A/N: This prologue, as well as the chapter that follows it, remain largely unedited. Some of the wording was changed, and the overall product was tightened, but I tried my best to retain the voice. Mostly it's the same, but Hojo got an extra line or two, so keep an eye out!


"Twenty of us, there were, all healthy 'n able-bodied to boot! But it don't matter how strong you are once the sun goes down and the wind comes up," he would declare, staring at his audience with unfocused eyes. "If you stop movin', even for a second, the cold takes you and that's that. I saw men stop dead, still as statues, their eyes froze hard as marbles. I alone made it to the top, but that night a terrible storm hit and I took shelter in a cave. The next morning, snow covered the trail and one slope looked just the same as another…but for one thing." At this point in the story, Zangan would appear to be hopelessly distracted by his empty cup. Once someone took the hint and ordered another round of drinks, Zangan would down the strong liquor in one gulp, smack his lips and continue the story. "As I was sayin'…snow from the storm had covered up the trail and there was no way to tell one path from another, but for one thing: the men I left behind me still stood, frozen in place. I followed 'em like signposts straight down to the village."

The man standing on the ridge now was motionless enough to be mistaken for one of Zangan's lost fellows were it not for the mist which puffed out of his nostrils at every breath. SOLDIER 2nd Class Garry Henrik wore nothing to protect him from the biting cold but his standard-issue uniform: a sleeveless maroon shirt topped by heavy steel pauldrons and tucked neatly into a pair of matching slacks. Henrik's feet were insulated from the snow by a pair of thick black boots, but his hands were protected only by a pair of black leather gloves. Atop his head was a helm of dark steel that obscured most of his face, but the true symbol of his office was the large burnished broadsword strapped to his back. Enemies often laughed the first time they saw a SOLDIER agent approaching guns and missiles with nothing but a sword, but nobody laughed once the sword left its sheath.

As the sun began to rise above the peaks of the lower mountains, Henrik thought that the night winds were almost as bad as old Zangan had said. If he had been anyone other than a conditioned SOLDIER agent, the cold might have claimed him. But even spending the night out in the cold was preferable to seeking refuge in the caves nowadays. Maybe back in Zangan's day the caves were safe, but that was before Shinra came. Now the interweaving network of caves and tunnels was infested with mako-born monsters; byproducts of the waste from the reactor. Henrik almost wondered if he should say as much to Zangan the next time he saw him, then the wind shifted and carried the stench of burnt blood and flesh from the ruin of the town below and he remembered that he would never get the chance.

Henrik had grown up in Nibelheim, but to join SOLDIER, a man had to subject himself to rigorous training, mental and physical. He must completely forsake his old life. Midgar was his home now, and SOLDIER was his family…but as the growing morning light illuminated the smoldering ruin in the valley that had once been his home, he felt a distant twinge of sadness. The reports couldn't be true. No SOLDIER agent could have done something like this, least of all the heroes he'd fought alongside in Wutai.

The sun had crept nearly to its zenith before Henrik heard a high thin voice pierce the low roar of the wind.

"…a helicopter, then, if the car couldn't reach…outrageous…don't lecture me about the winds…been coming here since before you were conceived in a gutter…" Henrik stood immobile for nearly an hour listening to the voice rant and berate, but never once hearing an answer. The corner of Henrik's mouth twitched in what was almost a smile. His men were bearing their burden well, with all the honor befitting an agent of SOLDIER. When the three figures rounded the corner and approached him, he was pleased to see that the two men wearing the blue uniform of a SOLDIER 3rd Class walked with straight backs and heads held high despite the half-day hike and unpleasant company. The owner of the sharp voice walked with a shuffling gait and was bent under the weight of his thick coat. His thick glasses magnified a pair of sickly green eyes and the gusts had pulled strands of long, greasy black hair out from under his heavy hood.

Henrik swallowed his pride and strode forward. "Professor Hojo, sir," he said, as he rose his hand to his brow in salute. "I am SOLDIER 2nd Class—"

"I could care less what your name is, cur," spat Hojo, "just take me to it."

"Yes, sir." Henrik bristled inwardly at the scientist's rudeness, but his face showed none of his disdain. The officer saluted and dismissed his two men before walking with Hojo into a nearby cave. As the two men walked deeper into the cave, the natural sunlight faded and was replaced with an eerie green glow given off by the rock walls around them. The cave narrowed and twisted into a dimly lit tunnel. As the howling of the wind was left behind them, Henrik became aware that Hojo was mumbling to himself.

"…always showed a remarkable intellect…suppose it was only a matter of time…he'll know some, of course, but he can't possibly have guessed it all…" The tunnel twisted again and again, growing more cramped the whole time until Henrik was forced to bend his back to progress. After what seemed like an eternity creeping through the belly of the mountain, the way lit only by the faint glow of the mountain's natural mako deposits, the mouth of the tunnel opened abruptly into a massive open-ceilinged cavern nearly a mile in diameter. The walls around the edge of the cavern pulsed with the green light of the rich mako veins. In the center of the cavern's stone floor stood a hulking monstrosity of metal. The reactor was connected to the ceilings and walls of the cave by dozens of rusting pipelines which drained the mountain of its abundant supply of mako. As the two men walked towards the center of the cavern, Henrik had the sudden impression that he was walking through the belly of some gigantic sleeping beast. The mako's glow seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat, and the wind swirling down through the cavern's open ceiling sounded like air being pushed through an enormous set of lungs. Henrik allowed himself a moment to savor the natural wonder before turning his eyes to the reactor, a steel tumor sitting in the heart of this massive ancient creature, sucking away its life. The stone walls around the pipelines had lost much of their light.

Henrik pulled himself back to reality as they approached the guards he had stationed outside the reactor entrance. The two guards were not SOLDIER, but rather a pair of Shinra foot-soldiers dressed in crisp blue uniforms with masked helms designed to intimidate foes and eliminate any sense of identity. The masks and helmets were as deep blue as their uniforms, and earned them the nickname "blueskulls" among the common people. Shinra troops were the most disciplined in the world, but the two grunts shifted nervously from one foot to the other and clutched at their assault rifles with the kind of grip that comes only from fear. Regardless, the men both saluted as Henrik and Hojo approached and stood aside to grant them access.

Inside the reactor, the sterile metal halls were lit by dim fluorescent light. Hojo unzipped his several coats and shrugged them unceremoniously to the floor. Underneath, the winter clothing, Hojo wore a stained off-white lab coat and his greasy black hair fell in a messy tangle halfway down his back. When he moved, he gave off a stale, sour aroma that made Henrik curl his lip. Though he was free of the weight of his clothing, Hojo's back remained bent. Henrik guessed this was from a lifetime of hunching over figures and test tubes and for a moment he felt a stab of pity for this little figure who was not quite a man. Then the professor opened his mouth and the pity evaporated.

"How many dead?" asked Hojo curtly as he began to shuffle down the hall.

"The whole village, as far as we can tell," responded Henrik shortly as he marched alongside the scientist. The lights flickered in the hall and in the shadows he could make out gashes in the steel walls, some as long as five feet, and none less than a full inch deep. A dark smear on the floor led to a dead man slumped over against the wall. He clutched a hunting rifle in two pieces in his lifeless hands. "It seems that the survivors of the initial attack guessed where they were headed, grabbed weapons and took a shortcut through the tunnels to head them off. They probably planned to lay an ambush in the reactor; maybe get some kind of payback." Henrik looked sadly at a pair of legs left lying in a nearby doorway. Their owner was nowhere in sight.

"Imbeciles," Hojo snorted, "how could they have thought they would stand a chance? My creations cannot be defeated in battle, no matter how strong the enemy. These fools would have fared better against a raging behemoth! Still, their corpses may yet yield some interesting data…" Hojo gave a nasty cackle and Henrik's insides twisted with rage.

Hojo stopped suddenly and whirled to face him. "Speak freely, SOLDIER." The scientist gave a nasty chuckle and waved a vague arm. "No one here will speak of it."

"These were good men protecting their home," Henrik admitted. "They deserved more than this, and they damn sure deserve more than you poking and prodding—"

"Yes, yes," snapped Hojo, "you can rest assured they'll be given every, heh heh, respect. Now, I think I can manage the rest of the way on my own. Where is he?" Hojo's watery eyes fixed on Henrik with sudden, unexpected intensity. Henrik returned the glare with a kind of grim satisfaction.

"Well, sir, we don't know for sure." Henrik took satisfaction in the naked fear that played on the scientist's weaselly face. "We've searched every inch of this place but one. It seems there was a chamber behind the power control center that wasn't indicated on the blueprints, and that chamber caved in. I've got my men working to dig out an entrance, but your…creation was most likely crushed inside." Henrik allowed himself a smile as the little man's misgivings blossomed into panicked denial. Without another word, Hojo turned and raced down the hall towards the heart of the reactor.

Henrik strolled after the professor at his leisure, stopping briefly to remove the dog tags from a dead SOLDIER 3rd Class lying nearby. Some of his own men had been on the mission when it went wrong, and they had paid the price for their loyalty. Henrik pocketed the dog tags with a weary sigh and continued down the hall until he reached a door to the right. He passed through and found himself standing at the edge of a massive pit crossed by a straight but narrow catwalk. At least two hundred feet below a sea of raw mako churned and frothed as it was processed by the machines under the surface. Mako in its purest form was not just green; it gave off a glow that was every color of the rainbow.

Henrik paused to watch the swirling patterns, now deepest crimson, now blue as a pristine sky, now the flaming orange of the valley in fall. He wondered, not for the first time, if something so beautiful should be torn from its natural state and used up at man's convenience. But Shinra had saved him from life as the poor son of a poorer farmer and given him everything he had today. He owed the company his life, and the President knew best. After taking a moment to compose himself, Henrik crossed the catwalk and slipped through the small hidden door behind the reactor's main power hub.

The air in the secret room's antechamber was choked with dust and lit only by a few strategically placed work lamps. The chamber extended back twenty feet before being cut short by a solid wall of collapsed concrete and twisted metal. Its ceiling sloped upwards and a set of steps had been built to allow access to the upper levels which had since been blocked by the cave-in. Henrik marveled again at the force it must have taken to bring down several tons of reinforced steel and concrete. Eight Shinra grunts were hard at work sifting through the rubble by hand, but they weren't the only ones. Much to Henrik's amusement, Hojo was on his hands and knees in the soot and dirt whimpering pitifully and wrenching aside rocks and parts of girders with surprising strength.

Overseeing the project were the three SOLDIER 3rd Class agents he had hand-picked for the recovery mission. Roger Holdfast was just a kid from Kalm with dreams of someday earning glory and making 1st. He'd removed his helmet to see better in the dark, but as a consequence his straw-blond hair was caked with dust. Korin Willems was from the slums of Midgar and seemed small and scrawny next to his companions. He had joined SOLDIER to support his wife and son, but Shinra was his family now and he hardly ever talked about them anymore. Fran Dysley was a rarity: a female SOLDIER operative. Tall and proud with short-cropped brown hair and noble features, Dysley sometimes reminded Henrik of himself. But Dysley was twice as good with a sword as Henrik had been when he was a 3rd and about a hundred times smarter than he would ever be. Henrik had taken charge of her training personally and only hoped that when she was promoted to 1st Class she would remember who showed her the ropes.

Dysley was the first to notice her commander and saluted smartly. Willems and Holdfast jumped and hastily followed suit. "Anything to report?" he asked, "How's digging going?"

"Sir, we're making great progress, sir!" Holdfast shouted enthusiastically. Henrik looked at the small pile of cleared debris, then at the massive wall still in their path. He turned back to Holdfast and fixed him with a piercing stare. Holdfast seemed to shrivel under his superior's glare. "Er, that is to say, we're farther than we were when you left. We would have gone faster, but Dysley made us dig less efficiently and so—"

"I stopped SOLDIER Holdfast from telling the men to remove that beam," Dysley said slowly through gritted teeth, indicating a long curved I-beam that snaked its way through the rubble. "It's load-bearing; take it out and half the pile comes down on top of the diggers. Then we have to postpone the operation until replacement diggers arrive, which could be days. So tell me, Holdfast, how is that 'less efficient?'"

Henrik looked and saw that she was right. The beam's uprooted base was sticking part-way out of the heap and offered a tempting place to grab hold and pull, but the upper part was still holding in place several large chunks of concrete that would certainly fall on the heads of the unsuspecting grunts. He was secretly glad he had not been here, or he might have given the order himself. There had already been enough death today. Once more he was impressed by Dysley's ability to analyze a situation quickly and accurately in the field.

"We've had them clearing the corner by the left wall," said Willems in his flat dead voice. Before his conditioning, Willems had joked and laughed with the other recruits, always full of stories about his family. But the surgeries, mako baths and harsh training had a way of hardening a man. Many a recruit washed out in training not because of the physical strain, but because their minds broke. Willems had cleared his psych evaluation, but only barely. His commitment to SOLDIER was absolute, but he no longer laughed. "It's farther from the center stair than I'd like, but SOLDIER Dysley's right; it's safest for the blueskulls and we'll get a better idea of how to proceed once they're done."

Henrik nodded and turned back to survey the work. Suddenly, a cry went up from one of the grunts. Henrik started forward but Hojo beat him there.

"What!?" he screeched, "Out of my way, idiots! What is it!? Is it—" Hojo stopped abruptly and turned on his heel. "Useless fools! What do I care for another jack-booted cretin!? Call me when you've found something useful!" As Hojo returned to his solitary labor, Henrik saw the grunts carefully lift the broken, but still breathing body of another Shinra grunt out of the rubble. As they lay the man gently down on the floor Henrik approached and waved them away, sliding a glowing green orb out of its pouch on his belt. The familiar voices sang in his head as he knelt and passed the orb over the man's body. Under the familiar glow, the man's bones re-knit themselves beneath the skin. Bruises faded and split skin healed as Henrik passed the orb back and forth over the man's wounds. Soon he appeared to be in good condition.

"Will he live, sir?" Henrik's eyes betrayed none of the surprise he felt at her voice. He always forgot how silently Dysley could move when she wanted to. Even his enhanced hearing had missed her footsteps.

"He will now," Henrik dragged himself to his feet and replaced the orb on his belt. "He's damn lucky he was caught in a pocket. The weight of all this debris would have crushed him. Maybe when he wakes he'll be able to tell us more of what happened here. Mother knows I have enough unanswered questions about this place. And I'm pretty sure most of the answers have to do with him."

Henrik gestured towards Hojo, then froze. The scientist was standing in one spot holding a rock in his hand. He was shaking from head to toe as if he was having a seizure, but as Henrik moved towards him, he saw that Hojo was shaking with quiet laughter. His mad laugh grew louder and stronger until everyone in the chamber had turned towards him. Henrik had time to notice that the rock in Hojo's hand was covered in some slimy green substance before he saw what Hojo had unearthed. Under the rock, and coated with the same green slime was a single black-gloved hand. With the strength of a SOLDIER agent, Henrik and Dysley tossed aside more debris until they came to a large boulder resting where the buried man's head should be. Exchanging grim glances, the two agents strained against the heavy boulder, steeling themselves for the mess underneath. Instead they found a handsome face beneath tufts of spiky hair. As they watched, the man groaned.

"He's alive," whispered Dysley, awe creeping into her voice, "but how?" The man moaned again and his eyes fluttered open, just for an instant. But it was enough. As Hojo's wild laughter echoed off the walls of the chamber, Henrik's training failed him and his face for once registered his shock. The man's eyes shone with the ghostly light of a SOLDIER 1st Class.