“Hello, Emmie.” Malcolm didn’t look up when she sparked into his office, just continued playing with so sort of puzzle. He moved one piece, another. Twisting and turning each piece until all of the creatures—what even were those things?—were able to wiggle into their holes without running into one another.
Content to wait for him, Emilia plopped herself down in the plush chair across from him, taking in the office he had occupied for over three decades. Little had changed since the last ti she’d sat there, in the last days of the war, curled up in this sa chair with a cup of tea from Byshire. A few new pictures graced the walls, though, marking the lives that had been lost during the war—mbers of The Black Knot, as well as Division 30.
Malcolm hadn’t been an official mber of their unit, but he’d been around often enough that he might as well have been. Her childhood friend had also been the one to push for mbers of The Black Knot to be allowed to join D30, when the governnt and higher ups had been concerned about their growing power and connection to The Black Knot, thanks to the presence of so many Penns residents who had grown up alongside its most powerful mbers, even training alongside them at tis.
Due to that connection, Emilia had spent many hours sitting here, waiting for the man to think through this or that. Malcolm had been raised to sit near the head of the organization, and so far, he’d done a magnificent job of it. Still, sitting there, waiting for him to finish playing with a ga of all things, was a new experience—the guy had only ever begrudgingly played with them when they were younger. So of her friends had assud his refusal to play with them was simply because of the age difference between himself and their group, which had included his younger brothers—and part of it definitely was that—but mostly, it was just that he was a serious dude! To see him playing now… it was an experience. A good one—Malcolm always had needed more soft joy and hobbies in his life—and as much as she had limited ti, there was no way Emilia was going to demand he put the ga down and pay attention to her.
Finally, his dark eyes looked up, the dim light of the room—Malcolm almost perpetually kept the blinds closed—turning the deep brown nearly black, casting his gentle brown skin an even deeper shade. It was a good image, for the people who ended up in this room: a terrifying monster of darkness, one who wouldn’t hesitate to kill when needed.
“Fuck, you look exhausted,” she comnted, noting the dark circles lining his eyes, far more wrinkles pulling at the corners than the last ti she’d seen him. “I think you need a better skincare routine,” she said, leaning in to press at his eyes and then a dry spot on his cheek.
It took a lot for low-devs to age prematurely. Clearly, the man hadn’t been taking care of himself, although whether that was from a lack of ti or desire to do so—her friend had never really been one for caring much about his looks, unlike the youngest of his brothers.
“I will take that under advisent,” he lied. Well, apparently she was going to have to take things into her own hands. “I can’t say you look much more awake.”
“Well, I haven’t properly slept in the real world in…” Emilia trailed off, wondering when her last proper sleep even had been. Even the night before the pink tide arrived, she’d only caught a few hours of sleep in between visiting The Grint and waking for class. Before that… there had been an assignnt due, and then she’d spent the night partying and…
Refocusing, she found Malcolm levelling her with a look she’d seen so many tis when they’d been younger, and he’d found her passed out sowhere in his house, the nearby park, the beach. It was his how old are you? look. When they’d been younger, him the almost always serious and grumpy older brother figure to their entire friend group—much to his chagrin—she’d always thought it was a ridiculous look. What better ti to skip sleep and enjoy the world than when you were young!? Now, inching into her 70s… maybe the look was warranted?
“There’s been stuff. School. The whole thing with the knotter.”
The man humd as he looked back to his puzzle, the pieces repositioning themselves into a fresh configuration that he handed over to her. “I heard about that.”
“Obviously,” Emilia snorted, accepting the puzzle and trying to figure out how it worked—not to ntion what the strange creatures on it were. “Where’d you get this?”
“Birthday present from Alex.”
Ah, that explained it; Alex always gave the strangest gifts. Nearly all of them seed to both be one of a kind and mass-produced all at once. No matter how many decades went by, where they got the gifts was always a source of conversation, always accompanied by Alex avoiding answers, just like they did about nearly everything.
“Is the knotter why you decided to stop by for the first ti in a decade?” Malcolm asked, a hint of accusation threaded through his voice. It was less accusation and anger than she deserved.
“No, Sammie’s taking care of that.”
“Sothing else, then?”
The puzzle vibrated gently, letting her know she had done sothing illegal, the pieces resetting themselves. “Yeah. I was in a raid—”
“The one where you got the tickets?”
“Yeah. It was… I know I don’t raid often, but there was so weird shit going on in it,” she said, explaining the situation with the heartcores and their mind manipulations. “It was… off-putting. I could feel it affecting my mind. I lucked out, and was in a knot therapy machine at the ti, so the person who was managing all that had so records of my brain. There are definitely so… fluctuations that they didn’t think should be there.”
“But you feel fine now?” Malcolm asked, more than a hint of concern laced through his voice as he ca to kneel in front of her and—
Attempts to smack his hands away failed, and suddenly, she was in the midst of her second physical of the day—not that Malcolm was a dic like Payton, but as far as non-dics went, he had more training than most. Given the mind manipulations would be, well, in her head, and he was assessing her whole body, it was easy to assu he also knew about her run in with the echo. He may also have just been concerned with her general wellbeing, though, and Emilia contented herself to actually reading the rules of his ga while he assessed her, only switching her focus back to him when a cool hand ca to rest behind her neck, probing into her Censor.
Emilia let her friend in, lips twitching when he realized her hack effectively locked him out. Realistically, even if he managed to get past the security protocols, he wouldn’t be able to understand what he saw unless she let him.
No one, at the mont, would be able to. Helix would be able to read so, since the new hack was both based on his own design and the programming language an extension of his, and he’d be able to figure out the rest relatively quickly, she was sure, but other than that…
Malcolm glowered up at her, knowing her well enough to know that if he glared long enough, she’d let him all the way in. She did, unafraid of what he would find inside her—part of her hack allowed specific mories to be further locked away, so she could let soone into her Censor without fearing that they’d accidentally stumble across anything that would lead them to hunt down certain people and torture them.
“This is allowing you to use your core?” he asked. Malcolm might not be as skilled with hacking as Rafe or the clones were, but his job demanded he know so, and it didn’t take more than a few minutes of searching through her mind, looking at mories from the raid as well as the last decade, for him to find a few of the more exciting monts from the last few hours.
“Cool, right?”
One brown eye squeezed open to et her gaze. “You barely know that man.” The fact that Malcolm inherently trusted anyone Hetexia had vouched for barely deserved noting. The fact that he imdiately didn’t trust Conrad was just as unsurprising. “You don’t even know his real na.”
“True… but when you know, you know. Am I right?”
Malcolm did not look convinced that she was right, and Emilia didn’t doubt he’d be sending people to look into Conrad’s mysterious identity. Sothing told her he wasn’t going to find anything—especially not with the revelation Conrad had been a mber of that secretive military group.
Fuck did she wish Conrad or Sil would give her a proper na for the group! It was annoying thinking of it as simply the secretive military group.
Annoying and repetitive.
“We have a few contacts—official, undercover, and begrudging—working for Hail. I’ll ask around about the raid, see if anything officially showed up weird—they keep logs of nurous things, even for private raids. See if anyone has heard about strange things occurring.” Rising with a sigh, Malcolm shifted until he was leaning against the edge of his desk. “Getting hero records will be harder, but doable. Ti-consuming enough that if whatever happened in the raid is affecting people on this side, we’ll likely learn about it through so incident or another before we can get access.”
“Not just going to hack in?” she asked, part teasing and part genuinely curious. While she’d heard a bit about the ways laws were now favouring privacy over The Black Knot’s traditional ability to go where they wanted and do what they wanted without oversight, part of her hadn’t actually believed The Black Knot wouldn’t be working around those laws.
“No, the governnt has made it apparent that for anything regarding Hail, raids, and potential wrongdoings we have to do everything by the book.”
“Seriously? Is that why there have been a few serious incidents with raids traumatizing people and no one really being held accountable?”
“Yup. Usually, soone else tips us off about a raid going bad or being concerned with how another hero is acting. We have to balance getting to that person quickly and catching Hail doing sothing negligent.” Smile tight, Malcolm admitted that usually they leaned into getting to the person quickly, and the less than legal stuff they did often fucked up any charges they could bring against Hail.
It hadn’t always been that way, but there had been a number of laws passed during the war to allow companies and researchers the ability to innovate without risking a visit from The Black Knot. Despite the war being over, so of those laws had never been repealed, allowing Hail and other companies to continue their fucking around without much care for safety or other laws.
Unsurprisingly, laws had also been passed during the war to give The Black Knot more power to investigate this or that. Those laws had been repealed practically the mont the war ended, resulting in a strange situation where The Black Knot, who were traditionally able to act outside the law against practically anyone, could do little to legally control the actions of companies like Hail, researchers and high-ranking politicians, who had their own set of never repealed laws protecting them now.
That said, Division 30 had its own laws protecting them as well, and Emilia would be rather upset if they were repealed.
Needless to say, the entire situation was ssy, but while Emilia had known about the general state of that ss, having been no contact with every mber of The Black Knot, she’d kinda just assud they had found ways to work around the laws when needed. Work around, as in, disappearing people to black sites and using {A Private Mont} and the Hyrat clones as needed.
Apparently not?
Malcolm snorted when she asked, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling, his hands digging into the wood of the desk. “Sotis we do, but we have to pick our battles. If we keep disappearing people or manipulating too many minds, soone will notice, and there are a lot of people in the governnt who don’t like us at the mont.”
Not exactly surprising—unless they were personally acquainted with a black knot, most people didn’t trust them—and it wasn’t exactly like many of Baalphoria’s governnts had been fans of the organization—not unless they were leaning into being dictatorial and using The Black Knot as their personal enforcers, anyways. The way her friend said it, though… Clearly, sothing else was going on. Sothing he wasn’t telling her, not that she deserved his trust.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said, reading her mind because despite a decade apart, he had still known her since she was a child. “It’s just complicated, and clearly, you have other things to deal with.”
Their eyes t again, his a near fathomless black.
“Later?” she asked, more hopeful than she would have liked to sound. This was, in the end, another small step back into her life, and at the mont, every step felt like a jump of faith. Her friends, no matter how long they had been in her life, could easily reject her and break her heart. Unfortunately, every person she reconnected with had the potential to break her, and she couldn’t forget that fact, nor the fact that she deserved to be broken for her abandonnt of them.
“Later,” he promised, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. He lingered there as he told her that he was sending a few more mbers undercover, onto Ship’o Stars.
“Don’t trust and Sammie to get it done?”
When he pulled back, Malcolm was once again the grumpy older brother figure, frowning down at her as a thousand past misdeeds passed between them. That was the problem with knowing people your entire life: they had a mile long list of all your errors in judgnt and fuck-ups. Given how often she and Sammie had nearly died—or nearly killed soone else—or just generally caused chaos and mayhem….
Yeah, Emilia couldn’t even be offended that he thought they needed supervision. Plus, having more help around couldn’t hurt, especially if they’d be unassociated with their little group—people who would have the elent of surprise when they inevitably needed help getting out of trouble.
“Thank you, Mallie,” she whispered, hesitating for a brief mont before surging out of her chair to wrap her arms around his neck.
Malcolm, for all that he was perhaps the most traditionally serious black knot of his generation of relatives, gave amazing hugs, at least when they were alone. Strong arms wrapped around her, pulling them closer, closer, until it felt like they could lt together. Her toes brushed the ground, her friend taking on the majority of her weight.
“I missed you, Emmie.”
Swallowing around her tears, Emilia told him she’d missed him, too. Despite her avoidance of her friends and family, she had always missed them, her mind so often drifting to the people she still loved and would die for, especially the ones who were public figures like Malcolm had beco, much to his general annoyance.
“I should go,” she finally said, snickering when Malcolm put her down excruciatingly slow, perhaps afraid that the mont he released her it would take another decade for them to et again. Emilia caught his hands before they left her hips, hesitating before asking him the question that she had asked him so often in the past and yet now felt odd, strained, obscene. “If I visit the clones soon—not until after the whole ship thing, obviously—do you want to—”
“Yes.” So easy. Once, it had been hard for Malcolm to admit he wanted her to co to him after she spent ti with the clones, or even just a random group of people interested in having a good ti together. Now, he didn’t even need to hear the rest of the question.
“Pervert,” she muttered, laughing when he pressed another kiss to her forehead, muttering back that she was worse, and yeah, she definitely was.
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