“I thought we were meeting up later,” Emilia said as they walked, students making way for them. Astrapan had a few Free Colonier students, but they weren’t exactly common and despite all the connections that had been made during the war, many people still weren’t confident in dealing with them. Emilia had introduced tons of people to Mazi, and they were friendly with him—and she knew a few of the random classmates who’d met him through her were now great friends with him—but she was pretty sure none of them would have known how to approach him without that introduction.

  It was about the same with Conrad—he had yet to answer her question about his real name, so Conrad it was, for the moment. Several of the people they passed eyed them up with curiosity. The silverstrain who had just blown up part of a dorm building—Emilia was sure everyone would know about that the moment they woke—and the mystery man from the Free Colonies—it was pretty clear Conrad wasn’t Baalphorian—walking arm in arm.

  Aside from the glittering purple of his temporary Censor, Conrad was dressed in clothing neither she nor her Censor could place. The general shape and form of them reminded her of clothing common throughout Baalphoria, especially with the younger crowd, but something about them didn’t quite fit. It were as though someone had taken what they knew of Baalphorian fashion and tweaked it just enough that it othered the person.

  “This person doesn’t belong here,” they seemed to say.

  Black pants hugged the man’s legs, highlighting how thin he was—and considering Emilia could see the lean muscle on him, she couldn’t imagine how skinny he would have been without working out. The man even had a thigh gap, for stars sake! A deep grey shirt was tucked into the pants, hanging loose around him. It almost reminded her of clothing seen in The Atrium, with its gently billowing sleeves and open neckline before making way for buttons, but not quite. It felt more like what someone might find if they went into one of the specialty stores that sold clothing inspired by Free Colony styles.

  Idly, she reached out to tug at the waist of Conrad’s shirt, wondering if a corset would suit her new friend. Conrad raised a light-brown eyebrow at her, but said nothing about her easy touch, instead finally replying to her question, his short curls and sleeves shifting in the light wind, coming off the ocean.

  “I was worried, and my family was annoying me.”

  “Ah~ are they okay? What happened with…” Emilia trailed off, awkwardly wondering if she should continue referring to his family by the ridiculous codenames she’d given them.

  Frowning, Conrad admitted that his sister and nephew had returned to the world off. “Something with them definitely isn’t right. It didn’t feel as extreme as inside the raid, but they’ve been sent to be assessed.” Smirking, he told her it had been quite a bit of work to subdue them, especially since the silverstrain girl and grumpy man had no idea what was happening, having been returned to the real-world hours beforehand.

  “My sister told them I had betrayed them,” the man explained as Emilia led them towards their destination. “They’re weak for their mom—most of her kids are—so believed her.”

  “So you came out into a fight with all of them?” Emilia asked, rather horrified, as she pulled them to a stop and began looking over Conrad for any injuries. There was also some patting. “There were a lot of them! Plus, I imagine Livia and that other kid were on her side as well! And then I went and killed Toby and—”

  Fingers pressed to her lips, rudely silencing her. The man’s energy lapped up her skin, trying to calm her, and she could feel it pressing at her meridians but never entering—Emilia didn’t know how much experience he had with Baalphorians and their finicky Censors, but he clearly knew not to push into her.

  That… was rather sad—she both missed the comfort of having her friend close and was rather curious what his energy would feel like inside her, here in the real world—and also the reason for their first stop.

  “I am fine. My brother—the one you killed in the raid—was also there, and despite how much we often do not get along, he is not stupid. He knew something was wrong with our sister and contacted our other brother. Together, we detained everyone and I explained what had happened. When she arrived, Oria backed me up. Even without that, it was rather clear something wasn’t right.”

  Emilia blinked at Conrad, waiting for him to remove his hand before saying, “Your accent is mostly gone.”

  A flush lit up the Free Colonier’s skin. “Yes. I imagine it is not a surprise that I enjoy playing with my identity inside raids.”

  Emilia nodded before realizing something and scrambling to catch Conrad’s hands. “Wait! You do blackaether raids, right!”

  The man nodded, frowned. He was adorable when he frowned, the pout of his lips growing more pronounced. Honestly, part of her could understand why he would change his appearance and adopt a thicker accent within raids: this man, with his small body, clearly expensive clothing, and perfect example of an eastern Free Colonier accent, with his clipped words and perfect pronunciation—thank you, early version of the generic language training system they’d used during the war, which had removed the ability to figure out where anyone who learned Baalphorian through it had originally come from based on their accent… not—was shockingly non-threatening.

  Actually, he wasn’t just non-threatening, he seemed to almost give off an innocent baby vibe!

  Fascinating. If she hadn’t already seen him take down Elijah—not to mention felt the sheer power in his energy at the time—she might have assumed he really was only powerful—vicious—within raids.

  Having confirmed the man was familiar with blackaether raids, Emilia spent the rest of their walk telling him about what had happened after she killed him and then about the fragments of Caro’s soul she and Hyr had received. Conrad had heard murmurs of similar things, but had always chalked it up to blackaether raid designers adding in some ability to move game soul between raids.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “I believe there are several legal raids that allow AIs to be moved between them as well, but they are rare.”

  “It probably requires a certain type of world for the AIs to survive such things…” Emilia noted, immediately wishing that she hadn’t. Even if they had Caro’s soul, even if they were able to revive him somehow, that didn’t mean the child would survive the transition from the world of the raid to wherever they ended up. It was definitely in Caro’s favour that they had already known about being an AI, but still…

  “Yes,” Conrad agreed as they entered a building, having walked across campus to reach it, rather than jump on a slide line, or even just slide or spark or anything else. As much as Emilia could do those things again, she really did like walking, and it wasn’t like they had a lack of things to talk about. “Many of those raids likely have worlds where something similar to raiding exists.”

  Across her vision, Emilia’s Censor offered up examples of several raids that allowed transfers of AIs between them. Indeed, usually they were either part of a collective world, each side possessing myths about people coming and going from different worlds, or had something similar to raids within them. They also weren’t quite the same, as most simply allowed AIs to gain the ability to move worlds, rather than giving heroes the ability to bring their souls into the real world and then transfer them to another platform.

  “I can ask around,” Conrad said, the but in his words already palpable, before he added, “Several of my niblings might have better luck.”

  Emilia wasn’t sure how much she liked the idea of asking those kids—again, she had to remind them that most of them weren’t actually kids—for anything, but after thinking about whether they’d be able to do anything bad with information about her somehow receiving a fragment of a game soul—unlikely—and asking if Conrad really thought they’d help her—yes, the ones he’d ask liked mysteries and weird techy shit—she agreed.

  Despite how much he raided, the Free Colonier wasn’t used to using a Censor for everyday things, and by the time he had managed to send off the required information to his niblings they had arrived at Sil’s door.

  Unlike her and Pria, Sil had a single dorm unit—Beth did as well, financed by a combination of Sil and her scholarship—and Emilia politely let him know they had arrived. The message she received back told her he was in the shower and to come on in. Another few messages had him agreeing to let her use his Virtuosi Rig.

  That was the main reason she had wanted to come here first. A shower would be great. So would a short nap—although given she was still a little buzzed from the incident with Elijah and his roommates and now had Conrad to supervise, she didn’t see that happening. Taking Hack in and Fix/Alter Your Censor off her list of things to do would be even better than both.

  Conrad took an awkward seat in one of the rarely used chairs scattered through Sil’s living room—usually they hung out… basically anywhere but any of their rooms—while Emilia ordered the three of them food and drink, leaving Sil’s in the kitchen and handing Conrad his. He eyed it dubiously, probably because she’d given him some very Baalphorian foods to try. She chugged her own disgusting concoction, meant to lessen the strain of so little sleep, that run in with an echo, residual drugs and uppers, and her recent unknotting and knotting, not to mention all her time in the Virtuosi System.

  Yeah, she probably needed more than one revolting drink. Her stomach churned at the thought, however, and she instead plopped down into Sil’s bleeding-edge rig and laid back. She’d drink another one after… probably.

  Immediately, the world well away, only the smallest of clicks notifying her that she’d connected to the system. Time warped, nearly screeching to a halt. Emilia didn’t know how long fixing up her Censor and figuring out how to force it to let her use her core—not to mention let Conrad use his on her—would take, but that was why she was using Sil’s station, as opposed to the dated one in her and Pria’s suite, or even one of the newer models in the Data-Recovery Lab.

  All time skews came at a cost. Forcing a mind to run that fast, to do so much, in such short periods of time could cause various health issues. Usually, it was just stuff like headaches, mild body aches, loss of appetite—the rig’s cooling systems kept brain damage due to overheating Censors from occurring. Nothing too serious, and even the ancient rig she’d used for her time in {A Life (not) in the Stars} only leaving her vision blurry, stomach turning, for about thirty minutes.

  That had been weeks pressed into hours. Emilia had a feeling this was going to be weeks pressed into minutes—seconds, if she could align her brain and the system well enough.

  Sil’s rig was bleeding-edge, which meant it could work smoother, faster, easier, but some of the kinks still had to be ironed out. Normal Virtuosi Systems automatically interfaced with everyone about the same. Sil’s required some tweaking—some getting to know the machine—for it to function at full capacity, allowing her to skew time severely enough that, even in a cutting-edge rig, her Censor would be liable to kick her from the system, worried it would burn out under the strain.

  It didn’t really matter whether she got it working at full capacity or not, although she still set her Censor to work on trying to do so—just because she didn’t have to didn’t mean she didn’t want to—while she pulled up every record of Simeon’s Censor.

  During the war, Ri had taught both Simeon and Helix how to use their cores to some extent, in order to allow Helix to fight at full capacity longer. While in Helix’s case, this more resulted in him learning how to use bursts of energy in an emergency—or when alone—Simeon had needed to learn more complicated core abilities to lessen the strain of Helix’s irregular deviation on his body.

  It had taken a lot of work—and a lot of ingenuity on her and Halen’s part—to make Simeon’s Censor allow him to use his core. Partially, their workaround had only worked because it was a war and Helix needed help from his support. Censors, regardless of how much they preferred cores not be used, really did want to keep everyone safe and happy. Helix needed help. Helping required Simeon use his core, hence, Simeon’s Censor had begrudgingly accepted their hacks.

  The other part, of course, was that Simeon was an ECC dyad, who always seemed to exist separate from, well… everything. They were simultaneously closer to the aethernet, and yet further away. They could meld with their Censors in ways no one else could, and yet it was often less existent within their idea of the world than for the average person. Simeon being an ECC dyad made hacking his Censor for almost anything easier.

  This all combined to mean records of the hacks done to Simeon’s Censor over the years—something now maintained by Helix—were the perfect place to start on her search for workarounds for making her own Censor accept core usage. At the same time, it was a terrible place to start.

  Still, not having seen her childhood friend’s hacks in such a long time, she was curious what Helix had done—if he’d managed to figure out better tactics, especially now that Simeon’s Censor may very well object that they were no longer at war, and allowing Simeon such freedoms was unnecessary.

  The only way was to look and find out, and give the jumble of code that appeared, barely understandable to her after years of living in a bubble of only her own, hobbled together hacks…

  Yeah, she was gonna need weeks to figure this out—to learn how much hacking had changed in the last decade.

  Better order a few more gross drinks.