Even Demons Can Be Saved

How to be a Turk

They had almost reached the Shinra building when Tseng stopped and turned to her. "If I do choose to believe you, how much time do we have until Genesis leaves with Hollander?"

She gave him a contemplative look. "That depends. What day and year is it?"

The look he gave her was incredulous. "How can you not know the year at least?"

The look she gave him back was flat. "I know the General had to have made a report when he found me, and there is no way you haven't seen it yet. Given that, you shouldn't be surprised. It was no lie that I nearly drowned somewhere in the ocean and somehow went from there to that pool in Modeoheim. The fact that I was still wearing my bikini should have told you all something. With that being the case, I can't make assumptions on the year. There is no telling how long I was actually out."

The look he gave her was contemplative. He had read the report, but at the time had discounted her words as confusion or straight-up lies. Now that he knew a little more, he had to reevaluate. If she really had been swept through the lifestream from one location to another and survived, that opened up a whole new set of questions. He frowned at her slightly before he spoke. "I will not say that I can believe that you survived something like that so easily, but I'll play along for now. It is August 3rd of 2000. Now, when will he leave?"

Eve's eyes widened at his words, and she couldn't hold back her curse. "Well, shit! She wasn't kidding when she said we don't have much time."

"She?"

Eve ignored his raised brow and waved away his question. "Minerva said I had to focus right away as we didn't have much time left. Genesis is going to be injured sometime in the next month, and that will be the catalyst to the whole ordeal."

Tseng could tell she was lost in thought but noticed she was so absorbed that she was answering without much deliberation. He wondered how far he could push before she noticed and clammed up again. "What day will he be injured?"

She gave him a frown. "I don't know exactly. All I know was that it will be sometime in late summer. That is why I said sometime in the next month. It could be tomorrow for all I know."

Tseng finally frowned as well. He wasn't sure how far to believe her, but if she was telling the truth, he really didn't have much time to dig for the answers. "He leaves after he is injured?"

She shook her head. By that time, she had finally realized she was blabbing without much thought, but it wasn't anything Tseng didn't need to know. Even if he didn't believe her for now, if he was armed with the truth, he might have a better chance of helping her figure out how to stop it. "No, his injury leads to him finding out the truth about his birth, but Hollander only tells him enough to control him. He ends up leaving sometime in October when he is deployed to Wutai. If we can keep him from getting injured, or at the very least, keep him from being deployed, we have a better chance of making changes. He won't be happy, but we can't let him leave."

Tseng was still confused about the connection. All the Firsts had been injured many times, even severely, but none of their injuries caused the type of behaviour she was listing. "Why would he desert after being injured. That makes no sense. His superior healing should make short work of anything that potions and cures can't fix."

The look she gave him at that was almost haunted, and he found that he had to work to suppress a chill. It was something he had not expected, and her words did not help to stop it. "It will be unlike any injury he has ever received. Something about it will be a catalyst that causes his body to start rejecting his very cells. He will not be able to heal and will basically start rotting alive. His degradation will be what causes him to believe and follow Hollander. Not that the crackpot has any real clue how to stop it, but Genesis will be desperate."