This idea has been spinning around with me for a few months. I'm only just getting to writing anything down.

Dedicated to everyone who has encouraged me, but specifically ReadingChick, Zaz, Yukiko, and Daemonesca. Also dedicated to Bri, Jay, Russ, Kat, and my advisers at school.

Necessary backstory for Silent Hill: It's a resort town of horrors that tends to change depending on the mindset of a given character.

Necessary backstory for FFVII: The Tsviets are a team of supersoldiers whose leader, Weiss, is dying.

I don't own either game, nor will I ever make money from them.

Memory of the Waters

70:40:11 remaining

The pressure had been immense, surely on no one moreso than Weiss. Each Tsviet was at a computer, save for Shelke, who was fully immersed in her SND equipment. All of them were united by a common goal, this time one that didn't result in bloodshed. This was to help, rather than to hurt. They only had a precious two days, twenty-two hours, and forty-minutes after all. After a solid hour spent in cyber space, with all the Tsviets gathered around her, Shelke had to remove her heavy, SND helmet and report: "Nothing. There is no data that I can access that will help us."

Weiss had been watching the screen on his monitor intently until Shelke said those words. "Absolutely nothing?"

"Nothing." Shelke set aside the helmet and reached for the water she had laid on the ground earlier. Shelke didn't usually do that, since there was no shortage of people willing to open the bottle prematurely and fry the system. Weiss' oncoming death was apparently safer for Shelke than any rules the Restrictors had put in place. "I am still waiting for our outsourced systems' data, but I doubt that there will be anything important inside those reports."

"Outsourced data," Rosso scoffed, examining the points of her gauntlets. Her expression gave one the impression that Rosso didn't particularly care for the data, and perhaps she didn't. Rosso cared about results, about the interpretation of Shelke's data, usually because it resulted in orders. Orders usually meant bloodshed, which Rosso could always get behind. The process of waiting for the call bored her usually, yet this was different. These results would decide the outcome of Weiss' life.

A squat machine stirred to life in the corner of the room and began spitting out paper. With Shelke being too exhausted to do anything but nurse her water bottle, Argent crossed the room and retrieved the reports. With each flipped page, the furrows in Argent's frown deepened. By the time she reached the bottom of the stack, Argent had composed her face into something more neutral. "It's as Shelke predicted. There is nothing."

"You're kidding." Nero got up from his terminal, retrieved the papers from Argent and began sifting through them himself. He read all the reports twice before handing them over to Weiss with a heavy sigh. Weiss took it in the laborious manner he would take a large bag of bricks.

"This can't be everything," he said. "We have more laboratories than this."

"I will make certain that all of the labs sent reports." Instead of taking the Net Dive for another run, Shelke sat at a regular terminal. She slumped over the keys slightly, but remained upright. Soon, there was nothing but furious typing. Shelke read the names of places that had reported out loud. They were places that no one could glean anything from, least of all the three who had been born in DeepGround. For example Costa De Sol represented sunny beaches Argent and Azul, who had been there once each. For Shelke, it brought up vague memories from something that might have been a dream. Weiss, Nero, and Rosso only knew that there were beaches there from reading about it.

"That's all of our la—" Shelke cut herself off, staring in puzzlement at one city that had popped up on the list. It was significant for two reasons. One was that Shelke had never heard of a place called Silent Hill. Another was that it was the one city had not given Shelke any kind of data regarding Weiss' condition. The puzzling thing was that Shelke had never seen the name in any of her previous searches. To withhold the information on the basis that it was suspect could be considered treason. "I believe I have located something of interest. One location has not reported back to us, due to what appears to be a faulty connection."

"Which one?"

"Silent Hill."

There was a sudden flurry of keystrokes as everyone began running through databases, searching for all the information they could ever find about Silent Hill. As they found information, they reported verbally, in fragments: Scarcely a city, more akin to a town; an old resort town; near a lake, Toluca Lake; several fires, but a quaint place in the pictures. There were two hospitals, a penitentiary, and an asylum that could possibly have Weiss' data. Alchemilla hospital didn't have a computer system, and the penitentiary would not do scientific research. It was down to Brookhaven Hospital or Cedar Grove Sanitarium.

After some silence, Nero was the only one with the mettle to ask, "Weiss?"

"We don't have any other options." Weiss stood and leaned against one of the terminals. "One of those places has our data, and it's just a matter of our retrieving it. We can repair their system and retrieve the data from here. If not, there should be hard copies of the data laying around and we can take that, just to be certain. We leave in one hour. Prepare accordingly."

"Hail Weiss," Azul murmured, more in reverence than anything else. He left the room, presumably to secure transportation for the journey.

"Hail Weiss," Nero, Argent, and Rosso echoed. Shelke continued to nurse her water before responding with her call. One by one, the Tsviets left the room, eventually leaving Shelke to herself, still sipping on water. On the screen that Rosso had been reading from, the phrase Silent Hill in black text on the white screen stuck out to Shelke, the only dark entity in a world of light. Shelke, though not a believer in omens (how could she be after DeepGround?), couldn't help but darkly reflect that the trip to Silent Hill might be the last thing they ever did.

69:40:43 remaining

Their plan was a simple one. Commandeer a helicopter and fly out to Silent Hill, a trip that would take easily twelve hours. Shelke insisted that the trip would take maybe nine with her modifications to the vehicle. She had also wired it to auto-pilot to their destination before promptly passing out in the smallest corner of the cockpit. Since their trip did not require a window, the helicopter did not have one. There was no need for it, and Rosso mourned the lack. She was determined to see the sky, keeping that goal glowing on the horizon of her mission. Azul was the next to trudge in, carrying an ammunition box with him. He sat across from Rosso, diagonal from Shelke, and stared into the blank space above Rosso's head. He did not move. The last three entered finally, each taking seats that their comrades had left. Everyone's weapons made small, clacking noises against the helicopter's interior, as well as the blades of others.

"Rest up," Weiss advised, putting a parachute on as a safety precaution. Everyone else followed his example, as was typical. "I understand that the past few days have been…" He struggled for the word, but only for a moment. The moment it took to realize that "overwhelming" was an insult to their skills and "stressful" didn't exist. "Difficult," he finished. "We have ten hours. Make the most of them."

One by one, they dropped off to sleep. They were super-soldiers, perfection in motion. They were killing machines, either born and bred or found and made, but they were still living weapons. They were also humans.

59:58:07 remaining

Weiss had only meant to sleep for maybe five hours, but there had been something exhausting him into sleeping double that time. Ever since the final Restrictor's death, there had been something peculiar. He had assumed it was the virus, making him feel as though he shouldered an enormous burden, but there was little data to suggest any psychosomatic symptoms came with the disease that would kill him in less than three days.

The thing that woke Weiss up was noise. The control panel had begun furiously beeping. It was an indication of losing altitude. Nero was faster than Weiss was, scrambling to the door and flinging it open. He grabbed onto the top rim of the door, prompting Weiss to run over and secure him as a spotter. With Weiss carefully holding onto his waist, Nero gingerly raised his head over the roof to see the propellers. Weiss guided Nero's body back into the security of the room. His brother's face was spattered with blood, sending Weiss' pulse sky-rocketing. Thankfully, Nero's face didn't show any pain, only grimness. The blood wasn't his.

"There's something caught in the blades," he reported. "We need to jump."

Shelke's stomach nearly fell out of her at the word "jump." One of the few benefits of DeepGround had been that all heights were either simulated by computers or man-made. Shelke rarely had to deal with them herself, since she almost never went on field missions in the first place. Jumping out of a helicopter into unknown territory was neither a simulation nor a man-made test that others had passed before her. This was real, more real than anything. The fog that rose and consumed them was real, blocking the ground, sky, and horizon from view. Dread built up into Shelke's body as she watched Argent, Azul, and Rosso jump out into the void. She was next, followed by Nero and Weiss.

"Jump!" Nero hissed.

Shelke hesitated, edging backwards. "I—"

The fog came closer than Shelke had ever wanted as she was thrust forward into it. Suddenly, she was falling through the whiteness. Deepground had beaten the instinct to cry out, but Shelke could still feel a scream building in her, crawling sickly up through her throat and clawing its way between her lips.

-END CHAPTER 1-

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