20: The Body Bites Part 2

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I sat in a lonely place no bigger than a common bathroom. It felt like a box hanging somewhere in space, the emptiest in or out of this universe. Sometimes, I felt peace, peace away from my captors. The rest of the time I felt utterly trapped, sealed off in a limbo I assumed was the closest I'd ever get to death without dying. I was sitting inside my own death come to life.

There was color. No blackness. A single light beamed down from the center of the low ceiling, and it shed a blue tint on everything from the strange window on my left to the walls where their corners were so seamless, I had no real idea where they ended or began. And the bench on which I sat, attached to the wall, seemed to blend in with the floor so well, I thought I was floating. Then I'd look down to my bare feet, see the shadow hiding behind my heels and know that I wasn't.

I lost time in this room. For as long as I sat here, nothing changed except when I blinked. Color would dim for a few seconds then revert to its scant brightness.

Occasionally I hummed to myself. Occasionally, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but the silence scared me.

Maybe this room was sound-proof.

Then a knock sounded, followed by a hiss of air and a low groan of shifting metal.

"Hello, our precious little bird," greeted a voice.

"Huh…?"

"Time for the best part of our jobs."

The dreary blue room melted into a long hallway of steel and concrete lit by saucer shaped lights suspended overhead. The walls out here were bare just like in the blue room, although a few modest doors appeared now and then along the way. Along the way... to where?

To another room. This one with a heavy looking door and wired window.

Saristis and two men that I'd never seen before, not exactly burly and not exactly frail, directed me into this room blue, white and pristine. Full of sharp things, tubes, and flasks of all shapes and sizes; books and binders in plastic on lonely shelves; big machines against the walls; little machines on wheeled stands gathered around a bed, board or whatever it was sitting on a big metal bar. The redhead's friends were gathered in here, too, waiting for me, dressed in more white than my eyes could handle. Even their hands were gloved in white.

I froze in the arms of the two unimportant men, prompting Saristis to circle round in front of me with an all too curious look.

"Something wrong?"

"I-"

"Oh, I know what the problem is," he said, smiling and snapping his fingers. "Don't worry, we'll start with something simple... like... a, a physical examination. How's that sound? Not too terribly invasive. These two will take care of that. My colleagues and I will be in the observation room."

With my mouth slack enough to catch a dozen flies, these new orderlies of mine drew me closer to the bedlike thing in the room's center while the scientists scrambled to another door far in the back.

"If you'll please, ma'am, take off your clothes and put on this gown," said one of the orderlies. "If not, we can always do it for you."

"N... no, I can…" Taking the gown as it was gently shoved into my arms, I turned away from the men. In seeing the big, long window in the room's rear, I hesitated. There was no real place to turn for privacy.

I dropped to my knees behind the table, shrugged the gown down over my head and tried to take my clothes off underneath. With every sharp movement, I heard the tiniest tear. A gown made out of paper? This was an unusual sort of trial I had to cope with, but there were worse things than paper clothes. Either way, as soon as I succeeded in donning the gown and fumbled with the ties at my sides, the orderlies hiked me to my feet and plucked me onto the table.

"Alright, you know the drill."

"No I don't-"

Orderly Number One flicked a light on in my eyes, forcing me to bounce back. Orderly Number Two snatched me up from behind and seated me correctly while the other hemmed and hawed to himself, fixing something to his little light and shining it in my ears, my nose and mouth. He nodded at whatever results he'd decided on and tossed it away.

"Wh..." Their stern faces emphatically kept me from wanting to speak. The men didn't even so much as make eye contact with me.

Number Two pressed a cold circle of something to my bare back, running it up and down, left and right. "Well, there's your heartbeat, alright," he mumbled, switching places with his buddy, and slipping that circle on a tube down the front of my gown. "Take a deep breath."

"O-okay…"

Switching places with his buddy again, Number Two said, "'Nother deep breath."

"Open your mouth, please." Number One stuck a cotton swab in my mouth, swished it around and then stuck it in a tube in his pocket. "Alright, now which one of us wants to cop a feel first?"

"Get serious, the boss is watching."

"Yeah, yeah… Lie back." Both the orderlies pushed and pulled on my shoulders, straightening me out on top of the table. Slapping on some new white gloves, Number Two sharply ripped a slit in the front of my gown and pulled it open slightly. "You got some nice skin, lady."

How could I stand this? It was easier to say I didn't, not one bit, but like I did with Sephiroth, I learned to sit and bear it. Though naturally I knew by now that it wasn't the smartest thing to do. The odds were against me. Muddled by panic, I couldn't focus on calling for help in any way, shape or form outside of my own body, outside of this room. I stayed gripped by the palpable dread webbing across my skin.

Pokes and prods at my breasts caused me to stiffen my entire body.

"Mammary glands…eh… seem to be lacking," said one of the orderlies. "I don't feel anything in there. It's like water in a bag."

"Write that down."

"... okay, now I'll check the abdominal area and pubis."

I sucked in my stomach and snapped my thighs as tightly together as possible, though this didn't fend off the encroaching hands. I squeezed my eyes shut, wringing tears from the burning ache and strain. The wooden touch of these men miraculously felt worse than that of Sephiroth's rough 'affection'. At least him I'd known personally, but these strangers frazzled my nerves near to oblivion. So, I'd rather suffer a familiar pain than an unknown one… That's very funny.

"Nope. Nothing. Other than that, everything looks in order down here…"

"That smell."

"What smell?"

"Her. It's kind of sweet, like pungent, you know... Mideel."

"Dude-"

"Prep a smear."

----

"I can't sense you… Why? Is it you, Mother? You interfere with what's rightfully mine? Shame on you. You knew my decision, yet now you…"

Sephiroth cradled the festering wing between his hands, brow furrowed and scathing enough to cut down a forest. Instead it cut across Vincent's figure coincidentally in the way of his gaze. He smirked at what he playfully regarded as a living mummy, wrapped in crimson and black with a fresh human head tacked on top. But he found the gunman so insignificant that all thoughts of morbidity and violence slipped away as soon as they arrived.

Only one thing truly concerned him now.

"Ignoring me, you bitch. But how can I stay mad at you? How can I stay mad at that delicious little body of yours?" Sephiroth frowned, pulling his shoulder close. "Things were so much easier with Mother and only Mother. Together, we wanted one thing, just one."

"Sephiroth, sitting there on the floor isn't helping anything. We have a plane to catch," Vincent said soberly.

"I need to know," he whispered, slowly raising his head. "Where is she? I need to sense her. But all I can... is... Her. On you. You, touching her, but she-"

"Sephiroth. Please. Cid's waiting."

"Me, the great Sephiroth... crumbling so easily. I'm not supposed to feel so dejected like a lowly human anymore; I've risen above them-"

"Sephiroth, honestly, shut it. Drana's waiting. Isn't that what you want? Get up and let's go."

He chuckled, at himself and Vincent's harshness. He didn't have to look at the man to know he still briskly kept his distance, barking like an irate dog safe behind his fence at the monster lounging patiently on the other side. From where did this man pull his shadowy bravado? Of course, it could only be her, thought Sephiroth. A shining hope for a hopeless man, and a hopeless race. Then the notion slapped him suddenly.

He was hopeless, too.

To share a state with the rest of humanity left a sour taste in his mouth.

He stood up, shook his arm and wing free of excess sludge, and stepped into the doorway, leisurely blocking it from Vincent's approach. The taller man turned to face the other, grinning dismally for reasons unknown even to himself. The gunman's hand moved imperceptibly out of eyesight, though there was only one place where it could have gone. His holster. An amusing reaction to an amusing action.

"She means a lot to you, doesn't she?" he asked.

"What?"

"And it isn't just the sad soul that has snagged on her. I would tell you to get your own but she's one of a kind. And she's mine."

"Lucky you," Vincent grumbled in return.

"Only I'll ever know how delicious she is, inside and out, while you have to brave the insuperable human lot. Must make your blood boil…"

The gunman spoke not a word.

"As I thought."

At last he remarked, "I don't think you have time to play mind games on me, Sephiroth. If you still want to save Drana, we're packing up and heading to Costa del Sol."

----

"Take a look at these results from the physical and quote-unquote blood test."

Within the observation room, the quintet of scientists sat at the table, poring over clipboards and test tubes with decent wonder. Saristis laughed at every other page he laid eyes upon, gasped and made every sort of satisfied noise imaginable. Nearly three hours following the examination, the redhead could hardly contain his anxiety and now he was bursting at the seams.

"So its morphology encircles all the bare essentials of a human female, however, excluding what would be a complete reproductive system," Saristis stated, his brow pinched and lips thoughtful.

"That's not even half of it, Sar," Aridale said, thrusting a sheet of paper in his face. "The blood test. No plasma, no cells, no anything that makes blood... blood. And then, take a look, traces of multiple genetic schemes. Humans only have one set, a combination of what's been passed down from their parents. But… It's as if she's made of several different scores of people, if anything."

"We also ran the samples through a series of chemical and radiological tests."

"Lifestream," Evvey voiced out of the blue.

"Yes, the constitution mimics almost exactly that in past tests conducted on Mako and Lifestream respectively," Saristis said, adjusting his glasses. "One thing, though, Kit. Note that we must run an I.D. check on the genetic schemes we found. Surely, Shinra kept those kinds of prints in their records of anyone particularly special that they came across. Like the Cetra family or the old general himself, anyone who's ever been part of an experiment."

"You know that counts for a whole town, an army, and then some, Sar," the woman divulged in a bit of a singsong tone. "Won't we have a fine time picking through that mess…"

"Heh... true."

"I think we should arrange a biopsy and a brain scan," Emerson proposed. "If the physical points to that woman's insides being nothing but Lifestream, I want to see how she's able to think, able to feel, and if that skin is really skin."

"We can always dissect her later, as well," Aridale said, feigning a voice of boredom. "But I can at least agree on the brain scan. If she has one in that noggin of hers, I want to see how it works, too."

"Okay, then," the redhead scholar called out, slapping his hands together. "Jenna and I will focus on everything from the cervical smear and blood test. Emerson, you get started on the brain scan, and if need be, the biopsy. Evvey, you take care of Quelin, but walk with me a bit and I'll give you some other important tasks, too."

"Yessir."