Chapter Three
Sally dismissed it with a shake of her head.
"Relena, you're imagining things. You could have woken up at that precise moment because of anything. A strong wind, a rustle in the trees, or even an owl hooting. Nothing ties that shuttle to your waking up last night."
"Something about that shuttle woke me up, Sally! I know it did. The question is what was it, and why?" Relena vehemently defended her intuition.
It was lunchtime, and Une had let them get an hour-long lunch, a rare treat for them. The girls stopped talking as other students walked past, and honed in on fashion. At lunch, they were allowed into the main college so that the other students wouldn't get suspicious and so they could see their friends outside of the group. The students passed without a second glance.
"Relena's right." Hilde agreed. "I saw that shuttle last night, and for some reason, I just knew."
"Knew what?" Cathy demanded.
"They're back." Hilde said, calmly. Silence followed her statement. Then-
"They can't be, what makes-"
"-it's been five years, surely you don't honestly think-"
"Where have they been? Surely we would know-"
"-why?"
"Because they know that Du Lac has targeted us, and they don't think we can stand against him. They've come to protect us." Hilde simply shrugged her shoulders.
"We don't need their protection. We can fend for ourselves now. And what do they care? Five years! They've been missing five years! Nowhere to be found, not a word from them. Well we don't need them. Typical, they're never around when you do need them, and then when you don't need them, they suddenly turn up to do the whole hero-saves-damsel-in-distress-routine!" Dorothy ranted.
"Calm down, Dorothy, someone might hear you!" Cathy said, gently.
"But she's right." Sally murmured. Everyone looked at her. "We don't need their protection. So what do we do?" Instinctively, all eyes turned to Relena, who was sat in quiet contemplation.
"Heero will be the leader." She quietly stated. "I know him, he will deal out the orders. From now on, we stay in the west wing, even at lunch. Any contact with other friends in the main college is by untraceable email, and even then only if it is life or death. Tell them that we are preparing for exams and don't have time to come out and talk. Knowing them, the pilots have already enrolled and have set in motion a plan to find us. We can't let that happen. We have come too far to be outsmarted by them. Agreed?"
"Agreed." The other girls chorused.
"Right. Split up. They'll be looking for a group of five girls, so we'll split- and keep your heads down. If you see any of them, exercise evasive manoeuvres. Whatever you do, don't let them see you enter the west wing. Arrive in five minute gaps, first Relena, then Hilde, myself, Dorothy and finally Sally. I'll see you there." Cathy instructed.
"Right, let's go." Sally dismissed them all, and they peeled off in different directions, their heads down.
The door slammed open, making Heero jump, but only very slightly. Slowly, he turned in his computer chair to watch the other boys filing in, nearly all of them so mad they were almost spitting fire.
"No luck?" He queried.
"Not a goddam thing! Anyone we asked just either blanked us, or didn't have a clue what we were talking about! They all must be in on it! Oh, here are my schematics of the building." Duo calmed down enough to say.
"None of us found much, Heero." Trowa stated, handing him the rough plans that he had made. The other two followed suit. "Did you have any luck?"
"Not yet, but I will." Heero coldly sneered. "I've tried all the codes I know but it won't open. But it will."
"Maybe you're…asking the wrong questions."
Four pairs of eyes turned and locked onto the boy whose platinum hair shimmered as he crossed the room. Quatre leaned down and began typing on the keyboard in front of Heero.
"Maybe someone knew that we would investigate the college," he explained, furiously typing. "so, they locked up the computer system in such simplicity that we wouldn't even think of it. There!" he cried, triumphantly.
On the screen, the words 'access granted' flashed for a few seconds before drawing up the college mainframe computer.
"What did you do?" Wufei asked.
"Well, Heero said that he'd tried all the complicated codes. But, what if the person who designed the system knew that we would try the complicated stuff, and so guarded the system extremely simply?" Quatre asked.
"We'd miss it completely." Wufei said, beginning to see what Quatre was on about.
"Exactly." Quatre faced them all. "But now we have a problem."
"Whoever designed the system knew that some day we would be coming here, and probably knows that we are here right now." The usually quiet Trowa remonstrated.
"That's right." Heero agreed. "From now on, we move with extra stealth."