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9. Aerith - Sceptic
Aerith knew she was being watched. It seemed prudent not to react, since for once the Turks kept their distance and didn't seem concerned with bringing her in. She didn't want to change their minds about that. Shinra's goons coming below-Plate was never good news.
The bizarre thing was, they didn't go away either. Practically from the day Zack left, she sensed them, watching but never actually approaching her. They were always there, a lumpish suspicion on the fringes of her mind – the kind of feeling you get when you're convinced you've left the front door unlocked or the oven on. It was unnerving, like trying to shower in a room of one-way mirrors with people on the other side.
What could they want?
As the days passed, her suspicions blossomed. Something was up. She could feel it crawling along her skin like maggots.
Tseng came by. That was a rarity in itself. The Head of the Turks delegated tasks to underlings, so if he was here personally...
Her suspicions tightened into a knot of dread.
In a way, Aerith felt sorry for Tseng. In the beginning, he'd been the one who always tried to convince her to return to Shinra willingly. He'd been logical, almost kind, but nowadays that initial kindness had eroded into clinical detachment, apparently in direct proportion with the amount of power he wielded. She wondered about the things he'd seen, done, and ordered, for such changes to occur, and the handful of times she'd seen him since he took over leadership of the Turks, she'd tried hard to spot shreds of the man she'd known in his face.
His eyes were empty as he stood on her doorstep, not trying to come inside or inviting her out. Yet Aerith got the sense that this wasn't because he didn't feel anything, than because at the moment he had nothing to fill his expression with. Tseng was an empty glass, shiny and polished, but still capable of holding emotions if he was so inclined. He just wasn't so inclined very often.
When he didn't volunteer a reason for knocking on her door, she asked bluntly what was going on. He looked at her in that way he sometimes did – blank with just a hint of something more underneath.
Bizarrely, even though he was a Turk, she didn't feel like she was in danger around Tseng, but she didn't exactly feel safe either. He allowed her to push him more than other Turks perhaps would, but she was acutely aware of his role in her world. The fastidiously spotless suit wouldn't let her forget. She knew he was the one Shinra would tell if and when they finally grew tired of playing games, and she wasn't sure what he'd do when that happened.
"Why now? Why, after all this time, have you suddenly upped surveillance of me?" She suspected it was timed to correspond with Zack's absence, but she couldn't read anything from Tseng's face.
Despite Zack's claims he was due for a mission away from Midgar, it had been weeks since she started having the dreams, and Zack had remained here until recently. She'd been relieved with each day he remained at her side. Now he'd been shipped out and she was being spied on. That couldn't be a coincidence.
Did Shinra think he'd been selling secrets to her or something? Or had Shinra been waiting for him to leave her unprotected? Had she got it wrong when she interpreted the dreams – which still came every night, and still disturbed her enough to throw up at least once a week – and it had been she, not Zack, who was the target of the formless evil? Suddenly her covert lessons with Kuchibeni seemed hopelessly inadequate. The Turks were the bogeymen of her childhood.
That was when Tseng told her Zack was missing.
She tried not to let anything show in her face, the way Tseng did. She tried to let his words slide off her like water. Tseng couldn't give her details, of course, but he told her enough to make her heart plummet. There had been an incident. Everybody on the mission had been declared MIA pending further investigation. Even that much information was top security.
"Why tell me, then?"
"Because I thought you'd already know the truth."
"I …" She stopped. Blinked. Realised what he meant.
Aside from Professor Hojo, the man who once oversaw the Cetra Project, Tseng probably knew more about her and her abilities than anyone else in the world. He knew about her connection to the Planet. He knew about the Lifestream, however much he actually believed in it. He knew about the nature of mako, and the hypotheses that it linked those touched by it, like SOLDIERS, to beings like Cetra.
If Zack had died, Aerith would know. She would have felt it. The more she thought this, the more convinced she became that this was the conclusion Tseng had also drawn. Turks were information-gatherers, among other things. He was asking her, without actually asking, whether those on Zack's mission were dead – which also implied he didn't know what had happened to them, or at least where they were right now.
If even the head of the Turks didn't know, then there was still hope he was okay as well as alive, just in a place Shinra couldn't reach. Aerith clung to this, even as her dream nudged her mind.
"I didn't know," she whispered.
Tseng didn't nod, but he did leave. The Turks kept watching her. They were waiting for something. Aerith took that as a good sign.