He was alone. Entirely alone in a bar full of drunks and addicts. Lights and music swayed, and he sunk into the couch. The potency of the drugs was not diminishing. He'd never hallucinated before, and it was more than he could handle.

The lights flickered. Power loss meant the storm outside was getting worse.

"Right here…Right here..." He repeated it, but he'd forgotten why.

He needed to… what was it again? He needed to find Cloud, that's right.

Something moved along the back wall, a curtain rustling in darkness. It was dark red and drifted mysteriously with the flow of air. Strange that he hadn't noticed it before. He watched people approach the curtain and disappear inside, a door opening behind it, admitting light before slamming shut. The appeal of it tugged at him. It was somewhere else, somewhere beyond.

And if he was going to find Cloud anywhere, it wouldn't be in this lounge. That woman with the red lips had specifically brought him into this building with knowledge that someone close to Cloud was nearby. Maybe behind that door.

Yes, the curtain seemed like a good idea. A very good idea. Denzel stood. Then he stepped forward. The curtain shimmered far ahead. He could make it if he just took it slow.

The curtain looked soft. He felt his hand touch the velvety material — very soft indeed — then he found the door.

With one brave push, he was through. White light ensconced him, disorienting. The damn drugs were highlighting and amplifying all sorts of things. He was in a long hallway with mirrors on either side, and ahead he could make out other people stumbling along.

When he turned the final corner, his jaw dropped.

There was an entire hall, double the size of the bar downstairs, filled with arcade games. Lights stretched above rows of gaming cabinets. People laughed and talked and played. It was like the Gold Saucer, and everyone was having a good time. The horrors were behind him, down that long mirrored walkway. Here was an inviting friendly feeling.

He went up and down the rows until he found a game he knew very well. The snowboarding game. Tifa's favorite. The player was obviously drunk, though, and not doing a good job. He chuckled.

The man spun around, a drink in one hand.

"What's so funny?" he demanded.

"Um, you missed like every single balloon," Denzel replied.

"Yeah? Well, I ain't even trying anyways."

The screen was twice as big as the one as the Saucer, and the lights around it burned so bright it was impossible to look away.

"Can I try?" Denzel asked.

The man shrugged. "Sure, whatever."

Eagerly, Denzel took the controls. The screen moved fast, much faster than he remembered, but he knew this stage by heart. Snowmen danced on the screen, happy little faces, and the balloons were giant. He was on point, hitting them without fail. Victory greeted him, and his chest filled with pride.

"Ha!" Denzel exclaimed at the screen and turned back towards the drunk man, who now, somehow was holding two drinks. Each time Denzel glanced at him, he seemed to be carrying more drinks, stacked and sliding in his arms, until he was surrounded with booze. At least the hallucinations were getting tamer. The girl with green eyed had been right. It was fun after all.

The room was chiming, alive, and the game started over. Had someone put more gil in?

Then the power flickered off for just a second. The game sputtered and reset. The screen staggered, looping on the start menu.

The drunk man was still standing next to him. "Tough break, man. Power outages happen, I guess. You are so good at this game!"

"Thanks. It's been awhile since I played, but…" He suddenly remembered the last time he'd, in fact, played. Then he remembered Cloud. "But...I gotta go."

He continued through the arcade, trying very hard not to lose the goal of finding Cloud. That was why he was here, after all. This was Junon. Right? But gazing down rows of games, he did not see the woman with red lips, the girl with green eyes, or the guy with blonde hair anywhere.

The room stretched outward, upward. He'd be lost in here forever. Focus, focus, he begged his mind, but it was no good. The more he tried to concentrate, the further away everything got.

At some point, he reached a door that led to a long dark hallway. He entered. The music behind him faded.

This corridor was painted black with nondescript doors spaced evenly like a hotel. The crowds thinned considerably. Soon Denzel was alone, walking endlessly with the putrid scent of spilled booze underfoot. The corridor must end. It had to, he reasoned. But it didn't. It just kept going.

Or was he going in circles? He glanced back the way he came, but it, too, was filled with faceless doors. A trickle of terror went through him.

He tried one of the doors. Locked. He tried another. Then another. All locked.

A door opened to his left. Someone was exiting, and he leapt forward to catch the door before it shut again.

He found himself in the spectator circle of an operating room. But that couldn't be right. He wasn't in a hospital, last he knew, though this was certainly fashioned after one. Behind the center glass, there was nothing of interest, yet more people were entering and taking a seat to observe. Nobody spoke.

Suddenly, a man dressed in surgeon's scrubs entered the operating theater below carrying a woman. She appeared drugged and struggled ineffectively.

Everyone in the spectator ring watched, rapt. Denzel watched, too, fascinated by the puddles of darkness he saw following the man's steps like sticky tar. A hallucination, he knew. The man strapped the woman onto a metal table and withdrew a scalpel.

"What the fuck?" Denzel heard his own whisper, but it was too late.

Real blood gushed from the woman's skin as the doctor sliced into her. This was no reenactment or staging. He was cutting her apart, opening up her insides. She was awake this whole time, moaning, helpless. Denzel could not fathom what he was witnessing.

The crowd was enthralled, motionless, watching. One guy had his hand down his pants, jerking off with eyes fixated on the action below. The doctor pulled out an organ, and Denzel lost it.

He threw up, and then catapulted himself out of that room as fast as he could. He'd been watching someone get murdered. All of those spectators, they were there for that reason.

Alarms blared in his head. Terror consumed him as he ran down the hall, past many other black doors, each surely harboring the same type of brutal show.

As a miracle, he found the door back to the arcade, gasping for breath, sorting out the horror in his mind. The noise in the arcade was overwhelming.

Someone grabbed his arm.

"There you are!"

It was the woman with the red lips.

"I've been looking for you, kid. Figured you'd be in the arcade. Were you coming from the black rooms?" she asked, but didn't wait for him to answer. "This is some strong stuff you shared with me. Who'd you buy it from?"

He stammered an unintelligible reply.

"Whatever it is, it's the best shit I've had in months. C'mon, you want me to bring you to your friend or not?"

He nodded weakly. He wished he would sober up so he could concentrate, but that was impossible.

The woman with the red lips pulled him away, out of the arcade, up another flight of stairs. He couldn't tell how far they'd traveled or what floor they were on. Music pulsed, and they were now in a dimly lit area of booths. The atmosphere was calmer, but his heart beat faster. His hands trembled. Shit, keep it together, he begged.

"Dax," the woman called to one of the men sitting in a booth.

Denzel froze. It was the man from the basement with short black hair and twin daggers. The one who had been with Cloud. The one who had threatened him.

But the assassin didn't even glance at Denzel.

"Hey, my favorite girl!" the man named Dax grinned up at her. "You here for some mako, doll?"

"Nah, this kid wants to see the boss. He says they are friends," she said and motioned towards Denzel.

The man with black hair grinned a mouth full of needles, bleeding down his chest. A horrific slime. Fear filled Denzel. It was just the drugs, he told himself. Not real. But what had that other girl said? She said 'lifestream' makes you see the truth, and this guy was full of horror.

The man's eyes flashed to Denzel, and the smile vanished.

Run, Denzel's brain told him. But nothing responded. Desperately, he thought of Marlene waiting in Corel or maybe in Kalm and he pictured that creepy attic room filled with flowers, and he commanded his legs to go, but it was no good.

"Well, if it isn't the little spy!" Dax said. "Thanks, Candi. I know exactly what to do with this kid. I think the boss will be very happy."

The safety of the woman's presence vanished, and Denzel stood paralyzed.

"I wanna see Cloud," he found himself saying. "She told me you could bring me to him."

The man laughed and that needle grin resurfaced.

"Oh, don't you worry. You will definitely see him."

But his tone meant something far more sinister. He stood, tall and skinny with cropped hair and a jutting chin. Two shiny eyes above a smirk of cruel intentions. He grabbed Denzel by the collar.

"Come with me," Dax hissed.

Denzel didn't have any choice. The ground slid out from under him and he fell, skinning his knees on the hardwood floor. The man dragged him up another flight of stairs. The sounds of the bar grew distant. He was thrown onto cold tile in a room of unpainted plaster lit by a naked bulb.

A fist pummeled his face. Brilliant pain exploded around his nose, and warm blood gushed. He cried for help, but nobody could hear him or at least nobody who cared.

He lay in terror, staring up at the pair of daggers sheathed at the man's belt. Without a doubt this was the same guy he'd seen with Cloud in that basement. The one who'd wanted to kill him, and now, he supposed, would. Blood flowed over his lips, down his face, and the drugs in his head were riotous. Everything was chaos and pain in hot wet spikes.

Something heavy hit his head. Everything went white. Then red. Then black.

Immense pain shook him awake. The assassin had him by the collar and was pulling him along a dirty splintered floor. His arms were tied with scratchy ropes. His head pounded with an intensity he'd never felt before, and when he tried to speak dried blood cracked on his lips.

He struggled, but was met with a hard smack which brought an assortment of colorful pain. The drugs were still drowning his brain. Then he heard the sound of heavy boots. Someone else was approaching.

He was thrown on the ground and didn't dare move.

"This is the spy, boss. The one I told you was watching us the other day."

Boss? Denzel glanced up at the boots. A chill went through his body. They were Cloud's boots.

"We should interrogate him," Dax said.

Denzel's heart fluttered. He was almost certain he would pass out. Nausea curdled in his stomach, and the blood sliding around his mouth was choking.

He lifted his eyes to the owner of the boots.

No, it wasn't Cloud at all but a horrific dark figure. One terrible black wing stretched down, enveloping its owner in shadow. Beneath the curve of feathers, glowing blue eyes stared into him, immobilizing any thoughts of escape. The rest of the world liquified into spiraling despair, projecting outwards from the single wing.

The figure spoke.

"I told you already, Dax. We don't hurt kids. Let him go."

Denzel caught a breath. It was Cloud's voice. Cloud! And he sounded annoyed. But that was impossible. He stared into the shadow, willing himself to see past the hallucination.

And there he was, beneath it all. It was Cloud, except he looked awful. Sickly Mako eyes in ashy pale skin. Blonde hair a disorganized mess of spikes. And on his back was the massive weapon that Denzel surely had thought was a wing.

As the remnants of Cloud emerged, Denzel felt something in him break. The entire night was catching up, and his pain was magnified tenfold by the drugs. The man he'd been seeking, desperately seeking, was here. In front of him.

He wanted nothing more than to curl into Cloud's arms and wish everything away. He wanted something, anything, any sort of physical contact to make it real. A hug. Safety from the assassin. Protection from the nightmares in his head.

Cloud turned away, and the shadow on his back followed. But Denzel couldn't let him go, not after he'd done so much to find him. Not after he'd been so lost.

"W...wait…!" Denzel croaked, "Cloud!"

Cloud did not stop, but Denzel was struck with determination, and he didn't care that tears were stinging his eyes and his throat hurt and his chest ached and his head pounded.

"Cloud!" he screamed, though it was only a rasp. "Cloud, please! Don't go!"

And then tears were all over his cheeks. It didn't matter. Denzel had to get through to him. Marlene was counting on him to do something brave in this very moment.

Against all odds, Cloud stopped. He looked back. Denzel could barely see through the tears. The heavy boots returned, and he felt Cloud standing near again.

"I'll handle this," Cloud's voice addressed the other assassin. "Go."

Dax released Denzel, throwing him to the floor, and then silently retreated. Denzel gazed up at Cloud, at the billowing wing curling over one shoulder and now he could see bleeding holes in Cloud's chest like gunshots. The drugs were not letting up.

"Don't move…" Cloud said and drew his sword.

Then the ropes were gone, and pain rippled through Denzel's shoulders as he fell forward. He lay on the floor, unable to move, swallowing another mouthful of blood. Then, as if in a dream, Cloud's arms were around him, lifting him up, holding him steady. Unable to support his own weight, he fell onto Cloud, hugging him tight, tighter than he thought he could manage.

"Denzel…" Cloud spoke soft but strained.

"I found you…" The words barely tumbled out. "I told Marlene I would…"

"Marlene? Is she here, too?"

Denzel shook his head, but the world shook with it, and he realized he was fading fast. He couldn't hold on much longer.

"I thought you might hurt me," Denzel confessed, though that all seemed so silly now. Cloud was the very last thing in the city to hurt him.

Cloud didn't respond and instead picked up the boy in his arms like a child. Denzel's limbs felt too heavy to move or care. His cheek pressed against the soft black fabric of Cloud's shirt, and he just wanted to curl up and fall asleep.

A sunken bullet hole touched Denzel's eye, and he glanced up at Cloud in a daze. But it was no longer Cloud. The blurry shadow had once again resumed its presence, and for a brief second Denzel wondered if this was all a terrible mistake. A very bad idea. But that too faded away as he lost consciousness.