BOOK ONE: MIDGAR
ONE
This entire mess, or at least our part in it, all started with the attack on Mako Reactor 1 in Midgar. Back then, there was only Barret, Tifa, the original AVALANCHE crew—Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie—and me. I admit, I wasn't exactly thrilled when Tifa first offered me the job, but money had been getting pretty scarce what with Shinra's death grip on the economy. And Tifa could be damnably persistent when she wanted to be. At the time, I hadn't known why it had meant so much to her to keep me around, though it had been five years since we'd last seen each other. But I wondered if that was all there was to it.
Midgar itself was no picnic. Oh, the travel brochures and television ads all proclaimed it to be the greatest city in the world, where anyone could live like a king all thanks to Shinra's powerful new energy source, mako, which produced electricity more efficiently and cleanly than oil, coal, or other fuels ever could.
Of course, those ads would always show large pictures of pristine, well-kept avenues lined by glowing streetlights, and along those streets would be lots of luxurious apartment complexes and residential towers in front of which stood countless happy, content, and smiling families, all courtesy of Shinra, Inc.
As Barret will gladly tell you, that—like most everything else about Shinra—was nothing but a big, fat lie.
I wonder sometimes if people would still have moved to Midgar if those ads had shown the underside of the place, the beaten, run-down slums that didn't even have proper streets, just a bunch of muddy trails lined by mountains of discarded junk. Wood and metal shanties barely large enough to accommodate a single person usually housed three or four, and the air was always choked with a mess of unpleasant sounds and smells, most notably the stench of leaking mako, which in a lot of places was strong enough to make you gag if you tried to breathe too deeply, or even at all.
That was the world I found myself in late one afternoon, preparing myself for what I had thought would just be a simple bombing mission. Sneak in, plant the bomb, and sneak out.
Easy enough, or so I had believed, and I'd figured I'd get a decent amount of gil for it, too. Just a quick job to get some cash so I could get the hell out of this godforsaken city. Funny, though, how things tend to work out differently sometimes from what you want or what you think you want. According to an old mercenary's credo, no mission ever goes completely as planned.
In our case, it went straight to hell.
The train shot out of the tunnel and screeched to a halt next to the station, steam hissing out of it like the exhaled breath of some massive beast. I knelt above the shadowy juncture between two of the cars and eyed the platform as a pair of guards, bland fellows with crisp dark red uniforms, moved in to inspect the disembarking passengers.
Or so they thought.
Two figures, first one and then another, leapt down from the train and into the unsuspecting guards. The first tried to bring up his rifle, but a swift fist slammed into his nose by the larger of the two attackers quickly removed that option. The guard staggered backwards, his nose running red like a broken hydrant, and a second punch left him lying bonelessly on the concrete. His companion didn't fare any better as the other figure, a woman, thrust a booted, metal-shod foot solidly into his chest. The air whooshed out of his lungs as he dropped to the ground like a rag doll tossed by an angry child.
Wasting no time, the two assailants raced down the platform and hurried around a corner, flitting from shadow to shadow with barely a sound. A moment later, a third figure—a heavyset young man wearing a belt full of grenades around his waist—shambled out of the train and followed the others, and from the car behind me emerged the leader, a hulking, dark-skinned giant of a man.
He glanced indifferently at the two guards sprawled out upon the concrete as he headed onto the platform. Grunting with impatience, he turned and motioned to me with a sweep of his heavily muscled arm. A flaming skull tattoo grinned at me from one massive bicep. "C'mon, newcomer. Follow me."
Narrowing my eyes, I somersaulted down from my perch atop the train's roof and landed lightly on my toes. The leader of our little group was already disappearing around the corner up ahead as I searched the guards' pockets for anything that might be useful. They carried a few potions for emergencies, but that was all. I hadn't really expected much else. Call me a thief if you want, but when your life's on the line, all the niceties have a way of disappearing on you.
A pair of Shinra troopers in crisp blue uniforms and steel helmets suddenly emerged from around the corner where the others had gone, and I froze in midstep, falling instantly into a defensive crouch. At the sight of the motionless bodies of the unconscious guards, the troopers stopped at once and brandished their guns without a word, eyeing me distrustfully. Guess I'll have to do this the hard way. Reaching over my shoulder, I drew my sword as the troopers closed in.
I spun and ducked as one of the soldiers opened fire, and using my momentum, I sliced open his abdomen with a vicious backhand slash, then quickly reversed the stroke and impaled the second soldier before he could react. His gun slipped from his nerveless fingers and clattered onto the pavement as I carefully withdrew my sword from his chest. As the bodies collapsed limply to the ground, I hurried around the corner and ducked into a narrow alley, heading quickly toward the reactor, my eyes alert for any other unexpected visitors.
I slowed as I neared the gate leading to Sector 1, aware of the small group of figures huddled furtively around it. The first, a lean, muscular youth—Biggs was his name, I remembered—wearing dark green army fatigues, heavy boots, and a bright red headband that stood out sharply against his short brown hair, shifted from one foot to another and back again. His eyes immediately found the bloodstained sword I carried as I approached. "Wow! You're definitely from SOLDIER, alright! Hard to believe one of you guys joined up with a group like AVALANCHE."
"SOLDIER!?" It was the pretty young woman—Jessie—who spoke, her brown eyes glancing nervously at me. Not that I blamed her, really. "But aren't they the enemy? What's he doing here?"
Biggs shook his head. "He's not with them anymore, Jessie. He left Shinra and now he's with us."
With you? Only until I get my money, kid. I suppressed a snort and rested my hands on my sword hilt, the angled tip of Buster's wide blade poking against the concrete. Where the hell was Barret? Jessie watched me for a moment longer before pushing up the sleeves of the dark blue shirt she wore beneath her armored vest and turning back to the panel she'd been working on. Biggs didn't look much more trusting, though I hardly cared.
"I didn't catch your name…" he said. Would he not shut up?
"Cloud," I replied, hoping that would suffice.
He raised an eyebrow. Sometimes I wonder why my mother had to have picked that name. It's so… I don't know… girly. I've never liked it all that much.
"Cloud, eh? I'm—"
"I don't care what your name is," I snapped. "Once this job's over, I'm outta here."
Biggs frowned, started to reply, then abruptly shut his mouth and swallowed whatever it was he he had been about to say as Barret finally rushed up the alley to the gate, his dark-skinned face a thundercloud. "The hell you all think you're doin!?" he snarled. "I told you goddamn fools never to move in a group!"
On lookout duty and wearing a large red bandana over his tousled black hair, Wedge flinched at the reprimand while Biggs just swallowed and shuffled his feet even more nervously than before. Jessie continued working on the gate panel, but her face did redden a bit. What a bunch of amateurs. Were they really so inept? I sighed, then remembered that this was their first real mission. So they were just inexperienced. That didn't make me feel much better, though. But I had to put up with it if I wanted my money.
Scowling, Barret went on. "Our target's Mako Reactor 1. Meet on the bridge in front of it."
A flurry of sparks erupted within the panel Jessie was working on, and the towering metal gate slid open with a low mechanical hum. She, Biggs, and Wedge all raced through it into the gloomy shadows of the reactor compound, but Barret paused and looked at me over his broad shoulder. Brown eyes filled with an almost feverish intensity glared at me with an expression not unlike that of the two troopers I had fought earlier. "Ex-SOLDIER, huh? I don't trust ya!"
As if for emphasis, he hefted that massive gatling gun fused to his right arm where his hand should have been. A thick sleeve encased his forearm up to just past his elbow, and the arms of his brown jacket had been torn off long ago. Without another word, he stomped off after the others, his boots thudding heavily on the concrete as he headed further into the complex.
High above me and to the left, the reactor itself loomed overhead like some bloated giant beneath a vast canopy of dark, billowing clouds that shrouded the city in a deep, endless gloom. Tightening my fingers around my sword hilt, I grimaced and moved on.
Damn, but that's a long way down.
I was standin' in front of the reactor entrance lookin' out over the side of the narrow, T-shaped bridge at the near two-hundred-foot drop down into the slums. Dunno why, but heights like that always make me shiver. That goddamn mako stench, like some badly made mixture of alcohol, bleach, an' ammonia, was eatin' away at my nose along with all the smog swirlin' everywhere.
At the far end of the bridge's short arm, Wedge was doin' his usual job as lookout, keepin' our escape route secure. The exit over there led out into Sector 8, an' from there we'd be hitchin' a ride on the train an' headin' back down to the slums in Sector 7. The reactor entrance stood open an' waitin' for us at the long end of the bridge.
I glanced back the way I'd come from while Biggs an' Jessie headed on inside, but Cloud still hadn't shown up yet. That goddamn kid was probably takin' his sweet time gettin' here, but I wasn't goin' no further 'til I knew he was still comin'. I didn't wanna be havin' any unexpected surprises, you know. Like a squad of Shinra soldiers or somethin'. I was jus' about to go look for him when he ran onto the bridge.
"Where the hell have ya been, Cloud?" I growled, fixin' him with a stony glare. "We ain't got no time for games!"
He shrugged. "I had a bit of a disagreement with some guard dogs. They lost."
I'd had to blast through some of them furry bastards myself on the way in, an' I didn't wanna know what kinda weird shit Shinra had done to 'em. Callin' 'em dogs was a kindness. Bloodthirsty death hounds was more like it, with sharp teeth like knife blades an' hooked claws instead of toenails.
"Well if you're done screwin' around out here, then let's get goin'!"
He swept arm toward the reactor. "After you."
Inside, Biggs an' Jessie were already workin' to disarm the lock on the first door, inputtin' them encrypted access codes we'd stolen earlier. Jess was a smart girl, always comin' up with some new gadget or other, an' she looked up to Tifa like the big sister she'd never had. It was Jessie who'd actually put together the bomb for our little operation. It wasn't much, but she'd promised it would get the job done.
Jessie had lived topside on the plate for most of her life, from what she'd told me. Her dad was some sorta corporate bigwig that she never got along with, and her mom had died in a train accident about a year ago. Jess had found herself alone down in the slums not long after that, but how she got there or why, she wouldn't say. There was a lot more to it than she was lettin' on, I was damn sure, but I didn't have a clue what it might be. Jessie had never once done us wrong, though, an' she had a good heart, so I wasn't gonna waste time worryin' about it. I knew she'd talk 'bout it when she was ready.
Biggs an' his little sister grew up in the slums an' played together in that spooky-ass Train Graveyard all the damn time. Caused their mom all kinds of grief with all the mischief they'd get into. Eventually she got sick and died from a bad flu that could've been treated if they'd had any money. Damned Shinra had bled 'em dry by then, so Biggs an' his sister hadn't had any choice but to fend for themselves. He'd been lookin' out for her ever since, an' he joined up with me to try an' help make things better for her an' everyone else down in the slums.
He an' Jessie were good kids an' decent fighters, but Shinra soldiers were much stronger an' faster than a few train guards. That was why I'd agreed to let that damn fool kid take the job. He claimed he could fight an' had been in SOLDIER, but I was gonna wait 'til I saw him in action to decide whether he was for real or not.
That he'd been in SOLDIER, I didn't doubt. No one else had them glowin' eyes. But what bothered me was that he'd said he had left. From what I knew of the Shinra, I didn't think they'd let one of their precious SOLDIER troops go that easily. They did some kinda weird shit to 'em with the mako that made 'em way more powerful than ordinary Shinra guards. Wasn't too sure I really wanted to know what that was, though. Goddamn unnatural, if ya ask me.
Finally, the kid strode through the entrance, that narrow face of his havin' all the expression of a brick wall. He wore one of them fancy-ass SOLDIER uniforms—dark baggy pants, a sleeveless black shirt, a wide belt, a pair of tough leather boots, and a studded shoulder guard. In his hands was the biggest goddamn sword I'd ever seen—had to have been almost as big as he was—with a couple of them weird-ass materia orbs in it, an' I had to wonder how he could possibly lift the goddamn thing what with how skinny he looked. Probably all that SOLDIER training. Let's hope it pays off tonight.
"Yo! This your first time in a reactor?" I asked.
Cloud shook his spikey head. "I worked for Shinra, remember? Do the math."
You goddamn right I remember, an' I ain't about to forget it, either! Friggin' smart-ass! Tifa had said I could trust him, but I wasn't too sure. Maybe he'd been her friend once, like she'd told me, but I couldn't see it myself. He was from Shinra, an' that was enough for me.
All of them Shinra bastards were friggin' killers an' thieves stealing the Planet's life for their own goddamn profit. There was no way in hell I would ever trust one of 'em. I scowled, not likin' what I had to do, but Tifa had made me promise to give Cloud a chance. And she don't take no for an answer.
"The Planet's full of mako energy," I told him. "People use it all the time, but they got no clue what it is. How 'bout you?"
He shrugged. I'd thought as much, so I went on. "Alright, listen up. Mako's the lifeblood of the planet, but Shinra keeps suckin' it dry with these damn machines."
"I'm not here for your speeches," Cloud snapped. "Let's just get on with it."
Don't he see what the hell's happenin'? He was probably jus' thinkin' about his money. Well, he'd get it an' get out, friend of Tifa or no friend of Tifa. If he'd ever been that in the first place. I was doubtin' that now. A kid like Cloud wouldn't know what a friend was, much less have any. Tifa must've been wrong about him. She had to have been.
"Alright. But from now on, you stay where I can see ya!"
Cloud shrugged an' nodded but didn't say anythin'. It was probably the smartest thing I'd seen him do ever since we got here. If he decided to get all uppity again, I figured I'd smack him upside that blond spiky-haired head of his no matter what Tifa would say later. Damn kid looks like he took groomin' lessons from a porcupine.
Beside me, the door slid open an' Biggs an' Jessie sped into the next room. Cloud followed on cat's feet, an' I brought up the rear, hopin' the others hadn't alerted any of the roboguards. We'd been lucky so far, but I knew it was only a matter of time.
Shinra's security 'bots had regular patrols that swept through each section of the reactor, an' the droids were programmed to take out any intruders they found. I didn't think we'd have much trouble with 'em, but if they caught us, they'd probably try an' sound an alert that would bring Shinra guards an' maybe SOLDIER troops as well.
As it turned out, though, the room was empty except for Biggs and Jessie, who were already busy unlockin' the next door. So far, the codes Jess had hacked off the Shinra mainframe were workin' out as planned, but the real test would come later on. If the alarms did go off, the doors would lock again an' the security passcodes would reset to try an' keep us from gettin' outta here.
Cloud took point as we moved through the second door, Jessie was in the middle, an' I came up last again. Biggs stayed behind to keep the doors open for our escape. With a little rewirin' of the lock panels, he'd be able to deactivate them automatic security measures that the alarms would set off. I hoped that it wouldn't come to that, but I doubted we'd be able to get ourselves outta here without any trouble. Shinra might've been ruthless, but they weren't stupid.
The next room was deserted too, but a small side passage led off to the right. Not takin' any chances, I stopped an' motioned for the others to hold up for a moment while I went an' checked it out. It led over to a small control room, not much more than a closet, really.
No guards or mechs were there, so I did a quick look around to see if there was anythin' we could use. On a shelf on the back wall, I found an emergency medkit with a pouch of phoenix down inside. The little feathers worked kinda like smellin' salts, so if someone got their damn fool selves knocked out while we was in here, the phoenix down would wake 'em right back up.
Once I rejoined Cloud an' Jessie, we went into the elevator over on the far wall. The reactor core was at least several levels below us at the bottom of this damn furnace. That's where the liquid mako was drawn up into the system an' converted into the electricity that powered both the upper city an' all the slums sprawled out underneath it. There were eight reactors in all in Midgar, an' if I'd had my way back then, I'd have torched every single one of 'em.
The soft, steady humming of the elevator was the only sound as we descended deeper inside the reactor complex. Barret scowled at me but said nothing. I was getting tired of his preaching, but I figured I'd have to suffer through it a little longer at least until this mission was over. To my right, Jessie stood quietly over in one corner, staring intently above the doors at the level indicator.
Barret looked at his gatling gun, then glanced back up at me. That frown was still there, almost as if it was a permanent fixture within that bearded, craggy face of his. Irritation was probably his normal state of mind. He growled as he started talking, that rough, low baritone of his really getting on my nerves. "The reactors are slowly drainin' away the planet's life, little by little. An' someday, that'll be that."
So? I should care? I shrugged. "Not my problem."
"Don't ya get it, Cloud? The planet's gonna die!" Barret exploded as he threw his huge arms up in the air. "Them Shinra bastards are killin' it! Don't that matter to ya at all?"
"Stow it, Barret. All that matters to me is finishing this job before security gets here."
Barret snarled, clenched his good hand into a tight fist, and turned around, glaring darkly at me over his shoulder and shaking with barely restrained rage. He started to say something else, probably to spew out more of his self-righteous save-the-planet crap, but then shut it again, muttering curses to himself under his breath instead.
A few moments later, the elevator doors slid open, and we stepped out into a vast chamber divided into several levels. We stood on a large square platform bordered by high stone walls rising behind and to the left of us, and to the right and in front by a metal railing that ran along the two open sides which dropped away into the lower part of the huge chamber. From behind the low dome of the overseer's office roughly a dozen or so yards away, four Grunt-class roboguards shambled toward us like mechanical zombies, their claws sparking with electricity.
"Unauthorized personnel detected. Surrender or be met with lethal force. Resistance is futile."
"Like hell it is!" Barret yelled as he opened up with his gatling gun, bullets punching through the air like a madman's typewriter.
One of the Grunts toppled drunkenly and collapsed, riddled with dozens of smoking black holes, as I rushed toward the remaining three. Fortunately they hadn't sounded the alarm yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time. As long as the Grunts were still functional, that was. I intended to see that they weren't.
I quickly dove to the side to avoid the sudden hail of blue energy bolts the roboguards spewed my way, and with a deft spin I swiftly cut the legs out from under one of the them, Buster's foot-wide blade easily slicing right through the shoddy metal plating that encased the limbs. Seemed like Shinra was too cheap to even build proper security droids, not that that was any real surprise to me.
A small black disc about the size of a hockey puck suddenly rolled into view, speeding right toward the other two roboguards. The droids hadn't yet recognized the threat, but I sure as hell did. I leaped over the railing onto the stairs below and ducked just as Jessie's explosive turned the part of the mid-level platform where the Grunts were standing into a blazing inferno, totally incinerating them in a deafening thunderclap of fire, smoke, and sound.
The air stank of scorched metal and wiring as I made my way back up to the platform to rejoin Barret and Jessie. A few scattered pieces of blackened metal, some still smoldering from the blast, were all that was left of the droids. A haze of smoke drifted through the air, making my lungs itch, but somehow I resisted the urge to cough.
"That all you got, Shinra?" Barret sneered, jabbing his gun-arm in the direction of the destroyed roboguards. "Gonna hafta do a helluva lot better than that to take me down!"
Jessie grinned at me as she headed across the platform. "How'd you like my little toy, Cloud? I've got a few others if we run into any more trouble down here."
"Not bad," I nodded. "Let's keep moving."
Without waiting for the others to follow, I moved past the elevator and started down the metal staircase, but it wasn't all that long before I heard Barret's heavy footfalls on the stairs behind me along with Jessie's lighter ones. Barret didn't seem to have a clue what stealth was. Myself, I crept down the stairs as quietly as I could, not wanting to encounter another patrol, but I kept Buster ready in my hands nevertheless as we continued our descent.
A massive pipe about twice as big around as Barret ran parallel to the stairs as we headed further down, and from time to time I slid my eyes over in that direction to make sure nothing was hiding behind it. Halfway down, the stairs bent sharply to the right, following the corner of the platform above us, while the pipe delved beneath the floor of the chamber and continued much further down to connect with the mako processing vats deeper in the facility.
Finally reaching the bottom of the stairs after numerous twists and turns on the way down, we went through an open doorway ahead of us and into a smaller chamber filled with a twisting labyrinth of pipes and girders. A narrow ledge no more than a few feet wide ran out from the doorway along the left-hand wall, and I made my way carefully along it as best I could, Barret and Jessie following close behind me. The mako vats churned endlessly a few hundred feet beneath us, the acrid stench wrinkling my nose even from up here. I hate that smell. My nose curls up just thinking about it.
A small black shape suddenly darted into view from just below us, scattering my thoughts like leaves in the wind and hovering in midair for a moment before launching itself at Jessie like a missile. I lashed out with Buster one-handed, using the other one to keep myself steady on the ledge, but the flying sentry slid in beneath the arc of my swing and rammed itself into Jessie's midsection. She managed to hurl it away but nearly lost her balance in the process. I shot my arm out in front of her and pushed her back up against the wall as Barret opened fire and blew the little droid apart.
But then there were a lot more. Looking like a swarm of little black squids with bulbous red heads, five of the overgrown mechanical gnats flew out from behind pipes or beneath girders and closed in around us. By themselves, they weren't much of a threat, but in groups they could be trouble, as they were now.
"Damn!" Barret growled. "How many of these things are there?"
I grimaced. "Too many. But I've got an idea."
"You better make it quick, SOLDIER boy, 'cause we ain't got much time!" Barret punctuated that statement with a second blast of gunfire, scrapping another of the flying droids.
Ignoring him for the moment, I gripped Buster in both hands and concentrated only on the Lightning materia embedded inside the base of the blade. The green orb pulsed with light as I drew out its magical energy and focused it upon the Mono Drive sentries that continued to dive at us like a flock of frenzied birds. One of them struck the wall less than a foot from my head, but I barely even noticed. You have to block out everything, and I mean everything, when you use materia like this, otherwise you could potentially lose the spell if something breaks your concentration.
I slid my sword over my shoulder and threw both arms out in front of me as the familiar heat raced through my blood like a firestorm and the magic flowed through me. A bright blue fork of electricity shot out from my hands and ripped through each of those pesky Mono Drives in a series of small explosions that split across the air one after another and left it stinking as much of ozone and burnt metal as it did of mako. Not much of an improvement, if you ask me.
"Cool!" Jessie chirped. "I've heard about materia, but I never saw it in action before. Until now, anyway."
I shrugged. "It wasn't much."
We reached the end of the ledge and climbed down a nearby pipe onto which a metal ladder had been attached. The pipe stretched down at an angle to a long set of thick iron girders that stretched across the width of the chamber from wall to wall, and another ladder descended out of sight from a small square platform resting on top of a thick pipe that curved away and back into the wall several feet beneath the ledge. I was just heading over to the second ladder when I realized that Jessie had stopped and taken up a position at the far end of the girder instead of following after me.
I frowned. "You're not coming?"
"Sorry, Cloud, it's just that that bugger took more out of me than I thought. I'll be alright, but I don't want to slow you down."
"No problem," I told her. "Think you can spare one of those bombs of yours? I have a feeling they might come in handy. Never know what we might run into down there."
She smiled as she handed me one of her black discs. "Sure! Glad I could help!"
"You holler at us if you hear anythin' comin' our way, Jess," Barret added. "Watch our backs."
"Right! Now get on down there and plant the bomb. I'll be waiting here for you guys."
Barret and I left her at the end of the girder and climbed down the ladder, heading deeper into the chamber and making our way through more pipes and ladders until we finally got as far down as we could go. I moved over to the railing of the wide catwalk, peering over the side at the bright emerald sea of liquid mako swirling below. Something about these reactors always bothered me, feelings of disquiet and unease that wouldn't leave no matter how hard I tried to ignore them. Maybe it was the oppressive gloom hanging all over the place, or the heaviness of the air, like the whole structure was frowning down at me. I didn't know, but I'd be glad when we were finally out of here.
We headed across the long catwalk over to the reactor core, a huge mechanism made up of pipes, dials, several reinforced steel beams, and who knew what else. The thing dominated the entire wall and seemed to rise up from the mako itself. The control panel was a complex array of keypads and buttons, and above it was a large metal wheel, probably for controlling the pressure levels in the reactor. Far above us, the high ceiling rose into a nest of murky shadows.
"When we blow this place up," Barret growled, "there ain't gonna be nothin' left. You set the bomb, Cloud."
He tossed me what was undoubtedly another of Jessie's homemade explosives, only this one was different. It was a large block of wires and plastique fitted with a digital timer on the front and a one-way arming switch. That meant that once it was activated, there was no turning it off or resetting it.
I frowned. "Isn't this your job?"
"Jus' do it! I'm gonna watch to make sure you don't pull nothin'."
"Fine, have it your way," I sighed.
Barret was grumbling under his breath again, but I put him out of my mind and turned back to the control panel. It wouldn't be too hard to plant the bomb, it was doing it without setting off the core's internal security alarms that was the trick.
I'd have to either find a way to disable the scanners—which would take longer than I would have liked, since I wasn't too familiar with the system—or I could try bypass them entirely, which was riskier but also easier and had a much better chance of success. I found myself wishing Jessie had come with us. She would surely have known the best way to go about this task, but since she wasn't here now, it fell to me to get the job done. Lucky me.
I had just started to slide my fingers across the controls when pain suddenly exploded inside my head as though someone had clamped it inside a vise and started to squeeze. At the time, I honestly thought my skull was going to crack right open like an egg. I grabbed my temples, dropping the bomb in process, but I hardly cared. All I was aware of in that moment was pain, far worse than anything I had felt before, raging inside my head like a beast.
— Wake up! This is more than just a reactor. —
I heard the voice clearly in my mind, but whether it was real or just imagined, I didn't know. When it spoke, the pain vanished as strangely and abruptly as it had appeared. I blinked, trying to remember where I was and what the hell I was doing. My brain seemed to have just gone to sleep. I shook my head to try and clear out some of the cobwebs still lingering inside my mind, but it was still foggy, like early morning mist hovering over the ground.
What the hell just happened?
"You okay, Cloud?" barked a gruff voice that I dimly recognized as Barret's. "Don't you start freakin' out on me, you hear?"
It was enough to jolt me back to my senses, which had likely been his intention all along. Barret stood like an overgrown bulldog, glaring at me impatiently. Not that it mattered much since he'd been doing that basically all night anyway, but at least it was a reminder that I was back in the real world again.
I nodded. "Yeah, sorry."
"Jus' get on with it!" Barret griped. "Goddamn weird-ass kid…"
Ignoring him, I knelt to retrieve the bomb from where I'd dropped it earlier, and I had just picked it back up when I noticed a tiny sparkle out of the corner of my eye. At first I thought I was imagining things, but then I noticed the small materia orb that had rolled into the corner underneath the control panel. I reached in there and grabbed it, taking a moment to look it over. Like most materia, it was about the size of a tennis ball and as smooth and as shiny as polished glass. It glowed with the bright green aura of magic, but there wasn't time to figure out what kind. I slipped the materia into my pocket and turned my attention to the reactor controls once again.
It wasn't all that hard to get around the core's internal scanners, but sooner or later they'd find the bomb. Hopefully we'd be on our way out of here by then, but I couldn't be sure.
Once I had done as much with the core's controls as I could, I took the bomb, stuck it onto the underside of the panel, and powered it up. After just a moment's thought, I set the timer for 20:00 and flipped the arming switch. No turning back now.
As the countdown started, I backed away from the core. "Alright, let's get the hell out of here!"
We had taken no more than a few steps, though, when the security alarms suddenly shrieked to life. Damn! How the hell did they find it so fast? I drew Buster and started running again, remembering the bomb, but froze in midstep when a loud rumbling suddenly drowned out the wailing alarm klaxons as something huge and metallic scuttled down the wall from the ceiling at the opposite end of the catwalk and headed straight toward us.
"Heads up!" Barret yelled. "Here it comes!"
The thing looked, as best I can remember, like a huge red scorpion. It moved about on six legs and sported a pair of claw-like arm cannons as well as a nasty-looking tail, and it also had a pair of green eyes that served as targeting scanners. A swirl of bluish-green energy swept over me as the creature locked on, and a split second later, the arm cannons spat out a stream of bullets in my direction. I dove aside and just barely managed to avoid getting shot.
I could hear Barret responding with a volley of his own, and while he had the creature distracted, I rushed in and sliced at its midsection. Sparks crackled and flew, but I hadn't hit anything vulnerable yet. This junk heap was tougher than I'd thought. No doubt a product of Shinra's infamous Weapons Development Division, the guard scorpion was the big bully of this place and was going to take more than few hits to take down before this was all over.
Dodging another stream of gunfire from the thing's arm cannons, I rolled away and brought the Lightning materia to bear upon it. Since the scorpion was basically just a big machine, I figured that shocking it might really do some damage. I took a deep breath and strove to ignore all the commotion going on around me just long enough to draw upon the magic. Sound faded away, and there was, for a moment, nothing in my mind but silence.
Thrusting both of my arms out in front of me, I lashed out with a crackling bolt of electricity.
There was something like an explosion in my ears, or at least that's what it sounded like—it was probably the lightning, now that I think about it—and suddenly I was back in the world again. A fork of bright blue electricity shot through the scorpion, blowing panels off the sides and sending puffs of black smoke floating up into the air. That walking pile of scrap metal didn't go down, though. Not yet, anyway.
Barret was still shooting, leaving a trail of smoking holes along the scorpion's dark red plating, but he didn't seem to have had much luck hitting anything vital yet, either. I readied Buster and charged in again, this time cutting low. A moment later, one of the thing's legs clattered to the ground, neatly severed. I knew I wouldn't have to cut all of them, just enough to push it off balance.
Something sharp suddenly lashed out at me, and I had to jump to the side to get away from it. Even so, I felt a sharp sting as it grazed my shoulder. I'd forgotten all about that damn tail, and apparently so had Barret. He backpedaled away from it and managed to avoid getting hit, firing off a few rounds as he got out of range. The tail didn't follow us, though, but hovered over the scorpion's body instead.
I went for another leg, on the same side as the first one I'd cut, and in the background Barret was spitting bullets again. This time, I leaped up and brought Buster straight down in an overhead chop directly over the joint. The scorpion lurched to the right, but somehow it still held. I was just about to start working on a third leg when a powerful energy beam suddenly shot out from the tip of the thing's tail and swept across the width of the catwalk, knocking both of us off our feet and the wind from our bodies.
I jumped up, my body aching from being hurled onto the floor like an angry child's toy. "Watch it, Barret! Don't attack it while the tail's up! It'll counterattack with its laser if you do!"
"Now you tell me!" he spat as he stood. "Jus' shut up and bust the goddamn thing, will ya?"
I slid in low and sliced off that third leg this time, rolling away just as the scorpion collapsed. The arm cannons fired my way again, and I had to dive to the right to get out of the way. But as I did so, something slipped out of my pocket and fell to the floor.
I scooped it back up and saw that it was the bomb Jessie had given to me earlier. The beginnings of an idea started forming in my mind as I turned the little black disc over and over in my hand.
A glance in Barret's direction told me that he was taking advantage of the guard scorpion's sudden vulnerability. Instead of bullets, what he fired out of his gun-arm now was a single fiery blast that smashed into the huge machine and blew one of its arm cannons right off. The other twitched feebly and tried to shoot, but it couldn't lock onto either of us. Barret's big fireball must have knocked it out of alignment. Either way, it was time to finish this.
"Barret!" I called, holding up the disc. "Time to leave!"
He nodded, pausing to fish something out of the scorpion's severed cannon, then ran like mad toward the far end of the catwalk, where the ladder would take us back up to the exit. Depressing the arming switch on the bomb, I tossed the flattened black disc into the thing's smoking chassis and dove back toward the reactor core just in time to avoid the deafening explosion that ripped across the catwalk.
Thunder flooded my ears and smoke stung at my eyes, but when I looked up again, there was nothing left except for a smoldering husk of scorched metal and wiring that still sparked here and there. Small fires burned amdist the rubble, and when I glanced over the railing, I could see a few scattered bits of debris floating in the liquid mako like the last remnants of a shipwreck.
"Yo, Cloud!" Barret's voice jerked me out of my thoughts. "Better get that skinny ass of yours movin', you hear? This place is gonna blow any second now!"
My eyes widened as I glanced at the core and the bomb I'd attached to it. The digital timer, which had read 20:00 just before our battle with the scorpion, now read less than 10:00. Shit! Only ten minutes? That left us barely enough time to get the hell out of here before the whole place went up. I considered trying to reset the timer but quickly abandoned the idea, remembering it was a one-way ticket.
I rushed back across the catwalk and followed Barret up the ladder into the maze of pipes and girders above us. They twisted and turned about each other like a demented puzzle, and I had to wonder what the Shinra engineers had been thinking when they'd built this place. Barret and I made our way carefully through the maze as best we could until, after climbing up another ladder, we returned to the thick set of girders where we had left Jessie.
She smiled and waved as soon as she saw us. "Hey, guys! Great job down there!"
"We ain't outta here yet!" Barret said, and for once I actually agreed with him.
We were just heading toward the last pipe and the ladder attached to it when a deep rumble suddenly shook the entire reactor complex. If that was the bomb just starting to go off, then there was even less time left than I had thought.
I grabbed onto the side of the ladder to steady myself, and Barret managed to stay on his feet as well. Jessie wasn't quite so lucky, though. She let out a startled shriek and tumbled forward across the girder, her arms spread out ahead of her.
"Jess, you alright?" Barret called out.
She seemed to be, more or less. But when she tried to stand up and move, she only managed a weak half-step before she winced and fell to her knees. At first I wasn't sure what was wrong with her, but when she started frantically tugging and pulling at her right foot, I saw the truth of her situation clearly enough.
"Damn!" she muttered. "My leg's stuck! It hurts like hell!"
Jessie's right foot and lower leg had gotten wedged right into one of the diamond-shaped gaps in the girder almost up to her knee when she had fallen, and in the process, her right ankle had bent itself almost out of shape. It was almost certainly sprained, and she was lucky she hadn't broken it. She'd have to have Tifa look at it once we got out of here and back down to the slums, though.
I knelt down in front of Jessie and gently grasped her stuck leg just below the knee. I didn't move it right away, wanting to get a better look first at how she'd gotten it wedged into that odd hole. It seemed like her leg and foot had just slipped right through it when she had fallen, and the impact must have slammed her ankle against the side of one of the crossbars as it went through and twisted it. That had to have been what was holding her now and keeping her stuck.
"Hold still," I glanced at Jessie and handed her one of the potions I had found on the guards earlier. "Drink this, it'll help with the pain. I'll get you out."
She nodded and did as I'd said, though I could feel her tensing up. I blocked out the blaring alarm klaxons and the rumbling deep within the reactor and focused only on what I had to do. Adjusting my grip so that one hand remained under Jessie's knee while the other grasped her swollen ankle, I pulled and turned her leg a little at a time, adjusting its position as I went so that it would clear the gap. It seemed like it took hours, but really it was only a minute or so before I finally got her foot out of the hole and helped her stand up again.
The reactor shook as another ominous rumble passed through it, and I had to catch Jessie before she fell over again. I barely managed to keep my own footing as it was. This whole place was getting ready to fall apart around our ears, and a quick glance down at the depths didn't ease my mind any. I didn't want to think about how much time we had left. All I knew was that it was running out, and fast.
Barret motioned to us with his gun-arm. "Alright, move it, people! Unless you'd rather fry!"
None of us did, so we hurried up the ladder and across the narrow ledge toward the open doorway, Jessie with one arm wrapped around my shoulder and one of mine around her waist as I helped her along as quickly as I could. None of those flying droids attacked us this time. I doubt we could have stopped to fight them anyway, but fortunately we never had to find out.
We hurried through the doorway and practically flew up that long staircase toward the main platform, Barret in the lead and myself at the rear with Jessie now limping between us but still managing to keep up. She was tough, I had to give her that. Potions can take the edge off the pain and provide some healing, but even they have limits.
We were just turning the last corner near the top of the stairs when a sudden tremor shook the whole chamber and slammed us against the railing. The bomb had just gone off, and the explosion began blasting up through the floor fifty feet below us in huge tongues of flame. There was a groan of metal and a snap as the railing behind Jessie suddenly broke apart as she collided with it, sending her plummeting toward the fiery hellscape below us.
"Cloud!" she screamed, her eyes wide with terror. "Help!"
I seized her wrist with both hands just before she fell out of reach. "I've got you! Just hang on!"
Beneath her, the floor was falling away in large chunks and taking everything else with it as the fire burst through and surged up the walls as though it was a living thing. The acrid stench of burning mako hung in the air, and the roar of the inferno filled my ears. Terror filled Jessie's face as she hung precariously over the firestorm, the orange glow of the blaze reflected in her soft brown eyes. She was starting to slip away, but I wasn't about to let go.
I pulled as hard as I could, and when she was close enough, Barret reached down and took her other hand, and together we helped her get back up onto the stairs. Then we hurried the rest of the way up to the platform and rushed into the elevator. I hit the button for the top level, and the lift started its ascent. It wouldn't be long before we'd be racing the flames out of here, and I could only hope that we'd come out on top in that contest. Second place wasn't going to cut it.
The level indicator beeped just a few moments later as we reached the first level. As soon as the doors opened, we hurried out. Biggs was still there waiting for us, and I doubted he'd moved so much as a single inch since we'd left. There was no need for any words, though, he knew just as well as we did what was happening. The four of us sped through the first level of the reactor, Biggs and Jessie quickly decoding the door locks one after another as we went.
An angry orange glow suddenly erupted not all that far behind us, and I glanced back to see billowing walls of flame hungrily consuming everything in sight. Doors and walls just vanished, tables and control panels were simply vaporized in an instant. The roaring of the inferno drowned out almost everything else except for the ear-popping bang of exploding metal and glass all around us. The fire was catching up to us even faster than I had anticipated.
Then the reactor's main entrance was in front of me, and I charged through, the others behind or beside me. I ran across the long arm of the bridge, taking Jessie's hand in mine and pulling her back to her feet when her ankle gave out on her. We made a hard right and rushed over to where Wedge was waiting for us. For once, I was actually glad to see his pudgy face as he beckoned us through the open gate leading out of the complex. With Barret taking the lead, the five of us ran outside and dove into the gloom of a darkened tunnel as the reactor exploded into a blazing fireball behind us.