Chapter two is considerably longer than chapter one. Hope you enjoy it!

Pain greeted him as he woke up. The room was still dark, but at least he wasn't itching anymore. He moved to raise a hand and realized that he wasn't strapped down anymore either. He wondered how long he'd been out... it must have been a while and quite a deep slumber for them to have been able to come in and unstrap him without him moving.

Then again, it had been weeks since he'd gotten decent, non-induced slumber at all. He raised his hand and moved his fingers, feeling himself all over. Aside from a strange slightly grainy skin texture... he seemed to be fine... asdie from that ache across his shoulders. That was annoying but there wasn't much he could do about it.

He sat up, or tried to. It took several minutes and quite a few false-starts before he actually managed to sit up. He was panting with the sheer amount of effort it had taken him. Was he really that weak? He supposed two months in stasis could do that to you but wasn't Mako exposure supposed to strengthen you? Then again... that was usually combined with intense training.

He experimentally moved his legs. Well, they worked... theoretically anyway. He shifted on the gurney and swung his legs over the side of it. The question was... could he stand? He suddenly realized that upon sitting up, some of the pain in his shoulderblades had lessened considerably. He rolled them and hissed as pain shot through him.

He reached a hand back to massage his shoulder and froze, all thoughts of standing up vanishing from his head as he felt a lump on his back. he shifted hands and felt an identical one on the other side. "What the...?" he muttered. He sighed. Whatever it was... he'd deal with it later. one thing at a time.

Just as he was about to shift off the metal gurney he had been laying on; which wasn't comfortable in the least, mind you; The lights flickered on and he was momentarily blinded. As his eyes adjusted a bit he glanced around. Typical. He was in what was essentially a padded cell. There was a camera up in the corner, the metal gurney, and a door. That was pretty much it.

He looked at himself... or what he could see. He seemed healthy enough, aside from being in considerable pain every time he tried to move. Then he caught it. A slight shimmer as the light hit his hand just right. He shifted about despite soft moans of pain and noticed it was everywhere.

At that moment he realized that the assistants (because like hell would Hojo do any manual labor that wasn't inflicting pain on his victims) had had the decency, at the very least, to put a pair of black shorts on him. He went back to examining himself. Ok so his skin looked like it had diamonds embedded in it. That was new.

Thinking to himself a bit, he tried to recall if he could remember anything said about what Hojo had done to him thus far. There was the injection of a serum Hojo had simply referred to as 'Genome E' and had recalled being in intense pain for a week as whatever was happening inside his abdomen happened. Hojo had seemed pleased with the results, and then had stuck him back in stasis.

Assuming Hojo had been continuously subjecting him to Mako treatements, he figured he'd probably reached quite a lethality record. He moaned softly as the bumps on his shoulders throbbed painfully. It seemed they were growing slightly. He went back to thinking. That diamond lookng shit he'd just injected in him was beyond his actual knowledge... Hojo had neglected to name it before subjecting Cloud to the horrible shit.

Reaching back to where the screws had been in his body he found, to his utter shock, a bandage! Come to think of it, he was bandaged wherever there had been IVs or tubes stuck in him. "Well shit, perhaps someone that works for that disgusting serpent of a man actually has a heart." he mused out loud to no one. Not that he considered Hojo a man of any sort, really... more like a monster in human skin. He shifted a bit on the gurney and jumped as he heard a noise.

A small flap in the bottom of the door moved and food was shoved in. Oh right... food. Something Cloud hadn't had in Gaia knew how long since he had been mostly fed by tubes and other nasty methods due to being in stasis. He stared at the tray as his stomach decided now would be a good time to eat itself; announcing to Cloud that he was indeed hungry.

Welp, he had to get up now. No real choice in the matter. He shifted a bit on the gurney and slowly and painfully slid his hip so his foot hit the floor. Padded room generally meant padded floor, so at least it wasn't cold and hard. He shifted and put weight on his leg experimentally. He didn't immediately collapse so that was a good sign, but dear Gaia that was painful!

He stifled a moan and slowly shifted his other hip off the gurney so he was essentially leaning against it. He clung to the thing like a toddler trying to find his balance for a while, the entire time trying to ignore the intense pain shooting through him. He gazed at his forearm. The shunt... that damnable thing was still there. They'd left one in. He didn't dare remove it... he was no doctor and if he wasn't careful he could hemmorage himself to death in a matter of seconds if he did it wrong.

Finally gaining his bearings and, despite how much pain he was actually in, he managed to lift a foot and take a step. He held onto the gurney and made his way down it towards the food, using it as sort of a lifeline for the moment till he had no choice but to let go and toddle, feeling too much pain with each step to think of how foolish he might look, till he got to the food tray. He slowly lowered himself to the floor and reached for the tray, going at the food like ... well.. like someone who hadn't eaten real food in months.

Meanwhile Hojo was watching all this via the observation camera in the corner. A knock at his door, or rather an insistant and annoying tapping made itself known. "Whoever is there, this is my office and i'm rather busy, please remvoe yourself from my lab." "like hell." Came an all-too familiar drawl.

Hojo jerked and inwardly swore, but did not even look at him. "What do you want now, Reno?" he asked, his tone bordering between impatient and nervous. The redheaded Turk wandered into the office as Hojo hurridly turned the 'channel' on the tv to show one of his other victims. His boss, namely, Rufus Shinra, had no idea he had captured Cloud; in fact, there was a rather large investigation going on in search of the blonde bastard. It was beyond Hojo's care why they were searching so desperately for such a low level member of SOLDIER, but like hell would he give up his most promising research subject since Sephiroth.

"I asked what it is you want." Hojo said, turning to face him at last, his impatience winning out against his nerves. Reno was anything but relaxed, though he constantly seemed to look it. His blue-green eyes locked on Hojo. "Boss says you overshot your funding again." He said calmly, tapping his main weapon, the Electromagnetic Rod (EMR), against his shoulder. "He wants to know what on Gaia could possbily be using this much resource without showing results."

Hojo glared at him. "I need time. Darknation wasn't created in a day, Brat." "Darknation already exists." Retorted Reno. "Hey, i'm just here to deliver a message." He said lazily. "Boss says show him some results by the end of the month, or you'll be meeting the 'business' end of my EMR." He held up a hand and wandered out of the office. Hojo rolled his eyes. He had two weeks. The end of the month was in two weeks... He had to speed things up with Cloud, if that was the case.

Hojo had been tasked with making Remnants. However in order to make Remnants, one must have a compatible and capeable subject with the ability to do so. He had searched far and wide till he'd found Cloud to be the best candidate. Perhaps President Shinra would be sated once the gestation had begun... but before that... Hojo had to finish altering Cloud's genetic make-up.