Chapter XXII: The beginning of the end
Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.
The sky is slowly lightening in the east, a purple band trailing across the rim of the sky and painting the jungle beautiful. Sephiroth would call it beautiful, but there isn't time, because there is a slow thudding hidden somewhere in front of them as the war drums are pounding out a warning, the pounding of the heart of Wutai in preparation for battle. His head is hurting like it never has before. The heat and adrenaline aren't helping.
If there is one sound that will never cease in this world, he thinks, still and watchful, silent as every eye is scanning the view in front of them, it is the beating of the war drums. It is hypnotic, lulling his mind away into a dark, lonely place. Then he feels tearing slash of pain like a scream inside his head, full of rage and pain it tears its way through his mind and the world is dipped in red fury. And the Wutaiians can see no reason for all they demand it with broken voices, for there is no reason to be found. What reason do you need to die?
"Sephiroth?" Zack's voice awakened him. The man hadn't awakened him with a touch, hadn't tried that since the one time they had shared a tent on a mission. Sephiroth, who had still been more than half asleep, had reacted out of instinct and Zack had been rather startled to find himself flat on his back with Sephiroth's fingers pressing down on his throat.
"How much time until we reach Firefrost One?" he asked and sat straighter. Zack was swerving the truck generously and despite his own misery, Sephiroth found himself pitying the men at the back.
"We're pretty much here," was the answer he received.
The cutting wind sent the thin coating of snow flying and Cloud rubbed his hands together, then gave the grey sky a dirty look and thanked Gaia they hadn't really decided to move their base there. It reminded him of Nibelheim in early spring and he had obviously gone soft during his years spent in friendlier climates.
"It didn't used to be this cold during summer," father volunteered much to his surprise. "The Firefrost Mako reactor has caused a drastic decree in the temperature during the last decade." His red coat was billowing around him like the red sails of a Wutaiian pirate ship as he worked his technical magic.
"Any chance we might get to reverse the flow down there?" Cloud complained in wistful jest. Father didn't bother answering, but Cloud was pretty sure he would have liked to do so too. He also found himself wondering where the Valentine family originated; father seemed oddly fond of the area.
He was definitely nervous as he crouched against the chilly, ugly concrete wall. This was his first real mission, in a way. When he had distracted Zack Fair, Renata Saint Cloud and the soldiers from finding their headquarters in Cosmo Canyon all he'd had to do was to sit on a ledge. Stealing Fuhito's memory banks had been a cakewalk. When the tonberries had attacked, it hadn't been a mission at all, but defending his and his family and friend's lives. There hadn't been much planning involved, just shooting and running, his blood running hot and cold. Operation Scarlet Woman had been a real mission and there had been few nerve-wracking moments, but he hadn't been a card-carrying member yet, the risk involved had been smaller and he hadn't been under scrutiny then. Veld was a big part of what caused his jitters now. He wanted to reflect well on his father's skills in front of his old partner, so needing a rescue wasn't in the cards.
It only took him a few seconds to reach the place where father hid in wait, and once he had disabled the alarm on a rare-used emergency exit opening there would be their entrance through seemingly endless flights of stairs. Waiting for his father, who was searching for the locking mechanism to insert their emergency codes into in the wall of the uppermost part of the stairwell, Cloud couldn't help remembering their conversation during the planning stages.
"I'm surprised the stairs go that far down," he had observed. "Isn't this a big security risk?" One they were going to exploit so he should know. He looked at his watch. Right now, Veld should be infiltrating the control centre.
"That's the only one that goes all the way. They're put there for safely concerns in case people ever need to leave in hurry and the elevators are out of commission, but are hidden to prevent infiltration," Veld had explained instead of his father. Now Cloud was seeing that in action; the wall slid open and the pair snuck into a dark passage. He had to admit it had been hidden very well. He'd even had time to make a tiny snowman for Piekna while father had been confirming that it was even the right side of the building to search from.
They had separated all too soon, and Cloud refused to turn to look after his father as he passed dozens of doors leading to a huge open-sided elevator. Rather than risk using it, for it was spotted with red, rusty stains and didn't seem all that quiet, Cloud gave a glance to a broad conveyer belt leading down and climbed onto it. The chemical reek was choking as he crawled below Firefrost's industrial zone to the level where the offices were and still below, towards Lab 2 and the Mako Reactor. His knees were hurting before long and his palms itched with something on the belt, but he ignored the inconvenience the best he could. He was a man with a mission.
Stealing information is much simpler and more straightforward than most people think, father had told him. If you don't need to go unnoticed, simply take the motherboard and the memory banks. And if you need to go unnoticed there's always the option of Armoured Golems, Cloud though humorously as he had to suppress a sneeze, remembering Barrett's humorous account of a mission in Junon. And eventually he reached the bottom.
He crossed quickly the large hall, trying to stay out of view of the security cameras. Veld should have set up a video loop by now, but it was better to be safe than sorry. The unclear, blocky shapes of the machines loomed over him as he spurted from one shadow to another under the dim, blue light. He flinched as he stepped loudly on metal grating under which ran many different sized pipes, coded for water, high-power lines and Mako with blue, red and green tags. No guards thus far—a good thing for him. Then he stood before the steel door that led to his destination.
The laboratoty was large, but Cloud's eyes were nailed into one sight at the opposite side of the room. In a huge glass container full of some bluish liquid there was a woman floating. Or at least female and human-shaped. Cloud's mouth suddenly felt dry.
"Múspell," he whispered. Was that the infamous vertebrate incubator?
The woman was deep, unearthly purple, her skin looking more like rubber than real skin. Her head was encased in angular headpiece with wires attached and she was connected to the tank by a tube resembling umbilical cord and fleshy cords resembling bowels. She was curvy and fair-faced, but even then her naked body didn't do a thing to Cloud. He felt like he was watching a female animal rather than a person, maybe some beautiful, lithe cat or a queen bee with thin waist. That or he really was homosexual, he thought dryly, inching slowly closer until he stood so close to the tank his breath left white steam on the cool surface.
There was something strangely hypnotic in the way her hair was floating around her face, in her half-lidded eyes and the silence that suddenly felt deafening against the silent humming of the machines. He wasn't the most superstitious person around, but there was a deep sense of wrong that surrounded the figure in the container. Cloud felt like he had when his father had made him train under the effect of a Confuse spell; little afraid and his thoughts clouded, making it almost impossible to concentrate.
Then he heard the door opened with another dry hiss and Cloud was shaken from his trance, and as silently as he could he hid behind an autoclave and an empty transparent container a few feet from the tank and the purple woman, cursing his dithering. At first he saw only three silhouettes, out of proportions, but when the shapes approached his hiding place he recognised first the thin, greasy-haired man with glasses, dressed in white coat. Professor Hojo, his father's and his personal nemesis. His fingers twitched towards his gun, but then the next figure stepped into light.
Cloud's breath hitched and he was dimly grateful it hitched silently. If the purple woman had bee-like asexuality, then this woman certainly wasn't the same. She was tall and graceful, her reddish brown, curly hair framing a lovely, but cold face. Her face wasn't what Cloud was looking at, however; she was dressed like the models in the Mercenary Babies pin-up magazine Sears and Hákon subscribed to, in black armour that resembled more one-piece swimsuit than anything else. She had legs that never seemed to end clad in black leather boots that reached her upper thighs and a furry, deep crimson trail that swept the floor behind her as she walked after the shorter man. Cloud felt his breath coming fast and swallow and fastened his eyes quickly to the huge double blade fastened to the woman's back, shamed and angry with himself. He was supposed to be a professional. He knew he was beet red.
Because the woman was so impressive, he almost didn't notice anything odd in the girl walking on Hojo's other side. Her hair was also red, but she looked very cute and harmless, though oddly dressed, as if one could have ignored the fact that she was there, in the company she was in. She also looked like she might even be ten years old. But there was also something in her expression, the way she walked… It threw Cloud off for some reason.
Both the woman and the girl trailed after Hojo as the man walked straight to the container Cloud had been staring only seconds ago and looked at the naked, figure inside it with intense look in his eyes before raising his hand to touch the enforced glass. Cloud felt terribly exposed even though he knew the corner was dark and his body was safely hid behind the massive autoclave and his head by the distorting, reflecting containers. Both the woman and the girl's eyes shined with what could only be Mako.
The way Hojo caressed the container was revolting to Cloud; he couldn't help but think for some reason that it almost looked like he was making love to it.
"I have a theory," Hojo whispered and Cloud found his voice as displeasing as his looks. In real life the villains rarely had greasy hair and viperish, oily voice, but Hojo was living up to the storybook stereotypes commendably.
"This is the way She, the original She, first became sentient: by absorbing the trait from other species. She is a marvellous life form, isn't she? The only being known capable of personal evolution." The woman in black and crimson snorted. She didn't look too impressed.
"Whatever you say," she said and even her voice was beautiful. Then she took a PHS from her waist and flipped it open, frowning.
"Lab 1 still hasn't called back. I'm going to check this. Shelke, follow," she commanded and Cloud felt himself reaching for his gun again, unsure. He knew father could take care of himself, if all else failed there was always Chaos to fall back to, but the woman looked dangerous. But a gunshot was bound to alert the whole base, now they were only beginning to suspect.
He hesitated too long and the choice was made for him; the woman and the girl named Shelke left, leaving him alone with Hojo.
Alone with Hojo. Cloud closed his eyes and was surprised to realise he was trembling, his breath shaky and now his fingers closed around Hrist, sister weapon to his father's Death Penalty. He could kill the man now. The childish rage he had felt when father had told him and mother the no doubt heavily-edited story of what Hojo had done to him returned at full force, now peppered with more mature hate. But with maturity came also sense of consequences.
Children were all for killing the villains. They grew up with stories where the wicked withes were pushed into their own ovens, the wolves were hacked open with an axe, the evil stepmothers were pushed into the river in a barrel, dragons were slain by knights in shining armour and the fearsome giants were tricked into their doom by the savvy heroes. It had been easy for little Cloud to say that he was going to kill Hojo.
And here Hojo was, at his mercy and deserving none, but still he hesitated. He had never killed a human being before.
Hojo looked after Rosso the Crimson and Shelke the Transparent as they left the laboratory and shrugged. With their lesser concentration of Jenova cells it should take at least two hours before they heard the call. They had ample time to take care of the intruders.
It had taken him years to complete his research, to find the right stimulus to activate the homing instinct. The cells of Nova Jenova that had been separated from the main body would return back to her, he knew this by heart. She would absorb the consciousness and create her own sentience from the collective sentience of the host organisms.
Nova Jenova was beautiful. Hojo knew it better than anyone; he had created her after all, from inside out. Her eyes were milky white and soulless, but her autonomic nervous system still worked, controlling her heart rate, digestion, respiration rate, salivation, perspiration, diameter of the pupils, micturition and the transmitting and genetic absorption process. He had attached the electrodes to her equivalent of cranial sensory ganglia and reverse-engineered the right neuro-active drugs to trigger the Reunion. It hadn't been easy; she was a silicon-based life form and ultimately different from anything that had originated on the Planet. He had prepared the machines and the Reunion program, he but needed to give a password to run it.
And he hesitated. For a few agonizing, thrilling seconds he hesitated. The Planet was already dying through no fault of his own. It'd be no great effort to hurry the process along a bit. And he would go with the glory of having proved his greatest hypothesis, the work of his life, correct! For him, science was to die for. His fingers danced on the keyboard.
Then a surge, like electric fire crackling through all of her nerves. She registered the pain, but she didn't feel it. There was no real her yet.
So the main organism began to call back its cells within infected hosts. And Sephiroth arrived to Firefrost One.
AN: Just to clear things, this Death Penalty isn't the canon Death Penalty, Vincent just likes the name. Hrist is one of the Valkyries. Her name means Shaker.
