Motherland - Chapter One
No attempt had been made to conceal the red trail that snaked through the halls of the ShinRa Electric Power Company's science department. If anything, effort had been put into making it more visible, more readily seen. For insidious reasons that no one could fathom, the faster, more direct route that the attacker might have taken hadn't been used; he gave up speed so they could drag their victim across the white tile instead of the maroon carpet of the lobby.
Smeared handprints, painted in crimson against sterile white, and the marks of the boots of the gravely wounded captive vainly scuffing for leverage as he was dragged to his death, were not the only distinguishing marks. Beside the red stream marched clear footprints; the shoes had been dipped in ink as black and sticky as tar before the attack. The red and black continued forward, up stairs, (three flights of them), through halls, around corners, deftly weaving through a maze of rooms and laboratories.
There, in the room that used to be Professor Hojo's private laboratory, Rufus ShinRa was pinned to the mako chamber with a strange, archaic and chillingly sinister spear.
The laboratory received no damage that couldn't be wiped away with a wet cloth, perhaps bleach to stanch the red from the few fabric items, and if anything, looked even cleaner than usual. Surfaces that might have been covered with dust from years of disuse were gleaming eerily. It was too clean, as if, despite the impossibility of it all, the laboratory's former inhabitant had been here only hours ago, or perhaps still lingered in the shadows…
The building, all 68 floors of it, was locked down. Every Turk was called to seal off the area. Every exit, from the front door to the top story window, was guarded by at least three ready guns and able hands to fire them.
It hadn't been enough.
Somehow, the attacker had gotten away.
The worst thing about the whole matter was that no one had been unaware for long. Security cameras might have been the first logical thing to disable if an attacker was going to do something so dire to someone as important as the president of the largest company on the planet. He had done, in fact, the complete opposite. He had tampered with the security system, but only to focus every camera on the building on what he was doing. Anyone who had remote access to a television or radio, not only in the building, but in all of Midgar and Edge, saw and heard everything with horrifying clarity.
The entire world witnessed the murder of its ruler.
The man wore no mask, nothing to hide his face, and often looked directly into the camera. Everyone had a flawless picture of everything: his eerie, nearly colorless ice blue eyes, his jaw-length black hair with a rebellious streak, the grotesque tattoo of a speared bird with broken, obsidian wings visible through his open jacket, just over his heart…
It meant nothing. Not his appearance, not his chilling voice, not his footprints, fingerprints, or the DNA extracted from his own blood he had used to seal a scarlet letter which also had samples of his handwriting, even his strange weapon had been left for their examination. They had all the evidence, everything…
But this man did not exist.
In all the records of every man ever to live in Midgar, Edge, or the cities surrounding it for hundreds of miles out, there was not a single record that matched.
Maybe he didn't exist, but despite his obscurity, he had openly wounded, perhaps fatally, Rufus ShinRa, through what was thought to be impregnable security.
It had happened before the planet's eyes.
It had been a drawn out, dramatically prolonged attack.
Evidence was everywhere.
It didn't matter.
No one knew whether the president of ShinRa would survive. Most speculated from the blood trail alone that he had surely been bled dry. Those who came into Hojo's laboratory saw further complications. The spear went entirely through him, shattering his shoulder into shards. His white coat was nearly entirely dyed red and brown with his fresh and drying lifeblood. He had been pinned to the glass prison that used to seal Hojo's victims of science inside searing mako, cracks in the glass from the initial blow gave way to splinters when they ripped his body and the spear free. Many of them only tore him further, to say nothing of how much damage the barbed spearhead did to his organs when they ripped it from him.
The scarlet letter, sealed with a few scant drops of the attacker's blood, laid forgotten on the table, but it was a useless, though harrowing token. The letter and the message the assassin had screamed to the video camera were the same.
"I will have my vengeance, Gloria Dawn! Mark my words, I'll make you pay in blood for your treachery!"
Rufus spoke only two words through the blood dripping from his lips as they rushed him, maybe in vain, to help.
"Warn…Sephiroth…."
A/N: It is here at last. WHOO!
Eh, I have AP exams, so probably no writing for a week? I will try. ugh...I hate tests....
The Marked is up as well...