notes: For the most part, this fic is based off the original game. There are a couple of details from the Compilation thrown in for flavor and some things are (obviously) drawn from Advent Children, but the bulk of this fic deals with elements presented in the original game. Dirge has been completely disregarded.

chapter one: the bleak sky that shimmers

They had barely made it inside Fort Condor when the batteries in Cid's flashlight ran out.

The flashlight wasn't a particularly good one, but it had been the only one that fit the batteries he'd found and so he'd been stuck with it. Cid smacked the heel of his hand against the flashlight, but all he got for his trouble was a couple lousy flickers. Then it gave up entirely.

"Oh, you gotta be fucking- are you serious? I bring this shit all the way here and now it decides to crap out on me? Seriously? This is the shit I put up with? Long-lasting Shinra quality my ass. Fucking hell, I don't have time for this bullshit-"

"Quiet," came Vincent's voice in the dark.

Cid shut up.

He could only just make out Vincent's outline in the flickering, feeble light coming from further down the hall. Might be leftover energy from the reactor here. Didn't matter where it came from, it was enough to get by. Barely. If nothing was in the shadows, that is.

He didn't hear anything. At least, not yet

"Maybe we'll get lucky and nobody'll be home," Cid said, keeping his voice low.

"Do you really believe that?" Vincent murmured.

No. No, he didn't.


Cid had bet that if any place could have survived this whole mess, it was Fort Condor.

Used to be he didn't understand why this place was called a fort to begin with. It didn't look a damn thing like the forts Shinra had built. Or Wutai for that matter. Hadn't been until the whole huge materia mess that Cid even been inside the place.

Made sense once he got a look inside, though. The place didn't look like much from the outside, but that was the whole damn point. Shinra had just built the reactor on top of the mountain and left it to bleed the ground dry. It was the people who'd turned it into something more, digging rooms from Shinra's maintenance tunnels - rooms that went so deep no army could ever root them out. Shinra had sure as hell tried.

Wasn't an army they were facing, though. Deep down, Cid wished it was.


A few lights were still lit in the hall. Not many. Just enough for Cid to see by. Vincent didn't have the same problem, Cid guessed. There was a faint red glow from his direction.

"There's been a struggle here," Vincent murmured.

Cid grunted. He could damn well see that. Hell, it looked like a out-and-out brawl had been fought in this very room, the way the furniture had been thrown around - and smashed, by the looks of the splintered chairs in the corner. He grabbed a chair leg to use as a torch and pulled out his lighter. The flame took, and he shone the torch towards the darker side of the room.

"No bodies," he said.

"No," Vincent agreed.

No bodies, but an awful lot of blood. Looked like some clothes, too - though most of them were ripped to shreds. Pair of boots, torn down the middle. Some of the wall was blackened and burnt, and Cid caught sight of an overturned lamp in the corner. Was a wonder the whole place hadn't burned down.

Come to think of it he could hear water running somewhere. No, not water - there was no goddamn way the pipes were still working, not after all this time. Mako. Fuck.

Whole place smelled like mako - not surprising, given the reactor, but it was overpowering, even drowning out the scent of death and decay that had taken root here. Cid glanced at one of the massive pipes sticking out of the walls. Wasn't a room in here without them. Came with the way this place had been built - with the reactor on top, the pipes went all the way through the mountain down into the mako in the ground below.

If one of these pipes had sprung a leak...

"Motherfucker," Cid swore under his breath. "I shoulda fuckin' known-"

A shadow passed in the torchlight. There was movement behind him, just out of the corner of his eye. Cid just had enough time to turn as they came for him, claws outstretched.

Vincent was already firing and Cid fumbled for his spear as he brandished the torch towards the creature before him. In its flickering light he could make out the gruesome look on its face as it snarled at him. Cid dropped the torch - he couldn't carry it and use his spear at the same time, he'd have to go without - and swung it over his shoulder just in time to block the monster's claws from ripping into his chest. Cid brought his knee up towards the creature and shoved it back as hard as he could.

There was no such thing as fighting fair with these things. He knew damn well that they wouldn't.

He had barely a second's reprieve before it was coming at him again, its long arms shooting out at him in the darkness. Cid slashed at the monster with his spear, but its skin was too damn tough for him to slice through, especially at this angle. Didn't leave much more than a dent. Same went for Vincent's bullets. Only way to kill these things was to wear them down or get a damn lucky strike.

There was a reason Cid still used his spear, though, even though it wasn't the wisest of choices in a room this small and tight. These things fought mostly with their claws and teeth, and if there was one thing spears were damn good at, it was controlling the range in a fight. Playing defense had never really been his thing, but these creatures didn't give much in the way of options. He had scars up and down his arms to prove that.

He kicked again as the monster got close and used the same motion to thrust forward with his spear. He hadn't been able to pierce its chest, but he could already see green blood oozing out of it. Good enough. He spun his spear around and hit the monster with the blunt end of his spear to stun it, then slammed the wide blade against the jagged spikes that covered its head. It crumpled to the ground, and Cid didn't hesitate to plunge his spear into its chest. The monster convulsed, spitting out more green blood, then went still.

Cid drew his spear out with a grunt. Vincent had stopped firing. Sure enough, there was another body on the other side of the room, a hole in its head.

"You hear any more?" Cid asked, not bothering to keep quiet. If they were gonna come, they were gonna come. No way around it.

Vincent shook his head. "No. They must be deeper in."

"Fuck." Cid wiped his hand over his face. "Fuck. This whole fucking place is overrun. We're not gonna find shit."

"...Do you want to turn back?"

"What? No!" Cid scowled at him. "Like hell I'm going back empty-handed. There's gonna be something here. We just gotta find it."

He bent and picked up the torch - then, after a moment's consideration, shoved it in Vincent's direction. "Here. You carry it, I can't see shit. And if this place is full of them I'm gonna need both hands."

Vincent accepted it wordlessly. Somehow, the monsters looked even more gruesome underneath the light, their faces frozen in death and the blue-black plates covering their bodies. The one he'd killed wasn't even that big. Couldn't have been more than a kid.

Cid couldn't bear to look. Instead he strode forward. "Let's go," he said.


The thing was, they'd thought they saved the world.

Hell, they'd done the goddamn impossible, hadn't they? They'd descended into the crater and faced off against a man who wanted to become a god, and they'd beaten him. It didn't get much more impressive than that. Course, when they'd gotten back out, Meteor had still been there, about ready to smash into Midgar. And Holy hadn't been able to stop it.

If there was one thing Cid was never gonna be able to forget as long as he lived, it was the sight of the Lifestream rising up to take on Meteor. The Planet defending itself against all that tried to stop it - now didn't that make for a storybook ending. And sure enough the Planet survived. They all made it out.

Everyone except Aerith, but - it was because of her the Planet had been able to fight back, wasn't it? That was the feeling Cid had gotten. She had helped them, to the very end.

And they'd gone to see her, afterwards, to say goodbye, and thanks, and Cid had thought that was the end of it. That they would go their separate ways and set about the task of rebuilding. Hell knew he had plenty to get to. He'd been to space - to space! - and he sure as hell wasn't gonna stop there. There was a hell of a lot to think about now that mako was out of the picture. There was some uncertainty in that, but hell. If Cid was the kind of man to avoid uncertainty he never woulda been a rocket scientist to begin with.

He'd helped save the goddamn world - that had to count for something, didn't it?


Maybe it would have, if it wasn't for the disease.

Cid had barely been home a week before it started showing up. In the beginning nobody knew what it meant, or where it came from. All anybody knew was that people started developing black rashes on their bodies. Wasn't long after that the rashes would end up seeping out black liquid, as if purging something from their flesh.

In the early days, when they were still figuring out what the disease was, sometimes people would just die from that - the sheer pain of the lesions, and the fainting spells that went with the black pus. But that didn't last. Not when it got worse.

Not when people started turning into monsters.

It wasn't even all at once - hell, if it was, Cid could have stomached it a lot better. But he'd had to watch as half his goddamn town had developed monstrous limbs, as their bodies began to harden and their blood turned to mako, as they slowly lost what was left of their humanity until they were nothing but mindless, raving monsters.

Once the disease finished transforming them... it was all over. They weren't people anymore.

It wasn't contagious. Cid knew that for a fact. He'd fought enough of them - suffered enough wounds - that if it was, he should've been turned into one of them a damn long time ago. But that didn't mean he wasn't susceptible to it. Anybody could get the disease if they got close enough to mako. That was how it spread so fast, in the beginning. The whole damn world relied on mako.

And now people were turning into monsters because of it.

No, not monsters. Cid had called them that in the early days, in Rocket Town. But it was more than that. These things were too crazed, too desperate to just be monsters. Normal monsters killed just for the hell of it. These things were born from mako, went mad from it, did anything to get it.

In Midgar they'd called them makonoids. Mako humans. The name was one of the few things that had gotten out of there.

Cid was taking a big damn risk even coming to Fort Condor. But he'd had no choice. There was no cure for the disease - at least, none they'd found yet. But you could stave it off a while, if you had tranquilizers. Not just any tranqs, either - Shinra-grade, the ones they used to take down SOLDIERs when the mako got to them.

No matter how many of Fort Condor's people had succumbed to the disease… it didn't matter. If there were tranqs here, Cid would find them.

He wouldn't let Shera down.


Fort Condor made about as much sense as a maze. The place had been built out of necessity, Cid knew, but that didn't make it any easier to traverse its tight corridors and trashed rooms.

There were bodies as they got further in - mangled corpses that were barely distinguishable as human. They'd been ripped to shreds and left there to bleed out. Wasn't really clear if they'd been eaten or not. Cid had never wanted to get close enough to check.

No sign of any more of the creatures yet. Not much in the way of supplies, either. From what Cid recalled from his last trip here there'd been a couple of shops on the upper levels, but they would've been cleaned out first, and it wasn't like Fort Condor ever had much in the way of natural resources past mako. Most everything they needed they had to import from Junon or Kalm. And it wasn't like they were exporting anything other than bullets.

Weapons were the one thing Fort Condor was bound to have. They had always had more weapons than they knew what to do with. Came with the whole fighting Shinra thing - after a while they'd built up a decent stockpile, they just needed people to come help fire the damn guns. They'd gotten by as much as they could with stuff no one needed to man, Cid remembered that much - he'd spent half of the battle he'd fought here just rolling rocks down at the approaching army - but they still had to fight back when it came down to it.

Sure enough, there were a couple of rifles near the disfigured bodies. One of them looked too damaged to be used, but Vincent picked it up anyway, ejecting the magazine and tucking it in his pack. The other rifle he slung over his shoulder.

Cid knew that ammunition was getting to be a problem. Shinra had always pumped out an endless supply between Midgar and Junon, but it took high-caliber weapons to take the makonoids down, not the shitty standard-issue stuff they'd given to the rank and file.

It had only added to the death toll. Even in a place like Fort Condor, apparently - somewhere that stockpiled as many weapons as they could against Shinra.

Cid swore under his breath. "Come on," he said. "We gotta get to the lower levels. If there's anything left, it'll be there."


There had never been any civilians at Fort Condor, as Cid understood it. When the people here had taken up their ill-advised mission of protecting the giant fucking bird that had taken roost on a goddamn mako reactor - and was Cid ever glad it had flown the coop, he didn't want to deal with it on top of everything else - they'd sent away anyone who wasn't willing to fight to the death.

Through the course of their fight, however, they'd endured casualties and ended up with a number of people unable to go out and fight off Shinra. This number had risen over time to the point that they'd had to hire outside help to fight their battles for them, which Cid couldn't make a whole lot of sense of, but whatever.

The point was, all the people stuck inside whenever Shinra came to retake the mountain ended up retreating to the deepest, most protected part of the caverns. Didn't take a genius to figure out where the survivors had gone after Meteorfall.


There were more bodies strewn around the room with the rope ladder leading to the lower levels. Some of the limbs in here weren't human at all, but it wasn't clear if the people attached had died before or after the transformation had taken them. Wasn't a pretty sight, either way.

Cid could hear something clanging against the pipes down below. The sound of mako trickling through reverberated through the walls around them. Cid peered towards the opening with the rope ladder with a scowl, his grip tightening on his spear.

Vincent held the torch to the side, signalling to Cid to stop. He nodded towards the opening and raised his gun. Cid grunted and hefted his spear, taking a few steps closer. Would be hard to get a good angle, but-

A makonoid emerged in a blur of blue and red, teeth outstretched. Cid thrust his spear forward - the tip slid off the hard shell of its chest but he managed to pierce it with a second push and pin it there as Vincent shot it in the head. More claws were coming up beneath it and Vincent was still firing as Cid drew his spear back with a wet spray of blood, kicking the corpse out of the way as another makonoid came up after the first. Cid slammed the side of his spear against its head, knocking it back down into the hole, and thrust his spear after it, catching it in the neck. He twisted his wrist and heard the monster cry out in pain. With another hard shove of his spear he knocked it down the rope ladder entirely. He hadn't managed to behead it, not with that strike, but it wouldn't be getting back up.

As soon as Cid moved out of the way, Vincent pushed ahead of him and moved down the ladder. Cid followed, hurrying as best he could with the long spear on his back. He heard more gunshots as Vincent finished off the one he'd knocked down there, then a couple more. When Cid jumped down he saw another makonoid slumping against the wall. Cid squinted towards the hallway nearby, but he didn't hear any more coming.

Shit, if he'd thought the stench of mako was bad upstairs, it was nothing compared to down here. The place was much more trashed, too - the monsters had had their way with the place for a while. The bloodstains didn't look fresh.

Cid had always had a strong stomach, but even before all this crap happened, sights like this would have made him go green. Now it just filled him with dread and a creeping resignation. He wanted to mourn the dead, but he just... couldn't. They weren't the first to die to the disease. Sure as shit weren't gonna be the last. Didn't mean he didn't care, course he did, he just didn't have the space for it now.

Had to get through this. Had to get what he needed.

Vincent was shining the torch down a hallway at the other side of the chamber. Rubble and debris blocked their path. It wasn't clear if it'd been put them intentionally, or if it was a casualty of the fighting.

Either way, they weren't getting through that way. Cid cast an uneasy look at the opening closer to the rope ladder. If there had been a door there, it was long gone. "Guess we're goin' that way."

Vincent glanced at him. "Are you sure?" He directed the torch back towards the ladder. "It's not too late to turn back."

Cid scowled and hefted his spear. "Yes, I'm fucking sure. Shit, would you quit asking?"

Vincent shrugged and stepped forward, impassive. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Jackass.


The hallways down here were even tighter than on the higher levels. It was clear that these rooms were never meant for people to stay in long-term - they were too small and cramped for that, as if no one had ever had the time to dig out anything bigger. Probably didn't have the space, with all the pipes running through the mountain. Seemed like they took up as much of the walls as the dirt.

That sinking feeling in Cid's chest was getting lower and lower.

Nobody really knew how the makonoids worked. Wasn't like anyone had the time to sit down and figure that shit out when half the goddamn world had been overrun in a matter of days and weeks. All anyone knew for sure was that they thrived on mako, and would do anything to get to it.

Fort Condor wasn't built like the other reactors - there was no mako reservoir here, all the processing was done up at the reactor on top of the mountain and the pipes running through the mountain simply pulled the mako out of the ground and got it up there - but that didn't mean there wouldn't be some left. And a settlement that should have been safe from the horrors of the Lifestream touching everyone in the goddamn world with raw mako wasn't safe at all.

The only solace Cid had was that at least it wasn't as bad as Midgar.

Vincent was silent ahead of him. Down here there were a couple of emergency lights still on, strung close to the ground. It cast everything in long shadows, and Cid couldn't help but feel even more on edge. In the distance he could hear some kind of scraping sound, but it wasn't close enough to make out for sure.

Cid glanced behind him. Empty. He knew the makonoids could move almost silently when they wanted to. It was the clawed feet that usually gave them away, but on the dirt floors Cid knew he wouldn't hear them. He was relying on Vincent's hearing more than his own. If Cid heard anything, it would be too late.

They reached another cramped room. Bunkbeds were set against the walls, the frames broken and the mattresses little more than a crumpled mess. Mismatched clothes hung from an upturned dresser. Amidst the upheaval, a small lamp had managed to stay upright.

No supplies, though. Nothing they could use. The clothes were too tattered to be worth taking back. And no weapons. They'd seen rooms on the upper levels like this.

They headed back out into the hallway, but Vincent only went a few more steps before pausing. "Watch your step," he murmured.

Cid glanced down. There was a dead makonoid on the ground, its spine twisted at an unnatural angle. He grimaced and stepped around it.

Something rattled against the pipes. Vincent stopped in his tracks and Cid froze up with a sharp scrape of metal against metal. His goddamn spear was too long - he was banging it against everything in here. If this place got much tighter he wasn't gonna be able to use it at all.

"Fuckin' thing-" Cid started.

"Don't," Vincent muttered. He hadn't moved. Then in a blur he raised his gun, pointing it just behind Cid and firing several times in quick succession. Cid yelped and tried to duck out of the way as the claws came towards him, the makonoid screeching in pain.

Somehow Vincent managed to squeeze past Cid's flailing limbs and swapped positions with him, firing again at the makonoid behind them. Light bounced off the bright brass of Vincent's claw as he shoved the creature against the wall and fired three more bullets into its skull. It went limp and sagged to the ground.

Cid looked down at the hallway behind them. He could see the makonoid's tracks in the dirt. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. "How long was it-"

"We need to keep moving," Vincent said. He was loading a fresh magazine into his gun.

Right. Cid gave himself a shake. They couldn't fight like this, in a hallway hardly wide enough for him to walk through. In and out. That was all this was supposed to be. In and out.

"Can't be that much further," Cid said. "We just gotta find where they holed up."


There were a couple more rooms along this hallway, all with the same level of disarray as they'd seen before. Cid bypassed them all. If anyone had survived here - and he doubted they had done so for long - they wouldn't have done it in those tiny, cramped spaces.

They would have tried to starve the makonoids out. They would have tried to hole up with as many supplies as they could so they could tend to their wounded, and they would have fought off any who got through. But it wouldn't have mattered. The makonoids didn't eat. Best as Cid could tell they didn't do much in the way of sleeping either. Probably too keyed up on mako.

And sure enough, the people of Fort Condor had done just that.

The room they found wasn't all that large, when it came down to it. It probably could have fit a couple dozen people, comfortably. But comfort had been the last thing on anyone's minds here. Bodies both human and monstrous littered the ground, too many to count. Electric lights had been set up throughout the room, but only half were still on, and it cast the place in as much darkness as light - so much that it took Cid a moment to realize that not all of the bodies here were dead.

He swallowed.

The makonoids hadn't noticed them yet. They were all gathered in the corner, next to one of the pipes, clawing at it with screeches. No wonder they hadn't heard them coming.

Not for the first time, Cid wished he could just use magic to take the fuckers down. He'd never been as good with spells as some of the others - he'd always been the brute force type with spells - but he'd take whatever edge he could get against these fucking things.

Didn't matter, though. Materia didn't work anymore. Hadn't since Meteorfall. Maybe it was the Planet's way of getting back at them for letting Meteor happen in the first place.

Cid tightened his grip on his spear. He couldn't make out exactly how many there were - five? six? - and they were too far away for him to get the drop on them. If they were gonna have any chance of surprise, it was up to Vincent.

Vincent had already pulled out the spare rifle. He balanced the long barrel in his claw, taking careful aim.

"I can take three," Vincent murmured. "Then it's up to you."

That was all the warning Cid got before Vincent fired.

One of the makonoids exploded in green blood. Cid jerked back - he hadn't realized Vincent had any bullets of that caliber left. Hadn't realized they'd do that much damage at this range. Two of the makonoids dove towards the fallen one, eager for its blood, but the others turned towards them. Cid barely had enough time to thrust his spear forward as they came towards him on all fours, using their long arms to increase their speed.

He caught one of them across the side of the face and another with the jagged side of his spear, and he twisted his thrust into a slash, trying to cut into the thick plates that covered their flesh. He couldn't let them get close - there were too many of them, he'd never make it if they got their claws on him. There was another loud bang as Vincent fired, beheading one of the makonoids closest to him with a single shot and fuck that seemed even louder at close range, his ears were ringing and the makonoid was howling in pain.

Another was coming closer and Cid wasn't quick enough to hold it off as it tore through the thick leather of his jacket with its claws. He tried to push it back with his spear but he couldn't get the right angle and he was reduced to giving it a hard kick. There were a few more shots - Vincent had switched to his handgun - but he wasn't firing at the one attacking Cid, he was fighting another that was all over him.

Cid gave another hard shove with his spear, pushing the makonoid back, and thrust the tip into the creature's gaping mouth. The spikes on either side of his spear caught the jagged edges of the makonoid's jaw and as Cid twisted he managed to rip its face off entirely. There were hints of something beneath - but he didn't dare look, he simply yanked his spear out and watched the body crumple.

Nearby Vincent had dealt with the makonoid attacking him, which left only one near the pipe in the corner. Vincent raised his rifle once more, but Cid shook his head. The creature was still in a frenzy trying to suck up all the green blood the other had spilled; it would never notice him coming.

Cid shifted his grip on his spear as he approached the makonoid. Best thing would be to take it out with a single hit. Back of the neck, twist it off if he didn't get it in the first hit. Wasn't often he got strikes like this but it wasn't the first time, either. It was better than fighting them. Anything was.

The makonoid didn't move as he came up behind it, head still bowed over the other dead makonoid. Sounded like it was trying to suck up all the blood it could get from the other one. Now that he was closer Cid could see that they hadn't broken through the pipe against the wall, but they'd certainly been trying. There were claw marks from the floor to the ceiling and dents all the way through. Thank fuck Shinra had built them sturdy.

The mako had gotten out one way or another, though. All the bodies in this room proved that.

Cid didn't give the makonoid time to realize he was there. He brought his spear down on the back of its neck and stepped on its back to pin it in place. He had to make a second thrust, but that did the trick. It was dead.

His shoulders slumped and he leaned against his spear. Didn't matter how many fuckin' times he did this, he never liked it. He did it, sure. Did it because he had to. But that didn't make it easy. None of this shit was easy.

"Fuck," Cid grunted. "There better not be any more."

"No," Vincent said. "That was all of them."

Least they had that going for them. Cid pulled his spear out of the makonoid with a wet noise. Looking around he wasn't even sure which ones they'd just killed, there were so many dead bodies in here. He wondered how long the rest had been here.

There were supplies, though. Crates stacked against the wall. Some spilling open onto the floor. Wouldn't be much in the way of water, but Cid thought he saw some old Shinra military rations. No way he was gonna turn those down.

Had to find the tranquilizers, though. Had to be some of them in here. "Tranqs first," Cid said. "Then we'll look around for-"

Something shifted in the pile of bodies.

Vincent's gun was already back in his hand. Cid gripped his spear, but it wasn't as steady as before. He thought he'd gotten all the killing blows. He knew Vincent never missed his.

A clawed arm stretched out towards them. Cid took a step forward- then stopped.

Because the body it was attached to was still human.

It was a kid, really. Couldn't be more than sixteen, seventeen at the most. Didn't look like he'd eaten in a while. His clothes were in tatters. And his arms were covered in blue-black scales and clawed at the end.

How the fuck was he still alive?

The kid was trying to pull himself out of the pile of bodies, but his limbs weren't responding properly - they never did, after they stopped being human. He tried to speak, but it came out as a rasp, more sound than word and entirely filled with pain.

Didn't matter. Cid knew what he was trying to say.

Help me.

Could he?

He'd seen... he'd seen people this far gone before. People he'd known, in Rocket Town. People he'd tried to save. He knew there wasn't any cure. Knew that once they got that far, it was better to end it. The lesions covering their body caused horrible pain. The monstrous limbs wouldn't respond to a human mind. It was only a matter of time.

But-

But-

Fuck, I can't just leave him like this. That's not right.

Cid swallowed. The kid was still trying to pry himself forward, out of the pile. He'd managed to get one of his legs out. Part of it was still red - some of the flesh beneath was still visible. A weak spot, Cid thought, and then immediately regretted it. There's a goddamn leg under there.

Vincent hadn't moved. He still had the gun raised. It seemed he was leaving it to Cid. No fucking surprise there. Planet forbid Vincent ever make one of the hard choices.

The kid rasped again, louder. It wasn't a word, but Cid could hear the pain in it.

Fuck it. He couldn't just stand here and do nothing. He had to help the kid. He couldn't heal him, but... he couldn't leave him like this, either. Cid steadied himself and moved forward, lifting his spear.

"Fuck, kid," Cid muttered. "I'm sorry."

The kid's eyes met his as he came closer. What was in them, Cid wasn't sure. In a matter of seconds, they weren't there anymore.

Cid jerked back. "No- fuck, no-"

It was too late. The transformation was already going through - the lesions spread out and covered what was left of the boy's skin, and hardened into the dark material that made up a makonoid's exoskeleton. In a matter of seconds the kid's face had been replaced with that of a snarling monster.

And it was coming for him, claws outstretched.

"Fuck! Fucking hell-"

Cid couldn't seem to move fast enough. His spear was in his hands, but he'd been too shocked to move - too horrified by it. He'd only seen the sudden transformation happen once before, had almost forgotten it was possible when people could survive months with the limbs - had forgotten that everything could be over in the blink of an eye and that there was nothing he could fucking do.

There was a sharp retort as Vincent's rifle went off. The makonoid's head exploded, sending green blood all over Cid's jacket. He staggered backwards as the makonoid slumped to the ground.

Vincent slung the rifle over his back once more. "I didn't know that could happen," he said.

Cid had to take a moment before he could find it in himself to respond. Shit, he needed a cigarette. He didn't have any. He'd ran out months ago. "It's... it's rare."

"Hm."

That was it. Just hm. He could really punch Vincent sometimes.

Cid wiped his hand over his face. "Let's just find the tranqs and get out of here." If there was anything to be found. Who knew if there was, at this rate.

"Check that one."

"What?"

Vincent pointed to the one he'd just killed. "Check that one."

"Why the hell would- you know what, never mind. Sure. Whatever."


It took both of them to clear out the dead bodies from the nearby area. Sure enough, just as Vincent had said, there was a small medical kit tucked close by. Inside were a few used syringes - but those that remained were Shinra-grade tranquilizers. Exactly the kind that staved off the disease.

Cid gave Vincent a bewildered look. "How the fuck did you know?"

"He was the only one to survive. He must have had them." Vincent cast a glance around the room. "This place was overrun at least a month ago. Perhaps more. The more the disease takes them…"

"The less the creeps pay attention. Right."

But it hadn't saved this kid. Hadn't saved any of the people here. All these tranqs had done was keep him alive for a little while longer.

Was Shera going to end up just like this?

Was he?

Cid shoved the medical kit in his pack. "Come on," he said. "Let's get the rest and get the fuck out of here."