The dogs don't like the Cradle. They sniff and growl through every step of the catwalk, and Cloud shares their unease. It reeks of death and mako vapor, the air so heavy with fumes that the walls pulse with radioactive energy.

Bennet unlocks the opposite blast door to the troop's palpable relief.

Cloud doesn't relax. This is the hallway with the clean room. His last visit didn't engender any good feelings about the place.

Two doorways sit opposite the stairway to the tiles, and he's prodded into it by the barrel of a 4R shotgun.

"Remain outside," Bennet says, following him in. The officers exchange glances, but don't disobey. She shuts them in together.

Cloud regards her coolly. He had known Zack wasn't dead, but her persistent lies still irk him. Would it have really made a difference for her to give him the small mercy of the truth? He'd been convinced of it regardless, so it's not like the truth would have polluted the outcome of whatever cruel joke they're playing on him.

This new room is strange. It has polka-dotted carpet and friendly, pale green walls. A child-sized table and chairs lingers in a corner between two worktops. Cloud finds that spot Zack showed him below his left wrist and presses hard.

There's a wood stool in the center, obviously for him. Electric cords hang from the ceiling just over it.

Bennet strides to one of the worktops and busies herself selecting bottled solutions from a high shelf. "Have a seat, Subject C."

Cloud knows better than to talk back to Hojo, but she isn't Hojo and his anger is becoming a sovereign person within him.

"You lied to me," he says.

She dips a cotton swab into a vial of yellow goop, and lifts an eyebrow delicately. "Is that what concerns you about this situation? Dishonesty?"

"It wasn't necessary. It was cruel."

"And why does that matter?"

Cloud chews his cheek, watching her hands move expertly through the tangle of wires over the stool, applying a dot of goop to each end. With a deep breath in and out, he sits.

"It's against the Shinra creed," he says. "We work to elevate the people through the betterment of society. The Science Department is only meant for voluntary testing."

The wires fall around him like willow branches, and he crosses his arms to keep from touching them. All for not, because as soon as he stills she starts parting his hair to stick them all over his head. It sends warm tingles down his back, and he hates himself for liking it.

"You were a security officer. You must have killed people on the job."

"Following orders, that's your excuse? That's just what people say when the truth is they don't care." He scowls down at his crossed arms. She nudges his head to the side and sticks a cold, slimy electrode behind his ear.

"You can't honestly be this naïve." Bennet narrows her eyes. His brows set in a glare, and she scoffs. "I've read your file, Subject C. Six applications to SOLDIER, all denied. Would you like to know why?"

Dusting her hands on her lab coat, she extracts a binder from a line of them on a nearby shelf. Documents cascade under her fingers in a fan of white, yellow, and pink paper. She stops on a page marked with a sticky note and holds it over his lap.

SOLDIER Fall Recruitment Application, 11/8/2000 , Candidate: Strife, Claude

She turns the page, and points a manicured finger to a line of filled-in blanks at the bottom.

Psychological Profile: AB-02, Ideal

Combat Evaluation: Exemplary

Physical: Candidate demonstrates good health and ability, but does not meet the height requirement for minimum mako dosage.

Recommendation: Reject.

"Five centimeters. That's the difference between Infantryman Strife and SOLDIER Zack Fair. Your follow-up applications were rejected automatically. They didn't even keep copies. Does that sound fair to you? Does it sound like a system designed to elevate excellence?"

She snaps the binder closed and tosses it onto the table behind her.

"There's a reason we only have one female department head, and there's a reason it's Scarlet. Ascending an unjust system requires a certain degree of brutality."

"At least my job was honorable. I killed to protect people. You turn them into monsters for a paycheck."

"And is it a crime to need money? Or to want to hold a position of respect?" Bennet repositions Cloud's head again, but with none of her earlier patience.

"No one at Shinra is without sin, Strife. Not even your beloved SOLDIER friend. He did the Genesis extermination in Banora, you know. Killed dozens of his comrades, and his own mentor a month later. That man has more blood on his hands than anyone here, and he knows it. The only person fooling themselves about honor and virtue is you."

A cold, heavy feeling takes hold of him. He doesn't want to believe it, but her face is uncharacteristically open. A wave of her bangs have come out of her hair clip, and her glasses are low on her nose. She looks at him with a resigned expression that reminds him, abruptly and painfully, of a mother he doesn't remember.

"You shouldn't ask questions if you aren't prepared to accept the answers," she says.

"Let's just get this over with." Cloud breaks away.

"Very well."

Excess wire hangs all around him, brushing his skin as he moves. He keeps jumping and twitching, thinking someone's snuck up behind him. The electrodes feel like bugs crawling under his skin.

Bennet indicates a large chest on the ground in front of him.

"You're now hooked to a very precise electric scanner. There's a control room next door." She points to a long window in the wall, beyond which he can only see darkness and the vague outlines of chairs. "I will turn on the scanner, and then you will examine the contents of this chest one at a time. I will ask you to describe any thoughts, feelings, or sensations that arise in response to the objects, and take relevant notes. Once the trunk is empty, we will conclude the experiment."

"This scanner—"

"Completely harmless. It's been known to make people's hair stand up, but that shouldn't bother you."

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" Cloud sighs.

The doctor gives the plugs on his head one final check, and uses a blow dryer to evaporate the last of the moisture from his hair.

She walks out briskly, leaving him with his thoughts and the building pressure of a headache. He pinches the webbing of his thumb, and wishes Zack were here.

Bennet's a proven liar, he shouldn't give her words any weight, but he can't banish the licking, insidious flames of doubt. How much does he know about Zack, really? A pathetic amount, relative to how much trust he's placed in him, all of it cobbled together from his patchy, vague memories.

The light in the window comes on, but the glass is frosted. Dr. Bennet is a fuzzy outline of white and yellow against a tan wall. Cloud slides off the stool to unlatch the twin locks on the chest.

It's made of old wood, the hinges dry and creaky. Thankfully, there isn't much inside. A few scuffed boots, dented armor, knickknacks and household items. He roves over them slowly, before angling a baffled look at the Bennet blob.

"This is junk."

"One at a time, if you please." The tinny intercom says.

He picks up the most interesting item that isn't buried—a well-loved bracer made of padded leather and polished to a shine.

It's a training bracer, not meant for catching blows but rather for simulating the range of motion granted by real armor. This one's taken hits, the surface marred by scratches and straps cracked with age.

Cloud's heart pumps faster, the smell reminding him of sweat and sore legs, long hours in the combat simulator followed by ice packs and beer.

"Talk to me, what are you feeling?"

Loss, he realizes. Wide, bottomless loss for the life he had. Feelings too big to say out loud, and which these scientists have no right to know.

"Subject C—"

What relevance could this possibly have to mako research?

"Sad," he says.

"Anything else?"

"...No."

"Try something another item."

He goes through a gamut of items, each as perplexing and meaningless as the last. Boots are declared smelly. Towels, mildewy. A smashed, black wallet is probably saturated in someone else's dry butt sweat.

He relays it all in a flat, dispassionate voice that steadily degrades Dr. Bennet's professionalism. A headache has been building, which he blames entirely on the experiment, to the point where it's difficult to look up without squinting at the overhead lights.

"This is stupid," Cloud declares.

"It wouldn't be, if you were actually trying," Bennet sighs. "Open the wallet. Feel the texture. It may stimulate a memory."

He shoots her a dubious look, but unfolds the wallet. It's been emptied, no identifying information or keycards, but embossed outlines in the leather hint at where those used to be.

The subtle impression of things now missing gives him an uneasy feeling. This is an invasion of a private space, an object accidentally imbued with spiritual energy by its owner's repeated use. His vision loses focus for a moment, and he shakes himself.

"Who did this belong to? It… shouldn't be here."

Bennet's pen scratches over paper. "That's good, C. Keep going. Concentrate."

His gut tells him not to. He wants to drop the wallet and back away, but that's ridiculous. It's just a dead man's leftovers. Swallowing down his reticence, he parts the centerfold with his thumbs to look in the bill pocket. Green tints his vision.

The empty wallet now holds paper money. A ten-thousand note folded lengthwise, and five crisp hundreds bent in half. Elegant fingers pick out the ten-thousand and slide it across a cherry wood counter.

"This should cover it," Cloud says.

The innkeeper's forehead wrinkles, his salt-and-pepper brows dipping. "Sir, the room is five hundred."

"I'm renting the building. No public access. My men will need food. See that it is delivered by your hand, and no other."

"What are you seeing, Subject C?"

Cloud winces, the pressure in his head building. His hands find the stool behind him, but he can't see it, nor can he see the cords that still brush and tickle over his arms.

"I'm renting a room," he struggles to say. "It's.. not right. I'm nervous."

"Is anyone else with you?"

Footsteps thunk on hollow floorboards, and Cloud turns to see… himself.

"General, we've completed our canvas of the area. Nothing to report."

"At ease."

Cloud throws the wallet across the room, stumbling back. If not for the stool, he'd have fallen on his ass. His heart hammers in his chest, his body shaking with the need to run as far as he can.

"These are Sephiroth's things," he rasps. He doesn't know who that is, or why the name fills him with dread, only that it does, and he doesn't want to be in this room anymore.

"That's correct. What made you throw the wallet?"

"I'm done, get me out." He reaches for the connectors on his head, and the collar tightens around his neck.

"You will be free to go when we complete the experiment. Why did you throw the wallet?"

He sucks in air, but it never seems to be enough. Cold sweat beads his brow. He blinks rapidly, terrified each time that he'll see a different room when he opens them.

"The faster you answer the faster you can leave," Bennet says

"Shut up, fuck." His teeth grind together as the pain whites his vision.

Anger helps. It belongs to him, born of his own thoughts and feelings. He grips the stool and focuses on the blaze of hate burning in his chest.

"This is wrong. He's dead. He should stay that way."

"Can you expand on that thought?" Bennet prods.

"These… tests. You think I have some kind of power. You want me to use it to connect you to him. But there's nothing to be gained from this. He's gone. His memories aren't yours to take."

"That might be the most I've heard you say in our entire acquaintance," Bennet hums thoughtfully. "Alright, I'll offer you a compromise. Try one more object of my choosing—really try, like you just did—and I'll see that you're housed with Subject Z indefinitely. Does that sound agreeable?"

Cloud rubs his eyes. He has a bad feeling about this, but…

"Okay."

"There should be a small robot in the chest. A toy dog."

Cloud sees it. It's modeled after a terrier with tall, thin legs and a short snout. Floppy cloth ears stick out of twin slots in his head, just over a pair of dopey cartoon eyes. He turns it over and around, poking at its creepy robot feet.

"Kinda ugly," he says.

"It was quite popular among my generation. What did you play with as a child?"

Green infringes upon his vision again, and he covers his eyes with his hand.

Toy soldiers stand in formation on the dusty front porch, carefully spaced. They're guarding the house while Mom's at work.

A group of boys come out of Mrs. Markel's and take notice. They stomp on the soldiers, and then on him.

Cloud's legs lock up underneath him and he falls to his knees. The rainbow dots on the carpet flicker green, but don't change.

"Do you like it? I hear they're all the rage in the city."

He squints up. Father is leaning down to talk to him, but he can't see his face through the light. He's so tall, like a giant. His hand dwarfs Cloud's head, ruffling his hair.

"Go on, give it a try."

"Subject C? What's happening?"

He opens his mouth, but can't speak. A child's warble bounces around his brain.

"It's mine? Really?"

"All yours. I thought a friend might cheer up your blue spells."

Cloud sits on the scratchy carpet, rubbing his fingers over the soft ears. "How does it work?"

"Oh it's quite simple, my boy." Father sits beside him and points to the square latch on the dog's belly. "It has a mako battery, see? So long as it's charged, you need only tap his little nose and…"

The dog lets out a bark, and Cloud drops it in surprise.

"Careful, you ungrateful louse. That was expensive." Father slaps him, and Cloud curls in on himself.

"Subject C, answer me. What are you seeing?"

An immense and consuming presence gathers behind Cloud, drowning him in shadow and the pressure of a thousand eyes.

Irritating, isn't it? They put you on a precipice and criticize you for falling. Don't worry, Cloud. They'll get what's coming to them. Reckless fools, tripping over themselves for a fleeting glimpse of true power.

"Who—"

It reaches for him, twisting and contorting into a demon's supposition of what a human hand might be like. It touches his back, fingers spreading and pressing through his skin. Pain like he's never known erupts from the spot.

Let's give it to them, Cloud. A taste of the calamity they court.

Pain obliterates everything until his entire world is white, empty, weightless.

He feels as though his body was peeled away, his skeleton ripped out and discarded like a skinned rabbit.

Though he has no mouth, no lungs, no air, he screams.