( 7. )

The sun would just be beginning to set in Midgar by the time Reno flashes Tseng the discreet twenty-minute warning; here, halfway across the world and across half a dozen timezones, it's just turning afternoon. Tseng slides his tablet (where he had been working on an email about the plans for Corel, trying to manage Scarlet without her realizing she was being managed, which is always a task that drives him up the fucking wall) back into his pocket and glances in the well-hidden mirror that reflects the passenger area of the chopper. Rufus has kicked off his shoes and is sitting in half-lotus in his seat, engrossed in his tablet; he's pulled out the roll-up keyboard and plugged it in, and Tseng can tell from the way his fingers tap against the rubber keys that he's irritated beyond all measure and trying to figure out how the fuck to phrase whatever email he's working on for maximum venom. Tseng would have expected him to have the laptop proper -- he's said multiple times how much he hates using the tablet for any real work -- but the laptop is in Tifa's lap instead, and she's frowning down at it just as sharply as Rufus is frowning at his tablet.

The slow and rhythmic click of her fingers against the keys tells him that she's working through the typing tutor; the occasional bitten-off swear tells him that she's not doing as well as she'd like. (He will be sure to pull her aside at some point and tell her that it takes months, if not years, for touch typing to become possible, much less second nature. He can type nearly a hundred words a minute now, but it had taken him a long time to stop having to look at the keys and type with three fingers.) The expression of concentration on her face is enough to tell him that she's absorbed in her task. He wouldn't have expected otherwise -- Tifa throws herself into just about any task with a ferocity that never fails to impress -- but he wars with himself briefly. He can't decide whether it's more merciful to let her know how close they are, to allow her to watch the approach (and steel herself against what she will find there) or let her continue on, distracted and preoccupied, until they land.

Reno must be able to see his dilemma, though, because he takes the decision out of Tseng's hands after another few minutes of Tseng studying Tifa in the mirror. "This is your fifteen-minute warning, yeah?" Reno says, clicking his headset back to the common channel from the auxiliary channel he and Tseng had been using for most of the second leg of the trip to discuss strategy without bothering Rufus and Tifa from their tasks. "We'll be landing in a few, so you might wanna pack up, get ready, do whatever you gotta do to brace yourselves."

He's talking to them both, but he means Tifa, and Tseng wonders what passed between them while he and Rufus had been inside the Shinra compound in Costa del Sol; he and Rufus had come back to find Tifa wearing a pair of the sunglasses from the random-disguises bin and staring at Reno like he'd just said something either profoundly unsettling or profoundly relieving. Tseng hadn't been able to tell which, and they hadn't said anything, just gone inside to use the bathroom. By the time they'd both come out, walking closer together than Tseng's ever seen Tifa walking with anyone who wasn't one of her chosen people, the catering staff inside had produced their lunch, and it was time to go. Once they'd gotten back into the chopper, the moment for asking had passed.

Now, Tifa looks up from her task, distracted for half a second before her face sharpens. "Yeah," she says, quietly enough that the microphone almost doesn't pick it up. "Um, what do I need to do to shut this down?"

"Just close it," Reno says, before anyone else can answer. "It'll go to sleep when you do, an' when you open it up again, it'll be right where you left off."

His tone is easy and casual, but there's some note in it Tseng has never heard before -- something caring, something protective -- and Tseng remembers a scared, skinny seventeen-year-old kid staring at a computer like it would blow up if he so much as touched it. That mysterious closeness suddenly makes perfect sense: he realizes that Reno has adopted Tifa just like Rufus has. Rufus's adoption might be that of the liege lord, but Reno's is that of the big brother; Tseng has never met Reno's sisters (they all keep their personal lives personal, as much as they can when they're living in each other's pockets), but he's overheard Reno on the phone with them, and Reno always sounds like this.

There's something about Tifa that inspires that kind of loyalty in people. People want to either protect her, or climb underneath the umbrella of her protection. Tseng noticed it a long time ago. He doesn't think he's any less susceptable to it than others are, even for being aware of the effect. It's like how half the time he walks into Rufus's office intending to chew him out for some crazy stunt and winds up leaving utterly convinced Rufus had been right all along. He supposes it's his lot in life to fall in with charismatic bastards all around.

In the backseat, Tifa bites her lip and gently eases the lid of the laptop down, slowly enough that Tseng can tell she's waiting for it to crack beneath her palm. When it's closed, Rufus unfolds himself and leans over to gently unplug the power cord from the jack in between the consoles -- the laptop's battery charge ran out long ago -- and coil it back up. "Here," he says. "I'll throw it into my suitcase."

Tifa bites her lip and passes the laptop over. Without it to concentrate on, she looks out the window, down upon the mountains beneath. She's facing away from Rufus, and Tseng thinks she might think she's being unobserved; her face changes, gets tight and taut and miserable with an overlay of fierce longing. She loves these mountains, Tseng realizes. Loved. It's another thing that was taken away from her.

Next to her, Rufus lifts his face, looking (unerringly) to the mirror no matter how well-concealed it is, meeting Tseng's eyes in reflection. He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to. The look he's giving Tseng is enough to speak volumes.

"What's the plan?" Tifa asks, abruptly. Tseng thinks she might be looking for something to concentrate on other than the way Reno's guiding the helicopter smooth and easy over the last of the mountain peaks before circling around for the Nibelheim approach, but she doesn't tear her eyes away from the window, her gaze sweeping over the scene below. Tseng thinks she might be searching out landmarks, trying to figure out how close they are and when she will be able to spot the village-that-was. (He signals Reno, as unobtrusively as possible, to take the approach that will mean the town will be visible on the right-hand side of the chopper, the one Tifa is sitting on; Reno flaps a hand back at him, the no shit, teach your granma to suck eggs written in every line.)

In the process of twisting around to stow the laptop and power cord in his luggage, Rufus shrugs. "We land at the mansion -- there's a helipad behind it -- and check it out to see whether we can stay there, or whether it's in too much disrepair, in which case --" He winces a little, realizing what he's about to say, but bulls onward. "--We'll get rooms in the inn. I don't want to head up to the reactor until the morning; we'll all be tired from the time change and I want us to be well-rested."

Tifa nods, absently. "Makes sense," she says, her voice distracted. She lifts a hand to the window, leans forward just a bit; Tseng, looking just as hard as she's looking, notices the smudgy lines beneath them turning slowly into the outlines of roofs and streets. Tifa inhales, sharply.

Rufus hesitates, turning back around and preparing to fasten his seat belt again, and leans over for a better vantage point. When he realizes what she's looking at, he winces ever-so-slightly, then leans back immediately, giving her more room. Gently, cautiously, he reaches out and touches two fingers to the back of the hand that Tifa has resting against her thigh, where her fingers are digging into her skin. Tseng can just see Tifa's startled twitch, the way her fingers immediately relax.

"Whatever it is, we'll get to the bottom of it," Reno promises, and Tseng looks over to him to see his eyes are fixed on the mirrors, too. (And not the windshield to see where he's going. Tseng would be more concerned, did he not know Reno's skill as a pilot surpasses any other Tseng has ever seen; Tseng swears he flies by intuition and feel more than anything he can see.)

Reno intends for his words to be comfort, Tseng knows, and Tifa's face does smooth out a little; she turns her face away from the window and smiles, her eyes lifting, and Tseng realizes, suddenly, that she knows precisely where the mirrors are, and that they are watching her. "I know," she says. "I --"

Then she stops. Her eyes widen, and she leans forward; whatever small bit of relaxation Rufus's touch, Reno's words, bought her has gone away, and her fingers are once more digging into her thighs, both hands this time. "Wait a minute," she says. Her voice is urgent, intent. "Wait a minute. Oh, fuck."

The expletive rings in the tiny cockpit, managing to echo even past the whirr of the rotors. Rufus's head comes up like a predator listening for the sounds of prey. "What?"

Tifa turns to face him, still leaning forward, every line in her body radiating urgency. "I think we have a problem," she says, and Tseng can tell it's only through great self-control that Rufus doesn't grab her shoulders, shake her, and demand she spit it out already. "You said -- You said your father was the one who ordered Nibelheim be rebuilt, right? You said --" Her eyes unfocus for a second, the expression Tseng already knows means that she's accessing a memory. "'We can't let anyone know we can't control our people', right?"

"Yes," Rufus says, frowning, impatient.

Tifa shakes her head, short and swift, not negation of Rufus's words but not wanting to believe the truth. Tseng frowns; he can't figure out what she's driving at. "So," Tifa says, "where did he get the people? And how much do you want to bet that at least one of them has orders to report back if someone -- anyone, but especially his son -- starts poking around and asking questions?"

There's a minute of utter silence except for the rotors. It's broken, finally, by Rufus starting to swear, viciously, scatologically, and full of blasphemy. The litany goes on for a full minute; all the while, he's pulling the laptop back out. "In thirty seconds you have just justified the considerable amount of time and energy that it took to get you here," he says to Tifa when he finally breaks it off. "Fuck. Reno --"

"Holding pattern until you say the word, far enough that it's not in visual range," Reno says, immediately, and Tseng can tell he's just as shell-shocked as Tseng himself is. Leviathan curse it, he should have realized. He should have thought. But he's far too used to knowing he is Tseng of the Turks and there is no door that will not open to him, and Rufus is far worse, and he hadn't put two and two together, and he should have. It's his job to keep Rufus from getting killed. And if it hadn't been for Tifa --

Thank Leviathan for Tifa, is all he can think. Because without her, they would've walked straight into Nibelheim without a single thought to subterfuge, and it likely would've fucked everything beyond all belief.

"Give me options, people," Rufus says, his attention focused on the laptop screen, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Tseng knows he's looking to see what he can find in the internal files, whether or not he can find a project or a budget item for whether Nibelheim's 'citizenry' are on the payroll, whether he can confirm any Shinra operatives stationed there, black-budget or not. (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and if Rufus does not find anything, it will not mean there is nothing to be found; Rufus's skill at negotiating the information ecology of Shinra's complex network of databases and data warehouses is unparallelled, but not everything can be found through those means, and even less can be found at a distance. But if Rufus finds something, at least they will know for sure.)

Tseng's brain feels like he's trying to swim through mud. "Touch down at the reactor, Tifa guides us in to town, we pose as a hunting or climbing party or a group on a tour of the continent," he offers. "Tifa, you said that was common --"

But she's shaking her head. "That wouldn't get us into the mansion," she says. "It's far enough away from the town that it didn't burn when Sephiroth attacked --" She can say his name without hesitating, this time, Tseng notices, with the corner of his brain that isn't running through damage-control mode. "But it's close enough that you can't get there without someone noticing, and the windows are visible from town, and if there were lights in there someone would come looking. If whoever's living there now is anything like we were, I mean." She frowns again. "How does --"

"Fuck!" Rufus interrupts her, bangs a fist down on the console between them; Tifa flinches at the sound, the motion, but Rufus doesn't seem to notice. He looks up, and his eyes are furious. "I wouldn't have found it if I been deliberately looking for it, because it's hidden too fucking well. Fuck." He slams the lid of the laptop down. "Anybody want to guess what department code the twenty people on payroll down there are being charged to?"

"If I say the science department, do I get that stop at Costa del Sol on the way back?" Reno asks. The words are a joke, but the tone isn't.

"Right in one," Rufus snarls. "Hojo. We're right back to Hojo. And if we can't figure out a way to get answers from down there, I am one step away from flying back to Midgar and beating them out of him." In his voice, Tseng hears the long smoulder of Rufus's ferocious temper, half an inch from ignition. He searches for some way (any way) to defuse it, because the last thing they can afford right now is for Rufus to explode.

Tifa closes her eyes for a long few seconds, and one of her legs starts to jiggle, as though she's wishing she could be up and pacing. Then she freezes and opens her eyes again. "You said -- The mansion was built for Shinra engineering and maintenance crews. What if we're one of them? There for, I don't know, spring reactor cleaning or something." Then she stops herself, shaking her head. "No, that probably wouldn't work, I'd bet you anything there's a special team that only does this reactor, people who know what's really going on, you said you weren't allowed into it when you were here with the reconstruction team --"

It's true, and part of the oddness they'd never been able to clear up, and it's one of the major reasons a visit to Nibelheim has been on the list since Rufus got back from Junon -- Tseng hadn't let him even contemplate the trip from Junon, not without backup, not when half the staff in Rufus's Junon office had been spies for his father. But the thought sparks something anyway. "If we're in the mansion, could you get us up to the reactor with nobody noticing?" he asks.

Tifa bites her lip. "Maybe. Probably. Yeah. Depending on how much gear we find in the mansion, or if I can buy from the general store and make it look like I'm buying for the mansion. I'm not taking you up into the mountains without both hiking and climbing gear, but if the mansion really is used as a base of operations for reactor maintenance crew, I'm pretty sure there'd be some gear stowed. You'd have to be suicidal not to have it. And even if there isn't, I could probably put together something I'd be satisfied with from general supplies we'd be buying if we'd be moving into the mansion for a while anyway."

It all falls into place. "That's it, then," Tseng says. "We're a team of low-level engineering grunts sent out by Heidegger and Palmer to do a survey of the structural soundness and logistical benefit of all Shinra-owned property, in preparation for identifying things that will need to be fixed or rebuilt once the Department of Engineering has ownership of all that."

Rufus blinks. Twice. "There's no way in hell the Department of Engineering will ever happen," he says, slowly.

Tseng laughs, feeling the giddiness of a plan coming together. "That's what makes it perfect. There is no Department of Engineering, not yet, but Hojo won't know if it's going to happen or not unless he talks to Heidegger and Palmer. And he won't do that, because if he does, it shows that he's too interested in Nibelheim. Palmer and Heidegger know there's no way in hell the Department of Engineering will happen, but they're not going to admit that, so if Hojo does break character and say something, they'll play along, and unless Hojo corners them both, they'll each think the other ordered it. And if all else fails and Hojo decides to pursue it, and all hell breaks loose?" He shrugs. "I'm not going to lose sleep over either Palmer or Heidegger getting onto Hojo's shit list. Anybody disagree?"

Another few minutes of silence. "It could work," Rufus finally says, slowly, turning things over in his head. "It could really work." He frowns. "We'd have to look the part --"

"Disguise drawer," Reno says, promptly. "Tif', it's right under your feet, the one you got the sunglasses outta. This is a Turks chopper; we come prepared. I know there's stuff in there in my size and the boss's. Boss, you're too fucking recognizable, but if we shove a baseball cap on your head and you hang back, you should be okay, yeah? Chief, you could probably fit Rude's, you don't mind swimming a little --"

"I'm the new recruit," Rufus says, immediately. "Just graduated. My first field assignment. Nobody's sure if I can hack it yet, so nobody bothered finding me coveralls that fit."

"That leaves Tif'," Reno says. "Who, I mean, don't get me wrong, Tif', you're gorgeous, but you are precisely the wrong size to fit into any of our clothes, you'd look like you were playing dress-up --"

"So, she's not an engineer at all," Tseng says. "What she's in now would work for a middle manager well enough. She's the bureaucrat who was sent along with us to make sure we don't go over budget and we don't skip any parts of the checklist." He frowns. "We give her a clipboard, shove a pencil through the bun -- I think there's a spare pair of plain-glass wireframe glasses in the props drawer to disguise her even more --"

"Yeah," Rufus says, slowly. "Yeah, okay. This could work." He takes in a deep breath, lets it out, slowly. "Odin's balls and Bahamut's wings, that was close. Too close." He turns to pin Tifa with his gaze; the storm on his face calming down a little now that the crisis has been dealt with, or at least a plan formulated, but from the way Tifa's shoulders go back at the look, Tseng thinks Rufus might still be working on banking the last of the fury. "And I am in your debt twice over. You are apparently better at spotting mistakes about to be made than we are." (Tseng winces, just a bit, to hear that proclamation; he knows he'll be hearing about his failure to realize just how much shit they could have landed in when they have a spare minute for Rufus to tear a strip out of his hide.) "From here on out, it is your duty to speak up, should you see those mistakes about to be made."

Tifa's voice is dry. "I would have anyway."

Rufus passes a hand over his face. Then frowns and digs both hands into his hair, starting to break up the strands slicked back by product, working at each of them with impatient fingernails. "Grab the coveralls," he says. "We'll be on stage the minute we land; we need to dress the part now."

It takes some wriggling to get changed while the chopper's still in the air, and Tseng winds up having to take the stick for five minutes while Reno contorts in his seat to undress and re-dress, swearing all the way, but by the time they land, they look the part. And it's a good thing, too, because there's a crowd of three "villagers" standing next to the mansion's helipad when they land and open the doors, and Tseng's blood runs cold at just how narrowly they dodged that bullet. (If Rufus's father knew that Rufus were digging into the truth of Nibelheim, so soon after having returned from being banished to Junon for fighting the 'reconstruction' plan so fiercely...)

They'd agreed, in the last minutes before they landed, that none of the three of them (Reno, Rufus, and Tseng himself) were suited to the role of the leader of their little team. Each of them is far too recognizable, each in his own way, even if the attention given to the Turks is usually to the suit and not the man inside it. The disguise drawer has coverup makeup in Reno's skin tone to hide the facial tattoos -- they're Reno's trademark, and like the suits, people remember the ink far more than they remember the man who's wearing it -- but makeup isn't perfect; Tifa told them they're still in the window for the spring rains that rise out of nowhere and turn into a deluge before you can so much as blink, and the coverup isn't water-soluble but getting caught in a downpour will at least make it plain that there's makup there, since wet makeup doesn't behave the way wet skin does. Tseng is Wutaian, which in itself isn't a problem -- after the first war, thirty years ago, many of his countrymen came to Midgar to escape the sanctions Shinra levied on the defeated nation and stayed to educate themselves in the technology Shinra had used to crush Wutai's spirit so thoroughly -- but the scar of his death-sentence marked between his eyes is just as distinctive; again, makeup can conceal it, but not perfectly.

And Rufus is Rufus. To place Rufus, undercover, in any position that would require him to play slightly at command, but not entirely, risks setting a plan up for failure. Rufus is an excellent actor -- Tseng remembers telling Tifa the story of Rufus's senior year, remembers the story they'd fed his father, and thinks that the lessons were indeed applicable in the business world, just not in the ways Rufus had claimed at the time -- but he works best when he can inhabit a character wholly unlike himself. Any crack for Rufus Shinra to move into the role he is playing is begging for disaster when Rufus's character slips; even the most excellent actor can't hope to remain on stage 24/7.

So it's Tifa who leaps from the helicopter first, her boot-heels clicking across the concrete of the helipad, her clipboard poised as though she's about to grade their welcoming committee on style and substance both. She looks cool and terrifying, competent beyond all measure, and Tseng thinks he might be the only one who saw her pause near-imperceptably before opening the door, squaring her shoulders and steeling herself for what was to come. Tseng follows her, trying to look bland and mousy, trying to blend into the background; he slinks in her shadow, watching her eat up the ground with her confident, long-legged strides. (He blesses Reno once more for the high heels on the boots; the extra three inches they afford her have magnified her natural tendency to project into all available space and then some. She looks like a goddess.)

The information Rufus was able to find about Nibelheim on the Shinra intranet includes the mayor's -- sham mayor's -- name; they couldn't tell whether or not he was on the black-ops payroll, in on the deception or not, since all of the payroll files Rufus was able to unearth were blind items, each resource identified by number and nothing more. (Which tells them that there's a file somewhere -- even if it's just in someone's head -- where number and name correspond, and that tells Tseng there's more digging to be done, and he knows Rufus's fingers are already itching to start in on the work.) Tseng has to admire the way Tifa brandishes the clipboard as she nears the delegation, alternating between looking up at them and flipping through papers (hastily assembled from every scrap of paper with the Shinra logo they could turn up in the chopper, accompanied by hand-written notes; Tseng wishes like burning they had a printer, so they could print up some official-looking forms overnight, but their little entourage had been planning to travel light, dammit, and Rufus doesn't pack along a printer unless he knows he's going to be doing business from the road).

"I'm assuming one of you is Mayor Calotta," Tifa says, and even her voice is different: she sounds like every terrifying middle manager Tseng has ever tried to talk his way past, like she is itching to discover all the ways in which the world around her does not conform to specifications so she can have the pleasure of whipping it into line.

The three men share a helpless gaze; one of them finally steps forward. "I'm Mayor Calotta," he says, looking like he's trying to decide whether or not to add the "ma'am" on the end.

Tifa lifts her chin and looks down her nose at him. (It, too, is easier with the heels; they are nearly of a height, and Tifa may have half an inch on him in the boots.) "I am Tara Miller," she says -- they'd decided that using her already-established alias would be too risky, in case anyone remembered it and reported it back; 'Miki Walker' is one of the Turks' standard burner aliases, able to be activated and transfered at a moment's noice when they find someone who needs it, and although the Turks and Rufus are the only ones who'd recognize the name on sight, Tifa may need to be Miki for a while longer. "Shinra Department of Engineering and Support, provisional. My men and I have been ordered to complete a full survey of all Shinra property worldwide to determine which properties to keep, which to repair, and which to dispose of. The property we are standing upon does belong to Shinra, yes?"

Unspoken, under her words, the implication: if this property is Shinra's, what are you doing on it?

One of the two unnamed men (and Tseng, looking for reactions, has already pegged him as the likely snake in the grass; his eyes had widened, just a bit, at Tifa's words) steps forward as well and clears his throat. "Of course, ma'am. We just didn't hear anything from Shinra telling us to expect anybody --"

Tifa fixes him with a cold glare. "I was not aware that Shinra needed to inform anyone of our plans," she says, neat and precise, and Tseng is torn between marveling at her ability to carry this off and wondering what it might be costing her. "The Department of Engineering and Support is provisional, gentlemen, and I will not be the one who fails to secure our permanent funding by failing to complete my mission. Now, it is of course company policy to integrate fully with local governmental bodies whenever possible, but I assure you, you'll barely know we're here. Our schedule on this inspection tour is quite tight, and barring any discovery of particular interest, we'll likely be out of your hair by Wednesday. Thursday at the latest. If there have been any updates to local building code since the property's last inspection, please have someone deliver a summary by tomorrow morning -- I likely won't have time to send any of my men down to check with your inspectors for changes; we'll barely have time to send someone down for supplies. Barring that, we'd rather like to get to work. We appreciate the welcome."

Tseng thinks he might be the only person to notice the way her wrists are shaking as she turns away from the group of men and starts her long stride back to the chopper. Rufus had been the one to coach her through that speech, twice, while stripping out of his suit and making his transformation into an anonymous engineering worker. ("Be firm, be arrogant, and above all else, don't let them get a word in edgewise before you turn your back on them and walk away.") Tseng plays hesitation for a second, gives the three men an embarrassed, apologetic smile (sorry, guys, but she's the boss, even if she is an arrogant bitch, and she signs the paychecks so I'm going with her), and then jogs the few steps needed to catch up with her, keeping his shoulders slumped over and his chin tucked down so his cap shades his eyes. "Nice," he says, in Wutaian, in an undertone he know will not carry. (Since there's no chance of disguising his Wutaian heritage, he's pondering -- mostly for his own amusement, he'll admit -- pretending he doesn't understand or speak anything but.)

Next to him, Tifa breathes out, sharp and rough. (Is it just the stress making her inhales and exhales sound like that, or was that really a slight wheeze he just heard? He resolves to listen closely when they are inside and away from the noises of nature.) "Not done yet," she says, her lips barely moving, and pauses about twenty feet from the chopper. The pantomime she goes through is clearly a set of orders to Rufus and Reno, still in the chopper, no doubt watching the whole thing with bated breath from behind the tinted windows: get the gear and get your asses moving.

(The spectre of Tifa giving orders to Rufus, even if only by gesture, is alone worth the price of admission.)

The "welcoming committee" is slow to depart, watching to see what they're going to do, and Tseng thinks (now that he is thinking) that there's something else wrong here, something more than just a set of Hojo's spies being uneasy at visitors coming out of nowhere. It makes him hold out a hand, touch Tifa's elbow quickly just as she's reaching for the front door. The delegation is far enough away that he doesn't have to watch his language too carefully, but he keeps his voice down anyway. "Hold on," he says. Then, knowing he has to make it look good -- his shoulderblades are prickling, and he knows without having to look that the departing trio have slowed down on the path away from the mansion, are turning back to look at what they're doing -- he pantomimes pointing at an "item" on the clipboard, taking Tifa's shoulder and drawing her back down the walkway, pointing up at the eaves of the mansion as though he's showing her something she'll need to mark down on her checklist.

Tifa's fast enough to catch on -- he hadn't expected otherwise -- and she looks up to follow his indication, frowning and pulling the pencil out of her bun to gesture up with it even as her words have nothing to do with the physical presentation they're fronting. "You caught it too, didn't you?" she says. Her face is a pleasant, thoughtful frown, like they're doing nothing more strenuous than arguing over whether the rafters are up to code. (Tseng can tell, without even looking too closely, that they aren't; the place looks like it's about to collapse.) "The one on the left, the one with the black hair and the creepy eyes, who said they hadn't expected us."

The motions of his cover are automatic: bend his head down over the clipboard, point out another thing to consider, hold his hands up about a foot apart and use them to frame a section of the roof. Tifa waves the pencil in midair, sketching out something in the section he would be indicating, were any of this real. (It's lovely to work with someone who follows his cues so flawlessly.) "Him," Tseng agrees. "Which tells me they do get regular visitors here, which tells me this mansion isn't as abandoned as people might think, which means there's no way in hell I'm letting you be first in. You and Rufus will wait out here while Reno and I clear the place."

Tifa inhales, sharply. (He isn't imagining it; her breath really is growing more labored, and it isn't from panic; he knows the signs of her panic by now. Dammit.) "I --" She bites back whatever she was about to say, transmutes it into, "I understand why you'd think you have to do it that way, but if there's any way you can be comfortable with letting me at least as far as the entryway, please." Her poise and composure cracks, just a little, and for half a second Tseng can see the stark naked agony in her face. It's only a flash before she gets control of herself again, but the fact she cracked at all is horribly telling when Tseng knows full well she knows how much is riding on her performance. "This is hard enough on me without having to stand out here on stage pretending I've never seen the place before. I can do it if I need to, but I'd really rather not."

Rufus and Reno come up behind them, each with a suitcase in each hand. "By a bear?" Rufus says, in an undertone. (One of their old codes: "exeunt, pursued by a bear", a line from one of the classic plays Rufus had always been reading, and they've always used it to mean that they are under observation by someone who hasn't really left after all.)

Tseng nods, gestures at the clipboard, points up to the rafters again. (Rufus, too, catches on immediately; he shuffles his weight from one foot to the other, scratches his head as a cover for pulling the brim of his hat down further -- although that might be natural; disturbing all that product probably means his scalp is itching -- and then gestures widely, like he's arguing for his own interpretation of what they're seeing. Reno just pulls out a cigarette, then looks at Tifa, closely, and pops it into his mouth without lighting it.) "Our friends are down by the bushes just past that bend -- don't look -- and one of them said something that makes us both think there are frequent enough visitors that I can't be sure the mansion really is deserted. I want you two to --" He thinks, fast; it's the small tensing of Tifa's shoulders, preparing herself to hear bad news, that decides him. "--Stay just in front of the door when we go in, and don't move until Reno and I clear the place."

"Thank you," Tifa murmurs. (Rufus looks at him, clearly wondering what she's thanking him for; Tseng makes the 'later' face.) "Are they still watching us?"

Reno fishes out his lighter, gestures wildly with it while pointing up to the rafter with his other hand. The lighter goes flying, precisely where Reno intended for it to go; Reno throws up his hands (clearly telegraphing I give up on this fucking day) and stoops to retrieve it. It's very smoothly done; Reno does faux-clumsy beautifully. "Yup," he says, when he comes back up. "Only spotted two of 'em; the third might've left, might just be behind something. Tif', time to throw a temper fit. Grab the cigarette, toss it in the bushes, yell a bunch about how we're all a bunch of slackers an' need to get inside and get to work, something. Me an' the boss first."

Tseng's expecting her to protest, expecting her to take a second to steel herself for the pretense; she doesn't. She grabs the cigarette out from between Reno's lips, her voice spiking in her clear, carrying last-call cadence. It isn't precisely yelling -- her voice never rises above slightly louder than conversational -- but there's no doubt their observers will be able to hear her.

"We do not have time for you to stand around and smoke while we are burning daylight, gentlemen," she snaps. (For a second, Tseng sees merriment flash through Rufus's eyes, there and then gone, and he thinks Rufus might be forcing back laughter, lest he ruin their cover.) She brandishes the cigarette in Reno's face. "This does not sign your paychecks. I do." Snap, throw, and little flakes of tobacco arc through the air as Tifa pitches it. "You and you," she adds, somehow managing to contrive it so that Tseng and Reno are the ones she's pointing at, "get our things inside and start on form 2B-slash-9. You --" The pointing finger transfers to Rufus. "--Are coming with me, and I will demonstrate to you the proper way to begin an evaluation, unlike what some people think is appropriate."

Tseng bows his head (it neatly conceals his own desire to burst out laughing; she sounds like a slightly sweeter, far-more-articulate version of Heidegger on one of his rampages) and grabs the two nearest suitcases, then scurries into the mansion. Reno does the same. The minute they've both cleared the door, they drop the gear in unison and fan out -- the sightlines mean their uninvited guests won't be able to see inside. Behind them, Tifa stalks in, her head held high; Rufus scurries along behind her and shuts the door. The minute he does, Tifa leans back against the wall; her shoulders sag sharply.

Rufus, however, doesn't do anything to let his cover drop, or even falter slightly. He whistles softly for attention, then flashes Tseng and Reno another of their private signals. This one says, I'm not sure if we're on camera or not.

Tseng kicks himself; he should have thought of that too. "He says, there may be an eye in the sky, watching," he says quietly, knowing Tifa won't be able to interpret Rufus's signs. (Wutaian has no word for 'camera'; they have borrowed the word from Midgar's common tongue, and any listener would be able to know what is being discussed, did they hear it.)

Tifa looks stricken for half a second, then straightens up and pastes her persona back on. "Ears?" she asks.

Tseng signs it back at Rufus, who shrugs. He's angled himself in such a way that his back is to the most logical place to put a camera; he signs a quick five, tugs his cap (minutes), and says, out loud, "Want me to go check the circuit breakers, ma'am?"

Tseng isn't sure if Tifa even knows what a circuit breaker is, but she nods. (No, that's unfair; she owns property and buys electricity from Shinra just like everyone else does; her unfamiliarity with computing technology does not extend to an unfamiliarity with every form of technology.) "Yes, please," she says, her tone brisk. She hesitates so briefly that Tseng wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it. "Gentlemen, I have had a very trying day, and I would like to get settled as quickly as possible. You two, start the preliminary walkthrough. I will begin constructing the final checklist."

Smart of her -- very smart, and Tseng thinks, not for the first time, that it's a pity he can't just hire her. She's just given him and Reno an excuse to clear the mansion and herself a reason to stay in the entranceway, the way Tseng had requested her to. (Can't help the fact Rufus won't be doing the same; Rude is the Turks' counter-surveillance and electronics expert, and although both Tseng and Reno can recognize and defeat the basics, Rufus -- whose hobby has been electronics and technology for as long as Tseng has known him -- is far more equipped to identify and handle a camera feed, if one exists.) Still, he can mitigate the risk: "I come with you, show you the breakers," he says to Rufus, playing up the thickest Wutaian accent he thinks he can still summon. (Rufus makes a face, but doesn't protest.)

The circuit breaker is in the same place it usually is in construction of this style and age: in the coldroom off the kitchen. Rufus opens it up, removes the front panel (Tseng bites back a protest; he's pretty sure you're supposed to turn the master feed off before you do that) and runs his fingertips over the wires, muttering softly to himself. Eventually, he puts one finger on breaker number 11, and one finger on breaker number 13. "Hang on," he says, and flips 11. The lights in the kitchen go out. He flicks it back on, then flips 13.

"Will you please provide warning before cutting the power to the room I'm working in?" Tifa hollers.

"We're clear, then," Rufus yells back, turning 13 back on. "Those are the only two breakers a surveillance system could've been," he adds, to Tseng. "If there's anything in here, it's stand-alone and battery-powered, and there's no model in production that's both battery-powered and continuous-transmit. If there are eyes and ears, they're capture-and-squirt, once a day when the comm satellite is overhead, and I checked the orbits; we have at least another five hours if that's the case. I'll toss the place before then and make sure."

"Then it's back to the vestibule with you," Tseng says. When Rufus glares at him, he shrugs. "I could make you feel better about it by saying I'd like to have someone keep Tifa company to make sure she's handling this all right. Which is true, even. But I'm not letting you anywhere else in this place before we sweep it."

It makes Rufus mutter with ill grace, but he heads back into the foyer, and Tseng draws his weapon and begins clearing rooms, one after another.

After having failed in sufficient paranoia twice in a span of half an hour or so, Tseng is on high alert as he goes, eyes open for the smallest of details. He's certain they're alone within two rooms, but he proceeds methodically anyway, mapping the space in his mind as he goes. The mansion is replete with an old and stately grandeur that has long since started to decay, and Tseng is surprised it isn't in worse shape than it is, but the layers of dust -- whole strata -- are not as undisturbed as they should be, if this place truly had been completely unused in the nearly-three years since Nibelheim's death and re-creation. Someone has been here since the reconstruction team left.

He only wishes he'd been more insistent, at the time, that he and the Turks should be allowed into the mansion, to stay there rather than camping out with the rest of the reconstruction workers in the hastily-erected emergency services pavillion tent they'd pitched in the backyard. Somehow, every time they'd tried, Hojo had been there to distract them. This is the first time he's been inside. It would have been nice to have the previous experience to contrast his evaluation with, but he realizes as he goes that he has found no reason why Hojo should have been so secretive. There's nothing out of the ordinary in here. Just the few books Tifa had mentioned when she'd discussed sneaking into the mansion as children, here and there, and the slowly crumbling furnishings and decor of a manor house that had once been grand.

"You find anything?" he asks as he passes Reno coming back down the stairs when he finishes his sweep of the ground floor and returns to the lobby.

Reno looks unhappy. "Yeah. Two things: jack and shit. And I'm not sure about the jack."

Tifa is sitting on the second-to-last step of the great staircase, having dusted herself a place to sit without dirtying her pants, her knees drawn up to her chest but still being careful not to lean back against the stair tread behind her and risk her white silk blouse. Rufus's confirmation that they are not on stage -- or at least, not on stage in real time -- seems to have robbed her of the last of the strength and self-control she had been projecting when they were still being observed; she looks small and tired and lost. There's another dust-free space next to her, where Rufus was clearly sitting, but it's empty now. She's looking across the room, at a sofa that had been sitting undisturbed in the parlor area and is now in the corner of the foyer. It's standing up on edge, and Rufus is perched, barefoot, precariously, atop it, reaching high above his head and feeling along the decorative frills.

Tseng closes his eyes and prays for patience. (Rufus has the balance of a cat, and knows damn well how to fall. The worst he could suffer would be some scrapes if the sofa decided it would no longer bear his weight and collapsed, and Tseng knows that's why Rufus has shed his shoes and socks: so that he can grip with his toes, feel the tiny vibrations of the wood and fabric beneath him, and know enough to throw himself free if the furniture is as decrepit as the rest of the building. It doesn't help.) "Dare I ask?" he says, as dryly as possible, sitting down next to Tifa. He doesn't like the way she looks, or the way she sounds, and he's hoping that if he settles in next to her, he'll be able to evaluate her and decide what kind of treatment is appropriate.

"He said if there were cameras, that's where they'd most likely be," she says. She sounds pale and colorless, as washed out as she looks.

Tseng is just about ready to say to hell with the subterfuge necessary to keep Tifa's fierce pride from flaring up when Reno crouches down in front of her. "Tif', I really don't like the way you're breathing, yeah?" he says. "You wanna take a deep breath for me?"

It's not the way Tseng would've approached it, and he expects Tifa to snap at him, to insist that she's all right, that she can handle things. But she only makes a face and sits up straighter, dropping her knees and resting her hands on her thighs, straightening out her spine, to obey.

Reno leans in, closer than Tseng would have thought Tifa would let him, until he's got his ear pressed against her upper chest. He stops breathing himself, concentrating fiercely, and when he pulls back, his face is unhappy. "You know what I'm gonna say, don't you," he says, sitting back on his heels.

"I was born here," Tifa wails.

Reno nods, his expression sober. "Which is why you know fucking well you're starting in on a case of rapid-onset environmental pneumonia. You want it to turn into pulmonary edema, or you gonna let me treat it for you?"

The Turks all carry Restore materia, as a matter of course, even if they don't usually keep it equipped. Rude's the one who usually handles their healing if all of them are in the field, though, and most people who know them think it's because Reno is one of the people with poor affinity with the restorative materia. They all know the truth, though. Reno's one of the best, most natural healers Tseng's ever found; when Reno cures something, it stays cured. It just leaves Reno sick and dizzy for hours afterwards, sometimes even to the point of manifesting the symptoms of whatever it was he was curing.

The last thing they can afford right now is for both Tifa and Reno to be out of commission. If Tifa's illness truly is altitude-related, stemming from the rapid change from cruising altitude back down to Costa del Sol back up to cruising altitude and then to here in such quick succession, a shot of second-level Cure followed by night of sleep at a stable altitude will work wonders; back when Tseng had first joined the Turks, both Kailas and Blaze had reacted badly to extended helicopter travel, and that plus drugs had always been the answer. If, as he fears, Tifa's illness is due to a genuine weakness of the lungs, an incapacity to handle altitudes this high and air this thin, there's even odds that she won't recover.

His heart breaks for her all over again: to be exiled from home twice over, once by the actions of another, again by the betrayal of her own body ...

Still. He can't risk having both of them on the disabled list. "Reno," he says, softly, regretfully: you know why that isn't a good idea.

Usually that tone is enough to make Reno back down. This time, though, Reno looks up at him, eyes blazing. "Shot of levofloxacin, shot of dexamethasone, wait ten minutes, add a hyper-focused second level Cure, and you know as fucking well as I do that your Cure's for shit and the chief doesn't do materia unless someone's bleeding to death. I'm not letting her suffer one minute longer than I gotta, I don't care what Cure does to me to cast. You need her on this mission a fuck of a lot more than you need me."

Tseng knows it for the sound of Reno putting his foot down, and when Reno puts his foot down, mountains will move sooner than Reno will change his mind. Tifa holds up a hand, though, and she looks utterly weary and utterly disgusted with herself. "It's all academic," she says -- and the worst part is how the wheezing, crackling sound of her breath doesn't even seem to bother her. She smiles, thin and tight. "When my doctor discharged me, he told me the scarring in my lungs is bad enough that using healing spells anywhere near my chest should be reserved for cases where it's Cure or death. You know how Cure eats your body's reserves to speed up the natural healing process? Yeah, my lungs don't have those reserves anymore. And if the scar tissue gets dislodged, there's a good chance it will permanently block off the lung."

She sounds utterly matter-of-fact about it. Tseng doesn't know how she can. Last night she'd told them a story that had ended with her breathing her own blood, and he's been called a cold bastard time and time again and even he doesn't think he could handle feeling his lungs pulling this shit on him if he'd gone through what she had. It must show on his face, at least a little, because her lips twist. "I'm almost positive it was the air in Costa del Sol," she says. "Between the humidity there and the altitude here, and then all this dust... I didn't think of it. I probably should have. I'll be fine as soon as we get back down under the danger line. If it gets bad enough, one of you can medevac me to Corel or Cosmo Canyon; Cosmo's where we always used to send cases of altitude sickness, since we had to go overland, but either of them should be low enough that I can recover a bit."

In her voice, Tseng can hear her knowledge that once she leaves, she won't ever be able to return. He stands, abruptly. "We'll try the drug therapy first," he says, and turns on his heel to go back out to the helicopter and collect the first aid kit. (The Turks' first aid kits are more in the way of battlefield hospital than anything else.)

When he comes back in, Rufus -- who has dragged the sofa over to the other side of the foyer for a second check -- is just leaping down from his perch atop it, graceful and light on his feet, his hands and face smudged with dust from where he had been feeling along the decorative edging of the ceiling. He comes over to Tseng's side. "Clear, in here at least," he reports. He glances at the first aid kit Tseng is carrying. "What's wrong?"

When Rufus is working -- especially when Rufus is working on technical matters -- his concentration is unassailable, but he registers enough about what's going on around him that he's able to think back over the conversations he's missed once he comes out of his trance of work. Still, it's easier if Tseng just briefs him. "Altitude pneumonia," Tseng says, shortly. "Small dispute about the best course of action."

Rufus looks over at Tifa, who has progressed to looking as though she is staving off a coughing fit with nothing more than pure force of will, and winces. "Who won?"

"Right now, me." Tseng carries the first-aid kit over to the steps, clicks it open and begins to root through its neatly labeled vials. They carry their drugs in both liquid and pill form, but with how grey Tifa is starting to look around her lips, an injection is the only way to go.

Reno holds out a hand as soon as he digs out the vial of dexamethasone. "Give," he says; it's the moving-mountains tone again. Tseng sighs and surrenders it. Reno's got a softer touch with a needle, anyway.

Once the syringe is loaded, Reno reaches for one of Tifa's arms; she shakes her head and holds out the other one instead. "Better use this one," she says. "The other one had two veins collapse halfway through treatment last time." (Both Reno and Tseng wince in unison.) She turns her head decisively away from the sight of Reno checking for a good vein.

Tseng takes a step forward to help distract her, but Rufus is there first; he sits down at her other side, one step above her so she'll have to crane her neck away from where Reno's working, and gives her a reassuring smile. He's clearly replayed his memory of the conversation he missed: "You said Cosmo Canyon's where you used to send cases of altitude sickness?" he asks. (Tseng would bet that he doesn't give a rat's ass about Cosmo Canyon or altitude sickness; he's just seized on that as a logical conversation flow from her last statements that doesn't involve her own medical history.) "Have you ever been there? I've heard it's supposed to be beautiful. And it happens to be where I've told everyone I am, so anything you can share about it will help."

Tifa shakes her head. "I only guided for parties trying Mt. Nibel one or two times a year," she says, "and after the first time I summited, I'd always stay at the last base camp; I wasn't crazy enough to go with them again. I got good at spotting altitude problems, though. Most of the climbers refused to admit they were having problems until it was too late, and it takes long enough to evac someone down to Cosmo Canyon from here that you have to start down off the mountain pretty much as soon as the problem goes from being a mild case of adjustment sickness to being something more serious." She breathes in sharply when Reno slides the needle under her skin; Tseng can hear the crackling getting worse. "I never followed along with the evac party, though. I was usually too busy trying to keep the rest of the team alive. Climbers are crazy."

"How far up in the mountains is the reactor?" Tseng asks, quietly. What he's really asking is how much more altitude are we going to gain; he's not a specialist in altitude sickness, but he knows enough to know that once you start displaying symptoms, the only thing to do is to either stay at the altitude you're at, or descend.

Tifa's lips twist; he knows she can hear what he isn't asking. "Still in the foothills; seven hundred vertical feet over about four miles. And before you ask, no, that's not enough to be dangerous, not if we return back down here to sleep. Look, I know how bad this sounds, but believe me, it's nowhere near as bad as you think it is. We're at seven thousand feet right now, give or take, and the real risk of HAPE only starts in around nine thousand feet or so. The sound is just the damaged pathways in my lung collapsing and then popping back open. I know how bad it sounds, but it's happened before, and it always stops sooner or later."

Reno flushes the needle with saline and reloads it with the next dose of the drugs he's giving her. "It always stops sooner or later at sea level," he says, pointedly.

Tifa sighs. "Look, I promise you, I am not just trying to tough this through, all right? I know how bad it sounds, I know you've all apparently decided that I'm the fair maiden to be protected at all costs, but I'm the one who's been living with this for nearly three years now, and I've seen enough cases of acute altitude problems and how miserable they are that I am not particularly eager to become one of them. If I'm getting worse, I will tell you, so you can all just stop hovering."

She flinches at the second needle stick; Reno flushes the needle again and goes back to the first-aid case for a third ampoule. "Hand to Alexander and Titan crush you?" Reno demands. (Tseng blinks; he hasn't heard Reno haul out slum expressions like that in years.)

Tifa lifts her free hand and makes an X over her chest. "Odin's lance strike me and drown in Hades' cauldron," she promises, providing the antiphon in a singsong. "I'll be miserable, and my head hurts, but I'm fine. And if I really need it, there's --" She breaks off, bites her lip. "I was going to say, there's a doctor in town who specializes in altitude-related problems, since climbing tourism's so big here. I don't know if there still is."

"I could check," Rufus offers. "Junior member of the team's the one who'd get sent to run all the errands."

Tseng shakes his head. "None of us are going down into town until at least after we get up to the reactor," he says. "I was hoping to go tonight --"

Tifa shakes her head before he even finishes speaking. "That was never going to happen. It's at least a three-hour hike, and we've only got another two, three hours before the light starts fading. I'm not taking a bunch of mountain virgins up when it's not full day."

Tseng does not allow himself to become angry; she is the one who knows this terrain, better than any of the rest of them, and he won't argue with experience. "All right, then," he says, instead. "I'll check the kitchen; I saw some nonperishables in there and a part of the pantry's under Stop. I'll see if the supplies are still good enough to let us avoid making a supply run down to town."

"There," Reno says, drawing the needle out of Tifa's skin and breaking off the tip so it can't be re-used by accident, then applying a bit of gauze to Tifa's inner arm and directing her to bend her arm against it. He drops the needle and the tip into the kit's used-sharps canister, looking up at Tseng and Rufus. "I found some acetazolamide in the kit, too -- it was a year or so past expiration date, since we don't have anybody who gets problems from flying anymore, but it's better than nothing. Tif', I gave you a shot of it, but boss, chief, if either of you starts getting a headache, you're taking it too."

Tseng just nods; he's never had altitude problems, but he knows better than to argue with Reno when Reno's in emergency-field-medic mode. "Plenty of water, too," Tifa says. "Three, four times what you think you need to drink. In fact, if you could go get me some..."

Tseng's pretty sure she's just trying to stop him from hovering, but he nods anyway. "Be right back," he says.

The taps in the kitchen are still operative; the water flows red with rust for the first minute, but clears while Tseng is opening cabinets and looking to see if there are any drinking vessels or if he'll have to go out to the chopper and retrieve their water bottles. There's a full set of dishes and glassware in there, though -- for eight -- and he takes down one of the glasses, inspecting it against the light, finding it perfectly clean without a hint of dust. Another sign that someone's been here more recently than logic would state. He cups his hand under the water flowing from the tap, sniffs at it, sticks his tongue into the pool (it tastes like his skin and like calcium, and he bets that when this mansion was regularly tenanted, they had a water softener installed; he'll go looking for it later to see if it just needs to be turned on), and finally decides it's safe enough to drink.

He's just turning to head back to the foyer when the back of his brain quietly informs him of the thing he's been subconsciously noticing since he first walked in. "Reno," he hollers.

A minute later, Reno sticks his head in. "Yeah, boss?"

"C'mere," Tseg says. He points at the far corner of the kitchen, the one against the outer wall -- the one that should be the corner of the mansion. "Stand right here, wait two minutes, and then bang on the wall."

Reno quirks an eyebrow, but does as he's told. (That's a miracle.) Tseng opens the back door and walks outside, following the line of the building, pacing off steps as carefully and evenly as he can. It's twenty-two steps from the door to the corner. He rounds the corner, puts his ear against the wall, and waits.

He waits a good five minutes, and he can't hear anything. He bangs on the wall himself. The sound echoes, hollow and hard.

Back into the kitchen, and Reno's got his hand on the wall, trying to feel for Tseng's answering signal. "Nothing," Tseng says.

Reno nods, somehow unsurprised. "Couldn't feel you, either," he says, knowing Tseng would have tried the same signal in reverse. Pacing out the length from the door to the far wall, and discovering it's only fifteen steps, is sort of an anticlimax at that point.

Tifa has gotten up from where she was sitting when he returns to the foyer with the glass of water in his hand, and she's helping Rufus haul the sofa back into the parlor where he got it from. Tseng waits until they're done before handing her the glass of water. (She's breathing a little easier, he notices; her lungs are still crackling a little on the inhale, but she doesn't look as grey and faded as she did before Reno started ministering to her.) He gives Rufus a look that's clearly you couldn't keep her from helping? (Rufus looks back, I'd like to see you try written as clearly as though he said it out loud.)

Reno bounces on his toes. "We found the secret room," he announces, gleefully.

"Correction," Tseng says. "We found the location of the secret room. We haven't found the entrance to the secret room yet."

"Details, details," Reno says. "Who wants upstairs, and who wants downstairs?"

Somehow -- Tseng isn't precisely sure how -- it winds up with him and Tifa upstairs, Reno and Rufus downstairs. (He'd rather Tifa stay downstairs, where the dust isn't as thick, but he apparently doesn't get a vote; at least Rufus pulled out the handkerchief he always carries and handed it over for Tifa to wear as a makeshift dust mask.) Tifa insists on changing out of her new clothes before starting -- "I'll change back if I have to go outside, I promise, but for all that I can move in them just fine, I can't get over being paranoid I'm going to wreck them, and it's filthy enough in here that I almost already have," and nothing Tseng says to her can convince her that the Turks' regular dry cleaner can get out any stain she might incur. (They're particularly good with blood, of course, but Tseng's never had to write off a suit completely unless it's been shredded entirely, no matter how obscure the stain.) He doesn't protest too much, though; he gets the feeling, looking at how much better she seems to feel when she's back in the tank top and skirt he'd packed for her to wear as workout clothes, that she'd simply been looking for an excuse.

(He does insist she keep the boots, though. Leviathan alone knows what they might find; he doesn't want to constantly be worrying about what she might step on.)

They start in the rear bedroom, the one overlooking the back lawn; Tifa watches him for a few minutes to see what he does before joining in next to him. Together, they inspect the edges of where the walls join the floor, run hands over the walls to find any hidden seams. Tseng knocks along the edge of the wall to see if anything sounds different, but nothing does. He finishes by inspecting the chimney that's lurking in the corner of the room that's shared with the other bedroom, thinking it the best bet, but nothing.

"If it's in here, it's going to take X-rays to find it," he finally says, breaking the silence they've been working in (punctuated only by Tifa's breathing, but thankfully, that's been getting better; now he can only hear the crackling wheeze when she breathes in too sharply, and he's hoping it isn't just that the handkerchief is muffling the sound). "Let's try the other room."

Tifa seems easier up here than she was downstairs -- Tseng remembers her saying that she and her friends never made it much past the foyer when they were young -- but she doesn't seem inclined to conversation. She just nods and follows him out of the room, into the other bedroom, and goes back to working at the walls. She starts on the side by the front, leaving Tseng to begin at the chimney.

It's only a few minutes later that he strikes pay dirt (literally; the mortar in between the bricks is of the chimney is crumbling, and half of it flakes away when he touches). The seams of the hidden door are nearly invisible, but his fingers catch on them and he knows immediately what he's touching. "Got something," he says, and starts exploring the edges of what must be the entrance with his fingertips, looking for the catch that will open it.

"So do I," Tifa says. Her voice sounds utterly flat, calm and controlled. When he turns to see what she means, she's holding out a book, thick and heavy and covered in aging leather. There's no title stamped on its spine or front, but she flips open the front cover and holds it out to him. He looks down to see the name neatly written on the flyleaf: Simon Hojo.

"It was under the bed," Tifa says. "Like someone kicked it there by accident and forgot it when they were packing."

Tseng's eyes narrow. "Now isn't that fascinating," he says. "What's in the book?"

It's hard to read Tifa's face with half of it covered, but Tseng thinks she's giving him the unhappy look. She flips another two pages and holds it out again. The title page, written in large authoritative letters opposite a frontispiece illustrating the female reproductive system, proclaims it to be Dewhurst's Textbook of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, third edition, published forty years ago. "There's a bookmark," Tifa says. "Page 374. In the section on gestational/maternal immune intolerance."

Tseng's eyes narrow. "Stick it on the bed," he says. "And go get Rufus and Reno."

He's hoping to have the door open by the time she gets back -- and to have already checked out whatever's behind it to evaluate its safety -- but no such luck; he's still sweeping the chimney for the catch when the other three come back in. Reno heads straight for the bed where Tifa left the book, picking it up and flipping through it. Rufus steps up to Tseng's side, holding out a hand to check the brick himself; he finds the seams of the hidden door about thirty seconds faster than Tseng had, but of course Tifa would have told him it was there.

"No luck finding the catch?" Rufus says.

"Not yet," Tseng says. "I thought that --" He breaks off when he hears a click and then a scrape; the chimney shudders a little, tiny vibrations setting more of the mortar to flaking, and the crack of the hidden door gets wider and wider, until it's visible to the naked eye.

He turns around to see Tifa standing in front of the bookcase on the other side of the room, stretched up on her tiptoes, her hand on top of the highest shelf. She gives him what he thinks is a tiny, embarrassed smile and shrugs a little. "In the awful Gothic novels, the switch is always in the bookcase," she says.

Reno puts down the book and comes over to inspect the door, drawing his weapon as he does. (Tseng follows suit.) "Both of you, stay right here until we call for you," Reno says.

"I should probably protest that you don't have the authority to give me orders," Rufus says. "But, you know, I think I'm totally okay with not being the first one to investigate the creepy secret room in the creepy deserted mansion."

Tseng snorts. "Stay put. Both of you." He pushes on the bricks that have moved out of place; the door groans again, but grinds back further. He sticks his head through it to see what the door might reveal. It's a staircase, heading down (and down, and down); the treads are wood, and look uneven and unsteady, as far down as the reflected light from the bedroom illuminates them. He sticks his hand in and feels the wall; there's a light switch right where he'd expect there to be. When he turns it on, he calculates, based on the depth of the stairs, that whatever's on the other side of the stairs is at least in the basement.

He's expecting Reno to make some sort of wisecrack (playing jan-ken-po for who has to be the first in would be Tseng's guess), but -- thank Leviathan -- Reno seems to have flipped over into utterly professional mode. He slides past Tseng, weapon held at loose ready, and starts making his way down the stairs. Tseng follows.

The air is stuffy, and at least five degrees hotter than the rest of the mansion -- probably from the sun shining on the outside wall; the stairwell is wide enough to account for all the missing space in the building, which would make the far wall the outside wall -- but it starts to cool off and get less stuffy the further down they go, and by the time they're down the stairs entirely, it's taken on a hint of dampness. "We're underground," Reno says, stamping one foot on the concrete floor to test it. "If the step count's accurate, probably by about ten feet."

"Let's hope whoever built the secret underground bunker was a better engineer than whoever built the mansion proper," Tseng says, "or we might just open this door to find it's all caved in."

It isn't, thankfully. The door opens onto a long hallway, lit by wall-mounted sconce lights every few feet. Three-quarters of them are burned out, leaving the space dimly-lit and eerie. There are doors stretching out on either side of the hallway, all of them closed. Tseng gestures to Reno to start clearing the rooms on the far side of the hallway, while he begins on the side closest to the stairs.

The first room looks like a stockroom, piled high with wooden crates, each of which has some long and incomprehensible chemical name stenciled on the side. The second is more of the same. Tseng's just reaching for the door of the third when Reno comes bolting out of one of the rooms he'd been assigned, and his face is deathly pale. "Boss," he says, urgent come and take a look at this unspoken.

Reno's holstered his weapon, which is the only reason why Tseng doesn't start running as he follows.

The room Reno was in is dark and gloomy; there are bookshelves everywhere, and for a minute Tseng's mind wants to call it a library. It isn't, though. There are lab tables set up in the center, with complex glass workings over old-style Bunsen burners and flasks and jars of chemicals everywhere. It looks like every single mad-scientist lab in every single bad horror movie Tseng has ever seen.

That isn't what made Reno come running for him, though. What made Reno come running is the two tubes, each about seven feet high and four or five feet in diameter, hooked to a ridiculous number of wires and plastic tubing, each filled nearly to the top with a liquid that is glowing softly blue. Lights flash on the panels in front, and the electrical wires lead to what is no doubt a uninterruptable power supply hooked into a generator in case of power failure.

There's something floating in each of the tubes. Something -- someone -- human.

Tseng only barely stops himself from signing the prayer against evil in midair. "Gods of my fathers," he whispers. Both men are naked, floating in a near-fetal position in the tubes, but whatever the liquid is, it hasn't made their skin shrivel. One has black hair; one has blond hair. Both of them look young, but Tseng can't tell if it's because they are young or because the buoyancy of the liquid is keeping gravity from taking its toll on their facial muscles. Both of them seem well-built, the brunette more than the blond; they don't look like they've suffered any muscle atrophy from being kept (in fucking jars) for however long they've been here. Each of them bristles with what must be hundreds of tiny needles inserted into each of their major muscle groups, and they're festooned with wires and IV lines.

Reno makes for the files and books on the lab table nearest the tanks. "There's a log book," he says. His voice is clipped, neat; Tseng recognizes it as Reno's version of utter fury. "First entry's almost three years ago. Want to guess when almost three years ago?"

Tseng doesn't need to guess. "Leviathan damn him to the seventeenth watery hell," he says. "We must have been right outside when he was doing this."

"Yeah," Reno says. Then: "-- I really, really don't want to say this, but --"

Tseng closes his eyes. "Yeah," he says. He knows exactly what Reno's going to say. "Go get her. Warn her first." Because there's one person who possibly could confirm the sick suspicion that's beginning to sleep in the pit of his stomach, and she's upstairs.

"I don't think there's any way you can warn something about this," Reno says, but he goes.

Left alone in the lab, Tseng knows he should start going through the paperwork, looking for some way to identify what's been done to these poor bastards, some way to undo it. He can't make himself move. He just stands there, staring at the evidence that Hojo is even more rabid than they'd dared to think. The skin at the back of his neck is crawling at the way the room feels, heavy and oppressive and fetid with a stink that isn't physical at all. The earth-sense, spirit-sense, that he's spent much of the past twenty years trying to rid himself of is screaming at him. Whatever Hojo is doing here, it is an abomination unto the laws of nature and the gods.

He can hear Reno's voice, low and urgent patter, along with three sets of footsteps (too much to hope that Rufus wouldn't come as well), long before they enter the room. Reno is the first one in. Tifa is right behind him, and when she sees the scene, she freezes in place (Rufus barely avoids running into her) and brings her hand up to her chest. "Holy gods," she breathes. She crosses the room, quickly, and stops right in front of the first of the two tanks, bringing her other hand up to press against its glass, right at chest-height on the blond floating inside. Tseng starts forward, intending to tell her not to touch, but one look at her face stops him: her eyes are shining with tears, and she looks like she's been punched in the stomach. "Cloud," she says.

"You know him?" Reno comes up on her other side, studying her, not the tanks.

Tifa nods, lifts a hand to dash the tears from her eyes, nods again. "He's --" She looks at Tseng. "Remember, I told you -- the boy I grew up with? The one I thought didn't -- wasn't -- I don't --"

There's a crash from behind them; Tseng whirls, drawing his weapon as he does, but it's only Rufus, and as Tseng moves, he picks up another of the empty Erlenmeyer flasks from one of the other lab benches and throws it as well. Tseng knows that look; it's the hot, vicious spike of Rufus's temper, having slipped its reins at last. Normally, he'd let it go -- when Rufus's control slips enough that the only possible outlet is breaking things, the smartest thing to do is to be in another building -- but now is not the time. "Rufus," he says, sharply.

"Don't give me that shit," Rufus snarls. He picks up a third flask and throws it too, hard enough that tiny flecks of glass splatter back from against the wall. "Who the fuck does he think --"

"Stop it!" It takes Tseng a second to realize it's Tifa who spoke; her voice is half-hysterical. Amazingly, Rufus listens; he lowers his his hand just as he's ready to throw the fourth flask, but doesn't put it back down yet. Tifa's shaking, tiny tremors running throughout her whole body, but her chin comes up and she stares Rufus down across the room. "Just -- stop it. We have to figure out -- we have to --"

Rufus stares at her, one long minute, and then his shoulders heave; he puts the flask down and closes his eyes, and as Tseng watches, he shudders once, from his face all the way down to his knees. When he opens his eyes again, the fury is still there, but at least it's more banked. "Right," he says. "Sorry."

(From behind Tifa, Reno looks at Tseng, eyes wide. Tseng knows why: if either of them had tried that, they'd be trying to reattach their heads right about now.)

Tifa takes another deep breath. Tseng can see all the signs of nascent panic, can watch her trying to fight it back with nothing more than strength of will. "Okay," she says. Closes her eyes. Shivers again. "Okay. Okay." When she opens her eyes again, they skitter over the tanks like she doesn't want to make herself look, but knows she has to. "That's Cloud. The boy I grew up with. The one I thought I saw when I was dying. The other one -- He's the SOLDIER. The one who was on the mission with S -- Se --"

She can't make herself choke out the name. Reno puts a hand on her elbow; she turns, blindly, and buries herself up against his chest, and Reno's arms come up around her automatically, one hand stroking up and down her back. "I don't remember his name," Tifa says, muffled against Reno. "I thought -- I thought I saw him die, but I couldn't -- I couldn't remember, and I didn't want to --"

"Take her upstairs," Tseng says to Reno, softly. She doesn't need to see the rest of this.

Tifa pulls back from where she's clinging to Reno and whirls on him. "Fuck no, you won't," she says. "I have a right to be here. I have a right to know."

Tseng opens his mouth, prepared to argue, but stops at Rufus's choked "Bahamut's balls." When he looks to see what caused it, he almost echoes it.

The SOLDIER's eyes are open, and he's staring at them.

"Get him out of there," Rufus orders. "I don't care what you have to do to get him out of there, just do it."

Tseng winces. "We have no idea how to do it safely --"

"I don't care," Rufus repeats, and for a second Tseng thinks he might just shove past them and topple the tank himself. "That man is alive in there, and I want him out."

Reno slides past Tifa to step in between Tseng and Rufus. "Gimme ten minutes to read the shit they left," he says. "I ain't gonna even try to touch that stuff until I know what it is and what it's doing, and I ain't gonna let any of the rest of you do it, either."

"I'll help," Tifa says. She moves over to the table and picks up a stack of papers, starts flipping through them. "We'll all help. Come on. If we can find something that says how to work those things --"

It takes them twenty minutes, not ten, but Tseng eventually finds a schematic for the tanks, with parts labeled. The liquid the two men are bathing in is primarily Mako, with additional additives to make it oxygen-rich enough to sustain liquid breathing; there are feeding tubes to carry a steady stream of nutrients, catheters for waste, IV lines for administering additional drugs, sensors hooked to computers to record data. He realizes, partway through, that someone has to be coming up here at least once a week to change the nutrient mix; he keeps that to himself for now, but he's pretty sure that's why they'd had a greeting party. (There's pretty much no way whomever Hojo has stationed here to keep an eye on things won't be in the mansion five minutes after they've left, and since there's also no doubt they'll be taking these two men with them when they go, they're going to have to figure out what they'll do when they leave. But that can wait.)

Once they have the schematics, it's only a few minutes to flip the right switches to drain the tank and crack it open to catch the man as he falls; Tseng makes sure he's the one to do it, plucking out enough of the tiny steel needles from his muscles that it's possible to ease him down to the floor without driving them in further. The man goes into a coughing fit the minute he's free, both spitting up and vomiting blue-tinged fluid. Tifa kneels at his side, pulling Rufus's handkerchief off her face and using it to wipe his face, her touch as gentle as it can be. As soon as the man can open his eyes, he's staring at her. He looks familiar, in a way Tseng can't place; the Turks and SOLDIER never interact often, but he's pretty sure he's met the man before.

"D--" The effort of speaking sends him into another coughing fit. "Dead," he wheezes, once he's recovered.

"You're not dead," Tseng says, softly. "Reno, get over here and unhook him."

But the man is shaking his head, still staring at Tifa. "Not -- me. You."

"No," Tifa says. "I didn't -- I wasn't dead. He didn't kill me. He just thought he did."

"S--sorry," the man says. He's shivering now, great heaving tremors; Tseng looks at Rufus, gestures with his chin for Rufus to look around for something, anything, they can use as a blanket. "Tried. Thought you -- thought he --"

"It's all right," Tifa says. "I don't blame you." But the man's eyes have drifted shut, and he doesn't respond.

It takes Reno five minutes to unhook all the wires and tubes and remove the rest of the needles; by the time he has, Rufus has run the stairs and returned with two blankets from the bedroom upstairs (dust hastily beaten out of them), the first aid kit, and two pairs of coveralls from the helicopter. (Tseng bites back a reprimand for having gone outside without telling Tseng where he was going, and only hopes Rufus was bright enough to check their unwanted observers have departed or to make it look like he was fetching something else.) It takes both Tseng and Reno to wrestle the unconscious man into a pair of the coveralls; he's heavier than he looks.

"Getting him up the stairs is gonna be fun, he doesn't wake up again anytime soon," Reno mutters, as they haul him up onto the cot in the corner of the room. There for whomever supervises this little house of horrors to sleep on overnight if the lab needs more close observation, Tseng presumes. "What was that about the dead thing?"

"Tell you later," Tseng says. He hasn't told Reno anything Tifa told him and Rufus, not yet; he'll probably have to, but he doesn't want to do it in front of Tifa.

Tifa must have heard, though. She's standing back up in front of the other tube, staring at the body inside it. (Willing him to open his eyes, too?) "He came running after Sephiroth, into the reactor," she says, quietly. She doesn't have trouble with the name this time; Tseng thinks she's gotten over her initial shock, shoved down her panic into somewhere it can't touch her. For now, at least. "After Sephiroth attacked me. I -- One of them must have been the one who hit me with the first Cure spell." She looks back and forth between the SOLDIER and the other man -- Cloud -- still in the tube. "They were both there," she says, slowly. "I wasn't hallucinating it."

"He was the guard," Rufus says. "I'll bet you anything. He was the guard."

Tifa brings her hand to her mouth, presses her knuckles against her lips. "Oh, Shiva," she says, and she sounds little and lost. She sits down, suddenly, right where she is; Tseng gets the impression it was sit down or fall down. She looks like someone who has had a very old question answered with decisive finality, as though a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. As he watches, she draws her knees to her chest and slumps her forehead down on them.

"Do you want us to wait a few minutes before we crack the other tank?" Tseng asks. (Wait a few minutes for her to compose herself, he means.)

"No," Tifa says, muffled against her knees. "Just --" She breathes in, breathes out. Then she squares her shoulders and picks her head back up. "I'm okay. Come on. I'll help."

The process is faster a second time, but the man -- Cloud -- isn't conscious for it; Reno needs to haul him into recovery position, although thankfully the cough to expel the oxygenated Mako from his lungs seems to be instinctive. Tifa kneels at his side, hovering as Reno strips tubes and removes the central IV line and the smaller needles; she pounces as soon as everything's clear, wiping off Cloud's face, more tenderly than she did the other man's. "Cloud," she says, softly, pushing strands of wet hair out of his eyes. "Cloud, wake up. It's all right now. Everything's going to be okay. You're safe now. Wake up."

It takes a long minute for Cloud to open his eyes, and when he does, Tifa makes a little dismayed noise. Tseng leans over to see what caused it, and has to blink. The man's eyes are glowing, SOLDIER blue.

"Ti -- T -- Ti --" he stutters. His voice sounds like a skipping record.

Tifa nods, her eyes brimming over with tears again. "It's me, Cloud. It's Tifa. Everything's going to be okay. We're going to take care of you. I promise, all right? I'm sorry it took me so long, but I'm here now, and everything's going to be all right."

Tseng waits for some kind of reaction, but all Cloud does is close his eyes again, and he doesn't reopen them.

"We have a hell of a problem here," Rufus says in Tseng's ear, while Tifa and Reno are working to get Cloud's unconscious body into a jumpsuit.

"Just one? I count about thirty," Tseng says. When Rufus gives him the look, he sighs. "I know, I know, I'm not funny. I'm assuming you mean the problem of getting them out of here without alerting whomever's been coming in and keeping an eye on things, and what we do after we get them out of here, since it's likely that their watchdog will cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war about three minutes after we take off."

Rufus nods. "And where we bring them, and how the fuck we find someone to take care of them, and what we do when Hojo realizes his lab rats have gone missing." Rufus's eyes are sick as he looks over to the empty-standing tanks. "Not to mention, how do we wreck this shit so thoroughly that it can't be used again."

"I got a mastered Fire I could equip," Reno says, viciously, from the floor at Cloud's side. Then his eyes get wide. "Shit, Tif', I'm sorry, I didn't think --"

"It's all right," Tifa says. She pushes herself to her feet; she's drenched in Mako fluid, but she doesn't seem to care. "Right about now, I'm ready to set this place on fire myself." She walks over to the tank, studies it for a second. Then, before anyone can say anything to stop her, she whirls and drives her heel straight into the panel of buttons and switches in a perfect roundhouse kick. It crackles and sparks, caving in.

She's breathing hard when she turns around, but at least her lungs are sounding nearly clear now.

"Pack everything you can get your hands on," Tseng says, making a decision. "There are crates in the other room; we can empty those and use them. I want all the books and papers first; if there's anything mechanical, haul it into here and leave it in a heap, and we'll decide if any of it is critical later. Leave any chemicals and any lab equipment. I want everything that could possibly explain what Hojo thought he was doing here packed up before those of us who are going leave for the reactor, because we aren't leaving this place alone until we're ready to go completely, and we aren't leaving it standing when we do."

Reno shakes his head. "We don't got enough fuel with us to take on much more than what we've already got. It'll be pushing it just to bring the two of them; we'll have to stop at del Sol and refuel as is. And I don't wanna think about the cargo space --"

Tseng closes his eyes; the day did lack only that, but of course Reno's right. "Fine," he says, shortly. "Pack everything anyway, as tightly as you can. How much additional weight can we take on and still make it to Costa del Sol?"

Reno's eyes go distant for a minute; Tseng watches his lips move. (Reno's the best chopper pilot Tseng's ever flown with, and he knows the fuel consumption equations like he knows the back of his hand, but he never can do them well enough in his head; he always has to visualize them.) "Guessing at how much they both weigh," he says, finally, "and bear in mind this is really rough and I wanna doublecheck it twice, I wouldn't want to take on more than another three, four hundred pounds."

There's probably about three times that much weight in books alone, scattered around. "All right, then," Tseng says. "Triage as you pack. Anything that's a standard print of a standard textbook, leave on the shelves, unless there are notes in it, and note down the title. Anything with notes in it, or anything that's a journal or logbook or printout, put in one pile and we'll prioritize further when we're getting ready to pack up. Try to keep things in roughly the same order you find them."

"I'll go empty the crates," Tifa says, softly. Tseng gets the impression she needs to be out of this room. (He doesn't blame her. Now they've drained the Mako fluid from the tank, his skin isn't crawling as much, but he'd still rather go get some fresh air himself, and it's a chore to force himself to contemplate the work that needs to be done.)

Reno looks down at Cloud, looks over at the unnamed SOLDIER. "I really don't think I should leave them alone, boss," he says, once Tifa's out of earshot. "The other guy seems mostly okay, little bit out of it but yeah, who wouldn't be, but him?" He jerks a thumb at Cloud. "I really don't like the way he's breathing, his heart rate is way too slow, and aside from that one minute of consciousness, he hasn't responded to any of the usual stimuli. I got the feeling, we leave him alone too long, we might come back to find he's slipped away entirely." He bites his lip, flicks his eyes to the door as though making sure Tifa really is gone. "Which, depending on what Hojo's been doing to them, might be the most merciful option, you know?"

Tseng winces. "Let's hold off on that for now," he says. (Tifa had reacted to Cloud's presence like a woman finding a long-lost lover -- something he's trying not to think about too closely -- and he doesn't want to see what it would do to her to find out they'd been too late, particularly considering her apology; for all there is no way she could have, Tseng knows Tifa would blame herself for not pushing to return earlier.) "Stay put, keep an eye on him, do what you can. I don't think we should give him any medication or use any materia until --"

He's interrupted by the sound of Tifa, screaming. All three of them are out the door with weapons drawn before the sound even fades.

They find Tifa standing in the center of one of the storage rooms, her hand pressed up against her chest, breathing hard. She holds up her other hand as soon as they burst through. "It's okay," she says, quickly, "I was just startled, it's okay --"

She doesn't turn around to face them, though, and Tseng realizes she doesn't want to take her eyes off what she's found: a shipping crate that's three times the length of a standard one, with the lid off of it. Inside is another man, lying on his back with his arms folded across his chest. He's asleep -- no, unconscious, the IV needle in the back of his hand attached to a plastic bag hanging on the inside of the crate.

"Reno," Tseng orders, feeling incredibly weary, and Reno holsters his weapon and comes around to check the man's pulse with two quick fingers.

"Alive," Reno says. He squints at the IV bag. "Phenobarbitol and nutrients. Whoever put him under didn't really care much if he woke back up again, not if he's on his back like that and isn't intubated."

"Can you bring him out of it?" Rufus demands.

"Yeah, sure, gimme -- oh holy fucking shit." Reno blinks. "Um. Somebody wanna c'mere and tell me I'm not imagining the fact he's got a giant fucking claw for a right hand?"

Tseng comes over and looks. "You're not imagining it," he says, lifting his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes where the headache is starting. "Okay. Bring him out of it. Slowly. Tifa, step back, and get behind me. Rufus, over there, out of sight, and cover me. Reno, get ready to move." He trains his weapon on the crate, waiting, as Reno reaches over and closes the IV drip.

"Should take about twenty, thirty minutes before he --" Reno leaps back, startled, as the man sits straight up; Tseng thumbs off his safety, just in case. (Something's bugging him about this, though, and it isn't -- isn't just -- how quickly the man shook off the anaesthesia. He, too, looks almost familiar. Tseng is bludgeoning his memory for where he could have possibly seen the man before, and coming up with nothing.)

The man's eyes sweep the room as he turns his head quickly from side to side, stopping when he sees Tseng holding a gun on him. "I am not a threat to you," he says. His voice is low, deep, calmer and more clear than Tseng would have expected it to be. (For someone who just woke up unnaturally quickly from a medically induced coma, at least.) His eyes, Tseng realizes, are a deep red -- Tseng suppresses the shiver at the sight of them -- but at least they aren't glowing. It says a lot about their day that this can be a relief.

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't leap to believe you," Tseng says, but he thumbs the safety back on anyway, even if he doesn't lower his weapon. The man's wearing nothing more than rags, with a labcoat over it all; they look like the remnants of suit pants and a dress shirt, Tseng realizes. "Who are you?"

The man closes his eyes. "My name is Vincent," he says. "What year is it?"

The name sparks some memory. "Vincent?" he says. His memory finally coughs up what he's been trying to remember for the past two minutes: the names and files of former Turks he'd gone through when he'd accepted the position as the department's director. What had the last name been ... "Vincent Valentine? Listed as missing, presumed dead, from the Turks?"

"It's May of 991," Tifa adds, from behind Tseng's shoulder.

The man -- Valentine -- slumps his shoulders. "I was once a Turk, yes," he says.

"Listed as missing, presumed dead, from the Turks thirty years ago?" Tseng presses.

"If it is 991, twenty-eight years ago," Valentine says. "I have been sleeping a very long time."

"Yeah, no shit," Reno says. "Bahamut's balls, man, who did this to you?"

"It was Hojo, wasn't it." It isn't a question; Rufus holsters his weapon and comes out from the crates he'd used as cover. Valentine's head whips around at the sound; Tseng can see the fingers of the man's claw/hand twitch, and thinks he might be stopping himself from reacting further. (It's the same twitch that they all get when they're surprised; exaggerated startle response is an occupational hazard.) Rufus comes to a stop right next to the crate Valentine is sitting up in; Tseng resists the urge to grab him by the collar and haul him backwards. (It's not like he gives orders for his health.)

Valentine frowns up at Rufus. "You know Hojo?" The frown deepens as he studies Rufus. "And -- You are Shinra. Not Jonathan --"

"I'm his son," Rufus says, quietly, the same mixture of pride and shame he always has when he has to claim that identity. "Rufus. This is Tseng, the current director of the Department of Administrative Research, and Reno, his second-in-command. The lady is Tifa; she's a ... consultant."

Tseng closes his eyes for a second and sighs. That's blown it; giving their true names means that if this man, whoever he is, is on Hojo's side, they're going to have to kill him before they leave. But Rufus is still talking: "We came here to investigate something that happened about three years ago, when a man named Sephiroth destroyed the town, and when we got here we found --"

Valentine interrupts. "Sephiroth?" He leans forward, urgently; Tseng thumbs off the safety again and shifts his aim from a chest shot to a head shot. (A bullet to the chest doesn't slow someone down fast enough to prevent injury to whomever they're attacking, at such close distances; a head shot will kill much faster.) "You know Sephiroth?"

"You're going to want to back up, Valentine," Tseng says, softly.

Valentine turns to look at Tseng, notices Tseng's aim, leans back. "I am unarmed," he says, holding his hands up -- slowly -- in the universal sign of weaponlessness. "I will not hurt your charge."

"I'm pretty sure that thing counts as a weapon," Tseng says. (Now that he can get a better look, he can see the 'fingers' of the claw are definitely sharpened blades.) "If you really were a Turk, you know damn well how twitchy we get. Rufus, back up. Now."

But Rufus only turns his head to look at Tseng. "He's not going to hurt me," he says, with utter conviction, and Tseng wants to throw something, or possibly pistol-whip Rufus into compliance. Rufus picks the worst fucking times to assert his independence, and even though Rufus is right ninety-nine percent of the time when he exerts his skill at reading people, there's still the one percent to contend with. "Reno, c'mere and get the IV line out of his hand so we can get him out of there."

"There is no need," Valentine says. "My sleep is the penance for my failure, and I pay it gladly. Farewell."

"Failure?" Tifa asks, urgently, as Valentine's good hand starts to reach for the IV line as though he's going to re-start the drip. "What failure? Did it have anything to do with Sephiroth?"

Valentine stops moving again. "Sephiroth," he says, his eyes slitting shut, pain written deeply in his voice. "Yes. You could say that. I tried to save Lucrecia from Hojo's madness, and I failed. I tried to save Sephiroth, both before he was born and after, and I failed. I cannot bear the weight of a third failure."

Rufus turns his head again and looks a question at Tseng; Tseng shakes his head. He's never heard the name 'Lucrecia' before.

"We're trying to figure out what happened here, three years ago," Tifa says. "I grew up here. I was the only one who lived through what Sephiroth did to this town, and I nearly died too. I --" She bites her lip, and Tseng stifles a curse as she comes out from behind him, moving around to stand at the foot of Valentine's makeshift coffin. (At least she has the good sense to stand out of Valentine's immediate reach.) "Sephiroth killed my father, and everyone I grew up with, and everything I ever knew," she says. "And the more we look into it --" Tseng is glad, at least, for the unthinking 'we'. "--the more we realize Hojo was behind nearly everything. Enough to know that we have to stop him, before he does anything worse. There are -- there are two men in the other room, and Hojo had them in some sort of -- tank thing --"

"My father has given him free rein," Rufus says. The shame is clearer in his voice, now. "I had no idea of his atrocities. I know now. And I'm going to stop him if it's the last fucking thing I do. Help me. Help me, and I'll do anything I can to get you justice."

Valentine closes his eyes and turns his face away. "It is not justice I seek, but atonement," he says.

Rufus reaches out and grabs Valentine by the chin, dragging his face to meet Rufus's eyes. (Tseng swears again when Valentine's body tenses and his hand comes up to encircle Rufus's wrist, but at least he reached for Rufus's wrist with his left hand, his actual hand, not with the monstrosity someone -- Hojo -- made of his right.) "That's fine," Rufus says, and there's heat in his voice this time. "You want atonement? That's fine. Help me, and earn it. And once we're done, if you still want to go back to sleeping your life away in a coma, in a coffin, in the basement of a place time forgot, I will put you back here myself. But help me first."

They stay like that for a long minute -- Rufus's eyes locked on Valentine's, Rufus's fingers on Valentine's chin, Valentine's hand wrapped around Rufus's wrist -- and Tseng's eyes begin to water from the effort of not blinking them. (Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Reno, weapon trained on Valentine as well, backing up slowly and stealthily until he's got a clear shot that won't hit Tifa if he has to take it. Tifa notices too, though, and Tseng wants to swear again as she lifts her chin and moves so she stays in between Reno and Valentine, fouling any shot Reno could take.)

Then Valentine laughs. It's low and bitter, rolling across the room like a spill of thick black coffee. "You are Shinra indeed," he says, and lets Rufus's wrist go. (Tseng finally lets himself blink. Twice.) Then Valentine is pulling away, and he moves so inhumanly quickly that Tseng can barely see him leap out of the coffin -- on the other side from Rufus, or else Tseng's instincts would fire before Tseng even knew he were doing it, which he's pretty sure Valentine knew damn fucking well. When Valentine finishes moving, he's standing away from Rufus, with the crate between them, and he reaches up and pulls out his IV line himself, tossing it aside as though it's nothing. (Tseng's not sure, the light down here is shit, but he thinks the blood welling up from where the needle had been is too fucking dark to be normal.)

"I will help you," Valentine says. "Somewhat. For now. If you are enemies of my enemy, we can be allies, for a time." In this light, his eyes are the color of blood. He keeps those eyes trained on Rufus, and Tseng wonders what Valentine thinks he sees there. "I will not tell you my story yet," he adds. "Too much of it are things no man should know, and I do not know what Shinra has become, and I have little cause to bear Shinra goodwill."

Rufus bares his teeth. It's not -- quite -- a smile. "That's fine," he says. "Neither do I."

Then he steps back, finally out of range -- Tseng feels his shoulders unknotting, before he realizes Valentine had moved quickly enough that he's probably able to cover the space between him and Rufus faster than Tseng could move between them as a shield, and has just confessed to holding a grudge. (Well. As for that, Tseng can't quite blame him.)

"Come on," Rufus says, making it an order to all of them, not caring how at least half the room bristles to hear the command in his voice. "If Valentine won't tell us the specifics of what's been going on down here, we can at least see if we can figure it out ourselves."

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