Chapter 2
The No. 5 Reactor was almost a carbon copy of the No. 1, a perfect illustration of how Shinra had automated draining the life out of the Planet. They spat these parts out of an assembly line and boom, there was another reactor.
This time, boom, AVALANCHE would make that happen in reverse.
Everything was going smoothly. They hopped the train before the ID scan and worked their way along the plate's underbelly to the reactor with Shinra none the wiser. It was Biggs who'd secured the old construction schematics, Wedge who'd plotted the route bypassing most of Shinra's security measures, Jessie who'd gotten them the codes they'd need to make their exit. Once he and Tifa had squeezed themselves through an overlooked maintenance hatch, the others withdrew. By the time the place blew, those three would already be safely back in Sector 7.
Barret wondered if it was too easy. Security didn't seem any heavier, but they'd come in through a back door that wasn't supposed to be there. Shinra had to be expecting them, but there were six other reactors, and they didn't know which AVALANCHE would target next. Maybe they'd spread themselves too thin or followed the wrong hunches.
Still, he slowed to look around as they approached the reactor's core. "Don't see any roboguards, but one jumped outta somewhere the second I planted the last bomb."
"You want me to do it?" Tifa asked him, and he handed it over without discussion. She could make quicker work of it with two hands, and he'd keep watch.
He scanned the walls, wondering if there was a hatch somewhere he hadn't noticed, something that had pulled back to release the robot. Something that big sure as hell wasn't hiding under the catwalk.
"All set," said Tifa. She joined him, and they waited a beat. Nothing happened. The hum of the reactor pulsed around them, and Mako churned in the pit below, filling the air with that noxious metallic smell. It had to make a body sick, working in these places.
"All right," said Barret. "Keep your eyes peeled, but let's get a move on."
Barret led the way as they hurried back up out of the bowels of the reactor. The exit came in sight, and still they'd encountered nothing but standard security. They burst out onto the catwalk that spanned the gap between the plates, the slums clear below them. Almost home free.
"This way!" said Barret, starting for the gate into Sector 5. It opened before he was halfway across, and a squad of soldiers marched out in formation. He skidded to a halt.
"Barret," said Tifa from behind him. He looked to her, then followed her gaze back the way they'd come. His mouth dropped open as President Shinra strode to a stop in the middle of the walkway.
"So, you two must be that... what was it again?"
"AVALANCHE!" Barret yelled, trying to barrel past his confusion. The hell was the President doing here? What kind of trap involved the head of the company? "Damn shame you won't live to remember it. This place's goin' up with a bang real soon!"
"Oh, I'm afraid I won't be joining you for the show," said the President. "But don't worry, your memory will serve Shinra for some time to come, even if you won't be around to trouble us any longer."
Barret snorted. "You really think it's just the two of us?"
"I know it isn't." Barret went cold as the President brushed a bit of imagined dirt from his suit before looking back at him. "You vermin nest in the Sector 7 slums, isn't that right? Unfortunately, it looks like terrorists are attacking on multiple fronts tonight. Come tomorrow there won't be a Sector 7."
"What?" said Tifa.
"It makes for a busy schedule," said the President, as if he were discussing a luncheon. "So, if you'll excuse me..."
"Wait a damn minute!" Barret cried. "Whattaya mean there won't be a Sector 7!?"
"Since AVALANCHE is so fond of explosions, we're blowing the support pillar."
Tifa's hands flew to her mouth. "You can't... That's so many people."
"A shame you won't be there to join them. But I made arrangements for a playmate for you instead." He snapped his fingers, and the Sector 4 gate opened to admit a hulking roboguard. Its design was completely different from the scorpion Barret had so narrowly escaped in the first reactor. It hovered above the catwalk on a wide circular base, its torso more humanoid with two powerful articulated fists.
"Meet the Airbuster," President Shinra continued, "the latest out of our Advanced Weaponry Division. I expect he'll make quick work of you, but do try to provide something for his combat learning module."
Barret had missed the sound of its approach beneath the whirring of the Airbuster's motor, but now a helicopter descended level with the catwalk beside President Shinra. His men helped him aboard as the squad of soldiers disappeared back through the Sector 5 gate, and the Airbuster began to advance.
"We gotta get outta here!" said Barret. "Marlene!!"
Tifa was already racing towards the Sector 5 gate. Barret raised his gun-arm to cover her as the Airbuster opened fire. There was nowhere to duck behind, no safe place to dodge to, he just had to hold its attention and hope he could move faster than its turn function seemed to.
"The code isn't working!" Tifa called, hidden from his view now behind the robot's bulk.
"Fuck, they must've changed it."
It was facing him, but something in the Airbuster's back opened up, shooting off a missile in Tifa's direction. He shouted a warning, she dropped to the floor, and it exploded against the door in front of her. For an instant, he was hopeful, but the smoke cleared to reveal undamaged metal. Tifa scrambled to her feet and started towards him.
Barret rolled to one side and then leapt back in the other direction, wanting to keep its main guns pointed away from Tifa. If it had any kind of access panel, he figured it'd be in the back.
"This thing's gotta have a hell of a power source," he said. "Maybe we overload it to blow the door."
"Even if it worked, that'd take out the catwalk, too," said Tifa. "We couldn't get to the door."
"We gotta do somethin'!"
A bullet burned past his leg as he dodged sideways again. Trying to keep ahead of it was wearing him out, and meanwhile the few shots he was getting off weren't slowing the thing down. He'd completely lost track of how many minutes had passed since they'd set the bomb.
"This thing's got a hover, right?" Tifa's voice came again, and for a second he had no idea what she was getting at. Then he took in the long drop to the slums directly below them.
"...that's crazy!"
The initial boom sounded from deep within the reactor, making the catwalk shake beneath their feet.
"But we ain't got time for sane," he decided.
Tifa landed a hard kick to the machine's back, and it turned slowly towards her, giving Barret the chance to back up a few long strides. He charged the Airbuster, slamming into it with his full weight. It struck the railing, which whined as it bowed outwards.
In that moment, the reactor exploded behind them, and the force of the blast did the rest of the work. The railing snapped, and Barret and the Airbuster went clear out over nothing. He saw Tifa leap after them, and he wanted to throw out a hand to grab her, but he only had the one to hold on with. She slammed into the roboguard with a grunt and clung tight.
The world dropped out from under them as the explosion plumed behind. Were they just falling? Barret fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut. The dizzying sprawl of the slums opened up below, coming on fast--but the view jerked and twisted. He realized the Airbuster was trying to turn to face its targets, tracing short sideways arcs through the air that slowed their descent. They were falling, but they weren't accelerating.
His insides seized--from the ride, from the roofs rapidly drawing closer. He didn't want to drop this thing into a bunch of civilians. They sped towards a warehouse; Tifa leapt, and Barret caught a glimpse of her sliding down the roof before the Airbuster punched through it. The thin metal screeched as it tore, and the robot struck the floor below, sending a jolt through his body. He was holding on too tightly, muscles rigid; he'd feel it later, but he was alive.
Before he could do anything to assess the Airbuster's status, the rat-a-tat-tat of one of its guns shot through the echoing space of the warehouse.
"Stay clear!" he shouted, not knowing if it had spotted Tifa somewhere. He yanked a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin with his teeth, and shoved it as far into the Airbuster's torso as he could.
He leapt free, cast a wild glance about until he spotted the pale rectangle of an open doorway, and bolted. He was lucky. The crash must have caused enough damage to slow the thing's response time, because its guns didn't spin up again until he was nearly outside. He dove through the doorway and scrambled to tuck himself against the wall beside it.
The blast came a second later, and in the flare of light, he spotted Tifa sheltering on the other side of the doorway. She met his gaze.
Silence followed the explosion, and they plunged back into darkness. The reactor explosion had knocked out the power, and all of Sector 5 was dark. For an instant, Barret felt himself back in the mines, but there was no claustrophobia of the tunnels, no rock ceiling close overhead. The plate was far above them.
The plate!
He fumbled at his belt, cursed. "Must've lost my flashlight somewhere. You got yours?"
"Yeah," said Tifa as a thin light clicked on. She shone it briefly into the warehouse, dimly illuminating the motionless wreck of the Airbuster, and then they walked past the building, searching for a landmark.
Barret was sure they'd landed somewhere in the outskirts of Sector 5, but it was a place they never had much cause to visit. He thought Tifa had one legitimate supplier here for a few specialty ingredients, but nobody ran guns or contraband through Sector 5.
He wondered if the lights were out in Sector 7, too. If Marlene was scared.
Clear of the shadow of the warehouse, they spotted the lights of the central pillar. They oriented themselves, and Tifa's tiny light carved a path west.
Past the unfamiliar streets of Sector 5, they reached the stretch of broken highway that ran through the Sector 6 slums. Jessie said that it had once run out to the harbor on the western coast, and it was how a lot of the materials had been brought in to begin Midgar's construction. After the raising of the central pillar, it had been abandoned and fallen into disrepair. Slums residents used broken construction equipment and scavenged scrap to shore up the gaps.
Barret thought of all the steel that hung over their heads, all the buildings, all the people. Shinra's great technological marvel, and they didn't even give a shit if it all came crashing down. Not as long as they could spin the disaster in a way that would cement their status in the minds of the survivors. Poor Shinra, those evil AVALANCHE terrorists just wouldn't get with the times, but the Company was doing its best. Meanwhile those who understood what had happened would be too scared to speak up.
He growled, wanting something to shoot. Tifa glanced back at him, and they picked up the pace.
They heard gunfire as they came in sight of the wall, though they couldn't see Sector 7's support pillar just yet. Someone was fighting back. Biggs, Wedge, Jessie? They could've made it back by now, and the neighborhood watch, too, could've stepped up. On an average day, they'd never have stood up to Shinra, but Barret wanted to think they'd find their courage in a situation like this.
If they could all just hold out a little longer--
The first boom sounded just as he and Tifa passed through the fence into the little park outside the Sector 7 gate. A collective gasp went up from the crowd gathered there, and the one Shinra soldier present shouted for people to move back. Just over the wall, they made out the light of an explosion.
And then the plate began to groan. The roads and tracks that connected Sector 7 topside to the other plates tore clear, the beams anchoring it to the central support couldn't hold, and that entire mass of metal fell.
Barret darted for Tifa, a pace in front of him, circled his arm around her, and pulled her back. People screamed and lost their footing as the shock wave of impact swept beneath them. Debris tumbled through the gate, over the wall, and most of it didn't reach as far as their end of the park, but he felt Tifa flinch in his arms as someone crumpled under a falling beam.
It was over fast, too fast for how many lives it must have taken. All those people, crushed in an instant.
Seconds passed with nothing new falling from the gap, and he broke away from Tifa. This park was usually empty, but it was crowded with onlookers, refugees. Barret scanned them wildly, searching for Biggs, Wedge, Jessie--
"Marlene!" he shouted. "Marlene!!"
But every child-sized shape turned out not to be her. The staring faces were familiar, but not familiar enough. People from around the neighborhood, people he would have been glad to see had survived in other circumstances, but they weren't his friends, they weren't his daughter.
He came to a stop at last in front of the gate, its opening filled with meters of tangled debris. His legs gave out from under him and his knees hit the ground.
"Marlene..."
He should have... what? He should have stayed. He should have made sure she was safe. That was his first and most important job, and he hadn't done it. And now she was... He couldn't even think it. It wasn't real.
Dimly he was aware of Tifa standing mute beside him. Everything she had was in Sector 7, same as him.
"...the basement," she croaked at last.
"Huh?"
Tifa swallowed and spoke again. "Seventh Heaven, the basement. Marlene knows she's supposed to go there if things get scary."
Barret stared at her, a tiny flicker of hope rekindling. Anyone who was underground when it happened might have survived. The bar's prior owner had built that basement for smuggling goods, and it connected to the sewer system, which meant there was a way out.
But...
"...she also knows it's a secret," he said. Would she have known it was more important for her to be safe than for her not to tell Johnny's parents about it? She was only four. Everything her father told her had equal importance.
It seemed like too much to hope for now that the others had made it back to the hideout and gotten her to safety. There'd been so little time.
"She--" Tifa faltered. "She'd want them to be safe, too." Her words lacked conviction, and she glanced around. "The closest entrance to the sewers is... Where was it..."
Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes as she struggled to remember the sewer layout. Barret picked himself up and laid his hand on her shoulder. He didn't have anything comforting to say, but they had to try. "Wall Market," he said. "I know the way."
Tifa nodded silently and followed him out of the playground.
Wall Market was crowded, but not in the way it usually was. Clientele had emerged from their various establishments to stand in the street and stare. A hazy glow from the lights on the upper plate filled the gap where Sector 7 had been, blocked here and there by smoke and the silhouette of debris that rose above the wall. Barret shouldered his way through without earning a single retort.
In the alley behind the gay bar, they came to a manhole cover. Tifa helped him pry it open, and they crouched for a moment in silence, staring down into it.
"I'll go first," said Tifa, handing him her flashlight. He clicked it on and pointed it down to light her way.
As she descended the ladder into the shaft, Barret was seized with the sudden fear that he was about to lose her--that Shinra would take her, too, like they'd taken Dyne after Corel. He tried to shake it off, but there was no dislodging this weight. He could only move forward.
He tossed the flashlight down to Tifa and followed.