Both knew there was no going back after their rescue mission. They would be declared traitors and hunted relentlessly.


Zack and Sephiroth spent the next week poring over the information Cissnei had provided, using new personal laptops they'd purchased specifically for the purpose. They had to make it look like they weren't doing anything special at all, and confined their research sessions to off hours in their own quarters. They knew enough to avoid connecting the new machines to any networks to avoid picking up spyware, and carried them on their persons at all times.

Cissnei's package had contained a flash drive and two matching keycards. The stomach-turning data confirmed everything she had told Zack and more. It was worse than Zack could have imagined.

By Sephiroth's reaction upon seeing the data, it was worse than even he had imagined, and he'd been raised inside Shin-Ra and Hojo's labs.

Cissnei's notes detailed a number of facilities dedicated to bizarre medical and bioscience horrors to create superhuman weapons beyond even normal SOLDIERs. All were run by Hojo and his hand-picked team of scientific sociopaths. Only those who worked deep in those places, their victims, and a limited number of high-level Shin-Ra personnel knew of their existence. One such facility was the size of an entire city and lurked beneath Midgar itself; others were hidden inside the Shin-Ra headquarters proper, and still more could be found in remote towns, reactors, and even on other continents. All conducted unimaginably amoral and vile human experiments.

Of course, the Turks knew everything, even things they weren't supposed to suspect. According to Cissnei's stolen documents, they had decided to learn exactly why they had been kidnapping civilians and subjecting them to extreme mako treatments-cum-tortures before handing the survivors over to Shin-Ra.

They'd been told they were finding "SOLDIER candidates." But everyone knew SOLDIER was a voluntary organization with candidates begging to join. No one in SOLDIER so much as whispered that they had been forced into service. It was rumored that Sephiroth had been given no other options, but he had been just a child when inducted and hadn't known any other life.

The Turks had grown suspicious, used their unique skills to discover the truth for themselves, and, once they understood, they had continued on as though they were still ignorant.

Zack couldn't forgive them. Surely there was something they could have done. But Cissnei's words rang through his head: "We tell ourselves we're loyal and it's for a greater good, and some don't mind at all, or even enjoy the work, but..." That "but..." and her own humanity had led her to commit what the Turks and Shin-Ra would consider treason. At least one Turk still valued a shred of conscience, though it might get her killed by her own colleagues.

The overviews and pictures of some of the experiments currently active had forced Zack to stop reading less than a third of the way through to get control over his reactions. He was a swordsman; he'd seen and inflicted a lot of gory carnage. But this—? Bad enough to torture monsters, but the things the "scientists" did to their fellow humans! Half of one poor man's brain had been removed and implanted into an attack robot while he was still alive.

It was all so passionless, so clinical, so methodically heartless and cruel. The victims were treated as unfeeling objects that, like robots, could be disassembled, reassembled in different configurations, and still perform on demand. The sadism required was off the charts and yet seemed almost an afterthought.

Not surprisingly, most of the "subjects" who managed to survive became insane. Worse, the guards sounded and acted as deranged as their charges, and the so-called scientists, while dispassionate and unemotional, were unfairly impatient and obviously unhinged as well.

While Zack couldn't do more than skim the rest of the terrifying descriptions and focused instead on maps and security analyses, Sephiroth had taken several days to thoroughly review all the material with stoicism and his usual iron control. He had cut through the nightmares to pinpoint Angeal's location in one of Hojo's secured internal labs in Shin-Ra headquarters.

There was a shallow section on the experiments associated with Angeal, and it wasn't very informative. It only listed topics with no explanatory text.

Zack read them over Sephiroth's shoulder: Copy Technology and Techniques; Infection and Integration Methodologies Utilized by Highly Aggressive J-Hybridized Cells; Tissue Regeneration: Cellular Dedifferentiation, Proliferation, and Redifferentiation; Autonomous Tissue Functionality and Motility; Para-Communications; J-Mediated Cell Immortalization; Reunion Studies and Applications.

"What does all that mean?" Zack asked in bewilderment. Scientific jargon was not his forte.

"I only recognize the copy technology," Sephiroth said. Though his features were composed, a flicker of rage lurked in his eyes. "The rest... Reunion sounds familiar. Perhaps Hojo has spoken of it before. I don't recognize any of the other subjects. I don't like it."

"That list is weird," Zack muttered. He didn't like it, either. Just reading through those incomprehensible topics gave Zack a terrible sense of urgency. When he thought about them in combination with Cissnei's warning that Angeal was better off dead, his urgency grew frantic.

The pair used cash to rent a series of crummy rooms at dilapidated inns along the outskirts of the slums—a different place each evening—and spent another week creating a detailed plan of infiltration, attack, escape, and even retreat in case of failure. All while performing their usual on-hours duties and pretending that nothing was horribly wrong. Every day or two, one or the other would make a new inquiry about Angeal, just to allay suspicions. Turks and other Shin-Ra spies might get too curious if Zack and Sephiroth suddenly lost interest in their missing friend.

With each passing day, Zack's impatience and stress levels increased. He took to pacing like a caged coeurl while Sephiroth worked, breaking into squats at irregular intervals to burn off his panicky energy. During working hours he took on monster hunting missions. The slums had never been safer.

When Zack broke the VR room while "training" to take the edge off his growing anxiety, Sephiroth found ways to keep Zack at his side "to assist with some extra paperwork." Zack was aware that it was actually to monitor him, keep him calm, and prevent him from doing something stupid. He accepted it, if not with good grace, then at least with a minimum of complaints.

Both knew there was no going back after their rescue mission. They would be declared traitors and hunted relentlessly. Shin-Ra might even issue "kill on sight" orders and offer bounties. Every detail of their operation had to be accounted for with obsessive precision. Sephiroth selected several rally points in case they became separated—places they could meet up within a given time frame and limited communications.

As part of their escape plan, they purchased an ancient truck and loaded it with supplies: first aid kits, camping and survival equipment, money, food, water, toiletries, bedding and clothing, extra potions and ethers, spare weapons, both their entire collections of materia—anything and everything they thought they might need for an extended time spent on the run. They managed to fully pack the cargo bed, tied the loads down with bungees and nets, and covered it all with a faded brown tarp. Sephiroth had insisted they deliberately make the vehicle look as beat-up and decrepit as possible to disguise its true purpose. They hid it in a series of slum locales, moving it twice a day. On the morning of their planned assault, they located it in a junkyard full of other broken down vehicles in a small village just outside Midgar.

At last, after almost two weeks, they were ready. Zack could barely control his panic. Preparations had taken too long. Since he'd read the list of experiments focused on Angeal, he couldn't shake a terrible and growing sense of dread. Every extra day they waited could mean the difference between life and death, but to go into such a secure, classified area of the headquarters unprepared was suicide. He had to trust that they'd covered every possible scenario and potential disaster.