"Are all you First Classes such giant drama bitches? Is it some selection requirement of Hojo's that I didn't know about?"
Zack went back outside to collect the three sealed jugs he'd dropped in his hurry to get to Angeal. Fortunately, they weren't too far from home base. He brushed as much of the ashy dust off them as he could, then stacked them back into his arms and returned to the old office building.
On the way through the corridors to the stairs, he passed what he'd heard Genesis's group call "the control center" and "the monitor room," and saw Lazard working inside at his multiple keyboards and monitors. A radio mumbled out a newscast; a television to one side also displayed local news. Lazard seemed obsessed with reviewing news shows and watching over the empty mining town, but that was good, wasn't it? Zack and Sephiroth had also paid attention to the news wherever they went. They were all hunted men.
SOLDIER's former director spotted him, or maybe heard him. Zack hadn't been trying to be sneaky.
"Zack," Lazard called out abruptly, and Zack figured he had to stop. He lived with these people now.
He poked his head into the doorway. "Yes, Director?"
Lazard made a funny face. "Just call me Lazard, please. I'm no longer your superior." He turned down the volume on the radio and television.
"Okay." It would be kind of strange, but Zack had no real issues with it. He shifted the plastic containers in his arms. "What did you want?"
"That...ruckus from an hour ago. No one's been down to tell me anything about it yet, but I know you, Genesis, and a lot of the G-copies went tearing upstairs. To the lab, I presume?"
So Lazard was on a fishing expedition, and there were things that Hollander didn't see fit to tell him. Zack licked his lips. He'd already figured out that Lazard was seriously uncomfortable with the G-copies and Hollander's biological experiments. Which was kind of funny, in an unfunny way. The man had been embezzling money from Shin-Ra to fund all that crazy shit and had been actively planning to use those resources to go to war with the company. He'd known exactly what had happened to all the SOLDIERs he'd sent to Wutai with Genesis.
Hadn't bothered him to sacrifice his men to Hollander at the time, now, had it? He apparently just didn't like knowing the up-close details of the mess he'd helped create.
Zack had actually liked Lazard before things had gone all to hell and he'd found out that SOLDIER's director had been working against the company for months, maybe years. Now he didn't know what to think.
Nowadays, he just lumped them all together: Genesis, Hollander, and Lazard. All three had turned SOLDIERs, good men and friends, into genetically mutated zombies in their desire to create the Genesis Army. Zack knew he was stuck with his "hosts" until Angeal got his body back. He'd need to be careful with his words.
"Yeah, we did," he said slowly, stepping just inside the office doorway. "It was related to that psychic field of Angeal's. We told you about it, remember?" When Lazard nodded, Zack continued, "Seemed like Angeal just had a panic attack, that was all. He hasn't had good experiences with labs this year, you know?" That was an understatement of epic proportions. "Sephiroth calmed him down."
"I thought Angeal was supposed to be unconscious."
So did I, Zack thought. But he'd suspected for quite some time that Angeal had some kind of weird, twilight awareness going on. Angeal might be mostly stuck in a dream land, but he had demonstrated at least limited knowledge of the world around him for a long time now. He'd even woken up twice in Zack's presence.
Lazard persisted, "If he's asleep, how did he even know he was in a lab?"
Zack shrugged. That was a very good question, one he kept asking himself, but something he couldn't definitively answer. "Dunno. Sephiroth and I always cast the strongest Sleepels we can on him, at least twice a day. Maybe it's that weird psychic field of his, I don't know. Maybe Hollander can explain it." Zack wasn't even going to try.
Lazard made a sort of humming noise. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. It was a painfully familiar posture and reminded Zack of better times, back when he'd been deluded enough to believe SOLDIER's ex-leader had his men's best interests at heart.
Hah.
"I never noticed anything," Lazard mused quietly. "I guess I'm not included in Angeal's psychic field. I suppose that's a good thing." He rubbed his chin. "I wonder what's required?"
Zack almost asked, do you want to be included? But that was a stupid question. Lazard was already edgy just being around G-copies and Angeal's head. The man would probably fall to pieces if he started hearing Angeal's voice or having nightmares about Hojo's lab.
The only difference that Zack could think of was that Lazard had never been a SOLDIER. He was just a regular, ordinary human with no enhancements or modifications. Even when Zack and Sephiroth had been staying in hotels, no one else had ever mentioned any weird experiences. Zack's enhanced hearing had never picked up any of the other hotel guests and staff talking about disembodied voices or having horrible nightmares, even quietly among themselves.
What was it about SOLDIERs and G-copies that made them more susceptible to Angeal's alien telepathy?
Genesis shared specialized Jenova cells—G-cells—with Angeal, so that kind of made sense. The G-copies had Genesis's own cells in them, which probably accounted for their sensitivity. Sephiroth was full of Jenova cells of his own. But Zack couldn't think of any reason he himself should be part of the psychic field. As Genesis had snidely stated the other day, he wasn't one of the "lab freaks" who'd been created part alien.
"I don't know," Zack said. "Maybe it's just time spent in Angeal's vicinity. Maybe everyone will end up hearing him eventually." Sephiroth had once said something similar. He was probably right. Sephiroth and Genesis—and apparently the G-copies—with their huge loads of Jenova cells, had "heard" Angeal right away. Zack had taken longer to start hearing him. He'd probably just been around Angeal's head long enough to be affected.
"I hope not," Lazard said with a grimace.
"Right. Look, I don't have any answers. Ask Hollander. I need to go. Gotta drop these off." He jostled the plastic containers.
"Yeah, sorry to keep you."
Zack took that as permission to leave, which he did with alacrity. He speed-walked up the stairs and into Hollander's lab. It looked much the same as an hour ago, with the glovebox still broken—though the glass had been cleaned up—and the surrounding equipment beeping quietly. "Professor, I've got the fluid containers. One has a little bit of liquid, but the other two are empty with just some dried up gunk at the bottom. You can poke at them to your heart's content."
Genesis was nowhere in sight—probably had gone back to whatever he'd been doing before Angeal had sent out his telepathic alert. Sephiroth looked up from where he'd been guarding Angeal from "unauthorized experimentation." It didn't look like Hollander was even interested at the moment, though.
The sensor disks had been removed from Angeal's head. He was back in his container of nutrient broth. It rested on a lab bench near Sephiroth, who sat on a high stool. Hollander was on the other side of the room working under some kind of vent that looked like a supersized, steel stove hood with bright lights and a rumbling fan. A protective, clear shield hung down about half way. Hollander, wearing his lab coat, a surgical mask, safety goggles, and latex gloves, had his hands under the shield and was painstakingly measuring watery pink liquid into rectangular flasks using a sort of big eyedropper attached to a pink, gun-shaped device.
Zack remembered those solutions and flasks—or rather, Angeal did. Zack had only seen them in dreams. The big eyedropper, he recalled, was a pipette. Hollander was setting up cell or tissue cultures.
Ugh.
"Just set them down on an empty table," the not-so-good doctor said, never looking up from his work.
"Yeah, sure," Zack muttered, but did as he was told. He wandered over to Sephiroth. "Angeal doing okay?" he asked quietly.
"He's back to sleeping," Sephiroth responded in a normal tone of voice.
"Are you sure?"
Sephiroth gave him a sharp look. "What do you mean?"
Zack shook his head and shrugged. "I mean, are you sure Angeal is really, truly unconscious? Too many weird things happen with him. I've mentioned it before. Genesis has mentioned it. Just a little while ago, I ran into Lazard and even he mentioned it, and unlike the rest of us, he has no psychic connection to Angeal at all. How, exactly, did Angeal even realize he was in the lab if he's in a coma?"
Sephiroth's lips compressed together in a tight, white line. "I'm sure it has something to do with the psychic field he generates."
"Yes, I thought so, too, but how?" Zack threw his hands in the air. "And why would he have panicked if he weren't aware? What's going on with him and why are we all connected to him?"
"Because you're all SOLDIERs, or in the case of the G-copies, something very much like them," came Hollander's voice from across the room. "You're connected through your Jenova cells. Angeal probably affects all the Jenova chimeras in the vicinity, though I haven't had a chance to check on the G-copies yet. I'll get to it eventually."
A frisson of alarm ran up Zack's spine, and the hairs of his arms stood on end. "What's a Jenova chimera? Why does this affect me and not Lazard?"
"Lazard is a baseline human. You're a SOLDIER," Hollander repeated. He didn't seem to think the questions merited more of an answer than that, and kept working on his cultures. "You undertook the enhancement treatments."
"So the psychic stuff works through mako?"
Hollander grunted through his face mask. It sounded like a distorted chuckle. "Mako? Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess."
"What's a Jenova chimera?" Zack tried again. He knew Jenova was that alien thing that had been used to create Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal. What did it have to do with him, though?
Hollander heaved a dramatic sigh, but still didn't turn around. "A chimera is an organism that has genetically distinct cells from two or more different sources," he stated, speaking loudly over the hood fan. "The cells are from different organisms, and so also have different sets of genetic information. In this case, a Jenova chimera is a human who also has Jenova cells as part of his or her cellular make up."
Zack's jaw dropped and hung open. He gaped at Hollander's back, then turned to stare at Sephiroth. Sephiroth met his eyes, his expression also shocked.
"Sephiroth, did you...did you know about this? Did you read about it in Hojo's notes?" Zack could barely articulate his question.
Sephiroth shook his head, still wearing his look of surprise and dismay. "I never knew... I always thought regular SOLDIERs just got mako." He raised his voice and ordered emphatically, "Hollander, explain this!"
Zack asked, "I've got Jenova cells in me? In me? How could you do this?!" He practically shouted that last.
"Oh, calm down, both of you." Hollander finally set his pipette aside. He switched off the hood and turned to face them. "It's never hurt you, Fair. It made you what you are."
"I'm full of alien cells and you tell me to calm down? You've done this to all of us? All of SOLDIER? Why did no one ever tell us?"
Sephiroth said dryly, "Shin-Ra has never asked for permission to experiment on its lab rats, but I never realized that the entirety of SOLDIER was part of that."
"Oh, hush, Sephiroth. Don't get snippy now. SOLDIERs just have a few extra cells. They're just cells," Hollander said.
Zack almost shouted, "They're not just cells. They're alien cells! That makes me—!" What did it make him? Half human? Half himself?
"You are who you are. Having them is quite similar to having cells from an absorbed twin," Hollander said dismissively. "You're still you."
"A what?"
"Something that can happen in utero," Hollander explained. "Sometimes a fraternal, non-identical twin is absorbed by the other twin, or two fraternal twins otherwise exchange some genetic information. It's called chimerism. A bone marrow transplant can also do the trick. It's one reason a person might have two different eye colors, say, one brown and the other green, or different patches of skin color, though it's rare and there are also other causes. It can affect other organs and blood cells, too. Most affected people don't have any idea they're a chimera unless there's been some kind of genetic testing done, like blood group tests or paternity testing to establish a child's parentage. If the affected tissue from one of the parents happens to be the wrong match, the test can get the wrong results. There's been many a big family fight over it until a decent physician with real knowledge intervened to retest and explain." He barked out a coarse laugh.
Zack had never heard of anything like that before, yet Hollander talked about it like it was common knowledge and no big deal. He exchanged a horrified glance with Sephiroth.
"Even normal people?" Zack said. "It's a fucking natural thing? You said non-identical twins. What about identical ones?"
Hollander said simply, "It's detectable in non-identical twins because their DNA is different, assuming anyone ever tests for the condition at all. The genetic material in identical twins is the same, though—that's what it means. So if they merge while still in the uterus, there's no way to ever know even through genetic testing, unless there's an unmistakable, visible defect. I once saw a specim—a person with half their body a light skin color, and the other half just slightly darker and redder, like a mild sunburn. The colors split right down the middle of his torso in a straight line. Hojo called it a scalpel guide. Tacky asshole."
Zack felt his stomach churn. He wondered what had happened to that poor, unfortunate victim, but more: How could this kind of thing, this chimerism, happen like it was...just a routine thing? He covered his mouth with one hand.
"Biology is messy," Hollander said, giving him a funny look through the goggles. "Don't expect it all to fit into neat little slots one hundred percent like you were taught in middle school. Most people don't understand just how messy it is or how many exceptions there are to what those uneducated dross consider inviolable rules. A lot of weird shit like that goes on all the time, all around us. Inside us, too, even without chimerism, hybridization, and other outlying conditions. You'd be appalled if you understood even a smidgeon of how biology really works."
Sephiroth protested, "You're talking about normal human cells, even if they did come from different individuals. Jenova cells are of alien origin, not of this world at all."
"That's one of the biggest company secrets. It's so highly classified that only select members of the Board of Directors and the science teams who work with SOLDIER and its offshoots know about it. Mako is only the publicly known part of the process used to create SOLDIERs. Everyone assumes that's all there is. But there's a top secret aspect to it, too: the implantation of modified Jenova cells. I've spent so much time around Genesis and Lazard, I forget that SOLDIERs don't know about what was done to each of them."
Zack fumbled blindly for a seat, finally grasping one of the tall lab stools like Sephiroth sat on. He swiveled it around and managed to get his butt onto it. "I've got alien cells floating around in me," he muttered, unable to process what that fact meant to him.
"Probably not floating around like you're imagining, though certainly some are in your bloodstream," Hollander said with a huff of laughter. "Most will have attached to specific organs and merged with some of your regular cells early on. They'll also have incorporated their genetic material into your own, and there are significant natural hybridization and transgenic elements to all of this that I won't get into. Basically, most Jenova cells target neuro-skeletal-muscular groups, lymphatic, and immune systems, which is why Genesis is having problems. His were introduced during his fetal development stage and are integrated everywhere, but imperfectly." He shrugged indifferently. "It happens sometimes even in normal SOLDIERs. Eventually the mix of native host cells and modified Jenova cells goes haywire. The Jenova cells also can affect the reproductive organs, like they did with Gillian. Hells, even her ova merged with Jenova cells. Whatever. Anyway, every last one of Angeal's natural cells contains Jenova genetic and subcellular materials because the ovum he grew from had hybridized with one or more Jenova cells."
That explanation, and the levity with which it was offered, did not help. Zack clenched his fists and moaned, "I'm part alien. Is this what Angeal felt? Like a monster? Not human? Oh, Shiva, no... What's going to happen? What?" He unclenched his hands, but his fingers curled instead into claws. His arms suddenly itched. Was that the Jenova cells? Were they in his skin, crawling around, eating him alive, transforming him? Would they "go haywire" inside him? Would he degrade like Genesis? Mutate like Angeal? He scratched at both forearms. He wanted to tear his own skin off, rend his flesh to claw out the foreign cells, alien cells... Hollander's next words stopped him cold.
"Are all you First Classes such giant drama bitches? Is it some selection requirement of Hojo's that I didn't know about? It's not just Genesis?" Hollander carried his completed flasks to a set of four big, boxy machines. They were white, the size of ovens, with pushbuttons and digital displays showing numbers and graphs on their outer doors. They hummed quietly. CO2 incubators, Angeal's memories told Zack. They rested atop low metal tables to keep them off the floor, and each had two gas canisters hooked up on the side. Zack wondered which lab or supply house they'd been stolen from.
Muttering under his breath, Hollander opened the door of the nearest one, then opened a clear inner door, carefully set his cultures inside, and sealed everything up again. He stripped off his goggles, mask, and gloves, and dropped them all into a wall receptacle labelled "Hazardous Waste" that had been installed next to a door on the same wall as the incubators. Zack assumed the door led to extra lab and storage space. It was closed and padlocked.
Who around here would steal lab supplies? Seriously. Zack couldn't imagine that Genesis or Lazard would even care. Besides, Genesis or any of his copies could snap a steel padlock like a pretzel stick. But the lock did convey serious intentions and told everyone around to keep out. Hollander must be extra paranoid from his years of working in Shin-Ra's Science Department. Zack couldn't blame him. And really, hazardous materials were always kept under lock and key. It was just practical and safe.
As Hollander washed up in a lab sink, he complained, "Genesis was one thing, he's been ridiculously emotional ever since he was a child. But Shiva knows I never imagined Angeal had such crazy dramatic tendencies. He went clear over the edge when he found out about how he was created. At least you, Sephiroth, haven't completely flown off the handle."
"Only because I never had time," Sephiroth said quietly. He rubbed his right arm. "I found out after Modeoheim, while I was searching for a way to get Angeal away from Hojo. That took all my attention, all my focus, and then it all went sideways, and then after we rescued Angeal we went on the run, hiding from Shin-Ra and looking for you..."
"Some rescue," Zack muttered under his breath, blinking rapidly while he stared at Angeal's head in its jar. He scratched the skin of his left wrist. It still itched.
Hollander sniffed, expressing his contempt for their emotional reactions. He came over to them and stood with his hands on his hips. "Well, don't have a nervous breakdown now. Bad enough Fair looks like he wants to go all fetal and start sucking his damned thumb."
Zack jerked his head up at that, bristling with offense and anger.
"I've had plenty of time to grow accustomed to the idea," Sephiroth snapped, his reptilian eyes flashing. "My concern now is—"
"Yes, yes, it's getting Angeal to grow a new body," Hollander said with callous brusqueness. "We all want that. In any case, you wanted to know why Angeal psychically affects you so much. Now you know."
"So the Jenova cells in the nervous system are probably the ones accounting for the telepathy?" Sephiroth asked. "That's why Angeal isn't affecting unenhanced humans like you and Lazard?"
Hollander just shrugged at that. "When I said my goodbyes to Shin-Ra, no one really knew the answers to either of your questions, not even Hojo. We didn't even know enough to ask the questions at all, but I'd guess the specific location of the Jenova cells, like in the nervous system, isn't much of a factor. The isolated cells react to each other at a distance even in ordinary cell cultures, without animal or human hosts. We'd never really had a big, coordinated mass of active Jenova cells in a living organism like Angeal to observe, though. The original Jenova specimen was kept locked away in a secret location. Hojo always claimed even he didn't know where it was, if you can believe a word he says. In any case, it was mummified and severely withered by two thousand years encased in the ice. It was a miracle we were able to extract any viable, useful cells from it at all."
He settled on a tall lab stool near Zack. "To speculate, though, it's entirely possible that a large enough mass of vital, healthy Jenova cells could telepathically affect baseline humans. Or a mass distributed among multiple organisms with a strong controlling personality and intellect, similar to how Genesis interacts with his G-copies, perhaps, only more unified and without the debilitating effects. Such a cellular mass might very well be able to psychically influence uninfected or uncolonized creatures, if it grows large enough, though I've seen no signs of that with Genesis.
"Maybe Angeal could do it now, but he's never shown any indications that he wants to mentally dominate anything or anyone, not even his own copies. So we may never know how wide-reaching his abilities are unless he's changed his attitudes about that." Hollander barked out another laugh. "But if Lazard and I start dreaming about Hojo's lab or Sephiroth beheading us, we'll know for sure, won't we?"
Sephiroth shot him a glare of pure dislike.
"A critical mass of cells," Zack murmured, remembering a couple conversations he and Sephiroth had held. "The expanding psychic field..." He cast a glance at Hollander. "And now you say it might even affect regular humans."
"I only speculated," Hollander sniffed. "There's no evidence yet for such generalized effects."
"It is as I theorized," Sephiroth said to Zack. "A critical mass of Jenova cells must generate the psychic field. Hojo's Reunion theory almost certainly requires it." To Hollander he said, "He was using Angeal to study something he called Para-Communications."
"Among other horrible things," Zack mumbled.
Hollander eyed them with curiosity. "Yes, you mentioned those theories about Reunion, telepathy, and Jenova cells before. It seems Hojo's been busy since I exited the company. You'll have to tell me more about these ideas of yours."
"Angeal has controlled his copies and his other cells at times," Sephiroth said. "Like just a little while ago in this lab, when I removed him from your glovebox. He recalled his free cells so as not to cause unwanted contamination."
"Removed him, huh? Is that what you call what you did?" Hollander sulkily folded his arms and flashed a disgruntled glance at his destroyed equipment. "But yes, according to you he does seem to be willing to exert some limited control, doesn't he? At least locally. So it seems he has revised his attitudes..."
"Once he is...better...it should be possible to investigate Reunion more thoroughly, if he is willing to cooperate. If not..." Sephiroth let that idea—a warning, really—trail off, and treated Hollander to an eerie smile.
In the meantime, Zack had pulled himself together enough to remember his original concerns. The conversation he was hearing now only worried him more. "You didn't answer my other question." He dropped from the tall stool and fidgeted, doing a couple squats before standing ready for—he didn't know what exactly. Bad news?
Or rather, more bad news. He'd already gotten a bellyful, but there was always more, wasn't there?
Hollander raised his eyebrows. "Oh? I thought I did a thorough job of answering your question. You certainly didn't like hearing the truth, though."
"Not that! My question about Angeal, about if he's awake," Zack spat out, ignoring the quelling look Sephiroth directed at him. "That's what I really wanted to know. How aware is he? He can't be totally unconscious—not if he knew you were attaching sensor pads to his head and freaked out so bad we all heard him. And now you two are talking about him controlling his cells like he's awake."
"Ah, that. Yes, that's a very interesting mystery. I can't say that I understand yet. We have been making some assumptions, haven't we?"
"So what's the answer? Are Sleepels not enough? Is he in some weird half-dreaming, half-awake state? Is he fully awake but unable to express himself?" That last idea horrified Zack. "What if he's been awake all this time? Aware that he's just a disembodied head, helpless, but unable to let us know?"
"He seems very able to let you know about things that are important enough to him," Hollander scoffed.
"That's the problem!"
"Look, Fair, I just told you I don't know. I've only just taken some initial cell samples and brain scans today. I haven't had a chance to analyze them or formulate any theories yet. Give me a few days. I'll figure something out."
"A few days, right." Zack stared at Angeal in his container. He seemed unconscious, but he couldn't be. Not really. Not the way Zack understood unconsciousness.
Angeal had been in that weird state for a long time now. Zack supposed a few more days wouldn't make any difference.