When Arthur woke up, he was in an all-white room, lying on a low mattress. There were no other furnishings, nothing that he could use. He sat up and turned his back to the camera he saw mounted in a corner, shielded behind a thick layer of glass where he couldn't tamper with it. I am weak, he thought, closing his eyes so they couldn't see them while he regained control of himself. When I received the note, I should have told the others, and brought them all with me when I found Heero. We would have had him, instead of him capturing me. He knew that I wouldn't bring the others, though. He knows that I am weak.
Arthur forced himself not to look up as the door slid quietly open and Heero walked in, carrying a platter with food on it. "I brought you something to eat. If you acted the way you normally do when something goes wrong, or before a mission, you haven't eaten in a long time. Days at least, maybe longer."
"Get away from me," Arthur said in a low voice, and was ashamed of how it trembled.
"I told you the truth back in the hotel," Heero told him. "Mem did attack me, he did try to kill me before anything else happened. They betrayed me, not the other way around. They betrayed all of us."
"One, stay away from me," Arthur said again, this time managing to keep his voice level.
Heero ignored him and took another step forward. "Arthur, I'm telling you the truth. The Alliance has been lying to us..."
"One, I swear to God, the Alliance, and everything else sacred that if you come one step nearer, I will kill you," Arthur said in a low voice. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something amazing, something he had never seen before in all the years he had known Heero. Heero looked hurt, for a moment, before he covered it up. Heero, hurt by something I said? Impossible.
"I'll be back later," Heero said, and set down the platter. He walked straight out the door. Arthur stared at the platter for a moment, then picked it up and threw it as hard as he could at the wall. The durable plastic bent, and the plates and utensils were scattered all over the room, along with whatever food Heero had brought. It didn't matter. Arthur couldn't have eaten it anyway, it was probably drugged with whatever they used to warp Heero's mind, to turn him against the Alliance.
Heero was the best of us, so much stronger than me. What could they have possibly done to him to make him betray the Alliance? Arthur realized that if they had been able to do that to Heero, they most certainly could do it to him. That's what's ahead of me - they'll try to make me betray the Alliance, the way Heero betrayed us. Then they'll send me out to capture one of the others. How could I have been so stupid as to trust Heero, especially after they told us what he'd done, what had happened to him?! I'm so weak!
Arthur remembered the excitement he'd felt when he received Heero's message. I believed it, I thought that he couldn't possibly have turned against us. I thought that I could trust my stupid hunch about his loyalty to the five of us being stronger than whatever twisted him, stronger than his loyalty to the Alliance. And now the others will pay for my mistakes.
What did they do to Heero? Arthur thought back to the hurt expression he'd seen on Heero's face for an instant. Whatever they did to him, it's not really Heero anymore. Heero would never allow himself to be hurt by something like that. He isn't weak, like me.
Arthur lay on his side and curled up in ball, hugging his knees to his chest. Despite what had happened, despite everything he'd seen, he still couldn't get that one image of Heero out of his mind, couldn't help but wish there was something he could do for him. Everything that had happened, and he still wanted to help Heero. Heero was the enemy, and Arthur's failure to realize that, to accept it, was going to hurt the others, was going to hurt the Alliance. Once again he fought for control. I wish I were dead.
----------
Rina stared at the image on the monitors, of the boy lying on his side on the bed. Despite what she knew about him, what she knew him to be capable of, Arthur was one of the most pathetic images she could have imagined. Heero seemed worried, actually worried about his companion. "I've never seen him like this," he muttered, staring at the images. "I've never seen him close up like this."
"Have you ever seen him in the chamber?" Rina asked suddenly. Heero had given her the design specifications while they were waiting for Arthur to wake up. She had studied them, horrified at first. She had known that the Alliance people were cruel, but subjecting them to that when they were only five? Intellectually she knew that they had been as intelligent and as mature as she had been, but emotionally it was hard to accept - the only five-year-olds she had ever been around had been full human, intellectually and emotionally immature. Even if the original training had been to strengthen their resistance, this continuous punishment for Arthur was unforgivable. That punishment, along with everyone he respected constantly telling him that he was weak, a failure, had obviously warped his mind, possibly beyond repair. That was what had prompted her question now.
"No, isolation is a big part of its effectiveness." Heero seemed surprised by her question.
"And how long do you say most people last?"
"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. All five of us have tolerances of well over an hour, though. I expect that your people could be trained to higher tolerances, as well." He was trying to anticipate the direction of her thinking, but this time he missed entirely.
"And how long is Arthur's tolerance?"
"I know they've left him in there for over three hours, and he has always come back with his mind intact," Heero said, now following her train of thought. "It seems impossible, even for one of us. You think that he developed this behavior as a defense, and that the reason I've never seen it is because he only did it in the chamber?"
"That's what I was thinking, but you're the one who's lived with him all your life."
"It's a possibility, but I don't know why he would revert to that behavior now. We're not torturing him."
"Maybe you don't think so, but maybe it seems like torture to him."
Heero stared at her, then narrowed his eyes slightly. "I don't understand."
Rina closed her eyes against the pain that threatened to overwhelm her. The emotional training really had taken hold with Heero. He honestly didn't seem to understand, or even consider, human emotions as a part of people's lives. She wondered if that would ever change. "There are many types of torture, only a few of which people can actually use against one another. The reason for that is because most tortures are only done by the people to themselves. Arthur obviously feels loyalty to you, and to the Alliance, and hates both as well."
"For what Mem did to him."
"Among other things. And now you, becoming his enemy, working against the Alliance. It may feel like torture to him."
"What do you suggest I do?"
"Just wait, for now. See if anything changes."
------------
Things didn't change. Arthur refused to talk to Heero, refused to communicate at all, and he wouldn't eat. It was more than distrust because of anything they might have put in the food. He's trying to die, by starvation if no other means presents itself. It was working, too. One day passed, then another, on the morning to of the third day, Heero tried again. Rina reviewed the one-sided conversation in her head, as she viewed it through the speakers.
"You have to eat, or you'll die. Is that what you really want?"
"If you don't eat, I'll bring in an I.V. I didn't bring you here to die, Arthur. I brought you here to learn the truth. You want to know that, don't you?"
Throughout all of this, Arthur sat on the low mattress, his legs bent in front of him, his arms resting on his knees. His back was curled, his head remained down, and he didn't respond to verbal communication, not even to look at Heero. Rina found herself fascinated by him. Watching these boys was sometimes like watching a distorted image of herself. She saw things in them that, when she thought about it, she could also recognize in herself. It was both fascinating and disturbing, to get insights like that, but she couldn't look away.
There are layers and layers to us. He looks like he's given up, he may even think that on the surface of his thoughts, but at some level it's also a trap, to get us to underestimate him. It's like me - I do appreciate friendships, and know that they have value for themselves, but at some level I know that I also use them as tools. I hate that in myself. I wonder if he does, too?
A few hours after that conversation, Hero had come to her. She put down what she had been working on and put on a curious face, although she was irritated at the interruption - the things she was working on were very urgent, and the sort of thing that only she could do in the time allotted. But then, Arthur was important as well. "Yes?"
"Will you speak to him, as you did to me?"
Rina managed to cover her surprise. "Why?"
"Because he will not listen to me, and I don't want him to die. If it is as you say, and he still does have the emotions that are no longer present in me, then it will take someone who can understand him to convince him that I speak the truth. I cannot understand him."
"Heero, you've known him your whole life. You must know him better than me."
"I don't. I never talked to him, except during missions, and even if I had, I still wouldn't be able to understand him. I don't understand anything having to do with normal emotions."
He is good at recognizing his own weaknesses, much better at it than me. They would have trained that in him. "I'll try."
"Right away," he said it in flat tones, but she recognized it as an order.
"No."
"No?" he couldn't seem to believe his ears.
"No," she repeated. "I have work to finish here first, work that only I can do."
"Arthur hasn't eaten or drunk anything in over four days. Even we can't survive that long without nutrients and liquids."
"Many more people will die if I don't finish this in the next hour."
"What is it?"
"Resource management. Yesterday the Alliance hit another food-producing colony. We managed to evacuate almost everyone in time..." Only almost. "But now there is another problem. Refuge is crowded enough already, and though we are working on expanding, it's not easy to do so without the Alliance noticing. Also, there is the problem of food. Thanks to the strike there is less available to the colonists then ever before, and now we have many more people to feed. I'm trying to figure out how to make the food last until we can get more."
"Let me do that."
"What?"
"You're talking about resource management, high-level numbers juggling, right?"
Relief flooded through Rina as she realized what he was suggesting. It was true, he could do it, and in less time than the computers. She'd never realized - well she had known it intellectually, but had never thought what it would really be like, to have someone who could do the things she could do, so that the entire load wasn't on her shoulders. "You're sure you can do it?"
"The Alliance had me manage troop resources. This isn't that much different. You'll go to Arthur immediately?"
"I will. When you're done with the numbers, take them to Mrs. Green down in Refuge right away. Ask the man outside the door, he'll know where she is."
"Mrs. George Green?" he asked, a hint of surprise in his voice.
"Yes." Rina froze as she remembered something. "Mrs. Green's husband was assassinated by one of you. Was it Arthur?"
"It was his first kill."
Rina's mind raced ahead. "Once you deliver those number to her, come back up here. I may need help moving Arthur."
"What are you planning?"
"Something emotional to shock him out of that trance, if nothing else works."
---------
Arthur saw the door open and a figure walk in out of the corner of his eye. He was tired, very tired, a sign that the lack of food was beginning to take it's toll. "Hello," said a soft voice, not Heero's. In his surprise, Arthur raised his head up off his chest. It was the girl, Rina Krace, the ambassador's daughter. She carried a large metal rod in her hands, and not much else. She was a Rebel. They've finally come to try to torture me for information, he thought, a little surprised. Then he was more surprised that he felt any surprise at that statement. What had he been expecting? He let his head fall back to his chest. Physical torture held no fear for him after the chamber. His training had done it's job.
"I know that you'll automatically disbelieve anything I tell you," she said, leaning against the opposite wall, studying him. "The same way you're refusing to believe the evidence that Heero's shown you." Arthur didn't bother to respond to such a stupid statement.
"Even he wasn't as thick-headed as you're being, but I think that may be because you're a little more human than he is. They punished you for it, so you've invented excuses in your mind for almost anything. Is that right?" She paused for an answer. "Is that right?" she asked a little more sharply. He still didn't respond, and she sighed. "Heero has asked me to provide some incontrovertible evidence that the Alliance has been concealing things from you, so here I am.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked, dropping to one knee to examine his face. He could also see hers. She was only fourteen, and looked twelve. Fourteen was very young... for a human. "Or, more to the point, did Heero tell you what I am?"
Heero? She calls him Heero? That was Arthur's first thought. Then came the second, What does she mean, *what* I am?
"I guess not." She took a few steps back, being careful to stay in Arthur's range of vision. Then she raised the metal rod in front of her, and bent it in half. When she moved her fingers, he could see the indentations they'd left in the metal. "Here." She pushed the rod into his fingers, and he could feel that it was solid steel.
He raised his head slightly. "How...?"
"There weren't five of you, there were ten. Five girls and five boys. I'm the only one of the others to have survived, and I'm the Phoenix."
"What?" he automatically tried to stand up. She was his enemy. His attempt failed - his body was too weak.
"Here," she said, again kneeling beside him. Her voice radiated comfort and warmth. From out of nowhere she produced a glass of water and some pills. "These will help replace some of the nutrients you've lost."
"No," he croaked.
"Please. I've got enough blood on my hands," she said, softly pleading. "I didn't mean for any of you to die when I decided to trap Heero."
Decided to trap Heero? Despite himself, Arthur was overwhelmed by his curiosity. Against his better judgement, he found himself taking the pills and drinking out of the glass she held. Even as he leaned back against the wall, he could feel the nutrients rushing through his body, revitalizing him, as did the water. He took the glass from her and drained it - she quickly refilled it with a pitcher of water she'd brought along. He drank all of that, too, but when she refilled it a second time, he just held it in his lap. "You're my enemy."
"I am the enemy of the Alliance."
"Same thing."
"Not necessarily. Heero thought so, too, but not anymore."
"What did you do to him?" Arthur didn't bother to disguise the hate in his voice.
"I showed him the truth about the Alliance, and what they've done to you guys, and what they've done to the colonies." She gestured to the file of papers Heero had brought on the first day. Arthur hadn't touched them yet. "The information is there, but I don't suppose you'd believe them even if you had read them. So I decided to bring a little more solid proof of what they've done - me."
"How?"
"They didn't want girls - they wanted ten boys, but the head scientists tricked them. She's dead now, by the way. They tried to kill me, along with all of the other girls, but they made a few mistakes, so I survived. I joined the Rebels to protect the colony against the Alliance."
"The Alliance protects the colonies!"
"It controls the colonies, and the products it produces. There are products that can only be made here. There are metals here that can only be forged here, for example, because of the concentration of minerals in the Centari soil. So by controlling the colonies, especially Alpha, they gain a monopoly on those products. They keep the populace under control through morale-destroying methods, like the random sweeps, constant presence of soldiers, and the way they control food, air, things we need to survive. I joined the Rebels to stop that, first by invading the Alliance's computer and warning them, then by joining them and leading them directly. As the Phoenix."
"I predicted the name had symbolism," he said smugly. "It does, doesn't it?"
She stared at him, suddenly intense. Arthur had seen the same sort of mood swings in the others. "It does. You know, in some ways you're more dangerous than the others. You understand people."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do." The intensity was gone just as suddenly as it had come. "I also know that you're different then them. You think of those feelings you have as weaknesses, but I don't view them that way."
He didn't know how to respond to that statement.
"Despite everything they've told you, you are human. All of you are. The only difference between you and the others is that the emotional training they gave you when you were young didn't take as well, so hints of the emotions you all should have keep breaking through. They punish you for it, which lead you to believe that it really is a weakness."
"It is." Arthur noticed that he had stopped resisting everything she said. She was good, slowly coaxing him along, subtly trying to get in and make him turn. He was alert for that, now. It wouldn't work with him.
"Do you consider me weak?"
"Yes."
"Don't lie. Don't look at me as a fourteen-year-old kid. Look at me as a fellow subject of the experiment that spawned you. I'm as strong as you are, and as smart. I've been beating your security system for years, and the Alliance never caught me. Think of me as the Phoenix. Am I weak?"
Arthur was furious at the thought that she'd managed to beat his system, but he concentrated on the question. "No," he admitted grudgingly.
"I have a full range of human emotions. They can be a weakness, but they can also be an ally. They make me stronger, sometimes, as I'm sure they have made you. Heero tells me that they punished you almost daily for having emotions, that you have a resistance to this chamber of theirs that seems almost impossible, even for us. There is something stronger in you, something the Alliance has denied because it might make you strong enough to break away from them."
Unbidden, thoughts of all the times he had questioned the Alliance's motives came to mind, all of the times he had resented, even resisted their instructions. He felt his control slipping slightly and fought to regain it. "No."
She sighed again. "Fine." She reached into her pocket and pulled out several more pills. "Take these. Will you be able to walk in a half-hour?"
Arthur tested his strength by sitting up. "Yes."
"Good. There's something I want to show you."
Arthur sat very still for some time after she left, thinking of the strange girl. He couldn't doubt her statement that she was one of them, created by the same scientists. He could feel the sameness inside of her. He also knew that she believed she was telling him the truth about the Alliance. No one could lie to him, not even one of the others. But he couldn't believe her statement that he wasn't really weaker than the others, that he was a human. It couldn't be. Just because she believed it didn't mean it was really true. Humans could be wrong.
---------
Rina changed from the loose-fitting pants and shirt she wore around the base into a short-sleeved dress she wore in public, both in the colony and in Refuge. She also changed her skin and hair color, and put on a pair of green contact lenses. By then almost an hour had passed since her discussion with Heero - it had taken some time to verify a few things and to get the nutrient pills here. She'd already sent Michael down to Refuge. Rina tapped her fingers nervously against her leg, an unconscious habit she was trying to rid herself of - that sort of thing could be a deadly giveaway in the game she played. She couldn't afford to show any weakness, ever. Except for the dozen people in her inner circle, no one knew who she was. It was safer that way, but it also made it harder for her to command most of the Rebels, the ones who never saw her face. None of that, now. Focus on the task at hand.
The task at hand wasn't more pleasant. She could tell from the way he looked at her that Arthur was constantly analyzing her, trying to find her weaknesses, trying to figure out her method. He could probably do it, given enough time. In that last meeting she had raised questions in his mind, but he couldn't face the fact that the Alliance was wrong, evil. He had obviously questioned it before, but had built a mental block around the Alliance. It punished him, and he hated it, but the problem had to be with him, not the Alliance. It might have saved his sanity before, but now it was stopping him from seeing the truth. She had to shock him out of it. What she was about to do was risky, dangerous, and cruel. It was just the sort of action the Phoenix was known for, and what she hated most in herself.
She forced her hand to stop moving as Heero opened the door. "I finished the report and delivered it, like you ordered. What are you going to do?"
"I got Arthur to eat some nutrient pills, so he'll be well enough to move when I take him down to Refuge."
"You're taking him to Refuge?" Heero asked. "But he's still serving the Alliance!"
"He won't face the truth, and nothing we say is going to change that. Desperate times call for desperate measures."
"You're going to use Mrs. Green against him," Heero observed, and Rina started. She just couldn't get used to the idea of people who understood her mind this well, who could guess what she was thinking so easily.
"Yes."
"It's dangerous."
"Yes."
"But you don't think there's another way?"
"If you can think of one, I'd be glad to hear it."
"No, I can't."
"If we take him out of here, will he try to run?"
"Probably. But the two of us can take him."
"That's not the point. I don't want him hurting anyone, and I don't want him getting hurt." Up until I'm ready, that is.
"Put a pair of handcuffs on him, and bring the dart gun along."
"Handcuffs won't hold him."
"But he'll understand the message. A real gun and he might run anyway, hoping that we would shoot him. A dart gun and he just ends up back in here. The handcuffs won't stop him, but they might slow an attack, and that will give us all the warning we need."
"Fine." Rina reached over and pulled a pair of handcuffs out of her desk. Heero's lips quirked in what might have been a smile.
"You keep a pair of handcuffs in your desk?"
"As a matter of fact, I don't. This isn't my room - I don't keep anything that unusual or incriminating in my room. Even if you had managed to get into my study at home, you wouldn't have found anything. I just happened to know that the guy whose room this is keeps a pair of handcuffs ready. He's in charge of most of our Alliance prisoners. Lets go." They walked back to the room where Arthur was being held.
He was standing when they opened the door. Rina walked in, noticing how Arthur's expression mirrored Heero's, in that there was none. "How are you feeling?" she asked. He ignored her, fastening his eyes instead on Heero. When he didn't answer, she pulled out the handcuffs. "Put your wrists in front of you."
Arthur stared at her and didn't move. Heero pulled out the dart gun and aimed it at Arthur. "Do what she says," he instructed. "We know these won't hold you. Consider them a warning not to try to escape. I'll be there the entire time."
Thank you, Mr. Subtlety. Rina managed not to roll her eyes. She had been right in her earlier assessment, that in many ways Arthur was the most dangerous of all of them. He could act human, and understand human motives. That was something that Heero might never learn. "We're going to a place with people who have already lost a lot to the Alliance. I won't have you bring them any more sorrow and suffering." For a moment Arthur's expression softened, not the way Heero's did, with a moment of hesitation or anger, but with genuine feeling and sorrow. Then it was gone.
Arthur put his hands out in front of him. "I don't suppose giving you my word that I won't attack anyone would be sufficient."
"Would you give me your word?"
He hesitated, then shook his head. Rina sensed Heero's disapproval, and knew what he was thinking. Honor was a foreign concept, and useless except as a tool to manipulate others. Arthur should have had no problem giving Rina his word and then breaking it. Still, he does have a sense of honor, or at least integrity. She tightened the cuffs around his wrists and gently took hold of his upper arm. "Come on." They walked silently to the lift that took them down to Refuge. Once in the elevator, Heero put the dart-gun in the back of his pants, then arranged his shirt so it covered the weapon.
"Where are we going?" Arthur asked once.
"To a place for people who've lost everything, or almost everything, at the hands of the Alliance," Rina replied, being mysterious on purpose. Arthur obviously had no patience for those word games now and fell silent again. When the doors to the lift opened and they stepped out into Refuge, Arthur lost his composure and stared around him in awe. "This is Refuge," Rina told him, pleased with the effect the underground city had on people. The first designers had taken care to make it pretty, as well as functional, a tradition that the new designers tried to continue. "It's for people whose homes and/or families have been destroyed by the Alliance, or those who fear for the same."
"It's so big," she heard Arthur murmur as he walked beside her. Heero walked a few steps behind him, out of Arthur's reach if he should choose to attack. "There are so many people."
"It's been growing for nearly thirty years," Rina told him. "Huge leaps. We are almost constantly under construction, and overcrowding is still a big problem."
"Huge leaps?" he asked.
"You'll see why in a few minutes. I'm taking you to one of our temporary housing centers. We have a few of them spaced around the growing city. They're places for people whose homes have just been abandoned, until we can find or build them permanent homes."
"We're under the Centari surface, aren't we?" Arthur asked, still looking around.
Rina hesitated before answering. She couldn't tell if he was speaking out of curiosity, judging them, or if he was trying to pry data out of her for the Alliance. Finally she decided to tell the truth - he'd figured it out on his own, anyway. "Yes. Several kilometers out. We couldn't build under the city - first of all there are subways and tunnels down there, and even if there weren't , we couldn't build anything this big without destroying the foundation on which the city rests. The city would come crashing down and destroy this place and everyone in it. Of course, that is what would happen if the Alliance ever found this place, if it ever became more than a rumor." She glanced at Arthur to see his reaction to her statement, but his attention was riveted on a couple of kids singing a song they must have learned at preschool. He had an odd, sad expression on his face.
"That's music, isn't it?"
"Yes," she replied, confused. Of course it was music.
"It doesn't sound like Bach, but it's beautiful, too."
"Keep moving," Heero said in a low, dangerous voice when Arthur would have paused to listen. Rina would have liked to see Arthur's response and see what it was about music that so captivated him, and was irritated at Heero's interruption. She made a mental note to warn Heero not to interfere next time.
Arthur seemed to remember he was a prisoner. His head dropped to his chest and he didn't speak again until they reached the housing center. Mrs. Green was working inside. She was a head organizer, which is why Rina had ordered Heero to bring the data to her - by now it was undoubtedly being used to help redistribute resources - Rina spared a moment of concern that it had been done properly. She didn't like to have these things out of her direct control. In any case, although Mrs. Green was an organizer, she liked to work with the people, too. She knew what they'd been through (most of the residents of Refuge did), and she said it was good for her to remember the people she was trying to help. It was a piece of advice that Rina tried to take to heart.
Rina led Arthur inside. As he started looking around, she started having doubts. Should I do this? Even if it works, he'll probably never forgive me. I won't forget it, either. And it might not work. He might come out of it on his own, in time. But even as she thought it, Rina doubted it. Arthur had barely blinked at the realization that there were more than five of them, that she and four others had also been created, and that the doctor who created him had been killed by the Alliance. The Alliance had really twisted his mind. He needed to be shocked out of it, but still... It will hurt him, and I don't want to hurt him. Despite what he is and everything he's done, there's an innocence about him...
Rina decided to try one more time to break gently through the wall he'd built around himself, to show him the truth, before she tried to shatter it. "These are all refugees," she told him. "They come from a small farming colony a few hundred kilometers from Alpha. The Alliance had it destroyed because the farm colonies are becoming more productive, producing more food and air than the Alliance wants in circulation. They would all have died if we didn't bribe some shuttle pilots to collect them and bring them to Alpha colony, and then we brought them here. Even with all we did, hundreds died, because the last shuttles didn't get out of there until the Alliance started bombarding the dome. Listen to them."
Rina did what she had instructed him to do, letting various conversations, fragments of them, drift through her consciousness. "We barely made it out in time. I heard the dome seal crack as we climbed into the shuttle!" "Mommy, where's Daddy? You said he'd be along, but the shuttle took off without him. When is he coming?" "Was everything destroyed, or will we be able to go back and salvage what might have survived the vacuum? I left some things behind..." "Does anyone know who these kids belong to? Did their parents get out?"
With some difficulty Rina stopped listening. It was very hard, sometimes. When she was young, physically, she had been forced to teach herself not to listen to everything she could hear, or she never got a moment of peace. She studied Arthur's face. He looked around the room, his eyes focusing and unfocusing as he concentrated on one dialog after another. Finally he lowered his head and closed his eyes. She could almost see what he was thinking. These people could be actors, but there were real injuries among them. How great a cost would the Rebels pay in order to trick him?
"It's not true," he whispered. "It's not. It can't be true." His eyes were clear - and blank. No trace of tears, or even of any of the emotions he had displayed before. It was the same way that Heero had looked when he reported to Michael. He was retreating back into what the Alliance had taught him, shutting himself off.
Rina closed her eyes. So that's it. If there is a God, I hope he forgives me for what I'm about to do, because Arthur sure won't. She let some venom creep into her voice as she said, "And that's because the Alliance is all powerful, and always right, isn't it?"
He started at the sudden change in her. Then his training reasserted itself. "Yes."
"And they love to have you kill," she said with a sneer.
Arthur swallowed. "I do my duty to the Alliance. It isn't my job to question their orders."
"And why not? Don't tell me that they're smarter than you, they designed us well. Wouldn't it strengthen the Alliance to have you point out its weaknesses?"
"It's not my job to question orders," he said, but his reply was weaker this time.
"So you just kill whenever they tell you? No hesitation at all?"
"No!" he cried before he got control of himself. "No," he repeated in even tones. "I always want to know whom I'm killing, and why. And the Alliance tells me. They only have us kill dangerous people."
"Is that so? I think there's someone here who might disagree with you." Rina's hand swung across the crowd to a slightly plump lady walking around the room with a clipboard, taking down information from the refugees. "Do you know her name?" His back suddenly stiffened, and she knew that he'd seen her.
"No," he whispered, but it wasn't in response to her question. Rina chose to pretend that it was.
"No? I thought you know who your victims are," she said, mocking. She specifically used the word victim instead of target. "Because she was one of your victims. Do you know her? Her name is Emma Green. Her husband was George Green. Heero tells me that he was your first kill. Congratulations." Her voice dripped with contempt.
"No, you can't do this," Arthur said, shaking his head and trying to back up a few steps. Heero was in his way.
"Mrs. Green sought us out after you killed her husband. She feared for her life, and the lives of her children. The Alliance had him killed because his research was dangerous, because he'd made an amazing discovery, but what they didn't know was that he'd already passed the knowledge along to his oldest son. Mrs. Green knew, though, and she feared for the entire family. She managed to contact us, and we smuggled them all, Mrs. Green and her children, along with her son and his family, down here. And as long as you always know whom you're killing and why, you might want to tell her why the Alliance thought that her husband was so dangerous. Shall I call her over?"
There was the shriek of tortured metal as Arthur pulled his hands apart, ripping the chain between the handcuffs in half. But Rina's hand on his arm and Heero's hand on his shoulder didn't let him run away, as he clearly wanted to. He turned to Heero, a desperate look on his face. "No! Please, you can't do this! Heero, please don't let her do it!" he begged, but Heero's expression didn't change. Rina wondered whether he really felt nothing at his companion's plea, or whether he was hiding his emotions, the way she was. She wanted to stop, but she hadn't gone far enough yet. He was still excusing the Alliance, blaming the Rebels.
"Do you know the true reason why her husband was so dangerous?" Rina asked in a low voice, almost a whisper. "He discovered a method of farming that would have doubled the colonies' ability to produce food. We wouldn't have been dependant on Earth anymore. His son, since being brought to Refuge, has built that system. It's the only way we can manage to stay hidden. It's not much good at sudden increases, but in a few months, with enough resources, he'll be able to expand production to cover our increased population. That's why the Alliance had his father killed - we could have been independent."
Something seemed to drain out of Arthur. "They told me it was a weapon," he murmured. "I knew they lied..." He cut himself off. "They told me it was a weapon."
"You knew that they lied to you?"
"I didn't know!" he protested desperately. "They told me it was a weapon!"
"A weapon against hunger," she said sarcastically, waiting for the wall to break. She waved a hand at Mrs. Green, who walked over.
"How are you, Diana?" the woman asked.
"I'm well enough," Rina said politely.
"Is this one of the new arrivals?" she asked, looking at Arthur. The mangled handcuffs were hidden by the sleeves of his shirt. "Poor boy. What happened to his family?"
Rina shook her head in response, and Emma immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had been orphaned in the flight, as Rina had known she would. "Poor boy! Someday the Alliance will pay for what they've done!" she cried, sudden vehemence in her voice. She reached down to touch Arthur's cheek, but he jerked his head away.
"Don't touch me!"
Emma jerked back. "What did I do?"
"He's going through a rough time," Rina said truthfully, watching Arthur. Ask it, she thought. You know the question. Do you want the truth or don't you? Ask it!
"Mrs. Green," Arthur said in a low voice, sounding miserable. "I... I heard that your husband was killed by the Alliance. I wanted... I need to know what sort of a man he was. Why did the Alliance kill him?" Rina could tell from his voice that he already knew the answers to those questions. How horrible it must have been for him - he must have known his Alliance masters were lying to him, must have known he was killing people who didn't deserve to die, but he didn't know any way that he could fight the people who had raised him. To Heero, they'd just been targets. To Arthur, they'd been people, people with faces. The block was coming down.
"What a strange question," Emma said, glancing at Rina. "My husband? He was a good man, a wonderful father, and always kind to me. He cared about people, which was why he continued his research, even after the Alliance brutes came around and told him to stop. He saw what was going to happen, I believe, because he taught Eric about his work, and left me clues on how to contact the Rebels. So he went on caring for me and showing that he loved me, even after they killed him. Why do you ask?"
"I was just curious," Arthur mumbled. Emma smiled and walked away, a confused expression on her face. Arthur stumbled several steps away, and this time Rina let him. She was done here. All that was left was to heal the damage she'd done. Arthur gripped his head with both hands, and she heard him muttering to himself. "No! Why?... Everything was lies... I killed... they made me..." Suddenly he gasped as if in pain, and spun around to face Rina. "Why are you doing this to me!?" he cried, and lunged at Rina.
He was still weak from the days without food, and a little slower than usual, so she sidestepped as he tried to punch her and grabbed his arm as it moved past her head. She was just in time to hold him as he went into some sort of fit, fighting madly, but not against Rina. Heero pulled out the dart gun, but she shook her head and it disappeared back into it's hiding place. He grabbed Arthur's other arm, and it still took the two of them to quiet Arthur. Finally he stopped struggling, standing quietly between them, breathing deeply.
"What are you doing?!" shouted a voice from across the room. Rina looked up as Mike started racing over. "Let go of him!" the shout was also a command. Heero looked at Rina, who nodded, and they released Arthur. Without their hands on his arms, he dropped to his knees. His back shook, and he took deep breaths, but no tears fell and he made no sounds.
"He's crying," Heero told her, expressionless. "Our commanders disapproved, but by doing it this way, he could hide it from them, sometimes." He fell silent as Mike reached them, dropping to his knees beside Arthur.
"Four!" he cried, and he put more sympathy and caring into that designation then Rina would have thought possible.
Arthur looked up at Mike. "Mike?" he asked, sounding confused. "What are you doing here? Did they capture you, too?"
He calls him Mike, not Mr. Teel, Rina thought, her mind chasing down all the implications of that one word.
"Capture?" Mike glanced at Rina and Heero, and she saw comprehension dawn. "No! I deserted the Alliance years ago. I've been a Rebel for over nine years now."
"You have? They told us that you were transferred."
"No. I protested too loudly about the way they treated you boys. I heard rumors that they were going to eliminate me, so I ran. I didn't have time to tell you, I'm sorry. Within a year I joined the Rebels. I wanted to strike back at the people who would do the things they did to you. I hoped that one day I'd be able to find you guys and take you away from the Alliance."
"You joined the Rebels because of me?"
"Yes! I'm sorry, I wanted to come back for you, but I couldn't find you. Four, are you all right?"
"My name is Arthur, now." Arthur smiled weakly and sat back on his heels. "I think Four died a couple of minutes ago, when I met Emma Green."
"Emma Green?"
"I killed her husband. I murdered him in cold blood, because the Alliance told me to. I should have fought them. I should have found out the truth. I knew they were lying to me."
Mike glanced across the room, and once again Rina saw him understand. This time the realization was accompanied by a fair amount of horror. Mike's face grew cold as he put an arm under Arthur's shoulder. "Come on. Can you walk?"
"I don't think so. I haven't eaten anything in several days." Mike pulled Arthur to his feet, then tried to support him as Arthur almost collapsed again. Rina moved forward to help, but Heero beat her to it.
"Here, I'll carry him." Heero got himself under Arthur's arm, and with no apparent difficulty started to half-carry, half-drag Arthur towards the door they'd entered by.
"Not there," Mike stopped him. "I have a small room in the back through there." He pointed. "There's a bed where he can lie down, and we can talk."
Heero nodded once and started carrying Arthur to the other door. Rina would have followed, but the angry look Mike was wearing stopped her dead in her tracks. Mike waited until he thought that Heero and Arthur were out of hearing range, then said to her, "How could you do that to him? You really aren't human, are you?"
Well, that wasn't pleasent for anyone involved, but it was necessary. But I think it bothered Rina a whole lot more than she lets on.
One more thing, at one point, Mrs. Green calls Rina 'Diana'. That wasn't a typo, it's just Rina not using her real name with people who get to see her face. That's also where I got the name that I used in 'The Others.'
Marika
Arthur forced himself not to look up as the door slid quietly open and Heero walked in, carrying a platter with food on it. "I brought you something to eat. If you acted the way you normally do when something goes wrong, or before a mission, you haven't eaten in a long time. Days at least, maybe longer."
"Get away from me," Arthur said in a low voice, and was ashamed of how it trembled.
"I told you the truth back in the hotel," Heero told him. "Mem did attack me, he did try to kill me before anything else happened. They betrayed me, not the other way around. They betrayed all of us."
"One, stay away from me," Arthur said again, this time managing to keep his voice level.
Heero ignored him and took another step forward. "Arthur, I'm telling you the truth. The Alliance has been lying to us..."
"One, I swear to God, the Alliance, and everything else sacred that if you come one step nearer, I will kill you," Arthur said in a low voice. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something amazing, something he had never seen before in all the years he had known Heero. Heero looked hurt, for a moment, before he covered it up. Heero, hurt by something I said? Impossible.
"I'll be back later," Heero said, and set down the platter. He walked straight out the door. Arthur stared at the platter for a moment, then picked it up and threw it as hard as he could at the wall. The durable plastic bent, and the plates and utensils were scattered all over the room, along with whatever food Heero had brought. It didn't matter. Arthur couldn't have eaten it anyway, it was probably drugged with whatever they used to warp Heero's mind, to turn him against the Alliance.
Heero was the best of us, so much stronger than me. What could they have possibly done to him to make him betray the Alliance? Arthur realized that if they had been able to do that to Heero, they most certainly could do it to him. That's what's ahead of me - they'll try to make me betray the Alliance, the way Heero betrayed us. Then they'll send me out to capture one of the others. How could I have been so stupid as to trust Heero, especially after they told us what he'd done, what had happened to him?! I'm so weak!
Arthur remembered the excitement he'd felt when he received Heero's message. I believed it, I thought that he couldn't possibly have turned against us. I thought that I could trust my stupid hunch about his loyalty to the five of us being stronger than whatever twisted him, stronger than his loyalty to the Alliance. And now the others will pay for my mistakes.
What did they do to Heero? Arthur thought back to the hurt expression he'd seen on Heero's face for an instant. Whatever they did to him, it's not really Heero anymore. Heero would never allow himself to be hurt by something like that. He isn't weak, like me.
Arthur lay on his side and curled up in ball, hugging his knees to his chest. Despite what had happened, despite everything he'd seen, he still couldn't get that one image of Heero out of his mind, couldn't help but wish there was something he could do for him. Everything that had happened, and he still wanted to help Heero. Heero was the enemy, and Arthur's failure to realize that, to accept it, was going to hurt the others, was going to hurt the Alliance. Once again he fought for control. I wish I were dead.
----------
Rina stared at the image on the monitors, of the boy lying on his side on the bed. Despite what she knew about him, what she knew him to be capable of, Arthur was one of the most pathetic images she could have imagined. Heero seemed worried, actually worried about his companion. "I've never seen him like this," he muttered, staring at the images. "I've never seen him close up like this."
"Have you ever seen him in the chamber?" Rina asked suddenly. Heero had given her the design specifications while they were waiting for Arthur to wake up. She had studied them, horrified at first. She had known that the Alliance people were cruel, but subjecting them to that when they were only five? Intellectually she knew that they had been as intelligent and as mature as she had been, but emotionally it was hard to accept - the only five-year-olds she had ever been around had been full human, intellectually and emotionally immature. Even if the original training had been to strengthen their resistance, this continuous punishment for Arthur was unforgivable. That punishment, along with everyone he respected constantly telling him that he was weak, a failure, had obviously warped his mind, possibly beyond repair. That was what had prompted her question now.
"No, isolation is a big part of its effectiveness." Heero seemed surprised by her question.
"And how long do you say most people last?"
"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. All five of us have tolerances of well over an hour, though. I expect that your people could be trained to higher tolerances, as well." He was trying to anticipate the direction of her thinking, but this time he missed entirely.
"And how long is Arthur's tolerance?"
"I know they've left him in there for over three hours, and he has always come back with his mind intact," Heero said, now following her train of thought. "It seems impossible, even for one of us. You think that he developed this behavior as a defense, and that the reason I've never seen it is because he only did it in the chamber?"
"That's what I was thinking, but you're the one who's lived with him all your life."
"It's a possibility, but I don't know why he would revert to that behavior now. We're not torturing him."
"Maybe you don't think so, but maybe it seems like torture to him."
Heero stared at her, then narrowed his eyes slightly. "I don't understand."
Rina closed her eyes against the pain that threatened to overwhelm her. The emotional training really had taken hold with Heero. He honestly didn't seem to understand, or even consider, human emotions as a part of people's lives. She wondered if that would ever change. "There are many types of torture, only a few of which people can actually use against one another. The reason for that is because most tortures are only done by the people to themselves. Arthur obviously feels loyalty to you, and to the Alliance, and hates both as well."
"For what Mem did to him."
"Among other things. And now you, becoming his enemy, working against the Alliance. It may feel like torture to him."
"What do you suggest I do?"
"Just wait, for now. See if anything changes."
------------
Things didn't change. Arthur refused to talk to Heero, refused to communicate at all, and he wouldn't eat. It was more than distrust because of anything they might have put in the food. He's trying to die, by starvation if no other means presents itself. It was working, too. One day passed, then another, on the morning to of the third day, Heero tried again. Rina reviewed the one-sided conversation in her head, as she viewed it through the speakers.
"You have to eat, or you'll die. Is that what you really want?"
"If you don't eat, I'll bring in an I.V. I didn't bring you here to die, Arthur. I brought you here to learn the truth. You want to know that, don't you?"
Throughout all of this, Arthur sat on the low mattress, his legs bent in front of him, his arms resting on his knees. His back was curled, his head remained down, and he didn't respond to verbal communication, not even to look at Heero. Rina found herself fascinated by him. Watching these boys was sometimes like watching a distorted image of herself. She saw things in them that, when she thought about it, she could also recognize in herself. It was both fascinating and disturbing, to get insights like that, but she couldn't look away.
There are layers and layers to us. He looks like he's given up, he may even think that on the surface of his thoughts, but at some level it's also a trap, to get us to underestimate him. It's like me - I do appreciate friendships, and know that they have value for themselves, but at some level I know that I also use them as tools. I hate that in myself. I wonder if he does, too?
A few hours after that conversation, Hero had come to her. She put down what she had been working on and put on a curious face, although she was irritated at the interruption - the things she was working on were very urgent, and the sort of thing that only she could do in the time allotted. But then, Arthur was important as well. "Yes?"
"Will you speak to him, as you did to me?"
Rina managed to cover her surprise. "Why?"
"Because he will not listen to me, and I don't want him to die. If it is as you say, and he still does have the emotions that are no longer present in me, then it will take someone who can understand him to convince him that I speak the truth. I cannot understand him."
"Heero, you've known him your whole life. You must know him better than me."
"I don't. I never talked to him, except during missions, and even if I had, I still wouldn't be able to understand him. I don't understand anything having to do with normal emotions."
He is good at recognizing his own weaknesses, much better at it than me. They would have trained that in him. "I'll try."
"Right away," he said it in flat tones, but she recognized it as an order.
"No."
"No?" he couldn't seem to believe his ears.
"No," she repeated. "I have work to finish here first, work that only I can do."
"Arthur hasn't eaten or drunk anything in over four days. Even we can't survive that long without nutrients and liquids."
"Many more people will die if I don't finish this in the next hour."
"What is it?"
"Resource management. Yesterday the Alliance hit another food-producing colony. We managed to evacuate almost everyone in time..." Only almost. "But now there is another problem. Refuge is crowded enough already, and though we are working on expanding, it's not easy to do so without the Alliance noticing. Also, there is the problem of food. Thanks to the strike there is less available to the colonists then ever before, and now we have many more people to feed. I'm trying to figure out how to make the food last until we can get more."
"Let me do that."
"What?"
"You're talking about resource management, high-level numbers juggling, right?"
Relief flooded through Rina as she realized what he was suggesting. It was true, he could do it, and in less time than the computers. She'd never realized - well she had known it intellectually, but had never thought what it would really be like, to have someone who could do the things she could do, so that the entire load wasn't on her shoulders. "You're sure you can do it?"
"The Alliance had me manage troop resources. This isn't that much different. You'll go to Arthur immediately?"
"I will. When you're done with the numbers, take them to Mrs. Green down in Refuge right away. Ask the man outside the door, he'll know where she is."
"Mrs. George Green?" he asked, a hint of surprise in his voice.
"Yes." Rina froze as she remembered something. "Mrs. Green's husband was assassinated by one of you. Was it Arthur?"
"It was his first kill."
Rina's mind raced ahead. "Once you deliver those number to her, come back up here. I may need help moving Arthur."
"What are you planning?"
"Something emotional to shock him out of that trance, if nothing else works."
---------
Arthur saw the door open and a figure walk in out of the corner of his eye. He was tired, very tired, a sign that the lack of food was beginning to take it's toll. "Hello," said a soft voice, not Heero's. In his surprise, Arthur raised his head up off his chest. It was the girl, Rina Krace, the ambassador's daughter. She carried a large metal rod in her hands, and not much else. She was a Rebel. They've finally come to try to torture me for information, he thought, a little surprised. Then he was more surprised that he felt any surprise at that statement. What had he been expecting? He let his head fall back to his chest. Physical torture held no fear for him after the chamber. His training had done it's job.
"I know that you'll automatically disbelieve anything I tell you," she said, leaning against the opposite wall, studying him. "The same way you're refusing to believe the evidence that Heero's shown you." Arthur didn't bother to respond to such a stupid statement.
"Even he wasn't as thick-headed as you're being, but I think that may be because you're a little more human than he is. They punished you for it, so you've invented excuses in your mind for almost anything. Is that right?" She paused for an answer. "Is that right?" she asked a little more sharply. He still didn't respond, and she sighed. "Heero has asked me to provide some incontrovertible evidence that the Alliance has been concealing things from you, so here I am.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked, dropping to one knee to examine his face. He could also see hers. She was only fourteen, and looked twelve. Fourteen was very young... for a human. "Or, more to the point, did Heero tell you what I am?"
Heero? She calls him Heero? That was Arthur's first thought. Then came the second, What does she mean, *what* I am?
"I guess not." She took a few steps back, being careful to stay in Arthur's range of vision. Then she raised the metal rod in front of her, and bent it in half. When she moved her fingers, he could see the indentations they'd left in the metal. "Here." She pushed the rod into his fingers, and he could feel that it was solid steel.
He raised his head slightly. "How...?"
"There weren't five of you, there were ten. Five girls and five boys. I'm the only one of the others to have survived, and I'm the Phoenix."
"What?" he automatically tried to stand up. She was his enemy. His attempt failed - his body was too weak.
"Here," she said, again kneeling beside him. Her voice radiated comfort and warmth. From out of nowhere she produced a glass of water and some pills. "These will help replace some of the nutrients you've lost."
"No," he croaked.
"Please. I've got enough blood on my hands," she said, softly pleading. "I didn't mean for any of you to die when I decided to trap Heero."
Decided to trap Heero? Despite himself, Arthur was overwhelmed by his curiosity. Against his better judgement, he found himself taking the pills and drinking out of the glass she held. Even as he leaned back against the wall, he could feel the nutrients rushing through his body, revitalizing him, as did the water. He took the glass from her and drained it - she quickly refilled it with a pitcher of water she'd brought along. He drank all of that, too, but when she refilled it a second time, he just held it in his lap. "You're my enemy."
"I am the enemy of the Alliance."
"Same thing."
"Not necessarily. Heero thought so, too, but not anymore."
"What did you do to him?" Arthur didn't bother to disguise the hate in his voice.
"I showed him the truth about the Alliance, and what they've done to you guys, and what they've done to the colonies." She gestured to the file of papers Heero had brought on the first day. Arthur hadn't touched them yet. "The information is there, but I don't suppose you'd believe them even if you had read them. So I decided to bring a little more solid proof of what they've done - me."
"How?"
"They didn't want girls - they wanted ten boys, but the head scientists tricked them. She's dead now, by the way. They tried to kill me, along with all of the other girls, but they made a few mistakes, so I survived. I joined the Rebels to protect the colony against the Alliance."
"The Alliance protects the colonies!"
"It controls the colonies, and the products it produces. There are products that can only be made here. There are metals here that can only be forged here, for example, because of the concentration of minerals in the Centari soil. So by controlling the colonies, especially Alpha, they gain a monopoly on those products. They keep the populace under control through morale-destroying methods, like the random sweeps, constant presence of soldiers, and the way they control food, air, things we need to survive. I joined the Rebels to stop that, first by invading the Alliance's computer and warning them, then by joining them and leading them directly. As the Phoenix."
"I predicted the name had symbolism," he said smugly. "It does, doesn't it?"
She stared at him, suddenly intense. Arthur had seen the same sort of mood swings in the others. "It does. You know, in some ways you're more dangerous than the others. You understand people."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do." The intensity was gone just as suddenly as it had come. "I also know that you're different then them. You think of those feelings you have as weaknesses, but I don't view them that way."
He didn't know how to respond to that statement.
"Despite everything they've told you, you are human. All of you are. The only difference between you and the others is that the emotional training they gave you when you were young didn't take as well, so hints of the emotions you all should have keep breaking through. They punish you for it, which lead you to believe that it really is a weakness."
"It is." Arthur noticed that he had stopped resisting everything she said. She was good, slowly coaxing him along, subtly trying to get in and make him turn. He was alert for that, now. It wouldn't work with him.
"Do you consider me weak?"
"Yes."
"Don't lie. Don't look at me as a fourteen-year-old kid. Look at me as a fellow subject of the experiment that spawned you. I'm as strong as you are, and as smart. I've been beating your security system for years, and the Alliance never caught me. Think of me as the Phoenix. Am I weak?"
Arthur was furious at the thought that she'd managed to beat his system, but he concentrated on the question. "No," he admitted grudgingly.
"I have a full range of human emotions. They can be a weakness, but they can also be an ally. They make me stronger, sometimes, as I'm sure they have made you. Heero tells me that they punished you almost daily for having emotions, that you have a resistance to this chamber of theirs that seems almost impossible, even for us. There is something stronger in you, something the Alliance has denied because it might make you strong enough to break away from them."
Unbidden, thoughts of all the times he had questioned the Alliance's motives came to mind, all of the times he had resented, even resisted their instructions. He felt his control slipping slightly and fought to regain it. "No."
She sighed again. "Fine." She reached into her pocket and pulled out several more pills. "Take these. Will you be able to walk in a half-hour?"
Arthur tested his strength by sitting up. "Yes."
"Good. There's something I want to show you."
Arthur sat very still for some time after she left, thinking of the strange girl. He couldn't doubt her statement that she was one of them, created by the same scientists. He could feel the sameness inside of her. He also knew that she believed she was telling him the truth about the Alliance. No one could lie to him, not even one of the others. But he couldn't believe her statement that he wasn't really weaker than the others, that he was a human. It couldn't be. Just because she believed it didn't mean it was really true. Humans could be wrong.
---------
Rina changed from the loose-fitting pants and shirt she wore around the base into a short-sleeved dress she wore in public, both in the colony and in Refuge. She also changed her skin and hair color, and put on a pair of green contact lenses. By then almost an hour had passed since her discussion with Heero - it had taken some time to verify a few things and to get the nutrient pills here. She'd already sent Michael down to Refuge. Rina tapped her fingers nervously against her leg, an unconscious habit she was trying to rid herself of - that sort of thing could be a deadly giveaway in the game she played. She couldn't afford to show any weakness, ever. Except for the dozen people in her inner circle, no one knew who she was. It was safer that way, but it also made it harder for her to command most of the Rebels, the ones who never saw her face. None of that, now. Focus on the task at hand.
The task at hand wasn't more pleasant. She could tell from the way he looked at her that Arthur was constantly analyzing her, trying to find her weaknesses, trying to figure out her method. He could probably do it, given enough time. In that last meeting she had raised questions in his mind, but he couldn't face the fact that the Alliance was wrong, evil. He had obviously questioned it before, but had built a mental block around the Alliance. It punished him, and he hated it, but the problem had to be with him, not the Alliance. It might have saved his sanity before, but now it was stopping him from seeing the truth. She had to shock him out of it. What she was about to do was risky, dangerous, and cruel. It was just the sort of action the Phoenix was known for, and what she hated most in herself.
She forced her hand to stop moving as Heero opened the door. "I finished the report and delivered it, like you ordered. What are you going to do?"
"I got Arthur to eat some nutrient pills, so he'll be well enough to move when I take him down to Refuge."
"You're taking him to Refuge?" Heero asked. "But he's still serving the Alliance!"
"He won't face the truth, and nothing we say is going to change that. Desperate times call for desperate measures."
"You're going to use Mrs. Green against him," Heero observed, and Rina started. She just couldn't get used to the idea of people who understood her mind this well, who could guess what she was thinking so easily.
"Yes."
"It's dangerous."
"Yes."
"But you don't think there's another way?"
"If you can think of one, I'd be glad to hear it."
"No, I can't."
"If we take him out of here, will he try to run?"
"Probably. But the two of us can take him."
"That's not the point. I don't want him hurting anyone, and I don't want him getting hurt." Up until I'm ready, that is.
"Put a pair of handcuffs on him, and bring the dart gun along."
"Handcuffs won't hold him."
"But he'll understand the message. A real gun and he might run anyway, hoping that we would shoot him. A dart gun and he just ends up back in here. The handcuffs won't stop him, but they might slow an attack, and that will give us all the warning we need."
"Fine." Rina reached over and pulled a pair of handcuffs out of her desk. Heero's lips quirked in what might have been a smile.
"You keep a pair of handcuffs in your desk?"
"As a matter of fact, I don't. This isn't my room - I don't keep anything that unusual or incriminating in my room. Even if you had managed to get into my study at home, you wouldn't have found anything. I just happened to know that the guy whose room this is keeps a pair of handcuffs ready. He's in charge of most of our Alliance prisoners. Lets go." They walked back to the room where Arthur was being held.
He was standing when they opened the door. Rina walked in, noticing how Arthur's expression mirrored Heero's, in that there was none. "How are you feeling?" she asked. He ignored her, fastening his eyes instead on Heero. When he didn't answer, she pulled out the handcuffs. "Put your wrists in front of you."
Arthur stared at her and didn't move. Heero pulled out the dart gun and aimed it at Arthur. "Do what she says," he instructed. "We know these won't hold you. Consider them a warning not to try to escape. I'll be there the entire time."
Thank you, Mr. Subtlety. Rina managed not to roll her eyes. She had been right in her earlier assessment, that in many ways Arthur was the most dangerous of all of them. He could act human, and understand human motives. That was something that Heero might never learn. "We're going to a place with people who have already lost a lot to the Alliance. I won't have you bring them any more sorrow and suffering." For a moment Arthur's expression softened, not the way Heero's did, with a moment of hesitation or anger, but with genuine feeling and sorrow. Then it was gone.
Arthur put his hands out in front of him. "I don't suppose giving you my word that I won't attack anyone would be sufficient."
"Would you give me your word?"
He hesitated, then shook his head. Rina sensed Heero's disapproval, and knew what he was thinking. Honor was a foreign concept, and useless except as a tool to manipulate others. Arthur should have had no problem giving Rina his word and then breaking it. Still, he does have a sense of honor, or at least integrity. She tightened the cuffs around his wrists and gently took hold of his upper arm. "Come on." They walked silently to the lift that took them down to Refuge. Once in the elevator, Heero put the dart-gun in the back of his pants, then arranged his shirt so it covered the weapon.
"Where are we going?" Arthur asked once.
"To a place for people who've lost everything, or almost everything, at the hands of the Alliance," Rina replied, being mysterious on purpose. Arthur obviously had no patience for those word games now and fell silent again. When the doors to the lift opened and they stepped out into Refuge, Arthur lost his composure and stared around him in awe. "This is Refuge," Rina told him, pleased with the effect the underground city had on people. The first designers had taken care to make it pretty, as well as functional, a tradition that the new designers tried to continue. "It's for people whose homes and/or families have been destroyed by the Alliance, or those who fear for the same."
"It's so big," she heard Arthur murmur as he walked beside her. Heero walked a few steps behind him, out of Arthur's reach if he should choose to attack. "There are so many people."
"It's been growing for nearly thirty years," Rina told him. "Huge leaps. We are almost constantly under construction, and overcrowding is still a big problem."
"Huge leaps?" he asked.
"You'll see why in a few minutes. I'm taking you to one of our temporary housing centers. We have a few of them spaced around the growing city. They're places for people whose homes have just been abandoned, until we can find or build them permanent homes."
"We're under the Centari surface, aren't we?" Arthur asked, still looking around.
Rina hesitated before answering. She couldn't tell if he was speaking out of curiosity, judging them, or if he was trying to pry data out of her for the Alliance. Finally she decided to tell the truth - he'd figured it out on his own, anyway. "Yes. Several kilometers out. We couldn't build under the city - first of all there are subways and tunnels down there, and even if there weren't , we couldn't build anything this big without destroying the foundation on which the city rests. The city would come crashing down and destroy this place and everyone in it. Of course, that is what would happen if the Alliance ever found this place, if it ever became more than a rumor." She glanced at Arthur to see his reaction to her statement, but his attention was riveted on a couple of kids singing a song they must have learned at preschool. He had an odd, sad expression on his face.
"That's music, isn't it?"
"Yes," she replied, confused. Of course it was music.
"It doesn't sound like Bach, but it's beautiful, too."
"Keep moving," Heero said in a low, dangerous voice when Arthur would have paused to listen. Rina would have liked to see Arthur's response and see what it was about music that so captivated him, and was irritated at Heero's interruption. She made a mental note to warn Heero not to interfere next time.
Arthur seemed to remember he was a prisoner. His head dropped to his chest and he didn't speak again until they reached the housing center. Mrs. Green was working inside. She was a head organizer, which is why Rina had ordered Heero to bring the data to her - by now it was undoubtedly being used to help redistribute resources - Rina spared a moment of concern that it had been done properly. She didn't like to have these things out of her direct control. In any case, although Mrs. Green was an organizer, she liked to work with the people, too. She knew what they'd been through (most of the residents of Refuge did), and she said it was good for her to remember the people she was trying to help. It was a piece of advice that Rina tried to take to heart.
Rina led Arthur inside. As he started looking around, she started having doubts. Should I do this? Even if it works, he'll probably never forgive me. I won't forget it, either. And it might not work. He might come out of it on his own, in time. But even as she thought it, Rina doubted it. Arthur had barely blinked at the realization that there were more than five of them, that she and four others had also been created, and that the doctor who created him had been killed by the Alliance. The Alliance had really twisted his mind. He needed to be shocked out of it, but still... It will hurt him, and I don't want to hurt him. Despite what he is and everything he's done, there's an innocence about him...
Rina decided to try one more time to break gently through the wall he'd built around himself, to show him the truth, before she tried to shatter it. "These are all refugees," she told him. "They come from a small farming colony a few hundred kilometers from Alpha. The Alliance had it destroyed because the farm colonies are becoming more productive, producing more food and air than the Alliance wants in circulation. They would all have died if we didn't bribe some shuttle pilots to collect them and bring them to Alpha colony, and then we brought them here. Even with all we did, hundreds died, because the last shuttles didn't get out of there until the Alliance started bombarding the dome. Listen to them."
Rina did what she had instructed him to do, letting various conversations, fragments of them, drift through her consciousness. "We barely made it out in time. I heard the dome seal crack as we climbed into the shuttle!" "Mommy, where's Daddy? You said he'd be along, but the shuttle took off without him. When is he coming?" "Was everything destroyed, or will we be able to go back and salvage what might have survived the vacuum? I left some things behind..." "Does anyone know who these kids belong to? Did their parents get out?"
With some difficulty Rina stopped listening. It was very hard, sometimes. When she was young, physically, she had been forced to teach herself not to listen to everything she could hear, or she never got a moment of peace. She studied Arthur's face. He looked around the room, his eyes focusing and unfocusing as he concentrated on one dialog after another. Finally he lowered his head and closed his eyes. She could almost see what he was thinking. These people could be actors, but there were real injuries among them. How great a cost would the Rebels pay in order to trick him?
"It's not true," he whispered. "It's not. It can't be true." His eyes were clear - and blank. No trace of tears, or even of any of the emotions he had displayed before. It was the same way that Heero had looked when he reported to Michael. He was retreating back into what the Alliance had taught him, shutting himself off.
Rina closed her eyes. So that's it. If there is a God, I hope he forgives me for what I'm about to do, because Arthur sure won't. She let some venom creep into her voice as she said, "And that's because the Alliance is all powerful, and always right, isn't it?"
He started at the sudden change in her. Then his training reasserted itself. "Yes."
"And they love to have you kill," she said with a sneer.
Arthur swallowed. "I do my duty to the Alliance. It isn't my job to question their orders."
"And why not? Don't tell me that they're smarter than you, they designed us well. Wouldn't it strengthen the Alliance to have you point out its weaknesses?"
"It's not my job to question orders," he said, but his reply was weaker this time.
"So you just kill whenever they tell you? No hesitation at all?"
"No!" he cried before he got control of himself. "No," he repeated in even tones. "I always want to know whom I'm killing, and why. And the Alliance tells me. They only have us kill dangerous people."
"Is that so? I think there's someone here who might disagree with you." Rina's hand swung across the crowd to a slightly plump lady walking around the room with a clipboard, taking down information from the refugees. "Do you know her name?" His back suddenly stiffened, and she knew that he'd seen her.
"No," he whispered, but it wasn't in response to her question. Rina chose to pretend that it was.
"No? I thought you know who your victims are," she said, mocking. She specifically used the word victim instead of target. "Because she was one of your victims. Do you know her? Her name is Emma Green. Her husband was George Green. Heero tells me that he was your first kill. Congratulations." Her voice dripped with contempt.
"No, you can't do this," Arthur said, shaking his head and trying to back up a few steps. Heero was in his way.
"Mrs. Green sought us out after you killed her husband. She feared for her life, and the lives of her children. The Alliance had him killed because his research was dangerous, because he'd made an amazing discovery, but what they didn't know was that he'd already passed the knowledge along to his oldest son. Mrs. Green knew, though, and she feared for the entire family. She managed to contact us, and we smuggled them all, Mrs. Green and her children, along with her son and his family, down here. And as long as you always know whom you're killing and why, you might want to tell her why the Alliance thought that her husband was so dangerous. Shall I call her over?"
There was the shriek of tortured metal as Arthur pulled his hands apart, ripping the chain between the handcuffs in half. But Rina's hand on his arm and Heero's hand on his shoulder didn't let him run away, as he clearly wanted to. He turned to Heero, a desperate look on his face. "No! Please, you can't do this! Heero, please don't let her do it!" he begged, but Heero's expression didn't change. Rina wondered whether he really felt nothing at his companion's plea, or whether he was hiding his emotions, the way she was. She wanted to stop, but she hadn't gone far enough yet. He was still excusing the Alliance, blaming the Rebels.
"Do you know the true reason why her husband was so dangerous?" Rina asked in a low voice, almost a whisper. "He discovered a method of farming that would have doubled the colonies' ability to produce food. We wouldn't have been dependant on Earth anymore. His son, since being brought to Refuge, has built that system. It's the only way we can manage to stay hidden. It's not much good at sudden increases, but in a few months, with enough resources, he'll be able to expand production to cover our increased population. That's why the Alliance had his father killed - we could have been independent."
Something seemed to drain out of Arthur. "They told me it was a weapon," he murmured. "I knew they lied..." He cut himself off. "They told me it was a weapon."
"You knew that they lied to you?"
"I didn't know!" he protested desperately. "They told me it was a weapon!"
"A weapon against hunger," she said sarcastically, waiting for the wall to break. She waved a hand at Mrs. Green, who walked over.
"How are you, Diana?" the woman asked.
"I'm well enough," Rina said politely.
"Is this one of the new arrivals?" she asked, looking at Arthur. The mangled handcuffs were hidden by the sleeves of his shirt. "Poor boy. What happened to his family?"
Rina shook her head in response, and Emma immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had been orphaned in the flight, as Rina had known she would. "Poor boy! Someday the Alliance will pay for what they've done!" she cried, sudden vehemence in her voice. She reached down to touch Arthur's cheek, but he jerked his head away.
"Don't touch me!"
Emma jerked back. "What did I do?"
"He's going through a rough time," Rina said truthfully, watching Arthur. Ask it, she thought. You know the question. Do you want the truth or don't you? Ask it!
"Mrs. Green," Arthur said in a low voice, sounding miserable. "I... I heard that your husband was killed by the Alliance. I wanted... I need to know what sort of a man he was. Why did the Alliance kill him?" Rina could tell from his voice that he already knew the answers to those questions. How horrible it must have been for him - he must have known his Alliance masters were lying to him, must have known he was killing people who didn't deserve to die, but he didn't know any way that he could fight the people who had raised him. To Heero, they'd just been targets. To Arthur, they'd been people, people with faces. The block was coming down.
"What a strange question," Emma said, glancing at Rina. "My husband? He was a good man, a wonderful father, and always kind to me. He cared about people, which was why he continued his research, even after the Alliance brutes came around and told him to stop. He saw what was going to happen, I believe, because he taught Eric about his work, and left me clues on how to contact the Rebels. So he went on caring for me and showing that he loved me, even after they killed him. Why do you ask?"
"I was just curious," Arthur mumbled. Emma smiled and walked away, a confused expression on her face. Arthur stumbled several steps away, and this time Rina let him. She was done here. All that was left was to heal the damage she'd done. Arthur gripped his head with both hands, and she heard him muttering to himself. "No! Why?... Everything was lies... I killed... they made me..." Suddenly he gasped as if in pain, and spun around to face Rina. "Why are you doing this to me!?" he cried, and lunged at Rina.
He was still weak from the days without food, and a little slower than usual, so she sidestepped as he tried to punch her and grabbed his arm as it moved past her head. She was just in time to hold him as he went into some sort of fit, fighting madly, but not against Rina. Heero pulled out the dart gun, but she shook her head and it disappeared back into it's hiding place. He grabbed Arthur's other arm, and it still took the two of them to quiet Arthur. Finally he stopped struggling, standing quietly between them, breathing deeply.
"What are you doing?!" shouted a voice from across the room. Rina looked up as Mike started racing over. "Let go of him!" the shout was also a command. Heero looked at Rina, who nodded, and they released Arthur. Without their hands on his arms, he dropped to his knees. His back shook, and he took deep breaths, but no tears fell and he made no sounds.
"He's crying," Heero told her, expressionless. "Our commanders disapproved, but by doing it this way, he could hide it from them, sometimes." He fell silent as Mike reached them, dropping to his knees beside Arthur.
"Four!" he cried, and he put more sympathy and caring into that designation then Rina would have thought possible.
Arthur looked up at Mike. "Mike?" he asked, sounding confused. "What are you doing here? Did they capture you, too?"
He calls him Mike, not Mr. Teel, Rina thought, her mind chasing down all the implications of that one word.
"Capture?" Mike glanced at Rina and Heero, and she saw comprehension dawn. "No! I deserted the Alliance years ago. I've been a Rebel for over nine years now."
"You have? They told us that you were transferred."
"No. I protested too loudly about the way they treated you boys. I heard rumors that they were going to eliminate me, so I ran. I didn't have time to tell you, I'm sorry. Within a year I joined the Rebels. I wanted to strike back at the people who would do the things they did to you. I hoped that one day I'd be able to find you guys and take you away from the Alliance."
"You joined the Rebels because of me?"
"Yes! I'm sorry, I wanted to come back for you, but I couldn't find you. Four, are you all right?"
"My name is Arthur, now." Arthur smiled weakly and sat back on his heels. "I think Four died a couple of minutes ago, when I met Emma Green."
"Emma Green?"
"I killed her husband. I murdered him in cold blood, because the Alliance told me to. I should have fought them. I should have found out the truth. I knew they were lying to me."
Mike glanced across the room, and once again Rina saw him understand. This time the realization was accompanied by a fair amount of horror. Mike's face grew cold as he put an arm under Arthur's shoulder. "Come on. Can you walk?"
"I don't think so. I haven't eaten anything in several days." Mike pulled Arthur to his feet, then tried to support him as Arthur almost collapsed again. Rina moved forward to help, but Heero beat her to it.
"Here, I'll carry him." Heero got himself under Arthur's arm, and with no apparent difficulty started to half-carry, half-drag Arthur towards the door they'd entered by.
"Not there," Mike stopped him. "I have a small room in the back through there." He pointed. "There's a bed where he can lie down, and we can talk."
Heero nodded once and started carrying Arthur to the other door. Rina would have followed, but the angry look Mike was wearing stopped her dead in her tracks. Mike waited until he thought that Heero and Arthur were out of hearing range, then said to her, "How could you do that to him? You really aren't human, are you?"
Well, that wasn't pleasent for anyone involved, but it was necessary. But I think it bothered Rina a whole lot more than she lets on.
One more thing, at one point, Mrs. Green calls Rina 'Diana'. That wasn't a typo, it's just Rina not using her real name with people who get to see her face. That's also where I got the name that I used in 'The Others.'
Marika
