Vincent stood in the doorway of the lab and watched as Lucrecia carefully moved sheets of paper from one stack to another. He frowned and walked up behind her.
“You’ve been doing this for a week, Lu. You must have found eveything worth keeping by now,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “You’re working way too hard on this.”
She shook her head. “The way that man filed? I’ll be lucky if I’m done in a month. He had four separate systems of organization.”
“This is ridiculous. I thought you said he was a hack. What does he have that’s so valuable then?”
“Not a hack, Vincent. A quack,” Lucrecia snapped.
Vincent rolled his eyes. “There’s a difference?”
“Hacks are useless, quacks are so crazy they occassionally make sense.”
Before Vincent could answer, a loud crack echoed down the hall.
“Fuck.”
“Do you really have to swear all the time, Vincent?”
“Yes. Yes I do,” he glared at her.
“Stop that. I’m going to check on him.”
“Check on him? You told me you shot him up with enough tranquilizer to kill a whole unit of SOLDIERs! There shouldn’t be anything to check on!”
“It was an experiment, Vincent. You can’t ever be sure.”
He shook his head. “You people and your experiments. I don’t know how you stand not knowing anything for sure. My job’s nice and simple. You shoot it, it dies. That’s how it works.”
Lucrecia snorted. “You shot him and he’s not dead.”
“That was your idea, my brilliant wife,” Vincent said, nearly yelling. “You were the one who thought we needed to save him or some bullshit like that. I wanted to shoot him in the head and be done with it!”
“Well, now he’s a liability.”
“A liability you created,” he glared. “I could still walk away from this.”
Lucrecia’s tone softened. “Oh, Vinny, don’t talk like that. I was just scared, I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m sorry, Vinny, please…”
He sighed. “I’ll check on him. You finish this graverobbing so we can get out of this damn house.” Lucrecia nodded and he stepped out of the lab and down the hall.
Vincent drew his handgun and leaned against the door. He didn’t hear anything, so he turned the key slowly in the lock and let the door swing open.
“Lu?” came a quiet voice from inside the room.
“Hojo? Fuck,” Vincent answered, stepping inside with his gun still drawn. He trained it on Hojo as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“Vincent? What’s going on, Vincent? It’s cold down here and I think I lost my pants. Did I get drunk again?” He sounded as annoyed as he always did, but Vincent thought there was an undertone there of something else. It might even be fear.
“Something like that, Hojo. Something like you pulling a gun on Lucrecia,” Vincent glared, trying not to feel sorry for the man.
“Oh, that,” he answered offhandedly, as if Vincent were complaining about him leaving a dirty dish in the lab. “She simply wouldn’t listen. You know how she gets. Now would you please get me some pants?”
“You’re staying in here now, Hojo. You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“In here? It’s drafty. Don’t be ridiculous,” Hojo said, standing up.
“You move again and I’ll fucking shoot you,” Vincent threatened.
“Stop playing around. How much work have I missed? A day? Two?”
“You were declared legally dead a month ago,” the Turk answered.
“What?”
“I shot you. Lucrecia tried to save your life with that ‘limit breaking’ crap of yours and you mutated so we tried to put you down. She’s used more tranquilizer on you in the last month than the Science Department usually goes through in a year, apparently.”
“But I’m not dead,” Hojo said simply. He was hoping to ignore the rest of what Vincent had said until he could rationally process it.
“We told everybody you tried to experiment on yourself and you were dead. You looked dead. Gast did the paperwork.”
“So you’re just going to leave me down here?” Hojo demanded, incredulous.
Vincent nodded. “That was the plan, yes.”
“You son of a bitch,” Hojo growled, stepping out of the coffin they’d laid him in. Vincent didn’t hesitate. He fired two shots, Turk style, one in the head and one in the chest, aiming for the heart. Hojo fell, naked and bleeding, on the stone floor.
“Vincent! Are you okay?” Lucrecia shouted from the hallway.
“Yeah. Just taking care of the problem.”
“You shot him?” she squeaked. “Oh god, Vinny, get out of there!”
“Why, what’s his corpse gonna–” Then he heard the growling. Lucrecia was screaming something about reaction times and trauma triggers, but Vincent didn’t wait for the lecture or to see the monster for a second time. He ran without looking back and slammed the door behind him.
Lucrecia was staring at him with wide eyes, fussing over him as she locked the door. “Come back to the lab, let me take care of you.”
“Take care of me?” Vincent asked as he stepped away from the door. He felt a chill on his back and had time to wonder what it was before the stinging set in.
“I need to clean these out,” she said, inspecting the claw rakes down his back, “and you’ll need a fresh shirt and jacket. You’re lucky, they’re not too deep.”
Vincent was shaking, and as he realized it, he hated himself for it. “I shot him. I shot him in the head.”
“I know, shh. I know.” Lucrecia ruffled his hair.
“I saw brain. On the floor. You don’t get up from that.”
“Vin, honey…” She didn’t know what to say, so she pulled his ruined clothing off and used a clean cloth to stop the bleeding.
“It just doesn’t work that way. Even a cure materia can’t do that,” Vincent continued.
“Apparently it does work that way, because you just watched it happen,” she said coldly, tired of reassuring him. What did he want her to say? They could both hear the scratching against the door down the hall, plain as day. Lucrecia thanked whatever gods might hear her that Hojo in his paranoia had seen fit to equip the basement with metal doors.
Vincent looked at her, and she at him, and they both went back to packing, ignoring the scratching and the screaming that followed.
