Seth
Seth scrambled to his feet as the doorknob turned. He hightailed it back across the room and dropped down on his bed just as the door opened. The man who walked in had a smile on his face and his cheeks almost looked cherubic. Did he pinch them before he walked in so they would be nice and rosy? He gave off a vibe like he was trying to be Jolly Ol' St. Nick in a suit, without the excessive hair all over his head and face. Well, without much hair at all, to be exact.
"Seth Rollins! Welcome to Shield!"
Seth rose an eyebrow. "Thanks?" The door slammed shut and Seth jumped. He'd never been quite as twitchy as he'd become since the cops hauled him in on that bogus murder charge.
Seth's eyes moved around his room. He probably should have called it a cell. Granted, it was nicer than what his old friends had described their cells to be like when they did time. It was clean. It was institutionally clean, as a matter of fact. The lights were bright. The TV mounted to the far wall had digital cable.
But, the door was still locked, and that made it a cell.
"Paul Heyman." He stepped up to Seth and put out his hand. Seth was cautious, but he reached out and took the offered hand all the same. Paul gave him a brisk shake. "Good to meet you."
"You, too?"
"Questioning thing, aren't ya?" Paul moved across the room and grabbed the metal back of the chair that sat at the equally shining metal desk. The legs of the chair scraped across the floor and Seth cringed. It was worse than nails on a chalkboard. It was more like the jingling of the jailer's keys, both annoying and terrifying all at once.
Paul put the chair down a few feet in front of Seth and took a seat. He was far enough away that their knees didn't touch, but close enough that Seth could see the tick in the corner of his mouth that told him that Paul's smile wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world.
"Uh huh. Are you my new boss?"
"That I am! Your new boss, leader, everything, that's what I am to you. And you—" Paul pointed at him, his finger bobbing up and down. "You just might be one of my most useful recruits to date."
"Look, man," he said, "it's like I told Trish. I didn't kill anybody, so if you pulled me out of jail for that, then I think we're both screwed, because I don't kill people."
"Who said anything about killing anyone?"
Seth rolled his eyes. "I've been called naïve a time or two, but let's face it, Mr. Heyman—"
"Paul, please."
"Paul," he said, "I'm not an idiot. I know dangerous people when I see them, and the kind of dangerous I saw around here? You kill people."
Paul took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Seth wondered how many people he had killed. Then he wondered if he was just the guy that told others to do it and wondered if he'd killed anybody at all. Seth wondered if he kept talking if he would be Paul Heyman's first kill.
"Look here, kid, I'm gonna explain something to you, okay?" The successful professional fell out of Paul's voice and posture. His words weren't so crisp, his tone holding a bit of an accent that might have been somewhere on or near the East Coast. Instead of sitting up, he slouched forward. He put his forearms on his thighs and let his hands dangle between his knees. His fingertips tapped, then stopped, then tapped again.
Seth nodded. "Okay."
"I run a business. Plain and simple, some people gotta die, and somebody's gotta kill 'em. This is how we stop World War 3. It's like the Cold War all over again, except everybody's playing a part, and they don't act cold."
"So, you're not going to give me a line that I'm fighting for my country?"
"Kid, you're fighting for every country. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't take just anybody. I've got operatives so good they could take out the President of the United States and nobody'd be the wiser, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do it. I've got standards."
"So… we don't fight for the enemy?"
"Kid, I fight for the paycheck. I've got connections, and a lot of our work comes from them, but not all of it." He leaned back in his chair. "Now, we're not talking your average joe on the street. Your average joe don't have a clue what we do, and they never will. We're talking big fish, world changing fish, and so far, they've all been people who'd change the world for the bad. But, Kid, you don't have to worry about that 'cause that's not what I brought you here for."
"What did you bring me here for?"
"I brought you here 'cause you've got a brain on you. Hacking, Kid, that's what caught my eye. And you're not that bad at cracking a safe, either. Plus, while you're not a killer, you're a fighter, and I need a tech I can trust to go out in the field if necessary and be able to defend himself."
Seth thought about it for a second, not just what he was saying, but the ideas that were popping into his head. He thought about one in particular, and when it was the only one he was thinking about, he said it. "Are you the one that set me up?"
Paul laughed, a short bark that flew out of his mouth accompanied by a small bit of spittle. "Nah, Kid, that wasn't me. But, I know who did. You do, too. Your buddies wanted a clean getaway. That video they got?" He shrugged. "Put together before you even showed up at the building. Something personal on one of 'em. We can send somebody to get personal on them if you want. We take revenge seriously at Shield."
Seth didn't even have to think about it. He shook his head. "No." He'd have liked to see his so-called buddies go down for what they did, but he didn't want to see them dead. He especially didn't want their deaths on his conscience. Besides, they'd end up that way soon enough if they kept doing things like that.
Paul shrugged. "Your choice." He stood up and the chair scraped against the floor. Paul tugged at the lapels of his suit coat and looked down at Seth. "Here's the deal, Kid. You give me your loyalty and you've got mine for as long as I have it. You screw with me, you find out how good my people are. You got me?"
"Yes, sir."
Paul grinned. "That's what I like to hear. A kid that knows respect." Paul walked up to him and cuffed him on the shoulder. "Starting tomorrow, I think I'll even let 'em unlock your door." He winked at him. "Get some rest, Kid. You've got a long day ahead of you tomorrow."
"What's tomorrow?"
"The rest of your life, Kid. And it'll be a great one, with great pay and a hell of a lot of fun if you let it be."
Paul turned to leave and Seth watched him walk across the room. Even if he had never said a word, his walk told Seth all he needed to know about him. He walked with a steady gait, even and cock sure. He was a man that knew he had the world by the short hairs and he twisted them whichever way he wanted, whenever he wanted. He was a man not to be messed with.
Paul struck the door hard and it opened for him. Before he stepped out, he turned back to Seth. "You got the look of somebody who has something to say, Kid."
Seth sighed. "Could you not call me Kid?"
Paul laughed. "Kid, I'll call you what I goddamn well please. Impress the shit out of me, Kid, and one day, you'll graduate to Seth." He turned and walked out the door.
And Seth flopped back on his bed and wondered why the world hated him so much.
Roman
The room was cleaner and nicer than the barracks, but at least he could walk outside in the barracks. Trish didn't say anything about locking him up. If that's what she was gonna do, she could have just him go to jail. The cops wouldn't have caught up with him on their own, but she knew enough about what he'd been doing to give him away.
She promised freedom and had only given him a jail cell.
Roman stood in the middle of the room and roared. His arms bent at the elbow, his fists clutched at his hips. His chest pushed out. The sound echoed throughout the room and bounced back on him. He wanted out. He wanted to do something. He wanted to do someone.
Roman stalked to one wall, and then to the other. He was like an animal, and he felt the walls of his cage pressing in around him. If he counted the time right, it was after 10pm. This is when he would have been outside hunting, looking for someone bad enough for him to take his psychoses out on, someone safe to erase so that he wouldn't go on a full on rampage.
The door opened when Roman was on his third charge back across the room. He stopped and turned. The man who came into his room didn't jerk back, didn't run back out, but he winced, and that was enough to tell Roman that he looked like he was ready to kill. He didn't bother changing his face.
The man eased into the room without opening the door fully, then closed it behind him. Roman heard the click as the door was locked. He felt the grin sliding across his face when he realized that he was being locked in the room with someone. Oh, the things he could do…
The man's face showed no fear, though, and that told Roman that this was not someone that he could kill. The lack of fear said that this was Trish's employer. The smile left his face.
"That's more like it. Sit down, boy."
Roman growled, but he did what he was told. This guy commanded respect. He stood with full self-assurance, and he looked at Roman like he was more dangerous than him. That didn't happen often. Whether this guy really was that dangerous remained to be seen, but this guy believed it, and a man with belief was one of the most dangerous things around.
Roman sat down at the foot of the bed. He turned angry eyes up to the man, who didn't even flinch. "Do you know who I am?" he asked him.
"You're the boss," he said.
"That's right," he told him. "I'm the boss. You can call me Mr. Heyman. I might let you call me Paul one day."
"What's that gonna take?"
"Me sure that when I walk out of the room, you're not imagining what I look like with my skin hanging off."
Roman grunted. Fair enough. He wouldn't want to be on first name basis with someone who wanted to put his insides on the outside, either. Roman folded his eyes and looked up at Mr. Heyman, waiting because he knew there was more to come.
"Now, let's get down to it," Heyman said. "You're here for one reason, and one reason only. Because you are a spectacular piece of killing machinery."
Roman grunted again. There was always someone around to find him useful. He should have been grateful for it. In a way, he was grateful for it. He had heard others complaining that the military had turned them into killers. The military had only turned him into a focused killer. They had given him an outlet for everything that he tried to keep buried inside of himself. He'd have stuck around if they weren't trying to fuck with his rules. If he stayed with them, they'd have ended up killing him. They wouldn't have been able to control him and he wouldn't have been able to control himself.
"That door," Heyman said, turning behind him, "is going to be locked every night until I'm sure you're not gonna go on a goddamned killing spree through my facility, you got me?"
"Yes, sir." He felt like grumbling, but the soldier in him snapped to and the words came out of his mouth crisp. He felt so damn military again, he almost saluted.
"Good. Now, ask."
Roman's head jerked to the side. "What?"
"You have questions. Ask them. I don't say that often, boy, so get 'em out while you can."
Roman only had one question. "Who do I get to kill?"
Heyman smirked. "Whoever we tell you to kill."
Roman glared. "You know I have rules. I have to have rules."
"I know about your rules, Reigns, and we'll follow 'em. I have rules of my own, the kind that you'll follow if you don't want to go toe-to-toe with some of my best. But, see, boy, I think you can be one of my best, if you really give it a go."
"What do I have to do to be your best?"
"It's more than killing," he told him. "You've gotta have a head on your shoulders. You have to play ball. We'll train you on everything that you need to know," Heyman said. "How far you go here depends on how well you take to the training."
Roman found another question. "Trish said you weren't military, but she could have been lying because she knows there was no way I was going back there. Truth time, Mr. Heyman. Is this military?"
"This is black ops, son," Heyman told him, "without Uncle Sam looking over your shoulder. There's no rank here but mine and my number two. There are no salutes, no shined up medals, and no accolades from POTUS. The only accolade you get is an extra zero on your paycheck."
Roman nodded. "I can do that."
"Can you? Because if you can't, I wanna know now. I don't waste my time, son," he told him. "It's too goddamned valuable."
"I don't waste mine, either," Roman said, the bass in his voice deepening. "And I don't like it wasted."
"Then we have an understanding." Heyman turned around and Roman was impressed. There weren't too many men who would turn their backs on him after looking into his eyes for more than half a second, especially when they were in a locked room.
Heyman stopped at the door and turned around. "Training starts tomorrow," he told him. "During daylight hours, the door will be open and you can roam freely through the areas that you are approved for. At night, you keep your ass in this room."
"So I'm in jail at night."
Heyman smirked. "Think of it as a security measure, for your protection as well as everyone else's. You're a werewolf, son, and until I fully trust you, every night is the full moon." He turned back around and pounded once, hard, on the door. The door opened and Heyman turned back to him, that smirk still adorning his face.
"Welcome to Shield, Reigns," Heyman told him. "Believe in us. Because we believe in you."
Dean
He turned off the lights, because it was easier on his eyes. He had been in the hole for so long, in the stinking dank depressing dark for so many never-ending days, that the light burned his eyes and made his head throb. The room smelled too clean, too. It smelled fresh. They must have found something to cover the smell of disinfectant, because a place that austere had to have been coated on a regular basis with a thin sheen of Lysol. With the lights, all of those scrubbed surfaces shone too bright, and they just made more light to give him pain.
So, he turned them off. Fuck 'em. They couldn't make him sit with the lights on. Right now, all they could make him do was suffer their cleanliness that was so foreign that Dean almost wanted to take a shit in the corner just to make the place feel more like home.
He used to have decent things. Not nice things, but decent things. Sure, over the years, he'd stolen enough that he probably could have gotten him a huge plasma TV and all kinds of nice middle class gadgets, but he'd blown that money on a lot of shit that was more important to him than nice middle class gadgets. There had been drugs for a while, lots of drugs, and look at that, when he was on the drugs, he didn't actually kill anybody. He hurt a lot of people, but he didn't kill anyone. There had been booze to go with the drugs, and again, the booze left people broken and maimed, but still alive, and it sent Dean moving on to the next town when someone ended up in the hospital for too long. To the next time, or to a stint in jail.
Where else had that money gone? Food. He'd needed food, and rent on a shitty apartment, but that was his cover, wasn't it? He was the kind of guy that people expected to leave in a rundown tenement in the projects with an assload of locks on the door but hardly any furniture. They expected him to be the guy with rats for friends and cockroaches for playmates. Well, they weren't! He killed the cockroaches and fed the rats to the neighborhood cats.
Truth was, Dean had never wanted nice things, because he knew that there were other assholes like him out in the world who would just break in and take the nice things. Nobody was taking anything from him ever again. He had enough of that shit when he was growing up, the runt that everybody beat up on and took from just because he was smaller than them.
But, he'd shown them, hadn't he?
The door opened and the only movement Dean made was to move his foot out of the stream of light that was sent his way. The light disappeared as the door was closed, and Dean stretched his foot back out.
"Too bright for you?"
Dean grunted. "I'll get used to it again. But yeah, it's too fucking bright."
His visitor grunted. He had hoped, when someone came to him, it would be the blonde from the jail. After locking him up instead of setting him free, the least they could do was send him somebody who smelled like freedom, and there was nothing like the scent of expensive perfume to say welcome back to the world, big boy.
Dean's eyes were well adjusted to the light and he could easily make out the large form of the man that walked toward the bed and sat down at the foot. He was either bald or his hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Dean would need more light to be sure. He looked like he was wearing a suit. Shit. They were probably gonna put him in a suit.
Fuck it. He could rock the shit out of a suit if it meant freedom.
"Dean Ambrose," the man said.
"Yeah, and you are?"
"Paul Heyman. Your new boss."
Dean grunted. He'd always hated bosses. They were always telling him what to do, even when he was already three steps ahead of them. Dean would have made a great boss. He knew when to shut the fuck up and let the people who knew what they were doing do their jobs. He probably could have had his own business, been a successful, productive member of society, but hell, man, what fun would that have been?
"You're supposedly my newest serial killer."
Dean grunted. "I'm not a serial killer. I don't fit the definition."
He fit some of the parts. There were more than three, a ridiculous number larger than three. He did have a cooling off period, but he always thought that criterion was full of shit, anyway. They said a cooling off period could be anything from a day to years. How the hell did a day count as a cooling off period? That was just taking a nap before starting again.
The important thing was that he didn't have a compulsion, and he didn't have a thing. He didn't kill brunettes who reminded him of the woman who broke his heart. He didn't kill lovers because he was a fat ugly piece of shit that couldn't get a woman. He didn't kill hookers because his mom brought johns home when he was a kid. Which she did, but that didn't matter. He didn't kill hookers. Okay, he didn't just kill hookers.
"No," Paul said, "you're not. You're just a mean son of a bitch, aren't you?"
Dean smirked. "Fuckin' A, boss man." He folded himself forward, bending his body in half, then pushed up with his hands on the floor. His legs slithered out from beneath him and stretched out until his sock covered feet hit the wall he'd been leaning against. Dean folded his hands on the floor and rested his cheek against the back of his hands. He faced Paul. "I hear you've got use for a mean son of a bitch."
"I do."
"And what do I get out of the deal?"
"Your life."
Dean barked a laugh that turned into a high-pitched twittering fit. Even as he laughed, his eyes stayed on Paul, waiting for the obligatory shudder that always came from Dean's bouts of crazy. Nothing came. He was a tough guy, that was for sure.
"Are you done?"
Just because he'd asked, Dean let it go on another fifteen or twenty seconds, before cutting it off quickly and sharply. "I'm done."
"You get good pay," Paul told him, "and a life worth living. How's that for you?"
"Not bad. You realize what I consider a life worth living."
"Of course." In the dark, Paul's teeth were bright white as he smiled, and that smile was as sinister as anything that Dean had ever put out in the world. "I don't take a killer off of death row unless I expect him to kill somebody."
"Who am I supposed to kill?"
"Anybody I tell you to kill."
Dean considered that for a minute. It took the pressure off of him. He didn't have to make the choice. He didn't have to watch the pretty prey walk past him on a daily basis and wonder which one would take the bait to give him a chance to fuck them up. There were days when he thought he'd never find a good one again. With this guy, there would always be another one.
"I can do that," Dean said.
"Good." Paul stood up from the bed and jerked on his suit coat. "Welcome to Shield, Ambrose."
Dean laughed. "Be careful, boss man. Disney might get you on copyright infringement."
Paul's laugh seemed to shake the floor as it boomed through the room. "You didn't strike me as a comic book man."
Dean snorted. "Don't judge me by my profile, Paulie," he told him. "There's a lot missing."
He didn't say anything about the nickname, but Paul did bristle. Dean only smirked. He loved finding new ways to aggravate people, to provoke them.
Paul turned toward the door and knocked hard once. The door opened, and the light came in again. Dean rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, avoiding the harsh line of white. He heard his new boss's voice as he said, "I can trust that the possibility of mayhem means I don't have to hide the sharp objects?"
Dean grunted. "Like I told the babe, your offer makes me a little less suicidal."
"Good. I'd hate to have wasted a favor."
Dean listened to the scuffle of Paul's feet against the floor as he walked out the door. Dean peeked an eye open and was actually surprised. The door was still open. "Huh," he muttered as he pulled himself up and moved back against the wall. He pressed his back against the wall and stared at the line of white that came to him.
Freedom was that way. Follow the yellow brick road to home, Dean. But, it was so fucking bright.
Eh. Maybe later.
