"The Fated Children"
Chapter Six
"Martial Law"
Most of the time, the mere presence of Brea Willings was enough to elicit reactions of disgust, condescension, hatred, pity and, in some cases, admiration – right now, the faces she saw around her reflected confusion, curiosity, and in the case of some redbands, realization of what her presence meant, especially coupled with the fact that she was shadowed by a small platoon of Garden Faculty this time.
Brea knew that they called her "The General's Dog" when they thought she couldn't hear, or "The General's Whore" when they thought she wasn't there at all. Their words didn't matter to her in the slightest. She would not apologize for doing her duty, nor would she try and appeal to their liking. The scared little sharpshooter who was, as they called it, adopted by the General during the Garden Atrocity had become a hardened veteran long before any of them had step foot into her home.
She had done her duty, and presently, she was doing exactly the same.
In one hand, Brea held a list of cadets, and behind the first sheet was a time table, cut and pasted onto a spare page, indicating where they were supposed to be at the appointed times. Brea's first destination was the dormitory, where three of her cadets were supposed to be.
The Garden Faculty members, their faces obscured by their hoods, did not make a single sound. They simply followed her, like ghosts.
Brea made her way down the corridors, searching for the room the first one, Ira Dafid was in. When she found it, she pointed at the Garden Faculty to step back and out of her target's line of sight. A passing thought had her wonder, out of old habit, if her pistols' safeties were off, but Brea knew that they were never on, and so she shrugged it off and knocked on the door four times.
After a few moments, a cadet dressed in pyjama pants and a wifebeater opened the door. Jet-black, short-cropped hair, angular cheeks, brown eyes and a scar on his chin. The source of the small mugshot in the cadet list she had. Brea folded the list into even quarters and then stuck it in her jacket's side pocket.
"Ira Dafid, Class Q?" she asked.
Ira sized her up.
"Yeah? What do you want?"
"You are under arrest."
Ira blinked. He blinked a couple more times.
"...what?"
"You are under arrest. Come with me."
"I'm not going anywhere with you. You have to charge me first."
That's right, Brea thought, but my orders say not to, unless I absolutely have to.
"As you wish." Brea said, "You are under arrest for suspicion of treason."
"Bullshit! You have no-"
Brea put one hand on her pistol.
"You either come quietly, or I'll drag you out of this room and into your cell. Your choice, cadet."
The TV Station was modeled after both the Timber Maniacs building and the TV Station in Timber, and as such, was full of small rooms filled with metal furniture that valued functionality over visuals. It had a small cafeteria on the ground floor, which was another name for an open space with a few round tables and plastic chairs that stood surrounded by vending machines, coffee machines and the ordering window that, Seifer guessed, led to the kitchen.
Presently, Seifer was sitting in a corner table, one eye constantly darting to the door. He was fresh off the third bathroom break he had had to take in the last hour and on his fifth cup of slick-black coffee. Janit, looking quite pleased to be there, was slowly, very slowly sipping tea from a Styrofoam cup.
The tape that held the Duke's death was on the table between them, its black shape a stark contrast with the dirty white surface.
They had been talking largely about the TV Station's right to or not to run the tape. Seifer's head was beyond splitting at this point – he could feel both of his eyeballs turning in their sockets.
"Whatever it is you have to say against it," Seifer said, forcing the words out, ", I want to know your source."
"It came by mail. Hand-delivered." Janit said, taking a sip.
"Regular delivery boy?"
"No. The front desk says it was just some guy."
"So, let me get this straight," Seifer knocked the cup back, "You take this shit from anyone who just walks in here?"
"If the contents are legit," Janit replied, leaning back, "Why not?"
"Fuck me, Mir's gonna have your ass for this." recollection made him sigh, "Fuck, I gotta meet him today..."
"How did you get beat up, anyway?" Janit asked, her lips curling in a smile, "I mean, Seifer Almasy, without his uniform and worse for wear. Imagine that."
"Don't get cute, it was a lucky shot." Seifer said, grimacing, "Or five. Don't change the subject."
"I doubt anyone could tell you who it was, honestly. We get anonymous materials all the time."
"Man's not even in the ground yet."
"News is news, as they say."
"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"
Janit nodded. Seifer took the opportunity.
"Did you know that our cadet detachment was supposed to stop them before they could get into the Timber woods?"
Janit raised an eyebrow and Seifer managed to grin.
"That fuckup wasn't ours. Quistis intercepted a transmission and learned their planned movements. We set up an ambush. The cadets had fucked up before, in Centra, so Squall and I were holding watch with the other instructors, somewhere on some hill, I don't fucking remember..." Seifer blinked rapidly, his head was starting to spin, "Anyway, well into the timeline, one of the squads sends a distress call, tells us they are one click off and that the Totalists walked right past them. The woods were too thick to go into with just four instructors and us, and they couldn't make it in time."
Janit appeared to be hanging onto every word. Her half-full cup of tea was forgotten.
"That's when Squall comm'd the squads, told them to stay out of the woods. He cut the line, turned to me, and said... well, you know what he said."
Janit nodded, " 'Torch the woods.' "
"I used Ifrit, the other Instructors used whatever they had. We burned the entire place right to the ground. Totalists, monsters..."
"Campers."
"We didn't know." Seifer said, "Who the fuck camps out with a monster lurking behind every damn tree?"
"What, Funghar? They're harmless. And delicious."
"That's not why I told you this." Seifer said, "Thing is, we had positioned the cadets ourselves before retreating to the extraction point. The intel was legit. How were they a click off?"
It took a moment for Janit to realize that the question wasn't rhetorical.
"The information was bad."
"No." Seifer said, "It takes a lot to get something past Quistis. I don't think anyone's that good. But, if the intel was somehow bad, then the intel wasdeliberately bad. On the flip side, if it was good, then something else happened – maybe they just managed to breeze on through the idiots, and they didn't want to admit it. Which is what we've been stuck at ever since. Now," he took a deep breath, "I need to make a call, where can I find a phone?"
The cadets and SeeDs watched for the next hour as Brea went from place to place, scaling the Garden in the process, always followed closely by Garden Faculty. She ticked names off her list one by one. A few came quietly. Some tried to argue Garden Law, or anything they could think of. Some tried to bargain. Two tried to fight, one of which Brea had to knock out with the butt of her pistol, had to be dragged out.
With every arrest, Brea handed the suspect to a Garden Faculty. Her enforcers grew smaller in number at times, but ultimately lost no-one, as those she had sent in a prior arrest returned. At the very end, there was only one name left on the list: Oli Sych. A lean, yet powerful martial artist with his own signature blend style that utilized dance-like moves. Skilled, and the survivor of two failed field exams. Brea found him, as she suspected she would, in the Training Center, dancing circles around a pack of Grats, using the lashing of their vine-like appendages as practice. Since he was doing this as a means of cardio, Brea decided to cut it short for him. She drew one of her pistols and fired six shots, dropping the creatures one by one. Oli stumbled, surprised by the sudden, incoming fire, and did what Brea expected him to do – he ducked, rolled, and rose again to an opening stance. Upon seeing her, he relaxed.
"Major General Willings... to what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked.
"Oli Sych, you are under arrest under suspicion of treason." Brea said, her pistol still drawn, "Please, come quietly."
Oli stood there, staring at her like she had just asked him to do something impossible.
"Uh... excuse me?" he said.
"You are under arrest. Come quietly."
"Fuck you!"
Oli broke into a sprint, tearing through the distance, zig-zagging towards Brea. Brea didn't think. She simply took aim and fired, dropping Oli onto the mud. She holstered her pistol and gestured for the Garden Faculty to take him away, and reminded them, as if she had just remembered herself, to get him to the Infirmary first. As the Garden Faculty brushed past her to do as they were told, she fished out the neatly folded list from her pocket and double-checked it.
All done.
She crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it away. Some monster, somewhere would find it to be a strange meal, she was sure.
In all the years they had been together, Selphie had been sure of a precious few things. Squall would always take some time to reach in any conversation. Quistis was in more pain than she led on. She herself had forgotten what it was like to not smile and try to entertain disinterested, or hostile cadets into doing something. Finally, she had been sure that there'd never be a day when Squall would lose his temper with Brea, mostly because Brea wouldn't do anything to warrant it.
Squall's shout cast echoes into the cavernous office.
"Just what the fuck did you do!? What did you do? Explain yourself!"
"He was coming at me, sir. I defended myself."
"Do you realize that this is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid!?" Squall replied, "If you had killed him I-"
"I aimed for a non-lethal spot, sir." Brea said, "He will barely feel it after it heals.
"I know you're a crack shot, that's not the point! The point is-"
The phone started ringing. Squall snatched the receiver from the cradle so hard, the phone flipped over.
"This is the General, what is it?"
"Squall, it's me."
"Seifer, just what the fuck are you-"
"Save it, big guy, I'm in no condition for this shit. I've been up for twenty-four hours and I took a beating for what I'm about tell you. Make like yourself and shut the hell up."
"Fine. Whatever."
"Atta boy. Now, the tape they showed was given to them by a courier. No name, no face, just some random guy. It's the original, it has the fucking Dukedom seal on it. Which means, somebody took it from the panic room. One of ours. Gotta be."
"Yeah."
"That's not all. The Totalists called it quits after Timber. Don't ask, I know a guy. So this new batch? Somebody's been recruiting, tossing Gil around, talking shit. Saying revenge for Deling shit, that you had fucked it up so you... they... something... wait... what was it... yeah, yeah, got it, that Dollet was about wrecking your shit, don't know what for, or how it was supposed to work. Like I said, nobody knows who these assholes were."
"That's the strange thing," Squall said, "There's a plan, but there's no objective to it. Or there is, but the moves don't build up to it. Not that I can see."
"But yeah, that's what they said, that this is about you."
"But we worked out an angle already. I'll tell you when you get back. When'll you be here?"
"Fuck it. I ran out of supplements early on. I'm just gonna find me some place that takes cash to let me crash, put my money down, sleep for a day, and Mir can wait, and if he can't, he can kiss my ass."
"Mir?"
"Wasn't I supposed to be meeting Mir? To do whatever?"
Squall couldn't help but smile.
"He probably does want a word, but we didn't set up an appointment. I just said that so you wouldn't try to delay."
"You're lucky I'm exhausted and way over here. I'll kick your ass for this."
"Save it. Go sleep. When you wake up, get back – straight away, get it?"
"Sure. I'm gone."