Chapter 3- First Day
"Faster! You can't even outrun a Black Bat with that speed. Come on maggots; get your asses in gear!"
Jade regretted signing her contract.
She thought the job would be simple. Sit around in a dark room all day with only the dim glow of hundreds of computers as a light source, typing away at a state of the art keyboard with the reflection of code in her glasses. What she didn't expect was torturous labor and, Gaia forbid, exercise.
The teen was fine with the concept of exercise-when she was enhanced with mako. Without the enhancements, she was like a limp noodle; weak and about to get eaten.
"Fair! What's wrong? You look like you're about to get eaten alive!"
The teen grumbled miserably under her breath. Luckily the training instructor didn't hear it over the sound of his own voice-he liked it too much.
Turk training was different from SOLDIER training. While SOLDIER focused mainly on physical fights with swords, materia and hand to hand combat, the Turks trained with guns and other 'hidden' weapons; ones that were meant to kill without drawing attention.
"Line formation!" The entire group of Turks in training lined up in a single file, orderly line. Their backs were straight, heads held high and were ready to serve the president and give their lives for him.
No sound escaped any of the occupants in the room. It was quiet; dead quiet. Even with the short amount of time Jade had been in the program, she knew to follow a superior's orders without question. If one shows hesitation in the field, they will die.
Suddenly, the doors of the training room busted open and a familiar mop of red hair came in with a shit eating grin. The barely done up buttons, loose belt and bedhead gave Jade the sneaking suspicion he had a quickie in a supply closet somewhere.
Brown eyes narrowed and glared at the red headed Turk. She couldn't believe he was sleeping around while on the job. Did Shinra really give their Turks such free reign?
Emerald eyes scanned down the line of recruits until they landed on Jade. A flash of recognition and then nothing.
"So," The redhead stated. "This is the new batch of Turks in training?" He turned to the instructor with an unreadable expression plastered on his symmetrical face.
"No gunna lie yo, I was expecting something a bit more…" Athletic, smart, good looking; the list went on forever. "Impressive than this." Were his final choice of words.
"Well, guess that can't be helped. You 're rookies after all." Jade furrowed her brow and narrowed her eyes, practically glaring a hole through Red's face. She knew more about computers and hacking than he ever would. She just didn't know how to evade Shinra's clutches - if that was even possible
"Alright then, let's see what you can really do. You, you and you; step up." Jade watched cautiously as three of her fellow recruits stepped out of line. At a glance, it looked like they had nothing in common but Jade knew better than to judge based on appearances -Reno didn't look like the kind of guy who would knock out and kidnap a sixteen year old girl.
The red head grinned a pulled out a wad consisting of several hundred gil from the inside of his black blazer. "I've got approximately a hundred thousand gil in my hand." He had a smile on his face as his emerald hues locked onto each of the three rookies, chipping away at the wall they built around themselves. His free hand reached into his blazer and pulled out three steak knives that gleamed under the fluorescent light.
Jade wondered what other strange things he had in that blazer of his.
"Mindy Singer, age twenty seven," Reno walked up to the woman, leaving a mere foot of space between them.
"Lived a cushy life, went to university and studied to be a business woman before applying to Shinra." He casually stated and held out the knife for her to take. She took it without hesitation.
"But no matter where you applied, no company would hire you." Mindy tensed. "And no matter what you did, you couldn't find a job. You went into depression and became desperate." The green money gently fanned and caressed her cheek. She leaned into the warm embrace of the green paper like a cat rubbing up on human.
"Tell me, how much did you whore yourself out?" The money was soon moved away from Singer and to the next person in line as the red head did the same. He moved onto the next person.
"Sanford Zielinski, age forty, has a daughter on life support." Jade saw the man's eyes widen and his hands shake. A bitter frown was pressed on his face as he averted his brown eyes from the Turk's striking emerald ones.
"Sold your house to pay for her bills but it still wasn't enough; lived on the streets, visiting her every day and telling her everything was alright." The Turk waved the money under the man's nose. His nostrils flared at the scent of money- the hope that he could afford better medication for his daughter. Unconsciously he took the offered knife, his eyes glazed over with a fog of green.
Black dress shoes tapped against the hard floor, stopping in front of the third and final rookie who took the blade without question or hesitation.
"What's your name rookie?"
He hesitated. "Gerald Umber."
"Good- and what's your story?"
"I'm an assassin for hire." Jade could practically hear the widening of eyes throughout the room followed by the distinct smell of fear and worry.
Reno's smiled never faded. "Now that you've all gotten a little peak into the others' lives, the last one standing will get the hundred grand."
"Now wait a minute!" Sanford objected. His hand clenched around the hilt of the blade. Even from her place at the end of the line, the hacker could see the stress lines and creases on his face. He was having an internal battle with himself. He needed the money but killing people for it was wrong. The father had a high sense of morality.
"You can't just tell us to kill for a hun-" His head landed on the ground, blood squirted from his stump of a neck. The body fell limp to the side, occasionally twitching.
A collective sharp inhale echoed through the training room followed by the distinct sound of vomit hitting the clean, crisp tiles. The sour stench of partially digest meat wafted through the air, causing many trainees to lose their lunch.
Jade was not an exception.
She found a nice little corner to vomit into.
She'd thought she could handle this. Years of being exposed to media news, watching people die while reporters kept on talking should have made her numb death. It was the circle of life- everything had to die in the end and most monsters met their demise as lab experiments. That or being torn apart by bigger creatures and eaten by humans.
So why?
Why did the death of someone whom she barely knew affect her so much? Why was she puking out her guts while the sound of metal on metal resonated in the background? And why, for the love of Gaia, was Reno lazily counting gil while the assassin drove the blade into the back of Singer's skull?!
The second body fell the same as the first. Her eyes still twitched, moving frantically as the last bits of her brain shut down and become nothing more than a rotting meat sac.
Another putrid stink entered Jade's nostrils, making her face scrunch up in disgust. Warily, she craned her neck to look at the two dead bodies that occupied a large section of floor space and sure enough, both had identical stains on the ass and crotch; voided bowels.
Piss, vomit and blood mixed and mingled. The once pristine white tiles were covered in at least one of the three liquids. The trainees were standing in all of the above.
Jade's stomach lurched and once again, the hacker found herself braced against the corner of a wall while her insides became her outsides.
The doors of the training room slid open and men in suits calmly walked in as if the floor wasn't covered in piss, the trainees weren't vomiting their insides out and there weren't two fresh corpses on the floor.
They simply came in with a tranquilizer gun and shot the assassin, taking him away to who knows where without questions, comments or concerns.
After a few more seconds of dry heaving, coughing and generally feeling like shit, the grating sound of the red head's voice filled her ears. The brunette strained her eyes to focus in his general direction. The mop of red hair walked with a small spring in his step even through all the piss, blood and vomit. He didn't seem to give a damn about the entire thing. Rather, he found it amusing.
The man walked over to each remaining recruit, giving those ten grand each and a demeaning pat on the head-even the ones who were hunched over and dry heaving like Jade was.
When he finally got to her little corner, he grasped her arm that stabilized her against the wall and placed the last ten grand into her palm. As soon as the gil touched her hand, she had a death grip on it, refusing to let go. The young trainee needed a touch of reality to cling onto and money was the only real thing she could think of at the moment while a million and three thoughts raced through her head.
Reno only smirked, the shit eating grin never leaving his face. He leaned close to her, his warm breath ghosting over the shell of her ear, sending gooseflesh to ripple on her skin like water.
"I let you live today Jade. Don't forget it." He let go of her arm, dropping her into the cesspool of human bodily fluids and walked towards the open doors of the training room.
"Oh and before I forget," Red hair whipped around like fire in the wind. "Don't bother trying to tell the media or the rest of Shinra what just occurred here or you might end up like those two." The corpses didn't move.
"After all, dead men speak no words." Were the last words he spoke before he strode out of the room to do who knows what, the grin and the skip in his step never leaving as he walked down the hallway, trailing a path of blood and bile in the shape of shoeprints.
The brownish liquid was still warm when it soaked into her pants. Her eyes were wide as saucers. Her body shook with fear. The wad of cash was still tightly clenched in her hand, her knuckles turning white from the strain.
At that moment, Jade realized something. Shinra could hide any and all evidence of what they had done. They swept everything under the rug and had Turks take care of it without question.
Shinra was a den of monsters and she agreed to become one.
Short chapter. Been a while since I've posted. Story isn't dead, I'm just very slow.
This story isn't meant to be one of sunshine and rainbows. It's pretty much one about corruption, money, revenge and all that good stuff. Think modern Shakesphere fanfiction of Crisis core and all the messed up stuff in his works (crap, I'm comparing my work to Shakesphere 0.0 That's not good). Cheers!
-Storm Caleum