21: The Body Bites Part 3
"This isn't quite how I pictured it…" -Drana
-----
This premonition couldn't be shaken. He wasn't popular for making predictions as anything but his counterpart, yet with Vincent's urgency and Tifa nipping at his busy heels not far behind, Reeve had to follow suit. He had to start thinking about what fishy goings-on were being conducted out there somewhere. The last thing he wanted, the last thing anyone wanted, was a repeat of what Shinra had done to nearly bring the earth to the brink of destruction.
Reeve nervously stroked his goatee, tired eyes glimpsing the papers strewn across his desk but racing out of focus at the very sight. It was almost midnight but the only thoughts his mind pursued were that of danger in the extremely near future.
Shinra brought trouble because it'd been built on trouble. He'd considered himself lucky to have gotten out of the company before it was too late, but this corporate demon of the past sought to dog him either way.
Reeve's computer suddenly beeped to life at his right, the screen fading in from black to white with the WRO logo in the background— it was a humble image of the Planet and the letters W, R, and O warped and fitted perfectly into the sphere. A textbox awaited him in its center over the logo, heralding new mail.
"Hmm?" He reached for his mouse and settled the cursor on the window. "Voicemail…"
"Hello, this is your friendly neighborhood mole, at your service," announced the garbled recording. "I have a message from those serving in the best interests of your beloved World Regenesis Organization. We believe that cohorts of yours, Commissioner Reeve Tuesti, happen to be searching for a man named Saristis Noah, and fortunately enough for you all, information has been arranged on the man's absurdly elusive location.
"The underground has been infested with rats lately, some too big to be ignored, Commissioner. We can only hope that Junon does not become ground zero for another worldwide crisis thanks to the shenanigans of a company that's supposed to be long dead and gone. We will leave matters in the hands of your heroes, as we wish to stay anonymous, and pray for the best. Godspeed."
Reeve narrowed his eyes at the voicemail's textbox, absorbing each and every word he could into memory before replay.
"Does... that mean they're here in Junon?" he asked himself. "Hmm."
----
Sephiroth had oddly turned to unflappability, allowing Vincent to seat him in the absolute rear of the plane away from Tifa and their attendant troop of flighty WRO youths. For as soon as he stepped onto the plane, they went batty from his stench within the closed quarters, retching and stumbling over the seats. The contented grin in the face of repulsion was enough for Tifa to stand her ground and glare him down in wordless aggravation.
But the gunman stepped in and coaxed each the other to opposite ends of the cabin.
Something didn't sit, however.
There came the inkling that Sephiroth would commit some sort of evil stunt from the safety of his own corner. Anything was possible with him. The prolonged exposure to purest Lifestream made it a valid concern. And his expression. Not knowing whether it was just the pleasure of watching others fall head over heels because of him or not made Vincent grit his teeth.
The man was far beyond the state of unwell.
We need to get her, fast.
----
"Wh-what are you going to do?" I pleaded, my voice at an unruly height in my throat. "I-I don't want... anymore."
"How you've broken so quickly, but we can't stop because we just started. When the going gets tough... pick her up now!" the fat scientist exclaimed to the orderlies surrounding me. They each picked an arm and hoisted me up between them, then hauled me off to the next room across the hall from where I'd been earlier mistreated. This new room housed a hulk of a machine with a table crowned by an arch of metal and strange utensils jutting from its sides.
Broken. It couldn't even begin to describe how I felt beneath the surface. I was not broken, but the fissured glass of my being shivered and cut into itself. Like I could truly collapse in on my own body at any moment. As much as I didn't want that, I was in no position to stop it. All I could do was call out to Aerith, call out to Sephiroth, even call out to the Planet, call out to someone while these men searched me over and over for what I didn't even know existed within the human body and if they existed in mine, too.
The orderlies hauled my purposely dead weight to the machine. Steadily, they placed me on this new table cushioned with something not quite plastic yet soft and comfortable all the same. Straps were pulled over my chest and thighs, sticky circles with wires dangling everywhere pasted to my forehead. The fat scholar then walked out of sight behind the machine.
"Are all the nodes in place?" his voice grunted.
"Yes sir."
"Alright. Stand back, I don't need your halfwit brainwaves mucking up the tomograph."
A great whirring started up all around me. I squirmed and shrank at the noise, squeaked at the sudden movement of the table with me on top below the metal arch. Rectangles of boundless black glowed with blue points of light on its underside, burning into my retinas the way the sun would burn blindness into a person's eyes. But they were so dim as to not be noticeable at all.
"Are her eyes open?"
"Yes."
"Tell her to close them."
"Lady, close your eyes, you'll burn your retinas," advised one of the orderlies.
I didn't. Not yet.
"What, what are you doing?"
"Simple brain scan."
"It... doesn't feel good," I whimpered.
Tiny hot spots welled up under the surface of my forehead, tardily traveling up the middle, back to the pate and straight for my spine. Whatever this contraption was doing to me, it made my body feel like it was being boiled and fried from the inside. I writhed in my restraints. Pain curled over my limbs, through my fingers and toes and spilled out their tips. What was happening to me?
"I can't get a clear view of things if she's moving around like that," the man said from nearby. "Hold her down."
"Yes sir."
"Maybe it's the x-rays coming out of that thing messing with her," noted an orderly.
"Hmm… Most humans wouldn't even feel them at this frequency. I have to finish the scan. Hold her down. Put on more restraints. The head, you forgot the head, you idiots."
For a time, I was thankfully pulled from the black eyed stare of the arch, easing the boiling swell throughout me. The orderlies fastened more straps over me, especially my head, and stepped back so I could be drawn under the searing glare once again. This time, snow sprinkled out from the black rectangles, covering my eyes until everything was white.
Then static.
Then Sephiroth briefly appearing in that static, his face sad but also preoccupied by mischief. Where and whatever he was doing, it provided a good distraction from this brief window of clarity between us. My mouth snapped open, prepared to spew a few cries for attention, but nothing came out. My tongue was frozen to the back of my throat.
He was gone.
What replaced him were thick, black bars across the stark whiteness, droning on and on like some broken machine. I could see a beam of red shoot out from the middle of my face into the barred whiteness, raining down bloody, beautiful stars.
I'd surely gone insane.
"Goddamn it, everything's reading off the charts," a voice echoed.
"Maybe you should... turn it off…"
"I've been locked out of the program from all these fatal errors! You, pull the hard plug, now."
"Yes, sir."
As if someone flicked a light switch, all went black, but noises still drifted around me, like the sounds of feet shuffling, frantic whirrings and clickings over a delicate hiss my ears could not place upon a single thing, mild curses and incoherent mumblings about 'this damnable machinery'. The blackness was so busy, I wished that I could see how.
The bars.
They'd never gone, and sneering faces muddled about in their darkness, like transparent monsters. Were they sneering? Perhaps earnest, perhaps witty and mocking, or just curious.
"Pl... Planet."
I had to wonder, with what was the Planet going to 'rescue' me this time and consequently miss the mark? From eggs to lizards to laser-slinging giants dubiously dubbed the Planet's own personal guard, what else was there? Oh so many things… The world was large and wide, infinite for just a simple hunk of rock in even more infinite space.
"Call Dr. Noah. He'll be in Lab 0-1."
A few minutes left me only to silence and frustrated sighs, not to mention the humming bars of black shielding my eyes. The boiling in the back of my head and spine had subsided, calling in its place what felt like a sheet of ice that I was lying on. It felt good in a way that would lull me to sleep if I wanted. And I desperately wanted sleep to come and take me, but I held high hopes for the arrival of my one true savior, holding them close alongside consciousness in this world and its coexistent pain.
"Emerson, what's this all about?" queried the sure voice of the redhead scholar.
"Well, first of all, I'd like to say I think our specimen and x-rays? They don't mix," admitted the fat man's voice. "I'll attempt the use of others, though, but they may prove hazardous, especially if the outcome is just like this, if not worse."
"Mmhmm…"
"While I reconfigure the machine, I was thinking you can have Evvey work on the biopsy in the meantime."
"I sent Kit out on some errands but I'll call him back. And… Hmm. Maybe you should take this to the lower complex? You know how delicate a lot of the tools are up here…"
-
Temporarily abandoned by all but the grumpy scientist, I'd finally gotten a chance to rest and focus on trying to connect with any source of familiar or merely soothing energy floating about. But in this place, this unknown location, had almost no touch with the Lifestream. This place was only a bunch of rooms bottled in by a dome of what I sullenly called no-life.
The sickening power of the rot hiding behind these white walls surely started my hallucinating. In one barren spot of the room, I saw an umbra, a sweet, modest thing with its shadowy head bowed. I hoped and prayed it was Aerith come to save me in some fashion that a ghost was most capable of. But this umbra didn't do a thing but stand there, teasing me with empty hope.
"I'm sorry..." spoke the shadow in a terribly cowed tone.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Just... a lonely spook." The thing motioned closer on cloudy funnels for legs.
"Not Aerith... ?"
"No… I'm no one, no one at all," nodded the muddled ghost.
I couldn't be fooled for much longer. The signs were all there, sparse though they were. A lonely ghost, its posture sulking and humble, the would-be frame long and slight. I wanted to lend an arm out, but all of my body was still strapped down to the table. So instead, I spared a few flutters of my eyelids in its direction. "Lucrecia. I didn't think I'd ever see you again. It's you, right? Sephiroth's mother?"
"I'm not worthy of the name... or the title. I am just a shell. I don't even deserve to be a shadow."
"Please, don't say that. It... hurts me, too," I whispered, pained by those words.
"You've done so much for me. And to see you like this, here, now, like I'd once been, it's enough to draw me from my void and cry. For you, for Sephiroth... for Vincent, I'd love to help but I'm just a ghost. I can't affect the living world. I can't do anything… Without you, I'll have no more ties to this world, no ties to the loved ones I'd left, to my poor son most of all. I can't do a thing…"
"You don't have to do a thing but continue caring for your son... It's all, all I really want to see you do."
"Hey, who are you talking to?"
"Drana, my life as anything remotely living may be over, but... I thank you for an existence in which I can be near my son. I'll repay you. Somehow."
"I heard you say Lucrecia and Sephiroth. What are you babbling about?"
The chubby scholar disinterested me, but in the faceless face of the poor woman's umbra, I wanted so much to hug her again. Without the feeling of poison biting into me, of course. To console her, to connect with this woman I barely knew apart from her pain.
"Please, it's not me that needs consoling anymore. I've accepted everything, my faults, my mistakes. But you-"
"No, I don't need it. Except... for all this, being caught and used. Being used…"
-----
"Commissioner, we just received report of some unknown creatures rising out of the sea and approaching the fishing village below Junon," blared the intercom on Reeve's desk. "Commissioner?"
"He might not be in the office," confided another. "Did you try his cell phone?"
"What? …oh right, what was I thinking?"