The Perfect Soldier
Chapter 18: The Scar
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Heero was inside.
Around his crouching figure, the familiar shadows crept forward to claim him. They whispered down the corridors, poured across the colorless tiles, echoed up into the open vent that yawned blackly above the intruder. Cobalt eyes remained fixed on the darkness ahead, keen ears tuned to the blackness behind. All was still. All was silent.
For now.
Not a single breath rushed past his lips to tear the perfect silence. Now he knew that his skills as a soldier would truly be tested. Here, where his teacher, his tormentor, his truth remained. More care was required here and now than had ever been demanded or necessary during his short, deadly career. In his memory, this place had never slept soundly, not even at two in the morning. It rolled like a fevered beast, constantly shifting in its sleep, seeking relief from the heat of infection. In its non-sleep, it slipped through time like a shark, for whom pause was an impossibility except in death. Unable to release itself from its terrible momentum of savagery, it circled in the silence.
Watching. Forever watching.
It was this watchfulness that made Heero's task so complicated. So dangerous.
So necessary.
Cobalt eyes narrowed as something echoed up from the darkness to sigh in his ears. Time was wearing thin. He moved.
In any other place, on any other mission, his presence, if it had been detected, had been assumed to be nothing more than a dream. He had been a vision slipping in and out of the unconscious mind which he plundered and mined for its secrets. But sleep did not live in this place. They would know. They would come.
Soon.
The black-clad figure shrank against a chill wall. A hand reached out and wrapped long, strong fingers around the stainless steel of a door latch. He did not attempt to open it. It was locked, of course. His fingertips whispered to the control panel. Sensing the motion, a light illuminated the keys. It waited.
He did not hesitate to use the code Dr. J had given him. It was a ploy, of course. It would alert the station's keepers to his presence. But it was the only way into the chamber. The chamber was all that mattered.
The keys did not beep as he pressed in the doomed numbers. The only sound was the gentle slide of metal against metal as the bolt retracted. It covered the sound of a gun slipping out of a leather sheath. The safety unlocked beneath a firm touch. The long snout of the silencer gleamed darkly in the shadows. He was ready for what awaited him in the darkness.
Or so he thought.
The room was deserted.
It was a trap.
But that did not stop him, not this time.
The gun would be useless for the attack that would come. He abandoned it and turned to the main computer. He had mere seconds and knew to use them carefully. The sound of gloved hands tapping out codes enveloped Heero Yuy. So consumed with his mission was he that the sound of boots striking the tiles never made it to his ears. He did not hear the dozens of soldiers, like himself, preparing to confiscate the intruder. He did not listen for the bolt. He did not cringe at the click of the latch. He did not turn when the door opened. It was only the voice that stopped him, that froze his hands above the keys, that signaled the end of this mission.
"Why, Zero-one. Still pretending to be a boy?"
Heero Yuy... No, Zero-one leaned away from the computer. The years of lies slid off of her shoulders. The face of her artificial twin slipped from her features. It was over. She was finished.
When she turned to look at the only father she possessed memory of, she was not the impressively trained soldier he had lost. She was the enemy he had created.
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"Come on, Heero. You can beat me. I know you can. Let's do this one more time."
The serious voice matched the line of the young girl's mouth. The strength in her voice matched the muscles in her forearms. But the deadliness of the game did not match the affectionate gleam in her eyes. Her younger partner, a boy of about nine years, looked up at her with determination. He said nothing, merely nodded, and took up his sword again.
In his seat aboard the intercolony space shuttle, Heero Yuy watched the home video Dr. J had given him before he'd left. It was dated nine years ago. And it was only a few minutes long, mere moments. It was a record of his first true test in fencing. And Yokaze had been his opponent.
The stinging slap of steel striking steel trickled into his ears as he watched the swordplay between two soldiers. There were no padded vests, face guards, or blunt tips. They faced each other as true fighters. She lunged, driving him back. He blocked, and waited.
This was not the first time Heero had seen this video. During the long flight, he'd nearly memorized every movement, every breath, every bead of sweat. He knew what came next, and although he did not cringe, he felt heavy with grief.
She glided within range and lunged. He watched his younger self turn sharply and bring his sword tip up and up, arching toward her perfect cobalt eyes. He would have blinded her. He knew his clumsy adaptation of the attack would have maimed if not killed. But she was quick.
However, she was not quick enough.
The razor tip of his sword sliced through her young flesh and a line of red grinned across her left cheek. Heero flexed his right hand against the arm rest of his seat, remembering the feel of resilient flesh—mortal flesh—being destroyed by his hand for the first time. Oh, he had known how to kill with the blade long before this interview, but he had never utilized his skill. The movie rolled on, but his younger self had frozen in shock. Yokaze didn't move, either. They simply stared at each other for a long moment. Blood dripped steadily down her face, staining the white of her uniform. And then she released her sword. His image started as the foil clattered to the mat and he blinked up at her in confusion.
She smiled. Yokaze crouched down on her knees and reached for him. Still holding his weapon, he leaned into her as she touched her bloodied cheek to his clean one. His child-self was confused by this, but reassured by her acceptance of the pain. When she leaned away once more, she held his gaze and whispered a single, simple sentence.
"Thank you, Heero."
At the time, her words had made no sense. The boy in the movie frowned as the others rushed forward to press a bandage over the dripping wound on her face. They disarmed him and lead him away. She stayed behind and watched him go and never stopped smiling her soft smile.
The screen filled with static. That was it. The movie had finished.
Slowly, Heero reached forward and turned off the video unit. As he did this, he thought of the look on Yokaze's face. He recognized that look; it was the same as Kathy's when she looked at Trowa.
Heero turned to stare into the blackness beyond the shuttle's window as he let himself slip back into his conversation with Dr. J.
"Is Zero-one my sister?"
The older man stared at Heero for a long moment, as if shocked by this question. "Your sister?" he repeated.
Heero nodded.
Dr. J sat back in his chair and considered the image of his interviewer. "Heero—"
"Mr. Yuy, I beg your pardon."
Heero looked up at the flight attendant. She pointed to his video monitor. "You've just received a message."
He nodded and turned back to the display. A few seconds later, Duo's familiar face came into view. Instantly, Heero tensed. Whatever Duo had risked a communication for could only be bad news.
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She did not say his name. In truth, she had never known it. The others called him General. But she refused to utter that title. It was a name of power, of distinction, given to a man of influence and this madman held no such sway over her.
For long moments, neither of them said a thing.
She did not ask what he wanted.
She knew.
She had always known.
He wanted her, his first creation, his perfect soldier.
"Zero-one, I always knew you'd return." The clean shaven, chiseled features smiled at her, but there was a chill in his eyes. As the silence stretched between them, his expression shifted from calculated victory to calculated contriteness. "Aren't you glad to see me?"
Silence.
"Didn't you miss me? The training? The challenge?" He smiled, his teeth gleaming in predatory appreciation. "The death?"
Still, the silence.
He took a step closer. "Zero-one, you do remember who I am, don't you?" He was teasing her. His cold, ice-blue eyes skimmed over her and flicked to the computer monitor. "You're running a data search?"
The question was rhetorical.
He chuckled. "Let's see if you find what you're looking for. In the meantime..." He knocked on the metal door twice and, immediately, a guard appeared. A few murmured words passed from the general to his subordinate and then the guard retired once more. She did not doubt that there were scores of other guards just like him waiting beyond the door.
Just then, the computer beeped. A pair of silver-blue eyes focused on the screen. A single sentence of green type blinked across the terminal's display.
No matches found for DNA sample "Zero-one."
The general smiled. "Well, well. You still haven't discovered who you are? What a pity. It's a shame our resources don't hold an answer for you, dear." When he saw the perfect lack of reaction in her features, his entire being softened. Even the bite left his smile. "Zero-one." His voice was softer. His hands relaxed. He regarded her with curiosity and appreciation. "Zero-one. It's been six years. Are you now ready to resume your place here? You must have exhausted every lead in your search prior to even considering coming here. Coming home." He reached out a hand to her. "Have you come home, Zero-one?"
He expected her to take his hand. She knew what the alternative was. She needed more time. But she could not bring herself to willfully touch him.
She took a step toward him, her eyes never leaving his face. She watched the smug pride. The conceit. In all of these years, nothing had changed. He moved forward until one of his large hands had clamped onto her shoulder.
He told her, "It's good to have you back."
A movement behind him caused the general to turn. The guard had returned.
The General nodded to him and he entered the room. A moment later, Zero-one realized that he was not alone. As her eyes alighted on the second, smaller figure, the general spoke once more.
"Zero-one, meet my newest protegé, Zero-four."
Zero-one stared at the young girl. The young girl who carried the same bearing as she, the same hardness as she, the same calculation as she. For a fraction of a moment, she neglected to sort through any of this new information. And then it came together in a rush.
"As you can see, I didn't let your absence stop me from creating the perfect soldier. Zero-four is the result of years of hard work. Once, there were others like her, but they could not handle the training." His arctic gaze moved over Zero-one's face. "Your training. All of them paled in comparison to your simulation data at the same age. All except Zero-four."
The young soldier stared dispassionately at her older counterpart, not the least concerned with the praise her creator dealt to her. The General's gaze moved over the young girl and then returned to Zero-one.
"My dear, I have one last training simulation for you to complete."
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I'm sorry, Heero.
Cobalt eyes drifted shut.
I'm sorry, Taki.
A slow, steady breath was drawn through her nose and released through her mouth.
I'm sorry, George.
Blindly, a strong hand reached for the white, cotton shirt.
I'm sorry, Bisho.
Hands fisted in the material that was the color of pain.
I'm sorry, Duo.
Slowly, as if she meant to torture herself with the movement, she slipped the article over her head. The cotton was soft, but the whiteness scraped over her skin, leaving her raw.
I'm sorry, Quatre.
She opened her eyes and reached for the pristine breaches.
I'm sorry, Wufei.
With a flurry of deft motions, she belted the garment in place. Her gaze fell to the soft boots. She bent and slipped her feet into them.
I'm sorry, Katherine.
She reached for the last items of clothing: a pair of white gloves. At this, she hesitated. She turned her hands over, remembering all of the things she had used them for: hacking into computers, setting bombs, fixing machines, building machines. Stupid things, worthless things. When was the last time she had used these hands for anything good, anything worthy?
When had she last embraced another human being? Smoothed a wayward lock of hair away from another's face? And what of the things she had never done? These hands had never grasped another's in quiet companionship, had never wiped away tears from a pair of deep, silent green eyes.
Trowa.
She closed her eyes once more as she felt the rasp of white against her mind.
I'm sorry.
She heard the click of the door latch and opened her eyes. It was time.
"Are you ready, Zero-one?"
The General smiled from the threshold.
Zero-one said nothing.
Undaunted, his gaze slid over her. "I remember the day you were brought to us, so very long ago. And yet, it feels like only last week it all began." He paused and his eyes examined her face as if attempting to locate a single fault. "You were my first. I told myself that I would make mistakes, that sooner or later you would be ruined, incapable of functioning competently." He smiled again, remembering. "I made many mistakes. But you never buckled. Not once. And that is what makes you a true masterpiece."
She said nothing. To him, she was a plaything, a toy; toys did not speak.
Her silence amused him. He was softly chuckling to himself as he opened the door wider. "Come, Zero-one. It begins."
She swept past him into the room that was to be the battleground. The brilliant, white tiles stretched out to define the rectangular arena. The white walls and two-way mirrors gave the open room a sterile quality which made the air she dragged into her lungs seem colder, drier. But it was instantly forgotten at the sight of her opponent who waited in the center of the room with two gleaming fencing swords. Like her, the opponent wore no padding, no mask. The tips of the swords bit into the air with their vicious points.
She understood. This was to be a battle to the death.
Her gaze collided with the younger, colder cobalt gaze. For a moment, they simply stared at each other. And then Zero-one invaded the distance between them and held out her hand for one of the weapons.
Her gaze never left her opponent's. The chill, the utter void where a human being would have been echoed through her being. This was not a soldier, a human being, a child. This was a machine. She remembered the pride on the General's face when he'd introduced Zero-four and felt the flood of icy rage ignite her blood. He had, once again, taken what was not his to take. And it was too late for this child to be healed. How many creatures like this one had come and gone since Zero-one had fled? How may had he created from Zero-one's discarded DNA? How many girls, her clones, had he created for his amusement? And how many of them had fought their mentor's madness? How many of them had been broken before their end?
The blank-eyed monster opposite her held out a sword and Zero-one wrapped her hand around the pommel.
Soon, it would be over.
Soon.
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Heero heard Duo's words as if from a great distance. The winds of his thoughts whipped across the space between them, snatching at the sound of Duo's voice and carrying the syllables off into the void. But the most important words had failed to be destroyed. They pierced through him, echoing, circling in the blackness that had suddenly yawned into existence in his chest.
Yokaze was missing.
And he knew where she was, God help her.
The winds shifted at that single three-letter word. God. A being he had never believed in. A lie he had never been conditioned to advocate. But for Yokaze's sake, he hoped there was more out there to protect her than a phantom of a dream from a forgotten youth.
Heero felt his eyes close as the arms, the scent of gunpowder, blood, and sweat wrapped around him once more. His pulse raced with the knowledge, the fear, the foreboding. And he could do nothing. He was racing through space in freeze-frame. He was trapped on the only vessel that could bring him to her. He was numb in the warmest arms he'd ever imagined.
And everything he had ever wanted now stood perched on the edge of his heart, waiting for an unbalanced breath to cast it, tumbling, into the blackness.
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"Engarde!"
Zero-one leaned heavily to her left as the gleaming steel sliced through the air. She felt the whistle of the disturbed molecules against her ear. Swiftly, she leapt back, regarding her opponent. Engarde, indeed.
There was no foreplay, no testing, no inquiry into each other's skills. It was instantaneous, a temper, a tempest. It was life and death in the flick of a wrist.
The child-monster advanced, unrelenting. Zero-one was content to counter, to dodge, to block. Each moment of time she bought brought the end that much closer. They circled in the unremarkable room, unconscious of the burning eyes that followed them from the other side of the mirrors. The scuff of the slim, white boots against the cold, white tiles, the sting of steel striking itself, the howl of the air as it took the blow, the light puff of breath through flared nostrils became the symphony of the moment.
The overture lasted five minutes, ten. And still, Zero-one retreated under the ferocious intensity of a single had-never-been-child. And then, the music that echoed through the room came to clanging halt. Zero-four stumbled and the blade arched upward in a novice mistake. A mistake that struck at Zero-one's memory as the slivery tip ascended toward her eyes. She leapt away.
She was quick.
But not quick enough.
The blade sliced across the flawless skin of her right cheek. And she remembered.
In that instant, frozen, immovable, she was in another time, fighting another opponent, receiving an opposite wound.
Heero...
All was silent as Zero-four waited for her opponent's retaliation. But, to the cobalt eyes that stared out above a blood-splattered visage, it was no longer Zero-four—a smaller, lifeless copy of herself—before her. Slowly, her hand rose to her left cheek, seeking the raised scar that he'd given her. Her first gift. The first thing she'd ever had in flesh and bone that they had not dictated to her. The child that he was, Heero could not have possibly understood the significance and value of that scar.
Thank you, Heero.
Her fingertips whispered over her skin. And felt nothing.
Of course nothing was there. They had taken it. In their quest to create perfection, even a single scar, they had denied her.
A new resolve filled her.
A new calm.
There was no hate, no chill, no calculation. There was only the time left to be bought. The promised end to all that had been stolen from her. And all that they would steal from Heero and from Zero-four.
She was numb. Completely numb for the first time in her known memory.
Her gaze flicked to the black windows. He was there, smiling with his conceit. He was there, deluded by his own creation. She had not come here looking for her past. She had come here to create the future. Her dark gaze slid back to the waiting soldier. They all thought she'd returned to discover her identity. What fools. The DNA search with which she'd engaged the data base had been a time-buying necessity. They did not know about her true mission. They could not guess at the computer's true assignment. They had no way of seeing what waited in the darkness of the ventilation shafts above them, below them. They could not see the synchronized, blinking clocks as they slowly beeped toward 0:00:00. They did not know she'd already spent over twelve hours in the base installing the seeds of its destruction.
But she knew.
She had descended into this hell one final time for one reason alone: Heero. They had mutilated his spirit for too many years. He had endured pain that she could have ended long ago. But she had left him behind. To learn to survive. To start a war only he could end. She had seen the spirit in him they could not touch. And if he had not flown Wing Zero, the war would still be raging. As it was, it would soon begin again. And this time, there was so much more to loose.
So much to loose. So much that had never been possessed.
She thought of the scar they had taken.
She thought of the name she had never had.
She remembered that moment when she'd pressed her bloodied cheek to Heero's. She remembered the feel of him, stiff and reluctant in her grasp. In that moment, she'd had a name.
She claimed it now.
Yokaze smiled as she took up her sword once more.
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The wind fled from him. The motor of the stolen motorbike screamed beneath him. He was breaking every speed limit known to mankind. If anyone had bothered to ask him if he cared, he would have ignored the very sound of another human voice. His cobalt eyes fixed on the horizon of L1 and let all the rest of the world fall away.
The littered streets, the sagging buildings, the shadows of life barely stirred in his wake. He was barely human, himself. The soldier had eclipsed his muscle and bone, but a very human plea echoed out of his tearing eyes.
He was close. In less than ten minutes, he would be there. In less that thirty, he swore, he would have her out of there. Nothing would stop him. Not the scientists, not the strategists, not even the General himself. They would not take her from him. She would not leave him. Not now. Not when he had just discovered the truth.
Dr. J smiled wistfully. "Heero, if I told you that being someone's sibling was only about genetics, I think you'd suspect I was lying to you."
The merciless wind tore a thicker stream of tears from the young man's eyes.
"She loved you."
Beneath the white-knuckled grip on the throttle, the front wheel spun blackly, furiously, hurtling the bulk of the vehicle and its single occupant closer to the target.
"She would do anything for you. When they threatened your life if she didn't cooperate with the surgeries, she believed their bluff and submitted."
Five minutes. He could see the looming gray of its façade in the distance, peering between equally doomed buildings.
"When she learned you were too valuable to destroy, she fled. She had no other choice, you see. But, Heero, it must have nearly killed her to leave you behind."
Heero blinked back the blurring that encroached on his vision and crouched lower over the bike. He was nearly there. Minutes. Moments.
He saw it before he heard it. The black smoke and flame that engulfed the gray shadow on the near horizon. The crumbling, buckling metal. His eyes widened as the impossible unfolded before him: the destruction of hell, his hell. And hers as well.
His hand had loosened around the throttle and the bike was beginning to slow. He didn't notice it. Didn't bother to care about it. That was when the blast rocked past him, slamming into him. And woke him from his shock.
With a vicious twist of his wrist, the bike screamed back to life. All was not lost. Perhaps there were survivors. Perhaps she had escaped before the blast.
He hoped.
And he hated himself for it.
The bike roared off toward the burning waste, leaving the occasional droplet behind to collide with the dusty street and to, eventually, be absorbed into the colony's artificial atmosphere.
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~End of Chapter 18~