Despite the insanity of the night's events, Ruby Rose couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement. As she, her teammates, and their close friends stormed the prison, she felt focused. As though she's found her element and was staying firmly planted in it. She wouldn't describe all the fighting that'd gotten them inside as 'fun', but it'd gotten her heart pounding. With all of them working together, she was sure they could still win here.

Even as everyone had been splintered off, she still felt as though they could win.

Though, now racing down the corridor leading to the arsenal, she felt her confidence waver. Having already watched the Courier and Penny pass her as they went to handle their own tasks, they were now even fewer than before. She still believed, yes, they could win. But losing more than half of her friends to other trouble in the prison had blown a tidy hole in the little plan they'd had. It put a feeling of unease in the pit of her stomach she couldn't shake, but she trusted them, just as she trusted her teammates. They were going to make it through this and win, grouped together or not.

"The exit should be just ahead," Weiss said, running alongside Ruby. "Do we have any idea what we're doing once we get there?"

"Nope!" Ruby answered, steadily getting ahead of everyone. "Open to ideas!"

"Typical," Weiss huffed.

"Not hearing any ideas, snowflake!" Sun chimed, keeping pace handily, Blake at his flank.

"Stop calling me that!" Weiss hissed as the group rounded a corner into a long, straight section of hallway. Ahead of them, Ruby could see an opening in the corridor, a concourse between it and a third hall. As they approached, she could see it spilling towards a doorway of reinforced steel, blocked by gating and barred walls. A checkpoint of some kind, she realized, to keep the prisoners from slipping through what would otherwise be an easy exit. But the checkpoint was abandoned. What she could see of it, bins for metal-detectors, chairs at monitors and the like it, were in disarray. Not the chaos of a fight, but as though they'd been abandoned mid-use. With the restored power most of the checkpoint had begun the process of rebooting itself. Something they each discovered, as they ran through the archways of the metal detectors. For each of them it made a shrill chirp, detecting their weapons, the few metal adornments on them.

"Where are they?" Blake asked. "Shouldn't there be guards waiting here?"

"With everything that's going on, I don't think they'd be waiting here for long," Sun said, scratching the back of his neck as he passed through the metal detector, eliciting another angry screech.

"This is a direct path to where Vale stockpiles most of its military hardware," Weiss countered. "Of all the places they should be staying, you'd think this would be one of them."

"People don't always make smart decisions when the fighting starts," Yang said, glaring at the archway as she passed through it. She then turned her gaze to the reinforced door in front of them. "So I guess we go through there next?"

"Yeah…" Ruby answered, looking at the doorway. She cast her gaze at the machinery that surrounded it, and approached. The pane of glass set into the wall near the door confirmed that yes, there was a second set of doors past it to help secure the checkpoint. They would need to go through both. "Two sets of doors…" She looked down at the controls in front of her, searching for an override that would allow her to open both. "Ok, if I can open the first set of doors, we just need to find a way to open the other-"

As she spoke, she heard the sound of metal groaning, and the ping of hydraulics being forcibly over pressured. Ruby looked up from the controls and through the window. As she did, she watched as the interior doors began to buckle outward into the checkpoint, before a sudden gout of fluid burst from the walls and they slammed open. An alarm began to blare in the checkpoint, as Ruby saw the black glyph that'd appeared in the frame of the security door disappear. Despite the ringing in her ears from the alarm, she leaned back from the controls and looked at her partner.

Weiss Schnee stood there, sword thrust into the ground and a similar, white glyph glowing beneath herself. She had a look of concentration about her, as she glared at the space where the door had been. She withdrew her weapon from the ground, returning it to her side as her teammates, and their plus-one regarded her.

"… What?" Weiss asked, looking at them in confusion.

"What!?" Ruby shouted over the alarm.

"I asked 'what?'!" Weiss repeated.

"What!?" Ruby tried again over the alarm. "I can't hear you!"

"What!?" Weiss asked.

"I'm going deaf in here, can we just go outside already!?" Blake interrupted.

"…What!?" Ruby asked.

Unable to take the noise anymore, Ruby just shook her head and began pressing buttons on the control panel, convinced that at least one of them would allow her to open the doorway to the outside world. She was indeed rewarded, when the second set of doors began to sluggishly move outwards themselves, opening the way back into the outside world. Though it also came with the added benefit of making the lights of the checkpoint flash uncontrollably, and barring the path behind them, leaving only one way forward.

Not planning to turn back regardless, Ruby left the controls and circled back around through the blasted open doorway. She waved her hand. "Come on!"

Understanding the basic message, her teammates followed. They passed quickly through the checkpoint, away from the blaring alarm and flashing lights and back into the night air, now once again dimly illuminated by the exterior prison lighting. The path beyond the door was paved, surrounded on either side by the barbed fencing of the prison. It led away from the building, up the natural rise the prison found itself on. Distantly, light could be seen shining, beyond a thin cover of trees.

Ruby could hear gunfire echoing all around her, both coming from elsewhere in the prison behind her, and echoing from ahead of her. She could not distinguish one from the other. They mingled and twisted together in a discordant cacophony of noise that, on different days, she was actually quite fond of. Though given the circumstances around her, Ruby could not find the charm she normally did.

As they stepped outside once more, Ruby turned to look once more at Weiss. "That was cool!" she said, smiling at her partner. "Since when have you been able to do that?"

"Since earlier tonight, when I flipped a truck over," Weiss mused, stepping briskly outside, joining Ruby.

"You flipped a truck over!?" Ruby asked. "How did I miss that?"

"It had been during the fighting at the front gate," Weiss said, smirking as she shook her head. "Simply forcing my way through things is so uncouth… Yet now I'm finding I'm quite capable of it."

"You should've tried it sooner," Sun said, stepping out after Weiss, tailed by Blake and Yang. "Could probably have avoided a bunch of stuff if you'd just started throwing things around."

"I didn't know that I could," Weiss countered with a huff. "That certainly felt like the upper limit of what I could do though. Even then I'm surprised I could do it."

"Guess Six was right that you should try experimenting with it more," Blake said, smirking.

Weiss shot her teammate a dirty look, and huffed. "… Well, he wasn't wrong. I'll admit that."

Ruby chuckled at her partner before turning back towards the path ahead of them. "C'mon! We need to hurry… Oh."

She immediately stopped dead in her tracks, as she gazed at the sight in front of her, something the rest of her team slowly realized was also there. Ruby didn't know how she could've missed it, when she'd first stepped outside. Perhaps her eyes simply hadn't adjusted to the gloom beyond the prison walls. Or perhaps her excitement and zeal to carry on with the danger in the evening air had taken her attention.

But she found it returned to her at that moment. She almost wished it hadn't, really.

The smell hit her first. Metallic and foul in a way that made her skin crawl. Despite herself, she found it familiar. It conjured to mind images of the previous night's endeavors with the general and his subordinates. She hadn't realized it was there, in all the fighting. It was something she'd only noticed after being able to step outside again and smell the night air.

It never occurred to her that blood had such a strong smell to it.

When there was so much of it, the smell only got worse. Now it was mingled with something else, multiple things. The acidic, putrid smell of vomit and the gut churning stink of festering body odor. It hit her nose like a fist and tried to pull her stomach out through her mouth. In a bid to try and ignore how atrocious it was, foolishly, she tried to breathe through her mouth. She gave up on that the moment she felt it hit her tongue.

Despite that, the sight in front of her was even worse, not helped by the dim lights coming off of the prison.

Weiss stepped beside her and gagged. "Oh… oh no."

"By the gods," Blake breathed. All of them pulled around her and surveyed the sight.

Ruby counted at least two dozen people that she could see. What was left of them. In the dim light of the prison she could see the uniformed bodies of the prison guards on the ground in front of her. They were spread out across the ground, weapons in hand, or near where they lay. Some of them lay face down in the dirt, a few on their sides. More were facing towards the sky, faces slack and grayed in the dim light. The light reflected glassy in the eyes of the nearest one, and Ruby couldn't hear any breathing. Not a single sound to say any of them were still alive.

The state they were in, Ruby wasn't sure if she should wish they were.

The guards lay twisted and contorted in the best of cases. Merely swept aside as though they were little more than an afterthought. Riddled with gunfire and forgotten, laying in dark and thick pools of gore. The dark ichor spread out in rivulets, connecting all of them as steam rose in the cooling night air. But the worst among them lay in pieces. Chests and stomachs split from ribs to groin, guts lying thick on the ground like snakes coiled on themselves. Others still, slashed across the waist, bisecting them. Bodies cut and cleaved as though they'd been little more than paper. Faces frozen with the thin remains of panic.

Ruby Rose had stumbled onto the site of slaughter.

"… Guess we found out where the guards went," Sun said numbly, trying in vain to cover his nose against the stench in the air. "Ugh…"

"It's horrible," Weiss spoke, voice brittle. "So… brutal."

"I've seen this before," Blake said, voice distant as she cautiously approached the carnage. She looked down at the nearest guard, face falling. "Before I left the White Fang, I saw the aftermath of a raid one of our leaders went on…" She shook her head. "It's… it's even worse."

Mustering her strength, Ruby stepped forward next to Blake. She reached out a hand and placed it upon Blake's shoulder. Trying to provide her with a reassurance Ruby herself didn't feel. She turned and looked down at the pool of gore nearest her boot, trying to keep her eyes from tracking deeper into it. To the body of a young woman who lay on her side in it. Her glassy gaze fixed back towards them, the prison.

"You said it yourself, The world's not a nice place," Ruby said, unable to find the words she felt she needed to say. "… But we can make it better. That's why we're here tonight. To stop people who would do something like… this."

Despite the urgency of their situation, Ruby found herself stuck at the scene. She wanted to urge them all forward. They needed to stop the White Fang, keep them from escaping with whatever they'd take from the arsenal. But she couldn't be brought to tear herself away from the scene in front of her. The smell churned her stomach and made her feel as though her heart was gripped by icy claws. It just didn't seem real to her, staring at all of it. To try and move past it, or accidentally disturb it. Ruby wanted to be gone already. But she couldn't bring herself to look away either. None of them could.

It wasn't until Yang spoke that any of them found it in themselves to start moving again.

"We need to go," Yang said curtly.

Without waiting for any of them to answer, without further instruction, and without hesitation, Yang moved. She gave the slowly cooling and thickening pool of gore and ichor a wide berth as she pressed forward along the path ahead of them. Yang moved slowly, watching her step as she made her way around the scene that had stolen the momentum of her friends.

Ruby watched Yang as she went. Calm, composed, and concentrated on the task at hand.

But most tellingly of all, cold.

She couldn't tell if Yang truly didn't care about the scene before them, or if Yang was merely keeping strong. But Ruby knew such a reaction was uncommon for her elder sister. The girl who blew-up in fiery rage if someone so much as grazed her hair. Or who would floor anyone who would look at them the wrong way. The very one who had tried so hard to be the very definition of warm and close with her for as long as Ruby could remember.

Yet now she walked past two dozen corpses and acted as though it meant nothing.

Ruby watched her sister as she passed around the far edge of the pool. Her teammates began to follow after. Yang was right, they needed to be on their way. Tellingly, she felt a pair of cool raindrops pop against her nose, and could smell the approaching storm in the air. Instinctively, Ruby pulled her hood tighter against her head, hoping to ward some of the coming storm away.

But as Ruby began to move, Yang turned back, briefly looking over her shoulder. What Ruby saw, she wasn't sure. Perhaps it was a trick of the dim light. But for a brief moment, she saw Yang, looking mournfully at the dead. A shallow golden glow ebbing into her hair, a red tinge growing in her eyes.

Then pain felled both, and she turned away, back to the path ahead.

Perhaps she was being strong.

Or perhaps, Ruby feared, there was something worse.

…

Despite now having the lights on, I still couldn't really appreciate the prison for the old structure it was. In the Wasteland, coming across old buildings was a natural occurrence. Pretty much any place worth prospecting was going to be from before the war, meaning they were centuries old. Which almost always meant, outside the security that might still be lurking inside them, they were chock full of history. Nothing survives that long without holding some kind of secret. Unfortunately, if I was going to find anything like that from Kohl's Gate, it wasn't going to be right then and there.

The only thing I got was that the place had been painted over a dozen times since it was built. Could mostly tell that from the glazed look most of the cinder block walls had. That, and the foundation was crumbling in places, causing the paint to peel off in a rainbow of aged colors. Always a shame, when the old buildings start to crumble and no one gives a damn. Though given the present circumstances, there were more important things to be focused on.

We'd had to pull ahead of Ruby and keep running. Left them at the crossroad to go the other way. Having gleaned the map of the prison once already, I was able to fill in the missing pieces of my minimap. Made traversing the place easier, since we didn't have to hunt down another directory to guide us. Getting there was a different issue, but Penny and I were both light on our feet, so we made it quick.

The Willowby wing of the prison was actually a step up in terms of construction, as we went deeper. It was hard to tell if it was a section of the prison that'd been added later, or if it'd received more funding. In either case, it showed in the general state and construction of the place: the cinder block walls transitioned from paint to proper paneling and cover. The exposed or barely covered piping and wiring was slowly covered over with drop paneling shielding, almost as though they were trying to make the place more professional for the people who had to work there. Really though, that should've been the standard throughout the prison. If you've got all the electrics exposed for any prisoner to take a stab at, it's a miracle no one had tried to escape sooner.

As we got deeper in, signage became more common, making it even easier for Penny and I to find our way.

A combination of the map and my Pip-Boy pointed us to an otherwise nondescript door in the middle of a corridor, windowed offices and bullpens before and after it. There were no windows showing inside the room, and only a singular sign dictating the room was any different than those we'd passed. If we hadn't had the map or Pip-Boy pointing our way, it would've been easy to mistake it for a closet. Which was probably part of the idea. The sign itself read 'Observations and Communications 1', which implied there was probably more than one room for the task, but what we needed was here.

The door to the room had clearly been forced. Despite being of thick wood, the latch and lock had been busted off of it. The door was ajar, canted inwards.

I pulled my lever-action from my side and cycled it, making sure I had a flash-shell loaded. Penny took one side of the door, and I took the other, and we paused a moment, listening. The only thing coming from inside was silence.

"Ready?" I asked.

Penny nodded.

I returned it, and placed a hand on the door. Slowly, quietly, I swung it inward and followed after it, sweeping the room.

Despite the power being restored, the lighting was dim. Overhead lighting was active, but they emitted only a soft and faint glow rather than the full strength of the lighting in the hall. Could feel it playing tricks on my eyes. Aside from that, the air was dry and warm. A side effect of all the electronics in the room, humming and trying to keep themselves cool and operating right.

The room was maybe twenty by thirty feet in size, divided in half. To one side of the room was a massive bank of terminals and computers. The observation half of things, I assumed. Though even with the power restored it seemed the system was still in the process of resetting itself. Didn't bode well for the communication half of things. The other side of the room contained banks of and towers of servers, which connected back to the terminals in a spider web of wires. I didn't know much about the operating system, but I had to assume most of it was for memory storage. On the opposite side of the room from the door were several metal storage lockers, each labeled with a wing of the prison on it. Probably the only thing in the room with a sense of cohesion.

We appeared to be alone. Aside from a few chairs and a table in the middle of the room, heavy with papers and coffee mugs, there were no people. Though the chairs themselves were overturned, and a bit of blood on one corner of the table. Safe assumption there was some kind of fight. But there wasn't a body to be seen.

I silently crept forward into the room, motioning for Penny to follow behind me. She shut the door as she came in, and I moved towards the banks of servers. Cautiously, I dipped among them, swiveling and checking the cramped spaces. It wouldn't make sense for them to be hiding behind them, especially if they weren't expecting company. But I wouldn't know unless I checked. It also gave me a chance to do a quick once-over of the servers for any physical damage.

"… Seems clear," I said, stepping back out and lowering my shotgun. I continued to sweep the room as Penny made her way in. I gestured towards one of the terminals. "See if you can't make a go of it first. Whatever's wrong with it, I can't find any physical damage to the servers. Part of it's likely in the software."

Penny nodded and approached one of the terminals. As she began tapping at the keyboard, I continued to slowly examine the room. There had definitely been a fight. The blood on the corner of the table led to a small pool of it on the ground, soaked into some paperwork. It wasn't dried yet, but I could see it was congealing. Taking out the comms would've needed to happen early on in the riot, so that would make sense. If the blood wasn't thickened, that would mean it had happened more recently.

But it still didn't explain where it came from. If whoever had spilled it had survived, they would've worked to get the comms open again. They wouldn't have just disappeared, not without the White Fang or the inmates dragging them somewhere. Didn't look like that'd been the case either.

If they hadn't survived… well, it would be a question of where they were.

"How's it look Penny?" I asked.

"I'm not too sure," Penny said, articulating each word. "Papa knows more about how to work with software than I do. I'm running diagnostics on the system now, but it'll take time to go through everything."

"You won't need to go through everything," I said, still eyeing the room. "These guys wouldn't have needed to go through the trouble of hiding whatever they did. Not if they were planning to do all this." I motioned to the prison at large. "Try scanning the more frequently accessed files and locations. They probably would've dumped everything there…"

My eyes traced to the back wall of the room, opposite the door. The metal lockers were all lining the wall neatly. There was nothing about any of them that stood out, at a distance.

I walked over to them and began examining them a bit closer. Most of the lockers still looked clean. In fact, most of them seemed to be a bit dusty, actually. Being that they were the most self-contained and neat thing in the room, that made sense. They didn't have to go into them as often, so they could get a little dirty.

Except, now that I was closer, I could see that one of the lockers had been disturbed. The dust had streaks of cleaner metal showing through.

The thick and smudgy ichor around the handle was a giveaway as well.

"I think I found it!" Penny chimed.

My hand passed to the latch of the locker and I pulled the door open.

The guard hiding inside stared back at me, face stricken with fear. He was a taller fellow, skinny, pale in the face and with pink hair. Made darker by a massive gash on the side of his head.

His lips tightened as he made eye contact with me.

"… Howdy," I said, taking a step back.

"… Hi," The guard said, eyes darting around the room. "… You're not with the inmates, are you?"

"Depends, does it look like I'm planning to attack you?" I asked.

The guard's eyes lowered down to about waist level, and I followed it. Remembering then, that I was still holding my shotgun.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"… Fair point," I said, sliding my shotgun back onto my hip. The guard relaxed a bit more.

"What's going on?" Penny asked.

"Think I found the guy who's supposed to be running this place," I said, eyeing him. "You are, right?"

The guard nodded. "Name's, uh, Mark." His name badge agreed with him.

"A pleasure," I said. "You want to keep hiding in there, or come out here and help us get everything running again?"

"… That," Mark agreed. "I'd prefer that." Carefully, Mark climbed out of the locker, stretching as he went. "More cramped in there than I thought."

"You wanna explain what you were doing there?" I asked, moving back towards the terminal bank. Penny was still tapping at the keyboard, but it appeared as though she was working to remove whatever files were blocking the system.

"Hiding," Mark answered. "Heard you coming down the hall and thought it was the inmates coming back for something."

"Can't blame you, seems like this place has been through the wringer tonight," I told him. "What happened?"

"You want the whole story?" Mark asked. "It's a bit long."

"The short version, if you could," I said, looking over Penny's shoulder. "We're already under a bit of a crunch."

"Uh, well, it started about maybe an hour, two hours ago?" Mark said, uncertain. He too loomed over us, looking at the terminals. "Everything seemed fine for the most part, normal night. Then I caught something going on near the Oakholme Wing and tried to get a read on it while getting people towards it. Seemed like a fight at the time."

There was that name again, Oakholme. They'd been planning for things to spiral out from there.

"How'd that evolve into a full blown riot?" I asked, settling at a terminal next to Penny's.

"Because they turned on the responding guards the moment they showed up," Mark explained. "Normally inmates will knock it off when the guards show up, rather than catch it on their sentence…" Mark's face screwed up slightly. "Wait, aren't you-"

"Crazy Steve, yes," I told him. "Which should be enough to tell you how your night is going."

"… Greeeeat," Mark muttered.

"So, the inmates you're talking about were with the White Fang, and the fight was part of their plan to throw this place into a riot," I explained. "That doesn't explain how they got here."

"Wasn't just here," Mark explained. "We've got another camera room on the other side of the building. Pretty sure they got hit too. But anyway, I had to direct people from here and it looked like it was contained. At least it did, until a group of them suddenly kicked in the door and attacked me. Caught me with my pants down, so to speak."

"Hope that's not literal," I said, tapping at the keyboard myself, opening the files Penny had so I could take a look at things. She had already started quarantining them, but the system hadn't come back up yet. "So they came in, kicked the crap out of you, then uploaded something?"

"Yeah, stuck something into one of the servers and the whole system went down," Mark nodded, tentatively touching the clotted-over gash on his head. "They got a lucky hit in and I caught the table on the way down. Looked bad enough they didn't bother to check me. After that I stayed down until they left, and have been trying to get any of it to come back online. I might've studied to be an engineer, but I'm clearly a guard! What would I know about how Atlas built those towers?"

"This feeds back into the CCT?" I asked, curious.

"It's how we communicate to the precincts back in the kingdom proper," Mark explained. "We get a direct line running back in. Though considering you're the one who answered, they must've done something to that too."

I tucked that nugget away for the moment, it would probably be useful once we actually got the main cameras running again.

It didn't take long for Penny and me together to rip through what shut the camera down. Like I'd told Penny, the inmates/White Fang/whoever had simply dumped their handy work in the nearest convenient location. I wasn't sure how they'd transferred it in, the guards should've confiscated anything they'd need to do it. But they'd had people helping them from every angle. Not hard to sneak contraband with enough hands.

What helped was that the overall layout was significantly different from how it'd been at the CCT. Probably got the system from a contractor in Atlas. Made it easy enough to navigate. The main file was an executable that had the cameras pull a system reset and randomize the input and output feeds, then have it keep doing that every time the system detected a proper connection. The end result caused the cameras to softlock themselves into an error screen. Everything was fully functional, and the system security had actually kept it from failing completely.

It was honestly the best outcome we could've hoped for. It was half-assed and wouldn't have worked if Kohl's Gate had an actual IT staff on hand. But because they didn't it was enough to shut the system down and not be easily pulled back online.

At least, not until Penny and I got to take a crack at it.

We removed the file and double checked that most of the main system files were still functional. It was hard to tell if any of the data was corrupted, but it didn't seem that they were. The program had been running off a copy it'd made inside its own subfolder.

"Alright," I said, pushing back from the keyboard. "If that's all they did, we should be able to get the cameras rolling again after another reset. Without the virus in the way, they should default back to the main files."

"If they don't, I should be able to figure out where they might have hidden the other files," Penny added. "I know what to look for now, so it should be easier."

I looked at Mark. "You know how to reset it?"

Mark looked towards the servers for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, easy enough. One sec." He headed towards the server bank and disappeared among the towers. A few moments later the terminals blinked off. Another few seconds and they began to each come back online, bootstraps flashing over the screens. One by one they began to display video feeds of the prison. Mostly downward angles, some spinning and panning uncontrollably. Most of the shots were incoherent, containing blurred and out of focus images. There could be a fire going on in any of them, inmates burning to death, and you wouldn't be able to tell.

"Gonna guess that something's not quite right," I said, looking at what was either a dance party or somebody getting their head kicked in by twenty people.

"No, no it's not," Mark said, eyeing the monitors. "System's back online but they're all out of alignment or stuck on default mode. They're going to need to be manually reset."

"Wonderful," I said, shaking my head. "… What about communications? The system's back online, so it should be able to connect to the CCT now, right?"

"It should, yeah," Mark nodded, before pointing at one of the terminals. "That's the emergency telecom. The moment you activate it, it'll send a distress signal out through the CCT to the surrounding precincts, and even Beacon Academy. Shouldn't get any of the students, but the professors will be allowed to respond, at least."

I grimaced at the thought. Having Port or Oobleck respond wouldn't be so bad, but having Ozpin or Goodwitch show would be. The assistance would be appreciated, but I'd rather not have to deal with the questions and accusations that followed.

Though with the way the night was going, I likely wouldn't be so cordial with them either.

Regardless, I went over to the terminal and began typing. Immediately I was greeted by a menu requesting an additional keystroke to engage the system. Then another to send the distress signal. Double authentication was normally a good thing, it prevented accidents. Though here it only slowed things down. A second keystroke and the system kicked to life, a progress bar displaying that the system was attempting to issue the alert through the outgoing connection.

It was promptly interrupted by a string of error messages.

"Think that's not supposed to happen," I said, getting Mark to look at the screen.

"Not unless something's broken," Mark said. "Which I'm guessing there is."

'Great, just what we needed, trying to troubleshoot an entire building's worth of I.T. issues.'

I scanned over the message briefly, trying to get the gist of them. Most of them were related to connection issues, unable to find a router or directory. It frankly only meant a handful of things, but they were a handful of things that might take time to fix. Pivoting at my terminal, I examined the back of it, finding wires that ran back into the wall. They were still intact, so that wasn't the issue.

"Connection issues means they either cut the line somewhere between it and the main hub, or they damaged the hub itself," Mark said, following my train of thought. "They didn't do it here, but there's space between here and the hub, could be anywhere."

"Let's assume they're not going to waste time trying to break random holes in the wall looking for the right wire," I said, looking towards Mark. "Where is the main hub, it shouldn't be far from here, right?"

"It's not. They had to move it to a different room when they upgraded the cameras a few years ago," Mark nodded, motioning towards the door. "It's down the corridor near Oakholme. They haven't put a sign on it, but it'll be the last door on the right before the corridor leading into the Wing. You'll find the hub and junction boxes in there."

Helpfully, my Pip-Boy updated, adding the location of the room and pointing there on my compass. I looked back towards Penny, still working at resetting the cameras, and doing so masterfully. "I'm going to focus on getting the communications opened up. Do you think you can hold things here?"

"I'm still combat ready," Penny said, shooting me a smile while her hands worked the keyboard with mechanical precision. Had to imagine she was a marvelous multitask-er.

I nodded to her, then Mark. "Anything happens to her, I'm beating your ass first."

"What'd I do!?" Mark asked.

Without answering, I turned and bolted back out of the door and into the corridor. I followed the basic directions that Mark had given me and kept along the main path for a distance. Wasn't like I could get sidetracked from it, short of jumping into one of the side rooms. Compass would've kept me going the right way anyhow.

Taking the opportunity, I pulled up my Scroll and checked my contacts. My teammates, Sun, Penny, JNPR, and CFVY were all still connected, so my communications with them were still open, at least. I pulled open the main-line between us.

"Roll call!" I said into the mic. "CFVY, how're things looking out at the gates?"

There was a pause, before noise began trickling back at me. It was crushed and tinny, but identifiable. The staccato of gunfire, pocked by explosions, and the occasional nonverbal cry. Coco's voice came through more clearly over it, the bursts of gunfire from her minigun peppering her speech.

"They haven't gotten through if that's what you mean, kid," Coco said, voice not quite a shout. "We haven't had a chance to actually talk with anyone yet but-"

"GET SOOOME!" Velvet suddenly shouted, a trio of explosions echoing through the speaker of the Scroll.

"Ease it back Vel, you're on the air," Coco said, a chuckle in her tone.

"Ignore her, do it again!" Nora chirped through the line. "BOMB BUDDIES!"

There was then another explosion, though this one I could tell was inside the prison. I could hear it echoing through the halls, and it shook the building slightly. As I rounded a corner, Jaune got on the line next.

"Nora, please don't bring this place down, we're trying to help," Jaune insisted.

"But I hit where I was aiming~" Nora answered.

"How're thing's looking on you guys' end?" I asked, moving on to Jaune. "You get a handle on the armory?"

"We're dealing with it now," Ren said, followed by a pair of gunshots and the sound of something squishy slamming against hard stone. "There's only a couple of them here- Nora!"

There was another explosion. A moment passed, before anyone else said anything.

"… Welp, Nora just blew the door off the hinges," Jaune said. "That's not good."

"They pay some to keep that stuff fixed anyway," I said, pausing briefly to scan the doors. Wasn't quite there yet. I kept going. "Ruby, you girls at the arsenal yet?"

There was silence over the line. It lingered there as I continued slowly down the hallway, making sure I hadn't gone too far or missed the door Mark had pointed out. We'd only been separated five, maybe ten minutes at the most. They couldn't have gotten into that much trouble. Nora could, as she'd more than willingly proven, but my teammates had a Snowflake to keep them in check. She would've at least sounded the alarm if something was going wrong.

"… You girls there?" I asked again, surveying the corridor again.

"… We're here," Ruby said a moment later. "We- um… ran into something when we got out here… We're still making our way to the arsenal, trying to move fast."

"Good… everything alright?" I asked, noting the lack of enthusiasm she'd had not long prior.

"You'll understand when you get out here," Weiss answered. "What about you, have you figured how to contact the authorities?"

"Working on it," I told her, spying the hall Mark had said would lead to Oakholme. The door I was looking for was right next to it. "Penny's working on getting the security system back online, she's resetting the cam-"

There was a rush of motion as I approached the door, coming from the crossways of the corridor. Immediately I ducked, rolling out of the way as an inmate crashed face first into the wall. I spun to face the direction they'd come from, the corridor to Oakholme. There were four more inmates rushing at me. All of them Faunus.

White Fang.

"-Oop, one sec," I said, launching back to my feet. My shotgun snapped to head level and I fired, nailing the first inmate who'd tried to tackle me in the head. He stumbled to the side, head half encased in ice, and hit the ground, scrambling to get the ice off. I cycled the action and whipped back towards the other four inmates bum rushing me. My aim fell low and caught the closest in the legs with another ice shell. His feet went out from under him and he fell forward, tripping the nearest behind him as they crashed. My hand cycled the lever again and loaded the next shell as the last two closed on me. VATS said they would close on me faster than I could draw a bead, so I didn't bother wasting the shell.

My shotgun spun around in my grip so I had a handle on the muzzle, and I met their charge. The closest of them, a lean guy with a fluffy and ringed tail, got in first. Only as he got within striking distance did I notice the ground down spike in his hand, a shiv. With whip-cord speed it raced up toward my throat.

With batter-like speed, I cracked the side of his head with my shotgun. Immediately he reeled back, swearing, shiv slipping back, only for his buddy to come racing in next to him, a big and hairy guy with round ears I recognized immediately. Seemed my gut reaction had been on the money. He launched at me with thick arms and sharp yellow teeth. I back stepped and dodged the grapple he tried to pull me into, I wound up and back handed him with the shotgun's receiver. Caught him on the nose, but he didn't stagger. His face twisted up, giving a better view at how large his teeth were, and he rounded on me with a massive paw. I raised my left arm and caught the blow on my Pip-Boy, countered with a heel kick to his stomach. As the hit connected, ring-tail scurried back in, stabbing straight with his shiv at my liver. He hit with a trio of quick stabs, connecting with my body armor. As the sharp weapon blunted itself on the plating, he realized his mistake and tried to pull back.

Using his buddy for balance, I pivoted, releasing a hand from my shotgun. My fist shot out and caught ring-tail in the throat with a Scribe's Counter. He stumbled back and dropped his shiv, clasping at his throat.

Then the two inmates I'd tripped up picked themselves up and began to circle me and round-ears.

Right as round-ears locked his hands onto the leg I'd planted in his stomach and pulled. He tried to drag me off my feet and towards him.

I helped him, springing off my free foot before planting it in his face. The shift in weight threw him off balance and sent him stumbling backwards. The two circling us took the chance to try and make their play. The closer among them, a burly and bulbous man with buck teeth, swung a hammer fist at me.

The muzzle of my shotgun passed around in time to meet his face. A stutter of VATS ended with him getting a face-full of frigid air and ice that planted him on his back. As my hand worked the lever, round-ears' grip on my leg broke, and I side-stepped off of him, right as the other circling inmate leapt at me trying to latch onto me.

My wrist flexed, releasing the Cow-Puncher, and I decked them in the face. There was a crackle of electricity at the connection, and a yowl from the inmate, a smaller, scrawny man with some kind of shell on his back and a nasally voice. He went rigid before losing his balance. My fist drew back and I snapped out a second strike with the Cow-Puncher, punching downward.

Shelly slammed into the floor and stayed there.

I released the Cow-Puncher and let it slide back into my sleeve as I cycled my shotgun again. With the last shell in the tube, I planted the muzzle against round-ears and fired. A shell of ice flowed over his chest, planting him against the floor. He tried to pick himself, struggling against the weight of it. While he did, I loaded a pair of magnum-shells, chambering one.

At that point, the first inmate I'd blasted finally managed to pull his head out of the ice. He was the only human of the bunch, an odd occurrence. He gasped for air as he scrambled away from the shell of ice shaped like his face.

I blasted him with one of the magnum shells and he blew back against the wall. He slumped to the ground and didn't move. My hand cycled the lever of my shotgun and I pointed it down at round-ears' head.

He stopped struggling and looked up at me.

"You REALLY want to try that?" I asked.

Without a further word, round-ears stopped struggling and laid against the ground, letting the layer of ice weigh him down.

I levered the action of my shotgun open again and began reloading. Replaced the magnum shell in the chamber with another ice-round. Needed to save how many of those I had. Making more would need to be a point of priority soon enough.

Sliding my shotgun back beside my hip, I picked up my Scroll again.

"Sorry 'bout that, where was I?" I asked. "… Oh, right. Penny's resetting the cameras right now."

"Just got the gate cameras back online," Penny chimed in. "Wow, you guys are doing great out there!"

"S'what we do," Coco said, audibly smirking through the call.

"I'm outside the CCT junction right now," I said, walking up to the door. Jiggled the handle, found it was locked. I levered Knock-Knock off my back and wedged the adze end of the head into the frame. A quick pull and the door snapped open, the lock bolt shearing apart. Spinning the axe around, I scanned the room and walked inside. "Now I'm inside."

It was a cramped room, even compared to the camera room we'd just been in. Only caveat was it seemed a little better coordinated. Wires were properly labeled, separate, and run in coordinated strands, making it easy to see what went where and easy to test if something wasn't working right. Had to imagine it was the work of an outside contractor. Probably whoever directly governed access to the CCT. The prison's own internal systems might've been a rat's nest, but those used to call for help couldn't be. By comparison, there was only one server bank in the room compared to the dozens in the camera room. There were plenty more wires running into the walls though. Connections for all throughout the prison.

A lone terminal sat at the back wall, CCT command prompt sitting open and waiting.

I shut the door and moved over to the terminal. "Alright, system's online at least, so that's not a problem." I ran my fingers over the keyboard, quickly attempting to wake the terminal and access the system proper. I was greeted with a menu, list of submenus, and some basic diagnostics. Listed off connections within the prison itself, signal strength, data flow speed… "Shit."

"What's wrong?" Ruby asked after a moment

"Outgoing connection is shutdown," I said, cycling through the commands. I settled over the diagnostics submenu and began to move through it. Found an option for trouble-shooting the various connections in the prison. "Let me see if I can't fix that."

I enabled the troubleshooter and another window opened. Progress bars flashed over the screen as it tested the various connections that ran through the prison. One by one they came back positive, showing that most of the network was still operational. Seeing the results come back without signs of error, meant that the trouble lay elsewhere. Instead, I went back to the main menu and worked my way down to the system-wide controls. The submenu that opened for it had an 'Emergency Response' option as the second one on the list. Right under 'Prison-wide Lockdown'.

I chose the 'Emergency Response' option and was greeted with an error.

'Connection to CCT interrupted. Please enable admin privileges.'

The outgoing-connection was still fucked.

I went back to the main menu and searched along the list for the option to enable admin controls. They'd likely let me bypass any remaining security. Naturally it wouldn't be obviously labeled either, so I had to waste precious time searching for it.

"Everything alright Six?" Jaune asked, the sounds of footsteps echoing through the speaker.

"Slow going," I answered. "This thing's design is terrible. Whatever they did, I'm just trying to bypass security right now to actually turn it on… ah, here we go."

I opened the submenu for the system 'Control Panel' and scanned the options. The option to run the system at administrator level was third down, and I chose it.

A new Error message popped up.

'Error Sys.##$ %^&32$$# % not found. Closing Administrator view.'

Immediately the submenu closed and I was booted back to the main screen. The main screen then crashed, and shunted itself back into sleep mode, before restarting completely.

"… Ok, that's gonna be a problem," I said, talking to my Scroll. "Whatever they've put into this thing they've made it so you can't access admin controls the normal way. I'm gonna guess the prison doesn't keep CCT experts on staff."

"… Mark said 'no, we don't'," Penny answered after a moment.

"Man, how long were they planning this?" Nora asked.

"Long enough," I said, grimacing at the terminal screen. Couldn't take the easy way in. Would need to try something a bit higher up the ladder. "… Penny, does Mark know if this thing is connected straight to the CCT, no other go-betweens?"

There was a pause in the air, before Penny answered. "He said he doesn't know, he's not a CCT expert."

Even before he'd answered I was already trying something. I used the same keystrokes I had previously to reopen the CCT's command prompt. From there, I began guiding the system back through the steps needed to connect to the tower proper. It was slower than when I'd been using the menus. Had to cut through files to try and find the links back. But it was working. I was able to get to the hardcoded screen that would give me access to the CCT.

I just needed admin credentials.

For a moment I stared at the screen.

Then I entered my Scroll number, and a password I'd associated with it. Graham.

There was a pause as the system calibrated itself.

Then a progress bar. It slowly crawled across the screen, before blinking.

My scroll vibrated and I looked down at it. I'd received a message. It put a diabolical smile on my face.

'LOCAL ALERT: WARNING! KOHL'S GATE PRISON IS UNDER SIEGE! REQUESTING IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE!'

It flashed over my Scroll until I sent it away.

"What the- What'd you do?" Jaune asked. "My Scroll just lit up!"

"Ours too!" Coco called. "What's going on?"

"Had to go higher up the chain," I said. "Sent the message through the entire CCT."

"YOU WHAT!?" Weiss asked.

I couldn't believe I'd done it either. It'd just been a lucky guess. But the prison was directly tied into the CCT system. I had to guess most municipal systems were, in some way.

And I'd hacked the damn thing. I hadn't thought about it at the time when I did it, it seemed so easy. Give myself a way back in if I ever needed it. What I'd done was even bigger.

I'd given myself a skeleton key to almost any system even remotely connected to it.

Though I clearly wasn't practiced with it either. I'd meant for that to only go to the necessary systems. Seems I might've overshot the mark. No telling how many people were going to be getting that message. Had to guess it wasn't going to Vacuo or Mistral, they weren't necessarily 'local'. But the military detachment hovering in the bay might've gotten the call.

Boy, would it have turned into a shitshow for the White Fang if Ironwood showed up. Gunboat Diplomacy HO!

As I sat at the computer, My Pip-Boy chimed again, letting me know I'd accomplished what I'd set out to do.

-Objective Complete: Restore connection to the CCT.

"How did you manage to send it to everyone!?" Weiss repeated.

"I don't know!" I answered back, only half lying. "I kept hitting buttons until it did what I wanted. Clearly it worked, and should keep working until someone shuts it down again."

"It'll be a bit before cavalry arrives," Velvet cut in. "But at least they'll actually show up now, right?"

"They should," I agreed, pushing away from the terminal. "I'm going to get the rest of the system back online with Penny and then we'll move to reinforce the group heading for the arsenal. How're you girls making it?"

"We're almost there," Sun answered. "It's starting to rain pretty bad out here, but we can still see the path."

"Good." I let the door to the junction room close behind me as I stepped back out into the corridor. "Penny and I should be on our way-"

A scream echoed through the corridor. The howl of a wild animal that'd been stuck with red-hot iron. Full of fear, pain, and a desperate need to escape. I'd heard the sound on occasion, echoing from Legion camps, or from the occasional burn victim.

I turned towards the noise.

It came echoing up the corridor from the Oakholme Wing.

I stayed still for a moment, staring down the corridor. Whatever was down there, it had been important that the White Fang start from that wing and make their way down. Having a moment to ponder, was it just its proximity to the junction? The camera room? If it was, why were there people still down there? Every other inmate had already made their way to elsewhere in the prison.

Why would they waste their time there?

"… You still there Six? You cut out," Ren said over the line.

"… Yeah, I'm here," I answered. "Just heard something that caught me off-guard. Someone's screaming down in the Oakholme Wing."

"Why's that weird?" Nora asked, breathing puffing as she did something from the other end of the link. "People are getting beat-up all over!"

I didn't answer her immediately. It shouldn't have stuck out to me. But I got a gut feeling that something was happening in there that was important. They'd put a lot of effort into this mess, what more had they done that we hadn't seen yet?

"… Penny-" I said, speaking into my Scroll. "Ask Mark what the Oakholme Wing is used for."

Again there was a pause in the line, as Penny likely asked Mark what the Oakholme Wing was for. Had to wonder what it was like on her end of this conversation. As far as I knew she didn't have a Scroll, and she was just tapped into this conversation by virtue of being Penny. Mark probably had a question or two.

After a moment, Penny answered: "He says it's where they keep the Maximum Security and Solitary Confinement."

I felt alarm bells begin to go off in my head, even before my Pip-Boy made another chime.

-(Optional): Investigate the Oakholme Wing.

'… Damn it.'

I looked around the intersection for a moment, before finding the one inmate I'd convinced to stay down. He was staring blankly up at the ceiling, trying to do his best corpse impersonation. His eyes briefly flicked over to me as I approached, and I could see the color begin to drain from his face.

"Give me a second," I said, lowering my Scroll. I knelt down towards the inmate. Getting nice and close. "I'm gonna give you one chance to tell me what's so important about having your guys down in that wing. Then it's going to start hurting."

"I-I don't-" The inmate started.

Then I drew Blood-Nap and sank it into the ground next to his head, his eyes tracking back to it. He blinked and swallowed dryly. One chance.

"… I-I don't know why they wanted us down there, really," The inmate said. "T-they said they wanted us to work with some of our guys who are already there. They'd made a deal with the other guys."

"What 'other guys'?" I growled.

"The guys- the hard timers, whatever you want to call them!" The inmate snapped. "Bandits, some of the old Xiong crew, Spiders, Mercenaries- Do I look like I know who they keep down there?"

"What did they want them to do?" I asked.

"I don't know, help?" the inmate gulped. "It takes a lot of guys to stage a jailbreak- a lot of them are willing to risk it if the alternative is rotting in here for the rest of their lives."

My gaze didn't leave the inmate as I mulled over his words. The pieces began to settle into place. The White Fang needed something to use as a distraction, both inside the prison and outside. They had their outside guys attack the precincts to stop outside help from showing up, while the guys inside cut the lines. It would let them use the chaos to get the rest of the way to the arsenal. In exchange, they'd cut loose the worst bastards in this place and give them a good shot at escaping.

Even if everyone pulled together, the guards, the police, Beacon, and any Huntsmen who pitched in, they'd be swamped. It'd mean trying to re-capture every convict that got away. Worse if it meant some of them rebuilt their gangs or crews and went back to whatever had landed them here in the first place. It'd be a manhunt on a grand scale.

No one would have time to worry about the White Fang.

"… FUCK," I swore and got up, putting Blood Nap away. Pulled my Scroll back up and looked down the corridor to Oakholme. "They're cutting the prisoners loose."

"They already did that!" Nora chimed, a dull thud echoing through the speaker.

"Not these guys, Oakholme is max security, it's where they're keeping all the top-shelf nutjobs," I told them. "The White Fang are going to use them as the final smoke screen to try and get away clean. Sick everyone inside loose on the city and escape in the chaos."

"There's no way that'd work… right?" Velvet asked.

"Chaos is amazing camouflage," I answered. "It'll be like they were never here."

The line stayed silent as everyone tried to process what to do. I didn't need to. I had VATS to think faster with, and had already made up my mind.

"Ruby, you girls are going to need to handle it without me," I said. "I'll try to catch-up, but this is too big to ignore. If this doesn't get stopped, it'll drag tonight out for weeks. There'll be too many things bogging the system down for anyone to actually do anything."

"We can come back-" Ruby started to say.

"DON'T," I intoned. "The arsenal still matters. We can't spread ourselves any thinner than we have." I took a moment to breathe, resolving myself. "I'll try and catch-up. But you need to try and finish things there, fast and smart. I'll take care of Oakholme."

"But you said it's full of-" Nora said.

"It is," I answered. "I'm worse."

I closed the line and sprinted down the corridor to Oakholme.