“So…” Payton said as they exited the slide lines, “why did you decide to bring me along? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be here, but you’ve never really seemed to like me.” He shot her one of his fake smiles as he dropped their hands and glide along. She hadn’t intended to glide tonight, but she was glad she’d worn sensible shoes she could glide in—it was just so much faster and more convenient than almost any other form of travel, save sparking.

“I don’t know you,” Emilia said sensibly, if unconvincingly.

The look he shot her this time wasn’t even fake amused.

“Look, I don’t know you,” she reiterated, “but I’ve known a few people with black knots. Some of them I love, some of them I hate. They’re all different, but the one thing they have in common? They’re all a lot of work. It’s not that I don’t like you, but…”

“But you don’t want more work.”

“Yeah.”

“Your friends always seem to be a lot of work,” he didn’t quite mutter, not exactly sounding bitter than he had fallen into a position of being too much work by virtue of something he couldn’t control, but not exactly not.

Emilia laughed, trying to keep her discomfort and guilt out of it. “Yes, yes they are. You have no idea.” She looked back at him, walking calmly through the area the horrible de la Rue house was located in—the area the purist meeting place was, as well. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I should be.”

His light-brown eyes met hers. “I’m used to people not liking me, even if they don’t know about my black knot. People can just tell that I’m different.” He was so accepting of it, like there was no helping it. It broke Emilia’s heart a little, that he felt that way, that she had been partly the cause of it.

“Why us?”

“Why…?”

Emilia shook her head, perhaps a bit too hard, her ponytail slapping lightly against her classmate’s back. “Why did you try to become friends with us? There are other friend groups in our class. Clubs to join. Other nurses, vets. Why us?”

Payton’s steps faltered slightly. They’d turned off the main road, after exiting the slide lines. They weren’t exactly going down back alleys, but the paths her Censor had mapped for them weren’t side roads, either, instead being some odd middle ground. Every so often, her Censor would alert her that there was an hidden door nearby—or, more that based on all the hidden doors she’d encountered over the years, the weird disturbances in the aether it was detecting were mostly likely hidden doors. Emergency escape lanes, then. Ah, to be rich and powerful and fearful.

“Because you all seemed different, in your owns ways,” he said nonchalantly. Emilia could still hear the slight echo of pain in his voice. The want, that she because she hadn’t been able to get over something traumatic that had happened over half a lifetime ago, had denied. Denied, because she had thought he would be too much work, even when he was right: everyone she knew was work. So much fucking work. She still loved them, but stars above did they give her headaches.

“Fuck,” she spit out, pulling him to a stop to glare up at him. He really was too tall, not quite the tallest person she knew, but pretty damn close. He was thin, pretty in a plain kinda way. He looked down at her with a blankly confused expression, and she sighed. “You’re better like this,” she said, waving over his general existence like that would explain what she meant. “When you’re being honest, and being the real you, I mean.”

His head tilted in thought, those light-brown eyes turning almost golden in the dim streetlight. “My dad always told me I should try to be normal—and that I should hold my tongue.” He smiled a little sadly, a little cruelly. “I used to be a natural at pissing people off with the truth—as I saw it, anyways.”

“Your dad was wrong,” she said, a little more anger than she would have liked seeping into her voice. “They weren’t black knotted?”

Payton shook his head. “My mom was. My dad left her when he found out.”

“He was wrong,” she reiterated, nodding as though that would make him believe her words. “Just be yourself. It suits you.”

She wanted to tell him that a big part of why he made her so nervous was that she knew he was lying—knew he was hiding his real feelings with half the things he said, with every smile. She hid a lot though—probably more than him, if she were being honest—so it seemed more than a bit hypocritical to point that out, even if she knew the things she hid didn’t affect who she was as a person, wouldn’t really affect how her friends saw her. Maybe when they’d first met, but not anymore.

She still wasn’t going to tell them about her past, however, not if she didn’t have to.

“I see…” he said, although she wasn’t sure he believed her. “Why did you swear?”

“What? Oh, because it’s annoying that you’re more likeable like this. Would have been easier if you still just… existed. Now I’ll feel bad if I get you killed!” She sighed dramatically, her shoulders deflating as they began to walk again.

“Ah~ the great and powerful Weather Girl will care if I die, such an honour.”

“Do not call me that,” Emilia said, wrinkling her nose at him. “It’s such a stupid epithet.”

“I heard you used your skill in a raid earlier.”

“Wow, you really did your due diligence stalking what we were up to today, huh?”

Payton laughed. It was soft—softer than the laughs she had heard from him in the past, always holding a bit too much force behind them. It was a nice laugh, more a huff of amusement than anything. “A couple of the people you hit came into the clinic earlier.”

“Whoops.”

“They’re fine.” He didn’t particularly sound like he cared, so maybe he was taking her suggestion to be himself more to heart.

“That’s good.” Emilia shrugged, looked away. She was glad they were okay, although if they had happened to be seriously injured… Well, it would perhaps be a good way to get the raid system shut down, if people started coming out with more than a few scrapes and sore muscles.

Not that she was going to go out purposefully trying to hurt people in raids. That would be insane.

They walked silently through the area after that. It really was too bad that they were doing this all under the cover of shadows because she looked like she actually belonged here tonight, on this posh street, inhabited by the city’s richest families and sub-30 vacation homes. It was probably for the best, though, that they keep out of sight. Her Censor was live mapping the area for her, searching up information on who lived in each building they came anywhere near. She recognized a few names. Some had children at Astrapan, although only a few were in the data-recovery program—even somewhere like their progressive school, rich kids were more likely to be seen in business courses and sports clubs. Occasionally, there was also a last name she recognized, however, the resident related to someone from her past life. Distant relations, it seemed.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

There was always the risk that she would run into someone she knew on the streets—see one Olivier de la Rue—but knowingly walking past places where their relatives lived? People they could conceivably visit from time to time?

Stupid. Travelling via the weird, emergency exit lanes it was then.

“This is the place,” she said as they reached the edge of a building.

It was tall, innocuous among all the other tall, imposingly white and glass buildings of the area. There didn’t seem to be any lights on—or, if there were, they were hidden behind aether-enhanced glass. Payton pressed a hand to a wall and Emilia reached out, trying to feel the subtle tendrils of his ability. Even this close, however, she could barely feel it.

“So… what can you do?” Emilia had asked, after Payton had agreed to go on this little adventure with her.

“This and that,” the man had laughed and Emilia had contemplated smacking him, or leaving him standing there alone on the street—possibly both. Then, he had actually told her what he could do.

It was an impressive list.

[Skill: {Med Search} Activated] flashed across Emilia’s Censor, the two of them having agreed to share limited data between themselves for the duration of their visit to the purist meeting place. Generally… you didn’t do that, not with people you didn’t completely trust, not outside of war, anyways. During war, you had to trust the people you were working with, even if you hated their guts.

She didn’t hate Payton, if anything, she had to admit, the more she got to know him, the more she liked him.

It was highly annoying, and if they continued on the road to becoming friends after this was over, she was going to have to make up for her previous coldness to him.

As she said, annoying.

[{Med Search}: 3 | 0 | 0 ]

Emilia shifted her weight uneasily, fingers twitching, itching to reach forward and—

“You can check, if you want,” Payton said, glancing back at her. “Would defeat the whole purpose of using {Med Search}, but I won’t be offended.” The glint in his eyes said he 100% would be, and Emilia sagged a bit.

“I won’t check,” she sighed because he was right. {Med Search} was primarily used by medical staff. It was lightweight, returning only basic information about how many people were in the search area, whether anyone was injured, and a generic danger rating for the area. It didn’t even return information about how serious any injuries were, that’s how simple it was. As a result, it was extremely hard for all but the most sophisticated security systems to detect. Even when a person or security system did detect the skill, they usually ignored it, logging it for what it usually was: medical personnel searching for a reported injury they couldn’t locate.

Other than the most paranoid of people, no one paid attention to something like {Med Search} touching them, and as far as Emilia knew, there weren’t swathes of people using it to scan buildings they were about to infiltrate either.

“What?” she asked, a hand planting on her hip as she glared her classmate down.

Payton’s eyes were so assessing, it was actually rather off-putting. She was used to people assessing her. People like Olivier and Beth couldn’t help but assess everyone they met, but they were much more subtle about it. Payton was being so open. It was refreshing and incredibly disconcerting.

She still liked him better this way.

“Nothing,” he said, shrugging and turning back to the building. “You’re up.”

Emilia stepped forward, her own hand hovering over where Payton’s was still resting before he pulled it away, leaving an echo of aether behind. There were three options, when trying to subtly break into places without having already hacked their security systems.

One: Choose completely different points at which to use each skill, hoping the system wouldn’t pick up on small aether surges from each. Generally, unless the system was complete shit—or some, usually teenage, resident had hacked it for their own sneaking out purposes—this method didn’t have the highest success rate.

Two: Use some really state-of-the-art skills to get in—skills that you had programmed yourself and the system wouldn’t immediately recognize as an infiltration technique. That shit took time, planning and countless resources.

Three: Purposefully use your skills at exactly the same point.

Most people left behind an aether signature when they used a skill. Unless they were completely inept, it usually wasn’t much, but it was enough for security systems to make a note that it might take a moment for the signature to disappear. The system would monitor the spot, make sure it didn’t grow when another skill was used, but leave behind a big enough signature, then have someone else use a subtle enough skill that it would disappear within that first signature? Most security systems wouldn’t notice the second skill… if the second person was skilled enough.

[Skill: {Hidey Hole} Selected]

[Skill: {Hidey Hole} Activated]

A small hole appeared in the wall, just big enough that Payton’s shoulders would fit through it—they’d measured.

“You know,” Emilia said, leaning back and admiring the small hole, leading into the dark building, “I used to use this to sneak out, when I was a teenager.”

“Wild teenage years?” Payton asked, nudging her aside so he could go first. They hadn’t really discussed the logistics after they got this far—too many variables—but apparently he had decided it was men first, or oldest first, she supposed. What a novelty that would be! To not be the oldest in her friend group, if Payton made the cut.

“Oh yeah~” she said, watching him disappear into the darkness.

[Payton: All clear.]

Oh, there was also that. Unlike her, it wasn’t a secret that her classmate had been active during the war. That could be helpful… or it could lead to her fucking up and him figuring out she had also served. Potentially… they’d have to have a discussion, about the secrets they had. She, for one, wasn’t about to reveal he had a black knot to her friends without his permission. So, maybe honesty was the best plan here? Hope for some mutual secret keeping?

Payton politely helped her out of the hole. It had been surprisingly long, even for an exterior wall, being almost twice her length. She slid out of the hole a little clumsily, relying on her partner in crime and vengeance to not let her splat onto the floor.

“Well, that was weird,” she said as she righted herself. She probably should have changed beforehand, her dress was going to be ruined after this—

“You have Olivier’s money now,” she reminded herself. She could easily go and replace this one—probably even get an exact copy, if she wanted—and not worry about the cost.

“Yes,” Payton said, glaring down the hall they had emerged into.

It was so dark, her eyes couldn’t see further than a few feet in front of her without the help of her Censor. Her Censor reached out, vibrating as gently as it could off the walls to get an image of the place. Ideally, they didn’t want to trigger the security system, trying to find somewhere they could hack it. Technically, there could be a security officer on duty, or the system could be programmed to watch for random people who shouldn’t be there. Both were rare in residential buildings, though, and while this building had another purpose, they were mostly just hoping the security system was relatively standard, monitoring aether activity outside the building and not much else.

Actually running into a security officer would be annoying, but they’d deal with that if they had to. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing, to break into the building hoping it managed its security like everyone else on the block—save perhaps the de la Rues—but whatever. This was an adventure! This was vengeance! This was getting the information they needed before someone got wind of the bartender’s disappearance and panic deleted it.

The worst that would happen is she’d be calling up Olivier to bail them out… or maybe calling in a favour or two with The Black Knot. It would almost be fun, watching Payton’s reaction when professional black knotters showed up to bail them out.

“Split up?” Emilia suggested, shaking off whatever nerves she had over how bad this could go if the security system were actually running responsibly. There were only three people inside, hopefully just normal residents, safely tucked into their beds on the upper floors. She didn’t really see any reason to stick together while they searched for what they wanted, especially not when the two of them together were more likely to trigger the security system.

Payton nodded. “I’ll take right. See you on the aether side,” he said, smiling darkly before he slipped down the hall and disappeared from Emilia’s sight.

“See you on the aether side,” she whispered back. She stood there waiting for a moment, waiting for him to get far enough away, before she slipped into the darkness as well.