Final Fantasy VII: Lifestream - Book 1: Arrival

TWENTY-EIGHT

I caught up to Tifa and Barret just a short way into the tunnel. The cargo elevator was right in front of us, with a small control panel off to the right. Without a word, we moved onto the lift, and then I turned to the panel and pressed the button to send us down. We got moving with a slight jolt and began to descend.

Tifa adjusted her gloves. "So what's the reactor like?"

"Hellhole," Barret answered. "Where they bleed the planet dry. She needs us now, Tifa. Needs us to torch this goddamn slaughterhouse an' shut it down. Oh, an' mind the smell."

"Smell?" she asked.

I nodded. "It's the mako. Stronger here than in Reactor 1. Probably why we need the antidotes."

Barret grunted. "Be ready for it."

We got to the bottom a minute later. Hurrying off the lift, we made our way through the double doors ahead of us and into Reactor 5 itself. The layout of the place was, as I'd told the others, pretty much the same as Reactor 1. Only here, a faint bluish glow hung in the air. We walked out onto a small ledge above the utility access area. Just like before, the stairs ran down through three floors until they reached the bottom and the doorway leading to mako storage.

"Oh, man!" Tifa coughed, curling her nose. "This is terrible! And I thought it was bad down in the slums!"

"Told ya," Barret chuckled.

I gazed across the huge chamber. "How do we get down?"

There was another staircase at one end of the ledge, but I discarded that idea right way. The stairs didn't go very far and only lead to a dead end with some pipes and machinery set into the wall. Trying the best I could to ignore the acrid mako fumes that made my eyes water and ate at the inside of my throat, I looked around for something we could use to get to the bottom of this place.

"Aha!" Tifa exclaimed. "How about this, guys?"

She was crouching down on the left side of the ledge, pointing at a thick metal pipe about three feet across that stretched all the way down to the floor at a roughly forty-five degree angle. It was probably used to channel the mako up from storage so it could be converted into energy. In any case, it would do well enough.

Barret shrugged. "S'pose it could work."

"I'll go first," Tifa volunteered.

Sitting carefully down on the pipe, she took a breath and slid down it, holding her arms out to either side to keep her balance. Barret went next, going slower but doing better than I thought he would. Once he'd started sliding down, I followed behind him. It didn't take long, barely even a minute at the speed we were going, and then we all stood safely on the floor at the bottom of utility access.

Tifa laughed. "That was fun. A little scary, but fun."

"Jessie would've loved it," I agreed.

"No doubt," Barret said. "An' speakin' of Jessie, you two did go over her intel report yesterday, right?"

I knew we had. "Yeah. Security's gonna be tougher here. Smoggers and bloodhounds. Machine gun sentries in utility access and the lower levels, too. Nothing we can't handle, though."

"Right," Tifa flexed her fingers.

On a hunch, I swapped my Restore and Lightning materia, linking the Magnify to Lightning instead. Then we got going, walking through the bottom floor of utility access. As we did, Tifa coughed again on the mako fumes, but she didn't falter. It was oddly quiet, and I didn't like it at all. The others noticed it, too.

Barret grimaced. "I hate this shit. Ain't no one home?"

"Do you really want there to be?" Tifa glanced at him. "Although... it does seem a little empty."