Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Kyou Kara Maou Fan Fiction ❯ Justice! ❯ In a Dark Place ( Chapter 3 )

Wufei was getting very tired of waking up in strange places, soaked to the skin, and with a pounding headache. Added to that, his contact lenses were irritating his eyes, making them feel gritty.

All in all, the day that had started out with his disciplinary hearing had only gotten worse. He wondered what Duo had thought when Wufei simply...disappeared from the men's room.

If he had disappeared from the men's room at all.

Looking at his unlikely surroundings, Wufei was struck by the sudden, disturbing thought that he might actually be trapped deep in a hallucination resulting from a psychotic break of some kind.

If so, it was an awfully convincing hallucination, right down to the all-too-pungent smells and the something–multiple somethings, actually--poking him through his uniform.

Suppressing a groan, he sat up, and looked around, studying his new surroundings.

Just as primitive as the old surroundings, he noted, but a lot less pleasant than the great hall he had formerly awakened in.

In fact, the place he now found himself in was approximately the size of Relena Peacecraft's shoe closet. Which he had actually seen for himself during a security sweep of her new residence in Brussels.

Unlike Relena's closet, however, this place was dark, low-ceilinged, and smelled unpleasantly of mildew, rotting food, and stale urine.

No windows, and the thick black iron bars crisscrossed across an arched opening alerted Wufei that he was now in a cell of some kind. There was a narrow horizontal opening in the bars across the bottom of the archway, high enough for a tray of food to slip underneath but not big enough for a man–even one as wiry as he–to wriggle through.

His immediate surroundings consisted of a layer of filthy straw over a stone floor, and a single, malodorous wooden bucket in the corner. Its smell betrayed its purpose immediately, and Wufei's nose wrinkled in distaste.

With an effort, he levered himself out of the disgusting pile of organic matter that passed for bedding, and got to his feet.

He felt dizzy and nauseous. His headache seemed to be pulsing in time with some sort of subsonic vibration that surrounded him just below the level of actual hearing, making him feeling jumpy and weirdly unfocused.

Had he been drugged?

He rubbed his throbbing temples, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. His symptoms certainly seemed to point to some kind of narcotic, though he couldn't imagine how they had managed to administer a dose without him sensing it.

On the other hand, drugs might account for the very strange things he had seen just before he was knocked out. Maybe they had used some kind of odorless gas on him...?

He staggered over to the cell doorway, cursing his unsteady legs. Craning his neck and pressing his face through the gaps between the cold, rough metal of the bars, he looked around.

What he saw confirmed his suspicion that he was currently imprisoned somewhere underground. Not a window to be seen, the air was suspiciously cool and moist, and the only light came from irregularly-spaced torches giving out a flickering, smoky orange light.

The torches held his fascinated attention for a long minute. They flickered and smoked and occasionally sputtered with a popping crackling hiss.

They're actually using open, unattended flames for lighting in here!

The colony-bred youth in him was shocked and a little revolted by the displayed carelessness, even after having lived on Earth for the past eighteen months.

Although, he thought, glancing down the arched stone tunnel of the corridor stretching away into the dimness on his left and his right, broken at intervals by the square darkness of other cell openings, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of combustible materials here.

He next turned his attention to the security arrangements, and was somewhat astonished by the massive but primitively simple lock on his cell grating, and the apparent total lack of any alarm sensors or security.

Even without Duo's uncanny lock-picking skills, escaping from this facility looked like it was going to be a piece of cake as soon as he had a chance to observe the guards–if any--and figure out what their routines and schedules were.

For now, he ignored the unpleasant buzzing in his head, stretching his senses and trying to gather as much information as he could. The cellblock seemed relatively deserted, if the lack of noise was any indicator, and at least fifteen minutes passed without any sign of a guard.

Lax. Very lax, thought Wufei, reprovingly. That laxness was going to work to his advantage very shortly.

He extracted his wallet from his trouser pocket–thankfully untouched, though the lack of a thorough body-search helped support his theory about the security setup in this place being as primitive as the locks–and found what he was looking for: his Preventers badge.

A quick search of his cell in the uncertain light of the torches turned up a number of odds and ends buried in the filthy straw, some more useful than others: a woolen sock, full of holes and rapidly unraveling; a single crudely-carved wooden die (weighted to always turn up sixes, Wufei noted as he bounced it in his palm); a rusted nail, and a large stone fragment from a cracked flagstone.

The last two items made Wufei feel hopeful.

Another twenty minutes of work, using the edge of a projecting stone block in his cell wall as a crude anvil and the stone fragment as a hammer, and he had a basic lock-pick set–the nail been pounded into an L-shaped torsion wrench, and the pin from his Preventer's badge had been formed into a crude rake pick.

Despite the noise he couldn't help making during these minor engineering operations, no guards came.

He did, however, managed to wake up one of his fellow prisoners while pounding the bits of metal into more useful shapes.

"Um, hello?" came a boyish voice from the cell directly across from Wufei. "Did they kidnap you, too?"

The voice spoke in Middle High German, but with a curious, clipped accent that blurred the "l" and "r" sounds.

Tucking the lock-picks carefully into his pocket, Wufei moved to the doorway of his cell and peered across the corridor.

Looking back at him from the interior of the cell directly opposite was a teenaged boy maybe two years Wufei's junior. He was Old Earth Asian--another L5 colonist, perhaps?--and dressed in a dark, high-necked tunic and dark trousers.

Despite the severe, military cut of his clothing, the boy was wide-eyed and innocent-looking.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," Wufei answered. "I'm Chang Wufei."

"Shibuya Yuuri," said the boy, and Wufei decided he recognized the accent.

"Anata wa Nihon-jin desu ka?" Wufei asked, switching smoothly to Japanese.

Although the predominant language of his particular colony had been Mandarin, everyone in the L5 colony cluster also learned Earth Sphere Standard English and the Japanese spoken in L5's largest colony, where most of the jobs were to be found.

"Yes, I'm Japanese," Shibuya Yuuri answered in that language, and grinned at him with a mixture of friendliness and relief.

Looking at the teen, Wufei was strongly reminded of his wartime ally Quatre Winner, who, despite his ability to cut down his enemies with ruthless skill in battle, still projected a genuine liking for his fellow man.

But unlike Quatre, Yuuri radiated the kind of innocence that only a civilian untouched by the horrors of war could possess.

Don't forget to reassure civilians caught in the midst of a crisis, his Human Relations and Cultural Sensitivity Training instructor had advised during his anti-terrorism ops induction. It makes them more cooperative and keeps them from panicking.

Wufei tried not to remember the exquisite humiliation of the third and last time he had been forced to repeat the class. Agent Chang! The next time I see you in here, you'd better be teaching this damned class, the instructor had bellowed.

With this in mind, Wufei forced himself to smile back at Yuuri. Poor kid.

Before landing in this cell, this boy's biggest worries had no doubt centered on his schoolwork and maybe the progress of a high-school sports team. The chances were good that no-one had taken him at age thirteen, and trained him to rain death and destruction from a giant Gundam, as well as how to be the perfect terrorist, planting explosives and mowing down the enemy in a typhoon of bullets.

"How long have you been here?" asked Wufei, already trying to formulate an escape plan that would allow him to bring Yuuri along during his escape, while minimizing the risk of harm or injury to the kid.

"Well, Chang-san, I'm not really sure," the boy admitted.

"Call me Wufei, please." Another tip from his Human Relations training. "On what date were you abducted, Shibuya-kun?"

"Ah...the fifteenth of April. I think." Yuuri swallowed. "And please, call me Yuuri."

Impossible! Wufei gaped disbelievingly at him. His hearing had been held on July fourteenth, and he didn't think it was much past the fifteenth now, even if he didn't know exactly how long he'd been unconscious.

Yuuri was nowhere filthy or unkempt enough to have been held three months in this place.

Unless, of course, he had been treated more nicely by his captors at first...well, that was possible. When Walther von Christ had mentioned something about Wufei being as useless as "the other one," had he been referring to Yuuri?

Wufei's skepticism must have shown, because Yuuri smiled sheepishly, and scratched his head in a self-conscious gesture.

He said in a rush: "They've brought me six or seven meals so far, and it seems a long time between meals, but I don't know if that means I'm only being fed once a day, or whether it just seems like a long time because I'm bored, sitting in the dark with nothing to do."

"Yuuri-kun," said Wufei, gently. "It's the middle of July. July 14th, AC 197, to be exact."

He felt a surge of impotent anger as he spoke. Yuuri's parents were no doubt worried sick about their missing son.

Bad enough that those sword-wearing goons had abducted a law enforcement agent. But to prey on innocent children and cause parents such heartache--it was the vilest form of dishonorable behavior!

It was Yuuri's turn to gape with disbelief. "That's--that's impossible! Time moves much quickly on this side–a week here is only a couple of hours back home." Then he paused, and Wufei saw his frown, even in the dim light of the underground corridor. "AC 197? What's that?"

What a strange question. "The year, of course," Wufei answered cautiously, wondering if perhaps the kid's captivity had affected more deeply than was immediately apparent.

There was a long pause. "Oh, I see," Yuuri said at last. He pressed his face against the bars of his cell, and squinted thoughtfully across the corridor. "Er, what kind of uniform are you wearing?"

Relieved that it looked like Yuuri wasn't going to panic, Wufei answered, "Preventers, Yuuri-kun. I'm a special agent....was a special agent. Now I'm just a traffic cop." He said that last with more than a little bitterness.

"Preventers? What's that?" Without waiting for an answer, Yuuri continued, "And you're not, um, Japanese, are you?"

"Chinese, actually. From the L5 cluster," Wufei said, crisply, hoping to discourage further questions in that direction. He did not intend to discuss the destruction of his home colony with this boy.

"L5 cluster?" Yuuri was clearly puzzled.

"Colony cluster," Wufei said, impatiently. "In space. Surely you've heard of them...?"

His voice trailed off at Yuuri's open delight. "Oh, you're from outer space? That's really cool! And that explains the whole thing about the date! But," his expression sobered. "I wonder where those guys fetched you from. It doesn't sound like you're from my world–we only have one space station up, and astronauts have reached the moon, but no one actually lives in space."

During the period spent studying physics as part of his pilot training, one of Wufei's professors had speculated on the possibility that multiple parallel universes existed, side by side in adjoining dimensions, and had scribbled a number of highly theoretical equations on the blackboard to support his wild suppositions.

Wufei hadn't paid close attention to the digression, since his focus at the time had been applied physics in relation to piloting his Gundam, but parallel universes did seem to be a popular literary device for science fiction writers.

Could parallel universes really exist? And had he ended up in one?

It was absurd to contemplate, but then again, so was a mysterious abduction from the heart of Preventers HQ and subsequent imprisonment in a place that resembled a medieval dungeon in appearance and general technological levels.

"How did you get here, Wufei-san?" Yuuri asked.

Wufei frowned. "I'm not quite certain. One minute, I was in the, ah, restroom at work, and the next minute...it sounds crazy, but the water started glowing, and...sucked me in...and then I was here, and a group of men started talking to me about overthrowing someone called the Maou, who I believe is a monarch of some sort."

He glanced at Yuuri to see how the boy was creating to this insane-sounding story, but instead of disbelief, Yuuri was nodding a little.

Wufei continued: "I take it that this Maou is something of a reformer, and from what I've heard, I think his rule is more than fair and just. Certainly, he seems to be doing a better job than these incompetents would manage, and I told them so."

Yuuri's eyes went wide. "I guess they didn't take that too well?"

Wufei shook his head. "Nor when I told them I had no desire to become their figurehead Maou."

He smiled unpleasantly, and Yuuri shrank back. "Chang-san, I mean, Wufei-san, you're kinda scary when you look like that."

Reassure the civilians. Wufei sighed, and made a deliberate effort to blank his expression. "Sorry. Anyhow, I don't think I was cut out to be a king--I've never had any desire to go into politics. My skills lie in other areas. And right now, I just want to get back to my job. I'm in enough trouble with my boss as it is."

"Oh, I'm so sorry for all the trouble!" Yuuri said, stepping back from the bars and bowing deeply.

Wufei blinked, taken by surprise. Yuuri seemed to be carrying the Japanese custom of apologizing at the drop of a hat just a little too far. "You're sorry? Why?"

"Well, they brought you here because they thought you were Mazoku, and wanted to make you the next Maou."

This gave Wufei the conversational opening he'd been hoping for. "So, you're here for the same reason? They pulled you from your world to use you to replace their rightful ruler? And now you feel responsible because they rejected you and tried again with me?"

"Something like that." Yuuri sighed and rumpled his hair again. "I was on my way here, um, to visit some friends, when they somehow diverted me, but yes, they captured me as part of their plot." He sighed again. "Gwendal is going to kill me when he finds out," he muttered.

"Look," said Wufei. "I don't know how yet, but I'm definitely going to get you out of here. Once we've escaped, we can figure out what to do next."

"Okay," said Yuuri. "But how are you going to escape? These cells–the walls have houseki crystals. You can't use any magic." He swallowed hard. "They make me feel like I'm about to throw up."

Ah. There was some sort of substance embedded in the cells meant to keep them weakened? Well, that explained some things, but not--

"Magic?" Wufei bit back sarcasm with an effort--reassure and establish a rapport with the civilians, Chang!--and settled for incredulity. "I couldn't use magic even if the cells didn't have the, ah, whatever-they-are crystals." He fished out the lock-picks, and held them up to show Yuuri. "But I have other skills."

With a quick look up and down the corridor to make sure no guards were coming, Wufei slid his arms through the interstices in the iron bars, performed some minor contortions, and began to pick the lock.

Between the crudity of his jury-rigged tools, and the stiffness of the massive (but mercifully simple) lock, it proved to be a struggle, especially since he couldn't really see what he was doing and had to proceed purely by touch and guesswork.

Yuuri watched him with great interest.

As he worked, Wufei took the opportunity to perform a quick skills assessment on his fellow prisoner. He didn't hold high hopes of the kid knowing anything that might be useful in an escape, but you never knew.

"Well, I've been learning a little bit about sword-fighting, but I'm not very good at it," Yuuri said apologetically in response to Wufei's questions about his weapons knowledge.

His answers confirmed Wufei's first impression of the kid as a pure civilian. No doubt, he'd had a high school fencing class or two, with those pitiful blunted toy rapiers and a method of combat so stylized as to be useless in a real-world fight.

No martial arts training, either, though Yuuri told him proudly that his horsemanship was quite good now.

Wufei tried not to sigh out loud at the additional responsibility looming over him as he continued to work at his lock. He had no doubt he could overpower anyone standing in his way, but things could get complicated with a civilian to baby-sit.

But he couldn't just leave Yuuri here, either.

Wufei's fingers were starting to cramp and his improvised lock-picks were growing slick with sweat when the lock finally yielded to his efforts and released with an audible clunk.

No doubt that Duo Maxwell, accomplished thief and escape artist, would have mocked him, had he been here. (Still too slow, Chang! If this were a real B&E, the cops would be all over you by now, Duo had been fond of admonishing while teaching Wufei the basics.)

But still, not too bad, Wufei thought, shaking the circulation back into his aching hands.

"Okay, Yuuri-kun, it's your turn." He pushed open the cell grating with the squeal of poorly-oiled hinges, and slipped out into the corridor.

"You're amazing, Wufei-san," Yuuri said sincerely as Wufei knelt in front of his cell.

"It's nothing," Wufei said uncomfortably, as he inserted the first pick and began probing. "I have a co-worker–a friend, actually–who could have done this in half the time."

Working the lock was much easier from this angle, and Wufei was making good progress when Yuuri whispered urgently, "Someone's coming!"

Wufei cursed under his breath, and straightened up, hoping to make it back to his cell before one of the guards spotted him.

Too late. Wufei cursed again.

"Hey, you! What are you doing--?" The guard, paunchy and wearing a stained uniform, was balancing a tray of food in either hand.

His look of surprise was comical, in the instant before Wufei felled him with a single blow. The crudely-carved wooden trenchers skidded across the stone floor, pieces of bread and wooden cups of water bouncing in their wake.

Wufei followed up with precisely-aimed kick to the man's head, to make sure he stayed down and unconscious. A quick search yielded a dagger and a small pouch of coins, but no keys.

Of course. That would have been too easy. Wufei thought with exasperation. He turned back in Yuuri's direction, stooping to retrieve his dropped lock-picks.

He had scarcely re-inserted the first one, when he heard a shout echoing from somewhere down the corridor, where it bent in a sharp turn. "Arnaulf! What was that noise. What's going on back there?"

"Wufei-san," Yuuri whispered urgently. "They're coming! You have to go now!"

"Not leaving without you," Wufei replied shortly, glaring at the recalcitrant lock, as if trying to unlock it through sheer force of will.

Trying to hurry without hurrying and making stupid mistakes, he bent his concentration on probing the lock, trying to remember the sequence that had worked for his cell door.

The tread of booted feet echoed down the corridor.

"Wufei-san!" Yuuri knelt, so that he and Wufei were face-to-face. " Listen to me–You have to leave! Go to Blood Pledge Castle, and tell Konrad–uh, Sir Konrad Weller–where I am. He'll help you."

"You there! Prisoner! Stay where you are, or we'll kill you!"

Wufei cast a desperate look at the men drawing closer, then back at the lock. There was no way he could open it in time.

He pushed himself to his feet, and turned to face the two guards pounding down the corridor. They had both drawn their swords. Damn.

Hoping for the element of surprise, Wufei attacked, taking out the man in the lead with a flying kick. He turned aside the second guard's blade with the dagger, then picked up the first guard's dropped sword, and dispatched his opponent with a neat thrust through the base of his throat.

The man fell with a choking gurgle. A pool of blood spread out from beneath his body, black in the flickering torchlight.

"Is–is he dead?" Yuuri asked, unnecessarily.

Wufei didn't bother answering the question. He was sorry that the kid had been forced to witness death at close hand, but it had been unavoidable.

But his troubles weren't over. The fight, brief as it was, had also been noisy. Wufei heard other shouts approaching, and the sound of a clanging bell.

"GO!" Yuuri shouted. He pointed in the direction that the guards had come from. "There's a stairway leading up–I think it's the only way out of here."

Wufei nodded, tightly, hating himself for agreeing to desert the kid. "I'm sorry!" he said to Yuuri. "I promise I'll come back for you!"

Knowing that hesitating any longer would ruin all chances for escape, he turned on his heel, and began to run in the direction that Yuuri had indicated.

"Remember–tell Konrad Weller," Yuuri shouted after him. "Or Gwendel von Voltaire...or Wolfram von Bielefeld...or Günter von–" The last of his words were lost as Wufei rounded the corner.

Wufei felt awful about leaving the kid behind, but on the other hand, now he didn't have to worry about getting Yuuri injured or killed.

Konrad Weller, eh? He thought as he pounded down the corridor. It was good to know that the kid might have some friends in this strange place. Maybe this Konrad person could help Wufei stage a rescue operation.

But how did Yuuri know these people at Blood Pledge Castle? His story had implied that he traveled regularly between his world and this place. That boded well for Wufei's chances of getting back home, but how did Yuuri...

One problem at a time, Wufei told himself, as he spotted a set of tightly-spiraling stone stairs leading upwards. Right now, his priorities were to escape, then to find the kid's friends, and then to return to rescue the kid.

There was one man guarding the stairs, but he was occupied in yanking a bell-pull for the alarm, and didn't spot Wufei until it was too late.

Wufei cut his throat with cold efficiency, and scrambled up the narrow stairs. The alarm bell, though silenced now, was sure to bring reinforcements.

He emerged into what looked like a guard-room, the walls hung with weapons, with small, iron-barred windows set into thick stone walls. A crude wooden table, flanked by equally crude benches stood at one end of the chamber, in front of a large fireplace.

In a stroke of luck, the room was empty.

At least he was now aboveground, thought Wufei. He spotted a door made of age-darkened wood banded with black iron, and opened it cautiously, just an inch or two at first.

He peered out, and saw a graveled courtyard surrounded by wings of the fortified stone building. The only way out appeared to be through an arched gateway leading between two towers.

The courtyard felt strangely deserted. For a building this size, shouldn't there be more staff in evidence?

And, even more strange, there were no vehicles parked in the courtyard. Wufei had been hoping to spot an unattended car or truck he might hot-wire. Hell, even a motorcycle would do–if he was pursued, a bike could go places where a heavier vehicle couldn't. He had learned that lesson well in his time as a freedom fighter for the colonies.

As Wufei waited and watched, he saw a man enter the courtyard, leading a saddled horse. He had to open and shut the gate himself, Wufei noticed. This place was definitely short-staffed.

The man led the horse into a ramshackle-looking set of wooden sheds built against one wall of the courtyard. Hoping that no one was watching from any of the narrow, barred windows piercing the upper stories, Wufei tucked the sword and dagger through his belt, slipped out of the guardroom, and ran swiftly across the courtyard to the sheds.

Maybe there were vehicles parked inside the sheds, he thought hopefully.

To his dismay, the sheds proved to be stables, containing nothing but...horses.

Horses. Wufei cursed softly. He could hot-wire any vehicle in existence, but how the hell was he supposed to escape on horseback?

Heero Yuy was the one whose training had included the archaic skills of horsemanship and ballroom dancing, so that he could go undercover among the children of the aristocrats.

Wufei had only ever read about horseback riding.

Then again, how hard could it be? Especially since one of the mounts was already saddled up?

Wufei crept up behind the new arrival, occupied in busily unbuckling one of the saddle straps, and swiftly disabled him with a blow from the heavy pommel of his sword. He tied up and gagged the man using a variety of thin leather straps conveniently hanging from pegs and hooks, and dragged him into one of the unoccupied stalls, leaving his victim partially buried in a mound of clean straw.

Warily approaching the very large horse, Wufei avoided those huge hooves, re-fastened the loosened buckles and straps, and cautiously led the beast back outside to the courtyard. It followed him docilely enough for a beast whose head easily topped Wufei's modest height.

Once back outside, Wufei went to the gate. Lifting the heavy crossbar, he pushed it open. The gateway was a short tunnel through the width of the building, with a set of doors at either end. No sentries stationed inside the gateway, that he could see.

What was going on here? Wufei wondered, disconcerted by the relative ease of his escape so far.

"There he is! Stop him!" It was almost a relief to hear shouts behind him, and the crunch of gravel under booted feet.

Wufei ran into the passageway, towing the startled horse behind him.

The doors on the far end began to swing ponderously shut. Wufei ran faster, and the horse, thankfully, did not resist but kept up with a steady clatter of iron-shod feet against flagstones.

Wufei saw the figure of a man silhouetted against the bright daylight, just before he reached the narrowing gap of light, and pushed back with all his strength.

The impact jarred his arms to the shoulders, but he managed to stop the heavy door from closing further. Slipping through the gap, he dropped the horse's reins, hoping the animal wouldn't bolt back the way they had come, and confronted the gate's lone sentry.

Wufei scarcely had time to draw his stolen sword before the soldier, a skinny young man who looked to be the same age as Wufei, was swinging wildly at him.

Wufei ducked the blow, and heard his opponent's sword bite deeply into the wood of the partially-open gate behind him. Before the young guard could pull his weapon free, Wufei took him out with a blow from the flat of his sword along his opponent's jaw.

The horse was still standing where Wufei had left him, but stamping nervously as two more men crowded into the far end of the tunnel and began running toward them.

Wufei grabbed the horse's reins, and led the beast hurriedly out of the gateway. Then, he boosted himself up in the stirrups, and swung astride.

Feeling like an extremely conspicuous target, Wufei sat up straight and kicked his heels into the horse's side, as he'd seen depicted in countless historical movies and shows.

The horse moved forward one step, then turned its head to fix Wufei with a puzzled stare.

His pursuers were drawing closer, and the downed sentry was starting to stir.

Desperately, Wufei leaned forward, and shouted, "Go!"

The horse went, bolting forward.

Wufei gave up all hopes of actually directing the beast, and concentrated on simply staying in the saddle as the shouts of pursuit faded behind him.