Four and Twenty Blackbirds
II. The Middle Of It All
Second Trimester
September-November

::My child, My lover, My brother, you will open your eyes. You will see what up until now has been clouded; you will taste the true power that comes from being as a god. You will stand astride the possibilities, riding the wind. You will hold lightnings in your hand and dictate the fate of the world. All this shall be yours, should you just calm your fears and listen to My words...::

"Ground Control to Major Tom." The mildly amused voice belonged, oddly enough, to Gast, who had dropped onto the lab stool directly across from Hojo's workstation; he was regarding Hojo with the tolerant expression that indicated that he was in an excellent mood. "I swear, Simon, every time I come in here, you're a thousand miles straight up. Enjoying the view from the clouds?"

Hojo, broken from his reverie, pushed his glasses up his nose. "Until I look down, yes," he agreed dryly, and busied himself with tidying his counter space, a task that was (judging by the crumpled papers and used Styrofoam cups) sorely overdue. "It's so restful to look down and be able to pick out what strategic missile targets I can use when I finally snap and bomb this place to kingdom come. What can I do for you, Rodger?"

Gast chuckled, and pushed a manila folder across the desk. "Word's come through from the university; Lucrecia's thesis review board is meeting next week, to consider the awarding of her doctorate. I've written them a letter concerning her work here, and I wanted to know if you wanted to sign it."

Hojo frowned, half of his attention, as it was of late, elsewhere. "Her thesis review board? Is that next week already? I swear, the last time I turned around, summer was just starting. Of course I'll sign the letter, though considering some of the professors on the board, perhaps my voice of recommendation won't be all that helpful." He flipped open the folder, scanning the brief letter of praise with distracted eyes.

"Well," responded Gast with amusement, "I'm certain that after some of the things you pulled back in college, none of them want to hear from you anymore. I suppose we can be thankful that Kaplan isn't on the board; after that stunt you pulled with the corpse and the exam, I suspect that he would run screaming at the sight of your name."

"We pulled," Hojo corrected, absently, as he reached for the pen to affix his name to the bottom of the letter that glowed with praise. "I was not the only one who was involved in that one."

Gast chuckled. "You know as well as I do that I only tagged along for that one because I didn't think that you'd actually pull it off. Though the expression on his face was priceless." He tilted his head to one side, studying Hojo carefully. "Come to think of it, the lab has been strangely quiet of late. No pranks, no distractions, not even any of your scatological little cartoons. It's almost enough to make me worry."

"I suppose everyone needs to grow up sooner or later," Hojo responded, his voice still a little bit distant. The voice that hissed in the back of his brain was getting stronger -- or was he imagining it? No, he was imagining the whole thing, had to be. Perfectly rational scientists did not begin to hear voices, and as he was a perfectly rational scientist, then he did not hear voices either. Q.E.D.

Chuckling once more, Gast reached out to reclaim the folder, sliding it back across the counter and resting one of his hands on it. "I will agree with you there," he said, with a smile, "though I was beginning to despair of it ever happening to you. The next thing I know, those horrendous T-shirts will disappear and you will begin wearing normal clothing. Though I will admit, the day that I find you in a tie will be the day that I no doubt suffer a heart attack and need to be carried away in an ambulance."

Seeming to snap out of whatever reverie contained him, Hojo raised an eyebrow. "Keep dreaming," he said, dryly. "You know that I can't breathe in a tie. Don't get your hopes up."

Snapping his fingers, Gast sighed in mock-disappointment. "Ah, well. Every man has his dreams, I suppose."

Still dryly, Hojo drawled, "If your dreams involve my neckwear, Rodger, you need to get out of the mansion more often. Was there anything else you wanted, or may I return to my contemplation of the stratosphere?"

A glance around the area revealed that no one else was present; Gast's voice dropped to a confidential level, losing most of its humor. "Have you done any bloodwork on Lucrecia lately, Simon?" he asked, his face suddenly serious. "She's been looking awfully pale, and I'm beginning to become concerned."

::Distract him; this is your project. Your wife, your child, your concerns.:: "I haven't really noticed anything; are you certain that you're not just seeing things?" Hojo pulled open one of the file cabinets, rooting around in it. "The last time I did a full workup on her was a few weeks ago, just after our resident thug started slinging accusations left and right. Everything turned out perfectly normal for a woman at her stage of pregnancy; there was a slightly elevated presence of serotonin in her bloodstream, and a little less dopamine than would be expected, but it was well within acceptable levels." He found the file that he was looking for, Lucrecia's lab work, and tossed it over the counter; the top paper fluttered in the artificial breeze created by its passing and fell to the ground.

Gast reached for it, nearly fell off the stool, and regained his balance just in time to avoid a potentially embarrassing loss of dignity. "I see. Well, if you'd like, I can run a few of the tests again; has she been complaining?"

Hojo fought down the wave of anger at the suggestion that his tests had been faulty; it was a moment before he opened his eyes again, not wanting to start an argument. "I don't think that will be necessary, actually. She's been losing a little sleep lately, but that could just be the stress of finishing up her thesis. I wanted her to wait until after childbirth, but she firmly maintained that she wanted to get it out of the way before, and I quote, 'I wind up larger than the specimen and twice as unwieldy.'" He forced the levity back into his tone, shrugging mildly. "I did not feel like arguing. You know how she is when she gets an idea in her mind."

Chuckling, Gast nodded. "Twice as stubborn as a cat, and about as likely to change her mind. Your lady is a strong-willed one, Simon." He gave the papers a cursory glancing-over, and then pushed them back across the counter. "Which is part of the reason why you two get along so wonderfully, I am certain."

"Certainly better than that infamous keg queen of whom you never cease to remind me," Hojo replied, dryly, watching Gast unobtrusively from behind the rims of his glasses. "While I had to admire her sheer gravity-defying architecture, her brain left a great deal to be desired."

Gast laughed again as he stood, stretching slightly. "And we all know what the important parts are. I'll be in the library, Simon, if you need me for anything; the new trade journals have just made their way out to this backwater due to the miracles of the Shinra postal service, and there's an article by Bernoulli and Jackson that I'm quite interested in." He paused, then, apparently seeing Hojo fully for the first time. "Are you sure that you are all right? You look ... washed out. Not like yourself."

One of Hojo's eyebrows lifted. "Rodger, if you don't stop looking for problems around every corner, one of these days you're going to be distressed to discover that you've actually found one. I am fine, Lucrecia is fine, the specimen is fine, even the puppydog is fine. Go and read your journals; some of us will sit out here and slave over a hot microscope for the next seven hours to produce some real work." His tone was not as biting as it could have been; it was an old game. "Let me know if Bernoulli has yet mastered the art of the coherent English sentence, or if his papers would still make any grammar teacher weep in shame."

Gast nodded, and a hint of laughter shaded his tone. "I'm certain that he still thinks that a gerund is a rare type of bird, but I will let you know. Enjoy yourself, Simon." With that, he let himself out of the lab on silent feet, whistling under his breath as he went.

Left alone, Hojo bent double, his fingers curling against the edge of the counter as he rested his forehead against the cool metal. The hissing sibilant voice that had been mostly silent during the conversation returned, twice as loud, mocking in the echoing quiet of the room. ::He will be problematic one day. Friend of yours he might be, but he does not understand; he will not understand. He cannot understand. Do not allow him to become too close; he will be the first to point to you and cry foul should he know the extent of what you have done ... He does not know you, does not know whom you have become...::

"Shut up," Hojo said, aloud, his voice cutting through the sharpness of the silence in the lab, echoing off the metal, returning to his own ears distorted and oddly shaped. "God," he added, lowly, scrubbing a hand over his face, "I am going mad."

::No, you are not. You are perfectly sane. You are perhaps the only sane one here, My child, My lover, My brother, and you are the only one who sees what needs must be done. Do not let your past blind you to what yet will be.::

Softly, Hojo let out a small moan, dropping his head back down upon the counter. /Madness,/ he reflected, with a bizarre mental clarity that was beginning to frighten him, /is clearly an occupational hazard of too much overwork./ The most distressing thought was the fact that the quiet mental voice that was growing clearer and clearer was often, to his way of thinking, right.

::Of course.::

Distracted, distressed and disturbed, Hojo began cleaning up his work area. Perhaps a nap would be a good idea, he mused. At least the dreams had been leaving him alone. For the most part. He still dreamed, he knew that much, but they dissolved like soap-bubbles upon awakening; they no longer haunted his every waking moment.

And if the small voice of reason, well-buried in the back of his thoughts, nagged at him that the reason his dreams had been so peaceful was that his waking world had become a nightmare ... well, the thought was so well-concealed that it did not surface, not when it was drowned out by the rest.

He slept, and once more, he dreamed; but this dream was eerily accurate, too detailed, as if it were not a dream at all. He stood in the corner of the lab, seemingly shadowed, as Lucrecia worked, watching her with careful eyes, until Vincent came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Lucrecia?" he asked, his voice rough. "Do you have a moment?"

It had been nearly a month since their argument in the treatment room, and they had not spoken since. Lucrecia looked up, warily, and her tone was cool as she replied, "If you have moved past the urge to cast aspersions at me or my husband, I would be glad to."

Vincent sighed, and sat down on the counter next to Lucrecia's workstation. "I wanted to ... to apologize," he said, lowly, his voice soft enough that it did not carry; but Hojo, wherever he truly was, heard it clearly. "I had no right to lose my temper like that, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped. I'm just -- I'm just worried about you, Lucrecia."

Strangely enough, she did not lose her temper at him; instead, the chill in her tone melted, and she smiled just a little as she looked down. "I know. I do appreciate it, Vincent -- it is simply that you have this distressing tendency to come off as a Neanderthal protecting his mate."

Something deep in his eyes moved as he looked back at her. "I could only dream that you were my mate, Lucrecia," he confessed, still softly. "And I have dreamed; but as long as you are happy, I can't say anything. Are you happy? You haven't been looking like you have been..."

She sighed, once more looking away. "I've been fine, Vincent. I've just been under a lot of stress lately..."

"And your husband isn't helping, is he."

She did not become angry at him, as she had often in the past when such an accusation was made; rather, she simply sighed again. "I know that you don't believe this," she said, still softly, "but I truly do love him. He is under a great deal of stress, as are we all, and stress does odd things to people." She lifted a hand to support her growing belly, and her eyes grew a bit distant. "When the stress goes away, he will be the man I married; I know it."

Vincent, too, sighed. "I hope you're right," he said, shifting against the lab counter so that his hip rested near her elbow. "I don't like seeing you unhappy..."

"I know." Lucrecia's eyes were dark as she looked up at him. "I ... I could wish that you and I had met each other sooner, Vincent, but it would serve no purpose." She rested a hand on his elbow again, in an almost loving gesture. "I count you as one of my dearest friends," she said, softly. "I would hate to lose one of my friends over anything, particularly if it were my fault. Please, don't be angry with me."

Vincent's voice was approaching anguish as he replied, "How could I be angry with you? You are married to him; he is your husband. Nothing that I say or do can change that fact." His voice dropped again, and he closed his eyes. "I love you," he said, wretchedly, laying the facts out before them. "I love you, and I hate seeing you in danger, or sick, or unhappy, especially when there's nothing that I can do about it."

She knew his feelings, but hearing them spoken so openly made her pale. "Don't -- don't say that," she stammered, lowly. "Don't even think that. I know how you feel about me, and -- Vincent, if things were different, perhaps I could even ... return those feelings. But things aren't different, and I can't, and -- please, Vincent, don't make this more difficult for me. If ... if you feel the way that you say you feel, please don't make this any more difficult..."

His hair fell around his cheeks as he bowed his head. "As you wish," he spoke, his voice rough velvet. "I won't ever speak of it again. But ... Lucrecia, know that there is always an alternative. If ... if things get bad, just let me know."

Lucrecia took a deep breath. "Thank you," was all that she said, but her eyes spoke volumes as she looked back up at him.

After a moment that felt like an eternity, Vincent nodded. "You are welcome," he said -- and then, daring just a little, leaned over and brushed his lips across hers, once. With no further word -- indeed, without even looking back -- he turned and strode out of the room.

Lucrecia was left, alone, in the lab; her face was distant, her eyes vacant, as she stared off into the distance. Slowly, one hand lifted up, the fingers pressing against her lips as if she wanted to save the touch of Vincent's kiss. "What can I do?" she whispered to herself, wrapping her arms around herself and holding on. "Oh, Gods, what can I do?"

Still watching, in the shadows, Hojo closed his eyes; he could feel the rage building inside him, burning hotter than acid. He stirred, moved as if to stride forward and confront Lucrecia, the impulse foremost in his mind to take her, to shake her and throw her to the ground, to force her to listen to him. He found that he was unable to move, bound in invisible ties that he struggled against to no avail.

::Watch. Wait and watch, My son, and open your eyes.::

Lucrecia's head snapped up, her eyes fixing on the shadows, wide and disbelieving. "I'm hearing things," she said, softly, to herself. "I'm going mad, and I'm hearing things..." Her eyes studied where Hojo was standing, and he realized -- suddenly, dizzyingly -- from the angles and setup of the lab, that he was standing next to where Jenova's specimen tank was situated.

Or was he ... standing in the tank?

Lucrecia's voice was a bare whisper as she bit her lip. "You're laughing at me, somehow," she said, quietly. "I can hear you. I can ... I can feel it. Like it's starting in my belly and spreading throughout my entire body; I can hear you. Stop it. Stop it!" Her voice faintly tinged with hysteria, she stood, backing away from the counter, nearing the door. "You -- you monster, I can hear you -- stop playing with me! I am not your puppet!"

::Ah, but you are. You both are, and I have not yet tired of pulling the strings.::

Disbelievingly, Lucrecia turned and fled, leaving Hojo cold and empty, alone in the lab.

And then he woke up.

In the basement of the lab, something stirred, grotesquely; if anyone were left in the room, he would have heard a soft sound that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike human laughter.

She crawled into bed, shivering, and curled up against his side as if seeking his warmth and comfort; it was a long moment before he stirred, moving to make room for her, curling an arm protectively around her shoulders. He had been dreaming ... but he could not remember what the dream had contained. "Lucrecia?" he asked, voice clouded with sleep. "What's the matter?"

It was a longer moment before she responded. "Simon?" she asked, her voice barely audible in the weighty dark. "Am I -- am I sane?"

He paused for a few heartbeats, feeling vaguely sick to his stomach. "What happened?"

Another shiver wracked her body, and she dropped all of her usual dignity to lay her head on his shoulder. "I was -- I was down in the lab," she whispered, against his skin. "I could have sworn I heard something laughing at me ..."

/While you were busy comforting the puppy, and telling him that had you not met me, perhaps you would have given him what he wanted from you,/ he thought, and did not know why; perhaps the dream? But he just sighed, deeply, and drew her closer. "As Rodger would say, it's an old building," he responded, softly.

Violently, she shook her head. "No. No, that's not it. It wasn't just something in the vents, or the wind -- don't you think that I know the difference? It was something laughing at me. And ... I could have sworn that it came from the tank..."

::Of course I laugh. Who would not, when you are so amusing?:: The quiet voice that spoke in his ears drew a shiver from him as well. Struggling hard against the urge to convince her that she was imagining things, that it was just the pregnancy, he rested his cheek against her hair. "It's not just you," he said, lowly, as the first beginnings of suspicion began to stir deep within his mind. "I've been hearing it for a few months now. It's not ..." A sharp, sudden stab of pain lanced through his forehead, and he must have cried out aloud, for Lucrecia picked up her head and looked down at him in concern.

"Simon?" she asked, softly. "Simon, what is it?"

Fighting through the pain, he shook his head. "I ... I don't know," he confessed, breathlessly. "My head just --" He swallowed, heavily, and lifted a hand to rub at his temple. "What was I saying?"

Dark and concerned, her eyes studied his. "You were saying that you heard things downstairs, too."

::Do not continue this line of conversation; if you do, you shall regret it.::

Disregarding the warning, he swallowed, heavily, and nodded. "I've been ... having dreams," he said, softly. "Lucrecia, what if -- what if --"

Seeing that he was unable to continue, she nodded, soberly. "What if we've woken something that should not have been woken," she finished for him, and once more buried her face against his neck. "Simon, I'm scared," she whispered, barely audible.

One of his hands rose to tangle in her hair, reassuringly. "I know," he answered, his voice just as soft. "I know... and so am I."

They lay there, curled together -- two people staring down the coming dawn -- and did not sleep, fearful of what dreams might come.

The lab was subdued as Hojo stepped down the endless staircase, his feet moving automatically down the stairs as they had done a thousand times before, his nose buried in the papers attached to his clipboard. He did not notice the silence, did not think too much of it; when the work was interesting, as it often was, the lab would grow quiet. He had overslept, badly, falling asleep just as the sun rose and not waking until it was well on its way down the sky. Upstairs, Lucrecia still slept.

It was when he walked down the hallway that Gast came out of the laboratory, and broke him from his reverie. "Simon."

Hojo's head came up; the tone in Gast's voice was almost unheard of, dark and wary. "Rodger? What happened?"

There were black circles under Gast's eyes, the same circles so often seen when the work had been going well and sleep had been a secondary concern. "Do you have a minute?" At Hojo's nod, he drew the younger man off to the side of the hallway, leaning against the door to the storage room. "Simon, something ... something happened -- in the labs."

Fighting back the sinking urge in his chest, Hojo prompted, "Something?"

Gast took a deep breath. "There was an accident, and one of the interns was ... was killed." Dark eyes watched Hojo carefully over the rims of his glasses. "He was in one of the smaller workrooms, and it seems that he didn't want to leave the laboratory long enough to go heat water upstairs, and rigged up a flask over a Bunsen burner to make tea with. The flask exploded, and the glass shards ... buried themselves in his face and his chest. It looks like one of them hit an artery." He dropped his gaze, one loafer-clad toe worrying at a rough spot on the floor. "We're cleaning up in there right now, and there will -- there'll need to be a funeral, and a burial, and -- I'm not thinking all that clearly right now, I'm sorry."

The laughter burned in his ears, the echoing remnants of last night's headache settling back down around his temples. "Who was it, Rodger?" he heard himself ask, his voice unnatural.

Startled, Gast looked back up. "It was ... It was Kevin," he said, slowly. "I'm sorry. I know that you and he got along well..."

The hissing in his ears grew louder, like the white noise at the end of a cassette. He could hear, dimly through the sound, a half-remembered conversation:

//"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."//

The dead man's voice echoed in his mind as he asked, too calmly, "Making tea, you said?"

Gast bit his lip, looking down again, and nodded. "Yes, it was quite dreadful. Apparently he had set up a flask on the Bunsen burner, and the vapor was simply too much for it; it exploded..." Impotently, Gast lifted a hand and pushed his glasses up his nose, a little too violently. "There's glass everywhere, of course," he said, dully, "and no one really wants to -- to disturb it --"

"Rodger," Hojo said, his voice even, "Kevin drank coffee."

Startled, Gast's eyes met Hojo's. "Are you sure?"

Hojo pushed himself off the wall and strode towards the door of the lab. "Positive. He and I used to complain about how difficult it was to keep the coffeemaker far enough away from the chemical stores. He couldn't stand tea. Where is the body?"

Gast matched his long strides, keeping pace easily, as he headed towards where morbid curiosity had drawn a crowd. "Well, I hardly think that's significant; perhaps the man just wanted a change. Ah -- Simon, are you sure you want to go in there? Quite frankly, it's a sight that I could have done without seeing --"

Hojo froze in the doorway, Gast's warning coming too late, as once again he walked into a nightmare.

//shards of glass, chemicals, concrete and broken lights, flecks of blood on the walls, crackle and hiss of bare wires mixing with the rough sound of his own breathing, a river of crimson pooling on the tiles to mix with the overturned mug//

"Oh, God," was the only thing that he could say as he gazed upon the scene. Kevin's body lay sprawled on the floor, slumped lifelessly in the midst of a sea of glass; too much glass, Hojo thought, dumbly, to have come from a single flask. The blood had cooled, gained the rusty color that comes from exposure and time. It was everywhere that Hojo looked, and the few sticky fingerprints next to the Bunsen burner indicated that either someone had been clumsy in reaching for the controls to stem the flow of gas, or Kevin had been cursed with time to struggle.

"I told you," Gast spoke, lowly, from Hojo's elbow. Hojo did not react; he could have been a statue, save for the muscle that twitched in his jaw. /Dammit!/ he raged, internally. /This was no accident, it couldn't have been --/

::Of course it was not, but there is no way you can prove that::

Dimly, he was aware of Gast giving orders: orders for the technicians to don rubber gloves and sweep up the glass, scrub up the blood; orders for the interns to move the body to the other room, where it would await burial. The sound of his voice was drowned out by the hissing, snapping silence, filled with the noise that could not be heard. "Rodger," he said, interrupting Gast's weary monologue, "I want to do an autopsy."

Gast stopped in mid-sentence, peering at Hojo owlishly. "What?" was his only response.

Hojo's ponytail curled around his neck, soft hairs tickling his ear, as he whipped his head around to pin Gast with a piercing gaze. "I want to do an autopsy. I want to know what happened here. What happened to him." His voice was cold, emotionless, but it was the sort of chill that spoke of great stress buried deeply.

Slowly, Gast nodded. "All right. I'll have the boys bring the -- the body into the other room. I was going to do one myself..."

"No, I want to do it." He unbent long enough to offer a ghost of a smile. "If you want to, of course, I won't argue, but -- he was my friend --"

Gast shook his head. "No, no, I don't think that will be necessary. If you -- Ah. Mister Valentine; thank you for coming down --"

Vincent stepped into the room on silent feet, taking in the sight with a stoic expression. "It is my job. What happened here?"

Clearing his throat, Gast summarized the facts as quickly as he could, retreating behind the shield of command. Vincent nodded at each point, his eyes scanning the room; they carefully avoided resting on Hojo, who was still studying the tableau with a dazed sort of horror. When Gast had finished, he asked, his voice strangely hushed in the cavernous lab, "Did anyone witness the incident?"

Gast shook his head. "Kevin had moved into one of the smaller anterooms; there wasn't anyone around. The first warning we had was the sound of the explosion..."

Abruptly, Hojo interrupted. "If you will excuse me for a while, Rodger, I think I -- I think I will go for a walk for a few hours. I need to clear my head." He let Gast think that he was simply disturbed by the scene; he knew that Gast would draw his own conclusions, and was perfectly content to let them be drawn. He could feel the weight of the lab rising around him, threatening to choke; he needed to escape. "I'll -- I'll be back in a few hours, and perform the autopsy." Carefully, he did not look at Vincent, nor did Vincent look back at him.

Gast nodded, absentmindedly. "All right. If you feel so inclined, stop down at the general store and pick up some cleaning supplies."

Hojo nodded, making his retreat before the very air itself could rise up against him. Behind him, he could hear Vincent beginning to question the workers in the lab, slowly and methodically. He would not find the answers there, that much Hojo knew. He was beginning to become terribly concerned that he knew very well where the answers were to be found.

"Thursday, first October. Ten fifty-three PM. Attending physician, Simon Hojo." Hojo's voice for the tape recorder was cool, holding a detachment that he did not feel in the least; not even his hours of wandering around the mountains just outside the village had calmed his mind. Outside the small room, the lab was quiet, still; nearly everyone had taken the first chance to desert the scene of death. "Autopsy conducted on male Caucasian subject, age twenty-four. Apparent cause of death multiple lacerations to the head, shoulders, and chest." Too many lacerations, he thought, but did not speak; the glass should not have produced the wounds that he was seeing. "Approximate time of death, between three twenty PM and three thirty PM, consistent with reports of witnesses."

He continued narrating, reducing the death of a human being to dry, rational words and sentences even as he painstakingly deconstructed the body before him. "...As I am performing a full autopsy due to the circumstances surrounding the subject's death, I have discounted the apparent cause of death for the purposes of this investigation. Note for the record, however, that due to the physical makeup of how the body was discovered, my official diagnosis will likely be that the cause of death was accidental. I have already procured blood and tissue samples, and will be handing them over to Dr. Gast for advanced pathological study for signs of foreign chemicals that may have contributed to the subject's death."

He went through the motions, accompanying each with a running commentary: the first incision, Y-shaped, running from the front of each shoulder down to the pubic bone; the peeling back of the skin thus exposed. As always, Hojo wrinkled his nose as the smell of the exposed muscle reached his nose; to him, it had always smelled, very faintly, like raw lamb meat.

"No abnormality detected upon first visual inspection of the rib cage," he continued, setting the bonecutting tool back down on the stainless steel tray as he lifted the sternum and ribs aside and placed the bone on the other table. "I have proceeded in removing the pericardial sac around the heart and can detect no abnormalities in the pulmonary artery; neither is there any sign of thromboembolus or other external blood clots. Due to the lack of these signs, I can rule out the possibility of heart failure as contributing to cause of death."

Moving smoothly, he proceeded to open the abdominal cavity, identifying each of the organs with a practiced eye and, one by one, labeling them as healthy and apparently perfectly functional. Moving back to the head of the body -- the body, he thought, with a wince: not Kevin, not Kevin anymore, simply a body like any one of the bodies you performed this procedure on back in school -- he tied off the carotid and subclavian arteries in the neck, before departing from procedure long enough to closely examine the area of severe laceration.

One shard of glass had pierced the carotid, producing the pools of blood that had so distressed the rest of the lab. It was still present in the artery, shimmering slightly in the artificially bright lighting of the small room that Hojo was using as a pathology lab. Absently, he continued dictating as he picked up a ruler to measure the entrance wound before turning to the tweezers, carefully picking the sliver out of the artery.

It was then that he noticed what was behind it.

His voice stilled, stopped, as his brows drew together; the heads of the recorder, set to voice-activation, obligingly hissed to a stop. Not quite believing the evidence of his eyes, he picked up the magnifying glass and the probe, delicately pushing aside the folds of the tissue for a better look. He worked in silence, but he had the strange, sinking feeling that he knew what was there; and a few minutes later, when he held what appeared to be a fragment of a talon in tweezers held by an unsteady hand, he was sure.

Slowly, ignoring the cadaver splayed out on the table next to him, he sank into the chair. His mind refused to quite accept the evidence that was displayed before him. Corpses that had been dead for hundreds, if not thousands of years did not stir themselves from the stasis tanks and murder interns, particularly not when those interns are working in the middle of a lab full of other interns and assistants. It was, quite simply, a logical impossibility.

It was also the only possible reason he could think of why a fragment of talon that almost definitely belonged to the specimen was found in the laceration -- behind the sliver of glass that had ostensibly killed his friend.

::It is the only possible reason, is it not?:: cooed the dark voice that he was beginning to feel had haunted him his entire life. ::But you cannot speak it, or you will be thought insane.:: Once more, feminine laughter sounded in his ears, though it was not audible.

/Stop that!/ he thought, violently, his mental 'voice' more lucid than it had been for months. His hand shaking, he reached out and turned off the tape recorder, nervous that something proving his mental difficulties might possibly be preserved on the tape, and spoke aloud, voice shaky. "You did this, goddamn it! I don't know what you are, but I'm getting awfully tired of listening to it. What the hell do you want from me?"

And as if that were an invitation, the voices burst forth in answer, caroling out in his mind like a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. ::Son of Man, thou canst not know, but thou dost. Thou hast known Me of old, from the moment thy eyes first met Mine eyes. Thou knowest My desires, for they are thine own. You think you have named Me, tamed Me, framed Me, harnessed My secrets for your own petty concerns, but I am no man's slattern, no man's playtoy. Son of Man, stand on thy feet, and I shall speak with thee, for you are My chosen, My son, My lover, My brother. I shall grant unto thee the power to change a world.::

::Son of Man, I have opened thine eyes. Thou canst not say, or guess, for thou knowest only a heap of broken images, but I have granted thee My fire, and thou shalt be as My hand in this world that Man has created. Thou shalt let the rivers run, and they shall be rivers of My passions, and a cauldron of unholy loves shall sing around thy ears. Thou hath done nothing until now but confirm thy prison at nightfall, but I am here to set thee free, to show thee. All manner of thing shall be well when the tongues of flame are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire and the fire and rose are one; all manner of thing shall be well when thou takest My hand.::

Frozen, Hojo managed to whisper though dry and cracking lips, "I can hear you -- who are you --"

::I am Many, and I am One. I am all, and I am nothing. I am Death; I am Resurrection. I am the One who freed the Hanged Man; I am the One who brought the Tower to destruction. I am ruin, I am rebirth; I am the world, I am the Fool. I am Jenova, named in the Cetra tongue, That-Which-Changes. I spoke that name as you slept, and in your blindness, you thought it was your own devising. Son of Man, thy need to name the world thou seest shall cause thy ruin, for in thy arrogance, thou hast named Me what I am.::

Hojo lifted one hand to the side of his head, threading the fingertips into his hair, as if he could block the force of that exultant voice with a touch. "Stop," he said, finding cracked and shaking voice. "Stop it." He jerked his head to one side, sharply, to clear it; the corpse's glassy eyes stared mutely back up at him, accusingly, as if to say: You. You did this. Hojo dropped his eyes, unable to meet that silent and lifeless gaze.

::And as I have touched thee, so have I changed thee, for thou art Mine now, and thou shalt know the awful daring of a moment's surrender; thou shalt know My fire, running clear and burning all that it touches. Thou shalt be as Mine right hand, and We shall go forth into this world bringing a hail of destruction. For O, you are a man of ready speech, able to put voice to My words. I shall free thee from thy labors and deliver thee from slavery; I shall rescue thee with outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. Thou shalt stretch out thine hand, and the rivers shall turn to blood, the earth shall turn to dust; thou shalt be Mine avatar.::

"No," Hojo whispered, feeling his hair slip around his fingers, feeling his chest contract and expand with each more panicked breath. "No, I will not. I will not be anyone's pawn."

::Thou shalt, and thou shalt have no choice, for I have Mine hand around your heart, and thou belongest to Me. Thou canst not resist.::

"I can," Hojo said, lowly, finding strength in defiance. "I can, and I will. Nothing controls me. I am not yours; I am my own. I will not be commanded, controlled, manipulated. You will not hold me."

::I will.::

In one convulsive motion, he was on his feet again, bursting out of the pathology lab like an explosion and nearly falling as his feet could not keep up with his movement.

"God damn you, you -- you thing," he spat, lowly, as he skittered to a halt in front of the specimen tube; the grey form floated motionless in the center of the pale preserving fluid. "You can't be doing this. This can't be you. You are dead, in the name of all that's holy -- I saw where you had been dug up out of the ground with my own eyes --"

::Death means little to one such as I,:: came the calm response, and Hojo moaned softly; in this proximity, the voice rang like bells through his mind, unmistakable. ::For I am Death, and I conquer Death, and I cheat Death; Death has been my lover, and I have been his mother. The petty concerns of Man cannot touch me, for I am eternal.::

"No," Hojo whispered, barely audibly: then, louder, "No. I am imagining all of this. I have to be." /This is some kind of sick nightmare,/ he thought, seizing on the mantra like a shield to protect himself; /all I have to do is wake up./

::There will be no waking, for Mine is the waking world as Mine is the dream; Mine is the kingdom, Mine the power, Mine the glory.::

Hojo's chin jerked up like the prey hearing the footfalls of a predator. "Stop listening to me thinking." His voice shook, a low moan. "Stop talking to me..."

::I can no more stop talking to thee than thou couldst stop breathing, for thou art a part of Me, and I of you; I am large, I contain multitudes.::

Hojo fought down a fresh wave of revulsion as his eyes fixed on the grotesque form that he had once felt so fascinating, and his voice spiraled upwards, grew more shrill. "I will not let this happen!" he spat out. "I am not yours, and you are not mine! I am a scientist! I deal with facts, and figures, and not some -- some ancient curse or power that sends me dreams and talks to me when I'm distracted! This is not happening!"

::It is.::

Barely conscious of the response, he reared back, his eyes blazing fire. Each of his words fell with anguished precision, each one containing a thousand renunciations. "I. Refuse. To. Listen. To. You!" His voice broke on the last syllable, cracked and fell through his shouting like a demented antiphon. "And I want you the fuck out of my head!"

Silence, after his words; silence, then a soft and dreadful laughter.

It was then that he moved.

As he watched, his arm stretched out, with a jerk and a spasm; his muscles were not his own. Clumsily, the fingers closed around the scalpel that had been left abandoned on a nearby counter, as he fought to gain back control of his body. His muscles tensed, his breathing quickened, but his motions were not his own; he could not even feel the cool metal of the tool in his hand.

The fingers curled around the handle of the scalpel, rearranging themselves as his puppet-master grew more adept. Hojo gritted his teeth, fighting back with every inch of strength he possessed. For half an instant, it almost seemed as if he could win... and then the pain returned, a spear through his temples, causing him to cry out roughly and throw his head back.

And then, his arm lifted.

The blade of the scalpel caught the light of the room, reflecting it back to his eyes on its journey. That journey -- with Hojo fighting through the pain, feeling the agony pressing behind his eyes, feeling his muscles grind against each other as the implacable force met his own highly-tuned will and his will lost the struggle -- ended at the curve of Hojo's left wrist, the tip of the blade just beneath the pulse that fluttered visibly in panic beneath the skin.

::Canst thou resist Me now?:: the insidious voice exhorted. ::Canst thou save thyself? Take thy hand from Me, if thou canst, and I shalt set thee free; for thou wilt have proven thyself stronger than I can control.::

And he tried; oh, he tried. A small runnel of sweat trailed down the back of his neck, shiveringly cool in the air-conditioned lab, as he struggled to regain control of his own muscles, fought to wrench the scalpel away from his own flesh; when that failed, he tried to jerk the other wrist away, with no more success. The only outward sign of his struggle was the small spasm in his elbow; nothing else moved.

/I can't,/ he finally realized, after moments of conflict that felt like centuries, and the knowledge of failure was bitter wormwood in the back of his throat. /I can't move, and I can't win, and I'm lost, so lost.../

::Son of Man, thou hadst lost before thou began'st the struggle.::

Leaving behind only three drops of blood, the scalpel clattered to the floor as Hojo's fingers opened. The laughter redoubled, as he slumped like a marionette with its strings cut, and he was awash in the dreadful realization that the voice had told nothing but the simple truth.

He was flying, and it felt wonderful. He could feel the air rushing around him, the draft beneath his wings, the way a single feather could change his direction. He could feel the sun on his body, glistening off the black feathers; the ground was far, far beneath him...

"Simon."

The voice jerked him awake, and he opened one eye, slowly. "Nrrgh?" was his only possible response, squinting as he tried to make out the figure leaning over him. After a few more moments (in which he started kicking his brain into the state known as 'awake', lower brain functions turning on higher brain functions one by one until he almost hit sentience) he could even place a name to that face: Rodger. And he was holding...

Gast stood patiently, smiling just a little; he was quite used to the process of waking Hojo up on a bad morning. "Good morning, Simon," he said, gently, placing the cup of coffee that he had been holding down in front of Hojo, on the ... lab counter? "Have you hit mammal yet?"

"Nrrgh," Hojo replied, picking his face up off the chill of the counter's surface; his head disagreed, and he dropped it again, wincing at the stab of pain that rocketed through it. /God,/ he thought, absently, /I feel like I'm hung over. I wasn't drinking last night, was I?/

Gast chuckled. "I'll take that as a no. Honestly, Simon, falling asleep on the lab counter? You haven't done that in years." He dropped down on the other stool, apparently quite willing to wait while coffee recapitulated phylogeny.

One of Hojo's hands reached out and curled around the coffee mug, drawing it close to him; he picked up his head again, slowly, and hunched over it. His voice rusty, he managed, "Wanted to finish up the autopsy report." The papers lying next to him swam into view, and he frowned, then picked up the coffee and sipped from it.

"You didn't have to do that immediately, you know," Gast said, gently. "Were you up all night working? The other room looked like a tornado hit it."

Something nagged at the back of his mind, and he sat up a little more. "Did I leave the body out?"

Gast shook his head. "No. It was back in the freezer, and you'd closed up the incisions." He frowns. "You don't remember?"

He didn't remember a lot of the previous evening for some strange reason, now that he thought about it. "Long night," he murmured, into the coffee cup.

Gast nodded, in sympathy. "Which tends to lead to a long morning. Do you remember what your findings were, or do you need another cup of coffee first?" Veteran of many dazed Hojo mornings, Gast was content to shepherd him up the evolutionary ladder.

Hojo shook his head and applied himself to the cup of coffee he already had. "No, I ... I remember..." /Or do I?/ he thought. /Why do I have the feeling that something terribly significant happened last night, and I missed it?/ He picked up the papers of his report, shuffled them like a deck of cards, dealt them out in front of Gast one by one. "I couldn't find any evidence of anything wrong. It looks like it was just a terrible accident."

Gast took off his glasses to rub his eyes. "We seem to have a lot of those," he said, sounding weary, as if he'd been awake for far too long already. "I've contacted the boy's relatives, and we'll be flying the body back to Midgar today. I'm afraid that I will need to go with them; with Kevin's death and Lucrecia's pregnancy, we are beginning to look short-staffed, and I would rather choose our new staff ourselves rather than allow someone to simply send them. Will you be all right here?"

::Yes, we'll be fine, Rodger.:: "Yes, we'll be fine, Rodger," he said, automatically. "How long will you be gone?"

Gast re-perched his glasses on his nose. "I don't know. A few weeks, at the most. I also need to pass by Cosmo Canyon at some point; Dr. Bugenhagen has mentioned some studies he thinks I would be interested in."

Hojo nodded. "Tell him I sent my greetings." Standing, he finished off the last of his coffee and stretched, feeling all the vertebrae from neck to tailbone shift and pop, and then rocked his head back and forth.

Gast shivered. "I'm sure you know how bad that is for you, so I'm not even going to bother." He said it automatically; this, too, was an old bone of friendly squabbling.

"Of course I know how bad it is for me; you persist on telling me every time you hear it," Hojo countered, a small smile spreading across his face. "And now, if you'll forgive me, now that I'm awake, I'm going to go upstairs, take a shower, and go right back to overwork. Was there anything else you wanted to share before I did?"

Gast shook his head. "Not really. Just keep an eye on Lucrecia, will you, please? I don't like how much she's been sleeping lately."

"Pregnant women sleep, Rodger," Hojo said over his shoulder as he went. "I wouldn't be concerned about it."

::Well done. He is not your friend, no matter what he seems.:: It seemed like his own thought, and he did not question it. Only a few days ago, he would have wondered why he was so relieved that Rodger would have to leave for a few weeks, but the thought did not even cross his mind. The lab would be his, and that was all that mattered.

He could feel a pair of eyes boring into his flesh like two bullets, watching him. It didn't bother him, not much; he was almost beginning to get used to the feeling of being watched, from one corner or another.. He lifted his eyes to meet those of his watcher, however, and raised one eyebrow in silent question.

Vincent scowled back from where he was standing in the door. It was then that Hojo realized that it was late, far later than it should be; he was the only one left in the lab.

Hojo's eyebrow arched further, and he drawled, softly, "Is there a problem, Mister Valentine?"

Vincent simply stood and watched for a few moments, his face full of contempt. Then, finally, he asked, his tone too even, "You knew that I fell in love with her the moment I saw her, didn't you."

That was hardly what Hojo was expecting, but he took it in stride; the only sign that he was taken aback was the other eyebrow, which rose to join the first. "Excuse me?" was all that escaped his mouth.

Vincent took a few more steps into the lab, until he stood on the other side of Hojo's lab counter, looking down and scowling. Hojo refused to stand and regain back at least some of the height advantage; he did not need to get drawn into the petty power games. "Lucrecia," Vincent said softly, and Hojo realized that while he was not quite drunk, he had been drinking. "When I first joined this project, and I first laid eyes on her, you knew. You knew that I loved her from that moment, didn't you."

Hojo turned away, rummaging through a rack of slides for the next one he needed. "You have been drinking, Mister Valentine," he said, coolly, "and you do not know what you are saying."

Brown eyes narrowed, then flared. "I know exactly what I'm saying," Vincent said, his tone too controlled. "I've known exactly what I was doing since I got here. Have you, Doctor?"

Hojo looked up from the microscope and just watched Vincent, carefully, even as his mind urged him to drive a fist into that contemptuous face and disrupt the scowl. "I fail to see where this is going," he said, still coolly. "Did you have a point, or did you just come to hurl platitudes at me?"

Letting his hands rest on the counter, Vincent leaned in a little closer. "I know what you've been doing," he said, lowly. "I know now. I didn't see it then, but I see it now. You saw that I was looking at Lucrecia, and you saw that she was looking back at me, and you decided to get your ring on her finger before I could do anything about it, so you'd have someone to use in this project of yours. And you've been using her; don't try to give me that shit about science. Science doesn't justify that." One lock of hair fell over his eyes, and he tossed his head, impatiently, to get rid of it. "And if there was a damn thing I could do about it, I'd do it, but there isn't. I just wanted you to know that I knew what you were doing, and what you had done."

His blood sang in his ears, but Hojo forced down the urge to lash out. "I am sure," he said, evenly, "that I do not know what you are talking about. Lucrecia and I are scientists collaborating on a project of great importance; I did not 'use' her for anything. She, Gast and I arrived at the method for this procedure together, and we have been learning a great deal in the process. No one is being used."

Vincent's eyes narrowed again. "Have you taken a good look at your wife recently, Doctor?" he asked, each word a dagger. "Have you seen what she looks like? Go and take a look at her and then tell me that no one's being used. She's a ghost. She's fading to nothing, and you're standing by and idly watching." One hand clenched, slowly. "Now, I stood on the side while she chose you, I will stand there while she lives with you and loves you and bears your children, but when you hurt her with your sheer blindness, I'm damn well going to step in and say something. Take care of her, Doctor. You don't deserve her, and she deserves so much more than you can ever give."

Hojo closed his eyes, not out of a desire to regain control but rather out of simple, sheer weariness. "I shall take your advice in the spirit it was offered, Mister Valentine," he said, his tone even. "Namely, the spirit of meddling where you do not belong. Leave me alone, leave my wife alone, leave this whole project alone, and do what you were hired for: standing there and looking menacing. Which, I will add, you are excelling at right now."

"You son of a bitch," Vincent said, but it was a soft enough growl that Hojo could pretend not to hear it; indeed, he realized, he should not have been able to hear it. Louder, he said, to Hojo this time, "There is nothing in this world that I would like more than to rearrange that face of yours so badly that not even any of your advanced surgery could put it back in place. But I'm not going to, and I'm not going to for two reasons. One, I'd really like to keep my job, and two, it would upset her. And unlike you, I care about what she thinks." He leaned in a little closer. "But I'm gonna give you a bit of advice, Doc. My job doesn't mean all that much to me when it really comes down to it. You can do whatever you want, you can screw up whatever you want, but when it comes to Lucrecia, you'd better open your eyes and start taking care of her. Because I'm watching you, and I'm not going to stand idly by while you kill her with your precious science. Remember that. Because in the end, I love her enough to do whatever it takes." His eyes bore into Hojo's, relentlessly. "Do you?"

Unable to answer, Hojo just looked back up at Vincent; his lip curled, faintly, and his fingers dug into the lab table he was clutching. "I refuse to dignify that question with an answer," he said, shortly. "And I find your demeanor quite unprofessional."

"Profession be damned." Vincent's voice, oddly enough, was soft. Deadly. "And now if you'll excuse me, Doctor, I think I'm going to go upstairs. The air in this place makes me sick."

With that, he turned and was gone. Hojo took a deep breath, and then another, tempted beyond all belief to go and slam him against the wall, to break that arrogance, that --

::No. Not yet. I will have need of him later.::

He sighed, taking another deep breath and letting it out slowly, regaining some sort of control. And then, answering that same strange inner prompting, he stood and unlocked the specimen room, moved over to the locked cabinet on the far side, unlocked that as well, and removed the spare .322 from the box where it was kept. Whistling softly and tunelessly to himself, he brought the gun back over to his desk, unlocked the drawer, and tucked the pistol under some random papers.

Locking the drawer behind him, he turned and shut off the lights to the lab, starting up the stairs. His whistling bounced off the walls of the stairwell, echoing back to his ears to combine with his footsteps. Absently, he wished once more that he could remember what had happened the last time he had worked late in the lab like this, but as it had several times in the past few weeks, the thought passed before it had even been fully formed.

In the darkened lab, something stirred once more. It could wait. It was used to taking the long view of things.