Julia had a headache, but that was normal after recovering a memory that old. And it had been old, probably only a few weeks after Daddy and Tousan adopted her. She almost never looked before that time. Even her memories had some limits, because whenever she tried to look before her adoption, her memories made no sense. Mostly she remembered a lot of white, with some old men and some equipment that looked like something out of a horror movie. Specifically, there was nothing that looked even vaguely like an orphanage, and she doubted that the creepy old men were social service workers. The first few times she'd ventured that far back, when she was younger, she'd ended up with horrible nightmares for the next week. After a couple of repetitions, she'd stopped going back that far entirely.
She examined the lock closely, focusing her eyes on the inside of it as well as she could. It was difficult to tell in the darkness inside the lock, but she thought that the pieces looked familiar. She reviewed the memory... yes, it definitely looked familiar. So maybe this would work. But she needed something... Suddenly she raised her hands and patted her own head. Miraculously, there were still a bunch of bobby pins there from her preparations this (was it still this?) morning.
:I don't believe I'm trying this,: she told herself as she pulled one of the bobby pins out of her hair. She bent it straight, then used her teeth to pull off the little plastic dots on the ends of the metal that were supposed to keep the pins from stabbing her. :This is insane. I can't believe I'm going to try this.: She kept up that internal monologue as she bent over the cuff attached to her left wrist, trying to angle it so that the maximum light entered the lock itself.
It *was* insane, trying to pick the lock of a handcuff with nothing more than a bobby pin and one fifteen-year old memory of how to do it. But she couldn't just sit here. Searching for the memory had kept her occupied up until now, but if she didn't keep moving forward, she was going to give into hysteria, and she couldn't do that yet. Hysterics were for later.
:Concentrate,: she reminded herself. Thinking about things like that was a very good way to get her thinking about what was going on right now, about her present situation, and she didn't want to think about it. She couldn't afford it. Her parents were coming for her, and she wanted to be ready for them. If she just sat around here...
Click.
Julia started at the sound, then looked down as the cuff fell off her wrist. Despite everything, she felt a grin appearing on her lips. :I don't believe it. I did it.: She got to her feet, rubbing her left wrist and looking down at the handcuffs. She resisted the urge to kick them or do something equally as ridiculous. Instead, she looked around the room once more. There wasn't much to see - four walls, one metal door, the radiator she'd been cuffed to, and a vent in the ceiling.
It was too bad that the ceiling was a good four feet above her head, and that there was nothing to climb on, otherwise the vent would have been a good place to hide, if she could have managed to get it open. But it was too high. Julia turned her attention the hall outside, listening for footsteps, breathing, heartbeats, anything that would tell her if someone was outside. She heard nothing.
Encouraged, Julia headed for the door, ready to try to pick that lock, too. She didn't know if she'd be able to do it, it had to be a lot more complicated then a handcuff, but at least she'd be doing *something*. Anything was better than sitting here and just waiting to either be rescued or killed. She stopped short in front of the door, seeing what she hadn't noticed before.
There wasn't any handle on this side of the door, or a lock. The door could only be opened from the other side. Julia's eyes immediately went to the doorframe, hoping that the hinges were on this side so that maybe she could pry at them or something, but they weren't. :Damn it.: That was it, she couldn't get any farther.
She sagged against the door as the memories she'd been working so hard to suppress surged up to the front of her mind. The worst of them was the one from right before she'd lost consciousness, after they shot her with the darts. She'd never experienced anything like that before, and she hoped that it would never happen again. Even when she lost control of her senses, it was, at worst, only one or two of them. When the dart had hit her, it was like she'd lost control of all of them at once. Now that she thought about it, she could remember the smell of some of the flowers coming from a florist down the street, remember the sound of footsteps echoing against her ears like gunshots, the light coming from the sun which suddenly seemed to be burning into her eyeballs...
:Stop it!: She wasn't going to think about this. She had to think about something else, anything would be better... Julia rested her head against the door, feeling the cool metal against her forehead. :Concentrate on that! Concentrate on anything...: Out of desperation she concentrated on the metal door against her forehead. She could feel - and catalogue - every imperfection in the apparently smooth surface. The sensitivity of her skin drew her mind back to what had happened, of the horrible sensitivity of her skin then, and of her inability to do anything to lessen it. And then, at the end, just before she'd finally blacked out, there had been that white blast. That had somehow been the worst, when she couldn't feel, see, or hear anything but white. It was if her body had gone numb, and she'd gone blind and deaf at the same moment, but instead of everything being dark and quiet, it had been white and far too loud.
:No...: Julia squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't deal with this right now. She just couldn't, not on top of everything else. Her hands clenched into fists. :Stop it!: she yelled at herself. She was dangerously close to really losing it, and then she'd lose control of her powers again, and it would just make everything worse, and then she'd get another one of those white blasts, again...
:No!: She slammed her fist against the door in a gesture of helpless rage. There was a loud creak from the door, and it was enough to shock her out of the downward spiral her thoughts were in.
Opening her eyes, Julia looked up at the door where her fist had struck it. There was a nice fist-sized indentation in the metal, now. :That's impossible...: Metal (unless it was very soft, like gold) didn't dent when you hit it. And if it was really soft, you wouldn't be using it to make a door out of. Slowly, Julia moved her hand to gently touch the metal indentation, and her fingertips confirmed what her eyes were telling her. There was a dent in the solid metal door. She could even see how her fist fit into the indentation, how the lines of it fit around her fist... she curled her fingers into a fist again and placed it against the indentation. It fit perfectly.
With a gasp, Julia pushed herself away from the door, stumbling backwards several steps. She looked from her own hand to the door and back to her hand again, as if that would explain the impossibility in front of her. You couldn't just dent a metal door with your fist, not even with a good deal of adrenaline. It didn't work that way.
But she'd just done it. Whatever was real and made sense... it didn't really matter, because she'd just done it. She didn't know how, or why, or anything, really, except that she had just done it. And if her fist could dent the door... Julia took a quick look around the room, judging the distance between herself and the door. After a moment's thought, she backed up to the wall, putting the maximum distance between her and the door. :I can't believe I'm going to try this,: she told herself. :This is completely insane. There is no way this is going to work. I'll be lucky if I just break my collarbone.: She didn't give herself a chance for any other doubts, this was insane enough on it's own without her mind listing all of the reasons it was stupid and crazy and what would happen to her if her insane hunch didn't play out. She ran at the door as fast as she could.
A second later her shoulder slammed into the door, causing a sharp pain to spike through her arm. She had just enough time to wonder if she really had gone crazy and had just managed to break her collarbone, before there was the shriek of tortured metal and a loud bang as the door crashed open when the lock gave way. Julia stumbled out into the hall, catching herself before she crashed into the wall on the other side.
:Or maybe I'd just crash *through* the wall,: she thought, turning to observe the wreckage of what had previously been a door. It was barely recognizable any more, twisted and bend around the large dent in the center where her shoulder had hit it, and barely hanging off the hinges on one side. On the other side, she saw that she had actually shoved the bolt of the lock right through the wall. She'd just plowed through a large, solid, metal door, with only a little bit of soreness in her shoulder to show for it. And even as she thought about it, the soreness disappeared.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard shouting as someone obviously heard the noise she'd made breaking out of her room. She had to get out of here. Julia took one last look at the door. :I think I'm going to have a rather large breakdown after this is over,: she decided, and then turned and fled down one of the halls.
----------
"Find her! We don't have any leverage without her!" Stevens snapped.
"But sir..."
"I don't care what she is! Shoot her if you have to, just don't kill her! I want you to find the little freak now!"
Two hallways down, behind a closed door, Julia fought to control her breathing. It sounded incredibly loud to her, loud enough that they couldn't possibly miss it, but that might have been because she was listening in on a conversation so far away. She carefully toned down her hearing, not wanting to risk losing control now. Then she sat with her back against the wall, right next to the door. :The little freak...: She shook her head slightly, trying to dispel the memory. She couldn't afford to worry about that right now. And she could have gone a long time without knowing that they thought she was dangerous enough to require shooting in order to control her.
Since she'd escaped from the room where they'd kept her, Julia had been doing her best to stick to her plan of hiding from them. She actually had spent a short time in the vents, after scrambling up to one from a table, before they figured out what she was doing. After they did, they started closing off the vents, one-by-one, and she'd only barely managed to get out of them before she was trapped entirely. Since then she'd been slipping from room to room, staying away from them and avoiding their clumsy search by moving into rooms they'd already searched. The fact that she could always hear what they were planning helped, too. By her reckoning, she'd been loose and staying ahead of them for a little over four hours.
But now Stevens had apparently grown a brain stem, because he'd gathered all of his men together and had organized them so that they could perform a decent search of the building. So far she'd managed to stay ahead of them only because they were so unorganized. An organized search was not a good thing. Sooner or later one of them was going to find her, no matter how careful she was. And then... :Shoot her if you have to.:
Surrendering wasn't really an option for her anymore. She might have been able to at the beginning of this, but by now they were really frightened of her. Although they wouldn't admit it out loud, she could hear it in their voices, in their racing heartbeats as they searched the rooms. Even if she turned herself in, she didn't trust that they wouldn't try to kill her. Even if she somehow made it to Stevens, who obviously wanted her alive, at least for now, she didn't trust that he wouldn't still shoot her. After all, she'd proven that she could get out of cuffs and batter her way through doors - she doubted that they had anything stronger to hold her.
Julia was trying very hard not to think about what she'd done. If she did, she might freeze again, and she couldn't afford that. More importantly, she couldn't deal with that, with knowing that she froze and being trapped in her own mind again. If they caught her, whatever they'd do, she'd be locked up again, with nothing to think about except what had happened, about her own senses and that white blast, and....
Julia shook her head once more, trying to clear it. That last thought string was almost incoherent. Not a good sign. She needed to focus. They were coming this way.
Hearing footsteps running down the hall, Julia froze, pressing herself into the wall. She heard one set of footsteps run on past the room, but another stopped not far away, and seconds later she heard a door open and close. :That was next door,: she thought, her heart threatening to pound it's way out of her chest.
Her eyes were wide as she tracked the sound of the footsteps. She heard the door across the hall open; then, after several long seconds, she heard it close. The footsteps drew nearer. She had to make a decision. As the door beside her swung open, she swallowed.
And when the tip of a gun started to enter the room, Julia let her body react without thinking. She waited the fraction of the second necessary for the rest of the gun to clear the threshold, then jumped at the man, pushing the gun to the side with her right hand, and punching him as hard as she could with her left. He'd never even gotten into the room, so his head snapped around and then he slammed heavily into the doorpost, causing the door to slam into the wall. The door made a loud (to her ears) clanging sound, and he slumped to the ground.
Julia stared down at him for a second, almost afraid to breathe, her body still in a fighting stance in case he got up. But he didn't move at all, except for the slow and steady rise and fall of his back. He'd dropped the gun when Julia cast a glance up and down the hall, looking and listening for any sign that someone had heard what she'd done, but she found none. After a moment's thought, she grabbed the unconscious body by the ankle and dragged him into the room, closing the door afterwards. She had a few minutes until he didn't report in. By then she'd better be somewhere else, which meant figuring out where, exactly, she could go, now that there was a hole in their net. She glanced down at the body at her feet, and noticed something attached to his belt. Grimacing, she reached down and pulled free the small communicator. Turning it on, she heard nothing for several seconds, then someone checked in that his guard was clear. He sounded bored. :This might help.: She shoved it in her pocket.
She highly doubted that he had anything else on him that would be of use to her (say, a map of the location), and even if he had, she didn't think she could stomach searching him right now. When she pulled the door open, it struck something on the floor. Looking down, she hesitated. His gun was still lying on the floor where it had fallen. She swallowed convulsively. After what she'd found out about her fathers, she had taken the time to look up guns. The two in the attic had been fully functional, as she'd expected. Because of her research, she did know how to operate one, even though she knew there was a big difference between knowing something in principle and actually being able to do it. But still...
:I don't know how long he's going to be out,: she suddenly realized. :And if he wakes up, he's going to take the gun and bring it with him again. And soon - I hope - Daddy and Tousan will get here. And if he has a gun, he'll try to use it against them.: Taking a deep breath, Julia gingerly picked the gun up off the floor, holding it by the grip. She immediately poked the safety to on, checked to make sure that she'd done it correctly three times, and only then did she stick it in the back of her pants, arranging her blouse so that it wouldn't be immediately obvious.
She stepped out the door and closed it. Unlike the room they'd kept her in, this one had a handle on both sides. Julia pulled the bobby-pin out of her pocket and jammed it in the lock. Hopefully that would make it more difficult for him to get it open. She started off down the hall.
It was exceedingly uncomfortable, wearing a gun there. She'd thought, from what she'd seen of her parents in the old records, that it would at least be moderately comfortable. After all, both of her parents had stored their weapons there, primarily, for more than a year. But as she walked along, listening intently for any footsteps or voices, Julia was acutely aware of the butt of the gun digging into the small of the back, of the barrel poking her butt. She paused and glanced back every thirty seconds to make sure that the waistband of her pants hadn't somehow managed to turn the safety off. Even though she was quite sure that was a ridiculous fear, she couldn't stop herself from checking every thirty seconds.
When she finally made it to another room that she judged was safe to rest in, Julia was a nervous wreck. She pulled the gun out and looked at it. It wasn't the same model as the guns she'd found in the attic, and it didn't look as well-cared-for, either. Of course, the guns she'd seen before had been in a box in the attic for over a dozen years, whereas this one was in use, but she had a feeling that even during the war neither of her parents would have let their weapons get in a state of disrepair.
It was heavy. She didn't remember her parents' weapons being this heavy, but maybe that was because they hadn't had the clip in then. But she didn't think that it was just the physical difference. When she'd picked up the gun in the attic, it had just been a piece of machinery, a startling one, but not something that would ever kill someone. Now... here... the gun in her hand could kill someone. It scared her. Julia was seriously considering leaving here, hiding it someplace they wouldn't find it and divesting herself of the danger and responsibility it implied.
She was glancing around, considering it, when she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. First just one or two shots, then more... Her heart leaped back into her throat. :That's them. It has to be. They're here for me.: Jamming the gun back into her pants, she slid the door open and stuck her head cautiously out into the hall. She didn't see anyone, but after a second she heard voices. "Quick, check these halls!" someone shouted above the thunder of the guns.
Julia ran, the gun digging into her back with every step. She was running towards the guns, but she intended to stop long before she reached the source of the gunfire, but right then, all she was thinking about was staying ahead of the searchers. She couldn't let them find her now that she was so close to being safe.
When she thought she was clear of the searchers, Julia started looking for somewhere to hide until it was all over. She had no desire to get any closer to the fighting then she already was. As she walked by a door that she knew led to another hall (she'd run through it before at some point), Julia heard low voices echoing down the hall. The voices were familiar.
"This one's clear. Any sign of her yet?"
"Iie."
:Daddy? Tousan?: Without thinking Julia threw the door open.
And came face-to-face with the wrong end of a gun.
"Well, finally found you," Stevens said with a smirk. He glanced nervously behind him. "Come on, we're leaving."
----------
Julia couldn't believe what was going on. She'd been so close to freedom, and then... Stevens had handed over a pair of handcuffs and demanded that she put them on, and was now dragging her all over the building, wherever they were, trying to find a way out beyond the increasing numbers of people in Preventer uniforms milling around. He'd even taken her up a flight of stairs, but there seemed to be Preventers up here, too. He was becoming more desperate, and there was an odd look in his eyes that she didn't like - something like a cornered dog.
She would have been trying to figure out how to get away, but she was too busy trying to stay on her feet as he dragged around by one arm. It wasn't easy to run with your hands tied behind your back, and every time she stumbled or hesitated, he jerked her back to her feet and either hit her with his free hand or threatened her with the gun. She could barely even feel the blows, but it was enough to keep her off-balance, and she couldn't do anything while he had the gun, anyway. The gun she'd stolen was still poking her in the back, and she was scared that he'd find it and get... um... more angry.
:Although more angry isn't necessarily a problem right now,: she thought, observing the look on his face. She couldn't believe she was thinking like this. The numbness was still there, but all of a sudden her head had started making random comments like this. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Stevens tried a door, found that it was locked, and cursed at it several times before he drew his foot back and kicked it. :Yeah, that's going to work,: Julia found herself thinking, just before he shot out the lock with the gun. :Overkill much?: Maybe not, it had gotten the door open, and that was one less bullet in the gun. Julia was keeping a careful count of how many bullets he used. She wasn't sure exactly how many were in his clip, but if it was the same model as the gun she'd stolen, she had a good idea of how many it could hold. So far he'd shot three bullets at Preventers they ran into, to drive them off, one at the panel that controlled the elevator (she was still trying to figure out why he'd done that), and now one more at the door.
A jerk on her arm sent her stumbling and brought her out of her thoughts. He pulled her down another hall, and then stopped short in front of a wall. Without any warning, Julia barely managed to stop from ramming full speed into the wall. As it was, the effort of trying to stop short with her hands behind her threw her off-balance again, and she fell. He glanced down at her, cursed, and hauled her back to her feet by the first thing he grabbed - which happened to be her hair.
"Ow!" she shouted, unable to stop herself. She'd pretty much gotten used to the occasional hits, but this was different. It was more from surprise than pain, anyway.
"Shut up!" he growled, shaking the hand that held her hair.
Julia grimaced, but kept her mouth closed this time. :Idiot psychopath,: she thought irritably. And then she had to bite back a little bit of laughter that threatened to bubble out of her. Well, now she knew why her father had continually cursed and yelled those ridiculous comments at the Oz soldiers during the war. It might be insane, but it was good for stress relief. And it was better, sort of, than just moving and reacting.
Then her attention was caught by Stevens, who was examining the wall very carefully while he kept the gun trained on her. Maybe he really had gone nuts.
A few seconds later, she found out that he wasn't nuts when a large portion of the wall swung open. :Shit. Secret door.: That was very bad. Extremely bad. If he closed the door behind them, the Preventers would never know to look for it, would never know where they'd gone. Stevens glanced at her. "Inside. Now."
Julia shook her head slightly and backed up a step. A flash of rage passed over his face, and he seized the back of her neck and hauled her forward, through the door and into what turned out to be a small shuttle bay. :Shit.:
He let go of her neck and started to turn back towards the door, but froze when he heard a voice say, "Freeze!"
Julia had often wondered what the Oz soldiers had seen on Daddy or Tousan's faces when they were fighting. Now she knew, and she wished she'd been kept wondering. Both of her parents were standing at the opposite end of the hanger, near the bodies of some of the goons who'd abducted her. They each held a gun aimed precisely at Stevens. And the looks on their faces...
There was a sort of mad fire in Daddy's eyes, as if he were almost-but-not-quite out of control, just on the edge of insanity. There was a broad grin on his face as well, but it wasn't any expression that she'd seen before. It looked sort of fixed in place, as if he was gritting his teeth instead of smiling, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out. Tousan was expressionless, as usual, but his eyes... they just looked dead, as if having to carry a gun again was doing something to his soul. But the most frightening thing about the pair was the total lack of fear or nervousness on their faces. Even the Preventers had been nervous - she'd seen it in their faces the few times she'd seen them, heard it in their voices at a distance. There was no sign of that on either of her parents' faces. Just a sort of grim confidence, as if they knew that this was what they'd been made for and that no one could stop them. It was the inevitability they managed to convey that was so frightening.
Stevens was actually standing behind her, and he spun back towards her, using her own body as a shield as he raised a gun to her head. She saw both of her parent's fingers tighten convulsively on the triggers of the guns, but they didn't actually pull the triggers. Although she was pretty sure that they could have hit him, even from that distance, without touching her, she figured that they didn't want to risk him shooting her as he went down.
"If you shoot me, she dies," Stevens said, confirming her observation.
"Let her go," Tousan ordered in a flat voice.
"Oh, no, that's not the way this works," Stevens said, his eyes flickering back and forth between them and one of the shuttles. "Drop your weapons, or I'll kill her."
Her parents exchanged an indecipherable look. "Stevens, you hurt one hair on your head and you'll be begging me to kill you," Daddy said softly.
Julia winced as the gun was jammed into the back of her head. "Do you really want to watch her die?" he asked. "Drop your weapons now!"
They both dropped their weapons. Some of that unholy light had begun to fade from Daddy's eyes, and now he just looked terrified as he looked at her. He moved his lips silently. Julia wasn't an expert on lip reading, but he was taking pains to make sure he was speaking clearly and slowly. :"Everything's going to be OK.": Julia wasn't so certain, but she tried to smile back at him.
"Kick your weapons away and come over here!" Stevens ordered.
Again they did as they were ordered, watching him like they were waiting for a moment of weakness in which to strike. They probably were.
As they walked towards him, Stevens shifted his aim from Julia's head to Daddy's. Julia saw him clench his fists slightly when the gun was shifted towards him, but he gave no other outward sign of nervousness. If anything, he seemed relieved that the gun was no longer pointed at her. Julia, on the other hand, was torn. She didn't want the gun pointed at her, but she wasn't any happier with it pointed at members of her family, either. Stevens still had a hand on her neck, keeping her from moving away, but most of his attention was focused on her parents now. A glimmer of an idea began to form in the back of her mind.
"So you're the famous Gundam pilots," Stevens said. "A bit young, aren't you? Were you infants during the war?" No one answered him.
Praying that he didn't notice what she was doing, Julia began to maneuver her cuffed hands so that she could get at the gun which was still stuck in her pants, digging into her back. It was difficult, and especially awkward since she had to be very careful not to brush her arms against Stevens. She couldn't afford to let him know what she was doing.
"Which one of you is the computer expert?" Stevens asked. When neither of them spoke, he grabbed her hair and shook her head sharply. "Which one?!" he demanded. Julia winced involuntarily, then regretted it when she saw both of her parents' faces go slack with shock. That expression was almost immediately replaced by blind rage.
"Me," Tousan grunted. Julia had the gun out of her waistband now. They were pretty close to her now. If she could toss it to one of them, she could probably knock Stevens to the ground long enough for them to get the gun and... stop him, somehow.
"You, huh?" Stevens asked. "Going to be a pain to haul the bunch of you fuckers away without any excess baggage. And I don't need you," he said to Daddy, whose eyes opened wide. "Goodbye."
"NO!" Julia shrieked, her mind suddenly catching up with what was going on. Without thinking, she bent over slightly and slammed her shoulder into Stevens' chest, making him stagger backwards.
There was another shriek of metal as she ripped the chain holding the cuffs together in half, and she automatically clicked the safety on the gun off as she brought it up to face Stevens. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.
For a second there was an almost comical expression of surprise on Stevens' face. Then he started to bring his own gun around to face her. Julia had just enough time to see a look of alarm on Tousan's face and to hear Duo-daddy shout, "No!" before she reacted to defend herself.
She pulled the trigger.
Julia didn't have much experience with guns, but she was standing less than three feet away from him. It would have been rather difficult to miss. Her shot hit him in the chest and actually lifted him a little bit off the floor, throwing him backwards. The gun jumped in her hand, and she almost dropped it. There was a mass of blood appearing in the center of his chest, but he was still breathing. As Julia watched, his chest stilled, and she heard his heart stop beating.
:He's dead.:
She retained just enough presence of mind to flick the safety back on before the gun fell from her numbed fingers.
"Julia!" she suddenly found herself enfolded in a pair of incredibly strong arms. It was Daddy, and she could feel his body shaking as he held her. "Why did you do that?!" he demanded angrily, moving back slightly so that she could see his face. He looked absolutely wretched, and there were unshed tears in his eyes. She'd never seen him cry.
"He... he was going to hurt you," she replied miserably.
Daddy shook his head back and forth sadly. "No," he said softly. "You shouldn't have. Not for anything. It wasn't supposed to be like that for you..."
"He was trying to kill..." Julia tried to say, then found herself unable to continue. "Oh, Daddy!" she threw herself at him, sobbing hysterically.
"Oh God, I'm sorry," he said, hugging her again. The two of them sank slowly to the floor, him holding her as if she was a child. "I'm so sorry."
Ok. That last section was almost painful to write. But hey, at least it's not another cliffhanger... :smiles weakly:
In general, this was not a fun section to write. The main character was either absolutely terrified, just bordering on hysterical, or numb throughout most of it, which is just not a pleasant thing to write. (At least not with my writing style.) I'm not sure how I feel about the middle section with Katie. Rest assured that there is a reason she was acting the way she was, at least in my head, but I think it may be confusing for readers. I'm thinking about writing a short (for me) piece from her perspective, after I finish this project, just to explore that a little. I'm also irritated that I had to break the pattern of doing Heero and Duo's section at the end, but it wouldn't have worked as well that way, I think.
On a lighter note, I've decided to rescind my request to not send any death threats. I've decided that they're amusing. The best ones I received last time had, "The walls will drip blood for years," and another one whose reason for not killing me was that she'd never see the end of the story.
Marika 2/10/02
She examined the lock closely, focusing her eyes on the inside of it as well as she could. It was difficult to tell in the darkness inside the lock, but she thought that the pieces looked familiar. She reviewed the memory... yes, it definitely looked familiar. So maybe this would work. But she needed something... Suddenly she raised her hands and patted her own head. Miraculously, there were still a bunch of bobby pins there from her preparations this (was it still this?) morning.
:I don't believe I'm trying this,: she told herself as she pulled one of the bobby pins out of her hair. She bent it straight, then used her teeth to pull off the little plastic dots on the ends of the metal that were supposed to keep the pins from stabbing her. :This is insane. I can't believe I'm going to try this.: She kept up that internal monologue as she bent over the cuff attached to her left wrist, trying to angle it so that the maximum light entered the lock itself.
It *was* insane, trying to pick the lock of a handcuff with nothing more than a bobby pin and one fifteen-year old memory of how to do it. But she couldn't just sit here. Searching for the memory had kept her occupied up until now, but if she didn't keep moving forward, she was going to give into hysteria, and she couldn't do that yet. Hysterics were for later.
:Concentrate,: she reminded herself. Thinking about things like that was a very good way to get her thinking about what was going on right now, about her present situation, and she didn't want to think about it. She couldn't afford it. Her parents were coming for her, and she wanted to be ready for them. If she just sat around here...
Click.
Julia started at the sound, then looked down as the cuff fell off her wrist. Despite everything, she felt a grin appearing on her lips. :I don't believe it. I did it.: She got to her feet, rubbing her left wrist and looking down at the handcuffs. She resisted the urge to kick them or do something equally as ridiculous. Instead, she looked around the room once more. There wasn't much to see - four walls, one metal door, the radiator she'd been cuffed to, and a vent in the ceiling.
It was too bad that the ceiling was a good four feet above her head, and that there was nothing to climb on, otherwise the vent would have been a good place to hide, if she could have managed to get it open. But it was too high. Julia turned her attention the hall outside, listening for footsteps, breathing, heartbeats, anything that would tell her if someone was outside. She heard nothing.
Encouraged, Julia headed for the door, ready to try to pick that lock, too. She didn't know if she'd be able to do it, it had to be a lot more complicated then a handcuff, but at least she'd be doing *something*. Anything was better than sitting here and just waiting to either be rescued or killed. She stopped short in front of the door, seeing what she hadn't noticed before.
There wasn't any handle on this side of the door, or a lock. The door could only be opened from the other side. Julia's eyes immediately went to the doorframe, hoping that the hinges were on this side so that maybe she could pry at them or something, but they weren't. :Damn it.: That was it, she couldn't get any farther.
She sagged against the door as the memories she'd been working so hard to suppress surged up to the front of her mind. The worst of them was the one from right before she'd lost consciousness, after they shot her with the darts. She'd never experienced anything like that before, and she hoped that it would never happen again. Even when she lost control of her senses, it was, at worst, only one or two of them. When the dart had hit her, it was like she'd lost control of all of them at once. Now that she thought about it, she could remember the smell of some of the flowers coming from a florist down the street, remember the sound of footsteps echoing against her ears like gunshots, the light coming from the sun which suddenly seemed to be burning into her eyeballs...
:Stop it!: She wasn't going to think about this. She had to think about something else, anything would be better... Julia rested her head against the door, feeling the cool metal against her forehead. :Concentrate on that! Concentrate on anything...: Out of desperation she concentrated on the metal door against her forehead. She could feel - and catalogue - every imperfection in the apparently smooth surface. The sensitivity of her skin drew her mind back to what had happened, of the horrible sensitivity of her skin then, and of her inability to do anything to lessen it. And then, at the end, just before she'd finally blacked out, there had been that white blast. That had somehow been the worst, when she couldn't feel, see, or hear anything but white. It was if her body had gone numb, and she'd gone blind and deaf at the same moment, but instead of everything being dark and quiet, it had been white and far too loud.
:No...: Julia squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't deal with this right now. She just couldn't, not on top of everything else. Her hands clenched into fists. :Stop it!: she yelled at herself. She was dangerously close to really losing it, and then she'd lose control of her powers again, and it would just make everything worse, and then she'd get another one of those white blasts, again...
:No!: She slammed her fist against the door in a gesture of helpless rage. There was a loud creak from the door, and it was enough to shock her out of the downward spiral her thoughts were in.
Opening her eyes, Julia looked up at the door where her fist had struck it. There was a nice fist-sized indentation in the metal, now. :That's impossible...: Metal (unless it was very soft, like gold) didn't dent when you hit it. And if it was really soft, you wouldn't be using it to make a door out of. Slowly, Julia moved her hand to gently touch the metal indentation, and her fingertips confirmed what her eyes were telling her. There was a dent in the solid metal door. She could even see how her fist fit into the indentation, how the lines of it fit around her fist... she curled her fingers into a fist again and placed it against the indentation. It fit perfectly.
With a gasp, Julia pushed herself away from the door, stumbling backwards several steps. She looked from her own hand to the door and back to her hand again, as if that would explain the impossibility in front of her. You couldn't just dent a metal door with your fist, not even with a good deal of adrenaline. It didn't work that way.
But she'd just done it. Whatever was real and made sense... it didn't really matter, because she'd just done it. She didn't know how, or why, or anything, really, except that she had just done it. And if her fist could dent the door... Julia took a quick look around the room, judging the distance between herself and the door. After a moment's thought, she backed up to the wall, putting the maximum distance between her and the door. :I can't believe I'm going to try this,: she told herself. :This is completely insane. There is no way this is going to work. I'll be lucky if I just break my collarbone.: She didn't give herself a chance for any other doubts, this was insane enough on it's own without her mind listing all of the reasons it was stupid and crazy and what would happen to her if her insane hunch didn't play out. She ran at the door as fast as she could.
A second later her shoulder slammed into the door, causing a sharp pain to spike through her arm. She had just enough time to wonder if she really had gone crazy and had just managed to break her collarbone, before there was the shriek of tortured metal and a loud bang as the door crashed open when the lock gave way. Julia stumbled out into the hall, catching herself before she crashed into the wall on the other side.
:Or maybe I'd just crash *through* the wall,: she thought, turning to observe the wreckage of what had previously been a door. It was barely recognizable any more, twisted and bend around the large dent in the center where her shoulder had hit it, and barely hanging off the hinges on one side. On the other side, she saw that she had actually shoved the bolt of the lock right through the wall. She'd just plowed through a large, solid, metal door, with only a little bit of soreness in her shoulder to show for it. And even as she thought about it, the soreness disappeared.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard shouting as someone obviously heard the noise she'd made breaking out of her room. She had to get out of here. Julia took one last look at the door. :I think I'm going to have a rather large breakdown after this is over,: she decided, and then turned and fled down one of the halls.
----------
"Find her! We don't have any leverage without her!" Stevens snapped.
"But sir..."
"I don't care what she is! Shoot her if you have to, just don't kill her! I want you to find the little freak now!"
Two hallways down, behind a closed door, Julia fought to control her breathing. It sounded incredibly loud to her, loud enough that they couldn't possibly miss it, but that might have been because she was listening in on a conversation so far away. She carefully toned down her hearing, not wanting to risk losing control now. Then she sat with her back against the wall, right next to the door. :The little freak...: She shook her head slightly, trying to dispel the memory. She couldn't afford to worry about that right now. And she could have gone a long time without knowing that they thought she was dangerous enough to require shooting in order to control her.
Since she'd escaped from the room where they'd kept her, Julia had been doing her best to stick to her plan of hiding from them. She actually had spent a short time in the vents, after scrambling up to one from a table, before they figured out what she was doing. After they did, they started closing off the vents, one-by-one, and she'd only barely managed to get out of them before she was trapped entirely. Since then she'd been slipping from room to room, staying away from them and avoiding their clumsy search by moving into rooms they'd already searched. The fact that she could always hear what they were planning helped, too. By her reckoning, she'd been loose and staying ahead of them for a little over four hours.
But now Stevens had apparently grown a brain stem, because he'd gathered all of his men together and had organized them so that they could perform a decent search of the building. So far she'd managed to stay ahead of them only because they were so unorganized. An organized search was not a good thing. Sooner or later one of them was going to find her, no matter how careful she was. And then... :Shoot her if you have to.:
Surrendering wasn't really an option for her anymore. She might have been able to at the beginning of this, but by now they were really frightened of her. Although they wouldn't admit it out loud, she could hear it in their voices, in their racing heartbeats as they searched the rooms. Even if she turned herself in, she didn't trust that they wouldn't try to kill her. Even if she somehow made it to Stevens, who obviously wanted her alive, at least for now, she didn't trust that he wouldn't still shoot her. After all, she'd proven that she could get out of cuffs and batter her way through doors - she doubted that they had anything stronger to hold her.
Julia was trying very hard not to think about what she'd done. If she did, she might freeze again, and she couldn't afford that. More importantly, she couldn't deal with that, with knowing that she froze and being trapped in her own mind again. If they caught her, whatever they'd do, she'd be locked up again, with nothing to think about except what had happened, about her own senses and that white blast, and....
Julia shook her head once more, trying to clear it. That last thought string was almost incoherent. Not a good sign. She needed to focus. They were coming this way.
Hearing footsteps running down the hall, Julia froze, pressing herself into the wall. She heard one set of footsteps run on past the room, but another stopped not far away, and seconds later she heard a door open and close. :That was next door,: she thought, her heart threatening to pound it's way out of her chest.
Her eyes were wide as she tracked the sound of the footsteps. She heard the door across the hall open; then, after several long seconds, she heard it close. The footsteps drew nearer. She had to make a decision. As the door beside her swung open, she swallowed.
And when the tip of a gun started to enter the room, Julia let her body react without thinking. She waited the fraction of the second necessary for the rest of the gun to clear the threshold, then jumped at the man, pushing the gun to the side with her right hand, and punching him as hard as she could with her left. He'd never even gotten into the room, so his head snapped around and then he slammed heavily into the doorpost, causing the door to slam into the wall. The door made a loud (to her ears) clanging sound, and he slumped to the ground.
Julia stared down at him for a second, almost afraid to breathe, her body still in a fighting stance in case he got up. But he didn't move at all, except for the slow and steady rise and fall of his back. He'd dropped the gun when Julia cast a glance up and down the hall, looking and listening for any sign that someone had heard what she'd done, but she found none. After a moment's thought, she grabbed the unconscious body by the ankle and dragged him into the room, closing the door afterwards. She had a few minutes until he didn't report in. By then she'd better be somewhere else, which meant figuring out where, exactly, she could go, now that there was a hole in their net. She glanced down at the body at her feet, and noticed something attached to his belt. Grimacing, she reached down and pulled free the small communicator. Turning it on, she heard nothing for several seconds, then someone checked in that his guard was clear. He sounded bored. :This might help.: She shoved it in her pocket.
She highly doubted that he had anything else on him that would be of use to her (say, a map of the location), and even if he had, she didn't think she could stomach searching him right now. When she pulled the door open, it struck something on the floor. Looking down, she hesitated. His gun was still lying on the floor where it had fallen. She swallowed convulsively. After what she'd found out about her fathers, she had taken the time to look up guns. The two in the attic had been fully functional, as she'd expected. Because of her research, she did know how to operate one, even though she knew there was a big difference between knowing something in principle and actually being able to do it. But still...
:I don't know how long he's going to be out,: she suddenly realized. :And if he wakes up, he's going to take the gun and bring it with him again. And soon - I hope - Daddy and Tousan will get here. And if he has a gun, he'll try to use it against them.: Taking a deep breath, Julia gingerly picked the gun up off the floor, holding it by the grip. She immediately poked the safety to on, checked to make sure that she'd done it correctly three times, and only then did she stick it in the back of her pants, arranging her blouse so that it wouldn't be immediately obvious.
She stepped out the door and closed it. Unlike the room they'd kept her in, this one had a handle on both sides. Julia pulled the bobby-pin out of her pocket and jammed it in the lock. Hopefully that would make it more difficult for him to get it open. She started off down the hall.
It was exceedingly uncomfortable, wearing a gun there. She'd thought, from what she'd seen of her parents in the old records, that it would at least be moderately comfortable. After all, both of her parents had stored their weapons there, primarily, for more than a year. But as she walked along, listening intently for any footsteps or voices, Julia was acutely aware of the butt of the gun digging into the small of the back, of the barrel poking her butt. She paused and glanced back every thirty seconds to make sure that the waistband of her pants hadn't somehow managed to turn the safety off. Even though she was quite sure that was a ridiculous fear, she couldn't stop herself from checking every thirty seconds.
When she finally made it to another room that she judged was safe to rest in, Julia was a nervous wreck. She pulled the gun out and looked at it. It wasn't the same model as the guns she'd found in the attic, and it didn't look as well-cared-for, either. Of course, the guns she'd seen before had been in a box in the attic for over a dozen years, whereas this one was in use, but she had a feeling that even during the war neither of her parents would have let their weapons get in a state of disrepair.
It was heavy. She didn't remember her parents' weapons being this heavy, but maybe that was because they hadn't had the clip in then. But she didn't think that it was just the physical difference. When she'd picked up the gun in the attic, it had just been a piece of machinery, a startling one, but not something that would ever kill someone. Now... here... the gun in her hand could kill someone. It scared her. Julia was seriously considering leaving here, hiding it someplace they wouldn't find it and divesting herself of the danger and responsibility it implied.
She was glancing around, considering it, when she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. First just one or two shots, then more... Her heart leaped back into her throat. :That's them. It has to be. They're here for me.: Jamming the gun back into her pants, she slid the door open and stuck her head cautiously out into the hall. She didn't see anyone, but after a second she heard voices. "Quick, check these halls!" someone shouted above the thunder of the guns.
Julia ran, the gun digging into her back with every step. She was running towards the guns, but she intended to stop long before she reached the source of the gunfire, but right then, all she was thinking about was staying ahead of the searchers. She couldn't let them find her now that she was so close to being safe.
When she thought she was clear of the searchers, Julia started looking for somewhere to hide until it was all over. She had no desire to get any closer to the fighting then she already was. As she walked by a door that she knew led to another hall (she'd run through it before at some point), Julia heard low voices echoing down the hall. The voices were familiar.
"This one's clear. Any sign of her yet?"
"Iie."
:Daddy? Tousan?: Without thinking Julia threw the door open.
And came face-to-face with the wrong end of a gun.
"Well, finally found you," Stevens said with a smirk. He glanced nervously behind him. "Come on, we're leaving."
----------
Julia couldn't believe what was going on. She'd been so close to freedom, and then... Stevens had handed over a pair of handcuffs and demanded that she put them on, and was now dragging her all over the building, wherever they were, trying to find a way out beyond the increasing numbers of people in Preventer uniforms milling around. He'd even taken her up a flight of stairs, but there seemed to be Preventers up here, too. He was becoming more desperate, and there was an odd look in his eyes that she didn't like - something like a cornered dog.
She would have been trying to figure out how to get away, but she was too busy trying to stay on her feet as he dragged around by one arm. It wasn't easy to run with your hands tied behind your back, and every time she stumbled or hesitated, he jerked her back to her feet and either hit her with his free hand or threatened her with the gun. She could barely even feel the blows, but it was enough to keep her off-balance, and she couldn't do anything while he had the gun, anyway. The gun she'd stolen was still poking her in the back, and she was scared that he'd find it and get... um... more angry.
:Although more angry isn't necessarily a problem right now,: she thought, observing the look on his face. She couldn't believe she was thinking like this. The numbness was still there, but all of a sudden her head had started making random comments like this. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Stevens tried a door, found that it was locked, and cursed at it several times before he drew his foot back and kicked it. :Yeah, that's going to work,: Julia found herself thinking, just before he shot out the lock with the gun. :Overkill much?: Maybe not, it had gotten the door open, and that was one less bullet in the gun. Julia was keeping a careful count of how many bullets he used. She wasn't sure exactly how many were in his clip, but if it was the same model as the gun she'd stolen, she had a good idea of how many it could hold. So far he'd shot three bullets at Preventers they ran into, to drive them off, one at the panel that controlled the elevator (she was still trying to figure out why he'd done that), and now one more at the door.
A jerk on her arm sent her stumbling and brought her out of her thoughts. He pulled her down another hall, and then stopped short in front of a wall. Without any warning, Julia barely managed to stop from ramming full speed into the wall. As it was, the effort of trying to stop short with her hands behind her threw her off-balance again, and she fell. He glanced down at her, cursed, and hauled her back to her feet by the first thing he grabbed - which happened to be her hair.
"Ow!" she shouted, unable to stop herself. She'd pretty much gotten used to the occasional hits, but this was different. It was more from surprise than pain, anyway.
"Shut up!" he growled, shaking the hand that held her hair.
Julia grimaced, but kept her mouth closed this time. :Idiot psychopath,: she thought irritably. And then she had to bite back a little bit of laughter that threatened to bubble out of her. Well, now she knew why her father had continually cursed and yelled those ridiculous comments at the Oz soldiers during the war. It might be insane, but it was good for stress relief. And it was better, sort of, than just moving and reacting.
Then her attention was caught by Stevens, who was examining the wall very carefully while he kept the gun trained on her. Maybe he really had gone nuts.
A few seconds later, she found out that he wasn't nuts when a large portion of the wall swung open. :Shit. Secret door.: That was very bad. Extremely bad. If he closed the door behind them, the Preventers would never know to look for it, would never know where they'd gone. Stevens glanced at her. "Inside. Now."
Julia shook her head slightly and backed up a step. A flash of rage passed over his face, and he seized the back of her neck and hauled her forward, through the door and into what turned out to be a small shuttle bay. :Shit.:
He let go of her neck and started to turn back towards the door, but froze when he heard a voice say, "Freeze!"
Julia had often wondered what the Oz soldiers had seen on Daddy or Tousan's faces when they were fighting. Now she knew, and she wished she'd been kept wondering. Both of her parents were standing at the opposite end of the hanger, near the bodies of some of the goons who'd abducted her. They each held a gun aimed precisely at Stevens. And the looks on their faces...
There was a sort of mad fire in Daddy's eyes, as if he were almost-but-not-quite out of control, just on the edge of insanity. There was a broad grin on his face as well, but it wasn't any expression that she'd seen before. It looked sort of fixed in place, as if he was gritting his teeth instead of smiling, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out. Tousan was expressionless, as usual, but his eyes... they just looked dead, as if having to carry a gun again was doing something to his soul. But the most frightening thing about the pair was the total lack of fear or nervousness on their faces. Even the Preventers had been nervous - she'd seen it in their faces the few times she'd seen them, heard it in their voices at a distance. There was no sign of that on either of her parents' faces. Just a sort of grim confidence, as if they knew that this was what they'd been made for and that no one could stop them. It was the inevitability they managed to convey that was so frightening.
Stevens was actually standing behind her, and he spun back towards her, using her own body as a shield as he raised a gun to her head. She saw both of her parent's fingers tighten convulsively on the triggers of the guns, but they didn't actually pull the triggers. Although she was pretty sure that they could have hit him, even from that distance, without touching her, she figured that they didn't want to risk him shooting her as he went down.
"If you shoot me, she dies," Stevens said, confirming her observation.
"Let her go," Tousan ordered in a flat voice.
"Oh, no, that's not the way this works," Stevens said, his eyes flickering back and forth between them and one of the shuttles. "Drop your weapons, or I'll kill her."
Her parents exchanged an indecipherable look. "Stevens, you hurt one hair on your head and you'll be begging me to kill you," Daddy said softly.
Julia winced as the gun was jammed into the back of her head. "Do you really want to watch her die?" he asked. "Drop your weapons now!"
They both dropped their weapons. Some of that unholy light had begun to fade from Daddy's eyes, and now he just looked terrified as he looked at her. He moved his lips silently. Julia wasn't an expert on lip reading, but he was taking pains to make sure he was speaking clearly and slowly. :"Everything's going to be OK.": Julia wasn't so certain, but she tried to smile back at him.
"Kick your weapons away and come over here!" Stevens ordered.
Again they did as they were ordered, watching him like they were waiting for a moment of weakness in which to strike. They probably were.
As they walked towards him, Stevens shifted his aim from Julia's head to Daddy's. Julia saw him clench his fists slightly when the gun was shifted towards him, but he gave no other outward sign of nervousness. If anything, he seemed relieved that the gun was no longer pointed at her. Julia, on the other hand, was torn. She didn't want the gun pointed at her, but she wasn't any happier with it pointed at members of her family, either. Stevens still had a hand on her neck, keeping her from moving away, but most of his attention was focused on her parents now. A glimmer of an idea began to form in the back of her mind.
"So you're the famous Gundam pilots," Stevens said. "A bit young, aren't you? Were you infants during the war?" No one answered him.
Praying that he didn't notice what she was doing, Julia began to maneuver her cuffed hands so that she could get at the gun which was still stuck in her pants, digging into her back. It was difficult, and especially awkward since she had to be very careful not to brush her arms against Stevens. She couldn't afford to let him know what she was doing.
"Which one of you is the computer expert?" Stevens asked. When neither of them spoke, he grabbed her hair and shook her head sharply. "Which one?!" he demanded. Julia winced involuntarily, then regretted it when she saw both of her parents' faces go slack with shock. That expression was almost immediately replaced by blind rage.
"Me," Tousan grunted. Julia had the gun out of her waistband now. They were pretty close to her now. If she could toss it to one of them, she could probably knock Stevens to the ground long enough for them to get the gun and... stop him, somehow.
"You, huh?" Stevens asked. "Going to be a pain to haul the bunch of you fuckers away without any excess baggage. And I don't need you," he said to Daddy, whose eyes opened wide. "Goodbye."
"NO!" Julia shrieked, her mind suddenly catching up with what was going on. Without thinking, she bent over slightly and slammed her shoulder into Stevens' chest, making him stagger backwards.
There was another shriek of metal as she ripped the chain holding the cuffs together in half, and she automatically clicked the safety on the gun off as she brought it up to face Stevens. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.
For a second there was an almost comical expression of surprise on Stevens' face. Then he started to bring his own gun around to face her. Julia had just enough time to see a look of alarm on Tousan's face and to hear Duo-daddy shout, "No!" before she reacted to defend herself.
She pulled the trigger.
Julia didn't have much experience with guns, but she was standing less than three feet away from him. It would have been rather difficult to miss. Her shot hit him in the chest and actually lifted him a little bit off the floor, throwing him backwards. The gun jumped in her hand, and she almost dropped it. There was a mass of blood appearing in the center of his chest, but he was still breathing. As Julia watched, his chest stilled, and she heard his heart stop beating.
:He's dead.:
She retained just enough presence of mind to flick the safety back on before the gun fell from her numbed fingers.
"Julia!" she suddenly found herself enfolded in a pair of incredibly strong arms. It was Daddy, and she could feel his body shaking as he held her. "Why did you do that?!" he demanded angrily, moving back slightly so that she could see his face. He looked absolutely wretched, and there were unshed tears in his eyes. She'd never seen him cry.
"He... he was going to hurt you," she replied miserably.
Daddy shook his head back and forth sadly. "No," he said softly. "You shouldn't have. Not for anything. It wasn't supposed to be like that for you..."
"He was trying to kill..." Julia tried to say, then found herself unable to continue. "Oh, Daddy!" she threw herself at him, sobbing hysterically.
"Oh God, I'm sorry," he said, hugging her again. The two of them sank slowly to the floor, him holding her as if she was a child. "I'm so sorry."
Ok. That last section was almost painful to write. But hey, at least it's not another cliffhanger... :smiles weakly:
In general, this was not a fun section to write. The main character was either absolutely terrified, just bordering on hysterical, or numb throughout most of it, which is just not a pleasant thing to write. (At least not with my writing style.) I'm not sure how I feel about the middle section with Katie. Rest assured that there is a reason she was acting the way she was, at least in my head, but I think it may be confusing for readers. I'm thinking about writing a short (for me) piece from her perspective, after I finish this project, just to explore that a little. I'm also irritated that I had to break the pattern of doing Heero and Duo's section at the end, but it wouldn't have worked as well that way, I think.
On a lighter note, I've decided to rescind my request to not send any death threats. I've decided that they're amusing. The best ones I received last time had, "The walls will drip blood for years," and another one whose reason for not killing me was that she'd never see the end of the story.
Marika 2/10/02