Arc 3 | Chapter 109: Friend or Stalker Material

“What are you smilin’ about?”

The man stared down at Emilia, his pained grimace falling away into a look of confusion as she smiled up at him. It wasn’t a smile of sadness—a result of her impending release from this world—nor one of cruelty because she had some plan to torment him in return—she was

way

too tired for that. To Emilia, her smile felt more like one of amusement—a smile of freedom, in a way.

“I came here more than a bit broken,” she told him. There was no reason to tell him the story of her life, except he either hadn’t noticed Astra trying to get Stephy into a nearby alley or couldn’t be bothered with them for the moment. Either way, Emilia needed to keep the man’s attention on her. “I think, despite everything, I’ll be leaving a little less broken? Thanks to those kids, mostly… and a friend. Say, you didn’t happen to run into anyone in the labyrinth, did you? The guy I was with?”

Dark eyes blinked back at her. “The man my brother was chasing?”

“Ah… is he your brother? You guys didn’t look much alike,” she laughed.

The man’s lips twitched, a small huff escaping him at the bad joke. “I didn’t see him, sorry. I don’t sense him in the city, either.”

Somehow, Emilia didn’t think the man was lying—or, if he was, he was an excellent at it. He truly didn’t sense V, and he was truly sorry he couldn’t give her an update on him. What a strange fellow. “Point is, there isn’t much you could do to me that’ll send me back worse than I was.” Except kill the kids she was protecting, although she obviously wasn’t going to be telling him that.

His head cocked. “Experienced a lot in your life, have you?”

“Oh yeah,” Emilia sighed, relaxing backwards slightly.

Might as well relax, given she wasn’t in any position to hurt the man, being sprawled out across the ground as she was, the guy flipping the weapon had thrown—a dagger similar to her own, it looked like—idly in his hand. He could gut her before she had a chance to get close to any of her weapons, and from what she could tell, the man could use his core to some extent as well. It didn’t feel like he had happened upon her by chance, nor did it feel like he knew V wasn’t in this city because he’d been watching the labyrinth entrance or anything.

No, chances were he was using his core to monitor the city—another person who had learned to use their core within blackaether raids? Someone from the Free Colonies? Emilia had no idea, but her gut was telling her that if she tried to use her own core to gather energy and blow him back, the man would realize it and gut her.

Better to just chill and try to distract him.

“War, terrible childhood, rough teens… and thirties—well, late twenties and early thirties. The rest of my thirties were okay, until the war, anyways…”

“Oh? S’that all?” the other visitor asked, a note of amusement in his voice. “So, what? Your mid-thirties and early twenties were okay? Maybe a bit of th’last decade? Y’already said you were broken when you entered th’raid, so I assume recently life has sucked, too? You’ve only ‘ad a few years of life not sucking?”

“No… last bit of the decade has been better than the first bit. Still sucked quite a bit. So did my early twenties—mid was okay. Teens were rough, but enjoyable.” Emilia shrugged, as though she hadn’t just admitted three fourths of her life had been shit. There had been fun among that shit, sure, but she’d have sacrificed the fun, had she been able to get rid of the shit as well. Then again, what would be left without fun and shit? A boring neutral existence? Okay, so

maybe

she would keep most of the shit; at least it made life interesting.

The man blinked down at her, something incredulous in his expression, which… fair. If Emilia heard someone describe the majority of their life, including the last three decades, as having been terrible… Well, she’d be a bit confused by them as well. Not that there was much help for people like her, their minds so wrapped up in traumatic knots that even professionals looked at them with sympathetic, apologetic eyes that said

there is no helping you.

“The war was rough on people,” he said, rather than question why she wasn’t getting help—wasn’t at least tucking herself away in one of the many homes that had popped up during and since the war for vets and anyone else traumatized by the war. Virtual raids weren’t forbidden in those homes, but ones like this certainly were.

He looked away, towards where the children were making too much noise. Astra had knocked something over as she dragged Stephy away, the child gritting her teeth against the pain. Still, sounds of broken pain escaped her. “What happened t’her?”

“She fell in a hole, broke her legs,” Emilia replied tightly, startling when the man’s eyes snapped back to her.

His head cocked. His eyes analyzed her. “I don’t hurt kids. Is that why you’re talking t’me?”

Her jaw tightened, anger rending its way through her. “How many kids do you think died in Livery—in the city where that stampede—”

“That wasn’t me,” the other visitor cut in, voice harsh and upset. “That was my brother. I would have stopped him, if I was with him.” He looked away again, back to the children. It was an interesting decision, given the children were slightly behind him, and he was effectively leaving himself open for her to attack.

“So, what? You care about the lives here?”

A smirk. “No, not particularly.”

Nearby, the curtains on a building were swung shut and slowly light began to glow behind it, the perpetual light of the world beginning to gather once more. The man was beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way. Dark features that reminded her of Olivier, just harder, stricter. Where Olivier had softly beautiful, this man’s bones could cut glass. He shifted, and in the light, his movements reminded of the woman from the cave—the mother, this man’s sister, perhaps. Sure and strange;

other

in a way that made her think this wasn’t an exact replica of his real body, but still one he had spent years—if not decades—living inside while raiding.

Emilia tried to bite down the question inside her. She still didn’t think the man was lying, not about V or his refusal to hurt the children. There was no reason for her to continue talking to him, and yet…

“Why won’t you hurt them, then?” In hindsight, the way the question came out

may

have sounded like she was trying to convince the other visitor that he

should

be willing to hurt them, and when he laughed and pointed that out a moment later, Emilia just sighed and collapsed further onto her back.

“Because of my brother—my other brother.”

“You have more family here?” she asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. It didn’t particularly work.

The man laughed, shifting his weight before squatting down before her, dagger still idly flipping through his fingers. It was beautiful—a complicated movement that left her repeatedly thinking he was going to cut himself, but he never did. The skilled moves of someone who had fiddled with blades for decades.

“Yes, and no. No, this brother isn’t here—not really his style. He’s a bit like you, traumatized by th’war. Hides it pretty damn well, but I can see it in him as much as I see it in you. Unlike you, he has sense enough not to come here and fire it all up. Yes, I have other family here you haven’t met.” A frown pulled over his face. “Actually, I guess I can’t say how many of us you’ve met. You could’ve met us all, and just not know it. A few of us… don’t really want to be cavorting with that main group.”

“Don’t imagine you’ll tell me how many of you there are—or were, I suppose? I must say, considering your… nieces and nephews, was it?” A nod. “Well, considering they attacked me first, I think it’s rather unfair that you all seem to be blaming me for their deaths.”

“You’re right. It isn’t fair, but most of us will protect our own, even if they had it comin’.”

“Even when they attack random girls who were just trying to get by them to the exit?”

“Even then.”

“Well,” Emilia sighed, shoulder’s flexing as the energy she had sent squirrelling off shifted back inside her. She’d sent off the wisp that seemed to be learning and growing a personality of its own, hoping that it would be able to sneak by the other visitor on both its escape and return—it would have been a little sad if he snuffed it out of existence, but it also had an important job.

As far as she could tell, the man hadn’t noticed it sneak along the street and slither back into her, so hopefully, mission accomplished.

“So, what now?” she asked, because seriously, what now?

The man seemed to have relaxed into talking to her, but she’d seen people with black knots have reasonable conversations with people just to turn around and snap their necks. Actually, Emilia almost would have assumed this man had a black knot, except something in his personality didn’t seem to fit—the way that he had been tracking her didn’t seem to fit. Familial obligation could be the cause of that chase—all black knot relationships tended towards intense, if not outright toxic and obsessive. Except, when he spoke of

a few members

not wanting to be involved with the main group, it sounded like he was including himself in that group, just as when he spoke of

most members

protecting their own, no matter what, it sounded distant, annoyed, almost. Emilia had never heard of someone with a black knot either hating their family with a passion, or being willing to burn the world down for them, and she highly doubted this man was some mysterious outlier. That said,

something

about him still scratched her familiarity with black knots.

Another strange thing was he hadn’t hurt her, not really. The wounds on both her shoulder and his chest had already healed. He felt threatening, but also not, and Emilia wasn’t convinced stress and sleep deprivation and the darkness weren’t driving her perception of the man. His blade was still out, but he wasn’t actually threatening her with it—it seemed more like a habit that he wasn’t thinking about. Emilia had no idea what to think of him, or the

why

of his stalking. If not for his family, why chase after her? Unless it had just been a coincidence they ended up in the same place?

“Now…” the man trailed off, neck snapping back to look over his shoulder. Finely manicured eyebrows pulled together and Emilia focused, her core reaching out, not trying to find what he had heard or sensed. Instead, she focused on him—on reading his core and meridians, trying to see if she could feel him using his core and—

And yeah, she most definitely could. The same way she’d been able to feel the shape and shift of Rin’s energy as she healed herself, following their climb in the library labyrinth, she could feel this man’s energy swirling and reaching out into the world and—

And fucking stars, his core was powerful and

controlled.

It reached out all around him, a thousand vines filling the world. It should have been erratic, a complete waste of energy. Emilia had seen a few people use similar abilities with both skills and their core during the war. Only a few people with excess control and concentration categories—an ECC dyad—could manage those abilities to this extent, everyone else hemorrhaging energy and aether because the information gathered from such wide scale monitoring was worth risking their lives for.

The man

could

have excess control and concentration categories, but Emilia doubted it. The few people she knew with such genetics tended to be… eccentric, to say the least. They weren’t just obsessive, but finicky and standoffish. They could be the sweetest people on the planet, but they tended to barely tolerate people they didn’t know, or talking about things they didn’t care for.

The thing was, even perfect control and concentration levels—which were uncommon outside of non-devs—wouldn’t have been enough for the control this man was exerting. This sort of control only came with those excess categories, as far as she’d ever seen, and… maybe that was why this man was so strange? Some odd genetic combination she’d never come across, confusing her perception of him?

Emilia felt it when someone crossed over the man’s web of awareness, subtle as it was, like a brush of air over the fine web of a spider. Again, again, again—little brushes as whoever it was moved. Further away, she could feel the children moving. Closer, Astra and Stephy. Hundreds of bodies inside the buildings, their existence muffled because this man was purposefully avoiding them, and it was overwhelming.

The man saw so much. No wonder he was a bit off. Forget about anything strange going on in his genetics, this alone was enough to explain the quirks of his personality. She’d be off too, if her brain was taking in this much information at her current level. In real life? At her prime? Even then, it would have been a nuisance to see and feel so much. Then again, that’s what Censors were for: deafening the roar of feedback.

A smirk pulled at the other visitor’s lips, his eyes sliding back towards her. “Nosy,” he said, although there was no bite in his words. “I’m surprised you’re still conscious. You really are so much like my brother.”

Emilia blinked at him, frowning. “Yes,” she admitted. “I am nosy, especially when it’s about things like… this.” Her energy vibrated over his web, like a fine mist of herself surrounding him. Emilia was trying to not think about how intimate it was. Some would have even seen it as a violation, to look so closely at another’s energy, but he didn’t shake her off, which he certainly could have.

Instead, he continued watching her, attention more focused on her than whoever was quickly approaching. “Fascinating,” he said, dagger suddenly grasped in his hand. “I’ve met so few people that can handle even looking at my web. You are a special one, aren’t you?”

A shiver shot up Emilia’s spine. Suddenly, all thoughts that this man wasn’t as dangerous as she’d first assumed vanished, instinct from decades pushing its way to the front of her brain to say:

run.

That, and a healthy dose of self-chastisement, her brain screaming,

“You’re a fucking dumbass, and probably just acquired yourself a stalker.”

Thankfully, Emilia didn’t have to think about that at the moment, a giant wall of fire slicing through the street and separating her and the man.