. :: Chapter 1 :: .

Reactor No. 5

The train had not yet come to a complete stop, but he leapt off anyway and landed with the graceful ease of a cat. His navy sleeveless fitted uniform and soft-worn boots lent him the freedom of movement he needed for such a maneuver. As he hit the pavement one hand reached over his shoulder for the hilt of the sword on his back while the other touched the ground lightly for balance. A round of gunfire filled the air, silencing the Shinra guards nearby before they ever had a chance to raise alarm. He straightened at the sound, lifted his gaze, and found what fight there was to be already over. He hesitated for a moment and glanced at their supposed leader. The hulking dark-skinned man that had just finished them off lowered his Gatling-gun arm and turned around.

"C'mon newcomer. Follow me." The man's voice was deep with a gravelly edge.

Newcomer?

He resisted the urge to lift an eyebrow.

I'm a hire, not one of your flunkies.

Despite these thoughts he complied without retort, keeping a tight grip on the hilt of his sword as he followed the rest of the group. The anticipation for what he knew lay ahead seared through him inside. His gaze moved frequently, his eyes darting around watchfully for any sign of more Shinra guards. For now, the coast seemed relatively clear.

The only woman with them moved ahead of the group and began work on unlocking the gate. The big man with the gun-arm hurried off in another direction, presumably to take care of a few more guards before they went inside.

"Wow! You used to be in SOLDIER, right?!" Another one of their group looked over at him as they neared the gate -- what was his name, Biggs? "Not everyday ya find one in AVALANCHE." The guy had a loud voice.

"SOLDIER? Aren't they the enemy?" The woman stopped her work on the gate and shot a look at him. "What's he doing with us in AVALANCHE --" She looked away, her accusatory gaze flicking back and forth between her other two companions.

Ex-SOLDIER…

Biggs cut her off hastily. "Hold it, Jessie -- he was in SOLDIER. He quit them and is now one of us." He frowned slightly and looked back at the man in question. "Say, didn't catch your name… "

His cold blue eyes traveled back and forth between Biggs and Jessie for a moment, as if gauging based on their faces how purposeful giving them his name would actually be. He decided that it wasn't very purposeful at all, since after this operation they may very well never speak to him again. Still, they stared back at him like curious children, and it seemed as if they weren't going to be comfortable with this situation until they had a name for him.

"… Cloud."

"Cloud, eh?" Biggs responded with immediate congeniality. "I'm --"

"I don't care what your names are. Once this job's over, I'm outta here." Cloud's voice was calm but carried a stiff edge. He intentionally fixed his gaze on Jessie, who turned back around without response and continued her work on the gate.

Gun-arm came running back to them.

"'The hell you all doin'?!" He barked. "I thought I told you never to move in a group!" Cloud glanced up at him impassively and watched the frown lines between his eyebrows deepen. "Our target's the North Mako Reactor. We'll meet on the bridge in front of it."

"We're in!" The electronic seal on the gate hissed and Jessie slid the door open with ease.

The group of them quickly moved inside, Cloud taking up the rear. As he crossed the gateway threshold, the gun-armed man turned around suddenly and blocked his path. "Ex-SOLDIER, huh? Don't trust ya!" It was a loud statement that actually caught Cloud a little off-guard. Why would he make a point of announcing that? Maybe it made the man feel more secure or something… Moron. "Name's Barret." Another loud and entirely unnecessary statement. Barret turned around and continued on into the Reactor zone. Cloud discarded the conversation entirely and looked upward.

Mako Reactor No. 5 rose up before him, a massive figure against the night sky. Grey clouds moved behind the building, shielding it away from the light of the moon. Cloud tilted his head backward and peered at it for a few moments, allowing the full weight of their objective here to settle around his shoulders.

If all went according to plan, there would be quite a bit of smoke joining those clouds within the hour.

His gaze shifted downward, back to the area before him. He continued on at a quick stride through the second gate, catching up with the rest of the group in the Reactor maintenance zone. They passed through a doorway which led them to a long catwalk that overlooked the Sector 5 slums far below. While the rest of them moved ahead into the Reactor, Wedge stayed behind to secure the route they would eventually be taking for their escape.

They ascended a short staircase and congregated at another locked door. Jessie was already entering the code for unlocking it when Cloud approached. "Yo!" Barret faced Cloud as he joined the group. "This your first time in a Reactor?"

"No." Cloud shook his head a bit, glancing at the locked door. "After all, I did work for Shinra."

Barret regarded him quietly for a moment and then nodded a bit. He crossed his big arms. "The planet's full of Mako energy." Like Cloud, he stared at the door, but his eyes were distant. "People here use it every day. It's the life-blood of the Planet, but Shinra keeps suckin' the blood out with these machines."

Cloud averted his gaze and resisted the urge to sigh. Extremist hippies. He'd heard it all once; and from Tifa -- no less. Once was enough; and if it weren't for her, he wouldn't have anything to do with these people.

"I'm not here for a lecture." He responded quietly. "Let's just hurry."

"Yeah, right," Barret nodded again, this time a little more stiffly. "Well, you're comin' with me from here on. Come on." He flicked his head toward the door just as Jessie cracked the code and slid it open. They moved into the next room, which was another maintenance room with another locked door. Cloud gave the room a brief circular glance as Jessie hacked the door lock. The floors were made up of a dingy grayish-green tile. Fluorescent lights hung above them, illuminating various exposed brass pipes and switches, equipment rigged with display monitors and exposed wires. It was actually quite a messy network for being Shinra owned and operated, and Cloud wondered at how anyone could make heads or tails of what exactly needed to be repaired should something go wrong.

As soon as Jessie had the final door unlocked, a short hallway took them to the elevator, which would take them right up into the mecca of the Reactor itself.

Cloud leaned against the elevator wall as it lifted.

Barret's deep voice broke the silence. "Little by little, the Reactors'll drain out all the life. And that'll be that." Cloud looked over at the man, wondering whether or not he was talking to himself. Barret looked back at him and raised his brow as if expecting some kind of response.

"It's not my problem." Cloud looked away. Why is he so hell-bent on having this conversation?

"Not your problem?!" Barret gestured with his one good hand. "The Planet's dyin', Cloud --"

"Look," Cloud cut him off. "I'm not interested, okay? The only thing I care about right now is finishing this job before security comes."

Barret's lips and brow fell into an angry scowl, but he didn't respond. Instead he angled his body away from Cloud and crossed his arms, finally choosing to let the matter drop. Cloud glanced at him impassively. Frankly, he didn't care how mad his apathy was making the AVALANCHE leader. He was a mercenary. Barret was a fool if he expected emotional investment out of a mercenary.

***

The inside of the Mako Reactor was an enormous steel cavern, the whole of it vast and open like the inside of a drum. It was not very well-lit, with a few hanging fluorescents placed over higher-traffic areas. It wasn't very often that someone actually needed to traverse this area. There were no floors, only long sets of staircases and interconnecting catwalks to differentiate between levels of elevation. The group took three descending staircases that angled down toward a central catwalk. Their boots thudded loudly against the steel-plate stairs.

From the central catwalk only Cloud and Barret continued on. A narrow beam and series of dangerous ladders had to be navigated in order to reach the very heart of the Reactor, where a control system monitored and regulated all of the Mako harvesting. It wasn't a safe path for more than a couple people. In fact, at their height the climb was nothing short of a life-risking endeavor even just for one person, but it was the only way they would be able to plant the bomb where it needed to be planted in order to ruin the Reactor.

Cloud watched his surroundings absently as he followed Barret down the final catwalk. The man must have gotten his hands on blueprints of the floor plan or something, judging by the way he knew exactly where he was going… Massive tower-like pipes plummeted down into the earth several hundred yards below. Mako pushed up from the earth surrounding the extraction pipes and rose in the form of steamy gas, filling the area below with a pale green glow.

"When we blow this, this place ain't gonna be nothin' more than a hunk'a junk." Barret said over his shoulder. Cloud caught a proud halfway grin on his face. Barret turned around still wearing that grin and approached the Reactor's central control system, bomb in hand. Cloud watched him pause for a moment, then turn backward and hold the bomb outstretched. "Yo Cloud, why don't you set the bomb." It was more like an order than a question.

Cloud glanced from the bomb to Barret. He frowned. "Shouldn't you do it?"

"Jus' do it!" Barret pushed the bomb into his hand impatiently. "I'll watch to make sure you don't pull nothin'."

He raised an eyebrow at the big man and considered refusing, but ultimately decided that it wasn't worth the argument because he didn't really care one way or the other. Might as well just get it set and be done with it, right? "Fine." He moved past Barret. Be my guest. At least if I do it myself, I know it will be done right… He knelt down in front of the big Reactor control unit and placed the bomb on the floor front-and-center. He could feel Barret's eyes on his back as he configured the time limit on the bomb's detonation device and set it to go off in ten minutes flat.

"Alright, done." He rose to his feet and turned. "I just gave us ten minutes, so we should probably get out of here."

Barret nodded.

The two of them turned and hurried back down the catwalk at a quick stride. They followed the path of a giant pipe back to a ladder, up the ladder and back onto the steel-beam walkway where Jessie and Biggs waited. Both of them were kneeling down low, and as Cloud and Barret got closer they figured out why. Sometime during their absence Jessie had managed to get her foot lodged within the steel-beam walkway and Biggs had worked himself up into somewhat of a panic trying to free it.

"What in th' hell?!" Barret stomped toward them, throwing up his arms. "We got less than ten minutes!"

"I tripped." Jessie mumbled weakly. "My leg got stuck… "

Cloud frowned in annoyance and knelt down in front of her. "Let go," He pushed Biggs' hands away from her foot and grabbed a hold of her ankle himself. She let out a sharp cry when he jerked it free. He looked up at her face just as tears started to well up under her eyelids. "You alright?" He stood, asking the question even though he knew the answer. She wasn't alright; he'd definitely sprained the ankle doing that. Oh well. At least she would live to escape.

Jessie was a trooper. She nodded mutely and stood, gingerly grounding the foot. Biggs moved to help support the weight on her bad side without being asked.

"A'wright then, c'mon," Barret rumbled, shouldering passed Cloud and leading the way for their exit.

***

They had to backtrack through all of the maintenance rooms on their way out and unlock every subsequent door all over again as they went. Sure, it had been stressful the first time, but this time around things were understandably worse. Jessie's bad leg was slowing them down a bit and that bomb was ticking away, getting closer to detonation with every second that slipped by.

Finally they rushed out of the elevator and onto the last catwalk, the Reactor at their backs. They had cut it close, Cloud could feel it. In fact, they should be moving more quickly still. They weren't out of harm's way yet…

He was thinking these things just as the eruption went off behind them, blowing out every other sound in the city. He watched Biggs and Jessie trip and fall together not far in front of him. He rushed forward and hauled Jessie to her feet without hesitation, carrying her more so than helping her walk. Together they stumbled toward a beckoning Wedge at the walk's end. Biggs moved on ahead and Cloud kept a strong arm around Jessie. He didn't need to look backward to know how far into the sky the explosion's fire climbed -- he could feel it's heat on his back and see right in front of him the way it lighted the whole of the city's Sector 5.

The Reactor shrieked like a banshee into the night as destruction triggered more destruction and steel tore away from steel. The catwalk groaned beneath them and Cloud's arm tightened around Jessie's ribs. He could see ahead at the threshold of their escape tunnel Wedge's mouth opening and closing but couldn't hear his voice. The catwalk groaned again and lurched. Cloud had to pause to regain his footing. Escape wasn't far, but debris from the Reactor had fallen onto part of the catwalk and it was going to give at any second. Barret came out of the tunnel, shoved Wedge out of the way and thundered toward them. As soon as he was within reach he grabbed up Jessie away from Cloud and threw her over his shoulder.

Even though he was faster, Cloud ran along behind the bigger man just because there wasn't enough room on the catwalk to give him a choice otherwise. It gave and fell away only seconds after Cloud jumped through the threshold and into the tunnel. With a sharp grinding sound the metal catwalk bent downward and crashed down into the slums below.

The sound left silence in its wake.

"That should keep the Planet going… At least for a little while longer." Biggs said. Wedge mumbled his concurrence. Cloud half expected Barret to say something, but the man remained quiet.

He exhaled and glanced around, impatient for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. "What is this place?" Being an Ex-SOLDIER he was relatively familiar with the Mako Reactor sites. Even so, this area didn't look familiar at all -- it didn't even look used. Scrap metal and debris littered the floor, and there were no lights…

"Outside every Mako Reactor, there is the entrance to a cement man-made tunnel like this close by." Jessie's small voice filled the narrow space. "They're all fairly small and they only lead down into the slums. Shinra used to pay men from the slums to work in the Reactors because it was cheap labor for dangerous work. The tunnels were built to give the workers access to the Reactors without giving them access to the upper plate. Another way for Shinra to hide its' dirty laundry."

"That's Shinra for ya," Barret interrupted. "Didn' wanna litter the nice clean streets of the upper city with an eye-sore like slum-folk, even if those slum-folk were just some guys tryin' to get to work… "

"Anyhow," Jessie continued. Gravel crunched beneath her boots as she hobbled ahead of the others and knelt down beside the wall. "Since the Reactors are now advanced enough that man-power isn't necessary, Shinra no longer hires from the slums. Because of that the tunnels have been sealed off." Though he probably couldn't see it in the dim space, she looked Cloud's way and smirked. "So even though it's a great escape route for us, there is no exit. We'll have to make our own."

Cloud arched an eyebrow.

"Alright guys," she said. "Stand back and cover your ears."