Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 13 ( Chapter 13 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Lethanon 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.19.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 280 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.19.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 280 | Status: Work In Progress
13:
It seemed infinitely wrong to Trowa that he had to go to work while he was technically at work, but it also seemed to be a side effect of him working at all. Infiltration missions had always been somewhat of a specialty of his and Preventers liked exploiting it, but it always left Trowa annoyed that he had to go do some other chump’s job just to do his own.
Worse, this time he was doing someone else’s job while Heero and Duo were doing something dangerous, leaving Wufei alone to do something he considered even more dangerous. So he thought he could be forgiven for sitting in his simulator the first two hours being sullen and basically sulking over the fact he’d already pulled one sicky and so couldn’t pull another so soon without arousing suspicion, and subsequently had to sit this one out.
Really, anything could go wrong. What if the people working on the satellite were armed? What if they shot Duo or Heero? What if they captured them? What if the satellite was a ploy to try and lure in the Origen and they followed Heero and Duo back to Wufei? What if someone raided Chinatown again while Heero was out and Wufei couldn’t get out in time? What if Godzilla suddenly appeared in the middle of the station and stomped on everyone else while he was just sitting in his simulator on Level 1? Yes, he was overreacting, but for the first hour at least he couldn’t calm down enough to stop thinking of every little thing that could go wrong, no matter how ridiculous he knew it was.
The only positive side effect was it made him leap at the chance to get out of his simulator and go do something, like take a closer look at the Pad in Hanger 101, so that was what he went to do. He was relieved when the mechanic wasn’t there and the Hanger was relatively empty. It seemed to be more of a dumping ground for projects other Hangers had given up on, which suited Trowa just fine. He fetched the transmitter from the SiS and hurried to the Pad, bracing himself for only a second before the nausea hit.
There had to be an easier way to remake yourself, in Trowa’s opinion. Despite Nataku saying it got better over time, Trowa wasn’t really finding it any easier. He just knew what to expect and that was not the same thing at all, though he was starting to suspect Nataku didn’t see a difference. He sighed and sat down, waiting for it to pass before crawling forward and staring at the early attempts at Nataku.
He moved to the most complete one; the one with a heart still beating in its chest and studied it dubiously, watching the way the heart pumped and a thick blue liquid flooded the tubes attached to it, pumping through the torso. He supposed something had gone wrong and its maker hadn’t bothered to make the legs. It just made it all the more grotesque, hanging there with its chest open to the world, heart beating, something like blood pumping, but clearly nothing going on upstairs.
He studied the face closely, noticing the similarities to Nataku, but also seeing similarities to Wufei that made him shudder and he reached up to force the lids closed with a relieved sigh. The ports in her head hadn’t been capped with the silicone yet and instead showed a small metal plate with the pin hole, ready to be plugged in. Curious, Trowa studied one of the holes on its shoulder and carefully pried the plate away from skin. Or tried to. It was stuck, cauterised in and he ended up fetching a knife from his bag and cutting it loose.
The plate was attached to a core; a slender capsule that held the pin and was covered in a fine array of circuitry. That wasn’t what made him shudder. It was the fine spray of feelers that covered the capsule, like roots from a tree just under the skin, attached to muscle and bone and blood in an intricate network he couldn’t begin to understand, let alone unravel.
If this was what was under Wufei’s skin, there was a good chance the ports couldn’t be removed, especially with the maker dead. He left the plug on the shoulder, disturbed by it just hanging there in an explosive mess as if it had blown out her shoulder, but not seeing anything else to do with it.
He moved to the plugs on the head, checking they were all there, then looking at the beating heart curiously before going to fetch his laptop. He knew it was a bad idea, but curiosity had definitely gotten the better of him. He wanted to know more about what was going on with Wufei and this was the best chance he had.
So he built thirteen connectors and a USB hub to receive them, and isolated all his information before connecting his laptop to the System. It acknowledged him as a port and he smirked, pleased with himself. But the hardest part was still to come.
He got out the journals and looked up the notes on the new Nataku, studying the diagrams the man had thankfully drawn and comparing them to the older model he had on hand. The older model was functioning, clearly, but he hadn’t managed to merge the biological responses with the System. Her body parts and the Computer worked just fine separately, but she wasn’t a good enough replica of the Origen for him to continue so he’d started again.
It worked just fine for Trowa. Effort didn’t begin to describe what it took to get the half made body down off its holster and laid out on a table, nor how hard it was to cut open the top of its skull so he could see inside and fix the few things that needed to be adjusted. It definitely didn’t begin to describe the horror he felt poking around a brain that was a clone of Wufei’s but he pushed his own feelings aside and focussed on getting the job done.
When everything was ready, he sat for a long time staring at it all laid out in front of him, wondering what the hell he thought he was doing. This was really taking Duo’s Frankenstein metaphor a little too far, but he reminded himself he was trying to achieve something and stopped thinking.
Just plugged it all in. The ports were old and disused and he had to shove them in hard, cringing at the grate of metal on metal and the soft whine of each pin sliding home. He was sure the feeling would never stop sending a shiver down his spine and through his arms, and pulled away hurriedly when the last one was in.
The lights from the ports glowed a rich red under each plate and Trowa wondered if the silicone caps did more than just protect against infections and the outside world; if maybe the creator had just wanted something to hide the eerie glow just under the surface, to reassure himself his creation was more human than machine.
The connection manager for the USB lit up, running a diagnostic on what it was now connected to and came up with a list of systems and programmes that meant very little to Trowa even having read the journals. He just hoped it was all working and booted up the System, connecting the visual from the model to his laptop and waiting.
Hanger 101 came up on his screen and he grinned, pleased with himself. He was in. He tried a few locations; the cafe, the temple, the shuttle interchange at Level 1 and they all came up just as easily. He tried the aviary and sure enough, there was the line of Passion Flowers Duo had related to them, and he could see nothing Duo had missed, no reason for it to be important at all.
He tried inputting a command for a door to open on a random person’s room and smirked when it did, then hurriedly closed it before anyone could notice. This was awesome! He felt like God and spent a few minutes being a dork. He made a shuttle stop and start again before anyone could notice. He made a few more Pads malfunction on Level 1 so the mechanics would be too busy fixing those to even think of looking at the one that led to Hanger 101.
He used Morse code, turning the lights in His Room on and off, wondering if Wufei was awake to notice.
Then he got down to business and accessed the Eye. It had one job logged, to begin in an hour.
So he went back to annoying Wufei with Morse code using the lights.
When it was actually time he pulled up a video of the white room Wufei had found and frowned at the men huddled there against the walls, waiting. Five of them, which wasn’t a problem, but were they innocent or guilty? Were they armed? Who did they work for?
Trowa studied them closely and decided which one was in charge. They were all clearly from Level 5, but this one held himself too tall and kept telling people what to do, despite the fact they had clearly all done it before and were merely repeating the process. He also didn’t look like a scientist, but more like a businessman and Trowa suspected he was one of the men who had funded the creation of Frank.
He wondered if the man had any idea that Frank wasn’t playing on the same team anymore.
A light flickered and the satellite appeared in the room and Trowa wondered why he hadn’t expected it to be that big. But the white room was deceiving and it was hard to discern space even when you were standing inside it, so he wasn’t surprised he had miscalculated.
The men were on it in minutes, and Trowa wondered waited impatiently as they got the plate attached but before they could pull away, the door opened and something was tossed inside. Heero and his damn gas canisters. How many had he brought anyway? Probably an entire bag...typical. He waited for them to fall, slumping against the walls and then Heero and Duo slunk into the room.
They looked a little ridiculous, truth be told, looking around frantically for anyone who might still be up, stalking their way around to check the unconscious bodies and then hurrying in to attach the transmitter. Trowa found himself laughing at the footage, wondering what Duo would say when he found out he had been on candid camera.
Dude, did my butt look huge?
They got the transmitter attached and were about to leave the room when Heero hurried back and started dragging the bodies into the satellite. Duo started arguing with him, even as he grabbed some poor sod’s ankles and helped drag the body to the satellite. Trowa wished he could hear what they were saying and tried to lip read but he was sure he was just making up what they said.
“Heero, we can’t just kill them!”
“They know we put something on the satellite. If they tell Frank he’ll destroy it before Quatre can get the information.”
“But they’re innocent people!”
“I don’t care. It’s for the mission!”
“Oh Heero!”
“Duo.”
“Oh Heero!”
He was definitely making it up. He laughed to himself and made sure they got out okay and then the satellite disappeared and the room was empty and he just sighed. How many more people were going to die before they finished this? He didn’t think it was a good idea to ask the earlier models of Nataku their opinion on the matter so he just patted its shoulder instead. The good one, without the mess of circuitry pouring out the side.
Relieved so much was going well, and hoping Wufei hadn’t strained himself too badly opening those doors, Trowa focussed on what he was actually supposed to be doing; figuring out the Molecularizer. The issue was keeping the Hanger 101 Pad off the grid, beyond Frank’s control but he slowly developed two programs that would be able to talk to each other without actually sharing all their information, allowing him to run the System program through Nataku’s predecessor and the system for the Pad on his laptop in unison, using the information from the System to dictate what the Pad did.
The issue he had wasn’t in getting it to work, though it took a lot of fooling around and checking back on the creator’s journals. The issue was he had clocked in at work, and had to clock out, and if he Molecularized himself out of Hanger101, he wouldn’t be able to explain how he left Level 1 without clocking back out again.
So he sat down and started on the much more difficult problem of trying to infiltrate the security on Level 1, which Frank had locked down like Fort Knox. Luckily, Trowa had always considered myths like Fort Knox to simply mean there had been no Gundam Pilots around at the time to prove it wasn’t that great after all.
It still took him several hours to break in, and another half hour to find his name amongst the many who had clocked in to work that day. He was about to clock himself out when he realised he had another problem. He was still in his uniform.
He sighed heavily and slumped over the table, staring at Nataku’s half finished face glumly.
“Why does my life have to be so hard?”
Thankfully, she didn’t reply.
He tried to think of a way to go now, but he really was just going to have to steal a uniform and try it tomorrow. Annoyed to have come so far only to have to try again tomorrow, Trowa carefully shut down the programs and went about unplugging the early Nataku. He grit his teeth as the pins ground their way out and then he just stood and stared for a long time at the beating heart in its half constructed chest, reminding himself it was just a clone. It wasn’t actually Wufei’s heart, and he needed it to keep beating, keep the body ‘alive’, if that was even the right word for whatever it was, so he could use it. It made him feel dirty, and no different to the men who had put Wufei into Frank to begin with.
He left everything but the laptop, stuffing it in his bag so he could at least work on refining the programs he had made throughout the day, and then he returned to his simulator, apologising to his superior officer for being so late back and explaining he had gotten lost, and then got to talking to one of the other pilots. The man just smiled and said he understood and that he encouraged his men to mingle with others and get to know each other. Trowa grinned at him and scurried off feeling like a prick. The man was a good leader and did a fine job and if he had really been a newly recruited pilot he would have had a fun entry into a new career. As it was, he was just relieved the man wasn’t a stickler for detail.
The siren sounded not long after he got back and he hurried out with everyone else, but slipped into the stores while the clerk wasn’t looking and snatched two spare uniforms, stuffing them in his bag before clocking out, waving to someone he pretended to know and getting the next shuttle out.
He sat in the corner feeling drained but pleased with the day, and just hoping Wufei hadn’t done anything stupid. He thought about it all the way back to Chinatown, then paused and went up the steps to the temple, going to wait in his corner.
It took a while, but the monk came out.
“So, you know who I am...”
The monk smiled and bowed his head in acknowledgement, as if they were just talking about prayers.
“I am Farrar.”
“Nice to meet you. I spent a lot of time in your brother’s workshop today.”
“And soon we won’t see you anymore, just as we never saw him,” the man chuckled and Trowa found himself actually smiling, shaking his head because while Nataku’s predecessors had no doubt fascinated their maker and drawn him back to them time and again, they didn’t hold the same allure for Trowa. In fact, if he could he would avoid seeing them again. Ever. They were creepy and gross and he didn’t want to think about the duplicate of Wufei’s beating heart.
“Your brother was military?”
“For a short while. But he met someone, some sort of prince in hiding, and was convinced that war was not the way. He wanted to pursue peace.”
“Yet he worked for the military in Frank.”
“It was the only way to hide from the System.”
That made Trowa pause, thinking it through and he recalled Heero mentioning the magnetic field and shook his head, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before. Frank could make the upper Levels give orders to Level 1, but he couldn’t infiltrate it himself.
“How can the things in Hanger101 work where Frank can’t?”
“I am not my brother. I have no idea. But it does. Some sort of bypass I suppose.”
Trowa just nodded, because he hadn’t really expected the man to know, that would have been too easy and nothing at all about today had been easy. Long, tiring, brain maddening, gut twisting and doable yes, but not easy.
“Have the ports started bleeding yet?”
It was such an extreme change of subject that for a moment Trowa didn’t follow it. Then his eyes narrowed and he pinned Farrar with a glare that would have made most men wet themselves. Farrar looked like he might, but he had the advantage of wearing a robe which made it hard to tell if he actually did.
“The withdrawals. They’d be starting about now!”
“What withdrawals?” It hadn’t been Wufei overusing the system? Damnit, the man was just going to use this as an excuse to do it even more.
“From the plasma.”
“The green stuff he was in?” Trowa was just taking a wild guess, that being the only substance he couldn’t now easily identify.
“Yes...It contains a variation of beta-carboline harmala alkaloids.”
Which meant absolutely nothing to Trowa and he made sure his frustration was clear on his face. The monk waved his hands apologetically, and struggled to explain.
“It enhances the effect of things impacting the brain! There’s other stuff in it, but it boosts the brain’s activity to the same level as the System’s, among other things. It’s also really addictive! He would have had enough left in him to last a few days but by now I would have assumed the withdrawals were starting and I noticed he was shaking last night...that’s all!”
Shaking and he’d crashed hard but hadn’t said anything. Had likely assumed the same thing as the rest of him, that he was just exhausted from the sudden move. He really had to stop underestimating what Wufei was capable of. Later, after he dealt with the idea of the man being an addict.
“How do I treat it?”
“I don’t know, I wouldn’t think cold turkey is a good idea?” It wasn’t. They didn’t have the time or luxury of standing vigil while Wufei tried to axe himself in a drug-desperate stupor.
“Can we get some from somewhere? Ween him off it?”
“Well, you could give him a tea made from the same base ingredient?” The monk was thinking about it and he hurried to the front desk to get pen and paper, scribbling down his notes and handing it over. Trowa scanned it quickly and then froze, feeling his stomach drop and he wanted so badly to laugh because if he didn’t he wasn’t sure his head wasn’t going to explode.
“It’s made from the root of the Passion Flower.”
“Yes. The flower itself doesn’t contain enough to do anything, so you must harvest the roots and leaves!”
“La Pasionara,” he murmured to himself, but he had enough sense to thank Farrar and hurry from the temple, heading fast for His Room, mind feeling worn to the bone.
Wufei was a sweating, moaning wreck on the bed, Heero holding him down while Duo paced erratically. Blood was leaking profusely from the ports on his body into the towels someone had put over the bed. Trowa guessed Duo.
“We don’t know what’s wrong with him! We got back from the satellite and he was like this. It’s only getting worse.”
“It’s withdrawals. Go get me a Passion Flower, Duo. One with lots of roots and leaves!”
Duo froze, mouth open as if to argue until he realised Trowa was serious and that was that. He grabbed his coat and left. Trowa strode to the bed and checked Wufei’s vitals, worried about the erratic, faint pulse and the amount of blood he was losing. It was slow, but even two hundred drops a minute was going to add up quick.
“Withdrawals?”
“Farrar...the monk, he just told me about them. Said we should be able to ween him off it with this tea...” He checked the ingredients again and rummaged through the cupboard, finding honey and sugar but needing the chemicals on the list. He handed it over to Heero and took his place holding Wufei down.
“Go get the rest. Steal it, don’t buy it.”
Heero didn’t argue, taking the paper and leaving immediately, leaving Trowa in the quiet of His Room with only Wufei’s moans for company. His weariness returned full force and he climbed onto the bed, sitting against the wall and pulled Wufei up against him, wrapping his arms around him and letting them lock into a gentle embrace that rolled with Wufei’s struggles, containing him and keeping him safe.
He grew lucid at some point that felt like hours later but Trowa knew was far less time. Trowa kissed Wufei’s forehead and waited while Wufei struggled to turn his head to look at him.
“Shhh. Just relax. Focus on breathing, you’re good at that.”
“What happened...”
“You’re going through withdrawals. From a drug that was in the capsule with you. We’re working on making one of our own, it’s just going to be a little longer.”
Wufei listened and responded with breathless, pained laughter that nearly broke Trowa. He forced himself to hold on, as the lucidity passed and Wufei struggled again, leaving bruises in the wake of his flung arms and legs but Trowa didn’t feel any of it.
Instead, he busied himself with thinking about the programs he needed to polish, and things he could add to improve them, and security measures he could put in place. Anything to avoid thinking about the things that actually mattered. Because if he had to think about Wufei where Nataku was now he was going to crack.
“Got it,” Heero came in, dumping several packets on the bench and quickly dolling out what they needed into the blender before putting the kettle on to boil. Duo wasn’t far behind him, rushing in covered in dirt and grease and grime from head to toe, a large plant in a bucket of soil. They put it in the sink and carefully picked some leaves and dug for roots, following the instructions on the paper while Wufei struggled feebly against him. Trowa had never thought he would be grateful for Wufei not being in peak condition.
“Looks like he smacked you a good one on the jaw,” Duo muttered and Trowa sighed, wondering how bad it was if it was already dark enough for Duo to see. Worse, he wondered what they would say at work. He busied himself trying to come up with a cover story. Bar fight? Did they even have bars here? Did anyone fight? Not a good option. Slipped in the shower? They had showers, and he could slip, if he was distracted, but there wasn’t anything in there to hit his head on. Slipped getting out of the shower? Stumbled into the refrigerator...couldn’t have done it if he tried. Perfect.
The scent of the passion flower was pleasant; a melon like sweetness that filled the room as they boiled the root and slowly broke down the properties in the blender. The tea looked horrendous; a dark greenish tint with a greasy texture, much like the goo they’d originally pulled Wufei from. That was the only reason they had for believing they’d made it correctly and Heero wasted no time prying Wufei’s jaw open and pouring it slowly down his throat.
It took a while for Wufei to respond, but his flailing slowly subsided and he fell asleep soon after, leaving Trowa with him sprawled across his lip, bloodied and sweat soaked towels tangled around them. He sighed and hefted himself free, going straight to the shower, of the opinion he had more than earned his five minutes.
He took a lot more than five, and by the time he emerged in clean clothes Heero and Duo had changed the towels Wufei was on and put a blanket over him. He nodded to them in thanks and Duo just smiled and headed for a shower of his own.
“What did you do anyway? Did your way into the aviary?”
“Something like that,” Duo called through the door and Trowa shook his head but didn’t push further. However Duo had done it, he was grateful.
Heero surprised him by holding out a bag of peas and pointing to his jaw and Trowa obediently put them against the dark bruise, sitting down on the floor, back propped against the bed, and getting out his laptop because now that the drama was over he had more work to do.
“The satellite was successful.”
“I know. I watched the whole thing.”
He was so worn he couldn’t even enjoy the startled look on Heero’s face. Instead, he explained what he had been up to all day, and the programs he had made to achieve it, and what he had planned for tomorrow. He was unspeakably grateful when Heero sat down beside him and pointed out more changes he could make, and when Duo came out he joined them, getting excited and trying to make it bigger and better until Trowa had to point out that he just wanted it to work, not make a lifelong commitment to its perfection.
It was nice, to be reminded he wasn’t there alone, that they were in it together. It was something he found himself forgetting when he was alone in Hanger101 and he wondered if Farrar’s brother had forgotten he had family, if he’d stopped coming out of his room and become entirely absorbed in his work without ever knowing how lonely he was. It was depressing and he resolved to take some kind of reminder with him tomorrow.
“Why do you think Frank told us about the Passion Flower?” Duo had a frown on his face that pulled his eyebrows down strangely and made Trowa laugh, maybe because he needed to laugh at something, or maybe because it really did look oddly cute. It won him a glare, but he just shrugged, not caring.
“Maybe because our only other option would have been to put Wufei back in?”
Trowa did not see how that would have been their only other option. Wufei would have made it though, they would have just been dealing with an addict’s withdrawals, losing time on their other projects. Only Wufei might not have gotten any better, still might not get any better, and if he’d been close to death and there really had been no other choice he couldn’t say he wouldn’t have taken Wufei back himself and plugged him in.
“Why doesn’t he want Wufei?” Duo asked and they all found themselves tilting their heads back to study Wufei as if he might wake and give them an answer. He didn’t, and Trowa got a crick in his neck and had to drop his head hard to each side to get it out.
“Maybe it has something to do with why they chose Wufei in the first place?” Heero suggested softly, but it was clear he just thought it was an idea and not that actual answer.
“Great. Guess we’re not going to know the answer to that one in a hurry,” Duo rolled his eyes and just arched a brow at the glare he got from Trowa. “What, he’s not exactly the fountain of straight answers right now!”
“Neither would you be!” Trowa protested, annoyed that they were expecting small miracles instead of counting blessings. Farrar would have had something smart to say about that.
“Doesn’t change the fact we don’t know the answer,” Duo countered, getting up and going to rummage in the cupboard for something to eat. He sighed when he didn’t find anything and looked at Heero expectantly.
“Wanna come get take out with me?”
“Yeah, sure.” It wasn’t like they had anything better to do besides wait for Quatre to try and get a response to them.
“You want anything Tro?”
Yes, actually. I want Wufei off the drugs, with the plugs out and everything back to normal, and I want my body corporate to let me keep a pet elephant. Think you can arrange that.
“Definitely hungry. Just grab me something big.”
And he was alone again, without even moans for company.
It seemed infinitely wrong to Trowa that he had to go to work while he was technically at work, but it also seemed to be a side effect of him working at all. Infiltration missions had always been somewhat of a specialty of his and Preventers liked exploiting it, but it always left Trowa annoyed that he had to go do some other chump’s job just to do his own.
Worse, this time he was doing someone else’s job while Heero and Duo were doing something dangerous, leaving Wufei alone to do something he considered even more dangerous. So he thought he could be forgiven for sitting in his simulator the first two hours being sullen and basically sulking over the fact he’d already pulled one sicky and so couldn’t pull another so soon without arousing suspicion, and subsequently had to sit this one out.
Really, anything could go wrong. What if the people working on the satellite were armed? What if they shot Duo or Heero? What if they captured them? What if the satellite was a ploy to try and lure in the Origen and they followed Heero and Duo back to Wufei? What if someone raided Chinatown again while Heero was out and Wufei couldn’t get out in time? What if Godzilla suddenly appeared in the middle of the station and stomped on everyone else while he was just sitting in his simulator on Level 1? Yes, he was overreacting, but for the first hour at least he couldn’t calm down enough to stop thinking of every little thing that could go wrong, no matter how ridiculous he knew it was.
The only positive side effect was it made him leap at the chance to get out of his simulator and go do something, like take a closer look at the Pad in Hanger 101, so that was what he went to do. He was relieved when the mechanic wasn’t there and the Hanger was relatively empty. It seemed to be more of a dumping ground for projects other Hangers had given up on, which suited Trowa just fine. He fetched the transmitter from the SiS and hurried to the Pad, bracing himself for only a second before the nausea hit.
There had to be an easier way to remake yourself, in Trowa’s opinion. Despite Nataku saying it got better over time, Trowa wasn’t really finding it any easier. He just knew what to expect and that was not the same thing at all, though he was starting to suspect Nataku didn’t see a difference. He sighed and sat down, waiting for it to pass before crawling forward and staring at the early attempts at Nataku.
He moved to the most complete one; the one with a heart still beating in its chest and studied it dubiously, watching the way the heart pumped and a thick blue liquid flooded the tubes attached to it, pumping through the torso. He supposed something had gone wrong and its maker hadn’t bothered to make the legs. It just made it all the more grotesque, hanging there with its chest open to the world, heart beating, something like blood pumping, but clearly nothing going on upstairs.
He studied the face closely, noticing the similarities to Nataku, but also seeing similarities to Wufei that made him shudder and he reached up to force the lids closed with a relieved sigh. The ports in her head hadn’t been capped with the silicone yet and instead showed a small metal plate with the pin hole, ready to be plugged in. Curious, Trowa studied one of the holes on its shoulder and carefully pried the plate away from skin. Or tried to. It was stuck, cauterised in and he ended up fetching a knife from his bag and cutting it loose.
The plate was attached to a core; a slender capsule that held the pin and was covered in a fine array of circuitry. That wasn’t what made him shudder. It was the fine spray of feelers that covered the capsule, like roots from a tree just under the skin, attached to muscle and bone and blood in an intricate network he couldn’t begin to understand, let alone unravel.
If this was what was under Wufei’s skin, there was a good chance the ports couldn’t be removed, especially with the maker dead. He left the plug on the shoulder, disturbed by it just hanging there in an explosive mess as if it had blown out her shoulder, but not seeing anything else to do with it.
He moved to the plugs on the head, checking they were all there, then looking at the beating heart curiously before going to fetch his laptop. He knew it was a bad idea, but curiosity had definitely gotten the better of him. He wanted to know more about what was going on with Wufei and this was the best chance he had.
So he built thirteen connectors and a USB hub to receive them, and isolated all his information before connecting his laptop to the System. It acknowledged him as a port and he smirked, pleased with himself. But the hardest part was still to come.
He got out the journals and looked up the notes on the new Nataku, studying the diagrams the man had thankfully drawn and comparing them to the older model he had on hand. The older model was functioning, clearly, but he hadn’t managed to merge the biological responses with the System. Her body parts and the Computer worked just fine separately, but she wasn’t a good enough replica of the Origen for him to continue so he’d started again.
It worked just fine for Trowa. Effort didn’t begin to describe what it took to get the half made body down off its holster and laid out on a table, nor how hard it was to cut open the top of its skull so he could see inside and fix the few things that needed to be adjusted. It definitely didn’t begin to describe the horror he felt poking around a brain that was a clone of Wufei’s but he pushed his own feelings aside and focussed on getting the job done.
When everything was ready, he sat for a long time staring at it all laid out in front of him, wondering what the hell he thought he was doing. This was really taking Duo’s Frankenstein metaphor a little too far, but he reminded himself he was trying to achieve something and stopped thinking.
Just plugged it all in. The ports were old and disused and he had to shove them in hard, cringing at the grate of metal on metal and the soft whine of each pin sliding home. He was sure the feeling would never stop sending a shiver down his spine and through his arms, and pulled away hurriedly when the last one was in.
The lights from the ports glowed a rich red under each plate and Trowa wondered if the silicone caps did more than just protect against infections and the outside world; if maybe the creator had just wanted something to hide the eerie glow just under the surface, to reassure himself his creation was more human than machine.
The connection manager for the USB lit up, running a diagnostic on what it was now connected to and came up with a list of systems and programmes that meant very little to Trowa even having read the journals. He just hoped it was all working and booted up the System, connecting the visual from the model to his laptop and waiting.
Hanger 101 came up on his screen and he grinned, pleased with himself. He was in. He tried a few locations; the cafe, the temple, the shuttle interchange at Level 1 and they all came up just as easily. He tried the aviary and sure enough, there was the line of Passion Flowers Duo had related to them, and he could see nothing Duo had missed, no reason for it to be important at all.
He tried inputting a command for a door to open on a random person’s room and smirked when it did, then hurriedly closed it before anyone could notice. This was awesome! He felt like God and spent a few minutes being a dork. He made a shuttle stop and start again before anyone could notice. He made a few more Pads malfunction on Level 1 so the mechanics would be too busy fixing those to even think of looking at the one that led to Hanger 101.
He used Morse code, turning the lights in His Room on and off, wondering if Wufei was awake to notice.
Then he got down to business and accessed the Eye. It had one job logged, to begin in an hour.
So he went back to annoying Wufei with Morse code using the lights.
When it was actually time he pulled up a video of the white room Wufei had found and frowned at the men huddled there against the walls, waiting. Five of them, which wasn’t a problem, but were they innocent or guilty? Were they armed? Who did they work for?
Trowa studied them closely and decided which one was in charge. They were all clearly from Level 5, but this one held himself too tall and kept telling people what to do, despite the fact they had clearly all done it before and were merely repeating the process. He also didn’t look like a scientist, but more like a businessman and Trowa suspected he was one of the men who had funded the creation of Frank.
He wondered if the man had any idea that Frank wasn’t playing on the same team anymore.
A light flickered and the satellite appeared in the room and Trowa wondered why he hadn’t expected it to be that big. But the white room was deceiving and it was hard to discern space even when you were standing inside it, so he wasn’t surprised he had miscalculated.
The men were on it in minutes, and Trowa wondered waited impatiently as they got the plate attached but before they could pull away, the door opened and something was tossed inside. Heero and his damn gas canisters. How many had he brought anyway? Probably an entire bag...typical. He waited for them to fall, slumping against the walls and then Heero and Duo slunk into the room.
They looked a little ridiculous, truth be told, looking around frantically for anyone who might still be up, stalking their way around to check the unconscious bodies and then hurrying in to attach the transmitter. Trowa found himself laughing at the footage, wondering what Duo would say when he found out he had been on candid camera.
Dude, did my butt look huge?
They got the transmitter attached and were about to leave the room when Heero hurried back and started dragging the bodies into the satellite. Duo started arguing with him, even as he grabbed some poor sod’s ankles and helped drag the body to the satellite. Trowa wished he could hear what they were saying and tried to lip read but he was sure he was just making up what they said.
“Heero, we can’t just kill them!”
“They know we put something on the satellite. If they tell Frank he’ll destroy it before Quatre can get the information.”
“But they’re innocent people!”
“I don’t care. It’s for the mission!”
“Oh Heero!”
“Duo.”
“Oh Heero!”
He was definitely making it up. He laughed to himself and made sure they got out okay and then the satellite disappeared and the room was empty and he just sighed. How many more people were going to die before they finished this? He didn’t think it was a good idea to ask the earlier models of Nataku their opinion on the matter so he just patted its shoulder instead. The good one, without the mess of circuitry pouring out the side.
Relieved so much was going well, and hoping Wufei hadn’t strained himself too badly opening those doors, Trowa focussed on what he was actually supposed to be doing; figuring out the Molecularizer. The issue was keeping the Hanger 101 Pad off the grid, beyond Frank’s control but he slowly developed two programs that would be able to talk to each other without actually sharing all their information, allowing him to run the System program through Nataku’s predecessor and the system for the Pad on his laptop in unison, using the information from the System to dictate what the Pad did.
The issue he had wasn’t in getting it to work, though it took a lot of fooling around and checking back on the creator’s journals. The issue was he had clocked in at work, and had to clock out, and if he Molecularized himself out of Hanger101, he wouldn’t be able to explain how he left Level 1 without clocking back out again.
So he sat down and started on the much more difficult problem of trying to infiltrate the security on Level 1, which Frank had locked down like Fort Knox. Luckily, Trowa had always considered myths like Fort Knox to simply mean there had been no Gundam Pilots around at the time to prove it wasn’t that great after all.
It still took him several hours to break in, and another half hour to find his name amongst the many who had clocked in to work that day. He was about to clock himself out when he realised he had another problem. He was still in his uniform.
He sighed heavily and slumped over the table, staring at Nataku’s half finished face glumly.
“Why does my life have to be so hard?”
Thankfully, she didn’t reply.
He tried to think of a way to go now, but he really was just going to have to steal a uniform and try it tomorrow. Annoyed to have come so far only to have to try again tomorrow, Trowa carefully shut down the programs and went about unplugging the early Nataku. He grit his teeth as the pins ground their way out and then he just stood and stared for a long time at the beating heart in its half constructed chest, reminding himself it was just a clone. It wasn’t actually Wufei’s heart, and he needed it to keep beating, keep the body ‘alive’, if that was even the right word for whatever it was, so he could use it. It made him feel dirty, and no different to the men who had put Wufei into Frank to begin with.
He left everything but the laptop, stuffing it in his bag so he could at least work on refining the programs he had made throughout the day, and then he returned to his simulator, apologising to his superior officer for being so late back and explaining he had gotten lost, and then got to talking to one of the other pilots. The man just smiled and said he understood and that he encouraged his men to mingle with others and get to know each other. Trowa grinned at him and scurried off feeling like a prick. The man was a good leader and did a fine job and if he had really been a newly recruited pilot he would have had a fun entry into a new career. As it was, he was just relieved the man wasn’t a stickler for detail.
The siren sounded not long after he got back and he hurried out with everyone else, but slipped into the stores while the clerk wasn’t looking and snatched two spare uniforms, stuffing them in his bag before clocking out, waving to someone he pretended to know and getting the next shuttle out.
He sat in the corner feeling drained but pleased with the day, and just hoping Wufei hadn’t done anything stupid. He thought about it all the way back to Chinatown, then paused and went up the steps to the temple, going to wait in his corner.
It took a while, but the monk came out.
“So, you know who I am...”
The monk smiled and bowed his head in acknowledgement, as if they were just talking about prayers.
“I am Farrar.”
“Nice to meet you. I spent a lot of time in your brother’s workshop today.”
“And soon we won’t see you anymore, just as we never saw him,” the man chuckled and Trowa found himself actually smiling, shaking his head because while Nataku’s predecessors had no doubt fascinated their maker and drawn him back to them time and again, they didn’t hold the same allure for Trowa. In fact, if he could he would avoid seeing them again. Ever. They were creepy and gross and he didn’t want to think about the duplicate of Wufei’s beating heart.
“Your brother was military?”
“For a short while. But he met someone, some sort of prince in hiding, and was convinced that war was not the way. He wanted to pursue peace.”
“Yet he worked for the military in Frank.”
“It was the only way to hide from the System.”
That made Trowa pause, thinking it through and he recalled Heero mentioning the magnetic field and shook his head, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before. Frank could make the upper Levels give orders to Level 1, but he couldn’t infiltrate it himself.
“How can the things in Hanger101 work where Frank can’t?”
“I am not my brother. I have no idea. But it does. Some sort of bypass I suppose.”
Trowa just nodded, because he hadn’t really expected the man to know, that would have been too easy and nothing at all about today had been easy. Long, tiring, brain maddening, gut twisting and doable yes, but not easy.
“Have the ports started bleeding yet?”
It was such an extreme change of subject that for a moment Trowa didn’t follow it. Then his eyes narrowed and he pinned Farrar with a glare that would have made most men wet themselves. Farrar looked like he might, but he had the advantage of wearing a robe which made it hard to tell if he actually did.
“The withdrawals. They’d be starting about now!”
“What withdrawals?” It hadn’t been Wufei overusing the system? Damnit, the man was just going to use this as an excuse to do it even more.
“From the plasma.”
“The green stuff he was in?” Trowa was just taking a wild guess, that being the only substance he couldn’t now easily identify.
“Yes...It contains a variation of beta-carboline harmala alkaloids.”
Which meant absolutely nothing to Trowa and he made sure his frustration was clear on his face. The monk waved his hands apologetically, and struggled to explain.
“It enhances the effect of things impacting the brain! There’s other stuff in it, but it boosts the brain’s activity to the same level as the System’s, among other things. It’s also really addictive! He would have had enough left in him to last a few days but by now I would have assumed the withdrawals were starting and I noticed he was shaking last night...that’s all!”
Shaking and he’d crashed hard but hadn’t said anything. Had likely assumed the same thing as the rest of him, that he was just exhausted from the sudden move. He really had to stop underestimating what Wufei was capable of. Later, after he dealt with the idea of the man being an addict.
“How do I treat it?”
“I don’t know, I wouldn’t think cold turkey is a good idea?” It wasn’t. They didn’t have the time or luxury of standing vigil while Wufei tried to axe himself in a drug-desperate stupor.
“Can we get some from somewhere? Ween him off it?”
“Well, you could give him a tea made from the same base ingredient?” The monk was thinking about it and he hurried to the front desk to get pen and paper, scribbling down his notes and handing it over. Trowa scanned it quickly and then froze, feeling his stomach drop and he wanted so badly to laugh because if he didn’t he wasn’t sure his head wasn’t going to explode.
“It’s made from the root of the Passion Flower.”
“Yes. The flower itself doesn’t contain enough to do anything, so you must harvest the roots and leaves!”
“La Pasionara,” he murmured to himself, but he had enough sense to thank Farrar and hurry from the temple, heading fast for His Room, mind feeling worn to the bone.
Wufei was a sweating, moaning wreck on the bed, Heero holding him down while Duo paced erratically. Blood was leaking profusely from the ports on his body into the towels someone had put over the bed. Trowa guessed Duo.
“We don’t know what’s wrong with him! We got back from the satellite and he was like this. It’s only getting worse.”
“It’s withdrawals. Go get me a Passion Flower, Duo. One with lots of roots and leaves!”
Duo froze, mouth open as if to argue until he realised Trowa was serious and that was that. He grabbed his coat and left. Trowa strode to the bed and checked Wufei’s vitals, worried about the erratic, faint pulse and the amount of blood he was losing. It was slow, but even two hundred drops a minute was going to add up quick.
“Withdrawals?”
“Farrar...the monk, he just told me about them. Said we should be able to ween him off it with this tea...” He checked the ingredients again and rummaged through the cupboard, finding honey and sugar but needing the chemicals on the list. He handed it over to Heero and took his place holding Wufei down.
“Go get the rest. Steal it, don’t buy it.”
Heero didn’t argue, taking the paper and leaving immediately, leaving Trowa in the quiet of His Room with only Wufei’s moans for company. His weariness returned full force and he climbed onto the bed, sitting against the wall and pulled Wufei up against him, wrapping his arms around him and letting them lock into a gentle embrace that rolled with Wufei’s struggles, containing him and keeping him safe.
He grew lucid at some point that felt like hours later but Trowa knew was far less time. Trowa kissed Wufei’s forehead and waited while Wufei struggled to turn his head to look at him.
“Shhh. Just relax. Focus on breathing, you’re good at that.”
“What happened...”
“You’re going through withdrawals. From a drug that was in the capsule with you. We’re working on making one of our own, it’s just going to be a little longer.”
Wufei listened and responded with breathless, pained laughter that nearly broke Trowa. He forced himself to hold on, as the lucidity passed and Wufei struggled again, leaving bruises in the wake of his flung arms and legs but Trowa didn’t feel any of it.
Instead, he busied himself with thinking about the programs he needed to polish, and things he could add to improve them, and security measures he could put in place. Anything to avoid thinking about the things that actually mattered. Because if he had to think about Wufei where Nataku was now he was going to crack.
“Got it,” Heero came in, dumping several packets on the bench and quickly dolling out what they needed into the blender before putting the kettle on to boil. Duo wasn’t far behind him, rushing in covered in dirt and grease and grime from head to toe, a large plant in a bucket of soil. They put it in the sink and carefully picked some leaves and dug for roots, following the instructions on the paper while Wufei struggled feebly against him. Trowa had never thought he would be grateful for Wufei not being in peak condition.
“Looks like he smacked you a good one on the jaw,” Duo muttered and Trowa sighed, wondering how bad it was if it was already dark enough for Duo to see. Worse, he wondered what they would say at work. He busied himself trying to come up with a cover story. Bar fight? Did they even have bars here? Did anyone fight? Not a good option. Slipped in the shower? They had showers, and he could slip, if he was distracted, but there wasn’t anything in there to hit his head on. Slipped getting out of the shower? Stumbled into the refrigerator...couldn’t have done it if he tried. Perfect.
The scent of the passion flower was pleasant; a melon like sweetness that filled the room as they boiled the root and slowly broke down the properties in the blender. The tea looked horrendous; a dark greenish tint with a greasy texture, much like the goo they’d originally pulled Wufei from. That was the only reason they had for believing they’d made it correctly and Heero wasted no time prying Wufei’s jaw open and pouring it slowly down his throat.
It took a while for Wufei to respond, but his flailing slowly subsided and he fell asleep soon after, leaving Trowa with him sprawled across his lip, bloodied and sweat soaked towels tangled around them. He sighed and hefted himself free, going straight to the shower, of the opinion he had more than earned his five minutes.
He took a lot more than five, and by the time he emerged in clean clothes Heero and Duo had changed the towels Wufei was on and put a blanket over him. He nodded to them in thanks and Duo just smiled and headed for a shower of his own.
“What did you do anyway? Did your way into the aviary?”
“Something like that,” Duo called through the door and Trowa shook his head but didn’t push further. However Duo had done it, he was grateful.
Heero surprised him by holding out a bag of peas and pointing to his jaw and Trowa obediently put them against the dark bruise, sitting down on the floor, back propped against the bed, and getting out his laptop because now that the drama was over he had more work to do.
“The satellite was successful.”
“I know. I watched the whole thing.”
He was so worn he couldn’t even enjoy the startled look on Heero’s face. Instead, he explained what he had been up to all day, and the programs he had made to achieve it, and what he had planned for tomorrow. He was unspeakably grateful when Heero sat down beside him and pointed out more changes he could make, and when Duo came out he joined them, getting excited and trying to make it bigger and better until Trowa had to point out that he just wanted it to work, not make a lifelong commitment to its perfection.
It was nice, to be reminded he wasn’t there alone, that they were in it together. It was something he found himself forgetting when he was alone in Hanger101 and he wondered if Farrar’s brother had forgotten he had family, if he’d stopped coming out of his room and become entirely absorbed in his work without ever knowing how lonely he was. It was depressing and he resolved to take some kind of reminder with him tomorrow.
“Why do you think Frank told us about the Passion Flower?” Duo had a frown on his face that pulled his eyebrows down strangely and made Trowa laugh, maybe because he needed to laugh at something, or maybe because it really did look oddly cute. It won him a glare, but he just shrugged, not caring.
“Maybe because our only other option would have been to put Wufei back in?”
Trowa did not see how that would have been their only other option. Wufei would have made it though, they would have just been dealing with an addict’s withdrawals, losing time on their other projects. Only Wufei might not have gotten any better, still might not get any better, and if he’d been close to death and there really had been no other choice he couldn’t say he wouldn’t have taken Wufei back himself and plugged him in.
“Why doesn’t he want Wufei?” Duo asked and they all found themselves tilting their heads back to study Wufei as if he might wake and give them an answer. He didn’t, and Trowa got a crick in his neck and had to drop his head hard to each side to get it out.
“Maybe it has something to do with why they chose Wufei in the first place?” Heero suggested softly, but it was clear he just thought it was an idea and not that actual answer.
“Great. Guess we’re not going to know the answer to that one in a hurry,” Duo rolled his eyes and just arched a brow at the glare he got from Trowa. “What, he’s not exactly the fountain of straight answers right now!”
“Neither would you be!” Trowa protested, annoyed that they were expecting small miracles instead of counting blessings. Farrar would have had something smart to say about that.
“Doesn’t change the fact we don’t know the answer,” Duo countered, getting up and going to rummage in the cupboard for something to eat. He sighed when he didn’t find anything and looked at Heero expectantly.
“Wanna come get take out with me?”
“Yeah, sure.” It wasn’t like they had anything better to do besides wait for Quatre to try and get a response to them.
“You want anything Tro?”
Yes, actually. I want Wufei off the drugs, with the plugs out and everything back to normal, and I want my body corporate to let me keep a pet elephant. Think you can arrange that.
“Definitely hungry. Just grab me something big.”
And he was alone again, without even moans for company.