Zack XII: Mako Poisoning

Zack hung up and sighed. Looked like he was stuck here for now. Sephiroth still seemed unconscious, but his eyes had started darting around again, and his hand were twitching. Zack wondered if that was a good sign. His eyes were still following me, and he tried (but failed) to take my hand that I offered him, and I can guarantee that even just attempting this is not usually a sign that things were going well. Hojo had denied trying to kill Sephiroth, but Zack was not so certain about how true that was. What was he even trying to accomplish? Exposing a person to a high dose of mako energy hardly ever helped improve their mental health. With Sephiroth already being as down as he was, this kind of therapy was unlikely to help him get back on his feet. Was he undergoing these treatments to make him even more powerful? What could that possibly be for? Shinra had won the war and there was no single person in this world who even came close to him in terms of physical strength. Avalanche was still around, certainly. Their strongest fighter was bio-engineered, just like Shinra's SOLDIERs were, but she and Sephiroth had already crossed blades and he could not hold a candle to him. As long as their main base could not be found, even having the strongest man alive would not be much use one way or another.

He mindlessly brushed away a few stands of hair from Sephiroth's face that had fallen into his wide-open eyes. The low humming of the machines around him made him sleepy. He shifted a little to lean his back against a desk close by without disturbing the unresponsive Sephiroth too much. Still tired from the short night of terrible rest and his early rise, the mako that had flooded the room when Hojo decompressed the tank did its part in making him even more sleepy. Not in an uncomfortable way, but that was what made it especially dangerous to people. Mako had a different scent and feel to every person. Apparently, one theory was that breathing low doses mako subconsciously invoked a person's strongest memories, which would cause them to smell things associated with these memories or feel general nostalgia. Zack could smell the humid forests of Gongaga, where he had spent his childhood chasing overly large Kimara Bugs while trying not to step into the infant O-Chus that had just taken root in the damp forest floor. The forest had taught him to fight before he started any formal training as a SOLDIER at Shinra. After an afternoon of adventures, he would return to the village to find his mother's hearth alight, food boiling over the open fire, that hardly ever was entirely unburnt, but the whiff of roasting was what made the food at Gongaga so special when he was a child. After the mako reactor was constructed in the very center of the jungle, where the trees grew the thickest, they would never cook over an open fire again, the food turned bland, and people would complain about the stench of mako that had displaced the clear forest air. But to Zack, the fragrance of the forest never actually disappeared.

He jumped and reached for his sword as the door opened and a short blurry figure in a lab coat stepped in. The figure flinched back and raised their hands in front of their body as Zack reached for his sword. Raising an outstretched index finger to their lips in a "shush" expression, they quickly closed the door. Looking around the room as she approached the pair, a female voice declared disdainfully: "He told me there was one SOLDIER with mako poisoning here, but it seems like there are two." As Zack looked up at her, the room started spinning around him. He pointed at Sephiroth weakly and said with heavy tongue: "He needs help."

She rolled her eyes as she walked over to the console that Hojo had worked on earlier and pressed a few buttons. The low humming rose in pitch as Zack felt a light breeze move his hair. The woman turned around and knelt down next to Sephiroth. "Hiya!", Zack greeted her, raising a hand in a daze. Catching his wrist in mid-air, she said nothing as she felt his pulse and temperature. "Got any plans for tonight?", Zack hit on her, barely able to keep his eyes open. "Let's see if you still want that once you're back to your senses", she scolded him as she got up. "The room was full of mako because you didn't turn on the ventilation. Before long, you would have ended up the same as him." Naturally, it was not Zack, who forgot to turn on the ventilation; it was Hojo, who had turned it off intentionally before leaving, probably with the intention of putting him into the state he was in. Hojo was not yet done with his victims.

She turned to the desk on the side and picked up a few vials, one after another, until she found what she was looking for. Until she pulled up a syringe and administered a clear substance to Sephiroth, Zack's vision had started to clear. He blinked a few times as he recognized that the blurry figure in a lab coat was a middle-aged woman with short brown hair. He shook his head. "Hojo did that." She shushed again as she nodded and whispered: "We have to make it look as if I found you by accident in case anyone walks in."

She looked hastily at the door and continued in a low voice: "That Turk contacted me. If the Professor did this on purpose, he'll come back as soon as he thinks that you've been in the fumes long enough to have fallen asleep. It was a trap." She slapped Sephiroth's cheeks a few times. Zack lifted an arm weakly. "You're destroying his face. That's a crime." She only scoffed with contempt. "Will he be OK?", Zack asked. She pinched Sephiroth's nose to block his airway. "This guy's basically indestructible. He'd probably survive even if you cut him in half." Zack looked up in wonder. "Has anyone ever tried that?" In that moment, Sephiroth woke up, breathing heavily, and the woman let go of his nose. "That's better", she declared as she got up. "I gave him a stimulant. Be very careful. He should be able to walk out of here in a few minutes, but the mako poisoning will last for another day or two. And he'll probably crash once the stimulant wears off, so get him to a quiet place as soon as possible." Sephiroth, having just woken up from what Zack believed were hallucinations, looked around in a panic. I can vouch for what he saw being real, but this experience would remain largely inconsequential, for when I offered him my hands this time, he did not react. When his eyes met Zack, the latter raised his hand and greeted him with a weak smile: "Hiya! Got any plans for tonight?"

The lady folded her arms. "You really try that one on everyone." Zack shrugged and said with a grin: "I just try to be fair." After a short pause, he added: "Got it? Fair?" She rolled her eyes. "I have no idea what you're saying." His jokes were the worst, but one might also argue that he was desperately trying to laugh away one, or possibly two serious inquiries that had remained unanswered. Sephiroth's head turned to her as she knelt down again, soothing him: "Don't worry, Firecracker. You'll be fine." She grabbed his clothes from the chair next to her and handed them to him. "He'll explain everything to you. Get dressed quickly and leave before the Professor comes back." He only stared at her, wide-eyed, without comprehension. As she did not get a response, she tousled his hair and got up.

Stepping over him, she pulled up Zack by his arm. "Come over here." As Zack stumbled after her, he questioned her: "So what's going on here? Why did Hojo do that?" She clapped back sharply without answering his inquiry: "Who are you anyway? I thought for a moment you were Angeal." Zack nodded and explained sourly: "Yes, well, I'm playing dress-up today for some reason. So what's Hojo's deal?" She shook her head as she looked over Zack's shoulder. "I don't know what his goals are", she said with a hushed voice. "But the Professor has been building up his mako tolerance for some reason." It was very hard to imagine at the time that this experience was just another part of a larger setup. Naturally, one cannot know if Hojo planned out everything exactly the way he intended for them to happen, but it cannot be denied that he had put most of his chest pieces in position already at this time. Sephiroth was just one of them, and the young Turk just returning to Midgar from a successfully completed mission to a village in a remote location on the western continent, whose purpose completely eluded not only him, was another.

Zack looked over his shoulder to witness Sephiroth having gotten up on shaky legs, trying to put on his pants. Turning back to her, he pressed further: "What could that be good for?" She shook her head. "I have no idea. A this point, he could swim in a mako pool without any serious consequences. That's far more than anyone reasonably needs. But anyway." She turned toward the door. "Leave as quickly as you can. Don't mention to anyone that you saw me here. I don't know anything and I will pretend not to know you if you get caught." Zack nodded. "Um. How do we get out?" She turned around. "Right. You don't have clearance." She slowly reached into her coat pocket and handed him the card. "You stole it." He nodded and pointed at his chest. "I'm a great thief!" She shook her head in disapproval and listened for a moment at the door before she opened it, spied left and right, and finally walked out.

Zack quickly texted a message to Tseng: "We're coming" and muted his phone. Sephiroth had made some progress in putting on his clothes, but he still looked pretty beat up as Zack walked up to him. He flinched when Zack draped his coat over his shoulder. "What did he do to me, Zack?", he muttered, his speech slurred and drowsy. Zack remembered for a moment Hojo's inappropriate remarks and gestures, but decided that Sephiroth had better not know about those. "He stuffed you in a mako tank." Sephiroth looked away as he tried to put on his gloves. "His stench is everywhere." Zack sniffed. Sephiroth's mako-drenched body and hair were still emitting the nostalgic fragrance of Gongaga's jungle.

"I chased him off before he could do anything." Zack picked up Sephiroth's sword as the latter finally put on his gloves. Zack stretched out his arm. "Can you walk? We have to leave before Hojo comes back." Sephiroth turned around and tried to walk a few steps before he stumbled and would have fallen if Zack had not caught him. He put Sephiroth's arm over his shoulders and grabbed him by his waist after he handed Sephiroth his sword into his free hand. "Damn, you're really heavy", he joked. "How much do you weigh?" Sephiroth's mouth twitched into a crooked smile. "Don't you think you should get to know me a little before asking such personal questions?" They reached the door, and, just like the woman in the lab coat did before him, Zack listened at the door before opening it, looking left and right and finally stepping out.