Arc 9 | Chapter 425: Wish Our Parents Luck if We Die

“I’ll stay,” Samina called over the cacophony that was the conversation—or was it more argument?—that had overtaken their group

Too many voices.

Too many opinions.

Too many ways of communicating.

Some people were still signing, all of their minds summarily overwhelmed with Halen’s translation function—as useful as the thing was, hopefully he or Emilia would be able to fine tune it a bit whenever they had a chance to sit down at a Virtuosi Rig—Samina was pretty sure the more sensible people in their group—which ironically included Simeon, the one person who actually needed the signing translation—had switched over to discuss the situation in a group relay that didn’t include the more panicked members of their group. Other people were just yelling at one another—well, mostly Darrian was yelling at Leerin. Despite how both Levi and Darrian didn’t say as much, everyone knew how much they loved one another—best friends in everything but the words being shared between them. Most likely, Leerin thought herself her cousin’s best friend, and in order to not cause more issues with her than everyone already had, Darrian and Levi just didn’t bother telling her that they were each other’s number ones.

Therein lay the problem: Darrian wanted to go find his dumbass best friend, while Leerin wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. In Leerin’s estimation, Darrian

had

to stay with her. Samina was sure that if Leerin decided to abandon the mission altogether, she would expect her cousin to abandon it with her. While Samina knew her brother believed Darrian would choose them over his cousin, the rest of their friend group was rather split on what Darrian would do, so no one—save Levi, and perhaps Baylor—wanted to push it, knowing that regardless of what decision in made in such a situation, it would weigh on Darrian.

Ironically, there were plenty of arguments for continuing on through the cave system—most notably that they had discovered their xpherns were no longer working. Without any way of communicating with the outside world, they couldn’t let anyone know that Lux and Levi were missing. Worse, they couldn’t let Emilia know they hadn’t randomly died in the cave system. Granted, Emilia would be pretty unhappy to realize two of her friends were missing—kidnapped by the random group of Lüshanians who had attacked them, although Samina was still convinced that if her brother caught up with them, they’d be trying to get rid of him immediately. Emilia would be even more stressed thinking they were all dead. Plus, there was a good chance she would need their help once she finally caught up to the missing lawyer; hence, most of their group needed to keep going.

This, unfortunately, was not the foundation of Leerin’s argument as to why they should effectively leave Lux and Levi to their fate. No… Leerin just didn’t like it here. According to her, it was dark and creepy and smelled funny and she wanted out. Samina wasn’t sure if the girl just couldn’t deal with the reality of the situation—and was therefore refusing to consider it in her decision-making—or if she really was being that fucking selfish. Either way, she shouldn’t be here.

Seriously, the next time they ended up on a mission like this—and Samina wasn’t stupid enough to think this wouldn’t be the first in a long serious of incidents that would surround their group as they worked their way into adulthood—she was going to insist they leave Leerin behind.

Once, the two of them had been friends, and maybe they still were. Samina had always been better than most black knots at opening her heart up to her friends—at closing it off from obsession and finding something more

normal

with her friends. Levi loved Emilia and Darrian—one agent of chaos to stir things up with him, one person to ground them both—and had little peepholes in his heart that allowed a few more people a little bit of leeway. For the most part, he didn’t really feel much for any other member of their group—and on everyone else’s part, Samina thought the feeling was mutual. Her twin was

a lot

—like, five Emilias bottled up and just waiting to explode at any moment. That was okay with Levi—he knew he was a lot, and in cases like that, where you knew your personality allowed something to be desired, black knots were awesome because you couldn’t actually give a shit that few people liked you!

Samina, however, loved a lot of her friends. When they’d been younger, the five of them—herself, Emilia, Lux, Leerin, and Janie—had been as close as sisters. Some of that closeness had faded over the years, but for the most part, they were still her world. The only one she loved more than her friends was her brother, stupid as he was—because seriously!? How did he just run off after the people who had attacked them? And over his weird not-a-rock!?

Idiot.

It would serve Levi right if he was killed for his stupidity. Unfortunately, Samina loved him. Emilia also loved him. Samina also loved Emilia, and Emilia would be upset if Levi was just left to his stupidity. So no, she couldn’t leave her dumbass brother or Lux—who she also loved and definitely wasn’t going to be leaving the kidnappers —to die within the cave system, even if a little part of her knew Levi deserved whatever fate awaited him in here.

All that said, Leerin needed to get the fuck away from her before Samina killed her. It took a lot for the love of a black knot to fade; yet, with every word out of Leerin’s mouth, Samina could feel her affection for the girl waning.

Fuck. Literally, Leerin was arguing that they just leave Levi and Lux behind! And all because of

her.

Because of her. Because of her.

Emilia didn’t matter.

Levi and Lux didn’t matter.

All that mattered was

Leerin

, and you know what!? Samina had a really good remedy for teaching people that they weren’t the only one who mattered: making it so they didn’t matter at all.

“You can’t kill her,”

Taelor said into their private relay, a message from Halen popping up a second later, asking if she was okay. In what world would she be okay? Also, what kind of alternative timeline had they ended up in where Halen of all people was asking if she was okay!?

Samina didn’t like this timeline, thanks. How did she get back to whichever timeline she’d been in before? The one where Emilia wasn’t running around a Free Colony and Halen wasn’t an ally! Give her back the timeline where Emilia and Halen hated one another!

“Shut! Up!” she yelled over everyone’s voice, Taelor helpfully sending a skill scattering over everyone to actually shut them up. “I said, I’ll stay and look for them. Everyone else should go on.”

Leerin looked like she wanted to say something—not something to try and talk her into not staying, Samina was sure. No, instead it was probably something about how she should have said something sooner—Samina had said something sooner, only few people had actually heard her. Worse, she could have been priming herself to tell Darrian something rude even though she was now effectively getting her way—Samina had no idea what the girl would say. Given everyone’s mood and the ire radiating off Darrian so powerfully that Samina was curious if Coral could feel it, even distant as she currently was, it was definitely something better off not said. Fortunately, Taelor was of the same opinion and kept his silencing skill clamped down around Leerin.

Funnily enough, he didn’t keep it active around anyone else—everyone else, evidently, could be trusted to not act like a spoiled brat.

“Why you?” Sorvell asked, unaware of how their group worked—so unaware, in fact, that he had effectively let them kidnap him.

Unlike his brother, Sorvell wasn’t the most useful of hostages—Doctor Vickers was a medical professional, after all; he also understood that his options once he ran into Coral and BJ raiding his office for supplies had been to come with them as their kinda-sorta hostage, or to be left tied up with a temporarily disabled Censor in his office. He had chosen to come with them. Then, somehow, his brother had ended up with them. Samina figured it was more because turning down his offer to accompany them would have made him suspicious, and if he were suspicious, he would have ended up tied up with a temporarily disabled Censor… somewhere. Possibly in some backroom of the SlideLine Transfer Station, where they’d come across him. Possibly tucked into a random side street. It wouldn’t have been ideal; hence, he was with them now, out of his depth as he was.

“My contacts are separate from my Censor,” Samina told him—there was no point signing or messaging the information when Simeon already knew it all—explaining that while they knew Lux’s Censor hadn’t lost its ability to use skills when it had vanished from their awareness, there was nothing to guarantee whoever had taken her didn’t have a way to fully disable Censors. “If they do have something like that, I’ll still be able to see with my contacts. Plus, they use a combination of Censor-side and hardware-side abilities, so if I have to cut off using skills because someone can sense skill use through the aether, I’ll be fine. Anyone else with be left blind if they can’t use {Starlit Eyes}.”

“Samie is also better trained than most of us,” Baylor added, bouncing on his heels with the energy of someone who wanted this conversation done so they could get moving again. “My brothers and I are trained, but we’re meant to work together. If one of us stays, all of us will need to.”

“And that would break the group up too much,” Sorvell finished. “You’re leaving yourself alone, though.”

Samina shrugged. While, eventually, the triplets would have more training on how to function apart from one another, they were too young to have more than the barest of training for that, and likely no real-world practice. Members of the Baxter branch of The Black Knot, on the other hand, were trained to work solo, as they often worked alone and undercover for extended periods of time—usually until their cover was blown. Sometimes members of their branch underwent the mysterious procedure the clones used to alter their appearances so they could take another assignment, but it wasn’t common. Instead, they were like the Hyrats in that there were a lot of them. As she and Levi—as well as their annoying little sister—were part of the

main branch

of the Baxter family, they still used their last name, but most of the Baxters didn’t; instead, their kids were raised in

normal

environments. They learned to pass as

normal,

while also being aware they were expendable—pieces in the game that was The Black Knot’s influence that could be left to wither and die if extracting them from a mission was too much work or risked the bigger picture. Samina and Levi were meant to be the next heads of their family—meant to be the people making decisions about whom to leave behind and whom to save; about what missions were worth losing people over and which were not.

It was a horrible fate, especially since they were going to be just as shit at it as Malcolm was turning out to be in his new role. None of them were equipped to leave the friends and family who had woven their way through their hearts behind for the sake of a mission… mostly. Currently, Samina would leave Leerin behind. As it was, she couldn’t leave her brother or Lux behind.

“I'll be fine,” she told Sorvell, already letting Simeon and Halen summon more caving and climbing gear for her from the aether—her own aetherstores were nothing to scoff at, but they were both far better with such manipulations than she was—

“and if I’m not… wish my parents luck,”

she added with a few lazy flicks of her hands.

“Luck?”

BJ asked from his position squatted beside Doctor Vickers, watching as he stitched up a deep cut Rafe had received in Simeon’s place with pure aether. Samina had the sense it wasn’t a common skill, the aether digging deep into the gash and stitching up the muscle fibres from the bottom up, rather than focusing on a surface-level repair while leaving the muscle to repair more naturally—at least until they could get Rafe into a machine to patch him up. Doctor Vickers had told them that as long as Rafe didn’t push it, he wouldn’t need anything more than a checkup later, to make sure nothing had pulled askew. It was so impressive that even Halen’s eyes were shifting back to watch the moment he was done handing over the equipment to her.

The smile Samina gave BJ was all teeth.

“If my brother and I both die in here, Stella will be left to run the Baxter branch. Our parents are already worried about Levi and I running it. Stella, though? Fuck if she wouldn’t run it into the ground. It wouldn’t even be an accident. Bitch has been complaining since the moment she could speak that she never felt part of the family cause she doesn’t have a black knot. But there’s no way that the moment she’s actually given a place in the family, she wouldn't fuck everything up being a petty bitch she is.”

Sometimes, those born to their families without black knots still joined The Black Knot. It was a temperament thing, mostly. Emilia—as much as she wasn’t a member of their extended family, even if many of them wouldn’t be surprised if she eventually ended up married to a family member… or several—understood that the organization was needed, the work they did a necessary burn over the world, even when it cost people their lives. So, she worked for The Black Knot, designing skills and functions, despite not having a black knot. It worked for her, being not just a way to keep the people she loved safe, but a way to contribute to keeping Baalphoria itself safe. The same would not work for Stella, who seemed to hate all black knots after years of never being allowed to be part of their friends group—and seriously, the girl was years younger than them! They had other members of their family who were her age that she could have been friends with, but no~ Stella had wanted to be the annoying child, hanging around her older siblings and their friends. In the end, Stella had only been allowed to hang out with them when blackmail was involved. So, they hated her, and at this point, Stella hated them right back.

So yeah, good luck to the Baxter family—and The Black Knot as a whole—if she and Levi didn’t come back. As much as people worried about her and her brother taking over, Stella would bring the organization to its knees if given the chance, all because she was a spoiled child who couldn’t accept that kids years older than her didn’t want her hanging around, ruining their fun. Sometimes, Stella brought up how Malcolm had always been friendly with them, even when he was a decade older. Brat didn’t understand that it was different—they had never ruined Malcolm’s fun by demanding to accompany him, nor had they ever demanded he give up something fun to hang out with them. Instead, Malcolm had just been there sometimes, keeping them safe and being a grumpy, older brother figure all the while—and when he didn’t want to fill that role, no one, save perhaps his mothers, had forced him to!

“You won’t die,” Janie said, wrapping her in a tight hug before Samina turned and microsparked into the darkness.