"Shouldn't we report this to corporate?" Ifalna asked.

Gast shifted where he sat and pretended to squint at the stained specimen on the microscope slide for a few more seconds.

"Won't the Turks want to know where he is? It's been five years since Nibelheim. They probably think he's dead!"

"Well, maybe that's not a bad thing," Gast said slowly, finally looking up from the slide.

"How in gaia is that a good thing?" Ifalna countered.

"Turks don't retire, Ifalna, you know that as well as I do," he began. "For all we know, his own people did this to him."

That brought her up short. "I thought you said you found him in lab storage?"

Gast nodded. "I did, but it was sheer accident. He wasn't labeled. Maybe they thought he was dead, maybe he'd been left there to die. My guess is he was waiting to be transported down to Deepground. I've heard the rumors, but hadn't put any faith in them until now."

"So you think the Turks did that to him?" she gestured broadly in the direction of Vincent's room. "Took off his arm, removed his tongue, did gods know what to his insides. You really think they would disappear him into the experimental treatment unit?"

He had no answer for that.

"What if...what if they weren't trying to disappear him?" Ifalna went on. "What if sending him to Deepground was the only way to make him better? They have had good results. Look what they did for the Lost Unit. They were all prisoners of war for years, and now they're fine!"

It was grasping at straws and she knew it. If Vincent had been sent to Deepground for therapeutic reasons and not as test subject, he would have been delivered wrapped in care and blankets, and not naked in a metal coffin. Perhaps the Turks had thought he was dead already and the only reason Vincent had been in lab storage was because he was awaiting an autopsy?

"I don't know," Gast confessed. "I think it's possible. I also think it might be best for us to keep him under wraps for now, at least until he can tell us what happened to him."

"Faremis, that may never happen."

It was Gast's turn to fall silent.

"Professor, we both know he's not in his right mind. What we don't know is how he got this way, and he may never be able to tell us. We have to consider the possibility that while he may recover, it may only be to a point. I want to help him but…" she trailed off and swallowed hard. "He needs more help than we can give him."

Standing, Gast crossed the floor and faced her, resting both hands on her shoulders.

"We're all he's got, Iffy," he told her earnestly. "I don't want to risk throwing a sick man to the wolves. We can't tell corporate where he is. Not yet. I know he's a handful but...I believe in you. I believe we can do this. He was my responsibility, you all were. It's my fault this happened to him. I've got to do what I can for him, even if it isn't much more than to make sure he's comfortable."

Reluctantly, Ifalna nodded. "I want to believe I can help him too but… I really have no idea what I'm doing. Nothing seems to help. Most of the time he sounds like screaming, and when he doesn't sound like screaming, he sounds like crying. I wish I knew how to make it stop for him."

"So do I," Gast said, pulling her into a hug. "So do I…"


Veld was getting sick of losing things. That made two more kids out of commission. At least they'd lived. What would become of them in the end, he wasn't sure. Tally was still kicking- figuratively, anyway- but he wasn't sure the current president would be as forgiving as the last. Veld might have to take it upon himself to make sure that the kids never talked. It needn't be as gruesome as the general populace thought. Far more targets had been disappeared than killed, but Shinra and the rest of the world didn't need to know that. Maybe he'd have to add these two to the bunch, set them up with a nice retirement package if they couldn't recover fully. He hoped they would. Neither of them were thirty yet. Kids. Babies. When had he gotten so old?

He was also getting sick of cleaning up messes that he hadn't made. Since when had the Turks become Shinra's janitors? There had been a time when the suit had meant something, but now… Veld was many things, but stupid was not one of them. Shinra Sr. had treated the Turks like his own personal bodyguards, and less like a flock of armed servants. Veld would have liked to say that the boy was just being careless, but he knew better. The younger Shinra had his favorites, namely those too young to be loyal to his old man. Maybe he thought he was being subtle, being clever, but no one could out-subtle a Turk. He was weeding out the people he thought he couldn't trust by any means necessary, and in the process was only making himself more enemies. It was not wise to make enemies of the people who were supposed to protect you and all your corporate secrets.

There were a number of secrets Veld wished he hand an answer for: what had become of his wife and daughter, why the training exercise that had burned Kalm to the ground had gone so horribly wrong, and most recently, what had become of his friend and old partner? "Recently" was perhaps putting it generously. Five years ago Vincent had been part of the team that had been sent out to Nibelheim. Veld had pushed Tally to send him in the hopes that Vince and Lucy could work things out. Seven months later, the team had returned minus one Turk. Veld had asked, sneaked, spied, threatened, pleaded, employed every tactic he knew to try to find out what had become of his friend, but no one knew. Even Lucy had been silent, only telling him that there had been an accident, and that he should ask Hojo. The senior assistant had not been very forthcoming, and then there had been another tragedy and everyone else had forgotten about Vincent.

Veld had not forgotten. Every so often he opened the old case file that he kept stored next to Linda and Felicia's. All three were depressingly slim, barely more than two or three pages each. In his mind, they were still open cases, even if he was the only one still looking. Tally told him to let it go, to grieve and move on, but he couldn't. Even if all three of them were dead and gone, the needed to know how, he needed to know why. It wouldn't bring them back, but it would give him a certain amount of peace.

Linda, Elfe, Vincent, and now Lucrecia, all gone. It didn't seem right or fair, but few things in life were. Lucy's death had been straight-forward enough, there was no need to further investigate a rough pregnancy that had ended in tragedy. She was not the first, and she would not be the last woman to die in childbirth; even in this modern age such things could still happen. Nothing fishy there, just deeply unfortunate. The other three, however… Linda and Elfe had never been formally identified. Veld was not content to let them rest unless he could prove for certain that they had died. Vincent did not even have the excuse of a major disaster to obscure his disappearance. He had simply dropped off the face of gaia. If anyone could disappear like that, it would be a Turk, but Vincent had no reason cut and run that Veld was aware of. No, something had happened, and Veld was going to find out what.