Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Once a Man ❯ Revenge ( Chapter 9 )

Once a Man

Chapter 9: Revenge

 

If you were to ask Vincent, what is the most horrible thing about you. He would say that he is a monster, a beast in human form. He'd probably go on to seriously explain to you how turning into a demon is his punishment for his sins.

At this point, I would like to point out one very pertinent fact. I wasn't the one who infected him with the Chaos gene. I was only the poor ass who tried to free Vincent from that gene. She is the one that did that to him. She is the one who made him a monster.

Oh, I've heard the melodramatic wailing, especially from the brat ninja, about how Lucrecia sacrificed herself for Vincent. Chocoboshit. Any sacrifice she made was for her benefit. She needed, and needs, Vincent alive and in control of Chaos, just as she needed Sephiroth alive and in control of Jenova, and me, I believe, alive and in control of Omega. Anything less and her plans are destroyed. While I grieve for my son, I am, at the same time, relieved that he is finally free now from her scheme. I still worry for Vincent, but she has made sure that I will never be able to help him again. For myself, I couldn't care less if I get turned into a demon or not. It makes little difference to me. Monster, demon what do I care? I only hope to never bow to her wishes.

Oh, her plan?

That really is rather simple. She is going to control the planet. I mean that in the most complete sense. With her controlling the hosts of Chaos, Jenova, and Omega, she will be able to become a goddess with ultimate control of life and death. If you are snorting and saying how the hell did she expect to gain control over the hosts, should I point out just how much control she has (and still has) over Vincent? Once, she had the same amount of control over me. I am sure, if I had left Sephiroth in the loving care of his mother, she would have had him slavishly adoring her as well.

You still don't believe me, do you?

Then look at the security footage from the labs. It's been a bit altered, I'm not sure who did the altering and I've been curious about that for years, but the evidence is still there. All you have to do is look at Vincent floating in the mako tank as his beloved, self-sacrificing Lucrecia tries to save him from my foul deeds. Take note, he is still wearing his uniform and it looks relatively clean and in one piece. If you look close enough, you can even see the bullet hole from where I shot him. Even his hair is short and neatly trimmed. Do you think that if I was going to torture him unmercifully, perform unspeakable acts of cruelty, and hack apart his body, that I would, at the end of the day, redress him in his uniform? Maybe have his uniform cleaned and pressed for him? Do you think I would hire a barber to come in and keep him well coifed?

Actually, I will admit, I would. Vincent, with his hatred of being dirty, would have been miserable being dressed in months old, unwashed clothes and knowing that I could spare him such an easily fixed annoyance, I would have done it. When he did finally get turned over to my care, I took the uniform away and put him in clothes that weren't so complicated to take off him to keep clean. I disposed of the uniform. He may not care too much about tattered clothes, but having a hole through the front and back of his uniform would have bothered him. The clothes he wears now are actually some of his father's. I found them when I went through Grimiore's things trying to research what she'd done. When I finally realized I could do nothing more to help him, I didn't want to put him to sleep in a flimsy hospital gown and since he and his father were the same size, I put him in those. (I could practically hear Vincent's snarls of fury if he woke up with his back end feeling breezy. -And wouldn't that have impressed the failure and his dimwitted crew?)

The reason that Vincent is still in his uniform in those videos is because she and Gast dumped Vincent into that tank and never bothered to take the uniform off of him. He was just a specimen in a bottle as they did whatever they wanted with him. His comfort or well being were never issues with them.

I, on the other hand (and yes, this is checkable and in Shinra's records) was shuffled away, back to Midgar. The official reason was that I had come down with a viral infection resulting in fevers, delusion, and irrational behavior. I was shuffled off to a hospital and “treated” for my condition. That was Gast's mistake. He believed that I was broken and no threat to him. I was stupid Hojo, the failed experiment, whose body rejected the Jenova treatments and was now too sick and too mentally crippled to do much more than curl in a corner and drool on himself.

Vincent was written off by Shinra. The official report states merely that he died while on assignment to Nibelheim. That was Gast's second mistake. If he had tried, even half heartedly, to make someone believe that I had been the cause of Vincent's death, I would never have been able to do what I did. After all, there is a world of difference between being delirious because of a bad viral infection and being murderously insane. Instead, in his blind, careless arrogance, he brushed it aside, and me with it.

I stayed in that hospital, raving for awhile, then someplace in my head things started to click back together. I'm not saying I became saner. I just became more functional. I started realizing that I had to do something to save my son or daughter from whatever Gast and Lucrecia's plans were, and to do that, I needed to play their game. Vincent had taught me to be a great game player. If you ever need to learn about deceit, ask for a Turk to give you pointers.

I became docile. I greeted the nurse with tired smiles and half feeble assurances about feeling a bit better than the day before. When someone gave me medicine, instead of fighting like a wild animal, I would calmly take it and ask a few questions about dosage, effects, and drug interactions. As my physical condition improved, I volunteered to help out doing small jobs around the ward. I helped where I could, smiled pleasantly at people, looked lost when asked questions about Nibelheim, and became the friendliest, easiest to care for patient in the hospital. I quickly became the hospital's darling and a few weeks later I was released back to work, with many nurses, orderlies, and helpers waving me goodbye and wishing me the best.

I waved back, and then turned my attentions immediately to my next goal. Destroying Gast. It was the only way. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him on his knees, helpless and at my mercy. I needed to destroy Gast's backing so that when I got back to Nibelheim I could move to save my unborn child and get revenge for my lover.

I would claim that I wanted to save Vincent too, but at that time, I truly thought he was dead. I wanted revenge for him. I wanted to know just what they had done to both of us. But I didn't believe he was still alive. My goal was my defenseless child, or, more accurately Vincent's defenseless child. I had checked the calendar and the records and realized that only a few months had passed. With a quick calculation of dates and even a basic knowledge of the human reproductive cycle, I knew that the child that Lucrecia carried was not mine. It didn't matter to me whose child it was. Vincent had been the center of my world and if the only thing I had left of him was his child, I would fight for it. That child was ours and nothing short of, and as it turned out including, the end of the world was going to stop me from doing everything in my power to protect it.

The opening move of my war against Gast was simply to go back to work. I shuffled in, looking as sick and weak as I could. As my co-workers came by to offer condolences for Vincent's death and concerned questions about my obvious bad health, I smiled bravely and thanked them as I wiped tears from my eyes. My official story was that I had been too sick to even realize he was gone till I woke up in the hospital in Midgar. About the Jenova project, I was just as confused. I settled at my desk, requested my secretary to bring me glasses of water on a regular basis, and devotedly did my paperwork. I became the model Shinra scientist: dedicated, loyal, and determined to discover a way to make Shinra great.

The Turks came down and questioned me more closely about Vincent's passing. I felt for them. They had been our friends and many of them were truly grieved by his loss, but I was not going to endanger our child by sentimentally confiding in these people. Turks are Turks and they are not to be trusted. Their first loyalty is always to Shinra and seeing the amount of capital and security that Shinra devoted to the Jenova project, saying anything suspicious might have earned me a bullet in the head and the baby would have been left to Lucrecia and Gast's mercy.

I stuck to my story and, as far as I could trust them, grieved with them. Eventually, I became old news and life went back to as normal as it could ever be without Vincent. I was just another cog in the great machine that was Shinra. I did my work and only rarely stumbled back to my now lonely apartment. If questioned about why I spent so many nights at the lab, it was easily explained by me taking a deep, steadying breath and saying how I hated going home. Sympathetic souls gushed comfort at me then left me alone in the lab to work off my grief.

Being insane does have its advantages, and apparently once your mind slips its gears, believably acting various parts becomes quite simple.

What I was really working on was diagnosing what Vincent and I had been given that made us so easy to manipulate. By the time I got free of the hospital, most of the chemical traces had been eliminated from my body. I could still spot the Jenova, even though it was dying, but the mind altering chemicals were trickier. I spent nights considering the trace elements in my blood, hair, and skin, and tracking down texts on chemicals. I used Vincent's passcodes to get access to the Turk's extensive files on drugs. It took weeks of nearly sleepless nights, but in the end, I found it. It was a derivative of a hallucinogenic that Gast had developed a few years back for controlling people in key positions in other rival companies. It was powerful, effective, and as long as the person took it they would remain under the control of their handler. It only needed to be activated with a manipulate materia and the person became your adoring slave.

You might wonder why I was so bent on this. It's very simple. Do unto others as they have done unto you.

I should have that framed and put on the wall.

As soon as I had this drug identified, I put the second part of my plan into play. Gast had the power he did because he was friends with the president of the company. I, in the guise of being the acting head of the science department while Gast was away, started becoming the president's new best friend. This was a disgusting process. The man was a sink of bad manners, poor hygiene, and absent morals. I spent more time in whore houses than I spent at the lab or at home. I trailed faithfully after him to poorly lit bars to gamble, to back alley dog fights, and to cheap hotel rooms where we would spend time using whatever poor, unfortunate creature had been selling themselves on the street corner when we drove by. At work, I laughed at sick, perverted jokes, snickered with him about sadistically pointless cruelties that he inflicted on his staff, and jeered with him at the ineptitude of humanity in general.

It took awhile to gain the trust of the Turks that guarded him. Even if I was Vincent's grieving lover, when it came to the president's safety, they trusted no one easily. Eventually, I won my game by simply infecting the president with a virus (I loved the symmetry of that).

It was simple enough. I chose an airborne virus and simply blew it in his face when I fake coughed into a treated tissue. The swine got sick two days later and was pleading for medication to make him feel better. His physician, like any other professional, advised bed rest and fluids. When he told me this, I shook my head and mentioned new breakthroughs we'd developed due to my new found (and completely fictional) hatred of all things flu like. As his friend, it was my duty to help him. I gave him an anti-viral medication and some “vitamins” (How I adored the irony.) He felt better quickly and citing my recent bad experience with viruses, recommended that he continue with the vitamins. I gleefully extolled the virtues of a good vitamin routine to keep one healthy and at peak condition.

It worked beautifully. In a matter of months from leaving Nibelheim, I was the president's best friend, and more importantly, his master. I ran Shinra. It was lovely to stand behind that fat fool and realize that even the tiniest of my whims would be his greatest desire. I had no tiny whims though. I had revenge. I was not going to let Gast and Lucrecia get away with what they had done and what they were doing. The child was depending on me, and I was not going to fail Vincent again.

Gast was the first to feel the weight of my new power. All I did was walk into the president's office and sit down with a worried look on my face. The president instantly dropped whatever he was doing and gave me his complete attention.

“You look troubled, my friend.” He looked so earnest.

I nodded and handed him a stack of paperwork. “I haven't wanted to trouble you.” I sighed worriedly, “But things are starting to get… worrisome.”

If it helps, my drugging the president did have a few beneficial side effects. He actually started to pay attention to his company rather than his penis. He even gave up some of his more disgusting habits like trawling the streets for hookers. Rufus can thank me for being born. If I hadn't gotten disgusted by my nightly wallow in the cesspool of the red light district, his mother would have remained a frigid virgin whose husband couldn't be bothered to even perform his marriage duties. He can also thank me for his ass staying intact. His dear old dad wasn't above fucking his own son. I never liked pedophilia (After seeing so many perverts eyeing Sephiroth, who even as a child exhibited all his father's exquisite beauty, I became a bit rabid about it), so when I noticed a little too much interest being directed at young Rufus, I whispered a few orders in my puppet's ear about leaving the boy alone. It didn't save him from feeling the effects of his father's repressed sexual drive in the form of getting beaten into the ground on a regular basis, but he didn't have the horror of having that sweaty boar violate him.

Said boar sat up alarmed. “What? What is it?”

He took the papers, looking through them. “Hojo, what is going on?”

“That's what I would like to know.” I shook my head. “It seems that the Jenova project is becoming… how should I put this…less than well documented and seeing the importance of this project, I'm becoming worried.”

This, while true, was really not a surprise. Gast was notorious for his lack of documentation. I just picked it up and pointed it out where it would do me the most good. If Gast hadn't been such a careless fool, my vengeance would have been much more difficult.

The president frowned at the reports. “This isn't good, my friend.”

I had doctored some of the reports. I had become quite an expert at that necessary skill as I usually had to forge Gast's signature, do his paperwork, and generally pretend to be him in the files of Shinra since he was far too important to be bothered with such trivialities. I put his laziness to good use now, making it seem the dear professor had become senile and forgetful. Most of his submitted reports, and there were few, now were rambling, vague, and completely off the subject. I even added a long dissertation about rose fertilizer. Vincent, my devious, botanist Turk, would have been so proud.

“I fear that Gast…well the strain must be getting to him.” I shook my head sadly. “Such a genious…”

My puppet obediently took his cue and looked worried. “Jenova is an important project. If he's not able to adequately do his job…”

I sat down and nodded. “He's been under strain since that…incident with the dissidents.”

“You don't think?” The fat swine turned red as visions of his beloved project became menaced by lurking shadowy figures of sticky fingered traitors.

Right then, I could have destroyed Gast. I could have had his head brought to me in a gift wrapped box. I could have had anything I wanted: his life, his job, his balls lightly sautéed in butter... I wanted him to suffer. Dead people don't suffer, that privilege is reserved only for the living.

“I doubt it.” My broken brain had a thought. “But what do we know about his assistant? I was very sick, but I remember there were a lot of strange people…”

The president sometimes surprised me. Honest, it amazed me how his piggy little brain could twist things around.

“Your sickness… She made you sick and Gast, poor old fellow, probably dotes on her…he does fall for the beauties… and can't see anything wrong.” He blinked startled. (I admit I was startled too, that his brain was actually coming up with something close to the truth.) “My Turk! He must have found out and she killed him!”

I nodded my head, and made sure the Turk heard me. “That may very well be why my Vincent died. He probably found out what was going on and had to be silenced.”

The president sat back appalled. In just a few moments and with a handful of papers, I had exposed a probable traitor who now was in the heart of one of Shinra's most cherished projects and she was connected the death of the Turk Leader. The president believed every word (after all he came up with most of them himself) and, just as importantly, the Turks now had someone to vent their frustrations and grief on.

“That traitor!” The president sprang to his feet, slamming his pudgy hand down on the desk.

I kept my mouth shut, but nodded solemnly.

He yelled at the Turk by the door. “Go get Veld! I want Veld now!”

The Turk scrambled out. I let my puppet froth at the mouth for awhile. He was quite good at frothing. He cursed Lucrecia. He came up with all sorts of vile things to do to her when he got his hands on her. -I should have taken notes. They were quite creative.- He even swore revenge for his loyal, murdered Turk, who by the time Veld got to the office, had been propelled up to the ranks of sainted martyrs. (By the way, if you were to dig through the ruins of the old Shinra tower, you'd find a small plaque that used to be in the lobby with Vincent's name on it extolling him as one of the best Turks in the history of the organization. I used to stop by it every night to touch it.) I quietly added a few suggestions, which in his drugged state, he absorbed completely, as if he had thought of them himself.

Veld, marched in and stood stiffly waiting for orders, occasionally looking towards me as if trying to get me to tell him what the hell was going on. I just nodded back and kept my peace. The president frothed a bit more, cursing Lucrecia.

He finally turned to his Turk. “Gast. I want him back here now. He can't stay in Nibelheim a second longer! He could be in danger!”

Veld nodded, “Already in motion, sir.”

“I want a complete inquiry into the Jenova project.” The president snarled. “Professor Hojo will be taking over and I want him to have a clean staff. No traitors!”

Ah well, there went my time in my cozy lab concocting mind controlling drugs, but at least I would be seeing my child again sooner that I thought. However, the last thing our poor child needed was to suddenly have his mother's brains splattered across a floor while still in utero. I made a note to myself to intercede, temporarily, on Lucrecia's behalf.

By the time Veld left the office, Gast was going to be whisked back to Midgar and I now held his job as head of the Jenova project. I had, with my swinish little puppet backing me, all the power I needed to destroy him and Lucrecia.

“Sir, while I hate to say this,” I took a dramatic sigh, “Lucrecia, while probably a traitor, probably should be kept alive. We will need her to continue the project without any serious delays… at least for a little while.”

My puppet instantly agreed. “Of course. We can assign extra security on the project to keep her in line. I will have her kept in Nibelheim in custody till you arrive.”

I nodded and stood up. “My friend, while I am pleased to help you in this matter, I am still sorry to have disturbed you like this.” I dropped my head, wallowing in the drama of it all. “I feel I should have done more to prevent this.”

“No. No.” He walked over and grasped my shoulders. “I am glad you came. You may have saved the life of a good man. I only wish I had known of this before I sent you and Valentine to Nibelheim.” He pulled me into a flabby hug. “I hope you forgive me for not realizing what danger I sent you both into. It cost you dearly.”

He really was a great puppet. I kept him on his special vitamins right up to his death and never once did he let me down. He prattled the most amazingly helpful things, kept me safe from my enemies, could always be counted on for a quick ego boost, and did it all with a huge smile on his piggy, fat face.

I hated the man.

I was back in Nibelheim two days later with an escort of thoroughly pissed off Turks, a squadron of soldiers who had shoot to kill orders targeting any suspected traitors, and a handpicked team of scientists.

Gast, looking angry and confused, was led to the transport and bundled off still clutching his morning coffee and donut. Lucrecia was escorted firmly to her quarters and the soldiers on duty were relieved of their posts to head back to Midgar. (The president wanted each one of them questioned for possible traitorous thoughts. Sadly, most of them were deemed traitors, and were quickly executed. Sad. Sad. I guess I should have been more specific when I whispered to my puppet to quiet everything down as quickly as possible.) I was quite pleased with how quickly Nibelheim came under my control until Veld came over and pulled me away from my gloating.

“You need to see this.” His voice sounded pinched and odd.

Whatever could shake Veld was sure to be something big, so I trotted quickly after him as he went down into the basement labs. He kept quiet. As we walked downwards, I noticed that many of the Turks we passed had a rather odd expression on their faces. Outrage. It isn't an expression that one normally finds a Turk wearing. They are a cynical lot and little ruffles their cold composure, but something up ahead had them all ruffled.

Curious, and getting a sick feeling of dread (I think I knew what I was going to find), I entered the lab. There was Vincent floating in a mako tube, his head falling limp, the gunshot wound in his chest still open and raw. They'd preserved him as he was the day I killed him.

Veld stood staring at this abomination with a look of total anger on his face. “What have they done?”

“I don't know.” I slid to my knees, stunned. They had been using Vincent's dead body for experiments. Even then I could feel cracks shattering outward in my already broken mind. I pressed my hands against my temples trying futilely to stop the cracks from spreading. “I don't know.”

Veld nodded to two Turks, “Get him out of there.”

“NO! No wait.” I stumbled to my feet. “Wait.”

Veld glared at me. “He's not an experiment.”

“I have to know what she's done.” I wobbled over to stand below the platform the tank was on, looking up into Vincent's dead face. “I need to make sure she…she hasn't… hurt him.”

Veld snarled, turning to one of the Turks that stood gaping nearby. “Where's the bitch?”

“She's up in her quarters.” The man saluted. “I'll go get her.”

I shook my head, clearing it, “Be careful with her. I don't remember much, but she's dangerous.”

“She's a traitor.” Veld snarled, coming to stand next to me. “Do you think she's the one…”

“Probably.” I nodded. “I was out of my mind with fever most of the time, but I remember…” I shook my head trying to clear it. I had to pull myself together fast. “I remember her and Vincent arguing… fighting about something…”

Veld snorted. “Take a look at this.”

He pulled out a picture. “Remember this?”

It was of me, her, and Gast on my wedding day.

I took the picture frowning at it. “Where's Vincent? Why am I…?” I pretended to be appalled and gave my voice a half hysterical pitch, which wasn't all that hard considering that I wanted to start shrieking and pounding my head on the floor. “No... I wouldn't have… Where's Vincent?” I let a few tears fall. This wasn't hard to do. Keeping them from turning into a torrent of hysterical crying, that was hard. “Why isn't Vincent…”

“Probably dead.” He pointed to the picture. “You look like the walking dead in that, Hojo.”

I did. I was semi-surprised I was standing. In the months that I recovered, I had forgotten just how horrid I had looked while under Lucrecia and Gast's loving care. My eyes were shrunken back into my skull-like head. My arms and legs were like twigs wrapped loosely in cloth. My hair was limp, lifeless and bedraggled. The look on my pallid, gaunt face was one of confused happiness, as if I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing or how I had gotten there but was too bewildered to question what was going on around me. I handed the picture back.

“Burn it.” I whispered. “I never want to see that again.”

“She's pregnant.” Veld handed the picture off to be destroyed. “Congrats.”

I shook my head, my voice trembled as I tried to hold myself together. It did make my performance have the right dramatic touch, I have to admit. “Don't congratulate someone who becomes a parent by being raped. It's no honor.”

I walked over to the monitor then picked up a notebook. I flipped through it till I came to what I expected to find. Notes on the experiment they were doing on our child. The experiment was heading in directions I hadn't even dreamed possible. Many of the notes had references to demonology and infusing the child with tainted mako as well as Jenova.

“Even the baby.” I handed the book over to Veld. “She was experimenting on the unborn child.”

Veld took the book, holding it like it was a dead rat. “Are you sure you want this bitch to live?”

It was providence that Lucrecia was hustled into the room when Veld said that. She was already pale, swollen with child, and obviously sick. I had no pity. It was thanks to her that Vincent was dead, in that awful tube with a hole through his chest. If it wouldn't have endangered the child, I would have attacked her myself. I would have gutted her with my fingernails and danced on her rotten heart for what she'd caused.

“For now.” I shook my head. “Once the child is born, she's expendable.”

Poor, sweet Lucrecia didn't look happy about that. Considering just how far along she was, she only had a few more weeks to live, if that. How I gloried in that appalled look. How I looked forward to seeing her face as she died in a hail of bullets.

“Hojo, my love, what are you saying?” She tried to rush to me.

The Turks wouldn't let her. She struggled against them, weak and crying.

“Hojo! Please!” She wept. “My love...”

I turned away from her, looking up at Vincent. “I don't love you.”

“Hojo, how can you say that? Darling, I know you were sick, but it's me. Your wife. Lucrecia.” She begged for my attention.

I looked back at her. “Tell me, did you really think I would forget him?” I gestured to where Vincent floated suspended above us in his mako tomb.

“You…you said you loved me.” She sobbed. I have to give her credit, she's a fine actress. “You said he meant nothing to you.”

“He was my life.” I looked back up at him. “Now that he's gone… I have nothing.”

Melodrama, ah, how I love it. Unhappily, in this case, it was also the truth, or very close to it. Until our child was born, I had nothing. Only when I had our child safe, then my life would begin again.

“YOU! You were the one that killed him! It wasn't me!” She gave up the pitiful act and went for acting like a shrieking harpy.

I only wish Vincent had been conscious to see the transformation. I wonder if he'd still think she was the sweetest, most perfect creature he'd ever met if he seen her like that.

That jolted Veld though. I blinked at her as if she'd grown another head.

I kept my voice soft, confused. “Why would I hurt Vincent? I'd have killed myself before I ever…”

“You shot him!” She thrashed against the Turks that held her. “You were jealous because he loved me and wanted me to run away with him.”

She overplayed her hand. The Turks there knew me and Vincent. They were the same ones that would come by our place for drinks after work. They had seen us together, seen how each of us was devoted to the other, seen how I would do nearly anything for him if it made him happy. If she had just shut her mouth after revealing that I was the one to kill Vincent, I might have had problems, but accusing me of being jealous of Vincent? Saying that Vincent was going to run away with her? That Vincent loved her and that I loved her and we were involved in some crazed love triangle after only a short time in her glorious presence? That I killed Vincent over her?

The Turks looked disgusted. Veld turned away, patting my shoulder comfortingly. “I see.” He looked up at Vincent's still form. “Take the bitch back to her room.” He waved for them to remove her. “I have enough problems without a lying shrew screaming.”

I admit, I used to like Veld, before his soul died.

I stood watching Vincent's still face, trying to memorize it one last time. I knew I would have to release him to the Turks. My small stall was only that. At that point, I doubted that they'd done more than examine his corpse to see what Jenova did to a body after death. Veld stayed with me for awhile, but then left to attend to his duties.

“Vincent.” I walked up the scaffolding till I was on the same level as the tank. “Vincent, I am so sorry. I should have known. I should have known...”

It might have ended there. In a few moments, Veld would come back and I would have to release him. He would have been taken from the mako tank and transported back to Midgar. There he would have lain in his tomb until the Chaos gene inside him matured and he would have woken to destroy this poor world.

I was just stepping back, hearing Veld's footsteps at the door, when Vincent's body thrashed. I jumped back startled, falling down the metal steps, with a terrified yell.

“Hojo!” Veld ran into the room with a couple of Turks at his heels, their weapons drawn.

My eyes were glued to the tank as Vincent's body convulsed again, transforming into the grey skinned, spiked haired monster I had seen before. The transformation only lasted a second (I know now that the Chaos gene was still not fully capable of maintaining itself in Vincent's weakened body.) Veld and the Turks were standing at the door, stunned. I could only scream as I sprawled on the floor watching Vincent slowly fade back into his normal form.

Again, it could have ended there. I could have just figured out a way to destroy Vincent's body and it would have ended there, but it didn't. I was laying at the foot of the platform, my hands pressed over my mouth in a desperate attempt to keep in the screams that bubbled out of my throat, when I saw it. Vincent opened his eyes and looked at me. He looked lost, confused, hurt, as if he was in terrible pain, but didn't know how it had happened. As if he was still locked in that moment that I had shot him.

“Planet.” Veld breathed in horror, “He's still alive.”