“Take it slow. Your body and mind have been through a lot. Give them a minute to adjust.”

  Something in Payton’s voice told Emilia this was just the spiel he gave everyone, each word measured and precise. No slurring, not when he was giving instructions to someone coming out of a fresh reknotting. Still, his words irritated her. She’d done this before—and under much less pleasant circumstances—thank you!

  Emilia wanted to bite at him, just a bit. She didn’t—he didn’t deserve that. Her classmate had helped her so much today, despite how mean she’d been to him in the past. Well… maybe not mean. Dismissive. Avoidant. Terrible.

  Payton was sitting again when she finally opened her eyes, having moved to help her remove the headset in her first moments of waking. Despite herself, she followed his advice and didn’t move more than her eyes. The world spun. Her stomach turned and her brain burned.

  “Fuck…” she breathed out. That really was rather unpleasant.

  Payton, the asshole, smiled. Just for a moment. Jerk.

  “How was the raid?” he asked, rather than ask how she felt. Emilia appreciated that. Sometimes, the people who worked in knotting clinics asked patients how they felt after their session. Even without frequenting them often—she had been patching her knots together by herself for years—Emilia had seen more than a few people seemingly purposefully puke on anyone who dared ask how they felt. You’d think the clinicians would learn, and yet…

  “Terrible,” she finally said, waiting another moment for the world to even out before beginning to push herself up. Almost immediately, Payton was there, helping to ease her to sitting, his hands warm on her cool shoulders. “Do people really raid for fun?”

  The older man smiled as he began to look her over, checking her temperature and eyes. A collection of skills popped out of him, testing her hearing and sense of touch. Out of the small grey bag he seemed to always carry with him, he pulled several medical devices. Why the man carried some of his normal medic stuff around with him, she had no idea.

  “Just in case,” he said when she asked. He had pulled out a mallet and was diligently testing her reflexes. Emilia wasn’t sure she’d ever been knotted—or unknotted—by someone so thorough.

  “In case your medic skills are needed?” Realistically, plenty of medics probably carried around an emergency kit with them, the same way supports still carried around their wartime willbrands, despite there being no need or use for most of them, even within real-world raids.

  “Sure.”

  Yeah, sounded convincing. Payton didn’t offer up the real reason, however, and Emilia instead turned to telling him about the raid. The man hummed at the right points, asked questions at others. He was surprised to learn she’d run into more than one war buddy during the raid.

  “I suppose it isn’t that odd,” she admitted, jerking away when Payton’s light touch tickled her waist. Somewhere along the way, her kinda-sorta friend had decided she needed a full physical—or at least as full of one as he could give her without more specific equipment.

  Chalk it up to being a veteran thing—if Payton tried to give someone like Pria a physical, her roommate would freak. Stars, the woman might just freak knowing Emilia had sat there naked, letting him poke and prod at her, making light comments about how she needed to eat better, but at least her heart sounded good.

  According to a very impressive skill, she was also free of a collection of diseases—some of which she’d never even heard of. Sweet.

  “I was in a really… weird and terrible raid,” she continued, accepting her clothing back from Payton and tugging the sweater and sweatpants on, her ass ripping free of the tacky plastic of the bay. Had they sanitized that before she laid down? She really hoped they had, but it was so long ago she couldn’t really remember.

  Better to just not think about it.

  Payton hummed as he took his seat again. “I read through the rules. That definitely wasn’t a normal raid. I’m not sure it was meant to be enjoyable, so perhaps don’t judge all raids by that one.”

  Emilia shot him a glare as she plopped down across from him. They watched each other for a long moment. Was he unsure what to say? How to tell her about what he’d done to her? That couldn’t be right—the man was a professional. Something else, then. Technically, there was more to tell about the raid, and if Payton wasn’t volunteering facts about what he’d done to her, she might as well continue her tale? Right?

  “Fragments of a soul?” he asked when she’d reached the end of her story—save actually telling him she’d won the tickets, anyways.

  “Yeah… I’m not really sure what to make of it? I had my Censor look into whether anyone has reported something like that before, and not really? There was a hint of something on a message board for blackaether raids—one of those public ones that claims it's just a normal message board, but totally isn’t. If anything more was ever said about it, it was deeper in the blackaether, and I don’t have access to that.” That was another thing on her list of things to do. Annoyingly, the two people she knew who messed around in the blackaether weren’t easily contacted. V hadn’t replied to her earlier message yet—and she was still trying really, really hard not to panic about that—and Helix wasn’t an option.

  Well, technically she could message him, but as much as she’d come to accept that she might soon be stepping out of the shadows—if only a little bit—having the entire world learn that she was connected to Baalphoria’s Top Hero and looking for information on the blackaether might be a bit much.

  Better to just wait for V, or ask Sil if he knew. He’d never said as much, but she kinda assumed he entered blackaether raids from time to time—there were just times when he vanished, not even inviting anyone to meet up in a raid later, as he sometimes did when he already had plans within a raid that he didn’t want their dumb asses crashing.

  Worst case, she’d go ask The Black Knot. They’d be annoying—mostly because whoever she contacted would be overbearing, which, perhaps given the circumstances, wouldn’t be too terrible.

  Still, they would always help her, no matter what.

  “I can put out some feelers for you, if you like? I’m not directly connected to the blackaether, but a few people I know are.”

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  Emilia watched Payton for a long moment, taking in the soft kindness of him. Even around their black knot, they were friendly—sweet, even. “I’m sorry.”

  Her classmate, who had leaned forward to rest his head against his fist as he listened to her, reared back slightly. “For… what?”

  “For not being your friend sooner. I’m stupid, and I’m sorry. If you still want to be my friend, I’ll do a much better job of it.” Seriously, so stupid. Most of her childhood friends had black knots, so why had she shied away from this man? Especially when, realistically, her childhood friends had been jerks to her way more over the years than Payton had ever been—they’d been friends long enough to fuck with each other and know they’d come out the other side okay… mostly. The number of pranks they had played on one another, where they were lucky no one had been seriously harmed…

  Payton’s hands wrapped around hers, tugging fingers that had been digging into the fabric of her borrowed clothing free. “I would like that.”

  Her eyes flicked up to his, finding sincerity in their soft brown, gently glowing under the harsh, buzzing lights dangling above them. Part of her wondered how many friends—real, true friends who knew exactly what he was—he’d had. “So… as my friend, want to skip school and go on an impromptu vacation on a luxury airship, as all but free labour, that’s really a mission to find our asshole knotter distributor?”

  Eyes crinkling, hands squeezing around hers, Payton agreed.

  “Well… that’s two of my ten tickets designated! Only eight more friends to find!”

  The look Payton gave her before asking if she actually had eight friends really was uncalled-for. Was she known for only sticking with Pria, Beth and Sil? Maybe. And yes, she realized that the fact that she really didn’t include Elijah or any of his friends even passingly in their group was a sign she really did need to break up with him. Still! Rude!

  Also, where was she going to find five more friends to bring with her!?

  It wasn’t the first time it had hit Emilia that she really had gone from having too many friends to manage to having almost none. Even when she’d been a teenager, with far fewer friends than she’d had at the height of the war, she would have struggled to narrow down nine people to bring with her. Now, it was a struggle to think of even a few more.

  “I’ll figure it out,” she said, already sending off a few messages and hoping at least a few of the people would respond to her request for their presence. “Worse comes to worst, I ask some of the people who raid around town. Most are more acquaintance, but they’d probably still come.”

  “Who wouldn’t? I checked out that ship while you were out. It’s pretty fancy.”

  “Yeah, but we’re also going with the intention of catching a criminal. Not exactly a relaxing vacation for most people, and even if they try to stay out of it, if they’re associated with us…”

  “They’ll probably get dragged into it.”

  “Yup.”

  “So, whoever you invite needs to know exactly what’s happening before accepting.” Payton watched her like a man who was aware she had sent off a few invitations without properly explaining things. Rude, but accurate.

  Her Censor popped out another few messages, explaining that this wasn’t just a vacation, with the exact details of it written in obnoxiously broad strokes, at least for her non-school friends. Them she’d see later and deal with explaining everything to… somehow. “Happy? Also, how do you know me so well already!?”

  Payton only laughed before releasing her hands and pulling up her genome on a screen. It flickered and for the first time she wondered if this place was actually safe enough to be fucking around with genetics in. What if the system had crapped out!? “I got you down to a 13D. Your knots were—are—pretty messy. Technically, I got you down to an 8D, I suppose, but those traumatic knots… fuck, man. I couldn’t leave you like that. Did you have hallucinations, when you first got them?”

  Emilia nodded. Shrugged. Muttered that she didn’t really know.

  “I was never really sure if I was hallucinating or things were actually happening, in those first few months after the war ended. Eventually, I went to a clinic, but there was only so much they could do. They recommended I admit myself into long-term care, but I knew if that happened, the chances of getting out…”

  Granted, she’d always known that her family and The Black Knot could get her out. She’d also known that as much as she’d played a pivotal role in ending the war, she had enemies. The chances of her being killed, had she willingly let herself be contained—let doctors and therapists force their way into her Censor so they could lock her skills away—had been high. At the time, she wasn't completely convinced that wasn’t just paranoia. Eventually, she’d realized it wasn’t.

  In the end, she was too dangerous. As much as her power and influence could be a good thing for Baalphoria, it was also a danger. Certain people had never liked her, and her actions during the war—especially the incident with Boyd’s unit and the whole thing in Chinsata, even if higher ups only suspected her involvement in all that—definitely hadn’t endeared her to them any.

  “In my professional opinion, they were definitely hallucinations. The knots I put in should counter that, although, you might notice your emotions can fluctuate more abruptly.” Payton seemed uncomfortable when she looked back up at him, having taken to staring at his dirty shoes as she spoke. At least Olivier had cleaned her up. No such luck for Payton. Rather, he’d sat there for hours covered in grime and sweat, small tears in his clothes offering glimpses of his pale skin—the man needed to spend some time in the sun this week, clearly.

  “I think I noticed that, in the raid,” she admitted, thinking back to the moments before she ran into the northerners, where her anger had been vibrating through her with too much power. Not quite a black knot, but pretty fucking close. “Will it just come and go randomly?”

  Sighing quietly, Payton began to explain exactly what he’d done. Clearly, the man was tired—he had likely been up just as long, if not longer, than her. At least she’d gotten to kinda-sorta rest in the raid, even if using raids as sleep wasn’t recommended.

  Basically, in order to counter the hallucinations, Payton had given her a few knots. Unfortunately, those knots would likely lead her to be both tired and passionless. Hence, he’d thrown in a few more knots to counter those side effects. Unfortunately, they came with their own side effects: an overabundance of passion and energy.

  “If you’re already feeling strong emotions,” he warned as he pushed off his seat, long arms stretching towards the low ceiling, his fingers brushing against it and sending a layer of dust falling over him, “you might go into being overly emotional. Anger to rage. Sadness to heartbreak. It might seem counterintuitive, but it’ll mostly boost emotions that are on the edge? A little intense, but not quite over-the-top? So, if you’re already heartbroken, you won’t feel worse.”

  Emilia nodded along, thinking that made sense. There had been a few moments, looking back on those last few hours in the raid, where her emotions had seemed out of control. The homicidal rage as she exited the building, her amusement as she teased Sk’lar, the depression as she fought the god. Definitely, those emotions had been too much. At the same time, her sadness at Caro’s death and potentially never seeing Astra again were similar to what she had felt when friends died during the war. No more, no less.

  “You mentioned something about energy as well?”

  “Yeah. That you probably wouldn’t have noticed inside the raid, as it’ll manifest more physically. Like I said, the knots I did to cancel out the hallucinations also make you tired. Hence, energy knots!”

  Emilia stared blankly at him. “I’m pretty sure it’s obvious in my DNA and previous knots that I have ADHD. Energy knots definitely aren’t recommended for me.”

  Payton smiled tightly. “They are not, but the alternatives are worse.”

  They blinked at each other for a long time, Emilia tapping a nail against the arm of her chair, their not-so-silent stand-off. Emilia generally considered herself pretty terrifying. Payton didn’t seem affected. Apparently, he was telling her the truth.

  “When I’m bouncing off the walls later, I’m telling everyone it's your fault. They’ll probably make you deal with me.”

  “Okay,” her new friend said. He sounded like he meant it.

  Hopefully he did, or it was going to be a very long week.