The Marked - Chapter One

A newborn baby was wailing.

The sound didn't fit. It was wrong, a disturbance to the orderly regularity of the gray, solemn, dignified establishment. The inhabitants of the science department at Shinra continued with their various tasks, moving fluidly from here to there, transporting data or equipment, making dry small talk about the weather, as they always did; day in, day out, every day of every week of every month of every year…

But not one, from the interns to the professors, could deny that their hair was on end, an electric shock running up their spines, making them stand a little taller. There was a chill in the room, an unnatural sensation that was perceived as coldness, but in all actuality might have been something else; anticipation, or a spectral premonition of fear…

The child created of the mysterious and sinister Jenova Project had been born.

The sound couldn't have been as loud as it was perceived; such a thing would be impossible from such tiny lungs. And yet it ricocheted against the sterile tile, louder and louder as an echo, perhaps not literally in volume, but for the abnormality of the sound. It loomed omnipresent, overpowering, chilling to the marrow of the bone.

No one would admit that their hearts were trembling, melting with sympathy, and so they continued on in cold regularity despite the cries, few caring enough to help, and those that were kept from action by the promise of trouble from the father, or worse, the child itself.

There were only two who dared to gossip about this abnormality: one, a young intern named Lavina, who was not possibly older than twenty, with earthen brown hair and vibrant spring-green eyes framed by thin, modest oval glasses. She had stumbled in late for work and was confused by her surroundings. On the one hand, her eyes told her it was business as usual. Nothing had changed from yesterday. Doctors walked the halls in pressed white laboratory coats, stiff and tall, going about their research business, just as they always did. Carts were pushed from here to there and back again.

But her ears rang in alarm. This was cruelty! Would no one step forth on behalf of the suffering child?

"What's going on?" Lavina asked.

None of the doctors would answer. Most shrugged at her and continued on their way, flipping through clipboards and discussing with other doctors. One even said, "What noise?"

Were they all deaf?

Lavina eventually went to Adira, a fellow intern who was just punching in her time card. She was the gossip of the research department. If she wouldn't speak, no one would.

"Adira," Lavina implored. "What's a baby doing in the research labs?"

Adira looked up from her time card, thrusting it into her lab coat without regard to how it crumpled. She frowned, looking as if she was just now realizing it. "My guess is that Dr. Crescent's little monster has finally arrived."

Lavina waited in silence, waiting for Adira to continue.

"Look, no one's surprised. The thing's due. Overdue. Had to come sooner or later."

"Well what is it doing in the labs?" Lavina pressed. "This is no place for a birth!"

Adira shrugged. "It's the spawn of science. I actually think it's quite appropriate."

Lavina swallowed her retort, forced her tone to be casual. "Well, that's…exciting. Dr. Crescent is probably very happy. Is it a boy or a girl?"

Adira tilted her had back and laughed sardonically, an odd disapproving discord against the baby's pleading cries. "Boy or girl?" she spat hatefully. "The thing probably isn't even human!"

But, human or not, the infant was in pain. Its cries were melting Lavina's heart, and she ached for the child. These were no newborn squalls of discomfort, but of genuine hurt or fear.

"Who's caring for it?" she asked quietly.

She shrugged casually. "Probably Hojo." She sobered a little, contemplating more on what she had just said. "I don't pity the thing…"

"Won't anyone help it?"

"It's a monster, Lavina. What don't you get about that? It'll probably bite your head off or something. It's a freak, an abomination, a spawn of the Jenova Project. It exists only to aid Hojo's research. I wouldn't sympathize with it."

Lavina couldn't bring herself to believe it. Those cries were of a suffering infant, not a monster.

"You're stupid to even think of it," Adira said, sensing Lavina's growing resolve to act.

"Come with me?" Lavina asked fearfully. Truth be told, she was terrified herself.

"Not for all of Gaia. You go yourself." Adira coldly walked away, joining the others in their stubborn denial of the heartbreaking wails.

Lavina stood stunned. Was she the only one in Shinra, or even all of Gaia, to care?

As her feet carried her closer to the child without her consent, she tried to name all the reasons why it shouldn't matter to her. First, it most certainly wasn't herchild, or even tied to her by family bloodlines or friendships. She had an aversion to infants resulting from the time she had accidently dropped her three-week old infant niece. Babies had always tended to distrust her anyway, even before that. She probably wouldn't be able to do the slightest degree of good for the poor thing, and Hojo would be furious when or if he found her meddling with his long awaited, perfect specimen.

Maybe Adira and all the other Shinra staff were right. Maybe the child was a monster.

She arrived at the threshold to Hojo's laboratory without really realizing that she had been instinctively drawn there. She was shocked to find her hand on the doorknob, and even more startled when it turned without her exerting any force on it. Quickly, she ducked to the side just as the door was ripped open from the inside.

"No…No!Hojo you can't…stop it! Stop it, please….give me my son!"

"Get her out of here, she's clearly lost her senses."

"No! Give me my son…let me hold him…please, just once!"

Six or seven smartly dressed Turks came out the door, paying no heed to Lavina, who cowered behind the open door. Between them was dragged a brunette woman in a hospital gown, struggling against the hands that held her, not even afraid of the guns they sometimes pressed to her temple or throat.

It froze Lavina's blood to see the kind, gentle Dr. Crescent so desperate, so torn and beaten. Her hair was disheveled, her face without the soft rose tint of life, so milky pale and transparent that she might have been an animated cadaver. Tears streamed from her dead eyes, the only spark behind the amber depths fueled by sheer desperation. Her hands, trembling, reached out toward the room, grappling thin air as she choked in her shallow breaths. She was too weak to support herself, and was dragged roughly and without consideration for her condition. Still, she fought against the strong hands that seized her with every last spark of life she had in her dying body, and would fight until the Turks disposed of her or she was spent of her life's energy.

Lavina stayed hidden by the door, frozen, only able to watch as Lucrecia was carried away, knowing that she would be disposed of now that she had completed her sole task of carrying and bearing the child of the Jenova Project. Now, she was useless, and would be discarded as a broken tool that had outlived its purpose.

Lucrecia knew this, Lavina saw it in her eyes, and yet she did not plead for her life, only asked to hold her tiny son once before she went to meet her fate.

The woman looked through her veil of matted hair to meet Lavina's eyes directly. Lavina didn't breathe, worried that perhaps the woman would betray her to the Turks.

Instead, she left Lavina with one last broken plea.

"Please…my son…save my son…"

The Turks paid no attention to who their captive was addressing, probably thinking her too far gone in the fires of insanity and delirium to be salvaged, or else that she was calling to her coworkers who moved monotonously around her. None of the other doctors paid any heed to the woman or the Turks who dragged her away, not even sparing her a sympathetic glance. Perhaps, to those whom she had known and worked with, she had been dead ever since she had conceived the fated child.

"Please," she cried as she disappeared from Lavina's view. "Save him!"

Lavina, unable to deny this woman her final request, nodded despite herself.

Lucrecia closed her eyes in release.

Lavina didn't know whether to take that as a sign of her surrender to looming death or not.

Professor Hojo stormed out next, at first seeming to follow hot on the trail of the Turks, but then turned, disappearing into the supply room, chuckling darkly, his beady black eyes glimmering with sadistic anticipation of plans and hypothesis that he could now test on the baby.

Lavina's hand gripped the door to the laboratory before it could swing closed and lock after the Professor's exit.

Inside, the product of the Jenova Project still cried in pain and fear.

It was a call that Lavina could no longer resist.

A/N: And so begins The Marked.

I will try my best to document my own ideas of what Sephiroth's childhood, adolescence, and young-adulthood were like and still make it compatible with the games (Crisis Core, Before Crisis, Last Order, etc.) although I feel it fair to warn you that I have not played any of them. (Though I do have Advent Children and am familiar with all the cutscenes of CC) Yes, I will include characters such as Angeal and Genesis (but I have to get there first!).

This story was meant to be a prequel to my other story, Broken Wings, but you will be able to read it independently. The only way this will tie to my other works is my OC Aralyn, who will emerge in a few chapters here.