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Chapter Three
Good Little Girl
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Gina woke up in a shuttle. She remembered the one that Duo had flown when he and Trowa had taken her to Earth with Uncle Ben and his family. She had gotten to sit in a seat a lot more comfortable than this one. She reached for her necklace, only to remember that it had broken when the man in the alley grabbed her arm.
She stretched in her seat to get a look around the shuttle. There were a few kids, mostly her age, sitting around. A lot of them looked like they were sleeping. There were a lot of empty seats, no kids were sitting together.
There were a few grown-ups, in the front rows, and they were sitting together, talking quietly to each other. None of them were the scary men from before, and that made Gina angry. She had missed school, they had broken her necklace and they weren't even on the shuttle with her. She sat back in her seat, scowling at the seatback in front of her.
There was a sharp pain between her shoulder blades, there and gone so quickly that she had only started jumping away when it was over, an electric zap, like static electricity. A voice whispered in her ear, making her look around wildly. "Little girls shouldn't frown. Good little girls smile and sit still."
None of the grown-ups looked back at her. Gina ran a hand through her hair, pulling at it in distress. Her fingers touched a wire behind her ear. A small device had been put in her ear so that the voice could talk to her. Gina started to pull at it, but another quick shock stopped her. "Good little girls should sit still." The voice repeated.
Gina sat still, trying to get her heart to slow down. The voice sounded weird like the person was talking into a microphone. She remembered how much she had laughed at how funny Duo's voice had sounded on the vid-phone message before he fixed the microphone, and this voice sounded a little like that, only not funny. She leaned carefully back in her seat, resting her head so that she could see the shuttle ceiling. There were cameras all over.
People were watching them. Gina looked at the other children, and every one of them was looking strait forward, or asleep.
The lights suddenly dimmed as one of the grown-ups stood at the front of the cabin. He clicked some switches and white noise started hissing in her ear. It was uncomfortable and her ear started hurting.
"Good girls go to sleep when they're told to." The voice came through the white noise. Nobody had told her to go to sleep! She opened her mouth to argue with the voice, and got zapped again. Gina whimpered.
"Good girls should be quiet. Be a good girl. Go to sleep." Gina sat very still and listened to the white noise.
Duo's eyes drifted out of focus as the lists of privately hired shuttles scrolled down the computer screen. He knew that if he didn't get some sleep soon, then he wouldn't be any good to Gina when they found out where she had been taken. Still, he felt that if he stopped they'd never find her. Like the shuttle listing was going to show up on the screen for just a minute, then disappear again as it was erased.
Duo didn't have the energy to panic at the thought anymore, and people had stopped trying to reason with him. Even Trowa, who knew all the tricks to winning an argument. So Duo sat that the computer, watching each new entry as it was posted to the Preventers' database, in a living room that was covered in sleeping bodies. They all looked pale in the glow from the computer screen, the light washing away all color from them.
A pop-up message pulled Duo out of his thoughts, a brief flash of hope running through him. It was from Noin, giving him the access codes for some of the files concerning groups that targeted children. It had been Une's idea to search for a pattern, steering them away from the thought that Gina had been snatched because of who her adopted fathers were. From the looks of the files, Duo could tell that Une might have been right.
There were two operating in areas that had gotten a lot of shuttle activity from L2 in the last few days. Since there had been no sign of Gina on the colony, even after it had been figuratively torn apart by two Gundam pilots, a Preventer and nearly fifty members of the Barton-Maxwell extended "family," they had concluded that she must have been moved off colony.
Duo started sending messages to the Preventer office on colony 19926-X, hoping that they would have more information on a few of the shuttles. Like the quasi-military organization that they were, the office sent him a reply within the hour. Several of the shuttles had been carrying children, though only one from L2. They could determine nothing suspicious about this however, because one of their satellite colonies 19926-X12 was a privately owned boarding school. There were children coming in and out all the time.
Duo requested the passenger manifest from the one shuttle that had come from L2 and thanked them. He was sure that if the shuttle had been carrying Gina, they would have used fake names. If it hadn't been, than this was another fruitless avenue. A dead end, and he didn't know what to do next.
Helena walked up to the Clinic's main building, clutching her books to her chest. She was supposed to meet Daddy here today, and stay with him until he was finished with his work, because the Grandpas were trying to find Gina. She hadn't been at school yesterday or today, and everyone had been asking if she was sick. Helena knew that she wasn't sick, Gina had left to do the early project when Grandpa Trowa had started correcting her own homework. As much as Gina ignored the important things, like school work, she never made the Grandpas worry by disappearing. So now Helena was scared to walk around by herself.
She saw the Clinic strait ahead, and started jogging towards it, to get to the safety of her father's side as quickly as possible. As she passed, she noticed the two rich men again. They leaned against the building on the corner, smoking cigarettes and watching the people coming in and out of the Clinic. Helena had been reminded of the gangster movies that Grandpa Duo and Daddy watched sometimes on TV. The ones that Grandpa Trowa said she wasn't old enough to watch all the way through. She didn't like the two men. She hadn't liked them the first time she saw them, when she had come to work with Daddy two weeks ago.
Helena jogged faster. She was going to get Daddy to tell them to go away.
Duo looked up with bleary eyes as the front door slammed. He tried to decide if reprimanding whoever was abusing his house was worth the effort, but hadn't made a decision when Ben rushed into the living room, Helena jogging in behind him. Duo raised his eyebrows at his surrogate son.
"There are two strangers hanging around the Clinic. Helena says that she first saw them two weeks ago, and that they were watching her. A lot of the children that I was seeing today told me the same thing when I asked if they'd seen the strange men. They said that the men were only watching the children, not the adults who visit me. What if..."
Duo was awake, and already pulling up the database of inter-colony travelers for three weeks ago. For the Preventers' database, photo's were included. There were at least a hundred, maybe two hundred names.
"Did you get a look at them Ben?"
"Just their backs. They started walking away as soon as I was out the door."
Duo turned his attention to Helena, who was clutching at her school bag and wearing the same expression that she used when Trowa was correcting her homework. Duo took a deep breath and forced himself to act normal.
"Sweetie, would you please look at these pictures with me, and tell me if you see the strange men?" Duo smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, and hoped that she appreciated him using proper grammar and everything. She smiled back and climbed into his lap to get a better look at the computer screen. Duo turned back to Ben, smiling at the combination of worry and excitement in the grown-boy's eyes, and continuing in his sparkling new good grammar, said, "Ben, would you please make us all a snack? We will be looking at these for some time. Thank you."
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End Part Three
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Thanks for the comments on the last part Jordan, Seeress and Chibiange. Hopefully I've fixed all the problems, and that you enjoy this portion just as much. Answers to the mystery will be forthcoming...eventually ^_^
