Chapter Text
Hopping through an open window, Valkyrie moved silently across the deserted office. She scanned the room, searching for any potentially hidden access points. Most people would struggle in the near pitch-black room; however, she was implanted with experimental night vision optics. Her head quickly snapped towards the edge of an access point, poking out behind a desk against the far wall. Gliding across the office and pushing the desk aside silently, she promptly began the breach protocol.
An innocuous office building with military-grade ICE would’ve aroused suspicions in anyone, but the FIA had specific intel that the building was a front for an Arasaka financial network. The corp had held its banking division close to its chest for nearly a century, with the randomly generated ciphers for an executive override command split among several locations across the globe. The objective was simple - slip a backdoor into the building’s network, allowing the FIA to access this piece of the cipher undetected. Within moments, the ICE had been pierced and the program planted. It was a quick and easy first op.
She heard a faint scuff of a shoe as she withdrew her personal link. She wasn’t alone. Diving behind a desk with cat-like grace, Valkyrie held her breath, not wanting to draw the attention of the mystery figure. This op depended on discretion, and any bodies could potentially jeopardize everything. However, if push came to shove, Valk was more than capable of defending herself. Eventually, the footsteps began to recede, and within moments she was easing open the window and slipping out. The instant her foot hit the open ground, the world froze.
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Reed pried off the BD wreath. V had been implanted with a braindance scroller, allowing any missions to be archived and studied. It had proven especially handy when it came to reconnaissance.
“Wish she had a BD scroller before.”
Meredith’s lecherous comment surfaced before being dissolved in an instant. She seemed hellbent on referencing her and V’s… Reed wasn’t sure if ‘relationship’ was the right word. Her and V’s history . Perhaps she knew how uncomfortable it made him.
Setting the wreath on a nearby table, he grabbed his datapad and pulled up the project documentation.
Myers had begun ramping up her efforts against Arasaka. She appeared to be building towards something big - Reed just wasn’t sure what that was yet. He suspected that she wanted to reclaim the Free States - her loss in the Unification War years prior had been a black spot in her administration. His eyes glazed over some nonsense report about Saburo Araska - he had been dead for over a year, so why should he care?
“Fuck…” Reed muttered to himself, dragging his hand across his face. He was already behind on reviewing V’s performances, and Myers was beginning to grow impatient with him dragging his feet. Sighing heavily, he inserted the next shard into the wreath.
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Reed had resigned himself to an evening of watching the mission equivalents of watching paint dry. It was only as he reached the last shard, that he faltered. It was well past 1 in the morning, and he wanted nothing more than to finish up, shower, and sink into his bed. But something about this shard in particular made the hair on the back of his neck shoot up. Quickly banishing his apprehension, he slotted it into the wreath and began the scroll.
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Valkyrie was sitting in a deserted train car, watching a nearby couple sit down out of the corner of her eye. The familiarity of the situation made him nauseous, and he knew the feeling was his and not Valk’s. She never experienced any emotions while out in the field. Or ever. She always managed to keep a level head and take steady breaths. Not wanting to get distracted, he focused on the couple. They were both Japanese, maybe mid-20s. Valkyrie’s assignment was to assassinate both of them, as they were reportedly major figures in Arasaka’s cybernetics manufacturing division, and retrieve a shard with documentation on a classified Mantis Blade prototype.
The woman laid her head on her partner’s shoulder, fatigue evident in her posture. The man, deep in his screamsheet, was oblivious to Valkyrie easing out of her seat and sliding a suppressed pistol out of her jacket. Lining up a shot at the base of his skull, she squeezed the trigger once, before flitting to the woman with superhuman speed and planting a bullet in an identical spot as the man’s. An unnatural silence fell over the cabin.
Within seconds, it was split by the sound of a baby’s cries. Peeling the woman’s body back revealed an infant swaddled in a mint green blanket that was now soaked with blood. No no no… Just take the shard and go , prayed Reed. However, in the back of his mind, he knew she wouldn’t. Confirming his fears, Valkyrie raised her pistol and centered it between the infant’s eyes.
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Reed threw the wreath off as he began dry heaving. Jesus fucking Christ … he thought to himself. He’d seen a lot of shit in his life and even participated in some of them. But nothing could compare to what he’d just witnessed. He had to remind himself that she was still the same person who had been upset at Slider's death, and when he and Alex killed the Cassel twins. But was she? The V he knew had refused to kill someone when another option was present. But Valkyrie? She had just executed three people, one being a child no older than 2 months like it was another day that ended in -y. He remembered chastising her for her attitude toward killing, wondering how she managed as a mercenary with such an unorthodox way of operating.
He felt his throat begin to constrict and his knuckles tighten. Struggling to his feet, Reed quickly trudged out of the lab towards his quarters. As his vision tunneled, V’s fury at the killing of Aurore and Aymeric flashed across his mind.
“It is a game, your fuckin’ spy game they weren’t playin’! They were innocent!”
At the time, he’d focused solely on the latter sentence, challenging their innocence. However, as her cry echoed in his head, her real meaning began to take shape. V meant they were innocent of the elaborate web of treachery and murder that had been the rescue of So Mi. To the Cassels, it had just been a sale of access codes. They were unaware of the execution that awaited them until it was too late.
His foot banged into the frame of his bed. He hadn’t realized he had reached his room. Releasing a breath he didn't know he was holding, Reed fell into bed - he wasn't even going to bother with a shower. Within moments, he was unconscious. However, he would not get any meaningful rest.
He was back in that godforsaken train. Except he wasn’t ‘him’, he was V. Paralyzed with terror, he watched helplessly as she ruthlessly killed the couple again. However, their faces had changed into a pair of hauntingly familiar figures. The man had a face that Reed had seen falling asleep countless times, accompanied by tales of a long-gone country. The woman had a face that Reed had seen whenever he struggled with his homework or had any kind of question.
“Mom…? Dad…?” croaked Reed, unsure of how his voice was coming from V. Looking down, he saw that he was a young boy, kneeling in a puddle of blood. His hands shaking uncontrollably, he let out a scream echoed by decades of pain.
Surging awake, Reed had a thin sheen of sweat coating his brow and tears prickling the corners of his eyes. With a hoarse cry on his lips, Reed focused on taking deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He hadn’t thought of his parents in years, compartmentalizing his trauma until it sat locked in the deep recesses of his mind. As all that pain came pouring out unexpectedly, he did something he hadn’t allowed himself to do since he was little - he began to cry.