Nothing as It Seems

II

Summary: He knew his place in the world, or he thought he did. They were all there, then they were gone.

He doesn't know what to believe anymore, everything he thought he knew was gone. Everyone he knows... fake. His Life.... A Lie. Open your eyes Squall, open your eyes....

Disclaimer: I Own Grace Mathers, and the doctors around the facility and I own the facility

Rating: R for language

Squall opened his eyes and looked up at the faces all around him.

"Squall? Squall Leonheart? Welcome back! You have been the main subject in a scientific experiment lasting the past eighteen years. How do you feel?"

He stared up at them and tried to speak but his mouth was still dry and voice raspy. What the hell? What kind of psycho dream is this? Squall sat up and through blurry eyes gazed around the room.

"Squall?" he reverted his glare to the doctor who spoke his name. "Kevin, get him some water,"

Kevin hurried back with a mug of ice cold water and handed it to Squall. "Now Squall, can you tell us, how do you feel?" He said noting and consulted with himself. If this is a dream, why can I control my body? The doctors waited patiently for the first words out of their experiment's mouth. This was the biggest scientific phenomenon since that cloned human way back in 2014. Being funded primarily by the worlds wealthiest people the experiment has been a hit since it started and has been gaining money and publicity throughout the eighteen years of it's existence. Now, every single person in the world is waiting for Squall to make his first live appearance. The world wants to know: what does a person who has just been brought out of a dream he has lived his whole life have to say?

"Rinoa," He whispered

The doctors all looked at him in surprise. "Get that tape recorder ready! What was that Squall? Can you repeat that?" Squall narrowed his eyes and deepened his voice. "Rinoa... Where is she," the doctors looked amongst themselves with questioning looks. "Rinoa? Who's Rinoa?" he heard on of them whisper.

"Rinoa Heartily," He started raising his voice. "Where is Rinoa Heartily," the doctors started whispering again thinking he couldn't hear.

"Who's that?"

"Isn't she the daughter of Mr. Caraway?"

"Oh right! Our main funds supplier. No wonder she's the main female."

"So, what do we tell Squall?"

"Let me take care of this," She turned and bent down to look him in the eye. "Rinoa has gone to see her father, Mr. Caraway. Now Squall, we are going to take you to your room so if you just lie back," wile she was talking she poked a syringe in his shoulder. Squall winced and started to feel strange. All the whispering going on was making him edgy and cautious, and the syringe, what was in it? What did they put in him? Who were they? There was only one answer. Galbadian Soldiers. He had been captured, but the security around him wasn't all that high. Now was his chance, if any, to escape.

He swung his legs out of the bed and stood up. "Squall, please, lie back down," Two of the male doctors approached him. Squall ran at them startling them, and punched the one on the left in the nose. He was out of commission for the time being.

The door. Un guarded. He ran out the door and took off down the hall. But he didn't get very far, the clear liquid in the syringe went to his head and he staggered to the floor. Blacked out.

Squall woke up in his dorm room. Everything as he left it before the engagement party. "What a fucked up dream," he said getting out of bed and heading for the shower. He paused. Where was his gunblade? He continued on into the bathroom. He stopped in front of the mirror and nearly fell over. His hair looked like it had never, ever been cut! It was all the way down to his calf! What the hell!

After twenty minutes of freaking out wile trying to wash five feet of hair and ten minutes of trying to find an elastic until he could get to a decent barber, he flopped on his bed and tried to figure everything out. Nothing came to his confused mind; instead, a knock came at the door.

"Can I help you?" He asked the woman at the door.

"Hello Squall? Squall Leonheart? My name is Grace Mathers. Would you mind if I came in?"

"Yes actually I would. Who are you and what do you want?"

She sighed. "I told you, I am Grace Mathers. And I have important information for you," She started to walk in but Squall shot an arm across the doorway.

"Squall, you have to let me in." He didn't move and kept his eyes on her. "Ok fine, have it your way. Squall, for the last eighteen years you have been in a coma like state. All your memories, all the places you've been to, all the people you know. They do not exist. They have been programmed into your mind as a experiment." Squall was startled. He just had a dream about the same thing! What the hell? "Look, Ms. Mathers. Do you know where you are?"

"Yes. I know. But do you?" She cocked an eyebrow and motioned with her head for him to look outside his room. Squall frowned and pushed past Grace on his way to the main dorm hall. But...

"Where am I!?" Squall demanded, yelling at the five foot, six inch tall brunette. Grace shook her head.

"You won't get anything out of me if you keep yelling. Now, you want information?" Squall glared at her. "Let's walk."

"This is the computer that generated all the geological places you've been too, such as Balamb, Timber, the Missile Base? Desert Prison? They're all here. The plans for the structures the climate and weather changes you name it, we got it," Grace offered Squall a seat at the computer. He looked at everything and it was exactly the same.

"You finished?" Squall nodded. "Ok, over here we gave everybody a history. You could pick any of the people in balamb, timber, anywhere; they'd have a fairly long background. There's the garden file and here's your file. It has all the people you were closest to, who you interacted with the most," Squall invited himself to sit down at the computer. He clicked on his file. And the list read:

Squall Leonheart

Seifer Almasy

Selphie Tillmit

Quistis Trepe

Irvine Kinneas

Cid Kramer

Edea Kramer

Laguna Lore

Ellon Lore

Kiros Seagill

Ward Zabac

Zell Dincht

Rinoa Heartily

He clicked on his name and it was all they're everything about him living at the orphanage to having President Laguna Lore as his father. It was all there, about Rain, about Ellon. He looked up at grace. "How-"

"There's one more key thing I think you should see," Squall followed her to yet a different computer. "This, this is all of the character design. Everyone was made up, except the people on the list we just finished looking at. They were all the billionaires and owner's of the corporations who gave us money for this project. So we made their children into characters," Squall whipped his head toward her. "These people are not characters, Rinoa is not a character,"

Grace looked at Squall with pitying eyes. "Rinoa is the daughter of Mr. Caraway, head of Caraway corporations. The largest weapons manufacturing company in the world. He took great interest in this project some twenty years ago when it first started out. When he read the walkthrough-"

"Walkthrough! Your making it sound like a game!"

"That's how they treated it Squall, and apparently you played it perfectly. He is our biggest sponsor and wants to meet you so I suggest being nice around him. Ok um...oh, Selphie Tillmit is the supervisor's daughter, with a different last name. Cid Kramer is the supervisor and Edea is his wife. Irvine Kinneas is the son of some guy who inherited his father's business and now owns every oil and gas field in the country um.... Laguna lore and his little girl Ellon won a contest held to be a character in your life. Uh.... Oh! Zell Dincht is my brother and Kiros and Ward are computer programmers here. Look, I know this is a lot of information to consume. Maybe you should go and think things over,"

Squall looked at her. "Thought things over. I want to see a barber and I want to see Rinoa. That's all I ask," Grace Smiled sweetly.

"Hehe, I think I can arrange both of those things,"

Squall sat in is room with his hair back to normal, messy and short, not knowing what to think. Everything Grace said could be true but... No. Rinoa was real, and his love for her was real. That was fact.

Grace was thinking the same thing. She'd seen the video's that tapped into his mind. She knew Squall and Rinoa had something special. But even if the love was real, the person wasn't. How's he going to react when he meets the real Rinoa Heartily? She sighed. I can't worry about that now. She faced another door and knocked on it.

"Yes?" the woman asked when she answered.

"Hello Quistis? Quistis Trepe? My name is Grace Mathers. Would you mind if I came in?"

TBC.....

AN: I spent four freaking hours on this stupid chapter!!! I have so many ideas but my typing today is.. Well not my typing, I can type pretty fast but just coughing it all out. It took so long!!! Oh well. Ch III will come out faster. I know exactly how it's gonna go. And one question. Does anybody know, Reijin, Fujin, Nida or Xu's last names? I couldn't find them anywhere! Oh well.

I gotta peace out now. Later!

LYLAFFR (Luv Ya Like A Fan Fiction Reader)