25

Tuesday, October 26th, 10:49am – Don Corneo's Mansion, Sector Six

"I'm sorry, Tifa."

Apologies should never be made in order to strive for success, or so the shills spawning at the base of every pyramid scheme had ever professed. But he could no longer measure his life as a series of successes and failures. It was too depressing to even think about it. So, instead, he simply came clean, stopped hiding behind machismo, and said a very belated sorry.

"Look, we can talk about this later. Right now we have something more important to deal with," she said, drying the tear tracks under her eyes with her palm as she strayed farther from his prying eyes and into those of engulfing shadows. Accompanied by nothing more than the sound of her own laboured breathing, she stopped, awaiting his reply. "Right?"

Rude wasn't ignoring her; he was simply paying more attention to his suspicion, his sixth sense. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck rose and tickled his skin, an evolutionary development that warned him of danger. After turning swiftly on his heels he caught sight of the small army that had stalked them through the darkness, and greedily gulped a lungful of air in preparation for the strident command that would hopefully engender enough adrenaline within Tifa in order for her to escape in time. But the command remained imprisoned in his mind as the pack's two pathfinders aimed their tasers and deployed a summated value of five-hundred-thousand volts through his body.

He shuddered violently, possessed by the electricity, witnessing the disproportionate explosions of gunfire through the darkness before he dropped to his knees. Like a fish out of water, he flapped and writhed against the floor as the two men relentlessly summoned lightning through his muscles, frying him like a piece of meat. He could still hear the gunshots and wondered if any of them had punched holes in his body. Above the confusing mixture of pain and numbness, he had lost all subjective awareness of his environment and his condition. Finally, succumbing to the persuasive whispers of pity or nausea, the men relinquished their roles as torturers and became interrogators. They slapped his cheeks and barked questions at him whilst he was still conscious, giving him the impression that they wanted him alive and were planning something far worse than barbequing him.

Receiving nothing but warm slobber and a vacant stare, they eventually clubbed the back of his neck. Working hard to attain their goal, they respected his potency, likening him to a bull that still would not submit to death after the matador had speared its neck with a third sword. It took four stretched minutes of beating before they knocked him out for the count and wiped their sodden brows, congratulating one another's efforts for bringing down this goliath. Marking the end of their job with hand signals, they paved the way for the guards that stepped closer to grip his limbs and drag him back into the shadows, a few of them finding the sight of his tongue lolling from his open mouth as it swept against the dirty floor amusing.

Antecedent to his head-first dive into the gelid waters of unconsciousness, his thoughts were framed by a few flashes of light. Between the flashes he could perceive faces, all warm and smiling as they should be and as he wanted them to be. The images flickered every time the batons struck his neck as though they were holograms or projections, but they filled his heart with joy and enough willpower to endure the trouncing for a little while longer.

The first image lasted the longest, wavering and washed by thin ripples of static like an old fashioned video looped to a certain scene over and over again. For that moment he was back in the bar between the backstreet methadone clinic and the twenty-four hour tattoo parlour in Sector Seven: a little place called Tifa's Seventh Heaven. He had finagled his way in and scooped the sleeping beauty that owned the place off the cinder blocks into his arms, trying desperately hard not to fall in love with her at the sight of her ruddy cheeks and her somnolent expression. She had one of those faces that made it easy to perceive how she might have looked as a child, owing to her pouting lips and her large doe eyes, an image of utter innocence marred by life in the city. But he was there for her. He had protected her, overriding his doubts of invading her privacy in favour of getting her back into the warmth and comfort of her own domicile. He didn't care what she thought of him; her wellbeing was more important.

And then there was that kiss, that soft entangling of lips, that exchanging of breath, that transfer of taste from one tongue to another; it was truly euphoric. In no mood to recognize its significance as it happened after he had recounted the sobering stories of his past, he saw it now in a different light. It was special, a milestone in their turbulent relationship that certainly meant more to her than she let on. He wouldn't pry such information from her when she was clearly uncomfortable about the situation; after all, her wellbeing was the most important thing to him. But she was kind to him. She willingly told him everything he wanted to hear through her body language, expressing herself through a flick of the hair or a bite of the lip.

The second image was of his ex-wife. No, actually it wasn't his ex-wife. It couldn't be. The woman in his head was smiling as she playfully roughhoused with a very young Jake, blowing raspberries on his stomach and rolling him on the grass to unlock those squeals of laughter and exuberance. No, that woman was not his ex-wife at all; she was his wife. She was the woman he had known four years ago, the woman he had fallen in love with. But, even on a summery day in the park on a Sunday morning, Rude was nowhere to be seen in the picture. On that day he had come home fourteen hours later to collapse on his bed, his head in Monica's lap, after she had slotted in the videotape and tried to keep him awake so he could watch his son's first steps.

God, I was such an ignorant bastard.

The third and final image was a mere flicker, almost a subliminal message, before one of the guards hammered a final blow to knock him unconscious. Oddly enough the image was of Reno, not the Reno he knew as a teenager in the junior ranks, or the Reno he knew as his partner in crime: the astute, wily little man that thought quoting bible verses before murdering people made him look cool. It was an altogether different man. He had become his shadow, watching him carry Tifa through the blustery wind of autumn down to the slums. Somewhere through the corner of his eye, through his blurry peripheral vision, he saw Reno displaying an alien expression of fear and... and...

Jealousy?

With their final blow delivered, they had stolen the physical world from him, thus heightening his acuity and his interpretation of the mental imagery. His immediate thoughts were not of concerns over the gunfire that would compromise Tifa's safety, or his guilt for failing Monica as a decent husband, or the niggling desire to fathom the real Reno behind the veil of fatuity and callousness. Instead, he asked himself why he had not yet pictured Jake's face. Would he have gotten to him if the guards had not rendered him unconscious? If so, why did he think of Reno before him, or even Tifa for that matter? Surely he was the only person that deserved the greatest portion of his heart. He was the only one that could ever forgive his sins even if he hadn't done so already or if he could never believe such sentiment was possible. Deep down, he knew there would always be a place for his daddy in his heart, the same man he had looked up to and once worshipped as a hero.

The truth of the matter was that he had forced himself to ask these questions. Even though he had been freed from the physical world, he still could not picture his son's face, no matter how hard he tried. The implication was too disturbing to think about, leaving him floating in the dark recesses of his own mind, resorting to other trying questions to keep himself occupied. And so he moved on to his mortality in greater detail. Would any of the people he saw, and tried to see, even feel the slightest scintilla of grief if these brutes slit his throat right here? Reno's reaction would probably the easiest to call. He would keep his emotions bottled, possibly shed a genuine tear at his funeral, and move on with life relatively quickly. Perhaps Monica would do the same. As for Tifa and Jake, he dared not to even imagine their responses, fearful of the truth.

But the truth was already out there. If he died, he would get a rose thrown onto his coffin through a sense of tradition rather than a sense of affection, he would get a small mention and a clicking of beer mugs in Turk HQ, and a laconic description of his life in the obits of a few local newspapers penned by Tseng in the fleeting moments he could find between his mountains of paperwork. And that would be his send off, his big curtain call.

The musings stimulated the resuscitation of his atrophied willpower. He would survive whatever torment lay ahead of him and he would rescue Jake, and hopefully Tifa if he was not already too late, singlehandedly. From then on he would concentrate on rebuilding the bridge that connected his life to his son's and would quit chasing women that did not wish to be chased. He would give his life meaning, if not for himself then at least for his son, and there would nothing anyone could do to stop him.

Well. Almost nothing...

Tuesday, October 26th, 12:12pm – Reno's Car, Seltzer Highway

"Look."

It was the first word he had said since the awkwardness had sucked the atmosphere from the vehicle, leaving the two veterans of many love wars in a suffocating vacuum of silence and uncomfortable glances. The worst of it occurred when they both reached for the radio dial in order to change the station, favouring the heavy, gloomy drone of electric guitars over the flowery pop of Midgar FM. Their fingers grazed one another's as they reached out, but there was no spark, no warmth, no recognition. And so, they both recoiled and let the flowery pop irritate them in fear of more unwarranted physical contact.

She couldn't help but feel he was simply too disgusted to touch her. But that wasn't going to stop her. She was a fighter through and through. But maybe that was her problem. She couldn't figure out whether she fought for things she really wanted or simply fought for the sake of fighting. It was only natural for her to pursue seemingly unattainable goals in order to redeem herself for her failures. After all, she was no longer a warrior on the battlefield; she didn't have the heart for it. But she was mentally impervious to defeat, an indomitable force to be reckoned with.

Of course, it couldn't really be so black and white, but she could still summate her entire life in the slums as nothing more than a fight against the odds. There was some Darwinian law shouting for attention in such a presumption. There had to be.

"Look," he repeated, failing to camouflage his lack of enthusiasm.

She opened her eyes, struggling to focus as the pain rushing up her foot almost rendered her unconscious. She had been fighting silently against that, too, of course. "Yeah?"

"I'm... I'm sorry I yelled at you back there. It's just that... well, I don't know where my head is right now."

"Ditto."

"So I was thinking."

She waited patiently for him to continue, realising he may have been holding back until she gave him the nod of approval. "About?"

"About this... this Rude fella."

"Oh, God. Not this again, Reno."

He had considered leaving the topic alone if only to retain his unruffled nature, or at least the outward appearance of such. But there was too much he wanted to know, too much that didn't add up. Feeling the presence of his gun in the glove box, he still hadn't formulated a plan of action, but needed to learn the truth before he did anything drastic. Besides, he was getting a little too familiar with the sound of her gentle breath. It was almost therapeutic, a sure-fire sense of comfort that had to be eradicated for the sake of gaining vengeance.

"Ten minutes ago you bit my head off for mentioning his name. Now you wanna talk about him?" she asked. With a laborious sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose, soon massaging her pulsing eyes over closed lids.

"I know I'm sending you all these crazy mixed signals, and I'm sorry. I just..."

"It won't do either of us any good. Trust me."

"I beg to differ. I think it's been gnawing away at me for too long now. I need some form of catharsis, something to help me understand why all this happened."

"But why do you need to know? Don't you think some stones are better left unturned?"

He shrugged abjectly and responded without facing her, exhibiting a thousand yard stare out into the middle of the road. "I've never been able to overcome my Rubik's complex."

"He's just a friend of mine. How many times do I have to tell you?"

"Well, it'd be a lot more convincing if you hadn't been thinking about him whilst we were fucking."

She grimaced, letting her head fall back against the rest. "You don't have to make it sound so vulgar."

"Well, sometimes the truth is vulgar, honey."

"I just don't want this to come between what we have. I mean... I can see you're finding it hard to forgive my transgression, but I don't want it to come between our friendship. You mean a lot to me, Reno. More than you think you do." She let a muted moan pass through quivering lips as she glanced down at her injured foot.

He stole a glimpse of her pain-stricken expression and spoke before thinking. "Shit. We've gotta get you to a hospital."

It was his first instinct. He had already fluently darted through four lanes of traffic, the accelerator pedal slowly reclining under the force of growing concern, before he realised the old sense of affection sweeping through his mind like a dense fog. After remembering what she had done, or what she had secretly confessed to have done, and his prior intentions for getting her in the car he let his foot off the pedal. The car decelerated slowly, prompting the motorists behind him to flash their lights, honk their horns, and yell at him to get out of the fast lane. Ignoring them, he could only respond to her response. She was furrowing her brows and giving him that vacant glance he hated; it made her look stupid. But she had a right to look confused.

He slammed his foot against the accelerator once more in an attempt to satisfy her curiosity, but only exacerbated the situation as the car lurched forward at breakneck speed, subjecting them to forces that did not play nicely with their stomachs. Receiving more honks and taunts from fellow drivers, he collected his breath and carefully made his way to the hard shoulder. The vehicle came to a stop on the embankment, throwing a plume of dust in its wake. His final action was a deep intake of salubrious air as he rested his forehead against the steering wheel.

As anxious as she was perplexed she reached out to touch his shoulder, moving slowly and cautiously as though she was still in the umbra of Corneo's torture chamber. She suddenly withdrew her outstretched arm, however, as he bolted upright and pushed back against the wheel.

"I'm sorry," he whimpered. Even though he was apologising to Rude, and partly to himself, for his submission to weakness, she had accepted it as her own, left to decipher the appropriate response. It was an arduous task, given that she had never really seen such a vulnerable side to him. She couldn't even recall him ever saying those words in the context of seeking forgiveness for a crime or sin. But, looking over their time together, he had never really needed to. She had made all the mistakes. She had been dishonest. She had damaged the relationship beyond repair. It was all her fault, and now she was expecting him to go out of his way to overcome their relationship flaws, all the while seeing his apology as a long awaited necessity.

I should be the one apologising, Reno. Not you. It's what she wanted to say. Instead, she said, "You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"You know me better than anyone."

His intention was of subtle flattery. But upon hearing it back in his head he realised it was true. His character in her presence was initially a work of fiction, sprouting from the minds of failed novelists in cramped plate-level offices. But after she had warmed to him, and after he had subconsciously warmed to her, he began to let his true nature leak out. Given enough time, she could probably work him out like a simple algebraic equation, understanding him, the human enigma, better than anyone else on the face of the earth.

The insight did little to calm his rattling nerves.

Frustrated by her sustained reticence, he prodded further. "If this guy means nothing to you, I don't see why you're finding it so difficult to talk about him."

And, just like that, he finally did have something to apologise for: he surely made her feel like crap when he spat pure condescension in her face.

She rolled her eyes upwards and sighed heavily. Perhaps the pain of speaking could detract from the pain in her foot?

"Fine."

He turned to face the road once more, readying himself by hiding his eyes. "OK. Hit me with it."

"His name's Rude..."

"Yeah, that much I know already," he quickly interjected, expecting such an opener.

"Listen, I'm giving you what you want, so shut up and quit acting like such a jerk."

"I'm... I'm sorry," he repeated with forced conviction.

There was that word again. He was getting quite familiar with it now.

"I met him about two weeks ago. We bumped into each other in the slums around Sector Seven."

Yeah, I remember. I saw it all. You saw him coming, even dropped your grocery bags to make it look convincing. You were getting bored with me, weren't you? You were getting sick of my secrecy and my limp dick, so you went after the first man that looked as though he could at least partially satisfy your base desires.

"It was a chance meeting, just one of those things that happen," she continued, mirroring his desire to stare into middle distance as she spoke. "And that's all it was."

"OK." He did his best to sound calm.

"We went for an innocent coffee," she said, omitting the fact that the coffee in question had been consumed in her apartment. It wasn't as though she was lying; she was just telling him what he needed to know. What good would it do to say he had gotten into her apartment in a fraction of the time it had taken Reno, and that he did not require an expensive trip to Kalm and two and a half dates to do so? "And then we got to talking."

"Wait, wait, wait. Who is this guy? What does he do? What does he look like?"

"Is that really important?"

"It is to me."

It really was. He wanted to kill her as much as he wanted to redeem her, and her ensuing description of this mystery man would sway him towards one option or the other. He was hoping he was simply insane, that their chance meeting was a dream concocted by sleep deprivation and alcohol, that he had simply mistaken his Rude for hers. It was a long shot, but it would have made things so much easier.

"He's a Turk." She made no hesitation, expecting him to either burst out laughing, burst into tears, or ask her to clarify what a Turk actually was.

He did none of the above, choosing to simply gulp hard and let go of every muscle in his face. Making every movement as deliberate as possible, he eventually turned the ignition key and clutched the gear knob, only to wince at the cold sensation of her fingers draping over his knuckles.

"You know about the Turks?" she asked with an inflection that bordered on interrogation rather than curiosity. After all, they were a secret organisation known only by scouted SOLDIER candidates, political traitors, and members of the ever-growing rebellion from which she had been excommunicated.

He nodded gravely, disappointedly.

"But... how?"

She hadn't made the connection yet; the fact that Rude and Reno bore striking similarities in spite of their differences did not even occur to her. Sure they both were exotic, standing out of the grey backdrop like fireworks against a blank night sky, and they had both stolen her to a fantasy land of quixotism and errantry, treating her to unprecedented affection. But that was nothing more than a very favourable coincidence. Right?

She was still clueless, unrelenting to believe the subdued voice that had been screaming at her to get out of the car and run as fast as her injured foot would allow her.

"You were talking on your phone back in the mansion," he said, peering into the wing mirror to find a safe moment to rejoin the traffic. "You said something about killing this guy, this Rude person... this Turk."

"Wh-what? I didn't... I..." She slowly slipped her hand away from his, watching it retreat shakily like a close-up shot in a bad horror movie. "Answer me!" Her curiosity morphed into anger almost as fast as his had done. The only difference was that she did not have to hide hers. "Well? How do you know about the Turks?"

Slamming his foot against the accelerator, spinning the rear wheels in a frenzied burnout, he rocketed onto the road, ignoring the resulting collisions behind him as he uttered, "Take a guess, you stupid bitch."

Tuesday, October 26th, 11:00am – Room 101, Don Corneo's Mansion, Sector Six

"Stay still. Stay silent."

Like a frightened infant on her first day of school, Tifa held on to Tseng's hand for as long as she possibly could before he, like all the men in her life, deserted her. He still could feel the moisture of her muggy breath on his neck until he stepped out into the light of the air-conditioned hallway. With his attention returned to the keypad, he closed the door, sealing her in. He was a man of traditional valour, good for his word and the promises he kept, so he would return for her if he could. But, in the unlikely event of his capture, his choice to close the door and occlude the only source of light she had left could have been misconstrued as spiteful instead of remorseful: he was either protecting her or entombing her for eternity.

He retraced his steps to the main staircase in order to utilise a more systematic searching approach. Clearing his mind, he combed his way through the now desolate hallways with his gun aloft to splice through the small pools of lamplight and the eerie white noise. It reminded him of his days in the academy and the simulated combat zones crawling with senior instructors wishing to test the cadets' skills. Armed with nothing more than paint guns and a gas mask, a little more primitive than the laser guns and electronic visors used in the academy today, he had had to wander through mock hallways such as this, hoping to keep his suit free of paint to pass his final exam and to conceal his obsessive compulsive behaviour.

Of course, his result was unrivalled: he had negotiated the hallways perfectly, fell for none of the traps, and rescued the fake hostage with ease. His supervisors were so pleased that they had insisted he give the valediction at the pomp masquerading as a graduation ceremony upheld by a century of tradition. It didn't bother him; on the contrary, he was happy to gratify their delusions of grandeur with a fake smile and a semi-plagiarised speech. But he knew that after the war ended there would be no use for his impressive skills, that he would be forced to become a brainless hitman, or a pitiful SOLDIER scout, or, worse still, a supervisor at the academy. So, in a way, it was almost satisfying to return to this world of suspense and darkness, to return to his home away from home.

Dusting off his old skills, he used his memory of the hallways to avoid any areas that would leave him exposed and vulnerable. Of course, he couldn't flat out ignore them, for they would be the most likely places to keep the child, but he had to use his wits to traverse them without getting himself or Jake killed. Corneo was not a generally intelligent man, but he was highly respected by many men in Sector Six, if not many men in the entirety of Midgar. He was a philanthropist amongst the perverse, spreading the concubines he no longer desired across the city to men of all castes, sowing seeds of illicit goodwill. Those seeds eventually grew, flourishing in the impoverished land, developing into friendship and then into loyalty. So, even though his mind moved at a slower pace than others, with the multitude of aces up his sleeve he was not one to underestimate.

After retracing his steps, finding no secret hiding places, he began to venture into unchartered territory, into the remainder of the unmapped basement. Coming across adversity almost immediately, he efficiently dispatched two patrolmen, firing two silenced bullets into their backs. He no longer cared about covering his tracks after wasting so much time: his foresight directed him to sacrifice invisibility for increased speed. The clock was ticking, and he knew Corneo would not keep Jake alive any longer than required. His impatience would probably override his desires for the correct dramatic effect, leaving Tseng with less and less time to get this right.

Suppose you don't, he thought to himself, as he continued to blindly wander. How would he handle the survival of his agents without the survival of Jake? He would not be able to tell Rude the truth regarding Reno's dishonesty, even though he loathed the prospect of lying to a man he greatly respected, as he knew the only positive, albeit utterly dysfunctional, human connection he had left was with Reno. And, even though he did not deserve to be protected, he knew Reno's intentions were not evil, they were simply misguided.

Although he knew he had done nothing wrong, he and his leadership skills would have to bear the brunt of the blame. But he also knew his role as a leader required preparation for such circumstances; scandals and treachery had plagued the life and work of every senior Turk since the group's conception, his own father a prime example. The old man was a great thinker and an even better speaker. He was a man of superior tastes, a nobleman born in the mud of a backwater town where philosophical thinking was prohibited and the practise of archaic religious doctrines was mandatory. As a young man he would lock himself away in the cloisters dedicated to colourful deities, relying on epistolary communication with western minds to restore his faith in man's sanity as opposed to praying for forgiveness. His penned thoughts soon caught the eyes of powerful academics in Midgar that insisted he studied there under a scholarship funded by the state.

After gaining a first class degree in law and politics, and joining Midgar's intelligentsia, he was invited to become one of President Shinra's strategists and to work on Operation Conundrum that later bore the Wutai war. Preferring not to be involved with anything related to his hometown, he respectfully declined the offer. However, feeling the man's talents would be going to waste, Shinra personally asked him to join the Turks instead. Aware of their pampered lifestyle and their reputation, he was delighted to accept the challenge.

Bypassing all academy training, he shot to the top using nothing more than his mind, a feat that did little more than aggravate his inferiors, generating tension and destroying any sense of budding trust. Evidently his two agents resented him and occasionally made deliberate mistakes in order to remove him from his seat of power. Ultimately one mistake led to another, resulting in the capture and gruesome slaughter of the two agents by the hands of rebels.

Even so, the organisation, used to such loss, did not strip him of his power or seriously reprimand him. But the guilt of indirectly murdering – slaughtering – two individuals was too much for him to take. Although articulate and forward-thinking, he was still just a simple village boy entangled in the bloodstained web of the big city. Rendered clinically depressed, he took to the bottle to endure a slow and painful death. In the end, his cowardice defeated him, and he was found swinging by a makeshift noose in his office, leaving his newly pregnant wife and his unborn child with nothing more than his legacy and a suicide note.

Tseng continued to amble through the darkness, entering a cavernous hallway of equal dimensions to the torture chamber. This, however, received the gentle light of lanterns and candles that almost bestowed a sense of tranquillity that he knew could not exist, like an atheist discovering a subtle sense of beauty in mankind's dogmatic faith. And there was the child, safe and sound, hugging his knees in a corner that remained unmolested by light. Still lost in an ocean of thoughts regarding the father he never knew, he forgot every trick and rule that had awarded him the highest mark in the academy, and walked over to the boy. Daring not to jar his nerves with sudden movements and a threat of impending doom he approached Jake slowly.

The boy looked up and cowered in fear, recognising the suit in an instant.

"Hey, kid, don't worry," he whispered, trying to use his most soothing voice. He held his hand aloft for Jake to grab onto, sighing as the child crawled further away from him and curled into the foetal position.

He wanted to just grab the boy and run, fully aware that he could not scream and give away their location. But he did not wish to put him under any more stress than was necessary.

Feeling the bead of sweat drip down his forehead, Tseng began to feel defenceless in the open environment, completely ignoring the eyes in the back of his head. Before he could even get so much as a finger to his pistol, the thunderous sound of fifty guns cocking rang around him.

"That's three out of three," Corneo whispered smugly into his ear.

Tuesday, October 26th, 1:04pm, S-7 Train Station, Sector Seven

This place could have been hell for all he cared.

He stumbled onto the platform, choking on a new taste in the air. He had no recollection of ever being stationed in this city. Barring the rumours of a rising insurgency, there wasn't much to do here for a SOLDIER of his calibre. Shinra usually sent truckloads of cadets here from Junon to maintain order. The young men were not strong or intelligent enough to handle more pressing issues in warzones or areas of political interest, but they were definitely good at assuming that they were strong or intelligent, which made them perfect at intimidating the feeble slum-dwellers.

Even though his memory of the city did not serve him well there was still an atmosphere of familiarity about the place. The barracks back in Junon shared the same suffocating warmth in the air, substituting only the stench of stale sweat for open sewers and barbeque smoke. The neon lights were new, giving him something fascinating to look at and also something to take his mind off the tangible disease crawling through his veins, wrenching his stomach and jabbing at his nerves.

The throngs of labourers scuttling out of the train to the sector's famous bars and restaurants brushed past him, pushing him one way and the other, clearly favouring a full stomach over his safety. They rapidly vacated the train that hissed as it began its departure for the next sector, spinning its wheels in unison with his spinning head. He shuffled away from the blurred faces behind him, trying to control his nausea until he could obtain a certain sense of privacy. The only entity larger than his malady was his pride, after all.

Waiting no longer, he fell to his knees behind a dumpster with his palms flat against the tarmac. His mouth began to salivate uncontrollably, spilling drool from the corner his lips onto his trembling fingers. The pulse ascending up his oesophagus stifled his breath before he vomited a vile concoction of blood and congealed clumps of mako powder. The taste left behind in his mouth was enough to send a shiver of anxiety down his spine. Of all the things he could remember, he knew vomit should definitely not taste like that.

With barely an ounce of strength left, he fell onto his back, narrowly avoiding the red and green puddle more fowl than the city's open sewers, and tried to call for help. Unable to spit out anything more coherent than the word Zack, he simply made as much noise as he could, producing nothing more than a pathetic, airy screech.

He didn't expect to attract any attention: he could barely hear himself over the echoing sounds of bustling life. Even so, he persisted, writhing around as the nausea multiplied into an indescribable symptom of an imaginary disease fed to his bloodstream by the beady-eyed professor still locked away in the crypt of the Shinra mansion. He screamed for the sake of his life, for the sake of his sanity, for the sake of his trust in the goodness that surely still existed in the human spirit.

And, at the speed of his beating heart, he was a silenced, not by pain, nor by a lack of motivation. This silence was actually instigated by a single thought; an epiphany. If he was just an ordinary man fighting to get out of the train, trying to make the most of his short lunch break by grabbing a bite of sushi or a pint of beer, would he stop and wade through the gutter to help a dying vagrant? Would he go hungry for the day in order to save a somewhat lesser life? He could only imagine an empathic nature had gotten him captured by that mad scientist in the first place. Maybe he had gone back to rescue a fallen comrade in a battle of sorts. Maybe he had volunteered to become the scientist's lab rat to spare another the pain and humiliation. Either way, this wasn't worth it. If he wanted to survive he would have to start looking out for himself alone. He needed neither baggage nor any emotional connection cementing him to the ground as the trials and tribulations of life slowly drowned him. If he did make it out of the other side of this illness, he vowed to change, ensuring nothing like this would ever happen to him again.

Alas, as the thought of recovering from this illness even crossed his mind, he was confronted by a celestial creature of incomprehensible beauty. The poet laureates that romanticised death had all been correct in their descriptions of the angels that transcribe one's sins and good deeds before lifting them off the ground ready for judgement. This particular angel spoke indiscernibly, but her sound was soft, sweet, and utterly reassuring. He used the last of his dwindling might to crane his neck upwards and get a better glance at her.

The poets may have hit the right chord regarding angelic beauty, but that was an assumption passed through generations since the inception of religion, distorted through constant reinterpretation. What they had failed to prepare him for was the overall dullness of the situation. He was promised a blinding white light, a sensation of purity washing over his physical and spiritual wounds, an immediate understanding of the workings of the universe and the meaning of life. He wanted to laugh at the simple answer that would befall him, to be free of his pain and his fear, to earn his place in eternal warmth and sunshine. But this angel did not loom from a source of blinding light; she simply walked – limped – over to him. Looking beyond her face he could still see the mortal world: the graffiti covering the walls lining the train tracks; the tired street lamps highlighting the poverty; the giant concrete plate hovering above them, holding a city of its own, independent from the squalor below it. He could still smell his fowl vomit, and the open sewers, and the petrol fumes, and the variety of cooked meats and spices. Most of all, he could still feel his pain, the physical manifestation of evil wreaking havoc within his body.

He dropped his head back in disappointment and closed his eyes, wishing simply to die and get the ordeal he called his life over with. It only took one drop of blood to open his eyes and lift his head back off the ground regardless of whether he possessed the energy to do so. At first he just felt a warm tingle on his palm, when he looked back at the angel, still mumbling incoherently and staring at him with wild fascination, he witnessed the blood dripping from a scar on her cheek to his palm, collecting in a small crevice.

This was no angel. She was a mortal; a mortal in danger just like him.

He squinted to get a better glimpse of her ever moving lips and tried to recognise the words sprouting from them.

Cloo...

Colou...

Clou...

Culu...

Cloud...

Cloud... Cloud, are you OK? Cloud, can you hear me? Cloud! Cloud!

She was mistaken. But that did not stop him from reacting. If pretending to be this Cloud person awarded him rescue he would go along with it and exploit her for everything she had. After all, things needed to change. He needed to worry about himself alone. He needed to leave empathy behind in this gutter with his steaming pile of vomit.

"Can you hear me, Cloud?"

He outstretched a hand shakily, enjoying the warmth of hers as she grasped it and held it to her cheek affectionately. With his fingers free he brushed the dark strands of hair from her eyes and began to speak reflexively. He spoke in tongues, almost as though he had been possessed by a spirit of some kind. The word that left his lips was as unintelligible to him as the garbled sounds of this angelic woman. Even so, it was a beautiful word. It was a powerful word. It brought a tear to his eye, even though he did not know what he was saying.

"... Tifa," he whispered before resting his heavy lids once more.