A/N: Hello, everyone! I originally tried to make this chapter shorter and ended up literally doubling it—although in my defence I merged two chapters together here. I haven't had any time to do any additional writing for a few weeks now, so I'm glad I've got the next twenty chapters all ready for you o_o I can't wait until I have chance to relax a bit!

So, what do you guys thinks so far? I'd love to hear from you all, please drop a line! Basically there's a lot of groundwork going on, and a lot of it gets referred to again later with more information so don't worry too much if there are lots of unexplained things happening ^_^ Everything is relevant, honest o_o Have a great day!

3rd Apr '19

Chapter 6: Unhinged

For the first time, Tseng hadn't ordered Aster up before the standard cadets. Standard was not meant as an insult. It had been almost two weeks since she had been let out of the cells, and already she would have given an arm or leg to be considered a 'normal' cadet.

At exactly five-thirty—to the second—the drill instructor unnamed to Aster yelled his way into the barracks, his voice rattling the metal cabinets and vibrating the skinny steel legs of the beds. She very quickly lived to regret not waking sooner, not to miss the perpetually angry sergeant screaming his face off until his skin matched the colour of his cap, but rather to enjoy the privacy of solitude for a shower. Privacy that the cadets were not granted.

Knowing she was the only one who could get away with it, she waited in a toilet cubicle until the shower stalls were empty and showered alone. When she returned to the bedchamber dried and clothed, the full squadron stood at attention in their matching white t-shirts and blue combat pants at the ends of their pristinely made beds. She strode past with her head held as high as she dared to hold it, masking her confusion—she was catching up on drill these days, but she had no idea what was going on here.

To some of the cadets, her nose was too high in the air; she looked haughty. "Thought you'd join us plebeians today then, princess?"

Quiet snickers rippled through the room.

Aster yanked her bedsheets taut and stared at the fabric in her white knuckle grip until the snickers died into smirks. Her eyes snapped up to the sneering cadet with a big mouth and rubbery cheeks midway up the row of beds on the other side. He was only slightly taller than her but made up for it in breadth. Probably her age, maybe older—hard to tell through the veil of his helmet. His name was Newberry.

"About time you started pulling your damn weight around here," he jeered.

The drill sergeant snatched her opportunity to jab back as he burst into the room. "Get your asses up to the courtyard, now. Two mile run!"

"Sir," they yapped in unison. Dogs to their master.

It only occurred to her then, whilst marching out to the courtyard in formation, that this performance was staged every morning. Each day they fixed up the barracks until they were spotless and awaited the appearance of the DI from the ends of their beds. While she was under Turks permission to near enough roam as she pleased, the others weren't allowed out of sight of someone important. Probably hadn't felt freedom in weeks.

Not that Aster had had a whole lot on that front either, but at least she could shower by herself.

The lump of ground beef on Aster's tray at lunch was dry and tasted like soil, and it was even worse when paired with the burning smell of chlorine in her nostrils. Honestly, the squares of prison loaf they supplied her with in her cell had been better than this—and she wouldn't say that lightly. Surrexit didn't look half as bothered, shovelling the dirt-like substance in his mouth by the forkful. While talking. And laughing.

He smacked his chest to dislodge the mince caught in his windpipe. "Who knew you were so bad at swimming?"

Aster stabbed her fork into her food and scowled. "I can swim enough to save my life."

"Evidently not."

"Not with a thirty-pound bergen on!" she cried out at him. "In real life, I'd've totally ditched that shit."

He snorted. "I better remember not to drown near you then—you'd leave me."

"I'll throw you a life jacket," she said with a grin, scraping mashed potato from her spoon with her teeth.

He pointed at her, watching her eyes through the tongs of his fork. "Did you finish last?"

"It wasn't a race!"

"Still."

She cast a sidelong glance down the cafeteria table. No one was looking, no one was listening—the room was getting noisier these days. The newest recruits were getting used to how things worked around here and weren't quite as scared of their own shadows as they had been on day one.

She chewed her lip. "…Define last."

"Okay. Last."

Sighing dramatically, she threw her spoon down with a clatter and clasped her fingers together. "I like to look at it as most improvable."

He snorted again, and Aster flinched as though expecting an eruption of half-chewed, ground beef dirt to fly all over her. He gave her a look. It was just one time! "Whatever, mate. Not had much experience in the water, I take it."

"Swimming? Please, I'm from Icicle Inn. You wanna go swim in liquid ice?" she scoffed, scooping a trowel of beef from her tray and dumping it on his. Before he could say thanks, she took half of his potatoes.

He pointed at his heavenly, buttery potatoes on her tray. "Okay, first of all, not an even trade—I want your juice. Second of all, liquid ice is literally regular water. Your move."

"Alright—pedantic—but alright." She deliberated before sliding her glass of orange juice across the table like a pawn on a chess board and took his bottled water. "But hypothermia? Not worth it."

"What, they don't do indoor swimming pools up north?"

"They do…just…nowhere I frequent," she mumbled, finishing up her stolen goods. She rolled her eyes. "Where're you from then? All this going on about swimming. Mideel? Banora?"

He sure sounded like he was from the warm southern continent. His voice held a carefree, lazy, holiday-town kind of drawl.

"Rocket Town," he said, puffing out his chest and grinning proudly.

"Rocket Town isn't watery!"

"Au contraire, indoor pools," he said with a short, mocking bow.

Aster pushed his head into his tray just enough to coat his nose in mince. "Dumbass."

Somewhere between the tears of mirth in her eyes and fits of laughter at the sight of Surrexit blowing and spluttering food from the innards of his nostrils, a figure came into Aster's view. Entering from the double doors at the far wall was a small pool of men with neat, beautifully held black uniforms. Among them, a set of bobbing black spikes set himself apart from the others.

"Shit!" Aster hurled herself under the table, but not before smacking her own nose into her own food with a loud clatter. "OW."

"Instant karma—"

"Shut up, Rex!" she hissed, from dangerously close to his thighs.

The high-ranking members of SOLDIER dispersed to various different tables, one straight for theirs. She watched black boots draw near her, to the foot of the table. Her fingers trembled; she pulled them to her mouth.

"Recruits!"

Aster's breath caught in her throat, thick like smoke. It was Zack but…his voice sounded so different. The playful, relaxed tone he had taken just a few nights ago was nowhere to be found in this hardened, authoritative timbre. She couldn't see the faces of her fellow cadets, just Surrexit's legs and Zack's feet, table legs and stools, but she could tell from the shakier resonance of their salutations that they regarded this man with a greater degree of respect than most. She did, too.

"Hey, now," he said, voice dropping to a more familiar tone. "Aren't there supposed to be twenty-four of you?"

"Sir, we've got one—"

Aster stabbed her fork deep into Rex's thigh.

"—ah, NOT HERE, SIR."

Zack stifled a laugh. "At ease, kid."

Rex booted Aster hard in the hip under the table and knocked her balance. She bit back a growl and shoved him in the knee. Like cat and dog.

There was a moment of silence, and Aster remembered her tray left roughly above her head. She chewed her lip, it was fairly obvious someone had been there. Newberry saved the day—in a backwards fashion—but his voice dripped of distaste. Disgust, even. "Obviously thinks she has better things to do, sir."

Aster seethed, imagining herself scuttling through booted legs and stabbing him in the thigh, too.

"Oh—Doe, the Turk cadet," Zack said.

She squeezed her eyes shut as though that might make her disappear for real. She prayed to any and all higher powers that may or may not exist that he wouldn't draw a conclusion that met Doe the Turk cadet with Aster the barmaid.

"Uh, that the chick?"

One or two cadets murmured in response but Rex didn't dare for fear of what she might stab next.

"Not a problem," Zack said, and Aster heard what sounded like the scratching of a ballpoint pen against a clipboard. "Alright. Grab your kit and I'll be waiting at exactly seventeen forty-five, you got that?"

When he stepped back, Aster sank further into the shadows with her fingernails dug into Rex's knee for balance. She watched him hook his gloved thumbs into his belt loops. "See you in twenty."

She watched him leave and only realised she'd been holding her breath when she blew a deep sigh. She pulled herself back into her chair, all elbows, certain that if she didn't make eye contact, no one would notice she just slithered out from beneath a table.

Of course, Rex did. "The hell was that?!"

She dabbed her nose with her fingertips, checking for blood from her throbbing face and finding only mashed potato and minced beef. "Honestly, I couldn't even tell you."

"Huh? Some kinda secret?"

"No, I panicked," she mumbled, untangling her limbs from around the cafeteria stool and avoiding his confused stare. "I gotta go get my helmet."

"Wait—were you hiding from him?" Rex asked with his head cocked in confusion, reaching for her hand to stop her leaving, but her fingers whispered out of his grip and she was gone.

Yanking the cool metal of her helmet over her ears back in the barracks felt like relief. She swore she'd never take it off again; it provided her with a literal mask to survive under in Shinra. Protection, however small. Protection of her identity—or the identity of the girl named Aster Doe that once lived in Icicle Inn, anyway. She wasn't sure she and her were the same person anymore.

When seventeen forty-five ticked over and the door opened to twenty-four cadets stood ready at the ends of their beds at attention, Commander Fair—indeed, commander of anywhere between a few and several hundred troops at any given time—stepped into the room.

Youngest of his class. He stood rigid, surveying them with a hint of a smile. The thick leather belt that sat over his abdomen perfectly visible—the insignia of SOLDIER. Men stared in adoration. So they should, he wore it proudly.

"Cadets," he said, without the strain of a drill sergeant. Didn't need to scream to pull everyone on tenterhooks the same way the DIs did. He turned his head, and his Mako-glowing eyes flicked across Aster's frame. "Ah, Doe. Good to have ya with us."

She cleared her throat and strangled her voice. "Sir…"

"Tonight…is gonna be brutal. Not gonna lie to you guys," he said, then punched his fist into his palm. "All you have to do is keep going. And when you think you're done and you can't do any more, you hafta dig deep and go on past the end. If you wanna be in SOLDIER, this is really gonna test your determination!"

They were taken from Midgar and beyond into the wastelands where the mountain ranges stretched to meet with the sky. Their task was simple, deceptively so. Run.

The Unhinger, they called it. The kind of phrase that stiffened backs and stood hairs on end. Every infantryman and members of SOLDIER would remember their Unhinger challenge not-so-fondly, the name alone being enough to set teeth on edge.

It was a run. An uphill struggle across the Mythril Mountain-line, in which they were forced to maintain the pace that was set for them by a member of SOLDIER. A First Class SOLDIER even larger than Zack, with similarly black hair that was slicked back behind his ears. He was somewhere between five and ten years older than Zack, even more experienced, and carried an enormous sword on his back. His name was Angeal Hewley, one third of the most famed trio of SOLDIER. He ran at nowhere near a SOLDIER pace, but something past comfortable for the average man. But fail to keep up? Fall behind Zack who kept up the rear? You're out.

Out. For good.

Better, the exercise would not end until someone quit—not that they knew that. One got unlucky, slipped on some loose rocks and fractured his ankle. Two quit. One because he couldn't keep up, the other because self-doubt needled its way into his mind and told him, repeatedly whispered in his ear, you can't do this over and over and over again.

That voice spoke to everyone that night. Even those who would never admit it—like Aster. But twenty-one did not succumb. Sparrow didn't. Sadly, neither did Newberry.

The human body is far more capable than the mind likes to think it is.

Once back in the barracks, all was relatively quiet. Speaking to one another took too much of the energy reserves that were being used solely to undress, shower off the grime and get into bed. One of the loudest sounds came from Aster as she gasped while peeling off her sock along with half the skin of her heel from one hell of a blister. Everyone else had similar problems. Barnhill couldn't even walk on his right foot.

When Aster returned from showering—last, as always—and collapsed into bed, a man in an irritatingly familiar suit with a tight ponytail stormed through the door and demanded her attention.

"Get up."

She didn't move, save for burying her face in her hands. There was no way—surely not. It was over.

"I said, up. We've got a training exercise for you."

Her body flinched, her blackened and bruised stomach tensed in the anticipation of a blow that never came. So she got up

and went on past the end.

Aster was shoved into a Shinra-supplied truck. It was Mako-powered, as were all modern cars, but it wasn't military standard-issue. It was civilian.

Tseng took the wheel and launched them onto the highway, and also into a barrage of detailed, personal questions, supposedly required for the maintenance of her safety as an operative. It was paperwork sans the paper. "Do you know anyone affiliated with Shinra?"

"Not besides you, sunshine," she said frostily, holding up her head with a hand and staring out the window with drooping eyelids.

"Ex-Shinra?"

She shot her superior a sidelong glance. "You know I do. Bryan Andrews."

"I know that I know you do," he said, tapping the steering wheel impatiently. "Do you know what he did?"

Nobody does. Her eyes pulled out to the city skyline that breezed past the window. "Negative."

"May he hold a grudge against you?"

Aster bristled. "Why would he?"

He rolled his eyes, tightened his grip of the wheel. "Due to his vast incompetencies and unremarkable career."

Bryan was a man Aster had idolised for most of her adult life, so even though she tried her best not to look offended, her face descended into a childish, sulky scowl anyway.

"Last junction we passed?"

"Twenty-three," she said curtly.

"Impressive." He acknowledged her with the nod of his head. "Any affiliation with any other military or private faction?"

"Nope," she said, popping her p and winding down the window, hoping the cool wind would lift the weight of her eyes.

"Doe," he said, voice straining in disbelief. "Listen. Your answers won't reflect negatively of you. You may answer truthfully—the purpose of these questions is to protect you, not incriminate you. If we don't know the answers, we can't protect you from them."

His words snapped her to full attention again. She scrunched her nose up, firstly at his uncharacteristically genuine sounding proposal, and secondly, at said proposal. "What? No. I was part of a small monster exterminating team, if that counts."

"Hm." He shrugged. "A pathetic one at that. As long as you believe you are not under any threat or duress from internal or external forces we have not, insofar, discussed, then I am satisfied."

"No more than the duress you apply," she grumbled with as much attitude as she dared.

He merely muttered under his breath, grinding his molars together. He pulled over on the shoulder and urged a swap of seats. Advanced Driving was important to the Turks—each operative was particularly skilled with at least one type of vehicle—and given that she hadn't a motorcyclist licence it made sense to enhance her four-wheeled skills.

"Occasionally, we are required to catch up to a target located on the opposite end of the city—most areas can be reached within twenty minutes by highway at our speeds, but navigating the streets comes with its own challenges. You need full control of the vehicle and to be fully alert," he said as Aster pulled back onto the highway, strapping himself in. Possibly deeming her driving unsafe from the onset—definitely by the extent of her exhaustion. "And I mean not just aware of what the cars surrounding you are doing, or that pedestrian and dog getting too close to the road, I mean foreseeing all of the above and their next five steps, and the next two or three of every other road user, all while giving full commentary and listening to the radio transmitting from HQ for updates, too."

Aster blew a stray lock of hair from her face as twenty pounds of anxiety dropped over her shoulders. She changed gears somewhat clumsily, readjusting to the feel of stick under her hand again. She hadn't driven stick since back in Icicle Inn.

"Don't get lazy," Tseng said, shooing her hand away and tapping an upturned pin that was glued to the gearstick. "Foot off the clutch. Hand off the gears."

"Right, right," she mumbled, fumbling to correct her positioning. "Destination?"

"Sector One."

Highway driving was relatively easy, so Aster thought. The difficulty lay in her burning eyelids; chronic exhaustion. Difficulty intensified further when Tseng turned up the communications radio and the transmissions between HQ and a few Turks live on the field buzzed through the car like white noise. Aster couldn't fathom out the military commands from the phonetic alphabet, and so the crackling filled her brain like cotton wool. She could just about hold a coherent train of commentary over her driving, and that was only due to the early morning sessions she'd had in practice.

"Heading up the Midgar Highway, northbound… Changing gear, checking rear-view mirror, left-wing, rear-view…" She turned her head fully. "Checking blindspots and changing lanes, preparing for exit in approximately—AHHH!"

Her yelp severed her commentary as her palm was pierced on the upturned pin following Tseng smacking her hand into it. The car veered out of sorts although she recovered relatively quickly.

"I said don't get lazy," he snapped. "Don't rest your hand on the stick! Do not let fatigue defeat you!"

Her eyes prickled with tears from due shock as she yanked her punctured palm to her lips and sucked as if to extract the pain. She blinked those tears away swiftly, taking a few exceptionally deep breaths and returning her hand to the wheel as if the pressure might plug the rut in her palm.

"Is this how you're all trained?!" She shrieked.

"Yes," he said matter-of-factly. "Stop complaining."

Needless to say, Aster did not rest her hand on that gearstick again, and in fact made all of her gear changes significantly faster than before, connecting with the cool metal lever only when it was absolutely unavoidable. The adrenaline he supplied her with fought her tiredness.

The radio crackled steadily with frequent transmission, although in all honesty, Aster had blanked it out which was sort of defeated the objective. Or she had until a feminine voice wavered over the line. Her frustration teemed through the radio.

"HQ, I've lost the target. He entered a previously unknown car and he's heading for the highway, southbound!"

A stuffy voice, presumably someone back in HQ, said, "Roger, Cissnei, can you return to your vehicle?"

"I'm at least ninety seconds away."

"Rude, can you take control?"

"No. Position compromised, holding. Any backup on the highway?"

Tseng snatched the radio from the cradle. "This is Tseng, permission?"

"Roger, no change. Go ahead," said HQ.

"Heading southbound on highway. Prepared to take control. VRN?"

Aster shot him increasingly nervous glances. They were still heading northbound…

"Roger, Black SIERRA-Model X-RAY, VRN: FOXTROT, ALPHA, DELTA."

"Received," Tseng said, jabbing Aster's shoulder and pointing to a short bridge connecting the south and northbound motorways used only—and strictly only—for highway maintenance to traverse between both sections of floating road. "Now!"

Aster's eyes widened in panic, they were travelling much too fast for any type of u-turn, illegal or not. She braced herself and braked, hard, yanking the wheel around the turn with Tseng on the handbrake, drifting over the bridge connection.

"HELL YEAH!" She screamed, footing the gas and shooting down the southbound highway, adrenaline coursing through her veins like something she'd never quite felt before.

Tseng spoke altogether calm as ever, pulling the radio to his lips. "Approaching target. Approximate location?"

"Target location between Sector Six main and junction twenty-seven."

"Roger, approaching."

He briefed Aster hurriedly. "Not our original plan, but training all the same. We've got four minutes of ground to cover, hit one-ten, one-twenty, whatever you can control for approximately three minutes then slow it to NSL—"

"NSL?"

"National Speed Limit—Aster, did you even pass your test?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"At NSL we only want to blend in. We need to find the target to trail him, but not obviously or he'll notice he's being followed by some bat out of hell at over a hundred."

"Got it."

The speeds were terrifying if given a thought, so she didn't think. Her commentary fell into self-reassurance. Tseng returned the radio to its cradle; it was all about 'living the cover' as he repeatedly drilled into her. Any suspicious character even vaguely aware of the concept of counter-surveillance would notice a man following him in a car with a radio at his mouth. If it's not obvious he's part of intelligence, he'd at least look like undercover police or security department. Not what they needed right now.

Aster spotted the registration number of the marked black vehicle only moments after Tseng did. He relayed the information to base. "HQ, we've acquired control of the target."

The guy at Headquarters audibly sighed with relief. "Roger."

"Any leads on destination?"

"Negative."

A voice crackled into the transmission. The girl, Cissnei. "Permission?"

Tseng looked around. No junctions for at least sixty seconds so there was no chance they'd lose the vehicle before then, meaning Cissnei likely had time to speak. Aster nodded to herself, picking up the cues. Cissnei had to ask permission to speak in case Tseng needed to jump on the radio more urgently since he was in control of the target.

"Yes, no change," he said.

"I'm back in vehicle on the slip above the plate, ready to take over at any exit junction," she said. Her voice was sweet, youthful, but controlled.

"Roger," Tseng said.

Aster's palms were slipping on the wheel despite how hard she gripped it. Her fatigue was gone, the pain in her palm dissipated under the rush. Under the thrill. She kept a close eye on her target, muttering commentary under her breath, not loud enough to disturb transmission, but loud enough to keep her own concentration.

The black S-model X car veered off towards Sector Six at junction twenty-nine, which Tseng immediately barked into the radio.

"Roger, I have control!" Cissnei chirped. "Thanks, Tseng!"

He chuckled. "You're welcome."

"WOW!" Aster yelled as soon as his finger depressed the mute button, shaking and bouncing in her seat. "That. Was. AWESOME. Also, what the hell just happened?"

He smirked faintly and attempted to translate. "Cissnei was on foot and was unable to follow the target when he unexpectedly entered a vehicle. Rude, the only other operative on the field, was also on foot. They're lucky we were around or they would have lost him. They would have had no idea what junction he exited the highway from. He could have escaped to any sector—exit junction thirty."

She did as told, veering off the highway and onto the slip towards the slums. "Who was the target?"

"Classified."

Aster rolled her eyes and shook her head as the vehicle descended beneath the plate. "Of course."

The slums are dark by their very design. Sunlight can't reach and the stars don't shine as Shinra, or rather the plate that holds it, sits in their place. No moon, no stars, and the giant lights that gift the citizens are turned off, casting a thick blackness over the whole land. The closest things to stars would be the twinkling of small safety lights here and there, like the ones that line the pillars of each slum and maybe the occasional headlight from late-running trains or old street lamps. Because of this so real darkness, not many people stay out past lights out.

The radio continued to run haywire. The target, tailed by Rude, sank deep into the unfinished Sector Six slums to a building of previously unknown connection to the man—or that was what Aster could gather from the snippets of intelligence code that she understood.

Cissnei had entered the vicinity on foot, not far from Wall Market, and Aster was ordered to pull up at the gate between Sector Six and Sector Seven behind a small children's park.

"I'm going off radio—they're everywhere," Cissnei said, her voice a whisper and almost indiscernible from the white noise. "I need back up, now. I repeat, going off radio."

Tseng muttered hastily, "Crap."

"What now?" Aster asked.

"Now you stay here," he said, grabbing a second radio from the glove compartment. He switched it on and inserted a tiny earpiece. "Wait here, do not move, and keep the radio on. You are not an active part of this operation, do you understand me? If anyone who is not me approaches you, you drive back to HQ."

She nodded with a slack jaw. "Sir."

He hadn't waited for her response. He left the truck with a slam of the door and the next she heard from him was over the radio. "On foot. Approaching vicinity. Permission to proceed?"

Aster shrank in on herself. The darkness of the slums crept into the truck as the engine died with the key and only the radio kept her company. Her eyes made out the faint outline of a lonely swing set in the pitch-dark, something ominous about its presence. Playgrounds are creepy at night.

The shiver down her spine sparked her limbs as she slammed the locks down on each of the doors. She returned her shaking hands to the steering wheel and gripped it like it supplied her life, and every time fatigue threatened to pull her into sleep, the radio barked static in her ears and jolted her upright once again. She gave herself a moment to reflect upon the injurious twenty-four hours her body had endured and intentionally rubbed the back of her heel to inflict pain. A reminder of the tenacity of the human body and mind. Despite the circumstance, she could endure. She was from the Knowlespole, after all.

Cissnei's exasperated voice snapped her from her thoughts. Her laboured breaths filled the car. "Target has left the building, heading north beyond Wall Market towards the slum depths—shit, I'm surrounded!"

HQ responded promptly. "Can you return to your vehicle?"

"No, negative!"

"Rude, whereabouts?"

"North of Wall Market," he said, "I have control of the target."

"Can you return to your vehicle?"

"No, three minutes."

Cissnei cut in, audibly distressed, whispering but shrill all the same. "There's too many of them!"

Aster fumbled for the radio and turned the key in the ignition simultaneously, almost dropping both with shaking fingers. "Uh—permission?"

There was a slight pause. "Roger, no change," Rude said.

"I, uh—I'm near the Sector Seven gate heading north, uh—" Aster's shaking voice and little knowledge of intelligence jargon was slowing her down, so she dropped it in favour of common language. "Cissnei, where are you?"

"On foot in the alley behind the Honeybee Inn!"

"On my way."

Aster floored it. The engine revved in resistance and shot through the small park, tearing down a small fence in its wake. She veered the truck down an alley directly behind where she assumed the Honeybee Inn to be, driving as recklessly as she needed to make track. The wing mirror to her side crashed into a building due to the narrowness of the path and smashed into her window, splintering the glass. The mirror was bent but not broken off.

"Shit!" Aster yelled over the screeching of metal on brick. "UM—I'm less than a minute away…! You ready, Cissnei?"

"Roger! I can hear you!"

The headlights coupled with a good deal of squinting revealed several sprinting figures in the distance and Aster realised almost too late she had locked the doors. Eyes wide and no time to think, she reached over the passenger side to pull the unlock catch. She swallowed hard, watching Cissnei's positioning and the figures chasing behind her. One wrong move and she'd mow her down.

Aster surged past them, squeezing tight into the wall and in doing so the wing mirror finally tore off, shattering the driver's side window with it. Glass exploded into the interior and covered the floor and Aster's seat—which incidentally she was only half sitting in as she was fully leaned over at the passenger side door, foot on the pedal and one hand on the wheel. She slowed to Cissnei's pace before shoving the door open.

The girl lunged into the vehicle and slammed the door behind her, and Aster threw herself back into her glass-ridden seat with relief and pressed the pedal to the floor. She let Cissnei do the honours.

"HQ this is Cissnei in vehicle, that's Charlie One Two. Proceeding north."

"I have control, apprehending target." Tseng's stony voice filled the car. "Doe, agh…"

She couldn't help but smirk as his clear disdain.

His voice hardened. "I need you to extract me from the Sector Seven gate in exactly two minutes and forty-five seconds, do you understand me?" he ordered, breaking the 'Secret Turks Language' just for long enough to drill instructions into his idiot student's head.

"Roger!"

But secretly she panicked. It had taken her longer than that to get here, and she had no idea where this road ended or if she could even turn around. There was certainly no room to manoeuvre in this alley.

Cissnei and Aster looked at each other in instant mutual understanding.

"Reverse!" The Turk screamed.

"Oh my Goddess—!" Aster cried breathily, slamming on the breaks. Cissnei braced her hands against the dashboard as Aster cranked the truck into reverse and tore back through the small street even more dangerously than she had coming in. She winced as the vehicle hit something hard, throwing her and Cissnei about in their seats but not really slowing them down.

Tseng said, "Target acquired. Returning to rendezvous."

"You're good this side—shit!" Cissnei spoke too soon and threw her hands in front of her face as Aster knocked off the passenger-side mirror.

"This is so bad!" Aster yelled, craning her whole body to get a view out of the back window now her mirrors were bust.

Cissnei broke out a white grin. "Then why do you sound like you're enjoying this so much?"

"Because I am!"

The truck shot through the alleyway, out into the dirt roads east of the Sector Seven gate and right over the torn down fencing. She stopped in front of the gate with a few seconds to spare.

Tseng yanked open the rear door and climbed in. "Get out of here and back up to HQ, but circle through Sector Seven and Eight before heading up plate to make sure you're not followed."

Heart pounding, Aster nodded aggressively, pulling the truck onward until the gate closed firmly behind them. "Right. Where's the target? I thought you got him?"

That's when she actually looked at Tseng. Blood soaked his previously pristine shirt and suit jacket. The colour drained from her face and settled like lead in her gut.

"Oh…" she said dumbly as her stomach turned. "You did…"

He nodded.

"I did."

The Turks plus one Selective grouped high in the Shinra building, but Aster was not permitted to learn the floor number that they disembarked from the elevator on. The location of the Turks Headquarters and command centre was a closely guarded secret and known only to few due to the confidential nature of the operations that go on there, but Aster wasn't stupid. They must have been above sixty somewhere, surely, deep in the labyrinthine floors. All she knew was that there was a lot of keycard swiping and identification authorisation going on, and also that upon reaching the meeting room they were destined to enter, Aster was denied flatly by Tseng who shoved her into a chair in a waiting room just outside. While they enjoyed a debrief, Aster's head spun.

At this point, she was starting to see double. She pressed her fingers to her eyes and waited. Time had been stolen from her so much in the previous weeks. She made a mental note to get herself a watch.

Eventually, the panel door slid open and Rude, Cissnei and Tseng emerged. Rude simply passed with a courteous nod in her direction before pressing onwards and outwards. Cissnei, as Aster now realised, stood covered in dirt, dust, blood and sweat. Her wavy auburn hair was damp and flat and dirty, and the state of Cissnei reminded Aster of herself both now after the Unhinger and the all-night escapades, and also of herself fresh out of the cell what felt like years ago, when she still wore her clothes from home and the blood of the monsters in the deadly climes of the Great Glacier.

But despite these similarities, something was starkly different. The way she held herself. The fire behind her amber eyes. Her posture, her stature. Where Aster looked defeated, Cissnei was powerful. Undoubtedly strong externally, but internally too, and it shone.

Her suit was dishevelled, but she wore it well, and proudly. "Thanks for helping me out back there. You make a cracking getaway driver, y'know," she said, folding her arms and smiling. "Pretty good! I'll let Tseng tear you a new one now. See you around if you survive it."

With a friendly wink, she followed Rude.

Aster smiled and nodded weakly. She was beyond tired. Adrenaline, like coffee, was a short-term high with an almighty crash. She felt like she could take any hell from Tseng simply because all she cared about right now was dismissal and bedtime.

He stormed out of the debrief room led by his diatribe. "I don't need to tell you that you weren't permitted to attend the debrief due to not being a full member of the Turks. Access to this level of information is strictly off-limits."

"Then why'd you bring me?"

"To debrief you myself," he snapped. "The mission, in basic terms, was not so much as a failure as it was an extraordinarily clumsy success. It was supposed to be clean and easy, but it began to go wrong when the target entered the Midgar highway, as you know. Without supplying you with too much information, the mission could not be abandoned due to the lack of knowledge as to his new whereabouts."

"Counter-surveillance is an enormous job. We have leads on any given individual of interest that span months, sometimes years. Sometimes decades. We know where they frequent. Often where they live. Sometimes we don't have to do more than keep an eye on them."

He gave her a pointed look and she shrank under it. Oh, she understood. Wondered how big her own file was.

"There are whole intelligence teams for that outside of the Turks force. But when the target goes somewhere new, a building that we have other information about, well, it can become an issue. So several men locating and potentially discovering Cissnei's identity was unfortunate, and as such Rude dispatched them after you injured all three of them whilst reversing through the alleyway."

Aster instantly felt a return of the meal she had eaten about twenty years ago in the mess with Rex last night.

"And finally, as for flat out ignoring my instructions."

"Hey, but, wait—"

"—Shut it."

She did. Swallowed her bravery.

"You acted outside of your prerogative and could have costed an entire lead, or worse, the target himself. This is inexcusable behaviour." He leaned into her face and lowered his voice. "You are not a hero. You are a child from a small town who happens to be good at driving a stick shift."

He sighed. For the first time, he looked just about as exhausted as she did. And although he was a dangerous man, and an unpredictable man, he wasn't wholly unreasonable. His back straightened and his voice returned to a more natural, less threatening note.

"But as it happened, you did not cost the lead nor the target. You acted to the benefit of Cissnei and the operation as a whole. But this does not take from the fact that the basis of this action came from a place of disobedience. As such, for punishment, you ought to be confined to the cells for multiple days."

Again! Time stolen again!

"However," he said, holding a hand out to silence her before she could protest, "given that you would simply sleep I see little point. Better punishment would be to send you straight back to training."

He watched dread, disbelief and horror wash over her face all at once. He smirked. "Hurry up. You're fifteen minutes late for Hand-to-Hand with Lockhart."