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Arc F1.9 | Chapter 8: Our Potential Death

Leerin didn’t know what was up with Janie, but you know what? Fuck her. They’d been friends forever, and yes, Janie had always been something of an outlier in their group, hovering on the peripheries and never quite existing within or without their group, but this was just too much.Despite her never quite fully meshing with their group, Janie was still their friend—someone Leerin would die for, and yes, despite her complaints, Leerin would also die for Emilia. Her friend was annoying, always getting her nose into things that didn’t involve her—things that, especially in this case, none of them needed to have their noses in. At the same time, she appreciated Emilia’s love and kindness—not everyone would risk their life for someone like Olivier de la Rue, after all. It was annoying, and Leerin hated her friend for it. Leerin still loved Emilia with all her heart—how could she not, when in many ways, she needed her friend to bury her nose into the Zentari family’s business and break her and Darrian free?

Had Emilia not already been up to her neck in legal troubles—and really, that was yet another example of how annoying and stupid and kind the other girl could be—Leerin might have finally managed to pull the truth from her heart and tell her about the purism that was increasingly pulling through the hearts of her family members. It was the perfect time to do so, her and Darrian months away from their thirtieth birthdays—Simeon and Coral as well. Then, they would all be some mixture of free and confined.

While she would prefer to continue living in Baalphoria, for Simeon and Coral, of course Leerin would leave their nation behind and go live in some Free Colony. It would be weird and unknown, but at least their Dyad friends would be free—her and Darrian as well. If they dared live in the Free Colonies for any amount of time, Leerin was sure their family would cast them aside.

What a tragedy that would be.

For the moment, however, Leerin couldn’t add more to Emilia’s load, even if she was adding more on to herself with this whole fucking situation. It was part of why, even before Emilia had gone offaether, Leerin had rarely been complaining about the situation to Emilia herself, and even when she did, she knew Emilia would understand that she just needed an outlet for her fear and stress.

she could remember Emilia saying, back when they were still young and her friend had first witnessed her parents laying blame over her that didn’t belong to her,

Leerin had replied, tucking further into herself. Her knees had been scuffed, twigs and dirt coating her hair, smudges of mud and blood wiped over her arms and clothes. Later, when she’d finally managed to get home and look in the mirror, she’d discovered her nose was bleeding as well. The next day, both of her eyes had been black.

Her parents had barely spared her a glance, even when they had been berating her for something that she’d only happened to get involved in. It didn’t matter that one of her cousins had been the one who had done something stupid and fallen down a bank in the forest. Leerin wasn’t even supposed to be with that cousin—had been forbidden from spending time with them, actually; her parents thought them a A few of them had heard her cousin screaming for help, Janie running to get an adult while the rest of them went to search out the screaming.

Both she and Emilia had gone down to try to help her cousin at least get into a better position, as they’d been close to tumbling further over the edge. Samina had stayed above—it had just been them girls—and scrambled with her pre-Censor tablet to message The Black Knot while Lux panicked in the background.

In the end, Malcolm had arrived first. Leerin could still picture the look of horror on his face when he saw Emilia slotted precariously onto the edge of the steep drop-off—even back them, Malcolm had only ever had eyes for Emilia and Finn. The eldest Laprise brother had come down himself, practically hurling the three of them up the cliff when a clone arrived to help, before letting the clone pull him up with some sort of skill.

Then, their parents had been called. It hadn’t mattered that she had been forbidden from hanging out with this cousin: her parents had still blamed her; claimed that the cousin nearly dying had been her fault.

Back then, Emilia had overheard it, her first real moment of understanding that Leerin was often blamed for that went wrong in their family; so, they’d talked, her friend giving her permission to let some of her misery out.

the little silverstrain had said, not nearly as messy as Leerin had still been because there wasn’t a chance Malcolm would leave her disgusting, the older boy before cleaning her up with skills and tucking her into his sweater to keep her warm.

Sometimes, Leerin thought Emilia had been lying when she’d told her to let her emotions out, or perhaps, the other girl simply hadn’t understood the true gravity of all the anger and suffering Leerin had forced down into herself. Maybe she did; sometimes, it was difficult to tell with Emilia, who always seemed to know so much of the world, taking in details and ideas with brutal efficiency until she seemed to be both a child and an adult, all at once.

Certainly, she had never been affected by being blamed for things that weren’t her fault. Even back then, Emilia had simply shrugged and told her that, as she was constantly causing problems—many of which the adults in their lives never found out about, or at least, never confronted them about—she knew she’d made a reputation for herself.

Emilia had said, as though it were the easiest thing in the world. Maybe it would have been, had Leerin’s parents cared at all about her. They didn’t, so, when she caused problems that only affected her and her friends, her parents rarely cared.

Even here, Leerin wasn’t sure her parents would care that she had left Baalphoria without permission and gone to help her friends. Mostly, she figured they’d care about her being separated from Darrian, or they’d be disgusted that their group had been saving Free Coloniers—some of which they were probably going to be bringing home with them.

It was going to be a mess.

Leerin would still rather it be a mess than have stayed home, despite her complaints and half-hearted attempts to turn around. Really, she sometimes wondered if anyone had ever thought to agree with her, just to see her change her tune. If someone else tried to turn back, she really would have bitten out at them.

In her mind, it was one thing to complain as a way to let off steam, even if she knew she was annoying a number of people—Halen, most of all, for some fucking reason. That said, she was sure she was also serving as a distraction of a sort for Rafe and Simeon as well—giving them something to discuss in their private relays.

At least, she been the main distraction until Janie started acting so strangely.

What had happened, Leerin wondered, to that little girl whose eyes had blown wide at the sound of screaming in the distance? Almost immediately, Janie had been moving, yelling back that she was going to get an adult while the rest of them surged forward, and maybe, that memory wasn’t as loving as Leerin had always thought it to be?

A little over two decades ago, Leerin had thought that moment a representation of their friendship: without even trying, the five of them had fallen into sync.

There had been Janie, running to get help. Almost immediately, she and Emilia had been going down for her cousin, quickly discussing logistics before beginning their descent. Samina had started messaging for yet more help once they knew what was happening. Lux was panicking, but she had also been the one to scream at Leerin’s cousin to calm down, lest they fall—or worse, topple Leerin or Emilia off the cliff—as well as the one to gather herself and Emilia to her in a giant hug once they were returned to solid ground.

Now, looking back… had Janie ever even come back? Come and checked to see if the rest of them were okay? Had they ever even confirmed what happened, after Janie left them there—confirmed she’d actually contacted an adult to come help them? Samina had called for help, and then The Black Knot had taken care of contacting their parents, so it was actually unclear.

Really, the screaming could as easily have been other kids playing in the woods—and they’d definitely come across Codeth and Mikhail, as well as some of their shitty friends, doing weird things in the woods more than a few times. One of those shitty friends had tended to scream as though he were dying whenever the smallest thing happened. It had actually been something of a problem, as those who passed the woods and the beach had learned to ignore children screaming as though they had lost a limb, simply because such screams were so common.

One of the first functions Emilia had designed for their tablets had been to differentiate who was screaming, simply so they could ignore that one boy. Leerin was pretty sure The Black Knot had created their own Censor version—their friend group had never needed it themselves, as thankfully, that boy had ceased his death screams after he turned fifteen.

Dozens more examples of Janie running off or vanishing into the shadows with far too much speed flashed through Leerin’s mind. Many of those times held the same energy as that time with her cousin: there was no conclusion, no moment of Janie coming back with help, and while she had suspected for a while that Janie wouldn’t continue to be their friend once they graduated… it seemed like really, she’d been trying to brush aside their friendship for a while. An even darker thought that popped into Leerin’s head suggested that, more than that, Janie had been constantly leaving them to their fate, never actually going for help as promised; instead, she had left them to potentially die.

How had none of them ever noticed how terrible a friend she was? It was a bit ironic, Leerin knew, coming from her herself. In the end, she was under no illusions: Leerin knew she wasn’t the greatest friend most of the time, but she tried, and she stepped up when it was important.

was important: making sure Rafe didn’t die fighting off the bone puller.

Who had even known Lüshan had a bone puller? They were how all the teeth had ended up outside of their bodies, the bone puller’s power tugging them free and leaving them to litter the floor. The question was whether it was purposeful or accidental—bone pullers were notoriously rare and feared. Not as much as lavender codes, but definitely up there in the ranks of irregular deviations that were perpetually followed by fear and loathing.

For bone pullers, it was fear enough that, when it was discovered a nation had one working for them—and this young woman was wearing a uniform, which, based on all the dead bodies, seemed to be for the Department of Communication and Propaganda—they were treated as veritable gods. The fact that this single young woman—maybe in her fifties or sixties, assuming she was a low-dev, which almost all bone pullers were—had been able to decimate the department’s staff was proof enough of why.

As a veritable god, the woman have been given training to solidify her power and control of her abilities, but based on how she was moving in her fight with Rafe, both Simeon and Halen backing him up with dozens of defensive skills, lest the bone puller manage to dig her abilities into him… no, was better trained than this woman. In other words: the teeth pulling had been an accident, the result of her lacking full control over her abilities.

A dozen confirmations of what she’d already come to suspect slotted into her relays—messages from Miles and Malcolm and Loren, as well as Levi, who had been messaging their Dionese friends to ask as well. There weren’t even whispers of Lüshan having a bone puller, and while the existence of such a person might have been kept secret…

The thing with was that it led to loose tongues. Bone pullers could be monsters; thus, either this woman’s existence had been kept secret from virtually everyone in the Lüshanian government, therefore eliminating the possibility that someone who feared the young woman would blab to the wrong person and the secret would get out, or the woman had been keeping her existence all to herself.

If it were the former, she could be part of one of the factions that were clearly splitting apart the Lüshanian government. If it were the latter, she could be a criminal. In either case, however, her lack of training made things strange. Clearly, given she appeared increasingly panicked, she had lucked out when she managed to decimate the department. Not a criminal, not a faction member… some random government worker who had been hiding her abilities? But then, why the killing?

The young woman’s eyes slid to the side—an odd movement, even for someone untrained, to look away from the fight.

Following the woman’s gaze, Leerin found a control panel, bloody fingerprints splattered over it. Automatically, her Censor began matching the fingerprints to the young woman—and every other body in the room, but it focused on the young woman’s bloody hands, quickly aborting its scan of everyone else when the fingerprints matched the bone puller’s.

What, exactly, had the bone puller been doing over there? Better question: why was she so desperate to get back, her steps constantly taking her a bit closer, a bit closer, before some attack by Rafe would intercept her—he had also noticed her attempting to get over there.

Strange, and definitely something to look into.