Final Fantasy VII: Reflections - Book 2: Ascent

TEN

One night about three weeks later, Cloud and I walked quietly into Sector 3 to meet our contact. Marcus had the C4 ready for pick up, and I had the cash to pay him. The bomb was mostly done, and I'd snagged the reactor blueprints and decrypted the passcodes for the doors. Now all that was left was getting the blasting agent.

The Sector 3 undercity wasn't much different from Sector 7, full of old shacks, narrow dirt roads, dark alleys, and a few streetlamps. I saw the street I was looking for and led Cloud onto it. The mako smell was worse here than back home, and I tried not to choke on it as we walked down the dimly-lit road. We'd been in this town before for work, but it wasn't one of my favorite places. I curled my nose at the acrid smells of mako, alcohol, and worse and shot Cloud a small, wry grin. His mouth turned up slightly in return. He didn't like it, either.

The street wasn't much more than an alley, with trashed piled here and there, and we went left around a corner to our destination. It was a small building made out of splintered wooden beams and metal sheets. After Cloud and I glanced uneasily at each other, I knocked quietly on the door. Nobody answered at first, but then a minute or two later, the door slowly opened and a middle-aged man with a short brown beard gazed suspiciously out at us from behind it.

His dark eyes narrowed. "Yeah? Who're you?"

I looked around first to make sure we were really alone, then gazed back at him. "It's J. Are you Marcus?"

"That's me," the man frowned. "But... you're J?"

"Yeah, why?" I asked.

Marcus scratched his beard and shrugged. "Just... wasn't expecting you to be some kid. Or a girl."

"I'm twenty-three. Hardly a kid. But definitely a girl."

All of my communications with Marcus before this had been done through encrypted text messages, so this was the first time we'd met in person. To protect both myself and Avalanche, I hadn't told him much, not even my full name or that I was a woman. But I enjoyed surprising him and not being anything like what he'd expected.

"Obviously," he grumbled. "Don't know what a little thing like you wants with what I've got, though."

I folded my arms across my chest and didn't budge. "I thought you weren't gonna be asking any questions."

"Right, not my business. Long as you got the gil, that is."

"I do," I said, patting my pocket.

Marcus nodded, then opened the door all the way and beckoned to us. "Then come on in. Not a lot of time to waste."

"Why's that?" Cloud asked.

"My shop's in Sector 6. Wall Market," he explained after we hurried inside. He went on as he closed the door behind us. "My brother and I sell weapons, armor, that sort of thing. He's the one at the counter most of the time, while I do custom work."

I thought I knew where this was going. "And?"

Marcus continued after glancing out the window. "Trouble is, a big cut of our profits goes right to Don Corneo. He owns Wall Market, and anyone doing business there has to pay up."

"But things like this, you do on the side," Cloud said.

"Right," Marcus agreed. "Special orders that the Don doesn't know about. Gotta make up for what we have to pay him, you know. Anyway, somehow he found out about our little exchange tonight."

I grimaced. "Shit..."

He gazed worriedly at us. "So some of his men might show up. I'm just a simple businessman, and I'd rather we all got outta here with our skins intact. So I think we'd better get started."