Every mont for the last… fuck if he knew how long—two? five? fifty-two? hours of his life had been a blur of motion, choreographed not through his own mind, but through sothing… else. Multiple sothing elses. The last had just been a normal… ish woman, her abilities swirling through him still, even if the pull of them was lessening over his sticky brain. The other had been sothing other. Sothing wrong, and yet… right? Not just that first other thing—even the woman’s pulling had felt right, in a strange, niggling way.
It was hard to explain. It had all made sense in the mont—this dragging of his body around the city, not by his own volition but by the will of sothing else. He hadn’t fought, except the once, early on. Maybe… an hour? No—less than that, after he had first found his mind so detached from his body. At the very beginning, everything had been heavy. There had been that otherness to begin with, dragging him along—inescapable in a way that turned his stomach even now, even as he looked back on what had occurred with a dual sense of rightness and foreboding.
Soone would die—multiple soones. It was inescapable now—burned into the future with a definitive swoop of ink, bloody and sticky, lding into the world until it was a permanent scar over the future.
It would be.
There was no escape.
His brain still floating, not quite reattached to his body, he couldn’t feel guilt for any of that yet—for these lives that would be snuffed out because of him. It wasn’t really him, of course. He knew that. He knew that.
Still, the feeling of rightness mixed with knowledge that death was required for the future to pushed forward, and that would be where his guilt ca from—from this acceptance that death of people who were not him was a necessity.
Now, if only he could figure out why it was necessary…
Eye skimming over the small cell he had been left in an unknown amount of ti earlier—really, he would neither be surprised if it had been minutes nor if it had been days since his mind had begun to tentatively brush against the electronic components installed at the base of his brain once more—he saw no evidence that the woman who had taken him was nearby. Well, that was good. She wasn’t happy with him—or perhaps it was better to say she wasn’t happy with herself.
She had underestimated him, after all, whatever core ability she had digging into him when he was bought to her by that other thing—the aether? its enemies? sothing else entirely? Who knew—not him.
That thing, whatever it had been, had lifted away from him the mont the woman’s ability had clawed itself into him. For her, that should have been it. Away she would take him, to this place. If anyone followed—and he was nearly positive they had been trailed by the most obstinate girl he had ever t—they would lose track of them soon enough.
The woman didn’t leave evidence of her movents behind.
The woman thought her powers inescapable, and maybe they would have been had Halen not given him a skill for breaking free of Emilia’s skills the day before.
Olivier’s relays might not be working, his Censor dragged offaether the mont that woman had rubbed a thick, burning oil over the nape of his neck, but skills and downloaded functions still worked—for those early monts, anyways. One explosion of that skill later and Olivier had managed to land a single hit on the woman before she regained control of him, her abilities bearing even harder over him and fracturing his mind away from his Censor further.
Who knew if Emilia would find the drops of blood he had left behind in that tunnel, dripping off his broken knuckles before the woman had burned them closed. Maybe she wouldn’t. He hoped she would—he had information to tell her, after all.
Still, it would do no good to just lie around and wait for the beautiful silverstrain to show. With the woman gone, her influence was slowly abandoning him—or, perhaps it was more accurate to say it had left him quite a while ago. While Olivier didn’t know nearly enough about Censors to be certain, he suspected that the amount of ti he had spent disassociated from it had left them needing to reacclimatize to one another again, similar to how those who were drugged with the Censor interference drug often complained of difficulties connecting with their Censor for a few days after the incident.
Due to a lack of control tests—who wanted to be a test subject for a drug that temporarily disconnected their Censor and brain, after all—Olivier thought most people assud it was more of a trauma response than anything else. Maybe it was, but if what he were experiencing were anything like what those who were drugged experienced…
Well, he didn’t feel traumatized, and realistically, with Perfect Balance Levels, it was unlikely only this amount of trauma would do more than leave him a bit jumpy for a few days, if even that. Still, his connection with his Censor faded in and out. For a long few minutes, Olivier turned inward, assessing himself for any sign he no longer trusted his Censor.
That was the best theory experts current had for why trauma from being dosed with the Censor interference drug could cause Censor disconnect: the loss of their Censor during a potentially violent mont of their life could cause a person to no longer trust it. Olivier had never really thought this a good argunt—after all, it wasn’t like the Censor disconnect usually lasted more than a few days, and it wasn’t like the days of constant fluctuation appeared to cause more trauma and distrust.
Unfortunately, while the drug was increasingly common, it was in no way widespread and while that was a good thing, it also ant there was no obligation for those who were dosed—or who took it voluntarily, as a small subset of the population had taken to doing, so they could either commit cris or just learn what being without a Censor as an adult felt like—to let themselves be poked and prodded by doctors seeking answers to how the drug was affecting them in the long- and short-term. If the drug started to pop up in more criminal cases, the governnt might consider forcing victims to submit themselves to such tests, while so researcher might show an interest in running experints on willing victims.
That sort of thing wasn’t sothing the governnt ever wanted to push—and realistically, if they did, they’d face lawsuits from multiple concerned parties. Everyone knew that the mont obligations like that were codified into law, the people they would affect were less likely to co forward. Even in the most benign of situations—such as forcing citizens to alert the governnt when they saw monsters coming out of the sea, for instance—often faced pushback, even if everyone knew such laws would go through eventually. For sothing as sensitive as this? Where the victims of the drug were often left emotionally and physically hard from what had been done to them?
No, in this sort of situation—
“Your brain is noisy.”
Olivier’s eyes snapped to the wall next to him, where the voice had seemingly co from. Laying on his side as he was, the cool of the damp stone seeping through his body, Olivier had assud the grimy grey wall was just a normal, solid wall when he had briefly let his gaze shift through the room. Evidently not. Instead, the top foot or so of the wall was barred. Two dirty hands had wrapped themselves around the bars, an equally dirty face smushed up against them. Olivier thought the girl’s hair was blue—did people have blue hair? He knew so people dyed their hair—Axelle was constantly dying hers; it was currently a shocking shade of pink—but with how haggard and undernourished even what he could see of the girl was, he would be surprised if she were dying it.
“More thoughts~ More thoughts~” the girl comnted, nodding like it was completely normal that she could either hear his thoughts or just tell that his brain was vibrating with thoughts as it ca back to itself. Most likely, it was the latter, as that was what she claid when he finally managed to find his voice and ask. The girl could be lying. Olivier didn’t think she was.
“It’s an irregular deviation!” the girl cheered, her disembodied head bouncing up and down as Olivier worked to get himself to sitting. “I an, it could be so sort of Dyadism? Hard to tell, since I’ve never been tested.” Shrugging, she said that Fräthk had had her tested, when he’d captured her a few months previous, but he hadn’t given her any information on the results. “Might be nice, to actually know, you know? I’ve always assud I’m an irregular, cause of the hair, and all? Don’t think Dyads generally get anything so vividly different about their appearance.”
Oddly, she didn’t sound too put out that this Fräthk person seemingly knew her results, and yet, wasn’t sharing. Then again, the girl had said she had been captured, after all, and this place definitely seed like a prison of sorts.
“Not usually,” Olivier agreed, struggling to make the strange vowels of Lüshanian co off his tongue. While he’d downloaded the translation packs, they weren’t actually ant to help soone speak the language. Instead, they translated what was said to them. In turn, the packs could translate what Olivier wanted to say and then say it into his head. From there, he had to force it all out of his mouth. It wasn’t going very well, the girl laughing and correcting his pronunciation into sothing that he was unconvinced wasn’t worse than his initial attempt.
“You could have both,” he noted. “An irregular deviation and Dyadism.”
The girl nodded along, telling him that she’d considered that before, before shrugging. “Don’t really matter much on the streets.”
“You live on the streets?”
“Used to. Now I live here—not by choice. Fräthk, you understand?”
Olivier very much did not understand. Fortunately, the girl was quite happy to keep chatting, explaining that Fräthk was one of two people working for the Unáshrà Family, each of them collecting valuable residents of the city—and increasingly other Lüshanian cities, although that was more Gëon’s territory.
“No idea how he’s doing it! Hard to get out of our cities. Even harder to get into another. Yet, he be doing it.” Sighing wistfully, the girl told him that she knew she should have gone off and handed herself over the Gëon before Fräthk managed to pick her up, explaining that while Gëon made no secret of how cruel and heartless he could be in his quest to get what he wanted, at least he wasn’t needlessly cruel the way Fräthk was.
“People don’t run off from Gëon.” Motioning around Olivier’s cell, she told him the reason it was so barren was because sotis, when people were picked up by Fräthk, they decided death was preferable. “Used to be those who weren’t any use to him would be shipped off to be slaves—Drini were totally corrupt for him, letting him take the people he had no use for out of the city. They’re still corrupt now, but the Drini’s top ‘kursta’s been slamming down on anyone too obvious. Don’t an they ain’t still stirring up a war.”
“A war between whom?” Olivier asked, rather than point out that both of them still had their clothes. While hanging themselves would be rather difficult, they definitely could slip sothing through the bars and try. Given a combination of factors—how terrible he felt, the fact that he’d had no knowledge of the situation until this conversation, his kidnapper’s constant underestimating of him, his potential hope that Baalphoria would try to rescue him—he wouldn’t be surprised if the woman who had brought him here hadn’t assud he wasn’t at much risk of killing himself. As for the girl…
Olivier didn’t exactly want to judge her based on their short interaction, but given how cheerful she was, despite having apparently been there for several months, it didn’t seem that she was the sort to be driven to a desperate death by a kidnapping alone. He could be wrong. He didn’t think he was, everything about the girl screaming optimism that sohow rivalled even Emilia’s. It was impressive, and also rather terrifying. It could also have just been the result of having been alone down here alone for who knew how long.
So, when the girl had finished explaining that she was pretty sure that Fräthk was trying to take down this Gëon with the help of a corrupt faction of the Drinarna, despite the pair technically belonging to the sa organization, Olivier had to ask exactly how long she had been down there alone for, and whether she had been allowed out of her cell in that ti.
“Alone? We’re not alone?” she said, tone implying she thought him particularly stupid. “Ah~ You’re not soone who can feel everyone else, I suppose. Hm… lucky. It’s so annoying always knowing when people are thinking around . There have been others like down here before…” Trailing off, the girl said that most of those people were gone now.
Olivier very much did not like the way she said gone, an implication that gone could an a dozen different terrible things hanging heavy between them.
“How many people are down here right now?” he asked, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.
“In the holding cells? Or in general?”
“Both.”
Her eyes flickering closed, the girl seed to just breathe in the aether for a mont, Olivier Censor picking up the smallest of shifts as it pressed against her, almost as though she were consuming it. “Twenty-two in the holding cells, another seven of us in the rooms further out, and nine of Fräthk's loyal—although, one’s an oddball, if you ask .”
“Fräthk's loyal?” Olivier asked, already cursing himself because he knew exactly where this was going—where his stupid bleeding heart was going to lead him, regardless of his lack of confidence that he wouldn’t just make things worse and get himself killed.
Nodding, the girl smiled, wide and sad all at once. “Not many of us want to be here, yeah? Hard to escape through anything but death, though. We can’t leave the city, you know? And the Drini can’t be trusted, so…” Another sad, too accepting shrug left the girl as she muttered that they could try to run, but Fräthk would just bring them back the mont he found them. “There’s no escape from this life, though… I dunno. So people give up; I don’t really want to, ya know?”
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