Another quick update in a week! I'm so proud of myself!

I want to thank everyone who reviewed what's been happening so far! It really does help me type quicker and figure out were the story is going. Which is of course important. So THANK YOU!

ON with the fic...

Ch19

The next morning Heero awoke to a knock on the door of his dormitory. He was up and alert immediately. Perhaps they had information on Wufei and wanted him to be notified immediately. He went to the door and opened it to find Duo standing there. He was quiet just looking Heero over before he stepped into the room and hugged him. He let go and moved back. "Is it true? Have they found him?" Heero nodded and stepped out of the way to let Duo into the room. The light from the sunrise was beginning to seep between the slats of the blinds into his room. Heero took a moment and registered the fact that he had been able to sleep through the entire night.

It had been a long time since that had happened.

Duo was staring at the rays that were on the floor as well, "So what news do we have?"

Heero sat down next to Duo on the bed and said, "He was in the prison all along and led the prison break. As of last night we have no idea where he is. Trowa just had his face reconstructed last night." Duo exhaled sharply looking at Heero, waiting for an explanation. "On the way out, Wufei punched him in the face. It cracked his cheek bone. There will be more news this morning when we go in." Heero glanced at his clock. There were three hours before the morning meeting.

Duo lay back on his bed to wait. He had been a lot quieter over the last couple months. In the beginning of all of this he had been up beat and voraciously looking for signs and traces of Wufei from his underground connections, but slowly as every single trail had led him nowhere or on hunts that evaporated to nothing Duo had slowly gotten a little quieter. He would probably return to his boisterous self soon enough, but right now Duo seemed as tired as Heero felt.

Heero booted up his laptop and went over his work email. There were several new work emails all listed as important. He had expected it. Looking over the subject most were about the jail break, but several more were about m isssions that he was starting to be assigned to againg. Just because this happened did not mean that the rebellions, riots and threats to peace decided to give them all a break. It was a sad fact that Heero was all to aware of.

He logged into his wartime email network.

There were no messages waiting for him from Wufei. He had a tiny spark of hope, but perhaps he had simply not been able to get to a secured connection yet.

Heero went to his news program, which was full of new headlines for the recent breakout obviously. It was listing a couple more of the inmates caught, which Heero would confirm at the meeting today. The next article he clicked open and he paused.

There was a picture of Wufei at the initial check in from nine months ago. There were others of course, many who Heero recognized, but Wufei's picture was at the top. The headline read, 'Dangerous inmates escape'. Heero didn't quite know what to do. This was a huge violation of Preventer investigations. He picked up his cell phone and dialed up Quatre. An exhausted voice answered on the other end. "Quatre Winner speaking."

"Did you know that the mass media somehow has released Wufei's photo?" Heero shot out. His mind was racing. Someone sent these files in to the media for release. That meant that someone had known he was there and wanted him to be captured badly enough to go over the Preventers heads.

Heero heard a dull, "Shit." On the other end of the phone which confirmed his belief that Quatre knew nothing about the photo release to the public. There was a pause as Heero waited. "What channel is it?"

"The ESUN news network." Heero heard Quatre swear again and a garbled noise in the background. Quatre was silent on the other end as Heero waited. Finally there was a strong, "We will discuss this today when we all get together. Have you heard from Duo at all?"

"He's here."

Quatre nodded, "Good. We're moving the meeting time up two hours. We have a lot more to discuss then we initially planned on. See you soon."

Heero shut the phone and continued scanning the news networks. It looked as though that was the group that had released the initial story. Therefore whoever got the information was somewhere at that network.

Heero returned to his work email for the remaining hour, before he shut it down and tapped Duo on the shoulder to wake him up. The braided boy had fallen asleep shortly after setting his head down on the bed. He stretched and as Heero had predicted he smiled up at him, which had been a marked improvement already from his behavior an hour before. He smiled up at Heero and said, "Well at least we know he's out and free."

Heero nodded. It was a fair assessment. But somehow that didn't seem to ease the tension that he had felt in his body since Wufei had yelled at him in the shuttle. He now felt as though he had betrayed Wufei not only for the initial capture, but for all the months that had gone by when he should not have been in the prison facilities. Heero had been the one who planned a way to put him there. It really was only supposed to be for at most those three months. But it had obviously expanded.

They headed off down the hallway and up towards Une's office. At this point there was too much information to bother moving the investigation set up from there into a designated conference space. Heero and Duo entered slightly earlier to see Une sitting at her desk nursing a cup of coffee trying to keep her head off the desk.

She looked up at them, but Heero had already moved to the wall where there was several prison staff photographs taped up with notes attached to each one. The table was cluttered under the reports, trials and rap sheets of all the prisoners.

Duo nodded to Une out of courtesy and took a seat. He knew he would get the information soon enough, but Heero liked to get the knowledge as quickly as possible. What had happened that caused them to be unable to find Wufei for months? Someone had to be covering it up.

Quatre and Trowa soon filed in and Duo jumped out of his seat and ran in front of Quatre, "Trowa what the fuck happened to your face?"

He stated, "Wufei happened to it." And that was the end of that conversation. Quatre quickly briefed Duo on the breakout as what Trowa had reported the day before and Duo was very upset by it.

Heero still threw out, "He still may have been doing that as an act. We do not know what he plans on doing and he has not yet responded to my email." The others looked up at him at that, "I sent out an email on the secured network that we had during the war asking him to contact as soon as possible." Quatre shook his head.

"Heero we have new information. One of the guards on the roof as they escaped knew who had fired at them and killed two. It was Wufei. He went directly for a kill shot on all, but missed on the last. We even have video of it." Quatre went to the folder closest to hum and pulled out several pictures and handed them to Heero, "We even have surveillance feed of him as he's coming out."

Duo interjected, "I want to see the footage. Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to find the nuances of a situation." Une turned one of the screens in her office on and brought up the surveilance.

Une said, "We still haven't figured out how he knocked out the medical wing cameras, but the rest of the systems seemed fairly intact." And hit play. They watched the feed of him taking down the guards and rushing through the halls shouting orders at different men. The move into the visitor's room had been a violent one. They saw the instant that Wufei recognized Trowa with a moment's pause and then watched as he beat him to unconsciousness. Duo exhaled loudly. They then watched as Wufei held Trowa upright and the cameras switched feeds to see Wufei shoot head shots of two out of three victims.

They were silent for a minute before Une cleared her throat and said, "We believe this is enough to judge that Wufei should now be considered a dangerous individual and have posted him on out person of interest list."

Heero growled "He could still be acting in his and Wufei's best interest."

Une raised her eyebrow at him and said, "He killed members of the facility without thought to wound instead. It makes him a liability."

Heero growled back, "It was the most efficient means of escaping a dangerous situation."

Trowa cleared his throat, pausing what was quickly a disintegrating situation, "He used me as a shield. The punching did not bother me. It was that he used me as a bullet shield."

Heero looked over the image on screen and there was no denying Wufei's first emerging from the outer door. He had Trowa propped up in front of him. Duo spoke up, "But perhaps he was betting that they would not shoot their own. Trowa was in prison uniform. Wufei had have known that they would not actively try to kill one of their own."

Quatre nodded. "Yes that is true, but we won't know until we find him."

They were all silent for a moment. But they knew that other things needed to be addressed.

"Alright so problems that have risen for this situation. We now know that Wufei was being held this entire time without public knowledge of his case for what appeared was going to be for an indefinite amount of time. Right now we have no idea who or why." Quatre said. He looked at all of them and they shifted acknowledging the need to progress.

"A secondary problem I see is that a lot of the prison staff members are now dead. When the prisoners rioted and escaped, not all of them were informed that it was a break out and instead went around the jail doing as they pleased until the local swat team went in and stopped their actions. We can speak with the warden and the doctor and a few of the guards, but those guards are currently undergoing medical treatment for injuries or post-traumatic stress."

Heero frowned. There were not many leads to the actual prison apparently. Une saw his face and stated, "I want it known right now that I will be personally heading the investigation into this prison myself. I will keep each of you in the loop, including how Wufei's picture has been leaked to the media. But unfortunately right now we have a problem that is much bigger than that." She sighed and looked down at her hands. "In case you have not been able to familiarize with the list of prisoners that are still at large we have a serious problem on our hands. There were a lot of dangerous men in that prison that have just been released. And considering it is past the forty eight hour mark it is unlikely that we will find any of them in the immediate vicinity. The ones I'm most concerned with are those who were leaders and organizers." Quatre pulled ten pictures from the table and handed them to Heero first.

He recognized most of them and he came to the last one. "This is our weapons dealer from the war."

Duo peaked over his shoulder. "Well I'll be damned. Marcus." He whispered.

Heero handed the pictures to Trowa who point out two of the men in the stack. "These two were definitely in helicopter that Wufei dropped me out of. Marcus and this one, Trent."

Quatre paused. "Are you sure?"

Trowa nodded and Quatre took the pictures back, "Alright I'm going to have you go over more pictures once we have collected them all. We are still missing some information for prisoner records. It may help to know who Wufei left with."

Heero spoke up, "So if we are not here to track Wufei, what is the purpose of this meeting?"

Une spoke up at this point, "Heero, I want you to maintain your duties as usual. We still have lots of problems that are flaring up that need your particular expertise. As soon as Trowa has fully recovered, he will be doing the same."

Trowa spoke up from his seat, "I am functional now. I can assist in Heero's missions." Une shook her head with a look of both exasperation and admiration on his face.

"Trowa your face is still swollen and purple and I doubt the injection you received has fully set yet anyways. I suggest you take a break." She looked at Quatre and said, "As per usual Quatre will work with me to head investigations and track down any information pertaining both to Wufei and the remaining criminals that are still free from this catastrophe."

Duo snorted, "I told you it would be disastrous to attempt to hold Wufei ten months ago, when you were doing the initial planning to get him to head to the trial quietly, but no, you didn't listen to me at all."

Une shook her head and said. "Well Duo I have a request for you. Since we now know that we are not going to be able to find any of these men by searching the area we are now going to need intelligence from the inside. I know that you were leaning more towards going completely clean, but we need someone on the inside. I would like you to fully commit to the criminal world at this point and find the people we need to find."

Duo stood there looking at her and said, "You're kidding right?"

She shook her head and Quatre put in, "We need information on these guys and it may lead us to Wufei's whereabouts."

Duo frowned and his anger was beginning to emerge, "That is ridiculous. You know that he is not going to be found unless he wants to be. He's a Gundam pilot! Don't you know how easy it is for any of us to disappear without a trace?"

Une spoke up again and said, "We of course promised full immunity if you are ever caught in a compromising situation." It was weak, but it was one of the few safety nets that would be offered if Duo went that way.

They were all silent when Duo kicked a chair into the wall across Une's office. "Fine. Expect reports via the war time network as often as I have information. I expect information via that route as well. Send me the list you want me to find as soon as you can. I have to plan my full entry." He snorted and shook his head, "This had been fun guys. See ya."

And Duo left the office slamming the door behind him.

Heero did understand what Duo was upset about. Living a double life like he did was very difficult to do without detection and possible issues of dying because of it. And he had plans of joining the Preventers full time. Not anymore. "I still think that Wufei may contact us."

Quatre nodded at his statement and said. "It's true Heero. He may yet." But his eyes didn't look hopeful.

TBC...

Well there you have it. Another chapter closer to reuniting the boys or spinning off into utter disaster. We shall see! Reviews are loved and make slow fingers into typing machines!

Ciao,

Silverserpent