“You’re ruining my mission,” Ruby said with quite possibly the most terrifying pout that Dyna had ever seen.

Pitrelli’s office didn’t feel like the most secure location to discuss possible traitors to the Carroll Institute. It had no door, a large window, security cameras galore, and more photographs of mountains and rivers. The latter fact didn’t weaken the security of the situation, but did strengthen the theory that the decor in Harold’s office had come from the institute rather than any personal touches. Though Pitrelli’s office did have a bit more personal touch on the desk itself. A large framed picture of a man with a bushy mustache, a woman with long orange hair, and a tiny little barely-a-year-old baby.

Probably just a regular guy, looking to get by in the world.

“I didn’t even do anything.”

“And that is a large problem,” Ruby said, voice like ice. “You were supposed to be seated here, watching the numbers go by on the terminal. Instead you ran off and came back with all this unrelated garbage.”

“Look, I wasn’t— I thought we were asking him for help or at least using him to figure out where to get the information we wanted. I wasn’t prepared to… hack into his computer,” she whispered with a nervous glance up to the security camera. “You should have outlined the mission better.”

“Emerald always says that the best way to learn to swim is to have someone shove you off the side of a barge ten miles out to sea.”

“That sounds like the best way to learn how to drown,” Dyna grumbled.

Shaking her head, she looked over Ruby’s shoulder at the terminal screen. Bright green command line text scrolled up the screen at an unreadable pace. Presumably running a search for files related to Dyna’s memories. A third drive, one that Ruby had brought in, was plugged into the side of the machine. A faint red light blinked on its side.

When it became clear that Ruby, now spinning in the chair out of boredom, wasn’t going to say anything, Dyna asked, “So what are we going to do?”

“Do?” Ruby said without stopping. “Good question. First, we’re going to let this finish. Then we’re going to regroup at your dormitory. And then, we’ll have to come up with a proper consequence for your AWOL actions. Now quiet. I’m trying to think of something good. Emerald always turns her punishments into lessons…” She trailed off, humming to herself in thought.

“What about Harold?”

“Irrelevant. He’s outside the mission parameters. We’re here for your mental history.”

“But we can’t just… He’s… There’s no…”

Dyna wasn’t even sure what she wanted out of the situation.

Her first instinct was that they should at least inform someone of what she had discovered. Doctor Cross should know that his assistant was possibly a spy. Emerald would probably be able to capture him within five minutes. The Carroll Institute did have a security team that could probably apprehend him as well, maybe taking more time but probably with less bodily harm.

Yet, what if he was off to leak information to the press that the Carroll Institute was engaged in brainwashing of their psychics? None of the papers Dyna had flipped through were related to memories or brainwashing, but maybe the next batch of files would be. And if the Carroll Institute was actually messing with people’s minds—more than they advertised—then information going to competitors was… good?

Elbows on the desk and face in her hands, Dyna groaned. What if he was off to deliver information to Russia or China and it sparked another war? The last one had just calmed down, but tensions were still high. The report he was running off with might be the straw breaking the camel’s back.

And the artifact… What was he doing with the artifact? Taking it to storage? Or delivering it to people who probably shouldn’t be in possession of a portent of apocalypse.

“I’m just a normal person. What am I supposed to do?”

Ruby didn’t give a response, still spinning in the chair.

“We can’t just let him go, right? No matter what the institute has done, if another war starts, lots of people will die.”

“War?” Ruby’s spinning stopped with her feet slamming down on the ground. She raised one eyebrow. “You jump to a lot of conclusions, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Your half-overheard conversation could have been about anything. A foil wrapped disc? Could just be his lunch. And these?” Ruby pointed to the pair of drives on the desk. “We have a dozen of them back in Emerald’s stash. All with different things on them. Some have programs on them,” she said, pointing to the terminal. “Others, maybe not. Emerald claims one has nothing more than pictures of me acting like a normal kid, but I haven’t found it so I think she’s lying. Besides, I never act like everyone else unless I have to and that obviously doesn’t count.”

Dyna, blinking twice, almost opened her mouth and said that Ruby acted normal sometimes. During their little movie sessions, while she hadn’t been afraid of the horror, she had definitely done typical horror-watcher things, including shouting at the screen about how stupid the characters were acting.

Speaking her mind would probably not go appreciated, however. Besides that… “You aren’t a very normal person, are you? How… did you end up like this?” Dyna grimaced as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The last time she had asked about Ruby’s past, the girl had frozen up. “Sorry, that was rude,” she quickly said.

“Like I care,” Ruby said with a scoff, resuming her spinning once again. How she avoided getting dizzy, Dyna couldn’t begin to guess. Just watching her had Dyna feeling queasy. “I don’t even remember much anyway. Just flashes now and again.”

“You don’t remember…”

“Not like you,” Ruby said, spinning halting once more. Then she cocked her head to the side. “Or maybe exactly like you? When the institute found me, I was apparently a feral little monster. Completely unstoppable too,” she said, lightly grazing the ruby gemstone at her throat with one finger. “Therapy did nothing. Lacking options and needing me to not try to kill everyone anytime I saw another person, zap!” she shouted with two fingers pointed at her head.

“They just erased your memory?” Dyna said, chill running down her back. If they did it once, they could do it again. “How do you—”

“I remember bits and pieces. That me can stay dead.” Ruby looked up, meeting Dyna’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have liked her. You probably wouldn’t have survived her.”

“But—”

“I don’t like the institute,” Ruby said. “They’re annoying, overbearing, bossy, and sneaky. But I don’t dislike them because of what they did to me. They even told me what they did—which is why I think this mission is a level zero.”

“They… told you?”

“Yep. Not right away, they let me get used to things first, but they were quite helpful in that. So if they did do something to you, it was probably for a good reason. And they’ll probably tell you eventually. If they haven’t told you, it is probably because it wasn’t them,” Ruby said with a casual shrug. Pressing her foot against the floor, she started spinning again.

Hearing that actually made Dyna calm down somewhat. A tension between her shoulders, one that had probably been there for days now, slowly unwound. Not completely, but enough to let her lean back. Was what they had done to Ruby ethical? Dyna doubted she was qualified to answer. Did it sound evil? Not if Ruby’s account was correct.

It sounded more like they had been left with little choice. Either that or throw some feral version of Ruby into a padded cell.

Dyna would definitely not be relying wholly on the word of the person who admitted to having their memory modified. Emerald might know about Ruby’s past. Later on, she would have to ask.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

For now, Dyna let her shoulders slump, feeling fairly good about her situation for the first time in a while.

“So I shouldn’t worry about what we might find and Harold probably isn’t a traitor.”

“Woah.” Ruby’s feet planted on the floor, stopping her rotation. “I didn’t say that. Who knows if he is a traitor.”

“But…” Dyna glanced down at the drives on the desk. “You said—”

“All I said was that if I attacked someone with as little evidence as you brought me, Emerald would have cut off my head again.”

“But you…” Dyna blinked. “Again? Wha—”

“She would scold me and admonish me for thinking I had anything at all and promptly send me back out to gather more information.”

“Wait, but—”

“Is your man a traitor? Maybe. I know the Carroll Institute has had problems with infiltrators in the past. Real infiltrators. Not us. Obviously. And for the record, I doubt that foil wrapped disc is his lunch. Emerald would just want me to consider all possibilities.”

“Ruby,” Dyna said, speaking carefully. “Does Emerald hurt you?”

“I can’t be hurt.”

“Maybe not… physically, but—”

Ruby’s eyes caught the light, flashing briefly as she locked onto Dyna. “I’m fine,” she ground out. “If I wasn’t, I would slit Emerald’s throat when she wasn’t expecting it.”

“That really doesn’t sound like a healthy outlet to your—”

“Just drop it.” Ruby stood. Her short height didn’t put her over Dyna even with the latter sitting, but she still radiated an intensity that Dyna wasn’t quite willing to argue with. “Understand? Focus on your problems. You have a traitor, some esper after you, and missing memories. Remember? Or are your memories so broken that you need me to remind you?”

Dyna nodded slowly. The conversation wasn’t over. Trying to continue it now, however, wouldn’t be productive. Not with the way Ruby was acting. Besides that, the younger girl was right.

Dyna had a lot of problems.

Clenching her fists, Dyna sat up. “Alright. Let’s remove some of those problems.”

There was nothing she could do about Id at the moment. Her memory problem, if caused by the Carroll Institute, would hopefully pop up on the terminal soon and either be removed as a problem or change the context of the problem. Either way, nothing to do about that for now either.

That left the traitor.

“A half-heard conversation, mysteriously wrapped object, and suspicious drive aren’t enough to confirm or deny any suspicions, right?”

Ruby, finding that the conversation wasn’t on her anymore, visibly settled as she retook her seat. The pose she adopted, a relaxed yet authoritative crossing of her legs and folding of her arms, would have looked more at home on Emerald from what Dyna had seen.

“Correct,” she said with a weighty nod of her small head.

Definitely emulating Emerald.

Dyna had no idea what to make of their relationship before and definitely had no idea what to make of it now. Did Ruby respect her or hate her? Both?

Shaking her head, Dyna kept her focus on the problem. She held up the drive she had pulled from Harold’s office. “Let’s just plug this in and see what is on it. If it is family photos, we can ignore it. If it is something like that,” Dyna said, waving at the terminal, “we know he is a problem.”

“Bad idea.”

“What? Why? It seems like the quickest way to find out.”

Ruby adopted a smug grin. She knew something Dyna didn’t and was obviously excited to share. “Photos or even classified documents don’t prove that he isn’t a spy. You might have picked up a drive he intended for people to find to throw them off the scent. Classified documents might just be part of his job. More importantly,” she said with a thumb pointed at the terminal screen. “If that drive is anything like one of ours, we don’t want it anywhere near something we care about. It could just steal information, or… Emerald has a few drives that fry whatever system they’re plugged into.”

Frowning, Dyna slowly set the drive back down onto the desk.

“So we need a computer we don’t care about?”

“Network isolated and nothing important on it. I don’t have anything handy, do you?”

“No.” Dyna tapped her finger against the desk. She did have a small laptop back in the dorm. It didn’t exactly have anything important on it. Mostly documents related to psychics and a small library of movies. But she used it for personal matters, purchasing goods, and other things that would identify her if something designed to steal information got onto it.

Besides that, it wasn’t a cheap laptop. The Carroll Institute paid her to be here, but not well enough to just throw away a computer.

“Then let me ask this,” Dyna said. “How would you figure out if he is a spy or not?”

“Follow him to wherever he is headed. If it is a dinner date, it still doesn’t prove he isn’t a spy, but it does reduce the chance a whole lot more than the contents of the drive, based on his half of the overheard conversation.”

Dyna’s eyes flicked to the terminal. More specifically, to the time in the corner. It had been fifteen minutes since she heard the conversation. Ten since she started her chat with Ruby. He hadn’t mentioned when his meeting was supposed to begin or where it would be, meaning that they would have to literally follow behind him on his way there.

“Great,” Ruby said, groaning. “Why did I have to say anything at all. It’s cold out there, you know?”

“If you’re vouching for the Carroll Institute, I’ll believe that they either didn’t mess with my head or they had a good reason for it. If it is the latter, I’ll definitely be confronting them. But we can’t just let someone sell out the people here. I have friends here, a roommate and Hendrix and… probably at least one other person I care about.”

“Convincing argument,” Ruby said, tone bland.

“Yeah, well, how about keeping a portent of apocalypse out of—”

Dyna didn’t get to finish. A light beep from the terminal accompanied a freezing of the scrolling text. Ruby turned to the screen and leaned forward. “Twenty-two documents found in line with my search. Want to read through them?”

“Yes. But later. My memories have probably been a problem for a while.” Not that she really knew. “Leaving them for another few hours can’t hurt. Harold might be handing over the Aztec calendar this evening. We’ll lose our chance. How are we even going to find him?”

Ruby didn’t say anything for a moment, choosing instead to pillage the desk. She pulled out a small roll of masking tape, tore a piece off, and stuck it to one of the drives. Using a pen, she wrote, H - Do Not Use. The other drive, the one Ruby had originally given Dyna—which differed only in its lack of a keyring—she put on a piece of tape but left blank. She then removed the drive from the terminal, put on a piece of tape, and wrote down Dyna.

She pocketed the first two drives before sliding the third over. “I wiped the drive. All that is on it now are your files. You can safely plug that into whatever computer you want.”

It felt hot between Dyna’s fingers. Both literally and figuratively. She glanced up, locked eyes on the red light of the security camera, then slipped the drive into her own pocket. “I’m going to get into so much trouble.”

Ruby rolled her eyes.

“So,” Dyna said, “how are we finding Harold?”

“Beatrice, find this Harold person.”

“Harold Porter is aboard the elevator, moving from Sector C Archives toward the Topside Parking Structure.”

“See? Glorified secretary.”

Dyna frowned, looking up. “She helped me—”

“Then it is because someone important told it to. Come on.”

“Wait… Beatrice, why is the camera in Harold’s office disabled?”

“Unknown. My records do not show deliberate tampering. I opened a maintenance ticket two weeks ago. There have been no developments since.”

“How does a maintenance request go ignored?”

“Unknown. I—”

“Come on,” Ruby said, grabbing Dyna’s wrist. “You can chat up the secretary later. If you want to catch your traitor, we need to move now.”

“Right.” Dyna took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and followed the younger girl out of the office. “Right. Shouldn’t we tell someone though?”

“If we do, they’ll assign Emerald to the job,” Ruby said with a scoff as they ran down the halls. “And this is still my mission. She can keep her fat head out of it.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good reason—”

“And you are supposed to follow my orders. Don’t think I’ve forgotten your failure earlier. You either keep up with me and follow my orders or I’ll hogtie you and throw you in the trunk.”

“Ruby—”

“I can do this,” Ruby said, seeming to talk more to herself for a moment. “I can do this. You’re looking down on me because of my age. They all do. But the institute messed with my mind. I’m not an immature child despite my looks. I know more than you. I’ll show you and them.”

Dyna opened her mouth to call that way of thinking immature, then hesitated. Ruby wouldn’t take that well. She certainly had problems. Maybe as many as Dyna herself, if not more. Despite her… abrasive attitude, Dyna didn’t dislike the girl. She didn’t know if she liked her, but their movie days had been fun and training with a gun hadn’t been the worst thing.

As they walked along the hall, Dyna decided on a softer way of phrasing her concerns.

“Wouldn’t it show them that they can trust you most if you did contact someone else? At least to tell Emerald about the change in the situation?”

“Trying to make me think its my own idea to call up Emerald?” Ruby snapped, looking over her shoulder with a glare. “Why not sneak in a bit of reverse psychology while you’re at it? I’ve been through lectures here too, you know.”

“I’m just saying that we should have someone competent with us. Not saying you aren’t competent,” Dyna said quickly before Ruby could whirl on her. “I’m saying I’m not. I’m not good backup for you.”

“You helped Emerald. That’s good enough for me.”

“I…” Dyna closed her eyes as they waited for the elevator door. “That was luck.”

“No such thing.”

“Yes, but—”

The elevator door dinged. Dyna rushed in hot on Ruby’s heels. Neither said a word in the voice activated lift, but the doors still closed the second they were inside and it started moving a second after. Beatrice, presumably, knew where they wanted to go.

Which just made the drive in Dyna’s pocket feel all the hotter. What was on it? Did the fact that files had been found mean anything? Or was that simply expected of an institution that delved so heavily into the mind?

“I’ll call her when we get there, okay?” Ruby snapped, hands slamming into her hips as she turned around. “If it isn’t a dinner date. She can catch up in an instant if needed. Does that make you feel better?”

Dyna let out a long sigh. “Much.”

“Good. Then quit complaining.”

“Thank you, Ruby.”

“Shut up.”