The Fallen Angel

by Pat Taylor

The dark tale of Hojo's other experiment - a woman with the power to control electricity finds herself caught in an epic struggle with a powerful enemy.

The Fallen Angel

Part One: A Dirty Mistake

Midgar, twelve years ago

Just give her the food, the scientist had said. Hand her the meal and leave. It had been that easy.

Yet somehow Jack Gorstach, a loyal Shinra MP for the past thirty years, had found himself ending the night sat in this dim infirmary room at the back of Shinra HQ, nursing a swelling on his head with a damp handkerchief.

"And you say the pipe just....exploded?" Hojo frowned, adjusting his thick glasses. The light flashing off them laid waste to whatever emotion lay behind them. "Just fell down?"

"Uh-huh," Jack nodded. His head throbbed. How the hell could this have happened? For the past five years he'd been guarding Hojo's test subject, and she'd given him no trouble at all. A little quiet at times, but he'd gotten used to that. She was polite, she ate neatly. She was a nice girl. And now this.

Hojo glanced down at the papers sprawled on the desk beside him. Documents stretching back for years now, detailing every movement of the girl - every breath, every pulse of her heart, every blink.

Her rigorous body tests had been followed and monitored by armies of loyal scientists. Yet there were no irregularities. For all they knew she had been a perfectly normal girl. But what had happened to Gorstach and his colleagues - that was far from normal.

Jack had cleared the electronic lock and had entered the barely furnished cell earlier that evening.

Normally the girl would have greeted him, taken the food and returned to her doll. But there was something different. Something in her eyes. They looked bleak, desolate and distant. Or perhaps in the grip of intense concentration.

He had handed her the food - Korean BBQ and some fried gyshal slices. Her eyes never once moved.

They just kept staring blankly forward. Gorstach had questioned her. She didn't answer back. He noticed vaguely that the air had grown thicker somehow, and sweat pricked his brow as it does before a storm.

As he left the room the pipe that pumped mako energy into the room exploded, spraying sparks on Gorstach and his colleague. At the same time the door lock blew outwards with a loud blast.

As the air cleared Gorstach recovered enough of his senses to realise that the girl had fled. He leapt up, smashing the alarm with his bare hand and holstering his gun. Then he gave pursuit, the sirens wailing in his ears, the passage lit up brilliantly with a pulsing red light. She reached an open window and for a moment stopped, on the edge of the wall thirty storeys above the plate. The air grew thicker. Gorstach slowed, as if in a trance - and then every electrical lock in the near area blew up. The heavy electrical pipe above his head blew up, swung down and knocked him clean out.

And he had woken up here, to Hojo's grilling. The damage had been pretty substantial. Much of the HQ had briefly lost its power. A lot of door locks and pipes had exploded, and all along the thirtieth floor the windows had blown out. Three casualties. And an enraged scientist.

"I am going to contact Rufus," Hojo sneered. "I want the Turks on this. And you.....you're fired."

Gorstach sighed and left.

The girl stood on the edge of a roof high up on the side of the Shinra building, breathing in the cool night air. She had never felt it before. There was something so sweet and pure about this air - she had never felt anything like it. As a helicopter hovered above, lighting up her world briefly with a white flashlight, she leapt down into the night and into the city.

Midgar, today

The drizzle flickered in the van headlights and died beneath the tyres as a small blue MP van tore down the highway circling the Midgar plate. The lamp-posts above flew past in a continual flickering stream of light, distorted in the rain, and occasionally the van's interior would be bathed in the weird blue light of a Mako reactor.

In the driver's seat sat a bulky, clean-shaven man clutching an intercom, wearing the tight-fitting red uniform of a low-rank MP. He adjusted his visor to night vision as they passed through a darker area, and tried to focus on the fuzzy words radiating from the intercom's speaker as they were drowned beneath the click-clack of the van's windscreen wipers.

"MP 16354, do you copy?" the voice, that of a harassed female, spoke. "We have a robbery in progress, perps are armed. I repeat, perps are armed. Require assistance, over. Bank of Midgar, just off forty-fourth street."

The bulky MP knew exactly where the bank of Midgar was. It was another grim, old building on the plate, another featureless landmark of Sector 4. On his trips into the city he regularly passed it. It was right opposite the train station. The van swerved off the highway and down one of Midgar's cobbled, rain-soaked streets.

"Armed perps?" the thin man sat next to him said nervously. "I don't like it, Chief. I don't like it at all."

The older man shrugged. "It's nothing, Chase. You get used to it."

Chase nodded and stared out the window. He seemed re-assured, but he still reached for his gun - just in case.

The Bank of Midgar was a grim, stone building set back from the road in a small tiled square. The entrance, beneath an ornate stone arch topped with a large clock, sat beneath a short staircase. At the centre of the plaza lay an ancient fountain which had not felt water run through its pipes for a decade. Ancient autumn leaves had clogged it up, from the shrivelled, dying tree that sat near it in the plaza. Nothing grew in Midgar anymore.

A good number of MPs had gathered outside the building, all fully armed. The blue MP van pulled up on the kerb, near a rusty motorbike. The two men stepped out, into the cold drizzle. Chase shivered and tightened his uniform against him. For once he was thankful for it. The elder man walked ahead and approached a man wearing the red uniform of a SOLDIER member.

"Reever Lionheart," the bulky man announced, flashing a badge. "MP rank 1, 16354. What's the situation?"

The SOLDIER rested his sword against his shoulder and for a moment the lights from the vans flashed against them. His eyes seemed to radiate cold light. "We've got four armed perps, holding out in the upper gallery. Two MPs already in there, but it's a standoff. They've got ten hostages, bank employees. It's too late for customers."

"You sending any more MPs in?"

"If the negotiators don't hurry up. The whole building's covered. And we've got the robo-cops to take care of any escapees."

Reever nodded and returned to the van. He calmly lit up a damp cigarette, its light flaring up briefly in the shadows beneath the arch.

"What's the situation?" Chase asked, clutching his gun close to his chest. There was something intimidating about the various militants gathered around the arch. Something he didn't like.

Reever opened his mouth to reply, but the air in the plaza was suddenly disrupted by the resounding blast of gunfire. MPs hurtled up the stairs and cries of surprise echoed around the plaza, closely followed by the clacks of guns loading.

"Come on," Reever said, raising his heavy machine gun. "We're up."

Chase followed Reever up the stairs and across the square, his legs pounding, his brow dripping with rain and sweat. Adrenalin throbbed in his veins as he burst through the glass doors leading into the bank. Reever was a spot somewhere in the distance.

Once again gunfire echoed in the quiet of the square, but this time it was quieter - and this time it was nearly lost in the cries of shock and surprise. Chase burst into the bank's lobby to find the room heavy with the stench of cordite and smoke. And, there on the grubby tiled floor, lay a body, riddled with bullets. Chase froze for a moment, his eyes fixed on the lifeless gaze of the corpse. A red bandana had kept the hair out of his eyes, but now it lay on the floor, in the puddle of blood.

More gunfire. The thud of feet on stairs.

Chase was jolted out of the daze. Empty shells clattered on the floor. He caught a glimpse of Reever heading up the staircase at the back of the room, closely pursuing the criminals. Keeping his eyes away from the body and blocking those accusing eyes out of his head, Chase followed Reever up the stairs.

He was in just in time to see Reever open fire on one of the perps, who slumped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, tumbling over the side as he did so. Reever leaped skilfully aside and kept on running, to the end of the corridor and up the staircase leading to the roof.

As Reever stepped off the stairs and out of the bank into the cool drizzle of night, he noticed the final perp standing on the edge of the building. Reever stepped out calmly, his gun raised. For a brief moment Chase felt a surge of pride at the skill and professionalism his mentor had - and then he remembered the staring eyes, and that pride dissolved into quaking, sickening guilt.

"Put the gun down," Reever instructed. "There's nowhere to run. This whole building is covered."

The final perp turned around and what Chase saw shocked him so much that he nearly fell.

The man was tall and muscular, his build that of a manual worker. He wore a tight muscle vest and blue jeans, scarred and stained with years of wear in harsh conditions. At first Chase believed the perp to be a slum dweller, but his deep tan and worn, craggy features spoke far more - this man was a foreigner, from a warmer country - maybe even desert. Yet that wasn't what had shocked Chase.

It was the machine gun fused into his left arm.

"I'm sorry, boss," the perp said. "Ain't gonna be able to comply with that demand."

"Then give yourself up," Reever replied calmly. "It's a long way down. You don't have to die."

For a moment the foreigner's face became something like a grin - yet it was more of a grimace. It was a horrible face. A face that spoke of tragedy and hate, and immeasurable suffering. Then he calmly stepped forward, keeping the gun held high.

Reever cuffed the perp and led him downstairs.

The drive back to the police station was short, but to Reever Lionheart it seemed to last a million years. For the most part it was silent - the only noise that passed between them was the swish of the windscreen wipers. As the van turned onto the freeway and into the blinding light of a huge reactor, standing strong against the grim black sky, the man in the cuffs across from him began to speak.

"You wouldn't understand," he grunted.

"Hm?" Reever replied.

"Every day the Shinra keep pumping the life out of the planet with those goddamned reactors," the prisoner explained. "Surely even a Shinra minion like you must have noticed that. Look around you. This is a place of death, not of nature. There's nothing but machines and smog and crumbling buildings. The world's dying. And you don't do a damn thing."

"Maybe I don't support Shinra entirely," Reever said. "But for the moment they're providing us with peace, stability and, above everything else, mako energy. Which makes my life a lot easier. If they could find another way to provide us with energy, maybe I could forgive them. But at the moment there isn't."

"And how about the world dying? How convenient would that make things?"

"There's plenty of mako energy out there. All the scientists say so. It's those eco-terrorists that'll tell you otherwise - AVALANCHE or someone."

"AVALANCHE," the man said, almost scowling. And then he turned away, leaving Reever alone with his own thoughts.

Chase left the MP office in Sector Four shortly after the only surviving perp of the robbery was taken into custody. Reever remained behind to clear up some paperwork. Or at least that was what he told himself. In reality, Reever had developed an interest in his prisoner. His words kept echoing in Reever's head...

This is a place of death, not of nature...

The world's dying and you don't do a damn thing..

Reever glanced up at the old clock on the wall of his office, its minute hand moving round the circle in loud ticks, shaving seconds off time. Nine o'clock. His shift ended an hour ago. He packed up his paperwork and prepared to leave.

As he reached the door that curiosity hit him again, harder this time. He turned around and walked straight back into the building and down to the small interrogation room.

You could have just turned around, he thought. It's not your case anymore. You just nail the criminals and let the Shinra prosecutors take care of everything else. But that didn't matter, and he knew full well that if he left this it would haunt him forever.

The interrogation room was bare, empty concrete. Thick blinds covered the windows. A small spotlight shined on an empty steel chair. Behind it a man in a shirt sucked on a ragged cigarette.

"You done with tonight's perp, Dex?" Reever asked.

Dex glanced up. His eyes briefly flashed, like those of a cat. Mako eyes. Dex was a former SOLDIER, an interrogator. He was responsible for a lot of information retrieved off POWs in the Wutai war. No-one doubted his methods. Yet for once he looked totally nonplussed.

"He ain't talking," Dex sighed, taking a long drag on the cigarette. "We've tried everything. All we got out of the guy was a name. Raven."

"Raven," Reever nodded. "What about the gun arm?"

"Nothing. We're guessing he's from the Corel area, possibly a former miner holding a grudge against the Shinra. Anyway, we've got enough to go ahead with an execution. Heidegger will clear it with the SOLDIER firing squad tomorrow and he'll be in a box in three days...what's wrong, Reever? You look pale."

"Nothing," Reever replied blankly. He turned, thanked Dex and left.

The train swept through the streets of Midgar, behind stone houses and towering industrial facilities. Reever Lionheart risked a glance up as it passed through Sector 5 and saw her face staring down at him.

The poster was old, beginning to peel around the edges. The spotlights beneath it were dull, uncared for, like everything else in the city. The word LOVELESS was barely noticeable. That poster had clung to the dirty brick wall of an old business establishment, but even beneath the years of neglect her face shone, her beauty was unmistakable. And once she had been his.

The thought brought a heavy feeling down on his chest, a feeling of loss. The train rushed into a tunnel, obscuring the face from sight, but leaving an imprint on Reever's tortured mind. It had been five weeks since Julia had left him, five long weeks spent drowning that perfect face in pints of Sylkis. Since then he passed her beautiful face every day on his way to work - her beautiful, innocent face. Who was he kidding? She was too good for him. Maybe Vigilante deserved her more.

Reever ceased thinking of Julia as the red sirens flashed up and the Shinra Security check began.

He ditched his uniform in his small home on the outskirts of the Sector 7 slums and headed off to the nearest bar, the Seventh Heaven, in casual wear - jeans and a long black jacket. He spent most of his evenings there, relaxing with a beer, maybe watching some TV. It took some of the stress out of work, and it helped to ease his passage into sleep without the images of the dead he saw everyday - without having to hear the cries of those who fell beneath his bullets.

Reever pulled up a stool at the Seventh Heaven bar and ordered something hard. The girl behind the bar, Tifa, poured him a Sylkis Smash. He liked Tifa. She was a nice girl. Always open for a chat, friendly, efficient. When she looked at him, however, he saw something different in her eyes. Something he'd seen enough times in his own eyes - loneliness. There was a space inside her. Sometimes she'd look longingly at the door to the bar, as though expecting someone to walk in. Then a patron would call her attention and she'd snap out of it, as though coming out of a daze.

Tonight, however, she was far too busy working. The bar was unusually busy.

"You look a little down tonight, Reever," she said, handing him his drink. "Still thinking of Julia?"

"Julia?" Reever replied, trying to smile. "Nah, I'm over her. She's in the past."

"Something's eating you."

Reever shrugged and took a long sip of his drink. It tasted foul, but the pleasant warmth in his belly made up for that. "I've had a hard night."

"I guess you've got a hard job," Tifa shrugged. A man in a red bandana called her over. "I'll get back to you soon."

Tifa served the man his drink and returned to Reever with an empty glass in her hand and a dishcloth. "I'm guessing you had to take care of that robbery, huh?"

Reever nodded. "It wasn't nice."

"It's been all over the news. Two dead and one in custody. They haven't released the details yet."

"There isn't much to release. We've got one perp. He's......"

(The world is dying)

Reever froze up halfway through his sentence. It felt as though a drop of cold ice water had trickled down his back. He shuddered. Finally he settled for, "He has strong beliefs."

Suddenly Tifa seemed very interested. She nodded, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on him. "What sort of beliefs?"

"It's..." Reever began, and realised that his throat was dry. He took a long drink.

Tifa walked off to tend to another patron, and found herself in another conversation. She never returned to her conversation with Reever, but she began to watch the TV News reports a little more closely, and eyed him suspiciously as she left.

He woke up the next day with the weak, watery morning sun shining through his eyes. Barely noticeable down in the slums, but sometimes shafts of sunlight got through the plate - early morning and late evening. It wasn't welcome. Instead it seemed to scorch his sore, bloodshot eyes. His head throbbed, a cold pulse in his forehead. His mouth was as dry as cotton.

Reever checked his watch. Seven o'clock.

He stretched out every tired muscle, wincing at the cries as each reluctantly woke up. He had fallen asleep on the couch again. A hard, battered old couch that faced a blank television in a building that was little more than a tar paper shack on the outskirts of the slums, with grimy, curtain-less windows that barely felt the touch of sunlight. He poured himself a drink and took a cold shower, in a feeble attempt to wake himself up. As he stepped out into his small bathroom, he shivered and realised that he was still half-asleep. He would be until he reached the train.

As he changed into his old uniform, he reached for his gun.

Tifa rested on the bar. The lights in the bar were out - sunlight, weak and watery in the smog, lay in a dusty bar on the bar floor. It was enough. A young girl with short brown hair slept soundly on a table towards the back of the room, oblivious to the conversation going on around her.

"I don't like this," Tifa frowned. "I don't like it at all."

A man lumbered out of the shadows, squinting briefly in the sunlight. Others may have mistaken him for a giant. He towered over the rest of the bar and for a moment obscured the light shining through the window. With one hand he scratched the short bar of hair on his head. Observers would have noticed that he had no other hand. In its place was a machine gun - stubbier than Raven's, but just as deadly.

"I guess a lil' competition never hurt anyone," the large man shrugged.

"But if there's another group out there..." Tifa replied edgily. "Barrett, it could get dangerous. What if it's someone we know?"

"They all saying' he's from Corel," Barrett nodded. "It don't surprise me. Not after what happened there."

"He could be out to get us. He could be out to get you."

Barrett shrugged. "I've seen worse. But if you really worried bout this guy, we'll start making' our move. I'll get Jessie to hack the Shinra network. Wedge can handle the explosion."

"What about the Corel guy?" Tifa said nervously. "I'd kinda be happier if I knew what he was up to."

"Then we'll keep an eye on him," Barrett replied calmly. "Get in touch with some other AVALANCHE members. That Reever guy should be easy to follow."

Tifa frowned and returned to her glass as Barrett vanished out the door and into Sector 7.

Reever Lionheart stepped off the train and into the early morning rain. Heavy today. Streams flowed through gutters and flowed out of the mouths of gargoyles. People wandered up and down the streets clutching umbrellas, avoiding murky puddles. He tipped a nod at the railway guard and descended the steps, heading out of the square and towards the MP station, nursing his headache.

His mind still replayed that first encounter with Raven. Just a nut, he told himself. Another eco-maniac, no better than AVALANCHE or whatever those extremists were called. But his words reverberated in Reever's head, over and over again like a bad dream.

The world is dying....

This is a place of death, not of nature...

On a day like today Reever could certainly sympathise with him. There was nothing but steel and stone in all directions, soaked a dull dark grey in the eternal rain. Once rivers had flowed here, plains had stretched off to the horizon. Trees had grown and blossomed. But those days were forgotten now by all who lived in Midgar. The city that lay before him had always existed, to its citizens - and probably always would. Until the world died...

The door was wide open.

It jolted Reever abruptly out of his thoughts. That wasn't right. The door was always kept securely shut, particularly in bad weather. There was no reason for it to lie open. Yet it was, and it had been for a while. A small puddle had developed on the grimy white mosaic floor, leaving dark muddy streaks. He nervously stepped over the puddle and slid the door shut behind him. The creak seemed too loud. It sent a chill down his spine.

There was another thing. It was too silent.

Normally the office would have been buzzing with life, even at half eight in the morning. The constant clack-clack of keyboards, the drone of telephones, murmured conversation, slamming doors. But there was nothing. Nothing but deathly silence.

Reever pushed open the door into the office and had to bite his lip to hold back the scream. If he had screamed then, he felt he would never have stopped, until he was led off to the asylum.

The office floor was littered with corpses - there had to be at least six. All were riddled with bullets. The air hung thick with cordite and smoke. Empty shells, shining a dim bronze in the flourescent lights, were scattered everywhere. Blood splattered against walls, on tables, on computer screens, dim maroon streaks coating everything. Bullet holes sat in splintered wood, in shattered glass. Two computers had blown up. Towards the end of the room, the door to the cells was ajar.

Reever proceeded cautiously, keeping his eyes away from the bodies. Just think back to your training, he told himself. A body is nothing but an inanimate object. Whatever life had existed within that shell was gone. Now it was just an object. Ignore it. He kept his head high, he ignored the acrid, coppery stench of blood in his nose.

Resting against the far wall, he peered cautiously into the cells. Two more bodies, wearing the blue uniforms of prison guards, sat slumped on the floor, face down. More streaks of blood covering everything, more empty shells. The interrogation room door was open.

Reever stepped through the door, clutching on to his gun with shaking hands. He carefully stepped into the short, narrow corridor.

A cell door was open.

Hid gun held high, Reever peered into the cell. Empty. The blankets on the bed were ruffled up, as though the resident had gotten out of bed in a hurry. Slumped in the far corner of the room was a prisoner officer, lying face up. Reever crept slowly, bent down, checked the pulse. The body was still warm. Three bullets stood out like rubies in his chest. He backed off from the silence that greeted his touch. Dead.

As he left the cell, he noticed the door at the far end of the corridor was open. He followed the corridor, pushed it open and stepped out into the driving rain of the parking lot. Another body lay slumped at the foot of the short concrete staircase, the long streaks of blood he had left behind growing wispy and thin in the driving rain. SOLDIER, Reever noticed, and shuddered. Yet he lay face down - as though fleeing. Fleeing? A member of SOLDIER? From what? Why?

He carefully stepped over the body and pulled out his PHS, jamming a number in with shaking fingers.

"Chase," he said, surprised by the hoarse sound of his own voice. "Chase, something real bad's gone down. I'm at the station....."

"Yeah," Chase yelled. In the background Reever could hear the roar of a motorbike. "I'm currently in pursuit of the perp. It's the guy we caught yesterday."

"You're in pursuit?" Reever cried. Thank you so much, Chase. "Where are you?"

"I'm heading down the highway, to Sector 4," Chase replied. "He's heading for the railway, currently escaping on a Shinra Military Issue G-bike. Possibly heading for the slums. I'll keep you posted."

"Alright, stay with me," Reever said, and shut the PHS case. Three bikes, hulking, great metal beasts, sat against the far brick wall, next to a van. Strictly military issue. Reever fumbled his keys out of his pocket and ran for the nearest bike.

He almost didn't hear the soft bleep of the PHS under the deafening roar of the G-bike. With one sore, gloved hand he reached for the small phone.

"Reever, I'm on top of a train, heading down to the slums," Chase said. In the background Reever could hear the rumble of said train. "I'll keep you posted."

"Alright," Reever said, shutting off the phone. He gripped the bike tightly and swerved right along the rain-slicked highway, the heavy bike rumbling like a sleeping monster, almost sliding out from under him. It took all his strength to control it, but somehow he managed it, keeping the bike slung low along the tarmac. Rain splattered against his helmet, soaked through the thick fabric of his gloves. His hands were numb. Occasionally the grey streets would flare to life under the blue-green glow of a mako reactor, towering above him.

The road swerved close to the railway, on the other side of a low brick wall. Reever yanked the bike so close to the wall that for a brief second sparks flew.

Okay, he thought. You get one chance. Foul it up and you're dead.

A train rushed out of the tunnel, screeching loudly along the rails. To Reever the train and his bike were both stationary, but the low wall and the road seemed to fly by, like a strange film reel. He brought the bike a little closer to the wall, jammed down the accelerator with one foot, and carefully balanced his body weight to one side. Then, using every inch of his strength to push himself, he leapt from the bike.

For a moment the whole world seemed to slow. The train, a hulking steel monster, moved slowly beneath him, one carriage at a time flying past him.

Then he hit it hard, knocking the wind out of him. With one aching hand he grabbed the rail along the roof of the carriage. The wind bit into his face, raindrops slashing against him like broken glass. From somewhere up above the bike slid to a stop and lay in the middle of the highway, a plume of steam rising from its engine.

Reever began to suck in air loudly, desperately. It felt hot and noxious. Brimstone swelled in his chest. His arm felt stretched and useless as it clung on to the roof. He had grazed his chest, even through the thick armour of the MP uniform. His hands were wet, clammy and sore. But none of that mattered. He was alive. That was all.

The PHS rang loudly as the train swept into a tunnel, heading down the side of the plate, into the recesses of the city below. With his spare hand Reever reached for it and answered it. The echo of the train in the tunnel sounded deafening, a metallic symphony playing directly into his ear.

"Chase?" he said into the PHS.

"That you, Reever?" Chase replied. No more rumblings from his end. Chase's surroundings were deathly silent.

"Where are you?" Reever asked.

"An old abandoned warehouse in the Sector Three slums. The perp's escaped inside. He locked the door after him. I'm taking a second floor entrance. I might need back-up."

"I'm on my way," Reever replied weakly. "Did you see what happened in HQ?"

Chase was silent, then his voice was croaky with fear. "Yes. Yes I did."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, chief. Be quick."

Chase hung up. Reever held on tight as the train began circling the pillar.

The warehouse was an old building buried behind a number of old wooden shacks, deep in the darkest part of the Sector 4 slums. No-one had used it as a warehouse for a long time, not since the plate was built. It had just been left to moulder, and hunks of machinery had piled up against it like the bones of some long dead dinosaur.

Reever Lionheart carefully walked across the dirt towards the warehouse. He was thankful for the shelter of the plate, but not for the darkness. A bright spotlight on the pillar picked out the clearings in the slums, but it also created far too many shadows. He unholstered his gun and kept it close.

"Chase," Reever said into the PHS. "Are you in?"

"Yeah," Chase whispered, his voice almost lost in static. "I'm on the second floor of the building, on a walkway. There are two people in the room below. They're whispering... something. I can't make it out, it's.... oh, god-DAMN!"

Gunfire echoed loudly in the background. The PHS died with a final burst of static.

Reever dunked the device into his pocket and broke into a run, his wet shoes kicking dust behind him, the graze down his chest a searing lance of hot pain with every agonized breath. An elderly couple on the porch of an old metal shack regarded him briefly, then returned to their drinks.

He ran towards the high front door of the warehouse. Corrugated iron. Keeping his gun close, he gave it a push. The soft clunk of a lock echoed back at him.

"Damn it," he whispered, then threw himself against the door, shoulder first. The door shook violently in its hinges, but the lock held firm. Reever backed off a little, catching his breath. He felt the beginnings of a stitch in his abdomen.

From somewhere inside there was more gunfire.

Come on, Reever told himself. You've got to get in there. You've got to save Chase.

He backed off a little more, winced at the pain, then ran full force and leapt at the door, shoulder-first. The lock shattered and the door was flung open, hurling shards of rusty metal across the dusty wooden floor. Reever fell to his knees, then leapt up, his gun held high.

"Shinra MP!" he yelled. "On your knees. All of you."

Chase was lying on the floor, one arm over his chest. With growing horror Reever noticed that thick, sticky blood was beginning to ooze through his fingers. Standing over him, with smoke rising from that hideous gun arm, was Raven. Next to him stood a young woman, her arms raised obligingly, but her face was calm and in control.

Reever carefully stepped closer to the centre of the room. A hole in the roof let the bright, unnatural light of the warehouse spotlights inside. Dust mites danced down to the gritty wooden floor. He kept his gun trained on Raven. The girl was unarmed.

"You shot him?" he asked.

Raven shrugged. "He opened fire on us. I acted in self defence."

"Put the gun down."

It was the girl. Reever edged the gun's sights towards her. "Excuse me?"

"I said, put the gun down. We're not going to hurt you." Her voice was so calm it was almost relaxed.

"No way, you're both criminals. I don't know what the hell you're up to, but you're both coming with me. I'm calling for back up."

Reever held the gun up with one hand, his gaze never leaving the dark eyes of the girl, and reached for the PHS with the other.

"Don't bother," she said. "You won't get any back-up. Shinra aren't on your side anymore."

"I don't believe you."

"Try it, then."

Reever flicked the switch on the PHS and dialled the number of the nearest SOLDIER branch. "This is Reever Lionheart, MP Rank 1, 16534. Requesting back up immediately. I have two perps, one man down." He vaguely realised that he was talking to static. "Hello? SOLDIER base 3? Base 3, come..... come i...."

Slowly, almost in a dream, Reever slid the PHS back into his pocket. "It's a trick. You've tricked me."

"Listen, Shinra aren't on your side anymore," the girl explained. "You know too much. About me. About Raven. About us. Who do you think wiped out your unit?"

"You mean....." Reever began, and looked blankly at Raven. "Why should I believe you?"

"Fine," the girl said. "Don't believe me. But Raven here has told me everything. SOLDIER came in and shot your HQ to pieces. They had orders to wipe out your unit and to take out Raven. You were lucky you arrived late this morning. So was your friend. Raven was lucky he got away too."

Raven was nodding.

"You're lying," Reever sneered. "Why would the Shinra do this?"

"I told you. You know too much. I'm the Shinra's dirty mistake, and they want me and everyone who knows of my existence dead."

Her words were almost lost in the deafening roar of a helicopter - a sound which had started life as a low hum in the distance. The girl looked up, her eyes wide with fear. "They're here!" she cried. "Raven, get the other guy."

Time seemed to slow down. Raven picked up Chase like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold. The girl climbed up a ladder towards the back of the room, crying, "Come on!" over her shoulder. The roar of the helicopter filled his head. Suddenly the whole warehouse was lit up with the flash of a spotlight.

Raven climbed up the ladder with Chase slumped over his shoulder, as fast as he could. Reever's paralysis broke and he made a run for the ladder, followed by the soft thuds of bullets whacking into the wooden floor, leaving small puffs of dust. He leapt full force for the ladder as Raven disappeared onto the roof. Then he began to climb. The helicopter spotlight flashed briefly on him.

Please, God, he thought. Please don't open fire.

A bullet whistled through the air and hit the ladder with a loud clang, so close to Reever's right hand that he felt the rush of warm air. He almost froze, but a burst of adrenaline led him to hurry up. Another bullet smacked straight into the wall in front of him. If you slow down, you'll die, he thought, and a chill went down his spine.

At the top of the ladder the girl's hand, small and feminine, reached down to him. He grabbed it like a drowning man and she helped heave him up on to the roof. As he slammed down on to the thin corrugated iron, he suddenly felt horribly exposed. The girl yanked his arm violently and he got to his feet, the roar of the rotors deafening now, the helicopter's search light blinding him.

"Come ON!" the girl screamed, and suddenly Reever was running, heading for the far end of the roof, the lights were too bright, the world lost in that incessant roar. They stumbled down the old machinery, almost falling on top of each other, before hitting the dusty floor below hard. Reever landed last, and he clearly heard the whoosh of two missiles leaving their barrels.

A blast of hot air hurled Reever over twenty yards, at such a slow speed that he seemed to fall in a daze. Then he hit the dust hard and skidded to a halt, feeling the searing heat on his back as a fireball rose into the air where the old warehouse had once stood. Hunks of burning metal rained down around him. A large cog, trailing flames like a meteor, bounced on the floor just inches away from his nose.

Slowly, every muscle screaming, Reever rolled over to face the blinding white wall of flame.

There, lurking above the fire, was the helicopter, it's rotors still deafening even over the crackle of the flames. It hovered forward, through a wall of smoke.

Oh god, this is it, Reever thought. Nowhere to run now. But even as his mind was ready to give in, the mako in his bloodstream began to pulse and he found himself lifting his gun, and holding it high, and suddenly shadows enveloped his whole world except for that looming black monster and those flames, and even as he held down that trigger and the recoil shook his whole body, he was hardly aware of it. Just stay focussed. The world began to blur, sweat prickled on his scorched brow. Flashes, constantly in his face. The rotors. Keep firing....

A metallic arm slammed him to the ground, so hard that he swallowed a mouthful of dust, and he stared blankly down at the hundreds of empty brass shells lying in the dirt before him, the light from the flames picking out every detail.

"Keep down," a harsh voice whispered in his ear, and something heavy rested on his back, keeping him held down.

Reever began to move his head up, and noticed to his horror that the girl was walking forward. She was approaching the helicopter, walking towards it as though it were an old friend. For a moment the air was still, even the helicopter's rotors and the crackle of the flames sounded quiet. She stood, on the dirt, every feature of her body clear in the bright firelight, her long dark hair trailing behind her like the tail of a meteor. And then she slowly raised her arms. Reever noticed that her eyes were closed and was she praying? It certainly looked like it. She was concentrating so deeply that she had almost fallen into a trance.

The air grew thick, all of a sudden. Time seemed to slow, as though it were syrup. And then the girl threw her head back and her body seemed to jolt, as though in the grip of an electric shock.

There were two small explosions, and the helicopter lurched forward, through the flames, rearing up like a monster rising from the deep, rearing up one last time before it began to fall, slowly, spinning round and round. From somewhere inside, even over the rotors which were starting to scream as the helicopter span gracefully down to its doom, Reever could clearly hear the screams. And, for one brief moment, he saw the pilot of the helicopter, his face a mask of suffering and fear - and saw the unmistakable black uniform of a Turk.

Then the helicopter vanished into the flames and there was another colossal blast of hot air. A fireball rose high into the darkened sky, and hunks of machinery flew out of the flames - new machinery, still shining even though much of it was burnt and blackened.

The girl slumped to her knees and Raven ran to catch her.

The small party wandered through the slums in silence, Raven carrying Chase over one shoulder. Reever had removed his helmet and had ditched his machine gun in favour of the military issue revolver. Far too many thoughts ran through his head, none of them pleasant. If what the girl had said was true, then he was a wanted man. He wouldn't be safe as long as he remained in Midgar. If the Turks were after him, he wouldn't be safe anywhere. So where did that leave him? He had no choice but to join these two terrorists, two common criminals.

I can work it out, he told himself. Somehow this has all been a misunderstanding. I know no incriminating existence. But that girl.... what she did to that helicopter. Just what the hell was going on here?

They stopped to rest at a small park, abandoned by the local children for god alone knew how long. A child's laughter had not been heard here for a long time. It sat lonely, empty and forgotten, ancient machinery piled up against the chain link fences.

Raven laid Chase down gently on the slide, as tenderly as he would have a baby. His actions surprised Reever a little - he would never have pictured Raven as having a tender side. Then he joined the girl on the swings, where she sat, gently swinging back and forth, trailing pictures in the dirt with her boot. Reever sat on the swing next to hers and absently did the same.

"Well," Reever said after a short while. "Looks like we're stuck with each other."

The girl smiled, and in doing so Reever first noticed her beauty. "You make it sound bad."

Reever blushed and shrugged. "You never know," he said. "I guess we might as well get acquainted. Reever Lionheart."

Reever raised a hand, and the girl gently took his. They linked hands between the swings in a gesture that was almost childlike in its simple intimacy.

"I'm Gabriella," the girl replied. "Gabriella Arkangel."

"That was some trick you did back there."

Gabriella shrugged, her long hair, black streaked with dark auburn, moving with her. "It was nothing." She looked guiltily down to her shoes. "Listen, Reever. It's my fault the Shinra want you dead."

"Oh, now, I don't believe..." Reever began, but Gabriella snapped a glance at him that silenced him immediately.

"Yes," she said. "It's my fault, because the Shinra want me dead. I'm a dirty mistake, a reject. I'm sure you've heard of Professor Hojo."

"Gast's successor."

"Yeah. Well, Hojo had other experiments going on, back when he was still finishing off Gast's work on Jenova. Chief among them was an investigation into lifestream, and the significance of it in humans. All humans have lifestream inside them. When they die, it returns to the planet. And when we breed, part of that lifestream is passed on to our children. But over the years the levels of lifestream in humans has started to diminish. Most scientists, Gast included, theorised that the diminishing lifestream levels in humans was due to intensive draining of lifestream by the Shinra to produce mako energy. But Hojo had another theory. He suggested that humans were reproducing for a purpose. After all, he used to say. Why do humans exist? To reproduce, and then to die. But why? Why does the species exist for the sole purpose of creating more of itself? He theorised that human reproduction and diminishing lifestream levels in humans were linked. Humans breed and reproduce, because one day we will create 'perfect' race of immortals. A race of people without lifestream.

'Hojo began experimenting on whether this was possible. He took two test subjects, a man and a woman, and fused them with electricity - which, as we know, as a by product of mako energy. The opposite of mako energy. And it began to have the opposite effect. The lifestream levels in his subjects began to weaken and diminish. And when the time came, he bred his two subjects, and nine months later the female gave birth to a daughter. That female was my mother - and I am the result of the experiment. The first human born without a trace of lifestream."

Reever stared into her dark eyes. They were open, but they were also fearful, and he could understand why. This girl had been nothing but a test subject, no better than a mouse in a cage since the day of her birth. And somehow....

"I escaped," she said. "It took me a while - I was eight when it happened. But I soon realised that it wasn't lifestream flowing through my veins - but electricity. Raw electricity. And somehow, with my mind - I could control other electrical objects. Control them, and destroy them." She began to look guiltily down at her shoes again. "And with that power, I broke out. Away from Hojo, away from Shinra, and into the streets. Hojo marked me as a failure. A write-off. I escaped to the slums, was taken in by a nice family, and I managed to hide from the Shinra who were determined to take care of me - the last thing they wanted was a renegade experiment free on the streets. About a year ago I met Raven over there. He'd just had the gun drafted on to his arm. Said he lost it fighting the Shinra, and came to Midgar to get the gun."

"And the bank robbery?" Reever asked.

"We have to do something to pay for our operations," Gabriella reasoned. "Those two men who died back then were close friends of mine - members of our team."

Reever turned pale.

"Gabriella...." he began, and then stopped short. He could confess, sure. But if he did, what would they do then? Abandon him to fight the Shinra alone? Kill him? Raven already knew... but did the girl? Was it worth the risk?

She was looking expectantly at him now, waiting for an answer.

"Nothing," he replied. "Just thinking."

Raven called over to them, "I think we better get moving soon. This guy needs help."

He was standing over Chase, who lay on the slide with his hand clutching his chest. Blood had seeped through the crude bandage. He had taken a bullet, and he was dying, and damn it they had just been sat around here chatting like it was a freaking tea party! Reever jumped up, into the dirt, closely followed by Gabriella, and the pair joined Raven.

"Nearest surgery here is probably at the Wall Market," Reever explained. "But we've gotta be careful. That's the Don's territory."

The three glanced briefly at each other. Don Giovanni Corneo, an ageing member of the Shinra underworld, controlled Wall Market with an iron fist. He owned most of the businesses, and any he didn't own were on his protection racket. For the most part he'd kept his links with the Shinra clean, and so they refused to look into his murkier dealings. His son was a well-known local womaniser who spent much of his time at his father's brothel, the HoneyBee Inn. His son was also greedy, popular and had set his eye on his father's empire. In his old age Giovanni was growing paranoid. His men were positioned around Wall Market, and any suspicious outsiders were instantly in danger. They would have to tread very carefully if they were to enter the Wall Market.

"We don't have a choice, I guess," Gabriella said, breaking the silence.

Reever nodded, and Raven tenderly picked up Chase. The three headed towards the Wall Market.

In his time, Nathaniel Shinra, patriarch of the Shinra dynasty and head of Shinra Inc, had been one, if not the, greatest industrialists in the world. After all, it had been his idea to turn from an already successful weapons production company to mako energy, a decision which had sealed the company's grip on the market, the economy and now even the political world. His enthusiasm, determination and vision had led to the construction of the Midgar plate nearly fifty years ago now, in a mako-rich area of the eastern continent. He had set out to create the greatest city in the world out of a number of small villages, and had succeeded. He had set out to create the greatest corporation in the world, to build a vast empire, and in that he had succeeded to. And now, at the twilight of his life, he had everything. From a large red seat high above Midgar, in the vast Shinra building, he could look out over the heart of his empire, and often, found it hard not to smile.

But Nathaniel's life was far from happy. He was now a very old man, a man who had led a long and hard life from humble beginnings as a Kalm weapons merchant. His son, the vice president, had vision and great ambition. Nathaniel feared him, as he was sure others had feared himself, once. His son had plans, ideas which he brought before the aged committee that controlled Shinra and which were all unanimously voted down. But he had his own ambitions, and Nathaniel knew that it wouldn't be long before his long life came to an end, and he and his committee would be instantly thrown out of office to be replaced by his son's loyal group, all young, all ambitious, all as greedy for power as he himself had once been.

"Well, let them have it," he mumbled to himself in his vast office. "I've done my time here."

But as long as he controlled the corporation, they would do things his way. Outdated, maybe. And maybe the Shinra had become a slower, less dynamic power. They were still under the old order, and until his death it was under the old order they would remain. No matter what his son thought.

Nathaniel took a long drink out of his glass of wine, and replaced it delicately on the desk. He turned his chair around to face the tall, dark man in the black suit who stood before him.

"Yes, Komodo?" he asked impatiently. Komodo shuffled uneasily. The Turks had been his son's idea - a SOLDIER recruitment force who could also take care of some of the corporation's dirty business quickly and efficiently. His grandson, Rufus, was in charge of them at the moment, a young man disciplined in corporate politics from a young age. Already the Shinra family traits were beginning to show themselves in him, though he was barely out of his teens. The fierce ambition, the greed for power - and that glowing strawberry blonde hair that Nathaniel himself had once had, long before it faded and paled.

"The vice-president has told me to report to you, sir," Komodo said. "They have entered the Wall Market, down in the slums. Corneo has agreed to keep an eye on them, but we need your go ahead to take them all out."

Nathaniel sighed, a long, whispery sigh from his old man's body. "I want them all dead, I want this whole mess cleared up. But not right now. I want to find out if there are others. Tell Corneo to capture them - and have the Turks keep an eye on him. If the old fool lets anything slip, take care of him. I'll stay in touch. When I give the go ahead, take them all out."

"All of them?" Komodo asked casually.

"Everyone of them. There can be no witnesses. I want this whole unpleasant business wrapped up. And when I get round to it, I want Hojo disciplined for this."

Komodo nodded and left the office.

It was midday and the Wall Market was bustling with slum residents visiting the stores, begging, or just browsing. Reever led them through the South entrance, passing a muscle-bound guy in a leather jacket who paid them a suspicious glance before wandering off.

"Stick together," Reever instructed. "This is a tough place. There are plenty of people here who would happily knife you or shoot you for your money. Stay close."

The doctor's surgery was a small hut near the Wall Market inn. Reever pushed open the door gently, not noticing the man in black who watched over him from an opposite rooftop through a pair of binoculars.

Doctor Milton, a friendly man in a long white jacket with a small ink stain on the pocket, helped ease Chase on to the couch on the second floor of his office. The office was neatly furnished, painted white, with medical diagrams nailed to the wall. The others stood nervously against the wall, watching as Milton carefully removed the crude fabric bandage around Chase's chest. He winced.

"Looks pretty bad," he muttered to himself, adjusting his glasses.

He unbuttoned Chase's shirt, ignoring the gentle grunts of pain that Chase occasionally let out, and began to clean up the blood with a wet cloth. About halfway through, he looked up, turned to the others and said, "This may take a while. He has a bullet caught in the muscle, thankfully it hit him at an angle after rebounding off something. Good job you bandaged him, otherwise he may have bled to death. If you'd like to wait outside, I'll call you when I'm doing. Have any of you got a PHS?"

Reever nodded. "We'll be in the area," he said.

The three of them walked outside the surgery.

As he stepped outside, Reever took a deep breath of fresh air. He had never liked the smell of hospitals, or of doctor's surgeries. That flat, sterile odour of death and pain. It brought back memories of lying on hard beds and being poked and prodded by needles. Compared to that, the pollution-thick smell of the slums was heavenly.

"What now?" Gabriella asked.

"Well, we've got some time on our hands," Reever replied. "I don't want to leave Chase alone in Wall Market. Maybe we can go look around the stores." He glanced around the area eagerly. "I wouldn't mind picking up some new clothes. I'm pretty sure I should ditch this uniform."

Gabriella looked the suit up and down. It was burnt, torn and scratched. She nodded. "Hmm, there should be a tailor round here somewhere."

They set off through the Wall Market. It was a short walk to the nearest tailors, and for the most part it was safe. They passed by stores with beautiful fabrics, rugs and trinkets. The smell of hot food wafted out of diners. People yelled and hawked their wares. From every direction there came the sound of haggling.

Finally they arrived at the tailors, a small hut near the bar.

"I think I'll go get a drink or something," Raven said suddenly as they stepped up to the door. "Never liked clothes shopping."

Gabriella giggled, covering her mouth with the back of her hand as she did so. "Yeah," she snickered. "You never struck me as the type who would be interested in clothes, Raven."

Now Reever was laughing too, and even Raven was beginning to smile.

"I'll see you soon," he said, walking into the bar. "Have fun."

As Gabriella felt her way through the piles of clothes hung up on the racks against the wall, Reever reflected on his situation. He hadn't been clothes shopping in a long time - not since...well, not since Julia, he guessed. That was a long time ago now. Maybe from another life. Clothes shopping with Julia had always been dull, routine. She'd pick out clothes without enthusiasm, would change, and that would be that. With Gabriella it was different. He watched intently as she felt the fabrics delicately, looked over every sheet of cloth, touched the cold brass of the brooches, the smooth leather, the course denim. He noticed that she even stopped to smell the clean, fresh aroma of new clothes. She was like a child, in a toy shop for the first time.

"How about this, Reever?" she said suddenly, turning around with a pair of blue jeans and a long leather jacket in her hands. "It suits you."

"Really?" Reever asked. "You think so?"

Gabriella nodded.

Reever took the clothes and walked into the small changing room. A few minutes later he was out, wearing the jeans, a black shirt and the leather jacket that flowed down to the back of his knees. He kept his light body armour on beneath the shirt.

Gabriella looked him over carefully. Then she began to nod, and...was she blushing?

"It's lovely," she said, smiling, glancing at the floor.

"What's wrong?" Reever asked. A smile crept across his lips. "You look embarrassed."

"I don't know," she shrugged. "It's just....I don't know, I'm stood here, looking a man up and down....and.... What's so funny?"

Reever was giggling now. "You, getting all coy. How do you think I feel? Shall I give you a twirl?"

He twirled around, making a theatre of it, until Gabriella burst out laughing. They were both laughing now. "Oh, you clown," she chuckled. "Come on. Let's find Raven."

As they paid, Reever found himself standing closer to Gabriella - and felt a flutter in his stomach that he hadn't felt since Julia. Was it love? Was he falling in love with her? Well, she was a pretty girl. They paid and left the shop together.

They entered the bar next door to find Raven holding a scrawny man with a blonde Mohawk up by the neck in the corner of the room.

"Oh no..." Gabriella muttered.

The man squirmed desperately, a look of horror on his face. Raven looked like a madman, his short hair straggling his face, a vein throbbing violently on his forehead. The barrel of his gun arm was pointing at the little man. The little man stared into it as though in a trance.

"Raven, stop!" Reever cried, running forward. A small crowd of onlookers, the few patrons the bar had at this time of the morning, had gathered around to look. All of them looked concerned. Reever noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that a barmaid was cowering behind the bar.

He carefully reached for his pistol and pointed it at Raven. Raven gave him a cautionary look.

"This little creep was spying on me," he balked. "I caught him calling his boss with information about me."

"Hey, pu...put me down!" the little man cried weakly.

Raven threw the man across the room. He crashed through a table, snapping it in half and sending chairs off into all directions. For a moment he squirmed weakly at the centre of the rubble, before he lay still. Reever hoped he was unconscious and not dead. A spectator walked carefully forward, glanced down at the man, and then backed off uneasily.

"Raven, just what the hell is going on here?" Reever snapped.

Raven turned to Reever, brushing off a small scram mark on his wrist that the little man had left as he flew across the room. "I told you," he said calmly, although his face was bright red and sweat trickled down his brow. "I caught the little bastard spying. He was sat in the corner, with a gun, muttering into a radio. I was here, drinking, and he was sat back there describing my every move. I went over to see him and he ran. I grabbed him, yanked his radio and I got the Don speaking."

"The Don?" Reever replied. "He's spying on us?"

"Looks that way."

"Then we have to get out of here, as quick as possible."

He glanced at Gabriella. She walked towards the door.

As she opened it, letting a bar of weak sunlight pour into the dark interiors of the bar, a bulky man in an open waistcoat with nothing beneath pushed her back inside. He was closely followed by two more heavies and a man with a large black beard. All were heavily armed.

Before Reever could react one of the bulky men had grabbed Gabriella and was pointing a gun at her temple. His wide body seemed to dwarf the comparatively petite Gabriella. He lunged forward, only to be thrown backwards by another heavy. He landed hard on the corner of a table, a lance of fiery pain tearing through his lower back. He realised that the bearded man was now pointing a large automatic rifle at him.

"Don't move," the bearded man said calmly. "Stay exactly where you are. All of you."

Raven was carefully raising his gun arm. A hood wandered behind him and placed a pistol against the back of his head. He whispered something and Raven slowly lowered his arm.

"Good idea," the bearded man said to Raven. "And don't try anything funny. I have an armed man standing outside the surgery where your friend Chase Zephyr currently resides, and a sniper across the street with Chase directly in his sights. I have only to press this button..." ,and here he held up the radio, before finishing with "...to kill him."

Reever looked desperately at Gabriella and Raven, hoping that they wouldn't try anything. They were cornered.

The hoods escorted them violently out of the bar and to the Don's mansion.

It was an old building, one that had once stood in rolling countryside, at the end of a long drive, possibly, that wound through neatly kept lawns and eventually ended at the road which would take you to a small town that had once had a name, but was now known simply as Sector 5. Back in the days when Midgar was a small town lying somewhere near the current Sector 4, and where the very notion of a city on a plate was absurd.

Now it lay in the shadows of a vast concrete pillar that supported the city that had once only existed on the head of a small boy who had grown up to become the president of the world's largest corporation, and now the rolling lawns had all died, leaving dust and dirt. A few old statues were dotted around the place, mostly crumbling or smeared in graffiti. Armed hoods patrolled the area. A few stores and other buildings were built very close to the grand old doors that led into Corneo Manor, the ancient family estate of the Corneo dynasty. Once they had ruled the area as nobles, now they ruled the slums as criminals. Despite his fear and anger, conflicting with each other inside Reever Lionheart, he felt a little sorry for the pitiful remnants of this proud legacy. Reduced to a sham like everything else had under the Shinra.

They were led through the doors into the old building by the bearded man and his cohorts. It retained some of the dignity it had once had. Much of the furniture inside was ancient. Suits of armour, portraits of long dead family members, furniture from exotic parts of the world hand-crafted by dead artisans. From somewhere an old grandfather clock ticked steadily, shaving off the seconds of time until its inevitable death. The sound mingled with the rhythmic beats of their footsteps, and for the first time Reever began to feel scared.

They climbed a staircase and were pushed through a pair of big wooden double doors, into the lair of the Don himself.

He was an old man, as Reever already knew. But he looked positively ancient. His hair was a dirty white cloud on his tanned head, still formal and proud, still betraying his noble heritage. There were still traces of the vivid blonde that was hereditary of the Corneo family. He was smoking a large cigar. As Reever and his allies entered the room, Giovanni Corneo reclined in his large, black leather seat. He smiled a wide, crocodile's grin, and in the light of his desk lamp one gold tooth flashed menacingly.

"Ah, here they are," he said, his voice a dull croak. The room was heavy with the stench of tobacco. He pressed a button on a small intercom placed on his heavy oak desk. "I've got them, Nathaniel. The girl is here. And I've got two boys waiting to take care of the other one."

A muffled, fuzzy reply came out of the intercom, then Giovanni carefully shut it off. He never once took his eyes off the group before him.

The bearded man walked towards the Don. He whispered something. Giovanni nodded, staring intently at Reever with his dull grey eyes. Then he reached into a drawer in his desk and handed the bearded man a small brown bag. "1500 gil," he muttered. "Now all of you get out." A little louder, addressed to the whole group.

Giovanni's bodyguards left, grumbling to themselves. They slammed the wooden door behind them and vanished down the stairs, leaving Reever, Gabriella and Raven alone with Giovanni.

After a short pause, in which the two sides eyed each other up, Reever said, "Pretty brave, dismissing your bodyguards."

Giovanni chuckled, a sound as dry and as old as the whisperings of the wind in autumn dead leaves. "Not really. Not when you consider that I could very easily end the life of your friend, Mr Chase Zephyr, with the push of a button." He raised the PHS. "I think the game is weighted entirely in my favour."

"You might as well lay your cards on the table then," Reever sighed. "Why are we here? Who's pulling your strings? The Shinra?"

"You know, Mr Lionheart, your curiosity will kill you one day..."

"Cut the crap and get to the point. I'm guessing it's the Shinra."

"You're correct," Giovanni confirmed, crushing out his cigar. "They're sending out some SOLDIER troops to escort you to Shinra HQ where you will be dealt with. But let me tell you that I did what I had to do, before you condemn me." Giovanni stared down at his hands, which were starting to shake, and in that instant he looked very old. "I am losing my grip on the slums. My position of power here is all that remains of the Corneo family legacy. All these young hooligans are taking more ground off me everyday. My son is a disgrace to the family. He will ruin the family name when he comes to power. Already he has fouled up.

'For a while the club owned by my son, the Honey Bee Inn, has received the custom of the esteemed Vice President of Shinra Inc. For a while we had a perfect relationship. The vice president's money and service, and subsequently support from the Shinra. MPs have been cracking down on crime in the area - as long as it is the work of other gangs. For the most part it has been successful. But then my idiot son decided to raise the rates in the Honey Bee Inn to an extortionate level - deliberately to garner money out of the Vice President. He got angry and threatened to close the place down unless the rates were lowered. I attempted to intervene, to lower the rates, but Shinra were already withdrawing their support. They have given me one last chance to prove myself. To capture you. As a result I have had my men keep an eye out for you, and they have succeeded. So here we are." Giovanni's face suddenly became more desperate. "Listen, I don't know what will happen next. I've angered the Shinra, and the President wants to tidy this whole mess up. He wants me dead. He wants you all dead. He's got the Turks monitoring this whole thing."

"The Turks?" Reever cried. "Oh man. Just what the hell is going on?"

"It's me," Gabriella said, her voice eerily calm. "They want me..."

Giovanni's eyes were wide with what looked like fear. "The President is making an official visit to the Sector One reactor tomorrow," he said, his words coming out in a fast garble. "He's...oh, please, NO!"

The door burst open, hurling splinters of wood in all directions. Two men in black suits, one wearing a red bandana, the other bald with sunglasses, tumbled in.

"PLEASE NO!" the don cried. "PLEASE I DIDN'T TELL THEM ANYTHING I SWEAR!"

The man in the bandana silenced the don with a short burst of automatic fire. Giovanni was thrown back into his seat, his body spasmed briefly, then he slumped backwards, blue smoke rising off his body.

"You've said enough, old man," the man in the bandana said calmly, lowering his smoking assault rifle. He wielded it with one hand, Reever noticed. A professional. The navy suit left no doubt as to his identity - he was a Turk. And he had just killed the head of the Corneo crime syndicate. He calmly glanced at Reever. "How convenient."

Raven had raised his gun arm, and Reever was reaching for his pistol. If they were going down, they were going down fighting. The man in the bandana sighed and gave both of them a withering stare.

"Oh, why can't you just die?" he said, shaking his head and raising his rifle. "It would make my job so much easier. I'm missing a poker game to be here."

"Take them out, Reno?" the bald man grunted.

Reno nodded. "Come on, Rude," he said.

As Reno raised his gun and as Reever began to flip off the safety on his gun, the air grew thick and time seemed to double back on itself. The tick-tick of the grandfather clock seemed to grow louder, slower, began to fill his world. Little dots pulsed in front of Reever's eyes. The room....the room was brighter. For a moment it seemed as though the light were as bright as the sun - it filled the whole room. And then it exploded, spraying sparks on Reno and Rude. Reno cried out and cowered, Rude did the same.

"Come ON!" Gabriella cried, grabbing his arm and yanking him towards the window. The room was still thick with smoke, and with the lights down it was plunged into darkness. Raven had leapt through the window already, smashing it into a thousand fragments with his gun arm. Gabriella closely followed, and for a moment Reever stood on the edge of the window ledge, looking down at the lower roof. The other two had run off and were climbing down.

Gunshot echoed loudly in his ears and a bullet whistled past him.

He didn't think. He jumped, landing hard on the roof. From somewhere over his shoulder he heard Reno cry out.

He leapt down off the lower roof, on to the dusty floor. Behind him the thuds of bullets impacting in the dirt drove him on, sent a surge of adrenaline into his legs. He ran and leapt for the cover of a store, where Raven and Gabriella were already sheltering.

"Come on," Raven said. He was panting, and sweat trickled down his brow. "There should be a hole in the wall behind the Market. We'll head for the pillar."

"The pillar?" Reever gasped. Brimstone swelled in his chest, hot and acrid. "Why the pillar?"

"If we're going to stop the Shinra, why not go straight to the source?" Raven replied.

Reever thought for a moment, then said, "The president? Are you nuts? He'll have so much security around him you'll be lucky to get within a mile of him."

"We don't have a choice," Gabriella said. "If we stay in the slums the Turks will find us."

Reever looked at both of them as if they were nuts. Finally, he conceded. "Fine. You two head for the pillar. But I'm going back for Chase."

"Are you nuts?" Raven cried. "He's probably dead. And if the Turks haven't got the Shinra military covering every exit in the Wall Market already, they will by the time you get to Chase. We have to go now, or we'll never get out of here."

"Then go!" Reever snapped. "You and Gabriella go on and get out. Me and Chase will make our own way out."

He started to walk away heading for the surgery. He's reached the entrance to the gym when Gabriella called over to him, "Reever, wait..."

She ran after him. He turned to her. "You coming along for the ride?"

And, walking slowly like a scolded dog, came Raven.

The man in the muscle vest was bored. He'd been stood in front of this door for two hours now, waiting for his idle PHS to buzz an affirmative. When he heard that buzz he could run into the room behind him and waste everyone inside. The idea appealed to him. It had to be better than reading old medical charts and posters on the wall, or at least attempting to. Hell, anything had to be better than trying to read medical charts. He'd never liked doctor's surgeries - never liked the smell.

The door swung open. He jumped, and almost fired a shot.

Steady, Kotch, he told himself. Steady. You blow this one and the Don will blow a hole in your head. It was just a patient, looking a little pale and under the weather, wearing a leather jacket. He almost chuckled. Nearly killed a sick man. That wouldn't look good on his future job applications.

"Yo, you looking' for someone?" he called over to the man.

"Yeah," the man replied. "Dr Milton here?"

Kotch shrugged. "He's in surgery at the moment. I suggest you wait outside."

"It's an emergency. He told me on the phone to come see him at once."

The hood sighed. There were always difficult people. Whatever you tried to do, you'd run into difficult people. He approached the ill men, attempting to tower over him. He did intimidating well. "I don't think you understand me..."

"Look," the sick man said, reaching into his jacket pocket. "I've got a prescription right here."

Kotch sighed and waited for the man to fumble out his prescription. He pulled something out of his pocket - but it certainly wasn't a pistol. It was a .32 pistol.

Before Kotch could react the sick man had whacked him hard in the jaw with the handle of the pistol. His head bounced off the doorframe and he collapsed unconscious to the floor.

"There's your prescription," Reever Lionheart said, brushing some of the white make-up off his face. That stop off at the chemist had been worth it. "And it isn't looking good."

He stepped over Kotch's twitching, unconscious body, then carefully opened the door to the surgery. Thankfully it opened outwards. He pushed Kotch's body aside and opened the door wide enough to allow him to peer round a corner. He saw Chase's eyes wander to the crack, saw them light up. Chase's mouth began to move.

"Shh," Reever whispered, placing his index finger across his lips in a silencing gesture. Chase turned back to Milton, who was carefully applying a bandage to Chase's bare chest. There was a moment of silence, before Reever stage whispered. "When I say go, both of you hit the decks. There's a sniper across the street."

Chase's eyes widened again, but this time the fear was unavoidable. Reever gently depressed a button on his PHS. There was that thickness again in the air - weaker this time, further away - and then he leapt into the room, yelling, "DOWN!" at the top of his voice. Please, Gabriella, succeed, he thought. Please. Or we're all dead.

Chase rolled to the side, dragging Milton down with him. A shot rang loudly in Reever's ears and the window exploded inwards. A bullet blew out part of the doctor's table, sending fluff and charred leather in all directions. It didn't matter. They had enough time to move.

The three of them crouched behind the doctor's couch, Reever holding them back, his gun held up by his shoulder. Carefully, his heart throbbing in his head, he peered around the corner, through the broken fragments of window. The sniper was good. Definitely a professional. If they hadn't moved exactly when they did one of them would be dead now.

There. Across the street. A light flashed off the barrel of the gun, held by a shadowy figure perched on the edge of the roof of a materia store. Then the blinding red flash of a laser sight...

Reever swung backwards just in time to see the porcelain on the wall just inches away from his head explode, leaving a good-sized hole in the plaster. Good god, he thought. That was too close.

He carefully raised the PHS to his mouth. "You and Gabriella set?" he muttered.

A fuzzy affirmative came from the device.

"Alright," Reever finished. "Do your thing, Raven." He turned to Chase, and passed him his shirt. "You think you're up to a little running, Chase?"

"He should be fine," Dr Milton confirmed.

"Alright," Reever nodded. "When I give the go-ahead, we all run for the door. Got that?"

Chase nodded.

From the roof Reever heard the loud rat-tat-tat of automatic fire. The sniper got up and ran as bullets bounced and rebounded off the wall of the opposite building. "Go!" he cried, running for the far door.

Chase closely followed, then Milton. They burst through the door just as two hoods ran through the entrance, crying, "Hey!"

"Up the stairs!" Milton said, bursting through the doors and climbing the staircase. The other two followed him up, Reever hanging at the back with his gun pointed towards the door. As they hit the turning the goons ran through the door. Reever shot one, fired at the other and missed. The shot goon slumped to the floor, clutching at his stomach.

They ran into the upper reception just as a hood smashed through the window and another came through the opposite door. "Where now?" Reever whimpered, pointing his gun in all three directions.

"There's a service ladder through that door," Milton explained, pointing at a door that looked more like a closet.

Chase ran through it, closely followed by Milton and Reever. They began to climb up the rusty ladder. Reever heard the door open just as he reached the top of the ladder, which led to the roof where Raven and Gabriella stood waiting.

Raven was clutching a large swinging crane which seemed to be hanging from the plate itself, hundreds of feet above. "Come on," he said, holding on tight. Gabriella had climbed up on to his shoulders, riding piggy back. "We're getting out of here."

From down in the streets Reever could hear plenty of commotion - people running, shouting, guns probably waving. If they went back down there they'd die.

"Come on," he said, and walked around to the other side of the hook, clutching on tight. Chase held on to the side, so that all three of them held on to the hook, and only Raven's feet were on the ground.

"Grab on, doc," Raven said. Hands were clutching on to the roof.

Milton shook his head, and ran for the edge of the wall. "I'll make my way into the slums. You go on and get out. I'll be okay."

Raven nodded as the doctor leapt off the roof and the first hood poked his head over the edge. "There!" the hood cried.

Raven leapt upwards, and they swung across the whole Wall Market as below them the citizens of the slums looked up in wonder.

They let go of the hook just before hitting the large concrete wall towards the back of the market that separated it from Sector 7 and the pillar. All three of them hit the dusty floor hard, apart from Gabriella, who remained on Raven's back.

Reever stood up, brushing dust off his suit. Above them the hook smashed into the concrete wall, spraying a light puff of concrete dust on top of them. He barely noticed. His legs were grazed, his back ached, he was hot, bruised, shaking, tired and in need of a drink. And now Raven was proposing that they head up to the plate? To climb hundreds of feet up the pillar, to face off against hordes of goons and robots, to risk his life yet again - and for what?

Already he was crawling through the small hole at the bottom of the graffiti-stained wall. Gabriella stood close behind him, waiting to follow. Chase was resting against the wall and pulling on his top. He had changed too, and was now wearing a pair of trousers lended to him by Dr Milton. The top was Gabriella's, purchased from the tailors, and she'd thrown in a waistcoat too. It looked good. She'd spent a long time picking it out.

Gabriella crawled through the hole, then Chase. Finally Reever ducked down and shuffled through. The hole seemed a lot lower inside, a lot more claustrophobic. It was a short passage, but halfway through he realised that he could barely lift his head without scraping against the jagged concrete exterior, and that above his head was a hell of a lot of concrete. Enough to crush him easily. It wasn't a comforting thought. He sped up, scraping his knees and elbows, staining his new clothes in dirt, then clambered out the other side into the wasteland of Sector 7.

For a moment aching familiarity hit him. He knew all this. On the other side of those piles of junk to the west lay Sector 7 itself, and his humble home, now lying vacant and empty a few mere yards away. To the east lay the train graveyard, which he sometimes wandered into when he needed some quiet time away from the hustle and bustle of Sector 7. Not that far away lay the nearest support, visible from here. Below that would be the railway station he frequented every morning, quiet at mid-afternoon. It would be so easy to just walk home - but it wouldn't be long before the Shinra would find him. If he left now he'd be dead.

Gabriella had approached the nearest rubble pile, by the wall. She blew up some machinery using her psychic powers, and caused a small landslide on the pile that obscured the hole.

"Turks won't follow us now," she said, and walked back to the group. "Come on. Let's go."

"Wait," Reever said, as the rest of the group began to walk to the pillar. "This is madness. Do you really want to climb all the way up the pillar, to the plate, into the heart of the Shinra? For what? I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted."

"You're exhausted?" Raven snapped. "Well, we're all exhausted. But if we stay here we'll all die. Nothing's stopping you going."

"If we go up there we'll all die!" Reever cried weakly. "Don't you see that?"

"Look, stop it, will you?" Gabriella snapped. "You're like children, both of you. I want to find out more about myself. And all I want is to be safe. Maybe the only way I can get both of those is to confront the President. And I'm going to do it, even if you all stay here."

She stormed off towards the pillar.

"Oh, man..." Reever sighed, and reluctantly followed.

There was an old rusty service ladder that stretched right the way up the side of the pillar. It led up to the maintenance walkways along the bottom of the plate, and by the looks of things hadn't been used in a long time. At two points it even went behind the railway that looped round the pillar and occasionally vanished into long, winding tunnels within the pillar itself. Reever followed its path with a growing sense of dread. It climbed so high that the rungs became invisible - in fact, the ladder itself was barely visible - it was a thin grey line. And they were about to climb up it?

Raven had already begun the climb, clambering up with surprising grace and skill, yanking himself up two rungs with one muscular arm at a time. Gabriella followed closely behind, then Chase, who eyed the ladder up nervously before beginning his ascent.

Reever grabbed the ladder and ice welled up in his heart as it shook beneath his grip. This isn't safe, he thought. Just don't look up. Or down. Keep facing straight ahead, keep facing forward. Don't think about the drop.

He began to climb, slowly at first, more rhythmically as he began to climb higher. At about twenty feet up he dared a glanced upwards. The ladder continued to stretch on forever. Raven was about fifty feet up by now. How the hell can he climb so fast with one hand? Reever wondered. The plate looked too far. Cranes and machinery hung off it, and then horribly two birds flew high above him, making him feel queasy and disorientated. He almost slipped.

Then he clung on tighter, hugging the ladder. Don't do that again, he told himself. Fall from here, you might break your legs. Fall from a little higher and you're dead. Just keep facing forward.

He began to climb again, ignoring the gritty, unpleasant feel of the rusty metal beneath his bare hands, and the unpleasant chill it sent into his palms. Just ignore it, he thought. They were growing numb anyway.

At the fifty foot mark, the ladder entered a small grove in the wall of the pillar, behind the railway line. Raven had hopped off here and stood on the metal railway line, high up in the air. He appeared to be looking out across the slums. The others followed. Reever clambered up and was thankful for the rest. Big red marks had been cut into his palms. They were now past numb.

"Check out the view," Raven said.

Reever followed his gaze, and he was right. The slums and the plate stretched away into the distance, small clusters of houses, piles of rubble, bustling markets, warehouses - it all lay below them, like a model town. And right beyond them, a small bar on the far horizon, was blue sky - a long round strip of sunlight just beyond the plate which seemed to swallow up the whole sky. And there were clouds, rolling over the eternal countryside beyond the city. The slums were still in darkness, but there was light - and Reever felt a strange, light feeling seeing it. A feeling of hope.

"Come on," called Raven. "There should be a vent somewhere in here that leads straight into the reactor. We've just got to hope we follow the right path."

"We could end up anywhere," Chase frowned.

"Don't worry," Reever replied. "I know the tunnels from reactor duty as an MP."

Chase frowned, as did Raven. But they headed down the tunnel anyway.

After what seemed like a lifetime's wandering into the dark, dingy tunnel, listening to the constant rhythmic beats of their boots on the concrete and the gentle hum of the generators, Chase stopped to rest by a wall.

Gabriella stopped too, and sat opposite him, beneath a dingy white halogen light in the wall. The tunnel was still pretty dark, but the light was enough to allow them to see. Just don't use those powers, Reever thought as he sat down next to Gabriella. The last thing they needed was absolute darkness.

Raven stood methodically in the centre of the sweeping rails that covered the floor. There was plenty of room here for the trains to manoeuvre. Reever thought about how many times he'd passed down this tunnel without even noticing it, how it had just been a series of lights flashing past the window. He'd have been thinking about other things, like work, or a drink, or....Julia. Julia.

An aching longing spread through his body. God, he missed her. And so far today he hadn't thought of her. Was he finally getting over her? Did he want to get over her? After all, had he not once thought she was his perfect woman? He still remembered that day in Kalm, in the sunshine - a picnic, the flowers waving round them, the air cool, the sweet taste of wine, and...

"Reever?"

He snapped out of his thoughts and he was back in this dull, windy tunnel, barely able to see himself in the dark, his whole body aching, scratched and bruised, wanting nothing but to be home with a drink, looking at Gabriella.

"What's wrong?"

Gabriella giggled. "Nothing. You just looked so serious. It was kinda funny."

"I can look serious sometimes," Reever replied, trying to sound angry. But he ended up laughing too, and here we are, he thought, sat in a railway tunnel in the middle of nowhere giggling like children. Chase walked over and joined them.

"Hey there," he said to Gabriella. She smiled and greeted him politely.

"How you feeling, Chase?" Reever asked.

"I'm fine," Chase replied. "The doctor did a good job. It was just a flesh wound, thank god. Should leave a little scar, but I'm ready to keep going." There was a brief pause, then he said, "I'd like to know what's going on, I guess."

Reever sighed. Hell, he wished he knew what was going on. Gabriella had wandered off to find Raven. "Far as I know, that lady over there, Gabriella, was an experiment. Dr Hojo of the Shinra messed round with her, and now she's got some weird powers that allow her to control electrical goods. And the Shinra are desperate to kill her and wipe out her existence, which means killing everyone who knows of her. Which, of course, includes us. And they're pretty serious."

"The Shinra?" Chase gasped. "They want to kill us? Surely it's a misunderstanding."

"Nah," Reever grunted. "I don't think it was a misunderstanding when they blew up the warehouse, or when I was nearly shot dead by the Turks, or when they massacred the whole MP 3rd Division this morning." He sneered. "There have been far too many misunderstandings."

"And now where are we going?"

"Apparently President Shinra is making an official visit to the Sector One reactor today. We are going to squeeze some answers out of him."

"Are you nuts?" Chase cried.

Reever shrugged.

"Hey, come look at this." Raven's voice. From the down the tunnel.

Reever stood up and brushed some of the grime off his clothes. He followed Raven's voice a little further down to the tunnel, to the glowing green bars that were the Shinra's ID scans. One step through there and you'd be fried, he thought glumly. They lit up the whole corridor in a dull flourescent green. But Raven wasn't looking at the ID scanners. He was staring intently at the small vent in the floor.

"This should take us beneath the plate," he confirmed, flipping off the lid. "Hope none of y'all are claustrophobic. It's gonna be tight."

Reever peered into the small, dark tunnel. Raven was right. It would be a tight squeeze - far tighter than the concrete wall, and a lot longer too. He glanced up at Raven. "I'm going first, aren't I?" he sighed. Raven nodded.

He peered down into the tunnel. It was dark in there. Very dark. For a moment he had the briefest hesitation, then he told himself to calm down, to not think about it, and began to crawl into the tunnel, face first. He pushed himself along with his elbows and his knees, along the smooth steel floors of the vents. For a minute or so he had the light from the tunnel to guide him, but then Raven crawled in and he was plunged into a darkness so pure that he didn't know it could exist. This tunnel had possibly never seen sunlight, and it certainly felt like it. As he crawled down the slope, scraping his elbows on the joints between the metal sheets, a cold breeze blew into his face. After a while, he thought, my cheeks will be numb and I won't notice anymore. He brushed through ancient, dirty cobwebs, felt bugs scuttle against his face that had never seen humans before.

Ignore them, he thought. If you stop now you might not move again, and we'll all be stuck here in the dark forever. You can only go forward, and for the love of God don't lead them to a dead end. He failed to notice the end of the tunnel until he banged his head directly into it with such force that, for a moment, stars flashed before his eyes. His temples throbbed. He felt clumsily to the right, to the left, with his arms. A junction.

"Junction ahead," he said, the echo reverberating around his swollen head painfully. "Head left. Raven, grab my belt so you don't lose me. The rest of you grab the belt of the person in front of you. If we get lost down here we'll be stuck here forever."

They turned to the left, followed the passage for a short distance to its inevitable end (which Reever found this time by waving his hands in front of him), and turned up a slope. They followed it round and up.

After what seemed like a hundred years of crawling round dark, underground tunnels, Reever reached a corner and for the first time saw a glimpse of glorious light, a small, dull bar reflected off the wall of the corner of the tunnel. He followed the air vent along and turned the corner, and there it lay - a bar of sunlight, quite dim down here, but blinding in its beauty to Reever's eyes. He crawled eagerly into the bar of sunlight and looked straight up.

For about twenty-five feet a small square passage led up to a grill, probably under a hood on the side of a building up on the plate. He could clearly hear footsteps from up there, echoing loudly in the tunnel. He could hear the rumble of cars. He heard voices. Life. A shadow briefly passed by, obscuring the light for a moment. Reever fought with the temptation to call out, and thought against it. If whoever had passed by - maybe a businessman, a businesswoman, an MP, a young mother - heard him, and looked into the grill, what would they see? His dirty face peering up at them? How would he explain this?

No, he told himself. For the moment it was best to carry on. Leave the outside world for later. He left the bar of sunlight and continued to crawl along the air vent, his elbows and knees raw, his face numb. Soon the light had faded out to nothing, and then they were back in the darkness.

It was a long time before they saw light again, and when they did it was the dull, artificial lights on the catwalk high above the slums, along the bottom of the plate. But to Reever Lionheart, they were the most beautiful lights he had ever seen. Because his trip through the bowels of Midgar was over.

A grill separated them from the catwalk, but Reever elbowed it open with enough force to bruise himself. It bent in and collapsed on the walkway with a loud clatter. He then pulled himself out and fell to the floor, relishing the feeling of his muscles re-awakening. He stretched for well over two minutes, just breathing in the fresh air, stretching out his muscles, as the others emerged.

It was a short walk along the catwalks, comparatively short compared to that long crawl, and this time it was all standing. They moved up and down ladders, through tunnels, beneath dull lights and power cables. The reactor was easy to find. There were regular rusty metal signs with the number 1 printed on them, next to arrows.

After a short walk they arrived at a large, hulking metal door. Raven eyed it up suspiciously.

"You think it'll be locked?" he asked.

"Nah," Reever replied. "They never lock the service doors to the reactors. The last thing engineers need when they're preventing meltdowns is a locked door." As if to prove his point he gave the door a hefty push, and it reluctantly creaked open a crack. He exerted a little more force and it swung open enough to allow him to enter.

They followed Reever through the door, and into the heart of Reactor Number One.

As Reever entered his chest swelled and he began to feel that second wind he had felt earlier, another surge of adrenalin. The mako in his system began to pulse and throb. This time, though, it was anger that drove him. He no longer felt reluctant. The Shinra had betrayed him, had tried to kill him. And now here he stood, right at the heart of their operation, armed and ready to exact revenge on the man who had planned this whole mess.

And now they stood in a room as high as a cathedral, with a huge hunk of machinery in the corner, pulsing gently. A steel staircase straddled the machine and seemed to lead up to an entrance further up - the street entrance, he guessed, although they were a long way away from the street here. Heavily armed SOLDIERs stood on walkways and ledges all along the wall. Two stood guard over an arch thirty feet up. Others patrolled the machinery.

Reever pulled out his gun and started to walk. Conflict was inevitable, but for some reason he couldn't help himself. They'd come this far - there was no way he was stopping now. None of the other stopped him. Instead they walked close behind him.

This is insane, he thought. We're wandering right into the middle of the reactor, where we will undoubtedly be torn apart by SOLDIER. And we're just wandering straight in. Any minute now they'd hear the wail of an alarm and cries for help.

But no. Nothing.

They passed beneath the arch. From somewhere up above a voice called for help, echoing loudly in the cathedral dome. Then there was silence. Another call.

Up ahead a member of SOLDIER guarded the entrance to the reactor core. He stared at them, blankly, almost in shock. Then he ran towards them.

Good God, Reever thought suddenly. Now what? You could pump this guy full of lead and he'd still keep slashing. He ran towards them, raised his huge sword.

Reever weakly raised his gun, fired a shot. It missed.

The SOLDIER leapt up into the air, the light flashed on the blade.

Voices cried out.

Suddenly the air slowed, and there was a flash of white light. The SOLDIER was thrown backwards with such force that he smacked against the metal door. A normal human would have been paralysed instantly, but this SOLDIER wouldn't have to worry about. His helmet had been thrown off, and his hair stood up spectacularly. Smoke rose off his body. He'd been struck by a ball of lightning. Reever turned to Gabriella, who was staggering on her feet.

"You did that?" he cried.

"Get DOWN!" Gabriella responded.

Reever hit the floor as two more SOLDIERS leapt down behind him. There was a deafening rat-tat-tat of gunfire as Raven opened fire, and the 'ping' as bullets bounced off their swords. They were deflecting bullets, he marvelled.

Then he came back to senses, rolled over and began to fire bullets of his own at the goons.

Gabriella was walking forward, approaching them. As Reever watched in amazement, she threw her head back and then thrust it forward as if nodding aggressively. The two SOLDIERs were similarly flung across the room and as they hit the floor their bodies spasmed briefly, small bolts of lightning crackling over them, before they lay still.

"Head for the core!" Reever yelled, and they began to run. SOLDIERs were flooding into the room now from behind them, leaping from ledges, bursting through doors. One of them triggered the alarm and a deafening wail filled the area as they leapt up the stairs and ran through the door, into the core of the reactor.

As Reever leapt down the iron staircase that led to the walkway, Raven carefully shut the steel door after him. There were plenty of goons down in the core - Reever could see them from here - and.... something else....

He'd been in reactors before. In his career as a member of the Shinra MP he had been posted on guard duty in every reactor in the city. Yet never before had he seen anything like this. The reactor core was a large round room, as big as the last, built out of thick, crumbling concrete. Walkways, catwalks and ladders connected it all together, and at the far wall lay the reactor itself, a large black box covered in valves, with hundreds of pipes leading off it all across the wall. Far below them pure lifestream, pumped straight out of the earth, bubbled and boiled and lit the room in a strange blue colour.

But this was different. Someone had punched thousands of small holes into the wall - so many that the room looked like the interior of a beehive. Pipes and wires from the reactor core connected each hole, in a vast, intricate network, like blood vessels. And at the centre of each hole, crouched up in what appeared to be a foetal position, sat a small, black...thing. To Reever's eyes they looked like dead spiders, their legs curled up, wires and pipes from the walls pumping them with mako energy. Each one of these dead spiders seemed to glow softly.

"What is this?" Raven said weakly.

"I don't know," Reever replied. He didn't think he wanted to know.

They walked carefully down the walkway, to the reactor core, in a state of shock. No members of SOLDIER appeared to be acting now. They watched from the other catwalks above, from ledges, as the party approached the President, who stood watching them from the core.

Reever stepped up to the core, to the President.

"President Shinra," he croaked. "What is this?"

President Nathaniel Shinra stood by the core and eyed Reever suspiciously. In one hand he held a bone ivory cane. He wore a long black overcoat. Here, in the dim light of the reactor, he looked very old. Next to him stood a man with shoulder-length black hair, a deep tan and a deeper scar down his left cheek. A black suit. Turk. Scarlet, the head scientist of Shinra weapons development, stood behind the two of them, in a long red dinner dress and stilettos, her honey blonde hair tied back so tightly it seemed to stretch her head. They were surrounded by members of SOLDIER. High security for the president.

"This?" Nathaniel said with a wide smile. "This is the future of Shinra Inc. Our first fully robotic army. Every drone is currently being fused with mako, of course."

"Mako?" Raven said suddenly. "A robotic army of drones - filled with mako? They'd be unstoppable!"

"Well done," the president replied. "That is exactly what we hope. And when the fusion is complete, our army will be battle ready. But enough about our plans. I think it's time that we became better acquainted, hmm?"

He began to walk across the catwalk towards them, the light breeze blowing his thinning hair around his head. For the first time Reever found himself actually looking at the President, at this man who he saw every day on the television, whose face he had seen so many times that it had become permanently imprinted on his memory. Nathaniel Shinra was a tall man, with a wide build. As a young man he had probably been quite muscle-bound. His hair, thinning, grey, still clearly had a touch of the strawberry blonde that was the Shinra family's legacy - much like Giovanni Corneo's brighter blonde. He had a noble face - high, arrogant cheekbones, dark eyes, a stiff upper lip. He looked every inch a leader and industrialist, and as he watched Reever found himself developing a grudging respect.

"So you're the little group who have been causing me so much trouble lately?" the President said, staring intently at Reever. "You've done well to get this far. I guess you have luck on your side."

"Maybe I don't need luck," Reever replied, trying to be calm. In truth his stomach was rolling and he felt ill. With just a word this man could not just kill me, but completely destroy me, he thought, and his gaze shifted to the wall of robots. He felt the hot acidic taste of vomit at the back of his throat, and gritted his teeth together.

Nathaniel chuckled. Unlike Giovanni's his laugh wasn't in any way weak - it was full of life, but it was in no way a warm laugh. If Giovanni's was the laugh of a man on the edge of his grave, Nathaniel's was that of a man who has fallen in and realised that it wasn't so bad at the bottom. "You have guts. A shame, they'll be of no use to you in the next life."

He opened his mouth to say something else, but then the buzz of a PHS filled the air. Scarlet answered, and the turned to the President, her face a pale mask of shock. "Sir," she said. "It's reactor control. They say there's something wrong."

Nathaniel sighed. He began to walk up the catwalk, passing Reever and their group without even sparing them a glance, when the walls began to grow a dim red colour and the reactor began to shake violently. The catwalk shuddered.

Panic struck the reactor core. SOLDIERs, guards, executives - everyone began to run for the door, pushing others aside. Reever turned to run, to escape in the chaos, but then he saw the President stand on a small lift, and realised that there was no way in hell he would let the creep escape after all they'd been through.

He ran down the shaky catwalk as machinery rumbled all around them. Then he leapt and grabbed the lift with his fingertips. The lift began to rise, scaling the roof the core, heading up to the control room. Reever began to climb up, and Nathaniel saw him for the first time.

"Do you ever give up?" Nathaniel cried.

"You're gonna pay, Nathaniel!" Reever yelled, and heaved himself up. Nathaniel kicked him hard in the jaw with one expensive shoe, causing Reever to lose his grip and hang on with one hand.

"Oh, am I?" the President said, and chuckled. He began to depress one foot on Reever's sore fingers.

Reever reached up and grabbed Nathaniel's trouser leg, used it to yank himself up and then threw the President against the control panel just as the lift clattered to a stop in the control room.

The President backed off, rubbing at a small trickle of blood down his cheek, and Reever found himself staring into the barrels of six guns.

"Sir?" the Turk with the scar said. "Are you okay?"

"Keep an eye on him," the President called to the SOLDIERs.

Reever was grabbed by his arm and thrown into the control room, where a member of soldier pointed a gun at the back of his head. Never before had he felt so small and pathetic. Here he stood, dirty, cut, bruised, his lip swelling, under the guard of a SOLDIER, and he had been so close to killing the President, so close. If he had succeeded, dying up here would all be worth it. Instead, his inevitable death would be meaningless.

"Sir, I think you should look at this," a man in a suit sat behind a control panel said. The President approached him and looked down at the meters.

"What's happening there?" Nathaniel asked.

"The machinery's going haywire," the man in the suit replied. "If we don't do something the reactor could blow!"

"What can you do?"

"I can open all the mako vents - but the pressure in the reactor at the moment will probably rupture most of the machinery and put the reactor out of order."

"Do it."

The man in the suit looked up at the President. "Are you sure?"

"We have no choice."

The man began to twiddle with valves and press switches. He hit a button on an intercom, and said, "Open all the valves."

A stunned voice said something back. The man in the suit said, "Just do it. Please."

Suddenly the reactor began to rumble aggressively. The people gathered in the control room looked at each other nervously. Red lights began to flash. The man behind the controls closed his eyes.

Outside Reactor 1 people began to flee to all directions. The reactor was shaking violently now. In houses people began to pack bags. Plates fell off tables, smashing to pieces. Windows shook in frames. Pictures fell off walls. For a moment it seemed as if the whole sector would collapse.

Then the reactor exploded.

A huge plume of blue smoke billowed hundreds of feet up into the early evening sky, such a vivid colour that it was almost aquamarine. Bolts of lightning crackled across the reactor. People who had been casually leaving broke into a run.

Down in the streets lamp-posts buzzed and turned off. Lights in houses faded out. Televisions died with soft thumps.

And the people of Sector 1 looked up at the reactor and prayed.

"Looks bad," the man in the suit said. People were fleeing the control room now. Nathaniel remained behind, sweat trickling down his brow. Reever felt that grudging respect again. Even in this desperate situation he remained behind, still standing strong against adversity.

"What's the situation?" the President asked.

"Most of the machinery is wrecked, but the reactor's not going to blow."

And then the doors smashed open.

Reever was thrown to the floor as a motorbike knocked down the SOLDIER guarding him. A muscular hand yanked his colour and violently threw him over the back seat, chest down. The bike swung around, nearly hitting the stunned president, before flying back through the door and down the stairs.

He looked up at the driver, and Chase smiled at him. "You okay, Chief?"

Reever shook his head. "You nearly got yourself killed!"

Chase chuckled. "Take the automatic rifle," he said, pointing to the rifle in the pouch on his back. Reever pulled it up, held it up against his shoulder and turned around as the bike swung round a corner, burst through a door and hit the highway, still wet with the rain.

Reever turned around, taking deep breaths of the city air. Never before had he felt so happy to feel the wind in his hair, fresh air in his lungs. He held up the rifle, sat close to Chase and turned to face the oncoming hordes.

Three members of SOLDIER, on bikes, were coming up behind them. One had his sword raised. Reever pulled the trigger on the gun and a stream of bullets hit the pavement, sparks flashing off the dark floor. A bullet hit the front tyre of the nearest SOLDIER and his bike spun out of control, hurling him off on to the floor, where he rolled briefly and lay still.

Another came up close behind them, the roar of his engine filling Reever's head, the screech of his tyres a banshee wail. Reever raised the rifle and fired a single shot. It hit the SOLDIER directly in the face. He took his hands off the handles, grabbed it his face, lost control and flew off the bike, landing like a pile of laundry a few yards ahead.

"Reever, the right!" Chase screamed. Reever spun round and a bike drove up close to him, a SOLDIER standing by them with his sword raised. He shot the SOLDIER in the gut, and he too skidded off, hitting the boundary hard. Reever's bike was rocked briefly by a blast of hot air as the bike exploded, but Chase soon regained control.

"Where's Gabriella?" Reever yelled as they sped down the dark streets. The bike's engine was deafening.

"She started acting weird," Chase shrugged. "Then passed out. She was saying.... all sorts of crazy stuff."

Reever looked puzzled as he lowered his gun. "Like what?"

Chase was silent. Then he said, still at the top of his voice but in concerned tones, "She thinks there's another. She thinks she saw another person when the reactor ruptured. Someone was trying to destroy the reactor. And she thinks he's....like her."

Reever sat still. Another.... like her. Another out there, with her powers. The night suddenly developed an extra chill.

They drove off the edge of the boundary and disappeared into the heart of the city.

To be continued...