[Can't Opt Out]

Arc F1.8 | Chapter 35: The Things We Learn When Fighting For Our Lives (Maybe)

In the worst of times—in moments of grief and stress and rage—people learned a lot about themselves: whether they would freeze or flee; whether they would flinch or slice a blade across an enemy’s throat; whether they would let guilt for their actions eat them alive, or if it would slide off them like drops of cooling rain. Darrian, in these moments of being attacked by Fräthk’s people—with their new allies’ help, Valor and Bireth had managed to get the criminal’s xphern messages translated, at which point they’d been able to track a number of their stalkers down—was learning that he didn’t feel much guilt over killing criminals.Were they people who had been forced into this life? Possibly—Vtraní had made it clear that Fräthk had far more working for them who had chosen that life or been forced into it due to their own, willingly made bad decisions, such as racking up a gambling debt. Yes, sometimes was bogged down by addiction and desperation; still, Darrian didn’t care.

These were people who would have killed or kidnapped them, if given the chance. Why should he feel remorse for cutting their lives short? He would rather kill them than let them live, only to later learn that they had killed someone else—done more harm to the world.

It wasn’t something he relished, but some part of him could understand Baylor enjoyed this, his face constantly lit up with a deranged smile as the two of them, plus Westrial, worked their way through their stalkers—the second group they’d hunted down, this one moderately big, although no one was particularly powerful. The rest of their group lingered behind them, Taelor and Valor prepared to step in at any moment, Sorvell prepared to use those oddly effective confinement skills of his, while Bireth had finally managed to get the hacked xphern away from Valor in order to manage it.

the Drinarna intern had admitted, easily tacking on that he had little confidence that his abilities would stand up to their own, based on what he had seen so far—and given the young man hadn’t actually seen them do , they’d all been inclined to believe him.

The intern was kind, even if he was formal and stern in the way most younger Lüshanians were—at least, those Darrian had met through Emilia dragging him about to hang with her when Cameron and the occasional other Drinarna intern was forced on her, were that way. Vantril hadn’t been so stern, while Westrial… definitely wasn’t a good measuring stick. The teenager was also clearly hiding some irregular deviation—further proof that she was trying to get to Fräthk because she had some knowledge of the people they were holding.

Considering that one of Emilia’s last messages had been to reveal that the building she was in was called the 17th holding cell… Darrian shook himself, not wanting to think of how many other people were being held by Fräthk, either due to an irregular deviation they couldn’t control or some error on their part. Getting into debt to a crime lord due to gambling was stupid; at the same time, it was so impossibly and as Darrian hit another of their stalkers with a skill, reducing them to blood and gore, he took a moment to channel Emilia and mourn the person they had once been.

This person, now a splatter of blood and bone, wasn’t someone worth mourning. At some point, however, they had been an innocent child, and whatever had led that child to this place, Darrian was sorry for them.

“Darrie~” Baylor whined, leaning against him, an adorable pout pulled over his features.

A sudden surge of rushed through Darrian, and oh… well, that was something both unexpected and entirely excepted all at once. If Emilia and Levi were his type, of course Baylor would be as well. Previously, his dick had just had enough sense not to want to fuck someone as crazy as Baylor. Apparently, becoming friends had knocked that little bit of common sense out of its little head.

Fortunately, Baylor didn’t seem to be paying attention to his vitals—Valor was, based on the twitch of his lips as he glanced over at them. Halen was also watching their vitals, even having the audacity to send a message asking whether he had actually experienced a surge of arousal in the middle of battle or if his function was acting up. Not wanting to accidentally fuck with Halen’s function—it was turning out to be moderately useful, allowing them to track each other and not worry too much about one another while separated—Darrian sent a picture of Baylor pouting up at him to Halen.

Halen’s response? A surge of both arousal—which, interesting?—and disgust—fair, given the ground under Baylor was covered in blood.

Halen asked, sending along his own photo of Simeon glaring at Leerin’s back, his eyes dark blades of ice because Darrian’s stupid cousin was going off about how stupid it was for them to continue on.

According to the short summary of the situation that Halen sent him, they’d come to the exit of the building they had landed on. So, they would be moving on to a new building as they attempted to get to the department that managed the xphern transmission network, in order to figure out it was down. Leerin didn’t want to leave the building. Personally, Darrian didn’t think hunkering down in the Secretarial Stand would do them any good, even had anyone else agreed to do so—although, it didn’t escape his notice that Halen’s summary gave no indication of which way Janie had voted, an increasingly common occurrence as the girl seemingly attempted to fade into the shadows.

Darrian replied while brushing aside Baylor’s questions about what skill he’d used at the same time. There was as much of a chance that Baylor would overuse the skill as there was that he would refuse to use it on the grounds that Halen had designed it. Either way, Darrian didn’t much think Baylor should be told that one of his skills—created by Halen or not, Darrian was sure the middle triplet still had a copy—could turn humans into ground meat.

Lips quirking at Halen’s one word response—it was quite rare to reduce the other boy to speechlessness—Darrian tugged Baylor behind him, another of the stalkers exploding out of the building beside them, intent to… do something to them. It remained unclear if they wanted them dead or captured for the simple fact that all of them weren’t very skilled. As a result, Darrian could have quite easily killed them with more sensible skills or his willbrand; instead, he had been experimenting with some of the skills his Censor had informed him over the years be potentially lethal.

For one reason or another, his Censor was obsessed with poking at skills and determining if they could be used to kill or seriously injure someone. As far as he knew, this wasn’t normal behaviour—it wasn’t as though anyone else had ever pointed out to Halen that {Ground Meat} had no safety features to keep it from being used on humans or anything over a certain size, after all. It did have a feature which would only let it affect whatever it was initially aimed at, however; hence, as long as it was being used in the kitchen, there was little risk of it actually harming anyone.

It also wasn’t like anyone had ever given him a function to do such testing either; instead, it seemed to be an aspect of his caretaker tendencies, reaching through his Censor until it was poking hypotheticals at all of his skills, making sure they were safe.

Usually, he told people about it. As the {Ground Meat} skill had been replaced by a more catch-all cooking skill by Halen and Emilia—one of those supposedly rare situations in which they collaborated that were actually in no way rare—Darrian had never bothered pointing out the flaw in the original skill to the other boy. In most cases, however, he told Emilia or Halen about the issue, both updating the skills quickly, never questioning him when he claimed some skill had an obscure use case that left it vulnerable to misuse. They would distribute the new version. Darrian would install it; he also kept the old version.

Emilia knew he kept them, designing a CS for him that disabled the older versions of the skills, while automatically switching over to a mode when needed. That version, active at the moment, had extra safety precautions so he couldn’t accidentally use a potentially lethal skill on an ally—that would be terrible. They had tested the lethal-combat mode quite a bit, with dummies. Some had been designated , others .

As much as small fuck-ups happened from time to time, leaving some lethality in an otherwise benign skill—in the same way that a normal knife could be used to kill, so too could completely safe and normal skills sometimes be deadly in ways that didn’t warrant extra safety features—Emilia was thorough. In no world would she want to leave Darrian able to accidentally kill someone he loved because she hadn’t tested his CS’s extra safety features to such an extent that Darrian had eventually been forced to beg her to stop—it had been a lot, and while she occasionally poked at the mode and did more testing whenever he had his Censor updated, she had mostly relaxed.

Halen was demanding as Darrian let a different skill slice through the aether, Darrian forwarding the other boy a copy of his own, catch-all cooking skill to make a point: {Ground Meat} was used by no one.

This new skill Darrian tested had been designed to blow hair back as someone walked, making them If calibrated , it could slice a person's head right off—a theory until the stalkers’ head went flying, Baylor releasing an orgasmic sound beside him. Halen added with all the horror of someone who already knew the answer and didn’t actually want the answer but couldn’t help himself.

Darrian replied, tacking on a comment about how he was pretty sure the person had realized their head was no longer attached to their body before the light left their eyes.

Halen, through their relay, seemed horrified. That was fair. Oddly, Darrian felt little horror over what he’d done, even his feelings over Baylor finding the situation arousing settling into some place of neutrality. As long as Baylor didn’t go around killing people for fun alone, what did it matter if his kinks were a little fucked up?

People, in the end, learned very strange things about themselves when their lives were at risk.

Westrial noted over the sound of Baylor whining about how Darrian wouldn’t tell him what skills he was using to The teenager popped up on Darrian’s other side, blood splattered over her cheeks. The girl wiped a hand over one cheek, the splatter turning into a smear over her dark cheeks.

Once they were done with the killing, Darrian would run one of Emilia’s skills to remove all the blood from each of them. It was a skill that was based on her knowledge of the Blood Rain General’s; as a result, Emilia had always been relatively disinclined to give it to anyone—it wasn’t like she was supposed to be sharing what techniques she learned in Dion with anyone. For him, however, she had made an exception for this one skill, not meant to be lethal, but loving.

Part of it was so his weird Censor could look at each skill and check for anything she’d missed. Part of it was because he was the one always cleaning them up—although, even his cleaning skills had limits, Westrial needing a proper bath to get clean.

Emilia had muttered as they waited for Darrian’s Censor to go over the skill.

It had been years ago—only a year after their Censors had been installed, before Warren hurt Emilia, before Rafe had loved and then broken Emilia, before the triplets had tugged her into their bed. Snuggled together on Emilia’s bed, his fingers brushing through her hair as she faded in and out of sleep because she’d just returned from Dion and been too excited to not invite Darrian over immediately, Darrian had tried to summon the courage to ask her out.

Obviously, he’d never managed to find the courage. Courage was a difficult thing to find for anyone, especially an awkward boy who seemed to constantly want people far out of his league. Now, with each person of power and beauty who fell into Emilia’s bed and heart, Darrian thought himself smaller and less impressive with each passing year. It was stupid, and he knew he should just… move on. Find someone a little to date. It wasn’t even like he was in love with Emilia or Levi, despite knowing how easily he could fall.

He was an idiot, though, and as Baylor continued to complain and smile up at him, occasionally leaning across him to whisper to Westrial about how mean Darrian was, for keeping secrets, Darrian felt another notch in his heart open up. He was an idiot, accepting yet another person who could never be his into that special place within himself, reserved for people he knew he could love, if only they wanted him to.

No one who currently lived there would ever want his love.

Still, Darrian pulled Baylor close and pressed a kiss to his forehead. To his other side, Westrial shifted, so aware that she was disgusting but relishing in his physical affection as much as any of the touch-starved people he enjoyed lathing in affection did. Darrian turned, intent to give her a forehead kiss as well, his eyes catching on movement to the side just as the attack came.

Unlike every other attack, this one was powerful, its intent clear: this was an attack meant to kill them.