[Arknights] The Originium Gambit

Part 11: Rhodes Island

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I'll be referencing two (2) songs in this chapter, you can see the original song in the A/N I added at the end of them.

Other than that, Lone Trail is Rerunning. It's actually one of the events I cared about. The Aesthetic, the mission, and the fact that it shares similarity to our own struggle to get off this dirt planet. Of course... the only Dogs that we sent up there burnt to death upon reentry so it's a good thing Kristen is frozen and would suffer the same fate as our Voyager 1 that's now 24,8 million kilometers (15,4 million miles) from Earth.

Or she could be eaten by the observers or something.

==++==

SOC Headquarters, Trimounts.

"You have to listen to me, Ivan," Fritz was already mid-rant as we walked down the glass-paneled corridor, his voice rising an octave every other sentence. "They're spitting things like—"

Oh. Hello there.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. Why is Ivan Romanov, the alleged financial mastermind, suddenly neck-deep in a mess about tax records? Isn't this the sort of thing he thrives on? Let me answer that, no amount of cunning can account for the incompetence of others. Trust, my friends, is the quickest route to disaster.

But I digress. The Supreme Court gave us one day—precisely ten hours—to deliver SOC's tax report. Failure to do would spell disaster. Accusations of tax evasion, crippling fines, dissolution—it's a death sentence. And here I am, scrambling to save an empire while Fritz flails like a fish out of water.

The workers in the hall glanced up from their desks as I passed, their eyes flitting between me and the Caprinae lawyer practically chasing my heels, his horns dangerously close to poking my patience. Fritz's excuses flowed like a waterfall, that is to say, rapid, overwhelming, and completely pointless.

When we finally reached my office, I stepped inside with the quiet resignation of a man about to dive headfirst into chaos. Fritz followed, and I shut the door with a quiet click.

I turned to him, exhaling slowly. My head throbbed, the dull ache that warned of a migraine—or worse. I fought to keep my voice level. "All right. Go on. What did they do?"

"That Attorney General," Fritz sputtered, wiping sweat from his brow, "keeps spouting financial jargon, that I frankly don't know the meaning of!"

I pinched the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes for a moment to will the headache away. "Alright, Fritz. What jargons did he throw at you this time?"

Fritz hesitated. "Uh... things like... um, amortization schedules, deferred liabilities, taxable net income, capital gains recalibration—stuff like that. I mean, who even uses words like that in court?"

My eyes snapped open. "Anyone who's trying to take advantage of you, that's who," I said sharply. "Capital gains recalibration, really? I'd laugh if this wasn't about to blow up in our faces."

Fritz wilted under my glare, muttering something about not being a financial expert. The room seemed to grow darker, shadows stretching and warping at the edges of my vision. The whispers started again—quiet, insistent, just below the threshold of hearing.

"Fool. He's laughing at you. Weak. Useless."

I closed my eyes for a moment, forcing my breath to steady, my fists tightening as I wrestled the voices back into the recesses of my mind. Not now.

Opening my eyes, I fixed Fritz with a determined stare. "Listen, Fritz," I began, "here's what we're going to do. First, you're going to help with revising the books—let's call it a creative adjustment. Then, it's your job to sell them a story. Make them believe there was an accident, some freak mishap, and ensure they buy it. Got it?"