It's been a while, hasn't it? meep...
Usual Disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not an anime producer. Hence, I don't own 'em. I'm just playing nicely with them for a bit.
Warnings: Yet More OCs; angst; slow updates; cliffhanger? (I didn't think so when I wrote it, but I've been told otherwise since)
Additional notes are at the end of the chapter.
Dedication: To Jefcat, for staging the hunger strike on the 4x1-1x4ml, and sticking with me through two fandoms. I hope it was worth the wait.
Chapter 5
Bright and early, Heero arrived at the site at 7 AM promptly the following morning, determined to schedule an interview with Senior Automation Engineer Robinson before another emergency pulled her away from her job. A cursory search of the grounds found her in the former Process Engineering Laboratory, directing the recovery of one of the modified mobile suits.
"Good morning, Heero!" Maureen waved to him from across the room as he entered. "Grab a hard hat and some safety glasses. There should be some spares to your left." Heero complied, donning a lab coat at the same time, to protect his uniform from the dust. Fully suited, he crossed the room and took his place at what he deemed a safe distance from the recovery efforts.
Maureen flashed him a quick smile before turning back to address her crew. "Hey everyone! Ten minute break while I chat with Preventer Yuy."
It was not until all of the operators had left the room that she turned back to regard Heero. "Sorry for the wait. I wanted to make sure they all got out of here safely before we talked." She frowned, her gaze flickering from Heero's face to trail the destruction of the room around them. "No matter how many times Ted reassures me, I'm still going to worry about my crew."
"Ted?"
"Oh, sorry. Ted Wilson, the Assistant Safety Engineer. Have you met him?"
Thinking back to the multitude of names and faces Maeda had introduced to him within his first hour on-site, Heero was fairly certain he placed the person correctly. "Theodore Wilson." The image of a balding man in his late thirties came to his mind. "He works for the civil engineering firm Isomer hired to assist with the plant scale-up."
Maureen nodded. "He's our safety guy around here. Ever since the accident, he's been working sixteen-hour days, helping to get things running, and trying to keep people like Glenn and myself from doing our jobs," she grinned.
Heero made a mental note to schedule an interview with Wilson as soon as possible. "Is he the primary representative from his company?"
"No. That would be Ted's boss, Jim Dornowski. He'd be the person to talk to if you have any questions about safety regulations. He spends most of his time at the new site across town, so if you want to talk to him you'd probably be best off driving over there and asking for an interview in person." She smiled, a mischievous light in her eyes. "Don't be afraid to abuse your status as a Preventer to get an immediate interview. I'm told he's very hard to get a hold of. I've even heard rumors," she deadpanned, "that he works more hours in a week than our very own Jason Yoest," she finished with a wink.
Heero started, reflexively schooling the surprise from his features. Why did he find the idea so surprising? Quatre had always been a hard worker; he had proven himself more than capable of taking over Winner Enterprises, even at the age of fifteen. Not once during the time he had known him had Quatre voiced a single complaint about the burden he was expected to assume when the war was over.
But that's it, isn't it? he realized with sudden clarity. When his initial search efforts failed, Heero had bought into the popular assumption that Quatre disappeared because he had not wanted the responsibility thrust upon him as CEO of Winner Enterprises. That there was more to it, that his voluntary disappearance was related to something other than the burden of the family business...
Unbidden, Quatre's own words returned to the forefront of his mind: "Maybe... maybe I've always been empty inside.
Heero had never even considered the possibility.
Picking up on the thread of conversation from early, Heero decided to turn it around to his interest. "Speaking of which, where is Mr. Yoest today?"
"Jason? I haven't seen him yet today. I expect he's working on the project I left him with yesterday." Maureen furrowed her brows, a thoughtful look on her face. "Have you gotten a chance to talk to him yet?"
"Yes." Heero considered his response carefully. "But given his role in the incident, I will require a more extensive, formal interview."
Maureen's laughter surprised him. "He got you, didn't he?" she asked with obvious mirth.
Heero looked at her in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"
Maureen grinned. "Jason. He's just like that. If he doesn't want to tell you something, he'll find some way to get around it. It frustrates Glenn to no end; sometimes I wonder if he does it on purpose to drive him crazy." Her smile dropped off suddenly, her previous mirth forgotten. "But in all seriousness, I'm sure you'll have no problem talking to him once he knows it's for the good of the investigation."
If only I had the same confidence as you. Heero nodded simply in response. He would tackle the Jason Yoest interview later; first, he needed to schedule a much more important one. "But on that topic," he responded, "I missed the opportunity to interview you yesterday afternoon." He paused and looked around the room, noting the state of disorder. "When would be a good time to take a statement?"
"Thirteen hundred." The answer was spoken firmly without a trace of hesitation. Heero pulled out his datapad and made a note of the time. "I'll be busy most of the morning getting this monster," she gestured at the still half-buried mobile suit, "out of the rubble and into the clear, so that we can get Jason to do a damage assessment on it."
Heero had opened his mouth to ask another question when a shout from across the room cut him off. "Hey Maureen!"
Two heads turned to follow the voice. An operator Heero did not recognize poked his head into the lab.
"What is it, Scott?"
The young operator stepped into the lab and cleared his throat self-consciously. "Umm, I'm sorry to interrupt. Glenn sent me to ask you for an estimate of when you expect to be done."
Heero watched with interest as Maureen made a show out of inspecting the room. Once an appropriate amount of time for mental calculation passed, she looked back to the operator and gave him a weak smile. "Tell him fourteen hundred."
Heero's protest was cut short by a quick smile and surreptitious wink.
Scott, however, seemed pleased enough with the answer. He smiled nervously and bowed his head. "I'll let him know. Thank you!" The operator disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared, running down the hallway in apparent haste.
Maureen sighed and shook her head, brushing the dust off of her hands onto her very dirty lab coat. "That should keep Glenn off of our backs for a bit. Otherwise," she arched an eyebrow at Heero, "you'll never get that interview."
Heero was puzzled by her deception. "Why didn't you just ask him directly?"
"Oh, I will, don't worry." Maureen was completely unflustered by his response. "It's just easier this way - less bureaucracy, with the same results. You know, cardinal rule of engineering: 'It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.'" She shook her head. "I'll tell him before I leave work today. I just don't feel like sending the message through a middleman, and I don't have the time to hunt him down now."
Heero nodded, finally satisfied with her answer. Privately, he reserved doubt that the recovery would be completed by fourteen hundred hours, much less thirteen hundred, but left it to the expertise of the Senior Automation Engineer to determine the time. He would be there at thirteen hundred for the interview, regardless.
Taking notice of the operators trickling back into the room, Heero turned to Robinson. "I will see you at thirteen hundred, then."
Maureen gave him another smile. Upon reflection, Heero could not recall the last time he had met someone who smiled so much. "Yes. You'll find me here, come hell or high water. I'll work through lunch if I have to."
Heero nodded, interpreting her words as a dismissal. He walked carefully across the lab and removed the lab coat, hard hat, and safety glasses at the door. The day was still young, and it would be another six hours before he could interview Robinson. Heero decided to check in with Okazaki and see if the man could put him in contact with Wilson for an interview.
Finding Glenn, however, proved to be an unusually difficult task. After a quarter hour of unfruitful searching, Heero conceded defeat and approached Maeda instead.
"Glenn?" The president seemed distracted as he answered him. "He's on an off-site assignment for the rest of the day. Do you have his number?"
Off-site assignment? Heero puzzled over Bruce's cryptic response. "Yes," he replied guardedly. "But I was hoping to speak with him regarding the case."
The words seemed to have a dousing effect on Maeda. A pair of tired brown eyes shifted quickly to focus on him; Heero privately wondered when Bruce had last slept. "My apologies. I was not thinking clearly." Maeda removed his glasses from his face and absently wiped them in his jacket. "All of my staff is available for questioning as you need them." He paused, a thoughtful look crossing his brow. "Actually, come to think of it, he should be back some time this afternoon. If it's urgent, I can contact him and delay the assignment."
Heero held a hand up. "No need. I have others I need to speak with first. Though," recalling his initial intention in searching out Okazaki, "perhaps you could put me in contact with Theodore Wilson?"
A well-practiced flip of the wrist brought a two-way radio into Maeda's right hand. "Ted? This is Bruce Maeda. Do you read me?"
Static crackled over the open channel momentarily before a response came though. "This is Ted Wilson. What do you need, Bruce?"
"Preventer Yuy needs to speak with you," he paused just long enough to get a confirming nod from Heero, "concerning the accident. What's your availability today?"
"Give me twenty minutes to finish up over here, and another five to clear my schedule with Jim. I'll meet Mister Yuy in the break tent at 800. Will that do?"
Maeda looked at Heero. "That will suffice." Maeda nodded and relayed Heero's confirmation to Wilson before signing off. "Is there anything else you need, Mister Yuy?"
Heero took a moment to consider his afternoon schedule. Outside of the hour allotted for Robinson's interview and statement, he had nothing planned. "I would like to begin reviewing the Vidbot footage in detail this afternoon. Can it be made available by 1400?"
"Certainly. I'll get someone onto it right away, and let you know when it's ready." Maeda jotted a few notes into his personal organizer, which had taken the place of the two-way radio in his hand. "Anything else?"
"That is all for now. Thank you." Heero bowed his head quickly and started walking in the direction of the break tent. He had another half hour left to kill before his scheduled meeting with Wilson, and decided now would be a good time to check in on the recovery efforts around the site, to give him a better idea of the sort of work Wilson had been doing for the past couple of days.
A detour to the former office building gave him some insight into the difference that even twelve hours made on structural reinforcement. Despite the knowledge that crews had been working around the clock reinforcing damaged supports and digging out critical labs, it was still a shock to him to find rooms that had been taped off at 5 PM the previous day already re-opened and in the process of damage cataloguing.
He had only taken two steps into the former Quality Control laboratory before all eyes turned from the task at hand to focus on Heero. Unfazed by the attention, he stood his ground, slowly turning his head to take in the extent of the damage and matching it against his memory of the room the previous day.
Though the floor was still littered with shards of broken glass, a path had been cleared through the major walkways to each of the lab benches and fume hoods. A whole quarter of the lab remained taped off, where three technicians in full SCUBA gear worked to clean up a chemical spill in a malfunctioning fume hood. He assumed that the rest of the fume hoods had been similarly taken care of before the workers had been allowed back into the lab; still, he noted that all of the technicians were wearing lab coats and gloves as a precautionary measure.
To his immediate right, a small stack of lab notebooks occupied the corner of a cleared bench. Those notebooks, he realized, were probably the most valuable items in room - more valuable than any of the expensive chemical analysis equipment, the notebooks held months of experimental data and probably at least a few company secrets. Heero wondered belatedly if perhaps the notebooks should have been transferred to a more secure location.
His reverie was broken by the crunch of glass under heavy boots, an early warning of the person approaching him from behind. As if freed from a trance, the workers started as one and went back to their previous tasks. Heero turned in place to face a frowning dark-complexioned woman in her late forties. "Can I help you?" a gravelly voice enquired.
Heero's hand moved automatically to the inside pocket of his jacket. "Preventer Heero Yuy," he introduced himself, handing his badge to the woman for inspection. Pulling it close to her face, she squinted at the picture a moment before passing it back to him.
"Laura Davis, Quality Control Manager." Her frown dropped away, replaced by a small, ironic smile. "I'd welcome you in, but as you can see, my place isn't in any condition for visitors right now. Do you need anything in particular?"
Heero shook his head. "I was on my way to meet with Theodore Wilson, and I was checking in on the recovery efforts along the way." He made a quick visual sweep of the room once again, committing the image to memory. "When do you expect to be functional again?"
Davis shrugged on a lab coat and pulled a pair of nitrile gloves over her hands. "A couple of days, a couple of months." She gestured expansively to the room around her. "What difference does it make, if I don't have product to test?" Bitterness undercut her tone sharply. "We'll be functional in another two days, once the replacement GC column gets in, and we've catalogued and cleaned this mess up. Until then, any chemical analyses you need done will have to be sent off-site. Is that sufficient?"
It was in fact better than he expected, after having his first glimpse of the lab the previous day. He nodded. "Yes, it is. I will inform you if I require your assistance. Thank you." A curt nod, and he was dismissed. Heero stepped past the woman, back out into the immediately adjoining room.
The sudden strange familiarity of the room jolted him; a half-minute of hard thinking later, and Heero realized the reason for it. It was the same room he had encountered Quatre in the day previous.
Or should I say, Jason, he thought with no small amount of rue. The mystery of Quatre Raberba Winner's whereabouts, finally solved, was only now replaced by Quatre's own baffling reasons behind it.
Two and a half years, half a dozen promising leads, countless personal interviews - all of it wasted effort, fruitless searching, but Heero could not help but feel that it had accomplished something. Peace of mind; the knowledge that he had researched every avenue open to him.
In the end, the means made no difference - he had found him, albeit it through possibly the strangest set of circumstances imaginable. He had to be thankful for that much.
Even if Quatre stubbornly refused to acknowledge their shared past.
Giving the room a final cursory glance, Heero dismissed the musings for the moment, refocusing his mind on his objective for the day. His goal was to have at least one realistic hypothesis for the accident by the end of the day, and taking into account the schedule he had set for himself, that goal was not an entirely unrealistic one.
The bright early artificial morning sunshine glared off of broken mirrored windows, making Heero avert his eyes and hurry toward the break tent. Once inside, he made his way over to the beverage station, passing up the coffee (he refused to make the same mistake twice!) in favor of a cup of Earl Grey tea. Someone had thoughtfully put a bowl of fruit in place of the donut box on one of the tables, making Heero's choice of seating simple.
07:49... Six minutes to eat his breakfast before he entered into Wilson's arrival window. Biting into the pear from the fruit bowl, he pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and checked his voicemail. There was only one message: Chang, communicating Une's approval of Maxwell's involvement with the case.
Heero carefully tucked the phone back into his jacket and took one final bite of the pear just as a flash of sunlight in his peripheral vision caught his attention. Turning in his seat, he was greeted with the ruddy-faced, slightly rotund visage of the Assistant Safety Engineer.
"Ted Wilson, Alexandria Engineering," the man said by way of greeting, thrusting his hand forward. Heero rose from his seat to grasp the proffered hand.
"Preventer Heero Yuy."
"Nice to meet you, Mister Yuy." Wilson released Heero's hand. He turned in the direction of the beverage station. "8 AM and I'm already beat. I'm going to grab a cup of joe before we get started. Can I get you anything? Cup of coffee?"
"No thank you," he averred quickly, perhaps a little too eagerly. Wilson cocked an eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing as he fixed his own cup.
Returning to the table with his coffee in hand, Wilson took the seat opposite Yuy. "Well, you've got me for the next two hours, barring any unforeseen emergencies. Which might not be saying much, seeing as how things have been going the past couple of days," he added as an aside.
Heero's eyes turned to focus on the engineer. Deliberately making a show of pulling the data recorder from the inside pocket of his jacket, Heero's hard stare matched his cool tone, as he pressed the record button in full view of the man across from him. "Mister Wilson, please elaborate on your previous statement."
Wilson did not seem at all surprised or put-off by the Preventer's sudden change in tone. Straightening up in his seat, he was all business, any trace of previous joviality gone. "I want to clarify first, for the record, that the 'unforeseen emergencies' I speak of are not suspicious in nature." Heero nodded, silently prompting the other man to continue. "However, in the two days since the accident that occurred on this site at 07:57 AM August 26th A.C. 199, there have been a seven emergency incidents requiring immediate response by my team."
"Please detail the nature of the emergencies."
Wilson sipped his coffee. "Well, not counting the accident itself as one of them, there were four fires scattered around the site, still smoldering under wreckage that had just been uncovered." Heero remembered Okazaki saying something about the fires still burning his first night there. "They - the fires, that is - should have put themselves out by the end of the first day, so the workers wanted to avoid taking any chances by calling the experts in.
"I took some samples of the ash and sent it offsite for analysis to check on the chemical, but the fires themselves were easily contained. I should get the results sometime tomorrow, if you're interested."
Recalling Glenn's own reservations about the nitrogen controller, Heero was most certainly interested in the results. "Yes. Please inform me when you receive the results. I would like a copy of them for my files." Pausing a moment to sip his cooling tea, Heero pulled out his datapad and called up a map of the site. "Can you indicate on this map the location of the fires?"
Wilson leaned over the table to inspect the display. "Here, here, here, and there," he indicated each location with the pointer. "I've got them taped off for the time being, so that nobody wanders in and gets exposed to god-knows-what, but if you need access, or if you just want to take a look, let me know and I'll get you suited up so that you can go in. I don't want to take any chances until I get that analysis back from the lab."
Theodore Wilson, Heero decided, was the sort of man who took his job very seriously. He nodded his approval before moving onto the next topic. "What was the nature of the other three emergencies?"
"Well," Wilson constricted his brows together thoughtfully, "there was a shelf in the QC lab that collapsed last night around 2100. I don't know why they called me in for it; maybe to check to see if anything else in the room was due to fall apart from the stress." A wry smile quirked at the edges of Wilson's lips, betraying his hidden joke. He reached down and pulled a two-way radio out of his belt. Heero leaned over the table to inspect the digital display - a date/time log of all calls taken on the device.
"Ah..." Wilson handed the radio to the Preventer. Heero bit back a wince at the displayed time. "This one was an odor complaint, from the room next to the Process Engineering Lab. Because of the toluene scare, they gave me a call to check up on things." Wilson paused for a drink of his rapidly cooling coffee. "I guess technically it wasn't an emergency, but anything that gets me up and at the site at 3 A.M. tends to get logged that way when I fill out my timecard."
Heero frowned. "What did you determine the cause to be?"
Wilson waved his hand. "They were putting in additional supports in the Process Engineering Lab for the mobile suit recovery project. The smell was from the quick-drying solvent they were using." He shrugged. "Most solvents smell the same to the untrained nose, so they were probably right in calling me in. Though I do wish they'd checked next door first - you'd think the noise would have tipped them off."
"And the last?" Heero prompted.
Wilson frowned. "One of the plant operators collapsed outside of the office building in the evening of the 26th. He was admitted to the hospital overnight for medical attention."
Heero exhaled hard. Careful to keep his voice steady, he asked for the confirmation he knew he did not need. "Name?"
"Jason Yoest." Wilson eyed him thoughtfully from across the table. Heero quickly unclenched his fists, palms flat on the table to avoid further temptation. "I wasn't there for the incident itself, but I checked out the surrounding area once the med team took him away, for physical or chemical hazards." Wilson shrugged. "Nothing. And since his medical tests came back clean as well, I've written it up as 'severe exhaustion' on the report I submitted."
Though it concurred with test results he had looked over at the hospital, it did not make Heero feel any better about the incident. Something about Quatre's - Jason's, he reminded himself sharply - fainting spell still bothered him, and he had hoped the safety engineer's recounting would shed some light on it.
But instead, he was just as much in the dark as before, and would likely continue to be; it was highly unlikely that Jason would ever chose to volunteer the information.
Heero scrutinized his notes and jotted a few additional details into the datapad before returning his attention to the man across from him. "Was that everything concerning the emergencies?"
"Yes." Wilson returned the radio to his belt. "Anything else?"
Heero fingered the stop button on the data recorder a moment before depressing it. "That's everything for the record. But if you have some time right now, I would appreciate it if you told me more about the reinforcement and restructuring activities taking place on the site."
For the first time that morning, Wilson's eyes lit up. "Certainly! I'll give you a tour."
Somewhat taken aback by the man's enthusiasm, Heero nevertheless rose from the table to follow him out of the tent and into the mid-morning sunlight.
The next hour was spent walking the length of the site while Wilson pointed out all of the reconstruction work that had been done to date, and much of the work currently in-progress. The extent of the damage both surprised and disturbed Heero; after seeing the destruction firsthand, he found it difficult to retain impartiality regarding the possible criminal nature of it.
No accident did damage so deliberate and thorough. Whoever had done it had been very familiar with the site, and knew exactly what they were doing.
Wilson provided him with a complete set of plans for the plant and offices, and promised to email him the manufacturing building plans later in the day. Finishing the tour back at the break tent, Heero was surprised to discover that the overall interview had taken longer than he had originally anticipated. It was already well past lunchtime at Preventer Headquarters. He flipped open his mobile phone and dialed Wufei's number.
"Chang here. What do you need, Yuy?"
Heero checked the encryption level registered for the connection on the display before responding. "Nothing in particular, Wufei. I am acknowledging your earlier message."
"Maxwell's rather excited about the case." Heero could hear the smirk in Wufei's voice. "He's called me three times already this morning, " now it was Heero's turn to smirk, "trying to get more information. I gave him everything I had the first time, but he's absolutely convinced you're holding back on him."
"That's because I am," he deadpanned.
The line was silent for an extended moment. By the time Wufei found words again, he was unable to keep the tone of restrained amusement out of his voice. "Well, whatever it is, he's your problem now. From this point on I am screening all of my calls, so if he feels the need to contact me, he's going to have to do it through you. Or Sally," he added as an afterthought.
"Understood."
There was a pause, and Heero could make out a muted exchange on the other end of the line, followed by a series of rapid keystrokes. "Yuy, Une wants a report tomorrow. Can you send it tonight?"
"Yes." He had already intended to send one; he would carbon copy Duo on it as well, and bring him up to speed at the same time.
"All right. That's everything for now. Contact me if you need anything else." The connection was cut off brusquely. Wufei had never been one for extended goodbyes, especially on company time.
Though on the subject of time... He glanced at his watch and noted the time. 1100... too early for lunch, but too late to start a formal interview with anyone on the site.
He briefly mulled his options. There was not enough time to do an impromptu drive over to the site on the other end of town. Talking to Glenn or Maureen was out of the question, since both were completely preoccupied with important tasks.
Jason, on the other hand...
Assuming I can find him, of course. He had not caught a single glimpse of the operator during Wilson's tour around the site. Granted, he had no idea of what the other man's work schedule was, but since he was one of Maureen's lead process techs, Heero assumed he would be working similar hours.
Walking in the direction of the Process Engineering Lab, he was distracted by the clack of keys emitting from a darkened office two doors down. Curious, Heero ducked his head in for a quick peek.
And quickly pulled it right back out.
Well, that explains where Jason has been all morning. Fairly certain he had not been spotted, Heero leaned against the wall opposite the office, out of the line of sight from the open office door.
Why the hell was he so nervous?
As the Preventer agent on this case, he had every right to walk into the office and demand an immediate interview, especially when it concerned one of the key eyewitnesses. He could invoke his rank as a Preventer, and probably get Jason fired if he refused to cooperate.
But Heero had learned through time and example that that was the worst way to handle a delicate situation like this one. Witnesses clammed up, or became recalcitrant in anger over the control exerted on them.
And there was still one simple fact to face.
This was Quatre.
As many times as he tried to ingrain it in his mind to call him Jason, Heero was unable to separate the identity of Quatre Raberba Winner from the person masquerading as Jason Yoest. He had fought, bled, and nearly died beside the other man, and his mind refused to let him believe the gundam pilot he had come to know during the Eve wars was dead, even only in a metaphorical sense.
But that fact only made it harder for him to approach the former pilot. Heero had never before dealt with the sting of rejection, and he was finding it very hard to accept.
He would have to face Quatre again, probably before the end of the day. But right now he felt no desire to rush the confrontation.
Casting a final wistful look at the open office door, Heero turned away and headed back out of the building. He would catch an early lunch after all; it looked like his afternoon was going to be busier than he had originally anticipated.
*****
Sirens blaring past the café window gave Heero his first warning that it would be a short lunch.
He dropped the half-eaten egg sandwich unceremoniously onto the table and reached for his already-vibrating mobile phone. Maeda's name on the callerID could only mean one thing; he was out the door and jogging back in the direction of Isomer by the time he answered, two rings later.
"Yuy here. What's the situation, Bruce?"
Discordant sirens sounded in the background a moment before Maeda's voice broke through, out-of-breath and slightly panicked. "Yuy, get back to the site immediately. There's -" The phone reception dropped out momentarily. "-ther accident, in the-"
The call cut out. Heero cursed and broke into a run; another three blocks, and he could get answers from Maeda himself in person.
He cursed again as he saw paramedics wheeling workers on gurneys into ambulances lining the street in front of the site. Memories of the war washed through his mind, images superimposed over the scene in front of him. Too many... He shivered, pulling the jacket closer to his body.
Stepping past the line of paramedics and emergency crews, Heero fought to retain a cool head as he took a long look at the chaos surrounding him. To his left, Maeda split his attention between the three people reporting to him in person and the two-way radio chattering away in his right hand. Sirens wailed in the air, and fresh emergency crews deposited onto the sidewalk rushed forward in the direction of the office buildings.
The office buildings... shit! The Process Engineering Lab! Heero broke into a sprint, pushing carelessly through the growing crowd of onlookers, his stomach clenched in fear of the vision awaiting him when he got there.
The crowd surrounding the building swelled as he got closer, trading elbows with the mass of workers as he tried to push his way through. He fought his way through the sea of humanity, pushing, prodding - anything to edge his way through the throng and into the building in front of him.
"Preventer Yuy!"
Heero's head snapped sharply in the direction of the cry, eyes immediately honing in on the waving arms of the Theodore Wilson. Wilson was ahead of the crowd, clearing an avenue through the mass of people and rubble for the emergency teams. Heero edged sideways through the crowd, making his way over to the clearing where Wilson was directing rescue efforts.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, he waited until Wilson had sent the rescue team inside before approaching the man. "What's the status?"
Wide, oddly calm brown eyes met his own. "We've evacuated 90% of the building. There are still four people unaccounted for. I'm sending a team in now to see if we can dig them out before the roof collapses."
"Where?"
"The Process Engineering Laborat-"
Heero was stopped mid-movement by a firm hand on his shoulder. He spun in step to glare at the Wilson. "Look, I can't send you in there. We already have four people unaccounted for, and I can't add you to that list."
Wilson's eyes were hard, but Heero could detect a trace of sympathy in the wrinkles around them. Swallowing hard, he relented momentarily. "Who is missing?" he asked, pushing past the thick lump in his throat.
Wilson's expression became grim. "Glenn Okazaki, Scott Waylan, Maureen Robinson, and Jason Yoest."
"What the hell happened?"
Two heads spun in surprise and shock at the arrival of the Manufacturing Production Manager.
Wilson was the first to recover. Not taking his eyes off of the man across from him, he pulled the two-radio back up and activated the transmitter. "This Ted Wilson with a Priority Green message. Call off the search for Glenn Okazaki. Repeat, this is a Priority Green message. Call off the search for Glenn Okazaki. Over." Putting the radio aside, Wilson ran a scrutinizing gaze over Okazaki. "There has been an accident in the Process Engineering Lab. Three employees are still unaccounted for."
Glenn's eyes widened in shock momentarily. They hardened almost as quickly, and he grabbed Heero's hand, yanking him in the direction of the entrance. "Come on, Heero. You can explain this to me while I find my team."
Heero required no compelling to follow. As they ran into the dangerously unstable building, Heero vaguely heard Wilson yelling in the background. "I think the roof is going to collapse," he spoke in a voice far too calm to have come from himself.
"Then we have to work fast! Who's still in here?" Glenn was already heading in the direction of the Process Engineering Lab.
"Maureen, Scott, and Jason."
The arm tugging him forward went suddenly slack, prompting Heero to turn and look at the man next to him. Glenn's eyes were shut tight, and he seemed to be breathing deeply, fists clenching and unclenching in a rhythmic pattern. Heero watched in stunned amazement, knowing he should do something to break Glenn's trance but unable to will his body to act.
Glenn's eyes snapped open a minute later, rendering his concern moot. "This way," he ordered cryptically, up a flight of stairs that took them in the opposite direction of the lab. "Scott's up here. I'm sure of it."
Heero followed the man blindly, through dark corridors and past obstructed exits, to a closed office at the far end of the building. Heero tried the door, and with some difficulty managed to pry it open far enough to let himself in. Glenn rushed in behind him, heading directly for the crumpled body in the middle of the floor.
"Scott!" Glenn yanked the radio off of his belt and tossed it to Heero with one hand while the other checked the body on the floor for vital signs. Heero understood the implicit order and contacted an emergency team while Glenn performed CPR on the too-still body on the floor.
Precious minutes later when the paramedics arrived, Scott had a clear pulse and was breathing on his own, but had not yet regained consciousness. Heero caught Glenn's frantic nod toward the hallway and followed him out. Jason and Maureen were still somewhere in the building, and the roof would not last much longer.
Running down the hallway at unsafe speeds even outside of an emergency situation, they retraced their steps in record time and were soon outside of the Process Engineering Laboratory. Two doors, completely destroyed, hung loosely off of their hinges, framing the hellish scene inside.
What had once been a well-organized room with a large, open test space looked instead like a twister had touched down at ground zero in the center of the room. Papers scattered all over the place - some of them burning in piles of unidentified chemical; the remains of delicate scientific diagnostic tools had melted into twisted shrapnel, littering the floor like a land mine field with razor-sharp edges.
Heero matched the image against the room he had been in only five hours previous. Where there had once been a half-buried mobile suit instead lay an indiscernible mass of broken metal and ruined recovery equipment.
"Jason! Maureen!" Okazaki's yell broke Heero out of his trance. One of the fires was giving off fumes he was certain were carcinogenic. Grabbing a cloth lab coat from the floor, he tossed it over the fire, hoping to smother it and buy he and Glenn enough time to search for the other two missing employees.
"Maureen!" Distantly, Heero heard Glenn's voice somewhere in the back of his mind as he carefully picked his way around the mobile suit remains to the opposite end of the room.
"Jason!" Glenn's voice echoed weakly in this corner of the room. Heero climbed over a fallen ozone monitoring station - how big was this lab, anyhow? - something vaguely instinctual compelling him head for the far end of the room.
"Maureen!"
Thick with exhaustion, hoarse with smoke inhalation, and tight with restrained tears - but a voice that most certainly did not belong to Glenn.
Heero felt his heart rise a little in his throat.
"Maureen!" The voice was much closer now. Heero dodged a shower of dirt and rubble flung in his direction and rushed forward, heedless of the danger.
"Quatre!" A blond head snapped sideways to the source of the voice, eyes wide on a face lined with equal parts blood and tears. Heero willed his legs to move faster.
"Quatre!" Almost there. Was there enough time? "Quatre! We have to leave now! The roof is going to collapse!"
"No!" Wide, crazed eyes pleaded with him. "Maureen's still in there!"
Heero's mind raced to reason with Quatre's panic. He needed to get both of them out of there now, before he and Quatre were buried alive. He wrestled with the options, and decided to take the one that would get them out of there the fastest - even if it meant Quatre would hate him for it later.
Lunging forward, he threw his arms around the smaller operator, pinning Quatre's arms against his body to minimize the struggle. Bringing their faces close enough to touch noses, Heero stared deep into the blonde's eyes. It was now or never.
"Quatre." He used his gentlest voice, trying to soften the blow of the words he was about to speak. "The roof is going to collapse. If we stay here another five minutes, we will be buried in here along with Maureen, and we will be unable to do anything to rescue her. Does that makes sense to you?" Quatre nodded his head, terrified blue eyes glazing over in the early stages of shock. "All right. Can you walk? Or should I carry you out?"
The blue eyes narrowed in anger, which relieved Heero in some odd way. Quatre was not totally out of it yet. "Follow my lead." He laced the fingers of his right hand with those from Quatre's left, and quickly made his way across the floor, taking a more direct route to the front of the room now that he no longer feared stepping on a body.
He could feel it when Quatre began to shiver, the shaking transferring through their shared touch to his own body. He had to hurry and find Okazaki and get them all of this mess before Quatre succumbed completely to shock.
He squeezed his fingers in gentle reassurance, a quick physical reminder to the other man that he was not alone. Spying the exit ahead, he was relieved to see Okazaki standing in the ruined doorway waiting for him.
"Heero! Jason! It's not going to hold. Run!"
Panting heavily, they broke through the doors to the hallway, then to the exit, fresh air and bright sunlight hitting them across the face like a slap to consciousness. Quatre was the first to fall to the ground, followed quickly by Heero, pulled down by a sharp tug on his arm.
"Maureen..." Heero could barely make out the name through the sobs wracking Quatre's body. Willing to damn himself for the consequences of his actions later, he reached forward and put his arms around him, pulling the blond tight against his chest. It might have only been his imagination, but it felt like the shudders decreased in intensity.
"Excuse me, Mr. Yuy." Heero looked up from the tap on his shoulder at the paramedic regarding him expectantly.
He tightened his arms around Quatre. The operator had relaxed completely into his embrace, causing him to wonder if he had passed out. Smoothing a stray blond lock away from his face, Heero reluctantly disentangled himself from Quatre and handed him over to the med team.
He watched, from a distance, as Quatre was carried away on a stretcher into an ambulance. It was mostly a precaution, he told himself... there was nothing to worry about...
Then why was his heart in his throat?
A gentle hand on his shoulder made him turn, just in time to see the roof collapse above the Process Engineering Lab. A feeling not unlike being stabbed with hot needles raked through the pit of his stomach.
"She's alive."
He turned in shock to face the person standing next to him.
"I can't explain it; I just know. She's alive."
Glenn's mouth was set in a determined line, but his eyes were distant, as if seeing something many miles away. His fists slowly clenched and unclenched at his side.
Heero briefly wondered if Quatre was not the only person in shock right now.
"Glenn?"
"She's still alive, Heero. And we're going to find her."
tbc...
Notes:
'It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission': The cardinal lesson of engineering, just as Maureen says. It was the first lesson I was taught by my boss when I was hired on as a process engineer, and to date has been the primary method used by engineering to get experiments past Manufacturing since we opened the fab.
SCUBA: Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. SCUBA equipment is also used for cleanup of chemicals and hazardous materials. All of the operators in the chemical plant where I interned were required to have SCUBA certification, and I got to watch them don the equipment on more than one occasion to clean up the interior of a reactor tank after a failed experiment.
