With a grunt that was more effort than sound, she drove her heel into the jamb just below the lock. It wasn't brute force; it was physics. The momentary flex of the frame tricked the sensor into thinking the door was misaligned. The bolt stuttered. The light flicked green.

She slipped inside.

That’s the difference between us and them, she thought, stepping over a twitching hand.

Tonight, Seventh Heaven was closed. And Tifa Lockhart was open for business.

The room was a gallery of nightmares. Glass tubes filled with murky green liquid, each containing a half-formed creature with too many teeth or too many eyes. Tifa’s stomach tightened, but her face remained a mask of calm. She wasn't here to save the monsters. She was here for the folder marked "Reunion Theory."

Not her own. The fear of the two guards currently crumpled in the corner of the loading bay, their nightsticks lying uselessly next to their unconscious forms. Tifa Lockhart adjusted the leather strap of her glove, listening to the rhythmic hiss of the ventilation shafts overhead. She didn’t break bones if she could help it. A swift, precise strike to the carotid artery, a soft catch of their falling bodies—clean, quiet, and merciful.