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Chapter 44 - The Ticking Clock

Warning: for language and violence.

Plus: writing some of the dialogues, I didn't want to offend ANYBODY. It's just for the purposes of the story.

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Heero POV

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Leaving the flaming hospital wing, Heero shut behind him the doors leading to the narrow skywalk and looked acutely around, listening. An ominous silence surrounded him, he could only hear the crackling sound of the fire and the alarm from behind the door. He was alone, and that actually dismayed him. How can the run-up to the command center be so deserted, with no Fireflies' soldiers guarding it?

As he walked across the screened skywalk, something behind the glassy windows caught his attention, and he looked out. Down, on the front lawn of the hospital, he noticed a dozen of carelessly piled graves and one massive pit filled with still not buried bodies… No corpse was complete - people were still wearing white hospital shirts, some of their limbs were severed, some even still had drip tubes attached to their veins.

"...Fuckers!" Heero growled under his breath, gazing at the macabre view. It was impossible to guess who these people were; probably, they were survivors who tried to live through each new day in this hell on earth. They didn't expect that death wouldn't be inflicted on them by the monsters, but other people...

That was the cost that Fireflies didn't hesitate to pay to get the cure for Cordyceps.

Heero kept walking ahead through the skywalk, and behind another pair of doors, he entered a spacious administrative open space. Just like the skywalk, this room was very well lighted, as it had the same glassy, tall windows, through which the golden-orange rays of the late afternoon sun poured into the interior. One of the windows was broken, letting in a gentle afternoon breeze. The ceiling was supported by several pillars. The room was stacked with work desks and crates with some equipment (and a distinguishable Fireflies' logo) that now cast long, dark shadows on the dirty floor.

This room, which was undoubtedly the Fireflies' command center, also seemed utterly deserted. Walking between the work desks, Heero took his steps carefully, holding his gun in front of him and gradually scanning the space for any move. He was slowly approaching the center of the hall, listening and alert to the faintest sound that would reveal the presence of even one Firefly, when he suddenly heard footsteps coming from behind him, from the direction of the entrance to the skywalk that led to the hospital wing.

At the speed of light, Heero whipped around and hid behind one of the pillars, keeping his gun close and peeking out for the enemy that was approaching. A few seconds after, the doors to the room opened with a loud bang, and Zechs Merquise in the flesh dashed inside, followed by a raven-black haired, tall woman in a white medic coat.

Heero froze hidden behind his pillar, feeling blood boil in his veins at the sight of the tall man, with difficulty resisting the urge to immediately shot the bullet in Zechs' head... They were separated by no more than twenty meters, but the two haven't spotted him yet.

The two seemed… stressed out.

"I've already said. That's out of the question, Noin," Zechs muttered harshly to the woman, putting all his gear, including shortwave radio and a rifle on one of the nearby desks. "I want you to stop."

"No, Milliardo, I won't stop," the woman, apparently called with strangely sounding name Noin, persisted, stopping abruptly a few meters behind Zechs and clenching her fists in apparent anger and restlessness. Heero saw this woman for the first time in his life, but he realized that she must have been close to Relena's brother if she was allowed to call him by his real name. Even Dorothy wasn't allowed. "We must evacuate the base. We need to save all that has been built here-"

"We're not leaving this place," Zechs snapped at Noin, turning around to face her and raising his voice. At that moment, he was standing with his back to Heero, and Heero sensed it was the right moment to come out of hiding. "Pulling back means starting with a clean slate and delaying everything for months, if not years... during that time, every day, more and more people are being torn apart by these monsters or suffocating in the fumes of spores. People are dying even now, Noin! We are not allowed to pull back even for a centimeter."

Now.

Giving himself only one more second to control his breath, Heero slowly, silently came out from behind the pillar, holding his gun in front of him.

"Your people are dying right now!" Noin screamed over-emotionally, pointing her finger at the door behind her, through which they had walked in. "What do you want to build on if we lose everything now?! I'm begging you, we need to pull back, please-"

The woman stopped short and froze in surprise as her eyes came to a stop at Heero's steely gaze just above the barrel of his pistol. Apparently noticing the sudden change of expression on her face, Zechs whipped around, and the two men's eyes finally met.

Stopping about fifteen meters from them, Heero held his gun steadily, aiming at the center of Zechs' forehead, whose countenance, though still composed, noticeably transformed from shock and surprise to blind fury.

"Smuggler…! I assumed you dead," Zechs growled, "and I was wrong once again."

Heero focused all his vigilance and attention on this man, the leader of the Fireflies, his former client, Relena's brother, and the self-appointed messiah claiming to bring normality to the world. Now, after seeying the evidence at the hospital grounds, he should also call him a massive murderer. The only thought about all this was enough for him to pull the trigger and end all this...

"You're not a pretty sight," Zechs suddenly continued, the muscles in his temples and neck pulsing distinctly as he kept his eyes locked on Heero.

"Thanks to you," Heero growled, but kept his nerves in check, not letting anger take him over.

Zechs shook his head. "I mean your right arm. So these scavengers eventually got at you. You're running out of time."

"I'm gonna make sure your time runs out sooner than mine."

Zechs narrowed his eyes menacingly at Heero when suddenly Noin walked from behind Zechs, spreading her arms in a surrendering gesture.

"You're committing a mistake. Not all hope has to be lost for you," Noin said in a gentle voice, pointing at Heero's hand. "We could help you..."

Heero gave her a dark look in reply. "Spare me those barbaric methods you practice here. Once I kill you all, I'll burn this place to the ground. I'll wipe off the face of the earth every fucking tiniest trace of you. So that such horror will never happen again."

Ominous silence filled the room.

Heero swallowed, suddenly feeling his heart beating so fast and loud as if it might have echoed in the room. It didn't usually happen to him, he was always able to control his body; this time, however, for some reason, he couldn't... Was it another symptom…?

"Just let me ask you one thing, smuggler. Do you think that this place was created in one go, just like that?" Noin asked rhetorically, cracking her knuckles.

"Noin…" Zechs growled, his sight never leaving Heero, but the woman didn't stop talking.

"Lives of dozens of Fireflies and people of goodwill had to be sacrificed to create this hospital. We needed months of preparation and smuggling tons of goods and medical equipment, including those found in other states... Such an operation would never have been possible if it hadn't been for the determination and faith that it could bring us a better tomorrow."

Heero's features didn't even twitch when he nodded towards the glass windows. "Those people… in those shallow graves out there, below the building... they shared your belief in a better tomorrow too?"

Zechs's stern expression didn't change even for a moment, but Noin apparently hesitated before continuing.

"Think about it. How many people must have died before the tuberculosis vaccine was discovered? Or polio vaccine, flu shots? Do you think that before this happened, there had been no attempt to treat people in all possible ways? To find out a cure, medics had done things on people that we would call torture today, but those actions eventually led to a breakthrough. Is anyone now questioning these actions?" she made a significant pause. "No. We all know that those actions were necessary and justified at that stage because all those experiences in gremio led to our present state of knowledge."

"…accepting that looking for a cure can be much worse than a disease itself, huh?" Heero concluded in a low voice. He felt irritated by this useless conversation, which was only showing the extent of the woman's hypocrisy. Nevertheless, he was finding it almost funny that she didn't or didn't want to realize this paradox. "Let's face it. You toy with human life here. Playing god. And that's a dangerous game."

"Now you are playing God, Heero Yuy," Zechs interjected, taking a step closer to Heero and pushing Noin behind his back. "You have no right to judge us. Only history has the right to judge us - it will also show who was right: we or you. Although something tells me that you will soon disappear without a trace into the darkness of history."

"I don't care," Heero growled back. "I just can't stand the thought that when I give up the ghost, you'll still be walking on this earth. You who don't hesitate to turn your own little sister into lab material."

Zechs snorted dismissively, and Noin flinched.

"I want her to become immortal," Zechs declared. "The part of her genes responsible for her immunity, fixed in a vaccine or drug, will live long after her death, saving millions of people. That's what I want for her."

"You want to use her."

"And what do you want for her?" Zechs snapped aggressively. "Or rather, I should ask, what did you do for her, so far? Except that you fucked her and fathered your bastard in her?"

Hearing those words, Heero stiffened, his racing heart skipping a beat.

His throat felt dry as if Zechs' words had the power to transfer him into the scorched desert. A hurricane of thoughts and emotions reverberated in his head, he was unable to utter a word, bewildered, and almost breathless… and then numb because of pain that struck his heart when he realized that his hunch ultimately turned out to be true.

Ever since the very moment when it had become clear that he was going to die, Heero stubbornly and desperately clung to the thought that he's wrong and she's not... Now everything was falling into place; he had no reason to believe that Zechs was lying.

Heero's heart bunched up as he perceived that by dying, he would leave not only her. He had brought to this tremendous world another feeble life, another child that won't remember his father - just like him. He's gonna wrong not only her but also this child, even before it's even born...

…how much easier and less painful it would have been to die without this awareness.

The anguish had to be reflected visibly like never before on his usually controlled facial features because Zechs smiled crookedly as if he realized and said:

"Ah, I see… You didn't know."

x

Relena POV

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On the floor above, in the corridor lightened by pulsating in red alarm lights, Relena stood in front of wide glassy doors with an inscription Laboratories, realizing that the destination of her long journey had literally materialized before her eyes. Although reason urged her to run out of the building and save herself, some strange power held her in place…

She had a hunch: behind that door could be a vaccine that had been taken from her. It was the vaccine created by her father to save the world and all people that now could be used for the particular interests of one group. Heero was right, and she was even more sure of that after speaking with Milliardo: it wasn't for the sake of humanity, but to gain the power to rule it. She couldn't let her brother succeed. Even if he was the only one in the world who had the opportunity to develop a vaccine... he surely didn't deserve it. That wasn't a world she wanted for her and Heero's child.

Relena yanked on the handle, but of course, the door was locked. She picked up a nearby metal trash can and banged it hard against the door with all her force. When the thick glass didn't budge, she swung again. This time the glass shattered with a loud crack into a million pieces, which reflected the red alarm light as if they had been flooded with blood.

Realizing she was still only in a hospital gown and barefoot, Relena carefully stepped over the threshold. Before she continued, she gripped from the floor a narrow, sharp shard of glass - her only weapon - and pushed it inside her pocket.

She cautiously went inside, quietly checking the next rooms of the laboratory that seemed almost identical - all sterile and full of white light. The laboratory was deserted. Here, unlike in the corridor, the lights didn't go out, only red alarms glowed above the doors. Despite the passage of years, the laboratory was full of various types of medical and diagnostic equipment. The amount of machinery was downright puzzling; it was unlikely it would all just be right here after an outbreak day. Relena thought that it was probably stolen...

Ultimately, after a few more minutes of looking, in the room at the far end of the corridor, Relena found a metallic box and inside it - a steel trunk with a familiar glassy vial inside.

She lifted the precious item to her eye level, inspecting it. Thankfully, it was intact, still filled with a gray-brown liquid, although its tip was connected to an air needle - a tiny device that allowed the contents of a tube to be injected without a plunger, by the use of a pressure difference. Relena remembered seeing something like this in her father's lab before...

"Hey, you," Relena whispered, twiddling the object in her hands. She smiled triumphantly to herself, although she was talking into the vial. "Forgive me. I have to get you out of here... "

"Hands off it."

Relena's glance darted up.

On the other side of the room, in the threshold, Dorothy was aiming at her from a gun. Relena didn't hear her coming. Dorothy looked like after a hard fight; she had scorch on the entire surface of her arm, she was covered in blood and dust, and her clothes had multiple burn marks. Her silver eyes were drenched with blood.

"The whole hospital is burning. I don't care anymore. Especially I don't care if you're fucking immune," Dorothy snapped, picking up her shortwave radio. "Let go of this vial, or I'll shoot you like a dog."

x

Heero POV

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The silence that fell in the command center after Zechs' words was suddenly interrupted by the tinny and cracking sound of an incoming connection from a shortwave radio - the one Zechs brought with him, and that was now lying on one of the desks. Zechs, Noin, and Heero stared at the device as the loud and high-pitched, distorted by waves voice of Dorothy Catalonia, suddenly streamed from the speaker.

"This is Dorothy, I need support. Relena has freed herself and is stealing the prototype. I repeat, support needed in lab number 7, over!"

Relena-

It immediately sobered him, bringing Heero back to consciousness. He locked his gaze again at Zechs and Noin, whose faces were distorted in shock and disbelief.

He realized in a flash that the only way to give Relena a chance to fight Dorothy was to keep those two in this place as long as possible.

"This is Dorothy, I really need help in lab number 7, over!"

"The fuck...?!" Zechs gasped.

As he turned on his heel and walked in the direction of the doors, Heero started shooting.

Noin and Zechs ducked down to the ground behind the desks, vanishing from Heero's sight, and he made a dive toward them. "You're NOT getting out of here!"

As he ran, at the last moment, Heero noticed Zechs peek out from behind the overturned metal shelf, aiming at him, and he instantly ducked under the nearby counter before a series of bullets flew over his head. Crawling on the ground, Heero moved behind another desk, and as soon as the series stopped, he leaned out again, shooting.

"Noin, now! RUN!"

The scream came from Zechs, who simultaneously fired at Heero, while the black-haired woman dashed towards the exit from the room…

Keeping his cover, Heero took aim and, without further hesitation, fired a shot that hit the very center of woman's back and made her buckle up.

"NOIN!"

The woman cried of pain and staggered, but before Heero could fire another shot, she managed to slip out of the room.

"Son of a bitch, I'll fucking kill you!" Zechs roared.

Hearing the clump of rapid footsteps, Heero slipped out from behind his cover, shooting at Zechs, who was running at him like an arrow.

He rarely missed all his life.

This time Heero missed… four times.

Zechs rushed up to Heero, knocking the gun out of his hand, then flung Heero to the floor. Hitting with the back of his head against the ground, Heero only managed to helplessly notice his gun plunging under the desk... not far away, less than a meter… from his limp left arm.

Damn it.

Then he shot and clenched his right hand around Zechs' forearm, blocking an incoming punch.

"You're like a wounded animal," Zechs growled, eyeing Heero with rage in his gaze, "you're like a deadly shot deer that keeps running away, even though it stumbles against its own guts... You're miserable, only delaying the inevitable...!"

He quickly pulled his arm out of Heero's grasp and inflicted him a hard, painful blow to the jaw, which made Heero see the stars, then rested his forearm on Heero's throat, pressing it against the floor.

Heero was suddenly left out of breath. The man twice his size was pushing at him with all his strength. Heero sank his fingers into Zechs' arm with all his might, then inflicted a blind blow, trying to break free, but with one hand, he had no chance...

"I see it in your eyes!" Zechs roared, pressing his forearm to Heero's neck, pinning him to the floor even harder. "I see that desperate will to live! Are you afraid of dying, Heero Yuy?!"

x

Meantime

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The stairwell corridor was still lit by pulsating red alarm lights, though she could see the red of her own blood everywhere without it. She smelled and tasted smoke from the burning part of the hospital on the lower floors. She looked down at the palm of her hand, with which she was pressing the wound in her chest. She saw dark red blood - a lot of it.

Feeling her strength draining away, Lucrezia Noin climbed to the upper floor and hurriedly limped towards the laboratories, bouncing from the walls every now and then, leaving bloody streaks on them.

She realized that everything was falling into place: Relena's pregnancy, the attack at their hospital, the smuggler who miraculously survived but had been bitten, and now Relena stealing the vaccine... For Noin, it was clear that all this was aimed at wasting not only their efforts but also the sacrifice of Milliardo's father.

She knew that she had to save the last thing, which gave the world a chance to return to normal. This is what they wanted... That's why they made all those sacrifices…

All this cannot be in vain...!

x

Relena POV

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The stench of fire raging throughout the hospital was already reaching the upper floors, but Dorothy's walkie-talkie remained stubbornly quiet. No response came, nobody reported off. It was clear for both Relena and Dorothy that no one would come.

As Relena regained control of her nerves with each passing second, Dorothy, on the contrary, seemed to be losing it. Ultimately she tossed the shortwave radio on the floor with chafe.

"…you little bitch," Dorothy hissed, narrowing her eyes at Relena, while still keeping her at gunpoint. "You've completely lost your mind. Is pregnancy making women stupid?"

Relena squeezed the glassy vial in her hand, eyeing Dorothy with a hostile glare.

"It could have been so different," Dorothy continued, pacing the lab bench calmly and approaching Relena from the side. "It could have been painless for you, no struggle, no resistance. You would have just got an injection, and it would have been over. You would have been transferred to eternity, and your life would have saved thousands of others. But oh no, you preferred differently... you don't care about others... you don't care about the world."

Spreading her arms to keep her balance, Relena slowly moved to the side, walking away from Dorothy, still gazing at her over the barrel of her gun. Looking into Dorothy's silver eyes, filled with rage and madness, Relena felt cold shivers run down her spine.

"The world will remember you as the greatest egoist ever. I wonder if this feeling would chase you for the rest of your life... I wish that guilt eventually rob you of your senses... I fucking hope so...!"

Giggling chillingly, Dorothy sped up like a leopard that was about to pounce on its prey, while Relena kept backing away faster and faster.

"My father sacrificed for this vaccine," Relena declared, her hand tightening around the vial. "For the sake of the memory of him, I can't let you use it as a tool of power!"

"You're still childishly naïve and stupid, just like you were when we first met. Everything has to be explained to you like to a little child," Dorothy snapped impatiently. "Only we can carry the development of this vaccine. And by denying us access to it, you're doing exactly the same what you accuse us of! You just decided over the lives and deaths of thousands of people! What is it if not a massive genocide?!"

Dorothy's finger curled around the trigger, and in that second, Relena ran around the corner, hiding from the shots.

"Now everything is fucked up! You've ruined everything!" Dorothy screamed, firing another bullet in her direction. "Come out!"

Gasping in terror, Relena quickly crawled on bent knees along the rows of low lab cabinets. She kept hearing Dorothy's rushed footsteps behind her, and another shot flew just above her head. She managed to hide behind a row of lockers when more bullets ricocheted on the floor right next to her feet…

Oh god...!

Tucking the vial with the vaccine to the pocket of her hospital gown, Relena quickly got up and stood on unsteady, trembling legs, then moved silently along the lockers to another row of lab tables.

She kept hearing Dorothy's careful, slow footsteps…

"I said: come out, slut!" Dorothy shouted, stopping at the end of the alley.

Relena felt how difficult it was to keep her balance on her legs, which were shaking with fear. Her hands, sweating from stress, left wet marks on the sterile lab tops. She felt as if there was no more oxygen in the room. She took steps blindly, moving as far as possible from the inevitably approaching Dorothy, whom she could only hear coming, but could not see... In a small laboratory room, she was quickly running out of places to hide, she had no weapons... and she was being chased by a bloodthirsty madwoman with a gun.

God… God!

Her chances were very low, and she was helplessly scared. All she could do was to stay low and continue moving away from Dorothy, as noiselessly as possible.

Then suddenly, on the ground next to her, she noticed several empty, broken glass packages. Relena stopped, grabbed one, and tossed it in the direction of the opposite row, between the lab tables.

When the sound of breaking glass reverberated in the room, she heard Dorothy's sigh of surprise, then the tap of her heels as she began to walk briskly towards the source of the noise.

Holding her breath, Relena peeked out from her hiding place to notice that the blonde took a bait and had just passed her without seeing her - finally turning with her back to her…

"I'll kill you bitch," Dorothy muttered under her breath, "I'll finish what I failed in Atlanta..."

That moment Relena felt this shudder that ran down her spine… It was an impulse, a cry of survival instinct, and Relena surrendered herself entirely to it. Her only weapon, the shard of glass she had previously taken from the corridor and surreptitiously pocketed, suddenly seemed to fit perfectly into her hand…

She crawled out from her hiding spot and moving while crouching she tracked Dorothy, who still hadn't heard her...

Relena had seen Heero doing it a hundred times. She remembered how he had followed his target completely unnoticed; then, after closing on, he had bounced off the ground like a wild cat and attacked his victims from behind their backs, killing them instantly… Now Relena was acting on the same autopilot, her will, and her body desperate and programmed on only one task: to be the one who would survive, the one who would leave this room alive.

When Dorothy slowed down for a brief moment, looking around... Relena attacked. Dorothy only managed to groan in surprise as a shard of glass sank deep into her throat, and the air she was breathing lost its only way into her lungs. Relena held her for a long time in an iron grip, releasing the woman only when her limp body slipped from her hands.

"Oh, fuck…!"

Still holding the piece of glass in her bloody hand, Relena was breathing quickly and heavily, gazing at Dorothy's body on the ground. Long-haired blonde's silver eyes froze forever in an expression of shock and disbelief. Backing away in terror, Relena couldn't control the trembling of her hands... only after a few more, long seconds, weakly, she unclenched her stiff fingers and dropped a piece of blood-stained glass to the floor.

As if trying to remember what she had come here for, she numbly reached to her pocket and pulled out a vaccine vial, staining it in red with her fingers. The awareness of what she had just done terrified Relena even more than things that this woman threatened her with... She didn't want it… she had to do this…

What had happened, what had she done, slowly reached her... But it wasn't the moment for pricks of conscience…

She should be running away now...

As she turned on her heel, she stopped short in front of…

Lucrezia Noin.

"I won't let you go away," Noin declared with a hoarse voice.

The doctor was blocking the only way out of the laboratory, holding a gun in both outstretched hands. Her overall was all covered in blood... it was obviously her blood. Relena froze with the vial in her clenched fist, staring helplessly at the barrel, aimed at the center of her chest.

This time there was no way to run.

Noin gritted her teeth against the pain as she looked down at Dorothy's body and then at the vial in Relena's hand.

"How many more people are to die...?" Noin gasped, the look in her eyes almost desperate and broken-hearted. "Is it not enough that for so many years we have been looking for what you want to waste with such ease? Do all these human sacrifices... really mean nothing to you...?"

"I…" Relena whispered, but Noin continued. Her hands were trembling now almost as intensely as Relena's.

"Think about what you're doing, Relena... It cannot be undone… For you, it's only one person... while in a few months, this vaccine could save the whole world...!"

Relena's heart skipped a beat.

"What-"

All of a sudden, Lucrezia Noin let out a hollow cry, and her body arched backward. Her smock tainted even redder with the flowing blood, and the gun slipped from her hands.

Relena looked up, taken aback. A male figure towered above the raven-black haired woman, delivering the fatal blow with a sharp weapon from behind the woman's back.

"God will never… forgive you this…!"

These were Lucrezia Noin's last words before her purple eyes froze and crept with a curtain of death.

"Didn't you people realize that already?" Relena heard an impatient, low, familiar, manly voice, "God doesn't care."

x

Heero POV

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He was losing consciousness. Darkness quickly surrounded him and enveloped his mind like a soft, impermeable duvet. The pain of his open wounds slowly faded away, as did the pain of slow death from suffocation.

Then, suddenly the grip on his throat loosened, and his lungs contracted painfully, drawing in the longed-for breath once again and bringing him back to life. When Zechs Merquise unexpectedly lifted his weight off his chest and let him go, Heero began to cough and desperately pant at the same time. He rolled over, blood pulsing in his temples, suffering a knackering cough that was burning his lungs...

And then he felt a rigor.

A robust and painful shudder that ran through his right arm at the speed of light. With horror, Heero realized that he had absolutely no control over it.

As he gasped for air again, the tremble reappeared, forcing him to bend his knees up to his chest. The veins in his right arm burned as if no blood, but lava flowed through them, melting his skin and spreading over his body. He wanted to curse, but his throat was tightened, and he only let out a broken grunt. Though he didn't want to be aware of it, he could feel fear slowly overwhelming him and exacerbating his pain... The shudder disappeared for a few seconds and then came back, hitting his body with doubled strength like a lightning strike, throwing his head back and clenching his fingers against his will so hard that the whiteness of his bones showed through his skin...

"This is the end, smuggler," Heero heard Zechs' voice above him, though couldn't see him. "You're losing feeling in your limbs. Soon you're going to lose your minds…"

Lying on his side, Heero closed his eyes shut, gasping for breath, his body tensed and shuddering. He didn't try to defend himself anymore, he didn't try to fight... He waited for the familiar sound of the cocked gun, and the shot of a bullet that would penetrate his brain and mercifully end this suffering...

But then, he heard something that terrified him to the core: the departing footsteps.

"I got used to leaving you alive... this time, Cordyceps will definitely finish the job for me. Fare thee well, smuggler."

No

Though every cell in his brain desperately tried to make him get up, Heero wasn't able to control his martyred body enough to get so quickly back on his feet. He rolled onto his stomach and sucked air into his lungs through clenched teeth at the same second when Zechs Merquise slammed all the doors to the administration wing with a loud thud…

…leaving him alive only to turn into this.

His mouth was dry; the thirst he experienced was overwhelming and painful. He couldn't curb his thoughts that were stirring in his mind, like whirlpools in the river's torrent, leading him to think only about…

hunger

Then his head started pounding with an exhausting, violent headache that instantly blinded him… It felt as if his brain was sprawling… as if something was smashing his skull from the inside out...

He let out a long, agonizing cry of pain and took his head in his trembling right hand as if it might help him contain the boiling he felt under his bones of the cranium and under his skin, every inch of which was blazing with fire.

With the last of his strength, he clung to the memories of the most beautiful moments in his life. The images flashed before his eyes, like a movie played at an accelerated pace as if his brain realized how little time he had…

"Heero!"

They were all only with her… Always smiling at him, calling him by his name.

"You were right about the shooting stars. They do grant wishes."

"Heero… I can't hold it back anymore. I want to stay by your side, no matter… if we ever manage to get to Houston."

"I love you, Heero."

"You can't die… you can't leave me here…"

He saw her through his closed eyelids.

She was dancing gingerly around him, spinning, tilting her head back, spreading her arms as if she was about to fly up into the air. The pale blue dress she was wearing on that party night was spreading around her like a celestial aureole. She was approaching him, he could smell the faint flowery fragrance of her hair, the scent of her skin... Then she stopped, and she looked at him with sad but wise eyes, just as when they said goodbye at Evergreen.

Relena-

Though he was reaching out to her, he couldn't touch her anymore, and she didn't come any nearer to him, resting her hand on a particular spot in the curve of her belly just below her heart.

…the bitter heartache that struck him then had absolutely nothing to do with the virus.

I'm so sorry, Relena.

"I'm not… afraid to die…!," Heero gasped, his body ultimately slowly lifting itself from the floor onto knees, and standing up, staggering.

Then his throat tightened, and he spoke a word in a human language no more.

I just wish… I had lived-

just a little bit-

longer…

.

The end of Heero's POV

TBC

…

Next chapter: "The Death Zone." Two chapters left.

"Even when hope is unjustified, and doubt and despair are more than justified, a man clings not to despair, but to this absurd hope."

- quote translated by me, from polish novelist Maria Dabrowska