Chapter Text
Overhead, fluorescent lights flicker and buzz on. Ruby groans. She pulls her thin, stiff pillow over her head. Not that it’s good for much of anything, least of all blocking out noise, but she can pretend it’ll help. Her headache from yesterday lingers. A dull, pulsing throb behind her eyes that reminds her there’ll be more pain today.
The door hisses open. Footsteps enter the room, then stop. Ruby can feel the shadow over her. She doesn’t turn around to look. Not yet.
“It’s time to get up, Ms. Rose,” the same words always greet her in the ‘mornings’.
There are no windows here, so it’s impossible for Ruby to actually know what time of day it is. They turn off the fluorescent lights of her room for ‘night’ and turn them back on roughly eight hours later, so lights on is really the closest to ‘morning’ she has.
Ruby inhales a deep breath. This time. This time it’ll work.
She calls upon her semblance.
Red rose petals burst into being, drowning the stark whiteness of the walls in saturated color. They separate into three clusters, fly around the exasperated scientist, and shoot through the door.
All Ruby has to do it make it down the hallway, turn left, get through the next corridor, arrive at the stairs, and race down them until she’s at the door that’ll take her outside. Then, then she’ll finally be free.
When Ruby reaches the left turn, the shot catches her. An electrified energy blast—they won’t risk using actual bullets on her, they don’t want her injured—hits Ruby square between the shoulders. She yelps, falls forward, hits the floor hard, and groans. Her aura flickers, but doesn’t break.
Footsteps echo down the hallway until they reach Ruby. Their owner sighs in dramatic fashion. “You know, you’re just making things harder on yourself.” He squats down next to Ruby, takes hold of her hair, and pulls her head up so she’s forced to look at him. “I thought you wanted to improve the world? That was your reason for attending an huntsman academy, was it not?”
Ruby glares, but doesn’t reply.
“Very well.” Dr. Watts stands up, pulling Ruby along with him. He keeps one hand pressed firmly to her shoulder and guides her back down the hall. “Come along. The General has scheduled quite a number of new tests for today.”
They stop back at Ruby’s room, where she’s allowed to change out of her night clothes into a standard issue, Atlas cadet training uniform. Sometime before she woke up here for the first time, they’d taken Ruby’s own combat gear from her and hadn’t given it back since. Ruby asked for it, and Crescent Rose too, in the beginning, but after enough times of being told she’d be provided with everything she would need, she gave up. They were, annoyingly, too smart to give her anything that may help her get out of the facility.
Ruby rolls her shoulders, trying to ease away the remaining ache from where she was shot, and doesn’t quite manage it. She drags her feet on the short walk to the private training room. She doesn’t want to do this. She wishes she didn’t have to do this.
The first few times, training wasn’t too difficult. The hardest part had been adjusting to using the standard bladed rifle she was allowed access to only under careful supervision. Ruby’s opponents had been automated turrets and robots. Even with as little previous training as she had, they weren’t hard to take down. Something that would have been fine, Ruby realized too late, only if Dr. Watts and the General were interested in seeing her combat skills improve.
No, what they want from her is much different.
She sighs upon seeing the room full of Grimm.
“Let’s see if you can use that superpower of yours today, hmm?” Dr. Watts smirks at Ruby. Sometimes, she wonders if he genuinely believes her silver eyes give her a special power against the Grimm, or if he’s just going along with the General because he enjoys messing with her. Ruby doesn’t know. She’s never asked. She’s not sure she believes her eyes are all that special herself.
At least not until she remembers what happened at the top of Beacon Tower.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
Ruby charges at the first Grimm, an ursa, in the training room. It’s easier to fight than to let her mind go there. The last night she was free before this place.
Beacon.
The White Fang and Grimm in the school. Roman Torchwick. Yang, with one arm gone. The call from Jaune. Racing to the tower. Then…
Pyrrha.
Ruby trips and stumbles. The ursa roars. It slashes out with a paw twice the size of Ruby’s head. She braces for a blow that doesn’t come. Ruby looks up.
Standing between her and the ursa, holding it off, is someone who’s supposed to be dead. Ruby stares. She doesn’t understand. How can…?
Penny turns, glances at the person she’s defending. Her eyes go wide too, as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing as well.
The ursa senses its opening. It breaks free of Penny’s hold and slams its paws into the floor, shattering the surface. It rears up.
Ruby watches, in slow motion, as the ursa’s claws close in on Penny’s head. She hears herself scream and only realizes that the sound is her a moment afterwards.
Blinding light floods out from Ruby. The Grimm disintegrates. Ruby’s ears ring. Her head pounds. Everything hurts. She falls to her knees. She feels cool, gentle hands grip her shoulders.
“Ruby? You—you can’t be—you’re dead. You died at Beacon. I don’t understand…Ruby?”
Ruby wants to respond, to say something, but the world is spinning. The last thing Ruby hears, before falling unconscious and collapsing into Penny’s arms, is Dr. Watt’s approaching voice.
“Experiment 201 is a success. Confirmed silver eye activation. Begin preparations for the next phase.”