Consciousness returned in a cold green glow.
Cain felt as if he were floating in a weightless space.
Thick liquid surrounded him, and a constant low mechanical hum droned in his ears.
He tried to move, but his limbs felt as heavy as lead.
Forcing his eyes open, he looked through the blurred green fluid and the glass around him, and saw another identical container nearby.
Suspended inside it was another figure, Zack.
“You’re awake, Test Subject C.” The voice from outside was so calm it felt cruel.
Cain shifted his eyes and saw the man in the white coat, Hojo.
He stood at a control panel, studying the readings from the container with amused interest, as if he were admiring a work of art.
“C?
What does that mean?” Cain’s thoughts were still a mess.
He tried to speak through the communication device built into the chamber wall, but all that came out was a muffled, garbled sound.
“C for Cain, obviously.” Hojo adjusted his glasses, a sick smile spreading across his face.
“And the one beside you is Test Subject Z.
The two of you will be my greatest masterpiece, a masterpiece that surpasses even Sephiroth.
You will prove my Reunion Theory.” The days that followed became a hell Cain would never forget.
Trapped in the secret laboratory beneath Shinra Manor, he was forced to endure Hojo’s mad experiments day after day.
Needles like shards of ice pierced his skin, injecting something unknown and deeply ominous into his veins.
Cain could feel the foreign cells rampaging through his body, trying to consume and assimilate everything he was.
They were Jenova cells.
Even worse was the mako immersion.
High concentrations of Lifestream energy were pumped directly into his body, and countless fragments of чуждые memories, chaotic emotions, and dying screams exploded in his mind.
They hammered at his sanity, trying to wash away his sense of self entirely.
“Give up, Test Subject C.” Hojo’s voice slithered into his ears like a devil’s whisper.
“Become one with Jenova, and you’ll gain eternal life and supreme power.
Becoming a god, doesn’t that sound wonderful?” In the middle of that endless torment, Cain nearly gave in more than once.
His consciousness swayed on the edge of collapse in the flood of mako, while the Jenova cells tore at his will like starving vultures.
But every time he was about to sink, one image stubbornly surfaced in his mind.
A girl with braids standing beside the wishing well, looking at him with clear eyes as she said, “Cain, your strength has to exist to protect something important.” Tifa.
That name became the only lighthouse left to him in hell.
“I…
made her a promise…” Cain screamed inside his own mind, throwing all of his will against the thing trying to devour him.
“I have to…
protect her…” That obsession became the strongest barrier he had.
But the Jenova cells did not stop.
Instead, they turned toward the most primal and powerful source inside him, his right arm.
A silent war erupted inside Cain’s right arm.
The Jenova cells tried to control that power, to seize and command it, while the demonic force sleeping in his bloodline instinctively rejected them as invaders.
The clash between the two brought him pain even more violent than the mako immersion.
At times his right arm felt as cold as iron, at others as hot as fire.
Blue light and mako green flashed beneath the skin of his arm in turns, as if two dragons were battling inside his flesh.
“Fascinating…
absolutely fascinating!” Hojo trembled with excitement as the values on his monitor changed wildly.
“The Jenova cells can’t fully assimilate this power.
They’ve formed a strange symbiotic relationship instead!
Perfect!
This is true evolution!” While Cain was being tortured beyond anything human, Zack was faring no better.
As a SOLDIER 1st Class, he already carried Jenova cells in his body, and Hojo’s experiments had driven him into severe mako poisoning.
Most of the time, he drifted in a half-conscious haze.
But whenever he had even the slightest chance, he tried to speak to Cain.
“Hey…
kid…
you still alive?” Zack’s voice came in broken pieces, but the stubborn strength inside it never bent.
“Don’t…
don’t give up…
We still have to…
get out of here…
open a little…
anything shop…
in Midgar…” Zack’s persistence gave Cain tremendous strength.
He was not fighting alone.
Time lost all meaning inside the pain.
It might have been months.
It might have been a year.
Cain’s body had changed in shocking ways.
In the dark, his eyes now gave off a faint green glow, the sign of mako poisoning.
And his right arm had become even more unnatural.
Black patterns seemed to drift slowly beneath the skin, and even at rest it gave off a presence that made the heart shudder.
The war inside him seemed to have reached a strange balance.
The Jenova cells had failed to consume his will.
Instead, they had been shackled by his obsession with protecting Tifa, and together with the demonic power, they were forcibly confined within his right arm.
His arm had become a wildly unstable powder keg, packed with Jenova cells and demonic force.
Then, after yet another high-intensity experiment, his chance finally came.
To test Cain’s limits, Hojo turned the mako injection up to its highest setting.
The agony was so intense that Cain’s mind was instantly swallowed by rage.
“Unforgivable…” He remembered Nibelheim engulfed in flames.
He remembered Tifa collapsed in a pool of blood.
He remembered Hojo’s revolting face.
“Unforgivable!!!” A roar that no longer sounded human burst from deep in his throat.
His silent right arm erupted with a light unlike anything before.
This time it was no longer purely blue, but a chaotic glow of blue and green laced with thin strands of black, something deeply cursed.
Boom!
The reinforced glass chamber that was supposed to be unbreakable shattered instantly beneath his fist.
The fluid exploded outward.
Alarms screamed through the entire laboratory.
“The data!
Record the data, now!” Far from panicking, Hojo looked even more thrilled.
His fingers flew wildly over the controls.
“The power is out of control!
Magnificent!
This is exactly what I wanted to see!” Cain stood naked in the center of the lab, radiating a murderous aura so intense it felt tangible.
His mutated right arm had fully transformed into a hideous demonic claw, the tips gleaming with a razor-sharp chill.
He ignored Hojo completely and turned, smashing open Zack’s chamber with one punch.
“Zack, we’re leaving!” The impact jolted Zack awake.
He stared at Cain, who looked like some dark god fallen into the mortal world, blank for a second, then managed a weak smile.
“Hah…
knew…
you could do it…” Cain caught Zack and hauled him up, throwing one of Zack’s arms over his shoulder because he could barely stand.
His own cold green eyes locked onto Hojo behind the control panel.
“We’ll come back for you, Doctor.” Cain’s voice was hoarse and icy, filled with a determination that could not be questioned.
Hojo looked back at him and smiled with contempt.
“You’re welcome back anytime, my masterpiece.
Go on.
Show the world your power, then return to me.
Your fate is Reunion.” Cain said nothing else.
Supporting Zack with one arm, he used the demonic claw to blast through the laboratory’s layers of steel doors and forced a path out.
When they finally escaped the darkness of Shinra Manor and saw the sky again, both of them froze.
Outside was still Nibelheim, but it no longer looked anything like the place they remembered.
Grass and weeds had overrun the ruins of the village.
Everything looked desolate, as if the world had forgotten it long ago.
With Zack leaning heavily against him, Cain staggered toward a well, the same wishing well where he had once made his promise.
He looked down into the water and saw his reflection, a face both familiar and alien, and those eyes glowing with an inhuman green light.
He was no longer the simple strong boy from Nibelheim.
Hojo’s experiments, the Jenova cells, the mako corruption, and the demonic power he had carried since birth had remade him into something entirely new.
Something even he was afraid of.
“We’re…
free…” Zack muttered weakly, breathing hard as he leaned against him.
Cain looked down at his right hand, which had slowly returned to normal, though black traces still lingered beneath the skin.
There was not a trace of joy in him.
He had escaped one cage only to discover he had been locked inside a far larger one, a prison called fate.
His homecoming, his fall, his rebirth, all of it felt like a tragedy written long before he was ever born.
And he was only the miserable puppet on that stage, possessed at once by demon and god, unable to control even his own part in the story.