A/N: Since it has been a while, just to recap, Herfst is Kira's codename, and Ertel is Heval's.

Disclaimer: I don't own or don't want to own Gundam Seed.

"Excellent job, agents. The data has been safely transferred. The Chairman will be very pleased" said a substitute ZAFT white-coat commander abroad the bridge of a Vozgulov-class submarine Krutz positioned a distance off the coast of the Gibraltar base.

"What about Herfst? He is long past overdue" asked Heval.

"I was instructed to go about that matter right now" paused the commander. "As by the Code of Military Conduct, section 14, clause 3, procedure 501, FAITH members Ertel, Aurig, Fleur have been found guilty by the ZAFT martial court in the charges of treason, espionage and terrorism. Any and all collaborators on this ship are being dealt with. You are to be detained and summarily executed along with them…Escort them to the launchers!"

"What? What kind of charge is that? We have not even attended a hearing and you have no authority over us!" Heval protested before he was detained by three fully armed soldiers.

"The Chairman has"

"…Right, so this is why Kira's missing. That and with the increased guard presence, missing crew members, and a substitute commander?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Raul Kessel (Aurig) taunted.

"Yes, you should be feeling the withdrawal of your conditioning about this time." replied the commander, hitting home on the fact that Heval beginning to feel his muscles twitching. Besides, there is no escape in this water coffin. We are 800 meters below sea level, and there are no mobile suits."

"True…" Raul said out as a small detonator slid down the right leg of his pants. "I am sure you haven't overlooked our specialties and field experience, right? And also, my trip to the bathroom earlier."

Yana Morelenbaum (Fleur) noticed his remark and slightly shifted her position.

"Stop him!" ordered the commander.

The detonator, by this time already on the ground, received a stomp to its button, resulting in a series of vibrations throughout the ship. The emergency alarm blared and the red alert lights came on. The would-be detainees wrestled themselves away from the grips of the off-balance soldiers. Raul and Heval each disarmed two of the three soldiers around them before discharging the lethal munitions into anything breathing except for the three FAITHs, taking extra effort to avoid damaging the control consoles of the bridge. Looking at the rate at which 13 bodies fell, it is a wonder none of the wheezing bullets hit the three detainees.

"So you think you can kill us in my home ship, huh?" Raul said, riddling the corpses with rifle bullets until the magazine was exhausted.

When the gunfire ceased, eerie reverberations of metal could be heard clearly throughout the ship.

"That is not good" commented Heval. "You overkilled with bombs"

"Yana, emergency surface! All ballast blow!" the explosive expert ordered.

With that, she stepped over the bloodied corpses and spilled brain matter around her, and proceeded to the CIC desk.

"Ballast tanks emptied. Sections 22-57, launchers, conditioning room and docking bays are flooding. Closing bulkheads. Starboard engines inoperable. Outer hull integrity breached. 2 minutes until acceptable pressure depth"

"Here, you will need this" Raul said, handing Heval a reserve PP stashed inside the handle of the periscope. "I have instructed the crew to the dining compartment. They should be safe there. If we survive the first minute, then we should be home free. If not-"

"-we get crushed" finished Yana.

Being finally face-to-face, Heval observed that Raul Kessel seemed to be of Middle Eastern descent due to his accent, built and face, as well as common brown eyes and messy black hair. Yana Morelenbaum, a Eurasian, on the other hand, is of stark contrast to what he expected an agent like himself to be. Her figure was unremarkable. Standing at only about 160 centimeters, 15 centimeters shorter that Raul, she came out as rather fragile. Perhaps she had other abilities to compensate for this. If not, she wouldn't be an agent. She had dark blue a-little-bit-below-shoulder length hair tied up in a pony tail. Adding to that eye catching hair color, she had black eyes behind a high-rim black glasses, all encased in a pretty face. Since Heval, and the other three FAITHs were trained to derive conclusions based on facial expressions and emotions, he could vaguely tell through the way Yana looks at Raul that she has a dear someone.

"Aurig," called Heval, "how did you know?"

"Just a gut feeling, and those feelings came almost always true."

"Then, why didn't you warn Kira then?" Heval said, grabbing Raul's collar.

"It's funny, you know? We were trained to always follow orders and never question Durandal" he said, silencing Heval. "Most of our missions always involved different forms of underhanded tactics. I would have never guessed I had to betray one of my associates."

"Durandal ordered you to rig Kira's plane…" the gray-haired agent breathed

"Part of the original crew is still onboard. They were sentenced to death and would gladly collaborate with us to survive. With this damage to the ship and only a percentage of engines working, there's no hope for escape by ourselves" said Raul. "Yan, send out distress signal. Make as if we have suffered internal malfunction and unable to resurface. Since our identity should be of the utmost secrecy, Durandal won't have risked his position to reveal the truth of the situation to anyone outside his most trusted circle. We will draw any rescue parties in and hijack their vessel"

"Maybe it's better to genuinely be rescued. This could be just a misunderstanding. Durandal would never-" said Heval.

"We have no difference in age, but I hope you are not as gullible as those words you just said" Raul debated. "Just what do you think we have been doing these past few years? Deception. Murder. Manipulation. Betrayal. We have become good at those that we think we are invincible from them. And who trained us to be specialists in that? And this conditioning…Did you not suspect that the conditioning influences our memories? Did you ever wake up having those empty blots in your mind? Blots adding to the big empty ones of our past? We did, but for what purpose? Experiments? For testing if such methods work to coordinators as well as to naturals!? We are just dispensable pawns in this twisted background chess game. No more, even if he decides we are not longer needed, her life nor mine are his to take"

"Raul…" Yana said.

"Since when did you get such thought?" asked Heval.

"By each mission. The more we performed them, the more we dug ourselves deeper and I realized that the only way out is death. So once our role is done, will death be waiting? Well, Herfst's death is the clearest answer"

"Hahahaha…I can't believe it. What a demented day…"

"The Vozgulov-class Clissare is hailing our call" the blue-haired female reported.

"Are you with me, Heval?"

"I don't think I have a choice, do I?

Opening Act
"Lacus!" a blonde haired woman barged through a wooden door. "How is he?"

"Stabilized. Thanks to your sending the surgeon quickly. Would you like to have some breakfast?" she asked, smiling while standing in front of the stove.

"Lacus!" this time a blue-haired man barged through the door after the blonde. "How is he?"

"Shhh, you are going to wake the kids. So, breakfast? Omelette? Pancake? Anything?"

"Are you alright?" Cagalli asked, seeing that Lacus is somehow trying to avoid discussing the person she found.

Predicting that he should leave the two females alone, Athrun walked out of the kitchen and proceeded down the corridor into the innermost area of the orphanage. There's an empty room with a single window here overlooking a small lake in the clearing of the woods. He silently entered and after closing the door behind him, walked up to the bedridden victim. Various life support and monitoring devices, such as IV, EEG, ECG, were connected to the patient. He is covered in bandages all over his body, primarily in the upper head, arms and legs. The broken left arm and right leg were cast so as to prevent further damage. Due to this observation, Athrun could conclude that the extremities were used as a shield. But from what? He, as a former professional soldier had never sustained such injuries, even after the fight with the person which resembles this one he is currently looking at. But despite this, his condition is stable with a 78/ 118 average heart beat and little brain activity.

Athrun was about to leave the room when he noticed a familiar piece of metallic gray cloth sticking out of the bottom of a cabinet at the corner of the room. He opened the said cabinet in an attempt to tuck the cloth back, but froze after recognizing the fabric. In addition, a side arm lay on the second shelf of the three shelf cabinet.

"ERIC. Explosive Radiation Immediate Countermeasure. They were still researching this when I was still…Springfield XD-73T. Standard issue ZAFT Special Forces. 2 rounds missing from magazine, 1 in chamber. What did you shoot? What have you done? What happened to you?" he said to himself. "…Maybe this is why Lacus refused to send you to a hospital"

"Athrun" Cagalli whispered, having been watching her companion at the doorstep.

"Cagalli, I would like to have a search party assembled. One that is unidentifiable as Orb forces. this equipment is not of civilian use, especially this one" he said, holding the crimson tainted grey fabric, "designed as a flexible shield for proximity explosions using mirage colloid technology. EAF used it for energy deflection by their Geschmeidig Panzer. This one is geared towards physical impacts. The first time I saw this equipment was in a demonstration. It had a near transparent color but after considerable C4 detonations, it turned a darker shade and became unusable."

"Mirage colloid is banned by the Junius Treaty. ZAFT would never openly use that like this"

"That is why we need to investigate this. Whatever was left behind cannot fall into the wrong hands. The fact that this cloth is here means a certain event just took place or is currently taking place."

"Go ahead, but be mindful of our appointment to Armory One"

"How was Lacus?" Athrun said as he was about to leave the room.

"His coming back into our lives and in such manner clearly shook her. She needs time to take this in"

"The vertical linear launchers cannot be utilized at this depth. Since the all of the docking bays are flooded already flooded, they have chosen to cut through the armor plating of the launchers and send a shuttle to extract us" Yana said.

"This will be delicate. If the timing is wrong, we will get blown out of the water" Raul warned. "They will not be checking for identity yet in this kind of emergency, so we will take action once inside the Clissare. Follow my instructions and we will get out safely"

"Are you there?" came a transmission over the radio. "The shuttle is in place. You can open the bulkhead now"

Yana did as prompted. Since the other side of the doors is completely submerged, the only safe way for rescue is this. The three agents and thirty four other survivors followed the plan and waited until the shuttle is in landing approach into the hangar of the Clissare. Since each of them had raided the armory within Krutz and armed themselves with concealable weapons such as pistols, the shuttle jack went smoothly and discreetly.

"These two guys are black-haired. Any volunteers?" asked Heval, kneeling over the dead soldiers and looking at the survivors.

A couple helmeted soldiers emerged from the shuttle and marched down the hatch ramp towards a junior officer standing a few paces off the shuttle. Four more guards replaced the two and took position outside the hatch of the shuttle. One of the soldiers making his way to the commander made quick, subtle observations of the hangar, taking note of the positions of the mobile suits, guards, as well as mechanics. As far as his vision could allow without revealing his identity, there are 4 ZnOs, 10 armed guards, and more that a dozen other personnel in total.

"Report" said the officer.

"There are 27 personnel just like the report. 19 are non-military, 5 are stationed soldiers, and 3 FAITH members"

"Three? All in the same place? The commander needs to know this"

"Yes, and don't worry. I'll tell him" said the same reporting soldier, swinging his rifle forward towards the officer.

He was spared the opportunity to object the surprise when a burst splattered brain matter and bone fragments to the rear of his head. With this cue, three flash bangs rolled out of the ramp of the hangar, stunning the 4 guards who are already distracted by the treacherous turn of events. Heval leaped out and sunk 4 shells in the cerebral cortex of his victims. The other shuttle passengers followed and began contributing to the skirmish, taking priority on the pilots attempting to remount their suits.

"Ertel, Fleur, follow me. The rest of you split up and secure the armory, the vertical linear launcher and those mobile suits!" said Raul.

However, while giving those orders, he placed his back towards the entrance to the hangar bay, resulting in his ignorance to a soldier had just emerged from the corridor leading to that entrance. The only thing he could see were the triggers of a pair of XD-73 handguns pointing at him being clicked. He jerked for an instant, taken off-guard by the seemingly treacherous act by Heval. At the next moment, he felt sharp gusts of air cutting both the top of his ears and screeching through the sides of his helmet.

"Darn, these are inaccurate. No silencer hardpoint either. I really need my own guns" said Heval at the same time as the soldier behind Raul slumped dead.

"Handgun expert indeed. Phew, thought I was dead" Raul thanked him.

With that, the three proceeded forward, past Heval's most recent target, and onto the most direct route to the bridge. So as not to engage in unnecessary confrontations, they used Heval's white coat attire and Yana's red to get past uninformed personnel.

"I'm sure you have questions about our future actions-" started Raul, in a soft voice, before he opened the doors to a living compartment and seeing several resting crew.

"We have a situation in the hangar bay. Electrical malfunction. PA system is down. Maintain position until further orders" ordered Heval to which the crew saluted.

"-remember I told you about our memories being controlled?" continued Raul, resuming their way. "Once, Krutz's conditioning systems malfunctioned for 42 hours when Yana and I were scheduled a few minutes before than. Of course, that delay caused a measure of discomfort for us, but in return, she recollected events of her past, not just words told by Durandal. A real memory figment"

"We started researching about my name and about those events in my mind" said Yana behind them both as they rounded a corner.

"Her family is one of the founders of the colony on Mars and the current head of state" continued Raul.

"Morelenbaum…" Heval filled in.

"When I suspected our boss was going to get rid of us, I planned on getting her back home"

"How did you become an agent?"

"It seemed I was abducted. I don't know by whom and for what reason. It is very unlikely to be a simple ransom when the kidnappers took the trouble to go to Mars. What I recalled was incomplete. One thing led to another and I was somehow found by a ZAFT rescue team in South America and ended up here" Yana said.

"It is dubious that Durandal is ignorant of her identity. That's why my trust began to wane. But until now, the Morelenbaums" –bam- "are still looking for her" Raul resumed, taking down a bridge guard.

-bam-bam-"Why are you telling me this?" Heval asked again, tackling another soldier into the wall and filling his victim's mouth with lead.

"We feel we could trust you, and we need your help. So how about it? Want to experience life in Mars?"

"Heh, sounds fun"

"Now that I know I have your assistance, shall we?" Raul led as he placed C4 charges on the edges of the sealed bridge shutters. "Stay behind me, Yana."

The three took cover around the corner leading to the bridge. The explosives expert then shielded the Mars nobility against the wall before clicking on the detonator. While the explosion rocked the vicinity and blew the shutter, Heval reloaded his guns before rounding the corner after the flames dissipated. Gunfire accompanied the blaring alarm klaxons throughout the submarine and nozzle flashes decorated the bridge like out-of-whack disco lights.

"What do you mean they are missing?" Durandal said.

"Their ID access tracers are not responding. The FAITH logon system has locked them out as a result. This happens only when the tracers are destroyed" said a technician in charge of the secure network on the other side of the visual transmission screen.

"Yes, I know that. What happened to them?"

"A Class SS data was transmitted directly to you using Ertel's access code. Approximately 2 hours before that, Herfst's tracer disappeared. Then 9 hours later, Aurig, Ertel and Fleur were simultaneously lost. Based on the mission plan, all 4 should have returned to the Krutz off the coast of Gibraltar. The ship requested permission for a voyage at 0300 hrs GMT. It maintained position at the entrance of the Straits 60 kilometers from the base before it submerged out of sonar range after receiving 2 civilian planes with clearance from Singapore and Carpentaria"

"Just two? What about the one bound for Pearl Harbor?"

"Unknown. Your orders?"

"Investigate this matter fully. Get places, names, times. Do this discreetly" the chairman said before cutting off the transmission. "Whoever you are, what are you planning to do? Why at this point?"

Five days have passed since Herfst washed up the beach of Father Malchio's orphanage. Athrun's search turned up nothing because of ocean currents and the fact that the vehicle of transport had been ripped apart by a powerful explosion. Nevertheless, several locals did witness a flash in the sky followed immediately by a loud bang. This account plus the items Athrun found support the theory that the plane Kira was on exploded. Bullets were discharged possibly through the window of the cockpit to allow an exit. ERIC was then used to a shield, but because the fabric only guards against explosions, shrapnel shreds through and struck the victim before he crashed onto the sea.

It is truly hard to be strong when the people one loves are taken in succession. Lacus, who thought she had recovered from the shock of the loss of loved ones in the last war, her father and then the pilot of Freedom, felt how powerless she was as a result of the latter's return: she didn't have the courage to even enter his room…until now, to tidy that very room. The night was very quiet. All the children had fallen asleep. The pond in line-of-sight from the room's only window is radiantly reflecting the full moon's glow. The only sound that can be heard, other than Lacus' putting up a curtain over the window, is routine beeps of the life support and monitoring devices.

"La..cus…" came a very soft voice at the same time the EEC reading showed a single sudden spike before returning flat.

Like every reflexive response, she gasped and dropped the fabric about to be latched onto curtain hangers. Her turning around and the lunar light from both the sky and the pond made her figure glow in the bluish-white light. At the other end, a pair of half-open, empty purple eyes is witnessing this scene. There was silence for a period of time until the female took the initiative.

"Kira?" she asked.

There was no response. The male remained motionless with his head tilted to the right towards her. She approached, going right next to the bed. His vision, because of remaining motionless, is still towards the window and just slightly off the person next to his bed.

"The operation was successful. However, I found that his brain waves are extremely irregular. Nevertheless, this and the kind of damage he took to the head, plus the exposure to salt water and at low temperatures, will not be without ramifications. I have never seen anyone take so much punishment. To be honest, I'm truly surprised he is even alive. Several major blood vessels have been cut, resulting in failure of several organs. But fortunately, those organs were successfully resuscitated. The one thing I am pessimistic about is that he will be in comatose state for very long time. Even if he does regain consciousness, his mind will most probably lose the ability for conscious activity like motor functions, memorization and thinking. As long as there's life support, he will survive. Otherwise… The lab results will most likely support my diagnosis. The only advice I could give you is try to expose him to anything significant in his life. I'm sorry" Lacus remembered the surgeon's words.

The lack of behavior the patient is currently exhibiting proved those words. Though he looked as if he had gained consciousness, he is in fact brain dead. The EEC graph showed a flat line whereas a healthy human's should be a spiky graph. Concluding the word she heard was just her imagination, an imagination simply as a result of her desire, she sat down next to him and touched his left cheek. After her eyes drifted away from him and onto a ring on a stand next to the bed, she suddenly hugged him, wrapping her arms gently around the top of his head, and letting her tears flow freely. The moonlight futilely tried to comfort her by making those beads of water sparkle.

A/N: Very sorry for the long delay. Graduation, application for college, work, etc. I got admission from Nanyang, woohoo! Erhm..anyway for compensation, I decided to submit two chapters. Any reviews to spare?