INTRO & DISCLAIMER:

Welcome one and all to Book Three of my brand new Quistis fanfic, "What Quistis Did Next." There are more chapters to follow if you all like this one, so read and enjoy!

I would also like to state that I am the writer of this fan fiction and it is not free for distribution without my permission. Also please also note that this cannot be used for commercial purposes.

Started November 28^th, 2003.

Searchlights swept across the fields to the rear of the office complex, the beams of light falling lazily across the greenery and scaring the wits out of any woodland animals who happened to be scampering past at that moment. The complex itself was composed of several tall buildings, lights off for the night but row upon row of window panes glittering softly in what moonlight fell on them. They were fenced in by high walls and topped with barbed wire, as though if the mood took they may decide to uproot themselves and trample through the rest of the city.

The guard manning the East Wall search tower sighed with boredom. Another night with nothing going on. He began to wonder why this place has such a high security budget if nobody ever tried to break into anything, although when he thought about it, the high security probably put off most potential raiders, and if he was honest he didn’t have the first clue about what went on inside the four office blocks’ cream-painted walls, despite his attempts to date that girl with the black hair who worked in one of the floors his tower could look into.

If he’d have been scanning the fields that lay beyond the border of the complex more carefully, he may have spotted four camouflaged figures crawling through the undergrowth, darting from cover to cover as they wound their way forward. Luckily for the figures, the guard was half asleep already, so they managed to close to within ten feet of the base of the walls before they stopped. The four of them were dressed head to foot in green urban pattern camouflage suits, with large clumps of grass and greenery attached to their backs so that they could blend seamlessly into the environment as they crawled forwards.

They were now faced with the problem of climbing the forty-foot high wall facing them, however, so the group assembled in a small circle to plan their next move.

"Jeez, that wall’s high," muttered one of them darkly.

"Hmm, I think I can get us up there," said another, female voice.

"You sure? It’s a long way, and we haven’t worked out how to distract the guards yet," said another, softer male voice.

"W-we’re g-going where?" said the fourth voice, a timid sounding female who seemed to be scared out of her wits.

Cevin sat up a little so his head wasn’t so close to the damp ground, and spat a few stray blades of grass out. Frowning, he turned to the others.

"You mean to tell me I let you talk me into crawling all the damn way over here, only to find we don’t even have a plan to get into the damn place?" Criss looked up at him and shook his head as he replied.

"Be quiet, Cevin," he whispered, "you’ll bring the whole place down on us if you’re not careful!"

"Guys, I’m telling you, I can make that!" said Katya, blowing a piece of her camouflage shrubbery from her face. "All I need is a diversion so I can draw enough juice to float us up and over that thing." Criss studied the walls, taking in the armed guards at regular intervals, the barbed wire and the security cameras.

"Too risky," he said, "and it’ll take too long. I’ve got a better plan."

"Look, I know you people must know what you’re doing and all," said the fourth member of the party, "b-but just how are we going to get all the way up there?" The voice belonged to Trini Jabotsky, one of the rebels’ computer experts whom Berne had assigned to the SeeDs to allow them to hack into the computer network inside the complex. She was a petite girl, unassuming to look at with large glasses and straight brown hair, but right now she was shivering from a mixture of the chilly evening wind and her own nerves, this being her first time out in the field. Katya smiled at her reassuringly, having already taken the hacker under her wing to make sure she was up to the job when the time came.

"Relax, Trini," she said, "this is just a minor inconvenience. Our job is to get you in there," she said, jabbing a finger at the blocks that rose into view over the rim of the walls, "and then watch your back while you do your job."

"Yes, yes, hack into the network and find out what I can about the experiments, I know," she said, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. Criss shuffled over to the two of them.

"Okay, here’s what I want you to do," he began.

* * * * * * * * * *

I must be out of my tiny little mind, thought Quistis as she sped towards Dreason a few hours earlier, her jeep bouncing along the dirt road that Raijin had insisted was a ‘shortcut, ya know?’ between Kabernia and the town where Seifer was being held in the asylum. Raijin and Fujin were along for the ride, Raijin clearly loving the trip as he whooped every time Quistis bounced the car into the air over the bumps and hills, while Fujin sat, stony and silent as always, in the back, hanging on for dear life. Raijin was nodding his head and tapping on the dashboard along to the loud music Quistis was playing, not noticing that she’d only put it on so she wouldn’t have to talk to either of them.

"How much further?" she yelled. Raijin cocked his ear towards her.

"Huh?"

"HOW MUCH FURTHER?" she bellowed into his ear.

"Uh, maybe another twenty minutes, the way you drive, ya know?" Raijin grinned and laughed, Quistis just rolled her eyes. Here she was, racing hell for leather down a deserted and very poorly lit dirt road in the middle of nowhere, leaving the bright lights of Kabernia behind, and leaving a vitally important mission to her SeeD cadets, who were all still cadets, she had to keep reminding herself, to be heading herself towards the rescue of one of the few men she’d hoped she’d never see again.

She cast her mind back to how she’d made her decision to the other cadets earlier that day..

* * * * * * * * * *

"You want to do what??" yelled Cevin as Quistis outlined her plan.

"I want you three to take the mission on the offices, and I’ll go to Dreason with these two to bring back Seifer."

"Have you gone stone bonkers crazy, Quistis?" Cevin shouted again. "That man is a killer! He tried to kill you and all your team however many times, all the while serving some power crazy, time-travelling sorceress who wanted nothing more than to take over the whole damn world, and now you’re dropping everything just so you can drag his sorry ass out of some nut house? Forget it!" Quistis raised an eyebrow at him.

"Cadet McClewen, did you just give me an order?" she said smoothly. Cevin stuttered for a few seconds, before flinging his hands into the air in frustration and marching off to the far side of the room. Raijin started to snicker until a glare from Quistis shut him up.

"While I’m not going to shout as much as Cevin," said Criss with a glance to his team-mate still fuming in the corner, "he does have a point. Seifer Almasy is a dangerous man, a renegade SeeD who sided with one of the greatest threats this world has ever known. Why should you jeopardise our work here to save him?" Quistis sighed, knowing that they weren’t going to like what she was about to tell him.

"Because he asked me to. And I don’t know what it is, some misguide sense of Garden loyalty or duty, or honour, or whatever, maybe it’s pity, but the fact is I.. I just can’t let him rot away in there. Maybe if I bring him out we can bring him before the Garden Council to answer for what he did at last." She scanned the room. They weren’t buying it and she had to admit she didn’t really blame them. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t know why she should risk her neck to get Seifer out of there either. It was probably as much as he deserved. But there was still something.. she didn’t know what, it was the vaguest feeling, like a tiny pinprick at the back of her mind, but it was there, a tiny disembodied voice telling her that she had to get him out. That he was different, that he was no longer a threat, and that once upon a time they’d been almost friends, they’d played together as children, and even despite all the terrible things he’d done, she did have a responsibility to help him.

* * * * * * * * * *

That thought kept rattling round the inside of her brain, almost as fiercely as she herself rattled round the inside of her speeding jeep as they hit a particularly rundown stretch of road.

"So, what’s the plan when we, ya know, get there?" yelled Raijin over the noise of the revving engine. Quistis frowned. Good point. She’d been so wrapped up in persuading the cadets to take the mission alone, feeding them some motivational speech about how ‘it was time for them to stand on their own two feet at last’ that she knew they hadn’t swallowed in the slightest, that she’d neglected to think up a suitable plan of action on how to actually get Seifer out of this place. Was she just going to walk up to the front door, knock, and ask politely?

"PLAN?" shouted Fujin, as if to remind her to answer.

"Well, we can’t just waltz in there and ask them to let him go," she said, slowing a little so she didn’t have to shout over the engine so much, "and besides which, if we try to do this officially there’ll be forms to fill in, evaluations to run - the whole process could take months, and we need him out of there tonight if I’m going to be able to help my cadets out."

"Heh, they can look after themselves, ya know?" said Raijin. "That spiky haired punk, he seemed like a tough nut, he’ll be okay."

"That’s not the point, Raijin," said Quistis with a glare, "I’m their instructor, I’m supposed to be leading by example, and rushing off on a fool’s errand like this is not what I’d call a good example!" Raijin shrugged and looked back out the windscreen. He squinted and pointed up ahead.

"There, that’s the place," he said, and Quistis slowed down. The road they were on was shadowed by tall trees on either side, so Quistis didn’t have a great view of the buildings up ahead, but she could see enough to know what it was.

The asylum lay about a mile up ahead, leading out onto fields to the back and a main road with a checkpoint that branched off from the road Quistis was currently on. It was a set of white buildings, lit from within through a variety of windows and divided into three different sections, presumably for the different wards there. Quistis could make out tall walls surrounding it, making any kind of sneak entry pretty difficult. She suddenly wished she’d brought her cadets along, she could have used their help just now. She brought the jeep to a halt, switched off the lights and rummaged around in her glovebox for the pair of night vision binoculars she had. Standard issue-equipment they may have been, but she’d rarely needed to use them so it took a few attempts to get the zoom working, with Raijin helpfully trying to tell her what to do before she figured it out.

She closed up on the walls, seeing that they were fenced from behind and topped by wicked looking spikes, a new windmill-like design that tore further in to whatever unfortunate intruder they got their teeth into in response to any movement. Scanning the windows, she grunted disapproval as she made out the bars covering every single one, and more significantly the fact that they all seemed to be secured from the inside. She swept her view across the buildings a few more times before putting the binoculars down and settling her chin against her crossed arms on the steering wheel.

"So, when do we go in?" said Raijin, clearly not one for strategy.

"We may as well wait till its gets a bit darker," said Quistis looking outside. The sun was half set already but there was thick cloud cover, with the wind kicking up and light spots of rain starting to dab at her jeep’s windshield. If they waited maybe twenty minutes more, the sky would already be grey and dark, so by the time they reached the asylum buildings it’d be near as dammit pitch black night outside. That would have to do. There wasn’t time for a reconnaissance sweep of the area, no time to pay a visit undercover to the place to get a good look round the inside - she was having to go in blind and she hated having to do that. She sighed as she started to ask herself what she’d gotten into.

She was disturbed as Raijin clicked the radio back on, blasting out loud music that must have woken up everything within a two mile radius.

"Raijin!" she screeched as she ejected the tape so fast it shot out of the cassette player and landed in Fujin’s lap, who regarded it with a confused look. "What the hell do you think you’re doing?"

"I was bored, ya know? How much longer are we gonna be waiting?" Quistis threw a look to Fujin as if to ask ‘Is he always like this?’ to which the grey-haired woman replied with a nod and a roll of her one good eye. Quistis turned back to Raijin, fidgeting in the front seat like a naughty schoolboy.

"Raijin, we’re going nowhere till the sun goes down. After that, wrap up because it looks like the temperature’s dropping fast out there, because we’re heading out on foot that way," she said, with a pointed index finger towards the back of the asylum. "I reckon that while the security won’t be any less, there’ll be less trouble getting into the complex from that side. After all, who wants to break in to an insane asylum? All the security is designed to stop people from getting out." Fujin nodded once in agreement, as did Raijin.

Twenty minutes of Raijin’s intolerable fidgeting later and Quistis was about ready to strangle the burly man, when she looked up and decided at last it was dark enough. Raijin had been asking that every minute since they’d parked up so she was glad to be able to say ‘yes!’ at last and shut him up. Stepping out of her jeep with the others following suit, she pulled out her black hooded sweatshirt and zipped it up tight around her, pulling the hood up to cover herself from the icy early evening wind.

Dreason, the town where Seifer had been found, was three miles further down the road according to the signs they’d passed on the way. Quistis had managed to work out an escape route but the rest of the plan would have to be made up as she went along. She grabbed her whip and a few more accessories from the jeep before locking it and turning to Fujin and Raijin. Fujin had pulled on a long black coat although her hair was still defiantly uncovered, while Raijin didn’t seem to have noticed the cold at all, his waistjacket still open-fronted.

"You two clowns ready then?" she asked. They both said yes, so she turned and started the walk towards the asylum.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Down on the ground, Katya looked up as Criss made his way up the rope, her hands knotted together and her brow furrowed in concentration. She was drawing up light blue-coloured essences from the ground around her, but she was trying to do so with the minimum amount of visual display. Managing to gather enough for what she needed, she pointed her fingers towards the first camera that Criss would come into range of in a few more moments, and willed a strand of blue light out to do her work for her.

*

In the complex’s security control booth, a night-watchman sat with his feet up on the desk as a huge wall of cameras faced him, all their monochrome screens flickering slightly as they showed various parts of the complex. He was engrossed in a magazine and sipping a cup of coffee, so he failed to notice one of the screens blurring into static, fading back to normal again after around ten seconds.

*

One down, thought Criss as he passed the camera, two to go.

*

Katya turned her attention to the first of two searchlights, whose lazy ovals of illumination were crawling across the wall towards Criss. Another raised finger and another effort of will saw the light’s bulb die and fade out, just long enough for Criss to climb safely out of its range, before it glared into life again and carried on as though nothing had happened. Katya looked down at the small bundle of blue energy in her other hand and grinned. Halfway there and still plenty of juice for the job, she thought.

*

The next camera followed suit, as did the next searchlight. After a few more moments of climbing, Criss managed to get one hand up onto the lip of the wall, straining his arm muscles as he lifted his head just high enough to take a look around and see what was there. This section of the wall was mercifully free of guards at this moment - they’d spent half an hour down below trying to get a feel for the patrol patterns, and so far this was exactly what they’d expected. Hoisting himself up onto the wall, he scanned around him quickly. The wall he was on led all the way round the perimeter of the complex, breaking off at regular intervals with walkways down to floor level. In the centre of the lot stood the three office blocks, a network of roads running round them. A few vehicles buzzed round the roads, but they looked like civilian cars instead of armoured personnel carriers full of guards. Which was a good thing, Criss decided.

His plan was to get down on ground level and head for an entrance the cadets had seen on the way in, so that he could let the other three inside without needing to set off any alarms or do any more rope-climbing, so he scampered long the walkway and silently down the first set of steps until he was down on ground level. Keeping close to the ground and in the shadow as much as he could, he was thankful for the many little barricades, electrics boxes and other obstacles jutting out from the wall because it gave him plenty of cover. Criss spotted the gate in question up ahead, a road bridge linking the civilian roads to the inside of the complex, one of several leading out from Kabernia. He headed over.

On the other side of the wall, Cevin, Katya and Trini were crawling into position, stopping just short of the start of the road bridge and within spitting distance of the checkpoint manning it. The bridge itself was only about twenty feet long, but there was a dip in the ground immediately after the checkpoint, causing the land to fall away before hitting the wall, leaving no way in except via the road. There was a guard at the checkpoint, idly smoking a smelly cigarette as he rubbed his arms to keep out the cold, his eyes scanning the empty night and wishing he could be amongst the warm, glittering lights of Kabernia in the distance. Cevin moved into position, as per the plan.

Back inside the walls, Criss stole towards the checkpoint booth on the other side of the road bridge, seeing the thick steel gate that had to be lifted by controls in the booth before anything could get inside. He jabbed his head into the booth then back again, taking in enough to see that there was one guard with his back to him. In one fluid motion he stepped inside, clamped a hand round the guard’s mouth and chopped him once on the side of his neck, hitting a bundle of nerves and dropping the guard to the floor, doubled up and unable to move or make a sound. Criss pushed him under the desk out of sight, winking once at the guard’s accusing glare, his eyes being the only part of him able to move after the chop.

Looking across the desk, he scanned over the row of CCTV monitors looking for the road bridge controls, finding the one he was after and hitting it. He raised the gate by about a foot then clanked it to a stop again, stepping back out of the booth and round to the side of the gate.

Outside, Cevin watched the gate clink upwards a few notches, then signalled to Katya and Trini to make their way towards it. The guard at the checkpoint heard the noise of the gate and turned to investigate, giving Cevin all the time he needed to silently rise to his feet and hit the guard in the back of the neck, dropping him to the ground where another swift punch took him out of play. Katya muttered about his heavy-handed tactics as she shed her camouflage outfit before grabbing hold of the side of the road bridge, using it as a balcony to make her way across towards the gate, her feet hanging in thin air as she worked her way along. Trini and Cevin followed suit.

Criss kept his eyes peeled, looking from side to side for anyone who might be heading over, hoping that he wouldn’t have to knock anyone else out. So far, so good, he thought as he knelt down and looked out towards the bridge, seeing Cevin and the others make their way over.

"Katya! Katya!" whispered Trini halfway across.

"What?" hissed Redman, trying to concentrate on keeping her grip on the cold metal bridge.

"I.. I can’t move!"

"You what? What’s wrong?"

"I-I’m too scared!"

"What’s the hold up?" said Cevin, catching up to them both,

"Trini’s got stage fright," said Katya with a groan. "You sort her out, I’ve got to keep moving or my fingers are going to fall off!" She carried on and was at the gate entrance in moments, taking one of Criss’ outstretched hands to pull herself up and into the complex at last.

"Come on, kid, we can’t hang around here all night!" said Cevin, trying to stay calm. Trini was shaking, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"I-I’m sorry, I.. I just can’t!"

"Trini, listen to me," said Cevin with uncharacteristic sensitivity. "You’ve got three highly trained SeeDs as your bodyguard, nothing is going to happen to you while we’re in here, okay? Do you believe me?"

"I.. I guess so," she murmured.

"But we can’t do that while we’re hanging out here, so I need you to keep moving, one hand over the other, you’ll be there in no time."

"But.."

"Trini, it’s all good. I’m right here, nothing’s going to happen. Can you try again for me?"

"I-I’ll try.." Trini closed her eyes and took a deep breath, one hand over the other as she hung from the side of the bridge, finally managing to get up to the gate where Katya and Criss were waiting to pull her up. Once the team was safely reunited again, Criss nipped back into the control booth and cranked the gate shut, rejoining the other three back outside, the group huddled down out of sight.

"Right, phase one over and done with, time for the next step," said Katya.

"Right. What was that again?" said Cevin.

"Get into the offices, locate the computer network from an access terminal and let Trini do her thing," said Criss, looking at Trini who still seemed to be on the verge of fainting with nerves. He laid a hand gently on her shoulder and she jolted to alertness again.

"What?" she said, worriedly. "Is everything okay?" Criss grinned.

"Everything’s fine. We’re moving out to that building there," said Cevin, pointing to the closest of the office blocks, keeping a watchful eye on the patrolling guards and occasional vehicles lumbering around nearby. Criss noticed that there seemed to be an awful lot of large, heavy goods vehicles considering this was only meant to be an office complex - he wondered if that had anything to do with the unusually high level of security here as well.

"What is it?" said Katya, reading that Criss was deep in thought about something off his frowning expression.

"Nothing really.. it’s just those trucks there," he said, pointing to a pair of large cargo trucks moving out towards the back of the complex. "They seem a little out of place here, I wonder where they’re going?"

"We can check that out later," said Cevin with a tap on Criss’ arm to get his attention, "let’s keep moving." Criss nodded and the group edged towards the nearest entrance to the building. Criss glanced up and around, checking the lay of the land. Where they currently were was behind a low wall that jutted out from the main complex wall, looking out across the road network and towards the building. The entrance to the building wasn’t guarded but several of the patrols had a line of sight to it - the bright floodlights dotted all around didn’t help matters either. Criss turned to Katya.

"If you can do something about those lights, I think we can make it to that door there, then all we need to do is pick the lock and we’re in." Katya grinned.

"I can do better than that," she said. "Anyone watching?" Criss popped his head up over the wall to check there was nobody nearby.

"All clear," he replied. Katya closed her eyes and drew up a small reservoir of green energy from the floor around her. Trini watched, wide eyed.

"Wow.. I’ve never seen a magic user like her before," she whispered, "she just pulls all that stuff out of thin air like.. like.."

"Like magic?" grinned Cevin. "Told you we were the best." Katya opened her eyes, and held her hands up to her mouth.

"Now just relax," she said with an impish grin," because this will feel a little weird." She blew into her open palm and the green energy flowed out like a cloud, settling on all four of them. Cevin stifled a sneeze and Trini wobbled unsteadily on her hunched feet, but after a few moments the dizzying sensation passed.

"What did that do?" asked Cevin.

"Watch" said Katya, grin still firmly in place as she stood up wand walked boldly out into the road, directly in view of at least three guards.

"Kat!" hissed Cevin, starting to rise but Criss held him back with an arm on his shoulder. Cevin turned to look at him but Criss just nodded back towards Katya. She walked right up to the door of the building, then turned back round and waved to the others. Criss grinned and stood up.

"Invisibility spell," he said as he started walking over to her, soon followed by Cevin and Trini. "Nice trick," he said to her, and she did a mock curtsey for him.

"Why thank you, now all we need to do is get this door open and we’re sorted."

"How long will this last?" said Trini, with worried glances towards all the guards nearby as Criss knelt down to start using his lockpick on the office block’s door.

"Ooh, a few more minutes at least," said Katya, completely unworried by the whole thing. Criss grunted as he tried to get into the thick set security lock on the door, his efforts rewarded with a click and the door swinging open.

"Careful," he whispered, "we may be invisible but we can still be noticed, let’s go. And stay quiet." The other three followed him inside.

The interior of the building was what you’d expect from a high revenue office centre - all neatly furnished floors, potted plants for ‘atmosphere,’ plain, unremarkable chairs and desks and neon strip light fittings that gave you a mild headache after a few minutes exposure to them. Criss led the way, padding silently across the carpeted floors down the access corridor that led from the front door, up to a reception desk that branched off into a larger lobby, with lifts and staircases heading off into the rest of the building from that. He scanned the list of office names and departments that was mounted on a plaque next to the desk.

"We’re looking for something like ‘Records’ or ‘Research,’ or.."

"Lab Reports," said Trini, her finger against the entry on the plaque, spelt out in little white plastic stick-on lettering. "Floor 37, that’s us."

"Well spotted. Now, we need to figure out what to do about the camera systems," said Criss, still scanning the lobby as he spoke. "There may be guards on patrol inside this building that we don’t know about, but we can’t rely on this spell to last long enough for us to do this and get us out here."

"’Fraid so," said Katya. "If I could have pulled up more essences then maybe, but as it is I could only get a little, especially when split four ways."

"Don’t worry," said Trini with a smile, pushing her glasses back up her nose, "this is what I came along for. Just give me a few minutes." She made her way round behind the desk, retrieving a compact laptop computer from the small backpack she was wearing. Tying her hair back out of the way, she pulled forward the small CCTV monitor behind the desk and plugged a lead from the laptop into it. With a few deft button presses and a little high speed typing, the camera’s signal was also showing on the laptop screen. Cevin nodded appreciatively.

"You do know your stuff, then, I’m impressed!"

"This ought to let us look through all the cameras, that way we can scope out the whole building from here and see where anybody’s hiding!" Criss and Katya shared a grin. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all.

* * * * * * * * * *

This is going to be quite difficult after all, thought Quistis as her unlikely trio neared the foot of the wall at the rear of the asylum. The fields behind and around her were scarce of trees or anything they could use to gain access - there was some kind of logging factory a few miles away that had probably scoured most of the countryside for fuel before now. She looked up - the wall was a twenty foot high monument of white-plastered bricks, too thick to just barge through and probably not great to try and climb up either. She was looking round for another way in when she heard Raijin and Fujin muttering behind her. She turned to face them, strands of her hair sweeping back into her face as the wind blew them from underneath the protection of her hooded top.

"What is it?" she said, having to shout a little over the wind. Fujin carried on talking before Raijin nodded and turned to Quistis.

"We got a plan, ya know? To get us over the wall." Quistis looked from them, to the top of the wall, then back to Raijin.

"Which is what, exactly? Are we going to use you as a battering ram to bash a hole through the wall? Because, I’d quite like that, ya know," she said, mimicking Raijin’s catchphrase.

"Naah, nothing like that. Guardian Force magic, yeah!" said Raijin, stepping back and letting Fujin step forward. Fujin held out a small, grey crystal which was glowing from within with a soft blue light. Quistis remembered the guardian force that Fujin used well - the air elemental spirit known as Pandemonia - as she’d briefly stolen it away from her whilst they were fighting in Balamb once, chiefly to stop it being used against her!

"So what do you plan to do, then?" said Quistis, but already starting to follow Fujin’s line of thinking. Fujin pointed at the crystal, then the sky, then the wall.

"WINDS. FLY. OVER," she said, marking possibly the first time Quistis had ever heard her say more than one word at a time. Quistis looked back up at the wall. It suddenly felt an awful lot higher.

"You sure?" she said with a quizzical look. Fujin just nodded, then took a few steps back, the crystal held in the air.

"Heh, this always did make a good show," said Raijin.

"Aren’t you two worried about the side effects of using guardian forces?" asked Quistis.

"What side effects?"

"Memory loss from using them."

"Using what?"

"Using the.. oh, never mind," said Quistis, admitting defeat. The winds around them seemed to be intensifying, distant rumbles of thunder reverberating through the sky, accompanied by flashes of lightning cracks and a steadily increasing flow of rain. Fujin stood in the centre of it all, her crystal now pulsing with bright blue light, her eye closed and a calm expression on her face. She’d done this many times and was used to it by now.

The air seemed to thicken all around, and Quistis felt her ears pop as the air pressure suddenly dramatically changed. A dark cloud started to form over Fujin’s head, and within moments it was the size of her jeep, changing to become a swirling vortex after a few moments. Quistis saw that the vortex looked like a tunnel leading off somewhere, and could distantly make out a speck of purple at the end of that tunnel.

"Here he comes!" yelled Raijin over the noise of the wind as it howled in protest, his jewellery rattling as it was buffeted all around. Quistis’ eyes widened as the purple speck rapidly accelerated towards them, becoming a human-shaped purple.. well, thing, and soon enough it hit the edge of the vortex and burst free.

With a crack of thunder, Pandemonia appeared in all his majesty, the eight-foot tall alien-looking humanoid’s feet slamming onto the ground as he landed from his escape from the vortex. The clouds died down a little as the vortex faded away, and Fujin, her hair and outfit now windblasted and haggard-looking, opened her eye and nodded with satisfaction. Pandemonia stood, chest rising and falling as his huge lungs took in gracious gulps of fresh air, his muscular body tensed for action.

Fujin walked and stood before him, and Pandemonia lowered his head to acknowledge his mistress. She pointed to him, then to the wall, miming with her other hand that she wanted him to get them over the wall. The creature nodded and stepped back, his footsteps sounding like the thunder still rumbling away overhead. Quistis hoped that the storm had hidden most of this disturbance from the asylum staff, or there’d be a hell of a waiting party for them when they finally got inside.

Pandemonia lowered his arm to the ground, and Fujin stepped forward till she as stood just past his palm, motioning for the others to follow. Quistis and Raijin joined her, and once they were in place Fujin nodded once to her guardian, who raised his hand slowly, lifting the three of them into the air as he did so. Quistis felt the winds tighten around her like an invisible hand, gently pulling her upwards, and as she looked back at Pandemonia she saw he was controlling their ascent carefully, lifting them straight upwards until they were at the lip of the wall. Fujin held out a hand to stop and they did, hovering in mid-air just below the top of the wall. Fujin placed a hand on the wall’s lip and stood on her toes, just enough to peek over. Quistis joined her.

They saw down into the asylum’s yard, a series of small gardens, carefully maintained by most likely the inmates, and beyond that the third building of the complex, roughly the size of a small house. Lit up from within, Quistis could just about make out a few silhouettes through the bolted-shut windows, their curtains drawn, but the weather had probably gotten any potential guards hiding away indoors. She looked down and saw a balcony a few feet below, probably a guard post so that someone could keep an eye on the whole yard. She nudged Fujin and pointed to it, who looked and nodded. With a hand out to help guide Pandemonia, Fujin had the guardian lift the trio serenely over the wall and down onto the balcony, where a staircase led down to the floor. Fujin waited while Quistis and Raijin started down it, looking back over the wall and saluting once to the creature below. There was another thunderclap and Quistis felt the wind die down instantly, signalling to her that the guardian force was back in whatever holding dimension it stayed in.

Within seconds, the trio were down in the yard, crouched down as they snuck closer to the main buildings, skirting round the edges of the floodlights’ rays until they were pressed against the wall of the first building. Quistis edged forward until she could place her ear against the first window they came to, seeing what she could hear.

It was eerily quiet inside - background noise from people shuffling around, a radio was on somewhere playing some unrecognisable tune, and a distant television set hummed away, but nobody seemed to be saying much. Quistis tried to look through the curtains but they were too thick to see through, despite the bright white lights inside.

"What are we gonna do?" asked Raijin as Quistis knelt back down.

"I’m not sure, we have two options," said Quistis. "We either blaze in, all guns blaring," she paused as Raijin grinned and cracked his knuckles together, "or we sneak in quietly, get some disguises and try to locate Seifer without anybody noticing."

"BETTER," nodded Fujin.

"Well, looks like you’re outvoted, Raijin, so you follow us girls in and try not to start punching anybody, okay?" Raijin shrugged and followed Quistis as she shuffled round the curved wall of the building towards a fire exit she’d seen. Standing and giving the door an experimental push, she frowned when she felt how securely locked it was.

"Hmm," she said, "anybody got a good way to quietly get in here?" Fujin looked at Raijin, who shook his head. Quistis sighed. "Well, here goes, then," she said, taking her whip and winding it tightly round her hand, then bracing herself before slamming her arm down hard on the door handle, whip first. The handle broke off and the door creaked open slightly - the damage had thankfully not made much noise. Quistis smiled brightly at the other two before taking an exploratory look either side of the door.

"Coast is clear," she said, "let’s go."

Inside, the asylum was all white tiled floors and plain painted walls and ceiling, and as Quistis carefully wedged the fire door closed again Fujin tapped her on the shoulder and pointed down the corridor from them. The windows were fenced off so there would be no quick exit, but the corridor they were on was lined with doors either side so there would be plenty of places to hide if needed, and the one of these that Fujin was pointing at had a small sign that read ‘Maintenance." Quistis nodded and headed over, trying the handle and seeing that the door was open. She disappeared inside, leaving Fujin and Raijin to scan the surroundings.

"I don’t like this place, Fuj," said Raijin nervously. "Places like these always creep me out."

"DRAINED," said Fujin with a solemn nod, looking down the corridor from their current position. It curled away from them at either end, but given how far along they’d come, they knew that some kind of lounge area was just round the corner to their left, especially as the softly filtered tones of the radio made their way round to them.

Quistis reappeared out of the doorway moments later, three plain white sets of overalls in her hands.

"Take one and get into them. I’ve had to guess at your size, Raijin, but I got a big one so you should be fine. You’re about the same as me," she continued, handing Fujin a set. Fujin looked down at them and raised an eyebrow.

"DISGUISE?" she asked. To complete the picture, Quistis handed each of them a mop and bucket from the storeroom.

"Yup. Now get out there and start cleaning the floors, first one to find Seifer comes and gets the rest of us, okay?" The other two nodded as they pulled on the overalls, Raijin twirling his mop round like a bo staff a few times when he was finished. "And most importantly," said Quistis sternly to get their attention, "absolutely NO fighting. I want this to be a quick in, quick out operation so I can get back to my cadets. Are we clear on that?" The other two nodded, and so with the final touch of three white peaked caps for each of them, Quistis bundled her hair up out of view and set off down the left hand corridor to see what she could find. Fujin and Raijin went right, splitting up when they reached another intersection.

* * * * * * * * * *

"There’s another," said Trini, her finger pressed against her laptop screen as the hijacked CCTV signal on it showed another guard, a portly middle-aged man who was quietly strolling down one of the many corridors in the building, whistling tunelessly to himself. Cevin marked his position on a printed off copy of the building’s blueprints that the young hacker had managed to locate for them.

"I think that’s all of them, unless there are any more cameras, Trini?" asked Criss. She shook her head as she unplugged her laptop and stowed it away inside her backpack again.

"Not that I could find. We just need to head for floor thirty-seven now so I can get into the computers up there." Criss nodded and headed over into the main lobby. Trini placed a hand on his arm to stop him before he walked into view of a small camera mounted over the lift doors, holding up a small pen-like device she took from her suit pocket, aiming it at the camera and pressing a button on its side. The red light underneath the camera blinked out.

"Circuit jammer," she said to answer Criss’ confused look. "Should stop the cameras from seeing us."

"Should stop them?" teased Cevin. She blushed and pushed her glasses back up her nose.

"Well, if they don’t, that’s what you three are here for, right?" Criss grinned as the lift doors chimed once and slid open in front of him.

"Let’s go," he said, stepping inside and sending the group up to Floor 37.

* * * * * * * * * *

Quistis walked forward carefully, head down and mop sliding along the floor as she entered the first lounge area. There were two sections to it, one with a TV mounted on one wall, caged up and out of reach of any of the patients, with around ten chairs arranged in front of it, half of it which were currently occupied. All the inmates had the same dazed, slack-jawed expressions, most likely due to the large amount of drugs running through their systems. Over to Quistis right there were three old sofas set up with more relaxed looking patients sitting on or lying across them, their ‘uniform’ being whatever plain pyjamas and dressing gowns they had with them to wear. Messy hair and irregularly shaven facial hair seemed to be de rigeur amongst them as well. There were two tables set up in the room’s centre, one with four men playing cards, and another with two old women drawing large, lazy circles in crayons on big sheets of paper, a look of extreme concentration burned into their faces.

Two attendants walked past chatting absently, their green shirts and trousers making them stand out from the whiteness of everything around them. Almost like somebody’s sucked the life and colour out of everything here, mused Quistis as she continued her mock mopping of the floor. The inmates paid her little or no attention, allowing her to work past the guard on duty and into another quiet corridor, where she left the bucket and picked up the mop, scanning the nametags on each of the doors as she made her way down.

This corridor had twelve doors in each wall, each one a thick, iron-set fixture with a slide hatch for viewing and a larger one for food trays. Little noise was coming from them, so Quistis reckoned most people would be asleep by this late evening hour.

She stopped halfway down the right hand side when she read the name’ Almasy, S.’ on one of the doors. Quistis paused and took a deep breath before sliding back the view slot.

And there he was. Seifer looked tired - his blonde hair was long and messy, his eyes sported large bags and he looked like he’d lost a fair few pounds in weight, but she could still tell it was him. He was curled up on one corner of the very minimalist bed in the room, seemingly asleep. As she stared, he moved a little and lifted his head up. Their eyes met, and all Seifer did was smile and nod at her. Quistis nodded back, an unspoken communication between the two that she was here now, and the rest was up to her. Seifer settled his head back down as Quistis closed the slot. Time to find the other two and get their master out of here, she thought before a heavy footstep landed behind her and she froze on the spot.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Criss stepped out of the lift first, his gunblade up and ready as he scanned either side of the long corridor. Plainly furnished and with the walls painted in drab hues like the rest of the building, they could have been on floor 137 and he wouldn’t have known the difference. He looked up - and there was the camera, gazing away silently as it swept its one unblinking eye across the intersection of two corridors at the corner up ahead. Criss nodded to Trini, who pointed her jamming device at it to switch it off, and once the path was clear all four of them exited the lift.

The corridor was lined with doorways which appeared to lead into the small maze of open-top cubicles that the corridors led on to - the wall facing them was just above head height so at a stretch Criss could see that despite the rows and rows of desks hiding away in their little box-like offices, and the varying levels of personalisation that the workers had made to their office spaces, there was nobody here.

"According to what we saw of their patrols, there won’t be a guard round here for another thirty-eight minutes, so let’s get moving!" he said, heading out into the office area. Trini scuttled past him, settling on the tidiest-looking desk she could and rapidly setting up and turning on her laptop.

"This shouldn’t take long, all I need to do is gain access to their network server and then see how much I can download from here," she said, her fingers skipping across the keys as she typed in bewilderingly long lines of code. Reaching under the desk for a thick grey network cable, she yanked it from the back of the desktop PC and plugged it into her laptop.

Katya and Cevin watched her work, still poised and ready.

"So what do you think we’ll find in here?" she said as she scanned the office, checking out the ways in which the workers here had tried to disguise the monotony of their jobs with whatever trinkets and distractions they’d brought in.

"I dunno, I don’t even know what it is we’re supposed to be looking for," said Cevin, picking up a squeezy stress toy from one desk and idly playing with it. Katya sighed.

"Do you ever actually listen in the briefings we have?" she asked, but with a grin Cevin just shook his head.

"Nope. I leave that stuff up to you pair," he said with a nod towards Criss. "I’d only forget something anyway, so my theory is if I have nothing to remember in the first place, there’s nothing to forget!" Cevin smiled brightly and Katya was forced to grin back at her colleague’s undeniably sensible thinking.

Trini frowned, and Criss leaned in closer to see what was wrong. Trini blushed as the admittedly pretty handsome Criss moved his head in close to hers, although he was staring at the screen and not at her.

"Problem?" he said in his usual subdued tones.

"Er, well, ah, we, ah, have a.." Trini closed her eyes, swallowed once to compose herself then continued. "I can’t get access to the network from here," she said, pointing to a series of flashing red ‘Access Denied’ logos on her screen. "These computers must not have the right privileges to get onto the part of the server we need. We want this section," she said, aiming her mouse cursor at a greyed out selection of file folders on her screen, "because that’s where all the lab reports are moved to after they’ve been processed here. And I can’t hack into it from here," she finished, tapping in a password experimentally to demonstrate and watching as she received an error message. Criss frowned.

"So in theory, the computers that house or receive this information would have access, right? They’d need it to be able to read the files."

"Yes, that follows. They’re located here," she said, unfurling the blueprints from earlier and pointing to a room on the fortieth floor. "We’d best hurry, according to these notes the patrols are more regular up there."

"Alright then," said Criss, clicking his fingers to get Katya and Cevin’s attention away from all the desk toys they were currently engrossed in. "Three floors up, let’s move."

"He’s getting very bossy, isn’t he?" whispered Katya as they followed Criss and Trini our of the room. Cevin chuckled.

"He’s starting to take after her, I reckon." Katya nodded.

I hope she’s okay at the moment, she thought to herself.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Who the hell are you?" came the gruff voice from behind Quistis.

Rumbled, she thought with a panic, and for a fleeting moment she thought of swinging her back leg out in an arcing roundhouse kick.. but she controlled the impulse and breathed deeply to try to calm the adrenaline racing round her body, keeping her back to her mystery accuser as she took one step back from the door.

"Cleaners," she said, trying to put on a thicker local accent in case it helped, "ah, I was a bit lost and just thought I’d sneak a peek into one of these rooms. You know, while no-one was here. I’m kind of new, I haven’t seen many crazy people before, ya know?" Quistis groaned internally at having to borrow Raijin’s speech patterns to try and make herself look stupid and harmless.

"You’re very lost," said the voice, which Quistis could now tell belonged to a woman, albeit a woman who must have smoked forty cigarettes a day since she was a toddler. Quistis turned round slowly to check her out - the woman in question was a matron of the institute by her uniform, a white dress and peaked cap with a tatty brown knitted cardigan wrapped round her arms for warmth. She had the kind of creased face that can only be made through many years of frowning accusingly at co-workers, and her piercing eyes were currently scanning Quistis up and down as though she was being x-rayed.

"Yeah, uh, sorry, I’ll, ah, get back to my work now," said Quistis, picking her mop up again and scanning round for her bucket. The matron stared coldly at her for a few moments while Quistis picked her things up and headed back towards the lounge area round the corner, and once she was safely out of view Quistis let out a deep sigh.

That was too close, she thought as she leaned against a wall and calmed her nerves. She knew that if she got rumbled walking around here, she’d have to fight her way out past those very scary-looking security guards, and if they got hold of her there was every chance she’d wake up drugged to the eyeballs, strapped tightly into a cell somewhere in here. She headed off back towards where she’d split up from Raijin and Fujin so she could use them to help get Seifer out of here at last.

* * * * * * * * * *

Criss tried the door handle. It didn’t budge, so after a check up and down the corridor he bashed the handle off with the hilt of his gunblade and stepped stealthily into the darkened room beyond. The team had gone up to the fortieth floor and made their way to the main computer rooms without a hitch, but twice already since stepping out of the lift they’d had to dive for cover to avoid patrolling guards - obviously whatever was stored on this floor was much more important to the governor.

The other three members of the squad followed Criss through the door marked ‘Central Network Computers’ and made their way along in the dark, Cevin closing the door behind them all.

"Shall I shed some light on the situation?" said Katya, summoning a small blue ball of light which illuminated the room around them quite effectively, a tidier place than the offices below and full of much more organised looking furniture and equipment. Scanning the rows of neat desks and desktop computer terminals, Criss tried to find what they were after.

"We’re looking for some kind of network server, it’d be a large computer on its own somewhere, probably next to some large data storage cabinets or something like that," whispered Trini. She pointed towards a door at the back of the room and tapped Criss on the arm. "Try in there, they’d need to keep it cool so it’s own room with air conditioning sounds like a good shot." Criss nodded and padded over, finding that this door was unlocked and pushing it open.

"Is this it?" he asked Trini as she followed him inside to the brightly lit cool room, the gentle hiss of the air conditioning unit overhead keeping the whole area at a constant low temperature. A larger than normal terminal sat facing them, with a row of white data cabinets lined up against the left hand wall, tape reels hidden behind frosted glass but visible still, spinning away irregularly as they backed up what the main computer was doing. Trini nodded and sat down before the terminal, charging up and connecting her laptop to the back of it.

"This ought to do it, I just need a couple of minutes to gain access to the server and then I can find the files we couldn’t reach before, re-route the main access codes so that I can directly download onto this PC, crunch the files up so we can store double the amount of gigabytes of info and then start running some post-encryption software to.." Trini trailed off as she realised Criss was grinning at her. "What?" she said, blushing yet again.

"You were doing that techie thing again."

"What techie thing?"

"Where you hit the jargon button and go off on one, saying lots of stuff that I’m sure is very clever but which goes over my head a lot," Criss grinned.

"Sorry, I don’t mean to-" Criss held up a hand to stop her.

"It’s fine. It’s good, it shows me that you know what you’re doing. I’m better with more hands-on stuff myself, I leave the software side of it up to people like you!" Trini smiled and nodded, turning back to her screen. Criss looked back out into the main room where Cevin and Katya were standing.

"What’s the news?" asked Katya.

"Same as last time, stand guard and keep an eye out for patrols, we don’t have as much time up here," said Criss. Cevin nodded and held up a walkie-talkie radio.

"Where’d you get that?" said Criss. Cevin smirked mischievously.

"Heh, took it from the desk downstairs, thought it’d help us listen in on the guards."

"Good idea, what have you got so far?"

"Well, luckily it was already set to their frequency so I’ve just been monitoring the patrol movements, so far nothing to-"

He was silenced as the radio crackled into life.

"Echo-Four-Whiskey, Echo-Four-Whiskey come in, come in, over." Everyone looked at Cevin, who very carefully made sure his thumb was nowhere near the ‘Talk’ button on the handset.

"What did.." Katya started but Criss shushed her as they radio crackled again.

"Echo-Four-Whiskey, we have a man down at the east side road gate, repeat man down, suspected intruder entry into the complex, stand by." Criss cursed. They’d found the guard he’d taken out at the road bridge checkpoint, which meant it wouldn’t be long before the complex was crawling with more guards. He dashed back into the computer room, startling Trini as she continued to type furiously away on her laptop.

"What’s wrong? You scared me half to death!"

"We have a problem. It seems the guards know we’re here, they’ll be on to us soon so you’d best get what you can now, I’m pulling us out of here in two minutes." Trini frowned.

"That won’t be long enough, I’m only just getting into the server’s files, we’d come away with nothing if we went now!" Criss paused for a second, then sighed.

"Alright, three minutes. Sorry to rush you, Trini, but we cannot be found here." She nodded and went back to her keys. Criss went back out to the other two.

"They’ll start checking the buildings soon, it won’t be long before they get this far. We need an escape route." Cevin nodded and retrieved the printed off blueprints they’d been using to mark the guard patrols.

"South side, there’s an exit balcony which leads onto the roof, from there we may be able to jump across to this car park access ramp, and from there onto the wall and down."

"Jump across?" said Katya incredulously. "And what about the armed guards and searchlights, exactly? Don’t we have a better plan than that?"

"It’s the best one if you make a good diversion for us," said Cevin.

"What did you have in mind?"

"Well.." he said, filling her in on the rest of his plan.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Quistis located Raijin and Fujin at last, quietly mopping another identical corridor in the building. Raijin jolted when she walked up to them, almost kicking his mop over.

"Aw, man, you scared me, ya know! This place gives me the creeps something bad, I don’t like it at all!" he said, clearly unsettled by the asylum’s atmosphere. Fujin was characteristically silent, but couldn’t look up off the floor at Quistis.

"Well what do you know, you two are scared of something after all," she said. "And how long have you two been cleaning? We’re only undercover here, we’re not actually going to be paid for anything we do!"

"We know, it’s just.. I didn’t want to have to keep looking at those people in there," said Raijin, obviously not used to being shaken by anything.

"SAD," said Fujin, looking back round to the edge of the lunge, where some of the pale-faced inmates could be heard shuffling around the room.

"Yeah, I know," Quistis said. "But listen, I have good news. I found Seifer." Both their heads snapped round to look at her, renewed vigour in their eyes. "There’s quite a crabby-looking matron on patrol round there, but if one of us distracts her we should be able to get Seifer out of there no problem." Fujin nodded.

"DISTRACT," she said.

"Well volunteered. Raijin, the door’s not hard to open but Seifer looks drugged up, he may be tricky to carry. Can you manage that?" Raijin’s chest swelled with pride.

"For Seifer, I’d carry the whole world and everyone in it, ya know?"

"That’s what I hoped you’d say," Quistis grinned. "Now let’s go to work."

* * * * * * * * * * *

TO BE CONTINUED..

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