Hello! I hope your weekend was spent safe and well 🌻
This chapter is a little shorter than my usual ones, but a lot happens and I hope you all enjoy it regardless 🌸 As always, thank you so much for the kudos and comments - they mean so much to me, and honestly make my day every single time 😊
As always, thank you to silver_doe287 for beta'ing this chapter 💙 As always, your advice and feedback are wonderful
Enjoy!
Chapter Warning: Lab Flashback, noted by italics
"Hello, Sample C."
The voice drifted across Sector Seven's control platform, and Cloud's breath hitched in his throat. The voice sounded a lot like a pencil scratching against paper, like bubbles crying upwards through mako, like a spiking heart rate monitor shrieking to a sterile white room. A cold sweat trickled down the small of his back. His fingers minutely trembled against the hilt of his gunsword. Images flickered behind his wide-open eyes, there and gone again, terror stringing them all together until they formed barbs on a wire and his mind was dragging itself across the hooks.
"Hojo," Cloud breathed. The name was spoken so quietly that the helicopter's beating propellers immediately tore it into nothing, a small mercy. He didn't recognize his own voice. He could hardly even think past the gaunt face that was staring coldly down at him. The weight of that stare had fear shifting within him until it became a living, breathing thing; its teeth gnawed on his ribs, its tongue racked across his tangled veins, and its claws grazed his beating heart. His breathing grew stuttering and uneven. There were songbirds screaming in his head. In fact, everything was screaming: the wind, the helicopter, his head, his heart.
His hand was tangled in his hair, but he didn't remember raising it.
"Hojo," he said again and dropped his hand; he couldn't show weakness, not now, not in front of him. "I'm not going back." He wanted to sound confident but instead his voice came out creaky, like old joints grinding together and rusty gears struggling against one another. He sounded as brittle as he suddenly felt. "I'm not."
Hojo noticed, and his sharp lips curled into a sneer. "What makes you think you have an opinion, Sample?" The obsidian helicopter landed beside the Turks' own helicopter, and wind screamed across the platform as its propellers slowed. "Don't make this more difficult than it needs to be."
Cloud's mind grappled for a retort, but mostly all he noticed was that Hojo had stepped off of the helicopter and had taken a step towards him, which had his entire body rebelling in horror. Without thinking he took a stumbling step backwards. Fear rolled through him like a sweeping fog. Nothing existed except for the man standing in front him and —
— and then he was lying limp on a table, a light hovering above him and cold air pressing against his bare body. Mako dripped from his hair into his eyes, stinging all the while, but he was too weak to wipe them dry. All he could do was lie there and listen as Hojo inspected a tissue sample beneath a microscope.
"Fascinating," Hojo was muttering, lost in his own mind, and Cloud distantly heard the distinct sound of a pencil scratching against a notepad. "Simply fascinating. Under normal conditions, MKO1 is imported into the mitochondria, where it is cleaved and degraded faster than it is synthesized… Though this results in low levels of the MKO1 protein, which is not benefitting of my research, I have solved this issue by periodically submerging the samples in a fifty-percent mako solution… Genius," the mad man mumbled to himself, "genius, simply outstanding…"
Cloud slowly blinked, too tired to wonder what all that meant. His mind was buzzing, a steady throb that had him blinking all over again, but a sudden movement distracted him. He dragged his gaze up to a nearby mako tank, vaguely curious.
There was someone inside the tank, someone with black hair and a scar along his cheek. His hands were clenched against the curved glass, but his lips lifted in a smile when Cloud met his gaze. Cloud blinked again. He didn't know who that was, he didn't recognize —
Zack. Cloud dragged the name out of his mind's battered ruins, and his heart painfully contracted because he had forgotten. Again. That's Zack, his name is Zack.
Zack mouthed something to him through his oxygen mask, but Cloud didn't know what he said. He only blinked once more and then lowered his gaze, their exchange already fading into the back of his mind as Hojo strode towards him. His boots echoed unnaturally loud against the tiled floor. Cloud, inexplicably, suddenly felt like crying.
"Outstanding," the scientist said again, and then leaned towards Cloud's wrist to collect another sample —
— and Cloud gasped, ripped out of the flashback, feeling as if the air had been punched out of his lungs. His hand had dropped from his hair and was now wrapped around his wrist, his thumb savagely pressed against one of the many scars there. "Stay back," he spit out as Hojo took another step closer. His heart beat in his chest like a wild thing, like it was intent to free itself from its confines and didn't care if it ripped apart his ribs to do so. He couldn't stop shaking. "Don't come closer, or I'll —"
Hojo laughed, a cut-glass sound, and spread out his arms as if to show he was unarmed. "Or what?" he demanded, and Cloud tried not to flinch at his tone. "If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it the moment I stepped onto the platform."
The implication was obvious: You could have killed me but didn't, because you don't want me to die.
"I gave you the SOLDIER enhancements you so desperately wanted," Hojo continued, hands still outstretched like a priest addressing a crowd. "I made you more powerful. I created you."
"Shut up," Cloud snapped.
"I fulfilled your life goal."
"Shut up!"
"I," Hojo said with a harsh glint in his eyes, "made you stronger."
"I didn't want it!" Panic singed Cloud's throat as his voice climbed to a bitter cry, a shout sewn together with nameless pain and something worse. "I didn't need to be strong! Not like that! All I —!"
Hojo's smile could have eclipsed the sun. "Yes," he interrupted matter-of-factly, "you did."
The toneless answer carved something out Cloud's heart like a blunt spoon through butter, and his features paled to a bone-white shade. The wind quieted. The air itself went cold. The control panel hummed cheerfully behind him, a monotone symphony that bellied his ragged gasps.
"No." The word was not as strong as it should have been, and so Cloud tried again. "No, that's not…" His voice cracked. "That's not it, I…"
"Cloud!"
A hand suddenly landed on his shoulder and Cloud possessed just enough self-control not to immediately throw it off. Tifa, he reminded himself with a sharp inhale, Tifa's here. Her fingers gripped his shoulder, a pressed flower against his skin, and he refused — refused — to push that gentle touch away. She deserved better than that, and when she flashed him a tentative smile before she turned away, something like relief trickled through him.
Here, his mind belatedly reminded, she's here.
And then in acute horror he realized: She's here.
"Tifa," he whispered. The name was a tremble between them. "You… You need to leave." You need to leave because he will hurt you. "You can't be here." You can't be here because he will break you like he broke me. "You will…"
"Cloud," Tifa said abruptly, cutting him off, and she turned to face him once more. Cloud snapped his mouth shut when he noticed her watery eyes. "I'm not going anywhere."
Cloud's panic compounded until his fingertips went numb. Suddenly he had found something he feared far greater than Hojo, than the labs, than whatever his murky memories could dredge up; and that mindless terror was Tifa being at Hojo's mercy, Tifa being in the labs, Tifa having to drink potions because her battered mind could no longer keep up with the world around her.
He was terrified that she would end up like him.
"Tifa, you can't," he whispered, choked and half-strangled. "Tifa, no."
But Tifa's hand only tightened on his shoulder, steadying him as she looked deep into his eyes, striping him to his core. "You said it yourself, right?" she told him. "That you're here for me?" Apparently not even bone-deep horror could fully mask his earlier mortification, because he felt his cheeks warm. Tifa's expression softened at the sight. "I'm here for you, too," she said gently, and squeezed his shoulder once more before she let go. "Always. No matter what."
Cloud's hands were shaking. But it'll kill you. The confession tumbled through his mind like poison, and the moment he thought it he knew it to be true… but because he was both selfish and a coward, he instead whispered, "Are you sure?"
And Tifa, because she was everything good in the world personified, smiled and replied, "Yes."
Her confession didn't even have time to cool in the air when the world tilted on its axis.
Except it wasn't the world that had been thrown sideways, it was his world. In between one breath and the next, Tifa's smile slipped and Cloud — one lurching heartbeat later — realized why. There was a needle was stuck in her neck, a dart filled with some sort of rapidly-depleting liquid, some mystery substance that undoubtedly existed to hurt. Cloud's head filled with white noise and he moved forward to catch her —
— but then there was a blur coming towards him, a hiss of black and white threading, and his body reacting without thinking. He pivoted to the side and the dart traced the harsh cut along his cheek, the angry red line chiseled from Rude's bullet. It stung, but the pain was nothing compared to the white-hot fear that was branching across his veins. Lightning bloomed in his lungs; thunder pounded in his head. There was a downpour in his heart and he was drowning in it.
"Tifa!" he screamed as he caught her crumpled form.
Her head lolled limp against his hand and some buried training had him pressing against the pulse in her neck. A crushing moment passed and then another, but then he felt it, the light flutter of her heart's clipped wings. He let his touch linger for a moment, just to make sure, just to ward off any sense of doubt, before he exhaled his relief. Not dead, he knew as he withdrew his hand, just unconscious.
Then he thought: How dare he.
Cloud lifted his head, and his brilliant eyes burned with a midnight light as he gently lowered Tifa to the ground. How dare he. His fingers twitched against the gunsword as he stood fully upright; his fear had been replaced by a nameless rage, something so ravenous and all-consuming that it had the world shifting into shades of green. I'll kill him. But his rage didn't want to just stop at killing. He wanted Hojo's blood splattered on the ground, wanted to paint the platform with it, he wanted —
"If you make any sudden moves," Hojo suddenly said, "I will kill Zackary Fair."
Cloud's thoughts tripped over themselves. "You're lying," he spit out. Anger cracked between every word. "Zack will be here soon."
"Are you so certain of that?"
A dark wind shifted across the platform, and the rage burning within Cloud burned colder. "You…" His voice was low, and cold, and savage. "What did you do?"
In answer, Hojo pulled a recorder out of his lab coat's pocket and pressed a button.
"Sample Z, I am going to ask you a few questions, and you will answer them," came Hojo's voice. The crisp sound of a recording hissed through the air, and Cloud's heart stuttered to hear it. The first question is, do you remember how you got here?"
A pause, then: "Yes."
"Good. And how are you feeling right now?"
"Like murder."
"…And physically?"
"Fuck off."
Cloud's hands began to tremble against his gunsword's grip. "What is that?"
"This is a recording taken a mere two hours ago," Hojo said in answer.
"No." Cloud held the sword tighter until his knuckles were bleached of color. "Zack's strong. He would never be captured, not by you. He's too strong for that."
Hojo's smile sharpened, and the recording ruthlessly continued.
"— re extremely difficult if you were separated from Sample C, and particularly when Sample C was… unable… to cooperate. But, I recall that you were very compliant when Sample C was involved in some way, now weren't you?"
A pause, one that filled Cloud with nameless trepidation, then a harsh sigh. "Fine," came Zack's voice, low with defeat."I'll play along."
With that, the recording ended.
"Zackary Fair," Hojo suddenly said, snapping Cloud out of his personal nightmare because what if Zack had been captured, what if Hojo had him now? "Barret Wallace. Jessie Rasberry. Biggs Emery. Wedge Jones." Hojo's gaze snapped down. "… And Tifa Lockhart. If you don't come with me," he continued, "I will kill these people one-by-one until you do.
"Or," Hojo added with a cruel gleam in his eyes, "you can attempt to fight me here. Just realize that you will also be attacking two Turks and a Shinra pilot while attempting to defend Ms. Lockhart, who is obviously incapacitated, and you and I both know that that is beyond your capabilities."
Cloud's eyes traced Tifa's unconscious figure on the ground. His rage had cooled to smoldering embers, and the light in his eyes had long since gone out.
"Of course, it makes no difference to me," Hojo continued as he slipped the recorder back into his pocket. "The choice is yours, Sample C. I trust that you'll make the right one."
Cloud hardly heard him. Instead, he knelt and reach down to gently brush Tifa's hair out of her eyes. Her face was pale, her eyes were squeezed shut, and her brows were pinched in pain. What did he do to you, he silently wondered as he ran his thumb against their crease to smooth them, his touch feather-light. She did not stir. "I'm sorry," he told her in a whisper, and his lips lifted in a half-hearted smile as he pulled his hand away. "And thank you for everything."
With that, he stood fully upright. His back was to the wind and his body felt like it was filled with lead. None of that mattered as he turned back to Hojo.
The scientist, that monster, was still smiling at him. "Good choice."
Cloud felt something dark rise within him. "Fuck you," he growled, and in a blur of motion he crouched low to the ground before launching himself forward. The ground was a smudge beneath him as he angled the gunsword over his shoulder. The sharp edge of its blade glinted beneath the artificial light. When he swung, there was the sharp crack of metal slamming against metal, a savage sound that echoed in his ears.
But there was also the harsh crunch of bone, because Hojo was not built for the battlefields and though his reactions with his hidden dagger were quick — undoubtedly from some experimental steroid — they were not quick enough. His nose pulped beneath Cloud's fist and then he was crashing backwards, a tangle of curses and limbs and white linen streaked with red.
Cloud followed him down, his hand outstretched and his teeth bared feral against the sun, and angled his weapon for Hojo's heart.
He wanted Hojo's blood splattered against the ground.
He wanted to paint the platform with it.
He wanted it coagulated beneath his nails and dripping down his chin, because feral rage blazed within him in an all-consuming fire and he was content to burn — but only if the world burned with him. Nothing else mattered.
But then milky fingers crossed his vision like prison bars, and his entire body went rigid — like a puppet that had its strings yanked taunt. "Cloud," came a silken, familiar voice. "Not yet."
Cloud's arms trembled as he fought against the voice — against Sephiroth, a ghost who inexplicably continued to haunt him — but it was a futile effort. The world was stained a sickly shade of green. His head was pounding with an intensity that had his expression twisting.
I should have finished that second potion, he thought dimly as the foreign hands moved to cover his eyes. There was a clatter as the gunsword slipped from his fingers and fell forgotten onto the ground. He sighed, unable to muster the strength to scream.
God damn it.
His eyes closed against his will, and the world went impossibly dark.
There were five shots in Zack. Three were tranquilizers he had been injected with an hour ago because two hadn't been enough to put him down, one was a mako solution Hojo's assistants had stuck in him directly after, and the fifth was a rifle bullet he had taken in the shoulder a couple months ago that he had never bothered to rip out. And at the moment, he was feeling all of them. Every ache, every raw nerve, every self-destructive thought… each one slipped effortlessly through his hazy awareness, and he held onto each one like he would a hand.
He wasn't sure how long he stared at the ceiling, cradling all of his hurts and blinking the heat from his eyes. Time was a broken clock on the wall; it had lost all meaning the moment Nibelheim burned, and he no longer needed to pretend otherwise. Cloud wasn't here. Neither was Aerith. In fact, little else existed apart from himself, the glass cell he was in, and his intense desire for a fourth tranquilizer — maybe one that would actually knock him out this time, instead of just incapacitating him.
And then the laboratory door slid open.
Zack, briefly thinking that his wish was being fulfilled, glanced towards the opening… but then he noticed that it was Tseng who had walked into the specimen room, not the lab assistant he was expecting, and something within him simultaneously soared and crumpled.
Zack returned his weary gaze towards the ceiling, "Fuck off," he slurred.
Tseng's footsteps echoed hollow against the tiled floor. "Zack, you need to listen to me," said the Turk, ignoring him. "We don't have much time."
"Time?" Zack nearly laughed outright, but all he could manage was a choked wheeze. "What time? I've been living on borrowed time for a while now, in case you haven't noticed. And look around you," he added with a vague gesture to his surroundings. "I don't have any time left."
There was a pause, one filled with vague machinery hums and white noise, though Zack couldn't be sure if the white noise came from somewhere in the room or his own ringing ears.
"You've been drugged," Tseng finally surmised. It wasn't a question.
Zack chuckled, a harsh sound. "Well, yeah. They've gotten smarter since last time."
Tseng's pause stretched out longer than before, to the point where Zack thought that Tseng had finally given up and would go back to wherever he had come from — undoubtedly somewhere comfortable, and warm, and safe — but then there was the distinct sound of the cell door being unlocked.
Zack's eyes widened and the door swung open with a faint pop due to the difference in air pressure, and he fumbled to sit upright. However, his body was still numb and heavy from the tranquilizers, and the best he could do was get to his elbows. "Why," he hoarsely croaked. His arms shook from the effort as he pinned Tseng down with a glare. "Why'd you do that?"
"I'm here to retrieve you," Tseng stated matter-of-factly. He spoke like it was obvious, like this was just another one of his missions and Zack was some package that needed to be delivered.
Zack felt something dark yawn open within him, and his upper lip curled in disgust. "I don't need to be retrieved," he said savagely. His vision spotted as he forced himself into a sitting position. "I'm fine, obviously."
"Obviously," Tseng deadpanned.
Then, without any warning, he grabbed Zack's bicep and hauled him upright. It happened so quickly that Zack's stunted reflexes didn't have time to react, and the best he could do was blink stupidly at the far wall and wonder when he had gotten up… and then he realized.
"Don't touch me," Zack snarled as he ripped his arm away. He immediately stumbled backwards, half-blind and seeing double, but still managed to dodge another one of Tseng's grabs. "Try that again," he ground out, "and I'll break your arm."
It wasn't much of a threat, despite Zack's past history of being an ex-SOLDIER First Class and something of a one-man army; he could hardly stand upright without falling over, let alone have enough coordination to snap a highly-trained Turk's arm, and he knew it. Tseng also knew it, because next thing Zack knew, his arm was being slung over Tseng's shoulders and he was being half-dragged out of the specimen room.
"Stop touching me," Zack hissed even as he tripped over his own feet. "Let me go."
Tseng glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "You need the help," he stated. "Unless you're planning on dying here?"
"None of your damn business."
"Or were you hoping to be rescued by someone else?"
"I said," Zack ground out, "that it's none of your damn business."
Tseng stared at him a long moment before turning away, and mercifully didn't respond.
Now that Zack was out of his cell, which was undoubtedly being pumped with some sort of tranquilizing vapor, his head was beginning to clear. The first thing he realized was that Tseng was indeed rescuing him, as they didn't stop at any of Hojo's usual places: the MRI machine, the mako tanks, the surgery room, the lone metal table with all of the straps — and instead continued to the exit, which made Zack weak-kneed with relief. His mind was still too hazy to contemplate why Tseng had bothered to save him, but that didn't matter at the moment.
The second thing that he realized was that in Tseng had incapacitated every laboratory assistant on the way to his cell. Their bodies were sprawled across the floor like rag dolls; some were slumped over their desks while others had crumpled where they stood and sported large welts on their heads to prove it. The sight had Zack pausing as a sense of wrongness needled him, but he quickly pushed that out of mind as well; compared to his nearby freedom, that didn't matter either.
"I can walk on my own," Zack rasped as the exiting doors slid open. Now that his head was clearer, his temper was beginning to fade away, though the tang of fear still lay heavy on his tongue. It took all of his self-control not to throw Tseng to the side and just start running, but only because he was more likely to fall on his face than make it three steps.
Tseng shot him a look, undoubtedly to gauge Zack's current temperament, before giving him a crisp nod. Tseng gingerly let Zack go, and though the ex-SOLDIER stumbled a bit as he hurried out of the lab, his legs held and stars no longer spun in his vision. Even better, when he inhaled he could only taste air-conditioned air and dust instead of the harsh ozone of mako, antiseptic, and the sickly-sweet taste of anesthetic vapor. He had left all of that behind him in the labs, with only an aching head and four pricks in his arm to show for it.
Zack braced himself against the wall as he inhaled another greedy breath. "Thanks," he said after a pause, and meant it.
Tseng nodded one more, and for the first time Zack noticed the dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes. "Don't thank me yet," the Turk said as he moved to a nearby stairwell, and gestured at Zack to follow. "Are you clear-headed?" he asked. In other words: Has your metabolism burned off the tranquilizers yet?
Zack pushed himself off the wall. "Mostly," he said, and then added a guarded, "Why?"
"Because you'll need to be for what comes next," Tseng replied as he opened the stairway door.
Zack frowned at the cryptic statement, but after a brief moment of hesitation he ended up following Tseng into the dimly lit stairwell; not because he wanted to but, because he didn't have anywhere else to go. He was buried in the heart of Shinra and surrounded by enemies who either wanted him dead or experimented on. Compared to that, sticking with Tseng seemed to be the safer option, if only slightly.
Yet as if to contradict him, Tseng suddenly asked, "Do you know why I picked you up?"
"No," Zack said as he kept a firm grip on the railing as he walked up the stairs. Each step demanded his entire concentration; his body still felt numb and heavy, and he was afraid he'd fall if he looked away from even a moment.
"I see." Unlike Zack's careful gait, Tseng's steps were quick and confident as he ascent the stairwell, though he did wait on the landing for Zack to catch up. "Do you recall what Nobody had told you in the Seventh Heaven bar yesterday?" Zack frowned. The first time he had even heard of Nobody was this morning, not yesterday, but Tseng immediately cleared up his confusion by adding, "Cissnei, I mean. She would have still been Cissnei at that point."
Zack went cold. "Cissnei is Nobody?"
"That's right." Tseng suddenly reached into his pocket and pulled out Zack's old PHS, the one Cissnei had given him just last night, and placed it in his hands. Its metal was cold to the touch. "Didn't it strike you as strange that, the day after she had given you an untraceable phone, it was contacted by another untraceable number?"
Not really, Zack thought, which had his mood souring. What other clues had he missed? "So Cissnei is the one who told us about the plate drop."
"Yes. And she is the one who also told you about the Turks secondary mission, which is —"
"— Which is to assassinate President Shinra." Zack had gone still, his body frozen mid-step. His stumbling thoughts tumbled in his mind, struggling to piece everything together despite the earlier tranquilizers, the chaos of the day, the trauma of it all. "You… You rescued me from the lab so that I would kill Shinra."
"Yes," Tseng replied.
"And…" Zack raggedly exhaled as he leaned against the wall. "Wait, does that mean… Were you the reason I was captured in the first place?" he asked in dawning horror. "Because I was… Scarlet intercepted me on the train, and she shouldn't have, unless someone told her that I… Did you feed her that information? Did you cause that?"
"Yes."
Something within Zack cracked at the admission. "Why?" he asked, and he hated how small his voice sounded. "Why would you do that to me?"
"Because it was the most efficient way of getting you inside Shinra Headquarters," Tseng replied, his voice clipped and immovable. "But… it was also the only way to get you here relatively safely," he added, and strangely enough there was regret in his tone. "Hojo was one of the few in Shinra who still wanted you alive, albeit for… his own reasons. He was the only one who could guarantee your life."
"I'd rather be dead than be Hojo's prisoner. I'd rather die than go through that again. I can't…" His shoulders sagged. "I just can't. "I can't do that again."
"I know," Tseng replied. "And I'm sorry. But it was the only way to guarantee your safety."
"Except now I have to kill for you, don't I? And for what… so that the assassination doesn't get traced back to you?" Zack barked a brittle, humorless laugh because this was too much. Everything was too much. "What am I to you, huh? A pawn? Something to use and throw away?"
Indignation flashed in Tseng's eyes. "Of course not, Zachary."
"Don't say my name," Zack snarled and lurched forward. Despite his heavy body, he somehow managed to grab ahold of Tseng's crisp collar and knock him back into the concrete wall. Tseng stared down at him, expressionless. "I should kill you," he spat. "I should kill you right here and be done with it."
"If you do that, you'll be in Shinra Headquarters without any backup."
Zack tightened his grip. "No backup is better than being stuck here with you," he hissed just as a new thought occurred to him. "If I don't assassinate President Shinra, you'll throw me back in the labs, won't you?"
Tseng's expression darkened, and he did not respond.
That was all the confirmation Zack needed. The image of being shoved back into that cell flashed in his mind, and Zack grit his teeth as he pressed Tseng harder into the wall. His arm shook from the effort. "You will, won't you? You bastard. I should kill you. I should kill you right now and make sure that —"
"If you kill me, then no one will be able to retrieve Cloud from the laboratory in…" Tseng glanced down at his watch, "… in less than one hour. And don't say you can," Tseng added the moment Zack opened his mouth to protest, "because you lack the necessary security credentials. And don't bluff, either. I already know that you traded your contractor ID in Wall Market for some materia and potions. That was a bad move, Zack."
"So this is my fault?"
"Our current situation is, yes," Tseng replied, and the dark bruises beneath his eyes seemed all the darker. "If you had just done as you were told, we could have avoided all of this."
"Shut up." Zack felt as if the floor was dropping away beneath him, and not because of the tranquilizers but because of something far deeper and far more rotten. "Don't pin all this bullshit on me. Don't do that. You, of all people, can't do that."
"Facts are facts," Tseng replied, removing Zack's grip from his collar far more easily than he should have, "and for better or worse, this is the situation we're in right now. I'm trying to make it right," he continued, "but in order to meet the best-case scenario, you're going to have to work with me."
Zack let his arm fall to his side. "I should just kill you," he said, but there was no more venom in his voice. If anything, he only sounded tired.
Tseng ignored him. "Shinra cannot trace the assassination plot back to the Turks, because that would lead to the worst-case scenario of the Turks being wiped out."
"I fail to see how that's a worst-case scenario," Zack deadpanned.
Tseng, with infinite patience, replied, "It's a worst-case scenario because if the Turks are wiped out, there will be no barrier between you and Hojo. And don't give me that look, Zack. I understand the irony, but I was not lying when I said that I was on your side. We want the same thing."
Zack snorted. "Doubt it."
"We do," Tseng replied, and then surprised Zack by saying, "We both want our freedom."
Zack shot Tseng a dry look. "Freedom?"
"That's right. And if you assassinate President Shinra, we'll return the favor by ensuring that Hojo will never be able to find you or Cloud Strife again."
"How?"
"We have our ways."
Zack watched Tseng for a moment before he turned away with a small shake of his head. "And the price of all this freedom is my life, isn't it? Because you sure as hell aren't paying for it."
"I've already paid for it," Tseng snapped, with an uncharacteristically harsh tone had Zack turning back to him in surprise, "in ways you cannot even fathom, SOLDIER. There's nothing more I can give."
"Except my life, apparently," Zack shot back.
Tseng bristled. "I would never," he began, but evidently decided that explaining was too much effort. Instead he exhaled his frustration, turned away, and took another step up the stairwell. "Ultimately it's your choice," he stated after a lengthy pause, "but if you don't come with me, you're going back to that lab and Cloud will be stuck there with you. And if you do," he added, turning back to face him, "you would have no one to blame but yourself."
Zack's hands tightened into fists. "You bastard," he hissed, because that wasn't a choice at all. It was a death sentence.
Hating every step, he began to climb.
There was something freeing about riding on the back of a motorcycle. Even though Aerith couldn't feel the wind against her face, her full-face helmet gave her a level of anonymity that she never felt before. In the laboratory of her childhood, she had been constantly monitored; then in the slums, people would recognize her no matter where she went. But here, speeding down the freeway on the back of a Hardy-Daytona? No one knew she existed, not even the highway.
"The plan is to meet Nobody in Shinra Parking Garage C," Kunsel said. His voice filtered in through her helmet's speaker, and he sounded surprisingly clear considering the roaring wind and motor. "Garage C is reserved for military and special operation vehicles only, and because all Shinra operatives are currently overwhelmed with other tasks, it will be empty when we arrive."
"And if it isn't?" Aerith asked.
"If it isn't, then I'll deal with it," Kunsel replied matter-of-factly. His hard tone left no room for nonsense, and suddenly Aerith didn't want to know what 'dealing with it' actually meant. He continued, "Once we regroup with Nobody, she will then escort us into Shinra Headquarters using her security credentials."
When Kunsel's tone trailed off, Aerith asked, "And then what?"
Kunsel swerved around a car that was going a pathetic speed despite being in the fast lane, and she thought she heard him mutter a curse under his breath. "And then we'll meet up with Zack," he replied. "According to Nobody's message, he has already arrived at HQ. Tseng is with him now."
"Tseng is?" Aerith echoed. "No, that's not right. He's supposed to be at the Sector Seven control platform."
"He's supposed to be… Why? What for?"
Aerith could hear the frown in his voice. "You haven't heard?" she asked.
"Heard what?"
"That Shinra was going to drop the Sector Seven plate."
This time, Kunsel's curse was very audible, and Aerith stifled a scream as the motorcycle suddenly wavered beneath her. Kunsel righted it immediately, but it was very obvious that they were now well over the speed limit. "They were what?"
Apparently Kunsel hadn't heard. "Shinra was going to drop the Sector Seven plate today, and Zack was going to stop them by going up to the control panel," Aerith quickly explained. "Cloud was going to help too."
"Cloud? Wait, Cloud Strife?"
"You know him?" Aerith couldn't keep the disbelief from her voice.
"Yeah, I… He was part of my squad," Kunsel said before cutting off with a breathless chuckle. "So the little chocobo head is alive too, huh? Figures. He always did have a knack for getting out of trouble."
In trouble too, Aerith privately thought, a ghost of a smile on her lips. Instead she said, "Yes, both Cloud and Zack are alive, and they were going to stop the plate from dropping together. But," her smile fell, "if Zack was in Shinra this whole time, then something must have happened."
For a moment, the only thing hissing out of her helmet's speakers was white noise. Eventually there was a sudden crackle, and Kunsel said, "Nobody can explain everything when we get to the garage." His tone made Aerith feel like he had a lot of questions he wanted answered, and she pointedly noticed that he wasn't asking her. "In the meantime, let's hurry. If Shinra really is trying to drop the plate, then the situation is more dire than I was expecting."
Aerith couldn't agree more.
Yeahhhh sorry about that first bit, but at least we got to punch Hojo in the nose? I hope you enjoyed that part as much as I enjoyed writing it lol.
My twitter is Rand0mSmil3z - chapter previews are always posted there first, and now that we're nearing the end of Halcyon Days, I'll eventually start posting about the sequel as well :)
As always, please stay safe and well during these unimaginable times. You're always welcome to DM my on twitter if you need to chat :)
Until next time!
