2-4. Endless Cycle
Lucrecia put down the pipette and stretched her sore neck, looking over the afternoon's notes. Research could seem so unrewarding on days like this, when the days stretched endlessly, filled with hurry-up-and-wait, shuffling samples, watching over reactions. It was her eleventh hour in the lab for the fourth day in a row, and little more could be said than this, a string of repetitive labels and references:
Jan. 23 ct'd (st. 5:49pm)
Digest DNA in 0.01% sol. of Tns-10 enzyme 45 mins at 45C, see protocol p. 12.
Prepared for run on 5% polysacch. gels, protocol p. 4. UV dye (radiation next time?).
Samples:
Lane 1: H40J = human cells + 40% J-cell preparation
Lane 3: HN = human cells, normal
Lane 5: JC = J-cells
Lane 7: CN = Cetra cells, normal
She sighed, stretched her cramping hands, and transferred the last sample—a mere drop of fluid, dyed dark blue—from a tube to a slot in the sheet of gelatin, lying in a fluid-filled tray on the lab bench. Lucrecia checked her notes again, marked the starting time, and hooked the tray to a set of electrodes. Nothing to do now but, again, wait. She flipped back to her earlier notes, months old now; the pages were dense with her neat black handwriting, paragraphs full of plans, objectives, descriptions of results. Photographs of test results were clipped onto every fourth or fifth page. Now… she looked over the list of the day's procedures. May as well write: "see last week's procedures. Repeat until-"
The door banged open, and Lucrecia startled. Hojo shuffled into the lab backwards, a metal tray in his hands. The thought flicked through her mind to hold open the door for him—but, thinking that the help might only annoy him, she simply watched him, with the queasy curiosity of an onlooker in a zoo's reptile house. She noted the contents of the tray: a simple supper, bread, broth, milk, something the housekeepers of the Mansion might make if a scientist were working late. Hojo turned, casting a resentful eye on Lucrecia, and set the tray on his desk.
"Working late?" Lucrecia asked, watching their reflection in the steel covers of the specimen tanks, reluctant to meet his glare just now. She was too tired today to deal with an onslaught of undiluted Hojo; it was all she could do to resist ignoring him entirely.
"I don't recall asking you for input," Hojo snapped. "What are you doing here?"
"DNA analysis of the experimental, Project, human and Cetra cells," Lucrecia answered shortly. I don't even call him 'sir' anymore, do I?
"Five percent gel."
"Yes."
"When did it start?"
"About a minute ago."
"What did you cut it with?"
"Tns-10."
"That's what Marks and Tinsley used in their comparative studies."
"Yes. It's one of the only enzymes that gives a defined cutting pattern, one we can use to tell human from Cetra."
"Hm." Hojo gazed at the bench behind her with half-lidded eyes. "Not bad." He turned back to his desk. "If it works."
You'd like that, wouldn't you, if I failed. Though, truth be told, a compliment from Hojo was a rare thing… "Thank you."
Hojo did not reply, cracking his knuckles as he looked over some papers on his desk. "Are you finished?"
"I need another half-hour or so, while the gel runs."
"I'll take care of it."
Lucrecia blinked. "Sir?" There it is…
"I said I'll take care of it," Hojo replied tensely. "Take a break or…something. Go." He waved vaguely toward the door.
Frowning faintly, Lucrecia checked her setup one more time. Her hand lingered on her notebook for a moment, debating whether to take it with her, then slid off. No need to be paranoid, especially since there's not much in it lately anyway… She left the lab and closed the door quietly behind her.
Her footsteps echoed down the empty hall as she tried to think of a place to spend the next half hour. There wasn't enough time to buy or make dinner, though her stomach was starting to grumble with hunger. And there wasn't much point in going back to the inn… Lost in these circular thoughts, Lucrecia glanced up the stairs to the south wing and stopped short. The greenhouse! She hadn't gone back there since the Project had started to… She crossed the landing and headed for the south wing of the Shinra Mansion, dreading what she might find. What if the groundskeeper had forgotten to take over for her…?
Lucrecia submerged herself in the hot, moist air, shutting the door firmly behind her. The greenhouse was lit by only a small lamp, hanging near the ceiling; its light reflected the interior of the room in the surrounding glass. She scanned the semicircular shelves in the half-dark. Thankfully, most of the plants seemed fine. A halfhearted smile crossed her face. At least that was flourishing, despite all the rest…
Lucrecia filled the watering can and lugged it around the shelves, checking each plant for pests or signs of disease. All seemed to be well, more or less, except for one flowering plant which seemed to have outgrown its pot. She cleared a jumble of shears, spades and stakes from the edge of the shelf—this place wasn't as neat as she kept it, that's one thing she could tackle… It would be nice to get this place back in shape again… a project, sort of. I could handle that, at least…
She stripped off her lab coat and hung it on the doorknob, starting to sweat in the sauna-like heat. Her mind drifted back to the day's work, the week's work, the month's, an endless repetition with only small changes—tweaks really, "improvements" that never seemed to improve anything. Time after time, the results had yielded only vague nothings and false alarms. This was supposed to be the clincher, the easy part! The hard work, finding a procedure that worked, was the challenge; she'd gotten that easily, almost without trying. This was just to confirm that it worked…
Except it doesn't.
Cradling the flowerpot in one arm, Lucrecia pulled carefully on the plant's stem. The soil in the pot slid out in a solid mass, bound by the root fibers of the flower. She winced sympathetically; the roots were pressed against the clay of the pot and wound around uselessly, not sunk in nourishing soil. If she hadn't found it, it would have strangled itself with its own roots…even now, it might not survive. She slid the too-small flowerpot off and set it and the exposed plant carefully on the shelf. Kneeling on the dusty floor—there's another thing to do, sweep this up—she found a larger pot under the shelf and pulled out a sack of potting soil.
She could have gotten gloves, too, but the feeling of soft soil in her hands was too soothing to pass up; she set at the task barehanded, as her mind drifted once again to the JENOVA Project. Is it even worth it, anyway? What are we trying to do?
We're following orders. Just like the Turks…But we won't kill anyone! I hope. No, we wouldn't! I'm not a murderer! Dr. Gast isn't a murderer! Hojo…
Is Vincent a murderer, then?
No…he's…a Turk…but… is that different, what he does and what we do? We're doing this for no good reason, we're hardly even doing it for the sake of science now—I'm not, anyway. I'm doing it for my career, because I was told to do it, and completing projects on time and under budget is what graduate students are supposed to do…
For my career, then…is that worth it? She bit her lip as she ladled handfuls of soil into the new pot, not noticing the strands of hair that were beginning to fall in her eyes. Is it worth what? What am I doing, other than beating my head against those stupid cells for the last two months? Nothing… is it worth doing nothing? I'm failing… I know I'm failing, I can't handle it…That's what Hojo said… is he right? He's always freaking right, he's the smartest jerk on the planet…
Lucrecia shoved her sleeves up to her elbows, annoyed by the stains of wet dirt that had appeared on the cuffs. He's a heartless bastard, but it's like he can look right through you… and he's my supervisor, I have to put up with that… let's hope he swallows some Project cells and mutates into a human being. A smirk crossed her face, a smirk that almost curled into a sneer. She started to peel the strangling roots away from the surface of the mass, so that they might be able to grow straight. …if they don't die before then. So now what? Is my career worth this, all this dead-end cycling, this endless…endless… nothing?
She picked up the larger pot, set the plant in it, and started to scoop more potting soil around the exposed roots. It's not. I can't stand this. I didn't join Shinra to flail endlessly in some basement. I didn't join the Project to fail. I came here to succeed. I started this all to succeed, to become something important. I want to achieve. Discover. Create.
I have to find a way out…
Is there a w-
"Lucrecia."
Lucrecia startled at the sudden noise, spinning around. The flowerpot slipped from her arm and shattered on the floor in a spray of black dirt. She stared at it in shock, at the naked white roots; they looked like…
She looked up into the pinched and bloodless face of Hojo.
…Anatomy lab. Nerve endings, infiltrating the flesh…we're powered by electricity, not Mako, wonder how many people know that?
What in Lifestream's name am I thinking?!
"Sir?" There it is again. Maybe I was wrong.
Hojo held out a small square of slick paper, a photograph of what looked like a black-and-gray blur. Across it, like a message in Morse code, stuttered a series of white dashes. The results of the DNA test! Lucrecia snatched it from Hojo's cold hands and studied it.
Lane 1. "H40J" was marked on the photograph in Hojo's barely readable hand. Human cells, treated with Project cells. Not important on its own; what mattered was if they looked different from the untreated human cells, more like the Cetra cells. If. If the treated cells matched Cetra cells, they were on the right track. They hadn't so far. She prayed, as always, that they would. If they matched the normal human cells, it was back to more tests, back into the grind.
Lane 2. "HN". Normal human cells. Her stomach turned. The dashes matched up with the first lane. No change. The treatment had not caused any genetic change… She scanned the rest of the photograph.
Lane 3. "JC". Jenova cells. Matched nothing else. Good.
Lane 4. "CN". Cetra cells, untreated. Matched nothing else. Bad. Very bad.
Lucrecia swallowed hard; her mouth felt dry despite the pressing humidity of the room. She wanted to cry, about the broken flowerpot and the strangled plant, about the bad results, about the endless, endless bad results. She remembered her undergraduate years, when she could complain, The experiment didn't work! I did it exactly as the book said, and it didn't work. Something must be wrong with the materials…
There were no more books now. There was nothing left to blame. She looked helplessly up at her supervisor, who should have been a guiding force, a mentor, a source of wisdom and advice when the bad days turned into bad weeks and the weeks into months, when the promising ideas that had once taken flight started to fall.
He was smirking at her.
Rage started to rise in her but quickly fermented into frustration. She handed the photograph back to him and silently started to gather up the broken pieces of the flowerpot. The plant's fragile roots had snapped when it smashed on the ground. She gathered it up anyway, kneeling on the floor. She reached back under the shelf for a new pot and scooped the plant and the soil back in place. The pot was lost, but the plant might be saved. Maybe.
She placed it on the shelf and watered it carefully, then turned back toward the door. Hojo still stood there, silent, his arms crossed over his chest, the failed results dangling from his long fingers. Lucrecia bent to pick up her lab coat, which had fallen from the doorknob when Hojo opened the door. She shoved her arms back into the sleeves, feeling exposed without it, under his critical stare.
Stop looking at me like that, I'm not one of your test rats. I am not a failure! I will not be a failure!
"And?" Hojo asked.
"It'll work."
A smile spread across his face, a smile that did not touch his dark and hooded eyes. "Of course it will."
Lucrecia stood on a cliff high above the sea, crossing her arms tightly across her chest to ward off the chilled wind. Winter was breaking, finally; the ground under her feet was bare of snow, though the grass had not yet revived. The wind that blew her coat back and numbed her face was not as icy as it had been. She watched the horizon, the line between the golden sunset and the dark depths of the sea.
"Lucrecia?" Vincent, this time. She turned, the wind blowing her hair past her face. Vincent half-knelt on the picnic blanket. Lucrecia smiled, half-heartedly, and Vincent relaxed back onto the blanket, leaning back on one elbow. He held his hand out to her; Lucrecia sighed and sat beside him, letting him tangle his fingers through hers. A small smile played over his face as he pressed his cheek against the back of her hand. Lucrecia watched him, torn between a wild, hopeless affection and its resultant trace of fear. And his affection deepened only the fear…
"Why are you like this?" she asked quietly.
"Like what?"
"This… treating me like this…" She sighed, at a loss for words. Why am I baiting him like this? What has he done? …apart from treating me like… "Treating me like something… holy, for no apparent reason."
Vincent drew away, lying back on the blanket he'd spread. His voice was quiet, dampened. "No apparent reason? It's not apparent that I love you? I told you that after…after the Shinra ball. I don't tell you enough? I'm sorry, it's hard for me to say…"
"It's not that." If you said it ten times a day I'd understand it even less… "I mean…why…?"
"Why do I love you? How can you ask that, after all you've done for me?"
"All I've done…what have I done?"
He did not look at her, staring up into the darkening sky. "You keep me from losing my humanity, from becoming what I hate the most." Lucrecia was silent, listening. Vincent went on, slowly, thoughtfully. "I don't even think I realized how much I wanted to find someone like you. I always sealed those kinds of things off, shut them down… I remember dreaming of it, but I scorned it, I thought it was a weakness. Maybe it was, I don't know. Maybe it's foolish." He swallowed, closed his eyes against the endless span of the sky. "I shouldn't tell you this, I guess, but I…still dream of it, in a way. I never really thought about it, before I met you. I never hoped for the future…sometimes I wished for a stray bullet to hit me, but that was all. I don't wish that anymore. During the ball, all I could think of was that I had to stay alive this time, because I had to see you again."
"Vincent…" She wanted to tell him to stop, to go on, to take it all back; she was immobilized by confusion and something very much like fear.
He went on, as if he hadn't heard her. "I don't know if you realize what you mean to me…maybe you can't realize it. Just…let me dream, for a little while. I don't see the harm in that. It's given me hope for the first time that I can live a normal life, away from darkness and death… somewhere quiet, peaceful… I've been to Kalm once or twice; maybe there. Not Midgar, I'm tired of the grime, I'm tired of not being able to see the sky. Maybe Kalm, maybe we could get a little house there. It's not too far from Midgar, if you still want to work for Shinra… but it's so much quieter, so much safer than Midgar…" Slowly, Lucrecia stopped hearing him; she had withdrawn into her own thoughts, hugging her knees to her chest protectively. I can't believe I'm hearing this, I can't believe he's telling me this…what am I doing, what am I thinking? What is he thinking, even worse? Domestic tranquility, peace and quiet, the whole mundane dream…me? I…can't, not me; I'm not that woman, that wife and mother, the domestic goddess. I'm a scientist, a daughter and sister, not a mother…not a wife, not Vincent's…Lucrecia Valentine, oh God, do I wish… I'm not part of his dream, I couldn't be. I'm not a glamourous dream, a dark chaotic queen…
But he said he doesn't want that; he has darkness already, and he hates it. He wants tranquility, he wants safety. He thinks I can give that to him. Can I?
Do I dare?
No…not now…I can't take this. I have to handle my career first, I've barely gotten started…someday, when I've found my way in Shinra, gotten rid of this Project and Hojo, when my hands are clean and I'm safely above all of this… then I can settle down in Vincent's idyll…but not now.
It's not just your career, you know that.
Still. I can't handle this now. It's too much, what he feels, what he's telling me. I love him, of course, but I…I don't know why he loves me, I can't believe this, it's too much. I can't take it. I don't know what to do…
She opened her eyes. Ten feet away the earth disappeared into an abyss; the sea was far away, dark and unfathomable, stretching out forever. The sky was dark now, the sun had set. The wind was growing colder, despite the coming spring.
Someday. I'll learn how to cope. I'll learn not to be afraid… but not now.
Vincent had stopped talking. Noticing her silence, he put his arm around her shoulders and sat beside her, watching the sky. As if in response to her silent pleas, he said no more.
