âAlright, alright~ Iâm here! Iâm here! No need to worry I wonât make it!â
Arabella groaned even as her youngest brother cracked the smallest of smiles at his older brotherâs antics. Why had she invited Sterling again? Oh yes, something about cheering Elijah upâgetting him out of the mood his time with the clones had brought down on him in hopes of lessening its hold over his knots. Unfortunately, while she loved both of her brothersâas well as their much younger sister, although the teenager just sort of existed in the periphery of their minds, due to their age differenceâthey were both tiresome.
Turning to look at her middle brother, Arabellaâs vision cut to black as the RaidZone descended upon them, a collection of notifications going off in her mind announcing this or that. Then, as the world reformed, more notifications came through as Elijah brought them into his team. Then, more and more people were added.
Apparently, for as much as they had been receiving strained looks from a number of the heroes waiting for the raid to begin, they were still aware that her brother was good at raidingâheâd even managed to rank in the Top Heroes of the Season a few times. Nothing too impressiveânothing like the one time his now-ex had ranked in the top ten. Arabella didnât think theyâd been dating back then. If anything, she thought the only reason Emilia Daniels had ranked so high was she her then ongoing feud with Elijah.
Oh, how things could change.
Thinking back on it now, Arabella supposed it shouldnât have been too surprising that the silverstrain was skilled enough to rip a hole in Elijahâs dorm room. Regardless of how often Elijah had complained that her ex didnât share his primary interestâraiding, both real and virtualâfrom what Arabella had heard, the girl was skilled when she wanted to be. Odd that, considering how often her brother had commented on the things she couldnât do, seemingly because of a relatively high D-Level. While raids were set up so even those with relatively high D-Levels could push their RaidLevel lower than their actual D-Level, the skill the girl had shown in her brotherâs dorm had, in no way, reflected what someone who wasnât a sub-100 should be capable of. Yet, there were many things Emilia Daniels supposedly couldnât do that were indicative of an ex-100âor perhaps a Dyad.
Regardless of what was seemingly interfering with the silverstrainâs ability to use slidelines or a number of other skills, their mother hadnât liked the fact that she couldnâtâno, she hadnât liked that at all. Samantha Richmond would never tell her children they couldnât be with someone who was an ex-100 or a Dyad, but the implication was there. They were to marry a sub-100 with nothing too difficult hidden within their genetics. If they could marry someone who was a sub-30, even better! No Sub-50s, thoughâno voting power there. If anything, being associated with anyone from the Sub-50s would be a stain on their family. No one liked the snobs of the Sub-50s, and the Richmonds werenât snobs, they were just⊠discerning.
Yet another thing Arabella would quite like to be done with. Why hadnât she just gone the way of Sterling and fucked off to the Free Colonies again? If not for the fact that Elijah may very well die, were he to be taken away from his precious raids, Arabella might have suggested they all just leaveâgo start new lives somewhere else. Sterling was always talking about the friends he had made wandering the continent. Surely, he must have friends they could stay with for a few months, while they figured things out?
âSo, little bro~â Sterling cooed, having come up and swung his arm over Elijahâs shoulder, his smile wide and disarming to anyone who didnât actually know him. âWhat exactly did you do to end up on the clonesâ bad side? Impressive that, I must say. Usually only hear about them leaving such visible prints on people who have royally pissed them offâor who are complete twats.â
Where had Sterling been living recently, to pick up that slang? Usually, he spent a season or two in each place he settled inâunless he
royally pissed
someone off so badly he had to leave abruptly, often abandoning his possessions in his haste to get out.
âBeen with a ship of Atrium tradersâwell, more pirates, I suppose,â he told her, before she could askâher asking about his current slang was too constant a thing for her to actually need to ask anymore. âBit of a mix, that bunch, butâŠâ Sterling shuddered, muttering something about how a few of them had leaned a bit too heavily into ideas of violent piracy, rather than just raiding vessels used by Chinsata scavengers or other people dealing in illegal goods. âFun enough to hit a civilian ship once in a while, but only for a little fun! Rob the rich, drop the goods into the slums of this or that nation,â he added, laughing and smiling like he hadnât just admitted to being involved with criminalsâagain!
Arabella gaped at her brother, horrified. Sterling just smiled back, unrepentant, looking for all the world like nothing could ever harm him, which, perhaps it couldnât. Long ago, Arabella had come to suspect that her brother had made some sort of connection with someone importantâsomeone who could get him out of whatever trouble he ended up in. Perhaps, if he were arrested for piracy, whoever he had befriendedâor found dirt on, who really knewâwould come to his rescue? Certainly, even their mother wouldnât have the pull to get him out of something so serious!
âOh, come off it,â Sterling sighed before she could even begin to yell at him. âJournalistic integrity, elder sister. I just watched it all go down. Sure, a few nations have laws about
prioritizing reporting crimes over all else,
but those places already donât like me. I didnât actually take part in any of the piracy, just watched, recorded. Iâll have a book out about my adventures soon.â
âIs it an adventure if all you do is watch?â Elijah asked, nervous energy thrumming through him, his weight shifting about as they waited for the raidâs invaders to spawn.
âDo you not think your experience watching that beautiful silverstrain you let get away rip a perfect hole in your wall was an adventure?â their brother asked, a cold edge running through his normally jovial voice. âI supposed that would mean it wasnât an adventure watching that piece of shit Victor attack an innocent girl either? Did it only become an adventure once you were taken away by the clones? Tell me again, how did that come about?â
A dozen flinches worked their way through Elijah as Sterlingâs words landed, always the ever seeking journalist, even when it was his baby brother on the receiving end of the questions and rebukes.
âIâll say it again, Eli: the clones donât pull people in for questioning and leave marks like thatââSterling reached out, brushing a thumb over the mottled skin of Elijahâs jaw, earning him another flinchââon someone for just watching crimes go down. So donât tell me that was itâthat you were just an observer and nothing more. What are we missing? What donât we know?â
Arabellaâs eyes shifted around the area, worried about who might be listening, only to realize her middle brother had erected a privacy barrier around them. It was good; she also hadnât noticed him activating it. Given the startled double takes they were occasionally getting, she didnât think many people around them had noticed it coming down either.
âI canât⊠I meanâŠâ Elijah tried to say, his eyes flickering about oddly.
Their baby brother had always been a terrible liar, but this was something else. This wasâ
âWe went to go ask Beth to contact The Black Knot. Victorâs parents wanted to⊠convince her to ask them to let him go.â
Despite the fact that she worked in politics, it was Sterling who had always been better at catching people in lies and half-truths for their word choice, for the tones they used, for the slightest of stumbles over their words. Still, even she could tell that Victorâs parents hadnât been planning to
convince
Beth of anything.
âLet me see,â Sterling demanded. âLet me see this
convincing
that you were a part of.â
Elijahâs cheeks reddened, but he still sent off a fractured recording of⊠basically nothing. Yup, just as she had suspected: someone had messed with Elijahâs ability to talk about the full lead up to his time in the clonesâ custody. Given he wasnât confused,
he
could see what happened, at least. The clones didnât erase memories unless they deemed it absolutely necessary, although that seemed to be happening more often. Arabella had heard murmurings of Hailâs raid platform being able to see even memories that were otherwise locked behind skills like {A Private Moment} and other, Black Knot manipulations. While she didnât want to believe it was true, she wasnât stupid enough to think that wasnât the caseâHail had been increasingly pressing its fingers into the government this last decade, and oversight on the company was⊠abysmal. It was fucking abysmal, and the government just seemed content to let them do what they would.
It was weird, and concerning, and there was a reason she didnât much like virtual raids in particular. There were actually a number of reasons, but the invasion of privacy on the minds of heroes was definitely high on the list.
Regardless of her opinions on raids and Hail, the question became
why
Elijahâs memories were locked up. What he could give them was more the initial interactions with Victorâs parents, in which they had been obvious that they would be willing to do almost anything to convince Bethâalthough they never deemed to say her name, instead preferring to use slurs to refer to
him.
Since nothing they said was an overt threat, no oneâs Censor had warned The Black Knot about the potential threat they posed to the girlâor, if they had warned The Black Knot, the organization had been unable to intervene because if what Elijah was showing them had been used in court⊠No, there was no way anyone would be charged with intention to harm from all this, even if the implication was clear. It would just be too easy to argue Victorâs parents had intended to beg and bribe Beth to ask The Black Knot to let their son go, even if anyone who saw the video would know they definitely intended to threaten her with bodily harm.
So, what had happened between the group of them making their way to Bethâs room, the elevator behind them opening before the blackness of a locked memory overtook the scene, and Elijahâs next solid memory of sitting in an interview room with three clones glaring him down? Something that needed to be kept from Hail? Or something that needed to be kept from the world?
Thinking back to her earlier contemplations that Emilia Daniels potentially had a friend either with connections to The Black Knot or within the organization itself⊠combined with just how powerful the girl actually was, despite her supposedly high D-LevelâŠ
A hand smacked into Arabellaâs head. âFuck!â she yelped, smacking back at Sterling, although he was already out of reach, laughing and snapping off the wristband-shaped willbrand he tended to favour. He had a few more, she knew. Ones from the war. Ones from various willbrandsmiths of the Free Colonies. Ones he had stolen from the places he visited and the people he was perpetually pissing off as well.
âBetter pay attention, elder sister, lest the monsters come and take a bite out of you!â
âTheyâre called invaders,â Elijah noted. While he had also readjusted his primarily willbrandâthis one a reward from some Hail-sponsored event or another that their brother hated, claiming it was trash qualityâshifting it off his upper arm to instead wrap around his wrist, he had yet to activate it.
Sterling scoffed, muttering something about how, as much as Hail and the government didnât call them monsters, they might as well be. There was some truth in his words, Arabella knew. There had been entire governmental hearings over the subject of what to call the monsters of war, of whether to call the creatures that inhabited Hailâs real-world raids
monsters
or not. The former were public domainâor, what was left of them was, most of the transcripts scattered into the aether by the Flaming. The latter, however, were still tucked behind privacy laws of various sorts. Arabella had only seen them due to her boss being old and seemingly having no understanding of how to keep her underlings out of documents they shouldnât have access to.
Watching the first of the invaders splatter out of the aether, their bodies pulling together into wriggling blobs of iridescent white, Arabella could understand both sides of the arguments against referring to these things as monsters: they were both nothing like the monsters of warânone sheâd ever seen, anywaysâand yet, there was something about them that was⊠familiar, in a way. The way they came out of the aether wasnât quite right, but there was⊠something. It wasnât something she could give words to, but even as someone who had rarely come face-to-face with the monsters of war, having worked more behind the scenes for most of it, she could see itâcould see why so many veterans hated raids.
Even without decades of trauma behind her, Arabella still didnât like it when the invader lurched towards her. It couldnât do anything more than give her a few bumps and bruises, maybe a concussion if she was extremely unlucky, but that didnât mean her body didnât immediately flood with hormones, urging her to moveâand move, she did, skills reaching out to take down the invader.
It was just⊠she was too late.