Author's Note: Here it is, the chapter you've all been waiting for since The Maxwell Project: just what exactly is Project Maxwell all about? How answers come here and more, along with some twists and a boost of plot to get the blood boiling. Enjoy the peace and calm you've been experiencing thus far because the boat's about to be rocked and it ain't gonna be gentle either. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing.

Warning: language, disturbing depravity

Project Maxwell

Believe it or not, Trowa was the type of person who could go about with as little sleep as a person could possibly have and still function like a regular human being. Not that he did such a thing on a regular basis, mind you, but he could do it if he wanted to. So when Solo came in and told him to get his ass in gear and follow him, he had shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal and had followed after him, checking on Catherine one last time before actually leaving.

He had no idea as to what Solo wanted with him but he refrained from asking since he was sure that his questions would be answered momentarily. The large blond led him into the chapel of the church where the unibanged young man found the priest and nun who had taken them in, Duo, and an unfamiliar man that he had noticed watching him from time to time. As soon as the two of them entered, the man looked up, his eyes focusing straight on him for a full minute before lowering and looking elsewhere.

As if he hadn't noticed that, Solo strode forward and leaned against the back of a pew with his arms crossed, his green eyes staring the man down. "Okay, he's here, now spill," the blond ordered.

Trowa frowned at that but only moved so that he could sit down on another pew, making sure he had a good vantage point to watch the proceedings that were about to happen.

The man who seemed to be the center of attention looked at him again, this time with an uneasy smile that was sad in some way that Trowa couldn't place it. "It's been a while, hasn't it, 10001?" the man said aloud.

Trowa found his body freezing up. It had been years, nearly a decade since he had last been called that. It was a name that he had fought to forget about for years as all it did with bring back the nightmarish visions of a past he wanted to have nothing to do with. How did that man know that name?

"I'm not surprised," the man continued with Trowa made no attempt to answer him. "I haven't seen you in years and I'm just as surprised to see you alive as you are to hear your old name. Allow me to reintroduce myself; my name is James. James Maxwell. How about yourself?"

"Trowa," he answered numbly, as if in a trance before he shook his head, memories of a time long forgotten resurfacing again despite the action.

This time the man's smile became warmer, "It's nice to hear that you have your own name. I don't think I could stand using those numbers to talk with you anyhow."

"Ya done blabbering?" Solo interrupted. "Ya said you was gonna answer our questions about somethin' called Project Maxwelt."

"Maxwell," James corrected. "And yes, I did say that, didn't I?"

"How's about you start at the beginning and stop stalling?" Duo suggested from his seat next to Sister Helen, his eyes crimson still, Trowa noticed.

"The beginning," the man sighed. "That's a good place to start. I guess you could say it all began years ago, when I was still a child. I loved reading comic books back then, especially the ones about superheros and others with special powers. Out of all of them, X-men were my favorite since all of them were born with their powers. That got me to wondering, if such a thing was possible and since others were given their powers through unnatural means, was there a way to give a normal, everyday person powers? Nobody took me seriously back then because I was just a kid with an overactive imagination, one that got me into a lot of trouble as my brother here can attest to when we were growing up."

At that point, James paused and looked up to Father Maxwell who smiled knowingly at the man. Trowa raised an eyebrow in surprise at that but did not comment any further. Neither did Solo who didn't express any surprise at this though Duo did choke.

"I never really gave it up though," James continued, "I just put it on the back burner when I became the laughing stock of my school and my family began to think I was losing my mind. However, I got back into the idea just as I was graduating college and with new knowledge and information, I began to really explore my childhood idea and I actually got quite a bit far with it.

"But everything costs money and if I wanted to go on with it, I needed to get a sponsor or sponsors to grant me the money I needed to continue. So I did the only thing I could at the time; I went to the World's Fair, the largest gathering of scientific knowledge and inventions assembled in one place and showcased to a large, receptive audience. Even there I was looked at as a mild curiosity and I overheard many a visitor joke about my work. It was discouraging, to say the least, but I endured. There were only two peoples' opinions that really mattered in my mind."

"And who were they?" Trowa asked when James ceased to talk and didn't seem to be continuing.

"The heads of, at that time, the two largest corporations in the World, Raberba Winner and Romafellor," James finally spoke. "I don't remember Romafellor's first name but then I doubt anybody does. Anyway, I made my presentation to them when one and then the other approached my booth. I desperately hoped that either of them would see the potential that my work held and would sponsor further progress. What happened was Mr. Romafellor said it was an interesting idea but it was nothing more than a child's fantasy and that I should give up on it. Mr. Winner, who had just inherited his father's company and had taken the position the man had held, was nicer about his declination and advised me not to quit my day job.

"As you well can imagine, the setbacks were devastating and I guess I was too much in a stupor to pack up and leave. Everything that I had done up to that point, all of my life's work, had come to nothing. What was I to do? Join the ministry like my brother or find a 'day job' that I did not have? It was towards the end of the day that I was approached again, this time by someone else. He was young, charismatic, and he had a great interest with my work. Since I saw no reason not to, I explained to him everything that I had at the time. Instead of rebuffing me like Romafellor and Winner before him, he praised me and said that he would sponsor me just as long as I was able to help him with his then fledgling company the X Associates, Incorporated, or XAI for short."

"Wait a minute," Solo interrupted. "Where's da military come into this? Aren't they da ones who were responsible for this?"

"The military," James snorted, "they had no interest at the time and didn't give me the time of day either. You see, the man who expressed interest in my work was named Janus Xavien and he is the one that put Project Maxwell together. Once he put a lab together for me, I began to produce, just like he wanted. From that lab, I helped to unravel the human genome and create the latest gene therapy procedures that everyone knows about today. The mysteries of life were unfolding in the palm of my hands and every single bit of information I uncovered I passed along to Xavien who would use it to boost his company up until it was a rival for both Winner Enterprises and the Romafellor Corporation. By the end of the second year, I was finally beginning to uncover the very secrets that I had been trying to get my hands on since I was a child, the way to evolve an average person into a superhuman. A series of formulas and procedures were concocted and then we turned to our first subjects

"It is something that will haunt me for the rest of my days…"

James stopped as he buried his face into his hands, his shoulders shaking and trembling with the emotions running rampant in his body. Trowa could only stare as it began to dawn on him just what, or should he say who, exactly were the "first subjects."

"They were humans, weren't they?" he asked aloud, dreading the answer that he was expecting.

"I wanted to try it all on animals first," James answered as he lifted his head up, his eyes expressing an unseen horror and sent a shiver down everyone's spines, including Solo, "but that was when I learned who Xavien really is. He's a manipulator, he knows how to play games with a person's mind, and at the time he was engrossing himself more and more into the project. With some sort of bizarre logic, he convinced me to skip animal testing, saying that the purpose of my work was specifically for humans and humans alone. He wore me down and I made my deal with the devil himself and agreed. My soul is surely damned for that and that alone.

"He didn't tell me anything about the people he brought in, didn't tell me that they were all there against their wills. One procedure after another we tried but all of them died, all in so much pain that it comes back to me in my nightmares. You see, in order for the formula to achieve its full potential, that is changing a person's DNA, it has to reach all the DNA a person has, the one in the nucleus in a cell and the other located in the mitochondria. Otherwise, the solution would fail and the body would reject it. It was determined that a liquid form injected straight into the blood stream would be the best way to achieve this but time and again we were met with failure. It was only by accident that we found out how to get the solution, specifically the one we called Solution 1051, to mix with the DNA.

"Electricity. Firing a jolt of it excited the electrons in both the formula and the person's cells. The cells began to absorb more of it and more it was able to get to both of the DNA's and change them. Out of the entire sample of test subjects, only one was able to survive."

"Me," Trowa said. "I was the only survivor? Why?"

"To this day I still don't know," James answered, "but you were the first, the first success we had and when you began to show signs of superhuman abilities, we knew and rejoiced. Then Xavien expanded the program; I was instructed to research the final formula, Solution 1051, more and refine it while more tests were performed on you, Trowa. Soon, new influxes of subjects were being brought in and from there we learned other things, such as the fact that females are somehow allergic to the solution. I've done more research in that area and concluded that females have not enough testosterone and too much estrogen, which reacts violently with the formula. One day altogether, Xavien stopped kidnapping those of the fairer gender and focused more on those who were masculine. Age eventually became another factor in survival rates as well; a boy just entering puberty is changing physiologically and is more susceptible to the changes forced upon it. Adults always died off and full fledged teenagers couldn't take it for too long and all died off over time, always before any of the desired results showed their selves.

"There are other factors I could go over but I'll save that for another time. To get to the point, young boys were the only possible test subjects we could get who had a high enough survival rate. After ten years working on Project Maxwell, everything changed."

At this, James stopped and looked pointedly at Trowa who frowned for a second before realizing exactly what the man was alluding to. "I escaped," he said.

"Wait, what?!" Solo blurted out. "But I never even heard of you before! How could you have escaped before me an' Duo?!"

"The answer is simple really," James supplied. "Xavien does not like being shown up; he hates it, loathes it. So when Trowa here escaped…how did you escape again?"

"I burrowed through the ground by using plant roots," Trowa said, his eyes twinkling with reminiscence of the memory.

"That's right. By the way, that was ingenious," James said. "At the time, the research facility was aboveground and not as secured as Xavien believed it to be. When Trowa showed him up, he was like a beast. For the first time, I saw Xavien's real self and it wasn't pretty to watch. He rampaged through the labs and destroyed so much before he got a hold of himself. Once he did that though, he had everything moved to a more secured location, a bunker deep underground, one located in the deserts of Western North America. Xavien changed the procedures, except for the essential ones, and when the next batches of subjects came in, he had them educated and brainwashed into loyalty, trying to wipe away all independent and rebellious thoughts and destroy all remembrance of his embarrassment. I didn't question it, I was afraid to. Xavien had changed; he was more ruthless, more conscienceless, more depraved. He was being corrupted by Project Maxwell, but I always had a feeling that maybe he was already corrupted before starting the project. It just seemed that more of his hidden traits were coming to light as he took a more central role in it.

"After about three years of this, living in fear every waking moment, I stumbled upon some files from Xavien's personal computer. I don't know how they were where they were when I found them but I looked into them. It was then that I found out about the government contract that had been made just when Xavien had moved the researched facility. I found out about how he had altered Solution 1051, making it a "Fountain of Youth" serum which he injected into himself. I admit, that did explain why he seemed to age so little, especially after Trowa's surviving the experiments, in the thirteen years since I first met him. He was making himself immortal, or trying to do so, and my work was allowing him to do this. But that wasn't all, not by a long shot. He was producing a more remedial of the altered Solution 1051, making it so that its effects were so miniscule and then placing it into his cosmetic products, like wrinkle creams and hair conditioners, that were sold to the public by XAI. He was even going as far as to use it as a "health product" to loose weight quickly. People were suffering and dying from the products and Xavien was always able to cast aside any blame that might be aimed at him and XAI should any be made. Nobody was the wiser of his schemes and I couldn't take it anymore.

"So, I gathered all the work and data that I could get my hands onto, deleting all that had been reported in or stored, and then making my own escape. I've been running ever since but I'm not the type of person who can move from place to place without settling down. I needed to stop and I found the only place where Xavien wouldn't think to look for me: the very place in which we are now sitting in."

Coming to an end, James stopped, his shoulders slumping in as if he had just torn his very existence asunder and displayed it all for everyone to see. Wrinkles all over face creased, making him look exactly like an old man.

"So that's it?" Solo asked. "That's all?"

"Were you expecting something else?" Trowa challenged.

"No," Solo said. "I was expecting this guy to do more than just run away."

"You do not know Xavien," James said. "If I had done anything else, I would have been dead."

"So?" Solo retorted, not in the least swayed. "There were times when I wished I coulda died so that I wouldn't have ta be anyone's guinea pig anymore. But here I am, alive, and I ain't lettin' any of those guys walk over me."

"What guys?" James asked, frowned.

"Those assholes are chicken shit," Solo stated with scorn. "They're sending all the other guys they worked on after us, tryin' to capture us and all that shit."

James had paled. "Oh God no. They'll be coming here!"

Solo blinked at that. "Huh, I guess they will. Hadn't thought about that…"

"What do you mean you 'hadn't thought about that'?" Duo demanded, crimson eyes flaring.

"Well excuse me!" Solo barked back. "I didn't see you thinkin' 'bout it either! Ya was too busy chasing after that nun's skirt da whole time!"

"And perhaps we should all calm down before this gets out of hand," Father Maxwell intervened. "I know that we all are…overwhelmed with this and I believe we should all get some rest and come back to this in the morning when everybody's had some time to sleep about it."

"But…" James protested.

"No buts," Father Maxwell said firmly. "It's late and we are all most likely on out last dregs. Let us all go to bed and then resume this when we are all fresh in the morning."

"That sounds like a good idea," Trowa agreed. "What about you two?" he asked, turning to the other enhanced humans in the chapel.

Solo stared Trowa down for a moment before shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Fine." Duo, seeing that being a part of the opposition would be a losing battle nodded his agreement.

"Then it is settled," Father Maxwell declared, his large hands clapping together in finality, much to the dismayed look on James' face.

---

It was a little while later that James was disturbed again just as he was doing what the majority had voted to do earlier. Much to his surprise, it was none of other than his brother who had a stern look on his face.

"What didn't you say earlier?" he asked, his voice giving no choice of refusal. "I know you James and you purposely omitted it. What was it?"

James stared at his brother emotionlessly before seemingly crumpling in on himself. "You were always able to look right through me, John. Yes, I did leave something out."

Father John Maxwell nodded his head but said nothing else, waiting expectantly for his answer.

Sighing, James said, "Xavien had expanded the project while still in the initial stages. About fifteen to sixteen years ago, he had kidnapped a woman but instead of adding her to be a recipient of the experiments like the others, he harvested all of her ovaries. It was the beginning of the other, darker side of Project Maxwell: to see if there was a way to use Solution 1051 as amniotic fluids and create test tube babies that would be soaked in and born from them. It was my belief that all of them had died off or had mutated into abnormal forms and weren't able to survive for long. I did not know what happened to the woman…at least until after I had ran out."

"You don't…" Father Maxwell's eyes widened.

"Poor Helen," James sighed as he looked up at his brother pleadingly, as if seeking some sort of absolution. "Not everyone that's suffered from Project Maxwell has died." Sighing again, he spoke, "He looks so much like her…"

"I know," Father Maxwell agreed. "I had thought that it was just a coincidence but now you've only confirmed my suspicions as well as answered some other questions I have had over the years."

"Do you think she could ever forgive me?" James whispered pitifully.

Giving his younger brother a small smile, he sat next to the other man and embraced him. "There's more than one reason why Helen chose to enter the service of God. I do not believe that you were the one responsible for the trials Helen had to face while in the captivity of that man but if you believe you are responsible then you should seek her forgiveness. Young Solo does have a point; you've always run whenever things began to become overwhelming for you."

"I know," James whimpered.

"And since you know, you should take the first steps towards atonement," Father Maxwell instructed. "You have begun already by telling those who can do something about this. Don't stop now. You've made your mistakes, we all have. Now is the time to make up for them, to atone for them. We live but one life and one day, I promise you, this will be all over."

"How do you know that?" James asked, looking more like a child than an adult.

"Do you really think those young men are going to let Xavien and his company get away with what they did?" Father Maxwell replied with a slight smirk. "They can undo what has been done. Just put some faith into them. They will come through mainly because they are just too stubborn not to."

For i don't know what my name is: Ah, that's a little secret of mine that I'm going to tell you about right now! You see, I'm several chapters ahead right now, at about fourteen as of now and working on fifteen. Amazing, eh? Now, I know what you're thinking: why would I write that much in the first place? Simple; it's a failsafe in case I get writer's block. If such a travesty were to occur, and believe me it's happened, I would still be able to update the story on a regular basis. That way, you don't have to wait an agonizing long time for the next update and still get your fix as I struggle to produce and write. Until next time, my friend, your awe fills makes me giddy so don't hesitate to praise me. (hint hint: It just makes me want to write more.)