Viral Love

I didn’t think I could take any more of Tifa and Cloud. Being a normal couple despite their extraordinary abilities, they had spats and cuddling sessions with alarming regularity. After two solid days of sharing their space or brooding in my bedroom, I felt ready to explode.

It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know of my hypersensitivity. They didn’t know I avoided contact with others to protect myself. Still, at the morning of day three, I plotted how to get away from them.

Hojo hadn’t yet returned, which angered me. He owed it to me to come here and get whatever abuse I could heap upon his greasy head. Fully recovered, I intended to attack him the second he came through the door. Tentacles or not, Jenova cells or not, I could utterly destroy him. In my current mood, I could take on an army and come out victorious.

I could hear Cloud and Tifa talking, but not well. Whatever lined the walls in these rooms had just enough padding to prevent picking up conversational nuances, but not enough to completely stop noise.

I’d never had the ability to filter racket from my ears, which had caused me much trouble in the Turk program. Now, with the heightened senses granted by Hojo, Jenova and Lucrecia, any sort of low-level aggravation sent me into frenzy. I more easily ignored active noise, noise I participated in and caused.

My blood teeth ached. Despite Hojo’s claims, I did feel an attraction to drinking blood. I’d never truly felt the need to drink it, however. But, the smell of it made me anxious and eager to taste. I didn’t know why my canines itched right now, but I couldn’t disregard the sensation. Possibly, Hojo had dosed me with something to cause it, put one of his ghastly, mysterious and experimental drugs in with the tranquillizers.

A knock came at my bedroom door. “Enter,” I said, noticing the conversation outside had stopped. To my instantaneous alarm, Hojo himself strolled in. He had a tranq gun and a toothy smile pointed right at me. “Chaffing at the bit?” he asked. “I suggest you stay flat on your back unless you want a good measure of barbiturates floating in your bloodstream.”

“You think you can hit me with it fast enough?” I asked, starting to move. “You think it’ll take effect before I tear your throat out?”

“Yes.” Hojo primed the chamber. “It’s measured specifically for you, stubborn Turk.” His smile never faltered. “There’s no need for such aggression. Your friends have already donated blood without too much fuss.”

I swung my legs off the bed. “If you put drugs in my body, you won’t get a sample at all,” I pointed out, standing.

“That’s true. I can always come back, though.” He stopped smiling, his mood shifting into serious intent. “Don’t you want to help conquer a deadly disease, Valentine?”

“If I could believe your claim, if I could trust that’s why we’re here, I’d help,” I admitted. “But, I don’t trust you.”

Hojo seemed to think about what I said. He let his eyes drift thoughtfully, those dark orbs looking at nothing and everything at once. “I could take you to the research lab,” he offered. “You could look at my notes and see for yourself what I’m doing.”

I heard his proposal for what it was; truth. Still, truth didn’t mean a complete revelation of his plans. If I had the nerve to crawl inside his crazy head, I might just do it. I wanted out of here. If I agreed to go with him, my chances of escape increased.

“All right,” I said. “You try to pull something and I’ll kill you.”

“You have to get in line for that, Valentine,” he answered dryly. Absently, he rubbed at a bruise on his cheek. I looked closely, seeing knuckle marks.

“Wine and roses over for Shin-Ra?” I asked, smirking.

“Rufus is gone,” he said, surprising me. “It’s quite chaotic without him. Scarlet and Heideggar run the company now.”

Interesting. Neither of those two held any love for Hojo. “No one knows where Rufus is?”

“No. He just vanished.” Hojo lowered his gun. “The Turks are very upset over this, of course. Heideggar had granted the complete transferal of all Turk responsibility to Tseng, but now he controls them again. He has them assigned to the most useless tasks, busy work and that kind of thing.”

“And the science department?” I prompted.

“Still funded, but only because an agent of New Midgar Alliance, Samuel Quinn, desires the same cure I’m looking for,” Hojo answered. “He’ll cause me a great deal of grief when he discovers I have the three of you here, being the head of an ethics committee.”

Even more interesting. I decided to put aside my plans to just break Hojo’s skinny neck until I knew more. The WRO would find any information about the NMA very useful. Reeve had nothing about the organization yet, and he very much wanted to know their operating policies.

“Scarlet and Heideggar are trying to kill you, aren’t they?” I asked.

“They try,” he admitted. “I average two attempts a day.”

I looked at the mark on him again. I now noticed a burn on his left hand, a scrape on his right jaw, and a small split at the corner of his mouth. “One this morning?”

“There were two of them this time.” Hojo chuckled. “I imagine they’ll keep upping the numbers until I fall.”

“You don’t seem very worried,” I observed.

He smiled. “All of AVALANCHE couldn’t kill me. Jenova couldn’t kill me. Why should I be afraid of hired guns? I’m in my own territory, surrounded by canon fodder, well armed and mostly sleepless.”

He had good points. I hadn’t known Jenova had taken a crack at him. “Do I get my clothing back?”

“Oh.” Hojo tugged at a black strap over his shoulder. “Here. They’re clean.” He tossed a duffel bag onto the bed. “Someone stole your boots I’m afraid. I replaced them, but they aren’t the same.”

Why would anyone steal those things? I grabbed the bag and dumped its contents. With my clothes and headband, Hojo had given me a pair of heavy combat boots.

“I’ll wait.” Hojo backed out, shutting the door behind him.

I changed, feeling much better now that I wore familiar clothing. The leather wrapped me in security, buffering me against external sensation. My new boots fit well. It seemed strange to wear them, as they were obviously Turk issue. I did miss my cloak. I’d lost it when attacking Foley.

When I emerged, Hojo was sitting on a couch. Tifa and Cloud, staring and glaring by turns, turned to give me pointed looks of concern. I motioned to Hojo. “I’m going with him to the research lab,” I informed. “He’s promised to show me his work on curing Geostigma.”

“I’ll bring him back in…” Hojo looked at his watch, a large, old-fashioned analogue piece with a cover so scratched I could see the marks from ten feet away. “An hour and a half,” he finished. “Surely that’s long enough to satisfy the curiosity and judgment of a stubborn Turk.”

Asshole.

To make him nervous, I walked behind him. It only seemed to work to a slight degree. While aware of me, he didn’t bank left or right to view me askance. Appearing quite comfortable with me lurking very close behind him, he began whistling.

Memories struck me in a barrage of music. Hojo had always whistled. I recalled how often I’d reported to the labs and heard him the moment I stepped off the elevator. He could whistle complicated tunes, and with pure notes, sometimes the melody so perfect it seemed manufactured by a machine and not a pair of lips.

It would be so easy to snap his neck right now.

“Stairs,” he announced. “After I narrowly escaped a cut cable on the elevator, it seems a good practice to exercise my legs.” He opened the stairwell door and entered, descending at a good clip and resuming his infernal whistling.

He seemed in good shape for someone his age, moving along easily and with speed. I wondered if he’d used the same anti-aging technology on himself as well as on me.

“Afternoon, Professor Hojo,” an attractive blonde woman greeted as we passed her on the staircase.

“Leanne,” he said pleasantly, nodding to her. He then snagged her lab coat and brought her to a halt. “Leanne, this is Vincent Valentine. Vincent, this is Leanne.”

Surprised at an introduction, I inclined my head to her. “Miss,” I said.

She smiled warmly. “Mrs,” she corrected, holding up her left hand to show off a tremendous diamond. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Valentine.”

We continued on. I grabbed Hojo’s hard, wiry shoulder, though I hated touching him, and yanked him to a standstill. “You call me whatever the fuck you like, but don’t use my first name,” I said hatefully. “Why the hell bother to introduce me to your Shin-Ra compatriot, anyway?”

Hojo’s black eyes revealed nothing but honest confusion. “Why not? She’s a nice woman, and we were passing her anyway.”

Now I felt confused. “I’m not a friend or a co-worker, Hojo. I’m a prisoner. Do you even have a concept of what that is?” The sick, deranged bastard. He had real issues if he thought I’d respond to a gracious routine at this stage in our relationship.

“Of course I know what that is, Vincent,” he answered, using my name again and making my teeth grind together. “I’ve been a prisoner of Shin-Ra since nineteen-fifty-six.” He turned and began walking down again. “Granted, it isn’t exactly the same thing, but how am I to entertain myself or to get anything accomplished without Shin-Ra gil?”

“Stop using my name, damn it,” I growled. “And, you could walk away from this place. How long do you intend to go on with your tinkering, your genetic experiments and basic, unwelcome meddling? You’re about a hundred years old. Shouldn’t you have retired by now?”

“Scarlet and Heideggar certainly seem to think I ought to retire,” he chuckled. “Honestly, if I could fund a decent lab, I’d retire today. Maybe.” He stopped at a door labeled SL-19 and pulled his identification card from his coat, swiping it down the scanner slot.

“Lucrecia said you were dedicated and driven, not a work fiend,” I answered, following him through the opening door.

“She had a tendency to lie.” Hojo led me down a long, utterly barren hallway. “She lied about you, she lied about me, about herself, about anything that struck her fancy. I always enjoyed that about her.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I demanded, reaching out to grab him.

Three shocking seconds later I was looking up at him from flat on my back with him atop me. Something cold and sharp dug into my throat, right at the artery and he brought his face within inches of mine. His black eyes burned with wrath and his body trembled. “I’ll talk about her the way I fucking please, fucking Turk!” he swore. “You knew her for six months. I, however, married her and had her for three goddamn years!”

The sharp coldness pressed a little deeper, producing a slight stinging sensation. Hojo’s eyes dared me to speak. I thought about flipping him over and just killing him. It would feel so good.

“You dare,” he said, not calming in the slightest. “You need to let her go, Turk, even worse than I do. You won’t be putting your dick in her anymore. She’s fucking dead!”

The need to know what he was up to, the need to learn about the NMA, all of that came to my mind. But, anger swelled within me so fast I left rational concern behind. I heaved up and threw him.

Hojo hit the wall, but he landed on his feet. He dusted himself off with irritated, quick movements. “So glad we could come to an understanding,” he said coldly, snapping his coat into smooth lines. Before I could get up, he had a hand in a pocket. “Don’t make me tranquillize you. Do you want to see my research or not?”

I felt torn between giving in to my homicidal impulses and the need to play this right. So torn, in fact, that I could only stare at him blankly for a very long two minutes. Two minutes. I knew because his watch made a strange sound every time it marked a full minute, a scratching sort of drag betraying the age of his timepiece.

He lit a cigarette. He never took his eyes off me. Each carefully controlled movement carried the same predatory effect of a swamp zolom’s choosing dance. He knew what I was thinking and he waited patiently for me to prompt his next move.

He always did this to me. I hated how he could make me fear him. Years ago, even before I’d started falling for Lucrecia, he’d inspired a wary sort of anxiety deep in my heart. I’d bluffed through most of it, sometimes feeling I’d fooled him and sometimes not, but always mindful. Being afraid didn’t make a Turk look good, and I had fright stacked upon dread of this man.

“You don’t know what to do, do you?” he asked quietly.

I began to deny it, then realized I’d already admitted as much with my frozen silence. Remaining mute didn’t get anything accomplished, either. So, I told him the absolute unvarnished truth. “I despise you and I want to kill you badly.”

He blinked. “You need to work on the present or the future instead of the past.” Slowly, he blew a perfect smoke ring. “The past is doing nothing for you, Valentine, and everything against you.”

“I’ve heard that before.” I found myself able to move again, but still didn’t attempt it. “It sounded no better coming from you than it did from my friends.”

“I should hope you consider everything I say to you with care,” he replied in a soft, measured tone. “I’m not here to preserve your tragic past, to diminish or promote your frame of mind. I am, however, completely honest with you and I have always been.”

“An honest opinion is still an opinion,” I argued.

“A good opinion is favorable to the outcome of any dilemma.” Hojo smiled. “What’s keeping you here, Valentine? I’m quite mad, but I fully understand your capabilities. I had a hand in your making.”

“As if I can forget!” I raised my voice for the first time in years, and it seemed so loud. It bounced around the long dimensions of the barren corridor and came back to me distorted and harsh. “Do you honestly think I can just forget, Hojo? That I can turn my back on what you did to me?”

“Why not? I turned my back on what you did to me.” He threw his cigarette onto the floor, smashed it under his boot heel with practiced efficiency. “Aside from your actions, I never knew you well enough for hatred. You don’t know me any better than I know you, yet you cling to some idea that I’m evil incarnate.” He started walking toward me. “I assure you, I’m not. No, I’m not a good person, but neither are you.”

Once he came to stand within my reach, Hojo stopped. “After you kill me, what then? You’ll have no focus for your hatred. Do you think you can let go of something that seems to nourish you so much?” He smiled again. “You cultivate your darkness by hating me.”

Shiva, he was such a villain. A natural villain. Since I’d never been a natural hero, I resented him for his freedom. I had to work through every problem with care while he blissfully and joyfully did just as he pleased and fuck-all to the opinion of others.

Additional to his villainy, he remained the most perceptive person I’d ever known. I would have a hole inside me if I killed him. I’d have no adversary. Since he was all I had left connecting me to Lucrecia, killing him meant severing my last, pathetic link to her.

I closed my eyes, sick of the duality in my life, my mind, my very soul. Long ago I’d wanted to stand for something. I’d never intended to be such a fence-straddler.

“You can hate me if you want, I don’t mind,” Hojo said, his tone so reasonable and quiet I knew he meant every word. “Just don’t expect me to hate you back. I got my pound of flesh and I don’t require more.”

I opened my eyes. “Show me your damned research,” I said.