Arc 7 | Chapter 274: A Curse, Four Decades Old

They were a mind melting, oozing, flowing. A merging of everything. A falling off of reality and substance until two became one, forever entwined—inseparable. Identical, as they had once been before fate pulled their cells apart. Once more one, connected.

There was something beautiful in it, this return to oneness that rarely happened outside of errors within the womb. Yet just as those pregnancies resulted in problems—a oneness that broke and battered the children born of such errors—so did this.

These twins, twinned together like gnarled roots, minds and souls hugging so tightly to one another they were pulling their collective life shorter. Nutrients couldn’t reach them. The will of the aether left to drip through them, too slow and meandering, until eventually, death came for them.

Three became one, if only for mere moments, coolness rushing through necks and Censor,. pushing Emilia’s hacking as fast as she could handle. Conrad’s darkness flickering over them, so fast and flawless that, for the barest of seconds, the cameras would be out, the system unlikely to notice what they were doing.

A thousand lifetimes of training to get to this point of perfection. Darrian and Conrad and Emilia, forcing their bodies to a limit that Hyr knew was not their limit.

Monsters. Conrad wrapped them in darkness, so instant and fleeting that their shifts and sparks and skills would be mere flickers into the eyes and minds of anyone watching them through cameras, eyes, the aether itself. An error of perception—what else would anyone assume?

Hyr could not imagine a world where they would assume reality: that Conrad was creating a cloak of privacy for them, Darrian sliding in behind the twins to press his hands to the backs of their necks, perfectly confident that, despite never using {Iced Access ver. Forced Access}—the most aggressive version of the skill Emilia had modified—before, he would not only be capable of doing so perfectly but of using it on both boys simultaneously, all so Emilia could slide into their minds, Hyr’s own hand pressed to the back of her neck, their stomach roiling under the assault of yet another spark, two.

One to get to the boys—apparently hacking Censors was easier, faster, the closer one was to their victim—one to get back where they began, each mere milliseconds apart.

The systems monitoring them were still a risk, albeit a small one, according to a message sent by Emilia to a group that included only the four of them, Leerin, Korrin and the twins left out because Leerin was neither needed nor in a headspace to help, Korrin was incapable of assisting them even if her mind weren’t also being watched, consumed, and the twins were corrupted, those same spies forced into their minds in a way that Hyr wasn’t sure what to think of. It wasn’t like the synat didn’t regularly see futures of their communities, stepping into conflicts and nefarious—or simply ill thought out—plans before they were even a thought, when all they were was a mere pondering, a gathering, a knife held to the throat of a cheating lover.

The synat watched, and yet they did no such thing. Their minds simply went where the aether willed, the aether itself the guide of their half-hearted surveillance, while whatever was inside the minds of these three—the rest of their cousins as well, Hyr was sure, only Leerin and Darrian spared from a worm of betrayal and imprisonment inside their brains—was always watching, always waiting for a reason to pounce.

Emilia wanted to get around that watching, difficult as she admitted it would be despite being the mind behind the blessing—the curse—that allowed for such a backdoor to exist within the twins’ consciousness. It would take barely a moment, both Hyr and Darrian turning their respective versions of {Iced Access} up as far as they could go, falling into the flow of the skill, so Emilia wouldn’t burn anyone’s brain out while she forced her Censor to the limit hacking the twins’ collective mind in the too brief milliseconds they had before the system would realize something strange was happening.

“The raid safety systems can monitor some of what happens with core abilities, but they generally can’t tell exactly what’s happening. Sometimes they can’t even tell who is using their core, and the shorter the ability is active—or if the system doesn’t have an official record of it—the less likely it is it can monitor it,”

Emilia had explained when she had first spoken of why they—why all Free Coloniers who wished to partake in raids, not that Hyr particularly

wanted

to be part of any raids—needed skill versions of their core abilities.

“They can’t track it well enough to make sure no one is using anything dangerous, but to be honest, it all kinda runs on an honour system? Especially since they can’t ban passive skills, since that would effectively ban most Free Coloniers who use their cores from participating… which would effectively mean banning them from Baalphoria, given the whole… raids are a more or less required part of life nonsense. Mostly, if the system can tell someone was hurt using a core ability—or there’s an accusation of such made—that’s when it becomes a problem and there’s an investigation.”

“Things can get messy,”

Rafe had noted as he flickered in and out of their virtual space, working to have their skills approved while Hyr tested the ones Emilia had designed for them and Conrad wandered about looking impressively bored—he had apparently finished his alien romance book and was undecided what he was in the mood to read next.

“The system likes to pretend it can monitor more than it can, but in the end, someone from Hail usually ends up watching body language, looking for signs of who did what.”

“And how often do they end up asking you for help?”

Emilia had laughed, nudging her childhood friend with her shoulder, her eyes dancing, her smile stretching simply because she was so close to her friend, to her love.

Grumbling, Rafe had admitted it was pretty often they asked someone at D-Tect for help, but they usually blew Hail off.

“There’s an unspoken rule that unless Alaric asks for our help, whatever Hail is looking into is stupid.”

“Stupid?”

Hyr had asked, fighting down a blush when Rafe’s intense eyes flickered to them. There was something about the way the man looked at them that made Hyr feel like Emilia’s first love could see everything, despite knowing full well he couldn’t.

Out of everyone, Rafe perhaps saw the least, too buried in shame and self-hatred to see beyond the present most often. Occasionally, he let himself hope and dream, but just as quickly he forced those things down under his self-hatred—under the loathing for something he had done long before Hyr had been born.

Hyr had tried to see what it was before, back when he’d first been graced with visions of Rafe’s silent suffering near the end of the war—although, Hyr suspected he had shared that suffering with someone in the decade since, gleaning facts from the shards of information he had been granted by the aether since the end of the war.

Over a decade ago now, they had forced their mind to flow backwards, spiralling into the past so they could find whatever moment had affected Emilia’s first love so much that he would break her heart so completely that she would spend decades second guessing herself when she found love lingering in someone’s gaze. Having been in their late teens at the time, Hyr hadn’t had enough control to see exactly what had happened between Emilia and Rafe. Now, of course, they knew better than to try to peek at such private moments, but what they had seen told Hyr that whatever had happened wasn’t as insurmountable as Rafe seemed to think it was.

Hyr hadn’t been lying when they told Emilia to not give up hope of her first love coming around. It would take time, love, and perhaps a giant push—there were several strands of fate tying together the moments where Rafe would realize his assumptions about himself and Emilia were incorrect—but he would get there. Whether they would reach a peace in their friendship or return to something more, however, Hyr had no idea. Too many strands. Too many paths the aether may choose to drag them down.

As the man himself had continually let his harsh gaze linger on Hyr… well, Hyr had never been one for hoping people would change—and they knew that if Rafe somehow never came to a place of acceptance, Emilia would continue loving him nonetheless—in Rafe’s case, Hyr rather hoped they changed at least a little, if only so he’d stop looking at them that way! Some odd mix of jealousy, self-hatred, and appreciation lingering in those cold, too-feeling, blue eyes, so dark they almost appeared black.

“Stupid,”

Rafe had agreed, something in his tone implying he wasn’t just talking about Hail.

“Most of the time, it’s a complaint about passive core use in a raid. The ability did nothing to the hero complaining, nor did it endanger anyone, but still, there are complaints. Sometimes, the hero is just assuming a Free Colonier used their core inappropriately—whatever the fuck that even means—because they were doing too well, when there’s no evidence they did.”

Snorting, Rafe had muttered that he and some of his colleagues even thought Hail was trying to plant people in D-Tect, hoping that eventually they’d hire someone who would go along with their complaints.

“Why?”

Emilia had asked.

“It's not like core use is common in Baalphoria. Sure, there are some big heroes who are from the Free Colonies, but not a lot?”

“I think they want to outright ban core use. If enough complaints go through and are noted as reasonable, they could do that.”

“Why?”

“Who knows. It’s not like they’d even be able to. I can’t imagine any of our former teammates being able to turn off their core-based defences, and if they can’t, I doubt anyone can.”

The man had given Emilia a once over and said something about how he doubted she’d be able to turn off her instinct to use her core as an emergency defence either, and that was before she’d

fucked around with her hack.

Emilia had gasped dramatically, rearing back to gape up at Rafe and demand how he’d found out about her hack. It was only then that the man’s expression had changed, if only a little. Gone was the intense man, glaring sleepily between Hyr, Emilia and the occasionally seen Conrad from under his unruly black hair. In his place, there was a man in love with Emilia. He was still stiff and hard—Hyr couldn’t really imagine the man ever being

soft

—but the way he had looked at Emilia…

Hyr wondered if the way he looked at her had changed in their decade apart. Certainly, if Rafe had looked at Emilia that way during the war, people would have noticed his affection for her? Would have told her even still so clearly adored her it was painful? Would have encouraged her to force the reason for his distance out of him?

Would Leerin tell Emilia of the affection she could so clearly see on Hyr’s own face when they looked at her?

The woman had been continuously sending them glances as they lingered near Emilia, letting their bodies collide far more often than before because Emilia had given them permission—because Emilia now laughed and smiled up at them, happy for the small distraction from the tense silence that had surrounded them as they had wandered down the long hall from the first level’s exit to the room they now stood in, Emilia blinking sleepily into the distance as her brain came back down from her hacking.

Would Leerin tell her once-friend that she was clearly missing the affection Hyr had for her? Hyr had no idea, but they hoped not. One day, they would speak on it—discuss the reality of the connection only a handful of people know the scope of, although, it had become clear that Conrad knew more than he should.

How had he found out? The man wasn’t someone Hyr knew had been told of the futures only they and the late syna Gru had ever been able to grasp at. It was no longer a secret that the late syna Gru had told several people with fates entwined with Emilia’s—with the only possibility to end of the war. Perhaps Conrad had learned from them? From one of the people the late syna Gru had told?

It didn’t much matter. Conrad understood the need to keep their and Emilia’s connection—the sights that had surrounded Emilia since the moment her mother saw her hair, and decided she could not be a parent to a child so profoundly blessed by the aether—secret for a little longer, even if he didn’t like it, his deep purple eyes—a tell of where he likely hailed from, an indication of potentially who had told him of Emilia’s place in the universe—flickering to them nearly as much as they flickered to Emilia’s childhood friend.

What a strange twist that was. Hyr knew Conrad and Darrian could find joy together, but the fact that the latter had known Emilia for the majority of their lives had been hidden even from them. This was, in part, precisely why speaking of the synat’s sight with outsiders could be difficult.

They saw only what the aether wanted them to see, sometimes to such an extreme extent that only select synat would be graced with certain sights, Emilia’s beautiful, grotesque end of the war one such sight. For Hyr to have not seen that Darrian was tied to Emilia before they came face to face with Leerin, their sight finally finding a flow that led their mind to the strain that would rise and fall and explode between the two women, was not surprising to them, nor to Conrad, who had simply asked if they knew about the connection beforehand, shrugging and surging after Darrian again when Hyr told him they had not.

They were cute together, even if the way Darrian was watching Conrad made Hyr’s skin itch. It was so much like the way Emilia’s former teammate—V, for the next few months—had watched her. Want and a strange affection that Darrian and V had both known was too fast.

At least in V’s case, he had known Emilia longer, not just within the raid but without it as well, even if it was broken by a decade and significant personality shifts on V’s part. It was too bad they hadn’t had an opportunity to speak with one another properly, Hyr having heard of the man from the syna Fivre.

For the barest of moments, a vision of V and Rafe together flashed through Hyr’s mind, Emilia sending them a quizzical glance as she no doubt saw in her function that they had seen something. Not the exact details or form, just an understanding that something had flashed through their mind, quick and fleeting and new.

Hyr’s hand tightened around the nape of her neck, where they continued utilizing {Iced Access ver. Gentle Hand} to soothe the ache of what she had done. It wouldn’t be enough, the strain of the long days she had endured to get to this point weighing on her. Emilia needed to rest, and for the moment, the best she could hope for was to lean against them and let her eyes fall closed—

Unless…

“Rest,” Hyr whispered as they once again hauled Emilia into their arms, her legs naturally clasping around their waist, as though resting in their arms were the most natural thing in the world, her mind slipping away, back, back, back into dreams of happiness and pain.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps this was why, despite everyone’s refusal to let them join the war—reasonable, given they had barely been twenty when it ended—Hyr had always felt drawn to join. Certainly, they knew well enough how little rest Emilia had been able to get in those last years of the war. They hadn’t been able to offer her comfort then, but if they could offer it now, they would do so, regardless of the odd looks Conrad and Leerin were giving the pair of them.