Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rude could have sworn the village was trapped in a rift in time. The settlement looked like it had lain dormant for decades, with only a solitary water tower standing to attention at its center. Even the tower was old-fashioned, cobbled together from coarse timber and chunky metal piping. He parked the pickup truck under its shadow, in the middle of what passed for a square in this mountain town.

It was hardly square, though. It wasn't even paved. It was a roundish patch of dirt, ringed by houses just as rough and plain as the water tower that took pride of place in this town. None of them were taller than two stories. It was about as far from the village of his birth as he could get on this continent, in both distance and climate, yet the first thing he thought of was home.

Rude wondered what the hell he was doing here.

"So this is Nibelheim," said the woman beside him. Professor Dana Rayleigh had spent the ride from the airfield with her nose buried in a folder, but now she peered out the window over her glasses. She sounded as underwhelmed as Rude. Then again, he had never heard her speak in anything but that paper-dry dismissive tone.

She was the reason he was here: security on this Shinra-sanctioned quest of hers. What Rude didn't understand was why she required not one but three Turk bodyguards in this sleepy backwater. The mission was basically recon for Shinra's science department, and the only known threat was the local wildlife. SOLDIER would have been a better match for bears and dragons.

Maybe the higher-ups knew something Rude didn't. In any case, orders were orders.

Rayleigh opened the door and hopped out, then swore as a gust of wind caught her hair and tousled it about her face.

"For crying out loud..."

Rude paused. It was the way she said those words. Her hair was a deep brown, not blonde, and too short; but it was the way she pushed it back with both hands. He remembered the smell of the air, that crisp promise of snow. He remembered the taste of her lipstick. Not Rayleigh's; hers.

Rayleigh tied her hair back into a stubby ponytail with an elastic band she snatched off her wrist, still muttering to herself, and the memory faded. Rude blinked and pushed his sunglasses tight over his eyes, then stepped down from the truck.

The sun shone thinly in a pale, cloudless sky, but in the shadow of the water tower Rude was grateful for the Turk suit. Nibelheim's summer weather was a far cry from the withering heat of Midgar or Costa del Sol. The breeze carried a sharpness that pricked his nostrils; Rude recognized the faint, familiar tang of refined Mako. He looked windward, but the steep mountainside hid the reactor stack from view.

"Not to diss your drivin' skills or nothin', buddy, but that was one hell of a bumpy ride. I can't feel my ass anymore."

Rude turned back to see Reno leaning against the cab in the back of the truck, goggles hanging around his neck. He wrinkled his nose as he ran his hands through his scruffy, red hair.

"What a shithole."

Rude winced as Reno's words echoed through the quiet mountain air. A couple of locals on the other side of the square looked up from their conversation. They glared at Reno with the same disdain that he wore as he inspected their town.

Cissnei jumped down and dusted off her Turk suit. Unlike Reno she wore it properly, complete with a tie.

"You've been here two minutes," she said.

"Yeah, well, I know a shithole when I see one." Reno pushed his hair out of his face with his goggles and seated them in their usual perch on his forehead. "Since I grew up in one and all."

"Isn't your current place kind of a shithole, too?"

"Nah, moved a few months ago." Reno grabbed hold of the side of the truck with one hand and hopped down. "Got a kitchen now and everythin'. You should come check it out some time."

"Only if you promise not to cook."

"Deal," he said, grinning, then glanced over at Rayleigh. "Y'know," he added, raising his voice, "Rude's a great cook."

Rude sighed. He had thought Reno had given up the wheel because he wanted a nap after the flight, or perhaps some time alone with Cissnei in the back of the truck. Rude got the sinking feeling he'd been wrong.

"Is he now?" Cissnei gave Rude a sly look. "Then I'm sure you boys don't mind taking care of the food on this trip."

Rude leveled a stare at Reno, who just shrugged with a sheepish grin.

Cissnei clasped her hands behind her back and stretched as she looked around. Unlike Reno, her face showed no reaction to the town, not even when she glanced back at Rude again.

"Have you ever been here before?"

He shook his head.

"First time for all of us," Reno added. "Ain't that right, Prof?"

Professor Rayleigh had climbed onto the back of the pickup and was rifling through one of her steel trunks.

"What?" she asked, looking up. "Oh," she added and turned back to her luggage. "Yes. My first time, too."

Reno grinned and opened his mouth, but Rude drove his elbow into his arm. So did Cissnei on her side, he noticed. Reno pouted as he rubbed his bicep, but stayed mercifully silent.

"So..." Cissnei pivoted around as she scanned the buildings that encircled them. "How do we get to the manor from here?"

As Rude did the same, he realized that only three major paths converged on the square. The village gate he had driven through was behind them, and a raised wooden walkway curved off deeper into the village. The only way further up the mountain was a wide stone stair beyond the water tower, carved into the rock itself.

"Won't get the truck up those stairs, and no way in hell am I draggin' all this science crap up 'em either." Reno looked over at the pair that had given him the evil eye before, but they pointedly avoided his gaze. "Heh. Guess I'll try the inn. Gotta fix us some rooms, anyway."

"While you do that, I'll see how chatty the locals are."

Cissnei nodded at the gate, pointing out a pair of girls in their late teens. Rude would have thought it too nippy for t-shirts and tiny shorts, but the girls seemed unbothered by the weather as they strolled into town. Reno's grin widened as he watched them.

"Put in a good word for me, yeah?"

Cissnei rolled her eyes and strode off. Rude settled for a sigh of resignation, feeling old beyond his years. Reno was technically a teenager, too, for another month or so. Cissnei was even younger.

Reno rolled his shoulders and slid his hands into his pockets.

"All right, let's get this done."

As he and Rude stepped away from the truck, the bang of a metal lid made them look back.

"Excuse me," Rayleigh called, and patted the lid she had just closed. "This is valuable Shinra property. We can't leave it unguarded."

It was a politely worded command. Rude glanced at Reno, and was not surprised to see the irritated squint on his face.

"What, you expect us to haul your shit around town?"

"No, I expect someone to stay here and guard it."

"Fine. If you're that worried about it, you watch the truck."

With that, Reno wandered off. Rude half-expected Rayleigh to protest, but she said nothing more as he followed Reno. He frowned and hastened his steps.

"One of us should stay," he said once he'd caught up with Reno.

"Relax, buddy. I'll tell Ciss to keep an eye on her. Or..." There was that shit-eating grin again, creeping back onto Reno's face. "You can go back and apologize for your asshole of a partner. Be her knight in a black suit, yo."

"No."

It wasn't the prospect of another half hour of silence in the professor's company. It was that Reno would think his little scheme was going somewhere.

Reno glanced up at him and smirked.

"Wanna play it cool, huh? Sure, man, whatever."

Rude sighed.

Cissnei had caught up with the girls near the inn and the three of them were hunched over a sheet of paper – a printed newsletter from one of the SOLDIER fan clubs, judging from what Rude could hear as he and Reno approached them. Despite their long, drawling vowels and the occasional patch of unfamiliar slang, Rude could understand most of their conversation. He had assumed as much – Shinra's history had intertwined with Nibelheim's for decades – but it was still odd to hear the official language of Midgar in this remote speck of a town, half a world away.

"No way!" exclaimed the girl with the brown ponytail and stared at Cissnei with round eyes.

"It's true," Cissnei said as she pulled out her PHS from a pocket. "I've got proof. Look."

She brought up something on the screen and showed it to the others. The girl with the glasses gasped.

"It really is him! You met Angeal!"

"You're so lucky," whined the other. "I'll bet he was even more gorgeous in person."

Cissnei pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and giggled. Fresh-faced and doe-eyed, she certainly looked the part of a sweet teenage girl. Only the suit marked her as something very different.

A chameleon, some called her. One who changed her colors to fit her environment.

Reno was a bit of one, too, but the personas he put on were all exaggerated aspects of his real self: the friendly drunk, the playboy, the ruthless bastard. To Rude's eyes, Cissnei seemed to become a different person altogether. Maybe it was only because he didn't know her very well, but it still made him uneasy. How would he ever get to know her if he couldn't tell which personality was her own?

"Who is that with him?" the girl with the ponytail asked, pointing at the screen.

Cissnei's smile softened to something sweeter.

"That's Zack. Zack Fair."

"Angeal was his mentor, right?"

Cissnei nodded, still smiling.

"Angeal sure had good taste in students," said the one with glasses.

"Zack is now First Class too, though," Cissnei pointed out. "I heard he might be getting his own fan club soon."

"I'm not surprised. Look at those arms."

The girls burst into giggles. Reno scoffed. Instead of slowing down on his way past them, he picked up his pace.

"C'mon, man, get a move on. Let's get this fuckin' done already."

Rude gave Reno a curious look as he stalked off toward the inn's front entrance. He noted the narrowed eyes and the tense shoulders, but decided it best to keep his observations to himself.

Rude followed Reno through the double doors into a haze of tobacco smoke and cooking fumes. He paused at the doors to let his eyes adjust. The clear mountain light outside had stung his eyes even through his dark lenses, but in here only a few ceiling lamps cast their dull light on the inn's bottom floor. No windows; stairs to the second floor on the right, two doors to the back. White plaster walls trimmed with the same reddish wood as the floor. A couple of gaunt old-timers seated by the counter. A pudgy man with a graying beard behind it, hunched over on his elbows. His face lit up as he looked them over.

"Come on in," he boomed as he straightened up. "I reckon you two are Shinra gents?"

"Yeah, that's us." Reno sauntered over to him. "Straight outta Midgar."

"That's what I figured. Fancy suits like that? Gotta be Midgar." The innkeeper flashed a broad smile. "Always good to see you folks dropping by our little village for a visit."

Rude took a second look around as he approached the counter, stooping under the low-slung beams that held up the ceiling. A few tables were scattered around the room, all of them currently empty. The shelf of bottles behind the innkeeper, along with the plates and the half-full glasses of beer in front of the old men by the counter, suggested this was also the village pub.

"Well, I reckon you gents have business at the reactor," the innkeeper continued. "Want me to find you a guide?"

"Naw, man, we're here to check out the Shinra manor. How do we get there?"

The innkeeper's smile vanished in an instant. "Take the stairs across the square."

He turned away, picked up a glass and started polishing it with the rag he kept around his neck. Reno and Rude traded a glance.

"Thing is, we got a truck. Got any roads up to the place?"

One of the old-timers jabbered something. Rude couldn't understand a single word of it, but the man's companion hacked out a laugh.

Reno planted his hands on his hips and sized up each of them in turn.

"You got somethin' you wanna tell me, old man?"

The man who had spoken stared at Reno, as he picked up a fried sausage from his plate and tore off half of it with nicotine-stained teeth.

"He says it's mighty nice of ya to visit the mansion," his friend said, his accent rolling thickly over his tongue. "The ol' place is getting hungry."

The first guy grinned as he chewed, turning his sausage into a slimy, red-brown mush right before their eyes.

"Go back the way you came," the innkeeper grumbled. "There's a fork in the road about a mile back."

"Don't say we didn't warn ya, though," the old guy added.

The Turks shared a look. Reno raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the doors. Rude was only too happy to nod in agreement. As they left, the old-timers wheezed in laughter behind them.

"What a bunch of weirdos," Reno muttered under his breath as they stepped out into the pale mountain sun.

He'd barely finished when someone crashed into him.

"Hey, watch it!"

Reno grabbed the gangly youth and held him at an arm's length by the scruff of his faded hoodie. The guy wasn't much shorter – or younger – than Reno, but he stared up at them with a wide-eyed naiveté that instantly marked him as "kid" in Rude's eyes.

"S-sorry, sir! I've come to report in."

"Huh?"

"I'm ready to sign up, sir!"

He peered at them hopefully. Reno gave Rude a bewildered look. He responded with a shrug.

"You're Shinra recruiters, right?" The kid looked from one to the other uncertainly. "For SOLDIER?"

Reno's face soured at the mention of SOLDIER, but he pasted on a smarmy smile as he let go of the guy's hoodie and patted it down.

"Sure, we're recruiters. You wanna be a SOLDIER, huh?"

Rude knew what that drawl meant, but the boy's head was bobbing up and down before Reno had finished his question.

"Cool. All you gotta do is come up to the manor house after nightfall."

The kid went pale.

"The, uh... Shinra place?"

"Yeah." Reno beamed at him. "That's where we're stayin'."

"I... Uh, maybe–"

"Awesome, kid. We'll talk all about your SOLDIER hopes and dreams when you get there. Make sure it's dark, tho'!"

Reno slapped him on the shoulder, making him lurch forward, then strode on toward the pickup truck.

"This whole damn town got a hard-on for SOLDIER?" he grumbled when Rude caught up with him. "What's so fuckin' great about 'em, huh? Nothin' but a bunch of juiced-up, glowy-eyed killin' machines, yo."

When Rude had met Reno, Zack Fair had been an occasional drinking buddy. Rude strongly suspected he and Reno had partnered up for a few of the more elaborate office pranks, too. Then Cissnei had joined the Turks, and been assigned to keep an eye on Fair.

It had been a long time since Reno and Fair last met up for drinks.

Cissnei was leaning against the truck, her hair lit up like bronze in the sun. She had a slight smile on her face; whether it was her own or for the benefit of curious observers, Rude didn't know.

"Anythin' to report?" Reno asked once they were beside her.

"Well, according to those girls I talked to we've ended up in the most mind-numbing hole in all of Gaia..." She opened her eyes fully and raised a hand to shield them. "Which also happens to have the creepiest abandoned mansion ever."

Reno snorted.

"You too, huh? You should've seen the show the old farts in there put on for us. Made it sound like somethin' out of a goddamn horror flick."

"Guess we'd best head on up there, then," she said with a crooked smile. "Did you get directions?"

"Yeah, we gotta go back the way we came some ways until we find a fork in the road."

Professor Rayleigh, who had taken a seat on one of her trunks in the back of the truck, looked up from her notebook.

"It's that far out of town?" She looked up at the mountains and frowned. "I know we planned to stay at the inn, but why not use the manor itself? Travelling back and forth will waste time I could spend on my work."

"She's got my vote."

Both Rude and Cissnei stared at Reno. He stared back.

"What? The sooner she's done, the sooner we can get the hell outta Weirdo-heim. Everybody wins, yo."

"Seriously?" Cissnei asked, echoing Rude's unspoken sentiments. "You want to hole up in some creepy remote mountain house?"

"It's better than havin' to fend off groupies and fuckin' SOLDIER wannabes every time I step out for a smoke!"

He spat it out. Rude frowned and glanced at Cissnei. She had pressed her lips into a tight line.

"Hell, the way these weirdos keep eyeballin' us," Reno continued, "I wouldn't be surprised to wake up and find 'em starin' at us as we sleep." He shuddered.

"The mansion's been empty for decades," Rude pointed out.

Reno huffed and stared up at the sky for a moment.

"We'll go up to the manor and take a look, okay? If it sucks too much ass, we can always come back here. Now let's get a move on. It'll be dark soon enough."

"Fine." Cissnei's smile held no warmth. "Your call."

The road they eventually found was little more than an overgrown set of tire tracks. It circled Nibelheim on a meandering path up the mountainside, until it joined up with a dirt road at the top of the rocky stair. From there it was only a few minutes' drive before the stone wall around Shinra manor came into view.

A woman was waiting for them by the gate. Her denim overalls hung loosely, cinched tight with a belt around her narrow waist. The blouse she wore underneath was buttoned up all the way to her neck. The tiny blue flowers dotting the white fabric reminded Rude of the dresses his mother liked to wear.

"So," she cawed, "you're the Shinra boys and girls."

Her skin was as thin as paper; crinkled around the mouth and eyes, and pulled taut over her forehead and cheekbones. Her hair was dark and thick enough to rival Reno's, though she kept it in a tidy ponytail. Her eyes seemed younger than her face, too, sharp and alert as she studied them each in turn. They could have been gray, they could have been blue; they were so pale that Rude couldn't tell for sure.

"I am Professor Dana Rayleigh," the professor said coolly and held out her hand. "I'm here to assess the mansion's suitability for my department's projects."

"Projects, eh? Well. Good luck to you. The old place can be... picky."

The woman peeled her lips back far enough to show both rows of teeth in a smile. It made Rude think of a grinning skull.

"Not as picky as us," Reno said, indicating the three of them. "We're here to go over whatever security this place has, make sure it's fit for these science guys."

"Turks," she said, eyeing their uniforms. "Yes. Well. I'm the custodian, as I imagine you've figured out if you're any good at your jobs. Euphemia Gubbins. That'll be Mrs. Gubbins to you lot."

Mrs. Gubbins turned around and pushed the gates. They jerked open like a twitching corpse, hinges screeching in protest with every shove. When the gap was wide enough for them to pass through, she stepped aside with a theatrical bow.

"Welcome to Shinra Mansion."

A broad stone-paved path, framed by knotty trees with bare branches, drew a straight line up to the manor. Two slim towers, topped by spires, rose from either side of the main entrance. Two rows of tall, narrow windows ran the entire width of the building, and a third row formed a series of miniature gables along the dark-tiled roof. Rude guessed the manor had once been sparkling white, but decades of grime had turned its walls a filthy gray.

"Well," said Reno. "This is creepy."

An eerie sensation crept down Rude's spine as the group approached the mansion. After the crisp breeze of the mountain road, the air within the mansion walls felt stale and perfectly still. He couldn't hear a thing beside the dull thuds of their feet hitting the weed-infested pavestones. If passing through the Nibelheim gate had felt like entering a different era, this felt like stepping into a dimension beyond time itself.

The main doors swung open with a tired creak to reveal a spacious foyer that spanned both floors. On the right, a wood-railed staircase curved upward to a second-floor landing, where a pale gloom sifted in through a trio of huge, ornate windows. The once-white walls were mottled with stains – whether it was mildew, soot from the Mako reactor, or both, Rude couldn't tell.

"The old place is in a bit of a state, I'm afraid." Mrs. Gubbins sniffed as she shut the door behind them. "Shinra pays me to keep the walls standing and the vermin out. They don't pay me to keep it spotless."

Rayleigh nudged a pile of rags with the toe of her shoe and wrinkled her nose.

"Is it actually in... livable condition?"

"Eh, I've lived in worse," Reno said with a shrug and wandered farther into the foyer as he looked around.

Mrs. Gubbins didn't exactly tilt her head, Rude mused. It slumped to the side and came to an abrupt halt, as though it was at the mercy of an invisible thread.

"Are you planning to stay here?" she asked, peering at Rayleigh.

"It's a possibility."

Her head rose slowly, pulled upright by that imaginary thread.

"Well! The bedrooms upstairs are in better shape than this. The kitchen's a bit old-fashioned, but everything ought to be working. Plumbing's fine, and I can have the water and power running within half an hour..." She nodded. "Well, sure. I mean it ain't fancy, but it's... livable."

"Could you show us the bedrooms, then?" Cissnei asked.

"Follow me."

The staircase protested with a chorus of groans as the five of them climbed to the second floor. Rude cast nervous glances at the steps beneath his feet, as did his traveling companions, but Mrs. Gubbins didn't seem worried. She led the way with her brisk, jerky gait, and turned left at the landing. A low stair brought them to a corridor, decorated with columns half-sunk into the walls. The layer of dust on the floor was thicker here and gathered in the creases of Rude's shoes.

"This is the south wing," she called over her shoulder. "It's mostly bedrooms, but there's a greenhouse at the end of the hall. A study, too." She stopped by the first door on the left and pushed it open. "Knock yourselves out."

Reno was the first to slink in. Rude stayed by the door and peeked inside, as did Cissnei. Dusty sheets shrouded all of the furniture, but it wasn't hard to guess which one concealed the bed. Rude suspected that under the rest lurked a couple of chairs and a dresser.

"Holy shit, this one's got a shower and everythin'!" Reno's voice echoed from what must have been the bathroom. "Callin' dibs!"

Cissnei glanced Rude and rolled her eyes, though there was a small smile on her face. Professor Rayleigh was frowning, though.

"Do you have anything closer to the library?" she asked Mrs. Gubbins.

"The master bedroom's in the north wing, but–"

"Perfect. I'll take that one."

Mrs. Gubbins gave her an unblinking stare, then shrugged.

"All right," she sang.

As the two of them headed back toward the landing, Cissnei sighed and looked at Rude.

"Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks this is dumb."

"You're not."

"Well, that's a relief." She looked down the corridor, gently chewing on her bottom lip. "He's got a point, though. If this means Rayleigh gets done sooner..."

They both flinched as Reno bounced out of the room and draped his arms over their shoulders.

"Hey guys, isn't this cool? We've got a whole frickin' mansion to ourselves, yo!"

Reno had streaks of dust through his hair, and his face was split into a huge grin as he looked from one to the other. Cissnei looked at Rude and raised her eyebrows. Rude sighed and gave a nod.

As they stepped onto the landing, Rayleigh and Mrs. Gubbins appeared at the other end.

"I'll get the bedrooms fixed up for y'all later," the latter called. "I figure I oughta get the generator running first. Water, too, now that you'll be staying here."

"The house isn't on the power grid like the rest of the village?" Rayleigh asked.

"It used to be, back in the good old days, but the boys and girls up there on the mountain made some changes to the reactor some years back. Or maybe it was to do with the power grid..." She raised her hands. "I don't understand how it all works, to be honest, but they told me to stick with the generator until some Shinra engineer types have looked over the electrics."

"Some years back, and it still hasn't been fixed?"

Mrs. Gubbins revealed her teeth in that disturbing grin of hers.

"I guess our little town isn't a priority to the bigwigs over in Midgar."

A silence settled, but before it could stretch on too long, Reno clapped his hands together.

"Right guys, we got a plan. Time to get shit done."

While Mrs. Gubbins scuttled off to the generator, the rest of them headed back to the truck. The rumble of the engine as they drove it up to the mansion sank into the silence around them without a trace. Rude couldn't pick up on the slightest echo.

Was he the only one who noticed it? No one else remarked on it.

At the manor's front doors, Rude hauled the suitcases off the back of the pickup truck one by one, handing them off to Reno before jumping down to help carry them inside.

"Could someone give me a hand with this?" Rayleigh called.

Rude looked up to see that she had climbed onto the back of the truck, and was struggling with one of her metal trunks.

"Rude can help ya out," Reno piped up. "He's real good with his hands, yo."

His toothy grin was as wide as it was shameless. The guy was fully aware of his lack of subtlety, Rude was pretty sure of that. What he couldn't fathom was how Reno could possibly think it might have a good outcome.

Of course, it was possible he didn't expect it to lead anywhere good at all, Rude mused. Reno enjoyed his innuendos exactly as much as he enjoyed getting on people's nerves. With only four of them cooped up together, his targets were few.

This would be a long week.

Rude closed the door behind him and rolled his weary shoulders with a soft groan. The day was almost over at last.

His room was the next one over from Reno's. Mrs. Gubbins had rounded up a pair of nieces – one of them was the brown-haired girl Cissnei had talked to earlier – and had them whip the bedrooms into shape. They had done a better job than Rude had expected. The thick layer of dust was gone, and every wooden surface was polished to a shine. The double bed was made with crisp sheets that gave off a faint scent of lavender. It couldn't fully mask the lingering smell of musty wallpaper, but there was little anyone could do about that on such short notice.

Rude took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, then shrugged out of his shoulder holster. He removed the gun from its holster and checked the clip. As usual, he took the opportunity for a bit of handling practice. Racking the slide and thumbing off the safety was coming to be second nature, but the weight of a firearm still felt strange in his hands. He was a brawler by nature, and preferred to keep it that way.

Rude holstered the weapon and set it down on the chair. While Turks were expected to wield more than just their fists, this was hardly the kind of mission that called for him to be armed at all times. He wasn't sure the presence of a Turk was required at all; much less three. Orders were orders, though. A slow mission was still a mission, and Rude was prepared.

His room may not have had its own bathroom like Reno's, but it did have a walk-in closet. Rude pulled his suitcase inside and hung up his clothes, taking the time to smooth out the inevitable travel wrinkles as best he could. A manor like this was bound to have an ironing board tucked away somewhere. He made a mental note to ask Mrs. Gubbins.

His suitcase was unpacked. On his way out, Rude gave the room a cursory scan. After a couple of steps, he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the chair.

His pistol was gone.

Rude's whole body flooded with adrenaline – but it took him only a second to spot his weapon.

On the bed.

After a careful look around, Rude slowly stepped up to the gun. It was still strapped into its holster, just as he'd left it. He picked it up for a closer inspection, but nothing about the gun itself was different.

He must have zoned out, Rude decided. It had been a long day, full of travel, and he was tired.

Rude placed the holster on the chair. After a few moments of deliberation, he brought out his phone and snapped a picture of it. He gave it some more thought, then stepped into a corner and took a shot of the whole room.

Just in case.

Chapter Text

Rude woke up with a murky head and heavy limbs. The so-called breakfast did not improve his mood: coffee, black as coal, and a few biscuits from Cissnei's bag of travel snacks. She had taken the truck and headed into town for shopping, promising to be back for an early lunch. Her reassurances didn't stop Reno's grumbling.

"What the hell kinda manor is this? Ain't there s'posed to be cooks and... I dunno, servants and shit? People who make food happen? This is just like home, man, and I sure as hell don't live in a mansion."

Rude didn't point out that the town inn likely served a hearty breakfast, cooked to their guests' liking. He could have, but he didn't.

Reno whined all the way to the foyer and groaned louder than the stairs to the second floor. He quieted at last when he and Rude realized that Rayleigh had followed them out of the kitchen. Reno waited until she was almost at the top of the stairs before he spoke up again.

"So Prof, what's the plan for the day?"

Rayleigh stopped and regarded him coolly.

"It's 'Professor'," she said in her dry manner. "There's a bookshelf in the master bedroom full of old notebooks and documents. I need to do inventory on them and I do not want to be disturbed. If you absolutely must, knock and wait for an answer."

She turned toward the north wing.

"Your bedroom, huh?" Reno glanced at Rude. "Need any help with that?"

She paused and gave him a long stare over her glasses.

"I doubt I'd need the sort of help you might be offering."

"Don't worry, Prof, I ain't talkin' about me. Rude here's pretty good with that sorta thing. He's very... meticulous."

Reno took great care in pronouncing the word, as if he was dealing with a term in a foreign language. Rude wondered if he thought it had some double meaning.

"It's Professor," said Rayleigh, enunciating her title with the same amount of care, "and I'm perfectly capable of handling all the scientific aspects of this excursion. I suggest you two stick to your own roles."

"Sure thing, yo."

Reno grinned and gave her a sloppy salute. She turned on her heel and went on her way, her steps echoing off the floorboards.

"Sooo, whaddya think of the Prof?" Reno's gaze lingered on her as she ascended the creaky steps to the north wing. "Nice legs, huh?"

Rude refused to dignify the question, but Reno refused to be ignored.

"I know she seems all work, but I get the feelin' she wouldn't mind a bit of play." Reno looked at Rude out of the corner of his eye, his mouth in a crooked smirk. "And since she tells me to shut up all the time, I bet she likes the strong, silent type."

Rayleigh's dress shifted as she walked, tightening over her curves. Her size and shape were similar, but her gait was wrong; her steps were too short, too much of a right-hip swing. Maybe it was the shoes. She wore taller heels than–

Realizing what he was doing, Rude turned away to stare out over the decrepit foyer.

"We have a job to do."

Reno laughed.

"Wanna know what we have, buddy? A real long, borin' week ahead of us. Lotta downtime with three of us here, too, and we're holed up in a big place. I'm just sayin' no one's gonna miss the two of ya if you decide to sneak off for a bit of alone time, y'know?"

Reno's voice bounced off the empty walls and returned to assault Rude's ears twofold. He could have sworn the echoes grew louder with every word, until they seemed to hammer into his brain straight through his skull.

"Quit it."

"What, she ain't your type or somethin'?"

When Rude stayed silent, Reno threw his head back and groaned.

"Every fuckin' time! What's with you and your impossible frickin' standards, huh? Nobody's perfect, y'know, and at least all the women I suggest work for Shinra and not–"

Rude turned his back on him and stomped down the stairs.

"C'mon, man," Reno called after him. "Don't be like that!"

Rude didn't slow down. At the bottom of the stairs, he stalked toward the nearest hallway he could see. He didn't know where it led and he didn't care, as long as it took him out of the foyer and away from the others.

The gloomy passage was shorter than he had hoped, but it ended in a set of double doors. He shoved the doors open, throwing up a whirlwind of dust in their wake. One of them slapped against the wall and swung back just as violently. A dull pain flared through Rude's shoulder as the door slammed into him, and with a snarl he knocked it back into the wall and barged in. He had only gotten a few steps into the room before the dust in his lungs had him doubled over in a coughing fit.

One of the doors was still swinging lazily on its hinges by the time he was able to breathe again. The other remained ajar, caught on a curled-up rug. Inside the room was a clutter of furniture, shrouded in white sheets thick with dust. Dust blanketed the floor, too, and Rude took care not to disturb any more of it as he made his way to the center of the room. It was easily the size of the foyer, though its shape was more unusual – an old ballroom of some kind. A circular alcove was scooped out into the southern wall and housed another jumble of covered furniture. Set into another alcove on the far wall, a pair of tall leadlight windows admitted twin streaks of the evening sun.

The filtered sun warmed Rude's face as he stepped into the light and up to the windows. The panes were covered in old grime, reducing the world beyond to nothing more than a greasy blur of shapes and colors. Instead he studied the geometric patterns of the panes themselves, following the intricate curves and angles of the leaden frames until he felt his focus return.

Reno was the one with a temper. Reno was the one who would lose his head and start banging doors. Not Rude. Rude contemplated, he weighed options, he thought before he acted. He didn't make rash decisions. He certainly didn't storm off in a huff and pick a fight with doors.

Maybe Reno was right. Maybe Rude was letting his personal affairs affect his performance. That didn't mean that loudmouth had any right to meddle in them, though. He certainly had no right to bring up her again. It had been months now, and Reno had made his opinions of her perfectly clear more than once. It was time he learned to shut the fuck up and mind his own business.

It was time Rude told him just that. He straightened up and rolled his smarting shoulder, then turned around.

Both of the double doors were closed.

At first, Rude just stood and stared. It was such a small change, yet in his worked-up state he needed a few moments to reconcile reality with his expectations. He hadn't heard anything. No creak of the hinges, not even the smallest thud. In spite of the sunbeam shining down on his neck, Rude felt a chill.

Then he was striding across the room, his jaw set. It was an old house, he reminded himself. An old house with drafts and uneven angles. The door hadn't been propped open; it had just caught on the rug when he opened it. It had only been a matter of time before it would slip free again and close.

He grabbed the door handle and pulled.

The door didn't move.

He tried again. He turned the handle in the other direction. He tried the second door. He grabbed both handles and shook them with all his strength. The doors wouldn't budge.

Rude took a step backwards and stared at them. No visible hinges. No latches, just a keyhole in one of the doors. A simple old-fashioned keyhole, designed to be used from either side. He got down on one knee and peeked through the hole, but luck was not on his side. The key wasn't in the lock.

Could a door like this lock itself when it swung shut of its own accord? Rude had no idea, but he did know one thing. Reno would laugh his ass off, the damned escape artist that he was. It couldn't be helped, though. Rude swallowed his pride and thumped on the door.

Half a minute later he thumped on it again.

"Reno?"

After two minutes he gave up and pulled out his PHS. He considered calling Cissnei instead, but she was still out for groceries. Besides, he didn't much feel like admitting to a junior agent that he'd been careless enough to lock himself in.

Reno didn't answer, though, no matter how long Rude let it ring. He frowned. As he tried again, he backed up against the wall so he could keep watch on the whole room. They had relied on the custodian's word, and had only checked a handful of rooms themselves. Rude was beginning to question that decision.

No answer.

Rude grabbed the handles again and gave the doors a forceful tug. They were sturdy, but not indestructible. He might be able to use something in the room to pry them open or break them down. That would be destruction of Shinra property, though. He'd rather not bring that particular pile of paperwork upon himself.

As Rude surveyed the room with a more careful eye, he saw something he should have noted when he first came in. Near the alcove with the leadlight windows was a second door, painted the same off-white color as the walls. A staff entrance, perhaps. If so, it should bring him to the kitchen on the other side of the building.

It opened stiffly with a push, and the hallway beyond was unlit. The light from the windows was only enough to reveal a few feet of corridor much like the one outside the main doors, though this one was narrower. Rude fumbled for a light switch on the side of the door, unwilling to take his eyes off the darkness ahead. Chances were the corridor stretched all the way along the back of the foyer and straight into the kitchen, he told himself. That's why it looked so dark, as though it might stretch on into infinity. Just a long corridor without any windows, that was all.

Rude cracked the door open wider and wedged himself through to check the other side of the door. As he continued his scan, he slid his shades down his nose and peered intently into the dark. As his eyes moved back and forth, he could have sworn he spotted movement in the periphery of his vision; but as soon as he looked straight at it, it was gone. Again and again, just little swirls in the dark, like–

His fingers hit the switch, flooding his vision with bright light. Cursing, Rude shoved his sunglasses up over his eyes and blinked until he could see straight – into a plain and very much empty corridor.

He didn't often feel like such an idiot.

The hallway was only a third of the foyer's length, though it ended in a door. Rude walked briskly up to it, but found it locked. The corridor itself turned left, and stretched on to accommodate several more doors on either side before it veered off again to the right. Finding his way to the kitchen might take some time; time he wasn't sure he could afford.

It was stupid, really, this sudden sense urgency. Technically, the only thing that had gone wrong was a pair of locked doors, yet Rude couldn't shake the feeling in the pit of his stomach. He could picture too many unpleasant scenarios taking place on the other side of those ballroom doors.

Rude dug out his PHS again, but frowned when it claimed to have no signal. Stepping back into the ballroom gave him a couple of bars; enough to try calling Reno again, but to no avail. After a brief hesitation he tried Cissnei, but the call wouldn't even connect. Cursing the mountains, he sent her a message:
Yellow. First floor, behind the foyer.

Hopefully she would receive it before she returned, and know to approach the manor with caution. Better safe than sorry.

As Rude returned to the corridor, he examined his surroundings with greater care. The dust had been disturbed several times in the past and had resettled in uneven layers on the floor, but the only recent prints came from his own feet. That was some consolation. He checked the doors as he passed them, and found most of them locked. The few that weren't opened onto small, dim chambers: some lined with shelves, others crowded with wooden crates and old sacks. All covered in a thick layer of dust, and none of any interest to Rude.

Beyond the second bend the lights grew dimmer. A few of the bulbs flickered softly. One was completely dark. Rude picked up his pace. He ignored the side doors as he hurried toward the end of the corridor. It was the sensible course of action, he told himself. If he checked every door, he'd still be here by midnight.

As Rude passed the darkened light, about halfway down the corridor, he noticed the silence. It was absolute. His footsteps ought to have reverberated off the bare walls of the corridor, but it was as if every sound vanished before it was made, like a scream of surprise swallowed by a swift death.

Rude squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and shook his head. The dust, he told himself. The dust dampened his footfalls, and being alone in a big, old house could play all sorts of tricks on the mind.

Rude should have been used to a place like this after all those summers at his uncle's house. He and his brothers would split up and hunt for secret passages after their uncle had shown them the one between the kitchen and the conservatory. They had never found another, but that hadn't stopped them from scouring the old place from dawn till dusk.

They had always searched during daylight, though, and most rooms had open windows that admitted both the sun and the warm Costan breeze. Here the air was thick and heavy and made his chest heave with effort. It was more like the nights when they'd used a blanket to make a tent between Rude's bed and a chair. In the light of Teo's flashlight, they'd scare each other with ghost stories until their uncle would come upstairs and chase them off to their beds.

Well... it had mostly been Teo who did the scaring. Rude hadn't been much of a storyteller back in those days either, and his little brother had been too young to come up with anything convincing. Big brother Teo was the one who had brought the horrors that kept them awake at night.

Rude glanced over his shoulder, then stopped for a double-take. The dark bulb was only a few paces behind him.

He'd passed it minutes ago. Hadn't he? But if he had... wouldn't he have reached the next turn by now? Rude looked from one end of the corridor to the other, feeling unease creep up his spine. This was almost like that one story Teo had told them–

Rude scowled and tightened his fists, taking comfort in the feel of his leather gloves growing taut over his knuckles. He wasn't a boy cowering under a blanket anymore. He'd gotten too wrapped up in his reminiscing and had slowed his pace to a crawl. That was all. He spun on his heel and stalked onward.

That goddamned Teo and his goddamned stories, Rude fumed silently. One in particular would haunt him for the rest of his life. It was about a vicious creature that had stolen the face of a corpse and wore it in an attempt to pass for human. It came out at night and broke into people's houses to check the doors to the bedrooms of the children, one by one. If it found one that was unlocked, it would sneak in and stuff the kid into the bag it dragged behind it. That's how you'd know the monster was coming for you, Teo had said. You'd hear the bag slide across the floor toward your bedroom door; sometimes even the monster itself, grunting as it struggled with the weight of all the children it had stolen.

The corridor ended in a T junction. The right arm pointed toward the front of the house, but it was a dead end. Rude had no choice but to go left and move farther away from the foyer.

Teo's story was diabolical, really. Their uncle had had a limp since the accident that ended his lucrative jockey career. Every night he would pass by their doors on the way to his bedroom, his bad leg dragging on the floor.

Rude noticed whorls and blotches in the dust near the base of the wall. He slowed to a halt and crouched down for a closer look. Not human tracks; they were too small for that. Rats, perhaps. Rats didn't appear out of thin air, he reasoned, and they had to eat. Following the trail might lead him to a larder of some kind, and thus closer to the kitchen.

Rude followed the tracks until they disappeared through a crack in a door. As he tried the handle, he realized that even the doors were similar to the ones in his uncle's house. These ones had locks on them, though.

Rude's younger brother had asked their uncle to put a lock on his bedroom door, and had told the monster story to explain why. Their uncle had been livid. It was not a monster, he had said in a quivering voice. It was Death itself, looking to steal away the souls of the unworthy. By telling it wrong, they had insulted Death and brought its mark upon themselves.

Rude had used a chair to barricade his bedroom door at night for months.

The door he faced in the present was unlocked and unbarred, though. He pushed it open. The gust of cool air that rushed past his face held a whiff of something organic, something putrid that made the muscles of his gut convulse in protest. He couldn't determine its source; the gloomy cone of light that crept in through the doorway didn't reach the far wall. He'd have to follow it inside to investigate.

Rude remained in the doorway. Long-ignored corners of his mind whispered to him of things in the dark, things of bone and fangs and claws. Things from Teo's stories. It was the same paralyzing fear that had kept him under the blanket, desperate to get away from Teo's hushed voice as it wove new horrors into his mind, yet too terrified to move a muscle.

Rude knew where to look for the light switches now. With a flick, the buttery glow of the lightbulb pushed the darkness back into the deepest reaches of the room. Yet even that couldn't banish the shadows completely; they clung beneath shelves and lurked behind the looming crates, as if lying in wait, biding their time until–

With a huff, Rude halted that childish train of thought and forced his legs to obey. Checking the room for doors was no longer just a prudent course of action; it was a test of manhood.

With each measured step deeper into the room, the stench grew richer. Rude had smelled it before. The corpses he'd come across in the line of duty were not all freshly made.

He spotted it in the farthest corner of the room, wedged behind a couple of stacked crates. Its shape was bloated beyond recognition, and a brownish liquid had seeped out and pooled in the dust around the carcass. Its head was crushed, caught in some kind of metal contraption, but the size, tail, and four little legs told Rude that this was the rat whose tracks he'd been following. Another dead end. Literally.

Rude was halfway to the door when he heard the noise. The door had swung shut behind him and muffled the sound, but he could definitely hear movement in the corridor.

A drawn-out sweeping, followed by a thump on the wooden floor. Then the sweeping again, like something being dragged along the floor. A guttural sound, like a grunt.

Rude had frozen to the spot. He didn't even dare breathe.

You're one of the unworthy now.

Rude squeezed his eyes shut. Get a grip, he spat at himself. This isn't a goddamned ghost hunt. He had the element of surprise, the upper hand. He couldn't let it go to waste.

Step by hesitant step, he crept toward the door. He might be able to get a better idea of who – or what – it was if he got close enough to hear more. Maybe he could even get a visual through the keyhole.

The floorboards creaked under his weight. The shuffling sound stopped.

In a panic Rude scanned the room for a chair, until he realized what he was doing. As the door handle began to turn, he dashed to the side of the door, flattening himself against the wall. As the door swung open, he pulled back his fist to strike, and as the hunched figure took a step inside–

"Ohh!" cried Mrs. Gubbins, clutching her chest as Rude diverted his punch at the last moment. "Shiva's mercy, young man, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"My apologies," he mumbled as he straightened up.

"What in the name of Titan are you doing here anyway? I thought all you suits were going to stick to the second floor today?"

Rude's cheeks had grown hot. What could he say that wouldn't make him seem like a complete fool? He nudged his tie as he thought, bringing it out of its perfect alignment, then adjusted it back into place.

"When I was in the ballroom, the..." He cleared his throat. "The doors closed and locked themselves. Is that common?"

Mrs. Gubbins squinted at him as her head flopped to one side.

"Well. Things ain't all that reliable in this old house..." She traced her jaw with her bony fingers and appeared to lose herself in thought. "I've never had it pull that one on me, though. Mind you, I don't have much business in the old ballroom. Maybe I just got... lucky."

The woman turned around and stepped back into the corridor. She grabbed hold of a large sack and braced her feet on the floor.

"Allow me," Rude said.

The least he could do after scaring the woman half to death was give her a hand with her burden, but she shook her head vigorously.

"Oh, no, there's no need. Part of my job description."

Her thin fingers dug into the rough cloth, squeezing the bag shut. Whatever she had inside was poking into the bag at odd angles, making it lumpy and ungainly. Something was oozing through the fabric near the bottom, turning its oatmeal grey into a rusty brown.

It occurred to him that Reno still hadn't called him. Rude stared at the woman's hands, wrapped around the top of a bag like she might wrap them around a throat, and felt a lurch in his gut.

"What's in the bag?"

Mrs. Gubbins tightened her hold.

"Nothing you need to worry about, Mister Suit. Like I said. Part of my job description."

"Open it."

"There's nothing in there you want to see."

The creak of leather rang loud in the heavy air as Rude balled his fists. He wished he hadn't left his gun in his room. He wished he hadn't walked out on his partner.

"Open it," he bit out.

The woman stared at him with her pasty, unblinking eyes. Then she pulled back her lips in that skull-like grin of hers and released the sack.

"Don't say I didn't warn you, Mister Suit."

She stepped back as Rude approached. He kept his eyes on her bony hands as he dragged the sack into the room and under the low-hanging lamp. He kept watching her through the doorway as he fumbled the bag open. Then he glanced down.

Countless glassy eyes stared back up at him.

With a gasp, Rude dropped the bag and flinched back. As the top of the bag toppled, little bodies spilled out and hit the floor in a smattering of wet thuds. Hairy bodies, their fur glistening with foul-smelling liquids that smeared Rude's shoes. Hard bodies, with segmented legs and serrated claws.

Raspy laughter filled the stale air.

"Was just cleaning out the traps, you see," said Mrs. Gubbins as she entered the room. "Plenty of nasty critters like to nest in empty buildings like this. They'll take over the whole place if you let them."

Rude hopped back as she pulled her sack upright and began gathering the dead vermin off the floor. He just stared, while the adrenaline pounded a frantic beat through his body. He was still fumbling around for something appropriate to say as Mrs. Gubbins rounded the crates and headed toward the bloated rat in the corner.

"Nasty buggers," she grumbled as she wrenched the crushed carcass out of the trap. "So... unworthy for a place like this, don't you think?"

She looked up, fixing him with her deathly pale eyes, and flashed her rictus grin. Rude felt the blood rush from his face.

"There you are! Where the fuck ya been, man? Ciss showed up a few minutes ago, sayin' you sent her a code yellow?"

Rude whirled around to see Reno stroll into the room. He took several steps inside before he noticed the custodian and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Whoa, hey Missus Gubbins. Didn't see ya there."

"Oh, don't mind me, boys. I'll just be getting on with my rounds."

Reno peeked into the sack and stuck out his tongue in a disgusted grimace.

"Eugh. Don't let us keep ya."

As she shuffled over to her sack and dropped in her latest catch, he walked up to Rude and looked him up and down.

"What's up with you? You look like you've seen a ghost, yo."

Rude swallowed – or he tried to, with mouth and throat painfully dry, as he watched Mrs. Gubbins drag her sack out of the room. Reno glanced at her, then back at Rude. He huffed and shook his head.

"That had better not be your code yellow, buddy," he mumbled under his breath.

A swell of annoyance shook Rude out of his daze. He was making a fool of himself, acting like some witless kid just because his damned brother had once told him some stupid goddamned story.

"The doors locked behind me in the ballroom," he muttered. "Didn't know why. Just playing it safe."

Reno was still studying him, still frowning.

"I was right here, y'know. You could've just called me."

Was it petulance Rude detected in his voice? Maybe he thought Rude was petty enough to refuse his aid as a partner due to personal issues. Rude's fears were quickly fading in Reno's presence, but his earlier irritation had begun to creep back in their stead.

"I did. Twice."

"Huh?" Reno fished out his PHS and looked at the screen. "I didn't get no calls."

"Bad reception?"

"Maybe..." Reno frowned at the device in his hand before he slipped it back into his pocket and shed his concern. "Anyway, Ciss brought back a bunch of food and said turnin' it into lunch was our job. So c'mon, let's go. I'm starvin', yo."

He put his hands in his pockets too, then headed toward the kitchen in that leisurely swagger of his. Rude followed, but did not join him by his side.

Chapter Text

Three Turks and one scientist had gathered around the square table in the manor's kitchen. A single bulb dangled from a yellow shade, casting down a golden glow upon them, and the greasy smell of fried sausage permeated the air. Under different circumstances it might have had a cozy charm. Instead Rude caught himself peering into the shadowy nooks of the room.

Mentally cursing his rampant imagination, Rude steered his attention to their lunch. He eyed Reno, who was carving off thick slabs of goat cheese and heaping them on top of his potatoes. Reno's idea of cuisine definitely favored quantity over quality.

"That Gubbins is a bit of a weird one, ain't she?" he announced. "You notice how she talks about this place?"

"You mean how the house likes this or does that?" Cissnei asked once she'd swallowed her mouthful, then smiled at Rude. "Wow, Rude, these sausages are great."

He responded with a nod. It was hardly the best lunch he'd ever prepared, but considering what he had to work with, the result was adequate.

"Yeah," Reno said. "It's the creepiest frickin' thing. She ain't the only one, neither. That inn had some real wackos hangin' out inside. Tried to spook us by sayin' this place is hungry."

"Well, it can't be hungrier than me. Pass the cheese, will you?"

Rude sighed and leaned back as Reno's arm shot across his plate toward Cissnei, cheese in hand.

"I bet they try to freak out anyone who ain't from around here with bullshit like that," he said as he shoveled cheese and potato onto his fork. "They must've pissed their pants with glee when they heard we'd showed up to check the place out."

"Not everyone is as much of a shit as you are, Red. I think a lot of the locals are genuinely scared of this house. The girls I talked to certainly were."

Rude couldn't help but feel impressed. Most of Reno's teetering tower of food actually made it into his maw.

"Yeah?" he got out through the food. "What'd they have to say 'bout it?"

"That's just it. They didn't. They just clammed up and gave each other these wide-eyed looks."

Reno's brow creased as he stared up at the ceiling in thought, chewing.

"Didn't one of them come up here to fix the place up for us, tho'?"

Cissnei shrugged. "Guess she's more scared of Gubbins."

"Hah. Can't blame her for that, yo."

He gulped down his monster of a mouthful, then looked over at Rayleigh.

"You're bein' awfully quiet there, Professor Science Lady. Worked out any theories about the place yet?"

She looked up from her plate. She was the only one who hadn't sullied his cooking with mountains of cheese, Rude noted.

"Local folklore is not the science department's concern. I'll focus on what's hidden on the bookshelves of this place, thank you." She returned her attention to her lunch. "Speaking of," she added as an afterthought, "I've found documents in an old local dialect and need to concentrate on them in peace. I do not want to be disturbed today."

"Hey, maybe Rude could help ya out. You might not believe it by just lookin' at him, but rumor has it he's quite a... cunning linguist."

Cissnei averted her face in a sudden coughing fit. Rude balled his hands into fists to keep from reaching across the table and slapping his idiot of a partner upside the head. If only he could smother him with silence.

The look that Rayleigh leveled at Reno reminded Rude of Tseng.

"No need, Mr. Turk. I like to be prepared, so I made sure to bring equipment for every conceivable situation."

"Oh, I see," he said with a devious grin. "Well, keep it in mind, tho', in case you run out of batteri–ow! What the hell, Ciss?" Reno scowled at her, rubbing his shin under the table.

"A filter, Reno," she said. "Find one. Use it."

He shot her a dirty look, but to Rude's surprise he stayed quiet and began chopping up his sausage instead.

"So, Professor," Cissnei began with an apologetic smile. "How long before the science labs at HQ are repaired? AVALANCHE must have caused a lot of damage if you need facilities outside HQ."

"The team is still assessing the full extent of the damage. And to be precise, most of it was caused by the test subjects AVALANCHE released, not the terrorists themselves." Rayleigh paused, and shrugged. "Or perhaps even the military sent in to contain the situation."

"Nah, weren't the military," Reno piped up as he decorated a slab of bread with his cut-up sausage. "We Turks had to do cleanup. Send a SOLDIER into a lab full of pricey tech and you're gonna end up with a billion-gil crater. Those guys do more damage than the monsters they're sent in to hunt."

He wasn't looking at Cissnei, but she looked at him. Faint as it was, Rude could tell the smile on her face had changed.

"And what would you know about SOLDIER conduct and discipline?"

"I know it wasn't enough to stop a bunch of 'em from –"

Rude cleared his throat. A professor from the science department would not have the clearance for messy SOLDIER business. Thankfully, Reno took his cue and shut up. Rayleigh looked from one Turk to another, her eyebrow cocked.

"Anyway," Reno said, "those beasties from your lab were the ones that–"

A loud thump made him flinch; they all flinched, and stared up as a series of rapid knocks pattered across the ceiling and halfway down the wall behind the sink. Reno twisted in his seat to stare at the wall behind him.

"The hell was that?"

"Nothing to worry about," said Rayleigh with a dismissive wave of her fork and returned her attention to her lunch.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes." She didn't even look up from her plate. "It's an old house, one that's been empty for a long while. It's bound to be a little noisy. Floors settling as the temperature changes, pipes banging, maybe even vermin scuttling around in the walls..."

Reno was still eyeing the wall with a suspicious squint.

"I didn't hear any weird noises like that last night."

"Consider yourself lucky, then. The north wing must be noisier than the one with your bedrooms. My room is almost directly above the kitchen, and I heard quite a few taps and knocks."

Reno turned to frown at Rayleigh instead.

"You didn't think to call one of us? It's our job to check out weird noises at night, y'know. It's pretty much the whole damn reason we're here, yo."

"There was no cause for alarm. Just the sounds of a settling house, nothing more."

"How about you let us be the judge of that, yeah? Call us next time you hear something weird."

"Very well." If there was such a thing as a verbal eye roll, Rude mused, the professor had perfected it.

Reno gathered up the sausage slices that had flown off his bread and rolled across the table. With his reconstructed sandwich balanced in one hand, he got up and headed for the door to the foyer.

"I'm gonna call Gubbins, tell her to come over," he announced, digging around his jacket pocket with his free hand. "If anyone knows what noises this creepshow of a house makes when it's 'settling', it oughta be her. About time she gives us the full tour."

The moment the door closed behind him, the room seemed a little duller, the air a little thinner – and easier to breathe. Rude felt his shoulders unknit as a companionable silence fell, disturbed only by the quiet clink of cutlery. His partner's chatter usually passed over him like a summer breeze, but his senses were still on edge after the ballroom incident. When he picked up every soft sigh and every creak of a chair, Reno's voice was like a blaring siren.

Rayleigh dabbed her lips with a napkin.

"Thank you," she said. "I'll be–"

She jumped as the kitchen door slammed open. In burst Reno, waving his PHS in the air.

"Holy shit, guys, check this out!"

Rude winced. Biting down on his irritation, he got up. So did Cissnei, and together they gathered around Reno. The screen showed a picture of him; tongue poking out, one hand holding his PHS, the other raised with his fingers making a V. Behind him Rude could make out the stairs and the mezzanine of the foyer.

"I took a pic of that old mirror that's by the front doors," Reno explained, a touch breathless. "Just for shits and giggles. Didn't expect to catch this, though."

Cissnei sucked in a breath and leaned in closer.

"Whoa. That almost looks like... you."

"Ha ha, very funny," Reno said, rolling his eyes. "Don't you guys see it?"

Rude supposed that explained the poor quality of the shot; the white plume of the flash filled most of the screen, and the picture was oddly fuzzy in places. The mirror's wooden frame was visible on the right-hand side, and it jogged Rude's memory. He remembered a tall mirror with a frame like that, right by the entrance to one of the towers which flanked the front doors.

What he couldn't spot was a reason for Reno's enthusiasm. Rude glanced at Cissnei, who shrugged. Reno huffed and pointed to the middle right of the picture, next to his head.

"Right there, see? It's a frickin' face."

And then Rude could see it, on the staircase bannister. Two round spots, like the holes of a skull. The dark smudge of a mouth, stretched down toward the frame, open in a silent scream. It was just a smudge on the lens or a trick of the light, it had to be – but the more he stared at it, the harder it was to look away.

"Huh," Cissnei mumbled and squinted at the screen. "It does kind of look like a face."

Reno grinned and zoomed in on the face until it filled the whole screen. Stretched out and pixelated, it looked even less human.

Rude was suddenly very aware of the door at their backs, and the corridor that led straight to the mirror. The knowledge tingled at the back of his head, until he had to step aside and shift around so the door was within his view.

"That mirror's pretty creepy, ain't it?" Reno asked. "Think something's inside? Hey! Maybe it's some kind of freaky summon!"

"I highly doubt it."

All three of them looked up at Rayleigh, who had come up in front of Reno. She was peeking at the picture over the top of his PHS.

"Of course you do," he muttered, then raised his voice. "Which part?"

She arched an eyebrow.

"All of it."

"C'mon, look at it!" Reno held out his phone toward her to show her the picture the right way up. "You don't think that looks like a face?"

"I suppose it does–"

"Ha!"

"...but that's hardly proof of anything," she continued without pause, her tone a fraction sharper. "From the day we're born, we're conditioned to recognize and react to the faces of those around us. Our brains are practically programmed to seek out faces... or anything that appears to be a face. All it takes to catch our eye are two dots and a line." As she spoke, she pointed out each smudge on the screen.

Reno flipped the phone around and frowned at the screen.

"Yeah? Well, those dots and lines didn't just show up outta nowhere, yo."

"It's an antique mirror, made before modern manufacturing techniques," she explained as she stepped in beside them. "The glass is bound to have imperfections. Tiny bubbles, waves in the surface, that sort of thing. Those can reflect the light in unexpected ways and look like smudges in a photo."

She grabbed the top of the PHS and tilted it back, leaning in closer to peer at the screen over her glasses.

"Could also be a handprint," she continued. "The glass covers a thin layer of silver, and fingers leave residue that reacts with silver over time. Someone could have touched the glass before the silver was applied, for example."

Rude watched her with growing curiosity. She was talking faster, and becoming more and more animated by the second.

"If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the 'eyes' are the tips of the index and middle fingers – and the 'mouth' is the thumb laid down flat like this." She held up her right hand, three fingers raised to match the positions of the smudges.

With a groan, Reno tugged his PHS out of her hand.

"You sure know how to take the fun outta things," he grumbled as he slipped it into his jacket.

She kept her eyes on him as she straightened up and pushed her glasses back in place.

"Perhaps I find the search for correct answers to be more fun than idle superstition, Mr. Turk."

"That's pretty much what I said, ain't it?" he shot back with a grin.

Rayleigh pursed her lips.

"I'll be in my room. Don't disturb me unless it's an emergency."

Reno watched her go with an unreadable expression. Once the door swung shut behind her, he shrugged and turned back to his fellow Turks.

"Right, so. Gubbins will come by in an hour. In the meantime, we can check out what's outside the house. Go over the gate and wall, figure out spots for cameras, that sorta thing. I'm thinkin' one of us stays indoors with the Prof while the other two scope out the garden. Ciss, feel like babysittin' today?"

"This afternoon, sure," she said with a shrug. "I'd like to spend a few hours in town tonight, though. The townsfolk might let something useful slip between the spooky stories."

Reno shuddered.

"Better you than me. All right, see you in a few."

On the way outside, Rude slowed as he passed the mirror in the foyer. It was taller than him. A bit wider, too. The wooden frame was stained with age, and dust had built up in every crevice of its intricate pattern of fronds and leaves. His reflection was cloudy in places, scratched in others. He found Reno's "face" near the frame on the right-hand side, precisely where it had been in the photo. From this angle, though, it didn't look like a face so much as a mere alignment of smudges beneath the glass.

Rude huffed. Typical Reno; making a lot of noise about nothing just to see who might come running.

The front yard was as still as a grave. The manor had been built in a hollow in the mountain, sheltered by rocky cliffs on three sides, but Rude still found it odd not to sense even the slightest breeze. Tucked away into the cliffs like this, the shadows were already creeping up on the manor despite the early afternoon sun.

Why would anyone decide to build a manor here?

"Let's be smart about this," Reno said. "You check the perimeter wall, I check the cliffs around the back. Keep an eye on the house, too. See if you can spot anythin' on the outside that could be makin' spooky noises."

They split up at the southern point of the property, where the wall met the mountainside. The wall itself – eight feet tall and built solidly from stone – passed muster, but Rude identified a number of vulnerabilities. A few large spruces had grown too near the wall, both inside the property and out; hardly pleasant to climb, but far from impossible. A rocky outcropping came a little too close for comfort. A crack in the ground may have compromised the wall's stability.

As the north end of the wall came into view, Rude found that Reno had already finished his half of the perimeter. He was lounging against the wall with a lit cigarette.

"Yo, Rude!" Reno waved him over. "Come here for a sec."

Rude picked up his pace. As he arrived, he raised his eyebrows in a question.

"Look up there." Reno pointed up toward the house with the two fingers that held his cigarette. "Notice anythin'?"

Rude could see both the front and the north side of the building. From this vantage point, it was clear that the north wing was of a slightly different style than the rest of the building. It was topped by a single gable while the south wing was split into two, and the facade's pale plaster had a more yellowish hue. A later addition to the manor, perhaps.

That didn't seem relevant to the task at hand, though, nor the sort of detail that Reno would find interesting enough to remark upon. Rude looked back at him and shrugged his shoulders.

"C'mon, buddy," Reno drawled, "ain't you s'posed to be learnin' how to fly?"

With a small frown, Rude gave the manor another once-over. What did flying have to do with anything? He could feel his patience dwindling, and the faint, crooked smile on Reno's face didn't exactly inspire trust. Was he just wasting Rude's time with another fake ghost in a mirror?

A feeble screech drew his attention to the closest gable. At the top of it, a stylized chocobo in blackened iron perched proudly on top of an arrow. It jerked halfway around its pivot with a series of short metallic groans. He followed the roofline and counted two more, barely visible against the gray rock of the mountain that rose up behind the house. As he watched them, the first one squealed again.

"The weathervanes. Only one is moving."

"Yeah, the one that's lower than the others. And down here..." Reno raised his cigarette and held it upright in front of his face. The wisp of smoke wafted upward until it thinned into nothing, even as the weathervane screeched above. He scowled up at it, then huffed and brought the cigarette to his lips.

"These fuckin' winds. I just can't figure 'em out," he said, puffing out smoke with his words. "Good thing I didn't have to put the chopper down here, huh?"

Rude stared at the facade beneath the offending weathervane, trying to pinpoint the rooms underneath. As far as he could tell, it wasn't far from the master suite the professor had occupied.

The weathervane moved again, its rusty cries echoing off the mountains.

"Weird," Rude said.

"That's all you got to say 'bout it?" Reno's laugh was more like a wheeze in his throat. "Why waste a sentence when a single word will do, huh?"

"Quite."

That got him another snigger.

"But yeah, weird. Wind is weird. House is weird." He looked over one shoulder, then the other. "Yard is weird. Ever seen trees like this before? They're, like... full of knots. What's up with that?"

Unlike the spruces on the other side of the property, these trees were squat and stubby. Rude studied their gnarled trunks and bare branches and wondered what kind of trees they were. The wizened clump of them near the house could have been the remnants of an orchard. Pepio nuts, maybe, or lasan nuts. Maybe fruit, like mandarins... or maybe not. Nibelheim's climate was hardly suitable for Costan crops.

Rude shrugged.

"I was watching 'em before, when I was tryin' to get a feel for the winds," Reno added, then lowered his voice. "You see a branch sway now and then. Not all of 'em, just the one branch at a time. Like these fuckers are wavin' at ya."

Rude leveled a stare at him. Reno met it with a sincere look on his face.

Too sincere.

"You're fucking with me."

Several seconds crept by as they watched each other. Then Reno chuckled and raised his cigarette for a drag.

"Yeah, okay, I am. You bought it, tho', just for a lil' bit. Admit it, buddy."

Rude scoffed and squared his shoulders. Reno's face split into a shit-eating grin.

"Oh man, you did!" he crowed. "You totally bought it!"

"Asshole."

"Aw, don't take it too hard, big guy. Stayin' in a place like this for too long messes with your head. I mean, just look at it." He threw out his arm in a wide arc. "Everythin' about this place is creepy as fuck, man. Hell, everythin' about this damn town creeps me out."

Rude grunted his agreement. As he scanned the trees by the house, he couldn't help but wonder why anyone would even plant trees in a place like this. Did they get any sun at all? He couldn't see a single sign of life among them, yet their roots must have clawed their way into the blackened soil at some point.

"Speakin' of..." With a dry chuckle, Reno nodded toward the gate. "Looks like Gubbins has arrived."

A skeletal figure in oversized overalls was marching up the path toward the house. Rude was reminded of the scarecrows that had loomed out in the sunflower fields by his uncle's property. Her twitching gait was exactly what his terrified young mind had pictured as Teo fed him tales of flesh-eating straw things coming for him through the crops.

"C'mon." Reno flicked his smoke to the ground. "Let's get this over with, yo."

As Reno sauntered off, Rude paused to grind out the stub with his heel, taking a moment to shake off the mental images of twiggy, grasping fingers. Reno was right. This place was getting to him. Reno, too, for that matter. Him and his spooky faces and the rest of his bullshit.

Rude straightened up and squared his shoulders. Then he froze. On the tree closest to him, a single branch was slowly swaying back and forth.

As Mrs. Gubbins led them on a tour of the house, Rude was content to tail them like a shadow and let Reno do the talking. He felt a growing knot in his gut as she brought them to the ballroom again, and through the twisty back corridors of the first floor. Her explanation for the banging they'd heard in the kitchen was offhand and brisk: water pipes, vibrating against their brackets as the heating kicked in. In each dusty room she pointed out noisy hinges or creaky floorboards or shutters that tended to come loose in the wind, until Rude was convinced there was not a single quiet corner to be found in the whole manor.

The tour came to an early end on the second floor, as they were heading rearward from the north wing. Reno flicked a light switch, only to jump back with a curse as a burst of sparks rained down from the ceiling light above him.

"The electrics are a little... short-tempered down this end of the house." Mrs. Gubbins tapped her bottom lip with a bony finger as she stared up at the lamp. "I would've gotten somebody to fix them, but you Shinra types are so finicky about who gets to poke around inside."

"You could've warned me, yo!"

After a quick scowl, he picked his way along the lightless corridor and peeked into the next room. Rude could barely make out Reno's black suit against the dark. He heard the clicks of another switch, but nothing happened.

"Looks like the power went out." Reno's voice echoed in the darkness that lay beyond him.

"It's probably only dead in this part of the house," said Mrs. Gubbins. "The back of this wing is on its own breaker."

"What's in there?"

"More of what you've seen on this floor, really. A few lounges, a couple of bedrooms... A dining hall, I believe."

"Eh, doesn't sound too interestin'." Reno turned around and headed back. "Hojo can deal with it if he needs 'em."

Rude had no complaints. The dust had been making his eyes itch for a good fifteen minutes, and was beginning to tickle his throat.

As they headed downstairs, Cissnei joined them in the foyer.

"I'd say my shift is over by now," she said once Mrs. Gubbins had left.

Reno shrugged. "Fine by me. What time is it, anyway?"

Rude reached into his jacket to bring out his PHS.

It wasn't there.

He paused, then patted down his other pockets. Narrowing his eyes, he looked over at Reno.

"Did you steal my PHS?"

Reno snorted. "You lose your damn phone and that's the first thing you ask? Thanks, man. That's real nice."

"Did you?"

"Why would I wanna dig through your pockets? No challenge in that. Not even candy, yo." He grinned and pulled out his PHS. "Hang on, I'll give you a call."

He flipped it open and thumbed a few keys. Once the call had connected he glanced around, as if that might improve his hearing. Rude stared vacantly at a crack on the second step of the stairs, trying to think of likely places to look as he listened. The list was daunting. They afternoon had taken them all over the manor, inside and out.

Cissnei looked over her shoulder and tilted her head.

"I hear something."

Beckoning them to follow, she led the way into the corridor behind her. Rude kept his ears pricked, but it wasn't until they got nearer to the kitchen that he picked up on it too. It had the rhythm of his ringtone, but it wasn't the same sound. They could hear it clearer as soon as Cissnei opened the door, but still the sound was off. Every ring was accompanied by a grating, metallic rattle.

"Down there, sounds like." She pointed at a pair of cupboard doors to the right of the sink.

The desire to run came over Rude. It caught him by complete surprise. His gut reaction was always to fight; not to flee.

His eyes darted across the other door on the opposite wall, the sink, the countertop, over and under the wooden table. Nothing seemed amiss, yet his unease grew more insistent by the second.

"Go on then." Reno's voice was quieter than usual. "It's your PHS."

Rude forced his legs to move toward the cupboard, forced himself to crouch down. He licked his lips, but his tongue felt dry, dry as the dust over everything in this damned house. He cracked the doors open for a peek. He opened them wider; an inch, then another. A large pot on the bottom shelf gave off a rhythmic hollow rattle.

Slowly, carefully, he reached in and lifted the lid. Inside was his PHS, vibrating tinnily against the pot with one last ring.

"Now that's real weird." Reno craned his neck over Rude's shoulder to peek into the cupboard. "Maybe you left it there when you were cookin' up lunch?"

It wasn't impossible. Rude just didn't have any memory of taking out his PHS in the kitchen. In fact, he had no memory of using it at all since the ballroom, and he certainly hadn't cooked in that pot. There was something surreal about the whole scene, a dissonance Rude struggled to resolve. As he picked up the device he had to tell himself that it was really there, that it was his, because it didn't feel like either. How could he have lost it there? And when?

Maybe that was it. Maybe he was, indeed, losing it.

"Well, now that that mystery is solved," Cissnei said, "I'll be off."

"I'll go with you." Not that Rude was particularly keen on the idea of an evening among Nibelheim's locals. He just had to get out of there. Get out, get away.

Cissnei paused in doorway, her eyebrows raised. Then she smiled.

"Sure. No problem. I'll just go change first."

Reno watched her leave. There was an odd look in his eyes, but it receded as soon as she was out of view. He turned back to Rude and leaned in closer.

"You sure you wanna head into town? I could head out instead, y'know, give you a couple of hours to get to know..." He smirked and glanced up toward the ceiling.

Rude felt his jaw tighten.

"I'm sure."

"All right, all right. Suit yourself, yo."

He strode out of the kitchen, leaving Reno behind. In the foyer, he took up position by the doors to wait for Cissnei.

He soon regretted it. The back of his neck wouldn't stop prickling. Whenever he glanced over his shoulder he saw the old mirror. He couldn't see the reflection; it was tilted very slightly toward the hallway that led to the kitchen.

He couldn't wait to get out of here.

The stairs creaked. Cissnei was on her way down, dressed in jeans and a short green jacket. It hung open, showing a top with some printed design. The narrow strip he glimpsed of it wasn't enough to make out what it was.

"Ready?" she asked with a sunny smile.

Rude nodded and grabbed the door handle.

"All right, kids, have fun." Reno strolled in from the kitchen hallway, hands deep in his pockets. "Got your phones?"

He grinned at Rude. Rude ground his teeth and yanked the door open.

"Hey, Ciss," Reno added. "I might need ya to watch the Prof tomorrow, too. That cool with ya?"

"Sure," she said, smiling. "No problem."

He didn't acknowledge her straight away. His forehead creased as he studied her.

"You okay, Ciss?"

"Sure. This isn't exactly where I'd choose to go on vacation, but other than that... I'm fine."

Reno gave her another long look.

"You sure about that? You've been awfully... cheerful today."

"What, would you rather have my bitch face?" Her smile was still there, sweet as ever.

"C'mon, Ciss," he huffed. "I just want you to be you."

"And what makes you think this isn't me?"

Reno's frown deepened, inched toward bewilderment.

"I know you."

Slowly, her smile changed.

"You knew me two years ago."

She left. Reno stared after her, and kept staring after she had disappeared through the front doors.

Rude reached up to adjust his tie. Reno glanced up at him.

"See ya later," he mumbled.

He stalked off toward the stairs without looking back.

"So," Cissnei began as they descended the steps into Nibelheim, "my guess is that you're not actually interested in spending an evening with a bunch of teenage girls."

Rude blinked. He'd just assumed that whether they were together or not, they'd spend the evening at the town's only watering hole. It was so easy to forget that she was still, technically, a teenager.

"Just want a quiet drink."

"Quiet, huh?" She chuckled. "I hear you. Enjoy your evening."

He nodded, and with a smile she skipped off across the square. She was out of sight before Rude had reached the water tower.

Only a couple of houses right by the village gate still basked in the glow of the waning sun. The pub was one of them. As Rude moved from shadow into light, he wondered if the place even had a name. All he could make out from the worn sign was the word "inn" in capital letters.

The amount of chatter that came pouring out when he opened the door surprised him. The pub wasn't full, just busier than he had expected; more than half of the small, round tables were occupied, and a couple of patrons were filling up space at the bar counter. The barkeep eyed him warily, but took his order without complaint.

Someone behind him said something he couldn't make out, that was met with a chorus of chuckles. No matter how many times Rude told himself it was nothing to do with him, he felt his shoulders tighten. When it happened again, he glanced back at the small group seated around the table behind him. He recognized the speaker as one of the old coots he and Reno had met on the first day.

Someone bumped into Rude's back. He caught himself with a hand on the counter and twisted his body around to stare at the offender.

"Whoopsh," slurred a man with a gaunt, ruddy face – the second half of the old coot duo. "Sorry 'bout that."

Rude let out a sharp breath and returned to his drink. The first sip was lukewarm and far too sour. Maybe he should have stayed at the manor after all. He could at least have had the sense to find a quiet table.

He still could, at least until he'd finished his shitty ale. Rude raised his head to look around.

The old-timer swayed back into Rude's field of view and gave him a grin.

"You're one of them Shinra suits, eh?"

He huffed beer fumes into Rude's face with every word. Rude drew back and leveled a firm stare at him, which was usually enough to deter attempts at small talk. This man, though, was too drunk, too foolhardy or just too stupid to notice.

"Ayup, thought you was. We had one of yer kind here before."

Rude withdrew into his drink and took a gulp. They were probably talking about Cissnei, he mused, or had mistaken the Turk uniform for a business suit. As far as he knew, Reno hadn't left the manor.

The man clambered onto the stool next to Rude, then looked him over with bleary eyes. His gray hair stuck out in thin, uneven tufts. Judging from the damp stain down the front of his shirt, he'd spilled his beer on himself when he knocked into Rude.

"Ayup," he said, nodding sluggishly. "Must be some twenty years back by now."

As Rude looked up in surprise, the man's friend mumbled something unintelligible behind them. The old man raised his eyebrows.

"Thirty, huh? Damn. Time sure flies up here in the mountains."

Thirty years was way before Rude's time. It was way before the time of any of the other Turks, too, except maybe for Veld. Had the Turks even existed back then? The Shinra Company had been a world power for decades, but Rude didn't know its early history.

"Not much for talking, that feller," the man continued. "Seemed harmless enough, though."

Rude sighed, and decided to bite.

"Who was he?"

"Oh, it was some long, funny name... Started with a double-you... or a vee, maybe? Vaughan? Nah, that ain't right. Maybe it was a B." The man squinted at the ceiling for a while. "Naw. Ain't happening. Was thirty years ago, y'know."

With a non-committal grunt, Rude returned to his drink. At this point he was willing to bet these guys were just trying to get a rise out of him.

"Jordy here knows what happened to him, though. Don't ya, Jordy?"

Jordy nodded and proceeded to blather for almost a minute straight. Rude couldn't even tell where one word ended and another began; it had to be the local language which had all but gone extinct since Shinra rolled into Nibelheim. Once his unfathomable story had wound to a close, Rude gave him a blank look and shrugged.

The coots shared a glance before the other one spoke up.

"He says the house ate him."

With a tired sigh, Rude took a long gulp of his beer.

"Naw, it's true! They say them scientists up there," the man leaned closer and lowered his voice to stage whisper, "made the house come alive."

He stared intently at Rude with wide bloodshot eyes, holding his breath. Then he erupted in raucous laughter, sprinkling the side of Rude's face with spittle. His pals joined in. Rude did not.

"Ayup," the guy chortled, "ol' Phemie's the only one who can keep that place in check. Tough as dragon hide, that one. You best stay on her good side now... or she'll feed the house with the lot of ya."

That set off another hooting round of laughter. With a quiet groan, Rude drained his glass and got up. Cissnei could handle the locals. He'd had enough bullshit for one day.

Chapter Text

Rude woke up with a stiff neck. It took him a few moments to figure out that this was because his pillow had slipped out from under his head at some point in the night. What he was unable to figure out, though, was how the pillow had ended up beneath his feet.

As his mind shed the remnants of slumber, this fact began to sink in properly. The back of Rude's neck began to crawl. His pillow had not moved itself. Someone had been inside his room, had taken the pillow from under his head and slipped it in under his feet. Someone... or something.

It took Rude a minute to dare open his eyes. It took several more for him to move. When he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he planted his feet as far from the bed as possible and bounded several steps away. Once he was clear, he dropped to his knees and bent down for a peek under the bed.

On the other side of the bed, something dashed up and out of view.

Heart pounding in his throat, Rude shot back up to his feet. Nothing. He lunged for the chair and fumbled his gun out of the holster. Keeping the pistol trained on the bed, he circled over to the door, where he got down on one knee and leaned down far enough that he could cover both the top of the bed and the floor below it. Crouched down just so, he crept sideways until he had checked every inch of the bed, above and below.

Nothing.

He had still been waking up, Rude told himself. It had just been a trick of the eye. He'd let himself get all worked up over nothing.

Yet he didn't turn his back on the bed for a single moment as he got dressed. He even shrugged into his shoulder holster, with his gun still drawn. Guns mean distance, and in this case... Rude wanted all the distance he could get.

Reno wasn't in his room. Cissnei wasn't in hers, either. Rude tried to keep it together as he tromped down the stairs, yet he couldn't stop glancing over his shoulder. Everything was so damned quiet. Against his own will, his pace quickened; by the time he reached the ground floor, he was almost stampeding to the kitchen.

Rude threw the kitchen door open. Reno was sitting at the table, his hands clasped behind his head as he balanced his chair on its back legs.

"Mornin', buddy! Sweet dreams?"

He grinned up at Rude as he slowly rocked back and forth in his chair, jacket hanging open and shirt barely buttoned. The coffee machine was sputtering away, filling the kitchen with the scent of fresh coffee. Four mugs were waiting beside it on the countertop, along with a bottle of milk.

Rude felt a bit woozy. It was such a sudden drop back into normalcy.

"Did you..." He wet his lips. "Did you notice anything this morning?"

"Like what?"

"Anything... unusual."

Reno stilled his chair and lowered it to the floor.

"It's been quiet around here. Why?"

"You didn't see anything? Hear anything?"

"Nah, man. Went out for a smoke a lil' while ago, tho'." He tilted his head to the side and studied Rude's face. "What's this about?"

"I think someone's been in my room." The word something was awfully close to slipping out instead.

"Like, this morning?"

Rude nodded. "Earlier, too. They've been moving my stuff."

"Anythin' missin'?"

"No."

With a pensive frown, Reno pushed himself to his feet and strolled over to the coffeemaker.

"Look, you sure about this?" he asked as he poured himself a cup. "I mean, why would someone come all the way up here just to move your stuff around?"

"I am certain," Rude ground out. "We should search the house."

Reno paused with his mug raised halfway to his face, staring in disbelief.

"Seriously? Like, the whole place?"

Rude nodded sharply.

"C'mon, man," Reno groaned. "We looked all over this shithole yesterday with Gubbins. None of us saw nothin'."

"We haven't cleared the north wing."

"Yeah, 'cause we didn't need to. The floor's covered in an inch of dust, remember? Untouched dust, yo."

Rude wanted to say that tracks meant nothing if the intruder could flicker in and out of existence and travel through locked doors. Saying it out loud might make it real, though. Make it a tangible something he didn't know how to catch or defeat.

Rude crossed the room in two quick strides and slapped his hands down on the table.

"Someone has been in my room," he forced out through clenched teeth.

Reno's eyebrows disappeared under his messy fringe.

"Hey, man, ease up, all right? You say we gotta search the house, we search the house." Reno reached into his jacket. He paused, staring at the floor. Then he let his hand fall. "You call Ciss," he muttered as he turned to face the coffee machine. "Tell her to get down here."

The call was brief. Kitchen. Now. Rude didn't miss the snort and the shake of Reno's head, but he didn't care. He was in no mood to waste words.

Despite his curtness over the phone, Cissnei greeted him with a smile when she entered the kitchen.

"Hey, Rude. What's up?"

She and Reno exchanged nothing but wary looks before he turned away and slapped his mug down on the counter. When he faced them again, he wore a crooked smile. His poker smile, Rude recognized.

"'Kay, so, we got a bit of a situation," Reno began.

He recapped what Rude had told him in about three times as many words. By the time he was finally done, Cissnei was frowning.

"This place is huge, though. How are we supposed to do a proper sweep?"

"At this point we're just lookin' for signs of an intruder. Unlocked doors, broken windows, tracks in the dust... you know the drill. There's three of us, four with the custodian. We oughta be done in a couple of hours."

"The custodian?" Rude asked.

Reno gave him a searching look. "Got a problem with that?"

He shrugged.

"Ain't like I'm a personal fan," Reno said, "but she knows the place, and working in pairs is better than havin' one of us go alone."

Rude was tempted to suggest they not split up at all, but he knew better. One group was easier to avoid than two. Sweep in from one end of the house and the target might just slip out through the other.

"'Kay, I'm gonna give the ol' bat a call. We can check the first floor while we wait, then pair up for the top floor when she gets here."

"Sounds like a plan," Cissnei said.

As Reno stepped out into the hallway to make his call, she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples.

"Problem?" Rude wondered.

"No. Didn't sleep well, that's all."

She offered him an anemic smile, which didn't reassure him.

Rude poured them coffee while they waited. It was too bitter and did little to ease the dull thudding in his head. He'd forced half of it down his throat when the door swung open again.

"All right, she'll show up in an hour," Reno said as he strolled up to the table. "Time to figure out a plan." He sank down in his previous seat and clasped his hands behind his head. "Rude here seems to think the sweet ol' custodian is fishy. Can't say I disagree. Mind pairing up with her, Ciss? Get a read on her?"

"No problem."

Her smile was different from the one she'd given Rude a few minutes ago; it was wider, brighter, more. He was beginning to recognize her game face too, he realized.

When she looked over at him, her smile faded.

"Rude," she said, "your disappearing phone yesterday... Do you think it's related?"

He nodded. She lowered her gaze to stare into her coffee, eyes narrowed in thought.

"It doesn't make sense," she mumbled. "If someone is snooping around, why draw attention to themselves like that? And if they're trying to mess with us, why stick to something as pointless as moving our stuff around? Why not take our stuff? Hell, why not put a bullet in our heads?"

"That's what a Turk would do, Ciss," Reno piped up. "Maybe we're just dealing with a prankster."

"Takes one to know one, huh?"

"Hey, I'm just sayin' that if I'd spent my whole life here in Boringheim, I'd be pretty desperate to liven things up. Maybe someone just wants to watch us foreign types lose our shit."

He was rocking his chair again, balanced precariously on two legs. It wouldn't take much to knock him over, Rude mused. Reno was little more than skin and bones. Just a little nudge would send him over, skinny limbs flailing.

Rude squeezed his eyes shut and pushed a couple of fingers under his shades to rub his eyelids. Where the hell did that come from? The past few days had left him in a terrible mood.

"Wouldn't that mean they'd have to be here to watch us do so?" Cissnei asked.

"Uh huh."

"Well. That's just great."

"What is?" Rayleigh's voice cut through the room like a whip. She stood with one hand on the door handle, back ramrod straight and eyes piercing as she watched Cissnei.

"In this neck of the woods?" Reno grinned. "Not a damn thing."

She remained by the door and eyed each of them in turn. She wore a green dress with random swirls of white and yellow – Rude couldn't help but think that Turk black would have suited her better at that moment.

"Reno thinks we might have a prankster on our hands," Cissnei explained. "We've had some... odd incidents since we arrived."

"Not more 'ghosts' in the mirror, I hope?"

Rude felt a rush of heat surge through his veins and curl his hands into fists. Of course Reno's fooling around would end up biting Rude in the ass. Of course it would.

Reno rolled his eyes and unfurled himself from his seat.

"C'mon, Ciss, let's check out this floor. Now that the Prof is here, Rude can stay with her."

"Professor," Rayleigh corrected him.

Rude picked up on a note of exasperation in her voice. He also noticed the sly look that Reno gave him.

"No. I'll go."

He headed for the door before Reno could come up with a more convoluted excuse to make him stay. As he opened it, Cissnei slunk past him and out of the kitchen.

"Thanks," she mumbled under her breath.

It wasn't what he'd had in mind, but he swallowed his surprise and hurried out after her. She was waiting for him at the turn of the corridor.

"So," she began as she fell in beside him. "Are you avoiding Reno or the professor?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

"Nice dodge," she chuckled softly. "Don't get me wrong, Reno and I are friends. On this mission, though, he's been a bit... much."

"I could say the same thing."

Cissnei smiled. Not the sugary-sweet smile she'd worn the day before, but a shy one that barely raised the corners of her mouth.

Rude and Cissnei had the same training, and they soon fell into an easy cooperation. He would take up position near the door, and keep an eye out while she swept any closets and other hiding places. He even began to relax into the methodical rhythm of it – until they reached the ballroom. The moment he heard the double doors click shut behind him, a chill came over him. Despite Cissnei's presence, despite his own reassurances, he couldn't focus on the task at hand. He had to try one of the doors. It opened.

It became a little easier after that. A little. Rude kept an eye on the dust as the parquet gave way to simple wooden floors, and then to the rougher boards of the storage rooms. He made out his own footsteps, along with those of Reno and Mrs. Gubbins. He identified the uneven smear that wove along the back hallways to be the sack that she'd dragged behind her during her vermin rounds. He made note of all the tracks and compared them to what he remembered from the tour with Mrs. Gubbins. Apart from a few rat trails, he didn't notice anything new.

They heard Reno's chatter long before they reached the end of their round. Rude couldn't make out all the words until they reached the storage rooms behind the kitchen. He doubted he'd missed anything of importance.

"Hey, guys!" Reno greeted them when Rude opened the door at the back of the kitchen. "What's the verdict?"

"Nothing," Rude replied.

Rayleigh whipped to her feet.

"In that case, I shall finally get back to my work. If you need me, I'll be in my room."

"We can trust you to stay put, yeah?" Reno called after her. "Lock the door, and don't open it unless it's one of us? Not that this is somethin' you need to worry about, really, it's just the usual–"

Rayleigh huffed out a theatrical sigh and turned to stare at him.

"Why are you still talking? I already told you what I'm going to do!"

He smirked.

"I'll take that as a 'yes', then."

The hinges croaked as she yanked the door open and left.

"No sign of Gubbins yet?" Cissnei asked.

"Nah, but she should be here any minute. If you guys want breakfast, now's the time, yo."

The ingredients of a sandwich were spread out on the countertop behind him. Rude made a beeline for the loaf. He had been too wound up to even think about food before, but now his mouth watered at the sound of the breadknife rasping through the thick crust.

He had just taken the first bite of a thick sandwich, laden with butter, cheese, ham and tiny sour pickles, when the door moved again. It swung open in silent slow motion, until a gaunt face fell into view.

"Good morning, kids," creaked Mrs. Gubbins, and peeled back her desiccated lips into a rictus grin.

Rude could barely swallow his bite of sandwich. It had become a ball of damp sawdust in his mouth.

"Come on in, Mrs. Gubbins," Reno said. "Let's go over the plan before we get started."

He must have explained the situation over the phone, because he launched straight into the pairing up and the division of the floor above them. Gubbins stood next to Reno's chair, stooping slightly. Her arms were gnarled twigs poking out of the threadbare sleeves of her pastel blue cardigan, hanging stiffly by her sides as she loomed over him. Rude didn't seriously think she was behind all this weirdness, yet he couldn't shake the mental image of her, by his bed, in the middle of the night... looming.

He forced down another mouthful of sandwich in a dry, painful gulp.

Cissnei headed out, with Mrs. Gubbins following her like a bad omen. Rude watched them leave, and tried his best to ignore that insistent prickling in the back of his neck, telling him to do something before someone got hurt.

Wood scraped harshly against wood. Rude flinched and turned as Reno pushed back his chair hopped and to his feet.

"All right, buddy, let's get this show on the road." He paused and eyed the half-eaten sandwich in Rude's hand. "You gonna finish that?"

With a sigh, Rude handed it over.

As they reached the second floor landing in the foyer, Rude looked over at the low stair to the north wing. Cissnei and Mrs. Gubbins were searching that end of the house – the lit parts of it, anyway. They would all meet up together afterwards, to search the dark zone.

He couldn't hear anything. That didn't mean a thing, but he didn't like it. If only he'd hear a few steady steps or a snippet of conversation, he could assume everything was proceeding as planned.

"What, think you should've been the one keepin' tabs on the ol' bat?" Reno asked, stepping up beside him. "Trust me, if she ain't who she claims to be, Ciss has the best chance of us three to figure her out."

"But she's–"

She was what? Rude couldn't think of a solid argument. She was young – as far as he knew, she'd been pulled in straight from high school barely a year ago, when the Turks were desperate for more agents – but Reno couldn't have been much older when Rude partnered up with him for the first time. She was a junior agent, but clearly no rookie. And as creepy as the custodian was, he had nothing but a bad gut feeling to go on.

Reno chuckled.

"Glad your mama raised ya right, but you gotta let it go on the job. Ain't no damsels in the Turks, buddy. Ciss can handle herself." He clapped Rude on the shoulder and turned toward the south wing. "What you oughta be worryin' about right now is what might be lurkin' in the shadows 'round here."

Rude tore his gaze from the north wing and followed his partner.

They swept through bedrooms, and storerooms, and stuffy studies crowded with empty bookshelves. The second floor was in better shape; the corridors were swept free of dust, and while most of the rooms still lay covered in drifts of the stuff, they showed fewer animal tracks and other signs of disturbance. More light reached the windows here than on the ground floor, filtering in through wispy curtains yellowed by age. It made the place feel less ominous, and more simply... abandoned.

"Yo, look at this! "

Rude cringed as Reno's echo boomed through the empty rooms. A search like this should have been well-honed routine for them, conducted with nothing more than a gesture and a look.

"You're giving away our position," he warned, keeping his voice low.

"Yeah, whatever. Check this out."

Reno stood by the carved leg of an ornate sofa, holding up a corner of the sheet that covered it and pointing at the seat. A ragdoll sat on the plush cushion, wearing a blue satin dress. The thread of its embroidered eyes and mouth had faded and worn thin, turning its features into a mere shadow of a face.

"Y'know, I can't decide what's creepier," Reno said, grinning. "A kid growin' up in this place, or a kid growin' up with this fuckin' thing."

Rude gritted his teeth.

"We're working."

"Oh, c'mon. We haven't seen a damn thing so far. Why are ya takin' this so damn seriously?"

Reno hadn't seen anything. The problem was, Rude hadn't exactly seen anything either.

"Because we're working," he said, biting off each word.

"All right, all right." Reno rolled his eyes and let the sheet fall back down. "Sheesh."

And just like that, he slipped back into acting like a proper Turk. Considering the amount of bullshit that came out of Reno on a daily basis, he could be remarkably quiet when the occasion called for it. As they advanced, he crept through rooms and corridors without a sound; he even bothered to sidestep most of the creaky floorboards.

More than once, Rude caught a private grin on Reno's face. He wasn't surprised; after a couple of days of the quiet mountain life, even the merest whiff of action was bound to get Reno fired up. It was for the best, he decided. Reno's grins kept the morning's lingering fear at bay.

The main corridor ended in a cylindrical chamber. They had taken a peek through the door with Mrs. Gubbins the day before, but this was the first time Rude had set foot inside. A wall of heat engulfed him the moment he stepped over the threshold; tall windows covered half of the room's circumference, and at this hour the abundant sunlight flooded every inch of it.

The air was saturated with the musty smell of warm soil. Rows of old terracotta pots and planters ringed the circular wall. Most of the pots still contained earth, and several of them sprouted slender stems and fresh green foliage. This had clearly been a greenhouse once, but Rude doubted this vegetation had been planted by the former residents. He spotted several weeds he'd seen by the roadside on his way into town, and a few pots even housed stunted versions of the pines outside.

"How the hell are these things still growing?" Reno muttered as he strolled along the innermost row of pots.

"Leaky roof, maybe."

"Maybe. Would've thought Gubbins would fix that sorta thing, tho'."

"Maybe she waters them."

Reno snorted softly.

"Speakin' of, we should link up with the others. See how Ciss is doin'."

They had agreed to meet up at the first T-junction beyond the entrance to the north wing. When they found the other two already waiting for them, both in one piece, Rude breathed out in relief. They stood in the hallway that led to the rear of the house, right at the edge of the swept floors; beyond them was an even layer of dust, marked only by Reno's boot prints from the day before.

"Now, this part of the manor is a little... different from the rest," Mrs. Gubbins warned as she handed them a couple of heavy flashlights. "It was tacked on a couple decades after the main house was built, and the layout here has its own ideas, compared to the side you boys were on. Just keep that in mind as you barge around. Wouldn't want to lose anyone... now would we?"

She grinned, and Rude really wished she hadn't.

There were two routes through the back half of the north wing, she explained, connected up by certain rooms. She and Cissnei would head right, to search a series of interconnected rooms along the northern wall. Rude and Reno would head straight ahead along the side that faced the inner gardens. At the back of the house, they would meet up.

The sounds of the women's hushed conversation faded fast once they split up. In less than a minute, it was as if the house had swallowed them whole.

Or maybe the house had swallowed him and Reno, Rude mused. Every step took them deeper into the dark, impenetrable were it not for their flashlights. Every step made the dread in his gut grow a little stronger, squeeze a little tighter. He glanced over his shoulder. The bright hallway shone behind them like a beacon, beckoning him to safety. Rude stifled the urge to run back, run now, run while you still can, and followed his partner into the darkness like a solid shadow.

Rude peeked into the first room and swept his flashlight around in a slow arc. Like everything else in this town, the light was an old-fashioned thing; weighty, chunky, and covered in thick black rubber that felt sticky in his gloved hand. He hoped the batteries were made in this decade.

It did shine brightly, though; not like the warm rays of the sun, or the golden glow of the manor's incandescent bulbs, but a cold, hard brightness that leeched the life out of everything it touched. Its harsh light fell across faded wallpaper, mottled here and there with little dark spots. Dull and flat and lifeless. If he shone his light on Reno, would it drain away his youth until he was nothing more than a grinning skull like Mrs. Gubbins?

The thought crept up Rude's spine like a chilly breeze.

The room was empty, with another doorway diagonally across from them. Cissnei would check the room beyond it. An airtight sweep wasn't necessary; they were only looking for tracks at this point.

As they stalked onward, Reno coughed into the crook of his arm.

"Man, fuck this dust," he grumbled. "I'm gonna be hackin' this shit up for weeks once we get back."

It was thick here, covering the floors like filthy snow, and every step they took kicked up more of it. Reno coughed again, hamming it up into a wheezing display of wretchedness.

"Keep it down," Rude growled.

"Gee, thanks for the sympathy."

The hallway led them into a large chamber, with a second doorway gaping in the center of the opposite wall. Rude looked back as he followed Reno across the room, but he could barely make out the door they'd come through. So much for their beacon.

Their flashlights glinted off gilded plaster and crystal chandeliers; it had to be the fanciest room Rude had been in so far. As he panned his torch around it, something darted away from the beam. A tiny, sudden thing, scurrying up the wall and into a gap in the ceiling trim. A thing with far too many legs for his liking. Rude hurried through the rest of his sweep, and hastened to follow Reno out of the chamber and into the hallway beyond. It wasn't that he feared spiders; he just didn't much care for sharing a room with them in absolute darkness.

For it truly was absolute, now. Had the dark grown darker?

"Hang on," Reno said, peering into another room on the right. "I gotta take a closer look."

"What is it?"

"Not sure. Lemme check real quick."

As Reno skulked inside, Rude shone his flashlight into the room after him. He moved in a cautious circle around the doorway, his beam making Reno's shadow leap and dance along the walls. He had nearly completed his circle when he felt it – a wispy touch on the back of his head, like the lightest brush of a shroud.

He froze to the spot. The sensation was gone... or was it? There was still something – something skimming along the edge of what he could sense.

Rude spun around, his light wheeling across the faded walls of the corridor. He saw nothing, but the prickling in the back of his head didn't stop. It repeated in quick little waves, like the pattering of a dozen tiny legs.

He threw his hand up, but just as he flattened it against the back of his head, the sensation skittered down his neck and in under his collar. His heart leapt into his throat as he felt it burrow down between his shoulder blades. He thrust his arm down his collar, frantically clawing at his back – only to feel another critter land on his head, then another.

Rude smacked both hands onto his scalp. His flashlight thudded against the floor and went dark. Plunged into darkness, he was helpless as the spiders descended upon him. They swarmed down his sleeves and up the legs of his pants. With a panicked yell he slapped down his wriggling clothes, but there were just too many of them. They crawled in under the fabric and bit into his skin with dozens, no, hundreds of tiny fangs, gnawing through his flesh–

"What the fuck? Rude!"

"Help," he wheezed. "Help me!"

The spiders scurried out of his clothes and up over his scalp. He clamped his teeth together, but they crammed into his ears, his nostrils, and pushed against his sunglasses. They squeezed in under the leather of his gloves. They tunneled into his arms, and the fabric of his shirt was soaking through with something warm and wet and–

"Rude! Quit it!"

A cone of blinding brightness pinned his hands in its glare. Rude stared down at them, frozen. The arm he'd been slapping, the arm that had been covered in spiders – in the cold light of Reno's flashlight, he saw nothing. Nothing clinging on his jacket, nothing squirming beneath the fabric. No tiny skittering legs, no bites, no blood. Nothing.

Rude just stared. The air shimmered with the dust he'd kicked up in his panic, and every shallow breath he sucked in tickled his throat. His arm trembled, more violently by the second, until Reno grabbed hold of it.

"C'mon, Rude, talk to me," he said, his voice unsteady. "What's up with you, man?"

Reno's face was paler than usual, eerily shadowed like a skull in the light of his torch, only he wasn't grinning. His eyes were wide and startled.

Rude felt light-headed. He felt like he was swaying at the precipice of a yawning abyss, mere seconds from plummeting into a pitch black nothing.

"I..." He wet his lips. "I don't know."

Chapter Text

The rest of the search passed in a daze. Rude could only recall bits and pieces of it, like the disjointed fragments of a bad dream.

He remembered Reno hovering around him, urging him to explain. He remembered cold, strobing lights on dust-smothered floors. He remembered Cissnei asking questions. He couldn't recall his answers, or even whether he had answered out loud at all.

And just like a nightmare, all of it was fading from Rude's mind now that he stood on the foyer landing, bathed in the sunlight from the towering windows behind him. Reno, Cissnei and the decrepit Mrs. Gubbins had gathered in the middle of the landing a few feet away, right at the top of the stairs to the ground floor; facing away from him, chatting among themselves. Reno had reverted to his laid-back self and listened to the other two report with a faint smile on his lips, as if he had not a single care in the world.

Maybe he didn't. Come to think of it, he didn't seem to give much of a shit about anything.

Lucky bastard.

"Well, I did tell you no one's been here for decades." The Gubbins woman's voice, creaking like rusty hinges. "If anyone from town would have come here and made a mess, I would've heard about it and set them straight real quick... unless the house got them first, of course."

She smiled, showing just a sliver of teeth. Rude went cold, but Reno just chuckled.

"Yeah, yeah, all right." He held out his hand. "Appreciate the help, Gubbins."

"Y'all have a nice evening, now," she said as she shook it, then grinned and looked around at the rest of them. "Don't let the bedbugs bite."

She said it just as her colorless eyes locked with Rude's, and the chill on his skin turned to ice.

"Gee," Reno said, "thanks for that thought."

He didn't know about the spiders – Rude just couldn't bring himself to describe what had happened – but his laughter rang in Rude's ears like mockery nonetheless. How could Reno laugh at a time like this, when Rude had come to him for help? How could he laugh with that woman? Couldn't he see what she was doing to his goddamned partner?

Bitterness simmered in Rude's veins. The guy just didn't give a damn, least of all about other people.

As Mrs. Gubbins descended the stairs with the jerking steps of a gangly bird, Reno unlatched the bottom pane of the middle window and tugged it open. By the time Gubbins had closed the front door behind her, he was sucking in air through a lit cigarette.

"So, Ciss..." He turned his head to blow smoke out the window. "What's the verdict?"

Cissnei had remained at the top of the stairs to watch the woman leave. She crossed her arms over her chest as she strolled over to Reno.

"She's... unusual," she said with a small smile. "Did you know she used to be a hunter? Big game, mostly. Bears, wolves, zuus–"

"Zuus? What're those?"

"Huge birds with teeth, apparently. Bigger than most bears."

Reno stared her down, narrowing his eyes, as he took another deep drag.

"You're shittin' me."

Cissnei shook her head. Her smile grew a fraction wider.

"Nope. Gubbins says they've been known to fly off with animals that stray too far from town. Cats, dogs, goats... One of the locals bought a small herd of cows once and let them loose to graze on the mountainside. Zuus nabbed them all, one by one."

His jaw dropped.

"Ifrit's balls," he sputtered. "Remind me never to go flyin' around these mountains, yo."

"Nibel wolves are almost the size of bears, too. Mrs. Gubbins told me she was out rifle-hunting by herself one particularly cold and miserable winter a few decades ago. On her way back, a lone wolf sprung on her. She managed to fire a couple of shots, but missed both times. She ended up clobbering it to death with her rifle."

"Holy shit." Reno's laugh echoed through the foyer. "No wonder she ain't flustered by a few Turks."

"Mm. Wasn't a small one, either. When she hung it up from the rafters to bleed it, the front paws rested the floor."

"Damn. That's one badass granny."

"That's pretty much what I said. She told me I'd get there too some day."

Reno snorted another delighted laugh.

"Y'know, creepy or not, I'm beginning to like the ol' bat." After another chuckle, he sobered up again. "So, you think she's clear? No bad vibes?"

"She says some odd things at times, but no, no bad vibes."

"All right. Good work, Ciss."

She gave them another small smile, then headed back toward the north wing. To check on Rayleigh, presumably.

Rude stared out the window, absently tracing the misshapen outlines of trees through the old, brittle glass. So, that was that. A whole day wasted on a search that proved absolutely nothing – except that maybe he was slowly going out of his mind.

Hell, maybe he was. Even here, out in the open and warmed by the evening sun, his skin still crawled. It must all have been in his head, and yet it felt so real. It stillfelt real.

Reno took one last drag and crushed the stub in a rusty tin on the windowsill. He studied Rude as the smoke slowly escaped through his nostrils.

"Somethin' still on your mind, buddy? You seem a bit wound up."

With a sigh, Rude shook his head. Reno gave him another searching look, then shrugged.

"If you say so." He glanced over his shoulder, down toward the kitchen, and pursed his lips in thought. "You know what? Fuck cookin' dinner. Why don't you take some time to relax in town, huh? Bring the Prof, have a drink or two. Take it easy, y'know, go with the flow for a bit."

Reno tried to play it casual, but Rude knew damned well what he was trying to do. It was all he'd been trying to do for days.

"No. Thanks."

"C'mon, man, do yourself a favor. I could bring Ciss along. Make it a double date, yo."

"If you're desperate for a date, that's your problem."

Despite Rude's curtness, Reno chuckled.

"It ain't for me, man, you know that. Why not give her a chance, huh? I think you guys could really hit it off."

"I don't think so."

"Oh, c'mon. She don't have a sense of humor, and you've forgotten how to laugh. You guys are practically made for each other, yo!"

Reno grinned up at him. Rude's tense shoulders stiffened some more.

"Leave it."

"Hey, I'm just tryin' to help ya out here!"

"Leave. It."

Rude turned on his heel and stomped downstairs. Maybe that would be clear enough to get through Reno's thick skull.

No such luck. Reno caught him by the foot of the stairs.

"Just give it a chance, will ya? Might loosen you up a bit. Man, I've been puttin' up with your blue-balls bullshit ever since that AVALANCHE bitch –"

Rude stopped in his tracks and rounded on him, and he fell out of the way with a satisfying yelp.

"Shut the hell up."

Rude loomed over him, glaring, but Reno didn't back down. He just stared back up with a frown of idiot concern that made Rude want to punch something.

"She's gone," he said, emphasizing each word. "You ain't gettin' her back."

"I don't want her back."

"Then why the hell have I been puttin' up with your mopey ass for over half a year!"

"I'm not moping. I'm..." Rude paused to draw in a deep breath. "Angry."

"Fuck, that's even worse," Reno groaned. "What's the big deal, huh? She's gone, she's over, none of it mattered! You should be throwin' a fuckin' party–"

His tirade ended in a pained grunt as Rude grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him into the wall.

"Fuckin' ow! What're ya–"

Rude shoved him into it a second time and pulled him up by his jacket, forcing him up on his toes, until their faces were level. Reno's eyes were huge and round as Rude leaned forward to stare him down.

"She mattered to me."

Rude let go abruptly, leaving Reno stumbling for balance. As he stormed out of the manor, he caught a glimpse of Reno in the old mirror. He was still wild-eyed, gingerly rubbing his shoulder as he stared after Rude with the crumbling face of a confused child. Rude scoffed and looked away, tightening his fists until the leather groaned in protest.

How could Reno understand any of it? He never got involved, never got attached. He discarded people without a second thought the moment he was done with them, or they with him. Come to think of it, Rude had yet to see him pursue anyone. Reno wore the Turk uniform to bars, not troubled in the least when those it pulled were more keen on the suit than on him. It was less hassle, he'd say, when those involved knew exactly what they were getting out of it.

The first time Rude had met Chelsea, he'd been wearing a windproof jacket, track pants and running shoes. So had she. It was a frigid morning, and the footpaths were deserted thanks to bitter winds, so it hadn't been odd that she would strike up a conversation with him.

It wasn't long before she'd seen him in dress pants and jeans, in tailored shirts and turtlenecks. The first time Rude had met up with her straight after work, she hadn't mentioned the Turk suit. She'd barely even glanced at it. He'd taken it as a good sign.

What a goddamned idiot.

Rude yanked at the gate, but it caught on something and got stuck, rattling in place. Another sharp tug jerked it free with a rusty creak, but the interruption was enough to jar Rude back into the present. What was he doing, exactly? Where was he even going?

Reno had gotten one thing right, he decided. Fuck cooking. Gritting his teeth, Rude stomped down the path toward the pub.

The pungent aroma of beer and fried meat washed over him the moment he opened the door. The barroom buzzed with dozens of voices, and every table was occupied. Was it weekend already? Rude had lost track of the days, cooped up in that despicable house.

Rude made his way to the same spot he'd sat in before, and ordered the same drink. It wasn't much of a routine, but it held enough familiarity to unwind his tautly-strung temper by a notch.

Just as his ale arrived, a woman hopped onto the stool beside him. He glanced her way and greeted her with a nod. She smiled.

"I haven't seen you here before!" Her voice was bright and perky.

"Just visiting."

"Is that so?" She shifted around on the stool, turning toward him. "Where from?"

Her knees peeked out from under her skirt. They almost touched Rude's leg.

"Midgar."

"Oh!" Her red lips formed a perfect little o that drew his eye like a beacon. "I always wanted to see Midgar with my own eyes. It looks incredible on TV."

This time, Rude let his gaze linger. A petite face with a round, stubby nose and freckled cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. Long, curly brown hair held back by a simple white band. A red dress with small white polkadots, in some old-fashioned style that clung to her waist and bloomed out toward the knees.

Her coy smile grew wider.

"Maybe you could buy me a drink and tell me all about it."

Rude found himself staring at her red-painted lips. It was tempting, so tempting, to prove to Reno that Rude didn't need his "help".

But that was Reno's way, not his. What did he have to prove to Reno, anyway?

"No, thanks."

The woman's mouth flattened into a line and she pushed herself off the stool without a word. Rude watched her out of the corner of his eye as she made a beeline for a man at a table in the corner of the pub. Pale blue button-down shirt, cotton trousers, stylish haircut that Rude had seen more often in Midgar than here – one of the reactor engineers, maybe.

Rude turned back to his drink as she gave the man the same smile she'd given him. His leather gloves creaked as they stretched taut over his knuckles.

Chelsea had never cared much for Midgar. She'd talked about leaving, about going somewhere where you could see the sky and trees would grow. He'd thought about inviting her to Costa. He'd thought about it a lot, at one point.

He'd never done anything about it, though. He'd figured out what she was long before he'd mustered up the courage to ask. Long before her cover was blown. He'd kept his mouth shut about that, too. Maybe he'd been hoping that sometime, somehow he'd get the chance to show her Costa after all.

Rude's jaw was beginning to hurt. He downed his beer in one go, and immediately ordered another.

Rude woke up with a throbbing head and the taste of ashes in his mouth. He wasn't sure why. He'd only had a couple of beers at the pub.

Well, two that he could remember. It got a bit hazy after that. Judging from the dull thudding inside his skull, his memory wasn't all that reliable.

Just like the rest of his mind.

His PHS informed him that it was almost eleven in the morning. He stumbled out of bed and into the shower. He didn't check if his shoes were still by the door, or if his gun was where he'd left it. He didn't look under his bed. He didn't want to know.

The rooms beside his were quiet. Cissnei had said something about going into town. He had no idea where Reno was. He didn't care to find out.

Rude headed south down the hallway, away from the foyer and far past their rooms, until he came to the door at its end. He pulled it open, and just like the day before, brilliant sunlight flooded his senses. He shut the door behind him and leaned back against it. Closing his eyes, he slid down to sit on the floor.

In this sunny greenhouse, surrounded by tenacious life and the scent of warm soil, Rude was firmly anchored in reality. Spectral spiders and shadowy figures didn't exist here, in the real world. They were all in his head, waiting there, ready to come crawling out of their hiding places as soon as the lights were dimmed. They had to be. Reno hadn't seen them, nor had Cissnei. Somewhere along the line, Rude's head had just gotten horribly fucked up.

Although... there was another possibility. The dead sought retribution from their killers. Tradition was very clear on that point, according to his mother. Everyone back home knew it was the price you paid for taking a life. Always, the dead would come to claim a piece of you in return.

Could the dead claim your sanity? Because Rude was indeed a murderer, still waiting for his debt to be claimed.

It wasn't as if he'd signed up to be one. He'd known taking lives was a possibility, perhaps even a certainty. The first death to mar his conscience had come before the Turks, anyway. An opponent in the ring; an unfortunate accident, one that just happened to draw Veld's eye.

His first as a Turk was a middle-aged middle manager who'd tried to settle his grudge against President Shinra with a kitchen knife. Self-defense, pure and simple. Rude had received a bonus in his next paycheck.

By the time he'd received his first assassination assignment, death had lost some of its mystery. Reno had pulled the trigger on that job, not him. Reno was no stranger to taking lives. Yet another thing he didn't seem to give a rat's ass about, one way or another.

There had been a few more assassinations since. Rude had dealt the killing blow exactly once. He had no excuses for that one; no accident, no self-defense. Cold-blooded murder, that was all it was. Four sloppy shots to the chest with a cheap black market pistol to make it look like a mugging gone wrong. The guy had bled to death long before he was found. Rude had picked up some Wutainese takeout with Reno and spent the rest of the evening watching action movies.

Rude tried to remember the mark. It startled him to find that he couldn't. It had been some upstart rival of the Shinra company over in Junon, but he couldn't recall a face, much less a name. He couldn't even remember exactly why the guy had to die.

Maybe it wasn't retribution the dead were after. Maybe they just wanted some goddamned acknowledgement.

A dark chuckle rumbled in Rude's chest. The bastards should go after Reno, then. Once all of his victims had taken their chunk out of him, there'd be nothing left.

He heard a distant tapping behind him. He turned his head, pricking his ears. There it was again; three distinct taps. Rude shut his eyes again and ignored it.

One, two, three. Louder this time.

Rude frowned. That didn't sound like the pipes. Seconds ticked by as he held his breath.

Tap, tap, tap.

Rude rolled onto the balls of his feet. He straightened up, slowly, and turned to face the door. It groaned softly as he nudged it open. Rude grimaced, and waited.

One, two, three. It sounded more like knocking, now, like bony knuckles on the lid of a coffin.

Rude squeezed his eyes shut and took a moment to banish that mental image.

The hallway seemed to have grown darker. It must simply have been the after-effects of basking in the sun, but Rude felt his resolve dwindle with every heavy thud of his heart.

He pulled out his PHS, dialed Reno's number. No reception. He shoved it back into his pocket with a frustrated groan.

Tap, tap, tap. Definitely louder. Closer.

If it was real, wouldn't the others hear it, too? Come out and investigate? And if it was all in his head, wouldn't he be better off with someone who could tell the difference between reality and the glitching figments of his mind?

Rude crept through the door and into the hallway.

Stealth wasn't his strong suit. Reno was the one who darted from shadow to shadow on quick, silent feet. The best Rude could hope for, as he skulked on to the foyer, was to miss the creakiest of the floorboards.

Doors stretched on ahead of him on either side, and the turn at the end of the corridor seemed awfully far away. A few of the doors lay open, gaping into the corridor like mouths stretched wide in soundless screams. Each one that he passed deepened the sick feeling in his gut. Rude didn't peek into any of them.

He was around the corner at last, and clear, and his breathing immediately became easier. The foyer landing was within sight, just beyond the doors to their rooms.

Rude tried Cissnei's door, then Reno's. Locked, both of them. He gave Reno's a careful tap.

Something knocked back – tap, tap, tap – and he flinched. It didn't come from the other side of the door. Rude peered over his shoulder back the way he'd come, staring hard into every shadow. Was it behind him now? Was it toying with him?

He couldn't stay here and wait. He needed to get downstairs, to find Reno or Cissnei, before whatever it was decided it was done playing. Rude scampered down the steps to the landing and sprung out of the hallway – and came face-to-face with a skull-like grin.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Gubbins. "You really have to stop doing that, mister Turk!"

Rude stared at her, frozen to the spot. Where had she come from?

"I knocked," she said. "Several times, I might add."

The stairs from the first floor creaked with every other step. The landing had been empty. Where had she come from?

She held out the container she'd cradled to her chest. A deep, oval oven dish with a white lid, painted with dainty flowers.

"I just made a big pot of my... harvest stew. There's plenty left over, and I figured y'all might be willing to help finish it."

Rude blinked at the dish. His eyes were all he could move; the rest of him was locked tight, paralyzed by a dread he could not name.

The Gubbins woman cackled.

"Believe you me, the dead would rise from their graves just to get another taste of my stew."

Rude sucked in a harsh breath.

"Who are you?" he growled.

Her head fell to the side as she peered at him, eyes unblinking and pale beyond a nameable color.

"Are you all right, young man?" Her lips inched apart into a grin that was all teeth. "You know who I am."

The slam of a door boomed through the foyer. Rude jumped back, heart thundering in his chest. Looking down, he saw Reno by the front doors, squinting up at them.

"Yo, Mrs. Gubbins," he hollered, strolling over to the foot of the stairs. "What brings you here?"

"Supper, Mr. Turk!" She raised the dish in her bony hands.

Reno's face brightened.

"No shit?" He waved her over. "Come on down here, then. Let's see what you got."

Mrs. Gubbins turned on her heel and stalked down the stairs. With a ragged breath, Rude fell out of his daze and fumbled for the railing. He'd stared down brawlers, gangsters, murderers, even Mako-touched monsters. Never before had his knees felt this weak.

The Gubbins woman didn't stay to share their meal. Rude was wound too tight to appreciate that small mercy.

The Turks and the professor had gathered around the kitchen table. Cissnei had found a tablecloth that morning, checkered in red and white. It should have made the kitchen feel cozier. Rude felt anything but. He stared at his stew, silently stirring the reddish-brown broth. The scent was mouth-watering, but he couldn't bring himself to try a single spoonful.

Reno frowned into his bowl. He picked up his fork and stabbed it into his stew. What he pulled out was about as long as the fork itself, maybe half an inch wide at one end and tapering to a point at the other. The surface was an uneven dark gray, plastered with slimy filaments.

"The fuck is this?"

"It's a carrot," Rayleigh replied, with barely a glance.

"A fuckin' zombie carrot, maybe." He held it up and shook it, dripping broth all over the tablecloth. "Look at this thing! This is carrot that dug itself out of a shallow grave, yo."

Rude gritted his teeth.

"Carrots grow in shallow graves, you know," Cissnei said, her voice brimming with amusement. "And for the record, it didn't dig itself up. That was done by Mrs. Gubbins's nephew."

Using his index finger, Reno reluctantly poked his carrot down the fork until the slimy-looking thing splashed back into his bowl.

"Of course they'd grow black zombie carrots in Creeperheim," he grumbled.

"Technically, they're purple."

"Still evil."

"Would you like me to eat your evil purple zombie carrots?"

"Hell no." With a mock scowl, Reno yanked his bowl out of her reach. "If it's on my plate, it's mine. Even if it looks like it might gnaw its way outta my stomach later."

What little appetite Rude had left turned to ash. All he could think of were the skittering legs and tiny jaws digging into his flesh.

When the others had finished their bowls, Rude's was still untouched. Reno asked if he was planning to finish it.

Without a word, Rude pushed his bowl across the table.

Rayleigh left. Cissnei stayed, and helped Rude with the dishes. Reno just stuffed his face. When the two of them headed out, Rude told them he'd finish cleaning up.

Reno hadn't even dumped his bowl in the sink. Rude snatched it off the table, along with his spoon and fork. The guy was such a fucking slob. The laziest asshole that Rude had ever seen, and an idiot to boot. Did he never stop to think how the things he said might–

Rude went still, halfway to the sink, and blinked repeatedly. What the hell was he thinking? Reno might not always think too hard about what came out of his motor-mouth, but he was a capable agent, crafty and clever in the field. Of all people, Rude would be the one to know that. He did know that. They were partners. They had each other's backs.

Rude dumped the bowl in the sink and headed for the door. He needed to speak with Reno, tell him everything. Together they could figure this out.

As Rude approached the entrance hall he picked up voices, engaged in conversation. He slowed, and came to a halt in the doorway to the foyer. In the antique mirror a few feet away he could see two dark-clad figures at the top of the landing. Reno was leaning against the wall between two of the ornate windows, a lit cigarette between his fingers. Cissnei stood in front of the window, the outline of her hair glowing like a copper halo in the warm rays of the setting sun. From what Rude could make out, they were chatting about the stew.

Rude decided to wait for his turn where he was. They were Turks, after all. If they'd wanted a private conversation, they wouldn't have stopped to talk out in the open.

"So, to what do I owe the honor? You have something on your mind, I take it?"

Cissnei's voice had changed. Rude couldn't put his finger on it, but it made his scalp prickle, much like the smile Reno would show a mark as he ingratiated himself.

"Yeah," Reno said as he handed the smoke to Cissnei. "I got somethin' on my mind."

He must have picked up on the change in her too, but his tone and posture remained the same. Rude frowned at the mirror. Its tarnished silver made the reflection too blurry for detail; he needed a better vantage point if he wanted to read their faces.

Reno looked down as he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket. Cissnei had her eyes on him. While they were both preoccupied, Rude took the chance to sneak around the corner into the little storage room next to the front doors and settled into the shadows behind a couple of stacked crates. Through the open doorway, he had the perfect view of the pair on the landing.

Reno brought out a piece of paper and looked it over.

"Nice pic, this. Signed and everythin'. From PR, is it?"

He held it up for her. A photo, maybe, or a postcard; but Rude was too far from them to see what it pictured. Cissnei eyed it as she blew out a slow stream of smoke, then looked up at Reno.

"That was in my room."

"Your room wasn't locked."

"The drawer I kept that in was." She snatched the picture out of his hand and wedged the cigarette between his fingers in its place.

"Yeah, well, it was a shitty lock," he mumbled as he raised the smoke to his lips.

"Should've known better, huh?"

"Well duh, Lil' Miss Turk." He watched the lit end of the cigarette as the smoke he'd inhaled escaped in lazy tendrils through his nostrils. "Somethin' goin' on between the two of ya?"

"He's my mark. You know that."

"You've been keepin' an eye on him for a year. If you can't remember what the guy looks like, maybe surveillance ain't your thing."

She laughed and looked away. "Screw you, Red."

"Ciss... C'mon."

"Am I too cheerful again? Want me to cry on your shoulder instead, so you get to feel like the nice guy?"

"For fuck's sake," Reno scoffed as he offered her the smoke again. "I'm just sayin' that if you've kept eyes on him like you're meant to, you gotta know he's deep into that flower girl down in –"

"Back off, okay? It's none of your business."

Rude hadn't realized how subtly she weaved a smile into her voice when she spoke; the sudden absence of it was startling. She gave Reno a scornful stare, then plucked the cigarette from his fingers.

She turned away, but Reno kept watching her, a frown on his face. He pushed a hand through his hair, let it linger on the back of his neck. Opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again.

"Look... Zack's a fun guy, sure, but he'll flirt with just about anyone. Far as I know, it don't mean nothin' to him."

"You don't know when to quit, do you?"

"I don't want you to get the wrong idea, is all."

"And listening to the guy who'll stick his dick in 'just about anyone' will give me the right idea?"

Cissnei shoved the cigarette between her lips for a deep drag. She hadn't so much as glanced at Reno, who had gone absolutely still.

"Yeah, you're right. Who the hell would wanna listen to me, huh?"

As he pushed himself off the wall and stuffed his hands into his pockets, Cissnei looked at him at last. He was halfway across the landing when she called out to him.

"Wait."

He stopped and tilted his head toward her. The silence was so thick Rude could taste it in his mouth, like the dust that smothered everything in this house.

"You forgot this," she said and held out the cigarette.

Reno raised his head just enough to see what she meant. His lips curled into his trademark smirk.

"You finish it. I'm done."

He skulked off toward the north wing and melted into the darkness like a shadow. Cissnei stared after him, rolling the cigarette between her fingers. Her face was blank. Not a single muscle on it moved as she pinched out the glowing end of the smoke and let it fall to the floor. Rude wondered if this was her true face. He felt a chill.

Rude could no longer hear the creak of floorboards under Reno's feet. Cissnei turned to leave, but hesitated before taking the first step. She bent down, picked up the snuffed cigarette, and slid it into her breast pocket. Staring straight ahead, she marched onward to her room.

Rude waited a minute before he moved. At the top of the stairs, he pulled the window shut. The groan of grating wood echoed in the stillness, but none of the others came to investigate. He looked down the dim hallway to their bedrooms, then over at the opposite wing where Reno had gone. The north side was even darker; of course Reno would choose the gloomiest part of the mansion to sulk. With a sigh, Rude followed his partner.

At the top of the steps, Rude took the right-hand fork toward the front of the house. The door was closed tight to the master suite that Rayleigh occupied; Rude heard nothing from it. The other two rooms off the hallway were empty. Reno must have gone left instead, into the dark zone.

Back at the junction, Rude stopped and pricked his ears as he stared into the darkness at the end of the hallway. The flashlights they had used the day before were still lined up at the foot of the wall. All four of them. Reno seemed to have better night vision than most people, but would he venture in there without a flashlight? All Rude could see was pitch black. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, unable to take his eyes off the dark. His skin was prickling... or was that just his imagination?

...How would he be able to tell?

His business wasn't that urgent. He could always talk to Reno in the morning.

Assuming Reno showed up in the morning at all.

That needling worry wasn't rooted in rational thought. Officially, they had swept the dark zone and found nothing – yet Rude couldn't make himself leave. Maybe they hadn't found anything – but had something found him?

A sudden irritation welled up in him, drowning out his anxieties. What kind of a man was he, cowering from the dark like a child spooked by silly ghost stories? If it was all in his head, he had nothing to fear. If it wasn't... he had every reason to get Reno out of there.

Rude clenched his jaw, snatched up a flashlight, and headed in. In the cold cone of his torch, he saw the footprints they had trod in the dust the day before. As he advanced deeper into the darkness, he recognized a new trail: a pair of uneven, roughly parallel lines smudged into the thick, gray layer on the floor. The tracks of a sulking so-and-so who dragged their feet, Rude supposed. Hopefully that meant Reno didn't have much of a head start on him.

The trail brought him into a series of parlors linked together by open archways. These were the chambers Cissnei had covered with the custodian. Normally Rude would have thought it worse to tread on unfamiliar ground in the dark, alone; instead it was a relief to avoid the ominous rooms he'd searched the day before.

The lounges were sparsely furnished; a few bookshelves and round tables, a couple of fireplaces framed by columns and swirls of molded plaster. Occasionally Rude's flashlight would sweep along broad windows that threw his own image back at him, like black mirrors blocking out the world outside. The darkness in here was nothing like the starry nights on a Costan island, or the humdrum dim of his unlit bedroom in Midgar, where the fluorescent gloom of a Mako reactor trickled in through the gaps in the blinds. The manor's darkness smothered and muted. It crept closer and closer, until it wrapped itself around its victims and ate them whole.

Beads of sweat pooled on Rude's temples. They ran down his face until they trickled under the collar of his shirt.

He clamped his clammy fingers tighter around the flashlight. They had cleared the area, he told himself. They had found nothing. There was nothing.

Behind him, something scratched in the dark.

Or did it? It was faint, like an echo in his ear, and when he flicked his flashlight in its direction, he caught nothing in its beam but moldering furniture and dust.

So Rude crept onward, and as he crept the memories from the past days gnawed at him, growing vast and vivid as they fed in the dark. Something had been going on. His pillow hadn't slipped itself under his feet. His phone hadn't spirited itself away. Those flashes of movement he had seen beneath his bed... The more he thought about it, the more foolish he felt for not bringing the others. If it had been more than his imagination, then it was a risk. A threat.

A threat that might be tempted to go for a lone Turk stumbling through the dark.

Gritting his teeth, Rude followed the dusty trail on through the next doorway, and the next. Of all the nooks in this giant manor, Reno just had to pick the dark zone. Always such a bloody–

Rude's flashlight fell upon a line of looming figures in white. He flinched back with a yelp – and swore at himself for doing so. Chairs... that's all they were. Chairs beneath white sheets, stacked up along the walls like a parade of ghostly caricatures. Muttering another curse, Rude followed the tracks inside.

This chamber was far grander than the parlors he'd braved to get here. Another ballroom perhaps, or a dining room sized for Costan weddings.

...Like the one in his uncle's place. Rude cursed himself again. It was too late; as he crept into the room, scraps of Teo's ghost stories flitted through his mind unbidden, one by one. The ghost children with holes instead of eyes. The wailing lady. The murdered man searching for a warm heart to replace the one he'd lost.

The damp collar of Rude's shirt stuck to his skin and seemed to shrink around his neck like a coiling snake. He reached up to loosen his tie, to reassure himself that it was still just a piece of fabric; a lifeless slip of cloth, unable to suddenly pull itself tight of its own accord.

Out of the corner of his eye, Rude kept catching the whiteness of the shrouded stacks. Some of them seemed to loom taller while he had the light aimed elsewhere. Others seemed to stir and shift, ever so slightly, just enough to make him doubt his eyes. In the beam of the flashlight they shone so bright they almost blinded him, and left spots dancing in his eyes.

Rude yanked off his shades and squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing them with the back of his hand. The fabric around his neck pressed against his windpipe again. Rude loosened his tie some more. As soon as he let go, he could feel it constricting around his neck, tightening.

This isn't one of Teo's stories.

That thought burned in his head as he hurried after the trail, one hand latched onto his tie to keep it from moving. The thought didn't help, not one bit. If it wasn't one of Teo's stories, then Rude wasn't just fighting figments of his imagination anymore. Then it was real.

Rude stumbled through another gaping doorway, the beam of his flashlight dancing wildly across the room. Reno had to be close by now. Rude had to find him, fast. After catching his balance, Rude panned his flashlight over the floor to pick up the trail again.

He stopped dead, and stared.

Before him, the dust was undisturbed. Reno's tracks ended in the middle of an empty room.

Chapter Text

As Rude stared at the dead end of Reno's trail in the beam of his flashlight, a faint whine rose and fell. It was gone before he could tell what it was or where it came from. He pricked his ears and kept perfectly still. His tongue was a thick slab, itchy and dry like his throat, but he didn't dare swallow. He might miss a repeat of that sound.

There it was again. High-pitched and thin, like the weak whistling of the wind. Rude listened, as stiff and unbreathing as a corpse, but couldn't pinpoint the direction. It was everywhere around him, all at once, hovering at the very edge of his hearing. Was it just in his head?

The sound ended. When it returned moments later, Rude could have sworn it had turned into a whimper, or a moan. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face and in under the tie he still clutched in his rigid fist. It took every ounce of his willpower to stay still, to listen.

The feeble sound was abruptly smothered by another: a soft rustle, like shifting fabric.

Rude whipped his flashlight around, flooding one corner of the room in bright light. Something tall and thin stood there, draped in white. A person, screamed his fears at him as he stared at the shrouded shape. A lamp, the more rational part of his mind corrected. A coat rack. A man-made thing, propped up by the wrought-iron base he could see below the hem.

A person, the senseless panic still insisted. The wailing lady in white. Rude tensed and squinted at one corner of the sheet. Did it move?

The wailing lady in white... A story Teo had been fond of telling, but not one of his own. Rude's uncle had told it, too, and so had his grandmother. Everyone in Costa knew the story: the woman who had drowned her children to be with her new lover, only to discover that he had already found another. She hanged herself and returned as a ghost, cursed to wander the planet to the end of all days, grieving those whose lives were stolen from them too soon.

The shrouded figure shifted. Rude's face went icy cold.

No, not the figure itself; the fabric at the top of it rose and puckered. Something was moving beneath the sheet, slithering under the fabric like a snake.

Rude tried to swallow against the pressure on his throat, tugging on his limp tie.

He had to check. It was his damned job to check.

Step by step he crept toward the corner, keeping his light pinned on the wriggling fabric. When he was within reach, he grabbed hold of the sheet ever so carefully, well below the part that moved. With a whisk of his arm, he yanked it off.

Screeching madly, a black creature slunk down the lamp and scurried across the floor. Rude caught sight of the naked tail just as it vanished under the white hood of another covered piece of furniture. Decades-old dust plumed into the air as he scrunched up the sheet and threw it to the floor. He'd been spooked by a goddamned rat.

A shrill wail echoed through the rooms.

Rude froze. That had not been his imagination. That was definitely no rat.

It came again, louder this time. Was it closer? In front of him, behind him? The beam of his flashlight swerved across the room, lighting up white hoods and moldering walls in bright flashes. His limbs trembled with the need to fight or flee; his whole body thrummed with it.

Listen closely to the wailing woman's cry, Rude's grandmother would tell him, each time she repeated the tale. The wailing woman knows the names of those who will be taken. She calls to them in her laments.

Rude knew how to fight the living, not the dead. Another desolate howl sapped the last of his self-control, and he fled the way he'd come.

He didn't stop until he reached the end of the dark zone. In the safety of the warm incandescent light, he bent over and hacked up the dust he'd inhaled on his mad dash.

Reeeee-nooooo

Rude went still, desperately choking down the cough that scratched at his throat. He had heard it, he was sure of it. That disembodied voice, keening his partner's name.

The next cry was wordless, but he could pinpoint its direction: whatever it was was ahead of him now. Rude rushed along the corridor toward the foyer. At the junction he paused, listened. The wail he heard was quieter, but it came from the hallway straight ahead.

Only a dozen feet of hallway stretched out ahead of him before the turn. Anything could be around that bend. Rude hugged the wall, proceeding with caution despite the pounding in his chest. He sidled around the corner, crept toward the master suite at the other end. He had almost reached it when, muffled by the door, he heard a scream that ended in a drawn-out moan. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Rude stopped in his tracks.

"Keep it down, will ya?" Reno's voice, coming from the other side of the door. "Ain't like I mind you screamin' my name, but the others gotta be tryin' to sleep, yo."

"Shut up and get on with it." Commanding as it was, Professor Rayleigh's voice held an undeniable breathiness.

The blood rushed to Rude's face. He turned on his heel and marched down the corridor the way he'd come, spurred on by the moans and the steady thumping that resumed beyond the closed door.

On the landing in the foyer he stopped, and gripped the balustrade to keep from shaking. The adrenaline still coursed through his veins, churning up his insides into a kettle of rage and mortification. His fists clenched white around the wooden rail, itching to throttle something. But Reno was busy, and so Rude stomped onward down the stairs.

He intended to march straight out through the front door and down to the pub to pick whatever fight he could find, but as he crossed the foyer, a glimmer of light caught his eye. A door was open in the hallway to the ballroom, and a warm glow spilled out of it, dancing upon the floor. The telltale flickering of fire.

In an instant, Rude pushed his indignation aside. He dashed into the corridor with flames licking high in his mind's eye, but as he got nearer to the open door he slowed his steps, still wary from the night's events. He stopped beside the door and listened – but all he heard was the unmistakable crackle of fire.

As soon as he peeked inside, his worry dissipated. The light came from a roaring fireplace. Cissnei had planted herself in a tall chair in front of it, a half-full wine glass dangling in her hand. She stared into the fire, lost to the world – or so Rude thought. She looked up the second he stepped inside.

"Please, join me," she said, gesturing to the second chair on her right. "You strike me as a man who can appreciate a good vintage."

The chair's armrests were ornately carved from mahogany, but its lacquer finish had gone opaque in places and the blue velvet upholstery was frayed and dulled from decades of ground-in dust. Thankfully, it was much more comfortable than it looked. Rude hadn't realized how exhausted he was until he collapsed into it, throwing up a small whirlwind of dust that shimmered gold in the glow of the fire. With a groan, he stretched out his legs. Cissnei poured him a glass of wine and slid it across the small table between them.

"Thanks."

Rude held the glass up against the light, studying the tawny red liquid inside. A glance at the bottle told Rude the wine was likely even older than his threadbare seat.

"Where did you find this?"

"In one of the pantries. Forgotten in the farthest corner of a cupboard."

Hardly the place Rude would have chosen to store vintage wines. He raised the glass warily, prepared for a mouthful of vinegar, but the scent that rose up to greet him was potent, and his first sip rolled over his tongue in an avalanche of flavors. Burnt sugar, raisins, mushrooms, roasted luchile nuts, a touch of tobacco... The taste lingered and evolved long after he'd swallowed it all.

He'd had wines of this caliber before, courtesy of an aunt who had a vineyard just north of Costa del Sol. A master of her craft, that one, and willing to share the fruits of her labor – as long as you enjoyed them quietly, while she lectured you on the finer points of making and tasting wine. In a family of blatherskites, Rude had quickly become her favorite.

Rude took another sip and sank back in his plush seat. As he closed his eyes and savored the complexities of it unfolding on his tongue, his thoughts drifted to his aunt's vineyard. He'd spent many an evening in her kitchen, as part of the small circle she'd deemed worthy of her special vintages, while the whole extended family celebrated some grand occasion or other out in the yard.

Well, weddings. It was always weddings. Every summer brought a fistful of wedding invitations into his mailbox, from second cousins he'd only met at the weddings of other second cousins.

Rude flinched out of his memories as that dark room flashed again before his eyes; figures beneath dusty white sheets lining the walls like long forgotten rows of dead brides.

Rude glanced at Cissnei, hoping she was still watching the fire and losing her thoughts in the flames, but no such luck. She was watching him, her brow gently furrowed as her gaze trailed down from his face to the rest of him, and Rude became acutely aware of his unbuttoned collar and the damp tie that hung slack around his neck.

"You look like hell."

"...Had a few rough nights."

She snorted. "You and me both. This place doesn't exactly conjure sweet dreams." With a lopsided smile, she raised her glass. "Thought this might help knock me out."

"Sounds like you've been learning from Reno."

Her smile vanished. She brought the glass to her lips for a large sip and leaned back in her seat, staring at the fire again.

Rude followed her example. His body sank into the plush chair like lead, and his skin felt hot and tight, like he was running a fever. This wasn't the post-adrenaline fatigue that turned his muscles into jelly; nor was it the lethargy he felt after heavy materia use, that sapped every ounce of strength from his limbs. This... was something else.

Yet there had been no wailing woman in white; there had only been Rayleigh. He hadn't seen or heard anything that couldn't be dismissed as his rampant imagination. No matter how much he'd panicked, the fact was that he'd made it out of the dark zone without so much as a scratch.

Had it all been inside his head? Now that he was here, enjoying a glass of wine as he soaked up the warmth of a crackling fire, his fears seemed like the delusions of a madman.

But no matter many times he repeated that to himself, the prickling at the back of his neck would not go away.

"Think Reno would like a nightcap?"

Roused from his thoughts, he looked over at Cissnei. She'd sounded perfectly casual, but she kept her eyes locked on the fire.

"He's..." Rude cleared his throat. "Busy."

She checked her watch and frowned.

"At this hour? Doing what?"

"...The professor."

She looked up at him with narrowed eyes, perhaps suspecting he'd cracked a bad joke; but as she watched him her eyebrows shot up beneath her fringe.

"You're kidding me."

"Sadly, no."

She paused, her eyes suddenly alert as she studied his face. Rude caught himself as his hand began creeping up to fix his tie, but the slight motion didn't escape Cissnei's gaze.

"You don't approve?"

She asked the question in Costan. She would do that at times, switch between the languages when it was just the two of them. Maybe she thought speaking in his native tongue might lure more words out of him. Maybe she was right.

Well, on topics like food or explosives, at least. When it came to relationships, it didn't matter what language Rude was speaking.

"Not my business."

Cissnei gave a soft snort. "Well, let's hope it lets him wind down. He's been testing my patience lately."

What could he say to that? "I know" might reveal too much, but asking for clarification might start a conversation he was not equipped to handle.

Rude shifted his weight in his seat and remained silent.

"I thought he was setting you up with her, though," she added.

"He certainly tried."

Cissnei laughed again. "Didn't work, huh? Well, he's never been one to let an opportunity go to waste." She was silent a while, watching her wine as she swirled it around her glass. "Neither is she, from what I can tell," she added. "I wonder who made the first move?"

The memory of Rayleigh's breathy moans flashed through Rude's mind, tangled in several layers of embarrassment. Then he remembered the last time he had heard those kinds of sounds from her; had been the one to bring them out of her. The heat on his cheeks rushed from his face down to his groin.

Rude squirmed in his seat and gulped down enough vintage wine to drown those memories.

"Time for a change of topic?"

Rude nodded vehemently, and Cissnei responded with a small smile. She watched him as she raised her glass to her lips. It was an appraisal, but it wasn't like Rayleigh's cool scrutiny. It wasn't Reno's sly sizing up either. It was, perhaps, the quiet sort of curiosity that Rude himself liked to hide behind his dark lenses.

Cissnei took a sip and closed her eyes, savoring the mouthful of wine before she swallowed.

"So, here we are." Her eyes opened a smidgeon, just far enough to keep watching him. "Three Turks protecting a single scientist while she inspects an old manor house. Kind of overkill, isn't it? One of us would have been plenty."

Perhaps Rude had been too hasty in assuming her motives for speaking Costan with him. In a remote mountain town, what better way was there to ensure a private conversation? Reno was learning, but he was nowhere near fluent. He was also the senior agent on this mission... The one whom Tseng had briefed in private.

"Got a point?"

She was silent a while. Maybe she'd been gathering her thoughts, or continuing her assessment of him. Maybe both.

"Reno wanted a chat after dinner. He had some... concerns about my primary mission."

"Surveillance. The newest First Class."

Cissnei nodded. "Zack Fair. Do you know him?"

"We've met."

She took a few more moments, watching the wine swirling around her glass.

"Seems Reno knows him better than that."

"He does."

She looked up once she realized that was all he was going to say. Rude kept his face blank and waited in silence.

"Reno and I go back years," she finally said. "We met in high school, actually. He's always had this... protective streak. So, I wasn't exactly surprised that he'd go all big brother on me the second he thought I had a crush on Fair."

"Do you?"

Cissnei pursed her lips and gave him another one of her appraising stares.

"I though you wanted me to stick to the point."

"I asked if you had one. Never said you had to stick to it."

"You also said Reno's little fling with the professor is 'none of your business'."

She had a point there. This wasn't idle gossip anymore, though. It was reconnaissance.

"He knows not to risk the mission," he said.

"And I don't?"

"Not sure yet."

He met her gaze, though she could likely only see flames reflected in his dark lenses. Her eyes narrowed before she turned toward the fireplace again.

"You seem awfully sure of what he will or won't do."

He responded with a non-committal grunt. Reno may have developed a knack for reading Rude's state of mind from measured silences and body language, but he was an exception. Rude was curious to see Cissnei would react to them.

He didn't have to wait long.

"Maybe he's the one with the crush. He's been getting pretty friendly with that... Aerith, hasn't he?" She said the girl's name much the way he'd heard her say "spinach" and "vermin".

"Not that friendly. Tseng would skin him."

"He might still have the hots for her. Doesn't everyone?" Cissnei scoffed. "Or maybe he's got a thing for Zack. You never know with Reno. Could be anyone."

"Could be you."

Cissnei went still. Then she turned her head away, from both him and the fire.

"Yeah, right," she muttered.

She had hid her face from Rude behind her curtain of wavy copper hair. He returned his attention to the fireplace and stared into the flames, absently tilting his glass back and forth as he weighed up her reactions. The companionable silence they'd shared earlier had thickened into something wary and tense. It made it difficult for him to concentrate. Maybe it had been a mistake to resort to the methods he used on the job. Cissnei was a colleague, not an informant.

No, needs must. His hand still trembled on the armrest, a physical reminder of everything he'd faced in the past hours – in the past days. Right now, Rude needed to know who he had on his side. He didn't trust her, couldn't trust her, until he knew what she was hiding under her chameleon colors. How would he ever find out, unless he peeled them off for a peek?

Cissnei cleared her throat.

"To return to my point... I get Reno having a bit of a fit. But that he'd do so here, on this bullshit excuse of a mission that pulled me off Fair's surveillance... that makes me think the chief or Tseng were worried I'd jeopardize the mission by having some 'romantic entanglement' with a target. And that really pisses me off."

She growled out the last sentence; a warning, perhaps, not to slight her again with his doubts. Rude could respect that.

As for what she was saying with her words...

"Still waiting for the point."

"Well... I guess I'm curious. If I'm right, that I'm here just so Reno can have a little chat with me off the record... That'd explain two Turks, but there's three of us here."

Rude's fingers tightened around the delicate glass in his hand. Reno's sudden interest in his private life since the incident with Chelsea. His constant attempts to fix Rude up with the professor, starting the minute they boarded the helicopter in Midgar. The conclusion, when he came to it, sank like lead to the pit of Rude's belly.

"I am getting pissed off, too."

"Does that mean I should run," Cissnei said with half a smile, "or that you think my theory has merit?"

"The latter."

Regret washed over Rude as soon as he'd said it. The admission hung heavy between them, trapped in the manor's stifling air.

"Turks and feelings," Cissnei mused, staring into her glass. "Never a good combination. Or so the chief keeps saying."

She knew, of course. Reno was the only one who would bring it up to his face, but they all knew. The whole damned department knew of his failure as a Turk.

The way she said it, though, with that sad smile on her face... She knew, all right. She knew in a way Reno and the others didn't.

Rude grunted his acknowledgement.

Cissnei sighed and drained her glass.

"On that cheery note," she said as she placed it on the table, "time for me to get some sleep."

"Good night."

Rude didn't mention the slight wobble in her step. As Cissnei had pointed out, there were three of them, when one was plenty. There was no need for them all to remain sober. Besides, if she was right, then the only Turk with a real mission in Shinra Manor was getting his rocks off upstairs.

Grinding his teeth together, Rude reached for the bottle.

Rude groaned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Half a bottle of wine should not have been enough to turn his head into an anvil. He dragged the blanket aside and let his hot, heavy legs slide off the edge of the bed.

As soon as his feet touched the floorboards, Rude remembered the previous morning and jerked them back up again. Sitting cross-legged on the mattress, he peered around the room with bleary eyes. He hadn't been drunk, exactly, but woozy enough to forget to take evening shots of his room. Woozy enough to forget what state it had been in when he crashed into bed. Not that he much cared, right at that moment. The dull pounding in his skull saw to that.

He gingerly lowered his legs again. Thankfully, nothing tried to grab his ankles as he got out of bed, nor did any boogeymen leap out at him from the closet as he dressed. The manor was quiet as he lumbered down the stairs, but in the kitchen he found Cissnei by the coffeemaker with a steaming mug in her hands.

"Plenty left for you." She nodded toward a white bottle of pills next to the coffee machine. "Figured you might need these, too. Looks like I was right."

Rude grunted some half-hearted reply and reached for the pills.

"I'll take that as a 'thanks'," Cissnei said, a slight smile on her lips. "That wine was a doozy, huh?"

Her eyes were a bit red, a bit puffy, but otherwise she looked no worse for wear and her tone was chatty. Rude scowled and swallowed a couple of pills.

"It seems we're both late for breakfast," she continued. "There's a note on the fridge."

He looked over to see a piece of paper filled with uneven lines of spidery letters. He scoffed and turned his attention to the coffee instead. He was far too caffeine-deprived to tackle Reno's scrawl.

"As far as I can make out, the professor wants me to..." Cissnei squinted at the note, then snorted. "I'd better ask her to be on the safe side, Reno's spelling is rather... creative. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean–"

They both flinched as the kitchen door burst open.

"There you are, buddy! Whoa, rough night?"

Reno's face split into a knowing grin. Rude scowled deeper and turned his back on him to grab the coffee pot.

"You could say that," Cissnei replied in his stead. "Rude caught you two... in flagrante delicto."

"Infla-what?"

Rude hadn't realized how mercifully quiet Cissnei had been. Next to Reno's hollering, her voice was a dulcet melody. It had turned several degrees cooler since the redhead's arrival, though.

"He heard you two doing the deed last night," she explained.

A few blissful seconds, that was all it shut him up for.

"Didn't know you were that kinda perv, man."

Rude sent a dirty look over his shoulder, but Reno's grin only grew wider. Rude turned his back on the conversation for good this time, hunching over the counter as he gulped down mouthfuls of hot coffee.

"He didn't go looking for it, dumbass. He couldn't miss it."

"Heh, yeah. Sorry about that. I asked her to keep it down, but y'know." An awful pause. "Screamers, yo."

Cissnei set down her mug on the countertop with a loud clink.

"Oh-kay, on that note of way too much information, I think I'll go see what the professor wants."

"Hey, I can tell ya what she–"

"Shut it, Red!"

The door slammed shut behind her, leaving Rude alone with a snickering Reno.

"What?" he brayed after her. "I was talkin' about the note on the fridge, yo!"

Rude's fingers curled into claws, digging into the countertop.

Still sniggering to himself, Reno grabbed Cissnei's cup and poured the last of the coffee into it.

"You look like shit, man. Still waitin' for the black stuff to kick in, huh?"

By now, Rude's shoulders nearly touched his ears. The headache had gone nowhere, the coffee had scalded his tongue, and there was nary a chance in hell that this blabbermouth would ever–

A jaunty melody scattered his thoughts. Reno pulled out his PHS and raised his eyebrows as he looked at the caller ID.

"Yeah?" he said by way of greeting.

Work-related, Rude surmised, and took another large gulp of coffee.

"Nah, through the side door by the kitchen. Huh? What, like in the middle of everythin'? 'Kay, we're comin'."

Rude sighed at the "we" and emptied his mug in one swig. When he set it down, Reno was already by the door.

"C'mon, partner. Ciss has got somethin' to show us."

Reno loped off, and Rude trailed after him at a pace he could stomach. Once he rounded the hallway corner, he spotted his fellow Turks just a few steps into the foyer. Cissnei was speaking to Reno, but Rude couldn't make out what she was saying. As Rude emerged from the corridor, Reno looked up toward the landing – then frowned and tilted his head.

"Huh."

Rude followed his gaze up to the second floor, and came to a halt.

In the middle of the landing stood a simple, wooden chair. The perfect vantage point for someone to sit and watch the comings and goings through the front doors – except the chair was empty.

Just an empty chair, perched right at the top of the stairs.

Rude felt goosebumps crawl up the back of his neck.

"Did you put that there?" Reno asked him.

Rude shook his head vehemently.

"It wasn't there a few minutes ago."

"Huh," Reno said again, frowning up at the chair. "Weird. The Prof, maybe?"

As he glanced around, Cissnei studied him with narrowed eyes.

"Why would she do that?"

"Hell if I know. Maybe it's a science thing."

"A 'science thing'? That's the best you can come up with?"

"It's the best I can do from down here," Reno said thoughtfully as his gaze roamed from one end of the landing to the other. "Rude, keep an eye out. Ciss, you're with me."

Rude scanned the room; apart from the chair, nothing seemed amiss. Nevertheless, his scalp prickled with the stares of unseen eyes.

The landing had been empty; Rude was sure of that, if nothing else. He could not remember seeing any chair – or any soul – on his way to the kitchen, not that he'd been looking. The light was still too bright for his eyes, even with his shades firmly in place, and his whole head thumped in time with his pulse.

His fellow Turks had checked each end of the landing and were now standing around the chair. Reno frowned at it. Cissnei frowned at Reno.

When Reno straightened up and motioned to Rude to join them, he realized he'd been frowning up at them too.

"Go check on Rayleigh," Reno told Cissnei. "We'll deal with the creepy chair."

She gave him another long stare, then nodded and flitted off.

"Any ideas about this fuckin' thing?" he asked Rude, once they stood side by side.

Rude stared at the chair. Where had it come from? The kitchen? No, the wood was too dark. This one was more like the one in... his room. Had something been in his room again?

No, it wasn't his chair. It couldn't be. The spindles in the back were fewer and fatter on this one. He was sure of it... almost. Common sense told him to take a closer look, to check and confirm, but he couldn't force himself any closer. Just looking at the damned thing made his skin prick with goosebumps.

It was a chair he was looking at, wasn't it? The others had called it a chair... Hadn't they?

"It's..." He licked his lips. "It's just a chair." He held his breath, desperate to hear a confirmation.

Reno rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, I can see that much. What's it doin' here?"

Just a chair – but placed there by whom? Whose trail had Rude been following in the dark?

"Someone's toying with us." His voice wavered. A part of him wanted to say something.

Reno snorted.

"You might be on to somethin' there, buddy."

He looked over his shoulder toward the north wing, his brow creasing. Moments later Rude picked up on it, too. Echoing from the corridor, he could hear Cissnei's voice, calling the professor's name; and behind it, the faint sound of... knocking.

"Should we–"

Reno held up a hand, and as Rude fell silent he realized that the noise had stopped. He listened again, holding his breath. As they both stood there watching the north wing entrance, he thought of trails smudged through dust, shimmering in the beam of a flashlight.

Cissnei came into view, still wearing her frown.

"She isn't answering," she called. "Got your lock picks?"

"Yeah, but don't need 'em." Reno grinned and flourished a crooked iron key, as if performing some magic trick. "Got the master key, yo."

Rude gave Reno a sharp look, but he was already striding across the landing to where Cissnei stood. She crossed her arms and stared at him as he approached.

"I didn't know you had a master key."

"You didn't need to," Reno said with a shrug, and swept past her.

Cissnei looked at Rude. He shrugged his shoulders and followed them both into the corridor.

Just as they made a right-hand turn at the junction, a piercing metallic screech stopped the three of them in their tracks.

"The fuck was that?" Reno asked, alarmed.

"No idea," Cissnei sighed. "I've heard it before, but nothing's ever come of it. Just another one of the creepy noises this place makes, I guess."

It sounded again; a series of creaks, like the protestations of a rusty hinge. Rude realized that he'd heard something very similar.

"The weathervanes."

She gave him an odd look. "Weathervanes?"

"Shit, that's right," Reno cut in. "There's a bunch of rusty weathervanes on the roof." He looked up at the ceiling. "That weird one oughta be right above us, huh?"

Rude nodded.

"That's one loud weathervane," Cissnei remarked as they continued toward Rayleigh's suite.

"Yeah, we could hear it all the way down in the yard. Guess ol' Gubbins don't get paid to oil stuff around here, either."

Once they were all gathered around the master suite, Reno pounded on the door with his fist. Rude winced.

"Yo, Prof!" Reno yelled. "You in there?"

A second passed, followed by another. Then the door jerked inward.

"What?" Rayleigh snapped.

She'd only cracked the door open part of the way, just enough to reveal her face. She glared at them through the gap, cheeks pink and chest heaving.

"You okay in there? Took you a while to open the door, yo."

"I was working. Something you lot should be doing, too."

She pushed at the door, but Reno slapped his palm against it and held it open.

"We are. Somethin' funny is goin' on out here. Wondered if you might know anythin' about it?"

Rayleigh looked over at Rude and Cissnei, then back at Reno.

"Define 'funny'."

"Someone put a chair on the stairs in the foyer. Was it you?"

She scoffed. "I don't have time to play with furniture."

Again she tried to close the door, but Reno pushed back. She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and blew it out in a huff. Flush with irritation... or out of breath? Rude glanced down. One of her feet was visible, propped up against the half-open door. Clumps of dust clung to the blue suede of her shoe, and a dark streak ran across the toes.

"So maybe you heard somethin'?" Reno asked.

"I haven't heard a thing. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

"You might wanna let one of us stay in there with ya. Someone moved that chair, and if it wasn't us..."

"Then guard my door out here," she spat. "Security is your problem, not mine!"

This time she put her whole body into it and slammed the door shut. The lock gave a defiant snick behind her. Reno snorted and turned around to face them, his mouth cocked in a wry smile.

"So... Whaddya think, guys?"

Rude mulled over all he'd seen, trying to fit it into the big picture. She might have tracked dust on her shoes while fetching a chair from the dark zone... But why would she still be short of breath from it? Why would she risk suspicion by not answering her door?

Beyond that, why would a professor with no perceptible sense of humor play stupid pranks with chairs?

"I think we should stick together until we figure this out," Cissnei said slowly, watching Reno. "Not let each other out of sight for one minute."

"That might make doin' our jobs a lil' tricky."

Her eyes narrowed, fixed on his face.

"Isn't our job already done? We've checked the house and the grounds. We're twiddling our thumbs waiting for the professor now, and she just sits in her room all day."

"Ain't our call to say when the job's done."

"Fine, but let's be smart about how we do it. It's pretty clear to me we don't need three damn Turks to watch one door. Hell, Rude and I may as well go back to Midgar."

"Only got one chopper, yo."

Rude struggled to make sense of their arguments. First they should stay together, then half of them should go home? Yet Cissnei didn't seem to be grasping at straws. Her gaze was steady, her jaw set, her whole body poised. Poised for what, though – that's what Rude couldn't figure out.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. It didn't help; his thoughts still crawled at a snail's pace.

"So, the job is done when Rayleigh is done?" he heard her say. "Well, she's already seen what she needs to see in this place, so I say now she's just wasting time. Ourtime. She can convince Hojo to bring the whole science crew here if she wants to stay that badly."

"Well... We could break into her room, kidnap her and drag her kickin' and screamin' to the chopper. Wouldn't look that great on the report, tho'."

When Rude opened his eyes, the smirk he'd heard in Reno's voice was still there on his face. Cissnei wasn't smiling.

"Then why don't you turn on your irresistible charm and lure her out yourself? You could always promise her a replay of last night."

Reno just chuckled.

"Pretty sure my charm only works once on the likes of her, yo."

"Then what the hell is it good for?"

He gave her a sharp look.

"What's up with you today?"

"Maybe I don't like the games you're playing."

"The hell's that s'posed to mean?"

"That maybe you should try leading by example for a change."

Reno pushed his hands into his pockets and tilted his head, taking a moment to study her.

"This about Rayleigh, or somethin' else?"

Cissnei didn't reply, just met his hooded gaze with narrowed eyes.

"I'll do a sweep downstairs," she finally muttered. "Check doors and windows."

She turned on her heel and left.

"What happened to stickin' together?" Reno called after her, but she rounded the corner without looking back.

Watching her leave made Rude think back on the argument he'd witnessed between them, and the tracks he'd been following in the dark. If it hadn't been Reno...

"I'll go with her," Rude said, and strode off after her without waiting for a reply.

He caught up with her just as she reached the steps to the foyer.

"Cissnei, I need a hand."

"With what?"

"Need to check the dark zone again. Could do with backup."

She arched an eyebrow, but nodded and followed him all the same.

At the edge of the dark zone, Rude crouched down and peered at the floor. In the faint light from the windows he could make out the smooth prints from Cissnei's loafers, next to a larger set that had to belong to the custodian. He saw the tracks he'd left himself; a tidy trail of prints heading in, and smudged ones, far apart, coming out.

What he didn't see was a pair of streaky lines in the dust, leading into the darkness.

Three of the flashlights were still lined up by the wall; the missing one was back in his bedroom. Rude grabbed the closest one and shot up. Despite the composure he tried to keep in front of Cissnei, his footsteps sped up as he approached the end of the corridor. The bright beam of the flashlight lit up a dirty white blanket of dust in the next room, marred by two sets of diagonal prints: one heading in, one coming out. His own. Only his own.

Rude fumbled for the doorframe. He dug his fingers into it, scraping off large flakes of old paint. The wood was solid, real in his hand.

"Rude?"

"Look in there." His voice was hoarse, but at least it was steady. "What do you see?"

She poked her head inside and squinted at the floor.

"Shit, someone's been through here. Running toward us in a hurry, but slow when going back in."

"No. That was me. Walking in, running out."

"When? What happened?"

"Last night," he said, ignoring her second question. "What else do you see?"

She scanned the floor again, but soon she looked up and shrugged.

"What are you getting at?"

The dust he'd kicked up on his way in tickled his throat and scraped beneath his eyelids like grit. His head throbbed, his muscles ached with tension. Rude closed his eyes and slumped against the doorframe. The leather of his glove felt cool against his forehead; or maybe it was his skin that was too hot.

"Rude? Are you okay?"

"Just tired," he rasped. With a deep breath that only worsened the itching in his lungs, he slowly straightened up. "We're done here."

Rude tottered after Cissnei, feeling lightheaded. He needed rest, he told himself. He was overworked, overstressed. He had been for months. He'd be fine as soon as he got a decent night's sleep.

They stepped into the foyer. Rude froze and stared.

The chair was flush against the wall. Upside down.

Rude squeezed his eyes shut. It's not real, he told himself. You're stressed. Tired.

He opened them again, gingerly. The chair was still by the wall, upside down, several feet from where they'd left it. Rude's legs felt unsteady, like he was standing at the edge of a cliff, staring down into nothing. Was he looking at the chair, or was he watching himself as he looked at the chair? For a terrible second he wasn't sure.

Beside him, Cissnei wheeled around, whipping her head to and fro as she tried to have eyes on everything at once. She stopped to stare at the chair again. When she looked up at him, her eyes were blazing in a furious scowl.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Chapter Text

Rude stood on the landing in the foyer, staring at an upside-down chair. Reno stood to his left, Cissnei to his right.

"Was it you?" she demanded. Her arms were ramrod straight, her hands tight fists.

Reno raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, 'was it me'?"

"Just answer the question."

"What makes you think it was me?"

Cissnei exhaled sharply. "You're not going to give me a straight answer, are you?"

"You really think it's me?" Reno smiled an unfriendly smile. "Been two years, y'know. Think you know me well enough to throw accusations like that around?"

She stared at him, nostrils flaring. Then she spun around and marched down the stairs.

Reno balled his hands as he watched her leave, and turned to Rude.

"You think it was me too, big guy?"

Rude was tired of their bickering. So tired of Reno's voice. Without a word, he followed Cissnei down the stairs.

Mrs. Gubbins's stew filled the kitchen with an inviting scent, completely at odds with the stony atmosphere that had fallen over them.

"Oh, great." Reno grimaced at the slimy purple carrot teetering upon his spoon. "These things again."

Cissnei didn't look up from her bowl. Rayleigh kept scribbling into her notebook.

"Hey Ciss. Hear anythin' interestin' in town lately?"

Cissnei glanced at Reno and shrugged.

Rude wiped up a few drops of spilled stew with his napkin. A few ticks came from the cooling oven.

"Rude, buddy." Reno grinned at him. "Wanna hit the pub later?"

Rude gave a non-committal grunt.

A chair creaked softly. Rayleigh's pencil rasped against paper.

"Yo, Prof. Whatcha writin' about there?"

"It's professor," Rayleigh said without looking up, "and this is work."

Spoons clinked against bowls. The light bulb above them gave off a quiet hum.

"So, uh..." Reno cleared his throat. "Guys... Whaddya think of–"

A shrill cry made all four of them whip their heads up and freeze. It was a scream. A human scream, that cut off as abruptly as it had started. Another began right away.

Reno shot to his feet, his mag rod already in his hand.

"Rayleigh, go upstairs. Keep the door locked 'til one of us comes knockin'. Ciss, make sure she gets there."

The professor frowned, but stood up without a word and followed Cissnei through the door. Reno stood still as their footsteps faded, his head tilted to the side and a finger held up in caution. The wait was short; another cry rang out, closer this time.

"Came from outside," Reno said, already striding to the door. "North, right?"

Rude grunted his agreement.

At the turn of the hallway, Reno paused long enough to wave Cissnei over from the foyer. She'd fetched her shuriken: an ornate four-pointed star in red and silver, nearly a third of her height from point to point. She held a flashlight in the other.

"Rayleigh's locked in her room," she reported once she'd joined them. "What's next?"

"Next we figure out who's makin' all that noise." Reno tugged open a door and waved them through. The short passage beyond ended in a heavy wooden door bound with black iron hinges. "Side entrance," he explained as he marched up to it. "The front's too exposed."

The latch on the door slid silently aside. Tendrils of mist swirled in through the gap as he pushed it open.

"Dammit. Can't see shit out here."

In the cone of light that spilled out from the door, Rude saw a thick, pillowy fog that rolled low across the ground. White wisps wove through the barren trees of the orchard like shredded gauze. They built up a barrier thick enough to hide the mountain wall.

Cissnei handed Reno the flashlight she'd brought.

"Not sure it'll help much in fog like this, but it's worth a try. Might help me keep an eye on you, if nothing else."

"Thanks, Ciss. Hold the fort."

Reno took the lead and crossed the flagstone path that circled the outer wall of the building. Rude brought up the rear. The flashlight gleamed upon the sodden boughs of ancient trees and threw shadows across their gnarling trunks. Their branches snarled and tangled into each other, as if weaving a trap for unwary humans. A pale disc, perfectly round, cast its light through their spindly cage. As grateful as Rude was to have the moon light their way, Teo's stories rattled insistently in the back of his head. Nothing good ever happened on the night of a full moon.

"This fuckin' place," Reno muttered under his breath. "Couldn't get any creepier if it tried."

A yelp rang out, impossible to pinpoint in the mist. A scream followed it, shrill, warbling as it drew closer. A blue flash by Reno's side told Rude he'd switched in his mag rod.

"There!"

Someone burst out of the mist. It was a person, a man, screaming as he hurtled toward them. He wasn't running at them, though. The guy barreled right past them and kept running, shrieking and flailing all the while, until he smacked straight into the mansion wall and collapsed like a bag of bricks. His head struck the stone path with a hollow thud.

They waited, holding their breaths, straining both their eyes and ears. Nothing else came out of the fog. Everything was dead silent; everything was as still as the body on the path.

"Holy fuck," Reno breathed.

They took off running at the same time. Reno got to the guy first and dropped down on one knee to check for a pulse. Just as Rude arrived at his side, Reno cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled into the mist.

"Ciss! We need a Cure, stat!"

It was a young man, a teenager. His forehead was split and a thick line of blood oozed into his blond hair. Reno tilted his head to one side and studied the guy's slack face.

"Hang on," he said. "Haven't we seen this kid before?"

Rude took a closer look. The guy looked familiar, but he was too young to be drinking at the pub. Rude could count his visits to the village on one hand, and the only time he'd met someone outside the pub was that first day–

"The SOLDIER wannabe," he concluded.

"Who?"

"The kid who talked to us the day we arrived. Wanted to be recruited."

"Huh." Reno frowned as he gave the guy another once-over. "The hell's he doin' here?"

"You told him to come."

Reno looked up, his mouth open in surprise and confusion.

Movement from the mist drew their eye. Cissnei came jogging down the path, her shuriken at the ready in one hand.

"Guys, step back."

She pulled back her left sleeve and ran her fingers over a sleek, black bangle rimmed with silver. It held three materia orbs; one of the green-tinted ones responded to her touch with a faint glow. She dropped down on one knee by the kid's head.

"It's Caleb Frye," she said. "Lives with his mother near the village square. Father died in the Wutai war."

Reno had turned away to keep watch, but at that he cast her a glance over his shoulder.

"You know this guy?"

"I wasn't gossiping with the local girls just for fun, you know." She placed her hand on Caleb Frye's forehead. "He's not on my watch list, though. He wants to sign up with Shinra, actually."

"So we've heard," Reno muttered, shifting his grip on his mag rod.

Tendrils of green snaked down Cissnei's fingers and crept across the guy's face. Rude looked away. The dank, encircling mist was no less eerie than her materia, but it was a familiar kind of eerie; a known quantity. Even with his back turned, he could feel the magic prickling at the edge of his awareness. He stared stubbornly ahead as his muscles coiled tighter.

"It's safe to move him," Cissnei said at last, breaking the uneasy hush. "I'll fix the rest once we get inside."

Rude grabbed his shoulders, Reno his feet. Cissnei opened doors and guided them to a musty room between the side door and the foyer. The room was a mirror image of the lounge where Rude and Cissnei had shared the wine. The fireplace looked exactly the same, and the same heavy gold-embroidered curtains framed the window. Instead of the blue velvet chairs, this room had a couch in the same style. Rude and Reno dropped their surprise guest on it, sending up a billow of old dust from the upholstery.

Cissnei sat down on the edge of the couch and brushed the wispy blond hair from the guy's forehead. She couldn't be much older than him, if she was older at all. Her face was just as blank as his, too, except that he had the excuse of being unconscious. What else had she seen, Rude wondered, when this didn't even register on her emotional scale? Reno had called the guy a kid. Rude found it hard to imagine anyone saying the same about Cissnei – the real Cissnei, not one of her acts.

Rude turned to look out the window as she called forth another healing glow. He made himself look beyond their reflections, outlined in pale green upon the glass, to peer into the darkness outside.

Shinra's mass-produced materia had been on the market for several years, but he still had trouble reconciling his childhood superstitions with the idea of materia as an everyday tool. Back on the island of his birth, orbs like these were seen as divine, otherworldly gifts from the Planet. He could make a fortune selling Shinra's cheap baubles to the Costan islanders.

Would they be able to tell the difference, Rude wondered, as he stared at the shifting shadows of leafless trees shivering in the breeze. Was it like the difference between shadow-play and threat? If a replica did the job just as well, did that make it just as real? If a figment of his mind made him cower and hide... Did that make it just as real?

Was the threat just as real, that had made this kid scream and run?

"I've done what I can," Cissnei said. "Let's hope he didn't give himself brain damage that a Cure can't fix."

"How long before he wakes up?" Rude asked. His skin itched with impatience, with the need to know what the guy had seen.

She shrugged. "No idea. We'll just have to wait. Do you know what spooked him?"

"No clue about that, either. Didn't see a damn thing, except for this guy." Reno came up behind the couch and leaned over it for a better look at him. "Think we should call someone? His mom?"

Rude his gaze wander over the kid's skinny body, observing the dirt on his hands and knees, the mud caked around his leather boots, the two-inch tear down his jeans just below the knee. He might have seen something that sent him fleeing... or he might have done something. Rude's first guess as to why this Caleb guy had shown up could very well have been right; but he could think of a dozen other reasons a teenage kid might sneak into the mansion's grounds, and none of them were good – especially if this wasn't the first time.

"Later," he said. "Let's talk to him first."

"Sure, whatever." Reno clasped his hands above his head and stretched his entire body into a gangly line. "Well, I'm gonna go grab what's left of my dinner. Anyone else want–"

With a loud gasp, a blond head shot up from the couch. Rude flinched, and Reno flailed out of his stretch with a startled curse – but Caleb Frye didn't look at either of them. He looked wildly around as he crawled backwards on the couch.

"Hey now, take it easy," Cissnei said, smiling sweetly. "What's your name?"

The guy tried to press himself deeper into the armrest.

"You hit your head. Do you remember that?"

His eyebrows scrunched together as he studied her. When he looked over at Reno, his eyes flew wide. Reno had already recovered; he leaned down and rested his elbows on the back of the couch. He was smiling his lopsided good-guy smile.

Better to let them handle the talking. Rude had no patience left for the good guy act; his heart was banging like a drum.

"Looks like you remember me, at least," Reno said. "How about the big guy over there, remember him too?" He flicked his chin toward Rude.

Caleb turned his head. His eyes bulged out even further, and with a yelp he flung himself back into the corner of the couch. It wasn't Rude he was looking at, though.

Rude spun around and stared at the window. He saw the same gangly trees, still reaching for the sky; the same full moon, thinly shrouded in a veil of mist. The same stony path, the same shadows.

Behind him, the kid's rising wail cut off with a strangled gulp. Reflected in the glass, Rude saw his body contort backward over the armrest.

"Shit!" Reno yelled. "Hold him down!"

When Rude reached the couch, the kid's head was almost touching the floor. Rude grabbed his convulsing feet and pulled him back onto the couch. He caught a glimpse of bared teeth and rolled-back eyes, before Cissnei pushed her weight down on Caleb's arms. From the corner of his eye he saw Reno, hand flattened over one ear and PHS pressed against the other, yelling something he couldn't make out over Cissnei's shouting and the kid's frothing grunts.

One second the guy was close to wrenching himself out of Rude's grip. The next, he went limp.

Their gasping breaths hissed loud in the sudden silence. Rude could hear Reno's muffled voice from the corridor, still barking into his PHS. Cissnei released the kid; she checked his pulse, then pulled down an eyelid. He didn't move a muscle, but he was still breathing. A strand of bubbly drool oozed from his mouth.

"What the hell is this?" Cissnei whispered.

Rude found himself staring at the window. All he could see now were their pallid reflections in the glass; otherwise the window was empty, their pictures painted faintly upon the solid darkness.

Yet as he watched it, he couldn't shake the feeling that the darkness was staring back.

Rude shot up, strode to the window, and yanked the drapes shut.

When Rude lumbered into the kitchen for breakfast the next day, the ladies were already sitting at the table with steaming coffee cups cradled in their hands. As he brought out the makings of a hefty sandwich, it became clear Cissnei was filling Rayleigh in on the previous night's events.

Just listening to it made Rude's skin tingle. He moved his arm, letting it brush it over the holster under his jacket. After last night, he wasn't taking any chances.

Reno showed up halfway through her account. He nodded at Rude and shuffled over to the coffee machine without a word. He remained by its side once he'd poured himself a cup and leaned back against the counter. He stared into his coffee as Cissnei spoke.

She omitted some of the details, but everything she did tell the professor was true. She and Rude had taken Caleb Frye to the village doctor, who had been just as baffled and stumped by the boy's condition as they were. The doctor had promised to contact the mother, so the Turks returned to the manor and checked the grounds. They hadn't found anything – though that didn't mean much, considering visibility had been next to nothing.

Cissnei pressed her mug against her bottom lip and stared up at the wall. Her eyes were distant.

"I wonder if he'll be okay."

"I suppose it depends on whether his fit is connected to the head injury," said Rayleigh, "and how long it takes before he wakes up. The longer he stays unconscious, the worse it is for his–"

"Enough about the fuckin' kid, all right?"

The three of them flinched and turned to stare at Reno. He glowered at the table, his shoulders tight and his jaw tighter.

Rayleigh cleared her throat.

"I think I will finish my coffee upstairs."

Reno stared after her until the kitchen door swung closed. His hand crept up to clasp the back of his neck.

"What the hell was that?" Cissnei demanded.

"I, uh..." He cast furtive glances at her and Rude, and let his hand fall. "We need to figure out what happened here last night."

He was staring into his mug again. She waited a while, but when it became clear Reno had nothing more to say, she huffed and shook her head.

"We should check if Caleb is awake. He's the one who knows."

"Yeah, good point." He straightened up, finally raising his gaze. "Wanna come with?"

"I think I'll hold the fort again." She gave him a joyless smile and swept down her coffee.

Reno watched her leave, too, and pushed a hand through his hair. It was likely the first time it had been combed that day.

"Guess Ciss is havin' an off day," he said with a sheepish laugh.

Rude's patience had run out. He had none of it left, especially for whatever games Reno had been playing. With her, with him; it didn't matter. He was sick of it.

"Maybe she's still upset that you went through her things."

Reno finally looked at Rude; it was a cautious look, sizing him up.

"You're sneakier than I give ya credit for, buddy. Got somethin' you wanna say about that?"

"No. Makes me wonder what other rooms you've been into, though."

"Yours, you mean?"

Rude gave him a steady look. Reno chuckled and shook his head.

"Got no reason to, buddy." He clapped Rude's shoulder on his way past. "Now c'mon. We got some questions to ask around town, yo."

Rude narrowed his eyes as he trailed after his partner out of the kitchen.

The village doctor had set up his office in a room on the first floor of his house. A former living room, or a dining room, perhaps. A scuffed doctor's bag in brown leather sat square in the middle of an antique desk. Wooden cabinets with glass doors sealed away potions and tonics and instruments, and infused the air with a curious blend of bleach and old wood. The standalone partition in the corner was folded back, revealing an empty examination chair. The cot beside it was empty, too.

"I let Mrs. Frye take her boy home this morning," explained Dr. Dyer. He was a thin man with graying temples, who was almost as tall as Rude.

Reno's face brightened.

"He woke up?"

"Sadly, no," the doctor said with a sigh. "I'm afraid he's been unconscious since you brought him in."

"Then why'd you let him go home?"

"I had to leave for another patient this morning. Thought it best to have someone watch over him. The Fryes live just a couple of houses over. Practically the same as having him out in my backyard."

Reno frowned at the empty cot.

"I ain't the doctor here, but bein' out of it this long doesn't sound too good. Shouldn't he be in hospital?"

"It's not so simple. I can't find anything wrong with the boy."

Reno gave him an odd look. "But he had a fit last night."

"There's nothing wrong with him now. It's as if he's just asleep."

"No drugs? I know a few things that'll mess you up pretty bad."

"Drugs?" the doctor huffed. "Please. This isn't Midgar. We have a couple of hyper vets, that's all."

"You get a bunch of Midgar engineers at the reactor, though."

Dr. Dyer's mouth flattened into a line of displeasure.

"The tests I do here showed nothing unusual," he said primly. "If you want additional bloodwork done, you'll need a bigger clinic than mine."

"So send him to a fuckin' hospital already!"

Rude couldn't help but flinch at Reno's outburst. So did the doctor.

"It's not that simple!" Dr. Dyer cleared his throat and took a slow breath. "I'm not sure it's worth the risk," he continued with a calmer tone of voice. "The nearest hospital is nearly a hundred miles away, and in terrain like this..."

"Not a problem. If the kid needs a hospital, we've got a chopper parked about half an hour down the mountain."

Rude blinked and turned to stare at his partner, but held his tongue. He waited until they had left the doctor's house and were walking down a dusty path toward the village square, away from prying ears.

"What was that about?"

"What was what?"

Rude let out a long, slow breath through his nose. He was absolutely not in the mood for Reno's slippery bullshit.

They were almost at the Frye house when Reno finally looked away.

"I was just messin' around about the SOLDIER thing." His voice was quiet, almost subdued. "You know that. But if the kid bought it, and that's what got him all..." He glanced toward the Frye house, and Rude could see the muscles in his jaw working. "Ah, fuck it. Let's just figure out what happened, yo."

Mrs. Frye took one look at them and screamed her head off about what they'd done to her boy until they left. The pub owner claimed not to have seen the kid at all the previous day, as did the two old coots who never seemed to leave the place.

Just outside the pub, a teenage girl in a cowboy hat was waiting for them. Rude wondered where she'd gotten it. No cowboys in the mountains, as far as he knew.

"I heard you were asking about Caleb?" she said, looking up at them both with hopeful eyes. A very pretty girl with her glossy dark hair and bright round eyes, Rude couldn't help but notice.

Reno gave her a disreputable grin. He had evidently noticed it too.

"We are, yeah. And who might you be?"

"Tifa," she said, holding on to her hat as she dipped her head in a quick bow. "Tifa Lockhart."

"As in Mayor Lockhart?"

"Yeah. He's my dad."

Reno was studiously ignoring the look Rude gave him. The last thing they needed was an irate mayor hounding them about his daughter's honor.

"Anyway, I saw Caleb last night," Tifa said. "He was talking to old Phemie. Mrs. Gubbins, I mean. Right on the steps there." She turned and pointed toward the stairs up to the Shinra manor.

"Is that right?" Reno shot Rude a glance. "Any chance you heard what about?"

"Sorry, I was too far away," she said with an apologetic smile. "Caleb looked none too pleased about it, though, I can tell you that."

"Well, thanks very much, miss Tifa." Reno flashed another one of those grins. "I might look you up later. Y'know, in case we need more details."

"Oh," she said, tugging her hat a little lower by the string, hiding her eyes. "Sure. Happy to help."

"Well, buddy," Reno said to Rude as he turned to leave. "Time to have a chat with ol' Phemie, yo."

"Before you go," Tifa called quickly, and gave them a shy smile when they turned back to her. "I was wondering... Caleb told me you're recruiting for SOLDIER. Do you... know any of them? The SOLDIERs?"

Reno's smile stayed on his face, but Rude could tell the instant it changed.

"Sorry, sweetheart. Can't help ya there."

The moment he turned his back to the girl, his smile vanished. He crossed the town square with strides so long even Rude had trouble keeping pace.

"Y'know, I'm gettin' real tired of this SOLDIER-lovin' shithole," Reno muttered under his breath as he pulled out a pack of smokes. The third one that morning, Rude noted.

They found Euphemia Gubbins in the vegetable patch of a small cottage, a short walk beyond the ring of houses around the village center. She got up, unfolding her limbs like a giant kyuvildun bug, and slapped caked soil off the knees of her overalls as she watched them approach. She was not surprised by the news.

"I heard, yes." She slowly shook her head. "Such a shame."

"Well, we heard you had a chat with him last night." Reno's voice held an edge.

"That's right."

"Didn't occur to ya to mention this when I called last night?"

It was a heated question; too heated for an interrogation. Rude watched Reno from the corner of his eye. He was scowling at her, and he wasn't even trying to hide it.

Mrs. Gubbins cocked her head to one side and smiled. "You didn't ask."

"What did you talk about?" Rude asked before Reno's temper could flare, and forced himself to meet her colorless gaze.

"Told him to keep off the manor grounds... of course."

"Why?"

"I knew it wouldn't be good for him." She clicked her tongue and shook her head again. "Such a naive, impressionable mind. The old place always did have a taste for the young ones."

"The hell's that s'posed to mean?" Reno cut in.

Mrs. Gubbins looked up in the direction of the manor, as if she could see straight through the mountainside.

"The place can feel... sinister. Especially after dark."

"Were you messin' with him?" He took a step closer, into her personal space. "Puttin' thoughts into his head? That what this is?"

"I was trying to warn the boy. I told him to stay away."

She locked eyes with Reno. He didn't shrink back.

Rude didn't have the patience to wait for a staring match that might never end.

"Mrs. Gubbins," he said, and did his best not to cringe as those pale eyes settled on him again. "Do you know what happened to Caleb Frye?"

"No," she said, and smiled. "I do not."

Their afternoon proved just as fruitless as the morning. Of those who would even speak to them, no one had seen Caleb sneak up to the manor. No one could recall a case like his before. By all accounts, the kid had nothing worse on his conscience than a few pilfered apples from a neighbor's tree.

Every conversation seemed to stack a little more weight on Reno's shoulders. He smoked two cigarettes on the walk back to the manor and barely said a word. Rude was the one who filled Cissnei in when they all met up in the foyer.

"So no one knows a damn thing," she remarked once he'd finished. "Great."

"Maybe we should take a closer look at where he knocked himself out," Reno muttered. "See if... I dunno, maybe he dropped somethin'?"

"I'll go. I'm going stir-crazy in here."

"Want some company?"

There was a plea in his eyes, but Cissnei had already turned away.

"I'll manage."

She left, heading for the side entrance. Reno seemed on the verge of following her anyway, but huffed and began digging through his pockets.

"I need a damn smoke."

He stomped out through the front door. Rude joined him outside. He wasn't eager for Reno's twitchy company, but the manor's gloom appealed to him even less right then.

Reno slumped back against the wall by the front doors, a lit cigarette already in his hand.

"What a shit fuckin' day." He filled his lungs with smoke and let it trickle out through his nostrils. "What a shit fuckin' week."

Rude stared up at the building's facade. Was it safer on the inside, or out? Twenty-four hours ago he would have picked the latter. After last night's drama, though... He turned and scanned the grounds within the gated walls. The fog had lifted, but Rude could barely make out the flagstone paths against the sooty ground. The sun was still up, but dark clouds were gathering on the horizon; the house was shrouded in a gloom that inched ever closer to the front gate.

"Guys?" Cissnei called.

Reno shoved himself off the wall and tossed down his cigarette, hastily stamping it out. They followed the stone path that crept along the manor's facade and spotted her as soon as they rounded the corner. She was crouched down on the path, near the spot where Caleb fell.

"Found something," she said as she straightened up. "Here, right by the wall."

She pointed at the narrow strip of soil between the path and the wall; likely meant for flowers and vines, now barren but for a few scraggly weeds. A patch of earth below one of the windows had been disturbed. Reno squinted, and dropped down for a better look.

"The hell is this?"

Rude would have waited his turn, but the astonishment in Reno's voice made him lean over the redhead's shoulder for a look. What he spotted raised the little hairs at the back of his neck.

He'd expected to see shoe prints – maybe Caleb's. The tracks beneath the window were something very different. The prints had a heel and five toes, like a human's foot – but a human's foot elongated and distorted beyond recognition, to fit tracks like that.

Cissnei brought out her PHS and squatted down, careful to keep her knees out of the dirt. The device flashed twice.

"Dammit," she muttered, squinting at the screen. "It's too dark to get a decent shot."

She looked up at the distant rumble of thunder.

"Sounds like we won't get another chance," Rude muttered.

He peered in through the window. An open fire lit the room within, judging by the flickering light. Then he recognized the blue velvet couch, and the blood drained from his face.

It had been watching them.

He jumped as Reno barked a sudden laugh.

"Yeah, I get it now," Reno said, clambering to his feet. "You're givin' me a dose of my own medicine, aintcha?"

Cissnei and Rude just stared at him. He shook his head and snickered again.

"Nice try, Ciss, but you're gonna have to try harder than that, yo."

"Try what?" Rude hissed, his startled heart racing.

The smile died on Reno's face. Before he could speak, Cissnei piped up.

"It was you all along."

"Well... yeah." Reno looked at the ground, then back at her. "That's why you did this, right? You had me all figured out."

The air rushed out of Rude's lungs. Reno may as well have punched him in the gut.

"You moved the chair. You took Rude's phone," Cissnei spat as she stepped up to Reno, eyes ablaze. "Wasn't enough, was it? Needed to bring the game to the next level, huh? Is that what this is?" She thrust an accusing finger at the ground.

Rude watched Reno's face; half of it was lit from the golden glow from the window, half of it cloaked in shadow. It made him think of the sign on the Loveless Avenue theater in Sector 8. A simple caricature of a mask, half white and half dark. Half smile and half frown.

"My pillow," Rude growled. "That was you? The locked doors?"

Reno's gaze darted between them. He took a step back, raising his hands.

"So I moved some stuff around, locked a few doors. I didn't do this, okay? I didn't fuck up that kid!"

Rude's fists were shaking. All that fear. All that doubt.

"That fuckin' kid," Reno mumbled, staring at the misshapen prints. "That's gotta be why he came up here. Maybe that's why Gubbins warned him off. She must've figured he'd do somethin' like this. It has to be that goddamn kid!"

Cissnei scoffed. "The kid ran into a wall and gave himself brain damage just to fuck with us?"

"So his plan sucked! He's some mountain yokel, what does he know!"

"Oh, come off it! Not everyone is as recklessly stupid as you!"

She shoved past him and marched to the front doors. The lit half of Reno's face was frowning. Rude wondered if that meant the dark half was smiling.

"I trusted you," Rude ground out. "My mistake."

Reno stood silent in his wake as he stomped off after Cissnei.

The foyer was murky and still. A faint metallic screech sounded from high above – the damned weathervane again, Rude recalled. Before he could decide where to go, Cissnei burst out onto the second floor landing from the north wing.

"Trouble?" he called up to her, tensing.

Cissnei pushed her hair back with both hands as she looked from one wing to the other.

"It's Rayleigh. I went to check on her, but she isn't in her room. I can't find her."

"We'd best take a look, then," Reno said right behind Rude. He tromped up the stairs without a glance at either of them.

Rude followed a few steps behind. On the landing, Cissnei fell in beside him.

"If this is another one of his fucking tricks...," she muttered.

As they approached Rayleigh's door, footsteps sounded around the bend of the corridor. Rude recognized the sharp taps of the professor's heels. The Turks stopped outside her door and waited in silence until the woman rounded the corner, heels clicking and skirt swishing.

"Hey, Prof," Reno greeted. "We were just lookin' for ya."

Rayleigh slowed her pace and looked at each one of them in turn.

"Why?"

"Well..." Reno glanced at his companions. "We're just doin' extra rounds, what with all the recent excitement. We'd appreciate it if you'd keep us posted about your comings and goings. Makes our job easier, y'know?"

Rayleigh raised an eyebrow. "I need your permission to use the bathroom now?"

"Nah, it ain't that bad," he chuckled. "Just let us know if you leave this wing of the house."

She shrugged. "Fine."

Reno stepped aside to let her pass. She swept into her room and shut the door behind her. The click of the lock echoed in the still air with finality.

"Seriously, Ciss?" Reno shook his head, snickering. "The can's just down the hall, yo."

"I checked it." She was staring after Rayleigh, her forehead creased in a rare display of confusion.

"You sure about that?" His voice dropped to a spooky whisper. "Maybe the house is gettin' to ya."

"I checked, okay? I knocked, I called her name, I–" She stopped abruptly and pinched the bridge of her nose, her face scrunched up in a grimace. "You know what, just forget it. I've had enough of this."

She pushed between the two of them and stormed off down the hallway.

"Ciss, c'mon!" Reno called after her. "I wasn't–"

She rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

"Shit," Reno hissed, pushing a hand through his hair. "I was just tryin' to lighten the mood. I didn't mean to…" He looked up at Rude, his eyes large and pleading. "I mean, it ain't like any of it is real! I was just messin' with you guys a little. The kid tried to mess around with us, too, only he was dumb enough to spook himself half to death. That's all it was. Just... messin' around."

He gave Rude a nervous grin. Rude didn't smile back.

Reno wet his lips and averted his eyes. Then his gaze fell on Rayleigh's door, and he smirked.

"Maybe I oughta check in on the Prof a bit later, though, make sure she ain't too spooked. She didn't mind my company last time I knocked on her–"

"I don't want to hear it."

He cemented his words with a glare. Reno's mouth fell open.

"Shit, man, don't tell me you've got the hots for her now." He threw up his hands. "Tho' if you do, it's cool! It's totally cool. The other night was just us lettin' off some steam, y'know? I wanted to get off, she did too. Doesn't mean a thing, okay? I mean, she doesn't even like me."

"Reno," Rude ground out through clenched teeth when the man paused to draw breath. "Shut. Up."

Reno's smile shrank into nothing as he looked up into Rude's stony face. When he dropped his gaze, his whole body seemed to deflate.

"Okay, man. Okay."

Reno pushed his hands into his pockets and trudged down the hallway, head bent low. At the junction, he passed the turn to the foyer and continued straight ahead. If he kept going, he would end up in the dark zone.

Rude didn't care. He turned left and stomped down the stairs to catch up with Cissnei.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Reno stared at Cissnei, wild-eyed and trembling.

"What do you mean we're lost?"

"Exactly what I just said," she snapped.

"It's a frickin' house! Just find a goddamn window!"

"Yeah? When did you last see one?"

"There was one just–" Reno cut himself off as he looked over his shoulder. "What the fuck, man?"

Rude slowly pivoted around. In the beam of his flashlight he saw nothing but walls and empty doorways.

"Look, take it easy, all right? We just need to stay calm and we'll be fine."

"Take it easy?" Reno's laughter, shrill and unnatural, echoed through the deserted rooms around them. "I'm fuckin' seein' things, Ciss! For all I know you're not even here!"

"Listen to me, okay? I'm right–"

Just as she reached for his hand, bright light flooded the room. Rude winced and threw a hand across his eyes.

"What's going on here?"

"Professor?" Cissnei lowered the arm she'd used to shield her own eyes, and rushed over to the other woman. "Do you know how to get to the foyer?"

"Of course I do," she said slowly. "It's right behind me."

Rude joined them just as she turned and pointed back the way she'd come. Through the doorway across the room, he saw a hallway bathed in light.

They had gathered in the foyer. Rude stood by the railing where he could keep an eye on both the main doors below and the threshold of the north wing. Reno sat to his left by an opened window, in the chair he had dragged there just to freak them out. He stared at his hands in silence as Cissnei gave the professor a rundown of the events.

"So none of you could find the exit?" Rayleigh asked.

"We weren't exactly looking for it when you found us," Cissnei admitted. "We'd just realized that we were wandering in circles."

"I see," she muttered.

"You got some smarty-pants explanation for this, Prof?" Reno raised his head, just enough to look at her face. His hands clung to each other in a white-knuckled ball. "'Cause I sure could fuckin' use one!"

Rayleigh straightened up and clasped her hands behind her back.

"As a matter of fact, I do," she declared as she positioned herself to address all three of them at once. "As I checked the bookshelves in one of the rooms in the north wing, I noticed mold on several of the books. Nothing severe, but considering the state of that part of the manor, many of the rooms are likely worse off than the ones we have occupied. I imagine the bathrooms are prone to water damage in a house with the bare minimum of upkeep."

Reno's face grew more and more incredulous as he listened.

"What the hell are ya on about?" he cried, shrill with exasperation.

"Mold, Mr. Turk. Fungi, bacteria. Some species of micro-organism are known to produce toxic compounds that affect psychological processes. Prolonged exposure to them can cause paranoia and anxiety, even mild hallucinations–"

"Mild?" The chair screeched along the floor as Reno shot to his feet. "I saw my dead fuckin' mother!"

Rayleigh held up her hands in a placating gesture.

"Calm down, please. I think it's best that I give you a physical examination before we–"

"The hell you will," Reno spat. "Last I checked, you ain't a doctor."

"For the record, I have a doctorate in biotechnology–"

"Wrong kind, genius! I ain't your fuckin' lab rat!"

He took a step toward her. Rude tensed, but Cissnei had already placed a hand on Reno's arm, and for once it was enough to stop him. He glowered at the professor, red in the face and fists clenching.

"Ma'am," Rude warned, drawing close enough to intervene if need be. "This is not the best time."

Rayleigh pressed her lips together and raised her chin.

"Yes, I can see that. Excuse me." She spun on her heel and strode past Rude.

"We should stay together," Cissnei called after her, "until we know what happened."

Rayleigh stopped at the steps to the north wing and turned her head.

"I thought my explanation was satisfactory? Unless you have a better suggestion, I'll be in my room, reading up on safety protocol for airborne toxins. Considering the circumstances, I'd say that's the best use of my time." She gave them a tight-lipped smile. "Don't worry. I'll fetch one of you before I venture into any mold-infested parts of the house."

Rude watched her until she disappeared around the corner. When he turned back to the other Turks, Reno had pulled out a packet of cigarettes and was tapping it against his palm.

"Oh, just fuck everythin'!" He crushed the carton, twisted it up with both hands. "The one time I'd kill for a goddamn smoke."

"No need for that tonight." Cissnei reached into her jacket and pulled out a half-smoked cigarette.

He squinted at it, until realization dawned on his face.

"Hang on. That the one I...?"

She smiled. "Didn't seem right to finish it without you."

Reno opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. After a few moments he gave her a timid smile, and plucked the cigarette from her hand with unsteady fingers.

As Reno brought out his lighter, Rude wandered over to the entrance to the north wing. His body was still buzzing, ready for a fight that never came. He kept pacing over to the junction of corridors to stare down both ends. He didn't like leaving the dark zone unwatched. He didn't like leaving the professor unguarded.

Rude glanced over his shoulder. Cissnei and Reno were all smiles now, chatting quietly over the cigarette they were sharing. He didn't like that, either. If Reno really had been in trouble, how could he bounce back so swiftly? Was this all just another act, a way to distract them from the fact that he'd been an unrepentant asshole since the day they arrived?

He flinched when the trill of a PHS sounded from the foyer. Cissnei passed the cigarette to Reno and pulled hers out. After a brief call, she exchanged a few words with Reno, then made her way over to Rude.

"Rayleigh called," she said. "She wants to check something out and asked for backup." She looked back at Reno with a small frown, then lowered her voice. "You stay with him, okay? Keep an eye on him, maybe get him to eat or drink something."

Rude sighed and nodded.

Reno followed him so closely on their way downstairs that Rude could have sworn he felt the guy's breath on his arm. Rude had to keep stifling the urge to whip his elbow back and knock him out of his personal space.

Once they stepped into the kitchen, Reno's eyes lit up as they fell upon the wine bottle Cissnei had left uncorked on the counter.

"Oh, thank fuck."

He grabbed the bottle, pulled out a chubby mug from a cupboard, and filled it to the brim. Rude watched with growing disbelief as he chugged it all back in one go. He and Cissnei had intended to have a glass or two, sure, but that was before they had found a fellow Turk poking holes in himself with a knife. Something was up, and they needed their wits about them to figure it out.

"You're on a mission," Rude scolded, as Reno slapped his mug down on the counter with a hollow clunk.

"I know I'm on a fuckin' mission! Why d'ya think I'm stickin' around instead gunnin' straight for the chopper?"

Reno looked over at the bottle and raised his hand, but Rude nabbed it first and slid it out of reach. Reno huffed.

"Look, man, just fuck off and do whatever. I don't need a goddamn babysitter."

Rude crossed his arms over his chest and stayed put. Reno threw his head back with a groan.

"Fine! Have it your way. But if I gotta stay in this house with you assholes, then I'm gonna drink 'til I pass out."

With that he lunged forward and grabbed the bottle, then leapt back out of Rude's reach. By the time Rude managed to tear it from his hands, Reno had poured half the bottle down his throat. He stared up at Rude with a feverish grin, his chin and shirt spattered with red wine.

"You've had enough," Rude growled. "Go sleep it off."

Reno laughed; a shrill laugh that echoed through the empty hallways around them.

"I ain't sleepin' here. In case you hadn't noticed, buddy, there's somethin' real fuckin' wrong with this place."

Oh, Rude had noticed, all right. He'd noticed his gun, his phone, his pillow, his fucking shades. He'd been jumping out of his skin for days, all because of his insufferable shit of a partner, who'd spent his days laughing behind Rude's back. He'd stuck with it, though – had done his fucking job to a fucking T – and now that this little jerk got a taste of his own medicine, he was expecting Rude to join his goddamned pity party? To watch this asshole chug down vintage wine like swill? A wine that was most decidedly not made to be guzzled from a fucking mug by some trashy punk with poorer taste than a Costan ship rat!

"Getting drunk won't fix that," Rude bit out, clinging to his calm.

"Sure it will. Won't be sleepin' if I pass out first, yo."

Reno reached for the bottle again, but Rude yanked it away and set it down behind him on the kitchen table. Reno smacked his hand on the countertop, and glared hotly at him through the mess of hair that hung in his face.

"You're gonna be a fuckin' asshole about this? Really?"

One second Rude was standing still, glaring back at Reno. The next second Reno's shirt was scrunched up in his fists as he loomed over the little bastard.

"Want to know what's wrong with this place?" He twisted Reno's shirt around his fists and yanked him up on his toes. "You!"

"What the hell!" The scrawny jerk clawed at his wrists, tried to pull them away. "The fuck is your problem?"

"I thought you were a Turk, but all I see is a whiny pissant punk who doesn't know how to wear a suit."

Reno's face screwed up in a grimace, his eyes alight with sudden rage.

"Fuck you, man! I was working the streets long before you rolled up on our doorstep! I'm the senior Turk here and I'm in charge of this fuckin' mission!"

Rude leaned forward, bringing his face right up to Reno's. The wriggling brat froze, his eyes wide and his mouth still for once.

"Then fucking act like it," Rude growled.

He let go, and turned away as Reno slumped against the wall and slid down it. In the silence that followed, Rude put away the bottle and moved the mug into the sink. He hoped the little shit would keep his damned mouth shut for the rest of night.

"You don't know what it was like, man. In that room. You got no fuckin' clue."

Rude slammed a cupboard shut.

"Oh, I've got a clue," he spat through gritted teeth. "I've got lots of fucking clues, thanks to you."

Reno didn't reply. By the time Rude was done putting everything away, the room was still thick with silence. Rude kept his back turned, leaning heavily on the countertop with both hands, until he heard the rustle of fabric and the quiet creak of the kitchen door.

Rude strode into the storage nook behind the kitchen and fetched one of the glasses he and Cissnei had drank from before. A glass with a foot, its bowl paper-thin and beautifully curved. Back in the kitchen, Rude filled it halfway with wine. He held it up to the light, admired the deep, rich shade of maroon. He rolled it around the glass, took a whiff. He was too agitated to pick out specific notes, but the familiar motions worked their magic. By the time he let the first sip wash over his tongue, he could let go enough to close his eyes.

What a disaster of an evening. All he'd wanted was to wind down with a glass of wine. Get a fire going, maybe. Have a quiet chat with Cissnei. Recover from the slow, wearying hell of doubting his own senses. Rude smiled darkly as he thought back on Reno's breakdown. About time the little jerk learned what it was like. After everything he'd put Rude through, he had it coming. He deserved it. He deserved worse.

Rude's smile faded. The deeper those vicious thoughts burrowed into his mind, the less they felt like his own. He remembered the horrified look on Reno's face, as he came to on the bed in the dark zone; remembered his trembling hands and shaky voice. He wouldn't wish that on a fellow Turk, would he? His own partner?

Now that Rude had had a chance to calm down, his earlier thoughts felt foreign to him, too. So what if Reno drank wine from a mug and couldn't tell a Costan vintage from Mideel plonk? So what if he was young? He was no kid, and he was certainly no brat.

Yet still the anger fermented inside Rude, festering, wriggling beneath his skin like worms.

What if Rayleigh was right about molds and toxins? And what if Reno wasn't the only one afflicted by them?

The wine on Rude's tongue had soured into something he could barely swallow. He smacked the glass down on the table and hurried from the kitchen.

The foyer was silent and empty. Rude climbed the stairs two at a time and headed straight for their bedrooms. As soon as he stepped into the hallway, he slowed. The nearest wall light had burned out, leaving a sooty mark on the wallpaper and cloaking this half of the hall in shadow. Silhouetted against the light at the other end of the corridor sat Reno, slumped against the wall, facing the door to his bedroom. As Rude approached, one measured step at a time, his eye caught movement at Reno's bended knee. He was spinning something in his fingers; it was too dark to make out what it was.

Dread spread down Rude's limbs like frost.

"Reno?"

Sluggishly, the redhead raised his chin and glanced at Rude's face. He scoffed as he looked away again.

"Don't look so freaked out, man. I'm fine."

"You're sitting in a hallway. In the middle of the night."

"Yeah, well... Mostly fine." Reno's laugh was a hollow thing. "But hey, Ciss still has my knife, so ain't like you gotta worry about it."

When Rude stepped closer, he could see that what twirled in Reno's hands was an old-fashioned key. He breathed out.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, y'know. Just hangin' out." Another toneless laugh.

"You're drunk. Go to bed."

"I know, I know. I was gonna head straight in and crash, but then I got here... And I just kept thinkin'..." The key spun faster and faster in his hand. "What if it's El I see next?"

It was barely more than a whisper. Reno covered his eyes with a hand. His giggle climbed a pitch higher, and it went on far too long.

Rude realized he'd heard the name before. Reno had mentioned it when he was talking about his mother.

"El… Your sister?"

"Yeah. Ariel." He thumped his head back against the wall and looked up at Rude. "You got any sisters?"

Rude shook his head. "Two brothers."

"Both of 'em still in Costa?"

Rude nodded.

"That's cool, man. That's cool."

Reno watched him a while, perhaps waiting for more. When nothing came, he turned back toward the door in front of them. He stared at it, unblinking, as if he hoped to bore through the wood with his gaze.

"Our place in the slums wasn't much bigger than my room here, y'know. Had its own bathroom, just like this one, and some sorry excuse for a kitchen in one corner. I had a mattress by the window. Ma and El shared the bed. When you opened the door, the bed was on the left." He paused and swallowed several times. "Just like this one."

Rude wasn't sure where this was heading, but he had the feeling it was nowhere good.

"I don't wanna see her like that again, man." Reno threw a hand over his eyes and squeezed tight. "I can't fuckin' see her like that."

What was it Reno had whispered in his despair? Rude couldn't recall the exact words, but it had been something about his sister. On the bed, bleeding.

"Fuckin' pathetic, ain't it?" Reno's bark of laughter sounded more like a sob. "Some Turk I am, huh? Can't even open my own fuckin' bedroom–"

"...I'll check."

If anything, that made Reno's shoulders sag further, and he offered up his key without a word. He said nothing as Rude approached the door either, just sucked in one ragged breath after another, faster and faster.

The door swung open without a sound. Reno's bed was a mess of rumpled sheets and pillows flung randomly about, but it was devoid of people, dead or dying or whole. At the foot of the bed Reno's suitcase lay open, its contents spilling over the edges and onto the floor. More clothes were heaped by the bathroom door.

"Clear."

A few seconds later Reno appeared in the doorway. He leaned in to peer around, and only stepped inside once he'd surveyed the whole room. He carefully avoided meeting Rude's eyes, even as he turned to face him.

"Look, uh..." Reno reached up to rub the back of his neck. "I kinda need a shower."

Rude nodded and turned to leave.

"Good night."

"Shit, that wasn't what I meant! Don't go, man, please!"

He froze mid-step. Reno spewed thousands of words at him every day, but "please" was not one Rude had ever heard from his lips.

Reno still stared at the floor, and was shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"I… don't wanna be in there alone," he mumbled.

It took Rude a few moments to parse what he was actually asking. His mouth fell open, just as the redhead peeked up at him through his bangs. Reno's cautious glance turned into a scowl.

"The fuck are ya lookin' at me like that for?"

"You want me to... join you?"

"Not in the shower, man. Just… be in the same room."

Reno said it as if that made it perfectly okay. Rude was not inclined to agree.

"That would be... weird."

"What's so weird about it? Ain't like you'd be the first guy to ever see me bare-assed. Hell, ain't like you've never seen me bare-assed either, yo."

It was true; Reno wasn't shy in the locker room after sparring or visits to the HQ gym. There were usually more guys than just the two of them, though, and Rude was there to shower and change too.

"I'd just be watching. Like some creep."

"So watch the walls or somethin'! Ain't like you gotta ogle me the whole time."

With a tired sigh, Rude pushed his fingers in under his shades and rubbed his eyes.

"I'd ask Ciss, but she's mooning over some beefed-up SOLDIER boy," Reno rambled on. "The last thing she wants to see right now is my scrawny ass."

Or the last thing Reno wanted right now, Rude mused, was an unfavorable comparison.

"She and I have one thing in common."

Reno didn't laugh. He didn't even flash a grin. He just seemed to shrink a little more.

"Ehh, fuck it. Could always try my luck with the Prof again, see if she wants to do it in the shower. Let her have that 'physical exam' she wanted. Or, hey, maybe she won't kick me out after if I tell her about my 'mild hallucinations'. Maybe that'll be enough to keep her interested 'til mornin'."

He began to giggle. It was the only word Rude find for the sound that came out his partner as he stood there, kneading his eyelids with his fingertips.

"Hell, if it ain't, I can just keep tellin' her about myself. Enough fucked-up shit in my head to keep us awake for weeks, yo!"

Reno wasn't making that sound anymore, but his shoulders were shaking. It might have been laughter that he struggled to contain; Rude feared it was something else.

"…I'll stay."

Reno grew still after a few moments and looked up hesitantly. His brow creased as he searched Rude's face. Then, his eyes went wide.

"Oh shit, I fucked it up again, didn't I? Look, man, I'm just mouthin' off. You don't want me near her, just say the word. I'll stay away, I swear."

"Reno. Get in the shower."

Hope bloomed cautiously on Reno's face.

"Really? You'll come with?"

Rude nodded. "If you promise not to sing."

Reno's bathroom was smaller than the one down the hall. The only place to sit was the toilet, which faced the bathtub and shower. Rude squeezed his legs against the cupboard under the sink and contorted himself toward the door. Mrs. Gubbins may have made sure the rooms were cleaned and the beds made, but she hadn't seen to every itty bitty detail – such as shower curtains. As long as Rude kept his eyes fixed on the door, though, Reno's pale buttocks blended in with the off-white tile in the periphery of his vision.

"Rude?"

He grunted, then realized Reno wouldn't hear him over the sound of running water. "Yeah?"

"I made a mess of things, huh?"

Rude didn't respond right away. Reno shifted, and a spray of water hit the side of Rude's head.

"You're making a mess right now," he griped as he wiped his scalp, grateful for the distraction.

"Oh. Whoops."

Rude's sunglasses were already misting up. No wonder there never seemed to be enough hot water for everyone in the mornings.

"Look, that spooky stuff I did? Hidin' stuff, lockin' doors and all that? I just figured it'd give ya somethin' else to think about. Get your mind off things, y'know? I never thought it'd be like... like the..."

Reno's voice echoed off the tiled walls at first, but by the end Rude could barely make out his words over the splash of water.

"I know."

"And tryin' to set ya up with the Prof, that was more of the same. Just trying to help, y'know, to make it easier for ya to get over–"

"Reno. We don't have to talk."

"I'd kinda wanna?" Reno said with a nervous laugh. "Don't want it all quiet in here when I gotta close my eyes. Bit hard to wash my hair with my eyes open, y'know? Or maybe you don't, Cue Ball. Just so ya know, shampoo in the eyes stings like a sonuvabitch, yo."

Rude sighed. "Fine. But talk about something else."

"Okay, man. Okay."

Was Reno trying to boil himself? Rude unzipped his jacket, loosened his tie. That didn't help with the humidity, though.

"Think Ciss will be okay? She had a point, y'know, about stickin' together. Don't like her bein' alone in this fucked-up place."

"She's with Rayleigh."

"Yeah," Reno sighed, "guess you're right. Ain't no way the Prof would agree to hole up in here with all of us, anyhow. She's gettin' more and more uptight every day, ain't she?"

Rude tried to let the words wash over him like water from a shower, but that only made him too aware of his surroundings. The stream of prattle made it impossible for him to concentrate on his own thoughts. In the end it was easier just to listen as Reno rambled on about Rayleigh, Cissnei and Mrs. Gubbins.

"Right, I'm done. Hand me that towel, will ya? And, uh, unless you want my ass in your face you might wanna get out of the way. This room ain't built for two, yo."

Rude extricated himself from his perch, pulled down the towel hanging on the bathroom door, and left it behind him on the toilet seat. He opened the door but stayed in the doorway, feet on either side of the threshold, welcoming the cool air that rushed in.

Reno turned off the water. The sudden silence was eerie, but it wasn't long before Rude heard bare, wet feet slapping on the floor tiles, followed by the soft rustle of a towel.

"'Kay, got the naughty bits covered now."

With a sigh that was as much relief as exasperation, Rude escaped into the bedroom. Never mind the heat and humidity. He was pretty sure at least three quarters of his discomfort came from Reno's commentary alone.

He glanced as Reno passed him on the way to the bed, then did a double take. His shoulder blade was a mottle of discolored skin. The bruise had already turned an angry purple that was yellowing at the edges. Reno would often boast that he healed quickly, and in the couple of years they had worked together Rude had found there was truth to it. With a sinking feeling he remembered their scuffle a few days ago. Reno must have hit the wall hard, to end up with a mark like that. Harder than Rude had meant.

"Your shoulder okay?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah." Reno rolled the shoulder in a slow circle. "It's fine. Good to go, yo."

He turned away as he checked his shoulder, but Rude didn't need to see his face. He saw the truth in the flinch of Reno's muscles, in his eagerness to avert his eyes.

"Doesn't look fine."

"I've had worse after sparrin'. Don't worry about it, man."

Had it been from sparring, Reno would have griped and groused until Rude promised to buy a round of drinks at the nearest bar after work. Here was the perfect chance to guilt Rude into fetching him a six-pack of beer from town, and Reno hadn't even tried. Rude frowned.

Using materia was pointless so late in the healing process. He was about to offer painkillers, when the thought of medication made him pause. Reno had trouble sleeping at the best of times. Did he take sleeping pills? Had he brought any? Enough… for an overdose?

What about weapons? Reno carried more than a knife and a mag rod, Rude knew that much. As he swept his eyes around the room, he noticed far too many risks, ones he hadn't thought twice about before. Reno's belt, still snaked through the loops of his trousers. The long laces of his boots. The persistent tremble in Reno's fingers as he rubbed his eyes.

"I feel like I've rolled down that whole damn mountain we got outside," he muttered as he shuffled over to the bed. He didn't throw himself onto it, or even flop down. He just sagged into it without a sound, like an empty sack sinking to the floor.

Rude stepped over to the closet and teased it quietly open. Several empty hangers dangled inside. He removed his jacket and hung it up, then his holster, his tie, his gloves and his shoes. Reno remained still with his eyes closed as Rude approached the bed, but he jumped at the first tug on the covers. He pushed himself up on his elbows and watched as Rude smoothed out the covers.

"Uh... What are ya doin'?"

"Staying for a bit." Rude sat down, then stretched out on the half of the bed he had tidied.

Slowly, a smile spread across Reno's face.

"Ten minutes ago you were weirded out by the idea of seeing me take a shower, and now you're jumpin' into bed with me?"

"This house weirds me out more than you."

Reno's smile grew into a broad grin.

"Oh, yeah? I'll bet you peeked during my shower and just couldn't resist–"

"Reno. That wasn't a challenge."

Reno snickered. The exchange seemed more like a performance to Rude, an expectation to fulfill. Whether that performance was for his sake or Reno's, he couldn't tell.

For a while they lay side by side, staring up at the ceiling. Compared to the shower experience, Rude was pretty comfortable. His body was cooling down, his limbs sinking into the mattress. The silence helped, too, though he knew it wouldn't last.

"You said you got brothers, right?"

Rude blinked. Reno's voice had startled him out of the pleasant languor he'd been drifting into. He was more tired than he'd thought. A few more minutes and he might have dozed off.

"I'm guessin' you're a bunch of fit, bald Costan dudes in different sizes," Reno continued. "Like those sets of dolls you've got over there, y'know? The ones that all fit into each other?"

"Grangalan dolls."

"Yeah, like those. That's what I'm seein' in my head. Am I right?"

"Not even close."

"Damn." With a dry chuckle, Reno clasped his hands behind his head. "So what're they like?"

"Teo is the oldest. He's like you."

"Yeah? Good-lookin', funny, boatloads of charm?"

"Skinny asshole."

Reno snorted. "That stings, yo."

"He has a piercing studio near the main beach. Does tattoos, too."

"Yeah?" He turned is head just enough for a glance at Rude's ear. "Did he do yours?"

"Most of them."

"What about the other one?"

"Name's Vidal. Concierge at La Joya Hotel."

Reno gave a low whistle.

"Now that's one helluva place. Nice bar, too."

A playground for the rich and famous, that's what it was, all elegance and unctuous finery – hence a popular choice among the Shinra executives. Growing up, Rude never dreamed he'd end up as a regular at La Joya. Perks of the job.

And a far cry from their current accommodations. He nearly laughed out loud as he thought of Vidal surveying the rooms of Shinra Manor. He'd pay good gil to see the look on his brother's face. The dust alone would give the guy night terrors for weeks.

His amusement faded when it occurred to him that might literally be true.

"You see much of 'em these days?"

Rude glanced to his left. He could see Reno's bony feet, loosely crossed at the ankles. His arm draped over his waist just above the towel; his thin fingers no longer rolled into a fist, but gently curled against his stomach. Of course Reno would be one to be soothed by chatter. With a small sigh, Rude resigned himself to an evening of it.

"Not really."

"The job, huh?"

Rude hummed.

He'd told his parents he worked in security at Shinra. It was both true enough and vague enough. People barely knew what Shinra was back home on the island.

The mainland was different. Vidal had heard enough rumors about the Turks that he'd kept his distance from Rude after seeing him in the suit. Teo knew, too – though he didn't seem to care. Neither had said anything to their parents, Rude was sure of that. His mother would have called him on the spot to give him an earful.

He'd been back to Costa a few times since signing up with Shinra: babysitting the bigwigs, recruiting for SOLDIER, reconnaissance. When had he last seen more of his homeland than the conference rooms, the hotel suites, the underground fighting rings?

"You have a week off next month?" Rude asked.

"Yeah, first week of August. Same as you. So long as nothin' important blows up, of course."

"Want to go to Costa?"

Reno turned his head to stare at him.

"Huh? With you?"

Rude nodded. Reno's mouth slowly fell open.

"Seriously?"

"Could rent a boat. Tour the islands."

"Hit the beach bars in the evenings," Reno said carefully, as if tasting the idea on his tongue. "Hey, you could introduce me to that asshole brother of yours. Been thinkin' about gettin' somethin' cool on my shoulder, here."

He propped himself up on an elbow and twisted around, then tapped his right shoulder – the one with an uneven scar, right along the bony ridge of his shoulder blade. Gunshot wound, Rude had surmised.

"As long as I don't have to hold your hand and listen to you squeal."

Reno laughed. "Fuck you too, man." He flopped back down on the bed and folded an arm under his head. "You wanna visit your island, too? Isla, uh... Arbo, right?"

Rude shrugged. "It's boring."

"Y'know, after today... Borin' doesn't sound too bad, yo."

Arching an eyebrow, Rude turned his head toward his partner.

"Yeah, yeah," Reno said with a dismissive wave. "Look, it was just a thought. Whatever." His smile, anemic to begin with, began to fade.

"It's boring…," Rude said again, still feeling his way, "…but the food's good. Good enough to stop by."

"Yeah? You miss your mama's cookin'?"

Rude shrugged again. This time, Reno's chuckle rang true.

"If she's the one you learned your cookin' from, I don't blame ya one bit."

It occurred to Rude that a Midgar slum kid like Reno had likely never gone fishing. He couldn't see Reno enjoying it for more than five minutes, but that might be enough in one of the better fishing spots on the island. And the taste of freshly-caught fish, after his mother had worked her magic on it... Rude smiled.

"You'll like it."

And she'd like having Reno around, ready to devour anything and everything she cooked. Here at last was someone who could match her verbal barrage – even if only in a different language. Reno's Costan was improving, though. Maybe he'd end up fluent by the end of a week.

"So... What're the not-borin' islands like?"

Rude pondered his answer a while. Summing them up in a word or two was woefully insufficient. Just thinking about all the sentences he would need to speak of the islands, in the detail with which he pictured them in his mind, made his throat itch.

Reno was watching him, his eyes round and expectant. There was life in them again; a spark of excitement.

Reno wasn't hoping for just a word or two.

Rude cast his mind's eye to one of his favorite spots. He recalled the rough rock of the cliff, the heat of it stinging his soles. He pictured the turquoise water some twenty feet below, glittering in a blinding flash as the sun hit the surface just right. His stomach fluttered at the memory of the final, frantic second before the jump.

Rude cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and began translating it all into words.

Chapter Text

An insistent pounding dragged Rude out of sleep.

"Reno? Reno! Are you in there?"

Cissnei's voice, he recognized. Why was she banging on his door if it was Reno she was looking for? Rude couldn't muster up the energy to tell her she had the wrong room, though. Sleep clung to him like mold.

The door rattled on its hinges, shaking from the force of Cissnei's pounding.

"Reno, wake up!" Her voice was getting tense, urgent. "I can't find Rude!"

Reluctantly, he cracked his eyes open. That settled it; he'd have to go over to the door after all and check what she wanted. In just a little bit. As soon as he'd blinked the sleep from his eyes, and got the blood flowing in his joints. Rude felt as stiff as a dead man.

As he tried to make his eyes focus on the cracked plaster ceiling above, he realized something. He wasn't alone. Staying absolutely still, he lowered his gaze until it landed on a scruffy mess of red hair. Rude blinked sluggishly, trying to make sense of the picture. Why was Reno using his chest as a pillow?

The door flung open, and in burst Cissnei. The moment she laid eyes on the bed, she froze in her tracks. Her mouth fell open.

"Whoa. Okay."

The locks in this place really were worthless.

Reno stirred and raised his head, blinking with bleary eyes. He squinted at Rude, then at Cissnei. He squinted at Rude some more, his face screwed up with puzzlement.

"Huh."

Rude took the chance to roll away, then threw his legs over the side and sat up on the edge of the bed. He was still wearing his shades, he realized. He nudged them up with his fingers to rub a sore spot on the side of his nose, giving Cissnei a furtive look in the process. Her grin was far too wide for his liking.

"You surprise me, Rude. I didn't think Reno was your type."

"Whaddya mean Rude surprises ya?" Reno had pushed himself up to a slouch and scratched the back of his head, mussing up his hair.

"Well, I do know what you're like."

"Shut up, Ciss," he grumbled as he rolled out of bed. "You know it ain't what it looks like."

"Oh, I'm not so sure about that. Rude strikes me as a man with great taste in partners, after all... romantic or otherwise."

Reno snorted. "Yeah, right."

He appeared to be on the verge of saying more, but after a glance at Rude he turned his back to them, remaining silent as he adjusted the towel around his waist. It had been a remorseful look, Rude realized to his surprise, perhaps even an apologetic one.

"Well, turtle doves, time to get to work," Cissnei said. "Rayleigh's got a plan."

"I hope this plan of hers involves coffee, yo."

Reno had dug out some underwear from his suitcase, and to Rude's disbelief he pulled them on right in front of them. Thankfully he was still wearing the towel.

"A pot's already brewing," Cissnei said, unfazed, and pushed herself off the door frame. "We'll be in the kitchen."

Rude shot to his feet and hurried out before she closed the door. After one more glance into the room, she pushed it shut and gestured him to follow her a few steps away.

"How was he last night?" she asked under her breath.

"Wound tight. He was himself, though."

She breathed out in a long sigh.

"Rude... Something happened to you when we searched the dark zone."

It wasn't a question, exactly. Rude hadn't mentioned it to her, but considering how spaced-out he'd been afterwards it must have been easy to tell something was amiss. After a moment's hesitation, he nodded.

"Was it like what happened to him?" she asked.

"It was... similar."

"You saw something?"

"I felt it." He wanted to tell her how impossibly real it had all been, but every word that came into his head seemed insufficient to convey the sheer intensity of it.

Even a few hazy memories were enough to make his heart beat harder. He gave her a little shake of the head, willing her to let it go. After a searching look, Cissnei nodded.

"Wait for him. Until we figure this out… He shouldn't be left alone for long."

Rude could tell what she really meant. She didn't think either of them should be on their own. He couldn't say she was wrong.

The kitchen had a different feel to it, Rude mused, compared to the rest of the manor. It was a safe place, untouched by the dread that permeated the rest of the house – especially now that Rude knew his missing PHS had been one of Reno's juvenile pranks. He still didn't get what was supposed to be funny about it, but at least it no longer made him fume. It was a mistake on Reno's part, that belonged in the past.

The professor stood with her back to the sink, her hands clasped behind her. She had just gone over the hypothesis she'd presented the night before, filled out with the details and cautions she had gathered during a late night of research.

"Still hung up on this mold theory, huh." Reno hunched in a chair by the table, arms bundled tight across his chest. His goggles sat lower than usual, leaving his hair free to spill over his face.

"It's the likeliest explanation, don't you think?"

Rude shifted his weight. The professor had presented convincing arguments, yet something about it all didn't feel right – and that alone made his discomfort worse. What should it matter how something felt?

"What about that kid?" Reno leaned back to watch her through the red bangs that hung in his face. "He freaked out before he even got inside the house."

"Spores like that wouldn't have sprung into existence in this house out of nothing. If it's a mold, then it's likely that it grows elsewhere in the area. The young man could have been subjected to them on the way up here."

"You don't think the locals would know about somethin' like that?"

"Maybe they do," she said with a tight smile. "No one comes up here unless they have to, after all. Clearly they're convinced that strange things happen here, but since they don't have the facts, they ascribe it to hauntings and myths."

"She has a point there, Red." Cissnei was leaning against the wall directly across from Reno. She spent as much time watching him as the professor, Rude had noticed.

"Those freaky tracks, then," Reno said. "By the window."

"What tracks?" Rayleigh asked them, looking from one to the other.

"We saw... weird footprints outside," Cissnei explained. "We couldn't get a good photo in the dark, and the rain must have washed them away by now."

"Are you sure you saw them?"

"Of course we saw 'em!" Reno spat.

"Are you sure?" Rayleigh repeated, emphasizing every word.

"What, all of us just happened to hallucinate the same damn thing?"

"Last night the three of you couldn't see a lit corridor twenty feet away."

Reno stared up at her.

Rude chose to stare at his clasped hands. All he had felt lately was fear, and anger. So much anger, senseless, churning inside him like a growing storm. If it was a mold – not the house, not some monster – did that mean all those mean-spirited thoughts, all the ill-willed anger they had fueled… had come from him alone?

His fingers were tugging at his sleeves, smoothing out wrinkles that weren't there. Rude forced them to go still.

"It's a bit like your spooky face in the mirror," Rayleigh added. "You point at it and say what you think you see, asking for confirmation. Suddenly others can see it, too."

Reno squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his face.

"Fine, whatever," he sighed. "Call it a fuckin' mold. What do we do about it?"

"With what I have here?" Rayleigh adjusted her glasses as she gazed up at the ceiling in thought. "Not much. I need my team and I need proper equipment from Midgar."

"So we're leavin'? Hell yeah, I'm all for that–"

"That won't be necessary. I'll send word to Midgar, and my team will bring everything we need. Shouldn't be more than a week."

"A week?" Reno scowled at her. "Oh, no. No fuckin' way."

Rayleigh narrowed her eyes.

"This is my expedition, Mr. Turk. I make the calls."

"And I can override 'em if security demands it. Well, guess what? Security demands that we haul ass, today."

"What?" Her voice rose a notch higher as her composure cracked. "You can't just make decrees like that!"

"I can and I have. Got a problem with that? Take it up with the chief. Hell, I'll take you to him myself once we're back at HQ."

Rayleigh's hands were balled into fists at her sides. Her mouth twitched as she glared at Reno.

"You said it yourself, Prof," he added. "You ain't equipped to deal with this shit, and neither are we. Pack your bags. The house will still be here when you get back."

She marched out of the kitchen without a word. As the door swung shut behind her, silencing the sharp clack of her heels, Reno leaned his elbow on the table and dropped his head into his hand.

"The same goes for you guys," he mumbled, rubbing his forehead. "Pack up."

Cissnei was watching him carefully.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'll be fan-fuckin'-tastic once we get outta here," he said, with a hollow chuckle. "So let's make it happen, yo."

The Turks left their doors open as they packed. Rude winced with every shirt he threw, straight from the closet into his suitcase. As he and Reno headed down to the pickup truck together, it became clear his wardrobe had nonetheless fared better than others. Reno's suitcase had a whole fringe of excess fabric, like a bearded clam.

Cissnei had parted from them at the top of the stairs, to go help Rayleigh while they loaded up the truck. They had just stepped back in through the front doors when they heard her call out.

"Hey, guys!"

They looked up to see her standing on the second floor landing – without Rayleigh.

"You're not going to believe this," she shouted.

Reno swore and bounded up the stairs. Cissnei fell in with him as he stormed onward to the north wing.

When Rude caught up with them, Reno was banging on the door to the master bedroom.

"Yo, Rayleigh! You in there?"

His question sank into the silence without a trace.

"Fuck it." He pulled out a key from his pocket, its silver surface marred by a patchy greenish sheen. "I'm fresh outta patience for this shit."

Reno jabbed the key straight into the lock and turned it.

"Careful–"

Rude's warning fell on deaf ears. Reno had already shoved the door open. After a quick glance around, he strode in. With a stifled sigh Rude followed him, just far enough in for a more measured look.

The room was much larger than Rude's, and about twice as long as it was wide. A king-sized bed was pushed up against the opposite wall, bathed in the cold morning light from a couple of tall picture windows. A section of roughly-hewn stone filled the far corner, rounded like a tower and broad enough to swallow up half of the shorter wall. The other half was covered by a bookshelf, all the way up to the ceiling. Rayleigh's metal cases were stacked in front of the books, glinting wanly in the glow of the ceiling lamp. Rayleigh herself was nowhere in sight.

"Goddammit!" Reno strode into the room, scowling at the equipment spread out on the floor. "Why the hell would she run off on us now? She knew we're leavin'!"

"She also knows we can't leave without her," Cissnei muttered as she crossed the room to the windows. Her shoes sank into the thick rug without a sound.

"What, she's gonna play hide-and-seek for a week? You'd think a frickin' professor would realize that as plans go, that one sucks!"

Rude eyed the suitcase splayed open on top of the bed. Some of her clothes were neatly stacked inside; others were laid out over the covers, still on their hangers. A button-down shirt had already been taken off its hanger. One sleeve lay draped over the rim of the suitcase, the rest in a heap that threatened to spill off the edge of the bed.

"Looks like she left halfway through her packing," he said. "Maybe she's hallucinating."

"Maybe..." Cissnei had turned her back to the window and was scanning the room. "But there's something else going on here, too."

"What do you mean?"

"You have the master key, but the rest of us don't have keys to our rooms. This door had to be locked from the inside."

As her point sank in, Rude felt his shoulders tense up. Reno's foul mood cooled to something more businesslike; he locked eyes with Rude and nodded toward the door. Rude backed up against the wall beside it, to keep an eye on the room and the corridor outside. Reno dropped to all fours and peeked under the bed, while Cissnei checked behind Rayleigh's silvery stack of metal trunks.

Nothing.

"Maybe she's got a key we don't know about," Reno said.

"If she does, Gubbins might know about it." Cissnei looked around, frowning at the walls. "Or she might know if there's another way out of this room."

"I'm gonna call Gubbins. She can help us look, if nothin' else." He pulled out his PHS, but swore as he looked at the screen. "Oughta get better reception in the foyer," he muttered, heading for the door. "Be right back."

Torn, Rude watched him leave. He didn't want to let Reno go alone, but he didn't want to leave Cissnei by herself in a suspicious room, either.

"Rude," she called, cutting off his deliberation. "See this?"

She pointed to the floor, and he came up beside her. At a glance nothing seemed amiss – but upon a closer look he noticed streaks on the floorboards along the rounded wall.

"Dust?"

"Looks like it. Mostly around here… so not tracked in through the bedroom door." She knocked on the wall in front of them, scanning the uneven stones with her eyes. "And the cleaners swept up every speck of dust in the bedrooms."

"A hidden door."

"That's what I'm thinking."

"What's that?" Reno asked behind them, returning to the bedroom.

"We may have found our second door," Cissnei told him, and pointed out the streaks she'd noticed.

"Huh. That would explain… a lotta things, actually." He took a couple of steps back and appraised the scene before him. "Look at that," he said, gesturing at one of the metal chests with a flick of his chin. "I don't remember any of those having dents like that when we got here."

"And it's pushed right up to the wall." She gave it a tentative kick, but it didn't budge. "Let's take a look."

She climbed on top of the trunk. While she examined the stretch of wall she could reach from her perch, Reno ran his fingers over the cracks between the stones. Rude stepped back and used his eyes. The stones were all different sizes and shapes, selected to fit together as tightly as possible. He stared at them, studying how they meshed into each other. After a while a pattern began to emerge; a continuous seam that formed a roughly rectangular shape, a bit taller and wider than a person.

"Reno. A bit to the right."

Reno moved his hand to the other side of the stone he'd been examining and felt along the edge of it. He dug his fingers into the seam and slid them upward, following the line Rude had traced with his eyes.

"Yeah, might have somethin' here," he murmured.

"I think I've got something too," Cissnei said and tapped the edge of one of the stones at her eye level. "Looks an awful lot like a keyhole."

Reno pushed in right next to the box and got up on his toes. Their heads nearly knocked together as he jostled for a closer look.

"So. You found it."

Rude whirled around at the voice that croaked right behind his back. There stood Mrs. Gubbins in her saggy overalls, her eyes large and hollow in her tight face. She extended a spindly arm and pointed at right him, like a vengeful scarecrow selecting its victim.

"Right there," she cawed. "That's what it opens."

As she lowered her arm, Rude realized he'd taken a step back to avoid her gnarled finger. Reno took a step forward instead, and placed his hands on his hips as he stared her down.

"You knew about this?"

"Of course," she scoffed. "It's my job to know this house, boy."

"So what's behind it?"

Mrs. Gubbins thrust a bony hand into the front pocket of her overalls and produced an old-fashioned key. She offered the key to him, along with one of her creepy smiles.

"See for yourself," she said.

Reno narrowed his eyes, but snatched the key from her and passed it to Rude.

The key was cold and heavy in Rude's hand; made of black iron, he guessed. The ornate head of it consisted of interlocking curves that made him think of a spider web. He looked up at Reno, but the man kept his eyes fixed on Mrs. Gubbins. Clamping down on his unease, Rude delivered the key to Cissnei. It slid easily into the keyhole, and turned with a quiet click. A portion of the wall shuddered, then went still.

"Give it a good push," Mrs. Gubbins said. "Damn thing is a bit rusty these days."

Rude put his hands on either side of the door and pushed. One side of the door lurched inwards a few inches. He shoved again, harder, and stale air blew into his face like a cold breath as the door swung halfway open. He could sense a large open space beyond it, but the feeble light from the bedroom's ceiling lamp refused to reach into the chamber.

"I need light," he said.

Cissnei dashed off.

Rude took a deep breath. The musty reek was much as he'd expect from a cool, dank cellar, but the air held something else too, something harder to classify. It made him think of moldering cheese, and glass jars where odd creatures floated in murky liquid.

Cissnei returned in less than a minute, cradling the chunky flashlights in her arms. Rude grabbed one and shone it into the darkness. The chamber appeared to be circular, following the curve of the wall in front of them. A platform of rough timber extended a few feet from the wall, forming a spiral downward into a well of darkness. In the thin layer of dust that covered the wood, Rude saw several sets of footprints.

"Looks like a way down," he mumbled over his shoulder, hoping to avoid an echo.

"C'mon, let the rest of us have a look too." Reno was hovering at his back, trying to peek around him.

Rude placed his shoulder against the door and put his back into it. A rusty cry echoed through the passage beyond; an ear-splitting screech he knew he had heard before.

The Turks looked at each other. Rude saw the realization dawn on their faces, perfectly timed with his own.

"Fuck," Reno spat.

"She's been going down here for days," Cissnei said.

"What for, though?" He stepped into the chamber and leaned over the edge of the wooden ramp, peering into the abyss. "This some kinda secret dungeon or somethin'?"

"Was an escape route once… or so I've heard." Mrs. Gubbins poked her head into the stairwell and looked around. "It's been made into more than that over the years. It's got rooms now, extra… passages, and the like."

Reno rounded on her. "Why the fuck didn't you tell one of us about this?"

Rude had seen men larger than himself back away from a fuming, scowling Reno. But Mrs. Gubbins just squinted at him, her head cocked at a slight angle.

"She asked me about it. You lot didn't."

"Are you fuckin' kidding me? She could've tripped and hit her head down there, and we wouldn't even have known where to look!"

"I get paid to look after the house. Not the humans inside it."

"Well you're gonna help us look for a human right now." He nodded down the rickety ramp. "Ladies first."

Mrs. Gubbins huffed. Rude listened to the creaks and groans of the planks as she picked her way down. The wood was gray with age; it may have held under a slim woman like Rayleigh, but Rude had his doubts about whether it would carry someone of his size. No railings, either. Of course there were no railings.

"Spread out, kids," Mrs. Gubbins said as she shambled onward, hugging the wall. "Only one person on a single board."

"I thought you didn't care about humans," Reno quipped.

"Maybe I'm just thinking it'd be a real pain in my ass to fix a staircase like this." Her skull grinned up at them in the light of the torch.

Rude was the last to enter the chamber, and he made sure to keep the others in sight as they shuffled down the spiral ramp like caterpillars on a branch. If the wood snapped under him, at least he wouldn't pull them all down with him.

Their flashlights gave him a better idea of their surroundings, too. The deeper they shimmied, the clammier the air felt on his skin. Soon, he saw the jagged edges of the stone wall glisten in the beams of their torches. The dust on the planks gave way to a slimy film that threatened to send his boot sliding with every step. He didn't take a proper breath until he had both feet back on solid stone.

Mrs. Gubbins stood at the only exit from the stairwell and shone her light down a dreary tunnel, wide enough to fit three of them side by side. Uneven flagstones lined the floor, but otherwise it looked more like a cave than something manmade.

"I haven't been down here for decades. Not since the last time you Shinra folks were here."

The strange smell was stronger at the foot of the stairs. Rude realized what was so familiar about it at last; just a few weeks ago, he'd smelled something very similar among broken containers and spilled chemicals at Shinra HQ, when the Turks had cleared out what remained of Hojo's lab.

"The science team," he said. "They worked down here?"

"They sure did. Labs down here, offices up there." She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "Wasn't this… dismal, back then."

Reno turned his head to stare at her, his face pale as a sheet in the gloom.

"What did they work on?" Rude asked her.

Mrs. Gubbins shrugged. "Wouldn't have a clue. They did their job… I did mine."

"Let's talk about your job, then," Reno said. "You've been the caretaker for decades. Ever see anything funny?"

"Funny?"

Reno paused; not long, but long enough for Rude to notice.

"Something that wasn't there."

Slowly, a toothy grin spread across her face.

"This old place is getting to you, isn't it?"

"You keep sayin' that. What the fuck do you actually mean?"

"You already know what I mean." She fixed Rude with a colorless stare. "So do you. I can see it all over your faces."

Reno took two steps closer to her, tapping his flashlight against his left shoulder as if it was his mag rod.

"Y'know what, Gubbins?" It was almost a purr. "I'm gettin' real fuckin' tired of your bullshit."

"Reno." Cissnei's voice was low, but carried a clear edge. "Let's find Rayleigh. We can ask questions once we're out of here."

Ever calm, ever the one with her priorities straight. Easy for her, though. She hadn't seen things. She hadn't seen anything. If Reno wanted to dig some answers out of the creepy old hag... Rude wouldn't stop him.

A drop of water echoed in the silence. With a dark glance at Cissnei, Reno stepped back and stalked down the passage. Mrs. Gubbins lurched after him, closely followed by Cissnei.

Exhaling slowly, Rude adjusted his shades. He wanted to rub his eyes, to rid himself of the pressure mounting behind them, but a primal instinct had taken hold of him, whispering in his bones to keep his eyes open, to never even blink. Something might just be there, out in the darkness, right on the edge of what he could see. A split-second might be all it would need.

Rude caught up with the others at the T-shaped split at the end of the passage.

"Well kids, it's a pretty big place." Mrs. Gubbins was peering down one of the branches, her flashlight painting a bright circle across the greasy-looking walls. "We could split up to cover more ground. Two of us to the left, and two… to the right."

"No, we should stick together," Cissnei whispered. "We don't know what's down here."

"Yeah, we stick together. I ain't taking any risks down here." Reno swept his torch across one end of the passage, then the other. "You know this place, Gubbins. Lead the way. We're gonna comb every inch of this shithole until we find the Prof."

Mrs. Gubbins took a few moments to deliberate. Then she shrugged, and stalked off to the left.

Rude brought up the rear once again. He would stop every so often and stare into the darkness behind them, straining his eyes and ears. He waited at the gaping mouths in the walls that led into chambers and side passages, while the others searched within.

The pressure behind his eyes was growing. Maybe it was the air, saturated with whatever chemicals Hojo had left behind him all those decades ago. Maybe it was the teeming spores of Rayleigh's hypothetical mold. Something was growing on these damp walls, black like soot in the light of his torch.

Rude.

Goosebumps crawled down Rude's neck. For a second, he could have sworn he'd heard–

Rude.

It was a woman's voice, fluttering right at the edge of his hearing; so faint it might have been nothing but a ghost, lost in the white noise that filled his ears.

Rude. Find me.

Rude slowed his steps and looked over his shoulder. It must have been more than just an overactive imagination. He could have sworn it came from behind him.

"Reno, wait."

They kept moving. Had he even said the words out loud? He'd heard his own voice, but it was hard to tell how loud it had been over the noise in his head. It was a constant, high-pitched buzz in his skull now; not one he could hear, but one he could feel.

Rude.

That, though; he had definitely heard that. It had to be Rayleigh.

"Guys!"

He saw only their shadows, bobbing in the faint, fading glow of their flashlights. They must have turned a corner.

Rude. Find me.

He froze. The voice had changed, or maybe it had just been too quiet for him to realize before.

Rude!

How could he have been so mistaken? It wasn't Rayleigh at all.

"Chelsea," he shouted. "Stay still. I'll find you!"

Rude!

Her voice held an urgency now, a touch of fear. Rude dashed back the way he'd come, heedless of the way his shoes slid on the slippery stones beneath his feet. He turned a corner, ducked into a chamber, turned again, slipped, stumbled–

A hard smack on his forehead sent him reeling backwards. He crashed into something behind him and threw out his arms as he fell. A sharp pain jolted his elbow and shot up through his arm. His flashlight flew from his hand and cracked against the floor and went dark.

Even in pitch black, Rude could feel the world spin. As the sensation ebbed, he gingerly reached up to inspect the throbbing spot on his head – and bit down on a hiss as the pain roared back tenfold. He waited until it died down again, forcing his breaths to be as quiet as possible. Chances were he had just run into a wall, but he couldn't be sure.

Carefully, Rude ventured to bend his arm, and to his relief he could. Likely not broken, but the elbow he'd landed on was stinging like a son of a bitch. He wouldn't be throwing any punches with that arm until he could find Cissnei and her healing materia.

That voice... He was hearing things now, but that wasn't the worst of it. The knowledge that he'd run toward the voice instead of away from it felt like a steel band tightening around his chest. His instincts weren't his own anymore.

He had to get back to the others.

Rude rolled onto his front, and spent a precious minute fumbling for his flashlight before he gave up. Even if he could find it, it would be useless. He'd heard the crunch of breaking glass as it landed.

He got up on his knees, then to his feet. He held out his hands and slid his feet forward one careful step after another, until his fingers hit something cool and solid. A wall, he confirmed, as he explored the surface with his hands. He fumbled along it till his fingers touched empty air. A doorway. Was it the one he'd come through? Rude had no idea, but through it he went.

His chest had grown so tight he had to fight for every breath, and each lungful of tar-black air only pulled him deeper into the abyss. He would drown in this darkness before he'd ever find his way out. Should he call out to the others? What if Reno was right, and someone – or something – was preying on them?

No. The others would call for him when they realized he was missing. It was better to stay quiet and wait.

He couldn't stay still, though; not when there was a risk he might hear that voice again. He would keep moving, keep himself busy–

"Huh?"

Rude froze. It was barely a word, but he instantly knew Reno's voice. Or... what sounded like Reno's voice. Rude remained still, pricking his ears.

"Whoa, hey, what are you doing?" The words trembled with nervous laughter as they echoed in the darkness. Definitely Reno's voice, and not too far away.

"You don't like that?" Cissnei's voice was a husky purr that Rude had never heard out of her before.

"No!" A brittle laugh. "Well, yes, but not– I mean... Uh..."

Guided on their voices, Rude crept forward in the dark. He fumbled through a doorway he couldn't remember passing through, and when he spotted a faint light on his left, relief filled his chest like a gulp of cool air. The glow seemed to be coming from another passage, in the same direction as the hushed conversation he was following.

"Is it her?"

"What? If you mean the other night, that was just... Uh, y'know..."

Rude saw their flashlights as soon as he rounded the corner, right at the other end of the gloomy tunnel. Hers was on the ground, angled haphazardly in their direction. Reno still gripped his torch in his hand, the one closest to Rude. He was flattened against the wall, while Cissnei stood before him. Rude could make out her hand against the dark fabric of Reno's jacket, stroking along his arm.

"You knew me long before you met her. How did she manage to catch your eye with nothing more than a smile? Why don't you ever see me?"

"Huh? She doesn't smile, does she?"

The more Rude heard of their conversation, the more hairs it raised on the back of his neck. Mentally cursing the darkness, he made his way toward them as quickly as he dared.

Shadows danced in the beam of Cissnei's flashlight as she took a step and closed the distance between them. She reached up to pluck the open collar of Reno's shirt, then slowly smoothed out the fabric with her palms.

"Have you never thought of me that way?"

Reno stood paralyzed as her hands caressed his chest, her fingertips slipping in under his jacket.

"Oh, fuck," he breathed. "This so ain't the place for this, Ciss."

"We can go somewhere else, then," she cooed as she traced his jaw with a fingertip. "Right now. Just you and me."

"That's... We can't just..."

But he didn't back away as she grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled his face closer to hers.

"Reno!" Rude called.

Reno whipped his head around. The moment he saw his partner, his shoulders sagged; whether from relief or frustration, Rude couldn't tell. Cissnei just froze, blinking. A small frown appeared on her face as she stared at her fists, still tight around the fabric of his jacket.

"What... Where did you–" She raised her face to Reno's. The moment their eyes met, she yanked her hands off him and leapt away. "What the hell are you doing?"

"What am I doin'? You're the one who pounced me!"

She stared at him, disbelief plain on her face.

"It was you...?"

"The hell's that s'posed to mean?" Reno's question held bite, and the confusion on his face had curdled into a scowl.

"Cissnei," Rude cut in urgently. "What did you see?"

She spun around and took in the clammy rock walls that closed around them. Rude could see the hope drain from her face, and every second of it wrung his guts.

"Costa," she whispered. "I was back in Costa. It was warm and sunny, I was at the beach, and..." She hid her face in her hands. "Fuck."

"So that's what it was." Reno's voice was trembling; the cone of his flashlight trembled, too. "That's all it takes, huh? The first whiff of some SOLDIER boy nookie and you'll drop the mission, just like that?"

"There was no mission! There was no Shinra! No Turks, no SOLDIER, just..." With a brittle laugh, she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Why the hell am I telling you this?"

"I had your back, you know! When Tseng wanted to pull you, I stood up for ya! I told him to keep you on, I told him he'd gotten the wrong idea!"

"Oh, save it!" Cissnei let her hand fall and glowered up at him. "I know you're here to spy on me! Everything else is just your bullshit, isn't it?"

"What?" Reno squeaked. "The Prof is missin', something in here is fuckin' with our heads, and you're callin' this my bullshit?"

The tunnel was filling with echoes, a current of accusing whispers layered under their shouts. The pressure behind Rude's eyes was building again.

"What about Rude?" Cissnei spat. "Did Tseng send you here to spy on him, too?"

"Are you even listenin' to me? I ain't here to spy on ya! Tseng just sent you here with me 'cause he wanted to give you guys a chance to clear your fuckin' heads!"

Rude stared at his partner in shocked disbelief. Clear his head? Clear his fucking head? As if he was some kind of liability that couldn't keep it together on the job?

Cissnei's lip curled.

"I knew it," she growled. "I fucking knew it!" She shoved Reno in the chest, sending him stumbling back. "Gods! I wish I'd stayed stuck in that hallucination. At least I was free from fucking Tseng in there. Free from you!"

Her voice rang in the sudden stillness. Reno just stared at her, silent, his jaw locked tight. Cissnei met him dead on.

Then she frowned, and blinked repeatedly. With a soft, frustrated noise she turned away from them and rubbed her temples with unsteady fingers.

Rude blinked, too. The pressure was gone. He reached up to wipe his forehead – and flinched as his gloved fingers brushed against the bump above his left eye. The pulsing ache in his elbow was returning. For a while there, he'd forgotten his injuries.

"Cissnei," he said, "I need–"

A sharp shriek made them freeze where they stood. It was a woman's scream, a scream of such terror it made Rude's blood run cold.

"Fuck," Reno spat and took off toward the sound.

Rude sprung into action a second later, but Reno was rapidly disappearing down the tunnel. Rude followed the swinging arc of his flashlight, his own pounding footsteps guided by Cissnei's light behind him. As they stumbled around a corner, he recognized the passage they'd taken before his mad dash through the dark. Reno had halted, halfway to the stairwell chamber, frantically looking from side to side.

Another blood-curdling shriek pierced the thunder in Rude's ears – and ceased in a final thud. Before Rude could reach Reno, he had bolted off again. He stopped at the threshold to the stairwell, pulled out his gun, and peeked in. Then he dove around the corner and vanished.

Rude swore and struggled to pump his legs faster, but the throbbing in his head had built to an agonizing roar. Cissnei sprinted past him and disappeared from view; Rude stumbled in the sudden, disorienting darkness that had swallowed her.

A blaze of light shot into the tunnel, out from the mouth of the stairwell. A flashlight, on the ground – placed there, or fallen?

Rude had enough presence of mind to stop at the corner and peek around it. The light spilling out came from all the way inside the stairwell. Beyond, he could barely make out a pair of silhouettes hunched over a tangled heap on the ground. As he crept closer, he confirmed that the two shadowy figures were Reno and Cissnei. And the third...

Reno looked up as Rude barreled into the chamber. His face was ashen and hollow in the shadow of the flashlight.

"She's dead."

Rude looked down. The bloodied, lifeless face of Mrs. Gubbins stared back up at him.

Chapter Text

The three Turks stared at the broken body on the floor. The beam of a flashlight transformed Mrs. Gubbins's face into harsh white peaks and sunken hollows. Her mouth gaped like an empty cavern.

Rude felt numb, drained. He looked up; the wooden staircase spiraled up the tower until it vanished into darkness. She must have fallen. She'd tried to run, and had taken a wrong step on her way up. But what could possibly make a woman like Gubbins run?

"It's high time we got the fuck outta here," Reno said, his voice as empty as the thing at their feet.

"What?" Cissnei stepped in between him and the corpse, forcing him to look at her. "What about Rayleigh?"

"Fuck Rayleigh!"

Cissnei lowered her chin, and her stare went sharp.

"I thought you already did."

"The hell's that got to do with anythin'?"

"You're such a hypocrite," she hissed. "Who's the one 'fuckin' around' on this mission, huh?"

Reno's jaw tightened at her mocking drawl. He stepped right up to her, towering over her.

"See, that's the difference right there," he growled. "Fucking is all it was. No feelings to mess things up, no cover to blow, no surveillance to compromise. I ain't screwin' the goddamn target!"

"Yes, you are! She is the mission!"

"No, the mission is to 'evaluate the mansion's security and assess local threats'. Let's fuckin' assess, shall we?" He pointed at the dead body at their feet. "Gubbins wasn't scared of us Turks. Hell, she wasn't scared of nothing, since she worked here for fuckin' decades. She knew this place inside out, knew what was wrong with it, and look where it got her!" He threw out his arms, his teeth bared in a vicious grin. "Based on the evidence right in front of us, I assess this local threat to be off the goddamn chart. That's it, job's done. Now let's get the fuck outta here!"

"We don't just assess the security," Cissnei snapped. "We are the security, and we've got high-ranking Shinra personnel who need it! The job is not done, and I'm not leaving until it is! I'm not failing this mission!"

That jolted Rude back to reality. Reno didn't have anything to prove to Tseng and the chief, he realized – but she did, and so did Rude. If they blew a simple low-priority mission like this, their careers were as good as over.

He stared at the old woman's corpse at their feet. He'd been convinced there was something wrong with her, that she had to be… supernatural, somehow – yet there she lay, dead and broken. Another human being, just like him. Just like Rayleigh.

The professor was convinced all this had a scientific explanation. If she was right, and they'd abandon her here because they were running from a fucking mold…

"Cissnei is right. Job's not done yet."

She gave him a sharp nod, then looked back at Reno.

"What's it going to be, then? Are you going to ditch us down here too?"

Reno's chest heaved higher and higher as he scowled at them each in turn.

"Fuck!" He kicked at a loose stone. It skittered down the passage and vanished into darkness. "How the hell are we supposed to find her, huh? And how the hell are we supposed to find our way out after?" He jabbed a finger at the corpse of Mrs. Gubbins. "She's the one who knew the place!"

"Would you just calm the fuck down?" Cissnei hissed. "Look, Rayleigh has been sneaking down here for days. We find her, she shows us the way out. Okay?"

"No, not okay! Did you forget what just happened to ya? What happened to me the other night? The hell are you plannin' to do about that, huh? Got any materia that stops hallucinations?"

She glared up at him. She didn't say anything, but her nostrils flared with every breath.

"Have you listened to yourself lately?" Reno's voice had risen to something shrill and brittle. "You keep spoutin' all this paranoid bullshit, like it's all some great big conspiracy! Rude keeps tryin' to use me as a punchin' bag, and I'm... Hell, I'm just a big fuckin' mess! We're not ourselves, okay? Whatever this is, it's screwin' with our heads!"

"Yes." Cissnei spoke with deathly calm. "Yes, it is. It's making you a fucking coward."

Reno went completely still.

"The hell did you just call me?"

"You heard me."

He took a step toward her, eyes wild in his pale white face, and Rude hurried to fall in at Cissnei's side. He had seen that look on Reno before.

Reno stopped in his tracks. He stared at Rude, and something finally broke in his expression.

"Fine," he spat. "Guess I am a fucking coward, then!" As soon as he'd said it, it was as if the wind went out of him. He looked away and when he spoke again, his voice was trembling. "I gotta be, if you both think it."

"We don't," Cissnei said, softer now, "Like you said, this isn't you. It's these hallucinations. But you can beat them. We can. Only one person gets these visions at a time, right? That's how we can beat this."

"Huh?" Reno cast her a wary glance. "What are you on about?"

"Think about it. It's only been one of us at a time. Rude and I snapped you out of it yesterday, and you two did the same for me just now. If we stick together… We can keep each other safe."

Rude dug through his memory. It seemed to fit, he realized. Could it really be that simple?

"You don't know that. And even if you're right, it might still happen to one of us. We might see... things. I don't–" Reno cut himself off and swallowed hard. "I mean, I..."

He scoffed and spun on his heel, turning away from them both. His hand trembled as he covered his eyes.

Cissnei's face softened. She closed the distance between them and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I know," she said quietly, then glanced at Rude. "We know." She wrapped her fingers around Reno's wrist and pulled down his hand, then waited until he looked at her. "But we're Turks. Turks with a job to do. We find Rayleigh, we get her out. Then we leave."

His gaze sank slowly, until he was staring at his shoes.

"Or aren't you a Turk anymore?" Cissnei's voice had acquired an edge. "Is that what you're saying?"

Reno whipped his head back up and his eyes flashed like bolts of lightning. She didn't flinch; she just stared him down, until he finally looked away. Emotions flickered across his face, too quick to read – and then the battle was over, and his jaw locked tight with resolve. He straightened up and met Rude's eyes.

"You in, partner?"

"We're Turks." Those few words said it all.

"We finish the mission." Reno drew a deep breath as he stared out into the gloom. "No matter what."

Cissnei squeezed his shoulder.

"We stick together," she said. "We watch each other."

They agreed to head right this time. The very first room they checked was stacked with ancient coffins.

"Oh, you gotta be kiddin' me," Reno groaned. "Fuck this place. All of it."

"Family crypt?" Rude guessed.

"Let's just move on," Cissnei muttered. "I doubt Rayleigh is hiding in one of those."

It soon became clear this part of the cellar was different in other ways, too. These were no longer tunnels carved into the raw rock, but corridors dressed with stone and dusty brick. The flagstones under their feet were uniformly cut, laid out in neat, straight rows, with bulging fungal growths pushing up between the seams. The storage rooms did not hold rotting wine barrels, but crates and fat steel drums. Rude spotted the red Shinra diamond on several of them.

"Look," Cissnei whispered. The circle of her beam rested upon another flashlight, abandoned in the middle of the corridor. "Seems we're on the right track."

"Guess she can't have gone far in pitch darkness." Reno aimed his light down the corridor and lit up a pair of massive metal doors at the other end. "Looks like that's the only way onward, yo."

The doors groaned reluctantly as they rolled them open, revealing a circular chamber that they gingerly stepped down into. A low fog clung to the floor and curled around their boots; out of it rose chunky stone pillars that converged on a central vault high above their heads. Rude had picked up the newly-found flashlight and probed the alcoves between the pillars with it, lighting up the spines of moldering books and the dials and signal bulbs of old-fashioned control panels.

He let his light linger on the row of tall glass cylinders that lined one alcove. They were large enough to hold a person and appeared cloudy in the light, as if they were filled with smoke. The ones in Hojo's lab back at HQ were a sleeker design, framed in stainless steel instead of copper, but Rude knew a Mako tank when he saw one.

He inspected one closer and made out a web of scratches on the glass. As they caught the light, he realized the scratches were on the inside.

"Professor?"

Rude turned toward Cissnei's voice. She had shone her flashlight across the chamber, at the far wall, where it opened up into the yawning blackness of an archway. Framed in her cone of light stood Rayleigh, her back to them, staring into the dark.

Reno was already making his way toward her.

"Prof?" he called. "Hey Prof, you hear me?"

She took a slow step forward into the archway. Reno swore and lunged for her. When he grabbed her arm, she finally turned her head to gaze at him.

"Yo, Rayleigh!" Reno snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Anyone home?"

At first she didn't react at all. Then she flinched, and blinked repeatedly.

"You with us now?" he asked.

She looked around, frowning. Slowly, she pulled her arm out of Reno's grasp.

"What… is going on?" Her voice was frail, with no trace of her usual poise.

"Hopin' that's what you'll tell us. We heard you've been comin' down here quite a lot. Would hate to think you've been sneakin' away for nothin'."

"But..." Rayleigh's forehead was creased with confusion. Her eyes were fixed upon the examination table in the center of the room.

Or perhaps it was meant for autopsies – the table was a crude metal slab that certainly looked a lot like Rude's idea of an autopsy table. It had a trolley of surgical instruments parked beside it. He preferred to think they had been used on the dead.

Rude averted his eyes, his stomach tight. Had the air grown thicker? It seemed harder to breathe.

"Reno," Cissnei called.

She stood before a bulky metal hatch as large as the door they had come through, with the back of her hand pressed against her nose. A round observation window was set into the hatch, its glass foggy with decades of grime. Below it was a wheel as wide as a human, which likely operated the thick bolts that protruded from all sides of the door. It hung slightly ajar.

Reno caught Rude's eye and gestured to Rayleigh with a flick of his head, then jogged over to Cissnei. She pointed at the bolts on the door and their corresponding holes in its heavy frame as she muttered something Rude couldn't make out. Reno studied them, then poked his head into the chamber beyond. When he pulled his head back, he was frowning.

"Rayleigh, did you open this?"

The professor looked up.

"A couple of days ago... Maybe?" She shook her head. "I don't remember when, it wasn't important–"

"Before or after we hooked up?"

She started and glanced at Rude and Cissnei. She looked none too pleased when she turned back to the redhead. Perhaps it was the lack of surprise she had found on their faces.

"Before," she bit out.

"What did you find?" Rude asked him.

"Dunno, that's why I'm askin'." Reno surveyed the room again. "Looks – and smells – like something was locked up in here."

"Excuse me?" Rayleigh asked, her voice ringing with disbelief. "I'm the one who unbolted the door. The room was empty."

"Yeah?" Reno pushed himself off the door and faced her fully. "Well, somethin' made me see shit that ain't real. What if it can also make you blind to stuff that is there?"

Rude crossed the chamber and shone his flashlight through the open door. He had to press his sleeve against his nose; the stench was vile. The chamber within was larger than he expected, almost as large as the laboratory itself. Drainage holes were set into the base of the walls at regular intervals. In one corner he could make out what appeared to be a pile of small bones.

"Are you serious?" Rayleigh's crisp arrogance had returned. "These labs have been empty for decades! How could anything have survived, trapped in there?"

"How the hell should I know? Ain't that a question for you science types?"

"And where, pray tell, is the science? All you have is conjecture!"

"I've felt this thing, okay? I've felt it inside my fuckin' head, we all have! It's got… intent, like it's–"

"That's what you have? You base all this on your capricious, fallible feelings?"

Her mockery stirred Rude's anger – but it wasn't the cruel, resentful malice that had festered inside him for days. This was simple irritation, contained and controlled. It was his own.

Neither Reno nor the professor would find any proof in shouting at each other. Rude took a deep breath, planted his nose in the crook of his elbow and ventured into the chamber.

The floor was sticky, creating a suction that clung to his shoes at every step. He squatted down by the mound of bones for a closer look, careful to keep his knees above the muck. The bones were thin and brittle like matchsticks. The skulls were blunt, compact things with pointy incisors. He could have fit several in the palm of his hand; the heap in front of him must have contained hundreds, if not thousands of them.

"Whatcha got there, buddy?"

Rude flinched even as he recognized the voice, muffled by the hand Reno held over his nose and mouth. The redhead hovered behind him, peeking over his shoulder.

"Rats. I think." He plucked a rib from the top of the pile, where the bones seemed moister than the others. "Looks like these are fresh."

"Well I'll be damned," Reno mumbled, then turned toward the door. "You hear that, Prof?" he crowed. "Something's been gobbling down a shitload of rats in here, yo!"

"All that proves is that a carnivorous creature was down here at some point in time. There's nothing that ties it to your claims of wild hallucinations."

Rude could see her face in Cissnei's flashlight; despite Rayleigh's rebuttal, her brow furrowed as she studied the chamber from the door.

Reno marched out of the holding chamber. As Rude rose and followed him, Reno planted his hands on his hips and gave the professor a long, hard glare.

"Wanna know why I ain't buyin' this mold theory? 'Cause I know damn well that thinkin' about my ma doesn't make me wanna play with knives." He turned toward Cissnei. "Ciss, think about that Costan daydream of yours. Is that really somethin' you could do? You couldn't just throw everythin' away for some guy and run off on us, could ya?"

Cissnei stared at him, frowning. Reno stared back, his eyebrows raised in part question, part plea. As the seconds stretched on, Rude couldn't help feeling he was missing some unspoken part of their conversation.

She slowly shook her head. Reno breathed out, and Rude realized that the redhead had been holding his breath the whole time.

"Point is," he said and cleared his throat. "Point is, it ain't us thinkin' these things. And if it ain't us..."

Behind him, Rayleigh scoffed.

"No, please, complete your sentence. I'm dying to know what kind of mystery creature would cause hallucinations like this."

Cissnei raised her flashlight and panned it around the ancient lab.

"Mystery creature or not," she muttered, "something was in that chamber, eating those rats." She strode back to the lab entrance and scanned the corridor beyond, too.

Rude's shoes were rimmed with brownish muck. As he tried to scrape them clean against the doorframe, his eyes fell upon his and Reno's footprints and idly followed their parallel lines back to the bone pile.

A thought popped into his head. He crouched down once more, flashlight in hand. The filth was trampled and uneven, more so after his and Reno's foray inside. He panned his light across it, studying the shadowed ridges and valleys.

A chill came over him when he found it. A print that wasn't theirs; a partial one, but enough remained for him to make out five odd elongated toes.

"Guys," he croaked. "I've got footprints. The ones from before."

The squabble behind him ceased. Soon, he sensed Reno lean over his shoulder.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're right."

Reno looked up as Rayleigh joined them and pointed at the imprint.

"See this? This is the print we saw when that kid got fucked up. The three of us," he waved his finger between himself, Rude and Cissnei, "we all saw it. We ain't just makin' shit up!"

The professor bent down and squinted at the print.

"I see it, but I have no idea what made it," she muttered. "It could be some kind of local wildlife. We'll have to ask Mrs. Gubbins–"

"No we won't, 'cause we can't, 'cause she's fuckin' dead!"

Rayleigh rose up, her eyes wide. Slowly, her mouth opened.

"What...?"

"She's dead," he spat. "She came down here lookin' for ya, and now she's dead!"

She just stared at him.

"Looking for me?" she repeated slowly.

"Yeah, 'cause you'd fuckin' disappeared. Why the hell did you come down here, anyway?"

"I…" She looked over her shoulders, frowning at her surroundings again. "I didn't…"

"Yeah, you did, 'cause something brought you here, by makin' you follow whatever the hell you were seein'." He spread his arms. "C'mon, Prof, look around! This is clearly a lab, and we both know Hojo messes around with some pretty fucked-up shit. If he got his hands on the right materia, or the right 'specimen'... You don't think he could cook up that kinda mystery creature?"

Her hand trembled as she adjusted her glasses.

"I-I can't really say what... My team works with biotech, with biochemistry, not with–"

"Guys?" Cissnei hissed from the door. "I suggest we get the hell out of here before we wind up dead, too. You can argue in the damn truck!"

"Yeah," Reno said slowly, with one last sour look at the professor. "Let's get movin'."

One by one, they filed out of the lab. Reno and Cissnei went first, following the directions Rayleigh gave them. Rude brought up the rear and kept the floor lit for both himself and the professor. He found it hard to focus on anything past putting one foot in front of the other. The buzzing in his head was back. The sour Mako stink in that lab must have made his headache worse.

"Guys? I hear something. Like..." Cissnei was silent a few seconds. "Shit, I don't know how to describe it, but it's getting louder."

"I feel something," Reno mumbled. "Like a pressure, in my ears."

"Think something is ahead of us?"

"With my luck? Probably." He scoffed. "I swear, if we ever get out of here, the first thing I'm gonna do is get hammered at Goblins–"

Rude's head filled with the babble of a dozen voices. He smelled alcohol, felt the heat of bodies, saw dimly lit mirror shelves arrayed with greasy bottles. It was gone in a flash, but Rude had recognized the vintage posters from the Goblins bar.

"Fuck," Reno breathed. "Did you guys see that, too?"

"It's getting worse," Rayleigh mumbled, clutching her head.

"No," Rude said slowly, watching the doorway in front of them. "It's getting better. It's learning."

"What?" She was staring at him now. "What are you talking about?"

He wet his lips, as best he could with the dry slab that was his tongue.

"It started with… emotions. Fear, anger. Then hallucinations that I could feel, then ones I could hear and see, and now–"

Rayleigh held up a hand.

"Please, we mustn't be hasty in assigning some kind of… motive to all this." She spoke quickly, with a tremble in her voice. "The wrong conclusions could lead to dangerous mistakes. I mean, it could simply be that molds thrive down here and we've been exposed to a higher dose–"

"Would you shut up about your fuckin' mold already?" Reno groaned, pressing his knuckles into his temples.

"How about you shut up about your creature!" The professor threw up her arms. "Even if something is still down here, you have no proof that it can do what you–"

"Would you two shut up about everything!" Cissnei yelled, pivoting on her heel to face them. "I can't even hear myself think, much less hear what's in front of us!"

The silence rang loud and sudden in Rude's ears, like the vibrating wings of a thousand bees.

"Oh, shit," Reno cried. "Here it comes!"

A solid black, darker than the shadows, surged into the corridor ahead of them. Rude saw a maw full of sharp, glistening teeth; no, several rows of them; no, several maws, lined with fangs like a shark's–

"Run!"

"This way, this way!"

Someone crashed into Rude, grabbed onto him and dragged him along out of the room. Reno, he saw in the wild strobing of their flashlights. They fled down a passage, then another; steadying each other, pulling each other along. Reno ducked into a dark chamber and switched off his flashlight. Rude did the same and pressed himself flat against the wall, gulping down mouthfuls of air.

A minute passed, maybe several. Their heartbeats slowly quieted.

"Light," Reno whispered, then clicked on his flashlight.

Rude had shut his eyes at the warning, but it took him several blinking attempts to open them again.

"You see that thing?" Reno's voice was breathless, as if he was still recovering from their reckless sprint. His eyes were huge in his white face, darting this way and that as he looked around.

"I saw... something."

"Kept changing, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck." Reno slumped against the wall and wiped an unsteady hand down his face. "Did you see Ciss?"

Rude shook his head.

"We gotta find her. We gotta find 'em both."

Rude knew that he'd been in this low-ceilinged vault before, back when they were searching for the professor, but he had no idea where it was in relation to anything else. Not that it mattered. Cissnei and Rayleigh could have run anywhere.

Reno peeked out through the doorway, then headed left. Rude could only hope he had a better sense of where they were. They crept along the passage, peeking into each room on their way past, until they reached what appeared to be some kind of boiler room. Reno listened at the threshold, then looked back at Rude, who nodded. Reno slipped around the corner and inside – only to leap back out and flatten himself against the wall again. With a strangled groan, he hunched over and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes.

"Tell me there's nothin' in there!"

Rude sucked in a deep breath, then poked his head around the doorframe. He shone his flashlight into the room and froze.

In the middle of the floor, amid the sooty bulks of cold furnaces, lay a crumpled figure dressed in black. Her face was turned away from the door, but he instantly knew her wavy copper hair.

Rude couldn't breathe. He stared at her, trying to determine if she was real or not.

"It's Cissnei."

Chapter Text

"It's Cissnei."

Rude half-expected the vision to disappear the moment he said it out loud, cast from his mind by the sheer doubt in his voice. It didn't.

Reno shoved past him and charged headlong inside. Rude stayed, distantly aware of some protocol that had been hammered into him: Remain by the door. Keep a lookout. Except he just looked at Cissnei instead, splayed lifeless on the floor. It couldn't be her. Could it?

Reno dropped to his knees beside her and cupped her cheek in his hand. Her head lolled toward him; her eyes were closed, her face slack. Blood welled from an ugly gash near her hairline and ran down her face.

"No…" He gingerly touched her wound with trembling fingers. "No, not..." He stared at his fingers, red with blood, and his whole body began to shake. "Oh fuck..."

He grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her into his lap. Her body was as limp as a sack of potatoes.

"No, no, no," Reno wailed, pressing her tightly to his chest. "Not you too!"

"Reno," Rude rasped, but got no reply. "Reno!"

Reno didn't even look up; he just rocked back and forth on his knees, clutching her against him, as if he was lost in another illusion.

Rude rushed to their side and knelt down. He pulled up her left sleeve, exposing the leather bracelet around her wrist. Before he could reach for it, Reno's hand shot out and wrapped tight around it. A green light enveloped his fingers, threaded up her arm in bright, spiraling tendrils. The air filled with the tang of magic.

"Please," he choked out. "Don't go."

The light grew as it crept over her, over them both, grew until it became too much for Rude's eyes to bear. He squeezed them shut and turned his head away.

For several seconds all he heard were Reno's breaths, so ragged they were more like sobs. The brightness waned, and Rude looked back just as the last filaments of it retreated into the bracelet once more. Cissnei lay still in Reno's arms, as they both shook with his choking gasps for air. Rude kept his flashlight on them and watched, holding his breath.

Her clothes rustled and shifted. Cissnei gently pulled her wrist out of Reno's hold, and flattened her hand over his back. Rude let out his breath.

Reno made some broken sound and squeezed her harder. She shuffled around in his embrace until she was sitting in front of him, and wrapped both arms around him. He buried his face in the nook between her neck and shoulder.

"It's okay, Red," she whispered. "I'm okay."

"Ciss..." He sucked in a harsh breath. "Don't fuckin' scare me like that."

"Sorry. Wasn't exactly part of the plan."

She pulled away. She'd barely straightened up before Reno pushed her hair out of her face and ran his fingertips over her forehead. The gash was gone.

"Damn, Ciss." He laughed, light and brittle. "You're a bloody mess, yo."

"Speak for yourself." She took his wrist and held up his fingers in the light of Rude's torch, smeared with her blood.

Reno snorted, though it came out awfully shaky. He tried to turn away, but Cissnei placed her hand on his neck and pulled him closer, touching her forehead to his. He was quick to clasp the back of her neck in return. Framed in the torchlight, they were mirror images of each other.

"Hey," she mumbled. "I knew you'd have my back."

His hold on her tightened. "Always."

After one more shuddering breath, he let her go. He offered her a weak smile as he sat back on his haunches, then covered his eyes with his hand. Cissnei pushed herself off the floor, and Rude offered her his hand to help her to her feet.

"What happened?" he asked.

She grimaced as she wiped her face with her sleeve.

"Can't say. One second I'm running down a passage with the professor, the next I'm caught up in these..." She sighed and waved her hands in a vague gesture. "Just random moments from my life, really. Something knocked me over, I hit my head..." She frowned and looked around. "Where's Rayleigh?"

"Did she knock you over?"

"I can't say for sure... but if she did, she's a hell of a lot stronger than I gave her credit for."

"Pretty sure Rayleigh ain't the one who did this," Reno cut in, staring at Cissnei's back.

Cissnei shrugged out of her jacket and held it up in the beam of Reno's flashlight. A jagged tear ran diagonally across the back, from the shoulder blade to the waist. The ragged edges glistened. Rude scooped some of the residue with a gloved finger and brought it up to his nose. The reek of it was ripe and organic, like a pile of moldering leaves.

"What is it?" she asked.

He shrugged and wiped his finger on the sleeve of her ruined jacket. Cissnei took a sniff herself and wrinkled her nose.

"So much for that jacket." She retrieved her PHS from the inside pocket, then wadded up the garment and tossed it into a corner.

"Fuck." Reno squeezed the bridge of his nose. "How do we fight somethin' like this?"

Rude's gut tightened as he thought back on their desperate flight. Whatever they had faced kept shifting, changing. He had no idea what it really looked like. He had no idea if any of the things it had made him see was really it.

"I don't think we can," he murmured.

"No, hang on. Let's think this through." Cissnei closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "You think it's a creature, right? Some kind of... animal?"

"Animal, monster, freaky lab experiment," Reno listed. "Could be anythin'."

"But it's something alive, right?" She lowered her hands. "Something with instincts, maybe even intelligence."

"What's your point?" Rude asked.

"If you were right, this thing has lived down here for years. This is its home, and we're intruders. It ought to be happy to see us gone."

"Yeah, 'gone' as in torn into lil' bits for dinner," Reno remarked.

"No, I don't think it's hungry. It could have eaten me while I was out, but it just left me there and ran off, probably after Rayleigh. This thing, if it's territorial like other animals, it's got to be freaking out right now."

"What, it's more afraid of us than we're of it?" He gave a hollow laugh.

"Think about the hallucinations we've had down in these cellars," Cissnei insisted. "It made me try to... lure you out of here." She offered Reno a weak smile. "Gubbins died falling down the stairs; maybe she was trying to leave, too." She looked at Rude, expectantly.

"I heard someone call my name," he said. "I had to turn back and check."

"So, you headed back the way you came," she said, nodding. "See what I mean, guys? This thing wants us out."

What had Rude's hallucinations been before? Voices whispering in the dark, spiders crawling under his skin; visions fed by whatever had been on his mind at the time. He'd freaked, he'd run, but nothing in the visions themselves had tried to lure him this way or that… until they had come down here.

"We were on our fuckin' way out just now," Reno pointed out. "It attacked us anyway."

"Because we stood between it and its creepy lair," Cissnei maintained. "Look, just… imagine a bear, okay?"

"The fuck…?"

"Humor me? Just pretend this thing is a bear. Maybe a young bear, hardly old enough to leave mommy bear. It's got a nice, safe cave, but it's curious about what's outside. The first time, it only takes a few steps before it gets scared and runs back. The second time, it goes a little farther. By the third time, it might be brave enough to reach the river."

Reno gaped blankly at her.

"What fuckin' river?"

"Just listen, okay? Maybe the bear runs into people. A couple of hunters. It watches them from afar, maybe sneaks up to poke around their backpacks when they camp for the night. It's just curious, wants to figure out what these two-legged things are. But the hunters see the tracks, the claw marks on their stuff. Maybe they find the bear while it's out exploring and shoot at it. They follow the tracks to the bear's cave, armed with guns, but now the bear is scared instead of curious. And these guys are marching right into it's cave–"

"Okay, fine," Reno interrupted, rubbing his eyes, "I see what you're getting at, but this thing sure ain't no bear. It was engineered in a lab, by fuckin' Hojo. If I was that thing, I sure as hell wouldn't be curious. I'd wanna rip every fuckin' human I met to shreds!"

"It could have done that already. It could have done it plenty of times, and we're still alive. You don't know what it is or how it thinks. Hell, you don't even know that it was engineered. Hojo had plenty of wild-caught specimens in his lab at HQ, remember? If it's an animal, it doesn't even get what revenge is!"

"Yeah, and if it used to be a person, it sure as hell does!"

With a huff, Cissnei threw up her hands and strode away.

"You didn't see what I saw." His voice seemed small against the thick silence. "You didn't feel what that thing made me feel. If you had…" He swallowed hard. "Maybe this thing is just real fuckin' evil, okay? What did you say just before, Rude? It's learning, right? What if it wanted us dead the whole time, only it wasn't strong enough to pull it off yet?"

Rude opened his mouth to reply, only to find he did not care. His mind felt dull and his limbs were stiff and leaden. Every lungful of stale air was heavier than the last.

"Talking… is pointless."

Reno snorted.

"Course you'd say that," he mumbled.

"We are tired," Rude continued, ignoring him. "We know too little. And… we don't need to know what it is. We don't need to fight it. We need to find Rayleigh, and leave."

Reno raised his head, just enough to peek at Rude from under his bangs.

"Leave? Just like that, huh?"

Rude shrugged.

"We can try. Stay quiet, out of sight. Run, together, if we have to."

"I'm all for that." With a few brisk steps, Cissnei joined them again. "Look, if I'm right, then all we have to do is make it back to the bedroom and shut the door. This thing will curl up down here and lick its wounds, and we can get the hell away from this place. If I'm wrong… Well, the sooner we get out of here, the better."

Reno looked from her to Rude, then let out a slow breath and nodded.

"Guess we have a plan. Grab Rayleigh and get out."

"Have to find her first," Rude pointed out.

"Yup," Reno sighed, climbing to his feet. "Again. You better keep your promise, buddy. I'm so ready for boozing on a Costan beach after this."

The dark felt darker now. Every shadowy corner seemed to hide slavering maws and gnashing teeth. Down these winding, pitch black halls, something lurked.

They found her in the lab. Rayleigh stood by the crude examination table in the middle of the chamber. She didn't react to their arrival; she might not have heard them, but that didn't explain the way she stared out into nothing at all.

"Shit, she's seein' things again," Reno hissed, peeking in through the gap between the doors.

"This thing keeps bringing her here," Cissnei muttered. "Think it wants something?"

"I don't give a flyin' fuck what it wants. What I want is to grab her and go." He nudged the door farther open as he spoke, keeping his voice to a hush. "Spread out, guys. We don't know what she might do, but we don't want her runnin' off on us again."

Reno went first. Rude had just slipped inside when he glimpsed it; in the alcove behind her, the shadows began to take shape. He went still, strained his eyes. He made out a limb – or was it a tentacle? No, it was some kind of serrated appendage – and then it wasn't.

The world shimmered, shifted. Bright light flooded in from high above; Rude yelped and flung his arms up to cover his eyes.

"Uh, guys?" Reno's voice was shrill. "Are you seeing this?"

A high-pitched shriek pierced Rude's ears. Not a human cry, though. It sounded like... a seagull? A breeze swept across him, carrying the scent of brine.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and lowered his hands. His mouth fell open as he looked around, taking in the sandy beach and dappled turquoise water spreading to the horizon.

"Is this... Costa?" Cissnei asked.

She and Reno stood where he expected them to stand, their faces grimy and their uniforms smeared with muck. She squinted up at a sun that shouldn't be there. He stared down at the tall blue cocktail that had replaced the mag rod in his hand, complete with a red umbrella.

Rude looked down and dug his heels deeper. It looked like sand. It felt like sand.

The buzzing was growing louder in his head.

"Fuck! Where'd she come from?"

Rude looked up. Rayleigh was there in front of them, right at the waterline, frothy tide lapping at her heels. She stood sideways to them, just as she had... Wait. Where had they just been? Had they been...?

She was holding something in her hand, looking at it. It glinted brightly in the Costan sun.

Rude's head felt like a rubber band pulled taut, being pulled tighter still. With a final tug it snapped, with an audible pop in his ears. He flinched, blinked – and opened his eyes onto total darkness.

He blinked and blinked again, until in a flash the world returned.

The beach was gone, replaced by cold, white tile. Rayleigh remained; she stood before a mirror, holding a stubby pencil. She tilted her face from side to side, and drew a fingertip along her eyebrow.

"Shit, she's got a knife!"

His view flickered again, like a visual stutter. The white walls fell away. It was no longer a pencil Rayleigh was holding – it was a scalpel.

Rayleigh removed her glasses. Staring straight ahead at nothing, she raised her hand.

"Stop her!" Reno hollered.

Late, too late, Rude moved. He watched Rayleigh's hand lift the scalpel to her face, watched her line it up with her eye. She was too far. He'd never make it.

Reno blew past him in a blur of spiky hair and pumping limbs. Rayleigh bent forward, brought the scalpel closer.

Reno lunged, crashed into her. They fell, and the scalpel clattered across the stony floor.

Where she had stood, something formed out of pure darkness. A hulking shape of rippling muscle and gleaming claws.

Rude had no time to stop or swerve. He did the only thing he could: he threw all his momentum into a punch. Instead of smacking against solid muscle, his fist sank into something soft and yielding. His vision stuttered again, and his hand was free, just hanging in the air.

Something whizzed past his ear, glittering silver, and sank into a solid mass that hadn't been there a moment ago. On his other side, a flash of blue lit up the stone walls, and lit up something else, something huge in front of them. The crackle of Reno's mag rod drowned in a raw animal scream that rang through Rude's ears, rang through his head, until he wasn't sure whether it came from the inside or out. The world shimmered, and twisted, and convulsed–

And then it was gone.

As the discombobulation faded, Rude found himself crouched on the floor, cradling his head in his arms. His head pulsed hotly, but the buzzing was gone.

A hand touched his shoulder and gave him a shake.

"Hey, man." Reno's voice; tense, urgent. "You okay?"

Rude unfurled himself and nodded. Reno clapped his shoulder and hurried over to Rayleigh. She sat in a heap, her breathing quick and panicked. She was wiping her eye with a shaking, bloodied hand.

"Easy there, Prof. Lemme take a look." Reno kneeled down beside her and pushed her hand down. "Ciss, some light?"

Reno tilted her face toward Cissnei's flashlight. A trickle of blood was smeared down Rayleigh's cheek, but the cut was too small for Rude to see at a distance. Both her eyes were intact, wide and panicked as they flitted from one Turk to another.

"I-I was just doing my makeup," she stammered. "J-just a bit of eyeliner..."

"It's okay, Prof. We get it, believe me." He looked around, then snatched up a pair of glasses from the ground and pressed them into her hands. "We need to get the hell outta here, okay? You know the way out?"

Rayleigh fumbled her glasses onto her face and looked around. "I think so. It should be right–"

Rude grunted as an invisible force pressed down on his head. His vision rippled.

"Take the lead," Reno growled, yanking her up to her feet. "Run!"

Rude galloped after them, following the mad weaving of their flashlights, the strobing silhouettes they left in their wake. Every shadow seethed with things straight out of his nightmares, every chamber echoed with their demented shrieks. He had no idea how long they stumbled through those dark passages, or what route they took. He didn't recognize anything – until at last Rayleigh led them to the root of the tower, and the wooden spiral up to the world above.

The women sprinted straight up the ramp, unheeding of the lifeless Mrs. Gubbins on the floor. At the foot of the ramp Rude paused and glanced back over his shoulder. The entrance to the chamber appeared to be… writhing.

"Rude!" Reno yelled, peeking over the edge of the ramp, half a spiral above him. "Get a fuckin' move on!"

That was exactly what Rude did. He ran and ran, legs pumping, lungs burning. How long had he been running? Whenever he looked up, all he could see was the ramp, spiralling on forever. Rude gritted his teeth and kept going. It didn't matter how far he needed to go, he had to get out, he had to run–

And then, on the spiral above, he saw them: Cissnei and Rayleigh. A section of the ramp was gone, leaving only a narrow, splintered lip along the wall. Cissnei had stepped onto the ledge and was shuffling along it with short, fumbling steps in the beam of Rayleigh's flashlight. Nothing remained of the missing boards save for a few shattered stumps on the other side of the gap, still nailed to the beam underneath. Something had crashed through them. Gubbins, Rude realized, as he drew to a halt beneath.

Reno was still running.

"The hell are you doin'?" he hollered. "Fuckin' move!"

"Stop!" Cissnei yelled. "The ramp is–"

With a startled cry, Reno went over the edge. He had momentum, though, and he had reach. He slammed chest-first into the beam across the gap; too hard, for he swung violently under the ramp. The wood groaned and crackled as he slid off, catching himself with his bare hands, scraping his palms raw across the splintered ends of the boards. He scrabbled for a better grip, but that only coated the edges wet with his blood. His fingers began to slip.

"Fuck!" he panted. "My fuckin' hands! I can't hold on!"

Cissnei was stuck on the ledge, not even halfway across. The beam Reno was hanging onto might not hold the weight of two; but if Rude did nothing, his partner was doomed. They were all doomed.

"Hang on! I'm coming!"

Rude took off running again, and at the edge he leapt.

His feet hit solid wood. So did his knees, and his injured elbow. A lick of pain seared up his arm, bursting into white spots before his eyes.

"Rude!"

He had no time for pain; he scrambled around on all fours, just in time to see Reno's bloody fingers slip over the edge. Rude lunged forward, both arms stretched out in a blind grab. His fingers brushed fabric and he snapped his hands tight around Reno's wrist. The wood under him creaked and split under their weight – but it held.

Reno was clawing for a new hold, smearing more red on the broken wood.

"Pull me up, pull me up!"

Rude was flat on his stomach; he had no leverage, but he tried. He pulled and he pulled, until Reno got his whole arm onto the ramp. Once he moved one hand to Reno's belt, it got easier. After what felt like an eternity, they were lying side by side, gasping for air.

"Keep moving!" Cissnei yelled. "It's coming!"

The wood cracked alarmingly beneath them as Reno rolled over. Rude got up on his elbows and shuffled backwards as quickly as he could, spreading out their weight. Reno flattened himself against the wall near the ledge and held out his hand.

"C'mon, Ciss, I'm right here for ya. Just a lil' more!"

Rude couldn't help; if he went any closer he might endanger them all. He couldn't do a damn thing except watch.

He crawled to the lip of the ramp and looked down. The darkness below had turned into a churning mass of tentacles, black as night, boiling up from the depths below. And then they weren't tentacles at all; they were eyes on segmented stalks – then vicious claws at the end of impossibly long fingers, digging into the crumbling walls.

Yet one thing remained the same: a darkness like an inky shroud, creeping up the ramp. He stared into it, tried to see through the dark. He caught glimpses; movement here, a shape there, thrashing like a twisted limb. Something was in that darkness, and it was coming for them. His fists were no use to him here.

Rude got his feet under him and took off along the ramp.

"Rude!"

He kept running, trying to blot out the shrill panic in Reno's voice. Up and up he went, away from the others and toward the only way out of this hellhole. The secret door was still open, just as they'd left it. He threw himself into the bedroom, rug skidding beneath him. There he froze, and his mouth went dry. All his strength drained from his limbs.

"Chelsea?"

She was standing right there, right before him. She hadn't changed one bit since he last saw her. She even wore the same green dress. She smiled and held out her hand.

"Come with me, Rude. It's time to leave this place."

He could see every strand of her hair as it fell about her shoulder in loose waves. He saw the tiny lines around the corners of her smiling lips, the little crinkles by her eyes.

"I'm… sorry. I can't."

"Of course you can." She raised her hand higher. "Just take my hand."

He felt the air shift as she moved. He could even smell her perfume. His knees felt weak, his legs were shaking. His whole body was shaking.

"I… I can't."

Rude turned his back on her. He grabbed one of Rayleigh's silver trunks, gritting his teeth against the pain that lanced up his injured arm.

"Rude…"

By Ramuh, her voice. He swallowed hard, trying to push down the painful lump in his throat. The trunk seemed to grow heavier in his hands with every breath he took.

Rude tightened his grip on the handles.

"Rude!"

Her voice deepened as he dragged the trunk back into the stairwell, turned into something low and guttural. The wood groaned and popped under his feet as he struggled down the ramp, far enough to see the others. Cissnei was off the ledge. Only Rayleigh was left, shimmying sideways on unsteady feet toward Reno's outstretched hand. Her face was twisted up in mask of pure fear; her lips moved in a frantic babble he could not hear. Rude's ears; no, his mind was filled with that ceaseless, wordless roar, louder than ever before. The source of it – that creeping darkness, he was sure of it – had reached the broken ledge.

With a cry he couldn't even hear, Rude raised the trunk over his head and took aim. He hurled it across the stairwell; it shone brightly as it arced through the beam of a flashlight and struck the opposite wall, right above the roiling darkness. It crashed straight down, swallowed by the dark – and then the darkness fell, too. The roar turned into a wail, then a high-pitched shriek. Rude doubled over and pressed his hands to his ears, but it did nothing. The noise was inside his head, and it was too loud, too much–

And then it was gone.

Slowly, he straightened up. He swayed, blinked several times. He saw nothing, heard nothing. Had he gone deaf and blind?

No, that couldn't be. He could see light below, the glow of a discarded flashlight. The shattered ledge on the other side was empty and much wider now; a whole section of ramp had sheared off under the force of the trunk, taking who knows what down with it. He inched closer to the edge until he could peek over. The bottom of the stairwell was beyond his sight; there was nothing down there he could make out.

The teeth, the tentacles, the noise; all of it was gone. The darkness had gone still.

"Move!" Reno appeared at his side and shoved his arm. "Go! Go!"

Cissnei and Rayleigh had already passed them. Rude forced his legs to move and stumbled up the ramp with Reno at his back, urging him on. They didn't stop and neither did he, not until they reached the bedroom and felt the secret door thud shut beneath their hands.

Chapter Text

Rude sank down to the floor. His legs felt like a pair of tree trunks. Cissnei may have Cured his injuries, but she couldn't make the exhaustion go away.

"Shiva's breath," Rayleigh whispered. She pressed her head to the door and ran her fingers over the stones that masked it. "Unbelievable. Incredible. I just don't have the words. It felt so real..."

She laughed, shrill and brittle, and pushed her hands through her hair.

"Forget the part where you almost gouged your eyes out already?" Reno asked. He had slumped down on the edge of the bed, his chest still heaving with labored breaths.

"Proper precautions must be taken, of course, but... There's no end to the research possibilities with such a potent hallucinogen. How it enters the body, how it reaches the brain, which signaling pathways it affects and how... Just think what we could learn!"

She was practically gushing. Rude wondered if she thought she'd hallucinated the caretaker's broken corpse at the foot of the stairs. Maybe she hadn't even noticed it.

Yet he couldn't blame her for it. Fragments of that visual cacophony kept flashing in and out of Rude's mind, afterimages lingering like a nightmare you couldn't quite remember. It was impossible to sift out what had been real.

In the steady light of the ceiling lamp above them, feeling his palms dig into the plush red rug on the floor, it certainly felt to Rude like none of it should have been real. He wasn't sure how much time had passed after they shut the door behind them, but everything had been quiet since. No strange visions or sounds, no pressure squeezing his brain. If not for their filthy, blood-stained clothes, he might have thought it had all been a fevered dream.

With a chuckle, Reno shook his head.

"You still think it's just a fuckin' mold, huh?"

"I am trying to curb my enthusiasm to a realistic level, Mr. Turk. But if your ideas hold true, and it does turn out to be some breed of telepathic entity..." Slowly, a grin spread across Rayleigh's face. "That would be huge."

Rude recalled the falling darkness, the abrupt end to the wail inside his head. He didn't have the heart to point out that she might no longer have an entity to study.

Rayleigh spun around and traced the outline of the secret door in the air with her fingers.

"We have to seal this passage, make sure no one finds it until I return. I'll need to coordinate with my team, with the other teams..." She pushed her messy hair out of her blood-streaked face. Her eyes danced along the shelves of books, and lit upon her notes scattered across the bed. "I have to meet with Professor Hojo as soon as possible!"

"Yeah, in person," Reno said, swaying to his feet. "We're gettin' the fuck out, now."

Rayleigh was the first to leave the manor. She scurried out with her PHS held high, looking for a signal, with a box of her samples and notes tucked under her arm. Rude came second. As soon as he was through the front doors, he stopped and drew in a deep breath. The crisp mountain air had never tasted this good before.

"Huh, it's night already." Reno glanced at his watch. "Just how long were we in that basement?"

"Hopefully just the one day," Cissnei said, rubbing her arms as she hugged herself.

Reno took one look at her and shrugged out of his jacket. She raised her eyebrows as he wrapped it around her shoulders.

"You're the one who'll be shivering now, Red."

"Nah, it's fine. Everyone tells me I'm too hot-blooded, yo."

He grinned. She responded with half a smile.

"Does that mean I'm the cold-blooded bitch?"

"Whoa, did someone call you that? If it happens again, come find me, all right? I wanna watch you kick their ass."

Cissnei's smile grew.

"Sure. Be nice and I'll even let you join in."

Reno laughed and draped his arm around her. She started laughing, too – soft chuckles, low against Reno's delighted snickering. Soon Rude felt his own laughter bubble up within him, impossible to hold back. As it spilled out of him to join theirs, Reno threw his other arm around Rude's shoulders and pulled the three of them together.

"You know what, guys?" he asked once their laughter had petered out. "We finished the mission, yo."

"Like the Turks we are," Cissnei added, wiping her eyes.

"Damn straight we are." Reno clapped their shoulders. "When we get back to Midgar, drinks are on me."

"Oh, I think we can make you regret that promise," Cissnei said and peered around Reno. "Right, Rude?"

Rude gave her a solemn nod. Reno grinned and squeezed them tight in his rangy arms.

"That's what I'm countin' on, guys. Let's go home."