Sephiroth smiled, gently and knowingly. The lights bathed his features in eerie radiance.
Zack awoke to the horrifying smells of antiseptic, bleach, and ozone. As always, he was naked, strapped down to a metal table, and covered in white circular sensor pads. The blinding surgical lights overhead that seared his retinas had become all too familiar. The entire situation was too familiar. It always presaged pain and horror.
Hojo entered the room, air hoses trailing from his sealed white biohazard suit. He was accompanied by two similarly garbed assistants. One carried a tray of surgical instruments and swabs for taking a variety of biological samples. She set it down on an adjacent table.
Zack struggled futilely and glared at his tormentors. If only he were free! He would murder Hojo! Tear him apart piece by piece, make that unholy sadist experience dismemberment for himself! Annihilate the lab, and Shin-Ra with it. He wanted to destroy the whole world! Burn everything down to the ground and beyond—shatter the Planet, destroy everything, everything, until he was all alone and could finally rest. Anything, anything to end his suffering and seek revenge like the monster Hojo had made of him.
Anything at all. Anything...
Through the suit's visor, Hojo leered at him. "And how are we doing today, Specimen A? Still fighting the inevitable, I see." He selected an oversized scalpel from the tray. Light gleamed on the sharp, steel blade. He looked over at his nearest assistant. "Be sure to—" He choked, ending with a gargling noise. The white biohazard suit emitted a loud hiss and a shrill alarm.
Wet crimson blossomed on the front of Hojo's suit. The sadist's face bleached white, bloodless, so bloodless, and blank with utter shock. Hojo dropped the scalpel and stared down at the growing red stain on his stomach. A wedge of silver emerged from the center, sharp and gleaming like the fallen scalpel. The biohazard suit hissed louder; the alarm shrieked.
More and more of the slender, shining blade pushed through Hojo's body. It twisted and sliced upwards, bisecting the mad scientist neatly from his stomach to the left side of his neck. The halves flopped apart, spewing fountains of blood and guts, showering Zack's naked body with Hojo's vile ichor. The blade vanished.
Zack flinched against the hot wetness. Hojo's right side hung near, the scientist's dead eyes staring blankly through tilted glasses and the biohazard suit's stained visor. Blood drained from his open mouth. Then, in uncanny slow motion, the body collapsed.
Zack felt a sudden, nausea-inducing lurch, and space transposed around him.
The alarm ceased. He was still in Hojo's lab, but now standing off to one side, free of Angeal, free of suffering. The bright lights had faded and the room filled with hazy mist, creeping shadows, and flickering lights in shades of purple, magenta, and electric blue. He heard whispers and rustling noises all around, and saw indistinct outlines, like hoses or ropes or—tentacles. They thickened and moved, shifting against themselves, undulating restlessly. In their midst he saw countless dark forms. Some were round and fluttered above the ground, others held tridents, some crouched on all fours. Most were man-shaped, though, their features unidentifiable. The men bore a single feathered wing on their left; the creatures two, both on the right side of their backs.
Zack looked back. Angeal's naked body lay strapped to the surgical table, haloed in otherworldly light. Hojo and the assistants were gone. No blood remained. Everything was pristine and clean.
The lights flashed harder, sharper; the shadows seethed and deepened. The mist drifted aimlessly. Zack tasted magenta, scented the burning odor of purple and electric blue. He heard discordant flutes, unearthly and shrill. His flesh crawled, not with goosebumps, but with independent life. Darkness and tentacles swirled around his legs.
A man in black walked out of the looming shadows and stood next to Angeal's head. Acid green eyes flashed. Green eyes with slit pupils. More eyes blinked in the shadows, matching eyes, and deep blue ones, blue like the ocean, joined them. A mass of thigh-length, silvery gray hair cascaded from the man's head and swirled with a life of its own. The silver strands reached out to the shadowy tentacles, twined with them, joined with them, until they were all one, all connected to the man.
To Sephiroth.
Zack inhaled sharply.
Angeal stared upwards, unaware, insensate.
"You don't need to live here anymore," Sephiroth told Angeal. "You're free now." He gently touched Angeal's cheek with one bare hand. "You're free."
Zack swallowed a sudden lump of horror as he saw Angeal's flesh writhe and stretch open and reach, as he saw Sephiroth's hand sink into the welcoming grasp of living skin and tissue, merging until his hand disappeared into Angeal's cheek and there was no distinction between the two. No scars, no seams, just a smooth, single expanse of skin and flesh. They were connected as one being.
"Be with me, my brother," Sephiroth crooned.
The restraining straps vanished, leaving no trace they had ever existed. Angeal sat up and swung his legs over the table. He stood, tall and proud, and where he had been helpless and naked on the table before, now he wore his SOLDIER uniform with ingrained strength and authority, every detail complete. Black sleeveless sweater, black fatigues, black boots, belts. Even the Buster Sword hung from his back. He stood, grave and powerful and indomitable.
Just as Zack wanted him to be. Just as Sephiroth wanted him to be.
The surgical table disappeared. All the lab equipment disappeared. The cavernous space filled with mist and shadows, shadows like smoke, shadows all around, and within them multitudes of eyes, squirming tentacles, and indistinct forms of humans and monsters. Flickering, unearthly lights of purple and magenta and electric blue illuminated and obscured details.
Sephiroth smiled, gently and knowingly. The lights bathed his features in eerie radiance. The whispers and flutes increased with approval. The connection between his arm and Angeal's face slid down to shoulder level, maintaining the blending of flesh with flesh.
"Good," said Sephiroth. "This is good." He turned to the figures lurking in the shadows and held out his other hand. "It's time. Join us, brother."
The scent of burning purple and blue, the taste of magenta, grew stronger.
One of the shadowy, winged men stepped forward. He wore black and brilliant crimson, his bearing confident and strong, his head crowned with shining auburn hair. Genesis.
Flashing lights briefly illuminated the rest. All the men bore Genesis's face. Among the monsters, Zack saw Sahagins, Hounds, Ahrimans, Griffins, and others. Others, and more: worms and fish and birds and more monsters, more insects, and normal animals. Even trees, ferns, brush. Angeal's features grew from different places on the nonhuman creatures, emphasizing their strangeness. Plant trunk and leaves showed faint impressions of his features. All the copies, man and monster, flora and fauna, they all hung back, stayed within the shadows where they belonged.
Genesis smiled, the same weird smile as Sephiroth. Sephiroth nodded to Angeal's other side. Genesis's gloves vanished. He pressed his bare hand to Angeal's arm, gripping tightly. "Yes," he said, aquamarine eyes rapt and glowing with eldritch light. "Brothers. The arrow has left the bow of the goddess. At last."
"At last," Sephiroth echoed.
Zack didn't think that particular "goddess" had anything to do with the Planet or Lifestream. And then he covered his mouth with both hands as he watched Angeal's flesh ripple, then engulf and merge with Genesis's fingers and palm. Genesis's hand disappeared in the merging, leaving him connected at the wrist, with no scars, no seams. A perfect melding of skin, of flesh. Just like Sephiroth.
Three had become One.
All three turned their faces in Zack's direction in an eerie, synchronized movement.
Sephiroth extended his free hand. "Zack," he said, simply.
Zack felt it: the tug, the promise of joy, of transcendence. He felt it and wanted it. He wanted it so much. It would be so perfect. A perfect existence, natural, unified. Eternal. Rapturous. Like the stories he'd read as a child about joining the Lifestream. Joined as One. Forever as One.
He savored the luscious taste of magenta. He inhaled deeply the glorious perfume of burning purple and electric blue. His eyes locked on Sephiroth's.
"This is our Reunion," said Sephiroth, still smiling gently.
Yes, a perfect Reunion. Of the body, of the mind, and emotions, and self. A single, unified soul.
One body. One self. One soul.
One.
Zack took one step forward.
Someone was screaming, destroying the perfect, idealized moment. It was his own voice—his own, and Angeal's, too. Their shared voices rose in volume, split his skull. Magenta turned to bitter poison on his tongue. Purple and blue scorched his nostrils like fire. The lights exploded in harsh pulses of unimaginable, unnameable colors, hurting his eyes. He staggered backwards, shaking his head against the sudden pain and the discordance of desires warring within him.
Alien, the two voices shrieked as one, as One, as one. Alien-alien-alienalienalienalien—
Zack barely registered the disappointment on Sephiroth's face as he stumbled back another step and over a ledge into an endless, black pit.
He fell into the depths, and experienced bizarre relief that at least he'd die cleanly. That he'd die as himself. And then he knew no more.