“I don’t want to!”
Emilia glared at her roommate. Pria was now clean…ish, her black skin shining with sweat from an excursion out into the quad, which had broken out into a rave while Emilia had been in Piketown. Pria had quickly changed her mind about partying, but the heat was so unbearable that a moment out in it was sweat inducing. She was also still suffering from the aftereffects of last night’s drugs and needed to go to the clinic. Actually, if anything, her aftereffects were worse now than earlier, the other girl screaming at anyone who tried to talk to her that they needed to speak up.
Pria had tried insisting it was the result of the music because someone had decided to use an actual sound system to blast music through the quad rather than let people control it themselves, through their Censors. The was not only loud, but whoever was controlling it had objectively horrible taste in music. So did all the people dancing. There were much better music options than this crap, in Emilia’s humble opinion.
Campus security had tried to break the party up, citing that physical speakers were forbidden without prior approval, before confiscating them all. Someone had proceeded to hack into the school’s announcement system, meant to be used in emergencies where they couldn’t afford for someone to ignore a notification through their Censor.
The music was now blasting throughout campus, and nowhere—save their dorm—was safe. Emilia may have hacked into the system in order to mute it in their dorm. She could have turned off all the music, but campus security had annoyed her a few months ago, and she saw no reason to help them out now. She also could have turned the music off in all the dorms, but, well, there were long-standing rivalries to think of. This had slightly backfired, the fact that their dorm was comparatively quiet having resulted in far more visitors than usual, more and more people getting fed up with the music.
“You have to,” she yelled at her roommate. She had been trying to only speak extremely loudly to Pria, but annoyance was starting to filter through her voice. “I will not be living with you like this for the next week.”
She sipped at her drink, something her Censor had ordered for her in an attempt to wake her up. Apparently, while she was a little nervous about using all that money Olivier had practically forced on her, her Censor had no such qualms. She had already received a dozen receipts, probably for things she did truly need, but still! Very presumptuous of her Censor to just buy things without her permission!
“I’ll go tomorrow if it hasn’t settled by then!” Pria yelled back—actually yelled. As previously noted, Pria did not like the clinic. She also didn’t like knot therapy units or tattoo parlours or fitness centres or the school cafeteria, although no one liked that place.
“No, you won’t,” Emilia spit back. She was working really, really hard at not stomping her foot at her stubborn roommate. She’d already given in and crossed her arms, trying to enact a threatening posture. If she hadn’t run into Olivier, she probably would have stomped her foot, but she knew if she did so now, she’d be falling asleep to the sound of him calling her princess.
Unfortunately, neither Sil nor Elijah nor even Blaze were around to help her physically get her roommate to the clinic. She wasn’t sure where they were—although she assumed Sil was holed up with last night turned this night’s hookup. Curious. Sil didn’t double-dip this close together. She had wondered in passing if Olivier knew who the mystery hookup was, or if she could search through de la Rue employment records to try and figure it out herself, but had quickly abandoned that idea. Either this would be the magical man who would get Sil to settle down and date, and they’d meet him eventually, or it wouldn’t. No sense wasting time tracking down the mystery man.
Beth, on the other hand, was doing the sensible thing and sleeping. Emilia had tracked her down after leaving Olivier, finding her stuck inside another raid, which had unfortunately fallen after she sobered up. She had been rightfully exhausted when she emerged, and Emilia had had to drag her to the nearest bubble station and then into her room, where she had promptly passed out.
“It will be too busy tomorrow,” she explained, trying not to sound too condescending. “It’s probably already busy, with all those idiots partying out there, but it’ll be worse in the morning. Then you really won’t want to go.”
“Then I’ll wait till the next day.”
“Class all day.”
“Then the day after that.”
“We have plans to go out, unless you want to cancel?”
“No!”
“Then we need to go tonight—right now, preferably. I don’t know about you, but I need food, and soon.”
“We could—”
“No.”
“But!”
“No. No delays. No food now and clinic later. Clinic now, then I’ll treat you to whatever meal your stomach desires.”
Pria shot her a suspicious look. “How you gonna afford that?”
“Got paid to have sex with a hot guy this afternoon.” Not exactly true, but somehow Emilia didn’t think it was entirely untrue either. Something told her that, if she happened to drain her account of all the money Olivier had given her—which would be a true feat, she was sure—all she’d have to do was ask, and he’d send more. He’d probably ask to meet up, though. He wouldn't hold the money hostage, but he’d ask so sweetly, so much concern lacing his voice, and then one thing would lead to another and boom! They’d be fucking in a random hotel room. Not exactly money for sex, not exactly not money for sex.
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Pria’s eyebrows lifted. “I thought you and Elijah closed your relationship?”
“Not officially,” Emilia said, taking her roommate’s distraction as a chance to loop their arms together and begin dragging her out of their room towards the elevator.
“Sure, but neither of you have hooked up with anyone else in, what? Like three months?”
It had probably been closer to five, but she didn’t tell Pria that. “It’s been a while, but we never officially closed it.”
“Mhm…” Pria hummed, shooting her a look that told her didn’t think her boyfriend would take the news too well. Too bad for him. If he’d wanted her all to himself, he should have made that clear. Closing their relationship required consent and communication, not vibes. If he asked… Well, she’d deal with that if he did. Yesterday, she probably would have agreed. Today… Well, she had been reminded of things she enjoyed and Elijah wasn’t into. That didn’t mean she intended to go out and find those things, but she liked having the option.
They stepped out of the elevator and back into the oppressive heat, music immediately beginning to blare around them. It really was awful, some kind of niche dance music that was popular in some clubs at the moment—the ones she, Pria and Beth specifically avoided. She thought Sil liked it, something about how it was great music to grind to, but he never forced them to go with him when he was in the mood for it. It probably wasn’t so much that he felt bad about subjecting them to music he knew they hated, and more that he was going to pull a disappearing act as soon as he could. When Sil wanted to dance, Sil wanted to fuck.
“Ugh,” Pria moaned, long and drawn out, as she let Emilia tug her through the crowd. “This is awful! How long is this supposed to last?”
Emilia’s Censor popped up, saying—
“A week!?” Pria yelled, more than a few heads turning towards them as her voice overtook even the music. “No, no! I can’t do it! I’ll die! I’ll die, I say! D. I. E. Die!”
Emilia couldn’t exactly disagree as her friend ranted about the university’s shit decision not to install climate control. True, extreme weather was rare this side of the Penns, but still! It seemed like bad planning to not even have an emergency system, for when the rare pink tide or tundra swell hit, even if that was probably only once or twice a decade max. They had yet to experience a tundra swell, and Emilia really hoped the pink tide meant it would be at least a few years until one hit. Being hot was infinitely better than being frozen, if you asked her.
They swerved through the gathered crowd, much smaller than most of the parties that exploded across campus. Usually, those parties were contained to specific events, like graduation, end of exams, holidays—regular stuff. Nearly everyone attended those, even the more reserved and bookish making appearances, even if brief ones. The heat was obviously keeping people inside. That and—if the pink bottles being passed around were any indication—pink vapour. It didn’t surprise her that news of the drug had spread, or that more people than just their slum town—“Alver,” a voice that sounded suspiciously like Olivier’s corrected—connection were dealing it. Likely, more than a few of the missing students were tucked away inside getting high in privacy, or had gone off to secure their own supply.
“The crowd isn’t helping,” she yelled at her roommate over the noise crashing around them. Music and people and it was just so much. She tried adjusting her Censor, willing it to deafen her a little bit, tune her mind and ears to block out some of the sound, the heat emanating from the air and the people boxing them in—but it sputtered and failed.
[Sound Control System: {Error}]
[Error Code: {Error}]
[Error Code: Error Code cannot be found]
[Error Code: {Error}]
[Error Code: Error Code cannot be found]
[Error Code: {Error}]
[Error Code: Error Code cannot be found]
Fuck. She manually forced the error message loop to stop. Eventually, she was going to have to figure out whether she’d hacked some error into it or if a knot was interfering with it. Hopefully, just a software issue, not a genetic one.
Around them, someone from the engineering department had deployed a collection of drones. They dove and fluttered through the air, exploding into displays that people laughed and pointed at and left Emilia seeing stars and explosions much more deadly no matter how hard her Censor tried to hide those memories behind the walls she had erected around them, more system errors popping up across her blurry vision.
“Get out of there!”
“Fuck! Mayday! Mayday!”
Someone had hacked the lighting system now too, it seemed. Lights flickered and changed colours, making campus look like the club people were pretending it was, even in the early evening light. One of the tallest building’s lights had been manipulated to have a giant penis stretching up it. Lovely. What was with men and displaying penises on things?
“Why is there a dick on your jet?”
“Cause we’re at war, and the only girls here worth fucking are already hooking up. Someone’s gotta see my glorious cock~”
“You think, even if we were single, we’d get near your nasty ass?”
“Can’t we just go back home~?” Pria whined, leaning her weight onto Emilia. Their skin stuck together, bare tanned arm to night black arm. So sweaty. They’d both needed to shower when they got back because, unfortunately, the growing darkness had done little to cool the air.
“You are such an ass! I just showered!”
“Aw~ poor little girl! Don’t like being dirty? Well, guess what?” Dark blue eyes had stared her down. He had been just as dirty as she was, covered in mud and ash from head to toe, not that he’d seemed to notice. “This is war. You’re gonna get a lot dirtier than that. There aren’t showers at the front. Grow up or go home—and cut that fucking hair.”
Emilia shook her hair, wishing she’d grabbed an elastic before leaving. There should be one around her wrist, digging a red line into her flesh when her hair wasn’t pulled up. Olivier—the jerk—had pulled out her ponytail earlier and apparently pocketed her elastic. Now, she was elastic-less. Her long hair sticking to her, growing wet and disgusting with every step.
“It’ll take longer to turn back than to get to the clinic,” she said, swallowing around the dryness of her throat. She wanted to die. She wanted to turn around and run home, hide in a cold shower and skip her classes for the next week. The idea of stepping back out into this firestorm—of facing the memories it was dragging out of her—for the next week made her want to die. Death was better than this. Pria was right. If they stayed here, they were going to die.