fic: eir's tomorrow (ff7) - ch.12
Mar. 2nd, 2010 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Slightly revised version. Short explanation here.
Eir's Tomorrow
Chapter 12
Author:
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Co-conspirator/beta:
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FF7 || R || Sephiroth/Cloud || chapter: 8,700 words
The Planet isn't willing to let death take away its greatest weapon. If Cloud can't save the past, then he'll be damned to watch history repeat itself.
12.
Dr. Libra was flitting between the beds holding Zack and the girl that hung around Cloud, Elena. Both were unconscious, and both had blows to the back of their heads that were making the doctor mutter things about concussions and aneurysms. Zack would probably be fine because he was SOLDIER, but Elena was near critical, and the moment she'd passed through the doors Libra had started barking orders to the nurses to get her on an IV, blood tests taken, and where the hell was the gods-damned radiologist? Skull fractures didn't wait for people to get out of bed on their own time!
At Sephiroth's insistence Libra kept both victims in the same room for the time being, not even fazed at being asked to take care of a SOLDIER when he normally dealt only with the Regulars. Sephiroth loomed at the back of the room where he wouldn't be in the way and watched through narrowed eyes as the panic died down and Elena was stabilized. Libra had no expectation of her waking up for several days at the least, which left Zack as the only other witness to what had happened and why Cloud wasn't there when the cries had gone up from the cadets that stumbled over their bodies.
"Sephiroth?"
Angeal's voice barely registered. Nodding towards Libra, who looked gobsmacked at seeing a previously AWOL general in his infirmary, Angeal moved to lean against the wall beside Sephiroth without taking his eyes off Zack. "What happened?"
"You tell me," Sephiroth ground out. "The last time Zack called me, he had Cloud and Elena with him and they were going to the infirmary. Sometime between then and my getting here, this happened."
"Were they Hojo's men?" Angeal asked quietly.
"If by 'men' you mean 'monstrosities', then yes," he bit out.
"What do you mean?"
"There was a lot of blood." All over the walls and floor, splattered in long streaks as if a kid had gone crazy with a can of paint. "I found this." He handed a large tooth to Angeal. The other general studied it in silence.
"It looks like a wolf tooth, but it isn't natural."
"No, it's not. I think it's from one of Hojo's pets."
"Sephiroth, the man is crazy but he isn't stupid. He wouldn't allow those things out of the lab, the president would cut off his funding for something so reckless."
"Not if Hojo thought the risk was worth the rewards," Sephiroth said flatly, watching the steady spiking of green on the heart monitor beside Zack's bed. "Think about it, Angeal. Four of his men attack Cloud and Elena without any provocation whatsoever and they fail. One manages to get away. Before anyone is able to plan a counterattack, he returns with stronger forces, like Hojo's pet experiments. If Zack was distracted with Cloud and Elena and if Cloud wasn't so stubborn and off in his head like he always is…" Sephiroth bit down on his anger before it could blossom.
"I took care of the bodies, but now I'm starting to wonder if that was such a good idea," Angeal murmured thoughtfully. "They were proof of Hojo's involvement."
"No, Hojo would have taken steps to make sure that their identities wouldn't incriminate him."
"Hollander's as unscrupulous as Hojo, but at least he was never as cunning," Angeal said with ruefully. Sephiroth didn't reply. He was remembering a time when he was a child and seeing how Hojo's presence always sent the angel into a cold, dark place of fury and hatred. It didn't matter that Hojo couldn't sense Cloud at all, that blackness would sometimes manifest as flickering lights and moving objects, and Sephiroth had always found reassurance in knowing that there was someone who could feel so angry on his behalf when everyone else treated him like the contents of a Petri dish.
He knew why, now, and the thought of what Hojo could do terrified him. It made the dark voice that had lain dormant in his head except at his most inhuman moments begin to uncurl and whisper.
You could kill him. He was never a real father to you. You owe him nothing. He's taken what is rightfully yours and that is not acceptable.
"Sephiroth," Angeal said sharply, putting a hand on his shoulder and jerking him away from his thoughts. Sephiroth was about to snarl back before he realized that the glass beaker that had been sitting on a shelf next to Angeal now lay shattered on the ground.
"I'm going to go follow up on something," he said shortly, pushing away from the wall and Angeal's hand. "Stay here with Zack and Elena. I'll return as soon as I can."
Angeal didn't argue, and Sephiroth swept out of the infirmary towards the elevators. He didn't notice the way people flattened themselves against walls as he passed. He needed to speak with Rufus, but it was probably a bad idea to do so when his hand was already so tight around the Masamune's hilt that the leather of his gloves creaked.
He went to Reeve's office instead. The man was there despite the late hour, fiddling with some electronic thing and cursing quietly when it seemed to reject his tiny screwdriver with a little shower of sparks. Sephiroth walked in without so much as a hello, slamming the door behind him and making Reeve jump in his chair.
"General! You scared the – "
"Is your office secure?" Sephiroth demanded flatly. Reeve blinked.
"What – "
"Is. Your office. Secure?" Sephiroth asked again, very slowly.
"As of eight o'clock this morning, yes."
Putting his hands on the edge of his desk, the general leaned forward. "A cadet named Cloud Strife has disappeared. Hojo has taken him as a lab specimen," he said quietly.
Reeve's eyes had widened, but he quickly recovered. "Why are you telling me? I create buildings, not SOLDIERs."
"Because you are going to help me make sure that Hojo and every person that has enabled his work is neutralized. You aren't like Heidegger or Palmer, Reeve."
There was a long silence. "And if I decide not to help you?"
"You are far more easily replaced in this company than I, Director. I suggest you consider your options very carefully," he said mildly, and, point made, left.
Now, to find Rufus.
…
Hojo wasn't impressed with what he saw. The specimen had the phenotype of the northern mountainous peoples, which meant he was smaller and more compact than the type Hojo preferred. But there was a telltale glow in his eyes, and the scientist could have cursed himself; it stood to reason that specimens gathered from a mako-rich region would naturally have higher resistance to poisoning. If ShinRa hadn't threatened to pull his funding if he returned to Nibelheim – something about public relations – then perhaps he wouldn't have had to waste his time for so long with the canon-fodder of Midgar.
The restraints on the operating table were the reinforced kind generally reserved for enhanced specimens. The boy jerked against them hard enough for thin lines of blood to well up over his wrists, and Hojo was intrigued by the level of panic and…recognition?
"This would be easier if you would tell me how you came to have such high levels of mako in your body. I suppose it doesn't ultimately matter, since you appear to be the most promising test subject I've had in quite some time, but for the sake of thoroughness."
"Fuck you," the boy snarled, so much hatred dripping in his voice that Hojo was taken aback. The bright lamp over the table flickered, even though all of the lab's electronics were connected to multiple surge protectors.
Hojo smiled.
…
"I knew it!"
Vincent raised an eyebrow at Reno's exclamation.
"I knew I recognized that bit of jailbait. His name's Cloud, innit?"
Vincent just stared at him levelly, and the Turk huffed and slouched against the ropes still tying him to the chair. "Look, man, I ain't got shit to tell you and I've been here for fucking ages, yo. If you slant-eyed freaks are gonna kill me, just get it the fuck over with already or let me go."
"That, unfortunately, is not my decision," Vincent told him mildly. He was sitting as still as stone in a windowsill on the far side of the abandoned building, watching the people below through cracked, grimy glass. His reflection was distorted in the panes, making the cloak he'd put on again look like a smudge of blood.
Reno snorted again and made of show of getting comfortable. Rather difficult, given he hadn't bathed in days and the friction burns he was probably going to have on his wrists from the ropes. "So, you know Veld, huh?"
No reaction.
"Met the fucker only briefly myself, yo. Nice guy, gotta wonder how he got mixed up with the fuckin' Turks, y'know? Between you and me, I think Tseng used to get all hard up for him with all that hero-worship."
Vincent let Reno's words pass over him without comment. Quite honestly, he was more curious about how Reno had gotten to be a Turk.
"Seriously, man, I don't know what you got against me, but I don't know shit. Turks ain't exactly confidantes, yo, we're just good little dogs."
"You're going to have to make a decision, Reno," Vincent said suddenly, just loud enough to carry across the empty space between them. The redhead gave him a cocky grin.
"Yeah, what's that? I mean, I'm all for the whole saving my own hide thing, but if I'm gonna have to take it up the ass or something, I'm out."
"ShinRa is going to fall. You will have to decide if you'll die with the company like a good little dog, or if you're going to be your own master." Vincent unfolded himself from the windowsill and moved towards Reno, his face as cold as a statue and his clawed hand on display in front of his chest. Reno hadn't lost his sharp grin, but his narrowed eyes were serious. "I know Cloud told you to ask me about Hojo."
"Yeah, well, I'm wondering if that's such a hot idea when you're waving that thing around," Reno said, eyes flickering to the claw warily. Vincent smiled thinly at Reno's resilience.
"Hojo and I had a disagreement. He shot me, enabling him to fake my death, and then turned me into a specimen until he decided to abandon that particular project." His voice was calm and relentlessly matter-of-fact. "He interred me underground until I was woken by Cloud a few years ago. You were all told that I had died in an accident while on a mission, and so most of ShinRa believed. However, the president and his aides were fully aware of the situation and continued to fund Hojo's projects."
Reno was shaking his head. "I know the company ain't exactly innocent, but they wouldn't do that to a Turk, yo. We're the ones that do the disappearing, not the ones that get disappeared."
Vincent flexed his clawed fingers and raised an elegant eyebrow.
"Look, man, that sucks, we all got our tragic pasts. But Turks are too valuable to just toss aside, and if one of us fucks up then we get a bullet to the head. Safer for the company that way."
"Unless the project is deemed more important than an individual Turk," Vincent said mildly. "And do recall the past actions of the president's son against his own father's company. That alone should be quite revealing."
"Oi – "
Vincent turned for the stairs, nodding silently to the Wutaian that passed him to take the next shift guarding Reno. There was nothing more the former Turk could say to change Reno's mind either way, so he would take care of other business.
Unfortunately, he didn't get too far down the street before the pavement shuddered under his feet, nearly unbalancing him. Cries went up all across the sector as a second earthquake shook loose mortar and brick from the buildings and made steel scaffolding groan dangerously.
Midgar isn't near any fault line, Vincent thought quickly, immediately heading towards the nearest cries to see how many were hurt. The mountains all run south of here, through the center of the continent. And no Zolom's Earth-based magic was nearly powerful enough to make that kind of quake.
Need to find Cloud, he hears the Planet, he'll know.
A third quake, the strongest yet, forced Vincent to drop low and brace himself against the trembling ground with his hands. The ear-splitting screech of metal and brick echoed across the sector and sent a wave of dust barreling down the streets. Vincent bowed his head against it until it dissipated, then shook himself and took off running towards the yelling.
The damage near the exit of the sector was the worst. Deep cracks broke up the pavement into uneven flagstones and split the foundations of the surrounding buildings. One of the buildings had listed to one side and crashed into the neighboring structure, the cause of that horrible explosive sound, and sent several tons of rubble and steel scaffolding into the street below. People were stunned, utterly bewildered by the sudden destructive chaos, as muffled screams came from under the wreckage.
"Get moving!" a Wutaian man was yelling as he went at the rubble with a vengeance, shifting as much of the concrete and steel as he could. A few people seemed to finally shake off their shock and started helping, and then more joined in. There was blood staining some of the rubble as the first of the victims were uncovered. Some people were crying, others grim-faced and pale, while more were nursing their own and others' wounds.
Vincent was already sweeping down the street to where the Wutaian man was trying to lift a huge slab and losing his grip. He steadied it with his brass claw, meeting the man's eyes across the pitted surface of the concrete and expecting to hear fearful cursing; instead he was met with a stern eye and gruff thanks.
The slab had fallen across a long steel girder, which propped it up at an angle. The girder itself was twisted and bent, and it was pinning down a fairly young but worn woman. In her arms was a squalling child.
"Mi tian gong," the Wutaian murmured.
Ignoring the expletive, Vincent swiftly kneeled down and reached for the child. The woman stared at him with shock-glazed eyes, still alive but not for much longer. The steel girder couldn't be moved without shifting several dangerous tons of rubble, and the way she was twisted under it suggested that her spine had been snapped at least once. "My babies," she whispered, "my little girl's gone, my boy – oh gods – "
Vincent gently but firmly took the child from her arms, unfazed by the wailing of the tiny boy. The woman's rambling was getting choked with blood, but she didn't seem to realize it, too far gone to notice the spatter on her lips.
"Please don't take my Denzel too, please, my babies – "
"He will be safe," Vincent said quietly just as the woman's words dissolved into wet gasps. Her body twitched and then lay still as Vincent stood, striding past the silent Wutaian. More people had joined in the rescue effort, moving concrete and steel and pulling out crying, broken victims.
"I'll find a safe place for him and then come back."
"Hai."
…
The restraints were too sturdy for him to break through, they'd probably been used for Sephiroth once upon a time and Cloud wasn't enhanced anymore, not like a SOLDIER, so if they could hold Sephiroth, then. Then he didn't stand a chance, oh gods. Hel.
Reeve once said something about post traumatic stress disorder not long after Meteor, before the Remnants, but he learned never to bring it up again in front of Cloud. Because Cloud wasn't going to be put into neatly labeled boxes anymore, he'd been there, done that. Sometimes with separate pieces in separate boxes. Though Hojo had been careful enough not to leave even a failed specimen permanently crippled. Well. Physically, at least. Otherwise it would be bad form. Sloppy.
Needles.
The Masamune was kind of like a needle, maybe, long and thin and sliding so easily into flesh but the Masamune had never put mako in him. Not that he could remember, anyway, which wasn't much at the moment because Hojo was standing over him with an utterly impersonal expression and using needles to put mako in his flesh again. Baseline measurements. Building up foundational requirements to carry the experiment forward into new areas.
Oh gods.
The break in his head had scarred over these last fifteen years but now the old wounds were being ripped open again.
No, he screamed.
…
Zack woke up thinking that an asteroid must've been dropped onto his skull.
"…Ow."
There was movement somewhere off to the side, but he wasn't in any hurry to open his eyes. Doing so might make his head crack open and his brains fall out.
"Zack."
"Yes, sir – ow ow ow." Talking had started a fire burning in his head. He paused, then said more slowly, "Please tell me that if I'm going to die, it's at least because I did something really awesome."
"You were attacked, Lieutenant."
By whom, Wutaian ninja? Those fuckers certainly moved fast…oh shit. "Cloud!"
His eyes shot open and he tried to sit up in what he realized was a hospital bed, but the room spun around him like a ride at the Gold Saucer and would've sent him face-first onto the floor if Sephiroth hadn't caught him. "Sephiroth, Cloud – oh fuck, we need to find him – "
"Lieutenant. Zack. Zack," Sephiroth barked until the SOLDIER stopped trying to wriggle away. Setting Zack upright on the bed, he put a hand on his shoulder and murmured, "You and the girl were brought to the infirmary. There was evidence of a battle, no sign of Cloud. What happened?"
The stern calm in Sephiroth's voice allowed Zack to grab onto it and steal some for himself as Sephiroth stepped back a bit. "Um. I was taking them to the infirmary. Cloud was walking behind us, I think he thought the blood on his clothes was just going to make Elena more upset or something – dude, you know he took out three guys and left his knife in the fourth?" When Sephiroth just arched a brow in that way he had, Zack hurried on, growing more serious. "I don't know what happened. I could swear…but it shouldn't be possible, we're in the middle of the ShinRa tower. Sir, I could've sworn it was one of those Blood Tastes you get in Banora, except these were bigger and meaner than any monster canine I've ever seen."
Sephiroth's eyes narrowed, but in a darkly thoughtful way. "Did they have any tags or tattoos? Some sort of identification?"
"I don't think so, but it happened so fast." The beasts had come charging down the corridor, barely giving Zack enough time to push Elena behind him and draw his sword. The first two enormous dogs were slaughtered by his weapon, but the third took advantage of the narrow area and slipped under his guard. After that it was a blur of blood and fur and wrestling with six-inch claws trying to gouge out his throat, and he must've hit his head somewhere hard enough to lay him out. Which was embarrassing for a guy who kept talking about being a hero.
"Dr Libra found traces of a sedative in both your and Elena's blood," Sephiroth said softly. "It seems that there was a human component that took advantage of your distraction."
"I got tranq'd?" Zack demanded indignantly. The assholes didn't even have the courage to face him properly? "Damn it! Sir, what – why were they so determined to get Cloud? I mean, acting out in the middle of ShinRa like that, it wasn't exactly subtle."
He watched the way the muscles in Sephiroth's jaw tightened and relaxed several times before the man could speak. "I imagine this is the very move of Hojo's I was attempting to prevent."
"Wait, shit, you mean it was Hojo? Crap. Where would Hojo have taken him? Where's he doing his SOLDIER upgrading project?"
"I don't know, but this means I will have to act sooner than I anticipated. I trust you have kept what I last told you to yourself?"
"Of course," Zack said blankly, he wasn't the type of guy to break his promises or go blabbing about the important shit.
Then Sephiroth laid on him the most insane, impossible story he'd ever heard: a future that never happened, the end of the world, and single man trapped in the center of it all. He baldly explained that Zack had died for Cloud's sake and Cloud was obsessed with preventing that to the point of psychosis, that and also the deaths of Aeris and Sephiroth himself. ShinRa still has the power to kill the Planet, and that couldn't be allowed to happen again, and I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but you're a part of this whether you want to be or not. It was crazy, and while Zack had heard about the circle of Lifestream rebirth from Aeris he hadn't really believed it, honestly, that kind of spiritual stuff wasn't really his thing. It was…big, bigger than the situation with Angeal with Genesis, bigger than anything Zack had ever faced.
But Sephiroth obviously believed it wholeheartedly, even if he was vague on the reasons why, and the man was the most logical, painfully analytical person Zack had ever known.
"What are we going to do, sir?" Zack asked, and Sephiroth's lips thinned.
"I intend to find Hojo."
"…Okay," Zack said slowly, and winced when a bolt of pain flashed through his skull. "So I guess Angeal should take Genesis to Aeris – and yeah, I know about that, Angeal told me and I made him swear in like three languages that he'll keep her safe."
"There's a man currently in the slums that's been working with Cloud named Vincent Valentine, and he's had past experience with Hojo. I want you to find him and see if he knows anything."
"Got it," and Zack stopped, squinting his eyes at Sephiroth. "Sir, are you all right?"
"If you have to ask me that question now, Lieutenant, then I must question your basic understanding of psychology."
Ouch. "If I may speak freely, sir, you look like shit. If you don't take care of yourself too, then the chances of you missing something get pretty high."
"I will take your words into consideration, lieutenant." Zack could swear the temperature dropped a few degrees.
Libra came in then to poke and prod and ask uncomfortable questions. Zack was scolded on being impulsive and having the common sense of a SOLDIER, which meant none at all, and sometime during all this Sephiroth disappeared to do Planet-knew-what. Zack honestly wasn't sure if he wanted to know, not just because he was having hard enough of a time assimilating everything he'd been told but also because Sephiroth's cold anger was nearly a tangible thing.
("I haven't really known him long, y'know. But the way he looks at me…and you too, for that matter, it's like. Like he's really seeing you. It's weird, but I think he might really be worth whatever happens.")
Zack was changing into a clean uniform and waving goodbye to the doctor when the floor beneath his feet suddenly shuddered and shifted and sent him flat against the wall.
"What the hell was that?"
"Must be an earthquake," Libra called from where he'd caught himself against a countertop. "Didn't hear any explosions."
"But Midgar isn't on a fault – "
A second tremor, less powerful but far longer than the first, made the entire ShinRa tower roll under them. The lights flickered, which should've been absolutely impossible with nine mako reactors powering the city and the tower, and Zack's earlier sinking feeling came back with a vengeance. He waited a moment in case there was a third tremor, and when the floor stayed obediently still he took off for the stairs. He ducked past panicked employees and ran through the first-floor lobby to the main courtyard.
It was chaos. Earthquakes were unheard of in this region, and no one seemed to know what to do or expect. The trains were still running, at least, but when Zack managed to get down under the Plate, he found the slums in even worse condition. Grabbing the nearest person, he demanded, "What the hell happened?"
"Are you blind or just stupid?" the woman snarled, yanking her arm out of the SOLDIER's grasp and backing away. "It was a fucking earthquake, but I guess you wouldn't notice it as long as you were all hiding in your golden fucking tower."
She disappeared into the constantly shifting flow of people.
How the fuck am I supposed to find Vincent in this mess? His head still throbbed. A few of the buildings had toppled and he could see a nearby house that had been turned into a makeshift infirmary, as much of one as was possible below the Plate. He needed to find Vincent but the cries of people scared and wounded pulled him towards the wreckage instead.
"Hey, you two – yeah, you! Take that side of this girder, I'll get the other. Don't just stand there, these people don't have a whole lot of time!"
It took some bullying, but Zack got some semblance of order going on with the survivors that quickened the rescue. It helped that he could take on obstacles that would take three or four men to move. Angeal was going to kick his ass when he found out what Zack had used his sword for, though.
After pulling out a young man and holding him around the waist to keep the guy's weight off his shattered leg, Zack yanked out his PHS. As soon as Lazard's cool voice answered, Zack was barking, "No time to talk, sir, but there's a situation under the Plate. The earthquakes or whatever took out a number of buildings and we've got dead and wounded down here – sir, I'll explain why I'm down here later – send down any SOLDIERs and medics you can spare, this is pretty fucking bad. Er, General Sephiroth's kinda busy at the moment – whoa, wait, just because Genesis and Angeal are AWOL doesn't make me next in chain of command – damn it, sir, just send the fucking troops already!"
Slamming his PHS none too carefully back into his belt, he was muttering, "Goddamn bureaucrats…what? "
The young man was staring at him, and seriously, was there something on Zack's face that was making people do that to him today?
"Did you just call for backup?" He sounded shocked.
"Of course. Just because I'm a SOLDIER doesn't mean I can do this all myself. I'm guessing the other sectors aren't in much better condition, we need more manpower if we're going to get this fixed and, no offense, but you probably don't have many good doctors down here."
He left the young man with the other wounded and went back to the rubble.
…
When people said that blood was red, they didn't really know what they were talking about.
Flat on his back on a table, stripped of clothes and basic human dignity, Cloud's head tilted to one side to watch one of the many tubes exiting his body. This one was connected to an IV in the bend of his elbow. Contained by clear plastic so it wouldn't oxidize in free air, the blood was a dark, ruby red, nearly purple-black, like a bruise.
…
He was coated in a fine layer of dust and sweat by the time Zack was able to slump in a pile near the outdoor hospital. It was well past evening, well past midnight, and the sun was due to rise in just an hour or so. Exhaustion made his eyes sting, but he was still in better shape than the slum citizens, who were falling over themselves after being organized into shifts. The SOLDIERs that Lazard sent had worked all through the night, and at this point anyone that could be rescued alive had been found. The rest of the victims would most likely be dead by now.
Kunsel collapsed on the ground next to him, also covered in dust as though someone had thrown a bag of flour at him. There were open scrapes on his forearms where some rubble had unexpectedly shifted and tried to take his hands with it.
"What a nightmare," he muttered, earning a snort.
"I'm surprised Lazard was able to send so many people so quickly," Zack replied, too tired to even glance over at the ShinRa doctors working furiously to the side of the wreckage.
"Wasn't without some sacrifice on his part, the way I hear it. I guess the President and his idiot lackeys were trying to keep all the SOLDIERs in the tower, claiming that his own life and the future of ShinRa was at stake and needed to be defended. Defended from what, I couldn't tell you, because earthquakes aren't exactly something you can fight off with weapons."
"What, and the Turks are just decoration? Their jobs were created to protect him."
"Yeah, but except for Rude, they don't exactly look intimidating, do they?"
Zack snorted, thinking about a Turk that had recently died in Wutai, slender body but a scar down his face and the kind of honor that Angeal had once upheld. "So what changed the president's mind?"
"Seems Lazard managed to get Sephiroth on his side, and with those two, how can the prez seriously say no?"
"Hope Lazard doesn't get shit for this."
"He probably will," Kunsel predicted darkly. "Office politics being what they are. What were you doing down here, Zack?"
"Looking for this guy named Vincent…dude, why're you looking at me like that?"
"Vincent?" Kunsel repeated slowly. "Tall, long dark hair, looks like a vampire?"
"Should I even ask how you know him?" Zack asked tiredly, because honestly, this was Kunsel.
"Meet up with him every so often," came the vague, quiet answer. "Nice enough guy, if creepy as fuck. How do you know him?"
"I can't tell you why, but I really need to find him."
"He plays messenger between the Wutaian rebels and some of our own homegrown factions. Rumor has it that AVALANCHE isn't as defunct as ShinRa might've liked."
Zack rubbed his temples with fingers. "So how do I find him?"
"He takes odd jobs every so often, especially for the weapons shop down in Wall Market. If you want to find him faster, though, I guess you might as well find a Wutaian and say that you come in peace, take you to their leader."
"Fuck," he muttered with feeling.
…
Specimen C didn't scream as much as the others. Of course he did scream, but not endlessly, not crying out for his mother or father or the family pet. Instead he stared into space, retreating far into his head. Hojo was mildly intrigued by this aberrant behavior; normally such a mental defense occurred late in an experiment. Libra's paperwork had noted a tendency for depression and aggression, but not to a dangerous degree, and nothing very far from the standard curve.
On rare occasion, C sang. It was little more than breath shaped by chapped lips, more like a vague hum, but Hojo recognized it as something people called a lullaby. Other times C murmured in an unrecognizable language, though the scientist thought he might have heard it a time or two in the Nibel region. An indigenous dialect, then. It seemed that C was beginning to succumb to one of the more common symptoms of mako poisoning which the few survivors had described as a constant stream of chatter from invisible people.
Fortunately, Hojo didn't need a mind for this particular project. He needed a method of creating better SOLDIERs without the aid of Jenova's cells, and finding a way to make a human body assimilate record amounts of mako seemed the most promising.
With clinical precision, he snapped the metacarpals of the specimen's right hand. C hissed out a cry before falling into twitching silence. Hojo noted the time and then waited patiently to see how effectively his body would be able to repair such damage. As he did so, he caught the title of the project in his own handwriting from the corner of his eye, and smiled. Using outdated religious terminology in the process of science had always amused him.
…
Elena stood in front of the bathroom mirror with a large knife in one hand and a fistful of golden hair in the other. She was dry-eyed as she let the thick lock of hair fall into the sink, and then gathered up another fistful, slicing through it with a harsh stroke of the knife. It joined the first, almost bleached of color against the stark white porcelain. In the mirror, she could see the thin thread of scabbed skin following the curve of her hairline. Save for a persistent low-grade headache and some bruising, that red line was all that remained of the attack.
The doctor wasn't going to be very happy when he came back in the morning and found her gone, but she couldn't handle being there right now. Lying flat on her back and useless, the way she'd been when they took Cloud, and the mere thought made her so nauseous that she had to hurriedly bend over a toilet as she was sick. When her stomach stopped trying to turn itself inside out, she went back to the sinks, rinsed out her mouth, and sawed through the last remaining sections of hair.
A pale teenaged girl with uneven, short hair stared back at her, dark shadows under her eyes. Her reflection suddenly snarled.
So fucking useless!
She didn't do anything as dramatic as punch out the mirror, but it was a close thing. Instead her hands gripped the edge of the long counter, and when she realized that the high-pitched whine echoing in the bathroom was coming from her, she had to bite her lip and consciously force herself to stop.
When Elena was sure that she had herself under as much control as she could manage, she picked up a pair of scissors and evened out the ends of her hair. The result was a cut that ended at the nape of her neck, the right side a little longer than the left. After staring blankly into the mirror, she finally swept up the cut hair with her fingers and dumped it all in a trashcan before taking herself off to the elevators.
Elena had always been good with computers. She couldn't fix anything for crap, and had no talent for making explosives despite their prettiness, but there was no software program that could keep her out for long.
The keycards she'd stolen during Cloud's mission to Banora would be useless by now, but she'd gone through the trouble of stealing new ones a few days ago. Never knew when they'd come in handy, and now she used the cards to slip past bored guards on her way upwards. She was likely to get caught again by a certain group of people, but now she was counting on it.
Rather than the computer she'd used last time, Elena went to the next floor up and chose another at random. It didn't take long for her to track down the information she'd found before – whoever was in charge of security should be dragged out and shot – and started downloading the information to a disc. Several minutes passed in silence, save for the quiet hum of the computer.
"Say something or fuck off," she suddenly snapped without turning around.
The darkness broke as Tseng stepped forward into the glow of the computer. He looked like a ghost still dressed in shadows, his fair skin a stark contrast against his somber suit in the sickly light. "You're trespassing into classified property, you know," he said mildly, and Elena glared at him. And to think that she'd once thought this asshole was attractive.
"I know exactly what I'm doing. I am going to make sure that Cloud Strife doesn't become the latest body in Project LAZARUS. That's what's going on, isn't it? Someone found out that Cloud isn't normal, so Hojo nabbed him. Something's gone wrong with the SOLDIER process and he thinks Cloud is the answer."
Tseng was silent.
"I'm right, aren't I?"
"You certainly seem sure of yourself."
"Oh, come off it," she growled. The computer gave a quiet bleep and she put the finished disc in her pocket before standing, facing Tseng with her arms crossed. "If you were going to kill me, you would've done so the first time Rude caught me up here. Instead you guys have been tailing me at odd intervals, though where you find the time to do so is a fucking mystery to me, so either I've been marked as a new specimen for Hojo or you're planning to recruit me. And since Hojo left me behind when he went for Cloud…"
"That is quite an assumption," Tseng said quietly, expression utterly neutral.
"Not really, no."
"So how do you propose we proceed?"
"Make me a Turk. You know that my sister died in your service and that I have the makings of a good one on my own merits."
"And if I decide that you need to be eliminated?"
"You won't be able to stop me before I get this information to Sephiroth, and the SOLDIERs are gonna be fucking pissed that their most promising cadet is now a lab rat. So, either you make me a Turk and I spin it to look like the Turks weren't involved, or I point a really angry Sephiroth in your direction."
Despite her words, Elena's belly was a tangled mass of anxiety and adrenaline and fury and gods knew whatelse. She was acutely aware of the way her dress shirt bunched under her crossed arms, the unfamiliar feel of her hair brushing the back of her neck, of the scalpel that she'd filched from the infirmary as the quickest replacement for her pistol and then hidden in her trouser waistband.
"I could kill you now," Tseng pointed out in the same voice he'd use when talking about the weather.
"Yeah, but that'd be a stupid idea. Remember, the SOLDIERs aren't happy that Cloud's gone missing, and everyone knows that I'm Cloud's closest friend. If I go missing or turn up dead, those SOLDIERs are gonna know it was you, and I don't know about you but I'd rather not have several beefed-up super-humans after my blood."
Elena managed not to squirm in the following moment of silence, even if she had to bite the inside of her cheek to do so. Then Tseng gave her a small smile.
"Well, it would've been interesting to see how you might have gotten along with Reno," he mused.
…
Cloud dreamed.
He dreamed of silver and green and pale, of dominance and owning and mine, he's mine.
He dreamed of fire and blades, of earthquakes and hurricanes and giant beasts that knew nothing except how to kill.
(there had once been a young blond soldierexperiment with a dark thing of power in his hand and he'd given it to a fallen angel, but that hadn't been cloud because cloud was
in the sky
flat on his back on a table while sharp things sliced into his belly)
Cloud dreamed of screams and blood and mine and didn't know what was real.
…
Yoshida smiled as she looked over the items on the table in the back room of her shop. Sometimes it paid off to have a reputation like hers: half reverent, half fearful, all with deep respect due a woman of her age and ability.
Her research had shown that the boy with blue eyes was a northern heathen. As she worked, she meditated on what she had found out of his gods and people, so different from her own.
…
When Specimen C manifested two white wings, Hojo was fascinated. The three SOLDIER Firsts all had one, of course, but that was the issue: they had one, unless one counted Angeal's withered second, and two of those Firsts had fully integrated, live Jenova cells at that. But this boy had two wings. Why? What were the implications?
Like the SOLDIER Firsts, the wings could be retracted, for lack of a better word, but when manifested they reacted as normal flesh-and-blood limbs, able to bleed and break and heal. It defied the laws of conservation of mass and energy, once more raising the question of what exactly the wings meant in the grand scheme of things.
Perhaps he needed to alter the direction of his procedure.
The specimen let out a wordless, high-pitched whine when Hojo's blade scraped bone.
…
Aeris found two SOLDIER Firsts on her church doorstep the night after the Planet screamed almost endlessly and tore down half the city.
"Miss Gainsborough?" said the brunet one, tall and powerful and sad.
"Yes?" she said, her normal cheerfulness muted with tiredness.
"We need your help."
Judging by the horrorpaindecay she sensed in the man standing behind the first, she could see that well enough. "Are you Angeal?" she asked. "Because if you are, I hope you know that, as Zack's girlfriend, I'm obligated to scold you for being silly and not talking with him. He's been absolutely miserable these last few months."
The other SOLDIER choked on a laugh.
"I understand," Angeal replied quietly.
Pursing her lips, Aeris finally beckoned them into the church. "Genesis, right? What can I help you with?"
He arched a slender eyebrow as though to say, Isn't it obvious? His hair, once a reddish auburn, was now almost completely grey, and his skin looked as washed out as old linen. Aeris looked right back at him with a patient smile, long enough for Genesis to start talking. "I'm dying."
"Do you know why?"
"Because the man who created me is an inept moron."
Angeal sighed. "We think it's because the…substance that makes him more powerful than most SOLDIERs is being rejected by his body."
"You mean Jenova's cells?" Aeris asked, and Genesis hissed between his teeth.
"Is this common knowledge, or did Hojo and Hollander start keeping the confidence of children?"
"Gast was my father actually, and really, I'm an Ancient. I can sense the presence of the Calamity in you quite clearly, thank you."
Ignoring their surprised looks, Aeris poked Genesis in the side to make him move over and sit cross-legged on the ground close to her flower patch. She settled herself in front of him while Angeal sat on the nearest pew, and lifted her hands in the space between them. "I'm not going to touch you, so relax, all right? On the best of days it'd feel like a bit of a tickle between your ears, but the Planet…something happened and it isn't very happy. Oh, but you would know about Cloud, wouldn't you? What happened to him?"
After a moment of silence, Angeal said, "He was kidnapped, most likely by Hojo."
Her pretty face was startlingly good at an infuriated expression. "Where's the most likely place Hojo would have taken him?"
"We don't know for certain. Somewhere with security but little known, given the nature of his human experimentation." Angeal's calmness wasn't enough to hide the revulsion in his voice. "Wutai is the most remote lab that I know of, but it's mostly a materia research outpost, and security there is far from the best given our, ah, relationship with the Wutaian people. I don't think he would've taken Cloud there."
"It depends on what Hojo is planning," Genesis said flatly. "If he's trying out some kind of new enhancement, he'll want to be near a reactor for all the mako. If he's just using the boy for spare parts, then he'd likely just remain in Midgar and play dumb when the search party comes around."
WEAPON, cried the Planet, worsening the tension headache that already ached at the base of Aeris' skull and making her hiss under her breath. The Calamity. Death. WEAPON. Blood and agony. Defending one's family/litter/den/pack. WEAPON.
"Miss Gainsborough, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," she gasped, putting a hand against her forehead. "Really, I'm all right, the Planet's just. Well, upset would be putting it mildly."
"The boy is important enough to rouse the Planet?" Genesis asked with that raised eyebrow again, and Aeris huffed.
"He's important to Zack and Sephiroth too, you know, but yes, he's also important to the Planet. Now, close your eyes and relax."
"What are you going to do?"
"Everyone has a bit of the Lifestream inside of them, and SOLDIERs have enough mako to make it that much stronger." How to explain something that came to her as naturally as breathing and walking? "I'm going to try and feel out what's wrong." When his expression remained skeptical, she huffed again. "Don't be silly, General, I'm hardly enough of a threat to overpower you and Angeal over there. Just relax and go with the flow, all right?"
Clearly begrudging, Genesis slowly closed his eyes, right hand twitching in his lap as though resisting the urge to grab his sword. Smiling wryly, Aeris once more raised her hands with her palms facing the SOLDIER. Slowing her breaths to something rhythmic and even, she closed her own eyes and followed the bright whisper of life immediately in front of her.
Aeris woke up sometime later with Angeal hovering over her worriedly.
"Well, that was interesting," she said once she found her mental bearings. "You ready for another go?"
Genesis gave her the oddest look while a small grin crossed Angeal's face. "You passed out, Miss Gainsborough," the first SOLDIER pointed out flatly.
"Just a bit more presence than I was expecting," she told him absently, sitting up and stretching her fingers. "I just have to be a little more careful. Please sit down, General."
"Miss Gainsborough – "
"Aeris, please," she interrupted.
"Aeris," Angeal continued calmly, "please. I promised Zack and Sephiroth that no harm would come to you. You just passed out. You should give yourself some time to recover."
"Oh, pish. I'm just fine, General, really." She was liking Angeal more and more, even if it was rather hard to forget that he'd been making Zack so upset lately. And she really needed to meet this Sephiroth beyond the carefully posed images on the recruiting posters. If Zack and even Cloud could speak so highly of him (and it hadn't escaped her notice how Cloud said the man's name, carefully enough that he obviously didn't take it for granted, rolling through his voice in a tangle of emotions), and if Sephiroth could show concern for her wellbeing despite having never met her and in the midst of all this chaos, he must be a very interesting man indeed. Much more than a publicity figure.
"Angeal," the man corrected her gently, and Aeris' smile widened.
"I'm fine, Angeal. General?" She waited for Genesis to sit back down in front of her, his eyes narrow and body language trying for 'languid' but landing somewhere between 'tense' and 'nervous desperation' instead. The presence of the Calamity was stronger in Angeal than in Genesis; perhaps that was why Genesis was decaying like this and Angeal wasn't? She thought about what it would be like to have her body at war with itself, struggling to stay alive while its cells were dying. To die in so much physical pain, and so slowly rather than the lightning-quick end from an enemy's sword, would've been cruelly horrible for anyone let alone someone as proud and insecure as Genesis seemed to be.
She didn't know specifically how the Calamity had come to be inside these men, but she remembered just enough about Hojo's lab to have a fair idea.
"I don't need your pity," Genesis suddenly snapped haughtily.
"You never had it," she said softly, then raised her hands again. "Let's try again."
Before she'd started dating Zack, Aeris had never done anything like this. While able to sense the presence of another person more easily than normal people, it was her mind's inherent fascination with the mako in Zack's body that had encouraged her to really start listening. The Lifestream usually manifested itself as a combination of emotion and sound, like hearing the hush of a wind and the rush of happiness or sorrow or anger that it carried along with it. Most people were flickering whispers, making a trip through the crowds to Wall Market more akin to walking through a room filled with the susurrus of softly talking people.
Zack didn't really understand why Aeris wanted to do things like listen to his heartbeat or just sit quietly with her hands somewhere on him, but he'd always been happy to indulge her. So now, it didn't take Aeris much effort to consciously slip into the instinctive empathy of an Ancient, but with the Planet so agitated it was like trying to grab the reins of a panicked horse.
Angeal sounded like a low, steady drumbeat off to the side, as solid and reliable as a healthy heart. Genesis was sharper, a violin's bittersweet twang that would shriek at odd moments, and each twisted sound brought out an arrow of sympathy in Aeris. Whatever kind of person he was (and Zack would complain loud and long about how aggravating Genesis could be), the fact remained that the ShinRa scientists had done something to him that now resulted in this slow, awful decay no one deserved.
Aeris leaned into the Lifestream more cautiously, keeping part of her attention on the Planet's restless murmuring while reaching for Genesis.
Painarrogancedetermination, she heard. Desperation and the pride that refused to bend for help. Conviction in superiority, underscored by a terrible and cynical awareness of the monstrousness of his existence. Something that should never have existed in the first place. The drive to live if only to spite both natural law and fate. An insidious fear of being forgotten, erased like a simple mistake, and willingness to become the hand of destruction if just to make sure he wasn't the only one.
The moment Aeris had that realization, the Planet lashed out.
WEAPON. The will to survive.
Aeris cried out as the connection between her and Genesis was snapped and it rebounded in her skull. Angeal caught her before her head struck the floor in her fit, though she was only dimly aware of it.
Stop it! she screamed, but the Planet wasn't listening to her. Instead it carried images to her of blood and flashing metal and the starkness of a bright light – the kind of light that doctors used, she knew, even though the Planet itself couldn't know such fine details, could only reflect general concepts from the memories in the Lifestream.
Oh gods, Cloud –
WEAPON, the Planet roared, the Lifestream surging out of its normal passivity into something intent and dangerous. Aeris felt tremors worse than the earthquakes that had hit Midgar, centered far away to the southeast…
Mideel.
She was abruptly thrown back into her physical body. She must have been seizing for her muscles be aching so badly, but Angeal had kept her from harming herself.
"Thank you," she breathed into his broad chest.
"What happened?" and though he was visibly trying to be calm, worry and fear made his voice cold and sharp.
"Genesis?" she asked instead, trying to sit up and not managing anything more than a twitch.
"Pounding headache, but otherwise fine. Now, what happened?"
"The Planet's waking up the WEAPONs," she said faintly.
chapter 11 || main post || chapter 13