“What are you talking about? We can’t…” Ruby trailed off, shaking her head. “That’s against orders.”

“That’s your problem? I didn’t think you would be one to adhere to rules like that. You hate rules. You are the real Ruby, right?”

“Of course I am.” She snapped. As soon as her glare died, she crossed her arms, adopting a fierce scowl. “I hate a lot of things. Emerald acting like she’s better than me. My efforts going to waste. Stupid hats. And bleeping Sapphire. Why the fuc—”

“Ruby. Hush…”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

“I wasn’t hushing your swearing this time,” Dyna said, looking around worriedly. The two of there were standing outside, around the back of the Carroll Institute’s mobile command center. It separated them from Tartarus, but it wasn’t like they were in an enclosed room with soundproofed walls or anything. “Nobody is supposed to know he’s here.”

“You sure screwed that one up,” Ruby hissed. “I walked right into his floating ass. And I’m going to kick that floating ass all the way back to the institute if he so much as looks at me.”

“Nobody else is supposed to know,” Dyna whispered back. “You’re fine. I think. I’m pretty sure. Probably?” She hadn’t exactly gotten the okay to that effect, but… it just made sense that Ruby would be able to know about him. It wasn’t like any of the guards had blocked the way between the command hub and the medical trailer. “He’s trying to read their minds or something. I don’t know exactly how his powers work. But that isn’t why we’re back here. I wanted to—”

Ruby let out a hefty sigh. The varying levels of anger she had demonstrated so far during their conversation fled. Dyna didn’t think it was her putting on her acting face; the way she kept her arms crossed as she glared off into the distance meant she was still upset.

“Grafton goes free. If Walter says so, then that’s what is going to happen. We can’t just ruin that. I can’t ruin anything else. I can’t.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, staring down at Ruby. She had to admit that she was disappointed. And surprised. For someone perfectly willing to sneak in and infiltrate the Carroll Institute, a little sabotage—or simply taking the institute’s truck and leaving without freeing Grafton—was an unexpected holdup. But then, perhaps she had known that nothing she was doing to the institute was worth them getting upset over. The same wasn’t true here. Walter made a deal and as much as Dyna personally didn’t like Tartarus, the same wasn’t necessarily true for the Carroll Institute as a whole.

As Dyna stared, she watched Ruby jump as if something startled her. Ruby immediately dropped into a guarded stance. One hand went to her hoodie pocket where Dyna knew she normally kept her gun. The other quickly snatched up a switchblade from… Dyna wasn’t actually sure where she pulled that one from.

Whatever the case, her sudden alarm set Dyna off as well. Having a pistol still, Dyna drew it and readied it, though she kept her finger off the trigger as she looked around.

Her eyes scanned over the school. The dark windows—what few weren’t boarded up—held no movement. No snipers sat on the roof anywhere that she could see. The grounds were empty too. And yet, Ruby just stared off toward the hallway between the auditorium and the main entrance.

“You see something?” Dyna asked, wondering what might be out there.

Had Tartarus sent their own reinforcements, who might now be spying on them? That seemed the most likely answer, except for the bit Maple said about them not having all that many employees. Of course, he very well could have been lying. Dyna didn’t trust them either way.

But Ruby just slowly tore her eyes away from the school building and shook her head. “Let’s move back to the other side of the truck. Where there is a bit more light.”

Dyna raised an eyebrow, but Ruby was already stalking off around the front of the institute’s truck. After taking one last glance in the direction that Ruby had looked and finding nothing, Dyna followed after her.

Though she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now. Just let Grafton go, she supposed. She could try something on her own, but without Ruby’s support, she probably wouldn’t do anything. And it wasn’t like she wanted to kill him. Just… severely inconvenience Tartarus.

Maybe she could just slash their tires on the way out.

That was just petty.

But…

Ruby, around the side of the trailer, leaned up against it not far from the two guards standing at the stairs. She took a few slow breaths, apparently calming herself.

Dyna wanted to ask again if Ruby was alright. It certainly didn’t look like she was. But now that they were back around other people, Dyna doubted Ruby would answer. And by the looks of her, dragging her back off alone was probably out of the question.

Something spooked her. Something probably while phased. Probably something to do with that arm.

Living shadows attacking her? Was that what she had said?

Dyna cast a look around, failed to find any shadows moving in ways she would define as strange, and eventually settled her gaze on Tartarus. Maple still stood about, seemingly trying to emulate the Carroll Institute guards with his disruptor. Ado, apparently having realized that Grafton wouldn’t be released immediately, had gone back to inspecting the possibly-entity possibly-living-shadow being with a variety of tools.

After a quick glance at Ruby, Dyna decided to head over to Tartarus. Maybe to find some small petty inconvenience she could cause them. Maybe…

“Did you figure anything out?”

Ado’s arms paused. Her head, still hidden, angled up for just a moment. “Where is Grafton?”

“I guess we need authorization to release him and someone is dragging their feet,” Dyna said. The one good thing the administrators had ever done, as far as Dyna could tell. It was minor, but it was an inconvenience. It also forced Dyna to be around Tartarus for longer, which would have been a downside if she hadn’t suddenly developed an interest in figuring out a little more about what Ruby had gotten herself into when the Hatman nabbed her. “If we didn’t intend to release him, I imagine we would have left already.”

“You don’t sound too happy,” Maple said.

Dyna didn’t bother giving him a response. “What about her?” she asked, nodding down.

“Our business together is at an end,” Ado said, resuming her inspection. “Or it will be shortly, once Grafton is free.”

“Surely you can tell me a little. Preliminary results of whatever scans you’ve been running? What is she? Not human, I presume. But she looks human—”

“Miss Graves. Our collaboration is at an end.”

Dyna clamped her mouth shut with a clack of her teeth. She stared… glared at Ado. After a long moment of nothing, she turned to look at Maple. While Ado was deliberately ignoring her as she went about her task, Maple wasn’t doing quite such a good job at the aloof disinterest. He wasn’t looking at Dyna, but rather at just about everything else, making it fairly obvious what his actual focus was. With his face hidden behind his mask, he should have been able to just stare in one direction.

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His discomfort wouldn’t have been more obvious if he tried.

Dyna had half a mind to just turn and walk off. Leave them to their stewing until Grafton got out. Ado was right. Their collaboration was at an end. There was no need for further fraternization. Whatever petty irritation she could cause would hardly be worth the effort.

And yet, turning, Dyna caught sight of Ruby. The younger girl had not followed Dyna over. She stayed close to the Carroll Institute guards with her knife out in hand. A part of Dyna thought she was trying to subtly threaten Maple or Ado, but that thought faded as Dyna realized just where she was staring. It was subtle, but the lights around the trailers let her see Ruby’s eyes clearly and the distance wasn’t so great as to make it impossible to follow Ruby’s line of sight.

She wasn’t staring at Dyna, Ado, or Maple. She wasn’t even glaring at the Hatman despite him having been the one who personally wronged her. No. Her eyes were on the body of the unconscious woman slash entity. And as a wrack of static crossing over the entity’s body, Ruby jumped ever so slightly. If Dyna hadn’t known her as well as she did, she probably would have missed it.

Even still, it was as alien an expression on the young girl as her false smiles when she put on her acting mask.

Lips pressed together, Dyna turned back to Ado and Maple.

“What do you want?” Dyna asked. “Aside from Grafton.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not signing up with you either. I’m…” Dyna stopped. She didn’t exactly have much else to offer. They were trying to recruit her, so she had figured that they would be a little more open in the first place. That was obviously not the case. She wasn’t sure if she had just exhausted their goodwill for the moment or if she had somehow upset them beyond the delay in getting Grafton back.

Dyna’s fingers found a hard circular object in one of her pockets. She had barely thought about her mirror in the last few hours. It just wasn’t useful. It wasn’t something she would mind losing, despite what it meant and how it had brought her here, inadvertently.

But she couldn’t lose it. Especially not deliberately. Walter would be disappointed at best. It would show that she couldn’t be trusted with a valuable object like an artifact. Maybe that she couldn’t be trusted at all.

Slowly, she pulled it out of her pocket. She flipped it open and glanced down at the two mirrored surfaces. Neither were mirrored at the moment. There were a lot of people around. A lot of people with her in their field of vision. Ado, Maple, Ruby, and all the guards that were standing around. Since it started exhibiting signs of being an actual artifact and not that in-between state of becoming an artifact, Dyna had been able to control what it showed a little better. With barely a thought in the back of her mind, she could flip between viewpoints like she was changing channels on a television.

“You are interested in artifacts too right?” They tried to steal one. It wasn’t exactly a large leap in logic. “You don’t get to keep it,” Dyna said, voice firm. “But maybe you want scans or whatever until Grafton is free? And in the mean time, tell me about her. What is she? Where did she come from? Are… Are there more of her?”

Dyna kept flipping through perspectives as she waited for a response. Ado hadn’t said anything just yet, but she hadn’t stonewalled her with the line about their collaboration ending. She had stopped scanning the entity, giving Dyna some hope that she was interested in the prospect of analyzing the artifact.

It was probably going to get Dyna into a bit of hot water. Definitely not nearly as big a pool of it as if she had just handed it over. She could probably argue that she was just doing as she had been ordered to and was using her available resources to gather information on Tartarus.

“I think,” Ado started slowly, pausing as if to carefully consider her words. “Your proposal is agreeable.”

“Good. Great.” Dyna wasn’t exactly happy doing the opposite of her plan to inconvenience Tartarus, but if she learned something that might put Ruby at ease, that would be ideal. “Let’s get started then,” she said, planting a foot on the little ladder-like steps that were designed to help someone into the back of the truck.

As she climbed up, an extra channel became available to Dyna. An extra perspective for her mirror to display. She immediately flipped to it with barely a thought and found herself looking up-ward at the ceiling of the truck.

The perspective lowered slowly, drifting down until Dyna was dead in the center of the mirror.

At the same time, the entity on the floor had tilted her head up. Both Maple and Ado were focused on me. Distracted. Only for a moment, but that moment was long enough.

The entity swept her arms out, leaving a trail of dark shadow behind her fingertips as she grabbed hold of Ado’s legs. That more than anything else confirmed to Dyna that this wasn’t just some random person who had gotten trapped in a phase-shifted state. Ruby certainly wasn’t leaving behind trails of smoke as she moved about.

Ado let out a small yelp as her legs were shoved out from under her. She put out her hands to catch herself, but landed directly on top of the entity anyway, pinning her.

Maple unleashed his disruptor at the same moment. Just standing off to the side, Dyna felt it. The entity must have felt it too, but unlike the previous times, she didn’t fall unconscious.

Ado’s protective suit must have shielded her, at least somewhat.

As soon as Maple triggered the disruptor and the entity came out of it unscathed, the entity used far more strength than a human would have possessed to throw Ado off her. And right into Maple. The force of a colleague hitting him sent them both to the ground outside the truck.

The entity started to stand, only to freeze.

Dyna had not been idle. This situation wasn’t quite like any of her training scenarios, but it was close that she hadn’t frozen.

Aiming the much larger wall-mounted disruptor at the entity did the trick. She stilled, half crouched. Static still rolled across her body. Especially around her legs where Maple’s disruptor had hit without any of Ado’s body for protection. It didn’t seem to affect her ability to move, but the black and white snowy particles cascaded over her torn clothes chaotically.

Dyna started to squeeze the trigger, only to stop just before she could move the small slat of metal.

She had been about to trade scans of her artifact for information on the entity. But why take that bad trade when she could get information straight from the source?

“You can talk,” Dyna said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

Movement behind Dyna made her take one single quick glance over her shoulder.

The Carroll Institute’s guards were not idle. They readied their weapons, aiming straight over toward the truck. Ruby was moving with her blade out. Ado was getting off Maple, but the disruptor looked broken. The whole front had snapped off.

Dyna snapped her eyes back to the entity. She hadn’t moved. Thankfully. Dyna’s finger had been tight around the trigger and she probably would have pulled it purely out of reflex if she felt anything or even caught the entity moving from the corner of her eye.

Taking a step, Dyna moved over, placing herself directly between the entity and the open rear of the truck. She didn’t want any accidents.

Hopefully the Carroll Institute guards wouldn’t fire anyway. Not with three people near their target who could get hurt by a stray bullet. And Ruby.

Ruby wouldn’t be hurt by stray bullets, but she was also a danger on her own. Dyna had seen the looks she had been giving the entity. Not to mention, she knew Ruby. The younger girl was probably perfectly primed to vault into the back of the truck and start stabbing before anything could be said.

Dyna took another step to the side, putting herself more between Ruby and the entity than anything else.

“That was self defense, right? In retaliation for Maple attacking you.” Though it was a question, Dyna wasn’t asking so much as telling. And telling quick. “The Carroll Institute isn’t going to let these people kidnap someone who has obviously done nothing wrong. Since you can talk, why not come have a chat with us peacefully.” Dyna waited a moment, then nodded her head toward the tank containing the Hatman. “Unless you want to end up like that.”

The entity looked over at Dyna’s motion. Her eyes widened and the tension in her shoulders lessened, albeit only slightly. A wave of static crossed over her entire body as she tore her eyes away.

“Doesn’t seem like I have much choice,” she said, putting on a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “Let’s chat. Dyna.”

Dyna blinked at her own name. Had the entity overheard it? She must have.

Not reacting beyond the blink, Dyna motioned. “Back at the other trailer,” she said.

“Sure.”

Slowly, without making sudden moves, the entity moved past Dyna. At no point did she try to attack. Ruby glowered at her, knife gripped tight in her fingers. Ado and Maple, back on their feet, backed away when she hopped out of the truck. Poor Maple had a hand pressed to his back and he didn’t quite walk straight. That didn’t stop him from moving much further back than Ado.

Dyna started to follow, only to realize that she wouldn’t be going very far with the large disruptor. Hanging it back on its rack, she quickly exchanged it for the smaller version that she had used earlier. “I’m borrowing this really quick.”

“That’s proprietary—”

“Situation has changed. Consider it official government requisition of civilian resources.”

“That isn’t legal,” Ado mumbled, but she stepped back and didn’t try to get in Dyna’s way as she moved to follow the entity.

Dyna didn’t really think it was legal. But it was probably an inconvenience for Tartarus. And if she forgot to bring it back after borrowing it, well, that would just be more inconvenient.