.
13. Hojo - Salvager
Hojo surveyed the man before him and sighed. The sigh seemed to start in his shoes and work its way up. Really, it was most unfortunate that a mind like his was constantly beset by such trivialities. Couldn't these people see he was occupied with something more important than this ridiculous question and answer session?
"Surely one of my researchers would suffice in my place?" He drummed his fingers on the table.
"This won't take long, Professor." The man's tone was appropriately courteous but Hojo still had a sense of being ordered about by a subordinate. It chafed. He wasn't some two-bit scientist who could be shunted from pillar to post at the whims of others. "We're very grateful for your cooperation in this matter, since you were so heavily involved with Project S."
He stopped drumming to link his hands under his chin. "I'm glad to hear it. However, if you're so grateful, it does beg the question of why you're keeping me waiting."
As if on cue another man entered with a manila folder that the interviewer accepted wordlessly. He shuffled through a few sheets of paper – was this a pathetic attempt at intimidation or did he genuinely not care who he was annoying? – before focussing again on Hojo.
"You were present during the Nibelheim Incident last month, Professor?"
"Is that what they're calling it now?" Hojo was bored and saw no reason to hide it. Many things bored him, especially paper-pushers and their bureaucracy. He itched to get back to the lab but had been prohibited until he agreed to this. Since he needed President Shinra's cooperation for the foreseeable future it had seemed a small sacrifice.
His interviewer didn't reply. Evidently he was waiting for Hojo to say more.
Hojo sighed. "Yes, I was present. Is there a point to all this?"
"You actually observed what happened?"
"No, but I was there for the immediate aftermath."
"You are aware of General Sephiroth's actions during that time?"
Hojo's irritation mounted. "Am I to understand I've been summoned from some extremely sensitive research – and by sensitive I mean time-sensitive, as well as too delicate to leave in the hands of the ham-fisted assistants you assigned me –" He paused for breath. "Am I to understand you have brought me all the way to Midgar just to establish things that could have been ascertained over a phone?"
His interviewer's lips thinned.
Hojo leaned back in his chair. "I see."
The man tapped the manila file. "These are financial records. Equipment requests. Documents filled out by your department in the last month."
"I'm sure they make fascinating reading."
"They do." A spark of something unpleasant appeared in the interviewer's dark eyes. Hojo hadn't got where he was today by ignoring warning signs but he continued to feign boredom. "In the last month you've transferred a great deal of equipment to the Nibelheim facility, as well as reassigning key members of your staff to your new venture."
"It was rather underequipped, yes, and I prefer to work with people whose credentials I -" Hojo skinned back his teeth to pronounce the word like an insult. "- trust. Did Shinra expect me to work with substandard apparatus for all eternity? I think not. Not if they want accuracy and precision."
"This new venture was commissioned just after the Nibelheim Incident."
"Your precious records show that too?"
"Nibelheim was burned to the ground during the Incident."
"Tragic, I'm sure. The gene pool weeps for the loss of hairy mountain men."
"Its inhabitants were all lost." There was that spark again. Hojo's spine tingled but he didn't straighten in his chair. That would be giving too much away. "According to the records. Official reports list the death rate as a hundred percent."
"What do you want me to say? My heart bleeds for the poor inbred troglodytes and their uncivilised frozen backwater. Truly. Is there a point to all this?"
"You've abandoned all your projects here in Midgar to move to the Nibelheim Lab."
"Not abandoned," Hojo corrected. "Put on temporary hiatus. I never truly lose interest in a project until I've seen it to its conclusion, however long that might take."
This time the interviewer stiffened – not that anyone could tell. Hojo, however, noted the slight dilation of pupils, the immediate downward tick of that dark gaze and the way several of the man's blinks were a lot closer together. What had him rattled now? He wondered whether that bore further investigation. Which project, he wondered, was of interest to this man? Vincent Valentine and the Chaos Project, perhaps? No, that was too long ago. Plenty of opportunities had already passed if Turk investigations were headed in that direction – opportunities not choked by politics and fear, which had flooded all of Shinra after the news of Sephiroth's violent psychosis.
Hojo flicked through mental records far more accurate and complete than any written ones he had submitted to Shinra. Yet his mind went back to the Nibelheim facility. He ached to be there at such a crucial stage. Like all artists, his first flush of enthusiasm was always strongest and this time it was especially potent. It was powered not only by his natural curiosity, his desire to know more than anyone else did or could, but also by the frustration and rage at losing Sephiroth. Even more than the desecration of Jenova, Sephiroth's defeat lit a fire inside him. He had worked long and hard to create the perfect life form; too long to let it go without a fight or retribution. There was a delicious irony that the subjects he had been left with would provide both, if only he could get back to them.
"Shinra is aware of my move and support me fully. My new branch of research is, as I have already said, quite time-sensitive and demanded an immediate relocation of resources for optimal results. You'll find all the requisite paperwork," he said the word with a wave at the file, and laced with a sneer, the way other people would say 'cat vomit', "filed with the right people and departments."
"The right people," his interviewer repeated. "Hm."
"Are you implying something?"
"General Sephiroth's remains were never found, were they?"
Hojo stiffened. Shinra's official voice still listed Sephiroth as MIA, along with all the other inferiors he'd been with during the confrontation in the Nibelheim Reactor. He knew, however, that they were a hair's breadth from declaring them dead along with the rest of Nibelheim, despite the lack of bodies. No small amount of pressure from Hojo himself had pushed them to pass the death certificates earlier than usual. He wanted interest in Nibelheim squashed. As long as a question mark hung over Sephiroth's death people would remain interested. His work would be much easier without the interference an investigation by the wrong people – like Turks.
"Do you know something I don't?" Hojo asked mildly.
"That would defeat the object of conducting this line of questioning, Professor."
"Many words that say very little. The General's body is still an issue, yes. The bodies of his subordinates …" Hojo shrugged. "They weren't the Silver General. They're of lesser importance whichever way you look at it."
"SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair was the Second in Command for the mission, wasn't he?"
"I believe so."
"Have you recovered his remains?"
Hojo spent a moment considering his answer. Ah well, no time like the present. "Yes. His body has been recovered. It is, however, in a condition that renders it impossible to return to his family." Not that Shinra would have done if Fair really had died. Release forms signed at the outset of the SOLDIER programme were full of provisos in small and smaller print. SOLDIERs were too precious for their usefulness to end when their lives did. The things he could have learned from Sephiroth's genetic material post-mortem! He burned with the injustice of losing that data. He had already learned so much from Hewley and Hollander's results, but Project G's failure was nothing compared to the perfection and success of his own Project S.
The interviewer said nothing. He didn't query the remark but the air suddenly suggested there were unasked questions lurking like rakes in tall grass.
Rather than step on one, Hojo said, "You want to ask me what I mean by that, don't you?"
"Would you explain?"
"Mako is still something of an unknown force in its rawest form. Its effects haven't been fully catalogued and have a tendency to respond to variables and outside factors that act upon bodies during exposure – as has happened each time some fool attempts to fill in the blanks, catalogue the undocumented side-effects and ends up getting themselves killed with mako poisoning. Pre-existing genetic proclivities; prior contact with mako, whether internally or externally; the physical condition of a body at time of exposure; the amount of raw-form mako involved and the method of exposure – do tell me if I'm going too fast for you. Or perhaps you'd like me to explain the bigger words?" His smile was a terrible thing and he knew it.
"Proceed, Professor."
"Damage to organic material can be quite extensive and perilous for those who come into contact with it afterwards, as in the case of First Class Fair and his lackeys."
"Their bodies are radioactive?"
"Nuclear fusion. How quaint. I wasn't aware anybody even thought about such a thing anymore, much less referred to it in context."
"I'll rephrase."
"You do that."
"Are you saying that the remains of First Class Zack Fair come under the classification 'hazardous biological waste'?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying. Hence, they will be disposed of safely and in controlled conditions, once proper tests have been run to establish that whatever affected his mind enough to attack General Sephiroth wasn't connected with his mako injections and won't happen again to any other SOLDIERs."
The interviewer's head jerked up. "He attacked the General?"
"Of course. You thought it was the other way around?" Hojo smirked. "A surprise attack, naturally. How else could someone as powerful as General Sephiroth be defeated by an inferior model?" He laughed. "Next you'll be telling me any unenhanced grunt could take on a First Class and win."
Damn it, there was that spark again. It flared to life at the words 'inferior model'. As though this cretin had any right to think of the unwashed masses as anything other than bodies to be spent how their superiors saw fit? Society hadn't evolved as much as it liked to think. It was still survival of the fittest. How much blood was on this man's hands? Hojo forcibly calmed himself and returned the stare.
His interviewer seemed to be waiting for something. Then he nodded; an abrupt up and down of the head that meant nothing except a visual a full stop to the conversation. "Thank you, Professor. You've been most helpful."
"And you've been most irritating," Hojo replied. "This entire interview has been unnecessary; a waste of my time and Shinra's resources."
A lesser person might have been cowed by his annoyance. Not this one. He offered no apology, just more polite thanks and the promise of a chopper to return Hojo to Nibelheim immediately.
"The least you can do, considering the trouble you've put me to," Hojo grumbled.
Still, he reflected, it had been worth it if it prevented a Turk investigation of what had really happened in Nibelheim. There may have been interest there, but he was sure Tseng had gotten the message: it was more than his life was worth to look too deeply at the Nibelheim Incident, just as it had always been too risky for anyone to look too deeply into Valentine's desertion. Tseng wasn't stupid. Stupidly loyal to his employers, but not brainless enough to take on an enemy he couldn't possibly defeat. Hojo had more might behind him than that nosy idiot. Plus, Shinra was panicking at the loss of its figurehead. If word got out that Sephiroth had turned on them … well, they just wouldn't let that happen. If Shinra ordered it, Tseng would have to stop even thinking about Nibelheim, much less looking into it.
All knowledge of Zack Fair and his team would be buried on Shinra's orders, Hojo was sure, and all interest in them as well. The last thing he needed was Tseng and his batch of well-tailored psychopaths getting in the way while he salvaged what he could of his beloved Project S.