Disclaimer: Ok…I don't really want to have to do this . . . buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I don't own Gundam Wing or any of its characters . . . but the story's mine!
Prolog: To Fly on Broken WingsThe boy's mouth was grim as he walked slowly down the long room, clutching the packet of information to his chest. He'd been sent here just to get this but the place was so big he'd gotten lost and found himself on the lowest level in this room.
Tubes lined the wall, maybe ten in total, each holding it's own gruesome payload of pale, scrawny toddler connected by wires to the walls of their small prisons. Masks covering their noses and mouths told how they breathed but the boy could only guess as to what was making them so still. He knew toddlers and knew they never stopped moving. For the first time, he wondered what exactly he'd been sent to get.
He stopped at the middle tube on the left wall, surprised to find a girl about his own age there. Her face said she was seven, maybe eight, but her body was so wasted he guessed she didn't weight much more than the toddlers. She had a mask covering her whole face and some one had shaved her head. Standing on tiptoe, the boy could see small bits of metal and electronics in her legs and arms. He jumped back when she rolled over and he could see that her back had thin wires snaking up her spine and branching off to the various limbs, like an artificial nervous system. Her skin was open around the artificial additions and a wire snaked from the back of her head up out of sight, like someone had plugged her in to something.
He turned around to look at the other figures along the wall, feeling a little queasy.
"What sort of place is this?" He mused, touching the wall beside the girls tube as he looked up at her again.
{It's a research lab.}
The boy jumped back, breaking the connection with the wall. "Who said that?" He looked around.
The girl roll again and her open eyes were the deep color of cobalt. She gripped her knees to her chest. Slowly, she pointed at the wall where he had placed his hand.
"You want me to put my hand there again?" She didn't move, her hand still pointing at the wall, but her eyes bored into his, commanding. He scooted forward, placing his hand on the panel again.
The voice of sounded in his head again. {You must keep your hand there to hear me. It's how they speak with me.}
"How who speaks with you?"
{The men who put me here, but don't worry about that. They're coming;, you have to leave. quick!} Bubbles rose to the top of the tube as she became agitated.
It was then the boy heard the click of shoes sounding smartly on the tile.
"Can I help you?" He was surprised to hear himself whisper the question.
{You can run. You can tell someone so no one else gets caught.}
"I'll find you again," he whispered before he ran, light-footed, down the length of the room and hid, heart pounding, just around the corner.
"Glad to see you're awake 173," the boy heard a man's deep voice. "Looks like everything's in place for your final step in here." There was a pause when the boy heard what he thought was the girl pounding on the glass. "Now, now. We're only trying to help you. Just relax and when you wake up next you'll be in a nice, soft bed."
The pounding slowly faded and the boy looked through the glass of the tubes. He could see robotic arms working swiftly in her tubes apparently sticking her skin back together as she lay limp in the water. No-name fought the urge to be sick as he fled the building.
2 years later
The girl stood in the long room that held the cracked and broken remains of the experiment tubes. She looked much different then when No-Name had first found her. She had the healthy shape of an active ten year-old. Her hair had grown in thick, brown, and wavy. Dressed in a pair of shorts and a tank top no one would think twice about her on the street, if it weren't for her eyes. Her eyes held death, and anger for anyone who crossed her. She'd learn how to hide that later, but now it radiated off her small body.
She'd spend four years of her short life in the this room and wanted nothing more than to flee it. Now. She could do that. She'd done what she came back to do and it was time to leave.
Glass crunched under her sneakers as she turned around to head out. A man crouched by the entryway, light flickered over his face and his breathing was labored. Sparks fell behind him from a broken light and more wires fell from the ceiling to join the rubble on the floor.
"173 . . . why . . .?" His voice croaked and blood dribbled down his chin. "We taught you . . . and . . . raised you. Made you . . . more than you . . . could be . . . on . . . your own. . ."
She stopped next to him and looked down. Tears streaked her face, but from anger, regret, or sadness the man never knew. "You forgot to ask me, doctor, if that's what I wanted. All I've known is pain and sadness." She nodded. "Yes, you taught me. Taught me to fear, and hate, and to kill. He taught me to hope." Sparing him one last glance she placed a final charger by his head.
She ran from the building. The building stood tall once last time before she hit the button on the remote detonation switching. She stood quietly, snuffling and wiping her nose for a while before she noticed someone coming. The light of the fire lit the boy from behind as he came to watch the flames.
She finally broke the silent. "Remote detonation," she held up the switch. "They taught me, never thinking I'd want to leave."
The boy nodded. He'd gotten taller in the two years. "The children?"
"Dead. I buried them out back. What's your name?" She looked up at him. It had been an unspoken rule between them to not name each other while she'd been in the lab. It hurts less to loose something if it's not named.
He shrugged. "Don't have one. They just call me No-Name."
She nodded and turned to leave. "Thank you No-Name, for showing me how to leave. I'm Monalin. I have a twin brother, we were in an orphanage together, I have to find him, maybe we'll meet again someday."