June 8

Squall lurched back to consciousness, nearly banging his head against the bunk above him. It took him a moment to gain his bearings; he was alone in the room assigned to him by the Galbadians, just as he had been when he had drifted off to sleep. Nonetheless, his forehead was throbbing, and his mind was screaming at him that something had changed.

He'd been having a dream. Even now, it was replaying itself in his mind, as some strange echo of the original, which itself had echoed a memory he didn't have. He was back in the Lunatic Pandora, except he was Seifer this time, casting Rinoa to the floor before Adel's tomb as the Sorceress' claw-like hands strained to reach her, then stood and watched as the two women merged into a single, terrible being even worse than before. Except he hadn't been Seifer. He had been himself, Squall, and he had pushed Rinoa to her doom.

There had been other images as well, other memories distorted by the dream. At times, he'd had Seifer's role, standing with Rinoa on the parade float in Deling City, gunblade held high; or he had been himself, as he chased after her through outer space but she always remained just out of reach. And there was more that he could not recall in his conscious mind, that manifested only as a feeling that he could not shake. He awoke breathless, and his heart was pounding, and something of the dream had remained within his mind.

Her. Rinoa. A feeling of urgency had settled into the base of his consciousness, and he realized that a part of his dream, the part he could not clearly remember, had not been a dream at all, and the preoccupation that had ever increased since he learned of her capture was more than any simple concern. He could feel her, somehow, calling to him. He couldn't explain the sensation, but there was no one around to query him about it anyway. The back of his left hand pressed to his forehead, he stood from the bunk and stepped out of the room.

During the duties that the Galbadians had assigned him to, Squall had at least gained the presence of mind to determine the basic layout of the facility, from maps and floor plans when he could find them and from his own travels through the halls. He walked up to the Galbadian soldier who stood guard beside the lift and quite calmly neutralized him with a Sleep spell before the other man even knew what was happening. Then he carefully relieved the man of the key card he had seen used to operate the lifts, and applied it to the door at the end of the hall. Moments later, a lift arrived, and Squall stepped inside. As the polished-metal door slid closed, he dimly noted that his reflection was wearing casual clothes, rather than the slightly more innocuous SeeD uniform. He found he didn't care.

Here was the first time where he truly had to think about what he was doing. The problem was that, while he was certain he had to go somewhere, he was very unsure as to exactly where that would be, or if it was within this facility at all, or this hemisphere for that matter. It didn't help that the majority of the levels did not seem to be marked with number labels, having instead only a strip of color.

A single word came into Squall's mind: Down. Since he was currently on one of the levels that was numbered, he simply chose the lowest level he could and inserted the key card. He found that none of the non-numbered levels would accept his key card anyway, so he ended up only going down to Level Fifteen, but he was certain this took him in the proper direction at least.

Level Fifteen looked nearly identical to the level he had left, with the difference that it had fallen into considerable disrepair. Judging by the amount of debris strewn around, the level had probably been flooded at one point, and no one had yet bothered to repair it beyond pumping out the water. Only about half the fluorescent lights lined along the ceiling were functioning, and these just barely. All the doors were closed, locked, and probably rusted shut as well. Fortunately for Squall, it was also quite deserted.

Hoping the layout of this level was indeed the same as the one he had come from, Squall crossed to the other end of the hall and checked the door there, which ought to provide access to the stairwell. As the label had faded to the point of illegibility, he could only assume he'd got it right. This decided, he set to the task of forcing the door open, which proved to be quite a difficult one. The automatic controls would not respond, and the heavy metal panel did not seem receptive to the idea of being slid aside manually. Squall considered attacking it with his gunblade, but then remembered that he had left the weapon back in his room. Rather than take this as evidence of how thoughtless and probably stupid his actions were, he closed his eyes, rearranged his junctions to improve his Magic power, and took several steps back. At his command, a bright green fireball appeared at the center of the door, erupting into a brilliant explosion that quite successfully vaporized much of the barrier. Resisting the urge to cough at the ionized air produced by the blast, Squall carefully stepped through the newly made hole, being certain not to come into contact with the faintly glowing edges.

There was indeed a stairwell behind the door, leading up and down as far as Squall cared to look. Despite the fact that the stairs were glistening wet with water dripping down from above and didn't look in particularly good condition otherwise either, he immediately set off downwards, hand tightly gripping the slippery rail.

The trip down the dark, wet stairwell might have seemed frightening, had he been in a different state of mind; the constant dripping of the water, the flickering lights and confined space certainly created a rather foreboding environment. However to Squall's mind, the only emotion he could identify was impatience. He had to reach the bottom of these stairs, and only the possibility of losing his footing and falling head over heels for the majority of his descent prevented him from sprinting down them.

He made his way down the stairs in something between a matter of minutes and hours, and past more floors than he bothered to count. Finally, as he was passing one level, he realized first that he was no longer being compelled to go down, and second that the door he had been about to pass by bore a light across the top that was both more advanced than the simple fluorescent bulbs he had been seeing so far and clearly running at full power. Also, this level's door-control panel appeared to be lit and functioning.

As Squall tapped the panel, the door slid open without hesitation, revealing a well-lit hall framed with blue-white walls rather than the stark metal he had so far encountered. As he stepped into the hall, Squall was given a sharp warning about his methods when he caught sight of a figure disappearing into a doorway, who would have certainly spotted the SeeD had he emerged from the stairwell half a second earlier.

Squall now stood at the meeting point of a T-intersection between two halls. Turning left, he ventured past a series of doors marked only by numbers that naturally bore no meaning to him. As he turned right at a corner, he thought he could hear a door opening behind him and a set of footsteps making their way along the hall in his direction, but found himself not particularly caring. The footsteps faded away, however, without ending in any shouts or alarms, so he guessed that he had either imagined them, or whoever it was hadn't been coming his way after all.

A moment later, Squall's feet involuntarily froze as he stood before a door marked 28454. The number he found to be completely meaningless, however, he found himself unable to move past it. Whatever force had driven him on this adventure was now telling him that he had reached his destination. Resolving therefore to open the door and check inside, he discovered that his hand was shaking as he reached up to activate the control. Steeling himself, he clenched his fist and punched the button to open the door.

Rather than sliding open, however, the door gave a harsh buzz and the text LOCK #6 – ACCESS DENIED appeared on the tiny panel. More than a little annoyed about the anticlimactic result, Squall struck the control again, with the same result. He took a step back, and was considering the implications of applying an Ultima spell to the uncooperative doorframe when it chose to slide open after all. Squall's surprise at the development was quite likely matched by that of the young man dressed in a white lab coat who stood on the other side, with his hand frozen over the door control on the inside of the room.

For a second, the two stared at each other, unsure quite how to react. Then Squall, who decided it would be best not to let the Galbadian make the first move, charged forward, catching the man off-guard, spinning him around and throwing him against the wall. The Galbadian, clearly not combat-trained and quite stunned by the move, remained with his back to the wall as Squall hit the control to close the door.

"Don't move," Squall commanded, giving the other man a harsh glare to enforce the point. He took a cursory glance around the room to ensure that no one else was there to cause trouble; but this examination never made it across the entire room, as his attention became fixed on the wall to his right.

He was in some sort of laboratory, where a long table separated the room about in half. The bare metal walls and naked fluorescent lights gave the room a very unrefined, utilitarian atmosphere, which reminded Squall particularly of the room where Seifer had tortured him in the D-District prison.

This impression was emphasized by the fact that a dark-haired girl was hanging strapped to the far wall, apparently unconscious, with a host of electrodes and intravenous tubes running into her body. Her ordeal had so transformed her appearance that Squall at first only recognized her by the familiar black dress that hung from her shoulders.

For a long moment, the sight held him completely stunned, his other surroundings forgotten. The man in the lab coat scrambled out the door as Squall almost drunkenly stumbled towards the figure who seemed to hover in front of him. He felt as if he had completely lost touch with his consciousness and lapsed into another dream; even as he came to stand right in front of her, he could not quite accept the information being given by his eyes. He attempted to utter her name, but his voice caught in his throat.

The door slid open once again, pulling Squall out of his trance and quickly reminding him of the gravity of the situation. He spun around to see that a middle-aged man, dressed in a lab coat like the scientist who had run out earlier, was now standing in the doorway. This man, however, was notably taller, with a stern face and an expression both harsh and neutral. He did not seem surprised at all to see the commander of SeeD facing him down.

The two simply stared at each other for a moment. Then, the Galbadian let out a sigh. "This will quite complicate things, I'm afraid," he said.