Archive of Our Own ^beta

I’m still not sure why I chose Nibelheim. Maybe it’s because of how they turned me away at Corel. They didn’t run me out of town with pickaxes, but it was a near thing, and I had to leave my suitcase behind. I don’t feel horrible about it, since I’m sure the locals need the clothes more than I do, but I would have preferred more intentional charity. And it’s still better than I fared in the Canyon, where everything was smoke and shadow and platitudes about how many paths one can take to the Lifestream, but for all their claims of open-mindedness they paid no mind to mine.

I called my brother in Midgar, while I still had reception. It’s spotty as anything out here, but he said that the highway runs south first, then north to the mountains, and that there’s a Reactor there, and a town to service it. Nibelheim, he said. They probably don’t get many visitors, but aren’t as bitter as they are in Corel. They might have room in their hearts to entertain the word of the Goddess. I have hope.

I check my phone to see if reception has improved. Whether it has or not turns out not to matter, because it’s out of power. Ah, well. I lean over to the kind soul who picked me up on the road. “Do you have a car charger?”

She shakes her head, eyes on the highway. “Nah, this is an old model. Been thinking about gettin’ someone to tinker it a little, but there ain’t parts out here.”

That makes sense. I’ll be sure to pay her well for the ride. “How much further?”

“Half an hour, son. Less ’n that if the troopers’ve done their job. You get some bonecutters out here, batwings, couple packs of wolves. You armed?”

“Armored,” I admit. “I carry Materia.” A bracer on my arm, the concentration booster I picked up at Cosmo Canyon, and the last mastered Restore I could salvage from the wreckage of my church, back home in Midgar. One of the terrorists made off with the other two. I’m not sure which thought is worse: the fact that they might be healing themselves with the spoils, or that they probably sold them on the black market for tens of thousands of gil.

The driver smiles, cocks her head in my direction. “That’ll serve you well out here. The beasties know who’s boss when there’s magic about. Always have.”

I nod. That’s true in the seedier parts of Midgar as well. People used to pass through a rough patch of Sector 3 to get to us. This Materia wasn’t just for show or symbolism on its pillar by the door. But the more I think about the church, the less I want to. Grant me strength. Help this shepherd find his flock again.

Blessedly, the driver smiles, makes some conversation. “But what brings a city slick like you out here?”

It’s always better when they ask first, and I’m pleased to answer. “I bring the word of the Goddess.”

She laughs. “You sure you’re going the right way? Cosmo Canyon’s back the way you came.”

I don’t mind, and smile back. “No, thank you. I’m sure.”

“You won’t find many folks with time for new gods out here,” she says, and the humor in her tone is reassuring, or would be if I hadn’t heard it all before as prelude to rejection. But you don’t become a priest if you don’t have thick skin and a smile of steel. “Hell, most of us don’t even have time for the old ones.”

“Most, but not all,” I point out, since she said it first. “I can hope.”

She raises her eyebrow, but doesn’t ask any more, about the Goddess or about me. There’s a half-hour to Nibelheim, and the sun sets early on the mountain road, in silence except for the rickety engine and the whistle of the wind.

I can hope. I have hope.

True to her prediction, her truck pulls up at the town gates at twilight, when most of the people in the town square are closing up their shops for the night. I pay the driver and wish her well, and she backs down the dirt road enough to turn her truck around and drive back toward the highway. Which leaves me with nothing to do, and not much more to look at.

The gate, old but sturdy iron, opens onto a ring of quaint shops and wooden houses with thick pipe chimneys, framing a well that’s wide enough to be a fountain but has no centerpiece. Too tall to be a watering hole for chocobos, I think. Do some places here not have running water? It’s the kind of town with one general store, one mayoral office, one tavern with a couple of rooms to let on the second floor. The nearest store to the gate is a machinist’s workshop, locked. The post office beside it, also locked. No library, no church, no school in sight. There are a half-dozen single-family houses, just beyond the square, all of them lit on the first floor, people cooking dinner, settling in for the night.

Well, when they say that a town has a Reactor and nothing else, they mean it.

With no other recourse, I head for the tavern. It’s just as sparsely populated as the town square. I’d think people were avoiding me, but with so few people in town at all it’s probably nothing personal. There’s no front desk, and no bartender, just two old men playing cards at a table by the window, and one closer to my age dozing in a rocking chair by the back porch door, lolling toward an overgrown field of golden grass.

They’ll know I’m an outsider as soon as I speak, so I don’t mince words. “Hello! Who do I talk to about renting a room?”

One of the men, with a beard and a faded army hat, raises his eyebrows so high they turn into new wrinkles, but the other throws on a smile and stands up from the table, bones creaking. “That’d be me, son. Two hundred gil a night, you can have your pick of the beds upstairs.”

I can pay that. It’s more than it cost in Corel, but then, in Corel it was a tent and a blanket and they still have my suitcase. “That’s wonderful, thank you.”

The barkeep walks by me, claps me on the arm with a gnarled hand, on his way to the bookshelf. “Let me get you set up, there. You come in from Junon?”

“Midgar,” I correct, not that it’s much of a difference out here.

“One of the two,” the barkeep says. He pulls a dark leather book off the shelf, blows the dust off. If the ledger’s that dusty, this town is even sleepier than I thought. He hauls it back to the card table, thumbs it to the roster and motions me to come closer. “Your name?”

“The Reverend Draco Trepson.”

“Reverend?” the other old man says, like it’s too big to chew. It probably is. He’s the thin sort of old, not starved but mealy and spare. “Out on a mission, are you?”

I smile. “Yes, sir.”

The barkeep writes me in with a little flourish, doesn’t ask how I spell it but gets it right. Common name, uncommon prefix. “Can’tve been a priest for long,” he says, “you look younger than my son.”

“I get that a lot,” I admit. And it’s true. I’m twenty-five, in a few weeks, and even if I haven’t been able to shave since Corel the beard probably doesn’t do me any favors.

“He’s in Junon,” the barkeep says. “That’s why I asked. Seekin’ his fortune, all that.” He turns the book around, hands me the pen to sign. “You paying cash, Reverend?”

“I have an account through ShinRa. Do you have a card-reader here?”

“No, but we can take the number. Macy, down at the post office, she’ll patch it in the morning. You got any collateral for now?”

Not really, but I can do without it for a night. I hand over my phone. It’s not the newest model in the world, but I paid five hundred gil for it when I bought it last year, so it should be fine. “Can you hold onto it and charge it at the same time?”

He laughs, and so does the other old man, but tells me sure, so I hand the charger over too. He takes it to the bar to plug it in and lock it in the cash register, and I sign the book. The last time anyone else passed through here was over six months ago. I really do have my work cut out for me.

But it’s better than being in Midgar, with the ghosts of the church and my failure.

The old man offers me the barkeep’s seat at the card table, for now, so I sit. He grins. “You got an account with ShinRa but you’re not staying with them?”

I explain, “My brother works for the company, so he controls the money, but I’m here on my own. What do you mean, with them? With the Reactor team?”

“Everyone here’s the Reactor team,” he says, “everyone who can work, anyway. But no. I meant the folks at the manor.”

“The manor?” It’s the first I’ve heard of it, and I didn’t see any manor from the gate.

Over by the porch doors, wood creaks, and the young man in the rocking chair groans.

The old man gets up, muttering a quick excuse me, so I stand too--but all he does is go over to the rocking chair. He picks up the young man’s wrist, like he’s checking his pulse. The young man doesn’t react except to loll forward, tilt toward the glass.

Oh. “Is he sick?” I ask, just to be sure.

The old man nods. “Hazard of the trade,” he says, rearranging the young man in the chair. It rocks a little harder, then settles to a slow, mousy creak.

I push up my sleeve to reveal the Materia, kneel by the rocking chair. “Here, let me help--”

“Put that away, son, quick!” the old man says, shoving me back with surprising force. “You don’t want to make it worse.”

--oh. Mako poisoning, then. Can’t treat magic with magic, they say.

The young man in the chair flinches away, a twinge of drool at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are vacant, unfocused, but when they cross over mine even the whites are clouded a sickly green. The Materia on my cuff is still glowing. That might be why.

I back away, give them both some space. “I’m so sorry.”

“Can’t fault you not knowing,” the old man says, rubbing the back of his neck as he stands. “You don’t get that much in the cities, I’ll bet.”

I nod. It’s true, we don’t. Or if we do, you never see it. “What happened?”

“Slip-up at the Reactor, what else? Got a pipe full in the face when he was cranking a valve, couple months back, I think. I wasn’t there. Still fighting it, though. You know the dead ones when you see ‘em.”

I can’t help wincing. Mako may be vital to so much right now, but that just makes it easier to forget how lethal it can be. I nod my respects at the young man, say a quick prayer.

But he looks up, right into my eyes, his pupils blown wide and hungry.

“Leave,” he says.

I swear to the Goddess, my heart skips a beat. Possibly two. That wasn’t a trick. His voice is ragged, more breath than sound, and he looked me in the eyes and told me to leave.

I didn’t mean to offend him, not at all. But I can imagine that prayers might me the last thing on his mind, if he’s in so much pain.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, then repeat it to the old man. “I should go upstairs and get settled in.”

It’s a softer bed than I’ve slept in in weeks. Well, that’s not precisely true, because for those weeks I wasn’t really sleeping in beds, and right now, I’m not sleeping at all. But it is a soft bed, and I’m sure if I could keep my eyes shut, I’d sleep well.

Which is to say, I can’t.

With my phone as collateral, I don’t even know what time it is, but the moon is high and the stars are blinding, bright beyond the curtains. I’m still not used to stars. I’ve read hundreds of stories of travelers and heroes who go out into the world to save it, and the books always speak of strange stars and new skies. For me, any sky is a new sky. The novelty hasn’t worn off.

My brother Wayne works at the top of ShinRa tower, and even he hasn’t seen the sky yet. Or if he has, he hasn’t told me.

But all those fantasy novels don’t tell you how strange it is, to look up at stars you’ve only seen in your mind and know, that cluster is the archer’s eye, those five-in-a-row are the rune-knight’s blade, that blazing bright planet to the left of the moon is Aspra and the slingshot stone at the same time. The books never tell you how bright they are, how hard it is to sleep when all you’ve known is Mako and halogen. And they never tell you how something in you never wants to go back into the slums and the cave once you’ve seen the outside, because all of those stories of swords and sorcery require that the hero comes home at the end.

If Wayne were here, he’d tell me how maudlin I am, and we’d argue for hours, and I wouldn’t have to worry about not falling asleep.

Soft as this bed is, it’s doing nothing. I shrug off the covers, pad over to the chair by the window, and pull the curtain back.

There they are. They’re even brighter here than they were in Cosmo Canyon. The moon hangs low and enormous, but the stars are even whiter, even stronger, enough that the golden dirt floor of the town square is shining blue, the glass of the storefronts silver as a blade. Even the houses beyond the town center are bathed in gentle light, the Reactor in the distance one solitary red light--

--and one massive mansion in the foothills.

That must be the manor that the old man mentioned. It’s easily as large as the apartment complex I lived in back in Midgar, a deep grey patch against the starlight. The windows are like gameboards, the glass faintly glowing, all reflection, but the wood as dark as the ground.

Except one. The lowest window, the cellar window, just above the ground, is lit from within.

Well, I must not be the only one around here with insomnia. Someone else is burning the midnight oil. And the old man said that the folks at the manor were all ShinRa, so it makes sense that some of them are workaholics, or at least have deadlines to meet, things to take care of. The company never sleeps.

I do, evidently, since I wake up in the chair, and sunrise has clocked out the stars.

My first stop is the post office, so the barkeep (who has finally introduced himself as Larkin, Larkin Rails) can have the postmaster run my card. Macy, the postmaster, is already busy when we walk in, handing a package to a tall person in a white coat.

“Well, that’s something you don’t see out here,” Macy says, bustling right into my space, shaking my hand. She’s large and cheerful, favoring her right leg. “Long time since we’ve had a new face!”

Her previous customer leaves without a word, and Larkin elbows me forward. “He’s taking one of my rooms for--how long did you say you’d be here, son?”

“I didn’t,” I say. “Until I work something else out, I guess. But you can just keep my card on file and run it every day, right?”

“Sure, I’ll keep a running tally. Connection’s pretty secure this season. You want to make a cash withdrawal too? I charge a little for that just ‘cause there’s only so much cash to go around here but if you need to stock up, get yourself a shave and a haircut--”

I laugh, thumb my jaw. A shave probably would make me look less like a vagrant. “Maybe the first, but not the second. And yes, go ahead.”

Macy laughs, takes my card. “How much?”

“A thousand for now, plus whatever you need to take off the top.”

“Well, that makes it easy. Eleven hundred it is, plus four hundred for yesterday and today for Larkin makes fifteen.” She swipes my card through the reader, watches it, tapping her foot and biting her lip. “You one of the college types? Looks like you got plenty to burn.”

“Sort of,” I say. “I’m here on a mission.”

Her eyebrows shoot up into the wrinkles on her forehead. “Beard or no, you don’t look like a mercenary.”

I laugh, though it’s not the first time I’ve gotten that comment. “I mean I’m a missionary.”

The card reader beeps obnoxiously and prints my receipt, and Macy’s eyebrows don’t come down. Then the cash register pops open, and she rips the receipt off the reader, tucks it in, starts counting cash, then hands it across to me.

“One thousand,” she says, and that’s all.

I smile, and thank her, and take my cash and card back. Smile of steel. Smile of steel. My father used to tell me that faith is like a skittish cat, it needs to be coaxed out and reassured and any sudden movement will set it bolting. Make yourself available, let them come to you.

But she doesn’t even say take care when I back toward the door, and Larkin stays there with her. I’ll get my phone back from him later, I think. When it’s less awkward.

I don’t fare much better at the general store, honestly. I buy myself a pack of razors and a toothbrush, some food that’ll keep, a bag of underwear, a change of clothes, a book to replace the one that was in my non-consensually donated suitcase. The owner, a wiry man about my father’s age with a withered right hand, is eminently courteous until I explain why I’m here. He then laughs in my face, says “Odin speed you, kiddo,” and doesn’t apologize when the door hits my backside on the way out.

Maybe shaving will help, so I head back to the tavern, take an hour to make myself presentable and change my clothes. I may not look any older without the beard, but at least I look cleaner, and that’s got to count for something. I think my eyes have gotten paler. They look like lettuce. Maybe they’re not paler, my skin’s just darker from all these months on the road.

By the time I’m done, it’s past noon, and the square finally has a few people in it, probably the night shift come home. Well, then, time to get to work.

No one answers at the first house, nor the second.

At the third, I walk up to the door just as a woman in a white coat is walking out. It might be the same woman from this morning, might not, but she doesn’t lock the door behind her (it must not be her house) and passes me at the shoulder. Goddess, she’s pale. And thin, and tall. She doesn’t look me in the eye but she could have if she raised her head, and that’s startling enough that I can’t help watching her go.

She has hair right out of High Fantasy. That’s the only way I can think of to sum it up. It’s in a low, single ponytail but might as well not be because it fans out wide and hangs all the way to her knees, past the hem of her coat. It curls more at the bottom than the top, a rich earthen brown.

I’m sure I’ll see her later. It’s a small town.

I turn and knock on the third door, and this time someone answers. “Doctor, did you forget--oh,” she cuts herself off, and looks me up and down. “Who are you?”

“The Reverend Draco Trepson,” I answer. “Are you aware of the--”

By the door in my face, yes. Yes, she’s aware.

I take a deep breath and steel my nerves before I turn back the way I came. There are other houses. Three of them, I think. Maybe more beyond this row.

No one answers at the fourth door, so I knock on the fifth. “Just a second,” a man says from inside, then opens the door just a crack. It’s bolted, just enough to see through. Under a bushy white eyebrow, one eye looks me up and down. “What are you selling?”

“Nothing,” I answer, “just bringing the word of the Goddess.”

He scoffs. “Which one?”

“The only one, sir.”

“Go back to school and learn to count,” he says. The door clicks shut. Good thing I wasn’t leaning in.

Just before door number six, I cross paths with the woman in the white coat again. She’s leaving, of course. I’m not sure why of course, but it feels oddly correct to pass her again. She still doesn’t meet my eyes, but I smile at her anyway, get a look at the rest. She’s wearing more white than just the coat: a white men’s shirt--not just man-styled, I think it buttons on the wrong side for a girl--and snow-bleached jeans, tight all the way to her ankles. Black belt, black combat boots. They might be the same ones that ShinRa troopers wear. There are no heels on those, so she really is about as tall as I am. I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl that tall. My age too, I think, maybe younger.

“Excuse me, Miss,” I say--but she keeps walking. I try “Ma’am?” instead, and that doesn’t work either, and by then she’s already turned, up the path toward the Reactor.

I thought small towns were supposed to be friendlier than that. Maybe they only are to people who are supposed to be in them.

Either way, I knock on the sixth door. Footsteps patter on the other side, and it opens without a word or recrimination. There’s a woman on the other side, my mother’s age perhaps, with burn scars on her face but neatly coiffed hair. “Yes?”

“Hello, ma’am,” I start, “I’m new in town and I’m wondering how to start up a church.”

At least her face contorts into amusement instead of outright scorn. “Come in, come in,” she says, standing aside from the door. “A porch is no place to keep someone waiting. Do you want tea? Coffee?”

I smile. I’ve run into housebound people like her before, more interested in conversation than conversion, but there’s always a path to friendship in places like this. “Tea, but I don’t want to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble, young man. Or Reverend, I should say!” It’s a short walk down the hall to a modest, sunny kitchen, with windows overlooking the foothills and the manor from last night. In the daylight, it turns out to be more white than grey, smooth carved stone with wooden towers. Her table is the same color. “Sit, sit,” she says. “And you can call me Laetitia, Reverend. How do you take your tea?”

“Uhm, black is fine.” I sit. The sun filters through the window, all the way to the white kettle on Laetitia’s stove. A few photographs hang on the counter, a ShinRa platoon in uniform, a distinguished old woman in sepia tones. “Thank you so much.”

“I understand, believe me. The people in this sleepy old town can be so set in their ways.” She fusses about the cabinets, gets out two bone-ivory mugs and saucers and sets them on the countertop beside a pillbox. “Why, I was just telling Doctor Kalgrey that it’s a wonder anyone here lets her treat them.”

The kettle steams, but doesn’t whistle, loud enough to cut the room. “Doctor Kalgrey,” I repeat. “Is that the girl in white?”

“Oh yes, dear. Did you pass her on the way out?” She throws a smile my way, opens a drawer, takes two spoons out and clinks them onto the saucers. “Such a generous girl.”

I can’t help repeating, “Generous?” She didn’t even stop to talk to me.

“Well, you know how busy the ShinRa folks are. She’s with the crew at the mansion but it’s not as if we had a headshrinker here before her. So many people home from the war, you know.” Laetitia turns to me with a wry, uncomfortable smile that makes her burn scars pull tight. “Just makes it easier, having someone to make sure you get the right pills. Otherwise you just wind up making hooch in your bathtub. You sure you don’t want sugar, dear?”

“I am, thank you.” A psychologist--no, a psychiatrist, Laetitia mentioned pills--my age or so, affiliated with ShinRa. Well, that’s also something you don’t see every day. Like me.

I hope she wants to talk. Then again, I’ve never met a doctor that didn’t.

“So, about this church of yours,” Laetitia asks. “Old gods or new?”

The kettle whistles, and I have a lot of work to do.

Laetitia keeps me for three cups of tea, two thick slices of rather good fresh bread and homemade apple butter, and a whole lot of mhms and uh-huhs. She also says I should come back tomorrow, which is a whole world more than I’ve gotten out of anyone else in town, so I shouldn’t complain. Possibilities. There are possibilities here, and that makes the trip worth it so far, and as the sun sets over the mountains I can’t help but think that there, right against that foothill, there’s a good place for a new church, a new home.

I should call Wayne.

Larkin still has my phone in the cash register, so I head back to the inn. The town square is just like it was when I got here--I’ve probably been here almost exactly twenty-four hours, that feels strange, perhaps stranger than it should--deserted, quiet, closed. Larkin isn’t around to unlock the register, just the sick man in the rocking chair, so I wait upstairs, get a couple of chapters into the book I bought earlier. It’s history, not fantasy, complicated truths instead of simple fiction.

When I wake, it’s well after dusk. There’s no one at all downstairs, and the stars are even brighter than they were last night.

Maybe the light is on in the manor basement every night. Twice is tradition, after all.

Morning is sudden and awkward, and the shift changes outside my window. The Reactor team returns, people I didn’t see yesterday: scarred, yes, but not as many with missing limbs or fingers that don’t fill their gloves. They taper into their houses, and by the time I’m dressed the square is mostly clear again. It’s a beautiful day, unseasonably warm and brilliantly clear.

I should check out the manor.

Laetitia waves from her porch as I pass her, and I wave back. I’ll stop by later, I think. At teatime. She said yesterday that she would ask around, see if anyone knows when the mayor plans on coming back from Junon. And from there it’s only a short way into the hills, and the mansion looms over me like a fortress. The windows are hooded and black. The curtains must be dark. And the lawn isn’t that well-kept, but it exists, which is more than I can say for the houses I’ve seen in my life. There’s a gate, just like the one at the fore of town, and ShinRa’s name is wrought in iron without the capital R, like a surname instead of a brand.

And there’s Doctor Kalgrey, walking out the front door.

She’s wearing white again, but that’s not the first thing that hits me. This time, I can see her eyes. They’re blue, like Materia in use, like a SOLDIER’s. And they’re large, standing out over dark circles. She looks like she came from the city. Like she’s still there.

I smile, step forward, offer my hand over the gate. “Now I see why you didn’t stop yesterday. I should have said Doctor instead of Miss.”

A cold kind of surprise washes over her face, and she looks me up and down, still on the manor’s stoop. “You couldn’t have known,” she says.

“The white coat should have been a give-away,” I admit. She still hasn’t taken my hand. I should give up, and just to emphasize it I lower my hand and back away from the gate. That works. She comes closer, but doesn’t let go of my eyes. SOLDIER eyes. That’s even stranger to see on a civilian than it is to see at all.

She knows I’m looking. I can tell. But it’s hard to guess what she thinks. I don’t see amusement, or anger, or fear. She just comes down the steps and the short stone path, sidles through the gate. There’s no sway to her walk. She isn’t flirting. That’s fine, I won’t flirt either. But I do have a job to do.

“Let me try again,” I say, and offer my hand one more time. “I’m Draco. Draco Trepson.”

She stops, cold, with her back to me. “Trepson,” she repeats. “I should have known.”

I can’t help laughing at that. “Why? A name you’ve heard around Midgar?”

I can’t see her eyes anymore from this angle, but her shoulders talk, tense and stiff. “And you’re here to bring me back?”

“Hardly.” If I’m going to get anywhere, I should lighten the mood. “I don’t think anyone should have to go back to Midgar once they leave. Frankly, I hope I’m here to stay.”

“You probably are,” she says, and starts walking. Not into town--up the dirt path, toward the mountain.

I follow. “You’re more optimistic than everyone else,” I say, even if her tone is rather caustic, because it’s true. “They want me gone.”

“They want your Goddess gone,” she says. “You have nothing to do with it.”

I never told her I was a Reverend. Then again, it’s a small town, and word travels fast when there’s nothing else to talk about. And she stopped at every house that I did yesterday. Probably the last, I haven’t been particularly subtle.

“So,” I say, “maybe the reason that no one’s been that forthcoming about where I can build a church is that it has to go through ShinRa. Is that the case?”

“You left Reeve back in Midgar.”

“I don’t think he’s got time to plan small towns like this.”

“And the people here don’t have time for false gods.”

Well, there it is. She keeps going up the mountain path, and I keep pace, but if it’s going to be this argument, it’s going to be this argument. “Are you calling Her false from a place of awareness? It’s not like a doctor to dismiss something out of hand.”

A faint wind rustles the hem of her coat, but not her hair, and she doesn’t stop walking. “Your Goddess,” she says, “has freed you from nothing. She hasn’t redeemed you. She hasn’t, and can’t, spirit you anywhere else. Whatever happens to you when you die, there won’t be anyone waiting for you, at least not in a form that you can recognize. You won’t be able to recognize anything. You’ll be dead. So other than serving her for self-serving reasons and deluding yourself in order to justify helping people that you know what’s best for, yes, she’s false.”

On the one hand, it’s the most she’s said to me. On the other hand, everything else. But I keep up my smile of steel and say, “You still haven’t answered my question.”

She sighs, and picks up the pace, but not fast enough that I think she’s trying to leave me behind. “Why are you trying to revive the hero who freed your ancestors from servitude? Do you, personally, feel like a slave?”

Well, now she’s answered it. She’s at least done some research since she’s right about the Goddess’s origin. Not a place of ignorance. I should have expected that.

Either way, she’s gotten ahead of me, and I have to jog to catch up. Another crisp wind hits, stronger this time, and a lock of her hair flags across my eyes just before I get in step with her. I should change the subject if we’re going to keep talking at all. I’m not sure I can. “So, have you read LOVELESS?”

“Not this shit again.”

“Okay, fine. Where did you learn about us?”

“Midgar,” she says, maybe a twinge more humorous than before. I should have expected that too.

“I guess the better question would be when you learned. It definitely wasn’t from me.” If she’d come to my church, I’d remember her.

She rolls her eyes. It’s still frightening to see them glow. I wonder what color they used to be. Does Materia change it altogether, or just superimpose itself on what you already have? Are these even questions I can ask her?

She asks me one first, having nothing to do with this. “Aren’t you young to be a priest?”

“Aren’t you young to be a doctor?” I counter, laughing. It’s like talking to Wayne, in a way. He always loved to argue, even more than I do. He’d probably like her. Or at least he wouldn’t be able to stop either.

“You’d be surprised how quickly you can accomplish something when powerful people really want you to,” she says. “Is that your answer too?”

“No,” I say, because clear answers should become a thing, in this conversation as in others. But she doesn’t have anything to say to that.

We’ve been headed steadily uphill for the past several minutes, and the dirt path tapers up, thinning and spiraling into the mountains. There are two guards up ahead in full ShinRa regalia, lighted helmets and pristine polish. They don’t salute as Kalgrey approaches, but they do perk up. It’s hard to see whether they’re paying attention with only half of their faces visible. But I smile, following Kalgrey toward the Reactor.

Even with the peaks of the mountain reaching up like grasping hands, it’d be impossible to miss the chasm, and the rickety rope bridge across it sways in the breeze. Breeze is the wrong word: it’s strong, up here, maybe the strongest wind I’ve ever felt that wasn’t a car whizzing by. The Reactor is built directly into the mountainside, but in order to do that they must have had to drill down, and the gorge is at least a hundred feet deep. I stop, but Kalgrey keeps walking, right past the guards and onto the bridge, as if she doesn’t care about the danger.

I won’t say I have a sixth sense about these things, but this one’s just too obvious. “Doctor, are you--”

The troopers bar by way with their rifles crossed. “No civilians beyond this point,” the one on the left says.

“She’s a civilian.”

“No, she’s a senior employee.” The trooper manages to say a great deal with just one grimace. “Go back to town immediately.”

Kalgrey is already almost halfway across by now. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I really should just let her go about her business.

You too, something whispers to me. Come too.

“Wait!” someone yells, and I only realize a second later that it’s me.

Kalgrey doesn’t stop walking--she lurches forward, and the bridge jolts with her, loud and hard enough that the ropes creak. Her coat flashes, white in the sunlight, right into my eyes. The Bridge holds, but swings, and her leg is plunged through it. The broken plank plummets, crunches when it hits the rocks below.

The troopers yell for her, and I barely hear it. I know what I have to do. She’s going to fall. She will fall. I remember what it felt like at the church, that moment before the terrorists opened fire, knowing what I should have done, and I do it now.

I reach out and cast. The incantation comes to me as easily now as I wish it had then, and the magic spirals out of me, green tendrils pouring toward Kalgrey, a spell to stop the hurt as soon it starts. She twists toward me, and her eyes harden, blue and cold in the light of the magic.

Then she falls.

Fifteen minutes later, when the troopers trade off who’s carrying her body, it hits me that she didn’t scream.

I have it on good authority that if I hadn’t cast that spell I wouldn’t be allowed into the manor. Apparently it’s stronger magic than the troopers are used to. I’m inclined to believe them: the Materia on their bracers isn’t anywhere near budded, and even if I can’t get a look at their guns I remember from somewhere that ShinRa doesn’t issue more than one stone per soldier. But the troopers didn’t stop me from following them right up the steps of the mansion, and by the time I was halfway up to the second floor the sergeant had already told the troopers to let the healer work. He meant me.

There wasn’t much work to do, honestly. The regen spell I cast started working as soon as Kalgrey landed, and though she’s still unconscious the magic saved her ribs and shoulders and spine. She didn’t bleed. I checked as much as I could without being impolite, but even though her coat and shirt are torn and covered in dirt, she didn’t bleed. Magic is a gift.

The only thing that didn’t work, it turns out, is something I can’t fix. Her right leg was fractured in at least two places at the thigh. I say was because it’s technically healed, but mangled and out of alignment, probably dislocated too. When they set her down on the cot, her knees didn’t meet. They cut her jeans off her, and it didn’t straighten anything out. That’s something that a doctor will have to take care of, and she’s not that kind of doctor. And even if she were, I don’t think she could set her own back-healed leg. So we’ll wait.

I didn’t mean to look. Well, I did. But I didn’t mean to pry, and it’s not the first time she’s been healed from something awful. Without her eyes to distract me--and now that she isn’t avoiding me, I guess--it’s easier to see the planes of her face. She’s too thin for her height, like a fashion model but worse. Bones, everywhere. Scars, lots of them: rough patches on both temples, sewn slits under her left eye. Her arms and midriff are scarred too, stripes and stabs, a couple of years old at least. Is she really a civilian? Then again, if she were a SOLDIER she’d have more muscle mass, and she probably wouldn’t be injured right now, and I’ve never seen a female SOLDIER either.

I pull the blanket up over her legs.

I shouldn’t pry. But I have nowhere else to be, and the troopers told me I could stay with her until the surgeons come.

Uncle Connor kept rabbits. His apartment had a fire escape, defunct because the two beneath it had been destroyed for scrap. So he kept plants--until they died for lack of sun--then cats--until they left--then rabbits. Two of them, in one massive cage made of crates and duct tape and the scraps of a fence. Brothers, I think, definitely both male, or else there would have been far more than two.

They never liked Wayne, but they adored me. I used to tease him about it, say his ears were too big. Competition. And probably not true, anyway, we’re twins, our ears can’t be that different, just he keeps his hair short and I don’t. He’s here now, by the fire escape. I look up, and so do the rabbits. Their ears twitch, their whiskers don’t. Something isn’t right.

“They shouldn’t be here,” Wayne says. I think he’s said this before.

I say the same thing I said then. “No one should.”

Wayne shakes his head, no. The image sputters like a light about to die. Twitch. “Neither should you.”

“That’s why I left,” I remind him. “You shouldn’t be here either.”

He smiles. His isn’t steel. That’s why I’m the preacher, and he isn’t. Right now, I don’t smile. “I’m not,” he says. “You are. And you shouldn’t be.”

One rabbit thumps, a slick black shadow. The other sags against the crate. His eyes are like Doctor Kalgrey’s, blue and afflicted.

I press my hand to the frame of the cage. I’m on the wrong side.

I wake up the same time she does, or her waking up wakes me, but either way I’m not asleep anymore and have a terrible cramp in my neck. It’s sunrise, or sunset, I don’t know which way this room faces but the green patterned wallpaper is orange now, like firelight. I sit up, and Kalgrey sits up, slowly, like she knows how painful it should be. Well, of course she does.

I don’t know what to say, but I should say something, not just sit here smiling like an idiot. “Do you know where you are?”

“Yes,” she says, deadpan. “You don’t.”

I laugh. “Yes, I do. This is the manor. We brought you here after you fell.” I check the clock on the wall: it’s analog, says 7:35, so, “Sorry, I don’t know if this is morning or night. I dozed off.”

“It’s night,” she says. “The sun sets that way,” she cocks her head toward the left. “You should go.”

“They told me to stay with you. Your leg--”

“I know. And you’re not a doctor.”

“How could you know?”

She sighs, pushes the blankets down and only winces a little. “I had at least ten minutes before you found me in the ravine.”

“You stayed conscious?”

“For a few minutes,” she shrugs. “How bad is it?”

“They’ve called a surgeon in. I don’t know when they’ll arrive. I’ll get the troopers, they made the call.”

She looks under the blanket, surveys her leg. Does it hurt, if it’s healed wrong? It’s never happened to me, but I’ve known a few, and they all complain. She doesn’t.

I smile, but I don’t hold back. “You seem awfully calm about this.”

“It’s not the first time,” she says.

It’s the first voluntary information I’ve gotten out of her at all. Not a one-word answer, not a question turned on its head. I may be pushing my luck to ask for more, but, “It’s not?”

She looks me in the eyes. Hers are more jarring than frightening, at least now. Well, she looks away after that, and clearly I have pushed my luck--

“A few years ago,” she says, eyes on the clock now, the glow dampened in the sunset, “back in Midgar. My mentor and I were attacked by a street gang. Sector 3, I think. I don’t remember as much as I should.” She bites her lip, blinks once, long, like a screen booting up. “Someone patched me up afterward. A man of faith. With magic. Like you.”

“I’m sorry.” That explains the scars, at least some of them. Deliberate, and awful, and poorly healed. And it’s not that uncommon a thing either, in Midgar. We got plenty of victims of concrete warfare at the church, and Wayne even took a few in at his apartment, back before he got promoted.

She shakes her head, no. “It’s fine. I deserved it.”

“--Deserved it?”

She doesn’t even glare at me, just watches the clock again. The second-hand crosses 12, starts its descent. “You should go.”

Well, I’ve run through my good will for today, it seems. And she does need rest. “All right. I’m sorry to pry. Is there anything you need?”

She thinks about it for a second, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Long hair, cute ears. Goddess, I am in such trouble. “Come back tomorrow before noon,” she says. “I’ll have a list for you. I owe you for this, anyway. You can make my rounds and get a foot in every door in town.”

“It would be my honor.” I’m not sure if it’s generous or just practical, but either way, it’s good for us both. “Anything else?”

“Three things. My phone, my notebook, and Ulfius.”

“Sure. Who’s Ulfius? Your mentor?”

Forget putting feet in doors, I really should put my foot in my mouth after that one. Wow. Something in Kalgrey completely shuts down. The clock on the wall ticks, ticks, ticks, and she doesn’t answer, not even when I ask again.

Ulfius, innocently enough, is a large grey rabbit, living in a proper cage the next room over. My neck hurts.

By the time I get back to the inn, Larkin’s already gone to bed, and my phone is still shut in the cash register. That’s fine; I probably shouldn’t bother anyone, and a nap in a chair is no substitute for actual sleep. I take a long shower, wash off the grime of the mountain. I don’t think they charge for hot water here. They can’t, it’s a Reactor town, but either way I take a good long time.

I didn’t get much of a look at the mansion, not with the hustle on the way in and the scrutiny on the way out. Kalgrey wasn’t the only person living there, that’s obvious enough, but there were few enough that she gets her own room.

Other than guarding the Reactor, what are they doing here?

Well, I’ll ask tomorrow, I guess. And I should get to know the troopers, not just the citizens. For all I know, someone stationed here knows Wayne from work.

Tired as I am, I still take a few minutes to read before bed. The stars are still brilliant out there, but tonight, all of the manor windows are dark. Well, mostly dark. Something’s still on in the basement. Not as bright as last night, or the night before, but on, like the faint glow of SOLDIER eyes.

Gatlings. They’re opening fire. It’s my fault, I can’t save anyone--

--wait. No. I sit up in bed. I’m in Nibelheim. Not Midgar. Not the church. And that’s not a gatling, that’s a helicopter. It blocks out the sun, casts a stuttering shadow on the hardwood floor.

I throw on the nearest pair of pants--yesterday’s, I think--and bolt out the door, down the stairs, and clear into the town square. The chopper’s passed overhead, but still slices through the sun, until it’s behind the manor and sinking, hovering a storey above the ground. It’s probably ShinRa’s, almost definitely the surgeons, and that alone has me running for the manor.

Two troopers flank a small man in a white coat, heading up the stairs and through the front door. The gate’s still swinging. I think I’ve seen that man before. Long black hair, hurrying or hunched. Is he Wutaian? He’d be the first Wutaian I’ve seen here. But he disappears into the house, and the troopers flank the door as it shuts, like pillars.

I nudge the gate out of the way before it can shut completely. “Is that the surgeon for Doctor Kalgrey?”

One of the troopers gapes and laughs, the other just stares--though he may be laughing at me behind the helmet, I can’t tell. “Put a shirt on, hotshot,” the first one says. “This ain’t Costa del Sol.”

--oh. Whoops. I laugh with them, since it’s not a big deal. “Right, right. Sorry. But she said I should come by and make her rounds, and--”

“And what?”

They still didn’t answer me about whether that Wutaian man was a surgeon or not, so I come closer and ask again, “They’re fixing her leg today, right? She said I should make her deliveries for her since she can’t walk.”

The troopers glance at each other--I think that’s what’s happening, it’s hard to tell with their helmets up--then turn back to me. “Wait here,” one says, then turns and walks into the mansion, leaving me with the one who called me a hotshot. I think.

I smile, shrug. “Thanks for your help.”

“Ain’t help yet,” he says, and shrugs back. “Just get off the porch.”

“Sure.” I back off, hands up and everything. I hadn’t realized I’d come that close, but I guess I’ve gotten used to putting my feet in a lot of doors. I pace on the lawn for a while, glance up at the windows.

Let’s see--if she said that the sun sets to her left, when she was sitting in the bed across from the window, that means that the window faces the front of the manor...and it had that one curved wall, which means it’s next to the weird circular turret, on the second floor. Which means it’s that room, there, the upper right corner of the façade.

The curtain is drawn. I’m not sure why I expected her to be sitting at it. I think the rabbit might be, if that tufted shadow is any indication. She’s letting it run free, even if she can’t get up to catch it? Strange. Uncle Connor never did that even when he could catch them.

I’m not sure how much time passes, and the trooper at the door doesn’t give any indication. The helicopter wind tapered off long ago, and the air is still, heavy without it. The rabbit in the window looks down at me. It’s grey, concrete grey. I wave. Of course it doesn’t wave back, probably doesn’t even see me. The next time I look up, it’s gone. I guess I should say he instead of it, she said his name was Ulfius. I wonder how long she’s kept him, how long she’s been here. She said she was in the city about five years ago. It can’t be that long.

The manor door swings open, and a trooper comes out with a cardboard box about the size of a loaf of bread. “Story checks out,” he tells his comrade. “She sent this down for him.” Then he looks at me, visor glinting in the sun. “She says drop off a note when you’re done or there’s anything wrong, and come back tomorrow.”

I thank them, and take the box. The contents are pretty much what I expected, a few vials and sharps, a first aid kit, and an open notepad with a note scrawled on top. I’m pretty sure the handwriting is Kalgrey’s.

Hit the houses counterclockwise from the post office.
Post Office: Macy Hoskins. Labeled vial + 1 Ether. She can administer her own injection.
1: Lukas Raden. Labeled vial. He can administer his own injection.
2: Myra Rice. Labeled vial + 2 tranquilizers, one now one later.
3: Ashilyn Dieter. Labeled bottle. Leave it in the mailbox if she doesn’t let you in.
4: Lorna and Horton Massel. Labeled vials. They can administer their own injections.
5: Roan Naybrook. Labeled vial + 2 tranquilizers. Inject him.
6: Laetitia Trace. Labeled bottle + 1 ether, 1 hi-potion.
Inn: Larkin Rails, labeled vial. He can inject himself. Enzo Marist, labeled vial. Inject him, take his vitals, ask Larkin or Horton about his overnight condition.
If anyone has symptoms to report to me, take them down. Any emergencies or deaths, tell the troopers at the door.

Her first name is an illegible scrawl, but the K in Kalgrey stands out clear.

It’s a foot in the door all right.

Macy’s honestly glad to see me, I think. She explains about her leg, those mountain wolves, you know, and sends her best wishes for Kalgrey’s health. She shoots herself up with the ease and experience of someone who’s brought herself back from some pretty dark places. It doesn’t seem right to talk about the Goddess with her, but I do listen, and tell her I’ll come back tomorrow if Kalgrey isn’t up and about yet.

Lukas and Myra both come to their doors. They’ve both heard about Kalgrey, of course, it’s a small town. Neither has anything to report, just take their parcels and bid me farewell. Ashilyn doesn’t answer the door, but Kalgrey said she might not, so I leave the bottle in the mailbox, like she said I should. At the fourth door, Lorna is home, but Horton is not, and she says I can find him with Larkin at the inn. She also says that Horton complained about his headache all last night, but probably won’t bring it up, so I take the notes and leave his injection with her, just in case.

Roan, the man who told me to learn to count, comes to his door right away, but only cracks it to a sliver of shadow. “You again?”

“Doctor Kalgrey sent me,” I tell him, and raise the box to the height of his eye. “To deliver your prescriptions.”

He looks me up and down, then steps back from the door and shuts it. But I know how bolts work--my apartment in Midgar had two, and Wayne always forgot to lock the door--and a scrape and a second later, it opens, slowly in.

Roan turns out to be missing more than an eye: the scars and bulging veins down his right side are almost monstrous. The light in his entryway is dim, all natural light I think, and I know how impolite it is to stare but I can’t quite stop myself from wanting to see how deep the scars go.

Without a word, he leads me into his sitting room, sits on a stool by the window. His right arm hangs limp while he rolls up his sleeve. I root through the box for his vial, set it down on the coffee table. “How long has this been going on?” I ask, mostly to pass the time and keep from staring.

“How long you think?” he sighs. His veins twitch, spidery and dark. “Hazard of the trade.”

“You worked at the Reactor?”

“What else is there to do in this place?” He rolls his eye, twists on the stool to offer me his arm. “Served two tours to try and get out of here, came back when there was nothing else to do, and what do I got to show for it?”

There are photographs on the mantle, spattered with a week’s dust. I could guess, get the stories, put a sequence together, but it’s more important just knowing he hasn’t spent his life alone. I set up the syringe, lay out a tourniquet. “Something, I’m sure,” I say. “Two tours?”

He scoffs. “Thought I was lucky. You herding birds over there, or what?”

“Sorry.” I probably have to tie the tourniquet for him too. So I do, and he doesn’t complain, makes a fist almost automatically. “Are a lot of people here soldiers?”

Of all the things I thought he’d have to think of an answer for, this wasn’t one of them. But he does think, and scoffs toward the window. “As many as not,” he says,” and that must be why he thought about it. “And a lot don’t talk. What if someone asked you?”

I set up the syringe, it’s not so hard. “I missed the last of the draft. I’d have gone, though.”

“Easy for you to say without going.”

“You have a point.” Well, it’s now or never. I have to look at his arm to prime the needle, and it really is awful. Not that I have any difficulty finding a vein--the opposite, really--but I can’t help wondering if I even should.

No. It’s supposed to take the pain away, and he’s clearly in pain.

I make contact with his eye, and he nods, so I plunge the needle in. He hisses, a low rattling kind of sound that I’ve heard far too many times before, but he doesn’t flinch, and I push the presser down until the syringe is drained. There’s only a little blood, enough that once I take the sharp out and swab it away it doesn’t start up again.

He doesn’t thank me, but I don’t really expect him to. “Is everything all right?” I ask, because someone has to, it’s too quiet in here. There should be city traffic and the thrum of mako through the fixtures in the walls, I’m not sure why but there should be.

“What do you think?” he says, already backing off, arm limp at his side.

“Sorry,” I say again. I get the feeling it won’t be the last time today, or even the last time here.

At the inn, sure enough, Horton says it’s nothing. Larkin isn’t around (which means I still can’t get my phone, not that I need it right now). And Enzo, the man in the chair with mako poisoning, doesn’t take his eyes off the sun, even when it takes me two tries to find a vein.

It must have been three or four V-W Days ago, back when Wayne was still living with Doctor Ciavelli, before Ciavelli went insane. He came home--our home, not his--home, from the party his friends were holding at some bar in Sector 6, more drunk than I’d ever seen him. He said he’d lost his tie. There was Truth or Dare, like children play, but when you’re grown up the stakes are so much higher.

There was a girl. A girl with a flaw in the design. Not broken, broken people used to be whole. A girl with dyed red hair like a gangster and something wrong behind her eyes, he said. Something wrong, something inhuman.

I told him that all girls are like that. I’d just broken up with Carmen. I even wrote a sermon about it. Goddess, I was an asshole. But Wayne said no, it’s not all girls, just this one, this one warping his heart, this one under his skin. We just talked about it, back then, but tonight he’s showing me.

“See?” he says, turning up his arm. His veins are the color of materia, of magic, of Doctor Kalgrey’s eyes. They rush, like lights in a marquee, up and down his skin, bright enough to shine through his shirt.

“Does it hurt?” I ask, because of course it does.

But Wayne shakes his head, says, “No. It feels better than anything else I’ve ever touched. That’s what hurts.”

Even if the guards at the manor know me, there’s still protocol. If it weren’t raining, I wouldn’t mind waiting outside so much, but this is one of those hot, thick-mist rains that make it hard to breathe, let alone stand without an umbrella. It’s only rained a few times since I left Midgar, and it’s better out here than it was there--less rusty and toxic, for one thing--but I only have two sets of clothes and I’m still not sure where I can do laundry here. I’ll have to ask Larkin about it later, if he isn’t busy. But for now, I’m standing outside the manor with one guard, possibly the same one as yesterday (though he’s not saying anything, yet), and I really hope that I don’t get my pants muddy because these are, were, the relatively clean ones.

“Nice shirt,” the guard says. Yes, he’s definitely the one from yesterday.

I smile at him, take a gamble on making him laugh. “Nice helmet.”

It works, at least a little, and the guard smiles at me, chuckling. “You wanna sign up? I get a bonus for every poor shit I sucker onto the mailing list.”

“Already on it, sorry,” I offer, “but thanks.”

“How’s a priest get on the recruitment ML?”

“My brother works for Reeve,” I answer. Someone around here may know Wayne, he hasn’t been over the sixtieth floor for long. “So he got the bonus.”

“Psh, like the suits need it. If you’re staying here, you’ll get a new address anyway, and they don’t double check how many emails go out.” He smirks, which is weird to see with his eyes covered by the helmet. “C’mon, help a bro out.”

“Tell you what: when I get a place to stay here that isn’t the inn, I’ll take you up on that.”

“Deal. Got a name, Reverend?”

I offer my hand. “Draco Trepson.”

“Yeah, they’re not gonna blink at another one with that name signing up. “He clasps my hand and shakes it, strong. “Ian Renking. They didn’t blink at mine either.”

I think I’ve heard the name Renking somewhere, but I’ve definitely met a lot of Ians. I shake his hand once more, then back off. He takes off his helmet, slicks his hair back off his forehead, not that the rain is going to help with that. Dyed electric red. Kind of a pretty guy actually, and I didn’t expect that on a trooper.

“So what do you want with Rapaunzel?” he asks.

He definitely means Doctor Kalgrey. “Is that her first name?”

“Nah, just an old nickname. You hard up, or what?”

Well, that was blunt. And I’m not going to answer that. “How long have you known her?”

With the hand not holding the helmet, he scratches the back of his neck. “Not that kind of knowing her. But I knew her back in Midgar, before I got sucked in. Sort of. What do you want with her?”

If I’m honest with myself, I don’t even know. And now I have to think about it. But the easy answer, the polite one, is “To talk, I guess. And to be as helpful to her as I can.”

Ian looks at me like--well, Wayne would get on his case about Language and he hasn’t even said anything, but that’s a look that screams profanities. Mostly of the sort that come out of the wrong end of a cow.

And he’s still looking at me like that when the manor door swings open.

Ian fumbles with his helmet, makes like he only took it off to wipe the rain off the visor. The other guard shrugs, steps out the door like he needs to get between us. “She says you can come upstairs.”

I thank him, and he lets me in.

I didn’t get much of a chance to look at the inside of the mansion when I was carrying Kalgrey through it, or when the guards were ushering me out after everything was taken care of. This time, no one’s in my way, and I’m struck by the sheer amount of space. An iron and crystal chandelier, a little worse for wear but still amazingly large, glints in the sunlight from high foyer windows over the balcony. The stairs wind up the wall to my right, one harsh curve, the banister and steps the same dark wood color of the trim on the walls. There’s scrollwork on the glass windows and enough room on the floor for every curve to cast a winding shadow. Rich people have always had space, I guess, but they use it differently in the cities. It’s not full here, I think. That’s the difference.

There are a fair amount of doors and passages on the first floor--I think the kitchen is to the left, it smells vaguely like cinnamon buns--but I really don’t have any business there, and probably shouldn’t stick my nose in, so I head upstairs like I should. The door to her room, the last on the right hall, is closed. But she said I could come up, so she’s expecting me. I knock.

“Don’t let him out,” she says, instead of come in.

I laugh. The rabbit, of course. He’s probably still hopping free. “I’ll be careful,” I say, and open the door just enough to sidle in, eyes on the carpet. The rabbit doesn’t run out--in fact, I can’t see him anywhere--but I shut the door quickly behind me, and only then look up.

Kalgrey is curled on her side in the bed, facing away from me. Her hair is in one long, sloppy braid, slipped off the edge of the covers, all the way to the floor. Like a bedsheet rope, I think. Or Rapaunzel, letting her hair out the window for the prince to climb. Hey, Ian’s joke makes some sense.

She doesn’t look up, so I say, “Hey,” and come a little closer.

Her shoulders twitch. But she does say “Hey” back, so that counts for something.

“How did the surgery go?”

She shrugs, which looks oddly cute with her on her side, half-blanketed. The bed doesn’t creak. “He re-broke it,” she says, like it wasn’t that big of a deal. “Twice.”

That’s about what I expected--not the twice part, but if it was a choice between that and losing the leg entirely I know which I’d choose. “That’s good. Do you think you’ll be able to walk soon?”

“Tomorrow. With a brace.”

“That’s late. Here,” I come to the edge of the bed, “if no one has materia strong enough, I could--”

“No,” she says, more firmly than anything she’s ever said to me that wasn’t condemning my religion. “No magic. I have to give it time to settle.”

Settle. Something that can’t be used with magic. Experimental medicine, probably.

I remember the look in Enzo’s eyes, in the rocking chair at the inn. Vacant and challenging, but glowing from within, a color not found in nature.

No. Not experimental medicine. Direct application of mako. Controlled mako poisoning.

She said it wasn’t the first time. It would explain her SOLDIER eyes, that’s for sure. And her scars, and her body. It’s not that different from Enzo’s, just as bony and pale, and I’d know, I looked him over for her yesterday, him and so many people in this town, with wounds that magic can’t treat. But that makes no sense. Why treat wounds with mako when there’s magic available? Even if it takes surgery to set the bones or keep the nerves aligned, aside from mako itself there’s nothing magic can’t fix.

Not broken, Wayne said. A flaw in the design.

I reach down to the blanket over Kalgrey’s hip. She doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch. She’s still closing her eyes. I know I should ask permission, but my throat’s dried up and I’m not sure I can take the breath to fix it, so I tug the blanket down--

The rabbit stamps its foot, a heavy echoing thump, and bolts out from under the bed.

At almost the exact same time, the door swings open, and I whip around from the bed, drop the covers.

I think it’s the man in the white coat from yesterday. From the helicopter. I wondered then if he was Wutaian but if he is, it only shows a little. Mixed, maybe, and short and hunched over his buttoned lab coat, hair in his face. He looks up at me, but the glare from the windows whites out the lenses of his glasses.

“Leave,” he says.

His voice wouldn’t be intimidating on its own, just nasal and unpleasant. But there’s no urgency in his voice, no feeling whatsoever, like an evacuation drill without a speaker to warp it around corners. Please remain calm and exit the building in an orderly fashion. Leave your belongings behind. Do not take the elevators.

I still manage to get out a “But--”

“Now,” he says, leaving the door open behind him and brushing past me to Kalgrey’s bedside. She doesn’t react to him either.

The rabbit will get out if he leaves the door open. I think that’s why I’m so quick to comply.

I hope that’s why I’m so quick to comply.

Well, I finally got my phone out of the cash register. It’s charged, so that’s good, but I have about as much chance of getting reception out here as getting struck by lightning.

I know because I’ve refreshed my settings, on and off, for the last three hours. Because I can’t sleep. It’s brilliant beyond the curtains, and the rain’s stopped but the humidity hasn’t left the air, like it’s just waiting to come back, biding its time. Praying doesn’t help--not with reception, and not with sleep. I can’t call Wayne, or even send him a message, and I’m not sure I would if I could.

It’s a Reactor town. These are the hazards of living in it. Wounds that magic can’t treat, disfiguring injury, blood poison. It’s a reality that the people here face. But Kalgrey’s not from here. Midgar, she said, and Ian confirmed it. And her injuries aren’t from the Reactor, or from mako at all. A fall from a bridge. A gang attack, years ago--and she said someone like me healed her then, as now. She can’t already have mako in her blood.

Which means the surgeon put it there. That man from the helicopter. The one in white.

If he put it there at all, I mean. I’m jumping to conclusions. I don’t have confirmation either way, even if that’s the answer that makes the most sense, and for all I know there’s a perfectly reasonable...reason. Maybe I oversaturated her when I cast. Maybe she doesn’t want to risk it healing wrong again. It’s her leg, her body. Her decision how to heal. Or it should be.

I check my phone again. No reception. Still. I put my phone back on the end table, stare at the ceiling. My eyes didn’t even have to get used to the dark, it’s not dark, not even with clouds still caking the sky. They’re thin enough that the moons break through, and even some clusters of stars. The archer’s eye and the arrowhead. The flare nebula. The princess’s crown. Wait, when did I get up and go to the window? It doesn’t matter. Goddess, I should sleep.

The basement light is on. At the manor. Midnight oil, indeed.

They’ll never let me in, but I can at least go closer. The walk will clear my head, or at least tire out my body. I could never see this in the city, never do this in the city, with a plate over my head and a thousand tubes of energy around walling me in, and cars, gangs, fire escapes. A million excuses. I get dressed, pocket my phone, head down the stairs.

Enzo rocks in his chair, doesn’t watch me go.

The humidity out here is all potential energy, and the ground is sticking, doesn’t push back under my shoes. No one else’s lights are on, just that one, and yet, the sky.

I don’t have to look to see the path up to the manor. It might even be reflected in the stars, the not-so-distant mountains slicing a slow wake into the clouds. A wound. A wound in the sky, shining down, too slow and old to bleed. I leave the town center, head for the mansion--

--and pass it completely, light and all.

Come where she can’t, the mountain says. Or seems to say. Goddess, I’m tired. And alone.

I shouldn’t be hiking this mountain alone. Then again, I shouldn’t be here, in Nibelheim, in the wide world, in any place but Midgar and its false safety and terrorism and history and pain, so why would I even listen to me. And it’s not hard to walk, if anything it’s easy, with the path set as clear on the earth as it is in the stars. So many people have gone this way. So many crews, to serve the reactor. To build it in the first place. To climb the mountain whyever they climbed it before there was power here. Wolves, Macy said.

The bridge is almost in sight, and I stall, then stop completely. Macy wasn’t hurt at the Reactor. Neither was Laetitia, she said hers were war wounds. They’re like Kalgrey. I didn’t ask Larkin or Horton or any of the others, but aside from Roan and Enzo they’re not so obvious--and they’re not suffering any of the other effects. Magic didn’t fix them, but magic didn’t hurt them to begin with.

The simplest explanation is invalid. The simplest anything is invalid.

I look up past the grasping crags to the Reactor, frozen in its eruption from the rock. In the sunlight it was hard to tell where the pipes ended and the rocks began, but under the stars it’s all too clear. Aside from deep red rust, the pipes shine flat and even, and the earth blackens like the blight around Midgar. This is about as close as I got before the guards stopped me last time, and Kalgrey fell. They’ve repaired the bridge since. I have to wonder how long it will last.

And there are guards, of course.

At least this time, there’s one I recognize.

“Hey, priest,” Ian says, waves me over. “Looking for a better shirt?”

I smile, veer a little off the path to get into conversation range. “Hey Ian. No, just checking out the Reactor. How are you still on duty?”

“Fucking doubles,” he says. “The Professor didn’t bring enough of us, ‘s what I say. And he doesn’t fucking sleep.” He takes off his helmet again. I get the feeling he doesn’t particularly like wearing it. I wouldn’t either.

The Professor, he said. And Doesn’t sleep. Well, that clears up which questions I have to ask first. “So if you’re shadowing the Professor--”

“Yeah, he’s here.” Ian thumbs over his shoulder in the Reactor’s general direction. “Says we’re not supposed to go in, as usual.”

But you can, the mountain says. You’re not him.

I know I’m not going to be able to sleep if I don’t. I know the rules of fantasy novels, I’ve read a million of them. Whether it’s schmuck bait or not, it’s better to know and defeat it than it is to let it fester. If you let it percolate, the danger comes to you. If you face it head on, you overcome it.

“What about me?” I ask. “Can I go in?”

Ian laughs in my face. “What d you think we’re guarding him from, wolves?” He rolls his eyes. “No, today I’m his fucking butler, that’s what. The crew isn’t even in there right now.”

You’re not the crew, it says, and it’s probably just a clearer thought, the same part of me that remembers what I should have said hours after I said it. “I’m not on the crew.”

Ian hisses through his teeth, somewhere between amused and annoyed. Wayne used to hate it when I do that. “What, you want a guided tour?”

“It doesn’t have to be guided.” I’ve gotten my feet in a lot of doors. I’ve made a life of it. This one shouldn’t be too hard. “I won’t disturb him.”

“Him? Bro, you’re disturbing me right now. What the hell do you want in there?”

“Answers, I guess,” I say. It sounds heavy, even to me, so I try and shrug it off. “It’s just...this place is strange. So are the people.”

“This coming from the mouth of someone who goes door to door trying to sucker people into gods.”

“Fair. But just one. One Goddess.”

“That’s even stranger.” He crosses his arms, which tugs the strap of his gun tighter. “And you know it.”

I disagree. Not about knowing it, about how strange it is. We live in a world of wonders, enough to take them for granted and not wonder it all. I can clear my head and heal broken bones with the same kind of crystal that powers my house. There’s a snake the size of a city roaming a swamp the next continent over. We fought a war over electricity. I went twenty-five years without seeing the stars.

I survived a terrorist attack on my own church. There is nothing strange about a Goddess. A higher power is the only thing that makes this world make sense.

But I can’t say that. Not to someone I just met, not to a soldier, not to someone who’ll just unwind all of this into more questions.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I say instead. “And you can say I snuck in. But I really want to go.”

“Fuck no,” he says, shoving his helmet back on. “I’m coming with you. Go big or go home. If I get lucky I’ll never have to come back.”

I think I meant to laugh at that, but it comes out dry, like wind through the slats of an air conditioner that hasn’t worked for years.

The bridge doesn’t break, this time. Even with both of us on it. I guess that’s the difference between something that was whole and is fixed, and something that was made wrong to begin with. You can fix something better.

It’s a loose definition of better. There’s nothing better about this place.

Even in the starlight, in the bright gap between the clouds, this mountain is beautiful and terrifying. The rocks shimmer with veins of crystal, and thicker patches burst out in spires, like miniature cities. It’s as if nothing grows here except the crystal: no brambles, no weeds, not even the ghost of vegetation. The sheet rock has cracks in it, too deep to be scars but too shallow to be homes, so there must have been some life here once, but there isn’t now. It’s the blight all over again. An ocean and a continent away and I haven’t left Midgar at all.

Ian whistles through his teeth, stoops to brush his glove against a tall point of crystal, as high as his knee. “Is this Materia?”

“I think so,” I say. The orbs on my bracer are glowing just a little, though that might just be the light, and the Reactor entrance has plenty of lights too, red and warning. Doesn’t red mean stop?

I don’t stop.

There are stairs, all iron, wide enough for a crew. I feel like each footstep echoes down the mountain, but I don’t stop. And no, it’s not an echo, it’s Ian coming up behind me. All right. For sneaking into a factory in the middle of the night, this could be a lot creepier.

When I get to the door, and push on it, nothing happens--but Ian scans his wrist armor, and then the doors part, like an elevator.

He grins, like he isn’t talking to me. “Man, didn’t think it’d be that easy. Mage would’ve loved that.”

“Mage?” I step into the Reactor, and the door whips shut behind us both.

Ian goes on. “Yeah. A friend of mine back in Midgar. He used to talk about storming a Reactor, you know, like AVALANCHE and shit. But he couldn’t do it, so he went in the front door instead. It was in the papers. Still don’t know what happened to him.”

With me, the mountain says. With me now.

The memory hits like the lights of this place. Cut off from the stars, everything overhead is red and yellow, strangely familiar, under the plate again, a world of tubes and wires and rust. Valves mark their sources with circles and crosses, like a pirate’s treasure map, here there be dragons. Chains and ladders snake along the walls, some with links as thick as my arms. Pipes run parallel overhead, down the walls and under the threads of the bridge, a hundred feet down or more.

And that’s the Lifestream. Down there, past the glow of steel walls and stenciled warnings.

Something happened here. Something that left gashes in the walls and ruts in the floor.

I pray, and it doesn’t drive the memories away. I read it in the papers, about the teenager who stormed the ShinRa building and iced, literally, dozens of people, killed SOLDIERS and ruined lives and inspired terrorist cells all over the city like the one that destroyed my church. “He was a friend of yours?”

“Yeah, sort of,” Ian says, no remorse, just humor, “I ran with a wild crowd. But we weren’t all crazy like him. And that Doctor guy.”

Maybe that’s the only answer I’ll get here. Maybe the world’s gone mad, when magic can’t mend wounds and civilian girls have SOLDIER eyes and troopers mention they were friends with terrorists like it’s nothing. Maybe it was safer in Midgar after all, even with the plate hanging over my head and the ghosts of my church haunting the streets. People believed. People had faith. You didn’t live in the slums of Midgar without faith, even if it was just faith that you’d get out someday if you worked hard enough and kept hold of your soul. Here, I go door-to-door and people don’t answer unless there are prescriptions on the other side, to help them deal with the pain of living because nothing else will.

Nothing else will echoes off the walls and down, as if I said it aloud. I didn’t. What I said was “How do you get down?”

Ian crosses behind me, looks around, shrugs, and grasps one of the chains. “Hope you didn’t flunk gym, priest.”

The world has gone mad, and so have I, because I grab the chain and climb. The Goddess abhors chains, but does it count as a chain if you’re not using it to bind someone? Is it a chain if it’s a ladder now?

Either way I climb, or, well, descend. The light of the Lifestream gets nearer, never near enough to white out the shadows on the walls but enough to warp them, like reflections in a puddle or the window of a cab at night. The wall turns out to be not all iron--I’m not sure if the streaked rock is bricks or demolition-carved, but either way it isn’t smooth. I climb down the chain, link by link, and the shadows get taller and taller, and the whir of the machines drowns out Ian’s steps above me.

“You think the Professor climbs this?” Ian asks.

I don’t know, and I don’t answer, but the ai sound of climbs hisses down into the bowels of the Reactor, bounces off every surface and blurs a little every time.

“Fuck, I’d pay to see that,” Ian goes on. “Probably an elevator somewhere, though.” Some people talk when they get nervous. I think Ian’s one of them. I should reassure him, but we’re climbing a fake ladder over the Lifestream itself in an illegally accessed Reactor, so I think there’s no reassuring anyone there.

I wonder why I’m not nervous. Something just feels right, somehow. Like when all the clocks in your house change at the same time, or you reach the corner right when the light changes. When the shoe fits. When you beat your alarm by seconds. When you ask yourself how someone is, and she calls.

Yes. She calls.

I think I’ve reached the bottom of the ladder. Chain. Whichever. The light is all red now, and the Lifestream is beneath me but that’s not where I’m going. I know where I’m going. I follow the pipes, the path, the stairs up. It’s like the church. My church. A center aisle, an ascent to a dais. Congregants. I don’t know why they’re in pods instead of pews but they are, and they’re facing me like I’ve come in from the back, like I’ve come to convey their wishes to the Goddess. Their prayers.

I’m here, I say. She says. Her voice is warm and gentle, stern. Motherly. I will answer you.

There didn’t used to be stairs here, but I climb them anyway. It didn’t used to be so red either, but red is a good color, a warm color, and I don’t mind the change. It’s whole again. Safe. Secure. Encompassed and held. Every tier up, another wish comes to be, another prayer. They want to be free. They want to be taken care of. I want to be safe.

You will be.

I want to be let in.

You will be.

I want to be loved.

You will be.

I want to be home.

You are. My footsteps ring like laughter. So does her voice. You could be more.

“When I said leave, I didn’t mean come here,” the Professor says, in that same flat fire drill voice.

I stop.

I climbed to the top of these stairs, and there was still more to go. Another door. The Professor wasn’t beyond it, but he’s here, in the top row, lit by the warning blue lights on the pods. It was never the church. It was never home. Everything is labeled but nothing is explained.

JENOVA, the door reads, in letters as clear as crystal.

A man in a dark blue suit knocks a gun against my head.

It doesn’t drive the voices out.

After the attack on the church, I woke up at Wayne’s. Not at the hospital. Not in jail. I remember how thankful I was, how strange it was, to look up and see his face. He had a goatee, back then. I think he still does. He’s also had a Revive Materia since we were teenagers, knows how to use it.

“Spirits of the fallen and wronged, return and be counted,” he’d say. He said. And it would work. It did work.

It doesn’t work.

So he says it again. And again. And again. And someone, someone not him, snarls about going downstairs and getting some phoenix down but Wayne says, no, there’s no time. And makes the incantation again. And again. And again. And again.

And then, when it doesn’t work, he prays for my soul.

This isn’t what happened. This isn’t what happened to me. I lived. I suffered through the attack, and I watched dozens of people die and everything I’d ever worked for destroyed, and I survived. The church burned but I didn’t. The glass warped but I didn’t. They smashed the pillars to get the Materia out and they defaced the Goddess’s statue but I lived.

My brother, my twin, is saying a prayer for my soul, and I’m not dead.

But I’m close, aren’t I. The Lifestream is here. I’ve seen it. It’s beneath me, us, running under the rope bridge like a river of stars with no names.

Wayne isn’t praying for my soul anymore. He’s standing at the other side, the side without the Reactor, and asking, “Why did you leave?”

“I couldn’t stay,” I answer.

Nibelheim rises behind him, the mansion towering and grey. I know where Kalgrey’s room is, at the top of the curving tower. Rapaunzel, Ian said. Wayne’s beneath the window, reaching up for her hair. No, it’s not him. It’s me. I’m reaching. I know because Wayne is holding my other hand, pulling me away, dragging me down.

“Not you too,” he says. Pleads. “Draco, not you too. Don’t leave.”

She left him. In this dream, she left him. Just like I did.

A girl. A girl with a flaw in the design.

I’m pretty sure this is the same chair I sat in in Kalgrey’s room. Except this time I’m tied to it. I really should stop sleeping in this chair.

Something cold and wet slaps me in the face. Well, that takes care of sleeping. Not the chair, though. I’m still in that. Tied, to that.

Yes, a chain is still a chain, even if it’s a ladder.

The man in the blue suit is definitely Wutaian, with his hair pulled back and a smear across his forehead like the statues of Da Chao. The war’s over, we won, and I was never a soldier, but none of these things do anything for the panic that wells up in my heart. Or the pain in my head, which is now also soaking wet.

He pours another glass of ice water from a pitcher. This time he drinks, instead of throwing it at me. Dark blue suit. ShinRa insignia. I should know what that means. I should remember what that means.

I think. I do. When Dr. Ciavelli went insane, they came to Wayne’s apartment instead of the police. Turks. Not this one, last time there were two, more punk and thug than law enforcement.

This one is definitely law enforcement. I broke the law.

And yes, there are still laws even when the world’s gone mad.

“Reverend,” the Turk says, level, low, unaccented, strangely respectful. “I assume you know why you’re being interrogated.”

I catch my breath--I’m not sure when I lost it, but I catch it--and try to adjust my posture. I’m tied with each wrist and each ankle to the arms and legs of the chair. No, not tied after all. It’s white medical tape. The irony doesn’t escape me, but it’s not funny either. “The Reactor,” I say. “Trespassing.”

He sets the glass down, fills it again. The ice clinks, one cube at a time, like music. “Good. Save me the trouble of breaking your fingers and tell me who you work for.”

The easiest answer, the true answer, is “No one,” so that’s what I tell him. “I’m not working for anyone.”

The Turk raises his eyebrow, folds his hand around the glass, doesn’t lift it. I think we’re back at the manor. I hope we’re back at the manor. He asks, just as calm and steady as before, “Why bother lying to me?”

“I’m not.” Water drips down my forehead. It might be sweat. Both, I think. Definitely both. It’s not cold enough to be one or hot enough to be the other. “I swear. I’m not lying.”

That eyebrow is still raised. I’m not sure it ever lowered. “Are you the Reverend Draco Trepson?”

“Yes.”

“You last legally resided in Midgar, Sector 3, second ring, above Our Lady’s Upturned Chalice Church.”

“Yes.”

“Your church was destroyed a year ago by terrorists and you, its pastor, are the sole survivor.”

“I wasn’t the only one.”

“You are now. Your brother, Wayne, works in our offices as a secretary to Reeve Tuesti.”

“Are you implying that--”

“I’m not implying anything. He can prove he wasn’t present at the attack.”

“But you just said--”

The Turk reaches over to my left wrist, rips clean through the medical tape. Pain like I’ve never felt before sears up my arm, straight to my eyes, and the skin on my arm is pink and raw. So’s my throat. I think I screamed.

“You were cooperative a minute ago,” he says, like he hasn’t just ripped a layer of skin off me, and tosses the strips of tape aside. “Go back to that. Who do you work for?”

“I don’t! I don’t work for anyone, I serve the Goddess and that’s it!” He’s not going to believe me, I know he’s not going to believe me, but it’s the truth.

I don’t want to die here.

He picks up another roll of medical tape, small, nearly empty, and starts wrapping it right on the raw patch of skin on my arm, over and under, over and under. I can only hope that the blood makes it less likely to stick. That thought’s not comforting at all.

“Why were you at the Reactor?” the Turk asks. A little of my blood is on his fingertips.

“I went for a walk.” It sounds asinine even to me. “I wanted--” answers, I was going to say, but that’s not enough. “The people here. They’re all sick. And hurt. There’s something wrong here.”

“It’s a Reactor town,” he says. “Hazard of the trade.”

The exact same words Horton said. And Roan. “But it’s not. Not everyone here works at the Reactor. And they’re still sick.”

“And you want to heal them.”

“Ask Doctor Kalgrey.”

That eyebrow comes up again, sharply enough to dent the mark on his forehead. But this time it sweeps right back down. “You think she’ll vouch for you.”

“I don’t know,” I admit it, “but ask her. I healed her leg before the surgeon got here. The Professor. And she sent me out to see everybody, and they’re hurt. They’re sick. There’s a man with mako poisoning and he can’t be treated with anything else and I get that, but not her. I healed her. She shouldn’t have to get shot up with mako if she wasn’t sick to begin with!”

I said something. I said something that sucked half of the sound out of the room, and the Turk is just staring at me with his arms at his sides and my blood on his fingers. Something drips. Condensation, maybe, from the pitcher. My heart is about to burst out of my chest and the pain in my left arm has dulled to an ache. My bracer is gone. Of course it is, it shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize that with a layer of skin torn off where my armor should be. That was the last Materia from my church. I’m going to die here if he doesn’t believe me. I’m going to die here and he’s going to torture me first. And that’s fine in the long run but not if he’s going to hurt Wayne, not if other people get involved.

I start praying. I shut my eyes, hang my head, and lend voice to every prayer that comes to mind. I know he isn’t listening to me, but She is. She heard me before.

Wait, she says.

If she says anything else, the Turk rips it out of me with a chunk of hair. He yanks up, forces me to look at him. “What did she tell you?”

The Goddess? Kalgrey? I don’t know. Either way, the answer comes out. “Nothing. She barely let me in.”

“That’s not nothing.” He tightens his grip. “Start from the beginning.”

It takes catching my breath, but I do. There’s no point in lying, I haven’t lied, and the truth has to be enough. It would have been enough for me. “I came here to start another church but no one would speak to me. So I talked to Doctor Kalgrey, but she got hurt. Fell off the bridge. She couldn’t make her rounds so she let me do it for her. But she didn’t tell me anything. How can someone not see that there’s something wrong here? I grew up in the slums of Midgar and it’s not like this.”

“Yes, it is,” the Turk says. “You just never looked.”

“Maybe I didn’t,” fine, “but I’m looking now. And that’s all. I went to the Reactor because it couldn’t be just the Reactor making people like this. It couldn’t just be a whole string of accidents. If it was, ShinRa would’ve done something about it.”

He doesn’t lean in, just pulls me a fraction of an inch closer, not suddenly but hard enough that the legs of the chair tilt off the floor. My stomach bottoms out, and nausea lurches up where it used to be. “And you’re asking me to believe that your whole life has been a string of accidents,” he says. “Your brother’s history. Your church. Coming here, getting caught. You want me to believe that you’ve nothing to do with this except supremely bad luck.”

I can’t lie. The answer is only, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

He lets go, and the chair hits the floor, then pitches to the side, taking me with it. I land smack on my arm, and blood smears along the floor.

The Turk pinches the bridge of his nose, as if to stave off a headache. “You must think I’m an idiot.”

“No, no,” I manage, as much because it’s true as because I really don’t want a Turk any angrier with me than he has to be, “I don’t. I know how it sounds. But I’m telling the truth. I just wanted to know what was wrong.”

“And what would you have done when you found out?”

“Fixed it.”

He looks down at me, eyes heavy and dark. Faintly gold. How many people has he stared down like this? How many people has he just outright killed, executed, who’ve been where I am now? But he doesn’t get out a gun or a knife or charge up Materia, just stares, and if I couldn’t blame the fog and sweat and fear I’d wonder if he saw a ghost.

If he does, at least I know it’s not me. Not yet, anyway.

Someone knocks on the door. “Tseng,” whoever’s on the other side says, “sir. Private Renking’s got something to tell you.”

Renking. Ian. I shouldn’t panic, I’ve done nothing wrong and he was only wrong for letting me into the Reactor, but this Turk, Tseng, obviously doesn’t care about that.

Tseng raises his eyebrow at me again, then turns for the door and doesn’t say anything. And leaves, shutting it behind him.

It’s not dark, but the lights aren’t on in here. It’s hard to take stock of where I am but I think this is one of the rooms on the second floor. Yes, it is. There’s Ulfius’s cage.

It’s open. And empty. The rabbit is running free.

This may be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, in a long life of doing stupid things. But I won’t just lie here and do nothing.

“Ulfius,” I whisper. “Ulfius, if you’re in here, come here.”

In the far corner, under the desk, two bright eyes pierce the darkness. Something twitches. Something thumps.

I really hope he understands me. “Help. Please.”

Whether he understands or not, he creeps closer, out of the shadow of the desk. For a second I am dead certain he’s going to bolt, but then he stays. And takes one hop closer.

I thank the Goddess that I’m not Wayne, and rabbits don’t hate me out of hand.

“Please,” I whisper again, because he seems to understand me. I’m definitely delirious. “Go get Kalgrey.”

His ears perk up. But he doesn’t run off, just scuttles closer. Another little hop. I think he’s glaring at me just like Tseng but he isn’t going away. His eyes flash blue--no, that’s just him passing through the ribbon of light under the door. I think.

Somewhere down the hall, someone screams, a raw bubbling sound like a kettle overflowing on a stove. Ulfius twitches but doesn’t spook. He’s almost nose-to-nose with me. I can feel his whiskers, testing me.

The Goddess tells me what to say. I don’t understand it either. But clearly, the rabbit gets something because he makes one more hop, to my bound skinless wrist on the floor, and he bites the medical tape. Once. Twice. Three, four times, a steady gnaw. He definitely gets the skin underneath too a couple of times but that pain is nothing if it means I’m going to be free soon. Whoever is screaming beyond the walls keeps on screaming, and it tapers out to gurgles and whimpers, but Ulfius keeps at it until I can wrest my arm out of the tangle, rip the tape the rest of the way. I immediately go for the other wrist, pull at the tape as much as I can. I didn’t think there’d be this much blood, this little pain, but maybe that’s just adrenaline. It was like that at the church too.

Your brother’s history, Tseng said.

By the time I get my ankles free too, Ulfius is crouching by the door, watching me, at the end of a little trail of bloody footprints. I definitely read a book in which rats saved a gryphon once, and I guess this is like that. I never thought I’d live it. Then again, I never thought I’d see the stars.

“Thank you,” I breathe.

He thumps. Yes, I know, I have to get out.

But not without Kalgrey.

I stagger to the door, get it open, don’t bother to be quiet. Ulfius bolts out, just one room over, to the corner. To Kalgrey’s room. I was right, this was the one next door. Well, at least the rabbit has its priorities straight. I follow him, dart into Kalgrey’s room as soon as the door’s open, Ulfius underfoot.

She isn’t here. The bed’s unmade but empty. The notebook and the phone are on the night table but she isn’t here.

It makes no sense. She can’t walk yet. She said it herself. Which means she’s been taken somewhere, or worse, or something--

The lights in the basement are on. I’m not even there, and I know this.

A splitting headache blasts through my sinuses, worse than the pain in my arm. Noise. Voices. Come. Know. Now. I bite down on my cheek so I don’t scream, don’t get caught, don’t ruin everything.

You know where to go, she says.

Rapaunzel in her tower. The corner room, next to the turret. I’m already here. Rapaunzel, Rapaunzel, let down your hair, so I may climb that golden stair. But this is the second floor, not the first. You can’t get to the basement from the second floor.

Come.

Even before I know what I’m doing, my hands reach out, to the wall where the exposed brick curves. I put my palms against it, at the height of my shoulders. Her shoulders. She’s taller than I am.

And just like in the movies, something gives in the wall, and there’s a staircase down. Dilapidated wooden boards, just like the bridge.

The lights are on. They glow, like the Lifestream, from beneath.

I should run. I should turn tail and leave this town. I have my phone and wallet at least, I don’t have to go back to the tavern for anything else, I bought it all here anyway. I’ll miss the bracer and the Materia on the road but I’ll probably get by without them. I can hitch another ride. Junon. No, somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I take the first step down, and the rest follow. Easy. Steady. Like a train on its tracks.

The stairs spiral down, regular intervals, the same perfect distance. I don’t trip, don’t catch my feet on a single board. There’s no handrail. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even have to brace myself on the mortar of the walls. I remember the walk up to our apartment in Midgar, it was just as much a spiral, just cornered. The haze gets brighter, greener. This isn’t like the room in the Reactor at all, with the redness and the warmth. The only red here is my bleeding arm, and even that is more of a filthy brown in this light, only slightly darker than the stairs, slightly brighter than the stone.

The floor, once the stairs taper off, is the same stone. Not lined, not tiled, just laid in place, more like a street than a floor. Crates line the walls, like a continuation of the stairs, some open, some nailed shut, all ShinRa. The insignia stands out, the same color as the wound in my arm. There’s one door to my left but it’s closed, and the one that’s open is where the light’s coming from, hot and vaguely green.

The shelves are in the center of the room, not against the walls. That’s strange, but it’s even stranger that of all the things that are wrong with this place, that’s the first I notice. The shelves are in the center of the room, stacked with bottles and vials and tubes, sharps, red canisters for waste disposal, jars, and the specimens in them, and yes it’s strange, but I really should have seen Ian strapped to a table first.

Or the vertical tanks against the far wall, filled with mako and monitors and one man each. I should have noticed that first.

The one on my left, with unruly black hair, opens his eyes. They’re like Kalgrey’s.

Should doesn’t matter anymore.

The Professor looks up from whatever in the Goddess’s name he’s doing to Ian, straight at me. “You’re early,” he says, vague amusement prickling through his tone.

I don’t run. I don’t move. I breathe, but that’s about it. “What are you doing?” I ask, or mostly ask, I’m not sure it comes out a question at all.

Why should it? I have my answer.

“That’s not your concern,” the Professor says. “And you wouldn’t understand if I told you.”

“What are you doing to all these people,” I try. I can’t stop.

He scoffs. “Stop wasting my time.”

“They’re--” I can’t even say it, I don’t even know what I mean to say, I just know that it’s wrong. All of this is wrong. “You’re putting mako in these people.”

“Did you only just figure that out?” He rolls his eyes, sharp enough that the glasses white them out. No, not white, green, so much of the light in here is sickly and green. “It seems she was right. You’re just an idiot.”

I can’t help but choke out, “She,” even if I already know.

The stone floor clanks behind me, and Kalgrey limps into the doorframe, her left leg in a brace. Veins of a deep, unnatural green shimmer under the cloth of her pants. She looks me in the eyes, but speaks to the Professor, like I’m not here at all.

“He deserved the chance to leave,” she says.

“Sentimentality has no place here.” He tightens something on Ian’s arm, enough that he’d scream if he were conscious. He’s not. Goddess, his chest is already lit up from underneath, electric red like his hair--

The door clicks shut, and Kalgrey comes the rest of the way in. There’s no strain on her face, no tension, just a persistent resignation that might be sadness if I could focus, but I can’t.

The Professor flips a switch, which does nothing I can see, and goes on, “But you knew he wouldn’t take it.”

She nods. “They’re connected. Not knowing who he worships doesn’t mean he can’t hear her. Of course he’d stay. I told you.”

“So you think it’s already present in him.”

“Not biologically. I don’t think. Not the cells. But an innate connection would explain why he was drawn here. And to the Reactor, both times. And why he’s staying.” She picks up a vial from the shelf--a small one, just like the ones I injected into Enzo and Roan and--

“Doctor Kalgrey.” I can’t believe how weak I sound, how drained.

She doesn’t hear me. She fills the syringe easily, efficiently, and injects it into Ian’s arm. It doesn’t take long to find a vein, not how they’re glowing. He shudders, jumps in his restraints, like he’s in the back of an ambulance, clear. She studies his face, looking for something. Stacking him up. Measuring him, like she did with me.

She knows my face. She already knew it, didn’t she. She said she should have known.

The Professor types something onto a phone, then starts unstrapping Ian’s body from the table. Then he looks at me again, as if he expects me to help. “Well? What is She telling you to do?”

My hand falls to my side, and my blood splatters on the floor. I left a trail, I could follow it out. Back up the stairs, out the door, to the road.

But She is telling me to stay. To come, and stay. To be with her. To be home, and safe, and free.

It’s impossible to be both safe and free.

Loved, then, She says.

“Interesting,” the Professor says. He skulks up to me, looks up through the strings of his hair. I don’t move. I can’t move. My arms just hang like so much meat. “Are you certain he isn’t like you?”

“Very,” Kalgrey says. “He wouldn’t be immune.” She glances back at Ian, the table, the vials. “He’s a strong mage. That’s it.”

“Excellent.” He holds out his hand to her, dispassionately.

She’s supposed to put a syringe in it.

She doesn’t. Something holds her attention, her eyes. They weren’t always blue, I can tell. There’s grey in them, under the sheen, the mako in her system. Immune. She can’t be poisoned. She has it running through her even now, and she can’t be poisoned, it just needs to settle.

You know the dead ones when you see them.

No. No, you don’t.

The Professor thrusts out his hand again, impatient. “What, now, you want a choice too?”

“I always had one,” she says, quietly, but it still echoes like laughter in my ears.

The Professor tsks, and the phantom laughter stops. “You of all people should know that choice is an illusion.”

Searing pain fills my head, and I can’t even lift my hands to my ears to drive it out.

Kalgrey still doesn’t pick up the syringe. She comes around the table, limps into my space. Looks into my eyes, level and cold.

I’d shout, Please, if I could, but it comes out a whisper.

The grey sheen over the chemical blue of her eyes is water. Tears that won’t fall.

She reaches into my pocket, ignores all the blood on my jeans, and takes my phone out.

“His brother is in Midgar,” she says, and drops the phone into the Professor’s outstretched hand. “You’ve wanted to do a twin study for a while and the Turks owe you a favor.”

I never told her I was a twin. I never told her I was a twin. I never told her I was a twin.

I knew, She says. Or she says. It no longer matters.

After all the terror I’ve felt today, all the pain I’ve fought against this week--all the loneliness of the road, all the despair at losing my home and my church--all the madness in this town, and the weakness I’m feeling right now when my body isn’t my own--after all that, I didn’t think I could experience anything more hateful.

I have. I never want to see the Professor smile again.

And I know I’ll be seeing it for the rest of my life.