Arc 9 | Chapter 322: Variety is Important

The walk to the steward’s office was quiet, and extremely long, an odd contrast to the Baalphorian airships Emilia had been on, spending long, lazy vacations with her friends and family, using the exit lines that connected various areas of the ship to bounce here and there. Some Free Colony airships probably had exit lines, if only to attract Baalphorians and the rare Free Colonier with a Censor. This one didn’t, and instead, she and Olivier spent nearly half an hour wandering through the ship as it prepared to launch, just taking in the details of it.

It was a nice ship, if different from what she was used to. On top of the fact that they were rich, her family was just the sort to attract attention. Hardly anyone in Baalphoria wouldn’t know her father by sight, and while he generally had a good reputation behind him, and it was rare for anyone to approach him with anything other than a smile, people were still constantly coming up to him, no matter where they were. In The Penns, there was a layer of disinterest that existed. They all knew famous people, lived next door to them; many of their kids would be famous one day in turn. So, they left each other alone. Secrets stayed secret.

It was the same in diplomatic circles.

It was the same at government events.

It was the same in fancy places—expensive air and cruise ships, hotels that cost more a night than most people made in a year, restaurants with dress codes that wouldn’t even let anyone in violation through the door. The fancier the place, the more the people within had things to hide as well. No one spoke about what they saw and heard in those places—not outside of their friends and silly gossip, all covered by its own expectation of privacy, anyways.

There was a reason why the public only vaguely knew that her father even had children, only whispers that one might be a silverstrain entwined with the rumours of their existence. Unless someone had met her or her siblings, no one knew the truth. Stars, there weren’t even rumours that they were adopted, nor that they were close with the clones or the Laprise!

Part of Emilia assumed it was the OIC System, snuffing out rumours that would put children at risk with efficient censorship. Children were so protected by Baalphorian law that, even in records of sporting events, their names were often censored or pseudonymous. Information could be passed along when it was relevant—such as proving grades or criminal records—but even that could be difficult. It was strange, but nice; Emilia could see how being outed by his mother as a teenager had affected Olivier’s life.

His mother had violated the laws—and seriously, how had she not been held more responsible for that?—and violated her son and his ability to live a normal life as a result.

Her parents had been careful to keep each of their children within a bubble, protecting their identities as much as they could—and stars knew her father had paid off reporters and news organizations in the few Free Colonies with less stringent privacy laws, intent to keep her name out of this or that.

Although! In her defence! Emilia had totally done her best to stay out of trouble where the news could do things with her name and face! The few times things had gone sideways actually hadn’t been her fault… mostly. There had been that whole thing in Lüshan, which had definitely been her fault, but it had been for a good cause! They’d taken down a ring of sex traffickers! Even now, half a decade on, Emilia didn’t regret what they’d done. Even if her name and D-Levels came out because of that incident, nearly a decade ago now, she wouldn’t regret the lives they had saved. Her privacy wasn’t worth the suffering of others.

“Are we going to Lüshan?” she suddenly asked as Olivier’s hand pressed gently into her back once more, tilting her down yet another hallway. This one, at least, seemed to finally hold the office they were looking for.

If not for that hand on her back—for the slight flex in those soft brown fingers—Emilia might not have realized they so totally were going to Lüshan when the man told her she’d find out another day.

“We so totally are,” she cheered, bumping him with her shoulder. “Don’t worry~ I won’t tell. We going there tomorrow? Or on the way back? Wait, are we coming back to Seer’ik’tine on the way back? Cause if we are, I bet I can totally organize that orgy~” Emilia almost offered to invite the older man, but his entire body had gone tense and given they were actually having a nice time together, she resisted.

“Do you not like surprises?” Olivier asked as they finally came to the office, a reception desk sitting in the middle of the small room that was lined with seats—seats with people already filling them.

Fuck. How long was this going to take? Actually, considering how big the ship was, how was the office so small, and with only one person working the desk, no less.

“I do…” Emilia breathed out, muttering about how this definitely wasn’t the ideal time to have come here. “Most of these people are probably new to the ship and having some sort of issue with their room.”

The majority of the people appeared to be Baalphorian, which tracked: the chances of any of them even knowing how to use the private exchange xphern in their rooms for calls to the steward’s office was pretty low, which…

“Because if we come down and talk to someone, they are more likely to take it seriously,” Olivier told her when she asked why they hadn’t just called. His dual-toned eyes flickered through the room, more than a few of the people in it having noticed him and begun to whisper about

the Olivier de la Rue

being on board, and Emilia didn’t think he particularly believed his own words; they might be true on a Baalphorian airship, but here, they might have been better off calling. “Plus,” he added, guiding Emilia towards a kiosk that gave out numbered tickets, indicating their place in line, “I had to call for access to Movree’s room, to get his things. There was a hold line with an estimated wait of three hours.”

“Yikes.”

“Indeed. Originally, I had intended to pack it up before we departed. As we will be leaving Seer’ik’tine soon, that won’t be happening, but I will also speak with them about gaining access to his room when we chat about your situation.”

Humming, Emilia glared between the ticket and the current line number, displayed above the reception desk. “Uh… Yeah. I think that might take a bit.”

Their shoulders brushing—and how had Emilia not realized her not-quite teacher wasn’t wearing his usual long-sleeved, if also rolled up, shirt until their bare arms grazed!?—Olivier grumbled something about how long the wait was likely to be.

“It says here we can load the number into a xphern, and they’ll message when we need to come back,” Emilia told him, squinting at the text written along the bottom edge of the ticket. “I’m guessing the number is so high because people in need of help aren’t just all these Baalphorians. The Free Coloniers with xpherns just ain’t waiting around for… however long this’ll take. I vote we leave, personally. Get food or something.”

“We can’t just leave your room to be wandered into, if someone finds your key,” the man replied, watching as she tugged the xphern she had clasped onto her waistband out and began following the instructions and ignoring the gaping looks from the people still watching them.

“Ah, excellent. You can—”

“No,” Emilia said, not bothering to look up from her xphern and the ticket’s instructions, Olivier holding it diligently up for her.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

Emilia turned a glare on the man who had approached them, not even bothering to introduce himself or interject politely. “You’re either going to ask Olivier for legal advice, ask me to put your number into my xphern and then let you trail us—or worse, demand I message you when your number comes up—or ask if I’m as slutty as people think silverstrains are and will fuck you. No, he’s not giving you legal advice. No, I’m not dealing with your or anyone else’s numbers—get a xphern if you’re travelling in the Free Colonies. No, I’m not slutty enough to sleep with you.”

Her eyes flicked over the man, in his too tight shirt that stretched over his stomach, the bottom just barely visible over the swimming bottoms that clashed with the top. If he weren’t rude, if he actually knew how to dress for his body type, Emilia would have considered it. It wasn’t like she cared about age or physical appearance much; rather, it was all vibe based: who would be nice—safe, even in the violence she occasionally enjoyed during sex. This man would be neither.

“You!” the man’s face turned a rather shocking shade of red so fast that had Emilia concerned for his health. Part of her wanted to recommend he see a doctor, get a referral to a health program and maybe a knotting clinic to make sure nothing was going off in that regard. People didn’t tend to appreciate unsolicited medical advice, however.

“Bye bye!” Emilia cheered, slipping her arm through Olivier’s and tugging him off. If she leaned a little further into him than necessary, neither of them said anything of it.

The lawyer sighed as they left the steward’s office, the rude man still sputtering behind them. Amazingly, Olivier neither said anything nor pulled away, although he did take control of their direction: towards yet another map.

“Not gonna say anything?”

“Would it change anything?”

Shrugging, Emilia told him that it wasn’t like she could go back in time and take back her words—not that she would—before slapping a monitor onto the still fuming man, who was now ranting to the room about

silverstrain whores

, much to the horror of everyone else in room—not because he was calling her a whore or anything! No, they just didn’t like the idea of accidentally offending Olivier de la Rue by insulting the girl he had been seen with. At the same time, a few of them were still whispering between one another about how they were surprised he had

such low standards

and how he

must just be with her for the sex.

“Well, he’s young. Let him have his fun. He’ll find himself a respectable woman one day,”

one of them was saying, their words logging into the back of her brain and sliding into The Black Knot’s system, making sure none of them were a danger to her because she’d ignored comments like that before—not interfaced with The Black Knot’s information network to make sure they were just jerks, rather than purists or rapists—and it had not ended well. Well, watching Malcolm almost strangle the jerk who tried assaulting her to death had been fun, but not exactly the sort of fun she wanted to repeat.

“You okay?” she asked, peering up at her pseudo-teacher after he’d been staring at the map a bit too long.

The man’s jaw clenched, a muscle twitching as he death glared the map. Without thinking, Emilia reached out a brushed her thumb over the twitching muscle, those beautiful eyes snapping back to her. Pale blue—almost so pale as to be white—and bright green gazed back at her, fiery with rage.

“It’s fine. Not like I’m not used to it.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s okay.” Under her hand, Olivier’s jaw moved as he talked, as he went back to grinding his teeth because he was also listening—also taking in the hatred being hissed in the room behind them.

“No, but there’s nothing I can do about it to change their mind—I mean, some silverstrains try, but…” Emilia made a face, thinking back to the activist group that all but demanded all silverstrains restrain their sexual desires in order to

correct public opinion of them.

A few times, members had approached her in public, trying to recruit her to their cause—trying to make her feel small, broken, repulsive, for actually enjoying sex.

“I guess you've never had someone force themself on you, just because they think you’ll like it,”

one man had hissed at her before stomping away, probably putting her on some watchlist for the organization because she’d had the audacity to tell him that yeah, sure, she often felt threatened by people who looked at her like she should be forced into sexual slavery, but she wasn’t going to let them dictate who she could be—who she could be with, what she could enjoy.

At the time, part of her had wanted to scream back at him that he was wrong—that she had memories, broken and scrambled, to prove she had been violated, although she would never know

why

Warren had decided to do that to her. It could have been that she was promiscuous just as much as because she was a silverstrain; these facts about herself were neither unrelated nor completely entwined. Fuck, it could have been for some reason completely unrelated to her enjoyment of sex!

“But, I’m happy with who I am,” she continued, “and I like sex enough that I would be perfectly happy to just spend my days in bed being fucked and fawned over.”

Olivier stared down at her, still unhappy—still itching to go back and tell everyone off but knowing it would do no good. “You’re lying.”

“What?”

“You’re lying.”

Emilia opened her mouth, intent to tell the guy that he didn’t know her well enough to know what she would or wouldn’t be happy with, but stopped when he shook his head, amusement dancing in his eyes.

“You would enjoy it… for a while, but you are not the sort of person to find contentment in any one thing long term—not sex; not a single, niche passion. You enjoy change, learning, variety. So, yes, you are lying. You would not be perfectly happy.” Rudely, the man’s amusement just seemed to rise when she glared at him a little harder before her own expression broke into an amused eye roll.

Okay, maybe he did know her well enough after all.