Emilia pressed herself to the ground, pushing Conrad’s much larger form further into the dirt. Although they were still a ways off, ahead of them, one of the Clarity groups was discussing the situation, and personally, she wasn’t into fighting with them. Not yet, anyways.
Instead, she was concentrating on listening to them because of all the abilities to suddenly get under control, it wasn’t her aethervoice. No, currently she was relying on Conrad sending his shivery energy through her to suppress that. It was better than the sharp shocks that Astra and V had been inflicting on her, at least, even if the man’s energy had an awkwardly sensual undertone.
When she had pointed this out, he had seed equally uncomfortable.
No, the ability she’d sohow managed to activate was an extension of her original, ability to hear locals gift. Now, even dozens of tres from the group, as long as Conrad was quiet, she could hear the group with perfect clarity.
And what they were saying? Yeah, it wasn’t good.
⸂Apparently they’ve suffered a split, and a bunch of their mbers straight up fucked off on their own. Seems the brainwashing of the heartcores wasn’t as thorough as they thought.⸃ She focused, watching the aether shift with their words and letting her ability translate those shifts for her.
It was a strange ability, closer to signing or reading than hearing. That was okay, she thought. What was even more okay? She could now read private conversations. Where previously she could only tell a private conversation was occurring, now, everything was an open book. Fortunately, it was also a book she could close, at least briefly—the process similar to zoning out in the midst of a conversation: the words were still there, her brain just wasn’t fully absorbing them.
⸂Seems it's mostly affecting the people who ca into the organization later in life? Like… they had already visited the heartcores a few tis before becoming mbers of Clarity?⸃
⸂That lines up with what we discussed,⸃ Conrad agreed.
They’d had to travel quite a while to get to the place he and the children had agreed to et up—big shocker, they weren’t there—and then the Ingogia estate, to try and track them down. One of the big things they’d discussed in that ti—other than how stupid he was to let the kids go off on their own—had been the toxicity of the heartcores.
⸂I’m glad I only entered two,⸃ the other visitor had said, frowning deeply.
Sothing had bothered him, but he had been unwilling to tell her what it was, so Emilia had been forced to let it drop. Let the man keep his secrets, although considering he was generally a pretty open book—when sothing was actually relevant to their current situation, anyways—she was rather worried about what could be concerning enough to make him hide it from her.
Part of what they had discussed was the way each group seed to be affected differently by the heartcores. Clarity mbers seed to lose their personalities in their altered state, becoming mindless drones when their heartcore corrupted personality was active. Risen Guards’ altered personalities, on the other hand, were zealots, willing to hunt down and kill Enclave mbers and visitors without pause, although they seed to draw a line at hurting civilians.
A few quick ssages to Boundary and Villy confird this, and they told her that the Enclave mbers who sought out the gifts of too many heartcores beca cruel, viewing anyone who got in their way as necessary collateral damage.
Interestingly, while Clarity and Risen Guard mbers shifted in and out of their corrupted personalities, Enclave mbers seed to slowly morph into theirs until it was all that existed. Well, that would probably explain why a few of the Enclave mbers she’d t—Sk’lar, Cade’s crazy babysitter, that rando Boundary had killed in the city, and pretty much every mber of the Ingogia family—scread psycho to her. Permanent psychos. Great.
In other words, with rare exceptions—like Carne—heartcores consistently affected mbers of each group in a specific way. Now, that was biting Clarity in the butt. A substantial amount of their mbers might have been born into Clarity, but not all of them: so of them had spent years training to be Enclave mbers and occasionally Risen Guards—it was even possibly several had been spies and touched heartcores as mbers of all three groups at different tis.
As she and Conrad had discussed all this, Emilia had finally opened Honey’s ssages back up, curious as to how the training had affected her as a spy.
The short version: it hadn’t.
The long version: Honey had never been able to seek a gift from a heartcore as an Enclave mber, due to how undercover she was. Her heartcore corruption was 100% Risen Guard, which simultaneously put her into a better and worse position than spies who had gone through both.
[Honey:Basically, if my personality switches, I’ll be all anti-visitor, anti-Enclave.]
[Honey:Obviously not good for family reunions.]
[Honey:But the alternative is getting the worst of both worlds.]
[Honey:The spies I know of who’ve done both?]
[Honey:Anger issues.]
[Honey:And it’s all permanent, and it all happens, like… way faster than usual for normal Enclave mbers?]
[Honey:Usually it takes them eight or nine visits for their personality to shift to the point where they can’t be reasoned with, but from what I’ve heard, pretty much the first ti soone gets gifts from both Risen Guard and Enclave heartcores, they beco really hard to deal with.]
[Honey:All that’s left is a very angry person with very firm beliefs on what’s right and what’s wrong.]
[Honey:That’s not even the worst that can happen, though.]
[Honey:From what I’ve heard, most of the ti the Risen Guard heartcores just speed up a spy’s transition into full-blown Enclave psychosis, but I’ve heard that sotis the spies… beco worse? Like… like a bit of the Risen Guard’s alternate personality makes it inside them?]
[Honey:I don’t know much about that. It’s pretty secret, and I think families kill spies who end up like that pretty quickly, since they’re basically just walking ti bombs.]
Emilia had sent off a few questions about Honey’s ssages, mostly about her references to beliefs and Enclave psychosis. What she’d gotten back was an explanation that heartcores hardened the beliefs of Enclave mbers, turning already existing beliefs about the world and its people into sothing unreasonable—sothing that couldn’t be argued with.
Dislike turned to hatred, love to obsession. Enclave mbers who believed their family should be the ones to win a heartcore beca willing to destroy anyone in their path, including other Enclave mbers. A want to save the world at any cost beca a willingness to kill, torture or sacrifice even regular civilians.
That would definitely explain so of the strange ways the Enclave families interacted.
An image of Harmony, hating practically everyone, flashed through Emilia’s head. Maybe that was why the girl had ended up hating her, for seemingly no reason. She’d almost seed to hate everyone at the end there, which sucked. As much as the girl had never been nice to her, she’d been able to befriend Rin, presumably before either of them began changing their personalities.
Rin. The thought of the girl had sent a spike of hurt through Emilia’s heart. Before they t, Rin had had a future with the Risen Guard. She had had sothing she believed in. Then Key had inadvertently filled her head with half-facts. Yes, the Risen Guard was still corrupt, but it wasn’t nearly as corrupt as Key’s knowledge had led them to believe, and now… and now what? She had no idea what had happened to any of the Stringers. Stars above, they could still be trapped inside the Library Labyrinth, for all she knew!
Before she could think too much about it, Emilia had asked Honey if there was any way she could find out what had happened to them. As much as the Enclave spy seed rather disconnected from the Enclave, due to how anonymous her fake family was, she must have so way to get a hold of soone and ask after the Stringers… her friends.
Honey had, sowhat reluctantly, agreed.
[Honey:I heard so whispers, about how they lost you.]
[Honey:I don’t know many details, but I think the whole family is being monitored, in case they ss up again.]
Emilia had replied with a redacted version of what she knew about the family, about how they had allegedly already been on thin ice, and ssing up in the Library Labyrinth probably hadn’t done anything for their reputation—especially if soone managed to figure out that Rin was actually a Risen Guard trainee. Plus, they’d killed Taoran, and she’d stolen V… then she’d been involved in the situation in Livery—sothing that had surely gotten back to the Enclave through spies, after they were rescued by the Risen Guard. Yeah… there was a chance that anyone associated with allowing her to gain power in this world might currently be in so deep shit.
That made her feel worse, and she had made Honey promise to let her know if she learned anything about what was happening with the Stringer family.
Honey had agreed, although she had clearly not been happy about it. When pushed, she had admitted that as much as Emilia wasn’t reading any of her other ssages—the ones that Emilia received endlessly, about every aspect of the girl’s life—she had still liked telling soone her thoughts. If Emilia actually needed to get a few of her ssages, it ant she couldn’t just keep ssaging her.
Thinking back, Emilia had realized all that the tis Honey had sent important ssages they had been followed by long silences, presumably so if Emilia actually opened the ssages, she’d see the important ones.
That was… kind, if also unnecessary. She might have put off reading Honey’s ssages, but it was more due to the headache they caused than anything else—she’d always loved gossip and drama, and the young woman’s ssages were filled with those things. Not relevant to her, but fascinating nonetheless. When she inford Honey that she had actually read all her ssages, the young woman had been so happy, Emilia’s heart had ached for her.
How hard it must be, to exist in the world with so many secrets. Everyone needed soone–it was part of why she’d held on to Rafe so hard, even after disappearing into her secrets. And here in this world? Harmony had found Rin, as ill-advised as that may have been, and even if she hadn’t, she also had her brother and family. Honey had already told her that she didn’t like her fake family and rarely saw her real one. It was sad, but there wasn’t anything Emilia could do for the Enclave spy long term. In the anti, however, she told Honey to not worry about ssaging her too much, and after nearly thirty minutes of her, Honey and Conrad struggling, they figured out how to connect Honey and Conrad’s ssaging system. Emilia had gotten a nose bleed, giving him system access several hours earlier.
Conrad, rather unsurprisingly, had taken well to the system. Sohow it was less annoying with him, sothing telling her that he was a lot like her, and generally took quickly to new things. Holding that against him felt a bit like forgiving so of her more terrible classmates, when they had glared at her for conquering one task or another too quickly. Given she wasn’t about to forgive their stupid jealousy, she wasn’t going to hold Conrad’s own skill against him.
He had asked, as she mused this over, whether the other visitors she’d been—playfully—annoyed with hadn’t felt like they were quick learners. Emilia had slotted away the fact that he didn’t deny he picked up skills easily, and explained that she didn’t think they were. Neither V nor Astra felt like they had expected to pick skills up so easily—it had just sort of happened for them. In their case… well, V had told her he had dealt with similar communication forms in raids before, and while Astra had never outright said so, Emilia kinda figured she thought less in words and more in images. For them, it felt like the raid system was natural, and it was frustrating because normally, she was good at being a natural at everything.
Not so much in this case.
⸂You know you’re being insane, right?⸃ the other visitor had asked, and yes—yes she did realize she was being insane and jealous over the silliest of things.
⸂It’s frustrating, is all,⸃ she had mumbled, glaring at the magic circle in the corner of the Risen Guard system and willing it to do sothing for her—anything.
According to the instructions Villy had given her, it should have made it a bit easier for her to use magic, allowing her to skip so of the background imagination, much like Censors allowed their owners to skip so of the computation of a skill. She couldn’t make it work. Conrad could, of course, and he’d even tried talking her through so of. It hadn’t helped, and everything was horrible.
At the very least, she’d been able to make the man laugh as they went, telling him stories about their ti apart, as well as before they had t each other. It was as though agreeing to et up in the real world had settled sothing between them, so tension disappearing, mostly from Conrad. He wouldn’t say why, although Emilia could guess it had sothing to do with the oddly familial way they’d been interacting with each other through most of their etings.
Leaving friends behind was hard enough, but family, whether blood or adopted or chosen? There was sothing sad to that, and she kinda figured Conrad had been holding himself back a bit—trying not to get too attached to her, in case they left this raid and never t again. If she reminded him of his brother as much as he claid she did, it was easy to imagine his brain had automatically classified her as soone he could love and care for with as much ease as he did this brother. The sensible thing to do was refuse to allow himself to love her.
Now, that sensibility had vanished. Emilia felt oddly loved and cared for, and for once, she wasn’t the big sister. Sure, Malcolm had been like a big brother to her at tis, but there were things that had happened between them that definitely didn’t belong in a brother-sister relationship.
And to everyone else? More often than not, she’d been forced into being a big sister figure to most of her friends. Sotis she was just friend or potential—or previous—hookup, but big sister was way more common. And the people she knew who could fit into an older sibling role? There had been a few people who felt like that during the war—Ri and Naomi in particular ca to mind—but they were gone, one dead and the other disappeared into his locked down Free Colony.
With Conrad, even after so little ti together… yeah, there was sothing strange and natural and familial in the way they acted and teased each other, in the way having his energy inside her felt awkwardly wrong in a way she doubted it would with almost anyone else.
Their relationship was weird. Not bad, but she was also pretty sure that once they t in person, she was going to have a hard ti getting rid of him, if she suddenly felt like she had to. Hopefully, it wouldn’t end up like that. The more she got to know the man, the more she liked him, the more she found they had in common, despite his overall oddness.
Plus, other than his one brother, the guy’s family clearly sucked. If she could help him get away from them, she was okay with that.
Yeah… that probably wasn’t the best ntality to be starting their weird relationship in.
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