Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Mystery of DM ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

See chapter 1 for disclaimer.

"yadda" speaking

`yadda' thoughts

/yadda/ typing

`yadda' mind speech

-

Paul strode onto the deck of the Sweeper ship, heading over to the giant crane. They'd been having some problems with it lately and he wanted to get those minor difficulties cleared before it became something major. `Ah, the perks of being head mechanic,' he thought as he walked over. `Get to choose the jobs I want!' Diana was supposed to arrive today and working on the crane would allow him a clear view of the area. Both he and Howard had warned the crew that the Kid would be coming back home, and that he'd been having a rough time lately, but they didn't say anything about Diana being stuck outside. If that info got out, it was very likely they would never see the Kid again. Something that nobody wanted.

So it came as quite a surprise when he found Diana already sitting at the controls for the crane. Asleep. A state she unfortunately didn't stay in for long as his tools slipped out of numbed fingers to clatter against the deck. "Shit!" Paul stared, not really believing what he was seeing. Diana looked as though she had run a gauntlet of mobile dolls, without a Gundam.

"I take it I look my usual self?" Her voice cracked, fatigue destroying its usual timber.

"Damn Kid. What happened to you?" Paul rushed over and yanked the door open, nearly spilling Diana to the deck. He swiftly helped her regain her balance; however, when she didn't stop swaying he picked her up, throwing her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

"Haven't slept. Haven't felt safe enough till I got here," Diana mumbled. The only muscles still taunt were her hands; they held the duffle bag in a death grip.

"Shit!" Paul swore again, running across the deck to get below, crew members scattering out of his way. He yelled for someone to inform Howard and medical. Someone must have listened; Howard ran around a corner just as Paul reached the small hospital, the door held open by their resident doctor. The doctor, John, started to examine her almost as soon as Paul passed through the door.

Diana began to protest once the new location registered in her exhausted mind. "Just need sleep; I'm not sick."

John smiled, not pausing his examination. "Of course you're not sick, Di. But we need to reassure the fools back there," he gestured at Paul and Howard, "that you are okay." He continued, giving Diana a thorough exam, humming occasionally. Once done, he sat back, balancing on his heels, absently tapping his stethoscope against his pursed lips. Paul finally broke the silence.

"Well? Is it just lack of sleep?" the mechanic demanded.

John looked over, eyes still lost in thought. "Hmm? Oh!" He stopped tapping his lips. "Some slight malnutrition and dehydration but otherwise nothing else. We should hook up an IV…" Diana growled, her eyes hazy with exhaustion. "But I know how the both of you feel about needles so as long as you drink everything I give you until I release you, you'll be fine." John stood, his coat flapping around him as he headed to one of the cabinets lining the walls. With his back to Diana, he mixed up something. Turning around, he presented a glass to Diana. "Drink. I promise there is nothing in here to make you sleep. Just some basics that your body desperately needs." He grinned at Diana's glare, still holding out the glass. With another growl Diana took it from him, draining it in one gulp. She handed the empty glass back to John.

"Can I go to sleep now?" She asked, cranky, voice still cracking.

"Go right ahead. I'll be in my office and will check back in a few hours to see how you're doing." He strode out of the room, taking Howard and Paul with him.

"See ya in a few," Paul managed to yell before the door closed. "So, what couldn't you tell the Kid?" He demanded of John.

The doctor sighed. "It's nothing that some rest, real rest, can't fix. Truefully." Paul and Howard glanced at eachother then simultaneously turned their gaze upon John, disbelieving. John sighed again. "Look, their body went through a hell of a lot of stress for the past year. The type that even adult bodies have a hard time recovering from. He had started to heal when this," John waved at the closed door, "happened. Honestly, all the Kid really needs is to take it easy and not push their body."

Paul held up his hands in mock surrender. "Alright, we'll believe you. And we'll make sure Diana doesn't push herself and cause another relapse. Think we should tell the other boys she's safe?" He glanced at Howard, silently indicating it was his decision.

Howard ran his hand over the bald patch on his skull, a nervous gesture he never got rid of. "Yeah, we should. I'll take care of that now. Soon as she's released, get her to her room. I'll talk to her about what she can do to help around here."

"Nothing strenuous!"

"'Course not, Doc." Howard calmed the doctor. "But if we don't give her something to do she'll find a job herself. The Kid hates to sit around doing nothing." With that, Howard headed to his office. He had four worried teenagers to reassure.

-

Heero scowled at his computer. `Two days. Two days and I haven't even decrypted a tenth of this file!' He glared at his computer; he could swear the code was mocking his efforts. The file name had only taken fifteen minutes to crack, giving Heero a brief burst of hope. He had found Duo's journal. That one shining moment wore away as the files code stubbornly refused to co-operate. Quatre, Wufei, and Trowa all avoided Heero; the Wind pilot took this challenge personally. A knock on the door interrupted him as he once more searched for the key to unlock the file. "What?!" he snapped.

The door swung open, Trowa leaning against the frame. "Howard's on the phone." The L3 boys words gave Heero an excuse he didn't consciously realize he needed. Heero stood, leaving his laptop on and followed Trowa to the study. Trowa watched him out of the corner of his eye. "You should take more breaks."

Heero snorted. "I know! It's just…" He let out an explosive breath, his bangs flying up from the escaping air. "Just doesn't seem like the level of work that Duo usually does. It's much more," Heero's voice trailed off as he desperately racked his brain, searching for the proper word.

"Then maybe it wasn't Duo that encrypted it."

"You mean Diana wrote the cipher?" Trowa nodded. "Hmm." Heero's brow creased as he thought hard. "I think you might be right."

Trowa chuckled. "Such high praise; I'm honored." He opened the door to the office, halting any further comments. Heero could see Quatre sitting in front of the vidphone, Wufei standing directly behind him. Howard's voice could be heard crackling over the speakers.

"Oh, you're all here; wish I was seeing the four of you under better circumstances."

"Howard said he had some news about Diana," Wufei informed Heero. The dark haired boy nodded as both he and Trowa moved to stand on either side of Wufei, forming a semicircle behind Quatre.

"Sure do! She's safe and currently resting…" Whatever else he was going to say became lost as the screen flickered. "What the…" If it was possible to see through the sunglasses, the four young men would have seen Howard's eyes widen in shock and recognition. "Damnit Kid! You're supposed to be asleep!"

Quatre felt a small frown form. "Howard, what are you…" He choked off the rest of his sentence as words began to scroll across the screen, superimposed over Howard's face.

/Sorry Howard, but Duo won't let me go to sleep until I inform the others on two points. First, we're fine. Don't look for us, we'll contact you later. Second, whoever copied that file from Duo's computer has about two minutes to enter this code (a string of letters and numbers, sixteen characters long followed) before their computer melts. Make that one minute now./

"Shimatta!" Heero bolted, racing back to his room, thankful that he had left his laptop on. Blessing his photographic memory, he hastily typed the code. Then frowned as a new phrase appeared on his screen. /Program halted. 24 hours to clear second stage./ Heero felt a growl beginning to form deep in his guts. He ruthlessly squashed the desire as he picked up his laptop, carrying it back to the office.

Thankfully, Diana was still in a talkative mood. On the screen, Howard was leaning back in his chair, watching them over the rim of his sunglasses, clearly amused. Quatre was doing his best to convince Diana to turn on her visual. "Please Diana. You can keep typing your responses, but we really need to see that you're alright," Quatre pleaded. Heero thanked the stars that he couldn't see the look that came paired with that tone of voice; Quatre always got what he wanted with that combination.

The vidphone's screen flickered again, this time splitting into two images. /Yeah, he did the puppy eyes./ Diana's words now appeared over the right half of the screen. A few seconds later a new image appeared. It was a hospital room with a single bed. Sitting on that bed, a laptop resting on his crossed legs with his back to the camera, was a young man with a very distinctive braid running down his back. /Howard, I don't even want to know why there's a camera in the med lab./ No sounds accompanied the words, making for an eerie situation.

Howard chuckled. "Well, after a certain someone decided to check themselves out without first seeing if they were finally okay…" He shrugged.

/Okay, you've made your point. So, you can see I'm fine, I've told all of you those two points, can I go to sleep now?/

"Wait!" Heero placed his laptop down beside the phone. "How did you know we went into Duo's computer? How did that program get onto my system; the file was clean when I checked it! And what is the code for the second stage?!" Heero's voice rose steadily until he shouted his last question.

"Easy Heero." Howard attempted to defuse the situation before it got out of hand. They could see Diana shift around on the bed until she faced the small camera. Quatre gasped, echoing the sentiment of the others, shocked at how rapidly she had deteriorated in the two days since she had left them. They could also clearly see the headset Diana was wearing. She wasn't typing her replies, she was speaking them. Quatre's heart tightened at this blatant display of mistrust. She opened her mouth to speak, answering Heero's questions.

/Any activity on Duo's computer is recorded and automatically sent to mine unless the stop code is entered before his computer is shut down. And the file was clean before you copied it onto your system. However, if you had watched the code as it was copied onto your system, you would have noticed the virus attach itself, moving with the copy to your machine. A watcher program I designed attached it the moment you began the transfer. As for the second code…/ Diana smirked, her fingers busy on the keyboard. Heero watched intently, trying to figure out what she was doing.

"Shit Yuy! She's doing something to your computer!" Wufei shouted, Heero's head snapped to the right, staring incredulously at his laptop. Diana's smirk widened.

/You'll find all of the stages have cleared. Good luck finding the back door my program inserted. And good night./ The screen flickered a final time, returning to showing just Howard's image.

The remaining Gundam pilots looked at eachother, shocked. "Well," Quatre broke the strained silence, "she did say she was better than Duo as far as computers are concerned."

"You're lucky Heero, very, very lucky. She doesn't like people invading either hers or Duo's privacy. You need to thank Duo; he's the only reason why you still have a laptop." Howard still watched them over the rim of his sunglasses, eyes serious. "She's promised to call you boys later so just wait. And I really wouldn't recommend going back onto Duo's computer. Next time she just might let your hardware melt."

"You've seen it happen before," Trowa stated.

Howard nodded. "Right after she designed it. We had an old clunker lying around that I let her use to test it. In 48 hours I had a pile of melted plastic and metal. That virus she designed will override any coolant device then superheats the entire system. Once it begins, there is no way to stop it. Like I said, you are very lucky."

"I wish I could understand why she ran." Quatre absently tugged on the cuff of his right sleeve. "She was willing to co-operate in order to find the Gundams."

"But what did you do right after she offered?"

"We discussed whether or not we should accept her help," Wufei spoke up. "But when we returned to the room, she had already left."

Howard stared intently at Wufei. "You left the room to talk over her offer without her present?" Three of them nodded, Heero the sole exception. Howard sighed, flopping back in the chair. "In other words, you didn't trust her enough to talk in front of her yet you expected her to trust you."

"But," Quatre began.

Howard held up a hand. "You trusted Duo, maybe even Shinigami, but you demonstrated in the clearest possible way that you did not trust Diana."

"If we had talked in front of her," Wufei stepped in to defend Quatre's decision.

"Then she would have listened, answered questions when asked, and let you reach a decision without trying to influence you." Howard pinned each of them with his eyes. "Trust goes both ways. Now you will have to work twice as hard to gain hers."

"But why didn't Duo tell us about her?!" Quatre burst, unable to hold back a question that had been simmering in his mind ever since that night.

"I think I know why." Heero looked up, noting their shocked faces with amusement. "We didn't exactly react well whenever Duo called himself Shinigami. We all assumed it was a mask, a defense to block what he was doing. It's become painfully obvious it wasn't an act. A part of Duo truly is Shinigami. And a part is Diana." Heero glanced at his laptop. "Hopefully the answer to how it happened is in that file." His shoulders slumped slightly. "All I have to do is crack that code."

Howard chuckled. "Lots of luck." The screen darkened as he terminated the call.

Quatre turned around, swiveling the chair 180 degrees. He noticed the expressions on his friends faces and cleared his throat. "I hate to add to the problems we already have, but what are we going to tell Sally and Une? The two of them are coming over today for our checkups."

"We'll have to tell them everything." Trowa stated, staring at the floor. "It's pointless to try to hide the fact that Duo just isn't here."

"And Sally just might be able to help us understand what is going on with Duo. After all, we were going to call her right after we met `Diana'." Wufei contributed. "But it goes no further than those two."

Quatre nodded. "Agreed. Too many people already know about Diana. And while the Maganac's don't know about her, they do know Duo is missing. Heero?" Quatre arched an eyebrow, asking the stoic young man's opinion.

"I see no reason for anyone else to know," Heero agreed. He picked up his laptop, heading out of the room. "Let me know when they arrive," he threw over his shoulder as he walked back to his room.