Chapter 6

The spiral staircase wound down forever, it seemed. She didn't remember it being so long. Then again, she was lost in her own thoughts as her feet found each rotten wooden step by memory and brought her closer to what she hoped was the basement. She thought of Gabriel, poor, innocent Gabriel who lay on the ground above her. He hadn't deserved to die, and if she had heeded Michael's warning, the boy would still be alive. "They're coming for him." She should have asked Michael to clarify his warning; she should have understood it earlier.

Her feet suddenly hit the hard-packed dirt ground and she stumbled at the unexpected level change. Placing a hand against the cold, hard rock wall she steadied herself. Then she quickly yanked her hand back and rubbed it against her black skirt, trying to get the feeling of wet dampness off her palm. She hated this place. Gritting her teeth, Tifa moved forward slowly, her eyes darting back and forth as she stepped silently across the length of the basement tunnel. She passed the iron-studded wood door on her left that led to the room she and her friends had found Vincent Valentine. She briefly wondered where he and the others were.

At the end of the tunnel, the door to the secret research laboratory stood ajar, hanging off one of its rusted hinges. Tifa peered inside before stepping into the room. It felt different than it normally did--still creepy, but now, eerie-creepy. As if it held some new and dangerous secret. What, she had no idea. She stepped inside and looked to her right at the abandoned test tubes and large experiment table. It was dark and the layer of dust on it was undisturbed. She looked left, toward the endless piles and rows of books. Some of them lay open in the middle of the walkway, some had fallen from their propped position, and an entire shelf had actually rotted away and its books lay in a toppled line across the ground. She carefully stepped over and around the old texts, hesitating only to think that Sephiroth had once stayed in this basement for days reading every single book here. His presence, even after all these years, lingered here like a sickness. She pushed that from her mind and looked at the makeshift study contained in the rounded off area where the two lines of bookcases met. This area looked considderably cleaner. The dust wasn't as thick and it wasn't as dark as the rest of the basement. In fact...

Her eyes narrowed and she crouched to the ground, careful not to put her hands or knees on it (this place was still disgusting). At this eye level, Tifa could scan the floor faintly, and her sudden hunch proved correct--there were skidmarks in front of a particular bookcase behind the desk. She got up and crossed to it, her hands coming out and reluctantly touching the damp wood, searching. Her splayed fingers brushed across slime and dirt and a gap. She paused at the gap, the grossness of the situation temporarily forgotten as she worked her fingers into it and felt cold air brush their tips. Trying to get a better grip, Tifa braced herself and yanked hard on the case. It shuddered and a couple of books fell around her. Sighing in frustration, she pulled even harder, bracing one foot on one of the shelves of another case. Her fingers were slipping, and abruptly, the shelf snapped in two with the extra added weight. She yelped and lashed out with her free hand to grab something, anything to prevent her from hitting the ground. Her fingers hooked into a candelabra mounted on the bookcase and she yanked to a stop. With a heavy click it slid downward a few inches and the case receeded into the wall then swung to one side, throwing Tifa into another tunnel. She rolled head over heels until she stopped at a rock ledge that hung over a crevace, and sat up slowly, shaking her head. She rubbed the side she landed on and winced, getting to her feet. Glancing back into the basement room, she moved back to the left side of the pathway, away from the ledge, and placed a hand on the cold rock wall. She hesitantly descended into the darkness ahead of her.

"When I escaped the Northern Crater," he said, strolling confidently through the darkness of the basement, "it was by pure accident. While I was running away from the faction, I fell into a crack in the rock and hit the Lifestream. I'm okay now," Cloud grinned down at the quiet boy. "It was about a year ago that I fell in for the first time, and I thought I was a goner. But Tifa stayed with me, encouraging me to keep hanging on, that I would be okay someday, even though she knew I had a damaging amount of Mako poisoning. She's amazing like that, you know. She makes you believe nothing is impossible when she's by your side..."

Michael looked up at his distant expression: "She loves you too."

"Huh?" Cloud blushed, then straightened. "Well, I..."

"What happened a year ago? You're not poisoned now," the boy tightened his grip on the other's hand.

"And here I thought you knew everything," Cloud laughed slightly. "Well, there was an attack on the town we were staying at, and the both of us fell into the Lifestream. We made it out, all thanks to her." He took a deep breath. "Since I've already been in the Lifestream twice, it didn't affect me at all when I fell in at the crater. So, I rode the stream to here, this basement. I never knew a place like this was so closely connected to the Lifestream, but there's a tunnel at the end of the way here and I think that's how the Xero Faction followed me here." He frowned. "I just wish I knew what the faction was and what it was after, exactly. I couldn't gather a lot from the bits I listened in on."

"They assume the shapes of the dead," Michael answered mechanically and Cloud stared at him in amazement. "They take their form directly from the Lifestream, which is how they could travel through it as you did. And that is how they absorb their powers as well."

"How do you know all this?" the older man stopped at the entrance to the laboratory. Michael kept going, pausing slightly in the center of the main room to look right, then left, and start down the passage of bookcases. Cloud followed.

"I've known a lot of things, ever since I can remember," he said softly, stopping in front of the secret bookcase entrance. "I get flashes, visions, and I try to warn people, but they never believe me..."

Cloud touched the young boy's shoulder: "And that light...?"

"That was the second time that's happened, " he shook his head. "The first was when I knew my parents were dead."

Cloud nodded and reached down. Michael took the offered hand, and the two of them started down the tunnel after Tifa.