[Step 3: Find all the missing kids]
Emilia found Caro first, although that wasn’t completely accurate given she’d taken off in the opposite direction the Risen Guard had gone, heading for the furthest child. She’d passed by a few children as she went, travelling as close to them as she dared, making sure they weren’t seriously injured or anything. Most of the kids couldn’t read, leaving her unable to communicate with them, and as much as leaving them alone longer sucked, she had to. It would be easier to grab them on the way back, rather than drag them along with her.
It was a bit of a surprise to find Caro had been one of the runners. Generally, the child took everything in stride, but when she slid in front of them, trying to stand in as much light as she could, she found the child still crying as they ran.
Caro skidding to a stop, eyes wide and teary, before they bolted into Emilia’s arms. Luckily, the child was on the lighter slide, and their added weight barely slowly her down as she made for the next closest child.
⸂I’m sorry!⸃ they sobbed into Emilia’s neck, fingers digging painfully into her. ⸂I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.⸃ They continued repeating their apology, never expanding on it, until they had reached the next child. They had taken one look at the new child and burst into more tears before thankfully passing out—their sobs had been so loud they hurt. Hurt what? Emilia had no idea, but exceptionally loud aethervoices were certainly capable of hurting something.
On the bright side, their sobs had helpfully altered the new child of their presence.
⸂It wasn’t Caro’s fault,⸃ the child—Ally, the child who Benny had originally tried to escape her to rescue during the stampede—said as they went, moving as quickly as her legs could manage through the city.
Emilia had offered to carry her, but Ally had shaken her head and insisted she was fine. ⸂I’ve been carried along enough…⸃ she had mumbled, and while Emilia wanted to disagree—she had been one of the homed children who had managed to stay aware for most of the labyrinth, despite Emilia knowing she had been separated from both her sister and mother during the stampede. The girl was small and had needed to be carried for large portions of their trek. Perhaps she felt bad, given she’d bolted and run quite far.
Emilia wanted to tell her that was understandable, adrenaline was a great beast, but they couldn’t communicate, and instead she had simply smiled down at the girl and patted her head.
Teary eyes had looked up at her before a wobbly smile spread across Ally’s face. ⸂Plus, I can walk,⸃ she had cheered. ⸂You should save your strength for when you have to carry someone who can’t.⸃
The next two children they found could walk, the third couldn’t, and Emilia was forced to shift Caro’s weight so she could carry both children, the other boy unfortunately much heavier than any of the kids she’d carried so far. They’d tripped and injured their ankle, however, and while they could walk, they would be slow.
⸂What’s wrong with them?⸃ the new, blond boy asked, glaring at Caro.
⸂They cried themself out,⸃ the black-haired boy responded. Emilia couldn’t remember their names, and neither of them had reintroduced themselves, okay? The best she could do was think of them in terms of appearance, and hope none of the kids she picked up were so alike she couldn’t differentiate them with such designations.
The blond boy snorted. ⸂Serves them right,⸃ he grumbled, turning his head away from Caro’s sleeping face.
⸂It wasn’t their fault,⸃ Ally insisted.
The girl didn’t expand on why it wasn’t Caro’s fault, and the older kids had been cagey when she’d asked them for details of what happened. She’d assumed they were just traumatized by what had happened, not wanting to talk about it. Evidently, there was something they were avoiding telling her.
As the children began to argue, the little pug nosed boy who rarely spoke walking quietly beside her, Emilia began to put the pieces together.
Caro had been fooling around, running wild down through other roads and meeting up with the group on the other side. Benny had told them to stop, the universe didn’t like what they were doing. Gale, who had been tired of the child’s unending chatter and questions, had told Caro to just be quiet and not wake up the city as they played.
They’d played and played, and then they’d returned with the man in tow.
⸂Caro looked so scared…⸃ the black-haired boy whispered, eyes glazed over as though he were back in that moment—and perhaps he was. Back to a place of remembering what it was like to watch Caro emerge from the darkness, their own eyes wide and fearful, some crazed visitor stepping out behind them. Perhaps the visitor even had a weapon on them—Emilia had certainly picked enough off their corpse that they could have wielded something else before picking her dagger off Kelly.
⸂They should have stayed with the group.⸃
⸂Gale told Caro they could go.⸃
⸂That homeless brat said—⸃
⸂Since when do you listen to anything the homeless kids say, huh? You don’t believe in that the universe is guiding us stuff any more than the rest of us!⸃
⸂Miira seemed to believe it, Caro too, even if they went back to ignoring it when they went running around, putting us all in danger!⸃
⸂I think they did believe they were following it, though…⸃ Ally said, her voice wavering like she believed what she was saying, but knew she wouldn’t be able to defend that belief is pushed.
Emilia glanced down at the girl, her feet scuffing against the ground as they walked and the argument dragged on her. She’d been subsisting on adrenaline and shock, and that was clearly running its course. If the girl fell asleep or couldn’t walk anymore…
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Well, she could always wake Caro up, make them walk a bit. Given how this argument was going and how far they’d run—how much they’d sobbed—she wouldn’t have been surprised if they tried to run off again the moment they woke. Hopefully, the girl would be able to carry on, or they’d get back to the others soon, and whatever kids they’d found didn’t need to much assistance.
⸂It’s a stupid belief, if it leads to things like this…⸃ the boy in her arms muttered.
Emilia disagreed on that point. To her, if the belief that the universe is guiding us to what is meant to be led to this, it was tragic and fascinating.
If Caro had thought they were following the universe, and they’d certainly been playing close attention to Sawyer and Benny’s lectures on the topic before their group had been split, then it was possible they had been following whatever this will of the universe was. Part of the system, machinations of the platform maintainer—or perhaps something else, something real, that Emilia had never realized existed in the aethernet.
If it was the game leading them, well, that was terrible and cruel. If it was real, however, it meant there was a reason that man had been led to them—a reason Caro had been led across their path.
These were vaguely terrifying possibilities, because Emilia had never considered herself much more than a passive, skeptic believer of such things. Don’t give too much thought to terrible outcomes, but don’t take that too seriously, either—because seriously? Some people took it way too far, refusing to even plan for worst-case scenarios because they were giving the bad things energy.
Stupid.
Regardless, without knowing who was behind whatever was guiding the signs in the aethernet, or whether Caro really had been following them or not, Emilia couldn’t do anything with those thoughts. Still, knowing she couldn’t do anything with them—couldn’t figure out some part of a missing puzzle—didn’t stop her from wondering about them as they continued searching for the remaining children.
Finding the kids was, thankfully, a rather speedy process. Benny and the Risen Guard in particular bolted around Emilia’s map, although they had very different strategies. Benny, she imagined, had taken to finding children and pointing them towards their agreed upon meeting spot—back where the Risen Guard and her stalker had been fighting.
In hindsight, Emilia realized she hadn’t actually told the Risen Guard that—he’d run off so fast, okay!?—but he seemed to figure it out on his own. Where Benny sent children stumbling through the streets alone, his dot darting off to the next closed dot, the Risen Guard was capable of zipping through the city, snatching up one or two dots and depositing them with the others.
He was fast, but whatever had happened with the first child he’d taken off to help had been time-consuming, and in the end his main contribution was grabbing Gale and Miira’s group, as they had been quite far out by the time she, Benny and the Risen Guard had made their way back to the centre.
“Do you think they’re in trouble?” Emilia asked, already planning on bolting to their rescue. Even if they didn’t need her, she could at least accompany them back.
⸂I will go see,⸃ the man said, practically vanishing into thin air. Actually, maybe he had. The transportation magic in this world relied on landing pads for safety, but since the man had a map, perhaps he could jump anywhere he wanted, without risking landing inside something—or worse, someone? At least within the city. Perhaps not the whole city system, although who knew what the Risen Guard’s map was capable of.
Emilia glared at her display. Other than the map and current step of the plan, it said nothing else. The Risen Guard had said that he’d provided her with access to his system and activated the map for her, the system then activating the quest system for her. Technically, that didn’t rule out that she could activate other features.
What sort of features, she had no idea, but as the man darted through the city, bringing a collection of injured children—apparently they had been in a group and knocked a pile of, thankfully empty, crates onto themselves—back to their meeting place, Emilia focused on trying to activate any other features of the system.
Lines of text, blurry and unreadable but there all the same, crossed over her eyes. She could almost make out what it said, almost force it to come into permanent existence. Just a little more and she’d—
⸂Impressive.⸃
Emilia so totally did not squeak when the Risen Guard appeared directly beside her, a child in his arms and his hand wrapped around Gale’s. The teenager tugged her hand away and ran over to where Miira was already trying to soothe the exhausted and terrified children.
“What’s impressive?” Emilia asked, glaring at the man. It didn’t feel very effective, given the darkness and how tired she felt, her eyes trying to flutter shut near constantly and burning in complaint when she refused to let them rest. [Step 3: Complete!] flashed through over them, followed by the fourth step of their plan: regroup.
⸂Usually, it takes recruits much longer to figure out how to activate features of the system on their own.⸃
Emilia blinked at the man before it dawned on her that, for one thing, the man could apparently tell what she was seeing through the system, and for another, she was apparently so tired that her brain was starting to slow down.
That wasn’t good. They needed to regroup and get to the homeless group before her brain completely melted. Luckily, the mysterious dot meeting up with their group didn’t appear to have resulted in any mayhem or death, although they had largely stopped moving as well, their long line slowly becoming a mass of children again. That didn’t mean whoever it was still wasn’t good news.
“We should go,” she told the man blandly.
⸂Agreed,⸃ he said, before turning and directing the group to form several smaller groups, so he could move them to the others. ⸂You should be in the first group,⸃ he told Gale, stepping towards the group he had organized her into.
As far as Emilia could tell, there was no limit to the number of people the man could move, but there did appear to be a weight limit. Herself and Gale had been placed with two of the smallest children, while the other groups consisted of four or five children each.
⸂The children trust you.⸃
⸂You could take Miira instead. People like her more than me,⸃ the teenager sniped.
⸂Gale—⸃ Miira began, only to be cut off by the Risen Guard.
⸂We do not have time to argue. I was being polite, by asking. If you cannot put your feelings for the guard aside, then you are not the girl I heard so much about.⸃
Gale looked like she wanted to hit the man, which probably wouldn’t have ended well, given his full suit of armour. Her jaw flexed, nostrils flared, before she muttered, ⸂Fine,⸃ and held out her hand for him to take.
Emilia looked to Miira as they vanished, but the girl simply shook her head. Whatever that was about, either Miira didn’t know, or it wasn’t something she was comfortable speaking about.
The Risen Guard popped back into existence and grabbed another group. Another. Another. Another. Their group really was huge, and Emilia felt a little bad for having never had the sense to do a headcount, lest they lose anyone. As it was, someone could have disappeared during their trek through the city and she would never know. Miira probably would, but it really wasn’t something that should have been left to the young girl.
The man slipped through the aether once more, right in front of her. ⸂Ready?⸃
A smile tugged at her lips, tired and sad. “Take us away,” she singsonged, offering him her hand.
Hopefully, this wouldn’t be the moment where he finally decided to fuck them over—disappear her elsewhere and leave the kids to fend for themselves in the dark, wondering why the Risen Guard had forsaken them.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t regret trusting this man.