Yang rubbed at her eyes, the physical manifestation of wanting to wipe away exhaustion. She felt no different afterwards. She sighed and went on scrolling through her datapad.
A week after her appointment, and she already wanted to jab a pen in Weiss's eye. If she had known that running the Analysis sector had really meant wrangling a duo of bespectacled, young, high-strung analysts with egos the size of the ship, then she would have told Weiss to fuck off and run the show herself. But, she'd underestimated the situation, and here she was. She couldn't quit, either; she had a job to do, and she was indeed the one most qualified to handle it.
After some brief introductions between herself, Blake, and the team, Weiss had taken them to a couple of empty stations on the other side of the room, to give them a proper rundown of the team:
Leda. Female, 27. Red, shoulder length hair, and blue eyes. A tall individual, as tall as Yang herself. She considered herself to be the de facto leader of the Analysis team, but – as Yang had found out over the week – had reluctantly agreed to kowtow to Yang's position and Weiss's new directive. She was incredibly ambitious, to the point of displaying obsessive and controlling tendencies at times.
Despite this, Yang now felt she would be the most reliable to leave in control of the team. She had the expertise, the skill, and was willing to follow her instincts. Plus, she gave off an aura of not taking shit from anyone, especially Hanberg, whom she clashed with frequently, over just about everything.
Hanberg. Male, 26. Black hair, parted from the left, and brown eyes. Another tall person – Yang figured his height allowed him to better engage and hold his own in furious staredowns and arguments with Leda.
Yang felt that, while a competent analyst – he was just as skilled as Leda, after all – he had an inferiority complex, expressed through spoken hostility and verbal aggression. In short, his personality was his main problem. He was younger than Leda, and Yang would argue that he likely felt under her thumb, with his colleague's domineering and borderline-controlling habits.
Stripped down to their basic traits, Yang saw them as non-identical twins, who were both smart, capable analysts that could transform into hotheaded, bickering siblings at the drop of a hat. It had taken a withering glare from Weiss for her to refrain from calling them B1 and B2. Instead, she referred to them as Red and Berry.
Weiss had ended the rundown by warning Yang to keep control of them. She was in charge, and she had to make sure they knew.
So far, after a few arguments and staring contests, Yang felt like she had things in control. Most of the time, anyway.
"Ma'am." Hanberg stood up from his station, and walked over to Yang's. "Excuse me for my candor, but it's been more than a week since we got our hands on this data. A week exactly since Miss Schnee appointed you to head up this investigation. We still don't know what we're looking for."
"What a random outburst," Yang mused. She leaned back in her chair, and threaded her hands behind her head. "You have your instructions, don't you? It should be pretty straightforward."
"We need more to go on than keywords. And these are heavy-duty encryptions we're dealing with here."
"How 'bout you stop complaining?" Leda piped in. "A hard job doesn't get any easier when you start running your mouth at authority. And what do you think you're doing, just getting up in the middle of this? Sit back down already. I have an idea for a new script to run."
Yang pointed at her, and then to Hanberg. "Listen to Red. She knows how to work. Not saying you don't, Berry, but every second you spend standing here by me is another second that you're not on the job."
Hanberg turned to Leda and raised a single finger at her before sitting back down at his station.
Yang shook her head, and cast a glance at her own monitors, and the steady stream of information flowing on the screens.
The door opened, and Blake stood in the doorway. She looked at Yang. "Can I see you in private?" she asked.
Yang regarded her with a bored, dismissive toss of her hair. "I'm working. Can't you see that?"
"I'm working as well," Blake countered. "That's why I'm here. That's why I'm asking to see you in private. Maybe you didn't understand the question, so I'll tell you what we're going to do: you're going to stand your fat ass out of that chair, and you're going to come with me so we can discuss an... issue that's arisen."
Yang narrowed her eyes at Blake, scowling, but stood and followed her out of the sector anyway.
"Wonder what's the problem this time," Leda muttered.
"Probably evals." Hanberg smirked. "Maybe your performance has come under question. Well, can't say I'll be sorry to see you get booted off the ship for not dragging your weight."
"Please," Leda scoffed. "We both know you'd miss me. You wouldn't have anyone to call you out on your crude dick jokes if I wasn't here. You'd just get bored of not being corrected all the time."
Hanberg balled a piece of paper and lobbed it at Leda's head. She swatted it back at him, missing his head by a few inches.
"You can do better than that," he chuckled.
"Shut the fuck up, Berry." She paused. "Hey, maybe we're looking at this wrong."
"How do you figure?"
"I... maybe we're not looking in the right places."
Hanberg picked up three sheets of paper, each of which had several sections highlighted. "Well, we already have these patterns. Do you want to ditch them completely?"
"No, of course not... I think I have an idea."
"If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, then I'm warning you now that it risks extending this entire operation. And if we come up with nothing, then it would all be a waste of time."
"I know," Leda said, adjusting her glasses. "But I'd rather try something new and maybe come up with something, rather than bust our asses hacking our way through every encryption on these drives all at once." She peered at Hanberg over her monitors. "You with me?"
Hanberg sighed. "For once, I agree with you."
"I'm getting irritated, Yang," Blake said, pacing the corridor.
Yang crossed her arms. "I know you're getting irritated. How's that been any different over the last few days? I'm waiting for the day when you pull me out of there and start your tirade with something other than, 'I'm getting irritated, Yang.'"
"You understand, though, why I'm irritated. Because we've had nothing since we started here. Your team is a couple of overgrown children, held up only by the grace of good reputations and a proven track record for dealing with this stuff. I've seen nothing else from them to suggest that they're getting things done."
"Well, this is what happens when you steal locked documents and protected drives that may or may not be useful. What did you think? That we'd crack these encryptions in a couple days of me joining them? This stuff is advanced, Blake. It's not like we can just run a search for a file named Evil Plans. And I might be able to hack, but I was never exceptional at it. This is difficult and tiring, even for me. You have to get around that."
Blake nodded. "I'll let you know now: Weiss is scheduling a meeting for tonight. She's looking for updates, wants to know what we've got."
"And we haven't got anything." Yang kicked at the floor, and it made a dull clanging sound as her boot connected.
"You're frustrated as well, then, I take it?"
Yang scowled again. "What do you think?"
Blake sighed. "And she's probably going to give us an update on Ruby, as well."
Yang shook her head. "And then there's the Ruby thing. Right. That was the most fucked-up thing I've ever heard, when Weiss told us. And that they didn't have a cure? Can you believe that? I can't."
"What part exactly?"
"That this thing could kill her!" Yang exclaimed, her eyes flashing red for the briefest of moments.
"You never aired these concerns when Weiss told us. Or since, as far as I know."
"It never came up. And you never said anything either."
Blake shrugged. "I felt like it wasn't my place. It's as simple as that. You knew her when you were young. I've literally known her for as long as we've been up here."
"I knew a different Ruby when we were young," Yang said, sadly. "Up here, we both knew the same Ruby for the same amount of time."
"This might be insensitive," Blake probed, "but, how do you think you'd feel? I mean, if this disease kills her."
"Is it wrong to say that I don't know? That I don't even know if I'd feel grief for her?" Yang paused. "I mourned Ruby Rose, my old friend, when I charged her with double homicide. I don't know if I've seen anything from the new Ruby to open my arms to her again. It's a terrible thing to say, really, but I think that's just how I feel."
"You can say that, sure," Blake said, a thoughtful look on her face. "But at the same time, this is someone's life we're talking about. And regardless of our opinion of her, we know her, and she's still a part of this team, even if she's more than 15 000 feet below us."
Weiss flicked through again, absorbing the information Marron had sent in his report. She set the tablet down, and rubbed her temples.
Ruby had begun preliminary tests three days ago, and the majority of the facility's team had devoted themselves to working on Guillren's Disease. Weiss secretly wished that she could have the entire building working on Ruby, but she understood that she couldn't pull everyone, not when she had people who were working intensely on more renowned diseases.
Marron had reported that the main research team was projecting starting a treatment plan in two weeks time. As for Ruby herself, she seemed fine. Interestingly though, Marron hadn't reported as much about how Ruby herself was doing. There was a lot of updates on personnel movements, the reallocation of certain resources to make way for Ruby's treatment, and how Ruby's condition was progressing. But it was like he hadn't bothered to actually talk to Ruby to see how she was doing.
She fired off a letter to Marron, telling him that she'd received his update, that she would expect another in five days, and that she wanted to know how Ruby was doing, personally.
The door buzzed, and opened. Yang and Blake both shuffled in.
"Greetings. Yang, you're looking a little worse for wear this evening," she observed.
"Then I guess I should be thanking you," Yang deadpanned. "After all, it was your appointment."
Weiss ignored the barb. "Sit down, both of you." She waited for them to take their seats before continuing, "I didn't expect you to have anything out of Analysis yet. Not with the amount of data Blake collected from the mansion."
"Then why are we here?" Yang asked.
"Two reasons in particular. Firstly, I have an update on Ruby's condition."
"Has she begun treatment yet?" Blake asked.
"If it was that quick and easy, then we could have treated her here and have her back in the field next week," Weiss said, like it was the most obvious answer. "So no. She's undergoing preliminary tests. The teams there will be working for some time to do their biochemistry work, which is frankly beyond much of my comprehension. They're hoping to start a treatment plan in two weeks."
"That's too slow," Yang said, with slight anger.
"You remember, how I said last week that there was no cure? Have a little faith, woman. I'm reasonably confident that they'll be successful."
"Miss Rose."
"Hm?" Ruby sat up in her bed, feeling disoriented. "Is it time for another test?"
Marron leaned against the wall. "No. You're good for a couple of days. Conserve your energy."
"Okay," Ruby said, laying back, as waves of pain ran through her head. She'd been in the Blizzard Centre for a week now, and every day since her arrival had been filled with interviews, consultations, and testing. It had been the most exhausting week she'd experienced since her late teens, when she was running around in the wilderness of Vytal amd playing mercenary every other day. "Why are you here?" she asked him.
"I sent a report to Miss Schnee this afternoon, regarding your condition."
"And she replied?"
He nodded, and handed a tablet to her. "I received her reply 15 minutes ago. I thought you might want to see it."
"Thank you," Ruby said. The message was succinct, only a few lines:
Report received. Continue procedures as planned. We have faith in your pending success.
Update expected from you in five more days.
Note: question her on how she is doing. Not just how her treatment plan is continuing.
Ruby looked at him. "How do you know this is her? She didn't even leave a pseudonym to call her by."
"She programmed our tech and communication systems. This included."
Ruby was skeptical, but she didn't want to waste her energy on conspiracy theories. "So she wants to know how I'm doing? What does that mean?"
"I assume Miss Schnee wishes to know about your personal wellbeing, rather than just the progress of your treatment."
"Really?"
He shrugged. "It seems that way."
Ruby stared up at the ceiling, the unbroken, white ocean that flowed down the walls, across the floor and all around them. She'd thought that she might have gotten used to all the white around the Blizzard Centre, after a week of living there, but she'd been wrong; it still made her uncomfortable and slightly nauseated.
"Do you mind if I borrow this?" she asked him, after a moment of deliberation.
"Uh, go ahead."
"Thank you," she said, again, and started typing. Her idea was simple: if Weiss wanted personal updates, then why shouldn't they come from the subject herself? She would provide Weiss these periodic updates, and Marron would still provide updates on the "business" front.
She finished her message, and explained her idea to Marron. "Easy, right?"
He nodded. "That works. Is that what you want to do, though? You do understand, that as your treatment plan becomes active, you may be indisposed or incapacitated for lengths of time while your body and the treatment tries to fight the disease."
"Well, when that happens, it's no longer relevant how I'm doing on a personal level, is it? At that point, I'd like to think that all the focus is on the health of my body."
"Hm. Indeed."
Another week dragged on, and Yang's mood and temper went grew worse and shorter by the day.
After the last meeting, she'd gone back to the Analysis sector, to find out that her subordinates had taken a completely new direction, without consulting her, one that could turn up nothing, and set them back even further.
As expected, she'd been furious. She would have demanded for them to go back to the original plan, but she knew that doing so would likely pile on more time. So she'd just hunkered at her desk, waiting for something to eventuate.
Each day that passed without results angered her further, and when Weiss called another meeting, she stormed off to the briefing room after downing three headache tablets.
As usual, Weiss was already seated, with her various screens and reports at her fingertips. "Sit down," she said to Blake and Yang, without looking up.
Blake decided to start the meeting with the job at hand. "We still have nothing," she said, noticing that Yang was staring stonily at the far wall.
"Nothing? Still?"
Blake nodded. "Yang?"
Without looking at either of them, Yang said, "The rookies thought it would be a good idea to cut the decryption process on six out of the eight hard drives. They're refocusing the processing power on decrypting the remaining two. It appears they're looking for patterns in specific archives now, rather than using the broad brush approach. What they seem to fail to understand is that picking these two drives could turn up nothing, and then they'll have to restart the process with the other drives."
"I'm sure it was something they considered," Weiss said, oddly calm. She fixed Yang with a curious glance. "Do you need to take some time off from this position? You don't look well, and you don't sound particularly well either."
"I'll be fine. I just need something to come out of this, is all."
"Don't exhaust yourself," Weiss warned. "If we get a result, then you're the one going into the field. Speaking of which; Blake, you have some news?"
Blake cleared her throat. "The doctor says that my healing is on track. Barring unforeseen complications, she says I'll be able to get the casts off in another week's time. Should be able to go back into the field two weeks after that."
"Excellent. But again, if Analysis comes up with something before that time, it's on you, Yang. And you will likely be going in solo, depending on what we get."
"Fine," Yang mumbled. "Anything else?"
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Do you want an update on Ruby? She's taken to giving me updates personally now, in conjunction with the reports of Doctor Scarlatina's nurse. Her treatment plan is developing smoothly, it seems. The projection is still the end of this week, but they are hopeful of starting her on the meds within four days or so."
Yang and Blake both nodded, when a chiming alert shrilled through the room, emanating from Yang's hip.
She opened up the scroll making the noise, to see that Leda was trying to call her. She swiped to answer. "Yes?"
Leda's voice was frantic, and excited. "We've got something here!"
Yang stood up. "You do?"
"Yes ma'am. You want to see this now."
"Okay." Yang gestured at Blake to follow, and nodded curtly at Weiss. "We're on our way." She closed the call, and looked at Blake. "Let's go."
"Until next time, then," Weiss said, as she watched them leave. She noticed that she'd told them about Marron's update, but not Ruby's. That was fine, though. She doubted that they really wanted to know Ruby's thoughts, whereas she paid them her full attention. She reopened the most recent message Ruby had sent her:
Weiss,
All this white. Seriously. And I know I wrote about it in the first message I sent you, but since I'm writing about it again, that should tell you that I haven't gotten over it, and it still hasn't gotten any better.
But anyway, I still don't know exactly what you want me to report. I guess I'll sort of just write what I wrote last time, then. In that case, I'm feeling drowsy, most of the time. All the tests are still taking it out of me. When I fall asleep, I sleep for more than eight hours. My head hurts, and the nosebleeds are more frequent. I haven't blacked out lately, as far as I know.
Marron is helpful, as much as he needs to be. But that's fine. I just want to get through this and get out of here. I don't need to strain his efforts and bedside manner for no reason.
Ruby hadn't signed off on the message. Weiss wasn't sure why that was the case, especially when she'd been named herself. But, she supposed, it was just another of Ruby's new idiosyncrasies, born out of the years they'd been separated.
"The name was part of this recurring pattern," Leda explained, pointing to various points on her monitors. "So we ran a number of searches. Hindall Peyters," she said, pulling up a text page with bullet-points. "A high-profile financier and investment bank CEO. He owns a number of firms over the world, which hold the accounts for a lot of construction businesses."
"How does he connect to this?" Yang asked.
"E-mail archives," Hanberg spoke up. "Managed to find the pattern. Diverted some processing power, cracked the encryption. Guy's been moving large amounts of money between corporate accounts. There was a pattern there in itself, with the companies involved." He then listed off the different companies, as Yang and Blake took notes. "We did a bit more digging on the companies, but-"
"I think we're dealing with dummy and shell corporations here," Leda interrupted. "There are inconsistencies, and things don't quite add up."
"Okay." Yang nodded. To Blake, she said, "I think you should call Weiss in here at this point."
Blake smirked. "Already done. Looks like you've got a solo op coming pretty soon."
Yang cracked her knuckles, and nodded. "Good."
Rolling along... rolling along... ignoring the vagueness of my exposition lately... rolling along...
... Truly Yours, Kalico.