Disclaimer: I don't own a thing (as sad as that realization is), except for the words I've written.

Warnings: Rated for adult language (Duo's got quite a surly mouth and mind), some violence, and mild adult themes.

A/N: Thank you for your constant support! As for now, updates may become few and far between for the next month or so. Just bear with me. Without further ado, here's to the 15th installment of this story... enjoy.

Maxwell

Chapter 15: Scientists They Couldn't Fix Me

The Walking Wounded - Bayside

Heero and Duo found themselves sitting in a room most likely used for interrogation purposes in Sanc's Preventer offices. It had been an hour since they'd heard of the private shuttle accident. No one seemed to be talking about it and that might have been what bothered Duo the most. That or the fact that no damn Preventer seemed to be able to give them a straight answer regarding the accident report. Instead they'd been corralled into the interrogation room like common criminals. It was Une's way of keeping them under her thumb and out of trouble.

In actuality, at the moment, they might as well have been going through a grueling Preventer-run interrogation with the questions and negative air surrounding them in the small room. Sean Davis was on his high horse again, Heero was grinding his teeth, and Duo was just generally fucking pissed.

"What the hell were you thinking taking on the men you were tailing-against Une's orders I might add-do you want to get arrested for assault? You can't just go around cutting people's hands up and leaving them unconscious in convenience stores."

Duo gave his utmost of serious faces, trying hard to ensure his words were tinged heavily with cynical innocence. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Davis gave him a cold stare. "Don't bullshit me, Maxwell!" Clearly he'd struck a chord. The man was obviously not very even tempered and that only added fuel to Duo's fire. Maybe still a bit touchy about his own bout with unconsciousness due to some certain ex-pilots. Heero's fists visibly clenched, but he chose to remain silent.

"The only bullshit around here lately is the fact that two fucking people are missing, probably dead, and Preventer doesn't have the fucking decency to even tell it to us straight!" Duo was rambling and his words were becoming heated and his tone uneven. He could feel a warmth welling behind his eyes and he willed his emotions to keep in check, at least until Davis left. He had no desire of showing any signs of weakness around the duplicitous man.

He could tell that Heero wanted to say something, interject, place a calming hand on his arm, but he didn't and Duo figured that was probably a good thing. Their relationship was none of Davis' business and it would have just solidified the weaknesses he was trying so hard to hide.

There was a long moment where no one said anything and Duo wondered if maybe his words had finally made an impact. He would have to wait on that answer as the door was opened and an unknown face appeared. Clearly the stranger was a messenger sent by someone higher up, maybe Une herself.

"There's a telephone call for Duo Maxwell. It's urgent." The messenger seemed nervous and Duo nearly felt sorry for him as the diverse emotions running through the room were probably quite palpable at the moment.

He furrowed his brows at the news, but moved to follow the young man out from the suddenly claustrophobic room, making sure that Heero was following his movements. At this point he had no desire to be split up from the man, even in Preventer's home base. It seemed that no one could be trusted these days.

They got to a desk, probably an extension of where the call originally came into, and the messenger handed him a phone. It felt heavy in Duo's hand and he felt odd holding the technology. It seemed outdated with its spiraling chord attached to a rectangular receiver with more buttons than seemed necessary. Of course Duo didn't have a phone of his own, landline or cellular, so really, what the hell did he know?

"Maxwell here."

"Duo Maxwell? What the hell is going on? Explain to me why Master Quatre has been conspicuously missing since he and his..." There was a pause of hesitance. "His friend, Barton, left our compound on L1." The voice was unmistakable from the moment he'd started speaking, though Duo had had very little interaction with him over the course of the years following the war.

"Calm down, Rashid." Duo almost felt stupid telling someone else to calm down when he himself couldn't seem to follow that advice.

Rashid did not seem to want to heed that suggestion either. "Duo, my job is to protect him. But how can I do that if he's off investigating some Preventer case with the lot of you instead of sitting behind his desk pushing papers like a businessman's supposed to do?"

Duo almost had to stifle a laugh at that. Even he knew how unhappy Quatre was sitting at a desk all day. Rashid must have been speaking at least a little facetiously in that regard. "Honestly, Rashid, at the moment I'm in the dark about his whereabouts as well." He didn't want to push his luck with Preventer and reveal too much, though he didn't really feel qualified seeing as how they refused to divulge a single fucking thing other than the incident of the shuttle crash.

Rashid did not immediately respond and so Duo was going to continue on, mainly just to fill the silence that tended to make him feel so uncomfortable, when a familiar voice came from behind him and the feeling of Heero's hand on the small of his back drew his attention away from the outdated phone.

Turning all he saw was a blur of blond hair before he was being surprisingly embraced by the petite arms of Quatre Winner and all he could do was feel a bout of anger well up inside of him. "Quatre, you sonofabitch!"

The outburst was halfway between fury and shock, but when Quatre smiled sheepishly up at him, Duo couldn't help but allow a small smile to grace his own features. Trowa was not far behind, in the other man's shadow as it seemed per usual. They both were quite in tact and far from dead as silently presumed earlier in both of their companion's hopeful minds.

Duo had almost forgotten that he was still holding the phone, until Rashid's bellowing voice interrupted the moment of relief. Quatre's grin grew more sheepish as he grabbed the device from his friend's hand and began to speak in rapid Arabic to the man on the other end.

Deciding to let Quatre fight his own losing battles with his overprotective bodyguard, Duo turned to Trowa with narrowed eyes. But Heero was able to get the first word in, which was probably for the better.

"Explain," was all he said, giving the taller man a very pointed look.

Duo smirked and Trowa raised a slightly obscured eyebrow. "It was Quatre's idea really."

"Always the strategist," Duo quipped with a soft frown.

Trowa shrugged. "It wasn't too challenging to leave a false trail. Whoever we're dealing with may have underestimated us this time."

Duo's frown deepened. "Or else they're toying with us again," he muttered.

Shaking his head, Heero folded his arms across his chest. "They underestimated Quatre."

"Everyone seems to these days," Trowa responded with a nod.

"If only they'd seen Quat during the war," Duo laughed out bitterly.

Upon hearing his name mentioned several times, Quatre turned with a curious look in his aquamarine eyes. He said a few parting words to Rashid and hung up, probably grateful for the excuse to do so.

"I apologize if our actions caused you any emotional distress." It was such a Quatre thing to say that Duo's frown managed to lift a bit.

He shook his head, feeling his braid shift with the movement. "I'd say we're gettin' pretty used to emotional distress."

There was a moment of hesitance before Trowa spoke. "Preventer seems a bit paranoid."

Duo rolled his eyes, not at his friend, but at the truthful root of his statement. "It seems they're using us as some kind of fucked up bait. They're monitoring us, treating us like untrustworthy kids."

Heero decided to jump in with what he felt to be more relevant. "Ryland is currently missing. Our leads are being taken out. We are clearly being targeted, but it seems less maliciously; we're all still alive." He spoke in such a robotic tone that it brought Duo back to when they'd first met, before he'd been able to break through his training and finally be able to put some feeling behind his words.

Duo opened his mouth to respond, to argue because hell, that's what he was good at, making waves and all. But Heero's cell phone chimed through the small room and they all drew silent.

Quatre leaned into Trowa and whispered something to his partner, bringing soft smiles to both of their faces. Their lips touched briefly, very briefly and Duo wanted desperately to understand how to be that openly intimate. He envied them almost as much as he envied Wufei's own ability to act as though Heero was anything but competition. But now, what with the woman who was currently hovering around him, Duo was beginning to think he might have been imagining the idea that he was being vied over.

Heero said very few words, so little so that the other three men couldn't even make out who was on the other end of the call. He closed the phone and faced them all with a neutral expression, as if the phone call had had little effect on him.

"Wufei needs someone to retrieve him from the hospital."

Duo wondered vaguely why the man kept contacting Heero and realized that maybe if he had some way to be contacted he would be the first choice. Shit, maybe he should get a phone.

Then he remembered his obvious competition. The braided man grinned, trying to hide his internal conflict. "What about Sally?"

Heero shrugged and did not provide any verbal answer. Maybe he was still being vied for.

"We can all go," Quatre stated. "I've got another car, hopefully untraced for the time being." He paused as if considering something of grave importance. "We need to reevaluate our plan of action."

At Quatre's unrelenting suggestion, Duo was the one voted to assist their comrade with his discharge from the hospital. The braided man had argued first that it should be Heero, seeing as how he was Wufei's most prominent contact ever since he'd been discovered to be very much alive. When that argument was shot down, the familiar thought that if he had a communication device he would inevitably have been contacted first being the unanimous sentiment, he had argued secondly that Wufei would not need anyone to assist him with his discharge.

And now, because Quatre was not one to be antagonized and bothered when he had his mind set to a task, namely re-strategizing their current situation, Duo found himself seated back in the hospital waiting room, his booted foot tapping the sterile linoleum beneath his toes nervously.

When Wufei emerged, his nerves only grew and that was probably what unsettled Duo most about his current situation. Not even the fucking murder attempts and threat of death could rival his adolescent need to resist any sort of confrontation with Wufei. At least not without Heero present.

For a moment Wufei stared at him with a quizzical expression and Duo considered that maybe he was reading into everything way too much. Wufei had Sally...right?

Duo stood and took in the man's post-hospital-bed appearance. He still had a bandage wrapping his arm, but otherwise seemed unscathed. He carried a small duffle bag on his shoulder, his civilian clothing rivaling Duo's own in color, but the other man's t-shirt was slightly less faded and his dark jeans much less worn and less distressed. It was almost like looking in a mirror to see what could be, but finding the sad truth when looking down at what actually was. But shit, Wufei was making it, Duo had already covered that.

The Chinese man broke his confused stare and took a few steps toward Duo, his hand patted the invisible space above Duo's shoulder because he sure as fuck wasn't going to actually touch him, and then proceeded toward the exit past him. "Thanks," he said quietly, almost as if he hadn't meant for the word to actually slip from his mouth.

Duo shrugged noncommittally, trying to be cool and not seem too torn up about things he was probably just making up in his head. He swallowed hard and as Wufei began walking towards a set of stairs that led down to the hospital's lobby, Duo spoke up from behind him. "Listen, 'Fei-"

Wufei's hand flew up, the palm facing forward in a commanding way. Duo stared at the back of the pale appendage as he followed the other man down the stairs, several steps behind. "Water under the bridge, Maxwell."

Duo immediately wanted to argue. Maybe it was because he still craved that interaction or else he truly was feeling guilty in regards to whatever he and Wufei had had some time ago. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.

He wanted their altercation, the words spoken that they both probably regretted, to be water under the bridge, but there was this annoying little nagging feeling that it would come back to bite them one day.

They reached the end of the stairs and started for a glass revolving door that would lead them back out towards the car that held the rest of their affiliates. "Where's Sally?" It wasn't really what he wanted to ask, but it filled the silence and he was curious about the woman's whereabouts.

Wufei turned slightly to appraise Duo out of the corner of his eye. He pushed into the revolving doorway and for a few seconds the two men were cut off from each other by the glass dividers. When they were outside, he finally answered. "I asked Une to find an assignment for her. She means well, but she can be a bit...stifling."

Duo smirked at the man's careful choice of words. It was obvious that he didn't hate the woman, like some might have assumed after witnessing their interactions; she was his emergency contact after all. But Wufei had always been a lone wolf, and even during their brief encounters it had never been about intimacy. For either of them.

By the time they reached Quatre's waiting car, parked several blocks from the hospital in hopes of some sort of confidentiality, the two men had finished their conversation and there was an air of almost friendliness about them once again. It was something that should have made Duo feel satisfied, but it only added more weight to the pit of nervousness in his stomach.

It was nearing dinner time, still early, but it seemed as though none of them had replenished their strength all day. What with ambushes, shuttle attacks and all that shit, adequate meals hadn't really been their first priority.

Duo took a long swig from his glass of ice water while listening to the conversation taking place in front of him with surprisingly thoughtful ears and a silent disposition.

"Whoever it is, they have studied us, our methods, our tactics, our personalities. They're always at least two steps ahead of us." Wufei spoke methodically, which gained him several nods of agreement from his fellow companions.

Trowa frowned. "Preventer?"

Wufei shook his head. "I just can't bring myself to believe that. We have got to be missing something here."

"There's still the fifth name to investigate further. So far it seems as though Menta Rolland is still alive," Quatre responded with a grim smile.

"A woman?" Wufei quirked a curious eyebrow.

Duo snorted at that, but still did not verbalize anything more. Quatre nodded, giving the braided man to his left a pointed look from the corner of his eye. "Her current residence is listed on an L2 colony."

That information got Duo's attention, his eyes narrowing. Shit, L2 was a breeding ground for innumerable vices and all things lecherous and oftentimes violent; he hadn't been there in years, but the memories were still quite fresh in his mind. It sadly wouldn't surprise him if their stalker did originate from that colony sector.

"Any news to you on the possible under the table research through Winner Corp?" Heero directed the question at Quatre.

The blond frowned. "No, but my thinking is that the CEO would be the last person to hear about anything underhanded or illegal going on inside his corporation." His words were tinged with a cynical form of sarcasm that Duo usually found only in his personalized arsenal.

This whole time Duo had stayed silent, contemplating and finally when he opened his mouth the first thing that popped into his mind came pouring out. "The last envelope was addressed to the fuckin' God of Death. Whoever our new 'friend' is doesn't seem to be the least bit intimidated by any of us, which is their first fucking mistake." He shook his head and smiled bitterly. "I still don't trust Davis, not from a Preventer standpoint, just a personal one."

There was a thoughtful bout of silence, as if his words were slowly sinking into the other men's minds. Wufei clenched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "He is the one I received the intel on Ryland's rental car location from."

Duo shot him a look as if contemplating whether or not to state the obviously warranted 'I told you so,' but he restrained himself. As damn hard as that was to do. "Yeah, those idiots didn't know what hit 'em," he muttered. "Not as smooth as their apparent boss."

"We're assuming that all these incidents are one in the same," Trowa stated, his green eyes glowing with thought through shadowing bangs.

Duo furrowed his brows. The man had a point, but shit he just had a gut feeling about this one. It would have been a pretty damn big coincidence. "You know what they say when you assume," he said with a quirk of his lips. He knew none of them were making asses out of themselves, but himself...well he decided not to open the door to that conversation.

"Either way, we've got to keep exhausting all options," he added to no one in particular.

Heero turned his gaze towards Quatre. "Ideas?"

Quatre pursed his lips, at this point not phased by Heero's obvious faith in his strategic abilities. "A night's sleep and an early trip to L2. We've got to exhaust all options, like Duo's pointed out. Menta Rolland is our last option, not counting the currently missing Mizzerahi Ryland."

Duo rubbed his temple over-dramatically, muttering, "All these M's and R's are fuckin' with my head."

"We're not under Preventer's supervision now so we need to tread lightly," Wufei said with a grim expression, ignoring Duo's last comment swiftly.

Heero frowned. "You're not under their supervision anymore as an employee on this case. That doesn't mean they're not still supervising us in other ways."

"Let them. We've been free agents before. Our allegiances are with ourselves, just like the war," Trowa said, channeling the role of a quiet cynic.

Quatre smirked darkly. "But this time around we haven't a clue who our enemy is."

They stared at one another for a moment, contemplating the gravity of the extremely true observation. They were working alone now, not a problem. However, with someone watching their every move, how alone were they really?

"I guess we all need to think a little more realistically, even me," Duo added, a soft wink in Heero's direction that he almost immediately regretted. Shit, it was a bad habit. He received nothing in response.

Wufei pointed a fork in the braided man's direction. "Especially you."

Duo suppressed the urge to stick his tongue out. How was it that this man was able to bring about his most immature impulses? It was that damn pointed sarcasm.

Before anything else could transpire their meals arrived and everyone seemed to be slightly relieved that their latest conversation was put on hold. Duo looked to Heero's face and saw that infinitely small trace of jealousy in the Prussian blue depths of his eyes. Just simple banter between himself and their Chinese counterpart seemed to stir something inside of Heero. Damn, noticing that possessiveness never seemed to get old. And yet, there was something just slightly unnerving about it.

The more he thought about it the more Duo's teeth were set on edge. Lately they had been fine, if not more than fine. But he knew things wouldn't be able to always be solved by great sex.

He decided to focus on the food before him, chewing quietly, not looking up again throughout the duration of the meal.

The small hotel suite they were now sharing had been almost stifling after the seriousness of their dinner time conversation. But the events that had transpired lately were enough to allow all five men the welcomed relief of sleep as soon as their heads collectively hit their pillows.

The faint sound of a computerized beeping was what awoke Duo from his slumber. It was coming from the laptop sitting on the coffee table in front of Wufei's rousing form. Heero was already halfway there, stretching the taught muscles in his arms, sitting cross legged on the floor and pulling the computer open with ease. It was almost odd to see him acting so casually, sitting in a lax way that Duo usually did.

Wufei spoke, saying something to Heero as he sat up on his makeshift bed; it was too soft for Duo to make out from his current position.

Quatre and Trowa were up now, untwining themselves from their sleeping embrace. For a split second Duo found himself feeling another quiet pang of jealousy; they were moving again in such succinctness. He shook his head and padded forward, joining Heero on the floor, for whatever internal reason careful not to actually make skin contact with him.

That look of possession had not seemed to drain from his expression all evening long.

Not a word was spoken and that was okay because the five seemed to have an understanding that did not require any verbiage. They sat with bated breath, almost as if they knew exactly what to expect from the early morning wake-up. Fuck, call it fatalistic intuition.

Heero opened the message, turning the laptop slightly so every one of them had some sort of view of what appeared to be a video that was popping up on the glowing screen.

There was no sound. Only dark and grainy footage of the five of them sitting around the table earlier that day, eating, probably making the implied casual conversation that a group of old friends should make. An ordinary fucking scene.

It made Duo's stomach sour, yet still no one spoke. How does the saying go? Duo thought wryly; A fucking pin would have been heard if he'd had one to drop.

An image replaced the film. Five pictures of them from the war, impossibly young and determined reflections of their now matured and more knowledgable selves. Corresponding with each was a photograph of men they hadn't seen since the war. The odd, lettered names of each typed below their faces, glowing on the screen with knowing looks on their aged expressions.

And then a typed message appeared on the screen.

Five gone. But what of the sixth?