"You had to of known there would be an investigation into how the escaping targets got their hands on your bike," Tseng said as he shook his head, rubbing the bridge between his eyes. "The fact that you failed to report your bike was taken when you said that you lost the target in the first place makes it seem like you helped them escape, Cissnei."

Agent Cissnei sat in silence beneath the slowly turning ceiling fan and fluorescent light of the interrogation room, nestled deep within the Shinra Company's main building in Midgar. She was clad in the standard Turk uniform, a suit that was pressed and neat. Sitting ramrod-straight in the chair, she kept her brown-eyes on her hands rather than risk meeting Tseng's.

Tseng continued, pointing to the report on the table between them. "And now that they've found it abandoned en route to Midgar, Heidegger will be looking into the matter personally soon enough."

He was right, of course. Cissnei had given Zack her bike so that he could get away after seeing what had happened to the other target—the person who had escaped with him, Cloud. It was only a matter of time before it was found.

"You were also a member of Zack's fan-club, the one known as Black Suit," Tseng added. When her head snapped up in response, he frowned. "You didn't pick a better cover, and it didn't help that you were constantly visiting his parents while he was missing. Presented with these facts as evidence, you understand that Heidegger will see you as a traitor to the company."

"I… expected as much, sir," she said softly.

"Then you understand my options are—" Tseng was cut off when the door to the room abruptly opened. His eyes snapped up to see that there was a tall man, dressed in the standard black suit with the addition of black shades. "What is it, Rude?"

"A message was just sent out," he said. "The fugitives are en route to Midgar now."

Reno popped his head in through the door as well. "The chain of command is determining what level of force to meet them with, but I wouldn't bet on it being anything trivial since one's a First-Class SOLDIER."

"Why?" Cissnei whispered beneath her breath as Tseng followed the pair out the door. Why did he come back knowing the company was still coming after him? As strong as Zack was, even he couldn't take out that many armed soldiers. And the other person he was with had been comatose when she last saw him.

They don't deserve to die, she thought. Shinra raised her to be a Turk—to be loyal to the company and to act within its interests. She had always believed that, for all the questionable things they had done, the people were better off for it with the developments the company brought about.

But after seeing how Zack's parents grieved for their missing son, and how the experiments had left that infantryman comatose and robbed Zack of years of his life, she couldn't help but have doubts. Even if it caused problems later on, she wanted to save him. Somehow, someway, she just had to.

Cissnei made up her mind and left the room behind, heading to the helipads. If she caught one of the helicopters there, she would be able to start a search for the pair. One of the helicopters was already being started up by the time she arrived, and Tseng had chased her up the stairs onto the helipad.

"Cissnei!" he shouted. "The army's mobilizing. Find the targets before they do."

Find and eliminate, she interpreted. It made sense given Tseng was true Turk through and through. She turned to face him, a mask of compliance on her face. "Understood. The army won't be as subtle."

"I want them alive, you hear me?" Tseng added, once she no longer faced him. "You're going to save Zack's life."

Surprise dawned on her face, before she turned to face him. Cissnei brushed her hair behind her ear. "Of course. I haven't even told him my real name."

"Help them, Cissnei." Tseng said softly as she turned for the helicopter again. "I have letters for Zack. 88 of them."

She waved without looking at him, smiling while her back was to him. She was confident that if they acted fast enough, they could reach them in time.

[-oOo-]

Dark clouds lazily drifted above in the wasteland, broken rays of light touching down from above in patches. Corpses lay strewn across the muddy battlefield by the time that Cissnei had arrived, her helicopter coming to a stop across from the one Reno and Rude had taken. They had sent her a notice that they had found the targets, and now the pair stood in front of one corpse amidst the sea of blood and mud, separate from the rest and covered by a cloth.

Cissnei stepped off the helicopter and slowly approached them. Their expressions told her everything she needed to know, but she didn't want to believe it. Not until she saw it with her own eyes.

She crouched down and slowly peeled the cloth away. It was harder to do than she expected. It was almost as though the sheet was made out of metal, but that was simply her trembling fingers. Cissnei steadied them and forced the cloth down, confirming that it was indeed Zack's body.

A streak of dried blood covered one eye and trailed down to his chin. Looking at the wounds on his body and the holes found through the shirt and pants, additional bullets were fired into him after he'd fallen. It must have been painful… yet, despite all of that, he looked peaceful with a smile on his face.

"He went down fighting," Reno said as Cissnei fell to her knees and reached down touch his hand. "Judging by all the bodies, he took on a hell of a lot of guys before being put down. That's a First-Class SOLDIER for you."

Cissnei's eyes were covered by her curtain of red hair as tears trickled down onto the dried blood. Her hands trembled and her throat strained to hold back her cry. She wanted to save him, yet everything that she had done to help him get away only led him to his death here.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and then heard Rude speak. His glasses hid his eyes, but the somberness in his tone expressed his own emotions. "The other one is still alive."

"He is?" Cissnei turned her head to look up at him. Her normally brown eyes were reddened by the tears she had shed, glistening trails running down her cheeks. "Where is he?"

"I found him passed out not too far from here, with the sword in his hands," Rude said. "He looked unharmed, so I put him in the back of the chopper."

"Okay…." Cissnei wiped away her tears. "At… at least we can still do something here to save him. We should tell Tseng."

"I'll call it in," Reno said, fishing through his pockets for his phone. "Clean yourself up."

Cissnei nodded and gave Zack a parting glance. Goodbye Zack. I'll look after your parents like you asked, though I don't know how I'm going to tell them about this… and I'll look after your friend too.

She re-covered Zack's body with the cloth and stood up. Out of habit, she brushed her knees, but it only served to smear the mud around rather than clean it. There was nothing to be done about it, so she remained quiet as Reno talked on the phone with Tseng.

"…Understood," Reno said before hanging up the phone. He turned to Cissnei's helicopter and twirled his finger in the air before pointing to the direction of Midgard. It was a signal for it to head back. As the blades came to life, his red hair billowed in the wind while he faced Cissnei and Rude.

"He wants us to meet him at point 627 in two hours," he said loud enough to be heard over the distancing helicopter. "We're taking the body and the secondary target with us."

"…Understood," Cissnei said after a notable pause.

[-oOo-]

Point 627 was just outside the Junon Port.

Junon itself was a major installation to the Shinra Company. It acted as a secondary headquarters for the company, and served as the central office for the Vice President. It was also a major port as well, acting as a transportation hub for various reasons.

Cissnei waited in the back of the helicopter, sitting across from Cloud. He was currently as unconscious as she had seen him with Zack the last time he was alive. Zack's body was also there, stored further away within a body-bag.

Rude had been the one who placed Zack within it, and then inside of the helicopter as well. Cissnei assumed he had done it to spare her from doing so. Both he and Reno probably thought she was as fragile as glass and would break if they weren't careful. She hated to admit it, but that was the truth of the matter.

It was unbefitting of a Turk in all honesty. They were supposed to be agents of Shinra above all else, yet she was willing to defy them following her heart for what she believed was right. She had been raised with the knowledge of what she would have to do, and was warned not to get attached to any of the targets, yet here she was pining over the dead after doing so anyway.

"I wonder what they'll do to us," she said to the unconscious former infantryman. She'd helped Zack escape and lied to her superior to cover it up. Agents had been terminated for less and, given that the army was sent to execute Zack, they would probably do the same to Cloud if they got wind of his survival.

Two loud taps against the exterior of the helicopter grabbed her attention and denied her the chance to think on it further. Tseng had arrived. Cissnei closed her eyes and took a moment to prepare herself for whatever would happen next. Then she rose to her feet and exited the helicopter.

Tseng waited outside in front of a motorcycle with a sidecar attachment to it, a traveling bag inside of the sidecar. His face was an impassive mask as it always was, and his arms were crossed as he talked to Reno in a voice that was too low to hear. When he saw her out of the corner of his eyes, he turned to face her and gestured for Reno to move.

The red-haired Turk stuck his hands into his pocket and passed her on the ramp, heading inside. He muttered something about doing all the hard work, but Cissnei couldn't afford to give it further thought once she came to a stop directly in front of Tseng and stood at attention. "Sir?"

"You've failed in your mission," he said with his voice at an even temper. Unlike the others, he was the hardest to read by body language or speech. She couldn't pick up anything that would give away his thoughts.

Nevertheless, she couldn't deny he was right. "Yes sir. We arrived too late to save Za—one of the targets. The other, however, we managed to retrieve successfully and are awaiting further orders."

He extended his gloved hand, palm first. "Hand over your identification card."

Cissnei's mind blanked for a moment at the request. "Sir?"

"You heard me," he said. "Your card."

With great hesitation, she nodded and reached for the card she kept tucked safely within the inner-pocket of her jacket. Her brown-eyes rested on it in nostalgia for a moment, recalling the day she had received it. She had been the youngest to make the ranks of the Turks.

When she handed it over, Tseng snapped it in two without hesitation. The sound rang out like a death knell amidst the grass and trees. "As of this moment, the agent carrying the codename Cissnei no longer exists."

Her eyes snapped back from the two separate pieces of her identification card to him. "What do you mean?"

"I believe I told you that Heidegger would start an investigation and we're already near-fugitives ourselves," he said, folding his arms behind his back. "In addition, you have proven time and again to undermine our mission as members of the Shinra Corporation. Therefore, as of two hours ago, the agent formerly known as Cissnei was terminated and cremated, as per regulation when an agent is disposed of."

"He's basically giving you a clean way out," Reno chimed in with some strain. He was carrying Cloud in his arms. He came to a stop as he walked past her and gave her a glance that carried a notable sharpness to it. "The only way to leave the company and Turks reliably is in a body-bag. At least this way it's clean—I would have hated to have to take you out."

She knew he meant it. Reno had done some things on their missions that she hoped to never have to do. He would have done it, even if he didn't want to. She supposed that was a sharp contrast between them—had he been the one to run into Zack all those other times, they would have been captured a lot sooner on Tseng's orders.

"You've become a liability," Tseng said abruptly, nodding his head towards the motorcycle. The unconscious Cloud rested in the sidecar, with Reno stretching his back before heading back to the helicopter. "If I ordered you to kill him in order to redeem yourself, would you have been able to at this moment?"

Cissnei closed her eyes and gently shook her head to the side. What had Cloud done to warrant death on the orders of someone else? He had been held captive and experimented on by the company along with Zack for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "…I couldn't, sir. I'm sorry…."

Tseng stepped forward and handed Cissnei the keys to the motorcycle. "Arrangements have been made for both of you to take the Cargo ship discreetly. I put whatever assets I could into the bag. Go to Costa Del Sol and disappear."

She looked down to the keys as Tseng walked past her towards the helicopter. Her fingers wrapped around them tightly. There was still one thing she had to ask. "What about Zack's body?"

"We'll take his body and dispose of it," Tseng said, never breaking his stride. "It would be for the best…."

"I see." It was better than it being placed in a lab or desecrated. After everything that happened, and how she failed to save him in time, it was the only mercy that could be given to him now. "Thank you, sir."

Reno set the Buster Sword into the sidecar and then brushed his hands together. As he passed her, he gave her a pat on the shoulder. "Take care of yourself."

"You too." Cissnei reached up and touched his hand, nodding her head. "Tell the others that I'm sorry, and goodbye."

With that, she remained rooted to the spot as the helicopter started up and billowed waves of dust as the blades spun. There were tears in her eyes as she watched it climb into the air and then fly off into the sunset, out of her view and life. After practically being raised to be a Turk, now that she was kicked out she had nothing left.

Cissnei held back the tears and, somehow, managed not to buckle under the weight of uncertainty looming over her. She knew she was sacrificing everything to go and helped them the moment she gave Zack the keys to her motorcycle. There was no doubt in her mind that Zack had fought to keep Cloud unharmed against that much of the army's forces, sacrificing everything as well to keep him alive.

He was gone now, but she could pick up where he left off and help Cloud get better.

"That's right," she said to herself, brushing her hair back behind her ears as she thought of what she would do next. "I suppose I'll need to tell Zack's parents about this, and find some place to settle down so that I can help him recover. And then there's finding work without any former identification since I'm supposed to be dead, and it has to be someplace away from the company so they don't stumble across him while he's in convalescence…."

She mounted the bike and started the engine. It sputtered to life beneath her as she continued listing off the things she had to do set a path to the future for her. She would miss her old life, and her old friends, but there was too much for her to do.

She couldn't be weighed down by the memories if she wanted to press ahead, at least not yet.

[-oOo-]

Night had fallen by the time that Tseng made it to the crematorium. The smell of bones being turned to ash and the burning fat leaving greasy residue on his skin were both something he'd grown accustomed to. Nearly all Turks had to some point.

Their work involved assassinations more often than naught. And the easiest way to gain the compliance of someone who spoke out against the company was to kidnap their loved ones, kill them, and then destroy the body so that it could never be found again. Once they had gotten what they needed they disposed of that person as well.

In all cases, the bodies were brought here so that there was no evidence left behind. The same held true for when agents had fallen in duty and their bodies were retrieved. At present, the body of Zack Fair laid lifeless and pale on the steel slider leading into the cremation chamber.

Reno pressed a button on the control panel, activating the chamber and bringing the oven to life. He waited for it to reach the optimal temperature before addressing his superior. "It's fired up."

Tseng nodded and opened the case that contained all the letters that Aerith had written Zack since his disappearance—all eighty-eight of them. He took them all, bundled together with a rubber band, and laid them on top of the body. "Do it."

The red-haired Turk pressed another button and the steel slider slid into the oven and sealed the door shut. Through the window, Tseng watched as the letters burned along with the recipient in silence. Reno waited patiently against the wall, eyes closed as he drummed his fingers against his arm until his superior deigned to speak to him again.

It was a few more minutes before he did. "Reno, you are to take over monitoring the Ancient for the foreseeable future."

"Just monitoring?" he asked for confirmation.

Tseng nodded his head. "For now, yes. I'll be busy looking into a replacement for Cissnei. This time we someone who will be more dedicated to their position and the Turks. We can't have a repeat of this."