#alt 9

The air within the sixty-eighth floor of the Shinra Building was a stagnant, heavy poison, filtered through the hum of cooling fans and the distant, rhythmic throb of the hydraulic systems.

Inside the windowless cell on Level One, the light was a sickly, flickering yellow that felt like it was peeling away the skin from Bianca’s face. She was two years old, a tiny collection of trembling bones and white, gold, and black wings that were tucked so tightly against her back.

Her hair, once a bright, liquid blonde, had been hacked into a shoulder-length mess by a laboratory assistant who cared more for the efficiency of sensor placement than the comfort of a child.

She sat on the cold concrete floor, her only world a single splintered wooden crate and a gray, ratty blanket that smelled of chemical wash and old despair.

In her small, bruised hands, she clutched a white chocobo plush. It was her only anchor, a soft remnant of a dream. Its fabric was torn, one of its button eyes hanging by a single black thread, and the stuffing was beginning to spill out like unspooled viscera.

It was a symbol of a promise she couldn't yet name—the same plush that, in a future of mountain air and freedom, her daughter Aurora would hold—but here, it was a target of Hojo’s cruelty.

Earlier that morning, the Professor had stood in the threshold. His glasses reflected the sterile light like twin moons and had ordered the laboratory attendants to take away any excessive comfort items that interfered with the psychological data of the Filum Aeternum, the Red String of Fate.

Bianca squeezed the plush until her knuckles turned white. Her small, golden eyes blown wide with a terror that transcended language.

The Red Thread of Fate—that pulsating, translucent artery of psychic agony—was wrapped around her tiny wrist in a delicate, glowing heart-shaped pattern. It was no longer a symbol of love. It was a conduit for a nightmare. Somewhere in the deep, metallic bowels—perhaps on Level Three in the Training Area or Level Six within the Specimen Refinement ward—four-year-old Sephiroth was being taught the ways of pain.

Hojo had decided that Sephiroth’s role as her caretaker required him to understand the cost of failure. And because of the string, Bianca felt every agonizing moment of his lesson.

The first wave hit her like a physical blow to the sternum. Through the thread, she felt the cold, serrated bite of a neural-electrode being driven into Sephiroth’s thigh. It wasn't just a prick. It was a white-hot lightning strike that traveled up the cord and exploded in her own small leg.

Bianca let out a jagged, voiceless scream. Her body jerked against the concrete. She felt the skin on his thigh being scorched by a high-voltage discharge, the smell of ozone filling her mind even if the air in her cell remained stagnant. She could feel his small muscles charring. The fibers snapped under the electrical load like dry twigs.

“Seph. . .Seph. . .” her mind whimpered, the telepathic connection forcing her into his current reality.

She saw through his eyes for a split second: the gray, industrial walls of Level Six, the Brain Pods floating in their green fluid, and the silhouette of Hojo standing over him with a stopwatch.

She felt the weight of the silver hair against his four-year-old neck as he trembled, trying to remain stoic because he believed it would save her. Then came the sharp, wet shlick of a blade.

Sephiroth wasn't being vivisected, as he was too valuable for that, but he was being sampled. Bianca felt the cold steel against his arm. Through the thread, the sensation was magnified ten-fold. It felt like a hot wire being pulled through her own arm.

She looked down at her small, unmarked limb and was confused by the lack of blood when her mind told her she was being flayed open. The phantom pain was so absolute that her body began to go into shock. Her pulse raced at a frantic, irregular rhythm, and a cold, clammy sweat broke out over her skin.

She buried her face in the torn chocobo plush: the scent of the rough fabric the only things keeping her from dissolving into his agony.

“B-Bianca, don’t look. . .” Sephiroth’s voice arrived in her head: a fragile, shivering echo. He was trying to push her memories of Caelora—the golden light of her mother Seraphine’s heaven—through the thread to shield her. He showed her images of clouds that felt like silk and light that tasted like honey.

But the pain was too loud.

A new agony erupted in her chest: a crushing, suffocating pressure as if his ribcage were being compressed by an industrial vice. Bianca’s wings flared in a violent, uncoordinated spasm. The white and gold feathers scraping against the concrete wall behind her until several were torn loose, leaving raw, red follicles weeping on her back.

She felt the sound of Sephiroth’s bones beginning to groan. The hairline fractures spider-webbed through his radius. The wet sound of a joint being pushed to its breaking point echoed in her skull.

She began to hyperventilate. The air in the windowless cell felt like it was being pumped through a filter of grave dirt. Her blonde hair clung to her face in damp, jagged clumps. She was a two-year-old girl lost in a sea of four-year-old boy's blood.

Bianca was terrified that if she let go of the plush, she would be pulled through the thread and into the dark rooms with him. She was terrified that Hojo would come back and find the plush that she had hid, seeing the very small, white bird as a weakness to be purged.

"Observation," a voice echoed from the hallway: Hojo’s voice, filtered through the intercom. "The sympathetic resonance is achieving ninety-eight percent fidelity. The thread is a remarkable conduit for disciplinary reinforcement. Note the tremor in Subject N’s primary feathers. It mirrors the muscle spasms in Sephiroth's with near-perfect accuracy."

Bianca’s eyes dilated until the gold was a thin rim around the void of her pupils. She felt the final, most vicious part of the lesson.

It was the feeling of a long, thick, cold needle being driven into the marrow of Sephiroth’s spine to extract Jenova-enriched fluid. Bianca felt the grating of the metal against the vertebrae. It was a grinding, visceral sensation that made her world turn into a kaleidoscope of red and whites. She felt his scream again: not a sound but a psychic explosion that scorched the thread.

She collapsed onto her side Her small body curled around the chocobo plush in a fetal position. Her wings were tattered. Her blonde hair matted with her sweat. She felt the sudden, icy chill of her core temperature dropping. Slowly, she raised her thumb to her mouth and sucked.

The thread dimmed to a dull, throbbing ache. The lesson was over.

2.

Sephiroth was carried in by a faceless security guard and layed onto the concrete. His silver hair a matted mess, his eyes glowing with a radioactive, cyan intensity that spoke of the mako they had pumped into him to keep him conscious. He was shaking. His small hands clawed at the floor as he crawled toward the corner.

Bianca didn't move at first. She was a ghost in her own body. Then, slowly, she reached out. She dragged herself across the floor towards him. The chocobo plush still clutched in one hand.

She reached him and draped the thin, ratty blanket over his shivering frame. She didn't call him by name. She didn't have the words yet. She just leaned her head against his shoulder, her torn and bleeding wings tentatively spread to cover him as much as they could.

Sephiroth reached out. His hand trembled as he touched the torn wing of the chocobo plush. He pulled her closer. His small, blood-stained fingers interlocked with hers right over a glowing red heart of the thread.

In the windowless silence surrounded by the smell of formaldehyde and the hum of the Drum, the two children lay together in the dark. As the lights flickered overhead, they were merely two small, unmade things holding onto a white bird and each other, waiting for the return in the morning.

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“Underling 1, Underling 2, are you there?” Inosuke’s raspy voice sounded through the walkie-talkie.

Tanjirou rubbed his arm where Zenitsu had grabbed him while jumping into the air at the semi-unexpected sound. With a sigh, Tanjirou patted Zenitsu’s head while he pushed the answer button.

“Yes, we’re here, Inosuke,” he replied for the tenth time, carefully listening for any sign of Nezuko who still had to be with Inosuke. He smiled when he heard her humming in the background. “What’s up?”

The last nine times he had replied to Inosuke’s question like that, he had first gotten reprimanded for not calling Inosuke Boss, followed by a way too detailed description of what they were seeing, hearing, and smelling in the basement. He braced himself for yet another of those monologues, staring along the long, empty hallway he and Zenitsu had just entered. But the walkie-talkie stayed silent.

He and Zenitsu exchanged a glance and Tanjirou pressed the answer button again. “Inosuke?” he asked, this time more attentively. And then he noticed that the humming had stopped. “Nezuko?”

Zenitsu grabbed his arm again and his fingers pressed into Tanjirou’s skin but this time he barely even noticed it. He held his breath when he heard a weird crackle through the walkie-talkie, followed by quick shuffling footsteps. “Inosuke?” he asked again, a bit more urgently this time.

His heart started beating faster when he heard nothing but more shuffling until suddenly, a hoarse voice came through the walkie-talkie. “Kentaro,” Inosuke whispered. “We … I think we’re not alone down here.”

Tanjirou froze and instinctively put his hand over Zenitsu’s mouth as he drew breath for another tirade. “What are you talking about?” he asked, hoping that he had misheard Inosuke.

Another moment of silence followed before Inosuke spoke up again, this time sounding almost haunted. “I think something is following us,” he whispered and Tanjirou’s heart stopped when he heard a small scared noise that sounded a lot like Nezuko.

“Where are you?” he asked intently. “We’re coming!”

His hands started to get sweaty when he heard nothing but crackling and hushed footsteps for a moment. He sighed in relief when he finally heard Inosuke speak again. “We are – wait, what’s that? I – ARGH!”

Tanjirou’s hair stood on end when he grabbed the walkie-talkie so hard that he heard the plastic aching. “Inosuke?” he screamed into the walkie-talkie. “Inosuke, answer me!”

Zenitsu next to him started shivering violently as he stared up at Tanjirou. “What happened?” he asked in a small, frightened voice.

“I don’t know,” Tanjirou answered tensely while frantically pushing the answer button again and again, only to be met with complete silence. “It just won’t work. We have to go down there and check on them!”

For once, Zenitsu did not protest and even though Tanjirou could read the fear in his face, Zenitsu followed him immediately when he whirled around and stormed back towards the staircase leading downwards. Their hurried steps echoed through the empty hallway when they ran through the never-ending gray of the hospital. The walls started closing in on Tanjirou when he called out to Inosuke and Nezuko again and again, to no avail. The walkie-talkie stayed silent, not even the faintest crackle could be heard anymore. Almost as if there never had been anyone on the other end.

“Hurry up,” Tanjirou pressed when Zenitsu fell behind. Even though everything in him urged him to run to get to his sister and Inosuke as fast as he could, he paused for a moment until Zenitsu had caught up to him. He grabbed his hand and together, they started running again.

When they finally reached the steps leading into the basement, they were both out of breath and their panting sounded abnormally loud in the deserted hospital. It echoed back from the walls, almost as if there were more people hiding in the shadows around them, breathing heavily while waiting for them to come closer. Zenitsu clung to Tanjirou’s hand and this time, Tanjirou was grateful for his grip, reminding him that at least he was not alone in this.

Slower now, they ventured down into the basement. Down here, there was even less light and the shadows seemed deeper than before. Whole parts of the endless hallway were plunged into darkness and when Tanjirou sniffed, he could smell nothing over the deafening smell of the old hospital. He shuddered when wafts of sanitizer, mold and something that smelled disconcertingly much like old blood reached his nose. All of this drowned out any scents that Inosuke and Nezuko had left while exploring the basement and this sudden loss of his most reliable sense unsettled Tanjirou even more than the darkness around them.

“Nezuko?” Tanjirou called out, his voice sounding almost weak in the nothingness around them. “Inosuke?”

He heard Zenitsu’s chattering teeth behind him as he shakily joined in. “Ne- … Nezuko-chan? A-are you here?”

They both held their breath while waiting for a reply but the only noise came from their own rapid heartbeats. “They must be here somewhere,” Tanjirou said, not sure whether it was confidence or desperate hope speaking from him. “I know it.”

Little by little, they scoured the basement, peeking into each and every room along the hallway. More than once, Tanjirou’s heart started beating faster when he thought to see something in the shadows, but every time it turned out to be no more than a reflection or a sliver of moonlight breaking through. He desperately let his gaze wander over the room in front of him again when he suddenly spotted something on the ground. He burst into action and almost carried Zenitsu off his feet who had not been expecting it.

Together, they dove into the room and Tanjirou grabbed the dark object laying on the floor, almost entirely hidden in the shadow of a chair that had fallen – or been thrown – to the ground. He picked it up and they both stared at it as it lay in the palm of his hand.

“The walkie-talkie,” Zenitsu whispered. “But that means …”

Tanjirou and Zenitsu stared at each other, their own horror mirrored in the other’s eyes. “That means they have been attacked,” Tanjirou whispered and his body suddenly felt cold.

Zenitsu started shaking as he looked at Tanjirou, sheer terror written on his face. “And maybe … it is still here!”

And when Tanjirou looked over Zenitsu’s shoulder, he saw a big silhouette starting to stir in the darkness. Frozen, he stared at it, unable to move a muscle as it grew bigger, looming over them. From the corner of his eye, he saw the realization in Zenitsu’s face as he slowly followed Tanjirou’s gaze.

And then, the monster jumped at them. Zenitsu’s scream rang in Tanjirou’s ears as he ran into him, trying desperately to get away from the thing clawing at them, screaming like a banshee, its legs and hands everywhere, tugging at them and pushing them. In a mess of limbs, Tanjirou and Zenitsu fell to the ground and the monster threw its head back and …

… started laughing. Laughing in two voices, one of them deep and raspy, the other as sweet as morning dew. Tanjirou squeezed his head past Zenitsu’s shoulder, blinking rapidly as the silhouette before his eyes parted and turned into two, smaller figures.

“We got you good, Ponjiro,” the bigger of the figures hollered, shaking with laughter.

Only very slowly, Tanjirou started breathing again – though a bit strained as Zenitsu was still laying on him, his eyes closed, his hands pressed on his ears. Suddenly, Tanjirou felt a gentle nudge at his cheek and when he turned his head to the side, he saw a familiar face hovering over him, its pink eyes big with concern. He felt Nezuko’s little hand patting his head while she hummed softly as she always did when trying to calm him down.

Tanjirou closed his eyes for a moment and took a strained breath before he carefully pushed Zenitsu to the side. He sighed in relief when the weight came off his chest and as soon as he felt his lungs filling with air again, he gently pulled Zenitsu’s hands from his ears.

“It’s okay, Zenitsu,” he said softly, trying to ignore Inosuke’s mischievous laughter still filling the room. “It’s just Inosuke and Nezuko who wanted to play monster.”

Zenitsu looked up at him, tears welling in his eyes – when suddenly Nezuko sat down next to him and started patting his head like she had done with Tanjirou. And while Zenitsu let out an ear-piercing wail, sinking into Nezuko’s arms, Tanjirou struggled to his feet and stared at Inosuke. “What was that about, Inosuke?”