Nobody knows where he has gone
Through his white bones when they grow bare
The wind shall blow forever more.
-- "Twa Corbies" (Scottish Folk Ballad)

Four and Twenty Blackbirds
I. The End of the Beginning
First Trimester
June-August

The planet cried aloud, and its guardians heard its voice.

The Cetra of Knowlespole heard the cry, and the Elders met to discover the cause. Dozens of the brightest, most receptive Cetra gathered together, joining their minds and speaking with the Planet. They heard the anguish, and wished to bring surcease, to heal the Planet's pain.

And slowly, as they stilled their voices and opened their hearts, the Planet spoke to them.

Something had fallen from the sky, blazing through the heavens to rend the surface of the earth. Something had hurt the Planet, and the Planet wept in pain.

Thousands of Cetra came to Knowlespole, to join together their knowledge. Thousands of Cetra drew together, trying to heal the wound. But the Planet resisted, for it had been badly injured, and withdrew upon itself, not trusting its caretakers to have the power needed to heal the damage.

The Cetra, though used to such vagaries from the spirit of the world they served, were worried, for the damage to the planet was more severe than anything they had seen before. The Planet required a portion of the life-force energy of everything that had been born, grown, and died upon the world; the Cetra desperately tried to cultivate the land, renouncing their small magics that had drained that energy in times when it had been plentiful, changing their lifestyles to allow the anet all that it needed to heal. The area around Knowlespole became frozen, barely habitable; the snow spread slowly down ft wound, the world chilling and freezing as the Lifestream of life-energy was diverted to provide nurturing for the injured world.

As the seasons shifted, the planet wept, and the Cetra mourned, hearing that lamentation.

It was then that it appeared.

It wore the faces of the dead: dead mothers, brothers, sons. Each of the Cetra saw it differently, heard it speak in a different voice. It came in peace, first whispering its words into willing ears, breathing its poisons into gladdened hearts. The Cetra simply saw that their loved ones had returned, and did not question the method of that return.

The virus that it carried entered the Cetra with no resistance. Madness first, then mutation; the fever ran through the blood of the Cetra, turning them into monsters that attacked without thought of consequence. It spread rapidly; everything it touched, it destroyed. The crisis from the sky had fallen, and showed no mercy.

The Planet, upon seeing its guardians insane and suffering, knew that it had to act, to destroy the threat to its people. As long as the intruder existed, the Planet would not be able to fully heal, for the stranger brought with it more crisis, more calamity. And slowly, the Planet gathered its will, and produced what was up until then Anathema on the peaceful world:

Weapon.

Weapon was created by the life of the Planet, nurtured by its blood, formed by its will. Once it was complete, however, it was no longer needed. A small band of the surviving Cetra had defeated the crisis from the sky, confining it, trapping it in layers of ice and rock at the very edge of the snowy regions. But Weapon, once brought forth, could not be un-made, and so it slept.

The crisis from the sky slept as well. But one day, it would wake again. And the Planet watched, powerless as the last of its chosen people suffered, and tried to heal.

"Simon."

Hojo's head jerked up at the sound of his name; almost guiltily, he dropped the pencil he'd been holding as he focused back in on the room. "Yes, dear," he answered, turning in the seat to look at his wife.

His wife. The thought still had the power to sober him; even now, watching her smile gently at him from across the room they shared, his breath was taken away by her form, her eyes. This creature of beauty and intelligence had chosen him, had stood by his side and pledged to have and to hold -- the idea still bewildered. He couldn't help but watch as one slender hand rose to tuck a lock of chestnut hair behind one shapely ear, and she chuckled at his bemused expression. "Simon, you look like you've been caught with your hand in the cookie jar again. What are you doing up here? Rodger is asking about you."

Hojo looked down at the paper on the desk beneath him; the bold pencil lines of a sketch stared back. A bird, black-winged, claws curled around a gnarled and dying branch ... He shook his head to clear it, and returned Lucrecia's smile. "Just some paperwork, love," he replied; "I didn't feel like braving those stairs quite yet."

Lucrecia smiled back at him. "Well, don't take too long, all right? There were some irregularities in the F-13 samples, and I'd like to have a second pair of eyes." Selfconsciously, she smoothed her trim jacket down over her stomach, the stomach that would not yet begin to show signs of her pregnancy for some many weeks. "And honestly, Rodger's in a mood and I don't want to be down there alone with him longer than I need to be."

Hojo chuckled a little, and nodded. "All right. I'll be down ... soon." He couldn't quite figure out what it was that kept him so reluctant to descend those stairs. Perhaps a sense of foreboding, perhaps an innate and newly-found aversion to the smell of dozens of seperate chemicals all layered on top of each other. Whatever it was, it had sent him up here to work on his blasted paperwork, rather than downstairs at his usual desk; here, at least, he would be free of the flaring tempers. He turned over the sheet of paper that he had been drawing on, barely noticing as the pencils smudged, and picked up the first sheet of the requisition forms he needed to fill out; Lucrecia crossed the room with graceful, easy strides and rested her hands on his shoulders from behind, briefly.

"You work too much, Simon," she chided, lightly, laughingly. Her thumbs dug into the muscles of his shoulderblades, and he let out a small, soft moan as the tension that he barely noticed suddenly chose that moment to nearly cripple him. "Don't think I didn't notice you up all night in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the project."

He had been up most of the night because of the dreams, the dreams where that distant voice whispered everything that he'd ever wanted to know just outside of the reach of what he could hear -- but he could not tell her that, not now. Rather, he chose gentle teasing: "I work too much, Lucrecia?" he said, letting his head drop backwards against her chest and smiling up at her. "Allow me to introduce you to my friend, Sir Kettle. He's black."

Lucrecia laughed, a merry sound. "Message received," she said. "We both work too much. And if you will excuse me, I shall be going back to my overwork, leaving you to sit up here and stare out the window while you should be processing paperwork." With an affectionate smile and one last gentle squeeze of her hands, she left the room, tugging on his ponytail as she went.

Left alone, Hojo picked up the pencil to return to filling out forms. Outside the window, the bird that he had been using as a model -- a single crow -- picked up a foot, set it back down again, and cawed harshly. Had Hojo remembered the old children's counting rhyme, perhaps he would have found the morning a bit more disturbing.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Bootheels sounded their staccato tattoo on floors of stone; Hojo's breath sounded too loudly in his ears as he walked. All else was silence and desertion. Underneath his heels, he felt the crunch of shattered glass grind itself into the floor.

Nothing stirred. Here, a chair sprawled on its side, turned over impotently; there, a panel of the overhead ventilation swung back and forth, connected with only one remaining screw, oddly making no noise as it dangled. Bared wires sparked electricity as he crossed; the sparks fell into pools of brightly-colored solvents spilling from jars and flasks that had fallen.

The lab was in ruin.

Here, someone slumped over a microscope; there, glassy eyes stared out from a body lying crumped against the wall. With curious detachment, Hojo noted the flecks of blood on the shards of a beaker that rested at its elbow, the rivulets of scarlet that had run from the wounds to the wrist. Madness, then; madness with swift onset and swifter consequences. His steps took on a measure of urgency as he picked his way through the ruined rooms that he had come to regard as a second home.

Lucrecia.

Lucrecia was here somewhere, he knew that much, and she was lying somewhere in the madness and the desolation -- perhaps bleeding, perhaps needing his help, perhaps waiting for him to discover her and save her, save her from this madness --

Perhaps, though he would not think about it, already dead.

As he rounded the corner, he came upon the specimen tank, the fog-filled glass in which Jenova had resided. The tank was shattered, empty. The specimen was nowhere to be seen; marks of slime trailed on the floor, leading back towards the lab, towards the site of the madness. As he stopped, lifting a hand to his face to push his glasses back up his nose, he could swear that he heard light, feminine laughter.

And he woke, drenched and shaking, unable to even reach for Lucrecia slumbering beside him; the sunrise had painted the sky an imperial violet before he could feel his breathing calm.

Rodger Gast's voice was not the voice of command; it was not strong, nor was it compelling. But for the assembled lab technicians and assorted science students, it was the voice of authority, and as such, it was given gravity. Hojo smiled, just a little, as he let himself into the lab; he was, as usual, quite late for the weekly meeting.

"--Rob, I'd appreciate it if you would spend the week working with Lucrecia; she'll need some assistance in her work with the sequencing of the genome. Meanwhile -- Ah, Simon, so good to see you've decided to stop in." Gast's tone was dry as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

Hojo smirked, just a little, as he passed the fringes of the gathering and slid up to sit on one of the lab counters, plucking the pen out of its usual home in his ponytail and settling his clipboard on his lap. "My invitation must have gotten lost in the intra-company mail," he deadpanned, mirroring Gast's gesture half-mockingly, though his heart wasn't in the usual game. Lucrecia frowned at him, lightly, and mouthed the word "Behave" across the room; he smiled a little more, more genuinely this time.

Gast chose to let the barb pass; he continued his list of assignments, as if Hojo hadn't interrupted at all. "Kate, your work with the geological strata that the specimen was found in is excellent; I do believe that we're beginning to see results. Let me know if you feel you need more resources --"

Hojo tuned Gast out; the weekly roster of duties was nothing he had not heard a hundred times before.. As was his habit when he was trapped in a meeting, his pen began to move on the clipboard, sketching idly. Usually, it was humorous; indeed, his cartoons and caricatures adorned many of the walls in the lab, everything from sharp satire to gentle barbs at himself and his coworkers. Yet this morning, the figure that took shape beneath his pen held a strange foreboding -- this line filled in the shadow of the main specimen tank, those shadings left no doubt that it was empty. Broken.

Broken, like his dream, like the dream that had shocked him awake for nearly a month now, ever since he had begun to hear the laughter --

"Simon?"

Once more, as was beginning to become all too common, Hojo was yanked out of thought, this time to find Gast standing next to him, eyebrows drawn together. "Are you all right? I've called your name twice already."

Belatedly, Hojo looked around; the staff had dispersed back to their workstations, chattering brightly, more than ready to face the prospect of another Monday. "Yes," he said, slowly, his voice sounding odd in his own ears. "Yes, Rodger, I'm fine. Sorry. I just -- fuzzed out for a minute there --" (Silent, mocking laughter echoed in memory, or was it memory at all?)

Gast's expression of irritation faded to one of concern. "Really, Simon, have you been working too hard again? I know that you never listen to me in staff meetings, but I wouldn't expect you to sit through the end of one. Today's cartoon must be exceptionally engrossing."

Quickly, Hojo flipped the page over; something deep within him whispered that Gast should not see. "It's nothing," he said, and ran an unsteady hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, Rodger. It's -- it's been a long few weeks, what with finishing up the last pieces of the genetic engineering on Lucrecia's pregnancy. I'm not all here right now."

Gast was the first to admit that he was not an observant man, not when it came to things outside of his specialty; perhaps that was why he did a double-take, truly seeing Hojo for the first time in weeks. "Good Gods, man," he couldn't help but exclaim. "You really aren't all right, are you; you look worse than you did the night before the Organic Chem final. Have you been sleeping?" Concerned -- for he was, at heart, a caring man, despite any of his other flaws -- he lifted a hand to Hojo's elbow.

"No," Hojo admitted, finally, taking a shaky breath. "Not much. As I said, it's been a long few weeks. We're so close to a few breakthroughs, I can almost feel it. And --" /And I've been dreaming of the end of this project, Rodger. I've been seeing you all dead, night after night, and knowing that I was the only one left. I've been hearing things in my sleep that would make your blood run cold, and if I told you about them, you'd begin to doubt my sanity more than you already do./ "And I've just been having some bizarre dreams," he finished, impotently, and scowled at the clipboard as if it could be blamed.

Gast actually unbent enough to sit up on the lab counter next to Hojo; despite all of his adherence to 'proper lab behaviour', there was still a streak of rebellious student in him, too. "Dreams?" he asked, thoughtfully. "What kind of dreams?"

"Bad ones," Hojo said, shortly, and dropped the clipboard on the counter with a resounding crack. "I don't want to talk about them. I don't want to give them the validation of the light of day."

Once more, Gast's eyebrows drew together, but he shrugged. "I think we're all having odd dreams," he said, his voice holding a note of dismissal. "It must come from the stress. I do have some good news, though." Taking Hojo's small gesture as a signal to go on, he continued. "I received a message from Jon Shinra this morning, and I think that we've finally convinced him that no, we're not going to get the specimen to shit golden bricks and build fighter jets while we sleep." That did bring a chuckle from Hojo; Gast's sense of humor shone through at the strangest times. "He is, however, beginning to accept that what we're doing here has scientific value, and I doubt that funding will be a problem for a while."

Hojo nodded. "That is good news," he agreed. "I was almost certain that we'd be seeing some budget cuts in the upcoming quarter."

Gast nodded in return. "It doesn't look like things will be that serious, yet," he said, happily. "We've at least all got jobs through to the end of the fiscal year, and there's no plans to cut the company benefits. Which reminds me, I gave Lucrecia her latest OB-GYN this morning, and all looks to be proceeding quite smoothly. I must admit, I was mildly concerned about the potential RH-compatibility issues, but it looks like that part of the project is going to work out wonderfully."

Irritated, Hojo snapped, "Of course it will. I spent months working through that; do you think that I would subject my wife to an experimental procedure unless I was certain that it would be safe? What kind of a monster do you think I am, Rodger?" Stung, Gast drew back. "Of course I did not mean to suggest anything of the like," he said, retreating behind his customary formality. "You will, however, have to admit that with a procedure that is so untested --"

Hojo lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, where the glasses left their mark. "Of course," he interrupted. "I'm sorry, Rodger. I really am --"

::Mad, going mad, you are going mad and you shall take them all with you; you are Mine, My child, My lover, My pawn, and I am your salvation::

"--under more stress than I thought I was. I didn't mean to snap at you." He forced a smile, through the haunting, imagined whispers calling him to listen. "That is indeed good news. She's handling it well, too, isn't she?"

Gast was only slightly mollified, but he returned the smile. "She is. She's showing signs of potential anemia, but that's to be expected; I've given thought to setting forth a much stricter diet, perhaps taking her off the vegetarian diet for the length of her pregnancy, but it shouldn't be necessary. Do make sure that she eats, though, Simon. I'm certain that she'll listen to you more readily than she would to me." Gast smiled again; this time it was more genuine. "And get some sleep, will you? It simply won't do to have the right-hand scientist passing out over his microscope from exhaustion."

//mutely, the glassy eyes of the technician stared accusingly back upwards at him, microscope turned on its side and smashed beyond repair--//

Hojo winced. "Yes, Rodger," he said, softly.

Gast clapped him lightly on the back. "You look terribly distracted," he said, amused. "Am I that boring?" "No, that's not it. It's just --" /Now or never, and he had mentioned the dreams.../ "Do you hear something in here? Something that sounds like -- like voices, or laughter?"

Puzzled, Gast frowned. "Not really," he said, after a moment's listening. "Perhaps it's the wind in the air vents again. This is an old building, you know."

::He hears My voice, but you are the only one to hear My words.:: Once more Hojo shook his head, to dislodge the whispers, but they refused to abandon him. "You're probably right," he said, with a little sigh. "You're probably right."

"Open up and say aaah," Hojo suggested, dryly. Lucrecia gave him a tolerant look from her perch on the metal exam counter, where she clutched her dignity and the flimsy pieces of the hospital gown around her like armor.

"Why don't I just make you say ouch," she quipped back at him, raising one eyebrow archly. "Honestly, Simon, why is it that these gowns are designed to show every square inch of skin possible?"

"Perhaps whoever designed them was simply a dirty old man who never got the chance to see naked female flesh otherwise. Now open up and say aaah." Hojo waved the tongue depressor menacingly before her, his eyes amused; it was an old game. "Otherwise I'll simply have to go and get three husky orderlies to hold you down."

"We don't have three husky orderlies," Lucrecia replied, but she goodnaturedly complied with his request, sticking out her tongue at him and letting him examine her. He shone the tiny penlight down her throat for a few seconds, and then, satisfied, clicked it off.

"We do have your puppydog," he couldn't resist pointing out, as he dropped the stick of wood in the garbage can and made a few notes on the clipboard. "I'm certain that he could make himself useful. I certainly haven't found any other use for him." The Turk had attached himself to Lucrecia nearly instantly upon arrival; it was only, Hojo felt, the fact that Lucrecia wore his ring that kept the puppy from disgracing himself. The fact that Lucrecia tolerated him as much as she did still rankled.

Lucrecia wrinkled her nose. "Oh, not again," she said, with a faint scowl. "We've been over this how many times before? Be nice. He's harmless, and you know it. Honestly, Simon, I'm getting quite sick of this. One would think that you were jealous."

Casually, Hojo picked up the stethoscope and draped it around his neck. "One might very well be correct," he said, forcing a tone of lightness into his voice. ::Make her yours, make her yours and make sure that she cannot escape, for she is destined to belong to you just as you are destined to belong to Me; there is no escaping destiny.:: The voice crooned in his ears, so loudly that he was sure she must hear it. "I just don't like the fact that he seems to follow you around like that. It makes me wonder."

"Are you saying that you don't trust me?" Now, she truly was annoyed; there was none of their usual banter to her irritation. "Do you think that little of me, Simon?"

::Yes::. Hojo shook his head in what was beginning to be a familiar gesture, the short brief jerk of a dog trying to clear water out of its ears. "No, not at all. Not at all -- it's just that I find him vastly irritating. You are my wife, after all, and he should not be paying you so much attent --"

"Thank you, Simon." The tone in her voice boded ill; of that much, Hojo was certain. "That will be quite enough. I am sick and tired of you viewing the most innocent activity with suspicion; I am even more sick of having you questioning my judgment, loyalty, and faithfulness. If you will excuse me, I think that I shall get back to my work. If you decide to trust me enough to allow me near your specimen, that is." Her chin tipped up, pridefully, as she looked him in the eye. "Oh, I forgot. I am one of the specimens now, aren't I? Are you quite finished with me, then?"

"Lucrecia, I didn't mean --" But she was gone already, trailing ice and dignity behind her as she stepped out into the lab clutching her clothing to her chest. Left alone in the treatment room, Hojo sighed and folded his arms on the table, resting his forehead against the cool metal.

Dammit, Lucrecia, I didn't mean to come off sounding like that. That's not what I meant, not at all --

::Let her go. She will return to you; it is best you turn your energies elsewhere.::

Tempers in the laboratory were once more running mercurial: hot and cold at a moment's notice, with nearly everyone snapping at the slightest provocation. It was not the most hostile work environment Hojo had ever enjoyed, but it was beginning to come close. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, letting his glasses slide further downwards over his fingers until they were more of an annoyance than an aid in vision, and shook his head. It was, overall, beginning to remind him of a war zone.

He was not even certain why things were so tense; the project was going well. They had discovered more about the specimen than they ever had a right to, really; sometimes, he really did believe that he was blessed to live in such interesting times. Lucrecia and he were arguing, certainly, but that was only to be expected; her body was, after all, undergoing a great many hormonal changes, not to mention the effects of the various therapies they were using to ensure that the embryo that had been implanted would not decide to reject the host, or vice versa. Overall, it had been a rather stressful set of weeks. The dreams certainly did not help...

"Doc?" The voice belonged to one of the lab technicians, a reedy, pale young man who reminded Hojo all too much of himself straight out of college: enthusiastic, with a devotion to science burning almost brightly enough to see and a wicked sense of humor that usually shone through exactly at the wrong moments. His face softened as he looked up, as it always did.

"Yes, Kevin?" He frowned a little at the look on Kevin's face, an utterly uncharacteristic somber gaze.

"Doc, you ... ah, you might wanna come take a look at this. I don't know if someone did this on purpose, but ..." The tech took a few steps backwards, as if he feared being the bearer of bad news. "I don't wanna touch anything until I let you or Dr. Gast see."

Hojo frowned more; what could be so difficult? But he nodded, and stood up, the ever-present clipboard in one hand. "What is it?"

Another few steps backwards, and then Kevin turned around. "C'mon, I'll show you." Nervously, stepping as if he were afraid that the floor itself would rise up and smite him, he led Hojo to the back of the lab, where the younger technicians usually set up their work. "I came down here about fifteen minutes ago," he confessed over his shoulder, not quite looking where he was going. "Got my cup of coffee -- we really have to scrub out the machine, I think it's gotten confused with the chemical wash again -- and came over here -- and I saw ... well, I saw this." He stopped at the door to the other room and gestured for Hojo to look in.

//the lab broken and abandoned, shards of glass lying everywhere, no motion but the rise and fall of his chest as he gasped lightly; chemicals and beverages spilled on the floor merged together into one unpalatable mass, staining the concrete and shimmering lightly in the faint, uncertain light from the broken overhead fixtures...//

"Doc?" Kevin's voice penetrated the dreamscape, and Hojo shook his head to clear it, quickly; he looked again to ascertain that he was not, indeed, seeing a scene from his recurring dream. No; the chemical stores had indeed been raided, and been raided with malice. A pool of liquid hissed in the center of the formica counter, islands of barely-dissolved powders rose from the puddle, with bottles casually tossed aside on the floor, on the counter, on the chairs. In all, it was a rather thorough piece of destruction. From what Hojo could see of the labels on the bottles, the mysterious vandal had chosen mostly the supplies that they used most often -- supplies whose lack would halt the project for hours, perhaps days.

His voice was tight as he turned back to Kevin, his orders terse. "Get out of here and turn up the ventilation system. I want breather masks in here before any of us go in there to clean up, just in case, and get someone into the stockroom to inventory what's left and what we've lost. Don't let Lucrecia come anywhere near this side of the laboratory; I don't want her exposed to this mess." He gave no explanation for that order; none of the technicians knew yet that Lucrecia was pregnant, that the project had moved onto the next stage. "I'll take care of cleanup in here. And for Ramuh's sake go find the Turk and send him to me; I would be terribly curious to see how this came to happen when he was the one who designed the so-called security for this lab after the last little incident." His eyes flicked back up to the ruin in the small workroom, narrowing as they took in the destruction. "And don't breathe over here if you can help it. I have no idea what's in this mess, or how dangerous it is."

Kevin's eyes widened a little at the tone, but he nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed back the immediate comment. "All -- all right, sir," he stammered out, and turned, nearly tripping over his feet as he hastened to carry out the orders.

Left alone, Hojo frowned, looking into the little room from the hallway. Such waste and destruction offended his sense of order; more than that, it disturbed him, seeing this scene from his dream taken flesh and spread out before him. He wondered, briefly, if his madness was contagious. If the entire project had been infected with the dream that would not leave him be...

No, he would not think of that. Better by far to pass it off as coincidence, and once more call it a moment of isolated malice. Valentine would hear about this, and it was his problem from here. If he could distract himself from Lucrecia long enough to contemplate it, of course.

Unnoticed as Hojo turned to go, the pool of acids moved, slightly, as the sea might move when a storm was on the horizon.

"Sir, I honestly do not know." Vincent Valentine, one of the members of Shinra's Department of Administrative Research who had been assigned to the Jenova Project, was not a man who admitted defeat lightly; the fact that he had to admit it now bothered him. He stared straight ahead, standing stiffly in front of Gast's desk. "The security measures have been in place for months now, and there have been no signs of difficulty. No alarms were raised, and there were no signs of a breakin; no one admits to hearing a disturbance. With all due respect, sir, I would postulate that this had to be an accident that no one is owning up to." He paused. "Or deliberate sabotage. Are you certain that none of the technicians or other assorted members of the project would do such a thing?"

From his vantage point, sitting perched on the top shelf of Gast's low bookshelves, Hojo snorted derisively. "Is that what they teach you in Turks school, Valentine?" he asked, scornfully. "Looking for the easy answer, rather than the right one? I thought you'd spoken with each member of the project the last time we'd had one of these little difficulties."

A single muscle twitched in Vincent's jaw, but he didn't react outwardly. "We cannot rule out the possibility, Doctor," he said, his tone cool; the honorific somehow sounded like an insult. "Not everyone is as enthused by science as you are; it is more than possible that some member of your precious project has decided that what you are accomplishing here is worth stopping. It's my job to discover just who it is." His eyes flicked back to Gast, who was sitting behind the desk, listening to the exchange. "With your permission, Dr. Gast, I will continue my investigations." Without waiting for permission to leave, he turned and departed, his stance almost military.

"You know," Hojo said, almost mildly as Vincent left, "I could really grow to dislike that man very quickly."

Gast chuckled, just a little, more out of habit than amusement. "You and he are rather like sodium and water, yes," he said, wearily. "I do wish that you would avoid antagonizing him unnecessarily. I'm not supposed to have to mediate arguments between the right-hand scientist and the head thug, Simon."

A faint smirk crossed Hojo's face. "I don't like him," he said, shortly. "I don't like him at all. I don't like the way he looks at Lucrecia, I don't like the fact that he always seems to be laughing at us all behind our backs, and I particularly don't like the fact that he is an uninspired, orders-following, soulless monkey." He drummed his fingers on the desk, absently. "Other than that, I am certain that he's a model person who always writes home to his mother on Sundays, but I would prefer that he not do so from my laboratory."

"Your laboratory?" Gast's eyes narrowed, just a little, at the tone in Hojo's voice; he too was beginning to feel the tension of the labs. "I will remind you, Simon, that there are others of us who work here. There are indeed others of us who are nominally in charge of the project."

Hojo waved a hand in dismissal. "Our laboratory, then. It's not important. Rodger, can you honestly tell me that you don't think that he's a disruptive influence? I've had more than one of the techs complain to me that he just lurks in the doorway, watching them. It drives them mad." He tried to avoid the implication that he was much more in tune with the lab techs than Gast was, but he knew it to be true. Gast was the enforcer of rules, while Hojo was the doctor who would sit on the lab counters and talk with them about their girlfriends and what kind of music they listened to. Gast was the head of the project, while Hojo was just another worker who happened to, almost incidentally, be partially in charge. It made a big difference; what they would not think twice of bringing to Hojo, Gast would never hear.

"No matter," Gast said, a bit abruptly. "Jon Shinra wants us to have a guard, so a guard we have. I would suggest that you learn to work with him, Simon, as he is certainly not going away." He paused, and then added, "And if I were you, I would not pressure the matter of his friendship with Lucrecia. You and she are on thin ice at the moment, are you not." It was not a question.

Hojo made a small soft noise of irritation. "That's truly none of your business, Rodger," he said, fighting to keep the terseness out of his tone. "She and I are working things out on our own; we do not need outside help."

Gast drew back, slightly stung. "If you choose to act that way," he said, coolly, "then by all means. I simply do not wish to have a domestic dispute interfering with my project, particularly when one of the participants happens to be the host-mother for the test subject."

"Oh, pull the stick out of your ass, Rodger," Hojo snapped. "She's my wife, they're our problems, and we're dealing with them just fine. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go inquire about the progress of the clean-up." He vaulted off the desk and landed lightly on his feet, picking up the clipboard and stalking off without a further word.

The first thing that graced his vision when he exited Gast's office was Vincent, deep in conversation with Lucrecia. His wife was smiling at something he'd said, one hand lightly resting on Vincent's elbow in friendship or camaraderie. Hojo could feel his back teeth gritting as Vincent smiled in return, nodding his head; their voices carried over the cacophony as if he had been standing next to them. ::He is touching your woman,:: the voice hissed in the back of his brain, ignoring the fact that, technically, Lucrecia was the one doing the touching. ::Go. Take him and teach him, show him that she is yours, that she is ours...:: But some small shred of restraint made him stall, and it was enough so that their voices reached his ears.

"--shouldn't taunt Simon," Lucrecia was saying, lightly, almost chidingly. "He's under a great deal of stress right now, and sometimes that spills over into his interpersonal relationships. I understand that; why can't you?"

"You shouldn't let him treat you like that," Vincent said, softly, his eyes revealing far too much to anyone who happened to be looking with the right vision. "You don't deserve it, and you shouldn't stand for it."

Lucrecia laughed, a little sound that rang out over the lab like bells, turning heads left and right. She did not notice. "Oh, Vincent, you're so ready to see oppression around every corner. He just snaps at me when he needs to snap at something, and I do the same. Honestly, you should hear some of the things that I've said to him." One hand lifted to rest almost protectively on her stomach, which was still flat, revealing no sign of her pregnancy. "I can take care of myself. Really, it's worse hearing the two of you arguing. I'm always worried that one of you is going to do something terrible to the other."

Vincent's eyes grew dark. "I won't touch him," he said, his voice a low vow, "unless he touches you."

Once more, Lucrecia laughed. "Always the white knight," she teased, affectionately. "Don't worry, really. Whenever he gets too ogreish, I simply whap him on the nose with a rolled-up lab report, and he gives me those puppy-dog eyes and all is well again." She smiled, warmly. "Now, please promise me that you'll behave."

Still unnoticed, leaning against the wall next to the door to Gast's office, Hojo smiled. Perhaps he was a little too much on edge lately, he mused; perhaps he had been too harsh on Lucrecia recently. He would keep an eye on that. And now that he thought about it, she definitely deserved flowers at the very least.

Once more, he walked the laboratory in the night; once more, he knew that he was dreaming. But this dream was different. The lab was full of activity, noise, and motion; a staff larger than anything he had ever dreamed of supervising moved through the hallways, one of them even bumping into him and hastily apologizing before moving off. The soft hum of electrical equipment provided a mild counterpoint to the muted strains of good old guitar rock drifting from one of the labs. He remembered reading, once, that you never truly heard things in dreams, but he could hear this: keyboards, drums, and over it all, a whiskey-soaked voice roughing in the vocals. He could hear it, and he did not know why, for it was a familiar song, but not one he had ever truly cared for.

//...And so she woke up from where she was lying still. Said we got to do something about where we're going. Step on a steam train, step out of the driving rain, maybe run from the darkness in the night...//

He studied the hallways as he moved through them; unlike the other dreams, the setting was not familiar, not the building he spent his waking life in. A window looked out over Midgar, and he was distracted for a moment, breathlessly, at the sight of the plates spreading down beneath him. The Shinra Tower. It had to be; that was the only building that dared to reach this high, almost as if they were daring the gods by trying to reach the heavens...

//...Sweet the sin, but bitter the taste in my mouth. I see seven towers, but I only see one way out. You got to cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice...//

And indeed, he wanted to speak, but could not open his mouth; he wanted to scream, to rage, to disrupt the routine of a lab that was not his, that would not be his, that could not yet be his ... and all that he could hear, as he paused in front of that window and looked down over the dizzying heights, was the music that would never be heard in a lab where Gast prohibited distractions such as rock music. And he wondered, with a sudden, dazed panic, whether this was something he was merely dreaming, or something that would come to pass someday. Wondered just how he had gotten here, and what this dream-realm was trying to tell him.

//...I took the poison, from the poison stream, then I floated out of here...//

As he turned from the window to survey the rest of the hallway -- noticing for the first time the low lighting, the dark atmosphere -- he could have sworn he heard low, feminine laughter -- the same laughter that was beginning to haunt his waking moments, the same laughter that he could never find an explanation for. His ears burned; he became uncomfortably conscious of the tightness across his chest. Another step forward, and then another; the tile underfoot reflected the sound of his footfalls, until he stopped with his hand on a doorknob. Something dark and twisted crooned in the back of his head, and an unspeakable dread filled his bones; but he was a scientist, and he feared nothing that his own mind could throw at him, and the door opened.

//...She runs through the streets with her eyes painted red, under black belly of cloud in the rain; in through a doorway she brings me white gold and pearls, stolen from the sea...//

The face looking back at him was his own. A few years were added, a few lines were drawn; the hair was close-cropped, the eyes ... haunted. His older self looked up, and smiled a needle-thin, rapier smile. "So you come to walk the laboratory that your actions will buy you, have you not? Look around you, Simon. Look around you, and bide your time."

He looked back at the other, and noticed, with a strange dreamlike clarity, that there was no wedding ring on his duplicate's finger. "Where is Lucrecia?" he asked, softly, his voice echoing the other's -- and with that, he knew once more it was a dream, for the other spoke not in the voice that he had heard in recordings of himself, but the voice that he heard in his own ears.

"Lucrecia?" His older self's lips curved, in a mockery of amusement. "You do not need her anymore. You have found a lover that is far more fitting of your genius."

//..She is raging, she is raging, and the storm blows up in her eyes. She will suffer the needle chill; she is running to stand still.//

It was when the first of the interns congratulated Hojo shyly on his impending fatherhood that he realized their hope of keeping it quiet was drawing to a close; they would need to make a formal announcement soon. For some reason, he had shied away from declaring to all and sundry that Lucrecia was pregnant; only he and Gast knew. And Lucrecia, of course. She had wryly commented, one morning, that the secret would be out sooner than expected if she proved to suffer from morning sickness and had to rush out of meetings; Hojo had simply quipped back that Rodger's staff meetings even made well men wish to run for the bathrooms. It had been a moment of shared lightness that was all too rare these days.

So: as the first trimester drew to a close, so too must their secrecy. He was not certain, precisely, why he did not wish to share their news with the rest of the lab; it was, simply enough, the young doctor and his beloved wife settling down and starting a family. There is no reason, he thought, wryly, to let the entire world know that you are trying to recreate a race that had long since died off from the earth, and that your beloved wife and your old college friend are your two partners in crime.

But there was no reason not to announce Lucrecia's pregnancy, and that was the conclusion they had come to in the last private staff meeting. And that was why he found himself standing in the midst of a group of staff members, receiving smiles and handshakes and slaps on the back as Lucrecia was ooohed over and kissed on the cheek -- and, he noticed disapprovingly, on the lips, by a few of the bolder interns -- and Gast smiled indiscriminately at everyone who caught his eye.

It wasn't until later, just as he came out of the day's work-haze to check the clock, realizing that Lucrecia would be arriving any moment for her next treatment, that he heard the lone voice of dissent speak.

"...you tell me you were pregnant?" Valentine, he thought, in irritation; the puppy, as puppies tended to do, had a terrible habit of wiggling into situations in which he did not belong.

"Because, Vincent," came Lucrecia's voice through the door, slightly chilly even through its kindness -- as if, Hojo thought, she was finally becoming annoyed by his constant presence, or was that simply wishful thinking? "I did not wish for you to begin treating me like a delicate piece of china, as you will no doubt begin to do now. I am pregnant, not ill." He could almost see her eyes flashing fire; could almost see the slightly ashamed look on the Turk's face.

"That's not what I meant. I mean -- oh, hell, Lucrecia, I just wanted to know why you didn't think that you could trust me enough to tell me that you were pregnant." His voice lowered, grew smoother, but Hojo could somehow still hear it. "Lucrecia, you know that I don't like seeing the way he treats you. I -- I just wanted to let you know that if he gets to be too much --"

Strangely, she did not snap at him; if anything, her voice grew softer as well, almost affectionate. "Thank you, Vincent. It does mean a lot to me, but I'm quite happy. And I couldn't be more thrilled about the child." The smile was plain in her voice, but Hojo could feel his teeth grinding together, caught as he was in the spell of their conversation and unable to turn away and stop eavesdropping. "And I hope that you can be as happy for me as Simon and I are about it. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for my checkup."

With that, the door clicked open; Hojo fought hard to school his face into impassivity. "Afternoon, dear," he said, forcing a tone of absentmindedness, holding out his hands to take hers as she crossed the lab with brisk steps to kiss him on the cheek. "How are you feeling?"

The smile that she returned was just as distracted, as if her mind was still on the conversation that had just taken place. "A little tired," she confessed, "but nothing overly distressing." She settled down on the nearby stool, running a hand through her dark hair. "And that could simply be because you are, as always, a restless sleeper."

He knew that it was teasing, but something ugly inside him reared its head and roared for attention; with a considerable force of will, he beat it back down. "Feel free," he replied, lightly, "to banish me from the bed entirely. I can always come down here and sleep curled up on one of the lab counters." One of his hands twined within hers, almost protectively. "You do need your sleep."

One part of him heard her answer, with a laugh and a smile; but it ws only part of him. In a strange sort of overlay, the rest of him was suddenly, dizzyingly, outside the small room, watching Valentine and one of the lab techs in the midst of a conversation. It was as if he stood, unnoticed, in one corner of the massive main room of the lab, watching the scene. Vincent leaned on the counter as the technician (twenty years old, and more than thrilled to take a semester's sabbatical from Midgar U. to come and work with some of the top scientists in the world, undaunted by the fact that his job was to clean the specimen cages and feed the rats) snickered over some private joke. Somehow, he managed to find the voice to ask Lucrecia to wait while he prepared the injection of Jenova cells that would, hopefully, urge the embryo along its growth; unnoticed, his fingers curled around the lab table, supporting him as he blinked, rapidly, trying to resolve the impossible dual vision.

Outside, the tech laughed at something Valentine had said. His voice came from a great distance, but it reached Hojo's ears: "They ain't gonna need me and my rats much longer, now that the Doc has his wife to play with," the boy was saying with a sly grin. "See, they knew I was goin' back to school in a few months, and that's why he knocked her up. He needed someone to play the guinea pig."

Valentine's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?" he grated out, menacingly. The boy shrugged.

"Come on," he replied, "you mean that's not the first thing that you thought of when you heard that she was pregnant?"

And with that, the image was lost. Hojo shook his head, blinking his eyes hard, and turned with the syringe in his hand to find Lucrecia studying him with concern. "Are you sure that you're not the one who needs more sleep, Simon?" she asked, lightly. "You were a million miles away."

A hundred and fifty feet away, he corrected mentally, but smiled back nonetheless. "It's been a long week," he said, with the excuse that was beginning to become routine. "Are you ready? Perhaps we should postpone this booster until you are feeling better."

Lucrecia tossed her head, her nose wrinkling. "No reason," she answered. "I feel fine. Go ahead and stick me with that needle, you vampire." Honeyed eyes laughed up at him as he crossed the room to roll up her sleeve.

She was in a good mood today, he noticed. The strain of the past few months had taken its toll on them both, and on their fledgling marriage as well. Perhaps it was simply that --

The door flew open just as the tip of the needle broke skin, to reveal six feet of sheer menace. "What the hell are you doing to her?" Vincent snapped as he strode in, ignoring the shocked looks that both of the scientists favored him with. His eyes fixed on the needle, and then widened again. "That's one of the experimental solutions. Don't try to tell me it isn't. What the hell are you doing, shooting that poison into her veins?"

::Kill, kill and keep yourself safe -- keep _her_ safe, keep Me safe, keep us all safe...:: Hojo could feel his back teeth gritting as he looked up from the needle to pin the intruder with a steely gaze. "Good afternoon, Mr. Valentine," he said, dryly. "So kind of you to drop in on us, really, but next time, do you think that you could consider knocking? I am in the middle of an examination, you know." He forced himself to remain casual as he withdrew the needle from Lucrecia's arm and pressed a square of gauze over the entry point, one hand protectively -- or was it possessively? -- circling around her upper arm.

"Don't give me that," Vincent growled back. "Lucrecia, what is he doing to you? What is he giving you?" He took a few steps forward, angry eyes accusing.

Lucrecia's chin came up, pridefully, as she returned the look. "My husband," she said, coolly, "is assisting me in the next step of our research, and it is no concern of yours. It is a matter for us, and us alone."

Vincent gestured, sharply, his hair falling into his eyes as he took another step forward. "You are using her as a guinea pig, aren't you," he asked Hojo, lowly. "I didn't want to think about it. How could you do that sort of thing? Have you ever heard of 'professional ethics', Doctor Hojo?"

Hojo took a deep breath, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that prompted him to kill, to maim, to destroy. "You are hardly the overseer of these labs, Mister Valentine," he gritted out, his tone icy. "This does not concern you, nor should it; this is our research."

"Research be damned." Vincent took another step forward, looking every inch the menacing thug they deemed him in jest. "You don't even know what that thing is; you've played with a few rats and a few tissue samples, and you think that you understand it enough to start sticking people with needles full of the stuff? You are experimenting on humans down here -- does Gast have any idea? Does Shinra?" His eyes burned with rage as he looked down at Lucrecia, protectively.

Hojo's fingers curled around Lucrecia's shoulder; he tried, desperately, to hold on to his usual cool sarcasm, and failed utterly. "She and I are both scientists," he hissed, "as is Gast. As it is plain that you are not. Science is risk, Mister Valentine; great risk with the promise of great reward. Were it not for science, we would still be ranged around a campfire roasting the spoils that the hunters dragged in from the plains every day. Can your feeble mind wrap itself around such a concept?" He ignored the low growl that made its way from Vincent's throat. "Do not presume to dictate to your intellectual betters, and do not dare to stand in the way of scientific progress. We are all adults here; we know the risks, and we choose to accept them. Isn't that right, Lucrecia?"

Vincent looked back at Lucrecia, and Hojo could see the hope written on his face -- hope that she would side with him, hope that she would renounce her renegade husband, hope that she would somehow tell him that this had all been a mistake. One petty, well-hidden part of Hojo rejoiced as she stood and tucked her elegant, aristocratic hand into his, standing by his side firmly. "That is right," she agreed, dignity incarnate as she looked at Vincent squarely. "It was not Simon's doing that involved me in this project, but my own, and if you cannot understand that, Vincent, then perhaps I have overestimated you. And if you cannot understand science, then you have no chance of ever understanding me. I had hoped that we could be friends. If you cannot understand something this simple, then perhaps I was wrong."

Vincent just looked back at her; his eyes could not seem to rise from the simple sight of her and Hojo's hands linked, as if that one simple gesture was his undoing. "I see," he said, his tone too calm, his face too controlled. "In that case, I must ask to be excused." He turned, sharply, and took the few steps necessary to bring him to the door, then turned back, looking Hojo directly in the eye. "If you do one thing to hurt her," he hissed, and then broke off, looking back at Lucrecia, the rest of his threat hanging unspoken between them.

When Vincent was gone, it was a long moment before either spoke; Hojo was the one who finally broke the silence. "Well," he said, dryly, "that was interesting. I wonder if he is still utterly convinced that the earth is flat."

Lucrecia laughed, but Hojo could tell her heart wasn't in it; she looked pale and drawn, and her hand in his felt all too fragile. "He just doesn't understand," she said, gently, all of her fire having cooled. "Be nice to him, Simon; not everyone has your intellect." She smiled, pressing his hand lightly. "I think that I will go upstairs and lie down. To borrow a phrase, it's been a long week."

Hojo nodded. "I'll let Rodger know. Do be careful, love; who knows what our Luddite might come up with next."

The smile that she gifted him with as she left was not her usual one, but it made him smile in return nonetheless.

Petri dish. Beaker. Test tube. The familiar tools of the trade spread out across the counter, all of them seeming to blur into each other as Hojo gazed upon them with eyes that probably looked as gritty as they felt. Even his hair hurt, and how he managed that one, he would dearly love to know. It felt as if a small colony of rodents had built their den in his mouth, and he quite suspected that he needed a shower.

No, strike that. He was vitally certain that he needed a shower.

Yet, for some reason, he couldn't manage to drag himself away from the lab counter, couldn't stir himself to move. His latest cup of coffee had gone cold at his elbow (the slight metallic sheen on the top of it indicating that despite his best efforts, the chemicals and the potables had once more managed to introduce themselves to each other). He eyed it with a bit of disgust and dragged a hand over his face.

/Sleep, Simon,/ he thought. /You need sleep. You're getting careless, and you know better than that. How many times has Gast lectured you on lab safety and the need for alertness? And how many times have you wound up here at four in the morning, insomnia lapping at your door, staring at this very counter? It will still be there in the morning./

::One more test.::

He clicked the slide underneath the microscope and frowned at it. He could sleep, yes; should sleep, even. But he did not want to climb back up the stairs and disturb Lucrecia by climbing into bed with her; she needed her sleep, and he would no doubt simply wake her. And he was honest enough to admit to himself that sleep would be far from forthcoming this evening; the dreams had been getting steadily, progressively worse over the past weeks, to the point where the very thought of closing his eyes made him restless and edgy. No, it was better to stay down here; at least here, there was the chance of some useful work getting done. He had the distressing feeling that they were close here, so close, so close ... but to what, he wasn't sure, and he frowned as the thought crossed his mind. Surely they had already made their major breakthroughs? Surely?

::You are close. You can be the one to make the next breakthrough. You can be the one to show them, show them all.::

He clicked on the microscope's light and glanced at the sample of the fetal cells, frowning just a little when the image failed to resolve itself quite properly to his eyes. He was taking his time with these blood tests, performing them over and over again, trying to erase the last lingering blemish of unprofessionalism that the Turk had cast upon their activities. He really should sleep, and he knew that. Whatever the discovery was, it would keep until morning.

::Look at the cells.::

He frowned again, and pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, pushing up his glasses. His thoughts were ... unusual tonight, close to the surface. His subconscious must have been trying to tell him something. But whatever it was, it seemed to be right; there was a strange mutation in the cell walls. A sort of ... receptiveness? It almost appeared as if the amniotic cells had rearranged themselves, waiting for something else to join them and complete the puzzle. He had never seen such behaviour in fetal cells before ... but then again, he had never seen fetal cells of an Ancient before, and the embryo that they had genetically tailored from Lucrecia's egg and his sperm had also received a healthy dose of genetic material from their Ancient specimen. Their child, yes, but also the child of the Ancient race.

Perhaps some of the other test samples would have some more useful light to shed upon the puzzle, he thought, and slid the slide out from underneath the microscope's lamp. Now, the question was: which one? Annoyed at his mental fuzziness, he checked the scrawled notations on the clipboard hanging on the wall, and selected the slide from the rack. J-17; that had been the most recent phase of the project before moving on to Lucrecia's pregnancy, injections on a live specimen in the hopes that the living tissue would accept and assimilate the foreign cells. There had been no negative change in the rats used for the injections, which had provided the encouragement to move onto the next phase of the project.

The slide he checked showed no signs of the same sort of rearrangement that Lucrecia's sample had shown; that did not surprise him, as he had cultured the slide himself scant hours before, and had not noticed any of the effects. ::Maybe you should check in on the rats.:: The suggestion seemed, to his sleep-mazed mind, almost reasonable, and he rose from the stool, bracing a hand on the table to fight against the inevitable wave of dizziness that indicated that he had once more forgotten to feed himself. /Maybe you should go and get out of this lab for a while,/ his inner babysitter nagged. /Maybe you should stop working and leave this until morning, because you know full well that you aren't thinking all that clearly right now. Maybe you should go and try to forget about the dreams long enough to sleep --/

::And let them steal your glory?:: the voice hissed. ::Let the others take credit for your discovery, whatever it may turn out to be? Let them put their names on it, their fingerprints? No. This is yours. Keep working with it; do not let petty concerns distract you.::

The lock on the door to the specimen room clicked open beneath his fingers, and in the back of the room, a frightened rabbit skittered away from the column of light on the floor to burrow in the nest of shredded newspaper in its cage. Hojo ignored it, the sound of his soft-soled shoes absorbed by the concrete of the floor as he paced over to the rat's cages. The J series of specimens were mostly sleeping soundly, save for the one with the red band around its leg; Hojo vaguely remembered that being the one that had received the highest dose of injections, the one that the culture had come from. Absently, he thought that perhaps he should take another culture, see if any one of the myriad factors had changed. He checked the clipboard hanging in front of the cage to verify the specimen's identity, and noticed that somehow the day's last injection had been missed.

Careless. Clumsy. The young man had, no doubt, been too busy spreading gossip about the project to complete his duties; that would have to be attended to in the morning. He ignored the fact that there was no rational way he could have overheard the conversation that he had almost convinced himself he had imagined. Well, there was no point in standing around and blinking at the cages; he might as well take care of the last injection now, before proceeding with anything else. With a bit of a sigh, dragging his hand once more over his hair and internally wincing in disgust as his skin picked up the oil, he turned to the small refrigerator that bore a prominent "Biohazard" sticker across the front of it. Going through the motions that he'd gone through a thousand times before -- removing the pre-prepared needle from the refrigerator, checking the specimen tag on it, removing it from its plastic wrap, holding it up to the light to check its contents, uncapping it -- he moved back over to the cage and caught the rat up in one hand.

Something in the back of his head whispered something soft and gentle about safety gloves. It was drowned out by the siren song of sleep deprivation and that terrible ringing of his own blood in his ears as he turned the rat over and exposed its belly for the shot. And surely that couldn't have been the sound of distant laughter as the rat bit him just as the needle was almost to its destination, causing his hand to jerk, his other hand to slip -- and the needle to bury itself firmly in the palm of his hand, emptying its contents into his bloodstream.

"--Fuck!" He was distracted enough to actually swear as he dropped both rat and needle, the one clattering unnoticed to the ground, the other landing back in the cage where it sullenly retreated behind the exercise wheel to glare at him. He cradled the injured hand against his chest and swore again, blisteringly, as he scrabbled for the first-aid kit.

His thoughts tumbled over each other like a swarm of newly-born puppies. /Think _quickly_, Simon, what the hell was in that one? ::You have received enough accidental doses of various injections that you should not worry.:: But that was a specimen needle! What the hell was in it? ::Relax; it was only one of a series, there is no way that a small dose like that, intended for the rat, can do you harm when you have been giving your wife ten times that amount for months.:: But what if I ::relax:: What if it ::no worries:: I need to ::calm down:: ...find... ::you are fine:: ...someone... ::no one will understand:: to see if ::no one but you:: they can ... ::you are safe now, no one will harm you, you will never be in danger again:: help ... me ... ::just let it go, let it go, let it go....::/

After a moment he rose from his knees, startled to find that he had fallen. He leaned weakly against the wall and breathed deeply, forcing his heart to calm. /::Panic attack, Simon. That's all. You're fine. We're fine. We're all fine. We'll never be anything but fine ever again. Go. Sleep. Do not worry about the dreams; I do not think that they will bother you.::/

::And I do not think that we need to tell Rodger about this.::

As he closed the door to the specimen room behind him, the rat's eyes glowed a triumphant red in the darkness.