Before Crisis: The Beginning

By DarkAngel

Disclaimer: I don't own any of it.

Chapter 17: The Twin (Rosalind)

The next room that Rosalind came upon was another large one like that one she'd first found herself in. It looked almost exactly the same, save for the lack of bodies and the fact that searchlight beams traced patterns across the floor. At the far end, at the edges of the lights, Rosalind could see a number of Proto Golems. She frowned. Not this again.

Her PHS rang, and Rosalind picked up.

"All right, Rosalind," Tseng said. There was the sound of beeping and clicking in the background. "I want you to listen carefully. You're going to cross the room to the other side without getting spotted by the searchlights."

Rosalind eyed one of the lights as it steadily made its way from the far side of the room to the other end closest to her position. "What happens if I get caught in one of them?" she asked.

"The security system will activate and try to attack you," came the reply.

She had to admit, the setup here was nothing short of ingenious. Some of the security measures were designed to deal with people if they so much as moved; others like this one waited until you made a mistake – it was a psychological nightmare.

"All right, I understand," she replied. "So I should dodge the searchlights, then."

"That's right." Tseng paused. "Be careful."

Thanks, she thought wryly. She took her first step, watching out for the searchlights and the Proto Golems, which stood still, waiting for her to slip up.

She sized up the room. There were four searchlights. The first and third moved from left to right, the second and forth from the opposite direction. The Proto Golems wouldn't be activated unless she was caught by one of the lights. With this knowledge firmly in her mind, Rosalind carefully made her way across the room. She was halfway across when the floor gave out from under her foot. With a shriek, Rosalind fell backwards, scrambling out of the way of the gaping pit that had suddenly appeared.

A light was moving in her direction. Quickly, Rosalind scrambled up, narrowly escaping the beam. She caught a shuddering breath, hand on her chest. That had been too close. And there were probably more trapdoors like that set up throughout the room. Why hadn't Tseng told her about this? She retreated back to the end of the room she had started out from, whipping out her PHS.

"Sir," Rosalind said without preamble. "Is there anything else about this room you'd like to tell me? Like, how there are trapdoors?"

Tseng sounded slightly abashed. "I'm sorry, Rosalind. I can track your position through your PHS. I'll tell you where to go and when. Just follow my directions and you won't encounter another trapdoor."

He must have been tired, stressed or worried – or all of those things to forget, Rosalind thought as she leapt, dodged and ran back and forth across the room, evading trapdoors and dancing out the way of the spotlights. Eventually, she made it to the other side.

"Is there anything about the next room I should know about?" There was no way she was taking any more chances if she could help it.

"Nothing you can't handle," Tseng replied. Rosalind frowned. That wasn't really an answer. Before she could reply, he said, "As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if that's been installed yet. I guess there's only one way to find out."

Rosalind hung up, biting on the inside of her cheek to stop herself saying something regrettable. This was the man who countersigned her paycheques, after all, and she did like Tseng. It wasn't his fault that things were falling apart the way they were. Repeating all this to herself, she entered the next room.

As it had when she had entered other rooms, upon entering this one, the door to the previous room hissed shut. She sighed. Pretty soon, she'd find out what she was up against.

"Intruder detected. Commencing scan operation."

Now what?

A thin beam of red light made its way slowly across the room, from left to right. Rosalind stood stock still, unsure of just what to expect. As it passed over her body, the disembodied female voice spoke.

"Scan 20 percent complete. Scan 40 percent complete."

What was the system scanning for? The fact that it was counting up meant that something would happen when it reached 100. Rosalind tensed.

"Scan 80 percent complete. Scan 99 percent complete. Scan complete. Commencing data transfer to materia. Data received by materia."

Data transfer to a materia? Somewhere in the back of her mind, a warning bell went off. She'd heard of something like this… it had been years ago… could it possibly be…?!

There was a set of six foot glass capsules in the room that Rosalind hadn't really looked at when she'd come in. One of them now hissed, white steam pouring from it. Another, separate hissing noise accompanied by mechanical beeping and whirring sounds filled her ears. Blinking, Rosalind watched as a humanoid form walked uncertainly out from the capsule. It rippled and shimmered, changing form before her very eyes. It turned into –

"Me?!"

Rosalind stood, mouth agape, staring at herself. Her twin – the clone – was the same height, same build, and had the same green eyes, which were staring right back at her. Even the way her twin held herself was uncannily familiar. Rosalind felt a chill run down her spine. So this was the rumoured materia – the Copy Materia. It had been a theoretical application in a textbook when she'd been at school. To think Shin-Ra had actually perfected one…

"Intruder detected. Elimination subroutine activated," the copy said in a monotone voice. Rosalind shuddered. For all that the clone looked and sounded like her, it was all technical. There was nothing human about her – it. She raised her gun. Her copy did the same.

Rosalind dodged as her counterpart fired a bullet, diving low to the ground and taking aim at the clone's legs. Maybe it was just a copy, but she hadn't the heart – or the nerve, if she was going to be honest with herself – to aim for the head or anywhere vital. The clone stumbled as the bullet lodged in her leg – then, to Rosalind's horror – the wound closed up, absorbing the bullet. "That didn't work?" she whispered.

She thought feverishly, trying to remember what had been in her textbook. The cloning system used a special Copy materia. Normally the magic used by itself would enable the person who had cast the copy spell to create a temporary clone that mimicked its actions in battle – essentially the enemy would have to fight two people at once, and the copy itself would be invulnerable to attack. The biggest disadvantage lay in the fact that because it was a clone, it would do everything that you did.

Clearly that wasn't the case here. After all, the clone hadn't mimicked her, and it was moving seemly of its own volition. Even now, as Rosalind watched, her clone lined up another shot, expression blank. What was moving it?

Her eyes darted around the room. There were no control panels or other obvious mechanisms that she could see. Breaking it probably wouldn't do a thing anyway, as the power source that had collected the data for the clone and the clone itself were two separate things. Rosalind glared.

"Think. Come on… what's powering the clone?"

There had to be an inner core, a processing unit of some sort. Rosalind eyed the clone. The most obvious places would be in the torso or the head. She tried those in succession. No luck. Blowing an exasperated breath through clenched teeth, she rolled as her copy took another shot. This time she felt air displaced in the vicinity of her right ear. If she didn't know better, she'd swear her machine's accuracy was going up every time.

As the fight went on, Rosalind trying to pinpoint the clone's weak spot, her fears panned out; it seemed that the Shin-Ra developers had somehow stabilised the copy magic and fused it with some pretty advanced technology. Not only was the clone unharmed for the most part, it was picking up on Rosalind's actions and thinking for itself the best way to cut her off – it had an AI, and it was getting more precise with each altercation.

The next shot the clone took hit its mark. Rosalind hissed as hot metal grazed her cheek. She could feel the flesh open up, warm blood spill out and drip onto her collar. The situation was the worst she'd been in yet. It was worse than being choked to death by AVALANCHE operatives; it was worse than being blasted by Fuhito; it was worse than the terrorizing helplessness she had felt as President Shinra had been attacked before her eyes. Now she faced extinction not from another human being but a machine – a copy of herself. Rosalind laughed.

Her side hurt from her earlier fight. She was running out of bullets. She hadn't done any significant damage to her so-called twin. She had some supplies, but those were dwindling. She was getting tired out, and unlike a human opponent, the clone didn't have that same problem. She wanted to cry out in frustration. She wished Reno or somebody else was here. They would probably know what to do.

That thought brought her up short. No. Wasn't that her problem? She relied on tried and true solutions, and when they didn't pan out, she immediately got frustrated. There wasn't anything stopping her from beating this thing but her own self-imposed limitations.

With a deep breath, she stood up, straightening her back, looking at the clone, eye-to-eye. She was a Turk. She had graduated top of her class at the academy. She was not going to lose to some automaton. She would beat this thing and move on, because that's what Turks did. No matter how impossible the odds, they came out on top.

The clone raised its arm. Rosalind did the same. For a brief second, their eyes met. Rosalind smiled. Taking another deep breath, she gathered her energy from within. She could do this.

She rolled out of the way of the next bullet that came her way, smirking slightly. Before the clone could get a chance to make its next move, she was back on her feet and running.

Whatever had been going through her twin's cybernetic mind, she couldn't possibly have calculated this. With a wrench she was taken off her feet as Rosalind threw herself bodily at her. Using momentum and all the power and weight she could muster out of all of her 5 feet 3 inches she shoved hard at the clone, throwing her onto the ground. The clone looked up at her blankly, not even blinking as her head bounced off the ground like a rubber ball. Rosalind wrenched the weapon from her opponent, tossing it away from her. She heard a clatter that sounded as if it was echoing from somewhere beyond the confines of the room. Focussing all her attention on her clone, she yelled out the Lightning spell.

The pain as the bolts of electricity seared her body made her scream. Her vision blanked, but she held onto consciousness viciously; she couldn't afford to faint here. Passing out meant death, and she hadn't gambled everything she had only to roll up snake eyes.

Beneath her, her clone was staring. Rosalind scrambled up, willing her body to move. Her limbs were out of sync with her thoughts, trembling and jerking. Numbly, Rosalind realized that the lightning had impaired her motor functions. She fell on top of her opponent.

She expected the clone to hold on, to grapple with her, to have a knock down, dirty, drag 'em down fight – but it didn't happen. The two of them lay there, one on top of the other. There was a hissing noise. The door. She'd passed. All the tension that had been holding her up snapped, and as the energy drained from her, Rosalind started to laugh. Weakly, painfully, her laughter not much more than a choked syncopation of breaths exhaled, she laughed.

To be continued…