Note:

I have my stupid awards ceremony and speech coming up again soon (3rd October) and need to take a week off around it to prepare. I really thought the business would be closed before getting to it, but it appears not ffs.

As such, there will be no updates from Monday 30th to Sunday 6th October. Both to let me get some prep down before, and to have a chance to unwind after it's over. Thankfully this is the last time I'll ever have to do it.

Edit: I got the dates wrong. I said Monday 1st but, as someone pointed out to me, that's a Tuesday. I meant Monday 30th Sept. Thank you to the peeps who corrected me!

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 116

It had been a manic two weeks since they got back from the camp. Four jobs in fourteen days, two of which turned out to be duds in which the "anomalous activity" was perfectly normal stuff under a lens of paranoia. One had been a case of mysterious sounds and activity turning out to be a drug kitchen – with a shootout between Blake and the drug lords to boot – and the other had turned out to be the client developing dementia. Sad, but at least they'd helped the old man realise it and get help.

The other two had been more routine, little more than locate and retrieve anomalous items. Both were simplistic, the first causing colours of anything within five metres to warp and change (but thankfully revert to normal outside its range) and the other turned out to be a burger, yes the food, that reformed once it was eaten. An infinite source of food it was not, as it reformed by taking away anything that had been eaten.

Amusingly, Saphron's office had found the lead because of complaints against a fast-food restaurant for burgers that weren't filling. Sure enough, the offending burger kept reforming in their kitchen. It had been easy enough to solve since a burger manifesting itself in front of their eyes was a little suspicious, and the offending food item didn't rot and didn't move, so it was sat in a containment cell in their new facility.

And only then because the Fist Office realised that killing it wasn't an option when the whole point of it was that it reformed back in that kitchen. Better to keep it safe and whole on site and spare the fast-food joint the negative reviews. Still, the two weeks' worth of work had all come from the Fist Office, and Blake eventually grew tired of Jaune not bringing it up.

"Okay, I'll bite," she said. "Why are we taking orders from the Fist Office now?"

"Technically, we're not taking orders from them. Each and every one of these cases has been in our territory. They're very much our responsibility."

"I get that but why are they finding work in our territory? Do they think we're slacking?"

"Quite the opposite," Jaune said, chuckling as he checked over their two new stored anomalies. "They know we don't slack, and that's the reason they're dedicating resources to finding us more and more work. They want to keep us busy."

Blake groaned. It wasn't hard to figure out why Saphron would want them run off their feet. The more time they spent in active duty, the less time they could spend in their facility researching the anomalies. The fact they weren't researching the anomalies didn't matter, because they could be and Saphron was a paranoid piece of shit.

"I really don't get how they're so much better at finding these jobs than we are," she said. "Are we doing something wrong?"

"Ha. No." Jaune laughed. "That's not it at all. You saw the Fist Office. It's not just the three of them. They employ at least thirty people there, more off-site than you saw. The main job for a lot of them is to trawl news and online for incidents which could be anomalous and then report them to their superiors. Saphron, Terra and Pyrrha don't have to find their jobs like we do. They're provided a list of potential leads by a small army of investigators."

"Well that's bullshit," she complained. "Why don't we have that?" Jaune opened his mouth, but she interrupted him. "No, I know. We don't have it because we're not trusted. No need to say it."

"I'm not trusted. You're fine."

"Yeah, doubt. I've had your corner one too many times by now. There's a reason Saphron felt the need to drag me out to do a job with their office."

Jaune shrugged, conceding the point without a fight. They were both persona non grata now, but that was fine with her. Blake was used to it. There was even an argument to be made that what the Fist Office were doing was sharing those investigators with them, and Blake was certain that argument would be made if she or Jaune complained.

The Fist Office were being generous, they were helping, they were trusting Jaune with a team of investigators, albeit ones kept outside of Vale and his chain of command. Saphron would smile and tell them this was a sign of more trust between them. Cooperation and family values. Blargh. Blake rolled her eyes at the image.

"We should just hire Ruby and—"

"No."

Blake glanced over, whispering a silent apology to Ruby. Sorry, Ruby. I tried.

"I don't want to hire anyone," he said. "I didn't want to hire you either, but you forced the issue."

"Is this some self-sacrificing nonsense?"

"No. It's me not being an asshole. Do you really think your life is better for being my assistant?"

Blake snorted. "Hell no. But Ruby isn't someone you can keep in the dark, is she? She already knows, she's involved, and she's fought anomalies. It's not like you're sparing her the danger by refusing to take her on."

"I know but I can spare her the mortality rate. Besides, we both know her thoughts of me are…" He trailed off. "They're…"

"Less than professional?"

"Yes." Jaune didn't blush, but he did wipe a finger over his nose and avert his eyes. Heh. Cute. He always liked to portray himself as above such things, but she could tell he wasn't immune to Ruby's crushing. "I really don't want to put Ruby through that. You've seen what my family is like. They've already pushed Terra to have a child against her will."

"Yeah, that was dark but at least she and Saphron are married. You think they'd do the same with you and Ruby?"

"I've no idea. They might decide I'm too tainted, but they might also want to see if a child of ours keeps the anomalous aspect. It probably shouldn't. Either way, any child from myself would be monitored form birth, and I wouldn't be surprised if I was ordered to give them up for their own safety either."

Blake scowled. "What? Set them up for adoption?"

"More like hand their care over to a more trusted member of the family. I'd still be their father and they'd know me, but it'd be a matter of safety for them to not be close to someone who could lose control and hurt them." He scoffed. "And, of course, they'd be raised in the traditional family values then, so I wouldn't expect them to want anything to do with me by the time they're old enough to protect themselves."

That was bad enough if it was just him but adding in Ruby and imagining her reaction to her child being forcibly taken away and… yeah, it didn't sound good. They'd probably be fine with Ruby going with the baby, but that'd make it a horrible choice between the man she loved and her firstborn child. It'd force a long-distance relationship on them. And sure, travel wasn't an issue with how rich ARC Corp was, but they'd be busy, wouldn't see one another as often, wouldn't be able to live together…

It'd all strain a relatively new relationship.

"Not Ruby, then," Blake allowed, now that she knew the reasons were less to spite Ruby and more because Jaune really did care for her. Maybe she could still help Ruby out there. Jaune and she could date without their family knowing. "Well, how about others? We've been trusted with a facility. How hard would it be to get trusted with some ancillary staff members?"

"Quite a bit."

"What if we made concessions? Like, if we had a team of investigators but every lead has to be forwarded to the Fist Office as well. Then they could monitor us."

"It's not about making reasonable concessions or not. There's nothing unreasonable about us having help in the first place. It's about influence. If we have people with us, those are people we can influence to see anomalies like we do – as not always harmful. That's a philosophy opposed by the family. It's bad enough in their minds that we get away with what we do. They're not going to double or triple the number of people who see things as we do. The old ARC Corp had its own factions who all had different opinions on how things should be done, at least according to Salem. The new ARC Corp must always be unified."

"Even at the expense of free will?"

"Especially at the expense of free will. This isn't a democracy, Blake. ARC Corp is a dictatorship by design. Right now, my father is dictator. After him, it'll be Saphron – which is all the more reason for us to duck our heads, do as she says, and not cause any issues. Because my father lives a dangerous life and could die at any moment."

Placing Saphron in charge of the family business. Saphron, who had expressed on multiple occasions a desire to see Jaune dead and Blake reassigned. In fact, it had been Nicholas who stepped in to stop her, either out of some lingering affection for his dead wife and living son, or because he was cold enough to see the value in a loyal anomaly.

"Balls," Blake said, summing it up in one word. Jaune hummed his agreement. "Then I guess we'd better be on our best behaviour."

"Hmmhm. That's a big part of why I didn't raise a fuss when they requested you for that job near Argus. Trying to keep you close would have made them suspicious as to why I want you close. If we're lucky, they'll assume it's because we're bedding one another and just pressure you to have a baby."

"That's if we're lucky!?"

"Oh yes. If we were unlucky, they might decide it's because you and I have something to hide, go back over our movements, notice several trips to Menagerie and then send someone to have a look what's going on down there."

Ah. Yes. That would be quite a bit unluckier than being forced to have Jaune's child.

Because they'd both be dead, her parents would be culled, and quite possibly every man, woman and child living on Menagerie would be silenced to prevent the nature of anomalies slipping out. They'd probably falsify it as an Atlas bombing run wiping out the island, kicking off another wave of racism and maybe a second faunus war.

But all that was preferably to a Reality Class break in ARC Corp's eyes.

The computers in the control centre buzzed an incoming call from Saphron, making them both flinch. Jaune answered. "Jaune here. What can I do for you, Associate Director?"

"Our teams have found another job for you."

Great.

"Great!" Jaune lied. "Please convey our thanks to your logistical teams for all their help. It's freed up a lot of our time to not have to find jobs on our own. I could almost get used to this."

Saphron's smile was tight, but also satisfied. "They'll be pleased to hear that, and I shall pass it on with a small raise. The company is also pleased with your quick responses to them, even if two turned out to be false alarms."

"It happens. Not the first time I've hunted down an anomaly only to find out it's a Halloween party gone wrong. Better safe than sorry."

"Indeed." Saphron didn't seem to mind how thickly he was laying it on – and it was thick. Jaune had never in his life sounded so eager, and Blake resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Then you'll be glad to know this new job is unlikely to be anything but an anomaly. In fact, we believe it may have some similarity to one our office has faced before. It raises uncomfortable questions about species of anomalies, but those might be explained away as the anomaly being a dimensional rift to a world with said species, rather than the creature itself being anomalous."

"Can we get an explanation of the anomaly in question before we delve into said theories?"

"Ah. Of course. I'm all out of order." Saphron chuckled. "Are you familiar with my protégé's first mission? The tunnel of love?"

Jaune looked like he couldn't quite remember it.

Blake could. "It was a tunnel of love ride with unusual stories about couples coming out either secure in their love or distrustful of one another," she said, filling in for Juane. "They found out that what it really did was split reality and send couples into a five-year rift whereupon they were tested and ultimately killed. The alternate version of the couples that came out alive wouldn't remember the details but would have lingering feelings, which would lead to them either cementing their love or breaking up."

Saphron looked pleased with her. "Exactly. Our experts believed the reason for the breakups was what the couples in the doomed reality did. If they worked together and comforted one another, they would come out with intense feelings of love. Turn on one another or act selfishly before their deaths, and their other selves would feel that. In a sense, it forced them to spend five years together in isolation. A good test of whether two people can stand one another. If it were just that, it wouldn't be such an issue, but the downside is that the anomaly kills the split-reality pair. It devours them."

"And you've found another instance of it?" asked Jaune. "In Vale?"

"We believe so, though there's no way to be sure until it's dealt with. Simply put, there's a tunnel that's just finished construction in what will in the future become the new connecting line between Vale and Mountain Glenn."

Blake's eyes widened. "They're rebuilding the city!?"

"Officially, not yet. But it's being cleared out. We all know the real reasons it fell so this will be reclaiming it from the Grimm. Until then, evidence still needs to be hidden of what the Twilight City really was. That's a job for our task forces, however. For now, know that the future line is taking place aboveground for the most part, but it's passing through a tunnel. That tunnel is where the anomaly is believed to reside. The train journey through the tunnel should last sixty seconds – but those taking it complain of it feeling like minutes. Beyond that, people leave shaky and troubled, sometimes with anxiety and even with some noting cases of acute depression. It's obvious something is happening in the time they're in that tunnel."

"Less romantic than your tunnel of love," Jaune noted. "Are we sure it's a similar thing?"

"Both involve an enclosed space and a temporal anomaly but you're right in that we're not sure it's identically the same. There could be anything happening in there, but given the mental scars left on people taking the journey, we believe it to be a time-splitting scenario not unlike the one we faced in the tunnel of love."

That explained their thoughts earlier on multiple anomalies. Since an anomaly was meant to be unique in its abnormality, there shouldn't be multiple of the same, but technically speaking the anomaly could be the doorway to this alternate reality, and the monster the natural inhabitant of it. That would neatly sidestep the issue.

"Pyrrha and Terra aren't willing to go through that again, certainly not while Terra is pregnant. It's also in Vale."

"Making it our responsibility. I know." Jaune sighed. "Thanks for that."

Saphron shrugged. "We dealt with the anomaly and killed it and came out fine on the other side. There's no reason it shouldn't be the same for you both. The complication will come from the civilian presence."

"What? What do you mean civilians?"

"The tunnel and train will remain in operation and open to the public while you deal with the anomaly. This is ridiculous, I know, but the city of Vale is refusing to close it down."

That seemed remarkably shortsighted, even to Blake. "On what grounds?" she asked.

"They claim that their agreements with ARC Corp pertain to protecting the world from Reality Class anomalies and preventing the spread of information. Their argument is that the tunnel erases its own evidence and is therefore not a risk to our secrets. Furthermore, that closing it down would only draw attention and increase suspicion."

"That's a weak-ass argument!"

"I agree, Agent Belladonna. However, Vale is technically correct. We can only demand the closure of an area when there is a risk of an anomaly exposing itself or others. Those regulations are being rewritten in the face of this obvious abuse, but for now we have to play by their games. That means civilians will be on the train with you."

"That's going to make this difficult," Jaune said. "Keeping them safe will be hard."

"It's not your priority."

Saphron's callous response had Blake shocked. "What?"

"No one has vanished or died coming out the tunnel so if the creature within does kill them, it's like the tunnel of love and it kills a split-time version of them. That means anyone who is killed on there should come out the other end safe, albeit mentally scarred. That can be dealt with. Your goal should be the destruction of the anomaly, not the safety of the passengers. And lest you not recognise the danger, keep in mind that an anomaly like this could spread if it gains enough power to do so. It could infect more tunnels, and perhaps eventually overtake the entire city. It must be stopped."

Jaune leaned back. "Is this an Armageddon scenario?"

"Not yet. It has the potential to become one, but it isn't close to that yet. ARC Corp is monitoring the situation, but the initial response will be to send you two in and see if you can't kill it. We did with ours, so you shouldn't have any issues."

Shouldn't have any issues. There was no guarantee there. Jaune asked a few more questions but soon the call ended, leaving them to sit in relative silence and contemplate the job ahead. If it even did end up being anything like the one Pyrrha faced, that would mean potentially five years stuck on that train. Five whole years trapped with one another.

And that was assuming it was like their one.

It could be five hundred years. Or it could be five seconds. There was no real way of knowing, and the only comfort was the knowledge that someone would come out on the other end. Would it be them, though? If this was a split-time scenario, it would be like flipping a coin.

Heads and they'd come out he tunnel after a few minutes thinking nothing happened.

Tails and they were doomed to suffer.

Even potentially die.

Except that, in a way, it wasn't even a 50-50 chance. They would suffer the bad event, but there was a chance they'd be the lucky ones to not remember it. Or that they'd have their memories wiped to protect them. It would be a mercy.

"Can't we just blow up the tunnel and seal it?" she had to ask.

"The city will open it again."

"Even when they know there's an anomaly inside?"

"From their point of view, it's not causing any significant issues. The ones in the know will simply refuse to ever take that tunnel, all the while assuring the populace that it's perfectly safe."

"Bastards…"

"Hmm." Jaune stood. "But there's no reason we should jump on it would preparing. I think we should run a few tests. Talk to people coming off it, have some monitoring devices taken on the train while it does its journey. That kind of thing."

That sounded good to her.

Anything to push back the journey itself.

/-/

"Thank you for your time, sir, and here's your reward as promised." Blake handed over the decent amount of lien, a payment for staying for a questionnaire. At least that was how the passengers saw it. Jaune and Blake, suited as they were, made for convincing officials, and bribing people to stay for interviews wasn't difficult.

Throw enough lien around and even the busiest of people would stay.

The last guest stood and fumbled his way out, still looking a little shaken. His testimony had been much the same as the rest – a short trip that seemed to last a little longer than it felt it should, but nothing outwardly unusual. Except that he'd left the train feeling exhausted and nauseous, and thrown up in a public restroom. He complained that it must have been uneven and had drops to give him vertigo, and Blake had assured him the council would double-check the tracks.

Not all symptoms were the same. Almost everyone came off feeling more tired than they should, but some felt sick, others had awful pain and cramps, and one person had come off with a crippling sense of sadness, needing all kinds of sugar and drinks to bring him back to life.

If it had been one thing, there'd at least be a theme, but the only theme so far was that no one enjoyed it. Everyone came off worse for wear in some way or another, to the point that rumours were already circulating. Thankfully, those rumours were ranging from issues with the tracks to secret government testing of drugs.

Normal conspiracy theorist things unrelated to the anomalous truth.

No one was taking them too seriously.

Jaune came in through the door after the man had left with a clipboard in hand. "I checked the instruments we left on board the train," he said. "They're all registering no more than sixty seconds, as it's meant to be, but all of them were dead on battery when I got to them. Which is strange since they had enough dust to run on low power mode for at least two years."

Blake's stomach dropped. "That proves Saphron's theory, doesn't it?"

"It confirms the temporal anomaly, yes, but we already knew that was the case. It doesn't confirm this is a mirror-image scenario to what her office faced with the tunnel. This could be different." He tapped his clipboard. "Importantly, there were married and dating couples on that train and none of them are splitting up. Not to the best of my knowledge anyway."

"That could just be because it isn't a tunnel of love," Blake pointed out. "People went into that one in Mistral expecting to be tested and only having one another to rely on. Maybe it's different here. Everyone on the train would have been able to interact with one another."

"Hmm. Maybe." Jaune set the clipboard down. "You know there's only one way for us to know for sure, Blake."

Her ears flattened. "I know…"

"We'll come out safe on the other side."

"A Jaune and a Blake will," she replied. "There's no guarantee it'll be us."

"There won't be." He didn't lie. "We'll take explosives and weapons on board. If there is an entity, we'll find and kill it. When Saphron did that, the temporal anomaly collapsed and the Fist Office walked out remembering everything. If we kill this, we'll collapse the split timelines and do the same. We'll walk out of it – us. A little messed up, probably with a severe phobia of trains and tunnels, but it'll be us."

Blake snorted. "With a whole trainload of traumatised civilians."

"I was thinking we'd do a late-night trip. Less passengers. The ones who are taking it now… ignorance is bliss. Even if we don't know if they died and have been replaced or not, they don't know either. Let them stay that way. When we go in, they'll all be exposed to the anomalous. There's little chance of stopping that. I'll have Saphron prep a Task Force to collect and silence them."

Blake hated that word, but only because it sounded like "kill" in her mind.

"What happened to the people from the resort who were silenced?"

"Half of them took on jobs with ARC Corp," he replied. "Very well-paid jobs, probably the ones who have been doing investigatory work for us, to be honest. The others accepted contracts and payment packages to forget it ever happened. They were convinced it was some government testing facility for a replicating Semblance which went out of control when the woman with the Semblance died with a bunch of her own clones active. Stupid excuse," he admitted, "But most civilians don't understand how semblances work anyway, so they think it was some super-huntress training facility gone wrong, and that Vale is paying them not to talk."

Throw in a few governmental threats and it would be enough to keep them quiet. And, if not, they'd go public with a story that was false anyway, protecting ARC Corp. The ones who had been recruited were another matter, but at least they didn't go around killing witnesses.

Though how they'd explain away whatever happened here, Blake didn't know. Because Pyrrha came out remembering every day of those five years trapped in another dimension, whether or not she aged, and every passenger on board the train with them had a good chance of doing the same.

Blake didn't envy the Fist Office that mess.

/-/

It was night.

The train was about half-empty, some fifty people to what could fit a hundred normally. It had that "new train" feel to it where the seats were still clean, and the metal walls were without graffiti. The thing hadn't been in service for all too long. Worryingly, there were posters on the walls warning of what to do with any sudden sense of vertigo or sickness.

Blake ignored those.

The other people in their carriage didn't look as nervous as she was. They were relaxed, listening to music or reading things on their scrolls. One faunus woman was doing her best to keep two girls seated while they wanted to run down the aisles. Blake glanced down at the briefcase on her lap, within which were several bombs and guns.

Ironic that she was here on a train with a bomb again, though at least this time she had no intention of using it on the train or its passengers. With a hiss, the doors closed and Blake bit her lip. The train came to life with a ka-chunk of its wheels grinding slowly on the tracks. The sound became louder as it picked up speed, and then quieter once that speed was reached.

They would hit the tunnel in a minute's time.

By all accounts, there were two ways this could go. Two timelines. Timeline one would see them kept in the tunnel for a few minutes longer than made sense, and then brought out on the other side feeling sick and nauseous. They would disembark, check the next few trains, and hope that the anomaly was dealt with. That the Jaune and Blake in timeline two had done their jobs properly.

And, if they were unlucky, they'd end up in timeline two.

Where they would have to withstand whatever the anomaly threw at them, and fight back – potentially giving their own lives in a suicide attack to kill it, to ensure that the Blake and Jaune in timeline one didn't have to repeat the process and doom another split-time version of themselves.

Please let us be timeline one, please let us be timeline one…

Blake chanted it in her head as they reached the tunnel, and the train interior was cast into darkness. Jaune held out his scroll, stopwatch activated, and started the timer. The seconds ticked by.

Please let us be timeline one, please let us be timeline one…

It reached sixty seconds.

Please let us be timeline one, please let us be timeline one…

Two minutes.

Please… Blake begged. Please let the tunnel end…

Three minutes.

Four minutes.

Five minutes.

Several passengers began to look around nervously, finally realising that too much time had passed, and the dark tunnel walls were still flashing by. Jaune turned off his stopwatch to conserve battery and put his scroll away.

And Blake bit back the urge to scream furiously. There were bitter tears in her eyes.

They were the sacrificial timeline.

"It's our responsibility now," he whispered, taking her hand and squeezing it. She could feel the heat from his fiery hand through his gloves. "It'll be fine," he told her. "We'll come out of this just fine."

The Fist Office had. Nikos had.

Blake swallowed and wiped her eyes, then nodded. Maybe it was this stupid train already getting to her – a taster of the myriad mental scars left on people who came off it. "I'll be fine," she whispered. "I think the train is affecting me."

Jaune hummed, though she wasn't sure if he believed it. Letting go of her, he stood and walked to the front of their carriage, then turned to face the very frightened passengers. He raised his hands.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you can all offer me your attention!" he shouted. "My name is Jaune Arc, Director of the Containments Office of ARC Corp, and right now I am your best bet at surviving this anomalous event. I am going to have to ask you all to stay calm and listen to me." To her shock, he cracked a bitter smile. "And keep your hands, feet and sanity inside the vehicle at all times. It's going to be a bumpy ride."

Next Chapter: 23rd September

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