Entering the main laboratory feels like walking through two worlds.
Zack's senses have a dimension now that he never felt before, subtle but fine-tuned by the quiet and solitude of the tank. Information seeps into him from everywhere, from books and dust motes and floor boards. It's like reading between the lines of the universe, like the Planet wants to tell him its secrets.
Hundreds of souls have passed through this door, across these floors. Their fear has accumulated within the walls and furniture, tainting the air with the stench of suffering.
All the technology has been replaced and upgraded, making the moldy bookshelves feel anachronistic. They mourn times gone by, when they were useful and essential. Nobody writes with pens and paper anymore.
Roche puts them in separate tanks, side by side. Zack feels Cloud's frustration at his lack of resistance, but he answers with patience and calm. He projects the prickling edge of hope to his partner and the tang of metal on his tongue.
His new senses tell him to listen and wait. He trusts Roche, inexplicably. If he's wrong, it'll doom them both.
Footsteps clop down the tunnel to the combat simulator. It's Hojo. The professor's aura warps the fabric of reality around him, leaving a noxious trail of evil and wrong wherever he walks. The stench is so strong it makes Zack's eyes water, even in the tank. He grits his teeth until he tastes blood.
The door swings open, and a figure walks inside. Zack doesn't look because he doesn't need to. He can see the gleaming lenses and imperious frown just fine through Cloud's eyes.
"Professor," he greets.
"Subject Z. How lovely to see you after such a long time."
"For you, maybe."
Hojo laughs at the double meaning, sliding his glasses off to polish them with the tail of his lab coat. "I see the tank has done nothing to correct your insolence."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Zack growls. Warnings batter his brain, courtesy of Cloud, but they don't stop him smiling sharply. What do they have to lose, really? He's at the point where he'd be okay with the collar choking him to death—if it meant he got to strangle Hojo first.
Captivity has a way of clarifying priorities like that, unwinding what really matters from the things that only seem important. Someone has to stop Hojo and the powers at Shinra who enable him. The first step to resistance is having the courage to call out what's wrong. Zack's willing to die for that, for the privilege of being one subject Hojo couldn't break.
The professor raises an eyebrow and returns his spectacles to his face.
"Defiance yielded results in this experiment," Hojo concedes. He eyes Cloud like a proud parent, leaning into the glass and petting the spot over Cloud's face. "After all, if this little wolf weren't so determined to protect his mate, we'd never have achieved the breakthroughs that we did."
Cloud remains unmoving, but his eyes burn with hatred. Hojo croons, his crooked grin widening.
"Oh, look at you snarl. I forgot how much I adored your little protests, mutt. I should have returned sooner."
"If you care that much, why make those clones in the Cradle?" Zack growls, reaching for something to get the professor's attention back on him.
"Bennet's work." Hojo bats his hand dismissively. To Zack's dismay, he only presses closer to the glass, looming over Cloud with a gleam in his eyes that makes Zack's skin crawl. "The proliferation of J-cells into numerous subjects was necessary to expedite Reunion, but oh, how dull it is, replicating the same subjects over and over ad nauseam. I reserve my attention for exceptional beings. And you, Subject C… you are the definition of exceptional."
"The hell does that mean? Get away from him."
"It means you should say goodbye." Hojo's glasses flash green as they catch the light of a nearby console screen. He keys in a series of codes, and the pump attached to the tanks starts churning.
The professor tucks his hands in his pockets and watches the tanks fill with a thick, gelatinous mako solution. Cloud's energy scrambles into a dark fog, and Zack strains to cloak him in serenity even as his own heart skips double time. "This is the final test. Pass or fail, he won't be himself once my latest formula runs its course."
Zack throws himself at the glass although he knows it's futile. If he could shatter it, he'd have done it a long time ago. Roche watches with naked discomfort from the corner.
"Ensure all personnel are clocked out, and lock down the facility," Hojo orders. "I alone shall see my son's face reborn, no one else. I will return him to this ungrateful world, and I will do it with the body of the very man who cut his life short."
The SOLDIER salutes, and leaves the room.
Long strides carry Hojo closer, his body pressing with unwelcome intimacy along the glass tube of the tank. Cloud fights to move despite the chaos in his mind and the stubborn disconnection of his soul from his body. He wriggles and scoots as far back as he can. Hojo presses his oily cheek to the glass.
"Won't it be proverbial, mutt? The teachings of the Ancients made tangible. We few born of the Planet endure. In her womb we find graves. From the flesh of her children is our essence reborn. Do you see? Your flesh, your grave—you will return what you took from me, and I will be rewarded at last with the bounties of the Promised Land."
Zack punches the glass. "I'll kill you, bastard. You'll pay for everything you've done."
Hojo cackles, shaking his head like the notion is ridiculous. "Patience, mongrel. Come morning you'll understand. You'll see the golden future I toil for. You should be honored to play your part in the Reunion. Children of the future will worship you as a martyr. They'll be taught the glorious liturgy of the mortals who created God."
"You're insane."
"You fear what you do not understand. That's a fault of yours, not mine. You simply cannot fathom the genius of my designs—but enough words wasted on the ignorant. I have preparations to make."
The professor turns, hands threaded behind him. Zack loses sight of him at the same time his feet lift off the ground. It's harder than usual to get the jelly-thick mako down. He hears and feels Cloud struggling with it too.
Long minutes pass before his lungs stop screaming and he can focus on anything but the goo. A scrap of metal floats past his face, long-since ejected from his mouth.
It's narrow and L-shaped. He blinks, stunned by recognition.
"Cloud! Cloud, it's a release switch! Roche gave me—"
His mental presence reaches out, and finds nothing of Cloud to attach to. Fumbling, he flails to see Cloud's body glowing.
Energy pours from him with such force that it distorts the space around him, shooting sparks of invisible energy through the mako. His skin quivers and ripples like the surface of a lake. It centers and focuses on a spot near his shoulder blade, and Zack's vision tunnels.
Cloud is… changing. Manifesting. The mako pushes his soul out and drags the Nothing in.
Zack grabs the bit of metal with renewed urgency, searching for the narrow slot in the hatch where an emergency release is supposed to be. They're normally large and painted red for visibility, but the tanks in the lab have had them removed.
Fumbling half-blind, he drags his fingers over the lid. They catch on gears and grooves, but nothing big enough, until at last his middle finger falls into a pit. He jams the switch in without a second thought, his legs kicking and sliding down the glass as he tries to put force behind the push.
The Nothing spreads through his connection to Cloud, and Zack pushes it violently away. He tries to turn the switch and nothing happens. Cursing, he pushes harder and turns slower, hands shaking and slippery around the metal.
"Hang on Cloud," he yells, as much for his own determination as for the other man. "I'm coming. Don't you give up on me."
Something like a shout answers back, muffled and contorted. Inky black tendrils creep out of Cloud's chest.
Zack sets his back on the wall of the tank and his feet flat across. He gives one more push with everything he has. The metal housing clicks. He grips the end of the key and twists, chanting a mantra of please, please, please let us live.
The hatch opens.
Zack kicks and pushes, hinging it up. He comes out of the tube like a newborn—yelling, weak, covered in slime. He only barely manages land on his shoulder instead of his head, falling freely from the lid and leaving a wet smear down the tube.
The unnatural brightness of Cloud's tank keeps him going. He feels drunk, disoriented, half out of his mind. His legs shake like jelly when he stands.
It's a literal miracle that he manages to operate the console on the other tank. He has no memory of doing it, no clue how he marshaled his coltish fingers into typing. Cloud's body comes out in one harried pull that spills them both over the edge and onto the floor with a smack. There's no time to think twice.
"Come on, come on," he pants, wrapping Cloud up in his arms and straining to stand. "You better wake up if you can hear me, 'cause I really need you right now."
The body gives a weak grunt. He jerks Cloud onto his back and takes the first of many shaky steps down the tunneled hallway. Gatling guns still hang from the ceiling, though now with a thick layer of dust on the tops.
A new room appears to his right, one he doesn't remember. An empty box of dynamite lies discarded on the hallway floor. His steps falter as the interior comes into view.
Coffins. Unmarked. Unburied. At least two dozen of them, crammed into a mass grave.
The prototypes for the subjects back in the Cradle, probably. He feels guilty, remembering the souls still trapped down there. The man he had been would never leave them there. He'd have risked his life to see each and every one of them free.
Gulping down air, teetering on the brink of collapse, he shoves the notion down and continues his death march toward the turret stairs. The tower seems endless, unscalable, a dark pillar piercing up out of hell.
There's sunlight up there. Or moonlight, maybe. He's forgotten what the day-night cycle even feels like. Weather in Cloud's mind was a question of mood. It shifted to suit their whims, meaningless.
He climbs the spiral stairs on pure adrenaline. Dry air caresses his face and chills his shorn scalp. He surges over the last flight like a man possessed and kicks open the trap door.
A musty bedroom reveals itself, lit only by the slats of a boarded-up window. Roche waits with his arms crossed.
Zack feels no great betrayal when the SOLDIER draws his sword. There are cameras. Everything shown will appear on the incident report.
Again, Zack is struck by the risk Roche is taking for them. He'll be court marshaled at a bare minimum. Discharge is likely. The best thank you Zack can offer is to show Roche putting up a good fight. He sets Cloud against the wall and works to steady his breathing.
"Stand aside, I don't want to kill you," Zack says for the cameras.
Roche steps back into a forward guard. "A true warrior never backs away from a pas de deux. Come, meet your end on the tip of my blade."
He lifts his sword into an aggressive stance, poised high and horizontal before bringing it swiftly down. The motions of combat return, steps and counter-steps as familiar to him as his heartbeat. They've been with him since he first set foot in a Wutai trench, and they don't abandon him now.
Zack sidesteps the first slash, ducks under the second, and jumps over the third. A quick lunge brings him inside Roche's guard, and the next step brings him behind. He locks the SOLDIER's neck in a choke, and twists the sword out of his hand when he stabs blinding at Zack's side.
"Where do you want it?" he hisses under his breath.
Roche wriggles to make it look real. "Anywhere. Make it hurt. My reputation can't withstand any more abuse."
Despite himself, Zack laughs. Roche lifts him off of his feet and throws him over his back, sending him crashing into a bookshelf in a rain of leather-bound tomes. He throws one at Roche as the man tries to retrieve his sword, and misses by a meter. Plaster dust rains from where it impacts the wall.
Energy pulls toward the SOLDIER, and his aura sharpens into a charged field. Cloud shouts a warning in Zack's head, and he dodges mere seconds before a Stop spell would have hit.
He swings his head around to find Cloud still slumped where he left him, but with his spirit standing whole and intact beside it. He stares so long that the next spell almost hits.
"Cloud! How are you doing that? Are you okay?"
"Focus," his partner snaps. Roche lunges forward, and Zack takes the advice.
Dodging the first punch and blocking the next, he wraps his hand around uniform suspenders and jerks, cracking Roche's nose against his knee with enough force to leave his whole leg smarting. The larger man goes down like a boulder.
"He's not out," Cloud says.
"I know." Zack spits out something nasty and glowing, part saliva and part mako. He puts his knee to Roche's bicep and grabs his sword arm. He pulls until the elbow joint locks.
"Sorry about this," he says, looking away and trying not to focus on the sound of bones breaking and joints popping. Taking up the sword, he stabs him through the leg, pinning him to the floor. It doesn't bleed, which means he missed the artery. He pats himself on the back for that.
A fight between SOLDIERs ought to level a city block, but he doesn't want to hurt the guy for real. He dumps the bookcase on top of him just for the show of it, wincing in sympathy at the heavy crash.
It's a pathetic imitation of what a real fight would look like, but it will have to do. He rushes to the next room where he has fuzzy memories of being held in the early days.
There's a big desk cluttered with old equipment, a worn rug, and a painting of the Shinra family. A modern steel trunk sits by the door, conspicuously clean.
"There," Cloud whispers.
Zack kicks the lock and it pops open. The smell of leather and gun oil wafts out. The shank of a key is broken off in the lock, stuck in the 'open' position.
"Huh."
"Go on, it's in there."
Zack kneels, rummaging in the dark and grinning widely when his fingers find the leather warp of a greatsword's grip. He drags the Buster Sword from the bottom of the locker, knocking aside worn pauldrons and boots. It seems unharmed, the blade coated in oil and wrapped in linen to protect it from rust.
Someone cared for it all these years, someone who knows their way around a blade. Another echo of guilt ripples through him at what he had to do to Roche in the other room. He settles the sword between his shoulders as he stands, and feels an emotional wound scab over.
It feels good. Heavy, like a legacy should. He hopes Angeal would be proud of him.
Gathering the rest of the gear from the trunk, he runs back to the other room and kneels beside Cloud.
"Look what I found," he says, dropping his ill-gotten gains on the floor. "Congrats on your promotion."
"Not funny," Cloud says. "Hurry up, before someone comes."
"I'm going, geez," Zack sighs, annoyed with his fumbling fingers. He hasn't tied shoes in years, and Cloud's anxiety is only making his hands shake more.
Once he's done with his own, he rips off Cloud's clothes and hurriedly shoves his legs into uniform pants. He babbles as he goes, forcing a smile past the chittering anxiety.
"Shit, look at you. You'd be a menace at HQ. I'd have to beat the ladies off you with a stick."
"They'd be too busy looking at you."
"Nah, maybe before, but now you're a First too. That means you get a fan club—and you don't choose the name! It'd be… I don't know, the Grumpy Hunk. The Saffron Spikes. Something totally stupid."
"Zack…." Cloud grumbles, flustered.
"As your personal security, I'd have to join. To keep an eye on the rabid ones, you know, and not at all because I want to see candid shots of your butt."
Something moves in the house, a ghost or a monster, it could be anything. He doesn't think about it, refusing to fuel his paranoia. They're inches from freedom, he just has to keep calm
"If I could move, I'd deck you," Cloud says. He'd laugh, if the other man didn't sound so faint and weak.
"I know. That's why I'm saying it now, while I'm free from repercussions." Zack stuffs the pants into Cloud's boots and laces them, dragging both of them to their feet.
There's a cobwebby mirror in the corner, speckled in rust. He stares for a moment, caught in a vision of the past.
It's a past that never existed—a world where things were fair and Cloud—but that doesn't make the sight of them standing as equals any less sweet.
They look human, respectable. Trained SOLDIERS instead of nameless specimens. A matched set ready to take on the world. He shines a watery smile at Cloud, and feels him swell against his mind.
With renewed strength, he lumbers across the moth-eaten carpet and through a maze of doors.
The house is pitch-black and shambling, curtains billowing in a cold draft as the old structure pops and creaks. He anticipates an ambush with every step, but nothing in the shadows moves.
Dripping sweat and exhausted, they reach the landing of a grand staircase. An entrance hall sprawls below, full of debris and fallen chandeliers. He fully expects to slip and send them tumbling.
Hiking Cloud up, he finds the stair rail with his hand and starts down. The light of Cloud's spirit drains to a flicker.
"Stay with me, Spike. Almost there."
"Can't… do it."
"Bullshit. There's the door. Dead ahead. Look. See it?"
"Yeah—" Cloud's voice wanes.
"So pick your feet up. Come on."
He remains dead weight, but his spirit warms Zack's back, pushing him onward. His brittle smile turns real.
He kicks the ancient door open with an all-mighty force, and cries tears for both of them when the first rays of sunrise kiss their foreheads.
The air is crisp and cold. Puffs of fog pour out of his mouth with each breath.
It's autumn, he realizes. Trees sway around them, a forest bursting with color. Mandarin orange, sunbeam yellow, and rich, bloody burgundy. Beyond that is Mt. Nibel, white capped and imposing, it's improbable, twisted peaks curling into the sky.
It's beautiful. So beautiful and singing with life, from the plumes of smoke rising in cottage chimneys to the insects chirping from under fallen leaves.
He falls to his knees and he shoves his face into the ground just to smell the dirt, to feel it squish, wet and gritty between his fingers. Cloud's joy is like a drug pumping through him, his presence sliding in beside Zack's to see and hear and smell with him.
Big, burbling tears stream down his face and he has no room for shame, even as his voice cracks and he wails like a baby.
"We made it." Cloud cries in his head. "We're free."
Leaves swirl around them, crunching and fluttering, music to Zack's ears.
"Not yet," he says, sniffling, pathetic, so damn happy. He puts his forehead to the ground and thanks any god who might be listening. "Not yet, but it's one hell of a start."