Adam's lip curled in disgust at the expensive fittings, the obvious show of prosperity as he stepped into the foyer. Water dripped from his coat onto the polished floor. The obvious protocol was to ring or knock, not just walk in, as a small porter's room was just off to one side, where the door-servant could wait. No one was there now, though, since business hours were over and there was hardly a point to having a man waiting any longer.

Wait—

The inconsistency hit him all at once. If it was after business hours and callers were not expected, then why was the door unlocked? Even if Saulbridge was normally cavalier about security—hardly likely given the wall, the gates, the barred windows—they wouldn't be the day after a break-in. And they surely knew that there had been a break-in, else why hadn't Blake and Vincent returned to the White Fang?

He was just making that mental switch that differentiated hunter from hunted, the confidence of one who controlled a situation to the wariness of one on enemy ground, when the men burst from the first doors on either side of the hall past the porter's room.

There were four in all, wearing the white uniforms and caps of orderlies, but carrying truncheons and pistols. They moved with confident steps, used to violence and to their weapons.

Adam struck like lightning. He'd been carrying his sword in his left hand, holding the center of the sheath while his right was on the hilt. In one movement he whipped the two apart, flinging the sheath into the face of one of the men on the left while slicing out in a horizontal arc that slashed through an orderly's jacket and carved across his chest. The weapon was a Japanese katana he'd acquired nearly two years ago and while he had no formal training in iaijutsu the strike, drawing the sword and launching a lethal cut in one motion, followed the same principles. He felt the pressure up his arm as muscle was severed, ribs and breastbone crunched through, and then the man went reeling away, bright blood blossoming against the white. Red was hard for Adam to see, with his damaged eyes and tinted lenses, but here he was well enough aware of it.

The two orderlies he hadn't engaged were lunging past him, going for the other two White Fang members that stood with him. Growls of fury and shock greeted the attack; his companions had been slower to react than he had.

He wanted to spring to their defense, but he had himself to worry about for the moment; the human guard that he was facing was wary, truncheon upraised, pistol still by his side in his left hand. Eighteen inches of ironwood was a good match for a rapier or smallsword, but the Japanese longsword was a different matter. Still, the "orderly" wasn't trying to fumble the pistol into his right hand to fire, which meant he was cool-headed enough not to panic, to know that at this range even off-hand shooting wasn't going to miss. Either that or he was just ambidextrous.

Either way, he was dangerous, and the best way to deal with a dangerous enemy was to prevent him from acting at all.

His blade seemed to sing as he slashed.

~X X X~

"Guests?" Weiss blurted out. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Miss Black's associates, of course," Hyde said, without any trace of agitation.

Despite the doctor's order, Garnet had not yet budged from his spot. He glanced back and forth between Weiss and Hyde.

"Go on," Hyde repeated. "I'll look after Miss Schnee."

Garnet gave him a scornful look even as he was drawing a revolver from beneath his jacket.

"Please," Hyde returned the scorn in full measure. "Do you think I intend to risk myself? Next to me will be the safest place she can find. And it will be less safe if you aren't doing your job to lead the defenses."

Garnet, though, looked over at Weiss again. She was flattered, but at the same time it seemed rather late in the game for him to be rediscovering his loyalty to the Schnee family. Whatever his other sins, Hyde's job had never been to stand as a bodyguard for Weiss. Whereas Garnet had worked with Ashton, and now with Hyde, basically everyone except Weiss.

Most probably, this played a large part in the orders she gave him.

"What are you waiting for?" she snapped. "You heard him!"

With a glower and one last glance between the two, Garnet spun on his heel and headed off down the corridor at a brisk pace. Weiss wasted no more time on him but rounded on Hyde.

"Now. You." She pointed up at him, her fingertip an inch from his nose. "You're far too calm about this, which tells me that you were expecting it."

"Of course. It was the next logical step for them to take."

"So you laid some kind of trap with yourself as bait?"

"Nonsense. Only a desperate man or a fool acts as their own lure in such a matter."

"Ahh, Miss Black, then."

Hyde nodded.

"Much better."

"But what about the people working here? What about the projects? Except for the fact that you knew it was coming, all this is exactly the same as what happened in your story about Ellespoint Island!"

"Precisely how foolish do you believe me to be, Miss Schnee? We were already closing down operations here even before these recent events, and Miss Black's discovery of this facility merely sped things along. I assure you that any remaining material of note was removed from this location today, and all but a skeleton staff reassigned if their efforts were needed and discharged if they were not."

Which explains the silence, the feeling of emptiness.

"Your secretary, the porter, they were all guards?"

"No, no—as I said, a skeleton staff."

"Then what happened to them? And what about Gertrud?"

"Miss Schnee, I hesitate to appear to agree with Mr. Garnet, but we should be moving to safety."

"Then answer my question, because I'm not moving until I know where I need to be going. I left my governess in your office and my coachman with the carriage because I assumed that I was paying a call on a business, not walking into a military engagement."

"Do you think that wasn't planned for? When dark fell, the regular staff had been instructed to move immediately to safety. Which, I may add, we should also do. They would have taken your escort with them."

Weiss hesitated for a moment. It wasn't that she didn't believe Hyde; if nothing else the remaining non-security members of the staff could hardly have missed what was happening and so would have made sure of their own safety. The question was whether or not Gertrud would have gone with them and left Weiss to her own devices, meaning in this case Dr. Hyde's care. Gertrud's tenacity towards Weiss's reputation was surprisingly fierce.

She's never tried to interfere with business, though. She hadn't followed Weiss into the alley to confront Miss Black or joined in on her conversations with Dr. Hyde. Gertrud had a relentless grip on her role, yes, but also had a firm awareness of where that role ended and where the things that were Weiss's alone to do began.

"I suppose that this explains why I was never served that cup of coffee your secretary offered, either," she said archly. Somehow, she had a feeling that showing excessive concern or relief over her subordinates would not win her any points with Hyde. Though frankly, I'm not sure how much that's even something that I should want! "All right, let's get to your safe spot."

It was clear that the trap had been sprung, not just once but in multiple places throughout the building, as shouting cries, and the sharp bark of gunfire came from multiple directions as Hyde rapidly led Weiss through the building. Outside, the storm continued to rage, and every time they passed an east-facing window Weiss could see a solid sheet of water descending down across it.

"Once again I must give my regards to Mr. Garnet's assessment of the situation from a security perspective," Hyde called back to her. "He anticipated that if an attack was made, it would come from multiple directions and deployed our security forces accordingly, laying ambushes at different likely chokepoints. There is a lesson in that for you as well, Miss Schnee: always listen to the expert on your staff in their field of mastery, presuming of course that it is not yours as well. Otherwise, what is the point of having them?"

Weiss had no idea how to respond to that; the idea of helpful business advice in a combat situation struck her as being so weird and incongruous that she could scarcely wrap her head around it. The prospect of revenge seemed to be the only thing that could pierce his scientific detachment—well, that and the amusement that he got out of weaving his web of words around the people he was dealing with.

The part that Weiss couldn't even properly process was the fundamental issue of what side she was on. She'd come to Pandora to gain information on an enemy, on a woman that had been hunting her family's holdings. She had expected to find evidence of unethical behavior; Miss Black's animal-like features told their own tale and it would obviously be a bad one no matter the specifics. She wasn't a child, and the things she'd seen in her father's private files only reinforced that.

But this—?

All the Gothic imaginings she'd had on the way up the drive had only scratched the surface of what Saulbridge Sanitarium really held. Hyde's story about Ellespoint Island had been a tale of what amounted to a slave revolt by an abused and brutalized population. Her sympathies could hardly help but be evoked on the side of the victims.

And yet, there had to be more to the story. She was sure of it. Hyde's insistence on treating the Faunus as less than human things, not even granting them whatever dignity Moreau's name for them awarded, couldn't be set aside.

It might just have been resentment, his hatred for what they'd done, but Weiss didn't think so.

And what was happening now? What did Miss Black and her fellow Faunus want from Pandora? Just more revenge? Maybe, but in that case why had she repeatedly showed Weiss mercy, left the manor guards and Sky and Bronzewing alive? And on the other side, the men fighting the Faunus, Garnet's guards laying the ambush, what of their lives? They hadn't been at Ellespoint, they weren't scientists caught up in ethical debate; they were soldiers protecting lives and property of the Schnee Dust Company that were under attack. They were part of the people whom Weiss, as a member of the Schnee family and an owner of the Dust Company, had a duty to protect, no different than how the Queen and Prime Minister had a duty to England's citizens. Even if she gave weight to the justice of the Faunus's cause, additional deaths were not justified.

She wanted facts, damn it. Everyone involved in this business had an agenda and had plenty of moral lines they were willing to cross to achieve it.

Which includes me, she admitted. There's no point in pretending that I'm any different.

"Where are we going, anyway?" she asked.

"Out and away from here."

"There's…some kind of escape tunnel?"

Hyde nodded.

"Very good, Miss Schnee. It was constructed when I took over this estate as a research center, and leads directly to the carriage house, if it becomes necessary to escape the grounds by vehicle or on horseback."

She didn't ask where the tunnel entrance was located, as that seemed plain enough by the direction they were going: Hyde's own office. While she might have made some acerbic comment about how the researcher had made sure that in most situations he'd have immediate access to a way out, a glance at his scarred hand made her stifle any thought in that direction. He'd been through this before, after all, without any escape route, and had constant reminders to say "never again." Besides, Weiss could hardly fault a situation that meant that Gertrud had been as close as possible to safety.

"Maybe they've even gone already, left for safety right away."

"They shouldn't have; a mass exodus of people would serve as an obvious clue that something was wrong, and thus they were instructed to remain out of sight in the tunnel."

"They're still down there? What if the Faunus attacked the carriage house and blocked the far end?"

"Your Mr. Garnet believed that was unlikely under the circumstances, and I chose to accept his belief as to tactics." He looked back over his shoulder. "Since we are wagering our own safety on this assumption as well, I should think we need to put more faith in that judgment and show less hesitation now."

Weiss supposed that it was a matter of consideration that he said "we" when it was fairly likely that he meant "you."

"I knew I shouldn't have left Myrtenaster in the carriage," she muttered under her breath, then started to dart ahead to catch up with Hyde.

Only she never got there, as a door burst open between them, knocked down by the two bodies that had crashed into it, a red-haired man in an orderly's white uniform—now spotted with stark crimson—and a woman wearing a tunic-like dress and some kind of sleeves of ragged gray fur.

Except that, as the two of them wrestled over a revolver, Weiss realized that the woman wasn't wearing sleeves at all; those were her arms, and her hands, too, were weirdly misshapen, being very narrow but with the fingers extra-long, as if they had an additional joint.

Behind them came a second man, whom Weiss realized at once was another Faunus because of the stag-like horns sprouting from his temples. The stag-man had a bandolier of knives across his naked torso, and a heavy maul in his hands.

Hyde flinched away from the sudden intrusion, shock and sudden fear on his face. The stag-man glanced back and forth, and then his stare fixed on Hyde before a bubbling growl came from deep in his chest.

"Jekyll!" he screamed, and in that roar was carried a depth of hatred that Weiss could scarcely comprehend. "Jekyll!"

There was no denying that the name carried power with it; at the stag-man's cry the female Faunus looked up, eyes searching for the object of her companion's scream. The distraction allowed the orderly to rip his arm out of her hand; he backhanded her across the face with the revolver and she reeled back. She gave a sharp cry of pain at the blow, and Weiss saw the gleam of sharklike fangs filling her mouth.

"Run, sir!" the fallen guard bellowed as he swung the revolver towards the male Faunus. The gun barked once, and the stag-man's body jerked as the bullet plowed into his upper left arm from the side. The maul dropped at once as the wounded arm was no longer able to support weight, the injury clearly being serious.

The stag-man gave another cry, rage and pain mingling, and he took a step towards Hyde, then another. The head of the maul scraped off the parquet, gouging streaks in the polished wood. The orderly squeezed the trigger again, twice, but both times the hammer clicked on a spent cylinder.

Shuddering, Hyde had thrown off his momentary paralysis fast enough to thrust his hand into his suit-coat pocket. He came up with a double-barreled derringer, a nasty little weapon whose walnut grip was nearly swallowed by his big hand, its over-and-under barrels throwing back the electric light in sparks. It barked once, twice, the stag-man twitching with the impact of the small-caliber bullets.

The Faunus woman's hands were now locked around the orderly's throat, rage burning in her eyes. He struggled weakly against her, but her hands were squeezing with tremendous force and it was plain to see that she was not only choking off his air but crushing his windpipe.

Through it all, Weiss just stared in horror. Men were being killed right in front of her, and she couldn't think of anything to do. She had no weapon, and a tiny woman in a full-length dress could hardly make a difference, but there had to be something—

Didn't there?

The stag-man lurched towards Hyde (Jekyll?); the bullets had plainly hurt him even if they hadn't been immediately lethal. The rasping squeal of the maul on the wood floor was a sickly presage of advancing death.

Blood trickled down the orderly's throat from where his attacker's claws had punctured the skin.

Hyde's right eye seemed to bulge in terror, the left one too trapped by its ruined socket to match the gesture. The empty gun dropped from nerveless fingers as a tremendous shudder ran through him. Then, as if by some supreme act of will, he threw off the fearful paralysis, turned, and bolted away down the hall towards his office.

The orderly's hands fell to the floor, the strength leaving his arms as his last struggles went for naught.

Weiss was cut off from the exit, with no way to get through, but practically…

If I'm still here, she'll go after me next. The stag-man was already lurching after Hyde, losing ground but still making progress. But if not, she'll help her friend pursue Hyde.

Weiss grabbed her skirts, pulling them up to calf-length for a little more freedom of movement, turned, and ran.

~X X X~

The shotgun seemed to jump in Jem Tanner's hands, the powerful recoil driving the stock painfully against his shoulder. At a range of five feet, though, the Faunus kept the aim on target despite the force of the recoil. Blood sprayed as the guard's chest was torn apart by the buckshot, and he crashed over backwards, hitting the wall and dropping to the floor.

Outside, thunder crashed and Tanner's whole body spasmed involuntarily, shudders running through him.

"Steady, Jem," said his partner. Lorenz's big hand came down on Tanner's shoulder and squeezed. It was as steady as a rock next to the whiplike Jem's twitching shudders. "Breathe."

Tanner did as he was told, drawing in air in long, slow, ragged breaths, trying to master himself. He hated storms, hated them. Every single time, they carried him back to the island, back to that first night, to the chaos and the blood, when three other Faunus were gunned down around him, corpses pinning him to the floor until he'd been dragged free by Drage and Vincent ten minutes later. He still didn't know how he'd survived, as if the storm over Ellespoint had been Death that had just carelessly passed him by and would come back one day to correct the mistake. And wasn't this just like that first time? Attacking an enemy in a desperate attempt to win their freedom?

But…regardless of what they'd all been through that night, they'd won, hadn't they?

So why not again?

And they needed him. Adam, Vincent, Blake, Lorenz. All of the White Fang.

"I'm…I'm all right," he said.

"Those men were waiting for us. They meant to kill us. You should have no regrets."

The thunder seemed to echo off his soul, hungry Death happy to be fed.

He strode forward and kicked the corpse aside with one hoof. Tanner could pass for human so long as he wore his specially-crafted boots to hide his feet and minded his stance and stride carefully so as not to give away that he had an extra leg joint at what in humans would be the ankle and heel. Tonight, though, there was no attempt to "pass"; his Faunus features were open and obvious. Not only did it free his movements, but if it shocked and disgusted the humans, that was just a weapon for him to use against them in battle.

He broke open the shotgun, extracted the two spent shells, and fed in two fresh ones. Gun at the ready, he threw open the door.

No attack greeted him, no shouts or protests. The room was completely deserted, so far as Jem could tell, but it was full of equipment. He recognized a coal-fed steam furnace at one end, with its water tanks and Dust-fueled temperature regulators, the smoke pipes from the coal fire passing up through the ceiling, but the item the steam furnace fed was another matter. It looked like a massive cylinder lying on its side in the center of the room, held up by a steel framework. A series of gears and interconnecting rods used the power of the furnace to rotate the cylinder rapidly, while a bevy of wires and cables connected the cylinder to a series of great glass jars on a rack as well as running up through the walls.

"What…what is all this?"

Lorenz snapped his fingers.

"It's a generating plant. This thing," he said while pointing at the cylinder, "is the generator. It provides electricity to the building, through these wires. And those jars must be batteries, to store the excess power and hold a reserve in case of trouble."

"In case of trouble, you say? Because when I think of it, those humans do indeed have a lot of trouble seeing in the dark. Whereas, we do quite well that way."

"Now that sounds like a good thought. If we shut this down…"

"They'll be stuck without lights, and easy prey for us."

Tanner's smile was more akin to a shark's than any animal whose attributes he actually possessed.

"Then let's see what we can do to shut things down," Lorenz said, stepping towards the generator controls to see what he could make of them.

"I have that covered," Tanner said, still grinning.

"You do? You didn't even recognize the generator. How do you know how to shut it down?"

"Well, that's because of how I'm going to take care of that job."

He swung the shotgun up into firing position.

"Wait a second! You can't just—"

The boom of the gun cut Lorenz off, the pellets tearing apart several of the batteries. Acid sprayed from the explosion, sparks crackling from cables tearing loose. The shotgun roared again, Tanner contributing thunder to the crackling lightning as he blasted loose one of the main cables coming off the generator. The battery rack came crashing down entirely, pulled free by its own weight, wet cells shattering, pouring their contents across the floor in a rapidly spreading pool. The lights died, the only illumination in the room the glow of the furnace and the wild crackling of the discharging electricity.

Then the spreading acid pool reached the feet of the two Faunus, the current discharging from the fallen cables pumping through it and into them. They didn't get to see the gears and rods start to tear themselves loose under the stresses, the coal-bin sparking into flame, or the steam pipes tearing loose, for they had already fallen.

Jem Tanner had always been sure Death would come back for him one day in an electrical storm. He'd just never realized that it would be one of his own making.

~X X X~

A/N: Hopefully, any electrical engineers in the audience will forgive me for dramatic license, and also for applying a steampunk aesthetic to the generator scene (the wet cell, of which car batteries are a modern descendant, had actually been invented by 1889, but I applied an appearance for them based on the Leyden jar, which is a capacitor, not a battery).