Chapter 18
Tifa didn't know how the village would look, now, but she had tried to imagine it. As they neared the mouth of the valley, she braced herself for burnt-out shells of buildings, for a pile of rubble where her house had once stood.
What she hadn't prepared for was for everything to look... the same. There was the general store, and her neighbors' house, and the well in the center of the square. There was the roof of her own house, rising up behind the Strifes.'
"They rebuilt it?" said Jessie.
Tifa shook her head slowly. "It can't be..."
Aeris looked at her in concern. "What is it, Tifa?"
They thought it was something new. That other people had come and built new homes here, in the place where hers had once stood.
"This is... how it looked before," she said. "That's the well. That's my house. It's like it never happened."
They were all looking at her, and no one seemed to know what to say.
"I know it happened," Tifa whispered.
Aeris took her hand and gave it a squeeze, grounding her in the reality of the moment. "We believe you," she said.
"Yeah," Barret agreed. "Whatever's goin' on here, we'll figure it out."
"Let's see if there's anyone around," Jessie suggested.
Tifa nodded. She drew in a long, slow breath, and let it out, and got her feet moving again.
Maybe it wasn't exactly right, she thought. Small things, small enough that she might have been remembering them wrong. But the lampposts looked different. Had the square always been paved? Yes, but the stones had been half-buried under dirt. Maybe that house had one too many windows, that one too few. Metal looked shinier, stone cleaner.
She led them first into the general store, because that seemed easier. It was part of home, but not a place that she'd loved when she'd lived here. The interior looked like she remembered, but the woman at the counter was a stranger.
"Welcome!" said the stranger. "Let me know if you need anything. We've been in business here a long time."
"Wow," said Yuffie. "That's some bullshit."
"I beg your pardon?"
"How long do you mean, by 'a long time'?" Aeris asked more diplomatically.
"Oh, I don't know. Just about forever, it seems like. This was my parents' shop, you know."
Tifa shook her head. "No, it wasn't," she said.
"Well, now, how would you know? You just came into town, didn't you?"
"I used to live here. I grew up here. I've never seen you before in my life. This store... this store belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Hirsch. I was friends with their son Kyle, but he moved away to Midgar before..."
The stranger frowned at her. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "Are you feeling all right?"
"The hell kinda game you playin' at?" Barret demanded.
"I think you all had better leave," said the stranger, wringing her hands.
Barret opened his mouth, but Tifa caught his eye and shook her head. "Not here. Not yet."
They turned and left the store.
Across the square was her house. The house that looked like hers, anyway. Tifa clenched her hands and strode across the pavement. She pushed open the door.
Again, it wasn't quite right, but it was too close. The rug leading into the kitchen was the wrong color, but the right size, in the right place. The grandfather clock looked almost new; it didn't have the crack in the glass from when she and her friends had accidentally knocked it over.
The house appeared empty. No one came at the sound of the door, and she didn't hear anyone upstairs.
Slowly, Tifa moved to stand in the kitchen doorway. A table with three place settings. The old furnace, not looking so old now. Pots hanging on the wall above the stove where she and her father had learned together how to cook, except it wasn't the same stove, not really.
"Tifa?" said Aeris.
"I don't understand it," she said. "Someone put a lot of effort into making this look like my house... It's so close, like they had record of everything, down to how many spoons we had. But still, it's not quite right... A person could go mad."
"Do you want to leave?"
Tifa shook her head. "I need answers. I won't find them unless we keep looking."
"We could look for you," Barret offered. Like she'd done for him, in North Corel. But she shook her head again.
"You all won't notice what's different," she said. "I'm all right. I can handle this."
She pressed on, making her way upstairs. Straight ahead from the landing, she could see into her parents' room, but she turned left to go into her own.
As she pushed open the door, her eyes fell on a figure in black huddled in the corner by her dresser, and she snatched her hand back from the doorknob, readying her fists.
The figure hardly moved. They sat rocking themself slightly, but they gave no sign that they had noticed her. A deep hood shadowed their face.
"Who the hell is that?" Barret asked, looking in over her head.
Tifa cautiously lowered her fists. "Hello?"
"Huhhn?" the figure replied. A man's voice. Almost like he was trying to imitate her, but couldn't form the sounds. No threat at all, she decided.
She approached to crouch down in front of him. "Are you all right?"
"Huh?" The rocking stopped, and the man lifted his head to stare at her with blue eyes that almost seemed to glow. Was there something familiar about them?
"He's got a tattoo," said Aeris, crouching down beside her. Tifa glanced at her, and followed her gaze to his hand, which bore the numeral XIV. "I've seen this before."
"You have?"
Aeris nodded. "Back in Sector 5. There was a man who'd arrived recently, and he was very sick. He had a tattoo on his hand. The number 2."
"It looks like mine," said Nanaki uneasily.
"Where did you get that tattoo?" Aeris asked him.
"Hojo," he answered. "The rest I had before, but the number was done by Hojo."
Tifa bit her lip. Another victim of that awful man... and there were at least fourteen of them. The man had started rocking again, and she reached out to touch his hand. "Hey. Let's get you up off the floor. Is that okay?"
"Hn," he said, but she thought he nodded a bit. She got her arm around him, helped him up, and guided him across the room to her bed. It was easy; he was skinny, and about her height, and he made no protest. She sat him down, and gently pushed back the hood to get a better look at him.
Wild, blond hair, and a face that looked... She hadn't seen him in seven years, but the resemblance was too strong to be a coincidence.
"...Cloud?" she said. "Cloud Strife?"
"You know him?" said Yuffie.
He looked at her again, and his brow furrowed, like he was trying very hard to understand something. Tifa had plenty of questions of her own. What had happened to him? What was he doing here?
"Do you remember me?" she asked him gently. "We were neighbors."
"Uhhh.... T... Tifa?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Tifa," he repeated. "And I'm..." It took him a very long time to finish, but at last he said, "I'm Cloud."
"I never thought I'd find you here," she said.
Cloud looked around, as though he'd had no idea where 'here' was until she'd mentioned it. "This... isn't real," he said.
"You mean..." Tifa hesitated, pushing her hair back behind her ear. "You know about the fire?"
He stilled for a moment, and then nodded. He didn't say anything.
"Cloud, do you know how you got here?"
"...no. I don't remember."
"What do you remember?"
Cloud looked up at her, and a pained expression crossed his face. He opened his mouth, but then something else seemed to occur to him, and he looked around again. "Zack," he said. "What happened to Zack?"
"Y-you know Zack?" said Aeris, stepping forward.
"I don't know you," said Cloud, though he sounded unsure.
"No, we've never met before. I'm Aeris. I'm... I was a friend of Zack's."
"Me, too. We're friends." He said it with a nod, as though he needed to remind himself out loud.
Tifa turned to Aeris. "Is there anything you can do for him?"
Aeris's brow knit together. "I don't know," she said. "I can try, but... I wasn't able to help the man in Sector 5. He wasn't injured, just..."
"I understand. But it's worth a try, right?"
Aeris nodded, and she approached the bed to take Cloud's hand. She concentrated for several moments, but she sighed and said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I can help."
"Sorry," Cloud mumbled.
"It's all right, Cloud," Tifa said. "I just wish we knew what happened to you. I wish we knew what was going on here."
Cloud fisted a hand in his hair, shutting his eyes tightly. "I knew it a minute ago," he said. "We were waiting..."
"Who's 'we'?"
"...I don't know."
"Hey, Cloud?" said Aeris. "Were you in SOLDIER, with Zack?"
He looked up at her, and then at Tifa, and he hung his head. "No. Just him."
Aeris nodded and pulled Tifa aside, to where the others waited on the other side of the room. "That glow in his eyes... that's a mark of SOLDIER. But if he wasn't in SOLDIER, then... it might be Mako poisoning."
"I've heard of that," said Jessie. "They say it messes with your head."
"But having you here seems to be helping, Tifa," Aeris added.
"I wish I could do more," Tifa said, "but I haven't so much as heard from him in seven years. I guess he joined Shinra, but I don't know how he got mixed up in something Hojo was doing. Or is that normal, for them to experiment on their own people just because?"
"Wouldn't put it past 'em," said Barret.
"Uh, Tifa?" said Yuffie. She'd been leaning against Tifa's writing desk, but now she picked up a few papers laying on top. "You might wanna look at this."
Tifa took them from her. "'Periodic report to Professor Hojo,'" she read, and frowned, skimming over the rest. On the one hand, it was a small relief to know she wasn't losing her mind, that it had really happened. But she felt her anger rising up inside of her.
"What's it say?" Jessie asked.
"It's all Shinra," Tifa said bitterly. "They rebuilt the town as a cover-up. Everyone living here is an actor, they're all in on it. And now they're using it for some sort of experiment, monitoring 'clones'..." She glanced at Cloud; could it be talking about him?
Jessie took it from her to read it for herself, and it got passed around to the others.
"What does that mean, 'clone'?" Nanaki wondered. "Tifa, you know him, don't you?"
She nodded. "He lived in the house next door, growing up. I'm sure it's him."
"Man, I feel like we're just gettin' more questions," Barret said, scratching his head.
"We should go to the Shinra mansion," Tifa decided. "Sephiroth was there for days; there must be something there."
Jessie glanced over at Cloud. "What about him?"
Tifa hesitated. She didn't want to leave him here, but she didn't think he was up for coming along, and she couldn't leave it to the others to find her answers for her. "Could one of you stay with him?"
Her friends exchanged glances.
"I'll look after 'im for ya," Barret volunteered. "I ain't much good at wrappin' my head around this crap anyways."
"Thanks, Barret." Tifa turned back to Cloud. He already seemed more lucid just from the way he was looking at her.
"Man," he said, "I must really be losing it. I could've sworn that wolf was talking..."
Tifa couldn't help a small smile. "No, that's real. He talks."
"Huh."
"We're going to take a look around town, and see if we can find some answers. My friend Barret is going to stay here with you, so you're not alone." When Cloud looked up at Barret uneasily, she added, "I know he seems a little intimidating, but trust me, he's a good person."
"And he's your friend?"
"That's right. I've known him for years."
Cloud nodded slowly. "All right. But you're... coming back, right?"
"Of course. And maybe then, we'll have some idea what's happened to you."
Tifa straightened and moved towards the door. Barret caught her eye.
"We'll be here," he said. "You come grab me if you need me. An' don't worry 'bout him. I'll try an' talk to 'im. Seems like we got a friend in common at least."
"Thanks," she said again, touching his arm briefly before she left the room. She gave her parents' room only a cursory check before she went back down the stairs and out of the house. It wasn't much of a relief; the rest of the fake Nibelheim still surrounded her.
"So that was weird, right?" said Yuffie. "Your childhood friend hanging out in a black cloak in your bedroom that's not really your bedroom?"
"Definitely weird," Tifa agreed, but she didn't know if any of that had been his choice. If it was, then maybe some part of him had remembered that night at the well, and the brief connection they'd shared.
"He seemed pretty coherent, even if he can't remember a lot," Jessie said. "That's gotta be a good sign."
"I hope so," Tifa said.
The Shinra mansion looked as it always had. An imposing building set back behind its walled yard and half-hidden from view by tall pines. As children, they had climbed over the wall out of sight of their parents' eyes and snuck in through one of the windows that had a broken latch. Now, they walked through the gate and up to the front door. It was lighter than Tifa had expected, but the sound of it closing behind them echoed in the large foyer.
"This isn't a copy," Tifa said with certainty as she looked around. The peeling paint, the grime on the windows, the heavy coat of dust over everything--they couldn't have faked those.
"So," said Jessie, "where do you think those records would be?"
"I'm not sure," Tifa admitted. "We snuck in here a couple times as kids, but we never explored the whole place. My friends thought they heard a monster in one of the back rooms and got spooked. It didn't seem worth it to come alone."
"There probably could've been a monster," Aeris said, "don't you think?"
"Could've been," Tifa agreed. Maybe it was for the best that her friends had gotten scared.
"Let's split up and look around," Jessie suggested.
"Uh, in teams though, right?" said Yuffie. "I'm goin' with Nanaki."
Nanaki cocked his head at her in apparent surprise, but he didn't protest.
"Sure, all right," said Jessie. "I guess the rest of us will stick together. Holler if you find anything."
They separated, Yuffie and Nanaki taking the west wing of the mansion, while Tifa and the others took the east, which was where her friends had claimed to hear the monster. There was a lot of junk in those back rooms. Boxes of old newspapers, canned goods decades past their expiration dates, a set of china, half-unpacked--or half-packed, it wasn't clear. Candlesticks arranged on the dining room table. An old wedding portrait on the wall, the faces obscured by dust.
"It seems like whoever lived here left a lot behind," said Aeris, as she stood looking at the portrait.
"Maybe they broke up," Jessie suggested. "I can see not wanting a painting of you and your ex."
"Maybe," said Tifa. "It's definitely worthless to us. Let's check upstairs."
The staircase groaned as they ascended to the upper landing. The tall windows there had probably been beautiful when the place was new, but now only a pallid, yellow light struggled through the dirty panes, throwing a haze over the foyer.
To the right, they found a sitting room, and what must have been the master bedroom. Jessie went to inspect the bookshelf, but Tifa was beginning to wonder if there was anything to find. They hadn't heard anything but creaking floorboards from Yuffie and Nanaki's progression through the manor, and everything left seemed to be junk or abandoned personal items. Had Sephiroth only come here to be alone?
"What's with this wall?" Aeris asked. She was staring at a curved, stone wall that cut into the corner of the room.
"It is strange, isn't it?" Tifa realized. "From the outside, I always assumed it was for a furnace, but it was all closed off downstairs, too."
"Does this place have a basement?" Aeris wondered.
Tifa shook her head. "I've never seen any stairs going down."
"No, look," said Jessie. "The bricks all line up along these edges here--" She laid her hand against the wall and pushed, and it gave a little. Tifa joined her, and shoved it the rest of the way open, revealing a spiral staircase descending into darkness.
"A hidden passage!" Aeris exclaimed. "Now this is promising."
Jessie stepped into the hall to call Yuffie and Nanaki over, and within minutes they were all together in the room.
"I guess you two didn't find anything?" Aeris asked.
"Well," said Yuffie, "there is a safe over there. That means there's something worth locking up, right?"
"Or something better left that way," said Nanaki. "It was making noises."
"Doesn't mean the monster doesn't have valuables."
"I think we'd better let it alone for now, Yuffie," Tifa said. "Nanaki, if you wouldn't mind leading the way?"
He nodded and approached the staircase.
"You know, there's something to be said for natural light, but we should probably still invest in a flashlight," Jessie remarked as they started after him.
"Yes," Nanaki agreed. "I don't always enjoy going first into dark places."
"Sorry," Tifa said.
They reached the bottom of the staircase and proceeded down a short tunnel that looked like it could have been natural, there before the house was built. Maybe this site had been chosen to take advantage of it.
Near the end of the tunnel were two doors, but the first was locked. Jessie put her ear to it.
"Well, I don't hear any monsters in there," she said. "I'll go ahead and take a stab at it."
The second door was unlocked, but Tifa couldn't see far into it without the light from Nanaki's tail, so she rejoined Jessie. Yuffie did have a point about finding more valuable things under lock and key. And it must have been a tricky one, because it took Jessie longer than usual, but at last she got it open.
Nanaki ventured in first, and Tifa followed close behind.
"Aw, man," said Yuffie. "A creepy murder room?"
"Not exactly what I was expecting," Aeris agreed.
The room held nothing but coffins and the scattered remains of human skeletons. A place to hide the evidence of failed experiments? Why lock it when the basement was already hidden?
Nanaki lifted his head, sniffing the air. "There is something alive in here," he said, nodding to the one casket that remained closed.
"That's cool," said Yuffie. "It can stay there."
"The monster might have valuables," Nanaki reminded her, shooting her a look of amusement.
"In a safe, sure. Not in a coffin!"
"I don't know, I'm kinda with Yuffie on this one," said Jessie. "What if whatever's in there killed all the other things in here?"
"Hello?" called Aeris to the coffin. "Mr. Monster, are you about to murder us?"
"What are you doing?" Yuffie hissed at her.
Tifa hoped Aeris had good reason to think it was safe. She got a sense about these things sometimes, didn't she? The coffin lid started to slide back, and Tifa raised her fists.
A man sat up from the coffin. Not a monster, at least by appearance--although he was strange-looking. He was about the palest person Tifa had ever seen, in stark contrast to the mess of black hair that fell forward over his face and down his back. His eyes were a true red, more intense than her own, and they seemed to glow, like Cloud's had.
Tifa didn't relax. He could still be dangerous.
"Why do you wake me?" he asked.
"Um..." said Jessie. "Seems like a bad idea to sleep in a coffin?"
"It is what I have chosen. Now leave me."
"Wait just a moment," said Aeris, quickly stepping forward before he could do more than put his hand back on the lid. "Do you know anything about this mansion? We came here in search of answers, and you seem to be the only living person here."
He hesitated, and his gaze swept over their party. "What sort of answers do you seek?"
Tifa joined Aeris nearer the coffin. "Five years ago, the rest of this village was burned to the ground. The man who did it spent the few days prior holed up in this mansion. We think there's a connection."
"This man, what was his name?"
"Sephiroth."
The man closed his eyes. It was difficult to read his expression, but the name clearly meant something to him. "How long has it been?" he asked. "What year is it?"
Tifa exchanged glances with Aeris, who mouthed the word 'vampire?' at her. Tifa told him the year.
"Thirty years," he murmured. "Much has happened, I suppose."
"You've been locked up in here for thirty years?" Jessie said incredulously. "How are you not dead?"
The man glanced at her. "That's a rather personal question to ask a stranger, isn't it?"
"Uh, sorry, I guess. But can you blame a girl for being curious?"
"You've been here that long," Tifa said slowly, "but you know the name Sephiroth?"
He looked back at her. "Yes. Tell me: what do you know of him? Does he still live?"
"He does," Tifa said, but she felt reluctant to say more. She couldn't be sure, but the man seemed eager for an affirmative answer. He wanted Sephiroth to be alive, even after learning he'd destroyed a whole village.
Aeris glanced at her and then offered, "We know he spent at least part of his childhood in a lab, supervised by Professor Hojo. At some point he joined SOLDIER, and he became famous as a hero in the Wutai War. And then... five years ago, he came here. After the massacre, he disappeared for a while, until recently. That's why we're looking into him now."
"I see..." said the man. "Are you seeking vengeance?"
"Shouldn't we?" Tifa asked. "He's killed a lot of people. He can't be allowed to continue."
"If what you say is true, then perhaps not."
"If what we say is true?" she repeated indignantly.
"I don't know you," he said, "so I have no reason to trust what you've told me."
"What reason would we have to lie to you?" said Nanaki. "After all, you're nothing more to us than a strange man we found sleeping in a basement."
"Yeah, and you could be lying, too," Yuffie chimed in. "Saying you've been here thirty years--maybe you're just some weirdo who came down here yesterday hoping to freak people out."
The man looked from one of them to the other, but he said nothing, not even to remark on the fact that Nanaki could speak.
"I'm Aeris," Aeris offered at last, holding out her hand.
He took it as though he scarcely recalled what a handshake was. "...Vincent," he said. "Formerly of the Turks."
"The Turks?" Jessie repeated in alarm.
"Formerly," he said again.
Tifa didn't care to offer her hand, but she could give her name. "Well, I'm Tifa. That's Jessie, Nanaki, and Yuffie."
Vincent nodded at them. "I take it you do not care for Shinra."
"Definitely not," said Yuffie. "We hate the Shinra."
"I can understand that, considering the actions they have taken in the name of research."
"Those are the actions we'd really like to know about," Tifa said pointedly.
"Before that," Vincent said, "there is one person that I would like to know about. You know of Hojo and Sephiroth, so perhaps you know her. Dr. Lucrecia Crescent."
Tifa looked to Aeris, figuring her the most likely to know the name, but Aeris shook her head. "I'm sorry. I've never heard of her."
"She was a biologist working under Professor Gast... But if she's left Shinra, that's for the best."
"Professor Gast," Aeris repeated. "You knew him?" There was an eagerness to her voice, and Tifa looked at her quizzically. "He- he was my father," she explained.
Her father, a Shinra scientist? Tifa had assumed that Aeris had never had the chance to know him, and so she wasn't able to speak to him as she did her mother. But a scientist... Had Aeris been born in captivity? She didn't speak the name with any resentment.
"You are Gast's daughter?" Vincent seemed surprised, too. He shook his head. "He did not have a family when I knew him. For your sake, I hope that that changed him."
"What do you mean?" Aeris asked.
Vincent considered her question for a long moment, and then at last he placed his hands on the sides of the coffin and climbed out of it. A tall man, he towered over them, but he wasn't so tall as Barret.
"I think I will tell you," he said, as though he hadn't meant to before. "I had my opinions, but Gast was someone Lucrecia respected..."
He swept past them out the door, and Tifa exchanged glances with the others.
"I think he wants us to follow him," said Jessie.
Vincent didn't go far. He strode into the other room at the end of the tunnel and switched on the lights. Tifa was surprised that they worked, until she noticed that unlike the rest of the mansion, this room had only the faintest coating of dust. The lights revealed laboratory equipment: an operating table, shelves of labeled specimen jars, empty glass tanks that still smelled faintly of Mako. Farther in, the walls were lined with books--not literature like in the house above, but scientific journals.
"In my time," said Vincent, "Professor Gast was the lead scientist of the Jenova Project. Hojo and Lucrecia were his assistants, and as a Turk, I was assigned to their protection."
Vincent's hand came to rest on the operating table, in memory of something, and Tifa waited for him to go on.
"It was a task at which I failed. Lucrecia became too invested in the project... and so her unborn child became a part of the experiment."
"...and that child was Sephiroth," Aeris concluded.
Vincent nodded. "Once she made up her mind to go through with it, there was no way to stop her. That was my sin. I let the one I loved, the one I respected most, face the worst."
"And then you decided to spend thirty years in a coffin?" Yuffie asked skeptically.
Vincent didn't reply.
Tifa had a different question in mind, but she didn't voice it, unsure of how she herself might react to the answer. Vincent had loved this woman, and he'd made no mention of a father. There were enough similarities, she thought. His height, the broad-shouldered yet slender build, the slope of his nose. If those eyes had been green, would they have looked so different?
But she couldn't ask, because if he confirmed it, then she didn't know what she might do to him.
"Vincent," Aeris said, "what do you know about Jenova itself?"
That answer came easier. "It was a specimen that Professor Gast excavated from the ice in the north, frozen several thousand years ago, in the time of the Ancients. The theory behind the experiment was that they might reproduce the abilities of the Ancients in someone by using Jenova's cells."
"That can't be right," Tifa said, looking sharply to Aeris. This was exactly what she hadn't wanted to find, evidence of a connection between Aeris and...
But Aeris was already shaking her head. "No," she said. "Jenova wasn't an Ancient."
"You're sure, Aeris?" asked Jessie.
"My mother told me. She said my father made a mistake... I think this is what she meant."
Vincent was looking at her intently. "When was it that Gast realized this?" he asked.
"I guess it must have been when he met my mother," Aeris reasoned. "She was a Cetra."
"Well, yeah," said Yuffie. "I don't know how you mistake that thing for someone like you, Aeris. I mean, this Gast guy had eyes, right?"
Aeris shook her head. "It's not just that. I think my mother knew exactly what Jenova was. I think Jenova was an enemy of the Cetra... and of the Planet."
"But how much of this does Sephiroth know?" Nanaki wondered. "If the project was completed before Gast learned of his mistake, then there may be no record here of Jenova's true nature."
"Come on, you really think he believes he's a Cetra?" said Yuffie.
Tifa hesitated. That was what he'd said, when he'd spoken to her. She had taken it for a lie at the time, but what if he really thought it was true? Was that why he wanted Aeris alive, because he thought he was like her? How might that change things for Aeris, knowing that even if they weren't the same, Sephiroth believed they were?
But they were already speculating on it. Why keep it a secret any longer?
"I... I didn't say anything before, Aeris, because I was worried how you'd take it, but Sephiroth did say to me that he was a Cetra. He said that... once you saw how awful people were, then you'd awaken to your 'true calling,' like he did."
Aeris frowned. "Does that mean... Sephiroth thinks that humans need to die, to save the Planet?"
"That doesn't exactly add up, does it?" said Jessie. "I mean, if he really wanted to save the Planet, wouldn't he have burned Nibelheim's reactor to the ground, not the town? I'm no Ancient and I still know that's what's doing it the most harm."
Tifa nodded. "You're right. It has to be an act." She looked to Aeris, brow furrowing. "I think he wants something from you, Aeris, and he thought he might get it if you believed he was like you."
"Something only a Cetra would know..." Aeris murmured.
"...the Promised Land?" Jessie suggested.
"What would Sephiroth want with that?" Nanaki wondered.
"What do the Shinra want with it?" said Jessie. "They must think there's a power there they could harness. Sephiroth, too."
Aeris frowned thoughtfully. "So, has he been following us, hoping that I'd lead him there?"
"I don't know," said Tifa. "But you don't know where it is, right?"
Aeris shook her head. "It's not the place I've felt drawn to either. I don't think."
"If you're not sure, then maybe we shouldn't go there. We don't want Sephiroth to have it. If Jenova's an enemy of the Planet... and he's an enemy of the Planet... then gods know what he'd do with it."
"I think this is something different, but... I'll try talking to my mother again, when I can."
Tifa nodded. Aeris seemed to have trouble getting clear answers from her mother, but maybe now that she knew more, she'd be able to ask the right questions.
"I'm still not certain where your friend fits into all this, Tifa," Nanaki remarked, looking up at her. He seemed more preoccupied with that than she'd expected. Maybe because of his tattoo.
"Vincent," said Jessie, turning back to him, "do you know about any other experiments done with Jenova's cells?"
"No," he said, "but even if Gast realized his mistake, I doubt it would deter Hojo."
"What are you thinking, Jessie?" Tifa asked.
"Well, between those pods at the reactor, and that report about 'clones'... Sephiroth was a huge win for Shinra, until Nibelheim. What if they've been trying to reproduce that success? But, it takes a long time for a kid to grow up."
"So they tried using adults..."
"I wouldn't exactly call Cloud a success," said Yuffie.
Jessie shrugged. "I'm not saying the shortcut worked out for them."
Vincent spoke up again. "This lab has been used much more recently than my time, and there are more journals here than I remember. I suspect some of them may pertain to newer experiments. Perhaps you could find record of what happened to your friend."
Tifa looked at him. He'd been reluctant to help, but he had given them information, and now for the first time he had volunteered something. She didn't have to like him or trust him, but she had come here for answers, and he was providing them.
"Could you tell us which journals are the new ones?" she ventured.
"Yes, I believe so."
"I'd appreciate that," she said.
Finally, things were becoming clearer. They still didn't know what Sephiroth was up to, but they could begin to guess. An enemy of the Planet... That sounded right to Tifa.