Jack nodded at the procession of recruits filing through the door. They quickly lined themselves up by the walls and stood in silence.
"At ease, soldiers."
The group relaxed. This room was different. It was small, and brightly lit in every corner by the stark white light of naked fluorescent bulbs. The wall directly across them took the form of lockers; stretched from end to end with sections marked along its doors, paired with a keyhole.
"I suppose you're wondering why you're here today. You see, grunts, today is a special day."
The recruits continued to stand in silence, trying to not break eye contact first when the commander looked at them.
"Today is a day of tests. Tests to determine your strength, aptitude, endurance…" he said as he waved a hand absently, "…among other things. These tests will decide who gets placed in what squad, with what other members, and also, who stays."
Jack turned around and started unlocking the gun-cabinets opposite the men. He swung them open to reveal rows upon rows of different firearms of varying shapes and sizes, but all a uniform black. Rifles, pistols, and submachine guns hung from metal brackets within.
"Sir? You said something about—"
"Speak up, soldier."
"Sir, what did you mean when you said 'who stays'?"
The constant jiggling of his keys were occasionally interrupted by metal lockers knocking against each other as he continued down the wall of weapons. "Who continues to live up to the ideals of being a Hound. Look around you, boys. The one beside you may no longer be when this day is done."
The men nervously glanced at one another.
"But enough of that." He turned and gestured to the wall of weapons. "For now, let's do an accuracy test. Pick up the nine-millimeter, each of you."
Genji's mind wandered as he stared blankly at Jack. He started when he realized his group moved to the front, and nervously picked at the weapon on the second shelf, careful to choose the one identical to the ones chosen around him. Stretching his arm out, he lifted the small weapon off the rack—a wave of nausea crashing into him immediately.
His vision swimming and chest heaving, Genji gritted his teeth as he struggled to retain composure. He shut his eyes. Tasting bile at the back of his mouth, Genji almost felt relieved that he hadn't eaten anything. Slowly, with senses returning, the nausea subsiding, he deliberately opened them.
The cyborg found himself not having moved an inch, his arms and legs locked in position. He tried to move them. They did. Genji glanced around. The recruits were too preoccupied handling their weapons to have noticed his episode. Despite himself, he found intrigued by the deftness and even grace as the soldiers slid parts and pieces of the weapons they held into each other, apart from each other, inspecting it carefully before returning it to its original state in a series of sure, practiced gestures. He looked down to the one nursed in his hands, before looking away abruptly, fighting down another wave of nausea.
"Spilt yourselves into four groups and line up at the booths," Jack barked, "no firearm gets discharged without my signal. I will not repeat this again and will not tolerate any mishaps. And so help me if I find a single gun not at the counters without its safety on."
Everyone except Genji nervously glanced down, double checking their weapons, trying to look discreet. They failed miserably. They quickly divided themselves up, and—
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
"Sir," a soldier replied hesitantly, seeing that no one else was going to, "where exactly is the range?"
Jack levelly held his gaze, his face without emotion as he turned back to the lockers and slammed his fist onto a button Genji hadn't noticed. His mouth twitched into a smirk as the wall adjacent to them spilt into three horizontal panels very slightly with the sound of escaping gas. Some men stepped back as the panels rotated outwards with an unsettlingly familiar mechanical, whirring noise, which stopped when the panels hinged themselves into flat planes.
Between them revealed a much longer room. It wasn't lit as brightly as the section they stood in, the lights dispersed between rails crossing the ceiling.
Jack chuckled as he surveyed the men, and shook his head. "You should see the looks on your faces. Never gets old." He turned and pushed another button, and with a shrill, metallic screech, four large sheets of paper, held up by metal hangers, slid from an opening in the wall onto the ceiling-mounted aluminum rails, before coming to a stop in the middle of the range.
From where he was, Genji could make out the minute numbers marked beside each circle which contained another, ending with a red dot in the middle. The number grew smaller in value the further out it was from the center.
He looked away from the target as Jack started speaking. "Take your shots as fast as possible. Your rating will be determined by the grouping you achieve at the end of two magazines against the total time you take to do so. The tighter your grouping, the better your score; but take too long to do it, your shots might as well be all over the place. Are we clear?"
"Yes, sir!" the group shouted in unison.
"Good. First row, step forward. Fire when ready. The timer starts on your first shot, ends on the last. Keep in mind, your time taken to reload is also factored in."
Genji watched the four soldiers at the counter unload their weapons at varying speeds, wincing internally each time they were discharged. The flash of the muzzle shone against their figures for the briefest moment like lightning, and an incredibly loud bang resonated within the room with each one. No one else seemed particularly bothered by it. A brief silence took the room as the four reloaded their pistols, the second one from the left dropping it in his haste. Soon after, the thunderous cacophony returned, and softened once again with lowered, smoking barrels, the one who dropped his ammunition being the last to finish.
The uppermost panel drew the eyes of all as it slowly rotated back into its original vertical state, and a bit more so it tilted down, facing the group. Red digits flashed on each one. They were screens.
The sheets of targets retreated nosily back into the crevice as Jack cleared his throat. "Not bad. Solid eights for all, except Private O'Malley. Keep your head up, soldier. These things happen. Just remember: it always pays to be slow and sure, instead of quick and hasty. Six is acceptable. Safety's back on. Back in line."
Genji watched closely as each man went to the front to take the test. He paid attention to their postures; how they held the weapon, and directed it. He tried to absorb it as much as he could, but he couldn't help but feel as uncertain as he had before.
Jack called each row forward quickly and efficiently, wasting no time, rarely giving brief comments.
"Our first ten." The commander nodded. "Where did you learn to reload like that, son?"
"The Alaskan mountain ranges with my family, sir." The soldier grinned. "We had little competitions every so often to see who could field-strip our weapons fastest, and also, who the quickest was to slam the clips back into 'em. I always won."
Jack looked critically down the range. "Grouping's impressive, but it could be better. Work on that. Well done, Private. Back in line."
He saluted and filtered to the back, the cyborg being pushed inexorably closer and closer to the front. Jack continued to dismiss each row with a simple nod, until—
"A two," the commander said flatly. The room was entirely silent save for soft snickering here and there, the singular scarlet digit seeming to bear down on the hunched shoulders of the recruit standing underneath it. "That's disgraceful, son. Fall back in."
The recruit turned to the back and strode quickly. He was cradling his firearm in both hands which trembled slightly, as if it was scorching his skin.
Jack watched him go, before eventually turning his attention back to the front of the columns, where Genji was now standing. "Next row, up the counters. Shimada, up here." He pointed at the ground in front of him.
Suppressing a groan, the cyborg paced quickly away from the now chattering mass and stood before the commander, stiff as a board.
"The rest of you, silence. Yes, the counters may continue on, no need to wait. This will take only a second. Shimada, turn around."
Genji turned around. All of a sudden, he felt his arms grow heavier as a small pressure asserted itself onto the back of his neck. Not only his arms. He was more sluggish, like a weight had been placed onto him. He resisted the urge to slouch.
"As much as I like filling out requisition forms, Shimada, I would prefer if you didn't accidentally damage anymore Overwatch property," Jack said behind him, "what I've just injected into you is a couple thousands of lines of code that should limit your mechanical strength to a more… normal capacity for exactly half an hour. How do you feel?"
"Slow."
"Don't worry, you won't get used to it. I imagine I would use this rarely."
The cyborg looked behind him, seeing Jack inspecting the strange baton-shaped contraption he bore, glowing from rings at both ends with one revealing a line of metallic teeth. "Still though, thousands of lines of code? You must have been built more secure than the Overwatch intelligence archives. Took Torbjörn a full week just to build the prototype, which nearly got issued until he found out it'd have the rather inconvenient side effect of terminating your respiratory functions too."
Genji gulped.
"Anyway, seeing how you haven't collapsed on me, I'd say you're good to go. Head up to the range." He patted Genji on the back before leaning into the radio on his shoulder and speaking into it. "He's fine. Send the stretcher back and re-station the response team." He paused. "Yes, I'm sure." He paused again, but rolled his eyes this time. "I wouldn't be much of a strike commander if I can't handle situations like this, now can I? I'm sure the most I have to worry about is insubordination, which I'm certain I'm more than equipped to manage." Clicking a button on the device, he turned back to see the cyborg staring at him. "You're wasting time, soldier."
Genji glanced at the door. "There were people outside? Because of me?"
"In case you haven't noticed, you're a bit of an anomaly, even for us. And that's saying a lot, because dealing with anomalies is what we do," the commander explained impatiently, "I mean, we have a talking ape taking care of our administrative processes. A talking ape." He shook his head. "The truth is, we don't quite know how to deal with you. But that's enough talk. The range, Shimada. If you please?"
Genji stepped up to the counters, closed his eyes, and tried his best to mimic the pose everyone else had been doing. He noticed that some of them held themselves ever so slightly different from one another, but there was a general uprightness that was present in each one. He drew himself up to full height, brought the weapon in front of him, and opened them.
Immediately, his vision started to swim as he looked down the iron sights. His stomach began to churn unpleasantly while his arms stayed resolute, coldly keeping the firearm level with his eyes. Trying his best to adjust his aim, he gently squeezed the trigger—only to find that he couldn't.
Squeeze. Nothing. Pull. Nothing either. With a start, Genji found that his arms and legs were locked up, cold and unmoving in contrast to the hot, heavy thundering of his heart.
The cyborg felt his throat seize up as the gun disappeared from in front of him. In its place, a pitch black darkness took his mind. His heart dropped. Have I gone blind? he thought.
The chatter of the soldiers faded into silence. The gunshots followed suit. Genji gasped when a tiny green flame suddenly burst into life, flickering at a distance. It did nothing to illuminate the space, burning softly against the veils of oblivion. He tried in vain to move his body, to reach and touch it. Genji didn't know why, but he wanted to. He needed to. It felt inexplicably important to him.
With a flash of white light and a deafening bang which shook his very soul, the noise and colors of reality slammed into the cyborg like a freight train, leaving his ears ringing with pain hammering into his temples.
"Shimada… Shimada!"
Genji rotated his neck and almost sighed in relief when his head actually moved. He saw that everyone was staring at him now, the other soldiers beside him already clicking their safety's back on.
"I know I said the timer starts on your first shot, but we ain't got all day," Jack said, glancing at his watch. "Finish up, soldier."
Turning back to the targets, Genji felt a strange disconnectedness as he pulled the trigger, again and again, listening to the bang which came with each one. When he heard the click of an empty chamber, he mechanically went through the motions of reloading his weapon before bringing it back up and repeating the process. He didn't watch to see where the bullets landed, if they did at all, for all he cared. He trained his eyes on the back of his hands as he focused on taking deep breaths, the pain in his temples slowly numbing over.
When he heard another click, his fingers of metal calmly turned the safety back on, before deliberately lowering the weapon.
Feeling a surreal mix of frustration and sadness, the cyborg found himself wishing that his arms would shake, that it would obey his heart in all its panic and anxiety. He wished that he could really touch the gun, despite knowing that it was in his hands, and to feel the metal, even when he knew it was cold. Arms like this didn't make him feel like he was responsible for what he did, like he wasn't a part of it. A nobody without a face operating controls that didn't belong to him.
Genji heard a soft whistle from behind him.
"A full ten, huh?" the commander said, sounding contemplative. "Not too shabby. Well done. To all of you. Put your pistols back where you found them and toss the empty magazines into that shelf. What are you waiting for? Yes, now." He paused. "No, Wolfe, that shelf. Pay attention. You're all dismissed for breakfast in the cafeteria. Return to the training hall where you've first gathered at eleven-hundred hours. Except for you, Shimada." He beckoned at the cyborg with a hand. "Come to me after you've put away the gun."
That drew a few more strange looks the cyborg's way. He took his time moving to the racks and stowed the firearm back onto them, vowing that he would never pick another one up again, if he had a choice.
Author's Notes:
So I severely underestimated the amount of schoolwork I would be assigned.
Turned out that the weekend between my internship ending and school starting served as a too brief respite, like holding your breath underwater for so long, coming up for a single gasp of air, before being shoved back down under. It's been extremely stressful, and easily my most difficult semester so far. Which makes sense, since it's the last one.
Less than a month till it ends though, and I'm still holding in there! I'm sorry for this unexpected hiatus, and I'll try to find the time to write this whenever I can.
Thanks for staying tuned. :)