Warning: This fic contains less-than-pristine language, violence, and non-explicit adult themes.

All But Blood

Chapter 2

by Krista Perry

Cloud has stopped screaming. And still, I keep my eyes tightly closed. I know what I'll see if I open them. I've seen it before, too many times. The memory, the gruesome mental picture floating in my head... of skin bled white, table and walls dripping scarlet, broken, bruised limbs, and blankly staring Mako-blue eyes...

That sight once branded into my brain is more than enough. I don't want to see it again, not with my real eyes. Not when I still can feel my own sanity skittering wildly along the razor edge of the abyss, desperately trying to find purchase before plunging into the depths.

Even within my sealed cylinder prison, I think I can smell the blood. And the sudden absence of Cloud's screams of agony leaves a ringing silence that fills the laboratory; silence so electric, I can almost feel it dancing across the surface of my bare skin.

And in the silence, I listen carefully. I always listen. I always keep my eyes closed, and listen when the screaming stops, because maybe, in whatever post-torture discussion that follows between Hojo and his subordinates, I might discover more about the true purpose of Hojo's crazy, inhumane experiments.

I have my suspicions. Over five years, I've gotten some pretty damn good clues, even though Hojo tries to keep all his cards close to his chest; even though he's got a poker face better than any gambler I ever played against.

But this is no game. The stakes are too high, and my suspicions are too crazy. Too horrible. Too terrifying to be real. And I hope that I'm not yet so far gone as to not be able to distinguish what is real... and what might just be the paranoid delusions of a mind kept too long a captive, in circumstances that would disintegrate the strongest man's soul.

Then the silence is finally broken by a shuddering, deep breath.

"Is... is he..." The trembling voice belongs to one of Hojo's flunkies. Simmons, the balding one, if I remember right. He keeps swallowing hard. Probably trying not to throw up, is my guess. "Is he still... alive?" he finally manages.

"Of course he is, idiot." Hojo's voice is icy calm. No surprise here. Only that cold-blooded bastard could stand in the middle of a gore-splattered room and remain unaffected. He snorts derisively. "And you call yourself a scientist. If he were dead, the glow of Mako would have left his eyes."

"Oh... right. Sorry, sir, I..."

"But look," Hojo continues abruptly, ignoring his flunky's apology. "I do believe that's the brightest I've ever seen them glow. You can barely see his pupils." He clucks his tongue clinically. "As I thought. The Mako and the Jenova cells are reacting to the massive physical trauma. His body won't let him die. It's already working to heal him - and look, the shallow parallel cuts across his cheeks from the beginning of the procedure are already closed up." Hojo's voice is growing more and more excited - the way it always does when he considers an experiment a success. "See? Wipe the blood away, and there's nothing. Not even a scar."

A gasp. "That's... amazing, sir."

"It is exactly as I predicted. At this rate, Specimen B will be completely recovered within 72 hours, without the aid of a Cure spell. The blood loss, the broken bones and internal trauma - everything will be restored without a trace of injury. He'll be as good as new." He pauses. "Better than new."

So Cloud will live, in spite of being methodically sliced and diced to the point of death. I'm not really surprised. Hojo isn't so careless in his sadism as to kill off one of his prized specimens.

I'm not really sure how to feel. Relieved, maybe. Cloud is my best friend, after all. But Hojo's words leave me chilled to the core, and I can't help but wonder if survival in this instance is really a better thing than death.

And suddenly I hear the familiar scratch of a pen on paper. Hojo's usual post-experiment ritual of scribbling pages and pages of notes.

Damn. That means the conversation is over. So much for learning anything new this time around.

Simmons clears his throat nervously.

"What is it?" Hojo snaps. "Can't you see I'm busy? Do something useful. Put Specimen B back into his container, and clean up this mess."

The flunky swallows. "Uh... by myself, sir?"

"Do you see me talking to anyone else?"

"N-no sir."

"Then get to it. Oh, and by the way, if you happen to see that pasty-faced, weak-bellied Hadley before I do, tell him that he's fired. Anyone who doesn't have the stomach for a simple medical procedure shouldn't claim to be a scientist."

Ah. Hadley must have been the flunky that I heard puking about halfway through. He must not have stuck around for the rest of the "simple medical procedure."

Another swallow from balding Simmons. "Yes sir. But... I've been meaning to ask..."

Even with my eyes closed, I can almost feel Hojo glaring over his dark-lensed glasses. He doesn't like to be interrupted when he's writing his post-experiment notes. "Spit it out."

"Well..." Simmons says quickly, "Specimen B has both Jenova and Mako working as symbionts within his body, and I was just wondering... How can you tell which part of his healing is the result of Mako, and which part is the result of Jenova, especially if both specimens are-?"

"They work in tandem," Hojo interrupts, his tone careless and annoyed. "The Mako is the energy. The power source. Jenova is the will that directs and focuses the Mako in the body and accelerates the healing. If you haven't figured that out, you are hopeless. Now stop wasting my time and get to work."

My breath catches in my throat, and my fists clench, knuckle-white.

The will that directs..?

I knew it. Shit. I knew it...

I hear the quick click of boot heels on the stone floor, walking over to the cylinder next to mine. The hiss of the cylinder door sliding open. Footsteps back to the table. The scrape and snap of metal restraints being released. The flunky's grunt as he hefts the dead-weight of Cloud's limp body.

And all the while, Hojo is scribbling his secrets on that notepad of his.

"I'll be down in the library," Hojo says suddenly. "When you're done here, come get me, and we'll begin the tests on Specimen A."

"Yes sir," Simmons replies with a gasp, and I hear a loud thump as he clumsily deposits Cloud's broken, bleeding body in the cylinder next to mine. A moment later the chamber door slides shut, and I can hear the hiss of Mako gas once again filling Cloud's prison.

So Hojo meant it - I'm next. But not even the thought of my own imminent torture is enough to keep the little pieces of the puzzle - the ones that have been dancing in my brain for years now - from clicking into place.

Sephiroth believed that he was the product of Professor Gast's genetic experiments using Jenova's cellular material...

Don't you get it, Zack?

As if summoned, the ghost of Sephiroth from five years ago emerges from the depths of my memory. I was standing in this very room, this laboratory, watching in growing alarm as my commanding officer paced the long hall to the library; a wild, unbalanced gleam lighting his Mako-green eyes. "An Ancient named Jenova was found in the geological stratum of 2000 years ago. The Jenova Project. The Jenova Project wanted to produce people with the powers of the Ancients - no... the Cetra." He looked up at me then, his gaze piercing. "And I am the one that was produced..."

That's right. Sephiroth was part of the Jenova Project, and he had Jenova cells within him - was possibly bred with them, if my suspicions are correct.

And if Hojo was telling the truth...

Jenova is the will that directs it.

Shinra allowed the Jenova Project experiments in their attempts to create a perfect soldier from the cells of this monstrous Ancient, and Sephiroth was the result. But there is something else going on here. Something that Hojo knows, that he's not telling anyone else, not even his Shinra employers. This injection of Jenova cells... it's more than just some bizarre sort of genetic manipulation to create a perfect soldier.

The voices Cloud is hearing. It's not Mako poisoning at all. And Hojo knows it.

It's her. Jenova. That weird monstrous creature that we found in the Mt. Nibel Mako Reactor. The one that drove Sephiroth off the deep end.

I don't want to be right, but I fear that I am. Too many things over the past five years point to this conclusion. When Hojo talks about Cloud "displaying signs of communication with Jenova," he's not talking about the traditional theories of telepathy.

Jenova is already inside him. It's part of his own body. It's guiding his healing processes after the "massive physical trauma" inflicted by Hojo.

And it's talking to him.

No wonder Sephiroth went nuts. He wasn't just "hearing voices." He really was not alone inside his own head. Jenova was there, a literal, physical part of him, like a cancer, whispering her will to him.

And now, Cloud...

But not me. For some reason, not me. Which either means that I'm immune to the Jenova injections... or that Hojo isn't really giving them to me. I don't think I would be immune. But I can't figure out why Hojo would claim to be using Jenova cells on both myself and Cloud, when in truth he is only using them on Cloud.

Then again, just because I don't know the reason, doesn't mean there isn't one. If there is one thing I've learned in five years, it is that there is always method to Hojo's madness.

The only voices I hear in my head these days are the ghosts of my memories. They haunt me with a vivid clarity that can't be... healthy. The memories of my former life are becoming more torment than salvation. A reminder of what I've lost.

Trapped as I am, the only thing I can do is remember.

The minutes tick by with infinite slowness. I hear the sounds of Simmons cleaning the laboratory. All too soon, he's finished, and summoning Hojo from the library.

The soft tap of slow, deliberate footsteps comes from the long hallway, stopping in front of my cylinder.

I open my eyes.

Hojo is smiling. His white lab coat is flecked with the rust brown stains of dried blood.

"Specimen A," he says, looking at me as Simmons begins to hook up the tranquilizer gas feed. "We're ready for you now."

"Hojo." The utter calm of my own voice makes me wonder, briefly, if my hold on my sanity is even more tenuous than I thought. "Who is Jenova?"

He blinks at me in a rare expression of surprise. No doubt because he was expecting me to threaten to rip off his head and spit down his neck again. But his surprise quickly fades, and he ignores me, glancing down over his notes.

"Why have you been injecting Jenova into Cloud, but not me?"

Hojo's head jerks up, and he stares at me, eyes wide for a split second before narrowing once again.

Heh. I thought that would get his attention. And from the look on his face, I hit the nail on the head. Looks like I won that bluff.

"Simmons, hurry it up, will you?" Hojo says, quickly getting his poker face back in place. He's trying to act bored, but I can tell that I've unsettled him. And Simmons can tell as well, because he glances at Hojo nervously, before quickly averting his eyes back to his task.

"If it's just because I'm a control, then I understand," I continue, unperturbed at not being answered. "Every good experiment needs a control, right, Hojo? So you can measure the differences between someone who's been altered with Jenova, and someone who hasn't. Right?"

Hojo isn't looking at me. That's okay, I'm used to his "ignore the specimens" attitude. I know he's listening. And I think he's angry. He seems awfully tense.

"What I can't figure out," I say, "is why you've gone through so much trouble to make Cloud and me believe that your experiments on the both of us are exactly the same. I mean, why should it matter what we think? We're just specimens, after all."

Simmons finally gets the tranquilizer feed hooked up, and in moments, the gray gas is seeping into the chamber. My time is running out.

"But it does matter, doesn't it, Hojo. It matters to you."

And something else dawns on me. "I wonder what Cloud would think if I told him that the reason I haven't been getting as sick as him isn't because he's weaker than me, but because you haven't been mucking with my insides in the same way." And I almost smile as I see the muscles in Hojo's jaw twitch violently, right before he lifts his gaze from his notes to look directly into my face.

"It doesn't matter what he thinks now," he says tightly. "And while your pathetic attempts to help him are admirable, I'm afraid you're far too late for that."

I open my mouth to reply to his cryptic remark, but an involuntary gasp escapes my throat instead, followed quickly by a strangled curse as the tranquilizer gas touches my bare skin. Instantly, the familiar cold fire burns through me, engulfing me in an enervating numbness. As I thrash against it instinctively, struggling to fight off its effects... I see Cloud, in the cylinder next to mine, drifting silent and limp within a green haze of Mako mist.

He looks dead. So pale, with ugly purple and black bruises that stand out like ink splotches on his skin. His spiky blond hair is matted with blood. But his eyes are partially open, and in that brief moment, I catch a glimpse of bright glowing blue under heavy eyelids, staring sightlessly.

The sight infuriates me. Futilely, I fight against the gray fog that is trying to dull my thoughts even as it drains the strength from my limbs. "Dammit, what are you doing to him?" I demand, glaring at Hojo, though blackness is quickly swallowing my vision. He is looking at me again, though his face is unreadable. The tranquilizers are pulling me down, the drugged sleep plucking away at the defenses of my fading consciousness, but I force myself to meet his eyes.

"What is... Jenova... doing... to him..?" I ask.

But Hojo doesn't answer. He just stares at me silently, and his cold, black gaze swallows me whole.

"NEXT! FILE IN!"

I winced and made a face as Heideggar bellowed practically right into my ear canal. Quickly, I scooted my chair away from him, getting as far away as the small table would let me. "Jeeze, Heidi," I said, sticking a finger in my ear, as if that would help ease the pain in my abused ear drum. I also knew that he absolutely despised the nickname, and yet couldn't do a thing to stop me from calling him that. "Do you think you could crank it up a few decibels? I don't think they heard you in Wutai."

He ignored my jibe with a scowl as usual, but my comment earned a few stifled chuckles from the cadets who were filing obediently through the double doors of the practice hall.

Being one of the very few members of SOLDIER 1st Class, and General Sephiroth's Second-in-Command to boot, had both its benefits and its drawbacks. A big benefit was that I was probably the only guy in Midgar who could get away with saying something like that to the head of Shinra Military Intelligence - even if he was little more than a big fat bag of stinkwind. But Heideggar was a fat bag of stinkwind who was in good with President Shinra. And so one of the drawbacks of my position was that, when it came my turn to help review SOLDIER applications, I was forced to endure his repulsive presence for a bit.

Heideggar harumphed importantly, and straightened a few papers and folders on the table in front of him. Some of the cadets, who were nervously muttering to each other, immediately fell silent when he fixed his beady eyes on them. Soon, lined up before us with military precision were 20 young men standing in two rows. All were younger than me, between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and I recognized many of them from the cadet mess where I would sometimes go to hang out. A few of them, when they saw me sitting next to Heideggar, looked immensely relieved, and I grinned back at them encouragingly, knowing again that it would irritate Heideggar. He didn't believe in being friendly as a rule.

I, on the other hand, liked getting to know the new recruits, and I hoped that, in the process, I could de-mystify the SOLDIER program a bit. Some of these kids came into the military so green that just the thought of seeing the great General Sephiroth in the halls of the Shinra Building was enough to send them into a catatonic fit of fear, hero-worship, or both. So I did my best to help them get over that - at least to the point where, if they did see Sephiroth in the hallway, they wouldn't panic and make complete fools of themselves in their efforts to get away, salute, and shake his hand all at the same time. I also often went to the gym to help where I could with their training, sometimes even giving impromptu lessons in combat skills, or just sitting down with them and talking tactics.

Consequently, I had a lot of friends among the new recruits - and the not-so-new recruits, who still remembered and appreciated my help during their first few months in Shinra. As the only SOLDIER 1st Class who would dare be seen with lowly cadets, I had earned a reputation as a big brother of sorts. When this reputation first spread to the upper echelons of the military hierarchy, Heideggar was furious, saying that my chumming with the grunts was undermining the work of the boot camp drill instructors. His objections were silenced, however, when Sephiroth pointed out that my involvement seemed to be improving soldier morale, discipline and productivity, rather than undermining it.

Heh. Not even Heideggar dared argue with Sephiroth.

Looking over the cadets, giving encouraging grins to familiar faces, I realized that there was one kid at the far end of the first row that I didn't recognize. I knew I had never seen him before. With all that spiky blond hair (which looked like it had defied countless attempts to comb it flat), I figured he'd be hard to forget. He also seemed to be in the middle of a growth spurt, if the too-short cuffs on the pant legs and shirts sleeves of his cadet uniform were any indication.

Like the other kids, he looked nervous, and was doing his best to hide it behind the military discipline that had been pounded into him over the past few months. But, as I examined him further, I realized that he also looked angry. As in, severely pissed off. His expression hid it well, but his jaw was tight, and his fists at his sides were clenched so hard that his knuckles were white. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that he was sporting a black eye, which he was trying to hide under a few errant locks of hair dangling over his face. He must have felt me watching him, because he glanced briefly in my direction, without moving his head, before jerking his gaze back to staring straight ahead.

Curious, I glanced down at the files on the table, picked them up, and thumbed through them. Each file had a record of each kid's Entrance scores thus far, comments by the examiners, and a small head-shot photo paper clipped in the corner. I found the kid's file quickly.

CADET: STRIFE, CLOUD

AGE: 15

I blinked. Cloud? What parent would name their kid something like that? Talk about automatically consigning your son to an eternal purgatory of harassment by his peers. Hell, the name alone would account for the black eye.

Skimming over his scores, I saw that he had tested moderately high on nearly all of the physical tests, but that he had bottomed out in the psychological profiling.

I blinked again. Those scores had to be typos. Nobody was that psycho.

Except maybe Scarlett. And quite possibly Heideggar.

While I was distracted with Strife's file, Heideggar began the drill by shouting "ATTENTION!" Immediately, the cadets who weren't already standing at attention snapped upright. Heideggar quickly began barking orders, which the cadets followed instantly and simultaneously. I grant Heidi that, at least - if there's one thing that he knows how to do well, it's shout at the top of his lungs.

As per my duty, I watched each cadet in turn, and made notes in their file on their performance. I was very pleased to see that all the guys who had taken pointers from me were excellent.

So I turned my attention back to Cadet Strife, more curious than ever, especially since he was the only kid I hadn't worked with. I wondered if, during the drill, he would give me any clues as to why his psychological profile scores were so bad.

But as I watched him, I couldn't see anything that would qualify him for the scathing review he had received. He was good. Focused. The anger I had seen in him initially had given way to determination, which was a good sign if you asked me. It meant that, when it came down to business, he could push personal feelings aside and focus on the matter at hand. He followed each bellowed order with snap precision. The drill went on for a good half hour, and Cadet Strife didn't miss a step.

I was impressed. And a bit disappointed at the same time. It was obvious that he wanted to join SOLDIER badly. His file said he was from Nibelheim, which, if I remembered correctly, was a small mountain town on the West Continent, northwest of my own hometown of Gongaga. Like me, he had come a long way to join SOLDIER. Like me, his file said that he had signed up at age 14, and had worked as a conscript until he had enough experience to try and join the SOLDIER program. And like me, I could see the hunger for it in his face; in his eyes. I recognized it.

But with those psychological profile scores, there was no way in hell he was going to get into the program.

Hm. This was going to require further investigation.