Chapter 4
Jessie sent Aeris on to Seventh Heaven; she didn't know Sector 7 as well as the rest of them, but she knew the bar, and she knew what to tell the others. She could get Marlene out first, to safety.
For Jessie's part, she went straight to the town gossip. No one knew how to spread information better. In spite of the curfew, the woman was still sitting out on her front stoop.
"Quickly! We have to evacuate all of Sector 7. They're going to drop the plate on us!"
The gossip regarded her shrewdly. "Drop the plate? What are you on about?"
Would anyone really believe that Shinra would do something like this to them, even here in the slums? Her heart broke as the words formed in her mind, but Jessie said, "The pillar. The terrorists said they're going to bomb the pillar."
The gossip's face went white. "Oh my gods," she said. But then she took a breath and nodded seriously. "I'm on it."
"Great, thanks." Jessie didn't stay long enough to hear anything else she had to say. She ran on to Nance's house and pounded on the door. "Mr. Carpenter, are you in there?"
No answer.
"Johnny!" He'd just come out of his cousin's house, and she waved him down. "Johnny, do you know if Mr. Carpenter is home? I heard he's sick."
"Yeah, yeah, but I don't have the key!"
"Okay. Just- You get your family out."
Johnny nodded and ran off. Jessie fumbled out her lockpicking tools, but her hands shook as she fitted them to the lock. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Easy, Jess."
She looked up. "Oh, Biggs."
"Don't get weepy on me. Just stand back."
Behind him, she could see Barret barrelling down the street, Marlene in his arms, Aeris and Wedge close behind. She backed away from the door.
Biggs kicked it open, and they went in together, finding Nance's father struggling to get out of bed. They got him up and, each with an arm under him, walked him out of the house.
Jessie glanced down the street. "What did you do with--?"
"The spy? We cut him loose."
She nodded. He was a scumbag, but he didn't deserve to be left to die. Biggs flagged down the owner of the weapons shop, and they passed Mr. Carpenter to him and his son to carry the rest of the way. Biggs turned to her.
"Aren't you going to help Tifa?" she asked him. "She went up there on her own."
"I will," he said. "I just didn't want the last thing I really said to you to be 'you look stupid in that hat.'"
"It won't be the last..." Jessie trailed off. They both knew that if the plate fell, this really could be the last time they ever spoke. The pillar could go at any moment, and they'd be crushed.
Biggs took her by the arms. "I love you like a sister, all right?"
Jessie hugged him tightly. "I love you, too."
He squeezed her back, and then all too quickly he was gone, down the street after Barret and the others. Jessie took a shaky breath and ran off in the other direction.
She pounded on every door she passed, shouting at the top of her lungs about the 'terrorist threat' to the pillar. The gossip had done her work, and others joined her in spreading the word. People came out into the street just to see what all the commotion was about, and when they heard, most of them got moving.
Horrifyingly, some people just shrugged and went back inside. Jessie couldn't say whether they didn't believe it, or whether they just didn't care if the end was coming for them. She didn't have the time to convince them either way.
On the next street, a knot of Shinra soldiers were stopping people. "Hey, hey, there's a curfew in place! Get back inside!"
"No!" Jessie shouted. She ran up to them, stumbling to a halt when they trained their weapons on her. "You can't enforce that at a time like this! There's a bomb threat to the pillar!"
They exchanged glances. "I haven't heard anything about that," said one.
"You can go over there right now if you don't believe me. There's- there's terrorists climbing the pillar!"
They regarded her skeptically, but with everyone waiting in uncertainty, they caught the echo of gunfire high above. They all looked up. It was too far to see anything clearly, but the sound was unmistakable.
The soldiers hesitated, but then their leader lowered his gun and waved his arm at the people standing in the street. "All right, everybody get moving! Get going!"
Jessie let out a breath of relief.
"You two, get these people out of the sector, I'm gonna go check out the pillar."
"Yes, sir!"
The soldiers dispersed, and Jessie had time only for a fleeting worry that she'd sent one of them after her friends. They'd rather that than have him holding up the evacuation, wouldn't they?
She worked her way down the street, pounding on doors until her voice was hoarse and her knuckles were raw. Fewer people were coming out, and she hoped that was because they had already left.
She stopped to catch her breath, and looked up at the pillar. She was closer to it now, and she could hear the gunfire more clearly. Her friends were up there, fighting for all of their lives.
It was time that she joined them.
Jessie ran to the base of the support, where she found that one soldier trying to persuade a crowd of onlookers to evacuate. She left him to it, pushing past them and through the fence. But just as she gripped the railing of the stairs, there was a shout from above, and a crash that she could feel through the rail. She looked up in time to see a figure tumbling down from several flights above her. As they came to a stop, she recognized them as--
"Wedge!"
She took the steps two at a time until she reached him. She glanced up, but whoever had knocked him down didn't follow. He lay groaning on the landing, and she could see blood seeping through his sleeve below the shoulder. She hurriedly shrugged out of Biggs' jacket and knelt down beside him.
"Wedge, it's me. Can you hear me?"
"Jessie," he said, opening his eyes. "They went on ahead."
"I know," she said, wadding up the jacket and pressing it against his arm. He winced.
Above them came a whirring sound, and she looked up as a helicopter approached the uppermost platform. Her heart sank. That was probably how Shinra was retrieving its men, before the pillar went... unless they were very lucky, and Tifa and the others had driven them off. She wanted to think they had, but the feeling in the pit of her stomach told her otherwise. If she reached her friends now, it would only be to die with them.
And maybe... Maybe that was what she deserved. It was their actions that had made a target of Sector 7. Wasn't it fitting for them to give their lives defending it?
Wedge groaned again, and she looked down. She didn't want him to die with her.
"Can you stand?" she asked him.
"M-maybe."
Jessie tied the jacket tightly around his arm and took his other hand, putting her full weight into hauling him to his feet. He staggered against the railing, and she got under his arm to support him. Together they stumbled back down the stairs.
"The others--" Wedge began.
"There's no time."
The only decent Shinra soldier in the world, as Jessie had decided to dub him, had started threatening the onlookers to get moving, but only a few of them did. He glanced up at the helicopter, met Jessie's gaze briefly, and ran off with the last of the evacuees.
They had made it almost to the archway into Sector 6 when Jessie heard the helicopter moving off. Any moment, she expected to hear the blast that would announce her death, and she urged Wedge faster and faster. They staggered through the arch and kept going.
"Move, move!" she shouted. Too many people were standing too close to the wall.
They made it as far as the cat-shaped playhouse and Jessie shoved Wedge into it ahead of her just as she heard the first distant boom. The playhouse had been there a long time, it had to be sturdy. She crawled in behind Wedge and curled up, wrapping her arms around her head and bracing herself for the crash.
The screams came first as the explosion progressed, people watching it happen from the wrong side of the wall. Then the plate came down, silencing them in a cacophony of metal. It was the loudest thing that Jessie had ever heard, and it lasted longer than she could ever have imagined.
Then, at last, silence.
Someone was weeping, and it took her a minute to realize it was her own voice. She swallowed her tears, sucked in a breath, and finally opened her eyes.
"You all right?" she asked Wedge.
His eyes were wide with horror, but he nodded dumbly.
They crawled out from inside the playhouse. Several steel beams had embedded themselves in the top of the thing; Jessie hadn't heard their impact over the rest of the noise. The few shacks between it and the wall had collapsed beneath chunks of debris. That Shinra soldier was lying wounded near one of them, someone crouched beside him, and for once Jessie hoped he'd be okay.
Ahead, through the archway into Sector 7, there was nothing but a heap of tangled metal and wires. Something inside of that was burning, and she could hear the groans and crashes of debris settling beyond the wall. Above, in that gap between the wall and the Sector 6 plate, where the Sector 7 plate should have been, was only the green haze that was the Midgar sky.
Jessie stood and stared. Wedge sank to the ground, his back thudding against the playhouse.
Biggs... Barret... Tifa...
"Jessie!"
She gave a start, and in the moment she recognized the voice, the moment before she turned around, she thought it was her mind playing tricks on her, giving her what she most wanted to hear in that moment.
But it really was Barret running towards her. Tifa limped up just behind him. They looked awful. Barret was bleeding from a gash in his head, Tifa's legs were badly scraped and bruised, and both of them were covered in an ashy film from the blast.
"You- You're alive!" Jessie exclaimed.
Tifa threw her arms around her and held her tightly, saying nothing. Relief swept over her. They were alive...
...but then she realized, someone was missing.
"Biggs?" she whispered into Tifa's shoulder.
Tifa was shaking her head. "He took a bullet on the way up... We couldn't go back for him. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jessie."
The tears welled up again in her eyes. "He went out... protecting everyone," Jessie mumbled. "You all bought us time, I know you did. He'd... he'd be proud of that."
"Yeah," said Tifa.
"Gods damn them!!"
They pulled apart at the sound of Barret's voice. He stood in front of the rubble, his whole body shaking. Tifa started towards him.
"Damn them!" he shouted again. "The hell do they think they are!? Playin' god? Destroyin' people's lives?"
He lifted his gun arm to aim it at the rubble, but Tifa caught his arm. "Barret, stop," she said hoarsely. "Ricochet."
Barret turned his head to stare at her, and then slowly lowered his arm again.
Jessie looked around. There were a handful of people in the park; she knew it wasn't everyone who had escaped. "Where's Aeris?" she asked. "She made it out, didn't she?"
Tifa looked at her in a moment of horror. "Didn't she?" she repeated. She shook her head to clear it. "Maybe she went on to Sector 5," she said.
"Hey, are you talking about that lady in the pink?" someone asked.
They turned. "That's right," said Tifa. "She would've had a little girl with her?"
"I heard she was taking people to some church," said the survivor. "But I didn't want to go, yet."
"You know where this church is, Teef?" said Barret. There was an edge to his voice, and Jessie felt it, too. A need to be sure. Marlene.
"I have an idea," Tifa said. "She said it was near her house." She knelt down beside Wedge. "How bad is it?"
"It hurts, but I can walk." Reading the expression on her face, he pleaded, "Don't leave me behind. I want to know, too, that they're okay."
Tifa nodded, and helped him to his feet. They all gave the ruins of Sector 7 one last look before turning away, and pressing on through Sector 6.
Their pace was slow. Jessie was probably in the best shape of the four of them, and she was exhausted. Thankfully, a number of the survivors wordlessly decided to go with them, and together they were a large enough group that the monsters kept their distance.
Tifa led the way once they reached Sector 5, and when they were closer to where Jessie supposed Aeris's house was, she started asking about the church. They got directions quickly, and Jessie could tell from the residents' solemn gazes and lack of questions that they weren't the first to pass this way.
The foundation of one of the church's towers had crumbled and it had half-collapsed against the main structure, but otherwise the church was in better condition than Jessie had expected for a building in the slums. Even the bell was still in the bell tower.
Jessie recognized the owner of the weapons shop and one of his employees standing outside the doors. They seemed to have stationed themselves there, though in what capacity, even they didn't seem sure.
"Good to see you guys made it out," said the owner.
"Marlene--" Barret began, but the man was already nodding.
"Your daughter's inside."
Barret rushed past them into the church, and the rest of them followed.
"Papa!" Marlene wasn't far from the doors, and she ran into Barret's arms as he dropped to his knees in front of her. "Papa, you hurt your face!"
"It's okay," he said, holding her close. "You're okay. That's all that matters. You're okay."
"Thank the gods," Tifa whispered from beside her.
And the church was full of people. Jessie recognized so many familiar faces--not all of them, which meant not enough of them, but a lot. Nance's father lay on one of the pews. Johnny was crouched down talking to two of the neighborhood kids, trying to keep their attention. Jessie wasn't sure where their parents were.
The town gossip was at the front of the church, trying to get people organized in some fashion. When she spotted them at the entrance, she marched down the center aisle towards them. She looked Jessie dead in the eye, reading the facts in her expression.
"It really happened then?" she asked.
Jessie could only nod. She didn't have the words right now.
"Where's Aeris?" Tifa asked suddenly.
Jessie looked around again, but she didn't see Aeris anywhere. When her eyes swept over them, some of the people sitting on the pews nearby looked away.
It was Marlene who said, "They took her away."
Tifa knelt down beside her and Barret. "What do you mean? Who took her away?"
"Some men from Shinra came," said one of the refugees at last. "When the first group of us got here with her. There was a dark-haired man in a suit... He said he'd have us all shot if she didn't go with them."
"Why would they take Aeris?" Jessie asked, puzzled. If it was because she'd become involved with AVALANCHE, then it didn't make sense to pursue her as a separate target when they already expected to wipe them all out along with with Sector 7.
Tifa shook her head. "I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me. But... I'd better tell her mother what happened."
"I'm goin' with you," Barret decided. "Aeris got caught savin' Marlene, so I gotta pay my respects."
"I'm going, too," said Jessie. "If we'd only stuck together, then maybe..."
Tifa shook her head. "If it's anyone's fault, it's mine, for getting her involved in all of this."
"Shit," said Barret. "How 'bout blamin' the damn Shinra? They're the ones that took her."
There was a short silence. He wasn't wrong, but Jessie didn't exactly feel blameless either.
"Um," said Wedge. He had eased himself down onto the nearest pew, and when they all looked at him, he said, "I'll keep an eye on things here for you."
"Good man," said Barret.
After listening intently to their conversation, the gossip finally turned away and raised her voice. "All right, who's got the medical kit?"
Barret stood, holding Marlene close in his arms, and turned to Tifa. "Which way?"
Tifa led them only a few blocks from the church, to an impossible house, a house that had survived from the time before the plate was built. Flowers bloomed all around it, and Jessie rubbed her eyes, wondering if she'd dozed off somehow.
Tifa knocked at the door, and a woman answered it as though she'd been waiting for someone to come. Her gaze swept over them, recognizing Tifa, taking in their condition. "What happened to Aeris?" she said.
"The Shinra took her," Tifa said quickly, before Aeris's mother could reach a worse conclusion. "I'm so sorry, Elmyra."
Elmyra didn't look surprised. "Was it the Turks?" she asked.
Tifa exchanged glances with her friends. "I'm not sure. It was a dark-haired man in a suit..."
"Tseng," Elmyra said in recognition. She opened the door wider. "I guess you all had better come in."
They filed inside, and Elmyra bid them take a seat at her kitchen table. Marlene had fallen asleep on the walk over, and Barret sat rocking her gently in his arms.
"I heard about what happened to Sector 7," Elmyra said, not sitting down with them. "You all must have lost so much."
"Thank you," said Tifa. "But I don't understand. What do the Turks want with Aeris?"
"They've been after her for a long time," said Elmyra. "Aeris is... the sole survivor of the Ancients."
"The Ancients?" Tifa repeated.
"I thought you were her mother," Barret said.
Elmyra nodded at Marlene. "Is she your daughter?"
"Of course Marlene's my..." He trailed off, taking her point.
"It's been 15 years since I took Aeris in as my own. Back then, I didn't believe her, but she told me that she'd escaped from some research laboratory somewhere. Her mother, her birth mother, was injured in the escape. Her dying words were to ask me to keep Aeris safe. I've done my best over the years, but..."
"She's her own person now," Tifa finished. "She's going to take risks."
Elmyra nodded. "I was worried this day might be coming. The Shinra need her, so I don't think they'll let any harm come to her, but I worry how they'll treat her."
"What do they need her for?" Jessie asked. "The Ancients, they're practically a faerie tale."
"They say that she has special powers, and that she could lead them to some place called 'the Promised Land.'"
"Is any of that true?" Tifa asked.
"Aeris would tell you it isn't. But I'm her mother, and I know when she's trying to hide things from me. I don't know about this Promised Land of theirs, but she is special."
They all fell silent.
"I'm sorry," Tifa said again. "I should never have let Aeris come back with me..."
"Don't blame yourself," Elmyra said. "Aeris didn't do anything that she didn't want to. She wanted to help you. And whatever you all have done... There's no doubt in my mind after today, the Shinra are truly evil. You have to fight them."
"Fuck," Barret cursed under his breath, earning him a raised eyebrow from Elmyra. Marlene slumbered on. "Sorry," he went on, "but we gotta go after her, right? I don't know if I get what they're planning for Aeris, but we can't let the Shinra have her."
"You're right," said Tifa. "We have to go after her, no matter what."
Jessie nodded her agreement. "After all, she's one of us now, isn't she?"
There were tears in Elmyra's eyes. "Thank you all," she said, and quickly turned her back on them to collect herself. After a moment, she went on, "You need rest first. You can stay here for the night."
Tifa rose to her feet and put a hand on Elmyra's shoulder. "We'll get her back," she said. "I promise."
Jessie hoped it was a promise they could keep. She didn't want to lose anyone else.