"You guys know you're wasting your time, right?"
What started as Zack tapping his foot is now a repetitive twitching of his entire leg.
The researchers ignore him, muttering to each other over a handheld device. He itches at the wires stuck in his hair, connecting him to it.
"We've been through this a dozen times. I'm not getting visions. I'm not 'sensing' anything. I'm as psychically attuned as a hunk of concrete."
"Quiet," the tall one hisses. Zack hangs his head and takes a calming breath.
Usually, he tries to be civil with the workers. Good behavior leads to better treatment and all that, but his worry for Cloud is getting the better of him.
They're in his cell instead of an exam room, which doesn't fit the pattern. Granted, nothing has fit the pattern since they threw him in the combat simulator. His knee shaking becomes a tip-tap rhythm of both legs bouncing.
The doctors took down the barrier when the came in, but the Turk is leaning against the wall by the door. He's on his phone, but that doesn't mean he isn't ready to throw down at a moment's notice. Those guys never really relax. That's why they lose more talent to the psych ward than the morgue.
There was a saying in Public Safety, half interdepartmental jab and half masculine chest-beating about SOLDIERs' tendency to come crawling back like cats: You never meet the same Turk twice.
Right about now, he wishes it wasn't so true. If it were Tseng standing there instead of some tweaking rookie in a second-hand suit, his outlook would be a lot less bleak.
Spurred by the thought—and maybe a touch of anxiety-induced bad judgment—he picks his head up and leans an elbow on one leg.
"Oy, Turk. You know any Wutaians?"
The gangly man looks up from his phone. His thumbs continue typing on the keypad.
"Yeah, I'm talking at you," Zack lifts his chin.
The man sniffs, and rubs his nose with the back of his hand. Diamond Dust was never Zack's thing, but he can see how a job like this would make a bad habit worse. It might have been useful for bribery, if he were in a normal prison with phone lines out. As it stands, it's just an idle observation.
"What's it to you?" the Turk asks.
"I met an op named Tseng in Banora. Decent guy, hella good shot. Saw him nail a dude between the eyes at three hundred meters once. I was just wondering if he's still kicking."
The man drops his gaze back to his phone, expression unmoving. "Never heard of him."
Tseng was second-in-command when Zack met him, so he takes that as a fuck-off and goes back to leg thumping. The docs jab him and swab him and do the usual things. Finally, something happens. A faint rumble shakes the floor.
Various heads swivel.
"Gentlemen," Hojo's voice crackles from the corner. "We have first contact."
"Battle stations," The Turk says with a touch of irony, and pushes himself off of the wall to open the door. There's a commotion of guards and Shinra dogs in the atrium, and the muffled sound of Bennet giving orders.
One researcher rushes outside while the other looks caught between the brain scanner in his hand and the hubbub outside. He opts to abandon it, which leaves Zack trapped behind a rising blue barrier in a tangle of wires.
"What's going on?" he asks as he rips the electrodes off in a hurry. Nobody deigns to answer. He catches a flash of spiky blond hair and runs to the barrier, close enough to feel the radiant heat of it on his nose.
He can't see anything through the cluster of bodies, and can't hear anything over the noise suppressing field of the barrier. He can only stand there, useless, and watch them pick at Cloud's motionless body like vultures.
There's a period of chaos, all swarming figures and emphatic gestures, and then a gradual cooling as Cloud is laid out in one of the medic stations and the guards are banished to the walls.
The white coats make an assembly line; cutting samples from Cloud's back, grasping them with tweezers and dropping them into little glass canisters like they might be contagious. Zack paces back and forth, his skin crawling.
They take blood, and jab Cloud with some mystery needles for good measure, then Bennet peels off her latex gloves.
For a heart-stopping moment, he thinks Cloud must be dead. That's the kind of nod she gives the researchers, the one that says, 'We've done all we can.'
Zack's knees go weak, his head buzzing with the thought of being alone in this now, of failing to protect yet another person he cared about, but then the Turk leans over Cloud's body and mutters something. Cloud's mouth moves in a one word answer.
Tension leaves him like a popped blister. He's alive, thank fuck, he's alive.
The Turk picks Cloud up in a bridal carry only to drop him on the cell floor like a sack of flour. He wipes his hands on his pants, like touching Cloud made him dirty. The barrier drops as he steps into the atrium.
"Heavy little bitch, ain't he?" the Turk snorts, glancing over his shoulder as the door slides shut. "Do yourself a favor, SOLDIER boy, and clean that mess up. I sure as shit ain't doin' it this time."
Zack runs, sliding to his knees at Cloud's side. His first impression is blood, blood everywhere. His second is a more protracted, dawning horror at the source.
Cloud's shirt is torn in the back, from the neckline to the mid back. A fissure mars his right shoulder blade, the skin ripped and torn like something had burst out from it. Recognition shoots an uncontrollable shudder through his body.
Wings. They all sprouted wings near the end.
"Za—"
"Shh," Zack manages to say around the lump in his throat. Numbly, he scrambles to the bed and back, ripping strips off the end of the sheet. "Save your strength. I've got you."
Cloud huffs, and then winces. "Hurts."
"I bet. It's gonna get worse too. We have to stop the bleeding."
Zack waits for Cloud to acknowledge. It's a long minute, his eyes roving Cloud's face until hazy eyes slit open. He demonstrably tears another strip from the sheet.
Cloud blinks slowly. "Go ahead."
Zack works the remains of Cloud's shirt off and uses it to dab around the wound. The fabric is about as absorbent as a sheet of paper, and not much softer. It doesn't soak up the blood so much as spread it out. Figuring that will at least make it good for sealing, he folds it up and presses it over the tear.
The other man flinches, but doesn't make a sound.
"Gotta wrap it," Zack says reluctantly.
Cloud breathes through the pain. "I can sit."
"Don't push yourself—"
"It's fine. Help me." Cloud grits his teeth and starts rising before Zack can really argue, so there's nothing to do but hook his arm under the other man's chest and lift. He moves in front, one hand holding the bandage while the other awkwardly drags them both to the wall.
Cloud slumps forward, panting. He has a scar on his chest where Sephiroth ran him through, the skin barely healed and puffy pink. An echo of despair calls him back to the moment, to his blood pooling on the reactor steps and an upside down vision of Cloud brandishing Angeal's sword.
The bandage under his hand turns warm and damp, grounding him in the present. He steadies himself, for Cloud's sake.
"Right, okay, wrapping. Gotta—shit." He left the sheet and the scraps on the floor. Kicking, he catches an edge with his heel and pulls. "Just gotta hold this in place and you'll be good as new."
"Right." Cloud manages to sound sarcastic even when he's bleeding out. It makes Zack's lip quirk, in spite of the situation.
It's the worst patch-up he's ever done, and he did a tour in the trench. Cloud's eyes track his hands as they wind around and around. He's strangely serene, hunched forward with his forehead resting on Zack's shoulder. He tries to take strength from that, and keeps his own nerves in check.
"What did they do?" Zack asks quietly.
He knows already, knows with a morbid, horrifying certainty, but he can't fathom why. Hojo's trying to make them Sephiroth clones, like Hollander did with Genesis.
But Shinra already has that technology. Zack delivered Hollander's notes to HQ himself. If they want an army of mindless monstrosities they can have it, so why authorize Hojo to do more experiments?
The only reason he can think of is ego. Hojo wants to piss on Hollander's memory by producing something bigger, deadlier, stronger just to prove he can.
Or, he supposes, out of misguided love for his son, to try and bring Sephiroth back. That would require Hojo to feel genuine love for a human being, though, so he discards it out of hand.
Either way, Cloud was right. Things are moving faster than Zack hoped. They need to get out of here as fast as they can.
Cloud doesn't answer, his eyes going glassy and vague again.
"Hey…" Zack nudges him on his good side. "Hey Cloud, you with me?"
The other man shudders, and blinks. He looks lost for a second, eyes darting around the room.
"Sorry."
Zack swallows his panic and slaps on a happy face. "All good. Just stay awake, okay?"
Cloud doesn't return it. He works his mouth into a tight line, and doesn't meet Zack's eyes even when he bends his head to try and catch him.
"The doctor said… you did a mission in Banora."
Zack's smile wilts a bit, despite his best efforts. He nods, pursing his lips. "What of it?"
"So it's true. You killed a bunch of SOLDIERs 'cause they ordered you to."
"I killed Genesis clones who used to be SOLDIERs. It's not the same thing."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Zack fidgets uncomfortably, Cloud's weight trapping him to the spot when it had felt reassuring a few moments ago. The wound on Cloud's back is eating an anxiety-shaped hold in his brain, and the last thing he wants to do is put those fears into words.
Even so, it's deathly relevant to the situation they've found themselves in. He grips Cloud's shoulders, nose wrinkling at the smell and sight of his own bloody hands.
It takes him back to past battles, to explosions throwing mud up in the air and guys bent over in agony, holding their own guts in. It's not a place he likes to return to.
"The Banora mission was a shitshow. Start to finish. Genesis—you remember Genesis?"
Cloud shakes his head.
"Right, 'course you don't." Zack works his jaw. "I don't really know a lot, to be honest. Shinra doesn't exactly put it on the recruitment pamphlet.
Most of what I know, I learned from torn up notes and insane ramblings. Not exactly reliable sources. But the short version is that the SOLDIER program began as a pair of parallel experiments on two pregnant women."
Parsing through the jumbled information he'd gleaned over a number of months, he struggles to assemble it all into something short and easy to understand.
"They shot them up with cells from this… ancient being. Jenova. The babies grew up to be Genesis and Sephiroth. My mentor, Angeal, came from something similar."
"Jenova." Cloud's eyes narrow and his face stiffens. "That's what makes SOLDIERS. J cells."
"Sort of," Zack tips his head, searching for the words to explain. "Putting Jenova directly into the bloodstream will kill a guy quick. That's why they cooked up this plan to inject it into developing babies, so that the kids could grow up with it inside them and maybe adapt their DNA to it.
It worked for Sephiroth, but not for Genesis. He discovered about a year ago that he was degenerating. He was told he had a few months to live. That caused him to defect, and he took all the SOLDIERs made from his cells with him. At first they were looking for a cure. By the time HQ sent me to Banora, Genesis wasn't himself anymore. At that point, he just wanted revenge."
"So you killed them all," Cloud says.
Zack sighs, laying his head back on the wall. "It's not how it sounds. They'd done some experiments of their own, using the 2nds and 3rds that came with him. There was nothing human left in them.
Hollander had come up with this crazy theory that the J-cells inside of them were trying to come together. It was killing them so that they'd 'rejoin the Lifestream' and bring the cells into the Planet with them."
Cloud's brows furrow, and Zack shrugs. "I don't get it either, man, I'm just telling you what they told me. The point is, they thought this 'Reunion' could be made to work the other way as well. Like, if two living people had J-cells, they thought that those people could use Jenova to transfer their consciousness between bodies.
If that were true, then Genesis could be more or less immortal as long as he had G-type clones available to him."
The color drains from Cloud's face. "And Sephiroth…"
"Yeah," Zack sighs. "He found out eventually. Lost his mind. Went on a murder spree. You killed him, after he smoked me. Don't know how you did, but it was a hell of a sight."
"Really? A 1st Class?" Cloud's eyes light, and it wipes out Zack's dark feelings like they're nothing. He lets his hands slide down and gives Cloud a proud fist to his chest.
"Not just 'a' 1st Class, bro. The 1st Class. Sephiroth's the greatest there ever was, and you gave him an express ticket to the Lifestream like it was nothing, right down the heart of the reactor."
"I didn't know…" Cloud stares at his own hands in his lap.
"That's probably why Hojo's shooting you up with J-cells. He wants Sephiroth back, and he figures one of us might be strong enough to hold him. Shows what he knows. The Reunion theory is total bunk. It didn't save Genesis, didn't save Angeal, and it sure as hell won't bring Sephiroth back from the Lifestream."
Cloud opens his mouth, but seems to think better of it. He looks away, chewing his cheek. "I hope you're right."
"I'd say not to jinx it, but there's a first time for everything." Zack scratches an itch on his neck, then realizes his mistake when it leaves a smear of tacky, cooling blood in his hair. "Ugh, let's get cleaned up. Shit's nasty."
Cloud sits up, a bruise just starting to darken on his cheek from the Turk dropping him face-first. If not for the exhaustion on his friend's face, he'd have brought it up, but Cloud looks like a wrung-out sponge. He helps Cloud get back on his feet, and walks him arm-in-arm to the bed.
"This mattress sucks," Cloud says.
"It's better than the floor."
"That's debatable."
Zack snatches up what remains of the sheet—roughly half of its starting size—and figures it's no less useless without another few centimeters. He tears off a section a few hand widths wide and breaks it into four roughly square scraps. Then he goes to the sink and wets them down. The faucet stays on, even as he wrings out the improvised washcloths and carries them back to the bed.
"You were right," he says under the noise of the water. "We need to escape. Tonight."
Cloud cranes his neck to look up at him. "You're serious."
"I'm scared," Zack says. He bends forward to keep his voice low, and scrubs the drying blood from Cloud's back. "It's not that I think we have a real chance of surviving. It's just that this wound reminds me of Angeal and I've been thinking… if I go down, I don't want to do it like him. I want to die with my humanity intact and the sun on my face. Whether it's tomorrow or a year from now, that's how I want it to be."
"We won't fail," Cloud says. Zack envies his courage. He used to have that, before the Genesis crisis smashed it to bits.
"We need a plan," he points out.
"I have one," Cloud shifts to his side, newly energized. "It's pretty simple, except… I dunno how much of an actor you are."
"Actor?" Zack walks to the sink to wash hands.
"Yeah. You'll have to sell it, or it won't work."
Zack takes his time scrubbing blood out of each fingernail, his hip perched against the edge of the sink where Cloud left a lasting impression of fear and rage.
Falling water echoes off the walls like a memory of rain.
"Tell me more."
The plan is simple, and doomed to fail.
Zack rests on the bed with his hands behind his head anyway. Worrying won't change a thing, it'll just sap his energy.
Cloud stalks around the pen in seeming ignorance to that. Watching him loop back and around makes Zack dizzy.
"Ey, would you give it a rest? You're driving me nuts."
The other guy gives him a dirty look, and keeps pacing. Zack sighs, and shuts his eyes. When the lights flicked over into night mode a few minutes back, he'd thought it might calm the little shit down. Boy was he wrong.
"The walls are too close. I can't breathe."
"Well gee, sorry my place isn't as nice as yours. Seriously, come lay down. You need sleep."
"There's no way I'm getting to sleep with you breathing down my neck and my ass hanging off the side."
"Excuse you, I am a very considerate sleeper," Zack sits up in mock offense. "You're the one that snores and kicks. You should be begging for the privledge of hanging your ass off my bed. Kids these days."
"I'm the same age as you." Cloud crosses his arms.
"Coulda fooled me. Here, I'll even let you have the unbloodied side of what's left of my sheet. Ain't I a gentleman." Zack flutters it at him like a handkerchief, and he can tell Cloud's amused even if he's still scowling.
"You're not gonna quit, are you?"
"Nope."
Cloud sighs.
He stalks over and glares down at the twin bed like it's some kind of death sentence. Jokes aside, it does hurt Zack's feelings a bit. Surely sharing a bed with him isn't that awful. It's not like he smells, he just got hosed down this morning.
"Move over."
"I am over," Zack protests, but moves onto his side anyway. He puts his back against the wall and pats the small space that's left. "Good thing you're not a big dude, or I'd be kippin' on the floor."
Cloud tips his head and turns his mouth down in that surly way of his. "You'd do that?"
"You're injured, 'course I would." Zack shrugs.
"I guess that makes sense." Cloud looks away, but uncrosses his arms and kicks off his shoes. He lowers himself gingerly onto his back, wincing all the way.
"You should lay on your front. Give that shoulder a break."
"Can't sleep any other way," Cloud sighs. "It's not as bad now anyway. Must be the mako."
"Yeah, the healing factor is pretty sweet. Unless you're trying to get drunk, in which case it sucks ass." Zack pats his chest fondly. "G'night."
The other guy sounds subdued when he gives his goodnight, and Zack pulls away quickly, thinking he's overstepped. Cloud grabs his hand.
His face is unreadable, turned slightly away. He can only see hair, an ear, and the slope of his cheek. The dim blue glow of his mako eyes hints at a stern gaze into the far corner.
"Sorry." Zack takes a stab in the dark. "I forget you're not big on touching. I'll give it a rest."
"No." Cloud holds tight, his grip almost painful. "It wasn't that, it's—" He blows out a frustrated breath, and says in a heated rush, "It's hard to tell, whether it's real or if I'm dreaming. I was afraid I made this all up, some messed up fantasy to make me feel better. But then you touched me, and—"
"Oh," Zack swallows, his throat suddenly dry. A feeling like a gathering storm tightens his chest, a jumbled mix of pain and protectiveness that he usually reserves for kids in danger and stray cats.
Slowly, he closes what distance remains between them and lays his arm across Cloud's chest. That puts his head on top of the smaller guy's shoulder, but in one miniscule stroke of luck in his otherwise fucked-up-beyond-all-reason life, it happens to be the uninjured one. The hand around his wrist slacks.
"Better?"
"Y-yeah."
"Probably for the best." Zack squirms closer, adjusting to the bumps and dips of Cloud's body and finding it comfortable enough. "You're a lot less likely to fall if you've got me as a counterweight."
"Yeah," Cloud nods, and his hair tickles Zack's nose. "Yeah, that would be bad."
"Super bad."
"It's just a logical solution."
"To your hanging ass problem, yeah," Zack chuckles. Cloud elbows him, which just makes him chuckle harder.
Remembering his promise about the covers, Zack fumbles around until he finds the sheet. It's hardly even worth bothering with one third of the length gone, but he throws it over their lower halves anyway, fussing until it covers both of them. Cloud kicks his feet back out.
"Of course you're one of those," Zack says.
"One of what?"
Zack shuts his eyes, and yawns. "G'night."
"One of what? "
"People who stick their feet out of the blanket. Don't know how you do it."
"It keeps me cool."
"Sure, but how do you not imagine critters coming along and biting your toes while you're sleeping?"
"I don't," Cloud says. "Or… didn't. Now I am. Thanks for that."
"Any time."
"Fuck you."
It's tough with Cloud's hair in his nose and his elbow jabbing into Zack's side, but he tries to get to sleep. It gets easier once warmth collects between them and the other guy's wiry muscles relax from boney boulders to slightly-less-boney pillows.
The room is still claustrophobic, the overheads too bright to feel like night. The sheets smell like blood and industrial cleaner, and the rough edge of Cloud's bandages is starting to irritate his skin, but underneath there's the steady rhythm of another human heart.
There's the unnaturally hairless skin of a man who knows exactly what Zack's been through, who knows the pain of living in a body that will never be the same.
There's the pungent scent of mako-tainted sweat but underneath Cloud smells like any other human, and it's particularly comforting in this isolating place.
He's hovering on the edge of sleep, taking it all in, when his ears perk to a hoarse whisper, barely louder than an exhalation of breath.
"This is... nice," Cloud says. "Thanks."
Zack buries his face into the guy's strong chest, and lets his consciousness stretch into goopy, amorphous dreams.
He wakes up to a crick in his neck and a numb arm. The lights are still dim. It feels like it hasn't been long.
Cautious of startling Cloud, he leaves his arm snug against his chest as he rises up on the other elbow. It takes a long minute to banish the drowsiness weighing heavily on his body. The pins and needles feeling of blood returning to his arm helps with that.
Cloud's deep asleep and snoring. He spares another minute to watch him, which he'll go to his grave insisting is an act of mercy for Cloud and not a wasteful indulgence of his own soft feelings.
When he can't really justify it to himself any longer, he rubs gently at his chest to bring him up easy. Military boys tend to come up swinging, and he'd rather not eat a fist right now.
Cloud's eyes cast a dim glow over his cheeks as they drift open.
Zack leans forward, cautious of the microphones. "I think it's go time."
Nightlight eyes blink slowly, then sharpen into awareness. "I'm ready."
Zack gathers himself, and slaps on a panicked face.
"Cloud?" he says with alarm. The other man's eyes roll back, and then shut.
His hand on Cloud's chest goes from rubbing to shaking. The body under his stiffens, then starts twitching and convulsing erratically. Yelling his name again, he jumps back as Cloud's body arches in a particularly violent spasm.
Zack runs to the camera in the corner. "Hey, assholes! Are you watching? Please, I need help! Something's wrong with Cloud."
No one answers, but the camera light is red. You have to sell it. Zack tries his best. It's not hard with Cloud looking for all the world like he's actually dying on the bed.
He carries on, even as he runs out of things to say and starts repeating. He's about to give it up for a failure when the cell hatch flies open behind him.
A 3rd Class SOLDIER rushes in, his belt and insignia bearing the red and white stripes of a medical officer. Zack's never been happier to see a guy who could fuck him up with nothing but a syringe.
Cloud turns the act up to eleven, moaning and thrashing his arms.
"Thank fuck," Zack exhales. "Hurry, he's getting worse."
"On the wall, Subject Z. What are his symptoms?"
Zack complies, ignoring the medic's perfunctory pat down once his hands are flat on the steel paneling. "I don't know, he just started freaking out in his sleep and he won't wake up. He hasn't been right since the experiment. You gotta stop him, he's gonna hurt himself."
The medic pats Zack's shoulder, and gives him a reassuring squeeze. "Don't you worry, he's in good hands. Stay here and don't make any sudden moves."
The SOLDIER's a good fighter, for a medic. He avoids Cloud's blows neatly and pins him in a submission hold that reeks of special training. Transferring from two hands to one, he reaches for a hypogun holstered on his hip and flicks the safety off.
Whatever drug is in the chamber, it's not going into Cloud. Zack jumps him, taking advantage of his distraction. Between a 1st Class and 3rd there's no comparison in strength. He wrestles the hypo from his hand and jabs him hard in the neck.
The SOLDIER goes down in a matter of seconds, uttering out a strained curse. Checking the cartridge, Zack finds a jar of low-grade sedative. Jackpot.
Cloud squirms out from under the SOLDIER, massaging his neck and testing his bad shoulder. His eyes are bright and vicious, and Zack catches his energy like a flame.
"Good work," he says.
Cloud smirks. "Nice acting."
"What can I say? I'm a man of many talents," Zack shrugs, cavalier. He finds his own shoes, and lifts the unconscious medic onto his shoulder by his uniform harness. "Thanks for the help, buddy, but your job's only half done."
They spill out into the atrium, and Zack's nerves unwind a bit more at the lack of guards. Cloud's intel is spot-on so far, which means they're more or less home free. Getting the night nurse into the cell was the hard part. The rest is just doors and cardio.
Cloud sprints to the first checkpoint, the blast door with the facial scanner. He waves Zack over, and together they hold the unconscious guy's face over the reader. A red bar slides over it, and then back.
"Access denied. Facial scan not recognized."
"Shit," Cloud thumps his fist on the side of the box.
"Eyes," Zack whispers. "Hold his eyes open. No, not like that, on the sides. Yeah."
The red bar goes again. Zack's heart thumps heavy in his chest.
"Clearance confirmed. Welcome, SOLDIER C-3 Roche."
A metallic groan announces the opening of the door. The sour taste of mako pricks his tongue as frothy clouds of mako vapor roll over the widening jaws of the gate. He takes his first full breath in minutes.
The green, polluted air in the Cradle hangs heavy with orbs of Lifestream, as stale and creepy as ever. Cloud ducks through the gate as soon as it's wide enough, and Zack follows once he's got the medic's body situated on his back. They'll need him to get through the other side, and Cloud's not fit to carry anything but his own weight at the moment, so the burden falls to him.
"Well, that was easy," he says, setting his second foot on the catwalk and straightening.
A shadowy figure emerges from the fog, long-limbed and catlike. An odd, bulky shape disrupts his silhouette, jutting up from the shoulders of his loose fitting suit. It clicks and expands, a mechanism of plates and gears unfolding into a massive six-barreled gun. He steps over a light in the floor, stunning white illuminating him from below.
The Turk.
"Finally, some real fuckin' work. I was starting to think you SOLDIERs were all bark." He slams his fist into a red button on the wall. Red lights flash over the green, and a blaring alarm reverberates through the cavern. The blast door slams shut behind them.
"You had to jinx it, didn't you?" Cloud groans.
"It's a habit," Zack sighs.
AN: Thank you so much for reading! This story will be updating multiple times per week until the Crisis Core re-release. After that it will probably go down to once per week while I 100% complete the game, but either way I'll be continuing until it's done. I haven't gotten as much response on this story as I'm used to and so it's been a bit of a drag to write lately.
If you're enjoying it, please please consider leaving some feedback in the reviews. Doesn't matter if it's just "good story" or a long, rambling wordvomit, or even just an emoji. It would just help a ton to know that people are reading. Even if you'd rather not, that's fine, I'm grateful just to have readers who make it far enough to read this note. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I'll see you with more chapters very soon. 3