The Shadow of Sirius

[Crysis]

-810AS

He either aced this exam, or had failed it with a price he was going to pay with his life. It had been two years since the exam, an ordinary day sitting in the courtyard enjoying a snack, staring up into the vast expanse of blue in the sky, everything turned dark. He had a sack pulled over his head and was restrained and cuffed, he attempted to kick and scream but no one was going to move a muscle, who did he know here on a personal level? Nobody? He was carried off somewhere he was uncertain of, he had lost his bearings and was thrown into the back of a freighter, some other figures lay wriggling along his side.

"Hey?! Anybody else here?! Its LD33C!" the voice went off into a slight cough as he gasped for breath.

"Yea, yea, I can see, they’ve snatched eight of us, knocked the sack of my head when they tossed me in!" said another voice on Reiner’s right.

"Aaaaaa! What’s going on?! Help!?" came a whimpering cry from behind Reiner.

"Shut up!" This was the voice of the one with the eyes in the room, "Orite, there’s eight of us, like I said… Now, we’re definitely in the back of a freighter. Brilliant! Again?! Really, do they not get tired, remain calm guys there’s no use struggling, we’re being transferred again, standard procedure", he was wiser than the others, he had authority, or at least he was screwed on a little tighter above the shoulders.

Reiner remained quiet, the next thing he remembers was the clanking of the opening metal doors of the freighter and with a swift bump on the back of the head out of nowhere, lost from the conversation on the outside and sounds of engines, he awoke in a medical infirmary, wired up to monitors with beeping sounds and flashing lights taking information and scanning him by the second. A nurse appeared through the curtains.

"Your awake, perfect, LD25… Please remain on the bed until the lights turn off, it should only take half an hour or so, when it does so, everything shall release itself and return to its allocated position, remain calm and when it is complete make your way down the hall and to the left, there everything shall be explained and you will be able to enjoy your meal… you must all be so tired, I hate how they deal with this procedure!" the woman didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the method in which they were dealing with us nor what they were doing, however she was accommodating and informative and when she was done left quietly as if she’d never entered to begin with.

Within the hour, the lights dimmed, the beeping came to a halt and all of the cables retracted to their original monitor and machine, Reiner arose from the bed, he was still dressed the same, he felt a lump on his right pectoral close to the collarbone, it felt solid, he felt perfect, revitalized, however he was very confused. As the nurse instructed he walked down the hall, everything in these places seemed to be white, a white scheme of purity on everything, it gave it a highly sophisticated touch. Reiner opened the door to the right, beyond them there were the other eight, chosen from what it seems, sitting on sofas surrounding a hologram pad. One of the older children on the sofa signalled Reiner over and motioned him to take a seat and listen patting a hand on the seat and pointing his index finger to his ear.

The hologram appeared, visualizing to full opacity as it fuzzed in and out of function. A very hard faced, battle-weathered man looked on at the faces of every individual in the room, and we looked back, in total silence."Konichiwa my children, you are all definitely wondering what you are doing here? Why you? What is going on? Have we done something wrong? I ask you all to remain calm, you are now in the Emperors Elite Shadow Squadron, this complex is simply known as base ‘Kōtei shadō chūtai’(Emperors Shadow Squadron). You eight, have been hand selected from your exams, we have chosen you… You are all aware that you are now developing, we will build on this here, and everything that goes on here is for the greater good of the empire… You serve the Emperor, You shall be his Elite, his assassins, His shadows of the night! Tonight you shall be briefed, you shall spend the next six years in this institution, and you shall leave as the most honourable, deadly and secret squadron in the Empires arsenal, Understood?!"

So we were to be the Emperors Elite Assassins, now that’s doing some serious dirty work. No one spoke a word, everyone just nodded, their eyes encaptivated by the hologram, as it dispersed, we all looked at each other and conversation broke out slowly and escalated quickly into a light roaring of kids, looking for answers. Men entered the room from a door where the three sofas broke the square and approached them all, directing them to their new sleeping quarters, here they each had their own room, once again, with the basic necessities and surprisingly enough, a change of colour scheme, black and purple seemed much more fitting for this dark and mysterious enclave.

The next six years were to be intense; specialized assassin training, severely complex software problem solving and combat pressure engineering training was to be taken on, on a weekly basis alongside disciplinary studies and uniform work during free time, they were not training them, they were building killing machines.


-816AS

D-day, after all the hard training and tedious exercises, examinations, tests, beatings, disciplining and epic ordeal which seemed to have become their lives to date came down to this. The ‘Inpei no Shuraudo’ the Shroud of Concealment, the final test of their abilities which allowed them to prove, to its full extent, the worth of what had become their lives. LD33C approached Reiner just before they were being summoned from their rooms, his bedroom door slid open;

"Oi! LD25 is it?"

"Yes" nodded Reiner.

"Listen, I’m not saying I like you, but if I were to take my chances alongside anybody in here well… Anyway, I overheard the guards talking about drop points and knowing your location on the map clicks, so on dropping just stay put, we could facilitate this, after all…" He was interrupted.

"No, no, I can’t h…" Reiner tried to squeeze out that he wanted no part in the plot.

The older boy approached shoved Reiner back with his open hand onto his bed and stared over him. "Listen to me you idiot! Just trust me! I thought you were the only other one with some brains, you can wait or you can run, your choice… We have to work as a team despite what they say, I’m tired of this sh… and if they don’t think I remember every second of what they took me from when I was just a little one, they’ve got it all wrong…" His voice had changed, it now had a deeper man’s tone, the teen which walked in at fourteen was now twenty years of age, a lot had changed, Reiner now stood at six foot, aged eighteen, abducted aged four.