⸂This one.⸃

Emilia and Key stopped, looking back up the stairwell to where Rin had been examining the most recent city level. They’d gotten so used to their passing of each other that Emilia had almost forgotten that Rin might actually find whatever it was she was looking for.

Glancing at each other, the two of them began the climb back to the Risen Guard trainee, who appeared to be looking for the mechanism that would open the door to the city level.

⸂Can you find it?⸃ Rin asked as Emilia came to stand by her, and after having let her energy wander along the edges of the stairwells as they travelled, Emilia actually thought she could—and she knew that Conrad was right when he’d said she’d be unlikely to find them from the other side, without any additional information on where they were.

The problem was they were not only inside the wall on the opposite side of the stairwell, they also weren’t near the ground level. Instead, they were located about halfway up each city level, and even with her okayish core control, she had to go back up another flight of stairs to be close enough to activate it. The mechanism inside the wall wasn’t just a mechanism or simple lock, either. No, they were puzzles that had Emilia second guessing if these stairwells were actually meant to be emergency exits, as she had originally assumed.

The puzzle of the lock wasn’t particularly difficult, but it was finicky, unfortunately, requiring Emilia to keep her energy taut as she rotated its internal structures. It wasn’t exactly strenuous, but it did require focus, and eventually, she was forced to yell at the others to shut it, their argument over something—Emilia had no idea what—reaching upwards and grinding at her concentration.

In some ways, it was fortunate that she couldn’t always tune out the world the way Simeon could. If something was interesting to her, she could definitely melt away into the beauty of it. Helix and Rafe were the same way. Halen and Naomi had been the same, and Olivier could definitely do it as well, and perhaps it wasn’t so much that the people of their unit had to be powerful so much as they had to be obsessive?

Honestly, that might have tracked. There were tons of powerful soldiers who had never been tapped for their unit, others who had tried joining their ranks, only to never be able to properly enmesh themselves in the unit’s flow before choosing to find another unit, less finicky unit. Even people like Nettie, who didn’t succumb to the same hyperfocus many of them had often found themselves beholden to, had been obsessive in other ways. Her skills were works of art, whittled down to the bare-bones and giving her speed and efficiency that even the non-devs of their unit had feared.

None of that was the point, however. What was the point was Emilia’s mind was wandering, even as she worked the boring puzzle that acted as the lock, her mind latching onto the silence of the world and what filled it. Not words or magic, but an energy winding around them nonetheless.

“What’s that?” Emilia asked, refusing to let her concentration break with her words.

⸂It’s not your friend?⸃ Key asked, referring to Conrad.

They’d briefly discussed the other visitor and his gifts—as well as what he looked like, in case they came across him. His energy was still twinned around her, keeping her aethervoice suppressed—and at this point, Emilia was beginning to wonder what sort of monstrous range his energy had—but that wasn’t the current energy reaching towards them, although it had a similar flavour and—

“Run,” Emilia hissed, her energy clicking through the lock as fast as it could. She was supposed to wait to finish unlocking it—supposed to let Rin tell her when the coast was clear inside the city level.

They didn’t have time for that.

⸂What—⸃ Key began to ask as Emilia vaulted the railing and landed beside him, manhandling him through the now open doorway, her energy already exploding behind them as magic barrelled down the stairwell towards them.

[Emilia: i think your family showed up]

[Conrad: Who?]

[Emilia: no idea]

[Emilia: but someone just tried to burn us to death]

[Emilia: and whatever core skill they were using beforehand felt a whole lot like what you do]

[Conrad: How similar?]

Emilia contemplated that as Rin led them through the city, confused residents yelping and ducking into bland grey buildings as they raced by. Behind them, the presence of whoever was chasing them continued following, energy lapping at their heels like a wild animal. She didn’t really want to let it actually touch her, but if she wanted to get a feel for it so she could relay information to Conrad and figure out which of his crazy family members they were dealing with—

[Conrad: Well, it’s definitely not my sister or the boy one you fought with.]

[Emilia: why?]

[Boundary: Because two members of his insane family just showed up to fight us.]

[Emilia: shit]

[Emilia: do you think they brought that weapon?]

[Emilia: you should get out of here!]

Emilia wanted to tell Boundary more—try and convince him he should leave them there—but her thoughts cut off as she remembered Rin and Key. It wasn’t fair to ask them to stay if Boundary left. The man might have something more tangible to live for—a family waiting for him to return—but Key and Rin had things to live for as well. Friends and family, lives they hadn’t yet had the chance to live. Just because Emilia had met Boundary’s family and liked them more than she liked the other Stringers didn’t mean he deserved to live more than the others—more than Gale and Caro, who were possibly trapped in the Clarity City System as well.

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[Boundary: Why are they even attacking you!?]

[Conrad: From what I can tell… my sister is upset I didn’t exact revenge on Emilia for killing Mihail.]

[Emilia: how did she even find out that was me?]

[Boundary: It was not a secret within the Risen Guard. I used your disgust with that man and his actions to convince my superiors that you were not an active threat to locals—that you did not view us as lesser, the way many visitors do.]

[Boundary: It is not a secret that there are leaks and spies within the Risen Guard, nor was your involvement with his death considered the sort of secret that needed to be kept.]

“Great,” Emilia thought as they continued racing through the city. “Just what I need. More people trying to kill me.” Granted, Conrad’s family would still have been pissed at her, given she’d already killed two of that woman’s kids before she’d killed her brother—Conrad’s brother as well.

That—the fact that Conrad was actually related to these people intent on killing him—was more where the problem lay.

During their time travelling together, she and Conrad had briefly discussed both how the fight with his relatives had gone and how his own relationship with his family was strained. While the man had been understandably tight-lipped about their exact identities and story, she had gleaned some information about them.

The woman she had deemed The Mother, was indeed the mother to all the kids, as well as Conrad’s elder sister. That said, something strange had crossed Conrad’s face when they discussed the pink haired kid—The Gangly Boy—who Emilia had already pegged as potentially not being related to the others—at least not fully. Conrad hadn’t confirmed that, but something in his demeanour had told her she wasn’t far off the truth.

If Conrad knew neither were the ones chancing their trio, that meant The Mother and The Gangly Boy had teamed up to chase after Conrad. Emilia rather hoped that once they met in person, Conrad would be more willing to discuss the specifics of his family and how they all fit together. His sister clearly hadn’t liked that kid, so why were they fighting together? Did his other nieces and nephews like him more? Would they have put up more of a fight, had his sister brought them along to kill him instead? Was it just easier for her to watch The Gangly Boy die?

Would her anger at Conrad reverberate into the real world? Maybe, maybe not. From what Conrad had told her, his older brother—the one Emilia reminded him of—ruled their family with something of an iron fist. The mysterious man didn’t approve of their behaviour inside raids, but something told her it was likely he accepted raids as a grotesque way of controlling his family’s less savoury impulses.

Emilia… understood that, in a way. It was part of what made The Black Knot work. The organization picked up people with the underlying impulse to do bad or who lacked a normal amount of empathy, redirecting them towards something less destructive.

Of course, there was a difference between the calculated strikes The Black Knot made against organized crime and terrorist groups, against hackers and foreign powers that threatened the country, and letting your family kill people who were all but real humans inside raids.

If she ever met Conrad’s brother, she’d be rather inclined to sit and have a long debate with him about all this—about the things he seemingly let his family do inside raids in order to have better control of them outside it.

The point was, she didn’t think he’d let his family take any sort of revenge on Conrad for his behaviour inside a raid. If she and this man were as similar as Conrad claimed they were, maybe he even had the sort of petty streak she did. If it were her, she’d probably be all for punishing Conrad for his actions within the raid, as long as the rest of them were open to punishment for their own actions within the raid in return.

All those people, dead. All those children, orphaned.

Those were the sorts of things Conrad’s family needed to pay for. This attempt at retribution on him for daring to not kill her for killing his brother in retribution for his destruction of Livery after she had—

Emilia’s thoughts cut off as they swerved around a corner. She was going to drive herself crazy, counting their debts and reasons for attack back to the start. That was how grudges capable of lasting generations began: her viewing their attack on her as the start—their fault; them viewing her sneaking up on them as the start—her and V’s fault.

Ridiculous, and she wasn’t entertaining such nonsense. When they met again, in the real world—and something told her that was an inevitability—she would leave what had happened here behind, the same way that she refused to judge her friends who participated in virtual raids and she was sure killed locals constantly.

As much as she might not like it, this was the world they had created—a world her creation and Hail had allowed to come into existence. There wasn’t much she could do about it, and as much as some part of her wanted to judge people against her own morals and ethics, that wasn’t constructive.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she let her steps faltered slightly, accepting the energy chasing them into her body and then sending an explanation of it back to Conrad, to see if he could figure out which of his niblings was currently trying to kill her.

⸂There is a group of Clarity members nearby,⸃ Rin said as she flawlessly led them through the city, her map presumably guiding their way.

Emilia wondered if she was simply reading it as they went, deciding where to turn whenever they came to a road, or if some secret function of the Risen Guard’s system was mapping the way for her. Boundary had done that, after all: turned on a map guidance system. Had he told her if the system itself was mapping, or if it had been him? Had it changed when she raced down the wrong alleys, trying to avoid Conrad and Boundary’s fight, when Conrad had been caught up in the moment?

⸂And we’re going to them… why?⸃ Key asked, and Emilia huffed a laugh for how affronted he looked.

Rin looked less amused, and told them that she had been searching for groups of Clarity members infected by the hive mind. ⸂In theory, all of these people should be infected enough that if the hive mind thinks giving you system access is a good idea, it will take them over and make it happen.⸃

Emilia was about to say that was a really big if—did they even know if the hive mind actually wanted such a thing?—but her thoughts cut off when she received a message from Conrad, telling her that most likely The Cheeky Girl—Livia, the girl who had been hit by her mother and ordered to follow after The Child after she ran off—was chasing them.

[Conrad: If the other boy is with her, do not fight them.]

[Conrad: I didn’t spend much time with them, so I don’t know what sorts of magic and abilities they’ve gained, but if they’re like me, they’ll have access to many of their real world core abilities, and you do not want to see that boy fight.]

[Emilia: great]

[Emilia: so, there are other terrifying members of your family?]

[Conrad: Yes, but my brother is the worst of us.]

Emilia really wasn’t sure whether to look forward to meeting this mysterious brother or not. “Alright,” she said, grabbing Key’s hand and beginning to drag him along when his steps faltered, unused to so much running, no doubt. “Let’s go, Rin. I don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but that’s about the only option we have right now.”