Rufus left his office and headed back down towards the lab. When he reached the door that led to the girl's room, he paused.

What's wrong with me? I carry out my normal plans to cause people pain, yet I'm trying to spare this girl as much pain as possible. Why is she so important? I don't know who she is, or even what her name is. And what am I going to do when she's completely healed? Am I going to send her back onto the streets, where she came from? Or am I going to let her stay, try to employ her? Before I drive myself insane with unanswerable question, I should find out how she is doing. Maybe Hojo was able to discover her name.

Rufus opened the door and walked in. The girl lay resting on the table. Hojo was busy concluding some research on his computer.

"What are you doing?" Rufus asked.

"Running some scans on one of our, older, specimens," Hojo replied without letting his eyes leave the computer screen. "Have you come to check up on our guest?"

"Yes. How is she?"

"She's almost completely healed. Right after the last time you spoke with me, I came in here to talk to out guest. She was still awake, so I asked her a few simple questions before letter her rest." Rufus waited expectantly. "Her name is Kristania. She's twenty years old. After I learned her name, though, I just decided it would be easier to look up her information in our databases. She has no living relatives, her parents died when she was very young. She grew up with her sister, Jemyle."

"Why does that name sound familiar?" Rufus asked.

"We brought her in a few years ago for testing. Unfortunately, she died during one of the tests."

"So her sister was killed here?"

"Correct."

"Does she know that?"

"I don't know." Rufus took a minute to think about what that could mean. "Do you need anything else?" Hojo asked.

"No." Rufus left the lab and headed back to his office. He was finishing up his lunch when Tseng arrived in his office. "Is Reno back?"

"Not yet," Tseng answered. "He was still trying to get the specimen the last time he checked in. He told me he was very close, he just had to get around Cloud Strife."

"I see. Thank you Tseng. You can go now." Rufus watched Tseng leave, and then turned around to look out the window. After a few minutes, he saw Reno bringing in the specimen. He assumed that Tseng would come up shortly to report Reno's return. To avoid the interruption, he called Tseng on his cell phone.

"Tseng here," said his voice.

"I saw Reno arrive, so just write up a report and hand it to me later," Rufus told him. "I'd prefer not to be disturbed at the moment."

"Yes sir." Tseng hung up. Rufus did likewise. He got up from his desk and headed back to the labs. He walked into Kristania's room. Hojo was still running things on the computers, but was not actually in the room at the moment.

"Hello," he said to Kristania, who was slowly walking around the room.

"Hi."

"Feeling better?"

"Much. What are these computers doing?"

"I don't know. Hojo would be the one to ask, since he runs all the computers and programs connected to the labs."

"Oh." She continued looking at some of the computer screens, but stopped when she came to the one nearest Rufus. "Why does this computer have information about me on it?" she asked. Rufus walked over to see what she was talking about.

"I asked Hojo earlier to find out your name, and he must have looked your name up in our databases to see what other information he could find out about you."

"You could have just asked me," Kristania told him.

"When I thought of it you were sleeping, and I wasn't going to wake you up of course."

"Oh." Rufus wasn't sure what he was going to say. He didn't even know what he wanted yet. "Got something on your mind?" she asked him.

"It's nothing. Are you hungry?"

"A little."

"Then let me get you something to eat." He led her out of the lab to his personal dining room. He let her eat her fill, and when she was finished, he led her up to his office.

"So this is where you work then?" she asked.

"Yes." Rufus sat down in his chair and gestured for Kristania to sit in a chair across from him. She did.

"What is your name, if you don't mind me asking?"

"My name is Rufus."

"And what exactly do you do here?"

"I'm the head of this company. My father owned it and when he died, I took over in his place."

"What company is this?" Rufus had been hoping to avoid this subject. He wasn't sure if she knew her sister had died here, and didn't want to discover it by finding out she did and that she hated him.

"Why don't we discuss something a little more interesting than my work?" he suggested, in answer to her question. "What do you do for a living?"

"I don't actually have a job. My sister used to work to earn money for food, but she died a few years ago and I've never been able to find a job myself."

"How did she die?"

"She was brought to ShinRa, and I never saw her again. It was just recently that I found out she died from some experiment a scientist tried to perform with her."

"You told me earlier that you had been heading to ShinRa prior to the explosion. Why would you be going there if that's where your sister died?"

"I want to speak to President Shinra personally. I want him to know what he put me through. I want to tell him what he's put almost everyone that lives in the sectors through. He doesn't care about anyone there, or he would do something to change things. But I'm talking up a storm, and you probably don't want to hear all my complaints."

"It's fine. It's nice to hear another person's opinions, about the sectors and life in them."

"Don't get out much?" she asked.

"Not as much as I should." A short moment of silence followed his sentence, but was broken when his phone rang. "Excuse me a minute. Yes? You know what to do." He hung up the phone with a loud click.

"Business call?" she asked. He nodded.

"One of our shipments has gone missing."

"What kind of shipment?"

"Nothing overly important." Rufus wasn't going to tell her what the shipment was, not when it would be a dead giveaway that he was the president of ShinRa. He watched as she seemed to be thinking things over in her head.

"What did you say your name was again?"

"Rufus," he answered calmly.

"Yes, but what's your last name?"

"Why does it matter?"

"I'm just curious." Rufus knew she was beginning to wonder who he was, and was becoming apprehensive with every minute that passed. He looked into her green eyes, and saw them sparkling with suspicion. "And what exactly does your company do?" she asked.

"It helps run some of the things for Midgar," he answered evasively.

"What kinds of things?" she persisted.

"Why are you asking all these questions?"

"I just thought I would find out who cared for my wounds, and what kind of work he does. It seems though that you are unwilling to give up very much information about yourself."

"I just chose to be careful about how much I reveal about myself."

"Yet you have no problem looking up my information to find out all you can about me, without bothering to ask me."

"I told you, you were resting."

"But you couldn't wait? What is the name of your company?"

"Is that really important?"

"Just answer me this: do you work for ShinRa?" She let the question hang while he considered his answer.

"In a way, yes."

"So you would know the president?"

"Not very well, it seems sometimes."

"I'm in the ShinRa building, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are."

"Then, you're really President Shinra, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You liar!"

"I didn't lie to you," Rufus said calmly, not sure where this conversation was heading.

"You never told me that you were Rufus Shinra, or that you owned the ShinRa Company. You- YOU MURDERED MY SISTER!"

"I had no control over that situation. That was done by Hojo."

"You mean the same man that killed my sister was the one that healed my wounds?" Rufus nodded his head. He thought it best to let her finish her tirade before speaking again. "How dare he even speak to me after what he did! And you! You talked to me politely and pretended to be some nice person while all the time you knew about me and what you did to my sister! YOU ARE DISGUSTING!" She was standing up again, and was looking at him as though she wanted to strangle him.

"Finished?" he asked politely.

"If you're asking to find out if it's safe for you to speak, then no. I don't care what you have to say. Nothing you will say can take away the pain you caused me, and I don't want to hear one more word from your mouth. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to leave and go back to my home in the slums you like to call sectors." Before he could call her back, she had turned around and left his office.

That is not at all how I imagined that going. I was hoping to keep her from finding out that I was Rufus Shinra a little longer, but I hadn't counted on her figuring it out by herself. She won't come back if I ask her, and even if I force her back she won't talk to me. She might yell at me a little more, but who's to say I don't deserve to be yelled at. Maybe I am at fault for having her sister killed. I had hoped to convince her to stay here a little longer; at least long enough for me to find a way to tell her that wouldn't cause her to go wild like that. Perhaps, though, all I deserve in life now is to be yelled at. But I'm not going to let that stop me from continuing to run my company. I may not ever find another person like Kristania, but I refuse to let that hinder my progress with my company.

Rufus stood up and walked down to Hojo's lab. He found the lab empty, and went to find where his scientist had run off too. He found his Turks working out, but continued to look for Hojo. After a half hour he returned to his office, intent on discovering Hojo's whereabouts.

But he never got the chance. Just as he was reaching for the phone, he felt a tremor run through the building. He stood up with plans to find the source of the disturbance, but was knocked backwards when an explosion burst through his office. He flew backwards through the window behind his desk, the window he had stared through so many times before. His last thought before he hit the pavement 70 stories below was: I'll always regret not telling her the truth earlier. Then things might have turned out differently.