Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 15 ( Chapter 15 )
[ 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: 01.20.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.2K | Visits: 306 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.20.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.2K | Visits: 306 | Status: Work In Progress
15:
Talking shop basically involved them taking a lot of guesses about how long it would take Quatre to read all the information they had sent, file a report with Une and have her send out a team to get them. From there, it descended into an argument about what their mission was, exactly. Whether their first priority should be getting off the station or whether it should be discovering exactly what Frank was up to, if he was indeed trying to get control of Preventers and maybe make some sort of universal debut as the ruling force over humanity. Trowa and Duo just wanted to jump ship, Heero and Wufei wanted to kill the beast.
In the end, Heero convinced them to do as much as possible before the Preventers team arrived, if it was even coming, which basically meant they had to keep doing what they were already doing. Only, do more as well. Duo was going to infiltrate Level 5 and figure out who the heads of Frank were, what they did for a living, and try and find some leverage over them. Heero was going to work with Wufei to access Frank, which Trowa thought was an epically stupid idea. And Trowa was going to continue his work in Hanger101, making sure they had a way out of Frank when the time came. He was content with his own role, at least.
But it had the strange side effect of making him very reluctant to leave the next morning. He lingered in bed, letting Duo shower first, and just lay, fingers lazily stroking Wufei’s hip, watching him watch him back, wondering for the first time what it would be like to lose this now he finally had it. If Wufei was wondering the same thing, he gave no clue.
Duo stumbling out of the shower, hair a mess over one shoulder, one hand holding his towel on and the other stabbing Heero with a hairbrush got Trowa moving. Seeing Heero Yuy, of all people, being domestic was not helping his mood at all and he showered with hurried efficiency, dressing hap-hazardly and stuffing what he needed for the day into his backpack.
Duo wasn’t ready to go at all, so Trowa made Wufei a pot of tea and left it on the stove to keep warm, taking a cup over to him, amused when Wufei insisted on fluffing his own pillows and getting himself sitting comfortably. He was getting stronger every day and Trowa knew he had to be working at it during the day while he was away. It only made him proud because Wufei was right, he never ran away.
“Just...be careful?” He pleaded softly, brushing the back of his fingers over the bandage on Wufei’s head so there was no mistaking what he was talking about. Wufei just nodded and took the tea and Trowa wondered how careful you could really be when you were sticking pins in your head and connecting to a monster computer with its own agenda. But he was outnumbered in the debate for whether Wufei continued to do it or not, so he had no choice but to sit back and let it happen. Wufei would do what Wufei wanted to do.
He stole a quick kiss while Duo was hurriedly pulling his boots on, grabbing his own bag of goodies and whispering something to Heero. Trowa couldn’t really imagine Heero putting up with someone whispering sweet nothings in his ear, but Duo got a free pass on a lot of things, so he wasn’t completely ruling out the possibility.
Then it was the morning shuttle and cafe routine and by the time Trowa got to his simulator he already felt tired because Tracey had talked their ears off about the Level 5 idiots causing all that fuss over a stolen flower. Sometimes things really did just work out right in the end. Duo was so blown away by the news Tracey felt compelled to sit with them for a good twenty minutes talking all about it and Trowa knew Duo was gathering intel on the situation, but he was also just lapping it up. Once a thief, always a thief.
He stared at the simulator controls in a stupor and when his superior officer came to check on how he was going the man laughed at the bags under his eyes, saying they matched the bruise on his jaw and that he knew getting to fly was exciting but that he should try sleeping sometime. It was good too apparently! Who knew.
He snuck away the first chance he got and went to Hanger101.
Hatty’s eyes were open again and Trowa frowned at her, reaching out to push them closed. She wasn’t even plugged in, so her having muscle function was more than a little disturbing. He plugged in his laptop and booted it up, then went about the process of getting Hatty connected. It was getting easier, and made his stomach turn less and he thought that was a bad sign but there was nothing he could do about it right now.
Everything started just as it should and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief, logging in to his message board and writing Wufei a message, being more careful with what he said than he would have liked because Heero was there.
‘Good Morning, Wufei. I’m just hanging out with Hatty, we’re having a great time. Don’t forget to water the plant and drink lots of tea.’
But not too much tea, they were going to have to start weening him off it soon, but he was putting it off because he didn’t want to watch Wufei suffering a little more each day. But soon...soon he would suck it up and make it happen.
“Hatty?”
How to explain that he had given a name to the half completed earlier model of Wufei’s replacement.
‘Nataku’s predecessor.’ Maybe he could get away with saying the creator had called her that in his notes? But if anyone else ever read the whole thing they would realise he’d made it up. Still, the chances of anyone reading the notes anytime soon were slim, so at least his humiliation would be delayed.
“Right.” Wufei, on the hand, would know he had named it. Oh well.
There were no more messages on the board and he forced himself to forget about Wufei for a while and concentrate on working. Namely, on building a replica of the Pad. Despite having read the manual and the journal notes, and having a perfectly working example to duplicate, it was far from easy and Trowa found himself cursing as he tried even just to find the parts he needed scattered about the workshop. The creator had no sense of ‘tidy’, and was hopeless at breaking things down to the nitty gritty, so Trowa found himself taking small pieces off the Pad and disassembling them, duplicating it one wire at a time.
It was a very time consuming process and by lunch he had barely copied three small components. He took out the energy bar he’d packed for lunch and his bottle of water and sat down next to Hatty, not sure that was a good idea but his stomach didn’t protest too horribly and he nibbled away at the bar while he studied the ports in her body. It still disturbed him to see how intricately each was connected inside, not knowing if they were removable or if Wufei was going to have to learn to live with them. Surely they could find some doctor and scientist crazy enough to figure it out. Sally would help, but she wouldn’t be able to do it alone.
They were thoughts for another time, in the future, when they actually got free of Frank and Trowa convinced Wufei to join him for a little while on his unemployment vacation. Wufei would be joining him whether he liked it or not after the crap he’d put them through.
He finished his energy bar and started poking around at Hatty’s head again, trying to figure out how her eyes kept opening but without taking her face off so he could see the sockets, it was too hard to tell and he wasn’t quite ready to rip the poor girl’s skin off her bones. Instead he logged in to her system and had a look that way, but biological responses were, as he knew from the creator’s notes, entirely separate from her system. It was why she had been discontinued, after all.
He did, however, find several modules in his coding switched off and turned each one on in turn, waiting for changes or responses. There were none, including nothing negative, so he left them on. Whatever they did, it couldn’t hurt to have them active and doing their thing as long as it didn’t interrupt or inhibit his access of the System.
He got back to work duplicating pieces of the Pad, and sent each piece through to His Room, wondering if Wufei or Heero had even noticed the random things popping up under the bed. It was the only place he could think of where no one was going to be standing at any given moment and get mixed up in the Molecularization process.
By the end of the day he hand superficial burns over his hands and up his arms, his fingers ached from twisting wires and shoving them into the tiny places he didn’t have the right tools to reach, and his eyes had the crusty, dry feeling that meant he was going to have to try and get some drops or stop staring at things for extended periods of time.
He was about to start the shutdown processes when the Pad activated and he stared in horror as a man doubled over on it and puked.
The mechanic.
“Damnit,” he muttered to himself but his hand was already reaching for his gun and he held it on the man, just waiting for him to realise he was even there. He supposed he should have known it would take a while, but maybe Nataku was right after all and he was just getting used to the process. The mechanic was clearly not so accustomed to being put back together.
“Bloom?” He squinted at Trowa, making him realise it was dark in the Hanger. His eyes had always adjusted well to light but the few in the Hanger were gloomy things and he hadn’t even bothered to turn them all on. No wonder his eyes were tired.
“You should have left it alone,” Trowa scowled. Because really, what was he supposed to do with the man now?
“What are you doing...where are we?” The man looked around with wide eyes, then caught sight of Hatty and her sisters and Trowa had to sit through another round of puking. And really, who was going to clean that up?
“I could ask you the same question. You inputted your own data into the SiS files?”
“There was no other explanation. I wanted to make it work.” Stubborn, fool of a man! Trowa didn’t want to have to kill him, but he would if he had to. It was a Yuy response to the situation though and he was trying to think of alternatives. He waved the gun in the direction of the tables and the mechanic wasn’t stupid, he walked. Or stumbled really, his legs still not fully recovered from the transition back into substantial being.
“What is this place?” He sat down in one of the chairs and looked around with wide, horrified eyes, his gaze coming back to rest on Hatty and her beating heart. Trowa doubted the colour would be coming back to the man’s face any time soon.
“This is Hanger101.”
“There is no Hanger101,” the mechanic frowned, clearly at odds with himself as he looked around again. Obviously, there was a Hanger101. “I don’t...I don’t understand.”
“The man who built this colony. This is his workshop.”
The mechanic just couldn’t stop his eyes from landing on Hatty and Trowa just waited it out, letting him get used to the idea, going to take a seat in front of the laptop again, gun still ready and pointed at the man in case he got any ideas. It wasn’t like Trowa didn’t need a few minutes to get his own head straight. He hadn’t expected the man to figure it out, though he should have known that once he knew Trowa had succeeded he wouldn’t stop until he figured it out as well. And here they were...what a nuisance.
“This...this is Harry’s workshop?”
“Harry?” Trowa sat up, wishing he’d bothered to ask the monk what his brother’s name was.
“Harrison Jules,” the mechanic whispered, still just staring at Hatty. It was getting annoying really, she was going to get a complex if he wasn’t careful! Girls didn’t like to be stared at, really.
“Harrison Jules?” He would have to check with Farrar and find out if that was indeed his brother. But what the hell was he supposed to do with the mechanic in the meantime?
“He was a friend of mine. He flew the SiS-50 from the broken Pad...But it stopped working and after a while he stopped coming to try and fix it...But he was coming here. Wasn’t he.” It wasn’t a question and Trowa didn’t bother trying to reply. It wasn’t like he actually knew what had happened anyway, he only knew the end of the story and he thought it was pretty obvious.
“He’s dead. Isn’t he.”
“Yes,” it wasn’t a question but Trowa felt the need to give him closure anyway. The man sighed and sat in silence, just looking around the workshop with a sad expression, shaking his head every now and then as if he couldn’t quite believe it.
“He was a good man. So clever...he could do anything. I’m not surprised it was him who made it all, though he never said.”
That still amazed Trowa, that the man had never demanded he be allowed to take credit for the incredible things he had brought to life. Whoever held the purse strings had to have made one hell of a contract to manage it, and even then he didn’t see how it had stopped Harrison Jules, if that was really his name, from telling the world about all his amazing inventions. From telling the universe about Frank. It would have saved Preventers a lot of time and trouble and made his life a lot easier.
Unfortunately he doubted they would have been told about Wufei. Some things happened the way they happened for a reason, Wufei liked to remind him, and maybe this was just one of those times. He had Wufei, so he would be grateful for it, regardless of what happened next.
“The System that runs this colony killed him,” Trowa told him bluntly. The man stared at him with wide eyes and Trowa decided some truth might just save the man’s life, depending on how he took it. So he crossed his legs and got comfortable.
“The System, which I like to call Frank, is trying to get control of Preventers, the peacekeeping force set up by the United Nations Body headed by Relena Peacecraft. You’re familiar with it?”
“Yes, but...what? Why?” Why indeed, when the colony’s goal had always been to remain apart from the rest of the universe.
“I am a Preventer agent. I was sent to investigate the colony, to see what it was and ascertain its purpose. Currently, I believe its purpose to be gaining full control of the human race. The System’s prime directive is to preserve human life...”
“I understand,” the mechanic whispered softly, but he was silent for a long while, absorbing the information. Eventually his gaze returned to Trowa, and more importantly to Trowa’s gun.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
What little colour had returned to the man’s face drained again and Trowa watched his throat swallow knowingly. He was in a very uncomfortable position and Trowa didn’t envy him at all. Of course, Trowa would never have gotten himself into such a stupid position in the first place.
“Do you have a family?”
“No...” He was clearly struggling to decide if he should have said yes, if it might have maybe made a difference. It would have, but only to how Trowa approached the problem. If he’d had one, and Trowa had to kill the man, it also meant he might have had to kill the family and that would have been annoying. Not having a family was always the better option, even when you did have one.
“That’s good,” he reassured the man, or tried to. It was hard to be reassuring when you were pointing a gun at someone. They just didn’t seem to accept you were being sincere.
The really annoying thing was that he was going to be late to dinner, which was, he at least hoped, going to make Wufei worry and the last thing he wanted to do was add to that man’s worries. Even if it felt nice to know he would. He hoped. And Duo would scowl at him all night for making his dinner cold or some such nonsense. It wasn’t even his fault!
He turned to the laptop and hacked into the Level 1 files again, looking at the man expectantly.
“What’s your military detail?”
“2620007622...Giles Hume.”
Trowa typed it in and copied his profile across to his system before clocking the man out for the day and then putting in a sick leave request for tomorrow and approving it.
“Okay, you’ve gone home and tomorrow you are sick,” Trowa informed him, pointing the gun at the hoists Hatty had been attached to. The man blanched but wheeled his chair backward until it was under the chains. Trowa moved in quickly and cuffed him to the chair and hoist, making sure he could move but that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go back to My Room and have dinner, and sleep and then come back here in the morning after my team and I have decided what to do with you.” And yes, he was going to let the man sweat on it all night.
He set the Pad back to register only his details and locked it that way, setting the timer and going about the process of shutting down his laptop so he could get out before he decided killing the man really would just be easier.
He put a cup on the table near the man as he went about unplugging Hatty and the man stared at it for a long time. Then he put his water bottle, which was mostly full beside it and the man frowned.
“The bottle’s for drinking, the cup is for peeing,” Trowa explained and the man slumped, all the fight gone from him. Trowa suspected he would spend the night thinking equally about his dead friend, and how much time he had before he was joining him in death. It wasn’t a completely useless way to spend the night, though Trowa would have looked for a way to escape had their positions been reversed.
“Please...please don’t kill me!”
Trowa stared at him, taking in the quiet demeanour and the pleading look on his face and really, he hadn’t nothing against Giles Hume. He was just a mechanic who let his curiosity get away from him and risked his life for no good reason at all. It wasn’t a good enough reason to kill him and if he was smart and did as he was told Trowa was confident it wouldn’t come to that.
“Don’t give me a reason to.”
He left it at that, going to the Pad as the timer activated and maybe Giles called something out, maybe he didn’t, Trowa had no idea because he was in the shower again, Duo standing in front of him, wide eyed and butt naked.
“Duo...” Duo’s fist smashed into his guts and he toppled backward into the wall.
“Pervert!” Duo bellowed at him and grabbed a towel, charging out of the bathroom. Trowa just slid down the shower wall and rubbed his stomach.
Heero popped his head in and smirked and Trowa just gave him the finger, motioning for the door to close and tossing his backpack out of the shower before turning on the water, fully clothed.
It took a while but his body got over the Molecularization and he eventually stripped off and showered, hanging his wet clothes over the towel rack and dressing in his comfortable house pants and a t-shirt. He was getting really sick of white clothes. When he got home he was going shopping and buying every outrageously coloured piece of clothing he saw.
“Bastard,” he grumbled at Duo when he emerged to find Duo and Heero on the sleeping bag, talking quietly over some folders they had been working on. Duo just shrugged, feeling entirely justified and Trowa glared.
“Okay, from now on, no one showers between six and seven. That’s Molecularization time. I could turn up in there at any time and I do not want to end up merged to one of you.”
“Neither do we,” Duo muttered darkly and Trowa wondered how long it was going to take for him to get over it.
Wufei snickering on the bed wasn’t helping anyone’s mood.
“Duo found the offices of two of the men in charge. They’re old names,” Heero noted softly, holding out one of the folders for Trowa to take and Trowa frowned as he sat on the bed beside Wufei and read the title.
“Noventa? Seriously?” Heero just grunted.
Flipping through the file it was mostly as Trowa had expected, an early history of activism, a son rebelling against a rich family, advocating peace and then a personal tragedy, the loss of a loved one to send them over the rails. The right contacts, a list of names likely to be in the same position and enough money inherited to help buy off a noted scientist. He sighed and handed the folder back, trusting them to read the details and build the right picture. His job was just to get the Pad working.
“I’ve got some good leads on the others. Think I should have the whole list in two...three days tops. Was hard getting around though, they’re fishy about strangers up there now and there’s ridiculous security in place. Even Wufei had trouble getting me through some places.”
That got Trowa’s attention and he studied Wufei as if he might see signs of a struggle on him. There were none and Wufei just smirked, knowing exactly that he was looking for.
“I’m fine, Barton. Stop looking for problems where there aren’t any.”
“Speaking of...” They were all looking at him and he shifted uncomfortably. “Well, the mechanic who originally was trying to fix the broken Pad on Level1?”
“Yes,” Duo droned expectantly, drawing the word out in the same way Trowa was drawing out the conversation.
“His name is Giles Hume.”
“I’m not seeing your point,” Heero noted coldly and really that was obvious from the frown on his face and Trowa just shrugged at them all.
“I’m sort of keeping him prisoner in Hanger101.”
A room full of silence was a very funny thing, but strangely no one was laughing.
“Define sort of,” Duo was very careful with his words and Trowa wondered if he should be as well.
“I mean I have him chained up with a cup to pee in and some water to drink and that I’ll go check on him in the morning.”
Even Wufei was just staring at him now and really, Trowa didn’t see what all the fuss was about. The guy had surprised him, so what. He had more initiative than Trowa had given him credit for, that wasn’t a reason to kill him. They weren’t at war, right now, and he saw no reason to start killing innocent people for the crime of curiosity.
“Kill him,” Heero ordered and you would think that was the end of the conversation.
“No. The man’s an innocent fool. Besides, he’s good with Pads. He can help me.”
“And in the meantime you’ll what? Keep him like a pet? He’s a human being, Trowa!” Duo was horrified, but Trowa didn’t bother pointing out that at least as a pet the man would be alive. In Heero’s scenario he was very much dead, which tended to be a rather irrecoverable state of being.
“What if he gets free?” Wufei asked softly.
“For starters, he won’t get free.” It just wasn’t possible, even if you were Heero. “And secondly, he can’t go anywhere, I took his details off the file, the Pad will only recognise me until someone reprograms it and I took the computer with me.”
“...that was smart,” Wufei admitted and Trowa just rolled his eyes, wondering if they had honestly expected him to do something stupid. Other than tie a man up to keep as a pet in his secret laboratory.
“It’s fine. He’s...he’s a good guy,” Trowa grumbled, not wanting to talk about it anymore. They dropped it and Duo went to the microwave, bringing back a plate of steak and vegetables. Trowa took it gratefully and shifted to the far corner of the bed to eat it, wanting distance from the people who hadn’t done anything since he got back besides punch him and treat him like he was an idiot. They were smart enough to give him his space.
He didn’t even think of looking up again until Wufei got up and went to the kitchenette to make himself a pot of tea. Trowa watched him, noticing the way he still only took small steps and the lack of confidence in those, but he was getting better and he had no trouble lifting the kettle and making the tea, while just a few days ago he would have struggled. So he smiled and took his plate to the sink, brushing his fingers across the back of Wufei’s neck on his way past, liking the way he shivered a little at the touch and looked across at him.
“I watered the plant,” he said softly and Trowa smiled. Whatever he had done with the rest of the day was irrelevant because he had been thinking of Trowa.
“No word from Quatre yet,” Wufei noted softly and Trowa just sighed. He wasn’t surprised, doing the math in his head.
“Even if he’d gotten to the satellite in two hours, which I don’t think he did...” Quatre was too cautious after losing men. He would have waited to see if it blew, then run every scan on it he could think of before going in, and even then... “Even if he’s got the information already, it’ll take Preventers at least 48 hours to get through it all and send a shuttle. And that’ll take at least a couple of days to track us down... I don’t expect to hear anything for at least three days.” And that was if whoever read the report had enough sense to really put all the pieces together.
“I guess,” Wufei grumbled and it was laced with so much unhappiness Trowa frowned and reached out to gently tug Wufei’s chin in his direction, making him look at him.
“Homesick?” It was about time.
“I just want it over.” Wanted closure, and Trowa knew he had done the right thing with Giles today. Humans weren’t inherently bad people, things happened that made them that way. He didn’t want to be that thing for Giles Hume. In the morning they would sit down and have a long talk and at the end of it he was confident Giles Hume would help him of his own free will.
“What’s a week to a lifetime?”
It was the answer Wufei had given him, when he’d asked for a week to think about it, to escape from the demand in Trowa’s gaze and Trowa had stood there, lost for words. Wufei laughed now, having his words thrown back at him.
“Nothing indeed,” he agreed softly and Trowa coaxed him back to the bed, tucking him in and bringing him a cup of tea when it was ready, settling in beside him while he drank it. He looked comfortable and content and Trowa ached to see him home, in his real bed, and to bring him tea that wasn’t laced with an addictive substance, and maybe watch TV on a screen that couldn’t watch them back.
But there would be time for that. A week wasn’t long at all.
Talking shop basically involved them taking a lot of guesses about how long it would take Quatre to read all the information they had sent, file a report with Une and have her send out a team to get them. From there, it descended into an argument about what their mission was, exactly. Whether their first priority should be getting off the station or whether it should be discovering exactly what Frank was up to, if he was indeed trying to get control of Preventers and maybe make some sort of universal debut as the ruling force over humanity. Trowa and Duo just wanted to jump ship, Heero and Wufei wanted to kill the beast.
In the end, Heero convinced them to do as much as possible before the Preventers team arrived, if it was even coming, which basically meant they had to keep doing what they were already doing. Only, do more as well. Duo was going to infiltrate Level 5 and figure out who the heads of Frank were, what they did for a living, and try and find some leverage over them. Heero was going to work with Wufei to access Frank, which Trowa thought was an epically stupid idea. And Trowa was going to continue his work in Hanger101, making sure they had a way out of Frank when the time came. He was content with his own role, at least.
But it had the strange side effect of making him very reluctant to leave the next morning. He lingered in bed, letting Duo shower first, and just lay, fingers lazily stroking Wufei’s hip, watching him watch him back, wondering for the first time what it would be like to lose this now he finally had it. If Wufei was wondering the same thing, he gave no clue.
Duo stumbling out of the shower, hair a mess over one shoulder, one hand holding his towel on and the other stabbing Heero with a hairbrush got Trowa moving. Seeing Heero Yuy, of all people, being domestic was not helping his mood at all and he showered with hurried efficiency, dressing hap-hazardly and stuffing what he needed for the day into his backpack.
Duo wasn’t ready to go at all, so Trowa made Wufei a pot of tea and left it on the stove to keep warm, taking a cup over to him, amused when Wufei insisted on fluffing his own pillows and getting himself sitting comfortably. He was getting stronger every day and Trowa knew he had to be working at it during the day while he was away. It only made him proud because Wufei was right, he never ran away.
“Just...be careful?” He pleaded softly, brushing the back of his fingers over the bandage on Wufei’s head so there was no mistaking what he was talking about. Wufei just nodded and took the tea and Trowa wondered how careful you could really be when you were sticking pins in your head and connecting to a monster computer with its own agenda. But he was outnumbered in the debate for whether Wufei continued to do it or not, so he had no choice but to sit back and let it happen. Wufei would do what Wufei wanted to do.
He stole a quick kiss while Duo was hurriedly pulling his boots on, grabbing his own bag of goodies and whispering something to Heero. Trowa couldn’t really imagine Heero putting up with someone whispering sweet nothings in his ear, but Duo got a free pass on a lot of things, so he wasn’t completely ruling out the possibility.
Then it was the morning shuttle and cafe routine and by the time Trowa got to his simulator he already felt tired because Tracey had talked their ears off about the Level 5 idiots causing all that fuss over a stolen flower. Sometimes things really did just work out right in the end. Duo was so blown away by the news Tracey felt compelled to sit with them for a good twenty minutes talking all about it and Trowa knew Duo was gathering intel on the situation, but he was also just lapping it up. Once a thief, always a thief.
He stared at the simulator controls in a stupor and when his superior officer came to check on how he was going the man laughed at the bags under his eyes, saying they matched the bruise on his jaw and that he knew getting to fly was exciting but that he should try sleeping sometime. It was good too apparently! Who knew.
He snuck away the first chance he got and went to Hanger101.
Hatty’s eyes were open again and Trowa frowned at her, reaching out to push them closed. She wasn’t even plugged in, so her having muscle function was more than a little disturbing. He plugged in his laptop and booted it up, then went about the process of getting Hatty connected. It was getting easier, and made his stomach turn less and he thought that was a bad sign but there was nothing he could do about it right now.
Everything started just as it should and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief, logging in to his message board and writing Wufei a message, being more careful with what he said than he would have liked because Heero was there.
‘Good Morning, Wufei. I’m just hanging out with Hatty, we’re having a great time. Don’t forget to water the plant and drink lots of tea.’
But not too much tea, they were going to have to start weening him off it soon, but he was putting it off because he didn’t want to watch Wufei suffering a little more each day. But soon...soon he would suck it up and make it happen.
“Hatty?”
How to explain that he had given a name to the half completed earlier model of Wufei’s replacement.
‘Nataku’s predecessor.’ Maybe he could get away with saying the creator had called her that in his notes? But if anyone else ever read the whole thing they would realise he’d made it up. Still, the chances of anyone reading the notes anytime soon were slim, so at least his humiliation would be delayed.
“Right.” Wufei, on the hand, would know he had named it. Oh well.
There were no more messages on the board and he forced himself to forget about Wufei for a while and concentrate on working. Namely, on building a replica of the Pad. Despite having read the manual and the journal notes, and having a perfectly working example to duplicate, it was far from easy and Trowa found himself cursing as he tried even just to find the parts he needed scattered about the workshop. The creator had no sense of ‘tidy’, and was hopeless at breaking things down to the nitty gritty, so Trowa found himself taking small pieces off the Pad and disassembling them, duplicating it one wire at a time.
It was a very time consuming process and by lunch he had barely copied three small components. He took out the energy bar he’d packed for lunch and his bottle of water and sat down next to Hatty, not sure that was a good idea but his stomach didn’t protest too horribly and he nibbled away at the bar while he studied the ports in her body. It still disturbed him to see how intricately each was connected inside, not knowing if they were removable or if Wufei was going to have to learn to live with them. Surely they could find some doctor and scientist crazy enough to figure it out. Sally would help, but she wouldn’t be able to do it alone.
They were thoughts for another time, in the future, when they actually got free of Frank and Trowa convinced Wufei to join him for a little while on his unemployment vacation. Wufei would be joining him whether he liked it or not after the crap he’d put them through.
He finished his energy bar and started poking around at Hatty’s head again, trying to figure out how her eyes kept opening but without taking her face off so he could see the sockets, it was too hard to tell and he wasn’t quite ready to rip the poor girl’s skin off her bones. Instead he logged in to her system and had a look that way, but biological responses were, as he knew from the creator’s notes, entirely separate from her system. It was why she had been discontinued, after all.
He did, however, find several modules in his coding switched off and turned each one on in turn, waiting for changes or responses. There were none, including nothing negative, so he left them on. Whatever they did, it couldn’t hurt to have them active and doing their thing as long as it didn’t interrupt or inhibit his access of the System.
He got back to work duplicating pieces of the Pad, and sent each piece through to His Room, wondering if Wufei or Heero had even noticed the random things popping up under the bed. It was the only place he could think of where no one was going to be standing at any given moment and get mixed up in the Molecularization process.
By the end of the day he hand superficial burns over his hands and up his arms, his fingers ached from twisting wires and shoving them into the tiny places he didn’t have the right tools to reach, and his eyes had the crusty, dry feeling that meant he was going to have to try and get some drops or stop staring at things for extended periods of time.
He was about to start the shutdown processes when the Pad activated and he stared in horror as a man doubled over on it and puked.
The mechanic.
“Damnit,” he muttered to himself but his hand was already reaching for his gun and he held it on the man, just waiting for him to realise he was even there. He supposed he should have known it would take a while, but maybe Nataku was right after all and he was just getting used to the process. The mechanic was clearly not so accustomed to being put back together.
“Bloom?” He squinted at Trowa, making him realise it was dark in the Hanger. His eyes had always adjusted well to light but the few in the Hanger were gloomy things and he hadn’t even bothered to turn them all on. No wonder his eyes were tired.
“You should have left it alone,” Trowa scowled. Because really, what was he supposed to do with the man now?
“What are you doing...where are we?” The man looked around with wide eyes, then caught sight of Hatty and her sisters and Trowa had to sit through another round of puking. And really, who was going to clean that up?
“I could ask you the same question. You inputted your own data into the SiS files?”
“There was no other explanation. I wanted to make it work.” Stubborn, fool of a man! Trowa didn’t want to have to kill him, but he would if he had to. It was a Yuy response to the situation though and he was trying to think of alternatives. He waved the gun in the direction of the tables and the mechanic wasn’t stupid, he walked. Or stumbled really, his legs still not fully recovered from the transition back into substantial being.
“What is this place?” He sat down in one of the chairs and looked around with wide, horrified eyes, his gaze coming back to rest on Hatty and her beating heart. Trowa doubted the colour would be coming back to the man’s face any time soon.
“This is Hanger101.”
“There is no Hanger101,” the mechanic frowned, clearly at odds with himself as he looked around again. Obviously, there was a Hanger101. “I don’t...I don’t understand.”
“The man who built this colony. This is his workshop.”
The mechanic just couldn’t stop his eyes from landing on Hatty and Trowa just waited it out, letting him get used to the idea, going to take a seat in front of the laptop again, gun still ready and pointed at the man in case he got any ideas. It wasn’t like Trowa didn’t need a few minutes to get his own head straight. He hadn’t expected the man to figure it out, though he should have known that once he knew Trowa had succeeded he wouldn’t stop until he figured it out as well. And here they were...what a nuisance.
“This...this is Harry’s workshop?”
“Harry?” Trowa sat up, wishing he’d bothered to ask the monk what his brother’s name was.
“Harrison Jules,” the mechanic whispered, still just staring at Hatty. It was getting annoying really, she was going to get a complex if he wasn’t careful! Girls didn’t like to be stared at, really.
“Harrison Jules?” He would have to check with Farrar and find out if that was indeed his brother. But what the hell was he supposed to do with the mechanic in the meantime?
“He was a friend of mine. He flew the SiS-50 from the broken Pad...But it stopped working and after a while he stopped coming to try and fix it...But he was coming here. Wasn’t he.” It wasn’t a question and Trowa didn’t bother trying to reply. It wasn’t like he actually knew what had happened anyway, he only knew the end of the story and he thought it was pretty obvious.
“He’s dead. Isn’t he.”
“Yes,” it wasn’t a question but Trowa felt the need to give him closure anyway. The man sighed and sat in silence, just looking around the workshop with a sad expression, shaking his head every now and then as if he couldn’t quite believe it.
“He was a good man. So clever...he could do anything. I’m not surprised it was him who made it all, though he never said.”
That still amazed Trowa, that the man had never demanded he be allowed to take credit for the incredible things he had brought to life. Whoever held the purse strings had to have made one hell of a contract to manage it, and even then he didn’t see how it had stopped Harrison Jules, if that was really his name, from telling the world about all his amazing inventions. From telling the universe about Frank. It would have saved Preventers a lot of time and trouble and made his life a lot easier.
Unfortunately he doubted they would have been told about Wufei. Some things happened the way they happened for a reason, Wufei liked to remind him, and maybe this was just one of those times. He had Wufei, so he would be grateful for it, regardless of what happened next.
“The System that runs this colony killed him,” Trowa told him bluntly. The man stared at him with wide eyes and Trowa decided some truth might just save the man’s life, depending on how he took it. So he crossed his legs and got comfortable.
“The System, which I like to call Frank, is trying to get control of Preventers, the peacekeeping force set up by the United Nations Body headed by Relena Peacecraft. You’re familiar with it?”
“Yes, but...what? Why?” Why indeed, when the colony’s goal had always been to remain apart from the rest of the universe.
“I am a Preventer agent. I was sent to investigate the colony, to see what it was and ascertain its purpose. Currently, I believe its purpose to be gaining full control of the human race. The System’s prime directive is to preserve human life...”
“I understand,” the mechanic whispered softly, but he was silent for a long while, absorbing the information. Eventually his gaze returned to Trowa, and more importantly to Trowa’s gun.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
What little colour had returned to the man’s face drained again and Trowa watched his throat swallow knowingly. He was in a very uncomfortable position and Trowa didn’t envy him at all. Of course, Trowa would never have gotten himself into such a stupid position in the first place.
“Do you have a family?”
“No...” He was clearly struggling to decide if he should have said yes, if it might have maybe made a difference. It would have, but only to how Trowa approached the problem. If he’d had one, and Trowa had to kill the man, it also meant he might have had to kill the family and that would have been annoying. Not having a family was always the better option, even when you did have one.
“That’s good,” he reassured the man, or tried to. It was hard to be reassuring when you were pointing a gun at someone. They just didn’t seem to accept you were being sincere.
The really annoying thing was that he was going to be late to dinner, which was, he at least hoped, going to make Wufei worry and the last thing he wanted to do was add to that man’s worries. Even if it felt nice to know he would. He hoped. And Duo would scowl at him all night for making his dinner cold or some such nonsense. It wasn’t even his fault!
He turned to the laptop and hacked into the Level 1 files again, looking at the man expectantly.
“What’s your military detail?”
“2620007622...Giles Hume.”
Trowa typed it in and copied his profile across to his system before clocking the man out for the day and then putting in a sick leave request for tomorrow and approving it.
“Okay, you’ve gone home and tomorrow you are sick,” Trowa informed him, pointing the gun at the hoists Hatty had been attached to. The man blanched but wheeled his chair backward until it was under the chains. Trowa moved in quickly and cuffed him to the chair and hoist, making sure he could move but that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go back to My Room and have dinner, and sleep and then come back here in the morning after my team and I have decided what to do with you.” And yes, he was going to let the man sweat on it all night.
He set the Pad back to register only his details and locked it that way, setting the timer and going about the process of shutting down his laptop so he could get out before he decided killing the man really would just be easier.
He put a cup on the table near the man as he went about unplugging Hatty and the man stared at it for a long time. Then he put his water bottle, which was mostly full beside it and the man frowned.
“The bottle’s for drinking, the cup is for peeing,” Trowa explained and the man slumped, all the fight gone from him. Trowa suspected he would spend the night thinking equally about his dead friend, and how much time he had before he was joining him in death. It wasn’t a completely useless way to spend the night, though Trowa would have looked for a way to escape had their positions been reversed.
“Please...please don’t kill me!”
Trowa stared at him, taking in the quiet demeanour and the pleading look on his face and really, he hadn’t nothing against Giles Hume. He was just a mechanic who let his curiosity get away from him and risked his life for no good reason at all. It wasn’t a good enough reason to kill him and if he was smart and did as he was told Trowa was confident it wouldn’t come to that.
“Don’t give me a reason to.”
He left it at that, going to the Pad as the timer activated and maybe Giles called something out, maybe he didn’t, Trowa had no idea because he was in the shower again, Duo standing in front of him, wide eyed and butt naked.
“Duo...” Duo’s fist smashed into his guts and he toppled backward into the wall.
“Pervert!” Duo bellowed at him and grabbed a towel, charging out of the bathroom. Trowa just slid down the shower wall and rubbed his stomach.
Heero popped his head in and smirked and Trowa just gave him the finger, motioning for the door to close and tossing his backpack out of the shower before turning on the water, fully clothed.
It took a while but his body got over the Molecularization and he eventually stripped off and showered, hanging his wet clothes over the towel rack and dressing in his comfortable house pants and a t-shirt. He was getting really sick of white clothes. When he got home he was going shopping and buying every outrageously coloured piece of clothing he saw.
“Bastard,” he grumbled at Duo when he emerged to find Duo and Heero on the sleeping bag, talking quietly over some folders they had been working on. Duo just shrugged, feeling entirely justified and Trowa glared.
“Okay, from now on, no one showers between six and seven. That’s Molecularization time. I could turn up in there at any time and I do not want to end up merged to one of you.”
“Neither do we,” Duo muttered darkly and Trowa wondered how long it was going to take for him to get over it.
Wufei snickering on the bed wasn’t helping anyone’s mood.
“Duo found the offices of two of the men in charge. They’re old names,” Heero noted softly, holding out one of the folders for Trowa to take and Trowa frowned as he sat on the bed beside Wufei and read the title.
“Noventa? Seriously?” Heero just grunted.
Flipping through the file it was mostly as Trowa had expected, an early history of activism, a son rebelling against a rich family, advocating peace and then a personal tragedy, the loss of a loved one to send them over the rails. The right contacts, a list of names likely to be in the same position and enough money inherited to help buy off a noted scientist. He sighed and handed the folder back, trusting them to read the details and build the right picture. His job was just to get the Pad working.
“I’ve got some good leads on the others. Think I should have the whole list in two...three days tops. Was hard getting around though, they’re fishy about strangers up there now and there’s ridiculous security in place. Even Wufei had trouble getting me through some places.”
That got Trowa’s attention and he studied Wufei as if he might see signs of a struggle on him. There were none and Wufei just smirked, knowing exactly that he was looking for.
“I’m fine, Barton. Stop looking for problems where there aren’t any.”
“Speaking of...” They were all looking at him and he shifted uncomfortably. “Well, the mechanic who originally was trying to fix the broken Pad on Level1?”
“Yes,” Duo droned expectantly, drawing the word out in the same way Trowa was drawing out the conversation.
“His name is Giles Hume.”
“I’m not seeing your point,” Heero noted coldly and really that was obvious from the frown on his face and Trowa just shrugged at them all.
“I’m sort of keeping him prisoner in Hanger101.”
A room full of silence was a very funny thing, but strangely no one was laughing.
“Define sort of,” Duo was very careful with his words and Trowa wondered if he should be as well.
“I mean I have him chained up with a cup to pee in and some water to drink and that I’ll go check on him in the morning.”
Even Wufei was just staring at him now and really, Trowa didn’t see what all the fuss was about. The guy had surprised him, so what. He had more initiative than Trowa had given him credit for, that wasn’t a reason to kill him. They weren’t at war, right now, and he saw no reason to start killing innocent people for the crime of curiosity.
“Kill him,” Heero ordered and you would think that was the end of the conversation.
“No. The man’s an innocent fool. Besides, he’s good with Pads. He can help me.”
“And in the meantime you’ll what? Keep him like a pet? He’s a human being, Trowa!” Duo was horrified, but Trowa didn’t bother pointing out that at least as a pet the man would be alive. In Heero’s scenario he was very much dead, which tended to be a rather irrecoverable state of being.
“What if he gets free?” Wufei asked softly.
“For starters, he won’t get free.” It just wasn’t possible, even if you were Heero. “And secondly, he can’t go anywhere, I took his details off the file, the Pad will only recognise me until someone reprograms it and I took the computer with me.”
“...that was smart,” Wufei admitted and Trowa just rolled his eyes, wondering if they had honestly expected him to do something stupid. Other than tie a man up to keep as a pet in his secret laboratory.
“It’s fine. He’s...he’s a good guy,” Trowa grumbled, not wanting to talk about it anymore. They dropped it and Duo went to the microwave, bringing back a plate of steak and vegetables. Trowa took it gratefully and shifted to the far corner of the bed to eat it, wanting distance from the people who hadn’t done anything since he got back besides punch him and treat him like he was an idiot. They were smart enough to give him his space.
He didn’t even think of looking up again until Wufei got up and went to the kitchenette to make himself a pot of tea. Trowa watched him, noticing the way he still only took small steps and the lack of confidence in those, but he was getting better and he had no trouble lifting the kettle and making the tea, while just a few days ago he would have struggled. So he smiled and took his plate to the sink, brushing his fingers across the back of Wufei’s neck on his way past, liking the way he shivered a little at the touch and looked across at him.
“I watered the plant,” he said softly and Trowa smiled. Whatever he had done with the rest of the day was irrelevant because he had been thinking of Trowa.
“No word from Quatre yet,” Wufei noted softly and Trowa just sighed. He wasn’t surprised, doing the math in his head.
“Even if he’d gotten to the satellite in two hours, which I don’t think he did...” Quatre was too cautious after losing men. He would have waited to see if it blew, then run every scan on it he could think of before going in, and even then... “Even if he’s got the information already, it’ll take Preventers at least 48 hours to get through it all and send a shuttle. And that’ll take at least a couple of days to track us down... I don’t expect to hear anything for at least three days.” And that was if whoever read the report had enough sense to really put all the pieces together.
“I guess,” Wufei grumbled and it was laced with so much unhappiness Trowa frowned and reached out to gently tug Wufei’s chin in his direction, making him look at him.
“Homesick?” It was about time.
“I just want it over.” Wanted closure, and Trowa knew he had done the right thing with Giles today. Humans weren’t inherently bad people, things happened that made them that way. He didn’t want to be that thing for Giles Hume. In the morning they would sit down and have a long talk and at the end of it he was confident Giles Hume would help him of his own free will.
“What’s a week to a lifetime?”
It was the answer Wufei had given him, when he’d asked for a week to think about it, to escape from the demand in Trowa’s gaze and Trowa had stood there, lost for words. Wufei laughed now, having his words thrown back at him.
“Nothing indeed,” he agreed softly and Trowa coaxed him back to the bed, tucking him in and bringing him a cup of tea when it was ready, settling in beside him while he drank it. He looked comfortable and content and Trowa ached to see him home, in his real bed, and to bring him tea that wasn’t laced with an addictive substance, and maybe watch TV on a screen that couldn’t watch them back.
But there would be time for that. A week wasn’t long at all.