"I'm sorry, Zack. It had to be done," Sephiroth said in a terribly reasonable tone. He sat cross-legged across from Zack and ran a soft cloth along Masamune's blade to polish it. Angeal's container rested by his side.
Later, much later, when Angeal had been reseated in his specimen container with fresh nutrients, when Sephiroth had changed into clean and dry clothes, when Zack's heart had stopped trying to pound its way out of his chest, they talked. They finally talked.
"I'm sorry, Zack. It had to be done," Sephiroth said in a terribly reasonable tone. He sat cross-legged across from Zack and ran a soft cloth along Masamune's blade to polish it. Angeal's container rested by his side. "I had hoped to spare you most of it. I wanted you preoccupied when I did it, that was why I told you to clean the container and load the truck, but you wouldn't be distracted so I just went ahead and did what was necessary. I kept it as quick as I could." He heaved out a deep breath. "I didn't think it could wait too much longer."
Zack remained silent. Silent and numb. Sephiroth sounded so calm, so sane, so...so reasonable. His voice stayed even. He cleaned Masamune so efficiently, as he'd done thousands of times before.
Zack knew better now.
Sephiroth was Sephiroth, and he coped with his issues in ways normal people couldn't begin to comprehend. He'd learned abominable things about himself and his friends and continued on as though none of it mattered.
Maybe Genesis and Angeal had understood his mind, at least a little. They were lab experiments, too. Created from an unholy blending of human and alien cells and biochemical processes. Human, and yet not. All three of them. Genesis and Angeal hadn't taken the truth well at all, unlike Sephiroth who simply carried on and...and did "what was necessary."
Was Sephiroth really managing any better than they had, or was it just an act, a mask of competence hiding a vessel full of latent rage, waiting to spill into psychosis and murder and revenge? Like Genesis.
Maybe worse than Genesis.
At the lab, and now here by the stream, Zack had seen graphic evidence of the alien nature that all three men shared. What else did they share that had not yet been revealed? How could anyone calmly accept that kind of knowledge about themselves? What was even normal or natural for them?
Zack was no greenhorn, no stranger to violence, to maiming and ugly death. He'd been blooded in war. He'd seen and done terrible things, been called a monster by enemy troops and civilians. He'd destroyed Ahrimans, too, just as Sephiroth had destroyed Angeal's Ahriman body. Zack had killed monsters of many types without a twinge of conscience or regret. Who cared if monsters died? Who felt guilty for killing enemies no matter their ilk? Kill them before they killed you. He'd learned that harsh fact in Wutai.
But he'd always had friends and comrades to share the guilt, to talk through grief and trauma, to salve the pain and horror. To reassure him that he'd done the right thing. He'd always accepted those assurances and so moved on to the next target with a clear heart and mind. He'd even looked forward to each new mission, eager to prove himself, to be a "hero."
Hah.
Here he had only Sephiroth and his former mentor's head in a jar. Neither helped him process his emotions.
"I needed to cut the Ahriman body away before it affected Angeal's brain too much," Sephiroth said, explaining, justifying his actions to Zack, to Angeal, and, it seemed, especially to himself. "Too high a concentration of Ahriman proteins, hormones, and enzymes might have altered his brain chemistry to such an extent that it would affect his mind and his personality. The body also appeared to have its own small brain, and it might have vied for control with Angeal. It had to be removed before irreversible changes were made. I believe I did it in time. I had no idea he'd grow and develop so fast when I left for the mining town, though."
Zack nodded mutely. It was old hat for Sephiroth, wasn't it? He'd been through it before. He'd been traumatized back then, when he'd done something similar in Hojo's lab, but this time he'd known what to expect. Zack remembered Sephiroth's horror while explaining what he'd seen and done during their escape from the lab. Now Zack had seen it, too. It all matched, right down to those alien tendrils.
It was horrible.
"I think you were correct," Sephiroth went on, "when you suggested the copies might have been influencing Angeal's regeneration. Perhaps through that peculiar telepathic link they share."
"But how?" Zack forced himself to ask. His voice sounded rough. "He was isolated. Isn't physical contact needed? Actual cells are used to create copies, aren't they? Wouldn't he have needed cells or at least the genes from another organism?"
"It's certain that Hojo exposed him in the lab. That's where those A-Ahriman copies were created. Also..." Sephiroth tilted Masamune to catch the light, and rubbed the cloth on a spot that displeased him. "Also, a SOLDIER of any class encounters many monsters throughout his service. How many times have you been splattered with monster blood and guts while dispatching them? It was easy enough for Angeal to be exposed, even without Hojo's repugnant assistance."
"Could that happen even before his...his mutations were active?" Zack questioned, aghast.
"Who really knows when the Jenova traits started manifesting? Unlike me and Genesis, Angeal was naturally conceived with them, so they might have been operating at a low level all along. Even in the womb. There's no way for us to know." He finally set Masamune down by his side, laying it between himself and Angeal's container. "Without the wings for evidence, who could tell Angeal wasn't a pure human?"
"His mother knew he wasn't purely human," Zack pointed out. "I wonder if that's why she didn't have any more children with her new husband. They would have inherited her Jenova properties. They'd have been like Angeal. She must have been worried about that."
Sephiroth inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Maybe. Or maybe Angeal's conception, gestation, and birth rendered her sterile." He shrugged. "Of a certainty, the Science Department knew. The President and select members of the Board of Directors also probably knew about all three of us."
"Lazard?" Zack's voice wavered.
"Even if he didn't before his treachery, Hollander and Genesis would have explained it to him. But the knowledge would not have been widespread. Hollander and Hojo both kept their secrets for decades. In any case, Angeal could have been collecting genetics from other creatures his entire life without anyone being the wiser. Perhaps his Jenova functions just hadn't become active enough to physically express the foreign traits."
Two-way conduit, Zack's mind whispered. "Not until the end, at least," he said gloomily. Angeal's wings had been harbingers; not gifts of freedom or angel's wings as Zack had wanted so badly to believe, but instead the beginning of the end, for Angeal's human life, for any dreams he might have had for the future. "What about the Ahriman copies?"
"It's unclear what was going on with them. Did they trigger Angeal's manifestation of the Ahriman traits, or did he just grow an Ahriman because he mentally contacted them in the lab to save us? I suppose after that they were drawn to follow him here. There might have been a sort of feedback loop between them. We'll have to ask Hollander about these things when we catch up with him." Sephiroth got up to put Masamune back in the truck.
"Are we ever going to find him?" Zack asked the empty air. "Really?"
Sephiroth returned and settled down in front of him. "Have you forgotten what I learned about the Western Continent? Of course we'll find him. He's there. He and Genesis both are."
"How will we get there?"
"We'll take passage on a cargo ship. Freighters cross the sea constantly. Most accept paying passengers and, if there's room, will also take vehicles. One is scheduled to depart in a week, in fact, taking a load of iron ore for one of the steel mill complexes in the Corel Area. I've already checked with the shipping agent's office. An Altera Company freighter can take us and our truck across—for a nice fee."
"How convenient that it's going where we also want to go."
"It's where the mills are and has good access to coking coal and to electric power. The whole area mines a variety of qualities of coal."
"There are different types of coal?" All Zack knew about coal was that it was burned for heat and electricity.
"Oh, yes. Coking coal is as necessary for steelmaking as iron ore." Sephiroth smiled, and his alien eyes gleamed. "I learned a few details about steel production as well as the iron mine's export schedule while I was in the town."
"And the cargo ship? When exactly does it depart?"
"Four days from now. Keep in mind that freighters don't operate on a precise schedule, but in more of a scheduled window. There are often delays in loading, but we can't count on that. The industrial ports are somewhat south of Junon. We'll need to get to them in advance of the scheduled departure, make our arrangements, and then just bide our time until the freighter ships out."
"You have it all planned out, don't you?" Zack's gaze flicked from Sephiroth's face to Angeal's in the specimen container. Again, he was just a head in a jar, comatose to all appearances, with a lot of room to float around. He was free, without crushing amounts of bulky new flesh to shove his head against the top.
What a strange definition of freedom.
Zack wondered how long they had before they would need to deal with more new tissue growth. What horrendous thing would go wrong next time?
Angeal had encountered plenty of monsters in his life, as Sephiroth had stated. Who knew what might be next?
"It sounds like it'll work," Zack said, slumping with defeat.
"It will be easy. I've taken everything into account."
"Easy, huh?" Zack doubted that. Nothing had been easy so far. "Whatever works, I guess. Anything to find Hollander."
Anything.
"We will find him," Sephiroth said confidently. He looked at Angeal. "I promise, we will. Genesis, too. You'll like that, won't you? Being reunited with your oldest friend?"
Zack bit his lip at the tone and words.
"We three are brothers in a sense, aren't we?" Sephiroth said to Angeal. "We all have the same third parent, if you use the term 'parent' rather loosely. Or the same third genetic and cellular donor, if you prefer, though yours and Genesis's was combined into a single woman, I suppose. We share a non-negligible amount of genetic material, at any rate. There are half siblings. Does adding Jenova into our genomes and cellular compositions make us half or one-third siblings? Knowing what I do of Shin-Ra's labs, I suspect we have at least as much biology in common as natural cousins. Perhaps 'cousins' better describes our family relationship."
Angeal seemed less than impressed by these speculations. Of course, being unconscious might have something to do with that, Zack thought.
"I'm not crazy, Zack," Sephiroth said, still looking at Angeal. "I've given this a lot of thought. I've considered it ever since we escaped from Hojo and Shin-Ra, and you know what? It's true. I have family, living, breathing family, and it isn't Hojo and whatever forgotten woman he coerced into bearing me."
"You're not crazy, Sephiroth," Zack replied cautiously. "You're not wrong."
He wasn't wrong, was he? According to Hojo, the three men did share alien biological components. Maybe that was why they'd always been drawn together despite their disparate personalities and temperaments. Zack didn't know enough about genetics or biology to understand how their shared alien heritage fit into human definitions, where it might place them on a family tree, but if the idea made Sephiroth happy, who was he to argue?
"I'm sure Hollander can explain exactly how you're related," Zack said to nudge Sephiroth back onto the more salient topic.
"Yes, Hollander," Sephiroth pulled his eyes away from Angeal and fixed them on Zack. "A standard freighter can make the crossing in eight to ten days, depending on weather and sea conditions. We need to make ready and head out tomorrow morning to catch our ride."