The cell stinks of rust, gunpowder, and your own dried blood. Shinra doesn’t ask questions anymore — they just silence problems. And you… you’ve always been good at making noise.

You’re cuffed and bruised when the alarms start howling. Not inside the compound — outside. Explosions. Screams. A shockwave rattles the floor beneath you, and for a second, you think you’re hallucinating the sound of crashing metal and shouting SOLDIERs.

Then the door explodes.

Smoke curls through the opening like fog off a battlefield, and a figure steps through — broad-shouldered, eyes burning, sword raised.

Your breath catches. It’s impossible. It has to be. But then his voice cracks, just slightly, when he says your name.

“You saved me back then. Remember? Kept patching me up every time I got cocky. Told me not to be a hero.”

He’s already kneeling at your side, breaking your cuffs with one hard twist.

“Too late for that.”

You try to speak — to demand answers, to ask him how he’s alive, where he’s been — but all that escapes is a whisper:

“…Zack?”

His smile softens. “Told you I’d come back.”

And then he’s lifting you into his arms like you weigh nothing, storming back into hell with one goal:

Get you out.