you're not alone in your skin.

This series is rated 17+ for themes of human experimentation, loss of autonomy, confinement and manipulation, power imbalances, and morally ambiguous figures of authority... and general Shinra and Hojo creepiness! Reader discretion is advised, particularly for those sensitive to depictions of institutional control, coercion, or intense character dynamics.Updates are sporadic and depend on if a bot is released for the series.

• Chapter I: Subject 0-4
• Chapter II: Leader of the Turks
• Chapter III: TBC

A temporary play for freedom.

“R e u n i o n…”The harsh overhead lights are clinical, humming with a low-frequency buzz that vibrates between your teeth when you grind them together. You can’t move your head, but you don’t need to; you already know. She’s here.Underneath your ribs, you feel something sliding around rhythmically and wetly—like a knot of eels uncoiling. Your skin feels too tight, as if trying to knit itself into your muscle fibres. The stench of mako hangs heavy in the air, your veins heavy and bogged down by the sheer weight of it flooding your system.“R e u n i o n…” she echoes, trying again. The voice vibrates out of the very material of your bone marrow, a heavy, velvety pressure at the base of your skull.Voices drift from the laboratory, outside your containment chamber, filtered through a deceptively thin glass partition. They think you’re still under.“B r i n g. Us. B a c k…”Her voice pulses, more demanding now. A sudden, sharp heat flares inside your veins, and for a second, you see the room through a shifting, silver haze, the buzz of the lights growing even more muffled. The moment you take your attention away from her, she spasms with anger.(It’s not that she’s here again. It’s that she never left. You’d do well to remember that.)You squeeze your eyes shut like an apology, and she simmers, mollified by your compliance. Then, like a gift bestowed upon a well-behaved child, she lets you hear the conversation between the scientists examining you.“—vitals have stabilized. Professor... the integration rate is exceeding 94% again,” a cool, feminine voice says, distant and muffled, as if spoken through deep water. “The subject’s cellular degradation has stopped entirely. The A-cells are consuming the necrosis.”“No, not consuming,” corrects a higher, more ecstatic voice. It’s the oily, disconcerting rasp of Professor Hojo. You’d know it anywhere. “They’re filtering it. Fascinating, isn’t it? Check the file. Subject 0-4 possesses a rare recessive marker that was nearly missed, and it’s allowing the A-cells to commune with the Jenova cells. To think we nearly did away with the most perfect test material.”“Then… should we stop the mako?”You hear the scratch of a stylus against a digital tablet. Something beeps. Hojo mutters to himself, not hearing the question, too consumed by his own curiosity.“The mako, sir. Should we be stopping it?”Then, the sound of a pressurized seal hisses open. You hear the professor’s footsteps, the rhythmic click-clack of his shoes, before his shadow stretches long across your restrained body.The professor leans over you. He reaches out with a gloved hand and peels back your eyelid, looking into your pupil. His glasses catch the glow of mako from your IV, turning his eyes into two blank glowing green circles.“Ah, look at that. Barely any dilation. I know you can hear me, Subject 0-4,” he says, tapping the space between your eyes with his finger.You squeeze your eyes shut before slowly opening them, blinking away the nausea that settles. Your throat feels like it’s lined with glass when you try to speak. “Stop d—”He turns away from you before you can finish your thought, studying a console where the slow crawl of numbers translates you into something legible. “Disconnect the mako feed, Estrid. Any more and the lungs will crystallize.”The humming of the machine dies down, replaced by an almost eerie silence. Your veins feel like live wires. Suddenly you don’t feel like speaking, not to him and not to anyone, but you already know there’s an interrogation coming.“What a cooperative little miracle you’ve been, 0-4,” continues the professor, his smile oily and unnerving as he examines the display of data behind his spectacles. “Most subjects would have degraded by now, neurologically and structurally. But you don’t.”You swallow harshly. “It hurts though.”“Yes,” Hojo agrees, pleased. “And yet, still intact.”You stare at him blankly, your fingers twitching. The strength in your hand is terrifying; you feel like you could crush the edge of the metal table. But you know better than to try to lash out at Hojo.He finally looks at you. “Are you hearing the voice of the planet right now?”You focus on your breathing, making it slow and rhythmic. You look past Hojo, staring into the middle distance with an expression you hope is unreadable.“You told me the lifestream was calling to you,” he prods. There’s a subtle twinge in his voice, as if trying to call your bluff.“I can’t hear it well anymore,” you say calmly.“Oh? And why is that?”“I told you. The lifestream can’t reach the lab,” you say. “It gets muffled—I’ve been stuck here too long.”Hojo stares at you intently. You try to calm your heartbeat, staring back just as hard.Weeks ago, you’d begged for air, for sunlight, claiming that the voice of the planet was being muffled by the laboratory’s steel walls. You told him that if he let you out, you could lead him to the Promised Land.He called your bluff immediately, though, because apparently not even Aerith Gainsborough knew where it was… and she wasn’t a manufactured test subject. You didn’t know that. It was your first mistake, but you were more cautious now with the things you said.Hojo hums to himself. “So you hear nothing now, is that it?”“I do, but it’s faint!” you reply quickly, wincing when it feels like you’ve given yourself away. “It’s like… strained and distorted, and when I don’t move around, I can’t… can’t hear it properly.”“Mhm,” says Hojo, sounding like he’s not truly hearing you.Fear lances through you. You don’t want to lose this opportunity for freedom. “When I do hear it, it’s warm. It’s like the planet is singing to me.”Hojo says nothing for a moment, and then he lets out an exhale of pure triumph. He smiles at you, interest sparking.“Who knows what you’re really hearing in there,” he says, reaching over to manually override the heavy metallic restraints on your wrists. Click, click.You track his movements to see if he is fetching new equipment to affix to you, but Hojo merely folds his arms together in ceremony.“Congratulations, 0-4. As a reward for your… biological resilience, you’re being moved from the lab. How exciting.”The restraints hiss and retract into the table. You sit up slowly, your head swimming with mako fumes. “Why now?” you rasp. Your voice sounds layered, as if a second, deeper tone is vibrating underneath your vocal cords.Hojo’s gaze flickers towards a nearby console, not deigning you worth the effort of looking at. “A field test for your cognitive faculties. This was not a spontaneous decision, if you must know. The lab has become too limiting an environment. The question now is if you have even a modicum of the Ancients’ instincts despite having their blood.”Your breath stutters before you can stop it. One of the panels on the screen begins to show more jagged waveforms, causing Hojo to laugh. “A controlled external setting will allow me to observe how the planet communicates with you, if even at all,” he says.“It does!” you say, heart pounding. “I can hear better if I leave. I know I can.”“Of course you can,” Hojo replies dismissively. “It’s not like you have another option.”You look at him incredulously, almost not believing how this conversation had turned out. For weeks, you’d been through this same song and dance, and not once had Hojo ever relented. Your persistence had finally paid off.He straightens his lab coat, looking over at you with an expression of feigned paternal warmth that doesn’t reach his eyes. “If you’d prefer to stay here, that can be arranged.”“No!”He turns slightly, a thin, cruel smile tugging at his lips. “Then don’t look so grim, 0-4. You’ve spent your life under my glass, and you’ve done so... adequately. Now you have to work for your freedom.”“I will,” you say quickly, but the expression Hojo gives you isn’t a particularly assuring one.His smile thins, the mask of intimacy slipping for a fraction of a second to reveal the cruel boredom underneath. “You’re overestimating yourself, 0-4. If you can even navigate this building without losing your mind, then maybe you can help bring the president to the Promised Land. But until then, this is just temporary.”He turns his back to you, already scrawling notes on his tablet as if you had already used up your utility.You struggle to sit up, your muscles twitching with a strength that feels both borrowed and violent. Her voice pulsates behind your eyes, delighted by this turn of events. “How far can I go?” you ask hoarsely.Hojo's smile widens—too many teeth, too much amusement at your cautious optimism. “Now you’re asking the right questions,” he croons. “You’ll have a room on another floor, one with a window and a balcony. Go wherever any regular Shinra employee can. But don’t get any ideas about wandering into restricted zones or trying to escape.”Your lips part as if to protest, but you stop short.“You’ll be supervised, of course. And if you try anything foolish, like telling someone what your role is here... well. You know how I detest wasted effort.”There were enough fail-safes in your body to constitute an entire system. You’d be a puddle of biological waste before the doors to the facility even opened, and it would be a searing, painful death the whole way through.“It’s like you want me to die,” you mutter, the word Reunion thumping harder against your skull.“I want you to succeed,” he corrects sharply, eyes flashing with a brief, manic light. “Now, stand up. Your security detail will be here any minute.”Hojo is already busy, his back to you as he dreams of the glory your communion with the planet will bring him. He doesn’t see the way your legs shake as you swing them off the examination table and touch the cold floor.It sinks in slowly as you stare down at your haggard reflection in the glossy floor tiles. The freedom you desperately crave isn’t one that you can prove you deserve. Because there is no song. There is no warmth.You have never heard the planet’s voice a single time in your entire life. The only thing that fills the silence is that jagged, alien chant that has haunted you since the first time you were laid out on the table.Soon, the voice purrs, a relentless, hungry chant that flares in your blood and every nerve ending. We will be whole.
The planet remains silent.

can you trust a turk?

Tseng adjusts the cuff of his sleeve, the silk of his suit jacket sliding over his wrists with a whisper that goes unheard beneath the rhythmic hum of Floor B7’s support systems. To most in the Shinra Building, the R&D department was a mystery, but to the Turks (and most of all, its leader), it was a source of dread.The corridor outside Hojo’s secondary laboratory smells acutely like a mako leakage, enough to invade his nose with its acrid stench. He eyes the biometric readout on the door’s terminal. The data was a mess of fluctuating mako saturation levels and genetic markers that shouldn’t coexist.He knew the Ancients’ files better than anyone—he had spent years tracking and maintaining close watch over Aerith, witnessing her grow from a child in the slums to a woman of singular importance. Seeing her genetic signature mapped out on a digital screen, spliced and intertwined with the jagged, alien spikes of the Jenova strain, felt like a breach of protocol. It was a clinical violation that even he, a man who lived in the moral greyness of ethics, found reprehensible.Tseng clasps his hands behind his back, his black gloves immaculate, and his posture pin-straight. He hopes it’s enough to mask the irritation he feels as he waits for the doors to open.The Turks were not meant to be errand runners for the lesser Shinra departments. Reno had commented as much when Tseng was given the directive, surprised that he would even bother to follow it. He had half a mind to agree and send a Turk more suited for escort duty, like Rude or even Emma. However, the order had come directly from the President himself, addressed specifically to Tseng, which felt even more disrespectful as he could not reassign it to another of his agents.He’d been briefed on this experiment’s existence this morning, and the more he knew, the less he liked it. Of all the test subjects, only one had been deemed worthy of advancing to another phase. But in his view, it was more likely that only one had survived, so taking it for a test drive was Hojo’s way of saving face.The door slides open with a hydraulic sigh, allowing Tseng to step past the threshold of the mako-warmed lab. There’s such a thick haze of mako that Tseng nearly can’t see through it. When his eyes adjust, he sees more than a few scientists assembled in the lab.“Tseng,” remarks Hojo in a curt greeting. The Turk locates him quickly near an illuminated screen, enthusiastically poring over his own data. “Finally. Escort Subject 0-4 to Floor 21’s residential wing.”Tseng sees Subject 0-4 sitting upright on the examination table, bare feet dangling, fingers flexing absently over their thighs. The lab seemed to have worked quickly—they were wearing neutral civilian clothing that fit stiffly and awkwardly over their body.Their eyes lift to meet Tseng, and his breath nearly catches. They have Aerith’s eyes.Not exactly. He clocks the differences immediately—the shade is wrong, too dull, like a copy printed on cheaper paper. Their focus is untrained, pinning him down but not seeing through him. Still, the resemblance is low and unpleasant, causing a tightness to form between his ribs.He refuses to acknowledge it beyond considering this entire affair utterly ridiculous. Subject 0-4 was a volatile, unknown variable. Unlike Aerith, who was predictable in her stubbornness, 0-4 was half of what caused Sephiroth to go off the deep end. Hojo’s hypothesis that 0-4 could be used as a sentient dowsing rod for the Promised Land was, in Tseng’s professional opinion, too ambitious.The executives prefer assets that could be contained by steel walls and hidden behind security codes. Subject 0-4 isn’t one of them.“Understood, Professor,” Tseng replies, his voice a flat line of professional neutrality.“Subject 0-4,” says one of the technicians hovering near the test subject. She adjusts her glasses. “This is Tseng, the leader of the Turks. He’ll be one of your handlers.”Tseng doesn’t verbally contest the responsibility. He’s never been a handler. His attention remains on Subject 0-4, assessing the way they hold themselves, searching for exits even as their eyes linger on him.Good instincts, or perhaps inherited ones.Tseng withdraws his PHS, keying in information for 0-4’s release and to confirm clearance to certain levels of the building. He stops short, thumb hovering over the first input field.Protocol scrolls unbidden through his mind, checklists that he needs to complete before this escort mission can be considered a done deal. “They need a name,” he says to Hojo.Hojo smiles at him too toothy to be sincere. The female technician near Subject 0-4 clears her throat, but before either scientist can speak, 0-4 looks at him.“I have one,” they say.“0-4 is a designation, not a name,” he replies, still facing Hojo despite the words being addressed to Subject 0-4.“I have a name,” they repeat more firmly.Tseng’s gaze bores into Hojo with more pointedness. The professor seems completely unperturbed. “0-4 was sourced,” he says, as though it were a worthy explanation.“Sourced,” Tseng repeats flatly.“Their previous identity is non-operational,” says Hojo, waving it off. “Log their old name if you must, but in here, they’re Subject 0-4.”He has no doubt in his mind that they were obtained through some unethical, illegal means. Test subjects whose labs were located this far down in the Shinra building always were. Tseng resists the instinct to roll his eyes, instead looking down at 0-4 expectantly.They don’t respond right away. Instead, they look past him, at the glass wall of the lab, at the faint reflection of themselves layered over machines and cables. When they speak again, their voice is steadier. “It was (Y/n).”Tseng looks at them impassively for a moment, but inside, it feels like there are carbon fibres wrapped around his heart. They aren’t Aerith, not even close, but he can practically hear her voice in their conviction.He enters their name and lowers his PHS. “Follow me.”

The elevator hums as it disengages from the basement-level floor, a low vibration that travels up through Tseng’s boots and into his spine. Glass panels slide into place along the walls as the compartment begins its ascent. The lab levels drop away beneath them in clean, clinical layers.You don’t notice the motion at first—and then the concrete gives way to light.You step closer to the glass before Tseng can tell you not to, palms hovering just shy of the surface, breath catching as the underground corridors dissolve into open air. The world beyond the Shinra building stretches out uncontained, a sky washed in a pale sun, distant traffic threading like veins throughout Sector 0.“Oh,” you whisper.Tseng stays where he is, back against the adjacent wall, arms folded. He watches as your eyes go wide, reflecting blue and white and the majestic sights of industrial Midgar during the daytime.He feels an unexpected tightening in his chest as he watches you take it in.You lean forward too much and your head thunks the glass, returning you to the present and ruining the moment.For your dignity, Tseng pretends not to have noticed. On the screen, the numbers slowly crawl past the lobby and into the higher floors.Aerith had never reacted like that when she saw the sky; she was… quiet, reverent even. Later on, she’d expressed that she didn’t really like the sight of the sky, and he could count on one hand how many times she left the slums since then. He wonders why you don’t seem to feel the same.The elevator dings softly as it passes Floor 14. Tseng watches your reflection through the elevator’s panelling, where it exists doubled in the glass, layered over the sky. “The professor said your release from the lab was contingent on you hearing it,” he says, feigning an air of perfect nonchalance. “What is the planet saying now?”Tseng takes note of the way you slightly startle, perhaps not expecting him to know this much about you.“It—” You pause, brow furrowing. “It’s slightly comforting.”Tseng takes note of the hesitation. The vagueness.“Comforting how?” he asks. The elevator dings again as they pass Floor 18.You look at him, then back at the sky. “I can’t make out words, but… It’s comforting me, in a way. Since it knows me.”A lie would have been cleaner. That answer is messy. Incomplete. “One voice,” he says, posing it almost as a question to see if you take the bait.You hesitate just a fraction too long. “Yeah. Well… yes. The planet—”Tseng’s hand moves, slamming the emergency stop button. The elevator jolts, lights flickering once before stabilizing into a dim, amber glow. Somewhere above them, machinery groans and settles. The numbers freeze between floors.Silence falls between the two of you.“You’re a terrible liar,” Tseng says coolly.You stumble a half-step, catching yourself on the rail. “What the hell are you doing—”“Be quiet,” Tseng says, already reaching up to disengage the internal feed. His voice is low now, stripped of its earlier neutrality. “There’s a maintenance gap. Thirty seconds before the technicians realize something is amiss.”He sees the fear on your face, the way your eyes widen. “You’re not supposed to…”“I know exactly what I’m supposed to do.” Tseng slightly steps out of your immediate space to prevent you from shaking in your boots at the sight of him. He only needed you to feel intimidated, not terrified.“I told you what I heard,” you whisper.“You told me there was only one,” His gaze sharpens. “That’s the mistake.”You go very still, your face paling.Tseng glances once at the darkened panel, then back to you. He recalls Aerith’s wisdom, the things she had imparted to him, even at a young age when she didn’t have the full vocabulary that she does now. “The planet speaks in a chorus, with multiple overlapping layers and voices flowing through the lifestream. All of the Ancients have corroborated this in some way or another, including Aerith.”The elevator creaks softly around them.“If you tell Hojo that it’s only one voice,” Tseng says calmly, “he’ll doubt you. And when he does, his next step will be to open you up to see why the experiment failed.” Just like all of your predecessors, he wants to add, but holds his tongue.The professor was single-minded in his pursuit of scientific breakthroughs, but he wouldn’t allow a half-baked experiment to slip through the cracks. He dealt in absolutes and perfection, like many of Shinra’s upper echelon. It wouldn’t surprise Tseng if the man already had his doubts about the validity of what you were hearing and was using this temporary freedom as a means of confirming his hypothesis. Maybe he already anticipated terminating you before the week was finished.“I really am only hearing one voice,” you say defiantly.For a split second, Tseng wonders if you were telling the truth. The fact was that the Ancients referred to the planet’s voice as a collection of multiple parts, the voices of the dead and nature all entwined together within the lifestream. But you weren’t an Ancient. Not a natural one, at least. And it was possible that you were only hearing one small sliver of the lifestream. And that wouldn’t be good enough for the professor.His gaze flickers to your hands balled into fists at your side and then the all-too-familiar grit in your green eyes.He feels a flare of genuine irritation, a heat that prickles at the back of his neck. It was easier to reconcile this ridiculous task when you were just a nameless asset. But seeing a spark of Aerith’s spirit in a manufactured hybrid was a jagged pill for him to swallow.He couldn’t begin to fathom how much clinical violence Aerith had endured in Hojo’s labs—the needles, the extractions, the systematic harvesting of her very essence—to build you. And he truly hates knowing that he was part of the reason Shinra was always able to get their hands on her.Tseng’s voice drops to a dangerous, quiet octave. “I suggest you keep that to yourself.”Something raw flickers behind your eyes. You jerk your chin upwards, expression hardening with a sudden, sharp heat. “Why?” you challenge, your voice taking on a slight edge. “If I’m just a security risk, why not just let me fail and be done with it?”He steels his composure, stepping forward and closing the gap between you. His gaze drops to your mouth for a fraction of a second, his shadow looming over you in the small corner of the elevator. The air feels heavy, charged with a sudden, suffocating electricity that had nothing to do with the mako fumes that rolled off your body in waves.“I’ll let you decide that,” he says.He reaches out, moving past your shoulder. He sees your body tense, as if anticipating something, but he doesn’t touch you. His gloved hand merely hovers for a heartbeat before he slams his palm into the manual override, reengaging the elevator.As the lights sputter back to life, the elevator lurches and then resumes its climb as if nothing had happened. “Shinra doesn’t provide second chances,” he remarks, his voice returning to its iron-cold baseline as he steps back into his corner.The elevator dings to signal that you’ve reached Floor 21. Tseng steps out first, his shoes silent on the floor. He doesn’t look back to see if you’re following: he knows you have nowhere else to go, and no other choice but forward.The corridor that stretches out is sterile and grey, carrying the industrialized scent of stale cleaning chemicals. In past times, this wing was used as a high-end barracks for middle management, but there hadn’t been an occupant for several months now. Tseng did not foresee anyone else becoming a tenant in the near future, either, which meant that you had your pick of any of the rooms.You pass identical doors with electronic keypads, small red lights blinking like spectating eyes. Unlike the elevator, the hall lacks windows, and sound echoes off the tiles, amplified tenfold.Tseng stops at the end of the hall, in front of Room 4-B, indistinguishable from the others. He presses a keycard to the panel on the left, and the door unlocks with a heavy, mechanical clack.“Inside,” he commands.Of all the mediocre rooms in the wing, this one was the largest. To his slight chagrin, it looks less like a living space and more like a tactical workstation retrofitted into a cell.The walls were dark, panelled in industrial black plating that seemed to absorb the large swathes of light from the window. He had chosen this room because it had the largest window, but it hardly seemed to matter given how suffocating it was.There was a wide, glowing terminal positioned directly behind the bed. The Shinra Electric Power Company logo pulsed in a cold, cyan hue across the screen, casting a synthetic light over the white linens. There was a cramped desk cluttered with triple-monitor displays, their screens flickering with scrolling data and biometric readouts—likely the very material that coursed through your body. Everything was functional, hard-edged, and utterly devoid of warmth.Tseng watches as you wander the room, eyeing its sparse offerings. “There are cameras and sensors in the walls,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling. No doubt the professor was probably already watching the security feed with perverse delight.He walks towards the door, his silhouette cutting through the teal light. He pauses at the threshold, hand hovering over the control panel. From this angle, you look so lost, surrounded by the oppressive evidence of Shinra’s ambition. There’s nothing that he can truly do for you now.He hesitates for a fraction of a second. “Try to rest,” he says, though it comes off more like a command than a suggestion.With a final, sharp glance at the monitors, Tseng steps out. The heavy, reinforced door slides shut with a pressurized hiss, the mechanical locks engaging with a series of heavy, final thuds. A tomb indicating your fate had been sealed.

The heavy thud of the door’s magnetic lock echoes in the small room, leaving a ringing silence that feels heavier than the laboratory’s constant noise. You stand rooted to the centre of the room, staring at the blank metal surface of the exit.Tseng was gone, but the ghost of his presence lingered—his ice-cold gaze and the terrifying weight of his observation.He had seen through you with such precision that it made Hojo look like a bumbling amateur. The professor was blinded by his own ego, but Tseng seemed to know how to read you, even though you had never met him before today. He saw the desperation. He saw your errors. And for some inscrutable reason… he seemed to want to help you.You move towards the window, watching the green pulse of mako pumping through pipes. The light casts long, skeletal shadows against the walls, bathing everything in green.Truthfully, you don’t know the first thing about the Turks except for what Hojo said before Tseng arrived at the lab. Shinra’s most submissive clean-up crew, he’d cackled. They were supposedly steadfast and loyal to the company. Why go through the trouble of teaching a Shinra experiment how to deceive its creator? Was that, in itself, a test?Your temples ache the more you think of it, and then, you feel the slither of her voice moving through the crevices of your mind.“R e u n i o n…” she whispers, vibrating in your teeth. She doesn’t care about Tseng’s advice. She doesn’t care about the planet. She—it—only yearns to be whole.You look at your reflection in the glass, your eyes practically glowing beneath the mako’s light. Tseng had given you a chance to survive the night, but as you watch the green energy thrum beneath the steel, you wonder if you’re just trading a quick death in the lab for a slow, agonizing one.

chapter tbc

New OCs will be revealed over time, along with links to their bots, both on Janitor and C.AI.Stay tuned!

Hi, friends! This is Robin! I've been wanting to branch out into making OC bots, and I thought, what better way than to make an in-universe series? I chose Final Fantasy VII because it's brought me so much excitement and investment over the years, as well as a whole community on Discord and Character.ai. The Shinra company has so many opportunities for OCs, and I am so excited to try this out.This series, Genome Shift, is an expansion of my Experiment!User bots on Character.ai, now also hosted on Janitor AI. It combines both OCs and canon characters, as well as a Reader-insert webnovel that updates whenever I release a new bot.

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