Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. The only compensation I get from this comes from my own healthy sense of accomplishment.
Warning: Swearing, violence, and yaoi.
Chapter 11Orth's estate was huge and sprawling. The main house, or rather, mansion, was as elegant and cultured as the man himself. And like Everett Orth, the handsome exterior was just another façade to hide the rottenness within.
A uniformed servant opened the car door at the entrance. Quatre stepped out of the limo and then turned around to graciously offer his arm to Ira as she emerged after him. "My little brother is such a gentleman. And I, of course, taught him everything he knows."
Quatre chuckled as she dragged him toward the entrance, not bothering to wait for any of their sisters. They had been forced to take three separate limousines to get nearly all thirty of them along.
The interior of the mansion would have made any normal person gawk like a slack-jawed yokel. The grand entrance room was done in 19th century French. The furniture was Louis XIV, heavily gilded and masterfully carved, and a sweeping grand staircase gracefully drew the eye up to the Poussin painting displayed proudly on the wall at the top. But to the heir of the Winner fortune, who had grown up surrounded by such luxuries, it was just another house.
By the time the man at the door had finished taken their coats, the rest of Quatre's sisters had caught up. The gaggle of Winner children was ushered into the reception room just off the huge dining area where they were to have dinner.
Here were the rest of Orth's guests. All beautifully dressed in their formal wear, heavily bejeweled, and smelling of expensive perfumes and colognes. The blonde boy tried not to grimace. He hated the artificiality and pretension of these kinds of parties.
At first glance, with his elegant gray suit, Quatre fit in perfectly with the other guests. But if someone were to look beneath the clothes they'd get an entirely different picture. Underneath his dinner jacket he wore a shoulder holster, which held two of his favorite handguns. Around his waist he had ten small-grade explosives. Strapped to his ankle was a long knife, fashioned out of, of all things, gundanium from Sandrock. And hidden about his person were several small electronic devices that he could use for various purposes, including opening locked doors or safes.
Quatre was, literally, dressed to kill.
No sooner had he stepped into the room then he heard someone squealing his name. He glanced up to see a petite, curly-haired, blond woman in a flowing peach dress. It was his sister, Terra. She ran to him and gave him a hug that nearly squeezed the stuffing out of him. "Oh Quatre honey, look how you've grown!" She said this every time she saw him, whether it had been days or months. "I was so worried about you when I heard what happened that I almost canceled this party!"
"Well I'm glad you didn't have to," the ex-pilot said with a smile, though he was thinking something else. I wish you had canceled you engagement to the slimy bastard entirely. But he couldn't say that. Terra's blind spot in regards to her fiancé was even more encompassing than anyone else in his family. All it would accomplish would be getting her to never speak to him again.
"I'm certainly happy about that too," Everett Orth said, coming up behind Terra and sliding his arm possessively about her shoulders. Quatre had the sudden nearly uncontrollable urge to draw his knife and slit the man's throat. When I send him to prison, and she finds out about all the things he's involved in, it's going to break her heart.
"Well now that the rest of my future family is here we can commence with dinner, come Terra." Orth led her off and the rest of the guests followed suit.
Dinner was torture. The blonde had to make polite conversation with Orth, when all he really wanted to do was grab the man and shake him until he spilled out answers. All the other guests wanted to do was discuss his kidnapping. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to anyone in their social circle in quite along time. Ten courses was entirely to long of a time to have to avoid questions.
Finally the meal was finished, and all the guests retired to the ballroom for dancing. Quatre was forced to dance with some of his sisters, and other eligible young ladies, until he finally managed to slip away.
It was time for the hunt to begin.
Quatre started his search in the east wing. Checking out the places Heero had highlighted on the house plans was slow going. The place was crawling with uniformed security. It was less like a private residence and more like a military base at the height of Oz's power. He's definitely got something to hide, the blonde thought.
Finding a safe behind a painting, the Arabian began to get out his gizmos when he heard footsteps. Damn it. He looked around, there weren't many places to hide, but the ceiling was covered with exposed rafters. Quatre quickly ran to an expensive Italian silk couch and used it as a jumping point. With a graceful, and mind-boggling high, leap, he scrambled up onto the rafters. He then held himself perfectly still as a guard walked into the room. Please, please don't look up. Luckily the man didn't, and the blonde was soon again alone in the room.
He jumped down and moved back to the safe. It was opened in mere minutes, but all it contained was a collection of antique gold coins, definitely not what he was looking for. Cursing to himself, he began to leave the room. Then he suddenly stopped and took a look around again.
Something was off.
It only took him a couple of seconds to realize that the dimensions of this room did not fit the plans that Heero had made him memorize. He began to pace around the chamber, pausing every once and a while to inspect something. He finally picked up a hideously ornate statue of a cherub to reveal a keypad hiding underneath it.
He pulled out his code breaker and hooked it up. Numbers flashed on the little gadget's screen and Quatre punched them in.
The wall in front of him smoothly moved to the side to reveal a gray elevator. He walked over to it and carefully studied the controls, and then he opened the maintenance panel and considered the wiring inside. This elevator was for going deep underground, which was pretty damn suspicious when he considered that this place wasn't supposed to even have a basement.
The blonde hesitated. Whatever the elevator led to was completely unknown, he would be going in blind. And yet, this could answer all his questions, and hold the key to stopping Orth. It required another code to get the thing moving, but Quatre merely played with the wires a bit and soon had it rigged so that he could use it manually. He closed the secret wall behind him, and then stepped in to begin his ride.
When he felt it begin to slow to a stop he drew his gun and pressed himself against the smooth metal wall. The door slowly opened.
Nothing happened.
He peaked out, weapon barrel first. A long white hallway stretched before him, empty. His luck was pretty damn good today. No one was around. He briefly stepped back into the elevator and pealed off the metal plate to the maintenance panel again. Hidden amidst the wiring he set one of the explosives from his belt.
Just in case.
Weapon out he began to head through the hall. His soft-soled shoes made no sound against the white industrial tiles of the floor. He planted several more bombs along his way. Quatre might not be as stealthy as the god of death, but he could definitely hold his own.
A door opened ahead of the blonde, and he heard voices. With a silent curse he ducked into the nearest door, shutting it carefully behind him. The voices got louder. Shit, they're going to come in here. It was a small room. There were several ugly green chairs and a couple of brown plastic tables. A snack machine stood alone in the corner. Quatre's eyes suddenly fell on a vent; he had nearly not noticed it because it was painted as white as the walls. Moving quickly, he jumped up on a table and yanked the plating out of the wall. He shoved the metal into the air duct ahead of him and then pulled himself up and climbed through. The blonde had just set the square of metal back over the entrance when the door opened. He peaked through the slits. Two men in white lab coats were taking a break. One of them began to curse and pound on the snack machine as it refused to work.
He turned and began to crawl through the ventilation system. It was a tight fit, and for once Quatre was grateful to be small of stature. He stopped at the first opened vent he saw and peeked out. More white hallway, also empty. He checked two more openings, but there was nothing of interest. His knees were just starting to get sore when he came to a fourth vent and peeked out.
His breath caught in his throat. Quatre had a feeling he had found what he was looking for.
A huge lab spread out before him, filled with white-coated men and women and others who were obviously security personnel. A glass-plated observation room made up the upper half of the north wall. Metal-plated doors dotted the ground floor. But what really caught Quatre's attention were the things lined up just to his right.
Cages.
Just like Mia had described. Some of the holding boxes were occupied, while others were not. The ones that were not looked brownish-red in color, like they had been left to rust.
But it wasn't rust. It was old blood.
Quatre drew in a shaky breath as bile rose in his throat. For a second he had to fight the urge to break through the vent with guns drawn and kill as many of the monsters that allowed this as he could. But there were to many, he'd be mowed down himself before he could put a satisfactory dent in their numbers. That would not save the survivors.
He quickly flipped out his communicator and contacted Heero.
"Yuy."
"Heero, I found something. A lot of something actually. Orth has an underground lab. I reached it through a hidden elevator in the east wing, in room 10b on the plans, there was a button underneath a statue. They've got people here, it's just like with Mia's brother."
As he watched one of the white-coats gestured to several guards. The guards moved to one of the cages and snatched out a teenaged girl with brown hair. They dragged her, shrieking, across the lab. Following the doctor into one of the side doors.
"Damn it. They're taking a girl now. I'm not going to let them do anything to her Heero."
"Quatre, get out of there. Wait for me outside the estate, I'll bring back up and then we can go in."
"No, this is my company Heero. I'm not letting these people destroy any more lives. This is my responsibility."
"I know you're not the traitor, you don't have to prove anything to me!"
"I know. But I have to do this."
"Damn it! Quatre . . ." the blonde shut off the communicator, cutting Heero off.
Quatre scrambled as quickly as he could through the ducts. He wasn't going to let what had already happened to so many others happen to that girl. The shaft branched out in three separate directions. He quickly calculated the relevant spaces in his head and then took the branch on the far left; it should lead to where the girl had been taken.
The screaming was what first alerted him that he had found her. He crawled to the vent and raised his head to look threw the slits. The cries assembled into words.
"Please don't do this! You can't! People will miss me!" The pleading girl was strapped down. Brown restraints bound her wrists and ankles to a metal table. The men in the room, two doctors and three guards, were acting like she wasn't saying actual words. To them she was just another lab rat.
"One full dose should be enough, it will travel through the subjects blood stream faster with the increased heart rate." The man in the lab coat turned to one of the armed guards. "You'll need to shoot to kill if she gets loose. Shortly after being injected nerve endings will stop firing and the subject won't be able to feel pain. A disabling shot won't do any good."
"I understand."
One of the lab guys carefully carried a syringe over to the struggling young woman. It was filled with a crimson liquid that looked more like fruit punch then blood. She began to get even more frantic when she saw it. "No! Keep that away from me, please! Don't make me like the others!"
Three guards armed with machine guns, two doctors. He made note of the exits. Quatre pulled his other gun as he planted both feet firmly against the metal grating. He pushed hard with his leg muscles and the vent broke away from the wall and began to fall to the floor below. He followed mere seconds after, guns out and firing.
The first shot from each gun took out a guard, one hit between the eyes, the other a clean shot through the throat. The third was still reaching for his own weapon when Quatre's next bullet went through his upper chest, it wasn't as perfect a hit as he would have liked. The blonde had to fire again to finish him off.
He was in no mood to be merciful.
The men in white lab coats were just beginning to react. The farthest away from the girl reached for one of the dead men's guns that had skidded toward his feet. Three bullets went through his chest before he could complete the action.
The doctor with the syringe had not moved. He was frozen in shock. Quatre bounded easily the rest of the way across the floor and kicked the needle out of his hand. It shattered against the far wall, fruit punch-colored liquid and spilled blood mingling until they were inseparable.
The ex-pilot knocked him to the floor and then stood over him, gun pointed steadily at his face. "Where does that door lead? Quickly, tell me!"
The man in the white lab coat whimpered. "It, it leads to the, the main hallway," he stuttered. The man suddenly jumped to his feet and raced to the door, not believing that the boy with the guns would let him live, that the only chance he had was to get away.
For a split second Quatre aimed the gun at the back of the doctor's head, then he pulled it away and shot him in the foot instead. I can't execute an unarmed man with his back to me! What did I almost do? The blonde shook himself and hurried over to the bound girl. He holstered his guns and drew his knife to cut through the restraints.
She whimpered when she saw the blade. "I'm not going to hurt you, okay? I'm here to get you out. I'm just going to cut these off of you." The blonde was painfully aware of the seconds ticking by. It was only a matter of time until someone came to investigate the gunfire.
She finally nodded, hazel eyes wide. The bindings were no match for gundanium, and very quickly he had her free and started to help her off the table. "I'm Quatre. What's your name?"
"Carly," she whispered breathily. This was a lot for a normal person to handle. He could tell that she was going into shock, and was impressed that he had gotten this much response out of her.
"We need to get out of here now, okay Carly? You need to stay close to me and be as quiet as you can. Can you do that for me?"
She stared at him for a second and then nodded again, clinging to his arm as if afraid he'd disappear if she let go. He led her out of the bloodied room as quickly as possible. As they ran down the featureless white hallways alarms began to blare, a discordant, ugly sound.
There was movement up ahead.
Quatre dove to the floor, dragging Carly down with him and covering her body with his. He rolled them into the wall and yanked his gun out, squeezing the trigger as soon as he sighted on his target. The guard crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.
He hauled the girl back to her feet. She slowed slightly as they passed the body, dragging at his arm as she saw the dead man. "We have to hurry!" He reminded her. Carly looked at him in mute shock, but allowed him to speed up their pace past the body.
"The intruder is over here!" Somebody shouted behind him. Quatre cursed and pulled the girl with him, turning a corner and almost running into another figure. Violet eyes, a black priest's outfit, and a braid.
The blonde's gun wasn't pointed forward. But Duo Maxwell's was. It was already pointed at Quatre.
He fired.
Notes: I am pure evil! (Holds pinkie finger to lips and laughs like Dr. Evil). I guess everyone will have just have to wait for the next chapter, but believe me it won't be long. I'm still on a deadline after all. Just in case you're all curious, I'm only planning 15 chapters for this so we're getting close to the end.
I hope the switch from the last chapter to this one wasn't to confusing. Basically Quatre just went home with his sisters, slept, got up the next morning, got smothered by his sisters again, and then went to the party. Nothing happened, really. It was boring, so I didn't write about it.
I love all you reviewers! Please keep them coming! I need all the help I can get . . .