Arc 1 | Chapter 28: A Charming Little Place

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Emilia asked Payton as he dragged her out of Seflora’s house. The older woman had already bid them goodnight, disappearing deeper into the house after she had finished restoring Payton’s aether stores—fully restoring, no less.

The woman had looked tired, worn out from both healing Emilia and transferring her own aether to Payton, but she had still been able to walk and talk. Her own aether stores must be giant, to be able to do so much and not be passed out cold.

“I am fine,” her classmate said, flexing an arm dramatically at her before closing the door behind them.

Tariq stood on the porch, staring out into the cold night. His short, grey dusted hair shifted slightly in the wind, his brown skin looking almost black in the dim light. He barely glanced at them as they reached his side, his eyes glazed over—presumably as he was given updates on whatever was happening back at the purist building. Emilia was almost tempted to ask him what was happening, but given the strain that had perpetually existed between them, she figured she’d be better off asking Olivier directly later—he’d probably like that, hearing from her again.

“How fine?”

“Why?”

She glanced at Tariq, trying to gauge whether it was worth trying to keep this from him. Probably. He already didn’t like her, but he’d probably just assumed that she’d fucked up in the normal way, fighting the echoes. She didn’t need him knowing she’d fucked up in the not so normal way. The old man might generally be pretty willing to go along with his master’s decisions, but she wouldn’t put it past him to attempt to stop Olivier from helping—stars, maybe even just seeing—her again if he knew the truth.

[

Em:

i need some knotwork done

]

[

Em:

sooner the better

]

[

Em:

not that you have to help me

]

Payton gave her a look. He didn’t even have the decency to look tired, his power napping and restored aether having rejuvenated him, while her own upper and the adrenaline of the night were quickly wearing out.

[

Payton:

I don’t get to do knotwork nearly as much as I’d like to.

]

[

Payton:

Do you have a place in mind? I assume this is off the books.

]

Oh, yeah. This was definitely off the books.

She rambled off an address in Piketown to Tariq, who gave her a judgmental look, although she was pretty sure she could have said any address and been given the same look. She and Payton hooked their arms through his, granted him {Spark Shot} access, and then the world was bending around them once again.

They popped out in front of the run-down little shop Emilia had told him to drop them at, and he shook them off. He glared at her a moment more, that perpetual frown of his growing deeper before he seemed to think better of telling her off—or just realized it was a waste of energy—before sparking off. Back to Olivier, she assumed. She’d briefly messaged him after he left, sending him bits of information as she analyzed files while Payton recovered. He’d quickly gone silent, something or other pulling his attention away, although he’d had time enough to remind her to contact him if she needed

anything.

She’d been able to feel his overbearing mother vibe through her Censor, and while she had once

hated

that feeling, she was surprised to find that now it felt safe and comforting.

“What a charming little place,” Payton said, eyeing up the shitty little building.

“It’s worse inside,” Emilia said, stifling a yawn as she pushed her classmate inside.

There were a few people in the shop, which was primarily a tattoo shop. Most of Beth’s tattoos had been done here, as well as the few she herself had. Of course, none of theirs had been done up here. Their tattoos had all been done in the back, where the real magic of this shop and its artists lay.

The receptionist glanced up from the magazine she was reading, someone in the area having recently decided to distribute actual paper magazines to the local shops as some kind of ad campaign, although Emilia wasn’t actually sure what they were advertising. The magazines were cute, though, and she’d seen them in more and more shops in the area over the last few months.

“Got a unit free?” she asked the woman. They’d met before, but only ever in passing, and Emilia wasn’t sure they’d ever been formerly introduced. Not that the people who worked or frequented this kind of place were generally formerly introduced. There was nothing formal about this place, and it was the kind of place that could potentially be raided by SecOps at any moment. Not knowing your coworkers by anything other than nicknames? Eyes glazing over with disinterest when you saw patrons? Those were the things that kept these places and the people who knew about them safe.

The woman shrugged, looking back at her magazine. “Probably,” she said, meaning either,

“Yes, one is free,”

or

“I have no fucking idea.”

Emilia hoped it was the former. While she doubted the receptionist cared that much about her job, she rather hoped the owner wasn’t keeping someone who was outright disinterested in the safety of the staff and clientele employed. She’d only met the owner once, though, and that had been by chance during a raid. She trusted the guy who had done her and Beth’s tattoos, but that was about it. She was just going to choose to believe their tattooist was discerning about where he worked.

She led Payton towards the back, the security system—a custom mod of the OIC System—letting them through the hidden door. Using custom mods was considered dangerous if you were doing something less than legal—you couldn’t completely rule out that the system would tattle on you—but there were a collection of industries where the system quite clearly didn’t agree with government policies. Enhanced tattoos and non-standard knotwork were included in that list, and it had become standard for shops to run security through it, relying on its programming and knowledge to both alert them when someone dangerous came in—because these places did attract some pretty dangerous people—as well as keep everyone’s information safe.

They slid through the door the system had opened for them and made their way down the long, dark stairwell. So many stairs today—Emilia was sure her legs would be burning later, although if she were lucky, the knots Payton removed would allow her to recover faster. They were silent as they went, only their footsteps and then sounds of creaking pipes filling the stairwell. It echoed, and Emilia had to shake off the reminder of what she had experienced in the bartender’s mind.

Fuck, that seemed like so long ago, but it had only been a few hours ago.

They emerged into a long hall of doors, the few lights set into the ceiling that weren’t burnt out flickering. Most of the rooms were occupied, but the system led them to an unoccupied knot therapy room. The door hissed open, old and barely maintained technology dragging loudly against itself.

Payton whistled as they entered. “Been a while since I used something this old,” he said, hand running over the dusty console of the machine.

The kind of knot therapy done in this kind of place was rare. Once, gangs had relied on places like this, but after the war—after government raids had made knotwork more popular among regular people—they had begun to hire and train their own technicians. For those first few years, these places had been too crowded with heroes getting fashionable knots at increasingly exuberant prices for gangs to use them anymore. That popularity had quickly faded, people realizing most knots weren’t worth the cost, and virtual raids that were largely unaffected by knots or D-Levels very becoming increasingly popular anyways. Now, only the most intense heroes, as well as criminals not associated with gangs, generally frequented these shops. Emilia was the outlier.

“You can use it, though, right?” she asked, frowning over at him. The last thing she needed was for him to fuck up her knots even more—or worse, accidentally kill her.

Payton shot her a look that told her he didn’t even think that question worth answering. “You have private sequences, I assume?”

She sighed, leaning against the crackling plastic of the machine’s bay, and sent him her most recent few.

He had a pretty good poker face—not that that was surprising. Most people with black knots were exceptional liars. They had to be. Children weren’t stupid, they knew when people found them off-putting. Lying was the easiest way to put adults who could tell something was

wrong

with you at ease. Children who had black knots got good at lying really fast.

He did glance at her once, assessing, as he took in her knots. “How low do you want to go?”

She’d spent some time between Olivier leaving and Payton waking up thinking about that. Trying to figure out what was a good number. There were so many options—63, to be very specific. She did not want to be a sub-50—even if that was more a societal designation than anything, the idea of being associated with those wack jobs was just… no.

51, on the other hand, felt too high. Had she had a D-Level of 51 today… nothing would have changed. The easiest would be to say 10. 10 was a safe number. 10 meant she would be able to spark without difficulty. 10 would mean ease and near perfection and hating herself for a whole slew of new—and decade old—reasons.

10 was definitely too low.

She shrugged. She’d been at 21 in the lowest sequence she’d given Payton, one from when she’d started at Astrapan and needed that skill to beat Elijah at everything she wanted. She wondered if Payton could tell how low she could go or see where trauma had wrapped up its own knots without her consent. If he were as skilled at reading knots as he had implied he was, he might be able to. If he could tell, he gave no indication of it—didn’t ask for older scans, or even one clean of any knots.

“Up to you. Ideally, I’d like to be able to spark more, ah… consistently again.”

He huffed, muttering about how while he appreciated not being run down by the echo, being run into a wall wasn’t something he’d like to repeat either. “You’re leaving it up to me?” he clarified, fingers tapping in thought when she nodded. “This… is going to hurt. Unless you want to do it over a few days.”

She had expected that. “I just want it over with.” Before she changed her mind, before the guilt of the evening faded, and she went and got high as the sky to bury her regrets.

Her classmate hummed, pushing himself up from where he had sat in the technician’s chair to check over the equipment. “There’s a Virtuosi System access here. I suggest you log in. Spend the next few hours inside. Skew time, if you can, to lessen the pain.”

She nodded, eyes following him as he diligently checked everything. He was much more thorough than she’d ever been, and whatever lingering tension she had over letting someone she barely knew mess with her genetics faded. “How long will it take?”

He shot her a knowing look, hearing something in her voice she hadn’t intended to be there. “Something you want to do in there?”

Emilia smiled slightly at him. “Gotta get us to the next stop on our mission.”

Payton’s eyebrows rose slightly, but he didn’t ask for specifics, instead asking how much time she needed.

“Five or six hours, assuming I’m right.”

He nodded, motioning for her to take a seat. “I can extend treatment over five, leave you under so you can come out when you want to. You should lose the clothing,” he added. “You don’t have to, but—” He cut off as Emilia stripped.

“Already been naked in front of two people today,” she said, shrugging off Olivier’s sweater. “What’s one more—although, I guess technically I was naked in front of you, too. You just weren’t conscious.” When she looked back at her classmate, he was politely looking away, although he didn’t seem embarrassed. More a medic’s training to not make someone uncomfortable. They were also both military. You got over being uncomfortable being naked around people pretty quick when you had to shower with a dozen people you didn’t know—when people were stripping you on the field to stop you from bleeding out.

A skill vibrated in front of her as she reached for the bay—Payton cleaning the suspect plastic for her. She flashed him a smile, noting how his eyes had caught on the scars across her thigh. Given how observant he was, and how she had never tried to hide the original scar, he probably knew the one was new—knew it was from their fight earlier.

He looked away again, as she awkwardly hopped up onto the bed. It squeaked under her. Her skin stuck to it, forcing her to lift herself up as she tried to position herself in the middle. Payton appeared at her head with the Virtuosi headset. It was old, too. Not just a metal visor, but a whole headset that he had to help her get over her head before positioning pads over the base of her skull to sync with her Censor.

“Amazingly,” he said conversationally—probably another habit from being a medic, something meant to make her feel as comfortable as possible—as he laid her head back down, then set to work positioning her arms and legs into whatever he decided was the best orientation, “this kind of headset is actually more powerful than the newer ones.”

She’d already known that. Most people didn’t need the power older headsets had, and the people who produced them had begun to favour simpler, more comfortable and convenient designs for average users. Only hackers and people who were truly pushing the system and their brains to the edge needed something as hefty as this thing.

“See you in a few,” he said, and then her Censor was connecting her to the Virtuosi System and the world disappeared.