"Ashes"
3. Silence
Squall grabbed hold of the edge of the walkway and pulled himself up. His left hand ground into glass and he clenched his teeth as he pulled his knees up. Once he was on the ground, he rose to his feet. His knees buckled and he fell to his side, felt the cold stone smash against his shoulder. He steadied himself and first got onto his knees, and then stood up again. He balanced himself on an opening stance.
Standing brought his body to a halt. He didn't move, had no will to. His mind was a garbled mess of thoughts rapid-firing and tangling up in an incoherent, screaming knot. Everything seemed to be at a distance, at a pace that was quite different than his own. He couldn't comprehend, he couldn't understand.
He couldn't hear anything. There was only the silence.
His eyes were seeing, but the images he caught didn't align, didn't add up to anything. Holes where there should be walls, cracks across once-smooth surfaces. Cracks and blank spots across the rising walls. The wreck left of the directory. Damage across the exterior of the elevator shaft. The walkway to the Training Center, completely destroyed – pieces of it, floating in the shallower ponds broken into the middle.
Rubble covering the area. Broken benches. Shards of glass. Cadets and SeeDs everywhere, in full uniform, mouths moving, shaping words he couldn't hear. Bodies on the ground, sprawled across the broken landscape, with the lucky ones lying on the laps or in the arms of those that loved them. The unlucky ones, alone, either lying dead or unconscious, or holding their wounds in a corner they had crawled to.
Around him, Ocean Garden was broken.
Something warm was running down his face. Squall touched it, and immediately winced at the stabbing pain. Blood on his fingers. A cut on his forehead, deep, but not deep enough that it required immediate attention. He took a moment to dig shards of glass from his palm, and hoped that he could hear something soon.
The brief interlude of pain brought him back. He felt as if a full-body bind had just been released. One thought came through loud and clear: he needed to move. So he did - he took a shaky step forward. Walking seemed too difficult a concept, so instead, he focused on getting one foot in front of the other. Repeat. Repeat.
Squall spotted a SeeD nearby, a girl, hugging her knees and staring off into the distance with dead, unfocused eyes looking through strands of her red hair. He shifted his direction towards her, steadied himself and started to wobble his way along. When he got to her side, he crouched, too afraid to go down on one knee. With gentle fingers, he untied her tie and pulled it off of her neck. She didn't react. He tied it around his hand, secured the knot. He reached and tapped the girl on her shoulder.
The reaction was anything but what he expected. The girl threw a wild punch that connected with his cheek, and continuing to throw kicks and punches, backed away from him. Squall tried to shake the impact off, and that was when the girl snapped to. Her eyes grew wide and she scrambled towards him, mouthing the word, far as he could see, "sorry" constantly. Squall pointed at his ear, and then, knowing that he could still speak, told her that he couldn't hear anything.
He stood once more, this time sturdier, and the girl stood with him. Squall asked her to spell out her name. B-R-E-A. Congratulations, he told her, you are my new aide. Help me. We have to go around the ring, see what happened.
Squall took Brea's arm and dragged her along. Something in him had shut down and all that was left was his training, which told him to do a damage assessment. The damage far as he could see through their walk around the ring, was the same, as if one section had been attacked, and the result had been copied and pasted onto the other sections.
The Infirmary, he saw, was completely blocked off – the entrance had collapsed. The dormitories were fine, and he made note to use it as a makeshift infirmary if they had the means to care for the wounded.
The entrance of the Cafeteria had been replaced with a block of fractured stone.
A thought eroded all others. Selphie.
For a moment, Squall was beset on all sides by the worst of his thoughts. Visions of Selphie, always dead and dead by different means, flashed through his mind, filling him with fear.
Snap out of it.
Squall pushed the thought away, retreated into the SeeD and continued to walk with Brea's help.
When he and Brea returned to their starting position, he outlined a plan of action. It was simple.
The ringing in his ear was starting to lessen. Not enough to hear, but not so oppressive now.
He told Brea to see if she could find two categories of people: unwounded or functional cadets and SeeD, and field medics. Brea nodded and hurried away. Squall didn't have to wait long, she soon returned with a group of cadets and SeeDs in tow. By then, his hearing was still recovering. She saluted him and told him:
"These are the field medics."
He could hear her as if she was very distant, but he could hear. That was good. There were five field medics in total. Not a lot to go on, but leagues above nothing.
"Senior level?"
One of them, a cadet, rose his hand.
"You're the field commander of Squad A. Also, you've just made SeeD. Your job is to take care of the wounded in ground level main." Squall said, "Junior level?"
Two.
"One of you is with him, the other one will be in Squad B. Finally, sophomore?"
Two.
"One of you will go with him, the other will be in Squad B. Now, Brea, the others?"
Squall counted sixteen in total, four SeeDs, twelve cadets.
"Eight of you," Squall said, "Are in Squad C. Your job is to clear a way to the Infirmary, we need the supplies there. The other eight is designated Squad D, who will clear a way into the Cafeteria. Squad B is with Squad D. Does everybody understand their assignments?"
Nods all around.
"Good. Go."
The soldiers scrambled, leaving Brea and Squall.
"And us, sir?" Brea asked.
"You're coming with me. We're going to the communications center."
"Do you think it's still intact, sir?"
"One way to find out. You coming?"
"Yes sir!"
Brea followed Squall into the main elevator shaft. They pried the doors open together, and Squall, upon seeing the elevator was on the ground level, muttered a prayer of gratitude to Hyne. They entered the elevator. Squall pressed the button for the navigation level. Nothing happened. He tapped on the button a few times. Nothing.
"Power loss..." he said, "We'll go through the shaft, then. Come on, Brea, you're up."
Squall lifted Brea up and she opened the hatch. She crawled up. Squall unzipped his jacket for more freedom of movement, and jumped to grab the hatch, and pulled himself up. They both looked up. The shaft, going up to the administrative level, had a detour, about three levels down from that, which led to the communications center. There was a ladder, embedded into the wall and on the side of the elevator doors. Squall started first. He had gotten up a few steps when he noticed that Brea wasn't following.
"Brea?"
"Y-yes, sir?"
"Are you coming?"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"Something the matter?"
"I..."
"Out with it!" Squall snapped.
"I don't like heights, sir."
"You're a SeeD. Get over it."
Brea latched onto the bars and pulled herself up. Squall wiped the blood off of his face. Damn thing was bleeding into his eye.
He could feel a headache starting to claw up to the top of his skull.
They ascended quietly. Brea spent the better portion of the climb reminding herself that she wouldn't think twice if the ladder was ten steps up, so she shouldn't think twice now. There wasn't this invisible variable that got added the higher it got, the mechanics were the same. Of course, the mechanics of falling remained the same also but oh stop it.
She clenched her teeth and followed the General.
The ladder shifted diagonally, with the bars remaining horizontal but moving sideways, when they got to the door. Squall shifted through them with ease. It took his annoyed shouting to get Brea to do the same. She hesitantly moved through the sections, ensuring that she had at least three limbs secured to bars before moving her body at all. Squall took the time to ascend to the doors' level and maneuver himself onto the narrow, but acceptably wide ledge in front of the doors. Brea followed suit.
"Now," Squall said, wiping the blood off of his forehead, there was less of it now, "We need to get these open."
"Sir, you're bleeding..."
"I'll live. What's your specialty?"
"Sir?"
"Your specialty, what are you?"
Squall observed the door. Heavy doors, adamantine-alloy, their mechanical systems tied to circuits on the elevator doors. They couldn't pry the doors open, not really – the ledge wasn't wide enough for them to gain a foothold, and the doors had nothing to grab onto.
Squall knew that the elevator doors actually clicked a circuit complete when they slid into place, which tied into receptor circuits on the sides of level-doors. The door frames held the wiring necessary for two circuits to become one through the act of one becoming active. Squall decided that the only way to do so was to turn the doors' own circuitry against itself. Loop the current. Which would of course only work if they still had power, and Squall didn't want to consider a scenario where they didn't.
"Answer me, Brea. Swordfighter, field mage, what?"
"Sharpshooter, sir."
"Glad to see that a sharpshooter will be guarding my back day in and day out."
"Your back, sir?"
"You're my aide. You're doing a fine job so far. If you keep at it, your position will be permanent... when we see this through."
"Yes, sir."
"So, do me a favor, there's a maintenance hatch surrounding the door frame. Do you see it?"
Brea turned and inched her way to the edge. She reached out and felt her way around. The frame itself was metal, but there was a thin, almost unnoticeable line where metal ended and masonry began.
"I think I found it."
"It opens outward, so find the lock and open it."
Brea felt around and came across a thick knob with an elevated center. Small, but there. She flipped it and heard the lock disengage with a thin clack. She opened the hatch.
"Good," Squall said as he pulled a mess of cables outward. Thank Hyne for every cable having a small tag to say what it does, "Reach in, you'll touch a bunch of cables. Pull them out, all of them."
Blue for positive, red for negative charges. Got it.
Fuck, his head was aching.
"Got them, sir."
"Get the blue and red ones. Strip the plastic covering."
Brea, taking great care to bite as shallowly as possible, bit into the plastic, just enough to make a dent. Then she peeled the covering back and exposed the wires.
Squall did the same. He instructed Brea to hold out red with her left hand, and blue with her right. He brought the cables around, only with hands reversed. They wires touched and electricity crackled. With a heavy hiss, the elevator doors behind them opened and they took a few steps in to be safe. Brea took a deep breath. Squall grinned.
The communications center was just down the hall. They saw that one of the doors was open, and it was slowly moving towards the middle of the threshold to close, stopping, and then opening again. Something on the ground, something round was shifting a bit every time the door hit it and stopped.
When they got close, Squall felt nausea join the headache. He was tired. He hadn't done anything, and he was tired.
Brea, by his side, gasped and Squall could barely catch her before her knees buckled. He steadied her, gave her the usual assurances, it's okay, it's fine, it'll be alright, and didn't believe one word of it – not with a severed head keeping the door open, not with a severed head with a piece of shrapnel where it's right eye should be.
Squall stepped over the head and Brea followed.
The communications center had been destroyed. The monitors lining both walls had been smashed by pieces of sharp metal – the switchboards were a mess of collapsed frames and dangling cables. The records compiler by the smashed window was just a short stack of tapes, paper and wires, and the rest was a pile of corpses, dead where they had been sitting, bodies mangled with the impact, supporting pieces of metal and glass.
Where there once was an endless array of sounds and words was only silence.
"Fuck!" Squall could feel the nausea asserting itself, little by little, "No contact with anyone. Fuck..." he ran a hand through his hair, "Ffuck..." he cracked up. Before the eyes of a very distressed Brea, he started to laugh, until he choked on it. "Hyne... Motherfucker's good."
"G...general..."
Squall wasn't sure if he had imagined it, but then, another sound, accompanied by the distinctive hiss of radio static accompanied it.
"Xu? Is everything alright down there?"
Squall leapt towards the window and found Xu in a corner between the record compiler's remains and one of the consoles. She held a portable transceiver in one hand, and with the other, gently pressed against a piece of jagged metal in between her ribs.
A red line crossed her left eye.
"I... passed out for a minute there... hey there, General..."
"Xu, what the..." Squall got down to one knee, "Can you move?"
"N-no... not in this condition."
"What the hell's going on down there?"
Squall took the transciever's speaking piece.
"Nida? Is that you?"
"General?"
"Yeah... it's me."
"Thank fuck... General, you need to come up here. We have a problem, we have a massive fucking problem."
"What is it?"
"I can't tell you. Have to see for yourself."
"Anybody else up there with you? The co-pilot, what's his name..."
"Jan? He's dead."
"Fuck... okay. I'm coming up. General Leonhart out."
"My regards, sir."
Squall returned the piece to Xu.
"It's gonna be alright." He told her, "We're gonna get help."
"I'm good to... wait."
Squall was sure that he would throw up any second.
"This is Brea. Brea, meet Lieutenant General Xu."
"Pleasure, sir." Brea said.
"New assignment, soldier." Squall said to Brea, "Go down to ground level main, take one of the junior level medics and get him up here. Go. Now."
"Yes, sir!"
Brea saluted them and ran out, only happy to leave the small mass coffin.
"What's... going on... Squall?"
"I don't know." Squall said, rubbing his temples, "But they're good, Xu. They're very fucking good."
"Formidable..."
"That's the word. Formidable."
Silence.
"I need to go." He said.
"Go."
"Will you be alright?"
"I'll... hold out."
Squall left the communications center wondering if he had made the right choice, but his churning stomach and dry mouth put paid to any thought deeper than where he needed to go and that they had a massive fucking problem.
He wondered if they had reached the cafeteria yet.