Chapter 16: Reset: T3B2C7
Time passed, as it tends to, and Cloud's days fell back into monotony. With Hendrick and Stefan gone, along with a good chunk of the other recruits that washed out, the trips below Plate petered off to once every couple of weeks with whoever could be mustered, instead of a weekly excursion for Cloud's small group.
Having taken Stengar's advice to make friends and promote himself as a team player, Cloud became a regular - although he was frequently teased for his sobriety (seriously, nothing ending in 'tini' ever again) he was also frequently the one hauling people out of the gutter and back to the barracks or trying to defuse fights with the locals. He earned their respect, even if he wasn't the life of the party.
Of course, that was when things went severely sideways.
About four months later, after they'd proven themselves to be able to operate as a unit through relentless drills and constant exercise, and had become something similar to comrades if not friends, an announcement was made at morning drill.
"You've survived so far," Stengar noted with his typical disinterested drawl, "but any halfwitted moron could do that. Now we see if you have the real talent for SOLDIER - surviving the scientists."
Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshit...
"All SOLDIERs are required to go through a physical enhancement program to boost their natural potential and give them pretty little glowing eyes - some of you have that potential, others don't. Today we see which you are."
He continued talking, but Cloud couldn't hear over the rushing in his ears. He was sure, absolutely sure, completely positive and without a doubt certain that this was not how things went the first time around. He remembered the day too well. It came right at the end, when he'd spent a year fighting every single day to be acknowledged as something other than a mediocre waste of space , when he'd come so close to his dream. It happened just at the worst possible time, when he thought he'd finally made something of himself. That he'd be strong.
He didn't know why it had changed.
He thought he'd had more time.
"Cloud," he heard faintly. He thought it was Marcel. "Cloud!"
"He doesn't look good," Thom said.
"I'm fine," he said with a croak, and cleared his throat. "I'm fine," he repeated.
"Sure? 'Cause you look like you're gonna pass out."
"I'm fine," he said a third time, and dragged out a ragged smile. "Just don't like needles much."
"Well, get comfy with them quick," Thom told him. "We're second up after the Sahagins."
White. Gleaming, glossy, sterile white, uncompromising fluorescent lights and the regulation bucket chairs made up the 52nd floor that housed the medical branch of the science department specifically for servicing the SOLDIERs needs. It put him on edge immediately.
The sixteen survivors of the first cull in his squad were lined up by surname alphabetically, making Strife the third from last to pass through the door at the end of the chair-lined hallway. It didn't help.
Originally, the day of the Mako exposure tests had been a day full of violent emotions. Excitement, fear, anticipation, dread - all of which culminated in a final numbing fall when he was confirmed to be unsuitable for further enhancement.
This time it was almost reassuringly one-note. Fear, pure and heady thrummed through his body as he waited to be called in. His hands shook, so he clenched them into fists as he sat and watched the others go through. None of them came back through, which he expected considering they would have to monitor them for a couple of hours before sending them out, but the slowly emptying room did nothing good for his nerves.
It took more effort than Cloud wanted to stop himself from floating down into himself, into a place he'd found in the labs where it didn't matter what was being done to him. He thought he'd lost that place years ago, and didn't want to go back.
The candidates had been told the test was to ascertain whether their body could cope with the treatments to turn them into SOLDIERS, which was true. It was also to see if their body reacted poorly to J-cells, which was why there were old stories of candidates "going home" after testing, only to disappear. But, the basic mechanics of the test were explained to them in detail, more to avoid runners than to comfort or instruct.
A Mako soaked swab would be wiped over a disinfected section of the candidates inner arm. Assuming no screaming occurred, a thin plastic cylinder shielding multiple thin needles would then be used to punch through the skin and deliver a subcutaneous injection of a tiny amount of diluted Mako (along with a tiny amount of dead J-cells). Clean, simple, bloodless.
Unless something went wrong, of course, as typically sedation was required for the unfortunates who reacted poorly to the cocktail.
Cloud had barely passed the swab test the first time around, and has seized on being administered the injection. It wasn't the most common side effect, but fortunately it had been neither rare nor interesting enough for Hojo to interfere. Painful and humiliating as it had been, with the ache in his muscles lasting for nearly a week afterwards, at least he was ready for it.
Except - he wasn't. He was ready to go through with it, perhaps, but there was still a lingering fear that perhaps this memory was another lie, that it had been worse. That something else was lurking out of sight, on the edge of his mind.
As his name was called, he stood woodenly. He marched to the door, and went in.
Cloud just felt cold.
"Right," he said quietly as the nurse began preparing the swab, dipping the cotton ball into the diluted Mako solution.
The thread connecting his mind to his body thinned to the point of snapping, a curling dread winding up from where it had sat, stonelike, into his lungs. The liquid the tube was filled with was a faint glimmer compared to the bright burning acid green of the mako that Hojo had used, but it still set off that screaming beast inside that knew that pain was coming.
Until it didn't.
The coolness of the disinfectant wipe was quickly replaced by the stinging cold of the heavily diluted mako that burned faintly on his skin, but it was unpleasant, not agonising. Dipping a hand into something faintly disgusting, instead of the expected acid. The nurse busied herself tidying up and disposing the contaminated swab.
A moment of two passed under the doctor's careful eye, but when Cloud didn't start expressing signs of crippling agony and skin remained pale instead of flushed, he opened a small drawer and pulled out the sealed plastic tube. As it was preloaded with its mix of mako and J-cells, he just had to pull off the seal on the top and snap off the protective plastic over the hidden needles.
"A small sting, and that should be it," he assured Cloud as he noticed the young man tense, before pressing on the button that sent the needles punching through his skin.
It was painful, a bit more than the promised small sting, and the cool stinging sensation he'd had with the swab test intensified - but no more than falling into a patch of stinging nettles. The nurse smiled.
"I suppose you were expecting a little more drama, yes?" she asked. "All the others are the same, I'm sure they expect their muscles to start growing as they watch!"
The doctor smiled politely in response - as she puttered around, dropping the needle into the sharps bin and stripping off her plastic gloves to dump them in the biohazard waste, he carried out what were clearly routine tests.
"Well, your pulse and blood pressure are both in normal range and you're responding to light in a typical fashion - I'm a little concerned by your breathing, but I think that's just nerves, isn't it," he told Cloud when he was done. "Typically if there's going to be a catastrophic reaction we see preliminary signs in the first minute or two, and you look to be in the clear."
"Are you sure?" Cloud asked, incredulous. Scared, if he was being honest.
"Sure as I can be. You'll stay here for at least two hours, and Nurse Liddell here will be checking up on you at twenty minute intervals to check that things are going well. If we don't see any odd or unusual reactions, you should be clear to go then, otherwise - it's all down to you now. Or your body, at least," he laughed as the two left through the curtain, wheeling the small equipment trolley with them.
Cloud sat there on the hospital bed, terrified and alone, as absolutely nothing happened.
Well, not nothing, exactly.
Orothe had taught him meditative techniques to commune with the Planet, and using those to steady his breathing he found it was a little easier to sink into the space that was both within and without – the river of green encircling the Planet was slightly louder, if something soundless could be loud. The physical world, when he opened his eyes after a moment of reflection, was sharper too. He could see more detail, hear a little better, and the feel of the paper sheet beneath him felt like a rough contrast to the glossy waterproof bed. It took moments for the feelings and sensations to fade, but they left behind a lingering awareness of what could be.
There was a comfort in the knowledge he could have his strength back without the pain and abuse he'd suffered the first time, but it was a distant comfort.
Cloud just wasn't sure if he wanted to continue down that road anymore. Not if it brought him in close contact with one of the few true monsters he'd ever known.
But if he didn't, then what was he supposed to do with this strange second chance that he had been given?
