Brave New World

Chapter 3

"Are you alive?"

The voice was female, very soft, tinted with layers of exaustion, and Cloud probably would have missed it entirely if it hadn't been accompanied by a hand on his shoulder, trying to shake him awake. It wasn't a very hard shake, but it was insistent enough that it pulled him from unconsciousness, and after a few moments he managed to lift his arm, shaking the hand off his shoulder.

"I'm awake." He mumbled, his arm dropping back down to his shoulders as he did a quick mental inventory, wiggling fingers and toes to make sure they were still there. Okay, so, alive, and in one piece. He hadn't been expecting that, not after the storm had swept him up like so much trash. He remembered twirling into the air, and then…nothing.

"Oh thank god, I thought I was alone here." The voice that had woken him up continued to talk as Cloud checked himself over, and he finally opened his eyes, sitting up with a groan. The room was only fifteen feet or so across, the walls and floor made of a dark colored metal with exposed rivets and gears, the only light source a swinging glowing tube far up in the ceiling.

"Everything still works?" The female voice came from next to him, and Cloud turned to find a young woman seated a foot or so away, her back pressed up against one of the walls. The first thing he noticed was the fact that her shoulder length hair was a light green color, and it half-hid her face as she looked at him. She was dressed in an old fashioned red and white shirt and skirt, and had a slightly curved military sword resting across her lap. She had an amused smile on her face as she watched him.

Cloud nodded, turning away from the woman to search the mostly empty room until he spotted his sword on the floor a few feet away, and reached out to grab the handle and drag it closer.

"It was on your back when I found you, but I moved it so that I could roll you over. I hope that is alright." As she spoke, the green haired woman pushed herself slowly up the wall, standing hesitantly, as though she weren't sure her feet were going to hold her up. "Do you happen to know where we are?"

Cloud shook his head as he stood as well, stretching the soreness from his muscles. "No. I mean, it kind of looks like Midgar, maybe somewhere in the lower levels, but most of those collapsed years ago."

"I am not familiar with that name, but there are many places I have not been since the cataclysm," the woman pushed off the wall and moved slowly towards him, her footsteps steadying as she moved, but her hand was gripping her sword so tightly her knuckles were white. "I think you are right about it being underground, though. I was almost-" Just before she reached him, her legs buckled and she pitched forward.

Cloud barely caught her before she hit the ground, easing her down onto her knees and then crouching next to her. "Are you alright?"

"Mmm, yes," she pressed her hand to her forehead as she knelt there, her other pressed into the ground with her sword to brace herself. "There is something here that does not agree with me, I believe. Something in the air," she looked up and smiled faintly. "It is simply making me tired." She stood again, her eyes closed, and then nodded her head. "I will be alright for now."

Cloud wasn't sure he believed her, but he let the matter drop, instead moving to scoop his sword off the ground and strap it to his back, and then heading towards the metal rooms only feature, a rusty looking door smack in the middle of the north wall. He paused, his hand on the knob, listening for any sounds of movement outside before turning the latch and pushing the door slowly open, peering outside. The room opened up into a long hallway with walls and a floor made of the same metal substance, and a grated ceiling with odd hooks and cranes hanging from it.

"What is your name, by the way?" The woman had stepped up behind Cloud as he peered into the hallway, and she reached out to rest a hand on his arm as she asked. "If we are stuck here together, it could help to know what to call each other, yes?"

"Cloud," he stated as he stepped out into the hallway, one hand reaching up to rest warily on the hilt of his sword, expecting something to jump out of the shadows at them. But the only sound was the woman's surprised laughter as she stepped into the hallway as well, her eyes sparkling. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing. It is just a bit odd. My name is Terra, it is nice to meet you, Cloud." She grinned, leaning her back against the wall as he surveyed the hallway. "An odd pairing of names though, is it not? Terra and Cloud, like Earth and Sky."

Cloud paused, and then he actually laughed softly, just for a moment, as he nodded his head. "It's strange." He agreed, shrugging his shoulders and then turning to move down the metallic hallway, listening to the woman's footsteps behind him to make sure she didn't fall beyond, or collapse again.

They walked on then, the only sound breaking the silence the distant machine noises, but none of the cranes and hooks above them were moving. After a few minutes, Cloud noticed the foot steps behind him had stopped, and turned to find Terra resting one hand against the metal wall, peering up at the ceiling. "Are you alright?" He asked, moving back to her.

"I…yes, I am fine. There is just...there is something familiar about all of this." She shook her head, some of her green hair breaking loose from her pony tail to fall across her face. "I feel as though I have been here before, but I cannot place it." She frowned, leaning her weight more against the wall. "And I do not believe I am as well as I thought." She added with a weak smile.

"Here, lean on me," Cloud hooked an arm around Terra's back and she settled her own over his shoulders, and he half-dragged her down the hallway.

It was another five minutes or so before the hallway began to change. The walls and ceiling started to spread out around them slowly, sloping up and away until the ceiling and all it's hooks and cranes vanished into the darkness above them. Cloud got so wrapped up in trying to figure out why the room was expanding that he almost walked into a large tube in the center of their path.

It was nearly ten feet high, filled with a viscus green substance that bubbled and boiled behind a thick layer of glass. "I wonder what it could be…" Terra asked softly as they went around it. Her eyes were half-open, and her head was leaning on Cloud's shoulder now. "Looking at it gives me a headache." She added.

Cloud nodded and hurried on, but more of the large canisters appeared before them, and he had to go far out of his way to avoid them. "Wait, something is different over there." Terra said suddenly, pointing away from him. There was a blueish glow off to the side. "Should we go and look?"

"Are you up for it?" Cloud asked, shifting her weight against him a little more. He was nearly carrying her at this point.

"No," she said, a little grin on her face. "But we should check it out anyway. It may be why we are here."

He stared at her for a moment, and then smiled ruefully and nodded his head, starting towards the blue glow. As they approached it, the large containers of green fluid became more and more numerous, until Cloud finally had to give up avoiding them, just moving through the rows between them with Terra as best he could.

Finally, the green tubes suddenly ended, and they stepped out into a large open area with a massive blue tube in the center. It was similar to the green tubes, except floating in the center of the liquid was a beautiful woman in a light white dress. The floor around the tube was sunken a bit further into the floor, and rows of computer panels lined the small walls. But the place seemed to be empty.

Cloud gently set Terra down on the short stairs that led to the lowered floor, and then moved further into the room, coming to a stop next to the tube, peering up at the woman. She was very tall, and through the blue liquid he could see bubbles escaping from her skin and hair, as if she was somehow leaking air.

"She's beautiful," he heard Terra say behind her, and he couldn't help but agree. There was an allure about the woman, something hauntingly sad and yet strikingly beautiful. She was asleep, and yet he somehow felt as though she were looking at him.

"I wonder who she is," Cloud asked, mostly to himself, as he turned to look study the computer panels that lined the sunken area. There were any number of panels that seemed dedicated to monitoring the woman, with various screens that he recognized from the hospitals in Midgar and Junon. Every twenty seconds or so all the monitors seemed to jump in readings, and there was a hiss from above them. He looked up to watch green liquid traveling along several clear pipes, to be gathered into one of the nearby green containers. "I think they are collecting something from her. Whatever those bubbles are…"

"Behind you, Cloud!" Terra called out, and he spun, yanking his sword from his back and raising it...only to come face to face with a startled looking young man in a white trench coat. He had short nearly-orange hair capping an exausted looking face, and he was holding a clipboard loosely in his left hand.

"Who are you? How did you get in here?" The young man asked, but before the words had finished clearing his lips he found himself pressed hard into one of the panels, Cloud looming over him, the massive metal sword resting against his neck.

"Who are you? What is this place? What is going here? Who's that woman?" Cloud let loose his own barrage of questions, and the young man held up one hand as if to show he wasn't armed. "Talk, fast."

"My name is Seifer. I…I don't know where we are, they don't let me outside. But this is all a, a collection machine. It gathers her up and puts it in those tubes for when they need it." The young man talked as fast as he could, smiling weakly. "They make me watch it, because the technology is similar to my world."

Cloud frowned, as if considering what he would do next, and then with a grunt he backed off, holding his massive sword loosely in one hand, his gaze turning back to the woman. And then something the young man said clicked, and he turned back. "What do you mean, your world?"

Seifer gathered himself up again, brushing off his coat and picking up the clipboard he had dropped when Cloud tackled him. "My world, before all of this. Before they created this place." He explained, as if it made perfect sense. "They use her to gather us up and bring things here, people, and buildings and…whatever they want, or whatever they have to bring, and they are sticking it all together, making…something." He shook his head. "I don't know what, they won't give me any details. I just watch the machines and make adjustments." He moved over to one of the computers as he talked, staring at it. "They're from Esther, a city on my world, and they use the magic of this tower to somehow…" He shook his head. "Harness her."

"Harness her what? Who is she?" This question came from Terra, who had hauled herself to her feet and was walking slowly towards them, leaning against the computer panels for support.

Seifer seemed unsure about whether or not he should answer, but a cough from Cloud got him talking again. "She's called the Cloud of Darkness. She has…a connection to the void, the space between worlds or dimensions, something like that. They have been sucking that connection out of her, capturing it with these machines and then focusing it out, sending it through the heavens to grab whatever they want." He shrugged. "I don't know why."

"You mean that…storm thing, it comes from her?" Cloud asked as he turned back to them. "My home was swept away by a massive black storm. She created it?"

"As far as I know, yes. She creates the essence of it, and then they use the machines to channel it where they want it." Seifer nodded. "It brings things here. Or it destroys them, I guess. I honestly don't know."

"What if we let her free? Would it stop?" Terra came to rest on a monitor a few feet from both of them, sitting on the edge of it.

"Free?" Seifer laughed. "She's not a prisoner. She wants to be in that tube, she helped create all of this. She's just sleeping until the first phase is finished."

"Well, what if we kill you then, will that stop it?" Cloud hissed, anger obvious in his voice as he stalked back towards Seifer. "Without you monitoring her, will she die?"

"I don't think she'd die, she'd just…wake up," Seifer stood his ground as Cloud approached, although he obviously didn't like being unarmed in the face of such an angry person. "And if you kill me, they'll just make one of my friends come do the monitoring. They're holding them hostage to keep me working."

"So you aren't-" Cloud was cut off as a siren sounded in the ceiling, and the far bank of monitors he hadn't been able to identify suddenly sprang to life. "What's happening?"

"They're using the void energy to move something," Seifer hurried to the other side of the room, Cloud following along, Terra leaning on him again. The monitors that had shown many different images were now all set to a single screen, where a massive castle city could be seen. There was a gleaming crystal spire standing in the center of it, but the streets were deserted. "They have been rearranging things for days now, moving the bits and pieces of what they brought here around the planet, sometimes buildings or landscapes, sometimes people." Seifer shook his head. "I've been trying to find some pattern in it, but there's nothing."

As they watched on the monitor, a storm suddenly developed above the castle city, the black clouds roiling and crackling with silent thunder and lightning. It swirled into a massive tornado that decended, enveloping the city. And then, it dissipated, and where the buildings and castles had stood, there was only flat grasslands.

"In an hour or so, the storm will place it somewhere else," Seifer said as he turned back to them. "There is a recharge period, I think. It's kind of like…using up a car battery? It has to sit idle before you can use it again."

"What's a car?" Terra asked, but Seifer just shook her question away.

"It doesn't matter, you need to get out of here. The storm makes mistakes, it's been placing people randomly all over this new world. Some were fighting it, I think, but others just..." He laughed. "It's kind of reassuring, really. They haven't quite worked all the kinks out of their machines yet. It must have dumped the two of you here. You need to get away before they find you."

"What about you?" Terra frowned. "You're a slave here, right? You should come with us."

"I can't. They have my friends, I won't leave them behind." Seifer sighed. "It's why I'm allowed to move around freely, they know I won't leave."

"Well, where are they being kept?" Cloud asked, his eyes narrowed, an unnerving smile on his face. "If we break them out, do you know a quick way to escape?"

Seifer seemed stunned at this unexpected offer, and he didn't answer for several moments, his gaze on the floating woman in the tank nearby. And then he nodded. "Yes, there's an airship dock on the same level as the prison cells, we could escape that way. There was a ship there earlier. But they took my gunblade and she hardly looks like she's in any condition to fight." He smiled apologetically to Terra. "There are several guards on that level."

Cloud's smile just got wider. "Trust me."

~*~

Seifer led the two of them to a small elevator hidden between several of the green tubes. It was a service elevator, a platform with no walls or doors, just a small control panel sticking on a spike out of the ground. "It's not really a prison, just several small cells with a guard at the end of the hallway," Seifer explained as they descended.

"Alright, when we get down there, take Terra and go get us an airship," Cloud was looking up as he spoke, his mind lost to his planning. "I'll go get your friends and meet you there."

Seifer seemed as though he wanted to object, but finally he just nodded. "Once you have them, the airship is at the far end of the floor. It's…two rights and a left from the prison, but you'll have to run. Once they realize something is going on, this place will be swarming with guards."

"If there are so many guards, why have we not seen any?" Terra asked. She was seated on the floor of the elevator, trying to catch her breath. As they moved farther away from the strange green tubes and the Cloud of Darkness, she was beginning to feel better. But the odd sense of the place was still weakening her.

"They don't patrol the collection floor," Seifer shook his head. "It was one of her rules. She doesn't like people seeing her like that. I suspect having me there was just an unavoidable effect of using the Esther machines."

The elevator came to a stop, and they stood in silence, listening for the sounds of footsteps or guards. "They must be at their posts. No one guards this elevator." Seifer reached down to help Terra up, and she smiled greatfully, standing shakily on her feet. But more of her strength was returning. "It's that way to the prison, and this way to the airship. I won't leave unless you bring my friends. Their names of Fujin and Raijin."

Cloud just nodded. "Give me ten minutes." And then he disappeared down the hallway.

After the sound of his footsteps faded away, Seifer turned to Terra and grinned a boyish, almost excited grin. "I've been stuck here for what feels like months. I can't believe…you think this will work?"

Terra just shrugged at him. "I have been in situations just as dire and escaped," she moved off the elevator, waiting for him to lead the way before she followed. "Although admittedly none of them were nearly as…strange, as all this," she frowned. "I do not remember the storm we saw on the monitors. Perhaps I was asleep when it came?"

"Maybe. On some worlds, the technology is advanced enough that they can detect it. My world was like that. On others…" There was a frown on the young man's face. "I'll admit, I've done some unpleasant things in my life, but nothing so…so…"

"Villainous?" Terra offered the word, smiling faintly. "It reminds me of someone I once fought. Insanity for the sake of insanity, with no real reason or backing." She paused then, and suddenly she held the red-sheathed sword she had been carrying out to him. "Here, you better use this. I am not strong enough to swing it yet, and I do not trust my magic in this…odd atmosphere."

Seifer seemed surprised, but he nodded and reached out to take the blade. "Thank you. There will be two guards at the door to the airship hanger, but I can handle them with this." He grinned, and Terra couldn't help but smile back. There was something infectious about the young man.

Indeed, there were two guards at the door into the hanger, and they barely even registered Seifer as he approached. Terra was back at the last corner, just the tip of her head poking around the side so she could see what happened. The guards were dressed in armor she didn't recognize, a mix of brown and red chain mail that reminded her of the garb the Imperial Forces had worn, but with less protection and more…show. It was less a piece of fighting equipment and more a uniform.

"You know you aren't allowed in the hanger, Seifer," one of the guards said, his voice tired. "That hasn't changed since you asked to be let in yesterday, or last week."

"I just want to see the sky, is all. I won't leave without my friends," Seifer spoke calmly, almost boredly, as though this were a conversation he'd had before. "I've got no where to run, remember?"

"That doesn't matter, the rules are the…" The guard cut off mid sentence as Seifer swung Terra's sword out from under his white coat and swung it in a single smooth motion that cleaved the man from hip to shoulder, his armor and chest bursting open with a sudden rush of blood and fabric, and he collapsed silently backwards, mouth opened in shock.

The other guard had just enough time to draw his own sword halfway from his scabbard before Seifer continued his swing, his weight carrying the blade in a downward arc that caught the man just under the chin, clipping his head clean off.

The orange haired young man took a step backwards as the two bodies slumped to the floor, and he crouched down to wipe his blade clean on a spot of unsoiled armor. "You can come out now." He called back to Terra.

She came carefully down the hallway, pausing a few feet away to study his handiwork. "You are rather good, but was it necessary to kill them?"

Seifer sighed and shrugged as he stood, offering the sword back to her. "Maybe, maybe not. It was the easiest way through the door." There was a casualness to his brutality that unnerved Terra, but she let it pass, taking the sword back from him and sliding it into the sheath she had been holding for him.

"Shall we see what model airships are on sale today?" Seifer asked, a grin on his face, as if he hadn't just killed two men moments before.

~*~

The entrance to the small prison section had also been guarded by two men, but Cloud hadn't even needed to unsheathe his own sword to get by them, smacking one with the side of the heavy blade and slamming the hilt into the face of the other before they even realized he was there.

Inside, there were six small cells lined up along each wall, lined with thick metal bars the same harsh metal color as the walls and floor.

"WHO?" A voice, female, harsh, called out before he had taken two steps into the cells, and Cloud searched until he found the source, a silver-haired young woman about seifer's age, dressed in blue and black, her small body leaning against the metal bars.

"Are you Seifer's friend? The name's Cloud. Where's the other one?"

"HERE." The silver haired woman pointed to a sleeping form behind her. ESCAPE?" She asked, her eyes wide. "HOW?"

Her odd way to talking threw Cloud off his beat, but he worked through it, turning to hunt for a way to unlock the cells. They didn't have keys on the doors, which meant there was a switch or control nearby, hopefully in the room. "By airship, they're getting it ready now."

The woman nodded, and then stuck her hand through the bars, pointing down towards the far wall of the room. "THERE."

He nodded and moved on, the sounds of the woman waking her companion accompanying him as he reached the wall and hunted around until he found a panel of switches. A flick of his hand threw them all up, and with the screeching of metal on metal, all the barred doors in the room began to open.

He hurried back to the cell to find the silver-haired woman helping a large dark-skinned man out of the cell. He was limping badly, and there were bruises all over his face and chest. "He alright to travel?" Cloud asked, eyeing the man. Why was everyone here injured in some way?

"YES." The silver haired woman just nodded her head, then looked past him towards one of the other cells. "RELM?" She asked, her eyes turning to Cloud.

"Realm? Realm what?"

"Relm, man. They've got her in a cell over there. We can't leave her here. She's just a little kid." This was from the injured man, who looked up gratefully from where he was slumped against his smaller friend.

"PLEASE." The silver haired woman nodded her agreement, and Cloud turned to the cell she had been looking at, frowning into the darkness. As he approached it though, he could see the form of a young girl curled up on a small metal bench inside. She was sleeping, or unconscious, but either way she made no response as he swung his sword onto his back and scooped her up.

"Any others?" He asked as he returned to his other two rescuees.

"NEGATIVE." The woman said. She was already moving towards the door, pulling her friend along with her, but not making the bets time.

"That's not going to work. Here, take her." He offered the sleeping child out to the woman, and she took her, letting Cloud catch the man's weight. "Are you Fujin or Raijin, anyway?" He asked the man as he started out the door, dragging the beaten one along with him.

"Raijin, man. She's Fujin. Don't mind how she talks, she's glad you're here. Seifer alright?" His voice was weak, but there was somehow still amusement in it, as if he were enjoying the situation despite how awful it was.

"He was fine when I saw him. Hopefully he's still fine because otherwise we're in trouble." Cloud hurried down the hall, pausing long enough to make sure Fujin was keeping up.

"Nah, it's cool. Seifer always manages to get us out of this sort of thing," there was a confidence in Raijin's voice that startled Cloud, as he thought back towards the orange haired boy he'd met earlier. Seifer had seemed nervous, uncertain, but perhaps that was just a side effect of his being trapped here.

The trip to the airship hanger was surprisingly uneventful, though Cloud had to admit he was surprised at the two dead guards in front of the door. "Hurry, inside."

The hanger was huge, a half a dozen airships of different shapes and sizes scattered about the floor, but one of them was covered in glowing and flashing lights. It was like an old fashioned ship Cloud had seen in movies, but with propellers instead of sails. Terra was standing on the gangway, waving her hands to get their attention as they approached.

"Hurry! Seifer believes we may have set off an alarm." She called out as they moved along the floor towards the ship. And as if heralded by her words, there was suddenly the sound of shouting from the hallway behind them.

"HURRY." Fujin said in her commanding voice, darting ahead of Cloud and Raijin and climbing the gangplank at a near-run. She moved past Terra, nearly knocking her off the platform in her hurry to reach the ship.

"Was that Relm?" Terra sounded stunned as she asked, but she remained on the gangplank until Cloud and Raijin had caught up to her, then helped Cloud with the injured man onto the ship.

"You're feeling better?" Cloud asked the green haired woman as they dragged the gangplank itself onto the ship a moment later.

"The further we get from that odd room, the better I feel. But there is still something…unpleasant here. Let's go, Seifer!" This last was shouted over towards the back of the ship, and there was a shout of acknowledgement in return.

Just as the ship was lifting off the deck, a group of guards suddenly spilled into the room, but there was nothing they could do as the airship cruised slowly out into the fresh air. The sun hung low in the distant sky, though whether it was morning or evening was anyone's guess. They stood waiting patiently, nervously, for the sounds of persuit ships or gunfire, but there was nothing.

Cloud stood at the side railing, catching his breath, and then realized Terra was no longer with him. A quick search found her standing at the rear of the ship, behind where Seifer was piloting.

"Thank you," was all Seifer said as Cloud passed him, and Cloud just nodded as he moved on towards Terra. She was leaning against the railing, peering back at where they had come from, the young girl Relm held gently against her, still asleep. Behind them, looming up from ground to sky like a monstrous finger, was a massively deformed tower, with spikes and spires of metal and stone jutting out in every direction.

"We were in Kefka's Tower," Terra said softly as Cloud joined him. "It is a place of madness and rogue magic." She smiled faintly. "Where did you find Relm?"

"She was in the prison cells with Seifer's friends. Who is Kefka?" Cloud leaned his hip against the railing, watching the tower fade behind them.

"A madman. He destroyed my world, tore it apart from end to end. I would be sure he's behind this somehow, but…he's dead." Terra shook her head. "I watched him die." There was a sadness in her voice as she said it, as if even the death of her worst enemy somehow brought her sorrow.

"I wouldn't count on death being a certainty here," Seifer called back to the two of them. "There's a sorceress running around, Ultimicia, working with the Cloud of Darkness, and I know for a fact she's dead too." Seifer shrugged. "The rules don't apply here all the time. So where are we going?"

Cloud just shrugged. "Away, for now. But we'll be back."

(( Well, there you go. Another chapter. I write these as they come to me, so I can't promise updates on any sort of schedule, obviously. Of course, reviews are motivating, so…if you review, perhaps I'll write faster!))