I'm alive.

I'm…alive?

Zack took a deep, shuddering intake of breath. Earthy air flew into his lungs and brought him back to his senses. He opened his eyes. The glistening midnight sky lay before him, dotted with silver specks of light. He must have been out for a long time.

Pain.

There was only pain then, knocking the new breath back out of Zack's lungs. His arms and legs felt as though they were on fire and throbbed uncontrollably. He tried to breathe in again, but this time his ribs groaned in protest. Zack squeezed his eyes shut. Remember. Remember.

The Shinra.

Memory flooded back into Zack's aching brain. The mansion. The experiments. The Turks. Everything. He'd suffered near fatal injuries at the hands of the Shina Army because they'd been trying to escape to Midgar.

Cloud.

Where was Cloud? Zack snapped his eyes back open and jerked his head up. Black spots blurred his vision and pain threw a blanket of dizziness over him.

"Cloud," he groaned. His voice came out cracked and weak like crumpled paper. Did he protect Cloud?

Zack and Cloud had both been made the personal science projects of the Head of Shinra's Science Department, Professor Hojo. The Professor had infused them with massive amounts of mako in a dangerous procedure, a procedure that did not give it's subjects a high chance of survival. But by some miracle, the two of them had survived and managed to escape.

The effects of the mako didn't really hit Zack that hard, mostly due to his SOLDIER training. All SOLDIER employees had experience with mako as part of their training. But Cloud had not been that fortunate. With the amount of mako poisoning that Cloud had, there was no way he would have been able to defend himself when the Shinra Army finally caught up to them.

Zack bolstered all the strength he could muster and brought himself to sitting position. He gritted his teeth, willing himself to function despite the excruciating pain. He took a mental tally of his injuries.

A broken arm.

At least three broken ribs.

Multiple burns, 2nd degree, if he was lucky.

And who knew how many bullet wounds.

But he was still alive. Still breathing. And that was good enough for him.

"Cloud!" said Zack again, this time with more strength. He listened for any kind of response but only got the whistle of the wind as a reply.

Zack looked around and saw that Cloud was no where to be seen. He searched for that spiky blond head of his but saw nothing but debris. Did the Shinra capture him? There was no way that he could have gotten away on his own. Right?

Zack dismissed the thought. If Cloud was still alive, he was probably long gone by now. It was time to worry about himself for a change.

Zack saw that he was still in the great desert plain where the Shina had attacked. Dozens of Shinra soldiers lay dead all around him, probably slain by his sword or some spell he had casted. He felt a pang of guilt, knowing that their deaths could have been avoided, if they'd only left him alone.

The sun had been shining when Zack fought the guards. He remembered because it had been pummeling him with sweltering heat and a devastating glare. He had slashed at the seemingly endless stream of soldiers blindly, desperately. But some time, while he was unconscious, it had rained. The arid landscape had cooled with the night and was dotted with shining puddles of water. Zach used his good arm to drag himself over to a nearby pool that glinted the moon light off of its glassy surface.

Zack looked into the puddle and saw a stranger where his reflection should have been. He was Zack Fair. Eighteen years old. Devastatingly handsome. SOLDIER First Class. The figure that glared back at him was a beaten, shadow of his former self. His left eyelid was puffy and swollen with his blue eye looking like a tiny bead between the purple bruises. His face was covered in scratches, most of his eyebrows were singed and his nose hung crookedly. His oil black hair stood up at odd angles, even odder than he usually wore it, and it was significantly shorter on one side.

Zack couldn't help but crack a smile on his chapped lips. He looked ridiculous. What would Aerith think?

And then something else hurt. Something that hurt Zack worse than any of his broken bones or cuts or bruises. Worse than his aching head. His heart.

Aerith. She was still waiting for him.

The smile faded from Zack's lips and turned serious and stern. He knew why he was still alive. He couldn't die without seeing Aerith again. He refused. He was going to get to Midgar by any means necessary.

The pool of rain that Zack had been peering into began to ripple suddenly. Zack cocked his head to the side in confusion and then narrowed his eyes in realization. Something or someone was coming.

Zack pushed himself up to his knees. Adrenaline was pumping now, pushing back the ever constant pain. He wildly looked around for his sword, the goliath buster sword, his most trusted weapon. But it was gone. Gone just as Cloud was.

Zack's SOLDIER instincts kicked in. If he couldn't get his hands on a weapon, he had to get to a good vantage point where he could surprise the enemy. Or at least hide until they moved on. Zack's ears picked up on the sound now that accompanied the vibrations in the ground. It was a familiar mechanical grumble, growing louder each second. A car.

Two Shinra soldiers lay motionless to Zack's right. If he placed himself on the ground between them then he would just look like another of the deceased. The soldiers wouldn't be able to protest anyway. Zack crawled awkwardly over to the two men and carefully placed himself onto the cool earth. He covered himself over with a cracked defender shield and waited.

Through a coin sized hole in the shield, Zack saw the car approach. He began to relax when he saw that it was a civilian vehicle. It was an old model, one that was rarely seen in Midgar any more, where all the latest models were sought after. The blue four-door, puttered along slowly, steering around the damaged Shinra weaponry that lay scattered on the plain. Zack closed his eyes and waited for it to pass.

"Halt!"

Swinging his eyes back to the hole, Zack saw that the car had come to a stop…in front of two, very alive, armed Shinra soldiers. Zack's whole body tensed up and his senses tingled. It was clumsy of him to think that there wouldn't be any soldiers still in the area.

The doors to the car opened and two women stepped out. The driver was an elderly woman, with curly silver hair. She did not look happy. The passenger was much younger and looked as though she could have been the other woman's daughter.

Zack wasn't close enough to hear what was being said between the two parties. But from what he could see from his hiding place, the conversation was not going well. The older woman was waving her arms wildly in protest and her passenger busy trying to calm her down. The two Shinra soldiers were not taking this lightly. The woman must have said something that did not sit well with the soldiers because one of them stalked over to the elderly driver, raised his rifle and brought the end of it down on the top of her head, hard. She crumpled to the ground.

Zack flinched when the blow connected. He couldn't help himself. Rage shot through him replacing the pain that coursed through his body. What other atrocities would the Shinra Army commit?

However, when Zack had moved, the shield that concealed him shifted noisily. The soldiers looked up from the slumped form of their victim and her crying passenger and looked right over at him. Could they see him? Zack racked his brain for options. He could run and try to escape, but there was no way he would get away in time. The guards were armed with automatic weapons that held bullets that were much quicker than he could ever be.

One of the soldiers yelled something to the women. Probably telling them to shut up and stay put, Zack thought. The two men began their approach to his position, guns ready. Zack groped around for something , anything to distract the men when they found him. A stone to throw, a hand full of gravel, anything. His hand drifted over the ground and grazed over cold metal. It was a Shinra automatic pistol. Zack gripped it tightly in his hand, feeling pain flicker up his arm again and prayed that the gun was loaded.

"You saw this one move?"

The men were four feet away.

"Yeah, I swear I did."

Closing in on two feet.

"Maybe it was just the wind, sir. These guys are all gone."

Right in front of him.

"Just check will ya!"

And the dented shield was ripped away from Zack revealing him to the startled guards. But he didn't wait for the two react. He raised the pistol and fired two shots that rang out into the night, clear and true. Zack's vision blurred and he felt the pistol fall from his grip. It clattered to the ground and plopped into the rain water. Zack just couldn't focus, all his strength was finally gone, and his sight puttered out like a television screen. He fell unconscious and the darkness enveloped him.