June 6, AC 200

0630 hours

Brussels, Earth

"Preventer Metal to Preventer Wind. There should be a door 10 yards to your right. Go in."

"Understood." The blond man closed the distance to the designation, pressing his back against the damp wall near the doorway, a chill running up his spine, shivering in unconscious response. He lifted his gun to eye level and inched closer, squinting through the darkness to take in the interior of the ruined dwelling. A portion of the ceiling had fallen in a pile of rubble and a wall had partially caved in, with what must have once been a mobile suit arm hiding the south portion of the room behind a tangled mass of rusted metal.

"Preventer Wind to Preventer Fire, I have a visual. Two doors, closed. Undetonated mobile suit shells. Proceed with caution."

He heard a noise behind him and spun around, training his gun on the cause. An emaciated man, a startled expression on his face, froze for an instant, then whimpered, wringing the edge of a ripped sleeve in his hand. Preventer Wind let out a breath and waved the man away with his gun. Picking up a loaf of bread and an apple he had dropped in fear, the homeless man scrambled away and stooped to enter a nearby shelter built of cardboard held together by twisted metal shrapnel.

Static filled Preventer Wind's right ear for an instant as Wufei's clipped tones came through the line once more : "Preventer Metal here. The informant is behind the door to the south. He's querying the network again. Access point confirmed."

"Preventer Fire to Preventer Wind. Hold your position, I'm almost there."

A woman in her twenties rounded the corner at a run and skidded to a halt, short black hair falling in her face. "Noin", he mouthed silently, and nodded his head towards the doorway. She ejected the clip, checked the bullets, then clicked it back in place as she slowly closed in on the other side of the entrance, her blue eyes intent on his face : "You give the signal", she whispered.

"Preventer Metal to Preventer Wind", Wufei's voice started again, the tense tone in his voice accentuating his Chinese accent, "The hacker is downloading classified files dealing with Mobile Dolls. Move out quickly - we can't let him acquire those files."

He nodded to Noin and ran in the room, dropping to a crouch behind the remains of a mobile suit console: Treize faction, based on the color. Still protecting me after all these years, my friend. A warm body dropped in beside him: "Zechs, remember, we need the hacker alive". He grunted in answer, and the set of his shoulders announced that he was going to be stubborn about this, but instead of pushing the issue, he propped his gun up on the partially rusted metal and scanned the room. "Four… three… two… go!" He lunged forward, and rammed the closed door with his right shoulder, falling in the room and rolling back to his feet, his gun held firmly in his grip. Someone was hunched over a computer terminal in the far corner.

"You, over there! Move away from the terminal!"

Next to him, Noin trained her weapon in the direction, and unhooked the flashlight on her utility belt to point in the perpetrator's direction. The light wavered as her fingers went lax in astonishment. "It can't be…" she breathed, unable to believe what she saw. There, her hand on the keyboard, her usually serene face looking gaunt and washed out in the harsh light… was Ann.

The brown haired woman shook her head in the dim lighting, feeling no sense of surprise at all at who had shown up, who had found her. She had left a small trail of breadcrumbs for the Preventers to follow and see where it led. And the ones who had come were the two she'd hoped to see - Fire and Wind. After all, they were former OZ officers, two of the best she'd ever come across in her career, barring only one. She had worked with them before while they were still OZ officer until the Eve Wars ended, then with Fire in starting up the Preventers four years ago to guard peace on both the Earth and the colonies, Wind coming along during the Mariemeia crisis. They'd both left for a year or so, but had come back to help hold together the peace that was so fragile at times.

She turned towards the second voice to see Noin, Fire, standing there next to Wind, a stunned look on her face, one that mirrored briefly on Zech's before his went impassive. A small smile flitted across her face - it was a trick that Ann had perfected years ago and honed into an art these past few years in dealing with bureaucrats. "Why are you so surprised, Noin?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to the glowing screens. "You're both in time to see his dream die."

Zechs slowly lowered his gun and put it back in its holster. "Whatever reason you had for doing what you did... I know he wouldn't have approved", he grated, his steel blue eyes riveted on the floor, avoiding her determined expression. "Take her away," he called through his headset as two other Preventers rushed in the room. He let her file out of the room with the two agents as her escort but still could not bring himself to look at her. He let out a sigh and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes, his hand going up to massage the bridge of his nose. Trust Treize to come back and haunt him.

Noin felt dumbstruck, eyes flickering around the room, trying to absorb what she had just seen. "Ann was the hacker?" she choked out. "What in the world could have possessed her to do something like this?" And worse yet, why didn't she tell her anything? She had become really close to the older woman after the war, a bond forming between them, a friendship that had only strengthened during the X-18999 crisis. They kept in contact even outside of work, and Mariemeia was a common sight at their apartment when duty called Ann to work even later than she usually did. She found herself shaking her head subconsciously. She supposed it was all too sudden... I mean, how can one expect to conduct a raid... and find your best friend, not to mention, the last person you'd expect to be there, is the one responsible?

She turned to Zechs, who was refusing to make eye contact with Ann as the backup team escorted her out of the room. Yet, somehow, she found herself looking in Ann's direction despite her best attempts not to. Ann was looking straight down at the ground, meek as a lamb being carried to slaughter. Noin shuddered, repressing the analogy - it struck too close to home. Noin's eyes narrowed as one of the escorts started behaving unnecessarily rough, prodding her to move faster, and before she knew it, she was shouting at the Preventer, warning him about proper decorum. After all, no matter what she may have done...Ann was still the Commander-In-Chief of the Preventers...at least until the President said otherwise. She turned to Zechs. Oddly enough, he seemed to be trying to avoid her gaze as desperately as she was trying to avoid Ann's. Feeling her gaze on him, he raked a hand though his hair and pushed himself off the wall with his shoulders. Stuffing his hands in his pockets he walked silently to the terminal. Reaching the computer, he stared at it blankly for a short while before resting the palms of his hands flat over the cool metal and letting his head drop forward in a cascade of blond strands. Noin closed the distance between them, and caught his arm, leaning her forehead on his sleeve. "She's not you."

"But why..." he whispered, his voice hoarse, "I should be the one to understand her... why she did... what she did... but I don't..."

She shook her head in answer. "What makes you think that, Zechs? I'm closer to her than you are, or at least, I thought so, but I didn't know about it either!"

"Noin...was that...how you felt?" She was silent for a moment, considering her words. "How...I felt? Maybe, Zechs. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have been able to believe that she was the one responsible. Never."

He shook his head. "I meant... back then... when I... the Earth, the Colonies, Treize...even you..." Zechs's hands closed into fists on the keyboard and he felt Noin's hold on him tighten. I betrayed you. I betrayed all of you. And I still don't know why.

"Four years, Zechs. That was four years ago. It's over. It was a confusing time for everyone. Right now we have other problems to face and questions to ask and, frankly, I think Ann would appreciate it if we were the ones to do the asking."

"Who am I to ask anything of her? Who I am to judge her?" He turned away from her and typed in the commands for a data dump, the ring on his left hand glittering in the green light of the workstation screen, watching as the machine wrote the contents of its RAM to file. They had to figure out what she sent and to whom as soon as they could. Anything to avoid confronting her.

Noin looked at him, watched as he leaned over the terminal, as his hands flew across the keyboard, typing in the commands mechanically. The slight annoyance she felt gave way to something greater. He was ready to investigate, ready to do anything other than confront Ann. Why couldn't he see that she needed them now, more than ever? Her hands balled into fists. Sometimes, Zechs was such a fool. Without warning, she reached up, one hand grabbing hold of the front of his Preventer jacket, yanking him to face her direction. The suddenness of her actions had caught him by surprise, a surprise that was mirrored in his eyes. It was a good thing, as she doubted she'd have even budged him had he been expecting it. Her other hand came up and the resounding sound of a slap reverberated across the room. Not giving him a chance to react, she looked straight at him, letting a hint of adamancy creep into her voice to show him she was serious. "Listen to me: Ann needs us, now more than ever. Can't you see that? You saw how that Preventer treated her! We're her best bet now, perhaps the only ones she can really trust fully anymore. We need that trust, if we're going to get to the bottom of this."

Zechs cradled his red cheek with a hand to ease the sting. He was weak, he knew it. He could not face Ann and wonder if he would see himself in her. And yet, he could not stand having Noin look at him that way either. She had never looked at him that way, not even in the midst of the war in space, when he had betrayed everyone, including himself. Even back then, she had been his strength. But today, she did not understand; he could see it reflected in her eyes. He always expected too much of her, like he expected too much of himself. Zechs tore his eyes away, reaching into his Preventer jacket and took out a disk that he inserted in the terminal, copying the files to it. A few more keystrokes and he had sent a trace. What it reported only added to his sense of numbness - he wasn't surprised. He couldn't be, after everything else.

"Gundam frequency 01. She sent a message to Heero Yui."