Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Eternal Promises ❯ Part 18 ( Chapter 18 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

I do not own Gundam Wing, or any of its associated characters, much to my dismay and pain. Of course, while I cannot claim them, I do claim ownership of this particular story and any original characters I happen to throw in.


Part 18

It had been a long day, Trowa reasoned as he followed the satellite GPS directions towards his destination. Shortly after he had left the Peacecraft mansion, he’d boarded a plane for western Canada and tucked in for the twelve hour flight. It had been a relief when he’d finally stepped off the plane and was able to stretch his rather log legs, commercial aircrafts always seemed to be excruciatingly lacking in space. He’d been on the road since then, having rented a car from the airport.

He wasn’t far away now from the target destination. He had to hand it to the Kidnappers or who ever had thought up the idea to transmit Miss Relena’s call from this particular location. The cities and smaller communities all seemed to melt together making it difficult to tell the beginning of one and the end of the next. One single transmission was easily lost within all the others being made at any time day or night.

For at least the dozenth time since he set out to find the transmission computer, he went over all the possible out comes as to what he could be getting himself into. The one that would be the most helpful would be if the location was abandoned, or at least unoccupied at the time of his arrival. Of course, this was unlikely seeing as a lot of trouble had been made to make sure the original transmission could not be tracked unless this location was discovered. Realistically, he was walking into a confrontation of some kind.

He took the exit road into one of the many small communities and slowed his speed accordingly. The GPS guided him through a tangle of commercial and then residential roads until Trowa found himself parking the mid sized coupe down the road from an average family home on what seemed like an average suburban street.

Not surprising this wasn’t the way he liked to do things. Jumping into a situation where you didn’t know the layout or the security or the possible problems that could arise put anyone at a severe tactical disadvantage. Trowa took a few minutes to survey the street and the house. Everything looked quiet. A few people were out in their yards while the odd pedestrian and vehicle made its way down the street. It was just a typical street, it could’ve been anywhere.

The former HeavyArms pilot pulled his gun out of the bag sitting on the seat next to him. It had been easy to get it past the civilian airport security. There was nothing like the flash of a fake airport security badge and a steely glare to make the rent-a-cops back down without question. He checked the clip before snapping it back into place and putting the spare into a back pocket before screwing the silencer onto the front of the weapon. No need to alarm the neighbours of his presents.

Taking one last look up and down the block, he left the car and made his way towards the house.

*~=~*

Heero entered the kitchen and narrowed his eyes at the room until his gaze found what it was he’d been coveting. Stalking over to the far counter he retrieved an upturned mug and proceeded to fill it with what smelled like a strongly brewed dark coffee. He didn’t allow the serious look to relax off of his face until he’d taken a good mouthful and swallowed it, leaning back against the cabinets, his eyes half closed enjoying the taste.

Relena was being examined by Sally while Noin and Zechs were close at hand. He had unceremoniously been given the boot for a few hours, told to relax by the elder Peacecraft sibling. Heero had a feeling that it was more then just a simple examination, that it might have something to do with what Sally had been eluding to the other day when they’d been debriefing the Politician. The way that she might be able to help Relena remember what it was the kidnapper had said to her before she had succumbed to the sleeping drug.

He frowned to himself, not liking that he’d been excluded from what could be an important discovery if whatever it was Sally had in mind worked. Actually, he didn’t like the idea of being told to leave Relena at all, but if it was actually as innocent as just an examination of the young woman to check on her condition he was more likely to understand.

Before he was able to become lost in his own thoughts, he looked up to see Wufei enter the kitchen looking a little worse for wear.

Waiting until the man had poured himself a cup of the same coffee Heero himself was still enjoying he said “You look like hell, what have you been doing?”

The Chinese man grimaced at the strong taste of coffee presumably before speaking. “I’ve been up all night going through a list of all the temporary staff that’s been employed here and at Relena’s office buildings for the last six months looking for anyone that might have connections of any kind to terrorist groups. Its going to take a while to get through them all.”

“I thought you were on duty last night when I brought Relena back to her room. “

“I was. Maxwell relieved me at midnight.” Wufei snorted. “ That fool brought me the list then all but crowing at his own genius idea. “

“Duo brought it to you? Hmm. Any luck so far?”

“Not so far, but its hard to tell with so many people.” He rubbed at his eyes with the heal of his free hand before looking at Heero curiously. “Why aren’t you with Miss Relena?”

“I’ve been told to take a break.” He narrowed his eyes slightly for a moment. “She’s being examined again by Sally. Noin and Zechs are with her.”

“Sounds like Zechs thinks your spending too much time with her.”

Heero ignored the statement. “Do you want any help with that list of yours?”

“You want to take a crack at it?” Wufei looked at him with interest.

Topping up his coffee Heero shrugged. “I’ve got a few hours to kill.”

*~=~*

Relena stepped into her room a few hours later and found Heero still working on going through the backgrounds’ of the previous staff members.

She stepped into the room quietly and moved to stand behind him, not wanting to disturb him. He noticed her though and turned his head for a moment to acknowledge her presents before returning to stair at the laptop in front of him.

“How did it go with Sally?”

“As well as can be expected I suppose.”

Heero didn’t fail to notice the tired tone to the young woman’s voice as she moved towards the balcony doors and unlatched them. He watched as she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply a small amount of stress that seemed to be present in her features eased. “What happened?”

She didn’t turn to look at him, choosing instead to talk to the late morning sunshine. “I’m sure your already have an idea of what it was Sally really wanted today when she suggested the examination.”

“She wanted to see if she could get through to the things you’d forgotten with the administration of the sleeping drugs.”

The young woman sighed and nodded. “I let her of course, any information I can give to you about the kidnappers would be one step closer to finding who it is, and would perhaps help us find out what it is they truly want. Sally thought that hypnosis would be the easiest way to proceed. Its simple enough, almost like going to sleep, and its supposed to get past the parts of your mind that block memories, past your inhibitions maybe.”

Closing the lid of the laptop Heero watched her more carefully. “Were you able to remember anything?”

Relena turned back towards him, a curious look on her face. “I remembered what he looked like, the leader, or at least who I think was the leader. He looked like you, he had your eyes.”

He was taken aback. “What? Are you sure?”

She just nodded.

Heero’s mind was blank. How could this be? Who on earth -

And then the dreams came back to him. Those fucking dreams he’d been having for the last month, how could he have forgotten? He shook his head, no. It was impossible anyways. That person had been dead for what? Ten years at least. He’d seen it again and again every time he closed his eyes, which was exactly why he hadn’t been sleeping.

He hadn’t noticed her coming to stand beside him until her hand landed on his shoulder, shocking him back into the present. Startled he looked up into her eyes, a flash of concern in them. “What is it? Do you know-”

“No.” He cut her off quickly and was sorry he did so a moment later when saw the concern deepen her expression. “No,” he said again, much gentler this time. “There was someone, but they died a long time ago. I don’t know who this person would be.”

“I’m sorry. They must’ve been close to you to share the same looks.” A sad smile graced her features.

No matter what, Heero couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the dreams, or about the person in them, about the person who’d died. They’d died because of him, but he didn’t want to tell her that, he barely wanted to admit it to himself.

“Did you remember anything else?” He cleared his throat in what he hoped was an unconcerned way.

Relena’s eyes moved to look at the ceiling as she thought a moment before sitting down in the chair next to his own. “There was one other man,”

“The large one who seemed to be following orders?”

She nodded. “Yes, him. His name was Reiko. I’m not sure how much help that is, but at least its something.”

Heero thought for a moment. “You clearly remember what those two men looked like now?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Then maybe you can help more then you thought.”

She was clearly puzzled, but seemed eager none the less. “What can I do?”

He was already opening up the laptop again, sure they had a better chance of finding what they were after now that they had some clues of who they needed to be looking for.

*~=~*

Else where in the Peacecraft mansion, Quatra was on his way to relieve Zechs from his guarding duties, when he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Stopping to fish the phone out, he answered, “Quatra here.” before continuing on his way down the hallway.

His eyes grew large and he stopped short again. “Trowa, is that you?”

The voice on the other end of the phone answered back “I’ve secured the machine in question, and I’ve found the location of what I believe to be the original transmitting computer. It looks as though the transmission originated in Santorin Greece.”

“Your sure? I’ll have to tell Heero and the others right away. I’m sure they’ll want some time to look into this before we plan our next move. How did it go getting the information?”

“The operation went smoothly, there wasn’t much for security here. I don’t think they expected us to actually figure out how they had hid their base location.”

Quatra smiled. “Well that’s fortunate for us. Right now we have the element of surprise on our side, and that makes things a bit easier. Will you be heading back directly then?”

“Yes, I’ll be on the next flight out. No need to stick around here any longer then I have to.”

“Agreed. Safe flight then Trowa. We’ll see you when you get back, we owe you a lot for this information.”

Once the call was terminated, Quatra took a deep breath and continued down the hallway towards the Preventors base in the entrance hall of the mansion. He didn’t think he was imagining the feeling that things were going to get interesting very quickly.

*~=~*

“I can’t believe you guys didn’t say anything about what you were up to.” Duo grumbled from one end of the large table a short time later. “Its not like telling the rest of us would’ve jeopardized the mission.”

“Your probably right, but we didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up until we were sure about the information we would find.” Quatra tried to pacify the braided man.

“Duo’s right. You should’ve told us. They could’ve been expecting us to make a move like that and could’ve been a trap from the very beginning.” Zechs sent a serious look across the table at both Quatra and Wufei. “At least with all of us involved we would be sure to avoid any mistakes.”

“There’s no use worrying about it now. We have the information we need to go after the kidnappers and maybe face them at a tactical advantage instead of stumbling around blindly waiting for the next attack.” Noin tried to reason with the man seated beside her. “I’m sure Trowa knew the dangers going into the mission.”

“There is no need for any of us to be throwing our lives away needlessly anymore. The world has changed, there is no more war, no more examples to be made. Everyone agrees that the fighting had to stop.”

“And yet here we are.” Wufei said, without looking up at Zechs.

He was about to retort when Relena placed a hand on his arm and caused him to turn to face her. “I don’t think the issue here is weather or not the correct action was taken, but what has come from the action itself.” She tried to pacify the people sitting at the table before a full blown fight broke out. “I for one appreciate any information that we gain in order to bring us closer to finding out what these men are truly after, and where we can find them to ensure that it will never happen again.”

“So we know they’re in Greece.” Duo said, his arms crossed across his chest. “We still need to figure out who they are before we can make a move on them.”

“We might have a lead on that as well.” Heero spoke for the first time.

Wufei looked interested. “That was fast.”

Duo scoffed at the Chinese man’s comment. “Told you he’d get results.”

“I had help.”

Relena smiled as he pulled out the laptop and opened the cover.

It took just a moment to boot up the machine and pull up the information on the screen before he turned it around and allowed everyone to take a good look at the picture of the man on the screen. “His name is Reiko Talmus, thirty eight years old. He’s been involved in anti government and terrorist actions on and off for the last twenty years. He’s an experienced soldier, and for the most part acts as a mercenary for hire.”

“He was the man who seemed to act as the leaders right hand man.” Relena added quietly.

“This is one of the men you remembered today, Relena?” Noin turned to her.

The blond woman nodded and Heero spoke. “When she told me what it was you were doing today during her examination, I thought she might want to take a look at the database we’ve been going through to see if she recognized anyone, and he was the first one she found.”

“But there are still lots of pictures to go through,” Relena added quickly. “I hope I can recognize the other two men I saw while I was there.”

“What was that man Reiko hired to do?” Quatra asked coming to stand behind Heero’s chair while he turned the laptop back around in order to look for the information.

“Says here he was working on electrical shorts in some of the offices around the mansion. There is a work order on file for the rooms he was permitted access to.”

“We should look into them, find out if there was any surveillance equipment installed that allowed them to gain access to Miss Relena’s rooms or office.” Quatra looked up, concerned.

Wufei stood up “On it.” as he walked from the room.

“I’ll need to inform Commander Une of what we’ve found out. No doubt she’ll want to make sure we continue to patrol the perimeter as well as the interior of the building carefully until we can be sure its completely safe.” Sally also left the room.

Zechs turned to Heero and Relena, “It might be a good idea if you didn’t go back to Relena’s room or office until it can be verified that both rooms are secure and uncompromised.”

Relena looked startled for a moment before nodding. “Yes, your right of course.” she stared down at her hands for a few moments. “Where do you suppose I would be able to spend the time until my bedroom at the very least has been cleared?”

Heero had continued on to read the work order for the rooms Reiko had been ‘fixing’. “It says here that rooms and offices next to your own were worked on as well as an outbuilding. That could’ve been where they sent the feed before it could be transmitted off the grounds to where ever they were reviewing it.”

Duo sighed and stood up. “I’ll go and let Wufei know. I’m sure he’ll want to make sure we check the whole place, but it will help to know where we should be focusing.”

As the braided man left the room Noin moved to stand beside Relena’s chair and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry Relena, just leave this to us, we’ll have it cleared up in no time.” She smiled at the young woman.

Relena smiled back. “Thank you Noin. I appreciate all you’ve been able to do so far, everything that everyone’s done.”

As both she and Zechs left to help with the room by room search Heero turned the laptop screen so that Relena could clearly see the other pictures he’d pulled up. “Do your recognize any of these men?”

There were six of them of varying ages and authenticities, and she made sure to look at each face carefully, but looked up at him with a frown on her face and shook her head. “No, who are these men?”

He turned the laptop back towards himself and closed the screen. “Other members of the same team that
Reiko came with to do the supposed electrical work. The next thing I’ll look into will be who it was that brought them in to work in the first place, and if there truly was a problem in the mansion or not.”

“Oh god, it really could be someone on my staff.” she shook her head hardly able to contemplate how it could’ve happened. “I know that they are screened fairly well, but I suppose you can never truly know what someone’s aims are.”

“I don’t think it matters how well the screening process works, it all comes down to how we as humans view the information we find. Even someone who had ties to terrorist groups in the past could be trying to make up for the errors of their ways. I honestly don’t think there was anything that could’ve been done to completely guard against something like this happening. We’re just humans and we all make mistakes once in awhile.” Quatra tried to lessen the blow to the young woman’s feelings towards the systems that were in place to keep her and her staff safe.

After Quatra also left to help with the search, promising to look for them both later on, just Heero and Relena remained in the dining room. They sat for what seemed like a long while without talking until Relena broke the silence. “I think I’d like to help you look through that list some more.” her expression was determined.

“Alright. Come on then.” Heero picked up the laptop and stood up from the chair he was seated in next to her and began to walk from the room. They proceeded to walk up the staircase and move through the hallways until they came to a familiar door. “I double checked the work order, but none of the ‘repairs’ were done on this side of the building, since it seems to be the furthest away from the part of the mansion you use. This room should be secure, but wait out here until I check.”

She gave him a grateful smile before he opened the door and slipped into the room. His bag was still on the floor where it had been placed the last time he’d been in the room. The only real change he could see was that the bed had been made and fresh towels had been put into the adjoining bathroom. He still scoured the room carefully, checking the balcony door latches, the telephone, as well as every single piece of furniture present.

When he was sure the room was clean, he motioned for Relena to enter and sat down on the bed, opening up the laptop.

She closed the door after herself and came to sit down next to him as he started up the computer once more.

Once Heero had the program up and running he turned to her. “Don’t try and force anything. Its possible that you may not recognize anyone else in these pictures, and even if you do recognize them, it could be from when then were actually working here.”

“Your right. I have to be careful, but I just know that if I keep looking through these pictures I’ll find something else that will help everyone.”

“You know you’ve done a lot already. That last person you recognized may lead us directly to the leader your hoping to remember.”

“I really hope your right.”

*~=~*

It was cold. She could feel the metal under her cheek as she laid on the floor. Slowly she tried to push herself into a sitting position only to find that there was a weight on her back preventing her from moving.

She felt rough hands grab her arms. Her captors acrid breath made her cough in the darkness as she tried to turn her face away.

You can’t get rid of me you know.

The words made her struggle harder against the steel vices on her arms, despite the warning.

Your all I can think about, your in my mind, you consume me.

“No,” She tried to kick her legs out, finally remembering they were there when she felt something brush across her forehead and realized with revulsion that it was her captors lips. “Get away from me, your disgusting.”

What’s disgusting? I’ve only done what I have to do to survive, and doesn’t the fact that I love you make up for all of that? Can’t you forgive me and see past it all?


Shaking her head almost violently she continued to try and dislodge the figure above her in any way possible. “Nothing can make up for what you’ve done. You have a rotten mind and a hateful soul.”

Hurtful laughter filled her mind. Stop struggling, you know you can’t get away from me and no one will be coming for you.

“Your wrong, Heero will come for me. He will always come for me.”

But he’s no different then me, how can you stand to be around him when you can’t stand me?

“He isn’t the same as you.”

Oh but he is. The voice rumbled not in her ear, but throughout her body as it spoke. He’s been forced to do things he’s not proud of, things that disgust even himself, but things that were necessary at the time. You know that and still you cling to the belief that he is somehow different then I am, how can you know for sure?

“I know him, I know he would never do anything to hurt someone and enjoy it.”

Are you sure about that?

“I trust him.”

Are you sure that’s a good idea? He might not be worth trusting. He’s the same as me you know.

It was then that she turned her eyes and saw her captors face, the mouth twisted up in a mocking grin. As she stared in shock the grin grew crueler and the truth more undeniable. “Ekin.”