Chapter 8
They were on the river for the better part of three days, reaching the bay late in the afternoon. Tifa might have found it relaxing, but she wished there were more for her to do. She knew it was faster than walking, but she wanted to be running. Jessie was counting on them.
She hoped Jessie was counting on them. Shinra must have told her they were all dead, but surely Jessie would see through it. Tifa didn't want to imagine her waiting on execution with no hope of rescue.
They came ashore to wait for dark, trying to get in a few hours of rest before what was sure to be a long night. Tifa couldn't sleep. She watched the sun set over the water, minutes stretching by.
"We're gonna make it," Barret told her.
"Yeah," she agreed. If they kept saying it, they could speak it into reality.
"We ain't gonna let them take anybody else. It stops here."
Tifa really looked at him then, studying his face. As often as she'd wondered it, she'd never asked, but in the week since Sector 7, she'd noticed it in both of them: they turned from their grief to embrace anger, because the grief was too much. They were both old feelings, the grief and the anger. Tifa had been through this before, and Barret...
"Marlene's parents..." she began, and then stopped when Barret looked at her. She swallowed and broke his gaze. Wedge and Yuffie were having more success at dozing, and only Red sat nearby, ears alert as though he were on edge, too.
"...did they burn your home, too?" Tifa finished quietly.
Barret stared at her a minute longer, and then he let out a heavy breath. "Fuck them," he said. "It's gotta stop. It stops with us."
She didn't ask for any more confirmation than that, and he didn't press for details. "It feels different this time... right?" she asked instead. "I don't just mean what happened, but... what we're doing."
"...savin' someone?" Barret ventured, and she nodded. "Yeah. Guess we never really got to try that before."
Weren't we trying to save the Planet? Tifa almost asked, but she already knew the answer. It hadn't been for the Planet. Was that where they'd gone wrong?
But wasn't it right that Shinra face justice? That there be consequences for their actions? They couldn't just go on like they were, as if they were inevitable. But maybe you didn't challenge their kind of destruction with more destruction.
She'd tried talking to Elena, tried wrapping her head around what could bring a person to do Shinra's dirty work. She could understand the rank-and-file employees, the soldiers. She'd grown up believing the lies they might still hold onto, and she'd seen how little opportunity there was in Midgar outside of Shinra. Even if you didn't believe, they snuffed out other options.
But how did a person knowingly sign on for kidnapping and murder, for covering up the kind of crimes she and Barret struggled to speak of? How could she fight that with anything but her fists? Was that the only option they'd left her?
She thought of the SOLDIERs they'd left in the woods, and on one level it didn't bother her. Those men had chosen a world where it was kill or be killed, and Tifa wasn't about to lie down and die for them, but at the same time, that wasn't the world she'd chosen. She wanted a world where there weren't any soldiers.
Pragmatism told her there'd be more fights ahead. She couldn't just will them away. Maybe the path would just be messy, for a while. But once Shinra was gone, people could make other choices, right?
When Yuffie took her back aboard and showed her a box of uniforms, Tifa almost laughed, an acid irony in her chest.
"I dunno if any of these'll fit you," Yuffie said, oblivious. "But you've got a better shot than those two."
Yuffie had pinched these for herself, but they were big on her, and only a little tight on Tifa. Shinra uniforms and a Turk's stolen ID, and maybe they wouldn't have to do much fighting tonight--but that was the optimistic outcome. Tifa flexed her fingers in the unfamiliar gloves.
It was good to get moving again. South around the coast, and finally Junon's enormous cannon came into sight. As they drew closer, Yuffie furled the sail so the white of it wouldn't stand out in the dark, and Tifa gladly took to an oar. Each pull through the water brought them nearer their goal.
Lights shone out from Junon harbor, but they hadn't lit any lanterns aboard their little boat, and even Red sat with his strangely glowing tail curled beneath his body. There was no engine noise to give them away either, just the faint slap of water against the hull, waves that would be lapping against everything else in the harbor just the same.
"You really pulled this off solo?" Barret asked Yuffie, his voice low. It would be a lot of work for one person to bring the boat in for this last approach.
"Uh, not exactly," said Yuffie.
"Whattaya mean, not exactly?"
"When it's just me, I sail into lower Junon and swim for the harbor from there."
"You swim it?"
"I'm a good swimmer," she said. "Figured you'd probably just sink, though."
Tifa didn't need to see it to know the look Barret gave her. But he didn't argue it, and Tifa couldn't imagine he had an easy time swimming with that arm. The real concern was that Yuffie hadn't actually done this before. "Are you sure Shinra's not going to notice an extra boat in their harbor?"
"Not as long as we're in an' out before daybreak, when the actual workers show up," Yuffie said with confidence, and they'd just have to trust her.
They brought their boat in alongside one of the big cargo ships, using its bulk to hide them from the view of the nearest guard tower. Yuffie leapt onto the dock, and Tifa tossed her the line to tie them up. The rest of them followed her, but when Red padded to the side of the boat, Yuffie shook her head.
"You stay here an' guard the boat for us, okay, Red? You're gonna stand out too much otherwise."
Red paused, tail swaying behind him, and then he flicked his ears and turned around to curl up in the middle of the boat again.
"Why do I feel like he always understands exactly what we're saying?" Wedge whispered.
Yuffie shrugged. "Maybe he does."
They stole across the silent harbor, keeping in the shadow of crates waiting to be loaded, and Yuffie deftly bumped the lock on a maintenance shed. Inside, they managed to find coveralls big enough to fit Barret and Wedge, and Barret stowed his gun-arm inside a duffel bag. Now they just looked like a couple of soldiers escorting some maintenance workers. Nothing suspicious about that, as long as no one asked them any questions to shatter the illusion.
From there, they went past the more obvious and likely noisier lift to a staircase hidden around the corner. They climbed as quietly as they could, boots ringing faintly on the metal. A door at the top opened onto a short hallway, which spat them out near the top of the lift.
Ahead of them was a broad avenue. Uniform high-rises lined one side with street lamps at regular intervals, while a sturdy wall marked off the other side of the street. It had to be close to midnight, and a few people lingered, but though Tifa was sure Junon had its own night life, it didn't seem to be centered here.
"Base is up higher, ain't it?" said Barret, jerking his head upwards. Tifa couldn't make it out clearly, but settled atop the high-rise buildings was a dark bulk of metal that reminded her of Midgar's plate.
"Yeah," Yuffie confirmed. "You can get into some of the barracks from the street level, but anything under lockdown's up top. I can get you to the lift, but you need ID to go any farther. I dunno the layout."
"We'll figure it out," said Tifa. They had to.
"You been a big help," Barret added.
"Why're you sayin' that like we're done?"
"It's riskier from here on," he said, "an' you don't know Jessie. This ain't your fight."
Yuffie huffed, like he'd offended her. "You want me to just wait by the boat with Red? I've been lookin' forward to this. We're gonna make Shinra look like idiots."
Tifa couldn't help a smile. Yuffie could talk with that kind of confidence because she didn't have Sector 7 weighing on her, and maybe it was unfounded bravado, but it was nice to hear.
Barret hesitated a moment before he nodded. "Awright. Your choice then."
They continued down the avenue, passing a few knots of people up on the wall admiring the ocean or on their way home from a night out drinking. No one paid them any mind until after several blocks they approached the part of the city where the cannon jutted out over it. The street passed beneath it into shadow, but Yuffie led them to the seaside wall, where a soldier guarded the lift.
"Hey," he said. "I know it's not what we're used to, but unless you've got authorization, I'm not supposed to let you through."
Were things locked down tighter because Rufus was coming? "We have authorization," Tifa said. She flashed Elena's badge, fingers obscuring the design so he wouldn't peg it for a Turk's. "There's still systems these guys need to check over before the festivities."
"Working you overtime, huh?" the soldier asked conversationally. "You'd think some of those guys they brought in from Midgar could lend a hand."
"Bunch o' lazy bastards, if you ask me," Barret remarked.
"An' I been on night shift for weeks," the soldier added, shaking his head. "I'm not even gonna get to see it."
"Tough break," said Wedge. "At this rate, I feel like I might sleep through it myself."
"Yeah, well. Least we can make sure everything goes smooth."
He stepped aside, waving them towards the lift door. They climbed in, and once Wedge had pulled the door shut, Yuffie flipped a lever which sent the lift cranking slowly upwards.
"So there ain't usually a guard there?" Barret asked her.
She shook her head. "They're usually just there to wave off civilians. It's up top where they check ID."
"So security's a little tighter, but they don't exactly seem on high alert."
"It's not exactly suspicious for us just to enter the base," Tifa reasoned. "Poking around a cell block might be different."
"And we don't know where the cell block is," Wedge put in.
"Everybody stay on your guard," said Barret, as the lift neared the upper level.
The soldier posted up top was immediately suspicious of their stolen ID. As he started to lift his rifle, Tifa grabbed it by the barrel and yanked it out of his hands. She struck him with it, and Barret's left hook sent him to the ground. Wedge hurriedly stuffed a gag in his mouth, and Yuffie pulled his key card off of him while they bound his hands, ensuring he couldn't follow.
"Awright," said Barret. "That starts a timer 'til somebody finds this guy. Let's hurry."
The soldier's ID opened the door into the base, and they found themselves in a wide metal corridor. A door off to the right was labeled 'Press Room,' but for the moment, it was empty. Rows of chairs were lined up neatly before a long table Tifa recognized from the occasional TV report which most commonly found Heidegger or Scarlet sitting dead center of the questions.
She could remember, too, the handful of men she'd seen marched down the aisle in front of the cameras and forced into the gas chamber in the back of the room. Every time, she'd wondered if any of the charges were true.
"...good to know where that is," said Barret, and they turned in the other direction.
Across the hall, the doors opened into a huge foyer dominated by a gold statue of the late President Shinra rising at least 10 feet tall. Barret snorted, and Tifa wondered briefly what it would take to bring the thing down.
Not important.
The foyer was dimly lit apart from the spotlights on the statue, and the seats provided for visitors awaiting appointments were empty. A large clock ticked quietly high on the wall, hands moving nearer to 1am. A staircase led upwards past it, but up seemed like where the big brass would be. Until they had their bearings, they didn't want important; they wanted nondescript and overlooked.
Tifa led the way past the statue to an unmarked door on the first level, hoping it led to rote administrative offices. The door opened onto another hallway branching off in either direction, and Tifa paused. Left or right?
"Is that blood?" Wedge asked.
Tifa looked down. Almost beneath her feet was a smear of red, as if someone had hastily mopped up a much larger stain. Why would someone have been bleeding here in the middle of the hallway?
"Gross," said Yuffie.
Barret pushed past them, checked the first door on the right, and nodded back to them. "In here."
The lights were out inside, but from the light in the hallway, Tifa could make out a computer terminal. She made for it as Wedge flicked on his flashlight and they shut the door behind them.
She booted up the terminal, and there was a slot which accepted Elena's key card. The machine granted her access.
"Okay," she said. "I don't know how much activity is logged, so... Let's try to be quick here." In the reflection on the screen, she saw Barret pull back so Wedge could look over her shoulder instead. Neither of them had much experience with computers, but Wedge had a good eye for maps if she could find one.
The system was proprietary and unfamiliar, and Tifa took a breath, trying not to feel overwhelmed. Just start somewhere. She found a collection of recent reports easily enough, some apparently flagged for Elena's attention. A treasure trove, but she tried to skim for any mention of AVALANCHE or prisoners.
"Can we download those?" Wedge wondered.
"I'll look for a disk," said Barret.
Sephiroth.
One of the reports said Sephiroth. Unconfirmed sightings of a man in a black cape on the base during the past few days, coinciding with the murder of five soldiers. Her mind leapt back to the smear of blood, her own footsteps following the path of a murderer. That was why they'd tightened security, not because of Rufus's upcoming arrival.
But wasn't Sephiroth dead?
"Tifa? You okay?"
"Uh-huh," she answered mechanically, and clicked away at random. Elena really did seem to have access to everything, but eventually Tifa found her way to incarceration records, and there was Jessie's misspelled name as the most recent entry.
"There she is," Barret breathed. "Where the fuck is that?"
"Um, it has a cell number. Maybe I can search by that."
Don't think about anything else, she told herself, and she set the reports to copy over to disk while she set a command prompt to search the file system for Jessie's cell number. They were so close. Not the first result, not the second--the third had a map of the base.
"There," said Wedge, prodding a spot on the screen. "That's two floors up, on the right past the command center."
"The files done copying?" Barret asked, and Tifa nodded. "Then let's go."
Tifa handed him the disk, which he tucked away into his coveralls, and after Yuffie poked her head out, they followed her back into the hallway.
Wedge took point, leading the way to the upper level of the base. A pair of soldiers guarded the door into the command center, but made no move to stop them as they turned aside to continue past it.
Another pair of guards loitered at the entrance to the cell block, straightening at their approach. "What're you guys doing here?"
"I got this one," said Yuffie. A faint green glow rose up around her, and a confusion spell settled over one of the soldiers. Before his companion could react, the soldier turned and jabbed him hard in the stomach with the barrel of his gun. He then unslung the weapon and hurled it down the corridor at nothing.
Tifa rushed in to grab the other soldier before he could recover, clamping a hand over his mouth to keep him from yelling for help.
"Can we get one o' these cells open?" Barret suggested, and Yuffie slipped Elena's key card out of Tifa's pocket. They opened an empty cell and shoved the soldiers inside, locking the door behind them. Their pounding on the door was barely audible.
Wedge hurried on down the corridor, stopping in front of Jessie's cell. "This one," he said.
Yuffie tossed the key card back to Tifa, and she keyed open the door. There, lying on a narrow cot with her back to the door, was--
"Jessie!"
Tifa darted to her as she stirred and rolled onto her back. They'd stripped her of her armor and gear, her hair was loose and unkempt, and she'd rewound her bandana around one wrist in a way that suggested a sprain or even a break. They hadn't let her shave, and bruises, too, darkened her face.
"Jessie..."
"Tifa?" Jessie struggled up onto her elbows, squinting at her. "Is that really you?"
Hurriedly Tifa pulled off the helmet. "It's me," she confirmed, and then she nodded behind her to Barret and Wedge. "It's us. We're here."
A slow smile came to Jessie's face. "I figured you weren't dead."
"You okay to move, Jess?" asked Barret. "We oughtta get goin'."
"Yeah. Let's get the hell outta here." Jessie was slow in swinging her legs to the floor, and Tifa offered her arm to help her pull herself up. "Who's the little one?" she asked.
"Excuse me?"
"That's Yuffie," Tifa said. "We'll catch up on everything once we're safe."
"Yeah. I bet there's a lot on both sides."
They moved back out into the corridor, and Tifa handed her helmet to Jessie. There'd be no disguising their actions now, but it might afford her some protection as they moved. Wedge had helped Barret back on with his gun-arm.
As expected, the soldiers outside the command center were immediately on alert. "Hey!" one shouted, and slammed a button on the panel nearby, sounding an alarm. But they didn't need to stand and fight. Barret brought up the rear, laying down cover fire as the rest of them hurried for the stairs. Wedge and Yuffie took point as Tifa urged Jessie ahead of her.
"Barret!" Tifa called. He backed up towards her, letting up fire only as he reached the top of the stairs. They bolted together as the doors to the command center opened and more soldiers ran out.
Wedge was half-carrying Jessie by the time they reached the first floor. Tifa saw her say something to him, but it was Yuffie who spun, pulled a grenade off her belt, and hurled it at the walkway just behind Tifa and Barret. Tifa rushed down the last staircase without looking back, and behind her she heard the pursuing soldiers shout.
The grenade exploded. A piece of railing struck the back of President Shinra's statue, and when Tifa reached it, she risked a look. The walkway above was damaged, sunken in the middle, and the soldiers had bottlenecked behind it, tumbling into each other as those nearest tried to avoid the blast. The damage wasn't bad enough to trap them on the second level, but it would slow them.
"Let's move!" said Barret, and they crossed the foyer, bursting out into the first corridor.
A robotic bulk blocked the way they'd come. Unlike the Airbuster or the scorpion Barret had described, Tifa recognized this as one of the mass-produced Sweeper robots with machine guns mounted on both arms. They heard the whir of its guns spinning up, and in a panic, tumbled through the door into the Press Room.
"There any way to seal this door?" Barret asked.
"There's no other exit to the room!" Wedge countered even as he pulled a lever to lock a bar in place.
The robot slammed into the door, sending them all stumbling back a few steps. It rammed it again, and the metal started to bow.
A crash behind her made Tifa jump. She spun to see that Barret had shoved over the heavy table at the front of the room. "Over here!" he shouted, and they joined him in ducking behind it for cover. The Sweeper crashed through the door, its sides scraping the frame as it entered. It opened fire, but the table was thick enough to absorb the bullets.
"I told them you'd be coming for her," said a voice as the Sweeper paused to reload. Elena entered the room behind the robot to stand beneath the flashing red lights of the alarm.
They all ducked back down behind the table as the machine guns spun up again.
"She's controlling it," Jessie said urgently, miming holding something in her hands. "If we can just get that away from her--"
"I'm on it," said Tifa, and Yuffie shut her mouth. "Cover me."
"We'll keep it occupied," Barret promised.
"Yuffie," said Wedge, "you've got that Lightning materia, right?"
Tifa waited until the guns paused again to reload before vaulting over the table. The Sweeper turned towards her, preparing to charge, but a Bolt spell short-circuited it long enough for her to run past it. She reached Elena, who swiftly tucked a remote into her jacket before raising her fists.
"A rematch, huh?"
"Oh, it won't be much of one."
Elena glared as she swung her first punch. She was telegraphing her movements, already on edge about something, and Tifa dodged her easily.
"I don't see any of your friends," Tifa observed. "Was one robot the best you could do?"
"As if it'll take any more for you lot!"
The other Turks weren't here. The infantry in pursuit would reach them any second now, but if they could just get control of the Sweeper--
A clatter behind her told her it was charging across the room through the arranged chairs. The others shouted, there was a heavy slam and the screech of the table sliding back along the floor.
Elena grinned. "See? Not long now."
But she was distracted watching her handiwork and bought Tifa's feint. Tifa's right fist knocked her off-balance, and with her left hand she dug into Elena's jacket pocket. Elena jerked back, but Tifa's grasping fingers pulled the remote far enough that it tumbled out, and she caught it with her other hand.
She didn't know which of these buttons did anything.
"Tifa!" Wedge called.
She spun towards the voice and threw just as Elena tackled her. She hit the floor and watched as the remote landed amid a tangle of folding chairs, short of any of her scattered friends. But Yuffie cast another Bolt spell and Barret charged for it. He grabbed it as the Sweeper stuttered back to life, smashed some button, and it paused with its guns pointed directly at him.
Still on top of her, Tifa felt Elena freeze as her friends approached.
"Get off," said Barret, "or we'll sic that thing on you."
"Like you know how to use that," Elena retorted. "It was a lucky guess you got it to stop."
Jessie motioned to Barret. "Give it here," she said, and Elena blanched. Tifa took the opportunity to shove her off, and climbed back to her feet.
Boots sounded in the corridor, but at Jessie's direction, the Sweeper spun around and charged across the room, firing out as it reached the doorway. Soldiers shouted in confusion outside it.
Elena had climbed to her knees, but at a twitch of Barret's gun-arm, she didn't move any farther.
"When you told 'em we'd be here," he said, "did they listen to you?"
Elena glared at him for a long moment, and then she grimaced, breaking his gaze. "...no," she admitted. "They said there's no way you'd know she was here. It wasn't intel I could've told you."
Not intel she hadn't told them, but intel she hadn't had access to. She must have known Jessie had been captured, but Elena hadn't known their plans for her until she'd made it back to Shinra.
"Why you wanna work for a bunch of assholes who don't give a damn about you?" Barret asked. "Who don't even respect what you provide?"
"Like I should work for a bunch of terrorists instead?"
"Which one of us crushed a town?" Barret countered, and Elena fell silent.
"Barret, just leave her," said Tifa. "We should go."
Barret met her gaze and nodded. "Jessie, you can make sure that thing covers us, right?"
"Yeah," she said. "Just not sure how much speed I've got in me."
"Here," said Tifa, moving to put an arm around her. "Just lean on me. We'll make it."
Barret kept his gun-arm trained on Elena until they'd all filed out of the Press Room, and then Jessie positioned the Sweeper to block the corridor, covering their retreat.
They exited the base into relative quiet and darkness, and Tifa was surprised to find the guard they'd bound still there. They'd taken his key card, but he could have made his way to the lift and alerted the soldier below. Then she realized he was slumped, unmoving. Dead, like the other murdered soldiers on the base.
Jessie didn't seem to notice, her peripheral vision obscured by the helmet. Tifa locked eyes with Barret over her head. They hadn't done this. Just like they hadn't done the massacre at Shinra Headquarters. Her stomach turned at the thought of who might have.
But she couldn't think about it now. For now it was just a rumor, and Jessie was back safe with them, almost. They'd rescued her from the belly of the beast, and they were almost clear.