Hojo's notes and scribbled-over computer printouts of reports were scattered all over the floor; ink bled out of an uncapped pen stabbed into a sliding stack of paper. Elena was sitting on a stack of cloth-covered crates in front of the open window, looking toward Midgar; Meteor was a scar of fire on the horizon, and the air stank of brimstone. She glanced at the door when it opened, reaching for the gun at her hip; but it was only Rude, and she turned back to the window.
"They didn't make it."
Rude left his damp shirt and jacket hanging on the coatrack, walked across the room and sat down next to her, close enough she could feel his body heat. "No."
"Nothing we can do now, is there?" If they'd gone with Avalanche, she wouldn't be sitting here waiting. If Avalanche would have let them, and she didn't think Reeve had that much influence over them.
He shook his head, and they sat in silence for a while. Reno was still in the bar, getting drunk; Elena didn't blame him. Staring cold-sober at the end of the world was not a brilliant idea. The city was mostly silent, only a few crying children and the noise from the bar; even the camps were quiet. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was resignation.
She knew Reeve hadn't planned to leave Midgar; if he had, he'd have gone with Avalanche and died the first time something took a swipe at him. Of course, now Meteor was going to kill everyone; being where he was, he'd die quickly. Lucky him. Meteor blotted out the moon and the stars as the night wore on and the noise from the bar grew uglier.
The explosion was so loud it seemed to be right in front of her. No flash, no smoke, no debris; she jumped to her feet and leaned out the window, wondering whether the Mako reactors in Midgar had blown. But even that shouldn't be audible in Kalm, and the ugly light on the horizon hadn't changed.
Rude caught her around the waist to keep her from falling. "What are you doing?"
"Didn't you hear that?" she asked.
"Hear what?"
The blaze of light shot through the sky like the Mako cannon in reverse, lighting everything up with the brilliant off-kilter glow of lightning, on its way to Midgar. Thunder rattled glass and bones, and white lightning flickered around the burning light. More thunder rumbled in the distance.
"That!"
"Holy."
"Guess they made it."
Rude let her go, and she sat more securely on the windowsill. She took her rosary out of her pocket, absently wrapping it around her hand. Rude stood next to her and watched the horizon. Holy held, and held, though Meteor's light never faded, lightning never slowing, thunder growing louder. Holy failed with a shockwave that rattled windows and rang bells, failed with a flare of sooty light, failed with a savage wind that tore leaves from shrubs and left the air thick with the bitter stench of ashes. Twice she started to say something, stopped, and stared wordlessly at the blaze on the horizon. Rude took her hand, his broad fingers callused and cool, and was silent.
Patience had never been her strong point, even if it was her own death she was being impatient about. Kalm would go first; then Junon, then Costa del Sol. Wutai and Rocket Town would be the last, probably. Or maybe Icicle Inn. The wind was rising, roaring in her ears, and she frowned, because the dust and fallen leaves were still. The roaring rose and fell like a heartbeat, and she realized it wasn't the wind but the sea, even though the sea was miles away.
"What's happening?"
"Down below. Look," Rude said, as a window was flung open at the old guardhouse.
Tiny tendrils of green light poked from the ground, growing into tall streamers waving in invisible currents and washing toward Midgar. Windows were flung open, the bar emptied, and still the streamers rose, drowning Kalm in a great green wave. It rolled over her, cracked her open as easily as cracking an egg, scoured her raw and bleeding, and rolled on. She tumbled in the waves, the current racing toward a great fire in the distance, surrounded by as much noise (sex and voices, barking dogs and meowing cats, distant music) as there'd ever been in her Midgar apartment.
Shock rippled through the current, something familiar, and she remembered forgetting something. The second time it hurt; she remembered Meteor and tried to swim against the current. The third time she opened her mouth to scream and drowned, clawing at nothing in desperate search of air, coughing and choking. She coughed until her chest ached, coughed some more, and breathed clear air. She gasped it in, breath slowly steadying, until she quit shaking and could force her eyes open. She was lying on the bed, one leg at an awkward angle and one hand going to sleep; she moved and tried to sit up. Rude pushed her back down. "Don't move yet."
Rude's face and arms were bleeding where she'd scratched him; it looked like she'd given him a black eye too. There was blood around his mouth. Her throat hurt and her mouth was full of blood because she'd bitten her lips and her tongue. Wavering green light cast strange shadows and softened edges, until she wasn't quite sure where Rude stopped and the rest of the room began.
"You weren't breathing."
"I drowned." She tried to sit up again, and this time he let her, sitting close by so she could use him as support without either of them having to mention it. "Was that Lifestream?"
"Yeah. It's still happening."
It felt like a forest in the rain, cool and wet and green, sliding along her skin like a cool damp breeze. She liked the rain, where it didn't burn with Mako; she'd only seen clean rain a few times, on training missions and her first few assignments as a Turk. It smelled fresh and clean, at least away from the reactors and the Mako taint, and Midgar was never - had never been - clean. Even the best houses always had that taint and decay. She leaned into Rude as the rain picked out lines of light like spiderwebs, vaguely surprised but not unhappy when he turned her face up to his.
She woke sprawled naked over him, to the sound of Reno singing cheerfully and completely off-key.
"It's morning. Aren't you sober yet?"
"Ah, you wake up so happy, Elena," Reno said. "Nice view!"
Rude was either still asleep or faking it well; she got up, and pulled on some sweats and Rude's t-shirt, four sizes too large for her. She threw a pillow at Reno and said, "What's happening?"
"I should have kept my mouth shut," he sighed, and threw the pillow back. "Nothing's happening. Last night knocked everybody for a loop."
Elena got off the bed and picked up a crumpled printout with a shoe-print on it and smoothed it out. "So what happens now?" she asked, as she put the remaining papers into neat, if disorganized stacks. Maybe she could find some medical books to use to translate Hojo's notes. "No company, no jobs ..." At least she hadn't slept with Reno; he was too self-centered to be any fun, and she knew too much of where he'd been. Rude wasn't likely to make a fuss over it, even if Reno wasn't inclined to let them live it down. She wondered if it mattered what Reeve would think, if he learned about it.
"Don't care, as long as I don't have to earn an honest living," Reno said cheerfully. "Still have gil, everybody still wants gil."
"Why start now?" Rude remarked. He got up and put on his pants. "Go to Icicle Inn?"
"Too cold. How about Costa del Sol?"
"Too hot."
Elena looked up from a page going into excruciating and incomprehensible detail about reactions to Mako. "Maybe Dio will hire us. He's probably the only person left who can afford us."
"She's got a point."
Reno sauntered over, dropped to his knees behind her, and peered over her shoulder. "What about Hojo's experiment?"
She jabbed him with her elbow to make him back off. "I'll have as much luck making sense of it at the Saucer as I do here." She picked up the sheet discussing her implant. It wasn't that hard to guess any number of things Hojo might have wanted to do with that. It was just which one, and whether he'd succeeded. Considering how sick she'd been, he probably had.
"Guess so." Reno patted her on the shoulder when he got up. "Grabbed some doughnuts if you two worked up an appetite."
"Coffee?"
"Do I look like your secretary?"
"If you were my secretary, I'd tell you to comb your hair and press your suit."
Rude chuckled as they bickered over doughnuts. Elena ate with better appetite than she had for weeks, completely free of nausea.
Eventually they went out to see for themselves what had happened. Children seemed largely unaffected by Lifestream, talking excitedly about all the neat dreams they'd had and showing off collections of rocks and bugs. Some of the adults were transparently happy, as happy as the kids at small things. Others cried constantly, bitter with incurable grief. A few stared into space, eyes blank and empty, and only repeated calling of their name could bring them back to themselves, and only briefly. Some couldn't be woken at all; they lay where they fell, eyes empty, and even moved inside and cared for, responded to nothing. Elmyra spent the entire day looking as if she were going to smile one moment and weep the next, and Marlene cried at sudden, unpredictable intervals.
The people who hadn't woken didn't wake that day, or the next, or the days after. By the eighth day, no one expected them to wake at all. No one came from Midgar, either; no word, no messages, nothing. Avalanche didn't come, and Marlene bawled if anyone mentioned her father. No one was yet willing to risk going to Midgar to see if anyone was left. To see if Midgar was left, if Meteor, Holy and Lifestream between them had left anything at all.
Everyone knew someone in Midgar, someone who might not have gotten out, someone they were sure hadn't gotten out. Not even the children talked about Midgar very much. Reno and Rude never spoke of it at all. Elena buried herself in Hojo's notes, spending most of her day trying to decipher his handwriting and then figure out what he meant. Sometimes the other Turks tried to help; Reno would get frustrated and stomp off after an hour or so, though Rude stuck around for two hours.
Clouds of dust rose on the road to Midgar on the eleventh day after Lifestream. It might be monsters or it might be bandits; disgraced apocalyptic prophets favored the idea of a Weapon. The best scouts went out to find out what it was, and were back before dark with the news.
The word was whispered, then shouted through town and camps. Midgar survived. Not by much, not well, but it had survived. People talked about nothing else, wondering how many people had made it, how many made it here, when they'd arrive, praying their friends and family made it safely. The remaining military set up a new camp, though something had to give. There wasn't enough food or water and the stench from the latrine pits was already overwhelming; monsters were prowling the edges of the camps looking for a free meal or three.
The caravan arrived late the next day: military vehicles and scavenged trucks, cars and motorcycles and bicycles, and even a dozen or so not-very-healthy looking chocobos that seemed happy to be in fresh air, even if they had to pull loaded carts. There were more people than Elena could have imagined surviving, packed into vehicles, wavering on bicycles or walking, exhausted and still in shock, but alive.
"Impressive," Rude said.
"Goddamn," Reno said, awed. "He did it. The bastard really did it!"
Kalm's supplies of potions ran out in minutes, the alchemist simply unable to keep up with the demand. Almost everything that could burn, that was not actively part of a house, was collected. The refugees in the poorest condition, the empty shells and some of the grieving, were packed into houses where they could be watched over. The rest settled into camp with varying degrees of grace. Religious epiphanies abounded, all in disagreement with each other and the prophets. Rude predicted brawls and riots.
Neve, when Elena found her, was dazed with exhaustion but happy, somewhere between the inexplicable and finally being able to stop moving; Elena dragged her to the convent. Alejandro was sprawled on the floor, already asleep; Neve stretched out next to him and was asleep. The nuns said Reeve was sleeping; Elena left to get some sleep herself.
Neve and Alejandro were still asleep, or asleep again, the next morning, but the nuns told her Reeve was awake. They'd put him on the top floor; the old narrow stairs creaked annoyingly underfoot. She could see him through the open door at the end of the hall, sitting on a pile of blankets, turning a small battered doll over in his hands. He was in no better shape than the doll, battered, bruised and exhausted, beard and hair in need of a trim and all of him in need of a bath. The room's one tiny window had been forced open, but it wasn't helping the stuffiness or the dust.
"Reeve, you look like hell." She'd meant to say something else, something formal maybe. 'You look like hell' hadn't been on her list.
"Elena!" He put the doll down and pushed himself to his feet, wobbling a bit. "It's - you can probably guess how it was. Lifestream was - I'm an engineer. It needs a poet."
"Or a prophet," she said. Then again, drowning wasn't usually a prophetic method. Prophets preferred other people doing the dangerous stuff. "We didn't think Midgar made it."
"It wasn't by much." He looked away, absently scratching the peeling skin on his hands. "The pillars cracked. They could have fallen already. The Plate tipped on Sector Eight's pillar and half of it fell ..." He shook his head and looked back at her. "Sorry, you probably didn't want to hear that."
"Is anything left on the Plate?"
"The Shinra building's still standing. Or enough of it. We could see it for days when we left." He yawned mightily, making her yawn in response. "Mind if I sit down?"
"No."
He sat down on the blankets, placing the doll carefully out of the way. "Sit down. Not that it's that much better than standing."
She sat down next to him; there wasn't much sense in standing on ceremony, when Reeve was as unemployed as she was. Maybe Dio'd hire him to build more robots like Cait Sith. "Where'd the doll come from?"
He looked down at it, startled and picked it up again. "I found it in the slums, before everything happened. I'm not even sure why I'm carrying it around."
They sat quietly for a while before she asked, "What about Avalanche?"
"They're on their way. Probably be here tomorrow," he said, mouth twitching in an involuntary grin. "As for what happens then ... I don't know."
"So they made it."
He nodded, picking the doll up again. "I was running Cait, through it. I - wouldn't ask them about it. Not yet. I don't think they plan to settle old scores. I should tell Marlene."
"What are you going to do now?"
"I have no idea," he said, looking down at the doll.
The silence stretched uncomfortably. "Come on," she said. "Marlene's probably playing with the rest of the kids."