Chapter One | The Reunification

Shawn struggled against the restraints binding him to the metal table. He was naked, with the exception of his boxers, and so the metal of the table chilled him to the bone. He cried out again, screaming at his assailants to let him go. Only the equipment lining the walls of the room answered him.

He lied back down on the table, fighting to hold back tears. He couldn't let them see that he was scared. Because that was the truth. He was scared. Scared of what might happen to him, scared of what happened to Katherine, and, most of all, scared to have to find out what he would have to do in order to live.

The door to the room was pushed open and Shawn shot up, at least as much as the restraints would allow. A man wearing a white lab coat over a blue dress shirt and dark brown dress pants stepped towards him. A mask covered his mouth and nose. Large round glasses sat in front of cold green eyes. The man combed through his wavy blond hair with a hand before stopping in front of the table.

"Hello, Shawn. You must be wondering⎯"

"Why am I here? Who are you? What have you done with my mother?" Shawn screamed at the man.

The man looked unfazed. "All in good time, Shawn. I promise. Before we can get to any of that, I need to check your vitals. Is that okay?" Shawn said nothing, staring at the man in contempt. The man took this as consent and affixed the stethoscope slung around his neck to his ears. He began to place it on Shawn's chest when Shawn jumped at him, startling the man.

The man scowled. "That's how you want to play it? Fine." The man replaced the stethoscope around his neck. "Let's see how much fight you have left after you're stuck in here for a few more hours." The man turned on his heel and walked towards the door.

"Get me out of here! Let me go! Let me find my mother!" Shawn screamed. The man turned his head towards Shawn again, shut off the lights, and went back through the door. As the door slid shut, Shawn slumped down on to the table once more. He knew he should be even more terrified now, but the darkness and the hum of the machines gave him a sort of quiet comfort. He closed his eyes and tried to prepare for whatever happened next.

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It was several hours later that the door opened again. The lights were turned back on, and if Shawn hadn't kept his eyes closed, he probably would have been blinded. He heard footsteps approaching and when they stopped in front of him, he opened his eyes. The same man from before stood in front of him, fixing him with an unfeeling stare. "Ready to begin?", he asked.

Shawn again said nothing. The man took the stethoscope from around his neck and placed it on Shawn's chest again. He noted Shawn's breathing on his clipboard and placed the stethoscope back around his neck. He walked to a cabinet on the wall, opened a drawer, and took out a blood pressure cuff. He measured Shawn's blood pressure, noted it on the clipboard and but the cuff back in the drawer. The next half hour progressed much like this, with the man pulling out different pieces of medical diagnostic equipment and noting the results. The man finally put the last piece of equipment away and walked back to the table. "You did well. Now we can finally move forward," the man said calmly.

"Move forward with what? Are you going to kill me?" Shawn retorted.

"No. At least as long as you're cooperative," the man replied. He turned back towards the door and began walking. As he got to the door, he pressed a button on the wall. Shawn's restraints snapped open. Without thinking, Shawn leapt up from the table and ran after the man. The man, surprised by Shawn's sudden burst of speed, tried to close the door, but Shawn got there first. He wrestled the door open and slammed into the man, knocking him to the ground. The man tried to get up, but before he could Shawn jumped on top of him. Shawn grabbed the stethoscope and tightened it around the man's neck. "Where am I?!"Shawn screamed. "Where is my mother? What is this place? Why did you bring me here?"

The man sputtered as he tried to breathe. "KATANA," was the only word he could squeeze out. "What is KATANA?" Shawn screamed again. The man tried to answer again, but as his mouth opened, blood started pouring from his nose and he collapsed, dead. "What the f⎯" was all Shawn could get out before another set of doors further down the hallway he pushed the man into burst open. A man dressed in the same dark-clad combat suit as the men who had kidnapped him ran down the hallway. He raised his gun as he sprinted towards Shawn and ordered him to put his hands above his head.

Shawn did as he was told and the man put his hands forcefully behind his back and put zip tie cuffs around his wrists. The man hauled him back into the sterile, white room and threw him to the floor. The man looked at Shawn and sneered. "That man's death is on your hands. He had a family, and you decided that was worth nothing."

"What? I didn't⎯"

"Save it!," the man yelled. He turned back towards the door. "You've earned yourself another few hours in solitary. Enjoy." The man walked through the door and slammed it shut.

Shawn cursed at himself. He was this close to escaping, to finding answers, and it was ripped away. Now he had to wait even longer, and hope he hadn't just signed his own death warrant.

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Even more hours passed. The only sound Shawn could hear was the whirring of all the equipment that surrounded him. Shawn tried to get up and look around for something he could use to free himself, but all of the cabinets were locked. He slumped down against the wall, his mind racing. He had to come up with a plan to get himself out of here. He needed answers. He needed to find Katherine.

His stomach growled and he licked his lips, trying to wet his dry mouth. He needed food and water, too. Which might mean more cooperation for the time being. He scowled, annoyed at the thought that he would have to be here even longer. Still though, this was his only option, being bound and locked in this room as he was.

The door to the room opened once more and Shawn looked up at the figures coming through the door. Another dark-clad man with a gun stepped in just before a man with a tan, neatly tailored suit. Their heels clicked in time as they crossed the room, stopping just in front of Shawn. When Shawn looked at the man in the suit, he gasped. "Victor?!"

Victor stared straight down at Shawn and sneered. "I always knew you were a weakling. You couldn't even escape properly." Victor glanced at the man beside him and nodded toward Shawn. The man took a knife from his belt and knelt down. Shawn's breath hitched as he feared the worst. The man hesitated, then cut off the handcuffs. Shawn rubbed his wrists and looked up again at Victor.

The man grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. Shawn stared hard at Victor, waiting for his adoptive father to move, to say something, to do anything. "Nothing to say, kid? I'm not surprised. You never were too bright." Victor turned to the man. "Let's go. The director wants to speak to him. Make sure he behaves." Victor turned once more towards the door. The man pushed Shawn forward, and soon they were walking down the hallway that not hours before Shawn had seen a man die before his eyes.

The hallway was decorated much the same way the room he was held in was, which was to say, basically not at all. The walls were painted a stark white, broken up only by light switches and outlets. The floor was tiled much the same way a hospital was, and the ceiling consisted of drop ceiling tiles interspersed with fluorescent lights. Shawn shivered. The hallway was somehow even colder than the room.

The trio walked for several minutes before stopping at a nondescript painted steel door. Victor grabbed a keycard from his pocket and swiped it in the reader next to the door. He then pushed the door, which opened soundlessly. They stepped through the entryway and entered what looked to be an office. The walls were also painted white. There was a singular bookshelf with books haphazardly piled on the shelves, and a painting of an old man hung on the opposite wall.

Victor, Shawn, and the mercenary stopped in front of a desk on the opposing side of the room from the door, which had shut automatically behind them. The desk was a rich mahogany, looking to have been crafted several decades before. On the desk was a pen holder holding several varieties of pens and pencils, a pile of pages on the left side, and in the center was an open file with Shawn's photo sitting on top of several documents which Shawn could not read. Behind the desk was a high backed chair, and in that high backed chair was a woman.

"Director. I have the boy," Victor said. The director looked Victor up and down, and Shawn swore he saw a look of utter contempt cross her face for a split second. Victor must have noticed it too, because he subtly straightened his spine and gulped.

"It's about time. You can go. Both of you," she said.

"But Director, he―"

"Do you think of me as a doe that cannot handle herself? Need I remind you what I am capable of when I am disappointed or disobeyed?," she growled.

"No! I mean, no, ma'am. We'll be going. Let us know if you need us again," Victor said hurriedly.

"Yes. I will," the director replied coolly. The two men turned and went out the way they came. It wasn't until the door slid shut again that the director looked at Shawn. She had striking gray eyes that betrayed little emotion. She had on a dark red suit that fitted her form perfectly. She was trim, but Shawn could tell there was taut muscle underneath the suit that she was trying to hide. The woman wanted to be underestimated, but Shawn was not in the business of underestimating anyone at this moment. The woman stood and walked around the desk. She looked him up and down, seeming to size him up. She scoffed.

"I don't understand," she mumbled under her breath. "Why this boy? He's a runt!" She took a deep breath, evening herself out before she looked back at Shawn with a level stare. "You must be wondering why you're here."

Shawn scoffed. The woman scowled at him. "Fine, have it your way. All you need to know is that you're ours now. You will never leave this facility, not alive at least."

"What's KATANA?" Shawn blurted out.

"We are KATANA. An organization founded nearly a century ago that has hands in every world government. We control the highest powers from the deepest shadows. There is nothing we cannot see and no one that we cannot reach," the director explained.

"Yeah, okay. How am I supposed to know that any of that is true? The only thing I know is that you hired Victor, which, might I say, has got to be one of the worst decisions you could have made. He might be strong, but the man has the intellect of a doorstop," Shawn retorted.

The director considered this and smiled slightly. "On that, we can agree. But his worth to us is not up for debate. You are much more valuable to us than he could ever be. As for proof? We found you didn't we? Three years of near constant isolation, and we still managed to find you and subdue you. Rather easily, I might add."

Shawn winced, the memory of his kidnapping still fresh. He considered his next words carefully. "Where is Katherine?"

The director smiled again. "Ah, finally. The question I've been dying for you to ask." She turned away from Shawn and walked around the desk. She stooped down below the desktop and grabbed something from underneath. She stood up and threw a pile of clothes at him, which he managed to catch despite his tired state. "Put those on. Then we'll go for a walk."

Shawn put on the nondescript gray t-shirt and black mesh shorts, then slipped on the black ankle socks and pristine white tennis shoes. The woman watched him as he dressed and huffed when he was done, indicating her patience was wearing thin. "Ready?," she asked.

Shawn nodded, and the woman walked to the door. Before opening it, she turned her head to look Shawn in the eyes. "Try anything and you won't live to regret it."

They walked through the door back out to the hallway. A couple minutes later, they stopped in front of an elevator and the woman pushed a button to the side of the doors. The elevator opened immediately and the pair stepped inside. The elevator was just as plain as the hallway. Even the buttons were unlabeled, although the woman seemed to know which one she needed despite that. She pushed one of the buttons and the elevator surged downwards.

Seconds later, the doors opened again to a much more dimly lit hallway. They walked out and turned to the left. An office encased in glass sat next to a barred steel door. A man dressed identically to the mercenary that had accompanied Victor upstairs sat in a chair in front of a computer monitor, oblivious as the pair stopped in front of him. The director waited a couple of seconds, then cleared her throat. The man, still not looking up from the screen, scoffed. "Hold your horses. I'm almost finished with this game."

The director pounded the glass, startling the man. "What the hell is your―oh!" The man stood up and at attention. "Director! I didn't realize it was you! L-let me let you through."

The director scowled at him. She pulled out her phone and dialed a number. "It's me. Yes, your man at the detention entrance security checkpoint thinks it's better to play solitaire than do his job. Execute him and let me in."

The man stared at the director in horror. "Please, don't! I-I didn't know it was you, I swear!"

"I don't care," the director replied coolly.

"Please, you don't have―" The man didn't get to finish his sentence before he stiffened up and blood began to pour from his nose. He collapsed as the door beside the checkpoint clicked open. Shawn cursed under his breath as they went through the door, unable to contain his emotions at seeing a second man fall dead within 24 hours of his being here.

The director led him past long rows of thick steel doors. The doors had only a slot big enough for a food tray and numbers were tacked at the tops of them, all in sequential order. They finally turned down one of the long rows and stopped in front of a door with the number 104 at the top. The director swiped her card at a reader near the door and the door slid open. The cell had no interior light, so only the light cascading in from the already dimly lit hallway illuminated it.

Shawn looked at the figure hunched over sitting in the center of the cell. She wore only a black jumpsuit, and her dirty hair fell over her face. Her hands laid in her lap as she stared at the floor. She looked up slowly at the two as the door opened. The woman's face was covered with small scratches, and her right eye was swollen shut. Nevertheless, Shawn gasped as he recognized the woman sitting before him.

"Katherine?"