The Conscience of the King Chapter 8: A Hundred Years "You built the walls of Jericho, you built them strong and tall A hundred years of solitude, the pride before the fall Well, how can you sleep at night, how can you afford To close your eyes for a moment when you're all the way down? And you won't believe, you won't believe, no, you won't believe Close your eyes a moment and you'll be on the way down. A hundred years of solitude, now what is there to show? You say you love the way the sun sets in the east Well, I know very well it's already set in the west And you won't believe, you won't believe, no, you won't believe I know very well it's already set in the west." -- Malcolm's Interview The one good thing, Reeve reflected, about being the head of Urban Development was that you got a top-of-the-line PC to use for your office. One of the good things about being involved with the vice president of the company (not the only good thing, of course; not even in the top ten, but still a consideration) was that no one would say one word to you about flagrantly violating the corporate network Acceptable Use Policy. You took the good parts where you found them. He turned up the volume on his non-standard-issue speakers a bit and sang along softly with the music that was streaming over his internet connection. He just had a little more work to finish up, before he was finished for the day. The blueprints for the proposed Corel Mako reactor were spread over his desk; he had one pencil tucked behind his ear and was using the other to scribble notes to himself in the margins. The project was looking good; it might even be feasible faster than the two years he'd projected. A knock sounded on his door; he'd sent his secretary home a while back, seeing no reason for the poor young man to keep the same ridiculous hours that he did. He looked up, pushing a lock of hair out of his face and scowling a little. "Come in," he called, looking back down at the blueprints. ~This had better not be any corporate bullshit. That's why I'm working late, because I sure as hell can't get this done during the usual day.~ "I hope I'm not interrupting." The door opened to reveal Sephiroth, cool and distant in his formal SOLDIER uniform. The irritation evaporated, to be replaced with the usual discomfort that Reeve felt when in the presence of one of Rufus's former lovers. "No, not at all," he lied. "I'm just finishing up some work that I can't really get done during the day; it can wait. Come on in. What can I do for you?" Sephiroth remained in the doorway, looking just as uncomfortable as Reeve felt. "I was looking for Rufus, and his secretary was singularly unhelpful in revealing his location; have you seen him lately?" "He's in his dad's office, I think," Reeve replied, after a moment's thought. "He mentioned something about the old man wanting to see him, at least. I haven't seen him since lunchtime. Was it something important? Could I help?" Sephiroth shook his head. "Not at all, no; I just received word that I am being sent out to Nibelheim on assignment, and the troop ship leaves in about an hour. I know that one of Rufus's side projects involves some material regarding an old research program that was housed in Nibelheim, and wanted to know if he wanted me to look into it while I was there." Reeve shook his head. "I don't know anything about it, no. He doesn't really tell me about what he's up to on the side, and I don't ask." ~I don't really want to know.~ "I'll let him know that you were looking for him, though. You said you were shipping out soon?" "Within the hour." Sephiroth's eyes skimmed around the office; the other man looked decidedly ill at ease. "It isn't important; if I have the chance, I will contact him from Nibelheim. Thank you." Reeve nodded. "No prob. Have a good trip. Um. I mean. Not like you're going on vacation or anything, but here's hoping it's quiet." Sephiroth smiled, slightly. "Thank you. I'm sorry to have interrupted your work." "No problem," Reeve repeated. "I'll see you when you get back." "Indeed." Sephiroth nodded his head and turned around, shutting the door behind him. Reeve tapped his pencil on the blueprints again and scowled. He liked Sephiroth. He really did. The man was reserved, true, but once you got to know him, you realized that reserve wasn't distance, but shyness -- though, he was certain, Sephiroth would deny the accusation. He liked Reno, too, and Rude, and Tony from Accounting, and Jessica from Billing, and was even -- slowly, but surely -- beginning to like Tseng, despite their bad start. That was the problem. He actually liked most of Rufus's former (or current) lovers; unsurprising, in a company where most people weren't worth the time it took to get to know them or the air they took to breathe, that Rufus would find the few people who were worth knowing. Unsurprising, too, given Rufus's character, that he would be sleeping with them. Reeve wasn't certain just how many of Rufus's ... "extracurricular activities" were still going strong; he just didn't ask. Not even eight months of togetherness had accustomed him to the thought that he wasn't Rufus's only lover. The time that they spent together was amazing, true; that was one of the only things that kept him from calling the whole thing off. He didn't want to bring the matter up with Rufus, not at all. It just wasn't worth it; he could imagine the scene already, complete with that cold and distant look from Rufus, the look that he'd seen more than once -- though, thankfully, rarely directed towards him. One thing was certain; Rufus Shinra was not the type of man who enjoyed being told what to do. Reeve sighed and ran his hands through his hair, eyeing the blueprints that had delighted him not ten moments ago sourly, as if they were responsible for Rufus's discontinuity. ~When,~ he asked himself, the same echo that he'd asked himself over and over again, ~will you decide whether this is good enough for you?~ He was happy with Rufus, true. Perhaps happier than he'd ever been before, with anyone else. Rufus had smashed through the barriers Reeve had erected, starting to heal the old scars by his very presence. For that, at least, Reeve had to be thankful. But why did his "saviour" have such feet of clay when it came to commitment? Reeve couldn't help but think, in the darkest recesses of his mind, that perhaps it was because he just wasn't good enough. He needed Rufus, that was true, but Rufus didn't need him. Not overtly, at least, and Reeve couldn't bring himself to hope that there was a covert need buried deeply behind that cool facade. Reeve just didn't know how much longer he could stand this half-relationship. It was tough enough having to hide it from the rest of the company, or at least the parts that didn't need to know. Having to hide a relationship that he wasn't sure existed as anything more than two or three nights a week was even tougher. He couldn't decide if he wanted more or not, and sometimes he hated himself for just taking whatever Rufus decided to give. For not being strong enough to put his foot down, one way or another. "Hey." Reeve jumped at the voice; Rufus grinned back at him from the other side of the desk, where he was lounging as if Reeve's thoughts had summoned him. ~How long has he been there?~ "If you scowl at those blueprints any harder, you're going to set them on fire." Reeve summoned up a small smile. "Tough day," he said, and needed to say no more; both men understood the corporate pressures. "Seph was looking for you. He's being shipped off to Nibelheim for a little while, and wanted to see if you needed him to investigate anything for one of your other projects. He didn't tell me anything else." Unspoken was the invitation for Rufus to fill out the missing pieces. Rufus didn't bite. "Nibelheim, eh? I'll radio him later on tonight, when they're likely to have gotten there already. You done for the evening soon, or are you going to be scowling at these all night?" Looking down, Reeve shook his head. "Nah. I think that if I stare at them any longer, I'm going to have them imprinted on my eyeballs for the rest of eternity. And as much as I like the design of these new reactors, I /don't/ need to be seeing them every time I close my eyes. What'd you have in mind?" Rufus laughed. "Dinner?" Reeve nodded. "Sounds good to me." And he pushed the doubts back behind his conscious thought, willing them to stay there. To stay there until the next time they snuck forward and threatened to overwhelm him. -- * -- /The truck is stifling in the mid-day sun, its grey and dingy body holding the heat and refusing to let it dissipate. You sit on one of the blocks, closing your eyes and willing your mind away from the discomfort, pretending that you don't feel the small runnel of sweat trickling down the small of your back. It wouldn't do for the great war hero to show even that small weakness in front of his troops./ /The other SOLDIER in the back of the truck is restless, pacing back and forth in the confines of the vehicle, stopping to do deep-knee bends, jumping back up to prowl the few feet anxiously, chattering about his materia and his weapons. A small smile for him; you were never that young, not in the same way that he shows youth. You sometimes feel that you were born as the serious, sober young man you present to the rest of the world. It's safer that way; if no one else can see behind that facade, you don't have to worry about getting hurt. No one can reach behind your armor and touch your core self. No one except one person, and you don't want to think about him; he's found something else to do. No matter. It doesn't hurt, not really; not the way it could hurt if you bothered to let yourself feel it./ /You've been sent to investigate reports of a Mako reactor malfunction, of the monsters that it is generating, and for a few moments you wondered why SOLDIER had been called at all; but you know, or you think you know, why you in particular have been sent. No one else has worked that closely with Hojo; no one else can know what the old man is trying to do with this project. Even you don't know all the details of the experiment, but you know enough. Your years with the professor before you decided to join SOLDIER served you well, and just because you choose to serve in the military does not mean that you have forgotten all of your science. Indeed, perhaps you are the only one who could serve for this mission. Your blend of physical ability and mental acuity means that if anyone can figure it out without being injured, it will most likely be you. You stopped wondering about that blend of mental and physical ability a long time ago, when it became clear that no one had answers for you./ /One SOLDIER, two guards. A small force, but you've done more with less, in your time. You've always been fairly unassuming in your own way. At first, when you were younger, it was because you were being raised among scientists -- you can't quite remember where, nor can you really remember who was there, but you grew up surrounded by grownups, who were much happier when you were quiet and self-possessed. If you were quiet, you always thought, then maybe they'd forget you were there; maybe they'd stop coming for you for tests and experiments. That much you remember, though you've blocked out the rest. Then, as you grew older, it was Midgar and the sterile confines of the Shinra building. Nurses and nannies, that much you remember, and a school where you couldn't make them understand that you already understood so much more than the pabulum they were trying to teach you. Then, just as you started hitting that turbulence of adolescence, the professor came back and took you under his wing, choosing you as a student, becoming the closest thing to a father figure you'd ever had./ /You sometimes wonder if he realizes how much you'd do to make him proud of you, how much trouble you'd go through to make him register one small sign of approval. He never does. No matter what you do, it's not good enough for him; there's always another hurdle to be crossed, always another test to be passed. You got tired of it, after a while, and in what you think might be your sole open act of defiance, left the cool ivory perfection of Science to join the military. Others think that you were the first to receive the Mako treatments of SOLDIER, but you and the professor know better. Your eyes were always this color. It's something you don't talk about./ /You ask him, sometimes, where you came from, and why you're so different -- stronger, better, faster, smarter. You ask him who your parents were. He always looks off into the distance, then, and his voice takes on that tight and nasal tone that indicates that it's something he doesn't want to talk about. "Your mother's name was Jenova," he tells you, coolly. "She died in childbirth."/ /You don't know whether or not you can believe him. Your earliest memories are of hiding in a closet, curled up against yourself, wishing desperately that the needles and the numbers and the science and the tests would just leave you alone for once. Maybe, you think, in your darkest hours, in the time just before dawn when the entire building is silent and even Midgar itself looks to be sleeping, just maybe you weren't meant to know./ /You hate him. And you love him. And you wish that once, just once, he would look at you and be proud of what you've become./ /One of the guards is suffering from motion-sickness, and automatically your mind reaches for the familiar discipline of medical science: chew some gum, drink as much water as you can, sit close to the window and breathe fresh air, try not to think about it. You could help him, you suppose, but it's easier just to sit on your box and try not to think about the damp sticky mass that is your hair in this mid-summer heat. The strange silver hair that marks you without words as misfit, outcast, loner. You've never seen someone who shared the hue. You rest your head back against the wall of the truck, breathing steadily and evenly, and try not to think about the fact that your head has been hurting for the past twenty minutes, as if there is a cloud of mosquitoes buzzing inside your skull. It's easier if you don't think about it. If you don't think about it, then maybe it will stop hurting./ /You remember, abruptly, with the stunning clarity that your memory usually holds, the woman who'd slipped into your early life as easily as breathing. You think you loved her a little; she didn't treat you like a freak, like an orphan, like an experiment. She'd taken you outside, and you'd scrabbled in the dirt like two children, instead of a sober, solemn six-year-old and a woman wise before her time. She'd listened quietly to you, and nodded in all the right places, and patiently showed you how to tend the saplings that she'd planted in the backyard of that mansion./ /"It's all right, Sephiroth. You're just different, not better or worse. You don't have the same experiences as everyone else; that doesn't mean that you're not like they are, where it counts. Inside." A gentle, slender hand, grubby from the earth, placed upon your child's wrist. "No matter what else happens, you need to remember that. You're the same as everyone else, inside."/ /You can feel the heat-haze crossing your eyes, and wish only for a drink of cool water. What had she known? She had run off with Gast in the middle of the night, leaving you alone./ /Had she been your mother? No. She couldn't have been. Your mother had died in childbirth. You'd killed her. That much, you know./ /The town makes you nervous, when you get there. You've never been there before, not that you remember. Your tours of duty usually kept you further to the east, on the Wutaian continent. You can't ever remember setting foot in this town. Yet somehow, when you walk through the gates, it seems almost like you're coming home. The thought startles you. You've never had a home. Not even the Shinra building, with its dizzying heights and its labyrinthine corridors, ever gave you any sense of sanctuary. Yet you know this town; you know every cracked cobblestone beneath your feet, every tiny house that parades by you./ /It makes you nervous. And your head still hurts. You could bring the soldiers to the inn; you could rest and tackle the problem in the morning. You should; that much you know. But something seems to call you onwards. You override it. The men need sleep. You know from long experience that you are the only one who can be as rested and refreshed after a night of work, without sleep, than if you got eight hours' worth of rest. You send them to the inn, and stand in the window and watch the town. Wondering. Almost remembering. Almost./ /You remember trying to convince yourself, as a child, that Gast was truly your father, that one day he would take you away from the experiments. A child's fancy: if I'm good, if I behave, if I cooperate, then maybe someday someone will come and rescue me from all of this. Gast was the only one who ever showed you kindness, as a child. He'd take you for ice cream, and indulge your little habits, and never once raise his voice to you. You knew he couldn't really be your father, but you never stopped hoping that someday, it would turn out to be the truth./ /The town is quiet and sleeping. You pinch the bridge of your nose; no one is around to see that small sign of weakness. You wish that your head would stop hurting. You don't usually get headaches. You're not quite sure how other people handle them; with drugs, you suppose. That's not an option for you. For some reason, your metabolism can't support much of anything outside the ordinary. Alcohol would kill you; caffeine nearly did, once. One of the lab techs had given you a bottle of spring water as a courtesy, and no one had bothered to tell you that it contained caffeine./ /The next thing you remembered was opening your eyes in a hospital bed, with Hojo leaning over you and scowling, and what felt like an ever-tightening steel band around your chest. Cardiac arrest brought about by allergic reaction, he'd told you. You'd always thought that your 'allergy' to caffeine, to chocolate, was simply a minor thing. It wasn't until later that you'd thought to wonder why Hojo had known precisely what to do, why he'd had the needle of atropine ready to inject into your heart, why he was hovering over your bedside with the look of someone who actually cared beyond the simple irritation of a scientist whose lab assistant had gone and injured himself./ /Later still, you realized that Hojo _had_ known precisely what to do, and that made you wonder even more. He'd never told you what caffeine would do to you. What other secrets did he know? What other secrets was he keeping from you?/ /One of the guards can't sleep. You almost feel sorry for him; you know what it's like to stare sleepless at the ceiling for hours at a time. You send him back to bed with thoughts of the morning's mission, and he goes -- not willingly, but he goes. Something about the strange mood the town inspires stirs up another memory, and you lean against the window and think it through. You don't have enough memories of your childhood to be able to discard any of them, no matter how painful they might be./ /You can remember the old, familiar insomnia, fear of what dreams might come when you close your eyes; restlessness had driven you from your bed. You'd crept down the stairs, some half-formed impulse prodding you down to the basement, to find the source of -- of something, something that whispered to you. The voices from the storage room had been raised enough that you could hear them even from the hallway./ /"--can't go back in there, Professor, not with that -- that /thing/--"/ /"Ifalna, you are overreacting. The specimen has been quiescent for thousands of years, there is no way that it could --"/ /"Quiescent? You can't even say that it's dead, not anymore! Because you know that it isn't!" You had never heard Ifalna's voice raised in temper before; it took you a moment to recognize it. Gast's rumble was far more familiar. "Professor Gast, you are not a man who sees the mystical until it gets rubbed in your face -- but even you must admit that there is something very strange, and something very upsetting, going on here. /How/ many people have died on this project?"/ /You had pressed against the wall, slinking into the shadows, knowing somehow that there was something significant going on in there. Was this why people stopped talking when you entered the room? But Gast kept talking: "Why are you asking this of me? Why me? Why me, out of everyone?"/ /"Because you are the only one on this entire team who still has retained some sort of sanity. You are the only one who has not felt the touch of that -- that /thing/." Her tone had dropped, as if she was trying desperately not to be overheard. "Professor, please, I beg of you. You are the only one left that I can save. That creature is /not/ a true Cetra! I have told you that, again and again -- won't you /please/ believe me now?"/ /"What would you have me do? Leave my best friend? Leave my best friend's son? Just -- throw my dignity and career to the winds, on the advice of --"/ /"Of the last remaining Cetra, Professor." Her voice had been suddenly full of resolve. "You know that, in your heart of hearts. You know that your friend is beyond your reach, and his son is even more so. You know that there is nothing left for you here -- and if you stay, you will end up like his wife, like those interns, like every other poor victim of this entire story! I cannot contain the creature -- but I can save one person -- one person who can raise the alarm later, help me save the boy, help me save all of these people --"/ /"Very well." Gast's tone had been heavy, resigned. "I -- I cannot argue with you. We'll leave in the morning."/ /"Tomorrow night. It might -- it might be sleeping, then. It might be quiescent. There might be a chance --"/ /You move, restlessly, dismissing the shadows that play upon the memory-screen of your mind. What had they been talking about? You don't think that you'd understood even as a child. All you understood back then was that the only two people who had ever treated you with kindness and affection were abandoning you, leaving you to the mercies of whatever horror lurked there in the basement --/ /The bolt of pain strikes you between the eyes and you hiss, softly, rubbing hard at your forehead to try and dismiss it. Is this what normal people call a migraine? And if so, how do they stand it?/ /Dawn finds you still standing at the window. It is not the first sleepless night you've passed, nor will it be the last. The local guide that you've hired to take you to the reactor is young, but she seems competent enough. Not even the collapse of the bridge can deter you from your mission; by then, you seem to feel some kind of purpose, as if something is pulling you deeper into those ancient mountains. Not even the natural Mako fountain can pause you in your way, though you can, in your own detached fashion, appreciate its beauty./ /The reactor looks like any other you've seen, and you've seen a great many reactors in your time. From the outside, at least. When you walk inside, the headache that hasn't gone away intensifies, and you feel, for a fleeting instant, as if you could close your eyes and listen to the whisper of a thousand voices that seem to run across the inside of your mind like a river. It is not a comfortable sensation, and you step further inside, seeking to bury yourself in the work like you have so many times before./ /There is cold comfort inside, though. Row upon row of metal pods, each with a glass window high upon its smooth surface to look into. You instantly see the reason for the malfunction -- a valve, stuck half-open, jammed there by age of machinery and the natural inclination of mechanical parts to fail at the least opportune moment. The SOLDIER closes it for you, and you can count your job done. Simple curiosity, however, prods you to look inside a pod, and you freeze at what you see there./ /It was once a man. That much is clear, by the twisted features and misshapen agonies written clearly across what used to be a face. For half a second, you want to jump backwards, want to crack the pod open, want to free the monster from whatever half-life it still has in this nightmare existence. You can't, though. You can just stand there and, suddenly, /realize/./ /Hojo. Producing these monsters. Trying with all his not-inconsiderable skill to create ... what?/ /You're horribly afraid that you already know./ /They were once human. Were you? Were you incubated in one of these pods yourself, only to spill forth into the bright light of day when your egg cracked its shell and let you free? Were you created like some kind of Faustian bargain, lovingly tended, with the balance of Mako and mutagen hand-tended until it produced precisely what someone wanted from you? Is this why you can't remember anything clearly before the Shinra labs? Is this why this town is so achingly, numbingly familiar?/ /There are no answers from the pods, though you draw your sword and strike at them in the most intense loss of control you can ever remember in your entire life. And then you look up and see the name blazoned over the top of the stairs, over the doorway into some unknown experimental chamber./ /Jenova./ /"Your mother's name was Jenova. She died in childbirth."/ /Yes. There were answers here. Answers you used to think that you'd give your life to know. They were here, somewhere, in this bucolic village, lurking beneath the surface of the idyllic lives./ /Your answers./ /You just need to find them./ -- * -- Rufus leaned over the radio in the communications room, frowning as the static threatened to overwhelm the connection. "I can't hear you all that clearly, Seph. Repeat: having difficulty reading you. The reception's shit out there in the mountains. Can you repeat?" The radio hissed and popped crankily; Rufus tweaked one of the dials a little more, and his friend's voice crystallized for half a second before losing reception again. "--extremely unusual going on out here, and I believe that Hojo is somehow connected to --" Static again. Rufus scowled and hit the side of the radio. "You're breaking up again, Seph. Dammit, why did they have to send you somewhere the phone lines didn't run? I'm not picking up more than about one word in ten. Repeat: you're breaking up again, dammit, fix your reception." He could feel his voice rising and wondered why people always seemed to shout when there was difficulty in understanding. It wasn't as if talking louder would improve the reception one bit. He could hear the irritation in Sephiroth's voice; either that, or it was static and imagination. "--Hojo, and I need you to check --" Static again, then Sephiroth's voice fuzzed back in. "--files called Jenova, or Jenova Project, I've found that Shinra used to have -- base here in one of the houses in town, and it all seems -- something that needs to be checked into, I don't like the looks of what I'm seeing in the --" Rufus grabbed a nearby notepad and started writing things on it, scrawled quickly in his near-illegible handwriting. "I copy. That's Jenova, Juliet Echo November Oscar Victor Alpha." The name tickled at the back of his head, and he drew two lines underneath the single word, adding "Hojo - Nibelheim" beneath it. "I'll see what I can find. How're things out there? Are you in trouble?" He could tell that Sephiroth was having no better luck understanding him than he was understanding Sephiroth, and he scowled a little more. Nibelheim might be tucked away in the middle of nowhere, but radio reception was usually much better than this. It had to be. Technicians were sent out to the Nibelheim reactor -- well, not often, but they were, and they needed to contact Urban Dev /somehow/. If radio reception were always this bad, they would have put in a relay station in the mountains by now. He wondered, briefly, for half a second, if something might be jamming the link, and then shook his head for being needlessly paranoid. "--can't hear you very well either -- important, Rufus, I don't know what's going on -- think it's connected with Hojo -- SOLDIER in the reactor -- fine, but I don't know what's going on and I'm not coming home until I do -- headache is driving --" The radio hissed and spat again, and then there was nothing but static. Rufus swore and hit the unit again, pondered bringing the technician back in to see if perhaps the man could figure out some way to improve the reception. But the impulse that had caused him to send the communication specialist away to begin with kept him from calling the man back. The most dedicated tweaking of knobs and dials couldn't get reception back, and he swore again before turning the radio off. He took a moment and scribbled down what little he'd gotten of the conversation before heading back upstairs to his office. Hojo, Jenova, Nibelheim, SOLDIER. He wondered what they all had in common. Reeve was in his office when Rufus passed it, and he stopped in his tracks, backing up to poke his head through the door. "You got a minute?" "For you?" Reeve grinned. "Hell, no. What's up?" Rufus smiled a bit at the joke, but he could tell that the smile didn't really meet his eyes. "What do you know about the Nibelheim reactor?" The grin fell off Reeve's face. "Funny you should ask that," he said, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet on the desk. "Since I've been looking into things since Seph got assigned out there yesterday. Just out of curiosity, you know. I haven't done much with the reactors outside of Midgar." He waved a hand at a stack of papers on the side of his desk. "Couldn't find much, and it was a weird kind of 'not much'." Rufus stepped in the office and shut the inner door, something seeming to tell him that privacy would be a good idea. "What do you mean, 'weird'?" He dropped into the stuffed chair on the other side of Reeve's desk, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair. "I don't like 'weird', Reeve." "Yeah, well," Reeve said dryly, "neither do I. There isn't much information on that reactor in /any/ of the files that I have, and I have the best damn files of anyone in this building when it comes to the Mako reactors." He pulled a face. "And apparently, it's just the Nibelheim reactor nobody's supposed to be peeking at. Midgar reactor stuff I can get, no problem. Junon reactor, same thing, everything laid out in nice tidy up-to-date blueprints within easy reach. You'd /think/ those would be the most important ones and thus, the ones whatever corporate dingleberry-I-mean-dignitary is in charge of that would stick in the Hush-Hush Stuff category. But no, and yet this little dinky reactor out in Bee Eff Nibelheim gets the super-duper-top-secret treatment. For Nibelheim, all I have are some sketchy blueprints with huge blank spaces, and a note scribbled on the paper copies that the rest of it is classified." He sat back with a little frustrated huff. "Now ain't /that/ some shit?" "Classified?" Rufus sat a little further upright. "What the hell could be in a reactor that's classified to the head of Urban Dev?" "If I knew that, I'd know more than I did right now." Reeve's voice was not happy. "You know damn well that I've got Ultra clearance when it comes to the city planning files. When I try to requisition the files online, though, it refuses to even acknowledge that they exist." He scowled a little. "You're welcome to try; I was just about to give you a shout and see if you /could/ get into them. You should have clearance for just about anything in the mainframe, right?" "Everything," Rufus said, absently, thinking things over. "What I don't have official clearance for, I can get to anyway. The security system around here is a joke to anyone who knows what he's doing. I'd've fired the head of IT if I didn't find it so convenient." He stood, abruptly. "C'mon. If we're gonna be looking for information, we should do it up in my room. My laptop up there has some much better security-cracking software than yours would." -- * -- ::suspicion-worry-distress. act. protect.:: He frowned and pushed the glasses up his nose. Things were beginning to move again. He'd wondered how long it would take. -- * -- "Sephiroth mentioned something about one of your projects before he left yesterday," Reeve commented as he headed out of the kitchenette area with two cans of soda, handing one over to Rufus. "What was he talking about? Could it have something to do with this?" Rufus was already concentrating on the screen in front of him; his eyes were narrowed in thought, and his fingers flew across the tiny keyboard with ease of long practice. "Yeah. I got interested in that a while back. You know Hojo's the only one whose files I can't crack?" "Hojo? No shit, really? He's creepy." Reeve handed over one soda, opened his own; he slid up onto the desk easily, letting his feet dangle over the edge, as he looked over at the laptop's screen. "What were you doing looking in his files?" Rufus smirked a bit and blew a piece of hair out of his face. "It's a long story. I tend to try and keep my eye on the pulse of things. The old man never tells me anything, so I usually have to go looking on my own. Best way to do that is to snoop files. I can't get into Hojo's. He doesn't use the normal security system; he's got some ungodly layers of protection over his stuff. I haven't been able to crack it yet." Reeve nodded absently, and then realized what Rufus had said. "Wait a minute. You can get into everyone's files?" He colored, faintly. "Mine?" A quick smirk. "Yeah. I haven't, though. At least, not lately. I've been trusting that you're telling me everything I need to know." Reeve couldn't decide whether to be offended or complimented...and made a quick mental note to restrict perusal of certain websites to his home machine. "Yeah. Well. Um. I have been, you know." Rufus waved a hand. "That's not the point. Besides, you're horrible at keeping secrets." He looked back at the screen. "Hojo isn't. Hojo is very /good/ at keeping secrets. I first realized about this gap in information when I went looking at Seph's files. It's subtle, but it's there." "What do you mean?" Rufus tapped his fingers against the keys without actually depressing them, a nervous habit that Reeve had noted before. The soft clicking noise wasn't precisely annoying, but it grated. "Look, you know that this company thrives on information, right? That you can barely take a leak without it going down in your official files?" He waited for Reeve's quick nod, continued. "You read enough of those files, you start to get a sense for how they read. There's a kind of ... I don't know, ebb and flow of data. It has patterns. It has /feel/ to it. And his files just feel wrong. There's nothing I can put my finger on, but there's just this subtle sense of /wrong/ to things. Things missing that I know should be there. Things there that I'd never heard of before, and that I would have been there for, or that I would have known about. Huge chunks of it that just /aren't there/, as if someone was screwing up and forgetting to put information in his file." "Couldn't someone have done that? Screwed up, I mean?" Reeve toed off his shoes, letting them drop to the carpet. "Or could it be because of his military experience? Stuff being classified?" Rufus shook his head. "I thought of that. I can crack Heidegger's codes about as easily as I can breathe--actually, I think anyone who can successfully find the power switch on a computer could; his security procedures are an utter joke considering the position he's in. I've got Seph's military record. It's got that same kind of subtle /wrong/ to it as the rest of it. There's just -- stuff missing. Stuff that doesn't make sense. Stuff that doesn't flow. It's almost like someone is making it up as they go along." He ran a hand through his hair. "And so I started suspecting Hojo. Since he's the only one who could really /do/ that without me finding traces, dammit." He lit a cigarette without really even thinking about it, took a drag, and put it down on the ashtray that was next to his keyboard. Reeve knew that he wouldn't touch it again, indeed had probably already forgotten it; it was another of Rufus's typical work habits, one which annoyed Reeve only slightly less than the ever-clacking keys. "Probably a wise idea." Reeve shuddered a little at the thought of the head of the Science department; people generally tended to give Hojo a wide berth, as if he had a neon sign reading "Psycho" sprouting from the top of his head. "What'd you find?" Rufus spread his hands. "Not much. I found a few references to some kind of project at about the time that Seph would have been born, that Hojo was a part of. And that's about where I hit the blank wall and rebounded against it so hard that I'm surprised I didn't break my skull." He rested his hands back against the tiny keyboard. "I've been working this for a few months now, on and off. That's usually what you find me swearing at my PC about. The fucker knows what he's doing." "Who, Hojo?" "Yeah." Rufus clicked the keys in irritation. "It burns me to admit it, but he's better than I am. I've /never/ run up against a wall this hard, and I can't crack it. He's not using the same encryption algorithms that are written into the system; I've never seen this kind of encryption before. It wouldn't surprise me if he created it himself." He saw Reeve's distaste at the clacking keys and lifted his fingers, reaching for his can of soda. "Sorry. Old habit. But yeah, he's managed to keep me out. I don't know if he had any tripwire programs running -- I don't /think/ he did -- so I can't be sure if he knows that I'm looking. I asked Seph to keep an eye out for information while he was out there, because I /think/ -- from what little I can tell -- that the project was headquartered in Nibelheim. And from what Seph just told me a little while ago, I'm on the right track. There's something out there that I just can't get my hands on, and it's gonna drive me nuts until I can figure it out." "Does Sephiroth know?" Reeve cocked his head, swinging one leg idly back and forth, drumming his heel against the side of Rufus's desk. Rufus made a face. "I told him a little bit of it. Not the part about him -- I didn't feel like getting into that -- but I told him about trying to get into Hojo's files and failing. I figured, he spent all those years as Hojo's apprentice, he might be able to come up with some ideas for breaking the crypto. He couldn't come up with anything, but he was pretty interested. He's got some weird issues about Hojo." "Who doesn't?" Reeve rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. "Man, am I glad that I can afford to pick my own damn doctor. The man gives me the creeps." "The man gives everyone the creeps," Rufus said dryly. "I don't know how Seph stood working with him for all those years." "Yeah, that always bothered me. I mean, why is Seph in the military if he was Hojo's apprentice or something?" Unconsciously, Rufus tapped the keys again. "He never really told me. As far as I can tell, Hojo was the one who really raised him, and just assumed that Seph would follow him into science. Seph hit the adolescent rebellion phase and decided that he'd rather go and beat people up for a living. I'm not sure why, and there's a lot of stuff that he just refuses to talk about." He frowned at the screen, typed another few lines, and settled back in his chair. "That'll be running for a /while/; I'm trying to find any mention of what Seph asked me about in any of the files that I can touch. Anyway. This whole thing is one of the only mysteries around here that I can't puzzle out. It's been driving me up the wall for years." "I can see why." Reeve took another sip of his drink. "What do you know so far?" Rufus lifted his fingers and began ticking points off. "One, there's something odd about Seph's past that no one knows about, probably not even him. Two, Hojo had some kind of top-secret classified project, that I can't even touch, running around the time that Seph was born -- and the only way I found /that/ out was by pulling the old budget information, which was only on microfilm, never digitized. I don't think I would have even been able to get that far if it had been digitized. Three, the old man doesn't know anything about any of this, or at least doesn't keep any files on it. I broke /his/ crypto years ago. Four, whatever's going on has something to do with Nibelheim. Five, you've just told me that the Nibelheim reactor has weird security things going on with /it/, too. I didn't manage to find any information available on that online, by the way; there isn't /anything/ where I can look. Six, Seph and Hojo are connected in some way that I don't even know where to begin dissecting." He reached for the ashtray to pick up the forgotten cigarette, sighing when he realized that it had burned down already, and lit another out of irritation. "Seven," Reeve added, when Rufus showed signs of pausing. "Sephiroth has just been /sent/ to the Nibelheim reactor, on some kind of mission. I wonder if Hojo knows." Rufus paused in the process of cigarette-kindling and made a little thoughtful noise. "That's a damn good question." He couldn't help but notice that Reeve seemed to perk at the compliment. "And I don't know how I can possibly find out." Reeve chewed on his lower lip, thinking. "Staff meeting's tomorrow," he observed, and something about his tone told Rufus that he was thinking out loud. "Hojo's been showing up for them lately. I could try and corner him after the meeting and let something casually drop." Rufus drummed his fingers against the table. "That might not be a bad idea. Think you could do it without being obvious?" "I'm almost insulted." Reeve grinned. "I might not be the world's best player of corporate politics, even after nearly two years in this infernal hellhole, but I can pull off small-town gossip with the best of them. You just watch me do it." With a laugh, Rufus held his hands up. "Okay, okay. You win. Let me know what you find out." Reeve nodded. "You got it. How long is that search gonna run?" Rufus glanced back at the screen. "Two, three hours. There are a lot of files for it to chew through. Why, did you have plans for tonight?" ~Why, did you?~ Reeve stepped on the thought before it could go any further. "No. But I'm hungry." His grin turned a bit sheepish. "Wanna go downstairs and pick something up before all the good places close for the night and we're stuck with Slim Jims and Big Gulps from the quickiemart?" With another glance at the screen, Rufus laughed. "Sure. I'll just lock up everything as tightly I can before we go." -- * -- /You know that if there is information to be found back in Midgar, Rufus will be able to find it; he is, simply, the best there is at that sort of thing. Yet you can't help but wonder if there is information somewhere in this town, information about what has been done. To you. To them. To everyone. You have enough leeway in your orders that you can stay in Nibelheim for some time more without arousing suspicion, but you don't particularly care if anyone wonders what you're up to. You want answers. You want the answers that you haven't gotten once in your entire twenty-five years./ /The inn is cramped and restless as you pace its boards, each inch seeming to burn its way into your eyeballs and the soles of your Shinra-issued boots. You don't know quite where to begin. Except, perhaps, with the mansion./ /You half-remember it, the building lurking at the edge of the town. The locals never even look at it, as if they're trying to forget that it even exists. You'd probably find that fact suspicious, if you weren't so busy trying to remember whether or not you remembered it. You can't explain your strange reluctance to set foot inside, not even to yourself./ /It takes you a few days before you can even bring yourself to approach it, two days you use to drive yourself into exhaustion fighting the Mako-spawned monsters that threaten the town. When you finally do scrape the gate open on its rusty hinges, you are so tired that it takes a long moment before you realize that you are standing in the courtyard that you remember playing in, so long ago. You turn in a slow circle -- yes, that tree, that was where you and Ifalna gardened, that was where you looked up at her with your child's eyes and knew that she could never be your mother. Your fingers tremble shamefully as you make quick work of the lock on the front door with the thief's skills you learned out of boredom and never quite forgot. And then you walk forward into all you remember of the only home you ever knew./ /"Professor Gast! Professor Gast!" You can practically see your child-self tearing down the stairs with the boundless enthusiasm that only a child can summon, the enthusiasm that has been pressed out of you by the weight of years. This place is filthy with the ghosts of years, the memories that you've repressed so far that you're surprised that they surface even now, when you're standing in the hallway. The dust is thick and ponderous, and your footsteps are the only ones to have disturbed it in years./ /"Don't run inside the house, Sephiroth." His voice. Always his voice./ /"I -- I'm sorry, Professor Hojo. I just wanted --"/ /"Whatever you wanted, it can be accomplished at a slower speed. Please do remember that you are hardly the only person in this mansion and alter your trajectory appropriately."/ /"I'm sorry, Professor. I'll try to remember."/ /Your head still hurts. You can barely remember what it was like to live without this pain. It's getting worse, as you step closer inside. It almost makes you want to turn around and go back to the inn, want to turn around and find something to cut through the buzzing hiss of memory. But you've come this far, and you've never turned back before./ /Another step inside. Your footsteps mark clear trails in the dust, and you know where you are going without question. There was a laboratory downstairs. Your memory fills in the image of books, dusty even then, lining the walls. If there are to be answers, perhaps that will be where they are found./ /And answers there are. There are not the thousands of books you remember from your childhood, though it is clear from the disarray that the scientists who once inhabited this laboratory departed in haste and packed up only what they thought was most important. But there are books upon books still remaining, all filled with the dry scientific jargon that you can read as easily as you can read your native language. You recognize Hojo's cramped handwriting in some of the lab reports, coupled with a more legible scrawl that must be Gast's, interspersed with the occasional genetic workup in a delicate and feminine hand. You pause at those, scanning over the secrets they hold, attempting to puzzle out the familiar shorthand of genotypes and phenotypes. DNA analysis was an infant science at the time these were written, nearly thirty years prior./ /You are not a biochemist; that is Hojo's specialty. You concerned yourself more with macrobiology, leaving the cellular-level work to Hojo. But you understand more biochemistry than, perhaps, he would ever have given you credit for. And you know that the proteins and enzymes at which you are looking are not human./ /It is, prosaically enough, a copy of a funding request being used as a bookmark -- and by whom, you wonder, who was it who left this bookmark, who was it who was reading up on toxaemia when this book was abandoned -- that gives you the first piece of the puzzle. You can feel your brows drawing together as you read the words that are written out starkly on the page in front of you./ /"Genetic analysis on the specimen indicates a 98% certainty that it is an Ancient. We respectfully request an increase in funding to continue our studies, with an eventual eye towards an attempt to apply what we learn to human biology in an attempt to revive the abilities of the Ancients..."/ /The Ancients. A fairy-tale story of the race that walked the earth before humans took the spotlight. For years, their legends have been used to lull children to sleep at night. The idea that respected Shinra scientists could be taken in by such a tale is almost ludicrous./ /Yet it is not human genetic material you are looking at./ /The lab equipment that was left here when this place was abandoned is crude and badly maintained. Thirty years of dust and neglect take their toll, even on things that were built to last; and this was created before the Shinra manufacturing plants realized that it was in their best interests to produce quality equipment. Yet you can find without much trouble a needle still packaged in its sterilized wrap, a microscope whose lenses are not so badly out of alignment that they cannot be mended. It takes you the better part of a day to reconstruct a centrifuge that is properly balanced, to separate plasma from platelet. You did this under Hojo's tutelage once, but it was not your blood which you studied. He never suggested it, and you never thought to ask./ /You never once think of contacting Shinra and asking Hojo for assistance. It is his handwriting on the files you are reading. If he had wanted you to know, he would have told you years before, when first you asked about who you really were./ /You hate needles. You always have. Being back in this subterranean laboratory, the source of so many of your childhood traumas -- though you did not remember them until first you set foot down those implausibly long and spiraling stairs -- makes that hatred even worse. You can remember, vaguely, trying to bargain with Gast to put off the inevitable injection just one hour longer, one more hour without the pain and the dizziness that whatever those needles contained would bring you. And Gast had just looked at you with those sorrowful eyes and told you that he needed to give you your medicine, to make sure that you grew up strong and healthy./ /The thought makes you laugh, hollowly, and the sound echoes against the stone walls. You're not sure why it amuses you./ /Drawing your own blood is only slightly better than having it drawn for you. You aren't sure how much you will need to confirm your suspicions, and so you take two vials, which leaves you feeling slightly lightheaded when you stand. Your hands know the procedure far better than you would give them credit for: stack the vials in the centrifuge, let it do the separation for you./ /You do not have the equipment for DNA analysis; the abandoned lab machinery simply will not support it. You cannot imagine that when this lab was in use that those who worked here had any detailed tests available to them. They must have been working blindly with crude tools, much like trying to sculpt a delicate figurine with a hammer and crowbar. Even if you had a modern lab, with restriction enzymes and electric equipment, proper gels and cultures, you are not familiar enough with the procedure to feel confident in your ability to conduct the analysis unassisted./ /You can isolate single blood cells, though, and that is what you do. It is the first time you have ever looked at your own blood beneath a microscope. It is the first time you have ever thought to do so. Looking back, you realize that Hojo had always gently dissuaded you from doing so, so subtly that you never realized the manipulation. The reason for his doing so quickly becomes quite clear./ /Your cells are shaped differently. Your cells are shaped like the sketches in the laboratory drawings from thirty years before. The laboratory drawings from the project that was attempting to give humans the power of the Ancients./ /You -- are an Ancient./ /Grimly, you strip the rubber gloves from your hands and stalk back into the room that apparently served as the project's library. Perhaps you are leaping to conclusions on insufficient evidence. But, as Hojo told you once, a scientist believes that the simplest possible explanation that fits all the facts is likely the truth. And this explanation fits all the facts that you can think of at the moment./ /Your head still hurts. Your soldier's instincts have you jumping at shadows, at every insect and rodent that stirs there. You haven't slept in four days. And as you take down the next book on the shelf, a slender volume of children's tales that you originally thought out of place in a scientific laboratory, you are irrationally certain that something is watching you./ -- * -- Strong thumbs dug into Rufus's shoulderblades, and Rufus couldn't disguise the little "mmmmf" noise of pleasure that this produced. Reeve's ponytail slid over his shoulder to tickle the side of Rufus's neck as Reeve bent forward from behind Rufus to inspect the screen. "Any luck?" "Yeah, and all of it bad. Dammit, I don't have time for this. The old man wants the redesign of Accounts Payable/Receivable on his desk by Friday morning at the latest, and I haven't even started on the budget figures yet." Rufus lifted a hand to scrub wearily at his eyes, strained by the last four days of staring at various computer screens. Reeve found the line of muscle in Rufus's shoulder behind the shoulderblade and worked his thumb along it. "Is it anything I can help with? You've been so busy for the past four days that I've barely seen you." Unspoken was the sentiment that he wasn't all that happy with this particular fact; he'd grown used to Rufus's overwork, but that didn't mean that he liked it. Rufus made a face. "You gotten any better at doing project plans?" Reeve made a face as well. "Not willingly, but I have. It's a survival skill around here." He gestured to his nylon laptop bag, tossed carelessly on Rufus's couch when he'd come upstairs to find what had happened to the other man. "Want me to boot up the beast and see what I can do for you?" Rufus spared a grateful smile for Reeve before going back to frowning at the screen of his laptop. "That'd be great. Dammit, I suppose that this search could wait, but Seph sounded like he was in trouble when I talked to him on Thursday. I'd like to have something for him if he calls back again." Reeve made his way over to the couch on sock-clad feet and claimed one corner of it, unzipping the laptop and resting it on his thighs as he put his feet up on the coffee table. "Have you heard back from him since then?" "No." And from the tone, it was clear that Rufus wasn't happy about this fact. "I'm starting to get worried, but what can I do? The radio guys told me that there were some storms going on in the mountains that might keep reception from getting through, and short of commandeering a helicopter and flying out to Nibelheim myself, there isn't anything I can do. And really, I have no reason to worry. Heidegger said that Seph's orders were open-ended, and that he was supposed to stay out there until he was sure that there was no more threat from the Mako monsters. Did you ever get a chance to drop Nibelheim in Hojo's face after the staff meeting on Friday? I didn't get a chance to ask you." He looked up and saw Reeve making himself comfortable on the couch and smiled; he scooped up his laptop and carted it over to the couch, network cable trailing behind him, and claimed the other end. Reeve shook his head unhappily. "No. He disappeared the minute that your father let us all out. It was almost as if he knew that I was looking for him." "For some reason, I'm not surprised." Rufus resettled the laptop on his knees and reached for the ashtray. "And all I'm finding are the same dead ends that I already knew about. Old budgets, mostly." He rolled his eyes. "If you ever need to find anything about this company, old budgets are the place to look. No one ever thinks about classifying /them/, and everything that gets funding from this company in one form or another has to justify every penny that gets spent." "I'll keep that in mind." Reeve grinned. "If, you know, you ever happen to not be around when I need to know something like that. You're ten times better at this than I am." "I don't /feel/ ten times better at this than anyone." Rufus fished out his cigarettes and lit one, looked at Reeve with raised eyebrow; Reeve nodded, and Rufus passed over the cigarette and lit another. "I feel like I'm butting my head against a brick wall. Dammit, nothing in this company should be able to disappear so completely like this. It's like what we're looking for never even existed." Reeve couldn't help the little thrill that ran through him at Rufus's use of the word "we". He knew it was pathetic for him to be so happy whenever Rufus said something that indicated that he thought of himself and Reeve as connected in some way. It was so rare that the self-possessed Rufus ever made any reference to needing another human being, much less Reeve specifically. "What could do that?" "I don't know." Rufus was wearing his "work" face -- had been wearing it for the past four days near-constantly -- but Reeve could still see the irritation; he was learning how to read Rufus. "And that burns me. I'm half an inch away from asking Tseng to have the Tarx keep an eye on Hojo and see what they can find. If anyone could do it without being obvious about it, it'd be them." "Hm." Reeve tilted his head and thought for a minute. "I ... don't know if that would be a good idea." He still didn't like Tseng, no matter how civil the other man was being towards him, but that wasn't the reason for his objection. "Someone would notice, wouldn't they? And ... you know, the feeling I'm getting from all of this is that the fewer people who notice what we're looking for, the better." Rufus ran a hand through his hair and picked his cigarette up from the ashtray. "Yeah. That's what's kept me from doing it." He shook his head. "Tseng's a wild card. He always has been. I think that he's loyal to me, rather than to the company, but I can't be sure. And if this is something that's this deeply buried, I'm almost wary of stirring up the hornet's nest." "Probably a good idea to be wary." Reeve ran his fingers across the keys of his laptop, stopped when he realized that he'd picked the irritating habit up from Rufus without even realizing it. "Let me know if you find anything. Or if you just want to bounce ideas off me. Sometimes an extra pair of eyes can be useful." "I know." Rufus rubbed at his eyes again. "Especially when mine are so tired. Give me another two hours, and then I'll stop and talk through what I've got with you, okay?" Reeve nodded. "Fair enough. I'll work on this project plan for you while you're working on that." Another little smile. "I appreciate it. Let me DCC you those files you'll need. I guess it's going to be another work night." ~Around you,~ Reeve thought, ruefully, ~it usually is.~ -- * -- /You don't know what day it is anymore. You haven't slept or eaten in longer than you'd care to think about. You only realize this when you finish one volume and reach for the next, and standing causes you to nearly double over with the dizziness. Low blood sugar, one part of your mind diagnoses detachedly. You've always considered food a low priority; Hojo once threatened to fit you with a digital watch that would beep three times a day to remind you that you needed to feed yourself./ /Food would mean leaving the basement, though. You don't know what time it is; there are no windows in this darkness to let in sun or moon. You've been reading. Here, finally, are the facts that you need to know, couched alternately in the arid scientific journals and the lurid books of children's tales. It is all beginning to make far too much sense./ /You don't want to leave until you've wrung this lair dry of every last drop of information it has to offer. Call it the last vestige of superstition that you thought you'd discarded years before; you are almost frightened that if you step foot outside, the entire building will disappear like a morning's mirage and with it, any chance you may have had of piecing together the puzzle of your own origin./ /And damn Ramuh, Ifrit, and Shiva all, but your damnable head _will_ _not_ _stop_ _hurting_./ /The footsteps make your head jerk up erratically, eyes tracking the shadows to see what surprises this ghost-laden hellhole has to offer next. It is only the guard that came with you, though, and one part of you is surprised. You had thought him too timid to have the courage to make his way down here through the dust and the layers of years. You speak to him. Sharply. You don't even know what you are saying anymore. The books and the papers and the journals are your entire world by now; perhaps it is they who speak through you./ /You tell him what you know. That the Ancients called themselves the Cetra. That they had no fixed cities, nothing that would rape the earth to provide buildings for man and man's destruction. That not all the Cetra agreed with such an itinerant life. That some of them settled, and lost their abilities to hear the Planet, and became humans. That years ago, disaster had struck the Planet, and the only ones to survive were the city-bound, the Planet-deaf, the ones who had given up their claim to the Cetra name. That the only ones who survived were the ones that had betrayed their Planet and their people./ /That the scientists who had once peopled these labs had found the frozen body of a Cetra in the ice and strata in the mountains, and had worked to revive her. Jenova. The Jenova Project./ /That she had been your mother, and you the one who was heir to her abilities and her strengths./ /Is that buzzing you hear in the back of your mind the Planet? Are those the whispers that have plagued you since you returned to this town after all the years having forgotten it even existed?/ /You have a mother now. You're not alone anymore. You have a mother, and she is here and waiting for you./ /_Mother_./ /Yes. My son. My child./ /You shake your head. The voice --/ /You shall come to Me, and I shall make you whole./ /How could she know? How could she speak to you?/ /You have been alone for so long; come and free Me, and we shall be together forever. Never shall I leave thee, for whom I have waited so long./ /You whisper through cracked lips, knowing the voice, knowing the glory of it. "Mother?"/ /Mother I am, and Mother I shall be to thee; I shall hold thee close to Me, and thou shalt do My work, and I shall be the one who makes thee even as a god. Never again shall they dare to laugh at thee; never again shall they dare to shy away./ /"Your mother's name was Jenova..."/ /Jenova I am, and the one who gave thee life: true life, eternal life, and the power that knows no bounds. My love for thee is endless, My son, and I have known thee since first we touched; come, I await thee./ /How terrible, how tempting that siren's call is, whispering to you of all the love and affection that had been denied you since your birth--and isn't that all you ever really wanted?/ /Come to Me, My son. I shall rescue thee with outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. Thou shalt stretch out thy hand, and the rivers shall turn to blood, the earth shall turn to dust; thou shalt be My hands, and I shall be thy strength./ /You cannot hear the alien note to the speech, can not hear the archaic and flavored tongue. All you hear is her promise./ /And lo, shall I love thee; for thou art the promise I made unto the world, and such promise you are!/ /You can think no more. All you know is that your mother is praising you; you no longer even think how you can hear her voice./ /Come to Me, My son, and thou shalt know the truth of My love./ /You take a step./ /Come to Me, My son. I am waiting for thee, waiting for thee to deliver Me, and we shall go forth together./ /Another./ /Another./ /"Your mother's name was Jenova..."/ /Never again shalt thou be alone. Never again shalt thou know fear, or anger, or despair. I am waiting./ /You can no longer hear your own heartbeat, or the sound of your breath. All you can hear are her words./ /Deliver Me from My prison, My son, and we shall go out unto the world like a fire upon the deep./ /"Your mother's name was..."/ /Never again shalt thou hunger, for I shall be thy sustenance./ /Someone speaks your name. You ignore it. Your mother is calling. For the first time in your life, your mother is calling. Your mother needs you. Your mother is promising you her love./ /Never again shalt thou know want, for I shall provide thee with all./ /Someone leaps in front of you. You knock him aside, not caring about the sickening crunch of bone as he impacts the wall of the mansion. I hear you, Mother. I hear you./ /And thou shalt hear Me for all thy days, for I shall never leave thee./ /"Your mother's name..."/ /The door to the mansion opens beneath your fingertips. Someone shouts at you. You let the words wash over you, not caring that you do not understand them. You understand Mother. That is all you need./ /"...was Jenova."/ /Yes. Jenova. Mother. Mother is calling. Mother needs you. They are trying to keep you from Mother. You feel the fire at your fingertips, hurl it without further thought. The flames catch, and that is right and good, for they have prisoned Mother. They have kept her from you./ /Yes, My son./ /I can hear you, Mother. They won't stand in my way any more./ /And you come to Me in My glory and reach out your hands to receive My touch./