First there was the sense that everything had been turned down, like the volume knob on a radio. The air seemed to peel away, as if it were being sucked into a giant vacuum; any odors lingering went completely stale; all noise filtered away; and in the very last moment before the apocalyptic blast, all color was drained away too, leaving everything white and gray; it had all been turned down. In this unreal, almost fluid moment, two thousand Shinra employees— workers, engineers, secretaries and Soldiers— had a bare instant to say good-bye to one another. When the explosion came, all of the things that had been turned down were cranked up again beyond their natural limits, with cataclysmic results. Released into the world from which they had been briefly taken, they brought with them all Hell unleashed. The explosion washed over every last man and woman it could reach, sweeping them under, smothering and consuming them in a sheet of tidal flame.
Two—Flight
The strongest sensations came hand-in-hand, and could almost be described as a single impression; deafening noise and furious heat seemed as one in the wake of the first explosion. First explosion, I say, because when the bomb gutted the reactor core, it set off a chain reaction through the rest of the plant, causing pressure pockets and engine rooms to add their own fuel to the fire, and many smaller explosions to the blast, and many numbers to the toll of death.
Metal slag fireballs rained down on the Sector 1 slums like comets, smashing stores and houses, setting many others on fire. All across Midgar, emergency sirens wailed into the night. The minutes ticked on, and from stories of death, tales of survival began to pen themselves into the pages of history. It was no different for the ones who had perpetrated the explosion.
As they ran down the tunnel bound for Sector 8, a shockwave of fire shredding the T-bridge behind them, the world trembling beneath their feet, they saw their own demise closing in fast. The gates at the end of the tunnel had sealed, and they had forced their way through a door marked with an exit sign, and down a small maintenance hall in total darkness. The metal walls quaked and groaned, threatening to collapse on them. The heat of the continual blasts was pronounced, even if the way they bathed Midgar in light to rival the sun was not. As the bombers made their way in the pitch, the heat, the quakes, it was as close as most of them had ever come to being in Hell; the exceptions being Cloud, who had been through a fair share of catastrophe in his lifetime, and more particularly, Barret, who has known merciless heat within the shadow of the grave once before—
—in a town called Corel, on the other side of the world. Once again, Barret's mind slips through the trauma, transporting him deep into the Earth, where a coalmine explosion has collapsed a tunnel, leaving him in the dark, in the heat.
"Hang on Dyne!" Barret shouts. If any of the other members of Avalanche hear him, they do not make issue of it; the world that seemed so static to them has, in an instant, become a wash of insensibilities wherein Barret's outburst was of little consequence by comparison. In a stumbling train of bodies, they follow the walls, desperately searching for a door to lead them away from the source of the heat. As they continue to blunder onward, they can hear a terrible deepening rumble, and the feel of an electrical charge building in the air. They know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mako-01 has one last eruption in it, and it is about to let loose...
"A door!" Jessie screams first, and then follows it with a cry of "help me!"
Closest to her was Biggs, and though she could not see him, she could tell by the cracked snarl of exertion that it was he who had just stepped up beside her to help pull it open. Next was Wedge, who squeezed himself in at her other side, and banged his fist on her discovery. The reports were hollow.
"I can't open it!" Biggs growled, pulling with all his might. Panic began to surface. The rumble of the reactor had become a full-throated roar.
Wedge, a mechanic by trade, began to feel his hands along the door, and in the darkness, he felt something he recognized. "Don't pull it, Biggs! It's a sliding door!"
Almost as soon as the instructions left his mouth, the door flew open. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, who had been leaning their weight on it, fell through the opening. Barret and Cloud piled in after them. The final explosion came just as Cloud, in what seemed an entirely futile action, slammed the door shut behind them. It was a discharge that dwarfed the one that had set everything off. All at once, they were in motion, tumbling and falling, as if the room they were in had been hit directly. Seconds became an eternity, as they spiraled helplessly through the dark. Then their ride ended just as abruptly as it began, with a crash.
"Owww," Wedge groaned.
"Are you guys okaaaaaaay?" Jessie droned, her voice half choked.
"Mother fucker!" Biggs shouted.
Fear reigned in silence. What about Barret? What about Cloud?
"Gitup, fools!"
"Barret!" Jessie cried. "You made it too?"
"Of course!" Barret said. "Get the Hell up so we can get out of here, and if any of you go tellin' me you're too hurt to finish after we come so far, I'll kill your sorry asses."
Barret's harsh words and voice served to center them, pulling them out of their hazes with expedience. Bodies began to move in the dark, with no sure way of knowing how to get up, get out, or if the mercenary they'd brought with them was even with them anymore. The only sure thing was that inside whatever chamber they had wandered into, they had been ironically protected from the tremendous heat by the explosion that had produced it.
Before any of them could ask if Cloud was alive, the sound of a match-flare striking off filled the room, and the hiss of sparks followed it, filling the room with bluish-white light. Cloud tossed the sparkler down into the center of the room, revealing to them, amongst a scattering of broken boxes and fallen supports, that they had wandered into a boxcar. The light further revealed that the boxcar was now upside down.
"Jess, do your thing," Barret ordered.
"Right," Jessie answered. Immediately she knew what was needed of her. She strode purposefully toward the door of the car, removing her splicing box as she went. With it came another box, this one marked plastique. The splicing box came to life, blooping, beeping, and carrying on as she began to program the charge.
Cloud took another flare from the smashed box he had found the first one in, and tossed it down onto the dwindling sparks, allowing them to light it and return visibility. He then resumed a posture of lackadaisical waiting; arms crossed, back against the Buster Sword, which he had planted in the ceiling of the boxcar tip-down.
Biggs had assumed a similar posture, leaning against a wall at the back of the car in unconscious mimicry of Cloud. Finally, he said the words that seemed to break through the shock of what they'd all just experienced. "That should keep the planet going...at least a little longer."
Wedge nodded from where he was, sitting against a box. He could muster little more than "yeah" in agreement, but to his credit, the only response Barret managed was a slow nod.
The noisy chattering of the splicing box ended abruptly, as the Jessie rose and took a step back. "Okay! Now everyone, get back!"
Compared to the explosion of Mako-01 the charge that blew the door off the boxcar was little more than a firecracker. Fire belched from the hole and caught across the top of the car as the escapees inside piled out. The last of them was Wedge, and he came out with his bandanna off, running in wild circles and slapping at his ass to extinguish flames that had caught on the seat of his pants.
A single glance was enough to tell Barret they had somehow made it into Sector 8. There were signs everywhere that bore the label: street signs, a wall where it was painted in bold script, a scrubby building proclaiming itself 8 END ESTATES. Barret could also see that Sector 8 had been touched by the blast. A long chain-link fence had been flattened out, and metal debris was strewn over every street. In the distance, he could hear the wailing of sirens. He stood still, gathering his thoughts. For the moment, he could afford the time. They were in the shadow of the dividing wall between Sector 8 and Sector 1, sitting in a drainage basin below street level and easily out of sight. A nearby set of stairs leading up to the streets seemed the only immediate way out.
"Good," Barret said to himself, nodding as if he had made a firm decision. He turned to the members of Avalanche, who had assembled themselves in a ready line. "Rendezvous at the Sector 8 Station. Split up and get on the train!"
They dispersed instantly, heading in three separate directions. Barret turned to walk toward a large drainage pipe, when Cloud lunged toward him. "Hey!"
Barret peered back over one shoulder, haltingly. "If it's about your money, wait 'til we get back." Wallace disappeared into the drain, leaving Cloud in the empty culvert.
Spying the stairs everyone else had avoided, (naturally, there would be swarms of suspicious citizens and police in the streets) Cloud decided on his course with little to-do.
It took him very little time to see how quickly spreading panic could serve to conceal his less than covert escape. Midgar police were so busy enforcing the emergency curfew that he was able to walk through several checkpoints posted at intersections for two whole blocks. His only tactics for subterfuge were to stick to the shadows, to keep the Buster Sword out of sight as much as possible— easier said than done— to keep up a brisk pace without attracting attention to himself, and to avoid running into anyone head on. In all of these things he succeeded marvelously, until he cut down an old and familiar alleyway.
The alley, he knew, would bring him out next to Goblin's Bar and the big playhouse whose name he couldn't immediately recall. When he emerged on the other side, he expected to hurry down the back streets until he came up behind the train station. His plans were immediately changed, when he caught sight of the flower seller in the long pink dress.
Scattering like roaches away from light, miscreant youths fled from the appearance of the ex-Soldier, and in passing, one of them knocked her down. She rose to see what the new commotion was— she herself had been preoccupied with watching the distant eruption where Mako-01 had once been— and that's when she saw Cloud. She dusted off her knees and decided to chance the possibility that he was going to bust her for being out after curfew and skirt around it by turning on the charm. Besides, she'd seen the Shinra at their worst before. If this guy was one of them, he was certainly nothing to be afraid of.
Cloud stood transfixed, alert in a way he hadn't been less than an hour ago when he was being fired at by deadly twin vulcans. Something inside of him was responding strongly to the girl with the wicker basket. Like the flowers in the basket, she was colorful, by contrast everything around her seemed gray, faded, she the lucid nebula of a stale reality. It was she that his eyes were drawn to; she was the attraction in the picture, the one thing the eye is drawn to over and over again. Now his focus seemed to be drawing her in, as she took hold of him with her eyes and closed the gap between them.
"Excuse me?" she asked, trying to secure his attention. He seemed to be looking right through her.
Cloud remained unsure of the shock that went through him. It was like a spiritual dowsing rod had come alive inside of him, and was pointing right at the flower girl, and yet there was a physical response as well— one both natural and electrical— that threw him completely out of his ex-Soldier mode and made him human again, and dully aware of his own vitality.
She waved a hand inches in front of his face. "Do you know what's going on around here?"
Finally he seemed to notice her, and as his eyes focused, they gained the hic et nunc they had been lacking for the last few moments. "Nothing," he shook his head. He had done exactly what he hadn't wanted to do— he had run right into someone, had been seen— and now he might be identified later or at any minute, if the wrong person happened along.
They stood face to face, neither aware that they were both trying to get around one another without getting in deep trouble. "Nevermind it," he continued, his eyes looking for a diversion. They found the flower basket. "Don't see many of those around here."
"Oh, the flowers? Do you like them?" she asked, holding the basket up level with her chest so he could see the petunias, daisies, and begonias that formed rainbow layer across the surface of the bin. "You can buy one. They're only one Gil."
Cloud gave little thought to the decision. As much as the woman— who would be poorly yet accurately described as beautiful— held him entranced, he needed to get to the Sector 8 station. His hand went into the pocket of his baggy blue pants and came out with a single Gil.
The flower girl walked her fingers carefully over the stems of the flowers, somehow knowing Cloud had no preference in which flower she was about to give him, but wanting to give him a pretty flower all the same. She came up with a pink tulip, which might as well have been a pink rose, for all flowers were rare in Midgar.
Cloud took it from her, and her hand brushed against his glove. For a biting instant, he wished he hadn't been wearing it. He shook that thought away.
"Thanks," she said, giving a half-nod half-bow, but remaining otherwise stationary. She clearly didn't want to be the one to depart first.
Sensing this, Cloud nodded and stepped around her. They left in separate directions, simultaneously and with haste, each feeling rather proud to have skirted the situation so smoothly.
---
The Shinra machine continued to grind on in the face of adversity; it had crews battling fires and working to restore power to Sector 1, whose streets were being defended from looters and rioters by Shinra MPs, while the President prepared to make a formal statement regarding the night's events.
It was easy for the members of Avalanche to know the police were out in full force. The rest of it they didn't know, because it was hidden behind the scenes. Behind that veil, a frustrated Shinra executive had just gotten off the phone after a brief argument with his supervisor in which he had tried to get someone to tell him how he was supposed to do the task before him, and his supervisor screaming that nobody could tell him, because nobody had ever done it before.
The frustrated employee, a young man whose slicked-back jet black hair has begun a premature recession from his forehead is standing in a long metal corridor between the Sector 8 and Sector 1 plates, staring at an open switchbox. Inside, eight switches and several knobs are his only tools with which to route power from the remaining seven Mako Reactors back into Sector 1. He begins to leaf through the dusty manual in his hand, looking for directions that had, as far as he knew, only been written in theory.
---
On the streets, the search continued for any suspicious persons. In the half hour after the explosion, fifty people had already been arrested. None of them were the right people, however. Much of that was due to the zeal of Soldiers, who had been turned out into the streets of Midgar with the notion of making a counter-attack on the terrorists fresh in their minds. It was a wonder, by that half hour, that no one had been shot.
It just so happened that a small group of these crack Shinra MPs had come unknowingly between one of the culprits and a certain train station. Instead of being found, however, Cloud had found them. High above the unsuspecting Soldiers, a series of high-tension wires flashed with angry slashes of blue electricity at intervals. The wind kicked up, carrying discarded newspapers and flyers down the street, past a public fountain that had run dry years ago, past a poster nailed to a support pillar. The message scrawled there carried a short but urgent warning:
Mako energy doesn't last forever!
Mako is the Planet's life source!
The end is in sight!
-Protectors of the Planet: AVALANCHE
Cloud's eyes narrowed as he passed it by, pulling the Buster Sword from his back as he closed in on the rear of the unit that was searching for him with guns loaded. For the second time that night, the battle haze fell over him.
The Shinra MPs were walking in a diamond-shaped six man formation, two in front, two in back, and a man on each side, when they heard what at first sounded like the chutting beat of helicopter blades. In the shadows something huge came down, striking the ground with a loud metal clank and the brief sound of scraped concrete. They turned as one, a well-honed machine, guns and flashlights pointed into the darkness, and saw a massive sword there, buried halfway in the sidewalk.
The two men in the back of the formation were hit hard and thrown into the men at the sides of the formation with incredible force, toppling all four. Cloud went through them like a bowling ball through pins. The two Soldiers at point whirled, quick but not quick enough. He flew into the air between them and lashed out with a single leg, spinning a full circle, kicking them both in the head. They went down hard and fast, and he ran for his sword, sweeping it up out of the ground in one motion as he dashed away. He had a train to catch.
An involuntary grin formed itself on his face as he heard footsteps beating the pavement to catch up to him. "Hey, you there! Stop!" One of his pursuers cried.
Before Soldier, he'd been a fast runner. These days, he could outrun anything on two legs. Bullets were another matter entirely. A pair of Soldiers Cloud hadn't seen followed him down a cobbled street between rows of apartment buildings. Curtains fell shut and lights in windows went dark as the Shinra MPs stopped their pursuit to unsling their machine guns. With a pull of a lever on the front of the guns, they locked them into firing mode and unleashed a hail of bullets with a squeeze of the trigger. The bullets however, were inaccurate at such a distance, and the Soldiers ceased firing as Cloud disappeared around a corner.
Instead of escape, however, Cloud ran right into a small platoon of Soldiers.
One of them had time to scream what the before he was flattened out. Cloud was on them before they could even draw their guns. With a single, wide swing, he batted the first three men back with the flat of his weapon, sending them flying into their comrades. Well-trained killing machines went down like dominoes, then scattered like pickup sticks as they tried to reassemble. Cloud turned on his heel and ran in the opposite direction, only to find another platoon headed his way. These guys had their guns out and were better shots and at a closer distance.
"That's him!" A man in front of Cloud roared. A bolt of panic jagged a course up through Strife's chest and struck his heart as he brought the Buster Sword over his shoulder and whirled it out in front of him, fanning off a spray of bullets. He went straight through two shooters, the spinning of his blade slapping them ten feet through the air. Then he levied it forward like a shield and brought it up in a high sweep, knocking another shooter back into his comrades, who were forced to cease fire, lest they kill their own.
One of them burst forward, throwing a lunging punch with all his might, but the mercenary was much faster. He brought his foot up into the man's face and stopped him solidly, then lifted the blade of the Buster Sword high into the air and brought it down between the felled man's legs, missing intentionally but making his point clear. The man on the ground screamed in mortal terror.
"I don't have time to be messing around with you guys!" Cloud shouted. He danced back and found himself in the middle of a gun-happy circle, all sights leveled in his direction. The Soldiers were fighting with everything they had, every ounce of spirit and energy they could manage, as if everything in their lives rode on taking him down, but he had been treating them with flippant dismissal. In that final instant, he could feel as much as see their deadly determination to take him down. Rather than fighting against it, he decided to turn their ambitions against them.
Their guns fired with merciless accuracy at close range, but the ex-Soldier moved with unholy speed, taking to the air with a single, miraculous vault. Bullets crossed through the space his body once occupied and found easier targets on either side. The first ring of Shinra MPs fell, some screaming, others never to scream again. Curses and enraged shouts filled the air as the Soldiers watched their own fall dead and dying. A kind of silent, instinctive order moved through the two platoons, forming wordless agreement; they would not make the mistake of friendly fire twice, and when they got a hold of him, they were going to make him pay.
"Get him now!" One MP hollered, as Cloud seemed to descend from the high arc of his leap, slow and dreamlike, almost as if being lowered on wires. They dove one after the other, fists flying, teeth gnashing, burying Cloud under a Shinra-made Avalanche. Fists rose and fell. Batons stuttered off flesh and armor. Boots scuffled and tapped along the dingy pavement. The mass of Soldiers moved as one pulsing, convulsing form. As the beating commenced, Cloud wondered exactly who it was they thought they were tearing apart under that pile.
"Are you guys done yet?" He called out. Somehow, he was standing a full five feet away from the dog-pile unharmed, shaking his head slowly. "Later," he said, tossing down a handful of small metal tabs that hit the street and bounced. One downed Soldier saw with horror that they were the pins to hand grenades, the ordnance each of them wore strapped to their belts.
"Grenade!" The Soldier screamed. His voice was followed by others, calling to scatter, calling to hit the deck. That was a worthless directive; looking down, he saw with horror, that the grenade on his belt was missing its pin. Many of his bewildered partners were standing dazed, like men waking from dreams, looking down to make the same discovery. Before they could untangle themselves from their gearbelts and go for the ground, Cloud was running for the street's edge to leap. The realization that he'd pulled the pins on more than a dozen of their grenades was so astounding they did not try to stop him; the implications were so terrible that a second riot was occurring, this amongst individuals striving to rid themselves of their deadly cargo.
Cloud planted a hand and sailed over the edge, leaving a single pin spinning on the rail like a top. He seemed to hang in midair, backlit for a brief instant by the detonation of several grenades, before gravity caught hold and dragged him down. Out of the mouth of the tunnel beneath him came the Sector 8 locomotive at full speed. His feet touched down on the roof of one of its many cars, and he pulled the Buster Sword close, bracing against the sheer force of velocity that assailed him. The train roared down the tracks, feeding into another tunnel. Cloud never looked back.
---
"Cloud never came," Wedge said, a hint of mournfulness in his voice.
The other members of Avalanche: Biggs, Jessie, and Barret, were spread out inside of a freight compartment. The scene was familiar enough to produce deja vu, a sensation that was easy to handle, considering how unreal the night had been. The boxcar had been mostly quiet since they boarded, as each individual member of the group had more on their minds than they could really say— too many feelings they couldn't express in words.
"Cloud...think he was killed?" Biggs asked, aiding Wedge in breaking the silence.
"Cloud..." Jessie repeated his name sorrowfully, obviously hoping he wasn't.
Another veil of silence lowered over the cabin, until a sudden thump on the roof caused all of them to jolt and look up at the ceiling.
"T'Hell?" Barret muttered angrily. The signs of a foul mood returning to him almost seemed welcomed in the shadow of the insanities the four of them had recently gone through.
Seconds passed with no further disturbance, and Biggs, already over his surprise, turned to Barret. Ignoring the warning signs, he posed a question. "Say, do you think Cloud's going to stay on and fight for Avalanche?"
It was the wrong question to ask. "How the Hell should I know? Do I look like a mind reader?" Barret slammed his fist down on a crate. Being reminded of how well Cloud had fought tonight really pissed him off, mostly because Cloud had showed downright apathy towards their cause while single-handedly proving himself to be more able to carry out their mission than the whole job lot of them. Realizing that just made him even angrier. "If y'all weren't such screwups," he trailed off. He knew he would need Cloud's help again, and he knew that as long as the ex-Soldier didn't care about their cause, the price they would have to pay for his aid would be a heavy one. Storm clouds formed on his brow as he contemplated that one.
Demonstrating an utter lack of survival instincts, Wedge posed a question of his own. "Hey Barret! What about our money?"
Barret's reply was quick and to the point; he slammed his fist into the top of the box a second time.
"Uh, nothing," Wedge stammered. "Sorry."
Too peculiar to be an accident came another thud against the roof of the car. This time Barret rose to his feet and brought the gunarm level with his chest and pointed it at the door, which shuddered two, then three times and suddenly came open, giving them a motion-blurred view of copper tunnels lit up by dull wall-mounted lamps. The world passed by at astounding speeds, and their breath was quite literally taken away, sucked right from their lungs.
Before one of them could shut the door, Cloud swung down from the roof and landed in their midst, the giant sword on his back overbalancing him, causing him to fall to one knee for an instant.
"Cloud!" cried Biggs and Wedge in unison.
He rose to his feet and found himself staring Barret's gunarm in the face. If it inspired fear in him, he didn't show it. "Looks like I'm a little late."
"Cloud..." Jessie said, her concerned voice lost in the back of the room.
"You damn right you a little late," Barret said hotly, the cylinder on his gun whirling to the right, clicking into place, as if to accentuate his words. "Come waltzin' in here, makin' a big scene!"
Cloud slapped the dust off his bare arms and shrugged. "It's no big scene, it's just what I always do."
"Fuck!" Barret snapped. "Havin' everyone worried like that. You don't give a damn 'bout nobody but yourself!"
"Hmm," Cloud grinned. His lack of humility, even as he stood with a gunarm in his face, caused the three junior members of Avalanche to gasp inwardly. They were sure he was about to say something suicidally smartassed, and sure Barret was going to plug him for it. "You were worried about me?"
"What!?" Barret shouted. "That's comin' out of your share, hot-shot." He turned and stalked to the front of the boxcar. "Alla' youse, wake up! We're movin' out. Follow me." The big man disappeared through the door at the front of the compartment.
Wedge followed quickly, but paused beside the mercenary before moving on. "Hey Cloud! You were great back there!"
Biggs also stopped beside the ex-Soldier, grinning. "Heh heh, Cloud! Next time we'll do even better!" He followed Wedge through the doors, and Cloud turned to Jessie almost expectantly.
"Careful," she said, walking toward the open door. "I'll shut this." It went shut with a bang, and it became easier to take in breath immediately. Jessie turned back toward him and paused in her tracks as her eyes touched upon his face. "Oh Cloud!" she gasped. "Your face is pitch black!"
Cloud stood silently as she pulled a handkerchief from her belt and gingerly swiped it across his face. "There you go," she grinned, and then made for the door herself. But before she went through, she turned back to him. "Thanks for helping me back there at the reactor."
As usual, if Cloud had a reply, he didn't relinquish it. She left and he went behind her, to the next car up. It was a passenger compartment, lined with benches and handrails, luggage compartments above the seats, windows in rows along the walls. Cloud tried his best to be inconspicuous with the heavy weapon strapped to his back, but knew it would be impossible. Lucky for him, there were only a few passengers, and most of them seemed to be completely zoned out.
At the front of the car, Barret flopped down and spread his arms across the back of one whole bench, crossing one leg over the other, content to enjoy the ride. He saw an oily business-type at the far front of the train eyeing his gun, gave the man a toothy smile. The man dropped his staring habit instantly. Seeing the hideous expression, so wrong on Wallace's face, Cloud thought to himself that Barret's smile was more frightening than the gunarm.
Cloud walked forward, his boots thudding against the hollow floor. He went past a hobo that was lying full-length across a bench with a newspaper over his face and glanced down to see the headline proclaiming the latest glory of Shinra Incorporated: PROUD CLOD UNVEILED TO THE PUBLIC
Cloud continued to make his way for the front of the train, and watched as the oily businessman bustled ahead into the next car up, fleeing his approach. Cloud had little time to consider that when speakers built into the ceiling kicked in, that cool, modulated female voice stoically filing her report with the passengers. "Last train out of Sector 8 Station. Last stop is Sector 7, Train Graveyard. Expected time of arrival is 12:23AM, Midgar Standard Time."
Biggs and Wedge were at the front of the train, leaning against opposite walls. As Cloud got closer to them, Jessie stepped out from behind a bench support. "Hey Cloud, come over here and look at this with me."
Cloud reluctantly did as she asked, seeing nothing better to do. He stepped up behind her and peered over her shoulder at a green-toned screen that pictured an outlined 3D model of the city rotating on its axis in random directions. Jessie hit a button, and the map ceased its revolutions, settling into a fixed position.
"Since you're still new to the city, I thought you might like to see this. It's a map of the Midgar Rail System. Let's look at it together. I'll explain it to you. I like this kind of stuff— bombs and monitors, you know? Flashy stuff." The monitor flashed white, alerting her. "Okay, it's about to start so pay attention."
Cloud nodded, but refrained from leaning in, even though he had a strange feeling she wouldn't mind, would perhaps even welcome it.
"This is a complete model of the city of Midgar," she said, tracing her finger in a way that was almost lovingly along the green wire circle that formed the upper-plate. "It's about a one and ten-thousandth's scale." Midgar, as far as Cloud could tell, was shaped almost like a barbell standing on end, the upper weight being the top plate on which the lively, glamorous parts of the city were built; the lower weight, of course, was the base of the slums, the underworld, the city beneath that people in Upper Midgar mostly liked to pretend didn't exist. Meanwhile, the barbell's handhold was the main support pillar at the center of the city, that served to keep upper Midgar held high above its lower counterpart. Yet a barbell formation, while an apt description, was not totally accurate. In the model, there wasn't just one support pillar, but nine of them— the large one at the center, and eight smaller ones surrounding it, each holding up an outer section of the upper 'weight' which, on the screen, was now being divided into eight pie slices. The model tilted sideways to give Cloud a view of the city from above as it completed the division effect, showing him every upper Sector, labeling them from 1 to 8.
"The main pillar supports the plate at the center," Jessie explained, "and then there are other support pillars built in each section." She lowered her voice to a whisper and continued. "The number one reactor we blew up was in the northern section," she raised her voice again, continued, "then there's number two, number three, all the way up to number eight reactor."
"With one in each Sector," Cloud added. "Right."
"Right," Jessie nodded. "These eight reactors provide Midgar with electricity. Each town used to have a name, but nobody remembers them anymore. Now we refer to them by numbered Sectors... that's what kind of a place this is."
The screen flashed white again, changing the angle of the model. "Ah look, there's more," Jessie said. Dots began to appear on the screen in a line curving down toward the central pillar. "This is the route the train is on. It spirals around the main pillar. According to this, we should be coming around the center of it right about now. As we travel the rail, we'll be passing through a series of checkpoints. Each one has an ID sensor device that checks the identities and backgrounds of each passenger on the train, and is linked up to the central data bank at Shinra HQ." Lowering her voice to a whisper once more, she tilted her head sideways, toward Cloud. "We definitely look suspicious, so we're using fake IDs."
The lights in the cabin grow dim, turn blood red, and begin to flash as a whiney, high-pitched alarm comes in over the speakers. Cloud fights years of instinct that make his hand nearly fly to the hilt of his sword. It would be one thing for people to see him carrying it, and another thing entirely for them to see him go on the draw.
"Speak of the devil," said Jessie. Again, her voice fell to a whisper. "That light means we're in the security check area. When the lights go off you never know what kind of creeps will come out."
Cloud glanced toward the doors, halfway expecting Shinra troops to bust in with guns blazing. His luck, it seemed, was finally going to hold out. The alert ended abruptly with the return of the normal lightning and the muting of the alarm.
"I'm seeing stars," Wedge groaned. "This sucks, I hate the dark."
Cloud halfway expected Biggs to comment, but saw that he'd slept through the entire procedure.
"I know," Jessie began. "Next time, I'll make one just for you."
By the way she intoned, Cloud knew she was talking about the next bomb. He flicked his thumb across the point of his chin. He wasn't entirely sure he was going to hang around long enough for there to be a next time. "Thanks anyway."
"Oh yeah? You might regret it," she smirked. "I'm the type who takes things personally." She stepped around Cloud and leaned forward to look out a window, into the smog-clouded heights of lower Midgar. "We're almost there."
"Look," Barret spoke up, turning in his seat. "You can see the surface now. Lower Midgar ain't got no day or night. If that plate weren't up there, we could see the sky."
Drawn to the window by Barret's urgings, Cloud leaned over a chair, and when he spoke, he seemed almost an entirely different person. "A floating city...pretty unsettling scenery."
Barret sat up, blinking. "Huh? Never expected ta' hear that outta someone like you. You jes' full of surprises." Wallace rose from the bench, marched to the other side of the car, and then turned back toward the window. "Upper Midgar, a city on a plate. It's 'cuz of that fucking pizza that people underneath are suffering, and the city below is full of polluted air. On top of all that, the reactors keep drainin' up all the energy. People down below can't just move up top, mainly 'cuz they got no money, also 'cuz they love their land, no matter how polluted it gets."
Cloud continued to stare down at the faint slum-town lights that were burning obscured by a layer of thick gray smog. "I know," Cloud said, sounding strangely agreeable, thoughtful in the least. "No one lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train; it can't run anywhere except where its rails take it."
The train roared as it curled around the main support, spiraling farther and farther downward. Soon it disappeared under a blanket of fog, carrying the members of Avalanche on the only path they knew to take.