Death comes in wet, hot strings of Mako melting and burning. This must be the end. Systems shutting down. The level of pain is beyond anything she thought capable of experiencing. Each atom pulls apart, piece by piece. Then darkness invades the acidic green, and everything fades. The agony. The hallucinations of someone holding her tight. Everything becomes nothing.
And Tifa drifts. She floats in denial and regret. Over and over, she reaches for his hand. Over and over, he calls to her. She can almost grasp his fingertips.
She gasps into sudden existence. Consciousness returns, though it coincides with a strange inner distortion she can't quite place. She's lying in a vast pool of dark translucent liquid. It shimmers, untouched, to every horizon, and above is a smear of cosmos, unearthly and vivid. Dizzying.
She pushes onto her palms, feeling thick sludge beneath. The silence is immense. Her breath draws no air, and no sound travels. The water is tepid and mirrors the sky to such perfection that the stars stretch seamless in all directions.
The sludge congeals between her fingers. Bodiless hands form and grasp and pull. With a shriek, Tifa recoils, but the ichor comes to life. It sticks onto her waist and shoulders and hardens in coils over her limbs. Then it drags her under.
She slips below the surface. Hands touch her face and neck, run through her hair. The ooze gets into her mouth, and it tastes the way starlight should—frigid and airy, like dust and metals. But it does not strangle or asphyxiate. It carries into darkness and compression.
When she nears blackout, the liquid deposits her through sheer sky, overcast and grey. Her body hits dirt with a harsh impact that bruises her hipbone and elbow. She coughs and sucks in pure mountain air. On her feet, fists raised, Tifa looks for her perpetrator in the haze.
But the surroundings shock her.
This is Nibelheim. More precisely, the mountain path leading into town. Quiet, peaceful.
A thousand emotions unfold. It is as she remembers from her youth. Fresh pine, a hint of winter. Branches rustling in a gentle wind that carries a falcon's cry from the valley.
This must be death, she decides. The afterlife—everyone she loves and lost—must be here. Her father... her mother... Her body must be decaying, and her soul has traveled beyond the mountains. Here, they must be waiting for her.
She takes the route to Nibelheim, wary, but encounters no threats. The town appears with its white picket fencing, silent and wavering a bit like a deteriorated recording. Squat rustic buildings watch along desolate streets. There are no rodents or birds or the usual slow creak of the windmill atop the water tower. Her boots click on cobblestones through twilight alleys and walkways.
At the village center, she pauses. The homes are all dark, and an unnatural white haze makes the mountain ridgeline impossible to see. This Nibelheim exists in a pocket outside of time, it seems. She touches the wood base of the water tower, tracing rough splinters and drops of moisture. Real enough. Yet if this is death...
Musical notes break across the square, coming from an open window. She turns at the sound.
Someone is playing piano. And it's a tune she recognizes, though she hasn't heard it in years. Her mother used to sing it.
She approaches the house. Yes, this is her childhood home. The light from the second-story window dispels the desolation, and her stomach twists. Her hand rests on the doorknob, thumbing the smooth spot that's always been there. The piano continues inside, repeating.
Tifa swallows and enters. Within, her living room and kitchen are in faded, frozen blue. Unimportant, because the warm light spilling from the stairwell beckons.
She ascends on tiptoes. The door to her bedroom is open, splaying yellow angles across the hall.
She peeks in.
A Shinra MP stands at her piano, tapping the keys with one gloveless hand and humming.
As she enters, he strikes the wrong note. The discord flatlines the tune, and he pauses.
"I used to hear this melody," he says, "from outside. Being played by you."
"Cloud…" She breathes out in relief.
He turns to her and takes off his helmet. The eyes do not carry any Mako shine, only a natural pale blue. There is no evidence of the monster within. Indeed, she feels no abstract revulsion.
His attention returns to the piano, and he starts playing again.
"You know, when I first came back into town, I went to your house first. I wanted to see you."
The tune halts mid-measure, leaving the refrain unfinished and wanting.
"But you weren't home."
She steps closer, noticing the surreality of their surroundings, the faintest scintillations.
"This song… You used to play it so often." He looks right at her. "Why did you stop?"
The question catches her off guard. She's never shared the reason with anyone.
She swallows. "Because it reminds me of my mother." She's surprised at how easy it is to speak with him. "I stopped playing when she died."
"Ah," he replies with a little nod. "I see. I can't imagine what that's like. To lose a mother."
But Cloud's mother is dead. So this must be before the incident. Cloud is sixteen, fresh from the academy, before Shinra sunk its teeth into him.
"I hope you don't mind if I play it," the MP says, tapping the tune again. "It reminds me of you."
She was never close with Cloud growing up, so it startles her how enamored he sounds. She'd been ambivalent to him, trading her time with the other boys in town, none of whom she can remember now.
"Cloud, what is going on here? Where are we?"
But he ignores her.
"Is this...one of your memories?" Tifa asks. "Did you really come into my house when you were in town on that mission with Sephiroth?"
He remains fixated on the keys, humming along.
Sudden black smoke billows in from the open window. It smells of burning skin and echoes with screams. Flames throw intense shadows across the MP, yet he doesn't move. Tifa runs to the window, and the town is ablaze, transformed into her nightmare. Adrenaline hits hard.
"Cloud, what do we—?"
But when she looks at the piano, he is gone. The keys are covered. Fire licks at the corners of her bedroom, forcing her to flee as smoke fills the house. Wood crackles and disintegrates around her. She makes it outside, and the scene assaults her fresh. It rips into her, eviscerating any doubt that this is hell. Yes, this is death.
The fire is blinding, the heat impossible. Cries emanate from collapsing homes, and piles of ash bloom black toxins. The heat chokes, and smoke stings. The pain is very real.
And she must find Cloud. He's got to be the key. But by this time, when the town was burning, he was in the Reactor. As was she.
She darts into the mountains through forested darkness. Her feet know this path well, but her mind is rupturing. Her sixteen-year-old self runs within her, full of rage and desperation.
The Reactor is a silo spewing greenish steam, bathed in floodlights, atop a slate clearing. Tifa hasn't seen it fully functional since that day, and it brings her pause.
Cloud would be inside. As would Sephiroth. Perhaps even Zack and her father. It's that last one she can't bear to see.
She clears away apprehension with a breath. Knowing what's inside gives her the advantage, though her heart still pounds upon approach. The entry hisses open at her touch, and the interior leads into a gloom of pipes and grating. The stench of Mako is everywhere.
The door seals behind her, and she is inside the beast. The lighting is dim, the humidity oppressive. A gentle vibration resonates in the walls. She wipes sweat from her eyes and continues.
The oxygen feels too thin, the corridors too narrow. The Reactor is a maze of catwalks and industrial ladders, never meant for human traversing. She finds the central chamber and its pit of green sloshing. The walkway bridge is empty. The platform where her father dies is vacant. But the door nearby is open and dark. This is where she'd taken up the masamune, that frightful sword, and pursued Sephiroth. She'd been spitfire and vengeance, so certain she could take his life in that moment. What a fool.
She enters the inner atrium, a smaller room filled with human-sized Mako condensers. An industrial staircase leads up a center aisle. It was here that Sephiroth struck her down, where she almost bled out. Her eyes rest on the spot at the base of the stairs. Right here.
Yet the massacre hasn't happened yet.
At the top of the steps, the final chamber is open. Inviting.
The letters J.E.N.O.V.A are above the doorway.
The thrum of the condensers vibrates her boots as she ascends. Her gloved hand slides along the spartan railing where she knows blood will fall. She never made it this far in reality, but perhaps Cloud did.
The inner sanctum is a single room of high ceilings, webbed with piping and designed to hold one thing. A monstrous thing, raised in a central platform of thick glass and chemicals. Blue lights illuminate the subject, which enthralls and disgusts.
The body of Jenova writhes in its tank. It has a head—a feminine head with long silver hair—and its organs float outside its body in the fluid. A metal device crowns its head, concealing the eyes, though Tifa knows—yes, she knows—this thing can see her. Tendrils drift. Mottled flesh indicates breast and shoulders, a defined waist and hips, amputated limbs. Lumps extend from its shoulders like twisted branches.
"Beautiful," a voice speaks, and Tifa screams.
Cloud stands near the platform, gazing up at the specimen, though Tifa swears he had not been there a second ago. He's appeared like a ghost.
"Isn't she?" He speaks soft, to himself.
Tifa finds her hand against her breastbone. "Cloud… Oh, Cloud, what is going on? What is all—"
"When they found her," he carries on, unbothered, "she looked so human. I can see why they thought she was a Cetra. But she'd been mimicking one. That's all. A Cetra woman had these features."
His voice is strange and distant. Tifa squints in the darkness. She can see things crawling on his skin like leeches. A multitude covers his body. He's wearing the First-Class uniform, except the purple colors look wet and the dry areas are blue.
"This is where we first met." He turns to face her. "You and I."
Mako-rimmed irises shimmer above the shadows. He is backlit by the containment of Jenova. The leeches fester over his face.
"M-me?" Tifa says, fighting to regain control over her sensibilities.
But he is horror incarnate.
"Don't you recognize me?" he says. Ooze trails from his lips. "Tifa Lockhart."
This isn't Cloud. It's the version she fled in Junon, the one pursuing her in Mideel. The soulless Shinra super-soldier, transformed by the very creature in this room.
He smiles, but his eyes don't.
Every alarm goes off in her body. Every part of her panics.
He comes towards her. She doesn't wait.
She bolts out of Jenova's chamber and flies down the staircase. Cloud chases, and she can hear his boots pounding close behind. He's fast, of course, and he catches her with one hand before she reaches the cistern of the central room. She turns and punches. He slips out of her reach. She spins into a series of kicks. He blocks with his forearms, and the connection of his skin is searing hot. Tifa pulls away with blisters forming on her shins.
She strikes with her open palm, but sludge pulls off his body, attaching to her glove and crawling up her wrist.
She throws her glove off. In that contact, it transfers onto her other hand and eats through the leather. She peels that glove off, too, watching the writhing masses consume both like acid.
"You should run," Cloud says, but it isn't Cloud at all. She can hear the duplicity in his voice.
Her bare knuckles raise to protect her face. She backs up along the walkway leading to the Mako chamber.
"Don't you remember your promise!?" she shouts.
He advances without acknowledgment, a trained killer. That's what he left town to become.
Her boots slip on the grating as they enter the area above the swirling green pool. Steam condenses over everything.
"That you would rescue me if I were ever in trouble," she says. "That was your promise!"
He pauses and tilts his head to one side in a mannerism so reminiscent of the real Cloud it hurts.
Then he laughs. "You think this is some sort of fairytale? That he'll always come to save you?"
Run, her body commands.
"This isn't your fantasy."
No, it's a nightmare. She spins and runs. Fast through the corridors, hearing him in pursuit, but the Reactor is a loop. Every catwalk turns her around, every ladder circles back. There is no escape, and he is getting closer. The heat is unbearable. Her knuckles hurt. The sludge had burnt into her skin when it dissolved her gloves.
Then she realizes he's stopped following. A new fright rattles her chest. It was better when she knew where he was. Now all is quiet except the hiss of valves and pumps. She follows the current path, but it keeps leading down. Down without deviation. Down beyond the depths it should. A knocking sound echoes in her footsteps.
The pathway terminates into an impossible location. The heart of the Reactor.
She's back in Jenova's chamber. Except everything has turned.
The glass tubing structure is shattered. The monster within hangs from its tendrils, hooked into the top of the enclosure, and its head…
Its head is gone. Chopped off. The neck bleeds silver ichor. Chemicals soak the floor. Stray wires spark in the aftermath. There's nothing between Tifa and the exposed body of that alien form.
It twitches. Tifa runs.
She runs straight into the antechamber of Mako condensing units. Then she halts at the base of the stairs. This room stinks of raw meat.
Zack lies in a puddle of blood, one arm outstretched, fingers frozen in one final curl. The hazard lights above the doors spin yellow and orange shadows. There's a crimson stain where Tifa's body should be. The sight spirals her logic, her sanity. She begins screaming. The Reactor is alive. It's transforming. This day, this moment, all of it, hits so hard she loses her balance. She clings to the railing, unable to stymie the tears flowing from unblinking eyes.
Then the scrape of metal sounds.
Cloud appears from the entrance to Jenova's chamber, holding Zack's broadsword. The hilt drips with blood. Zack's, perhaps.
Tifa's body tremors. The whirlwind of carnage tightens her throat.
But she keeps running. Into the Mako chamber, above the churning green.
Again, the scene is different. Gore sprays the walkway. Blood, too much of it, a loss nobody could survive, covers the grating. At the center of that pool is the Shinra MP.
"Cloud!"
The real Cloud. He's unconscious, breath a faint rasp, complexion a shade above death. She kneels next to him. There's blood all in his hair, and the stab wound in his chest gushes in sync with a dying heartbeat. The blue of his uniform is violet. The amount of blood startles her. It isn't possible. He can't survive.
"Cloud, please!" She doesn't care about the panic in her voice because this is him, the boy who made a promise on a well and played piano in her room. This isn't the monster, and maybe she can—
"Tifa," his voice answers her from the doorway of the inner chamber. "I thought I told you to run."
Silver hair, a single long strand, floats in the MP's gore.
"No, please," she begs, bending over the MP, trying to staunch the wound with her bare hands. "Please don't die!"
The tip of the broadsword comes into view near the MP's boots. Those same boots which her assailant now wears.
"He's already dead, Tif," Cloud says. "Can't you see that?"
Watching the life drain out of him surfaces her repressed affections. She misses him, dearly, and she doesn't want him to die, no matter what he's become.
Drips of sludge hit the grating, and when she looks up at the Cloud who's been stalking her, he's covered in that iridescent grime. Those worms crawling on him have converged into a single sheen over his skin.
"You should go," he says.
She doesn't know if he has the capacity to kill her, but she isn't willing to tempt it.
She leaves the MP. Cloud stands covered in alien matter, watching her. Her body shakes. Her fingers are slippery. His blood is all over her. Everywhere. Too much. Far too much.
This time, the exit presents itself without labyrinthine scrambles. Starlight splatters the night sky. She doesn't want to stop moving, but she doesn't know where to go or what to do. Her mind is numb. She treks through the forest while Nibel wolves yip, hungry, in the shadows.
The road leads back home, no matter which direction she turns.
Nibelheim still burns as she enters. Ashes float and stick to her eyelashes. The water tower is a pile of char and embers. Flames corrupt every structure except one at the edge of town. The Shinra Mansion. Its windows flicker with mirrored destruction.
There's nowhere else to go. This town is a prison, and the mansion could be the only refuge from the heat and the wolves.
She kicks the door down to gain entry, and the drafty darkness within is welcome. A chandelier hangs over a carpeted foyer and dusty furniture. This mansion captivated Cloud in the waking world, so it must be significant.
She explores the dismal halls. An uncertain feeling guides her to an electronic door, atypical of the decor. The keycard reader blinks yellow, and the door is ajar enough to get her hands through and heave it open. A stone stairwell on the other side spirals down beneath buzzing fluorescent lighting.
In all the years she lived in Nibelheim, the Shinra Mansion was a favored setting for haunted tales. Ghosts filled its halls, and mysterious disappearances played to its supernatural aura. Those same stories spin in her mind now as she descends, feeding their validity.
She reaches a basement, which appears to be both a research hall and laboratory. Books line the single corridor, and the sharpness of sterility mixes with the mildew creeping up the walls.
The laboratory is buzzing with equipment. Glass containers, scrawled notes, and trays of unknown components rest on every surface. But there is one peculiar device that stands apart. A large black box near a medical table. Oblong vials fill the top, and hoses extend from its belly, terminating in claws of long thin needles. Hundreds of them.
"Oh," a feeble voice says. "You've found me."
She spins on her heels. A corpse stands at the opposite end of the lab, bloodless and rotting. But instant familiarity strikes her.
"...Cloud?"
The MP uniform is sliced open into a gory pit of crusted blood and marbled organs. She can see the pale sheen of bone as he breathes. His blonde hair hangs in dirty strands around Mako-saturated eyes that glow too bright.
"Hi, Tifa." A smile cracks his dry lips apart. "I knew you'd find me."
Cities of tiny plastic tubes jut from infected incisions in his chest. A shimmer of green residue coats his body. He's dead. Yet he can't be.
"I don't…" She backs away, spreading her palms and trying to halt the surge of nausea. "I saw you…"
But her thoughts are a jumble. She senses the monster inside him, and that deep-seated terror seizes her core.
"Wh-what is this?" Tifa asks.
His smile fades.
"This is where I was born," he says after a moment. "And this is where I die. Jenova cells were in that machine."
His tone isn't threatening, but she feels a spike of fear nevertheless. Her eyes go to the myriad of needles held in vicious repose.
"But you didn't die," she states.
"Cloud did."
"Then who are you?"
The corpse of the Shinra MP doesn't reply at first. His eyes move from the machine to her.
Then he says, "The survivor." He steps towards her. "I'm all that remains of him, each and every time."
The words perplex her, and a sickening fascination overrides the instinct to run. She can't stop staring at him.
"I'm sorry, Tifa. I couldn't let you fall into that poison alone. I didn't mean for this to happen to us."
He speaks as if he's present and lucid, unlike the other apparitions. Yes, she remembers that embrace in the Lifestream. A body surrounding hers.
"You saved me," she relays, cautious and questioning.
"In a sense, yes. But the Lifestream can't absorb Jenova cells."
"You remembered me."
"No, not exactly. But when you let go… I couldn't stand the thought of anyone drowning like I did. It's the one thing Shinra keeps getting wrong. Death doesn't erase all of him."
"Death?"
"Well, yes. It's the only way they know to revert the cells to a state of regeneration."
Horrific understanding connects. She watches Mako leak from the corners of his eyes. His body overflows with it, and the tubes in his chest lead into intravenous darkness.
"Shinra kills you," she whispers, a hand hovering over her jaw. "Over and over."
"Yes," he says.
The implication makes her sick. He is a true biological experiment in Shinra's thirst for a flawless soldier. Brute force extracting necessary results.
"And every time he dies…" She can't stomach it.
"The memories scatter," Cloud finishes. "And fade. Except for this basement. Too potent, I suppose."
"But I saw you playing piano," Tifa says low and rapid. "I saw you inside the Reactor."
His intrigue shifts. "Where was he playing piano?"
"My bedroom."
"Oh. That must be an original memory. Were you there, too?"
She shakes her head because she can't find the right words. She's talking to a poisoned corpse. Her hands tremble. Vertigo pushes her to the wall, and spines of books poke into her shoulders.
He reaches for her, and she doesn't recoil. His touch is cold and inanimate.
"It's okay, Tif. I'm glad you found me."
But his voice is warm, growing stronger as they speak.
"H-How?" she says. "How is this possible?"
"We must be within the Lifestream." He surveys the lab as if to gain a clue. "The Planet can't break down the Jenova cells. So we've become… I'm not sure. I think it merged our consciousness somehow."
"I should be dead if we're in the Lifestream. I'm not like you."
"I know, but our bodies… Mine must be protecting yours."
From obliteration. She imagines that lake of ooze coiling around her human form, far above.
"What will happen to us?" she asks.
"I'm not sure." He tilts his head in that quintessential way of his. "But I think I'm trying to bring you to the surface now. My real body, I mean."
"You can see what's happening to us on the surface?"
"Not exactly. It's more like…" He pauses, squinting at something far. "It's more like a sensation. A truth I'm aware of. I don't physically see anything."
"So he'll remember you when he wakes up? I mean, you'll remember me. You won't take me to Shinra."
The corpse sighs. "This is where it gets complicated."
Of course. Nothing is simple. Tifa feels the dread weighing heavier each second.
"I can't force him to remember anything. And this particular event…" He gestures to the bubbling laboratory, to the instruments of his torture. "He doesn't ever want to remember this."
And there it is. The inescapable fate of Shinra winning.
She struggles to refute. "But...But he remembers our promise. He remembered me in the Reactor. Up until the part where…"
But even she doesn't know what happened. The Reactor is a feverish episode of loss and fear.
"I know," the MP replies. "Jenova encoded the memories most significant to him during my creation. But somehow there was interference around the Reactor incident."
Her eyes go to his, startled. "You don't know what happened either?"
He dabs at the chest wound, at the edges extruding necrotic flesh.
"No," he says, almost inaudible. Then his tone lightens. "You found an original memory, though. Playing piano. That's impressive."
But it won't help her retain him on the surface. She thinks hard, tapping fingers against the bookshelf. Her unease has not settled, but his presence no longer scares her. She's seeing the Cloud she cares for again—right here, yet still out of reach.
"Cloud wants to remember the Reactor," she says. "That's the one event he obsesses over. Finding Sephiroth. Discovering the truth."
The corpse nods along. "I know. And I can't help him with that. I can only remember what comes after."
"So you know everything else? Everything after this basement?"
"Yes. The perk, I guess, of being the only part to survive."
Each brutal death. Every agonizing dissection.
"Then if he does remember you, he will remember us," she says.
Cloud thinks. Then, "In theory. But, Tifa, I told you he'll never want to remember this. He caught a glimpse once, in the real Nibelheim basement, and it nearly broke him. He stifled it as soon as he could."
But that doesn't matter. All she has to do is get this version of him to resurface. And a plan is starting to form.
"The Reactor," she says, though her stomach curls at its mention. "That's the key. That's the one memory he wishes he could have. And it happened just before this."
The corpse tilts his head. He shuffles closer, listening.
"I found an original memory, you said," Tifa continues. "If I can find one more memory—the one specifically in the Reactor—then maybe that's enough to pull it into this one. Maybe he can face this basement knowing the truth of how it happened to you."
The MP considers this. His hands go to the mutilations, the gaping hole through his organs and bone and everything else, too.
"I don't know, Tif. There must be a reason Jenova didn't encode that memory."
Or it could be a fluke, she wants to argue. They know nothing about Jenova or whatever Shinra's been doing to him in the hopes of resetting the cells.
"I have to try," she decides. Because this hell is nothing compared to whatever awaits at the Shinra Tower, with the physical body of Cloud watching, impassive in his First-Class Uniform, as Hojo cuts her apart.
Yet, the Reactor is still the prime source of her nightmares. Sweaty sleepless nights that follow into daytime, even when she knows she is safe. She never escaped those flames.
"Come with me," she says. "We can find the truth together."
It's a sure-fire way to get Cloud to remember both the Reactor and his crucial rebirth. But the MP shakes his head.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
He presses his lips together.
"I can never leave this basement."
Alone. The Reactor looms and howls in her head. She must go back alone.
"No, there must be—"
"I'm not like you, Tif. Our consciousnesses merged, but I am still a memory. You are… You are something special."
If he had any blood, she would've sworn he was blushing. The same rebounds in her, squirming from the depths of repression. Despite his deterioration and the mass of alien cells, this is the Cloud she's known. The boy from Nibelheim was never anyone she cared for, as callous as that feels to admit. The Cloud she met in Sector Five, the one she kissed beneath fireworks, and, yes, even the one who reached for her as she plummeted into pure Mako—that's the Cloud she wants.
And he's right here. A culmination of everything they've experienced together. Everything they could experience in the future.
She has to find him. She has to return to the Reactor and seek out those memories which Jenova locked away.
"And if this doesn't work?" she asks.
The MP places his hand atop hers, cold and webbed with collapsed veins.
"Then, I'm glad you found me. Even if it is like this."
The Mako-soaked blue finds hers, and she is no longer afraid. She wants to feel his arms around her. But gore and chemicals saturate his clothing. His sallow skin depresses along bone. The Jenova cells have not yet regenerated, supported by the Mako enhancements. This perpetual hell traps him in this perpetual state. She can think of few worse fates.
"I'll find him," she states, holding his hand between hers. "I'll find it and bridge the memories, and when you wake up, you'll know me again."
As if saying it aloud could make it true. The MP's smile shifts bittersweet. Then he frowns and watches something unseen.
"You should go," he says. "We're running out of time."
It's enough to jolt her heart rate because her task is monumentous. She is wading into unknown territory, surrounded by the dead, in a mash of disjointed memories.
She breathes out.
"Okay," she says. It is not okay. But there is no choice. She nods, convincing herself. "Yes, okay."
Before hesitation can scuttle her resolve, she heads for the stairs. Cloud watches, tethered to that machine with one hand, and she sees the hope and longing in him. And something else. Something more. She hurries upstairs before she can admit she feels the same about him, too.
She emerges from the mansion in a different mind frame. The town burns into cinders, and ash pollutes the sky, but now she has a mission.
She isn't ready for whatever comes next. She doesn't know how to proceed. But she finds comfort that the real Cloud—the one who died in Nibelheim five years ago—exists all around her in the Lifestream. She's sure this is how she found that memory of him playing the piano. Or how it found her.
So what she seeks is out there. The dead hold onto it.
She journeys through the dark mountain pass. Smoke and ash fill the forest, and the burning smell contests the outpour of Mako-steam rising from the silo. The Reactor appears on its plateau, oppressive and jutting against jagged black peaks. The silver structure spawns unrelentless fright, yet she maintains focus and approaches.
The entry panel slides open once again. Above, the stars swirl like the cosmos surrounding that vast pool of sludge. Nibel wolves call behind her. A pack is approaching.
The Reactor boasts an interior of claustrophobia, dim red lights, railings that lead into a hot core of everything she's lost. No, this isn't her memory. It never was.
She enters, and almost at once, the door slams shut.
