They keep telling Ilia to give up. They keep insisting that Blake is long dead, after weeks she spent running from them in the desert. They say that the living are the priority here.
Ilia does not give up. She is White Fang, determined to have revenge for their ancestors. Determined to finish the war at last by conquering the Cities. They still say eat the rich, a slogan from centuries ago, because the rich will always exploit the poor until the rich are destroyed. Until equality is finally theirs. The White Fang are stubborn and idealistic by their very nature, and Ilia is no exception.
Ilia follows Blake, because Blake is all she has left, with her family long gone. She packs two days' supply of water, which will be enough. Ilia knows the tricks to finding water in the desert, to wringing it out of the mist and digging in the right places until the earth is damp, to traveling by night and sheltering by day. She has her maps and her weapons and her own abilities that let her blend in. Ilia is a Guide. She was born in this desert and she can survive it with nothing, because this is her home.
Blake may well be dead, but Ilia refuses to think about that. She has hope, because without hope she has nothing. And she hopes that Blake is alive, somewhere, amber eyes shining the way they always did when she looked at Ilia.
Ilia tracks Blake's footsteps, or what she can. Her trail leads to the edge of a glassy crater, the remnants of a nuked city, and stops abruptly. Blake must have made her way into the crater itself while trying to hide. Ilia follows.
…
The door opens, earlier than the woman in the white coat usually arrives. Ruby thinks so, at least. It's hard to tell time in the cell, but she pays attention to the small sounds of machinery in the distance and their patterns. Even an abandoned place follows the rhythms of its inhabitants.
There are too many people that Ruby has never seen, all in the same red, white, and blue. She tries to take in as many details as she can about each of them. One is tall and has eyes that glow, the wrong color for radiation. One is thin and smiling, fingers twitching with suppressed energy, steps bouncy. The woman behind them is tall and broad. Ruby knows what muscular people look like, and she doesn't look like Yang or Pyrrha. She just looks enormous. She's never been close to starvation.
The enormous woman tosses Jaune into the cell and closes the door. Ruby rushes over to help him up. Jaune looks thinner and more exhausted, and lost. His eyes are set deeper.
"What happened?" Ruby asks. "Didn't they feed you?"
"I thought it must be poisoned or something," Jaune mumbles, getting to his feet and then almost collapsing into Ruby's arms. Ruby catches him and lowers him back to the floor of the cell.
"Jaune, why would they poison us? They keep trying to get information, not kill us, and you can't escape when you're starving," Ruby scolds him. Jaune nods reluctantly.
"I didn't know if – any of you were alive," he admits. "If I couldn't protect you, and something happened, I thought it would be better not to –"
"Jaune!" Ruby snaps. "If something happens to one of us, the rest of us keep going. You don't give up just because someone dies, not out in the desert."
"I know," Jaune says. "But I'm a medic, so I'm supposed to be saving all of you."
"Wow, really, you think we can't save ourselves?" Ruby jokes. She's never been more relieved in her life, now that her team is back. Part of it, anyway.
Right on cue, the door opens to reveal the same three people. Ren is tossed in this time, the door quickly sliding shut behind him. Ren scrambles to his feet, then relaxes from his combat stance when he sees them.
"I'm glad both of you are alive," he says, which might be the longest sentence Ruby's ever heard him say. Jaune pulls both of them into a bone-crushing hug, and Ruby doesn't care because she has her team back.
With her team, she can escape. They can find their way back to the rest of the team. They can survive, all of them, no matter what.
…
Winter frowns at the test results and scans down the code for her catastrophic error that gave results this erroneous. She finds none, and activates the AI to search for bugs.
"No errors found," the message across her screen proclaims.
Winter rubs her eyes, then squints at the screen again, as if that will change what she sees, then gives up and sinks back in her chair.
The subjects all show dramatic genetic damage, as is to be expected from the high ambient levels of radiation. The dosage received over less than twenty years, assuming they stayed away from Ground Zero sites and other toxic areas, is less than the lethal dose, but they should still be riddled with tumors and horrific birth defects. Despite everything, the subjects are paradoxically healthy. Effects of malnutrition and periods of starvation are visible, but there is no significant damage. The most visible impact of the patchwork of their DNA is the female's two-colored hair.
Even in the event of incomplete xenocide, the specimens were never capable of producing offspring. The radiation and bioweapons should have sterilized any survivors, or caused birth defects that rendered the fetuses nonviable. That survivors exist is improbable enough, that they appear almost completely healthy despite the ravages of their genetic material is, frankly, miraculous.
Winter's first thought is that this cannot be natural. Perhaps this entire exercise was a deliberate test. The area was seeded with individuals who had shortly prior been given massive doses of radiation, and are now days from succumbing to its effects.
Winter realizes how little sense her attempts at explanations make, and gives up. She'll write in the report that the specimens are inexplicably healthy, and leave it at that. It is not her place to speculate.
…
Sienna Khan believes in the cause of the White Fang with all of her heart. That matter is not up for debate.
She is simply considering the practicalities of their situation. The poor who united and demanded that they receive the security the Cities provided, who attempted to start a war, were wiped out in days. They are far fewer in number now, and far less prepared. The Cities could wipe out every trace of the White Fang with a single atomic weapon. Their only hope is to collaborate. To beg for the mercy of the cities and pray that their generosity wins, rather than entering a battle of force which they have no hope of winning.
Sienna never voices her concerns to the leadership. Taurus is radicalizing them, and his rhetoric is persuasive in a way that hers will never be. He speaks of revenge, not of surrender.
Sienna's protégé Ilia Amitola is gone into the desert, perhaps an intelligent choice on her part. Sienna herself will likely not survive long if Taurus manages to wrest control from the leadership. For the time being, some of the Council are still more moderate, so Sienna retains her hope. Hope is all she has, and all the White Fang has ever had.