Chapter 11

"I cannot believe he was stupid enough to go back to his house." Argos complained through the radio. Dom raised a hand to his ear to trip his mike. "Quit whining just because you have to eat your words."

Ruby looked away from the house for a moment at his words, smirking before going back to keeping watch. It was a fairly standard home in the suburban district, aside from the overgrown lawn. The kind of house a fairly rich, single man who didn't feel any great need to stretch his legs or flaunt his wealth would buy. Even though he had enough life sentences to live out the rest of life three times over in prison, it was still technically possible that Daedalus would somehow get out of prison before his death, meaning the house was still his.

San had had them approach the house in a standard four directional approach. The members of Team RWBY had likewise spilt into four to accompany them. Dom and Ruby were across the street watching the front door, San and Weiss were in the bushes on the house's north side, Will and Yang had taken up perches in the towering oak tree two yards over and Argos was scanning the house from the back yard with Blake in tow.

The night was silent and still. Overcast clouds blocked the moon and there were no signs of activity in any of the neighboring houses. It was nearly one in the morning on a Tuesday after all; not surprising everyone would be in bed. Dom, suppressing a yawn, would have gladly joined them. He might have gotten his wish if, a half an hour after they had taken up their positions, a certain someone hadn't furtively walked down the street.

"I want a three pronged insertion, through the escape routes. Will, take the upstairs just to be safe. Check, one."

"Two." Argos said.

"Three." Dom joined in. "We're going." He said to the Huntress beside him.

"Four." Will finished.

"Go."

Dom burst from his concealment, Ruby right behind him. With her speed, she could have easily outpaced him but it seemed she was willing to follow his lead. Dom appreciated that, there hadn't exactly been the best relations between Shadow and RWBY.

They pounded up the porch, one of his knife's honed edges neatly slicing through the lock and granting them entry. It'd have been faster to just kick the door in, but far more noticeable. No reason to risk an awake neighbor calling the cops on them. As they burst inside, the sound of shattering glass heralded San's arrival. Dom ducked around a wall towards the back of the house, where their target was.

He needn't have hurried. Argos, who had entered through the back door, already had the doctor pinned to the wall with his spearpoint resting ever so gently on the doctor's throat. The man's eyes were the size of plates and he didn't seem to be breathing. When San and Weiss joined them from the other room, Argos whirled the spear away, thumping its butt on the floor. They didn't need to physically restrain a fifty year old scientist to keep him from escaping six hunters. Eight once Will bounded down the stairs with Yang in tow.

"Dr. Daedalus, I presume." San greeted drily. The scientist didn't look very good. He was unshaven, his clothes looked like he had been sleeping in them, and there were faint signs of bruises on his arms and face. He had a hand on his throat as if he expected the spear back sometime soon. Dom noted the bandages wrapped around the tips of his index and middle fingers.

San saw them too. "Only two? You could only take two fingernails being ripped out before caving? Disappointing."

"Eh, just means we won't have work that hard to get what we want out of him." Argos replied, holding out a hand. Dom flipped him a knife, Argos always put on a better performance than he could. Argos advanced on the doctor, who pressed himself farther back against the wall as if he could meld into it. The members of Team RWBY looked like they were about to object when Will stepped between them and Argos. Dom couldn't see the wink, but the sudden wave of understanding on their faces was enough of a clue.

Argos took another step closer, a light smile playing on his lips as he spun the knife in his hands. "So do you have any preferences? You know, to start with? Most people prefer the extremities get worked over first, hands and feet and all that, but you've been there done that so maybe you'd rather I start carving up your chest?"

"Wh-wh-wh" Fear made Daedalus unintelligible. "What do you want with me?"

"We'll start with what Phantom Squad wanted from you and work our way from there."

Strangely, the fear drained from Daedalus' face. "You- you're not with them?" He sank to the floor, looking too exhausted to keep standing. His expression was almost relived. "I was hoping someone like you would find me."

"Uh-huh." Argos, having been knocked off his game, awkwardly stood there playing with the knife. "Mind explaining why?"

"Because I need you to kill me."

The house was silent for a long moment as they all chewed that over. Daedalus looked from one face to the next. "I created something terrible, something that should never have existed. I thought that destroying everything connected to the project and getting myself thrown in prison would be enough to bury it forever, but it seems I wasn't thorough enough. If I died, there'd be no way to revive it but… I'm too much of a coward to do what must be done." He stated the unthinkable surprisingly easily. Dom might have thought he was joking or lying, but for the pleading in his eyes.

"Back up." San said for all of them. "When you say 'the project', are you referring to Project Icarus?"

"Yes." And there was a deep bitterness there, a regret that reached into his soul. "I... I never meant for things to go as far as they did. It-we only meant the best, truly."

San's face might have been carved from granite. "What did you do? What about this machine is so terrible?"

The doctor wilted. He glanced about the room as if to find something else to talk about instead before San's glare broke him down. He took a shaky breath. "The purpose of Project Icarus was to modify and enhance a person's body. To reforge them into a stronger, faster being. An ordinary person could be made as a strong as a fully-fledged Huntsmen or Huntress and one of them could be made inhumanly powerful. With this method, we could create a small army of super soldiers dedicated to fighting Grimm in a few months rather than over the course of years."

Yang let out a low whistle. "I guess we know why everybody wants to get their hands on it, huh?"

"Yeah." Blake replied. "Adam would love to get his hands on a super powered army. He'd finally get to declare war on humanity like he always wanted."

"And that kind of power, or even just the process itself as a bargaining chip, would be the only way for Phantom Squad to survive their defection." Argos mused. He rubbed his chin with a hand. "So how does that all work?"

Daedalus said nothing. San stepped in front of him again. "How. Does. It. Work?"

Daedalus broke from San's gaze and stared at the floor. In a wooden tone, he continued. "It utilizes Dust to enhance and strengthen the muscles and organs and Aura infusions to keep the patient alive as well as providing an increased store of Aura for them later."

Dom's head snapped around at that. Aura infusions? Daedalus kept staring at the floor. I created something terrible, something that should never have existed. And it all slid into place.

Dom wasn't aware of his feet carrying him across the room until his fist connected with Daedalus' face. The bastard's head reeled back, blood spraying from his mouth. Something clattered across the floor; it might have been a tooth. Dom hauled him up by his lapels and slammed his back into the wall. He drew back a fist to smash the son of a bitch's head in but was stopped by a firm hand closing around his wrist.

"Dom. After." San didn't have the muscle to actually restrain him like that, but it was enough to break through the rage simmering in Dom's mind. He dropped the blubbering mass and stalked off, unable to keep looking at him without resuming his assault.

"What was that!?" Ruby asked as he stomped past them. Fists clenched at his sides, Dom spoke through gritted teeth. "It's scientifically impossible to artificially generate Aura. It's the Holy Grail of modern science. People have been trying, and failing, for years."

"Um…" Ruby stammered and was about to say something, but Dom, heedless in his anger, plowed ahead.

"Meaning, if the enhancement process involves shoving Aura into the patient, they had to be getting it from somewhere else." He rounded back on Daedalus. "Your Project Icarus only works if you stick someone into the machine to serve as fuel, doesn't it? How many people do you have to murder for just one 'super soldier'?"

"Eight." Daedalus just lay where he had been dropped, not even bothering to wipe the blood of his face. There were tears running down his face. "It takes eight people of average Aura to activate the process once. More for good results, but less if the donors are of higher quality."

"Donors?" Dom took a step forward, his restraint reduced to a string. Daedalus stared at nothing, murmuring. "Of course, donors. We weren't murdering people, just taking Aura from where it was dormant and useless and putting it to work. And if it killed them, well, they were just vagrants and bums. Nobody would miss them and they had no value to society in any event. If anything, they ought to be thanking us for giving a purpose." He let out a bark of laughter, completely devoid of humor. "We were very good at coming up with excuses."

There was a long silence. Dom's rage slowly faded as he saw those empty, haunted eyes, leaving him just drained. He surveyed the rest of the group. Ruby looked horrified, Yang had an arm wrapped around her sister's shoulder, and Blake's face was set in a determined glare at Daedalus. Even Will looked a little disgusted.

Argos, contrary to the rest of the group, was curious. "You still haven't really explained how Icarus works. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure you can't just shove Aura and Dust into someone's veins and get out a super soldier. You're more likely to get a corpse."

Daedalus looked up from the floor. "You're right. Most of the initial test subjects did just die. All but one. Subject Alpha. He was a young man with a Semblance that related to transforming himself. Not only did he survive the experiment, his altered blood now produced a unique enzyme. This enzyme, when injected during the beginning stage of the process, serves as a powerful mutagen. The body becomes more receptive to the changes and is able to survive the transformation process."

"Subject Alpha?" Ruby asked. "What was his name?"

"Does it matter?" San asked at the same time as Daedalus responded. "To tell the truth, I never learned. And I didn't care enough to find out." He sighed. "All things considered I suppose that is the least of my sins, but…"

"What happened to him?" The young team leader asked softly.

"Nothing good, I'm guessing." Argos put in drily. "If his blood was the key to their super-secret project I doubt they would have just let him walk out the front door."

Daedalus shook his head. "No. We kept him caged, like an animal. Then one day, he managed to break free.

"He raged about the lab, his original transformation Semblance taken to unprecedented heights by his increased power. His body twisted and shifted to defy every measure we used to subdue him and he fought back. He killed over a dozen people and wounded many more; we pretended it was an industrial accident." Daedalus sighed again. "It sounds horrible, but Subject Alpha's murderous rampage helped open my eyes. When I realized how I was trying to recapture him more than save my dying colleagues and saw how my other coworkers were doing the same, the sheer callousness of our work hit me like a flood. I decided I needed to end my creation by whatever means necessary."

"Which is why you killed everyone who worked on the project and erased every mention of it in all the records you could reach." Argos supplied. Daedalus nodded.

"Wait, what happened to Alpha?" Ruby asked, concerned.

"He escaped the laboratory and fled into the wilderness to the northeast of the city. There were plans to send out crews to reclaim but, well, they didn't get off the ground before I… took action."

"Why did you feel the need to take such drastic measures?" Dom asked. Despite himself he found himself agreeing with the doctor's actions. At least, the parts that involved him trying to bury this as far as it would go. Still, without Subject Alpha it sounded like the project had ground to a halt, making his destructive methods somewhat questionable. "You could have just gone and told the council or Ozpin what was going on."

"And if the council liked the idea? Or Ozpin?" Daedalus countered. Dom hmmed, conceding the point. This advancement was the kind that even people who were disgusted by it might allow to continue, because of how useful it is. After all, if another Kingdom got their hands on an increase in military power like this, they could use it to overpower you. As long as it isn't worse than your homeland being destroyed, you would use it, or keep it in case you needed to. Dom knew full well that would be what his mother would do here. She'd curse Daedalus for making it, scorn Azoth for funding it, and carefully tuck it away somewhere.

Ruby apparently disagreed with that idea. "Professor Ozpin would never be okay with something like this."

"He might." San said bluntly. "Or someone he mentioned it to might like the idea, or someone who overhears him talking about it. The more people who know about a secret, the more failure points it has. As it is, someone must have learned about the project anyway, and brought Phantom in to serve as catspaws to get it."

Argos nodded. "Lance is too much of a follower to take the lead on something like this. Corralling his squad mates is one thing, being the mastermind? Never."

"Which brings us back to the beginning. You killing me." Dom narrowed his eyes. Was Daedalus reproaching them? He was being very tempted to take the man up on his offer.

"There's no point now." San said matter-of-factly. "Icarus' existence is already out there in the world. Killing you now won't stop that, only deprive us of what you know." San eyed Daedalus scornfully. "You don't get to die your way out of this."

Argos stepped in. "Let's get back to practical matters. Can the White Fang reproduce the Icarus machine even without you there to hold their hands?"

Daedalus shrugged and said "I am a genius." as if that was that. At the looks on their faces, he continued. "They may have forced me to make them new copies of my designs, but even assembling the components is a tricky endeavor. Following that, they also need to operate the completed machine correctly. I cannot say it is impossible, but it is highly likely they will make some errors."

"So they might not make a super soldier machine, just one that devours people's Aura and kills them?" Dom asked archly. Daedalus' vaguely smug expression curdled. "Yes, there is that. Oh, and they'd need to find Subject Alpha. Without his enhanced blood, anyone they put in the machine will die in agony even if they assembled it perfectly. We had discussed if it might be possible to use Icarus on another person with a transformative Semblance and use their blood, but that was just a theory and where you would find another Semblance like that I haven't the slightest idea."

"Does Phantom know about Subject Alpha?" San asked. Daedalus hung his head. "Yes."

"Then we'll just have to find him first." San held out a hand and helped the doctor to his feet. He then drove a fist into his stomach, knocking the man unconscious. He ignored the gasps and glanced at Ruby. "We're splitting up here."

"We are? Why?"

"You and your team will take this scum back to Ozpin," He gestured at the crumpled heap on the floor. "Shadow Squad will hunt down Subject Alpha."

"Oh? I thought you didn't trust Ozpin." Yang said in 'gotcha' tones. San gave her a withering look. "He is merely the best of bad options. Unless you do want to kill him after all."

"Bastard deserves it." Dom muttered, which was promptly ignored. Blake glared up at San. "Why're you the ones going after him?"

San responded with a question. "How many missions have you done hunting a single target in a large area?"

"Er, well…"

"That's what I thought." San looked back at the three of them. "You guys ready to go?"

Argos sighed. "You want us to go now?" He asked, already knowing the answer. San just turned to Will, who nodded, then faced Dom. He might have felt tiredness clamping down on his brain, but Dom just nodded his head.

"Right. Let's get moving." And with that, San was headed out of the backdoor and heading for the northwest edge of the city. Will was right behind him, Argos followed grumbling. Dom paused just long enough to wave goodbye then he was gone to. The four members of Team RWBY looked down at the unconscious man in front of them.

"We're going to have to carry him, aren't we?" Yang said to the room at large.

AN: And here we have it, the exposition everybody's been waiting for because it actually explains what the hell is going on. In the original version of the story, I'm talking way back when this was Monsters and Shadows, this was originally a big "Wham" moment but that goddamn Season 2 reveal from Penny shot that all to hell with her being an artificial Aura producer. Kind of ruined the whole reason this was a big thing, but not enough for me to justify to myself scraping the whole concept.

So like Ruby, you might be thinking this doesn't make any sense considering what we know about Penny. I offer two explanations, you can pick whichever you like better. Either A. Penny's existence is obviously a secret to a certain degree. Therefore, Daedalus and his coworkers didn't know about whatever method she uses to generate Aura and abided by the conventional wisdom that it isn't possible. Or, B. artificial Aura generation is indeed impossible and 'Geppetto' (whatever his name is) has a few skeletons in his closet. Up to you really.

As always, I lack proofreaders so drop a review if you spot a typo or something. Or if you like the story, whatever floats your boat, not that I care. Special shout out to Lord Jaric for his reviews and encouragement. I'll see you guys next time.