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15. Warning Off the Witch

"Yo, Cissnei! What's up?"

Cissnei didn't look away from her screen. "Reno. Rude." Rude hadn't spoken, but that didn't matter. They never went anywhere separately.

The smell of pepper and warm breath on her ear told her Reno had leaned in for a closer look. He always ate the weirdest crap for lunch. The last time she had eaten with them outside the canteen, he had delighted in finding a very particular food stand and searing off her taste-buds with something he later claimed was 'just chicken with a few spices'. Cissnei's right arm flipped up, blocking his view and nearly backhanding the middle of his face. Reno stood up grumpily.

"Keeping secrets, yo?"

"Secrets get you killed."

"Exactly."

"What do you want?"

"What any red-blooded male wants, sweetheart."

She snorted. "Keep dreaming."

"Oh well, then since you turned me down again for a date, even though you and me could paint the town red, I'll settle for knowing what secret project you're working on."

"What makes you think I'm working on a secret project?"

"Get real, toots. You've been sneaking around for weeks."

"We're Turks, Reno. You might like explosions, but sneaking around is what we do."

"Yeah, but I know for a fact your sneaking ain't to do with any mission, yo. Nothing official."

Cissnei's hands froze. She had to tread lightly. "Are you accusing me of something?"

Reno's smile hung in the air as much as his pepper-breath. "You got something to be accused of?"

"We all do." She finally swivelled to look him in the eye. He was standing while she sat in front of a computer terminal, but her brutal glare made it clear who was dominant in this situation.

Magically speaking, Reno was all brawn and little finesse. The rest of his attitude to life was only slightly better. He was not a guy who thought much about consequences, which was why Veld had partnered him with Rude in the first place. Rude said little but took in everything around him. Out of all the Turks (minus Tseng, because … well, he was Tseng) Rude was best at reading people. He reigned in Reno when situations had the potential to turn explosive – sometimes literally.

Reno grinned down at her. "Look, Ciss, don't get your panties in a bunch. We gotta stick together, y'know?"

Cissnei continued to stare at him.

He pouted. "You don't trust me, do you?"

"About as far as I can sneeze you out of my ear."

Reno raised his finger, mouth open, but stopped. "Wait, what?"

Cissnei sighed. "Go away, Reno. I'm busy." She turned her back.

"This is about First Class Fair, isn't it?"

Rude's words stopped her in her tracks. The hesitation cost her deniability.

"Seriously?" Reno looked between her and his partner. "You're still hung up on that guy? Give it up, Ciss. If he wasn't dead before, he sure is now."

Cissnei resisted the urge to wrap her hands around Reno's neck. "It isn't about First Class Fair," she said calmly.

"You tried to access his data files recently," said Rude.

Her spine prickled. She had, but some were locked and the rest were nothing she didn't already know: sterling record, child prodigy, orphaned in a vamp attack, apprenticed to Angeal Hewley until he went AWOL, yadda-yadda-yadda. The juicy stuff – the useful stuff – was under so many layers of encryption she had no chance of breaking in. She still only knew what Zack had told her about his last encounter with Hewley. Zack had been tight-lipped about anything to do with mentor, even when his entire body broadcast to the world that he was hurting.

Cissnei was no hacker, but she did understand that there existed such things as digital fingerprints. Rude was talented with computers. He could probably read them in his sleep.

"So?" She tried not to sound defensive.

"Why?" Rude asked.

"Because I want to know why files we weren't given about the Nibelheim break-out are connected to Project S. We're supposed to be heading the undercover task force, but we're not being given all the facts that will help us do our job properly." Did that sound convincing enough? She hoped so.

"Ah, shit. Project S?" Reno pulled a face. "That shit's bad news, yo. Always has been, always will be."

"What do you know about Project S?" Cissnei asked him.

He opened his arms wide, palms splayed. "Nothing. Nobody knows anything except that it exists." He squinted in thought. "Except for Tseng. Tseng probably knows. But Tseng knows everything, yo. Freaky dude."

Tseng was, indeed, scarily good at his job. On paper, he was a perfect replacement for Veld; but Tseng had none of Veld's experience. Cissnei was always more wary around him than she had been with Veld. She found it difficult to connect with the cold, emotionless man and talked to the bindi on his forehead rather than look him in the eye. She could have asked Tseng about Project S, but he would have looked at her and eventually she would have slunk away without any answers.

Project S was part fact, part urban legend. All the Turks knew that it existed. Some knew it was connected to the Jenova Project, the umbrella term coined to encompass all Shinra's initiatives for fighting the vampire virus. From the logistics and science of SOLDIER, to which craftsmen got the contracts to make wooden stakes, to PR personnel organising President Shinra's press tours, everything was stamped with the header 'Part of the Jenova Project' to differentiate it from the rest of Shinra's business. Project S was a ghost in the corporate machine. Nobody had all the facts about it. Cissnei had painstakingly discovered a tenuous connection to Nibelheim and run with it – apparently enough to make Rude notice, and possibly get the attention of those above him.

Looking at his impassive face, Cissnei corrected herself: undoubtedly those above him. Tseng really did know everything.

"Project S is not our concern," said Rude.

"Who says?"

"Those higher than us."

"Don't give me that crap. We're Turks. Information is our currency. We can't be expected to get the job done if we're working at a deficit."

Slowly, Rude raised one black-gloved hand and tilted his sunglasses enough to peer over them. His eyes were dark and the kind of intense that could melt steel at fifty paces. "This isn't about getting the job done. Not for you."

Cissnei glared. "I'm a Turk."

"So are we."

Ominousness crawled through her hairline, making it itch. "Am I your mission today?" she asked bluntly. "Were you sent to shut me up? Or shut me down?"

"Tseng thought you could use a reminder that the job is what is most important," Rude replied. His tone was polite but firm. "Nobody else knows what you've been looking for and they never will, as long as you stop leaving footprints that show them you've been playing in their yard."

"I just …" Cissnei deflated inside. Outside, she maintained her tough façade. She had been doing it for so long, it was no strain.

The job currently was to bring in Specimens Z and C. It could so easily turn into a termination mission. At the moment she could deal with capturing Zack and bringing him back. Whether or not she actually delivered him to Shinra was something she chose not to think about, if only because the fact her answer was not immediate genuinely scared her. If the order to terminate the two escapees came through, her loyalty would be tested out in the field, in front of witnesses, many of whom would prefer to consider her collateral damage. There was no love lost between Shinra's military and the Turks. The Turks creeped everyone out. Combine that with an itchy trigger finger and the prospect of not being punished afterwards for a stray bullet …

"Yeah," Reno said. "You just."

"There aren't any accessible records about what was done to them," Cissnei said quietly. "They were confined to the Nibelheim Laboratory for four years. Four years! Who are we – who is anyone – to take away a man's freedom after that?"

"You're presuming they're both still men," Rude deadpanned.

Cissnei fell silent. It was something she had considered. Then she had locked the possibility away at the very back of her brain and snapped the key off. "I can't ignore this," she said stubbornly.

"You're not being asked to," Rude replied. "You're being told to pay very close attention, but to the right subject. We're to concentrate our efforts on location and recapture, or at least observation to determine the next move Specimens Z and C might make."

"That's your area of expertise, sweet-cheeks," Reno said glibly. "If he is still alive, you know Fair better than any of us. You're the ace up our sleeve, so we really don't need you to appear on the wrong radar and disappear into thin air when we need your skills, yo."

Cissnei's glare could have levelled a city block. It bounced off both of them: you are rubber, I am glue, it sticks to me after bouncing off you. "Fine," she said eventually.

"You'll quit poking your nose where it don't belong?" Reno enquired.

"I'll stop being so obvious," she replied.

"That's all Tseng asks," Rude said. He pushed his shades back up his nose with the tip of one finger and turned to leave.

Reno followed him, hands deep in his pockets and grinning lewdly.

Yet it was Rude who surprised Cissnei by turning back one last time. "Don't get yourself killed, Cissnei. What you feel for Fair has to be in the past now. Five years is a long time. Even if he is still human, the law of probability states he won't be the man you knew. Not anymore."

Cissnei gaped at the glimpse of real emotion from him – spoken in a monotone and hidden behind his sunglasses and leather gloves, but still there at the core of his words. Rude wasn't parroting Tseng this time; he was talking for himself and urging her to be careful rather than just warning her off. She had no chance to respond, however. As if the moment had unnerved him as much as it had her, Rude strode away and Reno loped after him, leaving Cissnei alone with her thoughts.

….

The temple was old stone, old beliefs, old ideas and old paint. New scorch marks, however. They licked up the outer wall and had turned half of one pillar black. Thin cracks speckled the soot where the paint had dried out and flaked off in the heat. With its half-fixed roof, footpath studded with craters and neatly tended lawn, the whole place looked like a leper holding his fingers on with sticky tape.

She crawled through a gap in the outer wall. None of the adults knew about it, nor could they fit if they discovered it. She crossed the grounds easily, flowing between shadows to avoid detection. A pair of guards were supposed to be stationed at the entrance. Sure enough, they stood on either side of the door with spears propped on their shoulders and dozens of other weapons hidden around their bodies. The uniforms were so form-fitting, unwary and unknowing enemies assumed the spear was all they had. That lesson was short, quickly learned, and even more quickly forgotten when death claimed them.

She didn't even try to confront them. She had been casing the place for long enough to know there was no point. The temple's main entrance was its most fortified spot. The trick had been to locate the least fortified and use it to her advantage. As such, she clung to the deepest recesses of shadow, circling around to the back of the building where the Reflecting Pool had been allowed to overgrow. As with a lot of things these days, resources had been 'streamlined' to free up money and manpower for the war. What was necessary took pole position, overtaking everything else. Usually that was a giant bugbear of hers, but right now it was the key to gaining entrance to the temple.

She slid into the water that formed a long causeway, straight on either side and lined with pebbles gathered from all corners of the land and chosen for their beauty. It made the sides too uneven to bump against without pain, but she was willing to risk it. Sliding into the thickest weeds, she ducked below the camouflage she had gathered and woven into what looked like just another pile of rotting vegetation. Her progress up the causeway was finger-numbingly slow to avoid suspicion if one of the guards decided now was a good time to patrol and wondered why one pile of muck was moving faster than the rest. The effort was worth it when she reached and passed through the duct she had broken for just this purpose a couple of visits ago. Travelling that was was smelly, claustrophobic and disgusting in so many ways, but eventually she raised her head and saw she had made it inside.

Inside the temple was not nearly as well-guarded. She had snuck what remained of the archives after an air-raid took its toll. There she had borrow, copied and replaced her father's blueprint scroll and memorised the floor-plan in preparation for tonight. Her tutors often accused her of flightiness and an inability to plan ahead. True, more often than not she did leap before she looked – usually literally – but she wasn't a total moron. Those stuffy ass-hats would sure be surprised if they could see her now.

Actually, maybe they wouldn't. Covered in gunge, smelling like a chocobo dung-heap and sneaking around someplace she wasn't meant to be to steal something she wasn't meant to have? That was totally her bag.

The shrine was in a vestibule that had seen better days. What hadn't in this place? She approached cautiously. She had never come this far before. This was definitely Point of No Return territory. If she bottled it now, there would be no second chance. The guards would be able to tell someone had been in here and no doubt assign someone to guard the shrine itself, not just the front door. This was her only opportunity and she intended to grab it.

Literally.

Her hands closed around the dusty jar. It was bigger than her head and heavier than it looked. It refused to budge. She tugged and heaved, but no cigar. Disappointed, she perched in lotus position on top of its wide lid, fisting a hand under her chin as she thought what to do next.

Maybe she should just smash it; but the legends said the jar was what was important. Maybe it was the jar itself, not its mysterious contents, which were imbued with the 'great power' she needed. She reached down to tap against the side: shave-and-a-haircut. There was no answering tap. Sighing, she raised her eyes to the ceiling for inspiration.

Which was when the lid moved.

"Huh?" To get a better look she raised both feet, soles pressed together, balancing entirely on her scrawny butt. The swirly designs that covered the entire jar seemed to shift, sluggishly, like the long hair of someone waking up and raising their head after a rough night on the town.

"Hey!" yelled a voice. "Get down from there!"

Momentarily thinking it had come from inside the jar, she reared away and toppled backwards. She had time to notice the two guards rushing through the door, spears readied, before turning her fall into a handspring that saved her neck but kicked the jar away. The jar, which had previously been too heavy to budge an inch, arced through the air to shatter on the stone floor.

"I told you I heard something from in here!" yelped the second guard.

"Shit!" cursed the first. "She broke it. She actually broke the sacred artefact!"

"Um, whoops?" she offered with a rueful smile. "Clumsy me."

"She broke it!" the guard continued to yell. "You broke it, you stupid – uh …" He stared at her face. She had taken her mask off so she could breathe without inhaling the foul stench of the Reflecting Pool. She knew he had recognised her by the widening of his eyes and the way his mouth dropped open.

"Oh joy," she muttered. "Rumbled."

But the guard wasn't looking at her, she realised a few seconds later. He may have recognised her, but she wasn't what held his attention. She followed the line of his gaze over her shoulder, to where the small statue that had been inside the broken jar also lay in pieces on the floor. A cloud of sandy brown dust was rising from the shards. As she watched, the last of the swirly patterns on the jar's surface quivered and vanished, as the magic that had been keeping whatever was now rising disappeared. The thing had been fighting them from the inside and she had help it by taking the more direct approach and using violence. As usual.

"Crap." She backed away.

The dust cloud churned, growing to an impossible size. No way that much dust could fit into that size jar. Limbs appeared briefly, like someone running through fog or in and out of strobing lights. Something that could have been an eye peered out. A pair of ears pricked towards her. She could see them clearly: triangle shaped and tipped with tufts of white fur.

"Crap on toast!"

She turned to run, the way the two guards already had. She had barely gone three steps when the thing inside the dust cloud shrieked and descended on her. She choked, trying to breathe. Her feet left the ground. White hot agony shot down her spine, branching out when it reached her tailbone. Her entire body felt like it was being stretched in several directions at once. She opened her mouth to scream, feeling her teeth sharpen and elongate as her jaws gaped wider than had ever been possible before.

She was glad when the darkness came and she could feel nothing at all.

To Be Continued …

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