WARNING pretty serious Heero torture coming up!! Don't say I didn't warn you!

Chapter 5

Duo woke abruptly. This was because Heero had just pushed away from him so hard he had fallen off the bed.

"Shit!" he exclaimed as he rubbed his head. He looked up and froze. Heero was standing the other side of the bed, his eyes blazing at him. Duo set his eyes against Heero's with difficulty. He knew what Heero had woken to find himself doing, and there was nothing wrong with it. For all Heero knew, they had come together like that whilst sleeping. Even if they hadn't, what Duo had done wasn't wrong or anything, what was he supposed to do, leave him there? Be kept awake all night? No, he had a perfectly good reason to be found holding the boy.

Duo's fears of Heero challenging him verbally over it were soon soothed as he walked away. I should have known, he told himself, Heero doesn't do verbal. He got up and got dressed. He walked passed Heero without looking at him before going into the bathroom and redoing his hair and brushing his teeth and all that. He came out in his priest uniform and found Trowa sitting on the sofa with Quatre busy at the kitchen. They were all dressed as they were before, no need to change. Soon, they had all gathered and were sitting with cups of coffee, bought by Quatre the day before, in their hands.

Duo sipped his silently, not wishing to speak quite yet. The urge to find out what the hell was going on with Heero had just got more urgent. He hated himself for the weakness of it all, but he wanted to know that something was wrong with Heero, because he couldn't bear the thought of Heero doing that to him in a usual mood. He fought the urge to keep looking at him to check if he looked like he was going through the same as Duo was and so ended up glaring at the floor.

"Duo, look out, you're turning into Heero." Trowa stated and Duo looked up, his eyes switching from a glare to a grin.

"What do you mean?" he asked, innocently.

"You were doing the "glaring at the floor so hard it burns up" routine."

"Oh, well it wasn't intentional." Duo said, shrugging and grinning.

"What's wrong?" Quatre asked, his solemn face making Duo laugh, although he'd rather cry at the point.

"Nothing's wrong! Maybe I just don't like being woken up at eight in the morning."

"Eight in the morning is nothing." Wufei said, "I had to get up at five every morning."

"Well I didn't, ok? I got no sleep at all so I have to catch up." Duo said, his face telling everybody that he was not to be argued with. There were a few chuckles and then silence as everybody sipped their drinks again.

"When are we off today?" Quatre asked after a while.

"Well, we're going to need time so basically as soon as the coffee is drunk and everyone's ready. Is that ok, Heero?" Trowa asked. Heero nodded but kept on staring at the floor. Trowa looked at Duo and cupped his hands over his mouth so only Duo could see his lips. He mouthed "How did he sleep?" and Duo just rolled his eyes and shook his head, frowning. "Are you ok?" was next. Duo shrugged and looked away. The last thing he wanted was Trowa asking him awkward questions. No, the worst thing would be Quatre asking him awkward questions and he hoped Trowa wouldn't share his inevitable worries with his lover.

There was another five minutes of relative silence between them, and then Trowa announced that they were going. Duo let them all get their stuff and then met them at the door.

"Now, are you going to look at the files?" Quatre asked. Duo nodded. "If anything has a password, leave it and either I or Heero will deal with it when we get back."

"Sure, I'll do that." Duo said. "Good luck!" he called and Trowa waved at him as they disappeared. Duo waited until he had heard the door close and then he went over to Trowa and Quatre's bedroom. He took the laptop out of Quatre's bag and set it up on the coffee table in front of the sofa. After getting the disk from his room, he sat down, drawing the computer up to him and turned it on. It beeped and for once he wasn't impatient as it loaded. As soon as it was on the desktop he inserted the disk in the slot and double clicked on the disk icon. A load of folders came up onto his screen.

He scrolled down for a while and then found it. The folder saying 043. Heart thumping and eyes wide, he clicked on it. The screen went black and a grey box came up with a flashing cursor on some dots. The type above it said, "Please enter password." Duo swore, but then thought for a second. His tongue sticking out in concentration and anticipation, he typed in "H-e-e-r-o- -Y-u-y" Then he pressed Enter. The grey box disappeared and a green box came into its place. Duo sighed with relief. It said, "Password accepted. Loading data."

After a few minutes, Duo was getting slightly worried, but then he was rewarded. The screen went white, and a whole lot of icons came up. They all had complicated coded names and varied. Some had "ABC" written them, some had a square and triangle and a circle on them and some of them had a videotape. One of them, the last one was called "Slideshow."

His breathing slightly ragged, Duo double clicked on that one. The cursor disappeared and the screen went blank. Then, small writing started typing itself over the screen. This is what it said:

This is a collection of all of the known files on subject 043. On this slideshow you will find every single record, picture and any footage that is wanted of the subject and its progress over the years. Any written work will be either spoken by the head scientist or displayed in other ways. Rest assured that it is all here for your interest.

First, some background on 043. It has been with us for thirteen years and all experiments have proved very successful, if in more ways than anticipated. The head of the experiment is Doctor J and his team of three other scientists. All the footage of 043 is in chronological order and Doctor J himself shall guide you through this mine of information……………………………………………

Duo gulped and the computer screen suddenly showed a man standing in front of a deep blue, swirling screen. He looked very well built but short. He had thick hair that waved down his back and was slowly going grey. It had been brown. He had the same colour moustache and goatee beard. He wore dark glasses that reflected in lots of different colours and was dressed in a white lab coat done up to his neck, the first button undone, showing very tanned but ageing skin.

"Welcome to the information package on Subject 043, our most successful and most interesting and ongoing subject. First of all we shall show the results and pictures we have from when we had taken him from his mother's womb by operation. She was discarded of, as was his father, as they proved no more use to us. The baby was taken at three weeks premature to make sure we could put our stamp on it. It turned out to be a boy, as we wanted and expected, and, for formality only, we named him Heero Yuy."

Duo actually let out a crack. This was it, this was him. Heero was subject 043. He was already reeling from the information he had just got. He had been bred and taken from his mother by force. He had only been doing this for a few seconds and he was appalled already. The screen went pale blue and blank, before a picture emerged. It was of a baby, small, pale and wrinkled, obviously too small. Its eyes were tightly shut and there was an oxygen mask over its nose and mouth. It was naked and floating in a large vertical tube of greenish water that was bubbling.

That disappeared and a moving picture came up. It was of the same baby, but it looked a few weeks older. It was motionless apart from the odd twitch. Its eyes were now open and there was no mistaking the deep blue eyes that were Heero's and only Heero's. They were wide open, obviously used to the water now. The picture had come back a bit so that Duo could see the top and bottom of the tube, which were metal and had all sorts of buttons on it. Some typing appeared next to the square box that the baby was in, which temporarily froze.

A large amount of substance A was inserted into the subject's blood system. This substance, which will be kept anonymous, supposedly enables the subject to store extra amounts of oxygen in its lungs. For this experiment we will stop the oxygen supply for ten seconds and monitor the baby's heart rate and oxygen count. To do this, an electronic heart monitor must be attached to the subject's chest and two oxygen monitors must be inserted into the lungs.

Duo had only just stopped reading this when the square faded, the typing all but shrank and a number of photos came up. The first one he could deal with. The baby was lying on a white table, still naked, and what looked like a sticker attached to a cord was on its chest. The baby's mouth was open in what must have been a small wail. The next few photos, Duo's breath got faster and faster, as did his heart rate, and then he grabbed the nearest bin and retched just after he had shouted so loud the others would have heard him.

The consecutive nine photos were taken at different stages of an operation. This operation was to carefully insert two wires on the end of long probes into the baby's lungs. That in itself was awful, two such huge things in such a small body, but that wasn't what Duo was retching about. He could deal with that. The thing he was screaming and throwing up at was the absence of an anaesthetic mask over the baby's face and the wide mouth of a full on scream of agony that the baby was so obviously in. They had done it without any anaesthetic. To a baby. His eyes widened and he cried out, tears trying to get out of his eyes. To Heero.

Finally, the photos faded and another square came up. In it was the baby again, its voice just audible and its mouth slightly open in a small wail inside the mask. Now, two ugly probes came out of its perfectly stitched up chest and there was a heart monitor on its chest. Duo felt like shouting at the screen to not do it, his mind totally incapable to get the fact that it had happened already. This couldn't have happened, not to Heero. He cried out as the oxygen was turned off and the baby's wail turned to a yell and then was cut short as he tried to breathe in. Duo was biting the inside of his mouth so hard he could taste blood as they did it again and again, for longer each time, until a red light started flashing and they gave it back. The baby Heero started yelling and Duo wished he could hold him. Little did he know that this was not the worst.

Over the next hour, Duo witnessed seventeen main experiments over thirteen years. Some were not all bad, some were awful, but he found that it got worse for him, because the child got older and started using words to plead with the doctors not to do what they did. Also, he looked more like the Heero he knew. Duo found himself constantly throwing up and constantly had tears streaming down his face. He hadn't cried so much for years. But it was the last one that was worst. He had just seen a twelve-year-old Heero being raped by two big men to test his physical endurance, which was bullshit in his opinion, and then the screen went black and the white typing started again.

The last experiment in this show and the latest one to date is when a substance Y was inserted into subject 043's bloodstream. It should affect his healing ability. In the perfect situation, we wanted this to make 043 nearly indestructible. After this experiment, which was successful, as you will see, enough of this substance was inserted so that 043's healing power will be abnormal but not too extraordinary, as there were side effects. This was performed when 043 was thirteen.

Duo watched as the screen came back on and almost cried out. It showed a metal rectangle. Arms shackled above his hand and ankles shackled to the bottom, was Heero. He was naked and his hair was as floppy as it always was. His eyes were dead, but as there was a bang, he jerked his head up and his eyes widened with terror.

"What…?" he asked, his voice cracked. There was a low chuckle.

"Healing powers boy. We're going to see how much your body can take." Came a gruff, accented voice, the voice of the doctor. Soon, he came into view, flanked by his other three. Duo's eyes widened as he saw that they all had evil looking knives in their hands.

"No…you can't…please…stop…God! Please!" Heero yelled, his voice raw, trying to get out, but to no avail. The three doctors that weren't J grabbed him and held him even stiller than he was already. He kept on crying out for them to stop, but his cries became a wordless scream of pain as J dragged his serrated knife over his chest, creating a deep cut. Duo stared as the cut healed instantly. The doctor's cried out in delight and, to Duo's horror, started making cuts all over him that would heal in seconds, but would hurt like hell. Finally, laughing almost maniacally, J held Heero by the shoulder and then thrust his knife deep into the boy's stomach. Heero raw yell of anguish was joined by Duo's horrified cry. Chuckling, all the doctor's did the same all over his body, thrusting their knives and pulling them back , the serrated edges doing even more damage on the way out. Heero was yelling and whimpering and tears were streaming down his face, is mouth in a permanent scream.

"Check the bones!" the doctor cried. Like excited schoolchildren, they all crowded round Heero's left arm, un-shackling it. J took it in both hands and started pushing down. Heero's small whimper of pain became more and more of a scream as the pressure increased and Duo found himself trying to throw up again as it snapped at the elbow with a sickening crack. Within seconds, the broken bone had fused back to together again. The doctor's cried out in delight, shackling it back up. They then went around the whole of the body, breaking any parts of him they could and sticking their knives in his joints to prise them open, all the wounds healing within ten seconds of them being made. Heero's scream was endless, permanent and digging into Duo's brain. They couldn't…no.

"Come on, boys!" one of the doctors cried, and three big men came to him. First they beat him up, badly, most of the kicks and punches usually taking a person out, if not killing them. Then, they gave way to some very tall, thin and delicate men who had evil looking utensils that Duo knew as being the dreaded art of Kyna Keor, the torturing system that inflicted the most and most painful damage possible, while keeping the victim alive for the longest time of any. Before the guys had been doing it for five minutes straight, Duo found himself. He slammed his fingers onto the on/off switch and the screen went blank, but the images were still there. Tears streaming down his face and his breath coming in sobs, he ran to the bathroom and spent twenty minutes throwing up solidly.

After that he slumped against the bath, in almost total denial of what he had just seen. He wanted Heero, he needed Heero. He needed him like he had done when he had been stuck in Deathscythe, but he didn't want the new, hurt Heero, he wanted his Heero. No wonder he had been shit scared. Look at what the doctors had done to him! Shakily, he stood up and brushed his teeth, drinking some of the foul tasting water. He went and slumped on the sofa, staring at the blank computer screen. Trembling, he placed his head in his hands.

He was so busy trying not to throw up again, that he didn't hear the thumping of footsteps on the stairs and only spun round when the other four burst into the room, slamming the door.

"They…" Trowa started, but trailed off as Duo found all four pilots staring at him. Duo frowned, and then turned to look on the now reflecting computer screen. He was deathly white and tear streaks were down his face. He turned back, and his eyes were caught by Heero's. Duo looked into the blank blue eyes and the images all came hurling back up again. He dashed out of the room and threw up again, sobs cracking out of his body as he closed his eyes and wished for Heero's arms to be holding him. He slumped against the bath again, breathing hard, cracks coming out of him. He sensed someone in the room.

"Duo?" It was Quatre. Duo opened his eyes and took the water Quatre was offering him. "Duo, what is it?" he asked. He looked really worried. He would be, Duo thought to himself, but couldn't bring himself to say anything. He tried a few times, but all that came out was, "043." In a cracked voice. Quatre frowned.

"I'll get you some more water." He said, as Duo drained the last one. He took the glass and began to go to the door, but was cut off as someone jumped up. The two boys peered out into the lounge as Heero ran to the flat entrance and flung it open.

"Heero!" Duo yelled as something came out and hit him on the back of the neck. The Wing pilot crumpled to the floor and three big men came in, all holding machine guns pointing at Wufei and Trowa. Duo jumped up, pushing Quatre back into the bathroom and shutting the door. The men spun round to him and Duo found himself eye to eye with the barrel of a machine gun.

"Don't even think about it." The man said, gruffly. Duo cast an eye down to Heero. His pleading eyes met the man's, but they were passive. "He'll be alright, I didn't hit him hard and anyway, from what the boss says it'll take more than that to kill him. You two, hands above your heads, and you, choirboy."

One of the men roughly picked the unconscious pilot up and flung him over his shoulder. Wufei, Trowa and Duo were clumped together.

"I swear there were four of them last time without him." one of the men said.

"Does it look like there are any others?" the main man asked. "Go search the flat of you like."

The other man shrugged, they obviously really couldn't be bothered to be doing this and were insulted by having to capture four boys. Duo glared at them, his heart beating fast though he knew Heero was all right. But will he be, he thought as they were sent down the stairs, when he wakes up to find himself back in his memories?