them about it would be difficult for a bit—but included Annette.

Mostly, what his Censor came back with was confusing. There had been numerous conversations over the years about the fact that Annette seemed to hold some odd dislike for Emilia, but each of the conversations talked around she didn’t like her? It was strange, and from what Seven could figure out, it seemed like half the people in the relays had no idea what the problem was, a few people—including Leerin—were on Annette’s side, while most of the core members of their unit who understood the situation were on Emilia’s. Perhaps most interestingly, sometimes people knew what the problem was and sometimes they didn’t! Other times, they seemed to realize the issue mid-conversation, but then! They’d forget they’d realized it the next time Annette and Emilia’s strained relationship came up!?

Seven was baffled. Alex simply laughed at them, telling them that was because

Presumably, it was the lock he had been contemplating tugging free earlier. One tug later, and Alex was laughing at him once more—Seven was rather offended on Emilia’s behalf!

“What is Annette’s problem?” Seven snarled—actually fucking snarled because seriously! What was that bitch’s problem!?

“Dude, why are you keeping that memory locked up so tight? I don’t even think you were aware of the parts of it that the entire fucking continent knows? That’s like, such a red flag that you know of the story,” Alex laughed, tugging him back to sitting, lest he stomp off to tell Annette off. Apparently, the woman rarely showed at get-togethers anymore, due to half the people who generally attended being standoffish with her, thanks to her opinions on and

“I can’t even remember the last time Axelle and her were in the same room. They had this huge blowout a few years back—and like, if you check out of the relay for getting back at Elijah Richmond, a bunch of people admit they didn’t think Axelle would show up, due to how angry she is with Emmie for disappearing? But like, that girl loved Emmie so much. She’s like Baylor, I think? Their meeting again will be an explosion of yelling or tension or violence, but it’ll end the same way: with sobbing and begging.” Shifting, Alex reached towards a small fridge, tugging two bottles of ‘cyth juice out and handing one over to Seven. “They’ll both beg Emmie to not leave them again, and then, she’ll be all apologetic, and it’ll all be good. Angry or not, they love her, and everyone thinking either are too mad at her to ever make up with her—or even just want to support her from afar—are idiots.”

Grumbling to himself about Annette—bitch better hope he didn’t run into her any time soon—Seven snapped the seal on his drink, the expensive liquid tingling as he sipped, still contemplating Annette, his battered brain, and the secret he had kept from Emilia for far too long.

He needed a distraction, and luckily, he knew just where to find one.