Hilde had never moved so fast in her life. She had every scrap of material she and Noin had handled over their stay packed up just as it needed to be in under an hour, an impressive feat. Some of it had been placed on easily transportable luggage, but the vast majority of it had been contained and doused in an accelerant before being deposited in the furnace. As the younger soldier destroyed most of their temporary belongings, Noin gave ever surface a thorough rubdown with a custom made cleanser designed to wipe off fingerprints and destroy DNA. The odds of anyone directly investigating their apartment were not high, but they took no chances. Nothing was to be left behind.

Grateful for their overseer's paranoia, Noin used a set of backup identities to purchase shuttle tickets in the local library. If the boys had found their number, it stood to reason that they had found their identities. Phones and computers could easily be traced, and it would be too easy to track where they were headed if they ordered them in the apartment.

In a total of barely two hours, they were boarded on a shuttle, carrying the absolute bare minimum they needed. Their hair was cut again, Noin lightened hers, and Hilde streaked hers with purples and pinks. Different clothes, different accessories, different hair, different identifications, different credit cards, different location, every little thing had to change.

But they knew that it might not be enough. The boys had found them once, and it was probably only a matter of time before they were located again. All they could do was hope that they could fly under the radar long enough to get by.

As they sat back in the shuttle, neither one of them spoke. Nothing seemed to be going according to plan, and both women were feeling more than a little stress. While neither one said it, a common thought floated in both Hilde and Noin's minds. It was hard enough for them to relocate at the stage they were in, but it was going to be impossible in just a few months. Noin's condition was only going to get more intense, and that was going to be difficult just to move her. Pregnant women in their third trimester were banned from shuttle travel.

The longer the mission took, the harder it was going to get. And there was no telling what toll all that stress could take on that small, unborn being.

They had no idea how they were going to pull it off.

"Tell me you have something."

Heero growled as he continued to hammer away at his keyboard. Duo had been asking for updates every two minutes since he had begun the hunt. "I will let you know when I have something concrete."

"Does that mean that you have some form of lead?" Trowa seriously asked.

Heero did not respond. Whatever Noin and Hilde were up to, it had to be big. They had gone to ground, and they had done an excellent job disappearing. He had managed to get a hold of their aliases, but those names had not popped up anywhere. There had been no phone or computer use of any kind since Duo had made the call. They were apparently making damn sure that they would not be located a second time.

Scooting his chair a little closer to his Japanese friend, Quatre let out a gentle sigh. "Is there anything that any of us could do to assist you?" he sincerely asked.

Though his fingers did not slow down, Heero did consider the offer. "I'll keep working finding a way back into Une's system," he responded. "She's changed it just since this morning, and it's going to take a little time to get back in. While I'm doing that, you hunt down everything you can about those identities."

Duo was already on a computer. Several minutes passed in silence, save the sound of the clicking keys echoing in the room. Duo let out a low whistle. "Man, these guys are good," he said. "I haven't narrowed down which one had which identity. I don't know how they did it, but I can't find a picture of either of them. They're good. They have full frickin' backgrounds here. Birth certificates, school records, full family histories..." He typed away a while longer, muttering something unclear about a trace in the system and backtracking a file.

"Nothing new to us," Trowa responded. "We used to do that all the time. It was how we kept our cover."

Suddenly, Duo went completely stiff. "Oh, shit..."

Everyone else in the room turned their focus to the braided man. "What is it?" Wufei asked.

Duo slumped back against his chair, his hand covering his mouth. For the time being, he was rendered utterly speechless.

Since their companion apparently was incapable of delivering the information he had gathered, the others leaned in and peered at the screen. Systematically, the eyes of every pilot began to bug out.

"By Allah," Quatre whispered.

"Great Nataku," Wufei stammered.

"Damn," Trowa smoothly spoke.

Heero did not say a word, opting to only place a hand on his overwhelmed comrade.

After almost two painful, awkward minutes of silence, Quatre cleared his throat. "I wonder which one of them is pregnant..."

/

Zechs slumped against the inside of the cockpit. He was running out of everything. Food, water, time, even the strength to do seemingly basic things was fading fast.

Not willing to risk being caught, Zechs had waited for Matthews to fall asleep before clocking him violently in the temple. It had the potential to be fatal to the other man, but it was necessary. Matthews had to remain completely out if Zechs was going to be successful.

Praying that his device would work, Zechs powered up his hand made machine and waited for the telltale sound of it coming online.

"Here goes everything," the former blond muttered. Using the code that Preventers used, he typed out all the information that was needed. He repeated it several times, more than a little desperate. If his signal did not get picked up, and by the people who had to get it, there was a very real likelihood that he would never get home.

After several minutes, Zechs powered down and hid his communicator. If given another opportunity, after it got the chance to charge, he would take it. In all the time he had spent in solitude, working on his project, Zechs had been granted plenty of time to figure out the odds of his survival.

Without access to the mainstream equipment, Zechs was unable to ensure that his signal was on a mainstream channel. The odds of someone being in the exact right place at the exact right time with the exact right equipment and the exact right knowledge to get his words to the headquarters were grim at best.

He was not a sentimental man by any stretch of the imagination, but in the quiet darkness of his prison, he could admit to himself that he was truly starting to feel lost. When the entire ordeal had begun, he had managed to keep even the most vulnerable parts of his mind at bay, assured that, like all other times, he would find a way to freedom.

But as days had bled together, that little voice in the back of his head had gathered volume. What had once been fleeting thoughts that maybe, just maybe, he would nit find an escape, it had started to scream all day long.

Every cold, miserable day that passed increased that sensation of hopelessness, and even as he came down from sending out the distress call, he could not stop the sense of futility that flooded his soul.

It was oddly disturbing, but Zechs had found himself more and more feeling like a lost child. He wanted to go home. He wanted to sleep in his bed. He wanted to eat his favorite foods again. And more than anything else, he wanted to be back with the one person he called family.

He prayed he would make it home someday, but he was almost certain he never would.

/

"Wake up, honey."

Noin groaned, not particularly caring for whomever it was who chose to interrupt her blissful slumber. During the last hour of their flight, the pilot had miraculously managed to drift off and get some sorely needed rest. Being in her second trimester, Noin's body was draining everything she had to feed her unborn child. The baby was growing at a rapid rate, and it was leaving her constantly exhausted.

Hilde felt bad for waking up her undercover sister. She knew perfectly well that Noin had been needing far more rest than she had been getting, and that it was going to take a toll. However, the shuttle was landing, and it would not do to have Noin sleep into the next flight.

"Go away," the senior pilot moaned, swatting away the younger woman.

Brushing her newly colored hair away from her eyes, Hilde grabbed Noin by the arm and actually hauled the taller woman fully to her feet. "Come on, you lazy bum," she grunted, shouldering the weight of her pregnant companion, "we need to get going."

Noin groaned again, but she finally relented to the fact that she did, in actuality, need to wake up. Waking up had become a miserable experience. It was something that had never been an issue before her pregnancy. In fact she was normally a decent enough morning person. However, ever since she had become with child, Noin had been dreading the sensation of raising her eyelids and greeting the world.

Even though she was exhausted, though, she knew she could not wallow in her misery. They needed to get moving quickly if there was going to be any hope at all of keeping ahead of the boys. They had both spent enough time with them to know that the boys would never give up on something once they were involved. The two women had done everything they could to destroy any trace of their former lives in the apartment. Computer files, both on their own systems and those that they would have been entered into, had been viciously attacked by their program and wiped out any trace of them.

Adjusting her weight and gaining her balance, Noin grabbed her bag out of the overhead compartment. "What car do we have?" she softly asked.

"Minivan," the shorter woman responded, rolling her eyes. "After all, that's the best thing for impending motherhood."

Noin groaned again. "Great," she whined. "I have gone from the top of my game to boring old lady overnight."

"Crybaby," Hilde teased, ducking fast enough to avoid the duffle bag that was swung at her head. "Now, now, none of that. Can't be putting too much stress on you, sweetie."

"I am going to murder you," the elder woman growled, storming out of the shuttle. Being hidden away from the world she knew had been bad enough, but being forced to continue running was downright unbearable. There was still no word about her lover, and to top it all off, Noin's once flawless form was turning into a funhouse. It was more than enough to keep her in a sour, if not childish, mood.

Hilde just laughed as she followed Noin through the terminal. She was not happy, not even optimistic, but if there was anything she had ever learned from Duo it was that keeping a smile on your own face could help all around you get through a hard time. Even if things were starting to get harder than they had anticipated, she was determined to see them through to the end. She had been assigned to assist and protect Noin, regardless of cost, and that was exactly what she was going to do.

Quietly, the two women made their way to their new home. Until they received further orders, all they could do was pray that everything would turn out all right in the end.

/

Zechs leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. Between the fatigue, the lack of food, and the blood loss from the wound on his wrist, he was beyond his limits. It had been three days. Too much time had gone by without so much as the barest sign that someone, anyone, had heard his call.

Mathis' makeshift life support system would only be able to function for a couple days more, but by that point, Zechs doubted that it would be worth it. The general had been in such critical condition for so long, without even remotely proper care, was likely brain dead. Zechs sincerely doubted that even if they were rescued in the next couple of days the general would ever wake up.

All the effort he had gone through to secure the man was all for nothing. Being stranded in that abandoned station, with no means of escape and no access to food, all of it was pointless. After the biological weapon had been deployed, he could have just gone home and called it a day for all it was worth.

As he dropped into unconsciousness, Zechs tried to salvage that last scrap of hope he had. But his final though echoed maliciously through his brain, driving him to a miserable attempt at rest:

I will die a worthless death