Summary: Shinra's inability to build in a straight line hampers the team's desire to be quick and efficient, but it gives them a chance to talk about Tseng's offer, the future, and a bunch of other things that they might have avoided otherwise.

Chapter 17: Shinra's Deep Secret

After dealing with Rosso and some more hounds, there'd been huge gorgers not unlike the venowhatsits in the Sector 5 graveyard. Cloud had them scanned in his Assess materia, so the four of them had made short work of those. As monsters, they were 100 percent natural, so when Aerith said to let them dissolve into the Lifestream, Zack just shrugged.

They'd talked about the Lifestream in SOLDIER, of course, but the common attitude was that it was at worst superstition, and at best religion, and either way, it had no place in a science-based institution like Shinra.

Meeting Aerith had started him rethinking those ideas, but more in the vein of 'why not' than actual belief. After a month on the ground floor, talking with the people who lived in shacks but still made them home, he had a deeper appreciation for what the Lifestream could be.

He still didn't believe in Roman Shinra's version of the Promised Land, but he was willing to believe in Cloud and Aerith's.

Hopefully, none of them would find out for themselves during this little jaunt!

With Baz the Custodian leading from the middle, (carrying a broom handle as a weapon) they reached the elevator to Deepground with no wrong turns. It was a big freight one, with ugly metal doors and a frame painted yellow and black. The button lit up when he pushed it, so hopefully it was working.

After that, it was just getting Baz to the closest staircase out of here.

Again, Baz led from the middle. He told them to go right at the next T-intersection, but some sahagins were marching around the hallway looking like tall, angry lizards. Since there was a huge, dripping hole above their heads, and they occasionally tried to jump back up into it, Zack figured they'd fallen through from a different tunnel system. Too bad they weren't sentient; he'd've offered to toss them back up where they wanted to be.

Instead, as soon as one noticed their presence, the fight was on.

It wasn't fun – they hadn't asked to be dropped down into one of Shinra's Evil Labs, so killing them just seemed kind of pointless.

Plus, Tifa got turned into a frog, which didn't make her happy. At all.

While they waited for her to revert, they looked up at the hole the sahagins had dropped from. Considering the smell, Zack figured it was a sewer system.

They stood away from the drips, looking up. "We could throw Baz up there," Aerith suggested.

"Why would you do that?" Baz asked.

She said, "Might be safer up there than with us."

"Oh, hells no," he said, horrified. He clutched his broom handle tight, ready to poke it at anybody who tried to grab him.

Zack had to laugh. "We're not going to chuck you anywhere." He gave the guy a friendly shoulder pat that made him rock.

Tifa popped back up to her full size, which was still kind of tiny. "That was horrible! I feel slimy."

"At least there weren't any bugs for you to eat," Zack said cheerfully. He'd swallowed his share of insects while in frog form. It didn't kill you, but everyone he'd ever told that to had made interesting retching noises.

Tifa was no different.

With a laugh, Zack started up the corridor. The rest followed in the same order they'd established since leaving the break room: Zack and Tifa in front (giving him evil looks), Aerith and Baz in the middle, and Cloud guarding their rear.

It was oddly wonderful how well they'd clicked as a team.

Most of Zack's missions as SOLDIER had been solo. He'd been dropped off wherever, done the job. Then he'd get picked up and flown back to Midgar. The few times he'd been assigned a team, they'd been random infantry from the roster – it was how he'd met Cloud so many years ago.

That meant this was the first time he'd spent so much time fighting with the same group since the war, and he kinda liked it. Except for Baz, he didn't really have to worry about protecting anyone.

Well, he still worried, but not like before. It was nice. He bounced a little as he walked.

Behind him he heard Cloud ask Baz how he'd ended up in the secret sub-sub-basement. "No offense," Cloud said, "Don't seem the type to volunteer for evil lab clean up."

Baz waved at him. "No, that's…" Baz smiled. "It's actually a really nice thing to say. Thanks."

"No problem," Cloud said.

"Yeah, so. I got hired last month," Baz said as they continued along the corridor. It had a gentle slope down and a sharpish curve, which meant Zack had no bloody clue what was waiting for them ahead. "It was a good job, right? Decent pay, and you know, some bennies."

"Shinra offers benefits?" Tifa's voice said she didn't believe it, but Baz was nodding when Zack looked back.

"They're not great, but better than what I was getting at my last job."

There was a knocking sound, and everybody stopped. Zack inched to the right to check if the angle let him see anything. Nope.

The sound faded.

They resumed walking.

"You got hired a month ago," Aerith prodded.

"Yeah, well. Umm. To celebrate my first cheque, I went to this, uh, place in Sector 8."

"Goblin Bar?" Zack asked. It was where everyone he'd known in Shinra's military went to celebrate anything.

"Aahh. No. It was a place off of Loveless Avenue. You probably wouldn't know it."

"The Roost?" Cloud asked.

"You… You know The Roost?" Baz sounded surprised.

Zack looked back in time to see Cloud nod. "Been a time or two." Baz gave Cloud a long glance toe-to-top that Zack suspected was filled with speculation on what Cloud would look like without his clothes.

Zack caught his friend's eye and winked. Cloud raised an eyebrow and smirked – just a little.

Beside him, Tifa turned away abruptly. She was blushing and frowning, and it occurred to Zack that Tifa had also grown up in Nibelheim. A town small enough, and (according to Cloud) conservative enough, that it had had no words for people who weren't heterosexual.

He'd have thought a few years in lower Midgar would've cured Tifa of that awkwardness, but maybe it was harder for her to shake the small-town prejudice because she was fonder of her hometown than Cloud was. She hadn't rejected its values in the same way.

On the other hand, Zack had come from a small town too, and the various sexualities of people he'd encountered didn't bother him in the slightest. In fact, he'd been around enough sexy men to know he was only straight because Aerith was a girl. If she'd been a guy, he'd be as bent as a safety pin.

He reached a hand back blindly, wiggling his fingers at his girl. She gave them a squeeze.

"What happened at the bar?" Aerith asked.

"A lot of dancing," Baz said. "And maybe a little too much to drink. Enough that I didn't question when this mint bloke sat down beside me and started talking."

"Was he wearing a blue suit?" Zack asked,

"Uhh. No? Skin-tight jeans and a mesh top, actually."

Cloud snorted. "Definitely looking for some action."

Baz nodded. "Exactly. And he was really good-looking, so I didn't question it. I mean…" He shrugged. "If only I'd been less pissed," he added sadly.

"Who was he?" Aerith asked.

Baz's sigh was loud. "Senior's husband looking for revenge on her for… " This time he rolled his eyes. "Goddess only knows. But he took pics of us… you know, shagging." He gave them embarrassed looks. "I don't actually remember him doing that, but she showed them to me."

They'd all stopped to look at Baz, but it was Aerith who spoke what Zack thought they were feeling. "He did what?"

Tifa said. "Guy sounds a creep." Aerith nodded vigorous agreement.

"Maybe yeah? I mean, he picked me specifically because I was the new guy and didn't know who he was," Baz wailed. "And I told her that, but she still stuck me down here."

"A creep and a jerk," Tifa said.

"I'm really sorry that he did that to you." Aerith added.

"Sounds like a massive dick," was Cloud's contribution.

"It was a huge dick. I mean…" He held his hands out to illustrate. "I totally see why she doesn't want to share," he added mournfully. Zack laughed out loud and Aerith giggled. Tifa, however, coughed and changed the subject.

"So, what can we expect in Deepground?"

"I have no idea," Baz said blankly. "I just put their deliveries in front of the elevator and then ring the buzzer, so they know there's gear waiting. I haven't gone down. I don't want to go down." He paused. "Yeah, no. I'm not going down this time either."

"No worries, Baz. You showed us the elevator. We'll escort you to a way out, and then we'll go back on our own."

It turned out Baz had a map. Hand-drawn, cheaply laminated and stapled together, but still: a map. They discovered this when the corridor they were following was blocked and even his and Tifa's joint Iron Fist couldn't break the jam.

"Well, frog balls," Zack said. "Do we need to go back?"

"Hold on," Baz said. "Let me check." And then he pulled out his little handmade booklet.

They all stared at it and him.

"What?" he said defensively. "The layout in this place is crazy. Absolutely barmy." Baz muttered other derogatory things about Shinra's architects while he found them a new route around the blockage.

"Can we borrow that?" Cloud asked when they reached the stairwell that Baz would take to get out (and they'd probably have to use later).

"Can I have your phone number?" Baz blushed as he asked. Tifa shifted, but kept her mouth shut when Cloud held his hand out for Baz's PHS.

"Might be busy for the next while," Cloud told the guy. "Probably pretty messed under the plate, but in a week or two?"

Baz's smile was huge. "Yeah, man. That'll be brilliant!"

They listened as his footsteps clanged steadily on the metal stairs. Nothing interrupted the rhythm.

Zack turned back to the group.

"Do we really need to do this?" Tifa asked.

Zack, who'd been about to sweep them all back down the corridor, stopped. Did they need to do this? He didn't actually owe Genesis anything. Considering how often the nutjob had tried to kill him, and how he'd pulled Angeal into the crazy – and helped push Sephiroth over the edge – Genesis probably owed Zack. Like, a lot.

However, Shinra's secret projects had a way of reappearing in extremely deadly ways.

He sighed.

"If Deepground is a Hojo project, and Rosso had no reason to lie about that, then I think we have to," He said finally. "G-cells – the kind used in Genesis - allow for cloning. It's how Genesis made his army. I don't think we want Hojo developing an army of enhanced clones."

Cloud nodded. "She said the plan was to destroy the world."

"Rule the world," Tifa said.

Cloud looked at her. "Think they'll be any better than Shinra?"

That made the fighter frown. "No."

"Then we go," Aerith said, and she started walking back the way they'd come.

They ran into very little on the return journey A group of floating fish no one had ever seen before were underneath the sewer opening. They spat bubbles that Aerith didn't dodge fast enough. She fell asleep on her feet. Since she had the Cleansing materia they had to wait until she woke up naturally.

When they got back to the elevator the button was still lit but the car didn't seem to have arrived. It occurred to Zack that it probably wasn't working. And even it it was working it would be a box they'd be trapped in the whole way down.

"The lights are on emergency power," he said. "If I remember right, elevators return to ground when that happens."

"Pry open the doors and climb down?" Cloud suggested.

Tifa rolled her eyes. "Or find stairs. Rosso had to've got up somehow."

"Less likely to be monsters in the elevator shaft," Cloud said.

"Less able to fight if there are," she countered.

Aerith broke into their brewing argument. "Rosso was upset. If she took stairs, she would've taken the shortest path from them to the break room."

"There was that T-junction, two turns after the break room" Tifa said. "We turned right."

Zack nodded, trusting her memory in this freaking labyrinth. He dug out the map and gave it to her. "You're in the lead."

The return trip didn't take that long even with the stupid layout. They turned away from Baz's room into the hall they'd ignored before. Zack knew Aerith's theory was correct when they came across the blood, and a lab coat sliced nearly in half.

"That slice matches Rosso's gun blade," Zack said. He'd taken a good look at it before they'd left. He needed to know what kind of metal could damage Angeal's Galatine the way hers had. He'd suggested Aerith try using it as a staff, but she'd scrunched her nose and shook her head. Nobody touched it after that.

Looking at the blood on the wall, Tifa swallowed. "Guess we're on the right path then." Resolutely she turned away from the mess and continued down the corridor.

They found the remains of a SOLDIER next. "That's a second-class uniform," Zack told them.

There were no badges on SOLDIER uniforms. The only way to ID a SOLDIER's body was through the sword.

Zack braced himself, and then bent down to look at it.

It wasn't one Zack recognized and he let out a breath of relief.

He hadn't responded to any of Kunsel's messages since getting his PHS. Even though his old friend knew he was still alive and living in lower Midgar (Kunsel had sent him pictures from his revived fan club, of all things.) He hadn't responded because he felt… conflicted.

Kunsel had always known everything that was going on in and out of Shinra HQ. Had he known Zack wasn't dead?

His messages hinted that he'd known, but he hadn't done anything to help Zack. Why not? Their friendship wasn't worth the risk?

Tseng, at least, had been protecting his Turks. What was Kunsel's excuse?

Zack didn't want to think about Kunsel and divided loyalties, so he picked up the SOLDIER's sword. It was a large weapon, only slightly smaller than the buster. The blade flared wide with the characters for cutting all ties – literally, cutting in two with a single stroke – carved into the tip. There was also a name etched near the hilt: Hardedge. It could've been the dead SOLDIER's nickname, but it was probably the weapon's.

Zack flipped it in his hand a couple times. The balance was good. A little heavier than he was used to, but manageable. This would work until he could get Angeal's sword fixed.

Zack started swapping over his materia. He was quick because he'd practiced. Handling natural materia was more a mental thing than the manufactured balls he'd worked with five years ago. With those, their sizes didn't change much. They were just balls of hardened mako.

Natural materia, however, could expand or contract like a balloon. A thought could make natural materia contract into a ball small enough to fit in Tifa's glove slots, or expand to fit Barret's gun‑arm. It made the materia he had easy to remove from Galatine. He just 'thought' at the balls to shrink them. Then another thought to expand them to fit in the new slot. And always that warm 'hey, I'm here' feeling when he manipulated it.

It made a lot more sense if he believed materia was solidified Lifestream – he was literally talking to dead people.

Tifa cleared her throat. "You're just going to take the sword?"

"Yeah." Zack didn't bother looking up from what he was doing. "It's in better shape than mine."

Hardedge had an extra slot, but Zack left it unfilled. He was already pretty close to the maximum he could use. More and he risked exhaustion.

"Oh. I suppose…"

Cloud looked at his friend. "You wanted to blow up a reactor two weeks ago, but Zack can't take a sword from a dead Shinra SOLDIER?"

Tifa blushed a little and shifted. "It's different."

"Because he's already dead?"

"I keep saying, we weren't planning on killing anyone." Tifa's scowl was ferocious.

Cloud was unmoved. "Explosions, especially around mako, are hard to control. Even experts get it wrong, and none of you are experts."

"We'd thought of that." She tipped up her chin.

"If you had done it," he went on. "And people died from it, would you feel okay 'because you hadn't planned on killing anyone'? Or would you eat yourself up with guilt?" Tifa looked away. He put his hand on her arm. "If we agree to Zack's thing, maybe… Maybe we waive the ten million gil fee in exchange for Shinra researching better energy sources."

Aerith clapped her hands under her chin. "Oh! I like that idea!"

Tifa was looking up at Cloud. "But you're a mercenary."

Cloud laughed. "I'm a mercenary because I don't want anyone giving me orders. I take the jobs I want, work with people I like." He gave her a nudge. "And I can pick how I get paid."

"Chickens and potions, right?" Zack said with a smile. He swished Hardedge through the air, getting used to the feel of it.

Cloud smiled back. "That's right."

Tifa looked at both of them thoughtfully. Her gaze stopped on Zack. "Would you be okay giving up your share of ten million gil?" she asked him.

There was a certain amount of belligerence in her voice that Zack chose to ignore. After all, she was being asked to change her life plan. A plan she'd had for several years. Same thing as Zack was doing, so he knew it wasn't easy.

"I only said that to see if they'd go for it. I kind of expected an immediate no," Zack replied. "If we do decide to barter our fee, I think we should do it after. Let them sweat about the money. That way they'll be so happy when we change our demands that they won't realize that the research will actually cost more."

"You think it'll cost more?" Tifa asked.

"Oh yeah," he scoffed. "Think of all the infrastructure that's geared to mako power. All the vehicles and equipment that use mako batteries – the powerlines. All built by Shinra in mako powered factories. We'd be asking them to redesign practically everything."

"I… I hadn't thought of that," she said quietly.

"Don't get me wrong, it's a good idea," he said. "But it's not going to be quick and it's not going to be easy."

"Well, obviously that means they should start right away," Aerith chimed in. "Quicker you start, faster you finish!"

Zack smiled down at her. "Exactly! Speaking of – let's find that staircase." He looked up in time to catch Cloud's nod. Tifa was still frowning in thought, but she still moved up beside him. "Which way, Tifa?"

She jerked her chin up the lonely corridor. "Only one way."

They went through two turns and found one dead end before they found the way down. They knew it was the right one because the door had been torn off its hinges. They ran into a couple more creatures that Aerith insisted they burn. She was getting better at sensing the taint without having to bend down.

Zack could see a very awkward conversation in his future.

If the taint was Jenova cells, then what could Aerith sense from him?

Sure, Shinra had said that SOLDIERs were made with mako, but even if that was true (which is might not be), Zack had spent three years getting injected with all sorts of shit by Hojo. Jenova was Hojo's pet project and she'd been right there, in Nibelheim. No way Zack hadn't been given some of her poison.

Aerith's hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. Zack sighed and set that worry aside for now.

Inside the stairwell, the lights were even dimmer, but it was easy to see that the stairs were made from the same sturdy metal that was used all over Shinra Tower's back areas. More evidence (that they didn't need) that this was a Shinra lab.

There were no stairs going up.

There were a lot of stairs going down. Like, a lot.

Once they were at the bottom there'd be no quick or easy way to escape if this went fubar.

What the hells was he thinking, taking his friends down there – taking Aerith?

He whirled around to face them. "So, I, uh… I just want to say that… You don't have to do this," he blurted out. "You don't owe Genesis anything. I mean, I probably don't owe him anything, but –" He waved that away. "What I mean is-"

"You're being noble again," Cloud interrupted.

"Stupidly noble," Aerith added with a frown.

Tifa had her hands on her hips. "Already agreed this was important."

Cloud leaned forward and mock-whispered to the two women, "SOLDIER honour thing Angeal Hewley drilled into him." Neither Aerith nor Tifa looked persuaded. Cloud looked up at Zack with a little smile. "Wasting time."

Zack felt… swollen. Like there was this bubble of emotions rising from his belly to his chest and throat. It made it hard to breathe or speak, and his eyes felt hot. He knew what this was, and he blinked and cleared his throat and scrubbed his hands through his hair to push the emotions down. He'd deal with them later, when they weren't heading into untold, unknown danger.

"Thanks," he croaked.

Tifa punched his shoulder as she walked past. "Last one down's a rotten egg," and she was off.

.o0|0o.

Sephiroth was alive.

It was unexpected – no, not unexpected. That would mean he hadn't planned for something like this, and he had. Not thoroughly, but enough. Really, all he had to do was tweak his original plan. It would still work.

He had to laugh. Sephiroth was alive!

He'd been right all these years when he'd protested that a fall into simple mako wouldn't kill his greatest creation. If anything, it had made Sephiroth even more powerful.

The board was made up of fools! Short-sighted, venal fools who barely understood the power that Shinra had tapped into!

Gast may have had a higher IQ, but he hadn't been smarter. Gast, after all, hadn't understood the gift they'd been given, but he had.

From the moment he'd touched her, he'd understood.

Decades ago, he'd realized what Jenova could do for him – how he could use her to be more than these petty idiots would ever know. He would become a god, her god, and together they'd travel the stars!

To do that, they needed Sephiroth, and so it stood to reason that Jenova would not let him die because of the planet's petty lifestream. But he hadn't been able to explain that to the board when he insisted that Sephiroth wasn't dead, so they'd all decided he was mad.

He had nearly given up hope that Sephiroth would return in a reasonable time – Hojo could admit he suffered the flaw of impatience, but it was a minor flaw, easily compensated for. It was unfortunate that he'd needed Sephiroth to have brains because they'd made him recalcitrant as he'd aged. A mindless automaton would've been easier.

He'd hoped Specimen Z… But no. The SOLDIER treatment had given Z a limited immunity to the most important aspects of the treatments Hojo had used on Sephiroth, and his personality…!

No matter. Specimen Z was no longer important.

He would continue with his plans for Deepground, started when Sephiroth had turned away from his guidance and towards those two inferior specimens.

However, it was fiddly. Unlike the quest for a perfect soldier which had had the backing of the whole board, only the president knew of Deepground's primary purpose. That meant limited technical support, which further meant there were too many ways it could go wrong.

Like this.

His backup had…. Well, it had been interrupted due the explosion in the Deepground reactor. He needed a stable neural connection to Deepground's matrix to continue his upload.

It had been at least two hours and he was still without a stable connection.

Considering President Shinra had planned to blow up one of the city's normal reactors, it was taking Scarlet far too long to fix this problem.

Hardly surprising. The woman could barely design a cat's cradle let alone something as complex as a power grid. Honestly, they needed Tuesti on repairs.

Now he had a brain worth admiring. Unfortunate that his morals got in the way of any greater use of it. Perhaps he should've made Tuesti into one of his experiments….

The red light above Hojo's head started flashing, interrupting his thoughts. A worn recording played "Warning. Security breach in … 'Third Ward'. … 'Escaped experiments' … reported. Staff are to … 'barricade themselves in a secure room' … until the situation is resolved." Then the message repeated.

Hojo had to think for a moment. What experiment was he running in the Third Ward?

Ah yes! The zenenes. Very powerful but untameable. Perhaps some more genetic material from hounds? But if he added more hound nucleotides, then the zenenes might lose their special abilities and that would make them essentially worthless as killing machines.

He could always add cells from the Red XIII sample, but it was hardly more tractable than the zenenes. Still, it had a form of sentience which could be useful. It was always good to know your tools understood your orders.

Or perhaps he should grab some from Tuesti, the proselytizing fool. He did have a good brain…

That was for later, however. For now, he'd let SOLDIER dispatch the escaped experiments and then start fresh. He still had some base embryos to play with. He would bring those beasts to heel one way or another.

Until then, he needed to continue the upload of his brain patterns into Deepgound's matrix.

With Sephiroth returned, progress would finally commence on freeing Jenova from the planet, and he needed to be done with his backup in case Sephiroth failed.

Unlikely as that should be.

But the boy had let himself be defeated by a mere infantryman.

Besides, Hojo enjoyed having plans with plans within plans.

Hojo's hands hovered over the controls. The screen flickered, then went dark.

There was a growl from the hallway behind him. Another escaped experiment.

"Primary power interrupted," announced the automated system. "Back up systems unstable. Initiating full lock down."

The security door clanged shut leaving Hojo alone in the blackness.

Yes, Hojo thought. It was definitely time to leave.

AN: For my New Year's Eve, I watched Wonder Woman 84 with a friend. Remember that comedian who joked about a gauge of when women have achieved equality in Hollywood will be when a bad [female] superhero movie gets a sequel anyway? Yeah. WW84 just might be that test case. I could talk about the CGI and the logic (holes) gaps, but mostly, it wasn't actually about Diana Prince. She was a side story in her own movie which was, like... why? I dunno. I'm glad we didn't pay full price to stream it.