Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII. I depend on my daughter, Angeal Valentine (the author formerly known as xXxValentinexXx), and on Bjanik for all my information on the subject.
A/N—This week everything happens in Midgar. It's the fourth day Tessa has been in the tube, and the twenty-second week, fourth day of her pregnancy.
(10 pm, Midgar; 12 midnight, Mideel fifth day; 6 pm, Gongaga; 2 pm, Wutai)
Cloud Strife scratched his nose. It was the evening of the fourth day of Dr. Romera's confinement, and his second shift on guard duty watching the tube and the monitors. Cloud had heard she was going to be taken out of the tube tomorrow for tests. Cloud hoped she was okay—especially if it meant he could get off lab guard duty. He glanced around the dark lab/storeroom for maybe the fiftieth time and wondered what he'd done to piss Zack off into giving him guard duty in the lab. Nothing seemed to be happening, at all. All of Soldier was preparing for the move to Wutai tomorrow—except him. "General's orders, my friend," hadn't really cut it as an explanation, though orders were orders… Cloud stepped up to the door to the hallway to the main lab area and knocked. Benton, a fellow third class, opened the door.
"Relief for a couple minutes?" Benton nodded, and Cloud passed out of the room. Cloud could just hear Benton and Richards, his second class friend, both standing in the doorway, laughing softly together as he turned into the main lab.
Cloud had never been comfortable in laboratories—they reminded him too much of school—and the General's wife made him nervous anyway. He took his time in the bathroom and in coming back through the quiet main laboratory. He glanced at the white-boarded charts with their entries trying to understand them. Confusing.
As he turned the corner back to the hallway, Cloud stopped surprised. The door to the tube room was standing open, but there was no sign of the two Soldiers. Had they escaped for a few minutes of their own? He glanced behind him around the main room, but he saw no sign of Benton and Richards. He walked softly toward the open door checking the other doors as he passed them, finding nothing amiss. Then he heard something. Cloud immediately ducked into the nearest doorway. Was that a voice? A woman's voice?
"Get out the flex-tube. We'll pull some of this mako into the flexxie—use their supplies for now." A sucking sound started with a loud gulp then settled into a thrumming beat.
A second deeper, masculine voice. "What do we do with these two, Commander?"
"Just leave them alone. We don't have time to deal with them. They'll be dead soon."
Cloud knelt down close to the floor daring to look inside the room. Benton and Richards were lying on the floor, small black feathered darts sticking out of their necks. Cloud couldn't tell if they were dead or alive. Across the room, the mako solution was draining from the tube, great bubbles bouncing the General's wife's head about, the level dropping fast. Three black-clad invaders stood about the room. Two men with black balaclavas over their heads stood in front of an open grate in the wall near the floor in the far corner. The third, a woman, her head uncovered, with black hair pulled back in a long tail down her back, stood at the tube controls. A long silver object, rather like a sleeping bag, lay between the woman and the men. A hose connected the bag to a pump near the tube.
Cloud pulled back into the hall, silently slipped a short sword and dagger from their sheaths at his hips, and then wished again for the Baby Buster he usually carried. It was just too big to swing in the back room. Three on one—he didn't like those odds, but there was no help for it. He didn't know why, but these people were kidnapping the General's wife, and he had to stop them. The nearest alarm box was outside the labs in the main hallway—too far. They'd be gone before he could get to it. He heard the pump make a gargling sound. They were done draining the tube already! Next he heard an airy "whoosh" as the tube lifted from its base, dripping mako. Cloud risked another look and saw that the men had caught Dr. Romera's body in their arms and were lowering her into the silver bag. One man had his back to Cloud. Cloud stepped into the doorway and threw the dagger into that back with Soldier strength. Two on one. Better.
The others looked up alarmed. "Get him!"
The masked kidnapper took out a dagger and lunged for Cloud's stomach. Cloud grabbed the man's wrist with his left hand, pushed the flat of the dagger blade into the man's abdomen with the sword then continued the move connecting smoothly to the man's nose and drawing the sword across his face, zeeing the blade down and across his stomach, then cut across the femoral artery. Messy. Suddenly Cloud felt pain in his ankle then realized his mistake—"dagger-back" wasn't so dead after all. Cloud crouched to cut the man's throat, before turning to the last invader.
"Stop, or she dies." The woman held a knife poised above the General's wife's throat on the outside of the silver bag. "I can cut her throat faster than you can get across the room."
Cloud rose slowly, glaring at the attacker through a green haze. Maybe he could get across the room before the woman killed her—maybe he couldn't.
"You don't want to kill her. She's the reason you're here, isn't she?" Cloud took a slow, cautious step, careful of his footing on the bloody, body strewn floor.
"DON'T MOVE!" The invader pressed the knife closer to Tessa's throat.
Cloud stopped, "I'm not moving." He lowered his sword.
The woman straightened slowly, holding Cloud's eyes, the knife still close to Tessa's throat. Cloud suddenly realized they were both stalling, then that meant!... The green haze seemed to drain from his vision. In slow motion Cloud looked over to see a blue feathered dart protruding from his upper right arm. Another man was leaning into the room from the open grate, and a blow-gun was dropping from his lips.
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"Cloud! Wake up! CLOUD!" Cloud felt himself shaken, his head jerked about on his neck, pain as someone hit him across the face, then a stinging bite in his arm.
"Zack?" Cloud opened his eyes and then memory returned, "Oh… crap..." Zack was holding him by his shoulders, the feathered dart now lying on the floor beside them. Two other Soldiers were in the room looking over their comrades, shaking their heads.
"Yeah, I'll say… Where's Tessa, Cloud? What happened?"
"Two men and a woman took her out of the tube… I'd gone to the bathroom. When I got back, Benton and Richards were on the floor, and the men were putting Dr. Romera in a silver sleeping bag-thing. I killed the men, then a third guy showed up and shot me in the arm… from there…" Cloud waved at the now-closed grate near the floor in the wall.
Zack rushed across the room, ripped the grate out of the wall, and stuck his head in to check out the crawl space. He opened his PHS and speed-dialed his commander. "Seph, I'm in the lab. You'd better get up here NOW." With that Zack hung up, made a second call, and began to crawl into the shaft, "Commander Tseng. This is Zack Fair. Dr. Romera has been kidnapped from the tube. The perpetrators have…"
Suddenly the building swayed, every alarm went off, and Tseng's line went dead. Sirens screamed, overhead lights flickered, and red emergency lights strobed. Tseng wouldn't have turned on the alarms just yet, Zack thought. He'd have waited at least until Zack had finished his report. The building must be under attack! Zack paused. What should he do? Follow Tessa or defend Shinra?
"Zack?!" Cloud leaned into the shaft.
"Cloud, tell Rivers to stand guard, not to touch anything, and report to the General when he arrives. Tell Daniels to get Benton and Richards to the infirmary. Come on, kid, you're with me. Let's go."
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The Shinra front gate security guards paced their rounds slowly before the main building gates. It was late evening, and the guards were nearing the end of their shift. Suddenly a panel truck raced up the ramp to the building's courtyard level, crashed through the Shinra gates, and headed straight for the building's main lobby entrance. The guards opened fire on the truck hoping somehow to slow or stop it. With the guards firing at the truck, the black-clad attackers trailing behind it entered the complex easily and began firing at the guards taking them by surprise. The truck crashed through the glass front of the building and exploded within the lobby, blowing out much of the first five stories.
Sephiroth, sword in hand, was in the stairwell climbing up in answer to Zack's call when the building rocked violently, followed instantly by blaring sirens and strobing lights. He swayed in surprise with the building for a moment, then he turned and headed down the stairwell. At the Soldier level Sephiroth gathered Major Niven and several Soldiers with a yell, and continued down the stairs. Whatever was wrong in the lab would have to wait.
In the burning shell of the lobby, guards, Turks, regular employees, and even Shinra executives were now armed and firing away through the smoke and flames at black-clad attackers—Rufus Shinra and Reeve Tuesti among them. Tuesti was even shooting with one hand and holding his PHS to his head talking with his other. "Possibly already arranging repairs?" Sephiroth thought, commending Tuesti's forward thinking, then gathered his Soldiers to him with his eyes and headed out of the lobby to end the threat of the terrorists.
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The Commander had moved as fast as she could while pulling a dolly loaded with a body through the vents toward the service elevator shaft. At the elevators, she and her last cohort, with the body now slung over his shoulder and the dolly abandoned, had jumped onto the top of a descending elevator. Her henchman had climbed down into the elevator, overpowered the luckless Shinra employee, and commandeered the elevator on down to the lowest level of the building. From there they were in the maintenance tunnels—at least they could stand upright and make better time now. Suddenly she heard the building shudder and rock above her—her troops were covering her escape.
The Commander expected to be pursued, even though the three Soldiers were out. Hopefully the elevator shaft would confuse the pursuers. Too bad the blond kid had only taken a sleeping dart. The first two Soldiers had been hit with poisoned darts to their necks—if help came fast, they might live. It had taken a full day to dig through the barricades Shinra had installed in the ventilation shafts and maintenance tunnels, and to do it in such a way as to not alert the Turks via their vid-cams.
The Commander was deeply angry—just wait till she got her hands on Genesis. He was so dead—ordering such a stupid attack—too expensive in personnel to her way of thinking. She had already lost two of her men. She expected to lose more of her people in the truck bombing and assault on the front lobby. Her troops wouldn't attack for long, however. The bomb and attack were diversions for what she was doing. With luck, lots of luck, they might yet make it out of here. After all, any pursuit in the tunnels would have to deal with the surprise she had waiting at the end.
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"What do you think, Spike? Which way?" Zack and Cloud had come to an intersection of main shafts. While they had been following tracks in the dust, here the dust patterns were confused seeming to lead in both directions.
"If one of them was trying to lead us away, wouldn't we need to follow the trail more likely to have Dr. Romera's body?"
"Or they would think that we'd think that and manage to lay a false trail. Arg! Where's a Turk when you need one? I'm sure Reno could tell which way to go."
"Wait, Zack. Look over there." Zack looked where Cloud pointed—to the left trail about thirty feet ahead. There a tiny green dot glowed on the ground. Zack saw it then—mako. Was the silver bag leaking? For Tessa's sake he hoped not, but if it helped to find her, Zack would follow it.
"Right. Let's go kid."
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Sephiroth grabbed the straps of Rivers' kisori in both hands. "Where is she?! Report!"
Rivers had been expecting this treatment and had his report ready. "Sir! When Daniels and I got here with Lt. Col. Fair, we found Benton, Richards, and Strife out cold on the floor and two men in black, already dead. The lieutenant colonel managed to wake up Strife who reported he'd arrived back in the room to find Benton and Richards out cold and two men and a woman abducting Dr. Romera. Strife said he'd killed the two men, but another man showed up and drugged him. Lt. Col. Fair then ordered Daniels to take Benton and Richards to the infirmary, me to stand guard here, and he and Strife went into the ventilation shafts in pursuit."
Sephiroth pushed down the rage along with the green in his eyes and pulled out his PHS, pushing his way to the open grate.
"Tseng! Where do the building ventilation shafts come out?!"
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A toy-like cat glanced first back, then ahead. An elevator car with footprints in the dust on its roof was moving upward just feet from its nose. The cat listened to a voice only it could hear. "How about that? When the car comes back down, jump on top and drop a bit of mako, my friend."
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At the elevator shaft Cloud looked up and down the shaft walls and stopped in near despair. "Zack! Just look at all the ventilation shafts connecting to the elevator shafts! They could be anywhere!"
"True, kid, but I'll bet they're trying to get away underground and that means the lowest underground level of the Shinra building."
An elevator moved downward in front of their eyes.
"Look there! Mako! Come on, kid. We jump!" With that Zack leapt away from the horizontal shaft and grabbed for the elevator car's suspension cable with his gloved hands. He gracefully swung around the cable before coming to rest atop the car, Cloud following close behind. Zack opened the escape hatch of the car and stuck his head in. "Hey, would you push the very bottom level button for us?"
A short balding man looked up in surprise, "Hunh? How'd you get up there?"
"Chasing terrorists. Push the button, okay?"
"Uh, sure."
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Ahead the cat could see a dim light—the exit to the outside of the maintenance tunnel had been sealed off years ago but had now been dug through. That had taken some work. From behind, he could hear the Soldiers moving, trying to be quiet. The cat listened to the voice. "It's time to drop another bit of mako, my friend, then evacuate. The Soldiers should be able to find their way now." The tip of one of the cat's paw-fingers opened, and a tiny drop of mako fell to the floor of the shaft. The cat took a side-trip at the next intersection, careful to jump to the top of the shaft and grip tight with his claws, and not leave tracks in the undisturbed dust. It watched as the Soldiers passed.
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At the lowest elevator level Zack and Cloud had looked about and found a maintenance tunnel where the mako drops continued. They walked for what seemed hours, but the trail in the dust kept going. After a while lights ceased, and only mako glows kept them going. Finally, a lighter darkness appeared ahead of them. Zack stopped and pushed Cloud back, away from the lighter area. Zack gave Cloud hand signs for "equipment check." Cloud returned the signs for "knife," "short sword," "basic cure materia," and "fire materia." "Not bad," Zack thought giving his own signs for "knife," "master cure materia," and "master fire materia," then "give short sword." Finally, "careful," and they moved ahead.
The tunnel had widened, but rubble was everywhere. Zack's foot nudged a broken piece of masonry, and he heard a faint click. "CLOUD!!" He grabbed Cloud and hurtled the pair of them away—fire, rubble, and dust overtook him.
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"WHAT COULD THEY WANT WITH TESSA?!" electricity flickered between Sephiroth's fingers, and he growled at Major Niven. Then Sephiroth stopped still as a possibility became a dead certainty. "Wait… Genesis, you bastard! It's not Tessa. It's the baby!"
Sephiroth had gathered up Niven and five of his men as he'd hurried away from Shinra. They were making their way to the location Tseng had given them for the exit of the ventilation and maintenance tunnels at the train station. "Tseng said the whole area was blocked off—sealed up years ago—and the Turks keep it under video surveillance. So how could this happen?" Suddenly the sound of an explosion down a distant train tunnel came to his ears.
"MOVE!!" Sephiroth ran in the direction of the explosion, his men running hard in an attempt to keep up with him.
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"Zack! Zack!" Cloud pushed the body of his friend away from his own. Zack's eyes were dull, the mako gleam dimming. Rising to his knees, Cloud saw immediately that the entire back side of Zack's body was burned, the fabric melted, pieces of rubble were embedded in his arms and back—everywhere he wasn't covered by leather—and blood was oozing around the rubble.
"ZACK!" Cloud screamed then ripped open Zack's pockets for his master cure materia, laid it over Zack's back nearest his heart, and hoped in the dim light to heal the most threatening of the damage. He took one deep breath to calm his panic and center his intent, then "Cure3." Bits of the sparkling materia found its way through cracks in the melted fabric and leather, set to work pushing out the foreign materials, and began to heal Zack's body. Hearing Zack take a deep shuddering breath, Cloud took the short sword and ran through the new hole in the wall, only to find himself standing on a ledge above some train tracks in a tunnel. A train moved away from him in the distance.
Cloud ran, and the train receded. Suddenly Cloud found himself thrown backward onto the ground. Something silver and smelling of leather stood over him. "Cloud! Where…?" Sephiroth extended a hand, but Cloud was already running again after the train.
"That way! That one!" Cloud waved his arms wildly in the general direction of the receding train. Sephiroth jumped more than ran after the train, passing Cloud and pursued by several Soldiers. Cloud slowed knowing he could not catch the train and had better see to Zack. "Contact Tseng!" he heard as he slowed. Cloud stopped, his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath.
"Commander… Cloud Strife… Soldier Third Class here, sir." Cloud panted into his PHS. "The General is chasing… the train on track fifty-seven. It has his wife on it... but you'd better stop… all the trains in Midgar… just to be safe…" From every direction then, Cloud could hear screeching, see sparks flying, as every train in the station came to a halt.
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"Nothing." Sephiroth had personally searched the train, breaking benches, shelves, and the occasional passenger in the process. "NOTHING! Where are the Turks when you need them?!"
"Right here, General," a woman with wavy red hair in a blue suit dared approach the General. "I'm Cissnei, Commander Tseng's assistant. We'll take it from here. If Dr. Romera is on this, or any, train in the station, we'll find her."
Sephiroth frowned further at the woman's exception, "Could she be elsewhere?"
"There's always the possibility. There are a number of little-used exits in this station. The terrorists could be trying to take her out any of them. Your Soldiers didn't observe the abductors continuously, did they?"
"No, I doubt they did." Sephiroth turned away and flipped open his PHS. "Tseng! Do you have people at every exit from the station?!"
"Yes, but they could still slip out. I sealed all the exits from here, but these terrorists are smart. They could have an alternate, unsealable exit anywhere."
"DAMN!!" Sephiroth was about to explode.
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Cloud knelt by Zack's side. Zack hadn't awakened as Cloud had hoped, and Cloud applied the materia to Zack's body again, continued the healing process, and tried to clean more of the rubble from his friend's skin.
Zack took a shuddering breath and opened his eyes. "Hey, Spike… what happened?"
"There was an explosion. You were badly burned, mainly on your back. You saved my life. Thanks, Zack."
"Hey, it's okay… What happened to Tessa?"
"I took care of you the best I could, then I ran," he waved toward the hole in the wall. "The train tunnels are right there. There was a train moving away, so I chased it until I ran into the General."
"Wait… You mean, you ran into the General? Literally?"
"Uh, yeah. Landed flat on my ass. I took off running again and waving. He passed me chasing the train. I called Commander Tseng to report, then I came back to find you. As far as I know, no one's found Dr. Romera." Cloud looked ashamed. She had been his responsibility, and as far as he could tell he had failed in his duty.
"Hey. You took on what, four guys by yourself, killed two of 'em. Kept me alive, far as I can tell. Don't worry. You're a good Soldier, Spike."
Cloud's face brightened at the news. Zack reached up and ruffled the rubbly, spiky hair, now more white than blond. Dust and bits of cement flew off. "Come on. Help me up. We've got to find the General."
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Down the train tunnel in the opposite direction from that taken by Cloud's train, a manhole cover shifted quietly into its fully closed position, unseen by everyone.
A/N—This will be the last chapter for a couple of weeks. My mother's having open heart surgery 6/2 or 6/3—two states away (her prognosis is good!). I will be out of town next weekend for sure, so the update won't happen then—probably not until the following weekend. Angeal Valentine and I will be back soon!