Dyna wasn’t happy with her temporary allies. To be fair, at no point in their brief cooperation had Dyna been happy with them. At most, she had been relieved when they showed up at the hospital. Then maybe relieved again when they said they could help Ruby get back to normal. Her displeasure hadn’t come from anything that they had actually done. That might come across as a bit unfair, but Dyna didn’t care. They worked with Id, that earned them some ire.
But now?
“You shot her.”
Maple glanced over, face hidden behind the mask, and shrugged. “Why do you think we’re holding these things? For fun?”
“In case she’s a danger,” Dyna said.
“Exactly.” Maple nodded his head as if that response justified his actions.
“She just sat up and looked around.”
“Exactly. Someone knocked unconscious doesn’t just sit up. She was probably going to… I don’t know, make our heads explode.”
“Make our heads explode? You think she would have done that when she first appeared.”
“Not head explosions,” Maple said, quickly changing his mind. “Absolutely no head explosions. It was probably something innocuous and hardly worth mentioning… I… I don’t know what to say to you. I’m not Id.”
Dyna shot him a glare. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t try to be like Id. Not exactly my favorite person.”
“Whatever. Point is, we’re safe. Don’t ask me what she would have done,” Maple said, vaguely gesturing toward the terminal. “They’re the experts.”
Ado sat in the chair. She had hardly turned around, not even acknowledging the commotion. The suit she wore must have protected her from the disruptor. With Maple having stood outside the truck and firing into it, she would have been in a direct line of fire. Yet she hadn’t even wobbled. She had ignored the woman’s still twitching body as she approached Dyna, told her to speak into small small radio-like box to talk to Ruby, and then moved back to the terminal.
Doctor Darq, having appeared on one of the terminal screens, was somewhat less willing to ignore the goings on. “Mister Maple made the correct decision, faced with an unknown entity,” he said with steepled fingers. “The disruptor shouldn’t cause long-term damage to anything organic. It merely jumbles up the—”
“Darq,” Ado said, “the waveform analysis from the speaker box?”
Although a notion of annoyance crossed Darq’s features at the interruption, he nodded his head. “Sending it over now.” Despite his words, he didn’t move. Still, one of the other terminal’s screens changed, showing off a display that looked like the visual representation of an audio spectrogram. “Pay special attention to 3:35.”
“An odd spike. Cause?”
“Three guesses. First two don’t count.”
Ado turned her seat, looking back. Although Dyna couldn’t see her eyes, her head fairly obviously started out looking at the Hatman in his tank, then moved down to the woman, before settling on Dyna herself. “I suppose I have my guesses,” she said, turning back. “Is it going to be a problem?”
“Problem? Hardly! It likely saved us a good hour of trial and error. Not to mention the ancillary data extracted points to some fascinating possibilities with regards to—”
“Unrelated to the topic at hand.”
Darq pressed his lips together, unmoving at his desk on the other side of the screen. “This all would be far simpler if you simply told—”
“Unrelated to the topic. Remember Id’s orders.”
Darq sighed. “Very well,” he said. “But I will be bringing this up with the chief director. If you wish to make actual progress—”
“Unrelated.”
“I wish you would stop that.”
Ado shrugged, stood, and turned back toward Dyna. Bending slightly, she held out the small black box that Dyna had used to talk to Ruby. It had a few buttons on the front and a small LCD screen that displayed a few numbers. “Instruct your friend to stand a short distance from the truck, away from anyone else.”
Dyna accepted the speaker box, looking down at the empty harness. When she had first freed herself, Ruby had looked like she was about to run off. But since firing the disruptor, she had stayed close to the truck and had not budged since. The only movement she managed, or at least the only movement that Dyna could see through the movement of the Harness, was her turning around. Presumably looking around.
Sometimes she would jump slightly, quickly looking one way then another. No matter how much Dyna tried, she couldn’t ever see anything in the directions Ruby face.
It made her a little uneasy.
“Ruby?” Dyna asked, pressing the button helpfully labeled as Transmit. “Can you hear me?”
The harness popped up a bit, possibly startled, and then quickly hopped up and down three more times. From that, Dyna assumed that Ruby could hear her.
The speaker box seemed to only work one way.
“Good. Ado needs you to move…” Dyna trailed off. She glanced up, finding Ado fiddling with the knobs and dials on the side of the much larger disruptor gun. “Where, exactly?”
“Just away from the truck. I do not want sensitive equipment possibly damaged by the disruptor.”
“You’re going to shoot Ruby?”
“Disrupt. Not shoot. It should be harmless. Think of it as disrupting the entity’s power over her.”
Dyna nodded slowly. She should probably stop thinking of the disruptors as guns. With the odd cylinder on top and the nozzle at the front, they didn’t look anything like a proper gun. The only real similarity was the trigger. Even that was something electronic, rather than mechanically connected to a firing mechanism.
Disrupt.
Right.
They wouldn’t try to hurt Ruby at this point, especially not with the guards from the Carroll Institute standing just a short distance away.
Worries abated, Dyna held up the speaker box again. “Ruby, take ten steps to your two-o’clock,” she said.
The harness turned a bit to the left and then started pacing forward, only to stop no more than five steps ahead. It was an abrupt stop. Like she meant to continue, but didn’t.
“Could be that she isn’t perceiving distances correctly,” Ado said. Lowering the large disruptor, she took aim. “Should be far enough. Stand back, please.”
Dyna had her mouth open to argue that Ruby had clearly stopped early for some other reason. At Ado’s command, however, Dyna took a few quick steps back and out of the line of fire, not wanting to be anywhere near the disruptor’s area of effect when it went off.
And it went off quick. Ado didn’t hesitate in pulling the trigger.
Ruby rippled into existence in the midst of falling backward toward the truck, one arm looking like it was shielding her face. Her other hand tightly gripped one of her longer knives. She was facing the wrong way though, away from the truck.
Dyna wanted to rush toward her with the intention of giving her a hug. The knife had her hesitating. But she still took a few steps forward, only to skid to a stop as something else plopped down a short distance away from Ruby.
An arm. A human arm. The rest of whatever body it might have been attached to wasn’t following it into existence, leaving the arm severed just above the elbow. It twitched, fingers splaying out before dragging against the asphalt as they contracted. Dyna thought it was just a death spasm—or some other errant muscular seizure—but then it repeated the motion.
The hand stretched forward, dug into the ground underneath it, and dragged itself forward.
It didn’t stop after just one or two crawls. It kept going.
Ruby didn’t move. She lowered her one hand, but just stared at it now. She didn’t make a move to attack, pin it down, or even flee further backwards.
Dyna, a few months ago, might have freaked out. Or screamed. Now? She had seen Ruby and Emerald sparring before. She had seen worse injuries than a dismembered arm. Dyna didn’t want to touch it with her bare hands, but she did move up and lightly pin it down with her shoe. Not hard enough to injure it, just in case it wasn’t an enemy, but enough to keep it from scurrying about.
That seemed to break Ruby out of her haze. She slowly followed Dyna’s leg up until she reached her face. Ruby’s eyes lit up for just a moment before she looked off to the side. “Took you long enough.”
“It’s good to see you again too.” Dyna glanced down at the still squirming arm. A small pool of blood trailed behind where it had crawled. Not as much as Dyna would have expected in an arm, but, well… “Can you explain this?”
“I…” Ruby looked back down. “I don’t know what the bleep is going on,” she said after a moment of silence. “I’ve had a very confusing day, you know. I can’t believe you disappeared on me like that.”
“I disappeared on you?”
“Well you certainly—”
“Our agreement,” Ado said, standing at the rear edge of the truck. “We have fulfilled our end.”
Dyna shot her a dirty look. It had only been a few hours. Less than a day. But with everything that had been going on, it felt like it had been weeks since Dyna last saw Ruby. And now here Ado was, interrupting? Not that Dyna disagreed exactly. The sooner they were gone, the better.
Ignoring Ado for just a moment, Dyna crouched down. “Are you alright? Nothing left behind?”
Her ruby was there, still in her throat. She had all her fingers and presumably all her toes—her feet were hidden under shoes. Really, Ruby looked none the worse for wear. At least not aside from a few tears in her hoodie and dirt splotches sticking to her pants. It was possible she had been cut or otherwise injured, especially in those tears, but had since healed herself.
Then there was the arm. It obviously wasn’t Ruby’s as she wasn’t missing an arm, but…
“I’m fine,” Ruby ground out. She glanced back to Ado, then looked around and spotted the Carroll Institute vehicle. Putting on a scowl, she nodded her head back toward Tartarus’ truck. “What’s with them? That’s those people from the other organization, right?”
“Long story short: Walter made an agreement. They had technology to bring you back. We have to give them Grafton in turn.”
Ruby nodded slowly as Dyna explained. Maybe such details happened regularly enough that it didn’t surprise her. It wasn’t until she mentioned Grafton’s name that Ruby’s eyes widened.
“The mind controller with the junk attached to his head?”
“Yeah, he’s—”
“No. No. No. No. That was my capture. He’s my prisoner. I got him. You can’t just let him go and make it like I didn’t do anything at all!”
“You didn’t not do…” Dyna shook her head. “You did do something,” she said, rephrasing.
Ruby ground her teeth together. Dyna could hear it even from a few steps away. “Walter did this?”
“He was on my phone, talking to Tartarus. I was right there.”
“Is this punishment?”
“What?” Dyna blinked. “No, nothing like that I don’t think. Tartarus saw an opportunity to get something out of the situation. They held cards and Walter likely wanted to make sure they played them properly. If there was more reasoning behind it, you would have to ask him.”
“I will,” Ruby snapped.
Dyna started to move forward, maybe to try to give her just a little hug. The moment she took her foot off the arm, it twisted, clamping down around her ankle. With a slight yelp, Dyna stomped her other foot down on it. That was enough to get it to let her go.
Ruby leaned forward. With a blur of her arm, the black blade of her long knife pierced straight through the hand, pinning it down against the asphalt. It struggled some, but didn’t manage to dislodge the blade.
“What is this thing?” Dyna asked, staring down at the arm.
“I don’t know. There were…” Ruby trailed off, glancing behind her for a moment. Ado still stood, staring in their direction, though her eyes were hidden behind her goggles. “There were things wherever I was,” Ruby said, voice now a whisper. “Not nice things. Right before… this, one of them tried reaching out to me. I don’t think it was attacking, but I am sure glad to be back before it got closer.”
“You didn’t think you could fight it? Or heal if it hurt you?” Dyna looked down at the arm. “It’s just a regular hand, if oddly animate despite being detached from a body. Presumably, some poor person is at best freaking out about losing their arm. At worst, they’ve probably bled to death.”
“You don’t understand. These things weren’t people.”
“More Hatman… men? Hatmans?”
Ruby shot Dyna a look. “They didn’t look human at all. No skin. No… muscle or bone either. More like moving shadows. I don’t know why the arm looks human now, but I don’t believe for a bleeping minute that it is really a human arm.”
“Most human arms don’t keep moving after being separated from the rest of the body,” Dyna said. It felt obvious to state that, but relevant all the same. “There is a doctor here from the institute who would love to take a look at it. He wanted to look at…”
Dyna’s eyes widened as she looked up. Ado still stood at the edge of the truck. Despite hiding her eyes behind her goggles and the rest of her face behind the mask and helmet she wore, Dyna could tell that she was glaring. To her side, standing down on the ground, Maple had his head angled in Dyna’s direction. The disruptor he held, however, was still pointed at the girl. The entity?
Whatever it was, it hadn’t moved since last being disrupted.
Dyna let out a small sigh. Maybe Maple had been right to trigger the disruptor when the woman moved. Dyna was still certain that the… being had tried to warn them of the Hatman, but at the time, Dyna had figured that she was another of the Hatman’s victims. Someone who had been physically around when Maple stepped through the anomaly, maybe realized that she could step through in the other direction, and then tried it slightly less successfully.
Gripping the dismembered arm by the wrist, Dyna wrenched the knife out of the ground. It immediately tried to grab at her, but once up in the air, it had absolutely no real leverage.
“Come on,” Dyna said. Louder, she addressed Ado. “We’ll go see what the procedure is for releasing Grafton.”
Immediately, Ruby started grinding her teeth again. It was good that she could fix any damage she caused, otherwise whatever dentist she would have to see would likely have a few choice words for her.
“I don’t like it either,” Dyna whispered. “Not much choice.”
“We could just not. Maybe capture him after releasing him.”
“I think that would go against the spirit of the agreement. Maybe the literal wording too.”
Ruby scowled, but didn’t say another word as they walked up to the Carroll Institute’s rear trailer.
Matt was on the mobile bed still, which was now attached to the wall. The bandages around his leg were gone, revealing a few dark black threads holding his leg together. Given how much blood he had lost, it really didn’t look that bad. Then again, Dyna had no idea what the surgeons had done to him. They could easily have done an emergency patch job just to get him to stop bleeding while leaving the rest of his leg starved for blood.
She supposed that was what the two assistants were investigating as they hovered over him.
Doctor Teeth, however, stood away, not even looking at Matt. His attention was focused on some monitors set into the opposite walls. Monitors that were displaying a zoomed-in feed of the truck, the possible entity in particular.
Hands clasped behind his back, he didn’t even turn as he spoke. “Did it speak when it sat up?”
“No. It just looked around,” Dyna said. “Then Maple shot—disrupted it.”
“Shame. I would like to get it into our containment as soon as—” Doctor Teeth let out a high pitched squeak as he turned around. The collected and serious demeanor he had presented thus far vanished in an instant. Taking a few stumbling steps backward, he pointed. “What is that?”
“An arm,” Dyna said, waving with it. Not too much, however. It was moving around enough on its own. Holding it as far as she could from her body still left the bloody stump a bit too close. The clothes she was wearing would probably need to be burned. “Appeared when Ruby did. It’s also bleeding and keeps trying to grab me, so if you have any boxes to put it—”
“Grab you?”
Dyna pointed to the fingers. “That isn’t me moving them. It’s been like this for five… maybe ten minutes now?”
His eyes, already wide, widened further. Without taking those wide eyes off the arm, he pulled out a second table from the walls. Not a bed like what Matt was on, but a smooth table. “Quickly, place it down,” he said, taking several steps back once the table had been set up. “And strap it in if you don’t mind. Tight, please.”
With a half shrug, Dyna followed his orders. There were thick black straps on the table. Presumably for restraining someone uncooperative. The table was far larger than just the arm, but that didn’t seem to matter to Doctor Teeth. As soon as Dyna stepped back, he moved forward, dragging some tool with a coiled cord down from the ceiling to hover over the arm.
“Ruby is back too,” Dyna said after a moment. With a bit of a frown, she added, “Tartarus wants Grafton.”
“That’s nice,” Teeth said, not looking away.
“Shouldn’t you… examine her or something?”
“I’m fine,” Ruby said.
“Sounds like she’s fine,” Teeth said, tone utterly distracted. “Beatrice, see about informing Walter. In the mean time, any suggestions about this arm?”
“Notifications sent. Scans from the arm appear consistent with our long-range scans of the second entity.”
“Wonderful. Wonderful. Even if we cannot get that, we aren’t walking away with nothing.”
Dyna glanced over at the psionic isolation chamber at the back of the truck. Ruby was at her side. Matt was safe. The Hatman was locked up.
But she still didn’t like the idea of letting Grafton go any more than Ruby did. She glanced down to find Ruby’s red eyes boring a hole in the chamber, wondering if there was any kind of plan they could come up with that didn’t upset everyone. At least everyone she cared about upsetting.