Like clockwork… You return right back to where you started. No, not there. Right here. Where? That’s right: the top of a train, motherfucker! High-speed wind rustling past you, hair and baggy pants flapping as you struggle to hold on—how exciting!

  But is that you? And is that here and now? Let’s take a moment to break this down.

  As has been established, “you” are Cloud Strife. “You” were a goon for the Shinra Electric Power Company, but now aren’t. “You” have the bona fides of a member of the since-discontinued SOLDIER program. And “you” encountered a severe case of mako poisoning.

  Maybe it wasn’t bad. Maybe you will recover. But the screws holding the tapestry of your memories together have come loose, and you may not get them back together again. So… are you really “you”? Can you be confident in that? There’s always the chance the mako in your body destroys you. It could be cracking up and rupturing your DNA right now. Chewing on the wires of your nervous system… killing your blood cells… seeping inside your organs… making itself at home inside you, and forcing you to crave for more of that delicious green poison lest it shrivel up and melt your viscera until your digestive system dies and can’t process food anymore, and your lungs burst and suffocate you with your own blood.

  That’s a joke, of course. The mind is always the first to go when the mako starts killing you; you’ll be braindead well before any of that happens. Think about it: you, for weeks and months, deteriorating slowly, your head experiencing the worst pain it has ever known day after day after day, getting worse with each one and never easing for a moment, leaving you so diminished you forget how to speak and lose everybody that you know, until the unspeakable agonizing meltdown finally cuts the lights out—and everything that made you you is gone. Just like that. And then, if they’re cruel enough to keep your body on life support, all of your organs will wither and burst.

  Where were we? You’re standing on top of a train. Don’t get distracted.

  Except for… what’s this sky? What’s this lighting? Congratulations, Cloud, it seems you’ve caught a train to the upper city. Exhilarating, isn’t it? You might be able to see the sunlight if it weren’t for there not being any because it’s nighttime. There would be a vibrant sky of stars in its place for you to take in, if all that delicious smog wasn’t in the way. Do the stars truly exist if they can’t be seen?

  The wind is refreshing, even if you have to cling to the front of a 55-mph train car to receive it. You pass under and through the middle of dark residential areas and industrial zones, and catch the briefest flashes of glow from streetlamps on your skin. But unlike the undercity, those ugly and humid green mako lights are featured less prominently.

  It’s so boring when the city is blanketed in a static wash of light from the sun; it’s much more interesting in this dotted and discriminatory landscape. Small lights with small ranges, placed just far apart to leave chasms of darkness in between them. You can’t just be anywhere out here and see what’s in front of you; all you can see is what the lights allow you to.

  Beautiful disproportion. Even the houses, owned by the company and its owners employed to it. Every piece of the environment is controlled, calculated. Even you. This is the place where it happens. Mako pumped straight from the earth in eight open wounds and siphoned into all public infrastructure—the people dependent on the planet’s bleeding out when they didn’t used to be.

  It’s the most perfect lie ever sold. You can’t believe it’s not yours. But a speeding train, the gusts of wind parting way for you as you pass through the city, the rapid blips of light and darkness on your face, and an unfamiliar identity by the title “Cloud Strife”—these are yours. And now fiery doom will meet a mako reactor and plate sector, at nobody else’s hand. Yes indeed—welcome to Midgar.

  The one and only Cloud Strife. The ex-SOLDIER. It was starting to come together. Maybe it’s been a few days, a few weeks. He could have been hibernating for decades, and still wouldn’t know yet. Recovery has been slow—assuming there has been recovery.

  He almost got lost in the calm consistent noise of the train he was held onto, and could have loosened his grip to lean back and take in the scenery. But once the irritating clatter of its rusting wheels reached his ears, he couldn’t shake it out. So his fingers dug into the front of the train car harder, his head hurt deeper, and he waited anxiously for the ride to come to a stop.

  He could also have jumped off. He remembers fondly jumping off of that tenements building, and wishes he could do it again. He’s learning how fun it is to make dangerous jumps off of high places while holding onto his sword. But in that moment, the sound of the wheels is too grating to focus on anything else.

  He wondered what kind of train this was. Passenger, supply? There were a few cars ahead of him, and he could spot a couple behind him from the best angle to look backwards he could manage. But there was no way to see inside any of the cars, so he abandoned the question.

  The screeching of the brakes snaps him out of his nauseating hypnosis. The wheels being scraped against is far more pleasant to hear than them spinning like normal.

  It was coming up to meet an empty station. The tracks past it led into a tunnel, signaling either another sector or a track line leading outside of Midgar. Either way, it was coming to a stop where it shouldn’t have at this hour.

  It was impossible not to notice inside the station building. Cloud stayed camped in the dark above while two guards from the low end of Shinra’s Public Security Division come outside to inspect the unexpected cars under bright green lamp light. The red jackets and clunky red hats made them look like bellhops with batons.

  One rushed to the head of the train and shouted, “Hey! What’s goin’ on?”

  A man jumped out from between cars behind him, kicked his knees out, and cracked his head into the train handrail. The other guard was alerted and started running to help, until a woman jumped out in front of him, kicked his stomach in, threw him against the building wall—and a silenced submachine gun quickfire to the dome shot his lights out.

  Did Cloud remember what any of this was? Maybe.

  The man had an inconspicuous olive green shirt and shorts, and the woman wore a metal chestplate over a blue shirt and the same green shorts, both wearing red headbands. Short and spiky hair, and high-set ponytail respectively. Interesting. They had an air about them he could only classify as “scruffed.” Natives of the undercity scrapyards it seems, here to submit their due to the privileged factory serfs of the upper plate. What nobles.

  Another man jumped out from the train, with no station guard of his to dispatch—which is just as well because he didn’t seem like… the athletic type. The other two were relatively slender and fit. This one was the opposite—with a small arsenal of guns on his back to compensate. He had a beige shirt, metal shoulder pads, a red bandana with a fair amount of hair coming out under it, and a bandolier.

  But most interestingly, the door beneath Cloud slid open, and a gigantic weight stepped out, bouncing the train car. Not a testament to the stability of the train car. But that giant was a person—an inhumanly large seven-foot-tall person. Every proportion of his body was expanded except for the head—broad shoulders, arm muscles at least three times the size of the average person, tree trunk legs, and hands and feet that were too big.

  Except one of his hands wasn’t a hand at all. A whole forearm was a cylinder of metal, and in the dim lighting Cloud caught of a glimpse of minigun barrels protruding out. A full rotary firearm was grafted into his arm. On top of that, shades, a black buzz cut, a trimmed beard, a sleeveless brown jacket over bulletproof chest armor, and a large satchel over his shoulder. It was almost baffling at its audacity. Nobody’s look has ever singlehandedly screamed bad news like this one.

  The four of them started running down the platform, until the gun-armed giant stopped and turned to look directly at Cloud. His gruff voice ordered, “Get down here, merc.”

  Ah, right. Mercenary Cloud. That made sense.

  Cloud leaped over the edge and crashed down just as satisfyingly as before, his feet skidding across the concrete. The three grunts ahead turned into the station, while the gun arm kept staring at him for a moment. It was more an analytical stare than an expectant one, so Cloud opted to walk past him, and the station guard with his brains plastered on the wall. Then the man stopped staring, and ran ahead.

  Two MPs from Public Security came rushing out of the station, somehow missing the three who just entered, and saw the knocked out guard closest to them who got his head cracked. While they’re looking away, the gun arm quickly jumped into hiding between train cars and says to Cloud, “You’re up.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He remembered the MP outfits. It was the same thing they gave to all throwaway infantrymen, only with a different color scheme. The cheap and clunky blue helmets with visors that are too far away from your eyes to use properly; the cheap dark blue fatigues with a bunch of pockets that rub against your skin inside and cause untold irritation; the cheap white pads on the shoulders and knees; the baton attached to a cheap belt wrapped around your thigh; the cheap neckerchief that served about as much purpose as a karate belt—they spared no expense making you feel like a faceless company subordinate meant to follow instructions.

  The two faceless MPs ahead of him, armed with assault rifles, turned to him, a shadowy figure with a giant sword. About 50 feet between them. The task seemed easy enough.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?!”

  Some U-boat carts with bins loaded on them were lined up by the wall. Cloud pulled one of the metal racks out of it and launched it at them before they could realize they were being attacked. It slammed both of them flat on their backs, and Cloud came sprinting.

  He jumped, kicked off of the train midair, and the buster sword smashed through the left trooper’s chest. A desperate gasp of air made it out of his mouth to express pain while his lungs were chopped open.

  The second guard tried to climb back up, and found a sword underneath him that sliced his knees out and put him back on the ground. Cloud scooped him up with it, flung his screaming body upright into the air, spun around and slashed through his chest. He dropped into the crack between the platform and train, hitting his head on both on the way down.

  The gun arm stepped back onto the platform and started walking. Cloud looked at him and his intimidating gun arm, and said, “You coulda helped.”

  He grunted. “Just makin’ sure you’re cut for the job.”

  The job.

  “Well… if you’re looking for money right now, I might know someone who could use your help. There’s this… group of people who I’ve kind of been providing shelter to for a while, and they’re planning something big soon. But the person they hired to help just got arrested, so… if nobody steps in, then I might have to, and I don’t really want that. But… you could! The leader is a guy named Barret. If you stick around, I can introduce you and he’ll fill you in on all the details. He’s got pretty big money too. It’ll be worth the trouble, I promise. What do you say?”

  Cloud figured the gun-armed giant looked close enough to a “Barret.” Barret ran ahead into the station entrance.

  Cloud walked into the open archway next, and just behind the turnstiles were two more guards coming to investigate. Barret and the others were hiding behind the wall next to the gates, so Cloud was the one they saw and rushed to confront.

  “Who in the hell—?”, “Hands where I can see them!” they exclaimed while the other four snuck behind them and hopped the gates. The woman gave him a little wave for good luck. Charming.

  There was no ready tool near to incapacitate them both, so he had to rush in. While approaching the one on the left, he swung the right guard’s rifle away, but didn’t move fast enough on the other to keep him from firing. The close range bullets pounded against his shoulder until he put the sword up to block them, and slammed it forward against the rifle and knocked it to the floor.

  The guard resorted to kicking at him, and Cloud grabbed that foot and lunged him back into the middle of the turnstiles. Disoriented from the hits to his shoulder, he tried to swing at the knocked down guard horizontally and hit the gate instead, unsurprisingly.

  The MP to his right had his gun back up, so Cloud chucked his sword into the guard in front of him and turned to grab that gun before it could hit him. They struggled for control of it, but the SOLDIER strength overwhelmed and aimed the gun straight up. The guard tried to kick at Cloud, but he countered and pinned his foot to the ground, and with his other foot kicked through the shin bone. Cloud turned to pull his sword back, spun it towards the guard’s arm still locked to his assault rifle, and cleaved straight through his forearm.

  Cloud dropped his disembodied hand as he turned and collapsed onto his stomach. The tune of aggrieved screaming was silenced with a stab through the back of his neck and into the windpipe. They could have been handled better.

  Down the hall where everyone snuck past and in the middle of a staircase going up, Barret was waiting. “You havin’ trouble over there? Let’s go!”

  He followed through the waiting lobby, up the stairs and back outside to the main level of the city, and down the road over the train tracks past an opened fence where the three grunts were gathered around the access panel of a shut metal gateway in a concrete wall with electric fences up top. A big yellow “RESTRICTED AREA” banner hung overhead, and a smaller one on the side read, “SECURITY ON PATROL.” Not anymore.

  The ponytailed woman had dismantled part of the access panel and was connecting wires to between it and a cracking device in her hand. The thinner of the guys was standing next to her. The bigger guy, armed with what looked like a grenade launcher, was standing guard at the fence, and Barret walked past to keep an eye on the other side of the road.

  The woman asked aloud, “So… what’s the SOLDIER guy’s deal? He’s not joining us full-time, right?”

  The guy next to her said, “Who knows? Why don’t you ask him?”

  She turned her head. “What’s your deal, Cloud? Mister SOLDIER?”

  He saw their two faces looking expectantly at him. And he remembered the speeding train—but not him being on it. It was speeding below him. And then it was gone.

  “Next train’s the one,” Barret said. “It’ll be any minute.”

  All five of them climbed over the handrails above the train tunnel to the other side and hung on, waiting for the moment to drop.

  The woman, hanging next to Cloud, reaches a hand out to greet him. “Hi, I’m Jessie. Nice to meet you. Not everyday you see a former SOLDIER taking arms against the company. Most of them just end up homeless.”

  Cloud didn’t take the handshake.

  “Alright, then. Too hot for formality?”

  The guy with the olive green clothes told her, “His name is Cloud, if you’re curious.”

  “Who told you my name?” Cloud probed.

  “Barret. Who else?”

  Jessie leaned in to Cloud with an impish smile. “His name is Biggs.”

  Biggs jokingly responded, “Now who told you my name?”

  “You did, 15 years ago.”

  “Ooh, that’s right. When you upper city stage kids took a field trip down below to, what, throw bread crumbs at the orphans? Right?”

  And the fat one with a bandana on the other side of Cloud said, “And I’m Wedge!”

  Cloud instinctively blurted, “Like cheese?”

  Biggs laughed for half a second before stopping himself. “Sorry.”

  Wedge scoffed. “No cheese anymore, sir. Your boy is dieting now.”

  “We should make you eat a block of cheese every time someone makes that joke.”

  “That’s great,” Cloud interrupted, “but let’s focus on catching the train.”

  Squad banter, squad banter… the train came along, they dropped onto it and got into position. One of them must have taken over the controls to get them stopped here.

  Charming. What was her question?

  “I don’t have a ‘deal,’” Cloud responded. “This is a one-time gig. Once it’s done, I’m out of here.”

  “That’s what I figured,” remarked Biggs.

  “Everyone’s got a deal,” said Jessie. “Come on. You got a background? An upbringing, childhood, or something?”

  He gave a flat, “Nope.”

  “Any grand tale of leaving Shinra?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hmph. So, you just woke up one day and suddenly weren’t a SOLDIER anymore?”

  She might not have been far off, for all Cloud knew. “Sure.”

  “Interesting.” She looked back at her door cracker, still working its magic.

  Biggs pondered, “So, from what I understand about Shinra, they keep a pretty tight leash on their army. They don’t make it easy to get out of the machine without becoming a deserter. For SOLDIERs that’s gotta be especially true, because you guys are potential security risks to the company.”

  “SOLDIERs don’t see a lot of classified intel. They’ve always been at high risk of quitting since the program started. And public security troopers like the ones we just took out are a revolving door position.”

  “So they don’t keep a tight leash. Is it about saving money, you think?”

  A beep from Jessie’s device, and the gateway slid open. Biggs went, “Finally!” and he and Jessie sprinted through. Wedge gave a celebratory, “Woohoo!” before rushing as well.

  Barret growled at them, “Keep your voices down!” He walked past Cloud, turned around, and said, “She better have been right about you, merc. I don’t trust nobody that worked for the company.”

  She. Who, Jessie? He just shook his head and followed.