~AC 197, March 7th, L4 – A001, Winner Mansion, 9:04pm~
The nurse looked up when the door to the secure room opened with a hiss and Wufei came in. She was busy checking the settings of both a cardiac monitor and a smaller screen for brainwaves, and scribbling down notes on a pad, probably for Sally and Iria. She smiled nervously, but she didn't cower away like many others would have done knowing they were surrounded by Gundam pilots.
"Where is Mr. Barton?" she asked in a soft voice so as not to wake her patient.
"I managed to convince him to get some sleep before he would drop dead on the ground," Wufei answered just as softly.
The nurse smiled at him and nodded once.
"That's good. I was afraid for a moment that he was going to insist on staying here. He needs rest. Almost as much as Quatre, I would say. I am glad you could make him see reason."
Wufei smiled dryly while taking a chair at Quatre's bedside. It had not been easy. Even after agreeing verbally, Trowa had been very reluctant to go rest. Wufei had stayed in his room to make sure his friend would take a shower, and he had practically tucked him into bed and ordered him to sleep before he would lose patience and knock him out. Trowa had smiled at this, and Wufei wasn't sure why. It wasn't like he had even tried to be funny, and it was certainly not the kind of endearments one was supposed to say to… to whom exactly? What was Trowa for him now? Was it even accurate to call him only his best friend, when the young man had gathered enough of his courage to spill out his love?
Wufei sighed and tiredly pulled at the band tying his hair back, shaking his head to try and soothe his thoughts back to something more mundane. The nurse was now changing an IV bag. The line that went from it was connected to Quatre's left forearm.
"What's in there?" Wufei whispered.
The nurse jumped, surprised, then smiled again. It looked like she loved smiling, Wufei thought, and wondered why he was suddenly not thinking straight anymore. He was noticing odd things everywhere ever since…
"Just a little solution to fight dehydration. He did not eat much in the past weeks, and we always had to remind him to drink or he wouldn't have done it. But it was impossible to put him under IV all of the time."
"What's your name?" Wufei asked, thinking that Sally would have been very proud of him and his apparent lack of people skills, as she called his usual grumpy attitude. Wufei wasn't grumpy because he wanted to piss the whole world off, but because most people in the world pissed him off. But this kind woman wasn't one of those people. She threw the empty IV bag in a trash can and took a chair on the other side of the bed, checking Quatre's pulse.
"Shannon McCanaughey," she answered. "I know your name already," she added when he opened his mouth to introduce himself. "I had some time to myself earlier, and I met someone called… Ahmed, if I remember well, so I asked a few questions. I hope you don't mind…"
She sounded uncertain, as if she knew she had come close to trespassing, but Wufei understood. She was in unknown territory and they were hiding quite a lot from her and from the other doctor, so it was only fair that she had tried to obtain more information.
"It's okay," he assured her in a whisper, turning to gaze at Quatre's face.
He was resting on his back, the IV and different monitors preventing him from moving too much. But his sleep was not that quiet. He was frowning a little, as if disturbed by something in his dreams, and a few beads of sweat were appearing on his forehead. Without asking, Wufei took a small cloth that was resting in a bowl of cool water and washed the sweat away very carefully, running the refreshing pad along Quatre's cheeks too. When he looked up again, Shannon was watching him with a little smile on her face. Again.
"He is better already," she murmured. "I'm so glad. I felt so lost, at the clinic. I didn't know what to do for him. He looked so sad, so helpless, and yet… it was like he was calling for help, but he couldn't say it out loud. Very strange. And there was nothing we could do."
"You said he saved your life…" Wufei began.
Shannon ran her hand through fine blond hair, pushing the bangs away from Quatre's face.
"He did. I almost slipped on wet tiles. I would have banged my head against the edge of the sink if he hadn't caught me in time."
She frowned.
"In fact this is strange… I could have sworn he knew what was going to happen. He looked at me with a strange kind of look… I don't really know how to explain, just that… I could swear he knew."
Wufei blinked several times, trying to integrate what the nurse had said.
'This is consistent with Zero's patterns too. The precognition was a part of the program, since it could help predict your enemy's next moves. It basically showed futures, possibilities to choose from, and outlined the decision process that would lead to each possibility. I need to tell Sally about that.'
"You don't have to stay, you know," Shannon said suddenly. "You must be tired too. I won't leave his side."
"No, I… I promised I would stay here. I am not tired, and I brought something to read," he added, showing her the book of Chinese poetry he had brought with him. "You, on the contrary, have had a rough day. If you need to sleep, just tell me. I'll make sure Dr. Po is warned, and to wake you if anything happens."
Shannon gaped at him, incredulous eyes darting from the book to the young man holding it.
"Thank… thank you," she stammered, "but it's my job to… oh, thank you, really! I hardly slept last week. Quatre was very agitated, and I don't think I managed to sleep more than four hours in a row since the beginning of the month. And with that trip and all… you're very kind", she finished, lowering her head, a pretty blush covering her cheeks.
"No," Wufei said, shaking his head. "You are. You could have refused to come."
"No, I couldn't have. People become nurses because they have a calling, Mr. Chang. The kind of thing that tells you that you won't stand seeing a fellow human being in pain without trying to help. I have seen Quatre's pain for three weeks, and now I am actually able to do something for him, to make a difference. I can help him. I won't go away now."
Wufei looked at her, stunned, then bowed his head in silent thanks. He turned again to watch Quatre, and unconsciously emptied his mind, relaxing his breath pattern and going through the calming routine he normally used after physical exercise. He didn't know what Iria had meant when she had said that they should project as much calm as possible, he didn't understand the complex mechanism that was Quatre's brain, just that he could help a little like this. The least he could do was try.
Quatre winced as another flash almost blinded him, showing him a huge shadow looming over him. A black and white mobile suit, but it was not threatening, not at all. Yet there was a bittersweet tang of death and blood around it, and he shifted uneasily in his sleep as he experienced the mixed feelings that the memory was bringing back.
/calm quietness rest/
If Quatre had been awake, he would have blinked. That sudden surge of feelings did not belong to him, it had a different taste. He was not really used yet to having only himself in his head, so he pressed a bit, trying to get more of that strand of feelings.
/quietness reassurance calm/
/wufei/
/everything is going to be okay/
Quatre's face suddenly relaxed as his mind basked in the pool of calm and silence that his friend's gentle mind had created for him. He let out a little sigh of contentment before drifting off to deeper sleep, enveloped in Wufei's reassuring presence, and not bothering to wonder how he knew who was here.
~AC 197, March 8th, Outer Rim of the L4-cluster, 00:53am~
The shuttle's thrusters brought the vessel to a stop at a safe distance from the piece of space rock that was known in the electronic world of the Winner database as XR-36F5. Heero shut down the powerful propellers, only keeping the hovering ones on. Duo's gaze was fixed on the satellite. That chunk of ore lost in the middle of nowhere in space was holding lots of secrets, and he was determined to find them all out.
He turned to Heero to find him connecting his laptop to the satellite's network. Wufei had really made sure they would get the best, and the shuttle was equipped with a transmitter that would have made any self-respecting military ship jealous. But when Heero finally secured the connection, he did not enter any of the codes Iria had given them. Instead, he began hacking into the network with his usual ease.
"Whatcha doin', bud? We got all the keys to get us in. We don't need to do it that way."
"Just following your logic," Heero answered, eyes not wavering from the flashing screen. "If your hypothesis is right and this satellite has been used recently as a base of operation…"
"Someone will be on watch," Duo finished with a frown. "So you think that they monitor access? Whoever they are."
"That's what I would do."
"They're not you," Duo grinned. "But you're right. There's always a chance the Winners would do an inspection, right? So they're probably on the lookout in case someone enters the legitimate access codes. And I guess they would have changed them, too."
"Hn."
"And if that's the case, entering the right code would trigger an alarm. That's kinda clever."
Heero glanced at him, hands still typing away. Duo laughed a bit.
"Yeah, I know, too bad for them they have no idea who they're up against. Damn it, I hate killing dumb people. It's like a cheapening of my skills."
"I got it," Heero said.
"Great. I'll do a heat scan, then we'll think of how we play it."
The heat scanner, another of the great innovations that no other shuttle had on board, was done fairly quickly. Duo tapped the computer screen with an impatient finger as the results began to scroll down.
"Okay, we've got… far too much residual heat in two of those areas," he said pointing at the schematics that Heero had fished from his laptop's memory. "Sure indication that some machinery is working. Life support primarily, from what I can say. That particular heat comes from a metallic mass… probably the shuttle… Then we've got residual heat in what used to be the living quarters… temperature matches with residual body heat. People have been here recently. Quite strange for a supposedly abandoned piece of space junk."
He frowned at the last remaining analysis.
"There's heat coming from a place near the storing hangar but… I don't understand… This is… Look, it's like the heat is going through a wall!"
Heero could only watch and admit that Duo was right. The round red blotch on the otherwise blue screen was separated in the middle by a white line that was supposed to represent a metal partition.
"They modified the structure of the buildings," he said after a while. "That's the only explanation. They moved the partitions for whatever it is they're doing here. Our blueprints are out of date."
"This is beginning to sound more and more like a suicide mission, just like in the old days. Okay, it's just you and me, and we have no idea where the walls are inside. What do we do? Any news from the surveillance cameras?"
"They're not plugged in. Not surprising, since they're programmed to automatically send feedback to the central database."
"And they didn't need no one over there knowing something was going on here. Which means they probably installed some of their own. We can't disable them from here… so I guess it's stealth, and if we meet one, we'll improvise."
Duo was grinning from ear to ear, but Heero grimaced. He hated improvising. Back then during the war, he had always had very precise mission plans, while Duo always seemed to just barge in and torch everything, or slip in and complete his mission silently and unnoticed. It didn't mean Heero had no sense of improvisation, he had proved it when he had rescued Duo from his planned execution, but it wasn't something he liked to rely on when on a mission.
Duo caught his expression and smiled, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"I tell you what, we go in through the shuttle hangar and make sure our baby here is ready to go should anything happen. Then, we find the bloody shuttle, and you take the east wing while I do west."
"We shouldn't go anywhere alone…" Heero started to protest, but Duo interrupted him.
"We simply don't have the time, Heero. You know it. We can't disable the surveillance system from here. It means that inevitably, we will be detected, at one point or another. Whether it's soon or late is up to us, but they will see us. Which is fine by me. Let them see who's gonna be their end," he ended with a dark smile.
Heero still didn't look happy about the plan.
"You know it's the only way," Duo said, hugging him from behind.
"It doesn't mean I have to like it," Heero grumbled.
"Does it mean that you worry just a tiny little bit about my scrawny ass?" Duo teased.
"Oh, shut up!" Heero snapped, but his hand gripped Duo's wrist.
Duo spun Heero around, somehow managing to get him up in the same movement and held him against him. He had grown in the past year while Heero's Asian genes and the manipulations he had undergone had kept him at a smaller size.
"You swear you're not gonna get yourself killed in here, and I'll do the same," Duo whispered.
"You'd better not."
"I run, I hide, but I never tell a lie."
"Liar."
Duo just held Heero tighter.
"For Cat," he said. "This is for Cat."
They stood like this for a moment, their minds filled with the last image they had of their blond friend asleep in his bed, surrounded by the beeping machines. Finally, Heero disentangled himself from Duo and checked all of his weapons, a deadly gleam in his eyes. Duo did the same, and they both went back to their seats. Mind on the mission.
It took them precisely fifteen minutes to open the door of the hangar with the freshly hacked code, get their shuttle inside and maneuver it so that it would be ready to go in case of emergency. Heero was focused again, his face settled in that perfectly chiseled and expressionless mask that Duo usually called his 'mission face'. Duo himself was completely immersed in his task, but he felt unsettled. It was not like Heero to show that much vulnerability when they were on a mission. In fact, it was not really like him either to admit to being vulnerable in such a moment. But it was not like he had had a choice. Heero was really perturbed by what had happened to Quatre, even if he was quite good at hiding it to anyone who didn't know how to read him. And Duo himself was really shaken. They had almost lost Quatre. They could have lost him without even knowing. Duo shivered and chased that thought away. Now was not a good time for that. Still, it explained Heero's fear to lose him, too. And if he had pretended that he was not afraid to lose Heero, he would have been lying to himself.
'But he can take care of himself, and he trusts me to take care of myself… yes, but we all knew that Cat could take care of himself too, and look what happened! Someone got him. Okay, Maxwell, you stop that right now, or I smack you… myself… whatever! They're gonna pay, and you and the guys are gonna make sure they know what they're paying for.'
Duo looked at Heero. Heero didn't even spare him a glance, hands flying on the shuttle's controls.
They stalked out of their shuttle, careful to avoid detection for as long as possible, but they doubted that there were any cameras in the shuttle bay anyway. No one was supposed to have found out that this satellite was not what it was meant to be, and anyone using it as a base would have to be as discreet as possible. In silence, they made their way to the second shuttle in the bay. Heero was following the signal received by his palm computer. The little machine was a gift from Duo and allowed him to transport as much info and programs as his laptop when on a mission, but with much less space wasted. It had already been put to good use before, and was now detecting the signal sent by the shuttle's location chip.
"That's it," Heero confirmed in a whisper.
Both young men took the time to take out the metallic panel near the nose of the shuttle to retrieve the chip and silence it. Then, Duo went to the back and examined the medical cross painted on the tail. He used his index finger to scrape it, and red paint flakes fell on his gloves.
"Bad work," he remarked snidely. "It's fresh."
He looked more closely.
"Some other picture's been erased. What do you bet it's the Winner logo?"
"I don't bet when I'm sure to lose," Heero answered.
They didn't climb into the shuttle. The sooner they would start their exploration, the sooner they would get out of here. They left the shuttle bay through a door that was supposed to lead to a storage compartment... which was absolutely not what they found.
The very high space was unmistakably a mobile suit bay. And it was not made for ordinary mobile suits like Leos or Taurus. There was enough room there to store two or three Gundams. Both Heero and Duo had seen enough of those gigantic construction and repair bays to recognize one instantaneously.
"What the hell…" Duo muttered.
Heero was already exploring the room. It was relatively empty. All of the electronic equipment that was necessary in such a place had been stripped, leaving only empty carcasses with useless components. Yet a few supplies seemed to have been forgotten, and Heero went to a pile of metal panels that he recognized only too well. In an instant, Duo was by his side.
"Is that…" he began, but didn't dare say it.
Heero nodded.
"Yes. This is Gundanium."
"What is it doing here?"
"I don't know," Heero answered, frowning.
His hands explored the apparently flawless metal, detecting some invisible twists and failures that definitely identified the pieces as faulty and discarded. Whoever had left that here, they did not intend to build new mobile suits. Still, nothing explained the presence of the metal, or of the room, on what was supposed to be a sealed resource satellite.
"Well… I guess now we gotta split up and continue to explore," Duo said, scratching his head. "We stay in contact through the radio, usual frequency, right?"
Heero nodded, his whole body tense, but didn't turn back. He just made his way towards the exit he was supposed to use. Duo almost called him back for a moment to tell him something, what exactly, he had no idea. He didn't do it, just watched him disappear in the darkened doorway, then exited the bay too, slipping in the shadows of the west wing.
Five minutes later, Duo had found what was supposed to be the chemicals storage room. For the moment, all of the walls he had met seemed to be in the same place as on the blueprints, with the notable exception of that first bay. Neglecting to try and find the code to open the door, he just took out some of his explosives and blasted the lock. The door opened with a low hiss, and it was no real surprise for Duo to find the room mainly empty.
"Come in, 01."
"01 in."
"Looks like some people helped themselves to some spice here. Dunno if they're the same who played with the big dolls, but I'll bet they made some good money on the black market."
"Status?"
Duo suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, because he knew very well he would have asked the same question in Heero's place.
"Five by five. No leak, the place was just cleaned out. You?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary."
"02 out."
Duo came out of the room, not bothering to even push the door back into place. He wanted the people out there to know that someone had discovered their little traffic. As he began to go down the corridor, he suddenly noticed a little red light that he knew only too well.
"Come in, 01."
"01 in."
"Just found Big Brother's first eye. I'm gonna say hello. Move along and hurry."
"Roger. Found one too. Proceeding to eliminate."
"I love it when you talk dirty!"
"Idiot."
"I love you too. 02 out."
Eyes firmly planted in the camera's optic lens, Duo sashayed closer, taking his time to finally stop in front of the little machine. It had been installed directly beside the old camera, watching precisely the same spot. His eyes never leaving the black eye of the camera, Duo took out his gun from his waist holster and pointed it straight at the lens. He grinned evilly.
"Bang bang!"
And he fired.
~ Same time, somewhere in the L4 colony cluster ~
The man in front of the screen could hardly believe his eyes. In fact he had to stop the recording and replay it before he trusted himself enough to react. But there was no doubt about it. On the screen, a young man in a black spacesuit seemed to glide out of the darkness of the corridor, looking right at the camera. Then he stopped in front of it, took out a gun, smiled, and...
"Bang bang!"
Static covered the screen. The man began to sweat, and he launched a check of all the systems of the satellite. His face blanched a bit more when he realized that the shuttle bay doors had been opened about half an hour ago with the secret access code. He caught a radio and pressed a button.
"Someone call Selim and tell him to come to the surveillance center! Now!"
Heero was walking through the living quarters. Some of the rooms seemed to have been altered, to suit what needs he didn't know. Most of them were now completely bare of any furniture. The first real change in the topography of the place almost took him by surprise, when he found a wall pierced by a door when a corridor should have continued on to the main control room. Frowning, he stopped. After a few mental calculations, he managed to pinpoint that he was in front of the unexplained heat blotch that had seemed to expand through walls. It needed to be investigated, but he wanted to get to that control room first. He eventually did reach it after going around the unknown room. Another door in the control room's wall seemed to lead directly back into the place.
It took Heero only a few seconds to realize that none of the working machinery was commanded from here. The computers had been torn apart. The only one that remained was sporting a blue screen flashing a white 'memory cleared' sign. There was no hope of disconnecting the surveillance system from here either, so he did not regret having spent ammunition shooting down every camera he had met on his way.
Going to the door that wasn't supposed to exist, he took out his palm computer and connected it to the digital keypad. The small machined decrypted the code in seconds, and the door opened with a hiss. Gun in hand, Heero entered.
He almost dropped his gun. The room was a flight simulator. He could have drawn the schematics for such a thing in his sleep. He had spent so much time in a room just like this, doing flight and fight simulations until his hands would bleed on the controls, until his eyes would explode with the pain of staring at the screen, until his trainer would be satisfied with his performance. The simulator had soon become his nightmare in his early days of training, almost a punishment.
Heero shifted uneasily. Something was very wrong in this room. Most of the equipment had been stripped like everywhere else in the satellite, but not all. There were no screens left, no controls either. In fact, nothing but the shape of the room reminded him of its normal function. Only one console seemed to still be connected. A seat in the center of the room, and a helmet on it, and that was all.
Coming closer, Heero could feel his hands begin to shake. The helmet. The cables were connected to the working console that was humming in the background. He had seen one like that before. In Zero.
His gun fell from his hand in a loud clatter as he approached the seat. He had to know. He had to know if this was really it. Ignoring the little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Duo and was telling him this was a bad idea, he took his own helmet off and put this one on.
/welcome/
The mechanical voice resounded in his head, almost tearing his brain apart. And it started again. Just like in the beginning, when he was trying with all of his might to control Epyon, to force it to obey to his will. It was Zero, and it was not. The taste of it felt different… incomplete. He would not have been able to explain exactly what was not the same, he just knew it. Zero had been a part of himself for so long now that he could tell that whatever this was, it was not it, or at least not exactly. But then, what was it, and what was it doing here?
The visions began to flash…
/explosion was too big… smashed the leo in the building… hundreds of civilians casualties…/
/are you lost?/
/all those years with you… that was not so bad/
/a soldier should not feel anything… you've got to retrain him!/
His whole body was trembling now, but he was hypnotized as the endless visions of his failures, of his past pains and mistakes were fed to him again, and again. He fell on his knees, weakly trying to get the thing off his head, but unable to do it.
/see what you've done/
/mission failed/
/vayeate exploding like a supernova in that suddenly too black sky…trowa!/
~ Same time, somewhere in the L4 colony cluster ~
Selim watched the screen, his face expressionless as the scene replayed on and on. The man who had given the alert didn't dare look at him
"Who are they?"
"We don't know. We don't know how they found out about the satellite either."
"What exactly do you know?"
Selim's voice was as cold and cutting as glass.
"Nothing. Just that they're inside and destroying the cameras. We will lose video liaison with the satellite soon at the rate it's going."
For a moment, Selim looked like he was going to throttle someone. He cursed profusely under his breath.
"Someone get me Neelah. I need her to make some phone calls," he finally snapped.
The man at his side gulped.
"What do we do about the satellite, sir?"
Selim shot a disgusted look to the image of the unknown young man shooting the camera.
"Destroy it."
"Heero! Heero! Talk to me, please!"
It seemed to be too much of an effort to open his eyes, but he managed it. Everything was blurry at first, then Duo's face came into brutal focus. Dizziness spread over Heero, and he felt like he was going to throw up.
"…'m okay," he mumbled, trying to push himself upright.
He had just realized that he was lying on the floor. When he looked up again, Duo was watching him reproachfully.
"You're okay? Are you fucking kidding me, Yuy? I called you over the radio, and you didn't answer! I located you and came here to find you on the floor convulsing with that thing over your head! So if you dare tell me you're okay, I'll damn well make sure you won't be okay for a very long time!"
Duo had almost screamed the last sentence, his exasperation showing the measure of his anger and fear. Heero recoiled a bit, but as his hand went down to support himself, it banged into the abandoned helmet. Heero jerked his hand back as if he had been bitten by a snake and half-crawled away from it, eyes wide and face pale as he suddenly remembered what had happened. Duo seemed to notice the look of fear on his face because he abruptly shut up in the middle of another of his favorite rants about how Heero never took care of himself and was trying to get himself killed any way he could.
"Heero? Heero, what happened in here? What is that thing? Why did you have it on?"
"I… I…" Heero stammered, unable to get a coherent sentence out just yet.
He took a deep breath.
"I don't know," he managed to choke out.
"You don't know. You don't know what exactly?"
"What… what it is… Why I put it on. I don't know."
"You put it on? Why the hell… never mind. I should be used to it by now. Why do you always have to try stuff that looks like it could be potentially hazardous to your health anyway?"
"Duo, just… shut up, please."
Duo's eyes widened. The sentence in itself was not unusual, he heard it enough times in a day, but the tone it had been uttered in was quite unusual. Heero was unmistakably scared. Duo frowned and looked at the helmet on the ground, then at the blinking console. He was about to open his mouth when a siren suddenly broke out, and all lights turned to the standard emergency red.
"Self-destruction of premises engaged. Staff must have evacuated the premises in five minutes. Self-destruction of premises engaged. Staff must have evacuated the premises in…"
"That's why I was looking for you!" Duo yelled above the noise. "I was wandering around shooting down cameras when I discovered a neat little pack of C-4 just below the ceiling. The whole place is packed with them. Whoever's watching, they decided to blow this place. We must scram off, or we'll end up as very tiny little pieces of Gundam pilots."
He helped Heero get up, and was about to lead him out of the room when he escaped his grasp.
"Heero! We must go!"
"Not without this," Heero replied, fiercely tearing the console apart with his bare hands and pulling out the memory cards. He did not take the time to properly cut all of the wires, just pulling everything out.
"Why do you want to take this?" Duo asked as they ran out of the simulator, down the corridors that led back to the shuttle bay.
"Because I think I know… I know what was done to Quatre now."