Chapter Text
Cloud made his way to floor 66 of the Shinra building. The Medical floor with seven other cadets. Two of them were from his unit, but the other five he didn’t recognize. They were all older than him, a mix of alphas, omegas, and betas.
“You don’t think there was a problem with your suppressants?” One of the cadets with red hair asked another with black hair.
She shook her head. “No way, or they wouldn’t have called in Alex. He’s a beta. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s about our secondary sexes.”
Cloud kept his eyes on the floor. He noted the other two omega cadets also remained quiet. Stereotypes still abounded and his unit had gotten good at being quiet and listening. People talked around omega like they weren’t even there. Especially alphas.
“So, what? If it’s not about secondary sexes, it can’t be about training. We’re all different levels and we’re not in the same unit.”
The black haired cadet shrugged. “I don’t know, but don’t ask too many questions. Hojo might take an interest in you.”
A collective shudder went through the whole elevator car, even Cloud. No one wanted to become ‘interesting’ to Hojo.
When the door opened, they all filed out and walked in two neat lines, ordered by cadet age and rank, to the medical labs. Cloud hated it in the medical labs. They always smelled vaguely metallic and strongly of sterilizing fluid with a rusty undertone that wasn’t quite blood.
They all stood in their neat rows, at attention while one of the scientists went to alert Hojo of their arrival.
Hojo was a bent sort of man, like he spent too much time curved over a microscope… Or a victim. His glasses constantly caught the bright lights, obscuring his eyes and making his expressions, when he made them, difficult to read.
“Good, you’re all here. We’re going to have you doing voice recordings for one of my experiments.” He walked down the line handing a single sheet of paper to each cadet. “Read each word, clearly and with a three second pause between each. When you’re done, leave the sheet in the recording room and leave.” He gestured towards a glorified sound booth with sound dampening tiles on the inside and a recording microphone.
Cloud watched the first cadet walk into the booth and begin recording before he looked down at the page they had been handed and scanned the words. ‘Kneel’, ‘Come’, ‘Look’, ‘Present’... He had to stop reading the list as the urge to say them began to build in his chest. There were no suppressants for D/s Natures, it was just a rule most dom kids were taught by their parents or knowing teachers to avoid using those specific words in public. It wasn’t considered polite, he always used synonyms that wouldn’t trigger a response in any unsuspecting sub nearby.
Recording a Dom saying these commands… It could be used against subs. Especially because a recording couldn’t judge a sub’s comfort, or provide personalized use of the commands or aftercare. Cloud’s hands clenched. He ached to command someone with the list he’d been given and also wanted to complain about being sick so he wouldn’t be recorded. This was as bad as flooding an alpha or omega district with heat pheromones. Maybe worse because not everyone who had a D/s nature even knew about it.
Cloud was still contemplating calling ill, when it came up to his turn. He walked towards the booth, maybe he could say the words without making them a command. He hadn’t been instructed to command the words, only read them aloud.
He closed the booth door behind him and began reading the paper.