On Silver Wings – Chapter 4

HOJO’S LEGACY

She’d been so sure she would catch up with Zack, she and Yuffie hadn’t even given any thought as to how they would confront him when they finally reached him. Following the black-haired man hadn’t been easy, either. He knew the Neo-ShinRa building like the back of his hand, and a small, nagging part of her mind was a little angry at how effortlessly the easy-going Zack had managed to fit in with the Neo-ShinRa crew. Already, she could recognize the early signs of hero worship in the eyes of a lot of the younger troopers and officers. Zack had only been here a matter of months, and he was part of the scenery, a surprisingly lively relic of the days of Soldier and ShinRa.

All this meant for her now was that keeping up with the man had been near to impossible. Most of the employees and troopers she’d met on the way had been less than forthcoming with their opinion of the man’s whereabouts. Apparently, everyone around the science wing knew more about what was going on than Reeve had let on.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to find her way barred by a gigantic set of double-doors and a pair of grim-looking troopers who remained stoic and unflinching when she demanded to be let through. Tifa cajoled, then requested, then threatened. Neither of the men acknowledged her request and one of them outright ignored her presence entirely. Eventually Yuffie convinced her that berating the young officers was pointless and they started back towards the elevators.

She glowered at a passing scientist. The man had a Neo-ShinRa ID badge swinging on his neck. Tifa snorted softly, sure that he at least would have no trouble with the security check. Yuffie turned to glance at her as they walked past him.

“What?”

She shrugged. There was no way to explain her current mood; Cloud’s betrayal was a sharp thing in her chest, a pain that had nothing to do with her physical notion of hurt, a hint of Nibelheim burning still near. It was inconceivable that he would suggest this plan, this wild idea, of his own volition, but it seemed impossible to reason with him.

She settled for something she could readily identify and put down in words without huffing and puffing and cursing. “I hate the way this whole thing has got the lab coats running around. Did you notice? I haven’t seen this many scientists in a ShinRa building since we sent Hojo on his merry way.”

“Neo-ShinRa.”

Tifa missed a step and stared at Yuffie. “What?”

“You said ShinRa.”

“Well, damn, sorry.”

Yuffie shook her head slowly. She smiled at her, a little tentatively. “I know how this must feel, Tif, but we can’t stay angry forever.”

“I can sure try.”

There was a pause, and they walked in silence for a while. “So, we heading back to Cid’s office, right?”

Tifa shrugged. There was nothing else they could do now short of pleading with Reeve, and she wasn’t that desperate yet. “Sure. I don’t see what could be so important on that disk, but we might as well check it out.”

“Zack seemed… pretty serious about it.”

And that was an understatement if either of them had ever heard one. She didn’t know the black-haired fighter well, but he had never struck her as the kind of man to be easily shaken.

He’d seemed shaken when he’d given her the tape. If she didn’t know him any better, she might even go as far as call it haunted. There had been something in the man’s eyes then that she had never seen there before. She wasn’t sure, now, that she actually wanted to know. Whatever information Cloud had managed to find, she knew that if the disk had found its way to them, then Reeve probably thought that whatever was on it explained Cloud’s actions to some extent.

That was reason enough to feel apprehensive. But she couldn’t not go. As hard as it was now, she’d promised herself she would never treat Cloud as she had when they’d been kids; never look down on him again, never judge him for his rash decisions, whatever they turned out to be.

She had no choice now but to try and understand.

* * *

Cid sat back in his chair, cigar in hand. The plush leather chair Reeve had given him had some time ago lost most of its luster and shine. Shera kept telling him that the smoke was slowly turning his walls a horrid yellow color but he supposed that was only her way of encouraging him to find another vice.

This one suited him just fine. The conversion from his dog-ends to these imported monsters had been made easier by Reeve’s financial contribution. He supposed this was both better and worse than an actual raise; it didn’t net him any more gil in his pocket, but at least he didn’t have to try and hide his purchases from Shera anymore.

There was already a pall of blueish smoke hovering around him when Tifa and Yuffie came up to his office. Cid saw the ninja girl slowly shift towards green and reached up to put out whatever was left of his cigar with a sigh. He threw a lazy salute at Tifa and grinned at her, throwing a thumb over his shoulder at Vincent, who stood half-hidden in the shadows behind his chair.

“Hey, girl. Vince here has been waitin’ for hours for the both of ya. He says this place smells like an ashtray, but I keep telling him, hell, that basement we found him in smelled like a rotting morgue and we never said anythin’, right?”

He saw Tifa’s faint half smile and mentally cheered. Yuffie gave him a toothy grin.

“Where the hell did you guys go? Vince tells me you went running off into the science wing, and that’s when he stopped following you.” He shook his head. “Can’t say I blame ya, man.”

“Where’s Barrett?”

Cid managed to not even raise an eyebrow. “Fuck, Tif, lay off the coffee, would ya?”

He saw the young fighter sigh, and force herself to take a breath. Cid couldn’t even begin to dare imagine how she felt. Cloud had pulled a hell of a stunt on them; and it was hardest on Tifa, who probably felt more than a little betrayed. He certainly felt a bit left out himself, and Gaia knew Cloud didn’t owe him anything.

“Sorry. I’m just a little on edge.” She paused, managed to smile at him again. “So, where’s Barrett?”

“Right here. We doin’ dis or what?”

Tifa spun around and managed to look both relieved and surprised at once. Barrett squeezed through the doorframe and came to stand by her, laying a huge hand on her shoulder and smiling down at her.

Cid felt her relax from across the room and had to suppress a smile. Yuffie made her way past the two of them and plunked herself on the edge of Cid’s desk, peeking over the side of his computer monitor hopefully.

“So?”

The older pilot stared at Yuffie. Nicotine stained or not, this was still his damned desk. He reached over into his breast pocket and pulled himself another cigar, lighting it in one smooth, practiced movement. Yuffie made a face at him; he crossed his eyes at her, shifting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, where it swayed as he talked. “Dunno yet. It’s just a list of files, sorted by date. See?”

Tifa came around his desk and peered at his monitor where, shifting slightly behind the haze of smoke, a long list of dates and unintelligible filenames was displayed. The dates were going as far back as some twenty-odd years, and seemed to be in no other particular order. Filenames were a jumbled mess as far as any of them could tell. All they had to go on was a timeframe.

“Just pick one, then.”

Cid shrugged. Yuffie’s eyes were glued to the screen, Tifa right next to her. He could feel Vincent’s silent gaze behind him and Barrett was hovering behind the girls. “Fine.”

As he clicked a file at random a slightly blurry image came up, with a row of numbers slowly ticking by in the bottom-right corner. A tiny ShinRa logo was imprinted in very low opacity at the top.

“Security tape.”

Vincent nodded behind him. “Looks like it.”

For a while, the screen displayed nothing but an empty hallway. Seconds ticked by in glaring numeric numbers. He heard Tifa sigh next to him and pulled up another file. “Let’s see if this one’s any more interesting, eh?”

This time the unmistakable backdrop of one of Hojo’s labs came into sharp focus. The camera was closely centered on a metal-frame bed on which a young figure lay strapped. A man, his back to the camera, stood by the bed. There was no mistaking that bent shape; it was Hojo.

Cid heard Yuffie gasp before he’d even registered anything more.

“Is that…?”

“Sephiroth.” Vincent shook his head sadly. “He can’t be any more than six or seven years old.”

As they watched, Hojo turned and picked something off a metal tray which stood next to the bed. Two aides came briefly into view and wheeled the tray some distance away, disappearing out of the field of view again.

The camera was too far for them to clearly see, but Hojo bent over the struggling figure for several seconds.

When he came away, hands red, Cid jumped in his chair as the tiny speakers on his computer blared to life with the sound of a child’s shrill scream. Tifa and Yuffie both took a few steps back, startled.

On the screen, Hojo backed away and picked up a notebook, giving the camera an unobstructed view of the child on the bed as he lay twisting, his arm cut open to the bone from shoulder to wrist; the wound was shockingly red against the child’s fair skin. His scream became hoarse, then strong again, as he fought for breath.

There was a brief, barely recorded sigh from Hojo which Cid registered as ‘stop your whining’, then the professor put down his notes, came around the bed and bent over again. This time there was nothing obstructing the camera as he sliced through the fair skin in one very deliberate stroke which split open flesh as though there was no resistance.

Cid reached over then, and shut off the speakers. The scream had been unbearable; the twisted look of pain on such a shockingly young face even worse. Hojo walked away and sat on a chair in the background, picked up something which looked for all the world like a chronometer and waited.

Eventually Cid closed the file. He stared at the long list of security files. “Fuck.”

Yuffie’s face had gone pale. “I’m not watching any more, sorry. I don’t care what Zack said, I’m not… I’m done.”

Tifa reached over and took Cid’s hand away from the keyboard. She punched another file at random. Yuffie stood up and sent an uncertain look at her friend.

“Tif…”, Yuffie’s voice was shaky. “I’m serious.”

“Wait.”

As Yuffie sat back down slowly, the file opened and started playback. On the monitor this time, the image showed an overhead view of a close, barely furnished room; a toilet in one corner, one large bookshelf and a small table. On a cot in the furthest corner a young Sephiroth lay hunched over. His legs were bandaged and tucked in under him and his face stayed hidden behind a short curtain of hair as he slowly rocked on his heels.

Cid puffed out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. “Fuck, this is insane. That’s not a room, it’s a damn cell.”

There was an answering rumble from Barrett. “That Hojo was one twisted mother, that’s for sure.”

“Come on, Tif, we’ve seen enough. Let’s just get this back to Zack and tell him we watched some of it. There’s dozens of files on there, I’m not watching the whole thing.”

This time it was Vincent who kept Cid’s hand away. “Wait. Something’s happening.”

Tifa nodded. On the screen, she saw a burst of light as the door was opened and closed, then a hunched figure she recognized as Hojo approached the cot. He sat next to the trembling boy, who raised his hands to try and push the older man away.

They fought for a while, and evidently Sephiroth must’ve said something which sent the other man into a rage, because Hojo sent the child reeling against the far wall of his room with a vicious back-handed blow.

As the child reeled and collapsed next to the professor, Hojo pulled him up and crushed him face first into the wall as he reached over with his other hand to rip the child’s pants from him. He kept the boy subdued with one hand and managed to work himself free of his own pants.

Tifa stared, shocked and unwilling to comprehend what she was seeing. It wasn’t until she realized Yuffie was being violently sick in Cid’s wastepaper basket that she managed to tear her gaze away from what was happening on the screen and stare at the floor.

Barrett was cursing unintelligibly next to her and Cid was doing his best to help Yuffie, cigar all but forgotten on the edge of his desk. Vincent was staring at her, his expression unreadable.

She realized with a start that her cheeks were wet, and that she’d been crying. She wiped her face and stared back at Vincent. She swallowed a few times, and took a deep breath.

Yuffie came up for air, still looking unsteady. She stood and started walking out, shaking her head. Cid accompanied her out of his office, sending Tifa the most distressed look she’d ever seen on the older fighter’s face.

It took a while before she trusted her own voice enough to speak.

“We have to find Zack.”