Sally and three other people were waiting in the hanger she'd mentioned. Two of the people were dressed in gray jumpsuits, the other in a white lab coat. Julia felt an uneasy stirring along her spine when she saw the coat.
"Julia, these are Majors Kendle and Orlis, they're both here to keep an eye on this equipment," Sally gestured around the room at the variety of machines lining the walls. Some of them looked vaguely familiar to Julia, but she couldn't remember from where, which made her even more uneasy. "And this is Dr. Nichols," she said, gesturing to the final man. "He's here to provide me with a second opinion."
"On what?" Julia asked.
"On whether or not she's pushing you too hard," Nichols replied after a glance at Sally. "Sometimes an outside observer can see things that people too close miss."
Julia felt an instant's resentment flare up at being referred to like she was some sort of experiment, with a control group and an experimental group, but she pushed it aside. They did have her best interests in mind, and, after all, that was what she was, really. Someone's experiment.
"He's also here to make sure I don't make an stupid mistakes," Sally added with a slight smile, obviously noticing Julia's unease and trying to alleviate it. It didn't work.
"Good," Julia said shortly. She noticed Sally glance at Zechs, who frowned slightly and gave a brief shake of his head, then rolled his eyes towards Julia. Julia frowned. You'd think they'd realize talking like that was rude, especially around her. "I found out some stuff that I'm not especially happy with, but I'm beginning to get used to the sensation," she snapped, glaring at both of them. "What are we doing first?"
That was probably not the most graceful of invitations Sally had ever gotten, but at least she was smart enough not to push any further. "Here," she said, gesturing to a chair with a large screen situated about 8 meters in front of it. Julia sat, hoping that she didn't look as nervous as she felt. This was ridiculous, she'd done this dozens of times before! It was just like a regular checkup...
Julia caught a glimpse of the second doctor standing waiting, one of the engineers manning some computer equipment, and the second standing a few feet away, talking to Zechs. She resisted the urge to snort. Yeah, just like a regular checkup.
"We're just going to check your eyes," Sally told her. "To see how far you can see, and with how much accuracy. Kendle is going to be watching the contractions of your retina through a special camera. That's it. Is that all right?"
Julia nodded shortly. "One eye and then the other?"
"That's right." Sally handed her a short stick with a disc at the end to cover her eye. Julia placed it over her left eye and looked at the screen in front of her. Several lines of letters in different sizes appeared. She read them. More letters, smaller this time, appeared. She read them. The process repeated... two, three... five times before she couldn't read the letters any more. By then the second engineer had stopped talking to Zechs and was standing behind the first, looking over his shoulder at the screen that was displaying an image her eye.
"Is that..." one of them murmured.
"I think so. We'll have to see. But I can't imagine how..."
Sally glanced at them and they shut up. "The other eye, please," she requested, walking over to look at the screen.
Julia repeated the procedure, this time with her left eye. Now the second doctor was also staring at the screen, occasionally raising his eyes to look at her, then looking back at the screen.
When she repeated the procedure a third time with both eyes, it took nearly a dozen repetitions before the things got so small that she couldn't see them any more. Julia's temper was beginning to fray. This was taking forever, she was sick of the engineers and doctor trying to hide how surprised they were by what she could do, and she was getting a headache from trying to focus her eyes for things that small. She'd never tried to push her eyes that way before. In fact, she'd never tried to look at things so small that she couldn't see them, either.
"Julia..." Sally put a hand on her shoulder. Julia turned to look at her... and jumped back as she got an up-close view of every imperfection on one of Sally's hairs. She closed her eyes and rubbed at them, trying to get them to return to normal.
"Julia, are you all right?" Sally asked worriedly.
"I'm fine," Julia replied, shaking her head. "Just need a couple of seconds." She thought very hard about seeing things that were close up, and felt some of the tension in her eyes lessen. When she opened her eyes, everything was completely blurry for a second, then snapped into clarity. Julia blinked her eyes several times, glancing around the room to make sure everything was back to normal.
"Julia, are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine," she said a bit more sharply than she'd intended. She jumped out of the chair and started pacing back and forth, feeling an intense desire to prove that she *could* move around, that she wasn't stuck in the chair.
Looking at the slightly hurt expression on Sally's face, Julia tried to backtrack. "I... I mean... I'm sorry," she apologized. "What did you find?"
Sally nodded slightly in her direction, acknowledging the apology, then said, "Individually your eyes are approximately 80/20. Together, you're nearly 400/20."
Julia blinked. She'd known that her eyes would be strong, but that was ridiculous. "How... how is that possible? I mean, I'd expect it to be perfect or even a little better, but that's..." she cut herself off as she realized what she'd been about to say. That's not human.
Sally glanced at the man who'd been monitoring the console.
"I'm not entirely sure how, but at a guess I'd say that your eyes are acting something like telescopes. The way the muscles in your eyes work is strange as well. You seem to have a large amount of precision control over them. And, this is just a guess, but..." he came out from behind the consol and peered intently at her eyes. "I'd guess that they aren't quite shaped the way, say, mine are. There seems to be an extra layer of tissue there, to help you focus on things that are far away. And that makes your eyes a little more oblong than mine." He stared at her eyes for a second longer, then nodded as if to herself. "And I think they are."
Julia nodded. It all seemed to make sense, even if it was based on conjecture. Obviously these people were a lot more than just mechanics, the way Sally had suggested.
Then her aforementioned eyes narrowed. It hadn't sounded like he couldn't imagine how they'd made her, it had sounded like he couldn't understand how her eyes had gotten like this in the first place. Like he thought they were an accident of nature. "Did you tell them?" she demanded, rounding on Sally.
Sally had the good sense not to pretend she didn't know what Julia was talking about. "You reacted so strongly to other people knowing, that Une thought it would be best..."
"Not to tell the doctors I'm working with?" Julia asked disbelievingly. "And what were you going to tell them? It won't take them that many tests to realize that there's something seriously wrong with me."
"Your file is classified. They understand the need for such things."
"You mean *I'm* classified," Julia retorted.
"But only Preventer agents would know that," Zechs cut in.
"Julia stared at him blankly for a second before comprehension dawned. "And I, not being a Preventer, wouldn't know anything about it, would I?" she said slowly. She glanced at Sally to see if she was going to object to this obvious falsehood.
Sally was smiling.
Now Julia had just one problem - she had to explain the joke her life had become to a bunch of strangers. "I... am not a... normal human," she began, quickly sorting through what she would and wouldn't tell them. "I was designed. I didn't find this out until recently. I'm stronger, faster, and probably a bunch more 'ers' that I don't know about. That's what we're doing here - I wanted to know what I could do. The Preventers knew about me already, they took me from the people who... created me."
She saw one of the mechanics - Kendle - open his mouth, then slowly close it. "What? What did you want to ask me?" she asked warily.
"I... I just... how did you not know... your vision alone..."
"It was always like that for me," Julia told him. "I thought that it was that way for everyone." There was a moment of silence, then Julia asked, "So what's next, ears or toes?"
---------
Over the next several hours, they got a very good idea of what she could accomplish. She could easily hear a whisper (around thirty decibels) from a hundred meters away. She could run a hundred meters in just under ten seconds. Standing, she could lift almost a ton. When she threw all of her strength behind a punch or a kick at full speed, the force she exerted was considerably more than that. No wonder she'd knocked the door off its hinges. She *was* lucky that she hadn't plowed through the wall as well.
The people watching her had grown more quiet as the day wore on, aside from various comments about the machines they used to measure her abilities, or the occasional comment on how her body could have been adapted this way or that. The farther along the tests got, the more nervous the watchers got. Not that she blamed them, the results were pretty frightening to her, too. Finally, after watching the force readings when she tried punching with all of her strength, one of them muttered, "She probably shouldn't go against a mobile suit, but she might just survive."
Could I? The thought sounded preposterous, but... If I had a good idea where the lines for the hydraulics were located in the legs, I might be able to punch through the plating and rip them out. That would slow them down, give me at least a fighting chance. Then I could... she stopped herself as she realized what she was doing. She grimaced and fought the urge to bang her hand against her head. Stop it! she commanded herself. I will not let this get to me. I am not going to be controlled by a bunch of assholes who I haven't been near in over a dozen years!
"Hey, you all right?" Kendle asked. He had a hand half-outstretched, as if he wasn't sure whether it was safe or not. Or maybe it was that he didn't know if she'd take offense. She should give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Well, according to all this I'm more than all right," Julia joked weakly.
He let out the obligatory chuckle, then turned serious again. "No, seriously, are you all right? This is... interesting for us, but..."
"Thank you for asking, but I'll be fine," Julia said quickly. She was trying not to think about what all this meant right now.
"I think they're ready for you over there now," Kendle said, pointing at where Major Orlis, Doctor Nichols, and Zechs were talking in low voices. Julia was working very hard at *not* listening to what they were saying.
"Ready?" Julia asked wearily, directing her question at that group.
They broke off whatever they'd been saying and exchanged a few glances, then Orlis nodded. "If you'd just take a seat..." he requested, gesturing at the chair she'd sat in for the first eye test.
As Julia seated herself she asked, "What's this one?"
"Reaction speed," he replied. "This will be the last one today."
"Today?" Julia asked, alarmed. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could take. For some reason, sitting here with these polite people, doing these tests, was getting to her. A lot. She was almost having a physical reaction to this, and she couldn't remember why. Julia wasn't used to not being able to remember, well, anything, and the experience was putting her even more on edge.
It might not be that I can't remember, it might be that I don't want to. That was certainly a possibility - she knew enough about the way the mind worked to know that sometimes amnesia (that was the closest approximation for this situation that she could think of) was caused by a person repressing the memories. They couldn't figure out why the memories weren't there, until they did find them... and then wished they hadn't. I'll probably be joining that happy group soon enough. Julia knew herself well enough to know that she could not ignore a memory that she knew was there, and now, she knew enough to know that she probably wouldn't like what she found.
There was a slight pressure against her forehead, and suddenly Julia found herself standing, with the end of an electrode in her hand, a few strands of her hair hanging from the tape that had been used to attach it to her forehead. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably, and her breath was coming in ragged gasps. "What... what the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded hoarsely.
"Julia! What's wrong!" Sally asked, rushing over to her.
"What do you think you're doing to me?" Julia repeated angrily, throwing the electrode on the ground at her feet.
"Julia..." Sally said slowly, while making a slight motion with her hand. Out of the corner of her eye, Julia saw a man who'd been standing next to her slowly begin to back up. As he did so, Julia saw a number of electrodes in his hand, and recoiled away from them. A flash of a memory came back to her - a net of electrodes, just like these, and a shrill scream - she shook her head and it vanished.
She backed away from the man holding those... those things. It was always the same, those came first and then... she couldn't remember what came next, but she knew that she didn't want it. Another flash, looking up at a large face, a man with a hooked nose who always came with the net...
There was a touch on her shoulder and she spun, startling a woman who looked alarmed. A woman? She frowned. That wasn't right, there weren't any women here. That came after... After what? She couldn't remember. But there weren't any women... So who was this?
"Julia! Listen to the sound of my voice..."
That's me! I'm Julia, she scrambled desperately for some kind of mental foothold. She knew that her name was Julia, knew that she'd heard it before, knew that she *was* Julia, but she couldn't remember any specific incident where it had been so. It was true, wasn't it? She couldn't remember. They called her Two, that was her name. Who was Julia?
She felt hands on her shoulders and dropped down into a crouch, trying to avoid them. This was always how it started... first they moved her, then the net, then... "Please, not again," she whimpered to herself, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. "Please..." It never helped. No matter how much she or the other screamed, it always happened. There were big bodies crouching over her, blocking out the light. They were coming for her. She looked up and saw a large bald head... huge hands... She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see.
When she opened them, she was lying on a cold metal surface. The one with the large nose was standing over her... he'd just set her down. Now he reached for the net. She felt it settle around her head and at the same time felt the other's mental touch, trying to comfort her, but she knew what was coming. The one with the big nose came over again, removing a thin silver rod from his pocket, holding one end carefully. He made some noise, and one of the others responded. He reached towards her...
"Aaaaiiigh!" she let out a shrill scream and felt her body arch as pain exploded from her hand. She jerked it away from the source of the pain and heard voices again. A hand landed on her shoulder, trying to hold her down. She swung a hand at it, trying to get it to go away. Her fist connected with something, but then pain exploded from her other arm, and she screamed again.
It never helped. It always just went on and on and on...
---------
Duo tried to contain his impatience as their guide stopped at a checkpoint to make sure that their security clearance was still good. He obviously had no idea who they were, and Duo was about three seconds away from alleviating his ignorance, if it helped them get to wherever Julia was any faster.
They'd been sitting at home, worrying, when Katie called them to send their anxiety level through the roof. Her face was an unhealthy-looking grayish color, and she said that they had to get to Julia *now*. She said that Julia was about to be in a lot of trouble, and only the two of them could help her. That was all they'd heard before both of them were running out the door. Sally had called them from Preventer Headquarters to tell them where Julia was, and that she was keeping an eye on her.
By the time they got to Preventer Headquarters, Une had a guide waiting for them. And then that same guide insisted on stopping for a minute or more at every checkpoint between the gate and their destination. Heero's fists were already clenched, and Duo could tell from the expression on his husband's face that he was about five seconds away from knocking their guide unconscious and going the rest of the way by themselves, and to hell with the consequences. For that matter, he might help him.
Suddenly Duo's excellent hearing picked up a faint sound, and his heart stopped beating for several seconds. A shrill scream, sounding like terror and pain and helplessness and hopelessness and everything that Duo remembered from his childhood and the war, all rolled into one sound... Julia! He was running towards the source of the sound before he consciously made a decision, and Heero was matching him step-for-step.
He was dimly aware of shouting behind him, but there were no gunshots, so he disregarded the shouting as irrelevant.
They ran down a hall, turned a corner, made a quick left, and down another hall. Heero skidded to a stop in front of a door - to a hanger where training mobile suits usually parked, if Duo remembered correctly. "Here," Heero grunted, slamming his hand onto the panel that opened the door, hard enough to dent the metal slightly. The door seemed to creep open, and Duo squeezed through it the moment he could.
His trained eyes took in the scene in a quick glance. Zechs sprawled out on the floor, a man in a white coat crouched over him protectively. Sally stood nearby, one arm hanging limply with the other grasping it protectively. Two men stood behind her, staring in shock and horror at... Julia, who lay on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, her eyes wide open and unseeing.
As he watched, she let out another scream and her entire body spasmed, her fists slamming into the concrete underneath her and cracking it.
"Sally, what the hell is going on?!" Duo demanded at a shout as he sprinted across the space that separated him from his daughter. She stopped screaming, but lay on the floor, trembling and whimpering.
"I don't know!" Sally shouted back. "Watch out!" she shouted as he dropped to his knees and reached out to hold Julia. The second his hand touched her, she swung one of her fists at him. It wasn't the sort of directed punch he knew she was capable of, but with all of her uncontrolled strength behind it, it was enough to knock him back a few feet and to knock the wind out of him. "I think she's having some sort of flashback!" Sally told him. "She attacks anyone who touches her. She knocked Zechs unconscious, and I can't bring her out of it!" Fear and frustration made Sally sound very angry, but the terror and guilt on her face made it clear which emotion was responsible for her behavior.
"Shit... Heero..." before Duo could say any more, Heero moved forward. Moving as quickly as only he (or Julia) could, he ran up and lifted Julia into a sitting position, then trapped her arms against her by hugging her from behind. She immediately reacted to being trapped by letting out another scream, but Duo ignored it, crawling back to her side. He wrapped one arm around her chest and the other around Heero's back, being careful to avoid her kicking legs.
"Julia, honey, come on..." he said quietly. Julia jerked and one of her elbows slammed into Heero's midsection, and he let out a loud grunt. Wincing internally, Duo continued talking to her. It was the only way he knew of to bring someone out of a memory, and he'd never seen anyone trapped in a memory like this. "Julia, it's me, Daddy, everything's all right, you're fine, we're both here, me and Tousan, just look at me and it will be fine. You're here, and you're safe and we won't let anyone hurt you, do you hear me? We're here and we're not going anywhere, and you're safe, ok?"
Suddenly Julia jerked again and stopped struggling against Heero. She blinked several times and then focused - sort of - on Duo's face. "Don't hurt me?" she begged softly.
He quickly reassured her - several times - that he wasn't going to hurt her, that no one was going to hurt her, that she was safe here. After another minute, she struggled slightly against Heero's grip, and he released her.
She scooted a few feet away to sit on the floor, hugging her knees, regarding them warily. "Who are you?" she whispered, eyes flicking from one to the other. Duo felt his heart give a sudden lurch. "You're not one of them..." suddenly she broke off with a startled look, raising one hand to touch her own lips. "I'm talking... I'm talking?" She groaned and raised her hands to her face, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I can't... it's all jumbled up..."
She froze, and raised her eyes to them again. "Daddy? Tousan?"
"Yeah, honey, it's us," Duo repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time. He'd repeat it a million times if it helped her.
Without warning she lunged at him, and he braced himself for some sort of attack, but all she did was wrap both of her arms around his shoulders. He could feel her heart racing as she pressed up against him, and heard her breath coming in deep, shuddering, gasps. After a second she let go of him and grabbed for Heero, and Duo got a good look at her eyes. He didn't like what he saw - they were still wide open and unseeing, although she was blinking furiously now. "You're real," she breathed, then abruptly switched her grasp back to Duo, squeezing him hard enough to make breathing difficult. "Thank God you're real."
"Of course we are, honey," Duo murmured, carefully embracing her, afraid of setting off another fit. "Can you tell us what happened?"
"I couldn't... I thought... everything was gone," she whimpered.
"Shh, it's ok, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want," he said soothingly. Heero slid over and placed a hand on her back. She stiffened when she felt it, then relaxed a little.
"I... I couldn't remember anything," she continued, and he wondered if she'd even heard him. "I was back there, with *them*, and it was like I was there, like that was reality and everything else was... gone. Like the last sixteen years hadn't even happened. I couldn't remember before... they hurt me, and they..." her voice started rising hysterically, and he hugged her harder. Her shaking had stopped, and her heartbeat finally stopped racing. "And I couldn't get out of it, I couldn't turn it off, I couldn't even remember that it was a memory, it felt so real..." Her arms tightened around him again, and he felt the bones in his arms grating against each other, and mentally winced. He'd have bruises there in the morning.
"And..." her voice became less lost, more contemplative, much more like her normal self. She actually released him enough to set back, still holding onto his shoulders, but now looking at his face. "They were doing it to train me!" her voice took on an outraged tone. "To see if they could get me to ignore pain!" She was now speaking through gritted teeth, and Duo felt his heart jump as she mentioned 'training'. He remembered his own training, in things exactly like what she described, but he'd been about to enter a situation where things like serious injuries and torture were to be expected. That they had done those things to Julia...
He wondered if it was possible to get at the scientists now. He knew that they were in a maximum security prison at a secure location, but he bet Heero could find it, if he set his mind to it...
Deep in the back of his mind, Duo felt the stirring of a part of him that he'd shut away after the last war, after Julia came to live with them. Shinigami had no business being around a small child, and he knew it. But for this he might be willing to resurrect him, just for a time. Maybe.
"You came?" Julia asked, distracting him from his dark thoughts.
"Katie called and said that you needed us," Duo told her. "I know you didn't want us around, but..." He broke off as she embraced him again.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I was angry..."
"It's allowed," he told her. "I just wish..." I wish that you hadn't had to go through this at all. I wish we didn't have to lie to you. I wish that none of this had been done to you. I wish that there hadn't been any war, ever. He swallowed and forced himself to give her a smile. "I just wish. We wanted you to be happy."
She swallowed and gave him a watery smile, then looked around and paled, her eyes flicking between the broken concrete at her feet and Zechs body a few feet away. "What did I do?" she asked, sounding alarmed. "Zechs?" she asked, springing to her feet.
"He'll be fine," said the man who was kneeling next to Zechs. "She just caught him in exactly the wrong spot. There's already a medic team on the way."
"Are you sure?" Julia asked shakily, getting to her feet and extending a hand to Duo. He took it, and was surprised when, without squeezing his hand at all, she easily lifted him to his feet. She'd never been able to do that before, exert her considerable strength in one set of muscles and not another. It bespoke a control that he hadn't seen in her before. He watched with a slight smile as she easily lifted Heero up and set him on his feet. It was a welcome change, and yet... My little girl's growing up, he thought, his lips curling upward at the thought. He was turning into a stereotypical father. Well, maybe not completely stereotypical. Had to happen sometime.
"He'll be fine."
"Sally?"
"I'll be fine," Sally assured her, turning her body slightly so Julia wouldn't see her arm.
Julia's eyes narrowed slightly. "Your arm..." She swallowed. "I broke it, didn't I?"
Sally smiled wryly. "I will be fine," she insisted.
"I'm sorry."
"It's all right," Sally repeated, as the medical team arrived on-site, accompanied by their very-annoyed guide and a full security team. Heero glared at that, and headed over to the door to intercept the security team before they could upset Julia more.
"What were you doing here, anyway?" Duo asked as the med team began the necessary process of examining Zechs and Sally. Julia did not need to be thinking too much about what she'd done while she was... out of it. Besides, he was curious. There was an odd mixture of equipment here, stuff ranging from basic stuff used to check out the eyes of pilots to stuff used to test the scopes on long-distance rifles, and even a few large panels that were used to check out the hydraulics on mobile suits. Basically the suits pressed on the panels until they started shedding important springs and coils, to test how much stress you could put on them in battle conditions. But what were they doing here, and what did they have to do with Julia?
"I... ah... wanted to see what, exactly, I could do," Julia said, not taking her eyes off of the medic team. He had no doubt that she was paying quite a bit of attention to every word that they said, and probably heard everything the security people were saying, as well. So much for trying to distract her. He should have known better, by now.
There was also something odd in her eyes whenever she glanced at the security team, something hard and calculating. He'd seen that expression in Heero's eyes every day during the war, and he still caught him at it from time to time nowadays, when his training overtook conscious thought. But what was that doing in Julia's eyes? There'd obviously been more changes in the last few days than just getting more control over her skills. He wanted to know all of it.
"Tell me about it."
OK, the end is in sight! One more section ought to finish this story off, but I'm already working on a short companion/follow-up from Katie's perspective, and I have some ideas for a sequel to this, if there's interest.
Sorry this section took so long to get out. There were a lot of things that had to get in there, and some things that I wasn't sure how I was going to handle until I actually was writing it (Julia's episode, most notably), which slowed down the process, since I like knowing where I'm going. Real life has also been fairly busy, but I'm slowly finding a balance for everything.
I had some real issues figuring out how strong, exactly, Julia is, especially since the stats that are available about Gundams and mobile suits don't translate real well in terms of potential force and mass calculations. Easy enough to say that she can pick up a car, but how much force is that exactly, and how strong in comparison to a MS? So anyway, more complications. Same for the pseudo-science I used in describing her eyes. Hope that it worked out ok.
Anyway, this is pretty much the end of the story. The next section will be more of an epilogue, hopefully tie up some ends (but not too many! :)), and try to clarify some points that I wanted to make. Hope that everyone's enjoyed it so far!
Marika
"Julia, these are Majors Kendle and Orlis, they're both here to keep an eye on this equipment," Sally gestured around the room at the variety of machines lining the walls. Some of them looked vaguely familiar to Julia, but she couldn't remember from where, which made her even more uneasy. "And this is Dr. Nichols," she said, gesturing to the final man. "He's here to provide me with a second opinion."
"On what?" Julia asked.
"On whether or not she's pushing you too hard," Nichols replied after a glance at Sally. "Sometimes an outside observer can see things that people too close miss."
Julia felt an instant's resentment flare up at being referred to like she was some sort of experiment, with a control group and an experimental group, but she pushed it aside. They did have her best interests in mind, and, after all, that was what she was, really. Someone's experiment.
"He's also here to make sure I don't make an stupid mistakes," Sally added with a slight smile, obviously noticing Julia's unease and trying to alleviate it. It didn't work.
"Good," Julia said shortly. She noticed Sally glance at Zechs, who frowned slightly and gave a brief shake of his head, then rolled his eyes towards Julia. Julia frowned. You'd think they'd realize talking like that was rude, especially around her. "I found out some stuff that I'm not especially happy with, but I'm beginning to get used to the sensation," she snapped, glaring at both of them. "What are we doing first?"
That was probably not the most graceful of invitations Sally had ever gotten, but at least she was smart enough not to push any further. "Here," she said, gesturing to a chair with a large screen situated about 8 meters in front of it. Julia sat, hoping that she didn't look as nervous as she felt. This was ridiculous, she'd done this dozens of times before! It was just like a regular checkup...
Julia caught a glimpse of the second doctor standing waiting, one of the engineers manning some computer equipment, and the second standing a few feet away, talking to Zechs. She resisted the urge to snort. Yeah, just like a regular checkup.
"We're just going to check your eyes," Sally told her. "To see how far you can see, and with how much accuracy. Kendle is going to be watching the contractions of your retina through a special camera. That's it. Is that all right?"
Julia nodded shortly. "One eye and then the other?"
"That's right." Sally handed her a short stick with a disc at the end to cover her eye. Julia placed it over her left eye and looked at the screen in front of her. Several lines of letters in different sizes appeared. She read them. More letters, smaller this time, appeared. She read them. The process repeated... two, three... five times before she couldn't read the letters any more. By then the second engineer had stopped talking to Zechs and was standing behind the first, looking over his shoulder at the screen that was displaying an image her eye.
"Is that..." one of them murmured.
"I think so. We'll have to see. But I can't imagine how..."
Sally glanced at them and they shut up. "The other eye, please," she requested, walking over to look at the screen.
Julia repeated the procedure, this time with her left eye. Now the second doctor was also staring at the screen, occasionally raising his eyes to look at her, then looking back at the screen.
When she repeated the procedure a third time with both eyes, it took nearly a dozen repetitions before the things got so small that she couldn't see them any more. Julia's temper was beginning to fray. This was taking forever, she was sick of the engineers and doctor trying to hide how surprised they were by what she could do, and she was getting a headache from trying to focus her eyes for things that small. She'd never tried to push her eyes that way before. In fact, she'd never tried to look at things so small that she couldn't see them, either.
"Julia..." Sally put a hand on her shoulder. Julia turned to look at her... and jumped back as she got an up-close view of every imperfection on one of Sally's hairs. She closed her eyes and rubbed at them, trying to get them to return to normal.
"Julia, are you all right?" Sally asked worriedly.
"I'm fine," Julia replied, shaking her head. "Just need a couple of seconds." She thought very hard about seeing things that were close up, and felt some of the tension in her eyes lessen. When she opened her eyes, everything was completely blurry for a second, then snapped into clarity. Julia blinked her eyes several times, glancing around the room to make sure everything was back to normal.
"Julia, are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine," she said a bit more sharply than she'd intended. She jumped out of the chair and started pacing back and forth, feeling an intense desire to prove that she *could* move around, that she wasn't stuck in the chair.
Looking at the slightly hurt expression on Sally's face, Julia tried to backtrack. "I... I mean... I'm sorry," she apologized. "What did you find?"
Sally nodded slightly in her direction, acknowledging the apology, then said, "Individually your eyes are approximately 80/20. Together, you're nearly 400/20."
Julia blinked. She'd known that her eyes would be strong, but that was ridiculous. "How... how is that possible? I mean, I'd expect it to be perfect or even a little better, but that's..." she cut herself off as she realized what she'd been about to say. That's not human.
Sally glanced at the man who'd been monitoring the console.
"I'm not entirely sure how, but at a guess I'd say that your eyes are acting something like telescopes. The way the muscles in your eyes work is strange as well. You seem to have a large amount of precision control over them. And, this is just a guess, but..." he came out from behind the consol and peered intently at her eyes. "I'd guess that they aren't quite shaped the way, say, mine are. There seems to be an extra layer of tissue there, to help you focus on things that are far away. And that makes your eyes a little more oblong than mine." He stared at her eyes for a second longer, then nodded as if to herself. "And I think they are."
Julia nodded. It all seemed to make sense, even if it was based on conjecture. Obviously these people were a lot more than just mechanics, the way Sally had suggested.
Then her aforementioned eyes narrowed. It hadn't sounded like he couldn't imagine how they'd made her, it had sounded like he couldn't understand how her eyes had gotten like this in the first place. Like he thought they were an accident of nature. "Did you tell them?" she demanded, rounding on Sally.
Sally had the good sense not to pretend she didn't know what Julia was talking about. "You reacted so strongly to other people knowing, that Une thought it would be best..."
"Not to tell the doctors I'm working with?" Julia asked disbelievingly. "And what were you going to tell them? It won't take them that many tests to realize that there's something seriously wrong with me."
"Your file is classified. They understand the need for such things."
"You mean *I'm* classified," Julia retorted.
"But only Preventer agents would know that," Zechs cut in.
"Julia stared at him blankly for a second before comprehension dawned. "And I, not being a Preventer, wouldn't know anything about it, would I?" she said slowly. She glanced at Sally to see if she was going to object to this obvious falsehood.
Sally was smiling.
Now Julia had just one problem - she had to explain the joke her life had become to a bunch of strangers. "I... am not a... normal human," she began, quickly sorting through what she would and wouldn't tell them. "I was designed. I didn't find this out until recently. I'm stronger, faster, and probably a bunch more 'ers' that I don't know about. That's what we're doing here - I wanted to know what I could do. The Preventers knew about me already, they took me from the people who... created me."
She saw one of the mechanics - Kendle - open his mouth, then slowly close it. "What? What did you want to ask me?" she asked warily.
"I... I just... how did you not know... your vision alone..."
"It was always like that for me," Julia told him. "I thought that it was that way for everyone." There was a moment of silence, then Julia asked, "So what's next, ears or toes?"
---------
Over the next several hours, they got a very good idea of what she could accomplish. She could easily hear a whisper (around thirty decibels) from a hundred meters away. She could run a hundred meters in just under ten seconds. Standing, she could lift almost a ton. When she threw all of her strength behind a punch or a kick at full speed, the force she exerted was considerably more than that. No wonder she'd knocked the door off its hinges. She *was* lucky that she hadn't plowed through the wall as well.
The people watching her had grown more quiet as the day wore on, aside from various comments about the machines they used to measure her abilities, or the occasional comment on how her body could have been adapted this way or that. The farther along the tests got, the more nervous the watchers got. Not that she blamed them, the results were pretty frightening to her, too. Finally, after watching the force readings when she tried punching with all of her strength, one of them muttered, "She probably shouldn't go against a mobile suit, but she might just survive."
Could I? The thought sounded preposterous, but... If I had a good idea where the lines for the hydraulics were located in the legs, I might be able to punch through the plating and rip them out. That would slow them down, give me at least a fighting chance. Then I could... she stopped herself as she realized what she was doing. She grimaced and fought the urge to bang her hand against her head. Stop it! she commanded herself. I will not let this get to me. I am not going to be controlled by a bunch of assholes who I haven't been near in over a dozen years!
"Hey, you all right?" Kendle asked. He had a hand half-outstretched, as if he wasn't sure whether it was safe or not. Or maybe it was that he didn't know if she'd take offense. She should give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Well, according to all this I'm more than all right," Julia joked weakly.
He let out the obligatory chuckle, then turned serious again. "No, seriously, are you all right? This is... interesting for us, but..."
"Thank you for asking, but I'll be fine," Julia said quickly. She was trying not to think about what all this meant right now.
"I think they're ready for you over there now," Kendle said, pointing at where Major Orlis, Doctor Nichols, and Zechs were talking in low voices. Julia was working very hard at *not* listening to what they were saying.
"Ready?" Julia asked wearily, directing her question at that group.
They broke off whatever they'd been saying and exchanged a few glances, then Orlis nodded. "If you'd just take a seat..." he requested, gesturing at the chair she'd sat in for the first eye test.
As Julia seated herself she asked, "What's this one?"
"Reaction speed," he replied. "This will be the last one today."
"Today?" Julia asked, alarmed. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could take. For some reason, sitting here with these polite people, doing these tests, was getting to her. A lot. She was almost having a physical reaction to this, and she couldn't remember why. Julia wasn't used to not being able to remember, well, anything, and the experience was putting her even more on edge.
It might not be that I can't remember, it might be that I don't want to. That was certainly a possibility - she knew enough about the way the mind worked to know that sometimes amnesia (that was the closest approximation for this situation that she could think of) was caused by a person repressing the memories. They couldn't figure out why the memories weren't there, until they did find them... and then wished they hadn't. I'll probably be joining that happy group soon enough. Julia knew herself well enough to know that she could not ignore a memory that she knew was there, and now, she knew enough to know that she probably wouldn't like what she found.
There was a slight pressure against her forehead, and suddenly Julia found herself standing, with the end of an electrode in her hand, a few strands of her hair hanging from the tape that had been used to attach it to her forehead. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably, and her breath was coming in ragged gasps. "What... what the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded hoarsely.
"Julia! What's wrong!" Sally asked, rushing over to her.
"What do you think you're doing to me?" Julia repeated angrily, throwing the electrode on the ground at her feet.
"Julia..." Sally said slowly, while making a slight motion with her hand. Out of the corner of her eye, Julia saw a man who'd been standing next to her slowly begin to back up. As he did so, Julia saw a number of electrodes in his hand, and recoiled away from them. A flash of a memory came back to her - a net of electrodes, just like these, and a shrill scream - she shook her head and it vanished.
She backed away from the man holding those... those things. It was always the same, those came first and then... she couldn't remember what came next, but she knew that she didn't want it. Another flash, looking up at a large face, a man with a hooked nose who always came with the net...
There was a touch on her shoulder and she spun, startling a woman who looked alarmed. A woman? She frowned. That wasn't right, there weren't any women here. That came after... After what? She couldn't remember. But there weren't any women... So who was this?
"Julia! Listen to the sound of my voice..."
That's me! I'm Julia, she scrambled desperately for some kind of mental foothold. She knew that her name was Julia, knew that she'd heard it before, knew that she *was* Julia, but she couldn't remember any specific incident where it had been so. It was true, wasn't it? She couldn't remember. They called her Two, that was her name. Who was Julia?
She felt hands on her shoulders and dropped down into a crouch, trying to avoid them. This was always how it started... first they moved her, then the net, then... "Please, not again," she whimpered to herself, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. "Please..." It never helped. No matter how much she or the other screamed, it always happened. There were big bodies crouching over her, blocking out the light. They were coming for her. She looked up and saw a large bald head... huge hands... She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see.
When she opened them, she was lying on a cold metal surface. The one with the large nose was standing over her... he'd just set her down. Now he reached for the net. She felt it settle around her head and at the same time felt the other's mental touch, trying to comfort her, but she knew what was coming. The one with the big nose came over again, removing a thin silver rod from his pocket, holding one end carefully. He made some noise, and one of the others responded. He reached towards her...
"Aaaaiiigh!" she let out a shrill scream and felt her body arch as pain exploded from her hand. She jerked it away from the source of the pain and heard voices again. A hand landed on her shoulder, trying to hold her down. She swung a hand at it, trying to get it to go away. Her fist connected with something, but then pain exploded from her other arm, and she screamed again.
It never helped. It always just went on and on and on...
---------
Duo tried to contain his impatience as their guide stopped at a checkpoint to make sure that their security clearance was still good. He obviously had no idea who they were, and Duo was about three seconds away from alleviating his ignorance, if it helped them get to wherever Julia was any faster.
They'd been sitting at home, worrying, when Katie called them to send their anxiety level through the roof. Her face was an unhealthy-looking grayish color, and she said that they had to get to Julia *now*. She said that Julia was about to be in a lot of trouble, and only the two of them could help her. That was all they'd heard before both of them were running out the door. Sally had called them from Preventer Headquarters to tell them where Julia was, and that she was keeping an eye on her.
By the time they got to Preventer Headquarters, Une had a guide waiting for them. And then that same guide insisted on stopping for a minute or more at every checkpoint between the gate and their destination. Heero's fists were already clenched, and Duo could tell from the expression on his husband's face that he was about five seconds away from knocking their guide unconscious and going the rest of the way by themselves, and to hell with the consequences. For that matter, he might help him.
Suddenly Duo's excellent hearing picked up a faint sound, and his heart stopped beating for several seconds. A shrill scream, sounding like terror and pain and helplessness and hopelessness and everything that Duo remembered from his childhood and the war, all rolled into one sound... Julia! He was running towards the source of the sound before he consciously made a decision, and Heero was matching him step-for-step.
He was dimly aware of shouting behind him, but there were no gunshots, so he disregarded the shouting as irrelevant.
They ran down a hall, turned a corner, made a quick left, and down another hall. Heero skidded to a stop in front of a door - to a hanger where training mobile suits usually parked, if Duo remembered correctly. "Here," Heero grunted, slamming his hand onto the panel that opened the door, hard enough to dent the metal slightly. The door seemed to creep open, and Duo squeezed through it the moment he could.
His trained eyes took in the scene in a quick glance. Zechs sprawled out on the floor, a man in a white coat crouched over him protectively. Sally stood nearby, one arm hanging limply with the other grasping it protectively. Two men stood behind her, staring in shock and horror at... Julia, who lay on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, her eyes wide open and unseeing.
As he watched, she let out another scream and her entire body spasmed, her fists slamming into the concrete underneath her and cracking it.
"Sally, what the hell is going on?!" Duo demanded at a shout as he sprinted across the space that separated him from his daughter. She stopped screaming, but lay on the floor, trembling and whimpering.
"I don't know!" Sally shouted back. "Watch out!" she shouted as he dropped to his knees and reached out to hold Julia. The second his hand touched her, she swung one of her fists at him. It wasn't the sort of directed punch he knew she was capable of, but with all of her uncontrolled strength behind it, it was enough to knock him back a few feet and to knock the wind out of him. "I think she's having some sort of flashback!" Sally told him. "She attacks anyone who touches her. She knocked Zechs unconscious, and I can't bring her out of it!" Fear and frustration made Sally sound very angry, but the terror and guilt on her face made it clear which emotion was responsible for her behavior.
"Shit... Heero..." before Duo could say any more, Heero moved forward. Moving as quickly as only he (or Julia) could, he ran up and lifted Julia into a sitting position, then trapped her arms against her by hugging her from behind. She immediately reacted to being trapped by letting out another scream, but Duo ignored it, crawling back to her side. He wrapped one arm around her chest and the other around Heero's back, being careful to avoid her kicking legs.
"Julia, honey, come on..." he said quietly. Julia jerked and one of her elbows slammed into Heero's midsection, and he let out a loud grunt. Wincing internally, Duo continued talking to her. It was the only way he knew of to bring someone out of a memory, and he'd never seen anyone trapped in a memory like this. "Julia, it's me, Daddy, everything's all right, you're fine, we're both here, me and Tousan, just look at me and it will be fine. You're here, and you're safe and we won't let anyone hurt you, do you hear me? We're here and we're not going anywhere, and you're safe, ok?"
Suddenly Julia jerked again and stopped struggling against Heero. She blinked several times and then focused - sort of - on Duo's face. "Don't hurt me?" she begged softly.
He quickly reassured her - several times - that he wasn't going to hurt her, that no one was going to hurt her, that she was safe here. After another minute, she struggled slightly against Heero's grip, and he released her.
She scooted a few feet away to sit on the floor, hugging her knees, regarding them warily. "Who are you?" she whispered, eyes flicking from one to the other. Duo felt his heart give a sudden lurch. "You're not one of them..." suddenly she broke off with a startled look, raising one hand to touch her own lips. "I'm talking... I'm talking?" She groaned and raised her hands to her face, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I can't... it's all jumbled up..."
She froze, and raised her eyes to them again. "Daddy? Tousan?"
"Yeah, honey, it's us," Duo repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time. He'd repeat it a million times if it helped her.
Without warning she lunged at him, and he braced himself for some sort of attack, but all she did was wrap both of her arms around his shoulders. He could feel her heart racing as she pressed up against him, and heard her breath coming in deep, shuddering, gasps. After a second she let go of him and grabbed for Heero, and Duo got a good look at her eyes. He didn't like what he saw - they were still wide open and unseeing, although she was blinking furiously now. "You're real," she breathed, then abruptly switched her grasp back to Duo, squeezing him hard enough to make breathing difficult. "Thank God you're real."
"Of course we are, honey," Duo murmured, carefully embracing her, afraid of setting off another fit. "Can you tell us what happened?"
"I couldn't... I thought... everything was gone," she whimpered.
"Shh, it's ok, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want," he said soothingly. Heero slid over and placed a hand on her back. She stiffened when she felt it, then relaxed a little.
"I... I couldn't remember anything," she continued, and he wondered if she'd even heard him. "I was back there, with *them*, and it was like I was there, like that was reality and everything else was... gone. Like the last sixteen years hadn't even happened. I couldn't remember before... they hurt me, and they..." her voice started rising hysterically, and he hugged her harder. Her shaking had stopped, and her heartbeat finally stopped racing. "And I couldn't get out of it, I couldn't turn it off, I couldn't even remember that it was a memory, it felt so real..." Her arms tightened around him again, and he felt the bones in his arms grating against each other, and mentally winced. He'd have bruises there in the morning.
"And..." her voice became less lost, more contemplative, much more like her normal self. She actually released him enough to set back, still holding onto his shoulders, but now looking at his face. "They were doing it to train me!" her voice took on an outraged tone. "To see if they could get me to ignore pain!" She was now speaking through gritted teeth, and Duo felt his heart jump as she mentioned 'training'. He remembered his own training, in things exactly like what she described, but he'd been about to enter a situation where things like serious injuries and torture were to be expected. That they had done those things to Julia...
He wondered if it was possible to get at the scientists now. He knew that they were in a maximum security prison at a secure location, but he bet Heero could find it, if he set his mind to it...
Deep in the back of his mind, Duo felt the stirring of a part of him that he'd shut away after the last war, after Julia came to live with them. Shinigami had no business being around a small child, and he knew it. But for this he might be willing to resurrect him, just for a time. Maybe.
"You came?" Julia asked, distracting him from his dark thoughts.
"Katie called and said that you needed us," Duo told her. "I know you didn't want us around, but..." He broke off as she embraced him again.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I was angry..."
"It's allowed," he told her. "I just wish..." I wish that you hadn't had to go through this at all. I wish we didn't have to lie to you. I wish that none of this had been done to you. I wish that there hadn't been any war, ever. He swallowed and forced himself to give her a smile. "I just wish. We wanted you to be happy."
She swallowed and gave him a watery smile, then looked around and paled, her eyes flicking between the broken concrete at her feet and Zechs body a few feet away. "What did I do?" she asked, sounding alarmed. "Zechs?" she asked, springing to her feet.
"He'll be fine," said the man who was kneeling next to Zechs. "She just caught him in exactly the wrong spot. There's already a medic team on the way."
"Are you sure?" Julia asked shakily, getting to her feet and extending a hand to Duo. He took it, and was surprised when, without squeezing his hand at all, she easily lifted him to his feet. She'd never been able to do that before, exert her considerable strength in one set of muscles and not another. It bespoke a control that he hadn't seen in her before. He watched with a slight smile as she easily lifted Heero up and set him on his feet. It was a welcome change, and yet... My little girl's growing up, he thought, his lips curling upward at the thought. He was turning into a stereotypical father. Well, maybe not completely stereotypical. Had to happen sometime.
"He'll be fine."
"Sally?"
"I'll be fine," Sally assured her, turning her body slightly so Julia wouldn't see her arm.
Julia's eyes narrowed slightly. "Your arm..." She swallowed. "I broke it, didn't I?"
Sally smiled wryly. "I will be fine," she insisted.
"I'm sorry."
"It's all right," Sally repeated, as the medical team arrived on-site, accompanied by their very-annoyed guide and a full security team. Heero glared at that, and headed over to the door to intercept the security team before they could upset Julia more.
"What were you doing here, anyway?" Duo asked as the med team began the necessary process of examining Zechs and Sally. Julia did not need to be thinking too much about what she'd done while she was... out of it. Besides, he was curious. There was an odd mixture of equipment here, stuff ranging from basic stuff used to check out the eyes of pilots to stuff used to test the scopes on long-distance rifles, and even a few large panels that were used to check out the hydraulics on mobile suits. Basically the suits pressed on the panels until they started shedding important springs and coils, to test how much stress you could put on them in battle conditions. But what were they doing here, and what did they have to do with Julia?
"I... ah... wanted to see what, exactly, I could do," Julia said, not taking her eyes off of the medic team. He had no doubt that she was paying quite a bit of attention to every word that they said, and probably heard everything the security people were saying, as well. So much for trying to distract her. He should have known better, by now.
There was also something odd in her eyes whenever she glanced at the security team, something hard and calculating. He'd seen that expression in Heero's eyes every day during the war, and he still caught him at it from time to time nowadays, when his training overtook conscious thought. But what was that doing in Julia's eyes? There'd obviously been more changes in the last few days than just getting more control over her skills. He wanted to know all of it.
"Tell me about it."
OK, the end is in sight! One more section ought to finish this story off, but I'm already working on a short companion/follow-up from Katie's perspective, and I have some ideas for a sequel to this, if there's interest.
Sorry this section took so long to get out. There were a lot of things that had to get in there, and some things that I wasn't sure how I was going to handle until I actually was writing it (Julia's episode, most notably), which slowed down the process, since I like knowing where I'm going. Real life has also been fairly busy, but I'm slowly finding a balance for everything.
I had some real issues figuring out how strong, exactly, Julia is, especially since the stats that are available about Gundams and mobile suits don't translate real well in terms of potential force and mass calculations. Easy enough to say that she can pick up a car, but how much force is that exactly, and how strong in comparison to a MS? So anyway, more complications. Same for the pseudo-science I used in describing her eyes. Hope that it worked out ok.
Anyway, this is pretty much the end of the story. The next section will be more of an epilogue, hopefully tie up some ends (but not too many! :)), and try to clarify some points that I wanted to make. Hope that everyone's enjoyed it so far!
Marika