"FitzEvan! Or whatever the fuck your real name is! We meet again. Miss me?"

In a rather Pavlovian response, my muscles coiled tight at the sound of that jarring voice alone. Reno flashed me a toothy grin as he dropped himself into the chair on the right, while his partner took his customary place in the other one. I wondered what the bald man's purpose could be in these interrogations. He never said anything, rarely moved. Reno the chatterbox ran the show.

At the moment, however, the redhead was quiet. He was examining me with a thoughtful look on his face, as if mulling something over, while his fingers tapped a lazy beat against the table. His eyes paused as they passed over my left hand and darted up to meet mine. He'd noticed the missing ring, I realized. I was beginning to suspect that despite his seemingly disinterested demeanor, few things escaped the man's attention. He didn't say anything, however, and his gaze resumed its inspection.

I tried to keep an indifferent air, but as the silence stretched on, I couldn't help but fidget under his scrutiny. My nerves were shot. My injuries may have been minor, but they still bothered me, wearing me down with a dull, constant ache. The nights in my cell had been restless; the nameless dread had followed me even into what little sleep I'd managed to catch, depriving me of proper rest. In the mirror, a haggard face stared back at me; its paleness a stark contrast to the dark suits on either side of it.

How long had it been? I had no way of telling the time, but I would guess three, maybe four days since I first woke up here. No more than four days, and I was already a nervous wreck. Four days, and no sign of a rescue or a way out.

"Fitz, baby," Reno drawled, "we didn't end on a very good note last time. How 'bout we try again? A fresh start, eh?"

I said nothing. I didn't even look at him, just stared straight ahead into the lifeless eyes of my reflection.

"Let's talk 'bout why you trespassed on Shinra property. Let's see if we can figure out the 'how', too, while we're at it, eh?"

"I told–" The words scraped my vocal chords like sandpaper and I had to clear my dry throat before I could continue. "I told you already. It wasn't planned."

"So you're sayin' you ended up inside Shinra HQ, on a restricted floor in the city's single most secure building, by accident? A lil' farfetched, dontcha think?"

I released a slow, deliberate exhale. His condescending tone managed to pierce the fog dulling my sleep-deprived mind and irk me, but I couldn't come up with any sensible retort. I didn't feel like repeating myself, either, so I chose to remain silent.

"You sure you didn't, say, have a lil' help from the inside? Someone like, oh I dunno, a disgruntled middle manager with more debt than brains?"

I glanced at the speaking man's face, unsure of what he was getting at, but the intensity of the piercing stare that fixated my eyes made my heart skip a beat and I snapped them back ahead before fear could get the better of me. In the periphery of my view I was aware of a lopsided smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Turns out our last lil' chat had to be cut short 'cause of a bunch of morons dumb enough to use the access codes shit-for-brains had sold 'em. Headed for the Weapons Department, didn't get far. Friends of yours, by any chance?"

That didn't sound like the modus operandi of Cobalt Industries. It certainly wasn't my team of harmless technicians and scientists.

"No? Then I guess you won't be sad to hear they're dead, huh?"

Perhaps I should have been appalled by the casual reveal, but I was too drained to react to the harsh fates of strangers, even if it was intended as a foreshadowing of my own. Not a single muscle moved on the vacant face of my mirrored counterpart.

"You were headin' somewhere else tho', weren't ya? Why the labs? Tryin' to get your hands on Hojo's research?"

My forehead creased slightly. Labs? I didn't remember any labs apart from our own. Who was Hojo?

"Then again, who knows if you really are a scientist," the man mused out loud. Maybe he had misinterpreted my frown. "Maybe it was just good ol' sabotage. Were ya gonna release Hojo's critters? Wouldn't be the first time some tree hugger do-gooders had that particular bright idea for attackin' Shinra, yo."

He wouldn't keep asking questions forever. His tone had already sharpened with impatience. I had to speak, or the situation would escalate to something far more unpleasant than a mocking voice grating my ears.

"Look, I don't know what you're talking about," I explained with as much calm as my hoarse, unsteady voice could manage. "I had never even heard of Shinra before you mentioned it."

Reno laughed.

"Jeez, now I know you're lyin'. Everyone's heard of Shinra. You're one of 'em eco terrorists then? Causin' mayhem in the name of Mother fuckin' Gaia, is that it?"

"Gaia?" I exclaimed in exasperation, tired of both the constant dismissals and the nonsense he was spewing. "Who's Gaia?"

"C'mon, darlin', enough of the dumb act. The damn planet, of course."

I racked my brain for some kind of a connection between the strange names he was throwing at me. Maybe it was the stress, or the lack of sleep, but I couldn't make any sense of it. Nothing made any bloody sense right now. It scared me more than I would have expected. I had a talent for finding connections, seeing patterns. Why couldn't I see any now?

"Which planet?" I asked, hoping for something, anything, that would make the rest click into place.

The two men exchanged an odd glance.

"This one," the redhead said slowly.

My confused frown deepened. "You mean Earth?"

Reno's skeptical stare transformed into plain disbelief.

"We're in Midgar," he informed me all of a sudden, then continued when I gave no signs of recognition. "Y'know, kinda looks like a huge fuckin' pizza on a pole? Big reactors all around, glows green at night?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

I had never even heard of anything like what he was describing. Big pizza on a pole? It sounded ludicrous. The red-haired man narrowed his eyes and studied me with a curious look on his face.

"North of Junon, west of Kalm? Eastern Continent?"

"Eastern continent? You mean Asia?" I suggested uncertainly, then recalled the North American point of view. "Or Europe? Africa?"

"Uh... No. What about Costa del Sol, know that place? West of here, across the sea. No? Gold Saucer, then? Wutai? Mideel? Any of this ring any bells?"

With every unfamiliar name, the vague unease had grown to something akin to mild panic, making my breaths heavy and uneven.

"I don't know any of these places! Look, Cobalt Industries is an American company. I work at their research facility in Boston."

I had desperately hoped for instant recognition, but of course I had no such luck. It was Reno's turn to look puzzled.

"Huh?"

"I live in the United States of America," I clarified, feeling a cold trepidation settle in the pit of my stomach. "I have a dual citizenship, British and Canadian, and a permanent residency in the US. Check with the embassies!"

The words nearly stumbled over each other as I relayed the facts I should have told them yesterday, had I not been petrified by fear. However, none of them caused the reactions I had hoped for.

"Riiight," the redhead said, in a tone reserved for lunatics or senile old ladies. "Okay. That's enough for now, yo."

With that, the two men shot out of their chairs and exited the room. I stared after them long after the door had closed, fighting the anxiety that threatened to overtake all pretense of composure. Neither of them seemed to know any of those countries. Surely, that couldn't be possible? And all those places Reno had listed; names that said nothing to me.

Something was very wrong here.

My mind was a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts. It was all too overwhelming; I just couldn't focus on a specific one. Once I had been taken back to the relative privacy of my own cell, I lay down on the cot, closed my eyes and forced myself to take deep, slow breaths. Gradually, I was able to calm myself down enough to attempt a rational analysis of the situation.

A new, different world. It was Victor's ultimate goal for the Gateway project, albeit still very much theoretical and distant – or so we had thought. I should have realized it was a possibility. At first, everything had just seemed so...

I struggled to find the right word. The circumstances were hardly "normal", nor were they "unexceptional", considering the treatment I had been subjected to in the past few days. "Natural" could work, I suppose. It wasn't unreasonable to imagine myself in such a predicament on Earth.

Not only would it have been easier to identify the situation if I had landed on a completely alien planet, it would also have been easier to accept it. So much was similar here - no, identical. The language was the same – more or less, a wry part of my brain corrected me, remembering the red-haired man's sloppy slang – as were mannerisms, behaviors. Reno had even referred to human nature, for crying out loud. It should be impossible. It was impossible.

A frustrated snort escaped me. That was the best I could do? A scientific degree combined with years' worth of experience as a professional researcher, and all I could come up with was "impossible", despite the glaringly obvious proof to the contrary. I was here, wasn't I? It had to be possible, somehow.

Then again, was the evidence so waterproof? I scoured my recent memories for anything that would support the suspicion, but it was an exasperating exercise. I had seen nothing of the world beyond the cell and the interrogation room, so it boiled down to a handful of unfamiliar place names and my interrogators' claims and reactions. However, the latter had been rather convincing.

I grimaced and rubbed my temples, trying to alleviate the beginning headache. So many questions and so few answers. I would have to settle on a working hypothesis before the what-ifs drove me mad. So, operating under the assumption that I had been whisked away to a new world...

It was doubtful that I had just randomly ended up on a distant planet in our universe. The odds were, well, astronomical. There had to be a link. Some kind of parallel dimension? Not, that didn't sound right. This world was as three-dimensional as the one I came from. A parallel world, then? Parallel universe? I didn't know how to classify something like this. Did a proper classification even exist?

I huffed in frustration. If only Victor was here. He would have had a field day in a place like this, trying to unravel its secrets. It was literally his wildest dreams come true.

Victor... My chest constricted at the thought of my enthusiastic friend. The last memory I had of the man was him staring at me through the security glass after he had initiated the jump sequence. There had been a look of apologetic awe on his face as he watched the energy field expand and fluctuate around me until my vision rippled like waves on water. The next second the floor had shaken violently and he'd been propelled through the air when the lab door was blown open by our assailants, and then... nothing. My mind was a blank. I had no idea what had happened after that. I didn't know if he had survived the attack.

Clenching my jaw, I dragged my mind away from those events, forcing myself back onto my original train of thought. I considered my options. There was no point in driving myself crazy with speculation on alternate worlds. Theoretical physics was Victor's field, not mine. Cellular biology, however, was a different matter. The question was, how could I use it?

I shifted on the bed, bending one arm under my head while the other rested across my waist, and stared up at the ceiling with eyes narrowed in thought. The main problem was lack of information. I could observe the people in my vicinity, but that would only give me some indication about behavior and external characteristics. My sample size would be pretty limited, too. I needed more data. Genetic material to compare with my own and a proper lab in which to conduct observational studies and experiments.

Alas, I doubted these Shinra people would be willing to set me loose in their labs if I just asked nicely; if they even had any I could use in the first place. I would need to look elsewhere. Judging by my crazy-haired interrogator's last line of enquiry, this world had its own scientists and researchers. Did they publish their results? Did scientific journals exist in this world? Or books? I frowned, disturbed by the idea of a world devoid of literature. What a miserable, joyless place that would be. Of course they had books here. They had to have books.

Then again, my experiences in this place had been pretty miserable and joyless. Come to think of it, I hadn't heard any music, either, or seen a single cup of coffee.

No books, no music, no coffee, and doomed to be tormented daily by odious men in black. I groaned and buried my face in my hands. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like I had landed in my own personal hell. Maybe I had died during the attack and this was the punishment for my lack of belief in an afterlife or higher power.

Then again, maybe the answer was something much simpler. Maybe I had just gone insane. If so, my subconscious was more fucked up than I could ever have imagined.

I chuckled, toying with the ideas in my mind. Yup, looked like I had cracked the mystery. These were the only two sane explanations. The chuckle deteriorated into a manic giggle. I was either a nutcase or in hell. Tears began streaming down my cheeks and no longer knew if I was laughing or crying. But hey, every cloud has a sunny side, right? At least it couldn't get any worse.

Right?

When morning came, any lofty plans I may have concocted the night before were forgotten. The ache in my muscles had doubled – no, increased much more than just twofold – and my joints were stiff and sore. My throat was raw, as if I'd spent the night screaming. My mind was just... numb. Smothered in cotton. I lay motionless on the cot, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, and must have spent over ten minutes trying to form a coherent thought. My efforts were in vain. In the end, even the act of keeping my eyes open became too strenuous.

I awoke again when the cell door flew open, but my sluggish mind barely reacted. My eyes fluttered open to see the familiar uniforms of the guards. It was time. Inwardly, I cringed, but was unable to muster a visible reaction.

As they dragged me along, even my impaired mind couldn't help but notice the route was different than usual. An elevator ride confirmed it. The interrogation room was not our destination.

Perhaps I had been wrong? Maybe the doubt on the faces of my interrogators had not been due to lack of recognition, but fear of trouble on an international level? Could they be releasing me?

The floor indicator of the elevator was going up. I hadn't noticed what floor we had started on, but we were already at sixty. That didn't seem to fit the release theory. The burgeoning hope dissipated, leaving behind a hollow dread.

The elevator came to a halt on floor sixty-seven. By that time I was swaying in place while chills crept over my bare arms, goosebumps forming in their wake. I didn't feel well at all.

The doors slid open with a perky ding to reveal more brightly lit, pale gray walls and floors. As I was herded into the nearest room, the smell of antiseptic and the bare, sterile space gave me a medical impression of my surroundings. Was I in an infirmary of some sort? I hoped so; I needed one.

The guards stiffened as the door on the opposite side of the room opened and a man in a white coat shuffled inside. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing the prominent forehead, and his mouth was turned downward in a dissatisfied frown.

"Professor Hojo," one of the guards greeted. "This is the prisoner you requested."

My gut twisted upon hearing the word he used to refer to me. So much for my hopes of being released.

A younger woman hurried in after the man, also dressed in a lab coat and carrying a notebook and pen in her hands. Brown, wavy hair reaching her shoulders, pale skin, something of a nervous air about her. She hovered beside the professor while her restless eyes kept shifting between the people in the room, but didn't speak. The assistant, I concluded. Behind her, two others followed, though these were dressed in simple uniforms that resembled medical scrubs.

The professor peered at me over thin-rimmed glasses with cold, appraising eyes. There was something profoundly unsettling about the way he looked at me. There was no emotion, no empathy.

"Hm. Pale and sickly-looking, clammy skin, distastefully dull eyes. You don't look like a very exciting specimen, do you? Ah well, the tests will bring clarity."

I stared at him in stunned confusion. That didn't sound like a doctor's medical evaluation of a patient. Specimen? What the hell was he talking about? Specimen?

I wanted to demand an explanation, but all that my groggy brain could manage was a rather feeble one-word sentence.

"Wh-what?"

My flabbergasted question was ignored. The man's head jerked toward his assistant.

"Skin surface samples first, then sanitize the specimen before the rest of the tests. Follow the usual procedures and remember to document everything."

My puzzlement segued into incredulity, but no one else seemed to have a problem with the situation. The assistant's head bobbed up and down as she scribbled on her pad with furious speed.

"Yes, Professor."

With one last stare aimed at me down his long nose, Hojo stalked out of the room.

"Right," the assistant said, clearing her throat. "You two are dismissed. We will take over from here."

Her attempted tone of authority was moderately successful. The guards exchanged a brief glance, before one of them responded with a perfunctory "yes, ma'am". As they left, the man and woman in scrubs took their places.

"Examination room two," the assistant declared before leading the way through the door she had arrived from.

The two beside me grabbed an arm each in a tight hold and pulled me along after the woman. Considering my current state, their use of force was ridiculously out of proportion.

"Who are you people?" I croaked, forcing the words out even though each of them tore at my raw throat.

No answer; not even an acknowledgement of my question. The lab coat in front of me continued to swish back and forth in time with the assistant's brisk pace without pause. The orderlies didn't even look my way as my gaze flickered between their indifferent faces. The uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach morphed into full-fledged fear, its icy fingers clawing at my insides.

I was set down in an examination chair. I jumped when it moved to a half-reclined position without warning and the orderlies reacted by pushing me back down, then held me in place when I struggled. My pathetic efforts made no difference. The panic was rising, turning my breaths into shallow panting.

"What's going on?" I demanded, as loudly as my sore throat would allow. "What are you doing?"

The assistant had her back turned as she prepared an array of instruments on a steel trolley.

"Sedate the subject," she instructed, mild irritation in her voice. "I need her to be still for these samples."

My mind was recoiling, refusing to accept what was happening. What was wrong with these people? Now Reno's overt distaste for scientists made a whole lot more sense.

"No!" I yelled at the woman's back. "You can't do this! You can't just–ah!"

The sharp sting of an injection interrupted my protests, followed by a warmth that diffused from the needle into my arm. With only a few heartbeats, it had spread throughout my body, smothering my capacity for speech and movement in a soothing blanket of deceptively alluring languor.

"That's better." The assistant turned back, scalpel in hand, and reached for my arm.

"I'mmnnhgh," I pleaded, blinking sluggishly in a vain attempt to fight the effects.

The sedative brought with it the blessing of ignorance of what was being done to me. I knew the woman worked on my arm, hand and leg, but that was the extent of it. Then she said something about sanitizing, and the orderlies wheeled me out of the examination room.

Fluorescent lights raced above me, forming a glowing dotted line that traced my path down several corridors to an unknown destination. Along the way, I felt my head begin to clear. Perhaps the sedative was only intended for short periods of time. It certainly wasn't thanks to fresh air. The smell of antiseptic became stronger the further I was taken, as did other pungent, chemical odors I couldn't identify.

I was still too groggy to defend myself when the bastards ripped all my clothes off and hauled me into a small, tiled room. They left me in a heap on the floor and closed the door, while I stared at my surroundings in bewilderment, struggling to understand what had just happened. Then water burst forth from the ceiling, icy cold and harsh on my aching body, and tore a scream from my throat.

No, not just water. It smelled of detergent and stung my eyes, as well as the skin the assistant had damaged. I squeezed my eyelids shut and crawled over to the door, pounding on it with weak hands. I cried, I pleaded, I pummeled the door; but to no avail. Not even pressed up against the wall could I escape the relentless stream that pelted my skin with its frigid bullets.

When the hellish treatment came to an end and the door I had been leaning against opened, I just collapsed down onto the floor, unable to even use my arms to break the fall. My cheekbone smarted from the impact with the floor, but it was nothing compared to the feverish throbbing of my abused skin.

My eyelids drooped heavy, but I registered the scuffed pair of shoes that invaded my field of vision.

"Get up," someone commanded.

I stared at the shoes for almost a minute before I made the connection between their owner and the voice. The male orderly.

"She's still breathing, right?"

A different voice, female. His coworker.

"Yeah, and the sedative should've worn off by now. The bitch is just making trouble."

He was right about one thing: the effects of the drug was gone. I was intensely, agonizingly aware of my nakedness as I lay helpless and prone on the floor in front of strangers. Droplets of water trickled down onto the floor from my still form, but the ones rolling down my cheek were too warm to be remnants of the freezing barrage.

The man nudged my arm with the toe of his boot. "Come on, get up."

A deep, bitter resentment raked my chest, making my fingers curl up like claws against the floor. How could they treat me like this? Why? In what kind of a fucked up universe was this considered an acceptable alternative to letting someone take a shower like a normal human being?

The man let out an exasperated exhale, then seized my arms and yanked me up onto my feet. I cried out in pain, but the vice-like grip didn't budge. I stumbled over my own feet as he brought me over to the other orderly, who toweled me dry with rough swipes, ignoring my pained and mortified protests. When she was done, the pair wrangled me into a some kind of a disposable paper gown.

I was hoisted back onto the examination chair, now fully reclined, and restrained with leather straps around my wrists and ankles. Once more, I found myself pushed along Shinra's endless supply of bland corridors, interspersed with storage rooms of some sort. This time, however, I was aware of my surroundings and watched with openmouthed horror as we passed fluid-filled cylinders with... creatures in them. I had no better word for them, these nightmares in physical form that lurked within their phosphorescent prisons.

It was the almost human ones in the cavalcade of deformed monstrosities that made my stomach churn. Had all of these once been human? Were these more of Hojo's "specimens"? What in the name of all things holy were these depraved sons of bitches doing in here?

By the time my transport rolled to a halt, I was hyperventilating. I felt dizzy, my lips were tingling and I couldn't focus on the voices around me. I was cold now, shivering violently, which only worsened when the robe was cut off of my body.

A flash of light blinded me. Blinking away the bright spot, I caught glimpses of the faces of Hojo and his assistant hovering above me before another flash overwhelmed my eyes. Needles dug into my arms and I could hear one voice louder than the others, babbling incoherently. I think it was my own.

A darkness was creeping into the edges of my vision. My hearing was fading, too, and I could barely hear my own panicked gasps over the sound of my heart thundering in my ears. At last, the sickening reality grew distant as I fell into merciful, endless black.