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Arc F1.8 | Chapter 8: Safe Rooms Aren’t For The Help

Awareness stretched wide, the group moved. Decades of knowing one another, stretched through spots of time within the Virtuosi System, training before the wartime training system was more than the barest spark within Emilia and Halen’s minds, pressed the group into a symphony of movement. The Virtuosi System was not meant to be a thing of brutality, and yet, they had made it such—had opened a box of innovation that could never be closed because desperation led people to desperate places.Some things, of course, Emilia and Halen's would hold close to their chest—many others as well, their minds and ideas of creative destruction tucked away along with their unit’s home, gifted to them by The Atrium after Alliance Ridge fell.

A thing of hopes and sprawling dreams.

In her own dreams—not this dream, but other, more winding and nonsensical dreams—Emilia saw their ship, shifting through the sky, meandering over the earth, diving into the depths. Emilia didn’t miss the war, but she missed living within that monster of power and innovation—missed the overwhelming safety of it.

Monsters had flattened themselves to the sides of their home so often, and yet, nothing could touch its innards—their home, filled with love and happiness.

Their home, devoid of even a single memory of Halen.

Emilia floated, watching her friends move through one of Falmíer’s governmental buildings—one of the strange ones that held no purpose other than to house office upon office of secretaries who sometimes needed a place of their own. Not an office next to their boss, but something a little removed. It made talking to other secretaries easier, she’d heard, once. Having met a handful of their bosses over the long decades of her life, Emilia generally thought the secretaries avoiding their bosses, more than anything.

Currently, given the building appeared to have not a single person lingering within it, it seemed all the secretaries had been called away to their proper offices—at least, that was one of the options she knew her friends were considering as they shifted through the world, her mind splintering between Halen and Simeon, mostly.

Simeon signed, her father having been able to correctly guess which building Rafe had landed on—and fuck if that hadn’t been an absolutely terrifying moment to watch, this boy she loved and couldn’t make things work with swinging through the air, his eyes narrow slits of annoyance and determination.

Seeing inside Rafe’s head wasn’t as easy as it was some of the others. Halen was like an open book—Darrian and the triplets and the Baxter twins as well. Other people she had yet to reach within. Still more were a fleeting thing, brief and momentary as they watched something play out.

Even that brief moment within Rafe’s head, though… Emilia had suspected he had broken things off with her for a long time, and yet, she had never been able to bring herself to seriously consider it because in what world would Rafe ever be able to hurt her?

In what world would she ever be afraid of Rafe and what he might do to her? Rafe was love and safety, and the idea of her being safe with him? That broke her heart, to think of him believing himself someone she needed to be kept safe from—it broke her heart almost as much as Darrian’s contemplations that he wasn’t good enough to try for something with her.

Did he still feel that way?

Did he still want her that way? In that way where he was aware he fall in love with her, if only he allowed himself the chance?

Emilia’s mind slid back to their meeting in the PVP raid. All she’d felt from Darrian then was the unending, unbending love of friendship. There had been nothing else there—no extra hint of lust or longing for her in any way other than that of a long-lost friend; yet, had she ever felt anything other than friendship from the boy?

Rafe and Darrian were the same, she supposed: two stupid boys who wouldn’t properly explain themselves. If Emilia got out of here with all these memories, she was going to need to figure out if they were accurate—these images and thoughts and memories could all be a fabrication of her mind, although she doubted it—and then, she was going to need to sit those stupid boys down and tell them they were stupid.

Probably, she should also figure out what she was going to do, if it turned out Darrian was still lingering atop a knife’s edge, holding himself back from falling in love with her. A splatter of a thought—a vision of the future?—shot through her mind: Darrian smiling down at her and Baylor, two other bodies piled into the sheets around them—not Taelor or Valor, she didn’t think. A bundle of blonde curls, so familiar, and yet, it had been forever since she’d seen them in person. A deep-black hand, splayed over Baylor’s chest.

Was that the sort of chaos Darrian enjoyed? That seemed like a lot, but then, he always had seemed to enjoy pulling her and Levi back down to earth, his beautiful blue eyes squeezing closed in joy whenever the both of them were pushing against him, letting him pull them close and press kisses to their foreheads—when they were curling into his praise and adoration.

It would be easy to fall for Darrian, Emilia realized, blinking back into the moment—it was a boring moment of her friends slinking through a building she knew to be empty. They could run and scream; no one would hear them.

Halen offered, a counter to Simeon’s suggestion that they’d been pulled away for work.

Emilia’s mind shifted, pulling closer to Halen so she could watch him message her father to ask if the Lüshanian government’s buildings had safe rooms—they did, just as most official government buildings everywhere on the continent did, but it was good to check.

[Miles:]

[Miles:]

[Baylor:]

[Miles:]

[Miles:]

[Taelor:]

[Sorvell:]

[Valor:?]

[Sorvell:]

[Miles:]

[Rafe:]

[Miles:]

[Sorvell:]

Ah, Sorvell~ Still such a newbie at this point when it came to international affairs and the intricate nature of handling conflicts foreign and domestic. What Emilia wouldn’t have given, after learning about this strange conversation as Halen’s group working their way through the empty building, to have been able to jump in and regale the man with details about how, sometimes, the clones simply had to watch for betrayal.

There was an art when it came to catching people who would dare betray their nation. One could not jump upon them too fast, nor too slow. To swipe them up too quickly was to bury their connections back under the earth—to allow them time to rise with yet more power within whatever plans they had. To linger and watch too long was to risk them snapping up the chance to betray the nation more seriously.

Plus, it was always a better option to slip a clone into a betrayer’s place, and such things took time.

Emilia hadn’t been party to this discussion, however, and instead, Taelor gave Sorvell a much more succinct rundown of the reasons why the clones might not take people out immediately.

[Baylor:]

Were she able to laugh, Emilia would have. Her sweet Baylor, always wanting more and more stories, his mind a library of tales and histories that few other people on the continent knew.

[Miles:]

[Halen:]

Within Halen’s mind, a thought bubbled and popped, sparkles of that thought seeping into Emilia until she was filled with love for this boy who had always retained everything she said, even when it nothing but an overheard conversations about how difficult it was for Lüshanians to refuse a post. Secretaries had specialty training, but they could be assigned to working numerous different industries, and if a student were told they were being sent to the capital to work for the government? It wouldn’t matter that they knew they would be left to flounder were another coup to occur: there was no refusing the posting.

It was amazing, the things Halen remembered about her, practically every one of their interactions burned into his brain and coated with a fluffy layer of sugar and longing, and Emilia’s own heart burned for him. Were she in the real world, she knew she’d be crying—curled into a ball of despair for this boy she could barely remember and yet mourned with every shuddering breath.

Now, though? Now, Emilia had this image of what they really were and what they could—would—become layered over within her mind. A thousand flecks of the future lay there, strange and perfect. There were moments she remembered, forever stuck in the background of her mind because the clones had tugged them deep, so she wouldn’t remember unless she had to. There were visions that had filled a handful of her friends’ minds—a thousand more that had fluttered through her, gifted to her from the moments she’d spent within Rayleen’s mind. There was the taste of the future that every thought Halen, Baylor, Taelor, Valor—even Rafe and Darrian—had of her and each other.

It was a painful mess, and Emilia was a little concerned about how her brain and heart might be a shattered thing when she woke—they were already shattered, of course, but after all this, they might be even more so.

[Miles:]

Why Baylor was being called out about the lie they’d told her father, Emilia had no idea, but one moment she was floating, untethered, and then, she was flying home—home, oh, how she longed to find her feet home once more.