Chaos Cursed

Author's Note: Warning, this is not a happy chapter. There is death and screaming and pain and seperation. If this may disturb you, you might want to avoid it.


“Take those two, also.” The voice instinctively grated on her nerves, and as her eyes opened, she realized why. Though in agony, her mind still shattered by the events of the night, Seraphina recognized the man.

“…no…” She managed to whisper, drawing his attention. “…not you…Hojo…”

“Sedate her. We have a very good specimen for experimentation here, we can’t have it getting itself hurt any further.” He seemed delighted at the thought, humming even as he walked out of the reactor, leaving Seraphina to whimper as she was injected. Darkness closed in, returning only upon entering the ShinRa Mansion, eyes opening as they began to wheel her sister to another room. She struggled to reach out, whimpering in terror.

“Sa…Sanura…no…” Even as the needle sent her back to the cold, silent darkness, the last thought in her mind was not fear for herself, but only for her sister.

“Good, that will do nicely.” Hojo nodded a bit as he saw to the placing of Sanura, nodding as he turned to his assistant who was entering the room with a vial of Jenova cells, ready to be injected. The moment the assistant was within two feet of her, Sanura reacted. Her body began to shift, to change, and she ripped herself free of the restraints, reaching for the assistant. One hand fastened around his throat, while the other flattened, the long, deadly nails driving through his heart before she let him drop to the floor, focusing on the next assistant. Two more had died - though very quickly and relatively painlessly - before they managed to sedate her again.

From his hiding spot in a corner, Hojo stared in a mixture of awe and horror, gasping from his fear even as he gave the orders that she be placed in a capsule alone in this room, with no way to access her sister or even much of the outside world.

“Even if it could reach the other experiment, it would do neither any good.” Hojo couldn’t help is laughter, walking out of the room with the few remaining assistants he had. “I doubt that one will be able to focus beyond anything for some time. How are the experiments progressing?”

“Quite well, doctor, though it does seem to be causing the subject a great deal of pain-”

“It’s only a specimen for study, don’t pay that any mind.” Hojo said calmly, as he closed the soundproof door to Sanura’s chamber and locked it, before opening the outer door, screams of agony filling the dank basement hallway. He stepped into the room in which said experiment was contained, countless numbers of tubes and wires currently invading her flesh, her open eyes filled with horror and tears, even as readings printed from a machine.

“But must we leave the subject conscious through all of this, doctor?” The woman looked slightly upset at the thought, only to stare as he simply laughed.

“What? Of course we must, this subject’s reactions must be conscious to achieve the proper readings of the reactions of the two corruptions in it.” A shake of his head. “However, if it would make you happy, why not volunteer to watch over our other specimen?”

“No…I will work with this one.” The woman whispered quietly, and as she looked up into the girl’s eyes, for a brief moment the screaming paused. It was so short that the good doctor did not notice it, nor did any of the other many assistants in the room, but the woman saw it.

It was days before they simply left Seraphina alone - days in which she screamed for hours, to no avail. It was hard on the assistant who had suggested they sedate her to ease the pain, but she said nothing - she did not want to be reassigned from this specimen, who she had begun calling “the Fallen Angel” in absence of her name, which no one knew.

“You poor dear…” She whispered, walking up to the capsule in which the experiment now rested, alone in the room to watch over her, while the others sat in their offices pouring over the results from their experiments. It had happened so many times in the past two years, her being left alone with the girl, but only now did she have the courage to go right up to the capsule. “…I am…so sorry…If I could save you, I would…but Hojo has an alarm connected to all of these capsules, so that the moment they are opened, he knows…”

Her hand lifted to press to the glass, only to gasp as the girl’s eyes suddenly opened, a deep brown color filled with tears. The girl’s hand lifted to press against the glass where the woman’s own rested, her had moving slowly from side to side.

“No? …wait, are you telling me you…don’t hate me for all of this?” The woman was still so very young, and inexperienced, to feel so much emotion when all this girl should have been was another of the many endless specimen she had to help experiment on. As the girl nodded, the woman’s shoulders slumped in relief. “…thank you, Fallen Angel…oh…My name is Andromeda…”

She saw the small smile on the girl’s face, before her hand dropped and her eyes closed once more, still recovering from the most recent bout of experiments done upon her. Andromeda smiled softly, letting her own hand fall before she returned to the console that monitored the girl’s status, sighing as she sat back down to wait for the next round of torture.

As time went on, Seraphina began to fight her screams more and more often, recognizing the pain in Andromeda’s eyes when she screamed out in her agony. However, she could not stop herself, looking to the woman pleadingly every time the experiments began to rip her mind apart with the pain. In time, the guilt finally got to her, and only two years after she first saw the girl respond to her kindness, she believed she had her chance to save her.

Hojo, she had thought, had left for the next few days, and intending to use every moment of that time, she waited only until she was certain he was on the ship far from the ShinRa Mansion. Then, she rushed to the console, beginning to key in the first of the codes that would release the Fallen Angel from her prison. The second, had to be entered into a panel beside the capsule itself, and as she hurried to do so, the door opened behind her.

“…I knew you were going to do something like this…” Suddenly realizing why her Fallen Angel, as she called her, had been giving her panicked looks, Andromeda turned slowly to face Hojo, realization dawning. Seeing it, Hojo began to laugh. “That’s right, there was no conference at all…I never left. However…it seems I won’t have much choice now. All I have here are idiot grunts - good for analyzing data, but useless at being of any real help.”

“What…do you mean?”

“Why, I have to kill you, so I’ll need a new assistant.” A twisted little smile, as he lifted the gun and shot her in the chest, blood seeping from the wound and soaking into her once pristine white lab coat, filling the etched lettering on her nametag. In shock, she reached up to touch the wound, staring at the blood on her hands before she turned slowly to Seraphina, who was too horrified even to scream, but the tears were falling rapidly, her hand reaching out only to be stopped by the glass that kept her in.

“…I’m so sorry…my dear fallen angel…” Andromeda whispered, reaching out to touch her hand to the glass over Seraphina’s, before collapsing slowly to the ground and leaving streaks of blood along the glass. “…I…tried to save you…”

Lips parting on a silent scream, Seraphina could only watch in horror as Hojo left the room, muttering about needing to go replace a perfectly good assistant, leaving Andromeda there to bleed out onto the floor. Unable to get out to help her, she was left to watch in utter horror as the woman died, closing her eyes on the scene only when that life had ended.

The darkness that closed in on her was welcome this time - not even the nightmarish remembrances of her tortures frightened her now, embracing them as the lesser evil when compared to witnessing Andromeda’s death. It was the sound of a voice that woke her.

“…There you go, just sit tight, you two, while I go get Seraphina.” Opening her eyes slowly, she blinked a few times as Zack walked towards the capsule, only to stop as he saw the dead woman, and the panel that Hojo had not reset. A shake of his head, simply hitting the “enter” key, which allowed the capsule to drain, then open, so Seraphina could step out. “WHOA you have no CLOTHES!!”

“…you only now notice this…” A shake of her head at the man’s mild to moderate ditzy tendencies, crouching down to slide the bloodstained lab coat from her dead friend, putting it on and doing up all of the buttons so it became a makeshift dress.

“Are you…sure you want to wear that? There are clean ones somewhere in here, I bet. I’ll go find-” As she started to walk towards the side of the room, he blinked, watching as she pulled her old clothes from a locker labeled “Andromeda”, and put them on, as well as a pair of flats that rested on the very bottom of the locker. “…what the hell?”

“…she was going to help me escape.” Seraphina answered quietly, leaving him to blink in shock when, although fully dressed, she did not remove the lab coat. “…the shirt is pretty torn up from Sephiroth’s attack.”

“Oh. Right.” Zack merely moved to pick Cloud and Sanura up again, nodding to her as she followed after him, showing no sign of any trouble with having been sedated, as Cloud and Sanura had. The idea puzzled him slightly, but he shook it off as they made their way out of the room.