Trepidation filled him. He'd seen a film like that once—it had been about some sort of weird blob of gelatinous alien tissue that had started small, but as it consumed people it just got bigger and bigger, and eventually threatened an entire town.
"All right, the good news is that over the past four days I've taken a number of scans around the entire building using special Sense-type materia, and it looks like Sephiroth was right and Angeal's cells didn't contaminate anything when containment was broken." Hollander stood at the front of the old conference room, facing his audience of Sephiroth, Zack, Genesis (who for a change had hidden away his wing), and Lazard. Plus Angeal's head in a jar, which Sephiroth kept near him. The group sat around a long, beat-up table laminated in an unattractive, fake wood grain. Hollander had placed a laptop near him, as well as some projection equipment. Zack assumed there would be some show-and-tell as part of the presentation.
"So we don't need to worry about becoming A-copies?" Lazard asked pointedly, stress evident in his tone. "I'd like to stay myself, if you don't mind." He looked over at Angeal's head and grimaced. "Sorry, Angeal, but I like my own face, mind, and body. I've seen up close what Genesis's cells do to people, and your cells, well, only to monsters, but I'd rather not find out what they'd do to me." He didn't look like he expected Angeal to answer, and that expectation was fulfilled. Angeal remained unresponsive.
Zack half expected to hear a voice in his head offering desert-dry commentary about Lazard's concerns, but apparently Angeal wasn't speaking to him at the moment. In fact, Angeal hadn't said a word to him in a few days, not since he—and Sephiroth, Genesis, and the G-copies—had psychically "heard" Angeal's panicked cry for help in the lab.
"I already told everyone," Sephiroth said with noticeable irritation, "Angeal recalled his free cells after the breach occurred."
"Trust but verify," Hollander quipped to him, ignoring the scowl he received in return. "It's every scientist's motto, or it should be. And I've verified it. There's no contamination. We're good."
"Glad to hear it," Lazard muttered under his breath. He didn't appear terribly reassured.
Hollander went on, "There's more good news. I've analyzed the dregs of Hojo's nutrient mix and it's something I can reproduce here. I've also spent considerable time studying the data I took from Angeal, and my findings so far are promising."
"How do you mean, promising?" Genesis asked. He looked both interested and skeptical.
"I have successfully cultured a number of cell samples. I collected Angeal's cells from mouth, nasal, and skin swabs, and also from some of the fluid from his container." Hollander nodded at Angeal's specimen container, sitting on the table near Sephiroth's elbow. "The cells are unbelievably vigorous and their growth rates are extraordinary. The cell doubling time is many multiples the normal rate for human cells."
Lazard folded his hands and rested them on the table before him. "Explain what cell doubling time is. Remember that not all of us know anything about biology or medicine."
"Cell doubling time is the amount of time it takes a cell culture to double," Hollander explained with barely controlled exasperation, though that hardly mattered considering how sarcastic the circular "answer" was.
Zack couldn't blame him too much for his impatience. It did seem like an obvious conclusion to draw, but Shin-Ra scientists weren't known for clarity or transparency. It was best to get solid explanations from them.
Hollander continued, offering a simplified scenario, "For example, if you start out with just one cell, you time how long it takes to divide and make two. And then those two become four, the four become eight, eight become sixteen, etcetera. Each iteration is a doubling of the previous number of cells in the culture. The doubling time varies with types of cells and the conditions they grow in. Temperature, air, incubation, nutrients and substrates, that sort of thing. For example, some normal human primary cells can take as long as two to four days under near ideal conditions. Certain very fast-growing cancer cells can take as little as twelve hours or so."
"How fast are Angeal's cells growing?" Lazard asked the pertinent question.
Hollander smiled, looking quite pleased. "Extraordinarily fast. Each culture doubles in just under one hour. It's amazing."
Zack wasn't a scientist, but that kind of cell growth sounded scary fast to him, and his imagination was running wild. "What does that mean? Will his cells burst out of their containers and keep growing uncontrollably like some monster in a horror movie?" Trepidation filled him. He'd seen a film like that once—it had been about some sort of weird blob of gelatinous alien tissue that had started small, but as it consumed people it just got bigger and bigger, and eventually threatened an entire town. He didn't remember how the movie ended, but that was fantasy, anyway, not the reality they were all facing.
"Oh, nothing like that." Hollander waved his hands breezily, dismissing the concern. His beard waggled as he chuckled at Zack's fancy. "Nothing can grow forever without a surplus of resources. When the cells run out of nutrients, they'll stop multiplying and perhaps even die back. For now, I'm splitting the cultures into subcultures so they continue to have room and nutrients to keep increasing their numbers. That way I'll have a ready supply to study and I won't need to take any new samples from Angeal, at least for a while."
"So this means exactly what?" Zack asked, frowning slightly.
"For one thing, it corroborates your story about how fast Angeal grew that strange Ahriman body," said Hollander. He scratched the back of his head. "I didn't disbelieve you, not exactly, but the speed did seem unrealistic and possibly exaggerated. However, since his independent cells and those in his head are capable to reproducing at such high rates, it's entirely believable. It also probably means that once we get his development coaxed into following some kind of a human bio-template, he should complete his new body quite rapidly. Maybe as fast as just a few weeks. Now, the bio-template is another issue, but I have an idea—"
"Wait, slow down, Hollander," Lazard protested, leaning forward against the table's edge. "You just mentioned Angeal's head. Why isn't it growing, then, if his cells are multiplying so fast?"
Sephiroth spoke before Hollander could reply: "Angeal agreed with me that he should control his own rate of growth until we got here. There's been some new growth, but he's managed to keep it from getting out of hand."
Lazard pushed his glasses higher on his nose and stared at Angeal's head in the jar. Zack saw the skin under his left eye twitch.
"And that," Hollander added, "is a point of concern at the moment."
"Oh?" Sephiroth didn't look worried at all. In fact, he looked downright serene.
Zack, though, wondered what bomb Hollander was about to drop. It seemed like he was always worried, like he'd never not been worried, especially in regards to Angeal.
Hollander tapped on his keyboard. A multitude of small lights on the projector glowed. The device hummed and displayed a two dimensional picture on the wall behind the scientist. A giant view of Angeal's head appeared. It rested on a surgical steel tray, lying on his left cheek with his neck stump exposed in open air. Hollander pressed a few more buttons, and the image split, showing two views of Angeal's head side by side. The projector then magnified both pictures.
Both showed the lump at the base of Angeal's neck and the six protuberances that budded from it in an even circle. On the left, the image showed them as rounded nubs. But on the right, they were larger, having thickened and elongated, and each had developed an elbow-like bend and connecting membranous tissues. Some kind of thin, white fibers sprouted in regular patterns on the skin. A row of very small, rounded lumps, each with a horizontal slit over it, ran along the outer edge of all the bent stubs.
Hollander said, "These pictures bear out how quickly his tissue is growing and developing. The picture on the left is from three days ago. The picture on the right is from eight o'clock this morning. If you look closely at the base of Angeal's neck," he nodded to the specimen container, "you can make them out, though some of the changes are not yet large enough to be obvious without magnification."
Zack leaned over the table, looking at the container in front of Sephiroth. So did Genesis and Lazard. Sure enough, the little nubs did appear to have grown and changed. Zack couldn't see the slits or white hairs yet, but the nubs were larger and slightly bent.
They had grown that much in less than a week? Zack licked his lips. He remembered a few nights back how Sephiroth told Angeal he could start growing again, how he could start becoming. Zack remembered wondering what Angeal would become.
Once he'd calmed down, Zack had hoped for human. That didn't appear to be happening.
"Sephiroth, did you notice this before?" Genesis asked. He traced a finger on the curved, transparent wall of the container. "I hadn't."
Sephiroth said, "I've been sticking with Angeal whenever Hollander was working with him. The good doctor pointed them out to me, yes, but we both agreed to keep quiet about the changes until this meeting."
Zack noticed how he'd put the blame entirely on Hollander and had not admitted to noticing anything on his own. Sephiroth, Zack knew, had kept Angeal with him all the time, not handing him off to anyone else—not even to Genesis or Zack. From the way Lazard and Genesis both narrowed their eyes, they'd noticed that small misdirection, too.
Lazard gripped the armrests of his office chair and scooted it a little bit away from the table. "So you did know, then."
"Does it matter?" Sephiroth asked. "We're here to get Angeal to grow a new body. These growths appeared before we arrived. It was inevitable they'd become more prominent. That's what happens when things grow."
"Indeed. They aren't a major problem just yet, but they are a concern for us." Hollander tapped on his keyboard again. The left image disappeared; the right centered and zoomed even more. "Please pay attention.
"Now, as you can see," Hollander went on, confirming Zack's fears, "these six growths are clearly not human." He stepped closer to the projected image and pointed to the closest of the six new...limbs. "I have done extensive imaging to determine their internal and external structures. They are the beginnings of wings."
Zack heard some sharp, inhaled breaths from Genesis and Lazard, and felt his own heart drop clear down to his toes.
Hollander traced his finger along a line of pronounced, darker dots on the edge of one small limb. "These patterns are pterylae, also called feather tracts. A bird's feathers sprout from these locations in specific groupings. These thin, fiber-like extensions you see are not human hair; they are in fact brand-new feathers." He zoomed in on one patch so that everyone could see their narrow but unmistakable feathery structure.
"The growth points don't cover all the skin," Lazard observed.
Genesis snorted. He folded his arms and leaned back in his seat. "No, the tracts themselves don't. I should know." He rolled his left shoulder, reminding everyone that he could manifest a wing. "The fully grown feathers themselves do cover everything, though. Remember a single feather is wider and longer than the skin position it sprouts from. They're kind of like a weird blanket."
"Yes," Hollander said. "The feathers grow and overlap so that they cover an entire bird—or in Genesis's case, the entire wing. Angeal's two wings were the same while he still had them."
"It looks like he'll have them again, along with some spares," Lazard muttered. He stared at the image, both appalled and rapt, like he couldn't tear his eyes away. He scooted his chair back even farther, as though he was getting ready to make a run for it.
Hollander heaved an exasperated breath at the unhelpful comment. "There are multiple types of feathers with different functions, but we won't go into that here. Suffice to say that I've catalogued the feathers and functional structure displayed here, and each of these new limbs Angeal is growing will become an anatomically correct wing.
"And now it gets very strange. Do you see these lumps with slits along the outside edges of the wings?"
"Crap!" Zack said, bolting out of his chair in shock and horror. "I remember those from when he grew that Ahriman body. It had two slits just like those! One became a mouth and the other a giant eyeball! Sephiroth, you remember, right?"
Sephiroth remained calm, not budging from his own seat. "I remember how they began on the Ahriman body, just like that. I didn't see the eye and mouth develop as you did, though. That occurred while I was seeking medical supplies and passage over the ocean. They already were fully formed by the time I returned and..." His voice trailed off and his expression shuttered.
When you cut off Angeal's head and burned the body so he could start over, Zack very carefully did not say aloud. Instead he exclaimed, "It was horrible! We can't let that happen again!"
Genesis's face had drained of color, and he stared speechlessly at Sephiroth. "Like in my nightmare," he whispered. More strongly, he said in an accusing tone, "It was the second time you beheaded Angeal. You burned the body so it wouldn't try to rejoin with the head." He touched his throat. "I can still see it, feel it... I felt it all, even the Ahriman burning up. Like everything was still connected, even though the head was separate. It was weird and muffled, though."
"I explained to you before, Angeal can control his senses," Sephiroth stated emphatically. "His head wasn't conscious, but even so his basic instinct would have been to shut down pain. You felt pressure and tugging sensations, like when you have a local anesthetic for a minor surgical procedure. That's all."
"There was more to it than that! It was a separation, a wrongness. There were tentacle-things, too. They tried...they tried to reconnect the body parts... Reunite them...a Reunion... It felt—I've never felt anything like it, it was horrible but it felt natural, good—"
"Enough! It's over, Genesis," Sephiroth said sharply. "It was necessary then, but it's done now. It's past."
Hand still stroking his throat, Genesis muttered something unintelligible under his breath. He flashed Sephiroth a mulish look but nonetheless subsided.
Hollander watched them with sharp eyes, listening avidly. He typed a few things on his keyboard. "Zack is correct as to what the slits represent. Imaging and simulation data projections indicate that the slits will become eyes. In fact, I've already run a computer model of how his current growth patterns will proceed."
The image changed. Angeal's head was prominent in the center, but it was surrounded by six white wings, almost like a feathery halo. Rows of dark blue eyes stared out from the edges of each wing.
Zack coughed, feeling his throat close. He heard Genesis and Lazard gasp and protest. Sephiroth, though, remained utterly silent. Zack risked a look at him. He didn't seem concerned at all. In fact, he was nodding slightly.
Zack, on the other hand, felt physically ill at what he saw.
Hollander said, "This may not be a complete picture of how Angeal's current growth patterns are forming. There may be further developments that the simulation hasn't taken into account. Nevertheless, we now have to decide what to do about this undesirable direction. I recommend the wings be amputated before they have a chance to develop to maturity."
Zack felt his chest contract, and his head started spinning. His heart hammered. He was panicking. Why was he panicking?
Sephiroth said impassively, "I agree. The sooner, the better."
Stop! Zack wanted to scream at them. Something inside him—someone inside him—wanted to shriek and flee the room, flee the entire mining site.
Hollander said, "We can do it tomorrow morning."
"Wait wait wait!" Zack burst out, barely keeping himself from screaming. Hollander and Sephiroth were moving too fast, coordinated in their plans, while Lazard appeared too stunned to offer any protests.
Genesis tried to argue, though: "Sephiroth, do you seriously intend to behead Angeal again?"
"If necessary," Sephiroth said with a resolute nod. Genesis's eyes widened so much Zack wondered if they'd fall out of his face.
"Wasn't twice enough for you?" Genesis slammed a hand down on the table so hard it rattled. Hollander's projected images shook, and the liquid in Angeal's container sloshed back and forth a few times. Genesis's face had paled to unhealthy levels, and his breath came in short pants.
The screaming in Zack's head increased. He wrestled it down, but it wasn't his own. "Sephiroth, you can't do that!"
"Such a crude and imprecise measure will not be required," Hollander told them firmly. "I can remove the wings surgically. Each needs to be excised very carefully to preserve as much of the blastema as possible."
"The what?" Genesis barely managed to gasp out. His hand convulsively stroked his throat, but the rest of him was tensed. He looked like he was about to leap out of his chair and attack Hollander.
"The lump at the base of Angeal's head that the wings are sprouting from," Hollander said.
Sephiroth explained further: "It formed last time and then it grew and turned into the Ahriman body."
Zack was unable to slow the urgency beating at him like mad drums. He wanted to jump up, grab Angeal's head, and run as far away as he could.
"To be specific," Hollander said, nodding, "the blastema is a mass of cells that forms at the injury. It undergoes morphogenesis to regenerate the missing limb or organ—which in this case is an entire body. Since Angeal grew a complete Ahriman before, it should also be possible for him to grow a human body, but we cannot allow the wings to remain. They're currently taking all the blastema's resources and would hinder human development. After they're gone, I'll chemically direct the blastema to dedifferentiate again so it can start over—"
The panicky pressure crushed Zack's mental control and overflowed. They didn't understand! Why couldn't they understand? "Angeal doesn't want you to do that to him!" he shouted.
All heads except Angeal's swiveled at him. Four pairs of eyes stared, boring into his face.
"Can't you tell?" Zack asked desperately. "Sephiroth, you should understand! I know you can tell! Angeal's panicking!" He turned to Genesis. "You're feeling it, too. I can see it all over you."
A sudden supernova of magic erupted, biting hard at Zack's senses. He caught his breath. A Sleepel. An insanely strong one. He'd felt the sleep magic that strong before—Sephiroth had cast a spell like that right before he'd chopped Angeal's head from the Ahriman body, before he'd burned—
The sensations of panic left him abruptly. Even his adrenaline rush settled, and he felt tired. Tired and sleepy. Like other times when a super-strong Sleepel had been cast on Angeal. The magic leaked through the psionic field, along the pathways created by Angeal's alien telepathy.
Genesis let out a jaw-popping yawn.
"What the fuck is going on here?" Lazard snapped. He scooted his chair even farther away. "What's wrong with all of you?"
"I put Angeal deeper into sleep," Sephiroth stated. "Zack and Genesis should calm down now. The sense of panic wasn't theirs."
"Not theirs—?"
Zack said, "This is what I've been talking about! He's not really asleep. He talks to us and he knows what's going on."
"He knows what's going on through us," Sephiroth calmly told him. "Not necessarily through his own consciousness. He only knows what we know, and that is filtered through his altered sleep patterns. Our psychic links with him provide him with experience of the world."
"Like with his copies," Zack said, suddenly understanding. "He sees and hears and feels through them. Don't you do the same thing, Genesis?"
"Yes, but I'm awake and I control how much of it I take in. Angeal was conscious enough to panic when he realized Sephiroth and Hollander were talking about amputating his wings," Genesis said. His lips had turned down into a heavy frown and he glared at Sephiroth. "You're holding out on us. Stop lying. You know he's not really asleep."
"Hojo cut off his wings before," Zack added with dawning awareness. "He must've had a flashback. Sephiroth, how often do you cast Sleep on him now? It's more than just twice a day, isn't it? That's why you keep him with you all the time! Because he does wake up!"
"It's part of the reason," Sephiroth admitted, slowly, unwillingly. He shot a secretive look at Hollander.
For his part, Hollander had only looked more and more interested during the commotion. "So my hypothesis appears to be correct." He rubbed his beard, thoughtful and calculating. "You know what this means, Sephiroth. You were correct, too. Damn it, I wish it had happened under controlled conditions in my lab."
"You'll just have to settle for the data you get from me."
"What hypothesis?" Genesis asked suspiciously.
Hollander glanced at Sephiroth, who maintained a calm stone face, before he answered, "That Angeal drifts in and out of the sleep state into a sort of threshold consciousness, and that you three are acting as important secondary sensory inputs."
"So he is aware of what's going on!" Zack burst out. "I knew it!"
"No," Hollander said emphatically, though he avoided Zack's eyes by instead looking at his computer. "Don't get too excited. I don't believe he's awake and aware as we understand it. At most, it's probably like being on the edge of dreams. I need to do more research, though."
Zack frowned. "So what does that really mean?"
"It means I'm still analyzing data," Hollander brushed aside the topic with an airy wave of his hand, "but your strong emotions and loud reactions just now triggered him into a sort of nightmare. Sephiroth stopped it in its tracks by pushing him into a deeper, dreamless state. From now on, try to stay calm." Hollander's gaze took in everyone present. "All of you."
An uncomfortable silence filled the room.
"Now," Hollander said, "I propose removing the embryonic wings late tomorrow morning. I'll take care of the setup required before the amputation procedure. It'll take all of this afternoon and a little time tomorrow. Does anyone disagree with the timetable?"
Sephiroth nodded firmly, though he was the only one. While the rest remained quiet, there were a number of skeptical looks exchanged among them.
Finally, Lazard said, "Look, if he's awake—"
"Threshold consciousness," Hollander corrected.
"Yeah, right. Partly awake, then," Lazard said, his words dripping scorn for the semantics. "Anyway, if Sleepels don't work effectively, well, no matter what he's become, it's inhumane to just operate—it's like something Hojo would do—"
"It's something Hojo would enjoy," Genesis hissed out with venom.
Aghast, Zack gaped at both of them. Was Hollander really going to—?
"I want no part of it," Lazard stated emphatically. "I don't care what went on in the Science Department. We're not in Shin-Ra anymore!"
"Screw you, you fucking hypocrite!" Hollander shouted. "You knew everything—" He caught himself and stopped. Then he took a deep breath, let it out again. "Do you think I'd do that to my own son?"
Lazard looked both unrepentant and doubtful, and Zack didn't disagree. At all. Hollander had used his own son as a research project. Who knew what else he'd do given the chance?
Hollander went on arrogantly, "Unlike Hojo, I believe in using analgesics and anesthesia. I have always made use of them for invasive procedures."
Maybe that was true. Maybe. Zack wanted to believe it. Back in SOLDIER, Angeal had never complained about Hollander causing him unnecessary pain or distress during exams, but maybe he'd just been hiding it, fearing it might be perceived as weakness. Zack had grown cynical over the past months. The more he learned about his former employer...and now he knew that Shin-Ra's scientists had implanted all SOLDIERs, even him, with alien cells—!
"I guarantee Angeal will not feel a thing. I won't be relying on Sleep status effects, not when I have excellent anesthesia at my disposal."
Zack wondered why Hollander had those kinds of supplies. Full-on anesthesia. He knew that Genesis and a large number of copies had made a supply run the other night, fulfilling Hollander's "shopping list." Sephiroth, Zack recalled, had only warned Genesis to stay away from Pithole and a few other towns that might be on alert due to his and Zack's visits. Zack just wanted Genesis to stay away from those places because he felt sorry for them. They had been terrorized enough already by raids and "red monsters."
Genesis's raiding party had returned with an amazing array of supplies, including reagents, drugs, large clear cylinders, tubs and tanks, electronics, stainless steel lab tools, and a variety of weird looking equipment Zack couldn't identify.
He supposed Hollander had already been making preparations for the surgery. At least he'd done them the courtesy of informing them of his plans.
"Sephiroth, of course you are welcome to also use Sleep magic," Hollander said. "We'll make sure this procedure goes smoothly and without unnecessary trauma. Given Angeal's rapid cell growth, I imagine the injuries will heal over quickly and we'll be able to start the chemical process of forcing the blastema to grow new human tissue in, um, maybe two or three weeks."
Sephiroth nodded, looking perfectly fine with Hollander's plans.
"I don't understand," Zack said. "I mean, if the, uh, the blastema is already programmed to grow wings, well, how will it change? Last time Sephiroth cut it off entirely and Angeal grew new tissue from scratch."
Hollander said patiently, "It would be much too traumatic to remove the entire thing, and it would slow the process too much to start over completely like that. I can use certain drugs and chemicals, augmented with special magic, to coerce the blastema cells to dedifferentiate again—"
"You keep using that word, dedifferentiate."
With a huff, Hollander explained, "It means the cells abandon their current patterns and revert to a more generalized state. From there, I can guide the regeneration process such that the cells re-differentiate appropriately. Based on how that Ahriman body developed, the process should resemble human embryogenesis, if everything goes well." At the blank looks he received, he clarified with a loud sigh, "Like how a human forms in the womb. Angeal should experience regrowth stages that resemble an embryo then a fetus."
"You're saying he's going to become a baby again," Lazard said scornfully. He'd managed to scoot his chair almost to the exit. "He'll be like a baby with an adult head."
"No, I am not saying that!" Hollander growled in impatience. "He'll end up with an adult human body. He'll probably just go through similar stages of development. That's all!"
Sephiroth stood up abruptly. "I think this meeting has gone on long enough. I have spent the past few days in the lab with Doctor Hollander. I have observed his tests and results, and discussed what they mean and how to proceed. I am satisfied that his plans are to Angeal's benefit."
Well, that confirmed Zack's suspicion that Hollander had already been planning to perform surgery on Angeal, and explained some of the weird items in Genesis's "supply run" of the other night.
Genesis snapped, "You might have let the rest of us in on all of this sooner."
"There was no need." Sephiroth picked up Angeal's container. "This meeting was a courtesy, intended to bring the rest of you up to speed with what has been discovered and how we shall move forward. Accept that it's necessary. It would be best to adjourn." With a very Sephiroth-like finality, he stared hard at Genesis, then at Zack, and then he stalked around Lazard's chair and departed from the room.
Frowning, Genesis gazed after him for a moment. He drummed his fingers on the table once, licked his lips. His eyes went in and out of focus a few times as though he were deep in thought. Abruptly, he growled, "Fine," pushed out of his chair, and followed.
Zack felt a very similar urge. It was strange, like a tugging, like he needed to follow. Almost like a compulsion. He put it down to the protectiveness he felt towards Angeal in such a helpless state. He wanted to see for himself that Angeal was okay.
Zack really needed to follow and make sure Angeal was fine, rather than panicking again.
He was walking toward the exit before he even realized he'd gotten up.
Looking strangely alarmed, Lazard made a big production of scooting out of his way. Zack barely noticed.
As he left the conference room, he heard Hollander say, "I really wish they were all in my lab right now."
NOTE: The horror movie Zack vaguely remembers is the FF7 version of "The Blob" (1958). It's interesting that the The Blob, The Thing, and Jenova all came from outer space and were originally stopped (though not killed) the same way: by getting frozen and stuck in the Arctic and/or Antarctic. Alas, The Blob, The Thing, and Jenova didn't stay frozen. Stupid humans thawed them out. LOL
If you're interested in weird lore about mysterious, gelatinous blobs (possibly from outer space! LOL), look up "star jelly." Those old accounts (and new—people still sometimes come across mysterious jelly) even inspired "The Blob" film and other horror/sci-fi stories!