Duo lay in the ventilation duct and panted. He’d managed to get to the right room just fine, which had been quite an accomplishment through the maze of ventilation, but now that he was here he wasn’t at all sure how he was going to get down. Half-healed ribs already throbbed warningly from all the wriggling, twisting and squeezing he’d been doing. Getting out of the duct without straining them further was going to be a real treat.
At least he had some time before the feat would be required. Kerry Lynch should’ve snuck in at the same time as Heero and Trowa; the only other guy in the Preventers about as good as Duo at security systems; the only other one who could do Duo’s job, and Duo could rest and watch while he did it –
A door opened beyond the duct’s line-of-sight and quiet footsteps moved across the floor. Then Kerry’s round face, forshortened from Duo’s point of view, appeared with an anticipatory expression. He thumped into the chair in front of one of the three computers, set hands to keyboard and started punching in commands.
Duo had no doubt they were the right commands. Kerry was a pretty bright guy, more than competant or he wouldn’t be a Preventer. Despite all this, after he left Duo would be clamboring down out of the duct, sitting in his chair and looking over everything he’d done, and it wasn’t because Duo didn’t trust him.
Duo just knew something Kerry didn’t.
The mission specs had mentioned that the internal security system they’d be dealing with might have been designed by a man called Sniper, in which case it would be extremely difficult to get through. That was all it said. But Duo remembered a guy called Sniper from his time with the Sweepers – ran into him in the ghetto of L5, in the middle of one of Prof. G’s little errands – and the man had made something of an impression on him.
If Sniper had designed this system, Kerry didn’t have a chance. He’d think he’d succeeded. So would everyone else. Heero would go in to get the files they’d been sent for, now unguarded – and depending on how diabolical Sniper had been feeling, it might bring four squads of soldiers down on Heero’s head. Alternatively, the wiring in that room might catch fire and leave both files and Preventer so much ash in the ensuing inferno. You could never tell with Sniper.
More than likely, Duo smirked to himself, his employers themselves wouldn’t have a clue what kind of system they had now. He lay still on the cool metal of the duct and watched Kerry’s fingers fly. It would’ve been kinda nice if he could’ve let the guy know he was here, team up with him to see if it really was Sniper and then fix it… but Duo wasn’t supposed to be here. Duo had a nice set of healing broken ribs that he was supposed to be nursing. Duo was supposed to be resting at home like a good boy.
Duo was damned if he was gonna take a nap while a fellow former pilot got deepfried. He wasn’t about to hang loose, safe and sound, when he was the only one who knew about this guy.
His ribs were just gonna have to deal with it.
He’d tried to explain why he had to be there if it was Sniper, and Captain Renfield Bartlett had given him an ironic look. “You met this fellow once and you already know enough to be more useful on the mission than Officer Lynch, who is uninjured while you are physically compromised? Go home, Maxwell. Rest and recover, you know the drill.”
All right, so he had only met Sniper the once, been in contact with him less than a week – but the guy had a type of insanity that was pretty easy to grasp, impossible to forget. And impossible to predict for anyone that hadn’t met him. Not that Duo was saying he knew the guy through and through, but he sure as hell had a better chance of figuring him out than someone who’d never met him.
Duo yawned, shifting position as quietly as possible in the metal duct as the typing in the room below continued unabated. It was a good thing his ribs were wrapped as tightly as they were, he decided, or they really wouldn’t appreciate being flattened against hard metal like this. Instead of just aching significantly, the way they did now.
(This bit was written, but it got lost, and I haven’t rewritten it yet. Kerry completed what he was doing and left.)
One minute of extreme discomfort later, Duo was out of the duct, wincing slightly when he moved, and seated at the computer Kerry had just left.
Huh. Okay, so the commands were accepted. Duh, of course it looked that way. Now, return to normal functions… Hah! Well, there we go. That was easy.
In the lower right corner of the screen, a small countdown had started. 13 minutes 30 seconds, it looked like, and dropping. Of course, if Sniper’s sense of humor was what it had been, the countdown meant less than the smeer of dust on the screen – the true count until something really bad happened was as likely to be three minutes as thirteen.
Duo’s hands were on the keyboard typing. He had to get around the surface routine that Kerry had fallen for to the hidden program behind it, then think his way through how Sniper had set it up.
Five minutes later, he hadn’t heard any distant explosions, but he was stymied, facing a manic smiley-face that bounced all over a blank screen.
“Goddamn friggin psycho…” And Prof. G had compared him with Duo! “Old man’s gotta be nuts.” Oh, of course he’s nuts, he’s a mad scientist…
Duo blew out a long breath, set his hands back on the keyboard, and thought about Sniper. Guns. The guy loved guns. He winced in memory of how much. There had to be a gun in there somewhere, and if he could just dig it out –
Two minutes of frantic typing, one minute of scrabbling thought, another spate of purposeful typing, and Duo had found the clever little program buried in the code for the bouncing face. It showed as a toy gun onscreen, with 360 degrees of movement like in any good vid-game.
“All right,” he muttered. “Now what the hell am I supposed to aim at? The damn hyperactive bouncing grin from hell, like that’s gonna work…” He shrugged. “Whatever.”
The shot hit it square in the teeth. Red spattered across the screen, and Duo’s mouth twisted as the no-longer-smiley-face began to melt and decompose onscreen. “Oh man… Now I know it’s him. Gross, Sniper.” A second later the last… chunk… slid offscreen and a message appeared in large, blocky text.
AWWW, DAMN. NO MASSIVE CARNAGE. MAYBE NEXT TIME.
Now that sounded more likely. “Deactivation accepted” like it had said before, “System on standby” – that wasn’t Sniper’s style at all. “Damn, no massive carnage,” on the other hand…
Nevertheless, Duo got to work digging some more, working around behind the subroutines just in case it was another trick, but after another ten minutes he had to admit that it looked like he’d done it.
“I’m just that good.” Grinning, he started to fold his arms behind his head, then winced and put them down as the movement pulled his bound ribs. Oh well.
“Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, the God of Death is here again, and he has touched the security system! Duo Maxwell is a genius, if I do say so myself!”
No time to gloat, though, he had to figure out how to get back into that friggin air duct. Duo carefully stood up and glared at the duct, then froze, listening. Booted footsteps were coming down the corridor outside at a relaxed pace.
Can’t get into the duct without moving the chair to stand on or jumping, jumping would make noise, so would moving a chair, and clamboring into the duct for that matter – damn, not exactly in a condition to fight –
Duo doubted his ability to knock out a guard with one blow at the moment, and it sounded like two people out there, probably with guns – good thing he’d brought his own, with the classy silencer, he just hadn’t wanted to use it…
Maybe they were just walking by. No one had any reason to suspect anything was wrong, they’d only come in here if they wanted to do something with the intranet systems. Duo found himself standing behind the door nevertheless, gun in hand just in case –
The door swung open and two men walked in.
“Seriously, you should look at this,” the one in the jeans jacket said, going for one of the untouched computers. Duo breathed slow and silent as the ginger-haired guy followed to the other side of the room without looking around. He found the familiar dare-devil grin on his face and reminded himself that no one was going to die here; whether or not these guys were criminals they did not necessarily deserve to be shot. Right; chill, Shinigami.
Both guys had their backs to him, the ginger one breathing down the other’s neck as Jeans Jacket typed something in and started talking about statistics. Very quietly, Duo stepped forward, edged around the door and out of the room. Then he crept down the hallway, wondering if he should try to find another ventilation duct or just leave the usual way. Except Cap’n Renny’d prolly be annoyed if he started blowing up bits of this place before they had evidence of criminal activity.
Duo reached a crossway and took it, walking normally now, as if he belonged. His ribs weren’t thrilled about that, but he ignored them. Maybe he could just find a door and walk out – like there wouldn’t be guards and stuff. He sighed.
If he could accurately transfer the ventilation map to these corridors, use the distances and directions down here, one of the rooms on this hallway should have another way into the ventilation system. Right around here. Duo cracked the door and peered in, then quickly jerked back. Some kinda office with somebody bent over a stack of papers muttering. No visible air duct.
All right, nearby, then. He tried the next door. Empty, and there was the duct! Grinning, he stepped in, closed the door behind him, and stopped dead. On the floor behind the door was an open magazine, and spread across the two pages were a couple of guys doing a serious horizontal tango.
Duo blinked a couple of times, closed his mouth and turned to look for something to stand on. He’d need the height to get into the duct, and he had the feeling he wanted to be out of here before whoever left the magazine came back – nobody liked having their stash discovered.
Naturally he was only halfway up when the guy walked in.
After that it was basically downhill. The guy – startled brown eyes, tangled red hair – dropped his coffee and hit the alert just before Duo managed to knock him out with the butt of his gun. He got into the duct, went out a different way than he’d gotten in, and they must have been watching the whole vent system, because a bunch of guys with guns were waiting for him at the end.
Sure, he could’ve resisted. Wanted to badly, in fact, but he would’ve killed a bunch of them and then probably died, and whatever Shinigami might want, this was not a war, he didn’t have to die, and most of these guys weren’t soldiers.
So he tossed his gun down, and they grabbed him.
Bunch of friggin paranoids, honestly, Duo thought as another fist slammed across his jaw. They didn’t have a clue he was a Preventer – the gun was his, not standard issue – he was just a civilian kid playing cowboy as far as they knew, and they were still grilling him like they thought he’d planted bombs!
Maybe they did have a clue who he was… No, they’d have mentioned that, he was pretty sure. They’d have started with that. Of course, depending on how long he got stuck here, they might find something out eventually, and then things’d get really interesting.
“What the hell were you up to?!” The big dark guy was shaking him again, yelling into his face.
“Really, don’t you guys have anythin better ta do?” It came out a little more irritably than he’d meant, since his ribs were resenting the shaking. At least they hadn’t been directly targeted yet, he thought dizzily as an open-handed slap made his head spin.
“Where’d you get a gun like that? What were you doing with it?” demanded an older guy with a buzz-cut.
“Jeez, it’s mine! I can carry a gun if I want!”
“What’s a kid like you doing with a gun?!” broke in someone else.
“How the hell old d’ya think I am, anyway?” Duo retorted. “I’m not thirteen, y’know!”
“Answer the question!” roared Buzz-Cut. “What were you up to?”
Duo’s hands twitched, cuffed behind the chair. He really wanted to hit the guy in the nose – Duo Maxwell did not appreciate big ugly faces being shoved into his – but there were too many people watching for him to succeed in getting out of the handcuffs.
“Man, you guys just don’t get it,” he sighed instead. “A guy’s gotta have some secrets – ” A fist to the gut cut him off and curled him up, gasping. Congratulations, you have found the solar plexus.
Yeah, these guys were definitely scared of something. Duo made himself a bet that Trowa and Heero and everybody were gonna find a lot of interesting stuff in those files. If he won the bet, he’d buy himself ice cream and eat it really loudly right next to Heero. He wasn’t gonna lose.
They hadn’t stopped asking questions yet, and Buzz-Cut had apparently lost appreciation for Duo’s conversational roundabout skills, because a hard fist landed on his side, completely overshadowing the simultaneous roundhouse slap to the face. Duo heard the creak before his ribs broke again, and then he felt it, and then it all got a little blurry for a while.
When he could finally pay full attention again, he was lying on a cold floor, hands uncuffed, apparently alone. Then a boot scuffed behind him and he tensed.
“What, I get a personal bodyguard now?” Painfully he twisted his head around to peer back over a shoulder. Felt like they hadn’t stopped at the ribs after he got distracted…
Black hair, angular face, ice-blue eyes, tight orange tee – Duo vaguely remembered this guy from the back of the interrogation bunch. He hadn’t asked any questions, hadn’t touched Duo, both points for him in Duo’s good book, now if he’d just carry Duo out of here, he might earn Shinigami’s eternal gratitude.
“You don’t look thirteen to me,” said a deep voice, and Duo went still as pale blue eyes slid over him. Right. Forget the eternal gratitude. That look wasn’t at all difficult to recognize, even muddled with pain. Duo wondered exactly how much he was about to regret not being able to move.
“Hey, buddy, you better not be thinkin what it looks like. I ain’t gay an I ain’t desperate; go find someone who is.”
“Or you’ll what? Call me names?” Duo could hear the smile in his voice as the guy moved closer, and abruptly decided he did not want to be on his stomach. Turning over only required a momentary flex and push of his arms. Waiting for the sparkley grey haze to fade away from his vision after various things hit the floor took a little longer.
By the time he could see straight again, Ice-Eyes was crouching beside him, hands at the waist of Duo’s pants. Duo yelled.
“Oi, you goddamn pervert, get off me!” He aimed a fist at the guy’s crotch, figuring that would cool him off, but Ice-Eyes slammed his knees shut and twisted, trapping Duo’s arm, then fending off a punch from the other fist. A second later there was a metallic clink and a handcuff closed around Duo’s wrist again.
“Goddamn! You can’t even deal with a guy who’s had the crap beat out of him unless he’s handcuffed?!” Duo wrenched hard at his other hand, abruptly realized that it was sprained, and curled his lip as the other cuff snapped around that wrist.
“Man you’re twisted. I bet you’re gettin off on this, aren’tcha, you sick jerk.” He lay carefully, trying to calm his breathing so as not to puncture a lung, and glared through slitted eyes at the gleaming leer above him. Ice-Eyes chuckled and rolled him onto his stomach, a maneuver that left Duo struggling to breathe at all for a moment as his ribs compressed.
Pressure landed on either side of his thighs and he realized with waking anger that the guy was straddling him. Hands on his waistband, yanking down pants and boxers at the same time – when had this bastard got his pants undone?
“You realize the more you resist, the worse you get hurt,” smirked the deep voice behind him, and Duo kicked one leg up from the knee, hoping to get him in the spine. Considering the feet that slammed flat across Duo’s calves, Ice-Eyes didn’t seem to be paralyzed.
“Yeah, but the less I resist, the more you get!” Duo snapped. “Forget it, prick!” He wrenched his body to one side – or tried – in the hopes of either knocking the guy off or twisting out from under him. There were only two problems with this. First, his body didn’t like the idea, and told him so immediately, ribs, bruises and sprains. Second, Ice-Eyes had to be half his weight again, and wasn’t going anywhere.
“No,” said the deep, amused voice. “Why would I forget this?” A large, warm hand landed on the small of his back and stroked down, casually, as if it owned what it touched. Duo could feel true rage waking, Shinigami grinning and looking up deep below.
“Because it ain’t yours,” he hissed, taut as high-tensile wire. “Get off.”
“No, I don’t think I will yet,” Ice-Eyes smirked. The hand cupped a curve, was mirrored by the other hand, then two thumbs slid between and Duo snarled aloud, shoving against the floor with his one good hand – if he got the leverage, maybe he could hit the guy over his own shoulder with the cuffs –
Both hands slid up to his hips and pulled, hauling Duo onto hands and knees. If he took his hands off the floor now he’d fall flat on his face. If he didn’t –
A zipper snarled down behind him. Amethyst eyes lit in fury as adrenaline shot through his system, numbing all pain.
The door slid open behind them.
“Harris, you sick fuck,” said a tired tenor, and there was the familiar ker-chink of a gun being cocked. “Don’t do that.”
Ice-Eyes – Harris – froze, so close that Duo could feel the heat on his bare ass.
“I will be happy to shoot you, you know that,” said the tenor. “I have plenty of reason.”
Harris snorted and let go of Duo, who dropped to the floor and focused on trying to get his pants back up as quickly as possible without killing himself. The adrenaline was sinking back to its proper level, Shinigami snapping his fingers in disgust and going with it.
Behind him came the noise of a zipper going back up. “For such a flaming faggot, you’re a fucking spoilsport, Trente,” rumbled Ice-Eyes, standing up.
“I wonder why. I may be a fag, but at least I don’t make a habit of raping boys with broken bones,” snarled the tenor. “Time for you to leave.”
Boxers, at least, back in their place, Duo looked over at them for the first time and stared. Trente, the tenor, was the guy with the magazine who’d sounded the alert! Red hair falling all over his face, lip curled in a white-toothed snarl, gun jammed up against Harris’s broad chest, he seemed to be holding a grudge. Harris stared down at him darkly, still smirking, apparently unconcerned by the gun.
“All right, Danny, I’ll leave him to your tender mercies. Catch you later.” One hand lifted as if to touch the other’s face, and Trente shoved the gun so hard into his chest Duo wondered why it didn’t go off.
“I swear, Harris,” the guy’s voice was shaking as he took a step back, gun beginning to twitch a little, “leave now or die.”
“Funny, that’s not what you said last time,” Ice-Eyes breathed, turned and walked out. Trente hissed a long breath between his teeth, slowly holstered the gun, and turned to Duo. Brown eyes widened a moment.
“You must be stubborn. Looks like you got quite the treatment from our dear boys. Maybe – mmph.” He cut himself off.
“Maybe what?” Duo instinctively took steps to keep him talking. The longer Trente talked, the longer Duo was distracted.
“I was going to say something stupid. Like, maybe it wouldn’t have made as much difference as I thought if I’d gotten here late. But you don’t look like you’ve given up yet, so scratch that.”
“Give up? Hah! Why would I give up? This isn’t so bad.” Duo tilted his head to one side and back, the best he could manage for a shrug at the moment.
“Kid, you look like a goddamn patchwork quilt. That’s on the parts I can see.”
“Eh, whatever.” He tilt-shrugged again, then inspected the guy for a moment, curious. What was this thing between him and Ice-Eyes, anyway? “So why’d you show up?”
Thin lips twisted sourly. “I know Harris. Heard he’d been in the room when they were – uh, questioning you. Figured he’d want a chance by himself. You’re just his type.”
Jealous? No… Still puzzling, he grinned – oops, forgot the split lips – and raised an eyebrow. “So you came to save me?” Shinigami woulda done the job fine – doesn’t mean I’m not grateful, though; getting out of that woulda hurt like hell for sure.
Trente snorted, looking amused. “Pretty much, yeah. Harris is a sick bastard, and I figured I owe you one. You could’ve shot me back there before I hit the alert, but you didn’t. Just got close enough and knocked me out instead. Keeping you away from Harris just about sets us even, I figure – oh, how old are you, anyway? Should I put him down for pedophilia too?”
“Sure, but not on my account! Jeez, what’s with you guys? I’m eighteen, okay? How old didja think?”
With a slight, amused smirk, Trente shrugged. “Sixteen? You’re what, five eight?”
“Five foot nine, for your information! Hey, I’m savin up for my next growth spurt!”
That actually won a chuckle, and Duo grinned. “So there. Anyway, what’s up with him callin you a fag?”
Tense again, the redhead gave him a sardonic not-smile. “Maybe cuz I’m not in denial?” He shrugged. “He knows it’s true. Maybe it just gives him a little thrill, calling me something I can’t deny.”
Duo frowned. There was something about the way he said that, the flippant, angry way he talked and the hunched shoulders – it wasn’t just dropping clues, it was clubbing him over the head with them.
“How come you didn’t just shoot him? Sounds like you hate him enough.” Sounds like he formed his habits on you, is what it sounds like.
Ruddy eyebrows pulled down and Trente glared at him. “If it were that easy, I would’ve killed him a long time ago. I can’t kill him unless I’m ready to drop everything and start running. If he shows up dead, his friends come looking for me.”
Duo pretended absolute shock. “That guy has friends?”
Another vaguely amused snort. “Believe it or not. Old adage of like attracting like, I guess.”
“Ah. Large, nasty friends, then.” He lay in silence for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase the next question. This guy didn’t seem like an idiot, so why wasn’t he doing anything about his situation?
“I’d better leave, get back to work – ” Trente turned, stepped toward the open doorway.
“Hang on a sec. This guy, Harris, just because you can’t kill him doesn’t mean you gotta let him treat you like dirt.”
A mirthless half-laugh. “He doesn’t treat me like dirt.” His voice was toneless.
“Worse, huh? Why d’you put up with it?”
Trente turned around again and looked down at Duo almost contemptuously. “It’d take a bit of a long time to explain it to you, and I have to get back to work. Suffice it to say, I’ve made mistakes, and he holds all the cards.” He walked to the door.
“Waitwaitwait wait! That’s why you said that thing about me not havin given up yet, right? You gave up! So stop givin up! Fight back! I mean, how can you live like that?” Duo demanded of his back.
Trente stared down the corridor outside, then turned his head just enough to point the words back toward his persistant questioner. “Listen, kid. When I was twenty-three, I broke my collarbone. He caught me in an empty room, and when he left I had a broken arm, two cracked ribs, a concussion, and some nice twisted memories to match. I thought to myself, ‘Well, at least I put up a fight!’ Since then I’ve learned: some things just aren’t worth it.”
The door slid closed behind him.
Quatre had been fidgiting for the last two hours, since about half-way through the mission, and Trowa had finally had enough.
“Heero,” he said, and slate blue eyes flicked up from the paperwork in front of them. “Could you take Quatre to visit Duo, please? You know he turns his com off sometimes,” he added patiently to Quatre, who was practically hopping on one foot in the middle of Preventer headquarters. “He might be trying to get some sleep, as he was ordered.” He ignored the “Hah. Maxwell?” from Wufei, and continued, “Wufei and I can finish filing the initial reports. You two can finish yours later.”
Heero gave Quatre an evaluating glance. Through the war and since, they had all seen sufficient evidence to support the idea that when Quatre thought something was wrong with one of them, it was best to pay attention. Heero looked back to Trowa and nodded acceptance. “Mn.” Then he turned and strode toward the door, followed by an apologetic but grateful Quatre.
With the faintest of fond smiles, Trowa grabbed another sheaf of papers and turned back to his work.
Half an hour later his comm-unit chirped. Reaching over without looking up, he hit the acceptance button.
“Barton here.”
“Trowa!” His head snapped up at the anxiety in Quatre’s voice. Wide blue-green eyes luminous even onscreen, the blonde boy waved a hand behind him, where bits of Duo’s apartment were visible around him. “He’s not here, and his gun’s gone,” Quatre said unhappily. “Do you think he might have snuck in after us?”
Trowa frowned thoughtfully. “Why would he have done that? We had Kerry Lynch to take down the security, and everything else was covered. I know the mission specs said that the security net was tricky, but obviously Kerry did it correctly…” He stopped, realizing. “Unless he had some help he didn’t know about. But why wouldn’t Duo trust him to succeed?”
“Go ask Captain Bartlett,” said Quatre, and green eyes blinked startlement at the near-command. “Please! If he did follow us, he might have gotten caught, and if he didn’t we have no idea where he might be! I’m sorry,” he said more quietly. “It… it feels… I think he’s hurt.”
Trowa bit back the “hurt worse, you mean” as a bad idea, and nodded. “You’ll stay there while I go ask?”
Quatre nodded, smiling warm gratitude at him. “Thanks, Trowa.” It was practically a caress, and he hoped he wasn’t blushing when he stood up and started for the head office.
Captain Renfield Bartlett was short, built like a rock wall, and not at all pleased to have her first free minute since seven that morning interrupted. “Of course Maxwell wanted to be on the mission! The other four of you were going, it would’ve been a warm fuzzy little slumber party! He thought just because he’d met the fellow who might have designed the security system, he was a better choice to take it down than Lynch. I told him to stop being a moron and get some sleep. Now, if you’ll excuse me – !”
Trowa nodded to her and slipped out the door again.
Heero had joined Quatre at the com-screen when he got back to his desk. Giving him a nod of greeting, Trowa was brief. “He followed us.”
Quatre’s face fell and he nodded. Heero’s jaw set and he leaned farther into the viewscreen. “We’ll be there soon,” he said shortly, and hit the disconnect.
Trowa nodded to himself, rose and looked around for Wufei – at his desk, bent over paper piles as usual. In the implicit understanding that this was a matter internal to the former gundam pilots, and not the Preventers, Trowa headed over to explain the situation.
Wufei was staring at a form, pen in hand, apparently reading and filling it out, except that his eyes were fixed and blank. His head whipped around as Trowa approached, black eyes intense on the other’s face, and Trowa blinked.
“Well? He’s not there, is he. The idiot followed us, right?” Wufei demanded, taking his glasses off and glaring up at Trowa.
“It looks like it.” He was expecting an irritated rant about that idiot Maxwell, endangering the safety of the mission like that, what had the moron been thinking – Instead the hard dark gaze focused on thin air and stayed there, while the hand gripping his pen tightened til the knuckles paled. Uncertain, Trowa finally turned and walked back to his own desk.
Twenty minutes later the four of them were gathered in an empty meeting room, discussing.
“Quatre, can you tell what condition he’s in?” said Wufei curtly.
Tousled blonde hair ruffled further as its owner shook his head, sighing. “All I know is that he’s hurt.” One hand rubbed at his chest, right over his heart. “Nowhere close to death, for the moment… but it doesn’t feel good.”
“Stupid thing to do, following us with broken ribs! If they’d caught him while we were there, the entire mission could’ve been compromised!” Wufei snapped.
Ah, here was the familiar territory. “He may have had good reason,” Trowa reminded him. “We won’t know until we talk to him how much good Lynch did and whether Duo was needed.”
Heero hadn’t said a word yet, leaning tight-lipped against a wall with crossed arms.
“And whether or not it was a stupid thing to do, whether he saved the mission or put it in danger, what are we going to do?” said Quatre, looking around at them with that cute little distressed crease between his brows. The blonde boy was sitting on the edge of the table, which lowered his head to Wufei’s standing level from its accustomed grand height of six foot something. Of the five of them, Quatre’d done the most growing over three years. Trowa seemed to remember reading something about his father having had an impressive stature –
“Huh! We should just leave him there,” Wufei announced, glaring around the room, and Trowa blinked his thoughts back into order. “He got himself in, let him get himself out.”
“But he can’t! He’d have been home before us, not to worry us, if he could have gotten out at all!” Quatre protested.
“Listen to his side before you condemn him,” Trowa agreed. “And if he really is hurt too badly to escape by himself, someone needs to get him out.”
“It would serve him right if we just told Captain Bartlett,” Wufei began righteously.
“Ninmu ryokai,” Heero cut him off, and walked out.
Wufei glared at his back for a split second, then sprang after him, muttering something in Chinese under his breath.
Trowa frowned at the empty doorway, then slowly turned his puzzled expression on Quatre, who was staring after them. “Wufei?” he asked.
The blonde nodded, a tiny, incredulous smile growing on his lips. “Both of them!”
“He did seem in an awfully bad mood,” Trowa commented, looking back at the doorway. “Heero I expected. But… wait, how is that going to – if they both…?”
“Them too,” Quatre grinned, turning to him.
Trowa blinked. “Really. When did that – ?”
“Probably when the three of them were in that OZ cell, I would’ve thought. Didn’t you notice anything?”
He shook his head. “I assumed it was simply the kind of bond that forms between people confined together for a length of time. Perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention. So Heero and Wufei.”
“I think it’ll work!” said Quatre, bending to give him a sudden, jubilant hug. “It’s wonderful!”
Trowa was in no position to argue with that.
Wufei stalked along beside Heero in silence for a while, visibly fuming, before bursting out quietly, “Idiotic thing to do, following us like that, without even telling any of us!”
“What would you have done if he’d told you?” Heero said.
“Told him to stay at home and sleep like a sane person!”
Heero smirked almost imperceptibly. “You wouldn’t have asked him why?”
Wufei snorted. “Why bother? He’d tell me while he was arguing. Then we could design a reasonable strategy that didn’t involve people with broken bones waltzing around getting caught by criminals!”
“All by yourselves?”
One black eyebrow lifted. “I beg your pardon, do I look like a fool? You would’ve been consulted, Yui, stop looking hurt.”
There was an expressive pause on Heero’s part before he turned towards the parking lot and said, “Come on. I’ll drive.”
“Of course you’ll drive, you always drive,” Wufei muttered, and followed him.
Naturally, Heero had already memorized the blueprints and duty rosters that Trowa had obtained previous to the mission, so they gathered a few necessary supplies and went. A small distraction was necessary to get inside the complex, but once they were in, Heero got into the computer system and set up a series of viruses that should keep attention away from their activity.
He might have had some compunction about this if they had been an innocent civilian company, but if they had been legitimate, they’d have turned Duo over to the police and the Preventers would know about it by now. Illegal arms smugglers, some of whom dabbled in drugs as well as a handful of other unsavory occupations, had no hold on his sympathy.
As precious files, records, and minor security systems abruptly began to deteriorate elsewhere, an odd hole in physical security opened up in several sectors of one building, where a shift of guards apparently only came on duty two hours after the present shift left. If they hadn’t been so distracted, no doubt someone would have noticed this.
Some quick deduction told Heero which of all the guards stationed had to be on Duo’s holding room – only two guards, on twelve-hour shift? It was the laxest security in the system. They weren’t anticipating much activity, which was just about right for one out-of-commission sneak.
Wufei took point, Heero rearguard, as they moved along corridors which should be unoccupied, according to the carefully revised duty rosters. Being familiar with Murphy’s Law, they weren’t depending on this to be true, so they were ready when a door opened down the hallway.
The two men who exited were talking to each other, but the one with the buzz-cut was alert and twitchy enough that he almost got his gun out of the holster before the pilots got to them.
“Awake,” Heero told Wufei sharply, wrenching the other’s arms behind his back. “We have some questions.”
Giving him a look, the Chinese boy nodded. “Obviously.” He forbore to knock Buzz-Cut out, persuading him instead, through judicious use of pressure points, to stop offering resistance and cooperate.
“We are displeased with your treatment of our friend with the braid,” Wufei said, once they’d reached an understanding. He sounded about one step away from speaking through his teeth. Black eyes gleamed with suppressed rage, but his hold on the big man’s arms was judiciously careful, only slightly tighter than necessary.
“What did you do to him?” Heero said.
“Friend with the braid?” Heero’s own captive seemed confused, then turned to Buzz-Cut with dawning comprehension in his eyes. “Hey, didn’t you – that guy in the– ”
The burning glare from the other finally struck home and his mouth snapped shut.
“No, talk,” said Heero, tightening his grip slightly, and the man gasped.
“But I don’t know anything! I know they caught him crawling around the air ducts with a gun, but they couldn’t find out a thing! He wouldn’t say a word, that’s all I know, no idea where they put him but I know he’s not dead, honestly – ”
Puzzled at the frantic rise in the fellow’s voice, Heero finally noticed that his grip had tightened significantly for some reason and both arms were in danger of pulling out of joint. Hastily he loosened his hold, glowering at Buzz-Cut. “So you questioned him, and when he wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear, you lost control.”
“I did no such thing!” the man snarled. “Bloody little insect wouldn’t quit being smart-mouthed, so we took him down a peg or two, but he faded out on us. Maybe he is dead by now, hell if I care!”
Eyebrows twitching down in disgust, Heero nodded to Wufei and knocked his own man out. Mouth tight, the Chinese boy dealt Buzz-Cut a vicious neck-chop, then dropped his unconscious body on the floor.
Without need for consultation, the two set off at a run.
By the time they reached the hallway where Duo was, Wufei was using the tightest self-control to keep from clenching his teeth. A physical response was not required to steel himself inwardly for what they might find. He kept telling himself that. Somehow, it didn’t seem to help much.
Heero didn’t look to be doing much better at staying calm, on the other hand. Slate-blue eyes had gone as flat and deadly as they’d been back in the middle of the war with OZ. It was an odd thing to see, now that Wufei was accustomed to seeing life in them instead of the death-gleam of a suicide.
Pulling back from his glance around the corner, Heero jerked his head for Wufei to look. There was something else in his eyes now, Wufei thought in puzzlement, moving forward. He angled his head around the corner just enough to see, and black eyes snapped open wide.
Two men sat on the floor in front of a door some distance down the corridor, playing cards.
Relief, that’s what it was in his eyes, besides the deadly determination. Wufei could feel it slipping through his own veins, treacherously weakening the fury that was driving him. If there were still guards on Duo’s door, he couldn’t be dead yet, Quatre had been right. Not that there had been any reason to doubt him in the first place, but Wufei had seen the bruising on Buzz-Cut’s knuckles, and with broken ribs before he’d even arrived, Duo could’ve acquired any amount of internal damage.
“I’ll take it,” he whispered to Heero, and slipped out of reach before the other could argue. He imagined that he could feel the glare on his back from around the corner as he paced forward, looking around.
The guards jumped up before he’d gotten very far, startled. “Hey – who are you?! You can’t just – ”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said frostily, with the merest edge of embarrassment. “I am Peter Sung, from Genecto Inc. You may recall I was given a tour just a short while ago.”
One of the guards relaxed, recognizing him, and rolled his eyes at the other one, who still seemed jumpy. “Your tour is over,” the second growled, “and this sector is off-limits to non-personel!” He started forward to halt the intruder’s steady stride, and Wufei did his best to look petulant as he sped up, moving to the other side of the corridor as if to evade his aggressor. Sniggering, the other guard leaned on the wall, watching his partner move to confront a Chinese kid who was 5’ 7” at most. He didn’t see a problem when they ended up meeting less than three yards away from him.
Three very active seconds later, he had seen the problem, but it was a little late to do anything about it. He didn’t even have time to reach for his gun.
“They’re out,” Wufei called quietly, rifling through their clothes for the keycard. Frowning, he kicked the playing cards away from the door so as not to slip on them. Heero’s sneakers made next to no noise on the hard floor, he observed as the other boy joined him.
“We could have taken them out without them ever seeing us,” commented the flat voice. “What if they’d called for back-up?” His tone implied a lack of criticism; he was just wondering why Wufei had chosen this strategy.
“Against me?” The Chinese boy looked pointedly up at his companion, who had four inches on him. “Those men were bored. I was in a tour, I got lost. Why would they call anyone else in on the comedy when they’re a foot taller than me?”
Maybe they’d both learned more from Duo than they’d like to admit. One of Heero’s eyebrows raised a millimeter in amusement as Wufei turned away to swipe the card through the slot and the door slid open. He stepped through the door and then stopped short.
He could feel Heero stepping in behind him, sense the storm-grey eyes sharpen and narrow to slits, staring past him, but his own were transfixed by the same sight.
Duo, lying on the stone floor on his back, unusually straight, eyes closed, brow creased in discomfort, but breathing, oh Nataku, breathing.