Professor Gast paced up and down the lab floor impatiently. Every so often, he would direct a glance at a piece of equipment, where a clock was counting down the minutes. Nearby, Doctor Hojo stood still as a statue, arms folded tightly across his chest. His own eyes were firmly fixed on the countdown, narrowed, as if he could somehow will the numbers to change faster. The third person present sat delicately perched on the end of a laboratory table, reading through a choice selection of notes, seemingly unperturbed by the behaviour of her companions.

Lucrecia gave a small sigh, as the Professor passed in front of her again. She had lost track of how many times he had crossed her line of vision.

"I never thought it was possible to wear a groove into a tiled floor" she remarked offhandedly, "but I think you might manage it if you carry on like that." Gast paused in his pacing, and a wry smile appeared on his face.

"We're not all blessed with your infinite patience" the Professor teased gently.

The younger woman laughed. "On the contrary, I want to see the results of the tests just as much as you do" she said. "But as the saying goes, a watched pot never boils."

"True enough." Gast looked over to Hojo, who seemed to be doing his best to ignore them, so intent was he on the timer. "How long to go?"

Hojo's eyes never left the countdown. "Three minutes and eighteen seconds" he replied. Lucrecia pulled a face at his back, which caused Gast to snicker. Hojo's eyes narrowed even more, well aware that he was the object of their ridicule. "Have you quite finished?" he asked snappily. "This is one of the most important experiments we have ever attempted, and you are both acting like children!"

Returning her gaze to the papers in her hands, Lucrecia stifled her smile and continued reading. Maintaining her calm demeanour was getting more and more difficult. Much as she disliked agreeing with him, Hojo was correct. Today was the culmination of phase one of the newly created Jenova Project.

The pages in front of her detailed the history of the project to date. Once the Ancient specimen had been located, a team of dedicated scientists and archaeologists had worked round the clock to extract the Cetra remains and preserve them, ready to be taken back to the HQ for analysis. It was only when they had exhumed the body fully and it hit the fresh air, that they made the first of what was to be many alarming discoveries.

As they painstakingly started chipping away the remainder of the ice, two of the group who were working on the head jumped back in horror. The rest of the team, startled, ran to see what had caused the sudden panic.

They stared shocked, as the corpse inside the casket of ice slowly and deliberately, blinked.

This led to discovery number two. The Cetra was apparently not dead, yet neither could it be counted as alive. A more detailed examination showed instead that the specimen was in some kind of catatonic state. No revival process seemed effective. Without getting it back to the lab, it was impossible to tell exactly what was going on.

Gast of course had been in the loop from the beginning. As soon as news reached him that all wasn't quite as they'd thought, he'd commandeered a helicopter and flown out personally to investigate. As suspected, the scientists could do little more whilst at the Glacier. The Cetra would have to be transported back to the Shinra HQ.

In his position as head of the Science Department, the Professor pulled the necessary strings, and within a short space of time, more helicopters had arrived to package the specimen and carry it back to Midgar. Crates of ice samples, DNA and cellular debris were all ferried home, with Gast never leaving the side of the container holding the Ancient the entire duration.

The already heavily restricted Science floors became even more limited with the arrival of the Cetra. A large lab was immediately cordoned off, accessible only to Professor Gast and the Shinra top brass. An immense container was constructed, filled with a clear preserving fluid. Aside from the initial eye movement, there had been no more noticeable signs of life from the body, but Gast could not in all honesty class the creature as dead.

It had been Lucrecia herself who had discovered the Ancient's name. In the course of her research into the long extinct race, she had unearthed several documents and writings dating back to the Cetra times. In the light of recent events, she started going through these again, in the hope of finding some information about their find.

She was rewarded with a sketchy account of the last days of the Ancients. The documents were from Cosmo Canyon's library, old and incomplete but nonetheless valuable. Written in the Cetra iconic language, it took days for even the most dedicated scholars to translate just a small portion of text. It was broken up - not even the Canyon's elders could decode some of the script - but it made clear reference to 'Knowlespole', 'Crisis', 'Jenova' and 'skies'.

From correlating all their research, they knew that Knowlespole was the Ancient's term for the Great Glacier and Icicle Village (Lucrecia had eagerly imparted this scrap to Vincent, who had been most intrigued to discover the original name for his hometown). The rest was more conjecture than cold hard fact. As far as the scientists could discern, the downfall of the Cetra race was caused by this 'Crisis from the Skies' - a small meteor that had crashed in the Northern Continent and contained a kind of virus. The disease infected the Ancients that came into contact with it, and spread rapdly, killing all but a few. Then the account started to break up as the scholars ran into untranslatable iconographs. 'Jenova… Buried at Knowlespole… Frozen… ice'. That was all they could read.

Gast concluded that that their specimen must be the Jenova of which the account spoke, an Ancient who had succumbed to the alien virus and been frozen in the Glacier. Evidently no other Ancients had been able to help her, suffering as they were from the disease themselves.

The Professor had hand picked the team he wanted to work on the project. Lucrecia was one of the first to join, as a Biology specialist combined with her knowledge of the Cetra, she was an obvious choice. Doctors Keirnan and Hojo were also involved, if a little grudgingly when it came to the latter. Hojo was hardly a popular member of the group, but Gast had to concede that the man had skills in genetics that would undoubtedly be needed. Keirnan, one of the eldest members of the department was also an eminent Biologist, though nowhere near as much of an annoyance as Hojo. Together with a couple of juniors, they formed the Jenova Project.

Today was the day that the first stages of their experiments bore fruit. They had already conducted numerous tests, analyses and re-tests on various cell samples, until they had been confident of the cells themselves were a source of fascination for all involved. Similar to human, yet different in the most unusual ways.

Unsurprisingly, Gast had been the first of them all to notice the similarities between the effect the Jenova samples had on other cells and the effect of Mako on humans.

They had recently started the SOLDIER programme, following on from Gast's research. Injecting a watered down amount of Mako into specially selected members of the Shinra military, they had been able to produce men who were stronger, smarter and fitter than the average. Ideal soldiers, in fact. The President, immensely pleased with the results, gave the green light for an official regime, where the most promising candidates from the armed forces were selected to receive the Mako infusion.

The Jenova cells seemed to react in a similar way when combined with others. Tests run on single-cell organisms showed that the ones treated with Cetra DNA became more dominant and likely to survive, replicating faster and with less cellular degeneration.

The next step was obvious.

A soft bleeping noise from the direction of the timer interrupted her reading. Her calm exterior was immediately betrayed, as she hopped off the table and practically ran to the dial to switch it off. Gast was positively brimming with excitement, and even Hojo had exchanged his customary grimace for merely a grotesque parody of a smile.

The Professor produced a keycard from his labcoat and walked over to a sealed door. Behind it lay the first stage of their Project. Swiping the card through the lock, he watched eagerly as a light flashed green and the door released with a swift intake of air.

Inside, a neat row of five glass containers lined one side of the small room, each shielded by a cylindrical metallic plate so only the tops were visible. The plates had miniature clipboards attached to them, and Gast walked straight over to the nearest and pulled off the board. Scanning through, he seemed to double check the contents before turning to the two people next to him, both of whom seemed to be hopping from foot to foot in impatience.

"What do you say we dispense with a lot of the tedious procedures?" asked Gast with an almost impish grin, putting down the small clipboard. "I don't know about you two, but I want to see the results." With that, he proceeded to lift the metal casing from the first container, and all three eagerly leaned forward to see inside.

The container was full of a viscous liquid, almost transparent, but with a slight green tint to it. A frightening amount of tubes and wires were hooked up to it, some ending in sensors attached to the glass, others weaving their way into the liquid, and the experiment it contained.

Immediately, all their eyes focused on the test subject. Floating inside the jar, effortlessly suspended in the fluid, was a mouse. Tubes connected it to the apparatus behind as it hung there, supported by the machine.

"No visible signs of change" reported Hojo, unable to keep the disappointment out of his usual snide tone.

Lucrecia scribbled notes on her pad, keeping track of her observations. "This is only the first one" she reminded him. "It's a very weak Jenova infusion, only 5 percent."

The Professor nodded. "Maybe the other samples will have some more noticeable alteration" he suggested, removing the shroud from the next canister to reveal a slightly more promising result. At 10 percent, the mouse did appear to be bigger. It even appeared to be moving a little, despite being held in the liquid. He too was furiously scribbling down information as he recorded what he saw. "Hojo, you check on the 30 percent specimens, and Lucrecia you take the 40 percent. I'll see what 20 has done."

He lifted the case from the third sample to find the best looking result yet. The rodent was markedly larger than either of the previous two, it's eyes shining a bright red. It too was awake and moving. Gast shook his head in disbelief. "Marvellous…" he breathed.

A high pitched scream and a crash from the far end of the room almost caused him to drop his notes all over the floor. Jerking round instantly to see the source of noise, he joined Hojo in regarding a very pale and shaken Lucrecia. The case from the final test was rolling to a halt on the tiled floor where the scientist had let it go. Her delicate hands were pressed against her mouth, as she backed away from the container in front of her.

"What is it, my dear?" asked Gast, concerned, hurrying over to her side. Lucrecia was normally such a level headed girl, he couldn't imagine what had caused her outburst. "What's the… oh…"

He tailed off as he saw where her gaze was fixed. The jar she had inspected was identical to the others, apart from one thing. The creature inside.

It could no longer be called a laboratory mouse, that was for certain. Almost as big as a housecat, instead of fur the animal was covered in mottled green scales. Its feet had metamorphosed, becoming larger, harder and clawed. Gast could see scratch marks down the side of the container, where it had evidently tried to escape. Whatever it was, it was also quite, quite dead.

Even the Professor was taken aback. Gently patting Lucrecia on the shoulder, he ordered Hojo to unveil the last specimen. Hastily the doctor complied, revealing a mouse caught almost halfway between the two states. It too floated lifeless.

The three scientists stared at the array of animals in front of them, amazed. Gast couldn't help but marvel at the contrast. "Incredible" he said.

The noise triggered an almost instantaneous reaction from subject number four. Far from being dead, the creature's eyes snapped open to reveal evil glowing red orbs. Ferociously it tried twisting and turning, as if it was trying to attack its creators. The scientists stepped back, as the Jenova enhanced mouse continued it's frenzied assault on its prison before falling quiet and glaring at the trio malevolently.

"Well" Lucrecia breathed at length, regained her composure. "I think we can safely say that it worked."