Part 21 - Power standby

~ AC 197, March 8th, L4-A001, Medinah Business Building, 5:32pm~

Hakim sighed happily as he closed the last file on his desk. For once, he would be able to make it home and have dinner with his wife and son. His work had been eating up all of his time ever since he had started working for the Winners a good ten years ago, and Khadijah had been an angel with it. Never once had she complained about him coming home late, or even staying all night at the office. She would only look at him disapprovingly when it was obvious he hadn't slept enough. But then she would smile, and make him some nice perfumed tea and massage his shoulders, and ask about his day, and he would be only too happy to confide in her and tell her about his problems. Khadijah had always been a wise adviser, and she was his anchor in the crazy life he led at the service of the powerful.

He had never been happier than the day she'd given birth to little Ali, and now regretted to have so little time for his son. He had missed so much in his child's life already, and he didn't want it to go on like that. He would have to take a holiday soon, and take Khadijah and Ali away from this too big town in which work always threatened to lure him back into the Medinah Business Building. Maybe they'd even go to Earth and Ali could go see the sea for real. Hakim smiled as he imagined his son's eyes shining with delight in front of the endless blue waves. Yes, he'd take Ali to see the sea, and he would leave all his work behind for a while and only take care of his son and Khadijah. They deserved it after all they had done for him.

This quite happy reverie was interrupted by the loud ringing of the phone. Hakim glared at the machine, but deep inside he knew he would answer it. If one of his clients needed him…

"Hello, Hakim here."

"Hakim! What the hell did you think you were doing?"

Hakim blinked. It took him a few seconds to connect the infuriated voice in the phone with a face.

"Mrs. Winner?" he asked, eyes widening. "What are you talking about?"

"Just turn on your damn TV!"

Hakim's eyes went comically wide when he heard his late employer's elder daughter, a woman who always seemed to be the living impersonation of dignity, let out a swear word, and roaring it down the phone too. Of course, after some minutes watching the latest news reports, he understood the state she was in.

"I thought I had told you to keep this low, Hakim! This is not what I call low! What I call low is 'not on the news' low, the kind of low that reporters never get a hold of! So who did you talk to? And why?"

"Mrs. Winner, I fully understand your concern," Hakim started, only to be interrupted.

"You'd better," Iria Winner said threateningly.

"… but I don't know how the press got a hold of this," Hakim managed to finish while Iria caught her breath back. "I didn't even get one call from reporters. They know not to call here, and my staff have very strict instructions not to let them through and to address them to the PR department. Moreover, I am the only one here who knew about this matter."

"But then how? If you didn't get calls from the press… Wait, did you get calls from someone else?"

"Why, yes," Hakim answered, frowning. "One of your sisters called and inquired about the states of affairs."

"And you told her?"

"You didn't leave me any specific instructions not to inform your sisters, Mrs. Winner, and anyway they will know soon enough after the next board reunion. I didn't think it was a problem."

"Who was it?"

/"Ms. Neelah Winner on line 5 for you, sir," the voice of the secretary said over the com unit.

"Put her through," Hakim answered, wondering why the girl would want to talk to him.

Well, she was not a girl anymore, she was married now, but Hakim couldn't keep out of his mind the first image he had seen of her, a young girl barely twelve years old with strange and empty eyes. When her face appeared on the screen of his vidphone, he could see that she hadn't changed much. She was a pretty woman, with that sort of childish grace that some men found appealing. Hakim himself did not.

"Hello, Hakim," Neelah said, her voice seemingly trembling with something he didn't understand, a strange feeling between fear and anticipation visible on her face.

"Hello, Miss Neelah. What can I do for you?"

"Well, after all the changes that happened, I wondered if…"

"If I could tell you what exactly is going on?" Hakim finished for her.

"Yes, that's it!" she chirped happily.

"Well, it's very simple, actually. The money was redistributed just the way your brother had planned it. You should receive a letter soon informing you about your share."

"The way my brother… you must be mistaken, Hakim," Neelah said, now sounding like a petulant child. "It should have happened the way my father had planned it."

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Miss Neelah. This specific clause of your father's will is only applicable if your brother proves to be unable to manage his affairs, for whatever reasons. And anyway, the new redistribution scheme is enough to cancel it. Your brother is no longer CEO of WEI. But I'm sure Miss Iria will be most happy to explain all of that to you at the next board reunion."

"Iria?"

"She's the new CEO," Hakim said helpfully.

He did not understand why what seemed good news for him apparently put Neelah in such a state of distress.

"I didn't know…" she said in a blank voice.

He saw her looking to her right, probably to someone outside of the camera range, and her face paled, as if she was frightened by what she saw.

"I swear I didn't know," she said again, to the person she was looking at, and this time, Hakim heard the abject terror in her voice. He began to worry.

"Miss Neelah? Miss Neelah, are you alright?"

She seemed to suddenly remember that she was on the phone as her head snapped back to him. She gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes and nodded.

"Yes, Hakim, I will be okay. Thank you for your help."

And she hung up./

"It was Neelah," Hakim said.

"Neelah? Did she seem… odd? I mean, more than usual?"

Hakim would have smiled at the strange phrasing if not for the fact that he had been greatly unsettled by the girl's behavior.

"She seemed awfully scared of something… or someone."

"I see," Iria said simply.

Hakim didn't think it wise to ask what Iria saw. He just kept his mouth shut, waiting for instructions.

"Hakim, please do not talk about this to anyone, including my sisters, before either I or Quatre tell you it is okay to do so. And… I am sorry to have snapped at you, that was uncalled for."

This time, Hakim smiled.

"I understand the state of mind you were in perfectly well, Mrs. Winner. Your instructions will be carried out. I… did I do something very wrong, Miss Iria?" he suddenly asked, returning to the more intimate name almost without thinking.

"No, Hakim. And even if you did, it was through no fault of yours, but because of my own negligence. You'd think at my age, I would have learnt to be more careful. Thank you very much Hakim, now don't let me keep you. I am quite sure Khadijah and Ali would be glad to have you for dinner tonight."

"They most certainly would, Mrs. Winner. Good evening."

There was a soft knock on Iria's bedroom door just as she hung up. Before she could utter a sound, the door opened and Sally slipped in. The doctor frowned when she saw the lines of worry on the brows of that woman who had proved to be a formidable friend and an incredible mentor over the past year.

"Is it a bad time? I heard you speak…"

"I was on the phone with Hakim," Iria answered, eyes absentmindedly drifting to the TV.

"What for? … oh," Sally said, when she finally registered what the voices in the background were saying. "What happened?"

"My sister Neelah called Hakim, and he told her about the new distribution. She's the only person apart from us who knows this."

"And you think she told it to the press."

"No, I…"

"Then you think she's in big trouble," Sally pressed on.

Iria sighed and closed her eyes.

"You don't know her, Sally. She is… She's always been peculiar. I told Dr. Hewley that we Winner children had been screened for genetic defects, but the truth is, no one can tell with certainty what kind of gene patterns generates some mental problems. Neelah is someone fragile, easily persuaded. Her husband is someone less than savory. Father didn't approve of him, but he let her marry him, because he thought she was old enough to make her own choice."

"Which you don't."

"Neelah could never make her own choices. All her life, the choices have been made for her. She's… unstable. In fact, she suffers from a quite hard case of manic-depressive psychosis, but she was never really treated. Father was not around enough to notice, and I couldn't just take care of all of my siblings by myself. Especially just after Quatre was born."

There was a small silence.

"I think she may be in closer contact with the kidnappers than I thought. Someone… Hakim told me she seemed to be scared of someone when she called. God, I just can't take much more!"

Sally squeezed her arm gently.

"We will find her and make sure she's okay," she said, "but I think right now, we have other priorities. Like what do we tell the guys?"

Iria seemed thoughtful for a moment.

"They'll know soon enough about the leak, but not a word about Neelah," she finally said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I don't want to worry Quatre needlessly."

"Which means not a word to the others, or they'll tell him," Sally added with a smile. "I think you should take some rest. All of us have had a taxing day. We should all take advantage of a good night's sleep. Things always look brighter in the morning, they say."

"Then, 'they' are idiots," Iria snorted. "This won't look any brighter tomorrow, only dirtier and more tangled than I thought it possible."

"Just get some rest, you need it. The guys too. No matter what Heero says, he's not all that rested from that bit of hypnosis and neither is Duo. If Wufei is experimenting a widening of his abilities like I think he is, he'll need the night to get over it. And the lovebirds have deserved some one-on-one time. Not to mention Carter and Shannon, who need to unfry the brains we so diligently fried with information."

Iria smiled weakly.

"You're probably right. I'm feeling quite that way myself to be honest."

"All the more reason to shut your eyes while you can. Do you need something to sleep?"

"No, thank you."

"As you wish," Sally said lightly, straightening and going to the door with a hand salute. "I'm hitting the sheets too."

"Alone?" Iria asked mockingly, her eyes staring at the TV as if she was really paying attention to what was being displayed.

Sally turned around, her cheeks a bit pink.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Whatever you want," Iria said lightly. "I'd jump him while I can if I were you. Cute straight male doctors are hard to come by those days, especially colony-side."

Sally shook her head and laughed.

"I'm not sure threatening bloody murder is gonna get him for me, y'know?"

"Who knows? He stares at you a lot every time you yell at him. If you want my opinion, the boy wants a collar and the leash that goes with it."

"Iria!"

Iria grinned lasciviously, something Sally hadn't thought she could do.

"I think I'll just go to bed with my husband," she said lazily. "I really, really need to relax."

Sally's cheeks reddened again, but she managed a wry smile and wink before she got out. Iria still caught the beginning of a swear word, and grinned to herself again. She loved nothing more than watching young love blossoming all over the place. She had always encouraged Quatre with Trowa, and she would encourage them both with Wufei now, and Sally with Carter if the young doctor was as taken with her friend as she thought.

'But right now, I want Richard rubbing my feet and massaging all that tension out of my body. Damn, but where is a husband when you need one?'

~AC 197, March 9th, L4-A001, Winner Mansion, 8:45am~

Iria was walking along the silent corridors of the Mansion to her brother's bedroom. Apparently everyone had indeed taken advantage of the night, and none of the boys had shown up for breakfast. She suspected it was both because they needed the time to rest, and because, unconsciously, they were once again regrouping as a unit around their now weakened leader. If she thought about it, they almost reacted like a pack. When one of them was wounded or down, the others would erect that kind of protective circle around him. They didn't even need to do it physically. Carter himself had realized after only a few days that being on their wrong side while they were in this state of mind would do nothing but antagonize them and make them dangerous.

She and Sally could of course attribute at least part of that behavior to the New Type ability. It was an inborn characteristic of New Types that they regrouped to seek protection in numbers, in those days when they were still few and sometimes hunted. Other more dramatic circumstances had thrown those five together and contributed to strengthen the link that the power in them had created even if they were not aware of it. Iria didn't think she was wrong when she said that those five were family to each other, bound together by far more than just common purposes and blood ties. The five of them were complete.

It was a disturbing capacity of New Types to adapt so well to their environment and mates that they would elude detection. And she hoped, for all of their sakes, that those five could manage it for a long time, for as long as it would take for humanity to realize that some of its children were gifted and needed care instead of hatred.

As she passed by a window, she noticed a still form in the garden. She got closer and smiled. Wufei was sitting cross-legged in a secluded spot, eyes closed. Even from where she was she could see that he no longer had big shadows under his eyes, and that he breathed more freely. She frowned a bit as she took a closer look. His chest was heaving, but at a very slow rate, far less than what she believed human beings to be able of.

'I know it's normal for him, but God, it is quite surprising to actually see it done.'

She decided to retreat before he would see her, although she didn't know if he could perceive her presence if he was indeed in a trance. She'd have to ask Sally about that. She was knowledgeable on New Types because she had had to take care of Quatre, but her area of expertise was limited to empathy, and on a lesser degree telepathy.

She barely managed to suppress a fit of laughter when she passed by Heero and Duo's room and heard the muffled moans coming from there.

'Sally should really trust them more. They do have it in themselves to heal, but their methods are… unorthodox, to say the least. But then, who am I to speak? I did the exact same thing after all, and it does some good to a human being to be reminded that even after millennia of evolution, sex still is the basic cement of society and social interaction. Maybe some of our higher-ups would do well to remember that they are made of flesh and blood too.'

She was surprised to find Quatre alone in his bed when she came into the room. Her brother was lying on his belly, clutching a pillow, head facing the door, but not sleeping. Blurry green-blue eyes opened when the door hissed. He smiled at her, and when she raised a questioning eyebrow, he indicated the door to the bathroom. Only then did Iria notice the faint noise of water. Trowa was showering.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked, taking a chair as Quatre extricated himself from sheets and blankets a bit.

"More or less… I had… flashes, I think. Things coming back, but I'm not sure where all of it fits."

"Well, it means your body is starting to heal. I hope you two didn't do anything naughty?"

"Iria!" Quatre exclaimed, cheeks reddening.

Then, he shook his head and grinned.

"Even I am aware that I'm not well enough for that particular kind of physical activity," he said quietly. "Not that I didn't want to, mind you, but Trowa is the voice of reason as always, and my brain probably couldn't have taken it. I've had enough of overload for a lifetime."

"Once we get that shield problem behind us, which if I am not mistaken will be done this week, you can do whatever you wish. I am honestly astonished that you actually are so well. You lost weight, that's for sure, but not much."

"I think Zero may have used every little bit that I fed myself to my body's best advantage," Quatre mused. "After all, my dying would not have been good for it. It kept me alive."

Iria didn't add anything to that disturbing comment, and she was saved from an embarrassing silence by the water shutting and Trowa coming out of the bathroom, wearing only his customary jeans. If he was embarrassed by his attire in Iria's company, nothing on his face showed it. He just looked at Quatre, who shook his head, apparently understanding the unspoken question.

"Later," he said. "When everyone is here. We'll have a briefing about the inquiry, right?" he turned to ask Iria.

"Yes," she answered, wondering why that seemed important. "But we already told you most of what we know."

"So it is time for me to tell you what I know. What I remember."

"Is it a lot?" Iria inquired.

Quatre didn't answer, and Trowa's quiet voice almost made her jump.

"Let's just say we had a quite agitated night," he said simply. "I suppose I need to leave you two alone," he added after a small silence.

"Yes," Iria nodded. "Sorry, but you've never really had to shield before, none of you, since Quatre was doing it naturally, and he really must concentrate."

"Do you want something to eat?" Trowa asked Quatre.

"Uh, not yet. It's best if I do this with my stomach empty, believe me," Quatre answered with a wince.

"But you must eat something this morning anyway," Iria cut in.

She turned to Trowa.

"Why don't you get breakfast for yourself first? Once we're done, I'll ask Miss Shannon to call you, and you can bring him something before he goes back to sleep."

Quatre was about to protest, but Iria interrupted.

"You know perfectly well that you will need sleep if you want us to have a briefing afterwards, Quatre," she said seriously. "Just an hour or two of rest won't kill you."

"I'm just so tired to be stuck in here," Quatre said dejectedly.

Iria smiled, and smoothed down the pale, tousled hair around her brother's face.

"I know, honey. And if all goes well today, I will lower the settings of the system a bit so that you can re-accustom yourself to feeling people. I think we will only need two or three hours to rebuild the basic foundations. After that I want you to practice by yourself, and we'll do a session one hour a day. And… in between, I also would like you to speak with Dr. Carter, okay? Not just to straighten out your memories, but…"

"I'll do it," Quatre approved, not letting her finish. "I… I think it's a good idea," he added low, not looking at Trowa as if afraid he would not support his point of view.

Trowa said nothing. He finished dressing, then sat on the bed next to Quatre and kissed him lightly. Then, he got up and left the room. Iria watched him go with a little smile.

"He understands more than you think, Quatre," she said quietly. "Trust him."

"I do trust him! It's just…"

"You're both still a bit high-strung about everything that happened ever since you decided to have a break in your relationship. It's normal for you both to be afraid at that stage, but he's doing his best. The least you can do is do the same. Especially if you two really want Wufei to join you."

Quatre didn't answer, and Iria dropped the subject. For all his usual openness, Quatre could become very stubborn if you forced him to consider things he was not ready to look at, and she needed him to be focused on his power, and not on other subjects. That, and she had a feeling a conversation with a certain Chinese pilot would probably unblock certain things too, especially regarding the things in Quatre's past that Trowa knew he couldn't relate to.

"Alright, Quatre. Since you're not three anymore, we're going to have to do this a bit differently, but since by now you know what you're doing, it shouldn't be that hard."

Quatre sat comfortably on the bed covers and leaned on the headboard for support. He knew he was going to need it before the morning was over.

"Ready?" Iria asked.

Quatre nodded.

"Alright," Iria said, taking a deep breath. "Let's go. Think of something that makes you feel safe."

Quatre closed his eyes and smiled, summoning the image of Trowa and Wufei hugging each other, as he had seen them yesterday morning when he had woken up.

They stopped just before noon, both equally exhausted, and Quatre now completely sure that his elder sister was a sadist. She had used light hypnosis to remove the useless safe words and help him through the first stage of rebuilding the foundations of the shields. His brain had recovered the familiar routine quite easily, even if the image he now used to build the feeling of seclusion and safety was very far from the innocent castle-building his sister had made him use as a child. Trowa and Wufei had gotten the leading role in that, and thinking of them had been the only way he could go on at some point.

All that because Iria had determined that the safest way for him to recover more rapidly would be for his brain to find the patterns it used on its own. So, after helping rebuild the basic shields, she had 'woken' him from the light trance, and lowered her own shields to provoke a reaction. For almost three hours, she had projected her feelings, lightly at first, then more forcefully, to make him build shields as an automatic reaction. The first tries were not happy at all for either of them, but with time and patient relentlessness, and also the threat that his head was going to explode if he didn't do anything, Quatre had managed to erect the closest thing resembling a shield he had had in a month. It felt weird and so familiar at the same time to find that sensation again. But truly, Quatre was never more grateful than when Iria finally declared that it was enough for one day.

"Good," she said in an extinct voice. "Shower, food, and rest."

Quatre snorted lightly. He was aching in all of his body, as if he had just had a go in Sandrock with some too rough Virgos, and Iria didn't look any better.

"For you too," he said with a smile.

Iria groaned, and stretched.

"You're a handful, you know? Always have been, always will be," she joked. "I'll ask Shannon if she could change the bed linens while you shower. And eat enough. The briefing will take place at three. For now, just rest."

This time, Quatre didn't protest.

~AC 197, March 9th, L4-A001, Winner Mansion, 3:02pm~

"How's the head, Cat?" Duo asked as he strolled into the room, Heero, Wufei, Carter and Shannon in tow.

"Still on my shoulders," Quatre answered.

Although he had rested with Trowa, he was far from being his usual sunny self. He had shadows under his eyes, and his smile was a bit wry. Iria smiled apologetically at that last answer, and went to the control panel in a corner of the room as everyone found seats. She flicked several buttons, and the humming in the background lowered a bit.

"How is that, Quatre?"

Quatre frowned and closed his eyes, as if testing the quality of the silence in his head. It was probably not perfect, but it should hold for a while, Iria thought. She shot a discreet look to Wufei, hoping that maybe he was doing that thing that seemed to have done some good to Quatre again. Sally had not been able to explain what exactly it was, and apparently even Wufei hadn't really known what he was doing, he had just done it. But today, Wufei's face was completely impassive, features schooled in a perfect bronze mask and eyes guarded. Whatever had gotten past his control the day before wouldn't again.

Eventually Quatre nodded to say he could bear the pressure alright.

"Then let's begin," Wufei said. "Yuy? The memory cards?"

Heero held up said cards and put them on the bed.

"I compared them with the original Zero Program," he said.

Quatre looked around at his fellow pilots, surprised, but since no one seemed to feel inclined to explain, he patiently waited for the rest of what Heero had to say.

"It looks a lot like Zero," Heero continued. "There are more than just similarities. Entire parts of the programs are absolutely identical to the last symbols, but in this one, there are… gaps. Things are missing. Zero itself was far from being perfect in the state we used it, but if we had used this one, it would have been more than dangerous. It just… something doesn't add up with it, like it's a prototype or…"

Heero stopped talking abruptly and looked at the cards, eyes widening.

"I can't believe how stupid I am," he whispered, before taking the two attached cards and suddenly ripping the last remnants of wires that were holding them together.

Embedded deep in one of the cards, a small black plate of metal bore an inscription.

'Zero System 1.0'

"This is it," Heero said numbly. "It's the first version. The draft for the Zero System. That's why it looked weird and unfinished. That's why some bugs that were later corrected are still there. That's why the effects were not the same…"

"What effects?" Quatre asked suddenly.

Heero seemed to hesitate, but Trowa nodded to him.

"He needs to know," he just said.

There was a small silence, then Heero began to explain.

"Zero was showing us possible futures, and the choices we had to make to make them happen, but… you remember the side effects? The hallucinations, the nightmares… Well, those were in fact bugs that had been just slightly corrected from this first version, if I understood right. And the first version… well it's the only thing it shows… the bad things… everything you failed… all your wrong choices…"

Quatre held up his hand and Heero stopped. The blond young man's face was suddenly very pale, and his eyes had lost focus, as he suddenly understood

"I remember…" he said very low. "I remember waking up in that seat… I knew I was in the flight simulator, I've spent so much time there that I could tell… and… I was strapped, with the helmet on my head… And then it began…"

He didn't go any further, and from the look on Heero's face, he didn't need to. The Japanese young man had seen his suspicions confirmed.

"I've got questions," Duo abruptly cut in. "One, how the hell do you know there was a flight simulator on that satellite, and two, how come those cards were in there? Somehow, I don't think that they would have been lying around for anyone to find."

"I knew there was a flight simulator because I'm the one who installed it. This satellite is the place where Sandrock was built, and where I trained before Operation Meteor. This is also the place where Zero was stored."

"What?"

"I don't know why," Quatre sighed, "but Instructor H ended up being the one in charge of Zero and all the data that referred to it. But I only knew it was stored on the satellite. I never even saw it before I… I…"

Quatre didn't finish his sentence and looked away. Fortunately, Wufei decided to step in the conversation and save everyone from an embarrassing silence.

"So apparently, someone found the satellite, began to sell the unused chemicals and somehow came across what remained of the Gundam-related material and decided to use it against you."

"There are chemicals missing? But… we never even used that part of the satellite!"

"Which means someone else did," Duo concluded.

"There's something else," Sally interrupted. "There's been a second leak in the press."

"About what?" Wufei asked angrily.

"The little redistribution scheme Quatre enforced before disappearing. So of course now it looks suspect because no official statement has been released and the whole lot of them reporters are buzzing around waiting for some gossip to catch."

"I'm not talking to the press," Quatre said.

"That wouldn't be wise," Iria agreed. "For the public, you are currently on holidays after having been diagnosed with severe exhaustion. And you're in no shape to appear in public anyway, people would ask far too many questions. Recording a statement would not be good either so… I suggest we call Miss Catalonia back and let her handle it from here. We can have her give a press conference on behalf of the family, and I'll attend if necessary."

"Good," Wufei said, glad to have that taken away. "We'll leave that part to you, and try to concentrate on the perpetrators."

"And how are we supposed to do that, Wuffers?" Duo grumbled. "The satellite was destroyed, and this", he pointed to the cards, "is all that we have left right now, and looking for prints wouldn't be a lot of help."

"Then we wait," Wufei answered very calmly, unimpressed by Duo's agitation. "Up until now, we managed to deflect most of our enemy's plans. They will become careless and make mistakes, sooner or later."

"Hope it's sooner 'cause I wanna kick some ass," Duo muttered under his breath, but loud enough for an innocent bystander like Carter to hear it.

The young doctor just did his best to remain ignored. He didn't really know why he and Shannon had been asked to attend, except that Iria Winner and Sally Po seemed intent on having them participating. It was surely a way to make them feel more welcome. Carter wasn't sure it was working.

Carter looked around and frowned when he saw both Iria and Sally staring at Duo. Then, he got caught by the brilliant blue gaze too.

"You think you guys could give us a bit of catch-up time?" he vaguely heard Duo say.

Minutes later, all four adults were out of the room. Sally and Iria were walking down the corridor, discussing how to have Miss Catalonia come back here rapidly, and Iria was even mentioning calling the President of the ESUN to have the workload of Vice-Minister Darlian lightened a bit so that she could cope even without her assistant. Shannon was walking alongside Carter, and shooting him a weird look every now and then, as if she didn't understand why they were going away from the room. And if he really thought about it, he himself didn't really know why they were going away either. He scowled.

'Why does it feel like we all got politely thrown out of there?'