"Alright Nero, you're free to go," Veld said, unlocking the cell door and holding it open for him. Not that he needed it.
"Thank you, Sir," Nero said, stepping out the cell. He paused and looked around, bewildered, as if unsure what to do.
"Deepground is gone," he said.
"It is," Veld confirmed.
"The Restrictors are dead."
"Yes."
A pause. "I don't know who to report to."
"You're free, kid," Veld told him, closing the cell door behind him. "You report to yourself."
"Oh." Nero seemed confused by this, but nodded anyway. "I see," he mused, even though he obviously didn't.
Veld wished he had some sort of directions for the boy. Most of the Deepground refugees had been common soldiers or civilians who'd been imprisoned, detained, or set free as each case required. Most of them were receiving psychiatric treatment, and quite a few of the military types had opted to be absorbed into the WRO. Nero had been given a similar choice, but it hadn't worked out very well.
"You got a plan?" Veld asked. Nero thought for a moment.
"I'll find the others," he said decisively. "Weiss will have an idea."
"Good luck, kid." Veld extended a hand to shake. Nero just looked at it blankly, so Veld withdrew it again. After an extra few seconds, Nero saluted. Veld, despite not being military himself, returned it. Without another word, Nero walked down the hall and not through the door, but into the nearest shadow. Veld blinked as Nero melted into the darkness. Instinct drove him to follow, to try to reach after him with one hand into the void, but his fingers met only hard, painted cinderblock.
"Damn," he muttered.
Despite the innocuous display of power, Veld couldn't help the feeling of dread and regret curdling in the pit of his stomach. It was the same feeling he'd had when sending out recruits too green for a job because he had no one else to send; knowing he was setting them up not just to fail, but very probably to die. Releasing Nero onto the streets of Edge was not the same as turning a wild animal loose in its native environment. This felt more like abandoning a child in the wilderness. Nero could defend himself physically, Veld had no doubt about that. However, there were other ways to take advantage of a person. The boy might be a Tsviet and a SOLDIER, but he was dependent on stagnant mako, a substance so rare and mysterious that even most scientists were leery of it. He'd been actually, physically starving when they'd brought him in, surviving on what he could scavenge or steal. If nothing else, he could potentially become a weapon for someone else to use for their own purposes. They should never have let him go. But what reason did they have to hold him?
Veld sighed and stepped away from the wall. It was too late now. Nero wasn't the WRO's problem anymore, though he might be in the future. Until then, Veld had other, more immediate things to worry about. He pushed Nero to the back of his mind, it was no good trying to put him out of his thoughts entirely. He knew already it wouldn't work.
Veld stopped in Vincent's office after seeing Nero off. He found Vincent sitting at his desk, computer pushed aside, legal pad to the fore. Vincent stared into space, absently tapping a pencil on the paper.
"You finishing those reports," Veld said, "or doodling?"
"Hm? Oh. Hi, Veld." Vincent stuck the pencil into a chipped coffee mug. "So..he's gone?"
"Nero? Yeah. Walked straight into a shadow and disappeared." Veld didn't exactly shiver, but the twitchy feeling was there, just under his skin.
Vincent nodded, and sighed. Veld knew that air of preoccupation. "What?"
"I just...I feel almost, I dunno, responsible for him, I guess. I mean, I don't know that he is my son, and I only got a brief look at his face, but…"
"You don't know that," Veld agreed. "Even if he is- first, he's an adult; and second, you are not responsible for someone you didn't even know existed until a few days ago."
"I know."
"We had to let him go, Vincent. No one wanted to press charges for the food he stole, and he cooperated with questioning to the point where we couldn't think of any more questions to ask."
"But is it safe to let him go?"
Veld leaned against Vincent's desk, crossing his arms while he thought about that. "It's hard to say. We know he can fight, but what's left to fight for? Deepground is history. You know what happened when we tried to fit him into our own military. The psych department had a go at him, and their conclusion was that he'd never fit in with our troops."
"That's kind of harsh."
"No, it's realistic. His Deepground conditioning started the day he was born. Deprogramming him would be difficult at best, and expensive, and success is far from guaranteed.
"SOLDIER's a dead program, too. We can't hold him- literally can't- and we can't bring him into the organization. He had to be set free."
"I understand that," said Vincent. "But what I meant was, is it safe for him? He's been in Deepground his entire life. Where's he going to go?"
"When I find out, I'll let you know."
"Oh." Vincent blinked. "You had him followed."
"Not exactly. Remember, I said he left by going into the shadows. But if he surfaces in the city, we'll know about it, and then maybe we'll see if he really did give us the straight story."
"You don't trust him."
"I don't trust most people, and don't tell me this is news to you."
"Well, no. But, Veld, he seemed like a nice kid."
"Yeah, well, I'm reserving judgement." No point in explaining his gut feelings. He'd been wrong before. Granted, it had been several decades, but it was better not to overlook anything. One thing he was sure of: Putting Nero into the ranks of the WRO military had been a very bad idea.
Besides that, he wasn't getting any work done standing here chatting.
He patted Vincent's shoulder. "Get those reports finished. If you're done by noon, I'll treat you to lunch."
When the reports of dead thugs, muggers, and vagrants began to come in, Veld inwardly sighed. The reports of a man in gray, a living shadow, who killed without mercy followed close behind, and he couldn't bring himself to feel vindicated even as Reeve looked chagrined. Honestly, what had they expected to happen? Nero was only doing what he'd been trained to do, after all. Despite his recognizable MO, he was still impossible to find.
Veld had personally asked Tseng to assign a tail to Nero. However, the Turk had lost track of him before he'd even begun. Nero had disappeared into shadow the moment he'd left the WRO building and virtually no one had seen him since. He'd kept to the darkness, surfacing rarely. Only the reports of stolen takeout and slaughtered criminals testified to his presence.
"Okay," Reeve grumbled, more resigned than annoyed, "you were right."
"I didn't say anything," Veld replied, not looking up from his paper work.
"We had to let him go free!" Reeve insisted.
"Never said you shouldn't." Not in so many words, at any rate.
"Veld you saw what he was like with the regular troops! We don't even have any SOLDIERs left to put him with! It was a disaster!"
Veld did not disagree. Putting Nero in with the military, among his fellow Deepground survivors, had seemed like a good idea at the time. All SOLDIERs could fight, it was what they were bred for. However, they had not counted on Nero's training being so...aggressive. Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal had all been legends in their own time. Each had proved to be virtually unbeatable, as well as deeply disturbed and harboring a vicious streak that had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. Nero had been no different. The first time he'd been put in the training simulator with a dozen other recruits, there had been blood on the walls. No one had died, thank gods, but everyone except Nero had sustained grievous, if not life-threatening injuries. The sergeant had been beside himself. Nero had simply been confused. His words still haunted Veld's memory:
"But...it's training," Nero had said, genuinely at a loss. "Only one person can win."
His tone had been that of a child who'd had the rules changed on him halfway through the game. They'd left him to stew in the brig while the soldiers were treated and the commanding officers tried to sort out what to do next. There had been Deepground troops in with the WRO regulars, and their testimonies had varied wildly. Half were terrified of Nero; convinced he was not actually human, but some sort of mutant abomination constructed in the Deepground laboratories. He was rumored to eat human flesh and drink blood. Others, however, smiled fondly as they described how he'd kept them alive through his kindness. He was easily the nicest of the Tsviets, with a soft heart beneath the mako suit. None of it added up, and only left them all more confused than when they'd begun.
They shoved him in front of one of the shrinks next, hoping to get a more solid read on him. Nero's personality was shy and a bit naive in the office; cold and ruthless in the simulator. Veld had not seen such polarity in one person more than a handful of times. Strangely enough, Nero was deemed stable, if heavily conditioned by his Deepground training. However, it was not recommended that he continue with the military. Which left Nero out of a job, and the WRO out of options.
Despite the training fiasco, Nero's actions had not been premeditated, and he'd seemed remorseful. The stilted explanation he'd given afterwards had revealed his thought processes, but raised a dozen other horrible questions that had no answers. Or rather, there were answers, but no one wanted to consider them. In the end, all they could do was turn him loose to seek his fortune out in the wide world. A child who'd never known the sun, had not been out of Midgar, probably not even above ground prior to this, all alone in an alien city. Even as he'd watched him go, Veld had had a grim and foreboding feeling that they'd be seeing Nero again.
He was not wrong.
The call came in, oddly, at daybreak. Shots fired. Three officers down, and a backup squad was on its way, but would probably need more help. A tall man in black had attacked a patrol unit. Thirty seconds later, Veld's PHS rang. The Turk assigned to keep an eye out for Nero filled him in. He wasn't 100% clear on how it had started, but Nero and the WRO officers were engaged in a firefight.
The WRO officers were losing.
Grumbling a curse, Veld called down the hall to the bedroom: "VALENTINE! WE GOTTA GO!"
Vincent, bless him, did not question, just grabbed his gun and jacket and ran after him.
The squad had chased Nero from shadow to shadow not into a dark alley, which would have allowed him to escape, but out onto the main drag. Traffic lights blinked, street lamps still shone, store marquees glimmered, and worst of all was the rising sun turning the weak gray light stronger and more brilliant with every passing moment. Nero had no weapon, but that didn't seem to be an issue. Two officers lay sprawled and bleeding on the pavement. Shots rang out, but none of them touched Nero. The surviving shadows were too small and too faint for him to disappear into them, but allowed a vague sort of cover from the hail of lead and magic.
Veld watched, breath caught in horror, as one of the WRO troops broke away and tried to circle around Nero to drive him back toward the others. Nero dove at him, long body moving almost too fast to track. Veld opened his mouth, but another voice split the cacophony of gunfire and explosions.
"NERO!" Vincent cried, charging forward, not even reaching for his gun. "STAND DOWN! STAND DOWN!"
At once Nero stopped, freezing in place. A stray shot echoed, the last to be fired as Vincent rushed into the fray. Nero flinched as it struck him in the shoulder. Several people recoiled as fluid, thick and black as tar, oozed from the wound. Although Vincent had ordered him to stand down, he had not told him to stand still. As Vincent ran toward him, Nero cast about desperately for a shadow large enough to hide in. The sharply slanting rays of the sun had just begun to cast shadows as black and narrow as Nero was himself. A public mailbox provided a puddle of darkness just wide enough for his lanky body, and Nero lunged for it. He might be inhumanly fast, but so was Vincent, and Nero cried out- in surprise rather than pain- as Vincent's arms latched around him just as they touched the shadow.
"That's as far as you go," Vincent told him not ungently. "It's over. It's okay."
The squad commander gave the order to lower weapons, and Veld stepped forward. Nero sagged in Vincent's arms, the fight as well as all his energy going out of him at once. Up close, the mako suit hung loose where it had previously been skin-tight. His long hair was dirty and matted. Duct tape had been applied to his suit at elbows and knees and a few other places. Whatever Nero had been doing to keep himself alive the last few weeks, it had barely been enough.
He didn't fight when the squad commander cuffed him, or even speak as they loaded him into the van. Defeat and fear lingered like a fading scent all around him. This time he would be charged, but whether or not he would agree to stay put would remain to be seen. Because of the bullet wound, they would stop at the hospital before booking him. Vincent got into the van next to Nero. No one questioned him. It was close quarters in the back, so Veld stayed to clean up the mess. Valentine could handle one scared kid.
"You okay?" Vincent asked softly. Nero, crammed against him, did not answer. Sitting with one's hands cuffed behind one's back was awkward at best. Nero seemed to be having a hard time keeping his balance, so Vincent leaned against him to help him stay upright. Nero inhaled, sharp and ragged, the sound oddly like a sob. No tears welled up in his unearthly black-and-gold eyes, but he shivered where he sat.
"S'okay," Vincent assured him, lightly rubbing his back with on hand. "It's over. I'll stay with you, don't worry."
Nero made a noise of assent, mask crackling. Behind it, he was breathing hard, probably still riding the end of the adrenaline rush. It would take a few minutes to fade. By the time they got to the hospital he should be fine.
When they pulled up to the hospital, however, Nero was still trembling and a cold sweat had broken out over his exposed skin.
"C'mon," Vincent said, hooking a hand under Nero's arm and pulling him to his feet. Nero lurched upright and promptly staggered into him. Vincent almost collapsed with him as Nero dropped to his knees and began to gag. Purple dripped through the vents in his mask.
"Nero!" Vincent cried, not sure what to do. Off to his right, the ambulances had arrived with the wounded officers. Doctors and nurses streamed out of the building to hurry their patients inside.
"Hey!" Vincent shouted to them. "Hey! I need help over here! Something's wrong!"
One of the doctors detached himself from the group and rushed over. Crouching down, he quickly went over Nero; feeling his forehead, testing his pulse, and peering into his eyes. Nero's gray-white skin had taken on a ghostly pallor, and indigo beads of sweat stood out starkly in contrast. His golden eyes glowed bright and brilliant, pupils blown so wide it was arguable if he could see what was going on in front of him. The doctor eyed the purple smear on his fingers with some alarm.
"What is this stuff?" he asked.
"Stagnant mako," Vincent replied. The doctor looked up sharply, alarmed. Wiping his hand on the leg of his scrubs, he nodded.
"Mako poisoning," he announced. "Let's get him inside."
Between the two of them, they half carried Nero into the clinic. The triage room buzzed with the controlled chaos of doctors and nurses trying desperately to keep people alive. Together, they got Nero onto a gurney. The doctor made to remove Nero's mask, but Vincent grabbed his arm.
"No! He can't breathe without that."
"Oh," the doctor let go at once. "Thanks for the warning. What's his name?"
"Nero."
"Nero?" the doctor steadied Nero's lolling head with one hand. "Nero, can you tell me what happened?"
Garbled sound found its way out of the mask, but little else.
"Tell me, Nero," the doctor pressed, voice calm and gentle but eyes intense as he studied Nero's reaction. "What happened to you? How did you get like this?"
Nero tried to respond, but all he could manage was a drunken moan. The noise ended in gagging and the doctor reached to grab a kidney-shaped basin. Rather than have him vomit through his mask again, Vincent yanked hard on the straps holding it in place, snapping them, and lifting the mask just enough for Nero to retch purple into the basin. Vincent couldn't help wrinkling his nose at the reek of soured mako.
Under his breath, the doctor swore. "What's he been doing, drinking this stuff?"
"Possibly," Vincent allowed. "If you really want to know, he was shot, though obviously that's not the top priority."
Nero's eyes had rolled back in his head, only the black sclera showing, making a death's head of his pale face.
"Later!" the doctor snapped. "Keep him awake! He falls asleep, he may not wake up."
Fear shivered cold and restrictive through Vincent's chest. Reaching, he lightly slapped Nero's cheek- or tried to, the respirator was in the way. "Nero, stay with me. What happened? How did you get this way?"
The doctor was struggling with the sleeve of Nero's mako suit. "How the hell do I get this off?"
"Try rolling it?" Vincent suggested.
The doctor set down the pair of scissors he'd retrieved from the side table and hastily rolled Nero's sleeve up like a stocking. The underside of the fabric was soft and oozing, deep indigo liquid running from it at the slightest pressure.
"The hell?" the doctor remarked. "This is saturated in stagnant mako. No wonder he overdosed."
"He's a SOLDIER," Vincent told him. "He wears this thing instead of getting injections."
"So if it's not the suit…" The doctor grumbled a curse and fumbled with the IV needle. "Dammit, I can't get a vein."
Vincent didn't see how this was possible. Nero's veins showed through his translucent skin in thin black lines, as if he were carved from a block of marble and not made of flesh and blood. Nero whimpered as the needle went in.
"There," the doctor said with some satisfaction. "Try to get him to talk and watch his eyes. Keep him awake until his pupils retract to their normal size."
Vincent had no idea what counted as "normal" for Nero, but tried hard to keep the boy's attention while the doctor went about his business.
"Where did you go after you left?" Vincent asked. Nero mumbled something that sounded like "home". The only problem was that Deepground was mostly a smoking crater now.
"Is there anything left of it?"
The answer this time was non-committal, something approaching "kind of". Perhaps there were areas yet deeper below the surface that had not been destroyed.
"Did you find your siblings?"
Nero shook his head and promptly brought up more mako. Vincent grabbed the basin for him to spit in.
"Did you try to drink stagnant mako?"
That might have been a nod, or just lurching as he retched again.
"Should he be doing this?" Vincent asked, trying to balance the basin with one hand and hold up Nero with the other.
"He's oversaturated," the doctor replied, hanging a second IV bag. "As long as he's not bringing up blood."
"Right."
Nero seemed to be done for the moment, and Vincent eased him back onto the pillows, coughing and gasping. He thought Nero's pupils might be a little smaller. The doctor was still fussing over him, now drawing blood with a syringe. Vincent assumed it was blood. The fluid leaving Nero's body and filling up the tube was black.
"We still have lot of SOLDIER testing kits," the doctor said. "I'll have the lab run this just to be on the safe side."
"Do you know what's wrong with him?" Vincent asked. "How does a SOLDIER even get mako poisoning?"
"Was he always this thin?" the doctor tugged at the too-wide sleeve of Nero's mako suit.
Vincent thought about how lean Nero had been when he'd first been brought in, and how emaciated he was now. "...no."
"There's a couple of instances from the Wutai war where SOLDIERs let themselves run too low," the doctor explained. "Sure it's possible for them to go for days without eating or sleeping, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt. The mako and Jenova in their systems allowed them to heal at an accelerated pace, but in case of deprivation, all that meant was that the damage took longer to occur, not that it didn't happen at all. Eventually their bodies couldn't keep up and in order to maintain the healing, started breaking down fat and muscle just to keep going. It's starvation, just more dramatic. Everything's shock-and-awe with SOLDIERs."
Vincent thought about making a cutting remark, then paused to really look at the man. Younger than himself, yet older than Nero, it was entirely possible he'd seen action during the decade-long bloodbath. Thinking better of it, he kept his mouth shut.
"You...SOLDIER…?" Nero gasped.
The doctor smiled. "Nah, just a medic. 115th. You serve? You look kinda young, though Shinra sent Sephiroth overseas when he was just a kid."
Carefully, Nero shook his head. It left him cross-eyed, but he didn't gag. "Never been outside," he slurred.
The doctor peered into Nero's face, squinting at his eyes. "You tired, kid?"
"Yeah."
"Take a nap then," he patted Nero on the shoulder. "You can have pancakes when you wake up."
"Okay," Nero agreed and promptly dropped off.
"I thought you said he might not wake up!" Vincent protested.
"Easy," the doctor made a soothing gesture with both hands. "His pupils have retracted and he was speaking actual words and interacting. He's come in far enough from the edge that he isn't likely to fall off. If we'd let him go to sleep while strung out, there was a possibility his sense of himself and the here-and-now would have been compromised. He could have lost himself to the mako in his bloodstream. Essentially, he'd to return to the planet without actually dying. His body would still be here, living and breathing, but his personality and memories would be gone."
Vincent couldn't help the pang of horror, and open-mouthed grimace that accompanied it. "But that won't happen? You're sure of it."
"It won't," the doctor promised. "He's just dehydrated and undernourished. I'm guessing he started drinking mako because he thought it might stop the hunger. If we can balance his system and bring him up to a decent weight again, he'll be fine. I'm sure of it."
Vincent nodded cautiously. "I'll hold you to that.
By the time Veld tracked down Nero and Vincent at the hospital, Nero had been stabilized and admitted. The boy was asleep, an IV in his arm and a blood pressure clamp still on his finger. Vincent looked up as Veld walked in, accompanied by two burly orderlies who proceeded to fasten restraints around Nero's arms, legs and torso. Vincent pulled Veld aside.
"Is that necessary?" said Vincent, a little white around the eyes.
"What do you think?" said Veld. "He's going to be charged with two counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder as soon as he regains consciousness. Can't have a murder suspect disappearing from his bed."
Veld took Vincent by the arm to walk him down the hall, away from the sight of the leather straps. Outside the room, two WRO troopers stood, one to either side of the door.
"Guards, too?" Vincent said, eyeing them.
"They're not here to keep him in, they're here to keep everyone but the medical staff out while he's asleep."
"...For his own safety. I see." Vincent glanced back at Nero. "Only two dead?"
"So far. That could change. Several are in critical condition."
Vincent sighed, glancing back at Nero. "I don't understand. Why would he attack a patrol unit at random?"
"Revenge? Terrorism?"
"You don't believe that," Vincent hissed.
Veld reached past him and closed the door to Nero's room. "Carry on," he told the two guards, and moved past them, Vincent at his side.
"The motive really doesn't matter, Vince. There's no question that he did kill two men and severely injure several others. We turned him loose, and this is the result. Now we've got to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"Well, something doesn't add up." Vincent followed Veld out of the main doors. "Who's been taking statements?"
"Judit and her crew."
"I want to read them when they're done."
"Why? It's pretty cut and dried, Vince. Why do you care?"
"Because...He's just a kid, Veld. A kid who came out of a fucked-up program, who can't even keep himself fed, and has nowhere else to go. I just want to make sure he gets a fair shake."
Veld considered that, and the numerous ways it could go wrong. Once Vincent dove into this situation, he wouldn't back out or back down, and all for a stranger, a rogue SOLDIER who might, possibly, share his DNA.
On the other hand, it didn't make sense that Nero had attacked a well-armed patrol for no reason. Veld had already heard a couple of the statements, and one man in particular had insisted that Nero had struck first, coming out of the shadows to blind-side his unit as they passed an alley.
"Come on," he said. "Let's go talk to Judit."