Part III Chapter VI –Gloomy with a Chance of Clouds
"You just let him go?"
Zack wouldn't quite call it yelling, Vincent's voice was no louder than usual, but he got the feeling this was as close as he got. There was something in the tone that told him Vincent was ticked. Beyond ticked. Zack would even say it was closer to furious than ticked. He should know. Sephiroth did the same thing often enough.
The words didn't even cover how Zack was feeling. He couldn't decide whether to be angry or confused, and that was after getting down to the bare basics. If he had to add in the suspicion lingering in the back of his mind, stomping rather forcibly on dying embers of hope, well, there was a reason he was trying to ignore them.
Cloud is dead—Cloud is here—Cloud was here—Cloud is dead.
If the kid was here, If what they said was true, Cloud would be too injured to leave.
Aeris said he left. Aeris didn't lie. She looked like she'd been crying. Vincent was furious. Elmyra was hiding in the kitchen.
And Zack. Zack felt rather numb.
Every instinct he had said Vincent wouldn't lie about this. He was the kid's protective older vampire figure, had followed him across two continents for crying out loud.
Vincent was radiating cold fury, but Aeris didn't waver.
"You sent me away. Deliberately." Vincent stated, drawing Zack's attention back to the conversation. The girl didn't deny it.
"I tried to talk him out of it." She responded, picking at and smoothing out her pink dress, "It didn't work. Vincent—Please, he'll be fine."
"He was poisoned."
"He's had worse."
"He shouldn't have even been awake."
It continued in that vein for some time, until Zack got tired of the back and forth. He sighed.
"Repeated exposure builds immunity."
Green and red turned toward Zack at his interruption. He gave them a faintly startled 'What?' look. "As a SOLDIER rises in the ranks, he's exposed to more mako at a time. The more previously exposed, the less reactive we are to it. What would poison a non-enhanced person would leave us with severe weakness, but conscious." He paused, seeing Vincent weighing the statement, and the flash of relief from Aeris, before adding, "Granted, I don't know of anyone shrugging off prolonged exposure. Especially after the Class shots."
It didn't seem to help much. Vincent was still worried. Angry. Even if he didn't show it in more than the increasing frostiness of his stare. Zack understood. If, if, Cloud was alive, he didn't want him running around while suffering mako poison either. But they were wasting time now. Zack glanced at his watch, almost an hour since he'd gotten here.
"You know what guys? I'm going to go home. I'll…I'll find Grant tomorrow. I need to think."
Vincent didn't acknowledge him with more than a curt nod, giving Aeris one last disapproving look before—not quite storming, it wasn't obvious enough for that—beating him to the exit. The brunette sighed and glanced up at Zack, "He really is okay."
I believe you. He wanted to say, but his throat seized up. Instead he said goodbye and left the lit home, making his way into the darkness of the slums.
If they were telling the truth—if, if, if, if—then that meant Grant had lied. If Grant had lied, then someone higher up had told him too. The Turks may be involved in dirty business, but it was Company Sanctioned dirty business.
Zack still liked to think he was helping people through ShinRa. Liked to think, when he had field assignments, he was a hero. Killing monsters to keep the people safe. Removing rebels before they did something disastrous like blow up a reactor, which could do serious harm to life and living. His orders came from Heidegger.
The Turks only answered to the Head of Public Safety—Heidegger—and the President. If they were ordering hits on SOLDIERs…
The thought left him sick to his stomach.
What else could they be doing?
What else could they be covering up?
--
Why won't he wake up? Cloud had done everything from yelling at the comatose general, to claiming Zack was going to dye his hair hot pink, before finally slapping Sephiroth across the face. Any one of the three would usually elicit a reaction, but it was the last that made the uneasy chill grow to alarming worry. Whatever knocked out the general was strong enough to smother both SOLDIER and Jenova's inhuman, instinctive reaction to an attack.
SOLDIERs who didn't respond to an attack died. To see a war bloodied general completely unresponsive…
Hojo had something to do with it, Cloud was certain of it.
There were papers scattered around the room, loose papers, notebooks, and whatever scrap of napkins Hojo'd had at the time he needed something to write on. For a scientist he seemed to like hardcover copies. Nibelhiem had been like this, research notes and books everywhere, and the green glow of the computer monitor didn't help much. It reminded him too much of the view through mako-green glass.
He checked the computer first, not even bothering to look further when an inactive re-log-in box popped up as soon as he tried to look through the data. Paranoid idiotic scientist. Cloud resisted the urge to kick him as he stalked past, heading for the piles upon piles of loose notes. There had to be something here that would tell him what the mad scientist had used on Sephiroth—it would be far easier to get the man out of here if he could support himself. Sephiroth had at least two heads over Cloud; it would be extremely awkward to have to carry him.
Not to mention he was starting to hurt. His hands were shaking, making Hojo's triple-encoded chicken scratch even harder to read. His body had been telling him he was up too soon, too long, should be asleep right now recovering—Last time he'd take a dip in the lifestream he'd felt weak for days afterwards—no, there was no last time—Northern Crater, falling into blinding green like a puppet with its strings cut.
The papers told him nothing, and Cloud cursed Hojo's tendency to write in code. He was only straightforward when it suited his purpose, like the oh so convenient books placed under the Mansion, right where they would do the most harm to an unsuspecting General…
He threw them down, the off-white leaves scattering to the four corners of the lab. A couple of them slid up right next to the professor, the resulting touch causing him to stir, eyebrows furrowing in confusion at the unexpected sensation.
Damn. Damn. Damn. Cloud checked the clock in the corner of the computer screen. He'd been in here for an hour at least, the tech would be waking up soon, not to mention Hojo and maintenance. He was running out of time.
There was one last thing he wanted to check. Sitting on the tray attached to the IV line was a clipboard, a quick glance told him it looked an awful lot like the medical chart one would find at a sane doctor's. After a thought he pulled the papers off the board, folded them up, and stuffed them into his uniform. For one, Sephiroth might want to see it, two, if he had more time, he might make some sense of it. He then returned to the cold metal table, and the hospital garbed Sephiroth.
"How am I supposed to get you out?" He asked the silence, noting that there was an absence of restraints. Well, that was one less thing to get rid of. It was odd though, given a SOLDIERs automatic reactions, and aversions to doctors. The presence of the IV line hinted that maybe Hojo'd used some kind of sedative, although he'd never heard of one powerful enough to cause this level of obliviousness.
If anyone could come up with one to work around both mako and Jenova, Hojo would be the one.
He shook his head, brushing away the webs of old pain and bright, shining needles.
Running out of options, Cloud ended up doing what should have been impossible, and maneuvered the much larger man off the examining table and into his grip, a somewhat modified fireman's carry only made possible by mako enhancements. He almost toppled once, steadied and adjusted his balance. He just needed to get outside the confines of the building, Aeris had said, then Exit would take care of the rest.
He had no chance of getting out without security catching on—the only access he had to the outside was through the balcony on the President's Floor, or all the way down on the first floor. The office was just a floor or so up, but the security would be much tighter, probably even a Turk or two on guard.
Down it was. With a grunt Cloud was moving, one hand wrapped around his burden, the other pushing open the door.
Another groan from the doctor caught his attention, automatically causing a look-back, and then a glance at the door, more specifically the automatic lock. Cloud closed the door behind him, waited for the faint click of it locking, and then plunged his fist through the delicate electronics buried inside the hidden key pad. He ignored the spark of broken wires around his fingers—nothing compared to the jolt Grant—Reno in another time—had given him—and then yanked, tearing out the pad and dropping it on the floor.
The door refused to budge when he tested it. Perfect.
He had no delusions that Hojo would be stuck in there forever, but it felt satisfying.
His footsteps echoed down the metal hallways, abnormally loud, and he winced at every sound. He was just waiting for a guard to round the corner, or the previously called maintenance to arrive, or…even a stray security robot could be a major problem. Normally he could reduce a pack of the things to scrap metal without much effort, but right now…burdened down by the weight of a rather tall man, and his body beginning to shake from exhaustion and paranoia…
"I'm kidnapping Sephiroth." The thought floated through bundled nerves, and seemed ridiculously funny as he reached the stairwell. Cloud shifted the general to a slightly more secure position, trying to decide. Up or Down. A few floors up and tighter security or 60 some down, which would take more time, energy, and increase the odds of bad luck landing in his lap.
Unless I don't have to go all the way down. There were windows. He remembered them. Saw them through the open doors of the board room, some poor sap clinging to a scaffolding to…wash…them.
Of course!
As he headed down the stairs he turned his mind to the materia in his bangle, to the exit spell shimmering warmly with the residual energies of an Ancient—Aeris . She said it wouldn't work in the building, but outside? Sixty floors up in the air? Even as the question formed the energy within the orb shifted, answering with a reassuring pulse.
And now the materia is talking to me. He was starting to feel light headed. Maybe not talking exactly, but it was reacting. Had to be the mako.
He stepped out of the stairwell, landing on the richer than usual carpet that covered the entire executive floor. The halls were eerily empty, the entire trip, nothing like last time when the halls were crawling with Regulars, SOLDIERs, and automated security drones.
Was security really this bad? Was the heightened security really because of AVALANCHE?
Then again this ShinRa wasn't teetering on the edge of a precipice, but secure with itself and its place in the world. There weren't any terrorists running around blowing up multimillion gil worth of reactors and the surrounding infrastructure. It wasn't facing the monetary and civil consequences of dropping sector 7. This ShinRa still had Sephiroth.
The weight on his aching shoulder and in burning arms made him smile, pushing shaking legs just a little further. There was the board room now; the doors were still open—no! The windows were shut.
Now what? He wasn't sure he could make it down sixty flights of stairs and still have the energy to cast the spell. Elevators were out because of his cargo.
Cloud crossed the room, leaning into the glass and looking down. A length of steel hung a floor down, suspended by thick steel wire from the floors above. A small slip of a man in ShinRa's grey janitorial uniform stood on the far side, far enough that Cloud could drop down without knocking him off. It wouldn't even hurt. Much.
It might startle the guy. It would be best to give him some sort of warning. He stalked over to one of the huge, overstuffed chairs around the table and slipped Sephiroth off his shoulder. The pain eased as he leaned the tall man back into the chair, rolling his shoulder to try and further relax the aching muscles. He still hadn't so much as twitched. The medical notes seemed to burn against Cloud's chest—he was worried and itched to stomp back upstairs and beat the answer out of Hojo.
He shoved the thought away, summoning more of his waning strength and grabbing the largest, heaviest, gaudiest chair of red and gold—the president's, he remembered with a hint of cheer—and chucked it as far as he could. It shattered the glass and flew straight out, definitely missing the scaffolding, though he could hear the startled yell of the poor guy. The exertion caused him to stumble back, leaning against the chair he's stashed the general in.
Okay, spinning. Stop the spinning. The garbled yelling got even more muffled as the janitor scrambled into the safety of the open window to call a guard. Got to hurry. It was twice as hard to maneuver Sephiroth back on his shoulder, his body crying for rest. As soon as he got out of here…
He looked down, balancing on the window edge. The four foot wide piece of steel swayed just a floor below. Broken shards of glass waited, lurking, gleaming faintly in the window's light.
He tightened his grip on the general, took one hand and reached out to grab the wiring, hooking his arm around it. Feet left carpet, met air—a burn against his uniform, cutting through it to skin as he slid down the line. Wind teased, tugging at them both and spewing clouds of silver hair about them.
"You! Stop!"
Cloud's boots touched down on the metal, glass crunching, but luckily not puncturing the soles. His hand uncurled, leaving a bright angry red friction burn against his skin. Normally it would be nothing, but it ached. Damn mako. Getting drenched in it was killing his stamina. Even after getting the shots it wasn't normally this bad.
Duh, more mako. Need we remember being a vegetable?
The shouting was coming from inside, from a blue uniform that Cloud barely glanced at before reaching out to the lingering feel of Aeris in the bangle. The materia responded eagerly, sucking away at his remaining energy—
"Gaea, he has the GENERAL!"
And the world vanished in a wash of green.
Soft hands touched his shoulders, and he looked up into the face of someone he knew Aeris would give anything to see again.
We've got you.
He relinquished what little control he had on the magic, and his exhausted mind shut down.
The next thing he knew there was dirt beneath him, and it wasn't the uniform, bland ash of the wastelands surrounding Midgar. Rocks of various sizes poked painfully into his back, along with something long and twisted he hoped was a root. The smell of plants filled the air, almost overwhelming his senses after years of the city's pungent air.
It's clean. Natural. With a faint tang of mako. The last part narrowed down his location considerably. Only Nibelhiem and Gongaga had mako reactors in the middle of the wilds, and given he wasn't freezing—
He cracked his eyes open. In the shadows of dusk Cloud could make out the presence of trees all around him. They weren't the tall, bristling pines of his home, but the more broad leafed, tropical plants native to the Gongaga area. It looked like the exit materia had dropped him off in the middle of the forests, hopefully the town was nearby and he could figure out how to get Sephiroth to a sane and ethical doctor—
Sephiroth!
He shot up from the ground, the sudden motion resulting in a renewed burst of pain and exhaustion. It sucked at him, dragging him back down. Sleep! His body cried, but Cloud forced himself to ignore it, staggering to his knees, searching in the dimming light for his silver haired burden. A vague human shaped silhouette lay not too far away, and the dying sun caught on a weak gleam of silver. Cloud dragged himself over, searching hands landing on a still, hospital scrub garbed chest.
Too still. Chill settled in Cloud's stomach as he automatically searched for a movement, sound, or breath. Anything. The general had been fine, if comatose before they'd left the building. Now…now…
Half-remembered mandatory first aid classes sprang back to mind, along with even fuzzier images of a little girl on a shadowed beach shore. Breathe. Breathe. The command whirled around in his mind as he pushed against a muscled chest, leaned over to try and introduce air to stopped lungs.
He kept it up far past it would be too late for a normal human. Sephiroth had Jenova, he wouldn't die this easily. Cloud knew it. He knew it.
So why the hell wasn't it working!?
Time slipped by, filled with nothing but push and breathe, push and breathe. Eventually Sephiroth shuddered, body wracked by heavy, hacking coughs. Coughing was good; coughing meant whatever was blocking the airways wasn't anymore. Something glowing green and liquid appeared in the corners of Sephiroth's open mouth, each cough spitting up even more of the—he couldn't even call it mako. It didn't look like mako, didn't smell like mako—but with each splash of the stuff on the ground the General breathed a little easier.
It's almost like he drowned. Cloud realized, wiping away the stuff and wincing at the familiar freezing-burning of it as it seeped through his sleeve. It's not mako but it's—
He watched as the pooled green slowly lost substance and dissipated into wisps, sinking into the ground.
Lifestream? But why would there be—
The hands, that voice, green everywhere. As soon as he'd activated the materia, everything had been green.
Hadn't that been another dream?
--
The guard left the booth to take a break—and mostly likely take a smoke, if the tendencies Vincent remembered from decades past were anything to go by. People didn't change much, and he knew smoking, while allowed in the hallways, was not permitted near equipment. The security booth was full of delicate surveillance equipment, and he'd seen the on-duty guardsman twisting and chewing on the straw of his soda like a long time chain smoker. He'd spent enough time watching the man, waiting, so once the door shut he dropped from the crawlspace between the ceiling and the floor above into the center of the booth. ShinRa hadn't changed much, for all the years that had gone by.
Ever since learning Cloud had gone out on his own there had been cold dread gnawing at him. Hojo—or another scientist—had ordered that retrieval—he knew it was a retrieval, he'd participated in enough in his time to recognize one—which meant, if Cloud had been caught, or come on his own, it would be to the lab.
Vincent didn't dare try and break into the lab. He knew this security. The outdated, it's not broken so don't fix it, system in place on the lower floors. Should he try and head up to where the important stuff went on…he knew he could break it given time, but he didn't want to risk it, not when he didn't know what to expect. If he were to crack Hojo's security, he'd want to take a long look at it first Better safe than sorry. After years of living in Midgar he didn't want to at last alert Hojo to his presence.
But he had to know, and the surveillance footage was a start.
Knowing he only had a limited amount of time before the guard would return, Vincent surveyed the setup. There were a lot more buttons than he remembered, but the basic controls appeared to be the same, and he quickly found the keystrokes to access the wall of screens. The system of identification was the same as well, and it only took a quick foray back into his memory to find the numbers that corresponded to the lab area. He had to cycle through a few on those floors to find the right angle; the amount of cameras seemed to have multiplied, areas he remembered having one view, now had two or three angles.
He found the viewpoints he wanted, those trained on the entrances to the labs. The interior cameras weren't hooked up to this system; he knew that, so he didn't bother looking. The screens were empty for the moment , so he quickly, but carefully moved back in time, eyes trained on the screens as a security guard, some sort of unfamiliar robot, or the occasional well-dressed executive walked backwards through the hallways, up or down the stairs.
Vincent's hunch proved right when he reached a point in time some hour and a half before. A small man—about the right height—appeared in the stairwell near the higher floor entrance. Vincent paused the recording, backed it up some more until the man was standing at the top of the stairs, then rewound until Vincent could see all of him, and then paused it.
Right size, right build, even right hair, limp and faded as it was, it matched what Vincent had seen when Cloud was lying comatose. Mako did funny things to someone who'd been overexposed. He couldn't see the face well, not with the large man being carried half over the shoulder, half in his arms. He kept backing it up slowly, slowly, until the camera got a glimpse of the face, at the white bandages covering a good portion of burned skin. It was Cloud.
Knowing he was going to be cutting close to discovery, Vincent noted the time and found the camera a floor down, Cloud and his burden continued down the stairs. He found the next, and the next, until Cloud finally left the stairwell. Vincent tracked his target along the hallway and into the meeting room. When Cloud placed his burden into a chair Vincent paused it, freezing the frame and inspecting the person Cloud deemed it necessary to break into ShinRa Headquarters for.
The silver hair made him frown puzzled, not many people had such an odd metal on snow coloring, but it was the face that really threw him. It felt familiar. The nose, the cheekbones, the entire facial structure screamed that he should know it. Even the way the fair fell around the face nagged at him, but something told him the hair should be darker, the skin a little more tan, the face more feminine—
Eyes widened in shock. Her. He looks like HER.
His enhanced hearing alerted him to the sound of boots scuffing the corridor outside, and Vincent found the button he thought was the reset button and pressed it. The two monitors he'd commandeered flashed back to their original settings, and by the time the door was opened, Vincent was gone.
That could have turned out better. Aeris thought wistfully, staring out the window at the dim light—it was never completely dark. She had a brush in hand, hair unbound over her shoulder, using the rhythmic motions to distract her from harsh words.
She'd known Vincent would be mad. She wished she could have told them, made them understand why she let Cloud go. Why she wasn't worried. But they couldn't know. They couldn't know that she heard the whispers of the Cetra, of the planet. The voices were extra loud around the young SOLDIER, they wanted something from him, something that had to do with a certain scientist's lab, something they'd spent years working on…
Aeris sighed and lowered the brush, letting it fall and bounce on the floral patterned comforter. She closed her eyes, blocking out the memory of Zack's hopeful, but suspicious expression when he'd demanded to see Cloud, blocking out Vincent's silent, cold, yet furious stare when she admitted he'd let him go, and loosened the ties binding her mind and body. The physical world—the bed beneath her, wall to her back, small white materia rolled between fingers—all fell away, leaving nothing but the whispers that followed her day in and day out, the pulsing heart of the beautiful world she lived on, carrying the souls of her ancestors and millions of others to their next life.
They felt strange tonight, subdued, the loud, almost incoherent statements dying away as she came near, leaving behind a vague sense of disappointment. Sadness. Her mind immediately returned to Cloud, the Planet had been almost frantic about his mission, if it were disappointed—
The dream-seer, she started, projecting her thoughts into the roiling mass of consciousness, is he—
Reassurance. It pulsed back, more feelings then words. An image formed around her, taking over the soft green background.
The warmth was the first thing she noticed, despite night shrouding the scene. It was true night, complete darkness save for a sliver of moon and the twinkle of stars, nothing like the perpetual twilight caused by the slum's lighting. She'd only seen it once, the one night she'd been lying on a lonely beach north of Midgar, a trip cut achingly short because of a frantic phone call from her Mom, when a young Turk carted in a Mako poisoned SOLDIER…
The memory brought her back, and focused on the image. She'd asked about Cloud, so he should be here—
There. She could see the silhouette, starlight touching on too pale hair, not quite back to its impressive blonde spikes, but recognizable enough. He was curled up in the grass, back to, and leaning against another person. This one was much larger, taller, a metallic silver shine over his shoulder.
She knew that no monster would trouble their sleep, despite an obvious lack of shelter or fortifications. Through the Planet she could feel the predatory aura rolling off that man, an…unnatural presence that would repel all but the most powerful—or stupid—of the Planet's creatures.
Is this the man you've risked so much to save? She asked the sleeping Cloud, moving closer to the pair. The Cetra were yelling at her. They didn't like the alien presence within the silver haired man. It gave her the chills from across the clearing, but it felt strange. It should be much stronger. There was…almost a net over the man's tainted inner lifestream, subduing it. It felt odd, a mixture of the Planet's magic—materia?—and the cold indifference of science. She reached out with her essence and moved to brush it away—
NO!
The Cetra's reaction was deafening, and she felt herself yanked violently away from the starlit clearing. The scene vanished, leaving furiously roiling green thrumming around her. She was able to feel a frighteningly strong sense of disapproval before she found herself falling onto something soft and familiar, flower printed bedspread pressing against her cheek. Aeris pushed herself back into a sitting position, confused, and reached—only to jerk back, her mind assaulted by a ringing headache. She felt like a door had just been slammed in her face. Hard.
I was kicked out. The last living Ancient thought with mixed feelings of bewilderment and amazement, That's never happened before.
-
The phone was ringing. The thought managed to pierce the haze of sleep, prompting Zack to grope blindly with one hand for the phone next to his bed. He felt his hand hit it, heard it clatter to the floor. It didn't stop ringing. Didn't sound like the landline anyway. It wasn't close enough, but it had been worth a shot anyway. Zack lamented that he wouldn't be able to roll back asleep as he forced himself out of bed. His PHS was across the room, still in its holster in his uniform where he'd thrown it upon returning home.
He covered a yawn with one hand, reaching with another to extract the PHS. He hit the on button and put it to his ear, "Lieutenant Fair." He grumbled, annoyed at the late call. A glance at the clock blinking up from the floor—so that's what he'd hit!—showed it to be well into the You-better-have-a-damned-good-reason-to-call portion of the night.
Not that he'd never gotten them before, but he was tired. Emotionally drained, and wanted nothing more to sleep until he had to trudge back into an empty office and hope his commanding officer would be back, so he could go back to goofing off and avoiding work like usual.
No, it wouldn't be back to normal. He still had a Cloud shaped hole to deal with.
Note to self: track down Grant.
Tomorrow. He tacked on to the end of that thought, looked at the clock, then amended it, later today.
Hopefully another six hours later.
"Congratulations. You've been promoted. Get your ass to Headquarters, Fair. There's an emergency situation."
Heidegger?
Promoted?
The line went dead, leaving Zack blinking blearily at the PHS in his hand.
A/N: Yes, I know it's been forever. No, I don't really have an excuse. Just lazy, as usual.
It seems like every time I take an extended period of time between chapters I end up reworking the (remaining) plot. Not that that's a bad thing, I like the changes better. It makes me want to go back and rewrite the beginning though. The problem with having these huge breaks is that my writing style changes every chapter it seems. Is that annoying?
In case no one noticed, yes I did finally get around to changing Zack's name. Fair eventually grew on me, and I just couldn't think of him as Knightblade anymore.
Hope you enjoy the (extremely belated) chapter. Now I need to go work on my Detective Conan stories. You might not believe it, but in comparison to those stories, this one has been updated fairly quickly.