entry002.pdf
**************************************************
>>Welcome to Shinra Online Database!
>>Please enter search term or file number.
"kalm" "reactor" "hikou"
>>processing...
>>processing...
>>Database has returned 74 files. Press 1 more information. Press 2 to return to the previous menu.
1
>>processing...
>>Please select a file by number.
>> 1 Damage report on Kalm District Reactor 34/Mission.Reactor.34-4.7.3
>> 2 Field_Reports/Mission.Reactor.34-4.7.3/ID_8884654: Carson, Kunsel
>> 3 Witness_Reports/Mission.Reactor.34-4.7.3/Unidentified Female
3
>>processing...
>>processing...
>>Unidentified female retrieved from Reactor 34 core (post-collapse) by SOLDIER unit 7-d. Subject suffers various contusions, second degree chemical burns central to arms and chest, and onset symptoms of mako poisoning. Subject marked for interrogation linked to Midgar-area terrorist attacks. Order for detainment at Shinra Head Offices approved. SOLDIER ID 3267554: Fair, Zack assigned. Subject tagged for transfer to Science Department pending progress standard deadline. 23.87.#$(@
>>This article is crossrferenced with 4 other files. Press "M" for more.
M
>>Please select a file by number.
>>1 Shinra Times Archive: Terrorist Taken into Custody?
>>2 Hojo.casefiles.pdf
>>3 SD_TURKS/Employee_Drives/8246471/entry002.pdf
3
>>processing...
>>processing...
>>shinra_filespace.cdf.co/ SD_TURKS/Employee_Drives/8246471/entry002.pdf
>>entry001.pdf is a restricted file
>>Access code required
######
>>processing...
>>Access granted
**************************************************
There is no one waiting for me when I wake up and, oddly enough, this is what seems most out of place. Though I can't convince myself who should be waiting at my bedside, it seems only logical that there were people when it had gone dark, there would still be people when the lights turned back on, but the only greeting I received is from the sickeningly grey hospital room.
That's how I know I'm in trouble.
Because hospitals are supposed to be glaringly white and painful. They're meant to be bright, and sterile, and uncomfortable, and smelly--not that this place isn't uncomfortable and smelly, because it is, but in no fashion it should be. It smells like sweat and formaldehyde, no trace of the trademark industrial cleaner and sickness.
The bed seems similarly suspect--metal and thin. They may as well have laid a packet of tissue on the floor and dumped me on it. Nevermind that there was no hospital gown to speak of. I'd been left in my tattered clothes, reeking of fear that was not entirely my own, covered in blood that was. I inspected where the sleeve had been neatly trimmed from my left arm in straight scissor snips, revealing the bandages beneath. A bruise the size of a beachball had bloomed from my right bicep to my forearm, speckled with tiny red cuts too small to be tended once the glass had been plucked away. I glance down to be sure they hadn't finished trussing me like a chicken after plucking my feathers. My legs...
My legs.
In a panic, I swing one over the side of the bed and try not to cry in relief that it actually moves at the command. Small favors, I suppose.
I double over to take inventory and find watercolor splotches of purple stamped from knees to ankle. It reminds me of dye that is not truly black and the transition in color leaves me wondering how long I've been left to my own devices. The remnants of my jeans dangle from my knees in jagged strips leaving me bare down to the toes that wiggle against the cold ground. I look like a castaway.
I am a castaway.
The walls that surround me are metal. I extend a hand, covered in a spiderweb of red welts out to prod at it. The skin feels too small as I flex my fingers outwards and I recall the static smell of the gas rushing from the airbag. The walls feel like aluminum when I skid my fingers across them, but I know they cannot be. The sheet metal bends ever so slightly at my touch, giving a flimsy impression to the otherwise solid nature of the walls. I'm left with the impression if I were lucky enough to have a knife, I could rip through one like a can opener, but I haven't any knife.
There is no mirror, but the wavy reflection of my face dances back in the wall as I continue to tap--discolored, unattractive. My face feels numb, so I assume the funhouse nature of the image isn't just the bending metal but instead excess swelling. It hurts when I push myself up to stand, and my hand skid-stop, skid-stops across the slippery surface, unable to find any purchase. I decidedly don't like the feel of my bare feet sticking to the metal floor, but I manage.
The door is locked.
I think the door is locked.
There is no handle to turn, no finger-pull to slide the thing aside, not even a keyhole. Only a simple red light adorns the barely visible rectangle cut out of the wall, flashing periodically to reassure me I haven't been forgotten just yet.
The uncomfortable bed is too far away now, so I plop to the floor and count the blinks. I make it to forty-seven before the thing rattles upwards. It is intimidating, yet cheesy. I scramble to my feet and wait for a fog machine to roll and lightening to flash, illuminating some horrifying dark figure in its wake. Again, I am left disappointed.
Only Zack stands in the entry, smiling and waving with a card grasped in his gloved hand.
"How are you feeling, champ?" It is the sort of thing you expect a guy like Zack to say. I secretly wonder if he's fallen into stereotype vulnerability. "That good, huh?" and it was already too late to answer.
He looks decidedly less intimidating this time around and, by extension, decidedly less dependable. The sword strapped to his back is missing and his midsection looks indescribably bare. My mind can't conjure up what had once been strapped to the oversized belt around his waist, but it sounds the alarm all the same. He doesn't jump when the door whomps back down behind him and he doesn't flinch when the light above his head skips mid-blink from green back to red.
It is decidedly off-putting.
I haven't moved an inch. My feet are still stuck to the metal floor, four feet from the back wall, three from the corner, five to the door--if the door would open. I can't remember why this is important, but my lizard-brain takes careful inventory. We could not be in a corner. We needed a safe distance between us.
Zack's stance is awkward, knee slightly bent as if he might need to spring into action, but his arm is nervously scratching the back of his neck. His expression is anything but threatening. I struggle to remember why I should be scared, but come up blank.
"So much for tearful thank-yous, eh?" he laughs to himself. If it's a hint, I'm late on the up-take. "Will you at least tell me your name?"
I continue to stare. Lizard-brain has put this information is on a need-to-know basis.
He can only laugh nervously for so long. "Well, anyway, I'm Zack."
"I know," is the first thing I say to him.
"Oh," he responds dejectedly. I almost feel guilty or maybe my apprehension is just beginning to sink. I can't tell the difference.
He moves across the room to sit on the bed, shoulders slightly slumped, and I pivot to keep my back from him. I spare a single glance at the red light. There's now nothing between me and the door, except, well, the door.
"Well, I'll get right to the point then," he announces. "It doesn't really matter who you are. All Shinra wants to know is how, and for Odin's sake why, you crawled into the reactor core."
I don't answer. I can't answer.
"We know you didn't cause the meltdown," he insists. We won't be mad, hangs in the air above me, too childish to descend. "There was a structural defect in the higher support beams that led to the collapse onto the core, which--well, it doesn't really matter."
I nearly cross my eyes trying to stare at the words as they leave his mouth, but I can't see them any clearer than I hear them and they make even less sense. Brain damage, I consider, from the wreck. I have some sort of gap between my shitty Buick and "the core" I was missing. It was just a tiny piece, maybe ten seconds at best, but enough to ruin everything.
It left me with nothing to say to this man.
Inevitably, he must stand back up at some point and he does. It should sound threatening, but instead it sounds desperate when he tells me, "You're not going to get out of here very fast with that attitude," and paces back to the door.
I decide I have no answers for his questions, but then again, certainly not nothing.
Red. Red. Green.
"Thank you."
He hardly has time to glance back over his shoulder at me. I have enough time to see one blue eye widen in surprise before the metal crashes down again.
Red. Red. Red.
It's not a hospital at all.