Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Square Enix and the Compilation of Final Fantasy.
Author's Notes: And so, here I am again, Zen speaking! After three weeks without a computer, I got round to typing the third chapter of Ghost. Thank you so much to all those who reviewed and read the previous two chapters. On the whole, it seems as though Genesis is going down alright, and this story is doing something a little bit different with the time-travel plot, but I can't thank you enough for your comments. Thank you, secondly, to all those who favourited and followed. It's nice to know who's interested in knowing what comes next. In terms of update schedule, I am at a bit of an awkward stage of my life, so I apologise, but the ideal is going to be once a month.
This chapter...you might not trust me with this, but it's going to have repercussions. I had a blast writing a couple of the scenes, especially the later ones. Without further ado, onwards to Chapter 3, Best Zen :D
His first month in the past was a good one in Cloud's books. He had spent it quite productively, quietly navigating the Shinra security system, familiarising himself with the computerised emergency protocols, and learning his way around the Tower CCTV cameras.
After some practice, all he needed to do now was expand his senses outwards and it was like opening a hundred thousand eyes in a single blink, and the beauty of it all was that in his new capacity as little more than coding, he could process it all without going into shock from overloading his brain.
It was wonderful. It was terrifying, but in the same giddying way of standing atop the ridge of a mountain and seeing the world spread out below, everything small but part of a larger whole. He could see everything in Shinra Tower and whilst everything seemed small, it also all suddenly seemed heart-stoppingly, impossibly big.
Cloud had no intention, however, of spending his time monitoring the whole of Shinra Tower. For one thing, it was exhausting. Seeing as he didn't have a physical brain to exhaust, he didn't quite know how that worked – perhaps it was his mind, acting on the memory that certain activities should be exhausting – but, all in all, the fatigue of keeping all eyes open wasn't really his main problem.
The thing he was finding most difficult to do was focusing on one camera at a time. However much he tried to rein in his awareness of the other cameras, they were always there, clustering at the edges of his vision. He was never completely unaware of what was going on.
It made him feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, but he couldn't dislike the feeling however much he tried. It was a little like having a window onto a busy street, feeling shadows slipping over him as people passed him by, a kind of visual background noise. It helped to alleviate the silence, stopped the cyberspace from feeling like the Northern Crater in the depths of winter.
Sometimes it all got very quiet in the mainframe.
But he couldn't let himself get distracted! Cloud told himself fiercely. Not now that he knew that he really could make a difference to the past.
He had seen it with his own (a thousand) eyes. Sephiroth and Angeal had flown off to Wutai, sent off in a grand ceremony with lots of saluting, confetti, speeches and lines of parading Soldiers – Zack had been amongst them somewhere - and Genesis had stayed behind. This past was already different from the one he had lived in before.
It was a huge relief to Cloud. It meant that he wasn't destined to bring about the Nibelheim incident and precipitate everything that had led up to Meteor, or required to do so to prevent a paradox. The thought was a crushing weight off his mind. He could finally concentrate on his list of all that he had to change, and work out how to make those changes happen.
The List so far was simple: the Nibelheim Incident had to be prevented, Reunion had to be stopped and Jenova had to be kept away from the Lifestream. If if he could only prevent Nibelheim, then all those who had come to suffer, or died, in the chain of events afterwards – Zack, Aerith, his own mother, the people of Sector Seven crushed by the Plate, the victims of geostigma – could be saved. Avalanche, in the way that Cloud knew it, would never form, but maybe – just maybe (and it hurt to think like this) that was alright.
Avalanche had grown in retaliation to Shinra and the worst of its practices, but Cloud had seen the future since. Blowing up the mako reactors, bringing down Shinra, neither had achieved anything in the long run that could be justified by the grief both had caused, and now that Cloud was in the Shinra mainframe the potential fallout from both were all the more obvious.
He could see the Shinra employee database; regional energy consumption records; the files of the news and communication networks; the reports from the schooling system for Shinra employee children (which was prone to having its funding diverted to more pressing projects, like President Shinra's personal submarine, and was little more than a PR stunt); the accounts from the healthcare service Shinra provided (which existed primarily so that if there were any mysterious illnesses and conditions caused by proximity to mako reactors amongst the employee population, nobody would ever know), and the records of all the trade arrangements Shinra had made so that, as the land around Midgar turned into a dust bowl, people could be provided for, not to mention that Shinra was responsible for the local environmental clean-up for where they had built reactors in (removing mako mutants and pumping stagnant mako) and subsidising farming and animal husbandry.
There were simply too many reliant on Shinra for its fall not to hurt. The only reason Reeve and the WRO had never had to deal with mass unemployment and food shortages in the future was because the circumstances of that Shinra Company's fall meant that most employees had died along with it.
Besides that, the power vacuum left in Shinra's wake had only been filled by companies that were essentially Shinra in all but name and championed energy source. If Shinra could be turned around, its resources redirected towards researching new energies and its vast network then used to initiate a program to wean the world off mako, change could be pushed faster but still be controlled. If there was anything large organisations were good at, it was carrying out large scale projects and managing their subsequent impact.
On a smaller scale side of Cloud's plans, if Shinra could be shifted towards a new energy source beyond mako then the North Corel reactor wouldn't be implemented. Barret wouldn't get involved in Avalanche and Marlene wouldn't lose a father. If all of Cloud's plans worked out, neither Marlene nor Denzel would be orphans at all. Cloud and Tifa's little family, functionally dysfunctional as it was (if such a thing were ever possible), would never come together.
That wasn't true. Why shouldn't it ever come together? Sure, the future would change, but there was no reason why, once everything was arranged as Cloud wanted, he couldn't go out and find them all again, although the thought of having to perhaps do it in Cait Sith's body made something inside him twinge.
They would be different, of course. Whether Cloud would even be able to make friends with them outside of the extraordinary circumstances of their original timeline was a moot point, but the fact was, they would be out there somewhere and hopefully be able to live less damaged lives.
So how was he going to achieve all this?
In a nutshell, what he needed to do was limit the future. All branching potential futures that were different from the one he had in mind had to be eliminated.
He had to burn Jenova out of existence, kill Hojo, and raze Shinra Mansion to the ground. He would have included 'kill Sephiroth' into that list, but if Shinra had other Soldiers around with Jenova cells in them that Cloud hadn't previously known about, then killing Sephiroth would make little difference.
He stored away the thought of killing Sephiroth, Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley, and possibly a bunch of Soldiers Cloud didn't even know the names of, at the back of his mind and went absently on through the Shinra CCTV footage as he considered his List.
Vincent, for one thing, couldn't be left sleeping in Shinra Mansion forever. Cloud tentatively added 'Wake up Vincent' to the List and wondered how something so simple could be so hard to achieve.
It was clear that eventually he was going to have to find a proxy in the physical world to do the legwork. At the current, the most obvious candidate for that was Reeve, but Reeve was the Head of Urban Planning and, as the head of a department, despite how little attention that department got in the grand scheme that was Shinra, any moves Reeve made would be far too closely watched to be anything but dangerous to him, and Cloud was trying to keep all his friends alive this time.
Besides that, Cloud still wasn't sure he had forgiven Reeve of the Future for this mess he had been dumped in – not yet, at any rate. Maybe with a bit more time, Cloud would be able trust himself to approach Reeve without overlapping him with memories of the future.
So, if Reeve wasn't a viable option, perhaps Cloud could hijack Cait Sith again and somehow get to Nibelheim himself?
Cloud laughed.
Somehow? Who was he kidding? A robot cat was never going to make it to Nibelheim on its own. If he wasn't torn apart by monsters, the harsh terrain on the way there would probably do in his parts and gods forbid if it rained or snowed. He didn't like the idea of hanging around waiting for suitable Shinra transportation to crop up to stowaway on either. It made him too dependent on Shinra's schedule rather than his own.
Stuck for ideas, Cloud watched a trio of Thirds in the Weapons Department testing a robot that looked suspiciously like a prototype Guard Scorpion. On the other side of a shatter-proof window, Scarlet was dictating to a trio of assistants hovering at her shoulders.
It was obvious that the easiest way to achieve many of Cloud's aims was via a willing proxy – no, not proxy, he corrected himself as Scarlet snapped an order at her assistants that made them start and flee off screen – an ally. Cloud wasn't going to stand above anybody and order them around without their willing cooperation.
If not Reeve, then he needed someone who was either of too little significance for Shinra to consider a threat, or who was so much in the public eye that arranging their disappearance would be significantly difficult and likely damaging to the Company image if not handled with care. For the life of him, Cloud couldn't think of anybody in contactable distance who fit either description.
Although, having said that, there was somebody, wasn't there? Somebody in Shinra who already knew about Cloud's existence, even if only in the vaguest sense. Somebody who, quite arguably, owed him something of a favour. Somebody who was not only in the public eye but actively kept in it by Shinra itself as part of their precious public relations.
Even if he was corrupted by Jenova, until the man became a real threat and had to be dealt with himself, couldn't Cloud ally with Genesis Rhapsodos?
He threw out the thought a moment later. No, Genesis wasn't an option. Until he knew how deep Jenova's influence ran through the whole Soldier group, it would probably be best not to use any Soldiers at all. There was a very high chance he would need them to go to Nibelheim after all. Cloud would just have to wait for a suitable ally to appear.
A flash of red at the corner of his vision. Cloud found his attention shifting towards a corridor in one of the Soldier admin floors, where a tall figure in red leather coat was stepping into an office.
Always in red, like a leather traffic cone, Cloud could spot Genesis on the One Thousand Channels of Shinravision without even trying, maybe because a swish of red leather reminded him somewhat of Vincent and, over the years, they had all made a game of spotting Vincent when the (human most of the time) man didn't want to be seen.
Following Genesis close behind were two men in white. One man was fat, heavy-bottomed like a pear, and busy rubbing sweaty palms against the front of his T-shirt. A quick flick through the employee profiles allowed Cloud to identify this waddling open pore as Hollander. The other man was skinny and sharp-nosed, hair tied back into fastidiously neat ponytail, and one look at him filled Cloud with a dark swirl of disgust. This man was the specimen of humanoid scum known as Hojo that society had only allowed to be registered as human to please his mother.
And the three of them had just gone into an office together – an office in which Director Lazard and a small man who might have been one of the President's secretaries were already sat at an oval table, exchanging pleasantries and subtle hints as to who might or might not be holding which cards.
Of course, Cloud realised. This had to be the meeting Lazard had wanted with Hollander, to discuss 'some concerns' that a Soldier had brought to Lazard, according to the memo that had been sent round in the morning, but Cloud had seen plenty of similar memos being sent around between Department seniors and thought nothing of it. There hadn't been any mention of Genesis, Hojo or, for that matter, a representative of the President attending.
Something was going on.
Just when Genesis and the scientists were seated and Cloud thought that the meeting would begin, there was one last latecomer knocking at the door - a man in a dark-coloured suit, his trouser lines crisp, hair slicked back, and strapped inside his jacket, unseen but Cloud knew all too well they were there, were a pair of perfectly polished custom guns.
That settled it. If Tseng was in on the meeting, something was most definitely going on.
All Cloud could do from his silent sea of cyberspace was watch.
As mouths opened and closed, shaping words that Cloud couldn't hear and could only guess at, what power he thought he had gained suddenly seemed pitifully inadequate.
Senior employees had an irritating habit of trying to slip away quietly when the notice of an inquiry went out, which always struck the Turks as extraordinarily stupid considering just exactly who they were trying to 'out-slip'.
Veld hadn't wanted to waste Turk resources and time hunting the subject of the inquiry down; Lazard had agreed that Veld was being entirely reasonable in conserving Department resources; and Genesis had simply wanted to see the look on Hollander's face when he found out the truth.
Thus it was that Hollander went into his inquiry completely ignorant as to what the subject of the meeting really was about, and only realised that something was amiss when he saw Bingsleydale, President Shinra's oldest secretary, sat at the table with his rheumy eyes poring over a sheet of notes, and by the time alarm bells had started ringing, Tseng had entered the room and pulled up the chair that just so happened to be the nearest to the door.
Sweat broke out on the back of Hollander's neck and in the folds of fat around his throat. It really didn't help that Genesis was sitting opposite him, with an oddly knowing smile, watching him squirm and enjoying it.
Bingsleydale coughed into his fist. "On behalf of the President Shinra, I have been asked to oversee this inquiry over the professional conduct of Doctor Greyson Hollander – "
"Inquiry into my professional conduct?" Hollander spluttered as though he had been punched in the throat and perhaps he might as well have been. His face turned a curious creamy green colour that reminded Genesis of old squid. He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles shiny. "There must be a mistake. I don't recall anything – "
"Certain lapses concerning your particular responsibilities have been brought to the President's attention. There is no need for you to recall anything, Doctor. These lapses will be duly described over the course of this inquiry." Bingsleydale finished peering over his spectacles and, with a whispy cough, went on with his introductory speech as if he hadn't been interrupted. "I have in attendance Mr Lazard Deusericus, Director of Soldier; Professor Domon Hojo, Head of the Department of Science; Mr Genesis Rhapsodos, Soldier First Class; and Mr Tseng from the Department of Administrative Research. I, Humboldt Bingsleydale, will be taking the minutes of this meeting and overseeing it. Gentlemen, I thank you all in advance for your cooperation."
And so Hollander sat, stiff and speechless, fumbling for words and his composure, as Bingsleydale called on, first, Genesis and then Lazard to speak and asked them to describe how the files of Project G had been leaked.
Genesis began by speaking about a small packet he had received in the post around the end of August. This in itself wasn't unusual. Genesis tended to receive small gifts and tokens from his fans on an enviably regular basis, but this particular packet had contained a Shinra standard issue pen-disk, upon which he had found the files of Project G up to its most recent reports.
The envelope, he said, had been stamped in Wall Market and sent out on a weekend, a time when most of Shinra Tower was empty as employees enjoyed a day off. Genesis had, allegedly, spent the next month trying to track down the packet's sender, but after long days of turning up nothing he had finally gone to his overseeing officer, Director Lazard.
"When I received the files, I didn't know what to believe," Genesis sighed, pushed back his hair from his face and wearily shook his head, and Hollander watched in dismayed incredulity as Bingsleydale nodded and apparently lapped up what had to be most hammy acting of existential angst Hollander had seen since the Winter Festival Soldier Pantomime. "I thought it was some kind of terrible and elaborate hoax, some horror story they had cooked up, perhaps to turn me against Shinra Company, to make me suggestible to some scheme of revenge, which is why I eventually took it to Director Lazard. As my overseeing officer, I felt that it was only right that he knew there was someone in Shinra attempting to incite the Company's best Soldiers against it, and that since I hadn't been able to find the sender myself it meant that somebody potentially hostile to Shinra was still among us."
Genesis's eyes flickered up to Hollander to linger on him then return to Bingsleydale.
Bingsleydale adjusted his glasses, glanced down the table to Lazard. "And that is how you found out about the file leak, Director?"
Lazard nodded. "Yes, after a month of First Class Rhapsodos sitting and brooding on it."
A hairline crack appeared in the glass of water Genesis was sipping from, but the man said nothing.
Hollander cleared his throat. "Er…Excuse me, gentlemen?"
Eyes flickered his way.
"It is," Hollander took a deep breath, licked his lips, "regrettable that there was a leak from my department. Yes, yes! Regrettable! Most unfortunate, and I understand that Project G was my responsibility, but don't we have a more pressing concern on our hands?" He looked around the table, saw nothing but polite interest, mild at best, and threw up his hands in a gesture of desperation. "Well, what about this file leaker? The person who sent Genesis the Project G files! The chief culprit! Shouldn't we be focusing more on finding out who he is and what exactly he wants?"
"You need not worry about the source of the leak, Doctor Hollander." The hairs on the back of Hollander's neck stood on end as Tseng spoke, stretched in his seat and folded his hands on the table-top. "My colleagues are already investigating the matter. It is now a separate issue."
"As much as I'm sure Administrative Research appreciates the concern, Hollander, this inquiry is about you and your role as the head of Project G." Hojo chuckled. "And it really doesn't do to side-track the inquiry. It only makes things worse for you."
Hollander tried to laugh again but all he could summon was a tight, high-pitched wheeze. "But I haven't done anything!"
"And yet, all my Project files remain secure whilst yours have been revealed to the central experimental subject," said Hojo with a derisive snort. "Perhaps it is your inactivity that caused this problem in the first place. You were lazy, Hollander. If you had only taken the necessary security precautions concerning how the files could be accessed or stored, I'm sure that Project G would not have been leaked at all."
"You can't know that," Hollander protested, but whatever he said fell on deaf ears.
The meeting went on. Hollander could do nothing more than splutter and stammer as the men around him discussed just what exactly Hollander could have done to ensure Project G had remained secret. They largely seemed to be talking over his head.
He didn't even need to be there really. He could see it in the boredom in Bingsleydale's droopy eyes. The conclusion of this inquiry was foregone. President Shinra had probably sent his secretary in his stead with Hollander's dismissal left signed on the Presidential breakfast table.
"It is questionable whether Doctor Hollander has Shinra's best interests at heart at all," Hollander heard Lazard say above him and he briefly struggled out of trying to remember the time of the next fastest train to the slums to listen. "In August, First Class Rhapsodos sustained injuries in a training session with his fellow Firsts – "
And to Hollander's astonishment, Lazard produced a printed transcript of none other than that disastrous e-mail conversation. He looked up, saw Genesis's face and gleaming eyes, and suddenly everything clicked.
These two, they had teamed up. For vindictive reasons of their own, they were working together to bring Hollander down, and they had recruited Hojo to their cause, because Hojo was only too happy to have his position of Department Head become unchallenged and the Science Department funds diverted solely towards Project J.
According to Lazard, Genesis had gone to him straight after Hollander had examined his wounds from the VR room accident. Apparently, Hollander had made Genesis some 'very pointed suggestions' that they work together to 'correct the Company' from the inside, to somehow allow Hollander to become Head of the Science Department and various other garbled reasons. Genesis, being the loyal, model and exemplary Shinra Soldier that he was, had been quite horrified by the idea, and so had taken the incident straight to the Director of his department.
Concerned for the welfare of his Soldiers, Lazard had agreed to aid Genesis in testing Hollander. Together, they would try to learn how much Hollander had planned, what support he already had in the Shinra Tower, and the full extent of his ambitions, and after the two had gathered enough information, they had planned to trap him.
Lazard had offered his support as bait, using the Company rumours that he had been eyeing the Presidency as the hook ('Those rumours are, of course, completely untrue') and tweaked a program he had confiscated off a group of Soldier Thirds ('Just a bit of innocent fun – stupid fun, but they meant no harm in the development, and I have already had them disciplined accordingly') to bypass the Turk e-mail surveillance.
And Genesis? Genesis had played the part of the unwitting bridge between the two men.
Lies, all lies, Hollander wanted to cry, but there was nobody there to listen.
"This is most irregular," muttered Bingsleydale, frowning at the transcript. "Why did you not think to contact the Department of Administrative Research? Such investigative work is surely their area - ?"
"Apologies, Secretary, but I am the reason for the delay."
"You, First Class Rhapsodos?"
"I had a personal grievance against Doctor Hollander," said Genesis, oozing guilt and humility like Hollander had never seen before. Gods, he was a terrible actor. "Before I knew of degradation and the truth behind Project G, I thought that Hollander had botched the treatment of the wound I sustained in the accident and that that was the reason for why it was failing to heal in the normal way. I felt that he had been too distracted by his grand plans to treat me as I needed, and so I asked Lazard to work with me to bring this man's true intentions to light." Genesis lowered his voice to a biting whisper: "I wanted to be the one responsible for the end of this man's career - Me, my hands and my efforts. Not the Turks."
"That being said, some considerable time has passed since the end of your communications with Doctor Hollander, Director." Tseng leafed through the copy of the transcripts that Lazard had given him with an expression of mild curiosity. "Why did you not come forward with this sooner?"
Genesis raised his hands. "Again, it was on part of a selfish request of my own. My wound was experiencing complications in healing. I couldn't let Hollander go when I still needed him to see to the wound, but," his eyes flickered up across the table, his mouth curved into a grim smile, "then I received the files of Project G and realised that I was probably better off without him."
A slow scrape of a chair being pushed back. Hollander found himself slowly rising to his feet.
Bingsleydale set down his pen. "Is there something the matter, Doctor?"
Hollander raised a hand, swallowed and shook his finger at Genesis. "I," he dropped his voice, "I created you. You were made from my science, pieced together through my theories – you, Genesis, were my idea. I made you what you are, and so long as the Project continues, you need me - "
"Need you?" Something ugly rippled over Genesis's face like the shadow of raised hand. "Me, need you? On the contrary, Doctor. I think you would find that, since I am your experiment, you need me. Yes, I know fully well that you made me. You dreamed me up and made me the monster you wanted, but I'm not supposed to know that, am I? And if you had continued to have your way, I still wouldn't know, so apologies, Doctor, if all the years you've spent running my piss and blood through a thousand and one machines behind my back hasn't instilled some sense of gratitude in me."
"Genesis, you – "
"Doctor Hollander," Tseng barely raised his voice, but it was enough. Hollander flinched and remembered where he was. "Please, sit down."
"Yes, Doctor," Genesis's eyes glowed like torches, "you should sit down."
And Hollander could feel the noose tightening, choking his breath, making his head spin, so he did as they told him, the pack of liars (or were they really? He wasn't sure anymore), and sank into his chair.
"Gentlemen, I would like to keep this discussion civil, thank you." Bingsleydale glanced pointedly around the table. "As expected of honest Shinra Company men."
Hollander looked down, staring at the whorls in the wood, his own reflection, anything but at Genesis across the table.
"Yes, of course," Genesis all but purred. He sat back and crossed his arms and legs. "As expected of honest Shinra Company men."
Half an hour later, Bingsleydale collected up his notes and left the room. He had gone to take the minutes of the inquiry to the President. Supposedly the President would read them from when he had returned from whatever matter he was attending to and make a decision concerning Hollander by the following evening at the latest, but nobody in the room truly believed in that.
After Bingsleydale had gone and the inquiry was brought to a close, Hollander was the first to flee the room, fumbling the door handle in his hurry to get out.
Genesis was stretching the kinks in his neck and back in the corridor, almost happy enough to ignore the cold numbness spreading out from his left shoulder, when a voice called out to him from behind.
"First Class Genesis Rhapsodos."
Genesis turned and graced Tseng with one of his most benevolent of smiles, because he was in a good mood, and good moods ought to be spread around, like dirty laundry. "Do you need something, Tseng?"
"Just a small matter." If Tseng was taken aback by Genesis's unusually good mood, he didn't show it. "If it isn't any trouble to you, my colleagues have requested your laptop."
"My laptop?" Genesis drew himself up straight and looked Tseng down his nose."Well, of course, it is a trouble to me, I was planning on doing some work this evening – "
"Since this was an inquiry concerning a leak of files sensitive to the Company's reputation, we cannot overlook potential sources of it leaking any further. Presumably you opened those files on your laptop?"
"Well, yes, I did."
"Then we simply need to check that all traces of the files are erased from it. If your work is urgent, we can provide you with a temporary replacement. It shouldn't take long, not more than a couple of hours." He had a feeling that Tseng was studying him a little closer than usual. "This is the routine procedure for this kind of case, and you have nothing to hide from us, after all."
"Nothing to hide?" Genesis gave out a sharp bark of laughter. "Every man has something to hide, especially in this building. I should think you know that better than I do." Tseng flexed one eyebrow, but remained silent. "Alright. You can have my laptop. When would you want it?"
"Immediately, if possible."
Genesis may often have been called reckless, but he wasn't careless. He had long deleted his e-mails with the Stranger and, as far as his records went since, he was clean of any contact with him. Still, he allowed himself a calculated pause. It never looked good to seem too relaxed about having your possessions examined by the Turks. "I shall have to fetch it from my office."
Tseng bowed his head. "Then I will accompany you there."
Genesis struck out down the corridor and Tseng fell into step just a little behind him. Genesis had little issue having his back turned to a Turk. If the mood took him, he could kill Tseng blindfolded wherever he stood in Genesis's immediate vicinity, but what really mattered was that Tseng didn't walk alongside him.
That spot was reserved for Genesis's friends and equals alone.
The buzz from Genesis's PHS, just after Tseng had left his office with his laptop, didn't surprise Genesis. In fact, he had been greatly anticipating this moment and he snatched up the device from his table with a thrill of excitement, because the Thundaga had struck.
What did surprise him was to be greeted, not with an unopened e-mail, but with a blinking purple alert from his Shinra intranet instant messaging service. Genesis pulled a face. He wasn't in the habit of using the IMS – didn't like the way he felt it cheapened the written word - but he would make an exception for this case.
The communication channel opened up on the screen, and a soft green speech bubble dropped into view.
What do you think you're playing at?
The Midgar Zolom had finally reared its ugly head. Genesis laughed and tapped his reply. I presume you've done something to make this channel secure?
Of course. The speed of the Stranger's reply alone made it feel like a snap. That isn't the point. You. What are you doing? Why did Tseng take your laptop? What have you done?
Genesis hummed contentedly to himself. Don't you know?
There was a long pause which struck Genesis as just about enough time for somebody to wrestle with their temper.
A light chime, another message: You had a meeting with Lazard, Hojo, Hollander, one of the President's men and Tseng. What was it about and why did Tseng take your laptop afterwards?
In a series of long messages that made Genesis's thumb ache to type, he told the Stranger everything that had happened since they had last spoken, focusing especially on the excellent use he had made of the Project G files, and ending it his messages on the wonderfully upbeat note that Hollander would probably be shot the following evening.
You did say that the file was mine to do what I liked with, he pointed out, when the Stranger continued to remain silent and the time started to drag, so I used it to get my own revenge on 'Shinra and all its secrets'. It isn't any different from what you are doing. By the way, what exactly have you been doing this past month?
That is none of your business.
So for all your talk of Shinra's secrets and revenge, Genesis tapped out with the same mad impulse as he had once dropped a lobster he had bought in Wall Market on a sleeping Sephiroth's face, it seems as though, between the two of us, I'm the only one who's actually achieved something.
Nervous footsteps pattered up to the door of his office and were followed by a quiet knock. Genesis glanced up from his PHS, called out, "If it's made of paper and I'm not allowed to burn it, go away."
The messenger paused, then a hurried creak of leather and squeak of soles signaled their hasty retreat down the corridor. Genesis settled into his chair and returned to the conversation.
A chime, a small green bubble: You have no idea what you've done.
Genesis raised his eyebrows. Well, if only the Stranger had actually cared to tell him what he was up to, maybe Genesis would have some idea.
He didn't tell the Stranger that though. He thought it made him sound whiny, so instead he typed: Actually, I think you'll find I know exactly what I've done. I set the Turks on you, and considering how you responded to Tseng taking my laptop, you know what that means.
Oh, Cloud knew exactly what that meant. It meant that Genesis was an insufferably malicious prick.
At least it explained the sudden burst of activity around the Department of Administrative Research computer terminals. It looked as though they were setting up for a series of probes and sweeps, quite a large scale sweep too, probably looking for hacking entry and exit points, or simply suspicious computer activity from one of the Company's users – whatever it was that the Turks thought they needed to do to flush out who took the Project G files from Hollander's area.
In any case, if Lazard had given Tseng the e-mail transcripts of his conversation with Hollander, he had probably explained how the surveillance bypass worked. Cloud wouldn't be able to use Lazard's program to cloak his e-mails anymore, which was a pain, but not as bad a loss as it might have once been. He had been tinkering with Lazard's bypass in the past month (every artificial intelligence needed its hobby) and had worked out a couple of bypasses of his own.
But thanks to Genesis, the Turks were now aware that there was somebody acting against the Company, intentions unknown but likely hostile, with computer…er…'skills' and access to the Company internal affairs.
And, to cap it all, Genesis had apparently guessed that Cloud was somebody within the Company (quite accurate in a manner of speaking) and suggested this to the Turks via his goddam story of a 'Shinra issue pen-disk'.
If Cloud had teeth he would have ground them down to the gums.
I thought I said, he kept the Turk activity firmly at the edge of his awareness, that I would help you find a cure.
Yes, you did, Genesis typed into the PHS, at the same time as footsteps approached his door once again, the same nervous steps. He rolled his eyes and called out before the messenger could knock: "Don't even think about it."
The messenger shrank back from the door and went away.
Genesis turned back to his phone.
The Stranger had asked: And how do you think I'm going to help you when I have the Turks sniffing after me?
Genesis tapped his phone against his chin. I'm sure you'll figure out something. Consider the Turks an incentive to 'get a move on'. You were being much too dull this past month, Stranger. Do something.
Cloud finally understood just what kind of man he had made himself known to and inwardly groaned. Trust Genesis to set the Turks on Cloud's tail because he was bored.
Now Cloud was going to have to do something drastic. He needed to do something that would distract the Turk investigations whilst Cloud worked out how to hide himself from their scans. So much for subtle. What could he possibly do?
Hollander was going to be shot. Oh, he had no doubts that he would be, given what Genesis had told him, and he had already spotted Hollander running to his office and beginning to cram things into a carpet-bag. Apparently Hollander thought much the same.
Hollander's death wasn't something Cloud had planned or predicted he would have to deal with. What would it do to the Science Department? Would it affect Cloud's plans at all?
It would, he realised with a sickening lurch. It would affect his plans.
With Hollander gone, Hojo would lose his chief rival in the Science Department and the balance of power, already skewed to Hojo, would be tipped out of control.
Hojo, as the unchallenged head of the department, would probably take control of Project G whilst the new project leader got to grips with the ropes (or the Gilson's pipettes, whatever the lab equivalent was) of their responsibility and divert the funding, that would otherwise be split between the two Projects, to largely fund Project J. Cloud had already seen enough memos passed around the Science Department to know that Hojo held the team and subjects of Project G in utter contempt. He would have little interest in sustaining the Project beyond Hollander's death.
With Hollander gone and nobody in the department to keep him check, Hojo's power and influence in Shinra would increase, progress on Project J would accelerate, and Hojo would not only have Sephiroth but Angeal Hewley and Genesis Rhapsodos in his reach to do as he liked with, which was all the complete opposite to what Cloud wanted!
What could he do? What could Cloud do?
An idea occurred to Cloud with all the gentleness of one of Tifa's fists to his face.
The opposite, he realised, blinking through a haze of panic, the opposite had to happen!
If Hojo died, Shinra would have little choice but to keep Hollander on. He was the only one in the Department who was even close to Hojo's level of experience with Jenova and her cells. Then the balance of power in the department would tip, but they would tip towards Project G instead. Project J would be crippled.
Wait, Cloud, wait.
He forced himself to slow down. Was there any way in which Cloud could stop either scientist being killed at all? Removing either Hollander or Hojo would mean they would be replaced by a complete unknown, not only to Cloud but likely to rest of Shinra as well, given how much Hojo and Hollander dominated the face of the Science Department. Everybody assumed that their subordinates were a bunch of shoe-kissing minions, but they might prove differently once given a chance to step out Hollander or Hojo's shadow.
An unknown element added unpredictability. Could Cloud afford that in his plans? To derail the past beyond such recognition that he might not know what to do with it?
He heard, or rather felt, it was difficult to tell in the world of the Shinra mainframe, a papery rustle like a bundle of reeds being slapped against a wall. Long tendrils of probing code had, at last, unfurled from the Turk terminals and started creeping out into the mainframe like a slim-fingered electric frost.
Dilly-dally, shilly-shally, always dragging your heels.
No, he didn't have time for this, and who was Cloud talk about unknown elements adding unpredictability when he had gone and spoken to Genesis of all people? If he could handle a wild card like Genesis Rhapsodos, he could, and he would, deal with whatever came next in the Science Department.
The choice was between Hollander and Hojo.
Choice? What choice? There was only ever one answer!
Is that all you want from me? Cloud sent Genesis, watching the Turks getting their act together and musing that it felt a lot like seeing the gathering clouds of a snowstorm. The probe code frost inched through his space at a stately pace.
It depends on what exactly you do to make up for a month without a single performance, Genesis replied breezily. He waited for a response. Hello? Are you still there?
When nothing came back after ten minutes of staring at the screen, Genesis closed his PHS and set it on his desk. Maybe the Stranger was busy dodging the Turks now. The thought made him smile. There was nothing like a fire under the tail feathers to keep a little bird flying.
The messenger with the squeaky shoes knocked on the door again. He was an intern from Marketing, or Human Resources, or maybe PR, Genesis wasn't really listening. He took the papers the intern handed him and shooed the boy away.
It only occurred to Genesis half an hour after the conversation just how extraordinarily quickly the Stranger had found out about the laptop. It was as if the Stranger had been outside his office, watching Tseng leave with it.
For all his enhanced hearing though, Genesis couldn't recall having heard anybody there.
" – so I went to check in on Genesis, like Angeal asked me to, and you know what, Kunsel? I don't know what the fuss was about. So much for lonely! I don't think I've ever seen him in a better mood than when he's out frying the butt off the Midgar Zolom."
"Zack, watch where you're – " Zack's face smacked into the door. Kunsel sighed and put his head in his hands. "Too late."
Grimacing and rubbing his nose, Zack picked himself up off the floor and blinked the tears from his eyes. "Damn, that actually hurt. What just happened?"
"You picked a fight with a door and lost. Better luck next time, Zack." Leaving Zack to splutter indignantly in the background and pull himself together, Kunsel stepped up to the door. Just as he suspected, the door did not move. "The door's locked."
Zack frowned, not at Kunsel, but at the door of the VR room, which instead of sweeping open before them in a display of automated, computerised glory, stayed resolutely shut. "Did you leave your card in the access slot?"
"No. Did you?"
Zack reached for his back pocket and pulled out his battered Shinra access card. The photograph on it was so scratched it looked as though it had been taken in a blizzard. "Got mine right here."
"Well, it looks as though the door's locked itself then." Kunsel bent down to examine the door. "Maybe you broke the lock-system when you walked into it. It wouldn't be the first thing you've walked into and broken. Remember those lamp-posts in Sector Six?"
"Hey, Kunsel, you're supposed to side with me against the inanimate objects, not guilt-trip me over them." Nevertheless, Zack's face reddened. He scratched the back of his neck. "How long do you think it would take for maintenance to come by?"
"If you were Sephiroth, probably three minutes. If you were a First, probably twenty, but since we're both Seconds – "
"You mean, 'handsome, charming and Kickass-in-Training' Seconds? That's got to count for something, right?"
Kunsel sighed. "I'd say we'd be lucky if they came in an hour."
Zack was about to throw up his hands in a gesture of despair when there was a soft click, and the door slid open with a hiss.
They looked at each other with wide eyes. Then Zack gave out a loud 'Ha!' of triumph and thrust a finger in Kunsel's face. "And just what were you saying about me breaking the lock?"
Cloud withdrew from the VR room card access and lock system.
He had what he needed.
It was over. Everything was over. The cards had been dealt, Hollander had no aces, and what cards he had had been smeared over and blackened until even he couldn't tell what they were anymore.
Now he was collecting his things together, desperately salvaging whatever he could: his papers, lists of contacts, things he could sell or barter in the slums, anything, no time for everything, just enough things to get him somewhere safe. Maybe he should take the first aid kit from the bottom drawer? Or what about that emergency torch?
He yanked open drawers, slammed them shut, tossed whatever he found into a carpet bag with the same frantic haste as a robber might pack his sack with stolen goods.
The President's decision had yet to be officially announced. Hollander, however, was no under illusion that there would be any result other than one that served up his head on a silver platter drizzled in his own blood. He had to flee Shinra Tower whilst he still had the breath and pulse to run and keep running.
He had some idea for a safe-house: The old apple juice factory in Banora - that was where he would go. It was quiet and out of the way, undisturbed for years. Nobody would notice his arrival or know that he was there. He also knew Banora and its underground network of caves and caverns better than the back of his hand (because usually his hands were covered in latex). If he ever needed an emergency exit or to lose a pursuant, all he had to do was go down there. Yes, the old factory in Banora would be perfect.
Maybe he should arrange for a message to get to Gillian? Or Angeal? No, he shouldn't think about messaging anybody. That was much too final and simply asking for fate to come knocking on his -
A neat rat-a-tat-tat on the office door. Hollander jumped. The carpet bag slipped from his fingers, thudded onto his desk. He winced then cursed quietly as a voice called: "Doctor Hollander, are you in there?"
Something small and scared inside him shivered. "Who is it?"
"Administrative Research, Doctor Hollander! May I come in?"
That small scared thing squeaked and curled into a wretched little ball. "Yes." There was nowhere to run and no point in trying to hide. Hollander left the bag on top of his desk and sank into the chair. "Yes, of course. Come in."
The young woman who stepped through the doorway was tall, fair, and, as required of her department, dressed sharp in a tailored suit. Slung over her shoulder was an old leather trombone case, covered in colourful stamps and stickers and vibrant travelling tags.
Closing the door behind her, she glanced around the room, taking in the half-open drawers, the gaps on the bookshelves, the bag lying open on the desk alongside a yet-to-be-packed laptop, before returning to Hollander, who was too busy dabbing his face with a handkerchief to notice her moving across the space between them.
"Would you mind if I took this chair?"
She had her hand on the backrest of the chair in front of Hollander's desk, the one usually reserved for his guests. He gestured for her to take it, then watched her as she picked up the chair in one hand and set it down in front of the office door, turning it so that it faced into the room.
When she sat down, she flashed him a dazzling smile. "Thank you!"
Hollander grimaced, but forced himself to smile back. "Not at all."
She pulled the trombone case onto her lap and undid the clasps. The lid sprang open with a sharp double-click, and out of the case she lifted something long, polished and made of fused metal pipes that was, most certainly, not a trombone.
She shut the case, kicked it across the floor and held up a shotgun.
"You see, Doctor Hollander, it's sad and unfortunate, but sometimes the subjects of our Company inquiries get a little bit panicky whilst they're waiting for results and they end up doing some strange, silly and regrettable things."
Hollander sucked in a breath as the dark barrel of the shotgun was trained upon his chest. "Do they now?"
"Oh yes, quite often, in fact, so I'm here to keep you company and entertain you until the President decides what has to be done," the Turk woman told him brightly, one finger gently, oh so gently, tapping and stroking the trigger of her gun, but never squeezing. She smiled. It lit up her face like a gunshot. "There's a pack of cards in my case. I hope you don't mind shuffling - my hands are a bit full."
On Floor 68, the scientists of Hojo's laboratory were clearing up after a hard day's work.
Hojo was hunched over the keyboard in front of the computer, stroking his chin and muttering as columns and columns of numbers and abbreviated protein names streamed past his eyes.
Behind him, his subordinates were spraying surfaces, wiping them down, disposing of broken glassware, incinerating latex gloves, and checking incubator settings for the night. Some were finishing their filing, others taking down notes from the end-of-aisle whiteboards. Microscopes were being cleaned and bagged. Cabinet hinges were squealing as they were opened and closed in quick succession. Hands pumped alcohol gel at the ends of the benches, and feet were turning towards the doors.
Hojo would remain in the laboratory a little longer. He would be going over the day's studies with his most trusted subordinates, in other words, the ones that unquestioningly did as they were told and, despite being brilliant scientists, were foolish enough to believe that they were irreplaceable.
Tonight would be a little different from the norm. Hojo had to decide which useless goon to place at the head of Project G for when Hollander was gone. It was tricky. Ideally he needed somebody useless enough to steer Project G into the ground, but not so useless that they couldn't keep control of Project G's team and end up falling to a coup. The balance between useless and competent needed to be just right, in much the same way as science required work within a paradigm as well as collected anomalies with which to shift it -
Hojo rolled his eyes and span round in his chair. "What are all you imbeciles doing?"
Over the past few minutes, he had sensed some commotion developing around the laboratory entrance. There were only a handful of scientists left in the room. One of them was repeatedly pushing the green exit button at the side of the door, looking somewhat bemused. Another three seemed to be trying to prise open the door with their fingers. Two were examining a control panel in the wall that didn't seem to be providing very much in way of control.
"Sir," piped up one of the braver scientists, "the door just suddenly locked itself. We're shut in. Lingfield just called maintenance, but they said that they've been getting a lot of calls about doors suddenly locking themselves today, and that when they went to check those doors, they'd all unlocked before maintenance got there. They're telling us to wait half an hour before calling again."
A green light flickered on over the doorway. There was a low-pitched whine, a heavy clunk, and something in the ventilation shifted.
"Biohazard Level Three containment procedures initiated," announced the speakers. "Commencing Laboratory 681 shutdown."
The scientists stared in baffled silence as a sheet of steel, gunmetal grey and inches thick, slid smoothly down over the door in front of them and across the passageway to the living specimen holding room at the laboratory's other end.
Before they could begin to panic, Hojo pushed himself up from his computer and raised his voice so as to be heard by the increasingly agitated group by the door.
"Gentlemen, if you have been effectively keeping abreast with all that we do here in this laboratory, as is expected of you, you should be well aware that we not only haven't done any research involving a Level Three substance in the past six months, but have neither procured nor stored one in this facility for the past three. This," Hojo thrust a finger at the flashing green light, the hiss of the ventilation in his ears, "is a malfunction. A computer error - a simple computer error, caused no doubt by a simple-minded human fool, as these sorts of things often are. There is no need to worry - "
"Specimen holding chamber autolock disabled," announced a voice from beyond the seal to the specimen holding room, muffled by the steel.
"That isn't part of the shutdown procedure," whispered one of the lab technicians, whose name Hojo didn't know and frankly had never cared to find out. It was possibly Fish. The man certainly looked like one then, with his mouth opening and closing as if he was choking on air.
"No." Hojo pushed his glasses up his nose and considered the sealed off passage to the specimen holding rooms. "No, it isn't."
All of a sudden, one of the scientists flung himself at the steel wall. "Help!" he bellowed, slapping at the metal with his palms. "Come on, there's got to be somebody out there! Hey, if you can hear us, you've got to help! There's seven of us trapped in here and the emergency systems and locks are going insane - "
"I'm calling maintenance, Professor."
"Why? Whatever for? If you think that we're about to be killed by a monster, you should be calling Soldier, not some handyman with a sink plunger."
"Biohazard Level Three containment procedure – pro-pro-procedure-procedure-over-" the announcement was buried under a thick burst of static and broken up like a shaken puzzle, then when the pieces fell back into place it continued on "-override- manual override initiated."
In a series of jerks and screeches of scraping metal, the steel lock at the other end of the laboratory started to rise, and in the passageway beyond, something was pacing to and fro with soft padding steps.
When the seal was lifted half-way, the monster stopped and its clawed feet turned towards the laboratory. A nose appeared in the gap, shiny and dark like a beetle, more like a beak than a nose, and snuffled at the air. Nostrils flared, shrank then flared again.
Pressing its belly to the floor, it squeezed into the room, scrabbling at the tiles with long, almost human, fingers then rose to stand on all six of its feet.
It was black, lean with the slippery sleek movements of a greased panther. Six eyes flashed green from the warning light still blinking over the doorway behind the group of scientists. Six fleshy tendrils of what looked like feelers grew out from its neck, curling about its face, and what was left of its face that wasn't piggy eyes or tiny nostril was almost entirely mouth, and of its mouth, its mouth was almost entirely teeth, filled with row upon row of needle-thin shards like a mouthful of shattered glass.
A long time ago in the monster's history, it had once been other things. It had once been pieces of monster exoskeleton grown in the laboratory. It had once been shards of materia, embedded into muscle, but it had largely once been a leprous man from Gongaga Shinra had found in the slums, cheated into drinking a specially prepared formula to 'cure his illness', but of the origins of monster Black VIII, only Hojo was left of the original team to know them.
Perhaps somewhere deep in Black VIII's shredded mind, under the torrent of all of its screaming and snarling thoughts, it remembered Hojo and knew him, if not from the man's role in its creation, then from the days, months, and years under a knife or a needle that had come after.
With a light hop it landed in a crouch on top of a lab-bench, then it bounded forwards, spattering bright pink and blue pawprints over the benches as it smashed through bottles of stains, and in three, four, five bounds, it was leaping with its claws outstretched and its mouth wide open, tearing through the scientists like paper dolls to sink its teeth into Hojo's throat.
Thank you for reading.
Best, Zen :D