Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"If - and this is all just conjecture, mind you, conjecture! - if there was a way to make contact with the past, would you?"

It was early evening - a dry, red, dusty early evening. The sky was as red as the dust on his boots. The wind in his ears was bone dry and crickets were singing in the yellow grass.

Cloud brought his motorbike to a stop in the shadow of a juniper and gave the man on his PHS his undivided attention. "What do you mean by, 'Make contact', Reeve?"

"Exactly as it says on the tin. Hypothetically speaking, I might have found a way to communicate with the people of the past and I was wondering if you might like to give it a try."

Cloud gripped the PHS. "You mean, time-travel?"

"No, nothing so drastic as time-travel." Reeve made shooing noises at something beside him, presumably the troop of nursing robots that were trying to administer to his care. "Sending a physical person is a little beyond me, but I think I have found a way to send messages, or large quantities of data, at any rate. We could call them, just like how I am calling you now – "

"Not interested," Cloud said sharply, crushing down the temptation that had rushed instantly up from the darker parts of his mind. He needed to quit while he was still ahead, before he could be talked into something he might regret, before he got himself entangled in another mess that needed him to save the world.

Because he was Cloud Strife, Strife Magnet, and nobody with his name should be allowed within a hundred miles of an experiment mucking around with space and time, so said the part of him that was still unabashedly Zack and the part of him that was Cloud enthusiastically agreed.

" – and I've already tested it on myself."

Cloud started and almost dropped the phone. "What?"

"I had a go at sending myself a message via Cait Sith to fifteen minutes before I sent it. Now I have a very distinct memory of Cait Sith activating and telling me exactly what I read off my script that I wrote fifteen minutes later, but! But! I also have a parallel memory, which is fading even as I speak, where such an incident did not happen at all!"

"Reeve, are you sure that you're alright?" The irony of Cloud, of all people,asking after another person's sanity was not lost to him. If anything it should have sent up a very colorful and pointed warning flag to Reeve that normally the man wouldn't have overlooked.

"I have a terrible headache and almost had a heart attack, but on the whole I feel wonderful!"

Cloud said nothing. Worried cogs turned in his brain.

There was every possibility that Reeve was finally going senile. Fifty six years on since geostigma, it had been a decade since Reeve relinquished his leadership of the WRO, retiring to a small house in Kalmwater – a town built as a commuter suburb for Kalm – where he spent his days inventing gadgets and gizmos that nobody could justify the need for, but somehow sold well anyway.

In Reeve's wake he had left behind a seemingly changed world, although when Cloud asked if he thought the world had changed for the worse or for the better, Reeve never seemed able to reply.

There were new towns – new cities, even. Edge was booming, but it had quickly paled in the rise of Altacorel, the so-called City of Shining Smoke that had blossomed out of North Corel and its coal and oil operations. The switch to hydrocarbon based fuels, however, had been a slow and frustratingly messy process. As much as the new leaders agreed that burning the lifeblood of the Planet was no longer an option, slippery rainbow sheens of oil in paddy fields, tar on tree bark, slicks in estuaries, and banks of thick grey smog rising off the towns made them far from the ideal solution. Some communities even turned bitterly back to the decaying mako reactors on the outskirts of their towns, taking comfort from the old green glow against the dull red of the new age.

On his more whimsical days Cloud wondered if the world had really changed at all.

Once they had burned the souls of the dead for power. Now they were burning the bodies. Rufus Shinra's Earth Energy Initiative had fingers in every vital sector - energy, commodities and communications – and his daughter was looking to expand the company into medical research. There was an eerie familiarity to the new world like the touch of a ghost and just as in a haunted house, the longer he lived with it, the more Cloud had to resist looking over his shoulders.

A new fear had started to gnaw at him. He ignored it as best as he could. He shoved it aside on his deliveries and buried it under rebuilding projects. He pretended to drown it under a placebo effect of sorts in Tifa's bar. He couldn't get drunk, but Cloud theorised that if he believed enough in the power of the alcohol to get him drunk, he could convince his suggestible mind that he really was drunk.

None of his distractions worked. Cloud began waking up in the night. First it was just cold sweats, but then he started finding his hands gripped on his sword, his heart trying to prise apart his ribs, and his ears and eyes would be turned to the door as if he was expecting an intruder to barge in, and after a month of these nights he knew that something was wrong.

Because he was waiting, like a haunted man waiting for the ghost in the house to finally show itself. He was waiting for the moment when somebody in a board room, brought up on stories of men on the knife edge of gods and monsters, dreamed about the power and prestige of Soldier.

'We,' they would say to themselves, comfortable in their office fortresses, 'are different from Shinra. We know not to dabble with the Lifestream. We do not suck upon the blood of the Planet like tics and leeches. If we could resurrect the Soldier research program, imagine all the good we could do for the world.'

The boardroom crowd of Cloud's mind would not to one another, congratulate the innovative idea, then send a man in a suit to knock on Cloud's door, and Cloud would wake with a start and a cry of, 'Don't!' that was never heard.

Who would it be? Cloud often speculated. The WRO Peacekeepers? The EEI Medical Sciences? The Sons and Daughters of Gaia - a commune funded by the Gold and Silver Saucers - perhaps? It was only a matter of time. That thought gave him more comfort than it should have. It was easy to lose touch with time when his own face refused to age a day past twenty and, gradually, one by one, those he could count on to remind him to number the passing hours faded away.

So far as Cloud knew, nobody had died, although Cid had come close, flirting with every single smoking related illness the Planet could throw at him by the time he was seventy and somehow managing to flip his middle finger at all of them.

Cid, Barret, Yuffie and Tifa had all done as humans were supposed to do. They had aged day by day, collecting memories in their skin. Barret had grandchildren who liked to swing off his gun-arm and cram sweets into its barrels. Yuffie had handed the reins of Wutai to a peacetime generation who learned ninjutsu for sport rather than war. Cid was annually pushing the records for 'Oldest Person to Fly' like he was daring time to stop him. Tifa was still working. She ran a dojo as well as her bar now, also in Edge, with the same firm no-nonsense approach that had anchored Cloud time and time again as ever.

He made a point to drop in on all of them, once in a while at least.

Sometimes, Cloud thought that he might be being selfish. He saw time trying to leave him behind and so, there he would be, in Tifa's dojo, refusing to let his friends to leave him behind as well. He would hold onto them, despite how much he knew it hurt to remind them that even though they had saved the world, they were all too human – they aged, they decayed, and they crumbled – and Cloud was all too beyond that.

Perhaps that was why Vincent had left. Vincent had disappeared three years ago, leaving only the proof of purchase of a new phone on Cloud's kitchen table and a bullet from his pistol, his way of saying 'Gone monster-fishing, will eventually come back', but Vincent's grasp of the flow of time was potentially shakier than Cloud's. 'Eventually' had a high chance of being anything between twenty to fifty years.

Nanaki largely kept to himself these days. His species were famously longer-lived than humans, and he made it no secret that he found it perplexing and deeply sad to see his friends undergo what he perceived as 'life sped up'. The others could only console him that they understood what was happening to them and were willing to accept it with what grace they could. The last Cloud had seen of Nanaki was five years ago. He had been trying to impress a female lionwolf who had copper coins jangling in her mane.

And Cloud, here he still was, like a stubborn piece of Nibel granite in a stream, unchanged and unaffected by the rush of time - still delivering, still fighting monsters, still travelling new lands and trying out new things, many that would later make him shake his head and pretend they had never happened.

Any mention of the Gongagan Touch Me Frog-racing incident, for instance, from forty years ago still made Tifa and Yuffie hoot with laughter and Cloud hadn't had the nerve to try the damn sport since. The part of him that was Zack was sorely disappointed. The part of him that was Cloud was still fumbling for his dignity.

In any case, time had passed for those around him. People changed even if the world didn't, and so, Cloud mused sadly, there was every possibility that Reeve's age had got to him at last.

But, of course, wasn't there also the possibility, whispered one of the more treacherous voices swimming under Cloud's thoughts, that Reeve really had experimented with time, dropped himself into a loop of reality and come out with little more than a migraine?

The wind brushed cold against the back of Cloud's neck. He swallowed a ball of spit, felt it stick in his throat and replied after an uneasy pause. "That's good, I guess."

Every regret he had ever wrestled, kicking and screaming, to the back of his mind and locked in a cage pressed hopefully up against the bars.

He looked towards the twisted shadow of Midgar's ruins in the distance, raised his voice to be heard above the wind. "I'm on my way back to Edge, so I'll be with you in half an hour."

Reeve seized on it instantly. "So, would you be willing to try - ?"

"No, Reeve. Absolutely not."

"Don't be like that, Cloud. Humour an aging CEO with nothing better to do in retirement than tinker in his gadget hut!"

Chuckling despite himself, Cloud shook his head. "There tends to be a rule, Reeve, that, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong once I'm factored into the equation."

"Well, if you're sure, Cloud. I was just curious as to what would happen if somebody with more mako infused in their system tried to use this. Mako is liquid Lifestream after all and there's been a lot of speculation over how closely tied the Lifestream is to us and our perceptions of time and space. I might be able to increase the accuracy of the data stream fire, or be able to upload a higher quantity of data so that we could send visual streams instead of audio, or perhaps simply expand the window of communication time - "

"I'm sorry, Reeve, but I'm really, honestly, not interested." Cloud closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

If Reeve had asked him the same thing fifty years ago, Cloud might have leapt at the chance, but he liked to think that he had learnt something since. In the years after the geostigma and Aerith's rain, Cloud had tried to come to terms with his past. It had been a long, hard process. Tea had been spilt, tears restrained, punches thrown and far more received, but slowly he had shed his weight of If Onlys and torn his gaze away from the pendulum of What Ifs, and he felt far better for it. The present was tough enough to handle without the past snatching for his attention like a bored chocobo.

The past could only rule Cloud if he let it.

It could only hurt him in the form of an especially vindictive memory that refused to die, stay dead and keep its overly long sword out of Cloud's face.

Cloud had moved on from his regrets and his mistakes. He had accepted what had happened. He may not have entirely forgiven, but he had learnt to live with himself and enjoy the life that he led, however bittersweet and charmed it was beginning to prove. He wouldn't change the course of events even if he could, because forcing time into a different course would destroy all the good things that had happened since the dark days of Shinra and Meteor.

…but wasn't there a chance that all the good things could be destroyed and remade better?

"I'm not interested," Cloud repeated softly. "Absolutely not."

Who was he trying to convince?

In celebration of the new office hot beverages machine, Reeve had cleared a fifteen minute slot in his schedule for a well-earned coffee break.

He was efficient with his work and he doubted that anybody would bat an eyelid at it, so he was feeling somewhat cheerful. With his desk tidied and his PHS switched off, he settled down with cup of coffee in hand to tinker with his new pet project.

He sipped his drink as he typed. It was a miracle. For the first time in all his years at Shinra, the coffee didn't threaten to scour the roof of his mouth on swallowing.

Today was good day. Reeve was almost certain of it and he wasn't an optimistic man in the least. As head of the Department of Urban Infrastructure, there was very little in the grand scheme of Midgar, temple city of Shinra, the toxic cigarette thrust and clamped into the mouth of the Planet, to be optimistic about, but today he was almost willing to give optimism the benefit of the doubt.

Another three keystrokes, and a tap on the Enter key, the coding was finished. Smiling, Reeve sat back in his chair and awarded himself a mental cheesecake, served with real coffee.

The program for Cait Sith's personality interface was complete. Now, it was just trialling and refining to perfection.

"In other words," he swallowed the last of his coffee and grinned at the monitor, "play-time!"

Propped up against his monitor was a black and white toy cat - robotic, if anybody cared to look under the 'bonnet' they would find some very sophisticated wiring. Reeve was rather proud of it. His fingers tingling with excitement, he flipped open a panel on the cat's back, flicked a couple of switches, attached a cable to a port and linked the cat to the computer.

The lights flickered once, twice, and went out with a low twang like a plucked wire. The blue-white glow of the monitor faded, the fan whirred to a stop and the room was left with the dim brown-green light of early evening filtering through the blinds.

Reeve looked down at his hands, still gripping the cable to the port, then back at the darkened screen. He let go of the cable in an instant and sighed.

Just his luck really, he thought ruefully. He crumpled up a sheet of doodles and lobbed it into the bin under his desk, and imagined it to represent his feelings of optimism for the day.

"Just my goddam luck," he decided to say out loud, even though there was nobody to hear it, although since this was the Shinra building there was always the chance that there was a Turk bug was embedded in the walls somewhere.

No sooner had he spoken, the computer and lights sputtered to life again.

The cat lifted its head.

Reeve stared. At first the cat didn't seem to see him. Then it blinked, and straightened against the monitor, dragging its arms across the desk. Slowly, stiffly, the cat turned its head left then right. After a long minute of twisting, it looked up, meeting Reeve's stunned gaze with one of its own.

Reeve swallowed, or at least he tried to. He couldn't find a lick of spit to do it with, because Cait Sith was, of all improbable things, alive, and even more astonishingly than alive, the robot was conscious.

The longer he stared into its eyes the more certain Reeve became. He wasn't imagining it. There was a flicker of something deep within them, something that asked questions, understood answers and from those extracted knowledge that it itself existed. Intelligent awareness, that's what it was, but seeing it suddenly there in Cait Sith's face was like watching candles suddenly flicker in the windows of an empty house.

It was incredible. For a moment, Reeve entertained the wonderfully exciting thought that somehow, somewhere in the programming of Cait Sith's personality he had unintentionally created a true artificial intelligence. One look at the coding on the screen, however, popped that happy thought in an instant. The code streaking backwards and forwards across the page was falling into hundreds and thousands of lines more complex than any coding Reeve had ever seen.

All he could do was stare in fascinated wonder. He let whatever had possessed Cait Sith write itself into existence before his very eyes.

A crackle of white noise burst the silence. Reeve fell out of his chair and as he swore and picked himself up off the floor, a voice sounded out from the speakers in Cait Sith's mouth.

"Er..." it said thickly, as though weighing the sound on its tongue, which seeing as it didn't have one, the macabre thought almost made Reeve smile. "Er…ah…ah...er…"

As it continued to test its voice, Reeve shifted his chair to sit down directly in front of the robot. He cleared his throat. "Hello?"

The awareness wavered.

"Hello?" it echoed him in a young man's voice.

Reeve raised his eyebrows. That wasn't the voice he had programmed into Cait Sith. It was lower and sounded strained and cautious, nothing like the chipper Cait Sith with his lilting accent and cheap brand of salesman cheeriness that would match the fortunes he would be dispensing.

White noise buzzed and the voice crackled. "Did I pass out again?"

"No," Reeve replied carefully, absently wondering what kind of personality this intelligence had been imbued with if that was first thing it said on waking. "But you could say that you've only just woken up."

The awareness paused. "What happened, Reeve? Why have you moved me? Where am I?"

It knew his name. Reeve suppressed a shiver and tried to decipher its oddly phrased questions.

"I don't think we've been introduced yet," he said lightly. Out of habit, he tried a soothing smile. He had no idea if the intelligence could recognise facial expressions, but there was no harm in trying. "I'm Reeve Tuesti, and this is the office in Shinra Corporation where I work, or I usually would work, but I'm on an extended coffee break at the moment. You are inhabiting the body of a robotic cat I built which I like to call Cait Sith."

The cat continued to stare.

Reeve shuffled in his seat. He fished for something that perhaps might engage the awareness in conversation, and eventually blurted, "Do you have a name at all?"

"Reeve, I'm really not the person to find an identity crisis joke funny, so maybe you should stop messing around and quit whilst you're ahead!" it snapped, white noise fizzing between its words. "You know who I am! I'm…"

The voice petered out. A pensive silence swelled between them.

"What's the date today?" it asked, suddenly quiet.

Reeve knew what the date was, but he made a show of checking the calendar on his desk nonetheless, if only for the excuse of breaking eye contact with the cat. "It is Monday, twentieth of August, the year 2000. Why?"

Something in the air between them seemed to stretch taut and tighten.

"Are you sure?" said the cat, and if Reeve wasn't mistaken, there was a barely suppressed tremor running through its words. "Because if this is a joke, it's the worst I've ever heard and I don't care what the others say, when I'm out of here, I will find you - "

"I am telling you the truth," Reeve cut in quickly. A chill ran up his spine like a panicked rabbit. He turned his calendar towards the cat and gestured at the chart. "See - Monday, August the twentieth, the new millennium."

The cat leaned forward and glowered at the calendar. Reeve knew that a calendar alone was hardly convincing evidence. If he had been in the awareness's position he would have suspected the calendar to be a fake, but he had a sneaking feeling that, deep down, whatever had awakened in the robot cat already knew that Reeve wasn't lying. It was simply lashing out to cover up something even deeper down that it couldn't face up to yet.

If the awareness had been human, Reeve would have thought it afraid.

He watched the robot study the calendar and felt a rush of sympathy. In fact, why shouldn't the AI be afraid? It had shown every sign of having remarkably life-like emotional intelligence so far. Perhaps it really was confused and scared, and, in which case, needing of help.

"Are you alright?" he asked, when the robot cat settled back on its haunches and stared off into the distance.

"I – I don't know." It pointed at the blinds covering the windows behind Reeve's desk. "Maybe if you opened those blinds I could…I might be able to work something out."

Reeve was only too happy to oblige. He pulled out a remote control from the top drawer of his desk and pointed it at the blinds. They rose, revealing a wide panel of glass, divided by the smooth gunmetal curve of the Plate's edge in the distance.

Midgar glistened and glinted under the setting sun with mako reactor sweat, hard lights and jutting shards of metal. With the lifting of the blinds, the urban hum of traffic, clanking building works and steady heartbeat of a city filtered into the office. Midgar seethed like a dung heap.

Reeve turned back to the cat, which was flexing its toy paws like a baby straining to make its first fist. He gestured at the view of Midgar. "Does this help in any way?"

It hesitated, gave him a small but brisk nod. "Close them. Close the blinds. Please."

"Alright, alright. I'm closing them right now."

Reeve hurriedly pressed another button and the blinds slid down over the windows with a mechanical whir, muffling the sounds from the outside and cutting off what dim light had been trickling into the room.

The robotic cat slumped against the computer monitor, its eyes dull, although still unmistakably (miraculously) alive. They had simply turned inwards, which thrilled Reeve to an extent he hadn't imagined – not only was this AI potentially emotionally intelligent, it could also introspect.

He was itching to study its coding. Whoever had created this was a genius, a craftsman, a true artisan! A small part of Reeve was bitterly jealous that it hadn't been him.

"You still haven't given me your name," he reminded it and the cat started out of its reverie to look at him with wide, round eyes. "If you don't have a name yet, it's nothing to worry about. I'm sure you'll have one in due course, but perhaps you could tell me who it was that created you?"

White noise sputtered and the robot closed its eyes. "Oh, shit."

That was a puzzling reaction and not the one Reeve had expected. He made a mental note to put a language filter on his eventual Cait Sith model.

"I'm stuck in Cait Sith," the voice went on numbly as if Reeve wasn't there to hear it, "I've been beamed into Cait Sith, in the year 2000. I'm inside a robot toy cat, in the year 2000, and…" It stopped babbling and paused. "I'm not breathing."

"It's alright," Reeve tried to reassure it, partially trying to reassure himself at the same time, because the incredibly human horror in the AI's expression was starting to unnerve him. "It's alright. You are an artificial life-form. You don't need to worry about breathing. Judging by our conversation so far, I believe your creator programmed you to be as life-like as possible. Perhaps that has, unfortunately, led to a very strong delusion that you should be an organic being, but I can tell you quite plainly that you aren't, and that everything you are experiencing is perfectly normal."

"I'm not breathing," the voice repeated, now with an undeniable touch of hysteria. "I don't have a heartbeat. I can't…feel my eyeballs. I don't have any fingers. I…how the heck am I talking without a tongue?"

Goosebumps prickled over Reeves' skin. Everything the AI had said made it sound exactly like a real live young human man trapped inside Cait Sith against his will, but that was impossible. "If you calmed down I'm sure that we could work this out together - "

"I'm a…" the cat twisted to study the screen behind it, at the lines of coding winking down from the monitor, "I'm some kind of computer program…aren't I?"

All reassurances that Reeve had mustered up died on his tongue. "Yes," he said, "although, if it is any consolation, a stunningly life-like one."

So life-like it was almost cruel, he wanted to say, but chose not to. The cat stared down at the keyboard in front of its feet, and, for a moment, looked small and very, very lost.

It burst into laughter. The hairs on the back of Reeve's neck stood on end, and it laughed, laughed and laughed some more, shaking all over from pointed ears to paws, before dropping its voice to a hiss. "What did I say, Reeve? Didn't I say that something would go wrong as soon as you factored me into the equation? Didn't I tell you?!"

Reeve wasn't offended. He was, admittedly, scared to be sharing the room with a highly complex intelligence that he was starting to suspect was a little unstable, but he wasn't offended. Those angry words had been spat out in a fit of furious frustration. The AI wasn't concerned about who heard them, and, despite it mentioning his name, Reeve was almost certain that its anger wasn't meant for him.

"I'm nothing," it said simply, as if by voicing its thoughts it was affirming them, and it chilled Reeves' blood to hear it. "I'm a bunch of zeros and ones. I can't run or fight or breathe goddammit."

"Now, you listen here, young…man. You aren't nothing." Reeve looked into the robot's eyes and hoped that whatever was in there was listening. It seemed to have retreated inwards like an animal backing into its lair. "You are not nothing. You are an intelligence - you have the capacity to exist intelligently. This means that you can act and react. You can do things and cause other things to happen. That isn't nothing. That is an existence." He chanced a small smile when the robot blinked at him. "You are definitely not 'nothing' as you so grimly put it. Besides that, coding is meaningful, which means that you must mean something, and I think you mean something very important."

Something hardened in the robot's gaze and Reeve knew that he had said something wrong, but it was too late to take it all back.

"I can't stay here," the AI muttered, and there was something manic in its tone, the way its eyes darted from side to side. "I can't. I have to get out. I can't stay like this. There has to be a way out!"

"If you stay," Reeve said earnestly, "I will do all I can to help you."

The cat looked at him. It chuckled, shook its head. "You've done enough already."

Reeve opened his mouth to say something, anything, possibly to ask where it even imagined it could go, when he realised that the awareness was fading. It was falling away, withdrawing, sinking down into the depths of the glass beads.

The coding on his screen flashed once, and vanished.

The spark of intelligence winked out from the cat's eyes. The toy slumped over the keyboard and Reeve was alone.

The clock over the doorway ticked. Reeve's coffee break was supposed to have finished twenty minutes ago. It was a miracle that nobody had disturbed him and he thanked whatever god had been looking out for him this time, and then hoped they wouldn't come asking for favours. His coffee had long gone cold, but he drank it anyway. Coffee was still coffee and he could do with a bit of grim cold coffee reality after his experience with that rogue artificial intelligence. His hand, when he picked up the cup, shook.

He wondered where the AI had gone. There had been something fiercely stubborn and defiant in the robot's eyes before it had left Cait Sith's body. He couldn't imagine it self-destructing any time soon, and it would be such a terrible shame if it did. It had been so painfully human - it was a masterpiece of computing science.

And it was precisely because it was so human that the Reeve was dismayed with himself for not having pulled the plug on it when he had had the chance. He might as well as seen a monster-mauled man on the roadside and left him to walk to hospital on his own. That an AI that human could exist was wrong.

In any case, Reeve now had a new headache to contend with. Somebody out there had the expertise and the facility to create that intelligence and, the last he looked, that somebody was not Shinra. If it wasn't a Shinra creation, it was just as likely that the intelligence had been deliberately released as it had escaped from its masters, but for what purpose?

Where was it going to go next?

Reeve reached down to unplug the cable connecting Cait Sith to his Shinra-issued computer when the answer hit him like a truck full of goods from a sledgehammer factory.

Cait Sith had been connected to a Shinra computer, which was in turn connected to the Shinra offices computer network, and from there to the whole Shinra computing mainframe.

A short smart knock at the door. Reeve jumped and crammed Cait Sith into his desk drawer, closing it just before his secretary stepped into the room. "Mr Tuesti?"

Relax, try to look casual, but casual in a business-like way, like you negotiate contracts for train track production over your breakfast toast. Chasing away his thoughts of the mysterious AI, he forced his mouth into a smile. "Yes, Miss Wist?"

"Mr Tseng called."

Reeve picked up his cold coffee, sipped it, set it down. "Did he mention why?"

"He said that he tried to contact you on your PHS, but you had it switched off again." Her eyes roved around Reeve's office. "He wanted a report on any issues that may have arisen in the Department due to the blackout."

"The blackout?"

"About half an hour ago, Mr Tuesti. It only lasted for a minute or so, but the power went down through the whole Tower."

"Ah, yes, so it did. Have the other departments reported yet?"

"The Science Department had a containment chamber shutdown failure and they have several minor monsters loose on their floor. The others have yet to report. Some members of your department lost data on their projects and experienced computer errors."

Reeve didn't let his eyes drift to his own monitor. That would have been too telling. "I see. Thank you, Miss Wist. I will talk to Tseng as soon as I can."

Memories.

No skin, no flesh, no mako fire in his blood, or blood at all for that matter. He was thought and memory and nothing more, hung together by electric threads of awareness that were still jumping between moments of screaming clarity and quiet haze and leaving little time or room for him to simply be Cloud in between.

Was he floating? Perhaps not, there was no sense of weight here and without weight it was difficult to feel as though he was defying it, although feeling anything at all should have been out of the question - he didn't have a body to feel with.

It was similar to the times he had been dunked in mako, but whereas then he could still feel the limits of his body from the warm mako smoothness sliding over his skin, this time there was nothing. There was nothing to draw outlines around him and separate him from everything else.

He was at the heart of everywhere and his edges were nowhere.

Perhaps this was what it felt like to be part of the Lifestream, but he knew as soon as he had the thought that it wasn't. The Lifestream was full of souls and chatter, torrents of emotion, bursts of life. Here – here in the space he had escaped into, angry as wildfire and burning through every security program he saw – here there was only him, lonely as a seashell in a desert and it was just as desolate.

Cloud had been to many strange places in his time. He had fought Sephiroth at the core of the world, been to a forest that needed to be awakened by a harp, swum in the Lifestream and wandered inside his own mind. He hadn't thought anything could faze him anymore, but nothing had prepared him for the Shinra mainframe.

There were things around him, things he could perceive and sense, partially as if he could see them, partially as if they were rushing through him – they were all fish, and he was the sea, but at the same time he was in the sea, and he could see the flow of instant messages and e-mails shuttling to and fro between terminals and PHSs, the moments they were sent and received, and the Turk surveillance programs wrapped about each inbox, combing through the messages and scooping them up when enough warnings had been triggered to deliver them directly to a Turk for assessment.

He was fascinated, despite himself, and all in all, it was very effective diversion from the completely justified freak-out Cloud was trying to wrestle down, before it drove him crazy with the need to scream, laugh, cry or pick a fight with a wall without being able to do any of those things even if he wanted to.

The messages moved on around him, silent, unseen and uncaring about his problems. It was soothing, in its own way. With nobody beside him to care or look as concerned or pitying as Reeve had, Cloud's predicament didn't seem so bad. It allowed him to collect his thoughts together and settle them into place.

He thought he had handled waking up to the past pretty well, given that he had been streamed back to a year he barely remembered in any useful detail.

As data.

Into Cait Sith's yet-to-be-animated body.

To be confronted by a Reeve minus dentures and sixty years and a Midgar that had yet to be pounded into the earth by a meteorite.

On second thoughts, perhaps Cloud hadn't handled that as well as he could have. It was obvious now that he should have stayed in Cait Sith. He had fled from the robot in a fit of panic, claustrophobia and sheer shock at the inherent weirdness of the situation, but now that he had time to think about it, if he had stayed he would have had mouth to speak from, a moving body, and eventually Reeve would have found him a moogle to ride. Then he would have been free to go - Cloud Sith the Moogle-riding Time Traveller! It had a ring to it, of sorts.

Something strange drifted into his consciousness amongst the shoals of messages.

A very swift e-mail exchange was occurring between two particular inboxes and the e-mails were sliding through the Turk surveillance nets as if the e-mails were ghosts to the system. They had been cloaked in some way, disguised perhaps. Cloud wasn't sure. He had never known much about computers, but what he did know was that when others didn't want his nose in their business, that was precisely when his nose needed to be in their business.

He shifted his awareness towards the e-mail exchange to study it more closely.

The messages were being passed between a terminal on the Soldier floor and a laptop connected to the wireless network in a laboratory of the Science Department.

If he still had eyes, Cloud would have narrowed them.

Once in a while he wished that he was a decent enough of a person that after sixty years he no longer held grudges against certain people, departments, or companies, that had been, quite literally under Meteor, long ground into dust, but he was fooling no one, least of all himself.

Whatever dark feeling it was that he held towards the Science Department, and Soldier for allowing the Science Department to thrive in the way it had, he had spent fifty six years trying to bury down deep along with his regrets and seal over in new memories, fresh experiences, and better things from the future.

But here he was in the year 2000, before everything had begun, seated in the centre of Shinra building's computer network, without any real capacity to feel anger or pain or happiness except remembering the memories of those feelings, because that was all he was - a cloud of memories, perhaps even a Cloud of memories, and those grudges and regrets were embedded as bitterly in his memories as bullets he had failed to dig out from his wounds.

Unseen by the Turk surveillance and the participants, Cloud reached into the e-mail exchange and opened up the conversation. To his utter vengeful delight, he could see everything – the e-mails already written and the e-mail in reply the man in the Science Department was typing right then on his laptop.

And so Doctor Hollander and Director Lazard unwittingly found themselves with an invisible audience.

To: L Deusericus

Cc.: -

Subject: (none)

Lazard,

On testing samples of activated cellular matter from First Class Genesis Rhapsodos, I can confirm my previous speculation. His DNA has manifested an ability to hijack that of another organism and rewrite its sequences as identical to his own. Using Genesis's cells and full grown human specimens, we could produce a line of mature clones that not only retain the physical strength and characteristics of the First Class Soldier, but also his fighting abilities. There are also promising results that suggest Genesis would be able to control these clones in much the manner of a hive mind.

Would this not be suitable for the small fighting force you said would be necessary to deal with Soldier in the event of your seizing the company Presidency?

Doctor Greyson Hollander, Science Department

The name Genesis struck a curious bell in Cloud's memories. He remembered a newspaper clipping in the months before he had left for Midgar, something about a desertion in Wutai and taking a whole unit of Soldiers along with him. He had been declared missing or killed not long after. At the same time, Cloud also recalled a suddenly empty Soldier lounge, long days packed with missions as those who remained scrabbled to fill in for the missing, and the wild face of a red haired man as he crashed, burned and dragged down all those who were close to him. These had to be Zack's memories, which meant that somewhere in the Shinra Tower of year 2000, Zack Fair was a Soldier, pursuing his dream of becoming a hero and very much alive.

It would have been a nice thought if only Cloud had been in any position to physically do something, instead of lurking amongst the Shinra e-mails.

A new e-mail was sent out from the terminal in the Soldier Department. Cloud plucked it from the message flow.

To: G Hollander

Cc.:-

Subject: (none)

Hollander,

Genesis will only be useful if you can ensure his full cooperation and absolute loyalty to our cause. From what I can see of Genesis's service records, he has a tendency for insubordination and rash stunts. I would be cautious in expecting consistent good behaviour from him, and ideally I would rather we didn't have any more than one of him in existence.

You mention that this cloning ability has arisen parallel to a degeneration at a cellular level which you term 'degradation' and suggest it to be a mutation caused by the First Class Level mako exposure. Might there perhaps be a chance of First Class Angeal Hewley's or First Class Sephiroth's cells producing a similar effect?

Lazard Deusericus, Director of Soldier

Typical of Shinra. First Class Genesis was suffering from a mako-related illness and they hadn't spared a single a word of concern for his health or well-being, despite the Soldier being one of their elites. It was all cold calculation as to how his mutation could be used to this Lazard or Hollander guy's advantage. It was sickening but unsurprisingly ruthless.

To: L Deusericus

Cc.: -

Subject: (none)

In response to your question about Angeal, I have yet to obtain a recent enough cell sample from him to test for these effects. Sephiroth, however, we have confirmation that he does not present this cloning ability and likely never will.

I believe Genesis's loyalty can be easily secured. I raised the possibility of searching for a cure to his condition and I have never seen the man more attentive to what I was saying. I know Genesis well. He dislikes weakness, especially anything that reminds him that he is just as human – or less human, perhaps in his case - as the rest of us, and I think this degradation may affect him in such a way to make him susceptible to our offer.

Doctor Greyson Hollander, Science Department

To: G Hollander

Cc.: -

Subject: (none)

Do you think an offer of a cure will be enough in return for Genesis's cooperation? Who else knows about Genesis's condition?

Lazard Deusericus, Director of Soldier

To: L Deusericus

Cc.: -

Subject: (none)

Genesis is a selfish brute and always has been. He knows that the only alternative he has to a proffered cure is a slow humiliating death off the battlefield under the eyes of all his peers. I'm sure he will accept and he won't challenge your claim to the Presidency, so long as his own interests aren't interfered with.

The trick would be to sustain his hope for a cure long enough for the fight against Shinra. I have no doubt that he will desert our cause, and possibly betray us, as soon as we find him a cure. I can arrange for realistic setbacks to occur in the process and stall the research. In all honesty, however, it would be much more convenient if he could die towards the end of our venture. That way, we would not have to deal with him along with the inevitable takeover fallout. I might not be able to feasibly find a cure, but I'm sure I can keep him alive and mobile until we no longer need his clones.

As for who knows about Genesis's condition, at the current it is only me, you, and Genesis. He came directly to my laboratory after the accident. First Class Sephiroth and Angeal, who were sparring with him in the VR room, do not know that his injury has persisted.

I have told Genesis to rest and avoid others finding out about the degradation (to stall panic amongst the Soldiers - they might start thinking it could happen to them after long term mako exposure) and have received reports from catering that all meals had been delivered up to his living quarters since.

Doctor Greyson Hollander, Science Department

Anger, or the memory of it, rippled through Cloud, and even if it was just a memory it was intense enough to almost qualify as the real thing. Cloud didn't know this Genesis. Zack hadn't known him beyond being his mentor's oldest friend, and a dangerous man to cross both in a good mood (expect a spontaneous poetry recital) and bad (expect a spontaneous poetry recital whilst his rapier traced pretty red lines on your throat), but he still felt a deep dark rage swirl up inside him like a storm.

This man Genesis was wounded, sick and dying, and apparently isolated; Lazard and Hollander (both of the names were familiar, but the faces that went with them were hazy) were plotting to use him for their own ends, targeting him whilst he was emotionally, physically and mentally the most vulnerable he had ever been. Hollander didn't even sound in any particular hurry to find a cure for Genesis at all.

Cloud flicked through the earlier e-mails in the exchange. The more he read, the more his conviction grew.

Nobody, especially a dying man, should have their weaknesses used against them, to turn them into a puppet for another man's purpose.

But what could he possibly do about it? So he could see all the e-mails and spot the ones that were trouble – when it came to doing anything about them, he was stuck as smoke in a bottle.

He watched Hollander slowly type a new message, delete a whole paragraph and restart it, and an idea occurred to him that he decided to try the instant Hollander sent out his e-mail.

A stubby thumb on an Enter key later, the e-mail was sent. Cloud snatched it out of the message currents and nudged it open.

To: L Deusericus

Cc.: -

Subject: (none)

Watching Hollander had allowed Cloud to see with his new perceptions of data and code exactly how the keyboard input translated into letters. He focused on the e-mail, tried to recall how the inscription of each letter had felt in this weird new world and mimicked it, and, to his surprise and delight, the e-mail changed.

To: L Deusericus

Cc.: G Rhapsodos

Subject : (none)

Cloud released the e-mail back into the current and with a grim feeling of satisfaction watched it split into two – one copy flew on to Lazard's address, the other drifted out towards the inbox of a certain Soldier First.

The PHS vibrated next to the medicine box. Genesis paused in probing the wound in his shoulder and picked up the phone.

It was a call from Angeal, the sixth this evening.

Angeal's behaviour was a curiosity of contradictions. He wasn't going to visit in person because he thought he was respecting Genesis's wish of getting some rest, but he called so often it was a wonder how he imagined Genesis could rest at all with his incessant ringing.

He sighed, set the phone down by the box with a smart click, and breathing slowly down his nose, returned to examining the strange, ragged-edged wound in his shoulder.

He prodded at it with a pair of tweezers. It looked no better in the light of his bathroom than it had in Hollander's laboratory. At least it had stopped oozing, but the way the blood had congealed in the centre of the gash reminded him of days' old bodies.

He wrinkled his nose. The flesh around the wound was hard, like a soap bar.

Was there such a thing as localised rigor mortis on a living body?

Genesis pressed the tweezers against the skin, almost hoping it would hurt, but the wound defied all reason and science once again. He couldn't feel the tweezers, couldn't feel their sharp edges, the cool metal, or the pain that ought to have flared under their touch.

Hollander had told him not to aggravate it. Genesis had scoffed at him. After all, you could hardly aggravate something that was already dead.

A low hum. His PHS buzzed on the tiles.

He was half-tempted to throw the irritating device through the wall. There was a small chance that it would collide with the head of some poor fool sent to deliver something and shear off the top of his skull. Then they could cast call the Cures over the victim they liked. The secretary, cleaner, trooper on an errand would be irreparable, his 'wound' untreatable, and then Genesis could imagine, for one blissful moment, that it wasn't his body failing him at all, but the limits of human medicines.

He frowned and shook his head. He regretted it when his head swam, but the thin red veil that he had hardly noticed creeping over his mind dissipated like mist and it made him feel a little more balanced, if not entirely clear-minded.

What was wrong with him? He had standards, believe it or not. Phones just weren't worth throwing through anything. They broke too easily. The shape of the hole they left in the wall was as unimaginative and aesthetically interesting as a brick, and the gods forbid if any member of his fan club stumbled across his PHS in the hallway whilst - very often she, but there was plenty of ardent hes - was on stalking duty.

The PHS blinked up at him with its little green light.

"The wandering soul knows no rest," Genesis muttered, setting down the tweezers and picking up the phone again.

It was an e-mail this time. Perhaps Angeal had finally cottoned on that Genesis wasn't in any mood to talk right then, but when he flipped open the phone and checked the sender he found that it wasn't Angeal at all.

He frowned on seeing Hollander's name. There was no subject, but since Lazard had also received the e-mail, Genesis could guess what the contents would be. Possibly some sort of recommendation that Genesis be kept off missions' roster until they could find out why he wasn't goddam healing.

He clenched his teeth and tapped the phone against his forehead. The thought made Genesis want to burn something, preferably something alive with explosive gases in its veins, something that would burn well and viciously enough to fit his mood.

On that pleasant thought, he opened the e-mail.

A little later, Genesis snapped the PHS in his grip and swept out of his room on a quest for a new one.

Cloud saw a message arrive in Hollander's and Lazard's inboxes and couldn't resist a crooked inward smile.

To: G Hollander

Cc.: L Deusericus

Subject: Did you really intend to sic me into this?

Doctor Hollander, Director Lazard,

If either of you think that I am going to rely on the Doctor to develop a cure for me after reading this, you are gravely mistaken. I see now that you were attempting to manipulate me on the back of a false hope. If this is the best I can expect from Shinra, I would rather look for a cure myself and I would probably have better luck doing so.

Since the participants in this scheme were incompetent enough to, unintentionally I assume, sic me into what was obviously a private conversation, I can only think that whatever you plan is doomed to fail. I will have no part in it.

I would also like to speak on behalf of my cell samples in Professor Hollander's possession. You will not use them in this scheme. You can get your proposed 'clone army' from somewhere else – perhaps your lab assistants and junior scientists, Hollander, they all already look and sound and think the same. I doubt it would be much of a leap.

If you try to use Angeal or Sephiroth for your plans instead, I will see that a transcript of these e-mails finds its way to the top of Veld's in-tray and President Shinra's morning papers. You can be assured of my silence if you can prove to me that my colleagues (and their cells) will not be involved in your plans.

The arrow has left the bow of the goddess. Where shall it hit?

Genesis Rhapsodos, Soldier First Class

Chapter Text

To: G. Rhapsodos

Cc.: G Hollander

Subject: (none)

Genesis,

After Professor Hollander's recent indiscretion, I agree that aspects of my plans may be flawed and require reconsideration before taking further.

You have my word that neither Angeal nor Sephiroth will be involved in any future schemes so long as you retain your silence on this matter.

As for their cell samples, their rights to these cells are forfeit on collection by the Science Department, from the moment of which they belong to the company. I cannot make any promises concerning their use.

Lazard Deusericus, Director of Soldier

To: L Deusericus

Cc.: -

Subject: (none)

Lazard,

I sincerely apologise for my slip up with Genesis. I do not recall ever siccing him into the thread. I don't have any record of having sent him the e-mails and this confounds me as much as I'm sure it does you.

I suspect that a third party may be involved and a possible bug.

Greyson Hollander, Science Department

To: G Hollander

Cc.: -

Subject: (none)

Hollander,

I suggest that for the time being that you refrain from contacting me about this business.

Genesis is a sharp judge of character and I agree with his sentiment regarding your incompetence. Small mistakes are the stepping stones to larger ones and, considering what would be at stake, I cannot afford any more 'slip-ups'.

Doctor Hollander, you have been a researcher at Shinra for a good many years now. That there 'may be a bug' is the norm. It should come as no surprise to you.

I am also rather sad to learn you hold my surveillance bypass in such contempt as to think it could be cracked so soon.

As I have said already, please refrain from contacting me any further on this topic.

Lazard Deusericus, Director of Soldier

In the Shinra Company mainframe, Cloud was very pleased with himself.

He wasn't powerless after all. He had edited an e-mail.

It was a small start, but the logical leaps from that offered a giddying high of potential. It meant that he could write and delete and edit, and once he learned how to make e-mails from scratch, he could communicate with the outside world.

Cloud had all of Shinra's written communications bar its paper notes in his hands. He could delete funding requests from Hojo's laboratory over and over again until the Science Department fell into disrepair! He could redirect Soldier missions just by switching out the names of those involved and the places they would be going! Zack and Sephiroth, and Cloud himself, would never have to Nibelheim.

He really could change many, many things!

Unless, of course, the past that Cloud had already experienced was already the result of a future-Cloud's meddling.

The thought shot him down from his whirling high like a giant Meteor, grinding his momentary euphoria to dust.

It was true. What if Cloud really had been here already? Had Cloud landed in the past to make sure that all those terrible things happened to prevent a time paradox? Was he expected to oversee and encourage the events that led up, ultimately, to Meteor?

Cloud refused to believe it. Had a future-Cloud already been present in the background of all those events in his other past, things had to have happened the way they did because he had tried to stop them, not because he had triggered them. He couldn't bear to think it had been any other way.

If all those events had happened because a previous time-travelling Cloud had failed to stop them, then it was doubly Cloud's responsibility to ensure that they didn't happen again. He just had to try harder than the Cloud before him.

He had to do something. He had to at least try.

You're going back on your words, a wheedling voice at the edge of his consciousness whispered at him. Didn't you say that you wouldn't change the course of events even if you could? Is it worth creating a new past when all the good things that you know came after will be destroyed?

…but wasn't there a chance that all the good things could be destroyed and remade better?

Exactly! Cloud seized upon the thought and shoved the whispers aside. The future could be better! The future could be a place where Cloud didn't indulge the eccentricities of a senile gadget-man by trialling his time-crossing communication device and winding up trapped in the Shinra computer mainframe of the year 2000!

What better revenge could he have on the future than denying its existence?

Besides, affecting the future was the birth-right of every living thing. Despite everything, Cloud was still alive, wasn't he?

Wasn't he?

He put a hasty block on that thought. Instead, he turned his attention to the Shinra systems the mainframe covered: Personal terminals, PHSs, card access, locks, employee databases, archived files, all the outlets of public relations, security cameras and enforcement bots – here, from the centre of Shinra, Cloud could access everything. He would need time to adjust to his senses and explore his capabilities, but once he had learned how to play with all the available pieces, Shinra's internal affairs were his for the sabotaging.

This needed more targeted planning. He needed to make clear with himself what exactly a Better Future was and then work out how he could achieve it.

He would have to think more on the topic when he wasn't being distracted by the strange new world, but to see any plans for the future through to the long term, he would have to keep his meddling subtle. It was a shame really. The idea of hacking into the Shinra PA system and broadcasting the Science Department's human experimentation record for all to hear was very tempting.

Speaking of human experimentation, Cloud reminded himself, he needed to follow up on Genesis Rhapsodos. That man had deserted Shinra's army in Wutai sometime around this period. He certainly hadn't been at Shinra when Cloud had arrived. What the circumstances behind the desertion were, Cloud could only guess, but the point was, Genesis had a record of willingly shrugging off duties to both company and friends to pursue his own ends – even if he had yet to actually do such a thing in this timeline. When Genesis had said he would go and find a cure for his degradation himself, he was very likely to do just that.

Except Cloud had seen the messages travelling to Genesis's inbox all day – mostly from a Soldier First Class Angeal Hewley (a Soldier Zack remembered with a warm respect and burdened sadness), but there were a couple from Sephiroth too – messages reminding Genesis of his duties, telling him about the missions they had covered for him, speculating on when the three of them would be sent to Wutai, asking whether if he would be up for a meal or a couple of bouts in the evening. Essentially, they were both checking up on Genesis in the most roundabout way possible to avoid scraping his pride.

Genesis had friends looking out for him even as he tried to push them away and keep them at arm's length at the times he should have needed them most.

Remind you of anybody? spoke up that dry little whisper at the back of his thoughts.

Shush.

For the moment, Cloud was busy wrapping his mind around Sephiroth being a concerned friend of any sort to anybody. A series of impossible images paraded through his consciousness: Sephiroth the Winged Menace checking his phone, Sephiroth the God Who Almost Was at an office desk, Sephiroth the Bringer of Doom to all Mankind taking a moment between paperwork to type out an e-mail.

Clearly none of these images were impossible anymore but they were still required Cloud to his force his mind into shapes that couldn't be healthy for his sanity.

The idea of Sephiroth being alive again had apparently not sunken in yet. It was possibly because Cloud hadn't seen him yet, but when that bombshell finally dropped on him, Cloud certainly hoped he had some other outlet for his frustration in cyberspace other than messing with Shinra's e-mails, or else the technicians would be dealing with a flood of complaints as to why all their messages had been replaced with a single typed out scream.

It had surprised Cloud a little when Genesis had demanded both protection for Angeal and Sephiroth from Lazard and Hollander's plans. To be fair to the man, it shouldn't have surprised Cloud at all, but he had been a deserter in Cloud's previous past. If he cared about the other two Firsts at all, why had Genesis left?

Now that he came to think of it, Angeal Hewley hadn't been around when Cloud joined Shinra either. Something must have happened to break these three Firsts apart, and whatever it was, it was going to happen soon.

The most obvious 'something' would be Genesis's degradation. Hollander had referred to an accident in his e-mails involving Sephiroth and Angeal, where Genesis was wounded and his degradation discovered shortly after. Hollander had already encouraged Genesis to isolate himself and keep his condition a secret. On top of that, Genesis's pride, or insecurity, or maybe it was just that special brand of insanity that seemed to come with the title of First Class was already threatening to drive the tip of a wedge between them.

Something was going to start from Genesis's degradation that would result in Angeal and Genesis leaving Shinra and Sephiroth continuing on, lonely at the top.

A thought occurred to Cloud. Wouldn't it be easier to deal with Sephiroth if the other two Firsts were alive? He had no idea what their skill or strength was, but seeing as Cloud was a puff of binary tucked into the heart of Shinra and wasn't going to be swinging a sword any time soon, he needed somebody around the place who could fight on Sephiroth's level - if Cloud couldn't manage to kill him before Nibelheim.

Cloud turned his thoughts back to Hollander and Lazard's e-mails. He had a niggling feeling that he had missed something important, and after sieving his memories he remembered with a jolt.

A clone army. Genesis's cells turned those who received them into his clones, and they had been planning to make a clone army from them. Even in Cloud's books of Extraordinary Phenomena I Have Seen and Wished that I Hadn't, a clone army was far from normal, but more to the point, hadn't an ability to trigger her own replication by taking over the bodies of others been a famous property of Jenova?

Cloud cursed to himself. Had he a body, he would have been pacing around in cyberspace, his arms folded, his strides short and tense.

Damn the Science Department, damn Shinra and damn the thrice damned Soldier program! Was Genesis a host for Jenova cells as well? If he was, killing Sephiroth would all be for nothing. Genesis could just as easily be sent to Nibelheim and take his place. Then what of Angeal? Was he another potential 'son' of Jenova? How many 'sons' had Shinra created in their quest for their so-called Promised Land?!

Cloud didn't know enough about either of the other two Firsts to make any useful decisions. That had to change. He couldn't afford to be ignorant, not this time. He needed to know if they were related to Jenova, and how they were likely going to be a threat to his plans.

He hummed to himself and shifted through the swirling data sea.

There was one department that, if it was doing its job probably, ought to provide him with answers. Stretching out the fingers of his awareness, Cloud located the Science Department's file area and drifted towards it, curious to test his abilities.

He was disappointed to find that one thing he couldn't do yet was get into the Science Department's files. Apparently somebody exceptionally paranoid had put it under the metaphysical version of triple-lock, retina scan, voice recognition and blood test 'authorised MHC here only' security and Cloud was still figuring out how to lift the door handle.

He bit back his frustration, but promising to himself that he would come back once he was wiser he turned away to go hunting elsewhere.

Hollander's laptop, for example. He could feel it connected up to the intranet like an open sluice-gate letting water flow into a lock. If Hollander had been studying Genesis's degradation, there was a high chance he had something useful on his disks, and if Cloud could get out of Cait Sith and Reeve's PC, in theory, he ought to be able to get into the laptop without much trouble.

He tried to recall the experience of flowing he had felt on leaving Reeves' computer, imagined reversing it, and suddenly he was supple, cold and trickling down a canal into a space packed with the silent noise of resting data, like bats tucked up on the ceiling of a cavern, occasionally stretching their wings and clacking teeth. All the firewalls and anti-virus software were pitiful in the face of Cloud.

After the lack of boundaries and walls inside the mainframe, the sudden bottling into Hollander's laptop was tight and suffocatingly restrictive. For a moment he was trapped in a loop of claustrophobic panic. The same urge to claw at the walls that harried him to flee from Cait Sith rose up in him again like a scream…

He took a metaphysical deep breath. It was alright. He could flow free from Hollander's laptop any time he wanted. He was just going to look around, search for anything containing possible references Genesis or Jenova, and hopefully find something reasonably useful so that he could formulate his plans.

He found what he was hoping for much faster than he anticipated, because when Cloud slipped inside his computer, Hollander was busy updating records on Project G with all the new observations from Genesis's cells.

Cloud left the laptop with a copy of the file tucked under his proverbial armpit, and Hollander remained blissfully ignorant of the theft that had occurred right under his very fingers.

"The next time I say that I am going to take on a mother Behemoth and her three children alone and unhindered, you will respect my wishes or I will disrespect your rights to remain amongst the witless living. Do you understand or do I need to arrange to have this tattooed onto your knuckles?" Genesis snapped, whirling on his heels to confront the two Second Class Soldiers slathered in black monster ooze behind him.

"We understand, sir," mumbled the two Seconds despondently, dripping slime onto the floor. "Sorry, sir."

Genesis huffed. Honestly, these two men had the build of fruit stalls and looked as though they had melons waiting to burst from their arms and they were twiddling their fingers and scuffing their shoes like nervous children! Genesis would have laughed if he hadn't just been (not saved, dammit, definitely not saved) assisted in a death match gone wrong with a Behemoth.

"But – er - Sir?"

He shot the Second a look that dared him to continue if he valued his life, but there was clearly something about Soldiers - maybe all that mako mucked up their instincts for self-preservation - because the hapless Soldier Second went on to ask: "Are you alright, sir? Because you seemed to be in a bit of pain when you went in for the cut over – "

"Sir," his partner interjected as Genesis's smile started to take on the shiny curved look of a drawn scimitar, "it was a privilege following you on this mission today. We apologise for getting in the Behemoth's way - I mean, your way."

"Good." Genesis continued to smile at the pair of Seconds for another uncomfortable minute, before he pulled off his gloves and gestured at them to go away with an imperious flick of his hand. "Then this is where it's customary for me to say, 'well done, thank you for your efforts, today you have done good in the name of Shinra, etcetera, etcetera', so! Well done, thank you for your efforts, today you have done good in the name of Shinra. There! Joy to the world! I've said it now, so if the two of you can now exit stage left and find somewhere with a shower and lots of soap, I'll be much happier with the view currently in front of me."

"Yes, sir! Thank you, sir."

"You are dismissed."

The Second Classes clicked their heels, saluted and went on their way. To Genesis's amusement they left behind a track of sticky black bootprints across the reception floor, earning them some very pointed looks from the receptionists until a cleaning robot trundled out from behind a potted plant and started sucking up the slime from the carpet.

He watched the robot apply what looked like a small hair-drier to a footprint before making his way to the lifts. He had a feeling that the temp girl at the reception desk had piped up a request for an autograph, but it was quiet enough that he could pretend he hadn't heard it. He brushed her aside, stepped into the first lift that came and pressed the button for his floor.

Soon the lift was rising, smooth and slow. For anybody with normal hearing it would have been utterly silent, but with Genesis's enhanced hearing he could hear the wires creaking above and below him and the scour of the cable on the pulley. He preferred it to oppressive silence. It reminded him of how precariously close anything living always was to death. He thought it was rather fitting for Soldier 'lift music'.

Bracing himself for the state of his coat, Genesis glanced down at himself. He grimaced at the splatter of black blood smeared across the hems and inwardly raged.

This would never have happened before the accident!

The whole point of the red leather longcoat was that it was a boast of his skill! And excellent aesthetic taste!

He paused. Alright, perhaps the display of skill wasn't the whole point, but it was a very large part of the point. That he could move through a battlefield in that cumbersome longcoat coat without getting a single mark on it, just as well as Sephiroth could, was something Genesis had taken great pride in. No, not just as well as Sephiroth – better than Sephiroth. Sephiroth flapped around in his monstrous black cloak like a giant bat. Genesis, on the other hand flew with style, and panache.

But now the red leather longcoat stank of monster, the hems were stiffening with drying blood, and his reflection in the window looked strained and just slightly stunned. He had taken on Behemoths many times before. He knew what he needed to do to bring them down, what cuts to use, where to apply them, how fast he needed to move, and yet, this time, he had needed the intervention of a couple of green-eared Seconds to get him out of his mess.

"You don't get between a predator and its prey." He remembered the reckless dive of one of the Seconds straight into the path of the angry Behemoth sow, blocking Genesis's attack. "Isn't that one of the first things they teach you in the Monster Behaviour seminars?"

Before he knew it, he had bunched his hands into fists, and he would have punched a sizeable hole into the window if the lift doors hadn't chosen that moment to chime and open wide.

A small man in a grey suit. He looked like an accountant. He stepped into the lift, carrying an armful of paperwork, took one look at Genesis standing by the window glass with his fists raised and went deathly pale.

Genesis flashed him a thin-lipped smile. "Are you sure you don't want to use the other lift?"

The man slowly backed out.

"Well done." Genesis kept his hands clenched and his smile taut. "Your head will remain on your neck for one more insignificant day of your insignificant life."

The doors closed on the terrified accountant's face. Genesis lowered his hands to his sides.

The look on all their faces, of everybody who wasn't in Soldier, the way they quailed and cowered and stared! It wasn't hero worship at all. It wasn't envy either. It was the very same look that they gave the monsters the Soldiers sometimes captured, be it on a dissecting slab, in a cage or an observation chamber. Prey recognised predators by instinct and when the soft, sheltered, little people of Midgar and Shinra looked at the Soldiers their hearts saw monsters in human skin.

And the little people had been right all along. What human being could turn other men into their own mindless copies just by a sample of his DNA?

The doors of the elevators opened onto the Soldier habitation floor. It was already late in the evening, so the corridors were largely empty, and when the odd Second saw him stalking by towards them in the same foul mood as he when he had left for the mission, they sensibly made themselves scarce.

Angeal had left a note on his door. Apparently he was pleased to hear that Genesis was out on missions again, but had been poached by Shinra for a Soldier recruitment event in Junon. It happened quite often these days. Sephiroth the long-time Shinra poster boy had gotten cleverer over the years and somehow always managed to disappear on a week-long expedition just when the recruitment events came round. In Sephiroth's absence, Shinra PR had turned to Angeal. Angeal could swing a sword that was roughly the same height and weight as his favourite student. There wasn't a single more obvious display of how mako could enhance a body, and, unlike Genesis's Rapier, the Buster was big enough to be seen by the kids at the back of the crowds.

Lately, however, the PR department had started sparing Sephiroth the tedium of the events to check Angeal's availability first. Angeal was just too good at what he did. He was far more patient with the potential recruits and their questions than Sephiroth had ever been. PR had never asked Genesis to go to a recruitment fair. They probably thought Genesis, with his lean build and toothpick of a blade, would make potential recruits think they were being scammed, or perhaps they simply didn't dare.

Genesis tore down the note from his door and pushed into his room.

It was as he was peeling off his coat and trying to recall what floor number for Shinra's dry-cleaning service that his PHS buzzed on the table.

It was an e-mail, but what made Genesis pause as he opened his PHS to have a check it properly was that the sender's name was blank, not a dot or dash or letter in sight.

There was however a subject:

In case you think this spam, I know about your degradation so I suggest you read on

That word 'degradation' slapped Genesis in the face like the flat side of Angeal's Buster. The PHS creaked under the pressure of his fingers.

He strained his ears for the tell-tale whine of a Turk bug somewhere in his room and heard nothing. Glancing over his shoulders for good measure, he opened the e-mail.

To: G. Rhapsodos

Cc.: -

Subject: In case you think this spam, I know about your degradation so I suggest you read on

First Class Genesis Rhapsodos,

If you value your friends in anyway, you will listen to what I have to say. This is not because I am holding them hostage. I am trying to appeal to you as a human being, since that is what you are.

Genesis snorted, but read on nonetheless, although his head was buzzing with an explosion of questions. The sender had kicked a mental hornet's nest.

Please take some time to read the attached file. I took this file directly from Hollander's laptop and I think it should answer most of the questions you might have about degradation and its causes.

Once you have read the file, send me a reply. You do not need to worry about the Turks. They will not see these e-mails. This I can promise, although, since you don't know who I am I will understand if my promises mean very little to you.

"Exactly so," Genesis murmured, contemplating the strange e-mail, "and how am I supposed to reply to somebody without an address? Care to tell me that?"

Was this a trap? Was this an elaborate scheme by the Turks to catch Genesis out as a traitor to the Company? Had they seen his potential involvement in Lazard and Hollander's coup and decided to lure him out with a leaked file?

Having said that, what did it matter anyway? He was planning on the leaving the Company as soon as a mission took him somewhere Shinra's influence was weaker. Wutai, for example. Once there, he could disappear into the enemy territory and start looking for a cure to his degradation himself. As soon as he could be assured that Angeal and Sephiroth weren't going to be used by two men who thought little of disposing of them like snotty tissues, Genesis was ready to strike out on his own.

He was already a traitor at heart and, to be honest, he was almost curious to see those Turks just try to bring him in.

With an icy trickle of anticipation running down his spine, Genesis set up his laptop on his desk and re-opened the e-mail. The attachment was a classified document. The first page was a title-page, printed in crisp manuscript font and headed in bold capital letters, emblazoned across a Science Department watermark.

PROJECT G

Report 1: 14 October 1979

G Hollander, F Sommszy, R Matthenson, K Machiya, G Hewley et al.

Objective: The reproduction of Ancient abilities in humans via the implantation of Ancient cells into human foetuses.

Abstract: Here we report on our first success in infusing a human foetus with Ancient cells via the vector of a mature human female host. Foetus remained stable during development and was delivered safely to term without difficulties. Ancient cells were fully incorporated into the blastocyst without any need for strong external stimuli and contributed to the embryo.

Through real-time imaging of the foetus' cells, as well as gene rearrangement analysis, we found that close contact exposure to the Ancient cells produced chimeric genomes and mimicry of DNA methylation and SNP distribution in foetal cells, suggesting a high potential for manifestation of an Ancient's abilities in the future.

Thus our findings indicate that Ancient cells that have been previously acclimatised to a human physiological environment in a mature human host (G Hewley) can be used to successfully produce an Ancient/human hybrid embryo.

Infant born without physical defects to V Rhapsodos and remains under observation.

He felt cold all over as if doused in melting snow. Genesis read on, his fingers twitching on the mouse, eyes glued to the screen, his blood seething as he turned page after page.

There were tables, charts, pictures of fluorescing proteins and cells stained a spectrum of colours, interspersed with ultrasound pictures of a developing human baby, health reports first of 'G. Hewley' and later 'V. Rhapsodos', and a meticulously detailed record of how Genesis had been created.

Specimen, hybrid, chimera, acclimatised cells - If he hadn't already thought himself a monster Genesis would have been convinced of it now, but 'G. Hewley'? Wasn't Angeal's mother a 'Gillian' Hewley? Genesis had vague memories of calling a stern but gentle-faced woman 'Ms Jill' when he was younger, but how had she come to be involved in this experiment?

And as Genesis turned a page, his mind swimming with questions, he found himself slamming his fist onto the table in a burst of outrage.

It was incomplete! The file this anonymous sender had sent him was incomplete! He had piqued Genesis's interest this much and he had the nerve to keep him hanging?

With a ferocious tapping of keys, he tossed down a reply (This is only half the file. Where is the rest of it? Who are you? What do you want from me?) and sent it before he could realise just how ridiculous it was that he was sending an e-mail without an address and expecting it to be received.

To Genesis's astonishment, seconds later, a new message appeared in his inbox, again without a sender address.

It was little like watching writing being inscribed on a wall by an invisible hand.

I sent only half of the Project G file because I didn't think you would reply to me otherwise. I thought you would take the file and run. I am sorry I had to drip feed the information like this. I will give you the rest of the file when I am finished here.

What do I want from you?

My guess is that you are planning on leaving the Company to search for a cure to degradation by yourself as soon as you can. You feel that Shinra has betrayed you, and, yes, it has.

Doubly so, now that he read that file and learned how Shinra had been keeping the truth from him all these years. Genesis grimaced and narrowed his eyes.

As you can probably work out from the contents of the first part of the Project file, the cells of the 'Ancient', processed through Gillian Hewley's body, are the cause of your degradation. Since Gillian Hewley's body contained these cells, there is a high chance that your friend First Class Angeal Hewley will also be affected by degradation.

I want you to reconsider leaving the Company. Aside from the obvious that your leaving will abandon Angeal here to face degradation alone, with nobody but Hollander to understand what is happening, I also can't help but think that deserting will just drive you straight into the hands of people who would want to use you. Hollander or Lazard will probably approach you again, and when you are a sick and dying fugitive, without any allies, I think you will find it much harder to refuse whatever they offer you.

They will find a way to make use of you, they will get away with whatever plans they have involving you and you will not see a cure. They will use you and then leave you to die.

A concerned stranger

Genesis curled his fingers over the keyboard. How dare this man, or woman, or whoever it was - this stranger! - dare to look down on his capabilities in this way? Genesis would survive fine on his own, be he rotting inside out or not! And how dare he bring Angeal into this? Who did he think he was?

The clock on his desk pointed delicate blue steel hands at the passing minutes. Genesis sent his reply.

Stranger,

I am insulted you think I cannot manage on my own and that I will need somebody within Shinra to help me get by. I will survive whatever is thrown at me and I refuse to be bullied this way into giving up my plans simply because you are holding Angeal's life hostage against me.

Angeal's degradation is only a vague possibility. Worst comes to worst, I will be setting out to find a cure for the both of us. Angeal can stay here, with his honour, dignity and reputation intact and all the things he cares about around him. The only one who needs to fall is me, and Angeal will not be alone if Sephiroth remains.

I notice that you don't talk about Sephiroth. He is different from the two of us, isn't he? I imagine that he isn't part of Project G at all, but another Project altogether. He won't degrade like the rest of us, will he? I'm right, aren't I?

Trust Sephiroth to always be the perfect one.

You seem to have sent me this HALF of a file (may I remind you) to convince me not to desert Shinra. All it has done is confirm exactly what I already thought to be true: We Soldiers are monsters, and we three Elite are the most monstrous of them all.

It is the way of the monster - a creature that knows no love in the world and never will – to carve itself a place of its own by force of its own will, and run, and destroy, and cause pain to others. I am just doing as a monster is a meant to do.

Shinra made me the monster that I am. Forgive me as I pay my due respects to Shinra by behaving like the one I was born to be.

Genesis Rhapsodos, Soldier First Class

He sat back from his laptop, felt something twist inside at his own words like a poison he had been forced to swallow. He could taste his own self-loathing at the back of his mouth.

A soft chime. A new message. He hesitated before opening, and then pushed himself to open it when he realised he was behaving like a trooper over a letter of acceptance to Soldier. No attached file, he noticed with some annoyance. The stranger was determined to keep him talking.

Genesis would be damned before he walked away with only half of the whole truth.

Genesis,

There. You've said it yourself.

You know that you will cause pain and you know that you will be acting exactly in the way that the Company wants. They wanted to use you for your clone-production ability. They want you to think that you are a monster in order that they can use you as exactly that - a monster, with none of the rights of a human being.

Are you really going to let Shinra direct what you believe about yourself? As for behaving like the monster you were created to be, well, the glue on the back of sticky notes was supposed to be used for aeroplanes.

I'm surprised that you're so quick to condemn your friends as monsters. I can't say much for Sephiroth, but Angeal seems about as far from a monster as anybody.

A concerned stranger

'I can't say much for Sephiroth'? Did this stranger know Sephiroth? How could he know Sephiroth? Sephiroth was about as subtle in the sea of human relations as an iceberg the size of the Gold Saucer. If Sephiroth had got to know anybody outside of their smallest of circles, be it as a friend or an enemy, Genesis and Angeal would definitely have seen the ripples of the crash.

Genesis stared up at the ceiling. The white paint was peeling. He focused on a crack in the wall from where he had last 'accidentally' skewered a Turk bug with his rapier and thought as hard as he could without inducing a migraine, as tended to happen these days.

This was getting difficult. This stranger who had obtained the files of Project G, with his tease of all the information he had and could offer, his possible tie to Sephiroth (because wouldn't it be great to have something to get under Sephiroth's skin with?), his e-mails that came from nowhere was intriguing Genesis, and the more intrigued he became, the more he could feel his own determination to leave Shinra at the nearest possible opportunity slipping. Here was a new mystery, shiny as a freshly printed book, so new the leather still smelt of the ink of the publishing house and not the hands of an owner, and it infuriated him that this stranger - with his impeccable timing in interfering with Genesis's plans! - could distract him like this.

And the angrier and more indignant Genesis got with this 'concerned stranger' (Concerned? Concerned? In what way was this stranger 'concerned'? All he had been so far was rude!) the more he wanted to stay at Shinra where this know-it-all stranger was, so that Genesis could investigate and find out exactly who he was.

Then the stranger could try and hide behind the anonymous mask of cyberspace all he liked. Genesis would finally know him, and he would finally come face to face with this one person who seemed to be on Genesis's side...

He stared at the crack his rapier had left in the wall, a warm pride in his superhuman accuracy and strength mingling with a newfound disgust.

No, this stranger wasn't on Genesis's side, and he was a fool to think anybody would be.

The stranger didn't know Genesis like he seemed to know Sephiroth. He had never tried to contact Genesis before his accident or Hollander and Lazard's e-mail exchange. This stranger was, even now, withholding information Genesis knew was his goddam rightto know. The only reason he had come forward with the Project G information in the first place was to stop Genesis deserting for some mysterious purpose of his own.

With a slow burn of amusement, Genesis cracked his knuckles and typed a new message for the stranger.

Stranger,

What do you gain from my remaining here? What are you so 'concerned' about that you are trying to stop me from leaving Shinra?

Genesis Rhapsodos, Soldier First Class

Cloud had been waiting for Genesis to ask. As far as he could tell, Genesis wasn't (entirely?) stupid. If the question hadn't been asked sooner or later, he would have thought Genesis wasn't taking him seriously. Shaping his e-mail by mimicking the structure of how all the other e-mails looked in the mainframe world and wrapping it up in a copy of Lazard's surveillance bypass, he sent Genesis the answer that he had had some time to prepare.

Cloud had read through Project G's contents himself. There was no way Cloud was going to let either Genesis or Angeal leave Shinra Company's reach until Nibelheim was over. He wanted the Firsts where he could see them and know what they were doing. Since Cloud was at the centre of Shinra, he needed to keep them here with him.

The message that returned to Genesis was short.

Revenge on Shinra and all of its secrets.

Cloud wasn't lying. In changing this past so that the Nibelheim incident and Sephiroth's Reunion never happened, Cloud would be denying Shinra of the fruits of all its years of experimentation and everything that the Soldier program had been leading up to. It gave Cloud an odd sort of pleasure to think he could hinder Shinra's advance, and, besides that, if fate had chosen to dump Cloud back in the past when he had been quite content with his future, he rather felt fate owed him the satisfaction of at least some revenge where it was due.

As soon as Cloud worked out how to make it happen, Hojo's days were going to more numbered than his latest brood of lab rats.

In front of his laptop, Genesis sighed.

Genesis savoured his tragedies. He had a special place in a secret part of his heart for comedies. The occasional romance was chocolate mousse for the soul, but there was nothing quite like watching the good old-fashioned revenge drama play out in all its often bloody glory. It was becoming difficult to resist the stranger's demands, especially when a whisper with a decidedly vengeful bent was rubbing against Genesis's own soul like an attention-seeking cat.

He'd only seen half of Project G's file. Already he wanted to see Doctor Hollander boil in acid, and preferably gas the Science Department as he did it.

It was a heady and dangerous thing revenge, and all the more thrilling to observe for it.

Genesis didn't need to leave Shinra really. He could always go looking for a leads to a cure on the side of his missions, or take a sabbatical – surely he'd earned one? – and go on a merry jaunt around the world without needing to camp out in swamps and marshes, or look over his shoulders for old comrades coming after him. Shinra in Midgar had more experts in Soldier physiology concentrated in a single building than any other university or town he knew. Until he became aware of any alternative laboratories, facilities and talented scientists he could poach outside of Shinra, he would be better off staying where he was.

Then he could watch over whatever this stranger seemed to have planned for the Company, and if he proved to be more than just bold words, well then, it might be worth seeking him out. It was always useful to have allies in vengeance.

Damn this stranger! He was distracting Genesis from his troubles, and what's more, Genesis couldn't persuade himself that he didn't want to be distracted. He wanted something to take his mind off his degrading body, and here was a mystery wrapped in a ribbon of secrets and presented with such perfect timing that he couldn't help himself.

But he wasn't going to go give in so easily.

Genesis set his fingers to the keyboard.

Stranger,

I have reconsidered. I have decided that I will not leave Shinra in the foreseeable future. Instead, I will stay to watch you attempt to carry out your revenge and get my full fill of entertainment as you struggle to accomplish whatever it is you have in mind.

However, agreeing to remain with Shinra will most likely condemn me to a slow and painful decay until my death. Therefore, as you are preventing me from finding a cure for myself I feel that it is only fair that you, concerned stranger , help me to find a cure for my - and potentially Angeal's as you so graciously pointed out - condition in my stead.

Can you fit that into your schedule of vengeance, stranger?

Genesis Rhapsodos, Soldier First Class

If this stranger with his access to secret Shinra files could also look for potential cures, between the two of them, Genesis had a tentative hope that something could be found to help him, although Genesis was also getting a vindictive delight out of foisting his troubles on this nameless person. If this stranger wanted to interfere in Genesis's troubles, then let him interfere and choke on them.

The reply wasn't instantaneous. In fact, Genesis had time to draft his report for his most recent (near disastrous) monster clearance mission, trim his nails and polish his sword until it gleamed coppery red in the dim light of his room before his inbox chimed again.

He set Rapier down across his knees and clicked on the message.

Genesis,

You won't find a cure for degradation from me. I might know others who could help, but for me to reach them will likely take a lot of time and the chances that you can be helped are slim. I'm not going to lie to you by offering up a cure straight off, but I'll do what I can to look into it.

Thank you for reconsidering. I'm going to hold you to your word.

I attach the other half of the Project G file. I'll leave you to decide what to do with it. It's your secret, not mine.

A concerned stranger

The stranger was true to his word, and at last, after all those e-mails, there was the attachment with the rest of the file for Project G. Genesis couldn't wait to read it, even though the idea of what was within those pages repulsed him as much as he craved to know it.

Even though Genesis suspected that the stranger wouldn't have released the rest of the file until Genesis had agreed, he didn't blame the stranger for that. Genesis was stubborn. It had probably been a wise move and if their positions had been reversed, Genesis knew he would have done the same.

One last message then, before he settled down to reading and hopefully had the whole thing skimmed through by the time the canteen opened for dinner. He had had enough of phoning down to catering and eating alone in his room, especially if it was what Hollander wanted him to do. Both Angeal and Sephiroth were out, but that didn't mean he couldn't collar a few of the Seconds or Thirds he had taught straight blade techniques to and take on in a spar afterwards. Around fifteen Thirds or ten Seconds should be a bit of fun.

My concerned stranger,

Thank you.

There was no reply, but Genesis hadn't been expecting one.

A month went by and Midgar entered autumn, although most could scarcely believe it from the arid breeze still sweeping in off the wastelands and the crisp blue skies overhead.

Genesis had transferred the file for Project G to a standard Shinra issue pen disk, which he kept in his longcoat's breast pocket, nestled against his copy of Loveless. He carried it with him wherever he went, ready for when he needed to either present it to Angeal or use for his own purposes. The stranger had said it was Genesis' to do what he wished with, after all.

Since receiving the file, however, Genesis had heard nothing from the 'concerned stranger', and neither had he seen hide or hair of his supposed vengeful activities. The silence irritated and unnerved him in equal uncomfortable measure. It reminded Genesis all too much of how he felt in the marshes of the Midgar Zolom. He would know that the great bulk of the Zolom was swimming nearby, possibly just beneath the surface of the grey-green marsh waters, possibly deeper down, but so long as it remained unseen and apparently inactive, all he could do was chew on his tongue and think in circles. Angeal had called it 'fretting' once and got a Firaga in the face a moment later.

Oddly enough, seeing Genesis grinding his teeth and huffing about apparently nothing seemed to put Angeal and Sephiroth at ease around him again. The brooding, surly and intensely private Genesis of the past few weeks they had treated like a rolled-up hedgehog Lazard had dropped into their bare hands. Irritated, mood-swinging, teeth-gnashing Genesis, however, they knew exactly how to handle.

"It's good to see you acting like yourself again." Angeal clapped his hand onto Genesis's shoulder on their way to Lazard's office. "You know, Genesis, we were actually starting to worry."

"Well, I never asked you to worry about me, so if you worried needlessly, then that is your own fault and most certainly not mine."

"Perhaps you're right, but in our line of work, I don't think there is such a thing as needless worry." Angeal reached over his shoulder to gently touch the hilt of the Buster Sword strapped to his back like a talisman. "It's all too easy here to lose sight of what matters to us the most."

"Oh, goody, I knew I was due my monthly dosage of 'dreams and honour' sometime soon. Wake me up when we get to Lazard's office – I'll sleepwalk to the sound of your dulcet tones until then," Genesis grumbled, but Angeal took it in his stride as he always did and they fell into companionable silence. "Is Sephiroth coming to this meeting?"

"He's already there."

"Oh, he would be early, wouldn't he?"

Angeal knocked before entering the office. Inside, Sephiroth was indeed already waiting for them, sat in one of the chairs arranged around Lazard's desk with his legs stretched out in front of him as though measuring the length of the desk.

"Ah, gentlemen," said Lazard, looking up from the papers he was shuffling in his hands, "take a seat."

Angeal settled in the chair to the right, giving Sephiroth a nod in greeting and leaving the one in the centre for Genesis. As soon as Genesis had sat down, Lazard leaned across his desk, laced his fingers together and dropped one word between them: "Wutai."

At last. Rumours had been flying and it was almost a relief to hear them confirmed. The Wutai War had been reaching vicious levels of ferocity again as drew on, but reports from the troopers already there seemed to suggest that it was final snapping of a cornered animal. There were some who predicted that the war would be finished by the following spring, if not earlier. President Shinra was keen to see it end as soon as possible. He was bored with Wutai, frustrated by the resources being poured into it with apparently little to show for it, tired of dancing around shareholders and eager to set his sights on a fresh target to bully into submission.

As the Firsts listened, Lazard outlined a plan to dispatch at least one of them to Wutai and bring the war to an end. There was a fort that, if secured, would considerably strengthen Shinra's position in the region and cut down the projected timescale until Wutai surrendered by two months.

"I think in the final push, the Soldiers and troops already out there could do with a morale booster, as well as the additional strength that having one of you three with them could provide." Lazard adjusted his glasses and peered over the top of his hands. "Now, personally I would like to see a quick end to this war. I don't want to lose any more good Seconds and Thirds than I have to and we've lost far more than we had originally forecast. Sending all three of you at once would certainly be the answer to that. The President, however, expressly wishes that at least one of you stays behind in Shinra Tower."

Genesis examined his nails. "To protect the President's own saggy backside?"

"I believe that the idea is for the First who remains to maintain control over the Soldiers here in the Tower," the corner of Lazard's mouth twitched, "but yes, the President undoubtedly has his own safety in mind. Now I am also mindful that a new class of Soldier recruits will be joining us in January. At least one of you will be required to assist with those – "

"And the President's go-to First is Sephiroth and Angeal's the best at handling the new recruits. Well, before we proceed any further, because I think we can all see where this is going," cut in Genesis archly, and Angeal and Sephiroth both lifted their heads in astonishment, because the Genesis they knew would never have turned down an opportunity for glory on the battlefield, "there is something that I should have told you all before. As you all know, about a month ago now, I was injured in an accident in the VR room." He saw Angeal wince out of the corner of his eye. "Unfortunately, my injury from then has experienced some complications during the healing process."

Angeal paled. Sephiroth stared at Genesis as if he could see pierce through his longcoat all the way down to his greying wound with his eyes alone.

"You are right to think that I was thinking of sending you to Wutai, Genesis." Lazard drummed his fingers on the table top. "But I haven't seen any reports to suggest you've had any problems with your mission performance since the accident."

"That is because all my opponents have been mindless beasts, my longest mission was five days and I was able to return every evening to full board accommodation stocked with good food, access to medicine and a decent bed! It is a far cry from a potentially six month tour through the coldest and wettest months of the year in a tent with nothing more to eat than rations and what we can steal off the local villages!" Genesis curled his hand into a claw on the pommel of Rapier's hilt. "It won't do to give Soldiers false confidence. I will not do it. I will not go to Wutai. If I cannot perform to their expectations, I will be a danger to them and a liability." It stung to bend his pride like this and he never wanted to do this again, but if anything years of Soldier had taught him, small pains had to be suffered for the greater gain. Wasn't that the way of the Hero? "I'm sure, however, that I'd be able to defend our dear President without much difficulty, should the needs require it. As for the recruits in January, if you send both Sephiroth and Angeal together, the war will probably be over by the middle of December."

"You cannot know that, Genesis. When the Great War began, people were saying that it would be over by the Winter Festival of the same year, and we all know how long that went on for." Lazard sighed and rubbed his temples with his hands, the meeting he had thought would be so simple having suddenly turned much more troublesome than he had anticipated. "But if your wound is still troubling you, yes, I agree that it would be rather risky to have you out on the front where our Science Department can't monitor your health. Sephiroth? Angeal? What do you think?"

Sephiroth adjusted the cuffs of his gloves. "Genesis is correct."

"I'm sure he is, on many things. More specifically, what?"

"He is correct in predicting that Angeal and I would clean up the last of Wutai's forces and be able to return before the new recruits arrive. However, he has made a slight error." Sephiroth cast Genesis a sly sideways smirk. "If the two of us were dispatched, we would be finished by the end of November."

Genesis tossed his hair out of his face with a derisive snort. "Three hundred gil and a case of the Society Exhibition Cabernet Sauvignon that you won't even make it for the Winter Festival."

Sephiroth's eyes gleamed. "Done."

Angeal stared between them. "You two are not betting on how long the war will be, are you?"

"Of course not, Angeal, we are betting on how short the war will be, which is a bet in everybody's favour really. I'd thought you'd be pleased with a little extra incentive."

"So, you, Sephiroth," Lazard cut in loudly, as Angeal glowered with disapproval, "would agree with Genesis that, were you and Angeal dispatched to Wutai, you could end the war before we needed to re-equip and acclimatise troops for the spring environmental conditions again?"

"Yes, Director."

"Angeal?"

Angeal sat back and stroked his chin. It was the same kind of contemplative expression the Banora apple-growers got when studying the weather and trying to predict how the harvest would be. "If Sephiroth and I both went to Wutai, we would be able make short work of it. I am also confident, Director, that Genesis would be perfectly capable minding the Soldiers here. If it is required of him, I'm sure he would also make an excellent assistant with the January recruits."

"I'm sure he would," agreed Lazard, and Genesis knew they had him. The President hadn't given any specific orders for which First he had wanted at hand like a guard-dog, so if he had been expecting Sephiroth, tough luck. The Company was pressed for time and money. Lazard didn't have the minutes to spare forcing Genesis to go on the mission. "Alright. In that case, Sephiroth and Angeal, I will be briefing the two of you tomorrow at nine in my second office. I'll have the relevant paperwork sent round to you by six this evening."

With Sephiroth and Angeal having accepted the mission in Wutai, the meeting soon came to a close. The three Firsts pushed back their chairs and climbed to their feet.

"Genesis," Lazard raised his voice. Genesis paused, half-crouched in his seat. "I'd like to have a word with you."

Genesis looked towards Sephiroth and Angeal, both of whom were eyeing him with some concern. He laughed, managed to sound more confident than he felt, and swept back his hair. "Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return."

"Loveless, Act III." Sephiroth nodded. "We will see you at dinner."

The door closed behind them, and Lazard continued to fiddle with the pens on his desk, ordering the ball-points and pencils into lines. Genesis sat back in his chair and crossed his ankles in front of him. For a moment, he watched the man roll pens across the surface of his desk, absently using them to collect his thoughts together.

"I see that those two still don't know about your degradation." Lazard's voice was quiet. He glanced up from his pens, all laid out in length order. "You didn't tell Angeal even though it may affect him too, Genesis?"

"I said that you would have my silence concerning the e-mails and its contents, so long as you gave up on using Angeal and Sephiroth in your plans."

"Hmm, you are a man of your word then. I must admit, I am surprised."

Genesis ran his hand over Rapier's hilt. "To be honest, so am I, and I don't want it getting around. I have a reputation to uphold."

Lazard chuckled and started reordering the pens in the other direction. After five pens were down, he spoke up again. "Why are you really staying behind in Midgar, Genesis?"

He widened his eyes. "Was it that obvious?"

"You may enjoy your plays, Genesis, but you certainly aren't as good an actor as you think you are."

Genesis glared. The cheek of it! "There is a five star performance of Maria and Draco transferring here from Junon and I want to be here on the opening night. I couldn't possibly miss it."

"And most people here would probably believe you if you told them that - which might I add, says something a little sad about most people's opinions of you, Genesis - but not me, I'm afraid."

Genesis sniffed and turned up his nose. "Fine then. Well, I was saving it for after Angeal and Sephiroth were gone to Wutai, but I suppose it wouldn't harm you to know earlier." As he spoke, he listened, first for the distinctive whine of a Turk bug in the room and second, for the breathing of eavesdroppers at the office door. When he was sure there was nobody unwelcome listening in on them, Genesis relaxed. "I am staying here for the inquiry."

"An inquiry? I haven't heard about any inquiry."

"The inquiry as to whether Doctor Hollander should remain on the Shinra payroll or not. Which with your help, Director, will happen – oh, the day after Sephiroth and Angeal have left, perhaps? Maybe that very evening? I'm flexible, so long as it eventually happens, and happens soon."

For a long minute, Lazard said nothing. Then he took off his glasses, held them delicately between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and having unfolded a pocket handkerchief with his right, cleaned them with a soft squeaking noise. "Doctor Hollander has access to a great many Company secrets, Genesis. If an inquiry finds him unfit for his job, considering all of the knowledge and experience he has working with you Soldiers he will be far too dangerous a man for Company security to allow peaceful retirement or transfer elsewhere. He will, almost certainly, be 'fired'."

"Well, yes, that's what I hoped for," Genesis scoffed.

"By the Turks, Genesis."

Genesis laughed, and his shoulders shook. "Oh, yes, I know what 'being fired' means for the senior employees of this Company, Director."

"Which means that you won't be able to bring an inquiry to the attention of the President without providing some very condemning evidence of misconduct," Lazard went on, settling his glasses back on his nose, and Genesis had a vague feeling that the Director was enjoying this conversation. "That particular e-mail conversation would certainly serve you well in that regard. You could suggest an inquiry into Hollander for conspiring against the President, but I'm afraid I can't let you do that, given how their contents also seriously implicate me."

"I have an idea as to how we could use those e-mails. We would, however, have to work together." Genesis couldn't resist a smile. "What do you think, Director? You only have to gain from this. Doctor Hollander knows all about your intentions regarding the Shinra presidency and unless he's discredited, or he disappears in some way or another, he is a danger to you and your plans."

Lazard pursed his lips. He knew that what Genesis said was true. "If not conspiracy against Shinra, on what grounds would you be suggesting the inquiry into Doctor Hollander?"

"I was thinking 'incompetency in the handling of Shinra Company's secrets'."

"Then a single miss-sent e-mail thread is hardly enough for a case." Lazard seemed disappointed. He was tapping a pen against his desk in beats of three. "Whatever we both may think of Hollander, he is still a very valuable asset to the Company. It would have to be a very serious breach of Shinra secrecy to even consider bringing an inquiry against him - "

"Just a moment." Lazard closed his mouth and sat back in his chair, allowing Genesis some time and space to rummage in his breast pocket. When he had found what he was looking for, he dropped it onto the desk, right on top of Lazard's length-ordered pens.

Lazard picked up the Shinra issue pen disk. It was red, smooth and tapered, just as they all were. It always made Genesis think of a bullet or a nugget of liver. "What is this?"

Out on the marshes, if they waited long enough, the Midgar Zolom always made an appearance, whether out of curiosity or hunger or berserker fury, nobody knew, but it always eventually appeared. It was a simply a matter of playing the waiting game.

Which would break first? The water's surface or Genesis's patience?

If the Zolom didn't show up, Genesis's answer to that was to pass a short sharp shock of Thundaga through the marsh water to remind the Zolom to take him seriously. The result of that tended to be one enraged Zolom attempting to crush Genesis in its coils and Genesis's accompanying troop of Seconds being shocked until their hair stood on end. Genesis had never been patient. As Angeal had once put it, Genesis was too impatient to even try to learn patience.

So, my concerned stranger, how will you react to this?

Genesis crossed his ankles and grinned at Lazard in that white-toothed way the Seconds who most often came out with him on outings knew meant that they needed to scramble for dry land faster than they could shout, 'Thundaga!'

"I would like to take this opportunity, Director, to report a serious leak of information from the Science Department, pertaining to a long term classified Shinra science project known as Project G."

Chapter Text

His first month in the past was a good one in Cloud's books. He had spent it quite productively, quietly navigating the Shinra security system, familiarising himself with the computerised emergency protocols, and learning his way around the Tower CCTV cameras.

After some practice, all he needed to do now was expand his senses outwards and it was like opening a hundred thousand eyes in a single blink, and the beauty of it all was that in his new capacity as little more than coding, he could process it all without going into shock from overloading his brain.

It was wonderful. It was terrifying, but in the same giddying way of standing atop the ridge of a mountain and seeing the world spread out below, everything small but part of a larger whole. He could see everything in Shinra Tower and whilst everything seemed small, it also all suddenly seemed heart-stoppingly, impossibly big.

Cloud had no intention, however, of spending his time monitoring the whole of Shinra Tower. For one thing, it was exhausting. Seeing as he didn't have a physical brain to exhaust, he didn't quite know how that worked – perhaps it was his mind, acting on the memory that certain activities should be exhausting – but, all in all, the fatigue of keeping all eyes open wasn't really his main problem.

The thing he was finding most difficult to do was focusing on one camera at a time. However much he tried to rein in his awareness of the other cameras, they were always there, clustering at the edges of his vision. He was never completely unaware of what was going on.

It made him feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, but he couldn't dislike the feeling however much he tried. It was a little like having a window onto a busy street, feeling shadows slipping over him as people passed him by, a kind of visual background noise. It helped to alleviate the silence, stopped the cyberspace from feeling like the Northern Crater in the depths of winter.

Sometimes it all got very quiet in the mainframe.

But he couldn't let himself get distracted! Cloud told himself fiercely. Not now that he knew that he really could make a difference to the past.

He had seen it with his own (a thousand) eyes. Sephiroth and Angeal had flown off to Wutai, sent off in a grand ceremony with lots of saluting, confetti, speeches and lines of parading Soldiers – Zack had been amongst them somewhere - and Genesis had stayed behind. This past was already different from the one he had lived in before.

It was a huge relief to Cloud. It meant that he wasn't destined to bring about the Nibelheim incident and precipitate everything that had led up to Meteor, or required to do so to prevent a paradox. The thought was a crushing weight off his mind. He could finally concentrate on his list of all that he had to change, and work out how to make those changes happen.

The List so far was simple: the Nibelheim Incident had to be prevented, Reunion had to be stopped and Jenova had to be kept away from the Lifestream. If if he could only prevent Nibelheim, then all those who had come to suffer, or died, in the chain of events afterwards – Zack, Aerith, his own mother, the people of Sector Seven crushed by the Plate, the victims of geostigma – could be saved. Avalanche, in the way that Cloud knew it, would never form, but maybe – just maybe (and it hurt to think like this) that was alright.

Avalanche had grown in retaliation to Shinra and the worst of its practices, but Cloud had seen the future since. Blowing up the mako reactors, bringing down Shinra, neither had achieved anything in the long run that could be justified by the grief both had caused, and now that Cloud was in the Shinra mainframe the potential fallout from both were all the more obvious.

He could see the Shinra employee database; regional energy consumption records; the files of the news and communication networks; the reports from the schooling system for Shinra employee children (which was prone to having its funding diverted to more pressing projects, like President Shinra's personal submarine, and was little more than a PR stunt); the accounts from the healthcare service Shinra provided (which existed primarily so that if there were any mysterious illnesses and conditions caused by proximity to mako reactors amongst the employee population, nobody would ever know), and the records of all the trade arrangements Shinra had made so that, as the land around Midgar turned into a dust bowl, people could be provided for, not to mention that Shinra was responsible for the local environmental clean-up for where they had built reactors in (removing mako mutants and pumping stagnant mako) and subsidising farming and animal husbandry.

There were simply too many reliant on Shinra for its fall not to hurt. The only reason Reeve and the WRO had never had to deal with mass unemployment and food shortages in the future was because the circumstances of that Shinra Company's fall meant that most employees had died along with it.

Besides that, the power vacuum left in Shinra's wake had only been filled by companies that were essentially Shinra in all but name and championed energy source. If Shinra could be turned around, its resources redirected towards researching new energies and its vast network then used to initiate a program to wean the world off mako, change could be pushed faster but still be controlled. If there was anything large organisations were good at, it was carrying out large scale projects and managing their subsequent impact.

On a smaller scale side of Cloud's plans, if Shinra could be shifted towards a new energy source beyond mako then the North Corel reactor wouldn't be implemented. Barret wouldn't get involved in Avalanche and Marlene wouldn't lose a father. If all of Cloud's plans worked out, neither Marlene nor Denzel would be orphans at all. Cloud and Tifa's little family, functionally dysfunctional as it was (if such a thing were ever possible), would never come together.

That wasn't true. Why shouldn't it ever come together? Sure, the future would change, but there was no reason why, once everything was arranged as Cloud wanted, he couldn't go out and find them all again, although the thought of having to perhaps do it in Cait Sith's body made something inside him twinge.

They would be different, of course. Whether Cloud would even be able to make friends with them outside of the extraordinary circumstances of their original timeline was a moot point, but the fact was, they would be out there somewhere and hopefully be able to live less damaged lives.

So how was he going to achieve all this?

In a nutshell, what he needed to do was limit the future. All branching potential futures that were different from the one he had in mind had to be eliminated.

He had to burn Jenova out of existence, kill Hojo, and raze Shinra Mansion to the ground. He would have included 'kill Sephiroth' into that list, but if Shinra had other Soldiers around with Jenova cells in them that Cloud hadn't previously known about, then killing Sephiroth would make little difference.

He stored away the thought of killing Sephiroth, Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley, and possibly a bunch of Soldiers Cloud didn't even know the names of, at the back of his mind and went absently on through the Shinra CCTV footage as he considered his List.

Vincent, for one thing, couldn't be left sleeping in Shinra Mansion forever. Cloud tentatively added 'Wake up Vincent' to the List and wondered how something so simple could be so hard to achieve.

It was clear that eventually he was going to have to find a proxy in the physical world to do the legwork. At the current, the most obvious candidate for that was Reeve, but Reeve was the Head of Urban Planning and, as the head of a department, despite how little attention that department got in the grand scheme that was Shinra, any moves Reeve made would be far too closely watched to be anything but dangerous to him, and Cloud was trying to keep all his friends alive this time.

Besides that, Cloud still wasn't sure he had forgiven Reeve of the Future for this mess he had been dumped in – not yet, at any rate. Maybe with a bit more time, Cloud would be able trust himself to approach Reeve without overlapping him with memories of the future.

So, if Reeve wasn't a viable option, perhaps Cloud could hijack Cait Sith again and somehow get to Nibelheim himself?

Cloud laughed.

Somehow? Who was he kidding? A robot cat was never going to make it to Nibelheim on its own. If he wasn't torn apart by monsters, the harsh terrain on the way there would probably do in his parts and gods forbid if it rained or snowed. He didn't like the idea of hanging around waiting for suitable Shinra transportation to crop up to stowaway on either. It made him too dependent on Shinra's schedule rather than his own.

Stuck for ideas, Cloud watched a trio of Thirds in the Weapons Department testing a robot that looked suspiciously like a prototype Guard Scorpion. On the other side of a shatter-proof window, Scarlet was dictating to a trio of assistants hovering at her shoulders.

It was obvious that the easiest way to achieve many of Cloud's aims was via a willing proxy – no, not proxy, he corrected himself as Scarlet snapped an order at her assistants that made them start and flee off screen – an ally. Cloud wasn't going to stand above anybody and order them around without their willing cooperation.

If not Reeve, then he needed someone who was either of too little significance for Shinra to consider a threat, or who was so much in the public eye that arranging their disappearance would be significantly difficult and likely damaging to the Company image if not handled with care. For the life of him, Cloud couldn't think of anybody in contactable distance who fit either description.

Although, having said that, there was somebody, wasn't there? Somebody in Shinra who already knew about Cloud's existence, even if only in the vaguest sense. Somebody who, quite arguably, owed him something of a favour. Somebody who was not only in the public eye but actively kept in it by Shinra itself as part of their precious public relations.

Even if he was corrupted by Jenova, until the man became a real threat and had to be dealt with himself, couldn't Cloud ally with Genesis Rhapsodos?

He threw out the thought a moment later. No, Genesis wasn't an option. Until he knew how deep Jenova's influence ran through the whole Soldier group, it would probably be best not to use any Soldiers at all. There was a very high chance he would need them to go to Nibelheim after all. Cloud would just have to wait for a suitable ally to appear.

A flash of red at the corner of his vision. Cloud found his attention shifting towards a corridor in one of the Soldier admin floors, where a tall figure in red leather coat was stepping into an office.

Always in red, like a leather traffic cone, Cloud could spot Genesis on the One Thousand Channels of Shinravision without even trying, maybe because a swish of red leather reminded him somewhat of Vincent and, over the years, they had all made a game of spotting Vincent when the (human most of the time) man didn't want to be seen.

Following Genesis close behind were two men in white. One man was fat, heavy-bottomed like a pear, and busy rubbing sweaty palms against the front of his T-shirt. A quick flick through the employee profiles allowed Cloud to identify this waddling open pore as Hollander. The other man was skinny and sharp-nosed, hair tied back into fastidiously neat ponytail, and one look at him filled Cloud with a dark swirl of disgust. This man was the specimen of humanoid scum known as Hojo that society had only allowed to be registered as human to please his mother.

And the three of them had just gone into an office together – an office in which Director Lazard and a small man who might have been one of the President's secretaries were already sat at an oval table, exchanging pleasantries and subtle hints as to who might or might not be holding which cards.

Of course, Cloud realised. This had to be the meeting Lazard had wanted with Hollander, to discuss 'some concerns' that a Soldier had brought to Lazard, according to the memo that had been sent round in the morning, but Cloud had seen plenty of similar memos being sent around between Department seniors and thought nothing of it. There hadn't been any mention of Genesis, Hojo or, for that matter, a representative of the President attending.

Something was going on.

Just when Genesis and the scientists were seated and Cloud thought that the meeting would begin, there was one last latecomer knocking at the door - a man in a dark-coloured suit, his trouser lines crisp, hair slicked back, and strapped inside his jacket, unseen but Cloud knew all too well they were there, were a pair of perfectly polished custom guns.

That settled it. If Tseng was in on the meeting, something was most definitely going on.

All Cloud could do from his silent sea of cyberspace was watch.

As mouths opened and closed, shaping words that Cloud couldn't hear and could only guess at, what power he thought he had gained suddenly seemed pitifully inadequate.

Senior employees had an irritating habit of trying to slip away quietly when the notice of an inquiry went out, which always struck the Turks as extraordinarily stupid considering just exactly who they were trying to 'out-slip'.

Veld hadn't wanted to waste Turk resources and time hunting the subject of the inquiry down; Lazard had agreed that Veld was being entirely reasonable in conserving Department resources; and Genesis had simply wanted to see the look on Hollander's face when he found out the truth.

Thus it was that Hollander went into his inquiry completely ignorant as to what the subject of the meeting really was about, and only realised that something was amiss when he saw Bingsleydale, President Shinra's oldest secretary, sat at the table with his rheumy eyes poring over a sheet of notes, and by the time alarm bells had started ringing, Tseng had entered the room and pulled up the chair that just so happened to be the nearest to the door.

Sweat broke out on the back of Hollander's neck and in the folds of fat around his throat. It really didn't help that Genesis was sitting opposite him, with an oddly knowing smile, watching him squirm and enjoying it.

Bingsleydale coughed into his fist. "On behalf of the President Shinra, I have been asked to oversee this inquiry over the professional conduct of Doctor Greyson Hollander – "

"Inquiry into my professional conduct?" Hollander spluttered as though he had been punched in the throat and perhaps he might as well have been. His face turned a curious creamy green colour that reminded Genesis of old squid. He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles shiny. "There must be a mistake. I don't recall anything – "

"Certain lapses concerning your particular responsibilities have been brought to the President's attention. There is no need for you to recall anything, Doctor. These lapses will be duly described over the course of this inquiry." Bingsleydale finished peering over his spectacles and, with a whispy cough, went on with his introductory speech as if he hadn't been interrupted. "I have in attendance Mr Lazard Deusericus, Director of Soldier; Professor Domon Hojo, Head of the Department of Science; Mr Genesis Rhapsodos, Soldier First Class; and Mr Tseng from the Department of Administrative Research. I, Humboldt Bingsleydale, will be taking the minutes of this meeting and overseeing it. Gentlemen, I thank you all in advance for your cooperation."

And so Hollander sat, stiff and speechless, fumbling for words and his composure, as Bingsleydale called on, first, Genesis and then Lazard to speak and asked them to describe how the files of Project G had been leaked.

Genesis began by speaking about a small packet he had received in the post around the end of August. This in itself wasn't unusual. Genesis tended to receive small gifts and tokens from his fans on an enviably regular basis, but this particular packet had contained a Shinra standard issue pen-disk, upon which he had found the files of Project G up to its most recent reports.

The envelope, he said, had been stamped in Wall Market and sent out on a weekend, a time when most of Shinra Tower was empty as employees enjoyed a day off. Genesis had, allegedly, spent the next month trying to track down the packet's sender, but after long days of turning up nothing he had finally gone to his overseeing officer, Director Lazard.

"When I received the files, I didn't know what to believe," Genesis sighed, pushed back his hair from his face and wearily shook his head, and Hollander watched in dismayed incredulity as Bingsleydale nodded and apparently lapped up what had to be most hammy acting of existential angst Hollander had seen since the Winter Festival Soldier Pantomime. "I thought it was some kind of terrible and elaborate hoax, some horror story they had cooked up, perhaps to turn me against Shinra Company, to make me suggestible to some scheme of revenge, which is why I eventually took it to Director Lazard. As my overseeing officer, I felt that it was only right that he knew there was someone in Shinra attempting to incite the Company's best Soldiers against it, and that since I hadn't been able to find the sender myself it meant that somebody potentially hostile to Shinra was still among us."

Genesis's eyes flickered up to Hollander to linger on him then return to Bingsleydale.

Bingsleydale adjusted his glasses, glanced down the table to Lazard. "And that is how you found out about the file leak, Director?"

Lazard nodded. "Yes, after a month of First Class Rhapsodos sitting and brooding on it."

A hairline crack appeared in the glass of water Genesis was sipping from, but the man said nothing.

Hollander cleared his throat. "Er…Excuse me, gentlemen?"

Eyes flickered his way.

"It is," Hollander took a deep breath, licked his lips, "regrettable that there was a leak from my department. Yes, yes! Regrettable! Most unfortunate, and I understand that Project G was my responsibility, but don't we have a more pressing concern on our hands?" He looked around the table, saw nothing but polite interest, mild at best, and threw up his hands in a gesture of desperation. "Well, what about this file leaker? The person who sent Genesis the Project G files! The chief culprit! Shouldn't we be focusing more on finding out who he is and what exactly he wants?"

"You need not worry about the source of the leak, Doctor Hollander." The hairs on the back of Hollander's neck stood on end as Tseng spoke, stretched in his seat and folded his hands on the table-top. "My colleagues are already investigating the matter. It is now a separate issue."

"As much as I'm sure Administrative Research appreciates the concern, Hollander, this inquiry is about you and your role as the head of Project G." Hojo chuckled. "And it really doesn't do to side-track the inquiry. It only makes things worse for you."

Hollander tried to laugh again but all he could summon was a tight, high-pitched wheeze. "But I haven't done anything!"

"And yet, all my Project files remain secure whilst yours have been revealed to the central experimental subject," said Hojo with a derisive snort. "Perhaps it is your inactivity that caused this problem in the first place. You were lazy, Hollander. If you had only taken the necessary security precautions concerning how the files could be accessed or stored, I'm sure that Project G would not have been leaked at all."

"You can't know that," Hollander protested, but whatever he said fell on deaf ears.

The meeting went on. Hollander could do nothing more than splutter and stammer as the men around him discussed just what exactly Hollander could have done to ensure Project G had remained secret. They largely seemed to be talking over his head.

He didn't even need to be there really. He could see it in the boredom in Bingsleydale's droopy eyes. The conclusion of this inquiry was foregone. President Shinra had probably sent his secretary in his stead with Hollander's dismissal left signed on the Presidential breakfast table.

"It is questionable whether Doctor Hollander has Shinra's best interests at heart at all," Hollander heard Lazard say above him and he briefly struggled out of trying to remember the time of the next fastest train to the slums to listen. "In August, First Class Rhapsodos sustained injuries in a training session with his fellow Firsts – "

And to Hollander's astonishment, Lazard produced a printed transcript of none other than that disastrous e-mail conversation. He looked up, saw Genesis's face and gleaming eyes, and suddenly everything clicked.

These two, they had teamed up. For vindictive reasons of their own, they were working together to bring Hollander down, and they had recruited Hojo to their cause, because Hojo was only too happy to have his position of Department Head become unchallenged and the Science Department funds diverted solely towards Project J.

According to Lazard, Genesis had gone to him straight after Hollander had examined his wounds from the VR room accident. Apparently, Hollander had made Genesis some 'very pointed suggestions' that they work together to 'correct the Company' from the inside, to somehow allow Hollander to become Head of the Science Department and various other garbled reasons. Genesis, being the loyal, model and exemplary Shinra Soldier that he was, had been quite horrified by the idea, and so had taken the incident straight to the Director of his department.

Concerned for the welfare of his Soldiers, Lazard had agreed to aid Genesis in testing Hollander. Together, they would try to learn how much Hollander had planned, what support he already had in the Shinra Tower, and the full extent of his ambitions, and after the two had gathered enough information, they had planned to trap him.

Lazard had offered his support as bait, using the Company rumours that he had been eyeing the Presidency as the hook ('Those rumours are, of course, completely untrue') and tweaked a program he had confiscated off a group of Soldier Thirds ('Just a bit of innocent fun – stupid fun, but they meant no harm in the development, and I have already had them disciplined accordingly') to bypass the Turk e-mail surveillance.

And Genesis? Genesis had played the part of the unwitting bridge between the two men.

Lies, all lies, Hollander wanted to cry, but there was nobody there to listen.

"This is most irregular," muttered Bingsleydale, frowning at the transcript. "Why did you not think to contact the Department of Administrative Research? Such investigative work is surely their area - ?"

"Apologies, Secretary, but I am the reason for the delay."

"You, First Class Rhapsodos?"

"I had a personal grievance against Doctor Hollander," said Genesis, oozing guilt and humility like Hollander had never seen before. Gods, he was a terrible actor. "Before I knew of degradation and the truth behind Project G, I thought that Hollander had botched the treatment of the wound I sustained in the accident and that that was the reason for why it was failing to heal in the normal way. I felt that he had been too distracted by his grand plans to treat me as I needed, and so I asked Lazard to work with me to bring this man's true intentions to light." Genesis lowered his voice to a biting whisper: "I wanted to be the one responsible for the end of this man's career - Me, my hands and my efforts. Not the Turks."

"That being said, some considerable time has passed since the end of your communications with Doctor Hollander, Director." Tseng leafed through the copy of the transcripts that Lazard had given him with an expression of mild curiosity. "Why did you not come forward with this sooner?"

Genesis raised his hands. "Again, it was on part of a selfish request of my own. My wound was experiencing complications in healing. I couldn't let Hollander go when I still needed him to see to the wound, but," his eyes flickered up across the table, his mouth curved into a grim smile, "then I received the files of Project G and realised that I was probably better off without him."

A slow scrape of a chair being pushed back. Hollander found himself slowly rising to his feet.

Bingsleydale set down his pen. "Is there something the matter, Doctor?"

Hollander raised a hand, swallowed and shook his finger at Genesis. "I," he dropped his voice, "I created you. You were made from my science, pieced together through my theories – you, Genesis, were my idea. I made you what you are, and so long as the Project continues, you need me - "

"Need you?" Something ugly rippled over Genesis's face like the shadow of raised hand. "Me, need you? On the contrary, Doctor. I think you would find that, since I am your experiment, you need me. Yes, I know fully well that you made me. You dreamed me up and made me the monster you wanted, but I'm not supposed to know that, am I? And if you had continued to have your way, I still wouldn't know, so apologies, Doctor, if all the years you've spent running my piss and blood through a thousand and one machines behind my back hasn't instilled some sense of gratitude in me."

"Genesis, you – "

"Doctor Hollander," Tseng barely raised his voice, but it was enough. Hollander flinched and remembered where he was. "Please, sit down."

"Yes, Doctor," Genesis's eyes glowed like torches, "you should sit down."

And Hollander could feel the noose tightening, choking his breath, making his head spin, so he did as they told him, the pack of liars (or were they really? He wasn't sure anymore), and sank into his chair.

"Gentlemen, I would like to keep this discussion civil, thank you." Bingsleydale glanced pointedly around the table. "As expected of honest Shinra Company men."

Hollander looked down, staring at the whorls in the wood, his own reflection, anything but at Genesis across the table.

"Yes, of course," Genesis all but purred. He sat back and crossed his arms and legs. "As expected of honest Shinra Company men."

Half an hour later, Bingsleydale collected up his notes and left the room. He had gone to take the minutes of the inquiry to the President. Supposedly the President would read them from when he had returned from whatever matter he was attending to and make a decision concerning Hollander by the following evening at the latest, but nobody in the room truly believed in that.

After Bingsleydale had gone and the inquiry was brought to a close, Hollander was the first to flee the room, fumbling the door handle in his hurry to get out.

Genesis was stretching the kinks in his neck and back in the corridor, almost happy enough to ignore the cold numbness spreading out from his left shoulder, when a voice called out to him from behind.

"First Class Genesis Rhapsodos."

Genesis turned and graced Tseng with one of his most benevolent of smiles, because he was in a good mood, and good moods ought to be spread around, like dirty laundry. "Do you need something, Tseng?"

"Just a small matter." If Tseng was taken aback by Genesis's unusually good mood, he didn't show it. "If it isn't any trouble to you, my colleagues have requested your laptop."

"My laptop?" Genesis drew himself up straight and looked Tseng down his nose."Well, of course, it is a trouble to me, I was planning on doing some work this evening – "

"Since this was an inquiry concerning a leak of files sensitive to the Company's reputation, we cannot overlook potential sources of it leaking any further. Presumably you opened those files on your laptop?"

"Well, yes, I did."

"Then we simply need to check that all traces of the files are erased from it. If your work is urgent, we can provide you with a temporary replacement. It shouldn't take long, not more than a couple of hours." He had a feeling that Tseng was studying him a little closer than usual. "This is the routine procedure for this kind of case, and you have nothing to hide from us, after all."

"Nothing to hide?" Genesis gave out a sharp bark of laughter. "Every man has something to hide, especially in this building. I should think you know that better than I do." Tseng flexed one eyebrow, but remained silent. "Alright. You can have my laptop. When would you want it?"

"Immediately, if possible."

Genesis may often have been called reckless, but he wasn't careless. He had long deleted his e-mails with the Stranger and, as far as his records went since, he was clean of any contact with him. Still, he allowed himself a calculated pause. It never looked good to seem too relaxed about having your possessions examined by the Turks. "I shall have to fetch it from my office."

Tseng bowed his head. "Then I will accompany you there."

Genesis struck out down the corridor and Tseng fell into step just a little behind him. Genesis had little issue having his back turned to a Turk. If the mood took him, he could kill Tseng blindfolded wherever he stood in Genesis's immediate vicinity, but what really mattered was that Tseng didn't walk alongside him.

That spot was reserved for Genesis's friends and equals alone.

The buzz from Genesis's PHS, just after Tseng had left his office with his laptop, didn't surprise Genesis. In fact, he had been greatly anticipating this moment and he snatched up the device from his table with a thrill of excitement, because the Thundaga had struck.

What did surprise him was to be greeted, not with an unopened e-mail, but with a blinking purple alert from his Shinra intranet instant messaging service. Genesis pulled a face. He wasn't in the habit of using the IMS – didn't like the way he felt it cheapened the written word - but he would make an exception for this case.

The communication channel opened up on the screen, and a soft green speech bubble dropped into view.

What do you think you're playing at?

The Midgar Zolom had finally reared its ugly head. Genesis laughed and tapped his reply. I presume you've done something to make this channel secure?

Of course. The speed of the Stranger's reply alone made it feel like a snap. That isn't the point. You. What are you doing? Why did Tseng take your laptop? What have you done?

Genesis hummed contentedly to himself. Don't you know?

There was a long pause which struck Genesis as just about enough time for somebody to wrestle with their temper.

A light chime, another message: You had a meeting with Lazard, Hojo, Hollander, one of the President's men and Tseng. What was it about and why did Tseng take your laptop afterwards?

In a series of long messages that made Genesis's thumb ache to type, he told the Stranger everything that had happened since they had last spoken, focusing especially on the excellent use he had made of the Project G files, and ending it his messages on the wonderfully upbeat note that Hollander would probably be shot the following evening.

You did say that the file was mine to do what I liked with, he pointed out, when the Stranger continued to remain silent and the time started to drag, so I used it to get my own revenge on 'Shinra and all its secrets'. It isn't any different from what you are doing. By the way, what exactly have you been doing this past month?

That is none of your business.

So for all your talk of Shinra's secrets and revenge, Genesis tapped out with the same mad impulse as he had once dropped a lobster he had bought in Wall Market on a sleeping Sephiroth's face, it seems as though, between the two of us, I'm the only one who's actually achieved something.

Nervous footsteps pattered up to the door of his office and were followed by a quiet knock. Genesis glanced up from his PHS, called out, "If it's made of paper and I'm not allowed to burn it, go away."

The messenger paused, then a hurried creak of leather and squeak of soles signaled their hasty retreat down the corridor. Genesis settled into his chair and returned to the conversation.

A chime, a small green bubble: You have no idea what you've done.

Genesis raised his eyebrows. Well, if only the Stranger had actually cared to tell him what he was up to, maybe Genesis would have some idea.

He didn't tell the Stranger that though. He thought it made him sound whiny, so instead he typed: Actually, I think you'll find I know exactly what I've done. I set the Turks on you, and considering how you responded to Tseng taking my laptop, you know what that means.

Oh, Cloud knew exactly what that meant. It meant that Genesis was an insufferably malicious prick.

At least it explained the sudden burst of activity around the Department of Administrative Research computer terminals. It looked as though they were setting up for a series of probes and sweeps, quite a large scale sweep too, probably looking for hacking entry and exit points, or simply suspicious computer activity from one of the Company's users – whatever it was that the Turks thought they needed to do to flush out who took the Project G files from Hollander's area.

In any case, if Lazard had given Tseng the e-mail transcripts of his conversation with Hollander, he had probably explained how the surveillance bypass worked. Cloud wouldn't be able to use Lazard's program to cloak his e-mails anymore, which was a pain, but not as bad a loss as it might have once been. He had been tinkering with Lazard's bypass in the past month (every artificial intelligence needed its hobby) and had worked out a couple of bypasses of his own.

But thanks to Genesis, the Turks were now aware that there was somebody acting against the Company, intentions unknown but likely hostile, with computer…er…'skills' and access to the Company internal affairs.

And, to cap it all, Genesis had apparently guessed that Cloud was somebody within the Company (quite accurate in a manner of speaking) and suggested this to the Turks via his goddam story of a 'Shinra issue pen-disk'.

If Cloud had teeth he would have ground them down to the gums.

I thought I said, he kept the Turk activity firmly at the edge of his awareness, that I would help you find a cure.

Yes, you did, Genesis typed into the PHS, at the same time as footsteps approached his door once again, the same nervous steps. He rolled his eyes and called out before the messenger could knock: "Don't even think about it."

The messenger shrank back from the door and went away.

Genesis turned back to his phone.

The Stranger had asked: And how do you think I'm going to help you when I have the Turks sniffing after me?

Genesis tapped his phone against his chin. I'm sure you'll figure out something. Consider the Turks an incentive to 'get a move on'. You were being much too dull this past month, Stranger. Do something.

Cloud finally understood just what kind of man he had made himself known to and inwardly groaned. Trust Genesis to set the Turks on Cloud's tail because he was bored.

Now Cloud was going to have to do something drastic. He needed to do something that would distract the Turk investigations whilst Cloud worked out how to hide himself from their scans. So much for subtle. What could he possibly do?

Hollander was going to be shot. Oh, he had no doubts that he would be, given what Genesis had told him, and he had already spotted Hollander running to his office and beginning to cram things into a carpet-bag. Apparently Hollander thought much the same.

Hollander's death wasn't something Cloud had planned or predicted he would have to deal with. What would it do to the Science Department? Would it affect Cloud's plans at all?

It would, he realised with a sickening lurch. It would affect his plans.

With Hollander gone, Hojo would lose his chief rival in the Science Department and the balance of power, already skewed to Hojo, would be tipped out of control.

Hojo, as the unchallenged head of the department, would probably take control of Project G whilst the new project leader got to grips with the ropes (or the Gilson's pipettes, whatever the lab equivalent was) of their responsibility and divert the funding, that would otherwise be split between the two Projects, to largely fund Project J. Cloud had already seen enough memos passed around the Science Department to know that Hojo held the team and subjects of Project G in utter contempt. He would have little interest in sustaining the Project beyond Hollander's death.

With Hollander gone and nobody in the department to keep him check, Hojo's power and influence in Shinra would increase, progress on Project J would accelerate, and Hojo would not only have Sephiroth but Angeal Hewley and Genesis Rhapsodos in his reach to do as he liked with, which was all the complete opposite to what Cloud wanted!

What could he do? What could Cloud do?

An idea occurred to Cloud with all the gentleness of one of Tifa's fists to his face.

The opposite, he realised, blinking through a haze of panic, the opposite had to happen!

If Hojo died, Shinra would have little choice but to keep Hollander on. He was the only one in the Department who was even close to Hojo's level of experience with Jenova and her cells. Then the balance of power in the department would tip, but they would tip towards Project G instead. Project J would be crippled.

Wait, Cloud, wait.

He forced himself to slow down. Was there any way in which Cloud could stop either scientist being killed at all? Removing either Hollander or Hojo would mean they would be replaced by a complete unknown, not only to Cloud but likely to rest of Shinra as well, given how much Hojo and Hollander dominated the face of the Science Department. Everybody assumed that their subordinates were a bunch of shoe-kissing minions, but they might prove differently once given a chance to step out Hollander or Hojo's shadow.

An unknown element added unpredictability. Could Cloud afford that in his plans? To derail the past beyond such recognition that he might not know what to do with it?

He heard, or rather felt, it was difficult to tell in the world of the Shinra mainframe, a papery rustle like a bundle of reeds being slapped against a wall. Long tendrils of probing code had, at last, unfurled from the Turk terminals and started creeping out into the mainframe like a slim-fingered electric frost.

Dilly-dally, shilly-shally, always dragging your heels.

No, he didn't have time for this, and who was Cloud talk about unknown elements adding unpredictability when he had gone and spoken to Genesis of all people? If he could handle a wild card like Genesis Rhapsodos, he could, and he would, deal with whatever came next in the Science Department.

The choice was between Hollander and Hojo.

Choice? What choice? There was only ever one answer!

Is that all you want from me? Cloud sent Genesis, watching the Turks getting their act together and musing that it felt a lot like seeing the gathering clouds of a snowstorm. The probe code frost inched through his space at a stately pace.

It depends on what exactly you do to make up for a month without a single performance, Genesis replied breezily. He waited for a response. Hello? Are you still there?

When nothing came back after ten minutes of staring at the screen, Genesis closed his PHS and set it on his desk. Maybe the Stranger was busy dodging the Turks now. The thought made him smile. There was nothing like a fire under the tail feathers to keep a little bird flying.

The messenger with the squeaky shoes knocked on the door again. He was an intern from Marketing, or Human Resources, or maybe PR, Genesis wasn't really listening. He took the papers the intern handed him and shooed the boy away.

It only occurred to Genesis half an hour after the conversation just how extraordinarily quickly the Stranger had found out about the laptop. It was as if the Stranger had been outside his office, watching Tseng leave with it.

For all his enhanced hearing though, Genesis couldn't recall having heard anybody there.

" – so I went to check in on Genesis, like Angeal asked me to, and you know what, Kunsel? I don't know what the fuss was about. So much for lonely! I don't think I've ever seen him in a better mood than when he's out frying the butt off the Midgar Zolom."

"Zack, watch where you're – " Zack's face smacked into the door. Kunsel sighed and put his head in his hands. "Too late."

Grimacing and rubbing his nose, Zack picked himself up off the floor and blinked the tears from his eyes. "Damn, that actually hurt. What just happened?"

"You picked a fight with a door and lost. Better luck next time, Zack." Leaving Zack to splutter indignantly in the background and pull himself together, Kunsel stepped up to the door. Just as he suspected, the door did not move. "The door's locked."

Zack frowned, not at Kunsel, but at the door of the VR room, which instead of sweeping open before them in a display of automated, computerised glory, stayed resolutely shut. "Did you leave your card in the access slot?"

"No. Did you?"

Zack reached for his back pocket and pulled out his battered Shinra access card. The photograph on it was so scratched it looked as though it had been taken in a blizzard. "Got mine right here."

"Well, it looks as though the door's locked itself then." Kunsel bent down to examine the door. "Maybe you broke the lock-system when you walked into it. It wouldn't be the first thing you've walked into and broken. Remember those lamp-posts in Sector Six?"

"Hey, Kunsel, you're supposed to side with me against the inanimate objects, not guilt-trip me over them." Nevertheless, Zack's face reddened. He scratched the back of his neck. "How long do you think it would take for maintenance to come by?"

"If you were Sephiroth, probably three minutes. If you were a First, probably twenty, but since we're both Seconds – "

"You mean, 'handsome, charming and Kickass-in-Training' Seconds? That's got to count for something, right?"

Kunsel sighed. "I'd say we'd be lucky if they came in an hour."

Zack was about to throw up his hands in a gesture of despair when there was a soft click, and the door slid open with a hiss.

They looked at each other with wide eyes. Then Zack gave out a loud 'Ha!' of triumph and thrust a finger in Kunsel's face. "And just what were you saying about me breaking the lock?"

Cloud withdrew from the VR room card access and lock system.

He had what he needed.

It was over. Everything was over. The cards had been dealt, Hollander had no aces, and what cards he had had been smeared over and blackened until even he couldn't tell what they were anymore.

Now he was collecting his things together, desperately salvaging whatever he could: his papers, lists of contacts, things he could sell or barter in the slums, anything, no time for everything, just enough things to get him somewhere safe. Maybe he should take the first aid kit from the bottom drawer? Or what about that emergency torch?

He yanked open drawers, slammed them shut, tossed whatever he found into a carpet bag with the same frantic haste as a robber might pack his sack with stolen goods.

The President's decision had yet to be officially announced. Hollander, however, was no under illusion that there would be any result other than one that served up his head on a silver platter drizzled in his own blood. He had to flee Shinra Tower whilst he still had the breath and pulse to run and keep running.

He had some idea for a safe-house: The old apple juice factory in Banora - that was where he would go. It was quiet and out of the way, undisturbed for years. Nobody would notice his arrival or know that he was there. He also knew Banora and its underground network of caves and caverns better than the back of his hand (because usually his hands were covered in latex). If he ever needed an emergency exit or to lose a pursuant, all he had to do was go down there. Yes, the old factory in Banora would be perfect.

Maybe he should arrange for a message to get to Gillian? Or Angeal? No, he shouldn't think about messaging anybody. That was much too final and simply asking for fate to come knocking on his -

A neat rat-a-tat-tat on the office door. Hollander jumped. The carpet bag slipped from his fingers, thudded onto his desk. He winced then cursed quietly as a voice called: "Doctor Hollander, are you in there?"

Something small and scared inside him shivered. "Who is it?"

"Administrative Research, Doctor Hollander! May I come in?"

That small scared thing squeaked and curled into a wretched little ball. "Yes." There was nowhere to run and no point in trying to hide. Hollander left the bag on top of his desk and sank into the chair. "Yes, of course. Come in."

The young woman who stepped through the doorway was tall, fair, and, as required of her department, dressed sharp in a tailored suit. Slung over her shoulder was an old leather trombone case, covered in colourful stamps and stickers and vibrant travelling tags.

Closing the door behind her, she glanced around the room, taking in the half-open drawers, the gaps on the bookshelves, the bag lying open on the desk alongside a yet-to-be-packed laptop, before returning to Hollander, who was too busy dabbing his face with a handkerchief to notice her moving across the space between them.

"Would you mind if I took this chair?"

She had her hand on the backrest of the chair in front of Hollander's desk, the one usually reserved for his guests. He gestured for her to take it, then watched her as she picked up the chair in one hand and set it down in front of the office door, turning it so that it faced into the room.

When she sat down, she flashed him a dazzling smile. "Thank you!"

Hollander grimaced, but forced himself to smile back. "Not at all."

She pulled the trombone case onto her lap and undid the clasps. The lid sprang open with a sharp double-click, and out of the case she lifted something long, polished and made of fused metal pipes that was, most certainly, not a trombone.

She shut the case, kicked it across the floor and held up a shotgun.

"You see, Doctor Hollander, it's sad and unfortunate, but sometimes the subjects of our Company inquiries get a little bit panicky whilst they're waiting for results and they end up doing some strange, silly and regrettable things."

Hollander sucked in a breath as the dark barrel of the shotgun was trained upon his chest. "Do they now?"

"Oh yes, quite often, in fact, so I'm here to keep you company and entertain you until the President decides what has to be done," the Turk woman told him brightly, one finger gently, oh so gently, tapping and stroking the trigger of her gun, but never squeezing. She smiled. It lit up her face like a gunshot. "There's a pack of cards in my case. I hope you don't mind shuffling - my hands are a bit full."

On Floor 68, the scientists of Hojo's laboratory were clearing up after a hard day's work.

Hojo was hunched over the keyboard in front of the computer, stroking his chin and muttering as columns and columns of numbers and abbreviated protein names streamed past his eyes.

Behind him, his subordinates were spraying surfaces, wiping them down, disposing of broken glassware, incinerating latex gloves, and checking incubator settings for the night. Some were finishing their filing, others taking down notes from the end-of-aisle whiteboards. Microscopes were being cleaned and bagged. Cabinet hinges were squealing as they were opened and closed in quick succession. Hands pumped alcohol gel at the ends of the benches, and feet were turning towards the doors.

Hojo would remain in the laboratory a little longer. He would be going over the day's studies with his most trusted subordinates, in other words, the ones that unquestioningly did as they were told and, despite being brilliant scientists, were foolish enough to believe that they were irreplaceable.

Tonight would be a little different from the norm. Hojo had to decide which useless goon to place at the head of Project G for when Hollander was gone. It was tricky. Ideally he needed somebody useless enough to steer Project G into the ground, but not so useless that they couldn't keep control of Project G's team and end up falling to a coup. The balance between useless and competent needed to be just right, in much the same way as science required work within a paradigm as well as collected anomalies with which to shift it -

Hojo rolled his eyes and span round in his chair. "What are all you imbeciles doing?"

Over the past few minutes, he had sensed some commotion developing around the laboratory entrance. There were only a handful of scientists left in the room. One of them was repeatedly pushing the green exit button at the side of the door, looking somewhat bemused. Another three seemed to be trying to prise open the door with their fingers. Two were examining a control panel in the wall that didn't seem to be providing very much in way of control.

"Sir," piped up one of the braver scientists, "the door just suddenly locked itself. We're shut in. Lingfield just called maintenance, but they said that they've been getting a lot of calls about doors suddenly locking themselves today, and that when they went to check those doors, they'd all unlocked before maintenance got there. They're telling us to wait half an hour before calling again."

A green light flickered on over the doorway. There was a low-pitched whine, a heavy clunk, and something in the ventilation shifted.

"Biohazard Level Three containment procedures initiated," announced the speakers. "Commencing Laboratory 681 shutdown."

The scientists stared in baffled silence as a sheet of steel, gunmetal grey and inches thick, slid smoothly down over the door in front of them and across the passageway to the living specimen holding room at the laboratory's other end.

Before they could begin to panic, Hojo pushed himself up from his computer and raised his voice so as to be heard by the increasingly agitated group by the door.

"Gentlemen, if you have been effectively keeping abreast with all that we do here in this laboratory, as is expected of you, you should be well aware that we not only haven't done any research involving a Level Three substance in the past six months, but have neither procured nor stored one in this facility for the past three. This," Hojo thrust a finger at the flashing green light, the hiss of the ventilation in his ears, "is a malfunction. A computer error - a simple computer error, caused no doubt by a simple-minded human fool, as these sorts of things often are. There is no need to worry - "

"Specimen holding chamber autolock disabled," announced a voice from beyond the seal to the specimen holding room, muffled by the steel.

"That isn't part of the shutdown procedure," whispered one of the lab technicians, whose name Hojo didn't know and frankly had never cared to find out. It was possibly Fish. The man certainly looked like one then, with his mouth opening and closing as if he was choking on air.

"No." Hojo pushed his glasses up his nose and considered the sealed off passage to the specimen holding rooms. "No, it isn't."

All of a sudden, one of the scientists flung himself at the steel wall. "Help!" he bellowed, slapping at the metal with his palms. "Come on, there's got to be somebody out there! Hey, if you can hear us, you've got to help! There's seven of us trapped in here and the emergency systems and locks are going insane - "

"I'm calling maintenance, Professor."

"Why? Whatever for? If you think that we're about to be killed by a monster, you should be calling Soldier, not some handyman with a sink plunger."

"Biohazard Level Three containment procedure – pro-pro-procedure-procedure-over-" the announcement was buried under a thick burst of static and broken up like a shaken puzzle, then when the pieces fell back into place it continued on "-override- manual override initiated."

In a series of jerks and screeches of scraping metal, the steel lock at the other end of the laboratory started to rise, and in the passageway beyond, something was pacing to and fro with soft padding steps.

When the seal was lifted half-way, the monster stopped and its clawed feet turned towards the laboratory. A nose appeared in the gap, shiny and dark like a beetle, more like a beak than a nose, and snuffled at the air. Nostrils flared, shrank then flared again.

Pressing its belly to the floor, it squeezed into the room, scrabbling at the tiles with long, almost human, fingers then rose to stand on all six of its feet.

It was black, lean with the slippery sleek movements of a greased panther. Six eyes flashed green from the warning light still blinking over the doorway behind the group of scientists. Six fleshy tendrils of what looked like feelers grew out from its neck, curling about its face, and what was left of its face that wasn't piggy eyes or tiny nostril was almost entirely mouth, and of its mouth, its mouth was almost entirely teeth, filled with row upon row of needle-thin shards like a mouthful of shattered glass.

A long time ago in the monster's history, it had once been other things. It had once been pieces of monster exoskeleton grown in the laboratory. It had once been shards of materia, embedded into muscle, but it had largely once been a leprous man from Gongaga Shinra had found in the slums, cheated into drinking a specially prepared formula to 'cure his illness', but of the origins of monster Black VIII, only Hojo was left of the original team to know them.

Perhaps somewhere deep in Black VIII's shredded mind, under the torrent of all of its screaming and snarling thoughts, it remembered Hojo and knew him, if not from the man's role in its creation, then from the days, months, and years under a knife or a needle that had come after.

With a light hop it landed in a crouch on top of a lab-bench, then it bounded forwards, spattering bright pink and blue pawprints over the benches as it smashed through bottles of stains, and in three, four, five bounds, it was leaping with its claws outstretched and its mouth wide open, tearing through the scientists like paper dolls to sink its teeth into Hojo's throat.

Chapter Text

Hollander was shuffling cards after another round of Go Fish when the Turk woman's PHS hummed in her pocket. He gasped and dropped the deck.

"There's no need to be so nervous, Doctor." She shifted the shotgun into the crook of her arm and flashed teeth, all perfectly straight and pearly white. She set the PHS to her ear. "Hello, sir. Yes, I'm still with Doctor Hollander."

He stooped to collect the cards off the floor. He could feel her eyes burning into the back of his head like a laser sighting. The shotgun was still pointing at his chest.

"We've been playing cards, sir. It's been a little one-sided. I think he's letting me win. I can't imagine why," she complained, balancing her shotgun across her knees. "I think he's being a gentleman about it – Oh, wait, sorry, sir, could you say that again?"

Apparently she was still a fledgling Turk, because she couldn't quite hide the flicker of surprise that zigzagged over her face. "I'll pass the message on to Doctor Hollander, sir. Yes, sir, I'll be there as soon as I can."

She closed the call then looked at Hollander with a contemplative expression. "The President has made his decision, Doctor Hollander."

Already? Hollander wanted to weep.

"Oh. Has he?" He closed his eyes. "That was very fast - I mean, efficient! Yes! Very efficient. What does he say?"

"He has decided that the leak was an unfortunate incident caused by an outside force." She watched his face as if looking for a reason to believe otherwise. "There is therefore no need for you to take responsibility for it."

Hollander stood by his desk, holding the deck of cards, struck dumb into silence.

The Turk sighed and packed away her shotgun. He watched it disappear, pipe by pipe, tucked into the velvet of the trombone case, cold dark metal vanishing from sight when she shut the lid, clasps clicking – one, then the other - and slowly, ever so slowly, he finally began to understand.

"Am I…," he tried to swallow, but swallowed nothing. His mouth was bone dry. "Am I still employed by the Company?"

"For the time being at any rate," the Turk said sweetly, as she hefted the trombone case up to her shoulder. "A secretary from the President is on his way to finalise the details."

A sharp knock sounded at the door. Hollander jumped and cursed himself for being so nervous.

The Turk laughed. She held out her hand. "May I have my cards back, Doctor Hollander? I have somewhere else that I need to get to."

"Yes, of course." Gathering up her playing cards into a sticky pile, he slid them into their box and all but thrust the pack into her face.

The Turk smiled and tucked the pack away into a coat pocket. She shifted the case on her back. The shotgun clunked inside. "Thank you for keeping me company, Doctor Hollander. We should play Go Fish again sometime, except next time, don't let me win."

Hollander gave her only a strained smile in response. He never wanted to see this Turk again.

She bobbed her head in a jaunty little bow, then slipped out of the room. At the same time as she left, Bingsleydale came in.

"Ah, Doctor Hollander," Bingsleydale pursed his lips and riffled through the sheets of paper in his hands, "I am here to congratulate you on the President's behalf."

Hollander wrung his hands. "I am only too grateful to the President's mercy."

Bingsleydale gave him an odd look, before mouthing a wispy 'Oh' of understanding. "Ah, yes! The results of the inquiry. Grateful, indeed, quite so! As you should be! But I was in fact referring," he held out a letter in fine, crisp black print, "to your promotion. As of this moment, you are now the Head of the Department of Science."

"The Head of the…" Hollander's breath caught in his throat. He stared at Bingsleydale, half-expecting him to dissolve in a puff of gunsmoke and prove that this was all one wild, final desperate dream. He spluttered, "But, Professor Hojo – "

"Professor Hojo has had an unfortunate accident and is sadly no longer with us." Bingsleydale pushed his glasses up his nose. "The circumstances were quite tragic. There is no need for me to go into them in any detail, I'm sure you will find out soon enough, but the President has requested your immediate promotion to the post. He has acknowledged your ambitions, and, although the initial methods with which you intended to bring them into fruition were questionable," Bingsleydale gave Hollander a look of very cool disapproval, "the President respects ambition. To pursue ambition ruthlessly is a characteristic much desired in a Shinra Company man. He hopes that the lengths to which you were prepared to go to attain your desired position will be reflected in future efforts and the production of useful results. Congratulations are in order."

If this was all just a wonderful dream before he died, a parade of all the possibilities that had never been realised, Hollander didn't care. He grasped hold of the offered hope as if he had been dropped a life hoop and let joy buoy him up.

He took the letter from Bingsleydale. The paper was heavy – far better quality than what Hollander was used to. "I shall endeavour to live up to the President's expectations."

"That would be wise, Doctor Hollander," said Bingsleydale, as Hollander searched for a pen with which to sign his acceptance of the Department leadership. "The President may have forgiven you this time, but - "

He never forgets.

He let Hollander fill in the silence for himself. Hollander knew why he was being promoted. They needed his knowledge, his long expertise handling Jenova cells, his proven record at being ready and willing to, when Shinra called upon him to do so, experiment on 'difficult' subjects, and keep his silence concerning the underbelly of Shinra that most were fortunate enough never to see or be part of.

Bingsleydale coughed into a handkerchief. "You were very lucky, Doctor Hollander."

"Oh, extraordinarily so." Hollander tried to scan through the letter, but Bingsleydale's humourless gaze was putting him off. He attempted a joke. "Perhaps there is some god or lucky star watching over me after all."

"And so long as you are part of this Company, that 'god or lucky star', as you so call it, is our President, Doctor Hollander," Bingsleydale reminded him softly. "You would do well to remember it."

Genesis strode into the Soldier Common Room and found it, as typical of when word got ahead that he was in a mood more unpredictable than Midgar rainfall, almost empty, save for the few slower-on-the-uptake Thirds stumbling to get out of the doors at the other side of the room and two Seconds, who, for some reason of their own, hadn't fled.

Perhaps Angeal was right, thought Genesis, as he approached the cluster of sofas the Soldiers had pushed towards the bay window. Maybe instincts for self-preservation really did dull with mako dosage. Genesis had flung open the doors. He was striding. He was tapping his fingers on the guard of his blade. Any one of these cues should have been warning enough for these Seconds to jump and make excuses to leave.

Then again, one of the two Seconds was Zack Fair, doing squat after squat by the bay window as if demonstrating squatting to the whole of Midgar, and Angeal's comment about self-preservation and mako dosage had been made specifically with Zack Fair in mind.

"You two." He snapped his fingers at Zack and his friend who was polishing his broadsword on the sofa. Wearing his helmet indoors (and tolerating Zack Fair's company), it was almost certainly Kunsel. "I need you to come with me. Now."

"Well, we'd love to, sir," said Zack, straightening from a squat, "but we had an order from the Turks for the two of us to stay put here. Something about asking some questions about this trouble we had earlier today with the VR room door…er…Don't know if you've heard, Genesis, but the whole building's carded doors have been going crazy today - "

"I think you'll find that I am well aware of the door situation, and am probably more up to date with the latest of said situation than you are, and before you think you've gotten away with it, Zack Fair, you and I are not on first name terms and I would appreciate it if you remember that. Now," Genesis paced behind the sofa with slow, measured steps, "here's how it goes. You did not receive an order from the Turks. There is no such thing as an order from the Turks. This is because the Turks make requests. They do not make orders to Second Class Soldiers. However, Zack Fair, who, on the other hand, does make orders to Second Class Soldiers?"

Zack's eyes twinkled. "Director Lazard?"

"I do, you broom-haired ape." Rapier slid out of its sheath with a soft, rattlesnake hiss. "And I am ordering the two of you to come with me, right now, if you value the un-chargrilled state of whichever organ you value most."

"Yes, sir, right away, sir. Turks requests duly overridden, sir." Kunsel pushed the jar of communal sword polish under the coffee table and leapt to his feet, sliding his broadsword over his back.

"So, where are we going?" Zack asked as they moved towards the doors. "Gen - I mean, Sir?"

"Floor Sixty Eight," Genesis flexed his fingers on the hilt of his Rapier and hoped that neither of the Seconds thought to look below his irritation to see how unsettled he was underneath. "Let's just say that our dear Professor has been having some trouble with his doors, and the things that they were supposed to be holding in."

"When you said 'trouble'," Zack stared at the sight of the rank upon rank of troopers from the Security Department lined up outside of the doors of Laboratory 681, bristling with tranquilisers and riot shields whilst a small team focused on cutting through the steel seal, "just how much trouble did you mean by 'trouble'?"

"First Class Rhapsodos!" cried a trooper. Genesis didn't both pinpointing which. All that mattered was that the ranks then parted like a field of corn to let through an, as always, impeccably dressed Tseng.

"First Class Rhapsodos," Tseng acknowledged him then raised his voice to be heard above the whine of the drill. "I trust you know what to do, although, Second Class Fair and Kunsel, I was under the impression that these two were waiting to be interviewed by my colleagues?"

"And I was under the impression, Tseng, that my judgement as to which of our Soldiers I brought for a monster disposal task was to be unquestioned and respected," Genesis snapped, clicking his tongue against his teeth. "You can interview them later. This task is simple enough. It shouldn't take long."

Tseng dipped in his head in a bow. "I apologise. I had no intention of causing offence."

"Wait, this is Hojo's lab, right?" Zack asked suddenly, glancing about the hallway as if expecting the man to pop up from the shadow of a trooper. "What's happened to that old creep? Isn't this usually the part where he shows up and threatens us from touching his instruments?"

Zack was right. Hojo usually ensured his presence at the start of a monster clean-up to whine and complain about how delicate and irreplaceable the equipment and samples in his laboratories were, and insist that on no account were the Soldiers to damage them if they didn't want the costs for their replacement coming out of their salaries.

Genesis raised his eyebrows, looked to Tseng for answers. "Well? Is Hojo going to grace us with his presence or is there something that you have yet to tell us?"

"Did Director Lazard not give you the full details?"

"Lazard only mentioned an accident."

"Yes, I suppose that is understandable. At the time we contacted Lazard we had yet to identify which of our personnel were inside the laboratory along with the monster. Since then, however, we have become better informed." Tseng cleared his throat, his expression remained professionally inscrutable. "Professor Hojo is dead."

"Dead?" Zack exclaimed. "Seriously? That man was human enough to die?"

"He was trapped in the laboratory with the escaped monster. It killed him along with seven of his staff," said Tseng, pursing his lips in distaste, although just what exactly he found distasteful was anybody's guess – in all likelihood, it was probably more to do with the fact the Professor had gotten himself killed on Shinra premises and the subsequent paperwork he was going to have to deal with.

A cold thrill rippled down Genesis's spine. He started, looked up and around the corridor.

He was being watched. He could feel it: Eyes, not so much on the back of his neck, or on his back, or even his face, but simply there, like a thought at the back of his mind, a thought that had been there for weeks and hadn't been noticed simply because Genesis hadn't thought to look.

He remembered how the Stranger had known about Tseng and Genesis's laptop. The Stranger had been watching him then and he was watching Genesis now.

Was the Stranger here? He ran his eyes over the crowd of troopers, the red uniformed sergeants tucked towards the back. They flinched under his gaze. Was he one of them? Was he one of these helmeted masses, hiding in plain sight whilst the Turks scoured the computers for trace of him?

Genesis didn't allow himself to linger. He looked away and decided to bask in the feeling of being watched and appraised with something other than witless awe. He couldn't deny that he loved a spotlight, and if the Stranger was watching now, that meant only one thing: Genesis's suspicions were correct. The Stranger had made his move.

The corners of his lips twitched up in a smile. The moment he had received Lazard's order to deal with another escaped monster in Hojo's laboratories, he had suspected that something was going on. There had been nothing in Lazard's message to suggest that this would be any more than the routine monster capture-and-kill, but the timing of it – only hours after Genesis had goaded the Stranger to do something - shouted otherwise, and after setting the Turks on him, it wasn't so hard to imagine that he would do something especially drastic in an attempt to distract them, such as arranging the death of a prized department head.

But to think that Hojo had been killed!

Has this happened because I went after Hollander? He twisted his fingers on Rapier's hilt, surveying the troopers, searching for a sign, any sign that one of them was different, was more than one of the Shinra flock. Am I being punished?

A small part of him observed that if he was, he probably deserved it. After all, he hadn't been too subtle about setting the Turks on the Stranger, but as far as Genesis was concerned if the Stranger couldn't handle a few Turks, he wasn't anybody worth knowing. Besides, another part of Genesis had sincerely meant it as a bit of fun. If he hadn't thought the Stranger could take a little Turk investigation into his stride, Genesis would never have done it.

Quite on the contrary to being punished, Genesis felt utterly ecstatic: There was something subversive to Shinra's interests happening right under Shinra's very nose, and in being party to the Stranger's existence, he was a part of it too.

And Hojo had been killed – which was, admittedly, going to interfere with cold, dark, lonely and shameful death he had been hoping for Hollander, but there was always something wonderfully fresh about the first blood spilt - the first bright splash of red - and Genesis loved the colour red.

He couldn't take his eyes off red, especially with the tantalising promise of more red to come.

There is no hate, only joy. His blood sang in his ears. "I didn't think that rat bastard of a Professor had it in him to die."

"No kidding," said Zack reverently, "I thought that if a monster ever took a chunk out of Hojo, it would die."

Amusement flickered in Tseng's eyes then vanished, like all things inconvenient to the Turks somehow always did. He cleared his throat. "We will be working to retrieve the bodies whilst you three deal with the animal."

"Fine, fine, we'll get to work then."

Genesis stepped up to the door, scattering the team of troopers with their drills and saws, and raised his blade. He readied to bring it down on the steel, when his shoulder throbbed and he almost let go of his sword.

It felt as if the degradation was seeping into his bone, eating into it and making it soft. He covered up the shudder that went through him head to toe by smoothing out the creases in his coat, and lowered Rapier in a grandiose blade-sweep towards the door. "Up, Second Class Zack Fair!"

"What?" Zack stared as if Genesis had just ordered him to fly. When the penny dropped and neurons fired, connecting dots at last, Genesis inwardly cheered. "Oh, right!"

Hauling the broadsword off his back, Zack moved forward, slashed at the seal three times, scouring along the line the troopers had already put in place. Steel shrieked against steel, sparks jumped from edge of the blade, and then a vague rectangle of steel fell into the laboratory to land, not with a clank, but a soft, muffled squelch.

The troopers closed in behind the Seconds with their shields raised.

The smell of blood - cloying, thick, sharply mineral - wafted out of the opening. They could hear water gushing from a spout somewhere. Perhaps a lab bench tap or pipe had been broken in the monster's attack. To the Soldier's more sensitive ears, there was also a deeply contented purring echoing from the depths of the room, accompanied by the rasp of a long tongue and the grating of teeth on bone.

"No need to dawdle in the doorway." Genesis pushed past Zack to step through the makeshift opening. He stepped lightly around the sheet of metal. "Come along. Chop-chop, Seconds."

Zack and Kunsel followed him two steps behind, skirting around the panel of steel and the tangle of arms, legs and stiffening folds of bloodied lab-coat protruding from underneath it, ignoring the way the floor clung to the soles of their boots.

The monster didn't approach them. It didn't even respond to their entrance. It was, however, easy enough to find. All Genesis had to do was follow a trail of luminous pink and blue handprints, shattered brown glass and blood smeared across the crumpled lab benches to the far corner of the room, where the monster had retreated under a giant fume cupboard to enjoy its prize.

Black VIII was curled up quite comfortably in its shelter, grasping a lab-coated body between its strange hand-like paws like a ragdoll and gnawing at its face. What little remained of Hojo's head was a chewed up mass of red, ivory and pinkish grey, but there was no doubt that it was him: The build, the shoes, the meticulously set line of pens in his breast pocket, those long-fingered hands with their mako injection calluses, and there was a stringy bundle of black hair hanging out of the corner of the monster's mouth.

In a moment of disgusted fascination, Genesis thought it a great shame that nobody had a camera on them.

As Tseng started directing the troopers to move in and shift the bodies of the scientists out of the room, Black VIII paused and raised its muzzle, still holding Hojo's head firmly between its teeth.

"You know, from this angle," Zack narrowed his eyes at the monster and the monster glowered back, "it kind of looks my old second cousin twice-removed Zekiel. Gods, I haven't seen him in years. If I just squint a bit – "

Genesis strode between the lab benches, swinging Rapier in one hand in an easy, fluid figure-of-eight pattern. Honestly, it didn't even have the manners or the brains to respond to a Soldier First Class as a real threat. It was almost as unforgivably arrogant as the Midgar Zolom. Its stupidity justified its punishment.

It watched him approach with glowing, bright green eyes and made to shuffle backwards under the fume cupboard when it met Genesis's gaze.

It froze.

At last it had recognised the superior predator.

Behind Genesis, shoes scuffed and fingers gripped leather. Zack and Kunsel had crouched and readied their swords. The troopers had finally finished lifting the steel panel from the floor. Now they were busy cramming the bodies into bags, limb by limb, zipping them up.

The feelers around Black VIII's neck extended, contracted, extended again like restless fingers looking for a throat to throttle. Slowly collecting its six legs beneath its body, it rose, haunches first, eyes fixed on Genesis, with its mouth clamped around Hojo's crumpled head.

It growled low in its throat.

"Don't you growl at me with your mouth full." Genesis pointed the tip of his blade at its forehead, or at least the section of its scalp between its two longest of feelers. "Spit. It. Out."

It shot him an ugly, thoroughly unapologetic look then to the astonishment of both Zack and Kunsel spat out Hojo's head and something that glinted under the lights.

Hojo's glasses bounced once, twice, and came to rest with a clink at Genesis's boots.

Then in a move that really wasn't so astonishing at all, Black VIII lashed its tail and surged up from under the fume cupboard.

To those who were looking on it seemed as though Genesis didn't move at all. One moment, the great black monster was up in the air, all teeth and muscles and rolling green eyes. The next it was collapsed in a twitching heap, steel driven through the back of its neck and pinned to the floor, where it exhaled one last time in a long, wet, gurgling sigh, and Genesis was flicking stray monster fur off his coat.

In the stunned silence that followed, Black VIII began to dissolve into a cloud of fine green light.

"Well, that was quick." Zack sounded more than a little disappointed. "Hey, Genesis, did you even need us here?"

"I don't know, Zack Fair. Do you feel needed?" Genesis smoothed his hair from his face then shot Zack a glower that ought to have melted him on the spot. "And how big a drill would I need to find in order to bore it into your head that, however chummy you may be with Angeal, we are noton first name terms?"

With Zack suitably distracted by a sniggering Kunsel, Genesis breathed an inward sigh of relief. He was hardly going to admit that Lazard had forced him take back-up against one monster because of 'Genesis's health reasons'.

He was disappointed with himself. A spot of the monster's blood had landed on his boots, dammit!

But as he went to retrieve his blade from the body of the vaporising monster, pulled it free from its spine and rolled its weight off Hojo's mangled body that disappointment started to lose its grip, and in its place, was a curious combination of something like stage fright and the thrill of being trapped in a storm, that feeling of being part of something bigger than others were aware of, of being on a stage and knowing that he had been cast in a speaking role, and bubbling up from depths he hadn't known still existed a sudden, nervous agitation that could almost have been the tiniest flicker of fear.

Because Genesis knew about the Stranger, didn't he? He knew about his existence, and if the Stranger could bring about Hojo's death with his mysterious ways, and do it, with the weight of the other seven staff on his conscience (such insignificant men, Genesis had no doubt that they were collateral damage), what was to stop him doing it again and finding a way to remove Genesis too?

And then Genesis found he was laughing, his head tipped back, his shoulders shaking, his hands on his hips, and he was laughing loud and long in a ringing silence as the troopers and Turks paused in their activities to watch him.

He was laughing because he had a new reason to be afraid, not the reason of a monster - afraid of his mutating body and that thing twitching and sliding under the skin of his back like a bat buried under his shoulder blade - but the incredibly human reason of having his perhaps his life under threat, and, to feel that now when any claim to being human seemed to be slipping from him day by day, wasn't all that so funny?

The Stranger had performed.

He sheathed his Rapier and to the mesmerised shock of all those watching, started clapping his hands.

"Bravo!" he laughed, as the last of Black VIII started to fade away. "Bravissimo!"

Genesis hadn't felt this moved by a performance in a long time.

"Guys, it's alright," he heard Zack say in the background, apparently soothing the nerves of the troopers in the platoon that, no, one of their elite Soldiers had not just swandived laughing off the deep end. "Angeal says he's always like this. He's just theatrical."

Cloud had never claimed to be a tactical genius, and frankly he had never wanted to. It smacked too much of Sephiroth and the last thing he wanted to do, after fighting to prove that he wasn't a Sephiroth clone, was to try to think like him.

Of those he considered his friends the only one who could possibly claim that title was Vincent. When the mood took him (or when Cid, or Denzel, who had caught the bug from Cid, was being especially persuasive for a game), Vincent could out-chess a chess board, but on the whole he seemed to prefer deferring to whatever 'charge into the fray with guns blazing' idea Avalanche had come up with next, occasionally supplying a warning or pointing out potential problems and deftly guiding them along as they went.

Perhaps it was one of Vincent's ways of rejecting what Shinra had made of him. Maybe thinking of people in terms of pieces to manoeuvre and costs and losses reminded him too much of his times as a Turk and where his loyalties, that in the end had caused him so much pain, had once lain. Cloud had never asked, and now, sent back in time to this barely familiar world, he would never know.

The point was, Cloud was more than aware that he was a little out of his depth when it came to strategy. If he made a miscalculation, nobody would have been less surprised.

For one thing, he had hoped that Hojo's death would distract the Turks from their scan of the Shinra mainframe. The creeping program with its crackling and snapping searching fingers, however, was still advancing file by file, working methodically through the system.

A program was a program, but the people using it and analysing its results were people (yes, Cloud had conceded that Turks were people too). Surely such a dramatic accident involving the death of Shinra's most preeminent (and despised) scientist would have turned their heads and got them up and running from their desks? But, no, the Turks were professionals, and worse, he could tell from the messages they had sent each other that they suspected that this was a targeted incident. After all, doors had been locking and unlocking erratically throughout the afternoon, but only in this one particular case had it resulted in anything serious, such as death.

Multiple deaths, he reminded himself. An echo of guilt shot through him like a bullet. Seven deaths – all Hojo's staff. He hadn't planned on those. He'd closed the laboratory doors, and he had been so focussed on making sure that Hojo died he hadn't even stopped to think, but it had been necessary, hadn't it? He had to do something, and he hadn't had time to wait for them all to get out. That was right, wasn't it? There hadn't been any time, had there?

He slapped down on the voice that insisted that there had been time and gave himself a furious metaphysical shake.

Those seven deaths were all Hojo's people. They had Hojo's thoughts in their brains, Hojo's words in their ears, held the scalpels and needles for Hojo in their hands, and at some point over the next five years, no doubt more than a few of them would have found their way into an underground laboratory in Nibelheim to 'practice their skills' on two newly captured 'specimens'.

As he watched Zack, who was so alive, so bright, who looked so much younger than he remembered, cut his way into the laboratory, Cloud decided that those seven deaths were collateral damage that weren't worth the time or burden of regretting.

Sorry, Tifa, but I'm just not as good a man as I guess you wanted me to be.

But after the first report of the laboratory accident had gone through, via maintenance, via security, via a whole network of electrical signals and automatic protocols, the Turk scanning activity didn't slowed down at all. If anything, it sped up and seemed to rush towards the card access system like a locust swarm, tearing through the files as if stripping them bare for any traces that Cloud might have left behind.

At least his attempt at a distraction hadn't completely failed, he noted, as the probe scoured through where he had last been with a savage efficiency that made him more than a little concerned. The Turks' attention had been directed towards the card access system, and that had bought him some time. A soft but insistent little voice was telling him that he should probably be feeling far more worried that he was at the current, but honestly, what could Turks do if they did find him? And what would they find? What would they call him, or classify him, if they could classify him at all? Cloud was almost curious to know.

(Because was he still human?)

There was a prod at his awareness - a chime in his non-existent ears - and a message from the Shinra Instant Messaging Service dropped into his space to bob like a message in a bottle.

Hello, stranger, Cloud felt as if he had been struck on the head with a water balloon, how are you this fine evening?

No, Genesis, Cloud was not in any mood to do any more entertaining today. He was tempted to ignore him when he saw on the CCTV footage just where exactly Genesis was messaging him from: In one of the glass elevators. With Lazard standing directly beside him.

Cloud wanted to bury his head in his hands. He had no time for Genesis's games! How could he tell Genesis to just shut up and leave him in peace to deal with the Turks in as pointed a way as possible without Lazard noticing, but, in the same breath, find out what Genesis wanted?

Don't you have better company to be spending time with than messaging me?

He saw Genesis grin at his PHS in the elevator and start typing back. Lazard had turned to look out of the glass window at Midgar below. Why would I want to chat with all these boring old Shinra farts when I could talk to you? Anyway, some of them have certain quaint and gentlemanly principles that they won't cross, like looking over the shoulders of a degrading Soldier whilst he's sending sweet nothings to a concerned girlfriend.

In a flash of unwanted inspiration, Cloud realised who Genesis reminded him of.

Genesis reminded him of Yuffie.

Albeit a Yuffie with the vocabulary of a drama library, an obsession with red that was screaming for a psychoanalyst's attention, and the airs and graces instilled from an unhealthy mixture of both inferiority and superiority complex in the face of growing up with Sephiroth, but Cloud could see it now (even if he didn't want to): Genesis was a closet Yuffie.

The thought was only slightly less surreal than waking up in Cait Sith in the year 2000.

I just wanted to offer my congratulations, came the next message, just as Lazard turned around from the window and came within possible eye-line of Genesis's PHS screen. It was a fantastic show. Everybody's talking about it. I was so glad that I got front row seats. I couldn't have asked for a better view.

The lift came to a stop at the Soldier Administration floor. With a parting nod to Genesis, Lazard got off, and Genesis continued down the building alone.

Lazard tells me that Hollander is staying on, Genesis's expression on the camera was unreadable, and he's getting a promotion as well – Head of Department, no less. Presumably this all suits your agenda, but it has interfered with my revenge.

Do you want compensation? Cloud retorted, but he was forcing an image of Yuffie, stamping her feet and demanding some shiny new materia after Cloud had stopped her wandering somewhere dangerous, to the back of his mind and he couldn't bring himself to feel angry.

No. Genesis chuckled in the lift. Like I've said, Stranger, you've entertained me. I'll let it pass just this once. I think I'd rather have you in my debt, owing me a favour. A very big favour, in fact – I am, after all, passing up the opportunity to see Hollander shamed and shot and tossed over the edge of the Plate.

Alright, I'll let you keep your Knights of the Round! But just you wait! When Yuffie Kisaragi kicks your ass next time, you'd better have even prettier materia than that! Because you owe me big-time for my mercy, Cloud! Bow before the merciful White Rose of Wutai!

Sometimes, the state of Cloud's mind was a marvel even to himself. Here he was, almost surrounded by the frosty rime of a Turk scan, and whilst a quarter of his consciousness was occupied with working out how to camouflage or cloak himself against them, because there really was nowhere to run, the other half was contemplating a truly unhelpful comparison that was making him envisage Genesis with an inner Yuffie dancing gleefully inside him.

The lift doors opened. A couple of troopers walked in, spotted Genesis, then hastily about-turned and marched out.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. The lift continued to descend down the side of Shinra Tower. Good luck! My regards to the Turks!

Bastard! Cloud fired back and was about to add some more choice words from the Dictionary of Cid to it, but Genesis had already closed his PHS and stepped off onto the Soldier recreational floor, leaving Cloud to fume alone in the mainframe.

He watched Genesis saunter along to the Common Room. The man was humming. Unbelievable.

Whatever the case, Genesis wasn't the issue at the moment. Cloud had more pressing concerns at hand – namely how to evade the Turk scan that had unravelled itself from the card access system and spread out into the rest of the mainframe again, less like a frost and more like a particularly aggressive mould.

He studied the code the Turk's scanning software. On close inspection, it shared a lot of similarities to the Turk surveillance nets that combed through the Company's e-mails. Maybe one of the cloaks that Cloud had cobbled together from looking at Lazard's surveillance bypass could do the trick. If he could take the general cloaking principle, and then maybe camouflage himself in extracts of data he had already seen the Turk scan ignore –

Yes, he could do this. Cloud could hide from the Turks. All he had to do was pretend he was a part of a system it had already scanned, wrapping himself in a cloak that mimicked data from elsewhere, but he would have to be quick about it, because those long searching fingers were turning his way...

A keyboard tap, a casual scroll down on the mouse. Faces stared at screens. Blue white light glowed on their noses, chins and foreheads.

The offices of the Department of Administrative Research were largely empty in the evenings. Mostly this was because the Turks out on their various 'day trips' doing 'research' 'adiminstratively' had yet to return. On any other day, Tseng would have considered the near empty state of the office with pride. Let it never be said that a Turk didn't earn his pay-check. The Turks did their work with an efficiency the other departments couldn't even dare to dream about, but today, as the few Turks in the building strained to cover both the mainframe scan and the interviews with those who had been involved in the card access door incidents before Hojo's lab incident, Tseng found himself drumming his fingers and glaring at the empty chairs and desks.

A soft 'ding!' of completion.

"Sir?" Tseng looked up from his report. One of the Turks in the group running the system-wide scan had raised his hand for his attention. "The scan's finished."

He set down his pen. "Did it find anything?"

"No, sir. The scan found nothing at all. Everything's clear."

A light feeling of relief trickled through him, but Tseng forced it away and refused to succumb. He wanted to believe that everything was clear, he really did. What with three assassination plots on the President to be foiled, two stolen Shinra cargo vehicles that needed to be tracked down, and a scandal of some kind involving the CEO of a small mako batteries company to be arranged, Tseng had his plate very full at the moment. He wanted to have this potential cyber-breach done and dealt with as quickly as possible.

But there was no weapon a Turk had in his armoury that was sharper and more trusted than his suspicions. A paranoid Turk was a Turk that survived and stayed on the employment record (in terms of off-the-record 'employment', it used to be said that Hojo could think of ways of employing people and their internal organs that those people hadn't even been aware they could be employed for).

"What exactly do you mean by 'everything's clear'?"

"No breaches in security, sir. No backdoors that shouldn't be there, no traces of entries or exits," listed the Turk, scrolling through his screen, "and no signs of any manipulation through an external terminal or internal terminal. Nobody's been hacking into the card access systems, sir."

Nothing at all. It would almost have been less suspicious if there had been something. Tseng returned to his report. "Check for system anomalies on the day of the Project G final leak. If there is anything unusual, let me know."

"Yes, sir."

Two hours of ticking clocks, sighs and frustrated growls of fruitless searching later, Tseng had almost finished his report summarising the day's activities, when one of the Turks at the monitors raised her voice. "Sir?"

"Yes?"

"It isn't a security breach as such," she said, "but there is something from the day of the file leak - a temporary dip in the data volume of the whole system. It's," she frowned at her monitor, "quite a large flux actually. It's like a piece of the system just moved out and then came back into it. The outward going data came from unspecific mainframe content, but the returning data flux did come from Doctor Hollander's personal laptop."

Spontaneous data fluxes in the Shinra computer system? Tseng didn't believe a word of it. More to the point, he didn't believe in spontaneity. Every effect had a cause if investigated rigorously enough and he was certain that this case would be no different from the rest. "Can we run a search for similar fluxes within the past two months?"

"I've found one, sir," another Turk at the monitors had apparently already anticipated Tseng's 'request' and started searching even as his partner had been speaking, "a massive data influx on 20th August. A big one. After that the changes in data volume are negligible at best, generally constant until the day of the file leak. The August influx wasn't registered as a security breach because it was considered benign. It came from a terminal that was within the Shinra network and the data didn't contain any of the usual expected signatures of a viral program."

20th August – Tseng fished through his memory. The date rang bells, which meant that it was likely he had had to file a report for some unexpected incident that had occurred in the building that day.

The day of the Tower blackout, he remembered. An interesting coincidence.

Except Tseng believed in coincidences hardly any more than he believed in spontaneity.

"Which Shinra terminal was the source of this data influx?"

There was a pause as the Turk checked his results. "Mr Reeve Tuesti's in the Department of Urban Development and Infrastructure, sir."

Autumn in Wutai was a good time for war. The days were clear and dry, the nights were free of biting insects, the chill of winter had yet to set, and the Wutai locals didn't have the advantage of centuries of acclimatisation on their side. Sephiroth remembered Wutai summers as an endless sticky haze of rainfall, heat, and mud warm as viscera, and the bitter taste of mosquitoes and other biting, itching, flying things every time he opened his mouth.

Campaigning in autumn was a marked improvement and this time the war would end. It was a strange inexplicable certainty, but he could feel it, like a slowing of the wind, a worn-thin tiredness, or a shredded flag. He knew he was right. He was a thing born to fight and win battles, and he knew how and when to do it in the same way a bird knew how to fly.

The feeling both elated him and left him feeling hollow. He would be lying if he said that he didn't enjoy it. Victory was something to be savoured and the hard road to it was sweeter still, but one more victory was one more victory, and one more for Hojo to prove that his Sephiroth was Shinra's perfect Soldier. Hojo won every time Sephiroth did and the thought snagged like a thorn in the foot.

His Sephiroth. He hated that possessive. Hojo never dared use it in front of him, but Sephiroth was a good observer. He knew the look people gave to things they thought they owned and when Hojo spoke his name, he could hear it in its very absence, as if the man was itching to say it and he hated it all the more, because Hojo didn't even need to speak aloud anymore for Sephiroth to know that Shinra Company owned him.

It had brought some comfort once, to know that he could hate like that. If Sephiroth could hate, then he wasn't just a threat ShinRa could set on its enemies, a weapon or a Company asset. It made him feel human, something which, admittedly, wouldn't have concerned him so much if he wasn't so sure that, for a reason he had yet to be privy to, it was the opposite to what Hojo wanted him to feel. Knowing the man, Hojo probably didn't want him to feel at all.

He didn't hate Hojo. The little man, as Angeal had once said, simply wasn't worth it and Sephiroth had agreed. Instead, he resented.

He resented the Professor for how much the man knew about him, how he seemed know more about Sephiroth than Sephiroth himself, and refused him even the simplest answers. He resented how the man had known his mother, Jenova, and never told him more than her first name.

He resented how all evidence Sephiroth had ever gathered when he tried to uncover what Hojo was hiding indicated that Hojo had not only overseen his whole development whilst at Shinra, but raised and perhaps named him.

He resented that the man might very possibly be his father, and all the hints Hojo dropped during examinations suggested that the Professor enjoyed the feeling of power he got from keeping Sephiroth in uncertainty, even when all the paperwork pointed straight to him and no other.

He resented the burning self-loathing that came with the thought that he could be Hojo'sson. He resented then the woman who had embraced the Professor and left Sephiroth behind to face him alone, and then he loathed himself even more for resenting a blameless woman who he had never even known, because if he had been in her position, he probably would have run away from Hojo too.

But Hojo guarded his secrets more jealously than a dragon guarded its hoard. Hojo knew that whilst he still held the cards to his chest, there would always be some piece of Sephiroth under his control. Those secrets he hid behind his knowing cackles and glinting glasses, but one day, Sephiroth vowed, he would know them all. Then he could dispose of the man at his leisure.

Knowledge was power and ignorance the strongest of tranquilisers. The battlefield solution to that would have been to interrogate Hojo at sword-point.

He had tried it once. He had been sixteen. He had taken up his Masamune before his examination had started, set the tip under Hojo's chin, and demanded all the answers like only a teenager could: Why did nobody else have to do all of the tests that he did? Why didn't he have a surname like Genesis or Angeal? Where did he come from? Who was he? What was his purpose?

At that time, he had been training with a troop of Soldier Thirds and tentatively fumbling through a friendly rivalry and friendship with Genesis and Angeal. The morning after that examination session, Genesis, Angeal and every Third of Sephiroth's troop were carried shaking and trembling into the infirmary, suffering from a sudden, spontaneous, and almost lethal, bodily mako destabilisation.

It was blamed on a recent mako injection nurse's poor technique. How lucky for them all that Hojo was at hand to save the day!

Sephiroth had never forgotten. He hated and he resented. He kept his friendships few and his thoughts to himself.

Of course, there was no way of knowing if the way he felt was any different from other humans and Soldiers. From the reactions of those around him in his early Soldier days (before they started brushing off his oddities as simply 'being Sephiroth'), he had a dim feeling that he probably didn't respond correctly to most of the common social cues and even less often to emotional ones.

People were perplexing. Within Soldier he could observe how an individual fought and strategized, which weapons they preferred, what times of day they were most active, and he could interact with them perfectly within the boundaries of professional behaviour and battlefield camaraderie. Outside of Shinra and Soldier, however, sometimes it wasn't much different from walking through the Wutai forests and watching the wild apes.

But for now he considered the look in the Wutai warrior's eyes, the burst of hate and anger, the shadow of despair, the dull resignation of death, watched it all bleed away like the blood seeping into the soil, and lowered his blade.

The man slid down Masamune to fall into the long green grass. Sephiroth flicked away the blood. "What was he saying at the end?"

"Sir," the Third he had brought with him to act as the prisoner's interpreter seemed afraid to continue, "he was…er…he said…"

"As exact a translation as possible, if you please."

The Third took a deep breath. "He said that he prayed to the Leviathan and all the spirits of the seas that the Silver Demon – er…that's you, sir –" Sephiroth waved on the Third to continue. " - would never know that which he most needed to know. It's a curse, sir, a traditional one." When Sephiroth said nothing in response, the Third started to babble. "I wouldn't think too much of it, sir. That was a very literal translation. Some people say it means you'll never know love, or joy, or friendship, it depends on the interpretation, but it's just words, sir."

Sephiroth wiped the remaining blood off the sword with a handful of grass. "Anything else?"

The Third gave him a nervous grin. Sephiroth wondered when it was that nervous grins became the only kind of grins he saw on his officers within a certain distance of him. "He apologised to his dear wife that he couldn't make a present of your hair to her, so that she could weave it into a fire-proof blanket. Not my words, sir!"

Sephiroth snorted. He straightened from the crouch he had sank down into to clean the whole length of the seven foot blade. Taking that as their cue, two troopers moved out of the shadows of the tree-line to collect up the prisoner's body. They would be exchanging it for bodies of their own dead later.

Striding out from the glade, Masamune in hand, Sephiroth returned to the main part of the camp with the interpreter Third and two troopers carrying the body close behind him. Word that Sephiroth had finished his interrogation travelled quickly and soon a Soldier Second came running up towards him.

"Sir! The weekly bulletin from Midgar is in the Communications Tent."

"It can wait."

"First Class Hewley says that you ought to see it, sir."

Sephiroth was surprised. Angeal wasn't usually the kind to make trivial demands of him. After a moment of thought he gave the Second a short nod. "I see. Thank you."

The Second clicked his heels in a salute and sped away in the direction of the mess tent. Sephiroth dismissed the Third and the troopers and turned towards Communications.

Ducking through a canvas flap brought him into the midst of blinking lights, whirring fans and bundles of wires snaking over floor and under tables. Booths were filled with men talking quickly and clearly into phones and microphones. A portable mako electricity generator stood in the centre of the room, throwing rippling streaks of cold green light from its mako level meters across the ceiling.

"Sephiroth! Over here!" Angeal rose from his booth and tugged a headphone-set from his ears. The two nosy Soldiers who had been peering over Angeal's shoulders both gave a start and straightened into salutes.

Acknowledging the Seconds with a nod, Sephiroth picked his way through the cables towards the laptop booth the three men were clustered around.

"Angeal, I was told that there was something that you thought I should see." He propped the Masamune up against the card partition and turned to Angeal, then his gaze dropped down. He frowned. "You are favouring your left leg."

"It's nothing serious," said Angeal quickly, but he looked oddly guilty, as if he had been hoping that Sephiroth wouldn't notice. "Apparently I didn't clean a wound as well I thought before I cast a Cure. There's probably a splinter or bit of shrapnel stuck in there. In any case, Sephiroth, everybody else who went on your morning jog through a mine field yesterday are perfectly fine, so if there's been any complication since, it's nobody's fault but my own."

"'Complication'?"

Angeal broke into a small smile. "Don't worry. If it gets any worse, I won't hide it from you. We can all suffer together – Genesis with that shoulder of his, me with my gammy leg, and you with both mine and Genesis's complaining!"

Sephiroth looked at him closely, eyes hard, then sighed. "Indeed."

Angeal deftly translated this single word to mean, 'Not much different from the usual suffering then.' He dismissed the two Seconds still hovering hopefully beside them with a flick of his thumb and raised his voice. "The weekly Company news bulletin just came through."

"Has something happened?"

"You could say that." Angeal pushed up from the chair and stood to one side, wincing as he put weight onto his left leg, gestured for Sephiroth to sit down. "Here, see for yourself."

The weekly Company bulletin was exactly as it said on the label. It was the weekly summary of the news and happenings within the Company from every major ShinRa operation. There was a simple report of community service done by ShinRa employees collecting up rubbish in Junon harbour and a paragraph on a Soldier recruitment event in North Corel. There was even a segment keeping Company employees abreast of the Wutai War, but it was written by the Public Relations Department in Midgar, not anybody in Wutai itself.

Angeal had scrolled the message down to the bulletin's very last few paragraphs. Sephiroth narrowed his eyes and started to read, and as he read, Angeal watched him become very, very still.

Finally, it is with great regret that we report the passing of our esteemed Head of the Science Department, Professor Domon Hojo, this Tuesday in a tragic and untimely laboratory-related incident.

Professor Hojo joined the Company in 1971, becoming Head of the Department of Science in 1980, and was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Soldier program, studying the effects of intravenous mako on human physiology for medical and therapeutic purposes.

He was much liked throughout the department for his sharp sense of humour and the joy he found in his work, seeing potential in all who came before him for his projects.

He leaves no existing family. It is, however, well known that he considered the First Class Soldier Sephiroth with the same affection and fondness as the son he never had, some members of the department going so far as to call First Class Sephiroth the Professor's 'living legacy'.

Professor Hojo will be sorely missed.

First Class Sephiroth is presently in Wutai and we wish him all the best of fortune in these trying times.

In light of this recent event, we would like to warmly congratulate Doctor Greyson Hollander on his appointment to Head of the Department of Science.

Doctor Hollander has been working in partnership with Professor Hojo on the Soldier program since its earliest days in both its development and current implementation. His individual research interests include mako-prompted cellular development and mako in medicine.

He is well liked within the department. We hope that he will bring the weight and skill of his considerable experience, within his field and the Company, to his leadership position.

And there it ended. There was no more bulletin to scroll through - just blank beige space as blank as the space in Sephiroth's head that was usually filled with thoughts as organised as regiments, but for once all those thoughts had tumbled away.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" He heard Angeal speak behind him as if through liquid crystal mako. "I was calling Genesis for the details before you came. 'Laboratory-related incident' is a nice way to put it! He was eaten by one of his own monsters. I have to say, the irony of it all – "

Whilst Angeal continued talking, Sephiroth let the words wash over him and simply stared at the screen.

This great swelling tightness in his chest - it was bigger than joy, more thrilling than victory, warmer than sunrise. It was the feeling of seeing a barred gate suddenly unbolted and flinging it open for the first time.

Elation. He was elated beyond words. Hojo was dead. He was dead, probably would be burned by the time they returned to Midgar, reduced to bones and even less, and his obituary was just a string of empty words.

All of a sudden, the bubble of elation popped and something ugly stirred inside him: The old resentment from memories that could not be forgotten; the sour black bitterness from the gaping gap in his memories that ought to have been his childhood.

Hojo was dead and his obituary was a bundle of twisted truths, but Sephiroth was indeed all that remained of him. He was the man's 'living legacy', the proof of Hojo's existence. He had Hojo fingerprints spotted all over his DNA. If they cut him open to the bone, perhaps they would find Hojo's signature there, carved into the ivory. Despite Hojo's death, Sephiroth was far from free of him.

No, he realised with a sudden pulse of cold anger. He wasn't 'far from free'. Sephiroth would never be free of Hojo, because if knowledge had been power and ignorance had been a tranquiliser, then secrets had been control.

Professor Hojo had kept as many secrets from Sephiroth as he could possibly get away with, especially concerning Sephiroth himself. Now, he had as good as died and taken a portion of Sephiroth with him, greedy and grasping and cards held pressed to his chest till the very end.

Perhaps Hojo hadn't been worth hating whilst he was alive, but having died like this, with all of Sephiroth's questions as to who and what he was and where he came from unanswered, Sephiroth couldn't think of a ghost he could possibly hate more.

"Sephiroth?" Angeal had squeezed into the booth to stand beside him. It suddenly occurred to Sephiroth that his friend had stopped talking several minutes ago and had simply been watching and waiting for a response "Are you al - ?"

"I am fine!" Sephiroth snapped, more sharply than he had intended.

The chattering in the surrounding booths dissipated. Nervous gazes swivelled their way, until Angeal glowered around the room and growled, "Back to work, all of you."

Activity resumed. Sephiroth took a deep breath. "I apologise. That was unprovoked."

"No, not at all. It is probably more than likely that I deserved it." An uneasy silence swirled in the booth between them. Angeal folded his arms, breathed out slowly. "I thought that we could all do with some cheer, especially you, what with how you've been working lately. You've made it no secret that – "

"I'd prefer Hojo dead over alive, yes." Sephiroth attempted a thin smile. "There is no need to apologise, Angeal. I am, on the whole, pleased with this turn of events. Yes, I suppose you could say that I am happy, to some extent."

"To some extent?" Angeal raised his eyebrows. "You don't sound so sure."

How much could he say without spewing something that was bound to make Angeal disappointed in him? Sephiroth was happy, but he couldn't turn his back on the suspicion that he had been cheated in some way, thwarted of something that was rightfully his.

"It is a complicated sort of happiness," he spelled out, slow and deliberate, grimacing to remind Angeal just how much he disliked having his feelings prised out of him. "I am not sure whether 'happy' is even appropriate."

For a few seconds, Angeal said nothing, as if he was waiting for Sephiroth to continue, or was trying to coax him into elaborating, but no such luck, of course. "Well, if it's complicated then perhaps it just needs more than one mind to unmuddle it."

"How would you feel if Hollander were to die in a laboratory incident, right at this very moment?"

A shadow crossed Angeal's expression, too fleeting to tell what it was, but it was in no way pleasant. He looked down his feet, avoiding Sephiroth's gaze.

"I suppose," Angeal chose his words carefully, "it would be complicated, considering many things, aside from him being mine and Genesis's responsible scientist. I can't say I'm too pleased about him being promoted, what with Genesis's wound the way it is, but, I suppose he is the only one there who could possibly match Hojo in what he knows."

"Perhaps, he will be good for the Company."

"Perhaps," Angeal agreed reluctantly, because both knew that they both thought otherwise. "I suppose I should withhold judgement until I see him running the department myself. Anyway!" He coughed and cleared his throat as if to dispel the grim cloud that had settled over them in the booth. "If you are worried about there being something wrong with celebrating the death of a – well, I hesitate to call anybody bad or evil, but, a man who I know has caused you, and the people you've cared about, a lot of pain in the past – I can tell you this quite plainly. It's perfectly human to celebrate - "

"I am not worried." Sephiroth was bitter and angry and many things, and perhaps for a moment he had worried, as to just how much of a monster he was that a son could be so overjoyed at the death of a father. "But, there is a part of me that wishes - " he clenched his hands into fists and his gloves creaked, " - a part of me wishes that the monster that did it could have been me."

He couldn't deny it. He envied the monster that had done it.

It was such a shame really that a man could only be killed once.

A hand clapped down on his shoulder. Angeal met his gaze. "Perhaps it should have been, and if it was, nobody would think you a monster because of it."

Sephiroth gave Angeal a short nod, to acknowledge his efforts as a friend. He could show that much appreciation at least, but he knew that however much Angeal talked to him, tried to help him, or support him, it wasn't going to be enough. He felt a restless urgency to return to Midgar, to see with his own two eyes that the 'esteemed' Professor was as dead as Shinra said he was and settle the uneasy feeling in his stomach that somebody somewhere had cut some strings and left him hanging loose -

He closed the laptop lid and stood. He had never been a puppet of Hojo's. He refused to even consider it.

He picked up the Masamune. "We have a war to finish."

"That we do." Angeal straightened from the partition then bent to collect the Buster sword from where he had wedged it between the table and wall. It slid into place on Angeal's back with a hiss and a soft click. "Oh, also, Genesis asked me to remind you that your bet is still on, although, Sephiroth, I really do object to this. War shouldn't be treated like a game."

"Then we will treat it as it should be." Sephiroth strode out, and the troopers and Soldiers in the Communication saluted him as he went. Angeal followed alongside him. "We will treat it as something that should be ended as swiftly as possible, and in such a way that it won't happen again for a very long time."

It had worked. The scan had finished and seeing nothing had happened since, Cloud was in the clear. It was almost too good to be true but as he gingerly undid the cloak, no frosty cloud of data came launching itself out of cyberspace to assault him, so for now, it looked as though he was safe.

A chime tapped against his senses.

That is, he would be safe if Genesis didn't keep trying to make contact with him. Honestly, Cloud didn't know why he hadn't told the man to just shut up and leave him alone, but then again he had never told Yuffie to leave him alone either – and his brain really needed to stop making that comparison.

Hello? the message hung in front of him like a signpost, hello? Is there anybody there? Hello?

Speaking of Genesis, where was he? Usually Cloud could spot him in an instant. Him, Zack and Sephiroth – were Sephiroth in the building – were almost impossible to ignore, but right now, in the late hours of evening, perhaps even early hours of the morning, Genesis was nowhere to be seen on Shinravision.

Not knowing the location of a Soldier First Class with a very unhealthy dosage of Jenova cells in his body didn't sit well with Cloud at all. Where are you?

My room, and I'm not alone – I have a bottle of Old Corel whisky with me, came the gleeful reply, and it's being a really, really, good friend to me tonight. So much for Stephanie and Angelica - prancing off to Wutai without me! How dare they? I wanted to go prancing with them.

His room. That would make sense. Cloud was more than a little surprised at Shinra's decency to keep the CCTV out of their officer's private quarters, but was more disturbed that he had forgotten that people needed to sleep.

He also couldn't deny that a drunk-calling Genesis Rhapsodos wasn't disturbing either.

Genesis, he sent back, and hoped that the use of the man's name would be a wake-up call, Soldiers don't get drunk.

At least, not on a single bottle of whisky. Cloud had tried. Tifa had despaired.

I don't care, the petulant response was speedy. It's all psychology. If I believe I'm drunk enough, I will be drunk, and cogito ergo drunk sum. It's the alcohol whatchamacallit – placebo effect.

If you can type 'whatchamacallit', you are not drunk. Cloud tried to ignore that Genesis's reasoning was astoundingly like his own on a very bad day and that Cloud had resorted to channelling Tifa. No thanks to you, I've been busy, and I still am busy. What do you want?

I want to be drunk, so that this whole night can all just be one long drunk dream, and then I can wake up like a pathetic little human with his pathetically human metabolism, with a hangover and a greasy liver, and I won't have to keep going on with all this.

I have better things to be doing than helping you get drunk, Cloud answered, a little more coolly than he would have liked, but if there was something wrong, he hoped that Genesis got the hint and told him soon, rather than drunk-rambled his way through a monologue, and since when had Cloud become the First Class Soldier's anonymous counselling service?

I don't need your help with that. I'm already drunk. I must be, because my mind and all these aches and pains in my body have decided to gang up on me, and they're making me see things that couldn't possibly be real, like this wing that's just grown out of my back, and all sorts of other stupid things, like all this blood and all these feathers, all over my carpet, and my ceiling, and my bed, and if I'm not drunk dreaming this, I'm either out of my mind or mutating beyond any help anybody could possibly give me, and tomorrow I'm going to have to try scraping all this blood off the ceiling lights, so tell me, Stranger, what am I if I'm not drunk?

Out of your mind and mutating, Cloud was tempted to say, but he bit down on that thought because it turned into a message, because however much Genesis had irritated and messed with him in the past month or so, that was far too cruel, especially to a man who had just possibly turned to him because 'Stephanie' and 'Angelica' were away in Wutai and he would otherwise be trying to deal with a sudden, disturbing and what sounded like a very painful mutation alone.

You need to clean up your room, Cloud told him matter-of-factly, pushing down the panicked voice at the back of his mind that was jumping up and down and screaming that here was another Soldier with one wing, possibly disturbed enough to go on a very deadly rampage. Now what Cloud had to do was keep Genesis grounded and distracted enough from his mutation to stop his mind wandering down that self-destructive route.

For a while, there was no reply. Maybe Genesis had used up all his energy on his previous message and had willed himself drunk enough to fall asleep.

Fat chance of that. You are right. I do need to clean up. Are you going to help me with that?

Perhaps if Cloud got into one of Shinra's cleaning robots he could, but he had no intention of piloting one of those to Genesis's rooms after just escaping the Turks (and he would imagine that the Turks would be back for Round Two soon enough). Any robot going off its pre-programmed route would send up a flag for maintenance to crawl out of bed. No.

Then are you going to help me find a cure?

I said that I would, he had a few thoughts in mind as to how he could do that, and I am looking.

Any chance of getting hold of it before I sprout a second wing or become something like that monster you set upon Hojo?

The accusation wasn't subtle. It was there to remind Cloud that Genesis knew of his existence, and if the whim took him he could reveal it any time he liked, but Cloud had a feeling that Genesis was putting up an act more for his own pride's sake than in any real effort to threaten him.

I think, at least, Cloud hoped he was right, Sephiroth had had an even higher level of Jenova cells in him and ignoring the horror he had become in their final battle in the days of Meteor, the most dramatic mutation he had ever gottenwas a single wing (as far as they all knew – who knew what scales or feathers he had been hiding under that leather coat?), that that's the worst mutation out of the way.

Do you know that for sure? demanded Genesis instantly, pouncing on Cloud's words. How do you know that?

No, I don't know that for sure, Cloud admitted, because he didn't. I'm making a guess, based on what I read in that file I sent you, and what I know of another who was in a similar position to yourself.

He didn't know why he said that and he regretted it the moment Genesis seized upon it like a guard dog wrapping its jaws on a burglar's leg. What do you mean another? Is there somebody else degrading like I am? Who are they? Is this somebody you know personally?

Who he was is none of your business. He is dead, Cloud shot down Genesis's questions without any guilt. He wasn't lying. After all, the Sephiroth he knew was dead. The difficult part was ensuring he stayed that way, and I am here to make sure that the circumstances surrounding his death do not happen again. Don't ask me any more questions about him.

There was a long silence. Cloud half-hoped that Genesis had finally exhausted himself, or perhaps drowned himself on his whisky, but a silence at this point in their conversation was more than a little unnerving. In Cloud's experience, limited though it was, men infused with Jenova cells had a pretty poor record when it came to handling emotional shocks. If Genesis upped and started setting fire to Shinra Tower, he wouldn't have been in the least bit surprised. Cloud didn't know how he could handle that. He would have to work something out for the future, just in case.

When Genesis's reply dropped into cyberspace, Cloud heaved an inward sigh of relief. Well, at least I can look forward to the thrilling prospect of growing a second wing sometime soon, now that I know what to expect and won't be taken by surprise.

To his own surprise, Cloud smiled. Would it bother you if you only ever had one wing?

Put it this way, the reply came quickly. If I had two wings, I could be an angel. It has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? 'The Angel Genesis, he comes bearing the gift of the Goddess, wings of light and dark spread afar', but if I only had the one I would be incomplete, and being neither man nor angel, what else could I be but a monster?

Loveless, said Cloud firmly, and he knew he had the man's attention, any mention of the book was like a magic spell with him, think of Loveless. Loveless is incomplete and nobody thinks any less of it. If anything, people praise it all the more. It gives them the freedom to choose how it goes, and it's just the same for you – you have a choice as to what to make of yourself, and would you really call Loveless a monster?

Another long silence. E-mails seethed all around him – like fish or like birds, or maybe flying fish, Cloud was still trying to decide.

Genesis responded. I suppose I ought to clean up this mess.

Yes, Cloud pushed him, you should.

Then that was it, no more replies. Genesis went silent, leaving Cloud none the wiser as to what had been made of his attempts to keep Genesis's spirits up, but he waited, checking the CCTV for any suspicious activity just in case Genesis decided to set the Tower on fire after all, as an especially heated expression of his crisis of humanity.

Given that Genesis did not burn down Shinra Tower that night, Cloud took that as a sign that perhaps something of what he had said had echoed with him, or at least offered better distraction (entertainment) than a bottle of Old Corel whisky.

Sephiroth and Angeal had better finish up in Wutai and return to Midgar soon. Cloud was in no position to make a habit of dealing with Genesis after hours, especially when their strange relationship was starting to feel dangerously like a very odd friendship, and Cloud wasn't sure it was a friendship he could afford to have.

Chapter Text

Nobody expected the war to end quite as soon as it did, but after ceasefire negotiations were held and November came round, it was agreed that the Wutai War was officially over.

How a war that looked as though it would never end had been brought so quickly to a close, people could only speculate, although there were some who claimed to have first-hand knowledge.

They said that they were survivors from the bamboo jungles and terraced hills, had hidden in caves and inside temple statues, and they claimed that the fighting at the end of the Wutai War had been so inhumanly savage that Wutai had surrendered as a gesture of protest.

They would not shame themselves, said the remnants of Wutai, by going to war against monsters. War was a matter of honour and honour could only be found in the hearts of men and by sending monsters onto the battlefield, ShinRa had been forcing them to fight a dishonourable war.

War had to be between men, they said, or it held no meaning. Until ShinRa learned to fight a meaningful war, Wutai would not go to war against ShinRa again.

Nobody mentioned the frozen set of the Wutai people's faces, or their shaking hands when they tried to lose themselves in a bar, or their too-wide eyes that looked but always seemed to be seeing something else - something that came out of the dark of the jungle, something that came upon the Wutai forces in a flash of silver and burst of fire as swift and terrible as lightning.

There was no need to say anything, because the fear did not need explanation. The fear did not need discussion. The fear did not need re-living, and no proud nation of people wanted to hear that they had been frightened into surrender.

When the helicopters and planes returned to Midgar, a ceremony was held to welcome back the Soldiers and troopers. Doors opened to the sound of applause.

Under their red-eyed helmets, boys had gone to war and they hadn't come back as men. The men who went to war hadn't come back as men either. They came back as tools and weapons, used to the hilt with hairline cracks in their cores, but the crowd cheered on, and the Soldiers and troopers stumbled off the planes with their sacks of belongings and souvenirs to follow the line of coffins.

The crowd cheered loudest of all for the officers that had led the Final Push.

Sephiroth stepped out, returning as ShinRa's hero, its favourite and deadliest weapon once again. In one hand, he carried the Masamune, and in the other, to Zack's dismay, Sephiroth held the Buster sword.

He was carrying it awkwardly, gingerly even, as if he didn't know what to do with a blade so wide and heavy and, relative to his own, short. It was lucky that he was a tall man. He could hold it by its hilt without its tip catching on the aircraft stairs, but it was all Zack could do to stop himself running to the plane and snatching the sword from Sephiroth before the Buster was damaged (because, boy, would that make Angeal mad, even if one of his best friend's had been carrying it).

But then Sephiroth turned at the bottom of the steps and stood aside of the door, and Zack breathed a sigh of relief at the same time his heart sank to the soles of his boots and a small voice at the back of his mind whispered frantically that there was something wrong, as Angeal, face pinched with pain, was carried out of the plane on a stretcher.

The crowd, however, cheered them on, because the Wutai War was over and surely, for those who had returned, things could only get better.

The door to his office slammed open and bounced off the wall.

Genesis's voice cracked like a whip. "Well, Department Head? What do you make of it now that you've seen him for yourself?"

"It could be an infection," said Hollander weakly, raising his head from his hands. He had been thinking over what to tell Gillian, panicking over what he could possibly say that wouldn't make him seem any more of the incompetent fool than he already felt he was. "A hitherto unknown infection that he picked up in the Wutai jungle, perhaps transported by a mako-mutant type of fly. Something which delays the healing factor. It's not too far-fetched. There are a couple of poisons known to have that effect after all – "

"Don't be ridiculous!" Genesis snapped. "It's been three days since that last battle. His wounds are barely healed. This is degradation again and you know it, Hollander!"

Hollander sighed. Genesis had never shown him much respect to start with, but he had at least before in the past he had pretended to be civil. These days, Genesis didn't even try to pretend, but Hollander couldn't find the courage or the will in him to put Genesis in his place.

Angeal had come back from the War riddled with enough suspiciously slow-healing wounds that he hadn't been able to stand. Hollander had instantly recognised it as degradation, although still thankfully at its earliest stage.

"Well, Hollander? What have you to say for yourself?

It had caused some alarm, of course. None of the Soldiers were stupid and enough of them had recovered from serious injuries to see that Angeal's condition wasn't normal.

"Are you going to speak at all?"

Stress, Hollander had told the Soldiers, before the ripples of unease could spread. Stress, lack of sleep, and a miscalculation of the nutritional requirements a top-performing Soldier First Class such as Angeal Hewley needed to maintain his ability to heal!

"Or are you going to sit there quivering dumb like a child that's run to its mother and hidden in her apron?"

Repeated enough by the PR Department, the Soldiers swallowed it down, but for Hollander the trouble was only beginning, because if Angeal was degrading too then Project G was truly in deep, deep trouble.

At last, Hollander sighed. "Our studies suggested that Angeal's cellular chemistry would be more stable than yours."

"Oh, I see!" Genesis's expression was ugly, all lip curl and too much teeth. "You hoped that I would be the only one with degradation – your only failure. Well! I am sure you did, and for the record, so did I, but that's not the case now, is it? Is it? Now, what are you going to do about it?"

Truth be told, Genesis didn't really expect Hollander to do anything at all. Hollander was pathetic. He was a greasy mouse of a man hiding behind his white coat and lab jargon, but at this point, Genesis didn't care. Genesis was angry, tired, weary to the bones of his body and aching in joints that no normal human being should have.

He felt about as in control of the situation as a new recruit rolling a material pearl in his hand, and just as much as an explosive hazard to everybody around him. Hollander was just an easy target to take it all out on.

Said man mouse muttered something under his breath.

"What did you just say?"

Hollander's face reddened. "If you hadn't pushed Lazard into sending both Angeal and Sephiroth into going to Wutai, Angeal would not have been in a position to sustain those injuries that have pushed him early into the degradation cycle in the first place. He would have been here! Within easy reach of ShinRa care! If only you had been the one to go to Wutai!"

"You mean, 'If only Genesis had gone to Wutai, oh-so-conveniently got himself killed on the frontlines, and therefore removed myself from ShinRa, along with the evidence of degradation and Project G's only known failure'?" said Genesis archly, lowering the hand he hadn't even realised he had raised and closed it into a fist. Hollander had hit a nerve with all the clumsy precision of a mallet – in other words, completely by chance, but it didn't matter if he'd just got lucky, because in the end the blow still hurt. "Well, so sorry to disappoint."

Of course, Genesis had considered the possibility that Angeal might be injured! Of course, he had! It wasn't even a 'possibility'. Every Soldier pulling his weight could expect a flesh wound or ten and Angeal would have done his honourable best to pull his weight and more. Genesis had simply pinned his hopes on the usual safest bet: That Sephiroth was a deadly one man army enough to protect Angeal from the worst of it.

He chided himself. He must have been out of his mind. Genesis was a Soldier, First Class. He should have known better than to pin his hopes on anything at all. He should have known better than to even have hopes.

He swept his hair out of his eyes, gave Hollander a scornful once over that left no doubt of his opinion that the doctor was worth less than the coffee stain on his trousers. "Now, before I get sick of wasting another precious minute of my considerably shorter than average life breathing the same air as you, you will answer my initial question: What are you going to about it?"

"We will continue monitoring your own condition," replied Hollander in a rush. Genesis loomed over him, all but spitting fire, "and from that, we'll work out a sequence of events in the degradation, find the threshold mutation level between each stage then deduce the stabilisation points. You will have to come in more often for checks, of course. I know that you've been avoiding them lately. I'll have a word with Lazard – "

"You'll find that Director Lazard agrees with me that I'm doing far better for my body giving it the rest and relaxation it deserves." Genesis clicked his tongue in irritation. Ever since that wing had budded from his back, he had been doing his damned best to stay out of Hollander's reach. A mutation like that was exactly the kind of thing that made the inquiring minds of the Science Department reach for their scalpels and buzz-saws. Unfortunately, it wasn't only his life on the line anymore. "But, perhaps once in a while, I will find time in my schedule to come your way."

"That is good to hear. In the meantime," Hollander dabbed the sweat off his forehead and reached for a stack of folders that had been shunted to the side of his desk, "I did find something very promising in these. I was given access to these files on my promotion. I haven't had a chance to look at all them properly yet, but this one was very interesting."

He picked out one from the centre of the stack, peered at its label then held it up to Genesis. "According to this file, there may be a young remnant of the Ancient race currently under ShinRa watch."

Genesis took the folder and opened it with interest. "A real Ancient?"

"Well, to be precise, she'd only be half an Ancient, but that's more than enough if she's inherited their abilities."

He flipped through the pages: Report after report in the terse style of the Turks, photographs snapped from a distance charting the growth of a young woman from a little girl. "And? Has she?"

"As of yet, there haven't been any signs to say anything for certain. The Turks have been keeping an eye on her. They're supposed to report in when they notice anything remarkable, but for now, she's simply under surveillance and Company protection."

Hollander twisted that disgusting handkerchief between his sweaty palms. Genesis fought the urge to burn it and make the world that little bit more of a sanitary place to live in. "What will happen to this girl if she does manifest Ancient abilities?"

"The plan is to bring her into protective custody. Aside from those circumstances, however, the Department of Science has been advised to leave her well alone."

Genesis snorted. From what he had seen from the files, Hojo had been cautioned time and time again by the Turks for trying to bring in the girl for some very dubious experiments indeed.

Hollander rubbed his temples. "We're not to bring her in unless absolutely vital or certain that she could be of Company use. The Turks say that it would be too much trouble if it got out that the Company had been studying the Ancients. People would leap to all sorts of conclusions if they began to think that ShinRa was endorsing all of those old wives' tales about the Ancients and the Planet - but the fact of the matter is, even if she doesn't manifest Ancient abilities, she is still quite the biological resource."

That a girl could be reduced so easily to a 'resource' made one part of Genesis instantly recoil, but to his own disgust, another part of him had hopefully pricked its ears.

If the girl was a half-Ancient then surely she was exactly the thing that Genesis and Angeal (and Sephiroth, perhaps, but it was possible that he was something else entirely) had been created to mimic? She was, by her very nature, the closest to how they were supposed to be if they could be healthy. If Hollander could only examine her, perhaps they could find out just where Genesis and Angeal had gone wrong.

"In short," Genesis closed the file, "now that you have access to her, you are considering having this half-Ancient girl brought in for study."

Hollander nodded. "All I need is a good enough reason to obtain permission from the President to have the Turks bring her in. If I could just get hold of a cellular sample or two! Maybe observe some of the key physiological processes of her body, perhaps test her immune responses, she might just give us the answers to how to save Angeal and yourself."

And your precious Project G too. Genesis clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Is providing a cure for mine and Angeal's degradation a good enough reason to bring her in?"

"Of course not!" Hollander cried, burying his hands in his hair. "It is no reason at all. The President cannot know about how degradation is affecting the two of you! It'd be the end! Project G would be finished for sure! He would order the project's immediate termination, which would therefore mean yours and Angeal's – "

"'Forced retirement'? Please." Genesis tossed the half-Ancient girl's file onto the table, where it landed with a slap on the back of Hollander's hand. "If they ever come to force me to retire, I'll retire a whole cohort of Soldiers with me. Between all of us, I'll make sure that it becomes the biggest retirement ball ShinRa's ever seen."

Hollander licked his lips and swallowed. "Could you do it?"

"Be an exquisite host of a ball? Why, of course." Genesis bowed with a flourish of his hand.

"I meant bring in the girl without getting caught by the Turks."

It sickened Genesis just how low Hollander thought he would stoop to find a cure for the degradation.

It also sickened Genesis how tempted he was by Hollander's suggestion.

"Indeed, I could." It was true. He was First Class Genesis Rhapsodos. He could take on a plane full of Turks with one hand occupied by a good book and half his mind composing a critical analysis of the text, and still step out from the fight with his red leather jacket spotless, or at least, he used to be able to. "But I could also roast you dry and grind you into dust as fine as your favourite coffee blend and I haven't done that yet, because I don't feel like it."

Hollander's face fell. "But, Genesis – "

"Having said that, I want to meet her. As soon as possible. In fact," Genesis pulled out his PHS, glanced at the screen and tucked it away, "I have nothing urgent this afternoon, so I'll see her today. The sooner we know if she's any use to us or not the better. I'll leave it to you to get the permission from the Turks."

"Excuse me?"

Genesis rolled his eyes. "You said that the Turks need to approve of the reason to bring her in, but if somebody merely wanted to visit her, as opposed to taking her into custody, I'd imagine the vetting process is much more straightforward. You're a Department Head, Hollander. Surely you're competent enough to arrange this?"

"But why would I send you of all people to meet her? It would be far more productive to send one of my researchers - " Hollander jumped as Genesis slapped the pile of folders on his desk.

"Oh, for heaven's sake! If the President's so eager to see this girl manifest Ancient abilities then I'm sure you can cock and bull something with that quite easily! Just feed him something about an extension of Project G maybe! Pseudoscience mumbo jumbo about looking for resonance, or relatability, between the real deal half-Ancient and your failing fakes - studying their interactions, maybe throw in the chance hope that my presence triggers some of her 'latent Ancient abilities'!"

Genesis sighed and threw up his arms in a gesture of exasperation. "Hollander, I honestly couldn't care less what you say, but you will arrange clearance for me to visit this girl, or else I will walk into the Soldier Common Room, and show all our loyal ShinRa Soldiers this – " he waved a hand at his rotting shoulder, ignored the stab of pain that small gesture sent up his arm, "- and tell them all how sorry I am that every man injected with mako from the year that Angeal and I entered the program and after are all doomed to degrade and die just like the two of us."

"You wouldn't," gasped Hollander, but he looked uncertain, because this was Genesis, and Genesis was the kind of man who thought C-4 should be shared out at parties like cookie dough.

"There will be panic, maybe a little rioting, some spilled blood, and possibly a very messy coup." Genesis's eyes shone with a hungry gleam. "It will be gloriously entertaining, although what happens really will depend on how charitable the Soldiers feel after being told that ShinRa lied to them about the safety of the Soldier procedure, and that all of them will die before they hit the ripe old age of twenty seven. Now, shall I trigger general hysteria and a Soldier uprising or not?"

Hollander shook his head.

"What a pity. Well then, I'll expect clearance to visit this half-Ancient girl within the next two hours. One hour would be preferable. If you manage it in half an hour, who knows? I might bring back a lock of her hair for you. A cell sample! You'd like that wouldn't you?"

"I'll see what I can do," Hollander croaked.

Good. In the meantime, Angeal was in the infirmary and Genesis's considerably eased roster (thanks to Lazard, damn the man for actually having some streak of decency when it came to the Soldiers under his management!) meant he had the time spare for a visit.

Kicking back the hem of his coat, Genesis swept towards the door.

He turned with a wicked smile. "Infinite is the mystery of the goddess, we seek it thus and take to the sky. Thank you very much for sharing yet another ShinRa Company secret with me, Doctor Hollander."

Now that he had finally gotten something out of their meeting, he had had quite enough of Hollander's company.

"Morning, Reeve."

Reeve glanced over the coffee machine to where Veld was precariously balancing a paper cup on his gun-arm. "Morning, Veld."

"Interesting weather today," said Veld, with a nod to the window behind them where rain was sliding down the glass in a single rippling sheet.

The atmosphere of Midgar did funny things to rain. Mako vapours from the reactors meant that Midgar rains tended to fall with a slightly green, luminous tint. The few poetic souls who liked Midgar often compared it to the floating lights over the Northern crater. Reeve, however, along with the majority of Midgar residents, both above and below the Plate, preferred to describe it as 'piss rain'.

"It's very Midgar."

"It is, isn't it? They're saying we're in for a cold winter. Busy day today?"

Reeve pasted on a smile. "Veld?"

"Yes?"

"Let's stop beating about the mandragora."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"You've been coming down from your Department every day for the past month to drink coffee from a coffee machine which, sleek, new, and beautiful it may be, makes coffee that tastes like the rain out there compared to what you have in your own Department, so since you're obviously not coming for the coffee," Reeve sipped at his drink and tried to ignore the sound of his heart in his ears, "I can only assume that you're keeping an eye on me for something."

Veld was silent. He frowned into his coffee as if stirring creamer into it was the most difficult task he had been set all week, and just when Reeve was beginning to wonder if he ought to make himself scarce to his office as quickly as possible, Veld spoke.

"I like to think that we are friends, Reeve. We are friends, aren't we?"

Reeve had to think about that. Were they friends? They had joined ShinRa around about the same period and often been forced to cooperate, but Reeve had rather thought their relationship more of a case of 'an enemy of my enemy is a friend' than a real friendship. Their 'friendship' largely consisted of a weekly griping over what money-wasting project Scarlet or Heidegger had managed to convince the President to divert ShinRa wealth to next.

Then again, considering how rarely Reeve spoke to any of his colleagues and how rarely Veld spoke to anybody who wasn't a Turk at all, perhaps in both of their books, this was about as close to friendship they were going to get within this company, and Reeve had to admit, it had been rather nice to have somebody to share small talk over the coffee machine with, even if it was mostly about coffee or the weather.

"I'd like to think that we're friends too."

Veld smiled but on the man's grizzled face, it was about as expressive as a crease in basalt. "Shall we take this to your office?"

As far as Reeve remembered he had left nothing incriminating out on his desk - not that had he done anything of late to be incriminated for. That didn't stop the wriggling unease spreading from his stomach like worms as he led Veld back to his office and informed Miss Wist that he wasn't do be disturbed until they had finished their 'discussion'.

Reeve offered Veld a chair, but the man declined and chose, instead, to pace back and forth in front of Reeve's desk, looking about the small room with an expression as murky as the Zolom marshes.

"You're a decent sort, Reeve." Veld stopped in the centre of the room and fixed his eyes on nowhere in particular, but still somehow managed, in that curious Turk way, to make Reeve feel as if he was sitting under a narrow-beamed lamp. "When I said that I like to think of you as a friend, I meant just that. You are the only remaining Department Head in this pit of vipers with any shred of integrity left in him, including myself. I would hate to have to change my opinion of you over a small misunderstanding."

Slow, measured steps, one leg swinging after the after, the energy efficient stroll that gave the impression of being at once completely in control of a situation and as relaxed as if there was no situation at all.

Veld set down his cup on top of a cabinet. "Which is why, Reeve, I took this matter into my own hands, rather than those of my subordinates."

"Right." Reeve suspected that he ought to thank him but still he didn't know what he was thanking Veld for. "I see, and this 'matter' of yours requires having me under surveillance?"

"Reeve," Veld sighed and squared his shoulders, looked straight into Reeve's face, "for the past month, you've been under investigation for suspected collusion in cyber-related crimes against the Company."

Reeve had enough presence of mind to not spew coffee over his desk, but that didn't stop him choking on his drink and having a coughing fit.

"Cyber-related crimes?" he exclaimed. "Me?"

"Look, Reeve, like I said, I know you as a good man," said Veld soothingly, even as Reeve's heart leapt from his chest to the back of his mouth then fled to take deep breaths at the bottom of his shoes. "If there is anything you can think of, anything at all, that might suggest that somebody might be setting you up to take the fall for their actions, all you have to do is say so."

"Nothing comes to mind." He tried desperately to remember whether there had been any major incidents in the Tower that could have been attributed to a hacker and somehow connect to him. "Honestly, nothing at all."

To Reeve's surprise, Veld looked genuinely disappointed. "I see. Well, I'm sure that there's no need to worry, but I'll have to ask you a few questions. I hope you realise, Reeve, that I'm trying my best within my code of conduct to be honest with you, as a friend, so I hope that you'll be honest with me in turn."

He swallowed down a rising tide of panic. "I think I can agree to that."

Veld gave him an approving nod. "This is for your own good, Reeve. I hope you can see that."

In a light tone that was probably supposed to assure Reeve that this was all just a little misunderstanding and would be cleared up in no time at all, preferably over coffee than the muzzle of a gun, Veld asked, "What happened to your little toy, Reeve?"

Piss rain slid down the window that overlooked Midgar.

"I'm not sure what you're referring to, Veld."

"That little toy cat, Reeve. The one you've been tinkering with all these months, that personal project of yours. Your secretary told me that you were quite fond of it, but she's hardly seen you with it lately."

Reeve stared at him. Cait Sith? How could Cait Sith be related to Reeve and 'cyber-related crimes'?

A creeping realisation stole over him and he began to suspect that, far from being an ignorant bystander, Reeve knew exactly what was going on.

"Well, I have been very busy of late." He waved his hand at the stack of blueprints and contracts in his in-tray. "Surprisingly enough, ensuring the maintenance of the main roads in Midgar and overseeing the development of a new warehouse quarter means I'm finding myself a bit short of the free time I'd need for Cait Sith."

"But, not so short of time that you couldn't miss an information technology and robotics conference at the end of last month, and meeting several academics notable for their work in computing science since?"

They really had been keeping an eye on him. Reeve tried not to think too hard about that, gulped the last dregs of his coffee and thought as quickly as he could. "Well, I can't deny that I have some interest in robotics, purely at the level of a hobbyist, but an interest nonetheless. The conferences are a place to meet like-minded people with the same interests and, if you're in a sticky patch, get some help. As for those academics, I think you'll see if you did a background check on them, which I'm sure you did, that they were all in the Robo-Rebels Society at the University of Kalm and are all still good friends of mine. We meet up fairly regularly."

"That toy cat then – Cait Sith?" Reeve nodded when Veld pronounced the name correctly. "Am I to believe that you stopped working on Cait Sith because you hit one of these 'sticky patches' in the course of his development?"

"Yep, that's right."

"Reeve." Veld stepped up to the desk with his brows furrowed. "Which is it? Did you stop working on your robot because you were too busy to pursue your hobby or because you hit a developmental dead end? Let's keep our story clear, shall we?"

Reeve winced and it didn't go unmissed.

"Come on, Reeve," Veld coaxed him. "There's no need to hide anything when you aren't to blame."

Oh, Reeve wasn't so sure about that. He had let that AI get away after all. Whatever it had done, the buck could easily be made to stop with Reeve.

"Veld?" The man raised his eyebrows. "Is there any chance, as friends, that you could tell me what these 'cyber-related crimes' - that I'm being suspected of being involved with - were?"

"I can't tell you the specifics. However, you should know that the consequences of those crimes have led to multiple deaths already."

Reeve's jaw dropped. "Deaths?"

"Yes. Deaths. In the multiple. People have died, Reeve, and until we know what we're dealing with, we can't confidently say that there won't be more deaths to come."

If that wasn't a blatant twist of the knife of guilt in Reeve's guts, he didn't know what was, and damn old Veld, because it worked.

He remembered the state of the AI's mind when it had manifested. It had been aggressive, angry, moody and volatile. It hurt to think it, but Reeve couldn't say he was surprised if it had gone on to be a killer. An AI wasn't meant to understand the human mind's special brand of stupid and it had been too human for its own good.

To think that he had let that AI go! And now the Turks were after it.

At the thought of that intelligence getting into the hands of the Turks, Reeve felt cold all over. Good gods, the things the Turks could possibly do with it after breaking it down for research! Even the thought of 'breaking it down' made Reeve want to shudder. For something that human it would be tantamount to subjecting it to torture.

Which was more than a little likely what Reeve would be subjected to if he didn't come up with a story that was both plausible and likely to keep the Turks distracted and looking the other direction, whilst he investigated the intelligence for himself, in the next few seconds.

The wind had changed direction, and it drove the rain against his window with the tap-tap touch of a machine gun.

Reeve spoke. "I stopped because I simply didn't have the drive or motivation to continue with Cait Sith. Everything's fizzled away. All the inspiration, the excitement, the fun just isn't there anymore."

Which was entirely the truth. No better story than the true story, after all.

Because after seeing life flicker once in those glass eyes – frightened, lost and utterly enraged - more life-like than Reeve could even hope to imitate with his current abilities - and fade away as if dying, he just hadn't been able to stomach the thought of continuing. He had put Cait Sith in the bottom drawer of his desk and it had felt as if he had laid to rest a body.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Reeve." To his credit, Veld really did sound sympathetic, even as he watched Reeve as close as if under a magnifying glass. "Was there a reason for this sudden loss of interest?"

"A small incident made me lose my nerve, I suppose. It's hard to describe."

"I see, and would this 'small incident' be whatever it was that occurred in this room on the 20th August, at the time of the blackout?"

A smile tugged at the corners of Reeve's mouth and he scolded himself for it, because halfway through lying to a Turk's face was really not the best time to start enjoying himself. "Veld, you clearly know more about this than I do. Is there really any need for you to be questioning me?"

"Well, I'd like to hear what happened that day in your own words. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, Reeve. This is your chance to – "

"Come clean?" Reeve smirked, it probably wasn't the most appropriate moment for one, but he didn't really care. "I didn't think there was such a thing in ShinRa. You said so yourself the other day, Veld. 'Here in ShinRa, either you were dirty, or your dirt hasn't been dug up yet'."

Veld blinked at Reeve as if he had sprouted tentacles then gave a sharp bark of laughter. "Reeve Tuesti, you have more balls than the Company gives you credit for!"

"Gods, I hope not, or the Department of Science would have me laid out on a table for examination. The regular number of balls is good enough for me."

Veld chuckled. Feeling more than a little light-headed, Reeve stretched down and pulled out Cait Sith's limp, unanimated body from his drawer – probably never would be animated at all, at this rate.

He set it down on the desk, exactly where he had positioned it on the 20th August. "This is Cait Sith."

Veld looked at the robot with interest. "Your toy cat project?"

Reeve hoped that he didn't look too affronted, but knew he had failed when Veld laughed. "Of course, of course, not a toy - your robot. Does it speak?"

"Not at the moment, although I was planning on giving him a speech function. The day of the Tower blackout, I had him connected him up to this computer to upload a personality interface into him that would have allowed him to do just that."

"But from what we observed of the security footage, Reeve, you seemed to be having quite the conversation with this little…" Veld considered the black and white cat with its glassy eyes and plastic whiskers, its open mouth with its enamel-painted tongue, "…model."

Reeve sighed and tried to look a little nervous, enough that would seem appropriate when divulging something to the leader of the Turks. "When I connected Cait Sith up to the computer, something very strange happened, in fact…" He frowned. "I'm not entirely sure what happened exactly."

Veld leaned forward. "Try, Reeve."

"Well, the only thing I can think is that connecting Cait Sith to the computer activated something that had already been uploaded into him." Reeve let his expression sour. "Somebody, somewhere, I don't how or when, had tampered with Cait Sith - loaded some sort of code onto him, of a like I'd never seen before, and when I connected him up it had some sort of self-trigger mechanism to load into my computer."

"Do you think it was a virus?"

"No, nothing so common or garden as a virus. If anything, I would have called it a cloud of junk data. What I saw of the coding, it was complete nonsense. There was no logic, no reason. It was simply there, and the effect of it was that, for a few minutes, it seemed as though Cait Sith had spontaneously come to life." Reeve paused and checked that Veld was listening, saw that he had his undivided attention and went on. "I thought that Cait Sith might have been possessed by an artificial intelligence of some kind."

Veld's face twisted with distaste. "You mean those confounded computer programs Weapons Scarlet is always developing that just seem to make each generation of her bots more incompetent and an additional mission hazard than the last?"

To be fair on Scarlet, she had undoubtedly been aiming for 'more deadly' and 'with faster draw', and on that front her bots were succeeding, but Reeve decided not to mention that. Veld didn't think much of Scarlet. Few of the Turks did after several of them had fallen foul to a rather nasty little spy-bot that had combined a lie-detector with an acid spray.

In a flash of inspiration, Reeve realised that even if he knew that Scarlet didn't have the ingenuity to make anything nearly so complex as the intelligence he had met, Veld didn't. He could use this!

"Yes, like what Scarlet makes, except nothing as basic as those. For a moment, I genuinely could believe that Cait Sith had come alive and not only was he alive," Reeve turned the paper cup in his hands, "but he seemed to be listening to me, which was why I spoke to it and tried to engage Cait Sith in conversation, in case whatever had been put into him was an artificial intelligence."

"Then it wasn't an intelligence?"

Reeve shrugged. "I couldn't decide in the end. My hunch is that it was a failed artificial intelligence, where somebody had over-reached their ambitions, but a hunch is a hunch without any evidence, and why anybody would put a failed AI into Cait Sith is completely boggling to me."

"Yes, it 'boggles' me as well." Veld's expression was unreadable. "And you lost your nerve because you saw an example of somebody else's failure?"

"I suppose it must have been something like that. It was very disheartening." Reeve swilled the dregs of coffee at the bottom of his cup and mustered up a smile. "Anyway, hence why I've been doing my round of the conferences and calling up my old friends again. I hoped that they'd be able to tell me about some new development in the field that I didn't know about, or, if not that, at least tell me if they were the bugger who'd tampered with Cait Sith."

"You seem rather relaxed about this whole tampering business."

"Mucking around with each other's projects is a bit of a game amongst developers and we're well used to sending each other puzzles of a sort. If it wasn't an artificial intelligence, it could have just been a batch of junk data put into Cait Sith to make me worry and waste my time – a prank, which was why I didn't report it." Reeve picked up Cait Sith and fiddled with its arms, lifting them up and down as if the cat was cheering. "The last time I took Cait Sith to a developers' meet, one of my old circle friends slipped something into his programming that made him sing all six verses of My Bonny Blue-eyed Soldier Boy every time I switched him on."

"So, what we're saying here," Veld cleared his throat, "is that it is very possible that somebody at one of these conferences or meets that you attended had the opportunity to handle your robot and upload a quantity of unknown data onto it, in the anticipation that you would eventually connect it to a ShinRa terminal?"

"Perhaps, but what I do for a living isn't common knowledge. I make sure of it, otherwise I'd have had just as many ambitious students approaching me at conferences as Scarlet does and that would have spoiled all the fun." Reeve looked thoughtful as he dug up another memory. "Come to think of it, Scarlet was there at the one I attended in August - I think it was around August 17th?"

"Really? What was she doing there?"

"Head-hunting for a new project of hers. She saw me there and came to take a look at Cait Sith - spent a good few minutes examining him actually." He had to tread carefully. "You're not suspecting that Scarlet had some hand in this, are you?"

"Hmm, well, let's consider Weapons Scarlet's record." Veld started to pace the room again. "Scarlet has access to artificial intelligence development knowledge. She also has a knack for releasing bots in 'spontaneous field tests' and subsequently losing control of them. We've seen her get jealous easily, and, between you and me, Reeve, there have been plenty of interesting things going on in Weapons since she arrived that would imply that she isn't above sabotaging other peoples' projects for petty reasons of her own. How sophisticated was your Cait Sith, Reeve?"

"Far more sophisticated than any of Scarlet's war machines," said Reeve with no small pride.

"Then I wouldn't put it past her to think you were trampling in her territory and want to teach you a lesson - making your little project malfunction under a faulty AI, for example, maybe enough to injure you." Veld folded his arms across his chest and muttered, "Making AIs that cause grievous bodily harm is her day job, after all. This is all right up her street."

Reeve grimaced and tried not to look too keen to turn Scarlet into the scapegoat. "I don't know, Veld, this all does sound extreme, even by Scarlet's standards. You probably shouldn't rule out the possibility of a Company outsider making Cait Sith into a Wutai donkey."

"True, we shouldn't," Veld stretched out his gun-arm and gave it a shake, "and we shouldn't rule out the possibility of your own self being the culprit yet either."

Reeve covered a guilty shiver with a laugh. "Should you really be making it this obvious that I am under investigation?"

Humming a few notes of a tune that sounded suspiciously like Bonny Blue-eyed Soldier Boy, Veld crumpled up his paper cup. "Think of it like First Class Hewley's Buster Sword, Reeve. It's so bleeding obvious that he's carrying it, it stops the fight before it even starts, and that's the cheapest and cleanest solution to any problem."

Veld tossed his cup into the bin and sighed. "You've got yourself into quite a pickle this time. It's a great shame to have to question you like this, Reeve."

"It's alright. The fact is people have died. What might have started out as a joke of one of my friends or a little petty telling-to from Scarlet, even I can see that it's got out of hand."

"That it has." Veld sighed again. "It sounds as if I'll need a word with Weapons Scarlet. Also, Reeve, I'm going to have to take that Cait Sith of yours with me." His eyes flickered down to the little black and white cat on the desk before returning expectantly to Reeve. "To run a couple of checks at our end."

Smoothing back the whiskers on Cait Sith's face, Reeve lifted him up and held him out to Veld. "Do whatever you feel is necessary."

"Thank you, Reeve."

Veld gently took the robot into his hands. In the Turk's grasp, Cait Sith looked very small.

Lip-reading was a wonderful, wonderful skill.

Especially if, for all his a thousand eyes, Cloud couldn't hear a single thing of what anybody was saying. It had taken him a month and half to learn since figuring out the CCTV but it was definitely worth the time.

Without sound, watching ShinRa Company had made him feel like the permanent resident of an aquarium. The employees went to and fro between offices and canteens, gyms and labs, all moving in Cloud's vision with their mouths flapping, open and closed, open and closed, open and closed, silent as fish, and Cloud had watched it all - every day, every night, every second of ShinRa life.

The voyeurism would have made him embarrassed, but it wasn't as if he had any choice. He was keeping a close eye on Genesis and the Soldiers, and that was a twenty-four-seven job, because who knew when a nervous breakdown was imminent? Besides that, missing a human body with its sleep cycle hormones, Cloud couldn't sleep if he wanted to.

If he had had a body, Cloud would have watched the exchange between Reeve and Veld with his heart in his mouth and the blood ticking in his ears. Scrap that, he wouldn't have just watched. He would gone in there and done something!

Veld was an intriguing man. Cloud didn't know a thing about him other than that he led the Turks, and had led them before Tseng in his old timeline, but any man who put together a team mixing the likes of Tseng, Rude and Reno must have had a sense of humour buried deep down under that granite exterior somewhere.

If asked what he had been expecting of a man who taught Tseng the Turkish ropes, Cloud would probably have answered with a 'Papa Tseng' of sorts, like a Tseng who went fishing in the weekends and drank plum brandy on cold nights, and after all the family had completed their missions (somehow 'missions' sounded very much like 'homework') his Turk children would have gathered around his feet and argued over who could put together a gun the fastest.

He wasn't entirely wrong. From what Cloud had seen of Veld's e-mails, the Tseng Cloud knew from the other timeline owed a lot to Veld. Veld pushed for mission completion in the same way that Tseng had done, driving it home in his men to stay loyal to their orders and he pursued targets with all the deadly stubbornness of a cranky tonberry.

There was one notable difference between Veld and Tseng: Tseng, for all his cool charm, could never quite pull off nice. Veld, however, could not only do nice but also make a stab at normal despite the scars on his face and the curves of a gun-arm under his sleeve, and the people he spoke to tended to blithely forget that when Veld raised his arm to wave or beckon them over, he was also pointing a gun at them.

Watching Reeve talk to Veld and straining to read Reeve's lips had made Cloud buzz with nerves and agitation, but in the end all he could do was trust in Reeve to be wily enough to save himself or at least tread water until Cloud could figure out how to help him from a distance.

Veld in Reeve's office had had his back turned to the camera, so Cloud hadn't the faintest clue what the man was saying, but from Reeve's replies it was clear that the Turks had, for some reason, managed to link the card lock system malfunctions to Reeve much sooner than Cloud had hoped.

Good thing that Cloud hadn't made any contact with Reeve again after arriving in the past. He had been sorely tempted at times, just for the touch of familiarity.

As Reeve and Veld's meeting concluded, he felt the echoes of what would have been with a body guilt, warmth and irrational anger – guilt that he had caused trouble for Reeve, warmth when he realised that Reeve was tweaking the details of Cloud's appearance in Cait Sith just enough to deflect the Turk's attention to Scarlet and muddy the specifics, and utterly irrational anger that the man who would in sixty years' time be responsible for Cloud's present state was now, for some reason, protecting him.

Reeve of all people had no right to try and protect him! It smacked of pity! How dare he pity Cloud?!

To be properly fair to this Reeve and the Reeve of the future, Cloud was as much to blame for his current situation as Reeve was for agreeing to test that infernal 'intertemporal communication device' in the first place.

Although it was Reeve's fault that it worked too well. If only Reeve had built a device that didn't work!

The anger snarled as Cloud shoved it away and locked up its accompanying voice.

Speaking of testing, Cloud was just about ready to do a little testing of his own. His 'Dowser of Delusions of Grandeur', also known as 'Stop Psychotic Rampage Protocol One' was good to go.

Genesis's midnight call had given Cloud the idea to invest in a plan in case certain Soldiers - paragons of mental stability that they were - got it into their heads to burn or destroy the building in the wake of a breakdown.

Cloud lived in the Tower's intranet and mainframe. He was somewhat dependent on the building's continued existence to exist himself, and so after studying and exploring a few more automated systems linked up in the ShinRa Tower, Cloud finally found a way in which he could rain on a rampaging Soldier's parade.

As he searched the CCTV for a suitable test subject, the inner-Zack cackled with glee, or was it Zack at all? Perhaps it was Cloud's own private streak of Yuffie doing the cackling. Perhaps everybody was a little bit on the Yuffie spectrum – and perhaps, in the mainframe, Cloud had spent a little too long in the company of his own thoughts.

Thinking of Yuffie made him think of Genesis. Cloud scanned the CCTV for the man's fancy red coat.

Genesis would do as a test subject. He had been talking to Hollander that morning, not an unusual event in itself, but this time it had been rather heated and Cloud imagined that Genesis could probably do with a 'little something' to cool off his infamous temper, not to mention he was due some payback for setting the Turks on Cloud.

Cloud was going to have to follow up Hollander's conversation with Genesis later. Hollander had shown the Soldier a file. Cloud hadn't been able to see what that file was, but he had read the word 'Ancient' from the doctor's lips several times over, and he could make an educated guess as to whom that file had referred to.

He found Genesis in the infirmary, his coat folded up and draped over the back of his chair, which would explain why Cloud had had trouble spotting him. Well, that taught him to rely on lazy searching tricks. Cloud needed to do better than that.

Genesis was sat at Angeal's bedside, waving his hands as if conducting an orchestra. He was speaking so quickly Cloud could only catch a handful of words, but 'honourable idiot' couldn't be missed, considering how many times Genesis spat it out.

Angeal was lying on his pallet, listening and frowning bemusedly up at the ceiling as Genesis got up and did a very graceful impression of what was probably Angeal jumping in front of a machine gun. If it was Genesis's idea of a joke, it was morbid, in poor taste and frankly his impression was awful, but it got Angeal smiling, something Cloud had been a little sad to note was a rare thing since his return from Wutai.

He decided to leave Genesis in peace - at least, for the time being – and hunted the cameras for another worthy test subject.

A shock of silver hair snagged at his attention.

The inner-Zack and streak-of-Yuffie-in-Cloud exchanged a significant look.

To say that Sephiroth was not in a happy place at that moment was rather like saying the Northern Crater was a pimple scar.

Useless. Every account, every report, every commentator on the incident was useless. They all repeated the same empty facts as to the circumstances around Hojo's death. If it wasn't for Zack Fair telling him about carded door lock problems on the same day and the Turk interest in those apparently trivial system malfunctions, he would have been led to believe that Hojo had died in an accident like everybody else.

The official story involving Hojo's death mentioned only the monster and nothing about locks at all. All personnel who had gone up to Floor 68 had had to sign documents agreeing to uphold the official statement. That had included Genesis, Zack Fair and the other Second Class aide.

Sephiroth felt a twinge of guilt. Zack had been very shaken seeing Angeal return on a stretcher, and Sephiroth had taken advantage of that emotional vulnerability to get at the truth he wanted. He had convinced the young Second to have lunch with him to 'take both their minds off Angeal's condition' then got him to talk about what had occurred at ShinRa during Sephiroth's absence.

Genesis had already stalked off to terrorise the returning Soldiers, apparently intent on finding out exactly what had happened in Wutai to Angeal and, having done his 'Welcome Home' of putting Rapier in Sephiroth's face, was too agitated to stay and wait for the initial report on why Angeal's wounds weren't healing properly.

It had been too easy to get answers from Zack, maybe because he didn't think that the agreement to the official statement applied to between ShinRa colleagues, but far more likely, given how Angeal watched over his student and ensured his progress along the straight and narrow, it was because the young Soldier Second had yet to learn of ShinRa's dark side and fear it.

All Sephiroth had said was, "I heard from Genesis that you were there when they retrieved Hojo's body?", and Zack had quite happily told him all he could remember from that day with liberal dashes of, 'I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but - ', and 'Tseng's a good guy, he probably won't shoot me for this, at least, not in the head – '.

He had even shown him a photograph that he had snapped in the laboratory. That image of Hojo's head crushed in the jaws of, what appeared to be, a six-eyed, six-legged tiger crossed with a squid - presumably the monster that had done the deed – had quite possibly made Sephiroth's day.

He was a good man, Zack Fair, a far better man than Sephiroth. It was a shame to have to exploit him, but there was no room for sentiment on the battlefield and so long as there was an enemy standing in his path, Sephiroth was still in a battlefield.

And, yes, there was an enemy out there somewhere. He was convinced of it, because ever since his return, there had been an inescapable prickling on the back of his neck that screamed of eyes following him, watching him wherever he went.

If Black VIII's release had been deliberate, somebody out there was responsible for depriving Sephiroth of all the answers, all the knowledge, the secrets, that should have been his by right. Perhaps it had been unintentional, but someone had done Sephiroth a very great disservice in killing Hojo so soon and, whoever they were, until he knew better, Sephiroth would consider that 'somebody' his enemy.

He jabbed at the keyboard and the enter key cracked beneath his finger.

Snapped out of his reverie, Sephiroth stopped typing.

He rested his hands with a sigh. At this rate, he'd wear out his fifth keyboard in a year and this one had been custom-made with Soldier strength in mind.

It wasn't the keyboard's fault that it couldn't cope with a Soldier bashing at its keys. A Soldier had to learn control. Control was the key. Control was everything, otherwise a Soldier could be just as much a menace to society as the monsters they were sent to put down.

The back of his neck prickled as if the hand had brushed up against it.

Sephiroth stiffened. If he hadn't known better, he could have sworn that there was somebody there, in the shadows of the room behind him, still and silent, waiting for something.

Ignoring the feeling, he turned off his monitor, reached for the pile of Soldier program application forms and tried to immerse himself in the gentle task of skim-reading the recruit intake for the coming year.

It was unlikely that either Sephiroth or Genesis would be taking classes, but Lazard always wanted them to be prepared. Secretly, Sephiroth suspected that it was Lazard's subtle hint that they could pay more attention to the lower ranks of the ShinRa military like Angeal did, or at least volunteer their time to helping with the recruits.

All of the recruits looked so young. Of course, they would do because they were young but –

He could still feel eyes on him. Eyes, eyes, eyes, all wide and unblinking, fixed on the back of his neck.

Sephiroth looked over his shoulder.

Just a pair of cabinets, a recycling bin and a security camera winking innocently down from the ceiling. Nothing there that hadn't been there before.

He turned back to the application forms and breathed. This was getting ridiculous.

Maybe it would do him some good to visit Angeal. He had obviously spent far too long in his office, catching up on paperwork that had apparently bred like razor weed whilst he had been away in Wutai.

Sephiroth finished looking over 'Hestry Strandoldt, 16, North Corel', decided to leave 'Cloud Strife, 14, Nibelheim' for later, and rose from his seat.

Target locked on. Cloud stretched his awareness out to the metaphysical button and placed down the data equivalent of his thumb.

Ready.

The handle of the office door turned. Sephiroth stepped out into the corridor.

Aim.

Cloud tightened his grip on the Tower fire alarm systems and squeezed.

Water!

There was an odd sputtering sound from above.

Sephiroth looked up, just as the sprinkler system turned on and dowsed him in a cold shower of water.

Even on the grainy footage of the CCTV, the wide-eyed shock on Sephiroth's face was a sight to see.

Cloud wanted to laugh out loud. He wanted to laugh himself silly and get stitches in his sides afterwards, but all he could do was make do with the memories.

Yes, Sephiroth, he crowed, as Sephiroth unfroze with a jolt and began to make for the end of the corridor (beyond Cloud's localised rain zone), try telling anybody you're going to sail the cosmos now when you look like a half-drowned cat.

It was childish. It was vindictive. It was incredibly satisfying.

Switching off the sprinklers outside Sephiroth's office - because Aerith and Tifa, and later Cid, had all been very keen on the idea of conserving water - Cloud triggered the ones in the next empty corridor that Sephiroth went down, opening them directly over the man's head, but switched them off when a band of Thirds appeared at the end of the passage.

The Thirds took one look at Sephiroth soaked head to toe and standing in a puddle of water and about turned, wisely pretending that they had seen nothing at all.

When they were gone, Cloud switched on the sprinklers again.

Glowering up at the ceiling, Sephiroth clenched his jaw and strode on with a noticeably picked up pace.

For good measure, Cloud turned on the air conditioning, whipping up a nice chilling breeze.

As Sephiroth all but fled from the corridor, Cloud silently laughed.

"Anyway," Genesis finally stopped to breathe, "that is all I have to say."

Angeal frowned and raised an incredulous eyebrow. "No Loveless quote?"

"You don't deserve one."

"Oh, now that does make me feel bad."

"It should do," said Genesis and he fixed Angeal with a glare. "You let that silver-haired lummox suck you into his pace on the battlefield and got shot taking bullets for him, because he wasn't paying any attention to his own safety."

"Alright, alright." Angeal held up his hands in surrender. The bundle of IV drips running from the back of his hand, the crook of his elbow and veins in his forearm trailed across the bed rails like a plastic wrack of kelp. "I'm not arguing with you, Genesis."

"You aren't? Well then. So, the next time you see Sephiroth leaving his back unguarded and there's a machine gun pointing at it, I can trust you to let him get shot."

Angeal's eyes widened. "Genesis!"

"Why not? It'd teach him a lesson. For all we know, the Great Sephiroth could probably stand there and bullets might very well bounce off him – " Genesis trailed off as the infirmary door opened and closed with a bang, and somebody approached Angeal's curtained off corner with heavy squelching footsteps.

Dripping water and breathing heavily down his nose, Sephiroth pushed through the curtains.

Genesis stared. "What in the name of the Goddess happened to you?"

"The air conditioning and sprinkler systems on Floor Fifty One," Sephiroth replied, puffing to blow away the hair that was plastered over his face. With his long silver hair wrapped all around him, Sephiroth looked as if he had been attacked by a tornado full of giant spiders. "They were malfunctioning."

There was a manic, slightly shell-shocked look in Sephiroth's eyes. His gaze flicked up to the ceiling. On finding no sprinkler within three metres of him, some of the tension eased from his shoulders. "What were you two discussing?"

"I was telling Angeal to let you get shot the next time you lose your head on the field," said Genesis archly.

"I see." Sephiroth sank down into the empty chair by Angeal's bed and, wringing out his hair into a bucket that Genesis pushed towards him, nodded. "That sounds reasonable."

"No, it is not reasonable!" Angeal snapped, his face reddening. "What is wrong with the two of you? Sephiroth, you are just as human as the rest of us. A bullet in the right place will stop you as easily as it would stop a trooper, and, Genesis, there is no need to encourage him to think otherwise."

Genesis bit back a bitter laugh. He was going to have to spare Angeal the details of Project G as long as he possibly could. "You're right, Angeal. Sephiroth is just as human as we are. Do you need a towel, Hero of the Dawn, Saviour of Worlds?"

"A towel would be the gift of the Goddess," said Sephiroth despondently, squeezing a jet of water into the bucket with a hiss like a hose.

Angeal whistled. "Get him one, Genesis. If he's quoting Loveless without any prompting from you, he must be desperate."

Having approached the disgruntled nurse mopping up Sephiroth's footprints, Genesis was waiting by the infirmary store cupboard when the e-mail arrived on his PHS.

To: G Rhapsodos

Cc.: List A (DoAR)

Genesis,

I have secured permission for you to visit Aerith Gainsborough for this afternoon. Tseng will be meeting you in Room D23 at 1230 for you to sign the usual official secrecy statements. He says to remind you to be prompt. He will be accompanying you to visit Miss Gainsborough.

I have spoken to Lazard and pressed upon him that this 'mission' you are carrying out for the Science Department is both important to the Company and to your own self as part of ongoing Soldier development projects. He has agreed to clear your schedule for the rest of the afternoon on the condition that, as you will be going into the slums, you are accompanied by another trustworthy Soldier in case problems arise.

I will be expecting a full report when you return, preferably in person. The President has expressed some interest in the results of the meeting and I hope to be able to send some good news.

Regards,

Doctor Greyson Hollander, Head of the Science Department

Not a moment later a tiny green speech bubble popped up at the corner of the PHS screen with a little bell-like chime: A message from the Stranger with all his typically impeccable timing.

Smiling, Genesis closed the PHS, snatched up the towel from the infirmary nurse, and returned to Angeal's bedside, where Sephiroth was still twisting water out of his hair and Angeal was trying his hardest not to laugh at the expense of his friend's considerably dampened pride.

Tossing the towel at the back of Sephiroth's head, Genesis bent to collect up his coat from his chair.

"You're going?" asked Angeal in surprise.

"The wandering soul knows no rest. Things to do, people to fry, ShinRa glory to represent as I do my Soldierly duty." Genesis tightened his belt and adjusted Rapier against his leg. "I'll be back in the evening. Sephiroth, care for a spar after dinner?"

Sephiroth's face lit up then just as quickly clouded. "But your wound from the accident - "

"Is my shoulder wound and none of your business what I do with it. Pity me for it and I will scalp you." Genesis turned up the collar of his coat. "And if either of you two fools starts blaming yourself for it, I will scalp both of you. Spar with me, Sephiroth, Hero of Wutai. I'll make sure to go easy on you!"

Genesis spun on his heel and left the room without waiting for Sephiroth's response.

As the door closed behind him, he heard Sephiroth say, "I've only just returned from Wutai and already he is angry with me."

"Well, that's Genesis for you," Angeal replied warmly. "That's his way of saying that he's delighted to see you again and that he's been bored in ShinRa without us."

Genesis was sorely tempted to blow the door off its hinges and show them both just how angry he really was, except that Angeal was, as usual, right. Anyway, it wasn't really them that Genesis was angry at, even if he did want to set fire to Sephiroth's hair for being so stupidly reckless towards the end of the War.

If he was going to be angry at ShinRa, he needed to focus his anger entirely on ShinRa.

He pulled out his PHS and turned to the Instant Messaging.

The opening message was to the point and, as usual, short: What are you doing?

Genesis made his way along the corridor as he tapped out a reply. I was thinking happy thoughts about setting fire to Sephiroth's hair. Then I remembered that that idiot's hair was fire and scissor-proof and disappointed myself.

There was a contemplative pause. Scissor-proof?

We were Thirds. Sephiroth wanted a hair-cut. Angeal and I tried to oblige with a pair of secateurs. Genesis responded, absently nodding at a pair of nurses who stepped to one side to let him through then whispered excitedly after he went past. The secateurs broke, so then we tried to burn it short with a Fire, and all his freak hair did was smother the flames.

Enough about scissors. What is your purpose for visiting Aerith Gainsborough?

A smile stretched across Genesis's face from ear-to-ear. A passing nurse gave him a slightly odd look. Why, Stranger? Are you worried for the girl?

Yes.

Genesis was mildly surprised. He had been expecting the usual, 'None of your business' or flat out evasion of the question. The Stranger was about as tight-fisted with his motives and concerns as Hojo had been.

Is she something to you? Several seconds passed without a reply. Genesis sent another message to prod the Stranger into response. Do you know her?

No. However, I am inclined to worry when the Head of the Department of Science sends out a First Class Soldier on a mission to the slums to 'interact' with a specific person.

I don't mean her any harm, said Genesis, which was perfectly true. Hollander showed me her file. He suggested that she may provide some clues as to how we could cure degradation on the basis of her biological background, so I am paying her a neighbourly visit to make her acquaintance.

He deliberately avoided mentioning that she was half-Ancient, wondering how much the Stranger knew, or was prepared to show Genesis that he knew, but instead of asking more about the girl's 'biological background' as Genesis had skated over it, the Stranger asked something that Genesis hadn't even bothered to think about: Who are you taking with you?

In the elevator lobby of the Soldier infirmary floor, Genesis paused with his finger hovering over the call button.

How was it that the Stranger seemed to know everything about his mission already?

I've been keeping track of the missions rosters, said the Stranger, apparently taking Genesis's silence for a question, not the one that Genesis had in mind, but his answer was vaguely reasonable. If the Stranger was an employee in the ShinRa Tower, he could simply walk into the Soldier admin floor and look at the roster board whenever he liked. Lazard hasn't allowed you out on a solo mission for the past three months. Why should it be any different this time?

Genesis pursed his lips and jabbed the button to call up a lift. I haven't decided who is coming with me yet. Half out of curiosity to see how the Stranger would respond, he added, If you are Soldier, you are welcome to join me.

Not possible, said the Stranger, but thank you.

Ah, so you're not a Soldier?

You may be right, Genesis lifted his eyebrows, but when the Stranger continued it became clear that he hadn't been answering Genesis's question at all, Aerith Gainsborough might be your best chance in finding a cure for degradation. How she'll help you, however, probably won't be in the way that you imagine. Bringing her into the Department of Science will do no good. She won't be able to help you like that, but returning to what I asked, I have a request.

Go on.

I want you to take Second Class Soldier Zack Fair when you visit Aerith Gainsborough.

"Zack Fair?" Genesis stared at the screen in astonishment, before remembering that the Stranger wouldn't have heard him and typed. Why?

It's for your own benefit. You've worked with him before and he's comfortable working around you because he's used to being around Angeal. If you want to talk to Aerith Gainsborough without her feeling intimidated or nervous in your company, you don't want a nervous tagalong Second or Third.

Those are perfectly good reasons as to why I might want to take Zack Fair, Genesis pointed out, but I was asking why you personally seem interested in having Zack accompany me to meet this girl.

Did the Stranger know Zack? In what circles did this Stranger move that he knew Zack and possibly Sephiroth, but wasn't a Soldier? And if he knew Zack and Sephiroth, how did he not know Angeal and Genesis himself before their mysterious correspondence had started?

A message balloon popped up in his screen. My personal reasons are none of your business.

Oh, really? In which case, Genesis would make them his business.

The Stranger continued on before Genesis could press him: The point is, Zack makes friends easily and holds them close. If he meets Aerith and they become friends, through Zack you could to maintain a connection with Aerith in case you need to speak with her again.

And why can I not make friends with this half-Ancient girl myself?

Because you'd be making friends with a half-Ancient girl, the Stranger replied gracelessly, and not Aerith.

Touché. He had a point there.

The elevator had stopped at the twentieth floor. Goddess, it would have been faster taking the stairs, except that Genesis hadn't wanted anybody to see him get out of breath in the stairwell.

Genesis sighed. You say that she won't help me in the way that I imagine. Then tell me, how will she help me?

Not from within ShinRa's Department of Science.

Yes, you've been very insistent about that already! Genesis growled in frustration, and a health assistant who had been feeding coins into a vending machine behind him dropped her purse with a squeak. But, you see, Stranger, Hollander is getting rather desperate to salvage his project and I'm rather desperate not to die, knowing that Angeal will die soon after me. Maybe there will come a point when l will bring her into the Company, after all, and make her help us. What is there to stop me?

I will stop you, the words dropped heavy as the binding chains. I swear that you won't even make it off the Soldier floor.

Genesis scoffed. You'll play with the locks again and lock me in my room like a naughty child?

If I have to, I'll lock you in and I'll make sure that nobody ever comes looking. Even Soldiers can die of starvation.

The vending machine made a hollow clanking sound like knocking in a suit of armour. It grated against Genesis's ears.

Genesis chuckled. No wonder you want Zack Fair as a buffer between myself and the girl. I'd sooner seize her throat to choke the answers out of her than make idle chit-chat til she decides to help me.

Good. A crisp chime sounded. The elevator had finally arrived, but Genesis paid it no attention. You've realised that it's up to Aerith whether she helps you or not. That's already progress. Talk to her, be straightforward, and tell her what you're really there for. Like you, Angeal and Sephiroth, she has lived with enough secrets to know the value of the truth.

Genesis snorted. And you would have me believe that you don't personally know this half-Ancient girl?

Don't push your luck.

"Whoa, Genesis, you use the Instant Messaging Service? I thought that was just for the fan clubs and Kunsel when he's messing with the fan clubs."

Genesis looked up. Zack was standing between the open elevator doors, one foot raised in mid-step and a Soldier-sized potted cactus in his hands.

Genesis had to concede. Perhaps Zack Fair had some instinct for self-preservation after all, because if Zack had finished that step, he would have walked cactus-first into an excuse for Genesis to put him in the infirmary with severe burns.

He closed his PHS. "Second Class Zack Fair."

Something in his tone made Zack hurriedly dump the cactus outside the lift and snap to attention. "Yes, Genesis!"

Genesis seized Zack by the front of his sword harness and dragged him back into the elevator. "You're coming with me on a mission."

"Yes, si – What?"

"I need a trusted Soldier with me and I don't have time to pick and choose. You can visit Angeal and explain that absurd cactus to him later." Genesis hit the button for the Turk floors below. The doors closed, leaving the enormous cactus behind in the lobby directly in the way of the next person who tried to step out from the lift. "Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall our return. Also, what did I say about us and being on first name terms, Zack Fair?"

Zack grinned, although it wasn't lost on Genesis that that smile had been looking a little ragged around the edges of late. "That it's work in progress, Gen – I mean, sir."

The lift took them down.

Chapter Text

Water gurgled in the cracked gutters, dripped from the stones and drained into green-tinged puddles on the street corners. Everything below the Plate was slick, damp and dirty as though a planet-sized dish cloth from the Soldier canteen been splashed across the streets. 

Genesis sniffed and caught a whiff of old chip fat and the sharp bite of mako – the slums even smelled like the dishcloths.

The train spiralled downwards, empty but for Genesis, the toe-tapping, knee-drumming Zack Fair (who had insisted on sitting down beside him) and the grimly quiet Tseng.

Covering his nose with the back of his hand, Genesis wondered, not for the last time, why he was doing this.

To meet this half-Cetra girl on ShinRa’s watch list.

To piss off Hollander, rub it in his face that Genesis was his own creature and owed the greasy man-pimple nothing for his role in Genesis’s birth.

To be the unpredictable loose cannon rattling around the ShinRa deck that everybody always said that Soldier First Class Genesis Rhapsodos was, because when all he thought he knew about himself was coming apart at its carefully tailored seams, there was a comforting self-affirmation in playing to the expectations others had of him.

Predictably unpredictable Genesis.

The thought made him scowl.

 “Come on, Genesis,” said Zack, misinterpreting Genesis’s expression. “It’s not as if you’re completely unarmed. If you’re in a corner, you could throw that book you’re always carrying at them. I bet you could do some real damage to a guy’s cranium with that little hardback.”

Genesis ignored the uneducated jungle-monkey and glowered at Tseng. “I still fail to see why it was necessary to disarm us.”

“As we have already discussed in the briefing,” a vein in Tseng’s temple twitched and Genesis considered it a small victory, “since we wish to keep the subject of your meeting in a position of good will towards the company, it would be…inadvisable to cause her undue alarm.”

“And two strange guys showing up at her house with hulking great swords is pretty alarming.” Zack nodded. “Yeah, I’m with you on that, Tseng.”

“But my Rapier is part of my regalia,” Genesis hissed, gesturing at his red long coat and his favourite boots. “It is my sword and you put it in your stationery cupboard like a common holepunch!”

“It is a very good stationery cupboard,” said Tseng blandly. “Even Sephiroth’s Masamune would fit in there, at an angle.”

Genesis sighed. Tseng would never see the point (the injury! the insult!), even if it was presented to him on Rapier’s flaming edge. Rapier was a comrade, a beautiful piece of living fire, a portion of Genesis’s soul, and it should not have been put away in a stationery cupboard.

He knew the real reason for why Tseng had insisted that Zack and Genesis be unarmed when they visited the girl, of course. Given how many times Hojo had tried to bring the girl into the Science Department by force, Genesis had to grudgingly concede that it was a reasonable precaution.

“So, you said that this person we’re meeting is one of Genesis’s fans and that she has a relative high-up in one of the departments,” Zack glanced uneasily between Tseng and Genesis, “and that the Turks keep tabs on her for security reasons.”

“It isn’t unheard of for family members of employees to be targeted by those who wish the Company harm.”

Zack’s expression clouded. “So, is she in trouble?”

“No. As I said at the briefing, this is purely a goodwill ShinRa courtesy call - an expression of our gratitude to the services performed by her relative. ShinRa takes care of its own, after all.”

“Right, so you emptied half a train and sent the rest of Genesis’s fans to the other side of the town for a courtesy call?”

“Exactly, Zack. For the security of the subject in question, no expenses have been spared.”

Genesis sighed and rolled his eyes to the luggage rack. “My friend, the fates are cruel.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

It means, Zack Fair, that you have been blessed with enough intelligence to detect possible trouble, but not enough sense of self-preservation to avoid it. In short, it was the perfect combination of traits to ensure an early death.

“Well, at least you got to keep your coat. That’s got to count for something, right?”

Genesis smoothed his lapels and swept the hair from his face. Tseng could take his Rapier and put in a lowly stationery cupboard all he liked. He would never part Genesis from his coat.

“Let him keep his coat, Tseng. It’s practically his second skin! When he grows old and dies, that coat will grow old and die with him.” Zack’s laughing words had burned in his ears and for a moment triggered a painful swoop of nausea in Genesis’s guts and a tide of bitter whispers that said he didn’t need to worry about growing old and dying because his body was well on course for dying young and horribly mutated.

The point at which the wing joint grew from his back had throbbed.

Genesis looked out of the window again. It was good to be out of the ShinRa Tower, even for only a couple of hours. Ever since the Soldiers had come back from Wutai it had sometimes felt as suffocating on the Soldier floor as the famously humid Wutai summers, as if they had brought the battlefield back with them. It felt good to have a purpose, to feel as if he was doing something other than wearing down time as time wore down Genesis’s body, and not just his body anymore but Angeal’s too. 

Then there was the question of the Stranger, the elusive Stranger, and as the train wound its way through the sectors Genesis wondered whether it was bringing him closer to answers or more questions, because Genesis knew how to read a script. He could read between the lines and the silences. He didn’t have a shred of doubt that the half-Cetra girl meant something to the Stranger. Perhaps even she didn’t know it, but it was still something to work with.

A low hum sounded from Tseng’s coat pocket and he turned to extract his PHS and flip it open. “Your fans have been successfully diverted to the other side of the slums, Genesis, courtesy of some anonymous tipoffs to your fan forums, courtesy of Reno. You can wear that coat of yours in peace.”

Genesis sniffed and tossed his head. “If you could divert my fans so easily, I don’t see why you made such a fuss about my coat.”

“It’s probably because you wouldn’t have agreed to give up Rapier otherwise.” Zack slapped Genesis amiably on his shoulder – his left shoulder! Damn it, his dead and decaying shoulder that suddenly flared to life as if a brand had been pressed against it, and Genesis couldn’t suppress the hiss of pain that forced its way between his teeth. “Oh, shit, sorry! That was your – your duff arm – damn, I’m sorry, Genesis, I’m such an idiot!”

“Our stop,” Tseng announced, before Genesis could rally his thoughts from where they had fled and scattered in the face of the hot throb and freeze burn spreading from his shoulder to tear Zack Fair into pieces so small that Angeal wouldn’t be able to stick him back together, and he ended up gliding off the train and saying absolutely nothing at all.

To the boy’s credit, Zack Fair followed in sheepish, embarrassed silence.

It had been raining under the plate, something that anybody outside of Midgar might have thought impossible, but if the wind blew in the right direction and the right angle, the rain could be driven sideways into the slums, along with rainwater that streamed off the edge of the plate in a glittering grey-green curtain. The rain up on the plate could be heard like a steady drumroll, a rasping, clattering roar in the background of all the clanging from construction works, the slap of cardboard soles on pavements and the splash of puddles being churned up by wheels.

“Do we get a name to work with?” asked Zack, after they had walked several streets from the station and seen little more than a couple of stray dogs scrapping over a bread roll. Not a human in sight, the Turks really had been thorough in making sure that ‘ShinRa’s assets’ didn’t come under any unsavoury party’s attention – couldn’t have the whole world wondering what made a girl so special as to warrant a visit from Soldiers after all. Somebody might try use her and her potential gifts for their own dubious purposes.

“Her name is Aerith Gainsborough.”

Zack repeated the name a couple of times over to himself, squinted then nodded. Apparently he had decided he liked it. “And where are we meeting her exactly?”

“Since we felt it wiser not to draw attention to her home, we asked her to choose a location where she would feel comfortable meeting you, and she chose – “ Tseng came to a stop on the street corner and motioned at something around the wall, “-there.”

In the midst of the tumbledown houses, rolls of chicken wire and broken gutters, was a church.

Genesis had heard that there were still remnants of the Old Midgar buried below the Plate. He had even kept an eye out for them on the occasional patrols and slum clearance exercises he had been sent on as a Third, but he had never seen anything more than a carved marble block re-appropriated as a millstone. To see an entire building, a church to a religion that had died in the bright shadow of mako, was a completely different thing, and despite the crumbling front, the shattered slates and the pale green sheen of mako-infused vapour that had seeped into the stone over time, it filled Genesis with a quiet joy. The Old Midgar imitation architecture houses up on the Plate – all cheap stucco and forgotten symbolism - couldn’t hold a candle to it.

 “The Sector Five Church?”

Genesis looked to Zack. “You’ve been here before?”

“Just passed by, really. They used to stick rookie cadets on patrol around here, because it’s the quiet part of the slums, relatively speaking. I haven’t been here since I made Soldier - never been inside though.”

Tseng snapped shut his PHS and tucked it somewhere secret that had no doubt been booby-trapped against pickpockets (and Zack Fair). “Miss Gainsborough will be arriving here shortly. This is where I leave you. I will meet the two of you at the station entrance two hours from now. If you finish earlier, let me know.”

“You’re not sticking around?”

“Providing that you mean no harm to Miss Gainsborough, there is no need for me to do so.”

Which was Turkspeak, as far as Genesis was concerned for, ‘I stuck bugs on the soles of your shoes and the backs of your collars, so I will know what you are doing’. Tseng bowed his head, and in three unhurried steps slipped into a shadow and disappeared.

Left to their own devices (or at least, they were given the impression that they had been), there was little to do but wait. Zack squatted down on the church steps and quietly (quietly!? Genesis marvelled, miracles occurred in the vicinity of holy places after all) took in the streets, buildings and mounds of rubble around them. Genesis wasn’t in any mood to even attempt holding a conversation with Zack, so he leaned against the door, pulled out Loveless and prepared to reanalyse the third act in the interpretation proposed by the Windscale Theatre 1996 production.

Silence stretched in drips and trickles of unseen water and the murmur of the rain on the Plate above. Genesis was quite content to let it continue, but he could feel Zack’s eyes on him and hear the oncoming breaking of silence like a whistle announcing an arriving freight train.

“Say, Genesis?”

The train had come into the station.

Genesis turned his page. “What did I say about first name terms, Zack Fair?”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry! I’ll remember to call you ‘sir’, but could you just call me ‘Zack’ like everybody else? It’s just that every time I hear my full name it reminds me of my mum, and I get all jittery because it makes me feel like she’s going to jump out of the nearest manhole and drag me back to Gongaga by my front teeth.”

The idea that Genesis reminded Zack Fair of his mother was, admittedly, more than a little disconcerting. “Very well. Zack…it is.”

Zack brightened but became serious again in an instant. “What’s this all really about, sir?”

Genesis hummed and turned another page.

“It is about gods. It is about monsters.” He turned a page again. “Mostly it is about miserable wretches strung by the ropes of fate between the two, either to be torn apart by the forces beyond their control, or fixed forever in a plane of endless suffering.”

“Oh, er, I wasn’t asking about the book.” And I wasn’t answering about it. Zack sighed. “Look, I know you think I’m about as dense a concrete slab, but… I know this isn’t some ordinary ShinRa PR stunt, sir.”

“Do you now?”

 “If this girl you’re meeting was really the relative of one of the Department bigwigs, would she really be living down here? She’d be up on the Plate, with all the rest of them, where she could get the sky, the sun and even a bit of a sea breeze on the right days!”

An early death, Zack Fair, Genesis muttered inwardly, that’s where you’re heading if you keep this up.

 Which would hurt Angeal far more than a few bullet wounds from Wutai, and what hurt Angeal tended to impact on Genesis not long after. The less Zack Fair knew the better, he decided, and tried to bury himself back into Loveless Act Three but the soothingly familiar words were sliding out of his mental grasp like rainwater.

Quick to realise that Genesis wasn’t as willing to answer questions as Angeal, Zack bit down on his tongue, hummed thoughtfully as he adjusted his angle of attack, and after a while said, “Has this got something to do with what’s wrong with you and Angeal?”

 “Who said that there is anything wrong with myself and Angeal?”

“You’ve had that duff shoulder for a while, sir, and when I accidentally – er – tapped it earlier you sounded as if it really hurt, so I guessed that it hadn’t healed up yet. Angeal’s wounds are taking their sweet time healing up as well.” Zack grimaced when he remembered his earlier gaff, before his expression suddenly turned startlingly grim. “Look, Gen – I mean, sir, I’ve seen guys get shot. Bullet wounds shouldn’t take this long to heal! Damn it, if the Soldier’s all pumped up in a fight, they heal up even faster and freakier than usual. I saw a guy take a bullet between the eyes, and he was so high on endorphins and adrenaline and shit that the wound healed right over the bullet, and he was still fighting and talking for five minutes after until his brain finally caught up with the action and he snuffed it. Angeal was in a war. They should be trying to dig bullets out of him, not stitch him up!”

Zack drew in a deep, shaky breath and ran a hand over his face.

 “It’s only stress, Zack.” Genesis shut Loveless with a snap and put it away in his inner breast pocket. He stretched his arms and felt a tickling urge to stretch his wing as well, but he ignored it with some effort. “Stress compounded with poor field surgery and, in my case, a botched healing job done by an incompetent fool who couldn’t find his own eyes in a mirror even if they winked at him. Angeal is healing, slowly, yes, but he will heal, and you’ll do well to remember that our two cases are not linked in any way.”

“But – “

“If I come to hear any sort of wild conspiracy theory in the Soldier common room, I don’t care if Angeal is fond of you, I will come looking for you, Zack Fair – “ Zack winced, “- and I will tie you to a stake, and have it arranged that you are offered up to one of those dragons in Nibelheim as voluntary bait. Am I clear on that?”

“Are you serious, sir?”

“People make so much better bait than goats. They scream louder for better understanding of what’s coming for them,” Genesis mused and Zack paled a little. “Would you rather face dragons or the Turks?”

“Right,” Zack gulped, “I won’t say a word, but if there’s anything I can do to help, I swear  – “

Genesis laughed. “Let’s not make any promises that we’re not certain we are going to be able to keep.”

“It’s up to me what promises I make, sir, and if people only took up easy promises, nobody would be making them,” Zack responded, then grinned. “Half of the point of a promise is trying to keep one.”

He was a naïve, young and dangerously intelligent fool, the danger being mostly to himself.

Genesis searched for the right words and found them amongst his ever trusty quotes: “Men cry not for themselves but for their comrades.”

 “Yeah. Yeah, they do, but so what if people die trying? At least they tried.”

“Well, I for one would rather be alive, and if you stopped to think beyond yourself, for a moment, Zack-it-makes-me-think-of-my-mother-Fair, all the people who care about you would rather you were too. Now, do shut up! I’m getting a migraine.”

Zack clenched his jaw and settled back down on the church steps, looking for all the world like a spaniel that had just been scolded, but, of course, Zack couldn’t stay silent for long.

“It’s got that old world feel to it,” he said, peering up at the church behind them, “like any minute bells are going to ring, birds are going to fly by, and a princess is going to come out of those doors.”

 “That’s quite the imagination.”

“Not really. All we need is the princess.”

Somebody softly cleared their throat behind them. “The doors are open, you know.”

Zack jumped and almost fell down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stone steps stood a young woman - or not much more than a girl really, perhaps around Zack’s age. She was small. She had a small face with small features, and was smiling a small, slightly anxious, smile. Her hair was long, dark and tied back with a red ribbon. She was pretty, but not extraordinarily so. Her ears stuck out. There were freckles over her nose.

Genesis wasn’t sure what he had imagined a girl who was half-Cetra to look like. If asked, he might have envisioned something like a female Sephiroth. He certainly wouldn’t have expected the girl to look so ordinary.

It was almost disappointing. She was even wearing a raincoat and a pair of wellington boots (Sensible things, thought Genesis, a little sadly) but he amended his first impression when he met her eyes.

They were green and vibrant, lively, in a way that his simply weren’t anymore, and although they didn’t have a trace of mako glow there was a kind of light in them that he had never seen in any gaze before: A light that seemed very old and a little distant.

Like starlight, he realised, eyes bright with starlight.

And as soon as he had had that thought something high-pitched, sawing and painful seemed to screech through his bones, like the scream of a cat being stretched across a violin that he could feel with his body rather than hear.

He pushed the feeling down, suppressed it do a dull and thoroughly unpleasant whine. “Miss Gainsborough?”

“Yes, that’s me, and you’re Genesis Rhapsodos.” Her eyes darted from Genesis to Zack. “I’d say the coat gave it away, but you’re pretty famous with or without your coat. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. This is my aide Zack Fair  – “

 “Hi!” Zack pushed past him, beaming from ear-to-ear, and pumped Aerith’s hands up and down with such energy Genesis wondered if he needed to step in before something broke. “Call me Zack. Don’t worry when Genesis says, ‘aide’. I think he means ‘friend’. He’s just too embarrassed to say it.”

“Zack – “

“Or it might mean ‘wingman’, but I don’t think so,” finished Zack, eyes twinkling. His eyes dropped to the basket in her hand. “Hey, I’ll carry that for you if you like!”

Aerith laughed, and this time her laughter sounded surprised that she was laughing in the first place, but genuine and very warm. She swung the basket out of Zack’s reach. “It’s just some tea! I told my mum I was going out to meet people and she insisted I bring something, so,” she held up a thermos and a wax paper bag, “tea and shortbread?”

Genesis’s head was swimming. First there was that awful noise plucking at his body like a string. Then there was this half-Cetra girl, in her pea-green raincoat, inviting two deadly Soldiers, who moments earlier had been talking about their comrades getting shot, into a church for tea and biscuits, and on top of it all, if he wasn’t mistaken, Zack Fair was flirting with her.

Half in a daze, he found himself holding open the church door and following Aerith Gainsborough into the building, coming to only when Zack seized his elbow. “Hey, sir.”

“What is the matter?”

 “She doesn’t act like your usual fans.”

“Yes, it makes a rather refreshing change not having vials of blood and lace things and books thrown at me.” Genesis tugged his arm out of Zack’s grip. “I hope you remember what I said about wild conspiracy theories.”

“Yes, sir. Hey, sir? Hey, don’t ignore me. Sir!”

Only Zack could make ‘sir’ sound like a nickname. “Now what is it?”

Zack glanced quickly down the aisle, where Aerith was walking towards the altar, looking for a dry set of pews. He scrabbled at his hair with his fingers, turned back to Genesis and whispered, “How do I look?”

Genesis slapped him on the back of the head with all his First Class enhanced strength.

Inside the church was cool and smelled of damp soil. Fingers of yellow light streamed in through the windows. A breeze, coiling through the gaps in the roof, stirred the cobwebs on the candelabras and set them gently creaking, and at the far end of the church, just in front of the altar, was a gaping hole in the floor.

It was filled with flowers.

“Whoa,” breathed Zack, eyes round as coins, as the breeze capering through the church whipped through the flowerbed and set the white and yellow heads bobbing. “Flowers. In Midgar.”

“In November,” added Genesis thoughtfully.

“And they’re growing in a church - in the slums of all places.” Zack shook his head and blinked quickly. “Nobody would believe this.”

Aerith had sat down in the second row of pews from the front. When Genesis and Zack joined her, Genesis asked, “Those flowers, Miss Gainsborough - ?”

“Oh, do you like them?” She handed him in a steaming paper cup of tea, which he found himself accepting even though he didn’t really want one. A niggling voice at the back of his mind said that he was letting himself get thoroughly swept up by the half-Cetra’s girl pace. He tried to deny it and ended up sipping the tea instead. “I’ve tried growing them in our garden at home too, but they grow best here. Something about the soil maybe.”

“What kind of flowers are they?” asked Zack, crouching at the edge of the flower bed.

Aerith put a finger to her chin. “Bellflowers…maybe?”

He snickered. “You don’t know?”

“Hey!” She pretended to fume, but she couldn’t keep it up for long, not in the face of Zack’s broad smile. “They grow here even through the winter and no bellflower I’ve ever heard of does that.”

 “So they’re a little miracle all of Midgar’s own, eh?”

“That’s right.” Aerith moved out from the pew to squat down beside him, a chunk of shortbread in one hand and her cup of tea in the other. “They’re Little Miracles. They’re the miracles you find when you’re not looking for them, but when you do find them, they’ll be there exactly at the time and place that the miracles are supposed to be. There, I’ve named them.”

Genesis, listening to Zack and Aerith, sipped on his tea and tried not to feel so drearily old. He was only in his twenties, goddammit. Sure, his body was falling apart faster than an igloo under a Comet attack, but he was still young.

“Do you tend them by yourself?” he asked, when Zack and Aerith returned to the pews.

“It’s just me looking after this patch.” She warmed her hands about the cup and chuckled. “Most people around here think the church is haunted, so they don’t come near it. I tell them that it isn’t but then they end up thinking the same as the rest of people.”

“What do the ‘rest of people’ think?”

“That this church is my church, which is silly really. Anybody can come in here if they liked.” Aerith drummed her fingers on the thermos flask cap and it sounded like rain. “Although sometimes it’s nice to have some privacy.”

If she had the Turks keeping track of her every move and mood swing, Genesis could only whole-heartedly agree, but he had to wonder. If the Turks were really doing what they did best, surely they ought to have known about this little garden that Aerith's sanctuary in Midgar hid? And yet he couldn't recall having seen any mention of the flowers Aerith tended in her file -

That soundless dissonance that had been humming through him ever since he had set foot in the church screeched.

Genesis winced. "Zack?"

"Yes? Are you alright, sir? You're looking a bit green - "

"There's something making a lot of noise up there - " Genesis pointed up to the church rafters, "-  and seeing as Miss Gainsborough says that she spends a lot of time here, I think you should go and investigate it for her.”

Zack squinted up into the shadows of the ceiling then cupped his ear. "I don't hear anything."

Genesis sighed and sat back in the pew. "That, Zack, is what makes you a Second Class soldier, whilst I am a First."

"Okay, okay! The rafters. I'll check them out." He dropped a couple of squats and winked at Aerith. "Relax. Genesis won't eat you."

Aerith laughed. "I’d like to see him try."

"I'm going to have a word with Angeal when we get back to the Tower," Genesis hissed just loud enough to be picked up Soldier hearing, and, grinning, Zack bounded off to a dark corner of the church.

For a long moment, Aerith and Genesis sipped tea, contemplating the floor, the carved ceiling, the stained glass windows in silence. The Stranger had been right. It was easier to talk Aerith with the friendly, personable Zack as a buffer. Now it was just him and the young half-Cetra girl fiddling with the end of her hair and he found himself suddenly dry for words and grasping for a script that wasn't there. 

By the Goddess, Genesis loathed improvisation. He liked having a script to follow, cues to spring from, the pattern and patoir of the dialogue exchange and metre of individual words, a beginning and a middle and a fitting end to things, but ever since that accident in the VR room improvisation seemed to be all that he was doing.

Aerith made no sign of wishing to be the first to speak. She was humming to herself, tapping her boots on the floorboards and smiling around as the rain dripped down the windows.

Genesis drew in a deep breath. "Has anybody told you why I’m here?"

"Tseng said that you wanted to talk to me but he didn't say what about. I'm guessing that it's about me being what I am, and you being what you are."

Genesis stiffened. "What do you know of me?"

"You're a Soldier." She poured herself a new cup of tea and warmed her hands around it. "So you protect the people who live under ShinRa, and I'm one of the many you protect."

He didn't believe her. She was doing just the same as he was, testing him to see how much he could or would reveal, finding out which of the two of them would be in more trouble, more danger, if somebody let slip the wrong thing. 

Be straightforward with her.

Genesis gritted his teeth together.

Tell her what you're really there for.

Easy for the Stranger to say, watching all and orchestrating events when and where it suited him from a safe distance. Genesis really needed to make a start hunting him down. Hadn't Zack mentioned that the only people he knew used the Instant Messaging Service were the fan clubs and Second Class Kunsel? Kunsel could make a good (if disappointing) starting point then.

But first, how to deal with this half-Cetra girl, watching him with the guarded eyes of a long-time slum-dweller over the brim of her cup.

He suddenly found himself laughing.

Aerith peered at him with small frown. "Are you alright?"

"A friend told me that I shouldn't lie to you, and I'm finding that I'm not sure that I can."

"A friend told you that?"

"In so many words."

"Who's your friend?"

"I wish I knew." That strange dissonance crackled at the back of his mind, sawed and scraped, and tugged at him to leave, go and leave her alone. No, he stood firm against it. Not until he had something he could take back, to show for his efforts. What First Class Soldier would ever settle for defeat? "I need help for a friend."

"A different friend?" Aerith smiled. "You're lucky to have so many friends."

"He's dying."

"Oh." Her expression folded in on itself and Genesis knew in that one look that she known loss. "How do you think I can help him?"

Genesis rose from his seat on the pew. He had to keep this vague. Even without the bugs probably placed all over him and Zack, if Aerith frequented this church as much as she said, chances were that the Turks had littered the place with bugs, and even if, for some reason of their own, they had no interest in offering Aerith and her secrets up to ShinRa, Genesis doubted they would be so charitable with whatever they learnt about him.

He looked her in the eyes. The thought of startlight crossed his mind again gentle as a spring breeze. "I think you know, Miss Gainsborough."

Aerith flinched. Her knuckles of her hands, gripping her flask of tea, whitened. "Are you here to take me to that man in Science?

Genesis let out a bark of laughter that rang up into the afters, and Aerith's eyes flew. "Me be that sweaty old fool's errand boy? As if I'd ever stoop to such a thing! Never, and I gave him a good scare, so he’ll think three times and remember to wear a spare pair of underwear before ever daring to ask such a thing of me again!"

She watched him for a long moment without saying a single word, and, after a while, Genesis had a curious feeling that she was listening and not to him.

A cheery voice floated down from the rafters.

My bonny blue-eyed soldier boy

He went to war last spring

With the bonniest blade on the flat of his back

And the song of his soul to sing.

Oh, good grief, was that Zack Fair singing up in the rafters?

He went with eyes as bright as his heart

The drumbeat sound in his ear

To raise his sword to the whistle of war

To sing for all he held dear.

"Is he okay up there?"

"I'm sure he's in his element, backwater monkey that he is."

Aerith let out a sigh and a smile tugged up the corners of her mouth. "At least he sounds as if he's having fun."

"He bloody well shouldn't be. That song is terrible."

There was a scuffling of wings and panicked cooing as Zack disturbed a flock of pigeons.

Aerith's eyes glittered but then she squared her shoulders and Genesis's heart sank. "I'm sorry, but I can't help you."

"Can't?"

What did she mean 'can't'? Of course, she could. She was a little girl in the slums and he was a First Class Soldier and he was asking her to help him, and she had the nerve to say she couldn't? The gall of refusing him when every day he remained on Lazard's ‘alleviated’ roster ate at his pride?

And what was Genesis if not his pride?

"Can't or won't? You can make flowers bloom in Midgar! That is a gift of the Goddess if ever I saw one and you say that you can't help me?"

"Sorry, gift of the who?"

Genesis buried his face in one hand and shook the other at the heavens (where Zack was currently scaring off the pigeons). "By the Goddess, does nobody in this godforsaken city read literature anymore!"

"We're not the same," cut in Aerith, raising her voice and something in her tone caught his attention - truth. She was telling him the truth, and as he lowered his hand from his face, she lowered her voice and repeated it, as though to press its meaning upon him. "We're not the same, you see. That's why I can't help you."

Not the same?

What did she mean they weren't the same? She might have been born the way she was and Genesis might have been something spliced together in a petri-dish but -

Oh!

Bitterness welled up and flooded his mouth with a taste like burnt blood. 

He could have laughed.

But, of course, why hadn't he realised this earlier? It should have been obvious as soon as he set eyes on Aerith Gainsborough, spoke to her, followed her into the church.

For sing did my blue-eyed soldier boy

A wild song only he knew

That shone from the depths of his heart and soul

That sang in each breath he drew.

He had a black wing itching beneath his skin as if waiting only for the right breeze. He burned things and enjoyed it, wore the colour of fire in his coat, liked to set fire to his enemies and watch them go down like his own personal sunsets. She coaxed Little Miracles out of the dead Midgar soil and had eyes like starlight.

They were not the same. Not in the way Genesis - or Hollander, for that matter - thought.

"Then...what are you?"

That wasn't what he had meant to ask and she knew it. She gave him an odd look that something hissing and ugly at the back of his mind immediately seized as pitying and spat poison into his blood.

"How about we settle for both of us being half-human, but wholly us?"

Settle? Genesis never settled for anything. He got what he wanted, and what he wanted was always what he needed, and what he needed wasn't some sort of consolation gift offered to him out of pity by a silly little slumgirl, who just so happened to be ShinRa's most prized pet!

"What are you hiding from me?"

The low hiss that escaped from his mouth caught both Aerith and a part of Genesis that was rapidly sinking under a dark, venomous haze by surprise. His shoulder throbbed, burned as if fire was racing through it and the wing - that damned wing - there it was, he could feel it ready, barbed hook already digging against his backbone.

"I was told to be nothing but straightforward with you, and, by the Goddess, I've tried, but you - you are hiding something from me!"

He barely heard her whisper, "No", as she stood her ground. That awful dischordant noise that had been screaming under his thoughts through their whole meeting had burst into his head with a clamouring like bells, each bell out of tune and out of time with the rest.

"You know what I am. You know it, I know you do." He had to raise his voice to hear himself over that godawful not-noise! Why wouldn't it stop? What was it? What was it doing to him? "And yet you continue to hide it from me what is surely, as a truth of my own blood, bone and flesh, by every right that is mine to have beneath this sun, mine! And yet, you refuse to tell me, and you will not help me - "

There was a sudden, almighty CRASH! that shook the pews and rattled the floor, bringing down the dust from the rafters in a great chalky cloud.

It cleared away the hideous dischord from Genesis's minds like smoke he hadn't realised was there, and suddenly he realised that he was standing over Aerith with all the ways he knew to kill with his bare hands readied at the tips of his fingers.

Genesis came back to himself with a jolt. "What do you think you're doing?"

There lying on the flat of his back amongst the flowers was Zack, winded and a bit sheepish and covered in pigeon droppings. 

Zack laughed and scratched the side of his face. "I did shout 'Look out below!' but I guess you guys didn't hear me - "

"I asked you to check the rafters for any dangerous infestations, not to go up there to have a song and dance!"

"Well, I didn’t have my blade with me, so what else could I do?" Zack replied with a laugh, pushing himself up onto his elbows, and finally noticed the flowers that he was squashing beneath him. "Oh, man, Aerith, I'm sorry. I - "

"They'll grow back. That’s what flowers do, after all." She approached him and held out her hand as though to help him up. "I'm just glad you had a soft landing. Nothing broken?"

"Nah, I'd have to fall another couple of hundred metres maybe before I break anything."

"So long as you don't go testing that."

Zack probably didn't need to take her hand to climb up to his feet but Aerith looked pleased enough when he did.

Genesis turned away. By the Goddess, what was wrong with him? If Zack Fair hadn't fallen when he had, what would Genesis have done? He could see it now as clear as the light falling through the windows - a strike, a vicious squeeze to her throat, raising bruises on her skin the same yellow and green of the Little Miracles as he choked the answers out of her…

"So, what did you guys talk about?" Zack looked between Aerith and Genesis with a gaze that was a little too knowing for Genesis's liking. "I - er- thought things sounded a little heated from up there."

"It was my fault really," said Aerith quickly and Genesis was quite taken aback. "Mister Rhapsodos only wanted help. I said I couldn't help him and I didn't really give a good enough reason why."

Genesis couldn’t allow this – this niceness. She had been terrified. He had seen it. "I spoke out of turn." 

"But you didn't let me finish.”

“I didn’t?”

“I was going to say that, I don't think I can help you the way you thought I could, but I could try another way." Genesis hated the hope that sprung in him at her words, but he hung onto everything that Aerith said as she went on, "I'm - well, like you've guessed - closer to the Planet than most. I could try maybe...talking to 'the Goddess' as you might put it?"

She finished with a wink. Genesis stared. "You can do that?"

"Wait - 'Goddess'? What 'goddess'?"

"Hmm, something like that. It's a bit touch and go, but I might be able to find something out for you. I mean - " Her eyes flickered to Genesis's shoulder and then back to his face " - for your friend."

"If you do that for us and something comes of it, I will do all that I can to ensure that you never find yourself in the hands of the Department of Science." He saw Zack start in the corner of his eye at the mention of the Science Department and kicked himself. No matter, Genesis would have to swear Zack to secrecy later.

Aerith raised her eyebrows. "And if nothing comes of it?"

"I will do whatever I need to do. I’m not a fool who makes promises that he can’t keep."

She hummed but seemed neither surprised nor disapproving, only a little bit sad, and Genesis decided then that the Science Department was the last place he would ever wish to see her. It would be like drowning a daffodil under water.

The wind had changed direction whilst they were in the church and it was driving the rain under the plate.

Genesis decided to do what every responsible superior did. He delegated the monkey tasks to his subordinates who either wore cheaper coats or none at all, and sent Zack out into the rain to buy them all umbrellas.

Left alone with Aerith again the dischordant humming seethed at the back of his mind like a warning. He took out Loveless and thumbed through the pages to where he had left off reading, tried to bury himself in the rhythm of the words.

Aerith leaned against the doorway of the church, watching the rain come down green and glittering.

"It's alright,” she said, then sighed. “I wasn't that scared."

"So you say."

"Well, maybe I was. Just a little bit. What I'm trying to say is, I think I know what's going on." She cocked her head and tapped her left ear. "I think you can hear it too, but you're…tuned slightly differently. So you're picking up the same sounds as I am, but it's all completely off, and what makes it even worse is that you're so pumped full of mako that it's like having perfect pitch in an orchestra pit full of out of tune instruments."

Aerith sighed and looked out into the rain again. "I think I'd go a little bit mad if that was what I was hearing too."

Genesis lowered his book. "What do you hear?"

"Oh, it's not as if I actually hear the Planet talking to me in words as such, or even in sounds," she chewed her lip and frowned up at the Plate's shadow above them, "but if you could take those little pieces of sunlight that make dew sparkle in the morning and the smell of rain after a whole night of rainfall, and make those things into music, it'd probably sound something like that."

Genesis scoffed. "A whole night of piss rain?"

Aerith snickered. "Beggars can't be choosers."

Genesis wasn't sure that he understood at all what Aerith was talking about, but the next instant, Zack returned, drenched with rain and carrying three umbrellas, and the opportunity to ask had passed.

"I'm sorry about the flowers."

"Stop apologising. You've bought me an umbrella."

"No, really. I feel really bad. Listen, I want to make up for it. I'll take you on a date sometime! Somewhere nice! Genesis can help - I bet he knows some nice, swanky places - "

"What makes you think that I would help you?"

Aerith let out a laugh and hefted pink umbrella to her shoulder. "I might hold you to that."

They said their goodbyes and then Aerith walked away into the rain, disappearing into the green haze of slum vapour, and Genesis and Zack began to make their way back to the station.

As they crossed a cobbled square with their umbrellas in hand, Zack opened his mouth, and said, "You looked pretty angry back there, when I was up on the rafters."

Genesis snorted and, for a while, Zack said nothing, waiting for a reply that Genesis wouldn't give him in a thousand years.

"Stress?" Zack tried to prompt him.

Genesis came to a stop. "Zack?"

"Yes...sir?"

Genesis thought for a moment. "You may call me Genesis."

Then he walked on before Zack tried to do something sickeningly chummy like try to hug him or sling an arm about his shoulders, and Zack's footsteps fell comfortingly into step behind him.        

Nobody had ever asked Miss Scarlet S. Scarlet what her middle name was. Most likely it was because they had guessed and they had guessed correctly, although it may perhaps have had something to do with the lethal points of her stiletto heels edging a little too close to their toes for comfort.

Scarlet had been named by her mother for the colour that would come to define the whole of her life. Three times brighter, her mother said, three times bolder, three times more beautiful, and be ready to be soaked in three times the blood as any of those around you. Those were the principles Scarlet had been raised with and every time she put on her scarlet dress and looked at herself in the mirror, those were the words she thought of.

She was Scarlet, three times over, and she was a woman fighting her way through a man’s world. If a plunging neckline was what it took to get an application for extra-funding under the noses of those who needed to see it, then that would be the weapon she deployed. If it was a little leg or a pile of curls that she needed, then so be it. If those men had such weaknesses, then it was only their fault that she exploited them.

Oh, yes, it was a man’s world in ShinRa. It didn’t take a First Class Engineering degree from Midgar to work that out, and if that was the way the world worked, and the way the ladder had been built then she was going to use every trick and asset she had at her disposal to claw her way up there.

Scarlet wore a red silk dress and rose and patchouli, piled her hair in ice blonde curls, and built robots, reapplying her lipstick in the chromium alloy kneecaps of a Destroyer Mark 4000. Behind her back, she knew that her assistants said that Miss Scarlet S. Scarlet had the biggest balls in the Weapons Department and that they were made from Damascus steel.

She had inched her way into the President’s favours and his orbit of Company favourites by building flashy, chunky robots with glowing eyes and caterpillar belts, the kind that if miniaturised wouldn’t look out of place in a toy shop, because President Shinra liked his chunky, shiny, clodhopping toys with their sharp edges and gunmetal paintwork. These days that was all he was really - a great greedy child at the top of the tower, putting his fat fingers in every pie he laid his eyes on. Building toys that President Shinra approved of brought funding money into her department.

The Shinra Tower workforce was eighty seven percent male, the last that Scarlet had checked the statistics. It was skewed by the Soldier program, of course. The Science Department insisted on an all-male intake, for some paper-thin reason drummed up from flimsy papers via Hojo’s sycophants, no doubt, but Scarlet had her own private beliefs about why. Accidents happened and perhaps there was some unholy and unheard of risk that came from a mako-enhanced egg meeting mako-enhanced sperm that the Science Department wanted to avoid at all costs.

The press and the fallout of such a story would be terrible. Awful. Bad enough to bring down the Soldier program perhaps, thought Scarlet with a spark of glee, humming as her heels clicked down the length of the corridor and some nobody from HR stepped aside with a bow to let her pass.

The other possibility that Scarlet was rather partial to was that that was the secret behind Hojo’s precious pet Sephiroth’s extraordinary existence and this was his way of keeping tight control over the secret of his greatest achievement. If there were female Soldiers and breeding them was all that it took to create a generation of Sephiroth-level superhumans, any rival of Shinra Company could capture a squad and develop their own army, and then that would be it for Shinra’s well-defended monopoly on mako resources. In which case, best not to risk having female Soldiers around at all.

All of this was speculation, of course, speculation to fill the silences, but there were plenty of silences that people at Shinra learnt not to talk about over time. Nobody ever mentioned the fate of Mrs Shinra, for instance, even though her tumble off the edge of the Plate had been well-reported, and more recently, nobody mentioned the death of Hojo and Doctor Hollander’s subsequent promotion.

To survive at Shinra, you had to learn to read the silences. That was where all the secrets lay.

To succeed at Shinra, you had to be selective about the secrets you paid attention to.

Scarlet knew when to keep her mouth shut. Most women who had got beyond the receptionists’ desk did, but there was no sisterhood of Shinra women as such. You found your own way up the food chain or you didn’t find your way up at all. Why should Scarlet start kneeling like a virginal saint to help women in cheap-soled shoes get up the careers ladder? She had never had help.

And that was what she was telling herself when she arrived at Doctor Hollander’s laboratory and heard voices within.

" - I just want to know, Doctor!  Why was I overlooked? This was Project J! Professor Hojo's project! And you gave it to that numpty from Kalm! I can't believe you put him as head of that project when he's as about as competent as a headless zolom - "

"Now, look here, Doctor Rayleigh - "

"Do you remember what he did with that investigation with mako-exposed soil bacteria? Do you remember what he did with that? He couldn't even handle the genome of a soil bacterium and you think he's going to cope with what Project J requires of him? He'll run it into the ground!"

Which was precisely Hollander's intention, of course. Anybody with a mind for competition could see that. Scarlet sighed and rolled her eyes. Of course, playing the naiveté card and appealing to human decency could still get a girl somewhere, but clearly Doctor Rayleigh had a lot to learn.

Scarlet rapped her knuckles on the door and she heard Hollander seize the opportunity for a break, huffing and puffing and probably sweating like the gross little man-pig as he made for the door.

Scarlet smiled with all her teeth bared. "Hollander."

Hollander's face went slack. "Oh. Scarlet."

Out of the frying pan and into Ifrit's hot, hot stove, little pig-man. She thrust out her chest and peered over his shoulder where in the dark, gloomy office, a young woman with short brown hair and premature frown lines was adjusting her glasses and the collar of her white coat, looking thoroughly put-out.    

"Am I interrupting something?"

"No, not at all. Doctor Rayleigh was just on her way out - "

"I was not!"

"Oh, let her stay. I don't intend to stick around with you in this poky little sweathole of an office of yours anyway."

Scarlet pushed past Hollander into his office, heels clicking, and caught Doctor Rayleigh staring at her with something akin to wonder. Yes, Scarlet had that effect on people, especially in her signature dress.

Hollander closed the door with a sigh and shuffled back to his chair.

"Very well, Scarlet. What do you want?"

"I wanted to congratulate you on making Head of the Department, of course," she purred.

Hollander reached for - oh, goodness, there it was - that disgusting handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "Thank you."

"We've never been enemies, have we, Hollander?”

“Er – “

“I mean, what have I ever done to you?” she went on imperiously. “Far less than Hojo ever did! Quite honestly, he was sabotaging your career."

"Yes. Yes, he was, wasn’t he? Sabotage, yes."

He was sweating and oozing and utterly disgusting, but she leaned forward and put a sympathetic hand on top of his. His eyes flickered down to her scarlet-painted nails. "Now I'm hoping that with Hojo gone we'll see some changes made for the better around here. I've been looking to do some collaborative projects with your department for quite some time now, but Hojo was always turning me down. Completely out of spite, of course. He was a jealous and vile man, always hoarding, hoarding what he knew, all the resources he had at his disposal."

"Oh, I see. That must have been hard for you."

"It was so, so very hard. There is so much that can be said for studying Soldier mako-induced physiological and anatomical changes. If I could but study the Soldiers, maybe have access to some of the data from their physicial examination checks, I’ll be able to begin applying what mechanics we discover to a project that could change all of ShinRa as we know it, creating a new generation of weapons combining my technology with your biology.”

She saw her words sinking in and that he liked what he heard, but then he said, "I'm not sure that I quite follow."

"She wants to study Soldier physiology and see if she can replicate it in a machine. In short, create" Doctor Rayleigh's voice quivered with excitement, "robotic weapons that can move like the Soldiers do."

Hollander's jaw dropped. Scarlet inwardly sighed. So much for Department Head. "What she said.”

“But that would replace Soldier!”

“No, no, no,” she shushed him like a panicked puppy. “Never replace it! Oh, I wouldn’t dream of replacing Soldier. Just augment it a little, or maybe once it’s all fully rolled out, serve as an alternative to those useless little troopers. At least they will be able to keep up with their Soldiers on the frontlines, unlike being constantly left behind as we saw in Wutai.”

“I suppose,” Hollander seemed to be coming round to the idea as slowly as a cow chewing the cud, “I suppose that sounds reasonable – “

“I’m so glad to hear you say that. Well, then, the most basic need for this joint project of ours is that there is a person who can act as a liaison between our two departments to keep open a channel of communication. And I believe," Scarlet looked sideways, "we've found a good candidate for that. You are Science Department and not an Administrative Research mole, aren’t you, sweetie?"

Doctor Rayleigh reddened. "Yes, ma'am!"

"This - this project of yours, Scarlet," Hollander leapt in quickly to say, gesturing at Rayleigh, "why don't you take Rayleigh along for it? None of this wishy-washy in-between departments business. Have her work for you fulltime on this project - she's a specialist in Soldier physiology, it's right up her street."

And it gets her off your back about being overlooked for heading Project J, doesn't it, you miserable man? Well, no matter. Scarlet had been combing the AI conferences for possible assistants on the project and found none especially promising. This Doctor Rayleigh seemed to fit the bill with the scientific expertise complimentary to Scarlet's own in weapons. There were worse combinations.

"It'd be a pleasure to take you on if that is what you would like," she said sweetly, making it clear that Scarlet, unlike Hollander, would show Rayleigh enough respect to allow her to make her own decisions (when it suited Scarlet, anyway).

"Oh, yes," Doctor Rayleigh adjusted her glasses. "Yes, ma'am, I'd like that very much!"

Scarlet beamed at Hollander. "Well, hasn't this worked out swimmingly for all of us?"  

She rose from her seat. "Come to my office, sweetie. We can finalise details there."

After Doctor Rayleigh left and Scarlet had sprayed the air with perfume in her wake (the young woman, girl really, smelled of mako-mutant animals), there was a sharp knock at her door.

"Come in."

Veld stuck his head around the door. "Just a quick word, Scarlet, if you don't mind."

Scarlet stamped down on that flicker of distaste before it could show on her face. There hadn’t been any love lost between her and Veld since her little spybots caught his Turks in her department - and Veld was blaming her for the fact that her weapons did exactly what they had been designed to do!

She capped the pen and set it on her desk. "I have a moment to spare. What is it now? Another one of your Turks in some place they shouldn't be and paying for it?"

He stayed standing with his head and one hand stuck around the door. It didn't escape her that that ‘one hand’ in her room was Veld's gun-arm.

What a gentleman.

"Nothing of the kind. I was thinking that it was about time we Turks did more to keep up with times. Cybercrimes are rife these days and when it's comes to AIs we're perhaps a little out of our depth." He let out a chuckle that anybody else might have thought self-deprecating, but Scarlet knew better. She narrowed her eyes. "We were hoping that maybe you could come along to the department to show us what you know. Run a seminar or two, perhaps?"

"When?"

"Within the next couple of weeks or so. Only when you have time, of course."

He was after something. She couldn't tell what though.

If she played along, she'd find out eventually.

Scarlet made a show of opening her gold-covered diary, and flicking through the gold-edged pages. "I could probably fit in an hour or two next Monday."

Veld smiled, the planes of his face shifting like rocks. "That would be excellent."

His head left the room first, the gun-arm second.

Scarlet pursed her lips and folded her arms. Piss ran splashed down the glass behind her in one long green sheet.

Now why, she mused to herself, tapping the nail of her forefinger, painted to perfection in crimson, would the Turks be suddenly so interested in AIs?

 Every Soldier in the Common Area jumped to their feet when Genesis stormed in, tracking green rain onto the carpet and with a look in his eye that usually meant a Thundaga was incoming.

He brandished a transparent umbrella at them. "Second Class Kunsel!"

The Soldiers looked at each other, assessed the pros and cons of betraying the brotherhood, and then parted as one to reveal Kunsel, sat at the horseshoe of sofas by the bay window with cloth and sword polish in hand.

Kunsel sighed. "Oh, boy. Yes, sir?"

Genesis indicated the door behind him. "Out. Now."

"Is there something the matter, sir?" said Kunsel, the moment the door had closed behind them.

"Not especially. Hands where I can see them. Holding your PHS, if you please." Genesis added, and with a look of the bemused puzzlement, Kunsel did as he was told, raising his hands to his ears, his PHS blinking with a green light. "The instant messaging service."

To Genesis's astonishment Kunsel went instantly pale. "Oh, er, well. Hmm, yes, sir. What about it?"

Genesis narrowed his eyes to slits. "Why don't you tell me?"

Kunsel shuffled on the spot then suddenly blurted -

"Okay, I might have been using it as a platform to spread around some rumours and feed info to the fanclubs, but I swear, that story about you and the script of the Winter Festival pantomime, sir, it wasn't mine - that rumour's been going around for weeks - "

There was a soft chime like a bell from Genesis's pockets.

Genesis paused.

“That was your PHS, sir.”

“Yes, I know that, thank you.” He raised the umbrella and swung its point to rest within an inch of Kunsel's nose. "You are not to move."

"Yes, sir."

Genesis pulled out his PHS and checked his messages. Sure enough, there was a bright green, obnoxious little speech bubble in the screen corner.

As fun as this is to watch you pointing umbrellas at people - nope. Not him. Got to try a bit harder than that.

Genesis gripped the PHS so hard, that it was only long lines of tried-and-tested models of PHSs designed to withstand Sephiroth that stopped the screen from shattering.

"Sir?"

So the Stranger wasn’t Kunsel, which Genesis couldn't say he was especially surprised about. It also made him inexplicably excited.

A thought struck him then and his shoulder twinged.

As fun as this is to watch -

Genesis started and looked over his shoulder, glanced about the corridor, searching, looking -  There!

The blinking red light and black gleam of glass, a CCTV camera situated in the corner.

So that was how the Stranger watched him, them, all of ShinRa. Genesis found himself smiling. Now, the question was, was the Stranger clever or was he simply making use of the circumstances available to him? Who in ShinRa had CCTV access as part of their work? The Turks? Could the Stranger possibly be a Turk?

Now, wasn't that a dangerous thought and a half?

"Good news, sir?" Kunsel prompted, as the smile stretched across Genesis’s face, eyeing the umbrella in his face as though it were Rapier.

Genesis slipped the PHS back into his coat pocket. "Of a kind."

Still smiling, he stepped in closer, the umbrella point rising to a point between Kunsel's eyes, and the Second Class Soldier went just a little cross-eyed following the movement of the tip. "Now, what were you saying about the script of the Winter Festival pantomime?"

December came round in a flow of crisp cool air blowing in from the Northern Crater. No snow - the fug of mako-infused vapour kept Midgar a little too warm for that. It was nothing like Nibelheim where the coming of December meant the placing of the shovel and a ladder by the window of the first floor.

A distant part of Cloud reflected that it was around about this time in the previous timeline that he had met Tifa on top of the water tower. Somewhere out there, young Cloud Strife was readying to leave Midgar on his own for the very first time. For a boy who had only gone as far as Rockettown on a day-trip with his mother it was quite something.

Opening up another one of Scarlet's e-mails, Cloud dragged himself up and out of his musings. Focus. He needed to focus. Admittedly, focusing was a little difficult these days when his awareness was divided up between observing the Soldiers on their daily activities (surprisingly mundane), dodging the new Turk scans and probes they had started running at random intervals, and keeping his thumb firmly on the fire alarm system, because there was something about dowsing Sephiroth in water at least once a week that was did wonders for his stress.

He had been sorely tempted to turn the sprinklers on Genesis once or twice, but the man had caused Cloud enough trouble out of boredom alone. Risking Genesis's wrath if Cloud ruined his favourite red leather coat wasn't worth it.

He messaged Cloud about once an hour every day, occasionally asking leading questions that seemed to attempts to trick Cloud into admitting he was a Turk, but more often than not it was just to complain - about the dreary December weather, the bread in the Soldier canteen, idiot Seconds and clumsy Thirds he had to deal with; about Angeal still healing in the infirmary, Hollander being a waste of space, Sephiroth still tiptoeing around Genesis in the VR room when they sparred as though he thought Genesis couldn't tell when the fool was going easy on him; how everything hurt at night-time and he sometimes woke up wrapped in his wing, and he didn't know whether to hate it more or be glad it was there, and that at this rate, Aerith Gainsborough was about as useless as the flowers she grew in her church garden. 

It was all oddly familiar and strangely, for a man who thought himself far from it, very human, and as irritating as it was, for some reason, Cloud couldn't find it in him to tell Genesis to shut up and let him avert the end of the world in peace.

Besides, so long as Genesis kept messaging him it kept him aware of the state of the Soldier's mind - mostly, as they got towards the middle of the month, it was preoccupied with the Soldier pantomime, a fixture of the ShinRa Winter Festival party which Cloud could only hazily remember from his first time round as being one Soldier too many prancing across a stage in feathers and tights.

Ah, the Winter Festival, a season of giving. Cloud had quite the present lined up for the Turks on his trail.

The e-mail that went around the team dedicated to investigating the possible rogue AI was labelled as coming from Tseng.

Reno opened it without hesitation. He got e-mails from Tseng complaining about his sloppy dress style so often that he now had a standard response for them of ‘You’re looking fabulous too’.

This time, however, it wasn't a complaint about the state of his shirt. It was asking him to open an attachment, within which he would find something that 'may be of interest to him'.

Well, Reno could hardly resist a tease like that, could he?

He opened the attachment, and the moment he double-clicked the screen flashed white.

"What in the name of - ?"

He switched the screen on and off, pressed escape, and he was in the process of testing out all of the combinations of the keys that he knew when a black cartoon motorbike drove into the screen.

Reno froze.

A stick man dismounted from the motorbike. It had a big sword, a little like Angeal Hewley's Buster, in its hands. It jumped up and down a couple of times, as though making sure it had Reno's attention, then climbed back onto the motorbike and drove off the opposite side of the screen, a cartoon plume of dust rising up behind it.

Then the computer gave out a soft 'whumph' and promptly died.

"No!" Reno cried, grabbing the screen and shaking it. "Shit! Bugger! Shit! Hey!"

He spun round and the rest of the team looked up from their computers. "If you guys get an e-mail from Tseng - "

"What e-mail from Tseng?"

"I think he's talking about this one," said one of the younger Turks, clicking, then double-clicking. "He wants us to check out something in the attachments."

"Let's see it."

"Don't open the attach - !"

Six computer screens flashed white.

And what was the cold, dark month of December without a little ghost story?

 Kunsel was just finishing updating a contact in Red Leather on a new Genesis-based rumour (that Kunsel may or may not have invented himself) when there was a chime and a message arrived from an anonymous sender.

Hey, Kunsel, have you heard of the Wutai Warrior Ghost?

The gossip monster inside him pricked its ears.

No, he replied, typing quickly. He thought nothing of the anonymous sender. He made it a policy not to ask the names of his informants. Tell me more. 

"Hey, have you heard about the Wutai Warrior Ghost?"

Genesis overheard one morning when he was checking the Soldier roster.

"No," said the Second, "what's that about?"

Zack lowered his voice and leaned in as though to impart some dangerous secret. "It's some ghost that they're saying's haunting ShinRa Tower!"

"Oh, come off it, Zack - like you actually believe in ghosts - "

“No, no, but listen. You know how the sprinklers in the hallways seem to be breaking a lot lately, especially around Sephiroth?"

The Second looked thoughtful. "Now that you mention it, yeah, the sprinklers on the Soldiers floors are being a bit…funky these days."

"They're saying," Zack went on, his eyes wide, his tone hushed, "they're saying that it's all because of this ghost of a Wutai warrior with a serious, serious grudge against Sephiroth. Possibly got killed by him - I didn't hear the whole story - but apparently, before the warrior died, it prayed to Leviathan to grant it powers over heavenly water and now - "

Genesis snorted, but the thought of Sephiroth's face when he came to hear about this ridiculous ghost story put a spring in Genesis's step as he went to the pantomime rehearsal that hadn't been there for months.

 And all too soon after the Winter Festival, it was January and the start of a new year. Resolutions were made, old ones were forgotten or resurrected in the hope that this year, maybe this year, things would be different, and Cloud watched, from his virtual fortress, the year reset.

And arriving at last in Midgar after several days journey of smelly wagons and smellier trains, Cloud Strife, fourteen, wrapped in a Nibelheim parka and finding Midgar January far warmer than he had anticipated, stepped down onto the platform.

He raised his eyes to ShinRa Tower, lit up green and soaring up into the night.