Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Secrets ❯ own self be truth ( Chapter 9 )

just a little note: my ISP stopping being an ISP suddenly on Friday and I have been working on getting a new one. That has slowed down the writing so if the chapters slow down a bit you will understand why. I hate having to change stuff up. YUCK.

 

 

 

 

SECRETS 07: own self be truth

 

 

 

He was really starting to hate this. Every time he touched something from that base, he wound up unconscious in someone's arms. This time it was Wufei and Heero who had caught him. This was getting old, fast.

 

“You can open your eyes now.” Heero's softly spoken words made him blink. The boy actually sounded gentle.

 

Opening his eyes, he found himself looking up at everyone. Heero was behind him, cradling him against his chest, while Wufei was in front of him, his hands on his arms. Trowa and Quatre stood behind Wufei, both with eyes glued to him in concern, though with Trowa it was something felt not seen.

 

“Hi guys.” Duo smiled, hoping to defuse the situation, whatever that was.

 

“Maxwell, what the hell happened?” Anger radiated off Wufei like fire and Duo could see his dragon side emerging.

 

“Um. . . I think that it bit me?” Duo gasped as Heero suddenly dropped him and stood up, making everyone move back. “Hey!”

 

“Duo, that was not like before.” Quatre helped him up off the floor. “What happened?'

 

Duo shrugged. “I think that it was some one. Once.”

 

“What?” Wufei looked over at the cloudy black in the glass. It swirled within it's container, seemingly at peace. “How?”

 

Duo shrugged as he rubbed his arms, warding off the chill as he stepped toward the beaker. Before the others could stop him, he tapped a finger against the glass and jerked as the blackness began to swirl angrily, nearly tipping the glass container over.

 

“Duo, be careful.” Trowa caught the glass and set it away from the edge. It felt warm to his touch, which was odd since it wasn't heated. Trowa looked close at the substance. It greeted his glance with a caress of the glass before slipping into the center like a thin thread.

 

“Is that why there was so much pain?” Quatre came to stand by Duo, who's eyes never left the beaker. “It was a real person?”

 

Duo nodded absently as he tried to analyze all the things he'd gleaned in that one instant before pain drove him back. “It's not like the shadows I commanded on the base. It's old. Older than anything I've ever felt. Possibly someone from before colony.”

 

Heero frowned as he looked at the thin thread of black. “Before colony? Then they didn't create it in the lab on that base.”

 

Wufei picked through the stuff on the table in thought. “What about the rest of this stuff? We know that the system was created by WEI and was only in the testing phase; so how did they get it?”

 

Quatre looked over the boxes. “The targeting system is all. . .” sigh “. . . was all kept in a locked down facility on one of the resource satellites near L4. Few knew about it since it was going to be used strictly on the Mars project to keep the planet safe from meteors.”

 

Duo reached out and took the torn piece of metal that Wufei held. Instantly he could see the men who were working on it. They were simple scientist and techs with no malicious feeling at all. In fact their echoes were very weak, meaning they hadn't touched this piece since they completed it. Throwing it aside, he moved on to the others that were in the same box.

 

“Duo?'

 

Piece after piece was picked up and tossed aside with the same results. All of them bore faded echoes of the time when they were put together. None held any other truth.

 

“Duo?” Heero pulled Duo around and forced him to face him. “What are you doing?”

 

Blinking rapidly to remove the last echo, Duo met Heero's eyes. “The components have no residual echoes except for those they received when they were built. There is nothing from whoever or whatever stole it. These were all assembled on that base, no where else.”

 

“That's impossible.” Quatre whispered, his hand going to his heart in confusion.

 

 

“We need more information.”

 

Trowa's words prompted Heero to his lab top, which was never far from his side. It took no time for him to make his way through all the security of the system and into the records concerning the base and the faction they'd been sent to take down.

 

While he became absorbed into his work, the others put the components back in the boxes and labeled them with numbers and codes. Duo skirted around the beaker, while Wufei and Trowa placed it more securely on the counter, away from the edge.

 

Quatre watched the self-proclaimed God of Death as he moved around the boxes. Touching things within before settling once again on the beaker.

 

“Duo? Is something wrong?”

 

Duo jumped. He hadn't heard Quatre come up behind him. The black cloud moved inside the glass like a small fish seeking . . . something.

 

“How do you think they got the tracking system?” He asked quietly, his eyes glued to the glass container.

 

“What do you mean?” Quatre watched the container leerily. He hadn't liked the feeling he'd gotten from it before and knew he didn't want to touch it now.

 

“I mean.” Duo sighed and stood to face the blonde. “They left behind no residue. Nothing to suggest that they stole the actual machine. There were no alarms going off in your company and no alerts were sounded from the stations. If they didn't steal it, how did they get it?”

 

“They built it.” Everyone turned to look at Heero as he gestured toward his lab top. “I have records of the component sales to several members of the faction. It looks like all the boards we have here and a few that probably were completely destroyed. They built it themselves.”

 

“That's not possible.” Quatre moved to look over Heero's shoulder. “The model is locked up and the schematics are encoded. No one could just steal them. They would have to download from the main computer and then break the encryption. I used a different encryption code for each phase and then locked them all under one of our Gundam codes; no one could break into it.”

 

Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei all gathered around Heero as he went through the steps the group took to purchase the components.

 

“They didn't even bother to hide their actions.” He pointed out. “They made innocent purchases for what could have been a computer or a communications bank. It wouldn't have raised any kind of alerts since all of these aren't even considered dangerous when combined.”

 

Duo sighed and leaned against the table, his arms folded, with his back to the beaker as he listened to his friends talk. They were getting more questions than answers with each step they took. Shaking his head, he cleared the images from his mind and turned to look at the black cloud. He knew, as much as he hated it, that the answers lay with it.

 

“I'm telling you, Heero, not even you could get into that file without being detected.” Quatre argued.

 

Duo reached for the beaker and carefully wrapped his hand around the glass. There was no feeling here, no echoes, only mildly warm to the touch.

 

“Well, they got it some how.” Wufei contended. Pointing to the screen, he added. “They knew exactly what to buy and where to find it. Some of it they purchased directly from WEI.”

 

The black cloud expanded to encompass the whole glass as Duo lifted it carefully. That was weird, it made the glass feel soft- almost pliable.

 

“Perhaps there's a mole within the company?” Trowa speculated.

 

“No!” Quatre shouted, his voice laced with frustration. “There were only four people who even knew what the whole thing would be once put together and they're all in this room. Now unless one of you. . .”

 

“Shit!”

 

Everyone turned in time to see the beaker fall. Duo jerk as the glass broke and the cloud rose around him.

 

“Duo!” “NO!”

 

They other pilots seemed frozen as they watched their friend freeze in place, head thrown back, eyes closed. The cloud danced around his hands, caressing palms and weaving between fingers, slowly at first and then faster.

 

“Oh God.” Quatre moaned. Clenching his chest, he went down to his knees.

 

Heero caught the smaller boy as Trowa and Wufei rushed to Duo's aid.