The avian Heartless pierced the clouds to swoop down directly above the center of the city. One strike of its tail smashed the reflective window in the top tier of Shinra Headquarters to reveal a stylishly appointed conference room, every surface now strew with razor-edged glass. Kadaj handed the reins to Yazoo and leapt through the ruin of the window with Riku right behind him. The scurrying, tumbling Heartless led them through the corridors they had cleared into the heart of the building. The staccato beating of machine gun fire could be heard farther down the hall, punctuated by anguished screaming, but nothing moved to stop them—the automated defense systems and soldiers alike had been destroyed by their claws. Their prize was waiting behind a door marked VAULTS, which had been torn nearly off its hinges and bore evidence of huge claw marks.
Most of the Shadows were clustered around an imposing wall safe, the rest sucking greedily at what was left of the guards. Kadaj put his hand against the heavy steel door and shook his head. "They think this will stop us? Even I hadn't thought Rufus was that stupid. Open it." Several of them sank into the floor and slithered through the miniscule crack in the safe door, and the lock clicked through its sequence and the door swung open from the inside. The space was lined with drawers of priceless mako-refinement system schematics, formulae for materia synthesis, Cetra artifacts, DNA samples, and confidential reports; Kadaj ignored it all. He only wanted one thing, and this close to Her he could feel Her physical presence. Without needing to scrutinize the labels he chose a drawer and grabbed the box from its black foam cushion, running his fingers lovingly over its ridges.
"Let me see!" demanded Riku impatiently.
"Later!" he snapped back, and continued his single-minded study of the thing he had been seeking for so long. In the background the gunfire was getting steadily louder, which meant, against all odds, that the Shinra troops were regaining lost groundKadaj was so absorbed in adoration that he didn't notice the implications of the increasing volume, but Riku did.
"We have to go," he hissed at him. Kadaj shook himself from his reverie and tucked the box under his arm to run back the way they had come. The tread of many heavy boots echoed through the halls behind them, but the soldiers would never be able to catch them before they reached the breach in the walls.
Just as they passed through the door of the conference room the Heartless bird at the window keened and dove. "What the hell?!" said Riku. Glass crunch under his feet as he ran to the gap; he saw it make an ungainly crash landing at the base of the structure with a smoking hole in its wing.
"It appears your friends are here," said Kadaj, craning his neck upward. "We'll have to find another way."
Behind them the door slammed open, ablaze with gunfire. A bullet clipped his pantleg before Riku called his dark shield directly in front of the portal, and two of the blue-uniformed men were felled by the ricochet of their own rounds.
"Down!" Riku yelled.
They leapt. It was a long way to the platform below, a greater distance than any human body could take without snapping a bone. But neither of them were fully human, and they landed hard but relatively unscathed. This part of the structure was wide in the center and narrowed sharply into two pathways with a door at either end, probably meant for service crews and window washers. Kadaj started for the one nearest. Before they could reach it, an unnatural hot wind whipped up around them as the Highwind's thrusters churned the chill dawn air. Rubbing the whirling dust out of his eyes, Riku could just make out Sora, Kairi, Cloud, and Aerith jump onto the platform at the opposite end and run towards them. Kadaj had the presence of mind to call out for the Heartless, and pink spheres blistered all over the surface of the ship as they began to tear at its hull, forcing Cid to retreat and try to shake them off.
The door before Kadaj and Riku opened and disgorged a squad of soldiers led by a redhead in a black suit. Cloud stiffened in recognition and called out to him. "Reno! Help us keep them pinned!" He tossed off a mock salute, and at his order the soldiers fanned out in front of the exit. A few second after, the other door opened, and Tseng, who had been as Rufus's side in the boardroom, strode out at the head of another squad, weapons at the ready.
"Kadaj!" yelled Cloud. "You're trapped and outnumbered. Surrender."
"Outnumbered? You're joking." He tossed the box to Riku and drew his long katana. This had turned out even better than he'd hoped. The Heartless were an excellent tool but a treacherous one, and once Sephiroth returned there would be no need for them. Many had been destroyed in the assault on the tower, but there were twenty times that number still lusting for the hearts of the people in this city, including his and his brothers'. He didn't particularly care whether or not the humans died, but the more the Heartless fed the more their ranks swelled, and the warning that irritating Keybearer had given him might very well be true. He had no desire to risk his neck over it, since Cloud and his companions seemed so eager to rid him of this problem. "Come," he whispered. "All of you. Come to me now." The Heartless could sense his desire for bloodshed like a spider feels the trembling of a fly on its web, and as the vibrations sang up and down the threads that bound them to their chosen master, they began to move.
Riku smiled when he realized Kadaj's plan. "If you have anything important to say to me, Sora, Kairi, I suggest you do it now," he called out to them.
"Riku!" said Sora. "Please, if you can hear me, stop this. I don't want to hurt you."
"That's too bad," said Riku mockingly. "I have no qualms about hurting you."
"Even if that thing is talking through your mouth, I know you're there," said Kairi. "We're not going to give up on you."
A prisoner in his own body, Riku could hear them, barely. The invading alien consciousness felt like a coating of slime—sticky, foul, muffling. He had retreated as far into himself as he dared, hoping that the errant scrap that was his real self would be declared a negligible threat and ignored until he was freed. If he was freed. This wasn't the first time Sora had won the bet for his life against very long odds, but even the Keyblade Master was only human, and the more often he played, the quicker he would lose. Riku wanted desperately to warn his friends what was coming, but couldn't. He could only wait and hope that they were strong enough to withstand it.
The first of the horde to appear was a little thing, no bigger than a pigeon. It buzzed by Sora's ear and he swatted it to the ground with the Keyblade out of reflex, without ever taking his eyes off Kadaj and Riku. A few Shadows appeared and clambered over the railing, then a few more. None of Kadaj's enemies looked impressed.
"That's it?" yelled Reno, idly twirling his baton on its leather strap.
Kadaj just continued to smile. Kairi, who was closest to the edge, looked over and gasped. "Down there!" she screamed. The tower wall was black and oozing with the bodies of hundreds of Heartless climbing up the side like ants, a river of darkness flowing up to drown them all.