Gravity

I.

"I hate these briefings," Heidegger confesses as they rise in the elevator. "Hojo crowing on about his latest monster." When he speaks, Veld notices, the exhaled air blows at bits of his beard.

The general's words are brave, Veld thinks, considering who they're said to. Heidegger could learn a thing or two from Rude about keeping his mouth shut.

But the President only shrugs and says, "I'm afraid the briefings are necessary."

Before Heidegger can answer, they reach Floor 67, the elevator pings, and the doors slide apart. Veld puts his hand – the prosthetic one, the one without feeling – over the doorframe and lets Heidegger and the President waddle past him, into the corridor.

A lab assistant is there to greet them, nervous and fresh out of some college, built like Reno but with none of Reno's ropey, stray-dog muscle. Probably good for what he does, Veld thinks, but not much else. Certainly no use to the Turks. More assistants – because that's all anybody ever is to Hojo, an assistant – move through the corridor in small groups, talking, examining clipboards, wheeling trolleys loaded with samples. They remind him of Tseng with their solemn, introspective expressions, all plagued by this fear of failing.

"H-hello, Mister President, sir," the skinny researcher says. He doesn't even seem aware of Heidegger or Veld. His fingers – soft, unworked – are twisting at a pen. "Welcome to the Science Department. Professor Hojo is – is with the subject now. He's expecting you. I think. T-this way, please. Sir."

The President looks at Veld with an eyebrow raised. The expression reads, I'm paying this guy? It's one of Shinra's favourite jokes, and Veld is very familiar with it. He shakes his head slowly, smiling, and wonders why Hojo picked this stack of nerves to greet them. Dealing with people is obviously not one of the poor boy's strengths.

The assistant leads them along the corridor, white coattails flapping around his ankles. They take a left turn and then a right, passing door after airtight door. Veld snatches glimpses of specimen tanks, racks of test tubes, complex machinery. He doesn't get up to the Science Department often, and he uses this opportunity to get an impression of the strange world Hojo's created up here.

The professor himself is hunched over a clipboard when they enter one of the laboratories. He doesn't even glance up and for a moment Veld, Heidegger, Shinra and the assistant are all standing there, watching in silence as Hojo runs his eyes over a data sheet. The President gives Veld another look. Veld clears his throat.

Hojo's gaze flicks up and scrapes his eyes over them all. "What are they doing here?" he snaps at the assistant.

"Th-th-they're here t-to see Subject C," the assistant stammers, flinching away from his supervisor. "I-it was scheduled, Professor, you told me to -"

Abruptly, Hojo drops the clipboard onto the nearest workbench and rubs his hands together, smiling. When the scientist smiles his top lip peels back from his teeth and he looks half mad. It's an expression that always makes Veld's spine prickle. He remembers Hojo grinning like that in Nibelheim, as they moved victims into the mansion's basement.

"Of course," Hojo says. "This way." He shuffles over to a door in the back wall, and swipes his keycard through the slot beside it. The glass pane hisses open and they file through.

They're in a child's room. Posters explaining colours, letters and numbers are plastered on the walls and the white carpet is littered with colourful toys. A small bed is set against the back wall, and sitting on the covers with her legs dangling is –

The whole world bucks and Veld's knees almost give out. He gropes with his prosthetic at the back wall to steady himself. Luckily he's behind the others so nobody's seen his face pale.

Now that he's got the chance to get a better look, he realises that the girl doesn't even look like Felicia, not really; her hair's the same colour, that's all. Veld straightens up and tugs at the cuffs of his shirt. He's acting like an old fool. His daughter would be a grown woman by now, and this girl is five, maybe six? Felicia was that age when she died.

"This is Subject C," Hojo is saying. "My greatest success within the MYSTIC project."

"Hold on a minute," Heidegger says. "What are we talking about, here? The MYSTIC project?" As usual, the man hasn't done his reading. Sometimes Veld wonders if his bearded colleague is even literate.

Hojo lets out an exasperated sigh and repositions his glasses on his nose. "My department has been working on the MYSTIC project for the past seven years. Its main deliverable is the production of soldiers capable of telekinesis – of moving objects with their minds. Thus far success has been – well, limited. We've been trying to implant fragmented Gravity materia into subjects' nervous systems, but the experiments all became paralysed, or experienced pain so great they had to be euthanised."

The President speaks. "You're saying you can put materia into people's bodies? They don't need item slots? Why haven't I heard about this until now?"

"Because until now, I haven't had any results! Weren't you listening?" Hojo's snaps. Nobody else could talk to the President that way. The Science Department head is one of the only truly indispensable people within the company, and unfortunately he knows it. "All the previous experiments have been failures," he says, and his eyes cut to Veld for just a moment. Veld wonders why.

The professor's face opens into that awful smile again and he composes himself. "Subject C is our sole success. The materia was implanted while she was still in the foetal stage. This has allowed her spine to grow around the fragments, to incorporate them into the very structure of the vertebrae. At first, we thought Subject C was a failure like all the rest. For the first three years of her life, she showed no sign of any extraordinary powers. Then, thirteen months ago – well, perhaps it's best if we have a demonstration."

Hojo pulls a pen from the pocket of his lab coat and crouches down to set it on the floor before the bed. "Subject C," he says, standing up again. "Lift the pen."

The girl shakes her head, staring at her feet, and even though Veld tries to fight the memories down he can't help thinking of Felicia, and how stubborn she'd been, never doing what she was told. How he'd secretly been proud of that stubbornness.

"Lift the pen," Hojo says again, voice sharp.

Veld remembers tossing his daughter in the air in the evening, that last day he'd seen her. How the fading light had caught in her hair. The sound of her laughter is still fresh in his ears.

"Subject C, lift the pen!" Hojo's just about yelling. When the girl refuses again, he slaps her across the face with the back of his bony hand, so hard she's knocked sideways on the bed.

Picking herself up again, the little girl glares up at the scientist, and Veld is shocked by the intense heat of the hatred burning in her eyes. Little girls shouldn't be able to hate like that, he thinks. Leave hatred to the bitter old men.

And then, rushing in on him like a gust of wind, comes one of those moments where all the small lies he's told himself over the years are stripped away and he can look clearly at himself and his situation, and he realises that he and four other grown men are standing around doing nothing to help a little girl who has been caged up and experimented on. Grown men who all probably managed to get some sleep last night.

Veld forces himself to breathe, to think. He thought he'd killed those emotions years ago, but it looks like there's life in his burned-out old heart after all.

Maybe he's only feeling this way because the girl looks like Felicia. But why should that matter? Subject C is still somebody's daughter. If Felicia was sitting on that bed, and there was some other person in his suit, of course he'd want them to intervene.

For a minute he considers stepping in, but when he looks around at the faces he's with, he realises it would be pointless. The President must have sunk countless millions into this project; he's not going to let Veld ruin its sole return over a guilty conscience. Then there's the other reason, the one even he's trying not to think about: if they agree to do something about this one girl, they'll each have to face up to the countless times they did nothing. And no man wants to do that.

On the carpet the pen wiggles and then lifts slowly into the air, trembling a little. The girl's brow corrugates in concentration. Suddenly the pen bucks and flies at Hojo's face, hitting his glasses and knocking them to the floor. The professor grinds his teeth as he bends down to pick the spectacles up. The President starts laughing, and Heidegger quickly joins him. Veld watches the two fat men shake and go red in the face, and thinks of Felicia, and wishes he was anywhere but here.

II.

That night, Veld's conscience doesn't let him sleep. He lies on the bunk in his cell out the back of the Turks' office, turning over and over. He thinks about Felicia and that little girl in the Science Department, and somehow the two get twisted up in each other until they're almost the same. His guilt seeps into the dark air so that he's cocooned in it, it's everything that's real. He starts to imagine that she's standing beside the bed, Felicia is, staring at him with an accusation in her eyes. And even though he knows he's being crazy, he switches on the lamp, just in case. She's not there. He's looking at the side table, with his prosthetic in its stand on top of it.

Veld sits up and runs his real hand through his hair. Get a grip on yourself, old man, he tells himself. He's got to think about things from the company's perspective; that's what he's committed himself to, after all. Subject C is a valuable asset to Shinra, and without the company, what meaning does his life have? If he's not a professional, what is he?

Angrily, he swats that idea aside. This isn't about him, or his life; it's about what's right. There's no doubt in his mind that Shinra is what the planet needs – a government that can keep people in line, bring light and warmth into every home – but he's seen with his own eyes that the company doesn't always do the right thing. Take Nibelheim – even his Turks had been pulled up by their consciences.

Well, old man? he asks himself. Are you going to sit here drowning in your guilt, or will you get up and do something about it?

Decision made, Veld gets to his feet and clamps his prosthetic arm back into the sockets on his shoulder. He buttons up a fresh shirt, ties his tie, shrugs on his jacket and steps into his trousers and shoes. Then he walks through to the office, boots up a computer – Reno's, judging by the mess on the desk – and accesses the Shinra building's security video. He remotely disables all the cameras on the sixty-seventh floor. Tseng or one of the rookies could probably manage something more subtle, but Veld doesn't need to be particularly careful; he'll probably be the one reviewing the footage, anyway.

III.

Half an hour later he's standing in front of the glass door to her cell. It's the first real obstacle he's encountered on his journey through the building's air ducts and up its central elevator shaft, a journey that's left him short of breath, a fierce ache chewing at his organic arm. The problem is that he can't open it using his keycard without letting the company system know he's here.

He spends a moment examining the keycard scanner and then takes a metal stool from one of the workstations and bashes it right off the wall. The door beeps and glides open. Veld almost laughs; he could have spent hours trying to hack the damn thing. These old fashioned solutions are often the best ones, he finds.

He sets the stool down and enters the cell. The sight that meets his eyes wrings his heart like a sponge. The girl's asleep in the bunk, and with her back turned like that he can almost pretend – no, Felicia's dead, and it's his fault, and he can't allow himself to forget that for even a second. No matter how much he'd like to.

He crosses the room and gives her little shoulder a gentle shake. She turns over and looks at him sleepily for a second and then bolts upright in the bed, wide eyes white in the gloom.

Veld puts a finger to his lips. "I'm going to take you away from here," he whispers. "To somewhere safe, somewhere they'll leave you alone."

The girl frowns and looks down at the covers. Why should she trust him? Only a few hours ago he'd watched her get hit and done nothing. He was only the latest in a progression of old men in suits who had made her life miserable.

"I had a daughter your age, once," he tells her. "Would you like to see a picture?" She doesn't answer but he flips open his phone anyway and shows her one.

The girl looks deep into his eyes. "Okay," she says, and Veld breathes a sigh of relief. She slips her legs out from between the covers and stands up.

He leads her out into the laboratory and lifts her into the air duct, and they crawl along it until they're back in the lift shaft. Veld tells the girl to wrap her arms around his neck and he pulls her up the cable, climbing hand over hand. Just as the sockets in his shoulder are really starting to bite, they make it to the elevator's engine room. Veld kicks the door down and they emerge onto the building's roof.

Up here it's cold and the wind tugs at Veld's suit, the girl's blue pyjamas. The vast glittering surface of Midgar spills out around them. He guides the girl out to the edge of the helipad.

"Take my hand," Veld tells her. "We're going to jump off. Don't worry, though – I'm going to use a magic trick. It's perfectly safe."

"So pretty," the girl says. "I never saw so many lights." She wraps her hand around his index finger in a way that makes Veld's worn and leathery old heart feel like it's about to burst.

"Are you crying, mister?"

Veld's eyes are stinging and he can feel the wetness going cold on his cheeks. He chuckles. If only his Turks could see their chief now.

"Old men don't cry," he tells Subject C. "We leave that to the little girls. Now, are you ready?"

The girl nods. Veld fires up the Gravity materia in his prosthetic arm and a purple orb blooms around them. He steps off the edge of the building and they begin to sink, slowly, towards the lights below.

A/N: I kind of imagine this fic as setting the scene for what Veld does at the Corel Reactor – this small act of rebellion prepares him, in a way, for the much larger one when he decides to leave the Turks and track down Elfe.

I realise that Gravity materia probably don't function in the way they're used here, but I hope nobody minds me bending that rule a bit for the sake of the story.

Feedback is always much appreciated. Thanks for reading!