Veld had seen a lot of ugly things. He'd done a lot of ugly things, almost exclusively for ShinRa, little that it mattered. But he liked to think there were lines he'd draw. He'd drawn lines, hadn't he? A recent development, sure, but it still counted.

But no matter what he'd done, he wasn't this far gone.

He'd listened to Heidegger dance around the point far too long before his patience finally ran out and he started grilling him. And it became clear, then - fairly quickly - that while Heidegger knew more than bare bones detail, he wasn't exactly well versed. He knew aspects of the program, to be sure, knew them well, but he wasn't the brains behind it.

That, Veld had a sinking suspicion, had been Hojo. Who was very, very dead, and therefore unavailable for questioning.

But then, he knew Hojo. The man had quite possibly been even more obsessive about documentation than he was himself (quite a feat, likely only achieved by the fact that certain things Veld dealt with could never be written down) and would undoubtedly have had documentation on all this, too. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he might even find it. It was worth looking at least.

He let Maur sort through the digital, calling on whichever of his fellow Turks it felt most reasonable to, and took Vincent down with him to make an assessment of the hard copy.

There was a lot of hard copy, most of it non-applicable to Deepground or anything else Veld had particular interest in. One or two things were set aside for Rayleigh's review but mostly it was like shifting through a particularly morbid slush pile. (He was not enjoying the process.)

Neither was Vincent, though his only tells were minute shifts of expression, read just because Veld knew him that well. Funny how that hadn't changed, out of all the things that had. And honestly a bit of a relief.

They were there for hours, until time started to blur together and Veld very nearly considered breaking for a meal and some rest. Naturally, that was when they made a breakthrough - a cache of information, including profiles on the top operatives of the shadow organization that was Deepground.

Saying 'it was bad' was an understatement. Veld had known it would be bad. It was just so much worse than what he'd even dreamed.

He knew his history. He knew that the war with Wutai was just one of the most publicized wars, not the only one ShinRa had ever been involved in - usually on the sidelines, granted; they'd been a weapons dealer, en masse but still not the military force they'd grown into. They'd played both sides of various conflicts, pushing things ruthlessly for their own benefit even at the cost of countless lives. And their first forays into the military, pre-SOLDIER as the world knew it, had included some enhanced members. The legendary Lost Force, the true prototype of SOLDIER, where it all began, had been scrubbed from the history books and never really been a part of public memory. But he knew. And he knew the significance of what he was looking at.

"Were you around for anything with the early SOLDIERs, Vin?" Veld asked quietly, feeling him at his shoulder.

"If by 'around' you mean literally was I in the company, yes, it looks like I was," Vincent said. "If by around you mean did I know about this nightmare lurking under our feet like monsters under a child's bed, no. No I did not."

"So we're going in relatively blind, with Hojo's notes as a guide." It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Oh it gets better," Vincent said. He smiled thinly at Veld's look. "We have to tell SOLDIER."

Veld was not procrastinating. He was just taking time to make sure he knew as much as possible before bringing a bunch of hotheaded teenagers in on a delicate operation which was just good sense.

But he knew he had to make a move, and soon. On the one hand, Deepground had existed for decades, and would certainly sit for a while longer, but on the other, Heidegger was aware that he knew and his own conscience was being awfully noisy on the subject. Like he didn't have enough to deal with right now, now he had this.

Had he wished for a distraction, in the middle of everything? Surely he knew better. Karma was more than the name of his favorite pistol.

"You're over thinking," Vincent said, startling him out of his circling thoughts.

"I don't think that's possible in a situation this complex," Veld said.

Vincent eyed him a moment, then shook his head. "Definitely over thinking. Talk to me."

"I would like to point out the irony of this situation," Veld said, not quite complaining but not far from. Something about having Vincent back just stripped the years away and made it okay to let it go a little. He hadn't realized how much he'd needed that.

"Velllllld?" Vincent promised. "I'm waiting."

Veld sighed, running a hand back over his hair. "Not much to say. Just… trying to figure out how to best go forward with this."

"What needs done?" Vincent asked. "We can't do this solo, obviously. Reeve already knows and this is something SOLDIER deserves to know about."

"They're going to be livid," Veld predicted. "Absolutely livid."

"Of course they are, but not at us," Vincent said.

"They won't have a target," Veld said. "Rupert and Hojo are dead. Heidegger may pretend he knows the project but it's clear he's only skimmed the surface."

"Are you sure?" Vincent asked.

"I'm sure," Veld said. "Heidegger may have low standards for morality, but he's still got standards; there's no way he knows about all of this. And Scarlet may have supplied equipment, but this isn't her style either. So, no justified target, which leaves them loose, and one does not want SOLDIERs at loose ends."

"No, that's… inadvisable," Vincent agreed. "But if you can give them something to do, something to occupy them instead of letting them stew in their emotions, it ought to help."

"I'm not sure what we're doing yet," Veld said. "Let alone where I want to apply the SOLDIERs. My gut says this is a disaster waiting to happen if this isn't handled just so, and I'm not sure it's wrong."

"No, that's probably unfortunately correct." Vincent frowned thoughtfully, leaning into him a little. For a long moment, there was silence before he spoke again. "How long do you think you can put it off?"

"There's can and there's should and there is a very large gap between the two," Veld said.

"…how big a gap?"

Veld glanced up at him. "What are you planning?"

"Nothing, yet. I don't have a time frame," Vincent said.

"What are you wanting to plan," he corrected himself, because sometimes getting answers out of Vincent meant elaborate games of pinning him down with very precise wording.

Vincent side eyed him in a way that suggested he was contemplating being less than honest. At Veld's narrow-eyed stare, he merely gave a put-upon sigh.

"Vincent."

"It would help."

"What would help?" Veld pressed. "You can't go talk to SOLDIER. That has to come from me."

"But if it comes from me, then it sounds like we're trying to keep them in the loop discreetly - emphasis, I cannot add enough, on discretion."

"SOLDIERs are not particularly discreet," Veld said. "And they're especially not going to be when this train wreck comes to their attention. As soon as we tell them, we need a plan in place. We need a plan in place before we tell them, even, because they're going to want to act immediately and we have to be able to direct that energy or it's going to break loose and raise hell."

"Alright, so how much time are you giving them to process, then?" Vincent asked. "Work backwards."

"SOLDIERs are trained to make split-second decisions," Veld said. "But in this case, I'm hoping I can make the decision for them and they'll go along with it."

Vincent hummed thoughtfully, nodding. "And that decision is?"

"I'm going to let them come for the meeting with the board and Deepground's internal authorities - these Restrictors and the Tsviets," Veld said. "But they have to follow my lead."

"Fair enough," Vincent said. "I wish you luck."

He was going to need luck and then some, and he knew that from the moment he was facing the SOLDIERs down two hours later. It felt like nowhere near enough time, but really, he wasn't sure that it would ever feel like enough time. And the longer he waited, the worse it would be.

"Lookin' pretty grim, Director," Benji observed. "What's up?"

"Reeve and I made a recent discovery of an old project the President and Hojo had going," Veld said, watching them all go on guard at once, mako eyes piercing. A lesser man might have quailed. "Started well before I was the director, in fact."

Careful wording, so careful, so very deliberate. He had to play this right and he only had one shot at it.

"Unfortunately, Turks don't retire any more than SOLDIERs do, so when she passed the torch there wasn't exactly an instruction manual," Veld said.

"Yeaaaaah, feeling that," Zack muttered; he'd been in the same position - and that sympathy was part of what Veld was counting on. "So. What slipped past, and how'd you find it now?"

"We found it because Reeve ran into some funds going somewhere neither of us were familiar with," Veld said, which was the easier part. "What 'slipped past' was something called Deepground.

"Deepground both is and is not a portion of SOLDIER, in that it's made of former-SOLDIERs," Veld said, and he could feel the tension in the room rise as those bright eyes went brighter. Mako warning lights.

He pressed on, as if it didn't unnerve him. As if he was unaware of the very real threat represented.

"Well before any of us were a part of the company, there was a precursor to SOLDIER, enhanced forces that were… semi-successful, but nothing of the quality that you'd see in our current operatives," Veld said. "Wutai was not the first time we were involved in a war, merely the most high profile because we started it. And some of those pre-SOLDIERs went missing."

"Only they didn't," Kunsel said, far too quick putting things together. "Did they?"

"They were relocated into what became the Deepground program," Veld said. "I'm still learning about it, but I don't like what I've seen, and I know none of you are going to like it any better. In the interest of being up front with you, I thought it best to bring you in on the ground floor."

"Appreciated," Kunsel said evenly. "Details?"

It was a very unquestionlike question, because there was a tone of command there that Veld hadn't had directed at him by a SOLDIER since the trio had been around.

As inconvenient as it was in that moment… it gave him hope.

"I'll tell you everything I know," Veld said.