A/N: Sorry for the long update. That's what midterms can do to a person... But at least until finals in early December, I don't forsee any other delays.

So, um, lots of blood and gore in this chapter. Like, lots. Happy (late) Halloween!

Enjoy!

Ballad of a Dove

Chapter 10 - In the Tower

by The Secret SOLDIER

Not for the first time in his life, Zack found himself cursing enhanced senses, as the smell of blood intensified to a near-nauseating level the closer he got to the scene of the battle. Finally he resorted to holding his breath, only to let it out in a great gasp as he rounded the last corner and the SOLDIER break area opened before him. This had been no battle. This was a massacre.

Familiar blue and deep purple uniforms were torn, dyed black with drying blood; armor was cut in two, swords broken, helmets crushed as if by a giant's hand. Zack sent up a silent thanks that most of the bodies had already been claimed by the Lifestream. As it was, the place already bore too much of a resemblance of the plain outside Midgar, when he woke up amid the rain and slaughter.

And just like then, he had that same sick feeling in his gut, that same knowledge that some of his friends had fallen here. Kunsel, Luxiere, all his old buddies - they couldn't all have survived this.

A limp arm was outflung from behind an overturned table; Zack felt he ought to at least arrange the bodies, close their staring eyes and fold their limbs into some semblance of repose, but he couldn't bring himself to touch them. Not when there was a chance of seeing their faces, blank and bloody, sightless eyes staring past him...no, he'd already seen enough of that to last a lifetime. He'd never liked the aftermath of battlefields, never liked seeing even enemy troops dead, and this cut too close to home. If things had turned out differently between himself and Shinra, it could easily be his own blood congealing on the floor and splattered on the walls. The mako in that blood was the same mako that ran in his own veins...

He snapped himself out of his morbid daze quickly as he glanced around the room again. Whatever superhuman power had been able to inflict this damage on a room full of SOLDIERs was a force to be reckoned with. No, not reckoned with. A force to flee from. This - this was downright terrifying.

How long did it take for a body to dissolve into the Lifestream? He found he couldn't remember. Was the perpetrator of this massacre already long gone, or was it still around, going story by story up the Tower, killing everyone as it went? He shuddered at the mental image that gave him, a dark shadow oozing up stairwells until it reached the very top - and then what? Was it waiting for him somewhere, or was it perhaps coming down the stairs again, searching for more blood...

His sword shook in his hand and he was on the verge of bolting back to the elevator and getting out of there as fast as he could. Then reason kicked in, and he almost laughed at himself. Why, this was no better than when he'd been five or six, and he'd convinced himself that an Ifrit lived under his bed and he'd been too scared to get out of bed in the morning for fear it would grab his legs. There was no shadow-monster on the stairs. No invisible killer was going to sneak up behind him and cut his throat. And if one did, well, he'd give it the fight of its life. He needed to remember what he was here for. For Aerith, and for revenge. It just looked like the revenge part had been taken care of already.

Now all he needed was to go up twenty-something floors and get Aerith out of here before whatever ninja, assassin, or rampant First that had done this got up to the science floors. Once he had his girl, they'd get out, leave Midgar, and that would be that. But the devil was in the details.

Turning his back on the crimson-drenched room, he ordered his mind to think straight. Equipment. He was across the hall from both the supply room and the materia room. There ought to be enough in there to outfit an army - and probably some powerful stuff, too, if the quality of his supplies while in Shinra were any indication.

He hurried to the materia room's door, pressing his ear to it, and was both relieved and further troubled to hear no sounds from within. The only advantage this deathly silence offered was that if there was any other person in the building, Zack would be able to hear them from many rooms away. The fact that there was no one there to hear was what set his nerves on edge.

Letting the tip of his sword lead the way, he edged into the room and blinked in the sudden lighting. The fixtures overhead were harshly bright, unpleasantly reminiscent of a surgeon's lamp, but around the perimeter of the room more inviting colors were visible. Ice-blue electricity crackled intermittently in a case in one corner, while a crate adjacent was rimed with frost from Blizzaga materia. Along one whole wall were glass-faced cabinets that emitted a soft green light - just like Aerith's eyes - that made Zack feel healthier just by looking at them. Curaga, Restore, Regen, Esuna. But even more welcoming than their healing glow was an ominous darker green tinged with red that came from a locked chest in the far corner. Oh, yes. Hell Firaga.

He checked the room thoroughly once more to make certain there were no nasty surprises - not even any corpses - before swinging his sword to his back and tearing into the metal-bound chest. The lock popped after a few moments of being subjected to SOLDIER strength, and Zack grinned down sinisterly at the collection of dark swirling materia inside. Slipping two into his pocket, he started to turn away, then stopped and grabbed another orb. It wasn't like he was being charged for these.

Next came the Curaga set, followed by a few random extras. Some he infused directly into his body to be ready for instant use, while the others he crammed into his pockets. "I've gotta find me a backpack now," he muttered, more just to hear sounds than because it needed to be stated aloud. He vaguely remembered, from years ago, dozens of materia-hunting missions he'd once done for the mysterious "Treasure Princess," and chuckled at the thought that he probably looked now as she had then, with glowing orbs embedded in both hands and with pockets bulging.

But his mirth was shortlived, and he was once again faced with grim reality as he left the materia room and headed toward the supply area. He'd passed several empty hallways with no sign of either the killer or victims, and was starting to regain some bounce in his stride, when he heard footsteps up ahead. Crouching into an alcove, he peered out, readying himself for an attack of any sort. But the noise was wavering, with long gaps between steps, and it seemed to be coming no closer. He waited one minute, then two, then five, but still nothing appeared. Nevertheless, he was becoming more and more nervous at being on this floor so long, as if staying in one place could draw the killer to him. Finally - never having been one for inaction - he stepped out of the alcove and hurried on toward the supply room and the footsteps.

The sound became more distinct as he walked; by the time he was outside the door, it was evident that it wasn't footsteps at all. Something was dripping drop by drop onto the tiled floor, and Zack had a very bad feeling he knew exactly what it was. But even the sight of the break area didn't prepare him for what he saw upon entering this room. It seemed that this had been a sort of last stand for all the people on this floor: mostly SOLDIER 3rds, some 2nds, a group of infantrymen, and even a Turk. They had all been cut to ribbons.

Zack only hesitated in the doorway long enough to make sure that no one was alive in there, and then he shut the door, reeled back, and was violently sick in the hallway. Blood and gore was one thing, a reality that every warrior had to come to terms with, but no warrior would have the perversity to cut his foes into pieces and scatter them all over the room. No human could do such a thing.

I learned a long time ago that even those who look human, aren't. Why should this surprise me? Shinra was fool enough to continue their experiments even after they'd seen Sephiroth, and now they're reaping the - wait! Sephiroth. He...

He's done this before. In Nibelheim. Broken bodies, ripped apart with the razor-sharp Masamune, then wantonly thrown into the burning buildings. Even the children hadn't been spared, nor the animals. And the Nibelheim slaughter was being reenacted here, in this building, with Aerith somewhere in here.

His thoughts were spiralling dangerously close to the edge of madness before reality reappeared in the picture. Sephiroth was long dead, disintegrated in a mako reactor, and even Hojo would have the IQ not to recreate the world's deadliest weapon, not after seeing what he could do. There must be a reasonable explanation. Zack didn't really care at this point. All he wanted was to find Aerith and take her safely out of here and swear to never leave her side again. If only he could find her before whatever else was in the Tower did!

He spat bile from his mouth, grimacing at the burning taste, but glad to have that stink in his nostrils instead of the hideous smell of blood. Time to get moving. "Science floor it is," he said to himself. "Guess I didn't need new equipment anyway." Some new armor would have been nice, as would a simple change of clothes, but certainly nothing he was willing to go back into that room for.

Sword in one hand, Hell Firaga in the other, he charged up the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time. If the killer was moving floor by floor, he might get ahead of it this way. If it moved faster than he gave it credit for...he didn't like to think of that outcome.

He'd gone about ten stories when he slowed slightly, then came to a sudden stop by the door onto the 62nd floor. He couldn't recall immediately this floor's designation - he'd never gone much higher in the Tower than the SOLDIER floor - but there was clearly someone there. A faint groaning reached his sensitive ears, the sound of someone in terrible pain but lacking the strength to cry out. The sort of sound Cloud had made as he was dying.

Without really knowing why he did so, Zack cautiously opened the door and stepped through. In his early days at Shinra, he'd often been laughed at and told that he was too soft-hearted to be a SOLDIER; even Angeal had lectured him once or twice on the necessity of objective reasoning, not emotional. But Zack had never been able to pass up someone needing help, and now was no exception, even though his better judgment warned against it.

It took him ten strides before he recognized where he was, and he almost turned around and left. The Turk floor. A dull rage flared up in him. Why, by Shiva, should I help any of them? Well...maybe I won't. Maybe I'll put them out of their misery. But the thought of more bloodshed nearly made him sick again, and he recalled Cissnei's pleading words, They're my family...don't hurt them. He growled, the sound loud on the silent floor, and continued toward the now intermittent moans. On the bright side, the Turks probably knew exactly where Aerith was, which would narrow down his search immensely. Plus, they would be able to tell him what had caused this massacre...

He reached the central area of the Turk floor, a large lounge-like area with numerous hallways branching off like spokes of a wheel, leading to the different offices and storage rooms. There were no bodies here, but there were signs of a fight: sword gouges slashed deep into the metal walls, scorch marks on the floor, a spray of blood on one of the doorframes. Zack scoffed at the thought that the Turks had been better able to resist the intruder than the SOLDIERs had been, but that was until he glanced down the nearest hallway and saw a mangled pile of what had once been human beings.

His stomach threatened to betray him again, but he quickly returned to the lounge and concentrated on getting his breathing under control. Weakness would kill him here, where danger lurked in every shadow - and still the moaning continued, fainter now, but no less pained. Frowning, Zack tried to locate which hallway it was coming from, doing his best not to look too closely as he did so. Finally he found a corridor that was only somewhat smeared with blood and he began inching his way down it, checking inside every open room and shutting the door before moving on to the next one. He was fairly sure now that the sound was coming from the office on the far left, but he wasn't about to walk into an ambush just for the sake of some Turk.

Once he was certain that there was no other life in the area besides himself and the groaning man, he hurried into the last office - and stopped short. A tall dark figure was flung on the floor, arms clutched to a bleeding chest, black hair matted with red, face bruised almost beyond recognition, but still alive. A revolver was near him, crushed as if it had been stepped on by a behemoth, and spent cartridges littered the floor. Clearly he'd put up a fight, but had ultimately lost. Badly. Now he was lying there, eyes shut, face drawn into a mask of pain, oblivious to his surroundings, whimpering like a child, as he slowly bled to death.

If it had been any other Turk, Zack would have immediately whipped out his Curaga and set to work doing what he could. But for Tseng...should he even try to save him?