My first ever posting. Part of a much larger work; I'm testing the waters. Is this the place where I insist that I make no claim to ownership of any part of the Final Fantasy universe? The following story is for fun only. I welcome all reviews, especially corrections of any factual errors.
Tseng's earliest conscious memory was of struggling against hunger.
In a small dark space he lay curled up tight around the pain that was like a hole chewed in his belly.
He scrabbled across a mountain of sticky garbage, fighting the other children tooth and nail for a damp crust, an apple core. The garbage stank but that stink was the smell of food, and he was so hungry.
Next memory, possibly sequential: the Director's hands lifting him up. Being slung over the Director's broad shoulder. The Director's voice saying, You come with me now. The intense, indescribable feeling of being able to relax. Of being safe.
Of course at the time he could not have known it was the Director. He must have been afraid, or at least surprised to find himself being carried off into the unknown by a strange man. But he couldn't remember those feelings. How he had come to be alone and starving in Midgar, who his parents were, why they had left Wutai, and what had happened to them, were questions for which there would never be any answers. Tseng remembered nothing of his earlier life. It was as if he had been born the day the Director plucked him out of the Shinra Electric Company's kitchen dumpster and took him home – home being at that time, and for many years to come, the Director's office suite on the 66th floor.
How old had he been? Five, perhaps, or six. That was the Director's guess. There was no way of knowing for sure.
For a while he slept on a sofa in the ante-room. Looking back, this must have been while the Director was deciding what to do with him. At the time, he only knew that he had never slept so comfortably or soundly. Later, Veld cleared out a corner of the office he used as a store-room and had a bed put up behind some screens. He enrolled Tseng in school. Every morning Tseng dressed himself in grey flannel trousers and a blue collared shirt, ate breakfast in the staff cafeteria, and took himself off to be educated. He learnt the things one usually learns at school: prejudice, unfairness, and cruelty; he learnt to lie to the teachers and cover for fellow classmates at all costs, even the ones who put tacks on his seat and flicked rubber bands at his face and pushed him around in the playground, who called him squint-eye and woo-woo and monkey-boy. As far as he could remember, this was when he began to avoid the sight of his own reflection, though occasionally it took him by surprise, leaping out at him from a windowpane or a polished spoon or the lens of someone's sunglasses and alarming him by his almost complete lack of physical resemblance to the Director – or anyone else at Shinra, for that matter.
Everything about his appearance looked alien to him: the white skin, the high cheekbones, the slanted black eyes, the delicate mouth, the silky dark hair forming a widow's peak, all suggested allegiances he did not feel, a language he could not speak, a history he wanted no part of. Worst of all was the strange dot between his eyebrows that he could not scrub off. It was a tattoo of some sort, like something pressed into his skin by an inky little finger. Whose finger? His mother's? And why? To mark him? To claim him? No – he refused to be claimed. At school they accused him of being from Wutai but it was not true. He was from Midgar. Shinra was his homeland. He belonged to the Director.
One day he came home with a shining black eye and a bloody nose. The front of his shirt was stiff with dried blood. Director Veld cleaned him up, not gently, and said, "How long are you going to put up with this?"
Two days later he was sent home early for fighting. His other eye was black now as well, but this time the blood on his face and his shirt was not his.
The Director nodded. "That's more like it. Now they will respect you."
It was some time after this, when by his reckoning he was perhaps eight years old, that Tseng experimented with calling the Director 'Dad', just to see what would happen. He had half-hoped to get away with it, but the Director had no patience for sentimental falsehoods. The only kind of lies he tolerated were the ones that helped advance the company's interests.
"Never call me that again," he ordered, angrier than Tseng had ever seen him. "I am not your father."
"I know, sir. I'm sorry."
But as long as he kept away from mirrors, he could pretend.
When the woman and her baby came to live in the building, Tseng wondered at first if she was the Director's wife, and the little girl his daughter. The baby was so small her head fit into the palm of Tseng's hand, and yet she was minutely perfect in every detail, right down to her dark eyelashes and her sharp fingernails and the intricate whorls of her tiny ears. The first time he held her, he spread his hand across her birdcage chest and felt her heart beat under his fingertips. What a marvel! He looked up at her mother and grinned from ear to ear.
The woman, Mrs Gast, was beautiful, tall and slender with reddish hair and brown eyes, but also stern; in her manner there was more than a bit of the Director, which was why Tseng thought they might be married. They both gave Tseng the same feeling, when he looked into their faces, that they knew all about him, that nothing he did came as a surprise, and that though, on the whole, he was acceptable, there was still room for improvement.
Mrs Gast laid a hand on Tseng's head and asked the Director, "Is he yours, Veld?"
"He is now," the Director acknowledged. "He's bright; he has potential."
"He lives here, with you, in this building?"
The Director shrugged. "I like to keep things simple."
"It must be hard for him."
"He's doing all right. He's tough. He doesn't need your pity, Ifalna."
"You mean to make a Turk of him?"
"Well," said the Director, "We shall see."
Tseng's heart leapt to hear these words. The whole of his longing was to be a Turk like the Director, though he had never dared to say so. Why put into clumsy words what the Director surely already knew? He could see into Tseng's heart; he knew Tseng's mind. He knew everything.
School was boring but not difficult. After school was when the real lessons began. The Turks were his instructors. Charlie taught him the chemistry of explosives and how to shoot to kill. Natalya demonstrated the art of tailing a target and the tricks for making oneself invisible. She also taught him finer arts: how to dance, which wine glass to use for red and which for white, and how to handle a fish knife. Mozo, who was a rookie in those days, took him down to the gym and taught him to box. The Director coached him in martial arts, taught him the techniques for hacking into computer networks, and showed him how to tie a tie.
The hallways and yards of his school were his training ground. New boys came, tough boys with reputations to establish. Feet appeared from nowhere to trip Tseng up. Without warning, some body would slam his body sideways into the lockers. A gang of older boys trapped him in the men's washroom and shoved his head down a toilet, flushing and flushing until he was sure he would drown. In such a harsh environment, Tseng evolved. He developed that sixth sense, those eyes in the back of the head, that nose for trouble, call it what you like, that enabled him to sense danger approaching. He practiced Natalya's art of invisibility, the better to take his enemies by surprise. He worked out in the gym until he could punch twice his weight. He learnt where to kick so as to take a boy's legs out from under him, and how to kneel on that boy's forearms to cause maximum pain and hold his head and beat it against the floor until the boy stopped struggling. He thought, then, that he'd killed his tormentor, and he was not sorry. For this particular act of violence he was suspended for a month. The Director only wanted to know who had started it.
"He did," Tseng replied.
"Then you did well," the Director told him. "Next time, though, take it off the school grounds. You need to learn to be more discrete."
The boy did not die, but he never returned to that school and the janitor never got the dark stain out of the floorboards. For Tseng, it was enough that the Director approved.
When he had no homework and no lessons with the Turks, and time hung heavy on his hands, he visited Mrs Gast's suite on the 63rd floor. Three infantrymen were always on guard outside her door. Each had a key and all three keys were needed to unlock the door and let Tseng in. If he arrived at suppertime, she shared whatever she and Aerith were having, and since she was a good cook he tried to get there for supper as often as he could. It made a change from the cafeteria. After supper he played with Aerith while Mrs Gast sewed and told stories, or read aloud to him from one of her books of poetry, hero tales, fairy stories, or legends. Sometimes she talked to him about the time when the world was young: she spun her words so vividly that she almost made it sound as if she'd been there.
But the best thing was Aerith. She crowed with delight when he appeared in their doorway, holding out her arms for him to pick her up. She cried when he had to leave. When she was learning to crawl, he sat on the edge of the carpet and encouraged her, calling her to come to him. She liked to crawl right into his lap and curl up there, sucking her thumb, while he stroked her hair until she fell asleep.
The third word she learned to speak, after 'Ma' and 'No', was his name.
He held her hand when she learned to walk. He picked her up when she fell down. He taught her to throw and catch a ball. He gave her piggyback rides. He drew pictures of houses for her to colour in, with stick men and stick dogs and oversized flowers. Sometimes Mrs Gast let him take Aerith out of the suite. They went to the cafeteria for ice cream, then rode up and down the elevators together, Aerith sitting on his hip to press all the buttons.
Mrs Gast herself never left the apartment, and Tseng never wondered why.
Once, when Aerith was maybe two years old, he thought to ask, "Where's Mr Gast?"
Mrs Gast was standing with her back to him, washing some of Aerith's clothes by hand in the sink of her little kitchen. When she told him flatly, "My dear, he's dead," it sounded to Tseng as if she didn't care.
He grew older and began to understand more things. He saw that the world as it was portrayed by his teachers was a lie that did not extend even as far as the playground. Honesty was not always the best policy. Virtue was not always rewarded. Good did not triumph over evil. The weak went under and the strong survived. If the teachers believed what they taught, then they were fools, but it seemed likelier to him that they were deliberately peddling mistruths, because knowledge was power. The more Tseng saw and understood of the world, the more fully he was able to appreciate the Director. Veld never denied reality.
Tseng saw, too, that the reason he had no real friends at school was because the other children had learned to fear him. The realization gave him pleasure. Everyone in Shinra feared the Director. Even the Old Man, the President, spoke respectfully to Veld. The Old Man had money and money was power, but the Director had strength of will, ruthlessness, and information, and those things were power, too.
Having learnt everything that school could teach him, he went less and less, and finally stopped going altogether. The Director said, "If your education is finished, you might as well start working." A suit was made for him, a tie purchased in the company store. For the first time in his life Tseng liked what he saw in the mirror. He went to show himself off to Mrs Gast and Aerith. Aerith was delighted with the tie and immediately climbed onto his lap and tried to undo the knot. Mrs Gast looked long and hard into his face, until he felt uncomfortable and had to turn away.
"Is this really what you want?" she asked. "You're so young, my dear."
"It's what I've always wanted," he replied. "It's what I'm meant for. This is why the Director saved me, to do this work."
Mrs Gast put both hands over her mouth. As if she was forcing herself to swallow something; some words. She took a long breath. Through her fingers she said, "Veld the Saviour. An odd notion. Excuse me, Tseng, I have something I must do."
She went into the bedroom and closed the door. Almost immediately Tseng heard her making strange noises, but he was so accustomed to Mrs Gast being calm and in control and unemotional that it took him a while to realize she was crying. Aerith, hearing her mother's sobs, began to cry too. Tseng did his best to soothe her, though he was pretty upset himself. He had thought Mrs Gast, of all people, would understand, living as she did in Shinra and having known him and been his friend for so long. But she was prejudiced, too. She, like everyone else who knew no better, thought the Turks were frightening people who did evil things, when in fact they were practical, skilful people who did necessary, interesting things, and got their hands dirty so that others would not have to. But you probably needed to be a Turk to understand that. He wasn't about to start his career by apologizing for what he did, not even to Mrs Gast.
He began, as all good Turks do, by patrolling Sector 8. The first living thing he killed was a Chuse Tank, taking it out with a single clean shot through the eye, and he was so proud he dragged it all the way home to show it to the Director, Natalya, and Charlie, who suggested they should have it stuffed. He asked Mrs Gast if he could show it to Aerith. She said, "I'd really rather you didn't, dear."
The Director occasionally visited Mrs Gast too. Tseng had long ago discarded the childish notion that the Director and Mrs Gast were married, but it was clear that they had known each other a long time. They spoke of people Tseng had never known, places he'd never seen, events that had happened before he was born. They drank tea and talked, and Tseng played with Aerith, and from their conversations he learnt that the Director had once had a family, but that his wife and child had been killed, and he blamed himself for their deaths.
Tseng tried to imagine what that would be like; how the Director must feel. What if the Director died and somehow it was his, Tseng's, fault? It didn't bear thinking of. But it could never really happen. Nothing could harm the Director. He was unbreakable, a rock.
"It's a harsh world you've created, Veld - you and Heidegger and Shinra and the others," said Mrs Gast.
"It was worse before," the Director replied.
Later, when they were eating supper in the cafeteria, Tseng asked him, "Tell me about before, sir."
"Before what?"
"Before Shinra."
So Veld told him, and it was pretty much what he had learned in school. Centuries of warfare – the Great Continental War, the Mideelian War of the Funeral Urn, the Grasslands Nomads' War, the Fifteen Years' War, the Wars of the Three Queens… The history of their world had been one long struggle for power and control of resources, which had only ended when a small arms manufacturer, grown rich on the wars of others, discovered a way of providing seemingly inexhaustible energy for all. You could call it empire building, or you could call it imposing peace. Either way, the weary world was mostly glad to see Shinra take control. As the Director said, it had been worse before.
Then the Director pushed aside their plates and took hold of Tseng's wrists and said, "Listen. You're old enough to know these things now. What I'm about to tell you are company secrets. You don't talk about them with anybody outside the Turks. You understand?"
Heart beating fast, Tseng nodded.
Then the Director told him the things they didn't teach in school.
Mako energy was not inexhaustible. It was a finite resource and one day it would run out.
Mako extraction killed the earth. Around every reactor Shinra had built, a dead zone spread where nothing grew. Their scientists did not know why this was happening. The likeliest explanation was pollution. Credulous people and myth-mongers blamed something called the Lifestream. Tseng had heard of the Lifestream, hadn't he? Of course it didn't really exist; it was a fairy-tale. What the fantasists called the Lifestream was merely a linked network of huge, tidal, underground reservoirs of mako.
The monsters that afflicted Midgar and so many parts of the world seemed to be connected with reactor activity. Wherever there were reactors, there you would find monsters in abundance. Shinra's scientists were trying to discover why.
Humans were not the only intelligent life form on the planet.
Once there had been another race, an ancient race, called the Cetra. The Cetra had possessed a wealth of knowledge about the planet which they had refused to share with humans. They were a long-lived people but not vigorous, and several thousand years ago an unknown calamity had befallen them, possibly a disease of some sort, which had reduced their numbers below what a species needed to survive. Over the centuries they had continued to die out. Mrs Gast was the last one left. To safeguard her, Shinra had taken her into protective custody.
"You see, Tseng, Mrs Gast – Ifalna – knows something that could be of immense usefulness to the world. Her people called it the Promised Land. It's a source of unlimited mako that won't drain the planet's fruitfulness. If she would tell us where it is, all the world's problems would be solved."
Tseng's mind was reeling. He couldn't take it all in. So he fixed on the one point that seemed the most important. "Do you mean, sir, that Aerith's mother…. That she's not a human being?"
"That's a good question. I'm no scientist, but obviously she has to be somewhat human. Human enough to have had a child with Gast. I suppose the answer is that she's partly human. Or maybe she's a different kind of human. She's certainly much older than she looks. She knows so much about this planet. If only we could get her to talk."
"Aerith," said Tseng. "What about Aerith?"
"If Ifalna were to confide what she knows to anyone, it would be her daughter. And possibly her husband. I have always regretted killing him."
"You killed him?" exclaimed Tseng.
"He was the Chief Scientist before Hojo. He was working with Ifalna, researching her knowledge. Then they fell in love. It happens. Shinra had no objections. But they were seduced by the illusion of freedom. Gast chose to run away with her. It's dangerous for her out there, Tseng. If she were to fall into the wrong hands… Well, it wouldn't just be Shinra who suffered. My orders were to bring them back. But Ifalna - she knows this planet like the back of her hand. It took me two years to track them down. Aerith had just been born, which meant they had to stay in one place longer than they would have otherwise. I found them at Icicle Inn. Gast was working in the kitchens. Washing pots. The man who'd been the head of our science department. I offered them the chance to return quietly to Shinra. We wanted to put them into secure company housing. They could have lived and raised Aerith together. We needed them both, Tseng. But they fought me. He had a gun and she had materia. I couldn't shoot her, so I shot him. I wish I hadn't had to. After Gast was dead, she surrendered. It was such a waste."
"But – " Tseng stammered, "I don't understand. You seem – like friends – "
"She neither blames me nor forgives me," the Director replied. "That probably makes no sense to you. But you can see that she doesn't trust me. Or Shinra. She never has. And I don't blame her either. Personal feelings don't come into it. She has information that we need. We have to convince her to share it with us. For her own sake as much as anyone else's. And by we I mean you and me. The President is growing impatient. There is a limit to how long he will wait before he decides to turn them both over to Hojo, who has his own ways of getting what he wants out of people. You know what I mean."
Tseng did know: he had heard the stories. He had seen the victims and the failed experiments, carried out under white sheets to be disposed of in the incinerators. It would be better to die than to fall into Hojo's hands.
"No," he said, "Not Aerith."
"You're very fond of that little girl, aren't you? And she adores you. You've done well there, Tseng. I think Ifalna trusts you. I know she likes you. Build on that. Don't tackle her head on, don't ask her to tell. That'll shut her down more surely than anything, because she'll know it comes from me. Go on being what you have always been to them. Eventually, Holy willing, she'll see sense."
Tseng did not know if he could do this. How could he look Mrs Gast in the eyes and pretend to be ignorant of the things the Director had told him? What did it mean, anyway, to be a 'different kind of human'? Was Aerith different too? Half different, since she was half normal? How could you tell? In what ways were they different? He began to wish the Director had kept these secrets to himself a little longer.
But his need to see Aerith and to talk to Mrs Gast was as great as his fear of suddenly being confronted by their true strangeness. Eventually, pulled by his heartstrings, dragging his feet, he returned to them.
"We've missed you," said Mrs Gast. "Come in. I've made carrot cake. Aerith's napping. She's been asking for you every day; it's nearly driven me crazy. Veld's keeping you busy, is he?"
She laid a hand on his head, something she often did in passing. It always felt to Tseng a bit like a blessing, though he would have been far too embarrassed to say so. This time, though, her hand was heavy. His head tilted under its pressure."Tseng," she said, "Look at me."
He was thirteen now, or maybe fourteen. He was almost as tall as she was. Mrs Gast took his face between her hands and forced him to meet her gaze. She looked younger than the Director; you would have guessed she was the same age as Natalya. How old was she, really? The Director had never said.
"Veld told you, didn't he?"
After a moment, Tseng nodded.
"And that's why you stayed away?"
He blurted out, "Can you read my mind?"
Her smile was full of kindness, and some amusement. "Not in the way you mean, no. Just call me a good guesser. You shouldn't be afraid of me. Do you even need me to say this? I'm the same person I was before. I'm still your friend, and Aerith is still Aerith. And my carrot cake is still delicious, if I do say so myself. Now sit down and have some, while I go wake Aerith up."
Looking back, this was the first occasion on which Tseng could say with absolute certainty that Mrs Gast had lied to him.
Later that same day, she made a request. She wanted pots or any kind of container, and seeds, and soil, but the soil had to come from Midgar, from the slums underneath the plate. He passed on the request to the Director, and a few days later she had a bag of soil, pots from Costa, and seeds from Gongaga. Nobody knew what kind of seeds; nobody had asked. "It'll be like opening a present, then, won't it?" she told him. "A lovely surprise."
He didn't think they would grow. Nothing grew in Midgar, except monsters. How could seeds grow without sunlight? But they did grow, abundantly, spilling out of their pots and across the floor of the Gast's apartment, putting forth curly vines and large coarse leaves and trumpet-shaped flowers that turned into pumpkins that Mrs Gast harvested and made into pies. And thus she answered the question which he had not uttered, the question she had read in his mind.
Months passed. Aerith turned seven. She could read and write, and cook simple dishes, and sew a straight seam, and form her own opinions, and she wasn't shy about expressing them. She wanted Tseng to teach her how to shoot a gun. She wanted a kitten. Chocobo racing was cruel: she'd seen it on the TV. One of the birds fell and broke its leg and had to be shot. That wasn't fair. Had it asked to run in races? Why couldn't she go to school? Other kids went to school. She had seen them on the TV. Why couldn't they go for a holiday to Costa? She wanted to see the ocean. If she could be any animal in the world, she would be a dolphin. Dolphins were the most intelligent mammals. Eating meat was cruel: it was mean to kill a living thing just to eat it. She was going to be vegetarian. When she grew up, she was going to be a doctor. Or maybe a materia hunter. Or maybe a Turk.
Rufus Shinra first appeared in their lives around this time. One day he simply materialized at Mrs Gast's door, a small pretty blond child in a sailor suit, pulled to that spot by whatever mysterious force it is that draws children together. A flurry of phone calls ensued, and in short order a starched nanny arrived to escort him back to the penthouse. He went kicking and struggling, and the next day he was back. This time, the powers that be allowed him to stay. It was the shape of things to come. Even at five years old, when Rufus wanted something, Rufus got it.
"He is an annoying baby," said Aerith. The truth was, she resented having to share Tseng's attention. But Rufus wiled himself into her good graces. He submitted to being her doll, allowing her to dress him up in her old clothes and brush his long, curly hair. He played 'going shopping' and 'tea party' as if he enjoyed it. He was the tonberry felled by her Turk, the naughty class dunce to her ruler-wielding schoolmarm. His reward for putting up with all this was to be allowed to look at, and sometimes even touch, Tseng's gun.
"Must you bring it here?" Mrs Gast asked him.
"I forget I'm wearing it," he told her truthfully. He was fifteen, and half a head taller than she was. His voice had broken. He'd been wearing that gun under his suit for three years now. Without it he felt vulnerable. Naked.
He'd long ago stopped keeping count of the monsters he'd killed.
The Director was visiting Mrs Gast more often – two, sometimes three times a week. When he arrived, Mrs Gast asked Tseng to take the children out. The Director protested, "I have nothing to say to you that he can't hear," but she was firm. "It's my daughter I'm thinking of."
There was something ominous about the frequency of these visits. The shadow Hojo cast over Ifalna and her child was growing longer. Tseng sensed they were living on borrowed time.
Finally the day came when the Director walked into Ifalna's apartment without knocking. "Tseng," he said, "Take Rufus back to the penthouse. Leave Aerith here." His tone was clipped and urgent. Ifalna sensed it too, and, oblivious to the cookies balanced on her knees, she stood up with such haste that the plate fell to the floor and shattered. Tseng at once moved to pick up the pieces before the children could cut themselves.
"Leave that," said Veld. "Just go."
Rufus went willingly enough, pleased to have Tseng to himself for the duration of the elevator ride. Tseng handed him over to his nanny and hurried back down. As soon as the elevator doors opened on the Gast's floor, he could hear Veld's and Ifalna's raised voices and the sound of Aerith crying. The door to Ifalna's suite was ajar: the three guards were still standing outside it.
"It is you who doesn't understand!" Ifalna shouted. "You're the one who refuses to listen, Veld. How many times do I have to say it?"
Tseng slipped through the door and shut it. Aerith ran to him and buried her face in his shirt. "Stop them," she cried. "Stop them, stop them."
"You're throwing sand in our eyes," Veld shouted back. "Seven years I've protected you and all you can give me is this Lifestream bullshit. Dead is dead. Gast is dead. My wife is dead. Felicia is dead. You can't talk to them and you can't bring them back. We will never see them again. Accept it. They're gone."
"When you burn what you call mako, you are burning the soul of this planet – their souls - "
"Shut up! You know that's a lie. If it were true, you'd tell us where the Promised Land is. Unless you like the thought of Gast trapped inside a lightbulb –"
"Tseng, please," Aerith sobbed, "Make them stop."
"Maybe that's him up there right now," Veld went on, "Shining his little light on you. Keeping an eye on you."
"You're being cruel now, Veld."
"Cruel? I'll tell you what's cruel. To fob me off with fairy tales and try to buy time by talking me into believing that my daughter's essence, her soul – " he spat out the word – "Still exists in some form, somewhere – that's what's cruel. That is an evil thing to do."
"That's not what I said. You are willfully simplifying things – "
"Why don't you prove it to me? Huh? Go on. Talk to her. Tell me something only she and I would know. If you want me to believe you."
"I can't."
"No?" The Director snorted sarcastically. "My, there's a surprise. You know, Ifalna, I used to think you were just pig-headed, but now I think you actually enjoy the pain you inflict on me."
"Oh!" she gasped. "You hypocrite! At least I didn't kill my own –"
He hit her, slapping her open-handed across the mouth. She fell back against the wall, hands raised to ward him off. Aerith was screaming.
"As good as," said Veld.
For a few moments he continued to stand there glaring at her, fists clenching, breathing heavily. Tseng recognize the look in his eyes. He was itching to beat Mrs Gast into submission. Mrs Gast seemed to know what that look meant, too. She returned his stare defiantly, daring him to try.
The Director was the first to drop his gaze. "I can't help you any more," he said, sounding suddenly tired. "If you won't meet me halfway, then there's nothing more I can do. Just remember, Ifalna, this was your choice."
He turned to go.
"Veld," said Mrs Gast. "Wait."
He stopped, though he did not turn round.
She said, "You can't find what you seek because you don't know what you're looking for. But it will find you, where you least expect it."
"Fuck your riddles," said Veld, and left, slamming the door behind him.
Aerith ran to her mother and clung to her, shaking with fear. Ifalna kissed her daughter over and over. Then she looked up at Tseng. Her lip was bleeding. A bruise was forming on her cheek. The Director must have hit her once before, when Tseng was out of the room. Why did she have to be so obstinate?
"How can you do this to Aerith?" Tseng cried. "Why can't you just tell him?"
"You have to help us," said Ifalna, pulling herself upright. "We have to get out of here, now."
"I can't help you to escape. You can't ask me to do that."
"The President's giving us to Hojo. He signed the order today. Is that what you want for Aerith, Tseng? To be a sample in his labs? An experiment?"
"Of course not!"
"I'll kill her myself before I let that beast have her." Ifalna looked round wildly. Her gaze fell on a knife lying on the table. Tseng saw it at the same time and moved to grab it, but desperation made Ifalna quick. In one swift movement she beat him to it, snatched up the knife and held it against her daughter's throat.
He drew his gun and leveled it at her face.
Ifalna laughed. "Are you going to shoot me now, Turk? Will that save her, if you kill me?"
Aerith stood motionless, trembling and terrified. "Please," she said in a small voice, "Please, please, Tseng, don't hurt my mummy. Please."
If he shot Ifalna, Hojo would take Aerith. If he did not shoot Ifalna, she would kill Aerith. There was no right choice. He was out of options.
Lowering the gun, he said, "What do you want me to do?"
"Go to your materia room. Get me something – Stun, or Stop, either will do. I don't want to hurt anyone if I don't have to. All I want is to keep Aerith safe. Be as fast as you can. We don't have much time. And don't try anything heroic."
All the way to the materia room his mind was working furiously, trying to find some other solution. He desperately hoped he would run into someone – Natalya or Charlie, or best of all, the Director – who would stop him and ask him what he thought he was doing, and take the matter out of his hands. But the office was empty. He selected four materia and took the elevator back up to the Gast's apartment, dreading, hoping, that he would find them dead or gone. But the three infantrymen were still on guard, and when he went inside, Ifalna was still crouched against the wall, one arm round Aerith's neck, the other still wielding the knife.
"Now what?" he asked.
"Put them on the table. Keep one. Now – go out, but leave the door open so I can see what you're doing. Go to the elevator and press the call button. Then cast the magic on my guards. That will give us time to get away. You should leave before they wake up. And please - don't follow us."
He did as she asked. The three guards slumped to the ground, dazed and helpless. Ifalna threw the knife away. Aerith jumped into her mother's arms, wrapped her legs around her mother's waist. Ifalna scooped the materia on the table into her pocket. The elevator pinged. Clutching her child to her heart, Ifalna poised to run. The elevator doors slid open.
Another infantryman stepped out.
A moment was enough for him to take in the scene: his comatose comrades, the prisoner's open door, the prisoner herself caught red-handed in the act of escaping with her child, and the boy Turk with a gun in his hand –
Tseng shot him.
At point-blank range the bullet neatly pierced the bridge of his nose and blasted a hole in the back of his skull, spraying brain and bone and blood across the company logo on the wall behind.
Ifalna cried out in alarm. Aerith was too shocked to scream.
Tseng had never killed a man before. Only monsters.
In the aftermath of the gun's report, a silence fell that seemed to last for hours.
Then Tseng woke up to the realization that the elevator doors were closing. He wedged them open with one foot. "Quick," he said to Ifalna.
She and Aerith had to step over the infantryman's body to reach the elevator. Still with his foot holding the door open, Tseng leaned inside, flipped open a panel, and entered a code on the numbered keypad. "It's an override," he explained. "Now it won't stop till you reach the mezzanine. Mingle with the crowds. It's safest. You'll need money – "
He gave her all the gil he had. He wanted to give her the gun too, but she wouldn't take it.
"But thank you," she said, and kissed him. Tears were running down her cheeks. Aerith's face was pressed into her mother's shoulder.
He moved his foot. The doors closed.
They were gone.
Tseng walked down the stairs to the Turk's floor. The office was still empty. He sat in the lounge and watched the small hand of the clock judder forward, slow second by second, until ten minutes had passed. Then he opened his phone and called the Director.
For more than three hours he waited as he had been told to, until, eventually, the Director returned to the office and told him that Mrs Gast was dead. She had got as far as the Sector Seven train station before she was shot by some of Heidegger's trigger-happy grunts.
My fault, thought Tseng, my fault, my fault.
He would have cried if he could, but his eyes were so dry they burned.
"Aerith," he said, "Where is she?"
"No sign of her. We'll keep looking, of course, but a little girl like that, alone in the slums…. It's unlikely she'll survive for very long. And then there's Sergeant Mehta, dead for doing his job. So. Are you proud of your handiwork, Tseng?"
What do you think? Tseng wanted to shout back. I tried to save them and now Mrs Gast is dead and Aerith is lost because of me. I didn't mean to kill the sergeant. He took me surprise; it just happened. I didn't know what else to do. Why did you go away and leave me?
"No, sir," he said.
"She was a liar, Tseng," said the Director. "No mother would ever harm her child. She was bluffing. She used you. Do you see that now? It was her plan all along, I think. "
No, thought Tseng, that's not true. She was my friend. She liked me.
But how he could be sure of anything any more?
"After I left you," the Director went on, "I went to talk to the President again, to try to get him to rescind the order. To give me a little more time. I was managing to make some headway – and then, you called. He wants your skin, my boy. And I've a mind to let him have it."
By the time the Director was finished with him, Tseng's back was in shreds and two of his bones were broken and all he could think about was the pain, which was, he realized afterwards, Veld's kindness. It was less a punishment than an absolution: the pain was like a fire that swept through his soul, burning up and cleaning away the dead wood of guilt and regret and self-recrimination, and, when it had passed, leaving him light-headed and detached on the other side of the scorched earth.
If souls even existed. The Director didn't think so. But what, then, was Tseng to call this thing inside him that had been beaten in the forge and come out harder, like steel?
Life went on. The Director decided to send him to the military academy in Junon, but it was the same as school had been, too many fights, too many suspensions, and not much they could teach him that he did not know already. He came home, found an apartment, moved out; he rose through the ranks at work. The Director hired a tutor to teach him Wutainese, and he made swift progress, because, as he quickly discovered, he was not so much learning the language as remembering it; though he never dreamed in it. Never. He was Charlie's partner the day that Legendary Turk refused Veld's order to spring a notoriously crooked arms dealer, a pal of the President's, from prison in Corel; he was the one who put Charlie under arrest. More and more he found his elders deferring to his judgement. If the Director could not be contacted, Natalya, Mozo, Knox and the others would turn to Tseng and ask him what he thought they should do.
He was what he had always wanted to be; he was what the Director had made him. He was very good at his job.
It was five years since Aerith had vanished.
When the word reached his ears of flowers growing in the old church in the Sector Five slums, he knew at once who was responsible. He'd never really been able to believe she was dead. He took the train down to Wall Market and picked his way between the garbage and the rubble on the streets until he came to the door of the church, and opened it, and went in. She was up at the far end, standing beside a bed of yellow and white flowers that seemed to give off some kind of light.
How old was she now? Twelve? Dressed in boy's shorts and a grey sleeveless pullover, she was taller and skinnier, and her hair was longer, but otherwise she was unchanged. She, too, recognised him straight away. But this time there was no joyous shout of greeting, no jumping into his arms. It was not fear in her eyes, exactly, or hatred, but it was something close. She took a step backwards.
He stayed where he was and said, "Don't be afraid."
"I'm not going back," she declared, her voice echoing round the nave. "You can't make me."
"I haven't come to take you back. I wanted to be sure it was you. That you're all right. Are you all right?"
She took another step. If he moved, if he startled her in anyway, she would run.
"Go away!" she shouted. "Leave me alone!"
"Is this where you live? Are you on your own? Is anyone looking after you?"
"I'm not going to tell you, Turk!"
"All right. That's OK. You don't have to. Listen - Do you need money? Look, here's money." Very slowly, like a man disarming himself, he laid the wad of gil notes on the nearest pew.
"I don't want your Shinra blood money!"
"That's OK. Maybe you know somebody who needs it. Aerith – " After so many years, it was sweet to taste her name on his tongue once more. He said it again, "Aerith, I haven't come to hurt you or to take you back. My job is to keep you safe. Do you understand that?"
"Why did you have to come here? Why couldn't you stay away?"
"I have to know that you're all right. Just tell me that, Aerith. Tell me you're all right. Please."
Was it his imagination, or did her expression soften just a little?
"Tseng," she said, "I'm all right. Now stop asking questions and go away,"
She was right. He musn't rush her. Don't feel; think. If she took fright she might go back into hiding and he might never find her again. Be slow. Be cautious. Be discrete.
"OK," he said. "Look, I'm going now. But I will come back, just to check on you. You don't have to worry. You'll be safe. I promise you."
She never took her eyes off him the whole time he was backing out of the church. Like a trapped animal. And yet he couldn't help feeling that some part of her, some little part, had been glad to see him. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
Back at the office he went straight to the Director.
Veld was rarely astonished by anything, but it took him a few moments to assimilate what his lieutenant was trying to tell him. When he finally, fully understood that Ifalna's daughter was alive and well and growing flowers in the slums beneath his feet, he laughed out loud and punched the air, and enfolded Tseng in a bear hug.
Veld thought, and Tseng agreed with him, that this time around they should handle the primary objective differently. Since certain executives on the board advocated methods that were bound to be counter-productive, it was in the company's best interests to keep the last Cetra's existence a secret known only to the Turks. They would watch her, protect her, and ensure her survival. Tseng would continue to cultivate her friendship and win her trust. There was no guarantee that she would ever tell them what she knew, if, indeed, she knew anything at all about the mystery her mother had died to protect. But it was the only way.
In this, as in so many things, Tseng found that he and the Director were of one mind. What he didn't share with Veld was the decision he had made on the way back from the church that if he were ever ordered to bring Aerith in, he would shoot her. Two bullets: one bullet in the back of her neck, where it wouldn't hurt, and she would never know what hit her, and a second bullet for himself. Strange that it should be such a comforting thought, to know that death was the worst thing that could happen…
"Complicated?"
Zack's voice interrupted Tseng's train of thought, brought him back to the present moment: church, slums, SOLDIER, helicopter hovering above, the necessity of travelling to Modeoheim.
"Really?" said Zack.
Was it Tseng's imagination, or did Zack sound a little – suspicious?
Zack Fair, thought Tseng, what a simple soul you are. There are times when your existence seems an enviable one.
What Tseng said was, "Has she said anything to you?"
"Not a thing," Zack admitted.
"Then I won't either."
The noise generated by the helicopter's descent rendered further conversation impossible.