Arc 9 | Chapter 384: Odd Things Will Be Odd

Something about this place felt… off, but in the oddest of ways.

Emilia had, through general misadventure, been in a lot of weird places, been involved in a lot of strange and deadly circumstances. As a result, she liked to think she was a pretty good judge of the places and situations she found herself in. While she obviously didn’t have the clearest of pictures of the current happenings, given that the whole situation with whatever was happening in Lüshan was a big mystery, and Olivier’s disappearance—she was refusing to think of it as a death, potential or otherwise—was just another pile of questions, she still knew bits and pieces of information.

So, the facts!

The Drinarna officers had been acting odd even at the papers checkpoint. When combined with the rumours Malcolm had heard of something was apparently happening in the city, she didn’t really doubt something was, in fact, happening. So, either the rumours weren’t completely off, or something completely unrelated was happening; either way,

something

was up. Still, the Drinarna officers hadn’t stopped them. It could be that they also had no idea of the timeline either, so were just behaving a little oddly. Alternatively, they could be in the same strained position she and all the other Baalphorians in the city now were: acting too oddly might set something in motion; ergo, they had to be careful with their actions.

As for Olivier… Well, her pseudo-teacher wasn’t the sort to vanish for no good reason; therefore, something was definitely wrong.

All that added up to

something

was definitely happening. The questions were more if whatever had happened to Olivier was related to the rumours, whether any of it was related to the strange behaviour of the Drinarna, and whether Cameron had a part in any of it. What Emilia knew in regards to

that

was that Cameron had returned to yell at Norrayn—she wasn’t a fan of the Drinarna officer either, now that she’d been yelled at simply because she and Emilia vaguely knew one another—then left. That could mean that whoever had assigned Cameron to watch her hadn’t intended her to get away. In that case, whoever had assigned Cameron either had wanted her watched closely for the entirety of their day trip, or just hadn't known the pair of them well enough to know they wouldn’t click—that, or Cameron was just a really good actor and was now faking being the severe, rule following bitch Emilia had always known her to be.

Emilia… had her suspicions of which it was, but she wasn’t placing bets one way or another at the moment. Despite having known each other for most of their lives, the pair of them weren’t friends, and they rarely saw one another, and they definitely didn’t like one another. Cameron, good little officer that she wanted to be, child of someone who had gone against his organization in order to make sure he did the right thing: that was the sort of person who was difficult to anticipate. Hence! Not relying on Cameron to pop up and actually be on her side! Hence! Not killing Cameron on sight because she actually might actually be on her side!

All that was beside the point that this place? The weird backroom of the bakery? Fucking weird and giving her the oddest of feelings.

Wandering around, it was clearly some sort of base of operations, probably for criminals, but who really knew—and seriously, the laws in Lüshan could be so strict that despite its constant lauding of the freedom fighters of its past, there were actually a number of similar activities that were currently considered illegal.

Back when she’d been a teenager, she’d overheard a bunch of officers training in Baalphoria talking about a crackdown on illegal publications that were attempting to normalize a few irregular deviations. While small print publications of anti-government content certainly wasn’t new—and under the current government had generally been ignored, due to its overall positive image and polling—someone had published a pro-lavender-code book. This had been around the same time that the anthology show

Diary of Us

had been airing in Baalphoria, one of the episodes focusing on a lavender code—played by someone who actually had the irregular deviation, no less—just trying to live their life despite the stereotypes and stigma that followed them wherever they went. While the production company behind the show had been sued, it had been by a private individual. Yes, the Baalphorian government had clearly favoured the purist behind the suit, but they themselves hadn’t tried to pull up any ancient laws to censor the production company.

The Lüshanian government, on the other hand, had brought down the full force of its censorship abilities on not just the people who had published the pro-lavender-code book, but the entire underground publishing industry. Even some fifteen years later, the industry had yet to recover, and from what Emilia knew, there continued to be discourse of whether the underground publishers that existed then or now deserved to be known as yanswt. The word technically referred to all underground, anti-government movements that had heavy ties to artistic and intellectual endeavours. For many Lüshanians, the yanswt of the past were heroes, fighting against oppressive governments—especially when those governments were puppets of other nations. With so many positive connotations attached to the word, those who opposed the content of the recent and current underground anti-government movements were, of course, disavowing applying the term to them, even if it technically applied.

It is the essence of the term that matters most,

they would say.

Emilia thought this was the problem with using vague words to refer to specific things. The yanswt were a broad existence—and indeed, at times, the yanswt had included factions with differing views that brought them into conflict; one side would think the government too strict, the other too lax—and trying to apply it only to

appropriate

people, with beliefs that were

appropriate

or

supported by the majority

wasn’t going to work.

In the same way, the collective term of coren'taz had similar issues: there were individual coren'taz, but there really wasn’t any specific way of referring to each. Part of it was likely that there was a lot of overlap—after all, her coren'taz included teenagers, but they were more separate from the few older members who were pushing into their fifties, and definitely separate from their one odd member who was nearing two hundred. Those teenagers would continue to build stronger connections with people younger than them—with the next generation’s coren’taz. In the same way, Emilia knew members of what she would consider

the previous coren

'

taz

crossed over with the older members of her coren'taz. All that crossing over made it difficult to say which coren'taz someone belonged to—and realistically, sometimes it was just vibes.

Two Lu Rosi she knew were both in their early fifties and had known each other since they were children. If asked, Emilia and her coren’taz would say the one older by two years belonged to their coren’taz, the younger one to the previous coren’taz. There was no reason for this, other than where closer connections and friendships developed. All this was further complicated by the fact that her specific coren'taz was stronger than most, resulting in a more solid identity. Where the older coren’taz tended to melt and shift by the time its members reached adulthood, so far, they’d lost virtually no members to growing up—to shifting priorities.

So, it was annoying that, one day, someone might ask what coren'taz she belonged to and she’d have no good answer. The most she could do was give names—tell someone who had been close in her childhood coren'taz, who still met and talked regularly. It was possible those lists might be exactly the same, due to how close everyone still was. Yet, their continent was near constantly at war, and it was probably crazy to hope that politics and greed and hurt feelings wouldn’t break some parts of their friendships and connections away.

Ignoring the clench in her chest at the idea that one day her coren'taz might fall to pieces as war broke over the world, leaving her only connected to her closest friends and allies, Emilia continued moving through the odd place she’d found herself in.

It was just… a mess of things. Whoever used this place clearly had their hand in a lot of industries: partially bound books and flyers littered some of the tables; drugs were neatly sorted onto several shelves, including some stuff she knew would fetch a pretty price; and weapons sat in a bunch of haphazardly stacked shelves— and ooh, was that a willbrand?

Emilia plucked up the willbrand—after carefully scouring the area for more traps because that one on the door had been terrifying. Weirdly terrifying—like,

if she’d triggered it while the door was open she might have died trying to disable it

terrifying. Traps were definitely meant to be strong, but usually, with enough defences, one could avoid dying. This one? This one might have killed her regardless of how strong her defences, and even if she’d tried to run, it would have chased her

and

potentially attached itself onto anyone else in the building. That was part of what was making all this so odd: regardless of Olivier and his kidnapper being ahead of her, they shouldn’t be so far ahead that they could have gotten out of that trap’s range, had they come this way. In other words, either they hadn’t realized they were being chased, so hadn’t bothered disabling the trap, lest she catch up and accidentally activate it and kill them all, or they had gone the other way, through the bakery, and onto the street. If that were the case, was Olivier conscious? Or was the bakery complicit in his kidnapping, and therefore had ignored him being carried around unconscious? What about all the people they would have passed on the street?

Some might say it would be easy to assume the bakery had some part in the kidnapping—after all, this bakery also had an entrance to the underground tunnels she’d previously known nothing about, not to mention this room filled with illegal items.

Emilia didn’t think the bakery was complicit, was the thing—or if they were, she didn’t think something was right about it, after all, she could still hear people in the bakery. If the kidnapper was associated with the bakery, wouldn’t they have warned whoever was running it that they’d be coming through with a kidnapping victim soon? That someone could have been chasing them? That their pursuer might go through door number two and trigger the trap? Everything about the situation felt weird—staged. It wasn’t something she could easily explain, but if whoever normally used this place as a base popped up and told her they had no part in Olivier’s disappearance, she’d probably believe them. Instead, it felt as though whoever had taken Olivier was setting the person who usually worked here up and—

And yep, there it was.

For a moment, Emilia contemplated bolting back to the entrance of the underground tunnel and falling through it. Had she not actually needed information about the situation, so she could find Olivier, she might have. Backtracking didn’t feel conducive to that, however. On the other hand, going through more of this place seemed like asking to die—she didn’t doubt whoever owned this place had other traps set up throughout it, even if that first one had been powerful.

Emilia stepped away from the weapons just in time to turn and watch several Drinarna officers burst into the room. Having closed the door behind her, in case whoever worked at the bakery needed something from storage, Emilia felt her confidence in the Drinarna drop. If that trap hadn’t been disabled by her, the group would have just sealed their death.

“Emilia Starrberg,” one of them said, eyes skimming over the room. While she recognized all of the officers, it was only the vague remembrance of seeing their faces at joint training—no rapport to make use of, then.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me here,” she noted, readying herself to microspark out of there if any of the officers seemed liable to bolt off and trigger fuck knew what.

“Officer Intern Fulbrun informed us as to the situation and your disappearance location. We were aware of the tunnel entrance nearby. The tunnels lead only to a small collection of places, so we followed those places.”

“And this is, what? The fifth? Sixth? Tenth place you’ve burst into, looking for me?”

The officers didn’t even have the decency to lie—to claim this was the second or third exit they’d come searching for her at. Chances were she wouldn’t even be able to figure out they were lying if they had claimed this wasn’t their first, so-not-suspicious, stop, although she could have asked Cameron’s father, she supposed. She’d be telling him about the fact that at least five of his officers were part of some strange kidnapping scheme that had conveniently led them to a criminal’s base. Unfortunately, while the man could look into it, all she had were suspicions that something weird was happening.

Probably, one criminal had informants and plants in the Drinarna, and they were trying to get whoever actually used this space arrested—or, maybe the goal was more a disruption of power. Honestly, Emilia didn’t really care, other than that this had potentially put their entire group at risk, and Olivier was still missing. Also, the Drinarna officers didn’t even seem to be worried about where he was; instead, they were beginning to go through the items in the room.

“Where do you think my teacher ended up?” she asked—twice. The first time, the officers ignored her—although one did glance her way before quickly averting his eyes. The second time, she threw her voice into a skill they couldn’t possibly ignore.

The woman seemingly leading the group muttered something about how they would look through what was in the room—see if there were any clues.

“Fine. Who else is out looking for him while you search here? I wasn’t far behind whoever took him, so they have to still be in the area.” Emilia wasn’t expecting them to do anything, but with one of the officers standing directly in the doorway forcing her way out was going to suck, so she would be getting at least a little evidence against these fuckers before she found herself on a list of people in need of being deported.

One of the men had the audacity to snort before he said something about them being the only ones looking.

“A Baalphorian non-dev is missing—kidnapped—and only you five are searching for him?” she asked, honestly a little shocked. While she’d figured these guys weren’t really looking for him, just an excuse to get into this place, for the Drinarna not to have anyone else looking for him…

What the fuck? Well, she knew

what the fuck

was up: whoever Cameron had told—or someone above them, who would have been responsible for organizing a search effort—was in on whatever the fuck this was.

“Fine, I’ll go look for him myself. I have my xphern, so message me if you find anything,” she tried, Censor already pulling up skills because nothing was ever that easy. Indeed, when she moved towards the door, the officer there simply crossed his thick arms, spread his legs further apart and grinned down at her.

“Sorry, can’t let you do that.”

The man was tall, forcing Emilia to tilt her head to glare up at him. Short as she was, she probably looked like a breakable child to him, and even if she had a reputation for being a problem child, few people actually realized how dangerous she could be. “Get out of my way.”