Emilia stepped out onto the street alone, Payton having already rushed off to prepare for their trip—although she was sure a bigger part of it was how much he clearly wanted to shower—the chill of daybreak racketing through her. Even with climate control systems, there was just something about the moments of dawn, when the heat of the soil and the sun met, where the world just seemed too cold. It probably didn’t help that she had no shoes or socks.

  Not that the chill would last long, with the pink tide still pressing against the city.

  Briefly, Emilia considered trying out her newly freed ability to spark—considered jumping back to campus so she could snuggle up into bed in an attempt to get a few hours of sleep before she had to deal with, well, everything.

  She didn’t, instead contenting herself to walk the short distance to the slide lines. After so many hours inside the raid, her body needed to move—her brain needed to move. It was too soon to think over everything that had happened inside the raids—everything she had lost and found. Those sorts of things… she’d think about them later, when she was safe in bed or the shower—cause man, even though Olivier had washed her clean of all the grime she’d acquired during her tussle with the echo, she still felt pretty nasty. So, rather than panic or break down in tears, she instead clasped onto one thread of something more… positive.

  Hope? Understanding? Some sense of finally growing the fuck up?

  Emilia wasn’t sure, but she forced herself not to hesitate as she pulled Olivier’s borrowed sweater tighter around herself and opened a message. Her Censor stuttered, and she wasn’t sure which of them was the problem—she was the one who had been gone for so long, after all, the systems of the raid barely anything like the AI she had lived alongside for most of her life. Funny, how easy it was to forget the ease of using it.

  So yeah, she was probably the problem, although her Censor had been a bit moody since she’d come back. Hopefully, they would reacclimate to each other quickly… or her Censor would get over whatever its issue was. Perhaps it had realized how much she’d used her core within the raid? That would be just like it, to throw a mini hissy fit because it was a jealous bitch.

  It needed to get over itself. They had shit to do. Bad guys to stop. Plus, hacking Censors always went a bit better when the Censor in question was cooperating. Currently, Emilia didn’t foresee it cooperating, not when half her intention was to iron out the errors it had been giving her recently and the other half was a desire to make using her core easier.

  Yeah, it wasn’t going to like that.

  Finally, after too many seconds had passed—okay, that was definitely her Censor being a bitch—her message finally slipped free and flew through the aether.

  [Emilia: do you remember when i was a teenager and burnt the living room curtains?]

  It was early, the rising sun a slow creep over the crumbling buildings of this section of the city, and she wasn’t expecting an answer—except she was. Despite only one of her old friends having responded to her message about whether they wanted random raid rewards or not—one of Boyd’s teammates, of all people, who had diligently taken a few items—it didn’t take a genius to know that practically everyone who cared about her—who hadn’t heard from her in a decade—would have their Censors configured to wake them if she tried to contact them. Most likely, they just didn’t know what to think of her message—fair—or their Censor was programmed to ignore stupid messages about raid rewards, and that was superseding anything that might have woken them up—she seriously doubted anyone would have thought her first message to them in a decade would be about raid rewards, so why the fuck would they create an exception for her?

  [Daddy: Yes. They were almost brand new, which was bad from a money point of view, but made it quite simple to replace them.]

  Emilia stared at the message from her father. So calm, as though this was just a random message in a mess of dozens more—as though the last message she had sent him wasn’t a seven-year-old apology and promise that she was alive.

  [Emilia: did you know?]

  [Daddy: Know what, my little starlight?]

  [Emilia: that it was a distraction]

  [Emilia: that there were a bunch of teenagers upstairs sneaking out]

  Her father’s next message came slower. A sign that he was debating his answers? Or that her mother had woken and was trying to make him say one thing or another? The message count next to her mother’s name stayed grey, just as it had been since her last birthday. Her mother always sent her birthday wishes, even when they went unanswered by everything but a confirmation it had been received and read.

  [Daddy: Yes.]

  [Emilia: why didn’t you say anything?]

  From what she could remember, no one had ever gotten in trouble for their actions that night, save her being given the task of cleaning everything up. If her father had known, why hadn’t he ever said or done anything? Told any of her friends’ parents about it?

  The vague feeling of amusement slithered through their connection, his father laughing at her expense. “Because, my little starlight,” his next message read,“for all the times when a parent needs to reprimand their child, there are a million more when the child punishes themself more thoroughly than their parent ever could. It wasn’t an ongoing thing, and I assume you all learned a lesson that night.”

  Technically, they had mostly learned to keep their drugs out of their houses, instead holding their parties at the treehouse. She wasn’t about to ask whether the man knew about all that, however. The lack of adults around had been fun, the first few times. Eventually, the most extreme partiers had been banned. Having parties so far from the safety of their parents arms and common sense meant they’d been forced to adapt and grow up enough to keep themselves safe.

  Perhaps that, in itself, was a punishment of sorts. A forced growing up, in payment for their attempts at having freedom and a good time without their parents’ eyes on them.

  “I knew that, too,” her father responded when she fessed up that they hadn’t stopped partying, if not the exact specifics of where and how much. “Holding on too tightly to your kids can rupture the relationship. I believe BJ was sent off to boarding school around that time. He graduated and never spoke to his parents again.”

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  The man didn’t say anything about how that—the not talking—had become their relationship as well, regardless of how much he obviously hadn’t wanted it to be—how much Emilia hadn’t wanted things to become like this either. Then again, BJ had hated his parents from the moment they sent him away to the moment that he died, burning himself out as a support on the front. She had never hated her parents—had never wished to never return home.

  [Emilia: i see]

  It was a lame response, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. The problem was she wasn’t ready to go home, not yet. Soon, but not now. Being inside the raid had made her heart ache for home—for her family and their love—but it wasn’t the right time.

  [Emilia: i’ll come home… soon]

  [Daddy: Ah… I suppose I should turn your bedroom back, then. I’ve been using it as a cat sanctuary.]

  Emilia snorted, trying to imagine her father hoarding cats, spoiling them the way he had his children. Honestly, she could see it. The man had always had a soft spot for animals and needy children.

  [Emilia: i love you, and miss you]

  [Emilia: mom and everyone else too]

  [Daddy: I, and everyone else, love and miss you, too.]

  [Daddy: Take as much time as you need, my little starlight. We’ll be here when you’re ready to come home.]

  Emilia stared at that message for a long time, wondering what sort of pressure she had just put on her father. The thing was, as much as her eyes kept flicking to check for new messages from her mother and siblings, she knew they wouldn’t come. In the end, her father wouldn’t mention her messages to any of them. Part of it was loyalty, she knew. He knew her well enough to know she’d contact people in her own time, in her own way. Part of her also knew he was protecting them, just as much as he was her.

  She was untrustworthy, and he wouldn’t get anyone’s hopes up, telling them she had finally messaged him and said she would come home soon. Most likely, she would. Even she knew that most likely was there for a reason.

  In the end, trauma was a terrible thing. As much as Payton had sorted out so many of her knots, the worst of them were still tied up inside her, pulling at her mind and heart, forcing worries and terror into her even now.

  Hands clenching, eyes squeezing shut, Emilia tried to breathe through the panic edging its way into her. It was fine—she was fine. Payton had confirmed for her that nothing in her knots should lead her to lose control of her skills, even with his modifications. Payton had confirmed what a part of her had always hoped, but never completely believed: that those moments, in the first months after the war ended, where she had felt her control slipping, hadn’t been real. They were stress and pain and grief given shape inside her brain alone. There had been no real slips—no moments where a single, errant thought might have ended the entire fucking world.

  It was fine. She was fine. She was broken as fuck, but fine. Everything was fine.

  Still, it took longer than she would have liked for her heart and breath to settle. Automatically, her Censor had begun playing music for her, while she waited, a recording of [FIND A NAME!] from the war. The band, which had been formed from various members of their unit, was a mixture of too many genres, and while most people preferred the more upbeat or angry songs, this particular one was sad, singing of a fear that friendships would fade once the war was over—a song of how people struggle to maintain their friendships after changing so irrevocably.

  Soft conversation pulled Emilia out of herself, her eyes flicking open as she watched the first commuters begin to head for the slide lines. A few students were among them, people she vaguely recognized from around campus, likely returning to their dorms after a late night out or hookup. A few of them glanced in her direction. One even smiled at her before vanishing down the line.

  It was strange how, even after a lifetime of it, Emilia had never really gotten used to being so recognizable. With her silverstrain, she stood out. She also wasn’t stupid—she knew she was attractive as well. People noticed her. People remembered her. Perhaps part of it was the awkwardness of being recognized but not really acknowledged by most people. Sometimes, she thought they were just being nice, trying not to assume they had a relationship that required acknowledgement simply because they recognized her. Most of the time, she knew it was just that they looked down on her, even if just a little bit. Purist sentiments might not be as strong as they had been even during her childhood, but they still persisted, subtle, but there. There was a reason why most of her friends were people who had made an effort to acknowledge her before formally meeting her—it just suggested the type of person who didn’t give a shit about her irregular deviation.

  Sighing, Emilia pushed herself off the wall she had leaned against while gathering herself. Time to go. She didn’t have time to break down today—not if she wanted to properly break down in the shower in a bit, anyways. Plus, more time had passed than she realized while she panicked. That was normal, if annoying.

  Stepping onto the slide line solo for the first time in years, Emilia half expected her Censor to reprimand her for being unsafe—to warn her that she might fall off, due to her artificially high D-Level. It didn’t, and a blink later—a flash of beautiful, spiralling lights—she was gracefully stepping back onto campus.

  Well, at least nothing bad had happened. That really would have fucked up her confidence.

  The list she had been making of all the things she needed to do, both before leaving for Ship’o Stars that evening and in the wider ranging future, popped up as she moved through the quiet campus, only the occasional student seen making their way back to their rooms or to some early morning sports club.

  Emilia was just finishing up her prioritized list of Things to Do This Morning, when a message from Elijah popped up. That was… surprising. He was the one person she knew raided who she hadn’t sent a message about her abundance of rewards to— Well, him and all his shitty friends. Those assholes wouldn’t get anything from her, thanks.

  In Elijah’s case, she simply hadn’t wanted to know whether he was awake, because Break Up with Elijah was one of the harder items on her list. As long as she didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, she could avoid dealing with that—with him.

  Unfortunately, one of the people she’d contacted about the rewards had contacted him. That made it… so much worse.

  [Elijah: Hey, did you really join a raid and get a shit ton of rewards and not even offer me any?]

  [Elijah: Or maybe you kept something nice for me?]

  [Elijah: You still up, or crash?]

  [Elijah: Wanna come over and tell me about it?]

  [Elijah: Curious what made you join a raid for once!]

  [Elijah: Sucks it wasn’t with me!]

  [Elijah: Also! You owe me for sticking me with Pria earlier!]

  [Elijah: Fucking stars, that bitch was misery.]

  Well, at the very least, the fact that his last message was so rude would make this easier.

  Maybe.

  I wrote a significant portion of this chapter while I was editing chapter 125. That was the chapter where Emilia dreamed of her father. Almost a hundred chapters later, I finished it! Thankfully, not much of the chapter had to be changed, more some random details added in!