365 Hours with Rufus Shinra (FFVII: Rufus x OC)

ch15.1 damn you, self, for giving your f*cking life, for the sake of others

SHE HAD lost it all. She had lost her company. She had lost her apartment, her car, her job. Her employees had lost their jobs, her clients had all moved to Shinra's services.

Yeah. There have been a couple of hard months. She did have a job, though. With a little bit of effort, she was accepted in a clinic in Sector 4 where she worked as an Endocrinologist, and could at least pay the rent for a small apartment in the slums of Sector 4. But her current state didn't really matter as much as the state of the Planet.

Everybody would stop what they were doing and stare at the nearest TV to watch the news. The world was going to end, they said. There was no hope and everybody was panicking. Some people refused to leave their houses, their families. They preferred getting fired from their jobs and just spend the last few days with the people that they cared about the most.

Alas, Hannah had no such affiliations. So, she kept going to work, taking the train every morning to the upper levels of Sector 4. Reno had called her a couple of times and she did not pick up. As much as she loved her brother, she just wanted to be left alone. He was still working for the company that had crushed her own.

But the Planet was a mess, and that wasn't helping with her current state. A threat had awakened in Knowlespole, triggering the awakening of Weapons. They were unleashed and spread havoc across the globe. Meteor was coming. The day of the impact was getting closer and closer by the hour. It was only a matter of time now. Everybody said that. Everybody waited for death. She too waited for death. No. She anticipated it. Impatiently.

Everybody heard of the Weapon attack in Junon. It was said the President of the Shinra Corporation was there too. They had shot it down with the 'Sister Ray' canon. All wounded SOLDIER troops were brought back to the Shinra Tower along with the Sister Ray cannon.

Hannah didn't really care about how they were going to use the Sister Ray, but the wounded were so many, that Shinra had summoned all doctors -of any specialisation, of any Sector- to the Shinra Tower, to help take care of the wounded. She was one of them.

So many wounded. Cries of pain and despair. What was once a magnificent building, now it couldn't even house all these people. The hospitals were full. The losses were many. Wounded soldiers were sitting on the floors. The doctors checked them out one by one.

It was night when it happened.

The Sister Ray fired, and everybody cheered because it had brought down the walls of that threat in Knowlespole. But then alarms resounded. Then, people started screaming and panicking and running around the place trying to find a way out. Hannah had just finished treating a soldier who had lost his leg. She looked all around the fifty-fourth floor only to see people rushing downstairs from the emergency staircase and the elevator.

She saw doctors abandoning their patients, to run for their lives. The ones who couldn't walk, they crawled, and a voice shouted from the speakers.

"Impact imminent! Evacuate immediately!"

Hannah acted fast. No matter whatever her patient asked her, she helped him stand, passing his hand around her shoulders, taking him towards the stairs. She placed his hand on the metallic banister of the staircase before she rushed back inside and reached for the other patients. The entire building shook.

The lights went out. The creaking sound of metal reached their ears and people shouted in panic. Something had hit the building. The only lights were the ones that came from outside. The entire building slightly bent. Hannah's hands reached for the closest bench to keep herself balanced.