The crater formerly known as Deepground no longer gave off acrid smoke, but the piles of rubble were still there. Fencing had been erected around the entire site to keep out souvenir-hunters, scavengers, and the morbidly curious. There were cameras and alarms; Vincent knew where they all were, and knew the blind spots as well. He chose one of these as an entry-point, and simply jumped over the fence. Sometimes it was useful to have super-human abilities.

Veld's research on Deepground had opened up more questions than it had answered, and it hadn't addressed the one burning question that kept Vincent up at night: Was Nero his son? He needed to know, and this was the only place where the answer might lie. He had to at least make the attempt.

Much of the underground facility was now open to the sky. The hot spots had only recently cooled enough to allow anyone to enter, via a sloping section of rubble that led down to the interior. Vincent followed this path, slipping a little on the shifting rocks and chunks of concrete. Once inside, his Galian-sight allowed him to find his way through to areas where the walls still stood. Without a map, this would be a hit-and-miss operation, but the labs seemed the logical place to begin.

This close to the surface, very little was intact. His memories of that day were muddled; he remembered only flame and smoke, screams of terror, and Chaos' unholy glee. The sour stink of ash mingled with the distinctive smell of death. Bodies lay in the halls, stretching charred finger bones toward escape, blackened skulls grinning in the shadows. He hoped Nero's siblings weren't among them; there would be no way to identify them from the little that was left.

He lost track of time as he picked a path through the maze of corridors. More than once, he had to backtrack when a hallway led to a dead-end of collapsed ceilings and crumpled walls. If he let Gigas out, he could punch his way through, but that would risk more cave-ins, burying anything useful.

If his sense of direction was accurate, he was now under old Midgar, but still nowhere near the region of Reactor Zero. Finding a door hanging off of its hinges, he pulled it loose, triggering a fall of plaster dust that hit him square in the face. He pushed through the doorway, coughing, and took a moment to clear his lungs.

He'd found a roomful of desks, file cabinets, and computers. Possibly an administrative area? Dust covered the monitors, and papers littered the floor, likely scattered when the workers had run for their lives. He examined a few. Ledgers, requisitions, the stuff of boring day-to-day office work. At least this kind of research was familiar; he'd done plenty of it in his old Turk days.

Rifling through a file cabinet, he found hints of what he wanted: Expense reports labeled "Laboratory A", "Laboratory B", and so on. Going from cabinet to cabinet, more references to the labs turned up, but nothing that specifically mentioned the breeding program or its results. He'd have to dig further. At least he seemed to be in the right part of the facility.

Another office, another set of file cabinets. An old memory surfaced, of a long day spent poring over records and making notes in longhand, while Veld complained that no one could read his handwriting, and Vincent himself griped about being stuck on office duty instead of something more exciting. Not very long after, he'd been sent to Nibelheim, and gotten more excitement than he'd ever wanted.

Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Information about elite SOLDIERs wasn't likely to be kept where just anyone could get at it. He needed to find a more secure location, possibly a safe, or at least the office of a higher-up.

Coming around a corner, he caught sight of movement down the hall. Galian's keen sight zeroed in on a tall, lean figure who seemed just as surprised to see him.

"Nero?"

The figure vanished, disappearing into the darkness as if it had never been. After a tense moment, a familiar voice echoed among the wreckage.

"...Vincent?" A pair of golden eyes gleamed from deep within the shadows. Slowly, the rest of Nero materialized as he stepped forward. He wasn't wearing second-hand clothing, only his mako suit. Even in the poor light, it was easy to see that the protective suit was becoming more and more tattered.

"What are you doing down here?"

"I might ask you the same question. Aren't you supposed to be in training or something?"

Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought Nero's pale face had flushed gray behind his mask.

"No," Nero answered. "This is the only time I have to look."

"Look for what? Oh. Your sibs." Vincent approached, slowly so as not to scare Nero off. "I assume you haven't found anything yet."

Nero shook his head, long hair swaying with the motion. "No, sir. Not yet. I don't have as much time to search anymore. Er...not that I'm not grateful. I just… The classes and everything mean my day's full. It's okay, though. I'll still meet all my requirements, don't worry."

"I'm not worried. You're doing well so far." How much should he tell the boy? Nero himself had noticed the resemblance, but maybe it wasn't important to him. Veld kept warning Vincent to keep his emotional distance, but it grew harder every day. Damn it, he wanted this. Wanted Nero to be his. Was that such a bad thing?

"I'm trying to find some information on the Tsviets," he said, hedging a bit. "Do you have any idea where that might have been kept?"

"Not really, sorry," Nero shrugged. "This was part of the labs, but I'm not sure where the archives are. Some stuff's on computer, other stuff's in boxes in the vault. Er, that's below us, down in the catacombs, I think." Nero eyed the cracked ceiling and bowed walls. "I can get you down there if you need me to. I haven't been looking for documents. So far, everyone I've come across is dead. Then again, they didn't usually let us this close to the surface. All the residential areas are farther down."

"If that's where you think the classified stuff is, yes." Vincent watched shadows sliding along Nero's limbs. "Um, getting down there...you mean via shadow? I guess it would be faster than a staircase. I doubt the elevators still work."

Nero's expression was sheepish behind his mask. "I'm not sure we could walk there even if half the passages weren't collapsed. I'm used to taking the shortcut." Holding out one hand, he waited for Vincent to take it.

Vincent gripped his hand. "So how does this work?"

"Hold on," Nero told him, and pulled him into the darkness. It was as if a separate hallway had opened. There was floor, but it was difficult to tell which way was up or down. Yawning blackness stretched away on every side. Nero's rough fingers kept hold of his as he led him purposefully through the void, following a path known only to himself. Slashes of color and light- the red and green of emergency signs- shone through here and there as if through holes in a piece of torn fabric. Every now and again Nero would pause and examine one of these slits in the darkness. Finally he stopped and pulled the slit wider, ushering them through.

"Here we are."

By temperature alone Vincent could tell they were far deeper than the office they'd just left. The air was cold and dank, the concrete walls breathing moisture. An emergency light burned feebly overhead, casting a faint red glow across ancient metal shelves full of wilting cardboard boxes.

"There's way too much here to go through," he said, walking slowly down a row of shelves. The place stank of mildew and mold. He turned to look back at Nero. "Could you help me take this stuff back to WRO headquarters? Or somewhere. We'd have to remove it anyway, might as well do it now."

"Um, sure," Nero agreed, nodding. Facing one of the walls, he eyed it for a moment and then reached forward with both hands. There was no door there, Vincent knew that. The wall was smooth, blank, unpainted cinderblock. Yet Nero pulled at it as if drawing aside a heavy curtain. The darkness tore, and both of them had to squint as the dismal storage locker was suddenly flooded with what felt like blinding light. Reverting to his own senses, Vincent blinked and squinted through the pain. He felt his chin drop as he looked through the hole Nero had torn in the fabric of reality and into the WRO foyer. The neon sign for the cafe and coffee shop flashed cheerfully.

The thought occurred to Vincent that they were all damned lucky Deepground hadn't attacked first. Nero could have brought their troops right into the middle of WRO HQ, taking out civilians and agents alike before they knew what hit them. Had the Restrictors even known what they had in Nero?

"Okay," he said, pushing aside thoughts of narrowly-missed disaster. "I'll...step outside, and you can hand me the boxes?" People were going to be surprised, to say the least, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

"There's more than just this room," Nero informed him, shying away from the comparatively dim lights of the nighttime foyer. "There's like….floors of this stuff. Plus the vault. That's at the bottom somewhere. I don't know if I can get everything. The shelves are bolted to the floor and ceiling."

Nero stepped forward and peered into the darkness. "You'd better stand back."

He gestured at the hole leading into the foyer and Vincent carefully stepped through it. Being on the other side was somehow even more disconcerting. Vincent watched as the rent in reality became a formal doorway with posts and lintel of solid darkness, more than wide enough for two people to walk through abreast. Nero raised his hands and then swooped them down again, the murky outline of the shelves and boxes disappearing into nothingness. A deafening THUD echoed behind him and he jumped and whipped around, automatically reaching for Cerberus. A cloud of settling dust and a stack of several hundred moldy boxes were all that threatened.

"I'm pretty sure that's all of them."

Vincent stared at him, rapidly reassessing his power and his potential. Veld's caution no longer seemed exaggerated. Where Hojo had failed, with Vincent, to create a super-SOLDIER, Deepground had succeeded beyond anyone's dreams. And yet, Nero had never harmed anyone on the surface who hadn't threatened or attacked him first.

It was a damn good thing he was on their side, now.

"That's, uh...that's amazing," he said, aware of how lame it sounded. "What about the lower floors? I don't want you to overexert, but is there much more?"

"There's a shit-ton of stuff down there," Nero supplied, joining him in the foyer. "I can leave this here if you want," he gestured at the gateway. "You can send WRO guys or Turks or whatever to get more stuff, or I can just move it. Pretty sure what you want is gonna be in the vault."

"This is going to be a longer operation than I'd figured," said Vincent. "Okay, can we just get whatever's in the vault? I'll talk to Reeve and Veld, they can get people together to move this stuff into storage somewhere else. It'll take months, at least, to go through it all."

As he spoke, the elevator dinged, and five or six people in security uniforms rushed out of the elevator doors. Seeing Vincent and the stacks of boxes, they came to a halt, hands hovering over their sidearms.

"Uh...Mr. Valentine?" The chief of security gestured vaguely at the boxes. "What's all this?"

"Just a salvage operation," Vincent said. "That's all. Nothing to worry about. Sorry about the noise."

"That's...an awful lot of stuff," said the chief, craning his head to study the towering files. "Dunno what Mr. Tuesti's gonna say. You shoulda probably brought it in through the freight entrance."

"It's sensitive material," Vincent said. "And fragile. And I didn't want to disrupt regular deliveries. Don't worry, I'll have everything sorted out in short order."

"Well...if you say so." The chief waved a hand at his guards. "Okay, everybody, back to your posts." With a last glance at Vincent and the boxes, and apparently missing the black hole in the wall, he led his squad away, muttering about incident reports and extra paperwork.

"So um…" Nero's awkward syllables made him turn to face the boy and the hole he'd made in the wall. "You still want to see what's in the vault?"

"If it's not too much," Vincent told him, already slightly nervous about what this would involve.

"Okay," Nero said with a nod, apparently heartened by the assignment. Facing the doorway, he stepped up to it and crouched down. Edging his fingers beneath the shadow of the floor, he heaved and lifted it up. The floor rose as if on a stubborn conveyor mechanism, sliding up and away into the ceiling. Another dim room full of shelves of boxes took its place. Nero paused, his brows creased in a frown.

"No," he mused, "that'll take too long."

Stepping back, he laid a hand on one side of the gateway. A pair of triangular buttons- one pointing up, one pointing down- glowed purple beneath his fingers.

"There we go," Nero said, pleased, and pushed the down arrow. Floors slid away one after the other. Mold, mildew, and cobwebs flashed past. One floor carried a sluice of dirty water with it, causing Nero to dance back from the open doorway. At last he ran out of floors, the elevator grinding to a halt with a sound of grim finality.

Beyond the doorway was utter blackness; not so dark as the inside of Nero's shadows, but it was a close second. No emergency lights offered the least resistance to the gloom. Deeply suspicious runoff oozed onto the tile floor.

"That makes it easy," Nero observed. Vincent didn't see how, and then it clicked. It wouldn't matter if the vault were the sort more commonly found in banks. The blackness would allow Nero to bypass unlocking it entirely. He could just walk right in. "You might wanna bring a flashlight or your phone."

Vincent's phone was, as usual, somewhere else, probably on the bedside table at home. He hadn't yet developed the habit of carrying it everywhere, and probably never would, no matter how many times Veld reminded him.

"I have a flashlight," he said, pulling a small one from a pocket. "I don't usually need it, but this is too dark even for me."

Switching it on, he stepped back inside the darkness. "Lead the way."

Stepping through the doorway, Nero made a clawing motion with one hand and held the other out for Vincent. Vincent took his hand and allowed himself to be pulled forward. Again the atmosphere changed, the air becoming warm and stagnant, so thick with dust he could barely breathe. The weak light of his flashlight showed they were in a room no different from the others, except the floor was perhaps an inch deep in what he hoped was water. It reflected black in the faint light.

"Anything specific you were looking for?" Nero asked.

None of the boxes here looked any different. However, there were also metal lockers and wooden crates as well as the usual cardboard file boxes. Vincent trained his flashlight's beam on each of them one by one.

"Hey!" Nero said, coming up behind him. "That's my number."

Vincent eyed the serial number on the locked metal box and noted it on a few surrounding crates.

"Do any of the other ones look familiar?"

"That's Weiss'," he said, pointing, "and that's Rosso's."

"Grab those," Vincent ordered.

"Okay," Nero agreed, and repeated his trick of warping the boxes out of the vault and into the foyer via shadows.

Vincent eyed the growing stack of boxes out in the foyer. They were going to need a forklift to get everything shifted out of there. It was nearly 5 o'clock in the morning. People would be arriving for work in about three hours; some of them, like Reeve himself, even earlier.

Well, they'd seen stranger things. He'd explain. Reeve would understand.

"Take anything that's in a metal box," he told Nero, reasoning that the most important info had to be in something waterproof and/or fireproof. "We can leave the rest for later." He had no doubt that Nero could get in and out of that vault anytime he wanted to.

"Okay." Nero peered into the darkness and raised his hands. Air whooshed past, stirring Vincent's hair around his face. A crash echoed distantly as the metal boxes hit the linoleum. He had to lunge to keep something else from tumbling to the floor.

"Nero!"

The boy hung limp and heavy in his arms. At Vincent's voice he shook himself and blinked blearily in the darkness, golden eyes somewhat dazed.

"Are you okay?" Vincent asked him, fighting back a sudden surge of panic. If Nero fainted, or had somehow managed to injure himself, there was no way out of this airless room thousands of feet below the surface.

"I'm okay," Nero panted. "I just...that was kind of a lot at once."

"Can you get us out of here?"

"Sure."

Nero tried to stand, but his knees gave way. Slinging one arm over his shoulders, Vincent hefted the boy's weight, trying to keep him on his feet. Together they trudged through the darkness. Vincent let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding as the pale gray square of the gateway materialized. The flicker of the coffee shop sign was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He dragged more than helped Nero through, and eased him to the floor. There were no outward signs of injury, but his half-lidded eyes were staring vacantly at nothing.

"Nero?" Vincent tried, shaking his shoulder. "Nero!"

The boy started awake, struggled with him briefly- even incapacitated, he was frighteningly strong- and then relaxed.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "That took more than I thought…"

"Are you okay?" Vincent pressed.

"I'm okay," Nero insisted, climbing to his hands and knees. "Just a little tired."

A little tired his ass. Nero had mentioned classes and training taking up his day. The fool had probably been spending time when he should have been asleep hunting for his siblings among the still dangerous, smoking, unstable wreckage. Vincent couldn't really blame him. Hooking Nero's arm over his shoulders again, he helped him to his feet. The black arch of the gateway caught his eye. Like a regular elevator, a smooth door of what looked like highly polished black metal had slid shut within it.

"...should we leave that there?"

"It'll be fine," Nero told him, sounding drunk. "You saw how to work it."

"I don't want unauthorized personnel going in there," said Vincent. "As for you, you need to rest. I can take you to the WRO infirmary, let them check you over, and then home to bed. You can skip a day of classes while you catch up on all the sleep you've missed. You really should have let me know how draining this is, I wouldn't have asked you to do anything that strenuous if I'd known."

"M'okay," Nero slurred, struggling to stay upright. "Wasn't hard. Just…" he was cut off by a Herculean yawn that rasped in harmonica notes through his respirator. "I had to look. They could be trapped, or hurt or…"

"It's okay," Vincent assured him, dragging him toward the medical wing. "I'll help you look if you want. Hell, now that nothing's on fire, Reeve will probably send search parties down to rescue anyone who's still alive. He may ask you to help."

Nero made a noncommittal noise and leaned on him more heavily. He stumbled and collapsed against Vincent; over six feet of lanky dead weight.

"Ooof." Vincent shifted, and called on Gigas's strength to lift Nero in his arms. "Come on, son. Bedtime."

The doctor on duty in the infirmary examined Nero briefly, assuring Vincent that Nero had probably not done himself any permanent harm.

"He just needs sleep," she said, "but you both already know that. Want me to give him a bed here?"

"He's got somewhere to go," Vincent said, "but I don't know where it is. Nero? Can you tell me where you're staying? I'll make sure you get home."

Nero mumbled something incoherent, his words trailing off into the even rhythm of deep sleep. Vincent shrugged.

"Okay, let him sleep here. Don't try to remove the mask or the mako suit."

"Noted." The doctor fetched a blanket from a cupboard and spread it over Nero, tucking him in neatly. She scribbled a few notes on her clipboard and smiled at Vincent.

"All set. He's not officially admitted, so he can leave when he wakes up."

"Thanks." With a last glance at Nero, who looked about as harmful as a puppy right now, Vincent walked back to the lobby.

Stacks of cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and metal lockboxes filled most of the space. He sat on one of the wooden ones to wait for Reeve's arrival, and to keep an eye on the elevator to hell. Reeve should show up soon, and shortly after that, Veld.

Vincent could use the time to come up with an explanation for the clutter.

"Veld," said Vincent as he sank onto the side chair in Veld's office. "You were right."

"Well, that's very gratifying," said Veld, "but what about, in particular?"

"Nero."

"Specifically?"

"You saw the stuff in the foyer." Vincent rubbed his face, leaving streaks in in the thin coating of dust and ash he'd picked up in the ruins of Deepground. "Nero brought all of that out himself, using shadows."

"I see."

"Veld, he opened a door into the foyer as easily as cutting a hole in a piece of paper. If he'd done that for Deepground, we wouldn't be sitting here now."

Veld sat back, picked up his coffee mug, and drank from it, all while keeping the bland expression he was known for in his Turk years. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I'm not sure. There were boxes marked with Nero's serial number, and those of his siblings. I haven't even tried to open anything yet."

"Don't. I'll ask Tseng to go over 'em first, make sure nothing's rigged to self-destruct if tampered with."

Vincent nodded. "Reeve's got a security guard posted there now."

"Where's Nero?"

"I left him asleep in the med wing," said Vincent. "He's been spending nights searching for Weiss and Rosso instead of sleeping. Pulling several tons of records out of Deepground exhausted him."

"Well, then I assume we're all safe for the next day or so," Veld mused.

"It's not exactly funny, Veld."

"And I'm not laughing." Veld set down his mug and leaned toward Vincent. "I hope you learned something here. Whether or not Nero is your son is not even the major issue. He was brought up in Deepground. They taught him that the surface world is his enemy, and created him to help conquer it."

"But-"

"Let me finish. He's not a bad sort, in fact I think he's a pretty decent kid, all things considered. But he's always going to be what he is -a living, breathing weapon who can't be easily contained. He's going to need guidance up here, to learn to contain himself."

"Are you saying you want me to - I dunno, act like a dad regardless?"

"No, I'm saying you need to pull back a little. Be a friend, a mentor, someone he looks up to. If it turns out he's your son, you can take it from there."

Reading between the lines was an old Turk skill, and Vincent had learned to parse Veld's thought processes decades ago.

"You want me to keep an eye on him in case he turns out to be a threat."

"I think that, between you, myself, and the Turks, we can neutralize any threat he represents. He seems to have a good heart underneath it all. Let's figure out how to balance the danger with the good instincts."

"You really think I know how to do that?"

Veld's affectionate smile had a wry edge to it. "You've already done it once. Just be yourself."

"Ah." Vincent saluted, but it wasn't mockery. "Yes, Chief."