"We can't do it," Quatre's meek voice broke the silence.
"Heero wants us to," Wufei reminded him.
"Blowing up the OZ base artillery storage with our friend trapped in a prison cell below it does not seem like a good idea to me," Quatre insisted. "What do you think will happen to the ammunition stored above Heero's head? Do you think it'll just give up and surrender? That shit's going to explode and kill him, Wufei."
"Heero wants us to."
"I don't care what Heero wants. We're not going to blow up that base until I know he's safe and out of there," Duo said quietly.
"How do we know he'll be alright after we've gotten him out?" Trowa asked.
"I was able to save him last time," Duo adamantly said. "I can do it again."
"Making him live with you and work with you in the salvage yard was good for him, but will it work a second time around? You have to admit that Heero's much more attached to Jinx than he ever was to Relena." Trowa had a point. "This may be a blow he can't recover from."
"It's not up to us to decide his fate for him," Duo countered.
"Heero wants us to," Wufei spoke up again. "We should honor his last wishes."
Duo stood up, shaking with the pain he felt inside. "They don't have to be his last wishes if we go in there and rescue him!"
"Shh, everyone," Quatre hushed them. "There's someone approaching Heero."
* * * * * * * *
Heero could scarcely hear the bickering taking place on the carrier. The sounds were distant and indistinguishable from the small headset microphone, but Heero could hear barely enough to tell that his friends were fighting. For a while they had been quiet, or at least too quiet for Heero to hear voices. Now they picked up their argument again, with renewed vigor.
That's when Heero noticed the lone pair of footsteps that echoed down the sterile hallways towards his cell. Within moments, the arguing entering his head from the earpiece halted. They must have heard the footsteps as well. Instinctively, Heero began logging information about the steps that approached. They were light, suggesting someone who was fairly lightweight or very agile. The sounds were widely spaced, but grew louder as the steps got closer, suggesting that the person had a long stride and walked with purpose toward his cell. Lightweight and long strides, he thought. Not the same officer who came before, the burly man. It almost sounded like…
The door opened, showing a silhouetted figure. Jinx walked closer to him.
Heero could recognize her scent the moment she opened the door. He could recognize the shape of her body as she stood in the doorway and watched him a moment before she entered the room. Struggling slightly, Heero pulled on his chains, lifting his body up from its dangling position so that he stood on the floor.
Jinx didn't look at him. She stared at her feet or the ground as she slowly crossed the room. Meticulously setting one foot directly in front of the other, Jinx walked until she came within one foot of touching Heero.
She never looked up.
Broken between wanting to kiss her and wanting to wrap his legs around her throat and choke her, Heero could do nothing more than watch her.
Jinx knelt in front of Heero, lowering herself to one knee and keeping her head bent.
Bent in shame, Heero realized as he followed her with his eyes. Jinx was asking for forgiveness. That was something he could not give.
But, he thought, she was kneeling in his blood, which was still wet and covered the floor of the cell. Jinx didn't care about the OZ uniform, and therefore the OZ soldier, as she covered her knee in the prisoner's blood. She never looked up, and she never attempted to move or speak.
He wanted to forget it ever happened. He wanted to hold her close and tell her that everything was going to be fine as long as they remained true to each other. He wanted so many things.
Heero's attention was drawn to something in her hair. He didn't remember that being there, he thought, noticing a small white disc attached to the right side of her skull and covered by her dark hair. Shifting his head to the other side, he saw a similar disc on the other side of her head. His eyes narrowed as he realized what the discs were.
OZ was trying to break her. The discs concealed microchips that intercepted her brainwaves, sending a readout of her thoughts to a control room somewhere in the base. The microchips also continuously hammered against any mental barriers she'd developed to keep them from reading her thoughts. It was only a matter of time before she was worn down and defeated by the small discs that were hidden under her hair.
It was all clear now. Jinx couldn't have answered him as he called to her earlier. She couldn't have sent him reassurance via her mind or voice. Those signals would have been picked up and interpreted by the twisted persons responsible for attaching the discs to her skull. If she had let that happen, then the mission would have failed immediately. Once inside your brain, the intruding signals could not be eradicated.
Heero growled as he thought about it. Such devices were once used to interrogate prisoners, until it was shown that prisoners were either killed or driven to insanity because of the intrusion in their minds. No one used such methods on enemies anymore, and no one had ever subjected their own soldiers to the torture. No one except the Bravo faction of OZ.
But he understood. Now he understood that Jinx had no choice but to submit to the orders of her superior officer. She had no choice but to not look at him, and not talk to him, or else she could have slipped up in her mind and ruined it all.
Even now, she did not have the strength against the pummeling microchips to speak to him. Jinx could only kneel in front of him, waiting until he found a way to forgive her.
Bending his knee slightly, he let the fabric of his flight suit rub lightly against the side of her face. A sign of forgiveness.
* * * * * * * *
"Zero," Duo's voice hailed him. "What was that? We didn't hear anything after the door closed until it opened and closed again. What happened?"
Heero smiled to himself. "Commence with operation 'blow this place out of the sky'," he said. "Hope is on our side."
"What!?"
"Repeat: Hope has been reborn."
"What makes you say that, Zero? This could be a trick."
"It's not. Ever hear of interrogation chips?"
Silence.
"Death?"
"Yea, I've heard of them. Nasty little bastards." Everyone disagreed with hacking into someone else's brain to read their thoughts and then making them insane or dead from it. Interrogation chips were not popular.
"Hope is fighting them."
"Can she fight them?"
"We'll find out." Heero reflexively looked down to where she had been kneeling moments ago. Something was on the floor. His own blood was dried around it, but there was definitely something on the ground. Curious, and thankful that the OZ guys liked to take off prisoner's shoes, Heero reached out with his foot to grab the shiny object on the ground. Carefully twisting his body while hanging from the chain, Heero was able to move the small object into his hands.
His smile widened.
"Can you be sure about this?" Duo asked him, still skeptical of the girl who had given his friend forty lashes.
"I've just received all the evidence I need," Heero said, using Jinx's picklock to unlock the cuffs that kept him chained in his cell.
* * * * * * * *
Tears fell from her eyes as Jinx left the detention area of the base. She couldn't allow herself to dwell on the memory of Heero's forgiveness. She couldn't even allow herself to think of him. The constant throbbing pain that threatened to tear her head apart was a constant reminder of the ongoing battle in her head. With each passing second, the intruding electronic signals got closer and closer to breaking down the mental wall she desperately tried to maintain.
The fabric of her pants soaked with Heero's blood was cold as it brushed against her leg. She thought of him standing there, fighting with both his emotional and physical pain to remain standing. She never looked in his eyes when she went to go see him. She couldn't bring herself to. Heero saw her as a traitor.
But he had forgiven her, hadn't he? Why else would he have brushed his leg against her cheek? If that offering weren't enough for him to forgive her, then he would surely revoke his harsh feelings when he found the picklock.
Jinx fell against the doorway, trying to hold herself up. The pain in her head increased as she fought back against the white discs on either side of her skull. She'd let her thoughts wander too much and neglected to concentrate on keeping the signals at bay. Jinx was paying for it now. She had to give extra concentration to beat the interrogation chips back. It made her body weak.
After a few moments, she recovered enough to keep walking.
She made her way to the artillery hangar. The bombs she'd planted around the many rooms of the hangar after having to lash Heero were still inactive. Knowing the ex-Gundam pilots, they'd attack the base as soon as Heero unlocks his cuffs and gets out from under the target zone. She'd have to work quickly in order to make this plan work.
Ripping open the nearest control panel, Jinx sorted through the wires in the wall. Finally, she found the red and blue striped one she was looking for. Pulling it from the tangled mess, Jinx used her teeth to scrape away the rubber insulation. Be careful, she reminded herself. The red and blue striped wire was live and having her mouth that close to running electricity made her a little nervous. She made short work of the rubber and had the copper wires below exposed in no time.
Jinx pulled a detonation device from her jacket pocket. The detonator was a master control, able to detonate all 52 explosive devises she'd brought onto the base or rigged once she entered the base with one command. Expertly, she opened the back of the detonator and extended the alligator clip. Connecting it to the exposed wires of the base alarm system (red and blue striped wire), she adhered the detonator to the wall next to the mangled control panel.
Punching in codes so fast that it would make Heero Yuy proud, Jinx set the detonation of the explosives to coincide with the fire alarm. The pilots would have to create some heat in the base before the bombs would go off. Heero breaking out of the storage hangar and taking off in his mobile suit, or one of the other pilots using a thermal weapon, would be sufficient to set off the fire alarms.
Jinx hurried away from the artillery storage. She had to make it to her own mobile suit and get off of the base before the pilots blew it up or the interrogation chips hacked into her mind. On cue, her head began to swim with pain.
Clutching the wall, Jinx fought to keep control of her own mind.
* * * * * * * *
"Dragon, this is Clown, over."
"Read you loud and clear, Clown."
"Sandshrew, you in on this convo?"
"Affirmative, Clown."
"How about we show these OZ boys what Gundam pilots can do?" Trowa asked, trying to keep his voice from revealing too much of his glee. They'd found out that Jinx hadn't double-crossed them. They'd found out that Heero was picking his handcuffs and breaking out of his cell at this very moment.
And now they got a chance to shoot down and attack the most brutal cowards ever to exist under the OZ namesake. The cowards who were responsible for murdering his mother with the same plague that created Jinx in L3, and killing Duo's orphan friends with a similar 'clean up the streets' disease that also took the lives of Sister Helen and Father Maxwell on L2. These cowards who bombed a peaceful protest and also destroyed hundreds of uninvolved neighborhoods in L5, killing Wufei's wife and his family clan. These cowards who had poisoned the air of L4 and made natural birth impossible on the colony cluster, which resulted in the death of Quatre's mother.
If Heero was known to have a family, Trowa was sure that these bastards would have done something on L1 colony cluster to hurt him as well. But Heero didn't need that kind of an excuse to fight back against Bravo. They had already violated Jinx by attempting to enter her mind and were going to kill her soon if the pilots couldn't stop OZ. That was more than enough for Heero to be pissed. And he had definitely sounded pissed when they drew up this mission plan of action together moments ago.
"Sounds like a plan to me, Clown," Quatre's voice answered him.
"Anybody know if Zero's got the bait set?" Duo asked, referring to the explosives in the artillery storage area, which were part of the original plan.
"No confirmation on that, Death," Wufei answered. "We'll have to carry on mission without extra fireworks."
"Fine with me, Dragon," Death answered, chuckling. "As long as we all get out of here alive, I'm not too worried about the details."
"What about Hope?" Quatre asked.
"Hope's on her own, Sandshrew," Trowa answered. "There's nothing else we can do for her. We don't have a way of contacting her or communicating with her as long as the interro-chips are still in place."
The blip that was Duo disappeared from Trowa's screen as Duo went into stealth mode.
"Let's get this show on the road," he said, using an old circus phrase.
Together, Trowa went with Wufei and Quatre on an all-out frontal attack on the base, giving Duo the chance to sneak around behind enemy lines to help rescue Heero.
* * * * * * * *
Alarms resounded through the hallways as Heero ran barefoot away from his prison cell. Not wanting to put anything against the sensitive gashes on his back, he opted to leave the upper half of the flight suit around his waist. A poor nurse shrieked in terror as the bloody and half-naked Heero rushed past her, heading toward the storage hangar.