The ruins of Nibelheim gradually disappeared behind them, replaced by a wilderness that seemed to stretch forever.
For two people who had only just escaped hell, the air of freedom was anything but sweet.
It was filled instead with bitterness and uncertainty.
Cain supported Zack as they stumbled along the rough dirt road.
The aftereffects of mako poisoning showed clearly in Zack.
Most of the time, his mind was hazy, and his body was so weak that even a few steps left him gasping for breath.
Cain, on the other hand, had been transformed by both Jenova cells and demonic power into something far tougher than human, but the burden on his mind was immense.
He found himself looking down at his right hand again and again.
Most of the time, the arm looked no different from anyone else’s, aside from the faint black lines moving beneath the skin.
But he knew what slept under that thin layer of flesh.
Hojo’s experiments had branded themselves onto his soul forever.
He was no longer simply Cain.
He was Test Subject C, a monster infused with Jenova cells and inhabited by demonic power.
“Hey…
Cain…” Zack’s weak voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
“I’m here.” Cain answered at once, slowing his steps.
“Where…
are we going?” Cain fell silent.
He did not know.
Back to Nibelheim?
It was nothing but scorched ruins now.
To find Tifa?
In his current state, all he would bring her was greater fear and greater disaster.
He did not even dare let himself think too hard about whether she was still alive.
The moment that thought surfaced, it brought enough pain to rip him apart.
“Midgar,” Zack said, as if he could see straight through Cain’s confusion.
He forced the words out with all the strength he had.
“We’re going…
there…
My Aerith is there…” Aerith.
When Zack said her name, his voice was full of an almost boundless tenderness and longing.
It was the first time Cain had ever heard him say it, and it made him realize that this man who always laughed and joked also had someone he would risk everything to protect.
“All right.
We’re going to Midgar.” Cain nodded.
Having an actual destination gave his chaotic thoughts somewhere to rest.
Their escape was brutally difficult.
They were fugitives from Shinra, and they had to constantly avoid patrols, soldiers, and aircraft.
During the day, they hid in caves or abandoned buildings.
They only dared travel at night.
Food and water were their biggest problem.
More than once, Cain had to rely on his inhuman strength to hunt mutated beasts in the wasteland and fill their stomachs in the most primitive way possible.
Zack’s condition rose and fell unpredictably.
Whenever he was lucid, he would tell Cain stories about SOLDIER, about Midgar’s sprawling lights, and about the flower girl named Aerith.
“You know, Cain,” Zack said during one rest, leaning against a rock wall as he looked up at the moon, “my dream is to become a hero.
Not the kind of hero Shinra talks about, way up above everyone else, but the kind who helps anybody in trouble, the kind of jack-of-all-trades hero people can rely on.” Cain listened in silence.
Hero.
To him, the word felt both distant and bitterly ironic.
He had once dreamed of becoming a hero too.
Instead, he had become a monster.
“What about you?” Zack turned his head and looked at him.
“What’s your dream?” Cain’s body stiffened.
Tifa’s smiling face by the wishing well rose in his mind.
“I…” He opened his mouth, his voice hoarse.
“I want…
to protect someone.” “Then do it.” Zack smiled, even if the expression looked weak on his pale face.
“If you’ve got a dream, you can’t give up on it.
A person needs a dream to keep going.” The words fell into the dead stillness of Cain’s heart like a stone into a frozen lake.
After weeks on the run, luck finally turned in their favor.
They managed to hitch a ride on a cargo truck headed for Midgar.
The driver was a kind older man.
Seeing the two of them exhausted and half-dead on their feet, he let them hide in the back with the cargo.
That brief stretch of safety let them both breathe a little easier.
As the truck rattled down the road, Zack’s spirits seemed better than they had been in a long time.
“When we get to Midgar, I’ll take you to meet Aerith.
Her flowers are the prettiest in the whole world.” Zack spoke eagerly, already planning it all out.
“Then we’ll open our own little odd-jobs shop.
You’re strong, so you can do the heavy lifting and bodyguard work.
I’ll handle the customers and drum up business.
How’s that sound?” Looking at the light in Zack’s eyes, Cain felt a warmth stir inside him.
For the first time, he thought maybe the future was not entirely dark.
But fate never gave anyone time to breathe.
The truck was stopped on the highway cutting through the wasteland by several Shinra military vehicles.
The harsh screech of brakes and the barked orders of soldiers yanked them out of their brief dream and back into reality.
“Everyone in the truck, get out!” Cain’s heart dropped instantly.
Through a crack in the cargo compartment, he could see at least a dozen fully armed Shinra soldiers outside, their gun barrels already pointed straight at them.
“Damn…
they found us…” Zack struggled to sit up, but his body refused to cooperate.
“Stay here.
Don’t move.” Cain pressed him back down, his voice low and steady.
“No!
Cain, there are too many of them!
You…” “I can handle it.” Cain cut him off.
He looked down at his right hand as that familiar, alien power began to stir in his blood once again.
He feared it.
But he feared losing the only friend he had left even more.
He shoved open the cargo door and jumped down, exposing himself to every rifle trained on him.
“Test Subject C!
Surrender now!” the officer in charge shouted.
Cain ignored him.
He only slowly raised his right arm.
Blue-green light began to flicker.
Black markings spread across the arm like living things.
“Open fire!” At the officer’s command, a storm of bullets erupted at once, weaving together into a sheet of gunfire aimed straight at Cain.
The instant before the bullets struck, Cain moved.
His body blurred into a streak so fast it went beyond human sight.
Every bullet missed, hammering into the truck instead and sending up showers of sparks.
The next second, he was already inside the soldiers’ formation.
He had no weapon.
No technique.
Only pure, primal violence.
His demonic arm became the deadliest weapon on the field.
Every swing tore through the air with a savage howl.
The soldiers’ armor ripped apart like paper beneath his claws.
Their rifles were crushed into useless scrap with a casual squeeze.
It was not a battle.
It was a massacre carried out from one side alone.
There was no anger in Cain’s eyes, no satisfaction, only a cold, empty void.
He moved like a machine built only for killing, clearing out one target after another with brutal efficiency.
He could feel the Jenova cells inside him shrieking with the hunger to slaughter.
He could feel the demonic power pushing him toward unrestrained violence.
But with the last shreds of his reason, he kept that power confined to one purpose, eliminating the threat, without letting it devour him completely.
From inside the truck, Zack saw everything through the crack in the wall.
What he saw was not a comrade.
It was a dark god dancing through slaughter.
The sight filled him with shock, but even more than that, it filled him with worry and pain.
A few minutes later, it was over.
Every soldier lay on the ground, no longer able to threaten them.
Cain stood in the middle of the wreckage, covered in other people’s blood.
He lowered his head and stared at the right arm still flashing with that ominous light, his body trembling slightly.
“I…
did it again…” “Nice work, Cain.” Zack’s voice came from behind him.
At some point, he had climbed down from the truck and was leaning weakly against the open door, a faint but relieved smile on his face.
“Aren’t I…
a monster?” Cain’s voice was thick with self-loathing.
“No.” Zack shook his head, his eyes more serious than Cain had ever seen them.
“I saw it.
You kept it under control.
It didn’t swallow you.
Cain, power itself isn’t good or evil.
What matters is the heart of the person using it.” Those words shone into the darkest corner of Cain’s heart like a beam of light.
“Your strength exists to protect,” Zack said slowly and clearly.
The words overlapped perfectly with what Tifa had once told him years ago.
Cain jerked his head up and looked at Zack.
“So…
hold your head up.” Zack reached out a hand to him, though it shook without stopping.
“Carry my dream too.
Live on for both of us, and become a hero.” Cain looked at the hand Zack was offering him, then at his own, stained with blood and twisted by mutation.
He hesitated for a moment.
Then he reached out and took Zack’s hand.
One hand was weak, but warm.
The other was powerful, but cold.
In that moment, Cain was no longer lost.
He accepted this cursed body.
He accepted this crushing power.
Maybe he would never become the kind of hero Zack imagined, the kind who walked in the sunlight.
But he could become a guardian in the dark.
For Tifa.
And for Zack.
“Come on.” Cain caught Zack before he could collapse, helping him back into the truck.
“Let’s get to Midgar.
I’ll make your dream happen.” The truck started moving again, rolling over blood and corpses as it pushed onward toward the steel city in the distance.
Beneath its wheels, the road of their escape stretched on.
Inside its cargo hold, one dream had been passed from one person to another, and a monster’s search for redemption had quietly begun.