Rina's breath came hard as she ran through the streets, trying to make it to the square where her father was making a speech. I can't let him die, she thought desperately as she scrambled up a fire escape, cursing the bolts of cloth that made up her white dress, cloth that was slowing her down now and costing her valuable seconds. She made it to the crest of one building bordering the square just as her father stepped up to the platform to speak. Rina cast her gaze around at all of the neighboring buildings, trying to find the assassin. It would be one of the boys, and he would be on top of the building, or very close to it. There... on the top floor of the building to her right, the farthest window. She recognized him - it was Five. He was already aiming a blaster.
Rina only had a projectile pistol with her, a weapon whose optimum range was well under the distance that separated her from Five. She dropped to her hip and slid down the slanted roof of the building, tearing her clothing but doing no damage to herself. As she slid she automatically shifted into a disguise, making herself look like an Earthling. When she landed at the edge of the roof, she quickly found Five again. She only had seconds left. She raised her pistol, aimed, and fired. The shot hit the concrete of the building below the boy. She raised her aim slightly and fired again. This one hit the windowsill he was leaning on. That got his attention.
Rina heard people start to scream as Five swung his blaster around to aim at her. Rina started running. Her father was safe now, security would already have activated shields around him and gotten him out of sight. Now she had to preserve her own flesh. Rina ran towards the edge of the building, intending to jump to the next building over, which would take her away from the square, and to descend to the street from there. But as she started to jump, her left leg gave out from under her, and she fell into the alley that separated the two buildings. She barely managed to grab onto the fire escape, and the force of her body slamming into the metal fire escape almost made her let go. Then pain blossomed up out of her leg, so strong it made her gasp.
Rina struggled onto the fire escape, then looked at her leg. Fuck, I've been shot! Rina had been seriously been hurt before, but not this badly, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. But the danger of her situation allowed her to push past the pain. Rina's mind cleared as her emotions shut off, leaving her coldly logical and unnaturally calm. He'll come after me, she thought. No, security will have sealed off the square by now. He'll wait until they start letting people through, one at a time, then he'll try to pick me off as I go through. Rina cautiously got to her feet. The leg would hold, but her climbing back to the top of the building was out of the question. Using her hands to support most of her weight, she swung down to the ground, taking all of the impact on her right leg. Then, limping slightly, she pushed her way through the crowd to the base of the podium.
"Patricia," she said in a low voice, standing in the shadows the podium created so that no news camera could see her. She allowed the disguise to fade, and one of her father's guards came rushing over. Rina had been involved with the hiring of most of her father's staff, all of whom were incredibly loyal and had good reason to hate the Alliance. They all knew something of Rina's clandestine activities, although few knew it's true extent.
Patricia's dark eyes widened slightly when she saw the blood staining most of the left side of Rina's white skirt. "Mistress," she hissed. "That was you up there?"
"There was an attempt on father's life," Rina said. "I need your coat. Now."
Patricia immediately pulled off her floor-length black coat and handed it to Rina. Rina put it on after tucking her gun into a hidden holder under her dress. The full-length coat hid both the top of the white dress, which Five had to have seen, but also the blood stain and the fact that she was limping slightly. "All right. Leak this to the press. The ambassador's daughter actually came with him today, and was waiting for him in the car when the fighting started. When it was over she got out of the car and walked under the podium to see if her father was all right, but he sent her away in the company of one of his guards, and has ordered that she stay at home, fearing for her safety. Got it?"
"Got it. Mistress, do you need any help?"
"No," Rina replied, gritting her teeth against the pain that now came in waves upon her. "Is the path to the car clear?"
"Yes."
"Good. Stand behind me, and be ready to catch me if I fall, but make it look as if I'm fainting, all right?"
"Yes."
"Let's go." Raising her head high, Rina stepped out from under the podium and started walking out through the open area to the car. She heard whispers as people around her noticed her presence, and tried not to blink as dozens of lightbulbs flashed around her. She managed not to limp at all, and to smile, although both pained her dearly. She also forced herself not to look up at the window where she knew Five still waited. If he recognized her, she'd be dead before she heard the shot. She was relying on the fact that he would be trying to recognize her by hair and clothes, not by face.
Rina crossed the dangerous ground and got into a waiting car without incident. As she leaned back against the seat, she felt relief wash over her. It had been a very near thing.
------------
When the girl returned the next day, there was a brace on her right thigh and she was limping slightly, although she tried to hide it. "What happened?" he asked, surprised to find that his curiosity was real. His mind raced ahead... he knew what he had figured out was true. Would she admit it, or try to lie to him? The throbbing in his head had eased slightly, but something had changed. Now when he tried to think of the Alliance doing those things to him, to the others, that stupid phrase no longer popped up. But he distrusted this still, although the reason wasn't entirely logical. If the Alliance had done all these things, if they'd lied to him, it meant that everything he'd believed, everything he'd done in the last fourteen years was working for the wrong people. This realization disturbed him so greatly that he took little satisfaction in the fact that he could actually think these thoughts now.
She stared at him for a second, then gingerly sat down on the chair. "One of your comrades tried to kill my father."
"He isn't your father," Heero stated confidently, waiting for her reaction.
She started, then nodded wearily. "You're right. He isn't my birth father. But he is my father, in all the ways that count - ways that you probably can't understand."
He ignored her comment. "What are you?"
Instead of responding, she handed him a paper with thousands of numbers on it. "Do you know what this is?"
He glanced at it, hiding his irritation. "It's gene sequences."
"More specific than that."
He looked closer. "Those are the gene sequences of one of the products of Project Titan, specifically the ones that give us strength. I can't tell which one it is, because these sequences are identical in all of us."
She nodded affirmatively. "Do you know where I got these, brother?"
He hesitated, confused by her use of the word 'brother.' She'd never addressed him that way before, and it seemed odd that she should do so now. "You got them off of the Alliance's computer." That caused no confusing conflict, it was a simple statement of fact.
Then she shook her head. "No. Those gene sequences come from my own blood. I call you 'brother' most deliberately, One, creation of Dr. Smith, because you are the closest thing I have to a brother." Holding out the rest of the papers she held, she suddenly seemed smaller and wearier than he had ever seen. "Yesterday you accused me of lying because I was withholding information, keeping back a few of the files about the doctors who created us. Here are those files."
He took the files from her but didn't look at them. "What are you saying?" he asked.
"You know the answer to that question, brother, you just don't want to face it."
"That's impossible." She was right, he did know the answer, but it couldn't be what he was thinking. Why not? he was forced to question himself. They had lied to him about so many other things, why not this?
"Smith was executed for a number of reasons. One was for adding certain gene sequences to us that give us more power than the Alliance wanted. But another reason - the main one - was that during her manipulations, she changed something else in half of the subjects. There were ten of you, not five, did they ever tell you that?"
He didn't respond. He couldn't respond.
"There were ten babies born out of surrogate mothers, but when they saw the final project, they found out what she had done. Half of the babies were female." She stared at Heero with a startling intensity, and he suddenly felt like he was looking at Arthur or Michael. They had that same direct stare that made him think they knew something about him that he himself didn't. "They had no use for females - females don't make good soldiers, aren't as fast or as smart as men, and God knows what other reasoning they used, all of it perfectly useless, and ignoring the fact that a female was the head doctor on the project. They ordered the five female babies disposed of, and had Smith executed." She smiled humorlessly. "But they made a mistake. The disposal of the five girls was left in the hand of a man unconnected with the project, by the name of Kevins. All he was told was that the five were a danger that had to be disposed of. He felt sorry for five helpless infants and gave them to an orphanage He didn't realize they were all completely conscious of their surroundings and in many ways already wiser than him.
"We remained there for less than a week. In that time, Ambassador Krace and his wife decided to adopt a colonist orphan, because they couldn't have children on their own and because they wanted to be sure their commitment to the colony was demonstrated. They adopted me in a huge media event - it was a huge deal back then. I remember it.
"When I say that we remained there for less than a week, I mean all five of us did. I left because I was adopted - the others were stolen from the orphanage during the night and killed once Kevins' action had been noticed. They thought we were too dangerous to leave alive, even if it was only..." she cut herself off. "I was very lucky. If I had been adopted by a normal family, I would have been taken, too, and killed. But the adoption was a highly publicized event, and the ambassador was a highly public figure. If his newly adopted daughter disappeared, there would be a huge investigation, which was the last thing the Alliance wanted. So they covered up the fact that one of the babies had escaped elimination, and continued with your training as if nothing had happened."
She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. "I always knew I was different. From the moment Father brought me home I knew. I had already gone through over twelve years of schooling by the time I was four, and by the time I was seven, I held several degrees from galaxy-renowned colleges. Then, not long after my seventh birthday, I got hit by a car. The car hit me head-on, and the impact alone should have killed me, not to mention the way I was thrown well over forty meters. I walked away from that accident. That was when I realized how truly different I was.
"After that my studies went in two directions. First, I started studying my own genes, and I discovered that I had been designed. Second, I started studying the Rebels, and the Alliance, and I saw all of the horrible things that the Alliance was doing to the colonists, who were my people. I started secretly aiding the Rebels by computer, because I thought they wouldn't trust me if they saw who and what I was. I did that for three years, until you killed Representative Surd."
"I saw you looking at me after the strike," he said, remembering. "I thought it had to be a trick of the light, that you couldn't possibly see me from down there." If the Alliance was working against the people, then Surd must have been working for them, and when I eliminated him, I was also working against the people. We never did find any evidence that he was working with the Rebels, or stirring up discontent. Heero became more uneasy as he analyzed the strikes he'd made in the past two years, discovering how little evidence there'd been against those people. And now, discovering that there was another one of them... why hadn't they been told? The Alliance was keeping things from him, it seemed. But that meant... He unconsciously shied away from what it meant.
"Oh, I did see you. That night, after I went home, I broke into Alliance's security and accessed the files on Project Titan. That was when I realized how I had been created, by whom, and for what purpose. I sent all the information I had about you to the Rebels, but I needed more information in order to combat you, and there was someone within the Rebels who had once worked on Project Titan. It was the five of you, and the way that you were treated, that caused him to defect to us. Maybe you remember him - Michael Turston."
He remembered, but didn't say anything, lost in his own mind. Michael Turston - officially Mr. Teel - was the only one to ever tell them his real name. Michael had chosen his name because of Mr. Teel, and Arthur had always been his favorite. He'd disappeared without a word, and Mr. Mem had told him that Teel had been removed from the project. It somehow didn't surprise Heero that he had defected to the Rebels, but again... why hadn't the Alliance told them?
"He insisted we meet in person, so we did. He recognized me for what I was, and helped me to hone my abilities in a manner I had never been able to do on my own. That night I got back into the Alliance computer, and downloaded all of the information about you to the Rebel's computer."
"You!" he exclaimed. "The intruder that night, that was you?!"
"Well, you don't think a normal human could get in through Four's system?" she asked with a slight smile. "In some ways, I have you to thank for me joining the Rebels. If not for you forcing me to come out in the open, I never would have met Michael, and they never would have trusted me enough to let me join. I joined the Rebels four years ago." She fell silent, watching him out of half-closed eyes, but he sensed that he had her full attention.
What is she waiting for? he thought resentfully, and reviewed what she had just told him. Suddenly a conclusion leaped into his mind, so obvious he couldn't believe he'd missed it before. "You!" he shouted accusingly. "You're the Phoenix."
She smiled. "The Phoenix rose from the ashes of it's dead parent, and I emphasize the word dead. In a way, the Alliance is my parent. I intend to rise from its ashes, or at least, to rise above the ashes they intended me to be, the ones my sister now are. Don't look so surprised. It would have to be someone like me to keep up with you, someone who knows exactly what you are capable of, and who understands you.
"What I said about you being emotionally trained is the truth. I know that your emotional state is not natural, because I was created by the same scientists who made you, and I have a full range of human emotions."
"How... how do I know... The Alliance must have trained us emotionally to make us better soldiers," he said without conviction. "We live to serve the Alliance," the words tasted sour in his mouth.
She shook her head regretfully. "They did that to you to tie you to the Alliance. I have emotions, and they haven't affected my efficiency, as the Phoenix."
He knew that they'd used the training to tie them to the Alliance, but he needed more proof than that. "Not good enough."
She sighed. "One, have you ever done undercover work as an Earthling?"
Heero resisted the urge to tell her that his name was Heero and concentrated on the question. "Yes."
"And to portray an Earthling, you have to wear makeup, hair dyes, contact lenses?"
"Yes." What did this have to do with anything?
"And there was a danger that sometime the makeup might rub off, and you would be exposed as a colonist?"
"The danger was very slight - we use good makeup - but yes, it was present."
"What if there was a way to eliminate that danger altogether, and that method was open to you. Would that improve your efficiency, would that allow you to better serve the Alliance?"
"Yes."
She managed to stand up, grimacing in pain as she did so. "I told you that Dr. Smith was executed for two reasons. One was that she made half of the babies female. The other was that she added certain gene sequences that gave us abilities the Alliance didn't want us to have. I didn't find out about this until I joined the Rebels, until Michael told me, because even though I had noticed those genes, I didn't recognize them. There was a good reason for that." She stopped speaking, and as he watched, her skin slowly darkened from it's normal white color to a light pink, then a darker peach, then a deep tan. Her hair also darkened, sliding through various levels of yellow, red, and brown, finally settling on a dark rich brown. Pure white albino eyes stared out of a body that was definitely from Earth.
"What...?!"
"The reason I couldn't identify those genes was that they weren't human. They were originally from a chameleon, adapted for human use. I can't change as many colors as a chameleon, but I can be any shade that Earthlings are, and change my hair, too. All it takes for me is a pair of contact lenses to conceal the color of my eyes, and I could fit in on Earth. You have the ability, too. The Alliance knows it, and never told you because then you could leave at any time, run to Earth where there are billions of people, and just disappear." She regarded him soberly, slowly turning white again. "Try it. Isolate your hand, the way they taught you to for controlling pain, and concentrate. It's something like a muscle flex, only it's only on the top layer of the epidermis. Try it."
Turning his back on her, he stared at his own hand, trying to concentrate and do what she'd said. At first there was nothing, then he felt a slight tingling in his hand, and saw the skin darken from white to black in a matter of seconds.
"It takes time to learn how to control it," she said softly. "But it is a very useful tool."
Heero couldn't speak, he couldn't think, he could barely breathe. She'd done it. She'd convinced him. Everything he'd been told was a lie, and he'd been working against the people, just hurting people, his entire life. With a mindless cry of frustration and rage, he slammed his now-black fist into the wall, punching a hole in it. It hurt, but his hand emerged unscathed.
"They lied to you about their motives in your training, didn't teach you to be everything you could be to help the Alliance. Isn't it possible that they're also lying to you about the true intentions of the Alliance?" She obviously didn't realize that he'd already been convinced.
He nodded angrily. Everything he'd ever been taught was a lie. He raised a fist to punch the wall again, trying to get rid of some of his anger, his frustration, his pain... but she caught his arm. "Come on."
"Where are you taking me?" he asked listlessly.
"I'm letting you go. I don't want you to just take my word for it - I want you to find out the truth about the Alliance for yourself."
He didn't tell her that he already knew the truth. This would be an opportunity to make sure he was right.
She took him out of the room and down a series of nearly-empty corridors to a waiting car with darkened windows. "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to take you away from here before I can let you go. There are far too many people who could be hurt if this base was discovered by the Alliance."
Heero obediently climbed into the car and sat down as it slowly accelerated. Over the next half-hour the car made dozens of turns, obviously designed to leave him with no idea where he was or how far he'd traveled. Heero could have kept check in his mind, but he didn't. If they were letting him go, that required some sort of response on his part, so he didn't try to find their hideout. Finally the car stopped. "Here," she said, handing him a card. "Once you find out the truth about the Alliance, call this number and one of us will pick you up. We'll take you wherever you want to go, whether that is back to our base or to a shuttle that can take you to Earth."
Heero nodded and pocketed the card. He climbed out of the car, took a few seconds to orient himself, and then started off.
-----------
As Rina watched One disappear into the crowd, the divider between the driver and passenger cabin slid down, and her driver turned back to look at her. "You're taking a very big risk with this, Phoenix," he said, shaking his head. "I know you think you've convinced him, but if you're wrong..."
"I know that, Mike, but these are desperate times. Desperate times call for desperate measures. You know what is coming - we must bring him to our side, or at the very least, deny the Alliance his loyalty."
Mike nodded and started driving back to base.
"Has word gotten out that we held him for a couple weeks, that he hasn't been out on his own?" Rina asked.
"Yes, sir, just like you ordered."
"Then word will have gotten back to the Alliance leaders by now, to his superiors," she said slowly, although this was a statement of fact. "They'll assume that he has been turned, of course. The Alliance always was rather quick to kill off it's own people."
"You think they'll try to kill him?"
"Oh, that's a certainty. The main question is whether he'll let them. And that depends on what he learns before he goes to meet them, and on what I've already said. I've tried to take away his entire life. If I didn't do this right, he will let them kill him, and it will have been my fault."
"No more yours than the Alliances," he told her, trying to be comforting. "Because of what they did to him..."
"No, I take responsibility for it. I made a choice, in order to save lives, and if that choice costs one more innocent his life, then I will have to accept that." It occurred to her how odd it was to be thinking of one of those boys as an innocent, after all the people they'd killed personally and caused to have been killed. But for her, it was impossible to think of them as anything but victims of the Alliance.
Now all she had to do was wait and see if one of the Alliance's victims would also be a victim of the Phoenix.
---------
Heero's mind was at once a blur and incredibly clear as he walked into one of the Alliance's safe houses. He'd left word earlier that he would meet his superiors there, and had spent the intervening time doing some research of his own. He'd verified, through files that had been censored from the libraries and records rooms that the files the Phoenix had given him about the statistics on crime in the colonies before the Alliance arrived were accurate. He also walked the streets for some time, and talked to a few kids about what their parents thought about the Alliance. In all cases except one the children repeated derogatory comments their parents had made about the Alliance, and the last one, a little girl, just burst into tears and ran off. The people really do hate us. The only thing left to do was verify the truth from Mem himself, and Heero knew how.
When he entered the safe house, Mr. Mem was there, along with two men that Heero had never seen before, but he could tell from their posture that they were soldiers, fighting men, not scientists. He felt the tension in the air, and prepared himself for action if it was necessary. The truth, all I want is the truth.
"One, we were getting concerned about you," Mem said in that super-sweet tone of his, which immediately increased Heero's sense of danger. Mem always sounded like this right before he struck. "Disappearing like that for so many days."
"I was captured by the Rebels. I know the identity of the Phoenix." And something about her that none of us ever suspected.
"You do? That's astonishing. How did you find out and then escape?" Heero noticed that Mem, who was usually given to making broad gestures with both of his hands, kept his right hand under the desk. He's hiding something, a recorder, or a weapon...
"They let me go."
"They what?"
"They let me go without a fight. They tried to turn me against the Alliance."
"Did it work?" Mem asked, laughing playfully, but Heero heard that there was an actual question beneath this veneer of confidence.
"I'm here, aren't I?" Not quite a lie, that.
Mem hid his relief well, and said, "So, who is he? Who is the Phoenix?"
"Just one question before I tell you."
"What is that?" Mem remained outwardly friendly, but Heero saw him tense slightly in anticipation.
Heero held up his right hand and made it turn dark. "Why didn't you tell me I could do this?"
Without any warning Mem drew a blaster and fired several shots at Heero.
Heero had seen the muscles in his arm tense a moment before the shots came, and was already diving out of the way when the shots hit the wall behind him. The dive took him close to one of the two men, who reached out to grab his arm. Heero let him, then used that leverage to throw the man across the room. He upended the desk Mem was sitting behind, knocking Mem over and momentarily ending the barrage of energy bolts. The other man ran at him, but Heero threw a chair at him, and when the man ducked, ran out through the door. He ran one block down the street and then turned a corner. I've got to lose them before they can summon backup.
He slipped into a store and grabbed a bright orange jacket off the rack. Throwing it on, he casually walked back outside, disabling the store's theft alarms with a kick to the electronic grid that ran it. Do the unexpected. His training took over. He'd already changed his appearance, and no one would suspect that he would grab the most flamboyant outfit in the store, one guaranteed to draw attention. For that very reason it might cause them to overlook him. He started off down the street at a moderately paced walk, not running, but not dragging his feet, either. He heard shouts, but they were far away, well beyond the range of a normal human's ears, so he didn't stop. He didn't turn his head, either, which would have been an instant giveaway.
Heero almost thought he had gotten away by the time he entered a crowded market. Then he noticed a few people standing around in strategic exits to the large square, saw the bulges under their shirts that indicated they were carrying blasters or guns. How did they find me? he thought, then one of them glanced upward, towards the sky, and Heero's acute vision picked up a couple of shuttles floating far overhead, and he knew what was about to happen. The Alliance ran random sweeps every couple of weeks where they closed off a large region of public space and checked the ID of everyone in that region. If the ID didn't match what was on file for the person's fingerprints, or if the Alliance wanted them for some reason, the person would be taken away. These people weren't looking for him, but if he got caught in the sweep, it was only a matter of time until they figured out who he was, especially since he wasn't carrying an ID. He rapidly headed for one of the exits. He had almost reached it when a light flashed down on the square and an energy field sprouted up in front of him, blocking off the exits.
There were screams all around as people realized what had happened, and the undercover agents pulled out old projectile-guns and started controlling the crowd. They made everyone line up against the wall, hands pressed against it, heads down. When everyone was under control, they lowered the energy shields and let more agents in. These agents carried devices to check the validity of ID's and also a good deal of knowledge of the Alliance's enemies. They worked in pairs, one armed agent along with one identifier, in case there were Rebels among those caught. As they started to work through the crowd, he entertained a moment of hope that they'd just send him along, because he looked so young - they did that sometimes. In the meantime he started to come up with a plan in case they didn't. There was no doubt in his mind that at this point to be caught by the Alliance was to be killed, and probably in the most painful way possible, if they caught him alive. There was a faint throb of pain in his mind as he contemplated the Alliance as his enemy, but no repetition of the phrase, and the pain was much less than before.
When they reached him, the identifier asked for his ID. Damn it. "I forgot mine at home," he said in a high-pitched voice.
The identifier looked at the agent, who shook his head. "He's old enough now to know better. A few hours in Interrogation will teach him not to forget it again." He grabbed Heero's arm and pulled him away from the wall. "Come on, kid. This won't..." his sentence was cut off when Heero slammed his flattened hand into the man's throat, instantly crushing his windpipe. As he fell to his knees, dying, Heero pulled the gun out of his hand. He quickly lined up a shot and took out one of the armed agents. Ten left. He killed six of them before they realized that they were under attack, and only two of them ever got shots off that were even directed at him. The identifiers crouched on the ground with the rest of the terrified crowd - there was no danger from them. The entire process had taken less than thirty seconds.
Out of the corner of his eye Heero saw several of the members of the crowd run away from the wall and towards the exit. Rebels, most likely. Heero automatically raised the gun and aimed at one of them, but as the man turned to look behind him, a panicked expression on his face, Heero hesitated. A few days or even a few hours ago he wouldn't have hesitated to pull the trigger - these men were enemies of the Alliance. But so am I, now. He let them run away.
Walking over to the body of one of the agents he'd killed, Heero retrieved a fresh gun with an unused cartridge. Discarding the other one on the ground, he looked around at the crowd. This was no good. Alliance soldiers would be coming here in just a few minutes. He needed a rush of people to disappear in. "Everyone out of here!" he shouted. A bunch of people got to their feet, looking terrified. "I said move it!" he shouted louder. "The Alliance is coming!" He fired a shot into the air. That got a reaction. Moving almost as one being, the people got to their feet, gathered up what belongings they could, and ran for the exits. Heero picked one man at random and ran with him back out into the streets.
Rina only had a projectile pistol with her, a weapon whose optimum range was well under the distance that separated her from Five. She dropped to her hip and slid down the slanted roof of the building, tearing her clothing but doing no damage to herself. As she slid she automatically shifted into a disguise, making herself look like an Earthling. When she landed at the edge of the roof, she quickly found Five again. She only had seconds left. She raised her pistol, aimed, and fired. The shot hit the concrete of the building below the boy. She raised her aim slightly and fired again. This one hit the windowsill he was leaning on. That got his attention.
Rina heard people start to scream as Five swung his blaster around to aim at her. Rina started running. Her father was safe now, security would already have activated shields around him and gotten him out of sight. Now she had to preserve her own flesh. Rina ran towards the edge of the building, intending to jump to the next building over, which would take her away from the square, and to descend to the street from there. But as she started to jump, her left leg gave out from under her, and she fell into the alley that separated the two buildings. She barely managed to grab onto the fire escape, and the force of her body slamming into the metal fire escape almost made her let go. Then pain blossomed up out of her leg, so strong it made her gasp.
Rina struggled onto the fire escape, then looked at her leg. Fuck, I've been shot! Rina had been seriously been hurt before, but not this badly, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. But the danger of her situation allowed her to push past the pain. Rina's mind cleared as her emotions shut off, leaving her coldly logical and unnaturally calm. He'll come after me, she thought. No, security will have sealed off the square by now. He'll wait until they start letting people through, one at a time, then he'll try to pick me off as I go through. Rina cautiously got to her feet. The leg would hold, but her climbing back to the top of the building was out of the question. Using her hands to support most of her weight, she swung down to the ground, taking all of the impact on her right leg. Then, limping slightly, she pushed her way through the crowd to the base of the podium.
"Patricia," she said in a low voice, standing in the shadows the podium created so that no news camera could see her. She allowed the disguise to fade, and one of her father's guards came rushing over. Rina had been involved with the hiring of most of her father's staff, all of whom were incredibly loyal and had good reason to hate the Alliance. They all knew something of Rina's clandestine activities, although few knew it's true extent.
Patricia's dark eyes widened slightly when she saw the blood staining most of the left side of Rina's white skirt. "Mistress," she hissed. "That was you up there?"
"There was an attempt on father's life," Rina said. "I need your coat. Now."
Patricia immediately pulled off her floor-length black coat and handed it to Rina. Rina put it on after tucking her gun into a hidden holder under her dress. The full-length coat hid both the top of the white dress, which Five had to have seen, but also the blood stain and the fact that she was limping slightly. "All right. Leak this to the press. The ambassador's daughter actually came with him today, and was waiting for him in the car when the fighting started. When it was over she got out of the car and walked under the podium to see if her father was all right, but he sent her away in the company of one of his guards, and has ordered that she stay at home, fearing for her safety. Got it?"
"Got it. Mistress, do you need any help?"
"No," Rina replied, gritting her teeth against the pain that now came in waves upon her. "Is the path to the car clear?"
"Yes."
"Good. Stand behind me, and be ready to catch me if I fall, but make it look as if I'm fainting, all right?"
"Yes."
"Let's go." Raising her head high, Rina stepped out from under the podium and started walking out through the open area to the car. She heard whispers as people around her noticed her presence, and tried not to blink as dozens of lightbulbs flashed around her. She managed not to limp at all, and to smile, although both pained her dearly. She also forced herself not to look up at the window where she knew Five still waited. If he recognized her, she'd be dead before she heard the shot. She was relying on the fact that he would be trying to recognize her by hair and clothes, not by face.
Rina crossed the dangerous ground and got into a waiting car without incident. As she leaned back against the seat, she felt relief wash over her. It had been a very near thing.
------------
When the girl returned the next day, there was a brace on her right thigh and she was limping slightly, although she tried to hide it. "What happened?" he asked, surprised to find that his curiosity was real. His mind raced ahead... he knew what he had figured out was true. Would she admit it, or try to lie to him? The throbbing in his head had eased slightly, but something had changed. Now when he tried to think of the Alliance doing those things to him, to the others, that stupid phrase no longer popped up. But he distrusted this still, although the reason wasn't entirely logical. If the Alliance had done all these things, if they'd lied to him, it meant that everything he'd believed, everything he'd done in the last fourteen years was working for the wrong people. This realization disturbed him so greatly that he took little satisfaction in the fact that he could actually think these thoughts now.
She stared at him for a second, then gingerly sat down on the chair. "One of your comrades tried to kill my father."
"He isn't your father," Heero stated confidently, waiting for her reaction.
She started, then nodded wearily. "You're right. He isn't my birth father. But he is my father, in all the ways that count - ways that you probably can't understand."
He ignored her comment. "What are you?"
Instead of responding, she handed him a paper with thousands of numbers on it. "Do you know what this is?"
He glanced at it, hiding his irritation. "It's gene sequences."
"More specific than that."
He looked closer. "Those are the gene sequences of one of the products of Project Titan, specifically the ones that give us strength. I can't tell which one it is, because these sequences are identical in all of us."
She nodded affirmatively. "Do you know where I got these, brother?"
He hesitated, confused by her use of the word 'brother.' She'd never addressed him that way before, and it seemed odd that she should do so now. "You got them off of the Alliance's computer." That caused no confusing conflict, it was a simple statement of fact.
Then she shook her head. "No. Those gene sequences come from my own blood. I call you 'brother' most deliberately, One, creation of Dr. Smith, because you are the closest thing I have to a brother." Holding out the rest of the papers she held, she suddenly seemed smaller and wearier than he had ever seen. "Yesterday you accused me of lying because I was withholding information, keeping back a few of the files about the doctors who created us. Here are those files."
He took the files from her but didn't look at them. "What are you saying?" he asked.
"You know the answer to that question, brother, you just don't want to face it."
"That's impossible." She was right, he did know the answer, but it couldn't be what he was thinking. Why not? he was forced to question himself. They had lied to him about so many other things, why not this?
"Smith was executed for a number of reasons. One was for adding certain gene sequences to us that give us more power than the Alliance wanted. But another reason - the main one - was that during her manipulations, she changed something else in half of the subjects. There were ten of you, not five, did they ever tell you that?"
He didn't respond. He couldn't respond.
"There were ten babies born out of surrogate mothers, but when they saw the final project, they found out what she had done. Half of the babies were female." She stared at Heero with a startling intensity, and he suddenly felt like he was looking at Arthur or Michael. They had that same direct stare that made him think they knew something about him that he himself didn't. "They had no use for females - females don't make good soldiers, aren't as fast or as smart as men, and God knows what other reasoning they used, all of it perfectly useless, and ignoring the fact that a female was the head doctor on the project. They ordered the five female babies disposed of, and had Smith executed." She smiled humorlessly. "But they made a mistake. The disposal of the five girls was left in the hand of a man unconnected with the project, by the name of Kevins. All he was told was that the five were a danger that had to be disposed of. He felt sorry for five helpless infants and gave them to an orphanage He didn't realize they were all completely conscious of their surroundings and in many ways already wiser than him.
"We remained there for less than a week. In that time, Ambassador Krace and his wife decided to adopt a colonist orphan, because they couldn't have children on their own and because they wanted to be sure their commitment to the colony was demonstrated. They adopted me in a huge media event - it was a huge deal back then. I remember it.
"When I say that we remained there for less than a week, I mean all five of us did. I left because I was adopted - the others were stolen from the orphanage during the night and killed once Kevins' action had been noticed. They thought we were too dangerous to leave alive, even if it was only..." she cut herself off. "I was very lucky. If I had been adopted by a normal family, I would have been taken, too, and killed. But the adoption was a highly publicized event, and the ambassador was a highly public figure. If his newly adopted daughter disappeared, there would be a huge investigation, which was the last thing the Alliance wanted. So they covered up the fact that one of the babies had escaped elimination, and continued with your training as if nothing had happened."
She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. "I always knew I was different. From the moment Father brought me home I knew. I had already gone through over twelve years of schooling by the time I was four, and by the time I was seven, I held several degrees from galaxy-renowned colleges. Then, not long after my seventh birthday, I got hit by a car. The car hit me head-on, and the impact alone should have killed me, not to mention the way I was thrown well over forty meters. I walked away from that accident. That was when I realized how truly different I was.
"After that my studies went in two directions. First, I started studying my own genes, and I discovered that I had been designed. Second, I started studying the Rebels, and the Alliance, and I saw all of the horrible things that the Alliance was doing to the colonists, who were my people. I started secretly aiding the Rebels by computer, because I thought they wouldn't trust me if they saw who and what I was. I did that for three years, until you killed Representative Surd."
"I saw you looking at me after the strike," he said, remembering. "I thought it had to be a trick of the light, that you couldn't possibly see me from down there." If the Alliance was working against the people, then Surd must have been working for them, and when I eliminated him, I was also working against the people. We never did find any evidence that he was working with the Rebels, or stirring up discontent. Heero became more uneasy as he analyzed the strikes he'd made in the past two years, discovering how little evidence there'd been against those people. And now, discovering that there was another one of them... why hadn't they been told? The Alliance was keeping things from him, it seemed. But that meant... He unconsciously shied away from what it meant.
"Oh, I did see you. That night, after I went home, I broke into Alliance's security and accessed the files on Project Titan. That was when I realized how I had been created, by whom, and for what purpose. I sent all the information I had about you to the Rebels, but I needed more information in order to combat you, and there was someone within the Rebels who had once worked on Project Titan. It was the five of you, and the way that you were treated, that caused him to defect to us. Maybe you remember him - Michael Turston."
He remembered, but didn't say anything, lost in his own mind. Michael Turston - officially Mr. Teel - was the only one to ever tell them his real name. Michael had chosen his name because of Mr. Teel, and Arthur had always been his favorite. He'd disappeared without a word, and Mr. Mem had told him that Teel had been removed from the project. It somehow didn't surprise Heero that he had defected to the Rebels, but again... why hadn't the Alliance told them?
"He insisted we meet in person, so we did. He recognized me for what I was, and helped me to hone my abilities in a manner I had never been able to do on my own. That night I got back into the Alliance computer, and downloaded all of the information about you to the Rebel's computer."
"You!" he exclaimed. "The intruder that night, that was you?!"
"Well, you don't think a normal human could get in through Four's system?" she asked with a slight smile. "In some ways, I have you to thank for me joining the Rebels. If not for you forcing me to come out in the open, I never would have met Michael, and they never would have trusted me enough to let me join. I joined the Rebels four years ago." She fell silent, watching him out of half-closed eyes, but he sensed that he had her full attention.
What is she waiting for? he thought resentfully, and reviewed what she had just told him. Suddenly a conclusion leaped into his mind, so obvious he couldn't believe he'd missed it before. "You!" he shouted accusingly. "You're the Phoenix."
She smiled. "The Phoenix rose from the ashes of it's dead parent, and I emphasize the word dead. In a way, the Alliance is my parent. I intend to rise from its ashes, or at least, to rise above the ashes they intended me to be, the ones my sister now are. Don't look so surprised. It would have to be someone like me to keep up with you, someone who knows exactly what you are capable of, and who understands you.
"What I said about you being emotionally trained is the truth. I know that your emotional state is not natural, because I was created by the same scientists who made you, and I have a full range of human emotions."
"How... how do I know... The Alliance must have trained us emotionally to make us better soldiers," he said without conviction. "We live to serve the Alliance," the words tasted sour in his mouth.
She shook her head regretfully. "They did that to you to tie you to the Alliance. I have emotions, and they haven't affected my efficiency, as the Phoenix."
He knew that they'd used the training to tie them to the Alliance, but he needed more proof than that. "Not good enough."
She sighed. "One, have you ever done undercover work as an Earthling?"
Heero resisted the urge to tell her that his name was Heero and concentrated on the question. "Yes."
"And to portray an Earthling, you have to wear makeup, hair dyes, contact lenses?"
"Yes." What did this have to do with anything?
"And there was a danger that sometime the makeup might rub off, and you would be exposed as a colonist?"
"The danger was very slight - we use good makeup - but yes, it was present."
"What if there was a way to eliminate that danger altogether, and that method was open to you. Would that improve your efficiency, would that allow you to better serve the Alliance?"
"Yes."
She managed to stand up, grimacing in pain as she did so. "I told you that Dr. Smith was executed for two reasons. One was that she made half of the babies female. The other was that she added certain gene sequences that gave us abilities the Alliance didn't want us to have. I didn't find out about this until I joined the Rebels, until Michael told me, because even though I had noticed those genes, I didn't recognize them. There was a good reason for that." She stopped speaking, and as he watched, her skin slowly darkened from it's normal white color to a light pink, then a darker peach, then a deep tan. Her hair also darkened, sliding through various levels of yellow, red, and brown, finally settling on a dark rich brown. Pure white albino eyes stared out of a body that was definitely from Earth.
"What...?!"
"The reason I couldn't identify those genes was that they weren't human. They were originally from a chameleon, adapted for human use. I can't change as many colors as a chameleon, but I can be any shade that Earthlings are, and change my hair, too. All it takes for me is a pair of contact lenses to conceal the color of my eyes, and I could fit in on Earth. You have the ability, too. The Alliance knows it, and never told you because then you could leave at any time, run to Earth where there are billions of people, and just disappear." She regarded him soberly, slowly turning white again. "Try it. Isolate your hand, the way they taught you to for controlling pain, and concentrate. It's something like a muscle flex, only it's only on the top layer of the epidermis. Try it."
Turning his back on her, he stared at his own hand, trying to concentrate and do what she'd said. At first there was nothing, then he felt a slight tingling in his hand, and saw the skin darken from white to black in a matter of seconds.
"It takes time to learn how to control it," she said softly. "But it is a very useful tool."
Heero couldn't speak, he couldn't think, he could barely breathe. She'd done it. She'd convinced him. Everything he'd been told was a lie, and he'd been working against the people, just hurting people, his entire life. With a mindless cry of frustration and rage, he slammed his now-black fist into the wall, punching a hole in it. It hurt, but his hand emerged unscathed.
"They lied to you about their motives in your training, didn't teach you to be everything you could be to help the Alliance. Isn't it possible that they're also lying to you about the true intentions of the Alliance?" She obviously didn't realize that he'd already been convinced.
He nodded angrily. Everything he'd ever been taught was a lie. He raised a fist to punch the wall again, trying to get rid of some of his anger, his frustration, his pain... but she caught his arm. "Come on."
"Where are you taking me?" he asked listlessly.
"I'm letting you go. I don't want you to just take my word for it - I want you to find out the truth about the Alliance for yourself."
He didn't tell her that he already knew the truth. This would be an opportunity to make sure he was right.
She took him out of the room and down a series of nearly-empty corridors to a waiting car with darkened windows. "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to take you away from here before I can let you go. There are far too many people who could be hurt if this base was discovered by the Alliance."
Heero obediently climbed into the car and sat down as it slowly accelerated. Over the next half-hour the car made dozens of turns, obviously designed to leave him with no idea where he was or how far he'd traveled. Heero could have kept check in his mind, but he didn't. If they were letting him go, that required some sort of response on his part, so he didn't try to find their hideout. Finally the car stopped. "Here," she said, handing him a card. "Once you find out the truth about the Alliance, call this number and one of us will pick you up. We'll take you wherever you want to go, whether that is back to our base or to a shuttle that can take you to Earth."
Heero nodded and pocketed the card. He climbed out of the car, took a few seconds to orient himself, and then started off.
-----------
As Rina watched One disappear into the crowd, the divider between the driver and passenger cabin slid down, and her driver turned back to look at her. "You're taking a very big risk with this, Phoenix," he said, shaking his head. "I know you think you've convinced him, but if you're wrong..."
"I know that, Mike, but these are desperate times. Desperate times call for desperate measures. You know what is coming - we must bring him to our side, or at the very least, deny the Alliance his loyalty."
Mike nodded and started driving back to base.
"Has word gotten out that we held him for a couple weeks, that he hasn't been out on his own?" Rina asked.
"Yes, sir, just like you ordered."
"Then word will have gotten back to the Alliance leaders by now, to his superiors," she said slowly, although this was a statement of fact. "They'll assume that he has been turned, of course. The Alliance always was rather quick to kill off it's own people."
"You think they'll try to kill him?"
"Oh, that's a certainty. The main question is whether he'll let them. And that depends on what he learns before he goes to meet them, and on what I've already said. I've tried to take away his entire life. If I didn't do this right, he will let them kill him, and it will have been my fault."
"No more yours than the Alliances," he told her, trying to be comforting. "Because of what they did to him..."
"No, I take responsibility for it. I made a choice, in order to save lives, and if that choice costs one more innocent his life, then I will have to accept that." It occurred to her how odd it was to be thinking of one of those boys as an innocent, after all the people they'd killed personally and caused to have been killed. But for her, it was impossible to think of them as anything but victims of the Alliance.
Now all she had to do was wait and see if one of the Alliance's victims would also be a victim of the Phoenix.
---------
Heero's mind was at once a blur and incredibly clear as he walked into one of the Alliance's safe houses. He'd left word earlier that he would meet his superiors there, and had spent the intervening time doing some research of his own. He'd verified, through files that had been censored from the libraries and records rooms that the files the Phoenix had given him about the statistics on crime in the colonies before the Alliance arrived were accurate. He also walked the streets for some time, and talked to a few kids about what their parents thought about the Alliance. In all cases except one the children repeated derogatory comments their parents had made about the Alliance, and the last one, a little girl, just burst into tears and ran off. The people really do hate us. The only thing left to do was verify the truth from Mem himself, and Heero knew how.
When he entered the safe house, Mr. Mem was there, along with two men that Heero had never seen before, but he could tell from their posture that they were soldiers, fighting men, not scientists. He felt the tension in the air, and prepared himself for action if it was necessary. The truth, all I want is the truth.
"One, we were getting concerned about you," Mem said in that super-sweet tone of his, which immediately increased Heero's sense of danger. Mem always sounded like this right before he struck. "Disappearing like that for so many days."
"I was captured by the Rebels. I know the identity of the Phoenix." And something about her that none of us ever suspected.
"You do? That's astonishing. How did you find out and then escape?" Heero noticed that Mem, who was usually given to making broad gestures with both of his hands, kept his right hand under the desk. He's hiding something, a recorder, or a weapon...
"They let me go."
"They what?"
"They let me go without a fight. They tried to turn me against the Alliance."
"Did it work?" Mem asked, laughing playfully, but Heero heard that there was an actual question beneath this veneer of confidence.
"I'm here, aren't I?" Not quite a lie, that.
Mem hid his relief well, and said, "So, who is he? Who is the Phoenix?"
"Just one question before I tell you."
"What is that?" Mem remained outwardly friendly, but Heero saw him tense slightly in anticipation.
Heero held up his right hand and made it turn dark. "Why didn't you tell me I could do this?"
Without any warning Mem drew a blaster and fired several shots at Heero.
Heero had seen the muscles in his arm tense a moment before the shots came, and was already diving out of the way when the shots hit the wall behind him. The dive took him close to one of the two men, who reached out to grab his arm. Heero let him, then used that leverage to throw the man across the room. He upended the desk Mem was sitting behind, knocking Mem over and momentarily ending the barrage of energy bolts. The other man ran at him, but Heero threw a chair at him, and when the man ducked, ran out through the door. He ran one block down the street and then turned a corner. I've got to lose them before they can summon backup.
He slipped into a store and grabbed a bright orange jacket off the rack. Throwing it on, he casually walked back outside, disabling the store's theft alarms with a kick to the electronic grid that ran it. Do the unexpected. His training took over. He'd already changed his appearance, and no one would suspect that he would grab the most flamboyant outfit in the store, one guaranteed to draw attention. For that very reason it might cause them to overlook him. He started off down the street at a moderately paced walk, not running, but not dragging his feet, either. He heard shouts, but they were far away, well beyond the range of a normal human's ears, so he didn't stop. He didn't turn his head, either, which would have been an instant giveaway.
Heero almost thought he had gotten away by the time he entered a crowded market. Then he noticed a few people standing around in strategic exits to the large square, saw the bulges under their shirts that indicated they were carrying blasters or guns. How did they find me? he thought, then one of them glanced upward, towards the sky, and Heero's acute vision picked up a couple of shuttles floating far overhead, and he knew what was about to happen. The Alliance ran random sweeps every couple of weeks where they closed off a large region of public space and checked the ID of everyone in that region. If the ID didn't match what was on file for the person's fingerprints, or if the Alliance wanted them for some reason, the person would be taken away. These people weren't looking for him, but if he got caught in the sweep, it was only a matter of time until they figured out who he was, especially since he wasn't carrying an ID. He rapidly headed for one of the exits. He had almost reached it when a light flashed down on the square and an energy field sprouted up in front of him, blocking off the exits.
There were screams all around as people realized what had happened, and the undercover agents pulled out old projectile-guns and started controlling the crowd. They made everyone line up against the wall, hands pressed against it, heads down. When everyone was under control, they lowered the energy shields and let more agents in. These agents carried devices to check the validity of ID's and also a good deal of knowledge of the Alliance's enemies. They worked in pairs, one armed agent along with one identifier, in case there were Rebels among those caught. As they started to work through the crowd, he entertained a moment of hope that they'd just send him along, because he looked so young - they did that sometimes. In the meantime he started to come up with a plan in case they didn't. There was no doubt in his mind that at this point to be caught by the Alliance was to be killed, and probably in the most painful way possible, if they caught him alive. There was a faint throb of pain in his mind as he contemplated the Alliance as his enemy, but no repetition of the phrase, and the pain was much less than before.
When they reached him, the identifier asked for his ID. Damn it. "I forgot mine at home," he said in a high-pitched voice.
The identifier looked at the agent, who shook his head. "He's old enough now to know better. A few hours in Interrogation will teach him not to forget it again." He grabbed Heero's arm and pulled him away from the wall. "Come on, kid. This won't..." his sentence was cut off when Heero slammed his flattened hand into the man's throat, instantly crushing his windpipe. As he fell to his knees, dying, Heero pulled the gun out of his hand. He quickly lined up a shot and took out one of the armed agents. Ten left. He killed six of them before they realized that they were under attack, and only two of them ever got shots off that were even directed at him. The identifiers crouched on the ground with the rest of the terrified crowd - there was no danger from them. The entire process had taken less than thirty seconds.
Out of the corner of his eye Heero saw several of the members of the crowd run away from the wall and towards the exit. Rebels, most likely. Heero automatically raised the gun and aimed at one of them, but as the man turned to look behind him, a panicked expression on his face, Heero hesitated. A few days or even a few hours ago he wouldn't have hesitated to pull the trigger - these men were enemies of the Alliance. But so am I, now. He let them run away.
Walking over to the body of one of the agents he'd killed, Heero retrieved a fresh gun with an unused cartridge. Discarding the other one on the ground, he looked around at the crowd. This was no good. Alliance soldiers would be coming here in just a few minutes. He needed a rush of people to disappear in. "Everyone out of here!" he shouted. A bunch of people got to their feet, looking terrified. "I said move it!" he shouted louder. "The Alliance is coming!" He fired a shot into the air. That got a reaction. Moving almost as one being, the people got to their feet, gathered up what belongings they could, and ran for the exits. Heero picked one man at random and ran with him back out into the streets.
