Hojo: The Goddess of Your Sacrifice has Flown Away
Hojo walked over to his desk, ignoring the Turk glaring at him from the other side of the room. The last few days had been quite unpleasant, and her attitude had grown worse; not for the first time, he wished that Rufus had returned his Manipulate materia. At least he had her available for examination and treatments; she appeared to be suffering from particularly severe nausea, worse than Lucrecia had endured. The Mako treatments were quite effectively reducing that problem, with less danger to his results than the available drugs. The treatment had, however, had the usual effect on her eyes; they shone gold now, a warm burnished color somewhat darker than command materia, and he found the effect peculiarly unnerving. It was merely a side effect of the Mako treatment, he reminded himself firmly, but he still could not meet her angry eyes.
Mako. Sephiroth was out there, somewhere, planning to absorb all the Mako the Planet gathered and . . . he shook his head. Nonsense. Whatever, precisely, Sephiroth was doing, it had nothing to do with superstitious nonsense about sentient planets and souls. If he continued thinking like this, he would end up endlessly discoursing on sin like Vincent. Perhaps he should have just killed him, but using him to prove Lucrecia's own theories about summons had seem perfectly apt at the time, and the experiment had given him invaluable data. He shook his again to focus his wandering thoughts; he had experiments to record, data to examine, and no time for useless maundering.
He spun his chair around to sit, then noticed a strand of something in the fabric. He plucked it dextrously, expecting it to be perhaps one of Elena's hairs, or his own. It was cat hair. Cat hair. He had not allowed a cat anywhere near his laboratory or his office since before Lucrecia's death. The wretched things shed constantly, ruined experiments and attacked at the slightest of provocations.
He frowned. There were no cats running loose in the Shinra building since the failure had killed Rufus' pet, and this was clearly from an ordinary domestic cat. There was, really, only one person with a fondness for cats who would have been in his office. He was rather astonished that Reeve had been bold enough to break into his computer and rifle his files; the engineer had always seemed rather mild-natured, certainly not the type to take considerable risk. Apparently he had underestimated him. Something would have to be done before Reeve did anything damaging with the data he had stolen. Perhaps this would finally force Rufus to deal effectively with him; Hojo did not understand why Rufus had not taken measures previously.
He called the President's secretary and requested an emergency meeting, informing her that he had urgent information for him. The Turk, though she had not moved, was radiating fury; he supposed she had induced or intimidated Reeve into assisting her. He frowned, waiting for the secretary to return; Dr. Glatz had said something . . . yes, Reeve had been accompanying her the day she received the first Mako treatment. He sighed, hoping this would not skew his results. First Lucrecia, now Elena; he would never understand women.
The secretary returned to the line and informed him that Rufus was willing to see him for a very short time; Hojo hastened out of his office to the 70 th floor with Elena following him; he ordered her to remain outside. He heard Rufus order Reno out when he arrived; the red-haired Turk slouched against the wall next to Elena and offered her a cigarette as Hojo walked up the stairs.
Rufus stood at the back of his office, looking out the windows over Midgar. His hands were shoved into his coat pockets, his hair unusually disheveled; the hem of his coat moved in the faint breeze from the air-conditioning vents. He moved slightly at the sound of Hojo's footsteps, straightening with an annoyed shrug of his shoulders.
There was music playing somewhere, a soft, sad piano piece Hojo recognized; he had forgotten the title, something to do with rain. But it had been one of Lucrecia's favorite pieces; she had played her recording of it often before her death. She had been fond of another piece by that composer, but he could not remember it now.
"What do you want, Hojo?" Rufus' voice was flat and even, making it impossible to predict his mood.
"Reeve has broken into my database," Hojo said, snapping out of the unaccustomed reverie. "I believe he's giving information to Avalanche."
Rufus was still, the only movement the faint drifting of his coat. "What makes you think so, Hojo?
"He did not clean up after himself as well as he thought," Hojo replied. He loathed cats, and the feeling was distinctly mutual. "I found several pieces of evidence. And as for Avalanche - Reeve is the only one who will defy orders."
Rufus said nothing for a moment, then asked in a soft, even voice, "What do you think he stole?"
Hojo resisted the urge to smile. "I cannot say for certain, but I expect that all my data on that failed experiment . . . "
"Strife," Rufus said, making a sharp gesture, annoyance plain in his voice. "Cloud Strife."
"Yes. That data will have been compromised, and possibly data on some other experiments." Hojo shrugged slightly. "If he has gone to that length, I presume he may have - " The piano piece ended and a flute began a mournful melody.
Rufus raised his hand, his voice turning icy. "That's enough, Hojo. I know exactly what you're implying." He let his hand fall back to his side. "Get out."
Hojo turned and hurried out. Rufus, he was sure, would deal quite effectively with Reeve. Elena and Reno broke off their discussion when he returned, and Elena followed him back to his office.
Hojo watched dispassionately as the spell took effect. Elena, already immobilized by the Stop spell he'd cast a few seconds ago, slumped slightly, eyes closing; he did not wish to have those unnerving golden eyes watching him during the tests. He removed the prepared instruments from the cabinet and set up the machine. This would have been easier if he could have convinced her to lie down on the table, but that had been so clearly impossible he had not bothered attempting it; after he had spoken to Rufus about Reeve three days ago, she had barely managed even a pretense of civility. He unbuttoned her jacket, yanked her blouse out of her trousers and unbuttoned it, and shoved both jacket and blouse back on her shoulders and partway down her arms.
He attached the leads over her abdomen, flipped the switch on the machine, and began the test. Goosebumps rose on the Turk's skin; the spell held her too immobile to shiver. Normally he would enjoy this, but now it seemed quite a futile effort, spitting in the face of Death. He had not thought of that saying since his college days, and that was further in the past than he cared to contemplate. The machine beeped, indicating the end of the first test; he attached the leads over her torso for the second test, unhooking her blue lace bra to get it out of the way. He wondered, hand dropping to the waistband of her trousers and fingers curling over the smooth skin of her abdomen, whether she wore anything to match. He hesitated, then regretfully pulled his hand away, turned back to the machine and collected its report before looking back at her. Careful treatment with curative materia had prevented any of the injuries she'd received in the jungle from scarring; it would have been rather disappointing to see her marred.
That sort of healing was one of the more unusual properties of materia. Materia, condensed Mako, called Lifestream by some. He'd dismissed it as a superstitious, unscientific name for a perfectly natural phenomenon; none of that nonsense about souls, merely an unusual energy source no one had properly categorized yet. It induced hallucinations, facilitated healing at a rapid rate, and had other unusual effects, but there was nothing magical about it.
Sephiroth had proven him wrong. Sephiroth had maintained a silent belief in magic from his childhood, when some wretched nurse had smuggled in books of fairy tales and legends and other such garbage. It had polluted his mind with talking animals, sorceresses, and other ridiculous things, despite Hojo's every effort to install rational thought; indeed, the boy had seemed to cling harder to the stories for his efforts. And now Sephiroth had proven it, Lifestream and Planet and all, and was trying to turn himself into a god.
He arranged the leads over her abdomen again for the last test, and began taking blood samples. This was science still, and this would go on even if that failed experiment and his freak show managed to kill Sephiroth. He had not intended this to be his . . . legacy, but fate (something else he had disavowed as unscientific) apparently had other plans. It was unfortunate that he would probably never get to see the results. If Avalanche won, they would kill him; if they lost, he would die with everyone else.
He put the blood samples in a second machine for analysis and looked at the printouts from the first, scribbling notes on the reports as he read. Everything was proceeding well, even better than it had with Lucrecia. It was a pity he'd never found anyone to match her in scientific aptitude, although this girl was certainly superior to her in most other respects. Rather uneducated, but given Shinra's preference for easily molded child-soldiers, that was hardly surprising. The blood tests confirmed the splendid success of the experiment, and recorded something unusual in her blood, most likely a reaction to the Mako treatments.
He picked up his last Jenova sample and a sample tube of distilled Mako, looking at them thoughtfully. Sephiroth wanted Mako, did he?
Hojo would give him all the Mako he wanted, and show him that science wasn't going down with a fight.
[Author's notes: this chapter overlaps slightly with the previous one and considerably with the next one; more information with the next chapter.]