"Go left," Reese said.
"You're sure this is the way?" Blake asked.
"I was a little preoccupied with trying to untie myself, but this looks familiar."
Blake tilted her head in admission and continued down the hall. As they reached an intersection, she ducked around the corner and into a small side room.
Reese followed right behind her, closing the door just before the guard walked around the corner at the opposite end of the hall. Blake stood at the door with her ears pricked up until well after Reese had heard the footsteps pass and fade away. Blake peeked out the door, then they resumed their path through the building, slowly heading deeper inside the facility, moving closer to the mountain and the mine itself. They slipped past a few more guards, eventually reaching a hallway that terminated in a set of double-doors embedded in the rock face. Another hallway branched off to their right, running parallel to the mountain.
"Well?" Blake asked.
"I still thought I could get free in the beginning," Reese said. "I can't remember much of my surroundings from right after the cell. It might have been these ones."
Reese reached to open the double-doors, only for Blake to grab her by the shoulder and shake her head. She inclined her head towards the door leading to the hallway at their right.
"Someone thinks they're being clever," Blake murmured.
Blake pushed at one of the double-doors, then let it close as she and Reese took up positions either side of the door leading to the other hallway. The readied themselves to strike, Blake raising her katana and Reese brandishing the rifle like a club. Blake extended three fingers, lowered one, lowered a second—
The door burst open, trapping Reese against a wall. She swore as the door mashed her against the wall, and she heard a scuffle break out on the other side of the door. She kicked the door back, only for someone to pin her throat against the wall with their forearm.
"Reese?"
Reese felt the pressure lighten on her throat, and she blinked as she recognized Coco. Her weapon dangled from her free hand in its compact form, and a duffle bag hung from her shoulder. Her hair was a bird's nest, several large bruises covered her arms and face, and she smelled like a gym bag someone had left in a locker for a month, but it was Coco, in all her two-fisted glory.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"We were coming to rescue you," Reese said. "What are you doing?"
"Coming to rescue you. But I guess we can skip that stage of the plan. Nora, this is Reese I'm looking at, right? Not some hallucination?"
"Yep," Nora said.
Coco let go of Reese. Reese looked past Coco to see Blake extend a hand to help Nora to her feet. Nora waved her off, pushing herself up with her hammer. Coco handed Reese the duffle bag. Reese cocked an eyebrow at her.
"What's this?"
"We found the armory," Coco said. "Plenty of ammo in there for you, plus another gun. But it looks like you have that part covered. Once you're loaded up, we can move to the next step."
"Which is what, exactly?"
"We'll see if we can find a way to call out to Vale, then we'll head into the woods. With all the chaos you caused, we could last until Vale sends reinforcements. We might not be able to make it back to Crescent Hollow and hold the village, but we can lead the Fang here on a merry little chase through the forest."
"I think you're vastly overestimating our mobility," Blake said.
"I realize it's not ideal," Coco said, "But I don't think we're going to have much luck defending a spot in the base. Either way, we need to find a radio first. Did you guys see anything back that way?"
"Not really," Reese said.
"We haven't checked there yet," Blake said. She nodded towards the double doors.
Coco started to say something, when a siren began to blare through the building. Just beneath the siren, they heard the sound of running footsteps. The four of them ducked through the double-doors into an artificial cavern with three tunnels branching off from it in various directions. The area had been hollowed out from the mountain, but the relative newness of the trusses supporting two of the tunnels suggested that not all of them were part of the mine. Work lights on tripod stands lit the antechamber, and caged bulbs were strung along the ceiling of the tunnels, bathing the stone in harsh yellow light. Coco ground her teeth, looking at the tunnels.
"Nora," she said. "Think you can get us a little breathing room?"
"Step back," Nora said. Nora moved back from the doors while the other three huntresses retreated as far as they could from her. Nora fired three grenades at the ceiling above the doors, collapsing a section of the cavern into a pile of rubble, blocking both the doors they had passed through and the tunnel entrance adjacent to them.
One of the two remaining tunnels appeared to have been part of the original mine, judging by the aged supports and tools littering the sides. The other was much wider, built with newer supports, and was clear of obstructions along the tunnel. Tire tracks stretched down the tunnel. Reese tilted her head towards the newer looking tunnel, a questioning look on her face. Coco responded with a nod, and the four huntresses hurried down the tunnel as it curved through the mountain. At the end they came to a massive set of doors. The doors looked out of place in the tunnel; a pair of sliding steel panels set into the rock wide enough to drive a small truck through.
Nora spun the drum of her grenade launcher, but Reese just pushed the barrel down and shoved past her. She pried a panel beneath a keypad open with the bayonet on her revolver and started yanking wires out, stripping the insulation and pressing them together experimentally. A minute later, there was a loud beep and the doors slowly parted the width of a person's shoulders.
Blake, Reese and Coco slipped through. Nora stopped to unload a grenade from her launcher. She struck it against the door, shoved it in the maintenance panel, and ducked through the door. Once she was through Reese hit a close door prompt on the control panel inside the door and the doors sealed shut again. The grenade detonated, muffled by the door, but the door itself barely shook. The tunnel descended down a short incline before flattening out again. They reached the bottom of the incline and walked forward a short distance before they stopped and froze, stunned as they took in the room.
The tunnel emptied onto a large open space. The space spread back towards a wall with several doors set into it, all sliding metal ones like the one they had entered through. A small truck was parked near the largest door. The walls of the room were hewn from the stone and reinforced with metal panels in places, while the floor at the bottom was poured concrete. Lab tables and a few computer workstations filled half of the floor to the right, along with an array of equipment and scientific instruments, and a gunsmith's bench. A narrower tunnel branched off the left side of the room. A staircase in one corner led to a catwalk that ran around the room's second level, providing access to a handful of smaller rooms with normal doors.
"Well I know I certainly didn't expect this," Blake said.
Coco flexed her fingers against the handle of her gun. "Reese, see if you can find anything useful on the lab floor. Nora, give her a hand. Blake, you scout the tunnel and I'll take a look upstairs."
Blake stalked down the tunnel, passing around a gentle curve to a cave-in, the way forward blocked by a jumble of boulders and stalactites. If even if there was a way for their enemies to flank around on the other side of the rockfall, they wouldn't be able to dig through quickly or without notice. She began moving back the way she'd come, ducking into a passage branching off the tunnel halfway between the dead-end and the main room, her eyes scanning the inside of the entrance for a source of light.
Her ears twitched. Something had moved the second she'd stepped into the side-passage. She pressed herself against wall and stalked forward, squinting through the dark. The bars of cages and cells marked the walls at regular intervals, and one large cell stood at the rear of the hall. The door for that cell was slightly ajar, and there were a few scattered objects on the floor, but nothing moved within. Something moved again, and the sound of something dragging along the ground drifted from one of the cells.
Blake approached the locked cell the sound had come from. A familiar odor hit her nose and she clenched her weapons tighter. Peering through the bars she saw three Komodos towards the back of the cell, muzzled to prevent them from chewing through the bars. They growled at her presence, but didn't make any move towards her.
More sounds came from down the hall. In the next cell over, a pair of Boarbatusk scraped at the ground with their horns. The next two cells contained multiple Beowolves, pacing next to the bars and occasionally lashing out at Blake as she passed by. The cells behind her held a trio of Ursae and a Beringel. The other cells held a mix of the more common varieties of Grimm and a few smaller Grimm she didn't recognize. All except the open one at the end and the last cell on the left:
Up close, she recognized the objects in the open cell: Piles of jackets, boots, and small personal items like wallets and hats. Blake set her jaw, and gripped the bars of the cell until her knuckles turned white. She hadn't expected success finding the missing villagers, but that didn't make the truth easier to bear. She released her grip on the cell and turned her attention to the one to the left.
This one no longer had a door. Inside, several figures lay on the ground, dead. On closer inspection, they were all White Fang. Some of them looked like they'd been trapped under something heavy, their limbs crushed. Others had varying degrees of burns, or gunshot wounds from when their Aura had burst. One was just a massive form shrouded with a sheet. After failing to locate any supplies, Blake turned to leave—then she stopped.
Two men of the dead men lay on gurneys. Multiple lacerations covered their arms and chests. Some appeared to be from bladed weapons, but Blake couldn't recall fighting either of them. No one on her team or in the village had used edged weapons capable of such wounds. Royce was the exception, but the cuts were too clean to have been delivered by a halberd. Upon closer inspection, Blake noticed a set of irregular tears running in parallel diagonally across one man's belly. They looked like claw marks, but Blake had never encountered or read about any Grimm so small.
Something crashed back in the main room, agitating the Grimm in the pens. Shouting and more crashing followed. Blake gave the two dead bodies one last glance, then drew her weapons and ran to rejoin her team.
…
Reese moved aside a set of electrician's tools at one workstation and found two burnt out cloaking devices, opened to display their inner wiring. The crystal inside had dulled, like the one inside the unit they'd found after Reese had set off the EMP. She opened the flap on a satchel she'd found hanging from the back of a chair and placed the units inside.
Looking around Reese saw more of the same throughout the lab floor: Numerous workspaces strewn with beakers or tools, and the occasional computer terminal. Seeing one terminal nearby, she shrugged and powered it on. Nora approached from across the room
"You're telling me you can hack, too?"
"No," said Reese. "We're just lucky they didn't expect to have visitors. There's no password on this."
"What are you going to do? Email Vale?"
"I've heard worse ideas."
The computer finished starting up. There didn't appear to be any sort of communication program on the desktop or in the application list, but there was a folder entitled 'Facility Logs'. Reese opened it to find a series of folders arranged by date, the most recent of which was dated a few days prior. She opened the folder and read the lone text file within:
The assault on the village failed. All project activities are suspended until the huntresses from Vale and the remaining village have been dealt with.
Nora made an impatient noise. Reese frowned at the lack of new information and accessed a folder dated one month prior. This one held multiple files, photos, and charts. Reese opened the journal file in the folder and skimmed it:
We're expending test subjects too fast. Between weapons testing, pacifying our Grimm when they become agitated, and the live combat tests, we'll be out of warm bodies within a week. There's only two villages left in the region, and they're both catching on. Ash had the foresight to neutralize the village with the broadcast tower prior to the region's inhabitants realizing something was amiss, but we may not have the resources to take both remaining villages quietly. Our cryptic benefactors have been even less responsive than usual. Given its heavy use of test subjects, our "joint project" is paused for now.
Nora tugged Reese's shoulder. "Let's go."
"Why?" Reese said.
"Looking for the villagers in that file? There's still places we haven't checked."
"You go, I'll see if I can find anything else useful."
Reese started to turn back to the computer, but Nora turned her around to face her. Her face was stern.
"People need our help. Get up."
"I know that, Nora," said Reese. "If I keep digging around—"
"—you won't have to fight any Grimm?" Nora finished. Reese stared at her feet. Nora rolled her eyes, muttering and began to stalk towards the doors in the back wall. Reese looked back at the list of folders, examining the dates closer. She noticed a gap of a week or so between the most recent folder and the second most recent one. She opened the second most recent one. This one contained multiple sub-folders, but she ignored them in favor of the log entry. She read the first line, then stood up, turning towards Nora.
"Nora!" she called. "Take a look at this."
Nora stopped, then strode back, grumbling to herself. She scowled at Reese, then at the computer screen. Her scowl dwindled to nothing as she read the first line. She leaned on the desk and rubbed her face in exhaustion.
All test subjects are deceased, the first line read. Work on all projects is suspended until we can acquire the remaining village's inhabitants. Our scouts indicate that the village shouldn't pose a challenge, but they also reported signs of huntress activity in the area near Razor Ridge. This was inevitable after the discovery of the spy in Perfection. What was surprising was that they've apparently managed to fly under the radar for quite some time. Since this revelation, almost everyone has been working overtime in the field to track them down.
Despite the momentary lapse in experiments and the outside complications, our overall outlook is actually very positive. Subject Eight's combat tests gave us a vast amount of useful data. Though many of our goals for the subject remain elusive, I think we may achieve a breakthrough with a few more months of testing. Even if we cannot attain full combat capability, we should at least be able to build a collar capable of the control we require. Furthermore, pitting Subject Eight against a trained huntsmen team, even a novice one, should provide better data than simply throwing peasant farmers at it.
Nora looked up and pointed her chin at the screen.
"Anything else?"
"Not in this one," Reese said. She backed out into the previous folder and scanned the names: Physiology Charts, Post-Mortem Evaluations, Intelligence Assessments…and Combat Tests. Reese felt her stomach quiver. She looked at Nora, who nodded at her, then she opened the last folder.
Multiple video files filled the folder, all marked by date and time. Reese opened one. The camera peered through a window into an empty room with metal walls and a drain in the floor. Two men and a woman dressed similarly to Crescent Hollow's villagers stood backed against a wall, clutching a sword and some makeshift clubs. They stared at something off-screen in horror, flinching when it growled.
Something scraped against the floor, and the man with the sword charged forward, shouting in terror and fury. There was a shrill cry, like a mountain lion screaming, and the man's cries stopped. The woman and the other man shrank back, staring wide-eyed at the thing off screen. A moment later, the dead man's sword shot through the air like a spear, pinning the other man to the wall by the shoulder. The woman screamed and started tugging at the door set into the wall behind her. Something the size of a person pounced on the woman, letting out that same grating screech and began tearing into her.
Reese turned away before the blur of motion hit the woman. She clutched the desk to keep from trembling and made a couple choking sounds. Her empty stomach was the only thing that kept her from vomiting. She stayed hunched over, forcing herself to breathe. In the background, the woman's screams had stopped, replaced by the man begging.
"Turn it off," Reese said, her voice shaky. She looked at Nora. "Nora, please—"
Nora was staring at the screen, her mouth parted. Her eyes were wide, but they didn't show fear or terror. It was something else, and its presence unsettled Reese. Before she could ask Nora about her reaction, the small girl bolted for the back wall, and began flinging open the doors, frantically searching the rooms.
Reese watched Nora in confusion, then forced herself to look back at the screen. She flinched and covered her eyes as she watched the thing in the video tear into the final villager. Peering through her fingers, she saw a cloak shrouding all but the creature's arms. The left arm was black with sharp claws and bone white spines, but the right was humanoid, devoid of any skeletal plating or growths, and pale. Too pale for a Grimm's flesh. The cloak fell away from the things head and shoulders, revealing more unusual coloration. The color itself wasn't odd, but the amount and shade of it was wrong. The creature held the villager in place with its claw and stabbed him in the neck with a weapon. It looked like a large dagger, or a short sword—
Reese gasped, pressing her hands to her mouth.
She understood.
…
"Come on," Coco said, gentle but insistent. The search had frustrated Coco so much that she'd almost missed the old base radio, nestled under a pile of papers in the back corner of the fourth room. She'd felt a small spark of hope when it crackled to life without any trouble. Tuning the damn thing to the right frequency was a struggle thanks to a missing knob and dilapidated displays, but after a few minutes Coco was rewarded with a channel that played four tones in a steady monotonous pattern. She felt her heart leap and pressed the transmit button on the microphone.
"Vale Cove, this is Coco Adel of provisional team CNBR, come in, over."
There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch for hours before the radio crackled back:
"Good to hear your voice Miss Adel, you had us worried, what's your status, over."
Coco leaned back in her seat and punched the air in triumph before replying:
"We're all kinds of FUBAR right now. My team managed to escape hostile forces but recapture or death is an imminent possibility. There's also a village of approximately 200 civilians in need of defense. Unsure of the number of combatants, but they are a highly dangerous White Fang splinter group, utilizing experimental weapons and local Grimm. Request reinforcements for immediate assistance, over."
The dispatcher on the other end of the radio requested coordinates from Coco, and she supplied them. She hadn't seen the mining camp's location on a map, but when she described the facility the dispatcher assured her they knew the location. Afterwards, Coco heard a rustling on the other end of the radio.
"Miss Adel." Councilor Stonebridge's voice came over the radio, calm and measured. "I'm glad to hear that you've survived. Is Miss Valkyrie still active, over."
"We're all alive and mobile, Sir," Coco said. "Hell, she's probably the healthiest fighter we have thanks to that Semblance of hers, over."
"Is she in your immediate presence? Ambassador Sylva and I need to speak with her."
Coco's brow furrowed at the sudden terseness in Stonebridge's voice. Why on Remnant did they want to speak with her? Coco opened her mouth to reply, when a loud boom came from downstairs, like two cars crashing into each other. Coco swore.
"Trouble downstairs," Coco said. "I'll get her on the line ASAP, Adel over and out."
Coco burst onto the catwalk and looked over the railing. The largest door set into the rear wall curved back into the room beyond like a small train had plowed through it.
She ran to the stairs, down towards the door, her feet clanking on the metal slats. She met Blake at the breach and they passed through it to find a smaller version of the lab they had just left. The rear of the room had a control console that looked into a small room through a reinforced window. In the back of the innermost room a tall metal tube as wide as a doorframe stood at the left wall, rising from a base of machinery. Conduits and cables crisscrossed the ceiling hanging down to connect to the machinery, and a door was set into the opposite wall. Reese stood in front of the control console, her arms spread as she tried to block Nora from touching it. The two of them were shouting.
"Open it, or get out of the way!" Nora said.
"Nora, that is a very bad idea!" Reese said. "You watched that video, you know how dangerous that is. Let's stop and think for a minute, otherwise that thing—"
Nora seized Reese by her collar and flung her back towards the entrance. Blake and Coco parted to keep from being knocked over as she struck the floor and skidded past them. Before either of them could react, Nora pressed a few buttons on the console. The door across from the tube opened and the metal panels around the tube itself slid away with an almost silent hiss, releasing a cloud of mist. Nora sprinted through the door, and the other three huntresses followed.
As they passed through the door, the mist billowed away to reveal the contents of the tube. Reese stood at the rear of the group and shivered, but forced herself to not look away. Blake's ears pointed straight up and she gasped. Coco felt her jaw drop.
"Oh my god."
A figure floated suspended in fluid inside the tube, dressed in a bodysuit like the ones the other Black Fang had worn, minus the armor panels. The upper sleeves had been removed to attach medical monitoring equipment to the figure's arms, and an oxygen mask was strapped to her face.
Her left arm—her entire left side—was the black of Grimm flesh, marked by the odd spine or bit of bone plating, though the plated areas were so sparse they appeared to be a skeletal psoriasis instead of armor plating. Her right side was pallid, like a person that hadn't seen the sun in months. On the Grimm side of her face pointed teeth jutted past her lips like fangs, and a bone mask like those the White Fang imitated curved around her head, stopping at her nose. Jagged red veins trailed down her cheeks from her eyes like tears, but the other half of her face was otherwise the same. Her hair was still the same vibrant red, and in place of her circlet a pair of horns extended from the top of her head.
Nora appeared to wilt. Her hammer dropped from her fingers. She reached out a hand to touch the plexiglas tube.
"Pyrrha," she whispered.