Part 7 – This program has performed an illegal operation

~ AC 197, March 6th, L4 – B289, Fatimah Psychiatric Clinic, Isolation suite #07, 4:53am~

/they're coming/

Quatre's head snapped up. He had been awake for a while now, the nightmares always woke him up around two in the morning, and he had been lucky enough to grab a little more than two hours of sleep before they kicked in. It was also good that the doctor had stopped giving him those drugs that forced him to sleep. But now he was hearing it again.

/they're coming/

That voice… it had a particular taste. Quatre knew, almost instinctively, that it was himself, or the person he should have been if he had not been locked in a mental ward. He may have been insane, but he was not stupid. He knew that hearing voices and answering to them was usually a good sign that you were crazy. Still most of the time, he heard voices, saw faces that weren't his own. He had been an open channel into everyone's emotions around for… how long? He couldn't remember, probably all his life. But that voice… every time he heard it, he knew without a doubt, that it was a part of him, a part that he desperately tried to grab and hold onto, only to have it evade his touch. His power was too sensible, and just someone entering the room he was in or another patient having a crisis or even a temper tantrum was enough to break the fragile link he had with this little saner part of his mind. It gave him horrible headaches to try to hold back, and with time, he had just given up, welcoming the voice when it came, but not trying to retain it, just fervently hoping it would be back and he would not lose this chance at finding why he was here.

/they're coming/

/who?/ Quatre asked himself.

The rational voice always seemed sad, like it hoped he would understand more, remember more. And Quatre tried. But he wasn't sure he liked what he saw. A world ravaged by war, and himself, a soldier, a warrior? Someone fighting at least, but for what, for whom? Was the war over now, had it been worth it for him to lose everything, including his sanity and his conscience of himself in that conflict? When he thought that, the little voice usually tried to remind him that he already knew how that war had ended, and why, but the images didn't come into his mind.

/your friends are coming/

Quatre got up, frowning. That was new.

/friends? i have friends?/

If little voices could have rolled their eyes, then this particular little voice would have.

/of course you have friends/

/why would i? i can't remember who i am nor what i am doing here. i never know if the things i feel or see in my head are my dreams, my memories, or someone else's. and if they are my memories…/

/yes?/

/i am not sure i want them to be. if that's really me i did some pretty horrible things, and i'm probably better off locked up here. i bet i would endanger all of my friends if i had any/

/they're coming for you. they're worried/

Quatre shook his head in silent negation.

/no, you're wrong. no one is coming for me/

/i am not wrong. you know it. i am never wrong. they're coming to get you/

Images began to flash through Quatre's mind. The four boys of his dreams, some other people whose silhouettes were foggy. Quatre shook his head again, trying to clear his vision. These couldn't be the friends the voice was talking about. They had never been friendly in his dreams. But … they had never been really mean either. Well, okay, they were scary, but they were also the only ones to always come back, so maybe he had met them before?

/too much input/

The other voice, a bit cold, impersonal. Quatre knew he had also heard that one before, and that it had been his own at one point but not entirely. It didn't really make sense, but the voice was always associated with… a computer? Some kind of machine?

Things started to get blurry in front of the green-blue eyes. The voices went away, leaving behind only slight unease and a lot of unrest. The blond young man on his bed knew with absolute certainty now that something was going to happen. Something that was going to change everything in his life, but he had no idea what. And that scared him a lot.

Quatre hugged his knees, and tried, in vain to suppress the violent shudders that went through his body.

/scared. i am scared/

Then, a wave of other emotions hit him, coming from the poor soul whose room was above his and who was currently having a nightmare. But for the first time ever, his own emotion, the mind-gnawing fear, didn't completely go away as the other took over.

~Isolation suite #07, 8:53am~

"He's agitated, doctor," Shannon said, a worried look on her face as she watched the living area through the one-way mirror.

She was right. Quatre usually spent his day just sitting on the couch or on the windowsill, his face expressionless. This morning, he had not touched his breakfast and had paced, restless, in the living area before stopping in front of the window. One pale hand was pressed against the smooth surface of the glass while the other shivered, sometimes curling into a fist before relaxing again.

"I know," Carter sighed, rubbing his forehead. "There's not much we can do, though. Dr Hewley told us that his physician is arriving any minute now, along with people he knows. He's probably feeling it. I am wondering if he's not developing some kind of precognitive ability, but it only manifests itself every now and then."

"Are they really going to take him away?"

Carter smiled sadly.

"It's best for him, Shannon. Those people know how to treat him. Dr Winner is his sister. We don't know exactly what happened, but the fact that Preventer seems so deeply involved for something that was just a case of accessing forbidden medical files makes me think that what happened is really bad. I am almost sure that something was done to this young man, something criminal that damaged his mind. From all the accounts we've got, he was just fine a month ago. You don't regress to that stage in a few days when you've been trained enough to survive in the world as an empath for seventeen years."

There was a small beep from Carter's pager. He looked at it and put a reassuring hand on Shannon's shoulder.

"Our 'guests' have arrived. I have to meet them in the entrance hall and bring them to Dr Hewley. Stay here and call if anything happens."

"Yes, doctor."

Carter had not really known what he was expecting when Dr Hewley had told him that six Preventer agents would come and take care of Quatre's case, in addition to Iria Winner herself. What was for sure was that he hadn't expected the team to be composed of only one adult and five teenagers. Five teenagers who were grudgingly surrendering their weapons to the security guard. And who all more or less looked like they would like to be anywhere but here.

"I've always wondered what a funny farm looked like on the inside," One of them said. "But this is like a funny farm for very rich people, heh?"

"If you have to put it that way, yes," a blond woman that Carter identified as Iria Winner answered.

She was the only one not to wear a uniform. Next to her was a tall woman with braided blond hair, and a young girl who looked… familiar.

"Sean Truman Carter!" she exclaimed when she saw him. "How nice to see you again, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances."

"Dorothy Catalonia? What are you doing here?" Carter asked, forgetting all of his manners.

"I am a friend of Quatre and acting as a representative of Vice-Minister Darlian in this inquiry," Dorothy answered. "I'm sure we have hundreds of things to talk about, but now is not a good time. May I introduce Dr Iria Winner?"

"Welcome, Dr Winner," Carter said, shaking her hand. "And you must be Dr Po?" he added for the other woman.

"Bingo!" Dr Po answered.

"So you're the team… well I guess I should lead you to Dr Hewley's office, then."

"Dr Carter?" Dr Po said lightly.

"Yes?"

"Agent Chang is the one in charge here," she said, pointing at the smaller Chinese young man at her side, who raised an arrogant eyebrow at the surprise painted on Carter's face.

"Any objections?" he asked.

"N-No," Carter stammered. "I just thought…"

"Agent Barton, Agent Maxwell, Agent Yuy and myself are part of Preventer's Elite Squad, just like Agent Winner. We've come to get one of our own back."

The sentence was solemn, and Carter looked at the other teenagers. The one just beside Chang was hiding behind his hair, only one strikingly green eye visible and his face completely blank. The boy with the braid looked deadly serious, and his arm was draped over the sullen, dark-haired boy's shoulders.

"I am sorry," Carter finally said. "I just didn't know Preventer recruited that young."

"They don't," the green-eyed boy said quietly. "They made an exception for us."

This little sentence sent shivers down Carter's spine, because of all the implications it had. What kind of organization made exceptions to recruit seventeen-year-olds? Come to think of it, what kind of seventeen-year-olds enrolled in organizations like Preventer? Carter knew, like everyone else, that soldiers had been recruited very young during the war. What kind of horror had those youths, had Quatre seen before it had ended?

"Dr Carter, please?" Iria Winner said suddenly. "I'd like to see my brother."

"Sure, excuse me. Please just follow me to Dr Hewley's office, and then we'll get to the isolation ward."

Introductions were taken care of fairly quickly. Dr Hewley didn't give any sign of surprise when she saw the team and agreed that the sooner Dr Winner and Dr Po would see Quatre the better. Questions could wait until after they would have seen what had happened for themselves. Everyone met Shannon at the front desk of the isolation ward, and the nurse led them to suite number seven.

/people coming/

/curiosity/

/…/

/fear/

Iria unconsciously held her breath when she arrived in front of the one way mirror. Quatre was looking away from them, through the window. His hair was a bit longer than the last time she had seen him, and he had obviously lost weight. The white pajamas seemed to be far too big for him.

"Fuck," Duo swore in a whisper. "You weren't kidding when you said it was bad, doc."

"How long has he been in there?" Sally asked, trying to assess the damage.

"Almost three weeks. He spent only two nights in a normal room before I moved him," Carter answered.

"Wise move. You probably helped a lot just by doing that, which is about the only thing you could do," Iria said, her voice a bit weak. "I just wish you had found us sooner... or maybe we should have worried sooner not to see him coming back."

Trowa was stunned, not really ready to believe it was Quatre who was standing just a few feet away from him. The only thing anchoring him into reality was Wufei's hand on his shoulder and his voice murmuring "it's going to be alright" in his ear. He nodded absentmindedly, unable to detach his gaze from the almost glowing white figure in the room.

"We need to come in," Sally said suddenly. "I can't hope too much, but maybe seeing people he knows can help bring back some memories."

Iria agreed. Although it was the first time they were meeting face to face, she had corresponded with Dr Po these last two years, ever since Quatre had disappeared again with Wing Zero. She had been reassured to know that at least one person would be able to help her little brother should he get hurt, and shared the secret of Quatre's particularity only to have the Chinese doctor answer she already knew. Sally Po was the Gundam pilots' physician by unspoken agreement, the only person they trusted enough to let her come near them with a needle or medication.

"Alright," Dr Hewley finally said. "We'll let you in."

Everyone in the corridor jumped as Quatre suddenly turned around. Slightly unfocused eyes looked straight at the mirror.

"What's he under right now?" Sally whispered in spite of the fact that Quatre couldn't hear them.

"Nothing," Carter answered. "I got pretty confused with his reactions to drugs and stopped everything."

"One less trouble," Sally muttered, trying to evaluate what she would need.

Quatre got closer to the mirror, not even hesitating in his strides even though his eyes were still staring in the void and not really at where he was going. He stopped in front of the mirror, put one of his hands on it, and tilted his head to one side, peering intently as if he could see through the glass.

/people behind watching me/

/fear/

/my fear? or theirs?/

Very slowly, Trowa approached the mirror, drinking in every detail. Quatre's sunken-in eyes, his absent look, his thinner frame, the way his hands trembled just ever so slightly, indicating how much of a nervous wreck he was.

"What are you doing?" Carter asked, only to be cut off by an impatient "Shh!" from Duo.

Holding out his hand, Trowa placed it on the glass panel, exactly where Quatre's hand was on the other side. He wished he could hold Quatre right now, tell him he was sorry and that everything would be okay, but everything was not going be okay, not right away anyway. Something felt so wrong in the way Quatre was acting, like a caged animal that was watching his visitors curiously and with a bit of defiance.

/fear love concern fear shock love grief fear/

The conflicting emotions coming from behind the glass assailed Quatre's mind. There were a lot of people behind that glass, he knew it, but someone was… clearer. Quatre focused a little, and felt it. It had the same taste than the green-eyed boy in his dreams, but it just couldn't be!

Quatre's face constricted in a little frown.

Trowa almost jumped out of his skin when Quatre suddenly banged on the glass with his fist. Just once at first, then again, repeatedly with his two fists, as if trying to destroy the glass to see what was behind. The blows gradually increased in violence, making the panel tremble with the force of them.

"We must get in, now!" Iria said. "Dr Hewley?"

Elisabeth fumbled and took a card out of her pocket, sliding it into the keypad.

Quatre stopped banging on the mirror as he heard the electronic hiss of the door. He turned to look at whoever had entered… and his eyes went impossibly wide. It couldn't be… but the voice had said…

/friends? coming for me? i know them?/

They were all there, all four of them, looking at him with a concerned expression. There was also a girl with long blond hair. Quatre couldn't remember her, but felt one of his scars tingle, and something warned him about her.

/dangerous, not let her close/

Then, his usual doctor and the nurse, and the doctor who had come last time and flashed a lamp in his face. And… two other women. He was sure he had seen their faces before, but…

/too many people/

/trapped/

Fear was permeating the room, almost palpable. Quatre could taste it, it was almost suffocating him, and he couldn't know if it was his own fear at meeting so many people that he knew he should remember and who obviously knew him, or their own fear at seeing him. But then again, why should they be afraid? What were they afraid of?

Quatre winced and clutched his head.

"He's hyperventilating," Iria said. "We're scaring him."

"Pupils dilated, that's not good", Sally said. "You're absolutely positive that he's under no drug?"

"A hundred percent," Carter said.

"Everyone out!" Iria ordered sharply as Quatre winced again and let out a small whimper.

When the four pilots and Dorothy seemed rooted to the spot, she caught Trowa's arm and made him spin round.

"Out, now! You can't help here, not yet! Duo, you take them all out and wait there!"

"Calm down, Quatre," Sally said in a soothing voice, controlling her own breathing and trying to remain as calm as possible. "I don't know what happened but it's bad. He doesn't sleep, right?"

"Barely an hour a night, sometimes two," Carter answered as the door closed again behind the teenagers and Dr Hewley.

Quatre's eyes were darting from one corner of the room to the other, clearly looking for a way to escape. He had backed against the wall, still clutching his head, his breathing rapid and shallow, his eyes too wide.

"He's still feeling them," Iria noticed as the young man clutched his other hand on his heart. "It's too much!"

"I can sedate him and I will," Sally said determinedly, "but I can't get closer. If I do, then all of his training will kick in and he'll mop the floor with me before you know it. We have to calm him down some way, divert his attention."

"We won't be able to," Iria objected. "His mind is simply too awake, his brain is working faster than it should. It's exhausting him, but he's strong and we can't wait for him to drop on the floor."

She suddenly snapped her fingers.

"Too awake! Why didn't I think of that? I'm really stupid!"

She took a step forward, holding out her hand when Carter made a move to follow.

"Stay back! I am not sure it will work."

"What are you doing?" Carter asked.

"You will know if it works."

She took another step. Quatre tried to get away, but he was blocked against the wall, and he was having trouble breathing correctly right now.

"Quatre, look at me," Iria said very gently. "Quatre, it's me, Iria. I won't do any harm to you, I just want you to look at me and listen to me. I won't come any closer, I promise. And even if I did, I know you can take me down and I can do nothing."

Green-blue eyes blurred with pain looked up. Iria took a deep breath and said the words she had tried to ingrain in her brother's mind such a long time ago that even he didn't remember.

"Quatre, shutdown level seven."

Quatre's eyes rolled in the back of his head and he fell heavily on the floor, unconscious. Carter gasped, but Sally strode forward, taking a syringe out of her bag and quickly injecting some kind of drug before checking the boy's vitals.

"What did you do to him?" Carter exploded.

Iria backed away to give some room to Sally and turned to look at Carter, completely unfazed by the doctor's anger.

"Hypnosis. That was part of his training, a simple way to help him build shields. I put a few safe words in his mind that can trigger a partial or complete lockdown in that kind of case. They were never supposed to be used and I'll have to change them or simply remove them, whatever Quatre wants."

"What did you give him?" Carter asked Sally. "He doesn't react well to sedatives and…"

"I know, young man," Sally snapped, "I was his doctor during the war, I know pretty well what he can and can't stand. This particular sedative is a personal concoction and the only thing that really works on those guys. Only secondary effect is nausea when you wake up. By the way, doctor, I hope you didn't have anything planned for the next weeks."

"Why?"

"Because you're coming back with us."

"What?!"

"I will need to know exactly what meds you gave him, when, and in what quantity. I will need to know every little thing that happened during those three weeks. And you can tell the nurse… what's her name?"

"Shannon, but…"

"That's it, you can tell her to pack her bags too. We will need some familiar people to be around Quatre when he wakes up and for the moment, familiar means you and Shannon, not us."

"I… we are understaffed, and Dr Hewley…"

"If I can get my hands on a phone, I'm sure that Colonel Une will be delighted to dispatch some medical staff to you for as long as needed."

Carter just nodded, too numbed by what he had just witnessed. There was something more to this, something incredibly wrong if the Preventers were ready to use their own staff to replace two people in a private hospital just because one of their agents had been admitted there. There was something more to all of them. The other four moved like they were used to work together, in some kind of formation, with a weird space left between them. Carter suspected it was where Quatre used to stand when they were all together, between the green-eyed boy and the one with the braid, with the other two guarding the extremities. Dorothy had said she was a friend of Quatre, which in itself was strange since Carter had never known Dorothy to have any friends. Dr Po had said she had been Quatre's doctor 'during the war'. Those youngsters certainly looked like soldiers and were probably damn good ones to be in Preventer.

Something evaded his mind, just a little piece of information missed for him to understand why all those elements that seemed to clash could suddenly be logical, just because of Quatre's presence.

Sally and Shannon stayed with Quatre while Dr Hewley escorted everyone back to her office. Everyone was silent, the young agents even more so. Dorothy looked slightly ill and was doing quite a good job of masking it behind a sarcastic smile, but the other four were very pale. To be exact, Trowa was completely livid, although it was barely visible, and his hands were clenched into trembling fists. Heero was not much better, glaring murderously in the void. Wufei had retreated behind a cold, expressionless face, only his eyes bright with a fury that augured no good for whoever was responsible. And Duo was hugging himself to stop his hands from trembling and chewing on his lower lip, eyes dulled.

"So," Dr Hewley said sitting at her desk while everyone else took seats. "I hope you don't mind if I ask a few questions while Sally and Shannon see to our patient and complete the transfer procedure."

"I don't," Iria answered. "Ask anything you want, and I'll answer to the best of my abilities."

Dr Hewley took out a pen and a notebook.

"Who trained him?"

"I did. For a little while."

Dr Hewley frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"He was only a baby when it all started," Iria explained patiently. "He was a cranky baby, he was often ill, and we all wondered why, but it took me about a year to find the cause of it."

"Where does it come from? Do you know?"

"Our mother. She had that way of always knowing how you felt, I'm almost sure that's where he inherited it from."

"Do any of your sisters have the same talent?"

"No, Dr Hewley. We are test tube babies and our genes were very carefully examined before each of us came into the world. We are as healthy as human beings can expect to be, probably a bit more resilient, but that's pretty much all. Only Quatre developed this ability."

"Why that? Isn't he a test tube baby too?"

"No."

The pilots all stared at Iria with wide eyes.

"But…" Duo started.

"He doesn't know," Iria interrupted. "I have planned to tell him when he is ready. Quatre is the only naturally-born Winner. Our mother died giving birth to him, because of malformations that run in the family. She knew that having him would cost her her life and she did it anyway because she wanted to, and she could get very stubborn when she set her mind on doing something. Father never told him the truth because in his opinion it made no difference. I still think it doesn't, but I also think my brother has a right to know how he came into the world. Especially since thinking he was a test-tube baby was the reason why he always felt so miserable and useless as a child."

She turned to the four young agents.

"Please don't tell him. I will, in due time, but I think now is not a good time, and that it is still too soon. He is not ready to hear it."

They all nodded, a deer-in-the-headlights look on their face as they suddenly discovered a part of Quatre's life they had known nothing about.

"You said you trained him," Dr Hewley said, refocusing the conversation. "What did you do exactly?"

"Well, New Types weren't exactly a new thing, but not much was known about them. I was just graduating as a doctor, so I… improvised and hoped for the best. He was very small when I started, about two. I would pretend we were playing a game, and I taught him how to raise shields by envisioning his mind like a castle he would build. Raise the walls and then close the door, and he would be all alone in his castle. He caught up with it very quickly, because he needed this to stay sane, even if he was so little… And…"

"Yes?" Dr Hewley prompted.

"What you just saw. A bit of hypnosis in case it went out of control. It was only a safety measure. I programmed a few words in his mind that would trigger automatic shields in his brain. Several levels of shutting down, from mild to complete, complete being what you saw earlier. I never thought I would have to use them. In the beginning, I had to use a shutdown level three or four when he was tired, but never that much."

Iria took a deep breath.

"I am sure his training didn't just wear away, Dr Hewley. When he was barely five, I got married and left for a resource satellite in the cluster. I just kept an eye on him, and he pretty much trained himself from the moment I was gone."

"My god," Carter breathed. "He achieved that level of control all by himself?"

"This is unbelievable," Dr Hewley agreed. "But then, it could explain why it suddenly snapped, couldn't it?"

"No," Iria said stubbornly. "His training did not break all by itself. My brother knew what he was doing and his training held on all these years without breaking or he could never have been…"

Iria stopped and glanced at Wufei, who sighed and nodded, looking tired.

"… He could never have been a Gundam pilot," Iria finished resolutely.

There was a deadly silence, then Carter's voice again.

"G-Gundam pilot?"

Duo snickered.

"Man! You're saying that like it's a big thing, sheesh! It's no big deal really, we all were, y'know?"

Heero glared at Duo but remained silent as Carter's glance fell on the other four teenagers. So young, looking so lethal… Quatre's unusual strength and resistance to drugs…

"So you see, Dr Hewley," Iria kept on, "my brother piloted a mobile suit, killed and destroyed, without any major problems from his empathy. There have been things, during the war that were difficult for him, and he had some very bad times because of it, but he overcame them. At the end of the wars, he was marked, like all the other soldiers, maybe a bit more so because Quatre has always been someone kind and he went away against Father's wishes, but his ability was under control. He's been living with it all his life, and he knows what to do when it gets too intense."

Carter's eyes were glued to the four teenagers. He couldn't believe that his young patient, head to one of the biggest corporations in the world and such a sweet person when you knew where to look in the state he was in, could have been piloting a Gundam, but in a strange way, it made perfect sense.

"Which one?" he asked completely out of the blue.

Six pairs of eyes looked at him, blinking, but Duo took the hint.

"Sandrock," he answered. "Heero was Wing, Trowa Heavyarms, Wufei Altron, and I was Deathscythe."

"Why do we even bother to hide our identities?" Wufei growled. "I suppose I don't need to say that if either of you repeats that outside of this room to anyone, you won't live long enough to regret it, do I?"

The black eyes were glaring at Carter, who gulped and nodded. If he understood his situation well, he had been hired by a rebel doctor to take care of a Gundam pilot while being supervised by his four friends who had been soldiers for god knew how long and looked like they could kill you with their bare hands if you just looked at them the wrong way.

'What did I get myself into?' Carter thought, head spinning with way too much information.