A/N: I guess security cameras haven't been invented yet...

Night of September 27, 0007

Luck seemed to be with him. Two nights in a row with lazy watchmen. He scoffed silently at them lounging at their posts, one chatting noisily, the other half-asleep, as he slipped through the shadows not ten feet from them. Their lack of attentiveness was abominable. Not that it was an easy task anyway to spot a SOLDIER when he wanted to be stealthy, although right now Kunsel was cursing his glowing eyes. But his gamble held, that they would be distracted enough to not even look around, and he ghosted past them, a part of the night.

He was presently in the main lobby of the Shinra building, an imposing affair with twin curving staircases and a large balcony up above overlooking the ground floor. The guards had been stationed at the main entrance, a ways away from the two staircases, and with their backs turned to the doors on either side of the lobby. Obviously Shinra wasn't too concerned with threats coming up from the labs, as those elevators were never shut down at night, unlike the ones in the main backbone of the Tower. Those were blocked from stopping at any floors other than the lobby and the high-security upper stories.

No one thought an intruder could get into the lobby, not past the dozen alert guards stationed outside, so the sentries inside were lax in their duties. Hence, he barely had to try to slip unnoticed up the curving staircase and to the two elevators there at the top. These were the only ones in the Tower not on nightly lock-down, and so they were the ones Kunsel used on his excursions.

The door slid open with a quiet hiss. One last glance showed that the guards hadn't even moved, much less noticed, so he entered the car and pressed the button for Level 66, the offices of the department heads. He could pay the labs a visit later, if he had to, to find out more. Tonight, he had decided, he would find out everything.

His mind kept running in circles, repeating the same useless questions. Why had Shinra killed a SOLDIER? With Sephiroth declared MIA, Angeal and Genesis dead, and the few others Firsts overloaded with missions, Zack had been the top SOLDIER. A valuable asset for a company bent on world domination. Yet somehow, he had not been worth capturing. Why? What had happened to him?

Kunsel knew his friend had been incommunicado for four years, during which Goddess only knew what had happened to him. Yet even when, hardly more than nine months ago, he had been suddenly able to establish a connection to Zack's PHS, there had been no reply to the several texts he'd sent. Yes, there had been no way for Zack to have known that it was actually Kunsel texting him, and answering could have given away his position, but - they had been friends. What had happened to him?

Besides that, Kunsel wanted to know more about the infantryman who had supposedly escaped with Zack. The SOLDIER had refused at every step to let the man go, even when he was clearly only slowing him down. This man had to be someone important. Kunsel intended to find him, find out if he had even survived this long, and protect him with his life. If Zack's life had been worth it, so too was his own.

It took the elevator several minutes to get up to the sixty-fifth floor, where Kunsel held the 'door closed' button while pressing his ear to the cold metal. He could hear the faint whirring of the ventilation system, the subtle creak and groan of contracting metal as the Tower shifted in the night, but no footsteps. Punching the 'door open' button, he darted out as soon as there was space between the doors for him, and slipped along the dimly-lit corridor like a shadow.

He was going to the top tonight, as he passed by the sub-secretary's office he had been in the night before and headed straight for Heidegger's. Much as he hated the man - hated his new control over the SOLDIER Program - Kunsel had to give him credit for good record-keeping. Heidegger was a control freak, which helped, because he demanded copies of every report from every department under him be submitted to his office or computer, for ease of reference. That was where all the answers would be.

The helmeted SOLDIER passed Heidegger's office and instead entered the third office down. He pushed the desk chair out into the middle of the room, not too far from the desk to make it unbelievable that it had merely rolled away, yet far enough out that it would warrant inspection. Backtracking, he left the door ajar behind him, and proceeded to Heidegger's office. He pushed the door most of the way shut, aware of creaking hinges. He glared across the room at the desk and chair. Curse it, why was Heidegger so confident? Seriously, who but someone with either no fear or a death wish placed themselves in such an indefensible position willingly - with their desk against the far wall and their back to the door. Nothing for it, he thought, knowing his acute hearing would alert him long before anyone came close, as he settled himself in the chair and prepared for a long night.

Where to even begin? He had so many questions, so little time. And for a lot of the questions, he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answers. He wasn't sure he could handle them.

That was why he had brought a portable data drive. Tonight he would simply focus on downloading as many relevant files as he could locate; later, at his leisure, he could try to make sense of it all.

Heidegger had left his computer logged in, never dreaming of intruders, so all Kunsel had to do was turn it on and set to work, hurriedly opening Turk files, army reports, tracking information, and dumping them all onto the drive without a second glance. After he had retrieved the most detailed files he could find, he turned to the more involved task of matching up mission reports with Zack's plotted path on the world map. He wasn't entirely sure what he was hoping for, and it was proving more difficult to find the information than he had expected.

Zack had been hauling around an unconscious, poisoned infantryman ever since he had fled the Mansion, that much was clear. What didn't sit right with Kunsel was the way no mention of the infantryman was included in any subsequent reports. Had he died along the way? Been killed at the same time Zack had been gunned down? Or, as Kunsel was hoping, had Zack at some point realized the danger hunting him and had left the infantryman in a safe place while he continued alone toward Midgar?

The only problem with that were the places Zack was known to have been immediately before heading for the capital. The Mythril Mines facility was a ghost town, inhabited only by brigands and set deep in monster territory. Although the place was full of easily defensible positions, there would be no supplies there and no safe hiding place. Besides, the Turks had already thoroughly scoured the entire area.

Banora was completely out of the question. The place had been bombed; any survivors would be far back in the hills. No safe place there for a comatose man.

Before that, there was Gongaga. Kunsel was a little incredulous of that report - Zack would never have endangered his family by visiting home, not with an army after him. But it seemed that he had gone there, however briefly. It was a Turk report, though, meaning that blacksuits had been in the area. Definitely not a place Zack would drop off a helpless friend.

So, where?

"Looking for Zack?" a voice behind him said, freezing him in place. "I know where a hero's grave is."

Cissnei couldn't sleep. She tossed and turned, wrapping herself firmly in the sheets, then fighting to get free, only to lie staring at the blank darkness until she just had to move again. The words of the letter to the Fairs kept running through her mind. She had written half a dozen or more drafts, each one more unsatisfactory than the last, until she had finally left off, throwing all the paper into a crumpled wad on the floor. She had sat on her little white desk chair and stared down at the paper, her mind spinning everywhere and nowhere, until she had simply burst into - to her - inexplicable tears. She was a Turk, by Gaia! Since when did she care?

Since every time she had to drive around the city, she was reminded how she'd given him her motor bike. Since every time she showered, she was reminded by the scar on her shoulder how he'd saved her from the Genesis copy. Since every time she tried to think of some happy memory, something to make her smile, he was in it.

Stop it, just stop it! she tried telling herself. It's over. Just another casualty of war.

War with what? her mind asked.

Wutai. Genesis. Science. I don't know! She felt like screaming. Instead, she had dumped the hot chocolate down the drain, shoved the stationery pad back into the desk drawer, and stomped into her bedroom, sitting on the bed and staring at the carpeting until Tower curfew was announced. Habit was hard to break, and with a sigh she took off her jacket, dropping it on the floor by her bed, and turned off the light, lying back on top of the blankets.

She must have fallen asleep briefly, for she woke groggily, tangled in the sheets and with her face damp. She rolled onto her back, the letter she had to write foremost in her mind. That evening, she must have rewritten the opening sentence a dozen times. It had always seemed too flat, too unsympathetic to be a letter to a bereaved family; but every time she started to put in emotion, let true words flow onto the paper, it became very difficult to keep a safe distance between herself and her subject.

Cissnei had never before felt so completely unqualified for a job.

Finally, unable to take it any longer, she swung her legs out of bed, standing up and turning on the light. She strode purposefully back to the desk and sat down, pulling out the paper again and beginning to write furiously. She needed to think straight. This idea had worked well at the orphanage, a miserable place she had tried to block out all memory of.

A diary. She remembered the one she had kept long ago, a small book filled with petty intrigue, grievances never to be forgotten, friends' secrets, dreams. Thoughts. Feelings. Emotions. It took her a while to get the feel of it again, actually being free to spill her soul, but once she started, she found it hard to stop. The feeling was intoxicating; the weight was lifting from her shoulders with every stroke of her pen, urging her to write faster and faster, delving deeper and deeper into territory she thought would never come to light.

It was near midnight when she finally laid her pen down, totally exhausted. Methodically folding the sheaf of paper she had generated, she placed it in the drawer. It would be there for her later if she found she still needed to return to her thoughts, but she fully intended on destroying it when it was no longer necessary. No sense leaving evidence lying around.

Still, now that that burden was gone, another thought was nagging at her. Rude had been brief in his report to Tseng, even more brief than was usual for the laconic Turk. That was because she had been present. But Cissnei knew Rude. He never did anything halfway. Even if his oral report had been lacking, his written one would be complete in every minute detail. She'd read enough of them to know that for a fact.

Tseng would - more than likely - overlook anything he didn't want to see in the report, but superiors would not be so obliging. Especially since that superior was now Heidegger. The man had to have every report funneled through his own personal office. Cissnei knew he didn't read a fraction of everything that crossed his desk, but she didn't want to take the risk that he might pick up the wrong paper for his random leisure reading. A raid was in order.

The prospect of action, even technically illegal action, had her blood pumping. At last there was something else for her to concentrate on.

The elevators tower-wide were on lockdown. Even a Turk keycard couldn't start them, not without alerting someone, so she took the long way: the stairs. She was in no distinct hurry and allowed herself several breathers; despite her stamina, it took her a quarter hour to reach the office floor, and her heartbeat was loud in her ears as she stopped for a minute just inside the stairway door. She waited for footsteps outside, but tonight the guard was taking his time, and she eased the door open. A quick glance showed that the coast was clear with no one in sight and she cat-footed down the hall, light shoes making hardly a sound on the carpeting.

She was almost opposite Heidegger's office when she froze, looking ahead. It was apparent that someone else was up here, as a dim light was shining from under Heidegger's door, and an door several offices down was slightly open. That room, however, was dark, and there was no detectable movement from it. It was also first on the watchman's beat, before Heidegger's. Clearly, whoever was up here was good at their craft; they just had failed to consider someone coming from the direction of the stairs - and elevator.

Staring at the light under the door, she considered her options. Retreat - the thought was discarded immediately. She didn't know the exact scope of what was at stake here, but she had already decided it was worth it. She could wait until the person had left, assuming that they were going to at some point, or she could confront them. After all, it wasn't unusual for Turks to have secret assignments, and they were the one group who could wander at will just about anywhere, with passable impunity.

It certainly wasn't Heidegger in there; the overweight man never came into work more often than he absolutely had to, and he would have had no reason to set up the distraction for the watchman. Another Turk? Also out of the question. Although she couldn't think of a reason for one of her colleagues to be up in the head of Public Relations office, she also couldn't think of a reason why they couldn't be up here; she just felt it would be too much of a coincidence. Who did that leave? Another employee? SOLDIER? Scientist? Aside from the incredibly remote possibility of an intruder, that list covered basically everyone in the Tower. None of the choices seemed very likely.

She pushed the door open silently, one hand on her knife just in case.

A purple-clad man, helmeted, was sitting with his back to the door, staring intently at the computer screen. He clearly hadn't yet detected her presence, despite the enhancements that came with the SOLDIER uniform. Cissnei stood there very quietly, watching over his shoulder as he accessed several reports; he seemed to be tracking Zack's flight from the Shinra Mansion, all the way up until the trail ended outside Midgar.

"Looking for Zack?" she asked quietly. His body went completely rigid. "I know where a hero's grave is."