Chapter 104 - JENOVA Dreams
September, 2002
She's a fickle hallucination.
There are days now where she haunts Sephiroth's every step, her feet leaving a pattern on the floor. A trail of feathers decorate where they walk together. Sometimes she talks to him, quiet and smooth against his ear. Other times, her words don't reach him. On occasion, they only arrive broken as if whispered across the room. Sephiroth doesn't always need all the words for full comprehension. Murder, blood, kill, live, die, slaughter. He knows the meaning of these words.
He doesn't talk back. She's an unrealistic fragment. Once he opened his mouth to speak back and it felt fuzzy and useless. She is not real.
Then she'll be wiped from his life without warning.
He walks alone. The decisions he makes are unresisted and uncontested. He doesn't know how to operate without it. He has very few people he would consider a companion anymore. There is no one who understands him deeply. They have all faded away. On occasion, he will run through the phone number that Mariella had given him. He teases with the idea of calling it. She did set him free.
Then she abandoned him to the dust like everyone else.
Perhaps when he is gone, when "Sephiroth" doesn't exist, he would call her.
Then he remembers the child that she is supposed to have and how would he fit into that?
It's only been a month. There is no child. There is only a ghost of one but it stops him.
Ridiculous.
He wakes up in Nibelheim and prepares to meet Genesis Rhapsodos.
Things are still wrong to Sephiroth.
Bits of Nibelheim rub against him painfully. The girl, their guide, is too young. The man with the camera is too forceful with his insistence to photograph him. The air is cold. Zack's teeth flash as white as the snow as he smiles. He's somehow still too happy and too easy even with the grief that never left his eyes. The road up the mountain is not big enough for a truck. They must go on foot. The monsters that they find are larger and more aggressive than they should be for a small area like this.
The pieces do not fit.
Sephiroth wishes he could turn it off the sensations but they are relentless.
Their orders are to investigate the reactor, repair it, search for "the threat" and if nothing comes of it, to explore the surrounding area for disturbances. Sephiroth thinks about the mansion. He had wandered the outside in his dreams last night. The doors had been locked. The dog barked. He wanted to continue forward but the iron gates had not moved no matter what he did.
The house was untouchable.
He had woken up as if he hadn't slept. The weariness is hard against his shoulders. He needs to leave soon. The nightmare that he had woken up from is not the only one that exists.
He had looked in the mirror and stared at the man that was reflected.
Sephiroth isn't quite sure how much he recognizes himself. There is a separation inside him. The bangs, the leather coat, the set of his expression, everything has been written on him by another hand. These choices were not his. They were approved by a team in a sterile room that never met him but decided on his life because "it was best for the company."
The conversation with Hojo has crawled into his mind with the simplicity of the cell. Was that what was best for the company? They would have caged him like an animal if he hadn't been released from his medication. If he doesn't perform here, he would have been put away behind bars in R&D.
He may have been abandoned by his family. He may have killed hundreds. He may have disrespected direct orders. He may have been tricked into thinking he had friends.
But he doesn't want that fate.
He doesn't want that ending. He would rather die of his own body destroying itself than that.
It itches, wondering why he should deserve that.
The reactor rises slowly from the mountain side. It is an old model, the inside smelling like rust, mold and dead things. It hums at a low decibel in his ears, reminding him of how it is dormant. Smaller monsters crawl on the ceiling. They are easily cleaned out by the puppy. Sephiroth doesn't even summon Masamune. There is no need.
It doesn't leave him. The wrongness he cannot place sews a line in his scalp instead. Why would Hojo even tell him about the cell? Wouldn't he know what it would do? Did he truly think that it was going to force him to come back with Genesis' body? He takes a breath as they move upwards.
It doesn't matter. He should stop fixating on something so pointless. He is going to start over. He is going to create a new life. It is just a matter of going through the steps.
So Sephiroth choses to focus on the things that he can. This means finding Genesis so he can abandon all of this as soon as he can.
They head deep into the reactor.
If there is a place that Genesis might be, the main mako chamber would be the most defendable. There is only in and out at this level. The enforcement for the door would be too costly for multiple entrances. The mako exposure inside would be close to nothing for a First. There is a catwalk, perfect to keep the fight more even.
If he was Genesis and was expecting a fight, this is the place that he would strategize to be.
The door into the chamber is sealed tight. There is no sign of break in or tampering. Genesis did not choose it. Perhaps there would be another option. Turning away, the name above the door catches his attention. It did not state the title that was indicated on the floor plan that they both studied.
It simply stated JENOVA.
Sephiroth pauses. He reads it again. The engraved words remain the same. These are the words of his dead mother's name. It is not a common name. He blinks and shake runs in his hands. Zack is coming up behind him. His shoes click against the metal steps.
JENOVA
It is the exhaustion. It is the stress. His mind is grasping for things familiar in a world that is no longer familiar. It is another illusion painted to soothe him.
He turns away, letting Zack find his own discovery.
If Genesis is not here, there is still work to do. It was indicated that the engineers thought that the malfunction in the reactor was coming from this area. Sephiroth settles on finding that. The sign is too much. At least he can focus on what they are meant to be working on. Zack's mutterings on the name make it to his ear. He sees the same thing.
JENOVA
Not an illusion.
A tightness tries to lock his throat.
A control panel sits near the stairs, the lights humming red instead of green. Sephiroth wraps his fingers around the edges. The cold metal soothes through the leather. It doesn't matter. He needs to see Genesis, or what is left of Genesis, and then this will be over. His new life will begin.
The letters on the top are faded but only takes him a moment to see the erroring section.
Sephiroth sends Zack away to seal the section off so he doesn't look too closely. There are fresh scrapes by a tool through the rust on the pipe. These aren't leaks that were made from old age and neglect. The edges of the metal are sharp and new.
Someone broke it intentionally.
Another unknown. Another variable unfixed. It could have been Genesis but why? He would know that his presence alone should draw Sephiroth and Zack to Nibelheim. Breaking any part of a reactor is a dangerous thing. The Genesis that Sephiroth knew was smarter than that.
He needs to stop thinking so hard. He needs to get through. He does not need one more aspect of this to be wrong. He needs to put down his head one more time and complete the mission.
The lights from inside the pods flicker as Zack works the engine. He turns to one of them as a distraction. It is easier to look away from something he cannot answer.
"Geez, it took an arm and a leg but I got it sealed off..." Zack's voice says nearby.
A humanoid shape floats in the container. A crown of horns decorate what is left of the face. The skin is contorted into scales and is stained purple. Teeth jut out from a mouth that cannot close.
He's seen this before.
Mariella showed him a man from the R&D's lab. It would have been Orlin's fate had he not gone the way that he did.
This is Hojo's signature and work. This was his reactor. This is where he has hidden his abandoned projects.
It's the eyes that strike him the most. They may have been dull and dead but he could recognize those slitted pupils. They are the same ones that make people stare at the floor. It's the ones that photographers tell him to look away and never to make direct contact because they are too alien.
Would have Sephiroth ended up in one of these containers? His mind asks it without permission.
Pain stings up his back.
"What is that?" Zack asks after pushing past him to see.
Sephiroth focuses. Zack's confusion is real and tangible.
"You average SOLDIER members are mako-infused humans. You're enhanced, but you're still human." Sephiroth glances at the frozen grimace. "But these are harder to classify. Their mako energy levels are exponentially higher than yours."
He can't imagine how many years these bodies have soaked. A First Class SOLDIER's exposure is a second compared to what has happened here.
Zack pauses and stares back at the face that used to be human. "Are they monsters then? Not human?"
They need to keep moving. Somewhere in the building, Genesis is waiting for them.
"Yes." At least this is a black and white answer in a world of gray. "Hojo was the one who created them. Abominations that are spawned by mako energy. That is what monsters are by definition."
Zack's feet follow him.
"You said an 'average' member. What about you, Sephiroth?"
What about him?
Sephiroth is sinking back into the mako for the last time. The sweetness of the liquid relaxes his limbs. He remembers spooling out into the darkness. It pulls him away from himself. He had liked the sensation. He had loved the sensation. He had craved it.
Hojo promised the mako would make him stronger.
It had until he had left Sephiroth on the floor shivering in a pool of it.
But just how long had he spent in those tanks unconscious?
It makes his head spin trying to pull together an idea, an estimate, anything. Air sucks out of his lungs. He had just thought about the laughably minimal amount of time a First spends in the exposure tanks compared to this contorted thing that he has easily labeled a monster.
Sephiroth's exposures have stretched a countless number of times past any estimate.
A hand presses on his shoulder.
"Hey, Sephiroth. You okay?"
Being touched pulls him back but it's too much. Zack is related to Angeal, a man who was convinced he was a monster and he hadn't been exposed even half as much as Sephiroth has been. It's a live wire of fire in his body.
He shoves Zack away. What good is help when the only thing that it has ever done in the end is hurt him?
"Could it be…that I…was created the same way?" Sephiroth dares himself to say the words. He puts it out to see if it sounds impossible to his ears.
He's been having mako exposures since he was young. Wutai started him down this path. They exposed him so much that he lost his memories. How much mako exposure is that? How many hours? Could it be days of mako that his body had been exposed to?
If he was foolish enough, he would have been thinking he was having an attack. His hands shake with the emotion of these thoughts. A sense of himself starts to drain. He doesn't want to connect these dots. He doesn't want to continue down this path but his mind works faster than his strength.
He's stumbling down this logic and it is ripping something out of him.
Shinra has been known to send trained monsters out in the fields.
Their bodies are contorted and strengthened by mako energy forced into them. Sephiroth's strength is twisted, abnormal to even SOLDIER levels. He's seen his records. He is impossibly strong. Even Zack has mentioned that he isn't normal. Sephiroth has never even claimed to be normal. R&D doesn't even bother with pretenses.
"Am I the same as these monsters?"
Zack's laugh is forced as he comes up next to him. "Come on, Sephiroth. Lighten up a little, would you? You aren't these guys."
Sephiroth shakes his head. "I knew, ever since I was a child, that I was not like the others. I knew that mine was a special existence but this was not what I meant."
"Look at this," Zack says and presses a button. The pod releases next to them. It hisses open. The body flops out. The strength and danger is still there, just unspent and unfocused. His mind curls against himself. Could this have been a prototype for him?
Zack's boot nudges a shoulder. "You two are totally different."
Perhaps on the outside. Perhaps Hojo had found a way to twist the monster and bury it deep inside instead. Shinra needed their weapon but they also needed a figurehead. How many times had his picture been taken when he was streaked with blood and gore?
Zack wouldn't even touch the monster on the floor. He nudged the body with his boot.
"Am I a human being?"
He hates how it sounds true.
It would justify everything.
It would explain the cage. It would explain why Angeal and Genesis left him. It would explain the numbness in him. Humans feel. Monsters do not. He's never been the same. He's never been like everyone else. He's been warped.
It's an answer to everything.
"No such luck. You are a monster."
He turns.
And there he is.
Genesis Rhapsodos confirming all his fears.