A/N: Hi! Hope you're all well! Bear with us here, a lot of the information set in chapters two and three become more important as time goes on :) I literally cannot wait until we get to the real juicy stuff—but we have to get there first! Hope you're having a fantastic day! The canon characters besides Tseng really start to make their appearances from here on out, and eventually, they take up the major positions in the story that they deserve :) Thank you for still being with me on this!

Updates every Wednesday! (UK time that is!)

13th Mar '19

Chapter 3: The Object of the Spider's Eye

Labyrinthine twines and tunnels of the Shinra Headquarters nestled around a small, dark room, lit only by dozens of bright screens clustered together along a wall like the eyes of forty spiders. An eye stared into every room, every corner, and every forgotten corridor. Where anyone may be afraid to look, a camera was placed, and the image burned into the screens of this hidden cavern of surveillance.

One eye, in particular, was devoted to 67F Cell E.

67F Cell E held a slight, flimsy-looking girl, whose pallid hair was discoloured by both old blood and the war of two lamps; one paling in a corner, too dull to quite submerge the room in the colour of the sea, and one of hot red over the door, reminding the prisoner of the unforeseeable—and irrefutable—length of her stay.

Aster staggered into the metal frame of the bed at the edge of her cell. She allowed it to bite into her thighs and palms to support her weight, but she wouldn't justify its existence by using it. The mattress, if it could be called so, was worn to nothing. If it was a gym mat before it was less than cardboard now, with springs that might have encouraged some form of comfort years ago now poking out like upturned pins. It was a bed of nails poorly disguised as something less sinister. Besides this and a plastic toilet basin squatting in the corner, the room was nigh on empty.

The only adornment was an illuminated clock face on the opposite wall that demanded Aster's full attention. A sickly yellow-green backlight that shadowed the hands bored into her corneas like tiny, moving tattoos. The needle ticked steadily in line with her irises.

Tock, tock, tock, tock, tock.

Hollow and lacking the reprieve of a tick though it was, the monotony effectively became a metronome for Aster's heart to keep steady and calm. It was too quiet to fill the empty space but too loud to give much room for thought.

She couldn't allow herself to think, anyway. Her parents, her brother, her sister. Overwhelming pain. Her throat was raw from screaming and crying, but neither aided her with any form of reprieve.

A hatch opened, offered food, and snapped shut again. Perhaps 'food' was an overstatement. Her palms stung as blood rushed to where the metal frame of the bed had cut it off and screamed against curling around the dry, loaf-like article in front of her. She was certain it was edible, despite looking desperately burnt and brittle, but only because it was what she had eaten four hours and twenty-seven minutes ago, and seven hours and thirteen minutes before that, and two hours and fifty-three minutes before that, and…

And so, she never knew when her next meal was.

Deprived even of routine. She did know, though, that it had been precisely sixty-one hours and twenty-two minutes since the door had clamped shut and the red light began to gloat at her—plus the five minutes it took her frenzied brain to work that out. She also knew that her calculations were probably somewhat wrong, anyway, because she couldn't bear to face the truth.

She danced, sang, screamed more, cried more. She pressed her ears to the door and walls to catch bits and drabs of slipping conversations, like a haze, a dream. Loneliness began to creep around and she talked to her hands and the bottles of water she was delivered. She stacked them up and knocked them down, used them as weights and exercised. She rationed them, too. Some for drinking and some for cleaning. She rinsed the blood and sweat from her hair and skin as best she could. She looked better, but cleanliness couldn't mask bruising. Her chin. Her cheekbone. Her body was covered in cuts and grazes. It was a good job that there was no mirror because she would not have recognised herself. She thought that maybe that would help disconnect the self from the body, looking at a reflection you can't recognise, so she'd remember to drop Tseng that tip for next time.

She had to remind herself that she was alive time and time again. Then, she started to stop believing.

Days passed with irregular arrivals of strange loaves that sat uncomfortably in the stomach and almost tasted better coming up than going down, and nothing else but the moving hands to secure her, hold her with a throbbing grip, and remind her that time will always go on.

Until time stopped and the silence was deafening.

Sucked away was the air around Aster, her next breath along with it. Silence did not creep as shadows do but rather toppled through the door and crashed into the floor, breaking like a wave against a wall and dousing her in the very same icy cold. The room froze, time was void, and a ringing seared through her ears, prickling her spine with panic until she realised the ringing was merely the screaming of her own mind, overwhelmed by the enormity of nothingness on nothingness.

Blinking once, twice, did not remove the impossibility before her. The clock stopped.

No, please…

The clock could not have stopped. Those steady hands had dragged her through time; they had been all that had got her this far. In their absence, panic seeped through the floorboards, rising like a thick mist to settle in her throat with means to choke.

"No! Please!"

She lunged for it, smacking it with the heel of her hand to jerk it awake, trying to remind it that time will go on, as it had for her. Her palms throbbed and screamed, fingers raking through her hair, dirty with grease or blood or sweat. Head pounding, room swirling in a wood and white whirlpool, her knees clunked into the floor—though she was sure she was floating.

"This is pathetic. Unconscious!" Heidegger smacked the desk with a fist like a cannonball, with complete disregard for the flashing lights and buttons and delicate apparatus within the room of spiders' eyes. "Tseng, where is your point amongst this inanity?"

"In her coping methods," he muttered, leaning against the desk towards the screen intently, answering to him only because he was contractually obliged to. "She relies on the clock, I remove it. Remove each crutch until she's left only with her mental defences."

Heidegger seemed momentarily appeased, with a gruff sound of assent growling in his throat. His hand curled around his beard. "You are trying to break her?"

"ASURA will do that."

"Gya haa haa! Along with those before her. You're searching for the unbreakable?"

"No. That's where you failed before me," Tseng said, with more than a bite of irritation. "All humans are breakable. I'm just looking for someone harder to break than most."

Light sliced open her eyelids and filled them with blood. Groaning, Aster parted her forehead from the skirting board and her chest from the floor. She wiped her eyes to clear the blood and realised only then that there was none, it was merely light of the locked red door. The backlight of the clock face was gone, dead, lost, as though it were never there, and no matter how long she had been unconscious, time surely had not passed because it was still 27 seconds past the 17th minute of the 5th hour.

She rubbed her forehead, sure it was split in two. The skirting board and her head were an axe and chopping block in reverse. She imagined dropping something brittle on something hard. Her head pounded and cracked and throbbed. Throbbed and throbbed and throbbed, like the second needle.

There was hope in a pulse.

When she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could feel it in her throat and in her temple, in her fingertips and in her split lip.

In time with each rush of blood, Aster turned a white bead with an 'A' on it on her bracelet.

The next meal came in 5,498 turns.

She had almost reached delirium. Or maybe she passed that point a while ago.

Hours, days, weeks or years crept by unknowingly, and time slipped away like feathers in the wind. It had been months since she had slaughtered Lessaloploths for her people, since aggravated monsters were her biggest concern—it must have been years. She begged, pleaded with Tseng the single time he arrived outside the door simply to observe, for the time. He told her to get a watch.

Slowly, the room began to revolve even when she wasn't laid in her bed of nails. She turned those beads whenever she needed to remind herself: time goes on.

And when time was all but lost and everything outside the four walls of the cell ceased to exist, the hatch opened but food did not arrive. For a moment, Aster was thoroughly convinced that insanity had finally sunk its rotten nails through her skull and into her brain, because, for whatever reason, her next meal looked suspiciously like a pair of human hands.

Her fingers fluttered faintly at the prospect of interaction, and tentatively laid to rest atop of those open palms. It was a brief performance, small respite from the ache of solitary confinement. Cut short. Her arm was violently yanked through the letterbox-like shutter up to her armpit, her skin stretching and beginning to tear. Her scream perforated the door as her tiny bracelet was stripped from her wrist.

"No—! Wait! Stop!" She begged, arm now limply swinging out of the hatch. "Please, give it back!"

Her arm was shoved back through the door, and in its place now sat a pair of black, cold eyes.

"Tseng!"

As though it was trying to drive out a hole in the inches-thick steel door, Aster's palm smacked into it rhythmically, desperately.

The hatch stung her nose as it shut in her face. It opened once more, just wide enough for Aster to hear the familiar patter of beads against a concrete floor.

"GODDAMN YOU!" She screeched, sweat forming along the brow of her reddening face. But screaming and crying wouldn't open the door, or solve the mess she so seemingly willingly walked into, so with one last swift boot to the door, she turned to sulk on the bed of nails until her next meal.

It never came.

After who-knows-how-many hours and minutes (as it was still 27 seconds past the 17th minute of the 5th hour as far as she was concerned), and an even less established number of heartbeats and bead-turns later, a fresh set of clothes sat where her next meal was meant to be.

Cotton brushed her fingertips as she picked them up. Perhaps "fresh" was a term to be used loosely; the clothes smelt as though they had seen naught but the inside of a cupboard somewhere dark and damp for several months—and in many ways, she felt the same. Dusty and cold as they were, compared to what little she had been given to get by over the past tens of thousands of heartbeats, these clothes felt like feathered wings.

To remove the horrendously disgusting, blood and dirt ridden clothes she had been wearing since the assault on the Lessaloploth was a blessing in itself. Only when confronted with the new did she realise how much the old stank. Her only complaint was that while she could remove sodden clothing, she couldn't strip her grimy skin. She would have to wait longer. New clothes would have to do for now.

The crew neck t-shirt was fitted for women but fit for a woman two sizes larger than Aster. At least, she thought, no one would see her ribs, though her shoulders looked bony like a wire frame. She could, too, hide her hipbones beneath the thick, blue combat pants of some strange scratchy material and the nondescript belt they had supplied her with.

To hide the accumulation of grease and sweat and possibly blood, she scraped her hair back, twisted it into a bun and pulled the standard Shinra helmet over her head. Her eyes hid beneath the shade of the helmet that jutted out over her forehead, with its three glowing, eye-like triad of lights at the front, but there was nothing she could do to cover the hollowness of her cheeks or the dullness of her skin.

Cadet uniform. Not the full whack of the infantry uniform, but the standardised gear they supply to their grunts during basic training. Something that not too long ago she would have begged to have been in. She thought she'd feel pride in a moment like this. She really didn't.

"Oh, Tseng. You ought to know by now that I won't aid you."

Aster's head snapped up. Eyes wide. The voice was clear, crystalline, pitched and decidedly feminine, but far away, out of reach, and beyond the darkness.

"Lock me up as long as you like! You know I'll just escape again."

"Ever a child…"

"Insult me. But you need me more than I need you, Tseng. It's always been that way."

"It is about more than just you, this time."

"Hmm. Or is it?"

Aster could hear the unmistakable whisper of a metallic door and controlled click of a lock through the wall. She knew, after all, as she'd been dreaming of the sound for however long she'd been in this wretched place.

The voice of the girl in the room over strained against the apparent sealing of her room. "Ha ha… I'll be out in four days, Tseng. Watch me!"

"Then I will collect you from the slums in five."

Aster's newly booted toes glowed red with the light of the door, until the room flooded with green following the chirping of a keycard panel. The door slid from its tight clamp with a sigh.

To Tseng's, rather muted, surprise, the girl stood right in from of him, rocking backwards and forward on her heels and toes, possibly a side effect of losing her mind. Aster's lips parted but her jaw didn't have chance to fall. She lifted her helmet to reveal her face, blue eyes were far too wide to be entirely sane. Like a deer in headlights. Living up to her name. She just had to know the time. Needed to know the time.

He offered her no chance to speak.

"Hands behind your back and move it. Open your mouth and I'll swipe it from your face."

Whatever snarky comment had been sat on her lips dissipated into a pathetic breathy pant and her mouth closed, whether she wanted it to do so or not. She stepped out gingerly, the yellow and white lights of the halls blinding against the darkness to which she had become accustomed, and although she had spent two-hundred years staring at the foreboding red light above her door, she couldn't help but stare at the door next to hers—the one with the girl in, the girl who seemed to hold some kind of grip over Tseng. Locked.

And so in silence, omitting the sound of footsteps and general bustle Shinra Headquarters produced, the girl of eighteen was escorted through the building and out towards the nearby army grounds and campus whose silhouette in the skyline was impressive, but not so as the great building in whose shadow it loomed.

It must have been mid-morning, judging by the sun that burnt her eyes from having spent so long in the dull light of Cell E. Her breath puffed around her red nose and cheeks in the February mist—actually, was it still February? It felt too warm to be February, compared with Icicle Inn, anyway. She daren't speak. She'd save her questions for later.

More than the wintry mist though, bursting through the door into a standard infantry training room stole her breath. Not the countless pairs of eyes that were now upon her, no, she hadn't even noticed them, but rather the glossy, pale, wood flooring and handrail that ran along a mirrored wall at the far side. She was not prepared to be blindsided by such a recollection of home. Her child- and teen-hood. Those long hours spent in a room just like this, completing a very different kind of training.

Aster did not look out of place with her mouth hanging open, as she only reflected the men of the room and one certain martial arts instructor. Tseng's presence brought along a heavy air of authority, and each cadet snapped into a standard Shinra salute—many sloppily, many late.

Tseng jabbed her back. "Line up. Now."

She stumbled into a place between the men, frozen like statues, and mimicked their stance, biting hard on her lip to stop the quivering.

He drew in. Almost nose to nose. She looked more through him than dare to stare back into seething black stones as he yanked the helmet from her head. Filthy blonde hair fell from beneath it, brushing the middle of her back.

Out from his pocket, he pulled a snapped bracelet and a fistful of beads. He shook them in a fist near her temple.

"In terms of a debrief this is all you'll get. You coped. Barely. But if I find you so willingly displaying your weaknesses again," he snarled, "I won't snap the stupid bracelet, I'll choke you with it."

He threw the beads into the floorboards and they scuttled and sprawled all over. The broken thread landed at her feet.

"You exposed yourself, enabled yourself to be exploited, and I didn't even have to dig. Your enemies will find your every weakness, use them, and they will destroy you." He ground his teeth. "Fix. It."

Aster's face grew redder and redder, forehead beginning to sweat and eyes misting under the pressure. Publicly chewed out and humiliated upon first meeting these recruits. Of course, this was his intention.

"Lockhart has offered to provide you with extra training given as you are now two full weeks behind. I cannot think why she would have any interest in offering a little girl respite unless there's something in it for her. I wondered if she couldn't stomach the sight of your face dripping with blood when she first saw you, but she is a martial arts instructor and you are a fool, so that seems unlikely."

"Yeah," she said shakily, voice cracking. "I was bleeding spontaneously. You didn't twat me 'round the chin with a pistol or anything."

"Careful, Doe," Tseng said, alarmingly tersely. "Now more than ever."

The pressure of his glare made her body tremble, intensified by the thickness of the air and stillness of everyone in it. Sweat rolled down the back of her neck. Hair fell into her face and she tucked it behind her ear hastily, as though the feathery light touch might shatter her hard-kept expression. Her guarded wall was that flimsy, as flimsy as her whimpering resolve.

"I do not want to threaten you—"

"—But it's in your very nature."

There was a shift of uncomfortable movement and unrest from the cadets surrounding them. Trying not to look and trying not to look away. Even the instructor shuffled in her boots, holding her muscles tighter than they should rest. It was the girl with the long dark hair of before. Tifa Lockhart.

Not one breath was taken until Tseng made a dry sound in his throat. He surveyed the room.

"Fall out."

Silence. None dared to move.

"I said fall out!"

"Sir!"

The room surged with life. Hearts beat again and cadets sprung into training as though there had been no pause, instantly returning to their sparring partners, entertaining their set moves and patterns more vigorously than before in case he was watching. He wasn't.

"You'd better familiarise yourself with these grounds. You'll be training with me every day before PT and breakfast. I hope you like mornings."

When satisfied with the shame she faced, he threw down her heavy helmet with a bang. The thick atmosphere that had surrounded them loosened as he strode from the room and slammed the door in his wake and the draught that raised with it blew away the rest of his looming presence. As though that tension had been holding up her weakening body, Aster's head fell to her chest and she crouched to pick her bracelet and lost beads from the floor, willing her frame to shrink away from the scrutiny she faced from those surrounding her. Those supposed to be her new team. Those who had seen Tseng tear strip after strip from her. And he made it look damn easy, too.

But who was she kidding, it was easy. She had made it easy.

She kept her head down, vision blurring, carefully picking beads from the floor, hoping that maybe if she didn't look at anyone, no one would see her.

"Mate…you got a death wish or something?"

She reflexively snapped her head up to meet a pair of hazel eyes not a few feet away. Damn it. She blinked hard a few times, lessening the overall wateriness of her encounter with this young man.

He winked and flicked one of the straggling beads to her with his thumb like tossing a coin.

"Held your own."

Aster pursed her lips and lowered her eyes. Whether she agreed or not was another story, right now she just needed him to go away, and he did just that with the snap of the instructor's finger. He shrugged and drifted back to his sparring partner.

Tifa strode over after a moment's contemplation, slipping the leather tie from her raven hair and releasing it down her back. She tore off a narrow strip of the fabric and offered it to the shamefaced girl before her.

"Here."

Aster looked up at her with a quizzical expression, although not for the reason Tifa had thought.

"To fix your bracelet."

"Ma'am…!" Aster clutched the leather strip and shoved it into her pocket along with the beads. "Thank you so much, ma'am."

Another contemplative look. Then, she shook her head. "Tifa is fine. We met before I became your trainer. No need for formalities. They make me feel old, anyway."

The ghost of a smile touched Aster's face. It felt strange, and her lips cracked against the idea. "Tifa, then."

"Are you okay to proceed or do you need to check in to the infirmary?" She asked, pointing to the now old injuries and fading bruising to Aster's face with her wine-red eyes.

"What, on my first day? Not a chance," she said, burning with new resolve. Resolve to prove herself. She bundled her hair back up into a bun—or something resembling a bun or dead dormouse, anyway—and pulled her helmet back over her head. "Actually, may I ask the time?"

"Ten-fifty."

"And the date?"

"February twenty-sixth."

So it hadn't been years after all. She pulled herself back to her feet, stronger than before.

Tifa looked at her in mild disbelief. "You sure you don't need the infirmary?"

"Huh? Oh, no. Thank you."

Aster stood only a few inches taller than Tifa, and a few inches shorter than most of the young men around her. They seemed to be giving her a wide berth. If it was because her skin was covered in blood, mud and sweat then she couldn't say she blamed them.

"Alright, then. You're gonna have to catch up and catch up quick, alright?" Tifa placed gloved hands on her hips. "You'll be taught slightly backwards; we're doing kicks, knee-strikes and stomps. This lot have already begun basic upper-body strikes and punches."

"Admittedly, you'll struggle unless you've done martial arts before," she added.

"Not really…maybe some basic stuff."

"Well. Means I won't have to iron out any bad habits." She must have seen the flash of uncertainty take Aster's features. "You'll catch up."

Aster pursed her lips in a poor attempt at a smile as Tifa returned to the head of the room. In fact, she commanded it, even with her small yet clearly powerful structure. She was flanked by two presumably male, presumably drill sergeants and then a solidly built man in a black uniform appeared, leaning against the back wall with strong arms folded across his chest. Dark hair and a controlled presence, although that was all Aster could gather of him from her position near the back of the room.

"The front kick: raise the knee and foot of the striking leg and extend for contact with the target. This is all about control of the body. Focus on the thrust of your hips and connection with the bag. Don't compromise your balance: doing so may be fatal if you cannot recover in battle."

Tifa struck a free-standing heavy bag with her steel-capped boot. The crack of metal on leather was phenomenal. The strength of her position and how she held it perfectly to speak was equally so. This girl was iron and lead in perfect packaging. Even the collective sounds of a class full of amateur martial artists kicking the crap out of heavy bags were nothing on that single connection between Tifa and hers. The sound of power reverberated between Aster's ears for a long time to come.

Long before the end of the day, the other men of the room smelt just about as awful as Aster. She longed for the massaging pressure of hot water against her skin, but would not be granted such luxury.

After being screamed at for incorrectly following a military command, Aster stood red-faced in formation with twenty-three men before being led out to dinner. She had just reached the door when a gloved palm pressed into her shoulder, halting her while the rest of her new platoon filed through the hall and out of sight. She tensed immediately, awaiting a blow.

It never came. It was a firm touch, but not a harsh one. He wasn't hitting her. She let her body relax for only a second before she realised who was holding her arm. It was one of the figures that had drifted in and out of the training room, keeping open an eye. It took her a second, but she snapped into a nearly correct salute and stance. Oh, she knew who this was. Who didn't?

"Not bad considering you're two weeks late," he said with an assured smile. "Rest."

Though her eyes were covered by the shadow of her helmet, the parting of her lips and failure to move reminded him she'd likely have no idea what he meant.

"Oh, right, I mean—you can relax. Doe, was it?"

She nodded apprehensively. He was young; in his early twenties. Far too young to be giving her orders and donning the iconic uniform of a First Class SOLDIER as he so clearly was. His hair was black and fell to his shoulders in an unusual quill-like way. His features were striking. His attitude was different. Didn't look like he was about to hit her, at the very least. More than could be said for Tseng's perpetual scowl.

She found herself glad to be protected from his gaze, hidden underneath her helmet. Ashamed of herself, embarrassed of herself. Couldn't even look at him, though she didn't know why.

"You need to report to the infirmary directly after mess for blood and urine tests and vaccinations. Yeah—" he snickered at the immediate, accidental, scrunching of her nose. "It's almost exactly as fun as it sounds. I'll come get you later and take you there. Cadets aren't permitted to go anywhere alone in stage one."

For the most part it was like he was speaking a foreign language, but she nodded regardless.

"It's Fair, by the way," he said, stopping the automatic door from closing by holding a hand over the sensor. "I'm one of the SOLDIER members overseeing this season's cadets. No doubt I'll be seeing you around."

"Sir."

Fair delivered her, as promised, straight to the infirmary after mess, and straight into Tseng's hands thereafter. Her body froze automatically to the sense of his presence. Conditioned to do so. But she relaxed when a nurse accompanied him. The thought of Tseng stabbing her with needles was almost as terrifying as the prospect of him stabbing her with knives. No doubt he'd handle them with the same mastery, discretion and lack thereof.

As the nurse wiped off her arm with a disinfectant wipe—effectively reducing the grime on her arm to a record low of the past few weeks—Tseng spoke.

"I'll return you to the quarters in which you will live until basic training is over. Be aware that first call for the cadets is later than that it will be for you. You have a fuller schedule than they," he said. "I suggest you use this evening to familiarise yourself with the various buildings of Shinra."

"Tseng—Sir, I was told by a SOLDIER member that cadets have to be attended at all times."

He folded his arms and nodded. "He isn't as far as incorrect, only he is when it applies to you. You have express permission to manoeuvre unaccompanied within the Shinra grounds on account of your being a Turk Selective, not an infantry cadet. Your drill sergeants are aware, even if the whole of SOLDIER is not."

She sucked a breath through her teeth as a needle plunged into her skin. Tseng looked unimpressed.

"You can stare down the barrel of a gun unfazed and yet a needle takes your breath away. We have a lot of work to do, Doe."

He had the decency to chaperone her to the door to her barracks. It hid underground—or rather, embedded in the plate—in the same compound as the training areas and mess hall that sat in the shadow of the Shinra Building. Then and there he abandoned her. The officers at the door, dressed thickly in stiff red uniforms, nodded in acknowledgement and unlocked the door.

So cadets live like prisoners, too.

Upon entering, the general bustle of twenty-three men in the room in their off-hour ground to a halt. Awkwardly, she scanned the two rows of beds that stretched towards the back of this trench-like room without making eye contact with anyone, and quickly spotted the only unclaimed bed, directly to her right. Closest to the door and wall. Obviously the worst spot in the room but it worked for her, as hidden away in the corner as it possibly could be.

On her bed sat a familiar pile of blood and dirt-soiled clothing. She stared at them for a moment, isolated from the returning animation of the rest of the room. Laughter seemed far away. Smiling, foreign.

She perched on the edge of her metal-framed cot, face to the wall, back to the men, and unravelled the clothes in her lap. It was like discovering the remnant possessions of a deceased loved one. In many ways, it was precisely that. Like finding strewn clothing of the dead on train tracks. The clothes belonged to someone Aster once was, but she was gone now.

Nestled amongst the blood-caked fabric lay her thought-to-be-lost switchblade. She stifled the gasp she was desperate to seize and smoothed a finger over the deep red handle. About four-inches long when closed and a couple wide, the only reason it could be referred to as a switchblade was the flicking mechanism that engaged it. She clamped her jaw shut. Weaponry was hardly permitted in the cadet bunkers. Knots pulled in her stomach. 'It is safer to be unarmed than armed.'

Safer unarmed than armed.

She bundled the blade up in her sodden old clothes again and stole two, three, then four paranoid glances over her shoulder. Twenty-three men and boys and in-betweens talking or reading or off in the shower room at the back or showing off. None passed her a glance. She swiped open her designated wall cabinet beside her bed and stashed the knot of fabric packaging in the back corner and closed the door just as quick. Another glance. They acted like she wasn't even in the room.

A shuddering breath rattled from her lungs as she wiped her quaking palms over her thighs. If anyone found out she was harbouring a weapon in her belongings animosity would soar at best and, at worst, her life may face genuine danger. From the military, sure. And quite possibly from the squad.

The mattress creaked as she threw her back into it, pushing her hands to cover her welling eyes. She could ask herself why Tseng would possibly do something that he would surely know could potentially hold immense repercussions, but she already knew the answer. To instil hardship.

To test.