With every heavy step down the creaking stairs, despair rises higher in Zack's throat.
He's still shaken and nauseous. Each time he thinks about Hojo putting his vile hands on Aerith, he thinks he might puke.
The dimly lit cellar of the free clinic buzzes with the low, urgent energy when he lands there. It smells like anticipation and antiseptic, the air thick with whispers and plots. With the arrival of the ex-SOLDIER squad leaders sometime that evening, the small space became packed with bodies and gear.
Kunsel sits in one corner behind a mountain of old radio equipment, holding one side of a military grade set of headphones to his ear while listening to Elfe talk in the other.
Barret and Zhijie huddle in the other, the former looming like a weather-worn statue and the latter repeating the Commander's words after a beat in fast, clipped Wutaian. Several figures cloaked in the green cowls and silver plates of the ninja stand nearby, listening with rapt attention.
For lack of anywhere else to sit, Zack hops onto a steel drum near the stairs and kicks off his sweat-soaked boots. Shutting his eyes to gather his wits, he lets himself lean back against the rough plaster wall. The weight of failure shrinks his confidence to a spec.
Why does everything have to be so rotten? All he ever did was try to help and protect people. His whole life, that's all he ever let himself care about. And yet, the world keeps punishing him.
It's clear from her usual bold tone that Elfe's decision hasn't changed after talking to Shears. The bombing will happen, and while it's happening, Zack has to somehow get himself into and back out of the highest security facility in Shinra's empire.
Another version of him would probably be there already, swinging his sword and defying fate. Hell, even the Zack from two weeks ago would have interrupted the meeting and given an unabashed plea for assistance. But right now, he doesn't feel like either of those guys.
Right now, the bitterness and defeat that haunts the AVALANCHE rebels burns just as strongly in his heart. Nothing he's ever done has really changed anything. He only convinced himself that it did.
It isn't hard to imagine how feeling this way for years and years and years led Elfe and her faction to this musty basement, resigned to the hatred and futility of making a doomed strike against Shinra just so they could die knowing they tried.
Elfe finishes her rundown of the mission parameters and time table with a stiff and formal bow to her troops. For the first time since he met her, she's abandoned the blue Cosmo-style robe for a full, formal uniform and she has braided her normally messy hair tight against her scalp. With cool finality, she folds her paper notes in half and pinches the new edge into a wicked crease.
"That concludes the first part of the meeting. I will now assign your teams. Any complaints should be lodged immediately so we can make adjustments before notifying the troops. Zhijie—"
She turns to the middling man, who begins reading from a long list of names.
Zack watches the group make the final preparations, but his mind is with Aerith. What horrors must she be facing right now? How angry and afraid must she have been when those monsters came to take her away? He stares down the scuffed and mud-caked cylinder of his boot, at the worn and curled up insole that covers a hidden pocket in the heel.
His decision is not a decision. It's calculus.
In a panoply of options, this is the move which grants the greatest amount of safety to the greatest number of people. Gripping the edge of the drum, he finds strength in the rough texture of the rust.
"And finally, the last team. Reactor 8," Zhijie says.
Zack sits up and pitches his voice to be heard. "Actually, there are nine reactors in Midgar."
The room slacks abruptly into silence. Heads turn.
"There's a secret ninth reactor underneath Shinra HQ, built into the central pillar. They call it Sector Zero."
Elfe lifts a brow with one hand perched on her sword. "And you neglected to mention this earlier because…?"
Zack's spirit wavers, but when he slides off of the metal drum the old mask of a confident, commanding SOLDIER 1st slides into place too.
"Because it's out of commission. They only needed it to power the city while the other reactors were being built. It's been dormant for longer than most of us have been alive. But if we're serious about eradicating mako from Midgar, then Sector Zero has to go. They'll kick it back on in a heartbeat if the other reactors go down."
"We did make an extra bomb," the older Wedge brother pipes in. "Though that would leave us without any redundancy."
"And why the sudden zeal? You've been vocal in your protests up until now," Elfe says. A muscle twitches in her jaw and Zack panics, searching for some reason and latching onto the first thing that he hits.
"I didn't know what I was talking about," he admits, only partially a fib. More a simplification and exaggeration of his real feelings. "The state of the city right now, all these people starving and Shinra doing nothing… I never could have imagined.
I still don't like that our plan will cause more suffering for these people, but I see now that something needs to be done. If people are going to suffer and die either way, then we can't let them die in vain."
"And I take it you're nominating yourself for the job," she says.
"You and me." He strides into the middle of the cluster of people, holding his head high. "A large team would be clocked immediately on the cameras, but a SOLDIER and a maintenance worker won't raise any alarms. Once we enter the reactor they'll know something's up, so we'll need one to hold them off and one to set the bomb. There's only two fighters here that could handle a whole squad on their own."
Elfe regards him for a protracted moment, her eyes set into his, studying his face. He can see the moment that she decides to trust him. Relief and guilt tangle up in his stomach as she nods and gives him a thin, resolved smile.
"Barret, you'll lead my team at Reactor Six. Kunsel, find someone else to take comms so you can lead Barret's group at Four."
"Sir!" Kunsel salutes.
"That's what I'm talkin' about!" Barret bellows, his gun arm thrusting up toward the ceiling. "Let's hit 'em where it hurts, right below their ugly, green tower of greed."
A cheer rises organically from the group. Surprise and pride puff up the giant's chest, and he looks to Elfe as if asking for permission. Her reserved smile spreads into a dagger grin and she eggs him on with an indulgent 'go on' gesture.
Ripping his sunglasses off, Barret jumps on top of a crate that nearly collapses under his massive, muscled bulk.
"Can you hear the cries of the Planet?" he asks facetiously, a big, gnarled hand cupping his ear.
"Down with the Shinra!" the ex-SOLDIERS cheer.
"Can you feel the tremors of Her suffering echo through your veins?" Barret yells.
"Down with the Shinra!"
Zhijie rises from the wooden barrel he'd been sitting on, which Zack can now see is actually a cask of Wutaian ale.
"To victory?" He elbows the Commander with an impish eyebrow wiggle. With an indulgent huff, she draws her sword and stabs the lid four times to make a hole.
"To victory," she roars.
The brass mechanical legs of the crystal spectrometer straddle over Cloud's form like the predatory legs of a spider. Coiled energy licks the back of his mind like a thousand tongues. He holds back the power by a thread.
Fuhito raps the charred lens of the device with his fingertip.
"Curious," he murmurs, more to himself than to Cloud. He adjusts the angle of the lens fastidiously, squinting at the damage. Cloud looks past him to the dark, quivering scribble of a figure on the ceiling.
"What does it mean?" he asks the shadow.
A single black feather drifts past his face. Fuhito answers, but Cloud's ears are muted to the sound. He hears a ringing in the distance, like a boiling kettle or… screaming.
All at once, he's choking again. His hands come to scratch at his throat and he rolls onto his side, gasping. It's like the mako tank, like thick jelly clogging his airways, but instead of putrid green, his vision fogs with crackling red-black smoke.
The real world falls away like it's the illusion. The table and floor disappear beneath him. He falls.
Instead of the white Nothing of the spirit world or the calm wheat field of his mind, the space around him is turbulent and electrified. He doesn't recognize it, and that frightens him more than anything.
"Sephiroth!" he calls, because it was he who brought Cloud here.
The answer to his question must be in this storm, although if he'd known Sephiroth would pull him so violently out of his body, he would have kept it unvoiced.
A memory of pain sears his right shoulder. Force pulls his head forward as a great, black wing appears on his back, stopping his descent with powerful beats of the air. Cloud tries to recenter himself in the maelstrom.
"Where are we?" he yells. "What are you trying to tell me?"
The void stirs, rippling like disturbed water. Sephiroth's rich baritone makes the hair on his neck stand on end.
"The Black Materia," he says. Two giant eyes open out of the roiling dark mist—vast, unblinking crescents with no pupils or irises, only empty, white oblivion. "A memory of sorrow."
The black lens of the spectrometer flashes behind Cloud's eyes. Black feathers, black fog, black holes—the visual phenomenon that occurs when an object absorbs all spectrums of light.
"Stop—" He blinks away the disturbing thoughts, which he realizes aren't his. Sephiroth is sharing things with him that no living person is meant to see. It makes him feel like his head is too full, like his spirit is being stretched around a form that's too big and he might split if it continues. The overbearing presence pulls away.
Extending his senses, Cloud feels his mindspace nearby. It's difficult to place, but he senses it's above him. Reaching down, he finds the empty, silent Nothing.
"We're… inside me."
"Yes." Sephiroth's voice echoes now, all around and yet not present in the same way.
"The materia inside me is… this." Cloud says, stunned. "Why would Hojo do that?"
"Because it, like your body, is his sacred offering to Jenova. He believes her kind to be a superior race.
The proliferation of her genetic legacy, the eradication of the human race, these have been his life's purpose since the day she infiltrated his weak mind. He believes he seeks the Promised Land, but all he has done is create an army of parasitic monsters.
I was born to complete this dual mission—to be both executioner and breeding stock. My death at your hands only delayed his efforts."
"So he put it in me, why? For punishment?" Cloud stares at the spectral eyes, not wanting to believe it. The storm trembles and breaks, and he catches hollow, black glimpses of the Void through the gaps.
"To make you a fitting vessel for the day to end all days," Sephiroth whispers.
Fear and hatred drip from his voice and lend, wet and slimy, on Cloud's psyche. He shudders, his own lips forming the words at the same time Sephiroth utters them.
"The Reunion."
The phantasmic eyes hinge closed for the last time, and from their corrupted darkness Sephiroth flies in his raven form. Corkscrewing in a fast line towards the heavens, he pierces the tempest with his black beak. Cloud sees blue skies and wheat fields through the wound.
Flying, he hurls himself through the small tear in space before it can reclose itself. Unused to the wing, he lands in an unsteady crouch.
The raven touches down deftly between his knees.
"The Reunion must not be allowed to take place. You must stop Jenova and destroy the Black Materia before she can use it to fulfill her vile prophecy."
"But it's inside me. What am I supposed to do, cut it out?" Cloud pants. "You keep telling me these things, but I'm not like you or Zack or even Fuhito. I'm useless, okay? I can barely do anything on my own. I don't even know how she keeps getting in my head."
He squeezes his eyes shut around a stabbing pain. Heavy, leather-gloved hands encircle his crown.
"You are stronger than you know," the powerful presence rumbles from all around him. He feels him in the dirt, in the moisture seeping into his knees, in the very air that presses against him like the hazy barrier between minds. "This world of your creation is but a dream of a memory not yet forgotten. It is bound only by the limits of your self perception. Open your mind, and you will become stronger than any SOLDIER who ever lived."
Cloud opens his eyes and finds Sephiroth nose-to-nose with him, so solid and real that he can almost feel body heat. He shudders, staring into those terrifying, inhuman eyes.
His vision tunnels. The air turns hot and dry. Flames burst from the field, where just moments ago everything was peaceful and green. Chunks of burning rock and magma rain down from the sky. One large comet crashes through the bedroom window in an explosion of noise and glass.
"Destroy the Black Materia." Sephiroth repeats.
His figure doesn't move, and yet it starts sliding backwards as if he's floating on an invisible ship, drifting out to sea. Cloud rises and runs for him. He reaches out, but his hand goes right through.
"Don't go. Not you too," he yells, a foreboding feeling making his feet heavier with every step.
A great, molten mass blacks out the sun, and obscures the distorted view of the real world hanging upside down in the sky. Fuhito hovers up there, his glasses glinting in a strange light.
"There we go, all set," he says ominously, a pinched, dark gleam coloring his cool smile. Cloud jerks nauseously back into a bright, unflinching reality.
His body aches strangely. His muscles scream as if he hasn't moved for days. Something stiff and constricting holds his hands behind his back, lashing him to some kind of metal wall. His fingers feel numb from the cold.
"F–Fuhito—" his voice shakes from his shivering. He's wearing SOLDIER blues when he looks down. The Commander has a firm hand around his foot.
The left is already tied down to something, but the right one is loose. He aims a fast kick at Fuhito's gut. The other man dodges neatly.
"Fool me once," he chuckles, wrestling Cloud's weakened limb into a shackle.
He realizes he's in a truck, green steel walls wrapped around him on all sides. A line of solid, metal seats flank both sides of the transport, underneath a hanging net of army green webbing where rifles and gear bags would normally be stored.
Cloud wriggles, but none of the holds give.
"What are you doing? Let me go."
"No, no, we can't have you trying to escape," Fuhito tuts, fastening the seat belt around Cloud for an extra layer of restriction. His shoulders start to hurt from the stretch. "I need you in perfect condition when we arrive at the Crater. You must be rested so you can fulfill your duty to the Planet."
"How do you know about the Crater?" Cloud redoubles his efforts, but only succeeds in pulling a muscle painfully in his neck.
Fuhito looks bemused and superior when he straightens. Stepping over the long-levered stick shift in between the two front seats, he slides a key in the ignition and brings the engine roaring to life.
"I don't know if you realize, but you mutter the most enlightening things when you're in a trance. I had my suspicions, but I never would have put it together without your help. I never would have seen what a very special boy you are."
Pivoting his head to glance over the seat, he gives Cloud a crazed grin.
"Relinquish your fear, brother," he calls reverently over the tremulous rumbling. "Peace and rest await us in the Promised Land."