Arc 9 | Chapter 412: Save Yourself; Save Everyone Else

Olivier knew he shouldn’t offer help to this strange Lüshanian girl, with her bright blue hair and dirty body that was too thin, making it impossible for him to guess at her exact age. A part of him wanted to scream at himself to keep his mouth shut and wait for Emilia or someone else from Baalphoria to come for him. The Black Knot had already known something was up, so surely, they must be trying to find him. As much as he often hated how being a non-dev positioned him above the

average

person, in this case, it made it unlikely that the Baalphorian government would leave him to whatever fate Fräthk had in mind of him—and realistically, whoever this Fräthk was, it was perfectly possible that they were planning to use him as a hostage and ransom him back to his government or his family.

As he had never intended to specialize in transnational law—it was more a hobby interest for him which he had brought into his classes with these trips—there had only been a few cases where his classes as a student had explicitly covered instances of Baalphorians being taken hostage by foreigners, both by criminals and foreign governments. There had, however, been a few. Most of those cases had been covered as part of coursework studying the ways that social connections, D-Levels, and irregular deviations could affect the way the government treated their citizens. Such courses had also been where laws such as those that Emilia was being charged under were primarily discussed, as well as Dyad Containment Laws and the laws the left lavender codes to forever be tracked by the government, even if they never did anything to deserve such scrutiny—these specific blips in the law that made certain portions of the Baalphorian population a target for legal discrimination. While most of the cases they had focused on covered the more negative things that such laws inflicted on the populace—although, in the teachers and many of his classmates’ estimations, the laws hadn’t been a negative on the nation, but a positive—they had also included a few cases that may become relevant to him.

More often than not, the Baalphorian government was very unenthusiastic about letting their non-devs disappear. They were too valuable, and realistically, while it had been a few centuries since their nation had been dragged into full-scale war, everyone knew it was just a matter of time before another war broke out. As much as he hated it, Olivier knew that in war non-devs were considered essential, a single one able to tip the scales of war, the way the Blood Rain General had constantly done during the last Colonial War. If war came, the Baalphorian government wouldn’t want to be without him, nor would they want to risk that he suddenly show up on the front, supporting another nation because his home nation had abandoned him to criminals.

It was terrible, but precedent said the Baalphorian government would likely prioritize getting him and Emilia out of Falmíer, even at the expense of diplomatic relations, even at the expense of all his other students.

Olivier didn’t want it to come to that—didn’t want to be the catalyst that led to a war, all because he had been pulled along by

something

and ended up kidnapped.

So, some part of Olivier knew he should wait and see what fate would come for him—see who came to save him first. In the end, he couldn’t just wait around. In the end, he couldn’t even lie to himself and claim it was simply because he didn’t want to be that catalyst, however.

There were few times in life when anyone could make a a real, tangible and immediate difference in another person’s life. Logically, he knew that leaving this girl and all the people who were silent in what he assumed to be nearby holding cells to their fate was the smarter thing to do—knew that by getting back to Baalphoria he could do more overall good. A thousand hopes and dreams for cases he could file and fight and win lay before him in Baalphoria—little sparks of the

difference

he could make in the nation.

Olivier knew that, if he managed to return to Baalphoria, he would make a difference. It wasn’t a possibility but an eventuality—this immovable part of his future that he and his cousins had been pushing for since they were teenagers, first learning the horror of their family’s business practices. The de la Rue dynasty was power, and what outsiders saw was the good they did. Olivier knew that sometimes his family’s law firm did actually do good; they also did terrible things, manipulating the law and the government to do their bidding. Their group of idealistic cousins wanted to change that—wanted to forge a new path where all their family did was help people.

For some people, it would be easy to prioritize themself—easy to wait for the Baalphorian government or The Black Knot to come and rescue them. Fuck the consequences. This wasn’t his nation, while his students were adults and should be responsible for getting themselves to the embassy. Why should he care about anyone but himself, when he was the victim of a kidnapping?

Some people might not risk so much death and destruction on the slim chance they could save a few people—people who governments so often forgot. There were his students and every other Baalphorian in the city, who might be caught up in attempts to rescue him. There were the innocents of Falmíer and Lüshan as a whole. There were the soldiers and Black Knot agents who might be killed trying to get to him, not to mention any war that might rise from whatever attempts to find him were made. Those people would try to save themself alone, leaving everyone else behind—after all, in their attempts to save other victims they might accidentally bring about those mass deaths they were worried about when they couldn’t escape and stop a war to find them.

Life wasn’t as simple as counting out the potential lives that might be lost by a single decision to help or leave other people behind, and in no world could Olivier imagine himself going back to Baalphoria without at least trying to help this girl and anyone else who wanted out of this place. Olivier knew himself well enough to know that no matter what sort of cost his actions had, it would all weigh on him. These people. Soldiers and Black Knot agents. His students. Innocents in any nation.

No matter what, each of these lives would weigh on him, as would anyone he left behind, and—

And he was just talking himself in circles, trying to soothe his conscience—trying to convince himself that there actually was a good option, some way of counting all the lives potentially lost by each decision. His Censor was trying to quantify each option for him, numbers spitting out over his mind—calculations about risk and potential for lives lost, all an argument telling him to leave as though he weren’t perfectly aware it was programmed to prioritize him over all else.

Walk away from these people.

Try to save himself.

Don’t risk himself for anyone, especially not people he had yet to even meet.

The few dozens lives he might save here were in no way worth the risk of a war that would rip both of their nations apart, all because he hadn’t been able to get away and Baalphoria had to come for him, all because he had died protecting some random Lüshanians from criminals.

All the data, skewed as he knew it would be, said to leave—to at the very least only take the other victims of this Fräthk if he was planning to use them to get away. That was always an option: push someone else into the line of fire, run, run, run, as though his guilt wouldn’t consume him.

Olivier pushed his Censor away, causing it to stutter off for several long moments, almost as though, under the strain of their hours of separation—he had checked the time and confirmed he’d been disconnected from it for just over three hours—it was now pissy that he would dare reject its counsel. He most certainly was rejecting its terrible suggestion that he leave these people to their terrible fate of being used by a criminal, as well as its even more abhorrent suggestion that he only take them so he could use them.

How terrible. Olivier had heard murmurs of people attempting to argue their Censors had been the one to encourage them to do this or that unconscionable thing. Of course, there would be no record within their logs of such a suggestion occurring—no record of their Censor telling them to kill or bribe or maim someone. It was, therefore, natural that such claims would be brushed aside. Censors couldn’t erase data from their logs—not without their owner’s consent, and even then, often the clones could pull strands of data from them regardless.

Now, he wondered. Emilia would be able to look at his logs, he knew. He would ask her, he decided as he pushed himself up onto wobbly legs, activating a skill to push chemicals through his muscles to ease the strain aching through them from a mixture of too much walking—not that he remembered much of that—and then laying on the cool floor. Still, his muscles burned and complained, and he quickly found himself leaning against the wall and sinking to the floor once more.

Idly, he rubbed his fingers over his nape, wondering if he’d be able to remove whatever was keeping his Censor offaether—assuming there wasn’t something about the holding cells in general that was keeping him from reconnecting to the aethernet. While it wasn’t exactly common—especially not in Lüshan—he knew a few Free Colonies had technology or building materials that interfered with the aethernet. Having spent a significant amount of time within his family’s bunker, being offaether was nothing new for him; still, this was the first time he had been disconnected from it without his consent. It was… off-putting—also, annoying, as he would have quite liked to search the aethernet for references to an aethernet blocking substance that could be directly applied to the skin!

At the very least, whatever had been used wasn’t interfering with any other Censor function, nor did it seem to be causing any adverse reaction on his skin. Still, it was annoying when he pulled his hand away to find it slick with oil. Even more annoying, as far as he could tell, the removal of some of the oil had no effect on his connection to the aethernet.

“Do you know what this is?”

he asked the girl, still watching him with eyes just as bright blue as her hair. Holding up his fingers, Olivier explained what he could remember of how he’d come to be there, although he excluded the fact that something that he was pretty sure hadn’t been the woman who kidnapped him had been the first thing to drag him away from his students. Instead, he just said the woman had slathered the oil over his skin, then used some sort of ability to bring him here.

The girl looked contemplative for a moment before dropping away from her position of peering at him through the bars without another word. Olivier blinked at the spot she had just been, vaguely concerned that either she had passed out or he had hallucinated the whole encounter. At this point, nothing would surprise him, unfortunately.

Girl gone, Olivier took to activating a few skills, trying to remove the oil from his neck. Unfortunately, as much as the woman’s influence over his mind was slipping away, he and his Censor were still in disagreement about existing as one and about what to do about all the people supposedly surrounding them—if he had hallucinated the girl, Olivier was going to assume there was no one else around in need of rescuing unless he saw and touched them. As a result of his ongoing issues with his Censor and bleary, wobbly mind and body, only the most basic of skills managed to activate properly, none of which did anything to the oil.

If anything, while he couldn’t be positive, he could have sworn the oil was almost… rejecting his skills. It wasn’t the sort of issue that Emilia had spoken of the night before, when she had explained that the Dionese man’s core ability had been able to clean her clothes of the food spilled on her, while she had been positive any cleaning skill she had wouldn’t be effective against the clinging thickening agent of the sauce. Being no expert on skills, he wasn’t sure, but this didn’t feel like a case of the oil being uncleanable by the skills he was using.

No, this felt like a rejection of being touched by any skill and that was… disturbing, to say the least.

Yet, another thing to ask Emilia, he supposed, when she eventually found him—and he knew she would find him, knew she was out there somewhere, searching for him. Part of him wanted to insist it was simply because she needed him as a lawyer, but while he knew that likely meant The Black Knot would try pretty hard to get him back, a bigger part of him insisted it wasn’t just that for the silverstrain.

Emilia seemed to like him, her behaviour towards him seeming to imply she wanted to be his friends—that maybe, they already were friends, tentative and new as that would be. So, of course she would come for him. All he could do until she came for him was work to get himself into a position where he could be more easily rescued.

Of course, that would be easier by himself. Of course, that was the moment a blue hair popped back up, smiling once again before opening her mouth, presumably intent to tell him what had occurred during her brief disappearance.

Of course, that was the moment a door banged open, heavy footsteps echoing down on them.