Arc X.1 | Chapter 320: Interlude | Project Piketown Infiltration 3

Training a clone was slow, meticulous—an operation drawn out over the long decades of their youth, extending until the moment their life was snuffed out. For those first decades, everything was timed and perfect—a foundational education that would live within each of them for the entirety of their lives. Then, as adulthood came for them, as missions failed and succeeded—as the pod mates of their childhood died and suffered injuries enough to remove them from the field—and they found their niche interests and talents, the training shifted into specialization.

As much as the public tended to see each clone as an extension of some inherent, genetic personality, they were all different—unique as the fingerprints they were born with, each removed from their person in their early teens with acid and pain they had long before learned how to breathe through even without a Censor there to help ease their suffering.

To be a clone was to be perfect and flawed all at one—it was to be one’s self and yet know how to easily fall into the collective personality of cold disinterest they had cultivated over the millennia of their existence. Some jobs called for that disinterest, this particular job did not—no,

this job

was the sort Baylor liked the most: the sort where he could let his personal brand of cruelty rise and fall as he smiled bright and vicious at the man sitting in front of him, his blue eyes glued to the table because he wasn’t courageous enough to meet the three sets of green orbs baring down on him.

Silence stretched around them, long and painful. Baylor let it slide further and further, just waiting for it to snap down around the piece of shit who had dared treat Emilia like that. Baylor’s foot smacked into the table leg, sending Elijah Richmond flinching upright. Still, he refused to look at any of them, so afraid for all the wrong reasons.

The man was under the assumption that Samina was the only Black Knot agent his ex was friendly with. One of his roommates—one of the more helpful, more apologetic ones—had told the clone questioning him that he assumed Emilia had just happened to become friends with Samina at some point.

“She’s just… she’s so good at making friends with everyone? If you had asked me yesterday if I thought anyone I knew could be friends with a black knot, I’d have said Em.”

Ironic that Grenner had told them that, until the night before, Emilia had been avoiding befriending a classmate with a black knot.

“She was all grumbly when he started helping her with researching the knotter her friend was drugged with. It was pretty clear she felt pretty fucking terrible about snubbing him,”

the older clone had laughed as he prepared to let his body be pulled into a new arrangement in preparation for following his practically lifelong charge onto the airship she’d determined the terrorist she was looking for might be on.

For nearly a decade, Grenner had existed in Emilia’s shadow, lingering in Piketown and holding a small job on campus just to stay close, just in case she needed him—not that any of them had known that. Well, maybe Varo had known. That man knew virtually everything about the clones and their jobs. Injured from the war and aware that Emilia would be pissed if he put himself at risk for her, it wasn’t like Grenner could do much to help her himself—not in the investigation into the knotter or the purist group, nor with the echo attack that he had only noticed when the aetherproof glass of the building had exploded outwards, Olivier already bolting into the building because the fucking thing had been sparkproof.

Still, Grenner would continue to follow Emilia. Originally, he’d been intending to enter the ship wearing either his normal, clone face or the one he had designed for following her—not that Emilia wasn’t aware he was there. More, it had been a face so generic none of her friends would be liable to notice him. Grenner hadn’t wanted to steal the little bit of normalcy Emilia had dug out for herself—at least, that was what Grenner was telling the clone debriefing him, who was relaying it to the rest of them in turn.

So much of both Emilia’s decade away and her present had been blown in the last few hours, and as a group, they had decided they might as well just share everything. They’d deal with pretending they didn’t know later, if she wanted to disappear back into the aether. Baylor doubted she would, considering she’d given Sorvell permission to ruin this little shit’s raiding seasons for the foreseeable future. As much as his childhood friend could be impulsive—the release of the fucking video into the university and local raid message boards proved that just as well as the millions of examples he had from their youth might have—he was sure she realized that allowing so many of her childhood and diplomatic friends, most of them Division 30 members or closely associated with the group, access to her town was just asking for every bit of her identity to be blown.

At least… he assumed she realized that? If she hadn’t—or was hoping that everyone would just go with Sorvell’s story that they were in Piketown to support Olivier in his case—she was in for a surprise. Should he tell her? Or, maybe Sorvell should? Or Taelor? Taelor was always so much better at compartmentalizing their collective love for their friend. If Baylor contacted her, his messages were liable to carry all the yearning and frustration he felt for her. If it were Valor, his messages may just be straight up heartbroken. Taelor’s would be clinical—detached in that way of his where even Baylor couldn’t tell if he had actually found a way to move on from their childhood love or if it was just an innate ability to bury his feelings behind logic and a belief that one day Emilia would return to them.

Baylor believed that as well, to some extent. Emilia would come back into their lives in time; it was more the question of

how

she would come back that bothered him—that itched at his brain until Taelor’s hand was wrapping around the back of his neck and forcing him to his knees, forcing his brain to quiet until he just existed in the safety of Taelor’s presence.

Why couldn’t that safety be enough for Emilia? What could have happened that she didn’t think even Taelor could help her through it?

Fuck.

Baylor’s foot snapped against the table again, his frustration with Emilia and the fucking situation ripping out of him towards her shit ex.

“Seriously? What did Emilia see in this guy?”

“Maybe that he’s normal,”

Valor replied from the corner of the room they’d stuck the bastard into.

To anyone else, Valor wasn't paying attention, just idly gazing out the window towards the ocean. For hours, he had watched the bay, {Starlit Eyes} laced black over his eyes as he watched the docks for any sign of Emilia heading off to Ship’o Stars. He had seen her, laughing and smiling with her new Free Colonier friends, glaring at the purist dicks who had spoken so badly about them before sparking off to join the raid she was still inside. Now, Valor’s eyes were clear—Ship’o Stars was too far off for him to hope to see it across the pitch-black night or the inky sea. Still, his gaze was trained its way.

“So very normal,”

Baylor agreed, turning away from his younger brother and smiling at Elijah Richmond.

The Black Knot had a reputation for being cold and calculating. Everyone feared black knots for their ability to kill without remorse, only the disappointment of the rare people they loved enough to keep them from indulging in their urge to kill and destroy—at least, that’s what the public thought of them. The reality was far more complicated: the ability to kill without remorse was distinct from finding joy in it. Some of them liked killing; some of them loved it. Occasionally, one of The Black Knot’s agents hated it enough that they were removed from active assignments.

Baylor fucking loved it—loved pressing fear into the hearts of those he was allowed to torture for information, loved slicing into bodies and leaving his mark. Where Valor disliked making anyone uncomfortable with their

otherness

, Baylor revelled in it. Let his victims and the fools who found themselves at his mercy believe him broken, crazed, psychotic—in many ways he was, only the knowledge that Emilia would be disappointed if he ever fully gave into his urges and killed someone undeserving keeping him from snapping and ripping apart anyone who caught his attention.

“A clone who would have been put down long ago, if not for how tight his leash is,”

he had once heard an older clone say of him. He’d still been a teenager at the time, the image of Emilia frowning at him and telling him it was all fine and dandy to imagine killing people, but he couldn’t actually do it without a good reason burned into his brain.

Disappointing Emilia—forcing her to choose between her morals and him—wasn’t an option. So, he’d control himself. So, he’d let Taelor keep him on a short leash—and, he supposed, his brothers were a leash on his control as well, even without Taelor constantly watching for signs he might finally snap and embrace the serial killer within. Taelor and Valor might not have any more of a non-Emilia-based moral compass than he himself did—they just didn’t have the same desire to rip into people’s bodies and souls that he did—but they all loved each other. They would die for each other, and Baylor didn’t want them to suffer the loss of him just because he’d given into his urges.

So, no killing without permission, without a good reason.

Unfortunately, Emilia wouldn’t think killing her ex because he had shitty friends and no ability to stand up to them a good enough reason. Pity.

“You know, two of your roommates are still asking about the one we took earlier. His parents, too. It’s almost like y'all don’t give a shit that he attempted to assault someone,” Baylor mused, rocking his foot into the table in an uneven

thump, thump, thump

that left the man in a constant state of flinching tension. “Now, the parents… them, I can understand. Parents are

so

sentimental, constantly rewriting the wrongs their children commit as innocent mistakes, even when they try to cut off someone’s cock.”

“He didn’t actually hurt Beth,” the man mumbled, still refusing to look at any of them. It was rather rude, and while they had all agreed to let the group assume they were there at Samina’s request, Baylor wanted the pathetic man to look at them—to see the sorts of men the woman he had lost, had disrespected, actually liked to fuck.

Something about the guy just screamed to Baylor that he had so not been satisfying Emilia in bed. As much as silverstrains were easy to get off, Emilia had always enjoyed experimenting in bed—enjoyed pushing the lines of the sane and legal and taboo. So, yes—Valor was probably right in his assessment that this shit had caught her attention because he was

normal,

and their childhood friend had wanted to eke as a normal university experience out while she could.

Baylor had no doubt that if this guy knew exactly who Emilia was—exactly how terrifying she was—he would never have been able to get it up for her. A girl like Emilia—powerful, with a long line of terrifying and skilled lovers behind her—wasn’t the sort of person just anyone could find the confidence to fuck. Just knowing she’d had so many non-dev cocks inside her would break better men than this prick.

Giving the man a breath more to continue staring at the table, his face pulled into a moue of true belief that Victor LinKai being stymied in his very real attempt to maim Bethany Haelstrum somehow should have spared him from consequences, Baylor finally snapped. The fingers gripping into Elijah Richmond’s chin as he forced his face up would leave bruises, dark and beautiful, across his disgusting face.

“Look at me,” Baylor ordered when the man still refused to meet his eyes.

A beat passed. Nothing. Scared? Stupid? Obstinate? It didn’t matter—if Baylor had to force Elijah Richmond’s eyes up through his Censor, he would. Once, clones had needed to press their hands to the backs of a person's neck and directly interface with the Censor to force their will inside them. Emilia had changed that long ago, only the best hacks able to keep them out now. This guy, ironically, had the EMY hack, designed by Emilia during the war and still updated by Helix—not that either of those things were public knowledge.

EMY

was a beautiful hack. EMY let all clones in like the old friends they were, parting for them like grass in a breeze. Slivers of awareness followed Baylor as his mind wound its way through Elijah Richmond’s mind, the man frowning because this had never been done to him before and EMY interfaced with their hacking so flawlessly it was barely more than a tickle to those who hadn’t experienced their presence a dozen times.

Even decades on, when they wanted someone to know they were hacking them, clones pressed their hands to Censors and brutally pushed inside. Emilia had changed everything so many decades ago, and yet, so few knew. Rarely did anyone realize that they—as well as the best hackers—no longer needed that physical connection. Instead, when they dragged their awareness through an unsuspecting victim, pulling out information or controlling their body, they did it with a subtlety that left their victim uneasy in their own body for days.

“Look at me,” Baylor repeated, soft and sensual and murderous all at once.

This time, Elijah Richmond’s eyes flew to his, confusion and distress etched across the lines of his face, the frown in his mouth, the quiver in his eyelids as he tried to look away and failed because Baylor was inside him, forcing him to look when he didn’t want to—a betrayal of his body and mind that would stay with Elijah Richmond, a question of

why did I look?

and

why couldn’t I look away?

that would linger within him; a punishment for speaking to Emilia like that, for not immediately coming to her defence, for continuing to stand by his friend despite the transphobic shit’s actions.

Even decades earlier, Halen had only suspected his shitbag friend Warren had done something to Emilia. Still, he had turned his suspicions over to Rafe and never seemed to regret the result of his actions, even if none of them could prove Rafe had actually killed the boy.

This man had witnessed Victor LinKai’s attempted assault—had seen how close he had come to succeeding in maiming the girl in a way that could never be undone. Yet, he continued to believe his friend should be let off, should be given another chance.

That wouldn’t be happening, and unless each of these shitty men accepted the truth of the situation, they wouldn’t be leaving either, even if watching Sorvell and the rest of them ruin their seasons would be so enjoyable.

They were all a risk to the public—to the people Emilia loved—and while Emilia might not approve of him killing her ex, but Baylor knew she would be perfectly fine with some reeducation.