Chapter 63: Hacking

Chapter 63: Hacking

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryugii. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Hacking

Stepping through Raven's portal was an experience. It was likeI wasn't even sure how to describe it, really. Spots of differing temperatures played across my skin in whirling patterns as the world shifted before my eyes. Beneath the lens of my Clairvoyance, it was more than a vortex of red and black, it wasI didn't even know what it was. But space bent and shrank, almost as if being crushed by the fist of some enormous being, and then

And then it was over. I stepped out on the other side as though I'd just walked through an open doorway.

I took a deep breath, silently bringing up my Map to check where we were. There didn't seem to be any problems on that front, not that I'd really expected any so long as Raven was under the impression that I had a technique similar to her own. If not, I might have been a little worried about being stranded somewhere unpleasant, butwell, it seemed I could rely on Pathfinder in this regard as well.

Good. Its minor hints were pretty much all that was keeping me afloat at this point.

Turning my attention towards Raven, I saw her gazing at a building across the street and opened my mouth to say something before pausing considering. Levant and Vulturnus appeared beside me, invisible to any eyes but my own, and all at once my senses spread through shifting currents and grids of power lines. It only took me a moment to confirm my suspicions.

We weren't in the building we were aiming for. Close to it, enough so that we appeared to be next to the marker on my map, but we weren't there. But I could trace a path across the street in a web of light, through walls and floors and even below the groundand there it was. As I figured, right below the building Raven was watched were rows and rows of servers, bright to my Lightning Elemental's eyes.

But those weren't the only things he sensed.

"Worried about the cameras, Raven?" I guessed, inserting a slight smile to my voice. Raven's hair swayed as if her face had twitched in my direction, but she didn't look away from her targetpresumably she was scanning the interior for the safest way in. "Third floor, second window from the right. It's an empty room; no people, no cameras.

"I take it you know where everything else in the building is?" Raven said neutrally.

I did now, I thought as my Elementals guided their power through it.

"Naturally," I said aloud as if it were nothing. "The cameras are monitored from a room on the third floor as well; once we're inside, I'll disable all the cameras, shut down the communications in that room, and rush to disable the guard inside. Afterwards, we'll access the server from one of the computers, get what we need, and leave. If that's alright with you?"

She said nothing for a moment, turning to face me. Though her mask gave nothing away, I imagined she had an annoyed expression on her face. For my part, I just smiled at her, holding a hand out graciously towards the window.

"I'll take point, I suppose," I said. "No since taking any chances now, is there?"

She was silent for another long moment before a portal began to converge in front of me.

"Watch your step," She said as I walked towards it, and though there was no particular inflection to her tone, I figured it was probably a reminder of all the places she could send me with her creationbut given that Levant sensed the other portal in the room I designated and double checked by sending a current of air though it, I wasn't that worried by it.

"I'll sure to do that," I said as I strolled into the portal, emerging in the building. At once, Vulturnus finished his infestation of their power lines and promptly turned off all the cameras in the building before reaching into the control room and shutting down monitors, a computer, and a scroll. I felt the guard rise suddenly in alarm through Levant, hand going to the computer first in an attempt to restart it before reaching for his scroll. When that turned out to be a dead end, too, however, he turned towards the door, probably going to find someone.

I found him first and with a gentle touch, he stopped in place, fainting swiftly as Xihai got inside his system. I caught him and put him back into his chair, taking a few items off his person before leaving the room as quickly as I'd come.

To be honest, I was glad that Raven was hesitant to go in first. She wasI still didn't know enough about her to really guess what she'd do. She might kill anything that got in her way, paint these halls red in the blood of innocent workers, orGod only knows. Or maybe she'd do nothing and slip in without leaving a trace behind. I had no way of knowing, but with innocent lives on the line, I'd rather handle this myself, even if it meant doing something bad. It was likeit was like the difference between getting your car stolen by a drug addict and a professional, I suppose; a bad thing either way, but one might kill you to take your keys, while the other would be gone before you realized your car was missing.

Wellat least, I hoped that would be what this was like. As long as I didn't screw this up

I moved through the building silently, Levant guiding me away from anyone she detected as I made my way to the elevator and used the keycard I'd swiped to hitch a ride to one of the basement levels.

"You took your time," Raven said absently, already typing away at a computer hooked up to one of the servers. I'd felt her portal in as soon as I'd disabled the cameras, so I wasn't surprised to see her there. In response to her barb, I merely laughed quietly and gave her a conceding gesture.

"Have you found anything, yet?" I asked.

"Not yet," She answered, sounding somewhat distracted now that she'd returned fire. I couldn't see her eyes, but she was scrolling quickly through pages of files that I watched over her shoulder, taking them in quietly. She reached the bottom of the page without clicking on anything and then scroll back to the top, apparently searching for anything that stood out, first. Nothing really did, at least to me; they all had file names like SDC037 or MC02. But

"The fourth file," I said. "And the seventeenth, twenty-second, and thirty-ninth. Those are the biggest files by far. Images, perhaps?"

She clicked on the fourth file obligingly, opening 'SDCEMGA01.'

"Schnee Dust Company Estimated Market Growth, Appendix 1," She recited as if it wasn't in bold letters on the screen. As she scrolled down, there were graphsforecasts in many forms, comparing the business to other dust mining companies and businesses I didn't recognize. Past competitors, maybe? The graphs all trended upwards, though if these were files Weiss' mother had stored, they were probably somewhat out of date. Still, why would she leave such a thing for her daughters? I mean, if this was, as I suspected, some kind of annual report, then they should be able to get them normally as part of the company. Why list it here as well?

It would probably make more sense if we did more than look at the pictures, I thought. But

"Keep checking through the larger files. Afterwards, we'll scroll back up." I said.

Raven looked at me in what I assumed was annoyance but did as I requested, opening the files one by one. The first was another appendix; a series of maps, marked in various colors. Of the top four pictures, I recognized the areas surrounding Atlas, Mistral, and Vale immediately, which meant the one that wasn't immediately familiar to me was probably Vacuo. But the markings

I frowned for a moment, eyes tracking up to the one of Vale and then to the North of it; above Forever Fall, there was a massive section of bright colors, like a stripe across the forest. I'd never seen it represented in such a way, but I recognized the location, could all but hear the sound of the train.

Which meant

"These are Dust deposits," I said. "Around the Kingdoms?"

Would this mean war? As fears rose and things worsened, would the Hunters be called upon to fight each other?

Or maybe I was worrying over nothing. Maybe we'd stand together even in our darkest hour, the terrors at our door binding us even closer as we stood against it. I liked that thought a lot betterbut if our defenses failed, if our resources ran out, if fear and panic spread through the kingdoms because we all knew what was comingwould it be enough to make a difference? Or would we just die together instead of dying separately? Or maybe

So yeah, a part of me was curious now, about what the Council might know and might be keeping from the public. What type of things had been happening while all of us were completely unaware? Did that have something to do with why Raven stopped being a Huntress? All interesting questions.

But it probably wasn't the time to ask and I was struggling to care too much about the answers right now. Maybe later, I'd want to know, but for now I just wantedneeded to think, to take this all in and try to findsomething. A way out? A way through? I didn't know, but I had to find it.

And really thinking about it, I didn't even care too much about the fact that I'd been lied to. Maybe it was because of my power, but I didn't feel all that outraged. I could understand Raven's feelings, certainly, understand why countless others would undoubtedly be enraged by the fact and maybe even agree with some of itbut I thought they were probably right about a lot of things. If they'd heard the news, people would panic and that panic would spread until we were a beacon to every Grimm on the continent. All telling everyone would do is make things worse and hasten the fall. No, better to keep things quiet, amongst experts and professionals who could pursue actual solutions without making things worse in the process. That there was the potential for things to go so wrong just made it all the more important that cooler heads prevail.

Granted, I don't know where that put them morally speaking, considering that they were basically keeping it a secret that we were all probably going to diebut I understood it. Even agreed somewhat. The solutions they'd been looking into, on ways to improve efficiency, find alternatives, access new sources, and even attempts to create Dustthey'd made sense, even if they hadn't yielded the results they'd hoped for. I thought they were probably going about this as well as they could, under the circumstances. It was a pity these files were so outdated; perhaps something new had come to light, something I could look into. Or perhaps finding that would be the next step, but how

"What happens?" Raven asked suddenly, voice cutting through my thoughts. "What happens when it all comes crashing down?"

I blinked beneath my mask, thoughts taking a moment to jump tracks. I very nearly asked what she meant before hesitating; it was obvious enough, I guess.

"I suppose it depends on how it falls," I mused at last, speaking slowly as I continued to sound things out. "If the Kingdoms manage to stay together, there's at least the possibility of prolonging the inevitable. It's possible that we could find other places to settle; somewhere both near great supplies of Dust and shielded from the Grimm by natural barriers, where the cycle could continue. There must be at least a few places like that on Remnant, it's just a matter of finding them and surviving such a massive journey with the amount of fear such a trip would generate among the people. If so, that'd push back the end by a hundred years or so. And who knows, if the Kingdom's support one another, perhaps a solution might be found in that time. It would require a great deal of trust, of people holding it together during emergencies, and would cost countless lives to make such a trip and rebuild, but I wouldn't say it was impossible."

For a moment, she was silent, breath steadying as her earlier outburst faded away completely and the mask came back on. Several seconds after I finished, she nodded once, taking that in.

"And assuming that extremely unlikely scenario doesn't happen?"

I was silent for a moment, mulling the question over before giving my answer.

"It's likely that many Hunters would survive," I said at last. "Travelling individually or in small groups, it shouldn't be difficult to fight off most Grimm and avoid the rest. At the same time, those with power, experience, and training are less likely to react with the type of mindset that would draw in the Grimm. Many would still die, whether because of the resulting dangers or because they lost enough that their grief overcame their training or simply because of the lack of infrastructure, but many would survive. Some of them might even be able to support small groups of people in the aftermath and lead them somewhere relatively safe. Given time, they might find protected places and eventually build civilization anew."

"You think that's possible?" She asked.

"It may well have happened before," I replied. "Many civilizations have fallen throughout history, yet others have grown elsewhere."

She nodded again, taking a deep breath.

"And everyone else?" She asked, apparently under the strange belief that I was an authority on such things. "What will they do?"

"Die, I guess." I said, suppressing a sigh. That answer was obvious enough that I wasn't even sure why she asked. A part of me wanted to hesitate before the delivery, to call it something else, butwe both knew the truth. We both knew what was at stake. There was no point in hiding it.

Her response surprised me, though.

"No," She said. "I won't let that happen. There has to be a way."

I looked at her, eyebrows rising beneath the Goliath's mask. I hadn't expected those words from her and having heard them, Iwell, I wasn't sure how to process them. Maybe I shouldn't have beenI suppose we were all the heroes of our own stories, butit really made me wonder what could possibly be driving her, if that was her mindset. A Huntress, a terrorist, and apparently someone who wanted to be a heroit seemed contradictory, almost.

Of course, I was all of those things, too. Maybe that's why I considered her quietly for a moment and thendecided to take a chance. Maybe it was foolish, but

"Perhaps," I said. "You may have heard that my talk with Jeanne Roma and Cynosarges Alexandria went well. What you may not have heard was why. We found somethingperhaps something you could help us with."

She looked at me then and I knew I had her attentionbut I still needed to do this carefully, juggling my secrets.

"Some information has come to light recently," I continued. "Amanuscript, of sorts, written in Babel."

"Then it's useless to us," She said. "No one can read Babel."

"I wouldn'tquite say that," I replied and from the way she went still, I figured her eyes must have been wide under that mask. "I wouldn't call myself fluent by any means, but I believe I can understand the gist of it. Enough, perhaps, to find some clues."

Or, at least, that was the hope. With my Observe, it should be possibleit had worked with Naraka, at least. Although that had been a skill book, the fact remained that it had told me the basics even though I didn't understand the language. If I could improve my Observe or practice on somethingand if, in the long run, I could get a skill from it

At the very least, it wasn't impossiblenot even implausible, really. And if we had Raven's help

"Already, Jeanne Roma has expressed great interest in unveiling Babel's mysteries," I continued. "As we speak, she is gathering everything she can get her hands on. With your help, however, perhaps we might find something more quickly. At the very least, I'm certain she would be glad to deepen our alliance, in return for your aidwith her ties to the Mistral Council, she must already be aware of what is coming. Perhaps that was even why she took me up on my offer so readily. But with our power and the backing of Mistral's Families"

I left the thought hanging in the air, smiling at her beneath my mask.

"And what did you find that interested her so?" She asked after a moment of silence.

And here comes the true risk, I thought. Butnothing ventured, nothing gained. With this, I knew she'd be interested; if she felt as strongly about this as she seemed to, I'd make an unspeakable powerful ally out of what had been a deadly threat. And in the face of this problem, of what the whole world was facingit was worth the risk.

"This," I said, quickly draining several Dust crystals I drew from my Inventory before snapping my fingers once. "It's called 'Naraka.'"