Author's Note: Another short one but hopefully I clear up some questions a few of you have as well as raise more questions that will cause you to pull your hair out and scream at the computer screen. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing.
Warning: language
Chapter 11
"Another botch up, Commander?"
"Shut your trap, Wallace," Commander Farrell growled. "This is not the time to try my patience."
"Nor is it the time to try mine, Commander," Wallace stated with that clinical tone of his. Farrell could barely believe that the man was human from the way he spoke. "The prototype continues to run wild and your men have been underperforming in retrieving it. I am beginning to wonder if you aren't starting to become a liability."
Farrell picked at his mustache, a habit he had picked up shortly after he had grown it. He only really did that if he was deep in thought or agitated to the point that he would go postal. Care to guess which of the two he was right now?
"You gave me your word this wouldn't get out of hand, remember?" he snapped back at the other man. "You told me that this weapon would not do something like this, that loyalty would be programmed into it. Where's that fucking loyalty, hmm?"
"Not in the prototype since I didn't put that in yet," Wallace replied, not looking at the commander as he kept his eyes trained on the news broadcast. The light from the flat screen reflected off his glasses, making it harder to see those cold yet bright blue eyes. "I perceived that it wasn't necessary at this stage but apparently I've been proven wrong. Do not fret Commander, the next model will definitely have that wired in."
"I can't believe how you can talk about programming a human being like a computer," Farrell grunted.
"We've been over this before; no matter how similar the weapon is to us in appearance, the weapon is not human," Wallace stated. "It may have skin and organs and tissue but it will never have the moral compass that a layperson has. It is a blank slate that we can write all over if we want to. It's that simple."
"Whatever you have to do to sleep better, I'm not liking this project," Farrell said. "I'm helping you violate something, something precious."
"Why do you say that, Commander?" Wallace asked, taking his eyes off the screen to look at him curiously.
"It's a feeling, Wallace, something I don't think you have anymore," Farrell said.
"Regardless of your interpersonal conflict, we need the prototype back if only to upload the data from it," Wallace said, turning back to the screen. "Your men are going to have to pick up the slack or I won't be able to fulfill my end of our deal."
"My men are dying out there!" Farrell snapped, glaring at the white-haired man. "They've been giving their lives for you little fantasy! I don't want to waste anymore lives!"
"Fantasy? This is far from fantasy, Commander," Wallace replied. "I am so close to surpassing my mentor's work. He let himself be blinded by affection for his creation and allowed it to slip through his fingers. What am I saying, he let it go. Willingly. A priceless opportunity for scientific advancement and he falls prey to illogical human emotions."
"I don't care about your wet dreams, Wallace," Farrell scoffed. "I am not letting anymore of my men die for this. Their lives are my responsibility. If you think they'll listen to you, you'd better think again."
"Don't be too hasty, Commander. You're letting your emotions get the better of you," Wallace chastised. "If you are truly concerned about the well-being of your men, I can at least provide an alternative."
"What?" Farrell asked, confused. He barely understood half of the things Wallace said nowadays.
"There still are a few other prototypes," Wallace said casually. "They're nothing like the one that's on the loose but they should be able to weaken it enough for your men to recapture it. It's also an opportunity to provide more data for us to analyze."
"You mean…you've been keeping more of those things alive?" Farrell exclaimed, gaping at the other man. "What haven't you been telling me, Wallace? What else are you hiding?"
"Terminating all our previous failures wouldn't be sound from an economic standpoint," Wallace shrugged. "Those that managed to resist the call of death were kept to a side, mainly used for other experiments. Their endurance and stamina are inhumanly remarkable and with some basic instruction in martial combat, I do believe they will be adequate for this venture."
"You're sick. I don't know what made you like this, but you're sick," Farrell all but shouted at the doctor. "What happened to you? What happened to the kid I used to know and grew up with? What—"
"That's none of your business," Wallace interrupted. "I've given you a chance to spare your men more injury. Will you take it or leave it?"
"I need to go. I need—" Farrell muttered to himself as he left his seat, shaken by the coldness of the doctor.
"Think it over quickly," Wallace ordered. "There's not much time before its trail goes cold."
Farrell said nothing, leaving Wallace to his lonesome. The Commander had said he was going but it wasn't to leave this thing. He was so far deep in it that he wouldn't be able to leave, that is if Wallace would allow him to at this point.
To his horror, he was considering the doctor's offer and no matter how hard he tried, he would not be able to forget about it anytime soon.
What was happening to him?
An immediate search of the area pulled up nothing. It didn't make sense how Duo could just vanish into thin air in such a short amount of time. He had what, maybe two minutes, three tops, to abandon his car and flee?
No one had seen anyone matching his description either lurking around or fleeing out of any alley. Inspections of the nearby buildings, searching for a possible escape had been looked at and dismissed. In the meantime, the car was inspected to see if any clues had been left behind before finally being towed.
It was only then that someone spotted the manhole that the car had been parked on and evidence had shown that it had been opened up recently.
Already, they had a team sent down there to see if they could pick up Duo's cooling trail but Quatre had no doubt in his mind that Duo was long gone. It was an exercise in futility at this point. The putrid stench would be too much of a distraction for the initial team to handle and they would need some hazmat suits down there to more effectively search.
That was time that would be wasted and by the time an effectively equipped team arrived, Duo would have exited somewhere in the city.
The only thing that Quatre was focusing on now was the question why. Why was Duo running from them? Why had he resisted pulling over and giving himself up? Why was he in that chase in the first place? But most of all: why hadn't he contacted them at all?
They hadn't seen hide nor hair of Duo since that disaster of a mission and when they tried to track him down, their best clue had been a stolen vehicle that was left in the bad part of town.
Sure, there was the theory that perhaps Duo was dodging the men who had been chasing him but did he necessarily think that they too were enemies? There had been the split second when he had obviously seen them, recognized them. And still he ran. Whatever sense he had had at this point had to be thrown out the window because nothing about this was making any sense now.
So now he and his two partners were leaving the scene, all three of them knowing they could do nothing at this point. Throughout the whole investigation, Wufei had been in contact with HQ and Une, reporting what they had seen and what they were doing. After several hours of searching the second abandoned car, Une had called them in.
So now Quatre was in the backseat as Wufei drove more sedately than before, seething as he glared at the road before him. Trowa in the front passenger seat was still quiet but there was a tenseness about him that Quatre could detect. Both of them were having the same thoughts as he himself did and they were drawing up their own questions and conclusions. None of them were looking forward to returning to HQ and Une's office where she was most likely going to lay into them for this.
Streets were cornered off, property was damaged, traffic was horrible, and it was all probably covered by the local news stations. That would mean that some of the higher ups would be demanding an explanation for what had happened here and Une was going to drag everything they knew out of them.
The sight of HQ was very forbidding as it came into sight.
Minutes later, they were in front of Une's office having trekked all the way from across the street since the parking garage had been closed off. The needless walking had put Wufei in an even more foul mood and Trowa had withdrawn more into himself.
Quatre couldn't blame them as he rapped on the door.
"Enter."
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
Une didn't look frazzled or upset, Quatre noted as he walked in. If anything, she looked calm; too calm. He didn't like it.
"What have you found out since we last spoke?" Une asked them as Trowa shut the door.
Since neither of his partners were going to speak, Quatre knew the responsibility fell to him. "We've identified a possibly escape route Duo…I mean, Agent Nightmare took. It appears he slipped into the sewers. By now, he could be anywhere."
"That is…unfortunate," Une agreed, her voice not raising an octave.
There was something about the way she said that that perked Quatre's interest.
"Is there something that's come up that we don't know about?" Quatre asked.
Une eyed all three of them, internally debating whether or not she should say anything to them. Did they even deserve to hear what she knew? Those questions were washing all over her face and Quatre could see them as clear as day. There was not good news to found here.
"Our security feed picked up something interesting this morning," Une finally said after an agonizing period of silence. "We've been able to identify the intruder or should I say intruders. A camera in the parking garage located the persons who broke in and accessed the archives. They were looking for the data from your failed mission and managed to access many of the files before they were stopped. One of them was a good hacker and got through our various firewalls."
"What does it mean, Director?" Wufei finally spoke up, asking her to get to the point.
"One of our trespassers happened to be Agent Nightmare himself," Une stated. "From the footage, he also had an accomplice. Right how we are searching data banks for anyone matching the second man's description but so far nothing has come up. However, they did manage to make copies of a few of the files before they left."
Quatre stared at Une in disbelief. Duo had been the one that broke in? Duo had been the one to hack into their networks? Why? What was Duo trying to do?
"A witness was also found in the parking garage," Une continued. "She had been attacked by Nightmare's accomplice and it was discovered that her keys were missing. Since you had told me Nightmare was creating havoc downtown earlier, I have more than probable cause to believe that that was the witness' car that was driven.
"A check on the car should solve the rest," Une finished. "As of now, I am curious as to why Agent Nightmare has infiltrated us and stolen top secret documents. You wouldn't perhaps be able to shed some light on this?"
Quatre glanced at his two partners, Wufei and Trowa him reciprocated his looks. Sighing, he said, "According to what we know, apparently Agent Nightmare was being chased."
"I know he was, I saw the newsfeed," Une said dryly.
"Not by us," Quatre emphasized. "During the chase, we saw unmarked vehicles firing shots at Agent Nightmare and I believe Agent Night was able to incapacitate one of the vehicles."
"We were able to retrieve two other men from another accident that occurred during the chase," Wufei added. "They are currently undergoing medical treatment. Once they've been stabilized, we'll proceed to interrogate them."
"That I know as well but thank you for clarifying how they were taken in," Une said.
"We don't know who they are or why they were chasing Nightmare," Quatre slid back in to the conversation.
"Do you think Nightmare may have been working with them and this was a set up to distract us?" Une asked, voicing a possibility that Quatre had not wanted to consider.
"But why chase and shoot at him?" he asked her. "Why have your own allies shoot at you? To throw us off? It doesn't make that much sense."
"Unless they're trying to throw us off," Une pointed out, using his own words against him.
"We'll find out once the men are stabilized, won't we?" Trowa said.
"Indeed," Une agreed. "However, my concern right now is with our missing agent. It's now obvious to me that he does not intend to return to us anytime soon. What would you suggest I do?"
None of them could refute that. Duo was making it obvious that he wasn't planning on returning. That's what really frustrated Quatre the most and why he was asking all these questions that began with why. He was having trouble getting into Duo's head but then again, he had never been able to get into the brunet's head before either.
And now all this. It was more than enough to give the blond a migraine. He had never had a migraine before but he knew that before all was said and done he would have one.
Une sighed, an action that Quatre hadn't expected from her at this time. Especially since she was in a position to lord over them and blame them for screwing up so much. "You know why I have you all working with the Preventers, correct?"
Oh, Quatre knew. All of them knew. The five Gundam pilots were perhaps the most dangerous people on Earth and in the Colonies. They had instigated a never-ending war that had brought both the Earth and Colonies to near ruin. If they wanted to, they could overthrow the government of the Earth Sphere United Nations if they should wish. They were symbols of rebellion, of anarchy, whether they liked that or not.
It was more than reasonable for Une to want to keep them in sight at all times. If any of them wanted to go wild, it would have far-reaching implications than Quatre cared to admit.
"Of all of you, only one of you resisted the call to become legal agents," Une said. "I am, of course, referring to Nightmare. I had to pull some strings and force him into service, not the first thing I wanted to do. Out of all of you, he has the most motivation to go rogue just as he has done."
That…was something Quatre hadn't known. Duo had been forced to join? He had been under the impression that Duo had done so willingly. Yet it would explain the aloofness, the distance that existed between them and their errant comrade. The refusals to socialize, the isolation, the constant bad moods…
Duo had always been the type of person to resist authority. In fact, Quatre knew quite well how Duo resented being told what to do. It had always been a part of who he was and Quatre had never wondered why that was.
Then something occurred to Quatre. Why was Une mentioning this now? Why hadn't she told him or the others about it before? She was leading them in a direction Quatre wasn't sure he wanted to go.
"The failed mission has been bringing to light a lot of things that are hard for me to ignore," Une stated as her posture changed. Instead of being more receptive, her stance was declaring that she had made a decision about something and she was about to enlighten them as to what that was. "The fact that Agent Nightmare has avoided contact, snuck into the city and infiltrated Preventers Headquarters, hacked into our system and copied files he had no business to copy, and fled through downtown Sanc leaving wonton property damage in his wake, it has left me no other choice."
She leaned closer to them and Quatre found himself leaning towards her, a morbid curiosity forcing him to hear her out.
"I am going to have to declare that Duo Maxwell has gone AWOL," Une said.
And there it was.
"AWOL?" Wufei exclaimed, aghast.
"I would like to believe there is some plausible reason for all this but I have found none whatsoever," Une stated. "As of this moment, I want you all to track down and arrest Duo Maxwell."
"What about charges?" Trowa asked solemnly.
"As of this time, I would prefer to keeps those to myself," Une explained. "As much as I trust you, I do not want any loyalty you may have towards Maxwell to interfere with your duties. You will bring him in and I'll deal with the rest."
"Are you sure we're qualified for this?" Wufei asked softly, slightly surprising Quatre that it was not him who was asking that. "We haven't been able to locate or apprehend him before this. What makes you think we'll be any more successful this time?"
"I will be putting an expert in charge of this," Une told them, reaching a hand out to buzz her intercom. Not waiting for an answer, she sat back as she clasped her hands in front of her just as her door opened.
The three pilots looked away from the Preventers director towards the new entrant.
"Agent Trump reporting for duty," Heero Yuy stated as cold, Prussian blue eyes returned their gazes dispassionately.
Une had pulled Yuy off of the Vice Foreign Minister's security detail? Wufei knew that this wouldn't have been done unless things were incredibly dire.
Still, he had to wonder as they brought Yuy up to speed just what made him an expert? Did Yuy know something about Maxwell they didn't?
"So what is our first move?" Barton asked he crossed his arms, leaning his posterior against the conference table. Une had reserved for them a conference room in which everything that involved hunting Maxwell down would be sent and administered. No cubicles or offices for them, it seemed.
"Do we try to see if we can pick up Duo's trail?" Winner asked.
"Negative," Yuy answered. "At this point, trying to pick up Duo's trail would not be of any help. Right now, he might not be in the city anymore."
"So then what do we do?" Barton asked, frowning slightly.
"We make contact with any and all contacts Duo has," Yuy stated. "Howard, Hilde Schbeiker, anyone of whom he is an acquaintance with. Instead of trying to follow his trail, we will try to preempt him by getting those close to him to keep us informed. There is no doubt in my mind that he will try to contact one or any of them. It will be through them that we will close in on him."
"What makes you so sure that he will try to contact anyone?" Wufei asked, wondering where Yuy was coming up with that kind of logic. "Wouldn't it be better for him not to contact anyone? It's a risk that could expose him."
"From what I know of Duo, and I know a lot about him, he needs socialization," Yuy said, turning his hard gaze on him. Wufei shifted, slightly uncomfortable. He would not admit that he was squirming. "Isolation would be tantamount to a slow execution for him."
"I don't think that's…accurate, Heero," Winner said, backing away slightly from Yuy's intense glance.
"Why do you say that?" Yuy asked. Even Wufei couldn't hold back the wince at that bland voice.
"For the past two years, Duo has been willingly isolating himself," Barton piped in. "He has been refusing anything that has him in the company of others. We've been making efforts to get him to socialize with us but each invitation has been rebuffed or flat-out refused."
Yuy made eye contact with Barton's singular, visible eye, as if demanding if Barton was disagreeing with him. Unexpectedly, Yuy turned towards him and asked, "Is this true?"
"Absolutely," Wufei answered. "He will interact with us professionally but other than that, he refuses to spend time with us."
"Unexpected," Yuy murmured. "However, I don't expect for it to completely change him. I am told he did not want to work with the Preventers full time so that probably him venting. Now that he has been found out to be actively eluding us, he will fall back to what he knows and that includes people that he trusts."
"But most of them are in Space or the Colonies," Winner pointed out.
"The Sweepers," Yuy agreed. "That is a group that is extremely close-knit. They would be of little to no help in finding Duo. That will mean we will have to focus more on Hilde Schbeiker for the time being. We'll visit her, see how the relationship between her and Duo is and find out when he last contacted her. Regardless of her answers, we will set up a stake out and keep a close eye on her."
"And how long will that last?" Wufei asked skeptically. "Wouldn't her answers be satisfactory?"
"If he has contacted her, he's probably told her to lie already," Yuy replied. "If he hasn't, she'll figure out we're going to her for information and she will more than likely provide false information. She has more loyalty towards him than us. Before I forget, get a hold of her phone records; we'll use them to cross reference what she tells us."
"What makes you so sure that he'll contact anyone?" Barton asked, a distaste in his tone. "He has an accomplice; what need will he have to contact anyone if he has to talk with someone like you think he will?"
"I know how he works," Yuy stated. "He will contact someone. The accomplice is an outlier, not important. One of the things Duo is good at is counter intelligence. That and eluding authorities. He comes from the L2 Cluster and the citizens there are the masters at breaking the law and escaping punishment. He survived there for who knows how long and that will be where he goes. His motto, the same one he used to throw around, is that he runs and hides. Where better to hide than some place he knows? And this girl lives in that cluster. I know he will contact her at some point and we have to be ready for when that happens."
"Well, you're the boss Heero," Winner sighed. "If we look into Hilde, we look into Hilde. Come on guys, arguing will get us nowhere."
Both Winner and Barton left, probably to either compose themselves or start out with the tasks Yuy had slated for them. That just left Wufei alone with Yuy who turned his gaze to him. Wufei traded him look for look, determined not to show any weakness. He did not like being ordered around, particularly for no good reason. Someone had to be strong around here and not let their emotions cloud their judgments.
It would have to be left to him but he wouldn't be alone in the endeavor. He had ample company with Yuy in this department.
"Wufei," Yuy spoke. "I feel as if I have dissention in the ranks."
"We are hunting one of our own," Wufei stated. "It stands to reason that we would like to give the benefit of the doubt despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. However, if it comes to the point someone has to pull the trigger, I am sure that even Winner would do so no matter how much he would dislike it."
"That's good to hear but I'm going to need them to prove that to me," Yuy stated. "Regardless of what they think, Duo always has a reason for what he does. There is always something. We find out what that reason is, then we'll know everything we need to bring him in.
"Mark my words."
