It was quiet for a long moment, once the clones had taken the other group away, leaving only Samina, Beth and Pria behind. Perhaps… Samina hadn’t thought this through. It had been a long time since she’d told anyone about her black knot—not since the war, when every member of their group had been weird, and in the grand scheme of them all, having a black knot was on the less weird side.

  A hand landed on her shoulder, soft and warm. “Thank you,” Beth said.

  Glancing up, their eyes met, and Samina wondered if this was how Emilia had so often felt when they were younger, during the war. That girl had always been so good at standing up for people without a second thought—at putting herself in danger, just to protect someone else from harsh words, a fist, a skill. Without fail, she would always smile and awkwardly brush aside thanks for her help, even when it had almost landed her in prison. It had annoyed most people—they had just wanted to thank her for doing something so few people would do.

  Sometimes, people had thanked Samina for stepping into some brewing fight or another as well, but it wasn’t often. Why? Simply because she was who she was: someone who enjoyed causing trouble, and most people had never really believed she had good intentions when she got involved, just that she knew a fight might be coming. Maybe, sometimes, that had been part of why she stepped in, but most of the time, she had just wanted to help, something so many people couldn’t comprehend of someone with a black knot.

  There was something odd about being thanked now, for something that technically fell into her job description—seriously, anyone could tell that guy’s parents were bad news and The Black Knot had already been watching them, just in case they tried something. She’d been there, so she’d done something, but she hadn’t needed to. Stepping in… had just been natural because these were Emilia’s friends, and while another member stepping in would have protected them in the moment, this—offering herself up as Emilia’s friend who just so happened to belong to The Black Knot—gave them all another level of protection.

  People didn’t fuck with The Black Knot. People definitely didn’t fuck with the friends and family of its agent, not unless they wanted its wrath rained down upon them. As much as they were law enforcement, everyone knew they played fast and loose with those laws themselves.

  Stepping in to offer Emilia’s friends her name and power as protection was just… the right thing to do, for herself, for Emilia—for the friend she loved and hadn’t seen in far too long and hoped to keep in her life.

  So, no, she didn’t need Beth’s thanks, and instead, she laughed, trying to explain her tangled thoughts and Emilia’s reputation for wrinkling her nose in distaste when people thanked her as Beth led them to her room, the door hissing as it opened for them. A little notification popped up across her Censor, telling Samina the girl had given her access to come and go as she pleased, and how long had it been since she’d made a new friend? New friends?

  “She still does that, sometimes,” Pria said, wandering to Beth’s kitchen and beginning to order food from the fabricator. “Uh… I’m a little broke. You gonna be mad if I use up your credits?”

  Beth glared as she entered what Samina assumed to be her bedroom.

  Rolling over, she topped up both of her maybe-new friends’ credits.

  “Seriously?” Pria asked, tone more impressed than judging as she set the fabricator to spinning out more food than the three of them could possibly eat, not that that stopped Samina from requesting a few Penns specific dishes she had a hankering for.

  Shrugging, she told Emilia’s roommate that for one, her family was rich, for another, The Black Knot paid well, and for another, every member of D30 still got paydrops.

  “Seriously? Why?” the other girl asked as she let Samina activate a skill and move all the food to Beth’s living room.

  “We’re still active duty, technically,” Samina explained, amazed that this was how her revelation of not only having a black knot but being a high-ranking enough member of The Black Knot to pull more than a half dozen clones to her for what her father was currently telling her were “slightly petty, if understandable reasons.”

  As though her old man wouldn’t do worse for Emilia. It was always easier for the older generations to pretend their children and grandchildren were the only ones so attached to Emilia, to Simeon, to the half dozen other normal children who had been pulled into their orbit when they were still young and innocent. All of them knew the truth, however: those normal children, the adults they had become—fuck, even the adults they’d further brought into their lives through friendships and the war—were people they would die protecting.

  Well, Samina couldn’t blame her elders for not actively admitting it; no one wanted to accept the reality that The Black Knot had effectively been corrupted by love and affection. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, it wouldn’t be the last, and as much as the general public seemed to enjoy thinking black knots were incapable of love, they loved—they loved too fucking deep.

  Samina loved her twin, she even loved her dumbass, annoying as fuck baby sister, missing as she was. Her parents loved them as well, in their own strange ways. The clones loved each other in a very strange way that no one—other than Emilia, and maybe Malcolm—really wanted to put too much thought into. Black knots could love, but when they did, it was usually an obsessive love, leading them to a willingness to burn down the world. It was dangerous, so yeah, their elders weren’t talking about how there were a dozen—probably more, at this point—people they would betray Baalphoria to protect.

  That made it even more impressive that this is what they were discussing: her needless, D30 paydrop with Pria, explaining that most of their unit either didn’t use it or donated it, that the military kept them on active duty just in case they were ever needed—trusting them not to do anything weird with their military security was easier than trying to get that security back in an emergency. There were no questions about how much she loved Emilia, about what friendship with someone like her meant. Rather, it was just a normal fucking conversation with a mostly normal university student.

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  “The active duty thing also means Olivier and—” Samina cut off, having been about to say, “and Helix,” something the man definitely wouldn’t appreciate, very not-public D30 member that he was. “And other members who sometimes hit echos have an easier time of it. They can just flash their creds—even if most of us carry ones that aren’t so upfront about the D30 thing—at SecOps, and no questions asked.”

  Emilia’s roommate watched her, assessing, and Samina had a feeling that if she were a Free Colonier—if she were cable of connecting with her core and the aether more firmly—she would be able to see the power that this girl’s family was rumoured to have.

  Not much was known about their supposed empathic connection to the aethernet—their ability to read the emotions of the people around them through the way the aether reacted to them. The most notable thing in the records was that a relative—possibly an uncle, but the family’s records were spotty—of Pria’s had become catatonic during the final assault of the war. Terrian Braybun had been there, on the front, and Samina could guess that, if all the stories were true, he’d been overwhelmed by whatever Emilia had done to stop the war.

  What would Pria do, if she found out her uncle entered that unseeing, unfeeling state because of Emilia? Would she think it worth it, the cost to her family for the end of the war and all the death that had occurred during it? Or would she be like so many people affected by the war: angry and hateful, demanding to know why their family hadn’t been saved, why more soldiers hadn’t died so their loved ones could live?

  Whatever Pria was looking for in her, she said nothing about it, instead turning back to the food and asking how long Emilia had known she had a black knot, if her childhood friend knew she was currently a member of the organization.

  “Since we met,” Samina said, rolling the conversation around in her head as she stuffed too much food in her mouth, intent to give herself a chance to think. Eventually, after weighting the pros and cons of everything she could say, she decided to just say the truth, more or less. “Emilia’s always been like that: too friendly for her own good. There were a lot of us, black knots and other people who didn’t quite fit in, that she brought into her friend group—normal people, too. It never mattered what we were, just that we were nice—or, I suppose in the case of a few of us, not actively threatening. I can’t say one of my cousins could ever be called a nice person, he’s mostly just grumpy every waking hour—still a total softy for Emmie, though. I’m also not just a random Black Knot agent, by the way, I’m a member of the Baxter family.”

  Pria didn’t appear to know what that mean, but Beth, who had come to sit by them and eat after stuffing a ratty looking bag full of clothing and essentials, definitely did.

  “That’s what you meant, when the Hyrat clones came and grabbed everyone: you work undercover, so people aren’t allowed to know your face.”

  “Eh~ does that mean our memories will be wiped, too?”

  Samina shook her head, smiling sharply. “The clones won’t erase their memories, just lock them away. There was no point in revealing myself to them, other than to scare them into leaving you guys alone. That wouldn’t be very effective if they were wiped—but the clones can totally do that! Depends on the situation, but no, unless you give us a reason, the clones won’t be visiting you.”

  “At least not for that,” Samina didn’t say, thinking about how much the clones had missed Emilia. Now that she was opening herself back up to contact a bit… Yeah, there was no way she was going to escape a visit from them soon, probably within the next few weeks.

  “What’ll happen on the ship?” Beth asked, all intention to get answers about how this situation was going to work. There was a tint of hostility in her voice, and Samina doubted it was because of their trip onto Ship’o Stars.

  [Samina: I’m not going to tell your family where you are.]

  [Samina: Neither is anyone else.]

  Tension seized through Beth, Pria fumbling her food as he eyes shot towards her friend—yeah, definitely some weird empathy shit going on there. Fascinating.

  “Why are you messaging?” Beth asked.

  “Because I have no idea how much your friends know about your situation.”

  “They know enough.” Beth’s eyes skimmed over her, the frank assessment of a Sub-50. “If you weren’t friends with Emilia, would you tell them where I was?”

  “No.”

  The answer was so firm, so fast, that Beth startled.

  “There was a single member of our unit who was a Sub-50. I never met his family but…” Samina glanced away, licking spice off her lips as she tried to figure out how to explain herself, explain the way most of their unit viewed Sub-50s—not the general designation for D-Levels, but the social group. “But he was traumatized by it, and every Sub-50 I’ve met since—some in the military, some in jobs since the war ended—I’ve watched them, seen the ways their culture can so easily traumatize even a regular child.” Her eyes snapped back to Beth, the message clear: and you are not a regular child.

  “Besides,” she added, bringing a tray of pastries onto her lap—or lack thereof—“one of our oldest friends is trans. Emilia and I would both die for him. We even had a plan to murder his parents when we were younger. Sadly, Emmie just kidnapped him when he turned 30, so we never got to follow through on it.”

  A long sigh leaked out of her. Honestly, she was still a little bitter that she hadn’t gotten to off the Drydens and their shit stain of a daughter. It had been a good plan, too!

  “I don’t get it,” Pria said around her mouthful of food, “why did you feel like you had to tell Beth you weren’t gonna tell her parents where she was?”

  “Because I’m a missing person.”

  Apparently, Pria either hadn’t known that or hadn’t retained it, turning to her friend and gaping. “You’re a what?”

  Beth sighed, muttering that they’d had this conversation before, Pria insisting that they totally hadn’t. Samina… couldn’t tell which one of them was lying, instead just leaning back and listening to Beth tell Pria that she’d run off when she was a teenager, knowing that as a new-gen sub-30 there was no way her family wouldn’t be intent to use her to elevate their place in society. “There was no way they would have let me be myself. I would have been expected to have children that I didn’t want, all to further their rise.”

  “People and their obsession with D-Levels,” Pria sneered, shifting until she was right next to Beth and pulling her into a hug. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”

  Beth huffed out a laugh. “You know, I think if I hadn’t been a new-gen sub-30, my parents wouldn’t have cared how I wanted to live—I have enough siblings.”

  It had been that way for Seven as well. He had so many siblings—several of whom were now married with children—but because he was the new-gen sub-30, he had responsibilities. Funny, how the only two new-gen sub-30s from Sub-50 families she’d ever met had straight up run away from their family and obligations. Definitely, the Sub-50s were a terrible place to grow up.