Chapter 4

.

Winry Rockbell spent the entire morning after inserting Edward's arm researching the young man. She didn't have to search the Sol-Net long to find enough information to fill her aching head. Edward Elric, currently nineteen, recruited into the Solar military forces at the tender age of thirteen. Nothing in any of the public files gave any reason why they'd recruit someone so young, especially when eighteen was the minimum enlistment age. Even those rare protegees attending the academies who managed to graduate early were assigned desk jobs and low-risk positions until they could be of age for a ranking position with the military. And, Edward Elric did not attend any of the Sol-System military academies. Not one. She combed through article after article of Major Elric finding Alphonse always accompanied him.

"Funny..." She mumbled to herself. "Cyborgs are executed, but build a robot with human-like A.I. and there's no problems." The irony made her cringe.

After finding absolutely no pre-military history of Major Elric, the good doctor gave up. She knew he had to have a family somewhere, had to have been born on a station or moon colony. It suddenly hit her that someone removed this young man's information from the public record. That only meant that whatever there was to find out about the golden-eyed hot head, she'd never have access to, unless she could craft her way into and crack that shell.

She nearly gave up before the idea struck her to search under the name Alphonse Elric. The first speck of information she discovered came in the form of a news byline. A small article printed on the Agricultural Sector of Resembool Station reflected upon her tired eyes. Indeed, this huge space station orbiting Earth held a vast farming "ring." Thousands of kilometers in diameter, the "fields" on the farming ring encircled the station proper and the gentle spinning of the ring generated that part of the station's gravity. Winry didn't have a window at her medical station, but she could clearly recall, the lush and green ground of the agri-ring. When she was a little girl, she'd stare at the rows and rows of wheat and corn as they slowly moved and she counted the tiny little houses of the farmers who worked these fields and dreamed of running barefoot on the cool green grass as the sun's rays warmed her cheeks.

Instead, her childhood consisted of learning machinery, circuits and metals. Despite growing up in the station's Engineering Section, Winry picked up her mother's penchant for first aid – she often tended to scrapes and cuts from metal work. The turning point in her young life happened shortly before her fifteenth birthday when a sudden power outage trapped the girl on a lift. One of the passengers on that elevator was a young woman on her way to the Medical Sector to give birth. Cooped up for eight hours and using the dim light from the bio luminescent strip on the ceiling, Winry Rockbell delivered her first baby safely. Breaking from family tradition, the young girl decided to go to medical school instead of becoming a station engineer.

Although her field of study became medicine, her hobby remained with metal and wires. She built and crafted robotic prosthetics in her spare time. Due to the advancement of human medicine, only rare instances meant her robotics skills came to use. Sure, there were accidents here and there, but science progressed so that tiny appendages such as fingers and toes could be grown in her lab and transplanted. She even successfully replicated and transplanted a human eye for a blind man. Winry was completely certain that soon, and in her lifetime, she'd successfully grow a human arm or leg to be transplanted. Until that time, the young woman remained content to install automail limbs on her patients who needed them.

"Local boy killed in farming accident..." She read the article title out loud but finished the rest silently. It told of an unfortunate event with a threshing machine which ended the life of Alphonse Elric and injured his brother Edward. "Oh." Winry's stomach churned as she realized that Ed most likely built and programmed the robot out of grief for his dead sibling and this horrible event probably took Ed's arm and leg. Accidents happen, but it still did not explain why the military recruited a thirteen-year-old boy. A few more search results materialized upon her screen and suddenly, she faced the image of both Elric brothers. Even though youth and baby fat framed his small face, the young doctor could not deny that the robot in the room just by her work station looked exactly like the boy in the photograph.

"Oh, shit." She cursed upon realization that utter grief possessed a farm boy talented in robotics to build a robot to fill the hole in his heart and his life after the loss of his brother. Winry didn't know if she had it in her to get any more involved with Edward Elric than doctor/patient. Still, she felt compelled to speak to the man so she closed her workstation and made her way toward the hospital ward. The young woman steeled her resolve to face the sad truth behind the Elrics, that and she had secured workshop space for Edward to repair his robotic companion. With a woosh of the automatic door, she entered the room.

"Hey!" Alphonse greeted her. A whole Alphonse.

"What the hell?" She walked into the room to see the android sitting complacently on Ed's bed. His missing half restored to metal and circuitry leaving a weird delineation between artificial flesh and hard machinery from one side of his body to the other in almost a perfect line. Winry didn't understand, she hadn't been gone but a few hours. Even with all her expertise, she was sure she couldn't have repaired the boy. "How..." Edward, not in her line of sight answered.

"I fixed him." He stood, fully dressed in Resembool Station basic attire: blue shirt, black pants and shoes, but his golden hair neatly plaited. The young man maneuvered around the remains of the second bed and stood to the young doctor's left.

"But...how?"

"Brother used alchemy." Al, also dressed the blue and black except his shirt had long sleeves, evidently to hide his unmatched limbs.

"Alchemy?" Winry's brain kicked into second gear, searching for anything she knew on that subject leading to her to burst out. "Alchemy is illegal!" Indeed, among the colonists in the Sol-System, the ancient art which predated modern chemistry had been outlawed for centuries until it's practice was only written about in obscure history books.

"I know..." Ed tried to calm the girl. "It's one of the reasons we are here."

"Winry..." Al's kind half face implored. "We need your help. Ed's commanding officer isn't going to authorize the repair of our ship...we need transport to Earth."

"What the hell can I do about that?" She backed up a step, took in the two from one angle. "I'm just a cog on this station...I don't have a ship!" Indeed, since she graduated medical school, she'd been stationed out here in the boondocks when she longed to visit the most distant stations. Not even having her family close by quelled the overwhelming dread of being trapped orbiting the dead planet. This was an irrational fear she always held for as long as she could remember. The Earth offered her only death.

"No, you have the access codes, all station residents do. Al can unlock them and get us a way to the planet."

"You mean, you want me to help you steal a ship?" There goes her career. If she used her station badge everything would surely be traced back to her. "Forget it!" She waved her hands in front of her horizontally in emphasis.

"Winry, we have to be on the planet..." Alphonse came close, so close, she could have sworn there were tears forming in his sole human looking eye, an impossibility. "There's going to be a solar eclipse soon and we have to be in its center." His voice soothed her anger.

"I, I, don't understand? Why? The Earth is a death trap, there's nothing down there."

"I have to restore Alphonse." Ed almost whispered in her left ear. "I'm so close and can't give up now." He sounded almost regretful.

"I'm sorry." She had no desire to end her medical and mechanical career by helping them commit a very serious crime. "I can't." Secondly, she feared the Earth more than the vacuum of space – there was no way she would set foot on its bleak surface.

"I'm sorry too, Winry." Alphonse reached out and gently held her hands. "I'm sorry fate led us to you..." His words, almost hypnotic, distracted the woman from his sibling. "I'm sorry we got you involved in our mess..."

"...that's alright." She tried to tell him just to wait for a bit, she was sure that Edward's commanding officer would send word soon.

Whoooooooooosh!

The sound of the hypodermic injector stopped the doctor from finishing her sentence. Edward backed away, still holding the gun he'd manufactured from the metal bed. It held the same strong sedative used on him the day before – he'd memorized the construction formula as Winry punched it in the black console in the trauma room.

"You asshole!" Her left hand traveled quickly to the sore spot on her neck, where she'd been stuck but it was too late as the cold chemical traveled in her veins, feeling icy as it went. Her legs began to wobble but she felt determined to sock the human Elric at least once in the eye before she succumbed. She failed, instead, Winry fell forward into the hard arms of the android who swooped her up. The last sight in her blurry vision before everything went black was Edward looking down upon her, his long bangs almost obscuring his face.

"Find the badge, Al."

"Right." Alphonse gently laid the doctor's body on Edward's bed and he began to rifle through her uniform. Most of the station's working residents had a badge or pin on their person which gave them access to their job sites, living quarters and kept track of their personal currency. At least on all the other stations they'd visited and when they used to live on Resembool Station years ago, this was commonplace. Yet, he found none on Winry. "She must have a new implant...I can't find anything we can take with us." He glared at Edward with his one eye. "I told you I didn't like doing this!"

"Great." Ed palmed his head and tried to think. He knew it was a possibility that this young doctor was implanted with a badge as it was cutting edge technology, but he'd banked on her wearing one. "We'll just have to take her with us. Can you find it?"

"Yeah." Al stood back and scanned the body before him. His sensors removed her clothing and reverted her to a three dimensional image in his electronic mind. He spotted a small red beacon on the inside of her right wrist. "Here." The robot carefully held up the woman's arm and pointed to the area where the implant lay. "You know, we are not only going to steal a ship, but now it's kidnapping."

"Whatever." Ed replied with a sigh. "Not like I'm counting the crimes I've committed just to get here anyway, may as well add a few more." He started for the door. "It's going to be hard getting her to the launch bay, can you carry her?" He didn't wait for his brother to respond, but the gentle android gingerly picked up the doctor once more and followed Edward out of the room.

They ran in tandem through the carpeted corridors, and ducked out sight to avoid capture or suspicion. Once or twice they had no choice but to walk past others but when they did, they pretended to giggle or laugh and mumble the girl had a little too much to drink. It earned stares and most likely they'd be reported, but it didn't slow them down. Finally, the launch bay door came into view. The two waltzed into the enormous metal platform with small shuttles and larger fighter and cargo ships arranged in neat lines.

"I can't see The Nina, do you, Brother?" Al didn't need to really ask his companion as he'd neatly scanned and cataloged all the vessels in that particular bay in an instant. He knew their ship had to be in another launch site on the station and it had sustained pretty bad damage.

"She's not here...Mustang didn't authorize the repairs so we'll have to liberate a ride to the planet." Edward began eyeballing their choices until he found a small shuttle. "It's also lunch time for the maintenance crews...not many here to stop us." He moved quickly toward the craft as Al followed. As they came to the entrance, Al waved Winry's hand by the sensor and the door opened. The three found themselves safely inside and out of view.

The shuttle, pretty modest by Ed's standards, had just enough space to carry the three, it also contained four environmental maintenance suits – evidently, whoever used this shuttle did work on the outside of the station and these suits kept them alive. The brothers felt relieved to find the suits because they would be useful once the craft landed - the earth barely had any atmosphere and they'd need to breathe. Al then took great care securing Dr. Rockbell in her seat, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He frowned at the now blue bruise marring her pretty face. Finally, he and Ed strapped themselves in and then began preparations for disembarking Resembool Station.

"Please provide your launch permissions." The tinny voice of the station robot came through the shuttle's speakers.

Alphonse, who was closest to Winry, moved her right hand so that her wrist was over the scanning mechanism implanted in the arm of her chair. He pressed a button and the scanner turned red.

"Thank you, Dr. Rockbell." The ship bay doors opened and an unobstructed view of the desert planet reflected in a set and a half of eyes.

"Are you ready, Brother?"

"Yeah, I am, Al." Ed looked into the eye of the robot, then commanded the shuttle through the open doors and toward the coordinates on Earth he'd memorized from ancient alchemy tomes - the same electronic books they'd read as children and ultimately led them to this day.

"Where the fuck are you taking me?" Winry, groggily yelped and she felt her stomach lurch as the ship gained speed and the big brown sandiness of the planet's surface came closer and closer.