A Promising Young SeeD
Chapter 4
Black Out Days
She hated sleeping. Because she hated dreaming. Hearing the voice, the memories. All her sins. And there were many. Her guilt. So painfully obvious in her subconscious. They never stopped.
"Nothing is fun anymore."
At the same time, it was sometimes like missing pieces of the puzzle were being shown to her. They were so close, yet so far away from the truth.
Why had she been asleep anyway? Where was she? Hadn't she been…that's right. She was trying to find Siegfried. And somehow, he'd got the jump on her.
Alarm bells started going off in her head. Quistis started to panic as she slowly woke up and looked around. It was extremely dark, she was covered in…something.
First, she quickly took an assessment of herself. She patted down her body as best she could maneuver, given there was a mountain of crap on top of her that she couldn't distinguish. She wasn't tied up, good. Her clothing was intact, even better. And she still had her weapons on her person…interesting. Thankfully, she didn't seem hurt. Except for what was likely a blow to the back of the head. A nasty concussion, to be sure. Vomiting felt like a good idea, but not a possibility at the moment.
Was she still in a Slit-throat alley?
She started to try and push above her, trying to move whatever what was covering her. Kicking her legs, they were slow and not moving like she wanted them to. Maybe the concussion was worse than she thought. Moving seemed like a little too much work at the moment.
"No…Please no…" A voice came from the other side of the barrier that covered her. "Not again…"
Light was slowly creeping in as things were moved from above her. It was bright. Daylight. She squinted as her eyes adjusted, small triangles of light becoming wider and wider until she could see the tops of buildings around her.
And then there was Zell. Zell's wonderful face came into view. His eyes were wild and red. Like he had been crying.
Quistis slowly realized that he was heaving a pile of cardboard boxes off of her. They had been stacked neatly on top of her body. No wonder it was so damn dark.
"No…"
Zell dropped the last box and crumpled to a heap on the ground, burying his face in his hands. His knees curled to his chest as if he was trying to envelop himself into a child's size. "Fuck…Fuck, not again. I can't…"
He was sobbing and talking to himself.
"I fucked up… Shit… Shit, I can't."
"Zell…" Quistis' body finally felt ready to move. She sat up, shifting a little more cardboard out of the way so she could stand.
He couldn't even hear her at this point, he was so deep in the recesses of his mind. Of course he was. The last time he found one of their friends in a situation like this was—
And he had likely found her looking like another broken person. Thrown away like garbage. Unmoving, barely breathing as far as he knew…
"No, Zell!" She jumped up and ran over to him, dizzy and woozy from her head injury. Jumping was a mistake, but she couldn't lose Zell to his own mind. His own memories. His own demons. His own guilt. She absolutely couldn't.
Wrapping her arms around him, she rocked him as he cried.
While Zell may have been a cry-baby in their youth, quick to tears at the smallest injury, these tears were none of the kind. These were tears of pain and loss. Tears of self-blame. Because seeing a friend dead from a war was, in ways, easier than what Zell had seen. What Zell had to carry in his arms. And then listen to assignations of blame that twisted his heart. Humiliation and pain were etched on his face.
Poor sweet Zell. Sometimes he was far too pure for this world. For any of this.
"I'm okay. I'm okay. It's okay…."
"God, Quisty, I thought….and I saw it all over again." He was mumbling, and Quistis knew she was going to have to calm him down quickly.
"Shhhh… It's fine. I was under the boxes. I just… He knocked me out, that's it. I promise. Nothing else happened to me."
She wrapped her arms tighter around him and glanced around. The sun was now fully up, and they really needed to get out of this alley. They weren't that much safer in daylight than they were at night.
Zell took a deep breath. "I'm… I'm okay." He shook his head and Quistis watched as he rhythmically squeezed his hands over and over. A pattern. Squeeze. Relax. Squeeze. Relax. She said nothing. She knew the routine. It was the same way she tapped on her knee.
Get back to solid ground. Get back… Know the difference between reality and the voices in your head. The memories. Get out of the memories.
Some memories were better eaten. Maybe the GFs hadn't really been that bad. There was plenty she would have been fine never remembering again. And now…
She waited patiently, keeping an eye on their surroundings until he finally took one more deep breath and opened his eyes. "Okay. I'm good. Let's get the hell out of here."
Standing, he helped her to her feet and tugged off his sweatshirt, helping her shrug it over her head. It was cavernous on her, but felt a lot better than the small dress she was wearing. His had a knit cap pulled over his hair and was left in a t-shirt. The morning air was damp and cold.
Zell grabbed her hand and started to walk down the alley, weaving effortlessly in and out of the streets as she followed. She didn't know where they were exactly, and was still a little light-headed from the head injury.
"How long were you looking for me?" she finally asked. Not really wanting to know the answer, but knowing she needed to.
"Hour and a half." His response was tense and terse. He must have been completely panicked during that time.
"The tracker was giving me a location, but I couldn't figure out if you were in one of the buildings, and—"
She squeezed his hand reassuringly. "You were on time. You always are."
"I'll design the tracker better next time. I think it got wet or something. Wasn't as exact as it should be."
"Seriously, Zell. It's okay. And I was somehow able to get a tracker on Siegfried before he knocked me out."
Zell managed a small grin. "Really? I can find him once we get to my computer."
"You sure— Shouldn't we-?"
He shook his head. "You need to clean up before we go anywhere in daylight. As long as he's within 50 kilometers, I'll be able to find him. Tracker should last another twelve hours."
"Okay."
She didn't like to concede, but their partnership had long become just that. He spoke, she listened. She wasn't in charge, and neither was he.
"Why were you under all those boxes?" Zell finally asked.
"I'm not sure? I think…I think Siegfried put me under them."
"Why would he do that?"
"I think… he was trying to protect me?"
Zell scoffed. "A dealer was trying to protect you from the guys in a Slit-throat? Who is this guy?"
Quistis shook her head. "I don't know. But he was really angry when he found out his dealer was hurting girls. I think he may have… I'm not sure he was breathing afterwards."
"A diamond dealer with a heart of gold? Yeah right."
They made their way back to the apartment in companionable silence.
xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
Quistis showered as quickly as she could, pulling her hair into a sloppy wet bun and tugging on a pair of leggings and a jumper with sleeves long enough to cover her hands. Sneakers completed her outfit, in case they needed to run.
The further this went, the more mystery there was. Everyone knew that the people at the top never bothered to take drugs. They just took advantage of the junkies at the bottom. Siegfried obviously ran a pretty tight organization, which made sense, otherwise there was no way he would be able to be so far up the ranks.
The only reason they had targeted Siegfried in the first place came about when Zell started spectroscopy on the pills. The markings were consistent as to what was in them. Color, print. It was easy to determine the quality and purity of the pill based on the stamp and color of it. He had surmised that the green chocobos were coming from a single source, and that they were the "purest", or so they thought.
The speckles on them changed things. An addition to the pills. When the speckles were added, who knew? Before Siegfried? After? There were so many different combinations, but Zell was smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for, and he had quickly determined what was safe and what wasn't. Zell didn't know for sure, but from his research of the chemical composition of the speckles, the addition to the base pill was a hallucinogen.
Those weren't safe for Quistis. She didn't have a tolerance for those. They were obviously popular; she had seen many people overtly trying to get the less pure samples. A better high. A high she didn't want.
The drugs coming from Siegfried, if she only took one or two, did nothing to her. They discovered that early on. She was immune. As if she had been taking them for years and had built up a tolerance. It would take a much higher dose to touch her.
Well, they hadn't discovered that. Someone else had. Someone desperate for more. Desperate for too much.
"Nothing is fun anymore."
"It used to only take a few, and now—"
If enough was taken, anyone would get high. If too much was taken, well…
Something about the infusions at Garden gave her an extremely high tolerance to the drugs on the street. She assumed that the street drugs must put people into the trance-like state that she discovered early on in the infusions. It had taken months for her to build a resistance to the infusions in Garden, and it must have carried over to whatever was on the street.
For some it wasn't enough, they wanted more. Quistis never wanted to feel that high again. She hated it.
Some people craved it.
"Everyone is on something here."
"You wouldn't understand, you feel nothing."
Zell had already showered and changed. Tight jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt, along with his knit cap. He tugged a military style jacket on to cover the tattoos on his arm. With his blue mohawk covered by a cap, he was far less conspicuous. Especially now, without the facial tattoo. He was chewing on his lip ring, a nervous tell of his, and staring at his laptop screen.
He seemed slightly less worse for the wear. A cup of coffee, and Quistis allowing him to give her a once over and make sure she was okay, seemed to go a long way. She had learned long ago to not question what he needed. Sometimes she wondered if the whole thing had been harder on him than her.
"So, where is Siegfried?" she asked. Time to get down to business.
Zell frowned, pulling out the cord that was connecting his laptop to his phone. "Well… it kind of looks like he's at Esthar General."
"A hospital?"
Zell stood, stuffing his phone in his front pocket. "Yeah, gonna be a little harder to find him in there. You think you would recognize him?"
"A guy that huge? Without a doubt. Let's go."
xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
Zell's tracker was able to inform them that Siegfried wasn't in the emergency department wing of the hospital, but was somewhere on the floors. They decided to be systematic, and sweep one floor at a time.
On the third floor, which turned out to house the intensive care unit, among other things, Quistis recognized the sheer size of the figure that had intimidated her the night before.
"I think that's him. He's looks a little different, doesn't have the jacket, but…"
The scruffy dark hair from the back, the broad shoulders. He was dressed in the same hoodie and pants, but without the trench she had seen last night.
"Let me listen to him speak," Quistis whispered to Zell, turning her back to the figure and pretending to look at a vending machine.
Zell nodded and slinked around to the other side, hoping to get a better visual. He wouldn't be recognized by Siegfried, and seeing his face might help. He could maybe snap a picture and send it to Quistis.
'Siegfried' was talking to a nurse, who seemed to be rather enamored with him. She had huge eyes, dark skin and braided hair pulled into a bun on top of her hair. She was trying to cover her broad smile at talking to him with the chart in her hand.
"Thanks for telling me. You're always such a great help, ya know?" 'Siegfried' said.
That… was not the voice she heard last night. Or the accent. Was it? But, it was definitely 'Siegfried' in front of her. The body and the clothing. Plus, the tracker was…
"Updates are always good, ya know. Even if we hear its just the same, yeah?"
But that voice she had heard before, the cadence…
"It can't be…there's no way," she mumbled under her breath. She tried to find Zell to see his reaction. From a reflection in a window she caught sight of Zell's face. His jaw was almost on the floor, and he was obviously quickly trying to recover. Zell had seen the face. In the light. Without the hood. Which meant—
"Raijin would be hurt you have so little faith in him."
A voice was in her ear before she realized a body was next to her. Hidden from Zell's view by a convenient partition. The next thing she knew, with a single forceful grab, her mouth was covered and she had been dragged into some sort of janitor's closet before she even had the sense to fight. As she tried to struggle, she was slammed against a wall and pinned against it, a shelf digging uncomfortably into her ribcage.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she was met with a piercing emerald gaze.
"He was always the star of all the plays at Garden. Surprisingly great with accents."
"Wh—what?" Quistis squeaked out.
"Isn't that lovely memory of yours back now with all the shit they put in your veins at Garden? Aren't all those GF ripping drugs supposed to fix you? He'd be hurt you don't remember how good of an actor he is."
"Seifer…" Quistis gasped out. Air was tight and his body was pressed against hers, preventing any escape.
So, Raijin had been the one to carry her to that alley. The strength made sense now. She vaguely did remember that he was quite the actor, back at Garden. And him throwing his accent was impressive. But did that mean he was Siegfried? Where there was Raijin, there was Fujin and Seifer. So, what was Seifer's role in all of this? The boss, she thought. He had to be. He always was.
Seifer grinned, his teeth gleaming in the low light, the single bulb in the closet flickering.
"In the flesh. Miss me?"
