Alone
Chapter 11 "Painful Roadblocks"
Darkness…
Prickly heat…
Pain…
Conscious of only these things, Dorothy opened her eyes and shapes come very slowly into focus. Dark gray outlined by surrounding blackness.
…
Dorothy blinked her eyes trying to clear her vision.
Tall… objects…
Buildings! The shapes were buildings, but…
A pounding resonates through the air as if it were alive.
A flickering… what was that?
Turning her head, Dorothy catches a glimpse of a bright flash and a dark figure before it blends into the pitch-black background. She scans the horizon searching desperately; afraid to see the figure again, but terrified with the knowledge that she can no longer see it.
She swung hear head around from her position on the… street? The concrete feels warm under her hands.
The shadow is back! She raises her eyes to confront it, but there are more behind it!
Dorothy struggles to stand but the ground she is on tilts violently and she is forced back down to her knees…
As they near, they come into focus. Men, each bearing a weapon, all with glaring amber eyes. Their leader smiles at her… razor sharp teeth framed by unnaturally thin lips… Dorothy finds herself unable to move as fear twists violently in her stomach…
Trowa's fingers drummed impatiently as he tried to pull a schematic of the L2 storage facility that he and Duo planned to break into. From what he could discern, the security was unnaturally high. He had been working on the internet for the past hour and he had yet to score anything as simple as an aerial photo.
It was understandable that if Dermail had something that he didn't want anyone to see he would store it there. The facility advertised 2 levels of security and even the lower level was tighter than the infamous Fort Knox.
The newest line of motion sensors, high-powered infrared sound detectors, weighed floor panels, and DNA readers were only some of the advertised security measures; Along with a "labyrinth-type setup sure to confuse even the more industrious of thieves".
Trowa looked up from the facilities home page. It seemed like the perfect place to hide something you didn't ever want found. A brief glimmer of his earlier considerations to leave sleeping dogs lie, surfaced briefly until it was overtaken by an image of Dorothy from last night. Her hair askew, her face flushed, obviously trapped but still fighting…
Trowa attacked his keyboard with hightened purpose, before he could ponder why the mere thought of her in distress made him want to help more…
Dorothy was awoken by sharp pains in her abdomen. The pain is so severe that for a moment she can not orientate herself and it takes a moment for her to figure out she was dreaming and she is, in fact, safe in her room.
What was wrong with her?
The pain subsided briefly only to be replaced by a sharper more-urgent stabbing.
…Had she ever needed to pee so urgently? A frown of confusion crossed her face as she threw the suffocating blankets off of herself, welcoming the cool breeze on her clammy skin.
Attempting to sit up only caused more pain to make itself consciously apparent to the battered blonde.
The first shocking truth to Dorothy was how weak she felt. Struggling to simply sit-up, a constant pounding in her head was also making her slightly dizzy. And this did nothing to alleviate her need to urinate.
Despite protests from her entire body, it seemed, she swung her legs to the floor and began to stand. Angry white-hot pain from her ankle caused a gasp to escape her lips and she collapsed with a yelp, the instant she put pressure on her right foot.
Hot tears instantly filled her eyes as she focused on breathing deeply and minimizing the pain.
She tried to remember how she hurt her ankle and was surprised to realize that not only did she not remember hurting it – but she had no idea how she'd gotten home last night. The last thing she did remember was…
Another pain from her gut reminded her that she didn't have long to sit and think about it, if she wanted to maintain her dignity. Standing on her one good leg she made a stumbling leap to the wall, a mere arms reach away. Gritting her teeth as the jolt through her leg reminded her to be more careful, she awkwardly gimped into the bathroom – the wall her only stability as her equilibrium took a backseat to the pain running rampant through her body.
Trowa frowned as his best hacking program finished running and still failed to unlock the L-2 storage facilities employee files. He pushed away from the computer mildly disgusted. He had been trying for hours with no success to download information to find and order or create a new employee identification to assist him with infiltrating the warehouse.
From the look of it – it wasn't going to be that easy. He'd have to get in contact with an actual employee and get access to their company ID to create a duplicate.
He smiled bitterly. It didn't matter how tight an organizations security was, because it was still run by people. The rule of thumb was that people make mistakes. Like his so many years ago…
He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the image of Midi Une that popped into his head. It had been so long since he had thought about her.
He briefly consoled himself with the thought that his wasn't the first, nor would it be the last division to be raided from the inside out. He himself had used the same technique many times over. Although Wufei had interfered with Trowa's most recent attempt, he was certain he would have succeeded in MariaMia's army just as his did with the Alliance & Oz.
In comparison, infiltrating a storage facility should be a walk in the park.
Even if the company drilled proper security protocol into their employees and they are careful with their security badges and information (which in Trowa's opinion would be a first), it would still be easier to infiltrate an employee's house to obtain the information than to try the heist without it.
It's amazing how open people are when they believe they are on equal standing with one another… such as another employee. Even despite the fact they may never have met that employee before.
Trowa allowed himself a small smile before his computer beeped alerting him that it was finished with its process.
"Search Complete
No Results Found"
Trowa threw himself back in the chair and stared at the ceiling as if it could answer his questions.
His attempts to locate the whereabouts of Dermail's bin within the facility were officially a total flop. There were no schematics available through any government or municipal agency that Trowa could find.
He had even come up blank when he tried to "borrow" a satellite to take aerial photos. Breaking the codes to control it was a piece of cake… but when he entered the coordinates to photograph – or even tried to manually control the satellite over the coordinates to photograph the facility – it passed it by as if the compound didn't even exist.
He frowned. What kind of person could set up storage facility so top secret that it put to shame the best of OZ's and even the Preventor's security tactics?
Trowa wondered if the frown would ever leave his face. There was no point in planning ANY of the rest of the mission parameters if he could not even discern the location of the bin he needed to get into. It would be suicide.
The only other option he could think of was…
No – he couldn't, wouldn't ask Quatre for help on this. He was too emotionally involved.
'Like you're not.' Chimed that ever-annoying innervoice.
'I certainly AM not!' he argued back, only slightly surprised by the silence that accompanied his denial.
His frown deepened as he reviewed the megar information he had managed to gather on the storage facility. Primarily, this included an aerial view of the site more than 50 years ago. Which, sadly, was little to no help to the mission considering the updated security precautions and the likelihood of renovations over the years.
Again, as it often had, his mind bounced back to Quartre. He had the political standing to get a tour of the facially. Trowa's eyebrows furrowed. I wonder if they would request his personal presence, or if it would only take a phone call…
Dorothy moaned and she raised her head from the side of the bathtub. Thankfully the seemingly endless bout of dry-heaving seemed to be over… at last. She had ceased to have anything left in her stomach early on, but her body would not relent.
Each time she had moved, she was buried under another wave of nausea. She glanced up at the clock… it was already ten after 1 and she had risen almost 2 hours ago. She was grateful that Amanda was not home to hear the tell-tale vomiting. Hopefully she could pull everything over Amanda's eyes…
But… thinking on it… Dorothy seemed to recall coming home… did she wake Amanda?
And was Trowa with her… or was that all a dream? She frowned.
Her memory lapse was bothering her more and more, as her hangover symptoms lessened and the evening stubbornly refused to pop immediately into her understanding. Sometimes she recalled statements but they floated away before she could remember the context and other times she could remember an expression on Trowa's face, but could not for the life of her understand what lead up to it. Not to mention the fact that nothing was lining up… it was as though the entire nights memories were overlapping and she was only seeing the edges.
She mentally shook herself, trying to stop guessing at the nights events. It was not helping alleviate the feeling that things had gotten horribly out of her control. She focused instead on the tangible task of tending to her ankle.
A quick comparison to the other foot proved the ankle was indeed swollen a great deal. A light purple bruising colored both sides of her ankle and Dorothy had a feeling it would only get worse. Carefully, she prodded her ankle and tried to move it causing sharp needles of pain to shoot up her leg. After a few moments she determined…
…that she should have paid better attention in the anatomy courses she had taken in school.
Truthfully she had no idea if she had just twisted it or broken the bone. Nor did she know how to tend to it, other than put a cold compress on it… or was it hot?
She almost wished that she had injured herself more in fencing so she would have a comparison for how bad it should hurt, given the type of injury. But alas, her grace had always overcome any potentially dangerous slips. So she had NO idea what she was dealing with.
With a frown she pulled herself up off the floor by the tub so she was sitting on the now closed toilet seat. Opening the vanity door she pulled out Amanda's first aid kit – wondering if she had an bandage stocked. Amanda had one better! An actual ankle brace greeted her after she pulled out the kit.
Smiling at her good fortune, Dorothy pulled the obviously worn but clean brace, and tried it on. To her frustration as she tightened the straps – the pain increased greatly. Spots filled her vision and a great rush filled her ears and the bathroom door looked suddenly farther away.
Biting her lower lip to keep herself from fainting, Dorothy waited a full minute for the throbbing to subside before she tried to stand.
As before, the moment she placed weight on the injured limb her leg buckled on it's own accord despite Dorothy's attempts to maintain her stance.
This time she cried out as she wobbled on her good leg and grabbed the sink to keep her from falling.
This wasn't happening… this couldn't happen. Not now!
Trowa had found her. He was going to tell Quatre. Quatre would find out she was hurt… She would become his charity case… and then… then there would be expectations of her.
Oh – Quatre seemed like he was different, and Dorothy wanted to believe that… but it was only a matter of time.
You don't get something for nothing.
If she had learned anything in her short life, it was that everything had its price: from material items like room and board to something as seemingly insignificant as a kind word.
The world had its balance and people had their expectations. If you can't pay in money…
Dorothy's thoughts were interrupted by a sob. It took her a second to register that it was her own. She reached up to the tears already streaming down her face and wiped them away furiously.
More agitated that holding in the sobs only increased their intensity; she bent down and allowed herself to cry in earnest.
Injured like this… how could she maintain her freedom? She was trapped.
KAT: Whew! This chapter has been sitting on my computer for the last couple of months. I've been fiddle-faddling with it in between work and play practice (our community players preformed Disney's Beauty and the Beast which was AWESOME!) and now that I have more free time in the evenings (and a BRAND SPANKING NEW LAPTOP!) I'm well on my way to finishing this story.
I appreciate everyone's allowance regarding the spelling/grammar/typing errors and vow to have the story fully revised BEFORE my next update which I anticipate coming SOON!
It's my plan to have 5 – 6 more chapters, so the action's really going to peak! I hope you enjoy the ride!
Btw: I own nothing of Gundam Wing and borrow it without permission and without making any profit.
Thank you for reading, I hope you found something worth reviewing. ;)