Broken Doll {ManxMan}

CHAPTER 29

"It was after the wars, when we'd settled in the current Con Rồng base. Everyone was thrilled with the success we'd had training and conditioning Demi, but Vinet wanted more, Rupert wanted more, so a message was sent out to the survivors," I was staring down at the palms of my hands, which were sitting on my lap as I sat on the couch, doing my best to explain everything to Tobias, Bryn, Sasha, Klaus, and Diego.

"A new world, somewhere safe for them to settle, protected by soldiers and a new government who claimed they wanted nothing more than the rejuvenation of the people. It was... astounding how many people, single loners and entire families, answered to our summons, as if the idea of a government structure, control, was attractive to them. They could just relax and survive, while the Con Rồng took care of everything else for them.

"Once we'd started building, Vinet sent out a new call, to young and ambitious settlers. A chance at revenge against the world, a chance to be a part of the new government, be part of the revival of the world. She asked for volunteers to mold and train into soldiers, assassins just like Demi," I took a breath and shut my eyes.

"Again, it surprised me when so many men and women, young and old, showed up to volunteer. We put them all through basic testing, separated them into different groupings. We got a lot of book smart people who joined as scientists and scholars, but the people Bay and Vinet were most interested in were the probable soldiers. Even more important to them were the soldiers with skills that matched Demi's."

I looked up, "Vinet claimed if we wanted to stay on top, we needed to start building an entire army consisting of brutal soldiers and mindless assassins, people conformed and tortured into being compliant and powerful, more Bakunawa's to send out with Demi. Everyone who got past our basic training as soldiers were put through one last test, to see if they would be put through the same training as Demi, or placed as simple soldiers," my eyes lifted from the floor to meet Tobias' eye, "They had to fight our greatest soldier; Demi."

I dropped my head back down to watch my fingers curl in towards my palms, "He was given orders to fight, win, but not to kill, because we needed the soldiers. One after the other, we sent in men and women, and they all fell. Demi was too strong, too skilled. Vinet was frustrated, Bay was thrilled, Rupert was bored. After a few days of this it started to look like Vinet's dream of an assassin regime was pointless, because no one could beat or even come close to Demi's strength... then Rupert brought in Roy.

"He was... maybe twenty or twenty-one at the time. Every one of them was there for a reason, they were fueled by some kind of tragic past or pure ambition, but no one else had enough of that rage or ambition to fend off Demi and pass into that elite honor as government assassin. Whatever past was behind Roy, the rage he carried over from the modern world, it was strong enough to keep him standing. He lasted a long time, never got a good hit on Demi, but he had enough spirit for Vinet to happily accept him into the next step. The training that Demi was put through.

"Vinet figured it was a good sign, maybe we had a chance of our assassins regime, and the next recruit we brought in... went beyond any expectation," I folded my hands, "In the beginning we put every recruit through basic military training. Hand to hand combat, arms training, the bare minimum before we had them spar with Demi. There was one kid, the same age as Demi, who showed promise during that training, and when he came in to spar for the first time, I was expecting him to do decently, but... I wasn't expecting him to fight on equal footing with the assassin we'd trained from the age of thirteen."

I looked up again, "He fought against Demi the longest, showed skills we had not taught him, displayed a ferocity on par with Demi's, with a look of pure boredom, as if fighting an assassin was nothing but a day job for him. He landed a hit on Demi, made our assassin bleed," I lifted a hand and pointed to my lip, "If you look, Demi has a scar from it here," my hand dropped back to my lap, "They didn't stop, they wouldn't have stopped, until Vinet called time and they stepped away from each other. Everyone was in shock, he was immediately accepted into the regime, and Bay took... special interest in his training."