The next two weeks were excruciating.
The MPs strutted around town like they owned the place, scattering people before them wherever they went. If Skjulte Perle had been a larger town, it might not have been as bad; as it was, there was nowhere for people to hide. The MPs were able to corner people and force them into answering questions, and they exercised that power ruthlessly.
While they weren't obviously harming anyone, they were still terrifying SDR's employees and families. Perversely, some of the Skjulte Perle citizens found this gratifying. Weiss had never seen Holly Hemlock look happier.
All questions or comments Weiss directed at the MPs were met with dismissal. "We don't comment on investigations that are ongoing," McCarthy had said with obvious relish. "Certainly not to the subjects of those investigations."
It was an unwelcome reminder that the MPs were investigating SDR in general and Weiss in particular. It still dumbfounded her. SDR was the one Dust company on Remnant not trafficking persons, and it was the one Dust company getting investigated? Couldn't they go look at anyone else? Anyone at all?
After all, if the facts could be twisted enough to bring the MPs in for a look, what facts would be twisted when the MPs started looking?
Mayor Leif was trying his best. Weiss saw him periodically calling people up in Atlas trying to figure out how to get the MPs out of his town. His growing exasperation betrayed his lack of progress.
If that was the end of SDR's problems, it might not have been so bad. Instead, that was the most benign thing happening, even as it felt like the proverbial Sword of Judgment was hanging over Weiss' head at all times.
Dust revenues were down. A review of prices showed there was oversupply in the specific types of Dust that SDR mined. Weiss saw zero chance this was coincidence. SDR was breaking even for the moment, but that was partially on the strength of their reexports through the Prudence. That revenue stream would dry up once the Prudence returned to the shipyard, and Weiss was at a loss as to how to make it up. Without it, and with Dust prices where they were, SDR would start losing money again, and the company's reserve fund was not fat enough to sustain that for long.
Even Team RVBY seemed to have hit a temporary dead end. They were gathering bits and pieces of information, but it was all in the same vein as before: enough to paint Fall Dust as a deeply sketchy organization, but not enough to tie them to any specific crime. It was aggravating beyond belief. Weiss supposed there were benefits to being so rich you could have four intermediaries between you and any crimes you wanted done.
All these things together were putting a damper on the spirit of the citizenry, and the grimm noticed. Attacks were growing more frequent again, despite the half-complete sweep Winter and Team RVBY had executed. At least Team RVBY's semi-permanent residence at the mine helped keep the site safe. Weiss didn't know what SDR would have done without them. While they garrisoned the mine, Weiss and Winter didn't have to follow the same strict rotation schedule from before, and both were able to shuttle from mine to town and back as necessary. It was the only relief to be found.
Dread was rising, a creeping dread that Weiss couldn't put a face to or a name to. It felt like SDR was being hunted, but had no way to know when or where the next blow would come from.
And that was before they got grimm-baited again. Weiss knew it was coming; an enemy willing to commit such a heinous deed was unlikely to shy away from doing it twice. Weiss felt her Schnee temper rising at just the thought of it. The idea of someone ordering such a monstrous act, and of other people so barbarous they would obey such an order, left a bubbling hot sensation in her chest.
But what could SDR do? It was taking all of SDR's resources just to stay afloat. They had no capacity left to try and engage Fall Dust. What would that even look like, anyway? How could they force SDR to back off?
Weiss had an extensive repertoire of moves to use against any person or grimm that attacked her; she knew dozens of counterattacks and alpha strikes. A company was not a person. She knew nothing about this kind of combat.
She broached the subject with Winter in a desperate brainstorming session, and though the two sisters batted several ideas back and forth, none of them seemed to hold much water.
"Could you at least call General Ironwood and have him get the MPs off our back?" said Weiss.
Winter shook her head vigorously. "As far as I can tell, everything they're doing is legal and in accordance with standard procedure. Calling in the General on them wouldn't be protecting the integrity of the Dust industry. It would be corruption."
Weiss opened her mouth to contest the point, but she stopped at seeing Winter's face. Winter would not budge on anything involving 'the General'. Great. "Then what else is there?" Weiss said graspingly.
Winter's face tightened for a beat. "There's Cam."
"What do you mean?"
"You told me that Cam made a Burn Dust discovery that saved the SDC more money than they'd earn in a lifetime."
It stunned Weiss that Winter remembered. She nodded dumbly.
"Well," said Winter, "if we can't get new customers, and we can't control prices, all that's left is to do our part more efficiently. We can ask Cam what else they would do with our equipment if they had a little more funding, and then provide it."
That wasn't a business plan, it was a prayer. But… "It's better than nothing," Weiss said.
"Is it?" said Winter, looking over the charts again. "Because I don't know where we'd find the money for it. Having to spend money to make money is hard, and I have no appetite for going to the Hubers again."
"Then I don't know what else to do," said Weiss truthfully.
Winter started to say something, checked herself.
Weiss noticed. "If we're throwing ideas out there, we might as well throw them all."
Winter seemed to take heart from this. "Your trust fund," she said boldly.
Weiss would have been less surprised if Winter had proposed playing the lottery. "My trust fund?"
"You offered it up for the company when we were getting started," said Winter. "We ended up getting a good enough loan from Huber that we didn't need it, and we agreed to keep it as an emergency fund. Don't you think this counts as an emergency?"
"I guess," said Weiss, even though she didn't agree at all.
Winter must have heard the doubt in her voice. "If not now, when?" she demanded.
"I don't know," Weiss said again, and having to say those words so often was really starting to weigh on her pride. "I always felt like I would know when the right time to spend it was. This doesn't feel like it."
"Well, by all means," said Winter icily, "we should give all due respect to your feelings."
The sarcasm was as sharp as Eiszahn's point. It brought Weiss's temper boiling to the forefront. "Well, I'm sure you're in a hurry to spend it, but you would be, wouldn't you? It was never yours, so it costs you nothing to give it up."
"What would you need it for if not this?" said Winter, and there was true questioning in her words, not just argument.
"To live," said Weiss slowly. "If this goes south."
Winter blinked uncomprehendingly.
"I hate to say it because it feels like summoning that outcome," said Weiss quietly, "but I have to consider the worst case. If SDR fails, you can pick up some quick Huntress missions and have an income. Maybe not much of one, but enough to afford food and a place to stay until you work out something else. Or you can become an itinerant Huntress. There are plenty of those types out there.
"I can't do any of that. If SDR fails, I have nothing else. No home, no job, no license, no income, no chance… nothing."
Winter shook her head at Weiss, but with less than total confidence. "After everything you've done, you'd be picked up by any other Dust company the instant you applied. Or you could get into Atlas Academy as soon as you told General Ironwood you wanted in. You would not be turned out no matter what. You..."
Something she'd been about to say had struck Winter. Weiss, recoiling from the earlier words, couldn't imagine what it was.
"No matter what happens here," Winter said laboriously, as if her words carried a burden with them, "you won't have to go to Schneeville." She gave Weiss a softer look than Weiss could remember seeing on her. "But our workers will."
Weiss' heart stopped.
"For them, this is their best chance. They won't get a better one. Besides, didn't you say this company was your life? If this truly is what you care about, there can be no holding back."
The softness was gone. Something as hard and cold as a glacier was in its place. "If you care, prove it. Care all the way."
"Are you telling me," Weiss said with heat in her voice and her heart, "that you think I haven't given enough?"
"Not as much as you could," said Winter, not backing down. "You could give more. The question is, Will you?"
Resentfulness bubbled up high in Weiss' throat. "I didn't realize I deserved so little of your respect, Miss Schnee," she said savagely.
The words seemed to slip past Winter's guard. They left her too stunned to respond with the typical 'Miss Schnee' rejoinder.
Weiss couldn't stand looking at her sister anymore, and she certainly was in no mood to listen to her when she did come up with something clever. "I will go to Cam," she said with the same angry snarl in her voice. "I will decide how much of my trust fund to put into the company. And I will judge for myself if that is sufficient devotion. Have a good day, Miss Schnee."
Once more she gave Winter no opportunity to reply. She slammed the door shut behind her.
Aster Cristata stood between two of the large communal homes where his people lived. His people, he thought possessively. It was a habit from his days in the Crater, in Schneeville, acting as combination counselor and neighborhood watch. No one else would look out for the Faunus, so the Faunus had to look out for each other. Meaning him.
So why did it feel like he could do that less than before?
In the Crater, he had been almost powerless, but that powerlessness was its own kind of freedom. If there were only one or two things he could do, he never got bogged down worrying about his options. Simple. These days, nothing was simple.
Analysis paralysis was…
"How bad is it?"
Cristata just about jumped out of his skin. "Don't do that!" he shouted at the person who now stood next to him. "You'll give me a heart attack!"
Ilia, who'd appeared seemingly out of thin air, gave an unimpressed shrug. "You're made of sterner stuff than that."
"I know you think that's a compliment," Cristata growled, "but with the MPs around, any surprise hits me double."
"That's fair. I was here to ask about them, now that you mention it. How bad is it?"
Cristata silently appraised Ilia. When he'd been told the White Fang was sending an infiltrator, he'd held his tongue, wondering what they would make of this bizarro-world situation, but dreading that they'd muck it all up. The White Fang had done little to help any of the Faunus he knew.
Oh, sure, every once in a while some leaflets got passed around the Crater, or some inventive graffiti got put up in a public place for thirty seconds before it got washed off, or an especially anti-Faunus establishment took a firebomb through a window. Cristata supposed it might help those individuals feel better. But did it make conditions in the Crater any better?
Hell and no. It just increased the number of cops patrolling the Rim and made it so even fewer charities plied their trade below the Gutter. Security was too tight in Atlas for the White Fang to get up to anything truly spectacular, anything that might actually shift attitudes, but there were just enough White Fang to keep on being an irritant. Truly the worst of all possible worlds.
Speaking of White Fang irritants...
Ilia was still looking at him expectantly, so Cristata grunted. "The MPs keep asking about where folks came from, where they worked before, how SDR is treating them. And they ask all sorts of other questions, too."
"Like what?"
Cristata rolled his eyes. "How much Faunus-on-Faunus crime do we see. Do we feel safe walking on the streets. What kind of drugs are around, and how much. How many kids have two parents. You know, building the old profile. Looking for reasons to call for more cops."
Ilia nodded. "And when they send more police, they'll find more crime, of course."
"Of course," agreed Cristata. It was refreshing to talk to someone who knew this routine. The Schnees didn't, and with them being Atlesian human blue-bloods (three terms that meant the same thing to Cristata), he was sure that their first instinct was to celebrate the MPs' arrival. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if they called for more MPs.
Which was why he had to get this bug in their ear through whichever channels were open.
"I'm not really worried about that," said Cristata. "They'll do typical MP crap, but that's nothing we didn't put up with on a daily basis back in Schneeville. Nah, the issue is the trafficking stuff."
"But SDR doesn't traffic," said Ilia, a hand straying towards her jacket pocket. "My mission here would be much different if they did."
"Doesn't matter," said Cristata, not acknowledging Ilia's implications. "SDR could do everything right and still get it in the shorts. A bunch of the Faunus here were trafficked, just not by SDR. Those poor bastards don't have all their papers in order. Legally, a lot of them don't exist. They sure don't exist as citizens of the great, grand Kingdom of Atlas."
"So what?" asked Ilia.
Cristata stared at her.
Ilia shifted under his gaze. "I'm a citizen of the world. I've been in and out of every Kingdom, and non-kingdoms like Menagerie. I haven't belonged since I was in grade school, so I don't know how this citizen stuff works."
"Well," said Cristata, "Atlas has a rump agency that's supposed to advocate for trafficking victims. It's perpetually underfunded, and most law enforcement either doesn't know or doesn't care to write a referral. 80% of the time someone who's been trafficked gets picked up by the cops, the cops treat 'em as illegal immigrants."
That term registered; Ilia's eyes widened. "They deport them?"
Cristata gave a grunt that was supposed to mean, Yeah, duh.
"But that doesn't make things better at all!" protested Ilia. "That takes them out of their situation, but puts them right back where they started, back to the place where they were trafficked... in the first place..."
Cristata grunted again.
"That's always bad, but in this case, that'd be bad for both SDR and the Faunus themselves."
"Which is why we've been using every trick we know to make sure the MPs only meet with native born citizens of Atlas." When Ilia gave him a baffled look, Cristata had to laugh. "Did you think this was my first rodeo? The first time I've had to protect people from their 'protectors'?"
"I guess I shouldn't think that," said Ilia, looking at him with a changed expression.
"I can't keep the shell game going forever, though," warned Cristata. "Sooner or later, the MPs will find someone we don't want 'em to find. If we can't give 'em something else to look at, or somewhere else to be, they'll blow us up eventually."
"And neither SDR nor the workers themselves can say much about it," said Ilia. "They can only say the same things a trafficker would say, so they're as likely to be disbelieved."
"That's the size of it. Can't the Schnees do some of their bougie witchcraft and get the MPs sent somewhere else?"
"I asked that question, too," said Ilia. "They said they can't. I didn't really understand their reasoning, but I believe them." When Cristata showed her his doubt, she added, "The Schnees don't want to lose any of us anymore than we want to be sent away. If they knew a way out, they would have taken it already."
"That Hemlock woman really has us in a twist," said Cristata. "I knew she had something to screw us with."
"But if anything happened to the woman who called the MPs, while the MPs are in town..." Ilia said despairingly.
"Yep."
"Well," said Ilia, "can we call in that antitrafficking agency? Have them take a look?"
"That'd be dangerous," said Cristata. "If the MPs got wind of it, it'd give them reason to believe that SDR was trafficking, and the investigation might get real intense real quick."
"To finish up before the other agency gets here," said Ilia grimly.
Cristata felt a small flash of happiness. "Ah, it's good to be working with another cynic. Refreshing, even."
For a moment, Ilia just sat there with a stupid expression on her face, as if she didn't know if she should take that as a compliment. She shook her head. "Well, we'll keep looking for ways to make the MPs go away. If you can keep doing your thing, maybe we can outlast them."
"Or maybe that Leif guy can grow a pair and kick out that Hemlock woman."
"With the MPs right here? Yeah, that wouldn't look suspicious at all."
Cristata almost smiled. "We'll do our best."
Ilia nodded.
And vanished.
"Stop doing that!"
One more sniper shot fired, one more Sabyr roared and was silenced, and then there was nothing.
Neptune touched down next to Ruby on the observation deck of the watchtower. "What are we up against?" he asked.
"It's already over," said Ruby as she reloaded. "I think…"
She started scanning through her scope just to be sure.
"Oh," said Neptune, a little deflated. "Well... You did a good job, then."
"I'd like to think that," Ruby as she finished her sweep of the ground approaches and swapped to scanning the skies, "but I'm still worried."
Neptune, knowing Ruby by now and understanding what it took to worry her, grew serious. "You think more are on the way, then?"
"Those Sabyrs were charging, not prowling or searching," said Ruby. "They'd already picked up some negativity and were homing in on it. Something bad happened, and if it was bad enough to reel in some Sabyrs, it could be enough to lure..."
"Teryx," said Neptune.
"…I was gonna say 'more grimm', but yeah, I suppose a Teryx, too."
"No," said Neptune urgently. "I mean, there's a Teryx right there!"
Ruby looked and saw where his finger was pointing. Sure enough, a Teryx was on approach, a very fast approach. "Yang! Blake!"
"We're here," Yang called up to her from the foot of the watchtower.
So they'd heard her firing and come at the same time as Neptune. Good for them, thought Ruby. "We've got incoming!" said Ruby. "Time for us to do our jobs!"
As her team rallied to her, Ruby couldn't help but spare a thought for the miners behind her, and for what kind of disaster might be drawing in grimm like this.
"There's been an accident."
Words Winter had hoped never to hear. Yet here she was, riding a lift down into the deep mine, knowing only that an emergency had been reported.
The lift doors opened as it arrived. Miners were packed outside the door, trying to spill in to get away, yet they parted to let her through before rushing to fill the void.
She heard shovels clacking and scraping and deep, sustained groans of pain.
She clicked on the lights of her helmet. She saw an overturned mining cart that had presumably spilled its cargo onto the mine floor—including ore containing live Dust. That cargo was now beneath an ever-rising lump as three miners around shoveled dirt onto it, trying to cover it and keep it inert (or smother a new blast).
Well, keep what was left inert, because Winter could see that some of it must have detonated already.
One miner was on his side, rolling back and forth, clutching at a hand Winter couldn't see from here. Another was lying face-up, motionless, silent, with a fist-sized black area over his chest and thin shards of rock stuck through his shirt like a pincushion.
His eyes were glassy and still.
Winter swallowed hard and looked away. There was nothing to be done for him. She needed to look to the other. "Let me see," she said in her most commanding tones.
The wounded miner stopped rolling and looked up to her with piteous eyes. Possum eyes. Winter recognized this miner—it was the one who'd talked so much about feel being important to mining.
His eyes were wet as tears streamed down. His hand, too, was blackened, and there were shards of rock poking out of it.
Winter swallowed.
First aid for Dust-related injuries was not like first aid for more standard trauma. Dust, confounded, confusing Dust, had its own properties to consider, such as the way it could change its character and volume spontaneously when uncontrolled. For traditional penetrating injuries, the priority was to stabilize, leave the foreign object in place until it could be removed—carefully, professionally, in a sterile environment.
When the penetrator was Dust, priority one was almost always to get it out. Raw Dust did bad things to the body.
Winter's mind raced as she bent down to look at his hand. The rock impaling his hand had been Dust just moments ago, she could tell—probably Dust in its granular form. Oh, that was worse, so much worse. The few people daring and pain-tolerant enough to wield Dust by physical contact only ever used crystals. Crystals you could count on to hold their shape and to discharge in a controlled manner. Granular Dust was hazardous, terrifyingly so—Winter would never chance direct contact with grains if she had any alternative.
And for granular Dust to get inside a person's body…
She knew the worst-case scenario. Granular Dust could infiltrate the blood stream, if the grains were small enough, only to detonate later, without warning, inside the body. Inside the lungs. The brain. The heart.
The heart was the biggest risk. Dust brushing up against an active Aura was always at risk of detonation without control; while most people didn't have active Auras, they all had the potential for it, with the power emanating from their hearts. Even locked Auras could be faintly detected near the heart.
A pinch of Stone Dust that got into the bloodstream would come to the heart, sooner or later. Brush against the latent Aura potential there. Possibly activate.
Plaque-induced cardiac ischemia. A quick, gasping death.
There were medications, she knew, to bind with Dust in the blood and help the body excrete it, but they wouldn't help if he dropped dead before he could take them, and that risk got higher if more Dust was absorbed, more grains swept into the body, she had to keep that amount as low as possible, keep it from getting worse right now…
Winter swallowed and looked at the hand more closely. There was too much Dust there, too much—no way to pick it out, no way to get it clean, the shards seemed to be growing further even now, still activating in slow-motion, she had to work fast—no time—
There was only one way.
She swallowed again, summoned up her courage. "It has to come off," she said.
The miner sobbed more. One of the workers behind her managed a dull, "What?"
Winter looked around, trying to work out the logistics in her head even as everything seemed fuzzy and foggy, even as she could barely see with dust thick in the air and few lights and so many bad vibes. "Get him up," she said, moving towards the mine cart. "Get his arm here, so that his hand is out."
"What are you doing?" a miner whispered.
"His hand has to come off," Winter said, and only by supreme control did she keep her voice from cracking. "It's his hand or his life. It has to come off before more Dust gets in his blood, and we're running out of time already."
"How will we…" someone started to ask, but Winter already knew the answer, knew it as surely as she knew herself, as surely as she knew the pounding of her heart in her chest.
She drew Eiszahn. Her Ice Tooth. It had bitten many a grimm before—but a grimm was not a man.
"Get him stretched out," she repeated, and she wasn't as good containing her voice this time, couldn't quite manage it, not when foresight was dominating her vision, not when she knew what she had to do and was repulsed by that knowledge in equal measure. "There's no time. It has—it has to come off."
"Panzoa preserve us," one muttered, but at last, at last they complied, grappling possum-eyes and moving him over to the upturned cart. They extended his arm over the edge of the cart as she'd ordered. It was fixed dead-center in the light from Winter's helmet, center ring in this macabre circus. It looked even worse like this, purpled and blackened, dripping blood—those borders were compromised. There was no time.
She looked over to possum-eyes' face.
Apologizing…
"I wish…"
…was not the Schnee way…
"…it didn't have to be like this."
Understanding seemed to come to him. "Do it," he rasped.
Winter looked back to her target. The rock spikes were getting larger, heavier, penetrating further, driving grains further in, an ever-growing threat, danger rising every moment.
No time.
Eiszahn bit.
"... And a bigger centrifuge, of course, that'll be necessary. I've also included an order for some additional…"
"I know," interrupted Weiss. She was in no mood to hear Cam ramble on. "I saw your request. I need you to shave its value by about ten percent so we can afford it, then I'll put it in."
"Oof," said Cam. "That might take one of these procedures from being doable to being..."
"Figure it out," snapped Weiss.
Cam stared at her. Weiss realized she'd never directed her ire at Cam before, and realized further that Cam had never merited it.
"Today has gone very poorly," said Weiss, not as apology but as explanation. "There was an accident down in the mine. One miner dead, another maimed."
"Oh," said Cam, looking disarmed and at a loss. "Oh, that's... That's awful."
The words seemed so inadequate, but what others could there be? From a paucity of other options, Weiss nodded. "I've heard about accidents before, read about them before, you can't really help it in an industry like this. Dust is just too dangerous, there will always be accidents. But... there's a difference between reading about it and it happening in front of you."
She clenched her hands. "Between an accident claiming anonymous strangers on another continent, and it hurting people you know."
Cam's face twitched, but they had no idea what to say.
Weiss sighed. "I suppose… we'd gone so long without one, I guess I should have known that we were due."
"You know," said Cam, "probability doesn't work like that."
Weiss' eyes locked on to Cam's. Cam shrank slightly, but they tried to complete the thought. "Like, if you roll a die ten times, then roll it again, the die doesn't know what the other rolls were. It doesn't know when it's 'supposed' to give you a one next time. Each roll is what it is."
"People are not dice," Weiss said with a surge of frustration. "I'm not going to treat them like tokens in a game. That's what my father would do, but I won't."
"Sorry," stammered Cam, realizing they'd made a mistake without really understanding what the mistake was. "I was just trying to... Well, probability is impartial, you know? I always feel like I can deal with bad things better when I abstract them. Turn them into math." Cam clasped their hands and started up their anxious thumb-finger tapping. "It works for me, anyway," they mumbled.
Weiss took a breath, held it, let it go slowly. "I understand you were trying to help," she said. "I suppose different people are wired differently."
"Well... That's kind of why I prefer machines, you know? Nice and predictable. I can understand them."
For a moment, Weiss did see the appeal, even if she vowed that would never be her. "Ten percent," she said to Cam, gesturing at the requisition. "Preferably in the next day or two, so I can place the order."
"Don't you have to present it to the company at the end-of-week?" said Cam.
"If I were using company funds, yes," said Weiss, her voice growing hot. "But this is my money I'm throwing at this. The only approval I need is my own. That's why I can tell you that I need you to trim ten percent."
"Will do," said Cam firmly. "And I hope you... feel better?"
Weiss couldn't help the small, tight smile that appeared. "Thanks."
Next time: Inside Out
