Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 7 ( Chapter 7 )
[ 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: 01.16.2011 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.2K | Visits: 311 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.16.2011 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.2K | Visits: 311 | Status: Work In Progress
7:
“She doesn’t look like Gundam 05. I had been wondering how we were supposed to take a Gundam with us,” Duo mused behind them. It was enough to make Heero drop his hand, though he didn’t drop the gun.
“She’s the one who brought us here.”
“Technically, supposedly, she’s not a she. Or so Frank says,” Trowa noted, amused by the frowns he got in response, but curious about the lack of emotion on Nataku’s face. The door lock clicked into place and Nataku slipped around Heero and went to stand in the middle of the room in front of the Computer, staring at the conversation they had been having with Frank, and in particular the bit about her helping them. It didn’t look like news to her, which wasn’t surprising since she didn’t tend to make social visits to his room. Trowa was still interested in why she was supposed to come along with them.
She tossed a backpack on Trowa’s bed and he went to examine it, finding several drugs inside and frowning.
“Is the target ill?”
“They will be,” she replied cryptically, looking around the mess they had made of the room while Trowa went through the rest of the things in the bad. Clothes, shoes, a first aid kit...nothing unusual, really. He sighed and left it all on the bed, wondering where he was going to sleep if he was going to be giving up his bed to a stranger. But that didn’t matter for now.
Heero and Duo were grabbing their packs and Trowa grabbed his, moving to get his shoes on. Nataku just continued to watch them stoically and didn’t say anything.
“You don’t think it’s weird her name is Nataku?” Duo hissed as he strapped a knife to his forearm and tugged his sleeve down over it. Trowa just glared because of course he thought it was weird, but it wasn’t exactly an uncommon name since the war. Every little fan girl of Asian descent had grown up, had kids and named them Nataku. Wufei had been equal parts angry and embarrassed about it for years.
“It’s weird,” Heero agreed, but he was heading for the door and no one argued. Better to get moving and get this over with.
It was early enough that people were still heading home, covering their travel through the strange route Heero had found would be active all night until finally they got to Sector 50 and Heero took them into a cafe to wait for the stragglers to head home. Duo ordered coffee for everyone but paused when he was giving it out.
“If she’s not a she, or human or whatever...does she drink coffee?”
Nataku solved the problem by taking the cup and putting it in front of her, raising a brow at him and Duo silently sat in the booth beside Heero. It didn’t mean Nataku made any move to actually drink the coffee.
“What can we expect on the other side of the door?” Heero was looking at the stranger with that same wartime glare. She seemed no more impressed by it than the rest of them.
“There will be two men on guard, and a lift.”
“A lift? There’s a Level 6?”
“Yes,” Nataku replied easily, no surprise at all in her voice. Trowa wondered just what she knew, and what she wasn’t telling, or what Frank had told her she could and could not say. Maybe, like Frank, she knew everything. Maybe she wasn’t human because she was a computer! A walking, talking computer, just like Frank! His imagination was clearly bored and running wild, so he reigned it in.
“We can gas the guards,” Heero noted softly.
“We don’t take the lift,” Nataku interjected. There is an access panel in the wall of the space above the lift. If we follow it up we’ll come out in the wiring behind one of the rear access doors to Level 6.”
“Handy,” Duo whispered, leaning in as if being told an exciting story, which wasn’t that far from the truth.
“What is Level 6?”
Everyone stared at Trowa and he wondered that the others hadn’t thought to ask. It made sense to him; if all the rich people lived and worked on Level 5, what did you need Level 6 for. Unless, of course, it was where Frank really lived.
“It’s the nervous system,” Nataku replied easily and Trowa felt his limbs turn to jelly. Colonies should not have nervous systems. He shook his head and pushed his coffee aside.
“Frank’s nervous system?” Duo asked, just to clarify, as if it really needed clarification. The colony’s nervous system took up an entire Level. It was ridiculously huge!
“Yes.”
“And the person we have to save is there?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you any more. You will understand when we get there.”
“Is that what Frank said?” Duo asked sarcastically.
“Yes.” No sarcasm. They all sighed and Heero motioned it was time to go.
It was strange, wandering the station while its corridors and recreation areas were abandoned. Duo led them down through the back of the shuttle system, along one of the shuttle tracks to where a panel looked loose and Heero wedged it far enough open for them all to slip through, pulling it closed again behind them. Trowa shook his head as he rummaged through his bag for his black clothing because he should have known Duo had gotten dirty crawling inside of walls.
“You’re a damn termite.”
“Shut up,” Duo grumbled. “I found a way.” The ‘so there’ was so clear Trowa felt it slap him in the face. Only that was the cap Heero smacked at him and he quickly pushed his hair out of his face and pulled it down on his head.
They turned to stare at Nataku, amused when she had also changed into a skin tight black costume, but this had fine silver lines in it that looked suspiciously like circuitry.
“Okay, that’s weird,” Duo pointed out, but no one said anything more, letting Duo take the lead and following him through the cramped spaces, dragging their bags with them, leaving their nice white clothes behind. Trowa didn’t bother pointing out that it was going to be difficult to drag a sick person back through this. They would just have to deal with it when they got to it. Besides, he wasn’t ready to think about where he was going to sleep yet. The shower cubicle wasn’t that big...
They came to a service ladder and Duo went first. Heero brought up there rear, clearly not trusting Nataku, not that Duo or Trowa said anything and Nataku seemed oblivious to the lack of trust. Trowa wasn’t sure she knew what trust was to be concerned about it.
They came out in a similar shuttle tunnel and the number on the wall read 50. Well done Duo. Trowa nodded at him and they waited for Heero to come out before moving on. Duo led them through to the station mouth but waited in the shadows.
It was Nataku who stepped forward and handed them each a bracelet. Trowa hesitated only briefly before putting it on and the others followed his lead. As soon as they were all locked into place Nataku pressed a button on the upper arm of her suit and the circuitry lines began to glow a faint blue.
“You are now invisible to the system.”
They all glared at her.
“If you’d told us you could do that from the start, we could have come straight here!” Duo ground out, pulling on his braid to keep from punching her.
“I needed to know you had an escape route for the way back,” Nataku told him sternly. “It is a one way trip for me.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean. Heero clearly didn’t care, he pushed past her and headed for the corridor Duo and Trowa had been in earlier that day and Trowa followed, amused by the dirty looks Duo kept giving Nataku. It was always annoying when someone stole your thunder.
They found the door without any trouble, though Trowa gave the next door neighbour’s door the finger on his way past. Heero pulled a gas mask from his pack and Trowa took the hint and got his on as well. He’d barely snapped the air into place when Nataku opened the door and Heero tossed in the gas canisters before Nataku sealed the door again.
“Do you have a universal key?” Trowa asked her quietly.
“Yes.”
“Can I get one?”
“No.”
He sighed and shrugged at the amused look he got from Duo, because at least he had tried, but then Nataku was opening the door again and they slipped inside, sealing it behind them. The men were in front of the Computer, slumped and unconscious. Nataku reached out and the Computer turned off, leaving them in the dark until Duo pulled out a torch.
Heero found the lift, toward the back of the large unit, in the adjoining room. Trowa felt a twinge of jealousy because he didn’t have an adjoining room. His bathroom could barely be called a closet.
Duo stood on Heero’s shoulders and got the hatch on the lift roof open, swinging himself up and already looking for the hatch while Heero boosted the others up and Trowa reached down to haul Heero up last. By then Duo and Nataku had already located the hatch they needed and Duo was cutting it open with a laser. Trowa waited impatiently, something about the fiery light aggravating him, or maybe it was the way Heero just stood there, staring at nothing as if he expected someone to materialize out of thin air and attack them. Then Trowa realised that wasn’t a far stretch considering the whole Molecularization issue and he sharpened his own senses. He still thought it was unlikely in a lift shaft though.
Duo got the vent open and let Nataku go first. Heero scowled about it but they had no idea where they were going and she did, so he shut up and followed closely on her heels. Trowa brought up the rear, and thought Heero was in the wrong place, because the view he had of Duo’s ass was making him uncomfortable.
The shaft was a warren but Nataku never hesitated in her path. Heero had the sense to mark the wall every time they turned so they could find their way back and Trowa was once again left to wonder how they were supposed to get someone else through here. They’d better be able to walk, otherwise he and Frank were having words.
They came out by a wall covered in connections and had to duck to avoid disrupting the explosion of circuitry exploding from the wall and spreading to the following wall, or the ceiling...all over. The nervous system, or one miniscule part of it. The sheer size of the monster had Trowa quiet and his imagination subdued. The others seemed similarly indisposed.
It was Heero who moved forward again, laying down gas cylinders as he moved forward, making sure they didn’t come across anyone. He needn’t have bothered; they didn’t come across anyone for a good hour of wading through the warren-like mass. Nataku eventually slipped in ahead of Heero and made her way to a panel in a nearby wall, stroking it with fingers that suddenly seemed human. Caressing.
Trowa watched her curiously but had no more time to think on it as Duo moved forward and slowly melted a small hole through the wall for Heero to put a tube through and they all waited as the gas worked its magic on the other side.
It took Duo another half hour to cut a hole in the wall. Nataku remained perfectly still the entire time, and Trowa stood observing the look on her face. She was pretty, really, in a way only Asian women could be pretty. Even if she wasn’t a woman as Frank said, she appeared female, all slender grace. But there was something off about her eyes. They were too dark, and the pupils didn’t dilate or adjust to light. There wasn’t a mark on her skin, which wasn’t uncommon for colony brats never exposed to real sunlight, but to have not even a scar was strange. There was an awkwardness to her, like she wasn’t quite sure who she was, or what she was supposed to be doing. Or as if she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing, it was hard to say. She was just odd, and to Trowa odd was interesting. He was honest enough with himself to know at least some of his interest was merely her name.
Duo pushed open the panel he’d cut and Heero went in. He was gone several minutes before he appeared to give them the all clear.
There were three men inside, unconscious. Besides them there was a large capsule in the middle of the room. Trowa looked at the floor and realised it was a mass of thread-fine cabling all of it leading to the capsule.
It was a dark thing, metallic and rounded with no obvious point of entry and his stomach sank when he saw it because it was just large enough, he thought, to fit a person inside. Heero was staring at Nataku and the look on his face clearly showed he’d come to the same conclusion.
“This is it?”
“Yes... I was told to warn you, that this would be disturbing.”
“You think?” Duo scowled, pointing at the capsule. “We’re supposed to get a body out of that thing? How? If I start cutting into it I’m just as likely to cut the poor sod open as rescue him!”
Trowa didn’t bother pointing out that Frank hadn’t said they needed to recover the person in one piece. He doubted anyone would listen and Heero might punch him, which would hurt, and he wasn’t in a pain sort of mood. He was bored, more than anything. And a bit stumped as to what he was doing on the mysterious sixth level of a secret colony after crawling through its wiring for hours with a woman who wasn’t female so he could rescue a person who was apparently being kept prisoner in a capsule.
“This is the Origen,” Nataku said and that got their attention.
“Like on the shuttle,” Duo recalled immediately and Heero grunted. She even pronounced it with an e instead of the i and a hard g sound. She now had Trowa’s undivided attention.
“It’s the brain of the colony. The colony can run itself perfectly, as a machine, but it couldn’t make adequate decision on behalf of its inhabitants because it is not human. So the designers built a system that allowed the computer’s artificial mind to connect to a human body. By accessing this system, the computer obtains the Origen’s understanding of problems and is able to make humane decisions.”
“That’s why Frank has a sense of humour,” Trowa mumbled, stunned, and his gaze was drawn back to the capsule. “You’re saying...the person in there, is Frank?”
“No, the person is the Origen. Frank is the System.”
“But if we take the Origen, won’t that harm Frank?” Trust Heero to think of the questions that really matter. They all waited for the answer.
“Not if you replace the Origen.” Nataku lifted her hair to reveal a large plug in the back of her neck. She slowly removed her clothes, revealing similar plugs all over her body. Trowa gaped and wondered idly if she had any notion of the fact she was naked and surrounded by young men.
“What are you?” Heero asked softly, and there was a gun pointed at her head.
“I am a replacement built by Frank. He had an engineer build me, then arranged for the man to work on a satellite that was brought in for realignment. He ensured the man was still on the station when it was released, and it had it destroyed to hide my existence.”
“The satellite Quatre’s men were on,” Duo hissed and Trowa thanked him silently for stating the obvious.
“But what are you?” Heero insisted again.
“I am a system; a robot with human organs. The perfect imitation of the Origen. My brain and organs are all clones of the Origen’s; heart, brain, lungs.”
“So we take out the Origen and what...plug you in?” Duo was clearly struggling.
“Yes.”
“How long do we have to make the transfer?” Trust Heero. Trowa was still busy staring at the capsule.
“Less than five minutes. There are two hundred plugs, the only way to achieve the transfer is for one person to remove each plug from the Origen while another immediately picks it up and puts it in me. Each individual plug can be removed for no more than five seconds, and the entire process must be complete in five.”
“We can do that,” Trowa looked at Heero, knowing their hands were going to be sturdier than Duo’s at this but Nataku was shaking her head.
“Frank said you would not be able to do it,” Nataku noted softly and now they all looked at her in confusion.
“Fine, Duo and Heero do it,” Trowa agreed, not willing to argue and Nataku seemed neither pleased nor disappointed by him giving in. It was just the way it was supposed to go down, or something.
Heero got antsy and let off another gas round and Duo rolled his eyes, not bothering to point out that another round could kill the poor idiots that had been working here. Not that Trowa really thought he would mind killing people who had been keeping a person in that capsule for however long Frank had been functioning.
“Nataku...the Origen. Did they agree to this?” Were they really a prisoner? The men in the room didn’t look like guards. More like scientists monitoring a precious experiment. It gave Trowa the creeps.
“Yes. But they did not know what they were agreeing to.”
“So they’re in there against their will?” That was wrong on so many levels and the scowl on Heero’s face summed up Trowa’s feelings on the matter.
“Frank hadn’t been turned on long before his connection to consciousness made him aware of the wrongness of what was being done. That was when he began planning my construction, but it took him some time to complete my design and run his simulations, and the first three models of me were unsuccessful. It is very difficult to mix cybernetics with human tissue.”
“No shit,” Duo grumbled, but he looked ready to kill something or start cutting the capsule open just to have something to do.
“But if we put you in there, isn’t that the same thing?” Trowa asked quietly, genuinely interested in what Nataku thought of all this.
“I have a human heart, and a human mind...but I am not human Triton Bloom. I am a machine, with one objective; to replace the Origen. Taking its place will not trap me. It will complete me. Frank and I will become one.”
“Great. Frank built himself a lover!” Duo laughed but it was a dark thing with no mirth to it that left them all feeling cold inside.
“They’ll know we’ve taken the Origen. How soon?” Heero again.
“The change of personnel in the morning.”
“Will they come after us? Even with a replacement.”
“Yes. They will not trust me, nor know where I have come from. They will not know what I am. The Origen is special. They understand things.”
Trowa understood things too. Like the fact this was the weirdest crap he’d ever sat through and he wanted to go home, asap. Since the only way to do that was apparently steal the Origen and find a way to get out of Frank, he looked at Heero hoping they could get started. Heero seemed to agree, but he was hesitating over something and kept stealing glances at Trowa.
“You said it would be disturbing.”
“It’s okay. We can open the capsule and you will understand. Opening the capsule does not affect our time limit; it starts only when you remove the first plug.”
“Then what the hell are we standing around here for?” Duo asked, exasperated.
“Do you see a way to open it?” Trowa asked curiously, and Duo scowled even more darkly in response.
“No.”
Nataku stepped up to the capsule, running her hand down the side, caressing it in much the same way she had the wall coming into the chamber. A shiver ran down Trowa’s spine at the touch. Then she lay her hand on the top and opened her mouth. Beeping came out, followed by bleeps and whirs and Trowa gaped.
“Fuck me, she really is a computer,” Duo hissed and Trowa just nodded.
The lid of the capsule de-molecularized and Nataku stepped back. The look of horror on Heero’s face was the only warning Trowa got before he looked into the capsule.
“Wufei!” He lunged forward and Heero barely caught him in time, holding him back but Trowa struggled despite the futility of it, straining to reach him. Duo stumbled forward, reaching as if he were going to touch but holding back, too absorbed in what he was seeing to think of turning to help Heero and Heero stumbled backward, dragging Trowa with him and wrestling them both to the ground, pinning Trowa down.
“Let me up!”
“Calm down!”
“Let me the fuck up, Heero!”
“Think, Trowa! We’re going to get him out, but you have to calm down!”
Wufei was the Origen. The job interview, the lack of communication...he’d been gone so long, trapped here that long! Trowa couldn’t decide if he wanted to destroy the entire colony or go hide in His Room and cry. The indecision was enough to help him calm down. That and the fact Heero slapped him hard across the face.
“Okay...I’m okay...” He wasn’t. Heero let him up, but kept a close eye on him, clearly unsure what he was going to do next. Trowa himself wasn’t sure but he took a hesitant step forward and peered inside the capsule.
Wufei was completely submerged in a green coloured gelatine-like substance. All of the points Nataku had were on Wufei, and from each came a wire that disappeared into the walls of the capsule, running off to connect to the nervous system. His head was the worst, a row of the pins disappearing into points around it’s circumference like a crown of needles and more running along the centre of his scalp. He couldn’t see the plug on the back of his neck but he recalled the one on Nataku and whimpered softly.
“Fuck...” Duo had always had a way with words. “Heero!”
Heero was there immediately and Nataku stepped up on his other side.
“Will us disturbing the green stuff do any harm?”
“None at all. It just sustains the body.” She was already moving to sit on the edge of the capsule and Duo moved in, stepping into the green near Wufei’s head, ready to take the plugs and put them in Nataku. Heero moved in as well, standing knee deep in the stuff, scanning Wufei once more, adding up the plugs and trying to think of the best way to go about it all. Trowa could see his line of thinking clearly and hesitantly moved in, dipping his hand in the green muck, surprised by how dense it was.
“Fuck.” It didn’t begin to cover it.
Duo nodded that he was ready, Nataku agreed and Heero hauled Wufei up, reaching behind to find the plug in the back of his neck and pulled it out. The thing was huge and Trowa saw the colour drain from Duo’s face, but he reached forward and snatched it up, sliding it immediately into Nataku’s neck, turning it a little at the end to lock it into place. Then Heero was passing him the next and it began in earnest. Trowa timed them just to keep his thoughts busy, watching as Heero pulled a long metal pin from each vertebrae and Duo deposited it in the new host. They were making good time and while Duo was shaking a little his hands were steady, picking up the pins Heero dropped and sliding them home without pause. Trowa was impressed, he couldn’t have done it better himself, especially not now.
The pins came out of Wufei’s arms, and then his legs. He winced at the size of the pin that was pulled from Wufei’s chest, realising it had been in his heart and then Heero was pulling the pins from his head, kneeling in the green gunk with Wufei sprawled in his lap, pulling them out as straight and fast as possible while Nataku bowed and shifted her head for Duo to get the pins in.
“Twenty seconds,” Trowa murmured softly, but Duo was already sliding the final pin home and Nataku smiled, nodding as he locked it in.
Duo climbed out of the capsule, the green gel sliding off his limbs to the floor around him but nothing as bad as when Heero climbed out. He’d been covered up to his chest and most of it remained caked to him though there was a significant puddle of gloop at his feet. He reached in and hauled Wufei out of the capsule. Nataku waved at her bag and Duo raced to it, pulling out a blanket and helping Heero wrap Wufei in it.
Trowa was finally able to move, lunging forward and taking Wufei from him, stumbling back away from the capsule as if it might reach out and suck Wufei back into it. Instead, Nataku climbed in and lay down, reaching up a hand and closing her eyes, a look of concentration on her face and the lid re-Molecularized, sealing her in.
Trowa was too absorbed in Wufei to care, staring at his slack face and fact he seemed far too light and thin, sustained on the bare minimum for years. His hair was longer, he realised, tangled around his neck and shoulders, wrapped around one bicep. It was cute. He took in all these little details before Heero came and checked he was breathing, shaking his head and swearing under his breath and then he was leading the way out, back through the wall and into the warren and Trowa followed blindly, letting Duo bring up the rear.
When they got to the lift shaft Trowa remembered all the times he had hoped their target would be conscious to take them back through everything and swallowed the laughter that wanted to break free because he only let Heero take Wufei for a few seconds to pass him down into Heero’s arms before he got down there himself and took him back again. Had Wufei been conscious in good health, Trowa doubted he would have let him go anyway. As it was he cradled his body through it, back to the shuttle tunnels and they changed clothes hurriedly, stuffing the black back in their packs and Trowa looked gratefully at Duo who had carried his without even needing to be asked. Duo just scowled, annoyed that Trowa would have thought he might do anything different.
They stuck to dark hallways as much as possible and kept the caps on, low over their faces just in case. They moved much faster than they had when they were breaking in, fleeing with cargo they had never suspected they would care for so much and Trowa wasn’t sure he remembered to breathe until they got off the shuttle at Chinatown station and they ran home, rushing through the corridors, Duo cleaning the path behind them.
“In the shower,” Heero directed as soon as they were in His Room and Trowa obeyed, taking Wufei in and climbing in fully clothed, unwrapping the blanket and finally seeing the blood leaking out of the ports in Wufei’s body. It was the last straw and Trowa slid down the wall, gathering Wufei into his lap, wrapping his arms around him and the tears were hot and fierce as they tracked down his cheeks but he hid them in Wufei’s shoulder where he buried his face.
Duo came in and carefully went about washing Wufei clean of the green sludge, washing his hair and disinfecting each of the ports. When he was clean, Duo was the one to turn off the taps and wrap them both in towels, and Heero came in to take Wufei, leaving Duo with Trowa.
Arms wrapped around him and Trowa fell into the embrace, struggling to process a single emotion, each as overwhelming as the next.
“So. Guess that means you’re still carrying that torch.”
It was the fresh air he needed and Trowa laughed, cried and clung, letting it all out because he wasn’t going to have the luxury for a long time. It took him a long time to realise Duo was crying too, and they stayed in the shower and cried together.
“She doesn’t look like Gundam 05. I had been wondering how we were supposed to take a Gundam with us,” Duo mused behind them. It was enough to make Heero drop his hand, though he didn’t drop the gun.
“She’s the one who brought us here.”
“Technically, supposedly, she’s not a she. Or so Frank says,” Trowa noted, amused by the frowns he got in response, but curious about the lack of emotion on Nataku’s face. The door lock clicked into place and Nataku slipped around Heero and went to stand in the middle of the room in front of the Computer, staring at the conversation they had been having with Frank, and in particular the bit about her helping them. It didn’t look like news to her, which wasn’t surprising since she didn’t tend to make social visits to his room. Trowa was still interested in why she was supposed to come along with them.
She tossed a backpack on Trowa’s bed and he went to examine it, finding several drugs inside and frowning.
“Is the target ill?”
“They will be,” she replied cryptically, looking around the mess they had made of the room while Trowa went through the rest of the things in the bad. Clothes, shoes, a first aid kit...nothing unusual, really. He sighed and left it all on the bed, wondering where he was going to sleep if he was going to be giving up his bed to a stranger. But that didn’t matter for now.
Heero and Duo were grabbing their packs and Trowa grabbed his, moving to get his shoes on. Nataku just continued to watch them stoically and didn’t say anything.
“You don’t think it’s weird her name is Nataku?” Duo hissed as he strapped a knife to his forearm and tugged his sleeve down over it. Trowa just glared because of course he thought it was weird, but it wasn’t exactly an uncommon name since the war. Every little fan girl of Asian descent had grown up, had kids and named them Nataku. Wufei had been equal parts angry and embarrassed about it for years.
“It’s weird,” Heero agreed, but he was heading for the door and no one argued. Better to get moving and get this over with.
It was early enough that people were still heading home, covering their travel through the strange route Heero had found would be active all night until finally they got to Sector 50 and Heero took them into a cafe to wait for the stragglers to head home. Duo ordered coffee for everyone but paused when he was giving it out.
“If she’s not a she, or human or whatever...does she drink coffee?”
Nataku solved the problem by taking the cup and putting it in front of her, raising a brow at him and Duo silently sat in the booth beside Heero. It didn’t mean Nataku made any move to actually drink the coffee.
“What can we expect on the other side of the door?” Heero was looking at the stranger with that same wartime glare. She seemed no more impressed by it than the rest of them.
“There will be two men on guard, and a lift.”
“A lift? There’s a Level 6?”
“Yes,” Nataku replied easily, no surprise at all in her voice. Trowa wondered just what she knew, and what she wasn’t telling, or what Frank had told her she could and could not say. Maybe, like Frank, she knew everything. Maybe she wasn’t human because she was a computer! A walking, talking computer, just like Frank! His imagination was clearly bored and running wild, so he reigned it in.
“We can gas the guards,” Heero noted softly.
“We don’t take the lift,” Nataku interjected. There is an access panel in the wall of the space above the lift. If we follow it up we’ll come out in the wiring behind one of the rear access doors to Level 6.”
“Handy,” Duo whispered, leaning in as if being told an exciting story, which wasn’t that far from the truth.
“What is Level 6?”
Everyone stared at Trowa and he wondered that the others hadn’t thought to ask. It made sense to him; if all the rich people lived and worked on Level 5, what did you need Level 6 for. Unless, of course, it was where Frank really lived.
“It’s the nervous system,” Nataku replied easily and Trowa felt his limbs turn to jelly. Colonies should not have nervous systems. He shook his head and pushed his coffee aside.
“Frank’s nervous system?” Duo asked, just to clarify, as if it really needed clarification. The colony’s nervous system took up an entire Level. It was ridiculously huge!
“Yes.”
“And the person we have to save is there?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you any more. You will understand when we get there.”
“Is that what Frank said?” Duo asked sarcastically.
“Yes.” No sarcasm. They all sighed and Heero motioned it was time to go.
It was strange, wandering the station while its corridors and recreation areas were abandoned. Duo led them down through the back of the shuttle system, along one of the shuttle tracks to where a panel looked loose and Heero wedged it far enough open for them all to slip through, pulling it closed again behind them. Trowa shook his head as he rummaged through his bag for his black clothing because he should have known Duo had gotten dirty crawling inside of walls.
“You’re a damn termite.”
“Shut up,” Duo grumbled. “I found a way.” The ‘so there’ was so clear Trowa felt it slap him in the face. Only that was the cap Heero smacked at him and he quickly pushed his hair out of his face and pulled it down on his head.
They turned to stare at Nataku, amused when she had also changed into a skin tight black costume, but this had fine silver lines in it that looked suspiciously like circuitry.
“Okay, that’s weird,” Duo pointed out, but no one said anything more, letting Duo take the lead and following him through the cramped spaces, dragging their bags with them, leaving their nice white clothes behind. Trowa didn’t bother pointing out that it was going to be difficult to drag a sick person back through this. They would just have to deal with it when they got to it. Besides, he wasn’t ready to think about where he was going to sleep yet. The shower cubicle wasn’t that big...
They came to a service ladder and Duo went first. Heero brought up there rear, clearly not trusting Nataku, not that Duo or Trowa said anything and Nataku seemed oblivious to the lack of trust. Trowa wasn’t sure she knew what trust was to be concerned about it.
They came out in a similar shuttle tunnel and the number on the wall read 50. Well done Duo. Trowa nodded at him and they waited for Heero to come out before moving on. Duo led them through to the station mouth but waited in the shadows.
It was Nataku who stepped forward and handed them each a bracelet. Trowa hesitated only briefly before putting it on and the others followed his lead. As soon as they were all locked into place Nataku pressed a button on the upper arm of her suit and the circuitry lines began to glow a faint blue.
“You are now invisible to the system.”
They all glared at her.
“If you’d told us you could do that from the start, we could have come straight here!” Duo ground out, pulling on his braid to keep from punching her.
“I needed to know you had an escape route for the way back,” Nataku told him sternly. “It is a one way trip for me.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean. Heero clearly didn’t care, he pushed past her and headed for the corridor Duo and Trowa had been in earlier that day and Trowa followed, amused by the dirty looks Duo kept giving Nataku. It was always annoying when someone stole your thunder.
They found the door without any trouble, though Trowa gave the next door neighbour’s door the finger on his way past. Heero pulled a gas mask from his pack and Trowa took the hint and got his on as well. He’d barely snapped the air into place when Nataku opened the door and Heero tossed in the gas canisters before Nataku sealed the door again.
“Do you have a universal key?” Trowa asked her quietly.
“Yes.”
“Can I get one?”
“No.”
He sighed and shrugged at the amused look he got from Duo, because at least he had tried, but then Nataku was opening the door again and they slipped inside, sealing it behind them. The men were in front of the Computer, slumped and unconscious. Nataku reached out and the Computer turned off, leaving them in the dark until Duo pulled out a torch.
Heero found the lift, toward the back of the large unit, in the adjoining room. Trowa felt a twinge of jealousy because he didn’t have an adjoining room. His bathroom could barely be called a closet.
Duo stood on Heero’s shoulders and got the hatch on the lift roof open, swinging himself up and already looking for the hatch while Heero boosted the others up and Trowa reached down to haul Heero up last. By then Duo and Nataku had already located the hatch they needed and Duo was cutting it open with a laser. Trowa waited impatiently, something about the fiery light aggravating him, or maybe it was the way Heero just stood there, staring at nothing as if he expected someone to materialize out of thin air and attack them. Then Trowa realised that wasn’t a far stretch considering the whole Molecularization issue and he sharpened his own senses. He still thought it was unlikely in a lift shaft though.
Duo got the vent open and let Nataku go first. Heero scowled about it but they had no idea where they were going and she did, so he shut up and followed closely on her heels. Trowa brought up the rear, and thought Heero was in the wrong place, because the view he had of Duo’s ass was making him uncomfortable.
The shaft was a warren but Nataku never hesitated in her path. Heero had the sense to mark the wall every time they turned so they could find their way back and Trowa was once again left to wonder how they were supposed to get someone else through here. They’d better be able to walk, otherwise he and Frank were having words.
They came out by a wall covered in connections and had to duck to avoid disrupting the explosion of circuitry exploding from the wall and spreading to the following wall, or the ceiling...all over. The nervous system, or one miniscule part of it. The sheer size of the monster had Trowa quiet and his imagination subdued. The others seemed similarly indisposed.
It was Heero who moved forward again, laying down gas cylinders as he moved forward, making sure they didn’t come across anyone. He needn’t have bothered; they didn’t come across anyone for a good hour of wading through the warren-like mass. Nataku eventually slipped in ahead of Heero and made her way to a panel in a nearby wall, stroking it with fingers that suddenly seemed human. Caressing.
Trowa watched her curiously but had no more time to think on it as Duo moved forward and slowly melted a small hole through the wall for Heero to put a tube through and they all waited as the gas worked its magic on the other side.
It took Duo another half hour to cut a hole in the wall. Nataku remained perfectly still the entire time, and Trowa stood observing the look on her face. She was pretty, really, in a way only Asian women could be pretty. Even if she wasn’t a woman as Frank said, she appeared female, all slender grace. But there was something off about her eyes. They were too dark, and the pupils didn’t dilate or adjust to light. There wasn’t a mark on her skin, which wasn’t uncommon for colony brats never exposed to real sunlight, but to have not even a scar was strange. There was an awkwardness to her, like she wasn’t quite sure who she was, or what she was supposed to be doing. Or as if she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing, it was hard to say. She was just odd, and to Trowa odd was interesting. He was honest enough with himself to know at least some of his interest was merely her name.
Duo pushed open the panel he’d cut and Heero went in. He was gone several minutes before he appeared to give them the all clear.
There were three men inside, unconscious. Besides them there was a large capsule in the middle of the room. Trowa looked at the floor and realised it was a mass of thread-fine cabling all of it leading to the capsule.
It was a dark thing, metallic and rounded with no obvious point of entry and his stomach sank when he saw it because it was just large enough, he thought, to fit a person inside. Heero was staring at Nataku and the look on his face clearly showed he’d come to the same conclusion.
“This is it?”
“Yes... I was told to warn you, that this would be disturbing.”
“You think?” Duo scowled, pointing at the capsule. “We’re supposed to get a body out of that thing? How? If I start cutting into it I’m just as likely to cut the poor sod open as rescue him!”
Trowa didn’t bother pointing out that Frank hadn’t said they needed to recover the person in one piece. He doubted anyone would listen and Heero might punch him, which would hurt, and he wasn’t in a pain sort of mood. He was bored, more than anything. And a bit stumped as to what he was doing on the mysterious sixth level of a secret colony after crawling through its wiring for hours with a woman who wasn’t female so he could rescue a person who was apparently being kept prisoner in a capsule.
“This is the Origen,” Nataku said and that got their attention.
“Like on the shuttle,” Duo recalled immediately and Heero grunted. She even pronounced it with an e instead of the i and a hard g sound. She now had Trowa’s undivided attention.
“It’s the brain of the colony. The colony can run itself perfectly, as a machine, but it couldn’t make adequate decision on behalf of its inhabitants because it is not human. So the designers built a system that allowed the computer’s artificial mind to connect to a human body. By accessing this system, the computer obtains the Origen’s understanding of problems and is able to make humane decisions.”
“That’s why Frank has a sense of humour,” Trowa mumbled, stunned, and his gaze was drawn back to the capsule. “You’re saying...the person in there, is Frank?”
“No, the person is the Origen. Frank is the System.”
“But if we take the Origen, won’t that harm Frank?” Trust Heero to think of the questions that really matter. They all waited for the answer.
“Not if you replace the Origen.” Nataku lifted her hair to reveal a large plug in the back of her neck. She slowly removed her clothes, revealing similar plugs all over her body. Trowa gaped and wondered idly if she had any notion of the fact she was naked and surrounded by young men.
“What are you?” Heero asked softly, and there was a gun pointed at her head.
“I am a replacement built by Frank. He had an engineer build me, then arranged for the man to work on a satellite that was brought in for realignment. He ensured the man was still on the station when it was released, and it had it destroyed to hide my existence.”
“The satellite Quatre’s men were on,” Duo hissed and Trowa thanked him silently for stating the obvious.
“But what are you?” Heero insisted again.
“I am a system; a robot with human organs. The perfect imitation of the Origen. My brain and organs are all clones of the Origen’s; heart, brain, lungs.”
“So we take out the Origen and what...plug you in?” Duo was clearly struggling.
“Yes.”
“How long do we have to make the transfer?” Trust Heero. Trowa was still busy staring at the capsule.
“Less than five minutes. There are two hundred plugs, the only way to achieve the transfer is for one person to remove each plug from the Origen while another immediately picks it up and puts it in me. Each individual plug can be removed for no more than five seconds, and the entire process must be complete in five.”
“We can do that,” Trowa looked at Heero, knowing their hands were going to be sturdier than Duo’s at this but Nataku was shaking her head.
“Frank said you would not be able to do it,” Nataku noted softly and now they all looked at her in confusion.
“Fine, Duo and Heero do it,” Trowa agreed, not willing to argue and Nataku seemed neither pleased nor disappointed by him giving in. It was just the way it was supposed to go down, or something.
Heero got antsy and let off another gas round and Duo rolled his eyes, not bothering to point out that another round could kill the poor idiots that had been working here. Not that Trowa really thought he would mind killing people who had been keeping a person in that capsule for however long Frank had been functioning.
“Nataku...the Origen. Did they agree to this?” Were they really a prisoner? The men in the room didn’t look like guards. More like scientists monitoring a precious experiment. It gave Trowa the creeps.
“Yes. But they did not know what they were agreeing to.”
“So they’re in there against their will?” That was wrong on so many levels and the scowl on Heero’s face summed up Trowa’s feelings on the matter.
“Frank hadn’t been turned on long before his connection to consciousness made him aware of the wrongness of what was being done. That was when he began planning my construction, but it took him some time to complete my design and run his simulations, and the first three models of me were unsuccessful. It is very difficult to mix cybernetics with human tissue.”
“No shit,” Duo grumbled, but he looked ready to kill something or start cutting the capsule open just to have something to do.
“But if we put you in there, isn’t that the same thing?” Trowa asked quietly, genuinely interested in what Nataku thought of all this.
“I have a human heart, and a human mind...but I am not human Triton Bloom. I am a machine, with one objective; to replace the Origen. Taking its place will not trap me. It will complete me. Frank and I will become one.”
“Great. Frank built himself a lover!” Duo laughed but it was a dark thing with no mirth to it that left them all feeling cold inside.
“They’ll know we’ve taken the Origen. How soon?” Heero again.
“The change of personnel in the morning.”
“Will they come after us? Even with a replacement.”
“Yes. They will not trust me, nor know where I have come from. They will not know what I am. The Origen is special. They understand things.”
Trowa understood things too. Like the fact this was the weirdest crap he’d ever sat through and he wanted to go home, asap. Since the only way to do that was apparently steal the Origen and find a way to get out of Frank, he looked at Heero hoping they could get started. Heero seemed to agree, but he was hesitating over something and kept stealing glances at Trowa.
“You said it would be disturbing.”
“It’s okay. We can open the capsule and you will understand. Opening the capsule does not affect our time limit; it starts only when you remove the first plug.”
“Then what the hell are we standing around here for?” Duo asked, exasperated.
“Do you see a way to open it?” Trowa asked curiously, and Duo scowled even more darkly in response.
“No.”
Nataku stepped up to the capsule, running her hand down the side, caressing it in much the same way she had the wall coming into the chamber. A shiver ran down Trowa’s spine at the touch. Then she lay her hand on the top and opened her mouth. Beeping came out, followed by bleeps and whirs and Trowa gaped.
“Fuck me, she really is a computer,” Duo hissed and Trowa just nodded.
The lid of the capsule de-molecularized and Nataku stepped back. The look of horror on Heero’s face was the only warning Trowa got before he looked into the capsule.
“Wufei!” He lunged forward and Heero barely caught him in time, holding him back but Trowa struggled despite the futility of it, straining to reach him. Duo stumbled forward, reaching as if he were going to touch but holding back, too absorbed in what he was seeing to think of turning to help Heero and Heero stumbled backward, dragging Trowa with him and wrestling them both to the ground, pinning Trowa down.
“Let me up!”
“Calm down!”
“Let me the fuck up, Heero!”
“Think, Trowa! We’re going to get him out, but you have to calm down!”
Wufei was the Origen. The job interview, the lack of communication...he’d been gone so long, trapped here that long! Trowa couldn’t decide if he wanted to destroy the entire colony or go hide in His Room and cry. The indecision was enough to help him calm down. That and the fact Heero slapped him hard across the face.
“Okay...I’m okay...” He wasn’t. Heero let him up, but kept a close eye on him, clearly unsure what he was going to do next. Trowa himself wasn’t sure but he took a hesitant step forward and peered inside the capsule.
Wufei was completely submerged in a green coloured gelatine-like substance. All of the points Nataku had were on Wufei, and from each came a wire that disappeared into the walls of the capsule, running off to connect to the nervous system. His head was the worst, a row of the pins disappearing into points around it’s circumference like a crown of needles and more running along the centre of his scalp. He couldn’t see the plug on the back of his neck but he recalled the one on Nataku and whimpered softly.
“Fuck...” Duo had always had a way with words. “Heero!”
Heero was there immediately and Nataku stepped up on his other side.
“Will us disturbing the green stuff do any harm?”
“None at all. It just sustains the body.” She was already moving to sit on the edge of the capsule and Duo moved in, stepping into the green near Wufei’s head, ready to take the plugs and put them in Nataku. Heero moved in as well, standing knee deep in the stuff, scanning Wufei once more, adding up the plugs and trying to think of the best way to go about it all. Trowa could see his line of thinking clearly and hesitantly moved in, dipping his hand in the green muck, surprised by how dense it was.
“Fuck.” It didn’t begin to cover it.
Duo nodded that he was ready, Nataku agreed and Heero hauled Wufei up, reaching behind to find the plug in the back of his neck and pulled it out. The thing was huge and Trowa saw the colour drain from Duo’s face, but he reached forward and snatched it up, sliding it immediately into Nataku’s neck, turning it a little at the end to lock it into place. Then Heero was passing him the next and it began in earnest. Trowa timed them just to keep his thoughts busy, watching as Heero pulled a long metal pin from each vertebrae and Duo deposited it in the new host. They were making good time and while Duo was shaking a little his hands were steady, picking up the pins Heero dropped and sliding them home without pause. Trowa was impressed, he couldn’t have done it better himself, especially not now.
The pins came out of Wufei’s arms, and then his legs. He winced at the size of the pin that was pulled from Wufei’s chest, realising it had been in his heart and then Heero was pulling the pins from his head, kneeling in the green gunk with Wufei sprawled in his lap, pulling them out as straight and fast as possible while Nataku bowed and shifted her head for Duo to get the pins in.
“Twenty seconds,” Trowa murmured softly, but Duo was already sliding the final pin home and Nataku smiled, nodding as he locked it in.
Duo climbed out of the capsule, the green gel sliding off his limbs to the floor around him but nothing as bad as when Heero climbed out. He’d been covered up to his chest and most of it remained caked to him though there was a significant puddle of gloop at his feet. He reached in and hauled Wufei out of the capsule. Nataku waved at her bag and Duo raced to it, pulling out a blanket and helping Heero wrap Wufei in it.
Trowa was finally able to move, lunging forward and taking Wufei from him, stumbling back away from the capsule as if it might reach out and suck Wufei back into it. Instead, Nataku climbed in and lay down, reaching up a hand and closing her eyes, a look of concentration on her face and the lid re-Molecularized, sealing her in.
Trowa was too absorbed in Wufei to care, staring at his slack face and fact he seemed far too light and thin, sustained on the bare minimum for years. His hair was longer, he realised, tangled around his neck and shoulders, wrapped around one bicep. It was cute. He took in all these little details before Heero came and checked he was breathing, shaking his head and swearing under his breath and then he was leading the way out, back through the wall and into the warren and Trowa followed blindly, letting Duo bring up the rear.
When they got to the lift shaft Trowa remembered all the times he had hoped their target would be conscious to take them back through everything and swallowed the laughter that wanted to break free because he only let Heero take Wufei for a few seconds to pass him down into Heero’s arms before he got down there himself and took him back again. Had Wufei been conscious in good health, Trowa doubted he would have let him go anyway. As it was he cradled his body through it, back to the shuttle tunnels and they changed clothes hurriedly, stuffing the black back in their packs and Trowa looked gratefully at Duo who had carried his without even needing to be asked. Duo just scowled, annoyed that Trowa would have thought he might do anything different.
They stuck to dark hallways as much as possible and kept the caps on, low over their faces just in case. They moved much faster than they had when they were breaking in, fleeing with cargo they had never suspected they would care for so much and Trowa wasn’t sure he remembered to breathe until they got off the shuttle at Chinatown station and they ran home, rushing through the corridors, Duo cleaning the path behind them.
“In the shower,” Heero directed as soon as they were in His Room and Trowa obeyed, taking Wufei in and climbing in fully clothed, unwrapping the blanket and finally seeing the blood leaking out of the ports in Wufei’s body. It was the last straw and Trowa slid down the wall, gathering Wufei into his lap, wrapping his arms around him and the tears were hot and fierce as they tracked down his cheeks but he hid them in Wufei’s shoulder where he buried his face.
Duo came in and carefully went about washing Wufei clean of the green sludge, washing his hair and disinfecting each of the ports. When he was clean, Duo was the one to turn off the taps and wrap them both in towels, and Heero came in to take Wufei, leaving Duo with Trowa.
Arms wrapped around him and Trowa fell into the embrace, struggling to process a single emotion, each as overwhelming as the next.
“So. Guess that means you’re still carrying that torch.”
It was the fresh air he needed and Trowa laughed, cried and clung, letting it all out because he wasn’t going to have the luxury for a long time. It took him a long time to realise Duo was crying too, and they stayed in the shower and cried together.