"Sephiroth, what are you doing?" Zack asked, aghast.

"I will take care of Angeal." Unmindful of the dripping liquids, Sephiroth used his bare hands to lift Angeal out of the container.


Zack didn't know how much time passed. He didn't know how long he stayed still, lying on his side on the earth, shivering and numb. Sometimes weeping, sometimes gagging.

The sun rose higher. Sunbeams slanted through gaps in the trees; shadows spread where branches and trunks blocked the light. The forest around him gradually came back to life. Birds chittered and warbled, their songs blending with the stream's burbling waters.

Slowly, Zack lifted his head and looked around. The A-Ahrimans surrounding the campsite still slumbered, flopped in ungainly positions, grumbling out weird snores in their even weirder repose. At least they remained asleep. That meant that Angeal...Angeal's head and his body...probably both were also still asleep...

Zack shoved himself up into a seated position. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He avoided looking at Angeal's specimen container. He looked everywhere else. The forest, the stream, the dried remains of vomit that the earth had mostly absorbed, his bedroll, the piles of supplies Sephiroth had left with him. A bird fluttered between the branches, making them rustle. With a burst of frantic energy, he stood up and practically ran to the stream.

For a long moment he just stared down at the clear, running water. Then he dropped to his knees beside it. It reflected his own features back at him, wavery and distorted, with haunted, desperate eyes.

Angeal grew an Ahriman, his mind whispered. Angeal is an Ahriman.

He's...He's a human head with an Ahriman for a body.

A splash of cold water on his face helped him ground himself. Then another. And another.

This was not how Angeal's regeneration was supposed to go! He was supposed to grow a human body—his own body! Hells, Zack would be fine if Angeal even regrew a set of wings, but... But not a monster's body. Not an Ahriman's body.

Two-way conduit...

Zack rinsed the sour remnants of vomit from his mouth and spat, then fell back on his rear and wiped the water from his face. He drew his legs up against his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and stared hard at the nearest two A-Ahrimans. They peacefully snored a few meters away from him, leaning against one another in an ungainly heap of limbs, bat wings, and unnatural flesh-armor fusions. They must have been close together when they'd been hit with Zack's crazy, panicked Sleepel.

The copies had some kind of link with Angeal. It must have affected Angeal's regeneration, but how— How—?

How could that even work? Zack's mind scrambled for options. Though he'd never given it serious thought, he'd just assumed Angeal would need bodily contact to acquire genetic traits from another creature. Some sort of physical transfer of cells or DNA or...or something. Something real. But his head was locked up, isolated, in that specimen container. The A-Ahrimans never touched him.

Zack turned away from them, and Angeal's container came into view. Unwillingly, his eyes locked on the clear cylinder stuffed full of flesh. Angeal's head was still shoved to the top, angled awkwardly to one side. His eyes remained closed. Beneath him, attached to his neck, the Ahriman body rested, motionless, inert with the Sleep status effect. Its giant eye remained closed, its horrible jaws slack, its claws, wings, and tail relaxed, not trying to scratch out of cramped confinement as before.

The circulation equipment at the container's base gurgled and whined, overworked, straining to push the remaining fluid through tiny gaps between the jar and the compressed, distorted tissues.

Had Angeal absorbed all the nutrient liquid while regenerating? There wasn't room remaining in there for much. Trapped in the jar, the Ahriman body was too small, far too small for an adult Ahriman, so Zack knew it still needed to grow, but the confined space and lack of fresh nutrients kept it stunted. Its spindly legs and wings were folded and pressed tight against its veined skin. For that constraint, he should thank whatever Powers granted mercy, but he refused. He knew they had none for him or his friends.

"How?" Zack whispered into the woodsy air. "Why?"

Neither Angeal nor the A-Ahrimans answered.

"I'm so sorry, Angeal," Zack said.

He looked up. The sun burned overhead, high in the sky. He checked the time. It was early afternoon.

What was he supposed to do now?

He spent the next hour avoiding that question and all his others.

Salvation came in the uneven rumbling of an old engine. Zack stood while the truck parked. He heard it shut off, and then a door opening and closing. Sephiroth. Sephiroth had returned. Zack walked over and met his friend and former superior halfway. His mouth opened, and nothing came out but a little whine. His throat was too dry. He worked some spit around his tongue and cheeks, swallowed, and managed a weak "Sephiroth. You're finally back."

Something in his expression must have registered to Sephiroth, whose brows knitted. "Zack? What's wrong?"

That shoulder-length, brown hair still looked strange. The second-hand sweatshirt and jeans even stranger. Sephiroth's eyebrows were darker—he must have done something to them while in town. Probably makeup of some kind. Zack stared for a moment, adjusting his expectations, then gestured with a trembling arm to Angeal—to what Angeal had become. Sephiroth's gaze followed. His face grew impassive and immobile.

"He's an Ahriman," Zack said quietly. "He's becoming an Ahriman."

Sephiroth was silent.

In the background, the A-Ahrimans cooed and grumbled and shifted. Giant eyes blinked behind armored visors, claws and bat wings stretched with comfortable languor as they finally came out of their unnatural sleep. Did the mutated A-Ahrimans have some odd resistance to Sleep status effects? Angeal still slept, but maybe that was why his horrible new body had wakened while his head remained comatose.

"We have to get rid of the copies," Zack stated, at last admitting the obvious conclusion. He stared straight into Sephiroth's worried face, but images of Angeal's monstrous new form overrode his sight. "I think— They've affected him somehow. Influenced his regeneration...something. I don't know how, but they must have."

In unnatural unison, the A-Ahrimans fully woke at last. They fluttered into the air, forming a protective circle around the campsite—around Angeal. One moved in close and gave the specimen container a tentative nudge, making a questioning vocalization. It sounded like a cross between a coo and a growl. Zack remained motionless, watching. Fondness and hatred warred within him. They were monsters. They wore Angeal's face. They'd destroyed him. They were part of him.

They'd helped Zack escape from Hojo's lab.

It didn't matter. Not now.

Zack's fingers twitched for his missing sword. For better or worse, it rested across the way in the piles of supplies and his hands remained empty.

Sephiroth looked from the copies back to Angeal's cramped jar. "I didn't think it would progress so quickly," he murmured.

"So quickly?" Zack uttered a laugh that bordered on hysteria. "Sephiroth, he had growth spurt after growth spurt during the time you were gone, and he became a monster! Tell me you found medical supplies that can deal with this. Are we going to leave him like this until we find Hollander? What are we going to do?"

"I have supplies," Sephiroth said slowly, still staring at what Angeal had become. "The IV fluids, the refrigerator, a larger container... It's all in the back of the truck. I also purchased thirty liters of sterile saline and some jugs of bleach for cleansing the specimen jars and equipment."

"Did you hear anything about Genesis or Hollander?" Zack demanded, fists clenching. "We need them. We need Hollander!"

"There was gossip around the hospital and the supply centers about missing equipment on the Western Continent, lower than expected levels of certain chemical reagents and blood products in different areas there. Farms and supply houses raided by strange flying monsters in the dead of night."

"Genesis copies?"

"They must be. The scuttlebutt claimed they resembled humans and each flew with just one large wing."

"On the Western Continent?"

"Yes," Sephiroth confirmed. "Scattered throughout the region between the Corel region and Rocket Town. As we speculated. It's a significant chunk of territory, so we'll still need to do some searching."

The word "significant" didn't even begin to cover it. That area covered a third of the continent.

It did narrow the search down a little bit, at least. The Genesis Army had set up small bases, bunkers, and supply depots all over the entire Planet, though most had been destroyed. They'd been in cave systems, old mines, mako extraction facilities, even in Midgar itself. Most of those wouldn't be suitable for Hollander's labs, though. He needed stable facilities, infrastructure, and power sources.

Surely there couldn't be too many places that qualified.

Zack asked, "Do they really gossip about things happening across the sea at other hospitals?" Focus. He needed to focus on the practical details. Not on... Not on what Angeal was becoming...

"The medical community is very tight knit. They keep in contact with one another, share information and techniques, and know every scandal. It all affects them no matter where they are located, so they make sure to stay informed. They even know what's going on in the larger clinics of Mideel and Icicle." Sephiroth never took his eyes off Angeal.

"Great, so we're going to have to figure out how to get to Corel or Rocket Town. But what about Angeal?"

"Indeed," was all Sephiroth said. He moved to kneel down by Angeal's container and switched off the circulator pump. The strained gurgling ceased. In the silence that followed, he opened the top, exposing the contents to air. Liquid sprayed as Angeal's head popped up like a grotesque Jack-in-the-Box. His face and hair glistened, dripping wet. Drops clung to his eyelashes, rolled down his cheeks like tears. The A-Ahrimans encircling them mumbled with curious monster growls.

"Sephiroth, what are you doing?" Zack asked, aghast.

"I will take care of Angeal." Unmindful of the dripping liquids, Sephiroth used his bare hands to lift Angeal out of the container. One hand supported Angeal's neck and head, holding them upright, the other rested beneath that bulbous body. Folds of sickly-pale monster flesh sagged over his arms. Clawed legs and wings drooped, and the tail hung down like limp string. The entire bundle dripped, making little spots on the earth. Sephiroth tenderly cradled Angeal against his chest, ignoring the way nutrient fluid soaked into his faded clothes. The image reminded Zack of how one might handle an infant, and arguably—

No. That monster-body was nothing like a baby!

"Zack, please get the saline and bleach and clean out the specimen jar. We'll need to start fresh. Then...then load everything back on the truck." Sephiroth looked down at the freakish, horrible fusion of man and monster he held and repeated, "I will take care of Angeal. It will be fine. Everything will be fine."