"They were right," Zack whispered into the cabin's stuffy air. "Sephiroth and Hojo were right." And then his choked emotions broke loose and he laughed hysterically.
Once Zack got off the main road, he discovered that the community was a warren of randomly placed streets, many only one-way, with haphazard stop signs at odd intersections. Other roads were obviously not much trafficked. There were no warning signs on them at all, so he had to take his chances and hope no one zoomed through. While there didn't seem to be a central town square like in many small towns across the continent, there were a variety of little shops and eateries lining the busiest avenues. Most private dwellings were congregated to the south, with scores of windmills to pump water and provide some electricity, and long stretches of land cultivated for hardy crops even farther out beyond the town's outskirts.
While attempting to navigate the truck through the maze, Zack assessed for threats, eying the various townspeople who were just out and about their ordinary business. One or two older cars were parked on side roads, with a handful more moving on the streets. It wasn't terribly busy, and none of the locals even gave the battered truck a second glance. Some of them weren't paying attention at all, talking on flip phones as they walked by.
While they drove around, Sephiroth pulled on a knit cap and tucked all his hair inside it. He slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses to hide his alien eyes and said, "Stop and park here."
Obediently, Zack pulled over and parked on the street.
"I shouldn't take very long," Sephiroth said. He finally covered Angeal's container with a blanket to hide the contents from any curious passersby. "Keep the windows closed and wait here with Angeal. I should be back in less than an hour." He got out of the truck and walked away before Zack could protest.
"Damn it," Zack muttered, but there was nothing he could do differently. He just had to wait.
Waiting alone with Angeal was not something that made him comfortable. As the long minutes passed, Zack fidgeted, tapping his fingers on the wheel while trying not to look at the cloaked container next to him. He wondered again how Angeal's head could be alive, and how it would be possible to regrow his whole body. He pondered how the nutrient fluid "fed" the tissues. Would it help Angeal regenerate? He thought about the aeration equipment humming quietly to circulate the fluid in the container, and worried that it might eventually break down.
Sephiroth had said Angeal's head and torso had lived even after decapitation, growing tendrils and wriggling independently on the lab's floor out in open air. Could Angeal's head continue to survive when they inevitably ran out of the special liquid? Sephiroth and Hojo both had claimed he wouldn't die, but was that really true? How did it all work, anyway?
Worse, he wondered how long Sephiroth's latest sleep spell would last, and then he tried to remember when Sephiroth had even cast it. This morning right before they'd broken camp and gotten moving?
Sephiroth usually cast the spells twice a day—in the morning and evening. Except for just one time, they'd always held. But there was that exception where the spell had failed and Zack had seen it for himself.
The terrible expression on Angeal's face when he'd woken would haunt Zack forever.
Zack cast a quick look at the container. He should check. Suppose the spell failed again and Angeal woke up? In the dark, in a specimen container? Even if Angeal didn't understand that he was just a head in a jar, he'd still probably panic. He'd been Hojo's prisoner, an experimental subject, for several months. He'd been vivisected alive and the remains of his body, his person, kept alive in another, larger specimen container.
Bile surged into Zack's throat. He swallowed hard once, twice, and then a third time. He trusted Sephiroth's magic. He did. He had to. Angeal was still asleep. He must be. Zack didn't have to look to verify it for himself.
He couldn't bear it.
Instead, he checked the time. Sephiroth had only been gone for fifteen minutes and Zack was already freaking out.
"Hurry back, Sephiroth," he muttered. It was the first time they'd been separated for any length of time since they'd escaped from Shin-Ra, and the solitude did not sit well with Zack. He threw another quick glance at the covered specimen container then hurriedly averted his eyes.
The pull of Angeal's head was too strong. Zack found himself staring at the container, fingers twitching to remove the covering. All his questions, all his fears, rushed to the forefront of his thoughts and crowded out all other concerns. His breath came faster, and he felt a great lump throbbing in his chest.
"I'm sorry, Angeal," he whispered. Marshaling his nerve, he grasped the edge of the fabric and lifted it up just enough to see the head. Dark hair drifted in currents of nutrient fluid, and Zack heaved a sigh of relief. Angeal's eyes were still closed, his face relaxed and slack. The sleep spell held.
"Thank Odin," Zack breathed, soft as a falling leaf. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Angeal. Hopefully, this nightmare will soon end."
A man and woman, arm in arm, walked by the truck, giving it a cursory glance. Zack hastily let the fabric drop, concealing Angeal's head again. After they passed and turned the corner, Zack collapsed against the seat's backrest. "I can't take this. I really can't take this." He leaned forward again and turned on the radio. A little tuning, and he found a station playing some mellow instrumental music that just last year he'd have called "old fogey music." Like stuff his grandparents listened to. Now he found it soothing.
But he couldn't get Angeal's head out of his mind. Now that he'd relaxed a little, something unidentifiable nagged at him, eating at the back of his brain. There was a difference, something he'd only half noticed a few minutes ago when he'd verified Angeal was still asleep. He really hadn't been searching for anything but closed eyes, but now that he gave it some thought, there was something odd about the base of Angeal's severed neck. It hadn't been raw, had it? Zack had expected the tissues to be exposed, with veins or the edges of his spine and esophagus showing, but didn't recall seeing any such things.
Hesitantly, he lifted the cloth again and took another look. Angeal's face continued relaxed in his magically imposed coma. Zack forced his eyes to look down at the neck, and he drew in a sharp breath. There were no signs of traumatic injury at all. No bone or ragged tissue showed. The edge of the stump was smooth, as though it had healed over. Not with scar tissue, but with perfectly normal skin. And more, it was no longer flat, as it had been when freshly severed by Sephiroth's blade. Instead, the tissue had grown into a rounded, cone-shaped mass. That gentle lump of healthy-looking, skin-covered flesh capped the base of the neck seamlessly.
With numb, clumsy fingers, Zack let the cloth fall. Regeneration, he thought, his mind feeling as though it were clogged with molasses. Angeal's tissues had been healing all this time, and Zack had never noticed. He hadn't been willing to inspect the head so closely, and he'd missed the changes entirely. Sephiroth probably hadn't, though. He'd been holding one-sided conversations with Angeal every day. He'd probably known all along it was happening.
"They were right," Zack whispered into the cabin's stuffy air. "Sephiroth and Hojo were right." And then his choked emotions broke loose and he laughed hysterically. Hojo and Sephiroth had claimed Angeal could regenerate his body, and here was proof. It was happening already!
Another passerby gave him a strange look through the truck's closed windows. With effort, Zack got himself under control. Angeal was healing, regenerating. But would the process continue? That was the real question, wasn't it? What would that lump of flesh at the base of his neck become?
A whole new body, perhaps?
The song on the radio ended; another began, this one a virtuoso guitar solo. Zack left it on. He'd once tried to learn guitar, back when he was just in grade school, but hadn't had the patience or maturity to stick with it. Now, by concentrating on the complex arrangement of notes, he tried to ground himself. But he couldn't, not really. He felt high, lightheaded like he might float away, and he felt sick, like he might vomit his guts into the truck and keep on vomiting until his body turned inside out.
How fast, he wondered, would the regeneration proceed? They needed better facilities—at least a bigger container, and a lot more of the nutrient fluid to fill it. How soon until Angeal outgrew his current specimen container? Did the process need some external guidance, or would Angeal regenerate his body without interference?
On the run as they were, they didn't have any good options. For Angeal's sake, they needed to find Hollander soon.
Zack lifted the fabric again, just enough to marvel at the fleshy lump at the base of Angeal's neck. His eyes inspected every visible millimeter facing him, and he leaned in closer, seeing the shadowed traceries of new veins, the outlines of new tendons, and possibly even the hard edge of new vertebrae pressing against the new skin.
Regeneration. A miracle.
He was so engrossed in his examination that when the passenger door opened he let out a little screech and flung himself back against the seat. Wide-eyed and panting, he stared at the intruder.
A still-disguised Sephiroth, frozen in the act of entering the truck, stared back. "Zack?" he said in a questioning tone. "What's wrong?"
"You knew," Zack stated breathlessly. "You knew." And then he laughed again, full of hysteria and hope and absolute dread.