Arc 1 | Chapter 8: Grudges are Overrated

Usually, Emilia loved the slums. The main part of Piketown—the oh so original name for the city that lay at the base of Astrapan’s Mount Pike—was clean and sleek. There were some more unique areas—it was a college town, after all—as well as more bougie areas like the one they had just left. For the most part, however, the city screamed that it was well maintained, old buildings constantly being renovated or replaced by OIC bots hired by the city. This part of town, a small stretch of land pressed between an industrial area to the east, Mount Pike to the north and the ocean surrounding the rest, was one of the last remaining slums in the country, at least within more populous cities.

Dirty, rundown buildings stretched high above them, looking as though a sneeze could bring them crashing down. The sidewalks cracked and vanished. Little businesses poked out of alleyways, and uplines would take you towards businesses set high into the sky, having taken over whatever spot they could.

It was unique.

It was also less prone to raids than anywhere else in Piketown. Too many people in ill health, plus a substantial population of children and Free Colony expats, who often never bothered to install Censors—a requirement for participating in raids.

Yes, there tended to be higher rates of crime here than anywhere else, as well—SecOps rarely even attempted to patrol the area—but the risk of being caught in a raid was so negligible that Emilia sighed in relief as she, Sil and Beth popped out of the slum’s broken slide line exit.

Then, the heat hit them.

“Ugh, I forgot this place doesn’t have climate control,” Beth sighed as Sil let their glide along drop—the sidewalks were so uneven you couldn’t hope to slide along them. Walking along the deserted street it was!

Emilia felt the tingle of her Censor stretching outwards, searching for signs of other people. It was so hot, she doubted many people were out and about—and her Censor couldn’t even find anyone hovering in the shadows of the alleys they walked by. At least that lowered the chance of anyone causing problems. As much as they visited this place often and people knew them, there was still always some risk. It wasn’t that she was worried they’d get hurt or robbed if someone started something with them, it was more that if they defended themselves, they might end up not being welcome back, and they had great food here. It would be a travesty if they were banned.

“How are your knees?” Sil asked as they walked, a cooling skill rippling softly off him. It wasn’t enough to lower the temperature much, but it took a bit of the edge off. He glanced down at the medical pads now covering her scuffed knees, wrapping a bit more of that coolness over them.

A nursing student she hadn’t met before had patched her knees and palms up for her after the raid ended. She’d even matched them to Emilia’s outfit, using a medical willbrand to gather up aether to form the patches of pink and purple that now pressed into her skin. She’d have to remove them later, see if she needed to visit a clinic for follow-up treatment, but in the meantime, the patches were keeping the sting at bay and slowly drawing the skin back together—assuming the girl had been as good a healer as she’d claimed she was.

Emilia glared at him. She had refused to speak to him since she’d beaten the boss. Yes, the paydrop from the raid had been enough to clear her current debts, but still! She had been tricked! Kidnapped! She was entitled to be upset for at least a little longer!

Her friend sighed, turning to Beth instead and noting that the area did have climate control, but it was broken, something odd flowing through his tone as he spoke. “The city is trying to get the people who live here to sell, so they’ve stopped maintaining a lot of things.”

“You’re pretty well-informed,” Emilia said—ten seconds of angry silence was

“a little longer,”

right? Life’s too short to be mad about such minor things! She stifled a yawn. Five hours of sleep wasn’t too bad, but combined with 10 hours of work

and

two hours of sitting

and

a raid

and

this heat? She wanted to go to bed—go fall back into the fluffy blue clouds of her bedding. She knew she’d regret it when she was wide awake at midnight. Future Emilia would

not

appreciate that. So food! Friends! Slums! And maybe making Sil make it up to her.

Sil was quiet for just a beat too long before he hummed in agreement, and Beth was on him.

“And how, exactly, did you come to be so informed? Eh~ Sil?” Beth looked at him, eyes sharp and amused, a smile tugging at her mouth. “Didn’t think you were interested in current events~”

“Not unless they have to do with raids,” Emilia added, leaning forward to peek up at her friend. Payback time.

A blush began to spread across the freckled bridge of Sil’s nose—answer enough. Her friend might be a pretty damn good liar about most things, but his sex life was not included on that list, even if he most certainly wished it were.

“The sub-30?” Beth asked, leaning in so close to Sil that her nose brushed his cheek.

“You don’t know he’s a sub-30,” Sil said, his tone just as unconvincing as it had been when he had said the same thing earlier.

“Yes, I do,” Beth replied, just as she had before, although she showed none of the discomfort with her skill in assessing D-Levels on sight that she had earlier. “So, how’s he know about it?”

Sil sighed, pained and long-suffering. More than once, someone had overheard him sigh like that in regard to Emilia or Beth’s antics and asked why he was friends with them.

“Life would be easier without those two around,”

one of Elijah’s friends—one who was not welcome around Emilia or any of her friends anymore, but her boyfriend still insisted was a

“good guy”

—had said once.

“I could see if you wanted to get inside one of them, but you’re gay. Or are you just into dick? Guess if it’s that, then Beth would be just your—”

The asshole hadn’t finished because Sil’s fist had met his face. Then Sil’s knee had met his dick. Probably the worst dick Sil had ever had the misfortune of coming in contact with.

Sil still hadn’t answered when they arrived at the seedy little restaurant they all loved so much. It had been an accident that they’d ended up here, back when they had first become friends. It was difficult to get lost on the slide lines, but not impossible, and they’d accidentally exited early. Rare, but not unheard of. Normally, you just step back onto the line and end up at the proper exit. Except, the line was busted, the reason they were pulled them off early, and they’d had to walk through the slums instead, looking for the next closest entrance or a bubble station.

Then, it had started to rain. Actually, rain wasn’t a strong enough word. It had started to pour on them. An outright rainstorm, as a sudden electrical storm gathered above them. They’d booked it to the nearest building, discovering it to be the tiny, shitty little restaurant they now stood in. Dark and dreary and smelling like dreams come true.

“Ah~ if it ain’t m’favourite eaters!” Faylyn Adair, the owner’s daughter, cheered from behind the counter. “Y’ll came at a time! Got the whole place to yerselves. Ain’t no one comin’ out in this shit. Whoa! Wha’ happened ta you?” She looked over Emilia, her patched, dirty limbs and ruffled hair.

“Sil kidnapped me and dragged me to a raid,” she sighed dramatically, flopping into a nearby chair. “I got hurt! I’m all bandaged up! And look at those two! Not a mark on them~” If the counter she’d sat at didn’t have a permanently sticky top, she would have sagged onto it and pretended to pout. She didn’t need more dirt or stickiness on her, however, so she refrained.

“You needed money,” Sil said sensibly.

Beth slid into the seat beside her, and Sil the next. He, annoyingly, looked completely fine. So did Beth, although at least in her case, she was long-distance support. Sil had been right there in the action! Yet, his clothes and hair looked perfect! So unfair!

“You could have asked.”

“You would have refused.”

“Says who?”

“Says every Past Emilia since our freshman year ended.”

“Not true!” she bit back, a little too much triumphant energy in her voice. “There was also that time I wanted concert tickets. Ha.”

The look Sil gave her was withering, but he refrained from saying more, instead turning to a laughing Faylyn and asking how she was.

“Hot,” she said, pulling at the collar of her loose tank top, as though letting the stiffing air under it would help cool her. It might be cooler inside the restaurant than it had been on the streets, but it was still pretty damn hot.

Faylyn let her shirt drop and grabbed a few menus—although they had been here so many times in the last eight years, Emilia was sure they all had the menu memorized—and skipped over to them, her short red hair bobbing along with her. “Did ya at least win a lot for yer trouble?” she asked, eyes crinkling into happy lines as she handed the menus over, rare paper material in their digital world, even if this stuff was covered in some kind of protective material.

“Yes,” Emilia admitted. Her paydrop from the raid had been quite a bit. Enough to cover the bubble from last night. Enough to pay for some new clothes. There was also that invite she’d received. She had no idea what that was about, and given she had only just returned to talking to Sil, she had yet to ask him about it either.

“W’ll, there’s that, a’least!” Faylyn said, always one to try and find the upside, despite her own life being kinda shitty. “Lemme know when yer ready ta order,” she said cheerfully, before skipping back to the counter and sagging into the ratty chair she loved so much. Her head tipped up, returning to watching a rare physical screen mounted on one wall, a broadcast of the local news playing, the sound barely more than a whisper.

“It so quiet cause of the heat?” Beth asked as she began skimming the menu, finger tapping beside each of the items she was considering. If Sil was paying—which he usually was—she might order all of them.

“That, and that,” Faylyn said, nodding towards the news broadcast. “Lot’sa people went t’protest.”

Emilia looked away from the ocean that spread, steaming and pink, across from the window side counter they had seated themselves at to the screen.

“What’s that?” Beth asked, leaning so severely back in her seat that she looked as though she were about to topple over. “Oh~” she breathed out, that sharp, teasing smile sliding back over her face as she read the screen. “That what you totally know nothing about, eh, Sil?”

Sil blushed, although his eyes were glued to the screen as well.

Emilia leaned across Beth towards him, whispering, “Trying to catch a glimpse of your sub-30?” She snapped back just fast enough to avoid the hand swiping through the place she had just been.

“Not mine,” her friend hissed, his eyes still glued to the ancient screen, obviously intent on catching a glimpse of his hookup despite his denial. Rare—practically unheard of, really—for her friend to show such interest in a hookup.

She laughed, looking back at the screen and wondering if her friend had gotten contact information for whatever hottie he’d fucked last night—or been fucked by. Sil didn’t talk too much about his sex life, but she knew he liked it both ways because his hookups were generally all too willing to talk about what a good fuck he was.

Little dots appeared over the screen, the whispering volume rising as Faylyn pointed a remote at it.

“…promising to be quite the spectacle,”

one of the women was saying, fake smile plastered over her face, thick with too much makeup, as she discussed the situation with another woman and a man.

“Well,”

the other woman said, her own smile not exactly fake, so much as strained, as though whatever had been said beforehand had made her extremely uncomfortable,

“Olivier de la Rue is, perhaps, the most prominent lawyer of the last few hundred years. I’ve heard that his great-great-grandmother was the last lawyer to have a records such as his.”

The over-makeuped women’s eyes narrowed, just the slightest but still noticeable through the screen.

“Of course, Olivier de la Rue’s… record is admirable, but I doubt more than aspiring lawyers and those most interested in the outcome of this case will attend simply to watch how he performs in court. No,”

she quickly continued, cutting off her male co-host and making his jaw tighten,

“it is because he is an available non-dev—and an extremely handsome one at that—that it will be a spectacle. All those girls and boys lining up to try and attract his attention! I’ve heard that extra security is often needed at his hearings, in order to keep his fans under control!”

Beth snorted, muttering something about stupid people, wanting to be with someone like

that.

“H’ is very pretty, though,” Faylyn said, her eyes glued to the screen as the shot cut to the front of the courthouse.