Author: Sparkle Itamashii
Title: Inheritance
Warnings: Respect the rating. Please see my profile.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing AC is NOT MINE.
Chapter Twenty Five
"Trowa?" I asked, coming fully around the corner.
"Duo?" he responded, peeking around the equipment to get a better look at me. He looked as confused as I felt.
"Fuck, you scared the shit out of me," I snapped testily, angrily pushing on the safety lock as I lowered my weapon. "I thought you were one of the people after us."
He gave me a dry look as his own gun disappeared into its holster. His attention was then immediately off of me and back to the papers he'd been sifting through so intently when I'd arrived. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I- what are you doing here?" I returned, eyes narrowing. Heero had said that Trowa knew about the anti-virus. If that were true, would Trowa try to play as dumb as Heero and not tell me anything?
He shoved an entire pile of printed pages onto the floor. "Looking for something," he told me absently as he began digging into the next pile. The place was beginning to look like the L1 lab we'd just come from- a mess.
"Viral information?" I questioned levelly, as though I was asking about something only mildly interesting.
His fingers stopped sorting and I saw the subtle yet telling lift of his shoulders as he bristled. He'd been caught and he knew it but would he tell the truth even after being confronted? For a few seconds I thought that he might not, that he might try to shrug it off like he didn't know what I was talking about or that it was nothing. Instead his shoulders dropped and his eyes closed in graceful defeat.
"He told you?"
"Probably as much as he could," I responded, relaxing. I hadn't wanted to be angry with Trowa and it was a relief to know that at least someone was able to recognize that, despite the years we'd spent playing at domesticity, inside we were all still soldiers. "He said I would have to ask you about the anti-virus," I said seriously. "I don't like being kept in the dark."
It was a less than subtle hint and he seemed to get the idea quickly. "There isn't one," he said simply.
"There… what?"
"There isn't an anti-virus, nor will there ever be one," he clarified, hands once again moving through the papers.
"But they… surely- but that…" My mind had frozen with a sudden, gripping sense of panic. No cure? My stomach tightened in the most sickening way and I couldn't seem to banish the images of my L2 friends dying before my eyes while I sat by, watching helplessly. If this… this disease got out now, would that happen all over again? "None at all?"
"Well, half of one." He paused long enough to give me a searching look. "How much did Heero tell you?"
I took a deep breath and tried to calmly organize what I knew into the quickest story. "That basically there is coding for the worst virus ever split up between me, him, and Relena, two-thirds of which was given to Mara upon birth."
Nodding, he returned to his work. "They were careful about the anti-virus too. It wouldn't have worked if the people they were trying to threaten had the anti-virus. They split the coding in two and gave half of it to Trowa Barton and half of it to Quatre Winner. Only," he said slowly, "Trowa Barton was killed and the first half of that code died with him."
"Shouldn't they have given it to you? I mean, if you took over his job and name and everything else, wouldn't they have given that to you, too?"
He nodded, shoving his paper pile onto the floor again to start on the next. "Yeah," he agreed in that irritating monotone. "They should have put it in me or in someone, but it had become moot by the time they would have. Meteor had been scratched; they were tossing their luck in with us as pilots instead of as biological weapons."
"It was a good idea; we did end the war," I said carefully, skimming the pages he was flipping through as he went. "But now what? What are we going to do if…" I trailed off, swallowing thickly. I didn't want to ask what would happen if someone got hold of the full viral coding because the only way that was going to happen was over my dead body- literally.
"I don't know," he said resignedly. "I… I don't know. I'm not sure they can do anything with it anymore. I've been to the L3, L4, and L5 labs but they were all locked and untouched- no information left. The L1 lab got raided just after I'd gotten there. I had to run for it."
I laughed, but it was the nervous sort of laugh that wards off a larger fear. "Did you drop your phone?"
His nose wrinkled and he paused long enough to glance at me. "Yeah. How did you know?"
"It rang while we were there," I said, smiling. If it was Trowa's phone, if he'd just dropped it and they hadn't found it, then perhaps our enemies weren't as smart as we'd given them credit for earlier. "We were attacked before we could find it."
He winced. "It was probably Quatre calling. The last time I spoke with him…" He trailed off, his entire body bristling.
Immediately I was on guard, though I took care not to show it. "What time did you last speak with him?" I asked carefully, giving him a significant look.
"I think it was about one," he responded, hands slipping from the papers to his holster.
My eyes flicked to my one o'clock and I saw a flicker of motion at the far end of the lab. "Yeah," I agreed under my breath, moving myself behind one of the larger pieces of equipment. I don't think we'd been seen, although I doubted that we hadn't been heard. We hadn't been talking particularly quietly.
The click of Trowa's gun told me that he'd moved as well, probably taking cover. I risked a glance around the side of the machine but who-ever was here had disappeared behind the massive amount of clutter. I cursed silently, mind racing and ears straining to hear any whisper of sound. Nothing. Either they were really good at being silent or they'd stopped moving. If we moved now we would likely give ourselves away, which was the last thing we needed right then.
I took a breath and gently tugged my phone from my pocket. This was my turf, I thought, my resolve tightening. My phone's keys had been put on silent the moment I received the phone and they made no noise as I began dialing. I watched the numbers on the screen as I waited for it to connect. The screen blanked after a few seconds and a timer began to tick by soundlessly as a clicking noise from the earpiece signaled it was ringing.
Across the lab, the shrill, harsh noise of a maintenance phone ringing smashed through the silence. I heard Trowa startle nearby but more importantly, I heard a cry from across the room and the shiver of equipment as someone crashed into it. Confused, I stuck my head out and closed my phone. For the second time in a very short while, I recognized the voice.
"Heero?" I called tentatively. My voice echoed strangely all around the surrounding area.
"I'm going to kill you," came the irritated yet relieved response. He dropped around the side of a stack of gundam parts and gave me a scathing glare as he began walking our way.
I started laughing, unable to help myself. The number of times I had managed to startle or scare Heero could be counted on one hand. "Sorry, I thought you were… you know. Trowa's here," I said, my tone becoming far more serious as Trowa rose from where he had been crouching. "And… we have a major problem."
There weren't a lot of issues that could have been a 'major problem' right then and he guessed without my having to tell him. "No antidote?"
"No antidote," I agreed, holstering my gun. "Quatre's got part of it but Trowa doesn't."
The phrase 'we are so fucked' might have been appropriate right then but no one said a word. I could practically see the cogs turning in Heero's head as he tried to rearrange everything to fit the dangerous new situation. We would have to be doubly careful now to make sure that neither of us were caught or killed. If someone out there had the information about the virus, they probably had the information about the antidote and they probably assumed it would be safe, just like we had.
"Trowa's been to the other labs," I offered quietly.
Heero's gaze fell to Trowa then and the boy shrugged. "Nothing was touched but nothing was there. Everything was locked and pristine- even your place."
Scowl deepening, Heero sighed. "You're sure?"
Trowa nodded. "I didn't get a chance to check your place properly- I got attacked."
"Wu Fei checked and didn't find anything. He must have gotten there before you." He cursed and his hands worked themselves into fists at his sides. "That means the information was in the original L1 lab."
"They've got it surrounded," Trowa said dully. "It's all over the news. No one had gotten in last I heard."
"Someone's been in," Heero assured him. "Maybe not the public, maybe not right now, but someone got in."
Before any of us could even try to think of a response for that, the distant sound of footsteps echoed from the direction Heero had come. He'd been followed. "You didn't lose them?" I hissed, giving him an incredulous stare as he herded us behind cover simply by moving forward.
He gave me a look that quite clearly told me to shut up because I was being ridiculous. "Obviously not. There can't be that many and they're coming along the back way." His tone made it fairly clear that when he said there couldn't be many he meant there couldn't be many left. "Get out the front and I'll take care of them and come afterwards."
"Meet at the docking station?" I asked, heading for the doors even as I spoke.
"I'd suggest running," he replied, motioning with one hand to the fire-truck red cabinet a few yards away- explosives. He intended to blow the entire place. "Take care of him, Trowa," he ordered as Trowa joined my retreat.
"I can take care of myself," I shot. "Good luck."
He ignored me as he checked the clip on his gun and made for the cabinet. I stuck my tongue out at the back of his head and dogged after Trowa, who was heading steadily down the hallway. "We probably should hurry," I said as I caught up. "The back way in is protected by blast doors, but the front isn't.
Silence fell between us as we walked, the little floor and ceiling lights brightening and fading as we went. It was eerie and calm, despite that I knew we were on our way away from what would probably be a massive explosion. Trowa didn't seem to be bothered at all; he was doing the same as Heero had been and checking his weapon.
His long fingers flew over the keypad just inside the door. We moved to the sides as soon as it hissed open but nothing happened. I counted to ten, eyes locked with Trowa's but still there was nothing. When I chanced a glance around the exit frame and scanned the area, I didn't see anyone. I ducked back again and motioned to Trowa but when he looked he only gave me an indifferent shrug- nothing. If they'd followed Heero then it made sense that they hadn't found the front entrance yet- it wasn't exactly conspicuous and they'd probably gotten into the others by following someone through the front. I let out the breath I'd been holding and dropped around the corner, shooting a grin to Trowa.
"Looks like we beat them here!" I said with a low chuckle, although it was spoken a little too soon. The first bullet buried itself in the wall beside my head.
The second, in me.
/End Chapter Twenty Five, Inheritance/
Notes:
:is brick'd by readers:
Thanks to those people who guessed last chapter! Some of you were right (a lot of you guessed Relena, but I assure you, she's quite dead) and some of your had wild guesses, but they all made me a very happy girl. Any new specualtion/outcries?
