Chapter 6
Vincent spent the whole night wondering what the hell was going on. He tried to sleep a few times, but he simply couldn't, his mind wouldn't let him. He trusted Reeve's sense of reality completely, so if the WRO president was so worried there was surely a good reason. But which one?
As the hours passed he felt more and more tired, but sleep never came. When finally sunshine hit the window, Vincent felt a thousand years older than the day before. And the worst was yet to come.
Reeve arrived soon after breakfast. As expected, the others were gladly surprised to see him and he was welcomed in a very friendly and noisy way. Since he was always so busy with WRO activities, they didn't get a chance to see him often, so everyone was eager to exchange a few words with him. But he looked unusually tense.
Vincent waited for his moment and Reeve made it very clear that they needed a quiet room for themselves. Tifa kindly suggested they used Cloud's office, since he was away on his deliveries.
When they entered the room, Vincent felt that the atmosphere of the place matched quite well with Reeve's tense expressione. Cloud's office was quite a simple room, mainly occupied by a wooden desk and a chair. On the desk there were few sheets of paper and a phone that the blond hero was well known to hate. Behind the desk there was a window with grey curtains and there were no other chairs beside the one Cloud was supposed to use, since his business never required customers to come see him in his "office". Vincent stood in front of the desk, while while Reeve took place in Cloud's chair, that made a chirping sound as he laid on it.
-Did she tell you anything?- Reeve asked. There was no need to be more specific about who their were talking about.
Vincent shook his head lightly.
-Only that she has been down there for quite a long time, but she doesn't know exactly how long.-
Reeve took a deep breath. He looked like he was trying to figure out the right words to say something really unpleasant. He was wearing a dark suit, which was pretty much what he wore every day, but Vincent noticed that the man continued to touch the jacket, as if he was suddenly very uncomfortable in his own clothes.
-I want to know- Vincent said.
What he actually meant was that he needed to know, because of the thrill he felt touching her. Who was she? Who was the one his body seemed so reactive to?
Reeve searched for something inside his jacket and slowly pulled out a little black notebook. It looked very common and old but, at the same time, quite dangerous. Words can hurt more than gunshots and kill you in a more painful way. Vincent knew that. Reeve carefully put the notebook on Cloud's desk. His hand rested on the little black item.
-This notebook has been found in a room near the laboratory, some kind of store room full of old documents and books. There were a lot of spider webs, I don't think that room is used on a daily basis. It was not in the library, so I guess Professor Hojo didn't consider this as something important. But it could also have been misplaced.- he said.
Vincent looked at the notebook and stood still in the silence that followed those words. Reeve was clearly thinking about what to say next.
-I guess some of the information contained in these pages are about the person you rescued in the laboratory a few days ago. To be honest, I hope so, because if that's not the case, the situation in which we find ourselves is even worse.-
Silence fell again. Vincent noticed that the man in front of him was slowly moving his fingers on the notebook's cover.
-I think you should read it first, and then we can talk. If you want to.- Reeve said, eventually.
He withdrew his hand from the notebook and looked at Vincent with a very tense expression. The ex-Turk leaned forward and picked up the looked quite older now that he had it in his hands. The cover was a bit ruined in a few spots and the pages were yellowing. He opened it up and the first page had the appearance of some kind of diary. The date set the record to almost twenty years before. It was handwritten with a black pen and a chaotic calligraphy, mostly composed by long and thin letters.
Today's training was very promising. S. is improving faster and faster. He took down a trained soldier in 5.7 minutes. His agility is increasing.
The next page had a similar look. The date said to Vincent that this one was recorded a few days later.
S. got a new enhancing treatment.
Side effects: vomit and dizziness.
Training results: killed a level 4 beast in 6.1 minutes.
Next time I aim for a 5.0 minutes time.
Vincent rapidly read a few more pages. The contents were similar.
The subject called "S." trained with different timing results and received various doses of treatment experiencing all sorts of side effects. The person who wrote the diary looked captivated by his study and quite content with the long term results. Sometimes he added a personal statement suggesting satisfaction or surprise, but mostly it was just data. It all sounded very impersonal and boring, like most laboratory records do. Just the notes of a scientist with the sole purpose of keeping track of the experimental process.
Vincent looked at Reeve with a question in his eyes. The other one sighed.
-I think that what you are reading is a dairy that Professor Hojo held about Sephiroth's training when he was a teenage boy. If you consider the dates on that notebook, he was no more than fourteen years old when the first page was written.-
Vincent hardly resisted the urge to drop the item on the floor.
He had never spoken directly to Sephiroth and had no desire to share anything with the mad Soldier General, but reading those pages made him feel very uncomfortable. Sephiroth was the man that had almost destroyed the planet with Meteor, and he was also the man who had killed Aerith. The Avalanche's members all wore a pink ribbon somewhere on their body to remember her and her sacrifice. Vincent wore his ribbon on his right arm, the one he used to shoot, as a reminder that his guns fired only to protect the planet and its people, not to serve someone's interest like it had been when he was a Turk. But Sephiroth had also been Lucrecia's son and that diary was a proof that he had once been just a young boy whose own father had experienced on mercilessly. There were no kind words and no love for him in those pages,only the records of a scientist fascinated by his own glory. He wondered if there was a diary like that one about himself somewhere in the Mansion. He hoped not.
-What about the girl?- he asked.
He didn't know who she was, but she surely wasn't Sephiroth.
Reeve sighed.
-Please, go to the last pages and read some more.- he suggested.
Vincent did as he was told and opened the notebook to the fourth page from the end. It looked very similar to the ones he had already read, but the writing was now unusually long.
An adult human body cannot endure Jenova's cells. All the test subjects have died, even the one treated with MAKO. My conclusion is that the only way to achieve a successful union between a human body and Jenova's cells is to expose the body to the treatment before his birth, with the shelter of the mother's body. If I could recreate the circumstances of the only successful attempt ever made, S.'s birth, I am confident I could obtain other living hybrids who are capable of things a human, even a MAKO treated Soldier, can only imagine.
Vincent unvoluntarily bit his lower lip. The circumstances of Sephiroth's birth were awfully familiar to him. He had not witnessed the actual moment, of course, but he remember so well Lucrecia's round belly when she was pregnant and the dark circles under her beautiful eyes, as the pregnancy became more and more dangerous for her. He felt that Sephiroth had almost made his first victim even before being born.
Shaking the memories away, Vincent forced himself to continue reading.
I wonder what could be achieved by creating a generation of mothers with Jenova's cells inside their DNA. S. is the demonstration of the possibilities that lies in giving the treatment directly to the fetus, but both his biological parents were human. What if a mother had Jenova's cells inside her body from her own birth? How could that affect her future offspring?
Humans are a vulnerable race. They suffer all kinds of illness and they are not fit to live on this planet for much longer. S. has given proof of a strength unknown to a human. He has never been ill since his birth, he's even more resistant to wounds and recovers faster after being damaged. If humans could evolve using Jenova's cell, they could survive longer and better. A new and far better race would inherit the Earth. This is the future we must work for.
-This is madness- Vincent muttered. It was too much, even for a sick man like Hojo. To merge human's DNA with an alien one and to create a new race to inherit the Earth.
-That diary has been written almost twenty years ago. Now, should we guess what Professor Hojo has been doing all this time?- asked Reeve with a very tired expression on his face.
-Do you really think he did it?- the other replied. How could something like that be done in complete silence, without anyone knowing?
-Think about it: if this experiments were to happen and to be successful, Shinra would have had the control over the future of humanity. Not only energy, but also the very lives of super-humans created by Shinra and probably controlled by Shinra. If we consider only the military aspect of this, they would have obtained an army of Sephiroths. Not just one invincible general, but hundreds of soldiers like him.- Reeve argued.
Sometimes the mind works in funny ways. Vincent's mind didn't provide him with visions of the destruction hundreds of soldiers like Sephiroth could bring to the world. Instead, he thought about the expression Cloud would make if someone said "an army of Sephiroths" in his presence. His light blue eyes would become darker with anxiety. His hand would automatically reach over his shoulder in search for his big sword. The muscle would tighten, ready to face a battle.
Vincent didn't like to admit it, but that plan was very consistent with Shinra's way of thinking. Rufus and his father before him were like that, they would never stop. At the beginning they wanted to be a big energy company but they grew tired of that very quickly and decided to be the only energy company in the planet. They wanted soldiers to protect their way of life, but then they started to use the army to attack. They used MAKO energy to produce stronger soldiers and Sephiroth, the strongest of them all, to fight the impossible battles no one else could win. They were not afraid to create monsters in their labs or to change human nature to meet their purposes. Shinra had fallen, but of course Rufus and the Turks were not all dead. And as long as the old Shinra people were alive, the Shinra would survive in their minds, in their way to see the world.
They would never give up the opportunity to be the source of a new life itself, to built and control a stronger generation of humans. A generation of Sephiroths.
-So, that girl...- Reeve said, and Vincent felt like he had almost forgotten her -I think she could be one of this "mothers" Professor Hojo mentions in this book.-
Vincent felt that was very likely to be true. Or, at least, it was an explanation of what Hojo was doing with here down in the laboratory. But what about her? Was she aware of her role in that experiment? Was she even willing to participate? Was it possible for someone to willingly let a man liko Hojo experiment with one's own body? Vincent felt painfully stupid. Yes, it was, he had witnessed that before.
-And why do you feel you needed to talk to me before giving this information to the others? What has this to do with me anyway?- he asked Reeve.
He had been the object of Hojo's experiments himself, but that did not make him responsible for all the other victims.
Reeve took a deep breath. His fingers were moving nervously on Cloud's desk.
-If I understand how science works, when you want to copy a successful experiment, you need to recreate the conditions in which the original experiment took place.-
Vincent nodded. That was surely the way.
Reeve looked at his friend very carefully while he connected the remaining dots in his own mind.
In this case, the successful experiment was Sephiroth's existence. And the conditions in which he had been created were...
This time, Vincent did drop the book on the floor. His hands were shaking. His mouth felt very dry and his heart was beating in a messy way. Standing on his own feet suddenly looked like a very challenging thing to do.
Reeve nodded slowly with a concerned look in his eyes. He knew from the beginning that this was a thing that could turn Vincent's equilibrium apart.
-This is why I wanted to talk to you before facing this subject with any other person.- he said -Maybe we can investigate some more, even. But in the laboratory there's nothing more to find, we only have that girl and…-
-She can't know anything about it.- Vincent replied very harshly.
-Well, she's been here only for a week and has not said anything yet, so...-
-I don't mean her.- he said, interrupting the WRO founder.
What Vincent meant was tha Lucrecia couldn't be aware of what Hojo was doing with her DNA.
-Oh- said Reeve, looking guilty -I didn't mean to…-
Silence fell. Apparently, Reeve failed to find the right words to explain what he hadn't meant to do. But Vincent didn't care. He was no more paying attention to the conversation. His mind was was remembering the cave. The humid sensation when he walked inside it, the chill of the hair despite outside the sun shone at his highest in the sky. The strange, trembling light produced by the MAKO crystal. The silence. The feeling of humbleness, the same people usually experience in the presence of something divine, like a relic or a shrine.
And her. The dress, as white and pure as if she was a bride on her wedding day. Her skin, forever as young as he remembered her to be the first time they had met. Her hair. Those beautiful eyes who were once so warm and kind, and now stood closed. Her lips, which he had never had the boldness to look at for more than an instant. That impossible existence where she had locked herself. The tears she had cried in front of him while asking about her child. And the gentle lie he had told her, just to keep her calm and save her from more sorrow and pain.
She couldn't know what Hojo was doing with pieces of her DNA. Vincent couldn't suspect her of being somehow partner of those experiments. She had to be unaware of everything. She had made a mistake in the bast, but she was not at all like her husband. She would have never agreed to that madness in the first place.
-Vincent?- Reeve asked.
He had a concerned look on his face. Vincent shook himself from those thoughts and regained the necessary control over his body. His heartbeat slowly returned to his normal pace.
-What do we do now?- he asked.
-I think we should run a DNA check on the girl you saved. If my suspects are wrong, we have to go back from the start. If I'm correct, then we can explain what we think is going on to the other members of Avalanche and discuss together what to do next.-
Vincent was grateful to Reeve for his rationality, especially because he felt he had lost his own. He was tormented by the memories of a young and happy Lucrecia. She had once looked like nothing in the world could go wrong. He remembered very well how that aura of optimism had cast a spell on his heart. She believed in that bright future with such strength that he had desired to share her belief and be part of that future. To be part of her life.
Vincent took a deep breath. There was no use to dwell in the past. That dream could not come back. Now he had a very specific and unpleasant task to perform: make the girl drink something and steal the glass. Reeve would then take her DNA from it and check it.
As always, she was in their bedroom. It was late afternoon on the solstice of Autumn but Vincent hadn't been aware of which time was until he entered the room to find it flooded with the golden light of September. After his encounter with Reeve in Cloud's office, he had spent the day avoiding any contact with his friends. He just wanted to be alone and to avoid talking with anyone. But Reeve needed to go back to WRO headquarters before nightfall, and so he had to eventually put their plan in action. He found the girl leaning on the windowsill as she had taken the habit to do. This time, because of the sunlight coming in, Vincent thought that the skin on her arms looked like it was made of warm gold. He felt blinded by that view and shielded his eyes with a hand.
Nothing Vincent had seen or heard that day had made him think of something else but Lucrecia and how Hojo was once again exploiting her for his mad experiments. But now he was so surprised by what he saw that he completely forgot about her for a few moments. The girl had a completely different aura than any other time he had seen her before. Her body that day seemed stronger. He knew it was impossible for her to have changed much since the day before, but something in her was not the same. The casual way one of her bare feet was caressing the floor, her elbows solidly laid on the sill, her head lazily supported by her left hand, even the way she turned her back on the door. Nothing about her made her look like a scared puppy anymore. She now seemed to him similar to a woman in a painting: solid in her pose and fixed forever, with no past and no future, just the golden light raining on her through the glass.
Vincent suddenly remembered his task and cleared his throat politely to let her know he was there. She turned to him slowly, as someone who is waking up from a languid dream. When she smiled, her eyes smiled too.
-I brought you some water- he said, feeling like she could read right through his plan.
-Thank you- she replied, walking towards him with a solid pace.
When she took the glass from his hand, she caressed his fingers for an instant. Then, she drank all the content of the glass and gave it back to him.
-Thank you- she said again -I really needed that.-
Vincent had wanted to complete his mission and run away as soon as possible but suddenly his feet seemed to be not very fond of moving. He stood there while she sat on the bed. His bed, he noticed.
-What have you been doing today?- she asked, swinging her feet a few centimeters above the ground.
-Nothing in particular- he answered, thinking about his very particular meeting with Reeve.
-Has your friend from the phone come to see you?-
Vincent wondered if that question was innocent or if she had noticed how upsetting that phone call had been for him. He decided to follow her line of inquiry and see where she would lead him.
-Yes, he's still here actually.- he carefully answered.
The girl's smile turned off and she looked him very straight in his eyes. She didn't look kind or lovely anymore, he found out.
-Would you tell me what he has discovered about me?- she asked with a very serious and unusually fierce tone.
Vincent felt thrown off balance. For a moment, he had thought to see a glimpse of green in her deeply brown eyes. That may have been his imagination being very creative after a night with no sleep and a day of distress, but he was now facing a very real dilemma: he didn't want to discuss those things with her, but how could he refuse to give her information about herself? He felt that, if he were her, he would want to know everything. He was still trying to figure out how to answer the question she had asked when the girl's expression changed completely. She smiled and took her eyes away from him, going back to her usual vulnerable and kind self.
-I'm sorry- she said with a sweet voice -I was a bit blunt.-
He relaxed a bit, but now he couldn't helpt to be unsure about her. In the past days, she had always been silent and kind. Even when she had expressed a need or a desire, like the night before, she had done it in a very delicate and understanding way. Who was that person he had seen for a moment? Was that her true character?
At this point he had forgotten completely about the DNA test. He was compelled to discover who she really was, not only regarding Hojo's plan, but in a more immediate way. Who was she to him? What was her true self? Vincent put the empty glass on the nearest piece of furniture he found, then he sat on her bed, right in front of the girl, and wondered what he could reveal without shocking her and which information could produce that strange behaviour again.
-I didn't mean to sound so demanding- she explained -I'm very sorry.-
-Don't be- he replied instinctivly -I understand that you want to know.-
But now things were getting more and more complicated. In fact, either she genuinely didn't have a clue about Hojo's experiments, in which case she obviously wanted to discover what he had done to her; or she knew about the experiments, and she wanted to know what they had discovered about it. Vincent realized for the first time that she was indeed a stranger and that he didn't know if she was on their side or Hojo's. He felt suddenly very vulnerable for having shared his skin with her so many times without even knowing her name or her purpose. He had assumed she was a victim, just like him, but what if she was willingly participating in Hojo's plan to give birth to super humans like Sephiroth?
He was considering this possibility when he remembered the way she had desperately grabbed the cloth of his cloak when he was still sitting in his coffin. And when Hojo had found them, she had looked at Vincent in the same way people gaze at images of the gods while praying. He felt very stupid. Those were not the eyes of someone who was willingly to be experimented on and certainly not the eyes of someone who was now taking somehow advantage of him and his sympathy. Those were the eyes of a tortured soul, who would trust even a scary and unknown man in a coffin for the sake of getting away from the monster who had been holding her captive for so long.
He felt ashamed for doubting her. She was just a victim and victims should never be blamed or suspected. She was also still recovering from the trauma: sudden changes of mood were more than understandable.
-They have not discovered much- he eventually said. Of course, that was a lie, and Vincent, who was not used to lie, was quite impressed by how it had been surprisingly easy to not tell the truth.
And suddenly he remembered a huge piece of information which he had almost forgotten and that she surely deserved to know: Hojo was not dead.
He took a deep breath.
-I'm sorry to say that his body has not been found.-
The girl's eyes opened widely at that words and her skin went paler and paler until he became worried she would faint. But she didn't. Instead, she gripped the covers of his bed and shut her eyes very hardly to endure the pain and the shock that information brought by. She swallowed a couple of times. Her feet were now motionless, hanging just a fraction of space above the wooden floor.
They had already talked about the possibility of Hojo being alive, but only now Vincent understood how strongly she must have hoped for his death. Knowing that there was no body was a huge strike for her. Her wounds were fresh on her skin and in her mind and knowing for sure that the monster responsible for it was still walking the earth must have been like a new torture for her.
Vincent stood up and looked her in the eyes. He felt he needed to do something.
-You won't be in his power again.- he said.
She opened her eyes, which were now made shiny by tears, and looked at him. She was on the edge of crying. Vincent thought that he was towering over her and perhaps that didn't communicate a sense of safety. So, he knelt in front of the seating girl, finding himself with one knee on the floor and the other bent in front of himself.
He had meant to be less menacing, but she must have interpreted that gesture in a different way because she stood up from the bed and threw herself into his arms. Vincent had to quickly balance the backlash of her body thrown at him putting the other knee on the floor too, but he somehow managed to avoid falling. However, the girl burst into tears and her legs lost the ability to make her stand. She fell towards the floor and he found himself keeping her in an almost standing position with his own arms.
-I'm… I'm sorry… - he tried to say, hoping that she would regain enough control over her body to stand on her own feet, but she did quite the opposite. Her body became suddenly heavier and it felt like she was melting in his arms. He focused on keeping her off the floor but she slipped away from his grasp and she ended up seated on the ground with her back against his bed.
She was violently sobbing and she hugged herself as if she wanted to protect her body from him, which made Vincent feel like she was afraid of him. It was the first time ever that she appeared to be refusing his touch, and the sensation he felt was one of rejection and inadequacy. He had failed her. She needed his understanding and his sympathy and he had offered her suspects and lies, trying to trick her to give her DNA unwillingly to him. He felt a manipulative piece of shit.
And all that had happened only because of Hojo. Vincent felt anger rising inside him as she kept crying and shaking in front of him. How many lives could have been spared if only Hojo had never existed? All those tears that had been poured because of him and his doings, all those sorrow and pain caused only by his existence. Oh, if only that bullet had killed him. Instead of crying, the girl would have been smiling at the news that the scientist's body had indeed been found in the Mansion and he would not need to worry about that man's plan anymore. Vincent imagined to exist in a world without Hojo, to not have to spend nights awake worrying about him anymore. That was surely a world worth living in.
Leaving his thoughts aside, he eventually looked at her. She starting to cry in a calmer and quieter way. He felt sympathy for her once again. Her tears were his own. He hadn't cried in a very long time, but he would happily cry with her if he could. But he couldn't, so he settled for leaning a bit towards her and petting her head slowly. She looked very surprised and also relieved by that unexpected attention.
-The next time- he whispered - I will kill him in one shot.-
She looked at him with wet hoping eyes.
-For me?- she asked.
-For us.-
