Title: Genesis Awakening

Author: TheTemplarsWetDream

Chapter: 2, Lap Dog

Summary: Fourteen is having a rather hard time wrapping her head around a few things. The people she once knew were dead, some having gone crazy, others tried to end the world. But most of all, out of every memory she had, she can't place herself in any of them. Promising to go to WRO for some answers, will she become little more than she was before in order to get what she seeks?

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters but Fourteen. All of the others are property of Buena Vista Games and Squeenix.

((A/N: It has been FAR too long since I last wrote on this story! I'm back and ready to wrap up this story! Don't worry, there are still a few more chapters after this one!))

The old saying about the world going to Hell in a hand basket was no longer a figure of speech for Fourteen as she watched the war-beaten terrain pass beneath the helicopter. Still rather weak from her coma-induced muscle atrophy, she mindlessly moved her joints in vain as she continued to survey this "new world."

There were so many things to take in. Sephiroth had gone crazy, Zack was dead, Angeal was dead...heck, most of the people she could remember working with once were dead. Yet, as she could remember their names and faces, she could not bring up any recollection of her own name.

"Rayne?"

The voice from her dream still haunted her, and she wondered to herself if perhaps that was her name. Rayne...Rayne...No. No matter how many time she repeated it into her head, it felt more and more like trying to put on someone else's skin. That identity did not belong to her.

"Are you alright? You've been awfully quiet since we picked you up?"

She glanced up, green eyes glinting to lock on the large impressionable blue ones of the girl...Elena wasn't it?

"You tell me nearly everyone I ever knew is dead, and that the world nearly ended while I slept...it's a bit to take in...Sephiroth really-"

"Yes."

She shook her head. Sephiroth was everyone's idol. There hadn't been a person she'd ever met, herself included, that didn't want to be him in some respect. "Why?"

"Experiment. Madness." Rude answered, vague as ever. Her thin brows knitted together in thought.

"So all this time, ShinRa has been manufacturing its own toy soldiers, yet they've been letting cannon fodder like me in? Could have told me ahead of time that I would be part of operation meat shield." That little fact piqued quite a bit of annoyance within her. "What about Zack? Was he an experiment too?"

"Nope! He was the real deal! Even the S-Cells wouldn't work with him!" Elena informed. Fourteen crossed her arms, taking that bit in.

"You realize how hard all this is to take in right? I've got no name, no family, and a past I can remember save for the parts that actually include me. Here I am, sitting in the back of this helicopter with people who I came to realize were the bad guys, and I'm supposed to relax."

She received no reply, and though she hadn't expected one, she wished there had been something one of them could say to put her fears to rest. The rest of the helicopter ride lacked conversation, the sound of the blades cutting through the air almost deafening to her ears.

World Regenesis was as much of a prison as it was inevitably going to become a new home for Fourteen. It was all too familiar, the structure having borrowed several things from the old ShinRa Headquarters. Even as she walked throughout it, she had the urge to see if the old SOLDIER floor was still there, along with the virtual reality trainer.

But she refrained from it, instead following the others down the halls to the office of Reeve. She remembered him, and by the confused glint in his eye, it seemed that perhaps he remembered her too. Rude and Elena left her alone with him at his order, and she excused herself to sit down, feeling fatigued already.

"I must apologize for retrieving you without much of a reason, Miss. But it was imperative that we found you, and got you here safely before anything could happen to you."

She lofted a brow. "It was just...important that you find me-a girl who's been in a coma for a year-before something decided to get me when I woke up versus all that time I was sleeping." Fourteen narrowed her eyes. "I'm not buying it."

"Oh? So what do you think our reasoning is for bringing you here?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. If I know ShinRa, and I think I do, you don't like your product to go missing for very long. My only question is...how did you know I was going to wake up now?"

Reeve gave a smirk at that, sitting down and leaning back confidently in his seat. "Yes, how did we?"

This song and dance routine was getting old. Painstakingly old. "You can't hold me here."

"You're right, we can't."

Huh, hadn't expected that. "Then I'm leaving."

He didn't budge. "You're free to go."

Something wasn't right. Getting up, she started for the door. One step. Two. "Right. Thanks for the lift."

"Mhmm. If you decide you want to find out who you are, then please, feel free to return."

That stopped her. Turning on her heel, she wheeled around to face him with a frustrated glare. "I thought your people couldn't figure that out. Records being lost, and whatever else your people filled my head full of on the way here."

"That's right. Sephiroth destroyed a great many things here, but that doesn't mean there's not another way of figuring it out." He stood then, strolling leisurely around his desk toward the woman. "Let my people run a few tests, and should we not find anything to help you or you decide you don't like what we're doing, you can leave."

Fourteen knew this little song and dance routine. "Fine. What do you expect me to do for you then?"

That smile of his widened. "Simple. One of our men seems to have defected off to the bar down the street." He turned, finding a piece of scrap paper and scribbled something down. "Just follow those directions, and bring him back here. By force or otherwise."

"I'm not going to play SOLDIER with you guys."

Reeve shook his head. "It's nothing like that. Reno is one of our Turks. He's down on his luck, I just want him back before we have to drag him out at close."

She sighed heavily. "Fine. But if you expect me to walk anywhere, you're going to have to give me something to beat this weakness, or I won't make it far."