"Go on then," Hojo said indifferently. He was looking through a checklist of the various boxes that his most essential papers and equipment had been shipped over in.
I took in the high-ceilinged foyer of my new home. For a house in the centre of sector eight, so close to sector zero that I could run to the science department cafeteria and back for a coffee faster than boiling the water myself, anything bigger than a closet was basically a luxurious mansion, and this solid three bed two bath open plan 1dkl with two balconies and a yard large enough to swing Masamune around in was more or less a private plane sized flex. Well, I was Shinra property and this was Shinra property, so maybe that mattered less. I looked back at Hojo.
"I am to... Live here? Alone?" I demanded.
"Don't be clingy, boy," said Hojo. "Professor Tachibana has arranged for Doctor Shrove to be in charge of your care and feeding. A Turk will be by later probably. Eh. In any case, I will be busy with my work for the foreseeable future and haven't got time to coddle you. Not to worry, I will still be overseeing your education."
I looked at him. Project X was in something of a critical stage, or so I'd heard from Tachibana's minions.
"Will we ever visit Nibelheim again, professor?" I asked politely. "I am beginning to miss the clean mountain air already. And mother too."
Hojo's gaze snapped towards me.
"Mother?" He demanded sharply. "What are you talking about, boy?"
"Jenova," I said patiently. "You told me she died to give birth to me, so it stands then that she's buried there in Nibelheim. I... Would like to return so that I can pay my respects, if I can, when it comes time for my birthday."
Hojo looked at me.
"I will consider it," he said. "If nothing else, you will need mako from the Nibel reactor when you receive your first injection."
I brightened. Being full of J cells but without any significant amount of mako had left me pretty much at the peak of regular human strength. I couldn't wait to see if I could turn into Safer Sephiroth without losing my mind or destroying the world first. I could pass on Bizarro/Rebirth Sephiroth though. That form was too ugly.
I also couldn't wait to have mako enhanced hair that didn't tangle or break. Long hair was a pain to maintain, just brushing it was a daily ordeal. The pain was worth it though, because I had the world's prettiest hair. The silver of it was absolute perfection. The pain and indignities of being a kid Sephiroth was all worth it, to have hair this colour without needing bleach.
"Professor Hojo," I said slowly. "Did I inherit my hair from Jenova?"
He scowled. "None of that, Sephiroth, stop fishing for information that doesn't concern you."
"I..." I looked at him through my pale lashes. "Oh. But. Have you sequenced that part of my genome, professor? I... I'm very curious about my hair colour. May I visit your in the Science Department sometimes and borrow some equipment? I would like to complete the science project from my current educational packet by studying the structure and makeup of my hair. And once I receive mako enhancement, I could continue studying it to see if there will be any changes to the follicle and hair shaft."
He squinted at me suspiciously. I tried not to remember the ugly wretch with the goggles in remake and focus on the conservatively dressed corporate science drone in front of me, boringly normal face and well washed but limp ponytail and all.
"That new girl with the ugly purple lab coat wrote one of her lower degrees on alopecia. And that woman with the - oh what's her name. Dormand. I supervised her doctorate on the effects of mako on human keratin. Go bother them if you must."
I arranged my face into an expression of dawning joy, a smile stretching out like a slow revelation.
"Thank you professor!" I chirped. "I appreciate all your guidance and your help in my scientific education! If I could be anything other than a SOLDIER, I'd totally want to be a scientist. Well. Actually. Well. I'd totally wanna be a scientist if I didn't have to be a soldier and if I couldn't be a philosopher. I would have a double focus on mako engineering and makoculture." I looked dreamily into the distance. What I really wanted was to march up to the groaning husk that was all that remained of the Midgar University's school of Humanities and snort up the philosophical and theoretical traditions of this world like a mako junkie with a hacked aerosoliser and a canister of the raw stuff tapped directly from the plate pipes. I was desperate to see who they had instead of Foucault and Deleuze. And Freud! And Zizek! And Fisher! The timeline equivalency to the "real" world was unclear, but regardless of whether I considered the years of the Gregorian calendar to be exactly equivalent to their εγλ year numbers, or if I presupposed that 1997 on earth was roughly 2007 here, pairing the release date of the game with the time period the game started in... Well. Either way, if they had helicopters and cellphones and other tech equivalent or superior to the real world then they for sure had modern philosophy, though a globe spanning megacorp like Shinra didn't seem like they'd let people write about dialectical materialism and capitalist realism, let alone publish books about anything so radical, so maybe not. Shame, I just knew that if I became dictator I could forcibly create a fully automated luxury communist utopia. Hmm.
As my face slackened and I began to speculate what the humanist tradition would look like in this nominally non-Christian universe, Hojo made a familiar noise of irritation.
"Cease your nonsense," he pronounced. "You have been engineered for purpose. You are still being engineered for purpose. Your intellect is to be cultivated, but do not forget yourself. All children have unrealistic expectations of the future, I suppose, but you are beyond regular children, Sephiroth. I expected more maturity from you."
I stared him in the eye, incredulity ballooning up inside of me. But my external layer of obedient good-naturedness never wavered.
"Yes Professor," I said, pouting lightly as if I'd been denied a second popsicle or a midnight snack, rather than being reminded of my lack of choice and autonomy in all that I was. "I will be whatever the company requires of me."
Hojo laughed that unhinged comic book villain laugh of his.
"If only she could see the fruit of our labour," he murmured to himself. I pretended I hadn't heard. Louder he said, "hold out your hand, boy," and I obeyed.
He affixed a thin bracelet onto my wrist. It was a thin circle of braided UHMwPE cord with a metal clasp.
"Your access tag," he said. It was unclear whether he was annoyed at not foisting this off on an assistant or proud of me flying the coop and living on my own. He was always like that, dishonest about the depths that he loved me to and ignorant of how shitty his love was.
Anyway, I'd bet anything that there was a tracking device in the bracelet.
"Thank you, professor,' I said politely.
"Doctor," he said. "Doctor Hojo is fine. You have no need to imitate my sycophants. After all, your next promotion doesn't depend on the quality of your research, but rather mine."
Well, it was true that I was his research subject and creation and medical patient, as well as his biological offspring. I shrugged. "Yes, Doctor," I agreed obligingly, rotating the bracelet around on my wrist.
"Good. Now go unpack and organise your room. The cleaning service will not tidy anything for you. It is your own duty to keep you possessions and your space neat. If you cannot demonstrate your capacity for basic independence, you will be reassigned to a specimen holding cell. Shinra building has no spare staff living quarters in the science levels, and I cannot spare my assistants to babysit you as I used to. This is Midgar, and the idyllic life you were raised with has no place here."
I privately thought having my own bachelor pad in one of the most expensive areas of the most expensive city to live in was a pretty big step up from a nursery room where the most interesting thing that might happen to me was watching groceries be delivered through the window or being called in for unethical medical experimentation. There were three theatres within a hundred meters of the house, five bars, and innumerable restaurants. My new house was in a cul-de-sac that opened from a side road that branched from Loveless Avenue, which meant a pocket of relatively private residential buildings - townhouses, houses, low-rise apartments and the like - a literal stone's throw from all kinds of food, entertainment, and shopping options. I doubted Hojo chose it for its location though. It was likeliest just whatever was closest to the Shinra Building that he could requisition on short notice. Maybe it was even his house. I didn't care.
An actual kid would have been terrified and would immediately crumple under the circumstances, or at least clung to the replacement that Tachibana had arranged for me. Maybe that was what Hojo was trying to do, to get me to attach to someone who wasn't Tachibana or himself. Hojo laboured under the misconception that I was attached to Tachibana as a mother figure, but Tachibana knew I felt no such thing. We resented each other silently because of Yuuki - the first one, I mean. She didn't realise it was mutual though. I'm pretty sure she though I just knew she saw me as experimental material and not a real kid.
Sure, she'd meticulously planned the first three and a half years of my life and had a hand in the rest and had in fact nursed me and burped me and changed my diapers and soothed and cuddled me as a baby and called me and sweet baby darling boy or whatever, but that was just because babies that didn't get enough affection as infants usually grew up to be intractable and unproductive, which was obviously not what you want for your best experimental product. That was her exact rationale, I've seen her reports.
The replacement she sent was a twunky supermodel of a man, tousled hair and sleepy smile, who seemed to have been purposefully chosen to make me trust him. He was a man, so none of the mommy issues. He was younger, so none of the daddy issues. He was youthfully attractive and blond with short hair, to avoid visual similarities to Hojo. He smiled, actually smiled at people, with warmth and everything, which was not something people around me did often. Tachibana was patient and even nice, when she looked after me in a professional capacity back in Nibelheim, but she hadn't had any kindness behind it all. If Shrove worked for Shinra's science department then he probably wasn't a kind person, but he made a damned good show of it when he looked at you with his patient eyes.
I didn't really care though. Shrove could be a baby eating vampire, and it wouldn't make him any more corrupt than he already was in my eyes. He was Shinra. I would out up with him just to be out here on my own. I've never experienced even a single moment of life where the people around me weren't either Shinra employees or their victims. Now, I was to live outside a Shinra facility, and to attend a school where the children, though likelier than not mostly the offspring of Shinra managers, had not yet themselves become complicit in it all, for all that they benefited.
I would be able to wander out my door and to a restaurant, and order food cooked by someone who didn't explicitly know that I was a science experiment whose nutrition had to be strictly monitored. Even in the brief stay in Costa Del Sol and on the cruise ship, Hojo had ordered for me and at least nominally approved every bite I took, healthy or otherwise.
I thought about the burger restaurant not far away. It was too classy, a real restaurant and not a fast food joint, but by god, I wanted a greasy fucking cheeseburger.
I tugged on the tail of Hojo's omnipresent lab coat.
"Am I to receive an allowance, professor, or shall I expect Doctor Shrove to feed and clothe me?"
Hojo rolled his eyes. "You may take it up with him," he said. "You are of the age where children start wanting pocket money, I suppose. Be good and stay inside until Shrove and the Turks get here. I'm needed back in the lab. Don't open the door for non-Shinra personnel."
"I understand, doctor," I said guilelessly. "Thank you for taking time to get me settled. I know that you're busy with the new baby."
Hojo muttered curses under his breath. "I am busy with a multitude of projects. You will find that in Midgar, I have greater responsibilities than playing nanny to children."
"Oh!" I said. "Wow! I'm sorry for keeping you then, Doctor. It was nice of you to make sure I was fine anyways, even if it isn't your job to do it anymore."
"You are my finest creation, Sephiroth," Hojo said coldly. "Your well-being is imperative for my continued scientific success."
"Oh," I said, but didn't droop too much. "I'll be good and take care of myself then!" I said. I smiled at him.
His brows locked together, making the wrinkles on his forehead even more prominent.
"See that you do."
And with that, he whirled around and stalked out the door.
Needling Hojo with the potential of my filial affection was one of my few pleasures in life. He wanted me to love him. He thought of me as his son and himself as my father. But he also wanted me to be a perfect divine being with no parents and no human flaws and no human roots. The moment I treated him more like a father than a teacher or a tormentor, he iced over and usually stormed out, as if to reiterate how much he didn't really care about me. It was convenient for getting him to leave me alone, sometimes.
Shrove wandered in after a few minutes, smiling gently and boyishly. He was dressed in stylish business casual, no lab coat or lanyard in sight, and carried a takeout box from a Shinra cafeteria that contained my lunch. He handed me a credit card and a stack of emergency cash, directed a gaggle of assistants to put away the clothes and books and various items that had been acquired for me as I ate. He sat with arms crossed and legs crossed opposite me at the dining table, watching the bustle of people coming to and fro, and told me how to contact him, that we were to have lunch together three times a week, that I now had an employee ID within Shinra, which would allow me to take my meals at the various company cafeterias, and that I was not to go further than a hundred meters from the house without accompaniment. Then he handed me my schedule and a clothes catalogue with non-approved options crossed out in black marker and told me my clothes budget. He asked whether I had any questions, and of course I did, mostly inane ones designed to unsettle him a bit, but he answered them all patiently, then made his farewells and left with the gaggle of assistants trailing behind him, but not before patting me on the head and giving another one of his disarming smiles.
I stared at him until the last peon shut the door, a bite of lasagna still puffing up my cheeks. So, it seemed like I'd be basically by myself, then, when I wasn't scheduled for other things. I picked up the credit card, took out the takeout flyer that had been in the mailbox, and dialled immediately for a portion of good old fashioned handpulled Lanzhou beef noodles, which somehow existed in this world without a Lanzhou. They also had multiple varieties of Japanese ramen, for all that the complex history of Sino-Japanese food was erased into a vague homogenised oriental pastiche in the form of Wutai. this gave me hope, then, that I still could try Pyongyang cold noodles. I didn't care about the surveillance that was definitely watching my every action. I wanted hot meaty broth with noodle in it, and I wanted a side of crab roe dumplings and some paper thin slices of soy sauce braised beef.
When a Turk sauntered into the kitchen/dining room, I was weeping into my noodles. I didn't even notice him at first, and thus choked in the middle of a sobbing bite.
The Turk was probably in his late twenties, not more than thirty-two. He had a severe angle to his lips, but his eyes were patient in a way that Shrove's weren't.
"Homesick?" He said gently. I wiped my face with a tissue from the box that had been purchased and arranged on the dining table by an assistant earlier. They'd even opened the package and pulled out the first piece of tissue so it was ready to use. I blew my nose. Then I pasted my cheerful guileless smile back on and beamed at him.
"No sir," I said. "I just really enjoy noodle soup based foods."
The severe line of his mouth lifted briefly into a small smile.
"I see," he said, and didn't press further. "In any case, I am Veld, and I will be overseeing your security for the time being."
"Oh," I said, peering up at him. "Hi, Mr Veld."
"Hello Sephiroth. It is nice to meet you. I hope to make a good first impression for the Turks - if you are to join SOLDIER one day, we may end up working together in the field."
"Oh," I said. Then, on impulse, I added. "But you're not the first Turk I've met though. Vincent Valentine used to say hi sometimes before Doctor Hojo shot him."
All the colour drained from Veld's face.
"Shot him?" Veld echoed calmly.
"Yes," I said. "Don't worry though. He didn't stay dead. Doctor Crescent revived him with science and black magic. He's back in Nibelheim, sulking in a coffin and pretending he's a vampire."
"I- I see," Veld said slowly.
"He might not be there anymore though," I added thoughtfully. "I tried to get him to visit Doctor Crescent in her cave. But who knows, he seems pretty stubborn. In any case, the piece of Zirconiade materia is in the cactaur room."
"The- the what is in the what?" Veld was baffled by my words, but also seemed relieved. Maybe he thought I was just speaking childish nonsense. I had vague hopes of preventing Felicia from being implanted with Zirconiade, and so if he ended up not needing the clue after all, I'd count it as a win even if it did make me seem like I was either cryptic or insane.
"Nothing," I said. "the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim is full of secrets. Anyway. Are you here to chip me?"
Veld scrutinised me with an intensity that Hojo usually only reserved for difficult cell cultures and handwritten Christmas cards from the president.
"That is one of my tasks, yes," he agreed. "You are a valuable specimen and we would like to have our own way of tracking you. No offense to science, you understand."
"Of course," I agreed readily. I held my hand out.
He caught my gaze and held it. "It is very important that you don't try to circumvent your tracker, Sephiroth," he said forcefully. "For your own safety and for what modicum of freedom that you retain now. Is that understood?"
"Yes," I said easily. "Hojo had me chipped in almost every layer of tissue from my dermis to my bone marrow, with separate sets of trackers in every part of every limb as well as my head and all my major organs and my torso separately. I'm pretty sure he's got trackers in my dangly bits too. You know, in case of dismemberment. They lost bits of Yuuki after he exploded and they didn't find his liver stuck behind the ultrasound monitor until after it lost viability, so Doctor Hojo got really worried about me. He's kind of a helicopter parent."
Veld looked mildly ill. I was, after all, a small child, and I was very much deliberately trying to upset and unsettle him. He was still Shinra, even if he was supposedly an okay guy. He was complicit.
"Oh," he said. There was an agonised pause. "Well. Then perhaps you won't object to this." He held out a simple, understated necklace of a round black bead strung on a braided black nylon cord. I turned my back on him and gathered up my hair with my hands.
Veld hesitated for a long moment before he screwed up the guts to crouch down behind me and drape the necklace onto the hollow of my neck, then carefully tighten the screw clasp closure. Once the necklace was secure, he stood, took a step back, and sucked in a breath of relief.
I rearranged my hair, looking at him curiously. Maybe I'd overdone it slightly. He seemed a bit more nervous around me than I'd really expected, given that he would be director pretty soon. Hmm.
"There's one more," he said, and took out a little black case, which he unzipped to reveal the syringe inside.
"I hope you cleared this with Doctor Hojo. He's quite touchy about his specimens. Where do you want to inject it?"
"The inside of your upper arm should do," he answered. The sleeve of my loose top was easy enough to tug up to the junction of my armpit. With practiced motions he swabbed the area with alcohol then jabbed me in the soft flesh just beneath my armpit.
"There, all done," he said. "You can shower with your necklace on. It's waterproof. Now, with that out of the way, let's get to business. I have three days to finish your paperwork and train you up to standard on safety protocol for the main building. We will begin with your personnel intake form. Your specimen intake form states that you were born in 1980, but failed to give a more specific date..."
As he launched into asking me alternately inane and invasive questions, he seemed to relax somewhat, as much as a Turk ever relaxed. I could have somehow found a way to make recounting my vaccination history upsetting, but decided to have mercy on him. He left not long after, leaving me a set of keys to the front door as well as a long list of passcodes to memorise.
Left alone at last long last, I finished my dinner. It was delicious. Then I finally ventured outside the open plan LDK with its blandly expensive showroom decor and went to find my room.