"You've been out for six hours."
With a sudden jolt, Zack jerked awake to the scents of antiseptic and bleach. Electronic monitors beeped nearby. In an instant, he saw he was lying on a bed, on top of the bedclothes. The fluorescent overhead lights were harsh, but not blinding. He heard clinking glass and low voices.
The mattress, blanket, and pillow that cushioned him felt soft, but everything he smelled and saw and heard screamed LAB to him. His pulse raced as panic overtook him. The beeping grew faster. He gasped and lunged forward to sit up.
Sephiroth, in a chair next to him, looked up from a book in his lap. His surgical gown and mask were gone, and he was dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt. He blinked and said simply, "You're finally awake." He closed the book and set it on the floor.
Zack gaped and swiveled his head wildly. He pressed a hand to his chest and panted.
"Calm down," Sephiroth told him. "Everything's fine."
"Where am I?" Zack managed to utter. He winced at how loud and harsh his voice sounded to his oversensitive ears.
"Hollander's lab."
"Hollander's...? What am I doing here? I was with Lazard..." He belatedly felt pressure on his index finger and lifted his hand to inspect it. A small, electronic device had been clipped to his fingertip. He ripped it off and cast it aside, careless of damaging it. The beeping turned to a shrill whine.
Sephiroth retrieved the device and pressed a tiny button on it. The whine stopped, the air grew blessedly quiet. He said, "Genesis brought you here."
In the background, the clinking of glass ceased. "Don't touch the equipment!" Hollander's cross voice yelled from across the lab.
"Genesis brought me?" Zack asked Sephiroth, ignoring the scientist for the moment.
"I would have fetched you myself, but I could not leave Angeal alone with Hollander, especially during the surgery." Sephiroth nodded to the counter on his other side. Angeal's head slept within a fluid-filled specimen container there. The jar looked new, and about a quarter larger than the old one. "You've been out for six hours."
"Six hours?" Zack felt a wave of disorientation pass through him. "The surgery—did it take that long? How's Angeal? Did everything go okay?"
Heavy footsteps approached and Hollander's bearded face came into view. Genesis followed him by a few paces and moved to stand at the base of Zack's bed.
"He's fine," Hollander said gruffly, shoving his hands into his lab coat's pockets. "The surgery took a little over four hours. It went perfectly."
"That's good to hear."
"Sephiroth healed the incisions with a Curaga materia, and the rest of Angeal's tissues are regenerating at an incredible rate. Everything is going according to expectations. The only point of concern is the way you, Genesis, and the G-copies all fell unconscious."
"I knew I got sleepy, and Genesis, too, back with Lazard. But the G-copies also got knocked out?"
"Every last one of them," Genesis said, disgruntled. "They slept even longer than I did." His expression became distant, and he stared off into space for a moment, then shook himself and returned to normal. "Just checked on them. Some are still asleep," he said, "so you're not the last straggler. The wind sails over the water's surface, quietly, but surely."
The way Genesis communicated with his copies struck Zack as awfully similar to how Sephiroth sometimes communed silently with Angeal—when he wasn't having one-sided, verbal conversations. It was every bit as creepy, too. Add in the out-of-context Loveless quotes, and, well, disturbing didn't even begin to cover it. The verse made the hairs on Zack's arms and the back of his neck shiver, but he didn't know why. It was just another random quote from Genesis. What was different this time?
"Sephiroth says you brought me here from the control center, rather than Lazard or a copy?" he asked, rubbing an arm while looking Genesis up and down. Zack thought he hadn't been mistaken back in Lazard's control center—Genesis really did look better, his eyes and hair a little brighter, more vivid, less faded. Come to think of it, his voice sounded stronger, too, in some indefinable quality of depth in its timbre. He even smelled...better? Like a faint whiff of sickness had receded? Zack hadn't even noticed the way the degradation affected Genesis's voice and scent before, but now the differences came through loud and clear. Maybe Hollander really was doing something useful for him, at least in the short term.
Genesis folded his arms over his chest and cast an arch look at Sephiroth. "Yes, he and Hollander told me that story as well. Apparently I carted you around like a little child."
Zack cringed to hear that. "Um..."
"It's just as well he did," Sephiroth said, arching one elegant eyebrow. "I told you all that I would not leave Angeal during the surgery. I suppose you could have been left sleeping on desks in Lazard's office, but it was better to have you both with me."
"Why? Better for what?"
Nobody answered. Instead, Genesis shook his head. "I don't remember doing it, though. Carrying Zack up here, I mean. All the copies were dead to the world, too, so they didn't help, and I don't see Lazard around. Or did he drop by, as well?"
"No, he only called to say you were on your way," Sephiroth said. "He sounded quite disturbed." He smiled slightly, as though amused by a private joke.
Genesis snorted, expressing his contempt. "Figures. He's too normal for this bullshit." He shrugged. "In any case, Zack, you're welcome for the taxi service."
"Right, thank you," Zack said, abashed. He swung his legs over the side of his bed to sit up more comfortably, noting that he was still dressed in the same clothes as earlier, when he was back with Lazard in the control center. "You know, I don't even remember falling asleep," he mused. "I knew I was drowsy. I thought it felt different than a Sleepel. Was it the anesthesia?"
"Probably. What's the last thing you remember, Zack?" Sephiroth asked, strangely intent. Hollander glanced at him, nodded once, then fixed his attention on Zack as well.
"I was talking with Genesis and Lazard, and then I got really sleepy. Then Lazard said we should head back to our quarters. Do you remember that?" he said, looking at Genesis.
"Yes, I told them the same thing," Genesis said. "I don't recall the moment I fell asleep."
"Did either of you dream?" Hollander asked. "Did you have any dreams, at all?"
"Not even when I sleepwalked carrying Sleeping Beauty, here," Genesis stated flatly, his lips turned down in a scowl. "According to you two."
"Yeah, nothing else for me," Zack added. "One moment I was yawning in the control center, the next I'm here in the lab."
Sephiroth blinked slowly. "Good general anesthesia does have a sudden effect."
Hollander scratched his beard. "Yes, lights out like that is normal. Waking up can be prolonged, but then they weren't direct recipients of the medication. That could account for their quick returns to consciousness."
"That psychic stuff again," Zack muttered. He looked to Sephiroth. "Doctor Hollander said you healed Angeal's incisions. Does that mean you weren't affected? How is that possible?"
Before Sephiroth could respond, Hollander hurried to explain: "He zoned out for a while during the procedure, but never fell into full unconsciousness like you. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's related to his absurdly high concentrations of mako and pure Jenova material. In any case, it didn't matter. He wasn't needed for healing until the end."
"Huh," said Zack.
Sephiroth calmly added, "I imagine you and Genesis have some amnesia because of the pre-operative sedatives Doctor Hollander gave to Angeal. He did mention that they caused anterograde amnesia in patients."
"What does ante—antero—"
Hollander made an impatient, frustrated noise. "Anterograde amnesia. It means that the patient can't form new memories while the drug is in effect. Whatever you experienced in Lazard's office just before and during your power nap is probably gone forever. Such a shame. It would have been fascinating to catalogue any new dreams and psychic episodes you might have had during the surgery."
Zack didn't miss the peculiar expression that flashed across Sephiroth's face—satisfaction and—something more. Knowledge? Or just acceptance? Then his expression became completely serene and unreadable in that familiar way he had, and Zack told himself to stop imagining things. Hollander said Sephiroth had only "zoned out" while Angeal was under anesthesia rather than falling completely unconscious, but despite that he apparently had nothing to add when it came to psychic experiences during the surgery.
It seemed reasonable, with most of them unconscious through Angeal's medical anesthesia, that there simply was nothing to recall.
"Probably just as well we don't remember anything," Genesis stated. "I hope for his sake that Angeal didn't experience anything weird or unfortunate during that surgery."
"He didn't," Hollander stated confidently. "I know my drugs."
Sephiroth slid his eyes towards the scientist and smiled again, but kept his peace. He brushed aside a lock of his shaggy, brown-dyed hair.
Zack noticed some flashes of silver among the brown strands and growing in at the part, where there was now a long, gray stripe several centimeters wide. "Looks like the dye's either growing out or washing out, Sephiroth. I can see your real hair color in there." He squinted, attempting to peer more closely. "It's getting longer, too."
"It hardly matters. We aren't trying to hide our identities anymore," Sephiroth said serenely.
Zack touched his own hair. It didn't seem any longer to him, but Sephiroth's definitely was longer. Now that Zack was paying attention, he saw that it almost touched Sephiroth's shoulders. Maybe Sephiroth's hair just grew faster than normal.
"So Sephiroth and I are both going to have the same look for a while? Like twins, at least for hairstyles," Genesis said, cynically amused. "Gray streaked hair, or perhaps we can call it frosted or highlighted. People pay a lot of money to get fancy highlights." He scratched his neck around some degradation deterioration. The lesions contained spots of healthy pink, rather than looking crusty gray or black with necrosis.
Another point for Hollander, Zack mused silently. Seemed like he really did know what he was doing.
Genesis stopped poking at his neck and stared at Angeal's container. "I guess everything's okay for now, then. Angeal just needs to...I don't really know, actually. Grow a body, I guess."
"He needs to heal first, then I need to coax the blastema to dedifferentiate to a more generalized state so he can start over using a human bio-template this time," Hollander said pedantically, emphasizing the word "human" with care.
Made sense, Zack thought. Angeal kept growing non-human parts. Hollander obviously had a plan to control that and force Angeal to grow a human body.
Sephiroth nodded his quiet approval as though he understood exactly what Hollander intended to do. They'd probably discussed it privately.
"Yeah. That. You need to do that." Genesis walked slowly toward Angeal's container, taking a position standing before it. Sephiroth quietly joined him. The two men contemplated their comrade's head in silence. Genesis reached out and ran a finger along the side of the transparent jar. He moved his hand in a sluggish, ambling curve, as though he was mesmerized by the aerated liquid within. Sephiroth stood very close to him. Close, so close their shoulders lightly brushed.
"Again?" Hollander muttered. "What is with you two? I told you before, he came through the surgery with flying colors. He's fine. Everything is going as planned. You both have already—" He stopped himself, eyed Zack, and then merely said, "You don't need to keep hovering like that."
"They've been hovering over Angeal?" Zack asked.
"When isn't Sephiroth hovering over Angeal? It's recent behavior for Genesis, though. Two of them, now..." Hollander complained. "I suppose it's to be expected considering what's happened...but this lab is going to get crowded if you start, too, Fair."
Perhaps they had a good reason to hover, Zack thought with a wary eye on the scientist.