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08:47 pm

Fic: Recruit
Title: Recruit
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender (Cyberpunk AU)
Characters: Hyo, Lanh (Dai Li OCs)
Rating: PG
Summary: Lanh wakes up after a raid and is surprised to be alive.
Notes: This takes place in the same universe as The Boy With the Steel Arm. I will be memeing this 'verse, but not for awhile.

The first thing Lanh was aware of was pain.

Every muscle in his body was sore; he'd been unconscious a long time. A sharper pain in his neck indicated the cause: he'd been hit with some kind of sedative.

That brought memory back in a flash, and Lanh lurched upright. His muscles screamed in protest and siezed up, and he tumbled from the bed--

--right into someone's arms.

"Take it easy, kid," said an unfamiliar voice. "You've been in cold sleep."

"What?"

Lanh tried to wriggle free, but the man tightened his grip and held him in place. "Careful. You've been out awhile. Keep jerking and you'll tear yourself apart."

He had a point.

The young man forced himself to relax, and carefully turned his head to see his.... captor? Savior? "How long was I out?"

Strangely, the man's grey eyes held no trace of pity-- or revulsion. "A month."

Lanh flinched. No wonder this guy was pinning him. Torn muscles and ligaments were no fun.

He paused.

The man was pinning him.

Lanh's eyes widened.

"What are you?"

The grey-eyed biomod -- only a biomod could have held Lanh down like this -- smiled. "I am Commander Hyo."

Slag. He'd been picked up by the Dai Li.

"Before you panic," the commander said calmly, "consider that you are still alive."

That was a very good point. They'd put him in cryostasis rather than kill him. Which was weird. Lanh was an illegal mod, less than human. By law he should have been killed.

But the Dai Li are the law...

"What do you want with me?" he asked, throat suddenly dry.

Commander Hyo smiled. "You have skills the Dai Li could use, boy. Killing you would be a waste."

Ah. From one handler to another. He should have known.

Firm fingers gripped his chin and turned him to face Hyo. "Make no mistake, boy. You will work hard with us, but you will be a person."

Lanh stared into the commander's grey eyes and his lined face, and remembered everything he'd been told about the Dai Li.

Makers of the law.

Superhuman.

Subhuman.

The real power of Ba Sing Se.

His eyes fell to the deep green uniform Hyo wore. It was a working man's uniform, of sturdy duracloth that could take a pounding and a half and show little sign of wear. On the left breast of the uniform was the emblem of the Dai Li -- an emerald green circle rimmed in gold, with a small gold square in the centre.

Men who wore that emblem were human. Commodities, but human ones. He wouldn't be denied food if he didn't make his quota, he wouldn't be thrashed if someone caught him. (He hadn't been caught in years).

But Lanh was an illegal biomod, and this was too good for one such as he.

"What are you offering? Sir," he added as an afterthought.

The commander of the Dai Li smiled, and looked years younger. "Two years of training. Your room and board is paid for by the work you do as a trainee. After that, you will be considered an agent of the Dai Li."

Lanh stared at him. He had to be lying.

Hyo shook his head. "Boy, do you really think we'd go to the expense of keeping you in cryo for a month if we didn't intend to make you one of us?"

The older man had a point.

And hell, even if he was lying, it was still better than what he'd had. "All right," Lanh said. "I'm in."

Current Location: My bed
Current Mood: cheerful
Tags: au: cyberpunk, character: hyo, character: lanh, fandom: avatar, fanfic

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