To Let Go - Unedited

Home Sweet Home

《 VIPER 》

I walk leisurely along the market, completely ignoring all the speeding vehicles flying by as the dirt below them springs up to create a low cloud of dust. After my mission with Grayson Galani, I boarded the plane with my escort back to Saudi Arabia to a small town near the Persian Gulf. The bustling city baffles me as I’ve only been to the markets a hand full of times to witness the passing behavior around me. Unlike the states, regardless of the heat, by law, we have a certain dress code to identify different races and cultures. One thing they all have in common, however, is the colorful clothes that hide our skin. Currently, I’m wearing an extra pair of my escort’s long baggy pants with little clips at the bottom, and the robe flowing down to my ankles is a baggy and thankfully thin white material against the dry wind blowing in from the eastern waters. My escort forced the ghutra on my head after tying my hair back to prevent others from mistaking me for a woman dressing as a man. The people within the market have no piercings tattoos or strange tight-fitted clothing like those in the States.

Boss often ensured he’d educated me on our surrounding area at least, and though I may not know the exact location of the compound, I’ve been able to track the general vicinity down to one-hundred miles of the Al Jubail near the Persian Gulf.

My escort needed to attend to some business with the Boss to assign transportation back to the compound. Most of the time I’m boarded into a blacked-out van with a bag over my head and an old religious Arabic song plugged into my ears to prevent tracking the location should I try to escape. I’ve long since given up on the idea after my first two failed attempts as a child. Before I found out about the Boss’ connections with the leaders within the Kingdom, I naively tried to run. Not a pleasant thought.

I glance around once more for my escort and the usual van I’m carted around in, but still, nothing stands out. If anything it almost seems like all of the usual eyes on me are absent. Is this another test?

Boss should know better by now. I’m not a young recruit for the compound anymore, with just a few more months of training I’ll be initiated within the Nightingale Special Forces. That is what the Boss’ main purpose consists of, breeding and training mercenary soldiers better suited to undercover jobs and assassination as a secret task force. If we survive, we earn recognition; if we don’t survive, our existence is wiped of all traces.

I know Boss won't leave me unattended for long since I have a fight scheduled soon, I’m a trained soldier after all. Ignorance and stupidity bred from adolescence were beaten from us vigorously and our training ensured we allow for no missteps. Besides, even if it seems like all eyes are gone, they’re not - not really. Sometime today or tomorrow I’m up to fight in the ring against a few other tier-three soldiers. Seeing as I’ve completed my twentieth mission out-of-region without any complications, I have the option of a prize. I might even be able to bump up to that of a Nightingale sooner rather than later depending on the ring schedule.  

To break it down, all recruits are divided by their rank and floor; the basement floor consists of four years of extensive training otherwise known as tier one where we’re given a small four-by-four cell in the dank underground below the compound. The first floor is where the start of main operations begin. Training is more intense to ensure mission survival, it is also the beginning of mandatory fights in the ring for the upper Leaders of Saudi to gauge our money’s worth while weeding out the weaker recruits for another four years. I’m currently a tier three recruit with seniority overall save for the officially drafted soldiers, Nightingale soldiers that managed to reach tier four. I’ve only ever met three Nightingale soldiers, they are what all the other recruits aim to be for freedom’s sake. With the freedom to come and go as they please, they are the ultimate prize for surviving the torturous training beaten into us from childhood.