The good news was the kids weren’t dead, at least not as far as the Clarity members they had found knew. She’d eavesdropped on them for a while, but she and Conrad didn’t have forever, and when their conversation turned to bickering over whether to tell the other groups what happened—or, more importantly, report everything back to Ajarni—they decided to take matters into their own hands and force actually useful answers out of them.
They had children and V to find.
Conrad’s energy exploded out of him and wrapped itself around the Clarity group. Except, exploded wasn’t really correct. It was more like an instantaneous shift of the aether. One moment the aether was there, gently vibrating with the sway of the universe, the system, the people in the area and their aethervoices. The next, Conrad’s energy was enveloping the area, seamless and perfect and all-encompassing. It wasn’t an explosion, but that was only because Emilia had been paying attention her surroundings and the man himself, his energy still gliding through her and keeping her aethervoice suppressed. To anyone not watching so closely, it would have been an explosion. To her, it simply wasn’t filled with his energy, and then it was.
“Is that a gift from a heartcore?” she asked as they looked over the Clarity members, who she had bolted forward to incapacitate while they were distracted by Conrad’s ability.
The man hummed before telling her it was something he could do in the real world, but it had been augmented by a labyrinth gift. ⸂I suppose I can see th’aether clearer in this world, an’ send m’energy further. It—⸃ He hesitated, purple eyes locking onto hers as she tossed the members’ weapons into a pile. ⸂People do not use Censors where I’m from. Allowances are made for virtual raids, but that’s all.⸃
“Oh…” she breathed out. She’d kinda guessed her own burgeoning core control—sketchy as it was—was being helped along by the raid platform. It was nice, if a bit sad, to have that confirmed; it would have been nice to have similar control in the real world, although she was sure her skill here would translate to the real world, at least to some extent.
That was interesting. Most Free Colonies that had banned Censors didn’t allow virtual raids either. Without her own Censor going through records of each Free Colony, that information didn’t even help her make a potential list of places Conrad was from. It did tell her that wherever hit was, she knew next to nothing about it: there was no way she would have forgotten a Free Colony with such a unique set of laws regarding Censors.
Weapons cast aside, Conrad’s energy keeping them safe and her own {Blood Ball} hanging beside her, just waiting to randomly activate—because she, for one, had no idea why it activated at random—they set to work getting answers from the group.
By they, Emilia meant Conrad. He was a great interrogator, even if his methods were rather… horrific. Energy wound out of him and pressing into each of the Clarity members in a manner similar to how he was suppressing her aethervoice. It wasn’t the same, however. Where his energy within her felt awkwardly sexual, even without experiencing it, she knew his energy was violently forcing itself inside the Clarity members.
Where his gift of silence was like an awkward, if still consensual, coupling between people who didn’t particularly want to have sex in an arranged marriage, this was assault. This was forcing himself where he was unwanted. It was horrific, but necessary.
Every thrash the group made, however, her heart clenched. Every muffled sob, slurred curse word, spit insult, her stomach rolled, memories of a night she could neither remember nor forget tumbling through her head until Conrad told her to go sit elsewhere.
He would get answers.
She didn’t need to see this.
Had the children watched this?
Yes, he said, although they did not witness the hive mind he was creating from this group.
Hive mind. They were already something of a hive mind, weren’t they? Minions of Ajarni and the heartcores and whatever was behind them. Conrad was just forcing them to connect for him, so he could use their collective knowledge to garner answers from them. It was a terrible skill, and one Emilia didn’t think was a gift from the labyrinth. What a frightening skill. Even the brief bit she had seen—had experienced as her energy wrapped around his and tracing his ability through the aether—made it clear that he would get his answers, no matter who he interrogated.
His arms wrapped around her, his lips brushed her forehead, and then he simply moved her to sit against a nearby tree, her back to the group and whatever he was going to do to them.
Get answers.
He was going to get answers, obviously.
⸂Don’t watch. Don’t listen,⸃ he said, and suddenly, his energy was sliding within her faster, stronger, her ability to hear aethervoices just as gone as her ability to speak—just as gone as he was a moment later.
So she sat there in silence, staring into the abyss of the day—was it day? A quick message to Honey told her it was—and that she was still waiting to hear back from her contact about the Stringers. Several long moments of focus later, she managed to bring up a clock on her system using Honey’s instructions. A handful of blinks later, she became aware that she was dissociating, her mind floating away for far longer than she realized, trying to protect her from the feelings shuddering through her.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
It had done a good job—Emilia wasn’t even aware of what she was feeling. Empty? Sad? Horrified? She’d agreed to let Conrad do those things to those people, near empty shells that they were.
It still felt wrong.
They still needed to find the kids.
The kids, whole and loving and small creatures that they were, were more important than the people behind her.
Still, her stomach rolled.
⸂Emilia?⸃
Emilia looked up to find Conrad kneeling in front of her. He looked sad—sadder than she’d seen him. Had she ever seen him sad? Disappointed and frustrated, yes. Sad, probably not.
⸂I am sorry. I should have forced your awareness away, before I did that.⸃ His accent was gone, replaced by a soft lilt that reminded her of so many people from the Free Colonies, the ones that had other languages and whose soldiers had learned Baalphorian through the Virtuosi System for the war. It was pretty, coming off Conrad’s tongue.
She shook her head, mumbled that it wasn’t his fault.
⸂No… not entirely…⸃ he agreed, eyes skimming over her in that way people always did before they commented about it.
Did someone hurt you in the past?
You don’t seem the type to let that sort of thing happen to you.
Is that why you sleep around so much?
Really? I never would have guessed.
I would have thought you stronger than that.
There were so many terrible, judgmental things people could say about it. Things that always managed to make her feel lesser, despite knowing she wasn’t. Things that made it sound like she had done something to deserve it—that other people who had suffered the same and worse had done something to deserve it. She’d lost a few friendships over such crass remarks, regardless of how much they tried to argue they hadn’t intended to make her and every other person who had been forced on a dirty forest floor, a soft bed, a kitchen table feel like they had deserved, asked, wanted what happened to them.
V’s answer to her confession had been nice, though. A simple sorry, not because he had done anything, but an acknowledgement that it sucked. A promise to listen to her, to stop if she asked him to. That was all it took. Acknowledgement and a promise to not hurt her—to not hurt anyone else. Answers like that were rare, and Emilia braced herself, waiting for her new friend to say something about it.
⸂What happened to them?⸃
That hadn’t been what Emilia was expecting, and stunned, she mumbled that a friend had killed the guy. That… probably wasn’t the best thing to admit in a raid—you never knew who was listening or what was being recorded, despite there being some pretty strict laws on what could and couldn’t be shared by the platform maintainers as highlights—but it wasn’t like anyone could track it directly back to Rafe. Stars, it wasn’t even like he was touchable by SecOps.
Conrad nodded, although he didn’t look happy. As though sensing her thoughts, he told her he was glad the prick was dead, but disappointed he wouldn’t be able to hunt him down and make him suffer. Emilia… wasn’t sure if Rafe had made the guy suffer. Maybe? He was certainly capable of such things, but when they were younger, he had mostly been a grumpy guy who showed little emotion other than annoyance? He had been more harsh restraint, before that night.
He wasn’t anymore. Not after that night—not after the night he had crawled into her bed to comfort her, not after the prick didn’t show back up at school a two days later, after her friend had figured out just who had hurt her and hurt him in return. Something about her friend had opened that night, although she’d never been able to pinpoint what. It wasn’t like he suddenly had a taste for killing rapists or anything, but there was something freer about him. He was still the Rafe she had known most of her life, but different. Still someone she loved and would kill for, but different.
Today, she was sure he would make anyone who touched her—or the handful of other people he considered his friends—like that suffer, but the Rafe who had existed before he took that first life? She had no idea. She kinda wanted to know.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Emilia told Conrad, leaning forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder. Regardless of the cruelty the man was capable of, it was nice to know she could direct it, if only a bit—that he would spare he from it, when he could. “Learn anything?” she asked, although what she really meant to ask was, “Was doing that to them worth it?”
It had been worth it.
The reason the group had been so argumentative over whether to tell the other groups what had happened was Jerrina had sent a series of frantic message to Fran during the fight with the Ingogia family. Like most of the groups, Fran’s group—who had fallen behind and had still been forcing V and the other visitor through the labyrinth when the message came through—had been composed of a mix of lifelong Clarity members and those who had joined later in life.
As the information about Clarity’s real purpose was revealed, the newer members had rioted. In particular, a former Enclave member had gotten it into their head that they needed to become part of the Enclave again. They had killed the group’s leader—one of Phlostra’s children—and taken the other visitor hostage, intending to use them to bargain their return to the Enclave with, and vanished.
With several members gone, another dead, the remaining members had sent a distress message to the group she and Conrad had grabbed, their own chaos breaking out as a result. Their newer members teleported themselves away, while one of the visitors had taken the chance to run and the other tried to fight what was happening to their brain, although as far as the group knew, they hadn't been successful before they’d decided the visitor was a liability and killed them.
As for what had happened to V? The group had no idea. While the distress message read that the former Enclave member had taken a female visitor, it mentioned neither V nor Fran’s fate.
Emilia made Conrad repeat the message their captive had received twice before making him go check that he was correct. She didn’t like the idea of torturing the group for any more information, but she needed to find V and the kids, and the group was currently their only lead. Plus, while it wasn’t their fault they’d been born into a cult that was raising them to be sacrifices, Emilia was also aware that they hadn’t given a shit about offering up visitors to whatever personality consuming thing existed behind the heartcores or killing them when they become too much work.
If they were willing to destroy her mind, why shouldn’t she be willing to let Conrad force his abilities on them?
Because it was too close to things she herself had felt, obviously. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t different.
Conrad’s hands wrapped around her own shaking ones when he returned, repeating a slightly different message to her. It was slight, but the difference important.
In Conrad’s original, incorrect version, it had sounded like only the former Enclave member and their stolen visitor were gone.
In the correct version, it was clear that several other members of their group had gone missing during the chaos as well. Who and where they went was unsaid, but they had been gone, not dead—not then, anyways. More importantly, they had been gone before the Ingogia family caught up with the group and slaughtered the remaining members.