Novels2Search
[Can't Opt Out] : A Can't We Get Rid of the Raids LitRPG
Arc 3 | Chapter 110: Things You Can’t Come Back From

Arc 3 | Chapter 110: Things You Can’t Come Back From

Emilia’s Risen Guard saviour landed lightly before her. Well, more over her, the flames he had sent to wrap around her stalker only inches from her toes. They sparked and sizzled, a bubble of heat erupting out of them, and—

⸂E-Emilia!⸃ Stephy yelped as Emilia was unceremoniously dropped beside her, the place she and the Risen Guard had just been standing now a raging inferno.

“Strange,” her stalker said, stepping out of the flames unharmed. “I didn’t think the Risen Guard were in the habit of protecting us visitors.” He cocked his head. A predator sizing up its next meal. The seemingly normal man he had been moments before falling away into something terrifying—something that fit much more with his family than his previous soft teasing. “How about I make a deal with you? Give me the silverstrain, and I’ll let you and all the kids she’s gathered up out of this city alive.”

“You said you wouldn’t hurt the kids,” Emilia bit out as she crawled over the Stephy and Astra. They were coated in even more grime than before—understandable given they had not only been tossed aside by her, but with Stephy’s broken legs, they had had no choice but to crawl through the dirty streets trying to get away from her and the man.

Said man hummed consideringly, dagger once again flipping through his fingers. “I won’t, but only because neither you nor my brother would ever forgive me.”

A shiver ran up Emilia’s spine. Hopefully she was right, and this guy didn’t have a black knot. She’d already had once black knot stalker in her life, it seemed profoundly unfair that she may leave this place and find herself with another. If she had been annoyed before, when realizing her mistake in using her real name and base appearance for the raid, she was now afraid of what she had potentially brought down on herself. She had enough programs floating around inside various systems, including Astrapan’s, that if someone tried to hack it and find her, she’d know. Suddenly, those programs didn’t seem like enough.

This man and his strange, erratic personality could just be an act, and perhaps if he was here on his own, she might believe that. Cade had certainly given the impression of child playing a part. This man’s family did not. They seemed to what they were, but Emilia had no idea where he fit in with them, with his shifting moods. Certainly, she didn’t need a stalker with his erratic temperament, inside or outside the raid.

This man though… he was such a question mark. He felt like a puzzle to be pieced together if she dared.

She really, really shouldn’t dare to pick up any of his pieces.

“I wouldn’t,” she confirmed, swallowing around the mixture of fear and curiosity swirling in her stomach. They’d had so little food, and she’d left most of it to the children, a good thing now that her stomach was threatening her throat. “There are some things a person can’t come back for.”

Her stalker blinked at her, eyes blowing wide and incredulous, before he burst into such sweet laughter that her heart froze. A laugh so at odds with the man he had been second before that it was off-putting. A laugh that didn’t belong to the man making it, and yet it did.

“You're s’like my brother,” the man laughed, eyes crinkling as he smiled at her. Inside those dark eyes, something like fascination loomed—fascination, or obsession; Emilia wasn’t sure. “He’s said exactly that t’me, almost word for word.”

The vague image of a man floated through Emilia’s head. Strong and sharp and unbending and—

There was no way. This family couldn’t be—

✮ ✮ ✮ Sometime During the First Half of the War ✮ ✮ ✮

“Not going home for the break? I know you just got here, but you can totally go. I mean, the entire unit will be gone. It’d be silly for you to stay here alone,” Emilia—young and not yet broken by the war—said to the man. He’d only just joined their unit, after his Free Colony had finally been attacked after years of them mostly ignoring the fact that there was a war raging a quarter of the world away.

Golden eyes snapped to her, the colour so off-putting and strange that she’d assumed he was a non-dev when they first met. She’d asked, he’d assured her he wasn’t, a wry smile tugging at his eyes. What little he’d been willing to say on the matter was that he couldn’t be, some specific, terrible genetic irregularity making it impossible for him to qualify as a non-dev. He hadn’t even wanted to admit what his D-Levels were—strange, given he was obviously sub-10.

Emilia wasn’t sure how much she believed him about the whole not a non-dev thing, but practically everyone had told her to drop it: they needed every capable hand they could get. He looked and fought like a non-dev, was the thing, and since he hadn’t been willing to tell anyone what his irregular deviation was, and she wasn’t allowed to ask about it or his D-Levels anymore, Emilia had mostly been left to assume his D-Level tests had been wrong.

That, or the abnormality was being overblown in how it detracted from what must otherwise be a perfect specimen. It wasn’t a secret that irregular deviations were constantly categorized as detrimental when they really weren’t. Stars, some even left their owners stronger because of them. Not that anyone wanted to acknowledge that—acknowledge that a non-dev with a lavender code wasn’t actually a 2D but something beyond a non-dev.

No one could really fault the people who managed what was and wasn’t a non-dev for such exclusions, however. One of the few guidelines they had was to only consider one additive genetic spasm when assessing D-Levels, allegedly due to concerns about how those genetic abnormalities could affect the person later in life. Additional additive genetic spasms were treated as potentially detrimental. It was stupid, but it was how things worked. It was how a non-dev with a lavender code ended up labelled a 2D, while someone like Olivier, was still considered a non-dev. Both his heterochromia and non-dev status were the result of genetic spasms, but his eyes were just pretty. They didn’t give him better vision or anything else, just made him more of a dream boat.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

If scientists suddenly included other additive genetic spasms and their irregular deviations into their equations… things would get messy. No more straight line of these specific genes are ideal. Plus, people were already afraid of non-devs as it was. Olivier and the few non-devs who had publicly revealed themselves throughout the war had lessened that a bit—having reasonable public faces always helped normalize people and their oddness—but if the public realized there were a few people even more powerful than non-devs out there?

It was one thing to accept that there were a few dozen terrifyingly powerful humans running around out there, especially when someone like sweet, altruistic and vicious Olivier had accidentally become the most famous of them. It was another to realize there were a handful more humans who could put all of them to shame.

“No,” the man finally responded, snapping Emilia out of her increasingly annoyed thoughts about what the man could be hiding within his genes. His eyes turned back to where mechs were being assembled in the courtyard. A lot of the tech for the mechs had come from his home, even if they’d also refused to send soldiers until the last few months. From what Emilia had heard, most were just as eccentric and strange as this man. “My family are not… pleasant.”

“Oh? This is nice vacation from them then?” she asked, skipping over to the window and peeking up at him. Maybe if she made nice with him, managed to crack that shell of his and become his friend, he’d spill his secrets. Probably not the best motivation for making friends, but it wasn’t like that was the only reason! Everyone was friend material! Except Halen. Halen could be blasted into space. All his shitbag friends, too.

Emilia blinked up at their new member, trying not to come off too strong. She knew her personality could be… overwhelming, especially when she was hunting for information.

The guy was tall—probably the tallest in the unit, although she hadn’t bothered to ask her Censor to confirm such a silly fact. She could find out things like that the normal way—by, you know, looking—but most of their unit had yet to all be formally introduced to their newest member, nearly everyone currently deployed to the main battlefronts in preparation for the upcoming holiday. It wasn’t like they could negotiate a temporary cease fire, but they could clear out as many enemies as they could and hopefully edge out a little break in the fighting.

“I like a few,” he said, tone implying that few meant one or two among a hoard. “Our home…” He shook himself slightly, seemingly thinking better of spilling secrets about his reclusive Free Colony.

Emilia waited, staring up at him. He didn’t look at her again, and finally, she popped back to watch the construction below them. Quickly, it and the silence grew tedious, and she turned to disappear. Back to… something. There was always stuff to do, new skills to code up, enemies to go hunt down—although she was supposed to be getting ready to head home for a few days of R&R.

“Ri.”

Emilia looked back at her new teammate, just as she was reaching the door. “What?”

The man didn’t turn towards her, but she could see those golden eyes of his glowing in the window, watching her reflection. “When we met, I told you not to call me by my name. You said you needed to call me something. Ri.”

Emilia blinked back at him. She had said that, but only after asking why he hadn’t wanted to be called by the name on his file, only his first name having even been given. The man—Ri—hadn’t liked the question, and they’d argued. Politely argued. Mostly politely argued. Ri had given her a thousand reasons why, but none of them had seemed like his reason. The closest reason that felt almost real had been that he wanted to leave the war behind when it was over. He didn’t want phantom voices screaming his name in nightmares for the rest of his life.

If she had to bet on it, Emilia would guess it was the other way around. Ri didn’t want whatever his life had been before this moment slipping into the present. Given what she’d heard about his home, one of the terrifyingly authoritarian Free Colonies, it was easy to imagine that war was better than life had been before he had been shipped here.

“Alright, Ri,” she said, swallowing down her questions and accusations and meandering suspicions. “Do you want me to let everyone else know? Ah~ I should add you to the group chat— Oh. Did you decide if you wanted a Censor permanently installed?”

Ri finally looked at her again. “I… will get in trouble if I do.”

“Temporary one, then? Or, just never go back!” Emilia had meant it as a joke, but for a moment, Ri had looked like he was actually considering never going back. “You can think about it,” she quickly added instead, voice cheery in a way she didn’t feel. Working with people from Free Colonies like his was difficult because everyone knew once the war was done, they’d be going back to some dystopian homeland, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Well, they could burn those festering excuses for governments down, but that would probably cause even more problems, all things considered.

After a long moment of awkwardly staring at each other, Ri nodded, and turned back to watch the mechs they would lead to war be constructed. More outfits for the average solider to wear to their death.

✮ ✮ ✮

There… was no way this man was related to Ri, just on the basis that he was here. Here, inside a raid that he shouldn’t have been capable of joining because Ri’s home had remained firm: anyone found to have installed a Censor would be executed upon return. Ri had returned home following the war, along with nearly all the other soldiers from that dumpster fire of a Free Colony. A few had stayed in Baalphoria, or fled to other Free Colonies. Most had been hunted down with brutal efficiency by their government, public executions broadcast through the world.

Chaos had broken out after one of the last executions, some important member of a powerful family. Civil war, a colony wide lockdown that had never been lifted. Ri, disappeared into that cage of a home, the temporary Censor he had smuggled home disconnected from the aether so no one could learn whether he was alive or not.

No, there was no way this man’s brother was Ri. For as much as she and Ri had often held similar beliefs, for as much as it had been him to question some of the ethics of her and Halen’s training simulator, prompting them to alter how AIs were created for it, he couldn’t be.

Still, an image of Ri, refusing to follow orders, and saying, “There are things you can’t come back from. This is one. I will not lose myself doing this,” floated through her mind.

It was… impossible. His home was locked down, without Censors or any connection to Baalphoria’s raid system. The Black Knot, SecOps, the OIC System—someone would have noticed if people from there were somehow sneaking into Baalphoria or its raids, right?

⸂You will not be hurting the children, or taking the girl,⸃ the Risen Guard man said.

The man cocked his head, his neck twisting inhumanly and reminding her of the way the one boy had looked as he moved, like his limbs were too long, joints too loose. “Sorry, little boy,” he laughed. “I don’t take orders from anyone but my brother. Ah… but maybe taking orders from the little silverstrain would be nice too.”

Emilia didn’t have an opportunity to bite back—to say something insanely inappropriate. Something about how she was firmly a take orders in bed type person, perhaps. One moment, her Risen Guard saviour was standing between her, the children, and the man, then the next he was inches from her stalker, his body erupting in an avatar of flame and shadow.