CHAPTER 2: Requiem Inc.
As Cayne fell off the helicopter, Schwartz dove forward and grabbed the control stick and leveled the helicopter off so it would hover instead of drop. Looking out the window, he could see Cayne falling. Cayne flipped around in the air like a cat and came to rest safely on a rock.
"I just shot him nearly point blank range in the forehead and he's still not dead." Schwartz said to himself.
Schwartz pushed the dead pilot out of the seat and replaced him. It had been a while since Schwartz had been through basic helicopter pilot school, but he was pretty sure he could manage. At least he had a way to get back to Midgar and Requiem's headquarters.
Schwartz brought the helicopter to a rough landing on the helipad in the Sector 4 Slum of Midgar where Requiem Inc. set up when the Shinra building was pretty much destroyed by Meteor. Soldiers and staff met him on the helipad and helped him out of the chopper.
"Where's Doctor Higasa?" He asked the closest soldier.
"Um," the soldier looked around him at the others. The soldier next to him just shrugged. "He should be in BioGen lab."
"Okay, thanks."
Schwartz pushed his way through the soldiers and burst into the main building. Doctor Higasa was Requiem's leading medical expert and the mind behind the BioGen project. BioGen, which stood for Bionic Engineering, was a process in which nanomachines where integrated to a person's bone structure. The result was enhanced strength and speed that surpassed even that of SOLDIER. However, it was a very risky procedure and so far, no one had survived. The BioGen labs were on the bottom level of the Requiem building and Schwartz practically jumped many of the stair cases to get to the bottom.
Doctor Higasa was in the BioGen labs. Standing in front of the oversized tubes, watching the latest test subjects float in a mysterious blue liquid that I have been asked to keep a secret as far as its purpose. Each subject wore a breathing mask and their hair stood up straight in the liquid. Each looked like they were asleep, but Schwartz could tell by the faltering vital signs on the monitors that they were dying.
Higasa sighed and shook his head. He was an elderly man with a speckled bald head and a full white beard. He wore thick eyeglasses and the long white lab coat partially covered a beige pair of khaki pants and turquoise shirt. He was considered by many to be a quack. Reeve gave him just enough funding to keep his project going, but nothing more. Schwartz liked the good doctor and always took an interest in his project. He firmly believed that if Higasa had more funding and was able to purchase better equipment, the BioGen project would be a great success. The BioGen lab was currently working with tools and machines salvaged from the old Shinra building.
"Ah, Schwartz," Higasa said when Schwartz came running up next to him. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon. I guess your mission at the Northern Crater was a success then?"
"No Doctor, there was an incident." Schwartz repeated the events at the Northern Crater to Higasa.
"Oh my," Higasa said stroking his long beard. "That is a situation. And you're sure of it?"
"I'm positive of it. And if he's really thinking along the lines of Sephiroth, I know what he's after. But I can't stop him as I am. I need your help."
"Of course my boy, I will do whatever is in my power to assist you. Just tell me what."
"I need you to put me through the BioGen process."
Higasa gasped and his eyes widened, aghast. His glasses slumped down on his nose and he quickly pushed them back up. "Schwartz, a-are you sure? You know the risk of that, don't you?"
"I know that of the original twenty subjects, not a one survived. And fourteen of the fifteen new subjects died and the one who survived is the one floating in the tube behind you and he's going quickly."
Higasa sighed and looked at the ground. "I'm sorry Schwartz, I can't do it. Anything else I would do, but not that."
"I am a combat veteran," Schwartz pressed. "The original subjects were noncombatants, civilians. My body is stronger than theirs. That may give me edge I need to survive."
"Schwartz…" Higasa began.
"Doctor, I'm asking you, as a friend, to put me through the BioGen process. No one else will be able to stop Cayne. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to stop him with the help of your nanomachines."
Higasa turned his back to Schwartz and leaned on the nearest control console. "Report to the prep room, we'll operate in twenty minutes,"
Schwartz breathed easy and relaxed his hand which had been clutched in a fist the whole time. "Thank you, Doctor Higasa."
Schwartz lay on an operating table in the middle of a circular sterile room. He wore just a pair of black boxer shorts and his brown hair had been shaved for operating reasons. There was a bright light hanging from the ceiling above his face that illuminated the whole room.
With a soft hiss, a door opened and Doctor Higasa and six other doctors entered. Higasa stood beside Schwartz's head and looked at him with a sad expression. "How do you feel?"
"Like I got bugs crawling all over my skin."
Higasa nodded, "That's normal."
A young female doctor stuck a needle into Schwartz's shoulder and injected the sedative that would keep him out for hours. Immediately he began to feel drowsy and slip towards sleep.
Just before Schwartz fell asleep, he heard Higasa say one last thing, "Sleep now, Schwartz. You'll need it."
Schwartz had a sensation like he was being lifted up off the ground. As he felt something heavy and wet be put on his face and hooked behind his ears, he was vaguely aware of a dull ache throughout his whole.
"He's beginning to come around. Better give him another shot."
He felt a slight sting in his arm just before he was dropped into a warm liquid. He was now floating in one of the tubes inside the BioGen labs and Higasa was standing on the outside looking in on him.
"His vitals are stable, doctor. This one may just pull through."
"That's excellent." Higasa said. He turned back to the tube and put his hand on the glass. "You're a strong one, Schwartz. You've proven all our tests wrong."
Inside the tube of warm blue liquid, Schwartz's world went black again.
"Hey, this one's still alive!"
The voice was unfamiliar. Schwartz had never heard it before. He slowly opened his eyes and saw a man standing outside the tube. He wore a military uniform with a standard issue infantry rifle, but something was different about him. Then Schwartz saw the emblem on the soldier's uniform. He belonged to Stargun Inc., another one of the smaller companies that was born from the breakdown of Shinra. Stargun was run by the former head of Shinra's space program, Palmer, and was Requiem's chief rival. It seemed that Palmer had finally given the order to storm the Requiem headquarters.
"The boss said not to let any of the Requiem experiments continue. Kill him."
Schwartz's first thought was, "How can I see and hear so well when I'm in this liquid?" But then he saw the soldier raise his gun.
"Hey, he's awake." The soldier said. "Good, he can watch me kill him."
Schwartz raised his fist and punched the glass as hard as he could. The glass shattered and his fist made contact with the soldiers face. Schwartz felt the soldier's jaw and teeth break under his fist and he went flying back into the opposite wall, leaving a large blood splatter.
"He's loose!" Another soldier yelled as Schwartz climbed out of his tube which was now losing the blue liquid because of Schwartz's hole. "Kill him!"
The next events literally moved in slow motion to Schwartz. He saw the soldiers raised their guns and fired, but he could actually see the bullets moving leaving the guns. He moved at what he thought was his normal speed and weaved in and out of the bullets, moving in a zigzag motion.
Schwartz reached the nearest soldier and uppercut him with all his strength. The soldier's head jerked back and relinquished his gun to Schwartz. Schwartz sprayed two more soldiers with bullets, and then threw the gun, impaling a third soldier through the chest.
On a catwalk above Schwartz, he heard booted feet landing on the metal surface, then the click of a gun readying to fire.
"Sniper rifle, 50-caliber, range of 15,000 to 20,000 meters," Schwartz quickly added up in his head. This again surprised him, as he had determined this just from the gun clicking and the fact that he had actually heard the gun click.
The catwalk was twenty feet above the ground. Well out of a normal human's jumping range, but Schwartz easily jumped up to the catwalk to stand beside the sniper. The sniper was flabbergasted when Schwartz landed beside him. Schwartz struck the sniper in the chest, and again he felt the bones shatter under his fist.
All the Stargun soldiers either lay dead or dying and Schwartz was left to figure out how he had done all this. He had never been this strong or this fast. Why could he see the bullets actually leaving their guns? How had he snapped a man's neck just by uppercuting him?
"It worked." Schwartz whispered to himself. That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation. He had survived the BioGen process.
He then heard a sound that reminded him of two smooth pieces of metal sliding against each other. "Model TX139 Hammerhead rocket launcher," he quickly added up again in his head. "Incendiary round. Firing……now!"
Another Stargun soldier pulled the trigger on the Hammerhead rocket launcher. The rocket curved through the air straight towards Schwartz. But to him the rocket moved even slower than the bullets. He easily jumped the catwalk and the rocket did nothing but blow a big hole in the wall.
Schwartz landed like a cat and could see the soldier was clearly shaken but still had the mind to load a second rocket. "Second rocket: shrapnel round. Firing……now!"
Again Schwartz had timed the firing perfectly. He easily dodged the rocket and moved in what must have been just a blur to the soldier. Schwartz was soon right in front of him and roundhouse kicked him in the head. Schwartz felt the man's neck snap under his foot.
"There are probably more outside."
Opening up an equipment locker, Schwartz put on the black infantry uniform of Requiem soldiers and made his way outside. There weren't any more Stargun soldiers in the facility. They must have all been in the BioGen labs.
Schwartz walked the eerily silent halls of the Requiem Inc. headquarters. Never had it been this quiet. The firing range was quiet, the mess hall was quiet, and the crew quarters were quiet. The facility had become a ghost town in just a few moments. Power was still on in the facility though. According to the clock in the mess hall, it was now 2:36 AM.
Schwartz opened the two metallic sliding doors and he was immediately blinded by a bright light. It was a portable spotlight on the back of a military jeep. The clicking of rifles filled the air like a swarm of insects. Now close to a hundred rifles with laser scopes were aimed at his head and chest. Stargun had come in force after all. Apparently they knew of Higasa's experiments and the damage they could cause if a subject survived the process. They had even brought a Doberman, a small tank designed to support infantry in an open combat field. Behind the rifle line were seven men armed with shotguns. They formed a circle around Higasa and his team.
A single Stargun soldier steps out in front of the rifle line. He was a middle-aged man with a well toned body. He had salt and pepper hair and stormy gray eyes. Four purple hearts and a captain's star adorn his uniform. Looking at him, Schwartz was reminded of a wolf he had once seen. By himself he didn't look that dangerous, but he could have torn you apart if he really wanted to.
The man pulled clipboard out from behind his back. He grins, obviously amused by whatever was on the clipboard. "Schwartz Kenlee, 27 years old, six feet four inches tall, blood type O, born in the Sector 7 Slums of Midgar, joined Shinra Inc. at age 12, became a captain at age 23. Quite an impressive record, son."
"I'm glad you're impressed." Schwartz said sarcastically.
"Also the only subject to survive the BioGen experiment. Very impressive indeed."
"You knew I had survived but those poor bastards in the BioGen lab had no idea I was there. What kind of captain intentionally holds back information when sending his troops into a combat zone?"
"I see," the man put his gloved left hand on his chin. "So you killed the men I sent below. I'm not surprised."
"Good for you. Now let Higasa go."
The man chuckled, "Can't do that, son. Palmer is very interested in Higasa's BioGen experiment so he and his team are coming with us."
"Like hell he will."
"Use your eyes, son." The man waved his arm to indicate the large group of troops he had brought with him. "If all the other subjects had survived you may stand a chance against us. But you alone? You're not immortal, even if you have survived the BioGen process. So be smart, and let us take Higasa quietly and peacefully."
"I'm going to rip your heart out."
"Impressive threat. I'd like to see how you plan to carry it out." The man turned and walk back behind the rifle line. "Come on. I'm right here."
Schwartz moved in unison with the first shots from the rifle line and again the bullets move slowly to his eyes. He easily weaved in and out of the bullets and reached the first unlucky soldier. Schwartz wrapped his fingers around the soldier's neck and felt the muscles break. He threw the dead soldier into another one and in the same motion kicked the jaw in of another soldier who was standing behind him.
Schwartz moved down the rifle line taking out soldiers as he went. When he cleared the first rifle line, three jeep mounted stationary machine guns opened fire. These metal piercing rounds moved faster than the normal bullets but they still moved extremely slow to Schwartz's eyes. Schwartz flung a cadaver at the first machine gun and the body was impaled on the barrel. Blood was splattered up into the gunner's eyes and the body parts plugged up the barrel. Schwartz jumped into the jeep on the opposite side of the gun from the gunner. He spun the gun so the barrel swung around and bashed the gunner in the side of the chest, sending him flying off the jeep and smashing his head on a rock.
The second gunner abruptly quiet shooting and took a frag grenade from his belt. The tossed the grenade into the air and it came down right on Schwartz. Schwartz caught the grenade with his foot and used it like a hacky sack for, to him, a few seconds, then kicked it back towards the gunner who had thrown it.
"Aw shit." The grenade exploded right above his head.
Schwartz jumped from the jeep and landed on top of the Doberman. The machine gunner on top had no time to react before Schwartz had pulled him from his gunnery hatch and tossed him off the tank. He rolled when he landed on the ground and ran back towards the other soldiers. Schwartz commandeered the machine gun and used it on the third jeep. All four tires of the jeep instantly went flat and the gunner dropped to the ground, his body riddled with holes.
Schwartz then jumped from the tank and landed right in front of the circle of soldiers who were surrounding Higasa and the others. One soldier raised his gun to blast him at point blank range, but Schwartz's superior reaction time allowed him to jerk the gun from the soldier's hands, dislocating both his arms. Schwartz fired the shotgun like a pistol, killing one soldier and wounding another. Another soldier attempted to pull one of Higasa's female assistants in front of him as a shield. Schwartz jumped over the man's head and landed behind him then drove his elbow into his back, snapping his spine in half. Seeing the fate of their partners, the other shotgun soldiers simply threw down their guns and ran.
Now there was one obstacle left: the Doberman tank. At some point, the gunner Schwartz had tossed off had climbed back on to man the machine gun. Schwartz's first order of business was to move. He didn't want the tank shooting at him when he was close to Higasa. He left a cloud of dust behind him as he moved in a semicircle around the tank.
The Doberman was the smallest tank in active duty. It was built for speed and had thin armor. Its gun was small, didn't have the penetrating power like the bigger Rottweiler or Pit Bull tanks. It fired shrapnel rounds that would obliterate infantry amassed in a large group. Not the worst sight on the battlefield, but if Schwartz wasn't careful, it'd annihilate him. Schwartz had a plan to take down the tank, but it'd take perfect timing and he'd only get one chance.
The gun of the tank followed him as he moved, even to Schwartz's eyes the tank was moving at a fairly good speed. He had to make a move, and he had to do it now. He put all the power he could muster into his legs and leaped high into the air and just as he wanted, the tank raised its barrel to fire at him. This was his plan: when the tank fired, he would catch the shell in midair and send it right back at them. It would take expert timing on his part, if he moved too soon or too late, the shell would rip right through him.
"Hurry up and fire you bastard." Schwartz thought to himself as he began to drop.
He got his wish, the tank fired. Like before the round moved slowly to his eyes. He had one chance and it was a slim one. When his hands closed around the shell, he used the momentum of the round to spin himself around in the air 360 degrees and hurled the shell right back towards the tank. It worked even better than he had hoped. The shell reentered the barrel and puffs of smoke came out from above the treads and from under the main hatch. The outside of the tank was unscratched, but inside it was probably a bloody mess.
"Oh fuck this." The machine gunner said. He again hit the ground from the tank and took off with another group of soldiers who had turned tail.
Schwartz jumped from the tank and landed in front of the Stargun captain who was frozen to his spot in fear. Schwartz stood face-to-face with the man. "Didn't I say something earlier about ripping your heart out?"
Schwartz raised his hand like a claw and lunged at the captain. His hand went through the man's chest and out his back and in his hand was the man's heart. He had kept his promise; he had ripped the man's heart out.
"There is one more weapon you'll need if you plan to take down Cayne." Higasa said when he and Schwartz were back in the BioGen lab.
"Higasa, I already have the strength and speed of 30 men," Schwartz said. "What more do I need?"
"This." Higasa punched a button on a control panel and a piece of the metal slid back and something began to rise out of it. It was the black hilt to a sword, a katana from the looks of the hilt. Higasa grabbed the sword just below the guard and pulled it out. The sword was in a beautiful black scabbard. It was a long sword too, as long as the Masamune.
"This sword is called Forsaken." Higasa said. "The sword is made from a metal I created myself. I call it Adamantine and it's 10 times strong than Mythril. It was meant to be a gift for the first subject to survive the BioGen process. So it's yours, Schwartz."
Schwartz had a look of shock and disbelief when Higasa put Forsaken in his hands. The scabbard felt cold to his touch. He felt a great power welling up inside him just from holding the sword. Was it some kind of magic? No it was just a normal sword. But still, Schwartz couldn't shake this feeling so easily. Something felt different about this sword. Its length would tell someone it was pretty heavy, yet it felt light as a feather in his hands. It didn't even feel like metal.
"You like it?" Higasa asked with a proud look on his face. "Guaranteed not to chip, rust, or break. This sword will outlast even you."
"Professor…I, I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything." He turned away from him to walk back to the tube that Schwartz had punched his way out of when he fought the Stargun soldiers. "I also found some interesting data while you were recuperating. It seems that the nanomachines bonded with you for a very strange reason."
"What's that?"
"Well," Higasa turned back to him. "For the very simple reason that you're a virgin."
To say the least, that wasn't what Schwartz was expecting to hear. "Uh, do what?"
"I don't understand it either." Higasa shrugged. "But something about your body's absence of sexual contact allowed the nanomachines to bond to your skeleton better."
"Wait, you're telling me that with all the other subjects you brought in here, all of them had had sex before?"
"Yes. They were all civilian men with wives and families."
"That's……interesting to say the least." Schwartz said.
Higasa shrugged again, "I wish I could have given you a better reason but that's the simple truth of it."
And here Schwartz had been thinking it was a bad thing his girlfriend hadn't let him past the kiss on the doorstep.
"Now, I understand you might have some questions. So ask me anything and I'll answer them to the best of my abilities." Higasa pushed his glasses back up onto his nose.
Only one thing about the fight had been nagging Schwartz, "During the fight, all the movements of the troops seemed slow and sluggish to me. I could even see the bullets as they left the guns. What's that all about?"
"That's the nanomachines responding to the adrenaline being pumped through your veins. Everything will seem to slow down to you now when your adrenaline's pumping. Everything about your body has been revamped by the nanomachines. Your strength and speed have increased dramatically. All your bodily functions have been sped up. Your hair will have grown back to its original length after a few hours."
"I see," Schwartz was beginning to grasp the extent of the alterations made to his body. He'd have to learn to control his strength. A simple handshake from him could shatter someone's hand.
Higasa turned back to his computer screen. He punched in a few buttons and a fully 3D model of the world appeared. "Now back to the matter at hand. Do you have any idea where Cayne might be heading?"
"Yes I do." Schwartz said stepping up the model of the planet. "If he truly has become another Sephiroth, I'm thinking he'll head…here." He placed his finger over a part on the western most continent.
"I see," Higasa nodded. "So you'll be heading for Wutai then?"
"It's the most obvious spot; no one knows where the other two are."
"I'll arrange for a helicopter to take you."
Schwartz tightened his grip on Forsaken. I'm coming for you Cayne.