Duo's eyes were beginning to hurt. He was not as young as he used to be, and had long ago realized that he could no longer function properly on sleepless nights. Yet, if his body was beginning to falter then the sheer stubbornness of his will was not. He could deal with sore eyes and an ache in the back of his head. He could not deal with being disrespected and dishonored by a child.

True, he had once been of an age with Elliott DeSchepper, and as he stared at her lounging in her chair and gazing at him thoughtfully, she reminded him a tiny bit of himself.

Age lends perspective, he thought as he stared, iron-faced and unblinking. He had been in her position countless times in the One Year War, outwitting and capturing highly trained soldiers twice his age. At the time he felt no remorse for them. He thought they were foolish to have ended up at the mercy of an upstart street rat. Now that he was in their shoes, however, he understood differently.

"You're a bold man, Mr. Maxwell," remarked DeSchepper after a time.

"Master Sergeant," Duo insisted.

Elliott cracked a smug grin. "As you please, Master Sergeant, but it seems that such military titles aren't much use in this era of peace. Don't you agree?"

"There is no peace with lunatics like you running around."

"A very bold man."

Duo wondered what she was getting at. She had been sitting in front of his cell for a quarter of an hour now, just staring at him. Certainly there was a reason for it, and because she was not forthcoming with that reason Duo suspected that she wanted him to ask. He would not satisfy that.

"You're patient as well," Elliott continued. "That or you're painfully stubborn. Which is it, Master Sergeant?" She spat the title with condescension.

"Last I understood I was a prisoner. I don't have a lot on my agenda," Duo replied bitterly. "Seems to me that you're the one wasting time here. I can afford to be patient."

"Point taken," Elliott conceded, "but so can I. Now that your friend's escape pod has washed up at L3 we'll need to wait before we make our next move. No doubt she'll try to track the location of my ship. We'll be hiding until that search is called off."

"Sorry to waste your time."

"No, no, silly man," mocked DeSchepper, patting the air, "we would be waiting either way. Construction of the dolls won't be complete for a week, and testing of their operation system will need to be completed before then. There's plenty to do. Besides, the search presents an easy target, if it lasts long enough. And if it doesn't, it's no matter still. Targets are easy to acquire if you know where to look, and easier still if you know your enemy."

Dolls? Thought Duo. Certainly she couldn't be speaking of unmanned mobile doll units. The last of those were destroyed after the Marimeia Khushrenada incident of AC196, and their manufacture promptly outlawed by the most comprehensive and publicly understood treaty since pre-colonial World War II.

Still, there was only one kind of doll that would make sense in this situation, and this girl seemed reckless enough to try it.

"I'll take the bait," Duo said after much thought. "How could you and your tiny crew build mobile doll units, en masse? What do you plan to do with them? The code for the remote piloting system was destroyed at the signing of the Union Treaty."

"My personnel database is out of date, just as you mentioned earlier. But my schematic database is more than complete. Your Peacemillion doesn't house the only well-trained engineers in the world, you see, and not all engineers are satisfied with the false peace proliferated by your dear Union."

Duo sat in silence, unwilling to dignify her slander with even a twitch.

"My crew has been working tirelessly to redesign the mobile dolls, and they assure me that we can create a number of potent machines using half of the materials that the old models took. The things need to be powerful, not sturdy."

"You aim solely for a ballistic assault, then?"

"The world lacks the means to protect itself efficiently. Enemy defenses will take out one, maybe two of my cheap machines before they are overrun, and the machines that are destroyed will be easily replaced."

"Which leaves the defunct operation system."

"Mobile dolls are merely complex and devastating remote controlled toys," DeSchepper explained. "It is not difficult to add the means to control them to an existing operation system. My crew has been working to incorporate such control mechanisms into what you know as the Zero System."

"All working models of that system were destroyed."

"True. But some fool decided that the source code belonged in a museum database. We've made a new system with that code as its foundation. I'm sure you'll find it just as potent, if not more so, than your old systems."

"And that's why I'm here," Duo finished for her.

DeSchepper smiled and shook her head. "No. That isn't why you're here. I had initially hoped to catch the original Zero One pilot-Winner? But he turns out to be too well known to go missing. But you'll do very nicely."

The logic didn't sit well with Duo. Heero was the pilot most known for flying using the zero system, followed closely by Milliardo. The people who knew that Quatre originally built the machine were few and far between. Moreover, Winner had become ridiculously wealthy, well known, and marketable since he inherited his family's fortune, and he had earned repute beyond that for his work in medicine. It had not been a stretch for the peace-minded man to pursue such a path—it was family tradition, after all.

"At any rate," Elliott continued, "it's my understanding that all of the gundam pilots of the One Year War used the system at one point or another, so I assume you can handle yourself."

Maxwell remembered the first time he piloted Wing Zero, and recalled that it had not been a resounding success.

"I'll have you taken to our testing chamber tomorrow morning. We've got a simulation program set up."

"If I refuse?"

DeSchepper shrugged. "I'll destroy one of your precious colonies."

"You don't have the firepower," Duo replied, calling her on the obvious bluff.

"One does not need missiles or mobile suits to destroy a colony, Mr. Maxwell. They can be detonated from their cores easily enough."

Elliott stood and walked from the room before Duo could respond. Somehow he knew she wasn't bluffing.

Now that he was alone his capture seemed suddenly more sinister than it had been before Noin escaped. That was only hours ago—less than a day perhaps—and yet it seemed like weeks had gone by. Still, DeSchepper had opened up a bit since Noin left, had given up information that seemed, at least on the surface, to be important. She would never have given up such intelligence knowing that an escapee might leak it.

"She isn't going to let me go," Duo said to the emptiness, and he knew it as fact.

The thought sobered him, and he sat quietly for a while, until his headache faded and was replaced by a rumbling in his gut. The hunger came and went regularly, likely a byproduct of whatever medication the crew had administered. Soon it was gone as well.

Duo was snoozing against the wall when the door slid open and six guards entered. Three carried pistols, all trained on him, and one wore a sizeable key ring on his belt. An engineer or old-fashioned security, Duo thought, and the former was confirmed when the man opened the cell door. Rather than accessing the keys on his belt the man opened a panel on the smooth white wall, revealing a touchpad onto which he entered a code.

Duo's first instinct when the bars opened was to attack, but he knew that he'd never make it in his condition, and much less so with so much firepower pointed at him. Instead he allowed the men to help him to his feet, which they did with care and consideration for his wound, and then they escorted him silently from the cell block.

The part of the ship they walked through was grid like, laid out in a way that was easily navigable. Duo took careful note of his surroundings and thought, when he saw what looked like a med bay, that such might be his destination. But the guards continued on, down three more hallways and past innumerable doors and passages. If Duo believed that he was aboard a small ship before, he now understood the error in his thinking. It seemed that whatever vessel he was on could easily rival the Peacemillion in size.

At last the party came to a door at the end of a long hallway that opened into an apparently specialized room. It was spherical, with a tall ceiling and a flat floor, and unfurnished except for a strange looking chair situated in the center of the space. It seemed more a cylinder than a proper chair, reclined slightly and padded by thick gray foam in all the predictable places. Above it was suspended a mundane helmet by a thick cord and a loose coil of plastic-sheathed wires.

"Have a seat, sir," said one of the armed guards. "Miss DeSchepper will join you momentarily."

Duo obliged, against his better judgment, and took a seat in the chair. When he was situated the guards left, and moments after that the room went dark.

A low hum emitted from the walls around him, and a soft glow radiated forth. Next he knew the whole room was bathed in dim blue light from a hundred and more monitors lining the walls, which were so seamlessly connected that they seemed as one great projection. With absolute authenticity and unfathomable depth the screens displayed the void of space, and each star and nebula and galaxy glowed and twinkled as if he were watching through a powerful telescope. A single colony floated in the distance, far enough away to be rendered a gray-white splotch on the midnight blanket, identifiable solely by virtue of the solidity of its luminance.

Duo stared for a long time, lost in the captivating though almost wholly barren image. Such sudden and powerful immersion had him holding his breath, and when he realized moments later that he had yet to exhale he let go the air with a "Christ" that was far more prayer than sacrilege.

He had never seen outer space like this before.

A voice drifted up from below and wrapped around him comfortingly. At first it hummed, articulating nothing, but as Duo grew more accustomed to its presence it began to speak slowly and softly.

"This is how outer space should be," asserted the voice soothingly, and though he remembered keenly his surroundings Duo, awestruck, nodded his agreement. "Quiet and empty, without traffic or tourism or war. Humans do not belong here. This beautiful place was the last pristine refuge, the last realm left unspoiled by the machinations of men. We have defiled it.

"But now that we are here, let us stay, and let us live our lives anew. We are here and there is nothing to be done to reverse that truth. But let us also take care that the petty squabbles of humankind do not further diminish the splendor of our universe in the same way that they diminished the magnificence of earth. Let those born in the colonies live out their lives in the colonies, and let those who live their lives in the colonies die peacefully in their homes. Let the colonists live unmolested by the bureaucracy of the Earth Sphere, free to move and work and love and leave as they deem fit. Let them be unoppressed by excessive rule and treaties that do not have the same relevance in space as they do on earth."

The voice escalated as it continued on with its repetitive prayer, and Duo found himself nodding still. He had always thought that immigration to the colonies should be restricted in some way: Too many people made their lives in space, and too few could truly appreciate its grandeur.

As the thoughts progressed Duo noticed the air growing thick. Noticed, but did not care. He inhaled and exhaled labouredly, and the more he breathed the more intensely he felt. Emotions of all kinds flooded into his mind. He had gone for so long without such sensation that he could not sort happiness from rage from terror.

That voice had brought the feeling back.

Duo was euphoric.

And then it stopped.

ф

Noin was beginning to grow frustrated with the Peacemillion team. Heero had insisted upon a conference call to the ship as soon as they had rendezvoused on the L3 colony, but she had felt adamant about returning to the chase as soon as possible. Still, the call made sense: Noin had new information to share with the crew that could aid in the search for Duo. Refusing to share that intelligence was almost as bad as giving up the search altogether.

"Elliott DeSchepper," repeated the lieutenant again as Howard squinted at a point away from the camera. "I don't know how it's spelled."

"That's fine," said the elder. He insisted upon a thorough search of the ESUN census database upon hearing that Noin had a name and description of the enemy. "I've got six searches running consecutively with all the different spellings I can think of. Age?"

"No more than twenty-five, I'd say," Noin replied, and she could see Howard mouthing the information as he entered it into the system. "She had brown hair and brown eyes. No taller than I am."

"She?" Howard repeated dumbly.

"Yes, she. It was a girl."

Howard input a few more commands into the keyboard before him. Noin could hear the clicking of the keys as he typed, and while he did she shot a glance over either shoulder to Heero and Sally, who were both intently staring at the screen.

Howard's face lit up. "Ah! There we go. A lot of folks with this name, though."

Heero leaned forward, put one hand on the desk and the other on Noin's shoulder. "How many of them are registered with the GDOT?" he asked, referring to the galactic department of transport, a governmental organization that dealt with the registration and tracking of all vehicles capable of spaceflight.

"Those records might be tight, Heero," Howard replied. "I'll see what I can do."

A long while passed as Howard's searches ran, and as they waited the trio grew impatient. It wasn't long before Heero's fingers began tapping beats on the desktop and Sally started to pace. Noin herself felt fidgety—there was too much to be done to be sitting around.

"Okay," Howard said at length. "I've got 759 people named Elliott DeSchepper in the census who are under twenty-five years old, female, who meet your physical description. Of that number, less than half are registered with a space-capable machine."

"You'll have to manually search," said Sally suddenly, "but you ought to see if you can find one with a salvage class vessel registered to them. If you can find one that matches the specifications of the ship we saw in the photograph then we can get more information."

Howard shook his head. "The photo was poor quality."

"Are you saying it can't be done?" Heero asked.

Again, Howard shook his head. "No, it's not that it can't be done. It's just not likely that we'll find anything. It's unlikely that a loon like her would take the time to register her ships. Could even be that the ships are registered under another name, if they are at all. Aside from that it'll take hours to comb through these results so carefully."

"Do it," Heero commanded. "While you're running that information we'll deal with the serial numbers we found on the emergency pod. Might be we can find out what ship they're associated with and get another name—or corroborate one that you've found."

"Sounds like a decent plan," Howard agreed. "What should I tell your wife?"

Heero thought for a few seconds, and then said, "Tell her I'll be back as soon as I can, that she'd better not make a broadcast, and that I love her. In that order."

"Roger that. Be safe out there, you three. I'll never hear the end of it if something else happens. Peacemillion out."

The screen darkened and Howard's image faded. Heero crumpled in the chair beside Noin and he rubbed his face with the back of his hand. He knew as well as all the others that these informational searches were absolutely vital to the mission, but so, too, were they time consuming. But if he felt exasperated by the ordeal, Noin was much the opposite. Immediately after the communication feed was closed she began a search of her own of the immense GDOT database of serial numbers and ship descriptions, trying to find a match.

Typically the strings of identification numbers on escape pods were sixteen alphanumeric digits long and twelve of the sixteen digits shared with the mothership. The men who had found her could glean only eight from the pod in which she'd arrived, and those eight had missing data between them.

"I wish there was a way to search partials built into this stupid system," she uttered quietly.

"Enter the longest consecutive string you have and see what it comes up with," recommended Heero.

Noin input five digits that had been found in the middle of the string. Of the other three, two were at the end of the serial number and one was at the start. It was better than no information, but if Howard's search would be long then theirs would be endless.

"There are two thousand vessels with this partial," said Noin after the search had completed.

Heero leaned forward. "Sort by active date. If your description of the ship is accurate, then it was probably constructed in the last ten years or so."

"Twelve hundred registered in the last ten years."

"Get a print of those records," Heero ordered and stood, "I'll help you search through them while Sally takes us toward deep space. Should be easy since we've got the first number in the ID. It'll just be tedious."

ф

For the first time in a long time, DeSchepper harbored uncertainty about her plan. The mobile doll system check had been executed flawlessly even though the pilot had been completely unaware of his actions. The doping had affected him more than she hoped, and when combined with the images she'd found to motivate him in the machine he'd practically lost his mind. He'd taken the controls in hand immediately after they were presented to him, and then proceeded to run through the battle simulator almost flawlessly.

Yet still, Elliott could not be sure whether it was the system that had elicited such fantastic results or if it was the pilot she'd found. In much the same way as the zero system relied on manipulation of the pilot, DeSchepper's system was as much psychological warfare as it was physical, though her system was far less technologically advanced, depending on the pilot's reaction to negative motivators and stimulants to do the task.

She knew from experience how much a soldier's instinct relied on his emotions, and she knew how far a man would go to fulfill desires for vengeance and vindication when the opportunity presented itself. She had been introduced to the psychological numbing agent Quell when she was very young; she knew that despite its suppressant effect it had a tendency to amplify emotions—specifically negative emotions—when it was taken away. Combining that aftereffect with strong and lifelike images of war and death and whatever enemy her target perceived as his own had been far more powerful a motivator than she'd ever imagined.

For an hour after the testing concluded she sat in her private quarters, stunned by the numbers on her readout. Maxwell had performed better than she ever could have imagined, wiping out tiny simulated targets in rapid succession. The computer itself took ten minutes to make it through the simulation at its most difficult settings, but Maxwell had done it in eight. Even within that remarkable time frame he'd made three or four mistakes, which DeSchepper attributed to unfamiliarity with the control scheme, but he adjusted immediately. He never made the same error twice. She wondered how he would fare once he became more comfortable with the controls.

She wondered how he was coping in his cell.

ф

The dent was mocking him almost as much as his sore hand. Duo had spent the last hour staring at it while trying futilely to rub away the pain from his knuckles. Only after the drug had taken over again could he sit and think about what he'd just done.

In the immediate, he was fairly certain he'd damaged his right hand in a boxing match against the shining white metal wall, and he wasn't sure that he'd won. There had been no real reason to punch the thing except out of sheer mania and frustration. Though it had happened less than thirty minutes ago the memory had blurred, but the evidence was clear before him and a stabbing pain shot between his hand and his elbow whenever he flexed his fingers.

Prior to that was a rush of fuzzy images and fleeting memories. He recalled the spherical room with its strange but comfortable chair, the brilliantly realistic images of space surrounding him. It was about the time that the voice began its mesmerizing prayer that his mind began to blank. It had been difficult to breathe toward the end of it, the air had become heavy, and he started to feel. The first thing had been giddiness at the beauty of space and the colonies, and that feeling was allowed to linger for a while. But then the images changed. The voice changed. No longer was the room calm and sweet.

They had found images of that day. Of that place. They had thrust them in his face without censorship or regard, and every emotion that Duo Maxwell had felt on the day his childhood ended came back to him a hundredfold.

The voice had told him to get into the suit. To reap his revenge. And he had.

It was curious how they had gotten the controls into his hands and the helmet on his head, but once inside the visor Duo had lost himself completely. The images and voices were far more gruesome and frantic than they had been on the outside—more real. His ability to temper himself, to rationalize what he was doing, had gone. He shot to kill every target that presented itself to him while a woman's voice screamed at him in what he perceived to be agony. Reflecting back on it, the experience had been like playing a sick virtual reality shooter, and he had lost control.

He would never say he was thankful for the man in the white coat that had restrained him and doped him again before he was ever released from the chair. And he remained tightly bound until they had thrown him back in his cell. Looking back, even Duo could see the sagacity in such a move. The first thing he'd done when the restraints were removed was lash out at the man who'd removed them. Lucky for that man, his colleagues pulled him out of the cell and locked it tight. All the rest of Duo's frustration he'd taken out on the poor wall.

And now he sat, unfeeling again except for the pain in his hand and a dull ache in his gut. They had used his memories against him. They had used her against him.

Duo Maxwell resolved that he would kill them all.