June 11

"So do you normally get this much traffic in a day?" Miranda asked, pointing to the small fleet of ships clustered in the waters beyond the South Lanker naval port. It was a warm, sunny June morning, and she was beginning to wish she had remembered to bring a pair of sunglasses with her from Dollet.

The dockmaster shook his head. "Oh, hell no. Whole fleet's moving out today, but don't ask me why. Started takin' on supplies yesterday all of a sudden, and they sure were in some kind of hurry."

"They just started yesterday?" Miranda made an impressed face. "You must've been working pretty fast to load that many ships."

"Tell me about it," agreed the dockmaster. "Had us going double-shifts, straight through the night. And you should've seen how much stuff they took; we had to cart in extra from a holding station to load all of 'em."

Miranda frowned. "You didn't have enough supplies for all the ships? That seems kinda...weird."

"Well, it was a weird day," the dockmaster said. "We had enough on hand to load all the ships to standard capacity; but it turned out that wasn't good enough for 'em. They kept tellin' us to throw on more — extra munitions, fuel, food rations by the ton, whatever you can think of." He glanced out at the fleet. "Even from here, I can tell they're riding lower in the water than they ought to. Whatever's goin' on, they're going out loaded for Wendigo."

"Sounds serious," said Miranda. "You think it's got anything to do with this whole NALCON thing?"

"Could be," said the dockmaster. "But this ain't normal NAL-3 behavior, I can tell you. I've been working here through two Sorceress wars, and I've never seen a fleet in this much of a hurry when the Esthar Navy wasn't a hundred klicks offshore. If you ask me, Naraka's just flipped off his rocker."

"He has done some pretty funky things lately," Miranda agreed.

"The guy's got a paranoia complex the size of the Winhill bluffs," said the dockmaster. "I hear he sees a conspiracy when his coffee's too cold. Keeps things interesting for sure, but that's a hell of a guy to have running your country."

Miranda smiled. "You're not worried I might report you to the Special Investigators for saying that?"

The man shrugged. "Eh, what do I care? This is a shit job anyway."

Now Miranda laughed. "Nice talking to you. Maybe I'll catch you again sometime later."

"I'll be around," agreed the dockmaster.

As she struck out again along the docks, Miranda sought to put the information she had just gathered into some sort of clear picture. Clearly the Galbadians were worried about something; and knowing Naraka, that would likely mean serious trouble for somebody. But who? The fact that the focus now seemed to be on a naval operation at first seemed to support her idea about the pirates, but that suggestion seemed flawed. For one thing, why would the Galbadians have waited so long, then scrambled their fleet in such a hurry? The pirates weren't a new issue, and what about them would merit the attention of an entire battleship force in addition to the ships already in Centra?

Of course, so far, she didn't have any solid numbers on how many ships the Galbadians had in Centra anyway. And she wasn't going to get them from asking around the docks. She'd asked for interviews with officials in the Southern Seas Command, but so far the bureaucratic run-around was running just as strong with her actually on location. Her only options seemed to be a wave of persistent nagging or finding some friendly clerk who could grant her direct access to naval deployment files, knowingly or otherwise. At the moment, she intended to pursue both options and see what she could get.

Glancing out at the departing Galbadian warships, Miranda thought that she, too could see them riding a bit lower in the water than seemed natural; and another thought struck her. If the ships were that heavily loaded, then it seemed like the extra weight should slow them down. And if that were the case, it would be even harder for them to catch up with a band of pirates whose ships ought to be optimized for speed. It would have made a lot more sense for the Galbadians to be unloading any equipment they didn't need, to make their ships lighter.

For the first time, Miranda began to seriously consider the idea that she might be wrong about the pirates. Whatever Galbadia was doing, this was about a lot more than some bandits hanging out in Centra.

Of course, she'd go on pursuing the story she'd pitched to Blake. But she figured that, as long as she was in the neighborhood, she might as well try to figure out just what else the Galbadians were setting up for. From the look of things, her investigation was going to get pretty complicated from here on out.

The late-morning sun was brilliant over the tiny South Lanker town, though the SeeDs who had not seen any direct sunlight in the past four days would not have minded if the weather had been a bit more overcast. But the still-smoldering rubble of what had yesterday been an unassuming clinic in a sleepy country town, which resembled a giant patch of used-up charcoal in the harsh sunlight, managed to steal considerably more of their attention than the presence of a sun in the sky.

"You've completely ruled out any other cause for the fire?" Nida was asking of the town marshall. "Something with the wiring, maybe, or...a freak lightning strike?"

"Well, we can't rule out everything," said the marshall. "But it sure don't look electrical. From what we can tell, the fire started around one of the beds, not in the walls. Not in the bed, mind, but in a perfect circle all around it. And it just so happened that this is the bed where the staff put our mysterious visitor who showed up last night."

"But there's no sign of them now?" asked Quistis.

The marshall shook his head. "There's six bodies in the care ward; we figure they're patients who couldn't get out in time. But there were seven patients including last night's arrival, and we're pretty sure she's the one we're missing. Plus, old man Jenkers' car turned up missing this morning, so it's a good bet your one fugitive made off with the other, and they're maybe halfway to Dollet by now."

Quistis nodded. "Thanks for your time."

"No problem," said the marshall. "Oh, just for my money? The girl torched the place. She's the Hyne-child, for damn sure."

At first, no one on the SeeD team had thought to suggest a connection between Rinoa and the fire — or perhaps dared to consider one. It was a little disconcerting, then, that the townspeople seemed to have come up with the answer even without knowing Rinoa was a Sorceress.

"We plan to find her," Quistis said.

With the Galbadian soldiers standing watchfully nearby, the SeeDs had made themselves busy investigating the scene. While Quistis and Nida were speaking to the town marshall, Zell and Paige were helping the townspeople pick through what remained of the rubble, while Karenna and Jeck were talking to the medical center's administrator over by the six bodies covered with black sheets. There wasn't much to be done, really; volunteers from the town had already gone over the scene ever since the early-morning fire had been brought under control; but the SeeDs had to be doing something, so they found tasks for themselves.

Irvine hadn't been doing anything. He couldn't quite bring himself to care what the Galbadians would think, or think of any work to do. He stood next to one of the buildings that had adjoined the hospital; this building, too, had caught fire, but was at least still standing. Mostly, he was staring at the ruins of the hospital, or the six dead bodies lying out under the harsh summer sun.

He felt more than a little odd. He had seen death before, and even taken more than a few lives himself. He guessed the difference was proximity; sniping was to kill from a distance, where all he had to do to put distance between himself and the body was to put down the gun. Still, something told him the problem ran deeper than this.

He'd grown up near a town not too different from this one, in-between living at Edea's orphanage and living in Galbadia Garden. A little larger, maybe, but with the same basic design: a few dozen buildings lined along both sides of a little-used highway where the railroad tracks ran parallel to the road for a while. In his hometown, the railroad had actually run across the road in the middle of town; he and a few of the other kids had used the big freight trains to excuse being late for school now and again. Mostly what he remembered of the place was how incredibly dull it had seemed.

A charred shingle from the roof above him came loose, clattering down into the pile of ash that remained of the hospital. Irvine stepped away from the building.

He saw Selphie standing on the far side of the road, tracing patterns in the dirt by the road with her boot. It seemed as if she was slouching even while standing upright, which didn't seem like Selphie at all. Not that he could blame her.

"Hey," he said, approaching her. His initial plan had been to say something upbeat that could potentially cheer her up; but his heart just wasn't in it.

Selphie didn't answer right away, as she used her boot to wipe away the pattern she had been tracing and then start another. Irvine couldn't guess what either of them could possibly be.

"Rinoa can't have done this, right?" she asked. "I mean, why would anyone want to set a hospital on fire? That's just..." She turned away, bringing a hand up to her face as if she were trying to hold back tears.

Irvine was at a complete loss for what to say or do. "...We don't know for sure it was Rinoa," he said. "Everyone here thinks so, but they're all just guessing too. Nobody really saw it; and plus, we..." For some reason, he couldn't quite bring himself to say, 'we know Rinoa wouldn't do something like that.' If that was true, why couldn't he stop thinking that was exactly what happened?

They had been standing in front of another building, which was probably the town's grocery store. Neither of them had noticed this before a young woman, about their age with a similarly despondent expression, came walking out of it and nearly collided with Irvine. "Oh!" she exclaimed, blinking at the shoulder of his SeeD uniform, which happened to be at about her eye level. "sorry; I was...kinda out of it there, I guess."

"Don't worry about it," said Irvine. "It's a really awful thing to happen, having a hospital burn down."

"I actually worked there," she said. "I was the day nurse. And I was basically the night nurse too, because we didn't have a night nurse and I got called in if anything happened." She smiled weakly. "I really just did whatever Doctor Wayfield told me to; I haven't taken classes or anything."

Irvine was sure there were a hundred clever things he could say to this under ordinary circumstances, but at the moment he couldn't even think of one. "...I'm Irvine," he finally managed. "By the way. This is Selphie. We're SeeDs."

"Yeah." She nodded. "I'm Amey. ...Nice to meet you."

"Yeah," said Irvine.

More silence followed. "Hey," said Selphie, at length. "Were you working last night? Did you see Squall and Rinoa?"

Amey nodded. "I didn't know either of their names. I wasn't here when the guy – uh, Squall – brought her in, but I helped Dr. Wayfield with a couple tests. It seemed like she was just exhausted, and she'd be fine with a few days' bed-rest. So I told that to...Squall, and he was pretty tired himself, so that was pretty much the conversation." She was looking at the ruined hospital; or, it seemed, beyond it, as if she could see into the past. "You know, I kind of got the feeling, when I told him how long she should take to recover...it was like he wanted to get out of here sooner, like he knew something bad was going to happen. Or, I dunno; maybe it's just one of those things we make up in hindsight."

"He was probably just worried about us catching up with him," said Irvine.

Selphie was tracing an even larger pattern in the dirt.

"It's so unreal," said Amey. "I mean, everyone's talking about this girl being a Sorceress, or some kind of monster-spawn thing. But I saw her; she was just...you know, a girl. She was my age. I mean, is that what evil looks like?"

Irvine could think of a few different ways to answer this question; but none of them seemed remotely satisfactory, so he said nothing.

"Well, I should see if they need any help with, uh..." She motioned her hand to the six sheets on the other side of the hospital. "With the bodies."

Irvine nodded; but as she was leaving, Selphie spoke up. "Wait. Can you tell us who they were?" She looked apologetic already. "...The people who died."

Amey nodded. "Yeah. Sure. Uh...there was old lady Whittafer; she'd got a really nasty allergy from a couple of skunks that come around sometimes, and was spending the night on a respirator just in case. Mr. Talmat was in a car accident a couple weeks ago and broke a few bones, and then we had Ms. Lang, Mr. Drewson and Kelley Firlay in with some kind of bacteria from the bottled steak. Kelley went to school with me, but I didn't know her that well; she wasn't the kind of person who made friends too easy." She was staring off beyond the distance again.

"That was five," said Selphie. "Wasn't it six people?"

"Yeah," Amey said, then hesitated. "...The last one was...Mrs. Whittafer's granddaughter, Shannen. She wanted to stay the night; you know, so her grandmother'd have company." Again she fell silent, for long enough that Irvine started to wonder if she would say any more. "She was...her tenth birthday was next month."

By now, Irvine had figured out what made these particular deaths so disturbing.

"We're sorry," said Selphie. "I really wish there was something we could do."

Amey's wan smile returned. "They say Hyne created all humans to serve him. He gave us our souls, but once the soul left the body, even he couldn't put it back." She shrugged. "I never quite got it, but I think what they're saying is...what's done is done. Nothing's gonna fix this, so we should just...get on with the things we can do something about. That's what I've been telling myself, anyway."

Quistis joined them in the silence that followed. "We're moving out," she said. "Squall's probably going north in the stolen car, so we'll follow the highway as far as it takes us."

Irvine nodded, and Quistis left to speak with one of the Galbadian soldiers. "Well, we'd better get moving," he said, and Selphie nodded.

"Well, it was..." Amey trailed off before saying "nice meeting you". "...Good luck."

A cloud rolling in from the south blocked out the sun for a moment, hiding the details of the hospital rubble and making it look a little like a big square hole in the earth, a gateway down to hell. Or a newly filled grave.

"...Thanks," Irvine said.