Desha's Reno of the Turks Fan Fiction

Chapter 12: The Underwater Lab

He had to forcibly remind himself to fucking breathe.

Plunging into the icy water was a shock, even after a week of repeated ice baths back at headquarters. He’d never really gotten used to that sudden chill that engulfed him completely, no matter how many times Ashland had made him do it. It was terrifying and disorienting and his first instinct was to bolt back through the little opening in the bottom of the submarine… back to the safety and warmth of the vehicle, rather than stay one second longer in the water.

After a few seconds, though, he adjusted to the cold somewhat, and was able to think more clearly. Bright lights shone out into the darkness of the ocean bottom, towards his destination. Reno double-checked his tether before starting towards the buried research lab. As he swam, he was joined by other denizens of deep. The little silvery fish he’d seen from the underwater walkway flitted past, their scales shimmering in the bright floodlights. He reached out for one, only for it to dart quickly away from his fingertips, the entire school changing direction in unison to evade their harasser.

He left the fish alone and moved on, making his way towards the narrow opening that was the first goal of his short swim. The lab was situated over a small crevasse in the sea bed. The landslide that had buried it had cut off access, but the more recent slide had opened up about a foot-wide gap into the crack in the planet… which in turn, led beneath the structure itself. That was the only way in or out, and as he drew closer, he could see that it was going to be a tight squeeze, even by his standards of “tight”.

On the bright side, though, everything seemed pretty secure. One of his biggest worries had been the damn opening collapsing on him before he was through it. Reno slid out of his air tank’s shoulder straps and pushed it in ahead of him. It was much too narrow for him to wear it. According to the recon data, he’d have to go about seven feet before it opened up into a larger chamber. He took a moment to steady himself and wedged himself into the space.

It wasn’t exactly easy. He didn’t want to disturb things any more than he had to. It might have been secure… but this place had been buried not that long ago. He had no desire to push his luck. His journey was a slow, steady process of moving the tank forward a little ways, and then carefully wriggling himself after it, moving the tank, wriggling, moving the tank… until he fell into a rhythm. He had a momentary scare when his tether got hung up on some rocks near the entrance, and for a few seconds he was worried he’d have to backtrack, untangle the damned thing, and start all over. Thankfully, a few sharp tugs pulled it free.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he popped out into a wide chamber. The lights from the sub were virtually useless, serving only to illuminate the crack he’d come through, and little more. He eased his air tank back on and unclipped the flashlight from his waist, turning it on and flooding the chamber with pale yellow light.

Another several meters brought him to the first of the lab’s support columns, and from there, his path was an easy one. He kicked his feet, propelling himself upwards towards the airlock on the underside of the structure. Turning the handle took some effort, but the door popped free with an audible hiss, and he was able to push it inward. Reno hoisted himself up, into the abandoned lab and finally was able to breath a sigh of relief.

“I’m in,” he said, in the darkness of the airlock.

“Good,” Tseng’s voice replied, in his ear, “Let’s make this quick, shall we?”

---

Rude leaned back against the wall of the elevator, arms crossed over his chest, as it descended towards the Sector 0 train station beneath the Shinra Building. The morning briefing had started late… and that meant that he was late getting underway to his next meeting of the day. Hopefully the trains weren’t running behind, as well. He liked to be punctual when meeting informants. Especially new ones.

Especially new ones in Wall Market. Most of the Turks’ previous connections in the sector had been old friends of Tres… and though his late mentor had done an admirable job of introducing the younger Turk to them, many hadn’t been quite as willing to trust Rude as they had a fellow-slum dweller. As a result, they’d lost a lot of intelligence in the area after Tres’ death. Rude had been doing his best to build that back up for months now.

Initially, he’d considered appealing to Lira… but Reno had rather adamantly nixed that idea almost as soon as Rude had run it past him out of fear for her safety. And though he very much would have liked to have had her on board, he understood the redhead’s reluctance to let him ask for her help. She was as good as family to the younger Turk, and even Rude had to admit that he wouldn’t want someone he was that close to working as an informant. Besides… Wall Market was a busy place, and a lot of people were looking to make some quick gil. He had plenty of other potential candidates.

Like the one he was meeting this morning. In fact, this particular informant was one of Don Corneo’s entourage and had the potential to be extremely valuable indeed… if it didn’t turn out to be too good to be true. Rude wasn’t naïve enough to think that his luck was that good. Corneo’s men were well-paid and extremely loyal. For one to defect like this… well… Tres had once worked for Corneo himself, so it wasn’t exactly unheard of, but Rude was understandably cautious. It was too great an opportunity, though, to err on the side of safety and not take the meeting.

A part of him wished Reno had been available to come with him, however. He wouldn’t have minded a little backup in Corneo’s territory, and Reno knew the place at least as well as he did by now. As he stepped out into the station, he wondered how his friend’s assignment was going. Neither Reno nor Tseng had bothered coming into the office this morning. They’d left for Junon early, and by now the redhead had to be in the lab.

Oh, yes… Rude knew all about the lab. He wasn’t technically supposed to, but… nothing stayed secret around him for long these days. Reno hadn’t seemed at all surprised when the bald Turk had known exactly what his mysterious training was for. The files had been classified well above Rude’s security clearance, which normally would have made them inaccessible… but apparently the Board had also designated them as need-to-know, and that gave him a bit of a loophole. As the de facto head of intelligence for the Turks, Rude “needed to know” by default. That classification automatically granted him access to the files. From there, it hadn’t been too hard to piece together what Reno was being sent to do, particularly after he’d reviewed Ashland’s personnel file, as well.

The next train to Sector 5 arrived at the platform, and Rude hurried to scan his pass and step on board. As he settled into a seat, he glanced down at his watch. So long as there were no delays between here and catching the train to the slums over in Five, he should just make his meeting on time.

---

The air inside the lab was cold. Not as cold as the water had been, but Reno couldn’t help but shudder as he stripped off the hood that had protected his head from the ocean water and tossed it into the pile with his fins and mask and gloves. He picked up his light and looked around.

There didn’t seem to be any major damage… at least not in this section. Everything looked to be intact… nothing was leaking. It was just dark and deserted and cold. And more than a little eerie. He snickered softly to himself. It reminded him just a little too much of a movie he’d seen last week.

“What’s wrong?” Tseng’s voice asked over his earpiece.

“Heh… nothin’. Just wonderin’ when the bloodthirsty alien’s gonna jump outta the air vents at me…” he replied.

“Reno… focus,” his mentor chastised him… though the redhead distinctly heard a loud snort of laughter from Ashland in the background. “Remember… the drives with the research data are your top priority. Anything else is secondary.”

“Yeah, boss… I know. Get in, get whatever shit I can find, get out. I got this. Don’t worry.”

Now that his feet were back, safely, on dry land – in a manner of speaking – his prior concerns about the mission had been pushed to the back burner. Sure, he still had to get back to the sub eventually… but for now, he was in much more familiar territory. Dark, empty corridors… that he could handle.

He moved slowly along one long hallway, footsteps echoing far too loud for his taste in the still air, and paused outside of a door labeled “Power Room”.

“Hey, boss? Whaddya s’ppose the odds are of the power still workin’ down here? Any point in me tryin’ to turn on the lights?”

“I see no harm in trying… though I don’t know that you’ll have much luck. The facility has been offline for years.”

Reno pushed open the door and shone his light around the cramped room. The far wall looked to be a control panel of sorts, with lines of switches. As he drew nearer, he saw that they were labeled with what looked to be the various names of sections of the lab.

“Might actually not be such a long shot,” Ash’s voice cut in, “I’ll admit, I’ve been out of the loop for a good long time, here, but back in the day, if a facility like this was evacuated, part of the procedure was to kill the power. Both to prevent electrical damage and to make sure that there was some emergency juice left in the batteries for a recovery op.”

“Well… here goes nothin’, then…” he responded, and flipped the switch labeled “Airlocks”. Nothing happened. He stepped back and peered out into the hallway, looking down the passage in the direction he’d come from. Everything remained pitch black. He shook his head. “Heh… Figures. Just my luck I’m stuck wanderin’ around in the dark.”

“You turn the mains back on first?” Ashland asked.

“Umm…” Reno stammered, scanning the labels on the panel, “I’m not seein’ a ‘Mains’ on here…”

“Big panel full of toggle switches? Labels for the different parts of the lab?” he queried.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m lookin’ at.”

“Check the wall above the panel. It’s a fat red switch… sometimes more than one… usually with a big-ass Caution sign next to it. Might be protected by a cover.”

Reno shifted his flashlight upwards and looked for the switch, but all that was there were a bunch of dials and dark screens. When he looked to his right, however, he spotted a little metal door at eye level with a yellow and black caution sticker right over the word “Main Power”.

“Think I found it,” he said, grinning, as he opened it. Inside, as Ashland had described, were three fat red switches. He flipped the first one on, and jumped slightly as the panel beside him buzzed loudly and lit up. The second had much the same effect, except this time the lights in the hallway, as well as overhead, flickered to life. “Heh… Hell yeah. Now we’re in business…” he said, flipping the third switch… which promptly erupted in a shower of sparks. He yelped and literally jumped back several feet from it.

“Reno?!” Tseng’s voice prodded, the note of concern more than evident.

“I’m fine…” Reno muttered, glaring at the panel. “Stupid thing just tried to electrocute me, that’s all…”

“Probably a short somewhere… Did it kill everything?” Ashland inquired.

“Nah… I still got lights in here.” He turned back to the other panel and started flipping the rest of the switches. Most of the indicator lights next to them lit up when he did so. About a third of them stayed dark. “I’m not exactly an expert on this electrical shit… but I’m guessin’ I got power to most of the lab now… ‘cept whatever that last main switch was s’pposed to turn on. Eh… good enough.”

He clicked his flashlight off and ventured back out into the hallway.

---

The bar in Wall Market was… surprisingly busy for the time of day. Not packed, but there was certainly a steady flow of customers. Rude had settled himself at a table in one of the back corners. Apparently he wasn’t the only one running a little late today. His contact had yet to arrive… and he vaguely wondered if he’d decided to back out.

If would hardly be a shock if he had. The guy was planning on turning snitch on Corneo, after all… and Corneo ran this place. You double crossed him, and you didn’t just quietly disappear. You got made an example of. Painfully.

The Turk sighed softly. He’d had a feeling this might happen. Even for the pay he was offering, ending up on Don Corneo’s shitlist wasn’t a risk most people would be willing to take. He decided to give the guy ten more minutes. If he didn’t show, he was heading back topside.

In the meantime, he leaned back in his chair, and drank his tonic water… grimacing slightly at the taste. He wasn’t fond of it on its own. Too bitter. But he wasn’t about to order a whiskey while he was on the clock, either, and bartenders tended to frown on their patrons occupying space without buying anything.

His mind drifted momentarily to Reno’s plan to cook for him in a couple of days. He’d decided that it couldn’t possibly go any worse than the last time. Him ending up with the planet’s worst case of food poisoning was a fluke. He was even kind of starting to look forward to it. Near death experience aside, the food last time hadn’t actually tasted bad. And if the redhead really had been practicing, like he’d claimed to have been, this could actually turn out to be an interesting meal.

Maybe his friend would even start to get into the hobby. It would be nice to have a fellow foodie around.

He snorted softly as he laughed to himself as soon as the thought crossed his mind. Reno was never going to be a foodie. He’d literally eat anything you put in front of him. Rude was pretty sure the word “picky” wasn’t even in his vocabulary. Still… if he was starting to becoming even vaguely interested in cooking, it would certainly give them something new in common. There wasn’t anyone on the planet he enjoyed spending time with more than the redhead. The thought of combining his favorite pastime with his favorite person was… appealing.

And… maybe if this little culinary experiment worked out, next time they could invite Cissnei to join them.

He’d been trying to ignore it – his last relationship had gone down in flames rather spectacularly, after all – but the better he got to know Cissnei, the harder it got. The plain and simple truth was that… he liked her. As more than just a friend.

And it was very clear that, despite his efforts to pretend not to notice her flirting for over a year now, she still had an interest in him… he just hadn’t quite talked himself into acting on it yet. A part of it – a big part – was that, if things turned out the same way they had with Margaret, he wasn’t sure how they were going to handle having to continue working together.

He was starting to think that the risk might be worth it, though. Cissnei was funny… sweet… pretty… smart… and she could kick his ass six ways from Friday, if she wanted to. Best of all, he would never have to worry about her making him choose between having her in his life, and remaining friends with the redhead, the way Margaret had. She loved Reno as much as he did.

He smirked slightly at that thought. She and Reno really did get along wonderfully. Maybe a little too well, sometimes. He remembered an assignment about six months back, in Nibelheim. There had been an incident between some of the staff at the Shinra manor and the townsfolk. He’d been on assignment in Cosmo Canyon at the time, making him closest Turk to the little mountain town, and so he’d been sent on ahead to try and quell the tension… or at least keep it from boiling over before more help arrived from Midgar.

When he’d arrived… well, it hadn’t quite been the emergency he’d envisioned, by that point. The two primary instigators had already settled their differences the old fashioned way. The pair had gotten drunk, beaten the hell out of each other, drunk some more, and passed out in the town square. All that had been left for Rude to do was pay the bar tab out of the company expense account. They were the best of friends by the following afternoon… once they’d sobered up and recovered from their mutual hangovers.

But, of course, by the time he’d learned that the two drunken idiots had been taken home to sleep it off, it was a little late for his backup to turn around and head home. The staff at the manor had made the situation sound so dire that Veld had dispatched Cissnei, Reno, and Tseng. The Turk leader hadn’t been at all pleased to learn that it was essentially a false alarm. Plus, because they’d each been pulled off of their own assignments, their arrival in Nibelheim had ended up being quite late at night. Rude still wasn’t entirely sure how he’d managed to sleep through the sound of a helicopter landing…

… but he’d done just that. The next thing he knew, he was being awakened by furniture flying across the room, unearthly moans that seemed to echo throughout the entire mansion, and a dark figure in the corner holding an axe. Still half asleep, and thus thoroughly convinced that the place was haunted and/or inhabited by an axe murderer, he’d made a rather hasty exit from his bedroom… only to run straight into Reno laughing hysterically in the foyer and Tseng sitting calmly in a nearby chair, doing his best not to look amused by the other Turks’ antics. Cissnei had joined them moments later… still brandishing the axe, along with a sphere of Gravity materia.

From then on, it was decided that it would become customary to make rookies spend the night alone in the “haunted house” on their first mission to Nibelheim.

Rude chuckled softly at the memory as he finished off his tonic water and looked at his watch again. He sighed. The guy was a no-show. What a waste of a morning. Reluctantly, he stood up and headed for the door. He wasn’t really surprised that his would-be informant had gotten cold feet, but he was disappointed. Having someone on the inside with Corneo’s organization would have really been a godsend. The guy was a pain in the ass at the best of times, and even Tres had sometimes struggled to keep tabs on his activity.

But, it was what it was. Rude made his way out onto the street, leaving the little bar behind him as he headed back towards the train station. Hopefully he could still salvage at least some of the morning… though by the time he got back to the office, it would likely be nearing lunch time. If so, maybe it would be more prudent to simply swing by one of his favorite cafes for an early meal, and then make the best use possible of the afternoon. Just because his informant had ghosted him didn’t mean that his plate wasn’t full. He had plenty to keep him occupied while he waited for the next opportunity to secure a new avenue of information in Wall Market.

That thought in mind, he rounded a corner into a short alley, taking the quickest route to the station. He’d only taken a few step down the narrow passage when a something struck the back of his skull with a sharp crack and everything went dark.

---

“Ya know… if Shinra ever wanted to get into the movie business, this place would make a great set for a nice sci-fi horror flick,” Reno snickered as he extracted the last of the data drives from its housing.

“I suspect they might have some difficulty getting the requisite equipment and personnel down there,” Tseng’s voice replied in his ear. “How much progress have you made?”

The redhead consulted the list he’d been given, and checked off the drives.

“Well… I got the research data… and I picked up that prototype cutter they wanted on the way over here from the power room. Fucker’s heavy as shit, by the way. Gonna have a whole lotta fun hauling that thing back with me. It looks like I can get into most of the individual labs and the staff quarters, but the specimen room’s locked down tight, and there’s no power in there.”

“Don’t waste your time trying, then,” his mentor replied. “Go after the remaining equipment on the list. If you can find those in a timely manner, see to the low priority items as well, but if not…”

“I know what ‘low priority’ means, Boss,” he laughed. “I’ll do a quick sweep of the staff quarters, but I’m not on a fuckin’ scavenger hunt down here.”

“Good. I don’t want you in there any longer than you need to be.”

Reno smirked slightly.

“Yeah… you’ve mentioned that a few times, sir…”

That was at least the third time Tseng has said that to him just since they’d left this morning. The man had developed a protective streak a mile long… particularly where either the rookies or his protege were concerned… but he was usually far calmer than this. Of course, he was also usually in a position where he could come to the rescue if need be. He had no issues sending his youngest Turks off into danger… but he had a tendency to fret until they returned. Reno had a feeling that being so far separated from him was wearing on his mentor’s nerves a bit.

He’d been that way for… well… since his sister’s death, really. And the redhead didn’t begrudge him his concern one bit. Tseng had lost a lot that day, and it had taken him a very long time to recover from it. Reno wasn’t entirely certain he’d ever completely forgive himself, to be honest. Some wounds just cut too deep.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Tseng was… warmer, now. Less uptight. Oh, he was still the disciplined and polished professional he always had been, but nowadays he was a little less hesitant to let people see his softer side on occasion. And though Reno desperately wished that it hadn’t taken almost destroying his friend and mentor to get there, he liked the change and was pretty sure the others did, too.

Reno finished securing the drives in their waterproof container and then picked up the rather hefty cutter he’d recovered. No sense in lugging the whole mess all over the damn lab. He’d haul this shit over to the airlock, and then go check the other areas he could access.

It didn’t take him long to drop off his first load, and then he was off to the individual research labs. As he rounded a corner, though, he stopped short, freezing in place, eyes locked onto the shadows at the darkened end of the hallway. He swore that he’d seen something move. He remained there, utterly still, ears straining for the faintest sound… eyes locked on the darkness, searching for even the hint of movement.

After a long few moments of seeing and hearing nothing, he finally dared breathe again, and swore softly to himself.

“Reno? Is something wrong?” Tseng queried.

“Tch… nah, it’s nothing, Boss. Just been watching too much shitty horror lately. Imagination’s runnin’ away with me… Oughta just stick to porn when I can’t sleep,” he chuckled, and continued on down the corridor. Still… the fine hairs on the back of his neck continued to prickle with the uneasy sensation of being watched and he couldn’t help but occasionally glance down at that dark area every now and then until he finally slipped into the first of the research labs…

~end chapter 12~